The Besties - The Hundred Million Jokes of High on Life

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

This week, we're joined by GameSpot's Lucy James as we discuss Squanch Games' joke-packed first-person shooter High on Life. How many full-belly chuckles did we experience during our time alien bounty hunting? Also, can J.B. Smoove do voices in every game? Also discussed: Disco Elysium, 100 Ft. Robot Golf, Towerfall, Overcooked, Portal 2, The Stanley Parable, Prey, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, The Past Within, Outpath: First Journey, Dragon Quest IXNote: The day after we recorded this episode and just hours before it went live, NBC News reported that Justin Roiland, the head of High on Life developer Squanch Games, is facing charges of domestic battery and false imprisonment.After a lot of debate, we decided to still publish the episode as is because we thought it wouldn’t be fair to the other people at Squanch Games, to our guest for this episode Lucy James, and to our listeners, to just not publish the episode.When our discussion doesn’t mention this alleged, abhorrent behavior, we wanted you to understand why. If you or someone you love is experiencing domestic abuse, help is available through the National Domestic Violence Hotline: [phone]. You can also visit their website at https://www.thehotline.org/ 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!

Hey everyone, Russ here. The day after we recorded this episode and just hours before it went live, NBC News reported that Justin Roiland, the head of High On Life developer Squanch Games, is facing charges of domestic battery and false imprisonment. After a lot of debate, we decided to still publish the episode as is because we thought it wouldn't be fair to the other people at Squanch Games, to our guests of this episode, Lucy James, and to our listeners, if we were to never publish the episode. When our discussion doesn't mention this alleged abhorrent behavior, we wanted you to understand why.

If you or someone you love is experiencing domestic abuse, help is available through the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. Thank you very much. Lucy, where are you at, geographically speaking? So I'm in San Francisco, but I am... Oh my God, it's so early. I'm so sorry. I already apologized.

No, it's okay. I do morning mess with Grub on Wednesdays. So Wednesday is my up early already, get up and get out of day. So honestly, don't worry about it. I'm going to continue to worry about it for at least a week. So thank you. Sorry.

I thought I had this. You know what? I had hoped when I heard your accent, I was hoping you were in the UK because this is a real chill afternoon session. That way I felt really good about it. I can pretend that if you want. Oh, it's raining outside. I don't know why I changed my accent.

My accent is going to go. Yeah, it went northern. Did you just have a different British accent? Well, the thing is that this isn't actually my real accent. Okay. I love that. What's your real accent? So if I was going to talk normally, it would be actually really Northern because I am from the

Northeast of England. I am a Geordie. But then when I moved to London, the first job I had, they were like, they will not understand you. So I changed with peer pressure. And now I just have this mess of an accent where- I did too in the i had a much stronger west virginian appalachian accent uh and then i was a theater major and they kind of beat it out of me so it's like this weird hybrid of like jed clampett and transatlantic just perfect perfect can we all go back can we do the entire podcast just with our true voices? I can't do my... When I do a West Virginia accent at this point, it's offensive. Like, it's offensive to West Virginians when I attempt to do my real accent.

Have you got, like, a Gary Oldman situation going on where he can't remember what his actual accent is? Because he's been in America too long. I guess, yeah, pretty much. That'll be me in like four years. That's the dream, man. Us all just forgetting our past and becoming something new. Like a cocoon.

Like Gary Oldman. Yeah. Just like Gary Oldman. That's my dream, to be like Gary Oldman. I don't know. Somewhat. I wouldn't want to. Just exactly like Gary Oldman. That's my dream, to be like Gary Oldman. I don't know. Somewhat. Just exactly like Gary Oldman? I wouldn't actually want to be like Gary Oldman in some pretty specific ways.

Mostly the human part of it. There's some extremely specific ways that I wouldn't want to be like Gary Oldman. Gary Newman, though. Yeah. Gary Newman. Now we're talking. Driving around In cars

I don't know anything else about him I know he's like Banging that moog Banging that moog all day long Living on that pleasure principle Hell yeah Oh man my name is justin mcelroy and i know the best game of the week my name is griffin mcelroy i know the best game of like four weeks ago well it's an old game it's not a new game my name is griffin mccroy i know the best game of like four weeks ago it's an old game it's not a

new game my name is ross ross check it out the best game of the week hello and welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive inter game meant it is a video game club and just by listening you my friend have have joined look in your pocket you'll find a membership card. It's complimentary. No problem. We are here to talk about a new game, and we have a new friend with us filling in for Christopher Thomas Plant from all manner of gaming resources.

Most recently, Giant Bomb, GameStop. I screwed it up. GameSpot. No, own it. GameSpot. Own it. Most recently. I've moved Bomb, GameStop. I screwed it up. GameSpot. No, own it. GameSpot. Own it. Most recently. I've moved.

From GameStop. Statistically, all of us. Shut up. Lucy James, welcome to the program, Lucy. Hi, thank you so much for having me. Yay. Representing. Lucy, did you know that Griffin once got robbed at gunpoint at a GameStop?

