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

Episode Date: April 10, 2014

I hope you enjoyed March. The month full of big game releases may be the last of its kind for the foreseeable future. Looking at the calendar, we won't see four weeks so full of hyped AAA and indie games until fall. That's why we chose to withhold Dark Souls 2 from this month's Besties. We can discuss its release on PC next month. April, after all, looks slim by comparison. Anyway, let's live in the now! This month we have four good games, a bag full of reader favorites and some big news involving a certain Lawnmower Man knockoff. 8:30 - Titanfall 25:00 - Mercenary Kings 37:00 - Halftime! 48:00 - Infamous: Second Son 1:14:00 - News of the month 1:24:00 - Luftrausers 1:34:40 - Reader emails 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!

can i ask a serious question no if there was a grizzly murder let's say like 15 to 30 years ago don't even joke about this because like i've had that thought like i'm gonna i'm not joking i'm dead serious if this there was like a murder suicide and like the cats ate the eyes of the dead bodies in your living room theoretically would that's just like that's where i chill and watch walking dead if we couldn't haunt it right now sure walking dead's appropriate for that so a lot of ghosts in walking dead with the real estate agent is there like a statute of limitations for the real estate agent to say like yo dog there was something pretty awful here yes i think they do actually have to do that i don't think they have to denote the

residence's spectral activity though whoa okay but how many years have to pass before it's like yeah you know like everyone's been murdered everywhere essentially yeah i mean if you think about just like how big the world is and how long it's been around six thousand years um then like yeah probably every like every square inch of this beautiful blue orb we all live on has had a murder happen on it yeah you think like the average person's height keeping in mind that people used to be like wicked small um is probably like four and a half feet then you multiply that by what like how many people 40 4 40 trillion people times that yep i just did the math and it's the whole area of the earth okay what if when you

were looking for a house you found that the owner was named griffin the former owner right i wouldn't do it i wouldn't buy it and then like they killed someone there named like i don't know somebody that you're an enemy with. Like, who do you not like? Russ Frustick, for the most part. Yeah, let's say that they killed a person named Russ Frustick. Okay. If you, Griffin, killed this Russ Frustick in that house,

would that fall under double indemnity, and then you would not have to go to jail for it? I need to look up everybody who's ever owned this house and their murder history right now. Cancel the episode. My afternoon is booked. I'm going to murder Russ Fresh, I guess is what I mean. Cool. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the month.

My name is Griffin McElroy, and I'm having a hard time deliberating what the best game is this month. My name is Chris Plant, and I know the man that was killed in Griffin McElroy's home. My name is Russ Frustick, and I know the best game of the week. You took your time with that one, and you still fucked it up at the end. Did I? Welcome to the besties. You took your time with that one and you still fucked it up at the end. Did I?

Welcome to the besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in pop culture, boys. Zac Efron is in a spot of trouble, but he's still on my favorites list. Who we hate, who we love,

science, reading, reading math social studies and so much more but today we're gonna dip into video games not just pac-man anymore can we do a pac-man game let's let's do that pac-man and ghostly adventures because that got remember there have been some good pac-man games yeah Yeah. I mean, like in the past 10 years. Did you guys play that Pac arcade collection that came out recently? Pac-Attack. Nope. I think it may have had, it had Pac-Land in it.

Pac-Land. It's like the worst game. And it was like, we got to toss this, put this baby on the greatest hits. Got to get that bad boy in there. Got to get that bad boy. I gotta get that bad boy i mean i understand that it was a precursor to a lot of platforming games but it was skunk poop was it

like glover it's exactly like glover okay now i get it so i know what you're wondering you got to the end of the show and then you rewound it to the beginning of the show and you're like maybe i missed something why didn't they talk about dark souls 2 we're not talking about dark souls 2 um no we we don't in the show you wrote up the rundown for this episode you know goddamn full well that we're not talking about dark souls uh it's it's creative uh sort of license it's like i'm oh way to go George Lucas. Yeah, you really pinned a masterpiece there. I think it's... I understand why we're not doing this. I think it's fucking bananas

that my two favorite games that came out in March are not being discussed on this episode. No, but we are discussing them. I guess in this very circuitous way. Yeah, I would agree. I think it's smart. So, Justin's... Correct me if I'm wrong.

Justin's reasoning, and I think we all agree on that, regarding why Dark Souls is not in there this way yeah i would agree i think it's smart so justin's correct me if i'm wrong justin's reasoning and i think we all agree on that uh regarding why dark souls is not in there is because it sucked make a real game uh it's it's not on pc yet and there's many people on this podcast that would rather play it on pc than on current we should point out that's not a snobby thing the game does not run very well on other platforms like you're choosing between like crazy screen tearing or crazy frame rate problems i played it on ps3 um i guess i'll wait a month to talk about how good it is but god damn it's so good yeah but so like i would don't really have a gaming pc so maybe i should just wait until

they come out on next gen consoles which aren't even announced yet. Yeah, I've had that same thought. No, we're gonna play it on PC, because otherwise people are gonna get angry. And by then, the strategy guides are gonna be so sweet. And that's how I like to play Dark Souls, is my nose in a GameFAQs text document. Really? Absolutely 100%. For real,

dog? For real. Oh, yeah. Otherwise. Guys, that's so busted. It's got GameFAQ facts in the fucking game what no it doesn't it doesn't explain shit people scrawl pro tips on the ground in ancient hieroglyphics except sometimes they're a lie that are trying to get you to jump off or sometimes it just says butt sex i put one of those down not a butt sex one a lie to kill people there's like this rock and like the main central hub on a cliff that looks kind of like you can get around it and i wrote uh try circling around there like as soon as i started playing on launch day and i got so many recommendations on that no

because people are the worst it's a it's a fantastic game i guess we'll talk about it uh that was my game of the month followed by tower fall which i understand why we can't possibly talk about tower fall anymore what else we're gonna say four little dudes i do want to talk a little bit about tower fall should we do it now or should we do it absolutely not let's do it let's do it during the rest because a lot of people sent that one in okay uh i since we're going over things we didn't talk about uh elder scrolls online came out in april so we'll talk about it next month. But I did want to give my super early review, and that is, so far, the names that people have picked for their characters are excellent. I said this on Twitter, but so far, I have encountered, just yesterday, I encountered Mr. Stanky Leg. And also,

Will Tank for Dank. Oh. Thank you, Griffin, for providing the only appropriate response. What's wrong with Chris and Russ that they didn't provide that? Will Tank for Dank. You guys know that Dank means weed.

You guys are doing something else, aren't you? Dank is like the best word for weed. You guys know that, right? I've played an MMO before. Like, I'm familiar with the funny names of people. Like, that's nothing new. Mr. Stanky Leg and Will Tank for Dank. That's par for the course.

I hope they meet each other. They fall in love. Will Tank for Dank. That was on our role-playing server, right? Yeah. Yeah, role-playing server. We've talked a lot about this shit we're not talking about this week this month yeah let's get into a game we actually want to chat about okay um there was a small indie release called titanfall that came out this month

yeah so titanfall came out um it was super fun and i really liked it it had robots that punched each other how did you guys feel did we ever talk about i guess we weren't doing like the monthly shows when the beta came out did we talk about the beta at all not really here's what i think i i loved it i think it's a i think it's a really tremendous shooter with some really great ideas. I think its accessibility is what people are going to remember it for. But I think the fact that all of us so far,

I think in this episode, have talked about it in the past tense indicates that we're not playing it anymore. It kind of feels like that surprisingly a little bit, right? It kind of feels like the... I'll tell you my theory about it. But first, let's reach a consensus. Are we of a consensus that maybe that wasn't as much of a slow burn as we thought?

Yes, and I know why. I don't think that the fact that I didn't play the game... Or rather, I should say I haven't played the game um because I could definitely see myself going back to it like it's not you know that experience doesn't seem like it's gonna fall off anytime soon um I don't think the fact that like I didn't play it for months and months and months means that it's necessarily a failure or whatever. Like March was crazy. March was bananas. And like, I don't know.

I just, I found it hard to justify. Once I'd played like a bunch of stuff and unlocked a bunch of stuff and like, you know, figured out the progression hooks and, you know, spend some time with the game. I found it hard to like betray playing more Dark Souls 2 or diablo yeah um in favor of you know playing playing some more titanfall matches i actually do think so in the plus column for titanfall is that i have found that more than other games of this ilk like it is not hard to just hop back on sure do a titanfall match like it is very easy to get back in the groove uh you

can feel impactful without being like awesome at the game. That's exactly it. Like you fall off Call of Duty for no joke a week. You go on vacation and you come back and everyone's fucking 18 times better at that game than you are. Like it sucks. It's super, super not fun. And I've found Titanfall to be like a much more balanced experience experience in that even if you're terrible at the game, you can still get in a giant robot from time to time.

For me, though, I know that playing an enjoyable game should be its own reward, and in many ways it is for Titanfall. But my problem with it, and it's something we've kind of obliquely discussed before, I think. I don't know if we talked about it here, but I think the progression is kind of problematic. Yes, I completely agree. There's just no...

Okay, so on a few levels. One is the weapon, the sort of weapon issue, which is to unlock the upgrades for a weapon, you have to use it. Hold on one second. Okay, sure. Let me address that one point, you have to use it. Hold on one second. Okay, sure. Let me address that one point before you start listing other points. Well, I was going to explain that point, but sure, go ahead.

