The Year of the Video Game Ninja

It feels counterintuitive to miss Russ, but

how do you mean?

You know, it's like we complain so much about him being here, both to his face and behind his back.

And it's like when he's not here, it feels weird that that wouldn't be like a relief considering everything.

Well, don't always seem to go that you don't know the Russ you've got until he's a parking lot.

That's how I feel.

That's personally how I feel about it.

It's like, farmer, farmer, put away your DDTs.

I don't care about Russ's in my apples.

Leave me the birds and the bees.

You know?

Chris, you probably know Russ personally a little better than.

Oh.

Oh.

Is somebody at the door?

It sounds like someone's at the door.

I don't know who.

Justin, you mind opening it?

Yeah, I'll get it.

Creek!

Hey, what's up?

It's a Newark giraffe.

You remember me?

I live right across the river.

How cowardly of you

how cowardly of you to conjure him when russ isn't it means you're afraid of russ like the fact that you bring this out now

are you telling me my two best friends this is heartbreaking new york giraffe and russ frostnick are not here

It's like the parts in Rocky when he can't admit.

I'm here to collect debt.

You know in Rocky 6.

You know, in Rocky 6 when he can't add anymore?

Yeah.

It's like watching that.

It's like that was a podcast.

Oh, um, Newark giraffe, I believe that the death that you're looking for, it's right out that window.

Would you mind just looking right out?

He always does this.

He kills

the window, it shuts right on his head.

How did we, how does he grow?

You know what I mean?

He's got a dead giraffe in his arms.

And he fell out the window and it's a wolf.

We got a quote on the 30th floor.

Can you even imagine being scared of

My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Krishna McCarro and another best game of the week.

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week.

And sadly, Russ Fresh is not here, but this is still the besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment.

It is a video game club, and just by listening, you, my friend, have become one of our illustrious members.

This week, we're going to be talking about

Ninja Gaiden Rage Bound.

Chris Plant, what's that?

Ninja Gaiden is back, but it's not in 3D like it's been for you past few decades.

It's back in 2D, like the true fans remember it.

And not only that, but it's actually fun to play.

Yes.

Whoa.

Whoa, exciting huge change uh we'll talk about that and so much more right after this

y'all i was worried about this one okay yeah like same

ninja gaiden the nes games the 2d ones they're not especially fun going back i'll be honest even as a kid they were not my favorite they were just so mean and so tough and they had a kind of funky movement i just didn't know if i was ready to go back yeah i feel like um a lot of 2d side-scrolling action games are trying to capture the like

imagined fluidity of Ninja Gaiden or like the fluidity of maybe like the animation in Ninja Gaiden has given me the impression that those games are very like fluid to play and comfortable to play, but they're not.

They're very like stodgy action games.

Yeah, it's a lot of jumping way high up real fast and then touching an enemy and going flying backwards 15 feet.

It

yeah,

it's not the most satisfying, but man, they done something, they cooked up something good in that game kitchen.

They did some yummy work for us today.

Yeah, hoops, can you describe kind of like how it works this go-around?

Yeah, so

it is not unlike the ninja guiding games of your in that you're a little ninja and you're running back and forth in a 2D plane,

which is a pivot from the most recent Ninja Gaiden games that have been a little bit more like 3D action-based.

This looks kind of like if you're looking at it like a dead cells kind of thing but it's more uh i would say kind of like level based not a rogue like in that in that sense but it's a very fluid sort of uh action game it's doing some interesting things with like um in addition to the the main you know your your hayabusa descendant kin there's a another ninja that has like a long-range attack that feels uh different from what we would traditionally expect for one of these It gives it a bit more of like a shooter running gun kind of feel.

Kumori, I believe is her name.

But

there are cool upgrades, all those kind of like modern things that you'd expect, but it does have a very like retro-like look and feel with some like modern ideas that I think are kind of cool.

It looks fucking great.

The game kitchen is the developer who I referenced earlier made the Blasphemous games,

which are also pretty, you know, gorgeous, pixely

little snacks.

