The Besties - The Besties Podcast XXIX (archive)

Episode Date: September 20, 2012

Special thanks to Salivation Army for recovering this episode from the archive! 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!

sorry about your luck but yeah well you know someday i'll get this mri someday i'll find out if there's a tumor in my ear that's fun stuff seeing um seeing your brain i see the folds of it i hope i can see the part where creativity is do you know i can't have an mri why because i uh i had my my jaw was broken so they put like lots of metal in my i hate when my jaw was broken, so they put lots of metal in my face. I hate when my jaw was break. Yeah, right? I'm like, come on, guys. Just get it together. They said I'd look like Wolverine.

If they did an MRI, it would be like the adamantium being pulled out of my face. Cool. And it would just rip through my skin. Cool. I had an MRI once, and they looked at my optic nerve, and it looked like I had two eyeballs on it. One right behind the other one. I was like, hey, sup with that? And they're like, ah, don't worry about it.

It's cool. It's cool. It's cool. It's cool. Whoa. Doctors don't know what they're doing. What if like that was the eye that like saw reality and like the eye in front of it is like just the complacent eye and like a fictional reality? I think I absorbed it.

And I'm the twin. And I stall. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I have scientific evidence that says that my game is, in fact, the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I brought an app. Good. My name is Chris Grant, and I am going to, I guess, judge which actual game is the best. Yeah, that's the way it works here on the Besties,

in which we pit the hottest, latest, newest titles of the week against each other. They battle in Mortal Kombat, one reigns supreme, and then we pit it against our reigning champion to see if it is our new game of the year. Chris, what is our current reigning champion oh god yowzers yowzers i remember is it still mark of the ninja is it mark of the ninja still mark of the ninja has it only been one week well wait last week we talked about the Wii U, so we didn't have games last week. Okay, quick sidebar about the Wii U. I got an email from Chris Plant on Saturday, the Saturday after we recorded the Besties,

and he said the subject is I had besties. And he said, uh, the subject is I had a dream. And he said, I had a dream in which you told me I was obligated to give every last video game, a fighting chance. I woke up and pre-ordered a deluxe Wii U from Toys R Us. Thanks for the most expensive dream ever.

And then I read that email and I thought, Oh man, I haven't pre-ordered mine yet. I better, I should probably pre-order one too if chris is going to so both chris and i were i don't know spiritually guilted into pre-ordering we use they got you they they got you somewhere reggie fils-aimé is lying back in a chair pumped of drugs, and he's jacked into some sort of internet. And he's just, he's, he's wifi incepting every single game blogger in the universe.

I'm telling you between that and the, the limiting of stock, GameStop has already sold out of the deluxe Wii U. That's great. Cause what did they get? Did they get 15 of them? Is that, is that what happened?

It's crazy town. Justin, I actually wasn't totally honest with you. Okay. So the dream, you were at the end of a grander dream in which it was me and Reggie playing a pickup game of hoops. And he said, you know, we'll play. And if you win, I'll buy a new ipad and if i win you got to get that deluxe shiz and then you got to get all your your friends to get that shiz too and it was a

close game it came down to a three-point buzzer was it a close game because reggie fils-aimé probably has uh 16 feet on you yeah but no in my dream'm 20 feet tall. Did he try to make small talk like, hey, so Chris, did you happen to watch the latest episodic release of Breaking Bad this week? Chris, you're our commish. Maybe you should tell us who you want to pitch their game first. Oh, have you played anything this week? I've been playing Mark of the Ninja, which you guys have already thoroughly vetted i've also been playing a little game we call borderlands 2 don't talk about that one too much because you'll be able to contribute yeah i can talk about it uh so how about this because i like to hear myself talk let's start with griffin so we can get right into b2 um my game of the week is

borderlands 2 it is a um it is a shooter of the first person variety uh you know everybody i feel like it's silly to describe what the what the game is it's a first person shooter class-based four-player co-op big old open world quests a bunch of loot and uh it's got it's real edgy it's got a very edgy uh motif to it um and uh it's the second one so it's better than the first one um and it's got this robot in it and the robot is a real cut up um no it's it's it's very good i it is it has its fair share of flaws arthur addressed a lot of them in uh in the review i think its biggest issue and i'll go ahead and and do your guys work for you the uh the quests are often not very good uh the the two problems are almost all of them are sort of mmo-esque fetch and retrieval quests um which is which is rough

because you'll like get a quest in the main hub town and then travel to where the quest is get the thing and then have to travel all the way back to the main hubtown. Of course, there's fast travel and stuff like that that helps that process out a little bit, but it's still not very fluid. And what makes it worse is that you can, like, track the quests and look at them on your map, but you can have, like, a ton of quests in your queue, but you can only track one of them at a time, which means only one of them shows up on the map at a time, which is befuddling because you will run out and do a quest and return it and then realize that you just ran straight by four different quests that you could have been doing.

