The Besties - The Besties: The Best Games of April 2014

Episode Date: May 9, 2014

The ides of March were nothing compared to this! Yes, April is upon us and it seems many game companies are just holding their collective breath in order to make it all the way to May, which happens to be so packed with video games that we can't even deal. April is another story. Knowing that it was going to be a dry month, we held off on Dark Souls 2 until its far-superior PC version came out. Kinda cheating, but hey, who's counting? And besides, there are still a few legitimately April releases to discuss. Some of which we sorta liked! 4:30 - Dark Souls 2 53:00 - Wayward Souls 1:00:30 - News of the month 1:21:00 - Half-time! 1:25:00 - Elder Scrolls Online 1:40:00 - Broforce 1:51:30 - The Resties! Theme song by Ian Dorsch 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!

Y'all heard about that Amplitude Kickstarter, right? Yeah. I think we should start... Yeah, I'd rather talk about Amplitude than Kevin Spacey. That's fine, we can change it. But that didn't happen last month. Okay, fair. This is a wonderful system we've developed.

I don't think it matters. I think we can talk about what we heard. I can change it to Amplitude. Guaranteed this news... Guaranteed this news, guaranteed the news on the best games of the month. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I disagree because I think I know what those are. My name is Chris Plant, and there's only one great game of the month, and it's Dark Souls 2, so sorry, other games.

Sorry, everybody else. My name is Russ Froschkin. I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the Besties. This is where we talk about the latest and greatest in sports, news, entertainment, sex, relationships. Wow. Who do you think is going to take the Stanley Cup this year?

Of sex, the Stanley Cup of doing it. Probably hockey. I think it's going to bring home the gold silver cup. Silver. It is silver. Do you think knuckle puck is still big or is that sort of like faded? That's the thing. You don't do knuckle puck for like six years.

So that when you fucking drop it, along with with the fine v you go find the in the knuckle puck they're like oh shit i forgot about knuckle puck and then like distracting ballerina is also really effective guys can i tell you a story about hockey before we get going yes it's really short so this is about our co-workers mike mccorder who normally lives in los angeles is visiting uh new york this week for like a wedding or something and he came into the office yesterday and surprised us. And this was a great thing because like he's a beautiful looking man. And everybody was really happy to see him.

Except for Sumit, who is like busy with his headphones, just glossed. He was checked into his computer. And when Sumit finally sees Mike, he turns to him, not even looking at him with like surprise that this person is here, this friend of his. He just looks at him and he goes, Mike, did you know there are new announcers in the new NHL hockey game? And then Mike looks at him and he's like, no, I didn't know that. That's, I guess, I guess it's going to be a pretty crappy year for NHL. And Smith goes, no, this is the biggest thing to happen to this game in a long time. And then just goes right

back to writing his story he's excited about something he doesn't need to be excited about people he can be excited about is this what it's like to like sport games is this what your life is about how handsome mike mccorder is oh my gosh get into that first he's like our brett farve yeah he is our brett farve sometimes i'll see a banner for a t-shirt sale site, and it'll be a dude model on it. I'll be like, Mike McWhorter, what are you doing on my banner? It's not Mike, but it's a man who looks like Mike. Equal handsomeness level. Close, but not quite there.

Close, but no cigar. How many times did he get a haircut? Oh, God, sorry. This week, we're talking about our hottest male models, and also video games. So let's start with the video games, then we'll circle back around to hot male models and also video games so let's start with the video games that we'll circle back around to hot male models this month dark souls 2 is the greatest thing it came out last month two months ago actually don't be persnickety let's let's address the fact that like i mean it was a lock since we decided to hold off until plant got back into his home state

and we all had more time to play the game. Well, you all had more time to play the game. Well, and Justin also refused to play it on previous-gen consoles. Which was the right choice, it turns out. Oh, my God, it totally was. Like, we knew we locked in Dark Souls 2 a long time ago, and then last week, I feel like a week ago today, we scrambled like

well shit, like what else was April? I feel like we even goofed about that at the end of the last episode, but then we were going back and forth like fucking Russ Frustik wanted to put Flappy Golf in which is like, we're still gonna talk about Flappy Golf I guess, it's a fun game but it's like, it's a Flappy Bird Golf game

and then that's the end of the discussion. Like, it was so hard to find games, so we're probably going to spend a while doing Dark Souls 2. So just so you guys, I think this informs a lot of the discussion. Let's very briefly talk about, let's just each go around and say what our previous experience was and, like, sort of how much we've invested into Dark Souls 2. I did not finish the first game. I got pretty close. No, you got like 60% of the way through.

I got 60% of the way through. To Anor Londo, that's barely the way. No, I got through Anor Londo. When? You wrote a ballad about how Anor Londo crushed your spirits and you quit. Who's the boss of Anor Londo? The two guys. Okay, no, I did not beat them.

Didn't stop at Anor Londo for The two guys. Okay, no, I did not beat them. Didn't stop at Anor Londo. For death, for sure. That's where I stopped. So that's how far I got. And then Dark Souls 2, I have put maybe 30 hours into it and I just finished Earth and Peak. Yes, just finished Earth and Peak.

I don't know what that is. Perfect. You'll get there. I beat Dark souls on console and then i dip back in on pc because i wanted to mess with those mods got that hd frame rate texture mod which is incredible that just like a guy can make that like the original game on pc was such a broken mess and then just like ah dude was like oh let me just fix this whole game for you uh also put that thanks obama mod on there that made it say

thanks obama every time you died um i loved love the original dark souls there were some elements of the original dark souls i never really got into like pvp uh covenants were kind of a tough thing to get into like after you finish the core player versus environment of that game which is still i mean an investment which i think is evidenced by the fact that there are a lot of people who just never finished it because it's super super hard there is like another layer that only crazy people get into like mike mccorder um it's uh so yeah i i jumped into dark souls 2 and i feel like it made it a lot easier to get into that extra layer i finished it on playstation 3 um and then i picked it up on pc uh and then i finished it on pc again i did beat it twice and i started working on a

third run through the character named butter boy and i want him to be a pvp character i don't want to level him up too much and i do want to give him the full butterfly armor outfit um which lets you uh jump from a walking state instead of a running state i just think there's a lot of strategic depth there yeah that sounds like absolutely i've played a lot of probably about 100 hours now. Chris Plant? So my story starts with Demon's Souls, which I have the ultra-rare special edition flip book, whatever. I played that.

I completely forgot about Demon's Souls. I also played that. I didn't play it. It's in its plastic wrap, and I've always said that the day I get fired is the day I play through Demon's Souls. I can make that happen. Thank you. And then play through Demon's Souls. I can make that happen. Thank you. And then I actually tried Dark Souls, and that went horribly.

And then I tried it again on PC, and it went okay. I went back and played some more recently to prepare for Dark Souls 2, and it turns out I never fought the two goblins, and then you ring a bell. This is an important part early on in the game. I just kind of went past it. They're not goblins, and then you ring a bell. This is an important part early on in the game. I just kind of went past it. Those gargoyles? They're not goblins. They're gargoyles. Yeah, they're, oh, yeah, like the cartoon show.

Those two mummies up on the church. Listen, they were bad. Anyway, I didn't beat them, and it turns out that really, like, ruined my flow, my character, and then I just got destroyed everywhere I went. I didn't understand that this is a game where uh if you're getting killed in one area there's probably another area you should go to and on top of that this is what i discovered at the very last minute after beating the gargoyles is there's a lock on button in this game yep yeah holy shit how i didn't know so i was always curious why I was struggling so much. Were you using magic?

Yeah. That must be art. How did you do anything? So I would very carefully line up my camera, and then I would pray. It was bad. And I was like, how is this useful? Because it doesn't do any damage. Anyway.

There's like a pro tip at the very beginning of the game that tells you how to lock up. I'm going to shoot you real straight. That tutorial is one of the worst tutorials I've ever used. The first game tutorial. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty terrible. The second game has a bunch better tutorials.

It's miserable. Anyway. Fresh take. Okay. Dark Souls 2 is fantastic, and I am in love with it, and everything's changed. Okay. Okay. and I am in love with it and everything's changed.

Okay. I played through Dark Souls 1 on Xbox 360 about, I want to say like two years after it came out using extensive GameFAQs guides and beat it. It was hard but not super hard. I basically cheated my way through it. It was a blast. I really enjoyed it because I got really frustrated when I first started playing

and didn't know where I was supposed to go. And I died on skeletons about 30,000 times. There's actually a video that details this. And then Justin told me you shoot the fucking dragon in the tail with a bullshit arrow for no reason. And it gives you the best sword ever. No. I mean, if you're a dirty, filthy casual. Okay.

Well, then I realized that that's what this sort of game is is that you really need outside insight to be good at it and we should we should make it clear even when you have that insight that tells you like get the filthy casual drake sword at the beginning of the game if you don't like you know the game's complex systems if you don't want to appreciate all the work that from software put into the game you just want to be you know like a lazy bones jerk yeah um even when you have those tips it's not going to help you beat them bosses them bosses the capra demon is still going to fuck you up proper yeah let me say though that like the best argument i have for that i am the same way i like using a guide like as i play that makes me that is the that is a pleasurable way and i don't do

that with anything yeah that is a pleasurable way for me to play through dark souls and the only way i can play through it and not like when i pull my hair out here is my argument for why that is basically a necessity okay if you are someone who uses magic in Dark Souls 2, there is an item called the binoculars that you get. That is the only thing that allows you, once you have it, you are able to use magic in a first person perspective and target enemies at a distance longer than your lock on distance. It is an absolutely essential part of the being a sorcerer, right? And the binoculars are hidden

you have to jump off of a cliff and fall on a ledge and then fall off another cliff onto another ledge to find the binoculars. At a point really before the game starts, too. Yeah, it's crazy! It's crazy! If you you missed that i don't know what you would do it's insane i'd like to i played through my first playthrough as a magician um and when i played it on playstation 3 is before the game came out

there were no guides um so i missed that i played through without the binoculars and then my second playthrough i played as a miracle caster who has, you know, similarly like long range attack spells that I used. And I did find the binoculars because I found out where they were. And that playthrough, no kidding, I beat in half the time. Just because some areas like there's an area later towards the end of the game that is flooded with water and filled with casters that will blast you from a mile away. And there's no way you can lock on to them from that far away. And you're slow and you're slow in the water.

And the only way that I could beat them was to use a bow when I was the caster without binoculars, just because you do get the manual aim. when I was the caster without binoculars just because you do get the manual aim. So having binoculars in that area literally saved me probably four or five hours, I would say, just in that one area. Why do the binoculars need to be a thing? Like, just have a button that goes first person. It's crazy.

But anyway, that's Dark Souls, right? Yeah, that's Dark Souls. Anyway, I played like, I'd say about seven hours of Dark Souls 2. So I didn't get super far. Oh, wow. I love, okay, so Griffin, you might be able to illuminate some of the changes better than I can. But I would talk about the things that have made this, like, a lot more fun for me.

lot more fun for for me um the number one thing that i like and and maybe this is revealing sort of my shabbiness overall as a dark souls player but i really like the fact that after you kill enemies i think it's like 12 times they stop responding oh no see i don't i don't exactly care for that uh see i love that because i know that if i'm gonna if i've got a a route between a bonfire and a boss it's gonna be really tough i love that i can farm those souls get the souls get a clear path to the boss and then not have to worry about are you intentionally dying to like make sure they stop respawning no you don't you don't have to die you can go kill them go to the bonfire respawn them and i think if you like 12 or 13 times is that what you were doing justin uh if i've got accidentally i imagine well it started accidentally because i died so many fucking times

and then i when i realized like that i could manipulate it i because manipulation in dark souls 2 like there is nothing off limits unless you're like hacking the code of the game like i don't think there's any exploit that i feel bad about using in dark souls 2 whatever it takes to get through well it's using everything it can against you exactly that's the point it's doing everything it can to kill you so i figure i i should i should return the favor and what's funny is they added that just to curb people farming souls like that's why they added it was because people would just go to like really like good areas to farm souls and just i mean that's what i did in dark souls one yeah so it really was added to prevent people from screwing the system but i also which i also like though because like i think

that it it keeps me from having that compulsion to like, God, if I just keep grinding these guys, who knows, I might still be in the Tower of Flame grinding all night. The issue, my problem with it is less, and I think that this is the issue at large for people who play, who know they're going to play a lot of this game, is less about farming souls. Because I hit, so there's this sort of universally agreed upon level cap for PVP,

which is soul level 150, and if you go much higher above soul level 150, you're going to have a harder time finding duels to do, you're going to have a harder time invading, because that is like, in the Dark Souls community, the agreed upon alright guys, let's all get to 150 and then fight it out from there. Oh, so it only matches you with people that are around your level. And your soul memory, which is the fucking worst mechanic ever.

