The Besties - The Obligatory Annual Call of Duty Episode

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

This week, we're breaking down two great tastes that taste great together: The many faces of Call of Duty: Vanguard, and the newly expanded Animal Crossing: New Horizons. We also give a metric ton of iOS recommendations, and argue about the Mario Bros' Mushroom Kingdom citizenship. Other games discussed: Inscryption, Devil's Gambit, The Binding of Isaac: Repentence, Bloodshore, Nickelodeon All Stars Brawl, Super Stickman Golf 3+, Clap Hanz Golf, Solitarica, SNKRX, Fire Emblem Heroes 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!

So I haven't seen Mamma Mia the movie, but I did have a question for y'all, and maybe you could fill this in. Okay. What the fuck is that? Oh, you would know if you've seen Mamma Mia. Really? That sounded like the Dark Knight soundtrack. What is your question about Mamma Mia, dude? Is Meryl Streep... I know it really well, actually. Is Meryl Streep i know it really well actually is meryl streep

the titular mama mia there's no mama mia it's a jukebox musical it's just a song in it i actually uh no no no no no no no there's unquestionably a titular mama mia and she is the titular mama mia would you like to know why would you like to know more let's hear okay this has now suddenly turned into like a high stakes, like presidential debate between Chris and Justin. And first I would like to hear the opposing viewpoint from Chris Plant, please. The reason that it's called Mamma Mia

is because the plot of the movie is that Amanda Seyfried finds Meryl Streep, her mother's sex book, and she reads it. And she goes, oh, Mamma Mia. Yes, this is what I would say is closer to. Mamma Mia is the expression about the wild, the wildness of the, Mamma Mia directly in this case

refers to the sort of surprise of the farcical nature of the plot and the way the characters are reacting to the different complications within. It is not like Meryl Streep at no point would it make any sense at all for her to be like greetings i'm a mama mia no i understand absolutely there's also an alternate reading that i think is fair which is amanda seyfried in discovering her own sexual identity while reading her mother's sex book is like Mama Mia? Yeah.

Boy, I hope neither of my boys ever find my sex book. That would not go down good at any age. Have you seen the sequel, Papa Pia? And then have you seen the prequel prequel called Baby Got the Diarrhea? My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and someone outside my office window has the loudest leaf blower that's ever been invented on planet Earth. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best expansion to a video game of the week. Is the baby asleep? This is our bones or no bones. Is the baby asleep? Let's see.

My name is Russ Froschig, And I know the best game of the week. I can't decide for that. He's never asleep. Never fully. That's how he keeps from being murdered. It's his secret. That's why he's still alive. Welcome to the Basties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive

entertainment. It is a game of the year podcast that goes all year long. It's Video Game Club, my friend, just by listening. You are a member. Today we have, am I reading this right? Call of Duty Vanguard. Now, Chris Plant, I thought they already made a game called Call of Duty. Yes, Call of Duty Vanguard is another Call of Duty game.

It turns out they release these every single year. And there's also Call of Duty Warzone, which is a Battle Royale game. You know, it sounds like this all might be obvious. We have so many listeners who actually don't play video games. Maybe this is helpful. It is genuinely helpful to me. Anyway, Call of Duty Vanguard is like the latest in this. It is a World War II set version of the Call of Duty games.

And in truth, it's three games in one. It is a campaign for just you and you alone. It's a zombie smashing game where you and friends smash zombies. And it's that, you know, that tasty, tasty Call of Duty multiplayer that has made it such an enduring franchise. We are going to be talking about all three of those different facets of this game and so much more right after this quick break. It's the 19th main entry in this franchise, Vanguard. You think they're going to do something super special? Let me hit you guys with this at cod xx and then and people be like is it future war is it past war and they'll be like no

it's it's future past war it's time splitters baby that's right time splitters time i mean they've sort of done that with um black ops I think they kind of went future and past in the same game. God, then never mind. But they didn't have monkeys with guns, so I guess it's not Time Switters. So we're returning to the Second World War, or as many refer to it, the last good one. The World War II.

Yeah, I don't know about that. Well, no war is good, obviously. I was just having a bit of fun for our entertainment podcast. VanColony Vanguard is developed primarily by Sledgehammer Games, but like so many efforts at Activision, this seems like an all-hands-on-deck sort of deal. This is the first time returning to the Second World War since 2017, which was also the last sledgehammer games uh entry

yeah yeah that's that's more or less it i'll speak i don't know if did you guys play world war ii which was the last sledgehammer game i've been so checked out on this franchise like i it's i used to try to like at least play through the campaign but even that has gotten yeah yeah sketchy the last one i like really liked was um the remake of modern warfare i thought i had like a pretty great pretty good great campaign aside from like gross like nationalist revisionist history uh aside uh it was it was it was pretty great um but yeah we can we just say something real quick up top and i this is not meant to give us a pass but it's meant to make this like a useful thing call of duty because of the length that's been going in the topic

is one of the most like i would say politically fraught franchises and we cannot we do not have the space nor time uh or expertise to really talk about the full ramifications uh morally and politically and geopolitically of this franchise so uh i think it probably for this brief discussion we will try to limit to like the the game mechanic aspects of this as much as possible is that that fair to say? I would also add that I think this game has the luxury, as did World War II to some extent, but this game even more so, like they lean into the idea that you are hunting and fighting Nazis.

