The Besties - The Besties Podcast XX

Episode Date: July 20, 2012

This week on The Besties, Griffin returns and demands bombast from a fellow co-host. There's also some discussion about whether dolphins can survive in space. 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!

my name is justin mcelroy and I know the best game of the week. Hello there. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I will be deciding the best game. My name is Ross Vrostic, and I know the best game of the week. That one had sort of a Bob Dylan flair. I love it. I know the best game

this as you've probably guessed is the besties polygons flagship uh maiden podcast now temporarily temporarily uh it is a game of the year podcast where every week we discuss the latest games and figure out which one reigns supreme. Then that game is pitted against our current reigning champion to find out our new current reigning game of the year. Griffin McElroy, what is our current game of the year? Dog, I was absent last week, and you know that, so I don't know. Russ Freshstick. I was mentally absent last that, so I don't know. Shit. Russ Freshstick. I was mentally absent last week, so I don't really know either. Okay, Chris Plant.

The reigning champagne is Spelunky. Oh, my God. Yeah. Still with that. I think we got to retire that into the Hall of Fame this week. No. It's only been two weeks. What won last week?

Anyone remember? Yeah, it was the Secret World one, yeah. Oh, okay. week yeah it's only gotten two weeks yeah what one what one last week just anyone remember uh yeah it was the secret world one yeah oh okay griffin i still gotta get you up on that yeah i would really really i love it because there's that one scene where the guy gets a mouth stuff done to him i have not encountered this mouth stuff scene that you told me it's a secret easter egg you have to play it is one of the one of the clans. The way that they travel psychically into this special place is they get mouth stuff done on and to them. Okay. Well, I don't. That doesn't sound like an Easter egg.

When it's finished, when the act has come to fruition. Wow. They eat a Cadbury mini egg. They eat a Cadbury cream egg in a manner of fashion. So last week's reigning champion was the Secret World. It did not defeat Spelunky, sadly and misguidedly, in my humble opinion. But maybe one of this week's games will have better luck. Griffin, who should go first this week?

I don't know. I'm not the commissioner. Why do you always do that? Do you always like to step on people's toes? Because you always... That's classic. That's retro. Is it the commish?

The commish decides now. Okay, commish. Take it over. Take the reins. No, don't worry about me. I only have one job during the whole week, and it's to decide who goes. Actually, before you do your job, can you tell me about Tony hawk pro skater because i know you've been playing it oh man i have got it bad for not playing this game this game is not fun so here's the thing about tony hawk pro skater and you know

you don't realize this when you have nostalgia on the brain but tony hawk pro skater wasn't when you have nostalgia on the brain. But Tony Hawk Pro Skater wasn't fixed as a series. They didn't figure out how to make the game work until Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me defend it. My example is Street Fighter, right? In a good fighting game, there's checks and balances.

You have kind of like a rock, scissors, paper going on, right? Yeah, rock, scissors, paper. That's what people call it yeah sure rocks paper rocks in tony hawk one it's kind of balanced because all the tricks stand alone you have grabs you have grinds and you have kick flip tricks and you do those separately and you want to kind of mix it up because there's no manual in tony hawk two you add the manual and it connects those separately and you want to kind of mix it up because there's no manual. In Tony Hawk 2, you add the manual, and it connects kick tricks and grinds. We should define, for people that don't know, the manual is where you do a little one...

You balance on the back or the front of the board. It's not like the manual that you read while learning all the rules. Yeah, not an instruction manual. You can extend combos. If you thought that if you thought that when he said that then you're a f***ing idiot also you don't enjoy the x games uh but yeah it makes it makes the uh grab tricks totally useless so in tony hawk 3 they added a move called the revert which i don't think is a real trick in real life. It's just where when you come down from a quarter pipe jump,

you turn. It doesn't look impressive at all, but then you can do that into a manual, so you can connect everything in the entire game into giant trick combos. So the problem with this remake, whatever it is, is it only has a few levels from Tony Hawk 1 and 2, and you can manual through all of them,

which wasn't even part of the first Tony Hawk. So the only way to really get absurd scores is to use kickflip tricks and grinds and to totally ignore grabs. So you're essentially ignoring, like, a third of your character's abilities. And you're ignoring, like, quarterpipe ramps. Those are useless without

the awesome yeah exactly that were once important in tony hawk one so that sucks but then actually they're like their design of the manual is just totally broken to the point where once i got good i could stand in place just stand perfectly in place at the beginning of a round, and just start doing kickflips into manuals back and forth. And I could rack up, like, I think my current record is 42 consecutive tricks for over 200,000 points, which is, like, almost as much as you need to earn to, like, top a high score available for that level. So just overall, from, like like a pure earning points in this game standpoint it is broken the most exciting reason to get this game is for the online

