The Besties - The Besties Podcast XXVII

Episode Date: September 7, 2012

Besties! Besties! An old friend visits the show, proclaiming a love for the mightiest shape of them all. There's also some talk about overly complicated board games and the importance of maintaining one's composure when being a ninja. Also, Plante worries about pumpkin-spiced lattes. Welcome, once again, to The Besties. 05:00 - Griffin McElroy - Borderlands 2 (360, PC, PS3) 16:30 - Chris Plante - Rayman Jungle Run (iOS) 26:15 - Halftime: iOS 6 is a snore 31:15 - Justin McElroy - FTL (PC/Mac) 50:30 - THE DECISION by Chris Grant Music: "Little Marcus" by George & Jonathan Get the show: Download MP3" Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe on iTunes Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

We gotta go. Griffin, we're recording pre-goofs, so you have something to... I don't have time for pre-goofs. Look at me. Look at me. I can't look at you. I can't look at you. I'm gonna turn on video so you can look at me. How skinny I am. From all of the sweat that's left my body from the hard work

and good running I've been doing. Have you been running? I've been running so much. I have lost... I have lost 14. I have lost 14. So... 14 so wow so that's something 14 years your face you guys have put on you guys have probably put on 10 easy easy in the past few months i i for my jet setting and my sweat sweating just losing them just dropping them just has to go country to country did you get uh water poisoning while you were in mexico i did i got um i actually got it in germany rough water there real rough water

i understand why everybody just drinks beer constantly who got an im who just got an im more importantly it was too good to goof and now they're goofing? More importantly, who's using AOL Instant Messenger? Old school. I actually just have the sound effects turned on on my ADM because I like it. Jesus. My name is Rose, and I know the best game of the week. I'm Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. And my name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Chris Pan, and I know the best game of the week.

Was I supposed to go at the end? This is now a barbershop trio, and you're dead. I did mine. This is, of course, as you've certainly guessed, the besties, where we pit the top latest hottest titles against each other and uh the see which one reigns supreme then we put that game against our current reigning champion which is griffin what is the current reigning champion if i know all right rush fresh tick um wait i know. I feel like it's

a Virtual Boy game. Wario World? It won last week because it had to. Oh, Transformers. No, was it? Yeah, it was. Transformers? Not gonna be hard to beat.

I tell you guys, you know what? I'm creeping up on a you guys ever get to a point where you feel like you need to take a break from video games even if it was just for a week just to kind of cleanse the palette when I start playing I get to a point where I'm

playing like it's usually when I stop finishing games like i'm bouncing back and forth between like five different games and i say like hey i just need to take a week off and just chill out you guys ever get that um yeah i i'm it's hard for me to get enthused i think it's just i think maybe it's the summer doldrums i hope that's what it is i tried that it's just that the games aren't very good right now i tried that kingdom hearts 3ds game and i have never been so quickly alienated from a video game before in my life in my life i was feeling really cool to games all summer but then that some little big planet vita action

showed up on my doorstep that i can't talk about yeah i can't talk about that either i would love to talk about it but i can't but what i can't talk about is i i built this pc that's sitting right next to me and you guys wait a minute hold on one second chris plant what correct that statement i built this pc and russ preschnik was there and he bitched about it constantly i built that goddamn pc kept going why am i here and And I was like, and no crap, I took him to go get bagels, and it chilled him out. Oh, God. Can we go one up? Can we go one stinking episode?