These are not like, you know, regardless of the like German soldier versus Nazi difference, these are straight up, like they continually refer to them. They are cartoonish not like the nazis that you face that this this game is uh like 12 movies this game is like 12 different like world war ii like movies of different of different like well they're all the same genre but it's got a lot of a lot of inglorious bastards in it yeah a lot of inglorious bastards in it it's got

some some like little thin red line in it it's got it has like a bunch of shit like that so i feel like uh i don't know more than past games it sidesteps that stuff by being a little bit more uh accentuated to the point of non-reality, uh, that, that helps, I think, in that regard. I think so too. I, you know, I, I think we'll just talk about it because it really is three discrete games and there's almost no crossover between them. So just talking about the campaign to start off with, you know, I've played a lot of Call of Duty campaigns over the years. I think at this point, because it's been going on for so so long they really do need to figure out some way to distinguish themselves whether it's narratively or whether it's there's a gameplay mechanic or whether you're in fucking space um i think this one in particular feels very much like

we need to do a campaign we don't know what necessarily something that's like super grippy or original so we're just gonna kind of do a bunch of levels uh as told through like various flashbacks and then kind of jam them all together but it does not feel you know of all the campaigns i played is i would say is one of the more forgettable ones um you know i completely disagree i thought that's so well done um just because it's so smart in the way that like it takes you to want it has a crew of people this is my my my struggle with this franchise is primarily a lot of the time you have like six white dudes in like fatigues and camouflage on their face and like some some have red hair yeah some have red hair

one of them is name of soap sometimes uh and so they're hard to keep track of this very smartly one they're like a lot more diverse than than you're used to but two like that each level is like a chapter from this person's life where it like helps you build an affinity for the entire squad of people that you are with by letting you play as the different characters and establish some of their backstory. Two mixed results, I would pause it. I think they do some good work, but the only character...

It's funny, I guess I can't even remember her name, but the Laura Bailey counter-sniper, her shit is pretty dope. The other ones, I kind of agree with Russ. These games are wild because they are already pretty hit or miss just because they are three games in one usually. And those three games are never of equal quality in my experience. And weirdly, I feel kind of the same way about the campaign.

If I could highlight one thing of the campaign before i let let this go uh and and and see what other people think can we at least agree that the music is good absolutely i i got a track ready to go speaking of paulina uh i got like one minute of a track just to highlight this because for me it was the best single component of the campaign uh it's bear mccreary who you know fuck yeah battle star galactica and did uh dark dark void fucking great so this is paulina's theme after like it's called paulina's vengeance it's like after the nazis have taken everything from her when she decides to start like killing a lot of them and it's extremely good give me one minute. Thank you. so it's awesome it's great it's fucking such a good soundtrack and it really does make these moments feel cinematic in a way that uh i think i think really lands um because the

gameplay is so varied a lot of some of it doesn't work. I just did an airplane sequence that was miserable. Like, truly, truly terrible. But Chris, what did you think? How did it hit? We were kind of split on this. I'll be honest. I focused more of my time on the other modes

because the first level in this game is the worst first level I think I've ever played in a college game. You're kidding. The train? The train rules. Not real not good no it's so good no i mean i'm glad that your your threshold is set to zero um it's it quite i guess here's the thing it was a very fun level when i played it for the first time uh on the launch ps3 um it's great yeah it feels like a 2003 era it's level design level wild how i mean again compared to you're jumping between you're jumping between trains uh-huh you could shoot the wheels out of the trucks and they

explode and knock into the trains it rolls yeah you can You can shimmy along the side of a wall multiple times. There's a person with a big gun. Do you like Nazis? Is that what you're saying? Wow. You were rooting for them? We are not going down this goof hole.

It's not that goof hole. It just seems weird. No, it's uneven but but I thought it was. I enjoyed it. I think there was enough beats that landed, and I did like the way it was split up. Some of it was like, Polina's level is very cool. She also feels different.

She does a lot of, she moves quickly when she's crouched, so there's a lot of, feels like sort of hurtling through tunnels to avoid detection by enemies. It feels like a cool sort of cat and mouse sort of vibe. But I don't know. I enjoyed it. I don't know what to say. I liked it.