multiplayer which i know you are excited about griffin you uh no actually it sucks a dick it does doesn't it but let's back up and really examine that sentence you just said. You can't get excited for the local multiplayer because there f***ing isn't any. There's also not a create a character or a create a level, which I totally forgot were the things I loved about the original games. Let's back up to that sentence. Wait, wait, wait. I don't think you could create a character in the original games. Yes, you could because we made really filthy named characters of the people that I was talking about. I don't think you could create a character in the original game. Yes, you could, because we made really filthy named characters of the people that I was talking about.

I don't know. I think that might have been underground. No, I mean it's in Tony Hawk 3. Oh, in 3? Yeah. What I'm saying is there are many things that, you know, with the passage of time, you could possibly add to this, you know, new experience.

But then it wouldn't be the true Tony Hawk experience. Oh, my gosh, yeah. It also has less levels than any previous Tony Hawk game. It's, it's... Okay. This is, Robomoto, it's your third stab at this shit. It's your third try. I was about to say.

I want to be so down with you, because there's, like, no game developers in Chicago. And, but, this is your third try. And also, it's two games that have been out for a long time and so much time has passed you would think you could get this you have two factors working in your favor of getting this right i just i don't understand how you can have the there's so many so much good tony hawk material to work off of totally ignored that and also you've been working in this franchise for three games now,

and you still haven't gotten that either. It boggles the mind. Do you know what it's like, though? It would be like, imagine this opportunity. So a book publisher comes to you, and they're like, I have this copy of a book called War and Peace. All I want you to do is put it on slightly better paper. Just find a way to do that.

Just whatever you do, don't remove any words. Just put it on new paper and don't like change it to wingdings. Just new paper. That's all you have to do. No, no, shut up though. Because what you're saying is you were just a second ago complaining that there was no revert. And now you're saying add the revert. Well, if you're going to add the manual to levels that didn't have manuals...

Wait, by manual, do you mean instruction manual? Yeah, I mean, if you're going to add the instruction manual to Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1, then just don't. Four-color manual, you think? Oh, not four-color, no. I think the whole thing was sort of a conceptual disaster. I think the whole thing was sort of a conceptual disaster. Like, there's stuff all the way up into Tony Hawk Underground that I feel like you just can't release a Tony Hawk game, even one that's a remake, and not have that stuff in it.

Like, for me, even not being able to level out when you're coming at the ground flat, like, that's a disaster. Like, and not being able to get off your board to get to some of the hard to reach stuff like that it's just frustrating and it's stuff that wasn't frustrating after they fixed it in later incarnations and you just can't in this sort of game you can't go back to the way it was and it's like and and i know these levels weren't originally designed to have those mechanics they They weren't balanced for those.

But like, that's why this is a bad idea. Like, that's why it was a mess up for you guys to do this. And also, I can't enjoy the nostalgia of this with a friend because there's no couch co-op. What are you guys f***ing doing? What are you f***ing doing? Tell them what happens when you play online multiplayer after you finish the 32nd round. After you finish the 32nd round? After you finish a game?

You can't replay it. Gotta go back to the menu. Pick a new thing. Two more load screens. Are you guys... How do you f*** that up? It's the easiest thing! Jesus Christ.

Do you know my favorite thing about it, though? Is you write a negative review of this game. Because people are gonna give it good scores. Because, you know, favorite thing about it though is you write a negative review of this game because people are going to give it good scores because you know it's just like still if you if you got handed war and peace and it was in wingdings it's just like more in peace yeah i heard this is good so there will be people out there who love it but what's amazing and you know this is going to happen when you publish a semi-negative review of a popular old game is someone's going to tell you that you don't know how to play it like and it's like i i had to take a photo of i'm number two on the leaderboards at the time of publish and it's like yes i don't know how to play it except for better than the people who made it

like there were rojo moto people on leaderboards who are below it which is also telling when the people who made the game are not aware of like cheat cycles you can use to get 30 million points in this stupid game. It's just everything about it. What a disappointment. It's sad. It's such a bummer. And no Spider-Man. But you know what?

You know the good news, guys? The good news is I thought I was going to have to bring this game this week. I thought there was going to be a lot of crap because we're in the middle of summer. And it turned out that was not true. All three of you have games. I am honestly, I have not pre-decided who is going to win this week. And normally I do.

