The Besties - The Besties Podcast 44 - Antichamber and Ni No Kuni

Episode Date: February 1, 2013

Long live The Besties! This week's episode revolves around the mysteries of Doritos, Taco Bell and much, much more. Also Plante takes the opportunity to not say anything for the longest time in Besties history. Where was he? What was he thinking? We may never know. 03:00 - Antichamber 15:00 - Half Time 26:00 - Ni No Kuni 42:20 - 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!

um taco bell ceo recently announced that the cool ranch flavored do you like how i say that word cool cool ranch flavored uh doritos i've been saying they should get into french cuisine for the longest time they're bringing they're doing it they're bringing in the the cool ranch and they're doing it and like i think i feel like we've waited long enough don't you cool rant cool raw shell it is the new shell that they are bringing into the mix i'm excited for the good flavor because everybody knows that ranch goes better with tacos than nacho cheese so i thought they already had a doritos taco they do and it's nacho cheese not cool ranch pay the fuck attention got it got it got it My name is Justin McElroy, and I am the lunch flavor of the week.

My name is Griffin McElroy, and are we talking about different flavored taco Dorito shells? My name is Chris Plant, and I love pizza taco Dorito. My name is Chris Plant, and I love pizza taco Dorito. Come on. Come on. My name is Chris Plant, and I love pizza taco Dorito. Welcome to a show that we make Every week called The Besties

Where we talk about the latest and greatest Matrix movies And video games And everything, taco flavors, everything And we just Swap stories Swap spit I love the

Animatrix films Did you guys see the Animatrix films Did you guys see the Animatrix I did I saw them they were quite good They were really good I love the one Where the two people were In the dojo And they were like sexy fighting Cutting each other's clothes off

Yeah there was a lot of muscles and sinew A lot of sinew it looked like Final Fantasy The Spirits Within like i always wanted to see the final fantasy spirit you remembered um fucking buscemi's character from spirits within always wanted to know what it looked like under there i was gonna i was gonna talk about amazon.com being down but now it's back up so few guys to vote goof derail goof Goof aborted. Hey guys, can I talk about the game I've been playing this week? Please do. I've been playing Anti-Chamber, which our review, which I pinned, just went up.

It was a 9. There it is. You gave it a 9. We don't really need to talk about anything else. Because that 9 tells you basically everything you need to know. Yeah, I never, ever, ever, ever ever ever Ever ever read reviews past the number It was actually really hard I don't want to like pat myself on the back

But it was a really difficult game to review And I thought I did a pretty good job Why because of the puzzles? I didn't want to like You don't want to spoil it Yeah that's the thing like The whole thing about Antishamber is that a lot of people like compare it to to portal because you do have a gun thing that you use to solve puzzles

it's a bad it's not really it's not it's not an awful comparison like the the general structure of the game is kind of the same um only antechamber is not really linear like Portal is linear. It's sort of an open world where everything is sort of interconnected and you will cycle around and return to rooms once you discover new functions of the device you have. And the device lets you move around these bricks around the world in different ways. around the world um in in different ways so but but there's never any explanation for what you are able to do in the game so really half the game half the game is solving the puzzles using like interpreting the rules as you know them but the other half of the game is sort of discovering

those rules in the first place oh let's let's narrow this down and sort of have it like is there an example you can give because right now that's the thing like i get not wanting to spoil it but like some like early on i'll give a small example but then i'll talk about why i think it's not like portal at all uh an example is you have this little device and you can take a blue cube and then you can plug it into a blue slot and that will open the door uh okay that was hot by the way you'll need more blue cubes and there aren't any and how you discover them or how you discover you don't need them at all uh is like kind of the puzzle of the game uh and to kind of expand on that why I don't think it's like Portal is Portal is a great puzzle game

but especially Portal 2 really that game is so well designed that you don't have to know how to solve puzzles to get to the end it's always very carefully directing your attention to where you should look to solve the puzzle

things are just lit a certain way so it's like oh yeah I should plug one thing there and black black walls you can't put portals on but you can put portals on the gray wall so really just looking around for where the gray walls are will give you sort of a rough idea of like where you where you're going sure so i think portals one very linear and this is not no fault against it it's it's making you feel smart it's it's an empowerment fantasy that's also a puzzle game. Anti-chamber is the exact opposite, where if you can do something that breaks the game,

you're awarded for it. So if you can find out something that's the opposite of what it wants you to do, you can skip a large chunk of the entire game. Well, is that intentional, or is that just bad? It's always intentional. Yeah. That's the thing. That's what I love is like, I'll give one example.