That's okay. That's good. So that is what I do want to say as we transition to the other sections. What is, I guess, neat about call of duty especially if you're a longtime fan of it is it really is a collection of video games i mean it's wild how much stuff you get when you pick up this game because the single-player campaign while smaller i think than uh what it was in the past or maybe slightly less ambitious

is that fair to say certainly i think yeah ambitious small like i don't care these could be five hour campaigns i wouldn't mind yeah i just i would love that that would be excellent for me but then the zombies mode is i mean the zombies mode here is a just it's a full game it is meaty well let's be careful there because it is yeah i wouldn't explicitly not finished sure sure i guess what i would say is it it is not a it's not just like a horde mode of oh you sit here and there is a level and they send enemies at you let me let me clarify this because there's actually a very distinct difference between zombies previously, the zombies mode, and how zombies works in this case. would play as one of four characters and you'd kill zombies and you'd earn money and you'd use that money to either buy new guns or upgrade or open doors and you'd basically play out this very detailed um easter egg process where you're kind of like unlock the map and discover secrets and

it was very like for me at least intimidating because a lot of it you kind of feel like oh i need a guide to know where i'm supposed to be going and you don't just feel that way it's the truth i have never enjoyed a zombies mode in in this series until now because it sheds all of that so this mode still has zombies in it yay you still shoot them yay but unlike the you know following the very complicated easter egg you can jump into this as i did with total randoms and have a good time because basically what you're doing is there's like a hub area and there's some zombies there whatever and then once you're ready you've killed a few zombies you jump into these portals and then you're given these like little mini missions where it's like okay uh defend this point for

whatever two minutes or follow this moving target as zombies are like attacking it and you have to like keep it safe so you're given these like mini missions that you do and you earn more points by doing those and then you go back to the hub world you upgrade your guns you don't have to worry about like where's the fucking switch to turn the electricity on so i can finally upgrade my gun the thing is just right there you just upgrade it um it feels just very welcoming and instantly fun whereas i think the other zombies modes are very hardcore and really only cater to fans of traditional call of duty zombies uh the best thing in my opinion is every time you complete one of these missions and you come back to the hub world things get harder um and so i think i've made it i think like 10 10 rounds before like completed 10 missions and come back and the whole time you know i'm gathering money to

uh how you get weapons in this this uh version of it is like a loot box kind of like you walk up to a chest and give it some money and a random gun comes out yeah that's not new that's been in right right no no i'm saying but like that that is that is what you do with the money that you collect in these missions you can also buy like uh passive upgrades that can like slow zombies or my favorite one you can take over zombies so that they work on your team for a little bit and they are absolutely no pun intended monstrous like they will kill every zombie in the room in one hit um but the whole time you are also getting xp and that xp is cross uh it works for multiplayer too while you're unload unlocking stuff in zombies mode you are also unlocking

that stuff in multiplayer and eventually every time you finish a mission it gets harder back in the hub world uh so after 10 missions we load into the hub world and it's just too much so then there's a mission you can take called x fill where you have to run across the hub world which you could unknowingly populate with an unsurvivable amount of zombies to get out and get extra xp for the multiplayer mode it's fucking brilliant because i don't like grinding xp to like get the stuff i want in multiplayer to feel confident and like two or three rounds of zombies and i was able to do that right away uh also it's very fun unlike unlike zombies mode in the past yeah i almost i want treyarch because they are the ones who who uh do the zombie stuff uh to be able to make their own

horde game like their own and and this is sufficient it's fun there is like virtually none of that puzzle box stuff in in the zombies mode as is i think they're supposed to be adding it but like it's really fun in a way that is different from a lot of zombie games right now and i just wish that they could do like whatever the fuck they wanted to do with this formula because it's really good uh i want to highlight i really really really like the new multiplayer mode patrol did you guys try that uh is that the uh what is it it's it's new so it's sort of like a command point type deal where there's like a hill that you're trying to like hold

and the longer you hold the hill, the more points you get, right? Right. Except the gimmick is that the hill is constantly moving and not teleported around the map, like literally like moving throughout the map and you're constantly having to readjust, like, literally, like, moving throughout the map. And you're constantly having to readjust your, like, blind spots, the points where you could get taken out from a distance, like, moving cover,

constantly, like, reassessing the situation. And it makes it very tense because you can't get comfortable doing anything. It's, like, really having to be to be like constantly sort of on the move um and weighing the value of like being exposed and standing in the middle of the control point and like holding it versus like being a little bit safer but maybe not right there in the middle of it um and it's really dynamic and like constantly changing the um the dynamic of the battle it's's always like the times that I've played has been like, was very back and forth. On the mini map, can your opponent see

where the zone is moving? So it's like, how would you put this? Agnostic. So like anybody, everybody knows where the control point is because it's whoever is in it at that moment has it. It just on the hood basically it's just on the hut well it's yeah it's like huge on the hood because they want everybody pulled to this one spot to to fight yeah i guess what i mean is like is the is the zone moving like erratically or is it moving in

a straight line where it's no no it's moving it's not erratic it's not like teleporting around it's like slowly just like cruising through like imagine if they were to like make this a bit more practical it would be like defending a tank or something like that or like a a r uh an armored car or something like that like that's basically what you're doing is like it is slowly cruising through the map and you're just like keeping up with it. Yeah, it's an interesting twist because headquarters, which is like a very traditional call of duty mode

was essentially that. But as you said, it was like a random location that it would teleport to after 30 seconds. And what that ended up with was you'd have a team that was like extremely good at holding down the point.

