The Besties - The Fall 2022 Indie Gaming Pick-A-Mix

Episode Date: September 30, 2022

We couldn't pick a game to discuss this week, so instead we present to you an installment of Oops! All Indie Games. We've got a bumper crop of backlog material for you to dive into, from slime-based horticulture to interstellar mining simulators.Games discussed: Trombone Champ, Slime Rancher 2, Shovel Knight Dig, Deep Rock Galactic, The Diofield Chronicle, Steel Rising, Squad 51 vs. the Flying Saucers Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I have a new exercise routine. Oh, thank goodness. Anything we can do to extend your reign, I think we should do. Yeah, I don't, ever since I had a child, and it's now a 15-month-old child, I haven't had a lot of time to- Can you just call your baby an it?

You know, it. You know. Got it. Good old it. Got it, great. I haven't had a lot of time to take care of old me and my well-being sure but i found a way to do that and here's the thing i don't want to spend a lot of time chris point walks around his neighborhood for three hours and that's his exercise i ain't got that sort of time to walk around my neighbor for three hours something

high intensity high intensity low time commitment and something that I could theoretically do every day. Okay. Okay. Here's what I'm doing every single day. Wait, can we all just take a quick guess? Oh, sure.

Are you doing like spinning a rope around? Oh, that's good. I've seen videos of people doing that on YouTube. It's like a big thing. I've seen it where they hit the rope on the ground, like two ropes at the same time. Yeah spinning like a lasso bocce ball with your kid like you're gonna throw your kid as a bocce ball i mean he's not round enough he wouldn't roll

oh why do i worry it's gonna be something worse sort of cage fighting oh oh the octagon for us, we're ready. Okay, so I walk down to the basement of my building, and then I just walk all the way up to the top floor, which is 15 floors at once, and then I'm done. Okay, so you just

go up and down. I don't know why... So, you mocked me for walking around a neighborhood, and your answer is that you walk on, you don't even leave your building. That's correct. And it's very dark in the stairwell.

It's a very dark stairwell, and it's not scenic at all, but I am able to do it in like six or seven minutes, and that feels very productive, because I get a good, you know, I get breathy by the end of it. Sure. And what's that sound like? And there it is. That's you can use that sound for whatever you need.

You fucking creeps. Whatever you need to use that sound for you fucking weird creeps, nasty weirdos. Now you have it. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best games of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best games of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best games of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best games of the week. My name is Russ Frustrick and I know the best games of the week.

Hello and welcome everyone to The Besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in electronic interactive entertainment. It's a video game club and just by listening you my friend are a member when i was a kid there used to be these brocks pick a mix stands at the grocery store and you would uh have these bins that you would fill up a bag the chewy candies right brocks there's lots of different brocks is a brand so there's lots of different ones they do like a terrible candy corn there's a terrible candy corn just like all candy corn yeah um there's like uh gum balls covered in candy uh there's like gum drops it's a pick a mix and the important thing is that's what we're doing today we're filling up we're getting our little bag and our mom said we could fill it up halfway and we're just making ourselves a little pick a mix do you think the pandemic started in a pick a mix?

Probably. Somebody just ate one of those jelly fruit wedges. That's how it was. Yeah. So, Chris, tell us everything about every game, Chris. There's too many video games. Everybody said, hey, we're going to have a pandemic, you know, video game drought. It's been building up for years. And then video games was like, no, we're gonna have a pandemic you know video game drought it's been building up for years and then video games was like no we're not and then the people were like but we

have so much backlog and the video games were like i don't care there's a trombone game and then the people were like okay that sounds cool that sounds good actually that sounds good yeah so that's what we're going to talk about this week. That and so much more. But we're going to do it right after this. I just sent you guys a picture on Slack of a pick-a-mix. Tell me that doesn't fire something deep within you. That looks so bad. When were you born, Justin? There's so many different types of candy present in this kiosk.

You would think they could have found one good one. This image looks like it's from 1971. Does this ring bells for you, Justin? I mean, not the style, the fashion. It did predate me a little bit. Did you get a pick-a-mix and then go see, you know, like, Puff the Magic Dragon? What were your days like?

I filled my pockets with mallow cream pumpkins and had myself a day. A little bridge mix. So those terrible Neapolitan chewables. I filled my pockets with mallow cream pumpkins and had myself a day. A little bridge mix. So those terrible Neapolitan chewables. The Huntington Mall got the 70s in the early 90s. So you have to respect that. No wonder kids' teeth were destroyed. Like this looks like actual dental harm.

Yeah, they had like jelly nougats. Yeah, those were rough jelly nougats. Yeah, those were rough. So anyway, how are we structuring this? I think we should start throwing games out there and I'll start here with one of the best

games I've played in recent memory. The game is called Trombone Champ. And you play a motherfucking trombone okay my language just seemed unnecessary but yeah yeah i just wanted to like put a little trying to get people excited about music history yeah so music theory okay so trombone champ is a rhythm game um but it's not like the rhythm games you remember because most of it you sound terrible i think most rhythm games the point is to like make you feel like you have actual musical talent but in trombone

champ you sound constantly off key as you try to work your way through a bunch of fair use publicly available songs like uh auld lang Syne and the National Anthem. And while this is happening, there is a me character sort of bouncing on the right side of the screen, playing trombone, and it's spectacular. I can't put it down. It seems like a... Man, parody almost isn't the right word because we music was this like what we're looking when i first saw a video of this game it reminded me so much of the work of great ravi drums uh during that nintendo press conference sure uh where he and his associates just made some really bad music together

live on stage with their Mii characters. And it's nice to see somebody sort of take that ball that Mr. Drum sort of crafted himself and then made their own sort of twisted spin on it. I think it's actually helpful to think of this and then made their own sort of twisted spin on it. I think it's actually helpful to think of this as a comedy. Yes. In the sense that a lot of games mess up with comedy because they do comedy like a movie, right?

