The Besties - The Grappling Hook Brings You Back to Halo Infinite

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

How much can a single device — one that's been present in video games as long as there's been video games — renovate the Halo formula? As it turns out: A whole bunch. Join us as we discuss Halo Infinite's campaign and multiplayer modes, and talk at length about where Chief's poop goes.Games discussed: Halo Infinite, Loop Hero on Switch, Binding of Isaac (again), Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker (briefly) 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!

This was the Halo game that made me realize that Master Chief is a military title. And not just the big green man's name. Yeah, I've always been confused about that. Because, like, what's the deal? He doesn't get a promotion? He just stays at Master Chief? I mean, is there something high? I mean, Admiral.

General? But he's not going to push pencils, you know? Well, probably like Senior Master Chief. Military titles are the fucking wildest thing. Because there's not, I can't make rhyme or reason out of the order of them. Because it's like, I'm the private. Okay, well that sounds low. And then lieutenant.

Whoa, lieutenant sounds pretty high. Nah, man, there's like a thousand things above lieutenant. And then one of them just gets to be called master. Oh, what are you? I'm the captain. I'm in charge. Well, I'm the master chief. Whoa, shit.'s okay amazing so if you're master chief you get to have a suit where you can poop your pants

and like everybody's cool with it and it takes care of your poopy for you yeah yeah yeah promoted presumably because you know you get better and better outfits when you get promoted that's what they call it yeah in the military. Where do you go from there? That feels like kind of super Master Chief. Yeah, that makes sense though because he, my understanding is, my deep understanding of the Halo lore, he cannot take the suit off

so maybe that's why he's just stuck at Master Chief. Oh. So he's just pooping forever. I'm looking at the list now. There's so many things. It's like a mid-rank. It's like the sixth thing you get is Master Chief Petty Officer.

Wait, he's a petty officer? I think so, if I'm reading this right. That sounds very puny. The next one above it is Chief Warrant Officer. That should at least, he should at least be there by now, right? Seems like it. I'm just going on strike.

I really hate to go back to the pooping, but do you think it's called Halo? No, you don't. Don't you fucking lie to me. No, you don't. You love that. Do you think it's called Halo Infinite because he doesn't have to eat or drink anymore?

Like he is an infinite machine of his own filth. Yeah, there's one foot-long Subway Sub in there that is sustaining him for his entire journey across the cosmos. What kind of foot-long is it? I mean, he's got probably one densely packed with protein. A cheesesteak, perhaps. Yeah, meatballs. Meatballs, yeah. Something he can really recycle.

My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best Spartan of the week. My name is Russ Farshtick, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to The Besties, a show where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It is a video game club that goes all year round, and just by listening, you'll remember. That was the best I've done that so far. Crushed it. I think I did a pretty damn good job. Fucking crushed it.

Thank you. Well, the cussing. Today, we're going to be discussing Halo Infinite, a game that you have been able to play on internet with friends or enemies or strangers for, what, like a month now? But now the ding-dang campaign is out we're gonna we're gonna really get into it actually thinking about it we have discussed the halo multiplayer quite a bit um chris what is halo infinite halo infinite is the latest in the halo series it i mean it's it's a mega sequel you have to know so much lord understand what the hell is going on in this game but it kind of feels like a reboot.

Also, it's open world Halo with a grappling hook. And we'll talk more about it right after this break. I feel like this is a good sort of warning, maybe. And we're not going to talk about spoilers in this game, mostly because I haven't actually gotten to play that much of the campaign. But you really do need to have played the other halo games yeah and not silly not like one two three like the other three four three halo games okay can i can i address that really quick yeah so i played four

i really didn't care for four halo four no it's not i skipped five because everyone said it was bad right but i did but after playing like the first few minutes of Halo Infinite, I went and watched the end cutscene of Halo 5 thinking like, oh, that guy that you see at the beginning of Halo Infinite must be in that. No. But he wasn't. He's not, no. You want to know what ties this game together?

Yeah. Halo Wars 2. You played that one, right? Fuck off. Oh, boy. Who's got the time? No, Halo Wars is a good series. The first one was.

