The Besties - The Besties Podcast 38

Episode Date: December 7, 2012

In what is basically the last week of the year in terms of big video game releases, The Besties are concerned with one thing and one thing only: holiday cookies. Oh, what the heck, we'll talk about some games as well! Far Cry 3 is the heavy hitter of the week, but there seem to be some surprising contenders going up against it. 07:00 - Far Cry 3 21:00 - Skyrim: Dragonborn 34:30 - Halftime: The dark corners of Xbox Live 43:00 - Dikembe Mutombo's 4 1/2 Weeks to Save the World 48:45 - THE DECISION Theme song by Ian Dorsch Get the show: Download MP3" Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe on iTunes Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Will you guys tell me something seriously, please? Yeah. Do you like the butter cookies in the blue tin, Dan? Yes. In the blue tin? I like the ones that have the little unidentifiable jelly inside of them. Oh, oh. I like the ones with the clear specks of sugar.

Yeah. Well, you know those are sugar, or perhaps PCP, or angel dust, as the kids call it on the streets. But the jelly, what is that? What that what is that that's a good question archway cookies used to make the cookie griffin likes but they have recently trimmed their product line which cookie is that 100 cookies to 21 different varieties justin you sent me this image of the cookie, and it looks like skull. Like, it looks like chew. Like a chew.

Chaw. Like chaw. What? Oh, the chaw tip? Yeah. It's the size of, like, a plate. Oh, yeah. So the ones I like the most are the pretzel-shaped ones that don't taste at all like pretzel.

Yes. I don't know why they have different shapes. They are all the same cookie. Yeah. I'm talking about the Royal Dansk Danish Butter Cookies. You could try to make those at home. You're not going to get close. No, not a chance. That's because they're not food. They're chemicals.

What do you mean? I'm sure. Let's look at the ingredient. Chemicals are food. Chemicals are food for your brain. Without chemicals, the Ninja Turtles would never have happened. That's a good point. I take back my words. These are actually mostly natural

products, except for the ammonium bicarbonate. No, that comes from the plant. The ammonium bicarbonate. You apparently have overlooked artificial flavor vanilla. Flavor vanilla is one word.

What is invert sugar? I'm going to invert my sugar? Invert sugar is salt. Everybody knows that. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know it too, the best game. My name is Chris Plant, and I know the best game of the year. Whoa. Yeah, deal with it.

My name is Russ Frost and I know the best game of the week. You have joined us once again for the besties where we pit the latest and greatest games of the week against each other in Mortal Kombat to see which one reigns supreme. We didn't take that champion and find out if it dethrones our current king of the gaming for christmas i'm getting you a piece of paper with the script on it for you to read at the beginning of the show you know what's hurtful is i felt like that was a pretty smooth one needs a little work it was a little rough around the old edges someone knocking what's the current game of the year i'll tell you what the current game of the year is it's persona 4 the golden which is the more golden edition of persona 4 on ps2 and it's also smaller

because it's on the vita but it is actually it's large the the file size is larger because there's more content because there's more content i have more emotional uh connections you can make i have dipped into persona 4 i've played i would say about three hours uh on in the bathroom um i holy oh my god was that oh my god bathroom trip last week you last thursday i think is when we recorded you hadn't played it at all so you're saying over the past seven days not even seven days because it's we're recording this on wednesday it's been like five days yeah you have spent three hours on the toilet it's a very compelling game i uh have have just begun a relationship with uh chie just a faint inkling of relationship with chie

uh which is impressive considering the only times that chie and i have ever spoken my pants have been around my ankles and i've been using the bathroom you should be thinking very deeply about the things that you're saying as in before you're saying i think i should be thinking about the things i'm eating yeah uh more strictly so i have i have enjoyed persona 4 um we have game it's a game about relationships i have heard so much and a lot of it was coming out of my own mouth about how hard it is to describe this game do you think now with a few hours under your belt you can explain this game better than i did which well his belt was around his ankles so it's hard to say uh listen don't worry about the game worry about the story yeah that's that's what that's what you're here for i would say from what i've seen so far

the game is very much like persona persona 3 it's it's a turn-based RPG with some Pokemon elements. And if you could breed Pokemon... Similar to Pokemon. If you could make Pokemon breed... You can. You can. You can make new Pokemon.

What do you think Chance is doing with that egg? Okay, so to recap, this game is some Pokemons. I saw somebody on Twitter compare it to Pokemon cross Dawson's Creek, which, yep, that sounds just about right, actually. Pacey. Was that your impression of Pacey as a Pokemon? Yeah, that's what Pacey sounds like. Not bad at all.

What's his type? Water. Okay. I have really enjoyed the- Because of the creek. The story's very cool. I mean, again, three hours in, but I'm like, I'm really intrigued by what's going on. Is it a game that actually has something to say, which is kind of weird?