Where it's like funny lines they've written in the dialogue. But I think games work best when they're doing you're they're using mechanics to achieve something and this is a comedy in the sense that when you play well it sounds so bad and it's so funny every single time like i was like laughing my head off playing along with the game i thought i was doing badly until i got my rating at the end it's like oh i guess that was pretty good it sounds so i can't the effect of seeing it is like i don't know if it doesn't tickle you to see someone like absolutely bomb some john phillips is a uh solo on trombone it's absolutely hysterical and i want

to say like in addition to like sounding very hilarious and it does it's very clear that they came up with the core idea this like feels like a game jam idea and then they just sank so much time into presentation and like polishing the look and the feel of it that it feels like way more like a premium product even though at its core it's almost like an art game well with a caveat in that they yeah it's very polished and that it all runs well and it doesn't have bugs and things like that but it doesn't look like a triple-a game like it looks goofy as hell yeah but intentionally goofy like that's right right right i'm just saying like like i think

that's important because like comedies if like, like, take a movie. Like, a movie comedy looks like a good drama. That actually makes it less funny somehow. Yeah, this looks like. This looks goofy. This looks like a WarioWare minigame. Yeah. Basically throughout the entire thing. So, for example, while you're playing Old Grey Mare, classic song, a bunch of horses start just marching across the screen.

And they're not, like, high-res horses. They're just, like, JPEGs of horses start just marching across the screen and they're not like high-res horses they're just like jpegs of horses that they found and so they you know that's the sort of style that they're going for it definitely feels fills that pocket of games like uh what was the goose game untitled goose game yeah where i think it gifts really well like it's perfect for social media um and then when you play it as you know i didn't care for goose game like the actual gameplay of it but here i actually enjoy trying to get good uh scores in terrible generic songs um it's been very satisfying i don't know i think the song choice is so good i mean just saying old gray mare makes me laugh like what a funny song that i never think about they also have a running baboon joke that runs throughout which is quite funny there's also in the settings i haven't actually seen this in the game in the settings there's an option to turn off a jump scare and i haven't seen

the jump scare yet and that alone is so funny is terrifying me because i don't't seen the jump scare yet, and that alone is terrifying me because I don't know when the jump scare is going to happen, but I'm leaving it on. It's the scariest thing they could do. They're saying, like, there's one jump scare. It's what, but that's, again, it's what's so smart about it is, like, that's using, like, game mechanics, right,

and as a way of being funny. funny like it's funny that there is one single jump scare that you don't know when it's coming and they've made it scarier by warning you that there is a jump scare at some point and you can deactivate it yeah oh god i oh man it's great it's really good uh highly recommend it. You can also learn about music history with collectible trading cards in the game. Yeah, there's loot boxes in the game, not with real money, just with currency that you earn as you're playing.

I believe they're called dutes. And you earn trading cards, and then if you don't like the trading card or you get duplicates, you can turn them into poops. And then the poops can be used for other trading cards. It's fucking wild. It's a weird game. I like it a lot.

I think it's only on PC right now, which is kind of a drag. I played it on Steam Deck. What method of control did you use? Okay, so on Steam Deck, which again is not helpful because I realize most people don't have one, I used the touchpads,

which basically mimic the mouse. I think if most people, if they're playing it on like a desktop or a laptop, they're going to use a mouse keyboard situation. I was struggling to hit the sequences of notes well with, like I wanted to be doing it with my thumb. You know what I mean? Like my index finger was having trouble

keeping up with some of like the faster combos. Oh, I did it with my thumb and that, at least on Steam Deck that worked. Some people have used the gyro controls. Oh, yeah, that would probably be good. Oh, that's fun. It's clever, yeah. Speaking of poop,

Slime Rancher 2? I don't know why you would... Do they poop in that game? I thought that was the whole thing. I thought they pooped and then you turned slime poop into a thing. Is that was like the whole thing i thought they pooped and then you like you you turn slime poop into a thing is that not how the game i mean that's so that maybe the the grossest interpretation of the of what happened yeah i thought they were having babies no they jesus christ you guys played slime rancher right i played the first one and i thought don't they duplicate if you put them in the same pen together okay so slime rancher 2 is out now if

you have not played that or slime rancher 1 it is the way i like to describe it is like if viva pinata was a first person shooter uh okay can we reference something that's not a thousand years old that's six people also that didn't we reference viva pinata we did it keeps coming up and i feel like we're alienating the audience this is good people should go play viva pinata fuck that yeah go play the uh why are we not allowed to talk about you know you can talk about film yeah in a historical context well i roll my eyes at that too yeah uh rare the the rare xbox one like bundle thing that had like all every rare game uh has has both viva Pinata games, and they're great. So Slime Rancher is a game about owning and operating a slime farm.

I believe it's a ranch. Okay. And you go around, you have a vacuum pack that you can use to suck up slimes, and then you grow food for those slimes that you can then turn around and feed them uh there are uh sorry just pause right there for one second so you feed them and then what would you say happens to that food after they eat it okay fine um they create what are

called plorts oh that's different's different. That's different. No, you're right. You're right. You're right. Because then you feed the plorts to other slimes, and you make like fusion slimes. Gross. And then you can sell the plorts for money.

So if it was poop, it probably, they wouldn't be able to sell the poop. A fertilizer, it sells for plenty of money. Okay, that's fine too. Yes. So it is a farming sort of game kind of it's it's a tough game to describe honestly because it is about it's it's got sort of the uh like collection like uh collectipedia style gameplay of a i don't know

a star pokemon uh or a pokemon sure uh but it also don't you feel like it has like the progressiveness of like uh that's the hook yeah it's it's you are constantly going around you are finding new areas to explore you are unlocking new upgrades for your you know mobility for your vacuum pack for your farm uh for, you can build a corral for your slimes, and then you can shoot food into that corral, and then they will shit out their plorts. And you can go in there and suck them up, but that can get annoying because it's kind of tight space.

So you can purchase a plort collector upgrade for the corral so that it will do that shit automatically for you. I love the original Slime Rancher. I have played a few hours, I think, of Slime Rancher 2, and I am not 100% sure of what is super new in this one. They've done quite a bit of streamlining. Like in the past game, you would go around, you would collect your slimes,

you would harvest their plorts, you would sell the plorts for money, and then you would use those to unlock upgrades. And then there was like this separate science research sort of mechanic. Now those are both one thing. You used to have to like plop down these mechanical harvesters

to collect like resources in the environment, which was annoying because then you would have to go back and, you know, find those later to collect the things from it. Now you just find them and suck them up in your vacuum pack. And I realize now that all of the things that I am describing sound like nonsense if you did not play the original game. if you did not play the original game. But I think that that is kind of telling, right? That there is not like such an enormous like change that the game can kind of hang its hat on. That said, it's in early access. So like, who knows?

