The Besties - The lost hour of Half-Life [Resties]

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Half-Life, Valve updated the original game, released a documentary, and ran a brief PR victory lap. The standout achievement of the anniversary is the excavation of Half-Life Uplink, the original demo that crammed all of the game's big ideas into a 30-60 gauntlet of action. It's the antithesis of Half-Life's artful, but slow start. And it rules. In the back half of the episode, Frushtick and Plante talk about their surprising enjoyment of the Meta Quest 3. But does it have enough games? Get links to everything discussed on this week's episode by subscribing to our newsletter at Besties.fan! 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 everybody, my name is Christopher Thomas. My name is Russ Froschek. And welcome to The Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. This week, we are talking about the 25th anniversary of the original Half-Life and going deep into the future. We're talking about virtual reality, not virtual insanity, though I'll link that music video in the newsletter because why not? We're talking about the MetaQuest 3 and some experiences that both of us have had that I think have been pretty good. I'm excited to talk about that. But before we do either of those things.

Where do you dry, Chris Plant? Where do I dry? After a shower, where do you dry? Are you fucking kidding me? No. Where do I dry? My whole body is what I dry. No, no, no, no, no.

Because I just took a shower. No, no, no, no. Not what I was asking. This is my fault. I phrased it in a weird way specifically when you're drawing your whole body where are you standing so this is very intimate you you you let a little bit run off you don't just hop right out of the shower right that's that's amateur right like that's just your recipe for

disaster but then you have a bath mat outside of the shower and you stand there and then you dry okay but are you bringing the towel into the shower no i keep the towel right next to the bath mat see this is where i think people are ruining a lot of happiness that they could have in their lives. You bring a towel into the shower? Not while I'm showering, but the towel is accessible after I shower such that I will turn the water off, open the door, bring the towel into the shower with me, and start drying in the warm shower air okay and then once i feel like i've taken off a lot of the like excess moisture i will then step out of the shower and do the rest of the drying but i feel like a lot of people do what you're talking about which is like a whatever a shake to get the like the gist off and then step out and then do the drawing.

And that's like a lot of misery for those three seconds that I think there are not a lot of advantages to New York real estate. But I think this is one of them that you are in a confined enough space that you can reach out and grab a towel. What are you saying that your towel rack is so far away from your shower? Yeah. That's your fault. You just installed the towel rack in the wrong place. Where would I put it? The shower, that's just not how the geography of the bathroom.

Is your bathroom like the bathroom in Pee Wee's Big Adventure? My bathroom is like the bathroom in Demolition Man. Oh, with the shelves? Yeah. adventure my bathroom is like the bathroom in um uh demolition man oh is that weird yeah i i i mostly i don't actually bathe i mostly just use shells to wipe my tuchus i this i i hear you i'm gonna try to figure out how i would even do this without in the process getting everything I mean you were just saying that the towel is within arm's reach of the shower you just said that. You know what it is?

I got it. I install towel rack on the door of the shower on the outside and then I put it on that I just reach out okay we got it that's the problem I see we got it. We got it. That's the problem. I see you were right.

My problem is that the door to the shower here is more like a traditional sign, a door handle. I'm not turning it. That would be weird, but it is, it's not horizontal. It is not meant for carrying the load of any towel, which I think would help me here. I think this is, this. I think this is honestly, this is maybe the best Christmas gift you've ever given me.

You know, I'm happy to celebrate the season with you. It's the only Christmas gift. It's not even Christmas yet. We're about to, you know, close enough though. Okay, it's the 25th anniversary of Half-Life. And where do we even start? Oh man, take a look at my life. I'm alive like you were.

We had a debate before we even picked this for the episode where this is on one hand, one of the most important games ever made. And on the other hand, a series that is feeling so neglected at this point that I truly do not know how many people

under the age of 25 give a single shit about this game i know i know hey you you listening right now you 23 year old who's like i love this game that's great for you i'm really happy i'm talking about the rest of those suckers i think there might be a lot of people who a week ago maybe didn't care or hadn't played it or whatever but because the fact and i'm sorry for people that missed the boat on this but for like a three-day span valve lowered the price of the original half-life to zero dollars i think there's like a lot more people that have experienced this game recently than you would imagine i i yeah i think that's right we also have talked about the black mesa um project that's

right a while ago yeah besties before which was a started as a fan uh recreation of half-life so there are many ways to play this game what is interesting to me about the 25th anniversary is they you know where uh maybe i guess sony's like we're gonna spend a lot of money we're gonna bring back demon souls and it's gonna look better than ever thou said we're going to spend a lot of money. We're going to bring back Demon's Souls and it's going to look better than ever. Valve said, we're going to get rid of even the HD textures that we added a few years after the original game came back. We're going to bring back the desiccated corpse looking characters of the very original version of this game. Of the very original version of this game. We're going to make this.