What does it have to say? Well, again, just three hours into it is it like missile proliferation good try hey you'll get them next time maybe uh but i i've enjoyed now chris plant rose rustic you guys are gonna dip in did you did you check it out this week uh i saw it in the playstation store okay they didn didn't do their homework. So here's the thing. I had all the best intentions to play this game for probably at least like 20 hours. But then I played Far Cry 3 instead. Yeah, that's pretty much what happened to me too.

Pretty much all I've done. How are you guys getting all these copies of Far Cry 3? I had to do the tips feature. And I had to do that going insane thing thing oh yeah the bonkers video we're going playing a game for eight hours and going crazy so um is this our smooth transition yeah there's been a lot of i was i was i was out in the oop and i was waiting for you to dunk it all right well then let's wrap about the only game that is left to come out this year is Far Cry 3, which apparently is Skyrim with guns is the official subtitle.

I wouldn't, you know, I won't say, I don't think that's right. Well, you don't have to think it's right because Ubisoft said that out loud. Yeah, I think they're marketing to people who like crappy games. Okay, well, Chris hates Skyrim, so let's just factor that into that. said that out loud yeah i think they're marketing to people who like crappy games okay well chris hates skyrim so let's just factor that into that it's close enough to be a legitimate statement okay it's like fuck i don't even know where to start and how much i don't like that it's so much closer to i'd say just cause to uh donkey kong and a stealth game that's actually fun well how

is it like donkey kong because it's in the it's in the jungle that is the dumbest goddamn thing i've ever heard uh and he killed lots of animals he killed tonic crocodiles okay okay let's talk about the actual game instead of making the worst comparisons anyone's ever made i i think it was astute i don't know anybody else making that type of comment it was bad uh we can hold up we can hold a vote like an impromptu vote right now about how bad that was but it was bad bad oh it was bad just in seconds two and two it's been carried let's okay uh so i'll talk about the game do you want that yeah i think you played the most of it yeah i played a little bit um so the game is essentially uh you know those

horror movies where the white kids get kidnapped while they're in some foreign country and then after like a few of them get killed one of them decides he's gonna kill everyone as like revenge like jungle to jungle with tim allen well it's it's like jungle to jungle and donkey kong had a baby um so it's one of those jungles that's the premise it's one of those horror movies where you're this guy who's never really done anything wrong you're a preppy white kid who you know has had the same girlfriend since high school and you don't really know much about the world and you just want to skydive bro and you do skydive but onto the wrong island uh and and you're like i don't think i can do this i've never killed a man and 15 minutes later you are carving up human beings like it's your job and about three hours later, you have disconnected from the world entirely.

Like, you're blowing up cars and you're like, yeah, this is so fun. And somebody's like, there were people inside. And you're like, shut up. Can I just say really quick that I have only, I got the game last night in the mail at like 9 p.m. So I've only played about 20 minutes of it, that very first part that you just described. about 20 minutes of it that very first part that you just described and my only question is is this actually a spiritual sequel or perhaps a remake to lester the unlikely because that's where i'm at right now is some guy who's afraid of his own shadow and you say that he's eventually turns into the the most dangerous killer of all time very quickly i mean so answer answer me a second question is

anybody gonna understand my lester the unlikely no no no no did you guys get it no pearls before swine uh griffin let me ask you something okay if you found yourself skydiving with some compatriots and you landed on a pirate island and you're captured and tied up and they killed a few of your friends and there was a crazy guy screaming in your face how gun ho would you be gung ho would you be gung ho but let's back up because what are the steps that take me from sitting on my couch in my sleep pants eating a bowl of chili and playing persona 4 golden to skydiving over a pirate island because that seems like a pretty that seems like a pretty far cry if you forgive

oh my god oh shit that was really rough no that might be it you know what i like about this game what do you like i hate using buzzwords but like the the word that i'm to drop is the emergent gameplay. Let's gamify this game. Let's gamify this game. What I like about it is the missions are great. Actually, the story is great. The missions, when you're in them, are... There is an uncharted set of missions that I think were more thrilling than the past uncharted.