Does it look like- It looks great. It looks fantastic. Like much better than the original game? I don't know about much better. No. Because I remember the original game had some difficulties running smoothly at times oh i

don't know i've been playing it on steam deck and it's been running just fine um and it's a good it's a great steam deck game uh honestly i am torn after playing it uh for a little bit i was torn about like even bringing it because it seems like the kind of game that i am going to want to not play anymore until it's actually out out yeah like a rogue legacy 2 situation yeah right like there's so much there and it demands a lot of you and there's so much it's all about like progression and building this this thing and spending a lot of time like uh on upgrades and all that jazz and the idea of doing that a little bit now and then coming back to it later when the rest of the shit is in the game uh does the plort the the rest of the plort is in the game

does not seem very appealing um but at the same time i just really like playing slime rancher and this is more of it so seems like a good steam deck game it's a great steam deck game yeah it's uh it's i think it's maybe on Switch, too. I'm not 100% sure. Honestly, this is something me and Russ have talked about. The Steam Deck has completely swallowed up a lot of the excitement I used to get about third-party games coming to Switch. Because they just run better on Steam Deck. And so that is always going to be the platform.

I know it's on Game Pass as well. Is it? Oh, okay. I mean, if it's on Game Pass, just get it. You'd be silly not to. But also I think if you want to hold off until it's in full release, that is a sound strategy. I don't think you'd be silly not to.

Money is not the only cost on online people. You know what I mean? Your time also has value. Yeah. I don't know that is not the only cost on online people. You know what I mean? Your time also has value. Yeah, I don't know that that's the kind of attitude you can bring into Slime Rancher 2, but. If you, you can't allow yourself the idea that your time has value because then it's like, why am I reaching this far?

I'm literally sucking shit with a vacuum. You're literally pushing buttons and interrupting electrical circuits. Wow. I mean, come on, man. Why don't you get outside? Put that on a- Hey, have you guys ever heard of Sunflowers?

Wow. Let's put that on a fucking Besties t-shirt. I don't know if you guys have heard, but there's music now from symphony orchestras. there's music now from symphony orchestra you know how you know where i like to ranch slimes guys in a good book you know what i mean yeah sure the grapes of wrath was basically there's a few slimes being ranched in that yeah for sure anyway i'd much rather talk about the next game because i know that there's a a divisiveness about it that I'm excited to explore. So I think we're going to talk about a little game called Shovel Knight Dig next,

which is the, I want to say, second spinoff in the Shovel Knight franchise. I mean, it depends on if you count King of Cards. No, that was an expansion pack. That was an expansion. Yeah, I guess so. It was quite different, but sure. But there was the puzzle pack that was yeah i guess it was quite different but sure uh but there was the puzzle game puzzle shift i forget what that was called shovel puzzle shift

yeah puzzle shift no and uh and now we have shovel knight dig which is a roguelike platformer uh featuring the titular shovel knight and he's digging he is digging it is it feels a lot like i mean if you've played shovel knight uh it is it is shovel knight mechanics in a sort of downwell style roguelike format and it's uh i'm really i'm really quite smitten with it i think it has a lot of very very clever progression systems in it um and those work really really well with with uh the the shovel knight sort of formula yeah because you mentioned downwell which doesn't have any like make the game easier like unlocks right whereas this definitely does yeah for sure what what have you found like what of the progression system so like again you

most most of the playthroughs are really just you jump in the hole you try to survive for as long as you can um and then when you die you more or less start from scratch uh but you are making some decisions as you're playing through like what upgrades am i picking up or what paths am i taking as you sort of go through the levels deeper yeah so there uh you're going through you're collecting gemstones which is like the currency for the game uh which you can spend like in the middle of the run or you can hang on to it for more sort of permanent unlocks uh at the end of a run uh you are there's like branching pathways that go into different levels, sort of Spelunky 2 style. There are like NPCs in a hub world that you then can go back to.

And those NPCs will offer a variety of different things for you to upgrade. Like there's an armorer who has hidden templates all over the well that you're digging into. armorer who has hidden templates all over the well that you're digging into uh there are these relics that are like these boosters uh that you can not only find in the world but you can purchase these like relic keys that you can take into a run to possibly like add new relics to your uh future runs uh there's uh different weapon techniques that you can unlock by accomplishing different achievements uh and the whole time like you have a pretty limited health bar and uh it is it is one of those games where you kind of have to try and play perfect as much as you possibly can because uh you don't have like an overabundance there's not a huge amount of uh room for for

mistakes um and so it keeps the pressure on very, I think, in a way that keeps the game really exciting and also just offers so many different hooks for you to chase down. I am always in the process of trying to find new armor templates to see what things i can uh unlock there's i just unlocked one set of armor that makes it so that when i die i can take i can keep one of the upgrades that i have found in the run which is fantastic oh till i got to the next run you mean to the next run and then you keep keep that running forever basically i have one upgrade that uh there are these cogs that you can find in each level and if you find all of them you get like a special reward at the end of the level i haven't i found an upgrade that makes it

so that i uh don't have to find all the cogs i can only find two that's three and then like i'm getting the upgrades at the end of each level and uh as a trade-off like less money spawns in but i'm finding it much easier to you know get further in my runs and so it's a trade-off, like less money spawns in, but I'm finding it much easier to, you know, get further in my runs. And so it's a trade-off. I just think it's a really clever game. And unlike a lot of the games that I have played for the show recently, like I finished, I played enough of it to feel like I knew I could talk about it. And then I just wanted to keep playing it just because it was fun and I was having a good time uh which is yeah i i played it you've you've played a lot more than i have so i i'm not gonna the one thing that sort of jumped out at me is that because you mentioned

that it feels like shovel knight i thought it didn't feel i mean shovel knight feels as a 2d platformer feels fantastic it's one of the best 2d platformers in terms of game feel ever i didn't feel like this had quite that level of precision for some reason it was like a i don't know it was hard to put a finger on like a floatiness to it or a it just didn't feel as snappy to me um and i think it feels super snappy i think they've changed a few things. Like, uh, obviously shovel night was modeled after kind of the duck tales, uh, gameplay where you are flipping shit over with your shovel and then you can do like a shovel bounce to jump off of enemy's heads and damage them. Uh, now you like do that shovel bounce automatically. Anytime you jump up in the air, you don't have to like do any kind of downward button press or anything like that and

so it's really easy to kind of chain stuff together there will be these huge like paths of dirt that when you dig through them you can just jam on the the dig button and you will just zoom through which feels very good um i don't know i i i think i agreed with you when i started playing and and was having a hard time getting a foothold on the game but once those those like permanent upgrade mechanics start to reveal themselves um it became a lot easier to kind of hang with it and and get get much further in my runs yeah because there really are some very transformative upgrades that you do kind of need to rely on and they don't really indicate at least early on like most very transformative upgrades that you do kind of need to rely on. And they don't really indicate, at least early on, like most of the upgrades that you have at your disposal don't sound like that thrilling.