Those cubes that you can place, pretty, like if you are clever about it, you can figure out a way to put one on the wall and then jump up to that cube and then jump. As you jump, you can reabsorb that cube and then shoot it back up on the wall and land on it a little bit higher. So you can sort of cheat your way. Like Mega Man shooting those platforms. Sort of, yeah, yeah, yeah.

To figure out a way to cheat your way up the wall. And you figure that out. I was actually really disheartened the first time I did that. And then I realized, like, oh, the game knows that you can do that. Like, the game was totally, totally prepared because later on, there's a puzzle where you have a single cube, and it's like, good luck, fucko. And you have to basically, like...

But that's all I can do? You could just shoot the cube out and, like, step on it? But here's... He's really not going into much because I know he doesn't want to ruin it. Another way of saying it is because it's non-Euclidean math, as Justin was asking before the thing, nothing is based in reality. So just because you came from point A doesn't mean when you turn around

point A is still there at any time. The point is to never trust immediately what you've seen or where you came from, because it's constantly changing. So how do you have any sense of anything? So the antechamber is an actual room that you can return to at any time by hitting the escape key.

And what's neat is there's no UI in the game whatsoever. The menu is represented by a wall in the antechamber, with all the settings sort of splayed out on it and you just fire at them and it changes the settings of the game but also in the antechamber is an interactive map and every time you discover a new room it shows up on that map um and that map also shows the different uh entrances and exits to that room so it like gives you a good idea of there's two entrances in that room the one one way that you discover that led you all the way back to the beginning of the game, what probably isn't the only way to do it,

and it's probably not the correct way to do it. So if you get screwed like that, you can just press escape, return to the antechamber, and then immediately warp back to that room. All the puzzles are self-contained into the rooms. Got it. So the map is giving you this constant sense of knowing where you are.

And it also empowers you to just wander around and dick around for as long as you want. Because ultimately, your dicking around will come to a point where you have done everything you can do with the brick device that you have. So you have to return and look at the map and say, okay, what haven't I solved? And then really dig your heels in and think about what you've seen in the world that's gonna help you like get through the puzzles do you get like a fez vibe from it no in the way that like it doesn't explain a lot of the mechanics you just sort of have to figure it out do you get a fez that's a good question actually do you get a fez you get a very small car and a membership at the bfw it's a hard game to compare to anything else.

Half of what's cool about the game is, like I said, interpreting what you see in the world around you. The other half is just like, it's fun when the game pulls a fast one on you. When you walk through a door, and then you hit a dead end, and you're like, oh shit, and you turn around, and all of a sudden the door that you walk through exits out and then you like you hit a dead end you're like oh shit and you turn around and all of a sudden the door that you walk through exits out to a different thing it's like

it's like how did you how did you do that like as a as a level design it doesn't make any sense did you see what it's built in it's built in unreal it's built in the quake engine yeah that's what i i mean i don't know a whole lot about development, but I wonder if also the engine was chosen because it's one that is great with teleports. Because just designing it, how many things are asked to teleport you instantly without you noticing it, is crazy.

What's great is it is constantly doing stuff like that to you it is constantly like tricking you yeah and so the whole time like you sort of are like writing it off like oh that was that was a fun trick that you just pulled on me game but in actuality like it actually just taught you what you need to know to like recreate something to solve the puzzle that you're stuck on but But you just didn't even think about it. It's hard to explain what I mean, but because there are no tutorials telling you what to do, you sort of have to figure it out on your own, based

on what the game shows you. And it doesn't show you much, but it shows you enough. So the trick is to figure out what's important and what's not. It's a really neat game. I won't be playing it, because it's PC only. And that makes me sad. Interesting. It's a really neat game. I won't be playing it because it's PC only, and that makes me sad. How many, could it work on a controller, Ditto?

It's a, I think he said that it will eventually, but it's not there yet. But I mean, it's not, I don't, I don't know. It's not like you need like twitchy controller reflexes or anything like that. Yeah, but you want to chill out on a couch or something. Yeah, if you just want to hang on a couch with your bros. Maybe.

Maybe. I actually really like putting my face right next to my giant monitor and putting on headphones because sound is also really important. There's one puzzle that's actually kind of close to the middle of the world, if you can consider the world as having a middle

that has a clock in it. Is Patricia Heaton there? Oh, my God. Was that a fucking the middle joke? You know you don't have to say everything, right? Just because a collection of syllables. You know what's the sad part? The things I do say is strongly edited.

