The Besties - The Besties Podcast 52 - Life choices

Episode Date: April 12, 2013

Why hello there. This week on The Besties, we've decided to stick with the rules set forth in last week's episode because, hey, consistency has to rear its ugly head once in a while. And if Justin sounds quiet this week, it's because his internet is crap and he only heard about half of every conversation. Either that or he walked away from the mic for a really, really long time without telling anyone. 2:50 - Best reason that Russ Frushtick is an obsessive maniac (BioShock Infinite) 23:30 - Best mash-up of two genres you wouldn't think work well together but do (Guacamelee) 30:30 - Half time - Beard! 33:15 - Best Easter Egg that is better than the actual game it's in (Soda Drinker Pro) 41:00 - Best multiplayer mode for ruining friendships (BattleBlock Theater) 50:00 - The winner is... 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!

i bought a wii u game here that's a good topic but you got a wii u game let me guess okay please guess guess every game this is the only thing i could possibly think of is uh what is the capcom game with the monsters monster hunter nope i have considered that i don't have to it's just yeah uh mario no uh let me just spoil it for you guys it's jeopardy shut your mouth my uh my little sister-in-law was over here and she thought it'd be fun to play jeopardy so i paid 50 dollars uh for jeopardy now here's my question yeah it was put out by thq where'd that go give me your answer first yeah the answer is into a dumpster somewhere. I don't think the THQ failed because they took the money that they got

that we spent on their games and then threw it away. No, I think that there's no organization to accept this money anymore. So Nintendo calls and says, hey, we have a check for $48 from Justin. And they say, just throw it in the dumpster. The NPD for that game is just a box that says Justin in it. This game sold Justin. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best thing of the week.

What is that voice? I'm Griffin McElroy. This is just how I normally talk. My name is Chris Plant, and I know the best thing in the week. My name is Russ Frustic, and I know the best game of the week. This is the besties, where the four of us best friends sit around the coffee table in my den, and we talk about the best things in gaming. Maybe it's the best game.

It's so hot. Maybe it's the best mechanic. I'm sorry. Let me turn down the Java logs. Frustic, can you blow on my coffee for me? I can. Frustic has the coldest breath of the four of us.

I thought you wanted hot breath. He said the coldest rhymes. He has the coldest rhymes. Why would you want your rhymes to be cold? Just like ice cold, you know? I guess that's true there's a lot of ice related rappers very few fire fire related rappers do you want me to list them off

walk a flock of flame shit there's one that's the one god this this show should just be called hey hey bro i melted your theory down uh we're gonna talk about the best stuff in gaming who wants to kick it off this week? I will. Hit me. I don't know if you guys knew this, but a game came out a couple weeks ago called Bioshock Infinite. Infinite what? Yeah, Bioshock Infinite.

It's been in development for the last few years. It's actually a sequel to Bioshock, which was another game that came out a few years ago. You mean Bioshock 2, of course. No, actually, there was one right before that. It was also set in an underground, underwater city, so I can see why you're confused. There was one before Bioshock 2.

It was actually just called Bioshock, and this is sort of the continuation of that storyline. Okay. How many Big Daddies? How many Big Daddies in in infinite infinite okay that's a lot yeah oh my god the title of that game just clicked for me oh that's probably a spoiler to say uh what the title means yeah it means infinite big daddies okay um so i wanted to mention this game because what's the best? Sorry?

You're supposed to say a best thing. Oh, yeah. This is about to turn into a fucking hour and a half long dissection. That's true. I'll get to the best one. So this is the best example that I'm a fucking crazy person when it comes to completing a game. Okay. Did you do the 1999 mode?

Yes. No. I did. How could you? Okay, so here's what happened. Before I left for GDC, I got a debug version of the game on PS3 and played through it so I knew the story and all that stuff. I just put it on normal and finished it.

And then I left, and while I was gone, my girlfriend wanted to play it. So she played it while I was gone. But, again, to reiterate how insane I left, and while I was gone, my girlfriend wanted to play it. So she played it while I was gone. But, again, to reiterate how insane I am, I had her play it on my account so that when I got back, she would have unlocked Infinite Mode or 1999 Mode, and then I wouldn't have to play through it again on normal to unlock. You are a crazy person because you can just input the Konami code. I know.

I didn't know that at the time. Whatever. You can? Yeah, and it unlocks it without you having to beat it. Not that if you play that game as 1999 mode at your first playthrough, you're out of your fucking mind, and you're playing the game incorrectly. I would also agree with that. So that sort of leads me to my sort of discussion about 1999 mode.

I remember when it was originally billed it was described as like hearkening back to 1999 which was the the year that system shock 2 came out and i feel like for those that have played system shock 2 they have very strong feelings about it one of the core tenets of that game was that like decisions you make are hugely important like how am i going to spend this one whatever the units were of character customization, this one unit that I have, and if I pick the wrong thing, I might screw up my character for the rest of the game. It was, like, super, super hardcore. And that's originally how 1999 mode was built, that it was, like, really all about making those tough choices.

