The Besties - The Besties Podcast XXXII

Episode Date: October 19, 2012

Besties! Those stunning changes you were expecting? Yeah...sorry...you'll have to wait on those. The Besties are back, in pretty much the form you remember them in. But the changes! They're coming! We swear! And no, the changes don't involve us stopping the podcast. Sorry to disappoint! Ran into a few audio issues this week, so if you hear us talking over each other more than normal, blame evil, evil technology. 04:00 - Retro City Rampage 12:15 - XCOM: Enemy Unknown 18:30 - Halftime: Denpa Men & Spycraft 29:50 - Dishonored 43:30 - THE DECISION 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!

My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and nope. Me. I know it. The best game. Yeah? Do you? Should I? Is it more? Do you need? You know what? How about this week?

My name is whoever, and we know the best game of the week. I love it. Yeah, it's good, right? We are hive mind of good game. We are. That's our new goal. Well, do introduce yourselves, though. Yeah, yeah, sure. But we'll do the we know the best.

I don't think you need to introduce yourselves, actually, because I like this hive mind philosophy we've gotten. I like imagining all of us as one grotesque monster. We are besties. one grotesque monster. We are besties. And we just produce

we produce a jelly of natural best games. Our faces like come to the come to the

our thorax opens and our jelly spews forth and good games My name is Ross Brecken

and I know the best game of the week. Is that the jelly? That's the sound of the jelly. Yeah. We're all jelly. Oh, good game. here at the besties we talk about the latest releases the newest hottest games uh pit them

against each other in mortal kombat to see which one reigns supreme and then we see if that one can unseat our current reigning champion griffin mroy. What is our reigning champion? It is FTL, if memory serves. But I think FTL's been reigning supreme for like three weeks. This week, FTL will be dethroned. Are we retiring it? We're retiring it to the Hall of Fame. Well, I don't think we need to retire it,

considering the caliber of games. Yeah, it's going to be a rough week this week. I think it's going to get beat. Yeah. So we do have a change of rules. Would you like to address that, Hoops? Yeah, so we're going to steer away from each of us picking individual

games and just get into some deep dives of talking about the newest releases. Not one gay, one person. We're just all going to rap. It's just a freeform rap. It's just a free-form rap. It's about the games we don't talk about. That's what you've got to listen to.

It's like Jay-Z says, I just like to collaborate, man. I just like to end the best song. Right, exactly. That's exactly it. Let's talk about why. Because when Russ Frushtick decided that Little Big Planet wasn't the best game of that week,

Oh my God, this is still being brought up. I tried to burn his apartment down. And that's not good for me. As soon as the show was done recording and said, I'm losing interest in the besties. It's not good for me. It's not good for Russ. It's not good for the podcast. Yeah, and that woman whose apartment that you burned down because you thought it was Russ's apartment. It's especially not good for that woman.

Linda, I did smell a lot of mesquite in my neighborhood. I didn't know what that was. It's the woman I burned to death because of LittleBigPlanet. So we're just going to talk about the new games. We're going to talk about the new games, and at the end, we will argue about which one should be at the top. Yeah, we're still...

I mean, that scenario, it will still happen where I pick LittleBigPlanet as the worst game of the week. Like, that's still going to happen. It's still going to be very contentious, the show. But I'm probably not going to try to murder Russ anymore. Okay, thank you. And the great news is, this week, we have two really great, incredible games,

and one fine game. An interesting game worth talking about. And also, Dimpleman. Let's move on. We have something for halftime. So, Chris Plant, I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit. I want to start with a little bit smaller. I think of the three releases we're talking about this week, it's the least known quantity, and it's Retro City Rampage.

Can you tell us about it? Yeah, Retro City Rampage is, on its most basic premise, a demake of Grand Theft Auto. It's, you know, you take that big open 3D world full of crime, and you make it a 2D kind of 8-bit. It looks like Grand Theft Auto would look on the NES. So it looks like Grand Theft Auto would look on the NES. So it looks like Grand Theft Auto 1.

Yes, but much, much grungier and pixelier. I mean, like, there's like, you know, like, the NES is like 8-color palette type of thing. So, I mean, it really commits to that. So it looks like Ghostbusters. It does look like Ghostbusters, who happen to be in the game as Goo Busters,

and they clean up we're going to beep this, semen from the... What do we need to beep semen for? Oh yeah, we can keep semen. I said ejaculate like two and a half minutes ago. They clean up a surplus of semen at a strip club joint and I guess

they're overwhelmed by the semen so you go into the strip club and then you zap all the women to death. I want to take a quick pause. Can we take a quick time out to say daddy no like you so far. Yeah. Talk about mood slime.

So the Ghostbusters are not the only pop culture reference in the game. In fact, it's a bit of an exhausting churn of pop culture. In the first 10 minutes, I lost track at about 20 or 30 references. It's just one after another of, do you remember this from the years 1985 to 1995? Saved by the Bell, obvious, Degrassi is in there. My First Kiss, is that in there?

