The Besties - The Besties Podcast 49 - Ridiculous Fishing and Super Stickman Golf 2

Episode Date: March 15, 2013

All mobile all the time. In the history of The Besties, when the gents end up bringing mobile games to the table, it doesn't bode well for the quality of said games. This week is the exception to the rule, as they're talking about two of the best games of 2013 (mobile or beyond!). In other news, Chris Plante literally got off a flight from Japan and recorded the podcast, so if he sounds drowsy, it's probably the sleeping meds coursing through his veins. 04:00 - Ridiculous Fishing 20:00 - Half Time 27:00 - Super Stickman Golf 2 47:00 - 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!

plant honestly i'm a little more interested in the sorts of drugs you took flying back okay so i took drugs um i really couldn't tell based on what you were saying i took a thing called at a van which i think is like um i i'm clearly might still have some of this that's um that's what my dad used to say to our van when it did a good job. Yay, Atta Van! Is that after it went out and got itself a nice heavy metal paint job? Yeah, and then it won the baseball game. Oh, that was so good. My dad was actually prouder of that van than he ever was of me.

That's because it's hard to say Atta griffin you know i think that's only because you're a disappointment though and also that i'm not a van i cannot provide transportation for up to six people griffin did you also take out of van recently no i'm just pretty sleepy okay yeah that's that's pretty much what it does to you. The only weird thing that it did was on the flight to Tokyo. Raging boner? Three hours. No, no, that would have been better. Three hours passed in which I realized I had been working out

how a dragon's mouth would work in real life. Like how it would create fire. Well, essentially there are glands in the throat that release a flammable liquid or gaseous kind and then that ignites based on the friction with the teeth false so here's how it would work and i'll tell you how this came together so skyfall was on the tv and there was like hey everybody this is griffin i'm editing the episode and this is the part where chris Plant literally talks for six minutes about dragon physiology. So I'm going to skip you ahead just a little bit.

And then being polite, he's closing his mouth. But when he does that, flint on flint, causes a spark, out comes fire. Ativan's a hell of a drug. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know two best games. My name is Chris Plant, and I lived Thursday twice. My name is Russ Ruff, and I know the best game of the week. Man, if that doesn't wake you up, if that doesn't get the blood pumping, the heart also pumping, you are dead.

The penis pumping? Penis pumping. The heart also pumping. You are dead. The penis pumping. Penis pumping. Now I'm literally dead. So how do we usually start the show, Justin? I usually start the show by saying that we are the besties. Four best friends that love to play the best in video gaming. Whether that be on a real video game or sometimes phones, as we'll see this week. We review the latest and greatest in video game technology, and then we give it a score.

We critique it, and then we say it's the best. Before those people run off, because I hear them. Like, I hear a few people scooting their boot because they know we're just going to talk about iPhone games this week. Let me assure them I got a little surprise. I got a little surprise in my pocket that even you guys don't know about. And let me say it's not an iPhone game. I love this. I love the suspense.

Can I guess? Can we take guesses? I'll take the first guess if we're taking guesses. Go ahead. Is it an R-Zone game? No, but that was a good guess. Because it's an R-type game. Speaking of R-type game,

I would say that Ridiculous Fishing is almost certainly R-type of game. That's a good game. Yeah, it's by Flambier. Flambierambier like fam beer but with a vlam at the beginning like bill lamb bill vlam beer combat basketball they made super crate box which before this was the best iphone game that anyone used to be the best iphone game but now

it's a new best iphone game called ridiculous fishing yeah now used to be the best iPhone game, but now it's a new best iPhone game called Ridiculous Fishing. Now, you may be thinking, hey, I've heard of that. I've even played it. But no. Actually, you haven't played it. You haven't played it. Because there's been no game called Ridiculous Fishing that's been released. There was a game with

Ridiculous Fishing that was Ridiculous Fishing, but it at the same time was not Ridiculous Fishing. Yeah, it wasn't labeled as such. Do you want me to go over a quick history lesson for people? ridiculous fishing that was ridiculous fishing but it at the same time was not ridiculous fishing yeah it wasn't labeled as such do you want me to go over a quick history lesson for people yeah if you don't mind sure it's been long in the making okay so in the year 1992 johnny vlambeer was born okay no do the real one okay the real one is essentially a game called Radical Fishing came out in, I think it was like 2009 maybe, around there, 2010, I forget. It was a flash game with the premise of you're a fisherman and you are trying to fish as many fish as you can by sending the line down into the waters, getting as far as you can without touching a fish. And then once you touch a fish, the line comes back up and you're trying to collect as many fish on the way back up and then once you

