The Besties - The Besties Podcast 59 — Griffin buys a Wii U

Episode Date: May 31, 2013

I take a break from the podcast to fulfill my civic duty and Griffin McElroy buys a Wii U. I'm genuinely curious what our listeners think about this decision. At first, I was befuddled. It's like when a man buys an expensive umbrella in the middle of a drought. But I've come to see his point. The logic's charming in a really expensive sort of way. What do you think? Would you buy a console to better enjoy a hype train that may or may not arrive at the station? 03:30 - Best unreliable narration in games this year (Call of Juarez: Gunslinger) 14:00 - Best killer app for the Wii U that I purchased over the weekend for some reason (Super Metroid) 23:20 - Half time: E3 hype and a case of the barfs 33:30 - Best mask simulation in video game history (Metro: Last Light) 38:50 - Best use of life's mondernity mundisnus mundanity to build tension in a video game (Metro: Last Light) 43:20 - 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!

You guys get excited about E3? Um, yeah? I just, what's there to see that they haven't, you know what I mean? What's there to see that they haven't, you know? A lot of Xbox One games that we haven't seen. Yeah, I'll be psyched to see all those Xbox One games. Like they didn't peak with Blinks the Time Sweeper, right? Blastcore? No, fuck.

Wait, Brute Force? Edit in where i said and i said pretend i said brute force i do want a new blast core game that's doubtful although rare did say they were going to be bringing some shit back i hope that they do conquers because i think there's a you guys know how like squirrels collect nuts i still think there's a lot of humor left on on that particular vine to pick you know yeah they didn't really touch on that too much in in the first one no um there's also a lot of like tail could mean like a like a reference to like a like a derogatory reference to like a woman that or like this sexually attractive there's like a pirate and he's talking about his booty yeah sure i mean

that doesn't that's not inherently squirrel related but i understand what you mean no but they'll do like a pirates of the caribbean reference because he does all this funny movie pirates of the caribbean and he would uh use his p to like attack attack monsters and stuff like that like the kraken i'm like the Kraken. I am available on contract rare. If you want to just pick me up for like a one month stipend, I can give you all of this and more. Yeah. This is just free for use?

Is it public domain? This is free. Consider this my resume. A nuts. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best thing of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best thing of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best thing of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the thing this week. My name is Russ Rushing, and I know the best game of the week. Every one of those.

Okay, this is The Besties, where we talk about the latest, greatest, and saddest in video game news and reviews, features. And we just talk about it and try to come up with whatever is the best thing that week. It's an arbitrary competition show where we all come out better friends at the beginning. Fuck. Wait. We come out better friends at the end than we were at the beginning, even though that does not seem possible. I think you actually had it right the first time. I think our friendship is better at the beginning of the show than it is at the end.

What were you saying about the competition being arbitrary? He is right, though, isn't he? It's like Wheel of Fortune. You only win like 3,500 bucks if you win Wheel of Fortune. Yeah, but you can win like a boat. Yeah, but I don't get out of bed for less than 500 g's or maybe a quarter mil for in the master chef trophy oh man new app tonight i can't wait so fucking jice let's talk about games though who wants to start master chef is the greatest game i guess that's true give me that give me that mini game collection

uh i like to talk about something that i have been playing a heck of a lot of this week and I guess that's true. Give me that Wii U minigame collection. I'd like to talk about something that I have been playing a heck of a lot of this week, and it is a huge surprise to me that I am enjoying it as much as I am, and it's the best unreliable narration in games this year. I know. That's a big category. That's a real one. It goes to Call of Juarez. Gunslinger is my nominee.

Is that out? Yeah, it's way out. It came out last week. So if you were as ignorant about this game as I was, Call of Juarez is kind of an iffy series. The first one is okay. The second one is really good. It is all over the place. The third one. That one's great.

The third one is, yeah, the second one is a genuinely great game. Oh, stop. And if you haven't played it, it is. It is not. It's great. It's great.

Have you played it? Yes, I beat the whole game and it's good, but it's not. It's a great game. I think a lot of people went in after the first one was so all over the place.

And there is perhaps some confirmation bias there, but there there is it is a great game call of war is the cartel oh such a gym oh i thought god man that was the one i really liked because of the i love they few games since lucky and wild have truly mastered the art of getting a segment where you're driving in a car and also shooting from it. And Call of Juarez, the cartel, really nailed that, I thought. It is an abomination. So Call of Juarez Gunslinger is a downloadable game. It does not involve the McCall family, which have sort of been the connective tissue of the series.