I don't know what that even means. Okay, so a brief treatise, I guess. I don't understand. I barely understand It's not great it's i know that there was one area in the that i went into in the belfry the first belfry where like the bell towers you can be uh invaded uh by bell defenders that's one of the covenants and then uh there are two areas that the rat king covenant will actually pull you into their world, which is really cool.

It's probably my favorite covenant because you can, in your world, use those lock stones to set off traps and stuff like that. You're saying so many words right now. There's a covenant that will, in certain areas, pull other players into your world. Instead of you invading them, they invade you, and you can change your world and activate traps and shit

so that they have a really hard time surviving in your world. How do people get into my, like, how does that even work? It's just, that's just exclusive to that covenant, and it's when they're in that area that you are the covenant of. There are two Rat King covenant areas. It's very complicated.

But what about the usual PvP that isn't that, like? No, there are certain, there are items, covenant areas it's very complicated but what about the usual pvp that isn't that like no there there's certain there are items the cracked red eye orb lets you invade um somebody's area and then if you're in the covenant of blue or the sentinels of blue if somebody invades someone else you jump into that world to help fight off the invader there it's it's incredibly complicated honestly saying don't use a guide for this chaos that you're describing no i mean this for that was the whole thing this the system of covenants was supposed to be so much better explained this time around that was like one of the ways they

realized they fucked up the first game because like you really had to get super into the game to even understand the basics of how to invade a lot of the uh invasion both for you know uh competitive and cooperative play you had to be human to make that work so you had to spend humanity which is a pretty valuable resource um there it's a it's a lot more lenient about that in dark souls 2 but it's still not very well so how would it work i mean if i'm in like if i'm in the base area medulla and i use a cracked red eye orb, am I going to do something else as Majula? I don't think you can do it in Majula. I think you can only do it in certain areas.

Or else you could probably just wreck every NPC in the area. So soul level and soul memory. Soul level, if your soul level is too far away from somebody's, you can't help them out with cooperative. You can't summon them to help you out with a boss. For instance, one of you guys probably couldn't summon me just because my soul level is too far away from somebody's you can't help them out with cooperative you can't summon them to like help you out with a boss for instance like one of you guys probably couldn't summon me just because my soul level is higher than yours but there's also a mechanic called soul memory which is a tally of how many souls you've accumulated not your soul level but how many actual souls you've found and if that's too much higher than somebody's uh soul memory then you won't be able to, you know,

fight them or cooperate with them. The idea being that there were people that would like level up to a really low level just so they could grieve people and then spend the rest of their souls on awesome equipment. Sure. Smart. Yeah. Well,

it's not smart because like with those two gates in place, it's really, it's a lot harder to, it's a lot harder to, it's a lot harder to do that kind of multiplayer play, I have found. It's really, really tough to, I have a really hard time, like, finding, there's a dual arena, but, like, if my soul memory's too high, then I just can't use it. Like, it's, I don't know. Do you think they were, like, watching this game, like, they were like, oh, no, this is, like, way easier for people to understand. Like, if we put this NPC here, and he's like,

go forth with the wizard's key and take the dragon's eye, they'll know immediately that covenants need blue stones instead of red stones. Like, were they convinced they really, like, headed out of the park in terms of accessibility? No, it's not. It's not accessible at all. Once you do understand it, it works pretty well.

I did a covenant called Heirs of the Sun, which you just get a special item every time you help someone kill a boss, and you can exchange those items for powerful spells. It's how you get one of the most powerful... Oh, I need to get into that. Miracles. Oh, it's in earth and

peak there's a broken statue part of a covenant can i like switch yeah yeah you can switch them you can switch them as well i don't think it's in earth and peak though did i just did earth and peak i think i know this oh i'm sorry no it's a harvest harvest valley and you got to bring it yeah yeah can you kill other people's npcs is that what you said before i don't think you can because i don't think you can be summoned into an area. I'm not 100% sure. Again, I have only just started scratching that extra deeper layer

that I never got into in the original Dark Souls. I'm trying it on PC, and I think that's just tough, because if I did it on Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, it would bring more players. It's been out long. There'd be more players who are at the level that I'm at, so it would be a little bit easier to find some online play.

One thing I wish that they had changed or tweaked a little bit that I still think is kind of overwhelming is the leveling system, which if you haven't played, basically you start out, depending on your class, you start out with some base stats, but from that point you can put your stats your class you start out with some base stats but from that point you can put your stats into anything you want to and it it gives you complete freedom which i like in one regard like that's cool that i can evolve things um you know in a in a way that suits my play style but there are also these like soft caps they're break break points is what the break points like that throughout

leveling that once you level over a certain put a more points than x number into a certain stat then you stop getting the big bonuses right so for instance for hp and for vigor i should say an endurance which are stats that uh determine how like how much energy you have to attack before you have to recharge and how much health you have, those have a break point of 20. So as you put points in them up to 20, you get 30 HP, for instance, for each point that you put into HP. Then once you go over 20, you do like 21, then I think you only get 20 points of each so you get 10 less for each point that you invest in that and you start to get diminishing returns my numbers may have been off there but that's just sort of an example so it really does it doesn't make sense to

as soon as you start put all of your points in a single stat because you're going to end up with a weaker character overall because of those diminishing returns. I think we could grok it a lot, but I wanted to take a brief sojourn into the graphics for a second because really that's all I care about. I mean, I know games have the gameplay aspects to it, but if it's not pretty, who cares? I can't decide if I think this game looks really pretty

or really dog shit, and I feel like it kind of runs the gamut. I think the thing about Dark Souls that's very different and weird is that I think it has the – I think it can look beautiful very often. Like you see a lot of stuff that's like gorgeous. They do vistas really well. I think the effect that they're going for is much different than a lot of games.

They want to look tantalizing. You always want to go over that next ridge to see the next thing you're going to see. Dark Souls is a game that is much more about, for me at least, is much more about foreboding. Like, you go into areas that actively look like you don't want to be there.

Sure, yeah. Like, every, like, and that's every, and this is amazing that they have this, like, tonal consistency. There has never been an area that I've walked into and not thought, ah, fuck. This sucks. Everything sucks about this place. Yeah. I hate it here. I mean, that and not thought, ah, fuck. This sucks. Everything sucks about this place. I hate it here. I mean, that's the thing, right? Like, there's a lot of ruined castles, and there's a lot of underground crypts, and there's

a lot of areas that just, they don't look friendly. And so, like, I don't think those areas are going to look, you look at Hyde's Tower of Flame, and it's gorgeous. Like, you look out over the the vista you look at the you know the rolling waves like it's very very pretty um and that is like one of like 30 areas in the game and it's arguably there's there's a few that that look um nice and the rest are just like oh a lot of people have died here this is a this is a prison i think it also just uses very hard geometry like i think it's one kind of a throwback to older style of polygonal games i think i think it wants to look a bit like the old-fashioned type of like playstation adventure 3d game i don't think that's a stylistic art choice. No, I think it really is.

I mean, if you also look at the games that they have made in the past, I think there is a lineage between their old school dungeon crawling adventure type of things and this. On top of it, I think the hard geometry is on purpose because it feels rough and tough.

It's not a lot of smooth edges. And with how thorough they are with their art design, and if you ever read interviews with their art director or any of their designers, they really dwell on every little detail.

I mean, it's kind of amazing. But no, hold on. I'm going to stop you right there. Because honestly, you start the game, you're in right before you even meet the witches, which is literally the beginning of the game. And the ground looks like smeared feces. Like, it looks just like, and grass looks like dumb and silly. Like, it doesn't look good. I mean, at this point, you're talking about, like, does the resolution on the ground texture look good?

Does the grass billboard correctly? Yeah. on the ground texture does the grass billboard correctly yeah i i think there's a huge difference between like does it look like crisis and does it have beautiful art direction and are they are they actually thinking about these things in ways that other people aren't and they're not just like art direction like the the choices that they make to in to give you this sense of like oppression this oppression and foreboding there's this great that one of my favorite things is that when you're at a campfire which is like one of the few genuinely safe spaces if you're at a campfire a bonfire please a bonfire please you have to use the right bonfire if you

had a bonfire you're basically safe like and when other players are near that bonfire sometimes you'll get like a glimpse of them and they're actually look real when you're at the bonfire like they look like they're in your world and then as you both like get away from the bonfire they like turn spectral and disappear and it's like this terrible sense of like god i was almost sort of in a something like a sense of like partnership or community like there was another person for just a second and then as we get away from safety it's like nope nope no there's nobody here and i don't want to take that away from them because they do do that stuff well uh you know and i just think it's a weird dichotomy because i think they do like like as i said vistas and like sort of the meta art design really well.

No, but there are things like sometimes you'll go into a cave, for instance, and you look at a cave wall and there's like no variance in the textures. Like it just looks like. I think that that is why you all, I'm assuming, are familiar with the fact they they downscaled a lot of the graphical presentation of the game to according to from software you know maximize its performance it had like real-time shadowing it's that was the thing the big thing wasn't i mean the textures did look better but i feel like the big thing in those pre-release videos was the lighting because then you could be in an underground crypt that was ugly and scary and uninviting, but those shadows made it really pop

and made it look really visually appealing. Yeah, you can hide a lot of that stuff with good sight. Right, and I think that was their original intention. They just realized that that was not that was not going to work they have they have also i think done fewer things that make that that that there was a lot of stuff in dark souls one and this is a big part of the reason that i stopped playing there was a lot of stuff in dark souls one that was that was hard and frustrating but there were some things that went beyond that to almost like to a point of being demoralizing um i'm thinking specifically of when you would get cursed which would permanently not permanently well okay permanently

unless you did the craziest thing ever and gave a sphere to a nest and let an eagle pick you up and take you to a place where you could get a thing to fix it once like it is it is it is that was demoralizing and i think in dark souls 2 um although they do have a pretty demoralizing a somewhat demoralizing mechanic that like you every time you die you lose a little bit of your humanity which also actually lowers your base hp uh and it can get down to 50 and i did not enjoy the game as much until i found an item that would not let it get any lower than 75 at which point i just sort of accepted like this is where i this is my this is how dead i'm going to be this is the amount of deadness that i will experience for much of my playthrough to a point where I don't even like being human. Because when you're human, it's the only time that you can summon people into your world.

So I'm very choosy about when I decide to be a person. Most of the time, it's easier just to be a dead asshole. Griff, can you talk more about beyond beyond sort of these uh easily quantifiable mechanical differences what you think some of the like the big changes are so i i think that are a little less noticeable sure i well i mean there's one big obvious mechanic that we haven't talked about and that is the ability to from the start jump between bonfires at will in the original dark souls you get an item called the lord vessel that lets you jump between very uh particular bonfires there's there's i want to say like eight or nine in the game that you can justin was right at the boss right right

at the boss right before you get the lord vessel um in this game you can jump between any of them as soon as you find them you can can use it as a teleportation hub and jump to any other bonfire that you've found. That means you could jump to a bonfire in the same area that you're at that's just a little bit ahead. It makes exploration so much easier, which is good, because I feel like in this game, it's a little bit more open-ended than the original Dark Souls is.

In the original Dark Souls, don't get me wrong, you could go basically anywhere you wanted from the start, especially if you had certain items like the Master Key, which is one of the gifts you could choose at the beginning of the game. In Dark Souls 2, you really are almost always afforded five or six directions you can go to either discover a new area or discover a, uh, uh, an area in the same like zone that you're in that you haven't checked out before, which is so important because if you're running into a wall at the area that you're in, you could go into another area.