And unless your team was extremely good at holding down the point and unless your team was extremely good at coordinating to push back against them it 30 seconds would go by and you would just be like dying in a hail of gunfire whereas here you're constantly like you know the fact that people have to keep moving means that no one can really settle and and kind of focus their aim on a doorway or something like that when it forces you to compete rather than just accepting yeah you're not going to get one point back there's there's a couple differences i think in multiplayer that do really good work to sort of um disassemble a lot of the campy like uh intimidating shit for for players like me who like haven't really gotten into a multiplayer mode of cod in a while um there's a lot more emphasis on like destructible like doors and walls uh which

is always i don't know i think should be in every multiplayer shooter uh because nothing is more satisfying than like blowing up a wall and then just coming up right behind somebody who's like camping a hallway that can't see you yeah it does it does still i i think there's some smart upgrades here it still is not my jam because it is still and i don't know how you fix this maybe you don't fix this maybe it's not broken i just it's not how i like multiplayer shooters but it's just a lot of being killed by someone like from 15 years in the past like being killed by someone who is on mars that you just like could not see in half a second like that's uh that's still what caught is like the kill times are very very very very fast so you don't have like uh complete situational

awareness and you know some knowledge of what the map looks like you are at a huge disadvantage it kind of works for me, though, a little bit, or at least in the brief time that I played, and I'm in very much the same boat, but the quick time to kill does make it so that you can get lucky and just roll up on two people or three people and mow them all down and feel like, damn, I'm actually the best.

That's how I feel, yeah. I'm actually the best player. With Halo, you catch up on somebody and if they're a better player you shoot them in the back and they just turn around and start doing magic moves and destroy yes exactly right i like that you can get strategically lucky versus like actually have to be better than somebody else at shooting video games i do want to talk about one other feature of Call of Duty Vanguard multiplayer that I thought was very great, but also not very splashy. So pardon me.

It has a lot of filters to it, so you can really craft the sorts of maps and modes that you're playing. Yeah. always found infuriating about jumping into a new call of duty game is when the maps are designed for like 10 v 10 or 12 v 12 you really have a very tough time of sort of getting your sense of bearings of like where things are and where enemies are coming from and so you can set this to just give you 6v6 maps which in my personal opinion is like the best balancing for a call of duty game and um you can set it to like oh i want to do six v six maps i want to do team death match i want to do kill confirmed i don't want to do whatever domination and you can make those choices and then it'll just throw you into those appropriate maps rather than previously you would have like

a very large category and everyone would sort of like be in that and you'd sort of just have to like deal with it if you got a mode you didn't want to play or you were in a map with like way more people than you wanted so i think that's a really smart change i so should we summarize i don't know how you do summer i don't know that you can't summarize yeah i think i think how you do summarize. I don't know that you can summarize the whole thing. I think if you're looking for a single player experience, I think there are much better Call of Duty campaigns in the world. So like probably look elsewhere.

I mean, I know Justin liked it more than us, but. I liked it, but like, I think the time I played it before I came here to record this will likely be the last time that i go to play it you know not not a glowing yeah not not not unenjoyable but also like not something where i have to see where all these incredible stories end up yeah um but i would say for like zombies from like a co-op having fun standpoint if you played um back for blood and wanted more of that like pick up and play multiplayer fun i think zombies is great and i think you know call of duty multiplayer as like the versus mo team death

match and stuff is very intimidating and not for everyone what i would recommend on that front if you've never played one download call of duty war zone which is free to play you don't need to spend any money and you can just try it, and it'll give you a little bit of a sense of what it's like. Yeah, the game mode is different. You don't need to spend any money, but you need a hard drive that's the size of your office.

Yeah, that's true. They are very large, but I think it's a decent way to just try and dip your toe in. Okay, well, that is Call of Duty Vanguard. Good name, too. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good name.

I mean, I guess. What is it? I mean... Okay, Russ. Hey, Russ, don't think, just answer. Give me a better name in Call of Duty Vanguard right this second. Call of Duty Nazi Hunters.

Fuck, it is good. That is very good. Okay, listen, we're gonna be right back and we're gonna talk about uh animal crossing the expansion not just like as a concept okay we'll be back we're back my friends and we're ready to talk with you about uh animal crossing new horizons is that what it was i mean that is the name of the game that is the name of the game that's the name of the game newer horizons newer the newest horizons i would say final horizons too right from my understanding yeah we should mention that chris point had to step away uh because his laptop died so uh he he's with us in spirit yeah but his laptop isn't his laptop's in hell

yeah so there is new content weirdly that can you all remember a time where nintendo did like a surprise early release for anything because that's no this seems like a fuck up to me i mean it was it was what it was almost two days early uh very weird thing dropped i think someone's flipped the switch by accident yeah um yeah this is the what they call the final update it's the 2.0 update for animal crossing dropped last wednesday i think and oh boy uh there's there's a lot of stuff i'll try to summarize very quickly uh i mean i can summarize pretty quickly by saying that there were a lot of features in new leaf which was the 3ds uh entry the form the prior entry in the series before new horizons uh that weren't in new horizons just because you know they went

