The Besties - The Magical Butts of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

We're ditching the gruesome violence of the Borderlands franchise in exchange for the whimsical violence of Tiny Tina's Wonderlands; an exchange that then inspires us to reinvent Doom for an all-ages audience. Also discussed: The Afterparty, Dragon Quest V, Bloons TD 6+, All in the Timing 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!

Even though I know y'all have tried to explain it to me numerous times, I'm still not convinced that we know the difference between baking, broiling, and roasting. Specifically because Justin keeps saying that bread is used for baking, which I agree with. Yes, you make bread. I agree. I'm glad. And roasting is for chicken. If you disagreed with that, that would be the wildest thing ever.

Okay, and roasting is for chicken. Roasting is for chicken. And non-dough products sure so i agree with both of those things but thank you just saying you use like this for one and this for other does not define the difference between baking and roasting if i cut a limb off of you that's an amputation yes if i cut a limb off a tree i'm gardening. Or, no, no, no. It matters what you're doing the action to. If you cut a limb off a frush in a hospital when

he needs it, it's amputation. If you cut a limb off a frush when he doesn't need it, it's a crime. What about when he deserves it? This is something that a lot of people are kind of on the fence about. I don't think you deserve to have your arm amputated, Russ. I'm not saying he does.

I think sometimes. I mean, he didn't say arm. It's marketing. Oh, that's how they get you with it. Yes. It's a marketing thing. That's what I'm saying. It's a marketing thing.

They're trying to sell different kinds of heat, and it's bullshit. Why is it? Can I make a point? Yeah. None of this is funny yeah none of i was just thinking the same thing that's so weird so weird i just want to get the word out i just sorry i i know i know we're worried about humor here but i do want to confirm that baking is 250 to 375 degrees fahren. Roasting is 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

And broiling is 500 to 550 degrees Fahrenheit. That doesn't track. It's an arbitrary decision. I'm just saying that I went directly to the Maytag man, and the Maytag man is in my house right now. He's part of the problem. Yeah, he's big oven. He's big oven.

Oh, no, here comes Maytag man. He's a big oven. Oh, no. Here comes Maytag Man. He's a big oven. Get out of there. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I am here for you this week. My name is Russ Froschig, and I know the best game of the week. This week on The Besties, American McGee is back with Tiny Tina's Wonderland

headed back through the looking glass for another gothic adventure no it has nothing to do with American McGee American McGee's Alice or any such property it is a Borderlands spinoff technically I guess a spinoff of Borderlands DLC

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands it is new it's from Gearbox. And Chris, what is it? You just said it all. It's a first person shooter multiplayer, but you nailed it all. Let's take a break. And we will be right back

to talk about Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. Who got the most Borderlands like under their belt before? Are any of you like big Borderlands fans? I have played many dozens of hours of both borderlands one and borderlands two and even i even played the pre-sequel on switch so i've played a lot of borderlands i haven't played three to be clear but i heard three is pretty rough yeah i also heard i i'm in the i'm in the same boat i never

got like like destiny deep up in one of them, but I think I've played, like, all except for three. I'm not sure I've completed one, but I spend a lot of time in them. But this is sort of a fresh, a breath of fresh air. You're no longer in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. You are in a fantasy world designed by Tiny Tina, a beloved character from the Borderlands franchise. And in this game,

you are in a sort of like Dungeons and Dragons game of Tina's creation. You are playing with her and Andy Samberg and Wanda Sykes, just like all those dreams I've had my whole life. I'm playing Dungeons and Dragons with Wanda Sykes. So it's nice to see that finally come to fruition. And I mean, that's the bad, and there's a bad guy too. It's Will Arnett.

Yes, is the bad guy. Yeah, he's the bad guy. And it's a, that's, it's sort of like a fantasy shooter, like the construct of Borderlands with like more fantasy trappings. Yeah, so I remember the first announcement of this.

And first I like, even though Tiny Tina was in it, I didn't really grok that it was a Borderlands game. It actually took me a really long time to realize that it's called Wonderlands because it's like Borderlands. It's like the lands series. Oh, my God. This exact moment is when I was getting that.