You could go into a place that is like way more difficult than you can handle and just try and sprint through it. And maybe you'll find an item like that ring that justin mentioned that that gives you more health when you die or a weapon that you uh can use that's a lot stronger than the one you're using and and it's so it's it's rewarding both from an exploration standpoint and from a mechanical standpoint and in dark souls 2 because you can jump between bonfires you don't feel like you're being penalized for looking around yeah because you can just hop back to wherever it was that you were before you started you know going on this this odyssey it's definitely kinder it does sort of take a little bit of the magic away insofar as like in dark souls 1 there's like shortcuts that you really

really have to work for and it's like very rewarding when you like open a door and you're like, oh shit, I'm back here. And now I can like really quickly get around this area. Those still exist though. Those still definitely exist. There's a lot of those actually. The plant just turned into a zombie. Listen, listen, young fella.

They do still exist. A plant showed me one that I never in a million years would have spotted with like you throw a firebomb at a bunch of barrels and it like makes your life a million times easier. But it does. There's a great one in the Lost Bastille where

you are, you see a set of stairs and there's some sort of troll type fella at the top and he's got an exploding barrel and he kicks the exploding barrel at you and if you dodge out of the way of the exploding barrel it hits the wall behind you and opens up a route to a bonfire that like man you really need that by the way like it it it is it is very very valuable because there's also a guy in there with like a ton of items and crap like that.

Yeah. I just don't know. Like Griffin, you've obviously played way more than I have. Do you feel like it removed some of the like attachment you might have to certain areas? Cause in the end you're just like skipping past them very quickly. No, I don't think so. Because really in the first Dark Souls souls it wasn't like i would once i had found a bonfire it it wasn't like it takes away from the magic of having to run

manually between bonfires because what dark souls did because it didn't have a really great fast travel system for uh you know every location in the game I would just play through the game actively minimizing the number of times I had to backtrack. It was such a drain and such an annoyance, especially once you got to be pretty high level and you knew, you'd played through the whole game, you'd played through all the areas, you knew where all the hidden traps were,

you knew, oh, there's a guy around this corner that I need to kill. So the surprise and the wonder of all of that is not as great as it was the first time around. So, really, it was just kind of a pain in the ass. There is nothing that in any video game I've ever played that matches that feeling when you've really, like, got an area unlocked. Like, you really know it. Yeah. And you are navigating it.

Like, so, you really know it yeah you are navigating it like so what you know it reminds i always think of the uh the scene in the um fire swamp in oh yeah princess bride you know what i mean like where he's just navigating the flames and not even like thinking about it and like that's there like the attachment that you get to an area when you've like learned it that well and it's no longer scary to you because you know everything that happens and you're navigating it masterfully um there's nothing in any game that satisfies in that exact way uh that i found um except for snickers by the way this episode is brought to by snickers snickers it satisfies like mastering a level in dark soul i want to loop back to the the strategy guide thing really quick.

Just because we mentioned it briefly, and Griffin and I have already had discussions about whether or not it's the worst thing or best thing you can do. But I personally think you can still have that experience that Justin's talking about. Having a guide. Like, I enjoyed having a guide because

I am not going to have time for a second playthrough. And I think that's where a lot of hardcore Dark Souls fans take a lot of their enjoyment is the first playthrough is hard and they get surprised a lot. And the second playthrough is the one where they can actually apply all the knowledge that they have with the game. But also, it just reminds me of being a kid and playing through insanely difficult action games on the Nintendo or Super Nintendo and having that guide to me. I think you mean all of them. All action games on the NES are impossible. And I was so hard on Dark Souls 1

because I just thought of it as terrible design. Like, here's a game that you have to have somebody tell you how to get to the pause menu. Or you have to have somebody explain to you to get to the pause menu. Or you have to have somebody explain to you what these, what basic weapon functionality means.

And it seemed silly that I was being dissuaded not to use a guide, when at the same time, everyone I knew learned most of what they knew about the game from other people. Or from having played a previous game. There's also a system in the game, and yes, a lot of them are used for nefarious purposes,

but there's a system in the game for people leaving messages to tell you, hey, there's a hidden wall here. That is one that almost always appears in front of every hidden wall. If there's an illusory wall, there's almost always going to be a note in front of it saying, hey, check out here.

You don't really need a guide for a lot of that stuff. The best thing about messages is that you have to use pre-assigned words to like compose the message. You can't just type whatever you want to. And people have discovered that the word but is in there, even though it's B-U-T. And the word whole is in there, B-U-T. So any time, I cannot tell you the number of times that I've been wandering around this game feeling completely scared and demoralized and found a message that just said, destroy the butthole.

That just brightened my spirits a little bit. I like the idea that there's a graffiti artist wandering around this fantasy world. The fantasy, if you will. Plus the ones that tell you to jump off cliffs. Try jumping. Praise the sun. And there's also my tagline, what I got up

with was, hooray for horse. That was mine. I put that in every area. Here's my case against oh wait wait wait one more yes please message anecdote there was a uh after you beat the the sort of um medusa type boss uh there's like stairs that go around no no it's the slug type boss uh there are stairs that go around his area uh that there's like a they're broken at the foot of them but there's a little ledge below them and i tried like three or four times until i finally was able to like time it

so i could run at it and the the jumping is crazy in this game you have to like run with the circle button or the the b button however you're doing it and then press the left thumb stick to jump up but i on my fourth attempt i got it and there was a message that said i did it and i was like wow i know how this guy feels like i absolutely uh do like i that that's cool that somebody else had the same experience there's a message right next to it that says like dead in nowhere else to go i guess this is the end of my adventure with getting up these stairs but i'm glad someone else has has experienced these same things um my case against strategy guide is is this i i love dark souls 2 i think it's it is in a lot of ways a better game than the original dark souls there's some there's some stuff that it doesn't do as well as the original dark souls but there's so many more things that it does better um but i will never have that experience

of feeling like i had mastered something like i did when i beat the original dark souls i'll never have that experience of surprise not just like whenever i would get killed by a trap but just like learning that in this game there it's capable of screwing you over in that way in a way that like a lot of games are too scared to like a lot of developers are too hesitant to make a player feel the way that dark souls makes you feel like around every corner. It was just such a surprising and like wonderful feeling. Once you, once you finish the game, you felt like King,

King shit fuck mountain. And then I, I, in Dark Souls two, like so many of those skills and so many of those, the things I had learned in the original Dark Souls had carried over. So it was a little bit less surprising and and i think when you play through the whole game with a document that tells you what you're about to encounter it takes away from a lot of that surprise that you can only really have the one time like once you once you have learned it once

you've played through the game you literally will never be able to have that experience again so don't rob yourself of this one-time thing that you're going to be able to do okay but all right flip side yeah and it's not binary also you you don't have to do all of one or all of the other. In the moment-to-moment encounters, I agree with you. Like, there is not a lot that's better than the feeling of, like, happily jaunt, leaping up to the top of a staircase and thinking, like, man, I'm really making progress. And then, like, a giant swings a hammer and hits you instantly. Like, that rules.

That's great. Where I break down are things that, like, can screw you longer term in ways that you don't even realize you're being screwed. Another sort of counter example, besides the binoculars, which I think is basically like a foolproof endorsement of strategy guides, there's a guy in,

I guess he's on No Man's Wharf initially, where he is the only NPC in's the only npc in the game where you can sell your items to him and after you encounter him the first time he goes away and you'll find him again much later but like the game also he lets you sell off all your junk and you've got a lot of junk by this point. And the game also has a mechanic that lets you store your items. So I kid you not five minutes before I would have found this guy. Like the last time I visited a bonfire before I found this guy, I thought my inventory is getting really cluttered.

I have got to store some of this stuff. I store all of it except the absolute essentials. And then I find this guy like that. Well, I've sucks. Yeah, but you don't really need that i played through i in both of my playthroughs of the game i never found that dude and i didn't

really suffer for it i i understand what you're saying i think it's good to find like a things you should absolutely find guide like these are things you absolutely shouldn't miss and i think that that is okay. But like if you, here's what was crushing to me. I played in that Heirs of the Sun Covenant, which is basically a covenant that in order to progress, you have to help people out with bosses. And there's a slight stigma attached to, you know,

summoning players to help you out with bosses because a lot of boss fights, especially before you get into New Game Plus where everything is more difficult, they're kind of a joke if you have multiple people. And so what was really heartbreaking for me is I would, you know, be summoned into this player's world a lot. I did it, I think, like 30 times to max out the Covenant. The same guy?

What's that? With the same dude? With the same character? No, no, no, no, no. Summoned by the same person. guy what's that with the same dude with the same care no no no no no by the same person no it wasn't the same dude like man i really like that one guy's style i'm gonna keep bringing i'm gonna help i'm his guardian angel um and and a lot of the time like maybe half the time i would get summoned to a world and then they would go through the boss gate to start the boss battle and about half the time when they would go through the boss gate to start the boss battle and about half the time when they would go through the boss gate it would show the cut scene uh that that plays the first time you encounter a boss so what that suggests is that these people who summoned me

in to help out with the boss fight hadn't actually fought the boss yet just too scared they were either too scared or they just wanted to like burn through it. And that's so like, that's so crushing. Like I would also recommend that you only do that if you just can't get past a boss and you've tried them a lot already. Because like bosses I feel like are designed for single players to go at and learn their attack patterns and learn how to counter them and learn like the windows that you need to use to recharge your endurance. And it's like a microcosm of the game experience at large of having to learn how to do this thing and just stay alive. And when you have another player

that can take all the aggro while you just dish out all the damage, it kind of ruins it a little bit. There are only certain boss fights where I've had to do that. out all the damage like it just it kind of ruins it a little bit yeah there are certain there are only certain boss fights where i've had to do that like uh the one that i had a lot of trouble with as i'm playing through as a sorcerer who also has a sword and a shield for when things get dire but like mainly relying on magic the uh executioner's chariot um it was brutal god damn brutal and for and i just wasn't balanced i couldn't take a hit from the dude i had a hundred percent uh blocking shield that was one of my

hundred percent of physical damage i got and i had to i was like this is because it also is like you have to fight through these incredibly annoying uh uh dudes with like axes and whips that suck. And then you fight this giant red knight on a broken bridge that sucks. And then just to get to the Executor's Chariot, he is running around a circular room that's filled with skeletons. And if you don't dodge him in like an alcove, he'll kill you. And while you're hiding in the alcove, oh, kill you. And while you're hiding the alcove, oh, there, who's there? But your buddy's skeletons. And oh, good, in the next alcove,

there's a necromancer that's making more skeletons. It sucks. And that's before you even like get to the dude. That was one of the last bosses I actually fought. I fought, that was, it really was like every other boss and then that guy, and then I beat the game. It's super, super, super hard. But like, it was fun fun like the first like three or

four times I tried it and I was like oh I get it so this thing is running around in circles and killing you well that sucks this is gonna be very hard and then I learned how to get in the outcoast to dodge it and then skeletons would murder me and I'd be like okay I gotta kill those skeletons and then my third playthrough I killed the skeletons and they'd pop right back to life because there's something reviving then I was like oh God, I can't believe how fucking hard this is. Like it was so punishing, but so like incredible. It's it's that is like the Dark Souls calling card. And I feel like if you bring somebody in with you the first time, you're going to miss out on all of that.

All of that, you know, learning. You know what I actually ended up doing that i was pretty proud of myself i would fire a spell called yearn into his path and that would lure all the skeletons into the hall into the middle of the hallway it's like oh check that out what's that glowing orb is so baller that's incredible and like that's the kind of stuff that you don't learn if you play through the play through the game with too many helping hands. Yeah. I will say there are some bosses.