No, I mean, you knew I was going to say. I did. There's no way you would have interrupted me if you didn't read my mind and somehow project that into the reader's minds, too. I agree with you that it is annoying to have to use guns, specifically guns that require you to kill 50 specters. No, that's not my problem at all. This is why you should let somebody finish a paragraph,

maybe for once. You use the guns to unlock the upgrades for it, but then once you have the upgrades for the weapon, and you're like, okay, this is great. I have these upgrades now. There's no additional layers of customization or cool crap like that that would make you want to keep you once you have unlocked everything for the gun you are disincentivized for using the gun because you could be unlocking other stuff for other guns yeah it's not my biggest problem with

that loop like having to use guns to unlock stuff for the guns it's not exactly a new idea and i don't necessarily have a problem with it um it's that that i don't i don't have that problem i just think it's too the loop is very short right yes and i think it boils down to the fact that there's just not a ton of customization options for each gun there's like right a very small handful while in a uh a call of duty or probably a battlefield i'm not as experienced in that one but like call of duty has like sometimes like 10 a dozen like silencers different clips different you know stocks different like all kinds of different things that you can put on on the gun to change how it does

what it does it's funny too because the game is in that sense almost too balanced because you know you you get the silencer like okay sweet then you put it on and it i mean this is not a new idea but it lowers your uh you know it lowers your uh damage your damage so it's like okay well i don't really want that i mean if if one setup is going to be just as equally balanced as another setup like it doesn't seem very exciting to get an upgrade i think the problem is that if you want to do the call of duty comparison which i think is probably the most apt comparison in the history of video games not that it's not that it resembles call of duty but because of the ancestry of of respawn um and because of sort of the resemblance of the progression like call of duty is just the shooting like it's just the shooting of the guns for the killings uh and yes you can throw a hatchet in some of the games but it's mostly

about the shooting so the the very like minute like changes that you can do to each weapon are based around like how you shoot in those split second scenarios where the stock that you put on your rifle will make the difference between life or death. And in Titanfall, the action is so much larger than that. It's really not based around those moments where you turn a corner and then you have to shoot somebody as fast as you possibly can. And because of that, those progression hooks aren't as broad because ultimately they don't matter as much, I don't think. I don't think it's just that they don't matter. I i don't think i don't think it's just that

they don't matter i think by making the game more welcoming to all players it de-incentivized uh this progress when justin's talking about how it doesn't feel so special using a silencer because it's so well balanced that it you know it takes away from some other point that's the opposite of call of duty where you know the first five to ten hours are going to suck. You're just going to get destroyed because you're earning better weapons, but you feel like you're becoming more badass. And that's false. You're actually not.

You're just unlocking weapons that make it easier for you to play. I mean, you do learn how, you do get better at the game. You do in some way. And the idea of, like, I think a silencer is a sort of bad starting point for this conversation because the silencer is exactly like this this this is going to be either good for you or bad for you based on how you play the game like a silencer there are people who play these types of games stealthily and that's a definite way to do it we're talking about a level of options really like as griffin mentioned earlier like the fact that there are six smGs and 12 assault rifles in a Call of Duty game, whereas there are—

And the difference between those are so esoteric. They're so minimal. It's like 600 rounds per minute versus 550, but this one has a bit more kick. Right, and so, like, when you—all of those numbers boil down to that decision of when you turn a corner like who wins right and and this might seem like like people might be listening and be like who cares like whatever you're using an assault rifle so what that gives you is not only a feeling like you're progressing and you're fine-tuning the play to like fit your play style but you're also personalizing your gameplay style you're picking one out of 30 guns that is your gun

whereas when i'm playing titanfall i feel like i found you know i'm good with the carbine i'm sort of good with the car smg and that's it i can't use any of the other guns and uh same with like the titan weapons most of the titan weapons i't use. So what I end up doing, I feel like my loadout feels like very generic and the same loadout as a lot of other people. See, to go devil's advocate, I feel like my loadout is very personalized because it's nothing like that. Like I like playing as a shotgun a shotgun toting like parkour psychopath that can close gaps between myself and an enemy in like a few seconds sure and then but i would

say don't you think there's like another many other people definitely yeah sure but i mean there's there's that there's that too for any shooter you're not going to be the special butterfly but what i'm saying is there's like six of those different close range speedy guys in call of duty whereas there's one or two in titanfall the the thing that the like we are we are talking about things that are highly related to gameplay and like i don't even know if that is the kinds of things that i would want added. More guns, you mean? Well, no, I don't know if more guns is the... I would be happy to start off with just for...

And this is almost kind of crazy to me that this wasn't an option, that when I drop my Titan, it doesn't look like my Titan. It's crazy that there are not hundreds of like tweaks you can make to like, you have this robot that you drop, like,

why wouldn't you want yours to look different from other people's like that to me would be massive if those were like doled out as rewards. And that sort of goes to what all of these things that we're talking about goes to what feels like a pretty relatively content light game um it does not feel i mean quality wise i would say it's a lot better than call of duty ghosts but if you're literally talking about like how much content is in the game how many modes stuff like that uh it's way way less and that might not seem like an issue but the thing to remember is this is being designed as a comparable competitor sure but we need to we need to be careful because like if we're talking

about being light in content like the content if you want to use that word for titanfall can't just be it's only got the one shotgun because if you want to talk about content like in call of duty you can't drop a giant fucking robot from this guy sure i'm more talking about like there aren't very many modes there are a ton of maps i'll give them that but like it feels light and part of that feels like they spent all this time mastering a really awesome core gameplay mechanic which is super super good and then when it came to like adding the extras the bells and whistles modes camouflages for guns stuff like that customization of titan looks that's where they sort of just didn't have enough time or whatever it was and that's where

it feels a little light to kind of rejigger what i think freshek is saying this to me feels like the assassin's creed one yeah of this series like they figured out something really cool uh that is not like what other people are doing and they got it out the door and there's a lot to like about it but i think whatever comes next will be closer to probably what i think the full vision of this project is and i want to make a comparison here because we're going to talk about it, I think, later. But this game is, I think, just fun to play. I think the actual game is fun. What's unfortunate is it doesn't have the artificial hooks

that we come to expect from almost every major game that keeps us playing, you know, day in and day out. What do you mean? Artificial is suspect language. Artificial hooks, like, we'll get to this with Infamous, but things where it's, like, it's constantly reminding you and doling out stars and giving you these tiny weapon upgrades and skins. Dude, I would disagree wholeheartedly with that.

Not just, I mean, yeah, it doesn't have, like, it doesn't have those, like, vanity items, and there's not, like, a ton of guns and attachments, but there's, like, shitloads of of challenges to complete there's prestige levels to go through there's the entire system of burn cards there's i think there's more i think there's more hooks and more carrots than you guys are giving i think that we're not playing it says that there aren't enough or that they're not doing it the right way i think that we're not playing it in a case of fucking dark souls came out this month yeah i well i actually think there's a there's another reason for it and that it is a

weird time for uh the reason that like multiplayer shooters a lot of people most people played them on the 360 was that there was this sort of critical mass of people like your friends basically playing the game uh and it and because of the fragmentation right now between the generations it does not you it isn't that way like you don't turn on your xbox you know you don't look at your friends list and see everybody playing titanfall like because there it was too early in the console generation. So it's harder to just find people like you know if you want to hop into a buddy's game that's a little bit trickier

if half of your buddies don't have an Xbox One. I think also, and I've mentioned this a couple times, it's not like an excuse. I really do think that a lack of competition is the best thing that a shooter can have going for it in terms of longevity because i think call of duty um has traditionally not so much in the last year but it has traditionally benefited from being like one of the last big games that comes out in any given year and then it's like well yeah like i'm just gonna it's the same reason like whenever i

go back to playing world of warcraft like it's because there's no other games coming out, and I'll just play that, and that will be, like, my jam. And I think that Titanfall has not done especially great in the longevity department, because there is so much other stuff, like, you can't, it cannot be that game right now that's just like, well, this, what do I play? Right now, I play Titanfall. Like, this is all I'm playing. Can I also say something dumb

and part of the reason why i'm less inclined to play it now is that i hit the level cap and in previous games and again not to make the constantly make the comparison but in previous games like call of duty when you hit the level cap and prestige they started like they were smart about it and that they started rewarding you and giving you like prestige challenges and like special decals and stuff yeah right exactly and none of that is in there all you're getting is a little icon and a 10 boost and experience and again this all feels like they spent all this time on the core gameplay and then didn't have time for the fringes um i i mean i'll enjoy it like i'll i'll continue playing but I probably won't prestige.

And there just is less of a drive for me. I've dropped, I would say, probably 60, 80 hours into, like, Call of Duty games over the last couple years. And I've done, I would say, about 15 hours in Titanfall. And that, like, same, like, can't-stop-playing drive is just not there for me. I feel like I got my money's worth out of it. Oh, absolutely.

I'm not bothered about that. I guess I regret playing it. And, you know, some DLC will probably help a lot. I'm like, this is rare for me. I'm excited to have a reason to play it again. Once things slow down, like in April, I think, for the most part, I'll probably go reason to play it again like once things slow down like in april i think for the most part i'll probably go back and play it some more and it's also still for for the time being going to be like my go-to game for when like you guys uh were along xbox live like now

let's yeah sure let's play some time like it's still going to be that that game for me yeah i've had time fall meetings with chris grant while i was sleeping like i that's great i like i don't know i i'm not i'm not done with the game i've been like done with shooters before like i've prestiged a couple times in call of duty just being like well i'm not going to play this anymore um i don't think i'm gonna to be done with Titanfall for a while now Griffin, there's another game I want to hear you talk about sure it's called Mercenary Kings

oh yeah that one yeah it's on let's see Playstation 4 and personal computing systems is it out on Playstation 4? I thought it was only on Playstation 3 it came out yeah playstation plus it came out april 1st on playstation 4 and on like march 27th on pc so we're gonna ignore

nobody even acknowledged the fact that it came out on play okay so i've only played the pc version um so i guess i'll talk about that but as soon as we are done discussing these games i am going to download it on playstation 4 um i heard it's really good with remote play on the vtab by the way i doubt that it is really it's so twitchy well tell the tell the people uh what the game's about and then we'll it is a it is a very very uh retro inspired metal slug-inspired. It's from Tribute, the company that made Scott Pilgrim, the Scott Pilgrim game. And Wizorb.