I need to discover his Native American roots. You're playing as Bounty Hunter Silas Greaves, who is sort of a legend of the Old West in the fiction of the game, and he sidles up to a bar to spin his yarns

for a group of bar patrons. He saddles a building? No, he sidles. Oh, I thought you said he's up. I think you belly up to a bar. No, it's sidles. Anyway, it is a first-person shooter,

much like the other ones. The sort of structure of the game is that you're on the hunt for someone that did you wrong. But throughout the game, you're meeting up with all these legends of the Old West, like Billy the Kid and But uh butch cassidy and sonny's kid billy joel billy joel uh uh david cassidy from kung fu awesome uh butch cassidy from kung fu the train from 310 to yuma

the train from back to future three so many greats. And the story is all told via narration from Silas Greaves, an older Silas Greaves telling his youthful tales. And as he is telling the story, it's constant narration. So similar, I guess, to Bastion is the best sort of comparison i can make uh but in in this game silas will often be uh challenged on his story and when he is he will sometimes revise it which can sometimes cause the level around you to like rebuild like enemies can disappear and and stuff like that because he forgot a detail or got something wrong or change something to see if people were paying attention um which is super who's challenging him there's people at the bar who some of them uh you know don't believe that he is even the real

silas greaves some of them just don't believe some of the the the grander elements of the story um the game's action is super arcadey so everything's points focused there's a combo meter for uh quick success successive kills and you also get extra points for skillful kills like killing someone who's running or headshots or explosive kills stuff that's how the wild west was that's how the that's how it was in the Old West. There's one neat little thing where if you get shot, and it's the shot that's going to kill you, you can actually dodge it at the last second. Everything will slow down. Like time crisis is what it feels like.

Is that a thing? Well, in time crisis, you step on the pedal, and the bullets kind of miss you, but it has that same weird first-person look where time slows down, and you actually see the bullets coming at you. Yeah, and that's a refillable thing that you can't do that often, so if you really get in the shit, it's not going to help you. Other cool things, there are these collectible nuggets of truth in each level

where you find out the actual historical basis for each of the levels. You see a photo of the person that you're meeting up with and you learn about their life story, which is kind of a neat thing. And then you eat them? And then you eat the nuggets of truth and they give you superpowers. Are they covered in honey or barbecue sauce? Yes.

There's a... Honey barbecue. Honey barbecue KC Masterpiece flavor. Oh. There's upgradable skill trees there's a honey barbecue is honey bar honey barbecue casey masterpiece flavor oh uh barbecues um there's a upgradable skill trees that you use your points on i want to go back to the narration stuff because that was your best of uh this sounds pretty familiar actually it's not the first game that's a war shut up chris plant there's a war i was doing a slow build no no no to my eventually good point no but yeah we've seen unreliable narrators in another game that came out this year which one i believe

it was called gears of war judgment and it was almost exactly what you're talking about which is to say you would well it was optional so that it sounds like it's different because it sounds like it's forced right though what it probably is better in gunslinger there's something about the there's something about the idea of having a narrator for a game constantly that really appeals to me and i haven't quite gotten to the root of it yet um it i think it helps first off connect you more to the protagonist because it's not something you get in uh in a lot of first person shooter games um but there's also something i get in a lot of first-person shooter games. But there's also something...

It's hard to describe. It feels kind of... It makes you feel like someone's in control of the story a bit more. It makes it feel a bit more... I don't know what the word... Do you guys know what I'm getting at? In a weird way, I feel the opposite, though. What I like about...

It somehow feels like you're writing the story in a weird way like you're doing these things and it's being what you're doing is being described and it feels like i'm almost like cementing it in a certain way um here's the difference between it and gears is gears uses that narration to explain away the difficulty mode that has been added do you remember this like you could play in one way and then like extra difficult options would come up and be like oh this is actually what really happened these are the classified events well here it just makes the game fun uh straight through instead of making you choose between one or two so i don't know the game is more in control of

what you're seeing you don't feel like you're getting like you're missing anything by choosing one or the other yeah well in gears it sort of felt like you'd be dumb to not pick the option uh to the point where it almost felt like why is it even an option like why would you not pick the more fun way to play through the mission the other thing is in gunslinger most of the game is broken into vignettes uh so you're kind of like meeting a new famous cowboy and it's easier to keep track of the story uh because one most of them are famous events so you kind of may already know a little bit about it or by reading these truth nuggets or can by by chewing on them and actually putting them in your belly you you learn what the frame of these like little sequence what the what the story is supposed to be

uh so i felt it was easier to keep track of uh all the balls that are in the air compared to gears where i'm always just like totally dumbfounded why i'm killing things yeah it feels very much like a greatest hits of his career i I mean, it is the most exciting things that happen to him, and that's it. There's not a lot of thread you have to gather up to get from thing to thing. I mean, it is very condensed. And the action is great. There's actually an arcade mode you can do where the levels are much more filled with enemies.