Woof, guys. Woof them. And I was wondering why that is. Why wouldn't they just call it Tiny Tina's Borderlands D&D Adventure or whatever? Probably not D&D, but you know what I mean. And it occurred to me, and I confirmed this, that this is a T-rated game, and all of the other Borderlands games are heavy M-rated games, mature only.

And I think they wanted to basically create an offshoot of this extremely popular shooter franchise that people that aren't relative adults could play. I don't notice that kind of thing, but that's interesting that that was maybe part of the design. That also makes sense because the humor doesn't feel like it's for grownups anyway. Yeah, it definitely- Like any Borderlands game.

Well, it definitely seems like it is aiming for a younger audience in the humor. So I agree with you. Let's talk about the humor. We'll just start there and then we'll get into the other thing. There's a lot of it. There's a, well, there's a lot of jokes. There's a lot of jokes. I don't want to, I mean, I think it's weird to

dictate, you know, what is and isn't funny. That's going to hit people differently. Here's a, this is a revelation that I had while playing this game and I would love to get your is a revelation that I, that I had while playing this game. And I would love to get your ass thoughts on. I think that this, this sort of humor has been part of this sort of game for a very long time.

And I think that it is doomed from the very first time and it will never work. And this is what I mean by that. This idea of like people throwing off one liners that are supposed to be humorous in reaction to the things you find in an open world setting, it is never going to be funny. Comedy like is so much about the timing and when like something happens and timing that joke exactly right. And like having a bunch of like quote-unquote jokes that trigger from your actions in the world is never gonna land it's it doesn't matter if the joke's funny or not funny it can't be funny in a vacuum which is what this is relying on for so much of the of the humor in the game to

say nothing of the fact that one joke even if it lands with you you will almost certainly hear it repeated uh and nothing is funny the second time like that that will never work i mean it's more you're going to laugh well so the second time at it i i i think that there's actually a great comparison here and i don't know if you like this sort of thing but it reminds me of sitcoms in that like i don't feel like sitcoms rely so much on timing they rely on volume it's just how many jokes can we get in and a general feeling of like oh this is a nice place to hang out and you talk about like hearing the same joke over and over again in sitcoms you hear i mean the same structure of a joke endless times and then there are jokes that they like they actually do just repeat over and over as catchphrases for sure but like there are timed

to what is happening you know what I mean like it's timed specifically to the event I agree I just would say it's like less timed because again it I don't feel like they care as much so long as they get the mandatory you know like whatever the mathematical algorithm is of 50 jokes in a 30-minute episode. I do want to address the timing thing, because not to, again, go down this, like, rabbit hole, but there are moments that I think really land quite well in this when the narrative, which is delivered by Tiny Tina, she's the DM, and is basically, like, explaining the events of what's happening in this like D and D style adventure will be like, like the first time that it jumped out at me was you sort of arrive at this giant castle. And she's like, and then the skeleton showed up and then the giant warships.

And as she's saying these things, they're like dropping into existence. Yeah. Like that stuff I think works really well. And I kind of wish there was more of it. Yeah. The things that are more scripted like yeah like that stuff i think works really well and i kind of wish there was more of it yeah the things that are more scripted like that it's it's uh tiny tina is played by ashley birch who uh played uh aloy in the um horizon game she's got range and yeah and in addition to a bajillion other things yeah but i think that she really like helps with the, the charisma of that

to help keep it sort of, like, light and fun in that way. It's endeared, like, even when the jokes don't land from, you know, any character or any direction that they're coming from, because they come at you from all directions all the time,

it is, I was constantly endeared by, like, this little girl is girl is like trying to walk you through this like fantasy world that she's very enthusiastic about. Which I did not expect. I think she's probably a teenager at this point, right? Okay. Well, I did not expect that like kind of almost sweet natured storytelling from time to time. Wrapped in a heavy layer of like butt like butt jokes yeah there's a lot of butt jokes it genuinely makes me wonder like if i was a 10 to 12 year old like is this not my total wheelhouse

it might be i don't know yeah sure the only thing that is i wonder about that is like portabend's it's weird i just said that it's for younger people but there's something about it that's like late millennial almost early gen x type of like goofy humor i mean it's the people that are writing it so that yeah well we talked about it with psychonauts too and i i don't know i i'm curious if kids find this like cringe or if it works. I don't know. I mean, there are some things that hit me with a wave of cringe that like I had to set the controller down. The first time my main character yelled cast magic and yelled spell.

