The Besties - The Besties Podcast 42 - Kentucky Route Zero and Dark Souls

Episode Date: January 18, 2013

Oh ye of little faith! The Besties are back for 2013 to warm your hearths and hearts. As per usual, the rules have been changed, but don't worry, it's only to protect the innocent. We've got some new games, we've got some old games and we've got a time machine. Let's get crackin'. 03:00 - Kentucky Route Zero 18:00 - Half Time Battle Royale 23:40- Dark Souls 40:00 - What's next? 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!

What's the, what's the, what's the new sign-on be? What? Did we have an old sign-on? Well, it used to be, my name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. Yeah, that's true. How about, my name is Justin McElroy and I'm the best. Let's dip our d***s in it. My name is Justin McElroy. Let's dip our d***s in it.

Let's f*** some games. Um, we could sing the theme song to pinwheel you remember that show pinwheel pinwheel spinning around look at my finger and see what i found bad here we go My name is Justin McElroy, and I'm the best. I don't, I'm not sure. It feels a little self-aggrandizing. My name is Griffin McElroy. I'm doing all right. My name is Chris McElroy. I'm doing all right. My name is Chris Plant, and I'm doing pretty well, too.

My name is Russ Frusty. I'm the best. Okay. You lack some of the rhythm. That was my favorite Bob Dylan song, is that thing that Russ Frusty just did. That's the game of me. This is the besties, as you've almost certainly gathered. We're back for another challenging

season of podcast entertainment. We have again revamped our format and now it's all in Hebrew. We gotta go left to right now. Gonna go left to right.. Going to go left to right? Well, as opposed to...

You're listening to the end of the podcast. This is how the podcast ends. Oh, wait. Words go left to right normally. Do they? Yeah. So right to left is probably what we're looking for. I've been reading wrong all these fucking years, man.

New year, new us, no rules, just right. Is swearing still okay? Yes. Swearing's back for another big season here at the besties where I don't even know if we're going to pick a best game. We're not. Here's what we're doing. Let's just, we're tossing out the baby and the bathwater and the tub in which both were housed. But the baby's okay.

He's hanging on the tree. The baby's fine. The baby's going to hang on that tree for about a year, and it's going to create tension, and that tension is what's going to keep you all coming back. There's only one competitive element to this show, and we will address it soon. But first, I want to say the best thing I played this week

was Kentucky Route Zero. I don't know. That doesn't sound Like a real game Does it sound like an indie Record to you It does kind of sound like an indie record Like Sweet Foxes Yeah or a Bilko

Oh my god Kentucky Route Zero is an Independently developed Adventure game With a That feels like an independently developed adventure game that feels like, both in aesthetics and, I would say, values, like a spiritual successor

to some of LucasArts' headier efforts. Think like The Dig, for example, Loom, Grim Fandango, whatever fandango now what separates those what what in particular makes those their headiest dankest nugs as well because they're not goofs is i guess it's not about a crazy tentacle it's not about crazy tentacle it's not licensed weirdness it's like a little more mature take on on adventure gaming um honestly, Plant, I know you played it, and feel free to jump in with me at any point here,

but I was agog, I think. I had not heard of this game at all before you pitched it to me. I played the first episode and literally was, could not conceive of the fact that this is a game that I, A, have never heard of before, B, was coming out in January. It's stunning. I thought it's out already. It's out now, right? Yeah, it's out now. It's a ghost story.

I think that's the best way to describe it. It borrows some of the stuff from adventure games from back in the day, but I think what it feels most like is just the type of story you'd be told over a campfire. Walking Dead is a good example that you don't go to an adventure game for the game. You go for kind of the story and the experience and it kind of washing over you. And that is a lot of what happens in this. You just kind of go from place to place kind of discovering what's there. And, I mean, you could probably speak to that with how driving works in the game because I think that's really interesting. Yeah, so you do go from location to location uh looking for this this route zero um you're a delivery driver who uh has to take a package to uh this address that the only way you know to get there is to follow this uh Route 0. So people give you directions, and you will actually go out, zoom out to a map, and you don't see where the locale is

that you're supposed to be headed on your map. You actually have to physically follow directions. So as you're – they'll say, you know, take a left at the flaming tree that's always burning and then take a right on Peach Street or what have you. And this is all happening in real time? The like driving mechanics or are you just clicking? Yeah. Well, the cool thing about the driving is it looks somewhere between a really, really simple map. And do you remember the old DOS games?

