The Besties - The Besties Podcast xXx

Episode Date: September 28, 2012

Besties! Here's our State of the Union: We love video games. Much like Vin Diesel or (to a lesser extent) Ice Cube before us. Won't your join us for our 30th show-ebration? We certainly hope you will. 04:30 - Griffin McElroy - Little Big Planet Vita (PS Vita) 13:00 - Chris Plante - Torchlight 2 (PC) 26:00 - Halftime: Mr. Frushtick Goes to Japan 31:45 - Justin McElroy - The Testament of Sherlock Holmes (PC, 360, PS3) 39:30 - THE DECISION by Russ Frushtick 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!

I've been working on perfecting what would be the least pleasant thing to listen to a human eat on a podcast, and I think I am close. Least pleasant. The least pleasant. So you're saying the most horrific. You'd have to hit all of the sonic, like, notes. Like, you'd want a little bit of crunch in there, but then a lot of slop. Like, you'd want to hear something falling out of your mouth. Let me give you guys what I got.

Here's where I'm at. Oh, that's an apple. Or a pear. How do you eat? Do you tilt your head back and then gobble? Here's the thing. It's apple slices dipped in yogurt that has granola in it.

There we go. Oh my god, so much texture. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Perfect blend. yogurt that has granola in it there we go oh my god so much ting ding ding ding ding perfect blend My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I've pretty much got it in the back. My name is Chris Flatt, and I'm here to win. My name is Russ Freshstick, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Freshstick, and I spiked our audio. Was he changing gears?

He was. Like an automobile? No, more like a very small bike. My name. This is the besties, where we pit the newest, latest, greatest titles of the week against each other in Mortal Kombat. Let's see which one reigns supreme. We then pit it against our current reigning champion to find out if we have a new game of the week against each other in Mortal Kombat. Let's see which one reigns supreme. We then pit it against our current reigning champion to find out if we have a new game of the year.

Chris Plant, what is our current reigning champion? Oh, I always forget it. It's an FTL. We decided last week. Oh, yeah. That game's hot. I'm not used to it not being my game. Yeah, it's the game, FTL.

That game is good I came back from Japan I spent like 14 hours on the flight And about half of that time was spent playing FTL Time just flies by How far have you gotten? I've gotten to the final boss Wait on what difficulty level?

Easy Oh don't even play it Why? I think easy is a lot more fun It's a good way to learn the game It's a good way to learn the mechanics Yeah It's a good way to learn the mechanics. Yeah, for a child. Have you gotten to the final boss on normal?

No, I made it three quarters of the way through on normal. Well, but you have no idea what the final boss is like. Yeah, because I'm taking my time. I'm enjoying the game. I'm enjoying the game. Anyway, I just got... The final boss is brutal, if you haven't gotten there yet. They throw like 50 drones at you and like mega lasers

and people board you people board you oh i've gotten so much better at people boarding if someone gets on my ship i just turn the computer on no just go into the med station if you fight them in the middle i i i i uh pick the entire staff and just go in there and we'll pass all together i uh i my jam is to to dump all the oxygen out of the ship. That doesn't work. I tried that a lot, and all that does is make the ship a danger zone. The secret is you have to close all the doors, so they have to spend the time opening them. Yeah, you've got to upgrade the doors.

Yeah, if you upgrade the doors and you can – yeah, anyway. So it takes them longer to get through upgraded doors so you can starve them out with oxygen that way. Oh, that's smart. Yeah. I tell you, I got to the final boss and I was... I got beat and I was so, like, disheartened that I haven't been able to play the game since.

That was like a week ago. What? I just can't. It was so, like... Here's a pro tip the final boss has phases so don't waste all your missiles in the first phase yeah that's something you should know because that that's how i screwed myself but frankly i made to the final boss a second time and i still just got annihilated on the second phase the second phase is just brutal yeah so

anyway ftl is great uh listen to last week's episode if you want to know more about that. Griffin, have you been playing it? Yeah, I played it a little bit. It's very, very difficult. It is. Try Easy. It's a better way to learn. I wish they had a baby Easy mode.