Yeah. And then the 10th time they did it, I was really in a rough place. I think emotionally I had to take a second for myself. Yeah. And I mean, it's just, that's so much of the character of this game. I wish that they didn't feel, it's this other thing of like, not everything has to be like a quote unquote joke. has to be like a quote unquote joke. Not everything has to,

like so many of the names are just like have butt or some other like sort of goofy thing randomly inserted in there as like a substitute for humor, like joke adjacent. That's funny. I don't look, you know, if you like borderlands jokes or not, I don't want to get lost in the sauce a little bit. You're talking about the guns because the guns are.

Yeah. Let's talk about the actual gameplay. Cause think we've yeah analyzed it guns again i would say like you know i was talking at the earlier earlier in the show about how i was surprised that this was a borderlands game um and i was when i started playing it again uh i was even more surprised at just how borderlands it is if you remove the like theming of it because like functionally it is exactly i would say 95 of it is exactly like the gameplay of a borderlands game which is not a bad thing a lot of people love where i have played a lot of borderlands and i I love those games. But it is worth noting, if you're expecting a more RPG bent to it, there really isn't one.

There's just not. Yeah, there is a leveling up system, and it is very confusing as to what exactly each of the skills, or what you would want to increase in a given moment. Well, that's an example of something that has been in Borderlands from the beginning and always felt kind of weak to me because you get interesting like character builds and stuff like that but it takes many many hours to get there early on you're just like oh i want two percent more gun damage or that's it it's three percent more health like it's kind of a

you know it's one of those situations granular in's so granular in a way that is really tough to appreciate. If your game, in even the early stages, if I level up and feel nothing, that's not a great sign that the progression hook in your game is strong. But when I level up and I'm like, oh, okay, I can increase my melee attack speed by 8% and increase my status attack speed by eight percent and increase my status effect damage by two percent like who gives a shit i could not i could it's i was very

disappointed that that was not i don't know maybe i just assumed because of the fantasy trappings that there would be a little bit more i just thought they take a little more risks with the back and and they do take some risks with like borderlands format there's like this uh like an overworld like board game almost where you that you march around and like have a little quest things going on with like even random encounters in an open world as a cool idea of doing an open world where it's like cutting down on the amount of like getting from a to b at least making that kind of different and fun i think it's a really smart idea it's got big toy story energy too like you knock down bottle caps to form bridges like all that all that stuff is is yeah find a big cheeto blocking your path it's fun i also wanted

to say i really liked making my character which is a first for a borderlands game i mean borderlands traditionally has like very locked down characters because it's like the classes and you can't really customize them that much early on and here you had like full control over so much of it from like you know facial scars the preferred pronouns to you know uh for the body type section so in days of yore this was like male or female basically and now they just say under body type this or that which is just like yeah this one or that one yeah this one or that one which i think is a really great touch i uh there's also an option to disable slider limiting oh we need to fuck with that i know i know i know um i really liked that i i was really torn about the gun like i will say like

again this is a borderlands game like the pistols are like crossbows but like they're pistols like they look a little bit like crossbows but they're pistols so like well they can't get they can't get nothing past you juice i know yeah no man no i just didn't want people to think that i'm like i mean the first thing you get is a crossbow but it's like a small crossbow it's pistol yeah it's fun it's fun um but a lot of the guns don't look anything like a fantasy weapon they just look like a reskin borderlands gun like it's you know there's assault rifles and shotguns and all that stuff um there is a sword but it's or a melee weapon i guess you'd say but it's really not that important um i really mean you can have a you can

have a melee but like there's classes that have that they all have some level of importance depending on what kind of build you're going for but again like that's borderlands like it is there's not a whole lot of new newness i was very put off by uh i like the speed at which you get new gear i think that that's cool um i also think that it's neat that it doesn't like you really don't get locked into like one gear setup for too long because you're constantly finding something that's incrementally better. Yeah. I don't like how much time I spent in menus managing my equipment. So like every time that there would be a big fight, you know, drop 30 pieces of gear.