Like the green screen games games it was just like green lines that kind of glowed against a black background i remember uniracers like that sure anything super simple and that's what this map looks like it's just like a glowing white lines against black background that looks as primitive as you can possibly get but what's so great about this game is it takes these really really purposely primitive visuals uh from you know the most ancient computer but matches it with unbelievably modern uh sound design so you're looking at something that seems you know difficult to kind of translate in your head but what you're hearing is like sounds from a church that you're

approaching uh you know choir singing coming through the windows, like the crickets outside. And it all sounds, with a good pair of headphones, like you're there. And it's really strange and disorienting. That's funny because I'm actually working on an Unreal Engine 4 game that sounds like an old ColecoVision game. That sounds like an old ColecoVision game. It's about, there's like space marines, and they like shoot at each other, but the guns are like, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And then they say like, good job. That was them saying good job to each other.

Yeah, you actually don't get the dialogue delivered over speakers. It comes off of a binary printer. Your Xbox just shakes with the frequency to produce the sound. It's all, the whole thing is so deliberate, is the best way I can describe it. Somebody told me that, like, they didn't, they played it and they feel like they didn't

get it. And I feel like it's a really good example of where I think trying to, I mean, there is definitely a linear narrative going on here but I think it's much more about sense of place and a sense of sort of haunted isolation and and the sense of uh you know exploring this place where you're you're not really welcome um and it gives you those feelings through the design, through the sound design like Chris mentioned,

through some of the music cues, which are, there's some electronic music that underscores most of it, and then there's actually some old hymns and bluegrass standards that sort of underscore certain moments of the game. And I can't, I don't want to say anything too specific about those. Is the dreidel song in it? No. Sorry? Is the dreidel song in it?

There's no dreidel. Christian hymns. I don't think that counts as, is that a hymn technically? That's our only hymn. We have no other hymns. It's just the dreidel song. It's not particularly holy. It's like...

I made that shit out of clay, dude. You think that's easy? That is tiny Gollum. Now that we've enticed you, though, to give just maybe a bit more of a clear picture, because I can't understand how... Yeah, I don't really get what the game... You might still not fully understand what it looks like.

The art design looks like... Have you ever seen Iron Giant? Yes. You're gonna have to go with me on this one iron giant's art direction so kind of like the designs that were done to inspire that and in some ways that that art itself in the game is a lot of what it looks like it's this very sleek kind of 60s art directed style uh and you it's a 2d, and you're pointing and clicking wherever you want to go when you are in an actual setting. So the opening stage is a gas station, and you go into the gas station and go

into the basement. So you're pointing and clicking. But visually, what's so striking about the game is it uses kind of your perception of space to kind of trick what you're actually seeing. So areas that are dark will become light, and the other areas that are light will become dark, kind of fading away. So when you enter the basement, everything kind of fades into darkness. Or there is one scene where you climb a hill, and the hill is very far away, and you start out very close to the character. He's the only thing on the screen and as you're climbing the

camera pulls back and you know you get smaller on this hill but since the camera is pulling back you're also seeing what was behind the camera so you're guessing who or what is like seeing him so is it is it Harry Connick jr. but he's a hipster and lives in a junkyard uh the guy is an older uh junkyard type of worker uh there are similarities i i don't i'm not getting and not to be hung up obviously on the story the visual game that you're describing is very cool um i don't totally get what and again i don't want to be married to this being a game where you do stuff but are is it essentially like when you say it's like a classic adventure game uh is it like oh i need to find the hot dog the stuff in the hole you need to find where you need to go next that