And I think that might have been like hindering my enthusiasm for it. Yeah. But I'm sure, yeah, I mean, I hadn't unlocked the armor yet. So once that armor comes, I could see that really making a big difference. It's on apple arcade right it is yeah so so i mean that that seems like the best option i mean i know it's on i think pc and switch too i think it's on switch too yeah yeah i've been playing on steam deck again um because i i i saw that it was on apple arcade but i feel like i can feel control wise yeah um i think it'd

be okay because it's it's really just left and right and jump and and when i've played a few platformers like that on arcade and that seems pretty doable well and then there's like special attack buttons i i don't necessarily agree i i i do i would caution you to play with a controller or i you know if you're playing on apple arcade there's always like a you know third party controller things that you can yeah you can pair and pair it with an xbox controller yeah for sure um but i love it i think it's fantastic i love yacht club games i've loved all the shovel knight uh games and weird spinoffs that they've done the presentation and music uh are phenomenal um yeah this was nitrome was the i think core developer on this and then yacht club

i guess oversaw the project oh interesting yeah i didn't know that um yeah if you like if you like shovel knight and you also like games like downwell or i don't think it necessarily has the uh richness and complexity of a spelunky but if you do dig games like that, this one will. If I may. Got it. Dig. Oh, I didn't even. Oh, shoot.

Guys. I didn't even mean to go embarrassing. Speaking of digging video games, right after the break, we're going to talk about Deep Rock Galactic. Rock and stone. The game that I sort of spent the most time with, because I thought it was going to be one that everybody was going to play and i guess i'm really glad that i did because i was the one that played it rock and stone um is called deep rock galactic and i knew nothing about this game so

let me give you the very quick pitch there's a team of four dwarves that are sent into a system of subterranean caverns to retrieve the mission objectives vary but usually you're retrieving some amount of some element that you'll have mined out of the of the world of the of the mission and then you have to bring it back to either your ship or these things called mules, which are sort of like mobile bases. And these caverns are also infested by large, like, insectoid monsters that have to be dealt with while you are doing the mining. Okay, there's so much that's cool about it. That's the basic idea, right? There's so much that's cool about it.

I'm trying to get through as much as I can. There's four different roles, an engineer, a driller, a, like a guy, a gunner and a scout. And they all have very different skill sets, but they each have versions of similar ideas. Each one has a locomotion ability. So the scout has a long distance grappling hook. The driller can drill through, has these big powerful drills that can drill through walls. All the walls are destructible. Everything is destructible. So like if you are in a cavern and you can't get to the other people, you could literally get your pickaxe out

and start mining your way up to where they're at. And the driller can do that a lot faster are there like not destructible walls as well probably at the like outside boundaries of them but like by and large it's not like you're going to run into like you can basically like dig through whatever that's cool and uh the engineer in addition to building turrets can like shoot platforms so what you see is like a lot of great working together where like the, the, someone will see some gold on the wall, right. And they'll point it out. And then the engineer will like shoot a platform up there. Right. So you can stand below it. And then the

scout will use their grappling hook to like zip up there and get the, uh, the ore that they need mined. Um, so that's like the, and each level is very different there's somewhere you're like following a big drilling machine and defending it while it drills there's somewhere you're like finding fossils and like reclaiming them and bringing them back to your to your thing um there's also uh tons of like different perk loadouts and upgrades like all that kind of stuff so you put but you played online, correct? Yes. So this is the thing.

It's not, and that is not normally my bag. I know. I'm surprised. Right. So here's what's, what's great about this game is I have had nothing but positive interactions. And I guess the Deep Rock Galactic community is like well known for this, right? For being like, there is an ethos in this community of like positivity. So I'll give you an example. And I read an article about like how they got to this point.

But the main communication that you use is you have like a laser pointer basically where you use a laser pointer. You point at a thing. basically, where you use the laser pointer, you point at a thing. But there's also mapped to the right stick a cheer, which is literally just, they raise his pickaxe and it says, some variation of rock and stone. Oh yeah, you kept saying

rock and stone, I wasn't sure. It's in my head because constantly, anytime somebody brings you back to life, rock and stone! And they'll give you back a rock and stone! There is an ethos in the community of no dwarf left behind people do not leave your ass behind like if the mission is

done and they're all the way in the drop pad and you get killed by a bug those motherfuckers are going to come back for you like that is the way it works and they're constantly saying that like the dwarves are pre-programmed you don't hear a lot of voice chat it's just a lot of dwarves affirming other dwarves for how much they want to go get these emeralds and bring them back to their ship.

And like that, that is what really all the things are fun. But having this environment where people are just being like, there was this one time where this guy had a huge gold, gold chunk that he needed to take back to the ship but he wanted everybody to bless it first and this dude had a microphone and i don't know why he had a microphone for this but he was insisting like it would be better luck if we would all just like salute the gold chunk because i don't want anybody to pick it up he's like if you don't something bad will happen to you i heard it from another guy it's bad luck and maybe something bad will happen this time but it'll eventually happen to you so it's really important that we all bless the gold truck which is like and it's bizarre he's the only guy i've ever run into with a mic but

it's but everyone who doesn't have a mic is like there's no all the resources are shared right so everyone is working together to get all the gems that they can everyone wants to as many people to come back as they can a lot of the abilities sort of work well together there's like a good um synergy to them all the classes feel very different and you level them up individually so you're like getting better with a certain class but you see the roles that need filled right so you don't have to be the one that isn't being used if you join late um there's also like uh one other thing that's cool that kind of helps this uh that that like not loving to play with other people there's a ton of missions that you

go on and they're like collect the missions are like collections of certain levels in the game. So you have to go through like these certain missions to complete the quest. And what that does is it brings advanced people back into the lower, easier areas because you have to go through it to like complete a quest line, right? And so people will be, you know, they'll bring heavier hitters into your level.