I really, really, really enjoy this game

mostly because like,

you know, the ninja guidance sort of loop of like run around really fast, climb up on that ceiling, dodge a bunch of, you know, bad guys hopping out of walls and smashing towards you.

I find to be like, I don't know, it's hard, but it's also like fairly straightforward.

But every level like throws little challenges at you and has little little

scarabs and skulls to find that are hidden everywhere that you spend on these like permanent equippable upgrades that you can shop for between between levels.

I feel like adding that layer of kind of modern stuff

really made the rest of the classic pretty tough as nails ninja gaiden experience like a hit pretty good for me.

Another thing that I think is cool that they have brought over is like your character kind of like magnetically sticks to ceilings and walls which is a a facet of the original ninja guidance that feels very on-brand but they they it that helps it i think to feel different from a lot of other games because you have to kind of think uh a little bit more vertically um you're

you also have a a aerial attack that you activate like a double jump and if you hit something with it it gives you an extra sort of i think it's called a guillotine boost yeah which is a fucking kick ass name for a thing so like you spend a lot of time in these levels chaining together these aerial attacks and

sticking to the ceiling for a while and

dropping down to collect some treasure and looking for all these secret things.

I don't know.

I've never really given much of a shit about this franchise at all, but

this one has really hit for me.

It also

looks so cool.

It's like I mentioned like retro, but that doesn't even feel like

it's so, there's like so richly animated.

The detail is amazing.

It almost look feels more like a

cartoon.

Like the way it's like, I know that this feels a little trite, but like there is so much animation in every frame of this.

So much to look at.

It's like super colorful and just like, it's a joy to look at.

Yeah, it splices in a lot of cartoon visuals too.

So while it does have that like chunky pixelated aesthetic while you're playing, when you do special moves or you go into cutscenes, it's like somewhere between the NES style cutscenes and like 1990s anime from that period, like Ninja Scroll, which again is, I think, kind of actually creating the thing that you were probably imagining while you were playing Ninja Scrolls.

Yes,

right back then.

Yeah,

Desimist did that a lot too, of like blending together different animation styles to like a lot of like, you know, rotoscope inspired shit that would just kind of like appear out of nowhere or a boss who just like,

you know, visually doesn't quite mesh with the rest of the, you know, gothic environment that you're exploring.

I feel like this game throws that at you a lot.

Oh, yeah.

For people who played the original, the appeal was like the flow state of this game, especially in the early days compared to whatever else was available.

Because yes, like any damage basically meant you were wrecked.

You had to just be sprinting like a ninja through the course, slashing, memorizing the layout of the thing.

It was kind of like a proto-speedrunny type of platformy game.

And this does a really good job of that.

in that if you do get hit, it doesn't immediately mean death.

You do have a health bar and you can refill it at these various checkpoints.

But more importantly, it adds kind of systems to complicate the lines, the flows that you're creating.

So what I mean by that is there's like very, very heavy enemies the enemies that have shields that you either can't break through or they will take tons and tons of hits.

But there are special attacks that you can unlock that are tied to weaker enemies.

So you might see like a little bat that has a glowing red ember above it.

You shoot that with your little projectile, and suddenly now you have a super powered projectile for whatever your next damage is.

So it becomes this like flow of, okay, I see that heavy coming up, but I don't want to take them on directly.

So I'm going to look for weaker enemies to unlock my super move to then take out that heavy and just keep this constant sense of motion rather than like ever stopping to just spam the attack button.

It wants

to always be running.

You can also charge to harm yourself, which will temporarily put you in that supercharged state.

And man, like going through a whole screen in the way you can tell the developer sort of intended of like chaining together, like you kill that enemy to get supercharged, and then you use that supercharged attack to kill this other enemy, which unlocks the next wave of supercharge so you can chain it right to the next guy like it feels it feels very very very you feel very good at video games whenever it pans out and that's a very satisfying feeling did any of you do the um bonus content or the extra levels yeah so one of the things hidden in each of the levels in addition to like the currency you spend on these equippable upgrades you can find secret ops which are

uh usually i can't tell if they do they use the same maps or is it just sort of like the same texture background

set and the same set?