Wow. That's the best. Wow. Anyway, there's a clock in this puzzle in the middle of the room, and you can hear it. It's a very loud clock. And whenever you're in a room

completely, totally far away from that room, and you solve a puzzle and like you go through a hallway and turn a corner and you hear that clock, you're like, God damn it. Like it's about to drop me back in clock town, which is like so not where I like I want to move forward and I'm back at that fucking clock again. Like, I don't know. It's it's devious. And it's honestly like it's a little frustrating from time to time to like solve a really hard puzzle and be like i'm a super genius and it's like actually this exit is a dead end that takes you all the way back to the beginning of the level so you're not actually that smart um but it's neat it's got lots of easter eggs

in it lots of uh lots of hidden rooms that sort of show you like some some background stuff on on the game's development which is neat and it's got an ending that is completely bat shit so you beat it yeah yeah i solved every goddamn puzzle i went back after i beat it do you have to do that to beat the game do though huh do you have to solve every puzzle to beat oh no no no no what's um no i don't want to spoil it there's there's sort of a game mechanic that will make you think you have to do that yeah but um you you don't how uh this is going to seem like a weird question but how personal does it feel a lot of these sort of uh you know, one-man games, you get a real strong sense of the creator.

Is that the case here? I don't know. Is this a one-man? It is, right? Alexander Bruce did, I think, almost all of it. I think the score was composed by somebody else. I'm not sure what like supplementary development work went into it i think what i think the only like metaphorical significance that i got from

the game and like i am so fucking awful at divining that kind of stuff but there are these little placards hidden all over the game and they're constantly like giving you sort of subtle hints. You click on them and then it's like, life has a way of surprising you when you turn your back on it or something like that. And that can be just giving a very, very vague hint that if you turn around, something is going to change behind you. But sometimes they're just fucking lies. Sometimes they aren't true at all,

and they'll make you think you need to do something that will, in like screw you over in the long run um but they are everywhere there's there's dozens and dozens and dozens of them and they are either rarely useful or they tell you the answer to the puzzle that you just solved so like i don't know i that i mean i'm sure that has some some sort of significance of like it's such a unique game it could be relating to like people telling him how to make games but all of that advice is sort of useless in the end I don't know

but like from a lore perspective I don't know that there's much there but from a game design perspective like it's it's absolutely genius. Is there a narrative of any sort? Kind of. Yeah, she's like the mom, and she's trying to raise this really...

I'm going to fucking choke you out. I'm going to fly to New York, and I'm going to throw you downstairs. So The Middle is a hot new series, to New York, and I'm going to throw you downstairs. So the middle is a hot new series, but Andy Chamber is different, and it's a game. You can get that on PC right now for $15. It's on Steam.

It's on sale, too. It's going to go up to $20. It's on sale from $20 to $15. Right. I think, if you're going to play it, and you should, you need to do it soon. Because they're really like, those mechanics that I told you you're going to play it and you should, you need to do it soon because they're really like those mechanics that I told you that you need to figure it out. Once you figure them out,

it's not, I don't think as, as engaging, you know what I mean? Then you're just like running around and then it's just sort of like every other puzzle game ever. So like, I would don't,

I don't get this game spoiled for you. Like get on it as, as soon as you can. Is there a single thing people will tell you that will spoil it, or is it like, don't? There is a single game mechanic that I could not figure out for roughly two hours, and when I did, I felt like a goddamn super genius.

And, like, it cracked, it basically cracked the rest of the game wide open for me. All right. Also, the end of Season 2 ends with a pregnancy scare can we hang up on russ frustrated let me see if i can't hang up on is there any hang up with them hanging up on all of us i don't think so uh how was your last week anything hey we're at the middle of the podcast now guys i want to talk about the uh medical malady that i've been suffering for the last month what is it um my eye has been twitching like a mofo yeah and i thought it meant death because i googled it well here's the thing if you have something going wrong with yourself

probably shouldn't google it because nine times out of ten you're going to die within a week according to the google results uh in this case people thought it was a giant tumor or something horrible sure um anyway it was awful so i made an appointment to see a neurologist uh the other day and i go in the the the doctor's room what is it called called? Office? Doctor's room. Doctor's zone. I'm telling the symptoms that one of my eyelids is twitching and he's like, okay, and he does some tests. Does balance and neurological

tests. At the end he's like, okay, so this is pretty normal. It'll probably go away. I have a lot of patients that have this all the time. Just the probably go away. Um, you know, I have a lot of patients that have this all the time, like just the other week, you know, I have this guy in like once every couple months who has the same exact thing,

but in his arms, like his arms are always twitching and you know, he's like, he's a cop down the block. So, you know, and I was like, wait,

so a police officer has twitchy arm syndrome. And all I could think was, um, we're doomed. What did it turn out to be you got potassium deficiency no it turned out that i'm dying so by the time this podcast airs i'll probably be dead oh don't play with my emotions like that uh no it's he's just said come back in a couple months i think he just wants another copay. It's hard when your wife's a doctor because I'll have all kinds of these little maladies like that. And I'll say to her, like, hey, listen, sweetie, I don't want to worry you. But my eyelid's been, because this was happening to me recently.