There are these kind of stealthy missions. They're all these different kind of go through the corridors and see the big sites type of stuff and the story that ties that all together is like very very well written uh for a video game but well acted and well act oh my gosh well we'll get back to all that the i i will rave about the acting like crazy but the very best part about the game is that when you're not doing this story it is as fun or more fun because you can do the craziest shit like i i like to just climb up on a mountain side you know overlooking a road maybe 20 feet away you know like below me it's on a cliff's edge i lay c4 there and i just wait for cars to pass by and then i

just detonate them off of the mountain uh or instead of killing people with my own weapons i try to only use animals like i will find uh tigers and i will lure them uh to camps full of mercenaries and then i will just let the tigers savage them it's it's so much fun it's the law of nature slow down i'm trying to climax every time do we have to do that every time we talk about gruesome murder how's the hang gliding though because i saw a clip where a guy hang glid into another dude and i was like this is this game is my spirit animal yeah uh the hang gliding is fantastic especially because you can use the hang glide as a weapon so you can

spear people with it if you time it right yeah that's what i want the thing i wanted to say about this is that i think we've played a few stealth games this year uh dishonored being one of the very good ones and Mark of the Ninja this definitely has stealth elements but it's much more fluidly integrated into the game you feel like you're legitimately hiding from people and when you go to make

stealth kills using this whole takedown maneuver where you're behind someone and you click and you bolt forward and take them out with your machete it feels much more uh i don't want to say realistic but it feels like more believable this in the sense that you're like oh i'm hiding in the bush they wouldn't be able to see me uh it just handles it it feels like a like a legitimate way to handle stealth rather than just being like oh i'm invisible and actually having like long grass everywhere in the game which is an accomplishment like for the graphics

of the game actually serves a purpose for creating this sense of like hiding and the way the grass kind of moves and bends for you to peek through it it just feels like you're there i mean that's like very trite sounding but it really does the. The other thing, though, about the stealth is, I don't know how far Russ is, but first to set it up, you can throw rocks in the game, which sounds silly, but it's the equivalent of like the whistle in Assassin's Creed. But what's great about it is, one, it feels good. It feels like throwing a grenade.

Two, it distracts people away from you instead of, you know, towards you, so you don't have to, like, run away after you've done it. And it's amazing how you can handle a mission by putting silencers on your rifle, right? And you'll throw a rock to distract people on the ground, then you'll pick off a guard who's, like, you know, watching from a top area, you know, eagle's nest, and you'll sneak up behind the people on the ground,

string together two or three stab combos because you can string them together throw a knife at a guy grab a knife off of one of the guys you killed throw it at a guy across the room do another stab combo pull the great the string on his grenade kick him towards the rest of the people and he'll blow up and you'll kill like you can kill like a dozen people this has been far cry 3 pro tips with your man chris plan it's just crazy it's crazy to beat the third dungeon here's what you gotta do okay so you gotta stab and then you throw the knife and then you get the grenade uh guys how long have you now chris how long have you been a licensed gameplay counselor uh well here's the thing if you just call my number at 1-900-422-TIPS

uh i'll be happy to walk you through this game did you ever go to college for that or yeah you do i have a ba in tips um that's the tip um thank you um this game sounds good i'd like i kind of want to just stop fucking i I want to stop podcasting right now, and I want to go and play it some. Because my guy is still, like, a huge wuss. Like, he's still afraid of knives. He's somebody... He's someone on the ground,

and ran 100 feet away from it. That's scary. Got attacked by a paper. I wish more games were dictated... Like, gameplay actions were dictated by courage. Like, your character had more agency. That is what Lester the Unlikely was all about. Level one, you see monsters,

and you literally lose control of Lester, and he runs away. You know what else you can do in Lester the Unlikely? Throw rocks. That's for fucking real. So I think that whoever made that game, and I'm sure they're still around, I think that Ubisoft owes them some money.

There was a bit in Persona 4 when this character says that, Chie actually, one of the female characters says that you seem very open. You seem different from everybody else. And one of the dialogue options is, you're you're falling for me huh and i chose that one and it actually says you don't have the courage to say oh you don't have and i don't mean courage like general i mean like there is a stat you can raise that lets you say dope shit to babes you just gotta be brave enough is there a courage stat in far cry 3 that you can upgrade no you just do that gradually uh there's one thing i i that russ pointed out that i'll allude to him uh that i think was a really great point uh it is so much better than the other ubisoft game

uh it's it's not that it's better it's it's not what's although it is remarkably it handles similar things much better yeah so essentially in assassin's creed 3 for those who played it and enjoyed it as i know we all did uh there are elements like crafting and you know loot collection hunting and money all that stuff was in assassin's creed 3 but it was basically worthless or if it wasn't worthless it was a giant pain in the ass to use all that stuff's in far all that stuff is in far cry 3 um but it's so it's handled so well where oh crafting gives me more space to hide equipment or crafting lets me carry four guns at the same time or money lets me buy attachments for guns it's so clear why you would do the side stuff to the point where i find myself only doing