This is the true original Half-Life experience. Now easier to play than ever before. Because you can actually play it with a controller. And with like a wide field of view. Yeah. There was a version. I think Plant was alluding to Half-Life Source. Which was much hated in the community. Rightly.

Because it was buggy and a mess and a disaster. But if you you this is like extra with the version they just updated like if you already own half-life you've got the updated version but the version they just updated is the closest you can really get to playing what it was like to play back then but with the added benefit of, native controller support and a bunch of other like features that are like fun bonuses for fans of the series. So for the newcomers, what is the elevator pitch for Half-Life? Okay. The original Half-Life.

Well, the storyline is that you are a dweeby scientist and you're just doing your day job in this weird area 51 type place and part of that day job involves like pushing a rock into a big laser and uh-oh that creates the apocalypse and you're basically trying to escape your workplace which is called black mesa and uh survive uh more or less so that's the like plot of it the reason that you should care is in my opinion it's basically the first or one of the first people will probably correct me on this but in my opinion one of the first that i played narrative fps games like where narrative was like a big part of the fps experience in ways that like when you play doom or you play quake you're running through these levels there's demons there's whatever but no one is like thinking about the story of doom or quake

here you are like fully immersed in like what is going on with this environment in like really interesting ways and i'm not talking about like reading books there's not like lore really it's all just environmental storytelling but it is is fucking fantastic. And I honestly think it has aged really well, even with the nostalgia removed from it. minutes as the credits go by very similar to half-life 2 if you played that and you are learning about this world as you go deeper and deeper into your effectively your office work environment your laboratory um laboratory why did i say it like a british person strange um and yeah it it is now such a common thing to play a video game where they ask you to take a break from the action and kind of take in the world. But at the time, there wasn't much like this, whether it was in the indie space or the AAA space. I mean, the indie space was so small at that point.

It's hard to even compare it to what it is today. I'm going to pull out one specific feature before we dive into it deeper that is something that is like so simple today that back then was like a mind-blowing feature for half-life the fact that the levels in the game are all um linked together such that you're not like getting to the end of a level, flipping a switch, and then like magically teleporting to the next level. Yeah. The levels in this are like you go through a hallway and there's like a one second load screen and you're in the next level. It's like all this one fluid giant complex, which in addition to feeling great, also helps reinforce the idea that this is a real place that you're trying to escape.

And that shit was like no one had ever done before yeah and also just that it looked like a place that people lived and worked yeah you had a you know uh when you were going to change into your uniform or i guess your special suit that there is a locker room there right and there's a soda machine and the soda machine is like interactable um it felt breathed in one of my favorite things that i noticed this time around is there there is space beyond the walls and what i mean is you know when you go back and you play doom right it's it's this very rigid um polygonal geometry and then there are textures on the wall but really all the walls just are flat and things are painted onto them and here

there are moments where you find like a giant computer bay like a scientific giant massive super computers and at one point they explode and the way that they do that is not just changing the texture, the painting on that geometry there is a hole in it and you can see into it and there's depth and there's like sparks

shooting out of it, which again sounds so primitive. But at the time, it created a sense of realness of like, oh, there is actually a terminal here. Another example that happens throughout the game is an area that you walked past just thinking, oh, that is actually a terminal here. Another example that happens throughout the game is an area that you walked past just thinking, oh, that is a door that I will never go into. There is, you know, there's nothing behind that wall. A explosion will happen and or reveal a way into that space and reveal that there was a room, you know, hiding behind that wall the whole time. It really creates a sense that this isn't like

it's funny we talked about disneyland on besties this week but that there is not a backstage that this is like behind every wall is an actual room that makes sense yeah even though that's not true but they really sell it that way and they do a good job convincing you of that yeah i i'm really like i'll be really curious to hear from people and please write in the newsletter um when you when you listen to this uh if you've never ever played half-life one before and what your reaction was because i obviously some of this is nostalgia peeking in but it's been kind of a wild experience for me. The cool thing for people who have played Half-Life is they also included Half-Life Uplink, which I had never played.