in a different direction that's their prerogative but whenever you know the fan base has asked for new stuff a lot of it is like returning features from new leaf most of that stuff is in new horizons now like like um customization for most of the furniture pieces in the game like a bunch of new haircuts from a special haircutting npc a bunch of the npcs from new leaf that aren't in new horizons they're in it now there are just a million quality of life upgrades um like for instance you can build sheds now that you can place uh on your island and then anywhere you are if you have a shed there you can send stuff back home uh and a lot of that stuff

goes to i don't know a lot of those things are patches over problems that maybe shouldn't be in the game in the first place um but it the quality of life upgrades i think are the the reason why people are getting back into this thing also because there's i don't know how many new pieces of decor and just design stuff that you can go wild with uh i haven't even gotten into the dlc the uh happy home designer sequel essentially uh that adds if if you played Happy Home Designer, which was the only interior decoration sort of game in the series, where that's all you could really do. That's in here too now. But that equips you with a bunch of ways to, you know, customize your own house, like adding little partition walls to like really customize the

hell out of your rooms. The big thing that they kind of like featured early was the return of the cafe is like the first new building although it's part of the museum uh that has come out uh since the game launched and you get brewster the owl i think or pigeon who makes the coffee. And that is a big nothing burger in my experience. I mean, it's always been, like previously the only draw at a cafe was K.K. Slider would play there on weekends, but now he just plays in the courtyard. Right, and so you go there

and you spend 200 bells for a cup of coffee and sometimes there's other people there and you can invite other characters with amiibos. But it's like- samus yeah no like uh like animal crossing characters um so that that's that's nothing but like there's so much new content so many quality of life changes um you can build like a co-op market by like paying for different stalls for different npcs so like you can get crazy red uh permanently so that every day you can get new crazy red merch like fake art and shit uh same with you know all

the specialty vendors that show up from time to time on the island um it does seem like the the fortune teller is is in this this co-op also um capon is back the turtle what would you call him the the fairy driver he's a pirate turtle yes uh who sings you songs as he takes you to new islands and those islands will you know have sometimes vegetable starts because now farming and cooking is in the game or gyroids because gyroids are in the game now um or vines which is a new thing that you can put on walls and then climb uh like it's it's that's not even half the stuff um but it is it does it hasn't changed the game dramatically like maybe the dlc mode is like sort of its own standalone thing but it it just it has injected it with just an unimaginable amount of stuff um and yeah i feel weird because i played just a metric ton of animal crossing as everyone did when it came out yeah and i i

continue to play it i think longer than most people did and well it's weird on a couple ways one it's just so busy right now in terms of game releases that like staying ahead of everything, I like actively was like, I just can't jump into this again because I'm worried that it's going to like sink all of my time into this. And I might, I don't know. I'm wondering whether if I jump into it in December when everyone more or less is probably like gonna be moving back away from it whether that'll hinder my interest the the fan base is like

our our company slack is like always on that turnip hunt now like it's it's i think this is going to does money like matter again uh i mean yeah some of the new stuff like there's cars that you can buy as decor for your island because there's a lot of people with like urban settings that they built into their island. So there's a bunch of different types of cars that you can buy now that are like pretty fucking expensive because they're cars.

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't matter like a ton, a ton, but you do need, you know, a decent bankroll if you want to buy all this new shit. Honestly, I have been taking it slow, partially because of what you said like it's so busy uh game game wise i've been playing like i don't know half hour 45 minutes in the morning once everything opens up like get some go to an island you can only do one a day like the cap and tours oh let's see if i get any new cool shit uh fly to harv's island which is

where the co-op is and like unlock a new stall and see what kind of rare stuff that they have in stock and then usually that's that's about it um because like there are huge things that i could do now i could build a farm like on my island just for the cool aesthetics of it uh but like i don't know what i want to destroy in my island to make room for that so i haven't exactly gotten to that point yet where i'm like investing the hours into changing the the shape of my island um so i think if you just sort of go into it expecting to do that just like yeah i'm gonna dip in and see what's new and then sort of let the rest come to you if you if you want to go wild in it like you used to then that's go go you know that's there for you but i got so wild that the game i wonder if they've improved the engine at all because the game could not handle my level of creativity i started playing after

the expansion dropped on a rainy day not realizing that like when it is raining it moves all the shit around on the map more and it was so laggy it was extremely laggy uh which is a problem i did not i don't know i just never really noticed when i was originally playing it so that isn't that is an unpleasant issue on clear days it's fine though if you are somebody who's never played new horizons it is a the value proposition now is is i would say outrageous um but if you are somebody who used to play and you like you know there's a lot of people wrestling with like, God, do I start my Island over? Do I flatten it?

I would never do that. Yeah. Don't do that. I would say just, just, just go in and play the new stuff without worrying about like creating this utopian society with, you know,

ample farmland creating an agrarian sort of ecosystem. Like, don't worry about that shit. Just go take on a, take a few tours with a singing turtle, man. Amen. Justin, anything you want to add? Didn't play it.

