The Besties - Two great games: one new, one old

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

Starfield inspired Frushtick to take a ship deep into the cosmos of No Man's Sky. After seven years and tons of updates, the sci-fi game is a stunning alternative for people who crave the awesomeness of space more than the dramatics of a traditional RPG. We also talk about the fantastic Shadow Gambit, a stealth tactics game for everybody -- not just fans of the genre. Also discussed: Retro Bowl and Only Weird Games. For more info and links to all games, follow our newsletter besties.fan. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant. My name is Russ Froschdick. And we are the Resties. We're the rest of the best. Discuss the best of the rest. This week, we're talking about two great games. No bummers. That's what we like to say at the Resties. It's no bummer zone. We got No Man's Sky Twist. It's great.

No bummer, Man's Sky. Hey, that doesn't work. This is no bummer zone. I think that's a good effort. Yeah. We've also got Shadow Gambit, which is one of my favorite surprises of this year. A stealth tactics game, which is not my genre at all. And I am in love with it.

It's got pirates in it. It's got pirates in it. It has a real Sea of Thieves aesthetic to it that I'm into. Before we do that, though. Yeah, something. Okay. So the last time you heard from us was the episode on Starfield that we recorded. And this was before the embargo lifted and before we knew the broad reaction to the game.

We were pretty anxious. We were pretty anxious. We were pretty anxious. The broad reaction. Seems to be. Inconsistency. It seems like there's a lot. Here's what it comes down to. It seems like there's a lot of people.

That basically agreed with what we said. But it's just a question of. How much that stuff bothered them. And whether they were still able to find joy within the experience, regardless of that. Yeah, which I think, hey, you were skeptical during that episode when I said, I think there's going to be people who like this, who none of this bothers them. They just, you know, get a little bit of a little bit of the weed. They chill out. They zoom in.

They zone out and they have a great time. I think the problem for you, and this is what we're going to be talking about in this episode, is you made a criminal mistake, which is you went and played No Man's Sky. Yeah, that was a big mistake. That was a big it was a I would say a grave error on your part to go and do that. I mean, to be fair, I went and played it after I was not really vibing with Starfield. True. You were looking for something that like reignited that spark, that love for video games. Yeah, space exploration. Well, I mean, we shouldn't delay too much we should get into that i i will

say before we kick over to the podcast i can feel it there's some people who are listening they're really vibing with starfield immensely happy for you that rules um you might be thinking hey starfield and no man's sky totally different. And the answer is you're right. And that's going to be a big part of what we talk about right after the break. Okay, we're back. And let's start where we left off, which is why do we want to talk about No Man's Sky? In this, the year of our Lord, 2023, why are we talking about a game that's seven years old? During Starfield Week.

During Starfield Week. We could be doing more Starfield stuff. We could, but we're not. What motivated you to go and pick up this game? Because they are I think by definition very they're going for very different goals. I think thematically they're extremely close to one another

but in terms of what you're actually doing they are very very different. Yes, the meat of the game design, I think, is very different. You know, Bethesda wants that kind of old school RPG. You're going around, you're chatting up people. Narrative centric. Yes. You're picking up a lot of stuff.

You got dialogue trees that are all over the place. No, this guy has some of that though. That's true. Before we get into that, I'm want to answer your first question, which is why did I pick it up? There's two reasons. One, as I've mentioned previously, I was not totally clicking with Starfield

and I was kind of hoping to like recapture the magic of another space exploration game and thing two no man's sky just got one of the biggest updates it's ever gotten i believe it's called the echoes update which added a ton of stuff which we will talk about but in both of these scenarios were kind of like a just a confluence events that were like damn i really like this game and this is a good excuse to get back to it and kind of remind myself what the potential is for a space exploration game

because I didn't totally get that vibe from playing Starfield. I think that's the key word, right? Exploration. I think that is where those of us who didn't click with Starfield in the way that we hoped, those of us who didn't click with Starfield in the way that we hoped, we had assumed it would be much more of an exploration game with all the talk of like all these planets

and procedurally generated spaces that the fun would be in getting around and discovering new things. And that's not the case, at least during the core quests of the game that does not seem to be where its core interests lie the core interests seem to lie in like let's do what we always do but now it's in space yeah there's a lot of narrative heavy quests which which no man's sky does not really have i mean it does it does have narrative, light narrative and like, you know, vague allusions to like space gods and various other things.