Apparently, throughout the 15 or 16 years that Bioshock Infinite was in development, that concept didn't really pan out because the end result is just really hard mode, plus they take money $100 away from you every time you die, and if you have no money, they make you reload a checkpoint. But I beat it anyway. I thought I remembered hearing that it was supposed to be, like, almost roguelike-esque.

Yes. Like, if you. Well, I mean, I just remember, like, again, they just described it repeatedly as System Shock 2E. So you beat it. You beat it. I fucked with it for maybe 15 minutes and was like, this doesn't seem. The first time I died and, like, all my monies was gone i just was like no thanks i i appreciate you but but i don't want to pursue this did you i mean was it especially excruciating i'm guessing not

because the game's only been out for a couple weeks and yeah it actually wasn't it wasn't that hard i think a lot of people who just started are really intimidated because the first very first section of the game which is the part where you don't have a shield yet and you're just fighting guys without a shield is like by far the hardest part or close to the hardest part of infinite or 1999 mode um so i think a lot of people get scared away once you get the shield it it's still hard, but it's not nearly as difficult as that sequence. I think what bummed me out is that

when I played through the game on normal, it's not a super hard game. And because of that, it encourages you to really mess around and use all the plasmids and charge guys and really mess with people. On 1999 mode, it seemed like the only way to really succeed without dying a ton of times and losing all your money was just to snipe everyone and like stay at like obscene range halo yeah i mean well halo let your recharge

right right right it's a lot more tactical thought i think halo is one of the is actually a good example of an fps that like sort of forces you to think more tactically. I think if you're really – Especially on harder difficulties. If you're good at it. For someone like me who struggles with it, it's sit, shoot, wait for shield to recharge. Oh, well, if you have sick – well, I'll say it. I forgot.

Did you not – I thought that – sorry, Chris. I thought you were, like, a no no scoper like twitch jump twitch jumps uh rocket leaps oh no you confused me for justin oh i forgot justin you're the no scoper sorry what is no he's so good he doesn't even know what that means i know he does it that's the thing wait wait wait wait wait wait there's a scope he invented it yeah let's. It's all preternatural for Justin, by which I mean he's an imbecile. Well, I just want to mention. So the reason that I played through this was not only for the achievements, even though I really like achievements. I also sort of wanted to, because I felt like I missed when I played through it originally.

I missed a bunch of the recordings and other things. And I wanted to see if I missed any, big story beats uh i didn't you did not really i missed a few of the audio logs and apparently they were goddamn important audio logs like i missed out on a lot of the uh brother and sisters story points. That filled in. That informed. Like they're tied to. A lot of the other story points. And so. That's one of the things I genuinely like.

About the Bioshock universe. The series I should say. Is that. Typically I think it does a really good job. Of giving you the story. Like in a natural progression, but also saying if you want to understand a little bit more, you can go a little deeper and look through the world to find, you know, clues that help unravel the rest of the story. And that is like that's that sleep no more aesthetic that like I totally, totally dig. Justin, by the way, Justin, Sleep No More is a theater.

Like I, I dig that, but I feel like the balance was maybe just a little bit off. And maybe I am my my view of this isn't so great because I arguably missed the three or four most important audio logs in the game. So I had enormous, enormous gaps in the plot that I just never really caught up to. Did you miss where Columbia is resting on a giant rabbit? Yes. Because that's a big one.

Yeah, that one was important. How early are we getting here with the spoilers? We're not. on a giant rabbit because that's a big one yeah that one was that one was important mr checkers are we getting here with the spoilers well i just that was probably the biggest one is that columbia is resting on a giant rabbit yeah exactly no i'm not going to spoil anything i'm just saying that the way that all of the characters are connected and the events that precede the game a lot of that is informed by those audio logs. And there are some, a lot of them just sort of give you some background

on the individual characters. The ones that sort of talk about how they are interconnected, if you miss those, like good luck, man. You are going to watch the ending and not have a goddamn clue what's going on. Yeah, it's pretty brutal uh i think it's more so than it was in bioshock where i thought all the like main story beat like recordings were very much on the main path and then you'd find like some fun little side recordings

but for the most part like if it was important was important, you definitely heard it. Bioshock, I feel like all of the recordings were all about the characters speaking about themselves. And maybe there were a couple sort of about, oh, shit, what was the main guy? Andrew Ryan. Andrew Ryan. Yeah, sort of talking about his origins. And, like, that was all very important. But Bioshock, within the first i feel like half hour and i may be misremembering you pretty much like it's a city built under the sea and it would it was

you know a sort of super turn escape pod yeah exactly and like seriously all of that was was uh the player was filled into pretty much all of that very very quickly bioshock infinite it's it it's not quite as um i don't know it's not quite as transparent about that stuff it's also because they bother to explain everything like yeah what's great about bioshock is like there's a city under the sea and it's an escape from you know communism and capitalism and religion okay good done now let's talk about Andrew Ryan. Well, well, well, wait a minute. Bioshock takes a lot of time to be like,

and then the slugs are actually DNA things that are in your body. That's Bioshock 2 that really goes into it. But they went into a lot of that nitty-gritty stuff, whereas Columbia, they never explain how tonics work. The concepts, though, and what I'm saying is Bioshock Infinite tackles

like this story is much like can you guys really argue that it's if bioshock was as complex as bioshock infinite is like i don't i don't think you can like i had so many questions about that world yeah yeah for the better like that's my favorite thing about bioshock infinite is it's just like dripping with no like No. Oh, I mean the opposite. Yeah, I mean the opposite too. The simplicity of Bioshock is significantly better. Really? Bioshock allowed you to...