I don't think My First Kiss is in there. There was a group. There was a missile crisis in those years. And it gets super niche, like the... My Game On dying? My Game On dying is there. When I got my first pubes at nine. Pretty impressive. Wait, that was like 1996.

That was not within the... I don't want to brag. Oh, I'm like 1996. That was not within this. I don't want to brag. Oh, I'm sorry. I meant three. So what is the, tell me the gameplay loop. So the gameplay loop, what you do when you go to a mission is, you have to drive to every mission.

So in that way, it's like Grand Theft Auto. Then you get to that mission, and basically it parodies a famous video game from that period. So something like Commando, where it's that top-down shoot things and get from barrier to barrier. There's stealth stuff like the original Metal Gear. There's even a Pitfall-like minigame. So everything...

There's something like a wide range of styles. In a way, it's kind of like a WarioWare, where you're getting lots of tiny things. The problem being, none of them are as good as their source material, and you still have to drive to each of them. So imagine WarioWare, where you enjoy these 15 seconds, but then you have to drive for two or three minutes to get from one minigame to the next.

I think, I've only played the demo, but based on the demo, I think it makes WarioWare look cogent. It makes WarioWare like each of those games seem like a fleshed out universe in comparison. The other problem is it

wants to be referential of some of these games, which actually didn't have good game design. Like, there's a mission where you have to tail a car in the game, and it's like, oh, well, this is boring. Has tailing a car ever been fun in a video game ever? It's never been fun, but it's going to keep that mission. So now you tail a car, but you also collect coffee

because you're falling asleep because the mission is so boring. Hot coffee? Is it hot coffee? Don't worry, there is a hot coffee joke. Ah, funny. So you're collecting coffee, and then it's so slow that you don't even have to get in another car to follow him. You can just walk. But this goes on for, like, three minutes, and then it's so slow that you don't even have to get in another car to follow him. You can just walk. But this goes on for like three minutes,

and you get spotted pretty easily. So you'll do this mission. The first time, it's kind of funny. The eighth time, it's like, why is this mission here? You know this mission's bad. And they're just, I cannot think of a game that told me more often that, okay, you're going to do something cliche and boring,

but we have a twist. It's the old Matt Hazard. It's the Matt Hazard conundrum, right? Yeah. Making fun of bad gameplay does not make your gameplay good. It just is more bad. I do think the super hardcore video game fans will love it just for the references because they cut so deep.

I mean, when you, an example that we cut from the review because it was too niche even for the review is there's a Smash TV level where you interrupt a interview show with Will Smith as the Fresh Prince and he's interviewing Phil Fish.

Oh my god. Wow. I can't even handle that. And it's like, you go so deep, and you're like, Jesus Christ. Whoa, who will know what Fez is? I mean, not to take anything away from Fez, but who will know that Fez was created by Phil Fish? And I think that sort of brings up a point

that you were talking about earlier, which was there's a certain level of pompous snobbishness to this game. Yeah, well, I won't even call it snobbish. It's just almost like it's so close to what it's focusing on. I know the developers have been working on it for a long time and obviously has put his heart into it. But you can sometimes get too focused and you kind of lose track of how the rest of the world might

even absorb this thing. To hear you describe some of the, especially the stuff about like large publishers and their relationship to indie devs, it's a lot of it what you described sounded very cynical. Which is unfortunate because I feel like that is

cynicism is the domain of the mega publisher, you know, releasing whatever they think will move the most copies. And like that cynicism has been sort of refreshingly absent from the industry. I don't think that the game is especially cynical. I think that the reference, especially to like the source material from the 80s, comes from a place of sincerity. So what you have not gotten into in the demo,

and what is the main story of the game, is that the villains are giant publishers, and they're going to collect indie developers to make games for them so they don't have to work. And then they can reap all the money from them and wear them out. And then they won't want to go anywhere because the publishers can always get other indie devs so they'll be uh stricken to their contract and ultimately they want to get a time machine to

travel forward in time steal all the good ideas and use them as their own which as you can obviously tell is ironic because that is effectively what the game is doing. It is stealing all, I mean, it's borrowing all the great ideas of games past. I mean, there's nothing particularly original. So, the weird thing is it's so self-aware about the boringness and tedium of the missions, but it doesn't have that same

ability to kind of look at itself when it's making these attacks on a publisher. Which is, you know, that's a pretty big problem for your main story. And not that you shouldn't. I would love for a good game to satirize the video game industry. Game Dev Story is a great game that did that. You know, maybe unintentionally,

about how you can get into this loop of, like, just producing sequels just to make money. It also wasn't relying on, like, wacky family guy style pop culture references. Yeah, but even beyond that, if you cut all that. With the story, I want that story. There's plenty to satirize. But just doing it bluntly and just saying those things, that's not satire.

That's just, it's a forum post, you know. Yeah. Which is too bad. Oh, well. So, no stars? Yeah. Which is too bad. Oh, well.