Yeah. Super easy for babies. It's called YouTube. You just watch it. Chris Plant, ladies and gentlemen. Russ Freshdick, you're the commissioner this week. Who do you want to go first? Let us go with

Senor Griffin McElroy. Alright. My game this week, I've been waiting so long to talk about it, is LittleBigPlanet for the PlayStation Vita. Oh, man. You've been playing that for like months. Has anyone here played it oh yeah yeah um it is exceptional it is is absolutely fantastic i would be hard-pressed

other than maybe the walking dead games to think of a game that i've just fallen in love with as much as this one it's it is because it's not just like a good game for the Vita and an important like game for the Vita at this point in its life cycle it is probably the best console to handheld port in the history of video games like it's not a port I mean don't don't confuse the issue you're right I know I know I know what you're saying I would say adaptation. It's not an adaptation either. People need to know it's a different game. It is a different game. It's not LittleBigPlanet 2 Vita Time.

It is a different... Sorry, I misspoke. It is the best transition of a franchise from console to handheld. Because whenever you think of that sort of transition, the very first question that comes to mind is like, well, okay, what did they have to cut out and in this case the answer is literally nothing um they added like it looks sharp as hell it has the same like super charming art style as little big planet all of the level creation tools are here and there's also like a ton of new ones

including like touch screen and tilt and rear touchpad support. It uses all of the Vita's many, many inputs very well. It's very efficient. It doesn't waste any part of the Buffalo. You can use the microphone to record voiceovers for your characters in the game. phone to record voiceovers for your characters in the game you can use the camera to take pictures that you can then use for stickers to to add decorations to your levels or other levels if you want to grief people um it is i i mean it feels it feels really nice like the the conceptually it is perfect for a handheld audience because none of the levels are super long

the the story levels are a little bit longer than the community made levels because they know how to use the there's like a thermometer that caps how much stuff you can put in the in each level um but the community levels they take you like five minutes to beat it's almost like a wario ware-esque mindset for platforming because you just like keep going through these little bite-sized levels and like even though the game has well the game's officially been out for like two days now but um GameStop broke the the street date on it there's already like a ton of amazing stuff on there like every day I turn it on and there's new stuff waiting for me um but yeah it's just um I can't believe it's only been out for two days i've been playing

that game for they did send it very early so i i do want to bring up one thing um i i'm a very big fan of the vita as as hardware and i think a lot of game software makers uh have been smart about the hardware and so far as not demanding that you utilize every part of the buffalo as you said yeah um honestly i sort of think that things like back touch are awful and should be abolished from the planet and i find that in a little bit planet vita at least for the campaign i haven't messed too much with the um community levels yet they force you to use a lot of the features that drive me up a wall like i was really enjoying like just the normal platforming stuff and like a little bit of the front touch is totally fine but like every other level it's like

now you're rolling things by tilting the screen and stuff like that and that kind of bummed me yeah i still feel like the story mode is mostly just the same platforming stuff i i don't know i feel like they work specifically rear touchpad i think really the only thing they use that for is to push things forward towards the screen because it still has the same three layer platforming style that the other little big planet games have um that's that's really the only thing that they use that for and i don't think that's ham-fisted at all i think some of the front screen stuff i feel like is really inspired like you get a uh a helmet that shoots rockets and then you can steer the rockets with the touch screen um which is is really neat like some of the boss fights that they work that

into are really very clever i was just left thinking like you could have just done that with the analog stick or given people the option what was the name of that black and white game that came out right at launch that everybody was so excited about black and white escape plan i a third of escape plan was doing that silly touch the back of the uh vita to push out the block scenario and it was atrocious and it made me think this whole back of the pad thing just doesn't even work like you can't even program it well because these guys had to do three things and they couldn't do that one uh and i was shocked with little big planet while like russ i don't technically enjoy it that it at least worked like when i needed to make my way

across the level on the first try, I could do it. Like, it registered appropriately. And the same was with the user levels, where, like, I was more impressed technically that they appear to have gotten it right. Where if you want to do it, it's not a total pain. It's, like, fine. Not necessarily enjoyable. It lets you do cool stuff both in the create mode, like the rear touchpad. It is used to move

the camera around which in other little big planet games like if you are placing a block if you're like shaping something you have no control over the camera it's just sort of centered on what you're making which is kind of annoying in this game you can look like move around with the camera look at what you're like look at the other stuff surrounding what you're creating while you're creating it like it's a really helpful tool and it also leads to some cool gameplay stuff like did you guys play the level that i made no yes the the shooting the people who control things you you yeah you shoot clones of yourself out of your head and then you control yourself with the basic controls but you also move them around using the touchscreen.