Oh my God. That's true. Really? It's true. And here's the wild part, because he won't brag about this. I won won't brag about it because it makes me sound like i'm going through some pretty rough shit he won't brag about it no but they said do you have any ps3s i think it was ps3s it was he lied to them he lied to the person with a gun to protect that's a soldier of the game wait you had that's a true you had a stack of ps3s in the

back and you're like no pyramid of place this is when they cost six hundred dollars and so nobody was buying them so we had a literal pyramid of them in the back room and these dudes walked in and that's different game stops have been robbed in the area so when these two dudes walked in with hoodies pulled tight around their faces i was like oh a robbery and they're like do you have playstation 3s and i was like nope nope. And then they did retrieve the pistol and have me give them money. That's a Sony crony. You know what I mean? Like, that's a true Sony crony.

Did they take anything else? No, they took, like, it was like a snowy Sunday morning. They made, like, 200 bucks, and then they got arrested, like, four days later. Yeah. Good. Crime doesn't pay. I mean, it would have paid if I had given them, you know, the 20 PlayStation 3s we had in the back room. They made like 200 bucks and then they got arrested like four days later. Yeah. Good. Crime doesn't pay. I mean, it would have paid if I had given them, you know, the 20 PlayStation 3s we had in the back room.

Yeah, that would have been a good crime. Nice score. And to be specific, Lucy does not work or has not worked as far as I'm aware at GameStop. No, I've never worked for GameStop. But I do work for GameSpot. Right, GameSpot, which I'm sure people that are at game spot uh also make that mistake all the time right yes frequently that's good to know and you know what we're just used to it now we just yeah we just i mean do you want to do you want to try selling one of us a subscription at game informer yeah or just to see if because you might like it like

i loved it i thought it was really fun selling a subscription to game informant what am i getting with a subscription lucy well you're getting a year of quality uh print a publication full of features reviews and unfettered access to the latest and greatest in the world of video games so lucy how did your guest spot go on Besties? Oh, we're pretty good You didn't plug any of our competitors Did you give like an explanation Why our competitors have a great product? To be fair, I did actually see the Game Informer guys on Friday So I was, you know, doing them a solid Yeah, exactly

As somebody who wrote for a lot of video game magazines in my youth, and I was literally like leaping from rock to rock as they sunk into the lava beneath me, I want to support the game magazines. The game magazine, I should say. Game magazine, singular. Yeah, that still exists. We're going to talk this week about high on life. Normally, that's what magazine singular yeah yeah still exists uh we're gonna talk this week about high on life normally that's what chris plant would do uh is explain what it is but i'm gonna ask

a rush dick to sure high on life is a game uh from the mind of justin roiland who you know from rick and morty and it comes from Squanch Games which is his game development studio and it's a first person comedy centric alien game I don't know what this also came out last it came out like yeah late December so we missed it on Besties

so we're coming around to it and I'm glad we did because it's an interesting game to talk about we are going to talk about it we're going to do exactly that but we're going to do it right after this so high on life is as far as i'm aware the second game from squanch games because they also put out trover saves the world which was like a vr game did anyone play that right no i didn't but i could swear they did the universe saves the universe didn't they do accounting wasn't that down plus accounting plus oh wow so they're second game they've done pretty and then dr splorchy presents

space here man i guess i totally missed a lot of them which i don't know what that one it's it says it's available on Google Daydream. What's that? That's Google's discontinued VR platform. Okay, so, okay. It was like a frame that you put your phone into. Oh, yeah. Oh, but this is basically their,

this is easily their biggest sort of release from Squatch. Yes. Lucy, I'm gonna start with you. me about your your experience with high on life so i came into it i've never seen rick and morty the only things i know about that are pickle rick and the the sauce um i don't know you know the context of like what even pickle rick means Or you just heard it? I know that he got turned into a pickle. Yeah, there you go. That's all you need. Yeah, sure.

You got it. And I know because there are Funko Pops everywhere. Yes. So I didn't really know what to expect other than the kind of talk about this game is that the guns were annoying. And yes, I did find the guns to be very annoying. this game is that the guns were annoying and yes I did find the guns to be very annoying um but I I kind of went in with a little I don't know Ross you asked me to be on the show and it was a bit of a curl of the monkey's paw when high on life came up but then I went into it and I put a good few hours in and I don't hate it there's a lot in there that I really like I think they

talk way too much and the yeah, the characters are very irritating. And I couldn't tell you for the life of me a name of any character. Kenny. It all just goes over my head. Kenny. I think the gun. Kenny is the main gun. The first gun is Kenny.