Yeah.

But usually with like way more specific, like usually way more difficult challenges.

Like sometimes you'll get in a level that will be quite short, but it's like a really intense platforming section.

And one of the challenges is like, don't get hit.

at all.

And as you, when you complete those challenges, you get like a ranking at the end of every level.

And if you rank high enough, then it adds more stuff to the shop.

And so it all kind of feeds back into itself.

Yeah, no, I've been really,

everything I've been unlocking in this game, I have been dipping back into

mostly because I want to keep getting the weapon.

What did you think of the difficulty curve for the bosses?

So fucking hard, man.

Holy shit, dude.

They don't play around.

Like, some of the levels are tough, but most of the time you can die without any sort of,

you know, repercussions.

Maybe you'll fail a mission if one of the missions for the level is like, don't die.

But you can sort of, you eventually figure your way out and you get through it and you get to the boss.

Usually it's like, it's kind of a fool me once, shame on you kind of situation.

You'll rush into something too fast.

You're like, ah, dang it.

Okay, I get what we're doing here.

And then you try again, you nail it.

You'll hit the bosses, and the bosses are very much, you know, pattern recognition that you, you know, have to learn.

You have to figure out what it means when the boss starts to charge up this thing, what you should be ready to do, how you can get a supercharge and how you can use it to interrupt some attack.

Like all that stuff is kind of what you'd expect from a game of this genre, but your attacks do

just babysit damage.

And so, you have to maintain this perfect state of pattern recognition and like getting in your hits when you can for really long extended periods of time.

And it is, uh, which is it's only a bummer because it feels like you're playing a different game for a little bit.

It feels like the fluidity and the speed that sort of like makes the game work so well.

Like, not to, not to say everything has to be the same, but like, you know, you would never see like a dead dead cells slow down for so long and like stop you for so long when like a run is so much about like fluidity.

But yeah, it was

definitely the biggest hang-ups for me.

There is an accessibility sort of menu where you can go in and I really appreciate when games do this and you can go in and like very granularly adjust stuff

to make the game sort of to the level of difficulty that you want it.

You can't turn up how much damage you do, but you can like turn down how much damage you take and how long your supercharge lasts after you after you get it.

If you don't use your supercharge in an attack like quickly enough, it goes away, but you can extend that amount of time, which makes chaining together some of the sections a little bit easier.

And so I did dip into those to get past one or two of the bosses because they really beat my ass up and down.

Yeah, I spent probably an hour last night on just one boss, mostly because I feel like it's a troll.

Maybe there's a way to play this quote, right?

But it's this giant creature who throws spikes into the walls.

And one of the three spikes that he will throw allows you to get that supercharge.

Right.

So then you want to like get that and then knock him down.

The problem is it's all a trap.

Every time, one, there's spikes.

So if you jump at them, you will get hit half the time.

You're even trying to chop them up.

Two, he charges at whatever, wherever he's throwing the spikes.

So it took me, I don't know, 30 minutes of finally just accepting, oh, I need to just ignore this entirely and just like stick and poke him over and over and over again.

And then I did great, which on one hand is like clever, and on the other hand, a very weird thing, like you said, Hoops, to have a boss fight.

Literally, the strategy is ignore everything that you've learned so far.

Right.

Yeah.

It doesn't feel,

it feels kind of like shit after

another hour of that.

Super fun writing, which I wasn't really expecting.

The premise is that you are

Ryu Hayabusa's, not son.

No.

Is the relationship established?

You're like in his clan.

You defend the village while he's out and about.

Doing cool advisors.

But you go out on your own adventure and in so doing, you meet this ninja from an opposing, you know, evil corporate clan

who ends up kind of like merging with you a little bit to sort of like blend y'all's powers.