And Wizorb. I prefer Scott Pilgrim. I loved Scott Pilgrim. I got, like, a couple characters to max level cap just playing solo. I think I played that game co-op once. I love, love, love Scott Pilgrim. It is a metal slug inspired side scrolling shooter

uh that has a really great like borderlands-esque actually you know what it's weird i always make the borderlands customization it's more like that loadout game that came out last month that we discussed um i think more people will get right that's why i don't that's why i make the borderlands comparison uh you you have a gun because it is a side-scrolling shooting game and you can change every part of that gun to alter how it behaves so you can change the receiver for the gun and in doing so change it from you know change its archetype from like shotgun to rifle to submachine gun and then you can put like different barrels on it to change its range and

its fire rate and you can change the magazine to change like the damage that it does and how many bullets that it holds you can you can do this and so you can like go straight down the line and make like a straight up submachine gun or what's way more fun is you can create these like frankensteinian monsters most of which are completely ineffective like you can make a uh a shotgun with a revolver body and like a single a single bullet cartridge that just only shoots a single bullet that will do like thousands of damage but if you miss with it it takes like 15 seconds to reload um like you can do some pretty crazy stuff with that system uh and then take your character who you can also alter with like mods and armor upgrades um and your special snowflake of a gun and you can take it online and play with you know three other people

or same system or same system local co-op the uh i think the guns definitely like are the like star of the show in terms of character customization but what i found really cool about mercenary kings you mentioned it briefly is uh there's like a lot of customization beyond just the guns. The mods are, like, perks, essentially, and there's, like, I've unlocked, like, a dozen of them, and they each have, like, pluses and minuses. So I have one that, like, increases your run speed but also increases the amount of damage you take. So you can install two of those,

and then you're factoring things in, like, weight. So, like, if you pick, like, a rocket launcher with a giant barrel and like a heavy stock or whatever um you'll actually run slower so what i've sort of obsessed over is like okay if i add this site it's gonna increase me like one step above so i'll like i'm not quite running fast enough stuff that i did in dark souls right yeah that i mean it's like really pretty thoughtful considering uh it looks like a very simple like shoot-em-up game but there's like so much depth in the

character it's it is also you can also there's every likelihood of making a gun that is made of turds like it's really yeah a dud done uh i i went into a mission not realizing that i had made an absolute dud so i realized i had a gun that had like one bullet and did negative damage it actually gave the enemy a massage every time you shot them um there is a there is a surprising amount of depth to it um because and i say surprising because i my main problem with the game um and to be honest, I don't think I've played enough of it to get past this point. I just know that there is more stuff

on the horizon. It is such a slow starter. It is a crazy slow starter because you have all these different customization options. You can buy special knives and you have to find resources in the environment, either in chests or enemy drops that you can use to like build this stuff.

And that, I think that stuff drops fast enough and you can build really, you know, um, some neat stuff, but most of the recipes you won't have access to when you start like that stuff unlocks as you play. Uh, you have to like rescue a few people in the first few missions before you can change that stuff um and then like you move up through different ranks and the way you do that is by completing like a dozen or so missions and those missions all take place in the same level and some of them are like miserable you have a you have a timer for each one and i haven't run into too much problem with the timer being like too restrictive usually gives you plenty of time to complete the mission before it runs out but some of them are like that it was funny when when justin and i did the overview for this for this game i picked a mission the

objective for which was you had to find 10 gold coins hidden throughout the world and we had like 25 minutes to do so and we basically we nearly ran out the clock and i committed suicide just because it was like we found nine in the first eight minutes, and then we had to run around the same level that I'd been running through for the past, like, nine missions. Yeah. Trying to find this last item that was, like, nowhere to be seen. And what's weird is that I think they are aware that those missions are, like, tedium, because there are mods that like for example like some missions where you're trying to find a boss you have to fight a boss and when you first spawn into this giant area the boss can be in like one of four locations it's kind of like monster hunter

uh there are actually mods that like tell you off the bat like just like go to this one dog yeah because that sucks because then sometimes the boss will run away and then you have to find him again that like it's just not there there a few missions or mission types i should say because it sort of repeats the different kinds like there's hunting missions there's boss fight missions there's like kill this number of enemies missions there's rescue missions um some of the different types like i i despise the item hunting ones where it's like go find 20 bronze it's like shit like that sucks that sounds super not fun some of them are not great and then like when you pair that with the fact that you are stuck in the same level for a long time until you unlock the next batch like i don't know i i've i've found it a real a really like slow process and

like a kind of an unpleasant hike that I enjoyed it a lot the first you know hour or so that I was playing it and then it just felt super repetitive there's actually a way to speed up the process I found so what you can do is you do like five side missions and generally that unlocks uh the primary mission for the area and you can just skip ahead to that you don't need to do all of the side missions uh and then once you beat the primary mission for the area, and you can just skip ahead to that. You don't need to do all of the side missions. And then once you beat the primary mission, you sort of go to the next area, and that's propelling me through the game a lot faster, for what it's worth. Sure, but I mean, then we're talking about, like, skipping shit.

Yeah, I mean, what it goes down to is it really does feel like an inverse of Titanfall, which is to say you have so much character customization, so much, like, nitty-gritty-gritty cool stuff underneath it, but the core gameplay is not super great. You stole my point. That's how I was setting up earlier. Go for it, Plant. Take it away. No, I know.

I used to play with you, and I'm going to say it again during Infamous. I think they're both games where you get so distracted by the joy of collecting these weapons that you might not notice that the joy of like collecting these weapons that you might not notice that the game itself isn't especially fun uh i just i think i think i think mercenary kings is fun i think the boss i've enjoyed it uh kings that no playing the actual game is infuriating really you guys the the refilling i'm sorry if enemies respawn constantly the second you turn your back on them and your health doesn't refill except for very rare health drops, like to me that's...

You can also go in those... My personal tastes, that's a recipe for frustration. This is one thing I didn't actually know until I died on that overview video and somebody pointed it out. If you go into the infirmaries, which are like little houses hidden, well, they're not hidden, they're just sort of scattered across the map they're where you respawn if you just like kick it in there your health will refill slowly slowly yeah there there are a number of things that aren't explicitly told to you like uh i first started playing it in co-op with fresh dick um so

i hadn't rescued certain people so fresh it kept telling me to go to this woman who i couldn't see on my screen to upgrade my weapon so i played through the first hour of the game with the same crappy pistol oh no that's not good i had no idea that i had to go back and basically play this mission alone to to get the whole point of the game essentially i have found that it as a co-op game i get more enjoyment out of it yeah that mean that's how it was designed i think it's it's it's not like a a heady game you're not really you don't really have to focus i sort of turn my brain off when i play it which is also why i think it's a really good remote play game um which i've been doing over the last few nights and i i would go to so far as to say i think it's

the best uh remote play game i've played on ps4. It's not like, because it's such a, I played through a bit of Black Flag on remote play, right when I got my, yeah, my PS4. And like, it worked okay. But like, I always found it kind of like the chase missions where you have to like chase somebody across a rooftop and it like, or like chasing down the song sheets and it requires you to like make these perfect runs you might think that it requires a ton of like dexterity in terms of controller uh on mercenary kings but it really doesn't especially compared to like a 3d assassin's creed game yeah it's much much just give it a shot it's much easier to play that's a good point

and it looks great and there's no back touch. And it looks great. And there's no back touch, which is the worst. It looks great, man. I love Paul Robertson's animation style. Yeah, the art's really cool. The art is fantastic. I mean, again, if you have PlayStation Plus, there's really no reason not to download it. I think it's a really good deal for a PlayStation Plus game.

There's like 100 missions, which is a little crazy. I know some of them are just like the same map with different objectives, but I'm really enjoying enjoying it i've played a ton of it i mean that was a weird segment because it sounded like so i just really hated it uh i didn't hate it i i i just you know i like i like upgrading weapons but like that i felt like i was only doing i was only playing the game so i could eventually upgrade weapons so i could get through more of the game to upgrade a weapon yeah i sort of feel the same way there's no problem i don't think there's anything wrong with it yeah i i i have a lot of trouble playing games where i feel like i'm aware that i'm using up my time

that's life though dog heart yeah but like like it's the opposite like i like fresh was saying with titanfall while i'm in it i'm like this feels great this feels like a fun thing and like i'm having an enjoyable experience here uh well like i don't know there's something about that type of game it's probably just not that like the the old school hardcore game just isn't for me anymore i guess you know like it's just not my style. I just don't think, I mean, I think Mercenary Kings is not super engrossing, which is to say, like, it's the sort of game I would be playing with, like, a TV on in the background and just, like, chilling on the couch.

Yeah. So don't expect to be, like, taken in by the world and, like, you know, in the way that when you play Titanfall, like, that's all you're doing is playing Titanfall're doing it's interactive frazier is what you're saying yes precisely frazier halftime halftime did you guys know that there was a seventh guest three sequel on kickstarter yeah and it failed it failed at the kick. Of course it failed because of 11th Hour, which was terrible. I never heard about it. Did you guys know this? I interviewed those dudes, yeah.

I broke this story on that, yeah. Why didn't I know about it? Was it going to be as good as 11th Hour or as good as Seventh Guest? I mean, it's going to be non-existent. What it was going to do was take a bunch of people's money and then not get made if you want to talk about the actual arc.

How has the world of FMV games treated you recently? Not a lot going on. I know Roundabout, the new game from, well, the first game from No Goblin, which has some former Telltale, or not Telltale, sorry, shit. Toast to Pixel? Thank you, yes. That's got some good FMV in it. Otherwise, it's been a little slow.

I feel like maybe the FMV craze is maybe dying down. It'll come back. It's a surge. That's my worry. I don't want you to think i'm crazy but i i feel like it's kind of it's kind of slowed down a bit it's sad it is sad um i don't know if you're listening at home uh and you have played any other um fmv games that i don't know about that i'm not plugged into i play this game uh time traveler maybe i played that in a movie theater recently with the shooting like the wild west and they like fight on a hologram and there's a wizard yeah i played that one you've run out of time

reversal cubes you would say that we ran out of time reversal cubes bear stern's bravo was a very good uh fmv game if you If you haven't played that one, you definitely, definitely should. From the makers of horse e-books? From the makers of horse e-books. Ugh. Yes, correct. You liked that, Griffin, didn't you? I loved Bear Stearns Bravo, yeah.

I don't like horse e-books becoming art. Horses are already art. You don't have to art them. don't have to turn into a fucking gallery piece just have a horse there it is art you guys do you guys want to hear about gdc no oh i can tell you a fun story about how russ frederick tried to get me killed i don't remember that yeah so funny i do um russ frederick does this thing where he finds out that i'm going to be somewhere early so then he makes me go pick up keys to like any apartment we're staying at or

any hotel we're going to be at so of course he naturally pulled this again because i got in san francisco a little earlier than he did and he's like hey don't worry there's this uh penthouse that we're staying in near the water in san francisco here are the people they're going to contact you i just give me your phone number uh and meet them sunday morning and i was like i was gonna have brunch but whatever i'll do it so then i get a month let me just say it's not like a random craigslist thing it's an airbnb very highly rated continue sure so sunday morning I get a message from Sri Lanka from somebody, like, some crazy long phone number.