I feel like the big complaint that's been leveraged against this game by like Dark Souls and, you know, Soul Series vets is that it's easier in general. I think that it's not 100% fair. I would say it's more accessible and stuff like being able to jump between areas and the despawning enemies does make it a bit more accessible. But there are definitely bosses that are way easier than anything that was in Dark Souls. I can't remember anything in Dark Souls that I beat my first time through by myself. Like almost every boss I had to die a few times to learn how to even start getting hits on this thing um in dark souls two there were like there were like three or four bosses i just killed my first time through easy

peasy you're a beast i am a beast but i mean some of them just have like really predictable attack patterns and some of them are super super slow and all you have to do is get out of the way of their attacks and then attack them and then get out of the way of their attacks and then i think you're just really really good you're just awesome griffin that's all there is to do is get out of the way of their attacks and then attack them and then get out of the way of their attacks and then i think you're just really really good you're just awesome griffin that's all there is to it there were a couple that i beat i beat that slug guy the first time he he was junk yeah um but if he gets too close to you he eats you and takes off all your equipment yeah so you have to get away from him and re-equip all your shit i i i adore the game though i i i mean i that's pretty obvious, because I basically beat it twice

in the course of a month and a half, which is a lot of Dark Souls to take in. But it's super good. I want a mod for Dark Souls 1 that will include bonfire teleportation and eventual enemy despawns. It would be hard for me to go back at this point I think and finish the original

Dark Souls but like that's to me is the biggest plus in favor of using a guide if it suits you if it's what you want to do just because I got to a point

with Dark Souls where like I just couldn't do, just because I got to a point with Dark Souls where I just couldn't do it anymore. I didn't want to feel that way anymore. I mean, in my darkest moment, I took the disc out and I threw it into my neighbor's backyard. Is that true? That is 100% no bullshit truth.

Not only did I take the disc out, I stood up, I took the disc out, I threw the disc in my neighbor's backyard and then i took my uh 360 controller and i threw it at my garage as hard as i could and the thumbsticks came off are you eight years old i know i couldn't do that anymore i couldn't live that way it was a nightmare and that was ornstein and smog, I'm assuming. I would love to see a chart of the drop-off of people who play that game when they hit Ornstein and Smog. Because a lot of bosses before that, like the Iron Giant that you have to fight to get to Anor Londo,

there's a tricky way that you can get to make him fall off. There's an exploit you can do there. He has an elemental weakness that you can take advantage of. There's a lot of stuff like that for all the bosses up to that point there is nothing there is nothing you can do to make ornstein and smog an easier fight there's nothing and that is what i feel like makes them the the brick wall that players have to try and get over um i feel like we've spoken quite a bit about dark souls two and one are you guys i mean i feel like we what do you like it i feel like we talked a lot about how you know all this shit has changed but i love it i think it's good yeah i think it's a

good game i you know to be honest like i don't have a gaming pc which is a bummer but i just don't so i had to play in the a bummer, but I just don't. So I had to play it in the office, which kind of limited the amount of time. I'd much prefer it to just come on a next-gen console and play it on that, but that could never happen. Who knows? I think it'll happen. I have a...

I do still wish... So there's an item in the game I haven't used yet that lets you... When you equip it, you choose a god, which, which i again i haven't used it so i'm not 100 sure how that works i'm assuming there's just a list of names and then if another player is wearing that ring with the same god chosen it makes it a little bit easier to team up with them in in co-op play i do kind of wish and i understand why it's not an easy thing to do because it would definitely

throw off the game it would make those situations where you just bring the same person into a boss fight with you every time which kind of ruins the experience a bit a lot easier to pull off so I get why they didn't make it so you can just like summon one of your buddies into the world but I do kind of wish like

now like you guys are all playing it and like chris grant's playing it like a lot of people i know are now playing it on pc i kind of wish like i could hop into their world and play with them and explore with them and help them out with the parts that they're getting stuck on um because there really isn't like an awesome way to do that if your character is super high soul level and soul memory um so something like that i think would be would be good maybe even if it's just like in new game plus you can do it regardless of whatever the gates are like you've already beaten the game so it's not like you have to you know worry about maintaining that super punishing dark souls experience just let me play

with my buds my bros yeah i don't know maybe that ring does three maybe maybe that ring does do a good job of of helping that happen um i need to mess around with that a bit i guess shall we move on sure yes seems like we're due we just spent about 45 minutes on dark souls uh i'm i enjoy it but there are other games other souls games in the world. There are other games, but let's continue. One game that I wanted to talk about this month is a game called Wayward Souls, which also has the word souls in the title, and it's not a coincidence because it actually is pretty kind of similar to Dark Souls, which might, I mean, very different, but also kind of similar to dark souls um which might i mean very different but also kind of similar um it's

an ios game uh coming from a team called rocket cat and uh it is like a top-down rpg in the style of i guess like zelda one maybe kind of kind of feels like but it's randomly generated and very very difficult and where the similarities dark souls come in is that it's very much about mastering enemies and each and every enemy has like a way they attack and like you need to know every encounter and sort of feel like you are master of this arena in every encounter um it's interesting and it's it does bring me like gives me that same vibe that i get when i'm playing dark souls and i'm like rolling and dodging you know attacks from giant knights i you know i don't know that ios is the best platform for it i know it's coming to pc as well but you know yeah it reminded me a lot of rogue legacy it it maybe even has more

of that in its dna i think than dark souls uh just sort of structurally you choose a class uh between a mage fighter and well like a thief type dude there's like six of them i think yeah uh and and you the only thing you keep uh between attempts is the gold that you earn, which it is really hard for me to get into a roguelike like this. I think you could call this basically a roguelike where you don't have some sort of progression overall. So that is nice that you collect money on each playthrough and you can use those to upgrade the base skills of each class,

which I really dig. Yeah. I mean, what do you think about the controls? on each playthrough and you can use those to upgrade the base skills of each class, which I really dig. I mean, what do you think about the controls? Because from the beginning I was pretty much turned off to the game by the controls. This is interesting because what platform are you playing it on? On iOS? It's not on PC, is it?

No, what device? What physical device? Okay, interesting. See, I was playing on an iPad 3, and I had the same experience. I recognize that it's a very well-designed game. It looks incredible. It looks a lot like the Mana games. Yeah, Secret of Mana. Secret of Mana and all those titles.

Those are some of my favorites. I love the way it looks. On an iPad 3, I don't think this idea of dual thumbstick games works on an iPad 3 because it requires you to actually hold this relatively large device like you would hold a Game Boy. You hold it with your thumbs on, you know, the corners and you have to hold the whole thing with the rest of your hands. And it's so super uncomfortable. It made me wish that I... I mean, there are a lot of things in my day-to-day life that makes me wish that I hadn't bought this fucking HTC One

and had just gotten an iPhone like a normal person. But this is definitely one of them because it's just games, dual thumbsticks in games, I just don't think work very well i think on a big ipad i think it's better than other games have been just because like this uses like a sort of a quasi swiping technique so i think it's better than certain games have been on ios but it's clear that whenever any sort of dual stick anything is happening on ios it would be much better with a controller actually don't know if there's controller support if you happen to have an

ios controller 12 people that yeah i had the same experience i really like a lot of things that it's doing but there's a fidelity of aiming that i just isn't there and like for for like i was trying to use i like the mage because it has uh yeah a bit more range um but like the there were so many instances where like i knew what i needed to do like i knew what i needed to shoot i was in the proper place for it i was ready for it and just the aiming it didn't aim right with, like, the virtual thumbsticks. And that's tough when you're playing a game that, like, where challenge is a big aspect of it. If the controls aren't exactly spot on,

it makes it a lot more frustrating, I think, than it needs to be. Yeah, I agree with that. Again, it's coming to PC, so I think the game is going to see a bit of a resurgence, presuming it's hitting Steam or something like that. I think, like, that um i think like that's certainly the platform that i'd prefer to play it on like if i can play it with a ps4 controller or something on my pc or a mac whatever um that would be much better i think um the other issue

that i had with it is that and you guys probably didn't play quite this far into it there's like three areas and you basically like and like six levels per area the third area is such a brutal jump in difficulty from the second that i was like really kind of like oh i'm never gonna get through and it gives you like one potion every three hours like it fills them out so strictly, like you get nothing. Which I sort of get because of what the game is, the way they're doing it, the way it's designed, is that they're trying to get you to a point where you're really, every single encounter you're doing perfectly. Or at least, like, there's a little room for error because you do gain health every time you beat a level.

But they're encouraging you to be like, like, you screw up that's a big punishment and it's sort of similar to dark souls in that way where it's like you know every potion is valuable and you know i get why they did that but again the that third area is just like a wall of frustration and and the other issue that i took with was the upgrades that you're getting from gold unlike rogue legacy which i think is an apt comparison but the upgrades really don't they seem like they would make a big impact but it doesn't really feel like it like i didn't feel like i was getting that much more incremental things and not a lot to do with like the core things you would really want right and and there's like a weapon upgrade system which is kind of interesting where you're like selecting between two different upgrades but

a lot of times like one of the upgrades will just be awful and like i would just skip them because uh the starting weapons that i had were just like better one of the things i thought was really interesting about wayward souls um and this is maybe an advantage it has over over rogue legacy not to like keep comparing but uh the the levels are different each time you play yeah uh and the that that i'm normally not so crazy about but the cool thing with this is that there are actually story beats that you will find as you play through that are like that you wouldn't i mean that you run into sometimes that you wouldn't other times like sometimes you see like ghosts that are are of people who have died in this tower and you like see their little story play out or sometimes you'll run into

one of the other characters that you can play through just like through a wall or something i had that once where like i i i was, I was the, the warrior type guy. And I saw the mage on the other side of a wall. And like, they didn't communicate or anything, but like there was a little story beat where like one of them thought they heard something and they dismissed it. But like stuff like that was,

is really cool. It helps to take the, take the burden off of, uh, the, the sort of monotonous, like doing the, you know, going through the same thing over and over and over again.

Yeah. Yeah, I dug it. I think it's an interesting game. Again, I don't know that iOS is the ideal platform for it, but I think it's well-made and thoughtful. Again, I think the controls are probably the biggest sticking point right now. They did the best with what they could,

but again, just like digital control sticks on iOS. I will admit that it is by a large degree not the game I played the most on iOS this past month. Really? That's funny. What game did you play the most on iOS? Maybe like the just straight out game I play the most on ios i maybe like the just straight out game i i played the most on ios games actually because ftl advanced edition came out on ipad which we i think all acknowledge that we just can't talk about anymore yeah um it much like tower fall is a game that we

have extolled all of the virtues of completely there's just not a lot to talk about i mean advanced edition does add some new stuff and like that game is perfect for ipad um and you should pick it up if you haven't uh because it's amazing but uh hearthstone is hearthstone another game that we just can't talk about anymore sorry everybody hearthstone kit but this is the new segment news hot okay well yeah news hearthstone's a great game, and let's just talk about it. Speaking of games that, like, I would not have thought at all in any way that I would enjoy. Like, Hearthstone does not seem like my kind of jam, but man, oh man, did I get, like, deep into Hearthstone. You know what's great about Hearthstone compared with, like, other games of this ilk is like you can play it a lot and it certainly rewards that but like

hearthstone i can take two weeks off of hearthstone and hop back in and still have a lot of fun and like yeah and i don't feel like i lost a lot in the interim like it is perfect for like bite size you know i got 15 minutes. I'm going to get a couple rounds. It's kind of designed to play that way, right? Because you get daily quests. You unlock one a day. And you can have up to three at any given time.

And daily quests are your best way of getting gold. So it kind of makes sense to not play it for a little bit. Rack up some daily quests, knock them out, buy some packs or go in the arena, and then wait for more daily quests. I want to travel back in time. I think it was about two years ago, maybe a year and a half ago, give or take,

to a PAX where Hearthstone was first announced. Because Blizzard went into the PAX and they were like, hey guys, we are going to announce a new game at PAX. And everyone thought, hey guys, we are going to announce a new game at PAX. And everyone thought it was Titan, I'm assuming. And everyone thought it was something amazing.

And everyone was like on the edge of their seats. Because PAX generally, you don't get like huge game announcements. It's always not many of them. And certainly Blizzard usually saves their best stuff for like BlizzCon. And they go up there and they announce a card game. And the room is like yay but damn they knew what they were doing yeah because uh holy crap yeah i can't i can't stop i get home and i just cannot stop playing hearthstone it's so much fun how how does everyone feel about the pay mechanics because it's a free game and for for a long time, I had no desire to spend

money. I was playing ranked matches. I always felt like I was playing people who were right at my speed, and I thought I was pretty good at this game, and I was slowly getting better. And then I played anyone else. Any of our co-workers. I played Frosh. He's very

proud of how good he is. He has one combo deck that I can't beat. But what I realized was... I hadn't paid any money at that point. No, no, no. I understand. But to compete, I had to start reading a lot about the game. I had to start figuring out combo decks.