Normally I just choose Russ because I like him. Yeah, I have awesome games. But this week, I don't know. So I guess let's get started. How about you, Hoops? What do you got? week i don't know so i guess let's get started uh how about you hoops what do you got i have a game called dolphin up by rockins games okay maybe i lied maybe there is no no no no no no if if if you are of a certain well i mean maybe this wasn't as as universal as i think it was but

uh if you might have played the super addictive flash game Dolphin Olympics. If you haven't, I will describe it for you. You are a dolphin. You are swimming from left to right. You control – the only two things you can control are your direction. So if you point your – you can tilt the yaw of the dolphin so his uh his nose points more up or more down um and you use that to to leap out of the ocean to angle yourself out of the ocean and also to build speed the closer you get as you re-enter the water the closer you get to the angle at

which you left the water the more speed you build there are also um there are also ramps uh not ramps there are uh uh loops uh hoops that you go through and will boost your speed uh and basically the the point of the game is to chain together uh tricks chain together flips uh it's almost kind of actually fun strangely enough kind of tony hawk like in that in that regard because you're trying to chain together uh nice entries which are the when you re-enter at the same angle you left uh train together uh flips uh you can do corkscrews, and you can actually build your speed to the point where to these really crazy levels, the more you practice, you can build your speed to the point where you're leaping out of the water, flying up past the moon and Mars and Saturn

and grinding your dolphin on cosmic star beams or something. I'm not exactly sure what those things are but um if you it's always two you get exactly two minutes to do as many points as you want and i'm to a point now thanks largely to my uh to my work with the the flash game which is largely similar to this um where my trick chain always goes for the full two minutes. It's just a question of how much stuff can I work in there and how many different flips and corkscrews and different stuff can I sneak in. But if you haven't played it before, or even if you have, the mobile version works really well.

It's just you tap the right of right screen to tilt your dolphin down and to touch the left side of the screen to tilt your dolphin up. So it works pretty perfectly. But if you like those score chase games, trying to outdo your friends and always the exact same amount of time, you always know exactly how long it's going to go, and like building your score that way uh it's it it works really well on mobile and i like it a lot it's called dolphin up it's called dolphin up uh the uh the question i was

thinking as you were describing it because it sounds pretty awesome but i sort of take issue with one aspect which is dolphins can't really survive in space oh no that's yes actually not that's true dolphins can't survive in space. Oh, no. That's actually not. That's true. Dolphins can survive in space. Really? Because they're smarter than people. They figured out how to go to space long, long before. Yeah, but without a space suit, they could just go up there?

Well, they're up there for such a short amount of time, they just have to hold their breath. So it's like Event Horizon, basically. Precisely like Event Horizon, but with dolphins. To me, it sounds like at least a Frank Boner jam. event horizon basically exactly precisely like event horizon but with dolphins it's to me it sounds like a lisa frank boner jam if you dig the lisa frank lifestyle i think i could say that lifestyle then you are going to love dolphin olympics like a dolphin skating on the beautiful rings of of saturn um it just yeah it just have either of you three ever played Dolphin Olympics? Oh, yeah.

No, I have. I know Griffin got up in that. You know the problem with the game, though? There's no problem. No, there is. If you're a big fan, you can't get a tattoo. Because if you get a tattoo of a dolphin jumping over a half crescent moon, you don't look like a fan of Dolphins Olympics.

You look like just a crazy person. No, just a fan of Dolphins. You look like that girl that's always in front of you when you're at a theme park and you're waiting to get on the roller coaster. You're like, who's this girl? Your wife? Yeah. Got him. Guys, my wife does not have a dolphin tattoo.

It's something called Weiser Frogs. Where's your face? Let me pick that up for you. So that is Dolphin Olympics. It is. No, it's called Dolphin Up. Dolphin Up. I don't know why I changed it.

Probably because they don't have the rights to use Olympics. That's what I think it is, which is so awesome to think of the Olympics committee saying, like, listen, this is not sanctioned. Like, yeah, no shit. It's got dolphins in it. What was that accent that the Olympics committee had? That was kind of a, it was like Brooklyn meets Helsinki. But anyway, Dolphin Up is really good, and you can buy it. It's $2, which as much as you're going to be playing it is a steal.

It's $1 a minute. $1 a minute. Can't argue with that. Can't argue with that. So that's my game, Dolphin Up. It's a dollar a minute. Dollar a minute. Can't argue with that. Can't argue with that. So that's my game. Dolphin Up. It's great. That's great.

I think it's time to move on. We don't have any more questions about dolphins, do we? There aren't any sharks in it. So I'm like half interested. God, if there were, that would actually be, for Dolphin Olympics 3, like I'm ready.