That's the Dead Island problem. It's not only an MMO problem, it's an antiquated MMO problem because even like wow whenever you look at the map it shows you where everything is including all of your quest objectives it uh like it's crazy to me that that is not a thing that you can do um that aside it is it is very very good it scratches the diablo itch really well it's got this enormous enormous open world um that will take like months to catalog i've been trying to stay away from reddit because uh whenever i'm looking for news for the site uh like that's the

only place we find news every single yeah every single reddit update has like check out this crazy easter egg that i found in this corner of the world that nobody's been to yet um you feel like that sense of exploration is very very much alive um which is good because you're going to be going over that world a lot as you do these as you do these quests um now the the sort of the the bad things about the quest almost actually lend themselves to the co-op because you can jump in and help somebody out with a quest that you've already done. Or maybe you haven't already done and you don't feel like, oh, man, this is a quest that I should be doing for myself in my game. I feel like that's an issue that RPGs, like multiplayer RPGs, have is that, like, if you hop in and help somebody out with a quest that you haven't done yet, the only thing you can think is, i gotta do this one later too i don't want to do it twice um i guess i'm saying some of the quests are so bad that you won't feel like doing them twice and so you don't have um but

the customization is like leaps and bounds above borderlands like you uh you can customize the look of your character you get uh you can unlock these class mods that change the title of your character like uh there's the four basic classes that then branch out like my commando is now an engineer because i applied an engineer class mod that uh i think like makes my turret stronger or something like that there's there's it seems limited the what you can do with the classes but it does does, it really takes, like, two hours to realize that it is actually very, very deep. I was in a group with another engineer, or another commando, and, like, our play styles were just completely different. So, yeah, it's neat.

It's a really fun co-op experience. The quests are not great, but, but they're they're all i mean they're almost all optional the the story quests are usually much more uh there's a lot more variety in there so here's what i want to know griff you do you lol and or raffle at clap's antics? God, I don't know. Yeah, the writing in the game is, for the most part, good. I can't get down on comedy that is really self-aware. I don't think memes are very funny on the internet anyway and i feel like when you put that stuff in the game it's like yeah we know about memes too can you believe it

and it's like yeah i wicked can i think that there's like some really fun writing in the game and then there's some stuff that tries so hard that comes across as desperate it comes across as like please like me and claptrap i have not even cracked a smile at him yet. Yeah. Do you know who he is, Claptrap? He's one of the devs, right? Well, no. The guy playing.

He's Red Leader in Star Wars. Remember that? Like, I can't shake him. I can't shake him. It's like if you took that character and then just took that irritating voice and spread it for an entire game, you would have Claptrap. But it's not even that. It's like he comes. I mean, it's so.

I feel like it's kind of poking fun at the bro-y, frat-y mentality. But by doing it, it really is, in fact, itself becoming bro-y and frat-y. Right. And Claptrap is the most annoying character. It's the Matt Haz mac hazard problem right of that you can you you can parody something but you can't parody it by doing it also and like that doesn't fix your problem it's like when a hipster shotguns a beer it's uh it's the dawson's creek dilemma really oh i'm way into this hit me i just you know we're teens we're making a movie about teens

uh it's so terrible can you believe all these tropes are using in the movie what can you can you imagine if real life was like that what if our lives were like that it is like that watch the show anyway um yeah no but every other character I feel like is entertaining. I like Dr. Zed. I like the mechanic guy. For me, that's not the appeal. The appeal to me, I love a game with a good progression system. And this one has it in spades. I like getting new guns. And it's not just that the guns are more powerful.

They do, like, crazy stuff. Like, I will use a gun that is weaker than that new hot gun i just found if the my old gun when i reload it i throw it like a grenade like that's that's fantastic i'm a big big fan of that um so so i still get excited about that part of the game and if if you like that stuff then you're gonna you're gonna like this too i feel like i have i feel like i was i have a good defense like not defense but um i have been acclimated to this because i have played a lot of mmos and it really does seem like an mmo quest structure but um it's it's much more fast-paced and fun especially when

you get four players in there like all shooting at a boss it's complete may fast-paced and fun, especially when you get four players in there, like, all shooting at a boss. It's complete mayhem. Can you tell me if this is the right reading of Borderlands 2? Because this feels like a game that was really hyped, because Borderlands 1 was, like, kind of neat ideas in a really rough package. And Borderlands 2 was going to come out, and I was, like, my perception was,

okay, they're going to fix all those things, and then it's going to be a sequel. Like, we're going to get lots of crazy new stuff, too. And really what they did was they just fixed Borderlands 1. No, I think that the different progression mechanics, I really do think it adds much more to the game. I couldn't get into Borderlands because I never felt like my character in borderlands was was my character i felt like i was just progressing the same way that everybody else was progressing with this character and i can't that is a that's a dead

stop for me um i feel like the way that they've changed that is is really huge um i don't know about newer i just think it's bigger and i think that's how they've marketed the game and it's not wrong it is it is absolutely enormous um but yeah i don't know i still think there's room for improvement i think that the i i don't know i i think the quest thing could be patched like just let me see where everything is on the map that's that is so unintuitive and awful like i i do not know how they didn't catch that and play like oh man this is really the only thing i can think is it makes the game artificially longer because you're you know what i mean like you have to go yeah and they didn't need that right no he didn't because it's already super long i don't know but in his review and this is kind of impossible to understand he said

in his review that he played something like 40 50 hours of it by the end of it um he didn't do most of the side quests and he still hadn't seen the entire map but he had retread and backtracked over a ton of the map he did see so like on the main story quest they're not they're having you backtrack while leaving whole chunks of the map you know closed off and i guess accessible through side quests it just seems weird that they would like you know like why would you maybe make the side quests have the backtracking and there's there's a few there's a few problems. And the first and biggest is the fact that you can't see everything in the map.