Bioshock, I think, they've got this thing called the... I forget who I heard say this. I think it was in reference to the original Bioshock, where something they repeated a lot in the build-up to the game is the world is the story like world environment

as storyteller and I feel like in Bioshock that's also the case in Bioshock Infinite but the narrative storytelling presented in the world is a lot less elegant than what you saw in

Bioshock. Biosck uh infinite by comparison is very one note um and bioshock is full of these like worlds that feel very much related to whoever is in them like like yeah like you walk in an office right exactly or you walk in an office and you see like a ton of liquor bottles and a dude hanging off like from his neck on the ceiling and like a story develops out of that whereas in infinite it's rare that you're like you might go into a store or something like that but it's rare that like in looking around the room you'll get you'll sort of build a story from what you're looking at it's more often than not it's just like very pristine and like it's just sort of like that's what a store looks like yeah my problem is most of the characters in bioshock the original one had it was good ambition it was good intentions

gone sour you know they they really wanted to improve the world or improve themselves improve medicine and their like slavish devotion to that you know it spoiled it but in bioshock infinite it's just bad people are bad like but everyone's pretty clearly bad and the reasons they want things are because they're bad right and i'm i'm not saying that racism is good so please don't twist my words on me but i'm saying that that i feel like their intentions could be considered by their like-minded like followers as being good too like when you show up in that world, until you get to that one part that sort of sets shit off, and then you are just straight killing fools for the rest of the game. Until you get to that part, it's not a bad world.

Like, you're looking around it and, like, seeing stuff. It's pretty racist. It's pretty horrible. No. Like, are you fucking kidding? Like, when a barge pulls up and there's a barbershop quartet, you're like, oh, what? Look, these guys are probably lynch mob members like no and and and a mother is saying to her son i'm sorry this is like the first 10 minutes of the game so

don't worry about spoilers per se but a mother is saying to her son you know you got to watch out for those foreigners well yeah but that yeah that's how america was before there when there was only white people in it it was amazing there was like guys guys floating on barges ken levine reimagines an all-white america that is a a wonderland what i'm saying that's what i got from back yeah the intentions are i felt felt like, the same. That they wanted to create a better world as fucking horrifying. What, specifically? Yeah, I mean, that's what I think is missing. Because in Bioshock, it's like, I want the freedom to improve medicine, but I can't.

Because the ends would not justify the means in America. Or religion is holding us back, so we're stripping it away or we can build there's what they want to create is there's a clear object in here it's like well there's a white wonderland if we just put everyone else down i don't understand why here is my question and please bear with me Here is my question, and please bear with me. How did black people get to Columbia? Now, hold on.

If I'm black, I hear about this city in the sky, or they're crazy mean to black people, and someone's like, get in here, get in this chair, we're going to shoot you up there. I would say, no no that sounds whack like yeah i'm not gonna do that or if you're irish or literally anything other than like super super like the whitest unless you're like the whitest white person why would you go to a city in the sky that you can't get off of? Do you know what would have been so interesting was if it had been other white people with certain other faults.

So the racism was literally like turning in on itself. Like there will always be classism and racism and people will always find a way to distinguish lower from higher. Redheads. Well, that's the part. That's what sci-fi is supposed to be right it's supposed to be like refracting our very real prejudices and and very real social problems through a lens with which we can objectively sort of like look at it because it doesn't trigger that sort of like whatever hang-ups you already have about the thing like that twilight zone episode with the pig people yeah precisely like yeah it's a classic example or or you know

star trek with basically green people anytime there's green people basically like but but with this fuck those greenies very real i mean they use actual societal issues that we're still kind of struggling with and it makes it a little harder to stomach. I have to talk about, and this is in the first, we hinted around the action that sort of kicks things off, and I don't want to spoil it, so if you... This is about a half hour in. A half hour in, so it's not a big deal. I guess we're sort of, well, we're kind of... If you you want to skip a couple of minutes ahead i will try to keep this brief the very first thing you do if if i had a bestie this week i don't think this is my bestie but

best ethical quandary in a video game ever the very first choice you are given is whether or not you're going to throw a baseball at an interracial couple the answer is no okay like that's not a choice that's not a choice you're not like weighing the various like ups and i'm just not gonna throw a baseball you're saying that but ken levine knew that somewhere i don don't want to cast aspersions, but it would be in Mississippi. There's a man who gets to that point and is like, I don't know. God dang. They were right about these brainy games.