I think it's Dolphin Up, shark down. And then he goes, he goes deeper into the core of the earth. Just munching his way to the volcano at the bottom of the earth. That's how the earth works, right? There's a volcano in the middle. Yeah, pretty much.

I really don't know much about the middle of the earth. I know that the rock is down there, and he is just messing up those mole monsters, keeping us all safe, keeping the volcano core safe. There was a minute where i was half and half thinking is he talking about the actor or is he really did i say the rock because i meant i did mean brendan frazier i get those two confused all the time wait wait wait but the rock was in incredible no he was in journey two yeah two the center of the earth. We are to believe that Brendan Fraser evolves into the rock.

Right, you have to feed him three moths. You need a sunstone. He evolves into the rock. You need a sunstone and you feed him three moths. At level 30, if his happiness is full in the daytime, he becomes the rock. Did you guys see the... Can we take intermission now and then get to the other why not did you see this this i'm gonna have to find it this pokemon ios game that somebody's making oh

yes yeah you were really excited about it uh i am i am thrilled but the brazenness the brazenness of it is well i i'm gonna go ahead and say they could be more brazen because there was literally a game called pokemon yellow that someone stuck on the ios store and was like the top selling game for about three days before nintendo realized and shut it down yeah because nintendo doesn't know apple exists like so it could be more brazen in this case what was this called little creatures or something like that uh little masters little masters which sounds inappropriate um i mean it really does look like the pokemon on here really just look like the pokemon from from pokemon only they have like an extra horn are they cuter though uh no no no they're hornier uh arguably yes but like even But, like, even the things, like, the moves,

the same moves from the Pokemon. It's like, I'm not a child. You can do Scratch. Bubble Beam. There's Claw. But what's great is that they didn't make, like, back-facing sprites for each little master. So the Pokemon are facing away from each other in battle actively facing away

from each other which is just delightful um well aren't they facing one of them is facing they're both facing the screen right they're both facing you yes race to see who can beat you first um so so that's uh that's little masters that's my game for the week uh i don't know it's yeah it's good somebody make a fucking pokemon game for my ipad please please't know it's yeah it's good somebody make a fucking pokemon game for my ipad please please a good one this one might be good i don't know but the pokemon face away from each other so the pokemon facing away from you never looked that good in the original pokemon like no no yeah they always did look kind of disheveled yeah um yeah they would have like horrible bacne yeah they look like it looked like martin lawrence dressed as a pokemon to infiltrate to infiltrate a crime ring blue streak 2 i can't wait

i don't maybe this is this is i'm learning unity i don't know if i've caught caught you guys up on my quest to become the master you mentioned that you were taking those tests through that website i finished it yeah i finished the javascript course how is it going like what's the new thing that you're i'm i'm watching a video series on unity it's something like 400 videos or something like that um that that takes you through like making like a simple object hunt game and then uh like a 2d platformer and then a 3d platform i don't know why you would go beyond object hunt because that's clearly the best game ever yeah like i think the genre is really the peak of all gaming so uh but a lot of people

are using unity now and it's the the trial version is pretty beefy and it's free uh if i want to upgrade it's 1500 so to me that seems like if i do that then i'm i'm gonna have to i'm gonna have to really own it really own this new thing yeah you're gonna have to get deep i'm gonna have to get super deep into it but um yeah that's where i'm at now i'm excited that's interesting you know what's more interesting the space shuttle which i saw yesterday i was like right up on the space shuttle that's crazy isn't that nuts what was the occasion so in uh new york city we have this boat called the intrepid uh it sits in the uh hudson river i am legend he hits golf balls off right yeah if you've seen that film uh he does hit golf balls off of it anyway uh it's for

years and years it's been like an aerospace uh museum that you can go on and you know chill out and just recently uh new york won the rights to display the which shuttle is it do you remember the main shuttle the enterprise shuttle sure not the one from Star Trek, which is fabricated, but the actual one that went into space. So you can go in there and sort of hang out with the space shuttle, which I did yesterday. It's really big, but here's my issue. You can't actually go in it, which seems weird.

Like, don't you want to know the mystery is locked inside? Yeah, but you opened that up and i mean kids are gonna have you know ill-advised sexual space adventures right teens and teens are teens are constantly constantly scanning the environment for dark dark nooks they can go into and then uh you know make make love i mean that's something for the resume, banging on a space shuttle. It definitely is. And that's why it would become a destination f*** spot for teens. Now, Russ, can you tell me more about the sex resume that teens possess?