I think the town hub idea is just awful. Because if you're doing fetch quests, by the very definition of them, if you have to fetch, like, 100 away that's that is the opposite of fun like take a if you want to follow that mmo structure i think there's a way you can do it in an offline game you just have to do it well like in world of warcraft if you go to a new area you will find clusters of quests that have you go to an area nearby and then when you finish that cluster you go to another cluster that's also nearby and by the end you have finished exploring an entire area and done all of the quests in that area

without running all around the goddamn world borderlands is like come back to this one hub go out into the world somewhere do it and then come back like there's quests out in the world too but i feel like most of the things i do are for the Sanctuary Hub. Anyway, do better. Still a good game, though. Alright. So, what are you talking about, Justin?

What's your game? I can talk about FTL, but unless we want this show to come to a devastating decrescendo, we should probably just do Plants next. Okay. Tell us about the exciting, action-packed, totally unique game that you're bringing to today's The Besties. Making it sound like you don't like it already. No, I don't even know what it is.

I'm sure that it is very unique and that the gameplay mechanic in it is new and that we're going to be excited to hear about it. Okay, I'm going to give you the title, and you tell me what you think this game is okay the game is called raymond jungle run huh okay what type of game do you think that is when you hear that it's probably a platformer i bet i'm gonna say like a life a life sim based on everybody loves raymond uh no that sounds much i don't want to say better but better that sounds good uh he's on parenthood now guys i don't know if you're watching that stuff but oh man listen he speaks to me he's great we can okay so this game uh i'm surprised you said platformer because it is a platformer but when i hear run in an ios title i think a

really bad cannibal ripoff especially if it has an established uh ip already on top of it it's like burger king run the king's gonna he's gonna run wait hold on a second is that real patties is burger king run real how does kid vid how doesvid do it? He's in a wheelchair. He just wheels. Kidvid will wheel. Isn't Kidvid? So, you know what? I think Temple Run. I think the behind the player you know sort of thing. That's my...

You mean Pitfall? Pitfall Run, yeah. Just like Pitfall. So this game, it should just be called Raymond Origins iOS or something. Because it's a really smart design in which they took the controls of an endless runner, but they put it in a traditional platformer format. So you have 40-some stages, each of which have a beginning and an end, and you have collectible items.

The difference being the computer does have you running constantly. You're always moving from left to right. But you can actually subvert it by using walls and wall jumps and enemies even to kind of propel yourself against the current to find hidden areas. So you're not just, you know, moving on a flat surface from left to right. You can actually kind of reverse the flow of the game by using bounce pads and everything to find secrets. So it still feels like a platformer in the sense that this world is explorable,

but you don't have to worry about all the pains that would come with trying to play a platformer on a touchscreen system uh and it looks exactly like the game on on xbox 360 which i guess that means it doesn't take much to power it on a console but it looks stupid good on an iphone retina display so it's basically like the treasure tricky treasure levels is what it sounds like um kind of just that sense of momentum yeah yeah it is kind of like that it's somewhere between the normal levels and the tricky treasure levels and there are ones that are more like those things where you really are just speeding through it uh collecting

things that you know a breakneck pace but there are some where you kind of do stop just by you know running into things and kind of map out which direction you want to go uh i mean ultimately if you want to beat the game if you want to get you know every collectible uh and unlock all the bonus stages you have to play it like that where you're moving constantly and you're kind of subverting what the game wants to pull you to do. But the first go-through, it is somewhere in between. I don't know. How many bucks is it? It's $2.99.

You guys sound really down on this. Oh, my God. Can I be honest? I've tried to do the Rayman thing. Are you kidding? You're gonna trash Rayman? I'm... No, I'm not gonna trash Rayman.

I'm sure he's great. I'm sure he's... Did you really not like Rayman Origins? Are you serious? I just... Nothing about it clicked with me. I just didn't... No way.

You're kidding me. I really don't like platformers. Like, as a rule. I don't dislike platformers. I think I like them more than I do. I just... I never have gotten... I can't remember the last platformer i got into like really got into was it was a booger man charm what it's not that it's just like the mechanics don't appeal to me

they're not the kind of mechanics i not a lot i think or i just don't think it's fun to jump around on things and like explore and look for hidden track it just doesn't i don't know it doesn't click with me just on these games where you get to shoot people that are a different ethnicity than you are no that's not that's that's fundamentally untrue i just don't think platformers are very fun i don't like yeah they were just a little more xenophobic it would be totally cool yeah right i want raymond to have a turban on his head, basically. Raymond stomping Irish people. Yeah, right. If it's not like a real dirty Japanese dating sim, then Justin, just no interessante.

Yeah. If it doesn't have tentacle intrigue, I'm not. Tentacle intrigue? Is that what you said? Tentacle intrigue. Onomimoshi Tentacle Intrigue 4 is actually the pinnacle of the series. It's where they, it's all rotoscoped using puppetry. Yeah, Studio Ghibli, I think, helped out on that one, right? Yeah, Studio Ghibli did. He was like, you've got my axe. Let's make a tentacle porn game.