the side stuff like i haven't really touched the story missions just so i can like get all these upgrades whereas assassin's creed 3 handled all those upgrades in such a sloppy frustrating manner and it's just crazy to me that i mean granted it's a totally different team but it's crazy to Whereas Assassin's Creed 3 handled all those upgrades in such a sloppy, frustrating manner. And it's just crazy to me that, I mean, granted, it's a totally different team, but it's crazy to me that this is the same publisher putting out games that have very similar components but are handled completely differently. There is also, oh, sorry. I was just going to say, Russ, can you do a podcast by yourself called Frustration? Frustration. You wouldn't be the first to make that joke. Because you said frustrating frustrating and i couldn't tell if you did it on purpose no i can say that word just say we'll

workshop it after the podcast the other thing i want to like add to that is it's amazing how in assassin's creed 3 you essentially can't do anything without sitting through a load screen or a cut scene or both of them back to back to back like you're constantly having to sit and listen to people spout very bad story at you uh and then have a load scene to get that started and the load scene to prep the mission and all these things that tell you whether or not you're playing the game right and what far cry 3 does at least on pc uh russ you can probably speak to the 360 version, is unless it's a major story event, it doesn't stop the game. When you open a door, it's like that's a really fast, quick load screen.

There's not even a load screen when you open doors. There's not even a load screen. It just feels like the world is totally seamless. points like most of your missions somebody hops on a phone and starts talking to you and you can you know start shooting shit or start driving to wherever you need to go while they're telling you what you need to do also there is just tons of uh fast what is it fast movement things with the map i don't know what you're talking about teleport from one end of the map to the other fast travel so which is great because they make full use of the map because they're not worried about you having to go from the farthest west corner

to the lowest east corner because they assume you'll actually just fast travel. But let's be honest. Sometimes you want load screens every time you open a door. Oh, gosh. I sense a segue coming on. And you want a lockpick. Oh, gosh. Sometimes you see a door and you think,

hmm, I'd like to lockpick that sumbitch. And then I'd like to wait while what's inside of it loads. And boy, have I got some DLC for you. What a segue. Well, Justin, what if Far Cry 3 was like Skyrim without guns? cry 3 was like skyrim without guns far cry 3 is like skyrim with guns and without loading all the time and glitching and freezing and stopping working constantly um so i'm playing dragonborn Um, it's the new DLC from, from Skyrim Productions. And I, I, I am, I don't know. I really don't know.

Maybe two or three hours into it. It's really hard to say. I, I, um, so without addressing to, I'm going to review the, the actual DLC. So I don't want to get into too many, uh, real particulars, but I, I do going to review the actual DLC, so I don't want to get into too many real particulars, but I do want to say it's... Oh, actually, my review is probably up by this point, by the time people are hearing this. But either way, it is so hard to get back into these games for me. It is so hard to re-acclimate myself to the world, to remember what gear I'm using, what my go-to powers have been, what

skills I'm working on, what I'm even doing. And that's such a big part of the Skyrim hook for me. Um, any of the, honestly, any of the, of the elder scrolls games, like that's part of the hook is like your character advancing and getting all this gear.

And like, when you start up this DLC, it just feels meaningless. Um, I had actually gotten funny enough. Uh, I had gotten like slightly into, Russ, what was the vampire diary? Yeah, like you want to talk about disorienting.

When I booted up my most recent save, I was literally a half man, half bat in the bottom of a dungeon somewhere. Like that is not conducive to like let's get out there and have some adventure like i was just i had the in the thick of it i had to battle my way through some dumb dungeon that i was so disgusted by the first time that i played it i actually i quit like halfway through so i had to start with their um dragonborn takes you uh to a new island where you are attacked at some point in your time in skyrim you're attacked uh by these cultists who have been orders to to kill you for claiming to be a false uh a false dragon oh my god i had no fate a false dove so then you killed a dragon and ate it as is as you are want to do

and i have done hundreds of times and they're like they're like oh shit wait never mind not convinced what else you got um so i that was the and so you travel to this island and find a people enslaved by this uh evil dude uh and you have to stop his plans okay so that's basically i've played a lot of bethesda dlc packs yeah like a lot of them i played all the far cry ones all the oblivion ones etc you mean uh fall out fall out that's what i meant and i find that they're very hit or miss and the ones that succeed are essentially the ones where they just drop you into a very large new area with tons of new side quests and stuff to do. And the ones that fail are essentially ones where they just jam a lot of the content

into the map you've already been in and just make like a lot of linear dungeons. Right. So yes, because I think that by creating, by putting it on a completely new island and making it substantial, I think that's the problem I run into with these DLC packs is it's

not substantial and it doesn't give you enough of a runway to get back into the game. Like not enough runway to care. And so far this has done that. It has provided a ramp up. There are side quests to explore.

What is the is it like a temperate climate? This is the bad part, right? It was, after some sort of disaster or eruption or something, the entire island is covered in ash. So it is like gray on gray on gray on gray. It is not fun. I thought you'd go back to like Morrowind, don't you? I have not yet.