And that's fine. Did you play it, like, originally? I don't even remember. Yeah, I played it lots. Yeah. Really liked it originally, just haven't, I mean, I don't know what to say.

Yeah. It's intimidating. I did, well, you know, no, I do know what to say. I fucking bought Forza Horizon and was playing it, and you dolts decided to pivot, so I didn't play this game for children because I was too busy being a gearhead

and cranking out some RPMs. Cool. Yeah, they'll talk about that on Rusty's show. Yeah, I won't be on that, though. My time spent with Forza is just in the ether. I measured it in numbers of my children's smiles that I miss playing Forza Horizon. Let's move on. It looks like we have some questions here.

Chris, why don't these questions that are elapsed that departed from the call? Some real barn burners here. Which is quite, yeah, well we're gonna just start um isaac question from isaac what's the best smelling in-game world in a video game oh i see okay so what world smells best i think animal crossing i mean depending on how well you've been keeping up with your island, it probably smells pretty good. And I don't want to play this card, because I don't know if the PC culture holds up.

Yes. But have you ever been to a zoo? The scent of a zoo is not... It's a potpourri of garbage. It's never awesome. No one's ever gone home from the zoo and been like i only smelled great things today um but you're like you you so you think the animal crossing villagers are just shitting all over your island well bud their houses are wicked small and most of them ain't got turrets in them i know i love rolled my man my sweet little boy he's great he's been my og like since the first week that new horizons came out my og and new

leaf his house is like a little iceberg with no toilet so where are you doing it i like to think that like behind the back wall of the island it's just shit piled high to the heavens. Or like Toy Story, when I'm not playing the game, they all just walk waist high into the ocean and release it. You know, one world that looks good, but you don't think about probably smelling really bad is the Mushroom Kingdom. Because you think about the flora and fauna of that world. Like, that's a pretty funky environment.

It looks very cute. But, like, I bet when Mario first got there, he spent a good half hour just being like, Christ, this is funky. It's so funky in here with all the mushrooms. God. But hold on one second, because Mario was born there. What? Mario is originally from the Mushroom Kingdom. Mario was originally from Brooklyn.

No, despite what the movie would tell you. Mario Mario was born in Brooklyn, New York. No. Mario Mario is not a denizen of the Mushroom Kingdom. That's among the dumbest things you've ever said. Name other humans in the Mushroom Kingdom. Peach.

She's from New York! Then how did she worm her way into the monarchy? King Ralph. Okay, okay. Her mom died. Her mom from the mushroom it was the queen of the mushroom kingdom they chose like different they chose humans to rule over them because they felt like they couldn't self-govern it's one like a lack of self-confidence is a big problem amongst the people of the mushroom kingdom yeah mario mario was born in brooklyn new york um okay he's

an italian plumber. You're right, you're right. Who resides in the Mushroom Kingdom. Well, let me ask you this. This is the rest of the episode. They're twins, right? Luigi and Mario are twins. What?

They're born at the same time. No. What? Yes. No, Luigi's his younger brother. By like a minute. You are're a police i need you to just do you want me to back this up just say the word fraternal so i can move on with my life i and uh they're they're twins say the word fraternal fraternal twin thank you bob identical

twins bob hoskins god rest his soul and john leguizamo are not the same age i'm just saying in yoshi's island they are the same more or less they're both fucking babies in yoshi's island yeah that's actually a good point too shit yeah they're close more canonical than the movie all great and yoshi's island you see at the end of yoshi's island they get delivered to a mushroom house where mario and lu Luigi's parents live. Okay, the worst smelling video game is Toe Jam and Earl Panic on Funkatron. Agreed.

I think we all know that. Fuck, absolutely, granted. The best is Candy Crush, moving on. Best is, well, close, you're close. Actually, the best smelling one is Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine. Gross. You ever see it?

No, dude, anytime I played Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, which was a ton because i didn't have friends uh was they always i always wanted to gobble up those little gooey suckers but they smell amazing okay so we're gonna take we're gonna move on um this is a very open-ended question my favorite favorite mobile games'm going to take this to mean like- Ever? I can't do that. No, not ever, but like if you had to recommend one for people to play right now, what would it be?

Don't say- Isn't this a weird state of affairs? No fucking kidding, man. It used to be fun to play games on your phone. No, no, no, no. I actually play a lot. fun to play games on your phone no no no no i i actually play a lot the reason i reacted woof is because i actually feel a little overwhelmed by what i would recommend to someone because i actually have a lot of games that i play if you want to see a weird thing get winner winner it is a uh lie this is not a recommendation that you should actually do but it is funny

it is uh live streamed claw games that oh yeah i've heard about that control i think you just you might have recommended it yeah no i know i have never okay i've never recommended it but it is uh that is a weird it is a weird thing to do i i don't know that it's like but it's like you spend real money and then you can play real claw games and they'll ship you the prizes it's pretty wild yeah it's just wild that that is a thing also claw games are a scam so just keep that in mind before you throw money down well mobile games are a scam it's a match made in heaven um let's just start going the fire emblem game i think russ might still be playing that i'm still fucking playing firebomb heroes and it's like five years on it's great it's it's i think let's