And it's like, Hey, Chris, calling from Sri Lanka. Hope you have fun. Meet Robbie at this address. Okay, we don't need the editorial. Make sure to wear whatever outfit you want to die in. Yeah, who's Robbie? So far, this does this. We don't need the editorial. Make sure to wear whatever outfit you want to die in. Yeah. Who's Robbie?

Okay. So far, this doesn't... I mean, murdery... Robbie is a pretty murdery name, but so far, this doesn't sound very perilous. Also, Sri Lanka is very nice. Sure. No, I'm not saying it's not nice. I'm saying it's strange because I would assume the person that owns this apartment would

be there. You know, not everyone is from America, Chris. No, I actually think the owner is from America. I think they have a surrogate Airbnb person. Anyway, Robbie. So I am with my friend who lives in San Francisco, and he's like, sure, we'll go down there together, and I'll wait with you.

Fred Durst. You can say it. You don't have to be humble. It's Fred Durst, your best friend. So me and Fred are... Durst of limp biscuit you just say fred that's what cool people do me and mr durst uh we we get to this address and it's like in the middle of the giant office buildings downtown where no one would

possibly be on a sunday and then the directions say to go into the courtyards this so you go in here and it's this is where you would go to get murdered like murdered on a sunday because you're surrounded on all sides by 30-story tall buildings. Maybe if you're Jason Bourne, no one's going to murder you in a financial area. No humans are within eight blocks of us in San Francisco, right? And ten minutes pass. He should be there. He's not.

And then, I shit you not, he taps me on the back, like out of nowhere. Like he appears out of you know the thin air and he's like hello i'm robbie follow me and i'm like oh hey i'm chris uh is this where the building is does not respond to me he has already turned around walking down in a tiny alleyway that is filled with uh like fog so you can't see to the end of it okay you're making shit up this is no joke this is what happened i get to the end of the alleyway and through the fog we see an unmarked black suv and he's like hey get in the back of this oh no so then i like skipping or fred sorry fred and i are like yo do we want to fuck with them biscuit and he's like

yeah anytime anywhere so we put my bags into the back of the SUV get in he drives us around in like circles it feels like okay can we hold on for a second before you continue so can like 100% texting my wife to tell her I love her

and to please care for our unborn child listen carefully because Chris has literally said, Chris, you asked him, where are we going? And he's like, didn't respond. He's like, get into this car. And then you just got into the car. Yeah. I have a VHS tape that my Bible study teacher showed me a while ago called Stranger Danger that you might want to watch my bud. Yeah.

Hey, my dude, can you just pop this VHS in real quick? It's real fun. They sing songs. There's a clown that teaches you valuable lessons about how to protect yourself from adults that aren't your parent parents. There's a man in a dog suit. He's like, don't get kidnapped.

It's really a great watch. It's a great politeness thing, Chris, that was making you not trust. Oh, sure, y'all. Yeah, sure, Bob. Let me hop right in, bro. It's an I trust my friend, Ross Froschdick, that he would not get me in a situation that I would not be prepared for. And I have very little information. If some shit went down, Fred Durst could be like no not like this and kick his way out of the car so i'm about to break we're driving around this car like we're driving through an area

that is just construction like it's it's uh skyscrapers that are like you know going to get built uh but are not built yet and then he like stops at a stop sign turns on and hands me a bottle of wine he's like this is for you see look how nice this is turning out and at that point is when i was actually freaked now this is my final drink is what he was giving me we he turns from the stop sign into like the basement of a giant building and then once we're in the basement he's like i have to tell you and i'm like yeah and he's like this building doesn't accept airbnb i'm like okay and he's like that's why i'm sneaking you in robbie you couldn't have said that up front my dog that's typical robbie so then he takes me in sneak you in sneak you in in pieces he shows me the the weight room here's the meat locker okay wait stop wait stop is this

where you guys were staying yes for the entire time okay so what was like the entrance and exit strategy for like all the other times and that's where i get confused about this is because like he gave you keys and then once we had the keys we just like use the main entrance the whole week not only did we use the main entrance we actually had to load in all of our lighting here which are these like you know like the boxes that you see like bands move in looked like it was a metallica concert being moved into this building. And what we think is that the people who are renting it think that they have tricked the building. Yes. But the people who actually use the building think that the space is being rented out for pornography.

Because they have people... So they're cool with amateur porno being filmed on the premises, but not an Airbnb. Well, let's not go crazy with amateur, Griffin. We looked pretty legit. It worked out nice, though. It was a very nice apartment. Yeah, except for the screaming windows. Oh, well, whatever.

It was fine. It worked out. By the end of the week, the downstairs started just sending people up to the apartment. We didn't even have to go down and get them. So I think they were... So it doesn't sound like the stealthiest maneuver, Danny Ocean. No, they figured it out. Oh, you're there with the people that don't own the place.

Yeah, sure, going up. Before we moved in, we were given one warning. None of this was mentioned, obviously, before the meetup and the sketchiness. But we were warned about an old gentleman who lives on the floor and is very suspicious so he uh the owner actually told us if he asks you any questions just ignore him so i was actually walking in with some people we did interviews with and i pass i'm like getting out of the elevator and a guy is walking in and in the back of my head i'm like getting out of the elevator and a guy is walking in. And in the back of my head, I'm like, maybe that's the old guy because he was old. Hey, you that old dude?

So I turn around and the doors are closing. And then we like meet eyes and he gives me the most suspicious look and is like ready to open the doors again to like ask me what's up. But the doors closed too quickly. And then I run down the hallway and I'm fine. Oh, boy. That's old man. Old man. Old man Scruthers. Not happy. He hates video games. He does. closed too quickly and then i run down the hallway and i'm fine oh boy that's old man old man scruthers not happy he hates video games he does that's his whole thing is he hates video games

and if he thinks that anyone's playing or talking about video games on the premises he'll burn the whole building he kind of looked like tom kite i don't know that is okay uh that's from death from the death wish movies no he's a golfer uh that's pretty much our gdc story we didn't really do anything else besides hang out in a groovy uh loft our jobs are so sweet yeah anyway uh that's gonna do it for halftime oh justin you put some nice bookings on that bit now we are going to start now this thing is starting and now it has reached its terminus let's hit it infamous justin you played a game called infamous yes second son the third installment in the infamous series how did you feel about not that that's confusing no not at

all well the fourth if you count festival of No, that wasn't a full game. Don't be ridiculous. I think it was a standalone thing. There are a lot of people who say that was the best Infamous game. Don't be ridiculous. I never played that. Anyway, Infamous, Second Son, is the third disc-based Infamous title

where it is a complete sort of revamp from the infamous that you have come to know and love the beloved main character Crew Cut is gone. I think his name was Cole Houser. Cole Crew Cut. Cole Crew Cut is

gone. John Sparks. And his fat buddy. Nicholas Sparks and Hot Dog. I think his buddy's name was Hot Dog. I think it was Fat Buddy. Was it not? It might have been Hot Dog. Read a book.

Zeke Fat Buddy. So Zeke and Cole are outskies. Cole has an electronic shop. Try not to be like too bummed out. Okay. Is that a real? Because I ran into that. But I guess is there like a story mission later on that I didn't

get to where he's like, hey, caught you scoping my radios. Come on in and buy something. There is a Kohl's electronics store, I guess. And Zeke is listed in the credits, but I don't know.

I didn't see it. What was his role in the credits? Zeke? What? Oh, as a voiceover guy yes oh okay um anyway it's not like zeke did gaffer work on it textures we have new characters delson bro why are you so fucking bad at this delson row i played it a long time ago. Delson Rowe and his brother Reggie. That one sounds made up, but it's not. That one's real. It's like seven years or something that have passed. Most of the

conduits are locked up. A conduit that has the power of controlling smoke is being transported through Delson's, uh, neighborhood and he escapes.

Delson comes in contact with him and he finds that he has the powers of, to, to absorb other conduits powers and, uh, use them. So Delson has, um, uh,

the power of smoke and he later gets the power of neon which it's really interesting because the way it works is there are a few different elements that you can get in the game you absorb them you can't switch it well though, you have to absorb them from different sources so if you want to switch between

smoke and neon for example you have to find a neon sign somewhere and absorb it and that will refill your energy which lets you like shoot projectiles uh i don't remember how it works your smoke right right i don't you can only have one at a time i don't remember how it worked in infamous 2 because in infamous 2 you could get ice and fire powers um i don't remember if you could have them at the same time i think you could i don't think it had that switching mechanic. I think you had to pick between the two, though.

Like, you would either get ice or fire. The thing that's weirdly off-putting about it is that it isn't just useful... The powers work very well together in combat, but the thing that's kind of weird about it is that the powers also have very different roles in a locomotion sense like it is very different to try to get around with smoke than it is for neon because with smoke oh sorry go ahead uh with with smoke you kind of just can hover and jump through um grates that like propel you up uh through a ventilation system up to the roof of a building which we

can all agree is the fucking tightest thing it's great it's really cool it's really cool but then you get neon which lets you run at super speed and run right up the side of a building which kind of mutes the usefulness of that but later powers um have different um have some more implications for for locomotion it was kind of weird to not be able to switch in between those but anyway uh i have to say that i very much enjoyed infamous this is right sort of in my wheelhouse in terms of like games that i enjoy but i have to admit to overall um being a little underwhelmed by the total package here i i don't feel like there's anything about this game that couldn't have been done i mean obviously graphics are always a part of that conversation and it looks great and everything but the facial the facial stuff is like uh facial stuff's fantastic

it's like some of the best shit i've seen like i think it even does a better job of beating the uncanny valley than than even uh la noir did um because la noir got so so yeah because it got so close to it that like every i would say beyond i would say beyond two souls is probably they're very cheeky in this game like there's a little too much cheek action going on you know what like you know it breaks it for me oh what's that i know his hair the way his hair is like frozen out of that stupid beanie that he wears yeah it makes it feel like his whole head is like a cap and then like there are face parts that move within that cap i don't know it just drives me nuts looking at it i don't feel like there is anything going on in this game that is

substantially more interesting or cool than happened in previous Infamous games. I feel like there's a real sort of lack of ambition. There's lots of stuff to do. I mean, they have some interesting side missions like one that's kind of

neat is you have to find a security camera so you get in the region and then you can hack in and see the view that that security camera is um uh seeing and then you try to figure out where it is because it's very small and then you shoot with your bolts and you you know get some stuff you get more more control over the region and get some experience and what have you. There's also that incredible, incredible, like it beats out Mark Echo's getting up spray paint system.