And then I have to go into the menu and manually check each piece of gear to see if it's better than the one I'm wearing. And if it's not, then I have to press the left thumb stick to mark it as junk. And I'm like doing that management constantly. And I just wish there was a button that's like put all the best stuff on me and put everything else in the track. Because I don't – I hated that level of like micromanaging my equipment. Yeah, I don't remember – I don't think it was this game that they edited i think it was borderlands 2 maybe where they added the concept of a gear score where it like gives you a number of how good a thing is and that's super useful like it's a very shorthand way to do that but this is another area where i just wish like they're

taking chances it's a new quote-unquote new franchise just like let me just sell shit from my inventory or give me infinite inventory slots like why why there's a carry weight rotation just doesn't make any sense bullets that's that you know as a possibility it's like something like here's here's the great thing though this game has online multiplayer and you can play co-op with each other and it has split screen and yeah i feel like for a lot of people yeah borderlands more borderlands with those two options is like quite literally all you need yeah it is good like i don't want to be like reductive like that i'm not saying that all of our feelings good and bad aren't important i'm just saying honestly i might

end up playing a lot more of this game than other stuff this year just because i'm like you know move to a new city lonely boy need to need to spend time with friends and this is a great way to do it and i don't know there was there was a while where i felt like we were getting a lot of that with shooters but i can't think of the last time not really yeah yeah portnight is available and maybe just people don't want to try to compete with it i would wonder how much how it is doing co-op so i played completely by myself um i would wonder how it is doing co-op with somebody with that gear management going on because i feel like that would be very very i did it to constantly have it away i did it with uh my wife we play borderlands 2 on our vita or something like that together. And I will

say... The way God intended. The way God intended. And I will say, it's not the best. Like, there are definitely moments where it's just like, the other person is like, obsessing over which shotgun to take, and you just want to get shit done. That, oftentimes, for what it's

worth, I was the one obsessing. I was going to gonna say that sounds a lot more like you than it does yeah i i just think but i would say i was looking back so the original borderlands came out in 2009 which at this point is 13 years ago and there are probably people that were let's say in their like mid to late teens when the original Borderlands came out who now have kids and maybe want to play something like that with their kids but do not feel comfortable playing a game where people get melted by acid or burned alive.

And here, you're just fighting skeletons and ghosts and zombies or whatever other fantasy tropes there are. I mean, it's still T-rated because you are still i guess firing guns and stuff but it is definitely nice there's a lot of people in my family the midwest who will not let their kids play call of duty who will let them play halo yeah and like i i feel like that's that's the difference here i also just it's wild when you say the original borderlands came out in 2009 fresh were you at the the original press preview for this?

I was at a press preview somewhere in Brooklyn. Yeah, there was like in the middle of like, I'm sure now it's like some super expensive corner of Brooklyn. But it was like, I don't know, like some old factory or something. It was a weird spot for an event. And I remember seeing this game and being like, this is nothing. Like, why did they spend so much money on an event for this? What is this? And then

it ended up being the biggest thing. Oh, I was totally sold at that event. You were sold on it? Yeah. Because I had loved Diablo at that point. So the idea of Diablo plus the shooter, I played just a metric ton of that game, both at the event and when it when it came out so i get it chris plant just doesn't have vision is really what i guess that's true

also it looked like dookie i i just i want it doesn't make sense to me that i'm not deeply into borderlands and never have been because it's it hits all of the on paper like all the stuff i love like it's the goose it's i don't I genuinely don't think that's it, though. I think I can put up with bad goofs. It's that the feel of the game has never really clicked for me. And that's, like, a very granular thing to get into because every shooter has, like, a different pace and a different time to kill

and a different, like, emphasis on abilities versus, you know, the skill of the player. And it just feels like borderlands kind of has the the like final fantasy 14 problem where when it first launched nobody had played world of warcraft or any of the other mmos that had come out since like the last one that they released and so it just feels like if it feels weirdly antiquated in a world where like a lot in a warframe destiny. I almost said anthem, but that would have been humiliating. Yeah, I mean, I think at this point, this format of Borderlands,