Well, this is an idealistic sex resume. I wouldn't say. Have you ever heard the term notch in your belt? Yeah. This is like a, this is the belt is the resume only instead of putting a notch you would put you would carve in a little picture of a spaceship well no you'd have a belt buckle of the spaceship yeah and you just point to that and people would know that be like guess where i did it here and they'd be like your penis of course you did be

like no no no you you don't understand in fact that's a picture of the uss enterprise from star trek yeah are you worried about aren't we worried about the ruskies seeing that is that on yeah like if the ruskies see it they'll be like oh this is how you make it well okay so here's my theory is that this spaceship that they have on display is actually sort of a bogus spaceship that they want the ruskies to see so that when they do craft a spaceship which they haven't done yet i'm pretty sure russia has never made a spaceship before no when they do make one they're gonna make it all wrong they're gonna put like the windows on the back next to the engine and then it's just gonna be bad no when you said russia has never made a spaceship you mean

no one has made a spaceship because we've actually never been into space. It's all been just one giant hoax, right? Well, that's obviously. Yeah, I mean, I think we're going to all agree. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the only person that's been into space is that dolphin that Justin was talking about earlier. It's the only one who can survive. I wish that someone would make a remake of Dolphin only instead of playing a dolphin you play as richard garriott and literally everything else about the game is the same it's richard garriott

fixing his angle as he throws himself into the ocean trying to bring himself into heaven by the way except to which i would play that game is mind-boggling by the way sex resume wise i think rings of saturn are probably right there at the top. Yeah. You're right. You forgot the physics of that. I will. No kidding. I will empty my bank account for somebody to make Gary it up. I will. I will empty it. Griffin, that's why you became a programmer.

You're right. You can do this. If you know Dolphin Up Guy, if you can Dolphin Up Guy, if you just send me the code, if it's in Unity and also JavaScript. I've actually got his email address. Give me like a year and a half and I will probably know how to switch those two sprites out. How about fan art of Dolphin Up? If you guys can send that to us, that would be ideal.

But Garriott. Garriott sent Dolphin Up. All right. All right. Play it. Who's next? Next up is Griffin. Oh, how nice.

My game this week is Dyad. It is a... Oh, God. god this is gonna be i guess a racing game it's like a it's like a man it's not a race it is a it is a racing puzzle rhythm game it's bananas um basically you are uh moving down a, and you can move around all sides of the pipe. I guess it's circular, so it doesn't have sides, but you can go around the perimeter of it. And the core gameplay, it has a nice way of sort of ramping you up slowly through its different mechanics. And once it goes up to the next mechanic mechanic it almost never loses one of the older mechanics so that i mean even with after spending an hour with the game it's absolutely crazy how much stuff

you have to process at once but the basic thing is you uh hook uh enemies to move towards them and you gain speed by hooking pairs of enemies so they come in different colors so if you like hook a blue enemy and if you hook a blue enemy and then you hook another blue enemy, you'll make a pair and you'll move a little bit faster. And so there are things that can slow you down, like running into enemies, or if you hook an enemy

and then hook another enemy of a different color, it basically starts your pair over and you're constantly losing speed. So you want to keep these combos going of hooking enemies, but it builds so that you have to keep these combos going of hooking enemies but it it builds so that you have to keep other stuff in mind like you can drift by enemies to gain energy uh and then use that energy to do stuff like you can become a lance uh that destroys enemies and a guy named lance uh yeah you became you become lance bass okay and uh the faster you're going, the longer the Lance power-up lasts.

And then there's other mechanics that I haven't gotten to yet, like power-ups for invincibility. But the invincibility only makes you invincible to certain colors of enemies so that you can fly through them. But what's great about the game is, I mean aesthetically it's it's f***ing incredible it's it's a trip in in every definition of the word and the music is great um but what's great about the game is that it almost it challenges you to do these superhuman feats of reflex and and coordination that you don't think you're going to be able to do.

Like, I can't tell you how many times I've gotten into a level and reached, like, a speed and a difficulty that I'm just like, there's no, there's absolutely no way I'm going to be able to do this. But I'd get into this trance, and I would be able to do it. And it's rewarding in a way that few games are,

where you just get so overwhelmed, but you find a way to work through it. It's neat, and it's got a lot of score-chasing elements to it, which you're probably going to be into. But yeah, that's a very basic look at Dyad. I couldn't... To try and describe level 30 of the game would require a nove novella we're all