I said, my eyelid's been twitching a lot. What do you think's going on? She she said i think sometimes your eyelid twitches so do you think that's a class in medical school where they're like here's a giant list of things that you could just blow people off on yeah so i'm feeling hot and sometimes cold yeah that's probably nothing but like and they just watch you watch fucking house and somebody's like my eyelids twitching's like, oh, he's just got potassium deficiency. Right. And he looks inside. The blood in his brain has cancer. Right. He knows.

Everyone else is like, no, you're out of your mind. He's like, I am out of my mind. That's the kind of thinking outside the bun doctorship that helps you crack all these medical cases. And then the person fucking dies because they left the hospital. And then he pops like 500 pills. He pops like 500 pills. He's like, told you that brain blood had all kinds of shit wrong

with it. Yeah, he's never happy with it. They should make a Doctor House game. They have. I think they did. It was terrible. I'm just kidding. Guys, did I tell you guys about that Mr. Case Files? Speaking of Leah Thompson, did I tell you guys about that Mr. Case Files. Speaking of Leah Thompson, I'll tell you guys about that Mr. Case Files game I played.

No. It was good. You tried to. Was it yum yum good? Yum yum. I liked it a lot. If you like... It's like a find a hidden object game, isn't it?

Well, you know, the Mr. Case Files did used to be like that quite a bit. Okay. Now they do more like puzzle first off i only played it because like sometimes mystery case files have fmv in them how many is no exception this is a leah thompson plays a spirit medium who works for a show called ghost patrol and ghost patrol is hosted by a Criss Angel type figure. And when you said Ghost Patrol, are you talking about the fan club for Taylor

Hicks? No, I think you're thinking of Soul Patrol. It's a common mistake. No, Ghost Patrol and their lead guy is a Criss Angel type figure whose big catchphrase is,

Come at me, ghosts! So you get treated to him saying that sometimes. And they used to be more find the hidden object, and that is still a very small part of it, but it's really more of an adventure game now. You go from location to location and solve some puzzles. And then you also, in this one, she gives you psychic drawings that you have to match with different locations. And using those, you unlock more of the story and you try to find out why this town is cursed. It's like not at all demand it's like the anti

anti-chamber it's like not in any way like did you have to fight with the 12 year old girl over the last copy of this or uh well it's a digital download so no that saves you some shame um so yeah i mean i know these are probably for these are probably for nonnies or whatever, but I, I thought it was pretty good. I like FMV. Um. Now you like FMV. I've never heard you. Never mentioned that before.

I've never heard you express that particular. I just bought, I just bought on eBay a in package, in the wrapping copy of the only FMV console ever made called the PowerMax. Which I did not know anything about until this week. And I was thrilled to learn it existed. Was that just like a port machine for Night Trap? No, no. It is a This is great.

It is a console that works with your VCR. So you play a video and then your system has a receiver, an IR receiver, that you attach to your screen somewhere. That is un-fucking-believable. Yeah, and then, so the system doesn't have any sort of UI or anything. It is literally just a score that you get after watching the video and shooting at targets

on the video and that sort of is the whole reason i i don't understand your fascination with fmv games because they're essentially just a movie yeah like you're just watching a movie so why wouldn't you just watch good movies instead of like really poorly acted there is something about the idea of being able to interact with local community theater actors in Nebraska yeah the level of interaction is like hitting fast forward on a DVD that's not on some okay on that one yes have you played accurate have you played Mad Dog McCree 2 uh yeah I was more asking Russ because because of course you've played mad dog mccree i've played mad dog mccree one are they mad dog mccree two is probably the hardest video game i've ever played in my life the final duel that you have to do with mad dog mccree in mad dog mccree two i guess

this is he survives the first one it's so fucking indescribably difficult like it makes those crazy bullet hell shooters look like mystery case files like it is the hardest gameplay segment and it's like last two and a half seconds and every time you get shot you have to watch a nebraska community theater actor be like well guess need to have a little it's your trigger finger because he doesn't know how to which accent he's doing and you have to do that like 700 times before you finally get the one muscle movement down correctly to pull out your gun and shoot him in the head. You have to do it twice.

It's so fucking difficult. Why would you need to shoot a ghost in the head? I was watching the... I said watching. That was a Freudian slip. I was playing uh who shot johnny rock on on dvd and uh uh the dvd versions of those games those american laser games are amazing because it's like you use your dvd remote to move a cursor around the screen

until it's sort of but not really on the person you want to shoot and then you press enter on your dvd remote right and i can never remember exactly like where you are in the because i remember playing time time traveler and time travel was like that it's like that but it couldn't remember how many time reversal cubes you had yeah i remember you could sort of cheat the system a little bit get some extra time reversal cubes in one of the shots of who shot Johnny Rock you shoot a guy on a balcony and

it like pans to his face and then he falls off the balcony and I realized when it panned to his face that it was Rusty Dillon, who, as we all know, was the actor who played Mad Dog, actor slash stuntman, who played Mad Dog McCree.