what you need to do is find where to go right that's probably the best and it's not as easy as it would sound but the weird thing is you can skip all of it. Like, it's one of those games where there's more to find and there's more game and story to find, and it hints at it, and you can choose to go looking for that, or you can kind of stick to the simple story. And when I say ghost story, part of that's why I'm being so dodgy about what actually happens

because I don't want to spoil it, because there's nothing worse than having, you know, a spook story kind of ruined for you. But a lot of it is like there's a mysterious woman and her friend and the history of this town and what happened to them and what happened to their family. And as you are just trying to find a way out, you are kind of learning the pieces of this story. to find a way out, you are kind of learning the pieces of this story. It is $25 for several acts, I guess

five acts. For right now, you can get the first act for $7. It's at KentuckyRouteZero.com It's made by Cardboard Computer. It's the length of a long movie so you can play it with someone and you can play it in one sitting i thought i thought the first really the first acts that long should i be watching lame is while playing the game i would have two hours uh yeah

sure okay i don't think it's a long movie i think it's. I thought we were kind of bearish on adventure games that didn't have, like, dank headshots. I hate to keep using that word, but... Do you know what, Griffin? That's a great point. Because I was, despite loving the story of Walking Dead, I kind of was... Your exact words were, hey, Telltale, where's the dank headshots? I don't know. Was it dank or was it swank?

You said, where's Hillary Swank in this game? She has a gun and she plays Clementine's mom. And she comes back and she says, I'm here to save you. And then you control like a first person shooting segment where you just shoot every zombie. You shoot her headshot, the one that she gives at additions. That's right. Right, right. That's precisely what I'm talking about.

No, but like, I don't know, guys. I hate for us to be, like, this is not my opinion. I just am trying to get in front of the commenters. I want to take back my opinion from the the besties best of the year because this was a game where i have a whole new respect for walking dead and just this idea of games that have very very minimal game to them uh and it's just using the interactive medium to present the story is that what you're addressing griffin i just want to clarify what griffin's uh sort of getting at uh that i think

that this game doesn't have much quote-unquote game in it no i just sorry let me clarify i think that position is dumb yeah he's saying what i said i i i'm a dummy oh okay he's maybe happy i have you seen looper what i'm what i'm doing now is now is I'm throwing us into that time travel furnace from Looper so we can go back to mid-December and I can show you guys how dumb the three of you are. Let me actually say though, Kentucky Route Zero does

the difference for me in between Kentucky Route Zero, and this is again, after only playing the first act, it is, it never ever does anything it's not good at, great at. It never has you, it never breaks its own spell by forcing gameplay onto you, which I feel like Walking Dead did.

Yeah, with first-person shooter horribleness. Right. It never takes you out of the story. It never takes you out of the world by forcing you to do something that isn't uh that that isn't native to the to the design i i agree with that but can i don't i don't want to be a stickler i i hate to be that guy uh but griffin you don't think that the the furnace and loofer is how they travel through time that That's how they burn the dead bodies. That's what a furnace does. What?

No, I meant like... No, there's a... The time travel machine looks like a furnace. Yeah, thank you, Russ. You know what I'm talking about. I know you don't travel through time when you burn to death. I'm just glad. I was worried that you got that all mixed up.

I knew what you were talking about. It looks more like a diving bell, to be honest, but that's fine. I knew what you were talking about It looks more like a diving bell to be honest I knew what you were talking about But to be fair to Chris I'm not trying to dismantle this podcast from the inside out I'm not trying to But how can you fix something Until you take it apart to put it back together again That was Edison that said that

And then he killed an elephant Edison's a fraud Sorry guys Sorry there's the heat He was actually inside of the elephant and he said that and then he climbed his way out that's very brave of the three of you to pick on edison that's very brave of the i'm very proud of all of you such big men edison can't stand up for himself. Yeah, he's old. Unless he's with us now. Edison, are you here on this call? Hello?

Edison? Hello? Hello, Edison? Hello, Justin? Hi, are you speaking to us from the Black Mariah? This is Edison, yes. How are you? Do you have any lights on?