That's the one I remember. Kenny. I remember Gus. Gus is the J.B. Smoove gun. I remember that because that's also my son's name. Yeah. J.B. Smoove. J.B. Smoove. remember gus gus is the jb smooth gun i remember that because that's also my son's yeah jb jb my 21 month old jb smooth uh i did just get creature because it's tim robinson and i i knew

tim robinson was in it so i was like i will get that gun yeah i haven't gotten that yet i'm very excited for that there is i have just uh switched it yesterday uh there is an option to toggle enemy chatter and gun chatter uh and i i would there is well there's a max and then there's like occasional and off and i switch it to occasional it makes me wonder how deep into development did the qa team demand that? They must have been going absolutely bonkers insane having to deal with that. And they're like, we need an option to at least dial it back a little bit, y'all. vastly different i would guess than a lot of uh game vo or or or any dialogue in video games because it it seems to be highly improvised like it seems like each line was basically a sketch and then you know yeah just vamp on it just like just uh, just give me, you know, 10 different takes

on this line because the lines feel very, very stream of consciousness more than anything else. In the same way that, that I, I've not seen much Rick and Morty at all,

but it is very much in the same way that characters on that show do not speak in sort of coherent sentences without sort of stops and starts all over the place. Yeah, so I was wondering about that too because it is, I've seen probably like two seasons of stops and starts all over. Yeah. So I was wondering about that too,

because it is, I've seen probably like two seasons of Rick and Morty. It's very, very consistent with that. Griffin is right. But I think that's just Roiland's like delivery style to some extent. Like I think, sure.

I think he's actually extremely talented at making everything that he says on these totally like sound off the cuff. I think some of it is written. I think some of it is fully improv. But there is like a weirdly naturalistic delivery that actually sounds a lot like Bob's Burgers in that way, where they like kind of deliver stuff and it doesn't sound as written as like a Simpsons, for example. kind of deliver stuff and it doesn't sound as written as like a Simpsons, for example. So I actually, I actually am into it. I mean, there is a lot of talking and a lot of jokes in this game,

which can be, there's a lot of talking. There's a lot of jokes. There's some jokes. I don't mean that to be, sorry, sorry. I don't mean that to be dismissive. I'm saying that like the,

it's not as much there, there are, there are jokes, but it's mainly like amusing, like irreverent, not necessarily like joke, joke, joke. Like you're not getting – Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, okay. But there are also I would say in addition to sort of just the chatter jokes, right, which do not do it for me, right? Like I am glad that I have turned down the frequency on those. There are just constant, there are just constant kind of bits as you explore the world. And a lot of them are explorations of like video game tropes,

which, you know, this game is far from the first. I was trying to remember, what was the game that was- Matt Hazard. Thank you, Justin. That was that, you did not miss a beat there. Matt Hazard, which was like all about fourth wall breaking sort of like uh yeah right wow was it really yes i believe so yeah uh this this game does that like constantly right and it uh to me that stuff works really well

in this game like the jokes about video games i think this video game does better than any video game has ever tried to do it before. I tried to explain the, I don't know if anybody else did the Fallout doesn't let you do this achievement. And when I tried to explain it to my brothers on a call the other day, it made me sound like a psychopath. But it is a sort of exploration of how Fallout games and Bethesda games allow you to be like a psychopath murderer unless a child is present, and then it like disables your controls. This game sort of lets you explore that in a way that I thought was like hysterically funny.

And that is just sort of one example of the kind of, I don't know, very meta gamey send-ups that it does that I find very funny. Did anybody get to the trolley problem bit? No, I didn't see that. There's a bit where you're just like running around and then you come across the trolley problem. And there's five aliens tied up on one side of these tracks and one alien tied up on the other. And it literally just has you do the trolley problem. Like that is a straight over the plate fucking joke right that and that stuff is there's so much of it and i

think a lot of it works it's when the game gets a little bit i don't know lazier with the humor that it doesn't hit me can you talk before to pivot a little bit can you talk mechanically a little bit because we haven't really, what is the actual game? Yeah, we can dig deep, deep, deep down into our own belly buttons, figuring out what's funny and what's not. But to set the stage, mechanically speaking. So as a first-person shooter, you are playing as character taken from Earth because aliens want to come and basically use humans as drugs. And so you're taken to this planet and you become a bounty hunter to take out this gang.

And as a bounty hunter, you get this super-powered suit and you can add things onto it, like a boost, and later on you get a jetpack. And then the other kind of main conceit of the... and what sets it apart is that each of your guns is actually an alien who talks to you the whole time but has different abilities. So Kenny, that first gun is more like a standard sort of pistol, but he has an alt fire which globs stuff like a little explosive goo that you can use to kind of juggle enemies or you can use to move pieces of the environment then later on you get stuff that stops time you get a big mechanical saw blades that shoot out and so that for me when I got the first boost and I just started zipping around, it went from kind of like,

oh, okay, this is a funny game with kind of okay first-person shooter mechanics to, oh, I'm having a fun time. This is where it's all connecting for me. Oh, and you have a talking knife that latches onto stuff. Very murderous. Yes. It takes, in my opinion,