You're not like stuck with this level that nobody is playing how long does it take to like play through a level usually that is my one so that is like actually my one complaint with it and and i don't think this is necessarily a problem with the game but um levels there is a rating for like long like how long duration like how long they think it should take but if people get i think there's there's like uh secret objectives that i don't know about but i see people doing sometimes i just shoot the bugs and get the goal you know but like yeah other people will have get that money like that um and they can run for a while like i've been in ones that have lasted like 20 minutes oh that's not bad 20 or 30 minutes

i was 30 minutes which is not bad right but like my life being the way it is sure the idea that i would have like it is not uncommon for me to like just have to ghost these dudes because you know my mother-in-law's on the phone or there's somebody at the door or whatever and that is that is my what are you single-handedly ruining this community? Like you're the one guy that's dropping out? No, because they believe in me. They're happy to have me back. They did.

And then you're gone. You're AFKing. No, that sounds nice. I was worried you were going to say like an hour. No. Yeah, yeah. A half hour is not bad. But it is like I hate that feeling of like,

I wish there was a way to... You don't want to disappoint. Yeah, exactly. I don't want... It's a four-. No, no, no, no, no, but it is like, I hate that feeling of like, I wish there was a way to, you don't want to disappoint. Yeah, exactly. I don't want, it's a four member team, right? Yeah.

It's not like I can hide though. And that you can ping, this is actually really helpful. You, uh, you have a, uh, basically like a sonar that shows you the topography of the caverns in wireframe that you can bring up at any time and like,

see where everybody is, but also see where the other areas are in relation to you. So you can plot a digging path for like how you're gonna get to those people, which can be kind of fun to sort of chart your course. I remember when we played, I forget the zombie game that was like Left 4 Dead. We played that together.

Back 4 Blood. Back 4 Blood. And Justin, you had a penchant to run into the evil crows that would then cause the zombie swarm to attack us so is there an element of that where people could if they wanted to troll other people not that i can think of i mean that's good you the the monsters are sort of like you just get an alert that there's a swarm coming okay the way it typically works right and then everyone is overwhelmed everyone drop what you're doing

we have to fend off this wave and then we'll get back to the mission but even if like i guess you could leave to go do mining while that's happening but the swarm will follow you so if you go off on your own yeah you're gonna get wrecked yeah you're going to get wrecked. Yeah. You're just going to get wrecked. So it only makes sense to try to stay together so people can revive you. Yeah. That sounds lovely. It's really lovely.

I really encourage you guys to check it out. It is not a hard, I will say this. If you're new to it, there's enough variety. This is actually a good thing. There's enough variety in the missions where like, I didn't always have a clear idea of

what i was supposed to be doing but i did understand my role right so i did um oh oh oh darkness is a big thing in this game because you're in a cavern so everybody has a store of replenishing flares that you can drop whenever right and you can like that's a resource to manage like everyone's got to drop a bunch of flares and but the scout has a like super bright flare gun that he can attach to walls so you this is like part of your role in the team is like if you go into a dark area it doesn't matter what our mission objective is i know that i need to like shoot out some flares to make it so people can work in here without having to to to constantly drop their little oh sure requirements I get it yeah exactly um it's great it's so it's so fun that's great what platform did you play it on I played it on steam

but I think it's one of those it's on like it is on basically everything I maybe not switch but I basically everything else make sure you have the time to play a game because you don't want the guilt I didn't once I got the hang of that I just sort of like paced myself but you know I didn't but basically everything else. Make sure you have the time to play a game because you don't want the guilt. I didn't, once I got the hang of that, I just sort of like paced myself. You know, I didn't start a game unless I knew I was going to have an uninterrupted time. But it's so fun.

It is such a bright spot. It made me feel good to play it every time. I never felt like I was letting people down. I just felt like I was, you know, part of a team. And it was really, really cool. I want to play it. You should. You'd really like it. We should play it together. We should play it together. I want felt like I was, you know, part of a team, and it was really, really cool. I want to play it. You should. You'd really like it. We should play it together. We should play it together. I also want to play it. Can I play it?

That sounds good. It's kind of a brothers thing. No, I'd love to play with you guys. You guys are my brothers. Oh, thank you. How many players can play at one time? Four. That's perfect. There's four of us. Did you know that? Yeah, that's kind of why I thought other people were going to play it, honestly. I tried. I thought it was going to be something of a centerpiece well i will i will say fans have been asking for us to talk about this game for years so i'm glad we finally got around to it

and maybe we'll have more to say about it i'm gonna bully you guys into doing an episode on it it's so fun it does sound dope it sounds fun um i have been playing the dio field chronicle has anyone else been playing this and or even heard of it i've heard of it ronnie james dio field chronicle which i don't know god i've heard of it uh because you recommended it to me and i saw some reviews and and then i watched some videos and i was like this does not seem like my sort of game holy shit looking at the art for this, I feel like I've been shot with an elephant dart. Just like instantly, my body collapsed.

All interest vacated my body. Justin, I'm going to make it so much worse. Holy shit, look at these guys. Yeah. If I had to describe the genre, it is RTS, tactic, strategy, MOBA-esque. JRPG, right? Yeah, and some JRPG.

I mean, I cannot believe that I tried this game and that I like it that much. I cannot think of a game that seems more not my type of game. And yet, here I am, because this game is super fun. Square Enix is releasing like a trillion games. I think like the answer is like actually like nine games or something this fall. Just a ridiculous amount of stuff that they're clearing out. And a lot of them are these kind of like weird experimental projects. It feels like they're trying to figure out what they want to do next.