just focus on mainstays solitarica i go back and play a lot i've played it to death i played that one so much um recent one uh snkrx the i think i talked about earlier this year it's the snake tower defense game on ios it's i've played that so much if you want a chill game and you don't care about high score you just want to like kill some time on the subway or wherever you are desert golfing y'all oh yeah so fucking good mentioning these old bit busted joints what's busted about desert golfing it's just old joints or you can play this the sequel golf on mars i'm wanting like new recommend like when i get into a an ios game i get really into it but i feel like there hasn't been one that has like hooked me that deeply in in quite some time have you played smkrx yeah it was it was pretty good it was neat i like

that one okay but that's about as far as i mean clap hands golf is good clap hands golf is great also on arcade is super stickman golf 3 plus uh which is another game i've spent a shit ton of time playing oh yeah super good I would say if you haven't you don't really know what to play on mobile probably just like get Apple Arcade for a month because it comes with just so much shit similar to Game Pass

and it'll kind of develop your taste buds for that stuff to be frank I don't I'm always on the lookout for new iOS games just like always i'm always like checking reviews and like what's hot and getting on uh ios gaming on reddit just to like see if there's anything that people are like really hyped for right now and nine times out of ten there's just not that game that is like the one that everybody's talking about which it used

to be all there was i think a lot of people a lot of indie developers specifically have moved to either console development or pc development um there obviously are still big indie releases that happen but they are not super duper frequent on ios so i think that's probably came out on ios this year i think that's that's a good one that we've talked about. Tremendous game. Yeah. Yeah. Like that one a lot. You know what? Part of my problem is I do my Japanese studies on my iOS time.

But think of how many games, the doorway, the key to the doorway of gaming that's going to unlock for you. Yes. That's so true. When you can finally play Final Fantasy VII as Aerith. As intended. As God intended. I actually actually can you please keep us abreast because i want to know when when you're able to uh use this skill set when gaming yeah

that'll be fun uh yeah that'll be yeah i'll get there um let's uh let's what else you guys been playing uh i've been playing the uh repentance expansion pack to the binding of isaac which is on switch it just came out on switch fuck yeah like a week ago um extremely good uh certainly a good time to man binding of isaac we've talked about this before i adore binding of isaac it's the Switch game that I've spent the most time playing. It's really an astounding amount of time that I've sunk into this game. It is not easy to jump into. It's very intimidating.

But I think for people that like love Binding of Isaac, I think a lot of those folks might maybe prefer to play on Switch because it is meant to be like a pickup, put down kind of game. And it's super good on Switch, runs great uh it's so much additional content it's wild uh just they like doubled the number of playable characters and just added a ton of items and levels and actually an end to the story um super amazingly good so uh yeah uh and if you haven't bought it's a little weird just a heads up if you

haven't bought any of the games uh of binding isaac before you'll need to buy on switch you'll need to buy after birth i think after man i forget all the names but you'll have to buy the core game first um and then uh you'll buy repentance like as an expansion pack but if you're on PS5, they sell it as a big bundle that includes everything, so just maybe do some research before you plunk down and know what you're getting. What's Bloodshore, Justin? Oh,

buddy! Bloodshore is a new joint from Wales Interactive. Who's that? Those are your friends who have brought you so many great fmv titles over the years uh blood shore is a new fmv game that i just wanted to to very quickly shout out it is a um choose your own adventure type game don't expect like massive interactivity here it's it's pretty much just like do you do this or

do you do that it's not twitchy at all but it is a uh the story of like a battle royale where the uh it's also like being sort of like live streamed and there's a lot of people there that are doing it for the notoriety so it's like you get cutaways to like the audience and the people who are uh live streaming the actual like competition uh and you start off with like this group of people uh that are sort of like your squad and then immediately start making decisions about like when to betray them or when to help them and it tracks different things like um the morale of your team like how people are doing and like how well equipped you are like how how well outfitted you are depending on the the decisions that you make

but like you're making pretty monumental decisions uh about how you want to approach it pretty quickly it's surprisingly well writtenwritten and well-acted and like a good sort of like implementation of this. It's obviously like B grade. You're not going to see a lot of like names you recognize or anything like that. But I really, I thought it was really interesting. And it's very like, it knows exactly what it's doing.