Really? And so there are these parts of the level that, like, you have to control yourself to open up gates for the other person to move around to manipulate stuff in your environment. And stuff like that, like one-player co-op, like, that's not possible without the extra control mechanism. And you created that? Yeah. accessible without the extra without the extra control and you created that yeah there was only like one real problem with that level in that it didn't have enough michael keaton if i'm gonna play a multiplicity game i want you know i took a picture of his face and put it in the level but i i got a uh cease and desist from michael keaton Excuse me. There are people who are making really genuinely cool shit like that every day. It really is the best selling point for the Vita's crazy, otherwise extraneous features.

I think it is probably the first killer app for the Vita in that regard. Their community is so nice, too. I think it is probably the first killer app for the beta in that regard. Yeah. So that's LittleBigPlanet. Their community is so nice, too. I'm going to play this game, like, I can't see myself ever stop. Because LittleBigPlanet 2, I played that for, like, a year and a half. That was your Gatia, right? Huh?

That was your Gatia? Yeah, that was my game of the year when it came out. And this one, like, the same things I loved about LittleBigPlanet 2, like being able to come back to it and have basically 20 games worth of levels waiting for me like to have that in a portable thing like i am never going to get on a plane without it yeah can so can you um so you can download like a ton of levels and you don't need a net connection yeah you can stream the little big planet psp that was the only thing you could do which was kind of annoying but now you can either stream the levels like you do with basic little big planet or you can download them and

then just have them for later which is a really neat feature is it disc based or can i get it through the psn you can do that i have it on psn because it seems like it seems like like i said like i'm always going you'll always want to want it nearby so and you can take pictures of your junk and put it all over your level if you want yeah you can make a level yeah lovely uh i think next up is mr plant what do you got mr plant i got a little ditty called torchlight 2 which is the sequel to Torchlight 1, which is the, some, like, not a sequel to Diablo 2. It's not a sequel. It's inspired. It's inspired by Diablo 2, which is a lot of names of games that I hope you get the reference to, so this will make a lot of sense.

It's an action RPG. You play it from the top down. You build up a character who's a hero. And you go from dungeon to dungeon, clicking, clicking, clicking lots of things and collecting the loot. Those things drop after they perish. There's a bad guy at the end. And it is super, super addictive. The comparison that I can make to capture the essence of playing this game is the joy of opening a letter from a loved one that has come from some far off country mixed with cracking open a beer can and popping bubble wrap all at the same time. I don't have that many hands.

It's just what it feels like. It's like it just feels, texturally it feels good. And the sound is perfect every time you click, and then you just keep getting little gifs. I'm a recovering alcoholic, and also a bubble wrap addict. Bubble wrap, and he has no family.

Yes, and my family has never written me a letter. That was my favorite episode of the West Wing, when Leo has to deal with his bubble wrap addiction. You never just want to pop one. I don't understand people who can just pop one bubble. The sound of that. You hear the sound of that pop?

That's what I remember. The thing rubbing against the plastic. Russ is dying. I'm sorry. I just watched that episode. It's really hitting you episode it's really hitting you it's really hitting you in the spot directed right at me right at my heart luckily i've watched it was like six times so last night much like every episode of the west wing uh i do yeah i'm sorry go ahead plant uh that's i mean it's a very simple game to describe what i liked about is usually

these games are set in very dark uh settings like just gritty dungeons with lots of black and dark browns and maybe a little bit of red uh and they're not places i want to hang out i'm also not really into high fantasy uh like dragons and oaks and ogres and what is an oak like a tree oaks oak trees and fir trees um and what i appreciate about this game is it's like very charming and they do other types of fantasy like an entire after the game is set in the desert and which is not particularly wild but they choose to kind of go about it in different ways so there's a lot of references to uh arabian knights uh just to like turn of the century egyptian excavation excavation they go to different source material other than kind of the

typical fiction fantasy rack that you find at your bookstore. Another example is the third act is the most traditional, you know, murky swamp and, you know, dank forest. And rather than going to Tolkien, they go to Hans Christian Andersen stories and kind of like 1920s pulp writing,

which is, I think, just a richer source. I don't play that usually. There's lots of color. Get it, you can read. Jesus Christ. What? No, no. I'm just saying there's lots of color,

and there's lots of bright lights, and there's lots of interesting things to see other than, like, green ore. Inspiration of torture. You're just clicking shit, and then you stop eventually. Yeah, but you're clicking, like, the meaning of, like, life, right?