one of the issues I had, it takes, I think, too long to get past that first sort of standard gun. I actually had to stop playing for, now I have like pretty bad carpal tunnel syndrome, so your mileage may vary, but I actually had to stop playing at one point because my finger hurt too bad from single pulling the trigger over and over and over and over and over again um that is immediately reminded when you get the first like additional gun uh gus who is like a basically a shotgun um and uh but i it took too long to get to that point i think it felt pretty standard i don't feel mechanically like there's a lot of new ground being broken here. It's pretty, uh, it's pretty standard, but I think that that's fine. Like, uh, I'm not looking for it to sort of reinvent the wheel in that, in that. Yeah. I, I would also mention, you mentioned the,

the firing thing. Like, I think I've gotten extremely good at knowing what games are perfect to play on easy or very easy. And this game is perfect to play on easy or very easy because the combat is clearly like very secondary. You kind of just want to get to the environments or the jokes or whatever it is. So I was like zooming through this. I think I got through like the first four missions in like three hours, three and a half hours,

something like that and had like three guns and, and a bunch of upgrades and stuff like that. And three and a half hours, something like that, and had like three guns and a bunch of upgrades and stuff like that. And as Lucy said, the game feels much better when you have the mobility stuff and you're kind of like grapple hooking your way through the maps. And it becomes like, not to the extreme of Metroid Prime,

but it certainly has like Metroid-y elements where you're going back through environments you've been through with upgrades to find secrets and collectibles and stuff like that. Yeah, I don't know. I think this game works more than it doesn't. I actually think that it is, it feels like,

actually I'll give credit to Chris Grant who said this, it feels like a XB give credit to chris grant who said this it feels like a xbla game that never came out from the like 2010s and it um just like just feels like a throwback to that era of like relatively simple gameplay with like a lot of goofy jokes and uh you know an art style that is like not gorgeous but it is like unique and and kind of stands out and um i don't know i as a game that like i sit there and i play for 45 minutes and do a single mission or something like that i come away pretty satisfied because i feel like i had some sort of arc to it and like while it's not lol hilarious i like think it's pretty reasonably funny to like

keep my my attention the audacity is is a lot of what impresses me about this game there's a lot of stuff where it seems like oh you didn't oh you all really did this like this is really the direct i'll give you an example there is a um you can find these warp disks, and they basically let you warp, rather than warp you to a place, they let you, sometimes it works that way, and sometimes it'll warp in a structure, like it'll bring a structure in. I bought a movie theater warp disk.

Did anybody else do this? Not the movie theater. No. I bought a movie theater warp disk. I went to that, that like desert-y type world uh and i used the warp disc there and it created an entire movie theater um there in the desert world which i walked into and they were showing an entire movie called Demon Wind. And the guys from Red Letter Media were sitting in the front row as aliens

and talking, like basically riffing the entire movie. So like the whole movie is there. You sit in a theater and can watch the entire movie while these guys riff on the entire film. And that's just like a thing that's in there. And you can, I mean, the achievement you get from going in is like, yes, we paid for an entire movie while these guys riff on the entire film. And that's just like a thing that's in there and you can, I mean, the achievement you get from going in is like, yes, we paid for an entire movie. They did it for Multicus, yeah.

Tammy and the T-Rex is in there also. Blood Harvest is there because I came back to the house and Tiny Tim was just singing and I was like, oh my god, what is this? No, is this turning into a horror game? But no, yeah, I didn't realize it was multiple. Yeah yeah multiple films like the entire there's a part where like a guy traps you in a room and says that you need to wait

a full hour and that is your mission objective is like wait an hour and i was desperate to just like leave it running and come back in an hour it is on youtube if you want to you could skip ahead and yeah someone actually okay there is a lot of shit like that. I just saw a clip of somebody who was trying to like route a speed run through the game by like jumping over like some unintended geometry and then getting on top of a roof. And your gun like comments on it. Yeah. Like, oh, you skipped that part, huh? Oh, you must be doing one of those speed runs.

Oh, that's cool. That's cool. We like it. And then like as the game goes on, people will continue to comment on the things that you are skipping as you do this speed run and the fact that they sort of like programmed for that is is pretty delightful yeah to me that was a good justin roland impression too griffin well done oh thanks Uh, we are sort of dancing around this idea of like adjudicating a game's humor score because it's like not possible. It is so, uh, it is so subjective. It's subjective not only in the taste of the person playing it, but also in like the shit you see.

Like that movie theater thing sounds hysterical, but I didn't see it. But I feel like this game, it definitely throws a lot of spaghetti at the wall, but it got some full blown belly laughs out of me, which I don't I can't think of too many games that have done that sort of in the the writing and the like execution of game scenario as opposed to just like, you know, unintentional humor from like ragdolling the snake dudes on the bridge on Dark Souls. Like the first time I did that, I was busting up laughing, but that's not really writing. I feel like this game is one of the more successful, like successfully written comedy games

that I've maybe ever played. It is winning, I think, in terms of just quantity. And I think that that is a really good trick. I would complain a bit about, I heard some of the barks, like, you know what I mean? Like, the lines that the guns say, repeat it and I feel like

that's poison if you're writing this much stuff let it lie once but the second time you hear any joke ever it just needs to be deleted from the game at that point just like never let me hear it again because that really does break the spell.