I'd never even heard of Half-Life Uplink. Yes. And this was the demo that was effectively used to promote Half-Life originally. And it's wild to play this game as someone who has played the intro to the original Half-Life maybe a dozen different times. Because it is the exact opposite of the Half-Life intro. They condense effectively the experience of playing Half-Life in its totality into about a half hour. And it's amazing. totality into about a half hour yeah and it's amazing yeah it feels almost like provocative in the same way that like half-life did back then to play a game now that just gets right

into the action so fast feels weirdly modern yeah a little background which i found really interesting and some of this comes from the documentary they just released uh which came out alongside the 25th anniversary update which is free on youtube on valve's youtube channel it's a great documentary um so this half-life uplink was bundled with like a sound card and the only way you could play it is if you downloaded this special if you bought this special sound card and so a lot of people weren't going to play it and then the day they submitted it um the the demo leaked like all over the internet to the point where a lot of people were playing it much more than they were expecting were going to play it

and like magazines were starting to like review the demo saying like we don't normally review this stuff but this game is awesome. And you should be really pumped for the full release of the game. So it ended up being like this great advertisement for Half-Life in a way that like, I don't think they were expecting. It's also like totally new and separate from the main Half-Life campaign. So if you've never played that, this like tells a different story, has different levels. I mean, it's only like, yeah, about 40 minutes long, but it is like a discrete experience, which is extremely cool as well. It feels like speed running Half-Life.

It's bizarre and just such a delight. And I'm so glad that they dug it up. I, yeah, I don't know. I for whatever reason had zero expectations for it, which is silly because they know exactly what they're doing. And yet, so good. You mentioned the documentary. Any other, like, kind of pearls from that? People have been making a big deal about the fact that Gabe Newell, who is the head of valve who who founded valve um has a quote they basically

got a year into the development of half-life and realized it was bad and told sierra the publisher at that point hey we're gonna delay this and we realize like you're not gonna pay us for the extra delay but we just have to hold it because it's bad right now and gabe in the documentary gives the new quote of late is just a little while suck is forever which i think is uh pretty apt i know there's a miyamoto quote that people uh incorrectly associate with him uh a delayed game is eventually good but a rushed game is forever bad which again i don't think is a real quote but this is definitely real quote from gabe and uh it's it really shows like this was the first game that valve put out and the idea that they were willing to take it on the chin financially speaking for a year to make sure that it was right uh really tells you where

their heads were at they all they also the documentary also dives into the idea that like people were working insane hours and they're certainly not cheering that on. But it's also like 22 year olds just like doing it because they wanted to. And no one was like it wasn't really a culture where people would stop them. But some of the other employees that like had families and kids were like, well, I just had to go home. And I was just like like that was fine but yeah people were here until like 4 a.m working on textures and shit like that oh my gosh um did you play any of like the additional maps that they added or any of that stuff i know they added a bunch of um multiplayer

maps to the mix some some character models in addition to the like i think original character model for gordon freeman which is like ivan the space biker who has like this giant beard and is very funny uh but i didn't play any of the multiplayer i mostly just like stuck to uplink which i played through and thought was great and the campaign which again like you talked about uplink being like a speed run it's because it starts out and you've basically just got the crowbar and very few weapons. And then within 10 minutes, you've got like a shotgun and SMG and, you know, all sorts of other shit. Yeah, it feels like a speed run. It reminded me how much of a contrast that is because not only is the intro to Half-Life very like patient, but it's also like essentially a survival horror game for the first three hours.