So, no stars? It's a competent game that I think there is a definite audience for, which, if you know our rubric, will equate to a score. But the good news is there are two unbelievable games that we have a lot to talk about. Oh, man, Dimpleman. Dimpleman. It's not Dimpleman. Let's to talk about. Oh, man. Dimpaman. Dimpaman. It's not Dimpaman. Let's start with Dimpaman, then.

Let's not leave with Dimpaman. I would like to hear a little bit about XCOM. I haven't played it myself. I wouldn't say I'm a big strategy guy, usually. But this has been getting a lot of... It's for you. Yeah. It's for Justin?

It's for people who don't play strategy. I mean, it's for you. Yeah. It's for Justin? It's for people who don't play strategy. I mean, it's for strategy game fans, naturally. I gotta tell you guys, I was pretty close to taking the plunge and then I watched

some gameplay videos of it and it looked really intimidating. It looks so strategy. It looks wicked. There's like glowing lines and squares. Right, so what are the...

I read I played it a little bit at Chris Plant's house on the PC, which was an awful experience because PC gaming is horrible. It looks great though. But I also read Russ Pitt's review, and the one thing that I took away from it was that the combat sequences which are like the crux of the game

where you're like ordering a squad of four or five guys to like flank out outflank aliens and such, are cool. And all those mechanics work really well. And then there's the crazy, like, you're in a base and you're looking at graphs, and there's algebra to worry about. And that's sort of where...

I don't know. He just said that, like, Ross Pitt said that that aspect of the game was, like, weirdly, like, not on par with the rest of it. Maybe late game, I could see that becoming a problem. But the game does... There are two things for you, Justin, and people who don't play strategy games.

One, the tutorial is, like, three hours. I mean, it's so long that you don't even realize you're still in it. Love that. But it's not patronizing. Go on. You're learning the game in a safe environment before it starts just making it that your decisions will ruin you for the rest of the game the problem is that does

a point does come where you could effectively just lose which is terrifying I do think if you're playing on a hard enough difficulty that you could expend enough resources and not be able to earn enough resources to win. Right. I don't know for sure.

Is permadeath in every, because that's been like the big thing. Permadeath is in everything. The thing, but the good news is for you, who's not good at permadeath games, because we all know how much you hate them, there is a very easy setting. Yeah, the easy setting is incredibly forgiving.

Yeah, also, life has permadeaths, so I think they're sort of calling out that, that people die in life. Yeah, not with the loving blood of Jesus. So, next question. Just have to go away for 2,000 years. I mean, have you played it all, Griffin? XCOM?

Yeah. XCOM! No, I haven't. I'm interested in it because it seems like the kind of strategy game I can get in. It seems almost like a strategy RPG, which is more in my wheelhouse. It's like the tactics. Did you fire in once? Or did you play Valkyria Chronicles?

Oh, yeah. I played a little bit, yeah. I think if you could get into that, I think you could get into this. Yeah. Okay. It's sort of Valkyria Chronicles meets Pokemon Black and White 2. Oh, sure. Don't pander to me.

Oh, did we forget to mention the animal husbandry in the game? Right. That's a big part of it. How do you get new people on your team? Oh, boy. I have big problems with this system. Brace yourself. I saw somebody write about this,

and I wish I had the chance to actually read the post, but somebody pointed out that humanity is very low price. Like, you can buy soldiers for, I think, 15 bucks? Yeah. Like, 15 fantasy bucks? Yeah, but you don't know what the economy's like at that point. That's true. You are buying, like, an entire new unit of the XCOM. Pork bellies

are in the toilet. Yeah. So my big issue with getting guys on your team, and Plant's right, you do just pay, like, 100 bucks to get, like, a new guys on your team, and Plant's right, you do just pay like 100 bucks to get like a new soldier on your team. But you bring them on, and you know, they're like Dave or Billy or Beth. Or Dilly.

Dilly. Or Babe. What a babe. So you take them onto your team, but you have no idea what they're good at. Like they just appear in your base with a gun. And you're like, oh, okay. Sounds like when we hired you.

Boosh. So you send them out on a mission, and after the mission, presuming they live, which is unlikely to begin with, you then find out, like, oh, that's their skill set. So it seems kind of weird if you're like desperate for a medic to have to like run through seven or eight newbies to figure out like which one's the medic

by like a dice roll yeah well it also makes you decide what you're who are you who are expendable uh when you want a mission you know if you have a strong medic you're gonna want to make sure that he is not the first person you send into a dark corridor like i mean it's a game medic, you're going to want to make sure that he is not the first person you send into a dark corridor. It's a game that makes you make tough choices. But that's a dumb tough choice, to not know what a guy like me should do. Yeah, I guess. I appreciate... It's a choice

you have to make as a developer. Are you going to make people... Is this going to be a game where you have to make really hard choices with what you're doing with these people? And the only way to do that is with things like permadeath. I like when I know basically what's there. You like having complete control. Complete control over my life. Over the people in my life.