So I wish that that never happened. There's lots of writing in this game like it does not need to be repeated like that. I want to talk more about comedy in games because I have a lot of thoughts about it. And we're going to do that in the second segment. Anything else on this game specifically, though? I was really won over. I mean, I think it's very pleasant. I feel like if there is an issue I was having, I wanted the thing that works so well about like the Rick and Morty format or any serialized comedy thing is that like there's an arc, right?

It's like joke, joke joke joke and then a lot of episodes will have i like rick and morty not exactly but you know a point of view or like a not a message necessarily but like something that makes it feel complete rather than just like a family like family guy lacks this generally it's like a because it is a joke joke joke joke whereas i agree with you i think there is an ambition, surprisingly, to Solar Opposites and Rick and Morty that I haven't, I mean, I haven't beaten this, so it's hard for me to say,

but this does lean more on the, this is just a series of jokes. Or just like stuff like Bob's Burgers, anything, right? Like mainly comedy and then like, but there is a heart underneath it. And I actually don't know if that's there with this game if it is it's it it is playing its cards very close to the best um lucy do you have any i don't know lucy you you did you feel any of that like sort of fatigue

of just it being a constant joke stream no i i agree it's very it kind of made me feel like I'd gone back in time just to the point where the internet was just like rage comics. In a way, that's kind of what it reminded me of. Like everything was brash, but these were just very, very colorful kind of rage comics and very just in your face, just joke, joke, joke joke very relentless i also think kind of um it's gonna make me sound like such a dweeb but the the fact that like every line of dialogue has swearing in it definitely lessens the punch it kind of made me feel like you know like a like a cool teenager who's well they think they're cool they just like swear in every single sentence to the point where it gets a little bit overbearing and it lacks that punch anymore that you get from, you know, when a swear word just like really lands. When I'm kind of going through it, I'm just sort of like trying to pass out what the good jokes are going to be and filter out what the bad jokes are going to be because I think I agree.

When they land, they land really, really well. And there's some really weird stuff in there. I don't know if you found the alien who sells alien bodily fluids. What, like pee? No. Like blood? Let's not speculate. Like saliva?

Breast milk? Not even. Snot? That's all of them. That's all the juices. i don't get it juices no there's no it was uh really uh yeah it oh god yeah cerebral spinal fluid yes disgusting it's disgusting marrow yuck oh so you know there's also those moments where it really pushes what i think we've seen in games before in particularly when it comes to comedy and games, like those gross out moments. But I agree, I haven't necessarily found

any heart in there yet. I know that your sister is supposed to be this kind of, I don't know, anchor to humanity. And I'm at a part in the game where I'm kind of rescuing humans as well. But there isn't really, you know, I'm playing the game because i'm a bounty hunter and i have a talking gun and i'm going around just shooting stuff and zipping around the battlefield also you were assigned so you kind of had to yeah kind of had to do that so i didn't you know i didn't pick up the mantle or anything i was just kind of shoved into it um, but at the same time, I'm enjoying it. Like I've had big, I mean, Tim Robinson's gun is the weirdest one. And it is probably the funniest, even though the gun itself isn't necessarily my favorite. I keep it on all the time because it's just so bizarre. So weird game, but I like it yeah i would also add okay so the game is on game pass i feel like there are i as we've talked about game pass a lot on this show i think game pass is a very good service but i think there are also a lot of games that come through game pass and you kind of just forget that it

existed or it was on there and this is not one of those games like this is actually one of the more standout releases whether you like it or not like it feels like something very different and unique so because it is there i think a lot of people are going to play it whereas before maybe not um so i i think it's at least worth a shot to see if it's your taste i think a lot of people did play it right wasn't it top of the the game pass charts or i don't know i didn't talk to phil about really big phil um about it. I remember seeing something about really big Phil. I remember seeing something about just tons of people played it. I wouldn't be surprised just because there haven't been a ton of these more high-profile Game Pass releases for a while. And it came out during December when everyone was stuck at home.

So yeah, it would make sense that it did quite well and good for them. We've got lots more games to talk about, and we're going to do that right after the break. Which is now. Comedy in games is really hard. It is. I was actually going through a list of like some, quote, uh best comedy games and it reminded me like there's a there's quite a large range between you know i think this uh high on life is like a very dialogue centric or visual centric comedy game uh with quote jokes like straight up jokes in them but there are also games that are like like a human fall flat is just like a visual, like physical comedy game.