Where you have very little ammo. Everything can kill you in like three hits. There's very little health to go around. And it's scary as shit. Like things are popping out. There's like a ton of jump scares. And like lasers bursting through the walls and stuff like that. And tonally the game shifts over time where

you're fighting soldiers and it becomes like much more actiony but still like will drip back into those horror moments at times and that balance has not changed for valve uh even in half-life alex which was their vr project where they constantly are like balancing between those two paces of survival horror, slow and like super high intensity action. And it works. It's great for pacing. It's great for storytelling. And it makes it so that you're not getting bored and you're not getting overwhelmed. I don't know if we've talked about this on the podcast, but you and I did some appearances on the Verge cast recently talking about, you know, classic video game preservation and emulation and all sorts of things. Improving old games so that they're just enjoyable enough to play. That sometimes, you know, when you go back, games are broken in ways that are not inherently enjoyable and that actually can keep people away.

But then you are altering an old game. And I think they ran into an interesting problem with this because there are a number of gameplay changes. a number of gameplay changes everything from they improved or changed the physics for throwing grenades to fixing like decades old bugs um and it makes for a crisper and better experience but it is not the original experience and the way that they've accounted for that which i think is interesting is if you go into the beta branch which you can do on steam for any game um under like i think it's under some settings menu there is a steam legacy version of it and that is the pre-25th anniversary build of the game so that allows you to still have the the prior experience and also i i think wisely allows you to still have the prior experience. And also, I think wisely, allows you to still use old mods. Yeah.

Because this is a newer version of the game. Not all mods are going to work with it. And I think that is such a cool way to solve for preservation on digital platforms that you can have access to previous branches of the game. In this case, I mean, it's only two, right? And games get patched countless times. So we're still not at the point where it's like, well, I want to see what the difference is between this patch and that patch. But I think it is a step towards a solution we could see in the future for more games. Yeah, I think it's a really good solve. we could see in the future for more games. Yeah, I think it's a really good solve.

Unfortunately, it's also a solve from Valve, who has infinite money and the ability to like do this sort of shit. Like, can you imagine any other company doing this and not charging $30 for the privilege of being able to play this game that was very popular 30 years ago, 25 years ago? Like, Valve can do that and like does all the time like they frequently discount their games to like pennies on the dollar uh because they really have the resources because of the success of steam to be able to do that and they just want people to play their stuff as well so uh yeah i wish this would be more popular but i also understand

the financial limitations that prevent it from happening yeah um what a cool cool thing i think i'm gonna be half-life like yeah yeah for the first time in probably 20 years uh i like i'm really like you you don't think i'm going to i think you're gonna do what happens to most people which is you get to the final third of that game and you remember how frustrating it is that is the that is in the documentary as well they basically said like look we realize that zen which is the alien part of the game it's i don't know if it's a third. I think it's probably the last like four hours of the game is not great. They basically said that the reason they included it and didn't just cut it from the game is because they were so blown away by the art that was done for that section, which is genuinely pretty stunning. Like the whole Zen area is like so genuinely alien and weird and bizarre and in such high contrast to the rest of the game

that i kind of understand it but they also say like there's a lot of design stuff in there that is like the epitome of first draft like they had no time and they just put it in they're like good enough ship it and uh that's sort of where it landed. I would highlight at this point the Black Mesa team, which, again, remade Half-Life. There's a bunch of fans that remade Half-Life from scratch and got Valve's approval to, like, release it on Steam and all that stuff. Did a much better job at the Zen sequence in their game. So I guess you could play through all of this version of half-life until you get to zen and then switch on over to black mesa or you know just play them all and have a good time i think either way it's gonna be a good good way to spend this holiday season

speaking of holiday season i don't that's not a that's not a segue. No. I want to talk about VR. Do you want to go into the metaverse with me? Yeah, I guess so. Okay, let's do it. Okay, let's talk about VR. Here's the thing. Facebook, a.k.a. Meta, a.k.a. the Oculus Rift, now the Met now the meta quest 3 the name changing is not ideal i think if you just call it quest 3 that's quest 3 because they're all called called quest the

wireless vr headsets are all called quest except for the rift yeah um but the quest 3 is now out and uh i think both of us had tried the quest 2 yep we're okay i liked it it was honestly not only i like it it was my preferred vr headset of all the headsets i use mostly just because like it was a good wireless experience which i've learned wireless vr is definitely the preferred method i don't care if it means a visual hit. It really makes a huge difference in just being able to feel free and literally not tethered. Yes. To be clear, I agree.