Studio Ghibli really, they were very helpful. For a brief second, I thought it would be great if Somebody did some fan art of that But now I thought about it for one second Please do not Please don't Whatever happens do not do fan art of that What about Gimli but his beard

Is coming down but his beard turns into tentacles Nope let's stop talking about it Let's just forget about it and move on It's probably best if we just forget about it. Here's what I'm going to say, you guys. Probably a lot of people who listen to this didn't play Rayman Origins last year, even though it was one of the best games that came out.

If you missed on that, you're a dunce. Yeah. And so here, $2.99. You can get a pretty good idea of what that game feels like. Play it on the App Store. And then if you like it, be like, I wonder what that game feels like play it on the on uh on the app store and then if you like it be like i wonder what this would feel like if it was bigger and better and had four player co-op on the same screen and then go and get raymond origins yeah it's good or if you if you like me you are one of the goobers buying a wii u uh get that other new

raymond sweet stuff raymond legends it is it's one of the best games on on the vita right now too um it's it's a lot of fun to take on the road and it is the best platformer uh i think that's going to be available on wii u we'll see but i would be shocked if new super mario brothers had any more creative uh juice in it than the new raymond i you keep saying raymond it's weirding me out i am rayman i rayman i had a confession while you guys were talking i was checking gamestop because i i have not pre-ordered yet i just figured i would and it wasn't in a rush you know oh it's gone it's gone like but like how they had like eight they had like 14 of them yeah and they always get in trouble they don't want to do that again do you remember how the 3ds they had uh they shipped out roughly

hold on let me punch out the numbers here 16 trillion of those they sent them out and then people were like oh well we're gonna discount these by about 200 and then they sold them for about 25 each and then nintendo lost all the, and now they all live on the street. Do you remember how Satoru Iwata now lives on the street? He lives in a box car, and he travels from country to country, and just throwing Nintendo 3DSs at children. Do you remember how it used to be

that now Satoru Iwata lives on the street? Do you remember how that is right now? Do you remember how Satoru Iwata has to sleep in just a big pile of wild dogs on the street to stay warm? On those cold, cold Japanese streets, just sleeps in a big wild dog pile. Do you remember if you think back that one time that is happening right now where they had to eat Nestor to stay alive? I hope Howard Lincoln doesn't catch wind of that because he's going to regulate they don't want that to happen again so instead they cut it down from 200 trillion to 14 and now there's 14 and 14 lucky kids as far as i can tell there's still 200 trillion of the 300 crap version that doesn't come with any of this stuff.

So it doesn't come with a $60 game. It has one quarter the built-in memory. It doesn't have a charging stand. Save $50. Like, I wouldn't... How many parents are going to buy that shiz on Thanksgiving Day thinking they did good?

And then Christmas Day is going to come and baby Chris is going to be like, that shiz on Thanksgiving Day thinking they did good. I'd give them $100. Baby Chris is going to be like, take it back. The kid unwraps it and just barfs right on it. It's the Nintendo 64 kid. He's older now. He's in college. Oh, fucking great.

Thanks, Dad. I guess. I have an announcement for everyone. This Rayman game looks beautiful and is fun. I take it all back, Dad. I guess. Marv. I have an announcement for everyone. This Rayman game looks beautiful and is fun. Thank you. So I take it all back, Chris. You bought it? That's too bad because I'm going to end up pushing for your game, so it's not going to win anyway.

It's gorgeous. I'm looking at it right now. It's gorgeous. Three bucks. I mean, it's genuinely lovely to look at. And if you act like three bucks is a lot of money, I'm going to come over there and punch you in the nut. It's big, big money, Chris.

Hey, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, Mr. Oh, I've got my mansions in Philadelphia, a fish town, big guy. Hey, my house costs less than $3. So think about it. Hey, real quick, for halftime here, I wanted to see if you guys had gotten iOS 6 yet and see if you think it is like the snooze of the century. Because I got it and I was, I don't know. Usually an iOS release is met with some anticipation. But, man, it just is.

I don't give a crap. And I have an iPhone 4 if that colors it any. I've got an iPhone 5 in front of me right now. And I have iOS 6 on it. and I'm not sure what's new. It's got new maps. That's it. Yeah, which apparently aren't very good. Yeah. So, great, great, great gerb.

Yeah, I don't – I honestly am hard-pressed to tell you about the new features in iOS 6. The App Store looks a lot better. Yeah, but they could do an update on that any day of the week. I don't need a new operating system. That's like saying, hey, Steam has a client update. You need the new version of macOS. Yeah. What?

Not exactly. But, yeah, like the maps, I guess. And I guess Siri does some stuff. My phone doesn't do Siri. But Siri's new things are like, she can do movie times now. And it's like, hey, how about an API? So that she can do like a million things. I don't know.

Is that stuff different on my iPad, too? Yes. Yeah, on your new iPad. My iPad 3. Your iPad 3 has Siri. Yeah. My iPad Max doesn't have Siri. It has Siri on iOS 6.

Oh, it does? Yeah. Bye, suckers. I'm going to go talk to a robot. iPad 2 doesn't because of something about microphones. It doesn't have enough microphones. It's got a microphone. It doesn't have the right...