So racist. No, it is what happened. You got a bagel with, what is it, roast beef? With a schmear. And a little bit of mayo, and you were much happier. Now, the amount of mayo, would you say it was a schmear as it happens uh the jews as a people do not care for mayo i uh sort of bucked that trend yeah he doesn't want to come at you it's almost as if you can't dictate everything about a person's

personality and taste from their religion i know i was surprised too i uh anyway you guys before before you run away from that i just want to wait one second chris games there are a lot of them sorry chris like they're chris stop talking one second go on justin mcroy turn off your fucking im because if i hear it again i'm gonna strangle you well i muted it so okay great thank you for calling attention to it um continue plant all right let's keep moving on i'm drinking a salted caramel mocha from uh from starbucks one of the new fall collection uh really really enjoying it the lady suggested would you like

an ice and i said i i guess i would like an ice that would be great. I had it with a bagel. You don't fall collection with ice? Which apparently they'll sell the Protestants. Go figure. What were you saying, Plant? I have mixed feelings about the fall collection at Starbucks. Because it sneaks up earlier and earlier each calendar year. I think September 1 is the the switch done flipped

but it's like pumpkin spice latte that that that is a sign of fall you know halloween is approaching and it happens on september 1st and you're like i'm sorry it's 100 degrees outside i'm still enjoying summer i'm going to the beach next weekend and it's like no start thinking about how everything around you is gonna die um it's grim yeah it's a yeah god seasons are depressing you guys they are right everything dies did you ever think about that everything dies everyone we know is gonna die you know yeah do you realize do you know how many people die each year from death? Like, billions. All of them. Let alone. Can we talk about video games?

Russ Freshdick, tell me how you're distracting yourself from death this week. Oh, God. Well, I haven't been doing much game playing this week. So, unfortunately, I don't know how helpful I can be. But I can be helpful holy it's me texarkana tumbleweed wait a minute we wrote into the texarkana tumbleweed fiction that he died i'm back i am back and bigger than ever, folks. Hey, Texarkana. It's great to have you here.

What have you been playing this week? Now, Justin, let me ask you a question. Be honest. Shoot. Not literally, but... How do you feel about shapes? I think that some of my favorite things are made up of an assortment of them. That's how I feel about it. Well, there's one particular shape that I care for quite a bit.

That shape is the hexagon. Oh, yeah? I've always been rather fond of it. Now, which one is that? That's the one with the six sides. That's not five. That's not seven. That's six.

Now, I don't mean to ask an obvious question, but why would a cowboy have any interest in a hexagon? Well, when I was growing up, my daddy used to raise bees. He was a beekeeper. And if you don't know, bees use the hexagon to build their hives. And in this case, I found it particularly interesting, especially when they would sting me. I'd be like, good on you, bee. You got me nice hive yeah you gotta give them b their credit sometimes they can get you yeah yeah

they're so much smaller than we are and so you see that and you just think i've got it on this b but then they they flip it right on you now texarkana what made you think of hexagons well it's funny you should say that, Justin, because there is one game where... Is there anything funny about it? Go on. Where my favorite shape, the hexagon, it takes the starring role. I think it's the first time ever. That game is super...

Wait for it. Hexagon. Super hexagon. It's a game for the iPhone, iPad, you name it. All those Apple devices got it. Now, I thought I played something called Super Hexagon on my browser. You did? You played a game called Hexagon, not Super Hexagon.

If you want to play an inferior Hexagon, you might want to try Hexagon. Super Hexagon, next step up from that and uh why why is it super that's a valid question chris couldn't rightly say can you tell me about the game what are the game plays so you're now this is gonna get a little tri You're a triangle, which I don't rightly care for. But you are trying to avoid hexagons as they fly from the sides of the screen. And meanwhile, you got some like trippy techno hippie music playing like you hear in Austin. And you're trying to avoid these hexagons we're more into

octagonal shapes now but the music is is right in our wheelhouse yeah now now hex uh you are known for not actually describing your games very well so it might be worth mentioning that the the hexagonal shapes surround the triangle closing in on it getting smaller and smaller they do and the triangle has to point outside of the ends of the hexagon that are left open right so like they don't they don't fly at you like asteroids right so when i was uh youngin i was uh sitting on my daddy's beekeeping farm and one time this rogue tractor ran over me sort of hit me in the chest area and things got a little dark that's why you can't describe video games and there was a light kind of closing it was like a tunnel and the light was closing in

from all the sides and that's sort of what this game is like it reminds me of that that accident on my daddy's beekeeping farm now to clarify it reminds you of escaping death yes precisely just uh real quick have you ever read that stephen king novel like 11 6 11 63 we're about the guy who goes back in time to prevent jfk from being assassinated time cop you're talking about time cop novel yeah uh just say i just to let everybody know if i could travel back in time to influence one world event it would be to just keep going over and over with that tractor just park just drop the maybe attach some sort of thresher to the back of it some sort of auto harvester uh now tex i got a question for you i'm i'm playing this game now as i have been and will be for the rest of this podcast, it seems really hard. Yep, it ain't easy.