You can thank me for that. Hold on, I'm switching to wax cylinder uh hello edison it's me justin mackaroy yes i oh i know you very well how do you is edison like fucking santa claus yes what did you enjoy the light bulbs i left on december 24th edison day why did you leave them on the ground of my bedroom is the only problem I had. It was very Home Alone of you. Oh, I didn't know that you would wake up and slip on them in a comical way. I think you did.

I think you maybe were just being a dick. Well, maybe I put cameras in your room because I enjoy watching little boys slip on my greatest invention. Wait. Wait, hold on. You take pictures of little boys slip on my greatest invention. Wait. Wait, hold on. You take pictures of little boys while they sleep? No, while they slip on his greatest,

while they slip on his... Well, but before that happened, you were sleeping. Oh, no, no, no. Don't twist old Papa Edison's words. Why did you kill that elephant, Papa Edison? Oh, oh, oh, it's breaking up the hole in time is breaking up oh oh thanks papa edison thanks papa it's a good thing you survived that furnace

wow that was that was strange we made it 15 and a half minutes into the new year before one of us did a dumb goddamn voice hey that was a pretty good voice i thought that wasn't good that was uh and also it wasn't Russ doing it, which I was surprised. That's the shocker. What has happened to you guys this week? Anything interesting? I went to Montreal. Have you

ever been there? Okay, that's your pitch. Do we want to explain how halftime is going to work? Let me explain how halftime is going to work now. We didn't want to get rid of competition completely. So each of us will be giving a synopsis of our halftime anecdote, a TLDNR, if you will. And then we will decide on which anecdote we would like to hear. So, Chris, what happened to you

this week i got farted on by an old guy you changed your story obviously to make it sexier listen he he didn't we didn't have he didn't have the foresight uh i you got farted on by an old guy griffin um i don't know i started i started x i started really churning my legs on an exercise machine okay trying to get my legs good okay that's all you get justin it's really bad no stop talking i watched leah thompson's career disintegrate before my eyes okay as i played mr case files shadow lake that's pretty good i met the mayor of New York City, Mike Bloomberg. That happens all the time. Yeah.

And I think it's Mark. What do you guys want to hear? I want to hear Justin's. Can I go back in time? No. I thought of a way better one. Okay, Griff. I made a protest game in Unity.

I made a game protesting the American policies. I really want to hear that. Yeah, I think I want to hear that. I mean, the very first prototype they teach you to make when you're learning Unity. And let me tell you guys about it, because you're still on the outside of this industry sort of looking of looking in you know and then writing about what you see through those frosty window panes um on the inside the first game that they make you make is a protest game really to well no they make a prototype where you shoot balls at a big stack of bricks a big wall of bricks but uh if you're clever and you paid attention to the part of the book where they taught you how to make things different colors you can make that

wall of bricks look like the american flag oh my god heresy well it's not i mean it's not first of all ain't no log in it you know but second of all somebody has to stand up somebody has to stand up and take a stand i I thought in Unity you just make, like, a cube, and that's, like, the first game that you make. It's like you're walking around a cube. You make cube. You guys remember that YouTube video? No.

Yeah, I remember a cube. We almost, there was a name. We almost took Polyverse from cube for the name of our site. Oh, that would have been good that would have been from the movie cube no from the uh from the hit youtube video cube okay well i officially regret picking uh griffin that's because you haven't played my protest game you would play it and be like i get it i get what he's i thought i get what he's saying like some of these so are you saying policy is it is it wrong for me to ask what you're saying

uh the impression i'm getting is that you're saying bricks or balls should be thrown at a stack of bricks in the shape and color of the American flag. You don't have a gift for metaphor, do you? You really don't understand what I'm saying. Oh, it wasn't like literal? Have you ever listened to the music of Woody Guthrie? Yeah. He did Annie Hall, right? That is the codex.