How do you feel about Trojan women yeah russ is mad at me because i thought the trojan women was a play that everyone had to read in school and apparently y'all are idiots yeah every day of chris plant's life is just to prove that he went to college no was that mammoth i went to high school yes He's Mammoth. He ran it during the 300 B.C. era of Mammoth. Was that Euripides? Euripides. There is not a way to say his name that doesn't make you sound like a dipshit. Mammoth or Euripides? Euripides.

Euripides. Yeah, do you have any questions about the game? Yeah, so a lot of people didn't like Diablo 3 for a number of reasons. Did you play Diablo 3 at all? Yeah, I did with you, remember? No. I don't think we've ever played Diablo 3 together. Are you kidding?

We played it at the airport. Oh, right. For like eight hours. You never played the final one. Yes. Why do you think, because a lot of people are obviously making comparisons because... Here's my defense of Torchlight over Diablo 3 as someone who did not play Diablo 3 beyond the beta.

So take it with a pretty big grain of salt. You can, one, choose any difficulty you want at the start. So you can pick a very hard difficulty right off. Two, it's only $20, which i think is a valid argument uh three lots and lots of color which uh i i think that's like that goes a long way if i'm going to spend that much time in a world i want it to be a place that i'd like to be i haven't i i have a question about torchlight two go on i played torchlight one and uh my biggest complaint that i had with it was that i found and maybe this is like was like just me and i'm about to be really

embarrassed but i found it structurally pretty hard to um understand like okay get that get it if you're talking about the story you don't don't go into it for that but if you're talking about just story i mean like going to that same spot over and over again going deeper and deeper into the yeah i found it kind of hard to understand i keep track of i totally understand um oh this will be good for griffin so they've they changed it up now it's three acts really kind of like three and a half because it's a video game so it doesn't know when to end uh but you start in different kind of hubs now there's not just one hub there's multiple hubs and these hubs will have a specific area so you're kind of like it's more like a road trip where oh you've you've killed

everything in the forest oh where will you go kill next how about the desert and then you go there and it's like you've killed the entire desert to the mines and once you've like there's still something living organic material still exists but the best part is the the way you know you've killed everything is at the very end you fight a boss uh and then the boss perishes and then a giant pokemon appears and the pokemon talks to you And he's like, I am the Pokemon of Ember World, and you have saved me. It seems like a big spoiler. What?

It's not, because it happened so early. And they're everywhere. These goofy-ass Pokemon, for no reason, are in this world. Do you catch them? No, you don't catch them because they're majestic. Why are you saying they're Pokemon? Because they're an untrainable Pokemon.

You cannot husband these animals. There's no such thing as untrainable Pokemon. Yeah, you know what an untrainable Pokemon. You cannot husband these animals. There's no such thing as untrainable Pokemon. Yeah, you know what an untrainable Pokemon is? An untrainable Pokemon is just an animal. No, what about Mewtwo? That cat had sass. Except you can f***ing catch and train him. Dolt.

He uses Psybeam. I think he agrees to be with you. It's more of like an agreeable partner. If I put that f*** in my master ball, he is mine. No, it's indentured servitude, which is very different than capturing someone. There's no such thing as an untrainable Pokemon. There's only an undisciplined master. Exactly.

I have a confession to make. I don't think I like this type of game game and it doesn't make sense to me because rpgs are like my jam they're like my favorite genre of video game do you feel like you're wasting time when you're playing it is that a problem it is so there is nothing compelling to me about clicking on stuff to get more loot which I know is a total double standard because that's kind of what a lot of RPGs are. What is dumbfounding to me, I played a few hours of Diablo 3. I played probably eight hours, I would say.

Okay. And the whole time I was just waiting to fall in love and it never happened. And from what I've played of Torchlight, like the same thing happened. Diablo 2, the same thing happened. I played a Torchlight, the same thing happened. Diablo 2, the same thing happened. I played a Torchlight 2 demo at an event that was the most mind-numbing. It was embarrassing.