And it lingered on his face for just long enough that I thought, that's kind of like a nod to fans, I guess, because they're kind of pointing out that Mad Dog is there. And then I thought, no, probably not, because they're like kind of pointing out that Mad Dog is there. And then I thought, no, probably not. Because that would be crazy. That doesn't... They would not do that at all. Maybe they just shot him on the same day, and he was around.

They do use the same bartender in both games, which I did appreciate. That great, like, guy whose mustache is taken over his face. Does he wink into the camera? Wasn't he in Lincoln? Wasn't he the lead role in Lincoln? Yeah.

Daniel Day-Lewis was the bartender in Mad Dog McCree. Everybody knows that. Well, partner, welcome to town. We've seen our share of hard times here, but we shall overcome them. You know what? All I want is for there to be a Hoarders episode starring you, Justin,

and you to just try to explain to the Hoarders people why you need to keep all these games. Now, Justin, you have six copies of Wirehead. Can you please explain your actions? What if something happens to them? I am under no illusion that these games

are lost to time if I don't archive them. If I don't try to preserve them. Just like the newspaper from 1986. What? That's what hoarders do. Oh, right. Gotcha. Okay.

Let's talk about Ni No Kuni. Okay. I've been playing that. I played... I know we've all sort of dipped into it. I've played about four or five hours now. It's hard because if you go to the main menu, then the play timer keeps going,

but if you pause it proper, then it doesn't, so it's kind of weird, but... It's... I'm having a... Like, it is so... Every component of this game seems like it was made for me. Like, Studio Ghibli? Ghibli? Studio Gimli.

Like, I love it. Love that. Level 5? Yeah. Dark Cloud? Sure. Love it. Pokemon-style monster collection? Like, oh, now you are speaking my language. I think maybe it's just because I'm coming off of Persona 4 Golden,

which I put so much time into. It's hard for me to bounce directly from one JRPG to another, because it's such a commitment of time. But I mean, I like the hour and a half or so that I've played. I just feel like I haven't even scratched the surface.

Yeah, so what I've played I sort of found somewhat interesting, because i like the combat mechanics um can you describe this yeah i mean it's actiony in the sense that you can run around it's not like straight turn based where you're like standing still waiting for your turn you actually can run around the each arena and cast spells and stuff like that and all the spells take time um it's almost similar to uh it's almost similar to final fantasy 10 except it's not so much built on you know setting up these automated chains and and yeah i guess sort of a chrono trigger well chrono triggers turn base but

but in terms of like the using the arenas yeah your placement is is as important as anything else right exactly uh which i found interesting what i found less interesting was essentially just how much of this game you're just watching like so much like the first hour is like 45 minutes of cut scenes and i just i mean i guess that's a jrpg thing it just does no i know i know what you mean i mean it it it's hard because it it's definitely you know people always say that you know what you mean. I mean, it's hard because it's definitely, you know, people always say that. Wait, you know what I mean? You're an FMV addict. That's all you do.

That's different. Those are cut scenes that I have some control. I don't want to talk about this. Yeah, I know what you mean. And it is like a part of, as you said, it's part of the genre. But that doesn't necessarily make it, like, better. Like, sometimes I only have a half hour to play video games and it's like well okay i just watch cartoons i just want and it's beautiful cartoons

uh and well written and well performed cartoons but it is like it's kind of a stop start uh at the beginning there yeah what i don't particularly care for is like like you said like sometimes whenever i play nino cooney i'm really really only playing it for a half hour or so. Because I rarely have those multi-hour chunks to sit down and play something anymore. And what bums me out about Ni No Kuni is that it has this system where you can save anywhere if you're in a city or out on the map. But when you're in a dungeon you have to revert to like save points and it seems so weird to me that they would i i think i think it's crazy the game still have save points in 2013 it seems like such an

antiquated system that was like designed into the game based around hardware limitations I think there's something to be said for like in Dead Space for example has save points and I think there's something to be said for the level of tension that it creates like a lot of people had an issue with the Dead Rising the way Dead Rising had saves but I kind of liked it because it made

like you can't just save before a final battle like and whatever you reload the save no big okay but design like design around it like dark souls did dark souls you can just fucking turn off your xbox and it'll pretty much remember where you are it just uses the save points as sort of you know yeah i think the solution to that which i think the fire emblem games does is you can do like a temp save which essentially saves where you are, and when you reload, you lose that save. That is what touches...