I mean, in the same way that Borderlands 3, part of the reason that it got a little bit shredded was because the expectation, it had been five or six or however many years since borderlands 2 the expectation was that there was some evolution of the format and not just like a we're gonna keep hammering this format over and over again and here they are basically doing again with a different coat of paint um and yeah i'm just not not especially impactful it did not feel like a very very different experience

from when i played you know borderlands 2 for a long time yeah i did want i felt myself really wanting and this could just be the types of games i've been playing lately but in the um like big fights the the ones that are supposed to be challenging i felt like um so much of the fights were more about like my numbers versus their numbers. Like I would love and just like firing off my special ability whenever, you know, the ticker went up. sort of like block or counter or something to like bring you in a little bit more because it's like it's it's it feels a little uh flat and again i think that's that's always been an issue with borderlands which is you get those points much later in the game once your build is developed and you get action skills and active abilities and stuff like that where you can be more engaged

with it early on all you're really doing is like shooting your guns and throwing grenades in this case spells um and yeah i just i want a little more of that front loaded uh would be great but that being said i did have a little mushroom companion that ran around after me and shredded guys up so that was pretty good yeah uh i i started a few characters for this very reason because i was like this feels i don't feel anything different from the last i don't feel anything like this this feels indiscernible from borderlands i wonder if there is a class that is like you know wildly different gameplay experience because i don't really like the shooting and all that stuff so is there one that is like has way less emphasis and the answer is like yes there's a spell caster one that focuses mostly on spells and you can like build them to a point where you know their

shit recharges so fast you don't even need to use guns or there's the melee build that like you know they heal themselves so quickly and attack so quickly and have reduced damage whenever they're close to enemies so you can just run around chopping and it's like that's awesome but you're not going to get to that until you level up a bunch and there's you can multi-class in in the game and like have one of these very specific builds and until then it's it's it it you know it's what you would expect from from just takes a while yeah so i would i would say put a bow on it if you like borderlands and you want more of what you're familiar with with borderlands you should probably just pick this up and be very happy because there's plenty to like on that front um if you've got a younger

gamer in your life and you've always been worried about having them play a borderlands game because of the violence this is somewhat of a solve for that. But if you're kind of done with Borderlands because you feel like you've done it, yeah, probably not for you. I also feel like I was paying too close attention to it the way I was playing it. You were trying to like min-max it like an Elden Ring.

More just like I wasn't also like this is going to sound derogatory but I don't mean it to. I wasn't also like, this is going to sound derogatory, but I don't mean it to. I wasn't also like smoking weed and talking to a friend. Like it feels like, don't pay that closely. Don't like, you're overthinking it. You know what I mean?

I think that is right. A little bit. I would like go in my inventory. And I think in past games, I would, as I mentioned, obsess over like shotguns. And here I was like, that's the first five hours. I'm just going to like throw away everything that's the first five hours i'm just gonna like throw away everything that's under gear score 100 basically and that's fine like you will not get hurt by doing that i think you should kind of adopt a yolo mentality because everything is reversible

and not a big deal using the kids language yolo yeah yeah yolo cringe i got a yolo mentality we're gonna yolo real quick and, we're gonna YOLO real quick and then we're gonna YOLO right back after this YOLO. YOLO. So we've seen Tiny Tina's Wonderlands manage to take what is effectively a very hard M-rated video game franchise

and make it a little nicer, a little more welcoming, a T-rating. I'm gonna challenge you to go a little bit further to that extent. Let's make an E-rated version of Doom. How do we do that? Who is it for? I guess E for all. For children.

E? E for everyone. Not T, E. E for everyone. Yes, E for everyone. Okay, so the classic way of doing this, and I feel like we need to talk about the easiest way of doing it first because that way we don't have to spend a lot of time on it,

is to make it a biology thing, right? So like history is littered with blast the germs. Sure. Blast the polyps. Blast the checks. Yeah, blast the germ. Sure. Blast the polyps. Blast the checks. Yeah, blast the checks. Blast the tartar off the teeth. That kind of thing is one possible.

We need a metaphor for shooting that isn't like killing. You know what I mean? I feel like that is possible. I mean, they are killing the germs, but I get what you mean. So really, what they have in the soul. Or there's the Chex Quest route, right? Where you gotta eat those sweet, sweet alien Chex.

Or the Noah's Ark route, where you're feeding crackers to ducks or whatever. Which I like a lot. There has to be a gun. It's not a Doom if there's not a gun. Right, so how do we rebrand the gun to be something a little more family-friendly? How do we...