I was going up against a final boss, just clicking on it for 15 minutes, and my appointment ran over, and I was like, I have to go. I can't beat this. I'm sorry. I have to leave to go to my next thing. I can't believe they demo it like that. But here's the thing about Torchlight 2, that I felt differently about this than any of these games,

especially Torchlight 1, which I did not particularly like on console when I played it. In Torchlight 2, there were actual tactics, and they were very specific to your class. So I played a rogue, basically, who specialized in the dark magic. I could raise creatures from the dead. And I found that, one, you have eight or nine different enemy types that'll show up at one time. So you can have these goliaths and these tiny, small little creatures that'll get through

any barricades and trudgers and all these other things and i would use basically like one power like a bramble would that would put a thorny poisonous vine uh behind me so i could basically create uh corridors that these creatures would have to walk in by using this power and then at the front of that i would set up a flank of six skeletons that would fire arrows into that and then i would send a bouncing uh explosive typhoon down the corridor which would it goes through as many enemies as it can get in a certain amount of feet so i found i was actually using the resources available to me to create tactics which i've never done in those games like towards the end i wasn't clicking so much as i was like

using my hot keys to cast very specific spells to kind of manage the battlefield. And I'm sure you could still beat it with just clicking mindlessly, but it was surprisingly enjoyable to find ways where I could manipulate the surroundings to kind of just destroy people with three or four really well-placed moves. destroy people with you know three or four really well-placed moves i think maybe my my big hang-up comes with how sort of fast everything like how how you're not just killing like one or two monsters at a time i think the focus on like like tearing through huge mobs of people like that has just never really appealed to me which again like it's hard for me to smack talk diablo and be a world of warcraft fan but at the same time i feel like that like the tactics are much more like you're usually you're basically like one target at a time and one target time everybody working together like a lot of like threat coming off that target a lot of like

meticulous planning and teamwork like i i kind of like i guess maybe i just like a slower game where like when i kill something i'm like yeah we did it instead of like well one down four thousand you want a slower more panda oriented game yeah yeah yeah i just i've always had a problem with these sorts of games. I mean, at every level, pretty much every video game is, you know, click or push this button until you get the reward. But that game, this type of game seems to be like the least, the most obvious. You can see through the systems the quickest i think to where you realize like or at least for me like it doesn't take me long at all to realize i

never get into its spell like i just always feel like i'm just doing this to keep doing it you know and it's not actually i mean that's why i haven't playedablo, just because I didn't want to put a lot of time into something that is a lot of cooking. But, I mean, that'll be the question I guess I have to ask myself is, did I enjoy this because I played it for review and I knew I was going to finish it? Or is this something I would have committed all that time to if I had just picked it up?

I think it's the latter. I still think I would have played through it just because it's like, maybe it's just a game made for me with all the douchey references I made. But just amazing, like, it's amazing that there are all these settings in this game and even the side quests are totally different. Like you'll be in the middle of a bright field

and there'll be a lamp and you'll just decide to light it. And out of nowhere, a ghost ship will appear and you'll get on this ghost ship and suddenly you'll be in a totally different world uh well yeah no that sounds lovely and i would say uh i i think for someone you know i think we've all been in a situation where we're reviewing a game and getting to the end is just torturous so the fact that you reviewed it and got to the end and we're still having a good time and still i'm going back to play it again yeah and are still playing it that's a good sign for that cool um let's take a little break

what's been going on how you want to hear about your trip uh i went to japan what's like the craziest thing about japan like what's the craziest happened? Did you see any of the racist record shops? No, but I saw some really awful. So Mike McWhorter of Polygon has been there many times. And so he sort of guided me around, you know, Akihabara and Harajuku and sort of all the big haunts of Tokyo. and he did, I think just to see the horror in my face, take me into probably the most horrific manga store I've, like, I can't even fathom. My brain is scarred.

