The Besties - The Besties Podcast XVI

Episode Date: June 22, 2012

The Besties settle in for a long summer which may not be the most robust in terms of quality game releases. Justin describes the woes of Steel Battalion, Griffin gives some advice to Wizards of the Coast and there's some discussion over whether Gravity Rush should have actually beaten out Max Payne 3 last week. Also yuks. 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!

Guys, I'm gonna build a gaming PC. Oh, you are? What do you think that takes? I think if you build it, you gotta call it a rig. Oh, I'm gonna build a big rig. I don't know anything about PCs. What's your, uh, how big of a hard drive? How big of a hard drive do you want?

Um, that's the one thing I actually know about. You know, I'm gonna get a terabyte. No, no, no, get a solid state. No, you get a terabyte and then you also get like a 160 solid state, right? Yeah, what do you need a terabyte. No, no, no. Get a solid state. No, you get a terabyte, and then you also get a 160 solid state, right? Yeah, what do you need a terabyte for? You don't need either. Hard core pornography. All you really need is the cloud.

You can just put it all in the cloud. Is that true? Yeah, you put the cloud in your computer. Where do I put my GPU? In the cloud. In the cloud. You put everything in the cloud. Is the fan in the cloud, or do I need an actual fan? It's slightly below the cloud.

You can't actually put the fan in the cloud, or else it'll disperse it. It would blow the cloud away. Yeah, exactly. It's below the cloud. That seems really dangerous to keep clouds in your fans. But it's great because it comes with Thunderbolts. my name is justin mcroy and i know the best game of the week my name is justin mcroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Justin McElroy.

Shit! I'm actually good. My name is Griffin McElroy. Did I say Justin? You did. You did. Regularly? No, that's honest. That's the first time I've ever done it in my life.

And I know the best game of the week. My name is Chris Plant and I know my own name. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. Everybody stop chomping My flavor Chris Plant vs. 3 Justin McElroy It's my nightmare

Your sexual fantasies come to life A writhing pile of Justin Undulating with passion So this is The Besties Where the four best friends on earth Pick the new games of the week against each other in Mortal Kombat to find out which one reigns supreme. Once we have our victor, we will pit it against our current reigning champion to see if it is unseated and sent to our Hall of Fame. Where we'll battle to be our game of the year at the end of the year. Russ Freshdick, what is to be our game of the year at the end of the year uh russ fresh dick what is our current sitting game of the year our current sitting game of the year is max pain

three now justin you you expressed interest in perhaps submitting an appeal to last week's episode do we even want to discuss i don't know if we can entertain an appeal i had not played gravity rush to entertain this appeal we need a secondary body we need what we need is a system of checks and balances so that if we do make a bad call because let's face it gravity rush probably should have unseated max reviewed the tapes you know you you you do it in a sports game they look at the replay i say maybe maybe that call was bad i personally am i am going to make a motion that we uh retroactively unseat max pain 3 put it to the put it in the hall of fame

let it compete at the end of the year but uh put gravity rush in there because i tell you i've been playing it this week the gravity rushita, and it is the most fun I've had with a Vita. It's such a cool mechanic, a great aesthetic. Really better than the two other games on Vita? What are you talking about? There's like 20 awesome games on the Vita. There are not that many awesome games on the Vita.

There are a lot of great games on the Vita. There are a lot of great games on Vita, but this is the one that it is so unlike anything I've played before. And I've really, really been enjoying it. It's such a good reason to finally get the Vita out of storage and make sure it's charged up every hour on the hour.

Justin, do you think I'm right that it's a game that you can't really play on anything but a mobile platform? Do you think it would make you sick if you were playing that on a... I don't know. It certainly help to to give yourself some extra um to feel like you have more control perspective because it it's very sensitive to to tilting and it'll adjust your perspective accordingly um so in that in that regard it's it's pretty darn good but it makes really good

use of the vita tech too the touch screens aren't used abusively they're used in a very sort of coherent way um and it really honestly it just it looks great it feels great i mean it's the kind of thing you just want to play around with it um because the mechanic is so cool have you downloaded the soundtrack yet oh god are we gonna spend this whole time talking about a game we already talked about that kind of guy can can we get a second for justin's motion a second okay uh i guess russ and i have to vote i don't know i don't know what's the we're in favor so if one of you is in favor then i i'm i'm fine with it max pain three left me a little cold in love yes it doesn't matterotion carries. Our current reigning game of the year is Gravity Rush.