So they're just doing a lot of medium-sized things. And this is one of those. And the way it works is like picture a tactical rpg but instead of a grid when i say that i mean like final fantasy tactics or fire emblem fire emblem or x-com but instead of a grid it is just like an open 3d space and you move your characters around in real time and you basically like direct them on where to go as if you're like controlling an rts battlefield you have at least four at the beginning and then you can fire off their special moves as they effectively like accumulate as their bars charge right uh which sounds very very simple

and it is uh i spoke with the dudes from into the Aether, and they're like, yeah, it's like a PlayStation 3 game that just happened to come out this year. I think that's kind of right. and from like the drop you have powers where like a dragon the size of a skyscraper flies in and spits like a world-ending comet at your enemies i mean you you immediately feel comically overpowered and here's the most important part of all of these games there's basically no story i mean it's there but the game throws you into the gameplay right away right away it wants you like learning how the game works it wants you fighting it wants you upgrading it wants you buying new weapons it wants you doing the game of it all which for me especially with square enix anything i feel like hey i'm really enjoying this game and it's like very cool but we do have an hour and a half of story to tell you. And then I bounce.

So I think this is like, it's kind of the opposite of, well, the Fire Emblem fresh, which I think like people really, really love the story. And I think the gameplay is also great. But this feels like it's very much for people who just really want to get into the meat of the game. I do think you would like it if you tried it.

The other thing is, it's like just hilarious how much it raises the stakes the first mission is you're like fending off bandit bandits the second mission a zombies appear the third mission you're like under a volcano um it's just it's all very silly sounds yeah uh i guess my initial reaction a the art doesn't really do anything for, but that's fine. I mean, I get it. There's an aesthetic. I,

my initial question would be like, how does the RTS benefit it? Because generally I like really don't like RTS games and I'll name a few. I like the core of like Pikmin stresses me the hell out. Uh, even like Starcraft, stuff like that stresses me out. Cause I feel like I'm spinning plates and i don't really like doing that yeah it never felt like an rts to

me in that sense because you have so few people to manage yeah so it and it's really easy there's like one button that you can hold down to move all the characters at once which works a lot of the time there's another button that kind kind of creates like a little circle of influence so you can control whichever characters are inside of that. So I don't know, within like a half hour, I felt like it felt more like I was one character but controlling four characters in the game. Does that make sense?

Like, I didn't feel like I was having to like manage like an entire army. I felt like i was just using what was available to me to perform the one thing that i wanted to accomplish yeah that's why i always like fireball moves because at least for the like first half of the game you're only dealing with like eight or nine units at a time and but it was turn-based so i could like really plan out my moves whereas this definitely seems a little more uh you know. So the other thing here is when you're in the world, you can see a circle around each enemy,

which is when they'll be aware of you. So as long as you're not in a circle, you can kind of plan out your strategy. So a lot of the attacks that I did, some of them are, some of them aren't. But even with that, there's usually like a wiggle room to get around them. So a lot of my attacks were, you know, sending people around the map and letting them like go and collect some treasure while the slower people like hung out at the front of the line.

And then by the time the fast people on horseback or whatever could get to the back of the flank, we would perform a pincer maneuver from the film Tenet. Yes. It would go great. You mean a temporal pincer maneuver from the film tenant um yes it would go great you mean a temporal pincer yes we yeah we would perform a temporal pincer um uh it's it's a delight i i don't expect any of you to play it i i think it i think it's gonna be up we got um hey i think i want to say i think it's a hidden gem i think I think it's one of those games like in three years, people will be like, oh, yeah. I can't believe we got that game that year. And then they won't talk about it.

If it was a hidden gem, I would have found it by now. Me and my dwarf pals have been pretty thorough. Rock and stone. Rock and stone, yes. Justin, tell me about Steel Rising. Much briefer than my last spiel, I did just want to mention Steel Rising because I like Souls-type games,

and Steel Rising, despite the, I mean, truly terrible title. I mean, truly terrible. I mean, there are worse titles. Yeah, it's pretty bad. The Deofield Chronicle? It's a Deofield Chronicle. It's not great. Steel Deofield Chronicle? It's a Deofield Chronicle, it's not great.

Hey, hey. Steel Rising is one of those. It is a Soulsborne game. I think the real draw here is aesthetics. You are a clockwork warrior who wears a powdered wig, and she looks radical. If you could look at images of of a GS from Steel Rising, like you can customize her look some. But the entire game, basically France has been overtaken by a clockwork army.

And that because they were created to serve people and then the clockwork machines took over. were created to serve people. And then the clockwork machines took over classic. There is one clockwork warrior that is still loyal to Marie Antoinette. And that's a GS. And even rant when as like creeped out by her kind of, but she sets her on this mission to like basically save France from the people that are taking over it. So it looks really,

really neat. And the monsters are all all the enemies are all these like automatons too so they they you can see how they're constructed and they have really cool like movement patterns and things like that um mechanically it's it there's not a ton of like innovation going on here um there there is a uh there's like refillable bullets which is kind of interesting um which i guess other games have those but there's like like when you get to a checkpoint you just get more bullets basically no no no you can you like there's guns that use ammo basically that bloodborne is the closest like point of comparison here there's guns that use

ammo you have to collect it it's not it's a resource okay but the but the ammo is also used by other abilities oh i see this thing called um what is like alchemical capsules or something got it and those are used for various various like abilities and each weapon has like sort of a uh alternate uh ability you can also overload enemies um by uh using uh hitting them with a lot of like light attacks they'll basically become stunned one one thing that's kind of interesting is there's a there's a sort of stamina bar but it's representing a geus overheating because she doesn't have stamina obviously being a clockwork automaton um and you can basically hit a button when your stamina is out and use a

coolant that will refresh your stamina at the cost of your health. So like hurt you, but you can like get a couple more hits in if that's all you need to. Yeah, that's cool. Close the deal. It's fun. If you like these,

if you like the aesthetic, if you like the era it's, it you like these if you like the aesthetic if you like the era um it's it it feels different that way it doesn't feel different enough like it's just one of those where you start mapping one to one like okay these are the estes flasks these are the yeah this is the the soul the bonfire bonfires or yeah um but uh it's it's cool i i was having fun with it but i didn't necessarily feel like i've gotta see what happens next it does look outrageously cool though

we got one more game Hoops I think you are the other person who played this Squad 51 versus the Flying Saucers yeah this is an interesting one I think if this game had come out like 2008 on XBLA it would have been the biggest game of the season people would have been the biggest game of the season

people would have been over the moon um it kind of is doing what cuphead did with uh old school animation it is doing with old school sci-fi matinee film it is just a relatively straightforward sci-fi uh scrolling shooter like 2d scrolling shooter you are a plane and you are shooting uh at ufos and that's the the entire game but the look the aesthetic the vibe is really what takes it home um they they basically make the game itself look like late 1930s early 1940s sci-fi matinees and when i say that i don't mean like the 1950s like i don't know arch sci-fi i mean like hey movies are black and white and we just learned how to get talkies going yeah there's a real newsreel vibe to it like yes uh to the treatment of the of the graphics

and things like that um and for the most part like the acting the sound design they do a good job recreating it this isn't like for movie nerds like guy madden level of recreation of old film but it's it's pretty good i would say it is closer to recreating old film than like sky captain of tomorrow which right you know i think i tried to blur the lines between old and new um but the story is like there's just enough there that it's fun to watch you get you know a little short bit of the movie i don't know every two or three levels. Would that sound right, Justin? It's not like every stage. And then you get thrown into this shooter, which is a really solid shooter.