What's your record? My record is 54 seconds. That's in U.S. time. That ain't metric. Yeah, the best I've done is about 35. That is terrible. Have you posted a high score yet? I don't have it. I don't have it.

I don't have it. I don't have the game. Griffin, you got a problem with hexagons? Yeah, I've tried it on the browser. I haven't tried it on iOS yet. I know that Texarkana isn't doing as well as our friend overseas, Jason Killingsworth. Oh, don't get me started on Jason Killingsworth. Texarkana's arch rival, right?

Oh, my God. I hate that. Lily Leverd. Oh, my God. He's gone for 109 seconds. What is he, British or something? Now, I have one other question about this game, Tex. Yeah.

Why are you telling us about it rather than, say, a New York giraffe? I don't know this. Who is that? You've never met New York giraffe. I don't care for people from New York City, as you probably already know. Real quick, do you like salsa from New York City? Sorry. If somebody offered you salsa from New York City, how. If somebody offered you salsa from

New York City, how would you react? What was your general reaction? I would probably say something like New York City! Thanks, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. Please play Super Hexagon and support your local Hexagon and Beekeeper unions.

And it also features my internet acquaintance and i know some of you guys know too but uh jen um jen you guys are really close i can tell this is embarrassing oh well i know that i i only know her by her uh twitter handle jenatar uh jen frank there it is okay i knew it would come to me gr Griffin will edit that to make it sound more like it. Now it's going to go to my friend, Jen Frank. Jen Frank! Our dear friend, Jen Frank, is the

voice of the Hexagon. I'm coming at ya! I got six odds. I'm Hexy. So anyway, good stuff. Griffin McElroy. Yep on what's on your your plate uh i have been rigorously nos which means it's free to play save for the cost of the game right so it you buy the game for i think city and then you don't have to pay for a subscription

unlike some games how do you keep weaseling cash out of you uh there is an in-game store but it's it's very substantial i haven't i haven't messed with the in-game store at all because the the logic being you bought the game like the game the game is yours they're not gating any content from you um they're not getting any content like there's nothing that you would buy in addition to what you bought in the game? No, I mean, there's, like, there's novelty items. Oh, that's it? There's no, like, maps that are, like, locked out? Um...

Does somebody have somebody at the front door? Uh, sorry. I think my wife is making a smoothie really quick. Oh. She's upstairs. That's fine. No, if there is, I haven't to to buy it it's it's a it's a very complete package and it's very uh it's very solo focused i don't think i've gotten in a

group the whole time i played it because the whole game is built around these dynamic uh global encounters so you're instead of picking up a quest from the same guy that gives you the quest and then going and do the quest that people have already done millions of times over and then returning it and getting whatever loot you want uh you'll just stumble upon these things it's it's basically like stumble upon the game the mml and um so you'll you'll stumble upon these global dynamic events where you will either help out by doing, like, a variety of different missions sort of related to the location. So, like, you'll be at a farm and you can feed the cows or you can fight off these bandits who are setting the hay bales on fire. You can put out the hay bales or you can fight off these giant mutant worms that are coming up from the ground. or you can fight off these giant mutant worms that are coming up from the ground.