What was so horrific about it? I don't even want to put it out. It was hentai. Yeah, no, it was manga. I guess it could be both. That'd be like saying I went into a movie shop, and you're like, it was horrible, and it was like, was there pornography there a comic yeah it was just a porn shop yeah it was but it was only comic porn yeah hand-drawn that's what well sure anyway it was horrible um but japan on the whole like

amazing food like you can go into any like crappy it looks like a greasy spoon, like, hole in the wall. And you'll just get, like, amazing, like, noodles and beef bowls and, oh, spectacular. Beef bowls. The trains are very crowded. That rumor is true. I had a very intimate experience with a total stranger just because, you know, it was not my choice. But she happened to be, like, all up in my steez because there was absolutely nowhere to go. So she, and it was, you know, it was not my choice, but she happened to be, like, all up in my steez because there was absolutely nowhere to go. And it was, you know...

Was it, like, lost in translation, this encounter? We did... I did whisper something to her at the end of the trip, right? But I won't tell you what it was. Was it like, hey, you're standing on my balls? Yes. Something like that. Something similar to that. And then uh yeah so tokyo was very cool and i hung out with um you know friends of the show cheapy d and the um eight

four guys who were very very cool uh and then at the end of it we um well not at the end of it sort of in the middle we uh you know tokyo game show started in earnest and tokyo game show is a very weird show especially these days because there's really not a whole lot of games there that like people outside of japan would give two shits about so it makes covering it really tricky and finding like games that sort of have a more global appeal to them where are your cosplay picks uh i didn't see too many cosplayers did you not go to the the courtyard i oh no i guess i didn't go to the courtyard you're fired yeah that's creep town um yeah uh i'm not supposed to turn how am i supposed to charm my butter if you're not delivering me the cosplay picks,

it's a craze. Oh my word. I need four units. I do wanna mention again. I need four units on my desk by the morning. And two Rikus. Hey, wouldn't it be, okay, here's a free game, you ready? Okay. Pokemon Snap meets cosplay. That has to already exist in the Hentai game market.

It seems like it would be the best. Yeah. It has to, right? It has to already exist in the hentai game market. It has to, right? It's like, you're on the subway, and people are beneath you. Well, speaking of, I was in... You're talking about upskirt pics? Yeah, those games are cool here. Justin is talking about going around a game convention

with a camera and throwing apples at people in costume. Hey! This is important, actually. Apparently in japan there's like a whole um polite like system where you throw an apple on a girl well sort of with regards to taking pictures of cosplayers so apparently um you can't take a picture from the side if you do they'll yell at you and cross their arms in front of you in front of them so you don't take a picture of them there are it's like has to be very precise you have to wait in line and like stand in front of them and make sure they're looking right at the

at your camera otherwise you will honestly you'll just get like annihilated by i don't know some character i don't recognize but uh ranma ranma uh so yeah there's a lot of like a cultural uh drama that you need to worry about i also saw a no upskirting uh sign in the subway so well i'm glad that that's necessary they are they are being uh they're trying to take the bull by the horns and really take care of the situation with signs cultural phenomenon what taking upskirt subways are all over the place why in japan and they have to worry that much about men taking pictures of ladies because for many many years they were a sexually repressed culture and so now that their wings are starting to spread sometimes their excitement comes out in different ways i've also got an nyu talk going on about this and a ted talk scheduled later this

month so definitely tune in uh oh man i feel like i've learned so much about the japanese culture yeah i'm i'm basically um a bootish bootish golly over here can we shut this down oh i guess we have another game we have one more game one more game man from mr gotta talk about it justin mcelroy solving mysteries i'm not gonna win what's your game it stinks right no it doesn't stink what's your game it's the testament of sherlock holmes testament of sherlock holmes is a game and in it you are sherlock holmes but sometimes john watson but sometimes they're well wait are you really the dog yes wait is this the game that you spoke of briefly during e3 yeah oh it finally

came out a year and a half ago yes um so the testament of sherlock holmes there's a the mystery it's kind of hard to explain without uh ruining anything but there's a it's more already i'm getting ahead of me junior uh the bishop is uh is is murdered and uh sherlock is on the case and he acts really weird and you don't know why um you find out later uh and so i played i found out about sherlock uh during an e3 appointment for this game in e3 2011 um so i thought, God, they've been making all these Sherlock Holmes games. I'm going to go back and check out the last one they did. So I played Sherlock versus Jack the Ripper. That game was really cool.