I think it was the best option. I still just found it frustrating at times to use. It wasn't an enjoyable or relaxing experience for me to go into VR. Enter the Quest 3, which I have been completely charmed by. The real question I have that we will kind of dig at is like, is this just too late? That would be my number one concern for the Quest 3. But for me, this is the first VR headset that has delivered on the potential and the promise of it and honestly the comfort of it.

And that is because the screen is very good and crisp and it doesn't have that screen door effect where it like looks kind of blurry or pixelated. It looks like a video game would look how you imagined it was going to look when you put on a VR headset for the first time. The ease of use is infinitely better because it has the pass through video. So when you put the headset on, you can see everything around you, you can see everything around you so well that they actually have you use the an app on your phone to like install games and do things like that. It's just easier and more natural.

And I was able to navigate the app on my phone while wearing the VR headset. I, um, I was trying to, we'll talk about the game in a second, but I was trying to coordinate a multiplayer session with Griffin in VR. And I was literally able to message him on Slack while wearing the headset. Yeah. Wild. Yeah, and like typing on a computer.

Yeah, typing on a computer. Also, the app that I mentioned that ties to this, it works. It works really well. You know, I picked up a couple games on the app. It asked me if I wanted them pre-installed, and when I was ready to go play the game, it was all ready for me, and I was all set. picked up a couple of games on the app. I asked me if I wanted them pre-installed. And when I was ready to go play the game, it was all ready for me and I was all set.

Which again, that sounds like small, but all of those things together just make for a more comfortable experience. It was not fun early in the VR stage of, I am going to put on my VR headset to get something to start downloading so that I can then take it off and wait. Having to use VR to like manage your system, not a cool experience. So yeah, the controllers are also very nice and it now has hand tracking. So even if you don't have the controllers next to you, you can use your hands to navigate all the different systems. It's just really, really well done.

Yeah, I think it's great hardware. I think it's the best VR headset I've used and I've used the high-end PlayStation VR 2, which is, from a spec standpoint great but is lacking things like the you know audio without headphones which i really like not having to wear headphones while i'm doing vr and still being able to hear the game um and also it's just like very light the quest 3 is just like you can wear it and not feel like you're being weighed down by it. Yeah, yeah. The big challenge is the software. Yeah.

Is what do you play on this? And I will be clear up front, there's some things I've really enjoyed, but there's just not a lot. Right. And that seems strange for how far we are, how many years we are into this. What did you play?

Yeah, I've played a bunch of stuff over the years uh but most most recently specifically for this a few of the games i played i mentioned the multiplayer game this was actually the first time i've ever done multiplayer in vr i never like got around to trying it was a game called dungeons of eternity um which is a game title I keep forgetting, but it is essentially a FPS RPG like dungeon crawler with progression hooks where like you'll level up and find more gear and unlock like perks for your character and whatever. But honestly, in this scenario where you're trying to get people to play multiplayer in VR, all you want them to do is be able to jump get motion sick very easily but if a game has teleport i have no problems uh this game has that but it also has like natural motion if you have no problem with motion sickness um i was really really blown away by it um just because like it was just like instantly a fun uh experience i was like throwing daggers at spiders as griffin is like chugging health just because it was just like instantly a fun experience.

I was like throwing daggers at spiders as Griffin is like chugging health potions and throwing firebombs at people. It was like really genuinely exciting. I played Assassin's Creed Nexus. Oh, yeah. Which is sick. I am so impressed by this, and I was very, very skeptical. I saw a promotional trailer for it, I think at the Quest 3 reveal event, and visually it wasn't doing much for me at all.

headset being in assassin's creed uh specifically the etio era even if it does kind of look like that era it looks you know late xbox 360 early xbox one um it's still really cool and impressive and the way that they do it there's kind of two phases with like a lot of Assassin's Creed games. There's the like hacker meta story. And did you get a chance to try any of this? No, I haven't played Nexus. So the hacker thing that gets you into the game is like minority report in your room. So it's using mixed reality. It's using that pass-through video

where you can see your room, but then there are kind of like screens popping up that you are working your way through as like kind of a business employee. And then you get some – like you get taken to effectively an office of your supervisor who is giving you like work tasks. And it's just very very it's very clever um from there you get transported back in time and you are put into the shoes of etzio and it's an assassin's creed experience you uh walk around these you know um uh like villas or uh kind of mansions in distant Italy, and you stealth kill people. You can, if you like kind of whip your hand,