There are tons and tons and tons of upgrades that you collect basically constantly, and you can just keep adding them on as you go. You start with like one upgrade spot. You probably have like 20 by the end. And it has a good sense of getting stronger and stronger as your little ship fights bigger and bigger uh alien vessels uh and it spices it up like a fair amount where you know at first you're just flying through the open sky shooting ufos but then you're flying into a mine and then suddenly you're having to zig and zag inside and outside of giant UFOs to destroy them.

So it's not just the same thing over and over again. It's difficult, but I wouldn't... I mean, as far as shooters, like side-scrolling shooters go, it's pretty chill. Are there difficulty settings? Like, could you play it on easy? There's a normal and a hardcore. And the hardcore, I do not recommend at all

unless you're extremely hardcore. And the normal is... I am. Yeah, Griffin is. All of you I think of as hardcore shmup players. I did like how the top and bottoms of the screen aren't necessarily fixed. So, like, there's massive ships,

but you can kind of go around them when the UFOs start turning on their axis to where they become like big obstacles for you to try to avoid. That's kind of cool. I liked it. I felt like it was, I needed just like a little bit more mechanically

that felt like something new or something that I hadn't experienced before. The gameplay parts of this are all pretty straight down the middle. Do you think it was just like, oh, we have the aesthetic and the aesthetic sort of stands on its own? Well, I mean, that's part of it. But it's also like it's kind of hard to parse a lot of the time because it is all sepia toned so like that when the screen gets pretty crowded and this is i think by design when the screen gets pretty crowded it can be hard to pick out your ship amongst everything else um and that and i think that maybe that's why they're trying to keep it as sort of like

simple as they not simple in the meaning of like not complex not easy but uh it was definitely cool and i i dug it i just felt like um i don't know i needed something a little bit more to justify like coming back uh repeatedly because i was getting murdered pretty bad and uh i did not have enough fun going through those early areas to kind of keep pushing forward. It felt to me like a great proof of concept for this studio and the team that's making it. Like, I feel like whatever they make after this will be really fantastic. I think this is honestly great. But it's great because it's two of the things that I love.

I love these, like, 80s, early 90s side-scrolling shooters. And obviously, I love the weird film recreation stuff that it's doing. But I think like, unlike Cuphead, I think Cuphead's old school animation is like, I don't know, just more recognizable to people, probably because of Disney type of stuff. So i think it has like a more immediate appeal also cuphead is like just so polished um where this it it does have some rough edges like i mean an example is they had to use cg sets for some of the film sequences and it like kind of breaks the illusion a little bit um and then in the game there are times where they they really try to make it look like oh you are a actual like model plane flying over a you know green screen or i guess a projection screen from back then of like newsreel footage of a location but then every now and then there'll be a cg base or. And that, again, it kind of takes, it defeats whatever the larger goal is. And I get why they had to do it.

Like hand-making every set in this game would have taken forever. And I'm sure it's like, hey, good scope management. But it is why I would like to see, this is like the type of studio where I don't want them to get acquired by Microsoft. I don't want everybody to be acquired. Microsoft I don't want everybody to be acquired but I would like them to have like that support

from a studio that size where they could like give them the money they need to actually take a bigger swing yeah should we do read or mail? sure read or mail a few quick questions this one from Mike

what was the first real horror game you played does seventh guest count as a horror game i think so yeah then that would be it seventh guest very weird fmv game when i i was probably seven years old when i played that game hey appropriate the first game i can remember scaring me was willie beamish for this is a scary one willie beamish was a car a like very cartoony uh sierra online sort of adventure game where you're a little boy named willie beamish who had a pet frog rotor bund if memory serves and he was just a brat he was a real piece of shit just a brat who's a real piece of shit. And like the stakes of that game are so horrific where like if you get detention,

you get sent off to military school. And then at one point you have a babysitter who turns into a vampire bat who like carries you away into the night. And that made me very scared. But also the frog's name was Horny. So like, what were we doing back in the early 90s? Yeah, how's it going?

How's it going for everyone back then? You can push your little sister so hard on the swing that she like flies off and like probably dies. Pretty cool game, I guess. First one I ever played was a really, truly wild one. The Friday the 13th NES game I bought at, God, Budget Pharmacy. Remember? Christ alive.

Griff, you remember up on Fairfax? Oh, sure. It was, man, renting games used to be such a thing. Our mom knew nothing about video games, right? But if they were going to have adults over or something, she would rent us a game from the budget pharmacy or Cummings Rent-A-Center, and she would have no clue. So it was an absolute crapshoot what my mom would bring back for us to play.

This was the 80s. One time I remember she brought Centipede. I was like, fucking hell. What what am i gonna do with this yeah centipede for two for two hours unbelievable but one of the ones she brought back was uh for whatever reason friday the 13th i must have talked her into it if memory serves but that is a really hilarious game where you're like going room to room as a counselor and it is like 90 percent nothing is happening like nothing there's not like rampant sex or other uh you know friday the 13th style activities you're wandering around looking for jason and then if you find him maybe you have a weapon and you try to kill him and maybe you don't and you run away uh it is but he was scary though

i was like it was scary because you spend so much time with him not being there yeah that when he does show up you're like oh god it's jason yeah it was bad why am i looking for this dude he's so much bigger than me the box art for this game is like maybe my favorite box art from the NES era. It's so cool. It's really good. It's really good. It's like full Trapper Keeper except for like Jason with an axe busting through it. It looks like a Jason Trapper Keeper.