Goon. That is the codex that you have to use to solve this Da Vinci Code-esque metaphor. Okay, so I need to be really stoned first, and then what? And then you throw balls at a stack of bricks that looks like the American flag. And then when you do it, you'd be like,

you know what? I really have changed my position on unmanned drone strikes. You know? I really do have stronger and different opinions on the Patriot Act. I think that I'm going to make a lot of headway on the App Store because they have shown a huge tolerance for games that take

a political position. If you made a game right now called Don't Take My Gonzo Obama, I bet it would rocket to number one. did you say don't take my gonzo obama don't take the character gonzo from the second muppets film obama please leave him in there don't tie him up in court why does he love chicken so much sorry gonzo oh you, you meant Gonzo. You motherfucker. Oh, no. Russ. Oh, God. I'm gonna make a Russ Frustic. I'm gonna make a Russ Frustic protest game on Unity.

That's gonna be my second project. I said chickens, too. Like, the animal. It's gonna be a tower of bricks that are shaped like Russ Frustic, and you knock it down for the things that he says without realizing he said it. I think he's doing a fine job of that by himself. I don't think you need to step in there and help him dismantle the Russ Frustic image, if you will.

It's a brand. The Russ Frustic brand, I think. Anyway, look for it. Look for it. It's coming out. It's on Steam Greenlight. So all the likes you can give me on there, I'd appreciate it. Okay. How many achievements can I earn? It's's really just one but the achievement is patriotism and it's sorry you

don't get any points for it it's just inside your heart an eagle an eagle will come to your house and land on your shoulder when you get it so i want to hear from russ about uh what the best thing he played this week was what are we saying now the best game that i played this week best thing i played this week you don't need we saying now? The best game that I played this week? Best thing I played this week. You don't need to give me a hint. I know what I was going to say. You also don't need to clarify that when you play something, it's a game. Okay. The best video game device piece of software that I played,

but not like played like an instrument, played like a game with a controller. I'm confused. Like a baseball sport? No sport no no no so you know how they have sports where you like swing the bat around well imagine the bat isn't there you're just holding a controller that controls the bat sort of like um international players anthem like player like playing it's also very similar to playing a harp okay anyway the best game that I played this week is Dark Souls, which came out about a year and a half ago.

I guess this would be a good point in the show to mention that we're not just, I don't know the best way, because if we say we're not talking about new games anymore, I feel like 50% of the people listening are like, oh, well, bye. Well, here, let me put it about this. Well, to that one guy that just left, let me say this. Is our show going to talk about whatever we damn well please? How's that grab you?

Yeah. I would say the majority of the games that we're going to be talking about are new games. But in this case, I had never played Dark Souls before and remedied that fact over the last two weeks. And it was a mostly entertaining experience tell me about like did you finish it i did solve it yes i said about like the the gen like first few hours like what was your initial reaction yeah so i'm sure you've heard like everything about yeah so not to give a plug but there's actual video evidence of the first few hours of me playing this game if you search today i played dark souls on youtube or polygon you'll probably see the video but my first few hours were harrowing to say the least i'd been warned multiple times that the game

is very hard but i sort of wanted to do something new and didn't ask for any pointers before I started playing. And it was sort of a disaster. I ended up dying many, many, many, many times on, like, the first few enemies in the game because I guess I was going the wrong way. You definitely were going the wrong way. Yeah, well, yeah. So then I called my... Oh, you were trying to go...

I was trying to go through the skeletons. Because in this game, you are told you can go up and down, when in fact you can only go up. So you get past the tutorial. The tutorial took me like a half hour to beat, and you get past the tutorial, and essentially this AI guy is like, Hello, welcome to our land.

You must ring bells that are upwards and downwards. And I'm like, okay, okay cool i'll go downwards so i go downwards and i get killed by skeletons about 30 times that's not even the right downwards i mean i'm yeah right you're you're completely right but it is going downhill so i figured well there you go you are southbound and i think that's a lot about the game where they explain very little. And people sort of champion that. And that's fine. I'm down with, like, not giving too much player direction. I don't need a waypoint showing me where my next objective is.