This is some tough shit. That Michael Abbott in the brainy gamersphere. I wish they would actually come to you later in the game and say like just just remember earlier you waited 7.3 seconds before deciding to not throw a baseball at the interracial couple what were you thinking about during that time exactly but if they had said if you do that then you'll get a hundred extra adam oh my god then it would be off the races rush for us chick if there was an achievement if there was an achievement that and it would

be a public achievement so everybody would know that you got it would you would you do that in your pursuit for the for the 1k could i reload the checkpoint to get the other achievement no no the disc would snap in half. I'd have to choose. Is this achievement worth more points than the non-racist achievement? It's worth 50 points. And there is no non-racist achievement. This is the only way to 100% Bioshock Infinite.

Right, that's what I'm saying. You have all of them. You missed one. You missed one. And so you get on 360achievements.org or whatever. And you find out what it is and you go oh gosh but you have 950 points you need that last 50 you figure out how to do it you turn the disc on the guy's like check this out let's see that let's see what kind of arm you got on on you there uh cal ripken he was a pitcher right yeah yeah? Yeah. You know what the funny thing is?

When I first played the game, I actually tried to throw it at the interracial couple just because I knew it was the opposite of what everyone else was going to do. Just because, you know, for science, I was just trying it out. Sure. Also, I hate interracial couples. Stop it already.

Guys, enough already with the interracial couples. Enough already with that. It's just, I don't know. It's kind of a cheesy, like, what would you do? Well. I know. It was weak. And there are no real, like, tough, quote-unquote, tough choices in this game, which is kind of a bummer. Well, the quote-unquote tough choices of Bioshock were also kind of bullshit, too.

Yeah, but at least there was. There was this super good ending if you never killed any little girls and then if you kill one little girl it's like yeah and what if that little girl was a total jerk yeah like never even discussed maybe she what if she was like i threw a baseball that in a racial couple an interracial couple. Oh, shit. By the way, my name is Rass Freshstick. I don't want to talk about Mike. Come here, Mr. Bubbles. There's an interracial couple over here. I'd really like to pet. I don't want to talk about my childhood.

Hold on a second. I've got to go record the besties. Hey, I'm a fun character. I really want to learn the backstory on the guy that recorded the Cir the circus of values um uh vo and also the what's the name of the one in bioshock infinite i forget did you guys ever use that by the way did you ever buy anything i never bought any health ammo or salt from that machine there would be no reason to do that but in's also an achievement for not doing that yeah in 1999 mode yeah um we

should move on because we've been talking about my there's we could literally talk about bioshock infinite the entire time and i guess it doesn't make any sense for us to because let's not do that let's talk a lot of ink has been on it um my best this week is you You know, I was going to make a jab about the PS Vita, but, you know, it doesn't deserve it. Best PS Vita game of the year. Best PS Vita game of the year slash the best mashing up of two genres that should not work well together

is Guacamelee. Guacamelee is the new jam from Drinkbox. They did Mutant Blobs Attack. That was them, right? Yep. Guacamelee is a Metroidvania beat-em-up or a bump. A bump? That kind of mixes it around.

Which sort of has all the constituent elements you'd expect from both of those things. So the combat is all combo-focused. It's all about dodging attacks and you know laying down fat combos and at the same time you are you know learning new abilities you are increasing your health and your stamina you're finding unlocks you are getting through gear gates as tomb raider uh coined the term uh and just sort of exploring this this world which is like absolutely gorgeous um and i may just be looking at it through rose tinted glasses because i'm just psyched to play something on the vita because i really really like playing games on the vita um but yeah it just it looks great the controls are great which really lends itself to the

to the combo heavy combat um have any of you guys played it here's uh yeah i've played it but i i just want to talk kind of broad about it if if i'm sony right now right yeah and they're giving all this indie love um i buy drinkbox studios and i throw so much money at yeah yeah absolutely let them expand well but let them but a few projects going for you because they are they're knocking out of the park but i mean they're not gonna get out of the park now you know i don't think i think over investing in them and making them sort of spread themselves too thin would be actually pretty terrible well not only that they don't need to like ubisoft over investment i'm talking about like make them

capybara size no no but this this is the thing that they don't need to sony's whole strategy right now as they sort of triumph uh trumpeted at gdc was that they were going heavy heavy heavy into indies and not just drink box all indies so essentially uh they're you know as the finance people say, diversifying their portfolio. Right. So if you have a game that tanks, it's not a disaster because you have 16 other awesome indies. They are casting a wide net instead of, you know, going deep into one studio that's shown itself to be very promising,

which ultimately, like, I ultimately agree. Like, I want DreamBox to do very, very well because I think they do incredible work. And also, as I stated before, I want some more goddamn playstation vita games um but i mean i'm also psyched about a lot of the other pub fun stuff that's coming out so um but specifically specifically are we partying we are we're partying uh specifically about this game uh the one speaking to griffin's uh topic of discussion um i think a lot of people think