you sling out the blade, the hidden blade, and you can sneak up behind people and stab them. Does it feel weird to stab guys? Because I know they do haptics in Dungeons of Eternity, up behind people and stab them uh you does it feel weird to stab guys or is there like because i know they do haptics in dungeons of eternity which actually kind of sells the weight of it it kind of works i found that the sword fighting worked better for me yeah in terms of it like feeling like oh okay i'm clinking and clanking um but it's still feel I mean, it just feels cool to sneak around. I, I'm finding that a stealth game is kind of a nice match for VR, especially something like this, because it does move slowly. And you can be methodical. I played with like actually walking around in a 3d space using the the joystick on on one of the Quest controllers, and it didn't make me nauseous.

So I don't know what they're doing there. I did notice when you move around very quickly, the faster you move, the corners of the screen actually dim. Yeah, it's called vignetting or horse blinders. It's a common vr technique that some games use to minimize motion sickness unfortunately it doesn't work for me i've tried that as well but i would imagine there's probably some way to do teleport as well

teleporting yeah um and yeah if you you might want that if you are weak to the stomach because not only are you running around, but there's a lot of climbing in the game. So you have to do that by standing up and reaching up and grabbing on to these little pieces of brick as you ascend a three or four story wall. And you can look down and see the drop. you know, a three or four story wall, and you can look down and see the drop. And there are the leaps of faith that you have in Assassin's Creed games where you jump off of very tall buildings. So it's definitely a test on the tummy, that it does a lot that it never really bothered me. The only thing I'll say, and this is kind of a challenge that I have with all VR is definitely by an hour, even by a half hour, I've just had enough. Yeah. It is so overwhelming of my senses to be in a VR headspace, like not just making me nauseous. It's just a lot that I need to get out.

lot um that i i i need to get out and on one hand that's cool i like short gaming sessions on the other hand it it does feel a little weird to get into something like assassin's creed and even though i'm having fun my brain is like okay that's that's enough you you need to you need to take a break because otherwise you're going to start melting down yeah i think that's why there are probably fewer narrative vr experiences that like you know can go for 20 or 30 hours uh because yeah people just don't have the tolerance for it but i do think smart developers develop with that in mind uh you know dungeons dungeons of eternity like 20 or 30 minutes uh is a run and and you could just stop at the end of that and feel like you accomplished something uh half-life alex doesn't work on quest natively but you can play it over like if you're wired or wireless using steam vr

you can do that and that game was also designed in these like 20 minute chunks and i think that is like a really perfect length. Yeah, I will say for hardcore Assassin's Creed fans, the Assassin's Creed games, I think are always quite good at historical tourism. Obviously, the stories aren't realistic, but they're a chance to walk around thoughtful versions of recreating the past, right? What's interesting about Nexus is it's not so much about tourism of the past as it is tourism of Assassin's Creed. So being able to like go to Ezio's house, if you're a mega fan of the series, to be able to actually walk around that estate, it's really neat. You're not learning anything about history, but it is cool to be able to go into a game that I, or a series I've really enjoyed in the past and suddenly feel kind of like

it's a lived in space. And this is where Ezio was fucking. And this is where, this is where the magic happens. Um, yeah, it was neat. I also played power wash simulator.

Did you play much of this? because the one thing that holds the original back is just from an input standpoint it's kind of awkward to do the power washing simulator with a controller or even a mouse at that point there's like it just doesn't feel as fluid as it could be for what it is and i always imagine that vr would be a really good platform for it and honestly like i think it is but i do think that the version of power watch simulator that is currently live on the quest store is a little underbaked for where it should be i'll give you a couple examples for one thing if you bought a quest 3 recently at least the version that i played did not have quest three support, which is to say it ran on the quest three, but it's not supporting like it's full resolution,

uh, screen and seems to be really taking a hit on like textures and a lot of other stuff. It still plays well, but it feels like it should be playing better, uh, given the hardware. But if you're looking for something like very chill,