But you're not like going around talking to every person and getting like, you know, quest markers and stuff from them. You do do that, but it's not really the primary focus of No Man's Sky. Right. So can you kind of kick off a refresher on the history of it i know that we've talked about it many times but it is yeah i'll do a light speed seven years old yeah seven it is seven years old i'll do a light speed refresher for people no man's sky promised to be this infinite i've very similar if you're paying attention to right now the starfield promises like they were both pitched very similarly, which is like, here's this game you can play forever because it has a million planets or whatever it is.

And you can explore the galaxy and like live your dreams of being Han Solo or whatever the fuck. And the in the lead up to the game, a lot of promises were made about multiplayer and base building and all sorts of other stuff that when the game launched seven years ago a lot of that stuff was not in there and what was in there was like a pretty thin not terrible but not great um experience that involved like a lot of like collecting energy and filling up bars mining mining and taking care of your oxygen level yeah so since then there's been a ton of updates um that have added new content new features i think the last time we talked about it on besties or resties i talked about the fact that they added um difficulty settings that allowed you to turn off a lot of the more drudgery inducing uh aspects of the game like you could make it so that like you didn't have to worry about energy anymore so you could use your jetpack or launchers whenever

you wanted to you didn't have to like find sodium to fill your jetpack up so um this new update added like a whole new race of creatures these like this robotic race of creatures and uh some like epilogue post credits things um that have been like really great for me and really engaging and mostly it just like the thing about no man's sky and this has been true since the game came out no game has ever i'm sorry not almost no game. Outer Wilds kind of did this. That experience of going from a planet into space without there being a load screen is spectacular. And it really still is an awe-inspiring moment. And I love Outer Wilds to death, but it looks so fucking good in No Man's Sky.

And just like seeing the like different ecosystems as you like burst through the atmosphere incredible feeling it still has a wow factor today that like blows me away and honestly one of the biggest things that i was missing from starfield was not having that same experience because it it syncs the space stuff with the with stuff. Otherwise, they feel very discreet and separate. Yeah. I think that's a good summary of it. I have a lot of questions for you. Great.

On behalf of people who maybe have not played No Man's Sky ever or like me have played a couple times over the past seven years. Sure. Number one, where do I start? I have probably a few saves from over the years should i do that should i just like start from the beginning yeah it's a good question um it kind of depends on how far along your save is if you have a save of like 40 hours or something and you've been playing a bunch and you have a bunch of inventory slots upgrade or whatever it is it's probably fine for you to stick with that because a lot of the new content doesn't

really click on until after you finish the story but if you haven't really played a ton or you haven't really played since launch i'd actually recommend starting from scratch mostly because you can experience the new onboarding quest line that they introduced post-launch that is way more engaging and way more interesting and has actual characters in it and will guide you through all of the features they've added since launch in a really smart way.

You can also, while you're doing that, turn on all the difficulty settings that you want to make that experience much more fluid to give you an idea i caught up to like quote modern day like where the new content is i think my save said like 30 hours um and that was with like messing around and like trying base building and trying a lot of other stuff that i didn't have to do but i wanted to do because it was fun um so there's a ton of content that you can experience before even getting to the new content.

But again, it kind of depends on where your save is. You have like an entire collection of settings for this game, right? I do, yeah. I don't know of a great way to... I guess in the newsletter, we could probably share it. Yeah, I think in besties.fan, everybody should go and subscribe and follow us there. We can put a screenshot of all the settings that Frush has been using.

I think Griffin has been using on his playthrough. Yeah. That remove a lot of the simulation factor from it, which I think will make it more fun. A simple example. I mentioned the energy thing, but like I have infinite sprinting, which is pretty nice. There are aspects that like let you increase your sprint, but it's like drudgery and I didn't want to do it. So I just turned on infinite sprinting. That's great.