And the conversations between the two of them, I don't know, I feel like the game really shifted on a dime

as soon as she comes along and kind of like joins your

body, I guess, because then it becomes like a conflict between the two of them

sharing one form.

I don't know.

I was surprised.

I was not expecting like pleasant writing from the Ninja Gaiden Ragebound game, but it knows just the right amount of talkie.

Yes.

Yeah.

At the start of each level, you get like four sentences, and then it's time to go.

It's interesting this franchise, too.

It's worth talking about.

I think we should have maybe discussed this during the historical section, but it is wild the amount of time this franchise has been like dormant.

I mean, and we have

three games this year.

Like, it's kind of, you know what I mean?

Like, the last one was

like the Yaiba Ninja Gaiden Z in 2014, which is like a non-entity.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, like, the Ninja Gaiden 4 is coming out later this year, which is a sequel to Ninja Gaiden 3 from 2012.

So it's like, it's wild.

It's getting the Prince of Persia glow where it's all just hitting all at the same time.

I'm here for it, man.

I think Game Kitchen makes tight-ass 2D platformers, and they could have done this with any, any franchise, and it would have, uh, it would have been great.

And I, I think that they have done a, uh, I don't know what like the Ninja Gaiden hardcores think about it, because it, that, there is an element of forgiveness to it, I feel like, and the way that you can, like, uh, you know, modify your loadout to make things a little bit easier here and there.

And like, there's no lives, so it's not like dying is the most punishing thing in the world um i found it you know the boss fights are tough as shit but otherwise i found it like surprisingly approachable and i don't know if that's a a thing that the you know devotees of this of this uh series are are going to be a fan of but i i don't know i i think it's great and i'm glad i didn't let the ninja gaiden name sort of scare me off because that is not one that i find sort of uh appealing they i i will say for the hardcore out there there are unlocks similar to skulls and halo that can make the game harder.

Trima, yeah, like that.

That's your path if you are that sort of you know, sicko.

Yeah, it's one of the things you can buy with the currency of the game.

And I bought a couple of them thinking, like, because if you beat a level with the skull, you know, these hard modifiers unlock and it increases your ranking at the end of the level.

I was like, hell yeah, man.

I'm gonna, I put them on for one level.

I was like, no way, man.

No way, dude.

So it's 25, it looks like on Switch.

I'm assuming that that's pretty

like across the board.

The, The

for that, 25 is like, feels about right, right?

It's a look because it's kind of like

in that weird middle ground

between the AAA and the real indie stuff.

Yeah, super, super polished, I think.

Yeah, the publisher.emu has like kind of owned this $25

space that they released Creates of Rage 4 for that.

They have Metal Slug Tactics that came out for that.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Shredder's Revenge.

It seems like they are designing and budgeting games for a kind of a price point that they're own, like creating.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's cool.

Cool.

Very cool.

Let's take a break.

And then when we come back,

we can go ape.

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So Griffin and I were out last week while you and Freshstick

got to talk about Donkey Kong banana and

Nanza.

And Griffin and I spent quite a bit of time playing it and we thought that we could like kind of

see what each other thought about it.

See whatever.

Let me start with this as a catch-up.

Where did you and Rush shake out you know what pretty good i'm gonna say nintendo they still got it they haven't lost their fastball you know um no i mean we we we talked about all of the basics and

you can go start wherever you'd like this it this is a fun one because this is i think maybe the first game we have covered on this show

where you know it henry is old enough henry's eight and he's old enough now that like he can follow gaming news and he like knew this game was coming out was excited we were excited to play it together um and then we did and then um

he kept playing it by himself so much that i found it quite difficult to formulate uh cogent thoughts because i would be playing it with him and be like oh this is great i get it i get what this game's all about and then i would come back and he would be like a fucking huge super hot super muscular zebra man and it's like what the what happened what who is that guy what happened um but from what i have played it's a lot of fucking fun especially in the co-op mode that they have introduced which i think is a brave and bold innovation utterly chaotic it's barely even a video game at that point give it to a child it's really it's more of like a music visualizer like it's no longer

Did you all talk about the co-op stuff last week, Chris?