Like most of the jokes in that game are just like seeing people fall down in funny ways. And so there is quite a range. And I think there have actually been more games than you'd think that have actually done a pretty good job of it. Does anyone have any particular? Lucy, do you remember any that like particularly tickle your proverbial funny bone oh honestly i think i find more humor in games when it comes to you know like ragdolling around or something going the way you don't necessarily expect i did find disco elysium very funny but then at the same time incredibly depressing i like i feel like more games elicit

a sort of sensible chuckle from me rather than a full-on belly laugh it's really hard i mean games are tough because they're supposed to be or not supposed to be but almost always a player guided experience where you are taking in content at your own pace. And so much of comedy is in timing and the specificity of the moment. It can be really hard. For example, Griffin and I were participants in a little game called 100 Foot Robot Golf. We were not architects of that game. We were brought on to just kind of do jokes

at it as the announcers and the stuff that we thought um was funny when we were doing it uh a lot of people commented on how it just seemed like not really out of context and it's really hard right because it's so much about like, what came before this and what was the build to it? And like, what is the setup for it? And doing that in a vacuum can be really, really tough,

which I think is one of the benefits that High on Life has is that because Justin Roiland is so involved in the company, it's baked in from the beginning, right? Like it's not an afterthought or a slider that is being raised. It is like part of the DNA of the thing. games even though obviously that is a much more sort of explored emotion uh that the horror genre is much more served than the comedy genre in that like it is enhanced by the like form of

interactive video games for me the scariest video games are like the FromSoft games because of the tension that they build and the stakes that are developed. You get so into it. And then when that tension breaks with like a scary moment, it is more scary to me than a zombie jumping out of a box in Resident Evil, right right i feel the same way about comedy where when that kind of tension is broken with humor it is far funnier than any just like straight up joke could be in a game that's why like uh overcooked is is a big one for me that game is about like managing a very chaotic kitchen and trying to like stay up on top of all that and spinning all those plates puts you in a state of mind where once you start laughing at something like you kind of never stop i feel like the game that i have just full stop laughed at the most while playing is probably

tower fall uh just in playing like big groups of of my friends friends. We used to play that game all the time back when I was in Austin. And you get so like dialed into the matrix of that game that whenever you sort of have like a frantic close quarters match against somebody, no matter which way it goes, the like relief that you feel after that can be really, really, really cathartic and funny. And they also have, like, the replay, right, at the end of Tower Fall matches where it, like, slow-mo shows who died. And that's, like, a button on the end of that joke, if you will. And for me, that's, like, it's not a comedy. I don't even think it was intended to be that. There's not, like, ragdoll physics and funny stuff like that happening but there is something to be said for the fact that like you know games that leverage that sort of interactivity and make that part of

the joke uh that's always going to be better than just some sort of uh straight up you know uh recitation of of a goof that somebody wrote one time i feel like this game honestly does that pretty well uh the the like making you complicit in some of the funny things that happen and giving you the choice to either do them or not do them like walking away from an npc as they're talking to you and they yeah oh my god hey come on cool just walk away from me the the fucking uh you come to a broken bridge in like the second mission of the game with some construction workers and you can just massacre them all because this game sort of has a pretty blasé uh vibe about violence and they're all like asshole like jerk they're all assholes that have

the same like hey come on hey come on fuck you buddyholes that have the same like, hey, come on, hey, come on, fuck you, buddy. If you don't kill them, as you go on to do the platforming section that follows, they're just fucking commenting and razzing you like the whole time. Oh, look, this fucking guy, oh, he can tether. Oh, look, he's tethered. Oh, a dash jump.

Oh, real cool. You think you're such hot shit because you can dash jump. Like that's really that's really really funny and it's funnier to me than any joke uh that anybody could write for a game it's also fun to hear people having fun doing the video yeah or it's not i heard there was one where i forget what it was it was just there's a lot of like incidental, uh, what's the word where the, it's part of the environment.

Um, barks, diegetic, like audio where it's like, you're hearing a voiceover or whatever. There was one where he's doing a pitch for G somebody's doing a pitch for G3, which is the cartel that they, and he was just doing a bunch of different taglines.

And one of them was G3 cartel. What's in your wallet. And when he did it when he the person doing the voice like started laughing after they did like you heard them laugh and it's like that's fun like that's fun that's gonna that works i want to i would this is we're far past this point talking about the game the music is fucking radical it is my favorite part of the game it's by uh tobaccoacco, who was in Black Moth Super Rainbow. It's just like this really, I don't know, fucked up synth. Bizarre. Like, bizarre synth pulsating soundtrack that is kind of, like, dynamic whenever battles are happening.

There's that Batsy theme where it's like, it sounds like something's winding up the whole time. Yeah. And it just gets under my skin in a good way. Yeah. I wanted to mention, and I've talked about a lot on the show, I think Portal 2 for games that are trying for pretty consistent humor is the most successful at this. I think it does, you know, we were talking earlier about the idea of uh having humor and also

kind of building to a maybe a deeper theme to it and i think portal 2 nails that way more than any other game ever has um i mean if you want to go that route i think stanley parable it's their way parable a parable also including the ultra deluxe version which just came out um yeah both of them are extremely really really strong and and it's also weird that monkey island and space quests and all those games have never been funny ever and i not a single good joke in any of the franchises uh that has ever worked for me in the history of mankind still enjoy the series not a good joke in them i like space quest when i was a little kid i was like eight yeah there you go. It was funny. I liked He-Man.