I would be way more down with Ni No Kuni, and I would have put so much more time into it if it was on the 3DS or Vita or iPad or something. JRPGs, in my mind, are... I have always preferred playing them on handheld platforms, because then I can do them without occupying the entire television for hours and hours at a time. It's such a commitment to spend 60, 70 hours on your Xbox 360 or PS3. I've always found that medicine a little bit easier to swallow.

And this game actually came out on DS in Japan. Yeah, not exactly the same a version of this the problem is i don't see myself having like huge chunks of time to dedicate to this game and i am going to have to continue like consuming it in these half hour blocks and if i keep up that pace i'm not going to finish it unless i do that for four straight months and like that's that's kind of crazy to me. But we haven't touched on the game itself. Yeah, so it is a JRPG. We talked about the battle system. You play a little boy who lives in a place called Motortown, I think.

There's a lot of cars there. It's the real world, basically. It's the real world, basically. And for reasons that I will not spoil here, he is called into a fantasy world that, you know, he has to save because it's a JRPG. And the, you know, it's one of these, there are notes of sort of like a Harry Potter vibe to it.

The boy discovers he's a wizard. As you go, you learn spells which are useful in combat, some of them, and others are just used in the story. So the main bad guy has his big thing is he has heartbroken people, and what that means is he's taken

specific parts of their personality that they need to function like. For some of them, he's taken their enthusiasm, and it's different for others. And you can use your magic to find people who have the piece of their heart that they're missing, have it in excess, have excess enthusiasm or what have you, and suck it out of them. What? Yep. So you make people that are really happy sadder. Just kind of even them out. You're like an SSRI.

You kind of even people out. So if they're too happy, like a zany. People that are too happy, they're kind of the worst, aren't they? Yeah. You're just bragging. Take it down a notch. Take it down a peg. And there's also puzzles you can solve by casting fire, for example, like torches and that kind of thing.

It's all weirdly menu-driven. That was one thing I noticed about the combat is that I couldn't help but think, why is there not just shortcuts to all this? The second you want to cast a spell, and this is all happening in real time, you've got to sift through five levels of menus to get to that spell. Yeah. It's crazy um if you are into this genre i think it's very well executed i just i'm looking at it and when you compare it to i'm still

making my way through persona which is like a very mature story i mean at least comparatively um a much more mature story and i just don't know if I'm going to be able to, and I've been able to play it, I can play it on the bike, I can play it on plane trips and stuff, and I just don't have that luxury with Ni No Kuni. I can't see myself sitting in front of

a TV for 50 hours or 60 hours or however many hours to finish it. And I have that in my mind, right? Like when I start it, it's already working against it. Like I'm already thinking like, oh, God, I don't know if I can do this. And I know that if I turn it off or take the disc out just once, like, bye-bye, Nino Cooney. I'm never putting you in again.

I've actually gotten it through Gamefly. And it really – you've got a point like if i go two days without playing it i know i'm just gonna fall off and then it's gone like the i will send it away and and probably not play it again until i have like way more free time than i have now which is one i have one free time it's wednesday afternoons i call it griffin time and like i yeah once it's out of the system it's basically in an envelope and then it's back to you know grapevine or whatever and and the really depressing thing about all this is that you guys haven't from what i understand there's a point at which the game really hits a wall about 10 hours in where you're like there's like a big grind to it that's what phil's review said like they sort of

slow down the new mechanics but at the same time like the level the rate at which they are adding mechanics to the game right now where i'm at is almost a little overwhelming so i don't know yeah i i've just heard that it just really gets a lot less good at that point. And that's... I will say if you are a fan of Studio Ghibli or Ghibli or Gimli... I think it's Gimli. It's a fucking sumptuous feast of a game. Oh, God, it looks amazing. You would think you're watching a cartoon.

A lot of times it looks like you're watching a hand-animated feature. Right, and yeah, cartoon's not exactly the right, because like what's so incredible about the studio, the studio Gimli movies is like you go into a shop and one of those movies and everything on the shelves has such an intricate amount of detail to it that it's like your eyes are just darting around.

And like that, that is what's so incredible about those movies. They have, they have recreated that not only in the animated cut scenes but like in the game itself like everything is fucking gorgeous like it's such a beautiful game to look at um and the score is is incredible too like that's the kind of stuff that's making me want to power through sort of the that my hang-ups that i'm going to spend way too much time on this game when there's other stuff yeah but that stuff does it for me for about five six hours and then i'm

like okay like i need a game to be there otherwise i'd just be watching studio ghibli movie ghibli sorry it's really hard to talk about this i feel like without sounding condescending because like whenever i would like hear promotion about a game when i was in college and they'd be like it's got 60 hours of gameplay i would be like fuck yes i can't wait to dip into it but like now i i you know i live with my fiance we have really only the one tv with everything hooked up to it. I travel a lot, and I do a lot of gaming sort of on the go. Just portable makes so much more sense for me, and that's why I'm such an enthusiast about the 3DS and iPad and Vita. So the idea of a game that you have to play really hours at a time to make any headway on, unless you want to be playing it all year long, which I don't.