And by doing this, you are helping to complete the quest, which adds some variety to the, you know, just go here and kill 10 wolves. But there's also dynamic events that show up not on any given schedule that everybody can participate in. Like there will be a huge horde of monsters that will attack in an area and you can fight them off and then you receive a metal rating either gold silver or bronze based on how much you participate so if you show up at the tail end and only kill a few things you'll get the bronze reward which will be you know some gold and some experience but if you stick around for the whole thing and are a substantial um uh you know

supporter of the cause then then you'll get a much larger reward um and that's that's basically what the whole game is built around there's a there's a single player camp or a campaign that uh you know you'll find missions through that but mostly it's all about finding these global dynamic events um and then there's other cool stuff in the game too like there are these vistas that you can find and you sort of have to navigate the environment which has never been a huge part of an mmo um and let's and let's uh it's not well executed here but what do you mean look the locomotion especially the sections the vistas that i found that were built around like platforming were were i mean pretty pretty janky i didn't have i didn't have much of a problem with it to be honest i'm not just i'm not i'm

not just saying that because i there's one that i did where i had to climb up like a big beanstalk that had lots of leaves on it and i had to like climb up on the branches and the i don't know the geometry is just not and control scheme is not built for platforming yeah and that's what it was asking me to do but but anyway when you do get to those vistas by figuring out how you're supposed to i i wanted to ask uh so how those global events how are you finding out that they're going on uh they show up on your map when you whenever you get close enough to them but the the it's tied into the vistas because you you get to these high up places and then it gives you sort of like an

assassin's creed the the um like the perches the lookouts that fill out your map uh the the the vistas do that too there are also these npc scouts you can talk to who will give you sort of an overview of the immediate vicinity but it's really the entire zone you really have to do some exploring to find these areas um and also whenever it shows up on your map it shows you like the suggested level and you can't be too high a level to do the events it'll scale you down to whatever like the maximum level for that event is and it does it all pretty seamlessly which is cool because you can then partner up with people who are much much higher level than you are and not just get you know swept under the rug by them cool yeah it's an it's it really is a neat system and it adds just more stuff to do

than there usually is in an mmo it's very it's very immersive in the way that you explore and you feel like you feel like you're charting your own course you don't feel like you're running the same chain of quests that everybody else has done you know hundreds of thousands of times before i uh i was can you talk about the combat a little bit because i was was pretty underwhelmed by that aspect of it. I thought it was really spammy. I'm coming off of Secret World, which seems to be actively designed to sort of issue the MMO standards whenever possible. And Guild Wars 2, especially compared to guild wars 1 seems to be

running towards mmo convention uh whenever it can i think and i think that's why i had a hard time sort of getting into it besides the fact that the world and everything just seems very sort of been there done that um did um did the secret world use a lock-on system or did you have to aim your aim your abilities yeah it was locked on okay because there's a few that's been like the big i think was it terra that had no lock-on system in the upcoming the neverwinter mmo doesn't have a lock-on system i don't think you have to aim and shoot everything like. Like, yeah, it is kind of spammy. It's very fast-paced, though. You only have one power that's auto-activate,

and it's basically your weapon's basic ability. But basically, each class of weapon, like one-handed sword, two-handed sword, axe, mace, they have five unique abilities that your class uses when using that weapon so if you are a if you're an engineer and you're using two pistols you will have five powers that are completely different than the five powers you'd be using if you're using a rifle and then to complement those you have five ability slots which you unlock using ability points you earn when you level up or for completing special challenges on the map, which augment your ability.

So I'm playing an engineer, and I've unlocked a grenade belt that gives me special grenade abilities and an auto-rifle turret that I can drop on the ground to sort of complement and add some strategy to your basic combat abilities. But the idea being that each class can fill many roles based on what they have equipped and sort of being shoehorned into one role for the entirety that they they play the game cool yeah and there's there's uh like there's some other action mechanics like dodging in it uh you have like a

energy meter specifically for dodging so you can tuck out of the wave attacks if you see them coming um it's it's very fast paced i i actually like it quite a bit uh especially when you're doing like one of these global events where you're taking down this huge boss and you have 40 people all participating in it and you don't even need to be in a group because everybody's getting rewarded um and just seeing every class sort of use their abilities in tandem um it's it's neat very cool let's go like it go wars the wars of the guilds there's a polygon guild in the uh in the forums it's in the forums you can find it there but um i don't for sanctum of roll i think is the server we're