Don't watch a lot of He-Man these days, but I did enjoy it as an eight-year-old. Should we move on to honorable mentions? Wait, you didn't even put Deathspank on here. Who made this list without Deathspank? Probably the only person old enough to remember Deathspank,

but that was Ron Gilbert's actual adventure that was very Deathspank came out in like 2010 yeah it leaned a lot on Bacon it did Bacon's funny hey should we dive into honorable mentions anyone playing

anything or watching anything else I've been playing Prey again 2017 wow 2017 the arcane one oh okay the good one yep the good one i um no i'm a big arcane fan very excited obviously for redfall even like it looks to be kind of a bit of a departure from you know kind of more of an open world type thing but no i just i realize that i'm a huge i'm a huge arcane fan and i've played you know the dishonored and death loop so many times but i never really gave prey i only played it once and i didn't

remember loving it as much as the others at the time and then i went back to it and yeah play prey rips it's so good i'm loving it did you play moon crash separation no i didn't that was the other thing because i know that they kind of used a lot of that as inspiration and like trialed a lot of things when they were making for making death loop so i uh that's my you know i'm right at the end of prey and i'm gonna go in and try moon definitely play moon crash moon crash i think as a core gameplay experience is stronger than death loop i think it takes more risks which kind of makes sense because it was dlc so it wasn't like a full game they had to build out but um it's much more in the style that i

prefer of that kind of game um so yeah definitely check it out it's excellent yeah there's just something about arcane games where I can just pick one up and I know I'm immediately comfortable. Like I can just, I know exactly what to interact with. I know exactly the rules of it. I know the limitations of it. I know how it's going to feel.

I can't take credit for this quote. It's, I think Beck said it, but it's like sitting in plastic furniture and you go back to a rocking chair and you just ease into it and you just you melt into it and i just feel so familiar and i am really nosy i guess and so the fact that it has so many emails i'm just going through and being a right little like i immediately just invested all my points into hacking and i was like yeah i'm gonna go through everything i'm gonna follow this dnd game right there's a whole dnd bit that's what i was thinking too with the emails yeah wow it's great um prey has the nerf gun it does right that

you can use to press but god what a fucking great game it's so good and then and like i uh the first time i played it it would have been i think it was pre-release. And so I wasn't as, I wasn't aware of how much you could get away with, with the glue gun. So now I'm just making stairs everywhere. I'm just hopping up and going into places where I probably shouldn't have been. Found a whole section of the ship I missed on my first run. Like a massive section of the ship that I missed. And I'm just, yeah, I'm just having such a good time with it. I think I've really missed just an immersive sim, to be honest.

Yeah, I guess it's been a little while since we've had one on that scale, right? I can't think of like a more recent example of it. I have been playing something really good actually uh it's called the past within do you all know about this no it's uh okay do you does anyone here know rusty lake yes it's a developer that does it's an indie game studio that does a they have a world that is called rusty lake and they've done a series of like these point and click sort of gothic point and click adventure games, very puzzle heavy. They've done a lot of escape room type games that are small, contain things, and then they have some bigger ones called Rusty Lake Hotel and Rusty Lake Paradise. I did not realize – I've played Rusty Lake Hotel.

I did not realize this is a whole meta verse of um yeah they have tons of games but this new one the past within keeps that same sort of idea of like the gothic past and one of you is in the present. And the two phones, if you're playing on phones, I think it's also on Steam, are not connected. So it's about like using clues from one to help you solve the other and helping you solve that one will help unearth a clue that will help the other person progress through theirs. So you're kind of like describing what you're seeing. For example, you might find like a keypad with no hints or numbers or anything. And then the other person on their screen somewhere finds a random like grid that they can't make heads or tails of but that grid that they found is actually a clue for your puzzle

so you're using like clues the clues for yours are in the other person's so you're playing collaboratively you have to be in constant communication, but you're not like the phones are not communicating. It is just using one to help you in the other. And you see the two sort of intertwining and things like that. It was a really cool experience. I played with Sid just sort of like, you know, on the couch. But it was real. But you could play it over the phone or whatever, Discord or whatever.

But you could play it over the phone or Discord or whatever. They have a Discord server actually set up for people who want to play but don't have somebody to play with. You can log in there and find someone who will run through it with you. But it's a really cool idea, a really neat concept that was a lot of fun. Both of you have to own the game, but I think it's four or five bucks, something like that. But it's called The Past Within, but it was really neat. I want to give a quick shout out to Outpath First Journey.

I saw this pop up on like the Steam top charts. It is free. It is like the prologue of Outpath, a bigger game that is supposed to come out this year, which is like a clicker survival base building game. It's like a first person 3D game.

You know what it is? It is basically Forager in 3D form. So it's very, very similar. You go around, you know, busting up trees and rocks to build a crafting table to, you know, earn experience points to rocks to build a crafting table to you know earn experience points to expand your island and unlock new biomes and all that stuff uh i played like a couple hours of it and it's very cool and then i made myself stop because i i really liked it and i kind of just want to wait for the full oh yeah it's got like a minecraft look to it kind

of yeah sure uh i you don't think so? Yeah, sure, whatever you say, man. No, it looks exactly like Minecraft. I mean, it's not. Everything's not made out of cubes. If we want to get... Hey, baby, I'm looking at it. Everything's made out of cubes. Just small cubes, but it's not cubes.