All right, John. You see that, guys? We take the rules and we say, screw them. No, that was very orderly, I thought. It was very orderly. That was very orderly. That was Robert's rules of order, like, straight down the line. To a T.

It was. I'm just glad that somebody can update their Wikipedia page and now let people know. Our ongoing Wikipedia page that no one let people know Our ongoing rule set Okay so Who wants to pitch first Can we address Who the commissioner is this week I think

The big game I played this week is Steel Battalion And as a result I think I should be the commissioner Okay But Justin I heard such good things about that good did you because it is made of farts let's do a splinter universe out of 10 let's do an alternate reality right now where you are actually pitching steel battalion to us to become the bestie because one of us played something even worse which according to your review score might be impossible it is okay so like has anybody here tried the demo or attempted to play this bitch uh okay i thought it looked cool

in the video i'll be honest it does look cool and there are moments there are moments where you're in the the cabin of a mech you're not really seeing through the eyes of your mech i mean you are a person inside this vertical tank um and and as a result you use connect to activate a lot of the features in this tank um you can turn your chair to look at other things inside the cabin. You can stand up. Wait, but you turn your actual chair? Yes.

No, no, no. You have to swipe your arm to turn your chair. Why you don't just turn the thumb stick to do that, I have no idea. Because you also have to hold the controller as you play. Yeah. So you hold the controller as you play. The sticks control movement and the perspective of the tank. Your hands control everything else.

You have to let go of the controller to swipe to, like I said, change your perspective in the cabin. You also have to use it to operate most of the things in the cabin. So let me walk you through a few actual scenarios. The problem is Connect is not good with small motions connect doesn't know uh pushing buttons it's not good with that especially when you're sitting down right it's terrible with sitting down it thinks my knees are my hands a lot of the time and that gets very awkward you see the skeleton on the screen represented by what the connect seeing and you can see this wireframe of your torso,

and it can get a little silly up there. Now, in K'nex defense, you absorbed a twin in the womb, and your knees have fingers. That's true. That's fair. But only my right knee. And this is doing both knees. Well, that's inexcusable. So it's inexcusable.

So, like, there's a lever you have to pull to start the tank, which is kind of crazy because that should be a button because it – I mean, it's pretty important to turn it on. And a lot of times you'll, like, go to start the tank, and instead you'll pull out the panel that has a self-destruct button on it. Why does that panel exist? Well, in case, I don't know. I mean, it's really, the only thing I can think of is because it doesn't have a retry button. So, like, if you just want to blow up your tank, it's the only thing I can think. Maybe it comes into play later. Well, the panel also has the flashlight.

It also has the night vision slash flashlight button, and it has the button to vent the cabin. So, like, there are instances where the cabin is so smoky you can barely see, and you pull out a panel where one thing is a lever to vent the smoke out, and the other thing is a button to explode your tank. Oh, man. That does not seem very safe. That's already pretty crazy.

It's like a car with the eject button next to the windshield wiper. Right. Like an eject button, like in cars. So that's pretty whack. And there's things like that always happens at the worst possible moment. You always – and there's like you have to push a button to switch between ammo types. And it doesn't know – I mean it's not good with – K'Nex is not good with that sort of thing. So you're just like pawing at the air trying to switch from armor piercing to anti-personnel rounds.

You know, this reminds me. Did you guys play that game Out of This World? Remember that scene in Out of This World where you enter the alien arena and they throw you in an alien tank and you have no idea what to do with the buttons. You're just mindlessly jamming everything. This is an

entire game that's that. It's not that far off. I have to tell you about my favorite sequence though. My favorite sequence is at the beginning of the fifth mission. Your tank is waiting for a surprise attack from the enemy. You don't know where it's coming from. Your tank is off. It's silent to get the jump on the enemy.

The way the tanks work is the guy in the rear has to spool it up, has to wind the engine up, and then you pull the lever that activates it. So what he tells you is stand up, look for the bad guys, and when you see them, give me the signal, and I'll turn on the tank. Okay? Sounds good? see him give me the signal and i'll turn on the tank okay sounds good so i stand up and it's literally three minutes of standing and waiting with my binoculars to my head like you raise your right hand or left hand and you have binoculars so i'm like standing and looking all around

waiting and waiting and waiting and finally after three minutes like a puff of birds flies up and i look over in that general direction and i see that the enemy tanks and i'm like there i got them now to give the signal and i don't know i have no idea what the signal is so i'm like banging on the top of the tank and like pointing at them like that. And then I shout, hey, those fucking guys are over there. Signal, signal, signal. Nothing. So they roll up on the tank.