I'm very controlling. Over Bave. Over Bave. Now, Chris, you've played it an okay amount, right? Yeah, yeah. Did you play with a controller or with a mouse and keyboard? I played with mouse and keyboard, but I've also played it with controller.

Controller's better. It's not better by any means, except for throwing grenades. There is nothing about this kind of game that says to me I'd want to play it with a controller. Actually, it does work very well with a controller. I thought the same thing, and I played it with a controller at E3, and

they have this whole system where they're like, it's sort of like snapping to cover. And I was actually issuing orders. I put it on the PC at Plant's house. I was issuing orders faster on a controller than I was on the PC. Can I shout orders at Kinect? Yeah, you can yell, get me a cup of coffee. I crave that good Kinect shouting functionality.

You could actually command the whole game with Kinect, but you have to be naked. So, really. To see every part of you. Every part? Every part of you. My holes and everything? Your orphans.

His goody goodies? Good. Squishy bits Hey I know what you want to talk about Idea? It's so rare That an eShop game comes along That touches me

As completely as Dimpleman has touched me More emotionally impactful than Love Plus? Love Plus. Love Plus. Take the emotionality of Love Plus, rub it all over Journey, and then wrap it in a flower taco shell.

And by flower, I mean the game Flower. Feels like hyperbole. You know, I mean, you're not prone to that, but... Here's what's up. It's a dungeon diver game in the traditional style. Yeah, but dungeon diver can mean a lot of things. What does that mean? You dive through dungeons, like, level by level.

Like Greg Louganis? Yeah, it's a Greg Louganis simulator. Okay. And you hit your head on the diving board, and you get a blood nipple. So, Dimpleman... no, you go through dungeons like level by level. It's almost roguelike-esque. Mm-hmm.

In that, if your Dimpleman die and you leave the dungeon with them dead, they're gone. What is a Dimpleman? I'm glad you asked what a Dimpleman is. They're Pokemon, aren't they? It's just gonna be a Pokemon. Nope. They're men. Okay.

And they wear jumpsuits. I think unitard is more the best, the better term. And they come in different shapes and sizes. And they come with different antennas on their head. Are there 150 different ones? It's sort of their elemental property. But their antenna determines what kind of special attacks they do. So maybe they have a sprinkler up there.

And then they have like water powers. So maybe they have a sprinkler up there and then they have like water powers or maybe they have a little tornado and then they have wind powers or a little fireball. Wait, were you just saying? Or a little medic thing. Were you just saying that the color- I bet you feel like a real fucking idiot for thinking they were Pokemon, right?

Yes, it's not anything like Pokemon. But they're all men. And that's what's important to keep in mind. When you call them Pokemon. Griffin, were you saying that the color determines their skill set? No. The color determines their elemental properties. So if they're red and they get hit by a water attack,

it's going to hurt more. Okay. And they're good at riding horses? Here's what's great. Let me tell you about it. Go on. When you get experience points in the dungeon, not only the Dimplemen in your party

get experience, but also the ones at home that you didn't take with you, so you're constantly building up an arm. So it sort of benefits you to catch a lot of Dimplemen. I should get to that point. So you catch Dimplemen. Do you catch them all? No. It's impossible to catch them all.

In fact, it's fucking stupid that you just said that. But these are men. You can't catch men. You can because they live in your radio waves. Can I please talk about dimple men? Oh, no, no, wait, wait. That reminds me of my favorite Twilight Zone episode. To catch men.

No. To serve men. You derailed us for that? To catch men. It's not even... They were trying to catch us all along. I have places to be, and I wish you guys would let me talk about dimple men.

Okay. Please, please tell me about dimple men. So dimple men show up all around you, augmented reality style. You have to look around. Oh, no. Demonstrate. You have to look around, right? reality style. You have to look around. Oh, no. You have to look around, right?

And then catch them like this, right? Like this and like this. And they show up all around you, okay? But there's only so many that show up in your, wherever you are. In order to make more show up, you have to go to different, like detect different Wi-Fi signals. So wait, I want to make sure I'm getting this right. So you're playing a game in which you try to make more men come around you so you can take photos of them with your 3DS.

And then they show up in your dungeon party. Yeah. Got it. They show up in your dungeon. I'm glad you're paying attention. Oh, you bring a bunch of men to your house, you take photos of them with your 3DS. And then you go diving with them.

And then you put them in your dungeon. They're invisible men. Right now, all of us are breathing dimpamen. When you walk with your mouth open, you are eating dimpamen, and you may not know it. No, it's actually a really cool thing, because you'll only be able to catch

certain types of dimpamen in your house, right? But if you take your 3DS with you, and you go to a Starbucks, or you go to anywhere else that has Wi-Fi signals, then you will have more Dimpleman around you that you can catch. Justin, are you not even paying attention at all? No, I'm sitting here listening to everything you're saying. I'm talking about a game that is brave.