We talked about it just that it's so nice to be able to play with a kid and that it's like how

yeah, exactly that.

I think

I think what I'm loving about New Nintendo, and this is the epitome of it, is they do not care if you break their game.

And not just break their game in like the old school sense of like, oh, you have too many lives, or the original Mario thing of like you can exit the game's geometry.

But like on a second-to-second

experience in this game, it looks broken.

Like when you are digging through the walls, it looks like it's clipping.

And they've just embraced that aesthetic, and it carries in every single direction.

They do not care as long as we're having fun.

It's really smart.

I think the

directional punching, the up, forward, and down,

it seems silly, but like it is so smart, I think, because what it does is it sort of it eliminates a lot of that orientation discussion.

Because if I can push a button and he'll punch up, I know that's up, right?

So I can always go in an up kind of fashion if I need to.

And that's really smart.

And I feel like these controllers have all these buttons.

Yeah, man.

Thanks.

Let me punch in a lot of different ways.

That's great.

Great fun.

Good job.

I always want to punch down.

Thank you.

It's such a like philosophically, it feels so different from Odyssey, which is, I think, interesting only because, you know, it's made by the same team and has the same kind of look about it.

But whereas like Odyssey, I feel like I spent the whole time looking around for stuff that I would be like, oh, there's definitely a moon hidden there.

Like, there's definitely, definitely, definitely something there.

In this game, it is not as apparent.

And while in Odyssey, when you would get to one of those places, you'd be like, oh, okay, I kind of think I know what I need to do.

I kind of think I know what they have set up for me to accomplish here so I can get this hidden moon in Bonanza, especially when you're playing in co-op mode where player two is, you know,

Pauline as an AC-130 just showering the ground with exploding words.

It feels like there, I, maybe there is no intended path to this thing, or if there is, like, I am, I have wandered so fucking far from it, and I cannot believe like the solution that me and my son have stumbled onto actually worked.

Uh, and that's crazy that that is true.

Speaking of uh surprising solutions, uh, my daughter and I, Cooper and I turned this, it she turned it into something more like a competitive game where I was trying to

complete the level and she was absorbing explosives and trying to destroy the things that I needed to make progress.

So I would be climbing.

She would then blow up the wall so I couldn't use the wall.

And she would demand that I would return to explosive creatures to let her absorb their explosive powers.

So I would try to avoid those at all costs.

So that was the give and take is that I would try to keep her away from the explosives.

And then if she absorbed them, then she would sort of like stop my progress for as long as she could.

It really, really lets you just fuck a lot of stuff up.

There's a lot of places where you get somewhere and be like, oh, I see.

Donkey Kong is supposed to go up to this exploding guy and rip out a chunk of him and then throw it at this pillar so that he can get up high enough to then throw another explosive at this concrete wall.

Meanwhile, Henry could just be like,

and destroy the thing without having to do any of the extra stuff.

I don't know, man.

I think it's genuinely, genuinely great.

I liked this game okay when I was playing it by myself.

I really, really loved it when I was playing it in co-op.

I know it, it probably seems silly, but I play, I found myself playing this game just for fun.

And, you know, that's not that common for me anymore, but I just really get a kick out of...

Trying to see how much of a thing I can destroy, trying to wipe it clean, seeing what's hidden underneath.

It all feels like virtuous cycle, like all of the destruction you do feeds into better capabilities in that, and so like nothing ever feels like wasted.

Like, you're destroying, but it's all purposeful because, like, you're constantly getting stuff that improves the experience.

Those, and those red faction-ass submissions where it's just like, destroy this building as fast as you can, uh, very much was like zoom into my memories ratatouille style

on the surface of Mars.

The art style is so great, too.

It is this tex Avery type of approach.

It's not doing the Walt Disney preciousness.

Like Donkey Kong is a weirdo in this game.

He's just weird.