It's very confidently like put together and stuff and it's called blood shore and i think that it's pretty pretty neat um okay i'll go through mine really quick i finally beat act one of inscription and i get it and now i get it i get it now and i'm excited to have time to like see what act three looks like like it that game is uh that game is very exciting do you guys understand why the frustration where it felt like you guys yes we're talking about a different game than i was wait because i've beaten act one but i and now griffin's talking about act three oh no no i'm on act two now like i want to beat act two now just to see yeah okay i'm on a wild shift is

going to be as well because i it hasn't it hasn't dramatically dramatically i mean there was i'm not going to talk about it here there was something wild that happens at the end of act one but it hasn't dramatically dramatically changed yet for me so i need to play the next 20 seconds then because it gets i don't know what you're talking about the exact same place you stopped no i played have you played some summon act 2 i i think holy shit okay we'll talk about this after yes uh i beat death's gambit a game we talked about last week i started that actually that's very great yeah it's fucking cool man it's like a halfway between it's very easily like dead cells meets a soul's right yeah that's it uh i can't recognize enough i started another

playthrough because there's so many different ways to play that game i wanted to see like what meets a souls right yeah that's it uh i can't remember enough i started another playthrough because there's so many different ways to play that game i wanted to see like what a magic playthrough was yeah and it was that great souls like shit where i just burned through the game i'm almost about to beat it and i've been playing maybe this save like three hours or so and i'm also getting a different ending there's lots of different endings apparently i didn't do good enough my first playthrough and so there's oh yeah so you didn't get any of the bonus endings no but it's more open

ended than I expected it to be there's a lot of times where I'm like I don't really know what to do next I think I'm going to poke around this way it does not have the punishment of failure yeah it's not nearly as intense as usually these games are so it really does encourage you to kind of like fuck around like I don't know poke around see what yeah the only thing you drop just to get

back into death's game but i guess you have healing plumes which are the estus flask of the game right and you collect different uh you collect like extra charges for it um so now you can use it three times before you go to a safe point uh and when you die you just drop one of your charges and you have to go back to the point where you died to get it or you can spend a bunch of the currency of the game to like just automatically get it back so what you can do is you can also deposit all of your plumes at a save point to give yourself a little bit of extra damage uh but you won't have any healing if you like deposit them all but then there's no penalty for dying so you can do that and just like go on these wild runs to find shit

that game is fantastic and has cemented itself in my in my goatee considerations yeah it's definitely up there started shinogami tensei 5 we're going to talk about that next week uh but the big one i wanted to talk about uh henry uh my my almost five year old now uh has gone on a couple youtube deep dives into like the gaming space which i've had to watch like a hawk uh but he watched a playthrough of um nickelodeon all-stars brawl which if you don't know what that is it is super smash brothers explicitly but with nintendo care or with nickelodeon characters uh so like you can get powdered toast man fighting oblina from all real monsters yeah i was curious like do kids i it felt like the the catalog of characters that were playable do kids even recognize these characters absolutely like maybe they don't maybe

they don't they don't rock with nigel thornberry in the way that i do uh but i mean they got characters from loud house on there as you know all of the spongebob friends uh it's really multi-generational in a way that's extremely smart yeah and like appeals to like i get to show her like powdered toast man yeah exactly and she's getting to play like the loud house so now he's obsessed with cat dog and like now wants to watch cat dog because he's a playable character in nickelodeon all-stars brawl and that just delights him um and it's it is simplified like smash i would say although if you do watch people playing it online at like expert level like you're like does spongebob just fucking wave dash like you see this stuff that the pros do um but you can also like tune the ai uh all the way to like have have your you know five-year-old who's not really great at pressing multiple buttons at the same time

like fight against a completely stationary invader zim and still get the joy of like smashing him off the screen yeah i was very proud of henry actually he one-on-oned uh spongebob while playing as reptar and actually beat him and it was like the most like proud he has been of his playing in a video game before uh and by extension the most proud i've ever been of him of course period as a person as a person um yeah it's a lot of fun i know most of our listeners are not going to get a lot out of it but if you have you know kids around that age it is a i would say an approachable experience um yeah cool uh i wanted to thank the following folks for writing reviews uh on apple podcast thanks to captain humphrey water boy low davy b701 dalton kiebler and lone cart thank you for

writing reviews on apple podcast really appreciate it Thank you to everyone else who has written reviews on Apple Podcasts. We also really appreciate you. Games we talked about this week. I will attempt this in Chris's absence. Call of Duty Vanguard, obviously. A bunch of Call of Duty games started by extension. Animal Crossing New Horizons, new expansion, which is free, except for the Happy Home Designer DLC mode.

We talked about Dr. Robotnik's mean bean machine. We talked about oh shit we talked about a bunch of mobile games. Solitarica

Super Stickman Golf 3 Plus Clap Hands Golf Fire Emblem Heroes Fire Emblem Heroes S&K RX probably some other ones. I apologize. And then we talked about

The Binding of Isaac Repentance which is out on Switch the dlc for binding of isaac talked about blood shore death's gambit afterlife talked about uh inscription and shimogami tensei 5 briefly and the nickelodeon all-stars brawl that's the best i got gang that's good cool nothing wrong with that thank you for listening to our podcast we very much appreciate it i here's what i would like to we've got like a spot or two in the schedule coming up um i would love to do another one of those like hidden like stuff that you've been playing recent like past few months new stuff every day i log on to like steam and the the switch shop and just see like so much

stuff that i don't have time to like dig through to see if it's if it's worth exploring anymore so if you found some like cool hidden gems i'd love to to to hear about it um if not hidden gems like games you think it's buck wild that we haven't talked about yeah mail at besties.fan is us so you can send send us mail there. Thanks for listening. We appreciate it. Be sure to join us again next time for the Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!