Now we're talking about... We're doing the fucking NRA's job for them right now is basically, how do we make guns less like, you know, a gun? Well, could it be a pencil? And maybe they're like doing their homework on the enemies. Oh, that's great. And teaching them that way. No, no, no, no, no, no.

What if it is these like picket fences that are the enemies, right? And they're surrounding you and you have a gun that sprays whitewash on it. And then after the kid did it, you'd be like, lesson learned, kid. I tricked you into painting the fence. Like you take the VR helmet off

and it's fully Ender's Game. Like, yes, you did actually paint my fence. And learn about Tom Sawyer in the process. Yes, it wasn't a simulation. Tom Sawyer 2022 actually makes it so you paint my fence at the end of it. I like that. I'm pretty sure that you're not supposed

to put VR helmets on kids though. What? While you hand them real paint. My kids are fine. Yeah, my kids got a huge head and great eyes. Powerful eyes. Powerful eyeballs. Yeah, it does need a lesson, right?

Like, you can't make a game for kids without it, like, teaching them. Yeah. You know who it's been a while since I've talked to? It's my old friend, Math Blaster. And we could do, like, a sort of a... Iaster and we could do like a sort of uh i mean we could do math blaster but with like a story or number muncher no probably math blaster has more doom dna and yeah you have blasted hello griffin it's your dear friend math blaster oh math blaster it's been a it's been a minute how are are you doing, bud? Oh, my back.

It hurts, and I ran out of the pills. I haven't been able to go to Costco. All that time in zero gravity must have done a real number on your bones, Math Blaster. They're so frail now that I've returned to Mother Gaia. Math Blaster, are you still living in a floppy disk? Oh, no, I left the floppy disk so many years ago it says here that you had a um you did have a facebook game back in like 2017 uh and that was huge for you it seems like what's wrong math blaster the notifications yeah one two three four well math blaster you

didn't just count you're not the count you. You did math. Yeah, there was math too. Plus one, plus two. This character, Chris, is really bumping up against the fact that I feel like you don't know a whole lot about Math Blaster. That does seem evident. He doesn't know counting, so that's a start. It's a blast. It's a graveyard bash. He did the match.

Right. Okay. yeah it's a graveyard bash he did the match right okay now so on mars specifically is there any need for math yes because i don't want to change the environments that seems like too much work too yes do you have any other questions about mars that was not as much who's lived on mars and the only question you have to ask is math still useful? Yes. It feels like the character you're doing is an older man who walked into our studio and then pretended to be Math Blaster.

But didn't know anything about Math Blaster. But didn't know anything about Math Blaster. Which is like a fun... I actually kind of am into that. That's kind of avant-garde but it's a thinker yeah it's a thinker math blaster that's your real name be honest math math blaster but who are you one question could you validate my car yeah yeah no he's just here for validation that is very clear

both personal validation and car validation well i'll just step outside this window ah oh good it's so important that we kill our characters when we feel like they don't have like a future in front of them especially when we don't actually know their real name so right that's been confirmed there's no way to for a community to rally around that um you guys play anything else i have not been playing anything new but i did watch the after party on apple tv plus and that was excellent delight it's really good it is a uh murder mystery show featuring sam richardson and ben schwartz and uh ike baron holtz and a bunch of other very very talented people and uh it's created by the people

who did lego movie and uh 21 jump street and it's great it's very smart each episode is basically a new sort of genre of movie that they're tackling as each person sort of conveys their memories of the night of the murder um so they do like a musical episode and they do like a Fast and the Furious style thing. It's great. It's been really good. I actually think Apple TV Plus has been doing quite well considering it's relatively new.

Probably my favorite Tiffany Haddish role aside from the Eric Andre movie. Bad Trip. Bad Trip. Fuck. She's really good. Yeah, she plays the detective and she's really good yeah she plays the detective and she's uh excellent yeah

um i have been playing a new game with henry he's been sort of so we played the kirby game together uh and that did that did okay anything in sort of three-dimensional space is a little too complex for his uh developing motor skills but we've been playing bloons uh i guess the sixth game in the bloons which is on apple arcade it's like a tower defense game right it is it's a tower defense game where you have different monkeys and they have different ways of throwing darts at bloons as they come down a path you want to talk about it e for all rated tower defense game this this is it it's monkeys throwing darts at balloons as they come down a path you want to talk about it e for all rated tower defense game this this is it's monkeys throwing darts at balloons but there's a lot of like it's surprisingly complex like there's a bunch of different ways to like customize each monkey and level them up and