They're jam-packed, and you can usually, in most of the scenarios, keep a combo going for the entire thing. So that's really addictive. You get three-fourths of the way through, and your combo breaks, and you restart it so you can get that great combo that will lead you through the entire thing, get your better rating. I have one question. Hit me.

Is there an appearance by Ladder Goat? If there's not an appearance by Ladder Goat... Oh, I love Ladder Goat. I'm not interested in the title. Ladder Goat was great. I wish. That would have been nice. No Ladder Goats in this one.

Oh, why even play it then? Talking about this game just makes me want to play the club. Remember that game, man? Oh, God. That game was so good. to play the the club remember that game man oh god that game was so good is it like the club well i mean it has the like combo scorekeeping system yeah it's kind of like the club and also uh what is it four minute long load screens yeah it had oh yeah some great low res textures it is actually you're super vulnerable so you you die a lot if you don't play smart. But the reloading's super quick, and sometimes he'll even make a comment like,

wait a minute, it didn't happen like that. I'm pretty sure I lived through it. Oh, and there are duels. Oh, the duels are good. They're really good. You keep a focus on the enemy with the right stick and keep your hand over your gun with the left stick, and all the whole time you're keeping an eye on the enemy waiting for him to draw on you.

Uh, and you can actually draw early, uh, but you get fewer points and it's marked as a dishonorable kill. And then you get sent off to West Virginia and you have to serve in the sheriff's office. That's real nice for us. That's real nice.

That's not, that's not a region that is already, you know, beleaguered in literally every other way imaginable let's go ahead no let's go ahead and it's a tv show it's no it's great i'm so happy justified i was i was referencing justified justified does take place in west virginia so no oh wait you're adult it's actually in kentucky it's all the same to you isn't it oh anyway it really is all the same to be honest who else wants to talk about a thing? I need a palate cleanser to get Russ's hate taste out.

Griffin, I think you should go next. Oh, yeah, because mine's not very good. My best this week is the best killer app for the Wii U that I purchased over the weekend for some reason. What? And that is Super Metroid. No, no. I love that game.

Wait, sorry. Before you get there, can you talk me through how this happened? I'll talk to you about it. And I will. And you may judge me. The listeners at home may judge me. Uh-huh.

But there were really two reasons. One... You like new things. I like new things. Three reasons then. Wait, are we describing why you bought a Wii U in the first place or why you bought Super Metroid? Two reasons. One. You like new things. I like new things. Three reasons then. Wait, are we describing why you bought a Wii U in the first place or why you bought Super Metroid? No, the Wii U first.

I bought Super Metroid because it was 30 fucking cents. Yep. Like, why would I not buy it? I love what Nintendo's doing up on that 3DS. Really, I think this is going to be like a crazy, really good year for the 3DS. I know Iwata's going to drop that bomb eventually on the Wii U, and I want to be a member of the winning team,

if that makes sense. So you're hedging your bets. The reason I bought it... Griffin's taking all the good tables as everybody's leaving. He's just putting his coat on the chairs, and he's going to really not set up but everybody tries to get back into the club. Honestly, one of the reasons I bought it is that I wanted to be psyched for Nintendo's presence at E3.

As fucked up as that sounds. I got so excited by the PS4 and Xbox One events. And I'm similarly excited by the nintendo directs that have happened over the past few months where they've announced like a shit ton of 3ds games um i guess i just kind of wanted to have that sense of excitement for for the wii u platform as well does that make any sense to you guys at all hey do you know is that game where you're a little kid in the city where all the like godzilla monsters live is that coming out in america um uh yeah i think so is that a

wii u or a 3ds i think it's 3ds oh never mind yeah i thought no it's a wii u game that game you played at e3 last year no that was no that's that's the wonderful yeah um Super Metroid, though, and maybe all good virtual console titles on the Wii U, have kind of sold me on what I didn't expect to be the Wii U's biggest feature for me. I've played the Wii U at Justin's house before. I know what it's capable of. But I super dig, the thing I did not think I was going to dig,

the off-screen gamepad-only play. I think it is the absolute best thing about that console so far until some more games come out for it. The fact that I can put Super Metroid in my lap while me and my fiance watch

Amazing Race on the Xbox. Okay, follow-up question. Isn't Super Metroid already on the eShop for 3DS? Oh, God, no. Oh, I thought it was. No, sir. Aren't there a bunch of Super NES games on 3DS? There are absolutely zero.