I didn't play the second one. This isn't a spoiler. It's kind of about Cortana. And where's Cortana? And what happened to Cortana? She was evil last time I we saw her I'm pretty sure yeah pretty sure that's what was going on um but like very first mission it's like oh who are you I'm the character you sent to find Cortana oh that must have happened in five because I think

everyone skipped that one uh so so I I don't know it's nothing that kept me from enjoying my time with the halo infinite campaign but it it it is surprisingly lore dependent yeah i was kind of which i was not expecting considering they've labeled this sort of as a as a reboot i feel like every halo game starts with master chiefs floating in space and i kind of wanted to just be like hey here's a new planet and here's all these people that you've never met before, and we're just going to start from scratch. Yeah. And that didn't happen here, but that's okay.

I know people like the lore. I know people like the characters of Cortana and Master Chief. Sure, of course. So they're back, sort of. Although Master Chief is peak Master Chief in this one. He is. Literally, my man in the first few hours of the game does not say a sentence longer than three words. almost all of them are like someone saying hey are you sure you should

go in there and him saying like there are they sure that they i should be there that's even too long that's even too long i'm talking about the the pilot who was like in the trailer and is a major character throughout this whole game uh is like whose name is a number thanks thanks 343 those are easy to remember you're lucky i can remember your fucking numbers 343 um but you like he's master chief is wandering into a big room and the pilot's like how do you know this isn't a trap and master chief is like i don't by the way i'm kind of sick right now so my master chief impression is spot the fucking chains. Really good. I don't think we can dwell on the lore too much. Chris, you

have played the most of it out of all of us, right? Yeah. Because you got it pretty early while I think me and Russ got it yesterday afternoon. Why don't you sort of lead this talk about the campaign before we get into the multiplayer stuff? So we... The lore doesn't matter because the video game is you get a grappling hook this time

and you can grapple hook to enemies and then you can punch them in the face so hard that electricity goes everywhere. And that is the entire video game. Oh, that grappling hook also, you can climb pretty much anything with it after like one upgrade. can climb pretty much anything with it after like one upgrade so for me the surprise of halo infinite was that it it's just crackdown like it's like first person crackdown yeah that's a video game that's interesting that's interesting by the way you just slipped in the fact that there's upgrades which i don't believe again maybe it was in five i I'll never know. But there's permanent character upgrades during the campaign,

which is a weird thing for a Halo title, I feel like. It very much follows the model of Ubisoft. I mean, obviously there are bad open-world Ubisoft games, but the core idea of after the first couple intro missions, you are dropped into an open world. In that open world in that open world are like bases to clear out and like upgrade points to find that you can then spend to increase your grappling hook ability or increase your sense threat sensor ability it's like it's like five

like different types of skills each with like i think five upgrades and it is not like super deep which i think is yeah i think is good because it's still weird to me that the big problem with this is the grappling hook is the only thing that you need in the entire game um and to you like have to give up the grappling hook to use those other things so there's like a shield and there is a uh like a beacon that will find invisible enemies and anytime i don't have my grappling hook equipped i feel like i'm not the full master chief which sounds silly but that is that is the hook of Halo for me now. The grappling hook is such a mega addition to the game that it should just be the core feature of the game. Removing the core feature of the game is never going to feel right.

Yeah, it would be like if you were playing Breath of the Wild and every time you wanted to climb up a wall, you needed to equip gloves. That's basically what it's like. wanted to climb up a wall you needed to equip gloves that's basically what it's like and it uh yeah i think part of it is just like they struggle to like sort of integrate the other upgrades in as naturally as the hook feels i think they work and we'll talk about this in a little bit but i think they work more in areas that are like more linear and like there are like more story driven areas that are like not in the open world necessarily and in those scenarios the shield and the threat sensor

and stuff like that become more helpful but the hook is still hella fun even if you're in a corridor shooting down a corridor right at someone is fucking awesome it's so fun that's that's it's got weird like almost tribes energy where you can shoot the grappling hook at the ground like 15 feet in front of you and then as soon as you hit where it hooked you press the slide button and you go approximately 400 000 miles an hour yeah the momentum is amazing uh yeah tribes it does remind me of tribes and also just cause it feels like that yeah sure hook from Just Cause. If you've never played the Halo games,