hit the water you shoot all the fish out of the sky with weapons so that game came out as a free flash game and people really really enjoyed it and then a year or so later who made that who made that that was made by flambierer. Bill Vlambeer. Combat basketball. And so about a year later, another company came around and released an iPhone game called Ninja Fishing, which basically ripped off every gameplay component of Radical Fishing. And they went and sold it, and it made a bunch of money and the uh meanwhile the guys that were that made radical fishing had been working on their own iphone version of the game

ridiculous fishing and they were so disheartened by the cloning that the game essentially got shelved for a while but now it's back and it's been released and it's been released, and it's excellent. So fuck the clone and get the OG. Did you notice how the clone, the day before Ridiculous Fishing went up on the App Store, so I guess Wednesday, discounted their game? Well, it had been free to play for ages, actually. Well, they were running some sort of promotion for i didn't i didn't check it out because you know i support the indies and i'm a big fucking creeps lots of

indie cred but i guess maybe on their in-app purchases they were doing some sort of yeah ninja fishing's free fuck this game yeah seriously why are you even talking about it guys those guys free our commenters said they want more of that conflict from that og best use stuff so you know i'm i think you know i'm i'm gonna be brave i'm gonna come out in favor of ridiculous fishing on this one oh really you're gonna go with that one i'm gonna go with i'm gonna go with that one so chris plant what do you what is it you like about this game uh here's what i like about it. That somebody came to me, right? And they said, hey, Chris Plant, you've got 12 hours on a plane.

Was this before or after you took Ativan? When they came to me, it had to have been afterwards. Because I don't know how they would have found me. Were they sparkly? Did they have wings? Was it a talking dog? Of course they had wings. And they breathed fire.

They're dragons uh so they came to me right and they were like what if i could give you a game where you fish and i was like no i don't want that that sounds try again i got that on the dreamcast i don't need it on anything else friend and they And they were like, okay, what if instead of a fishing line, it was a chainsaw? And I was like, you have my attention. And then they were like,

okay, and after you chainsaw the fish, you shoot them into the sky. And I was like, with an Uzi? And they were like, with a Kimbo Uzis. And I was like, $ Uzi and they were like with a Kimbo Uzis and I was like $2.99 that's the most I'll pay and then we just bit and shook on it yeah that's an accurate statement uh no it's it's a hugely like I mean it feels I think what it has over um

super crate box is that it feels even more sort of native to the platform. Like, this feels like an iPhone game that is taking advantage of everything the iPhone is good at and not wasting any time. Because that was the one, in my opinion, the one sort of hindrance with the totally great Super Crate Box that I was hugely addicted to was, at first, I didn't even like it because I thought virtual controls always sucked. super crate box that i was hugely addicted to was at first i didn't even like it because i i thought virtual controls always sucked and like it they may not be made if they made them work but like they're still not great i mean it would still be better to play that that game it was just a very

good game like the design of that game was very very good and it, and it really lent itself to the score-chasing nature of iOS games. Like, the design, not the controls. The controls weren't great, but the design of the game was perfectly suited for iOS. And it's hard to look back on that game with rose-tinted glasses, because as soon as I picked it up on the Vita, I was like, oh, fuck. Like, this is how that game is supposed to be played. It is so much better with some button-ass buttons on it. This is know it's just tilting and it's tapping like it tilting tapping i yeah i'm impressed how much they make me like things i hate about the iphone uh like using virtual controls with super crate box or like using the gyroscopic tilt uh which i could live my life never having to use uh and still really

enjoying it i mean that that i don't understand any game that uses tilt because they've clearly never had to play a video game on a subway or in taxi uh because it's impossible um but it's still great some games do really well till to live i felt like had a pretty exceptional control scheme for a game that was literally just gyroscopic controls well and i think this one does too like it yeah i remember playing it still yeah i remember playing it at gdc last year and it had uh toe controls then but it's been refined so much to the point where like you feel like you have complete like you could sneak your fishing line in such narrow tiny little holes that because the controls are so solid like a schmuck but almost like i mean it is a bullet one third of the game is a bullet hell shooter yeah and it

like i think that's what's so great is that it is, it blends some pretty crazy genres, like the, I don't know what you would call the shooting part of it, like I guess sort of an on-rails shooter, except it just goes straight up. What was that circus game where the clown had to, like, keep balancing the things? They were the acrobat.

Yeah, sure. Oh, yeah. So it's sort of like that, where once you throw the fish up in the air you're trying to like shoot the bigger fish to send them farther up into the air so you still have time to kill the smaller fish and there's like strategy there yeah there's a lot there's a lot of uh tactics in this game there are tactics uh but i think what will make this game sell really well and i try not to get into these sort of predictions too often but it it's so enjoyable even if you're just totally playing your brain dead just like sending that little line down and then just collecting things and

then tapping to make them explode there's so little skill required to get the kind of action hook that the game offers. Yeah. Which is great. Plus, it's nice the whole thing is built around... Maybe we should talk a bit more about mechanically, sort of how this works. So we talked about the basic gameplay, but basically when you catch bigger or harder to catch fish, Basically, when you catch bigger or harder to catch fish, you get paid more for those. And you use that to buy lots of upgrades. And for me, that's sort of like, I don't know.