it is a very chill VR experience. So that is kind of the benefit of it. And it has a lot of like teleport motion or natural motion, whatever you're into on that side. I know you felt like it was a little revealing of the nature of PowerWatch Simulator. Yeah, yeah. This is not a fair critique because you can say this about i think it's funny i think it's a funny critique it it really hammers

home the silliness of video games when you spend a half hour washing a make-believe truck in virtual reality and then you go and get in your car and it's filthy and you're like you're just like why did i do that why why why am i doing free labor in a video game when i could just come out and do that same labor for myself and the answer is obvious like you're not getting soaking wet you're gonna use this super cool power wash tool It just works how you would like it to work in real life. Don't get me wrong. It's cool. It just, I couldn't shake it. I could not shake it. And when I really, when it really broke me is I, with this like filthy van, I cleaned all of it. I was at 99% and you can hit a button that reveals all the gunk. And I could not find this gunk. And then I realized, oh, it wants me to clean out the grates on the front of this van.

So here I am in my office kneeling down in my VR headset, you know, using like the finest tooth comb of power wash to get inside of this grate and get out all these dead flies or whatever. And I did have a real like, what the fuck am I doing? Like, this can't, this isn't right. I just like the purity of it. I like how direct it is about an experience that you could be having in real life, but you're doing it in a virtual world. Insofar as like, I'm never going to run a farm. Like that's never going to happen for me,

but I might have to wash my car. And I just like the purity and simplicity of that, even though I agree with you, it does make me look inward sometimes. I also just love where they choose to like stick to reality. Like, again, you have this super power washer you can change it use all these different novels all these different things it's so good like stuff just flood dirt and gunk is flying off your car right but hey if you want

to clean off the roof you better get a step stool you can't fly in this universe that would be weird like what just let me like why why am i getting a step stool i can i'm i am the super washer and yet here i am you know troubled by my lack of height and the the troubles of gravity um yeah anyway long story short the meta quest 3 quite good it's good hardware i here here's what i'm gonna say if you've tried vr before it wasn't for you this is definitely not for you either like i don't think it changes anything that dramatically to make it like a world-changing experience i think if you are a vr snob it is a great way to experience vr it's like the best wireless headset that exists right now for vr um but i would say if you feel like you've played everything over the last like five or six years that are on all the like best of games lists

those lists have not dramatically changed over those five or six years. So, you know, while there are a few cool games to check out, Nexus, Dungeons of Eternity, both great games, you're not going to see a ton of releases coming out all the time that are like, wow, I wonder what's on VR now. Like there just aren't that many amazing games coming out on the platform. And I don't think there will be because the audience is still really, really small. So that is sort of what you're fighting between. Cool. I think we have like,

we have one piece of reader mail that I want. Oh, that's exciting. Oh my gosh. I just realized who this is from. This is from Evan Minsker, who actually is a friend. Evan Minsker writes for Pitchfork, and people should read his stuff.

It's a delight. Evan wrote, Boys, were you aware that there was a Like a Dragon Gaiden, the man who erased his name, Street Fight tonight on AEW Dynamite, featuring Cosplay and the team of Chris Jericho, The Big Show, Kenny Omega, and Kota Ibushi. Please consider watching it and reporting back if you do. I did not know. I have dug up the video on YouTube. This looks awesome and i am going to drop it into the newsletter because what a joy that is uh that the world would give us this uh is this when you're going to also talk

about the fact that you made me play that game oh yeah we should probably talk about that right yeah yeah i guess i can kind of blend into like honorable mentions or dishonorable mentions in your case. Plants Recommendation. Plant wrote a very good review about how this is like a great entry point because it's kind of like a, you know, welcoming people to the series, but in like a truncated way. The game is called Like a Dragon Gaiden. The man who forgot his name. Did I get that right?

I think erased his name. Erased his name. It's the Half-Life uplink of Like a Dragon Gaiden. Yeah. And it was fine. I sort of come away from all of these Yakuza games feeling the same way, which is I really, really like when they get super-duper weird. Like, you're fighting a bear that just escaped from the zoo.