And of course, like our tank's not on. So they destroy us, right? And it sends me back to the beginning of the waiting three minutes again of waiting i do this four times before i here's the signal. Ready? You sit down. After you spot them, you sit down. You swipe so you're facing him. Then you reach out and tap him on the shoulder. What? That's the signal. Here's the even best part.

You don't have to see them before you do it. At the beginning of the mission, you can just turn to him and say, Hey, turn the tank on. For me, turn it on so we can go kill these guys. And he's like, all right, I guess you saw him. No problem. That's, and that's like, that's if the game worked perfectly.

If the Kinect worked perfectly. There's so much wrong with it. There's a, somebody's taking a a pee and they find an apple and they get they get pee on their hands. Right. And someone tosses them an apple and then they toss that apple to your right that literally every other word out of his mouth is, Padna? And it says on the screen, the caption is literally, P-O-D-N-A-H. Padna? Okay, Padna, we're going to get him. Padna? Okay, Padna, we're going to get them.

And there's a moment where you are going out on a mission and they tell you, like, we're going to have dinner and wait for you to get back. And he says, man, what happened to equal rights? I'm equally hungry. What are you doing? What are you talking about? This is the craziest. And that's if the game worked

and it doesn't it is anyway it's not I mean like it would be a very very bad game regardless some people are giving that game I think if anybody gives that game any points

they are not your friend they do not care about you they don't love friend. They do not care about you. They don't love you like I do, because it is miserable. So that is not our game of the week. No. Justin, can you decide who is going in what order so we can finally pick the wheat from the chaff

that you've laid for us? Yeah, let's separate. Let's find the wheat here. I'd like to eat from Russ Freshstick first. Hello. And then we'll go uh griffin mccrory chris plant we'll go alphabetical this week is that alphabetical i don't think that is at all fresh dick mccrory oh last names got it okay so i am bringing a game called astronaut uh it's worth noting that astronaut is spelled Astronaut. It's worth noting that astronaut is spelled astro, traditional spelling, and then not N-O-T.

As in psych? As in psych. Yes. But it's one word. It's an iOS game. Surprise. But we are in the thick of June, and quality retail releases are somewhat too and far between. So Astronaut is basically like

imagine if the Atari 2600 had its own Metroid game. I don't think there was a game like Metroid on the Atari 2600. Was there? Anyone know? E.T. was probably as close as you got. Yeah, E.T. was pretty great.

Go around, collect the things, get a little more advanced. That's not what Metroid is. Oh, Pitfall. No. Oh, guys, Barnstormer. We're naming games now. So, Astronaut is basically Metroid, but, like, really lo-fi. It's, like, imagine if the graphics were even more lo-fi than the NES.

Very blocky. The audio is like bleeps and bloops. But despite the basic graphics, the gameplay of a Metroidvania is still intact. So you're still exploring this alien world, collecting like power-ups to make you jump higher, or weapon upgrades, or energy increase things. I don't know.

I have a very strong taste for the genre. I can play just about any Metroidvania game and have a good time. I like when people sort of take the genre and put their own little twist on it. I think Astronaut does a very good job of that.

How does it put is it just the aesthetic yeah finest they don't that's what i mean there's no like mechanical like oh that's a clever idea uh no not that i've seen i've put like an hour into it and it's mostly like traditional metroidy stuff but i don't know it's like i'm how much how much twitchiness does it require because that's right so the controls i would say are on par with probably not as good as um super crate box but close and you don't but you don't need nearly as like twitchy like movements as you did in super crate box uh it's closer to like the original Metroid, which didn't require like intense, intense jumping sequences. Yeah.