Way more realistic. Super realistic, super tight. So bizarre. Okay, so you find these spots. That locomotive flow is just like going, I'm hovering, shooting, running. Let me do a quick spray paint. Show the world I have a message.

Spots that you can stop and you turn the controller upside down. Keep that flow going. Just turn your controller in one hand sideways. That's how you would hold the spray can. And then you spray with the trigger you spray like a sort of fill in the blanks like color within the lot it's very like it's extreme because it's graffiti and it's very unextreme because you have to keep it inside the

line you don't have to it's graffiti extreme anymore i think anytime somebody appropriates it it's immediately lame uh there are some like so like the graffiti kind of folds into like um these themes of surveillance that are like communicated by like the cameras for instance there are two different kind like you have to shoot regular cameras to uh uh free an area from the clutches of the bad guys and then you actually have to you know you have to shoot smaller cameras uh and like they're hinting around these themes of like control and surveillance damn the man they don't really like connect with in any sort of way the trappings are there they're not really hinting at this no i mean the mechanically that

mechanically they are hinting like i don't feel like thematically the story has anything to do with it like no i don't think it has anything to do with surveillance or do you remember the the announcement of this game yeah i think it was at the sony event where they like got on stage and it was like this whole speech about, you know, like how we're watched and, you know, riots and, you know, the, the civilians versus the government and yada, yada, yada. And they were like, and that's why we're here to announce Infamous. And it's like, wait, what? The superhero game? And, and I mean, these games have always had a history of that, of taking things that are like kind of deadly serious and then barely saying anything about it but kind of using it as an like i don't know a top kind of

gaudy layer of art design the for me i was i i really didn't get into infamous too because of all the katrina stuff i think it was like oh that's like it was pretty tasteless and then i don't think that that i don't it didn't lean here's how you even here's how you know what i think you know it's tasteless is because when they started promoting the game they were like oh yeah new orleans yada yada yada and then as they got closer to it they're like oh this definitely isn't new orleans you know it's just a place in the south that has you know a whole bunch of oil companies who are spilling oil all over the place and oh yeah you also turn into natural disasters i don't i don't think that was

that i never connected those dots a hurricane on the slums or you used oil all i'm saying is i i feel like this is like this is not nearly as bad as I think that, but it's taking these things I think are like really important issues. Um, and it, it wants to kind of have it both ways. It wants to be like a blockbuster game, but it also wants to say something at, which I think is great.

Like I, I would prefer that over a game that doesn't do any of this. I think there's an, I think there's an earnestness to what second son tries to do with those things. I, I, we talked about the graffiti and we ragged on it. I think there's an earnestness to what Second Son tries to do with those themes. We talked about the graffiti and we ragged on it. I think it's actually pretty, like, from an artistic standpoint, like, there's some pretty good, like, Banksy-style shit in the game.

I actually always liked seeing what it was. A lot of it's very kind of clever. I got excited not because I was, like, going to lower this arbitrary percentage of how much control the government had on this territory or whatever like i got excited to see like what the art was and like i really liked that message like there's a mission really early in the game where you have to like rip down all of this surveillance equipment from the from the space needle which is crazy like why is all that shit why would the space needle have all kinds of surveillance but then you do and then you like spray paint this flag at the top

and i was like fuck yeah yeah but it does feel like like sort of like a mall a shopping mall esque a militarism against like society which is to say like i bought a box set of rage against the machine so i know everything there is about uprising it also has that weird thing where it's talking about right and wrong and here you are like just killing tons of people and it's like but don't kill the cops the morale these people i liked i liked second son a whole whole whole lot the karma system still fucking sucks it's always been bad like it's always been unnecessary there is it's okay but like that's i feel like even the even the decisions i i feel like games have started to realize that game developers have started to realize that you can't make morality a black or

white issue you either have to incentivize being evil in some way like i still i can't think of a game off the top of my head because I was about to bring up Bioshock, but in Bioshock you can either kill the Little Sisters or you can free them. And either way, you're going to get energy or bonuses in some cases. There aren't that many games where if you commit a crime... Fable 3, which was a shitty game, but when you became king, they actually gave you, so you have like a set amount of money,

and the world's going to end, and you need to fund your army. But they were like, but this swamp is like messed up. And you actually had to decide, do I want to clean up the swamp, or do I want to save money so I can protect the entire realm? So that's the sort of interesting decision that I want to be making in these games. Not like, I want to punch this old lady in the face right or make the evil decision and you will somehow because of that decision become more powerful than you would have been if you made the good decision because why the fuck else would you make it like it it boils

evilness down to like this primal human thing and not like this thing like people do bad shit because there is incentive to do it and if you can get the same shit by doing the good thing too like you i i think that it is clever in the way that it handles that system in combat because like if you mostly spend your time like disabling enemies instead of killing them you'll unlock more powers that will help you disable them like that's that's okay but i like that that that spreads to going all the way back to these talking about huge issues that are incredibly complex it puts that into the game too so you have these bad guys and it's about surveillance and the reason we have surveillance

issues in the world is not because people are inherently evil. There's good motives behind bad actions many times. And instead, in a game like this, it's like, well, here's the guy that has giant cement flying around him and he wants to beat people. The game from the bottom up is black and white. And I think that's what's so frustrating about it. We need to stop pretending that games like this have choices. They don't. They have one choice.

You either decide at the beginning that you're going to be good, which it's a game about a superhero. That seems pretty obvious. And that's it. You're not going to continue to weigh it because it doesn't make any sense. It was always my problem with the Star Wars, with the Knights of the Old

Republic games, where you don't you aren't really making a decision one way or the other because you get more powerful my problem with the um with the uh star wars with the knights of the old republic games where you don't you aren't really making a decision one way or the other because you get more powerful right if you get to good level three then you get yeah there's no reason to stay in the middle same way yeah that's common uh but i i don't i think that it might be handled like it's exceptionally uh unpleasant aside from from the in-game mechanical stuff here, which I think is really... The mechanical stuff is smart. It's kind of cool. Except I don't enjoy the...

If you shoot enemies in their heads with smoke, then you can knock them out. Yeah. If you target them with neon and you shoot them in their heads, then you vaporize them from the face of the earth

yeah so that's a little you gotta kind of really keep your keep on your toes for that I would I really wish they'd gotten into the fact that like this is one of the very few games that has a Native American lead character I would really enjoy like and it is very much just

a frame where you start in – I'm not sure he's in a restaurant. He lives in a longhouse. Anyway, that is not something sort of marginalized and put upon. And that it's similar to, you know, what's happening to the conduits in this game. It might have been an interesting angle to play. I think they, I mean, it's subtle. I think that was their intention was to make that comparison. But they really don't play into it very much at all.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I felt like I was having to connect a lot of those dots for him. Uh, the relationship, what I will say,

the relationship between him and his brother, uh, some of the individual performances are actually, uh, quite good. The writing, I think on the whole is actually pretty fantastic. Ah,

some of the incidental dialogue is like, holy, unenjoyable. So much like, I'm loving this conduit stuff. Like he actually says that at one time. Take that concrete queen. Yeah, like can we, could we not? But the individual performances, Troy... Troy Baker.

Troy McClure is great as the... Troy Baker is great as the lead, and the guy playing reggie's really good the super the super villain like the main the main bad bad woman yeah i thought was really really really great like one of the better villains to be in a game in in recent years i i found the hero a little too smirky a little too like yeah I'm like, oh, it wasn't nearly that bad. I like that because it's like, that's what I bet a lot of people would be like if they could all of a sudden turn into fucking fire.

Is that what you would be like? Yeah, dog. You'd be all smirking at the camera and stuff. Need a light? He's already half that way and all he has is a podcast. Yeah. I think it's just an improvement over zeke and cole well that is the weird thing i like zeke a lot in games it was zeke was like the goofy dumb

ass and then cole was like the serious one so they flipped it where the brother is like the voice of reason and the main character is the dumb ass i like yeah they're they're they are a lot better i i fetch the uh woman that you absorb the neon power from is also really really good i wish there had been more with her in the game because uh both her character and her performance are really really good can we talk about the moment you discover her hideout though because that's pretty yes please can we spoiler alert so when you find the you like have to see a few grisly crimes committed by this hero conduit i guess i'm not hero who is killing people with these neon powers and then you follow her neon path uh and by saying her it's already a spoiler to this like space between two billboards

and it's like it has a guy's name written. I think it's Brent. It's written in like a quote unquote girly flourish. And then there's like bras everywhere and a copy of Jane Eyre and like tall boots. And it takes you and your brother about 10 minutes to decide. About six months of thorough investing. It's one of those gameplay segments. They upload ten photographs. Right, you have to take pictures. You literally take four photographs, and they're also of like,

take photographic evidence of something that would really convince me. So you take a photo of Jane Eyre. I think the last thing you take a photo of is bras. Right, the order that you take it in, if you take it in the wrong order, it's like Jane Eyre. Yeah, that's probably a girl's book. Look at these boots. Yeah, those aren't men's boots i bet oh there's a dude's name scrabbled here yeah it looks like girls handwriting look at the fucking bra there's like 80 bras there's like 80 bras

everywhere bras everywhere everywhere dog alright what have we learned it's probably a probably a woman case closed it is also I also kind of enjoyed how utterly

unfathomable it was to them that it would be a woman I mean there's like literally no reason for them to make this assumption. But, yeah, it takes 50 bras, 50 bra shots to convince them

that, uh, I don't know. Better take a picture of each bra individually. Lay him out on the bed. I did everything. Like, I got all the side stuff, uh i but like that's the sort of thing that i can get kind of focused on is like i'm gonna clear this area and clear this area and it's that's built very like satisfyingly i just it it was very i could feel sort of the the the memory of playing it draining out of me as the credits were rolling there's just like not a lot