all on so if you want to get up on that uh what's what's funny every time i think i want to play a game like that you say somebody says sanctum sanctum of roll and then i'm like immediately i i such a turn off the story parts are the are the worst high fantasy clap trap i can't make heads or tails of it i'm not gonna lie to you guys though once that mr pandaria comes out sorry guild wars i'm ghost that game has pokemon in it dog thanks and thanks for the thanks which which mmr are you gonna play griffin oh i don't know probably the pokemon one are you gonna play as a panda uh i'll play as whichever one is the best if there is a class a race that has better pokemon training abilities i'll play it i don't care if that race has no other abilities or stats i think

i don't care but if you look at them when the other faction looks at them they die instantly if they get good pokemon training skills guess what i'm that one so you should just play pokemon what's up what's going on in everybody else's life i think everybody's just tired i labor day man you're supposed to like catch up on your rest right no did anybody do that no no right no not at all um No. Justin and I played a neat board game. Oh my god. What did you play? This board game. It's called Duel in the Dark. And

I don't know how many levels of description Actually, the funny thing about Duel in the Dark is once you understand what the game is it is not actually that complicated. But it's a World War II set is it it is not actually that complicated but it's a it's a world war ii um set in world war ii uh specifically the british bombings of germany and one player takes on the the role of the germans

and the other player takes on the role of the british um i'll be honest the the name duel in the dark sort of reminds me of a game you would play at a middle school co-ed party yeah like light as a feather stiff as a board kind of thing so the game the big picture is not that hard to understand there are

high value targets you know throughout Germany Berlin obviously being worth the most points, and the British player sets up a path of a secret bombing run to attack one of those targets or multiple targets and then has to return back. The path the player sets is unchangeable,

and after the player sets that path, the German player lays down defenses where they think the British player might be going. So it's like Stratego. Sorry? It's like Stratego. Yeah. And part of the logic of it comes from the fact

that with every night you play um there's a a randomly generated weather system so your your uh bomber is safer in the clouds so the german forces can kind of predict where they might be going because they're probably going to stick to the clouds because they're safer there yeah um and you're once the night starts and the bomber starts going on his path the german uh player can uh follow the uh has has a squad of fighters that can sort of harass the british bomber and uh try to protect its its uh its its cities. And the game is really predicting where is in the German player predicting

where he thinks the British player is going to go. So in that sense, it's kind of a deduction game. It's really, really advanced battleships. The British player has one other plane that it can use to sort of clear a path, like blow up the defenses and it gets points if the fighters move into the space with it. So you can use that of clear a path like blow up the defenses and um and and it gets points that the

fighters move into the space with it so it could you can use that to clear a path or you can use it to just mess with the other player make them think that you're going into an area that you're not really going into to try and distract them but the other player can see that slip and then you know it's there's there's there's a lot of levels to it but here's the thing what griffin and i have just given you is the simple version of describing this game there is any number of fact like any factor you can come the the the planes pieces themselves are on these uh are on plastic rods that you can slide the planes up and down to adjust their altitude each each fighter jet has its own fuel gauge that is that that changes the the rate of use changes depending on if you have a tailwind like yeah you know you roll the tailwind at the beginning of the night and see

which way and if you're going with the tailwind then you use less fuel when you're following the, you know, when you're flying. So basically like ages 6 to 10. If there's a full moon out, then you get extra points. If it's summer, then you get extra. Like it's bananas. That's crazy. There's a, when the Germans are laying down their defenses, like you get an extra point if they fly into a square with a flat cannon but if you have uh if you have a spotlight there then you get an extra point for your for your flat cannon

but if they've flown through a thunderstorm to get to you then they lose two points unless they land in the thunderstorm in which case you gain it's bananas i griffin and i played it for like two hours and i still don't think we had like we were like using all the rules properly like your planes have to land to refuel and stuff like that it's bananas uh but and the board is massive the board's probably like what would you say Ditto? 16 feet? 16 feet basically it's like two Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's