What I don't dig on is having major gameplay elements like humanity never fucking explain explained in the game and this is like like you're seeing a giant fucking number next to your health that indicates humanity but you have no idea they actually as soon as you get like past the tutorial like a prompt shows up and it's only like five or six words and it's like use humanity for kindling and it's like i don't know what the fuck you're talking about because i recognize those words right and you're only able to identify the articles in that sentence everything else is like i understand what humanity is because i have it in life and kindling i guess is a weird way to say stuff you put in fire yeah but you don't know that it doubles the amount of estus flasks that you get

because that's a crazy fucking thing to think about without having anybody tell you it. Yeah. So it's annoying that they have mechanics like that. I don't know why there are ghosts running around. I beat the fucking game, and I still don't know how to enter someone else's world. Like, that's weird.

The PvP especially, I've beaten the game twice now actually and i have only done like the pvp once um i never actually was able to get in the dlc has like a pvp arena that i wasn't even able to get into yeah i was able to summon a guy but i couldn't figure out how to enter other people's worlds um so that's a bunch very it's really difficult even to do that like summoning a dude is like one of the most basic multiplayer components and even then like you have to wait around for somebody to find your mark and like be the appropriate level no there wasn't a mark it was just i was running by a bonfire and there was like a ghost and i clicked on it and it and it summoned, like, an AI guy.

Not an AI guy. Sorry. It was an actual player. It summoned an actual player, and he helped me try to beat a boss. He didn't, like, kill everybody around you and then throw you off of a bridge? No, he was surprisingly helpful. That's nice. I know Chris Plant had a more negative experience with summoning people.

Yeah, who's bad? He got invaded and then kicked off of the ledge or something no the first time somebody came on they just stood next to me like for minutes and i stood there like wait like i'm gonna cut you if you did you wave closer and then i did i after he didn't do anything i was like signaled and then he signaled back and then he like kind of went forward like he was guiding the way right and i was like oh he's gonna help me cool and he took me to uh a store a guy or whatever and i i like clicked on the store and while i was in the store he just cut me down yeah and then he sent me an xbox live message that said hey welcome to dark souls yeah that's like the pilot episode of the OC.

That's exactly what you just described. Welcome to Dark Souls, bitch. I'm going to go back to my water polo, buds. I'm a little sick of the analogies between the OC and Dark Souls, to be honest. Yeah, it's a little played out. So after all that sort of complaining that I just did over the last five or ten minutes, you might think, well, why is this the best game that he played over the last two weeks it actually it once you get past the um obtuse craziness of dark souls it's actually a really good game to be found in like the combat feels really like rewarding and like the character like the way you customize weapons is really cool

and uh i think the way they built the world is awesome like i can't think it i i said the first time i played it it is the best like castlevania game oh yeah it feels like a 3d symphony of the night absolutely yeah the set pieces are all very dramatic and unique. Like, going through the second time and playing it, I remembered every single place I went to. It's like, okay, now we're going into the Darkroot Basin. I remember this place perfectly. And I especially like the fact that they don't cheat by using, like, portals. You, like, literally everything connects to one another in, like, a reasonable way.

Like, oh, this elevator goes directly down to where i started even though it took me 45 minutes to get there there's there's one or two exceptions there are rule but like yeah that is cool especially when you like think like oh jesus i can't believe i have to run all the way from point a to point b and then you discover like a secret entrance that saves you like saving time is like the ultimate commodity in dark souls like when you find a new bonfire it's like the best thing ever because you've been working towards it for yeah you know hours to try and try and make it to that checkpoint yeah i think it's um pretty excellent uh and i think the only way you can really play it is either you have someone that

played a ton of it and you can call them and ask for help or you just spend hours going through the maniac Dark Souls wikis that explain all the gameplay mechanics to you because the game does not throw you any sort of bone whatsoever. Except for the monsters that throw their jagged bones at you. Or the homeward bone. Yes, that is a thing. I do want to mention one more thing though blight town is the worst

level in a video game ever made definitely definitely how'd that frame rate teach you oh yeah blight town is blight town's where you can get that really bad poison you you have platforming right like horrible platforming horrible platforming wasps following you uh uh the entire oh my god and the frame rate all of the ground is covered in a substance that kills you yeah that's the whole floor and also if you don't look directly at your feet and you look into the distance at all the frame rate drops to uh about six yeah around six or five yeah i actually didn't know that trick about looking down at your feet so i just sort of trudged on through that horror uh i really hope that in the next game they realize like oh we are terrible at platforming let's never do that again do you know who i feel bad for though