I had to start saving up dust to get certain cards to build my own if I didn't want to play a certain type of class. And it became a thing where I more and more felt obligated to spend money and also just to start playing the game in a very specific way, which, I don't know, it made it more competitive, which is fun, but it also kind of took some of the joy out of it. I feel like we're all sort of on the same page. We had this discussion a while ago, I think when Super Stickman 2,

Super Stickman Golf 2 came out, about spending money on either free games or games with microtransactions. And the way that I feel about it, and I've always felt this way about it, is if I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of a game, not even like how many hours I put into it, but like how much I've enjoyed that game. I have no reservations about spending money on it if it enhances my game experience not like a lot of the times in free-to-play games that will mean like doing this one thing faster or um you know getting past this one sort of artificial gate hearthstone just because of uh you know the the random nature of its expansion packs it really does just feel like it is enhancing that experience without making you feel guilty about spending money on it.

I would say it made me feel a little bit guilty. It does, in contrast to what you just said, it does speed up a certain aspect of the game, which is to say, if you for a week just do daily quests, you would have enough to buy a pack for free, essentially. But sometimes

you can get a pack that does nothing for you yeah frequently and that and that and that that's that's not a very satisfying experience um for me i don't like the and and this is probably heresy to some people like i don't really enjoy the deck building aspect of it like that funny to me does not appeal i really like that part and i don't like the random part of it i don't like the the idea of like trying to build a deck that uh you know does or doesn't work together i like to look at decks other people have built and try to like emulate those decks because i like the playing of the game i don't necessarily like the the deck building aspects of it so like for me you mean deck building from scratch yes like deck building yeah so that was the issue that i had with it as well is that um i would like when i beat plant

it was really satisfying because i beat him with a deck that i created myself but every time i'd go online i'd get crushed and what i found was really the only way to do well online is to essentially like you go online there's tons of decks that people have built what i like to do well online is to essentially, like, you go online, there's tons of decks that people have built. What I like to do is generally like, I'll recreate a deck that someone made and then alter it with, like, certain favorite cards that I have. Or because you don't have the legendary cards. Right,

exactly. But I, like, I don't have the insight to know, like, oh, this is how the mana curve should be. Like, I should have three threes and three fours because if I don't, I'm going to get screwed. You play with a couple deck, you play with a deck a couple times and you start to figure out what that deck does well

and what sort of areas it's deficient in. Yeah. And you start to learn what cards you, you know, draw when you're playing that you just never fucking use. So, like, with my hunter deck, with my hunter deck, it was like, I was constantly like desperate to get Release the Hounds, which is like my

super powerful card that all my other cards are like relying on and I wasn't getting it. So then I just altered my deck to have more cards that caused me to draw more cards from my deck. You're going to lose tempo though if you play a lot of them. Shut your fucking mouth, Griffin. I'll play how I want to play.

I felt the same way about i i had built a mage deck that i just really needed pyroblast and i feel like if you don't have pyroblast you're barely i think you're only half a mage because like there's it's really great to really super great to have somebody who thinks that they're winning and then drop the the hammer like that that's how release the hounds was for me yeah god it's so satisfying anyway what oh sorry go ahead i just want to say i think my issue with all that because i i don't begrudge the company wanting to make money off its free-to-play game like and compared to all the other gross things other companies do i don't think this is that terrible i just think it's like all other trading card games which

i i've always found frustrating because when i play a game of poker, I know they're going to be the same cards in every deck, right? Like, I know I don't have to continue to invest money just to compete, and if I'm going to go up against people who have, like, a ton of legendary cards, not only do I, can I assume that they're better at the game than i am but they also have an advantage on top of that and that is what even knowing it exists even if i don't come up against those people kind of like turns me off to wanting to continue to play the game because i know just to get up to speed i'm going to have to there aren't there aren't a lot of the there are there are a lot of legendary cards but there's only a couple that are used in a lot of the, there are a lot of legendary cards, but there's only a couple that are used in a lot of decks. There was one card called Pat Nagel,

which is a really low cost card that would make you draw a card at the end of your turn. And it had, or sorry, it had a 50% chance to draw a card at the end of your turn. And it had like a shit ton of health. And it was one of the, it was a low cost card. So you could play it at the beginning of the game and then basically keep card advantage for as long as it was on the table.

And it was in every deck for a while until Blizzard made it so that you had to draw a card at the beginning and not the end of your turn so you had a chance to kill Pat Nagel before you had a chance to use that ability. And then he started showing up in absolutely no decks. So like Blizzard, I think understands that that problem i still have a real issue with leroy jenkins which is a card that uh has charge meaning you can use

it the turn it's played and it has six damage so it's fucking super super powerful and is like the card that people play at the end of the game to shut you out and it's so frustrating because i see it in a lot of decks and i just i haven't found it and it costs a lot to craft it yeah what i will say though is that i was i was online last night at like 10 p.m looking at various car of decks that people have built and this dude made a hunter deck that made it to like number one in north america number one in Europe etc etc like very powerful deck and not a single legendary in it it was like

and not even like epics either it was like a mix of rares and common cards and so like that does give me hope like the game is designed that you should be able to win if you're smart without getting these lucky draws I think the lucky draws help more casual people to you you know, be better at the game.

But the expert players are not reliant on getting those legendaries. Legendaries are balanced because you can only have one, not two of them in your deck, meaning you have to be pretty lucky to draw them in the first place. And most of them are pretty situational. So, like, you have to draw them at the exact right time. So really, Plant, you're just bad at the game. You're just bad at the game. Sure.

I think you're great, Plant. Don't listen to these guys. We've got to move on. Talking, by the way, a lot of big game from people on this podcast, I am still undefeated by anybody at the Polygon staff. I beat you. You've never beaten me. I came close to beating you once.

I beat you when you started playing. Well, that was... Go suck an egg. I was a child. I'll play again. I'd like to. We'd hone each other like steel. Like fine steel hones other steel.

What other news do we got? There's not going to be a Nintendo press conference at E3. They're going to keep their same strategy that they had last E3. Which is they have a completely controlled video message that they send out to the nintendoids i'm fine with it yeah it's just i i don't know it's more evidence that they

realize they can't really compete on a well no because they had a scale they had a shit ton of stuff at last year's in last year's nintendo direct you know press conference but they had a shit ton of stuff that would appeal to hardcore Nintendo fans, they realize they're not going to get New York Times to write about them. Right, they don't need a mainstream press hookup. It's six in one, half dozen in the other. I think by doing these Nintendo Directs,

they can get this shit out in front of more people without having to rely on... It's the same people they're getting in front of. They're getting the hardcore audience that they've always had they're not getting a new audience from these nintendo directs i'm saying that in nintendo direct is easier to consume if you're not at e3 and you're just like at home or at work with a fast internet connection and you can just watch the nintendo direct live when it happens it's easier easier. Like, let's be honest. It's not as exciting. It's nowhere near as exciting as, like, having an event on stage that feels like an event. That also is videotaped.

Yeah, and also is pre-taped. Like, having a demure Japanese man slowly roll out the iterations of Mario that they have for the year is perhaps more soothing. Is it more soothing than like it's it's more soothing but like i would take that over fucking like chingy getting on stage and then doing a song and then talking about how much you love fifa 15 the benefits of chingy are that let's say my program russ freshtick extols the virtues of chingy my cousin who's not a hardcore gamer doesn't know what games are about but just heard heard from Chingy that the Xbox is mad hot. And then goes to Best Buy and is like, oh, I guess I got to get an Xbox.

Like, that's how you grow an audience. And Nintendo is not trying to grow their audience. You're saying that people who don't give a shit about games are clamoring to find out what the fuck is going on. I'm saying they might read the New York Times. are clamoring to find out what the fuck is going on. I'm saying they might read the New York Times, and if the New York Times is not writing about your press conference, except to say you're in trouble financially, that's not a good method.

I just don't give a shit. I really just think it's like... I care about the games too, but like... I think it makes sense in their strategy, but I think there's a lot of people who wish their strategy was something different. I don't think it makes... Like, their strategy has been failing for the last three years. So I don't know why.

But we're not talking, okay, this has nothing to do with their fucking corporate strategy. It's just a different way to disseminate information about the games that they're going to release over the next calendar year. It does have,

it does have to do with their corporate strategy. They are not making a play for the mainstream audience. They feel like they had their day and they are not trying to get Average Joe and Average Jane. If they announce Wii U 2 during this goddamn streaming video

instead of their press conference, people are still going to write about it. It doesn't matter. They're just doing a prerecorded thing other than a press. Here's what I think. I think two-thirds of press conferences at trade shows are fucking terrible, are miserable, and we all walk out of them going,

that was a joke. Like, why? If you don't think you're gonna be able to like it's not for us and announce a new thing if they announce wii u2 during a video at e3 what that says to investors and what it says to the type of people who would read the new york times is wow this company has such little confidence in their product that they can't be bothered to present this on the stage like every other tech company, not just video game companies in all the world.

And that would be the issue. It has to do with their business because it has to do with perception. I'm not saying like for the consumer, it's, yeah, it means jack. Like there's barely any difference. But in terms of like showing the strength of your company and showing perception to investors and people who are into what the hell is going on with the company, this says we are not spending a lot of money, we are trying to be conservative right now,

and we just want to get to next year because maybe next year will be bigger. I wish those investors could have had to cover, from a journalistic standpoint like a konami press conference circa 2010 and be like wow maybe we should do less of these things but jennifer love hewitt how else will you know the games are good if she doesn't tell you insert just so lay i just think i i it is so rare and i guess that's what's so exciting i remember plant Planet, you and I covered at a Ubisoft press conference a couple years ago, and it was the one where they announced the Zombie U and their huge slate of Wii U games,

and also they announced Watch Dogs. I remember you and I walking out of that like, fuck yes, that was awesome. All kinds of new IP, genuinely exciting, super concise. It was a really great press conference that is such a a a rarity i feel like most of the time there's just so predictable so much just bullshit like it's this year it's all about the player experience like shut up let sheen back on the stage to do another song the point the point of the matter is that if nintendo felt like it was capable of generating that

kind of excitement, the kind of excitement that would get you talking about their platform more than Microsoft and Sony, they would be at E3. And they're not. They don't. Are they not going to be at E3 at all, or are they just not doing a press conference? Yeah, that's what I thought. You know what I'm saying. They would be doing a press conference. I think they're good at doing these videos.

I look forward to the Nintendo Directs. I think these videos are the fucking pits. Are you kidding? I would sooner read a Nintendo Power Back issue than watch on my fucking iPhone as I see Kirby's back yet again. And it's not the one good Kirby where you draw on the DS screen. They're press releases, essentially. It's boring. It's boring.

There's a video clip and you can't even tell why it's better or worse than the last one and if you're not like a big nintendo die hard already which i'm not apparently i am i love nintendo i like their games a lot and it this really does not do it for me like also how can we tell what's going on internally if we don't have reggie casually ribbing a lot of on stage but they do that in the videos they that's how i judge the corporate temperature and the relationship between america and japan so when you guys watch that one press conference where fucking robbie drums got up there and had a seizure and died on stage you guys weren't like hey nintendo i'm you know what guys i love you guys i love your games i love zelda and i love all of the jumping that

mario and luigi do together as brothers. You are allowed to not do press conferences anymore because I just watched a man have a seizure and die on stage. Did I miss that press conference? Apparently. Listen, I'm not saying it's a bad idea. I don't think they should have one this year. They have to go into their turtle shell.