It doesn't have enough microphones. I've been thinking about getting into that Lumia because I've been looking. I love the Android App Store. It's got such a renegade spirit to it. Like nothing on it is very good and most of it is illegal, pirated, stolen copies. And like I like that.

It's got like a whole gray market. Yeah, you realize it's Windows 8, right? It's Windows Phone 8, which is even... So that's similar to the Android App Store being kind of a renegade, except it doesn't have any of the... It doesn't even have the Pirate stuff in it. It's just empty.

Yeah. Well, I don't want that. What's a good Android? The Galaxy, yes. Robocop. Is that an Android, or he's an Android, right? I don't know Robocop. So, yeah, iOS X, I think, is kind of a snore.

I had a fun encounter this week I was noticing how my area does not have LTE and it is also not on the list of coming soon properties like not on the list of places coming soon to have LTE, but Verizon had LTE

in my area. And so I said on Twitter, like, yo, I'm out. You're on AT&T, right? Yes, I'm on AT&T, right. Well, they own your ass. Right. But I was an empty threat, because, like, I'm on a shared plan with my wife.

I'm not going to go through the hassle of switching providers for something for LTE. Or switching assholes, because AT&T owns it.'s in the that is in the eula of at&t they own your a-hole so i complain on twitter and they say okay just relax we're gonna dm you don't do this okay they dm'd you and said who ass is this who ass is this is this our ass i think this is our ass uh but why does it sound like you're in prison like because that's because our because my ass is theirs two cellmates are fighting over whose wife they're gonna have um so i they said listen there's good news we got lte in honey's room right now i'm like oh man are you serious they're like uh yes look at

this coverage map like okay I'm looking at it the coverage map on on AT&T is crazy if you haven't seen it it is all in shades of blue so like if you have cell phone service it's light blue if you can get 3G it's like a slightly darker blue if you you got 4G, it's a darker blue than that. And if you have LTE, it's the darkest of blues. So this guy didn't know the difference between the different shades of blue. I don't know if this fool was colorblind or what, but he tried to convince me that no, no, no, definitely, definitely do have LTE in the area. And then I later get a call that, sorry about that, Pedro was mistaken.

We don't have LTE in the area. Was that his real name or are you being racist? No, no, it's Pedro. Pedro was mistaken. We don't have LTE in the area, but look for it by the end of the year. Whoa. Whoa. And they're like, don't hold me to that.

But I'm like, okay, well, don't worry. You're AT&T. Like I literally, I couldn't if I wanted to because my ass is yours. Your whole ass. Your ass is yours, too. Yeah, the whole thing. All right, I'm going to talk about, can I talk about, speaking of LTE, can I talk about FTL? Oh, God, this game.

Let's do it. It's so good. Guys, this game. Turn it on. Okay, so, FTL. Good luck describing it. I say this in my review And it is very true

The hardest thing about FTL Is convincing people That it is As much fun as it is Because if you had Described it to me Before I played it I would have

I'm not sure I would have made it To the entire description But It is a And bear with me here it is a top-down space combat slash exploration sim with roguelike elements and strategy elements no okay and system maintenance and ship building okay so that's a lot of like uh that's a lot of sub genres there let me just tell you how what it is like um you captain the spaceship you name it

whatever you want you you hire you have a crew and you can name them whatever you want um it's all very basic uh both graphically and just sort of in the UI. I mean, you have the fundamentals there. So you can rename your crew, rename your ship, you set out into space, you're on the run from this huge fleet of rebels, and you're trying to get some vital information back to the Federation that you belong to. So the flow of the game is you planet hopping, flying from planet to planet, sector to sector, trying to escape the rebels and get back to the Federation with this information. On some of the planets, you'll find hostile rebels or pirates that want to take your ship and you have to destroy them. Sometimes it's a store where you can buy upgrades for your ship sometimes it's uh you know a random a random

story event like we want to do research on your crew and you know we'll pay you in credits or sometimes it's a distress call where you can go and rescue somebody for a reward or maybe it's a trap or whatever uh the really coolest thing about the game and the what really i think is the the best hook is the combat so it your main view when you're in a fight you don't control the movement of your ship what you control is uh targeting um every room in your ship is tied to a system so you have a shields room and a life support room and a weapons room. Right. An oxygen room.

And when enemies can target specific rooms and shut those systems down and you have to send crew members from your ship to repair those systems. If they're in an undamaged room, then they're providing a boost to it. from your ship to repair those systems. If they're in an undamaged room, then they're providing a boost to it. So you have to decide to pull them off of the system that they're supplying the boost to and go set them to repair the room, which they'll automatically do if you enter them into it. It's all very simple um from a control perspective uh you also have a limited pool of energy that you can shift between your different systems so if you are hurting and limping back to repair station maybe you want to put more energy into your shields or uh if you're up against an enemy with strong defenses maybe you want to push all your uh energy into and your

weaponry um when you are under attack the rooms can get damaged that sucks uh but sometimes they can also be set on fire which makes it dangerous to send your crew members into and you can do stuff like uh open the blast doors on your ship to let the vacuum of space in and suck all the oxygen in the room out um and and put the fire out that's more uh moving on to more advanced stuff there's like uh there's cloaking systems you can buy for your ship there's um you can you can teleport your crew members onto the enemy ship to try to take it apart that way um and there are so many different it's a it the reason it it shares with like the roguelike genre is you are almost always going to die it's usually a question of how far can you make it um because it is pretty

darn difficult but the uh the amount of different encounters you can have is really staggering, and it makes every playthrough feel like a new adventure. I never got frustrated when I got killed. I was ready to just get started and go again because I wanted to see what I was going to run into this time and readjust my strategy because it's so deep while being very easy to understand because it's all visually laid out for you on one screen. You know everything that's going on. It's just maybe you overinvest in shields, and then the enemy is able to send one mantis man over to your ship and eat everybody. And it's like, well, you don't have a crew now.