And stuff like that. Yeah, I mean, it's fun. It's a universal app. And I think on iOS especially, there aren't very many really cool Metroidvania games, and I think there's a demand for it um i will say this though i'm a little bummed so there's i guess it's a throwback to the original metroid which didn't have a map but there's no map unless i haven't found it yet do you have

graph paper yeah i think they're asking for you to craft your own map uh using diligence um which i guess is part of the experience and like the retroness of it but i kind of like maps yeah nothing says mobile game like carrying around i don't know how to i don't know how to have this conversation i i so i got an ipad last week and it's really i i did i would get interested in like some games on my iphone and i would get like deep into them but i never got on like these sprees on my iphone where it's like i want to get some new games for this and the ipad i feel like i can do that more because i think it is a better gaming platform than the than the iphone is but there are these weird there's like there's like how many games like 250 000 games there's probably

even more than that on the app store and despite that i feel like there's these weird gaps of like genres that there really just aren't that many yeah entries in right no it makes sense a lot of those there's a few reasons for that i think one is like a metroidvania if we're going to talk about a specific genre is not an easy game to make there's a lot of work that goes involved in like making sure the map makes sense and making sure you can't like access the end at the very beginning stuff like that um and like for the amount of work you know wouldn't it be easier to just make an arcade game but don't these people don't don't there's so much cruft on there doesn't it make sense to say if we put out a higher quality

product than what everybody else is putting out that we're gonna rise above them like i i understand what i have though right i mean like you you can make the gamble that hey maybe people like this arcade game that i can make in a shorter amount of time or maybe i sink a bunch of time into this game that doesn't catch on i mean right but i'm saying everybody to be so random everybody's right everybody's doing that first thing if somebody was doing the second thing don't you think they would stand out like well i think i'm not saying that there aren't high quality games on the ipad i, like, I was trying to find a good, like, role-playing game or a turn-based strategy game. And there are a couple.

Hunters 2. Hunters 2, sure. I mean, there's a handful on there. But when you think of 10 good role-playing games or turn-based strategy games out of, you know, a quarter of a million games, you would you would think that i don't know i don't want to paint the whole ios platform at in the same light that the hardcore gamers do we're saying it's not you know a platform for serious games but it just seems like

so many people are okay for shooting for the bare minimum i think there are two problems though that i mean to play devil's advocate i mean one genres that require control like any type of shooters you know from side scroller to uh first person they're just difficult to control so there's that problem right off the bat okay but then games like you mentioned uh turn-based uh strategy games or real-time strategy games i those are made for that platform they are made for that they are made for that but the people who love those games are used to playing current gen strategy games and i think the ai on those games plus the graphics that are available right now is at a certain level

and i honestly don't know if the ipad can produce something comparable no no no that's not why that's i don't think that's true you just's not why they're gaming. I don't think that's true. You just don't think they're investing in it? No, I don't. Are you kidding me? People that like turn-based strategy games would play with hexes and colors. Well, they do. They're not demanding folks.

I honestly believe it comes down to how many developers want to put in the time to make a really well-crafted turn-based strategy game versus whether they think that's going to be a success on the app store yeah i was i was jones i had a jones for like a tactics game and there's a lot of tactics games there's there's not there are a lot there's there's wicked there's wicked not there's not a lot of like released a new one last week i thought i don't even know what you're talking about like final fantasy tactics like final fantasy no i know plant what games are you talking about name one final fantasy tactics okay yeah that's 16.99 on the platform it's like 5.99 on the playstation

network what are you doing with your pricing square enix get your shit together plant final fantasy single tactics game that's not tactics i don don't play these games, but I feel like I've seen them multiple times. There's a few. How do your opinions are just based on guessing? What? How do your opinions are based on guessing? One second. No, it's stuff I've seen.

There's a few. I have played a few of them, and they're not bad. Tactical Soldier, Undead Rising. I mean, that's not technically the tactics you're talking about, though. No. Anyway, I don't want to totally derail the conversation. I'm just saying. No, that's fine. i wish people would make i wish it wasn't just like chair and you know

a nimble bit and like there are people making good games but i haven't i have needs that need filled and i think the rpg genre is like perfect for that platform it's like the least twitchy you can get yeah people just aren't people just aren't making them another problem is that is the retro aesthetic hey indies we aren't fooled we know that you probably like old games but i also know that it's wicked easy to make those graphics like just make like real graphics i know it's harder but like stop trying to trick us it's not nostalgia it's like seven blocks you're like, I guess I'm done with graphics. I kind of preferred that an astronaut went even more in that direction.