He looks all the little

like load screens make him look like a total goofball.

It's kind of red and stimpy-ish in a certain way.

It's a little gross to look at at times.

See, I feel like Donkey Kong is just kind of puerile.

I think he's just kind of a gross guy.

But embracing him.

Maybe the artist is just like nasty.

I think that's a great choice and he is a dirty boy and you do see his bottom you know so like how could you not make that it's so fucked up how they give him pants and then immediately take the pants away like no no that's that's part of the tease i think yeah i think it's i think it's just great it's

i think it will have an interesting legacy because i i don't think it is you know super mario odyssey 2 which i know a lot of people are sort of clamoring for i don't think it is as like

uh

polished in like the mechanics of it, but I think that it also has, I don't think Nintendo's made a game quite like it before.

And that it definitely deserves recognition for that.

Yeah, it's a great, it's a great playground and it's a lot of fun.

And it's a great,

it, it is also, and I mean, we knew this would happen, but it has also had this effect of like

its glow has elevated the Switch 2 in my approximation.

Like the Switch 2 feels more like, I found myself seeking it out in a way that i haven't done and

i mean yeah if this had been a launch launch game i don't know i think the the the conversation about the switch 2 which was already pretty good would have been uh a lot a lot sweeter on it yeah

yeah uh hey we got some reader mail want me to open the mailbag please please uh this one is from big

five

Easy cheat code to make a new mother earthbound game.

Get Toby Fox involved.

Nintendo already has a pretty pretty good relationship with him, with his involvement with the Pokemon soundtracks and Deltarune being a Switch 2 launch title.

And Toby Fox fans will eat up anything with his name on it.

But particularly, that seems to be the kind of project Toby Fox would love to work on, given how much of his game dev roots come from Earthbound.

I think this is good, but does like Toby Fox even need

does he want that?

Yeah.

I don't know.

I mean, that's how, from what I remember,

he like started out in the under,

not Undertale.

That's the one he made.

Earthbound.

Starman.net, probably.

Yeah, like the mods and the translations and all that jazz.

There's definitely a lot of similarities there.

But one, I think he's going to be making Deltaroom for a good long fucking time.

And yeah, two, like, I don't know if that's something he would even want to do.

I could see like him doing music for it.

And it makes it.

Oh, it would be fucked up.

It would be fucked up if someone made it, though.

This is actually a good point.

If someone made it and

he was not involved to some extent, that would be pretty wild.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This one we've got from Dayton.

I've been really surprised to hear people confused about the new Kirby Airride.

I grew up in the GameCube generation and feel a sense of incredible fondness for that game from other people who played it.

I wonder if the generation getting nostalgic reboots and re-releases is just aging up.

We certainly had plenty of PS1 nostalgia in the past year or two.

Totally fair observation.

Like if you were a kid of a certain age when GameCube came out and you were

sucking the nutrients out of every release that they deigned to give you, I imagine that the nostalgia factor would be quite high.

For me, it is virtually non-existent.

I did not play Kirby's Air Ride, but maybe once or twice at a friend's house.

I mean, I'm just excited because Sakurai making a game that's not Smash Brothers is a thing to be excited about.

Oh, I'm excited.

But it's purely, you know, we love, we love this pink man.

I'm excited anytime anybody's not making Smash Bros.

Yeah, that's weird.

I had this thought yesterday.

Isn't it kind of weird that there's not like a Switch 2

version of Smash Bros Ultimate?

Doesn't that seem kind of weird?

Doesn't that seem like a tentpole ass thing that people are still fucking playing that you would want to

get that money with?

Get an extra 10 bucks a pop out of people for just wait till they need that money that i that that's probably it is that they they're gonna you know walk this dog for as long as they can that we'll get that maybe that's this christmas right they need some big fancy refresh for christmas and and

that seems like the right time to do yeah but they would i don't know that they would have the courage of their convictions to do that without adding more characters to the roster and they've been so explicit like we're fucking done man we could put more stages stages.