and this sounds so silly to you that we are talking a lot about a grappling hook, a feature that has been present in video games since the dawn of time, this game and Destiny, obviously there's a lot of DNA shared between them, are all about the sandbox, which is sort of a generic term for like all of the all of the game design stuff that they sort of it's

especially prevalent in an open world where they just toss you in there they say here's how the world works and here's all the different things you can do in it and how those different things interact now go have fun and the halo sandbox hasn't been dramatically changed since i think uh three is when they first started to include like uh tools and equipment and stuff that you can use like the barrier you can throw down or the jump jet you can throw down uh or the jet pack uh and then they you know focused a little bit more on aim down sights instead of just being a uh you know a hip fire game for the most part uh the grappling hook really does change that sandbox pretty dramatically because master chief ain't the most mobile of dudes he's a big green heavy friend uh and that that i don't know it really changes at all yeah

i like i keep thinking about halo and like how there's this legend of master chief right like everyone in the halo universe knows about master chief knows he's a total badass but when i think back to the moments of him being a badass in the older games they are all cut scene moments it's all like oh he's skydiving from space that's fucking right cool the actual minute to minute gameplay now granted his body count pretty fucking impressive he's killed like thousands of covenant well done but the actual things you're doing are like pretty typical first person shooter guy things like you're just running around and shooting guys a lot and throwing grenades and pretty typical this is the first game where i've played it and felt that like quote master chief legend in the actual gameplay in the same way that like

doom 2016 same idea where you're running around and you feel like an unstoppable monster and everyone is terrified of you like when the grunts see you in this game the little guys and they go oh no it's the Master Chief. I get it now because, god damn, I'd be fucking terrified too if someone was grappling at my face and then punching me to death. Yeah, I think there's a reason for that, which, I mean, Frosh, you mentioned Just Cause earlier. Yeah. And I think this has the same structure as Just Cause, not just the grappling hook. But, like, you are, it is guerrilla warfare once you go into the open world where there are these bases all over the place and you are busting in there. And a

number of the like missions are, oh, you hit a button that raises up the energy cell that is fueling the base. And then you like destroy the place. I mean, you, like, literally explode it. And at first, you know, everyone's very confident that they will destroy you. There are effectively, like, these propaganda speakers across the world where the grunts are, like, giving podcasts about how great they are and how much they can destroy you. But as you just obliterate this planet, that obviously changes.

And it feels like you are, like the odds are against you, that you are a one-man wrecking crew in a way that, you know, the kind of quarter versions of Halo don't because they do feel out of your control you know halo every other halo game for me feels like if i set the controller down and it just kept moving forward it would kind of play itself that's all that's all sandbox stuff though right like the sandbox is fucking excellent it's it's the most fun the stuff that you in the campaign that you everything around the sandbox in the campaign especially in the uh like not open world segments are pretty in my opinion pretty boy okay uh i have

not i have not enjoyed that as much yeah so if you are at home and you're curious you should know i would say like the first griffin you know because you played it twice because it crashed the first like 45 minutes are like linear like corridor stuff correct classic i mean yeah well not not classic halo right because this the whole game is the silent cartographer once you hit the open world stuff right like that there was some of that in there it was big it was a big linear map essentially back in the day right um but it was so big that like you know it was fun and also the sandbox was new and i spent you know two days playing with my friends trying to flip a warthog over the rock arch like that

that stuff was very that stuff had staying power in In this one, it's just like, let's run through a black and red bad guy ship. And let's just keep doing that. Let me address that real quick. Because it's important that people remember. And I had the same thought as you. When I think back to Halo, it's the silent cartographer, which is that first mission when you land in the Halo Combat Evolved and you're on the planet and you have the warthog and you drive around and fuck shit up. That's what I think of Halo. The truth is that's like 30% of Halo, whereas most of Halo are like very linear, like you're on a covenant ship and like doors are opening for you and it's a lot of corridors and a lot of like small stuff.