Like, they could have done, like, NES graphics, but they're like, no, we're going to keep going with it. I kind of preferred that. Let me try and make the transition in my game because it almost works. My game is sort of a tactics game. It's Pokemon Conquest for the Nintendo DS, the orig. Whoa. Yeah, I know. Is that out? tactics game it's a pokemon conquest for the nintendo ds the ridge whoa yeah i know is that out yeah it's out okay um it is uh the pokemon spinoff is i guess it's almost its own genre and it's they have varying degrees of quality like there's the pokemon dungeon you have a chart somewhere?

They're almost all pretty bad. They're almost all, they're not great. I think Pokemon Pinball for the Game Boy Color was the only one that really captured my mind. Oh, that one was good. And also Pokemon Snap. Yes, yes. But typically they try to go, I think there was the one, I played the one on 3DS where it was like toys. It was like wind-up toys.

Oh, that one was the worst. Oh my God, that was terrible. Yeah. So yeah, they're usually not very good. where it was like toys it was like wind-up toys oh that one was oh my god that was terrible yeah so um so yeah they're usually not very good but pokemon conquest is a hybrid of pokemon and the strategy series nobunaga's ambition which i have never played any of those before and the result is a uh basically a tactical rpg where um you have to raise an army of warriors, and each warrior has Pokemon that they have linked to them, and you have to form links with new Pokemon and hire new warriors

by battling them and beating them under certain conditions and then conquering all the kingdoms. And it's got something like 200 Pokemon of the 600-odd Pokemon that are in all the pokemon games yeah so there's like there's a lot of stuff and there's i don't know how many warriors but um it's it's it's kind of a departure from how pokemon works the the franchise not just battles um but it it's it's kind of confusing you it's its biggest problem is that there's not much micromanagement that you can do

which is weird for a tactics game like this gaia where is probably like the most micromanagement you can do um each each pokemon has like one move and and that's all that they can really do on the battlefield and they have like a passive ability and each warrior has an active ability that they can do regardless of which pokemon they have linked to them but managing those pokemon and the warriors is a total nightmare because they're dispersed throughout all the kingdoms that you own so basically if you want to hire one of them you have to find which kingdom he's at march him to the kingdom next to the kingdom you want to attack and then it's it's that part of the game is a total nightmare, and I'm not going to deny that. But the combat is fantastic.

And I think if they had gone a little bit further with it, and, and maybe made the management less of a nightmare, it would have been better. So there's still the same systems of, like, super effective attacks and weaknesses and, you know, evolution, all that you have to keep in mind but all the battles take place in a grid-based battlefield where it's usually a six on six fight uh where your pokemon have you know attacks with different elemental types that have different ranges each pokemon has different movement ranges uh and you have to you know get position on the battlefield and take out all your enemies and if you take them out like i think it's on the battlefield and take out all your enemies.

And if you take them out, I think it's something like if you take out a warrior under four turns or you take him out by recognizing his weakness and then exploiting it, you can recruit him to your team, which is a neat system, and it's addictive. And the only problem is you can see how it could have been deeper. I don't understand why each Pokemon could only have one move because that makes the battles a little less exciting. You sort of know how things are going to go

as soon as you see what the other team's bringing. But yeah, it's neat and it's exciting because it's the first real innovation to the Pokemon franchise that I have really gotten excited about. Like, I think that the core Pokemon games, the battles in them have needed shaking up outside the addition of, you know, like two on two and three on three fights. And I think if they explored this, I think the turn-based strategy method would work really, really well for the core franchise, because it's just a huge, you know, six-on-six

melee, everyone fighting at the same time. It's pretty cool. I have a question. Yeah, shoot. Is Meowth in the game? I haven't seen him. Okay. You would hear him first.

What about Magikarp? Magikarp is in the game. What about Haunter? I haven't seen him. Mr. Mime? Executor? No to both. It sounds like grown-ups are the ones doing the battling in the game where it's traditionally been kids.