It's great. Sounds awesome. How, I mean, you said 30 hours. Is that like 30 hours about how long the entire campaign is? I mean, it really depends if you are like doing nothing but going from like quest point to quest point to quest point. You could probably get through the like two main storylines, which kind of like branch off of one another in about 20 hours. If you really if you're sprinting um i wouldn't encourage that because there's a lot of reason to not do that whether it's like chilling at a star

base and looking for like a new ship to buy or doing like side quests or like raiding freighter ships there's so much stuff that like it's worth doing when you feel like it otherwise i think you might get a little burnt out yeah well okay so walk me through the expansions i mean don't walk me through each of them there's a ton of them yeah but that's the part where i get intimidated is i've seen the trailers for these you know like every nine months or whatever yeah and it always feels like a lot in there i remember what was it no man's sky, which I think was the one that introduced that original quest line. Right. Yeah, that was like the first huge expansion.

Yeah, really big. But are a lot of the other expansions adding stuff that is more key to the endless exploration of the game? Unless to, hey, you need to get through the first 30 hours yeah 100 this is actually this quest line that they just added is i think the first quest line that actually requires that you finish the main story what's very very cool about most of the updates that they've done is a lot of it is like quality of life stuff i mentioned the difficulty thing another is like you can ride on pets like alien creatures that you find and you tame and then you can ride on them that was an update that just came it wasn't exclusively just right on pets the update but that

was a big feature and so they've added a lot of stuff that has just been like fully integrated into the game in smart ways that don't require you to progress the story or whatever it's not like destiny where you're like oh i haven't played any of this content so i gotta like get through it you'll run upon this stuff very naturally as you're just playing through the game and maybe you won't even realize that it was like added an update they added this thing i forget what the mission is called but essentially you can buy um these like devices that track down freighters that have crashed in space they're like derelict freighters oh yeah and you board them and it turns into like a mini dead space mission and that was

just something they added in an update and it's like spooky and you're you only see where your flashlight's pointing and there's like this whole like backstory of how the crew died in horrible ways it's just like a really dope thing that if you didn't know any better you'd think was in the game from the beginning yeah they did like a big underwater one too yeah there's there's a quest line where you they teach you how to like make an underwater base but again that's like a totally side thing i actually didn't do that quest line until like after i had done the new content so there's like tons of stuff that they just have layered in in a really smart way that makes the game so modular and like exciting even moving forward from now yeah i i am just endlessly curious about it i noticed a thing today with the starfield

comparison where i feel like with the starfield comparison where i feel like this game starfield has been in development for 10 years yeah um and i i feel like i was hearing rumors about it even that long ago but well i was yeah i think the the 10-year thing comes from the fact that todd howard who's the main designer of the game copyrighted the term starfield 10 years ago because it struck him as a really good branding exercise. So people knew that there was a copyright after this game from Bethesda, but they didn't know what it was going to be.

And I think actual earnest game development started about eight years ago. Okay. So basically right when No Man's Sky, the press cycle is going i'm not trying to say that like they saw no man's sky and they're like we should do that yeah i don't think it's more just unfortunate yeah i don't think it was that i think bethesda where they were at at the time you know they had made fallout they had made elder scrolls a bunch of elder scrolls games but at that point they had never really done anything that was like hard sci-fi and this certainly counts so it like if i were to guess like what was your next like big open world rpg space would make total sense also in terms of the you can go

anywhere like the skyrim you know see that mountaintop you can go there yeah the idea of like pointing to the sky and be like see that planet see that star you can go to any of it yeah unless it's jupiter in which case it's a gas giant you can't land there that's fine that's so true that's a very good point um who who do you think like is the target for this in the year 2023 because again i get thematically if you are coming to starfield and no man's sky and what you want is that sense of awe of you know you're in space and you're exploring i i assume no man's sky is the game that you're looking for a hundred percent i think visually speaking if you're looking for that, like wallpaper for your desktop

background aesthetic, No Man's Sky is extremely good for that. In terms of who it's for, I think the range of audiences is kind of astronomical for this game. I mean, Bethesda games, too, have like a really wide gulf of audiences that experience those games. But I think, like, depending on the settings and what you're interested in doing, people that love Stardew Valley could potentially love No Man's Sky.

If you want to focus on like base building and like growing a garden of like alien plants, you can do that. And you can make it so that like you don't have to worry about, oh no, aliens are constantly attacking my base and making it really hard to do anything. You have those options.