I thought that we changed the show to avoid this kind of- Justin's trying to take a photo of all the Dimplemen in his house right now. I'm seeing if my the show to avoid this kind of... Justin's trying to take a photo of all the dimplemen that are in his house right now. I'm seeing if my phone picks up dimplemen. It doesn't. He's like, I gotta get all these dimplemen in my phone.

It's a great little RPG. Because here's the thing. You might go to a dungeon that has all types of, like, fire monsters in it, so you should go around to a lot of different Wi-Fi signals until you can catch a full team of just water dimple men. And then you can go in that dungeon and just clean up.

I just realized where I've heard about this from. It was the crazy person who sits outside our apartment building and yells about the Wi-Fi rays and the invisible men that come to him when he's fire crawling. The game does sound like it was made by paranoid kids. The Wi-Fi rays and the invisible men.

I want to talk real quick about... More about Dimpleman. Yeah, I've got about an hour. I can talk more about Dimpleman. They all have names of... They all have like dude names. Like, hey, I'm Zach. What a surprise. I'm an invisible man that lives in Wi-Fi.

Zach. I'm Ernest. Let's go. I'm Ernest. I live at the Wi-Fi at Vizzoli's. I want a dungeon. Actually, they live at the Wi-Fi. I come from Vizzoli's.

Mamma mia, that's a spicy dungeon. I've been playing... I spent my weekend playing... I have a couple of the hot games we're talking about this week. And I spent my weekend playing, I have a couple of the hot games we're talking about this week. And I spent my weekend playing a game called Spycraft. It is from 1995 or 6-ish. It is an FMV spy adventure game.

And I know what you're thinking. I know that I am big on the FMV games and tend to be more forgiving of them. But this is not that. Spycraft is they just released it on Gong. Gong.com. Six bucks. It is a

spy adventure game where you are role playing as an actual CIA agent. I mean, it's not like, it's very not James Bond. It's very much about research and intelligence gathering. Aren't they supposed to be a secret, though? Yeah.

Well, the game was consulted on by a former CIA chief. And they, like, released all these real names? And a former KGB chief. No, obviously the names aren't relevant. Wait, wait, wait. We're working with the Ruskies now? I don't think this is possible. Yeah, in our video game development in 1995, we're working with the Ruskies.? I don't think this is possible. Yeah, in our video game development in 1995,

we were working with the Ruskies. But you have access to all these different tools, so you're given the very broad outline of what the plot is about, of what you're trying to uncover. And then you have a video communicator where you get video messages from people, and they say something like,

you know, I've just sent a photo your way. Can you check it out? You have tools like an image analyzer where you can look for from people and they say something like, you know, I've just sent a photo your way. Can you check it out? You have tools like an image analyzer where you can look for clues in a tool. There's a segment where you have to Photoshop a picture to trick an opposing agent. There are codes you have to break. And a lot of it, there's very brief action sequences. By and large, it's about using your tools to unearth the plot. And it requires some actual lateral thinking.

I was impressed. It sounds a lot like Missing, like the Missing games. Yes. Yes. It is very much like Missing since January and the other one. Evidence, right.

Sounds like a hell of a game. What was the subtitle of Evidence? It couldn't be less important. Yeah. Evidence, right. Sounds like a hell of a iPhone game. What was the subtitle of Evidence? It couldn't be less important. Yeah. Evidence, we've got you. It honestly sounds like you've boiled down the CIA job into just the paperwork of it. And that's really the crux of this game.

No, not really paperwork. There's no Claire Danes busting terrorists in this one. I'll give you an example of one of the sections you are trying to find an informant named Birdsong. Is that his real name? Birdsong? Or is that a nickname?

It's Philip Birdsong. Is it his name or is it like onomatopoeia? So it's like Philip... Chris, if you're going to interrupt me, I will ask that your jokes be better. Is that his name or is it like onomatopoeia? So it's like Philip. Chris, if you're going to interrupt me, I will ask that your jokes be better. Okay, what about to serve men? You're not even making sense now.

So you overhear an audio clip of him on the phone with somebody else and you have the MP3 fed into your computer, and you can highlight specific sections in an interface that's very much like, looks like Audacity, the program we used to record. You can highlight specific sections and send them to an analyst, and they will tell you what you're hearing.

So if you hear a plane taking off in the background or a trolley or something like that, you highlight that specific part of the WAV file, send it to an analyst, they tell you what you hear. You can then plug that data into a map of whatever region. I think in this specific example, it's in Russia. But it will show you the areas at which these different things could coexist. So you have to figure out where you could be hearing all these different sounds and use that to hone in on,

on where the informant is, is being held. So there's a lot of really incredibly advanced for the late nineties. Yeah. It's, it's, yeah, it's really shockingly good.

It was published by Activision. So, I mean, they had, they had some, some dough. I hope they're not using Apple maps. Apple maps are bad.