It is a very well-constructed story just because it has to be to follow the events of Jack the Ripper. So much of it is laid out for them, and it has some actual cool twists in it, and it's also really good for, like, just that sort of virtual tourism thing. They really capture, like, the spirit of what you might imagine it to be like in Victorian England in that period.

You go to, like, you know, you spend most of your time in Whitechapel and things like that. Was it Moriarty? No, it was Jack the Ripper. So that game was pretty good and I was excited about Testament. It is just not... So the basic flow of the game is

you're going from location to location and you're doing very little actual deduction. What you're doing very little actual deduction you know what you're what you're usually doing is um solving weird puzzles like everyone in london in this time period apparently had esoteric puzzles guarding their they were all the riddler yeah right everyone in england was the riddler no it's like professor layton except, yeah, except all the puzzles are, very few of the puzzles are like, require actual brain power. They're more mischievous.

They're more like, once you realize it, it's like those slide puzzles. Don't you hate those? Oh, yeah. They're locked in one corner, and you know what has to happen it's just a question of like oh i guess i just gotta fiddle with this thing until i get it that's the kind of puzzles we're talking about um and again they were better in the last game uh you do some

deduction where like you find a bunch of clues and you have to tie those clues together and make some conclusions about them but the conclusions are always so crazy um that it's it's hard to follow their logic uh so you don't really feel like sherlock holmes you just feel like a guy that got lucky uh the some of the acting is good the dialogue is is okay is it fmv acting no no it's all f that well they're actually it's funny that you mention that because this week also saw the release of Sherlock... The Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective on the iPad, which were FMV games originally on the Sega CD, and they've revamped the video.

And I played those actually right after Sherlock Holmes, Testament of Sherlock Holmes. Did you kickstart this? No. Because it didn't get funded. So the Testament of Sherlock Holmes sorry

in Consulting Detective you are actually going to location you're interviewing people you're listening to their story you're looking for uh incompatibilities with things you've heard before and trying to actually deduce the answer to the the puzzle that's set before you the the mystery and there's so little of that and and and it's so in in testament it's such a shame that this uh this you know, whatever, 15, 20-year-old Sega CD game

is a better representation of, you know, that feeling of being Sherlock, but it totally is. So it's hard for me to recommend Testament of Sherlock Holmes to any but the hardest core of Sherlock fans or fans of the series, but it's inoffensive. It's just a lot of missed opportunities. Also, they lie in that marketing campaign. They've been the truth as far as you can pin without breaking.

How so? Because the advertising makes it sound like it's an open world Victorian game. Well, I mean, it's open world in the sense that you can go, you can choose one of like four locations. Yeah, but like when I'm watching that trailer, I'm thinking like, oh my gosh, this is like GTA in Victorian England. So it's more like Carmen Sandiego. This is going to be awesome. It is actually not that far off. I want to hear more about Sherlock's dog.

Okay, so Sherlock's dog is named Toby. And in one level. Wait, isn't your cat named Toby? No, my cat used to be named Toby until it turned out that he was a girl. So now my cat's named Emilia. Is the dog ever like, I smell a clue? No, but that's not, like, he doesn't say that, but he sees a picture of a snake. Toby, spit out that bone.

That's evidence. I'm sorry. When he sees the murderer do his ears flop up straight on Inge. I mean, it really is like... Oh, where'd this poor woman's head go? Oh. You follow

stink lines. Stink lines. For 15 minutes. Sherlock, something's carved into this woman's stomach. You eventually get to a doorknob And It's actually awesome because You start the level as Toby

You run around You jump over a pile of Boxes And you climb up this thing And you flip a switch with your snout And then you run over here and then you do this thing And then it ends up with Toby scratching A doorknob for for sherlock to come open it and investigate and the doorknob is like literally

five feet from sherlock like he was looking at it the whole time i don't know what the dog did um but sherlock does some really messed up things he at one point point I'm not making this up. At one point he feeds an opium addict ashes mixed with dirty water to make him puke. Well that's good because he was going to die from the opium, right? No, no, no. He just needed a distraction so he could

steal the keys in his opium den. What a dick. Yeah, he's a real jerk. At one point there's this woman who's a secretary in a prison and she is pregnant with one of the guard's children and they're they're terrified that her dad will find out because he might uh fire the guy and beat her mercilessly for getting pregnant and for no reason that i can discern sherlock fully tells the dude that she's pregnant and who the father is. Did you select that option, though?