Yeah, I agree with that. Unless they have new go into like their turtle shell and yeah i agree with that unless they have new hardware coming out i think they should not pretend and because it's way more embarrassing to just do a press conference and just like list off a bunch of old franchises then and then no third part like little third party support and little like entertainment stuff like yeah so if they had a wii u2 which i think would be a bad idea but if they had like a new 3ds like a 3ds4 whatever um fine have a press conference like that's something worth shouting that's something that might get mainstream attention yeah the other

benefit to this is when they do have an ethereum press conference the next time they will generate more excitement it will be more exciting because they've been out the game. Okay, just super quick. Kevin Spacey's in Call of Duty. That's crazy. They should have a press conference just for that. That's crazy. How big of a check? Right? How big of

a check? They are capable of writing pretty big checks at this point. I like that he's exactly the same character. I got, yeah, sure. Here's my insight. That trailer got me hyphy again. I didn't think I'd ever get hyphy for this franchise again after fucking Ghosts,

which I played for 15 minutes and was like, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I played it for more than 15 minutes, maybe 25. I played the whole thing. It's so brutal, man. It was bad. I didn't think I would be able to get excited for this year's model guess what i did i'm psyched all that mobility stuff uh i mean that's the new hotness in first portion shooters is all about mobility with titanfall i'm now this i'm most excited to see what sledgehammer can do with the franchise because i i think they'll be

able to uh come up with some pretty fresh shit. Bring back Pick 10. That's all you need. Anyway, that's cool. Also, Amplitude. What? Amplitude Kickstarter from Harmonix. Very cool in the regard that Amplitude is a great fucking game and I would love to play another Amplitude. Weird in that

it seems like they would have the money for this. It seems like they would have the amount of money that they're asking for. Well, but you would say that at this point about Double Fine, right? Like, Double Fine, you know, that's what Double Fine's doing too. It's like, you know,

it just removes all the risk for them. Yeah, I mean, maybe that's the play. You know, they know there's, they want to see that there's pent-up demand for it. Also, they have, I mean, it may have nothing to do with how much money they got in the old bank that they can spend on this stuff it may not have anything to do with development resources it's they have two games in development they have more

than two games in development right now probably maybe this is a way for them to go a little bit above and beyond what what their their current resources allow um. I'm fucking psyched, though. I loved Amplitude. A lot. And it's interesting that this was a... Yeah, like that POV stuff. This was a... It sounds like this was a project

that Sony was a bit sort of complicit in helping get this Kickstarter going, which is fascinating. The relationship there is really interesting. Can I do a brief halftime segment? I know we said we weren't going to do one but i sure have for it so i woke up the other day and i was about to go outside and jammed in my door remember i'm living in an apartment building so this is i guess not too uh dissimilar because you get menus and stuff jammed in your door jammed in my door was a letter. It was printed using block letters.

Great. Good start. It basically said, attention, your building is about to use oil-based primers in the building which causes headaches and baby problems and a list of other things that are really, really bad for me. Oil primers for painting? Yeah, for painting. And that was it there was no like this

is from a concerned neighbor there was no like nothing else on it like no action items like should I present this to the building and be like what the fuck uh it was like like uh someone hammered it to my door as a way to describe all these awful things that were going on.

But I have no way. Dear Russ Breshtig, shit's about to get super bad for you, my man. Did you call the building or whatever? I mean, I don't even know how that conversation is going to play out. It's like they're going to be like, yeah, we know. Yeah, we're doing that. it's gonna play out it's like they're they're gonna be like yeah we know a part of me was thinking it's the contractor that is like the building's kind of cheaping out on us getting the shitty paint and not paying us as much so we're gonna it just seems like there's some fucking drama going on in my building and i don't know how to deal with it i'm gonna assume it's

batman you think batman's like spreading the word on oil-based primers take some softballs every now and then you know batman needs a grounder from time to time. And maybe putting notes about this in people's doors is just like, ugh, I just need to relax. Do you think in primer, like lit on fire, there's going to be like the bat signal in my hallway? I told you so. Shoot me straight.

How would you rush to buy the DLC? Leave a window open. Would you buy that DLC if that was like what they offered for the new Batman game? They're like, here, it's a whole bunch of missions where you like unclog some toilets, you pull some hair out of a sink. You do a quick time event and you just like

jump in to somebody about to eat their dinner like, those, that Lane Cuisine is full of GMOs. You really should be chewing more with that steak. That milk expired two days ago. I've told everybody the blue is for glass. The green is for paper. Mr. Brennan in 4A, I saw you.

The difference between us is I'm not wearing hockey pads, and I know where the glass goes. It's in the blue. Yes, so it's a bit of a quagmire that I'm in. Well, good luck. Don't die. The trash cans have a bit of a quagmire that I'm in. Well, good luck. Don't die. The trash cans have a lid for a raisin. If we get raccoons, I'm holding all of you personally responsible.

The raccoon. If my arch nemesis, the raccoon, by which I mean not an anthropomorphized raccoon, but an actual raccoon, gets into our trash, I'm holding all of you personally responsible.coon, but the natural raccoon gets into our trash. I'm holding all of you personally responsible. My family was murdered by raccoons. When I was a kid, I fell down in a cave and was swarmed by raccoons. And then bats. And I decided to go with the bat thing because they're kind of a scarier animal than a raccoon man.

Raccoons have natural masks. They do have natural masks, which I appreciate. Their tiny tails are so cute. I could have been Tanooki boy. I could have had giant awesome balls like a Tanooki man. But it would have been much, much harder to fly around and shit. Where's Falcone? Where's Falcone, though?

Falcone from 7B. He left the back door open again. Falcone? Where's Falcone though? Falcone from 7B. He left the back door open again. Falcone! Racone! Racone! Tanuki! Where's Tanuki? Where is he? Oh my gosh.

Alright. Let's talk about Elder Scrolls Online which somehow made it on the list of the best things. I just want to talk about it because I put a lot of time into it, like 40 hours, and I'm trying to get as much value out of that professional life as possible. I have not played 40 hours of it. Boil it down, though. You guys both love Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

Absolutely. Skyrim is one of my favorite games ever made yeah so of course you love elder scrolls online i think elder scrolls online is fascinating i i i i'm reaching a point where you're laughing but like i can appreciate a game that is fascinating in its design even if i don't necessarily like playing it um that's how dark age of camelot was same developer very fascinating but like not super fun to play was that the same developer it was that no that's not right i think it is now the developer of this game is xenomax media yeah but they were i think xenomax bought um whichever company made here somebody googling someone

looking it up but I'm pretty sure Zenimax bought that company that made Dark Age of Camelot. It was made by Mythic, and Mythic was picked up by... Oh, yeah. It was published by Vivendi Games. Right.

But then Electronic Arts purchased Mythic, and they were the publisher after that acquisition in 2006. So am I dead wrong or dead right? Yeah, you're super wrong. Okay, never mind. Totally wrong. Anyway, so the weird thing about elder scrolls online there's a lot of weird things but it's a weird the big bet that elder scrolls online is making is that what people liked about elder scrolls was the world and the lore and maybe like half of the mechanics and not the sort of solitary,

you know, exploring an entire world and becoming the, the master of it. Uh, because the experience that Elder Scrolls online offers is like a deep dive on lore, like deep, like it's taking you back to the beginning before. I mean, like deep like it's taking you back to the beginning before i mean we're back to the

interregnum before the events of like most of the pretty much all the modern elder scrolls games yeah but i just like this do you care about the lore of elder scrolls like if justin doesn't if justin doesn't nobody does right if i don't know i i've never been a big lore nut i like worlds i like exploring them i like the lore of fallout never been a big lore nut i like worlds i like exploring them i like the lore of fallout because yeah okay well shit yeah i actually do like the lore of fallout a lot more but uh i that is the game that is on offer here it is weirdly in in the areas that you would expect them to sort of transcend the mMO genre to make something that really makes sense in the context

of an Elder Scrolls game. They have instead doubled down on MMO convention to make something that's weirdly more expected and predictable and sort of hits all the genre beats but doesn't

really exceed them in any way, which is very strange. Can you guys help me out? Cause I, I actually could use it in regards to this game and maybe Skyrim too. So I hated fantasy for all of my life until about six months ago, after I played like D and D for a while. And that kind of like got me a little bit into it.

And now I've like watched Game of, like, two and a half weeks. So I think I'm, like, getting closer to going all in on this thing. And I'm like, hey, you know what? If I like those things, maybe I like other things that people in this world like. Like Skyrim, that I always felt like a crazy person for. So here I am today, and I have two options. I could play Elder Scrollss online i've never played an mmo like considerably either or i could play skyrim which is an older game what do i do

and why would i do it are you asking us whether you should play the elder scrolls online or skyrim yeah i mean i don't know i don't know much about these i like i've avoided these games because they had dragons in them okay so here's what i would say uh if you're gonna play an mmo go ahead and play world of warcraft it's still wicked good and they have uh shaved off every single rough edge until it is a pure dopamine experience that still has the power to rope you in in a deep, big way. If you want a single-player game, if you want to experience the Elder Scrolls world,

play Skyrim. If you want to understand what all the cards in Hearthstone are based on, go ahead and play World of Warcraft. You'll see some familiar faces. You don't even know what fucking murlocs are. What are you doing playing this goddamn game? He actually asked me the other't even know what fucking murlocs are what are you doing playing this goddamn game he actually asked me the other day what is a murloc and i had to make

the noise for him no i know what the noise is i played hearthstone i know what a murloc deck is but that's how we learn decks before you knew what a murloc deck was fool when you were talking to learn what a murloc was he didn't realize that they were actual murlocs in world of warcraft okay that's true i didn't know that that's actual murlocs in World of Warcraft. Okay, that's true. I didn't know that. That's crazy. But, yeah, Skyrim is in every conceivable metric a better game than Elder Scrolls. But I would say to Justin's point,

what he said earlier, I think is totally accurate. And I think a lot of the reason why you don't give a shit about Fantasy Plant is that lore in fantasy tends to be pretty shitty. Which is to say, unrelatable and sort of like well then there was a demon and a dragon they fought and another demon dragon baby came out the reason you like game of thrones is because it's a little more grounded although it's more historical is that

how demon dragon babies are made they fight and then the dragon baby's born game of thrones definitely has uh a deep, as does Skyrim. And I would include Oblivion in this as well. But the reason that it works, and the reason that people who don't like to do deep dives on lore can hang in there, is that there are certain characters that when you bring the story back around to them, then you're able to sort of get a rhythm. Like, oh, okay, this guy. Now I know where I'm at.

And Skyrim does that really well, right? There are a lot of one-off weirdo characters. But it's more for individual story arcs. It's not like the overarching story of the world as much as it is like, oh, this is the head of the thieves guild and it keeps popping up. Right, and I think one of the big problems

with Elder Scrolls IX is that they're throwing so many characters at you with so many crazy names. They're just odd collections of continents and vowels, and you cannot get a foothold in the lore because it's moving so quickly

that you never really develop an affinity for any one area or person. It's just sort of like grinding to the next quest. And Skyrim really doesn't feel that way. Skyrim lets you live in a quest line or whatever for a really considerable amount of time. It's in that way slower paced, I think,

than Elder Scrolls Online. I'd say it's like five hour arcs per quest line. Right, but you really get like, when you finished a quest line in uh elder scrolls you are in you know skyrim you feel like you've completed a story yeah and you never get that foothold in elder scrolls online there's there's one maybe two characters that i could pick out of a lineup uh uh and one of them's just like the super old dude watcher observer whatever they still don't know who that is yeah it's still no that is and interestingly

they made a change in the uh early game uh from the beta where they put you in a different area than they initially did and they have god that was the fucking worst starting area of any mmog ever played but the the odd thing about it is they have michael gambon who uh of course is dumbledore uh doing the voice of this cat except they didn't apparently they had to change his dialogue just a little bit to indicate this new area that they've got you going to and they did not get mr gambon back in the studio So it is just a different old dude, which has got to be a great- Welcome to Evergreen.

That's exactly, like, yeah. And it's, all of a sudden he sounds different, which has got to be a big confidence booster for Mr. Gambon. Like, oh, so just any old dude then. Do you just, just any old, we all sound alike, right? Great, so glad.