The grown-ups aren't actually, they're not, like, on the battlefield. That's what I'm saying. That's what's so confusing. Instead of controlling just one dude with, like, in the core Pokemon games, you have six Pokemon with you at all times. And you can switch them out on your PC, which is where the Pokemon live and they're not in battle. All of the Pokemon are dispersed

throughout all of the warriors who are spread out through all of the kingdoms that you own. That's what I'm saying. Like if you want to build a team of like all water type Pokemon, first of all, they're probably not going to be very strong because you haven't been using them. But you have to go find which kingdoms your water pokemon are at and which

warriors have them and then march them each individually to where you want them wow yeah yeah i don't know it's pretty awful like items that people get and armor that they get they buy them in stores and then it's bound to that warrior so to like unequip an item from that person so you can use it on somebody else you have to find where they are go into the menu unequip them and then find where your other guy it's it's a total disaster um but the combat is really neat and and building your army you have like a strength rating at all times that is you know clearly indicates where you're at compared with the armies you're about to fight which is cool um it's got it's got a lot of good ideas but a lot of pretty bad um execution i have a question yeah is crabby in the game

haven't seen crabby yet what about drowsy nope lapras lapras died come on i don't know in the opening cutscene he died yeah yeah yeah pincer oh my god oh i got one more yeah no two more snorlax okay no mr mime you already asked mr mime uh tangela iela. Do you have a wiki open right now? Or is this all straight off the dome? Frank Langella. Frank Langella is in the game. He's one of the warriors. Frank Langella.

Langella! Got you. Langella. Do you think that maybe this means Romance of the Three Kingdoms will come back and get partnered with some type of game. Boy, I hope so. What I hope is that... Do you miss those games?

Oh, boy, I do. What would be dope is an actual, like, the next Pokemon generation had, it was, you know, straight-up Pokemon through and through all the system of managing and catching and all that stuff. But instead of the, you know, turn-based battle, do, like, a tactics tactics game i think that it would be perfect for it i think that would be completely amazing that'd be amazing but two can you imagine a historical pokemon game like where they discovered that they could battle

pokemon you like to discover that that would actually be neat yeah sure that'd be like really cool like here are these adorable animals how do we enslave them and make us fight for them no like yeah they wouldn't even see it coming like they'd find two animals and then they'd just be sitting around the campfire and then like look at holy they're beating the crap out of each other look at those two guys go and afterwards they start placing bets where's the pokemon gambling game i see i I think that would be cool. I want to go to the track and gamble on which Pokemon is going to win. Because you know there's at least some OTBs that got some action on Pokemon battles. Guys, I think I should talk about my game.

Please. What? Let's take a little breather, though. Let's take a little breather, though. Yeah, let's take a little break. I don't need to hear about your game. Before we take a break, I just want to apologize. For what? I might have been very wrong about what I said about tactic games. I did some Googling, and it turns out almost every game I thought was on iOS

is actually available on the PSP. But, but. That's what you're thinking, yeah. To make you feel better, Total War Battles Shogun is on iOS. Oh, no, I put, that's not, no. That's not a tactics game like you think. No, I know, but I mean it's a strategy game. I'll tell you who's, Atlus is like the market leader in this.

I am begging you. I am begging you, Atlus, to put some of these games on the iOS. Please. I don't know what I have to do. Or Square Enix, if you could just like, I don't know, put Tactics Ogre up on there. It's perfect for it. Anyway. They'll charge $300.

And why, like, why, Wizards of the Coast, make a D&D game and put it on the iPad. You did it with Magic and it's super good, idiot. Whoa. Got heated in here. I just get so angry. Imagine a D&D game that worked with asynchronous play and then the dungeon master could leave voice messages. Right?

That would... I would buy that. I would spend however much you want. It's not hard to do that. I promise you it's not hard to do that i promise you it's not hard to do that jason rower did it with sleep is death you can have like a game that you can control entirely and customize to your will and you could do it on ipad and make it a tactical rpg what are you doing get it together wizards of the coast come on just do this thing

i'm telling you I swear to God billions bajillions a million dollars isn't cool actually you're not even getting a million you know it's better than zero dollars any dollars Gary Gygax is spinning wildly in his grave he's like get that money, son. What is it? iPad? I dreamed of this. Get that. Idiots. Dummies. I'm about to fail.

We made fourth edition. It's pretty much like a video game, but we're not going to make a video game out of it because we hate fucking money. We like books now. Idiots. Fuck. Fuck. What about that game you like from E3?

Neverwinter? Yeah. Yeah, that's good that's dnd that's a game yeah no i mean it is and it's cool it's got the it's got like the creation stuff but it's not like you're not rolling die it's not grid based you know they don't sell the dnd books on ipad do they no no that just blows my brain open that right they have this whole digital dnd insider program that lets you create character sheets and looks up all that shit for you. Not on iPad, though.