and doors are opening for you, and it's a lot of corridors and a lot of small stuff, the best levels were always those open levels, but they were never the vast majority of what you were doing, which is why it's so cool that this game basically made the bulk of it one big silent cartographer mission. Exactly, but there's stuff that isn't that, I guess I'm saying,

and the linear missions in past halo games have not been i mean you're on this like really really bland future tech bad guy ship yeah and you're shooting and you're shooting a bunch of covenant who you've been shooting for uh 30 years now i i when did halo come out probably not 30 years ago when i was when I was four years old. 20 years. It's a bad start. Yeah, I agree. I like the start a little bit. I think it's at least trying to be a little bit more cinematic than classic Halo where you are flying through space. It's not cutting to the cutscene.

That said, it's probably the weakest part of the game. The linear stuff does get much better. So there are these linear sequences that lead to boss fights that I personally liked because visually it's very repetitive. It is a series of go into a different shaped room and destroy everything inside. But because it's even more physics-based now than before, and you have all these accessories, it becomes like, I don't know, like a playground of like, oh, there are these different types of explosives everywhere.

Can I destroy everything in this room just using my grappling hook or just picking up exploding barrels or just using a sniper rifle before they even see me. In a weird way, like the Batman Arkham Asylum comparison clicks for me where like that game had similar kind of muted indoor settings. But the fun was, OK, how am I going to clear this room this time? I don't think it's as good as the open world i agree with you but it is a gajillion times better for me than general halo corridor sessions where i felt like it was like okay now i'm gonna shoot some more stuff and keep moving forward yeah i played through the first i think it's the first mission that you get to the tower in the open world which is the tower right exactly and the tower starts there's like a base that you

have to clear out and you complete some basic objectives and then you get like airlifted into this giant tower that you're kind of running up ramps and a bunch of corridors and enemies and stuff like that you're right like i like that more than the intro just because i had more tools at my disposal at that point but it did feel like a downgrade what was cool to me though is after i you know at the end of that mission you're basically at the top of this giant tower and i looked up and there was there were some like struts and stuff like that above me but they were super high up and using like momentum and like crazy jumps i managed to get myself on top of the tower itself and that felt like oh this is awesome like that that felt like a breath of the wild moment where i like fought the physics to get myself up there super satisfying reward there was like a funny yeah there's like a funny nod to craig

the poorly animated um brute that was in the first halo demo up there so like i'm glad that they allow for that stuff and i think it provides like a lot more variety and expandability even basic stuff just like climbing using the rope to climb up to the top of a mountain so you can start uh assaulting a base by sniping instead of just running in feels very fucking cool one one uh piece of advice uh for folks who are playing this you do get those upper upgrade points the first two things that you should buy are the first two upgrades for the grappling hook. Because one of them, I think it's the second or third one. It's the second one.

It cools down faster so that you can basically use the grappling hook to climb. That it'll cool down fast enough that you can just keep going higher and higher if you keep spamming the grappling hook. And I do not know how you would get around parts of the game uh without that so i would prioritize that okay we're gonna take a quick break and then we're gonna talk to you about the the to do it with all with every man with all the master chiefs to do it to play to play halo with all the master chiefs by which i mean your friends everybody's pooping i feel like that we can summarize this pretty quick because we've already one we've talked about it a lot already but two like we've said already in this episode the the

sandbox of this game is really fun it is fun to just be in the world and do things and use all the different rad weapons which man hats off to 343 pretty much every weapon in this game you can you can get up to some gnarly super fun yeah a really really really really good balance and design there but the sandbox is amazing and that's all the multiplayer is is is you messing around in the sandbox with other people in the same sandbox and also the other thing, it's fucking free. So that feels like a pretty easy endorsement on my part to pretty much anybody who has a computer or an Xbox to just get it and start playing it because it's really fun. Yeah, if you're intimidated,