Perhaps you should have thought of this before. I was like, ah, damn it. Next time I'm going to have a droid on board that I can activate. That'll fight people that try to board my ship. And then, you know,

the next time who knows what you'll run into, but, um, it's like nine bucks right now on steam. Uh, and I've probably spent 15 hours playing it over the last week. I'm hopelessly hooked on it. A typical playthrough lasts about anywhere from a half hour to an hour typically

and it's like the most – it's a ton of fun. Plant, you've been playing it. What am I missing? Well, I want to talk a little bit about roguelikes in general because I love Spelunky earlier this year. In a weird way, I feel like they have a lot in common. In the sense, one, that they're roguelikes, but two, there's something about these games

that I'm starting to realize I love about video games in general that most games don't do right that cost a lot more to make. And that's the best video games for me tend to be cause and effect simulations like big machines of just vast like cause and effect systems so when i say that i mean uh in this game somebody targets your oxygen and they knock that out so suddenly you don't have oxygen and you have to run and refill the oxygen or everyone dies that was like that's a really simple cause and effect you know you can't worry about shooting them anymore because if you can't breathe you can't fight uh but then you see

like more complex versions of that where uh a fire started on my ship and it filled five rooms right away they like three three missiles just basically destroyed the ship and what i had to do was empty all the doors uh on my entire ship once. I opened all of them and it flooded the vacuum of space in which sucked all the air out which killed the fires but it knocked everyone's health down to two but it allowed them to continue operating the systems and that might say to it it lowered their health very low but it allowed them to keep operating the system so it was a quick choice that hurt everyone but then it allowed me to take out this ship at the last second so i got rid of all this fire without taking anyone off of their duty i

defeated this ship that was like way above my rank uh all because i knew kind of how to play that cause and effect uh and sometimes it works against you in really fun ways like for example there will be a fire in in a big section of your ship you'll open the doors, suck out all the fire and then an enemy missile will take out your doors will take out your door system so you can't reshut it so it's about like

oh god now I gotta send a guy into a room that doesn't have oxygen and he's gonna die but he has to fix the doors or else I can't fix the doors and that's why I can't and now something else just got shot while I was thinking about it. Sorry, just to finish this really quick. I think that's why cause and effects make for good storytelling. When you talk about this game, most games have a simple cause and effect.

It's you shoot him in the face and he dies. Or you shoot him in the body and he dies a little slower. And that's a first person shooter. There's not a whole lot of different things you can do. Well, here, there's so many things are tied to each other. You know, one thing happening in one part of your ship will affect everything else that you do, that it creates these hills and valleys of a story where you're like, well, the oxygen went out, so I saved the oxygen, but by doing that, I left myself prone to my shield, so then they blasted a hole in the front of the ship, so then I opened all the oxygen, but by doing that, I left myself prone to my shield. So then they blasted a hole in the front of the ship.

So then I opened all the doors, and with whatever oxygen I had left, I fired missiles, and I took them out, and then I leaped to a new planet just in time to survive. All these things are causing new things to happen, and you're having to react one thing after another. This sounds amazing, and I'm going to buy it thing after another this sounds amazing and i i'm gonna i'm gonna buy it when we're done with the podcast i'm gonna play it for the rest of the workday please don't tell brian i won't my my problem is and it's it's a problem that i've had with

all roguelikes that i've only just recently discovered is that i i understand that the mechanics of a roguelike of a good roguelike are built around the impermanence of it of when you die you're done um it's but it's hard for me to to really fall in love with that that model when it has these like great progression systems and you're getting stronger and you're learning and then it's over and then you and then you have to start over like there is a mode for you it is called easy the just and i had talked about this i don't like that i like where you you lose everything like i like a really hard roguelike that it's chaos and you can just lose for no reason other than trusting someone that they are a good guy and then getting on board their ship and finding out that they are actually sick with a flu that kills

your entire team like that that is i'm saying though that there's a way to work that kind of stuff into the game without the penalty which is the ultimate penalty next to like deleting itself off of your computer or console if you die the ultimate penalty that a game can can do to you is start you over there is a way to to give you that experience like take dark souls like dark souls has that same thing about learning and it has punishment but at the same time if you die like not all hope is lost that like i mean i don't like i don't like starting over in a game it seems counterintuitive to me and i understand that that makes me sound like a huge but no no no i completely griffin i agree with you i i and i do think i'm i'm a big proponent of um like i'm a big proponent of ethical design that doesn't that doesn't waste your time it