You're out of your fucking mind. Really? Yeah. Yeah, dog. Wow, I have not looped in. There were some NES games on there. There's a lot of Game Boy, Game Boy Color. I don't know if there were some nes games on there there's a lot of game boy game boy color i don't know if there are game boy advanced games for sale i know that there

were a ton of as a part of the um ambassadors program which which i still have on my 3ds xl um but i don't there's no n64 games on there there's no story okay n64 i can sort of get because there might be some porting issue, but for a game that's 20 years old, there's no reason. Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, Super Metroid, these are games I would definitely in a heartbeat

get. You realize the Nintendo 64 was almost 20 years ago. It's not that far away. I was talking about the Super NES. Yeah, I know. I'm saying like the idea that that... Plant is saying that the N64 is similarly aged. Yeah. Well, the N64 introduces a lot of controller issues.

I mean, with the SNES, it's a perfect analog to the control layout of the 3DS. But the... So I've been playing a lot of Super metroid mainly because it is 30 cents um i think could you find the ball that's kind of tough to find no i didn't i'm actually doing a what's called a no ball playthrough it's a no ball speed run where you play through the whole game without getting the ball no ball that's nuts uh that one is trademarked for russ rare you can't have that one that one was not part of the original stipend if there's any rare employees listening um

i i don't know i just like the idea i've done it a lot with i also picked up scribble knots which i read some not so great reviews for that game and it is an absolute fucking delight treat little morsel sweet piece i love that game it has do you guys know about the multiplayer mode for that game yeah no you create objects with the pad and you you know you control the game as normal with the game pad and you create objects using that um and then another player with the wii moat can possess any object you create and control it so like you can make a bear with a jetpack, and then player two can just control that bear with a jetpack

and just sort of fly around the level, helping you out like some sort of guardian angel. Christian, you played this. You remember that, right? At E3 last year, yes. No, when we were reviewing the game. Scribblenauts? Yeah.

No, false. Yeah, because you got mad. You got very mad, and then you said you weren't that doesn't sound like more the wii u games okay no yeah i'm very level-headed okay but i also remember playing it i dig that like i i played a lot of new super mario brothers wii u on the gamepad while i can like do other shit though i i just the way i consume media and i know that this i think we've talked about this before and somebody on this podcast thought it was fucking crazy but like i like to play video games while i watch tv and gamepad support like allows me to do that while playing

a a console game which has never happened before outside of you know like picture in picture which i have actually fucked with yeah i think it's a good i like i completely agree i play video games when i'm watching tv as well and that's why i play vita and 3ds while watching tv absolutely it's weird though because when you say console games pretty much every wii u game i wouldn't say that but a lot of these wii u games especially the ones you've listed seem like they could just as easily run on the 3DS or the Vita so the experience of

playing a quote unquote console game isn't really accurate because you could just be playing these games on a portable device. Maybe. I mean it's not like you're playing Halo on your lap. Sure. But I mean you do have a much much larger display than you do on the 3ds and the video

you do have you know more sophisticated controls than you have on any of the portable platforms that you mentioned i mean there are there are differences um back touch and and honestly i feel like a reason that you're saying that it's just because there's not many wii u games out there that's true um so yeah like it's it's been a surprising like i haven't played nintendo land very much because i haven't had like people over to play with the thing and it doesn't seem like a very fun single player experience but i have played like the gamepad only games quite a bit like those have been the things that i've spent most of my time on and like i don't know, I dig it. I enjoy it quite a bit. What's your overall review of the

Nintendo Wii experience so far? It's bad. It's not a good one. I just need those games. I'm trying to get hyphy for them and that hope, that hope for hyphy-ness is what is going to carry me through E3. I can't believe you can't get excited about game releases

unless you actually own the console. That makes perfect sense. No, it's just, it helps, actually. Actually, yeah, that thing you just said is bullshit. Of course that's why you get excited. Honestly, how it works for me, I saw that the Nintendo 3DS lineup for this year was amazing, and I went out and bought an XL,

because I thought it was worth it. That's what normal people do, is they wait for evidence, and then they act on that evidence. 3DS lineup for this year was amazing and I went out and bought an XL because I thought it was worth it. That's what normal people do is they wait for evidence and then they act on that evidence. But see, I'm all about that build up, baby. I'm all about the foreplay. I like being excited about excitement and that's what purchasing a Wii U when it's still a fat turd

allows me to do. Do you invest in stocks? No, I don't invest in stocks. I invest in dreams. I invest in hopes and I invest in dreams. Now every time I watch Nintendo Direct, I can have those high, high hopes that Iwata's going to be like, check it out, Pokemon Wii U.