Let's never do that again. Do you know who I feel bad for, though? Who? The people that had to review Dark Souls. Yeah, so I was talking to Phil Kohler about it because he, I think, did the review for Game Informer or whatever. He reviewed it with no guidance whatsoever and, like, first of all, went through the catacombs way earlier than anyone was supposed to.

Like, he had no no i have no idea how he finished that game yeah i imagine that there was i imagine that there was like a secret like a midnight society of game reviewers that just like got together every night just like man help me out what do i do with that hydra i guess if you play demon souls that might help but i'm actually stoked about the dark souls 2 turning into like a weird like every day for the first couple weeks after that's out is going to be recess in the mid-1980s just like a bunch of like whispered myth and and you know riddles and whatnot i will put a book i will cut out a poster and tape it to my wall

i mean it does have like it had so many games nowadays come at you with like it's got old school sensibilities or they probably don't say sensibilities because that's not a good marketing word but they say like this game is old school look Look at the pixel art. But, like, I feel like games like Dark Souls really do capture that. We're not going to tell you what to do. The constant sense of there is something bigger going on just below the surface that I cannot see. But, man, when I see it, man, it's going to be sweet. It's going to be so, so nice. Yeah.

They did a really good job uh i just get annoyed with the people that like any complaint that's leveled against this game like you people were when i complained about it on twitter people were yelling at me for complaining about blight town or they were saying well that's you know once you've been through blight town that that's the training you need to get through the rest of the game. Right. Fuck you. That is just bad game design. So, but overall, I really, really dug it. But isn't there something to be said about, like, years from now when somebody's like,

what's the most unpleasant thing that's ever been in a game for you? Like, you are going to remember these sense memories of, like of like blight town is for people who haven't played a vertically stacked shanty of like thin rickety sometimes the walkways like even move out from underneath your feet and you fall to your death and like if you don't find the ladders that you need to climb down from level to level and there's like 25 levels that you have to climb down through but eventually you die so many times that you start looking for ways to throw yourself down like the cliff side and still like land on something and live and so you'll try that for like an hour like what what platform 100 feet below me can i fall to and still have like a little bit of life left and then like how can i fall down this city and still be alive but like ultimately that doesn't work either like it's the

worst it's terrible it's it's terrible but like i i don't know like it's so memorable it's so memorably terrible i think that it almost circles back around like looper yeah i'm glad that i can no no we're going down that road it is kind of like looper it's just bad there are some parts that are just and that's what makes it so irritating is that i think they use the the difficulty as a cop-out a lot of times for just not refining something i just don't get this is what i don't get right now justin that you cave to an orlando and you couldn't get over? Oh, yeah.

You stopped there. You stopped at Anor Londo. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. I got it. I got it. At least two people on this podcast are in the big boy clean plate club because we finished our dinner. We took all of our medicine.

I tried to go back. I actually tried to go back. Talking to Frustic, one made me want to go back. And when I started, I was in the depths. Because this is the second playthrough. Wait, what? Oh, you beat it already? No, no.

What do you mean it's the second playthrough? So I got to Anor Londo with my pyromancer. Which is about halfway. It's about the halfway point through the game. But it's also, it features features the most probably the most difficult boss battle in the game if that's where i was like you know what i'm just not i'm not going to anymore uh and and and i got to that point then i restarted with a sorcerer and i got apparently like level 50 and then i got to the depths and like, I,

I turned the game back on and I was, it was the, it was almost like a great metaphor for dark souls itself because I turned it on. I was in a sewer. I had no idea which direction to go. And as soon as I stepped out of the door, a slime fell off the ceiling onto my head and killed me.