So it's really one of the most i think broad reaching uh games around right now yeah i i will say if if what you are wanting is more of that nitty-gritty rpg i do think starfield is the option that you're looking for still well it, it depends. If you're looking for, again, if you're looking for a narrative RPG, I don't think Starfield does that. I think it has a narrative, but again, it's pretty light. So if you're looking for a narrative space RPG, you kind of have to go Starfield because the audience is pretty limited or the options are pretty limited. Or the options are pretty limited. But I mean there's so much else that these games can be. And I think Starfield checks a lot of the other boxes that you might be looking for.

Yeah. I think that's right. I would also say like if you're looking for a hardcore like intense simmy experience. You can turn No Man's Sky into that as well. You can turn on all the difficulty settings to like ultra survival. You can like obsess over there's like a ton of mods that like give you like 20 more damage on your guns or increase your shields a certain amount and you can like really go on the hunt for those or you can hunt for the perfect ship there's just like so many avenues you can go down to get the best experience

depending on what you're looking for that i like but no guns there are guns there are yeah there's rocket launchers and flamethrowers and all sorts of shit what guns this fighting this combat that's in there oh man now i gotta download it what type of chaos am i gonna cause and mars plant loves guns oh my gosh please don't let that be the clip that gets cut out um this sounds good i it runs okay on steam deck it runs great on steam deck i mean it will look a lot better on like a good pc yeah they did a next gen update like a year or so ago yeah right yeah i think take it if you did like screenshot side by side certainly there are aspects of starfield that are going to look a lot better but i think in terms of like the diversity of

what you're seeing way more diversity in no man's sky and even if you're playing it like on steam deck i usually play on like low to medium settings at like 40 frames a second and the still the game still looks really good like It's just so vibrant. Like all the blues and reds. I think it's just the success of like. Amazing art design. That like scaled really well. That's awesome.

Cool. I am going to give it a try. I have a feeling. That we will weirdly be talking about. No Man's Sky a bit more. Across the both this and besties because it's kind of taken over our our little slack um so we'll talk about that more later right now i want to take a break and then i want to come back and talk about shadow gambit the cursed crew

okay i have good news and i have bad news which what do you want first here do the good news first okay the good news first is shadow gambit the cursed crew is an absolutely amazing game that we're going to tell you so much more about um do you want the bad news yeah this is the final game by the studio that made it yeah um they they released it uh we downloaded it we were immediately in love and then uh i think you were the person who sent me the message that was like oh by the way yeah they're done um the studio uh me me me is based out of munich they are closing following the release of this game they're gonna be they're gonna be like supporting the game i think for a year but effectively this is the last title they're gonna be putting out yes and i believe they're doing it for the well-being of their founders and leads it seems like i don't yeah my my impression my

impression is that these uh you know and they say this pretty directly in the in the blog these sorts of games which are like stealth tactical games which will kind of explain uh in a little bit what that even means but the audience it seems for these is relatively narrow. It hasn't caught wildfire in the way that a battle Royale has, for example. And so what that has resulted in is even though they've made, this is their third installment in the genre. The first one was shadow tactics. The second one was desperados three. And this is the third only bangers.

And they're all great. They're all fucking great. Well received. Only bangers. And they're all great. They're all fucking great. Critically well-received. Yeah, fantastic. And even though they've made all three critically well-received games, every single time they have a new project, they are desperately struggling to get funding and support it such that, like, I think they ended up having to put this game out using the funds from the German government actually funded a percentage of this game. So it's just been like kind of this uphill battle for these folks. And I'm sure just trying to find money to get this stuff, you know, across the finish line is really, really brutal. And it's not for everyone.

And I think these the two founders of the company decided it was not for them long term and they were ready to take a break which honestly if you know that's the way to play it if if your mental well-being is becoming damaged or your family life is becoming damaged because your work maybe it's time to find another job for real i i know that we mentioned um double fine psych odyssey uh you know earlier year, but I think that is a great thing to return to, or especially watch if you haven't seen it yet. Double Fine is a very established studio, and probably the middle chunk of that is them panicking about funding. chunk of that is them panicking about funding yeah um and you know it's like if double fine is struggling what does that mean for these sorts of smaller studios yes tim tim schafer talks about how yeah a through line throughout that series is where's tim because tim's never around when they're doing like design decisions and stuff and what tim has said is basically i was out trying to sell the game and desperately keep the studio open which is like