This is a new island that I am exploring now. I saw some Morrowind looking shit. I saw some like tall ass mushrooms, some buildings that look like jellyfish. There are tall ass mushrooms as you put it. That shit's tight. Yeah you as you that shit's tight yeah i mean they are they are pretty pretty good pretty good how far are you into it i don't know maybe three hours okay i'm just now giving a shit about it again so however long it takes to start giving a shit about like how high my archery skill is that. A lot of this sounds like it would have just been abated if you just started a new character.

It doesn't sound like the problems you're having with it is necessarily the fault of the DLC because you're making it sound like any expansion released to Skyrim you're going to have a hard time getting into if you don't start a new guy. Well, but you have to be a little bit into it first um you can't you can't start dragonborn just right away um so you do have to like all dlc um like all dlc for for well not all but but like like most dlc it would be better if you just had

it it would be better if you just if it. It would be better if it was just in there and, you know, it was part of the initial adventure, because it doesn't feel like for me, for DLC to be really compelling after I've already done everything in Skyrim, it has to feel like

a new quest. It has to feel like waking the guy back up and saying like hey we've got something else for you but that's what essentially they were you know arguably that's what the vampires thing was and it still wasn't good dlc the reason the reason i think it uh certain bethesda dlc packs succeed is because what makes these games so fun and interesting is not necessarily the combat or the character advancement is exploration oh i want to see what's around this corner oh i want to climb this hill so when you have a brand

new island a new map exploration makes that like a compelling dlc pack did you play it did you guys play any of the new vegas dlc yeah so there were a few that were excellent like the what was the futuristic one old world blues yeah was tremendous that was great and that was set in like a crazy giant crater with like old sciencey buildings and stuff like that those don't seem to follow the same pattern you're talking about though because they're not necessarily based around exploration as much that is that one was well they're just like really heavily scripted also that like sort of instances that that you go and you explore a self-contained story that they have written for you like that is the kind of stuff that i get into not necessarily

like there's some new stuff in this world go find it yeah but compare that to operation anchorage for fallout 3 which was a highly scripted instance but it was super linear and it wasn't good like everyone hated it yeah and there's a reason why one succeeds and one fails and i think a lot of that is exploration what you are describing is why i can't get into these games and why i wonder in 20 years if people would ever want to play these games again because they don't they don't have particularly great story from what everyone who loves them says they don't have good gameplay uh they just have the exploration i know that's good none of the things that you're saying are true

yeah none of this is accurate oh how you guys are the first ones to say this and then somebody like will criticize it's like actually the stories the story's great i don't think elder scrolls games have very good story but i think the fallout games have great story i don't i think i don't i i would argue okay i would argue that maybe it's great the skyrim like overarching story isn't great but the personal narrative of your character and also all of the miniature arcs that you come across like all of the side quest storylines which are these self-contained stories of which there are you know hundreds and hundreds of in skyrim those are all really great like well not all of them they're pretty hit or miss no but i i played skyrim for a probably a combined total of hundreds of hours and i wouldn't be doing that if i thought that the both the gameplay and story were shit like and you can't and honestly these games are not

built around a central narrative that you i mean sure that is not no that is not the idea what i'm saying right also for me i'm not saying that universally this is pretty big blanket statements about the games don't have good gameplay and good story yeah for me i don't i don't enjoy that gameplay i think it feels like shitty combat and i think the story feels half-baked and rushed because they had to write a billion words skyrim's combat is a vast improvement over oblivion it's still not great though yeah i mean well i mean like i said i i've played probably like five or six hours of it and the combat was nothing was enough to get me into it and like i admit that they're just not the games for me but for me i that is why i just can't get into them because i feel like i feel like the hook is the exploration but

i also feel like there are games out there where i can have a good game and that also like gameplay that excites me exactly game something that pulls me in on top of all of that i will say like talking specifically about the combat in skyrim compared granted there are guns but sort of the sort of tactical decisions that you're making in uh far cry 3 in terms of handling like a camp of bad guys versus the tactical decisions you can make in Skyrim. Essentially Skyrim is like, oh, I start, I'm going to try to be stealthy. I might kill a guy or two, but then they notice me and they start charging at me. That's not how every, that's not how every encounter in Skyrim breaks down. Like the fact that you think that that is how it works makes me think.