Like, well, I think i am good with my progress in dark souls i think i'm okay yeah i mean you didn't get i mean you didn't i feel like it's gonna haunt you basically your whole life like an albatross hanging hanging around your neck that you just couldn't muster no i mean no no doubt it does i i think that's probably gonna happen it's really oh and the kaiser soze ending let me tell you like no one gosh you did not think that bonfire was behind that whole thing does anybody want to say anything else

about video games they played this week um yeah i mean look for the i'm gonna upload my my patriot game onto some pirate sites um i'm trying to keep it like as indie as possible do you have mac support griffin i do not have mac support what about linux only it's only on uh linux and okay uh but you have to run the linux on a ti83. Okay. So I'll play Street Fighter 2 in that. It's what you might call a limited release. Yep. Look for us on Kickstarter, though. Awesome.

I only need 750 Gs to make this stream come true. The other thing about this is that Griffin is getting the Indiana Jones license. That's the other big expense. Yeah, you should know. I'm shooting for that. I hear they got it to give, though. So we'll see. That's going to do it for us this week on the besties.

Wait, wait. Don't we have to talk about what we're going to do next week? I feel like we've made some sweeping changes that we just haven't explained. Yeah, I think you should explain that, and then we should do it really quick. I'm tired of talking. Okay, do you want me to talk about it? Yeah, do it. So at the end of each besties now, we talk about, hey, maybe we'll talk about it yeah yeah do it so at the end of each besties now we talk about

hey maybe maybe we'll talk about it next week and in case you weren't aware uh at least two but ideally all of us uh will have actually played the games we're talking about each week you know so we have discussion and not just monologues let's also address the fact that we're basically giving up the King of the Hill weekly best game model, since at the end of the year, so many of the games that we talked about were either completely not acknowledged by that model or had actively been shot down by that model and came back.

It's kind of, I don't know, guys, it's kind of i don't know guys it's kind of arbitrary the good news is these are the best games we've played these are the best we're not going to talk about like shitty games unless they're so shitty um so like i don't think less king of the hill more oprah's book club i love it so anyway at the at the end of each episode we're going to talk about hey uh here's something i played i think the rest of you should play it, and maybe we can talk about it next week. Has anyone played DMC? Yeah, I'll play that. Plant is going to be playing DMC.

I'll play DMC. You know what you guys should play if you haven't yet? And it's a little bit old, but it just came out on Mac. A little game called Legend of Grimrock. That's been on Mac for a while. It was in a bundle from, like, last fall. Came out on Mac. A little game called Legend of Grimrock. That's been on Mac for a while. Oh. It was in a bundle from like last fall. I bought it in the Humble Bundle.

And I thought that's when the first time it came out on Mac was. Yeah, but that was like fall. No, that was three weeks ago. It was Humble Bundle 7. Just happened. So I'm going to try to, I'm going to grab Cart Life. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Plant told me that that's really good. So I'm going to try to, I'm going to grab Cart Life. Oh, yeah.

Because Plant told me that that's really good. So I'm going to grab that so maybe we can talk about that next week. Oh, next week also Might and Magic Clash of Heroes comes out on iOS. Oh, that I'm excited for. I'll play that. I'm so excited. I played that game for like five minutes on DS. I never really played it on DS. So I'm looking forward to it.

That's probably going to be mine because I don't have like a lot of money. Yeah. I'm not asking you guys like actively for a handout, but like I don't, I'm just going to, let me just say, I don't have a lot of money.

Okay. So do with that information what you want, what you will. Great. And that's going to do it for us here on the besties. Make sure to keep listening every week if you want and subscribe on iTunes and tell your friends and polygon.com is our

website where we're doing all the games we would love we would all love your feedback too on this on this format that we have now as long as your feedback doesn't involve us going back to the old shitty format that we had thank you so much thank you thank you thank you and that's going to do it all of us going back to the old shitty format that we had. Thank you so much. It doesn't work. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And that's going to do it for us this week on the besties. Make sure to join again next Friday on the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!