maybe you don't play a ton of online shooters, now is kind of the perfect time to try it. A, it's free, as Griffin mentioned, but also B, a it's free as griffin mentioned but also b um because it's free the audience of people playing it is just very broad and uh so you're gonna play against a lot of other people that also don't play a lot of online shooters and you might feel like you're doing pretty good um yeah i felt pretty satisfied with my skill set whereas these days i usually just get totally creamed in multiplayer,

so that was pretty satisfying. Yeah, they've done some things with the multiplayer to make things a bit easier and a bit more accessible. I'm thinking about the way that they manage headshot damage versus body damage makes it so that, again, this is going to get really granular, but a lot of weapons are like this with the battle rifle uh if you get like three bursts on someone's body and then just

like one shot on the head it will kill them with the exact same speed as someone who you know gets nothing but headshots so it's not like the math they have done there has made the game less uh like pinpoint precision based and more about just like getting the angle and using the sandbox correctly and yeah it feels more tactical than it than yeah like a normal shooter like a apex or something i guess i mean any shooter really like destiny doesn't work that way call of duty i don't think works that way in those games if you get nothing but headshots you'll kill anybody who who you know doesn't yeah i the the experience that i haven't had yet and i think this is probably because the forge which is like the mode creator thing isn't live yet is just like the classic experience is like getting a bunch of friends together

in the same large map and you know picking your parameters and having like a golden eye type night of it right um which i haven't been able to do yet but like that you know because the sandbox is so much fun you know ordinarily when you're playing the game um the grappling hook in multiplayer is limited so you have pick it up and then you can only fire it like three or four times and then it doesn't work anymore you could easily set up a mode where grappling hooks for everyone are unlimited and just go fucking buck wild with it. There's so much variety that I can just see expanding out of this sandbox long term, which makes sense because they more or less are going to build this in the way that Call of Duty is. Call of Duty Warzone is built, which is this is the multiplayer platform for Halo for the foreseeable future.

Things are not changing anytime soon, so they're going to go pretty ham on it. I would also say you don't have to be that nervous if you play big team battle because your individual contribution isn't quite as important. And also, there are lots of really stupid ways to kill people in big team battle, like hitting them with a vehicle or landing a big alien spaceship on them.

There's so many ways to just have fun without that minute-to-minute, like, oh man, my KD ratio is so sick right now. Yeah, I've never liked the look of Halo games. I don't know, there was something always muddy and incomplete and polygonal that didn't click for me. But I've really come around to appreciate what they're doing. And I guess this is just the most refined version of it, or maybe I'm just finally seeing it. But it's like a cartoon aesthetic that doesn't keep any fluff around so you can focus on the action yeah that makes sense like there's nothing extra so some of the maps in in the multiplayer almost look like user-generated maps and maybe they use like the same tool that users can use to create their own

stuff i don't i don't know um but i I really appreciate that now. And maybe I'm just older and less good at video games, but I feel like I can read the map instantly. Like I hop in almost like a Nintendo 64 game. Like I get dropped in it and I'm like, okay, I get where the sight lines are. I get where the corridors are. I get where I need to go.

Like, let's do it. And I mean, that goes for the single player too it kind of has that that breath of the wild aesthetic where it's so simple that there are moments that are beautiful but there are also moments where it's like is there supposed to be a texture here or is it just supposed to be green uh they also added a lot of um accessibility stuff i'll just say specifically for me and my colorblindness, all the enemies that you're facing, you can change the highlight that is around them. I think by default, it's blue and your team is...

I'm sorry, by default, it's red and your team is blue. I changed all the enemies to being pineapple colored, which I guess is just like a bright yellow. And if someone is across the map trying to snipe me but they are bright fucking yellow in front of me i can see them instantly it's great so well done guys yeah um i don't know what else to say i i am late to playing the multiplayer uh i only started playing it when the fan was in seattle and justin had brought his laptop and had it hooked up to a hotel tv and i just like went over there i was like all right