I love that sort of thing. You know that's my shit. I know that's your jam. And for me, it makes it so that it's not as frustrating as it could be. Because even if I don't have a particularly good haul, at least I know, hey, well, I made some money regardless, so I'll get them next time. Yeah, it's not the skill-based upgrade thing either.

It feels to me like the rewards are placed so well that I could hand it to my mom, who does not play any iPhone games, and she would be around the same place in the game as i am just because it really like all you are doing is tapping things well i don't know avoiding i'm certainly still to avoiding uh to avoiding the monsters it's very minimal fish it's i mean it well in the later levels yeah i, yeah. I'm saying later on, sure. I'm saying this as a compliment,

that I unlocked the ability to drill through fish and shoot them with an akimbo Uzi and towards the moon with very little skill required, I think is a good thing. You're saying you're bad at video games. I'm saying I'm bad at video games. If you can do it and and if i can do it and it can give me that power high and i can know what it feels like to shoot a baby eel up into the heaven then you know then a dog could

do it is what you're saying if you can do it a dog can do it and dogs i don't know if you know this uh number one purchasers in the app store. Sure. That would explain a lot. Also, can we address the fact that all the music was done by the guy who did Spelunky's soundtrack? Spelunky's soundtrack. I hate the music. It's the worst part of the game.

I like it. Bam. It's so annoying. It's just grating. It's not sonically pleasurable to me. What? What did Zach Gage do on it? Design work.

He did the voice acting for the fisherman. I caught me another one. Shoot him up in disguise. Yeah, they don't do that. So Greg Woolwind also did the art style, which I love. I think the art is, like, super clever, and I don't think I've ever seen any art style like this where it uses essentially like very minimal polygons, like angular shapes to sort of make up everything like fish and sharks and the fishermen and the boat and stuff like that. I don't even know how to describe it.

It's almost like. It's vector art, isn't it? It's almost like, what's vector art, isn't it? It's almost like... What's it called? Stained glass? It kind of looks like that. But it's very, very cool. Can we also talk about the fact that there is a Twitter for birds

that you talk to birds on on Twitter? I don't know if they're birds that you're talking to. There is at least one bird, but I thought they were all birds. I don't know if they're birds. Yeah, talking to there is at least one bird but i thought they were all birds i don't know if they're birds yeah there's a weird in-game they've been doing this arg to promote the game for like birder uh it's very weird i don't get it but everything else the game is very cool yeah yeah it's like an in-game twitter that you can retweet from in your real life. And they talk about when you buy an upgrade, they're like, oh, nice hat. Right.

Which is weird. One thing that I was kind of confused about, and I'm still not 100% clear, some fish, when you collect them, actually detract money. Yeah, jellyfish. Is it just jellyfish? Just jellyfish. Not piranhas. Not pirananhas everything else gives you money okay just jellyfish you don't want to catch right and you can actually see what things are worth you there's like a book that keeps track of all the values of

the fish stuff yeah fishopedia i wish they made that more clear because it adds a lot more skill to the um to the return trip there's a big number that you you keep seeing every time well no no i i know that there i realized that there were some things that were reducing the the amount um i just wish it was more clear on the types of things you want to hit and avoid so you because it it adds a lot more you know it's a lot more interesting making the return trip when you have certain things you're trying to you know why they do that though jellyfish are notorious pickpocketers yeah oh right they're also they're also endangered so there's a font there's a pretty steep fee you

also have to pee on them five dollars per jellyfish i don't think you pee on them that's i'm that's how they die that's their weakness. That's like, yeah. The one where Joey gets peed on. Yeah, and they all peed on it. The poison in your bloodstream won't be nullified until you find it. It's like when you get bit by a snake, you're supposed to kill the snake and bring it to the hospital so that they can see what kind of poison you got.