yeah pretty brutal and unfortunately pretty common like uh actually we just learned that uh volition a long time game development studio behind the saints row series and red faction series is closing so game development is in a pretty tough, as I think we all kind of are to some extent. So not surprising, but at least we have this spectacular final hurrah from me me me to keep us busy. if it is a kind of a victim of your own success sort of thing where a lot of studios they don't make a great game that gets critically praised and then don't make enough money to keep the lights on yeah um but this studio like it neither it made enough to seem to stay open but not enough to be comfortable yeah and that's like that seems like a really tiring place to be for over a decade. Okay. No bummers, though. No bummers. No bummers. No bummers. We're here to celebrate. We are. Me, me, me. Not to bury it. This game is awesome. It is set in kind of a fantastical spin on the golden age of piracy i think uh sea of themes is a very clear uh visual comparison

for its aesthetic or or like even pirates of the caribbean the movies i think tonally are very close to this yes though cartoony like it has that kind of i don't know very colorful very like sharp angles for all of its characters yeah um uh and it works like a lot of stealth tactics games you start with one character and an isometric map an island in the caribbean and you are sneaking around and killing things and you have a little special power which is you can kind of teleport to an enemy like you would in Dishonored to perform a kill. And then, quite rapidly, you unlock more and more characters who you have on your haunted ship. And those characters, you can choose which ones you want to select and in which order.

So there's a sniper sort of character who has a one shot that you can use but then you have to go collect the ammo from wherever you downed a person and there is a character who throws seeds that plant bushes that you can hide in or conceal bodies in um each character i actually think has two special powers um And yeah, I am curious for you, what characters did you pick? And then kind of talk through how the game played. Because I think how this game plays is really dependent on the type of characters that you end up choosing. Yeah. And let me just note, again, for people that aren't familiar with the genre, the whole point of this is to essentially not be spotted.

So you'll have like viewing cones and stuff like that. But if you get spotted, it's pretty much game over. Like there's not a lot of coming back from being spotted. And the game is built around the idea of I'm going to plan this perfect attack such that I don't get spotted. attack such that i don't get spotted but it requires a fair bit of trial and error so much so that the game maybe for the first time ever i don't think i've ever seen this diegetically mentions the idea of quick saving they call it something else they call it memories or whatever it is but it's integrated into the plot of the game where they're like you got to create a memory right here because things might go awry and you might have to jump back to it yeah you'll see it like written

on the walls of the stage yeah i mean then as you're doing it rather than it be like a little save icon in the bottom left it's this like big green liberty bell sort of thing that rings right in the center of the screen. Well, the bell is there to remind you how you haven't saved in two minutes. Like the game is fully designed around saving actually all their games are. And all of the games in this genre are because they are about save scumming to the point of being like perfect, like handling a situation perfectly. Okay, that said that I took a very different approach to it. And we'll get back to the characters because now we're deep into the same scumming. What I love about this game, and you mentioned, right, the goal is to not be seen.

There's usually an objective, like find five pieces of a relic on this island or, you know, assassinate these two characters without being caught. I found this game quite forgiving if you did get spotted in that each of your characters on top of the two special powers also has other ways they can get around the environment. So some can swim, others can climb vines. And I didn't have to save Skelton every time I got shot. time I got shot, I could like swim off and use that to distract the guards and pull them in one far off direction as they kind of chased after my swimmer to then let the other two like sneak by. So I, I felt like I was actually able to use things going awry as a strategy rather than, oh, well, I slipped up again again i need to start the whole thing over yeah that's interesting i've never played these games like that but i guess that's closer to like a metal gear strategy which is actually pretty cool that you can play that way i that is so

smart that you say it like that because you're right it it weirdly feels to me like a squad based metal gear game i hadn't even thought about it until you said it, but that is so spot on. I know, I'm so smart. No, it's good. That makes me actually like it even more. No, that's really cool. I do want to talk about the characters.