let's try this out and that was a really fun way to step into it yeah because it's it's fun to watch someone play the game and to like be watched playing the game because there's like a the first time i picked up the oh god what's it called the stake the gun that shoots the stakes out that pins people to walls oh yeah the giant like slowly reloading one yeah you just like shoot a rail out that you can impale people with the first time i used that to like kill a flag carrier it was like me and justin just like cheering uh because it was such a rad thing that i was not expecting speaking of the sandbox i saw a video so that giant steak launcher if you're firing at

someone and at that very same second they switch weapons they drop their weapon in front of them the steak can hit the weapon in midair and save them from being killed that's hysterical yeah that doesn't seem like something you'd be able to easily no you couldn't but it just goes to show like a lot of this stuff in the same way the breath of the wild is sort of physics determined same thing here like it could very easily be like you know whatever oh it's an instant kill there's nothing actually traveling through the air. But here they're actually, like, factoring that stuff in to determine whether you get killed or not, which seems cool to me.

This game rules. I know we'll be talking about it more during the Gotti discussion with Justin. So I think, like, we'll get a little bit more time in, maybe finish the game, and then, yeah. I do want to say just, I think, there's been a lot of talk about the like free-to-play progress um like unlockable progression what you're paying for versus not i think there's still a lot of room for improvement on that front um especially when you compare it to

another free-to-play game fortnight which just from like a what they're offering standpoint you know right now halo the one of the things that they're being dragged for i think rightfully is they're asking people to pay money for specific like armor colors which is fine but they're locked to like specific armor sets and there's just like a lot of like nested very limiting customization stuff that feels a little overdone i think this stuff will improve as the game ages and they sort of figure out what's okay versus not but that is just one minor thing that i think uh you know i mean you don't have to spend money there's no reason to but if you do decide to spend money just be mindful and careful about

what you're getting because it wouldn't necessarily be as useful as you think it might be. Yeah. All right. Do we have any questions from the audience? We do. The first one is from Will. Are there any recent-ish games that can scratch the same itch as a Halo LAN party in the 2000s? I mean, I think Smash ultimate certainly would do the trick

on that and you wouldn't even need to set up a land you could just do it on yeah same screen not necessarily land but i think split gate is like the kind of other air to the halo throne for people who are into that part of it yeah it's also funny like like land obviously at this point is kind of pointless like all these games are designed for people to just bring their laptops or their cell phones even to the same room and just like play that way which is awesome logistically speaking lands were a giant pain in the ass so i'm glad such a pain in the ass but the most fun like they were great the the pain in the ass part was almost the point yeah because it's like yo we got 16 xboxes all connected uh with a sort of uh deep god-esque uh arrangement

of ether ethernet wires um and so like we already spent so much time on this so nobody's leaving nobody can leave until we've played until it's 4 a.m. I don't know that I've ever played. I don't know I've ever recreated that experience. Certainly not recently. Not since I've, you know, since we had kids. Yeah, I think it's a young man's game. Fancy, yeah.

I mean, online stuff, like for me, it's still Destiny 2 because I have a lot of buddies that play that. And, you know, making a six-person party to do a raid or iron banner or something like that like that's probably the best online multiplayer stuff i've had in recent memory yeah uh and i got one more question here from mike as a lifelong playstation owner the playstation's life not mine what is halo also is it worth getting on game pass to play from the start oh and get to infinite so like play all of the games in order yeah or go straight into infinite i don't know how to answer the what is halo question so maybe i'm just gonna skip that

one it's i mean it's a it's a shooter it's a formative like first person shooter you're a playstation person so so how about this? It's like Killzone, but better. But yeah, good, but good. But not terrible. Got him. Got him. Yeah.

Should you play from the beginning? No. Here's the thing. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. They are just very basic and hard to play, I think, these days with modern gameplay sensibilities when they first came out they're amazing very impactful but uh just jump into infinite as you know you'll get a little lost on the story but honestly i've played all of the halo games and i'm

completely lost on the story so it's fine i just do it just play the multiplayer like you don't have to worry about the plot stuff like just try just try the multiplayer, and maybe you'll like it. Or maybe you won't. It's free. I mean, this is the fun of Game Pass, right? Yeah. Yeah, right? If you're going to try it with Game Pass, like, just try it.