Whenever you get stung by a jellyfish, you have to hunt down that jellyfish and pee on it to nullify the poison. Not just it, on its whole family. Yeah, whole family yeah well no no i can't go i can't go with you there sorry nice um what should we uh what should we have time about what what is that all we want to say about well two nine nine like get it yeah it's really really good my only note i have two notes of minor minor complaints hit me minor complaint a it's sort of a little bit lacking in competitiveness uh there's are there fine boards there are leaderboards uh pretty sure the only leaderboard is the maximum depth that you've reached in the final area

um and i think that's the only one um which sort of makes sense because the other areas do have like a finite depth that you can get to whereas the final depth just keeps going but it it's i don't know i feel like there could have been a little more of that the other thing is a little annoying that i don't think they do cloud saving so essentially yeah which sucks because it's like it is conceptually it is the perfect iphone game to just like play in a in you know on a train or on a bus because your rounds can either take like a minute and a half or it can go much longer if you do very well um but it's it feels better to play it on the ipad and there are a lot of games like that that i wish had clouds aiming just so you know i could pick it up the ipad is like my home boo it's like i pick it up when i'm at home

it would be nice if i could port it on the go i actually had a a concern about it maybe you guys can you know put this fear to rest it seems like my war with super crate box the some of the unlockables are so difficult and so tied to skill that like realistically i'm never gonna actually do them um but it this seems like the kind of thing where i might be able to just finish it well yeah so that's the other thing i want to mention is that it essentially doesn't the only thing that's skill-based is getting to the lowest point of the final area because everything else you're just earning money every time so it's not a question of like when you'll get everything it's just a question of how long it'll take you

um or whether you'll get everything um so yeah it isn't really i kind of do wish that there was more skill to it there is some talk and i don't know if this is like bullshit like the bigfoot in san andreas but there is some talk that there is a secret area tied to some of the game's items and if you do certain things uh you might be able to unlock like more content so i haven't gotten to that yet but there is a lot of like weird secret fish and stuff like that will you let me know when you when you find it i'll try yeah i think you might be talking out of your ass like you do that all the time like age you find the secret gold level in spelunky like that doesn't exist. That's not real.

You're just fucking with me. I don't know why you lie so... Like, how am I supposed to trust anything you say when you lie about Spelunky secrets? My doctor says it's a problem. Yeah. So, guys, anything... Chris, you gotta have some sort of... Yeah, he said he had a secret, a surprise.

Oh. And he forgot it. No, I got it. Great show surprise oh and he forgot it no i got great show everybody i got it i got it guess what game i played uh in japan uh horse racing gallop 2012 okay one yes i did that's racist they the horse racing game is there they are they're out of control yeah and they look like the starship enterprise like you sit in a seat the size of the starship enterprise like captain seat but then there are like 20 or 30 of these in a room facing a movie screen holy shit yeah and then across from that like that's like one end right that's the sega end across from that is a giant like it looked

like grandpa finally got all the money he needed to buy his ultimate horse racing set and there is a like how long has he been saving this beautiful million dollar uh horse racing track model and the horses actually race around it, little robot horses, and people gamble on the robot horses. Like sometimes when people talk, I close my eyes and I just sort of try to make my brain paint a picture of what they're saying, Chris, and I have literally nothing from all that stuff. Like a robot horse? Okay.

Does it look like matchbox cars? No. Like a track? Talk scale. Okay. Imagine a train set. Yes. Instead of a train set, imagine that as a horse racing stadium.

Okay. So probably like maybe like. Is that the official terminology let's say like six feet six feet wide by maybe i don't know like 50 feet long by like six foot tall are they on like automatic electrified tracks or are their legs actually propelling no it's like steel horses that just get pulled by a little steel bar across these tracks okay so it's well i'm gonna ask that right every yeah i'm gonna ask what everybody's thinking where do they find jockeys small enough to ride them jockeys are pretty small not that small though yeah the good ones are

guys the important thing is the greats the greats are that small. I played the game Flip the Table. Oh, great. What's that? So the way Flip the Table works is you flip the table. There's a table, and there's a screen in which a represent, you know, there's a you on the screen, and he has a table. So when you flip the table, he flips the table, and you get points for knocking stuff down in the virtual room. But you don't have to flip a table.

You can also flip a wedding cake if you're an angry bride. You can flip, like, a bookshelf if you're, you know, a spurned professor. And I am. I did okay as the bride, but I brought it all home when i flipped the table inside of a baseball stadium uh and man i flipped it where was the table so the table was at home plate and i flipped it so hard i hit a home run with a shot glass on my table we're trying to play baseball here could you get the furniture out of the way please there's we're playing a game of baseball two weeks away i i that's what i would tell them well let me ask you a question

chris about your table game so there's a physical table attached to this arcade machine right it's like half a table right uh is it it's about like three quarters of a table is it tethered yes you can't steal the table i tried can you can you like lift it over your head no you can only push it you can only flip it towards the screen okay so imagine imagine like a imagine like a pinball machine you know it has like the the section coming out at you and then the screen in the back that's kind of what it is you grab the front of the table and sort of fold it almost. I see.