of metroidvania style games as super fun to explore but the combat is never like the driving center force behind these games it's always sort of just an afterthought you know even in metroid or castlevania you're whipping stuff you're shooting stuff with rockets it's not like super in-depth um in this you've got a full suite of like combos and special attacks that you can whip out at any given moment is it worth explaining what a metroidvania is because i didn't know what it was like that term was unfamiliar to me until i started doing this job sure i don't think it's hyper like sure i think it's almost normal okay it's it is any it is any sort of game and it can i guess it can really slot into any genre but typically action rpg

is i think where it usually lands and it is i guess the defining thing is it has a large world you can explore parts of which are shut off to you until you find a new ability that then lets you access that part of the world, which contains a new ability. You need to access another part of the world, or another big feature of it is returning to places you've been with new abilities to find treasures that you couldn't access at first because they were out of reach. Yeah, essentially Castlevania Symphony of the Night

or Metroid or Super Metroid match any of the metroids pretty much i think it's interesting i i don't think that's a common term and i think it's also interesting how many big games use that that people might not know yeah um i think like i mean batman being i think batman is the biggest yeah batman is it hits that hits that aesthetic to a big point uh tomb raider new tomb raider tomb raider did it tomb raider coined the term gear gating which i really like it's very did they coin that term i don't know no that's a very old term really yeah i'm pretty positive um but i don't know i think i think you're right russ i think what's great about guacamelee is the combat is great which is nice because

you'll you know you'll discover a big room and then all the doors will shut off, and it'll be like a big arena, or since you're a luchador, a wrestling ring that you, you know, can't leave until you kill everything in the room, so just throw gobs of enemies at you that you then have to, you know, fight off without getting killed yourself. Yeah, the combat's really great the platforming is really really fun especially uh eventually you get the ability to sort of switch between these two dimensions um and then once you do that it sort of has uh what was that game not ikaruga but the uh the platformer that bubsy 3d oh bubsy 3d yeah yeah like it was one word once once guacamelee once the main character of guacamelee starts like making really fun puns outland once he starts outland once he starts gexing

oh man once he starts gexing poetic it like the game really takes off um no yeah outland guys have you seen that new smurfs 2 joint? Ah, Jesus. Oh, man, that game looks great. Yeah. I mean, talking about, like, old games like Gex, it looks like a PlayStation 1 game that you can buy on your Xbox 360.

What game is this? Smurfs 2, Revenge of the Smurfs 2 is coming out this summer for next gen or current generation next gen it's the first announced Xbox 720 Ubisoft announced the next box by saying

Smurfs 2 will be the first launch game they said we need something to fight against Knack in the mind space of young kids you want to talk about the fact that I'm growing a beard yes desperately mind space of young kids um you want to talk about the fact that i'm growing a beard yes desperately uh so i uh when i went to gdc generally when i travel i don't shave uh i usually shave on the normal about once every four days but when i travel i sort of like round up and

say screw it um and when i went to gdc i didn't shave and then right as at the end of gdc plant made a comment saying oh you look growing a beard there and i'm like nah i'll probably shave it and i was like and and plant was like no you should keep it it looks really good plant because it really only takes one it really only takes one person i got when i did movember a couple years ago um i got one comment from somebody saying i don't know i think it kind of looks pretty dope and now that poisoned my mind to like so deeply that now when i look back at pictures of myself with this pervert's mustache i think like yeah like when it was time to get our polygon i don't know if you guys remember this

when it's time to send a picture to get polygon portraits i know what picture will be nice and representative of me permanently let's just get this pervert pic and see what it looks like i'll tell you what it looked like i had a single brown rhombus that looked like somebody laid a turd across my face didn't translate well the polygon was that the one and only polygon portrait that was rejected and had to be redone i sent it back because i was like i'm trying to establish a fucking brand here um yeah so i i'm not to be honest super caring for the whole beard thing um i can't escape the feeling that there's just a shitload of pubes on my face yeah but is it long like that is it like norse are you yeah it's coarse here's the problem i i encouraged you before your like stubble just turned into like just a bristly pube bush yeah so that's where it's getting to i actually

ordered a beard trimmer so we're gonna see if that makes things better. I promised myself I would last a month. So far, I'm at 18 days. Do you have places where it's just not coming? That's my problem. It's okay. I want a beard so bad. I tried for a couple years there when I was living in the harsh wastelands of Chicago. As soon as I moved to Austin, i shaved it right off and i looked a billion times better so like you have that to look forward to you're gonna look pretty shitty for a

month but then next month you're gonna feel really good what's up face i missed you i miss you face you're so smooth but i don't know it's not just chris plant giving me the props a lot of people i like it what about your wifey she likes it she likes it a lot oh see now you're now you're screwed what about your kids do you think when you shave it off your kids it can be like where'd daddy go do the kids lose their beards if i shave mine off yeah you have a family beard shave no i meant sort of like a reality shift thing like uh twin realities altering the flow of time we're're talking about Bioshock again. We are.

So that's my beard story. Let's talk about something else. I want to talk about my best of the week. My best thing of the week is my best Easter egg that is actually better than the thing it is

hidden inside. I actually saw this in the email and it made no sense to me at all. Okay, well let me hip you to it. Hypnotize. You could go right now and get a game called Soda Drinker Pro.