digesting yeah it I've seen it in action before but do you think it does a disservice do you think they've done a disservice showing as much of the game as they have because yeah I think so an appearance and it's very daunting I mean it's super daunting it's incredibly difficult but um yeah i it's i am not the kind of person who obsesses over mini games especially twitchy games because i i i am always the first one to bow out and be like people better than i are going to be this is going to be their realm and i'm fine with that i have games that i can i can enjoy um And yeah, like seeing it at events, seeing it like the creator Sean McGrath, like when he shows off level 30,

he's like, check out how crazy this game is. I'm like, you're right. That is crazy. I'm never going to play that game ever. Right. And yeah, I think that was probably a strategic error. But just starting off like the first few levels like it's it's really approachable um and and you really do have to educate yourself through that

you really can't hop into it halfway through those are the i think the best type of games i mean that's why i like spelunky so much i love games that are teaching you how to play them and that is i don't know spelunky throws throws you in the deep end pretty quick i mean spelunky from well it teaches you how to play it by killing you repeatedly yeah diet has a different educational flow where it's like it's baby steps baby steps um but there's there's a lot of baby steps and pretty soon you're still taking baby steps only you have 60 legs like a baby caterpillar like yeah like a baby cat yes exactly precisely what wasn't the game inspired by some sort of drug trip yeah i mean it looks like he's on a drug trip we asked the

guy that at e3 and he said he'd never done drugs before. But look at that guy's f***ing... Look at his f***ing beard. Not a chance. Isn't his wife... She, like, works for the Canadian Drug Administration or something? I thought there was, like, some connection like that that was, like, too incredible. He does look Canadian, though. Yeah. I can't remember what it was.

I don't know. There's a demo. There's a demo on the PSN. So that should... I think it's definitely worth trying. I think after a few minutes with the game, you will know whether or not it's the kind of thing that's just going to be too intimidating for you to get into.

But I really like it. I'm getting into the score chasing aspect in a way that I really haven't for a game since like Geometry Wars 2. I do think it's kind of funny though, because visually it's basically like, oh my God, this is the perfect stoner game. But you play it it's the total opposite of that like there's no chill like hazy atmosphere going on here it's like you need laser focus otherwise you're just gonna lose

i do think it's interesting that so far we have three similar games that are all like short burst uh twitch score chasing experience what was the other game tony hawk dolphin up and diane yeah you didn't like none of them are like similar at all i mean they're like other than that totally different i don't know i think that's interesting that at their core it's the same kind of type of game, yet for very different audiences. You do get points in them. Yeah, and you have a short amount of time, and it requires absurd amounts of skill once you reach the top level. Yeah.

Yeah. I think Dyad is probably harder than Tony Hawk, because in Dyad, you can't just stand still and press the X button over and over again. So let's finish this off. What do you have for us? Oh, I don't know. Just a little game called Field Runners 2.

It's Field Runners, but again. You didn't come with a voice this time. No, I didn't. I thought about it, but pretty much all the voices I could come up with. Can we talk about your performance lately? We're racist. Can we have a review? You've been letting me down lately with your with your lack of bomb was there a time when he was letting you up last week was high i think we might have

peaked did i miss it yeah i guess yeah you missed it i just got pushed out a window and killed oh man it was like yeah it was full foley, yeah, radio play performance, theater of the mind shit. It was great. I just, I missed the bombast, I guess. Oh, you don't think I have bombast anymore? Oh, I brought it. I just think some weeks you phone the bombast. Somebody's at the door.

No, this is, I can't. Somebody's at the door. Who's that at the door? Can't force it. I thought about Sally Fields. I thought that was going to be a bad idea. I don't want to. Oh, Sally Fields would thought that was going to be a bad idea I don't want to Can you give me

Two seconds of your Sally Fields impression I'm a flying Nun See I thought you were going to go like fried green tomatoes No I went flying nun I don't know if you caught that By what I said No I'm going to talk about

Field runners too for a second if you don't mind. How many here have played Field Runners 1? Uh-huh. Not me. Okay. It's a tower defense game, which we're all pretty familiar with. Oh, then I have played it. Really?

No, that was a joke because all tower defense games are the same. Oh, balderdash. a joke because all all tower defense games are the same oh balderdash uh so field runners was kind of the first tower defense game to sort of bring the heat i think there had been tower defense games before that but they bring the high stinky cheddar to bring the cheese um because there have been tower defense games before that but this was the first one that was like pretty overly polished and uh like clearly was like a full-on product whereas before it was just sort of like flash games mostly uh for field runners 2 they've basically taken the concept and expanded it with a ton more towers

like it's it's almost like call of duty in the sense that you can like pick your load out of towers that you're bringing into each game uh which is cool there's probably i think there's like 15 or 12 towers and they also do some crazy stuff with the runners so before actually in pretty much every tower defense game uh what they usually follow a very strict path and sometimes you need to force the guys on a strict path uh in this they sort of can run anywhere they want so long as it's open so what you can do is you have full freedom as to like guiding huge numbers like hundreds and hundreds of enemies at once through these like tunnels and loops and stuff like that to sort of take advantage of the situation.