that's very it's just safe i have some advice that i'm stealing from russ freshstick but let's just pretend that i came up with it uh play it on easy especially for the first three or four hours because this is like the previous games uh not very fun until you've unlocked quite a bit of stuff it's not really fun to navigate the world it's really slow you don't really have any interesting powers uh until you basically get to neon i there wasn't a lot of stuff that i enjoyed doing though climbing climbing the uh the space needle space needle is a legitimately cool yeah yeah there's a lot of those i think the way that they've rendered seattle is really thoughtful um i because obviously they can't do the whole thing

but i feel like they've they've presented a very condensed version of that city in a way that no game has ever has ever done it before i i have always taken umbrage with the fact that they do wait super long in this year i i so i'm probably one of the few people on the planet earth that actually liked infamous 2 more than the other games in the series more than this one is that what you mean i think i do kind of yeah um because i think that the the setting was so completely unique i like the setting a lot and the the locomotion powers were like unlike anything like the i don't know if you guys ever finish it but close to the end of the game you get an ability called lightning tether that you can use in conjunction with every other ability that you

have so you can use like the ice spike that launches you up into the air and then you can do like the electricity dash forward and like grind on a rail and then you can shoot this tether up at any surface and it'll fling you up towards that and you can keep doing it over and over again so it's almost like all of your abilities that you have before and also spider-man webs like it was the most fun i've ever had getting around in a game um and i think i don't know maybe by virtue of the fact that they have sort of separated the power so you can only have one at once um i it never felt quite that fluid to me i hope that if they make another infamous game i honestly don't hope they make another Infamous game, I honestly don't hope they make another Infamous game.

Those guys are so fucking talented. Like, I have liked or loved every Infamous game that came out. I think it's really cool that they, one of the things I loved about it, and I guess it's good that they did a reboot with Second Son, one of the things that was most exciting about me, about the original Infamous to me, was up to that point in my mind i think um probably spider-man 2 the movie game was the best superhero game that i had ever played and then here was this game with like all these cool mechanics that like looked and sounded and

felt super great but it didn't have this like pre-established lore to it that was like decades old like this character could be my character his powers could be like i could sort of come up with this stuff it didn't have all this baggage of like is this the game where he accidentally breaks that one girl's neck like it doesn't like have all that stuff it's just like a new clean slate um and like i i like that and i think i would i would like to see what they could do with a completely new ip or a sequel to rocket robot on wheels it's just weird that you said that it was a reboot because this to me doesn't feel like a reboot at all it feels like i mean it feels i mean it's a new new characters

new new yeah you know powers but i feel like a reboot is like a real, like legit re-imagining of a franchise. That's a good point. No, it is set in the same world and it's built on the events that happened at the end of the first two. And it's also built structurally. It plays out exactly like Infamous 1 and 2,

like based around mini missions scattered around the map, et cetera, et cetera. Like it really does feel very similar to 1 and 2. I would like to see them make a small game on the side like i i have a feeling that they're probably gonna have to make more infamous after this especially if this is a reboot um but i would like to see them make something like brothers that doesn't cost so much that they can like they they have such cool ideas for how their games feel and they also have i think really ambitious ideas

especially with the politics and i i have to imagine that there are things that they've wanted to put in all of their games that they weren't allowed to or that it was just like uh maybe this wouldn't be so comfortable in a game like this uh a game that's about superheroes so i think that like you said they're so talented and they i, I think, want to do something important, and I would like to see what would happen if they were given that opportunity. Yeah, I mean, obviously, like, there was a lot riding on this one.

Like, there was a lot riding. It had to be the PlayStation 4 system seller. It had to come out in the same month that Titanfall came out. I think it did that job pretty well, but I'm glad, and I'm sure that they are too, that i think it did that job pretty well um but i'm i'm glad and i'm sure that they are too that they don't have that baggage especially like you could feel that in the spray paint like or in the like put your finger on the touch pad and then swipe it across

the touch sensor like it is in real life like it felt a lot of that stuff kind of felt a little make sure you showcase the hardware to me yeah um which like i don't know i think i think sucker punch does best when they just are given free reign to do what the fuck ever they want uh let's talk about some news i feel like there's only one piece of news that brought the internet to its knees uh facebook buying oculus rift i thought you were gonna say like a joke there. No, I'm just dead serious. It's such a serious subject that we have to.

Super serious. Yeah, it's weird, right? Can you do a quick summary for some people that maybe were super busy last month and maybe didn't have time? You don't know what Facebook is? Facebook is a website. You basically like make friends and then you can play cool games when people request. Sorry, just one layer deeper what friends are. Okay, so people that you see, but you know more about what their deal is,

how they live their life and stuff. That doesn't sound great to me, if I'm being honest. It's pretty good. And then, so this company that invented friends is now inventing vr nbc nbc universal uh kevin s bright so uh yeah so facebook bought akio swift and the internet uh sort of died how much like three three hundred thousand two and two two two billion with a b american dollars that's one-fifth of a whatsapp that's one-fifth of a WhatsApp. That's one-fifth of a...

Actually, I think it's less. I think WhatsApp was like 18 billion. Oh, God. So, anyway, it seemed like a lot of people were upset. I don't know if we have any Kickstarter backers in this podcast right now, but it seems like a lot of the Kickstarter backers

were upset because they feel like they sort of like kick-started they were like unknowing venture capitalists for the oculus like as as we can approach this from as logical a standpoint as we as we you know possibly can but don't you guys fucking get it like don't you like if you were on this is literally i can't think of anything in the entire games industry that this could have happened to that would have felt like more of a betrayal to a grassroots effort than like this thing. It'd be like if Chris Roberts was like, and now Star Command, we sold that out to Texaco. Like what? Like it is, it is this thing that was built on the shoulders of like all of these people

and like i like i i'm a realist i understand that's not how like business and shit works but this is like literally the worst the worst here's what breaks uh here's what breaks down for me says who i mean says who like what why there has been zero evidence for this being like the worst whatever thing to happen to oculus since whatever what a way you could spin it is this hardware that i bought has gone from like a scrappy like independent thing that doesn't have a ton of support to being owned by like one of the most powerful companies in the world that can maximize its usefulness sure to like a much greater extreme i could understand that if it didn't already seem like it was moving in a direction where it was becoming like the heir apparent to the vr kingdom and i was the one who helped get it there like i

was i was one of the the people behind this thing like as a as a logical, as it might sound, like, I felt like I had some sort of agency. Were you a backer? No. Were you? No. Okay. I'm speaking rhetorically. Like, I felt like I had some sort of agency over the success of this thing that was on its way to becoming, you know, a game's first piece of hardware that was going to change the entire fucking world and like my 300 bucks are what helped it get there and then all of a sudden it's like i well now we're gonna do like a face time with it the i i i have a sort of a mixed response to this on one hand i

sympathize but i don't i i i don't empathize in that like and i that's probably a weird distinction to make but like i understand why people feel that way but at the same time like i'm glad they're feeling that way because it is yet another of the many many many many many many many reminders we've gotten that wish in one hand and kickstart in the other and spit in your third hand and see which one fills up first. I'm not saying this like, well, you know, you put your money in

and you get what, I'm saying like you have to go in with that expectation. Like to spend a large amount of money on something that you have no guarantee of ever receiving is gambling. Right. It's gambling.

You're gambling. I don't think that's especially appropriate here because like people have gotten their deaf kids. Like they've played some cool shit on it already. Like they have this thing and this purchase isn't like, you know, you kickstarted, you know, whatever code hero and it's taking forever to get made. It happened. Like it's in your to, to get made. It's, it happened, like, it's, it's in your hands, like, they were making moves. It's not like a thing that was, like, canceled, and they had to figure out how or if they were going to get their money back to everybody. Well, then, over, even more, I mean, the fact that, that you have hardware doesn't

change the, the, the, the basis that you don't have any control over what's going to happen to a thing like you don't have your 300 bucks doesn't get you a say in in how that goes and i don't say that like punitively like just shut up about it i'm saying like remember this the next time you're going to spend money on something because like this is the nature of kickstarter like you're it is a interest-free loan that there is no promise of return on. Yeah. Ever. I would say the weird thing about all this, I mean, there's a lot of weird things, but the weird thing about all this is that I just cannot envision a world where VR, or at least the VR that, like, I've experienced in using the Oculus Rift, is ever, ever ever ever going to take off on a broad facebook like scale maybe it's 15 years in the future 20 years in the future but the next five years

not a chance well no like that's a weird comparison because like you don't have to buy facebook like you know but you don't have to drop like okay so like the scale of like an xbox one how's that also that's why I think Facebook bought it now for, and this sounds crazy, but only $2 billion. I think their logic, and you see this, a lot of tech writers are writing about this, especially the guys at BuzzFeed. But Facebook wants to own whatever the next Facebook is.

That's why they bought WhatsApp. That's why they're buying something like this that maybe, just maybe, this is the way that people use monitors in the future. And they buy it two billion dollars now which is like a pebble of you know facebook's total worth if it ends up blowing up they own it but what's weird is that like oculus rift is not like as we saw during gdc sony came out with their own thing it's not like they're the only game in town it's not like anyone couldn't replicate that the work they've

done right they have a pretty huge leg up and like a pretty good relationships or at least they did before this acquisition like they had a lot of really good relationships with people they had like the most positive i think about how fucking narrow a needle that is to thread to make vr something that's not just a goddamn joke like they did it they did it and that's absolutely super impressive i just i just don't like the the idea that people are going to go home after work and like block themselves i mean unless you're like living alone or you are out of your fucking mind dog like people fucking get home and then they pick up their ipad and then just stare at that totally totally 100 different i Totally, totally, 100% different. I don't think that is – well, I agree it's more awkward to use.

I think there are – we've talked about this at GDC, but I think there are a lot of issues with turning yourself top to the world. And I think they'll try to solve those in certain ways. I think the comparison to the iPad is interesting because if this is the next way we engage, right, if this is the next monitor, the next screen that we're looking at, Facebook wants to be the apple. They want to be the person who, like, can get 30% off of every single thing you buy for this. Is there anybody on this call who thinks it was a bad idea for Facebook to do this? Not at all. I don't think that's the point. I think that's a fucking good-ass pickup.