I am, like, so gung-ho about that. But so much of these games is focused around around like yakuza politics and like backstabbing and like crime drama stuff that doesn't land with me at all and it's like 90 that and like 10 a pretty serviceable beat-em-up game. And I'm sort of at a point where I don't know that I can play any more of these. I think that is fair. I will say for people who do enjoy these games, like myself,

this is not the best one at all. But it is, I think, the silliest. Within minutes, you have Spider-Man powers. Within hours, you have a swarms of drones. You have cigarettes that are bombs that you can throw at people. There is a giant floating Sin theme park, I guess. Not Sim, Sin of just, you know know lust and blood and blood lust it is so cheesy in such a delight and i think uh yeah a really fun way to kind of wrap up i guess not even wrap up but

transition this character ahead of the like a dragon turn-based game which is now kind of like the main line that is coming out i believe in the end of january yes i'm around there i should also mention i had no idea who this character was but i gleaned enough to know that they had a sordid past and then they entered a monastery the games that's who it is it's the one who's in all of the games really yes all of the games the very recent one that one has ichiban in it and that is the first time we've had a different main character there are like side characters who you play but this is this is the main character well who did i play in ishin well you played him and like dressed up his historical version of it got it okay person but yeah this is this is the guy.

This is him. He's going to Hawaii next? He is, and here's how I'm going to get you to play that one. There is an entire Animal Crossing game within it. Mm. Uh-huh. See, you're a little curious. I mean, I like Hawaii as a setting.

That is encouraging. I'm putting the football down. I'm saying take a good swing at it. I think you can kick it this time. Yeah. Yeah, I like this game. I'll drop my review in the newsletter too. Anything else that you have been enjoying?

I think that's it. My free time was really spent playing that game. And so I wasn't able to experience any time with my family. My son was sick and I just left him to the wolves to see how he would fare. He did pretty well. I got to say he did fine. But yeah, no,

I don't think there's, I'm still watching Harley Quinn. This season of Harley Quinn has been phenomenal. That series continues to be just spectacular. Definitely one of my favorite animated series. So yeah, I continue to recommend that. Did you watch the Frog and Toad show on Apple TV Plus? No.

Children's cartoon. So there's a children's cartoon version of Frog and Toad that is quite loyal to the books. It's very sweet and just delicate and nice. And I'm watching it, and out of nowhere, this character comes on,

delivers one line, and I'm like, that's Ron. What's Ron doing in this show? Just showing up. Here he is. He's got one thing to say. just, just showing up just here. Here he is. He's got one thing to say.

I hope he's in more episodes, but immediately I was like, I was the Leo DiCaprio meme pointing at the TV being like, that's our guy. He's right there. You know, what's very funny about Ron and Harley Quinn Ron, for those that don't know,

play plays King shark in Harley Quinn is even though he's King Shark, which is just a large shark person, he's still a fucking dork in Harley Quinn. They make him the IT guy at the Legion of Doom, and he's just into the stuff that Ron is into. So I love that they've really informed the character off of just Ron. He has some really great stuff in in this new season yeah that rolls um cool uh i think that's it i think we did an episode to recap for everybody we talked about who let me see we talked about half-life 25th anniversary we talked about half-life uplink which if you want to try that, it is inside of the menu for Half-Life. So again, if you already own Half-Life and you download it, when you play a new game, it'll give you the option to pick that if you want to give it a go.

We also talked about the MetaQuest 3. And we talked about Dungeons of Eternity, Power Wash Simulator VR, Assassin's Creed Nexus, and then we talked about Like a Dragon Gaiden, which I enjoyed, Frog and Toad on Apple TV+, and Harley Quinn on Max. Awesome. And that's it. If you want links to all those different things and a number of things that we mentioned throughout this episode, including that AEW pro wrestling match featuring Sega cosplay, you can find that in our newsletter at besties.fan. Please go and subscribe.

It's much appreciated. Another thing that you can do if you enjoy the show, because hey, it's the giving season, go leave a review. Go to Apple Podcast, find the besties, and leave one of those, if you want, five-star review. It goes a long way. It helps us get the word out to the show. And the very, the very best thing you can do is just share the show with a friend. Because not only are you helping us out, but you're making their life better, you know? And tis the season. And that's it. That's it for the Resties. We did it.

We love it. This is the Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. I'm Christopher Thomas Plant. You are... I'm Russ Frustik, Not how we end the show. And now here's where we say it. Ready? Rusties. Definitely not how we end the show.