I don't know. It's a turnoff. And I know that's kind of fucked up to say because it has no reflection on the quality of the game itself. I think where I really actually have the biggest problem with this one and length is when you're in dungeons, you're in dungeons you're the

and this kind of feels sort of like the save point thing, kind of like a weird throwback-y type thing. When you're in dungeons, the enemies respawn like very quickly. So if you want to like explore more, you know

it's going to be five more battles as you make your way there and then fight your way back and that starts to feel i mean that that to me once you have that like grindy sort of thing that is not the mark of like an expansive experience that's the mark of like you didn't you didn't uh you, you didn't balance your game so that I would have X number of fights and then be ready for the last fight. Yeah.

Like, you left it up to me to grind and grind and grind and grind until it stopped being fun and then, you know, fight the boss. Also known as a JRPG. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, fair enough. Like, you just hope that they would take the good conventions about the genre and sort of like leave the rest by the

wayside and i know i know that there are people out there who are like probably screaming at their ipods right now and i get it like if you're way into this sort of thing like i i get how every little bit of more you could get of it, you would classify that as a good thing. I don't know. I feel like if I'm in a dungeon and I've already run through a certain hallway, I've already seen that, and I've already fought all the monsters in there 15 times, then it's like you're not really showing me new game. You're just kind of throwing clutter at me. I actually really like Z-Boyd in the Cthulhu RPG, and I think in, depending on arcade games,

but I haven't really played enough of those. They're a modern RPG maker who makes sort of retro-style RPGs, but they make it so that when you are in a dungeon, there is a counter that goes down. Every time you do a fight, it subtracts by one. And then once you've killed like 30 guys in that dungeon battles become optional oh that's the remainder of the time that you're there it's very smart it's a very like forward thinking you will never see in a jrpg well maybe i don't know

like someday guys i don't know because there are jrpgs that get around that like in uh uh xenoblade which i think you could qualify as a jrpg you can just like run around them you can ignore them well and then and even in persona i think the enemies are are kind of thick and slow enough that it's not tough to avoid them in in nino cooney they are faster than you and in fact if you attempt to run from them they will catch you and then they will attack you from the back and have you at a disadvantage so like it does not make sense to try to run away from them um and that i don't know that just feels really antiquated to me guys serious i have a serious question okay is chris plant dead hey how you doing chris plant has literally not

did you take a 30 minutes just didn't have anything to say Have you played Ni No Kuni? No Did you play Andy Chamber? Yeah I talked about it for a little while Are you having kind of a rough day? No I have no comment What do you want to talk about?

Yeah let's talk about you I'm good don't worry about me Do you want to talk about what we're going to play next week? Sure what are we playing next week i'm gonna dip pretty heavy into fire emblem awakening for the oh my god i have never played a fire emblem game before and i love fire i was never i was like didn't know anything about it wasn't really excited about it and then i think they released a trailer like this monday and i was like i have to own this game this looks incredible i am a huge huge fan of fire emblem games uh and i've been looking forward to this for the last year or so but if i play it if i play it on the i don't okay so just from the name yeah no i trust me the franchise alone does nothing for me. It's essentially XCOM.

Like, if you like XCOM, it's essentially XCOM. You're dealing with classes of units that excel against other units, and you're equipping them with items, and you're... I mean, there's, like, crazy Japanese stuff. It's intelligent systems. It's intelligent systems. It's almost exactly like Advance Wars, only with a fantasy approach and upgradable units.

Yeah, the big difference between Fire Emblem and Advance Wars is that if you lose a unit in Fire Emblem, they're dead forever, just like XCOM. You can turn that off, which I'm thinking about doing. You shouldn't do that because that's lame, and you'd be lame for doing that. It would make me sad if i lost someone you're a bully part of the magic uh it really is like the way i play these games is like old school and if i lose someone i'll restart the mission because i'm a maniac but i don't know it just adds a certain level of uh making every single move like thoughtful and

important because one mistake and you like you're like girl archer that you've been friends with since the beginning is you know has her head speared by a cannon that sounds awful uh it's great though and i'm actually really cool I've got two dentist appointments next week. And so I'm going to have that with me to go along for the ride. Now, here's an important question about your dentist appointment. What flavor are you going to pick? Like metal and tooth dust. No, but don't.