there's a lot of different types of balloons that require different strategies to counter them that was a moment where i was just like what am i fucking doing with my life where when you said there's a lot of ways to customize each monkey like yeah that was that was a real look inward moment maybe but it it is like perfect for where he is at like it is it is the definition of a game that is like meeting him exactly where he is when there are not a lot of games like he's so interested in minecraft but he just cannot operate two thumbsticks at the same time yeah uh and so it's very cool to like see him really click with a game that is just like dragging and dropping monkeys and then customizing them and there's like all kinds of different difficulty like it's uh it's been really great it it makes me wonder whether getting introduced to the analog stick with the

N64 was the way to go. Cause you only just had one and I was able to master that one before the second one. Yeah. I remember playing like the first call of duty on PlayStation or, uh, maybe it was even, I guess ape escape was like the game that really launched

the DualShock sort of concept because in Ape Escape, it was a 3D platformer and you could run around with the left stick and then with the right stick, you would swing a net around. So it wasn't like camera controls, I don't think. It was just, you swing the net around to catch the monkey. So that was like an easy transition

into like a first person shooter where you have to, anyway, all that said, Bloons td6 plus i guess as all the apple arcade games have that's a lot of there's a lot of things on there uh i also wanted to uh mention i was looking for something to play for myself on my phone and i chris talking about dragon quest 11 are you still playing that, Chris? Yeah, it's a good game. It's fucking great. And I really fell in love with that game last year.

And I loved the Builder's Dragon Quest games. But aside from that, I didn't have much exposure. So when the Analog Pocket came out, I picked up Dragon Quest I and II for the Game Boy Color. And those are very quick. All those old Game Boy like rpgs are pretty short because they're have to they're like eight kilobytes or whatever uh but i just started playing five which is the one that like everybody recommends uh and it is on iphone and it is

exceptional and i feel like i have this huge gap in what i assumed was fairly comprehensive like classic jrpg knowledge uh and i am seeing like so much stuff in here that is like making me rethink my my knowledge of jrpgs it's very cool it's it like goes over a person's lifespan and you like start a family and then your family members become your party members and there's like time travel and like just a bunch of crazy shit that happens in that game that i am uh i'm really enjoying what sorry what was the name of that game again it's dragon quest five hand of the heavenly bride thank you that's the name of it love it okay uh chris plant uh we talked about timing so i'm recommending all in the timing by david ives

a collection of one-act plays that you can almost certainly see at your local high school theater. Yeah, I was gonna say, go to a local college and just stand and wait, and All in the Timing will happen around you. Justin, I want to hear about the game you play. It's funny though. It is. It's a good show.

It's a good show. A lot of different variations of it. There's like, I think like 14 plays show a lot of different variations of it's like i think like 14 plays that make up in in different permutations kind of like sort of like uh fifer's people i think is similar anyway but did you play any games though like where where are the games i mean obviously cash solitaire we don't need to dwell on that um i'd like to i'd like to spend a little bit of time on it one of these days i want to get you guys i don't even want to i don't want to give it a hard plug because someone will play it and i can't have other people i don't like lose 500 or more um i downloaded weird west um which i get i think has been in like demo and beta stages but is now on like full full release um and i just think it is fantastic it is

a um isometric uh sort of in this the general vibe is like think uh like sort of the structure and and and uh presents itself sort of like a cr, but much more of a Diablo-style mechanics. There's tons of loot. You're managing your inventory, and you have special abilities that you're using. But the thing that's interesting outside of the mechanics of it is that's all very good. All that stuff is very good.