Got it. That game makes me so angry by the way. I've gotten so many PR emails for that game. It's amazing. It makes me angry because like it looks like something i could make now in unity with the limited limited unity abilities that i have and but this dude is getting like notch rich off it he's getting like so paid off it but here's or lady i don't know who made it who made it do we know uh no i don't know is it it. Who made it? Do we know? No, I don't know. Is it anonymous? It's on Steam Greenlight right now,

and I think people are probably going to greenlight it because how could you not? But here's the thing about Soda Drinker Pro. It is a game which has movement, and it has two buttons, one to raise soda to your lips, and one to drink soda. And the environments are terrible terrible and the whole time

you're playing you hear someone like environments like a disc what you don't even need every level is like drinking a soda at the beach it's all about immersion that's sort of what does it impact the gameplay at all uh no it impacts your experience that's like the promise of next gen is hey not you're still going to be shooting aliens, but now you're going to do it in environments. Oh. So in the distance, you always hear a voice saying things like, I love this soda, and I wish I could eat soda.

And then sometimes you find a bonus soda, and and it says bonus soda uh and that has no impact on the gameplay but here is the crazy here is the thing about soda drinker pro so drinker pro is terrible if you there's a rock on this in the second level if you stand near the rock for like 30 seconds, the screen becomes covered in like white particles, and then the screen goes white, and then a box

appears that says, click to unlock Vivian Clark. You click the box, and you get an email that sends you a download for a game. It's not even on the same piece of software. Called Vivian Clark. And Vivian Clark is an astounding game so far.

It's a 40 level, basically a demo. And trying to describe its structure would be sort of a misnomer it would like be futile but um what you've basically got are wario ware style mini games where the things you interact with draw you into different levels so like uh when it begins you're basically a raindrop and the first thing the and yourop, and you're trying to avoid clouds or whatever. If the first thing you fall onto is a hot air balloon with a snake in it, you're suddenly transported to that snake's minigame. If the first thing you fall into is a spaceship that says space written on the side, then you are transported to that minigame. It's all controlled with space bar and directional keys. So you're being sucked from sort of world

to world, and you can die. And when you die, you're transported back to this thing called the campfire, which lets you play a minigame to get back into your original game. The idea is you're trying to find all the different stages it has. And it's like, it's absurdist, but there are certainly like mechanics at play here. And they actually launched a Kickstarter to make, you know, the full game. So basically, Soda Drinker Pro

is a Trojan horse, a Projan horse, if you will. They call that a backdoor pilot. A backdoor pilot, exactly. It's like the farm. I like that a lot. It's like the applesauce around the pill that you, you know, you described Vivian Clark. Is that it? Yeah.

It sounds interesting, but not like I've got to download that interesting. Soda Drinker Pro is undeniable. Yes. Yeah, so I have so many questions to ask you, Justin. Hit me. Three jump to mind. Okay. Number one, how would you know to wait by the rock for 30 seconds?

You wouldn't. That's why it's called an Easter egg. You've got to get on Google. How did you personally know? We got an email from the Soda Drinker Pro people. It says, stand by that rock, like basically from their PR. So obsequious was his Easter egg that he had to out it. Wait, I had another question.

He actually outed it with the giant bomb. Yeah, what's up? Why is it called Vivian Clark? That is another great question that I have no idea. Why is it called Soda Drinker Pro? Again, who knows? I have no insight into these geniuses. I've been waiting 52 episodes to say the word obsequious on the air. Did I use it right?

Doesn't matter. Nobody listening to this show knows. No, obsequious means being super, super nice to the point of being obnoxious. What was the word? I thought it meant to be obsequious well uh anyway so um you can go get soda drinker pro right now and then you can secretly unlock vivian clark i'm looking at vivian clark's kickstarter page okay here's what you didn't mention the artwork looks like the junk that you would draw inside your science notebook in like sixth grade uh but water colored beautifully so the art is kind of crappy looking but it's full of color and really

pretty there's a really ugly star wearing a baseball cap eating a starship while wearing purple purple roller skates yeah he runs into the mouth of a green monster and comes out its poo hole yeah it looks really good the thing is it looks much prettier than uh soda drinker pro which might be the ugliest game I've ever seen. No, Soda Drinker Pro is a nightmare landscape of, like, not just bad design choices, but almost negative design choices. Vivian Clark has a distinct – it making choices it has it has choices i so i have a follow-up question okay vivian clark has no relation to vivian clark the gynecologist

who graduated from harvard university and loves her dog emma uh i don't believe so, no. So I feel really bad for this person because at present, she is the leading SEO optimized name for Vivian Clay. Her profile is about to blow up. I don't get it. Where's the rain ghosts? I don't get it. What does a starfish wearing roller skates and a beret have to do with me? I need to.