Well, it's, it's an, it's in 96, so that's... Apple existed then. Maps didn't exist in 1990. Maps didn't exist. Cartography wasn't invented until the early 2000s. Until Apple invented it. And of course, it's FNV, which helps quite a bit. And it's neat.

It's six bucks on GOG. I mean, go check it out. It's held up miraculously well. What do you want? A Subway sandwich? Or do you want this ridiculous... You want to skip your Subway sandwich this week? Or do you want to take yourself on a spy adventure?

Maybe talk about Dishonored? Yeah, it's interesting that we brought three games to talk about this week, because we're all going to talk about the same games together. And what happened is the Brothers McElroy, they hijacked our new podcast idea so they could not only bring games that were not released this week.

Yeah, also games that no one cares about. But bring out their own games so they could just do little monologues about 1995 and the good old days when videos were videos and games were games. And racist little men living in microwaves. I figured since we only spent a few minutes on XCOM, since none of us have played it,

maybe fill it in with some other games. Why not, right? I think. Half of us played it. Half of us. Your experience of it seems to be sitting on Chris Plant's couch, looking over his shoulder and kibitzing about the baddie. The resolution. Yeah. Let's talk about Dishonored. No, Ono Red. Chris Plant's couch looking over his shoulder and kibitzing about the baddie's doing.

Yeah. Let's talk about Dishonored. No, Ono Red. Dishonored is a game. Yep. First person crossbow game where you are, it's really hard to describe. There is a crossbow in it. There's a crossbow.

I don't want Chris Plant. Russ Freshday. Yeah. There is a crossbow in it. There's a crossbow. I don't want a crossbow. Russ Frushtick. Yeah. Tell me about Dishonored. Well, before I get into Dishonored, I wanted to talk a little bit. Good, by all means. About something that, I mean,

you guys might remember a few months ago that I sort of suffered a bit of an accident and for a brief period of time became a vampire. Do you remember that? Yeah. It was really harrowing. But no, it's cool because I went on this long quest

to cure myself of vampirism. There was a lot of things I had to pick up. But this weekend, I was hanging out in my apartment and I look over because I felt something on my shoulder and there was a little bat on my shoulder. I was like, hey, bat, but then it bit me.

And since then, I've been feeling really sick. Hello. It is me. Count Von Froschdick. I am back. Here to talk about Dishonored. Uh-huh. Are there vampires about Dishonored. Uh-huh.

Are there vampires in Dishonored? No, there are not. Okay, good. Any vampires in Dishonored. But I did want to say that, Griffin, are you a vampire as well? Yes, he is. I wanted to say that many of the tenants... That's the sound of Griffin putting

a bag over his face. Many of the tenants in this island match my attitude towards life. Okay. My vampiric attitude towards life. You don't have to string it out. Let's hear it. I am very

sneaky. I am very sneaky. I can transform into animals. And I believe in not killing anyone. It's strange for a vampire. Vampires kill many. No, we do not. Yes, you do. We do not.

We transform people into vampires. No, that's not how it works. When they suck the blood, they die. What they can do to transform them into vampires is they cut open their arms and then they make them suck it. That's not accurate. You watch, like, not watch True Blood? They just drink until their pulse slows. They become a vampire, like me.

You need to, you're not Bela Lugosi. I'm saying this is how it works yes would you like to know no not now not from you at all

really in any sense but go on please no complete the bit to completion you can't see it I'm with Russ right now he

he brought you know those the hoods that just tap, like they can be removed from a winter weather jacket? He's wearing that over his head, but there's no winter weather jacket. So it's just a big hood on his face.

Like a vampire would wear. Vampire outfits. It might be the laziest costume I have ever seen. I am very offended that you do not approve of my traditional vampire outfit. I can't wait to see what Russ does for Halloween. Like maybe he'll just make like a gun out of tinfoil

and say he's Han Solo or something. I shot first. Yeah. Carry around some band-aids. I'm a doctor. Why? Have you, any of you, I have a question for the group. He'll just wear clothes and say he's a mannequin?

Have any of you ever become a rat? No, I can't say I have. In real life, I mean. Become a wrecked? A rat. Like a mouse. That's A rat. A rat. Like a mouse. That's still what I'm hearing.

Like a mouse. Oh, yeah. Erect like a mouse. I have become a rat in real life, but also in Dishonored. Okay. And Dishonored is the most accurate representation of rat transformation I have ever seen in any video game.

He doesn't really transform into a rat, though. It's not like his limbs shrink down and he becomes furry. He possesses the mouse. There's already a mouse. He inhabits his brain. Unless there's any

argument from Count Freshnick, let me lay out some of the basics here, and then you can give me some more of your expert analysis. Excellent. So in Dishonored, you play a former bodyguard of an empress that has been assassinated. She has been assassinated. He has been framed.