We put Minecraft Steve in there.

We can't fucking do anymore.

We're done.

I'm the chicken jockey, yeah.

Should we talk about what else we're playing?

Y'all got any other good stuff going on?

Did y'all talk about Merge Maestro last week?

I don't believe so.

Fuck yeah, dude.

Yeah, it's good.

Griffin made me play it.

It's good.

Merge Maestro is an iOS game.

I believe it's also on Steam, maybe a couple other platforms.

It

is sort of like a

basic structure of a threes

or

2048.

Was that the name of the other one?

Where you have a board with 16 slots on it.

You are dropping these tiles numbered one through eight on it, and you combine like tiles to make the next highest one.

If you have a one on the board and you drag another one on top of it, it turns into a two.

As this is happening, enemies are spawning in slots across from your board, and the point of the game is to take them out before they can attack and kill you.

Between each sort of like set of waves of new enemies coming in, you go to a shop where you

swap out one of your sort of like featureless numbered tokens for one that gives you some sort of ability, some sort of power.

Maybe this one does multiple attacks whenever it spawns in.

Maybe this one creates some sort of buffing item whenever it is destroyed.

There's like a dozen different ways that these things trigger and

synergize.

And there's like a million different ways that you can kind of like build a strategy to complete a game, which goes through 15 different waves of enemies.

There's also like, you know, constant perks that you will unlock every five waves, which will really inform the strategy that you go with.

And they'll be like, you know, your number three token triggers two more times.

It's just like,

there's also, I think, 10 different sets of 20 tokens.

And every time you play, it mixes together five of those sets to create like a new, new deck.

So you don't really know what you're going to have whenever you, you know, start a new round.

Then there's like Bellatro style, like different difficulties.

And if you get certain win streaks on those difficulties, you'll unlock new challenges and new sets and new boards.

And like, there's just so much shit.

And this game is $3.

It's just, and it really, really, really

fully consumed me, I will say.

When we were traveling last week, I spent a lot of time in the car just sort of trying to knock out some of the challenges on my phone.

But it is very, it's great, man.

It has the aesthetic of a super Auto Pets, sort of like a very emoji style interface, but don't let that turn you off.

There's like, there's so, so, so much game here.

And

I found myself very, very compelled by it.

Also, we finished watching The Studio.

Have you guys talked about that?

Yeah.

The

Seth Rogan comedy about a team of creative executives at a high-profile movie house in Hollywood and his sort of foibles in trying to run the company.

It's very, very funny, very ambitious sort of stuff.

I mostly wanted to watch it because every single person who was on it got nominated for Golden Globes, some of whom were in an episode featuring fake Golden Globes.

So it's very inward looking, this program, but I really liked it.

You guys talked about Maze Mice last time, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

It's really good for you.

You played Maze Mice?

No, I didn't play Mice.

I didn't play Maze Mice.

You've been enjoying it?

Man, Maze Mice is, uh okay imagine you're a mouse okay and you're on a pac-man style maze and you're running around the house maze trying to eat all the delicious cheese in the maze but here's the thing about it you're being trailed by cats and as you pass by other cats they start trailing you too until you have an increasingly long line of cats but as you are picking up upgrade as you're picking up the cheese of power, you're getting more and more powerful and you're getting upgrades in the fashion of like vampire survivors.

So

maybe you start leaving behind a trail of fire to kill cats, or maybe you start shooting spikes at any cats that are near you, etc., etc.

And so you can kind of build a strategy around how you're going to eliminate cats.

Now, as long as you can stay ahead of the cats in the maze, you're probably okay until the line gets too long and they start to cut you off.

That's bad.

And then there's also free-floating enemies that are not constrained by the mice that are trying to get you.

So you're like having to deal with those and eat all the power up so you could keep leveling up your

cat killing abilities.

These are nasty looking cats, by the way.

Like there's probably people hearing this thinking like, that's awful.

If you could see these cats, they are nasty kitties.

So it's a very, it's like a, it's like one of those like two great tastes kind of things.