And if you don't vibe with it, there's, like, a trillion other things you can try. Anybody been playing anything else that's been fun to play? I spent, like, 15 minutes this morning with Loop Hero on the Switch. Is it out now? As of this morning, it is out. Okay. We talked a lot about Loop Hero earlier this year, and I recently tried to describe it.

It's a weird card game strategy, whatever. Please look it up if you're not familiar with it. It's hard for me to sort of summarize. But I was a little bit concerned because so much of that game is like using a mouse to very quickly move stuff around. They have come up with a very smart controller solution for that game.

When you're changing equipment, you hold down the right trigger and it instantly snaps you the equipment. When you're changing cards, you hold down the left trigger and it instantly snaps you the equipment when you're changing cards you hold down the left trigger it instantly snaps you the cards and then when you're placing stuff you are kind of moving the analog stick as if it were a mouse but that's relatively minimal considering um i it felt good to me felt felt like uh loop hero on switch certainly easier than like resting a laptop on my uh you know yeah so if you dug loop

hero and or if you didn't touch it and you like kind of card-based strategy games uh definitely check it out because it's dope as hell one of my favorite games of the year yeah me too i can't wait uh to to play it on switch i think i i would have played more of it if it had been a Switch-like launch, or it had launched on Switch alongside PC. I mean, I've just been playing more Binding of Isaac. Oh, I turned on Endwalker, the Final Fantasy XIV expansion, long enough to make a beautiful bunny man.

Wait, you made a new character? No, there's these things called a vial of fantasia that you can use to completely change your character. So I switched my little tiny Lala Fell boy into a big, beautiful bunny boy, and I regretted it immediately. Yeah. It's not mine.

You can't make that change so late in the game. I can't make it. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him so much. And then I played through the first cutscene, and I literally had this moment where I showed up to the new big capital city of the expansion, and half an hour in, and I was like,

I can't do this right now. I don't have the time to really dip into this right now, and I want to be able to savor it. I was a year late to Shadowbringers. The last DLC that everybody said was, oh, this is the best Final Fantasy story ever. So I don't think I mind doing that again with this one. Whenever I have a clear chunk in my schedule,

I'll just get in there. The listeners are going to be mad. They want the full Griffin update on Endwalker yesterday. I mean, it takes a lot of time to get into one of these, and it's the busiest time of year for me personally. And so I can't do that, I can't do that. I can't do that. And I don't want to,

I almost don't want to spoil it for myself by playing an hour of it every week. And because that's how you lose momentum, especially with an MMO. So, you know, I'll have things to say about it someday. I do want to ask you though, please describe the experience of traveling with Binding of Isaac, which is in my opinion, the best travel game ever made.

It's so good. It's so good. And I really do think Repentance, the DLC that just came out, is like what makes it for me. It's so good. It's the most like, okay, one more run game that I've maybe ever played more than like spelunky uh where like if i have a mission in mind or i have like an unlock that i'm going for like i can't put the game down yeah like i have to keep trying and you know find the right synergy of of items that i know is gonna like carry me through uh it's i i have put a lot of time into that game in the last uh last couple last couple

weeks i guess yeah because it's like the switch is the only thing i really play these days which i can't wait to talk about goatee stuff because i think all my stuff is on the switch because i have a new baby and so i can't be up in my office all day playing pc um steam deck baby someday someday yeah in 2029 the steam deck console yeah uh yeah i think it should really good it shouldn't be diminished that binding of isaac because it auto saves like every single room you walk into there is never a moment where you can't turn the game off and know that your progress is saved and that is a very rare thing for most games and you're just constantly unlocking stuff yeah there's like uh pretty much every time you finish a run you unlock something new but also like there's little uh kind of like hidden achievements almost that you just like every run you'll unlock a couple

new items or a new challenge to play through a new new, you know, whatever. It's got so many carrots on so many sticks. And it's wild how this game went to, went from like an afterthought to me to like one of my favorite sort of gaming experiences right now. Chris Plant. Y'all, I saw that licorice pizza. P.T. Anderson, yeah. P.T. Anderson, he's done it again.