Like if your kid was like a little bit more alternative, like they didn't want a bunch of sports cars and things like that. I want Jason. At the top it says interactive video games, but interactive is spelled like entertainment. No, you're going to have fun. There's also 2D segments too. Don't you love that NES thing where it's like, hey, we should try to make two different games and put them into one.

There was that one. The Goonies game was like that. Yeah, there was one called rescue that was the the uh the embassy mission where you would do like a sniper section you remember this one griffin you would do like a sniper segment and then you would run around a first person in a building and then there was a side scrolling action thing where you hid from spotlights and stuff okay gotta mix it up. Mine is just Splatterhouse, which you can play on Switch right now. Yep, Mosey discovered that on some video game mix

collection on his Switch, and at first I was super proud that he just happened to discover Splatterhouse, and then I watched him play and I was like, you know what? No, this probably is not a good thing for a 40-year-old. Not cool. You can punch people so hard that they explode into organs.

Friday the 13th was made by Atlus. Yeah. Isn't that wild? They also made Quirk for the Game Boy. Atlus beats ass. Very quick question from Emmy. Is Chris Plank going to watch the Nier Automata anime series? Yes. Of course. Definitely.

Was there any doubt there are no doubt because apparently the story is a little bit different so you know i gotta get caught up on that lore maybe they cut out the little annoying boy from the storyline and i'll be more interested um can you ask this next one real quick because i just want to make a quick quick pitch uh alex asks uh what are good unsettling spooky games that aren't out to give me a heart attack but definitely fit the spooky eerie vibes i just wanted to very briefly make a pitch for um there are a ton of adventure games um from like the mid 90s and i know that i know i push fmv stuff a lot here uh not just fmv stuff but like phantasmagoria there's a lot of like

adult um adventure games that sierra did um the seventh guest and 12th uh what is it seven thirteenth hour or something no 11th seventh guest 11th hour 11th 13th something is the new one but um they have a really cool like a lot of those games from that time period with the beginning of – like the more sophisticated MIDI audio and a little bit of voice acting. Some of those have a really cool creepy vibe without being like all about jump scares. Ones like Harvester and Stalker too from that same time period definitely like meet that criteria I think. I think Luigi's Mansion series is right there costume quest i don't think the games are fun but just being in the world is great i think there's an amazon animated series um and if you like old old games my number one rack zombies ate my neighbors oh yeah i don't know that or fester's

quest none of those are spooky or eerie yeah what are you talking they're all like costume quest is your you watch costume quest and you're like oh chill no but it's got the that gets there's like a banana it's like halloween stuff for people who don't want to be scared yeah yeah they clearly said they want unsettling okay listen hocus pocus zombies ate my neighbors their neighbors are dead they're not coming back from that okay if we want something that's like not fully scary but unsettling remember that uh little nightmares game we played oh yeah that works that's a good one that That was kind of scary, though. Thank you. Like Limbo, that would be good. Yeah, Limbo. Anyway. And then.

What was the one that Tequila Works did? Oh, those games were fun. They made two of them. Oh, my God. Oh, that's going to. Oh, no. Write in and tell us. Somebody's just yelling at us right now.

Sexy Brutale. Sexy Brutale. Thank you. Oh, I was thinking of the Japanese tequila studio. Oh, yeah. I mean, they have good ones too. Okay. Last question from David.

With the rise of legitimately good video game animes, which IP, big or small, would you like to see in gritty anime form? I think let's cut gritty i think just anime form viva pinata do i have to watch it if i request it or can't be more like it's good that it's out there fester's quest um adam's family would be perfect for an anime for what it would be a great anime yeah this is like a tricky i mean dark souls i guess after that elder grain manga i'm like super into seeing what they would do yeah could be really good i like that i i'm okay with that i would be very curious what a call of duty anime would look like. But that's just morbid curiosity, not that I think it would be good. Maybe like Destiny.

I think you know, the Dishonored world is what I would watch an anime set. I like that. That would be good. Same with Prey. Really anything arcane. Yeah, they make really good. Have y'all watched any of the Cyberpunk? I'm assuming

that this is the, is it okay? Is it good? Yeah, it's great uh do do not watch it in with your kids like even remotely near oh bro i've we were fucking boy howdy big ups i forget what we were looking up we were looking up like uh smash brothers like stage builder mechanics and controls and stuff and it loaded up some wiki website and it played an ad for that show somebody got like cut the fucking half and bloodshot everywhere oh and henry was like you should not be watching videos like that and i was like it's an advertisement i would never um yeah it's it's it's a lot but it's great um hey we we emptied the reader mailbag

should we do some honorable mentions okay so uh we have the following people to thank for reviews for the besties on apple podcast ryan lane can you believe it that's a funny name uh ultra ma and what someone's name is it oh i mean somebody's name. Is it? Oh, I mean. Somebody's name, man. They lucked out. And Mystery Wizard, thank you for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcast. Thank you to everyone else

for sharing the show and talking about it and doing all sorts of great things. Chris Plant, what did we talk about this week? Please grant me one more week of playing Deep Rock Galactic guilt-free. Please.

It's all I want is for you to say Rock and Stone and then we'll all play it and it'll be the most fun. I just downloaded it, baby. And this is what we talked about this week. I know, but it's all I want is for you to say Rock and Stone, and then we'll all play it, and it'll be the most fun. I just downloaded it, baby. This is what we talked about this week. I know, but it's all... We're going to get to what we're talking about next week.

We just barely scratched the surface. This week, we talked about Trombone Champ, Slime Rancher 2, Shovel Knight Dig, Deep Rock Galactic, The Deofield Chronicles, Steel Rising, and Squad 51. It sounds like you're saying Deerfield like an adorable baby. The Deofield Chronicles, Steel Rising, and Squad 51. It sounds like you're saying Deerfield like an adorable baby. Deerfield. The Deofield Chronicles.

Squad 51 versus the Flying Saucers. Next week, we're going to talk about something mysterious. Will it be more Deep Rock Galactic? I don't know. It could be. Just commit to it so everybody can play Deep Rock Galactic with us. Whatever it is, it's going to be great. Rock and Stone. Justin, you can't end the show with Rock Galactic with us whatever it is it's going to be great Rock and Stone

Justin you can't end the show with Rock and Stone you need to end it normally well I will probably still say Rock and Stone at the end that's going to do it for us for this week thanks so much for listening and be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Games. Besties!