Usually they put molds in your mouth and you ask for a flavor. I think they only do that for babies. Yeah. They've been doing it to me for years. I don't know why, but. No. I usually get mint or pina colada. Okay.

Is that, like, a fluoride-based that they're doing? Yeah, maybe. It might be. If I could get fucked up while they're, like, upping my gums, that would make the whole process a lot smoother that's for heroin flavored Chris what are you going to play this week I don't know maybe Proteus did your house burn down

like right before we started it's gone it's all gone it's everything this whole life we built I'm going to play Recovery should someone play Skulls of the shogun well we have three games skulls of the shogun proteus and dead space three oh damn no dead space three isn't out until the following week is now it's next week february 5th right yeah shit yeah can i i played

the demo for that and i fucking fell asleep Like, welcome to the real world, she said to me. I had to be straight with you guys. And this is why I probably... I have tried with both Dead Space games to get up in there. And I was actually talking to a guy from USA Today that wanted to do a story. I did an interview with him last week. He's like, hey, I'm doing another story. I'd like your comment about Dead Space.

Just like how dope it is and how... And it's like, I actually had to pass him off. I was like, I gotta be fair to you, my man. As hard as it is for me to cede any line, I'm like, I think those games are... The demo for Dead Space 3 is available now. Dead Space 2 was great. Dead Space 1 was great. Dead Space 2 was okay.

Oh, you guys are crazy. I have not finished either one. I don't know what it is. I really don't. Dead Space 2 is like the best Bioshock ripoff that exists. It just doesn't. You're crazy. I think it's the combat. I don't really like the... I don't know what it is.

Aiming is not fun to me. The story is goofy. In the end of Dead Space 2, when people say they like the ending, that's when I'm like, okay, whatever. We're on a different page. No, I think from a gameplay mechanics standpoint, I think those games are great. And I thought Dead Space 2 was exceptionally great.

But Dead Space 3, the demo opens up with you are on a train, and the train crashes, and you have to sort of climb around the train as it falls off a cliff. Spoilers. I've never seen that before in a game. Then when you get to the top of the train, you have to sort of climb around the train as it falls off a cliff. I've never seen that before in a game. Then when you get to the top of the train, you have to fight off guys with the guns that you find in the snow. I've never seen that before, though. It's in the fucking demo, but you have seen it before

because you played Uncharted 2. No, I think Dead Space 3 did it first. It's hard to say. You know, it's so hard to prove these things. Check the record. Check the record check the record go to movie games figure it out well that's gonna do it for us this week on the besties we sure hope you'll join us again next friday when we will uh do a deep dive into some of these new titles i don't really want to play any of them so i might be a crisp plant next week it's hard to say

you shouldn't be planting next week i don't want to plant i don't want to plant it next week garden i'm gonna burn your house down before the show so uh make sure you join us though for the best hey wait wait wait wait before you do that now you're gonna do that hey since everybody knows what we're playing next week uh listeners, maybe leave a few comments about these games that we're playing on this post. Maybe we'll talk about those. Yeah, that's a good idea.

That's a fun plan. I did play a reader-suggested game that was absolutely bonkers, and I couldn't even deal with it. Yeah, let's talk about that real quick. Goblet Grotto, which was recommended by a reader in the comments of last week's episode, is like, you just took speed and thought crack would be a good idea to mix with that.

Because there's like symbols and like, it's all hand-drawn and you're a frog and everything is like talking to you. It was, it's, I mean, I don't even know how to put into words. This looks ape shit. It was not fun. I just dropped a link into our Skype chat and maybe you can throw that into the post, Russ. So our listeners

can go and click on this right now because it is the weirdest game. It's really weird. That noise you're hearing, Griffin, it does not stop and you could like fall off a cliff

and you'll end up in like a world below like it doesn't kill you you just end up in another land like ToeJam & Earl and there's like yeah like ToeJam & Earl and there's like symbols

constantly appearing at the top of the screen and you don't know what they do and there's constantly symbols constantly appearing at the top of the screen and you don't know what they do and there's constantly noises assaulting you it's really like a bad trip I've clearly never taken crack so I don't know

what that results in but I would say probably something really bad this reminds me a lot of the game I'm making now in Unity actually yeah you have to collect batteries to open a door that sounds about right This reminds me a lot of the game I'm making now in Unity, actually. Yeah? Yeah. You have to collect batteries to open a door. That sounds about right.

Sounds good. But you need four batteries, but there's only three. It's kind of like America. It's kind of like an art. Yeah. Anyway. Wow, this looks bananas. Okay, so that's going do it for us this week

make sure you join us again next Friday for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games