standing on top of each other's heads it's insanity but I picked it up for like 11 bucks off Tenga so it was a good deal and it's a neat game I think if we were to play it again and weren't so like overwhelmed with it's one of those where

you don't I think it was probably comparable to learning Last Night on Earth overwhelmed with... It's one of those where you don't... I think it was probably comparable to learning Last Night on Earth, which is my favorite board game, but there's a lot less internal logic. That game has a lot of rules, but it all

runs on a pretty understandable logic. This game, you know, there's a lot of factors that I don't really think about just because i'm not an expert of world war ii air combat but it's highly recommended i guess would it make you an expert like if you played it do you think you could walk away and be like i could have been one of the fly boys i'd at least learn where the cities are in germany so that would be good it was it must really hit

home for you ditto to be to be i gotta take brought up some it stirred up some shit that's all i'm gonna say yeah it stirred up some real shit that air berlin flight was pretty bad wasn't oh oh boy we were harassed by bombers the whole time did you have a tailwind yeah we were flying it against the wind it's bob seger maybe that might be bob seger hey guys so i actually have a game oh yeah yeah you want to hear about it tell me about i'm ready. So I have a new ninja stealth game called Mark of the Ninja. And it is by... Russ, you're going to have to help me with the pronunciation. Do they pronounce it clay or Klee?

It's pronounced Kla-ee. I can see it's definitely not that one. Klee! Klaw. Klaw. Klee. Klaw. K-traw. K-traw. K. Claw. Claw. Claw. Control. Control.

That was such a good gag. I'm really glad. Yeah. I'm back. They made Shank. In Shank 2, they made Eats. And they have, what's the new game that's coming out? Stay Hungry? What is is it russ i don't

remember i'm just turning to you for everything the point is uh it's a stealth ninja game but the twist is it is 2d uh it is not a 3d stealth game like pretty much every other stealth game that you've played in the last 15 years uh You basically start on one end of the map. You make your way towards the end. It's linear in that way. But what you do, getting from point A to point B, can get pretty crazy. You... crazy. I don't have the enthusiasm to actually say crazy.

You use all of your different skills like hanging upside down like Batman and pulling people up by the hooks that are wrapped around their necks. There's lots of stabbing people in the spine. Light, whether you are being you know seen in light or not in light, is represented by shadow that is on screen. So everything that's in shadow is black the characters are outlined with white thin little lines and once they're in the light they go full color and they kind of look like Saturday morning cartoons cool and sound every basically everything that could give you away is represented so sound is represented by these little circles that kind of ripple out from anything that

makes noise so if you're running it'll send out little circles that kind of ripple out from anything that makes noise. So if you're running, it'll send out little circles. If you scare away birds, they'll fly everywhere, sending sound vibes off across the screen. And once those hit guards or enemies, they are alerted and they start looking for you. It's all the tropes that you know from metal gear solid uh put on a two-dimensional map which makes it a lot easier i i feel like i had more control of some of the crazier things i was able to do because i wasn't fiddling with the uh the camera or i knew exactly where i was in the video game space. Yeah, I would also say I've played a lot of it.

And I think one of the things, it's sort of hard to put your finger on, but one of the things, I love stealth games, but one of the issues that I run into is that there's a lot of guesswork involved with them. Like even in the Metal Gear games, it's pretty rare that you know like 100% whether you're going to be seen or not. Like there's sort of this learning curve that you have to hit where it's like, oh, I'm like eight feet away from a guy in low lighting that he won't see me. But in Mark of the Ninja, like 100% of the time,

you know whether you're going to be seen, whether you're going to be heard, and you can use all that information to inform the way you progress through the level. Yeah, I'm very down with that. A great example of that is, so there's a room, and you're hiding underneath it in the sewer. And in that room is a guard, a dog, and a light. Dogs get set off very easily, so you can aim at the light through the gate in the bottom of the ground and while you're aiming at it, it freezes time and it shows you the radius of impact for that light. So if you bust it, it'll show you about you know 10 feet wide that it will kind of sound