That's thrilling for people that like those games. Not so much for other people, I realize. In other things that are good... Do you already give up on your game? I'm sort of half giving up. Do you want feedback? Oh, rad. Yeah, that would be awesome if you could do that

oh you like that uh there's also they also completely redid the graphics so they're full retina display graphics uh only on your iphone shut up i'm talking i'll bring that up stop it stop interrupting don't worry it's not on ipad so um there's full retina display graphics the graphic style uh is similar to field runners one, but they up res it. And it looks very like Pixar. Sort of cars too. No more like up like dolphin up.

It looks like nice. And he tried. There's a, Oh, so there's this whole like map screen that they added with like, there's got to be like 20 or 30 missions. I haven't beaten the whole thing yet, but there's a ton of missions and a lot of different modes that they added. So like there's a survival mode where you only get like three hearts and they're just sending tons of guys and you just have to kill as many as you can in a limited amount of time. Time trial.

And you're telling me that these uh missions you call them are on yeah are they put them on a map yeah it's it's like a it's like a mario map you know when you're picking levels in mario i got a question for you do you think that maybe we've been duped and that every game russ has ever brought is actually super boring but his funny voices made him a little more appealing this game is good yeah but you're doing the worst it's got a f***ing map this time you guys it's it's hard oh you gotta check this come on no but seriously like tower defense as a genre just describing it is really sounds pretty damn dull because it's you know you just kind of find it pretty damn dull

i i find it really good strategically i think it's you know you just kind of find it pretty damn dull i i find it really good strategically i think it's interesting when you're picking like which tower to put down and stuff like that here's here's what it comes down to uh but i guess it's like what why like what why does this exist this feels like a more refined uh more variety filled tower defense game you know but can i the tower defense games I get super into are games like Dungeon Defenders and... What's that one that's really big on that? Huh? Kingdom Rush, yeah.

Where you not only have these towers that you can place. Kingdom Rush even did this only to a limited extent. Dungeon Defenders did it a lot. Where you could actually, in addition to placing these static automatic placements you had more direct control okay anomaly warzone earth is another great i like that i've got something to say to that because this they actually this is something i forgot about and thank you for reminding me uh this they added um abilities, very similar to Kingdom Rush,

where before you jump into a level, you can basically select proximity mines or freeze, or there's like six or seven of them. You can poison the whole field, and basically you can use those whenever you want. So they act like the active abilities that you're talking about um i think just it adds a lot more strategy because you're picking your load out and deciding how you want to best deal with the situation yeah it's funny because you know what game got that really right even though the

game was not fun in the least and i'm gonna get in trouble for saying it wasn't fun from its super fans but brutal legend like oh first of all there's no super fans of Brutal Legend. Oh my gosh, there are, and they are intense. It's not like Brutal Legend at all. I think they're super fans of... Everything? Double Fine. Yes.

It's not like Brutal Legend at all. But what I'm saying, that was actually a great idea in Brutal Legend of letting you troll around and beating crap up. But you don't do that in this game. I know. I'm saying maybe this game could learn a thing or two from a game that is not good. From a game that everyone loved like Brutal Legend.

No, this only speaks of how much I don't want to play your game. If Brutal Legend had something going for it, the game doesn't. It didn't. It sucked. Man, maybe if your game had more Jack Black. Oh, my God. Comedic stylings of the Jack. Here's the thing.

I think there's a ton of people out there, apart from you guys, that played the original Field Runners. And loved it. And loved it. And I think this is a pretty sizable expansion to what they were doing in the first game. And I think those people are going to think it's baller. Moms, grandmas, little nephews, this game is for you. Those guys? Those guys, yeah. And Sally Fields. grandmas little nephews this game is for you those guys those guys yeah and sally fields well this podcast started off really nice and then got super mean spirited by the end oh well that's sort of you know we had that's the breasties trademark arc the breasties we were nice

until you brought up a bad game it's not it's not even a bad game actually it's not i acknowledge how poor i am at describing games power defense is so boring to talk it is it's not it's not even a bad game actually it's not i acknowledge how poor i am at describing games power defense is so boring to talk it is it's a really tough genre to talk about when you when you're fighting against dolphins in space and whatever game griffin brought that i don't remember anymore laser it's laser lance laser lance uh it's difficult to say like strategy towers stuff like that um but, I think enough people bought Field Runners 1, and those people should definitely get 2 because it's awesome. This is just a separate side note.