Good job, Facebook. I guess I just want to know the application. Yeah. I think, here know the application. Yeah. Here's the thing. If there are any hesitance I might have about this, I wasn't a backer, so I don't have that gut punch, like, fuck you, this was my grassroots thing. And I am excited about the gaming applications of this.

I am super excited for the non-gaming applications of it. When you think about this, and I forget, I am super excited for the non-gaming applications of it. Like when you think about this in, I forget, I think it was maybe Doug Wilson or somebody who's making this point about like, think about how like, instead of having to go on field trips in schools and shit, like you can just have this like virtual thing and you can see what it's like to see like dinosaurs to scale.

Like the applications are literally endless. Like I think there's some really really exciting stuff that they can do and i my hesitance my only hesitance is that facebook has not proven itself as an especially great vanguard for video games in the past like we've seen developers like entire developers rise and fall because they base their game on that platform yeah and then just it shit the bed the only thing that i could think that makes sense is that mark zuckerberg thought he was buying on oculus rift he just two bill are you sure okay two bill it seems a little you know i don't remember if that seems pricey or not i guess things cost it's like a milk right like a

pint of milk a bat of milk seems good i i they'll have learned a lot from the game issues. My biggest concern is that it'll be a walled garden, like what has happened with iPhones. And I think the most interesting things that are happening right now on VR, for me personally, are really strange and provocative. The thing that was on our site and was also on the verge of being able to switch bodies with someone of, you know, a man in his underwear and a woman in his underwear standing across from each other and having the Oculus Rift on,

you know, seeing from the other's perspective. I think those are really important things. I think they like, those are like, Facebook wants to change the world. Those are the sort of things i think actually could insert there's that there's that one dude who first like hooked up the the hydra controllers the six things and and like made it a full body tracking system that was like doing some really cool stuff like the coolest shit that's going on right now is in the in the open source field and i think that i think you're right chris i think that's something i we gloss over we were talking about this before is like if that goes away it'll be a goddamn shame

because i think that colored a lot of the uh impressions when they they revealed morpheus which is like there's some really cool applications for this but if you don't make it easy to to get into like as easy as pc development or like open source development is then like it's probably not gonna set the world on fire. Sure. You guys know I never I've never worn an Oculus Rift. Oh you're kidding me. No you're missing out buddy. You really have to do it. It's like

I don't understand. Well I'm not going to buy it now since the only thing I can look at is like which one of my friends like Captain America. Like I don't really want to see that in 3D. I don't think that's only what it 3D. I don't think that's only what it's good. I think that's the only thing he'll be able to use it for. Listen,

I want to talk about Lufthrasis. It's a new game. Chris Plant, can you give me the lowdown? Yeah, sure. This is the new game from Vlambeer. You probably know them from Ridiculous Fishing on iOS. Or maybe you know their new game that's, I guess, coming out,

even though you can play it through, what is it, Early Access? Nuclear Throne. So Luftrausers is a dogfighting plane game. It's 2D, and you can play it on PC, PS4, Vita. And the goal is to accumulate combos by flying your plane around and shooting larger planes and boats and subs and other vessels the big hook though is as you uh kind of hit certain accomplishments or complete challenges you unlock new parts of the plane and you can uh choose like a different type of body you know so

maybe it's strong or maybe it has the ability to go underwater or maybe it's a melee body so you can run through stuff without taking damage. Or you can get a different type of weapon, which, like, one's like a laser, or one that has, like, a spray of bullets. And what's the other thing? Engine. The engine, yeah, yeah. Like, one's a gun engine, and it fires bullets out of its rear end. It's the fucking worst.

Yeah. I guess it used to be super overpowered. Anyway. It's not anymore. Yeah, it's a very kind of arcade-y type of game where you're constantly trying to destroy as much as you possibly can and maintain this combo. So you're always trying to stay in the fight.

The creators actually refer to it as a very angry game. They were developing it around the time that they were going through this whole thing with Ridiculous Fishing being cloned, and they were kind of at a dark place and weren't sure where they stood in game development. You can definitely feel that with this, again, constantly needing to be in combat, constantly needing to be killing and killing and killing.

It's also a very old-school game in that you're kind of doing the same thing uh constantly you're repeating the same kind of attack formation you're finding ways to kill these big ships uh in like i don't know it kind of reminds me of blinking red bosses from back in the day where it's like okay i'm gonna shoot shoot shoot dodge bullet okay go back to the other end of the screen now come back shoot shoot shoot dodge bullet go back to the end of the screen and you kind of create these loops uh to survive and all of that stuff i find kind of frustrating to be honest uh because i don't know i i find it very tense and it's not a place that i especially want to be i also find it like frustrating maintaining a combo

because it's reliant on uh vehicles constantly coming onto the screen and sometimes i feel like i got cheated where i'll be like oh well i could have maintained that combo but there were no enemies around combo system didn't bother me so much because with certain weapons like the laser for instance it is so easy that even if you do drop a combo just fly in any given direction for a few seconds without shooting behind you and then turn around and there's 20 planes right behind you that you can just like not always i mean there a good amount of the time there just isn't anybody yeah shoot the way the game works actually is when certain enemies appear so like when the blimp appears they actually get rid of the rest of

the spawns on screen so you'll stop seeing planes flying around and it's a why i take issue with the combo system is that it really is a feast or famine situation where it's like if you have a 20 point combo you're making tons of points and then 20 times combo but if you lose it and there aren't like it's just big guys around you're basically toast like you Like, you know, it's pretty frustrating to, like, spend a few seconds trying to blow up a battleship and only getting, like, 150 points when with a combo, a decent combo, you could get, like, 10,000. And there is a strategy to that of, like,

basically keeping things on the screen, not killing everything right away. Sustainable farming. Sure, yeah, that's pretty good um but i i don't know i freshick really likes there's the extra difficult mode called it's sfmt is that yeah i don't actually i wouldn't say i really love it i actually like the normal mode better what's it what's that stand for i don't actually know i have no idea i looked it up before the show and there are so many different answers and i don't know which one's right yeah i don't know i should

ask them uh i don't actually that mode is like outlandishly hard but i am eighth in the world in that mode so i guess i'm pretty good i'm proud of you uh the uh normal mode is more of a gradual incline of difficulty whereas on that super hard mode like there's like a blimp and three battleships the second you spawn and it's just absolute insanity um i like i like the progression of the game i just don't think i don't like the top end so like i liked unlocking parts for the ship i liked completing missions for certain parts so like one mission might be like kill six ships with the rockets or whatever so i like that stuff i just got really frustrated when it came to like the end game which is essentially like a high scoring thing and it's so reliant on that combo system that it can be a little bit frustrating i actually oh sorry well i just want to say this is probably my uh i have

been playing it and i've enjoyed my time sort of unlocking things. It's probably my least favorite of the Vlambeer games. And I've thought about it a lot as to why. As near as I can figure, it's that this is a, at its core, I mean, get right down to it, it's a score chase game, right? It's how high of a score can you get. And I feel like when you have... One thing that I've always thought about score chase games is that it's meaningless unless the parameters

for every score chase are the same. If I have a higher score than Russ, well, something's wrong. But if I have a higher score than Plant, then I don't know if that's because I did a better job or if my particular loadout was better or worse than whatever he was using. I feel like once you unlock everything... It's less loadout, right? It's less about the loadout and more about just how the enemies spawn.

I don't know. I like a score chase game. My favorite example and one of my very favorite, one of the types of these games is Super Crate Box, which from a progression standpoint is actually really similar to something like Tilt to Live, for example, where you play through until you unlock everything, and then the actual score chasing begins. And that's when I tend to get pretty addicted to these things. And that's actually what SFMT is supposed to be. The idea is, like, that unlocks when you've played through and you unlock everything. So that's, like, the quote-unquote score chase mode because it's much more of an even playing field in theory. I just feel like it's not for me. I'm not going to get into,

I'm not going to get invested in a score chase where there are those kinds of like massive variables. Like it's not, it is not as meaningful to me to get invested into, into score chasing in that scenario. Yeah. And I get that. Like,

I don't think you can necessarily blame the like ship aspect as being massive variable. Cause you can, it's up to you. You figure out what you're good at. You should play it to your strengths. That being said, to give you an idea, when I got my high score, 8th in the world, by the way. I said it already. But when I got my high score, the reason I got it was because this certain ship showed up at the exact right time when I had a huge combo and I blew it up and I got like 30,000 points for killing one ship.

And that's where it's a little bit bullshit because that's a massive variable that I only got to because I played and played and played and played and got this scenario eventually to happen. And it didn't feel necessarily like a skill thing. I mean, there was some skill, but it was more like just a confluence of events. You have to be able to capitalize on those things. And I mean, are we not just arguing how long it takes you to get to

that stuff? Because ostensibly, if you can stay alive for long enough, you'll get the highest score in the world. Yeah. That's not really what it's about. I mean, it's more about, like, at least in my situation, like, getting a high combo followed by this one ship spawn. Like, the scoring just doesn't feel as well thought out as the rest of the game, to be honest.

What I do love, though, I really, really like, is just flying as an airplane. Oh, yeah, it feels super good. It feels so cool because, you cool because you either press left or right to kind of steer in a circular motion where your plane's facing, and then you hit the gas to propel in that area, which I guess is kind of like Asteroid back in the day. But with gravity.

What? Yeah, but with gravity. And it's so cool to just basically let your plane stall out and then spin it around and start shooting at whatever's behind you. And then right before you hit the water, press on the gas and, like, kick up. And the water even kind of sprays, I guess, underneath the propulsion. Like, it all looks and feels really cool. To the point where I just wanted to be doing that instead of violent stuff. Maybe some, like, fly some Pilotwings-style slalom course or something.

Oh, that'd be kind of awesome. I mean, it feels like it'd be perfect for that because it handles so well. Yeah. That I kept wanting to be challenging. Unless you're using the Gungeon, which is the fucking pits. Yeah, you don't want to do that. I mean, I think it's a good game. I think it's a good fit.

It's a good fit on the Vita, too. It's great for Vita. Yeah, especially. I found myself, while I was traveling for the past few weeks, switching between that and Spelunky. And it was like they were overpriced pairing in a weird way. Did you play Olly Olly yet? I did play Olly Olly. I did not fall in love with it as hard as you did.