Oh yeah, that's going to happen. Maybe it will happen, Chris. Okay. All these haters. Super Metroid is also a super good game. Have you guys played that one? Oh, my God. It's one of my favorite games of all time.

Cool. Hey, guys. Quick question. It's the second best game on the SNES, in my opinion. I would agree with that. Well, no. I think it's the best game on the SNES. Excuse me.

Excuse me. I just need to confirm. Are you saying it's better than a legend is that a link to the past i i am saying that yes guys earthbound is better than all of them let's get to my super metroid is phenomenal okay yeah yeah yeah uh can we talk about plant what plant's been doing last week or is that gonna send him to jail no i can't talk about that that would be illegal and i would go to jail. Boo. But I can say I've been on the set of Law & Order.

What? Yeah, and Blue Bloods for you CBS folk. You like 80-year-olds who listen to our show. That great part of the Venn diagram that combines CBS viewers and besties listeners. Oh, boy. You guys watch that Bachelorette? What do you think about that? Come on, guys.

Talk about what you love and what you know. When I started watching Bachelorette with my friends, we made fajitas, and I ate them, and I got diarrhea instantly, and I missed almost the entire episode. We made tacos. No way. Well, we made fajita tacos. Did yours give you horrible, horrible diarrhea?

No, but I ate Italian last night, and that gave me the barfs. Have you ever had that, where you eat too much Parmesan? Sure, sure. Let's talk about something else. Why don't we each go around and say what we're most excited to see at E3? Okay. That's fun.

Pokemon X and Y, you fucking idiots, of course. Okay, but don't you feel it's just 3D Pokemon? No, shut the fuck up. Shut up. Stop. How many starters are there? There are six divided by two.

What? You're lying. They're actually doing a whole... So, like, you know how Nintendo does a developer's roundtable every year? The year they announced the 3DS, that's when they announced Ocarina of Time. They are doing a whole roundtable about Pokemon X and Y. I could not be more psyched. Question one.

Is the format and gameplay of the game identical to the last 19 Pokemon games that have come out? I would love to live in a world where 19 different Pokemon generations... Not games. I'll say generations have come out uh i would love to live in a world where 19 different pokemon generations not games i'll say generations um number two yeah you're gonna eat your words i don't know why but you will do it because you're wrong it's gonna be new it's gonna freshen up the whole thing do you think they're just gonna add one type one new type and that's gonna be we are talking there are rumors of a fairy type which is like everything is already so intricately balanced as is that if we add this fairy type in i mean it is already had fairy types they're called clefairy well that's the thing people are assuming that the clefairy will be migrated from normal to fairy type shut your mouth also

who wants to play as normal normals are the worst um justin what are you looking forward to i'm not done god i'm sorry go ahead griffin gotta be something um i i just hope there's a new pikachu i still get like hella excited for press conferences i i know that's i know that it's goofy and i know that it represents sort of a dying industry that is collapsing under the weight of its own hubris but uh i still really look forward to you know all the just one more thing drop the bombs yeah the dad that has been the dad from christmas story there's one last present behind the yeah exactly And that's been such a, like, the rise and fall between my expectations and reality in the past, like, two years of E3 press conferences could rival the summit of Everest. Well. It is very.

Plant and I covered the Ubisoft press conference last year, which I don't know if you guys remember, was fucking baller. It was great. They announced Watch Dogs, Aisha Tyler Hostin, and I think she is this year, too. I don't know if you guys remember, was fucking baller. It was great. They announced Watch Dogs, Aisha Tyler hosted, and I think she is this year too. I don't know. My hopes are actually kind of low for it this year because what else can they possibly have up their sleeve? Well, they had the advantage of showing the only next-gen game

at all of E3 last year. I guess that's true. That's a pretty good way to go. Which press conference are you most jized about, Justin? XBot, baby. What? They're always so boring. They start out as like a cult hearing, and then it gets just increasingly dull.

I mean, I think that both Sony and Microsoft will have a great press conference because they're going to see a lot of new franchises. I think EA is, I'm looking forward to see what they're doing with the Star Wars franchise. Well, they can't talk about it. They're not even... Yeah, they haven't even started developing. Yeah, but they are revealing their Star Wars games. They announced that.