Where's the check? Thanks. I will say for the record that the president of um zenimax online was one of the founders of mythic entertainment and worked was the producer on dark age of camelot so i'm not 100 true okay well mechanically griffin talk about like combat because i that is that one area where i actually do enjoy Elder Scrolls Online more than a traditional MMO. Because it's interesting, and it's fucking hard. Like, it's super difficult. We caught a lot of flack for the first overview that we did on the Elder Scrolls Online beta,

because I was playing it like every other MMO, which is you figure out how to use the skills of your class, which you've assigned to your hotbar, in loops, that maximize your damage potential and survivability that is like the mmo way um elder scrolls online requires you to uh use these uh timing based systems of uh of uh countering enemies blocking enemies uh parrying them to make them more vulnerable and to block uh the enormous amounts of damage that they're capable of dishing out uh and if you don't use those systems

then you're gonna fucking die every time uh which like is is so far from the idea of of other mmos which you brought up world of warcraft which i also think is a tremendous game, and I've probably spent playing more than any other video game in existence. But it is at times like pretty mindless, like you learn your loops, you find an enemy if he's by himself, and not surrounded by other enemies, which requires you to drop back and punt a little bit. You know what buttons you have to press to kill them. And then it's just a matter of pressing them and letting your cooldowns refresh and then pressing them again. Elder Scrolls Online gets away from that. It requires you, it has a little bit more action to it.

So that idea is really interesting. It's just, even after I learned it, again, I appreciate that it varies from the norm in a pretty clever way. I just didn't really like just didn't really like playing it. Part of the problem with that part of the issue with that difficulty is you talked about the hot bar and it gives you a lot of freedom in how you develop your character so if you want to be someone who has magic abilities um but uh uses a i don't know a two-handed axe you can absolutely do that there each levels in its own way has its own set of skills that you can invest in or not invest in as you see fit as a a result, it is pretty easy,

and perhaps even statistically more likely, that you will make a character whose skills do not necessarily complement each other, that do not have complementary effects that make your character competitive in battle. And that's kind of intimidating because you don't really know how, like you only have five skills

you can have up at one given time, plus like one ultimate ability. And you acquire many more skills than that almost immediately. So like deciding how to level those up in a way that like makes a lot of sense for your character can be pretty difficult can you like screw up permanently there are you have the ability to respect but it

is pretty expensive from what i heard i haven't done it but yeah um i i i don't know i haven't dipped into the i i spent a lot of time at the beta i haven't dipped into the final game just yet so i i feel like i shouldn't give any like grand qualitative statements about the game um but i just i don't know for me to get into another mmo it's just it's gonna require something truly phenomenal yeah because i i i do like those games and i still dip into world of warcraft from time to time but more than any other game and i realize that this is a really futile way to look at you know spending time on your hobby which is you know what games are to me um i it's really hard for me to look at an mmo and not just see it as a furnace that i shovel my hours into to get

a purple item oh that's better than the blue item i already have hearthstone well yeah but a little bit but at least hearthstone you could play for 20 minutes and finish the game and feel like you did something right and hearthstone i have spent I would say a grand total of maybe 10 hours playing. I have spent days of my life playing World of Warcraft just to get that best thing. And at the end of the day, are those days that I put into World of Warcraft like trying to max out my item level

more enjoyable or more valuable than the 10 hours? There will be a mention of my beast stalker pants that i spent fucking a month trying to get right yeah it's very sad i i don't like to look back on those days i don't either like i i am at times genuinely embarrassed there's a a command you can enter when you're playing world of warcraft that will show you how much time you spent playing the character and i did that for the first character that I got up to like level 60 in the vanilla release. And like, it was not a measurement of minutes or hours. It was a measurement of how many days of my life

I've spent playing this game. And I'm not saying I didn't enjoy that time, but it reaches, there's a breaking point where it's just like, fuck, like that's so, that's a lot of time. And I really do think that the more time I spend playing MMOs, the more likely I am to just sort of abandon the entire enterprise because it is a pretty enormous investment.

There's a moment, I think, in every MMO that I've ever played where I sort of, to put it in the lamest terms possible, see the matrix. You know, you see all the numbers for what they are in your stop. I lose the ability to sort of imagine them as magical strength and just see just all the numbers, basically. And I got to that point fairly quickly with ESO,

largely because of the way you unlock skills. You don't get things that are, because there's a balance, they don't have progression in the same sense it's like there's not like a huge uh mage skill that i was like waiting for and i knew once i got that everything would change um because you can unlock those skills at very different rates uh if you want to which it sort of breaks the loop a little bit yeah i think I think the MMOs that I'm going to, I think if there's another MMO I'm going to get into, it can't just be this straight up and down MMORPG idea

that World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls Online and even some upcoming MMORPGs sort of represent. It has to be something that is new and exciting and super fun to just play um and it's not just entirely about that loop of go go grind this dungeon a few times and maybe the item that you need that's better than the item you have now will drop like it's gotta be something more than that um because it's just that loop is losing a lot of luster to me at this point. Point at what we were saying? Oh, I think that I've always been kind of hard on people who played MMOs,

and I don't play them at all because of what you're talking about. But I don't know. At the same time, I remember the taxonomy of gamers. Somebody you went to school with wrote that, right, Frush? Mitch Kropota, I think? Yes. But it was like this breakdown of the different types of people who play games and why they play them and what i've come to think more recently is like i'm just not that type of person there's nothing wrong with seeing the

matrix and still liking the game like there's there's a pleasure to be had in that sort of experience when i play a game what I generally want is something that I either feel like I'm testing skill, which is what I liked during the early period of Hearthstone before I figured out that I also had to kind of turn it into a puzzle almost. Or like an exploration thing where like what you're talking about what you would want from a new MMO, Griffin, something like Grand Theft Auto for me or Just Cause where I just have fun being in the world. Like I just have fun getting around and exploring and doing those things. But I don't know.

I now have trouble begrudging people or even like the games themselves for what they are just because there are so many different things for different people. I don't know if that makes sense. It does, it does. And I think that developers of these types of games are getting a little bit smarter. I've played a lot of the beta for Wildstar, which does a really interesting thing in its, I forget what they call it, path system is what it calls.

And basically, in addition to your class, you pick a path, and that path will tailor content in the game to the type of where in that taxonomy you fall. So if you are an exploration-based player, there's an exploration-based path that's all about finding these hidden areas and using platforming to discover parts of the game that other players on different paths will never see. So stuff like that is really interesting. I think for me, the shine has come off the apple since I've started doing these overview videos, because as a result of having to do these videos, I have to play everything. Like I have to play every game that comes out. And because of that, I sort of realized that when you spend, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens and hundreds of hours playing an MMO, that's time that you could spend, you know spend playing and completing and experiencing dozens

of other games. And it's hard for me to justify making this one game the game I play instead of playing the 30 interesting indie games that came out that month. That's it. I would still heartily recommend

to take a tour through World of Warcraft. Put 30 hours. I think it's a kind of essential. It's kind of an essential gaming experience. Play it as a normal game. And then I'm not afraid to also delete things. Like, that is like a personal rule, too. I delete things off my iPhone after I play them for too long.

And I, like, am not afraid or ashamed to just completely get rid of games i own that feel like they're addictions more than experiences i'm enjoying yeah stronger man than i i think it is much easier to play world of warcraft at this point and oh yeah a point where you're like okay i get it that was neat like it the content is so dense that you don't feel like you're just running through yeah whatever i mean there's a lot of really neat stuff. And it's super, it's so incredibly polished that, like, it's still fun to jump in and take a run at it. We got one more game here in our Besties show. And this game is called Broforce.

Broforce. I played it for the first time this morning. Really putting the research time into it. Well, Stupid Frustic just added it yesterday, but I will say I'm glad Stupid Frustic did because it's a fun game that I enjoy. Frustic, I feel like you probably played it more than anybody else. Probably not, actually.

Oh, okay. Interesting. I played it for about an hour, I would say, which might it more than anybody else. Probably not, actually. Oh, okay. Interesting. I played it for about an hour, I would say, which might be more than anyone else. That's not very much time. And it's fun. To be honest, I didn't love the game. I think it does some funny things. I like it more than Fraction.

Just so people know what it is. Yeah, please, somebody get it. There's odds that you don't. It's a 2d pixel art and i mean action shooter game where you run across the landscape kind of like metal so like killing and shooting enemies uh but the twist is the environment's destructible so you can kind of like tear through the actual uh i get terraform or whatever the buzzword is for it but later on in the game,

how you get through the environment is kind of like, I don't know, platforming puzzles? Like you'll bash a propane tank and then hop on it and then ride it across the stage or do that to get to a higher platform. Or you can blow the ground out from underneath an enemy to kill them. There are also boxes that you can just push and you can push it off a ledge into a big group of enemies and it explodes you know

murdering all of them um there's a lot of really clever stuff and then there's the character stuff which griffin i mean you can probably i mean it's amazing it's it's so it's so so so good and like i didn't understand how good it was watching the trailers because it just looked like these are kind of dumb homages to these different characters. It's so, each one is so almost respectfully adapted. It's so, so thoughtful, like all the way down to, like each character has special abilities, so you unlock Neo from the Matrix,

and he can slow down bullets that get shot at him and redirect them them or he does this like dashing punch he doesn't have a gun because why would neo have a gun i mean neo does i guess have a gun he does he does do gun things but he's mostly a punch man that's like his his main thing is punch he's a punch man sure you do uh you do john mcclain from die hard and he's not wearing shoes um you do john mccain yeah politics one of the things that i uh i love that you switch these characters on the fly randomly and you don't know who you're going to end up as and as as hard as it i didn't even get this when i was watching griffin play

but like they feel completely different like you have to completely modify your whole play style. One of my favorites is Blade, who jumps way higher than the other guys, doesn't have a gun, just has a sword. And you have to completely change how you play as soon as you start, but it feels really good. They've had to balance so much crap to make it make sense um there's also macgyver who doesn't have a gun he just throws dynamite and that's so hard to play with him uh in certain situations like if you're in a boss fight you may as well just die because it's really hard to get that dynamite on an enemy but not only that just like when you're traversing the level you are going to blow up the entire level and make it much much harder to you know do all the platform it's really fun the way it works because you'd think it'd be like tossing grenades but really what happens is when he tosses it at an enemy

the enemy catches it and then runs because hey i'm holding dynamite and and then they die and i don't know it just feels really good and his uh special attack is that he drops a turkey filled with dynamite that lures enemies in because they see a turkey on the ground and i guess they're hungry yeah uh and they'll all go for it and then die uh explosively so one thing i will say the reason that i'm a little lukewarm about it is that it's like a like imagine playing contra but the jump is sort of finicky and weird like Like, the controls do not feel great. I disagree. I think they feel great.

I think it's super polished. You agreed with me on the control thing. No, we had this discussion. We were enjoying the game. Well, I was enjoying the game. And right away, you're like, so what is it? Is it like there's every level? And I was like, no, let's keep playing.

And you're like, I don't like the way you jump. And I was like, no, just give it some time. you're like, I don't like the way you jump. And I was like, no, just give it some time. You're like, how do I get up on this platform? And I was like, just chill out and let yourself have fun. And then you're like, this is pretty fun, but I don't like the jump. That's pretty much the whole conversation. Why do we even need Russ on the podcast? If we can just have Chris Plant do Russ.

I'm a giraffe. There it is. You got it. Perfect. Did a perfect job. It is at times. It's not. I think in general the controls are fine.

I will agree with Russ. There are certain situations. There's one boss fight where you have to scale a tower while a helicopter is shooting at you, destroying and exploding the level underneath you as you climb it. And it is very hard because you have to attach to walls using your knife, which is a little that that part, I will say, is a little bit finicky. And when you, you know, have to do that and keep going up, and if you fall behind for

a second, you die. And then that's game over. It's it's really, really, really stressful. have to do that and keep going up, and if you fall behind for a second, you die, and then that's game over. It's really, really, really stressful. But I don't think there's a lot of times where that is an issue. My favorite part about playing the game that was playing it with Russ, even though he... Did you play co-op? Yeah, we played co-op, and he loves killing his friends in these games,

which at first will drive you crazy, like when he killed me in Spelunky and carried me to the end and cackled for about 20 minutes. But it was fun in this game, like deciding when you wanted to turn against each other and blow the ground out from under the other one. Yeah. I don't think so.

I found that more engaging than the actual game. Killing me? Yeah. Thank you. Remember the time I threw you off the building and cracked the actual game killing me. Yeah. Remember the time I threw you off the building and crack down. That was fun. Yeah. Um, yeah.