doesn't take your time for granted here's what i would say in in in terms of ftl and in a few instances one there is an easy mode where it's not super easy there's a lot i mean you're it's a lot easier and and you are frequently i mean you will frequently still die. So that can help with the experience. But if you die in easy mode, you still start over. You still start over. But wait, there's two other things. One is there are achievements in the game that you can use to unlock better ships. So if you get to the fifth sector sector for example uh then you unlock another ship

or yeah like a board cube and and that is permanent that is that does not go away with time so that is one thing the other thing i would say is that the game is laid out in such a way that it is designed to i don't know why this is i could probably figure out if i thought about enough but it is emotionally very easy to start over and and you're usually itching to start over by the time you die because if you do die it is typically very apparent to you what you did wrong um it's in these bite-sized chunks where that's just the ebb and flow of the game where it's constantly testing your defenses and testing your strategy and then when your strategy falls apart you're eager for a way to you're eager for

a chance to to try it again because you understand where it it went wrong um so between that and the the completely randomized nature of it, you know, it just feels like another story. It feels like a separate adventure where completing the game, we're getting the best ship, isn't really the point. It's about how do you do it

all the most efficiently. The progression is so different each time you play that it's not like Spelunky where you know that you didn't make it to world two you know like spelunky while it is different each time you play like it's like okay i am in the caves then i'm in the forest then i'm in the ice world then i'm in the tombs then i beat the game like here you don't feel like you've been shamed or that you haven't reached a you know a desired goal when you die it's not you feel like you've been shamed or that you haven't reached a you know a desired goal when you die

it's not you feel like you did your best it's thrilling i mean it really is like especially when you're up against a wall and you're in it's so many of those um the those moments from like tv or movie space battles when it's like push all the energy into this one thing or pull all the crew off this and put them all in the engine room working to repair the damage so I can get that one more shot off that I need um there's a lot of those like those great moments and it takes a lot of really complex elements and makes them that would normally put me way way off and by grounding them in the ship physically it makes it all very easy to take in just at a glance i mean you intuitively understand how this ship

works just looking at it um the only that's the only reason i would recommend the normal mode to even give it a try after you played the easy mode maybe for a while and gotten the hang of it is it makes you, uh, kind of a despicable person. You, you start like working with pirates who are taking advantage of people and are like, Hey, just take like,

just take five bucks. Look the other way. Just keep moving in the galaxy. Nothing to see here. You know, we, we both can come out of this doing pretty well because if you stop, if you try to be hero in this game,

you are punished. Like in normal mode. Yeah. punished. In normal mode, yeah. In easy mode, you're like the white knight of the solar system just gallivanting around like, oh, no problem. I'll take care of this guy. And on normal mode, it's like, well, listen, I'm not going to tell you your business. You are obviously a pirate. Yeah. So just go ahead and murder everybody on board and steal all their

gold and if you can just give me like a missile if you can give me like one missile then i'll just be on my way i got another nebula to explore and this is you've obviously got some cultural things going on here that i don't really understand the worst was somebody was like we have somebody on on board who who appears to just have a cold do you think you could stop for a second we give you all this money i was like hell no that cold is a zombie plague like you guys are on your own i'm booting and you don't know like even if you saw that exact same beginning of a quest you don't know if it's the good guy uh you know you're gonna get the good zombie guy or the bad zombie guy it's like good guy will join your crew and be really helpful. And it's like the bad guy will infect everybody on your crew.

I think one time I had an upgraded medical bay, and I actually healed him from space. Like, listen, you guys just chill for a second. I'm going to hit you with some beams and see if that don't sort it out. Because if not, I've got to be on that Lonesome Rise. You guys, i can't bring you on let's uh let's pick the winner okay chris grant i have one other question for you justin on ftl uh hit me tell me about the graphics because that's important to me um it is i would

say they're simple um not how high res are they the term retro aesthetic has become so like it's not really retro it's not it's not i wouldn't say it's met retro um i'm trying to think of a comparable i mean it's not realistic certainly um but i don't know chris what cues would you i would say it's just very simple hand-drawn representations of what this you know like when you drew uh ships in your uh elementary school like notebook did you ever do that where you'd be like oh this is a ship sure and this is these are my rooms and this room has this power uh it looks a lot like that if done very well yeah like it looks like notebook designs for your future Facebook,

or not your Facebook, your Starship layouts. Only other thing I would say about this game is it really needs to be on iPad. Oh, my God. I don't know how well it would control. I'm kind of mixed on that. It's all clicking. I mean, it's all. Yeah, but I use a lot of hotkeys.

I do use a lot of hotkeys too. That would slow things down. But I would really encourage anybody to give it a try. Because not only is it really great, there are so many other directions I could see them going with it. I'd love to see them get more into personalizing the the crew and yeah and maybe more permanence like like griffin talked about um the other thing is when people when you have crew members manning a certain station for extended periods of time then they become really good at it and you get bonuses for them manning that station so uh you know like when my uh weapons expert gun dude was on the guns for long enough,

then eventually my guns would be really solid. And the alien species that you pick up also have their own attributes built in that they're already good at. There's one that's sort of a, not a bug-like alien, but like a morph. A mantis. No, not the mantis, the electric. Oh yeah.