Okay, I have a second question. Second question. Can you play by sense of smell? No, it's flip the table. I bet fucking Tommy could probably handle flip the table. Because really, I think... Not too impressive. Yeah, like even being deaf, dumb, and blind,

I think you can still grab something and lift it heavily because you know how your other senses improve if he's three senses down his sense of strength is going to be is it true that Tommy's strength actually came from the who like if they weren't playing he wasn't able to

do anything that's true that's so weird the sense of strength the sense of strength? The sense of strength? Yeah, sense of strength. So you have sight, you have smell, you have touch, you have sound. And then not a lot of people know this, you have a fifth sense.

And that sense is like, you know how like when you look at like a couch, you're helping a friend move and you look at a couch and you go, uh, Oh, there's no fucking way we're going to be able to get that couch up that flat. Does everybody have that? Or is it just doctors who work too close to nuclear? A lot of people have it when they,

when you don't have it. Um, so like Jean-Claude Van Damme, no sense of strength, which is good, which is why he sees a tank. And he's like, I'm going to pick that up.

And people are like, don't fucking do that. And he's like got this and he guess what he does got this he almost always does so he does have a really good sense of strength thing because he knows exactly what he can pick up um no because like if he tries to pick up the moon like he'll die because he's in space if he tries to like pick up the ocean he'll drown you know what i mean like there's nothing particularly impressive about the fact that he can lift almost anything. Yeah. It doesn't seem like it helps you.

It seems like it's the colon of senses. Colons are tremendously helpful. Colons are actually pretty great. I eat rocks all the time, and my colon has not done anything for me. You don't have any sense of eat, which is... Yeah, you're missing that. Another real thing. Also no sense of abs.

That exists. I got a sense of golf. Segway. Death perception? I don't know. Super Stickman Golf 2 also launched this week. Didn't I used to... I thought it was Wednesday when stuff came out.

Wednesday at 11 p.m so essentially it's thursday i have a story to tell about super stickman golf 2 oh hit me okay so don't make it bogus it's not no this is a legit story so about two years ago um every year before e3 there's this event called e3 judges week where essentially one representative from each publication goes out to los angeles and gets sort of carted around on a bus i was at this event so this is bogus i'm gonna be able to i'm gonna be right gets carted around on a bus and uh shown a bunch of different games so essentially it's like 25 games folks on a bus and on the very first night that i was there um i mentioned in passing that everyone on the bus should start playing this game super stickman golf and everyone promptly laughed at me i was

mocked repeatedly it was horrible but slowly but surely i convinced people to start trying this game and by the end of the week it was no joke the best game any of us had played all week and we were playing like triple a console titles now i'm gonna i'm gonna fill fill out kind of a hole that's that's here okay i will i i was on board with the stickman golf i i did laugh but not at this time i was already on board when we got there what i did was who got you on board with it though you did oh you did 100 yep but what i did was i saw i saw skepticism amongst the ranks i targeted uh the the the big man in in the in the prison yard garnett lee uh i got him to download it. Killed him.

And then I dominated him in it. He, a viciously competitive human being, was crushed, and that attracted more people because there was blood in the water. I like how Russ's story of how great Super Stickman Golf is has actually turned into a Chris Plant story about how cool he is. A real dig me tale about Chris Plant. I beat people up and that's why the game is popular. It has nothing to do with the game.

Don't be fooled. Let's get some perspective. Suffice it to say it's a game that looks if you look at a screenshot of Super Stickman Golf you will roll your eyes into eternity. Essentially you'll be looking at the back of your stick man golf you will roll your eyes into or to eternity essentially you'll be looking at the back of your spine you'll be rolling your eyes so much

because it looks like a lame kiddie golf game the moment you play it and i mean literally the first hole that you do you will understand the greatness that is this game it's the biggest problem with the game i think is that it it on the surface it sounds like the worst sort of ios oh it sounds terrible super no thanks stick man don't no thank you golf like i can i not please do that at all uh but man a lot it really captures the i think better than anything else the feeling that for me that it captures is that feeling of uh playing like putt putt and and and it's that feeling of like how did i miss there's no way i missed that shot there's no at all the sort of like weird superstition that comes along

with that like the sort of like feeling like the entire universe is working against you somehow along with that, like the sort of like feeling like the entire universe is working against you somehow. It's, it's not just like, it's, it's, there's been a movement.