That's a level. This might be an ARG. I'm looking for a local gynecologist solution. Let's see. Let me just Google this. Well, this won't do. I need to be inspected

down there. I don't need drawings of starships being eaten. I don't need snakes and hot air balloons. I don't need this. I need something else. I need something far more clinical. Chris chris plant what's your best thing uh my best thing is the best mini game collection to destroy best friendship and that is the arena mode in uh not castle crashers battle block theater did you get confused there for a second? Oh, I did, because I'm so used to saying Castle Crashers for the name of the game

made by these people since it took them what, like 900 years to release Battle Block Theater? Yeah, it was like 930 years. 900 years ago. Do you guys know what Battle Block Theater is, should I tell you? I really don't. I mean, like, I've been aware of it, but, like, I actually don't know that much about the game itself okay so battle block

theater is a four up to four people uh platforming game uh in which you like jump and you reach down on ledges to help people up onto higher campaign is only two people we should mention oh it's only two okay uh but yeah you help people across these little block-based levels. And that's pretty much it. I mean, it's very good, but it's a platformer in the truest sense. What is difficult to sort of describe is that it is, like its level design and even its game design is so modular like it is called battle block theater because every level is composed of blocks like and that's really like that's really

all the environments are are blocks of different types that have different effects on the gameplay so like when you're playing it the the game is very, very much the... The core gameplay loop is very much the same from level to level. It's just all about identifying how those blocks are laid out and how you are going to navigate them. It's like LittleBigPlanet. It's very much designed for a level editor.

Unlike LittleBigPlanet, it's purely platforming. I don't i don't think your little big planet comparisons no it doesn't hold up at all because little big planet it's all about no it's all about drawing sort of you can draw complex shapes and you can do like you can program things into the environment but only dorks do that okay well battle block theater is like it's it is just about the blocks. It's just about building mazes out of these blocks. Basically using the dozen or so available systems,

like the bouncy block or the sticky block or the spikes and the various different enemies and putting them together in interesting ways. So that's the main game. You can build levels and trade them with friends. It's very good. But what's better is the arena mode, which is probably, how many? Six, eight? Eight different competitive modes?

It's like seven or eight. Yeah. And they are all over the place, and all of them are so well balanced. Surprisingly so. One of them is basically a a soccer ball is dropped in the middle of the stage this is a 2d of course and the goal is to grab the soccer ball and throw it into your opponent's hoop uh simple enough another one just like real soccer just like real soccer um another one is uh each player has a horse uh which is kind of like capture the flag.

You run to their side, get their horse, and bring it to your stable. Of course, most of the time you're just beating each other up, preventing them from getting to the horses. What are some of the other ones, Prash? Yeah, so there's one where you're running through the stage, and every block that you run over turns the color of your team, but it blinks, and while it's blinking, the other team can run in and steal your color and make it their own, and whoever has the most blocks colored by the end of the round wins, essentially.

Sort of that Tony Hawk whatever. Yeah, but with less grind and skitching. Well, I've just lost interest entirely. So I think probably what's the most amazing is that even simple modes, like there's a deathmatch mode relatively, you know, just like beat up the other guy and get as many quote-unquote kills, are really well thought out to the point where like even playing with just two people, you can play with up to four in adversarial but even just playing with two people it's super fun and

addictive and strategy driven they just like so fine-tuned each of these modes to like for example in the deathmatch mode if you punch someone or hit them on the head you'll earn two or three points if you actually kill them you'll earn like 20 points if you suicide the other team will earn 10 points so there's like this whole strategy into what is ordinarily like in most games it would just be like well you kill them and you get a point but they like really thought through each of these different modes and more so than any other game i've played in a long time maybe spelunky felt this way too it seems so perfectly designed for just like oh you have some people over this is the game you would play and have a ton of fun at it's like that spirit of uh you know in the way that you played mario party and some of the better mario party mania that kills me the way you say his name mario that's his name mario mario mario okay

well on top of all that it's made by the people who make castle crashers which means it is this very cutesy 2d art it's unbelievably charming things die in very grotesque ways there's a bit of gore but it i don't want to say it looks like looney tunes because there's no blood in looney tunes but it definitely has like this i don't think there's blood almost like a renin stimpy ish kind of feel yeah uh in terms of how it handles death um there is a guy that melts from acid and his skull is left over jesus i've only played the uh the demo but i i i want to put more time into it it's just i there's something about the way that it the platforming feels which i know i'm probably like the worst person in the world to talk to

about this because i do like really enjoy the little big planet games but yeah oh i know i i think like yeah at the platforming alone in those games is what drives me nuts and i think this game does a lot better so floaty um i don't know i think when i when i saw like trailers and stuff for it it sort of harkened back to me one of my favorite games like this that are sort of like these um platformer fighting party games was ragdoll kung fu i fucking love that game um and i think i was one of the only people on the earth to like really get into it and enjoy it but you may be the best person on earth at it um probably there was like a solid two months there where like whenever my friends would come over we would we would get some

ragdoll kung fu going because it did have like sort of those crazy like there's like a dodgeball mode that was i think sort of designed to just be an offshoot thing, but like so many, many games, like it just became the core product for me. I don't know, I feel like, I feel like the platforming feels so old school, it feels like digital, it feels binary, it doesn't have that sort of floatiness, and I think that you can go too far with that, but I think that your platforming needs like just a little bit of that do you know what i mean like whenever you jump whenever you jump you jump to 200 pixels every you do have more control uh in battle block theater like you can do a little jump or a bigger jump and like that wasn't the best way to put it you do have like depending

on how long you hold it but it does feel feel like Mega Man, whereas again, the extreme on the other side is Little Big Planet where there's so much control that it's just a pain in the ass. I like how the jumping and the mechanics feel in BattleBlock Theater, but I can get why some people would be able to put off by it.