He has been framed for her assassination. Her daughter, the rightful heir to her throne has been kidnapped heiress to her throne has been kidnapped um and our our hero corvo is enlisted by a a group of rebels to retrieve uh em, the daughter of the Empress, by using his skill set, which involves killing people in a very covert fashion. And as the game progresses, magical powers. These powers are not necessarily, I mean, they can be, but they're not all offensive in nature. Most are used to facilitate...

What about the blackface power? I found that one pretty offensive. Yeah. I am not familiar with this power. You got left out on a raft in the middle of the ocean with that one. That was a perfectly

crafted goof, and you guys just like... The boat just left without goof. And you guys just like... The boat just left without you. So you, for instance, you have a power. The first one you get is called Blink. It's a very short teleport. I have that power. Yeah, just like a vampire.

No, but I am 98% certain that Russ is just talking about his ability to close and open his eyes, to moisten his eyeballs. That's impossible. I am versatile. So the game is much more open-ended, I think, than a lot of AAA action games, especially in the first-person arena go. You are given multiple options for how you're going to approach a scenario. For instance, if you need to infiltrate a building, maybe you can use blink to climb up the side of it.

Maybe you can possess a fish and swim in through a grate. Maybe you can just fight your way in with stabbing and shooting your gun and your crossbow bolts and your weapons. I've gone for a stealthier approach, which is weird for me because I'm usually like attempting stealth

until I get spotted and then just turning it into a bloodbath. And for some reason, the game is designed so that stealth feels fun. Part of it is you have an ability to see vision cones and you have a lot of tricks up your sleeve that make not getting caught

much easier. Like me! I have many tricks. I think it's the best representation of stealth in a game. A lot of people, so there's this chaos system in the game, where if you kill a bunch of people, then the global chaos level rises, and the global chaos level rises.

And the more chaos there is, the more like swarms of rats there are, the more guards there are, the more basically the world becomes a darker place. And a lot of people see that as punishment. And so that's why you're sneaky. But I think that it really does have some of the best stealth mechanics in the game. And that might just be because of how limited those mechanics are.

If you, if you sneak into shadows right next to a guard, you're not invisible. There's no uncertainty about it. It's all very logical. If you would think that in real life you would be seen by a person, then you're probably going to be seen. This is what I

wanted to discuss, because I think as a vampire, my personal life choices have been recreated and dishonored so accurately that it is a little disturbing. Like maybe they were watching me when they developed this game

and that's what happened. Like maybe I deserve some of the money that is coming out. You're saying it's a biographical video game? Yes. And that you have been dishonored by it being released. And not getting any royalties. No casks of gold.

Does gold come in casks? I don't recall. That's the only form it comes in now. One of the weird things for me about the game is that I am so stealth-focused that I feel like there's whole aspects of the game I'm missing. For example, there's a whole, first off, there's offensive magic powers like blackface or a- What?

I know. That kills your enemies. There's upgrades you can do to your pistol that makes it more accurate. There's combat upgrades that make you better at sword fighting. And I'm using none of those. That is completely foreign to me. I sometimes forget I have a sword because

all I do is A, choke dudes out, and B, shoot them with sleep darts. That's it. That's my whole game. To go to the chaos system, what I think is sort of brilliant about the chaos system, and I don is sort of brilliant about the chaos system, and I don't know why people are complaining about it, is it basically turns the game into a first-person shooter

if you're playing it that way. It says, okay, you're killing things. It caters to the way you're playing it. You're killing a lot of things. Well, clearly that's how you're going to go about this. We're not going to let you just cakewalk these four guards that are in each stage. We're going to start giving you some challenge and things to shoot in the face.

And I think that's pretty great. It scales the world naturally to how you are playing the game. And contextually. It actually makes sense that if a lot of people are dying in this world, that more guards would maybe start showing up at important places. It also lends itself to multiple playthroughs, because I'm already going through as a psychopath who is trying to see how many people I can kill

just by, like, falling. That's my whole thing. Like, I don't need guns. I just kind of want to make people fall. Maybe that entails shooting them with a sleep dart when they're looking over a ledge. Maybe that entails freezing time, knocking them out,

picking them up, and throwing them. You haven't finished the game? Yeah, I finished it. This is not a spoiler, but near the end of the game, there is a man peeing that you can also make fall. And there is nothing more satisfying than making a pee-pee man fall into the wind

he is pissing into. Here's his pee, and he's falling into it as he's going down. I also made many people fall in this game. But in truth, I made them fall in love with me. Using your vampire seduction.

Because I am a handsome vampire man. So powerful are your vampire skills that you can use them in video games in which they are not programmed. Well, it was based on my life, so clearly love... So you know the cheat codes. They are not cheat codes, they are life codes.

The art style of this game is super interesting, and it's hard for me to describe without using other video game touchstones, because it reminds me a lot of what we've seen coming out of Bioshock Infinite actually does it remind you at all of Half-Life 2? yes

because it was designed by the same guy yeah it reminds me of Castlevania if part of this is part of the reason that Infinite wanted to get out of the... This is part of the reason that Infinite wanted to get out of the fourth quarter of... I'm going to guess it wasn't

because they were running scared from Desire. I'm just going to throw that out. But! But it is a very cool look. I'm shocked by how much I'm enjoying it. I mean, I thought it looked slick, but especially stealth is not usually appealing to me.