They'll tell me lies. Tell me sweet little lies. EA's press conferences are really tough to get through. I would agree with Justin, if only because I feel like Xbox has the most mystery to it because so little of the games were revealed during their first outing. Do you remember the time that they made

all of us dress up like the KKK and break into a poor family's house? I do remember that because I had a stomach flu. And you needed to barf and poo everywhere. Wait, why do you think they were a poor family?

No, I mean like a poor isn't like all those poor souls. Not like they didn't have enough money. They clearly had a very nice house because they had giant windows and they had an Xbox Kinect like months before it came out. And West Elm furniture. It was very nice. It was very nice. Here's something that you won't learn

about press conferences watching at home. Especially the EA conference. They're so loud. They are fucking deafening. EA is the loudest thing you will ever hear. I mean, it is

unpleasant, physical violence loud. It's not just that it's it's not just that the volume of the speakers is turned up this is something you can't it's so subtle you can't hear it over a web stream but peter moore is fucking yelling like ea sports is gonna deliver fire on all cylinders this year football touchdowns but they have those gamer chairs yeah they need it high because they're gonna bring out all those athletes who always Islanders, it's your football touchdowns. I think they have those gamer chairs. Yeah, they need it high because they're going to bring out all those athletes who always come out on stage and like the biggest guys in the world

and they come out like, hey, so I heard that you like touchdowns. Is it true that you like to get slam dunks? Because they're not public speakers. No. Pele comes out and he's like, I heard you would like to talk about a soccer. You wouldn't believe what i've done to women over my career oh man do you guys remember when pele and joel mikhail were on stage at the ubisoft press conference of the worst the worst 10 minutes of my whole life

oh that was the same one with the the uh we what is it laser tag that was the best ubisoft press conference oh battle tag battle tag was so dope. What else? Does that ever come out? Yeah, it did. In Canada. Canada exclusive. Plant, Fresh Chick,

what are you guys looking forward to? I'm looking forward, wait, looking forward to? I thought we had moved on. Last Guardian. Last Guardian is not happening. Shut up.

It's going to come out. It's going to come out during E3. They they're just gonna do a simultaneous release on vita look under your chairs bitches please don't play it on playstation mobile playstation 2 uh yeah i don't know i'm looking forward to seeing what xbox has i don't think sony game wise is gonna have too many surprises uh you know they'll have the infamuses and the kill zones and the drive clubs but that's the only reason i'm not more excited about sony is that they the the things that they kicked off with at their their announce were just so the same

unappealing to me i'm it's like man what is the point of this technology if this is what you guys are doing but that's the thing is like their mainstay franchises have i mean i don't want to sound partial but the infamous i will say i actually liked both of those infamous games i think they're really well-made games except for the kill zone they keep they keep okay settle down they keep trotting out the kill zone as like kill zone being their halo i don't know maybe i'm but you know what's fucked up resistance might be their halo resistance three yeah fucking terrific game except for the last level level oh get off your fucking eye but it was a very good game and i would have been much more excited to see something even just i don't know no i want to say new franchise but

they showed off knack so never mind yeah um here's my my my worry is that we're gonna go right and they're gonna show us all these new games and they're just gonna be more of the same type of games that could run on my xbox right now just prettier like they're not actually games that take advantage of the technology in any interesting way other than the graphics okay what what would you want that's not my job my job is to use the to know what the future of games his job is to hate indiscriminately i don't know no no it's just what is a stronger processor i've said this about like the 360 right with with earth depends force when i played that and i know it's not a pretty game,

when I was able to, like, blow up an entire city, I was like, wow, this is what a next-generation game feels like. Or even Crackdown, where I was able to, like, run and go through Grand Theft Auto, but run and jump through it. It just felt bigger and more powerful and, like, something that was astounding. Yeah, but there's going to be more shadows, though. Yeah, well, I feel like most of what we're going to see is better lighting. Like, really great lighting.

I feel what you're saying, Plant, but there is also a part of me that I didn't know existed until I actually reviewed Defiance across all platforms. Yeah. Where I am actually psyched for a performance increase on the new console. Oh, yeah, me too. Because, like, it wasn't until I started playing console versions of PC games or vice versa that I realized that, like, our consoles are fucking terrible. Metro Last Light on consoles.