I feel like the past couple of years and it's been a slow boil, but of like indie developers re refocusing on like the folk gaming roots of local multiplayer. And this was, I remember the first time I played local multiplayer stick, super stick man golf, which is a four player race to the finish you don't go by whoever gets there with the fewest shots it is a race to the

finish that like i just fucking fell in love with the game and to this day when we were in in new york city for polycon last year it was like every time we had a free moment we would pull our phones out and play it yep and it's that there aren't a ton of super stickman golf too because okay that's there's a rub there well i think it's a bigger rub or a smaller rub than you think it is but we should touch on it so super stickman golf 2 just came out today uh but a few of us have been playing it actually all of us have been playing it for the last couple of days because we got some early codes. And in addition to the, like, standard things you would expect from the single-player game, they added one feature in particular

that I think makes it head and shoulders above Super Stickman Golf 1, which is asynchronous multiplayer uh which essentially allows you you know uh what's that scrabulous style or scrabble turn-based whatever it's like a turn-based golf game where you take a stroke or you finish a hole and then you watch your friend finish a hole uh i get it stroke um and it's just like constantly like i have 10 games going right now and it's just super satisfying and well what i love so much about it is you watch the other players turn so like i'll watch your rust just like take because you have uh it's the same rules as the original super segment golf you have uh seven power-ups you can use throughout the nine whole cores.

And those power-ups are different things that you unlock. The first one is just a mulligan. So if you don't like your shot, you can take it over again. And then there's things like a sticky ball, where you can stick to walls, or an ice ball, where you can freeze water traps, and so on and so forth. So watching Russ just have a full fucking panic attack breakdown on a hole, and have to take five mulligan

it was essentially have you seen tin cup yeah it was right it was the it was that scene in tin cup where he couldn't get over the water and he just kept trying and trying yeah yeah he got it in 12 so yeah but at the same time it's like i've watched you do this and i laugh and i get so fucking proud of you when you finally make it it finally sinks it oh man it's i i've watched you do this and i laugh and i get so fucking proud of you when you finally make it it finally sinks it oh man it's i like it a ton um i actually my one of my very few problems well i don't have very few but one of my problems with the multiplayer aspect of it the implementation is um i really don't like that i really don't like the inclusion of of mulligans in the and i get that it was part of like when it was a race um but like it's hard when you're playing somebody to

know that like okay that's probably where i could have gotten a leg up on the person and i know that i have that same advantage but like it's hard it doesn't seem fair to me like that they can try that i'm watching them like choke choke choke and knowing that like oh man i should be like pulling ahead here because i sunk this in one and like watching someone get eight chances to do that it feels unfair i don't know if like from a game design perspective actually is but it feels i have a feeling that first of all i think that that issue is abated a little bit towards the uh later courses because you have to spin those power-ups like unless you want to shoot on par or over you have to spin those power-ups on the special things like the sticky ball and on the you know the the water and sand swap like you need to be very judicious with

how you spin those but you're right i think that what that mode really could have used was sort of a super smash brothers style like full rule customization of no power-ups whatsoever because like what's tricky is you still have to actually i don't know because i the only games i played against justin which i haven't checked and and russ when you're playing against somebody who hasn't unlocked all the power-ups that you have can you still use all the power-ups you have yeah you can and so that all the power-ups you have? Yeah, you can. And so that's one thing that I do have an issue with, is that essentially, like, if I was playing with all the power-ups that I had already unlocked...

Yeah, you'd fucking destroy me. I'd destroy you, because it is a... Well, Russ is also notorious for using them once he starts losing. No, that's... I was playing legit, Griffin. Oh, yeah, Griffin, maybe. is losing no that's i was playing legit griffin oh yeah he did maybe i i've seen sticky balls come out when well griffin told me before we started hey all i'm saying is he shows me the sticky balls the second you know i pull ahead so so just to speak to justin's point uh i would agree with griffin i think there is it's very much a currency thing so essentially if they

spend all of their power balls uh on the same hole um the fact that they're not able to use them on later holes is a big deal and you'll have a huge advantage yeah so eventually that match where russ had his panic attack and blew five of his mulligans right there like i there was no coming back from that like i had him so but the reason it's in there and the reason i think they didn't although i would like to see in an update like a raw like no power-ups version of multiplayer there i think the reason they did it is because it essentially lets you if you're down a considerable amount if you use your power ups very smartly you have a chance to come back uh whereas i think if both sides didn't have any power-ups and you were down by like three strokes you would feel like oh

you know it's there's not a whole lot i can do to really get an edge let's talk about the power-ups because i i haven't um i saw this but i didn't like investigate it yeah and i need to know whether or not i need to be angry about it okay in the single player courses when you use up all your power-ups do you have the option to buy more so you can use the in-game currency of quote-unquote bucks i think it's bux you can spend five bucks to get another um power ball uh which i do not dig on that okay i appreciate the not digging on that and i don't really dig on it either um because you get those bucks either by there's 10 on each course that you can pick up there are you get them for achievements and you get them for multiplayer victories but you only get like two for multiplayer victories it's not like it's not like you're

doling them out in big numbers i think that's to prevent people from abusing it yeah and of course you can also buy like you can buy it with in-app purchases yeah i've never actually used a purchased power but like i've never spent the five bucks to get that extra one um i would say that the difference between having eight and having nine power-ups is pretty negligible. I don't know if you can keep buying. I don't think you can, but I'm not 100% sure. And, like, I am not saying this because I have, like, a fundamental problem with this model because this model is basically the only model for profitability for these games.