But this stealth makes you feel so powerful. I mean, there's no reason for you not to be able to, you know, to go through this stealthily. It is not balanced against you being able to be stealthy about it. Right. And there's lots of opportunities. There are lots of rewards outside of just, and Chris, you had a great piece about this up on the site this week.

There's lots of reward for using stealth in terms of the narrative, because you pick up a lot of conversation snippets that you would miss on just a pure murder playthrough. I heard one. Fill in a lot of the backstory of the game. Two guards were talking and one of them says to the other one, did you see that handsome vampire in the shadows over there?

Christ. I nodded to myself. It doesn't make sense. You're not... I'm very handsome. I played the game to completion and I didn't see you in it as a vampire. Also, they made the game a long time ago and you only became a vampire eight minutes

ago. It is based on my earlier years as a vampire. So it would just be Russ Freshstick walking around pretending to be a Frenchman. After I reviewed Skyrim, that's it. Do you know what's so good about this? Russ knew you were going to say that and that's why he did set up the premise.

He had the fiction. He had been a vampire before and then it went away, and it resolved it, and then it came back. He was in remission. He was in the shower this morning, and he's like,

I'm going to get him good. I'm going to get him so good. This is my life. I think we're all leaning towards Spycraft as the biggest... We need to come out with a new show, new us, new year. We need a new metric for deciding which game is the best. I'm going to say which game has the most dudes you catch with Wi-Fi.

I do think that for me, at least, Dishonored takes the cake this week. Yeah, I think so too. I think it's fantastic and I would like for everybody to play it. I don't think I've had an experience that feels fresher than this, that makes me want to be playing it again as I'm playing it the first time. It actually made me hungry to play more stealth games. I actually, as soon as I finished it, I downloaded Metal Gear Solid on my Vita and'm playing it the first time? It actually made me hungry to play more stealth games. I actually, as soon as I finished it, I downloaded Metal Gear Solid

on my Vita and started playing it. Just to see what it... Every time I've played a game like this, it really has been, yeah, I'll try stealth, but instead of screwing up and starting the section over again, I'll just kill everyone. This was the first game where I really

felt like I should stick with the sneaky thing. I would agree. I would also say, apart from Dishonored being my favorite game that came out this week, I would say if you in the audience listening right now enjoyed Dishonored, please send me $7

because that is how much Bethesda owes me for taking my life. Just $7? $7 per person. So if we combine the $7 of all of the listeners who listen to our show, we will be up to $28. How many listeners?

Actually, my wife told me she stopped listening. So $21. $21. Great. Chris, are you agreed? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a shame XCOM won't get the chance to sit on that pedestal, that arbitrary pedestal we've created,

because I think any other week it would be there. I mean, it's one of the best games of the year. But you've got to keep in mind, that means if it made it to the Hall of Fame, it wouldn't be in Dishonored. Yeah, it would still be in Dishonored, Dishonored's going to beat it in. Yeah, it would have still been beating Dishonored. Exactly. So, yeah, knowing that, yeah,

Dishonored wins this week. And FTL dies as well. I think Dimpleman, on its own, would have dethroned FTL with a bullet. Right. But I am willing to let that ship sail, and maybe it'll meet up with a little big planet ship in the ocean.

They'll form a rebel armada. Deep beneath the sea, you mean, where it's so... And come destroy our show. Man, usually by this point, Russ Frustik will have found some way to come back. He will have found some way to change things. I hear someone knocking. Someone's at the door.

Oh, you better get out of here, vampire. But the vampire is Russ. He's turned. Just go with it. It's the only way to go away. Oh, no. The vampire's turned into a bat. No, the bat's flying out the window.

Whoa. Oh, no. Not into that. Oh, no. That blimp. The fire. Oh, that bat's dead. The bat's dead, and all that remains is Russ rushing in a dopey hat.

That would be better. dead. The bat's dead and all that remains is rust-frustrated and a dopey hat. Vampire! Vampire! So if you kill a vampire, it revives back into its normal human form? Yeah. Did you not know that part of the mythos? We're really playing fast and loose with the

fiction. I guess. So Dishonored 1, does it beat FTL? I think yes. Yeah, easy. Thank you so much for listening to our show. We will be back maybe next week, but maybe not. No, I think we're doing it next week. Well, I'll have to talk to you about that after.

There's a chance we may not be here next week. But either way, we will be back with you soon and in a different state, possibly, than you're used to seeing us. Or not seeing us, as the case may be. Spoiled! Spoiled.

But thank you for listening. Make sure you head to theverge.com forward slash gaming. That's where all our writing is. So soon, it's going to be polygon.com. That'll be a lot easier to say. Please go to iTunes, subscribe to our show, give us a review, a rating, a good one,

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