I've been trying to play that. I got it on Gamefly, and, like, it's fucking miserable. It is ugly. It's, like, so, so sluggish that I just, I'm about to send it right back. That's not a performance thing. I'm probably not being fair too because I haven't played a game that is on PC and console on console since October of last year. Well, yeah, since you got a PC that was more powerful than God. Great.

Speaking of, this seems like the opportunity for a seamless transition to Metro. Last Light. Do you want to say what you're best of? Fresh and I are both bringing it. Yeah, we're going to do a second half of the show is all Metro. I'll do mine first and you can do your dumb thing.

My thing, far more interesting than Plant's dumb thing. I bet it's not going to be well-rounded and you're just going to thing. My thing's great. My thing's far more interesting than Plant's dumb thing. I bet it's not going to be well-rounded and you're just going to end up talking about the game. Oh, the competition's back. It's back, everybody. You wanted it. The best mask simulation in video game history

brought to you by Metro Last Light. I'm going to give you a minute to talk about this. So here's the thing. And I'm just going to say Kid Chameleon right now. Go on. Metro, the original Metro, from what I understand, had masks in it. But I never played it. So we're going to pretend that that didn't happen.

Oh, great. And I just played this one. There's some really, so essentially, as some of you might know, the game is set in a post-apocalyptic Russia. Oh, my God. were you not sure pretty sure it's russia that is the most russian ass game that anyone ever that's the most russian ass piece of media i hesitated only because after the ussr broke up i'm a little confused about like what things are called well the nazis probably threw you off too, right? Spoilers. Anyway, so since it's radiated and all that stuff, you need to wear a mask.

By the way, masks don't help a ton against radiation because they can go into your ears, but that's neither here nor there. And when you're wearing a mask, there's actually a dedicated wipe your mask button because constantly when you're going through the world like whether you're just being slashed by a giant insect or whether you fall into a swamp there's just crap constantly flying on your screen like or like spiders crawling across your mask and stuff like that and you constantly have to wipe it off and i've thought it was kind of like odd at first but now i'm like i find it super a super cool way to like get you into this world and make you feel like you have like a tactical like control over, or not tactical, but tactile like control over this world in that you're constantly like brushing crap off your mask.

Metroid Prime did it. This game does it like way better it was automatic though in metroid prime right yeah i mean metroid prime did stuff like you'd like there'd be a bright light in front of you and it would like light up her face yeah but this game it feels way more yeah interactive and and way more complimentary to the environment you're in do you have say my my best of because yours is like a seed and the watermelon that is my best well let me ask let me ask one question of us real quick because you you said it's a great simulation of what it's like to wear a mask but like if you get if like a some sort of mutant space bug poops into your eyes yeah that it doesn't seem like you would just be able to just

press left bumper and then like it's gone like it seems like you would need to carry well it seems like he would need to carry around like like a roll of of bounty no it seems like he would need some sort of it seems like he would need some sort of solution to apply to the mask it seems like you would have to have some sort of fibrous cloth well it's funny you should mention that because actually so what you would expect is okay you have this button to clean off your mask and essentially hitting the button equals instant perfectly clean mask yeah but as it happens just hitting it once might like leave some streaks okay that's what i'm wondering is there it might not fully clean it. Is there residue? There is absolutely residue,

and sometimes you have to hit it a couple times, and even then it won't be fully cleaned off. Is there a Gears of War-esque active reload option where if you hit the clean button just perfectly, you'll get out that roll of bounty, you'll get out some pledge, and you'll just fucking go to town? Maybe DLC, but I haven't seen anything in the main game.

Is there an obsessive-compulsive difficulty setting where you just fucking can't go on until it is absolutely perfectly clean? You actually play as Mark Summers in that version. Oh, the irony. You have to go and shoot the last monster. There's a puddle of mud. It has not happened to my friend.

Wait, that's not a puddle of mud. Was that a Mark Summers? That's a mouthful of gack. Reach up the giant nose. Anyway, that was my best thing of the week. Here's my best joke that has yours in it. Keep it narrow. It has what?

It's not as narrow because that's boring. Mine is the best use of life's mundanity to build tension in a video game and it includes modernity mundanity oh so it's mundane mundane mundanity mundane i don't think i hate this fucking podcast okay here we go. Mundusness. Oh, there it is. So you get to wipe your face, right? So that's really cool. But you also get to have tasks like pumping your air-powered weapon

and pumping the power for your lights or your UV spectacles. There's a lot of prepping for battle in the game so that you basically have to be ready for a scenario, and sometimes you'll find yourself halfway through shooting people, and they'll be alerted to your place, and you'll have to go hide to go pump up your gun or pump up your light or wipe off your mask or change out your air filter in your mask.