set off anything inside of that. So that'll set off the dog uh that knocking that out will attract the dog and the dog's barks you can see will set off the guard and the guard will come over to inspect the light and in doing so we'll walk over the grate and then you can reach up through the grate pull them under and stab them in the neck and you basically know like you're not reacting to what happened you know what's going to happen before you do it because it sort of gives you a preview of like how wide a sound radius action would be so you're like very informed as to what's going on it's pretty great yeah and i like that i don't like how much i like the idea behind stealth games but even in like the best ones even in splinter cell i still felt like there was no feedback for if i was walking behind a guy

if i was doing if i was being sneaky enough yeah yeah yeah here it's very digital you're either uh you know in basically in darkness or not or you know you're seeing exactly how much sound you're making it's always very clear yeah i it's also worth mentioning the story because stealth games tend to have the crappiest stories uh because for whatever reason they all want to be a really bad 1980s espionage film um and this game takes a pretty different path it's it reminded me a lot in a weird way of bastion uh and i rust probably don't think i'm crazy yes but it's delivered to you by this kind of sidekick uh character that is catching you up to speed on what your mission is and there's kind of this this is not a spoiler you know that once you complete your mission

you will have to kill yourself so there's this impending sense of dread because you want to be loyal to this clan that you are a participant how is that not a spoiler that's because you learn that at the very it's the basically the first mission before you even play the game uh that you are in a clan you have a tattoo that gives you unimaginable power but it also will corrupt your mind and so once you've used that power to complete a mission, you have to commit seppuku. By a mission, he means the entire quest of the game. Yeah, so it's, yeah.

But what's good about the story is that it deals with that, that it's constantly confronting what is right and wrong, why you're doing this mission, what your clan's ambitions are uh what loyalty you actually have it's and it's all simple enough it doesn't go metal gear on you uh that you kind of are able to trace it and because you do have this narrative happening throughout the game you don't have to stop and sit through a lot of cut scenes like they get a lot of story in without slowing down the actual pace of the game yeah there's one one other thing i wanted to mention uh again i'm a big fan of stealth games but i think one thing that a lot of developers struggle with is how to do like big boss fights uh one of my favorite

stealth games the last year deus ex uh invisible what was it called human revolution yeah i'm the invisible man right that's that's precisely the one um had some really great stealth stuff but a lot of people complain that like oh when you're up in a boss fight you had no option but to basically you know blow them up with a rocket launcher um you know the stealth element basically got turned off and um mark and the ninja never abandons the stealth angle like there's never a moment where you're encouraged to just like annihilate a guy with like a machine gun and i think that's really um pretty difficult to do throughout an entire game, while still remaining fun and interesting. So props to them on that. I will say, I don't know if this is a spoiler or not.

We might have to bleep this out. I'll ask Russ. But the hallucinogenic moments of Batman Arkham Asylum have clearly become a tool for other developers to get in that wacky not wacky but like their get their creative jibblies off uh to like play with art design and do like the really weird absurd things that differentiate it from the rest of the game and this is definitely a game that does that i mean i would say that's probably worth editing out, but I would also say that I don't think this game really does what Batman does, like, not nearly to the extent.

Like, there's not fucking skull castles made of syringes. No. Like, it's pretty grounded, even the hallucinogen stuff. And if this sounds like something that they could be heading towards, let me know. But it seems like this mixed, like interspersed perhaps with Shank could be a really cool game. Are these two guys teamed up with each other for some reason? Oh, you mean the characters? Yeah, I mean aesthetically it's already sort of in the same wheelhouse like well i think this in a weird ways plays it has it has this feel that reminds me so much of shank they're both i i talked about this in my review that will probably go up today but they both have