And, like, i think there are organic and respectful ways to do that but at the same time they have also placed a higher emphasis on leaderboards for each course and like i use the scores that you and killingsworth put up as like that's my par like i have to finish this course 19 under because that's what russ did and when i see that and like knowing that you or the person coming after me had the option to to juice like it just it kind of it kind of i don't know it lessens my interest in continuing to play the game in that competitive manner yeah so there so there's that which i agree with you the other X factor is the addition of hats

which we haven't really gotten into it's new for the sequel and essentially so you can you collect these bucks by like getting achievements and finding them around maps and stuff like that and then you can then spend them in a sort of lottery I don't know what capsule toy type thing

which essentially... A gachapon? A gachapon, thank you. Chris Plant, I'm sure, knows exactly what that is. Actually, it might be gachapon. It's one of the two. Okay, let's be very careful here. But you can essentially spend the money there

and it'll reward you with a hat. And these hats hats apart from changing the look of your character actually have passive abilities so some of the hats are very basic they'll you know change the size of your character which actually makes no difference at all but it'll just make you look bigger but the later hats the more we'll turn the water into blood like right some of them it's cute whatever but the later hats actually have gameplay implications, like one of the later hats causes you to stick to every green. Like the second you land on a green, you're stuck on it,

so you won't bounce off. It also prevents you from rolling in shots. But there's one hat that's all upside, which essentially it gives you two bonus power-ups for every time you play around um and that's the sort of thing where it record like it took me a while to unlock that um but it does feel like a pretty serious advantage so i don't use it when i play multiplayer so that's the sort of area where i feel a little dodgy about you know competitive competition and i would like to see like a no

power-ups no hats again like it those the power-ups and the hats are not they're not objectively bad things it's if we had to like if russ and i stuck with it and unlocked everything in the game like the more hardcore players i think would formulate strategies around those things. Like the sticky green hat, that's just a kind of strategy. You're not going to get the roll-in that you want, but it is easier to land on the green. Yeah, it might make us give in course much easier to finish. But for everybody else, for the people who are just coming up the ranks, there's a leveling system for other people who haven't unlocked a bunch of shit yet there really does need to be a just plain multiplayer mode where you can still

i like that the multiplayer mode you still earn experience and and currency like i dig that i i do i just yeah there needs to be a vanilla the uh the other big problem i have with the multiplayer, and I'm not sure what the smart fix for this might have been, but you are effectively not playing each other. I mean, you're playing each other in as much as when you play single player and you compare the score you're trying to beat with the other person. I mean, with the Super super stickman golf when it's local you're you are in direct competition because how fast that person finishes the hole impacts your score um but in this case there's no real difference i mean it it's multiplayer only in

the strictest sense because really you're just playing two concurrent single player matches well i wouldn't i wouldn't necessarily agree with that. First of all, we should mention that the race mode is still in it. So if you want to play race, you can still do that. It's four players online, eight players local, which I can't fucking wait. GDC or whatever is going to be a lot of fun. The other thing I would say is different from single-player, I think you make a lot of choices based on how the other person is doing

that you wouldn't ordinarily make. Like, for example, if you're down two strokes and the other person made an insane shot, you might go for the riskier path, even though you might not make it. And, like, that changes your strategy. Strategies that you wouldn't take if you were playing a single player. Hmm. Yeah, I could see that. So, fuck you, Justin. Chris Plank.

Got you. yeah i could see that so fuck you justin chris plan that's the best thing about the besties is we cannot have a someone cannot make an actual valid it's so rare that we have a valid point to make that it it's a ticker tape parade um i i think i know i do want to hear chris plan's concerns though because he's been he might be asleep though i don't know no i my concerns they're dumb concerns sometimes i appreciate a game just being very simple and this is insane because it's a sequel and they want to expand and they want to make it a better game but what i liked about the original super stickman golf is that i felt like even without the fancy special balls, I could hop in a game with people who had never played it before, and everyone was close to on

the same level, no matter what environment we were playing in, even some of the more difficult levels. I felt like it was much more about precision and just aiming and powering your shot and less about using the sticky wall in the right corner and knowing the map and knowing which ball to use when and weighing when when not to use your ball tokens. And like I said, that's silly because what they did is they made a more robust game. But sometimes from multiplayer experiences, I just prefer the latter.