They are awesome. When you start out, Plant mentioned you have the captain character, and she is specifically designed to like teleport she could also stop time for one one guard so you could freeze time and like kill someone right in front of them and so long as you could hide the body fast enough they won't even see it um so you start with her and then you're deciding between two characters one of them was like uh i think a doctor like the ship's doctor and she was the

one that could like create bushes and can also like cause guards to like walk away from where you're standing so uh if you need a guard to like move in the opposite direction of where you are you can do that so i had those two um i know there was another option you could pick, but the third person that I recruited was the spy, which is a very common, uh, I guess class in these sorts of games. Usually there is one character who can disguise themselves as the enemy and pass undetected through, uh,

uh, through vision cones and various other things like that in a way that can like the other two can essentially like take advantage of situations the spy here is like so cool they added really smart systems where once you transform into an enemy guard you're limited by your range so you can't actually just run all over the map there's like a giant circle that appears where you possess that guard. And you can only travel in that circle. So what you can do is kind of hopscotch from guard to guard so long as you're not being spotted when you possess the next guard.

It's really, really smart. And he runs around with a cane and has a pipe and he looks awesome. That is cool. The sniper that I have can shoot from just absurdly long distances i mean i have not found like a limit to it effectively as long as there's line of sight um and you know it can be vertical it could go in any direction um but also has a it's like a smoke bomb effectively that they can fire that will close off uh enemies view cones for a short period of time so like you if you have there's a number of scenarios in this game where you have a pretty clear thing of two people chatting and they're

easy to go just schedule a kill for i don't talk about scheduling in a second but then there's like a third person watching them and having this is is my like go-to way of okay i take that person down so not even that they're killed but that they're just hacking and then i uh take out my two enemies and it feels great do you did you use the schedule feature very much is it really called scheduling and i don't i don't know a good way i don't know how else i would describe it's like a planning mode basically yes yeah it's a feature that has been in their games before uh it was definitely in desperado's three there was an element of it in uh shadow

tactics but i think it's been refined since then in shadow tactics it wasn't quite as intuitive but the gist is it allows you to control two characters at once or even three characters at once such that they all execute a command at the same time so for example if you have three guards standing with your their backs facing you, in order to get all three of them to be killed by your three units in real time, you would have to kill one, switch a character, kill the next one, switch characters, kill the next one, switch character, whatever.

There's no way to really do that in real time. You would get spotted and it would be over. But with the, I guess we'll call it scheduling sure with the scheduling you can set it so that all three of the units will go at the exact same time you basically like hit y or whatever the button is and they all kind of enact whatever plan you've laid out for them and so then all three of the units are dead at the same time all the guards you can use it with your special powers. So another example would be that there is one guard on the ground and there's a lookout guard up high. And you could use the character who has that dash move to dash in to kill the ground guard. You could use the character that throws the bush to throw it on top of that to, one, conceal the first killer,

and two, it kind of pushes disintegrate any bodies that get thrown into them. Yep. And then you can use the third person to snipe the person who is on the lookout. Yeah. And it all happens in an instant. Yeah. If done right, it feels like those moments in a samurai movie where the one guy is in the center and then like does a quick sword swipe

and then everyone around him dies that's what it feels like it feels awesome and you can use it as much as you want so you could like use it and it could start to go wrong and you could stop time again and go right back and put up a new plan um it's very generous with it and doesn't want to like make it a special power you know that you have to wait to recharge because the other abilities that is a case you know throwing the concealing seeds or whatever a lot of those things you kind of have to wait on but not this yeah it's incredibly smart and i think of all of the games that they've done this one is probably the most approachable for this genre because as you said there's a lot of aspects that are actually pretty forgiving and it kind of eases you in not

only with the gameplay but also just tonally it's so like light and airy that you really don't feel like i don't know intimidated by the genre itself how you you played on controller yeah i played on steam deck mostly yeah i mean how was that because i found it surprisingly good for a controller experience with a genre that i just do not associate with controllers it is extremely good i so i have actually a pretty good frame reference because i played desperados 3 their previous game with a mouse and keyboard which is how i traditionally played this these games i was like oh of course i game with a mouse and keyboard which is how i traditionally played this these games i was like oh of course i play with a mouse and keyboard and here i'm playing with a controller i think the controller handles incredibly well it actually feels for those of

you who've played balder's gate three very similar in that way because you are directly controlling the characters you're not like setting a waypoint for them to run to which is how it feels when you're using a mouse and keyboard so it feels just like much more direct in that way there are aspects of using a controller that can get a little hinky specifically like locking your camera to someone can be a little bit tricky sometimes but the fact that you can make all these choices in like a turn-based mode whenever you want allows you to do even really complex things very easily because you can really take your time and like set it all up so yeah controller is great i actually recommend it over mouse and keyboard yeah and it looks great on even a small screen you can with the controller very easily zoom in and out and at