But mostly because I just end up playing Spelunky. That is what I do. If it's on my Vita, I will just wind up playing it. Even though I keep trying to play other things, I will end up playing Spelunky. You know, we have opinions. It's sort of the nature of the beast. But I'm kind of more curious right now about what our listeners are playing and enjoying. We had a lot of people on board for Luftrausers.

That was probably our most popular pick. A lot of people love Titanfall. You guys still there? Yeah. You're just letting me talk. We're listening. It's such a rarity. I mean, we talked about those.

We've extolled their virtues. I know. Then we have some oddball suggestions like Yaiba, Ninja Gaiden Z. Okay, bold. I guess that's completely... Isn't that game like a piece of shit? Yeah, it's supposed to be pretty bad. Why would you send that in, Parkson?

I don't know, Parkson. Do you want to credit the people as they don't i mean don't put this person on blast we just talked about how poor a choice they made but well uh and a lot of let's see i'm i'm stocking down some other uh uh suggestions here we had some tower fall here's one that i think is really uh is really a shame that we didn't talk about but it's a little bit harder to get everybody you know well versed in an rpg uh dark souls 2 dark souls 2 no uh south park the stick of truth um did you guys invest any time in that at all not much no i sort of stopped after the i liked it it's just like i could tell that it was going to take a bigger investment from me

than I had time to give it. I'm going to play it once it gets patched on. Right. It's an obsidian game, so I'm going to give it like a couple months before I break. It's really, really surprisingly great with some of the craziest, like they pushed the proverbial envelope much farther than I've seen it in pretty much any other game ever released. So pretty wild and surprisingly well thought out

from like a perspective of like combat, surprisingly like deep in terms of the different types of abilities you have and uh weapon patches and stuff it looks just like the show and i don't think it's great i don't think it like i wasn't surprised by the depth of the mechanics and the customization because like that's like what obsidian do well surprised in the context of it being a south park game but sure yeah it really does look like you're playing an episode. That was the craziest part to me. Like how, how,

I don't know. It feels like that's sort of the dream of a licensed product. Isn't it? Like you feel like you are interacting with the, the like licensed product in like the purest way imaginable. It's also super watchable. Like I would not mind just watching someone play through that game. Come on over.

Okay. That sounds fun. I also wanted to give a plug to a February game that we missed, but I didn't play it until March, so whatever. And that's Danganronpa, Trigger Happy Havoc. You tried to sell me on this, and I'm curious, because you said it was like Persona 4, and that's literally all you have to say about a game to get me interested in it okay so like if you can imagine a blend between persona four and uh ace attorney

the ace attorney series is basically a lot of reading uh well yes it is a it is a visual it is a lot of reading it is a visual novel are you recording in like a peaceful grove by the way it sounds like there's like a blue jay sitting on your shoulder just like yeah that's just how it is in West Virginia all the time oh I love the South Park game

so the sort of broad setup is that you are accepted into an academy, sort of a private school, and you fall unconscious as soon as you arrive there. When you wake up, you're with 15 other students, and you realize that you are trapped there by unseen forces. You are trapped there and you are told that the only way you're going to get out, there's no communication with the outside world, the only way you're going to get out is by killing another student.

You can kill one other student and if you get away with it, I mean, other people don't catch you killing them, then you graduate and everybody else dies. Cool. If you... Man, I'm into that. You graduate, everybody else dies. If you get caught having done the murder,

then you die and everyone else lives. So the breakdown of the game is you have 15 people living together uh trying to maintain the peace and thinking this whole thing's insane but also there keep being murders and in that case when there's a murder you are in a you're put into like an investigative mode where you have to try to find clues at to to what happened and then there's a trial where you have to figure out who performed the

killing and how they did it and there's like that's the actual game mechanic part is in the trial so there's like challenging suggestions which is kind of interesting because you have to put a contradiction into your truth in your gun

and fire it at the answer on the screen and there's like little hangman mini games that you can uh when it's not like a multiple choice thing or contradiction when you just need a one word answer uh there's like a hangman type thing um i'm into that and That sounds good. Meanwhile, you're also trying to figure out what happened and where you are and what's going on and why. I thought it was great. Once I was into it, I have not fallen in love with other visual novels. Did you ever play the...

I wasn't crazy about 999, for example. Did you play Virtua's Last Reward, though? No, I didn't play that one. Is it supposed to be better? It's one of my faves. It's so goddamn good. Is that on Vita? It is on the Vita.

It was PlayStation Plus. You may have missed that, but you can probably find it somewhere cheap. Okay, I'll play that if you play this. Deal. We'll write up book reports, then we'll read them out loud on the next podcast. Sounds awesome. Oh, boy. It sounds fun for playing fresh.

You two pick a game, and then you go swap Rooney on. Okay. Pick it right now tower of guns uh tower fall awesome oh great that's gonna be i do i know justin's gonna kill us but i do want to say real quick about tower fall so i've gotten a lot of shit on this podcast shut up justin i've got why not talk about tower of guns one second and then i'll talk about tower of guns oh no you don't you get to choose choose a tower choose your tower i've i just wanted to say i've got a lot of shit about being an achievement whore and like obsessing about that you got to put me oh god i can feel the blast coming here comes the blast griffin spent fucking 5 000 attempts getting diamond times in the time trial mode of towerfall for no goddamn reason at all why griffin why you didn't even bring up the best part what is that i tried to do it on two

different platforms because i got all of them on pc i talked about it in the overview that we did like i had this one mission i just couldn't get the diamond on. There are these time trials that you have to do where you can get the gold time, which is easy-pleasy, and then the diamond time, which requires you to do all these super sick moves in perfect order. There's also dev times, which are bananas. Which you didn't even know existed.

Which I didn't know existed because they don't show you, and then one of the developers was like, hey, you should take a stab at the dev times. I was like, you just ruined my whole fucking month because now I'm going to... I tried. I only got one of them. They're super hard.

But yeah, I got all of them on PC and I've been trying to do it again. Why? It's fun, man. It's fun running down those lines. I want that trophy. It's pretty sick. Also, Tower of Guns is really effing good.

If you like Binding of isaac but wish it was a first person shooter bam tower of guns with really great locomotion really like super floaty jumps and like speed skiing and like all that shit rocket great randomization of rooms and like cool art style it's nice hella good game um any other remain i played a bit of the diablo 3 expansion yeah i've actually gotten to like i haven't gotten to the fifth act yet i played a bit as the crusader my main like favorite stuff about it is the stuff that wasn't even in the expansion but the loot 2.0 patch yeah that is such a better game now they also got rid of the like really frustrating aspects of the late

game stuff where it was like insta kill like you'd basically run in, you'd get hit once, and you'd have no health. And now the enemies scale with you, which sounds like it would be lame, but it actually means that, like, every time you play, it's, like, a good experience. Right, you can't get ahead of yourself. Right, and you're always getting good gear for your level,

and it's just satisfying. Good gear for your class. Right. Yeah, they redid all the loot. that being said i i'm kind of waiting for it to come out on ps4 before i like go nuts on it you know i was doing the same thing but i realized that like i don't know i i've just gotten so acclimated to playing blizzard games on on my computer like just why not go ahead and knock this one out i say that in like preparation for hearthstone coming out on ipad yeah which will like really really tie me down and possibly

kill justin it's gonna be sad i'll miss him he's my brother yeah yeah well we had a good run uh are we done now i think we're done yeah it seems like this went on forever tower of guns is really good you should play it. Preview for next episode. Obviously, we have to talk about Dark Souls 2. I can't wait to crack that open. I'm going to play through it again on PC. I already beat it.

Did you beat it? Yeah. You solved it? Oh, my God. You're crazy. Did you need game facts? What am I paying you for? I didn't.

Do you have a job? That was like my spare time buddy. You bought a house. And a PlayStation 3 game. What about Rusty's Real Deal Baseball? I think we should all make an effort to play that game. What else? FTL Advanced Edition?

I guess that's not really a new game per se. It's out on iPad right now. It's so goddamn good on iPad. Yeah, it's real good on ipad uh goat simulator came out april 1st it's a pretty great game probably won't probably won't get around to that particular one wow i'm looking through and i'm like i am not getting excited we're gonna talk a lot about dark daylight is out dark souls is gonna be that's like the end of april oh my god i have so long to wait oh my gosh i can't believe i cannot believe i mean i know you're not true faithful fan

kind of a disgrace to like fans of the franchise because you didn't even get past an orlando but um i'm surprised that you've held off this long i i really want to play it on i the thing is it this is also where i work. And I can't... I'm sorry. That was actually going to be an explanation why I shouldn't play it on PC. Because I'm going to get some really confused emotions. But it's like, oh, those are so old now.

I hate them now. What? What does that mean? The PS3 is old. Oh, that's how I feel too. 100%. The 360's old. It's fine.

I don't have my 360 hooked up. My 360's in my fucking basement. And there it shall stay. My PS3 got a reprieve. The warden took it off death row and put it in my bedroom because I can play Blu-ray. Can you believe? That's it. Can you believe?

I want you to, everybody close your eyes. Maybe not everybody, because I think this news is maybe only pertinent to Justin. Actually, I don't know where you guys land on that. Anyway, close your eyes and imagine over like more than a calendar year from today we will be playing persona 5 on our playstation 3 yeah don't care crazy town maybe i'll play more than an hour before that happens i wish we come out on vita instead yeah bro whatever teddy's to run around. Someone's going to go to June S. I've been there. I'm just getting excited hearing you say those things.

I know. I don't even know if those are franchise staples, are they? Oh. Everything is great at your choose. Final Fantasy X intend to remaster. Other scrolls online. I intend to ignore those. No, Final Fantasy came out in March.

I played it. Final Fantasy X is still not a great game sorry this is going to be a crazy month Dark Souls we'll figure some shit out some crazy stuff will come out on Steam and we'll be happy yeah okay so that's going to do it for us here on the besties make sure you head over to polygon.com

read more of our stuff there subscribe to us on iTunes leave us a review follow each of us on Twitter because please why not we're at Polygon on Twitter if you just want to follow our site there and be sure to join us again next Friday for another episode not next Friday why would it be next Friday next

month for another episode of Betsy's because shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games? Besties!