very sticky feelings like you you you aim at what you want in an environment and you click a button and you're just there like you kind of latch uh onto things across the environment hopping from like one thing to next and though this game is by no means you know as crazy as shank it has like these weird similarities and the other strange thing that makes it kind of an alternate universe shank is shank is famous the character famous uh but he's known for his red bandana that is you know soaked in blood and the ninja in the game has a red bandana tattooed across his eyes so in the art design is all the same so it does feel like there is some weird connection going on even though as a game they're about as different as you can be the gameplay i would say is almost like black and white different but that would work if they were

if yeah a co-op game i would just say it's very difficult my one of the problems i had with shank is that it all got kind of uh same yeah and this would be this would be a nice way to just spice that up i think i think i wouldn't mind you know the occasional mix of that but what is great about this game compared to shank and what i think makes it so much superior is it has incredible pacing uh i mean you were just you're constantly learning and then once you've kind of been trained which is you know three quarters of the game you're just let out in these more open-ended levels where you, I, I, I, you have the option to go back and play, uh, choose levels that you want to play, and I went back and played, you know, the final two stages multiple times just because there's

so many bizarre ways to go about, you know, killing everybody or not killing everybody. There's a dart that is worth mentioning, speaking of hallucinations. There's a special weapon that you can unlock that is a hallucinogenic dart that you throw at guards or anything, and it makes them go homicidal, so they start killing everybody. And then the upgrade version of that is they will kill everyone in the room, and then they'll turn the gun on themselves, put it in their mouth, and just blow their brains out. That sounds scary. It's pretty—it's really violent. This this is also a true story by the way it's a really violent game um when can i play this game today today download it now why is it out on a friday on xbox live why isn't it why wasn't it part of the summer of arcade is the real question yeah well they had to get you know they had it really is outside of spelunky it is easily my favorite thing that has come out

for xbox live arcade this year i'm really horny to play it now you should i'm rocking i'm rocking like three-quarter chub yep yep semi-rod right here ready to play it ready ready to play uh so i'm gonna pick a game that sounds the best and to me that game sounds like super cool and i think it's the best game of the week yay anybody has a can make a case against that no it's fine russ your game is just shapes griffin i played your game. It's boring. Mark the Ninja wins. Yay. As the winner, I'd like my victory speech to be that you should download Super Hexagon 2. Oh, it's great.

It's Terry Cavanaugh, right? Yep. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Incredible design. The guy can't draw, but man, can he design. So definitely download that. But yeah, Mark of the Ninja is moi.

It's delicious. Delicious delicious read my review hopefully that is online today i think now is this a better game than transformers war for cybers how hard was it to say that with the straight face i'm asking. Yes. Okay. That's one vote for yes. Chris? Yeah. Okay. Griffin? No. Okay. And I say no.

What? I haven't played this ninja. Just because you've played Transformers is enough for you to say no? Yeah. I played Transformers, and that's, like, super cool, and you can transform. What is the ninja transforming? Oh, you can transform into a box. You can. Are you serious?

Yeah, they did include a box. There is a great Metal Gear Solid box that you can tool around in. Okay. Griffin, does that change your opinion, if you can transform into a box? Can the box, like, do cool shit? Like, drive around and f***ing hang out with Shia LaBeouf? Yeah. That's the only thing, though. Then, yes yes it changes my answer oh oh okay oh that you have the power late in the game of no shut up this is all this is spoilers

prant okay yep all right no stop it Our current reigning champion is Mark of the Ninja. Spoilers. Russ, did you have something you wanted to add? Yeah, I wanted to say that was bullshit. Spoilers, and you can't put that in the podcast. Yeah, we bleeped it out. We bleeped it out. Every game has...

Who gives a shit? Yeah, why don't you enjoy... F*** you, plant. I'm going to bleep that out so it's gonna be fun for people to try and like figure out okay that's good okay try and try and figure out thank you so much for uh enjoying our program or just or just audible just like just hearing it taking it in just like being in the same room where it is being where it is happening uh we sure appreciate you stopping by. Again, if you want to read the stuff that we write, it's at theverge.com forward slash gaming. We're in the middle of this new documentary web series about the production of our site, Polygon.

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