It just like, it just works.

It's fun.

It's, it, it is, uh, it works in a very predictable way, but that doesn't mean that it don't work so it's uh i like it a lot it's the same dev as uh luck be a landlord also which is also sort of similar to uh merge merge maestro for sure but yeah this looks like uh what are you playing this on steam steam steam deck yeah yeah yeah

i would definitely think so speaking of games that uh can be broken one of our listeners sent us a video of it on steam deck where they had gotten a perfect build and it was just slowly degrading the steam deck's quality it was like literally hands-off checking checking in on it every 15 minutes after three hours, the Steam Deck was moving at like two frames per second.

That's crazy.

Hordes of mice or cats got destroyed.

It was very good.

Cool.

Yeah, the only thing that I have, and we'll be talking more about this on the next episode of the Resties, but Wheel World?

Do you know about this?

Is it a racing game?

It kind of, yeah, it's a bike, a cycle racing game.

But

Griffin, you'll be most excited because it's the new game from Mess Hoff, the creator of Nidhoff.

That's what I thought.

That's what, just based on the...

Yes.

And it's just a good chill-out video game.

I mean, you know me.

I love games like that remake of SSX or Steep where you just flow through a really pretty environment.

And that's this.

I mean, it's

hoops.

Speaking in theme park terms, you know the cars land in Disneyland when you go and it's like everything is just an ode to cars?

I mean, I can imagine.

I've never been, but I get what you're saying.

Now I have to get you out of California.

It's like that.

Oh, no, no, no.

I was within five feet of it.

I just didn't want to waste my time.

I've been to Disney World, so.

Jesus Christ.

That's what I'm doing.

Yeah,

I went to downtown Disney.

I just wasn't going to walk all the way over to Disneyland.

No, thanks, man.

You weren't going to walk all the way over to Disneyland because the guilt we would have felt going to Disneyland without our children would have been unbearable.

Yeah, just like, I've been to World.

It's like bigger, you know, I can imagine it bigger.

Yeah, it's inherently better.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, so there's this, there's this like, you know, trashy little place called Disneyland, and they do have a cars theme park where everything is known to cars.

Wheel World is like that, but for bikes, where everything in this world is centered around bike culture from like.

The only thing people want to do is talk about bikes.

They want to sell bike parts.

All of the like ancient statues are based off of bikes.

It's just.

I love that in video games.

That's like my favorite favorite video game trip.

What was the monster hunting game where it was like a resort island, but literally every conversation was just always about monster hunting?

Because, like, why do you want to talk about other stuff?

You mean

Dungeons of Hinterberg?

Dungeons of Hinterberg.

That was a good game.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was a good one.

But yeah, I'll be talking about this more with our boy Fresh.

So if you want to hear more about this game and other stuff, listen to the resties.

That is it.

I think we did it.

Do we have anything else?

No.

No?

Cool.

Thank you.

I'd like to be more.

I could tell him about our Patreon.

That's okay.

Oh, yeah.

Let's do that.

Yeah, I got a Patreon.

If you want to support this show, if you like what we do, you can go to patreon.com/slash the besties.

You can also gift a membership at patreon.com/slash the besties.gift.

Sorry, the besties slash gift.

Thanks to members this week, people like Bryson, and James, and Dave, and Freud Top Mom.

Next week, what are we doing?

It says here.

No way, dude.

Nay, Frush.

No way, dude.

I think next week is going to be a little bit up for grabs.

There is the System Truck 2 remake, which I don't know that I would have a lot to say about.

Oh, I'll be here.

Guys, do whatever you want.

Oh, that's a good point.

Grounded 2 just hit early access.

I might get into that.

Next week, Grounded 2.

You're not going to be here.

We'll do both.

Doubleheader.

Grounded 2.

And.

Yeah, we'll talk about something next week, and it's going to be fucking great.

So just like, chill out.

Just be calm.

That's going to do it for us until next time.

Be sure to join us again on the besties.

Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

Besties