like a very close range i mean when possible i prefer to play in that just because it looks so nice yeah um it's reminds me of baldur's gate 3 in that way where i kept baldur's gate 3 zoomed out a lot at the beginning because i was like oh well this is how these games are meant to be played and then once i switched controller i was like wait what it's all this detailed like the game actually looks fantastic zoomed in oh okay um yeah i i think it's really something special i'm really sad for the team that these were not all mega hits and that they're not you know very very financially comfortable and able to just do this forever and ever i am extremely grateful that they made what really feels like the culmination of all their design ideas yeah there's nothing about this game so far and i

don't know maybe like six or probably like seven or eight actually hours and there's nothing about it that like leaves me wanting um and wanting in the sense of like more if anything i feel like i can't wait to unlock more characters there's a skeleton character that like specializes in treasure tricks um that i cannot wait to pick up next uh i like even that, even the layout of this ship that's between missions where you get kind of your story dumps and you have the other undead characters that you need to revive to bring into your party that I can go and look at all of them and see what their skills are before I unlock them. It really just incentivizes me to keep playing. So many little clever decisions like that throughout the yeah there's a neat upgrade system with like each of the characters you can upgrade like one of their primary skills so uh the spy for example if you gather this resource and

decide you want to upgrade the spy you can now possess like the high ranking guards that previously you couldn't so each of high ranking guards that previously you couldn't so each of the characters has that like one aspect that they could like enhance in a dramatic way which is really cool yeah yeah no i i just am so very very very very impressed by it yeah i i am bummed about the studio and for everyone that works at the studio i really hope that they find uh their feet elsewhere but i am actually happy for anyone that is listening to this and ends up falling in love with this game in particular because the other two games that they've made are great actually there's even an i think it's an expand alone of shadow tactics which i haven't even played yet so there's like two other games

plus this expansion which is easily probably 60 hours of gameplay of like missions that are like this so if you fall in love with shadow gambit and want more that is there is plenty more waiting in the wings yeah um i got a few quick questions for us from uh the newsletter oh boy uh and let's just dig into them because i think this game is an answer to one of the questions from turtle just got myself a steam deck after having a console i missed you on entourage i god damn i knew i knew i knew it's him vinny doing the movie again you're doing the movie um turtle wants to know if uh we have any recommendations for steam deck staples i would have my god have we not buried everyone listening at home with steam deck staples you know how often people ask us this question they always want more they oh just give them give them one new one i mean shadow gambit rules and so does no man's sky both of them steam bag staples we did it and

i'll add one more blasphemous too great game blast oh okay that's good that's good uh and you know what while you're having a blast you should check out uh blaster Master Zero while you're there. That whole series. We had a bunch of people who had strong feelings about our list of games for the 1990s to 1994. Uh-oh. And they all thought we were great. There was actually no negative feedback. Nobody agreed with them entirely. actually no no negative feedback i'm gonna agree with them entirely though some people including paul mentioned uh dragon quest 3 would be a good selection yeah we did mention the drag the fact that the dragon quest games in particular are like a big blind spot for us but i'm sure it's lovely

and i have good news i actually spoke with steven hilger over Into the Aether, and he is going to record a little five-minute segment with me ahead of our final episode to help us pick a good RPG from that era to make sure that we can include it on the list. So I think that'll be great. Patrick recommended Team Fortress 2. I want to shout out Ben, who cheered on Sonic and the Sega Genesis because it needs defenders, especially in this house of slander. Yeah, sorry. I also want to shout out Brent, who dropped a YouTube link that I can share in the next issue that is a kind of narrative explainer of myhouse.wad that doom uh expansion that we talked about a few episodes ago that's absolutely bizarre and while i don't think that game is playable for everybody i do think it's least worth checking out as a youtube video um and just a lot of other stuff

we i i appreciate everybody who uh is responding to that and i know like all four of us have been happy not just with like the response, but people kind of helping each other out in the comments that when somebody asks for a game recommendation, another person is there to, you know, show them a recommendation or you guys are so positive. I love it.

Everybody's yeah. It's a really positive energy. And that, that is what we want. Do we have any, I guess you want to share to share any separate honorable mentions? I don't think I have anything that immediately springs to my mind. That's great because I've got two.