But narratively, you're in a sort of like dark gothic version of the old west, you know, a lot of like horror and that sort of vibe with supernatural horror like injected into it. So, you know, you've got werewolves popping up and that kind of thing in between the old west settings. What's a really cool thing is that it's structured so that you're leaping your consciousness I guess is taking over different bodies and each one has their own goals and things that they want to achieve but also like it's a completely different character with completely different

abilities. Like the first that you begin with is a bounty hunter whose son is killed and her husband is kidnapped and she has to like get her guns back out to go to track them down. And that's fairly standard old West stuff. And your very next character is a pig man that can eat corpses after he kills people and is the only pig man that can talk for some reason so he has to figure out why um the writing's really good the vibe is cool like the presentation looks fantastic it's i think it's former dishonored develop i know i believe that is accurate yes dishonored um worked on this

but the gut the the action is very dynamic. It's much less static than you might expect to look at it. There's a Max Payne-style dive that you do. You get supernatural abilities that let you... Your next rifle shot will be silenced and do double damage or whatever to let you take like a stealthier approach or what have you um it's also cool because i there's like an overarching narrative and then these like sub narratives are overlapping with each other and like interacting with each

other in in interesting ways like finding fragments of the other stories that you've played but um really i can't recommend it enough it's it's extremely is it more actiony or more like uh immersive immersive sim like a border like a bioshock dishonored thing i mean immersive sim games are pretty actiony i so i guess i mean like like is it more are you shooting guys mostly or Or are you like, oh, I'm going to hack this turret and use the environment and blah, blah, blah. I mean, there's definitely those options, right? There's like you can shoot out this lamp if you want. Or like there's also a kick button that lets you kick barrels of oil or explosives or chemicals or whatever into people, which is like an interesting tactical thing um

you have a partner that's working with you uh or i think you have up to two companions um so there's a little bit of like dynamic i don't know a strategy of like okay you take this gun i'll take this gun and you know whatever but um yeah it's there's a lot of flexibility i think with how you how you decide to to play yeah that sounds cool yeah it's a there's a lot of flexibility i think with how you how you decide to to play yeah that sounds cool yeah it's very cool it sounds like quantum leap a little bit but that's good that is good for me positive quantum leap thing yeah do you have any reviews you want to thank how does that sound like quantum leap because you're leaping between bodies oh yeah i was doing leap yeah understood, I was thinking more of the time-jumping parts of it.

Anyway. There's no time-jumping. Okay. It's hard netting. I want to thank the following people for writing reviews for The Besties on Apple Podcasts. Lizzie McGuire123, no relation. Sci-Fi Riot, Winter Light, Tomorrow Jones, and Twizdaddy.

Thank you all for writing reviews on Apple Podcasts for the besties, and thank you to everyone else who's written reviews for the besties. We really greatly appreciate it. And to recap the games of this week, we had Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, and then we made our own game.

Kind of. Sort of. And then we, Fresh recommends The After Party on Apple TV+. I recommend All in the Timing by David Ives, playing at every high school and college theater across the country. Griffin recommends Bloons TD6. Plus. And Dragon Quest V, Hand of the Heavenly Bride.

Thank you for adding that. Well done. And Justin recommends Weird West. hand of the heavenly bride thank you for adding that well done um and justin recommends weird west and next week we have an elden ring spoiler episode is that right fuck yes we are going to go hard on every aspect of it so if you are looking to beat the game now is the time to do it chris plant i'm looking directly you don't want to have this incredible finale spoiler there's no way i'm going to beat it on that i know you're never going to be it. Chris Plant, I'm looking directly at you. You don't want to have this incredible finale spoil. There's no way I'm going to beat it on that. I know. You're never

going to beat it. It's fine. We forgive you. I don't need to be forgiven. Do you need me to do it for you? No. I'm pretty good at it. So if you need me to come over. Let dad do it for you. Let daddy do it. I'll come over. I got you. You're the worst. All of you. That's been the best. Wait, wait, wait,

wait, wait. No, you're a bad character. Learn more about math, Blaster. No, no, no, no, no. I've got to apologize. After exiting the window, I appeared to fall on one of your cars, and I would like to read this formal statement to show my regret.

You're not just going to be making up... Hello. Hello. I am Blasternaut. Did you write it? Also known as Blaster in one continuity, Max Blaster in another continuity, and Blaster Prime

before finally arriving on my real name, Max Martian. I was initially a member of the Galactic Forces. I have commanded several starships alongside friends, Spot, and the the Galactic Forces. I have commanded several starships alongside friends, spots, and the great Galactic Commander, who later became promoted to the rank

of Galactic Commander. Because she's in the world's best friends. Take the world's best games. Only life. Besties!