While people are working on the Richard Garriott Up game, can somebody also get a head start on a Lance Bass version of Dyad where it's just Lance Bass flying through the infinite circle of color. I love it. I'd buy that. Chris, you need to pick a best game. Okay. I'm gonna go over some of the things that are in my head right now.

Field Runners 2. You should definitely download it. Oh, absolutely. But it's horseshit. I want it on my iPad. It's not there. I do want to talk about this, though. though okay so it is not a universal app um i i need to i'm going to download it on my ipad and see how it looks if you do the two times thing because it is retina graphics so it'll look probably look pretty good on an ipad um you can still do that you realize that right griffin you can Yeah, I'm not a child.

Yeah. So I was disappointed that it didn't have universal. So I asked them about it, and they were like, well, with the first game, when we put it out on iPad, it was sort of like a deluxe version of the game. And they want to wait and see what people want after the first game comes out, which sounds a little silly. They want to release it again and make more money yeah it sounds like that's

fine i don't yeah uh but yeah i was disappointed that it wasn't a universal app yeah so i actually i think there is more of a good game available in field runners 2 than dolphin up i i like dolphin up a lot i love that i i I love Dolphin Olympics on the Flash game. But, I mean, you said it yourself, Justin. At a certain point, you're hitting the combos for the whole two minutes. It doesn't sound like there's much going on after that. Am I right? No, you're absolutely incorrect.

I mean, you can always, first off, you can work more tricks into a session, but it's also about perfecting your angles so you can always first off you can work more tricks into a session but it's also about perfecting your angles so you can get even higher and then learning to grind on the star beams and stuff is is a lot of challenge too i mean that's why you keep playing it because you can always improve your score and get better scores there are people who are in the hundreds of millions and i'm like long way away from that for growth oh's room for growth. Oh, yeah. By keeping my combo going, I just meant that like I'm able to keep my jumps and falls in such a way that like I don't lose my streak. The only time you lose your streak is when you belly flop and don't have like a nice, nice, slick.

Yeah, but it's still the same, effectively the same game and the same level that you're playing over and over again yeah i mean it's not like a sequel to another game that is in the same genre oh no no i don't think either of your games win sorry dyad wins pop pop yeah that's that's i mean yeah dyad is really good i've've played a lot of it. It's great. And both of your games are like other stuff. Dyad is crazy. Dyad is cray cray. It's true.

I can't think of any other game that Dyad is similar to. But let's get to the real question. No. Is it better than Spelunking? Is Grazing and Lansing better than Spelunking? I would say no. No. I mean, these are both. I'm on record as not enjoying Spelunking, so I'm more than willing to throw my heat behind Dyad.

These are both excellent games. These are excellent games. They're both incredibly good in totally different ways. It's a really tough call. I feel like Spelunky in many ways is more accessible than dyad but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a better game yeah no i i've played both of them a fair bit and i still as much as i really really dig dyad i gotta say spelunky is there's something about the aesthetic of spelunky and not even the aesthetic, but the concept of it,

that it just feels heartier. It feels like at the end of the year, I'm going to remember the experience of playing Spelunky more than I'll remember Dyad. And that's not to say that Dyad is forgettable. It's just the... Yeah, Dyad has the luxury of changing its gameplay style pretty much every level.

Whereas Spelunky sort of has to exist in the same realm but constantly manages to like reinvent itself the experience of like mastering a score chase game is incredibly fun and addictive in the moment and i think even it it has legs beyond that um because i still look back on like Geometry Wars 2 with a fair amount of fondness. But you remember playing the world of Spelunky? And I think that that makes it... Dude, I stuck bombs on Satan's face in Spelunky.

I haven't gotten that far. Jesus. You might never make it that far that's a hidden level that like what what were the numbers we calculated for people who actually even seen that uh it was like it ended up being like one percent of one percent it's about like yeah like one in a thousand one in a thousand give or take i've gotten there so i'm awesome so yeah i think spelunky this this is tough it's usually most weeks we can just be like oh there's no way this game is as good as but it is diet i think diet is close but i i think

spelunky is the more it's more game of the year material than than diet is but still definitely definitely go play it all right and that is going to do it for us for this week for the besties. We hope you've enjoyed yourself. And if you would like some more, go to the verge.com forward slash gaming. That's where all the polygon content lives for now. You can subscribe to us on YouTube. It's YouTube slash polygon, Facebook slash polygon,

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