Oh, yeah, just get out your f***ing Tandy 400 and look that up. Not that thing that you have that has all the dice rolling apps on it anyway. Just, oh, you guys. I think they're on Blackberry, actually. What happened? I swear to God, we were relevant yesterday.

Here's my thing thing if people are already distributing pdfs of uh your book just throw up that pdf and sell it because at that point you know just have something that can compete with the people who are going to steal it from you they don't want to marginalize their their pen and paper product and i get that but if there's only a hundred people doing that like there's not that much left to marginalize dog and honestly like you put it up there for 10 bucks so many people would buy it it's and it and why is it so why are they still so old like fantasy is old news why not get sci-fi let me hit you guys with this space dungeons and space dragons like that like it's a

joke i don't i don't think it's a joke. Just sell it. Sell it. Put a stamp on it. A trademark. I bet I could get the trademark on Space Dungeons and Space Dragons right now. You just Photoshopped goggles on top of everything in the book. And that's what you're saying.

No, no, no, no, no, no. You're thinking of my steampunk multiverse, Gears and Dragons. That's a different thing. No, just a lot of neon you'd be set guy guy gack sounds like a space dragon's name yeah just i'm just making that observation his name was basically the scariest dragon name that you could come up with i think that's why all the dragons sound like that guy gack sounds like a dragon that swallows the earth every five cycles. We are nearing the time of the swallowing.

Russ and I are playing D&D. We have a game this weekend and we are facing a dragon that burns a town every I don't know how often, Russ? Seems like that's all dragons do is that they sleep for a while and then they come out and they mess shit up

and then they go to sleep again. I think we might be facing him. It's narratively valuable, but it's kind of a hollow existence, big picture. Well, they get to sleep a lot. Gygak sounds like a nickname for semen. What? Come on. Gygak?

We're having a really intelligent conversation about our dnd game okay can we not play it tell me about your dumb game don't you think it's great so i brought an ios game that's actually good unlike russ which he brought an okay game but mine's pretty great uh it's called the act and i i don't want to like i feel bad for everybody else because I already have two votes I have my own vote and then I have Justin's vote because I am bringing a full motion video animated game basically the first great one since like I don't know like the 1990s isn't that you can't I don't think it can be a it's like it can't a full motion video and animated. I bought it.

It's Dragon's Lair. I mean, it looks like Dragon's Lair. It looks like a Don Bluth game. And the animation is gorgeous. Games Radar says it is the number one most beautifully animated 2D game ever. That's ridiculous. But I don't know if I would go that far but i will say it is beautiful i don't actually enjoy um i don't enjoy animated fmv games as much as i do actual fmv games but they do have a special place in my heart i i i understand that and i have uh i have bad memories

of dragon's lair because i think i played it on i don't know like my sega on the nes on a cd i think uh and i i don't think i ever made it past the when you're going over the moat and the tentacles grab i literally have never made it past that part yeah i i don't know what happens here what's great about this game though is it's set in, I think it's like New York around, I'm going to guess, probably like the 20s. And it feels like a silent film. It's all based off of music. There's no talking. And you play, did you see the artist?

Yeah. You play a guy who's like the lead in the artist. You know, this suave, kind of goofball-y guy who uh in in this case he's like an everyman he's a window washer and he falls in love with a nurse uh who he has fantasies about and he gets in all sorts of hijinks pursuing this woman uh basically you know like dressing up as a doctor and then he gets wrapped up in brain surgery and you know typical goofball uh silent film story wait he's he's in he has to perform brain surgery i'm not i don't want to get into the whole story because

the story is really cute and i don't want to spoil any of it okay that's why you're playing this game i mean you the game itself is fun but it's more of experiencing the story but the way they get around the really annoying stuff from Dragon's Lair is great, because you only have two options. You swipe right if you want to make a really bold move, or in some cases if you just want to react to what's on the right side of the screen, and then you swipe left if you want to be a bit more passive, or if you want to react to what's on the left side of the screen. And there are variations on that throughout the game. And how hard you swipe affects how big of a reaction you're doing.