I also love how, how silly it is, which I thought that I was done with like this, like hyper masculine, uh, parody homage, but it goes so far that it actually comes comes back around to like at the end of every at the end of the levels i played at least you raise the american flag you kill you kill the

devil kill the devil who's in a suit you kill the devil raise the american flag jump onto a helicopter and the entire level explodes below you yeah every time there's actually a good thing in co-op where the first person to jump on the helicopter the helicopter takes off so it's sort of a race and like you'll ditch the other person if you get on it first i like that and that never happened nope never let's talk about them rasties okay um here's the rest of the setting by kyle star thank you kyle my pics of apr are Monument Valley and Hearthstone. Both are shining examples of the high-quality experiences that mobile still have to offer.

We did rap about Hearthstone a lot. Monument Valley is a very cool game, though. I still haven't played that, but it looks gorgeous. It's cool. I'm not smart enough for it, but visually, it's very cool. I have a lot of friends who don't play a lot of video games that are talking about that game. Yeah.

Apparently, it's a crossover hit with a lot of mainstream appeal. The next one is from Albert. Did anybody play Monument Valley that can talk about what it is? Yeah. So it's like an MC Escher style platformer puzzle game, sort of similar to Echo Chrome in that way, because it does a lot of like perspective shifting weirdness. Sure.

It's a cool game. Again, like it gets pretty tricky um yeah and it's funny guys have made whale tail right i believe so yes uh us too is the name of the developer um albert said um he played uh fracked os osc which was pretty great. Great colors, visual design, multilayer puzzles. He says the puzzles weren't always great, but he enjoyed how they related to the music. I know Chris Plant played and reviewed Fract. I played a bit for Overview, too.

It has its issues. You get stuck in the terrain more than i would like and a few of the puzzles aren't as intuitive as you would want them to be um but it is a really just fucking fresh game like when you solve a puzzle and make like a sick beat it's very very satisfying in a pretty unique way yeah when the game is like hitting you know when it's doing what it's trying to do best When the game is like hitting, you know, when it's doing what it's trying to do best, it's excellent. It's just kind of mired by, like you said, some of the terrain issues. I wasn't able to finish the game because I hit a bug, but I don't think that bug is in the game anymore.

But yeah, I mean, it's very pretty and it sounds killer. Yeah. Brayden says Child of Light light although he hadn't played it he has not played when he said that light although but he is brayden is assuming that child of light is a dope hit uh you already know about this one a platform rpg created with the ubi art framework with unique visual style akin to a storybook or watercolor painting, blah, blah, blah. That was not me being rude. That is what Braden actually says. He did write blah, blah, blah. I liked it a lot.

I think it's a really cool game. I haven't finished it. I've heard the writing is broke. What? No. Yeah, I've heard the writing is pretty much like not—it ruins a great game. No. Yeah? No, I mean mean it's just 100% wrong the writing is done all in rhyme uh and it's always rhyming plant now i did i've heard all about it and it sounds just as broke as most of the people on my turner stream does it does the game start with hickory dickory dock uh-huh um it does no it's it's really like the

rhyming is super charming and like i mean yeah the dialogue isn't i guess like like off the chains it's not like you're addressing important moral issues um in detail yeah and but like but it's it's like no other game does that one thing i don't know i just think it's voiced by the basement, right? It rhymes, and no other game does that one thing. I don't know, I just think it's a really unique game. The combat system's really clever. It's all about timing your attacks to interrupt your enemy's attacks while making sure that you don't get interrupted in return

using that sort of Grandia 2-style dynamic battle system. It's a really, really interesting game and absolutely gorgeous it makes me optimistic that they're going to be able to do a lot more with the ub art framework so pretty it's so pretty in persia to like oh my god that would be super super baller um i want to talk about flappy golf okay it's surprisingly no one wrote in to say how much they love flappy golf but i do really love it. Who on the show has played Flappy Golf? I think we pretty much beat it.

I think I have like one or two stages. Justin, did you actually play it? I did. I really did. And did you like it? Yeah. It was good. It's not the best game ever.

It's okay. It's neat. The reason I mention it. I don't think it makes. Okay, so like Flappy Golf is Super Stickman Golf, except instead of hitting the ball, you flap it. The only thing that's weird to me is I don't think the two mechanics necessarily always work together so well. There are a lot of hills and terrain that a lot of times it doesn't make sense to take advantage of because you really just want to flap your way. Right, well, they're the exact same maps yeah as before yeah right uh the the reason i like it and the reason i want to mention it is

because i think it's an interesting example of like cloning versus not cloning which is to say you know you could clone luft rousers take the gameplay take the visual design and take everything about it and just like change the name. And that's a clone. Or you can do something like they did with Flappy Golf, which was take the basic mechanic of Flappy Bird, which was tap the screen to make something flat and then integrate it into something completely different, in this case, golf.

For being a free game, it's honestly that and Hearthstone are the two ios games i've played most of the last month which is a little bit shocking but it's like very perfect for like subway gaming um the ads the ads are fucking oppressive oh i paid a dollar to get rid of them so you can do that yeah it could also make it a little more obvious how to pay to get rid of the ads i don't know how i figured it out, but I just did. Yeah, there's like in the options menu you can do it, but they are horrible.

And I know that that's like a joke. I know they're playing off of the Flappy Bird ad, but it's a tough joke to stomach. It's a dollar. Like, I had no... That, for me, is where the joke breaks down. Like, ha ha ha, get it? Give me a dollar. Yeah, I don't know that it was meant to be a dollar. It give me a dollar yeah i don't know that it was

meant to be a dollar it's a free game i don't know that it was meant to be a joke i think um also it's not meant to be a joke they're demons they're demons i want to mention tabletop simulator um just because it's one of the most interesting games ever it is not like when i talked about it among the the polygon staff like everybody was like is this like you can play Pathfinder online with buddies? I don't think it's an especially great system for that, but it is a physics-based tabletop-ass simulator. You can simulate a tabletop with a physics-based simulation. So you can play like they have presets for checkers and chess

and poker and stuff like that. Or you can upload your own designs for cards and boards and basically make your own board games and then play them in an online environment where everybody can interact with the table all at the same time. It's just a super interesting tool that I've seen people use to you know create entire board games online either recreate you know stuff like cards against humanity or whatever or you know create their own stuff and

then play test them online like i i don't know i think as as as like a development tool even for for people who are interested in making their own board games that don't want to you know 3d print a bunch of figures or go print a bunch of cards it's it's just a really interesting thing or if you're doing like a dm like you're dming you could dm yeah i still think something like roll 20 or or something not physics based like the physics thing is so clumsy and like intentionally kind of funny at times. Like there's a button flip the table. Yeah.

Um, I, I definitely could work and I think that it's built to work. It's just, doesn't seem like the best way to do that. But like to go online and see some of the crazy shit that people are doing with it is, is really,

really, really rewarding. Um, so yeah, tabletop simulator. I wanted to mention one with it is, is really, really, really rewarding. So yeah, tabletop simulator. I wanted to mention one quick iOS game that I liked a lot. We already went over Flappy Golf, by the way. No,

no, it was one that my, my sister-in-law who's 13 recommended to me. And she's, these kids are playing, this is how, this is my mobile discovery engine. Now this is how I found out about cool mobile games. I just asked her what these kids are playing this is how this is my mobile discovery engine now this is

how i found out about cool mobile games i just asked her what the kids are playing 13 year old tweens are the new rust fresh stick basically yes uh uh the game was called a dark room um there's actually a online uh web based version of this um but it's actually a very different game that has different endings uh on ios it starts out very simply uh it's all sort of text-based uh best comparison i could make is it sort of reminds me of candy box a little bit it starts out very basic you're you're in a uh dark uh dark room a titular dark room and from, you start to build a community and a village. And from there, you strike out to sort of explore the world around you. And as you're playing,

there is a under the surface narrative that's being occasionally delivered to you as you play and continue through the game. Mechanically, it's simple. There aren't a lot of stats to think about. And in fact, you don't understand how deep it is until you actually start to explore the world around you and run into things that can sort of help or hurt your village. But it's a really interesting progression. And it was one that once it got its hooks into me, I had to keep playing until I finished it.

It does have an end, and there are actually a couple different endings you can get, but it's a super, super cool game. You can try it online first if you want to, or just grab the iOS version. I think it's like $2 or $3. But A Dark Room, it's neat. I'm going to throw one more on there, and that's Hitman Go.

Oh, yeah, that looks really neat. I still haven't played it. Wow, what a special game. What a nice thing to see from an otherwise serious developer. And it's a version of Hitman for your iPad, and I guess it's iPhone also, but it is a board game, and it's a really nice looking very clean great sounding too like it sounds very tactile like it sounds like you're playing uh an actual game they put a lot of work into that yeah in in the design they said that it was

inspired by that i wish i could think of the name of the thing where it's like rich people with no problems or something it's a a Tumblr about just spoiled rich kids. But these photos of rich young people. Rich kids of Instagram? Yeah, yeah. In these giant open lawns. Just lots of empty space that just is super, super wealthy looking. Just very gross.

People that you kind of probably wouldn't mind killing with your Hitman character. Okay. Yeah, sorry. Kind of a sinister thing to say out loud i didn't like that i'm just saying like if these are like not real humans but you know caricatures of uh privileged wealth in the modern age of capitalism maybe you'd want to kill them with a hitman character it's what you're doing in hitman already um and yeah it looks great it reminds me in a weird way of something else uh screen x did which was the tomb raider uh isometric game do you remember that the laura croft

yeah yeah it would yeah but it was a like it was a very interesting weird take on one of their franchises that for me was like i mean that, that's my favorite Tomb Raider game. I love that game. And I think it's so much more interesting than the rest of the series. And that's kind of how I feel about this thing. It's like, it's something that just feels different than everything else I'm playing. And somehow is able to tie in a popular brand to that without making it feel, I don't know, kind of lame as most tie-ins feel. Yeah, I'll dip into that. Also

FTL Advanced Edition, play it. Yeah. So that's going to finally do it for us. We've reached the end of this epic episode. Thank you so much to you at home for listening. If you get a chance to review our show on iTunes and spread that link around and get your friends to listen, that would be great.

Well, we got up next month, I guess. It's a big month, actually. Sports Friends, Mario Kart 8. Tex Murphy. Tex Murphy, Tesla. Super Giant Game. What is that called? Transistor.

Super Time Force. Is Watch Dogs out this month? Watch Dogs. Jesus Christ. Please don't make me play Mario Kart. No, not Mario Kart. I'll play that Mario Kart. Mario Kart 8.

I'll play Mario Kart 8. But I'm not going to play Mario Kart. I still haven't tested Mario. I have it for overview. I haven't tested its capacity for Mario Kart. Griffin, can we do an evening recording of a review where we play cario mart yeah sure it would get pretty rowdy and we would be pretty sick the next day yeah but yeah i don't i don't see why not cario mart is a game where you open a beer at the beginning of a race

and you have to finish the beer before you can complete the race and you can't and you can't be drinking the beer while you're driving the car what What? It's only, so you have to either, you know, slam it right there at the beginning, or if you get hit by a shell, you can chug while you're... Oh, so you can coast while you're drinking. Well, no, that's kind of bad form. It's usually whenever you come to a complete stop. You can't, like, gun it and get full acceleration, then let go

of the button, take a sip, and then... That's bad form. You gotta take breaks. It's a fascinating strategic exercise. It's for kids. That makes bad form. You gotta take breaks. It's a fascinating strategic exercise. It's for kids. That makes you drunk. That makes you super, super, super drunk. It's the only drinking game I like.

But we'll talk about that and so much more next month on the besties. Until then, keep going to Polygon.com. We got a ton of crap there for you to enjoy. We're on Facebook too. Facebook.com forward slash Polygon and YouTube slash Polygon, everything slash Polygon.com. We got a ton of crap there for you to enjoy. We're on Facebook, too. Facebook.com forward slash Polygon and YouTube slash Polygon, everything slash Polygon. And there's a lot waiting for you. So go drink it all in and then come back and join us next month for the besties.

Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games. Besties!