Oh, boy. It is football season. By the time you are. Dun, dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun. I thought you were going to harmonize.

Oh. It's tough to do. It's tough. Here, I have two football things for you. Retro Bowl Plus and Retro Bowl, which I am praying it's on Android also. I know it works on iPhonehone um and i want it to work on other things so that people will be happy that i mentioned it and i have great note

news it is it is on google play right now yeah android gaming android gaming i did it i brought an android game this is such a good football video game and it is 2d it's going for kind of a i mean kind of a tech mobile i mean it looks exactly like tech mobile right but the way it works is you it's only offense defense is a automated by the ai you don't have defense is always boring anyway so that's boring right and then on offense the way that you perform passes is by uh pulling your thumb back and then aiming in the direction of where the route is going kind of like a golfing game yeah you know and that feels so good and is the closest i personally have experience to uh reading routes in a football game wow where before the before the thing even starts i like look at my routes i memorize where

they're going i memorize who will get where first and then i can actually like check my routes in the right order and then throw the ball wow um yeah it feels so cool and and that was within the first match i i was playing it properly so you don't think madden has ever done it no madden has done this amazingly well i just don't click with it oh and it like i cannot see routes in mad yeah it all moves so fast sure it's 3d like there's a lot going on the way this game works again it's 2d and you just see the route overlaid on it before it even happens it's so easy to keep it in your head yeah um and it's so easy to see like the entirety of the field the running game works surprisingly well it's just overall a delight and then on top of that it has a football

sim layer over all of it where you are like getting trade offers drafting players and you know putting points into your coaching in the facilities your fans so it is really this kind of like pairing of a really great exhibition football game within an addictive loop in between every round. Cool. I'm just, I'm completely obsessed. And then the other one I have is I just want to shout out Friends of the Show. My favorite Kansas City Chiefs football podcast is no longer at the athletic, but they are independent now.

And that's only weird games. And if you are like me, a Kansas City Chiefs football fan, or you want to become one, hey, there's always room on this bandwagon. I love when people hop on. You should really listen to this podcast because it's hosted by three people who can talk at length about Pokemon. And I love nothing more than listening to my football podcast get diverted by talk of Pikachu, Bulbasaur, who's best.

So the podcast is called Only Weird Games? Yes. So the reason it's called that is there's a belief amongst Kansas City Chiefs fans that we only play weird games, that nothing goes as expected. It can never just be like a blowout for a Kansas City Chiefs game, even though we're a great team. Got it. Only play weird games. But it's a great title for like a

video game podcast. Yeah, it is. Right? It's a lot of pressure. It is a lot. It's not always a weird game. Yeah, what do you do when you only have like boring games? You know? That's really tough. Anything else you want to share on your end before we wrap up?

No, I think we did it. It's been a busy week of a lot of major releases and other things going on. But I'm happy to say that we talked about a lot of awesome games. And that brings me joy. Including one that's seven years old. Yes. I'm very proud of us what do we have next time do we know it's two weeks away i don't know man anything could happen

i'm sure it's gonna be absolutely great whatever it is and i mean we are in the heart of holiday season right now we will be and so you know we got to bring some ballers it can't all go to besties it's going to go to resties as well so keep an ear out dwayne the rock johnson ballers runoff um that that sounds good i will say for people who are curious about the final episode of required reading list that will be within this year that'll be before the end of 2023 but it will probably be later in the year we we tend to give a few uh episodes between those yeah we'll space them out a little bit but it will come uh when we have a bit of a lighter release week uh we'll slot that bad boy in we're also going to think about what we want to do for our ongoing series next year.

Always love to hear any ideas if you want to drop some in the comments. Yeah, please put ideas in. Haven't even talked to Fresh about this, but how do you feel about a poll? Should we maybe do like a poll? Get a few good ideas with audience things? Like a May poll? No, like a poll in besties.fan. People can go and vote.

For what? What could they vote for? For what our miniiseries is. We give them five great choices and they pick. I love it. Do it. Let's do it. That sounds good.

Maple. Jesus. Anyway. Hey. You. Yeah, you. The one listening right now. I just want to say, I hope you have a wonderful day.

This has been another episode of The Rest Use. I'm Christopher Thomas Plant. I'm Russ Frostick. That's right. That's who you are. And we are The Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. Resties!