So say, like, one of my favorite moments that I've played so far is you are dressed up as a doctor, and you're trying to fit in with these two doctors who are looking up to like the one doctor who's obviously their boss and they're laughing at you know at every joke he says or looking like really concerned about whenever he's telling a story that you know is about someone dying i assume so if you swipe right you laugh uh and if you swipe left you look concerned but there are like five variations of how hard you're laughing, uh, or, like, how concerned

you are, so you're always trying to really balance, like, to look like you're fitting into this conversation, like, if you're not laughing hard enough, he'll kind of, like, look at you the wrong way and kind of push you to the back of the group, uh, or if you, like, slap him on the back because you're laughing too hard, he'll be, like, embarrassed for you, or if you're laughing while he's telling a really dark story, they'll, like, all abandon you and leave you behind so it's this weird thing where much of the game is just trying to basically look like you belong in these really awkward and funny scenarios if that makes sense does everybody follow that yeah it sounds really interesting it sounds i mean it sounds adorable it's super, and it's super cute,

and the animation is, I mean, precious. And what is so great about it, too, is it could get really annoying, and it still does every once in a while, trying to figure out that sweet spot with, you know, how far am I going, how much pressure am I putting on, you know, the reaction that I'm trying to create. Like, at the beginning, unfortunately, one of the most difficult and sensitive uh mini games of this is when you're having a fantasy about being with

this nurse and you're kind of hitting on her and it takes a while to get used to like do i want to like just give her a look do i do i want to you know kind of dance towards her do i want to thrust my hips and you have to learn to kind of don't do don't do that i can i can go and tell you how to do that you don't do that but you want to let these animations play out, which you're not used to in a game, like kind of doing a command and then waiting for the other character to react and giving it some time

and then making a move after that. But once you kind of get into that frame of mind where you're not just jamming the touchscreen the whole time, you really get into it uh i mean it's just really special i like i like fell in love with the game pretty much instantly once i got once i got the hang of it you don't have to make do you have to make love uh no you don't have to make love there's not like a love making fingers there's no aggressive love making it's all this is now is this a universal app uh yeah it's uh

iphone ipad and i believe it's universal let me what would you recommend i play it on i was gonna play it on my i recommend you play it on ipad okay because it looks so pretty okay i have a question yes griffin is wiggly tough in your game all right uh guys let me hear go in order start with rest again let me hear some uh some final arguments why should i pick your game uh if you like metroidvanias there aren't very many of them on ios and this one's fun you could do worse that. That's all I got. I'm sorry. Mine represents the bold reinvention of a franchise that has been long stagnant since the late 90s.

And I think that we should encourage its evolution, much like Jigglypuff evolves into Wigglytuff with a Moonstone. That's true. That's how you evolve that particular pokemon yep mine doesn't just resuscitate a single game that has had a hundred chances and tons of money to do so it brings back an entire genre and it's 2.99 on the app store universal app so you can

play it on two different devices. I like that you pronounce a hard G when you say the word genre. Genre. Genre. Okay. Guys, I have to say that judging if only by your passion, but also by my own demonic proclivities. I am going to award our best game to The Act,

an iOS title. I'm fist pumping it right now. I knew it. I knew I was coming into this week with a winner. How long has it been since an iOS game won? It's been a little while. Here's the question, though. Is it a better game than Gravity Rush? No. You've played them both. It doesn't sound like it to me but here here's a weird thing if i would if i'm reviewing this alone i think i would i would give it the

better review but it's it is short once you've played it you've played it, you've experienced it. It doesn't take as much risk as Gravity Rush. I don't technically think it passes Gravity Rush. It pains me to say it, because I love this game. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, our winner and still champion,

The Act. No, just kidding. Oh my god. Classic J-Man. man classic that's it that's our program uh thank you for joining us once again uh hey if you're into pocket planes i am guys i i have been getting a non-stop money flow from our flight crew i don't know what happened to the people In our flight crew if we just have a ton of them Or if they're insane people but In each challenge

We like come in third place and I get 50 bucks Every single time Guys get up in there Just hashtag polygon Join our flight crew Just wheeze the juice Mason your face told me to pimp it. Because we are falling in the rankings.

And we're going to climb back up. We're going to battle back to the top. So, thank you for listening. Be sure to visit our video game website, which is currently housed at theverge.com forward slash gaming. Someday it will be at polygon.com, but I got to finish coding it with all the HTML and URLs you crave. If you want to become one of our valued tipsters,

send us tips at tips at polygon.com because I read those and they help us, you know, expand our news offerings. Just a little PSA from me. Oh, and one more thing I forgot. Yeah. Griffin is dugong in your game?

I f***ing hate you so much! And be sure to join us next week for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends be the world's best games? Ha ha ha! besties