It's pretty good. First the Resident Evil movies and now this. Hey now, get your Andersons mixed up. See what you're doing, you little goofball. Is that all you have to say? You just wanted to say the name of the movie? That movie is not out in most places. It comes out like Christmas.

So, you know, I don't want to spoil that movie for people. I'll just say that I largely enjoyed it. All I know really is that the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman is the star of it. Did that gene pass along to him? The acting gene? Oh my gosh, yeah. He's great. Cooper Hoffman?

A star. Alana Haim? Also a star. The entire Haim, also a star. The entire Haim family is in the movie. I like that. For people who like Haim. All the Haim. A gaggle of Haim's. I want to thank the following people for writing reviews about the Besties podcast.

It's a podcast. We have Ben the Jedi, Dangerous Eggsteam egg steam not forrest gump the criddler and blazing scourge thank you for writing reviews uh we just very recently passed 4 000 oh my god 4 000 reviews on apple podcasts so awesome love to see it uh we appreciate you guys and everyone else who has written reviews um for the podcast uh it means a lot it helps share the show if you don't have apple podcast or haven't figured out how to write a review uh you just share it on twitter as well that's another option but uh regardless we we appreciate all of it um i just wanted to mention i started a bold new video series on the mackroy family youtube

channel where i play through a randomizer run of link to the past oh my gosh as guy as guy fieri and also one hit kills are turned on uh and it's a it was it was wild i feel like if you're gonna play as guy fieri you should probably say his name how it should be said. Yeah, Fieri. Fieri. It feels, to be honest, guys, when I do say it like that, I do feel like Chris Pratt trying to do Mario. Fair. Fair. We haven't heard the voice yet.

We don't know what the voice is. He said TBD. Right, but my man is kind of an Okobayashi Maru, isn't he? He is. Because if he gets out there and he's like, hey, everyone, it's me, Mario. Then everyone's gonna be like, that sucks. But if he does out there and he's like, hey, everyone, it's me, Mario. Then everyone's going to be like, that sucks. But if he does like a really, really robust Italian accent, there's also going to be people who are like, I don't know, Christopher.

Are you sure? At least we know that Keegan-Michael Key will be fine as Toad. There's no question in my mind. Yeah, unless they try to make him go like, just Toad's fucking voice. Is that your pitch? I think you should just play Toad. That was spot on. It was pretty good. Toad, Master Chief, I've got range. You do.

Next week... Oh, wait. Chris, what did you talk about? So here's what we talked about this week. We talked about Halo Infinite, the main game in the multiplayer. They're available on Game Pass. We talked about Loop Hero Switch. We talked about B Infinite, the main game in the multiplayer. They're available on Game Pass. We talked about Loop Hero Switch. We talked about Binding of Izwick and the new expansion to Final Fantasy XIV, Endwalker. And we talked about Licorice Pizza. It's pretty great.

And, yeah, that's it. And then next week, take it away, Griffin. What's next week? Next week is the Goatee. We're there. We're approaching the event horizon of the Game of the Year discussions. We have our picks picked out. I think, do we have the audience votes tallied to put together the bracket yet?

People who listen to this now, you have one day left. If you are listening to this the day that it came out to vote on the listener bracket and it is at the besties pod on twitter uh it the vote closes saturday night make your vote count now you know what you're doing saturday night is you're sitting down in front of your computer and making four nerds talk about which virtual delights they think are the best. I'm looking forward to it. I genuinely, I don't know what is even going to be on the bracket, let alone who is going to come away with the crown.

I'm excited. We will see. Okay, that's going to do it. Thank you so much for listening to the Besties or the Besties Pod on Twitter. We have merch over at, is it at mackroymerch.com? Is that where we're selling them? I think they're all together, yes. Yeah, I think they are all one big lump.

So yeah, we got merch there. And I think that's it, yeah? So make sure you join us again next week for the beginning, part one of our Goaty discussions. And until then, this has been the besties because wouldn't it be better if if we did it wouldn't it be better if we pick the best games together totally Besties!