You think I'm bad? Well, no, the fact that you think that that is how it works makes me think that you didn't... Well, no, it's just... There are so many different ways for a character to shape, to be shaped, that there's no way that every character plays every combat encounter the same way. Like, my stealth guy and my magic guy, like, handle shit completely differently. There are so many... So, like, just because you can't throw rocks doesn't mean there's no tactics involved in Skyrim's combat. No, I completely agree with Griffin, and I think that is probably why I don't like the game. Again, is because it, as the type of

role-playing game it is, it tries to do everything for everyone. Like, you can play it in all these different ways, there's all these different types of people, and you can have all these different stories, and, you know, you probably won't even see most of it and for me it none of it feels as good as it could be because it's trying to do so much and that is like again my problem with the games i don't think i i definitely understand why people like it because they do they they appreciate that freedom more than they appreciate the like nitty-gritty feeling of you know just the basic combat or the cohesiveness of the world that's pretty much how i feel you know i appreciate the freedom but i also appreciate it just i mean i trust me i played 90 to 100 hours of skyrim so i played a lot of that game

and i enjoyed it overall but i totally admit the faults and you know big ones like the fact that there are 30 second load screens whenever i try to open a door all that stuff hinders the experience that i'm trying to have which is i have free reign over this very large expanse and uh having played just far cry like that's it does so many things that i wish skyrim did yeah Yeah, I don't disagree that Skyrim could be doing things better. I think they have a pretty set watermark that they're trying to reach with their games, and they

hit it, but they don't reach beyond it, I think. What I would say is that the technical aspects of this, I touched on the door thing, but but seriously considering the fact that this is all downloaded i mean none of this is on a desk anywhere it's all on a hard drive and i know

that's not the only consideration but like the constant long loading is just unbearable i mean it is oppressive yeah like it's a problem if the only dlc pack i want is a chest outside my safe house door so i don't have to walk in my safe house and get two load screens walking in and out yeah and i'm talking about like glitches i'm talking about freezes i'm talking about like 10 second uh just stalls yeah stalls when it auto saves stalls when you go into a menu at least one like hard go turn off the 360 lock up um i think you need to clear your cache which is a ridiculous request but i had the same issues and that helped a little bit uh maybe maybe but there's no excuse there's no excuse to put a game out that requires people to google how you clear your cash on Xbox 360. Yeah. I mean,

I, it seems crazy to me that this, that they do not have a better handle on this stuff. Well, you should be doing that regularly anyway, because else people are going to see how much Perno you've been looking at. Right. You download it at that entertainment app.

Is there some, there are Pernno entertainment apps out there on this app store of the xbox live who was gonna get one of those and like have a bud over like hey bud let's play some halo and then they see like you know but the butt slammers app who wants that are there apps there are there's no way there are porno apps. There are porno apps on the Xbox Live app experience. I don't. It is the new, new Xbox experience.

It's the nude Xbox experience. Nude Xbox. I think the Kinect's watching me, guys. Well, that's why you don't want. Can this be our halftime chat? Because I'm fully in it. I'm fully, fully in it now um i'm afraid that my xbox watches me do everything i do i mean it does you can unplug the connect because you're not you're probably not using it did you see the trailer for that paranormal activity that little kid it has all the dots on his face and those dots are reading belly all's influence on his on his life

his possession i sometimes i'll turn on my uh i'll have the 360 on but my tv off and i will turn the 360 on and it it it thinks i have attempted to bing something like football shortcase jungle gym or something. Can I tell you the best Bing I ever got? It was, I think, right when the Bing thing came out. And I searched for Mario Lopez, the Greg Louganis story, like you do. And the result that I heard was Marioio lopez the great day mystery which i like to imagine it's a movie where mario lopez has like a really great day and he tries to figure out like what he did to deserve

all of these blessings can i i've used that cert like voice search feature more than once. And I never thought I would, but there have been times where I've just been chilling. Maybe I'm petting my cat. My cat is so adorable, I can't take my hands off it. And so I've got to use my mouth to search for Battlestar Galactica. And it works?

It works most of the time, yeah. Yeah, I've had some hit or miss situations right better than typing it's better than oh god anything's better than typing with shitty the worst search functionality ever like inside the hulu or the amazon app like just a straight row of letters that you have to scroll across who's the who are the ad wizards that thought this up guys i just remembered that i played something else what space team okay we'll talk about space team real brief so correct me if i'm wrong justin essentially it's like you're running a space it's like the movie space camp hold on hold on right hold on i have to continue halftime for just a second oh no

right hold on i have to continue halftime for just a second oh no uh we'll do space team and then we'll do the the other third game uh but first i want to tell you guys that we got an email from garbage dick at gmail.com who said can you change my name username to garbage duck so i can post but how will people know who he is how will people identify him that's amazing that man is a grandfather he has many children many garbage dick children that won't recognize his posts garbage duck sounds like i don't know it sounds like a like a shitty saturday morning cartoon character um garbage duck uh so i'm gonna tell you guys real quickly about space team because uh i don't think it can hang with some of our other entries this week but i did want to alert people to it because i've been having a lot of fun with it. It is an iOS game that requires two to four players.