Dudes. There's these green Martian type fellows that if you put them into one of your rooms, they emit a electrical pulse from their body that actually charges the, the weapons and saves you some energy. So like each of the different crew members has their own. Yeah. I had one that had second sight and I could see where

people were walking around on other ships, which was great. Because then I was like, oh, they're all running to go fix this. I'm going to blast the hell out of that and just kill everyone on board. Yes, the slugs are psychic. The slug people are psychic. Alright guys, I think I've

did some calculations. I've got a spreadsheet here. I've been adding in all the features everyone's talked about and all the superlatives. I rank each superlative Scrabble style. So I've been weighting those as well. I ran it through.

I pulled the lever a couple minutes ago and it's just wrapping up the calculations now. Is this a Chris Grant-it. But it's looking pretty clear, guys. I think FTL is going to take it. Yes! The amount of enthusiasm

I also absorbed your enthusiasm and I injected that into the spreadsheet and that really I think tipped the meter. And I think with Borderlands 2, it's a great game. It's got a lot of cool stuff in it, but it doesn't necessarily...

More doesn't necessarily make it better. I think FTL brings a lot of originality, brings a lot of kind of unique, clever design. Even though it's got graphics like a high school notebook. We've gotten some flack for skipping over games before i do not think we will we have seen anything like we will see the uh the lashing low receipt for not making borderlands 2 the game and i think if you're one of those if you're writing that angry email right now i would say don't even worry about it because a none of this matters it's all video

games it's well okay a it's all video games none of this matters b this podcast is nobody gives a and c like little big planets out next week that's obviously going to take it over pokemon's out a couple weeks after that that one's going to just knock it right off the block like it's it's so fluid it's like i'm also gonna say this guys if you're gonna before you get grumpy about one game winning or another go give ftl a download yeah go snag it give it a play it's it's windows and mac it's like eight bucks nine bucks i think on steam and uh and it's it'll run on your your old you know macbook air or your it's one of the few games that I have on my Mac and will keep here

because it is really good. And I would encourage you, Chris, Griffin, you guys please play it today. Why don't you go and indie devs is what I bet people are writing. I bet you,

why don't you get shocked and close. These guys are so hipster. Does it beat Mark of the Ninja? Yeah. I mean, I don't say that lightly. Mark of the Ninja is a great game. I played all through mark of the ninja yeah i mean that i like i don't say that lightly mark of the ninja is a great game i played all through mark of the ninja and i think ftl is both better and more

important well i think ftl will i have no shame in saying this will definitely be near i would not be surprised if it is in my top list at the end of the year or if it is something we're seriously debating at the end of best days this year. Alright guys I need just a little bit more data to make the final determination between Mark and the Ninja and FTL is there maybe a couple more superlatives you could throw in there? Why don't you kiss

Jenova Chen on the mouth? Is that enough? I think that did it. FTL the new number one best game of all time officially as stated by Does that is that enough that I think that did it FTL the new Number one best game of all time Officially as stated by polygon calm and all of its editors. We all agree equally little FTL footle

Griffin years will you play FTL today? I will do you get to have that trash truck? Do you think it's like FTL in there? Do you think they're like, someone needs to be on the trash engine. I get so excited. Here in Austin we have those trash trucks that have the mechanical arms on the sides of them and it scoops up the can and it dumps it right in the back. It's the game of the year. I can't play it. I'm very

busy. I'm working on two reviews Simultaneously right now I will get around to it though Alright Chris I am I have an iPhone 5 What about our route You can't play it yet because you lost your iPhone

That's true Guys listen to this story ready I left my iPhone 4 at the train station yesterday I realized I left it there It was dead. That's why I didn't check it for a while And I didn't realize it was gone But I can't remote wipe it using find my iPhone because it's dead so I gotta wait for somebody to turn it on so I've got it set to like wipe when it turns on and and

and send me an email, but Nobody's turned it on yet, which means I don't think anyone's found it. And so I'm just like, it's in DC. I almost want to hop in the train and go back down there, but it was because my stupid battery only lasts like an hour, but I got the new phone today. It was kind of good timing,

but I can't activate the new phone because doing that will disable the SIM on the old phone, and then it won't check in and get the signal to remote wipe so i need to wait until somebody finds it and plugs it in before i can actually wait until somebody tries to steal it yeah wait until somebody really like officially tries to steal it yeah have you considered uh have you considered taking phil fish on a romantic carriage ride through the country? I haven't.

I'm not sure how that would help my phone situation. I'm just saying, if you love Super Meat Boy so much, why don't you marry it? Okay. All right. That's going to do it for us here. All the best to you. Halo! Thank you for listening.

Thank you for listening You can read all the crap we write On theverge.com That will soon be Polygon.com Chris when's it gonna When's Polygon gonna launch Definitely gonna be 20

Okay it's almost definitely gonna be In the 2010s Okay definitely in the 2010s Can Okay, definitely in the 2010s. Can you give the people anything more concrete than that? People turn to our show for the breaking news. I think if you've been watching the Press Reset series, you'd tell now that it's somewhere between now and Thanksgiving. Fair enough.

Okay, and that's's gonna do it for us The Besties, please scribe and Scribe and russum Sorry, subscribe And review our podcast on iTunes And make sure to join us again next Friday For The Besties Because shouldn't the world's best friends

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