No, no, no. He just did it. I wouldn't have selected that option. He's a detective. He's got to share his secrets. He has a compulsion to share his secrets. He's promoting his personal brand. All right.

So that's Sherlock. I don't know. Go ahead, Russ. It sounds like it's going to win. Yeah, maybe. But Go ahead, Russ. Sounds like it's going to win. Yeah, maybe. But it's not, because Torchlight's going to win. No, come on. Yeah.

Torchlight wins. That's horse apples. You didn't even give us a chance to argue it. Give us a chance to argue it. Okay, fine. Justin. No, because obviously you're going to be very receptive to what we have to say. I would rather throw my considerable weight behind LittleBigPlanet.

You're not allowed to. Brothers. The brothers. No, I'm just better than clicking 2.0. Now click in color. No. Veiled references to Hans Christian Andersen. You have to defend your game, Justin.

Wow. Yeah, I'm sorry. The two people who say they don't like the genre don't like a torchlight what a surprise okay okay fine uh so justin votes for his own game the dog game with sherlock and griffin you describe how awesome your game is with back touch is that the is it really the only reason you don't care for it a lot of times you have to touch the back of the console i played a lot of it. Because sometimes you have to touch the back of the console. I played a lot of it, and I found it basically to be the same as LittleBigPlanet 1 and 2, but with backtouch.

I'm willing to make a compromise here. I'm going to broker a deal. It doesn't matter, because what I say is the law. No, this is for Griffin's vote. Okay. This is for Griffin's vote. Okay. I think I would vote for LittleBigPlanet if we can agree FTL is the better game.

Oh, no way. Yeah. What? Wait, what? You guys can vote for whatever the f*** you want. It's going to be me making the decision. Yeah, I was just helping you get this week. It's a documentary.

Oh, no, no, no. I don't... I'm not going to... I't. I'm not going to. I mean, I'm not going to compromise like that. It's a much better game than FTL is. You are a maniac. Russ, you're the commissioner. This is your.

I know. I'm ending this. Okay. Torchlight wins. Little Big Planet, if you played the first two and don't like back touch, you should probably not play this. You are a fucking imbecile. Wow. No. the first two and don't like back touch you should probably not you are a fucking imbecile wow uh no i will say i didn't uh hate little big planet vita and i think especially if you haven't played the other ones this is a good one to get because it doesn't really require

playing the other ones and it's fun it's like a fun and there aren't a ton of games on vita but sorry it doesn't reference more classic literature that nobody's ever heard i trust me that is not why russ voted for my favorite level in torchlight is the one where you wake up as a bug okay um so congratulations torchlight two um there are flying cockroaches in the game that throw spears yeah Yeah, and do they have humanity issues? Oh, not really. You're not really sure if they're a bug or they're just an old man who's no relevant in his family as the German. Good times. Are there witches and stuff like that?

Yeah. How deep are we going? Yeah. Okay, so Torchlight, congratulations. Does anyone think that FTL is not as good as Torchlight? I don't know. This is certainly an interesting trial. That's another Kafka joke.

Okay, no, we're going to finish this off. Griffin, what do you think? Is Torchlight better than FTL? I think FTL is a much better game than Torchlight. Okay, anyone else agree with him? Yeah, I agree. It's obviously better. I also agree. So FTL continues a much better game than Torchlight. Okay. Anyone else agree with him? Yeah. Yeah. It's obviously better.

I also agree. So FTL continues its reign. Congratulations, FTL. Thank you to everybody for listening to our podcast. If you would, take a moment to subscribe on iTunes and write us a review there. I've never checked, but hopefully we have some. Oh, I'm looking now. Half a star.

Half a star overall score. No, we have many positive reviews thank you for the people who've done it we don't want to besmirch their effort we uh we we uh are also write things about video games at the verge.com forward slash gaming no yeah gaming uh and we're gonna have our own website like in a week or two or three or four or five or six. And that's Polygon.com. Hey, they should find us on YouTube.com forward slash Polygon and watch the documentary series too. Yeah, we got a documentary series about how dope we are.

Dope! And everything else is great. So just listen next week and shouldn't the world's best friends be the world's best games? Woo! so just listen next week and shouldn't the world's best friends be the world's best games Besties!