Much like, you know, Super Stickman Golf or whatever, you start the game up and it looks for somebody else in your area. Then the two of you are manning a spaceship with a complicated series of nonsensical controls and the controls change from stage to stage basically you're piloting a spaceship that is trying to run

from an exploding star and you are trying to get far enough away from it that you can jump to hyperspace both players get instructions to their team that are, again, seemingly nonsensical until you look at the controls you have below you. And each player will get a different command. So one player may get a command to set shift sanitizer to one,

and the other one will get a command that says set sigma clapper to zero the two players then have to figure out who has which control and do it as fast as they can so both of them are shouting out do this thing and they may or may not have that control on their own console or maybe they have to get the other player to uh to find it and activate it yeah you know turn photo lamp on so you have to look on your screen to see if you have it and if you don't yell at the other players that they need to do it and you're trying to do it uh together and then there are some tandem actions like uh if an asteroid is coming at you both players have to shake their phone um or uh to avoid a wormhole both players have to turn their phones upside down so what we're

basically talking about here is cooperative touch screen space bop it yes that is a that is a wonderful way of describing it and the the names of the controls there are like thousands of them and they're all super super ridiculous so sometimes you'll turn on the twin mill. You'll deflush the synth cage. There's a button that says there's a section of the control panel that says leftovers and just a big button that says refrigerate. So you have to yell at the other player,

refrigerate the leftovers! It's really, it gets really, it's just a silly, silly game because you are shouting these ridiculous things at each other and trying to decide oh and as you if you do badly um your control panel will start falling apart and sparks will start shooting out of it so sometimes there'll be like bolts of electricity on your control panel you have to avoid or you have a a part of your uh control panel is like hanging

by a thread and it might be blocking another button so you have to sw a part of your, uh, control panel is like hanging by a thread and it might be blocking another button. So you have to switch your control back and forth to try to expose the button you need to push. Um, and the game is free and it's super fun to play with a bunch of people because it's, it's, it's totally goofy. And, uh, and, uh, I had a lot of fun with it. And it gets pretty hard because as you progress, you'll get, there'll be like complications, like something is wrong with your translator, so none of the names will be right.

Or sometimes all of the names will be replaced by pictures. So you'll be shouting at the other person, like raise the upsidedown shower to three. Or set the thing that looks like a toilet in an elevator, set that to four. But Cindy and I played it. We had a lot of fun, and I would highly recommend it. It's just Space Team, all one word, by Henry Smith,

and it is free on the App Store. Sounds like a buyout. You can unlock the things you pay for alike. You can unlock achievements. You can unlock different costumes for each of your characters. But it's pretty silly. And I

enjoyed it. Sold. Sold. Let's talk about what is apparently the game of the year. Oh, boy. That nobody knew about until two weeks ago. I don't want to. Somebody else do it, I mean. Okay.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. Somebody else do this thing. So the game, I might get the name wrong, so correct me if I'm wrong. Dikembe Mutombo's Four and a Half Weeks to Save the World? Correct. That's the name of the game okay so essentially it's a it's a series of flash games made by the folks that made cannibal and the premise is simple enough uh as we all know the apocalypse is fast approaching and um you know come december 21st i believe it is we're all pretty much boned until then we have a chance to save ourselves uh and the uh epitome of that savior is dikembe

matumbo uh former nba star now dikembe matumbo's quest involves carving additional rings on the mayan calendar which will in turn give us all more time on this floating coil uh to carve more rings uh dikambi matambo must compete in a series of pop culture driven mini quests uh involving convincing people that are dancing the gongam style that they should vote um and destroying furbies on the production line it is that latter one is pretty relevant go on yeah well furbies are back baby you didn't know yeah furbies are back in a big way big way they're like the holiday gift because they rebooted them. What are the odds of my nanopet collection suddenly increasing sharply in value? Well, they're probably all dead, so I don't know if they have time to die.