I need to spend just a little bit more time with it. Really, it may be that Little Big Planet is sort of poison my... Because the level design aesthetic and the gameplay are so stand on different ends of the spectrum that maybe that might just be why I am...

I don't know. But arena mode is where it's at. What I like about it is I feel like there are very few games that I own or that even come out that i can throw on the tv when friends are over that don't play video games and everyone like wants to play like even if they don't normally play their their one their interest is piqued by how it looks but two they somehow get the sense just watching it that like oh i could easily do that and when you

play it they actually can like it's kind of disappointing how few of those games come out that aren't on iphone yeah it's true what are we looking at next week you think oh we don't know it could be anything what's our best what's what's the oh yeah we have to decide uh the best of all of these yes well i can say it's definitely not Frush Dicks. No, I think here's the key. We're not rewarding the best one. I think we're rewarding the best argument for the one that people brought. Best angle.

I don't know. I can't put Block of Melee down. Yeah. I didn't listen to anybody but mine. So that kind of an impasse. You know what? I got to say, I think Justin is my pick. So that kind of an impasse. You know what? I got to say, I think Justin is my pick. Thank you.

Russ Frushtick. Vivian Clark. I think Griffin's mine. Yeah, I think mine is mine. Yours can't be yours. Pick your own. I hate this angle of the show. I can't.

You got to love it. This is important competition. People wanted competition. We have abstracted competition out to its most nonsensical. We are right now comparing the best thing Whose line is it anyway?

I think Bioshock Infinite. I think Rust did good with that. I'm just so sick of that game getting lumbasted. It's got a fucking like 99 on metacritic it's got to be good i mean that's science yeah dude it got a 10 on our site how can you argue i genuinely i don't i don't get why ever like everybody's beefing on that game i don't

get it it's super good game it is a good game it's like the best game everybody's beefing i don't know about this it's super i like the tomb raider brawl okay so vivian vivian clark the gynecologist if you work for gamefly can you put that in an envelope and send it to me i've been waiting for like a week i'm not made of tomb raider yet no oh man it seems like one of those single player heavy experiences i don't like dropping cash on that unless it has bioshock in the the title. You are in for a treat. I know, I'm excited. You know what? I think Justin won, sure, yeah.

Vivian Clark, the gynecologist from Horror Bird that loves her dog, Emma. Congratulations. Hey guys, what's up next week? Anything cool happening? I'm still playing Defiance. Man, I need to get on that. Yeah, you really do. My review's going to be going up soon, but it's fun.

It's a fun one. I feel like there's a 3DS game or something coming out next week. What's coming out? Russ, are there any good iOS games? I haven't played any. I played Slayin' for a bit. That might be fun to talk about. That was fun, right?

You liked Slayin'? Yeah, I like Slayin'. Badland is also really good on iOS. I'd strongly recommend that. Why don't you put your money hat away? We got Dead Island to talk about next week. No, we don't because it's not out yet.

It's out the 23rd. 23rd. Dumb plan. We'll figure it out. I don't think we need to decide now. We'll figure it out. I don't think we need to decide now. We'll figure it out. Yeah. Cool.

Thank you guys for listening. I feel like this is a good... I'm talking to the three of you. Oh, hey, you guys know what you should do? What? You guys and everyone listening, you should go to the Webby Awards, which I don't actually get the address,

and you should vote for us. For Besties? Well, no, for Polygon. Besties won't be nominated for shit ever ever no but we polygon is nominated for a webby award we're gonna drop the link in the post and you should click it and then you should go vote for us oh wait wait wait there was something else that i forgot apart from the webbies which was very important do you remember last week when i brought i mentioned that some gentleman gave me a screenshot oh you sussed it out i sussed it out because the creator it's actually the dude who made mcpixel oh shit why wouldn't he fucking introduce himself to you so admittedly he might

have said his name but it might have i just might have forgotten no no no no no say say what's the truth it's possible that i didn't fully uh comprehend the name coming out why is that because did you have it loud okay not that you're not that you're a huge xenophobe that's not it right right anyway uh we all love mcpixel so uh this new game is definitely something worth keeping an eye on i still don't know what it's called i i asked him again what the game is called on twitter and he still won't tell me so it's part of sas solwoski or something to that effect is his last name but sos is his first name you would think if get it. But SOS is his first name.

You would think if you're coming back to this show to talk about it a second time, you'd really nail it down. But no, you're busy, man. You're busy growing a beard. Please vote for us in the Webbies. Okay. Because – and we'll be back with you next Friday. The besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's

best things? It's not great yet. We'll find it. We'll find it. Besties!