I'm made out of cubes. If you get small enough... I'm looking at it. They're cubes, bud. I mean, there are some cubes. There's definitely lots of cubes if you get small enough they're cubes bud i mean there are some cubes there's definitely lots of cubes it's mainly cubes uh i uh i'm surprised justin that you did not talk about paul t goldman did you talk about it last yeah we talked about it already i talked about last week okay okay and i had to tell you about it again the name is not a memorable in person griffin griffin was not no no no it's not that griffin i guess just sort of spaced out because i had to give him a second pitch

on palsy goldman but you did watch it my tv watching me up my tv at first a defense my tv watching during hockey season is competitive man i don't i only have a few nights a week where hockey is not happening and i use those those days to usually watch you know survivor the circle yeah whatever uh do you watch hockey or is it just rachel oh yeah dude we watch every blues game we have for years um uh yeah it's fucking great it's so weird it's the weirdest it's the weirdest show I've seen in forever. And I think it even ramps over what the rehearsal did in terms of sort of like experimental sort of meta storytelling. He was on Jimmy Kimmel.

I saw an interview with him and Seth Rogen together. Paul T. Goldman? Yeah. Wow. And it was bizarre. Paul T. Goldman? Yeah. Wow. And it was bizarre. I bet. I bet it did. I also wanted to play an RPG,

and so I picked up my Nintendo 3DS. I've been playing Dragon Quest IX on there. It's a good game. Great game. Okay. Real quick, I've been playing uh castlevania dawn of sorrow which i haven't played in years and years did you play that hack with no touch no screen controls yeah it's can you talk about that because it's hysterical to me and also the only way to play sure so so uh castlevania donna sorrow was the first ds um castlevania game and uh it came out and you know when a new nintendo console launches of course every feature within the console needs to be utilized and in this case every time you needed to like capture a soul or beat a boss you had to draw a fucking pattern on the screen and it sucked

and then there'd be like oh here's some ice you have to chip away at the ice you just want to play a fucking castlevania game so industrious game modders uh basically went through the game and just ripped out all of those features and you just play it like a normal castlevania game and it's so so good it's it's essentially a straight up sequel of aria of Sorrow, the first Game Boy Blitz game with Soma and all the soul collecting. One of the best. I would argue those two Castlevania games

are the peak of Castlevania for me. I agree. Better than Symphony of the Night. I think they are spectacular, and if you've never played either of them, I know Aria is on the Advanced Collection that just came out, and then Dawn of Sorrow you have to obviously own.

How funny that Russ and I are both playing Nintendo DS games this week. This is the age we live in. I guess so. I wish I had my DS here. All my old Nintendo stuff is back in the UK. I only have my Switch over here. But every so often, you kind of get a pang. I was like, I would love to plug.

Can you plug in a UK, like what happens if you plug it in the outlet? Does it get fucked up? Like the PAL thing? I don't know. Oh, I don't know. I usually use, I have a power adapter, so I still have like a UK switch. It should be okay. We'll find out.

Well, I'll find out. I'll report back. Cool. I think we did it. Lucy, where can people find you and your things? You can find me I'm on Twitter, God help me, at Lucy James Games.

You can find me GameSpot, Giant Bomb, and on the Friends Per Second podcast. Awesome. What are we doing next week? Well, before we do that, I want to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts. We have Balik Papan4444444, many fours, Sebster666, and McSizzle. Thank you for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts.

And thank you to everyone else who has shared the show and talked about it and said how great it is we greatly appreciate it um next week we have metal gear solid one the very first why metal gear solid is it an anniversary nope we have no news peg for this thank you griffin for asking the exact question i asked and was laughing you know what it is a valid question whether we have a reason to be playing this game we had an idea i really plant had an idea but he's not here today so i'll give the idea we had an idea that it'd be fun on the like slower uh weeks if we went through the year uh playing through a single series and we thought Metal Gear Solid, given the fact that the game,

the series ranges pretty dramatically over the course of many years, would be an interesting one. So we're going to try it out. And if y'all don't like it, we will just bail after the first episode. But I think it's going to be pretty interesting and cool. So we're going to be playing Metal Gear Solid 1

primarily on the PlayStation. Can we, does Twin Snakes count? I don't know. Good question. I mean, I might do that one. It's a little more playable. Yeah, it's whatever. But yeah, no news peg.

We're just going to dive in and I think it should be fun. Excellent. Well, I'm looking forward to that. Anything else for us before we- No, I think we're good. Thank you, Lucy, for- Thank you, Lucy, so much for being here

with thank you so much for having me this has been wonderful thank you again a pleasure you can go back to bed now i guess it's so pretty no i got another show in half an hour oh my gosh okay thank you so much and thanks to you for listening 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? Besties!