I don't know. I haven't checked on them in a while. Let me see. Oh, my God. Oh, no. I feel like describing the Kambi Mutombo's four and a half weeks to save the world does it a bit of a disservice because the writing is so spectacular

that I can't even begin to I mean if someone else knows direct quotes from that game and can spout them out yeah that's going to be fun for everyone I think because I had to do Persona 4 last week you need to nut up

and do your job shut up shut up thanks i'm just saying far cry i didn't even realize we were bringing this game until far cry is like it's so easy it's skyrim but with guns oh my god it's easy to explain don't ever say that again sky guns sky guys in the world of tomorrow i have a question about the cameo matembo yeah about the audience for it so people i don't know if you know this but uh sometimes people who really really love video games can have uh strong feelings about uh ethics and advertising uh and you know what's hardcore or casual how do you think these people feel that some of the funniest writing in a video game this year was probably crafted by a copy team

and by probably i mean definitely yeah i mean we can't prove that maybe it was done by salt apparently they get uh basically a binder full of uh what they have to make the game each week, and then they make it. Like, all the copy and what's actually going to be in the levels and everything. Yep. Maybe people who write video games should just start giving Grove a shit. Maybe if they gave a shit about the things that they were having people say from from time to time occasionally then it would be better maybe maybe here's the thing maybe it's not as hard as they're making it seem not every video game has dikimbe matumbo delivering the lines of the video game that's that's fair and that's a lot of the science the bear right so they don't want to

they don't want to say they don't want to write any dumb shit that then NBA – former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo will have to say out loud because then he'll be like, this shit is really dumb. So maybe – oh, this is – oh, my God. Dikembe Mutombo will become a consultant for every AAA video game released. And what the writers have to do is they write the script, and then they have Dikembe Mutombo read the entire script out loud, and then they know that they have the ultimate, you know, bar of quality check they have to fulfill

before they can have actual voice actors going in. Cortana, you cannot go rampant. I love you. Please, please, please, please, please, please. Cortana. That was great. i i respect what you're saying griffin but i think i think you might be coming out from the wrong angle i think the trick is if you want to make an indie a funny indie game it has to have an nba star in

it because think about it the kimmy matembo one of the funnier indie games. And the other super funny indie game, Charles Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden. Yeah, it's a good one. Also really funny. I'm seeing a theme. Yeah. What if Scotty Pippin did all the voice work for Hexagon? How much are you paying me?

Can you guys believe how fast that Kickstarter for Charles Barkley got into? Well, they asked for like $35. Yeah. I mean, they wanted to know they asked for $35,000. No way. That's nothing. The people we have creating our games database did put the entire name of Charles Barkley

into the game's database. You bet they did. So if you go and look up any story about Barkley 2, you will see the full name, The Magical Realms of Tirnanog, Escape from Necron 7, Revenge of the Cthulhain, The Official Game of the Movie,

Chapter 2 of the Hoops Barkley official game of the movie chapter two of the hoops sparkly saga oh my god oh they deserve every dollar they get hey i can i donate again like um so far cry 3 then well yeah far cry 3 wins this week uh and and probably the whole thing wins this week uh and and probably the whole thing well settle down but it is it is gonna let's talk about this really quick because i very recently put together my own personal okay i haven't played much far cry 3 so i probably don't have the best uh metric for this yet but i i am not comfortable with booting persona for golden because it is very, very, very high on my list of favorite games I played this year. Here is what I'm saying. Here's what I'm saying.

Are you ready for this? This is honestly the last week of big games before the end of this shiz. I think we just push Persona in, push Far Cry in. Next time we'll talk, it'll be the beginning of... Oh, the quarterfinals? Well, we'll see. It's something we're all going to have to talk about. But I think we're getting into the year-end.

There are literally no other games to go, right? Actually, here's what I think we do. I don't want to give away the big big big plan of what we're doing so i say next week we build the bracket i think we take our winners and we build the bracket this that sounds thrilling i'm into that this is gonna be fun we'll build a bracket and then we'll put it somewhere where you can print it yep and take it to the office and fill it out. So next week, let's pare it down to 16, because I think we probably have around 16. I don't know that we have 16 in the game.

Well, I mean, we may have to bring some stuff back. Does anyone have a list? I haven't been keeping a list, no. We have 16 games that can go in. If we bring back Need for Speed Most Wanted, I think we can get it up to 16. I think we could just use it twice. Yeah. god this is gonna be fun i'm pumped i'm pumped can we not be let's just make a pact right now can we all make a pact right now can we stay friends no matter what

because it's gonna get pretty hyphy in there i don't think it's gonna get that bad because far cry is gonna win okay no i mean so long as we vote out persona in the first round i think it's gonna get that bad because far cry is gonna win okay no i mean so long as we vote out persona in the first round i think it'll be fine okay we're talking about like ankle deep in our own blood i think it's gonna get rough and tumble uh until then you'll uh you'll have to stick with us on polygon.com and read the words you write about video games and follow us on twitter at polygon facebook twitter it's all there for you um and make sure to join us again next friday for the besties and and subscribe and rate the show you can can you write griffin on the piece of paper you're gonna buy me can you

put it into well i probably i have like i have paper like i can well i want special gift paper maybe with trees on it or something all right well something festive you know you'll yeah you will i yeah you'll why don't you try again though okay so make sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best thanks sling blade Thanks, Sling Blade. Besties!