There's just lots of activities to do that aren't shooting people that builds tension. It's essentially like if you've ever used a super soaker before, pretty much that. Sure. I mean, it's the rule of like a horror game, right, that by making a task more difficult you actually build tension uh which maybe unintentionally like with like the

old resident evil game because it was difficult to control there is this added sense of tension in that sense my console version of metro last light adds quite a bit of tension because it runs like a fucking dumpster poop it looks so gorgeous i am afraid to see what it would look like on a 360 because it is a pretty it looks fine it's just like one of one of the clunkier shoes i don't think it's performance issues because i'm playing on console as well i think it's honestly like the controls are just sluggish like it feels like you're aiming like i had to mess with the sensitivity of the aiming to even play it. Like they didn't even think that that was a good, like it's very weird and slow.

It's interesting. I get what Planet is saying. I mean, essentially when you're playing a Call of Duty game, all you have to do to prep for a fight is like dock and then reload. Press reload, yeah. But here what you're doing is you have to worry about reloading, you have to worry about charging your flashlight up, you have to worry about cleaning your mask off, changing your filter. You gotta call your dad, because it's his birthday.

And you don't want to shoot too much, because you have limited bullet supplies, and certain bullets are actually your money, your currency. Yeah, but you also have to, like... No, okay, the currency thing is cute, but here's the thing. It's not as difficult as it was in the previous one.

Yeah, no one's going to switch. So, essentially, the currency is, like, equals super bullets. You can use super bullets for money, or you can use super bullets to kill things ultra fast. No one in their right mind is going to use super bullets to kill things fast, because why would you waste them that way? I'll fucking do it. You gotta shoot money to make money. That's what Jay-Z told me.

But his interpretation was more literal. I don't know if you guys know this about Jay-Z. He will actually shoot stacks of money. He'll get a gun and he's got like a big t-shirt cannon. He'll just put wadded up hundreds in there. Just blast them. He thinks he's actually

making the money that showers back to earth that's it that's the that's jay-z's secret also jay-z has the memory of a goldfish whoa so when the money comes down he's like where where did all this come from it's like you shot it into the air with your cannon jay-z i have no memory of this yeah oh and also i i just like that it's a shooter where instead of like cutscenes you just go to a town and listen to people talk and you can just sit there you can watch an entire theater performance

there's just lots of stuff to see and enjoy or you can just walk right through it I don't think you'd have too much trouble following the story if you didn't sit and stare and overhear every conversation that happens yeah the one thing i haven't gotten so it's in russia right okay that's pretty much the one thing i wasn't sure about oh okay did you did the was the nazis is that is that what threw you off no we like maybe this is

germany there are nazis here no it was the accents. I constantly confuse Russian and Australian and Japanese. If you had said Austrian, I would have maybe understood. That's what I said. Oh, yeah? Austria is basically a more Northwestern version of Australia.

You should really read a book or watch The Amazing Race. Oh, yeah. Yeah. version of australia you should really like read a book or like watch the amazing race oh yeah yeah um i would i would fucking excel at that show everyone says that everyone who watches a reality show thinks they would be the best at it uh that's not a running if i was on survivor i would be dead in the afternoon not i mean it would be literal survivor for me i would be sucking on bark to try to get a wi-fi signal out of it um i i don't know who won this week uh i mean it's a real close one a squeaker but i think griffin won griffin did do a great presentation man guys i appreciate it but i just feel like i just feel like you guys are giving it to me because you know i'm having a hard year um i think i liked justin's the best because it i had no fucking idea that a this game is out and b that it was

worth it's waiting dog shit and apparently it is it is both it's more than it's it's waiting dog shit apparently but i mean if you guys want to overrule me to to make me the king no i think you won okay well wait did you hear the thing about my mask though oh yeah kid chameleon already won it sorry beat you on that i don't know there's a mask in that game what is only masks what about the mask the mask has better mask usage uh mask majora's mask is actually worse because that's not a good game there's. There was a video game that they made about Mask, the movie about the Rocky. Like Mobile

Armor Strike Command or Jim Carrey or Rocky Dennis? Rocky Dennis. Thank you. What about masking tape? Does that have anything to do with masks? You just don't stop. I say Griffin. Congratulations, Griffin.

Congratulations to you for getting to listen to this. We'll be back, of course, next Friday with another episode pre-E3, right before things get deep, things get real. So make sure you join us for that. If you haven't visited our website recently, Polygon.com has loads of features and news

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