Yeah, I think you want what we want, which is essentially a very vanilla multiplayer mode option. I really do feel like that's the only thing that's missing because in every other regard, it has the race mode apps you know that's that's my problem is the stages themselves are just yeah they are kind of like they're more they're a lot more level yeah and playing through it in single player was a lot less fun oh i don't know about that i had fun playing i think the course has been pretty good so far and also i mean i've been able like you can beat those courses under par without using power-ups. It seems like for a lot of them, there's no way you can get a hole-in-one, right? I mean, it's, like, literally impossible.

Yeah, but, I mean, it was that way for the last game, too. But, I know, but, like, I like holes-in-one. Like, getting a hole-in-one makes me feel it. It makes me feel like a special boy. I'm writing an email right now to Noodle Cake Studios asking them to release a new game called Super Baby Golf and it'll be just for Justin

and he can hit all the holes and go right in one and it's just a short little putt and it'll have a picture of Justin on the front, but it's his adult head on a baby's body. Is the hole just a vacuum? Uh-huh, the hole's a vacuum. You don't even need to hit it.

It's a video. It's a YouTube and it's just a YouTube of a ball going in a hole that repeats while a lullaby plays. Infant. This has been a cool day. Happy birthday, Justin. Best birthday I've ever had.

I'm going to keep playing Ridiculous Fishing. Sorry, Ninja Fishing. Fuck Ridiculous Fishing. Is there a free version of Super Secret Golf 2 I can get? What are we playing next week, yo? So, I think probably next... I know what we're playing next week.

Well, it's not the game that you're thinking of because we can't talk about that yet. Gears? Oh, yeah. Well, Gears is one of them, right? And then Justin, I know, is playing StarCraft II Heart of the Swarm. Oh, God.

Does that mean I have to listen to you talk about it? No, I'm absolutely not doing that thing he said. I would play it if I had a computer to run it on. I don't think I know anybody who's playing it. I didn't finish the first one. I finished the first one. Nancy Kerrigan was in it. I've never played any of them.

Yeah, I like the story, and I like the gameplay campaign. I just can't play multiplayer. So yeah, it probably won't be StarCraft, because none of us can actually either play it or has a desire to play it. But Gears for sure. And do we have another game we could bring up? I really think we should return to SimCity

since people can actually fucking play it now. I don't want to talk about that yeah chris had to miss out on all the all the fun i'm glad i don't know what you're talking about was there controversy surrounding that game chris to what extent could you like keep up with what was going on like it must have just seemed like the internet was melting back home um yeah i, the world went through changes, right? War has changed. I don't know. Honestly, man, I was just watching a lot of anime.

There's a new Evangelion, and man, that opened my eyes. Things are just so much better in Japan. They don't care about SimCity. They don't care about American games. That's what I learned. I thought everybody had Xboxes.

Oh, yeah. Everybody loves Xbox. And they love American-made video games. I mean, God of War. Are you getting God of War from Gamefly Griffin? ugh no I just got Metal Gear Rising I haven't opened it yet

oh Luigi's Mansion oh yeah that's good I'll do that is that coming out next week? I can do Dark Moon it comes out on the 24th which will be a couple days after Besties goes up do you guys want to hear oh man I should have talked about Lego City Undercover oh man I want to play that i thought oh man i should talk about lego city undercover oh man i

want to play that something fierce can i tell you one thing about it yeah before we and then we'll log off here um guys it has it it's fun if you don't play with your kids it's pretty fun i don't know i thought it was kind of fun the important thing uh it has no bullshit, minute-long load times. I mean, I thought it was installing the first time. Like, it gives you a 30-second load time before the title screen, and then once you press start, it gives you a minute-long load time. And then any time you go back into the open world, it is a full, like, I don't mean exaggerating I mean like I had my stopwatch out like minute to a minute

15 seconds of loading. But that makes sense because essentially they're building each level by hand. There's a small man in there and he's furiously Tommy is in there building by sense of smell. Oh man but that's good because you can get in like a full round of ridiculous fishing in there building my sense of smell. Oh, man. But that's good because you can get in a full round of ridiculous fishing in there.

Yep. Silver lining split boat. We may. I don't know what we'll do next week because next week will be PAX. No. Shit. Before PAX. It's before PAX.

Yeah, yeah. It's before PAX and then we got the Judica. I will be on a plane at this point. Yeah, I will be up in the air. Well, we'll record before that. All right. Okay. Yeah, but let's do Dark Moon because I'm going to have some shit to say about that.

And then we got the Jitika. Yep. So there you go. Cool. Thanks so much for joining us. Make sure you listen to us talk about those games. And join us again next Friday for the besties. Shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?

I'm going to bed. I'm going to bed. Besties!