Deltraune Isn’t Finished Just Yet, But You Should Play It Now

I have a towel report.

Okay.

How's our stock?

Good, good, good to see you.

We are no longer in the podcasting business.

We are in the towel business.

We're in the towel bus.

I got a marketing arm that is a podcast, this podcast.

And we mainly make towels.

We make one towel.

We have a towel so far.

And we don't make it.

Russ came up with the idea.

The rest of us are wheezing.

Russ is juicy, but he's not making the damn.

M-H-R.

Home runs.

I did.

I was creative director.

Yeah, sure.

So at that point,

I was making some serious, tough calls about the towel.

The towel, just to refresh people's memory, the towel says you dried on it in Dark Souls font.

Am I allowed to say that it says Dark Souls felt?

I wouldn't, but you already did.

I just did it.

There's no going back.

It keeps selling out because people really think it's hilarious.

Good one.

Why won't we just make more, they say?

Well, we are making more.

We figured out a way to do a pre-order page on the page that keeps selling.

We need to start the show with this.

Absolutely off the rails to start the show with this.

This is a towel report that the people want to know about.

Right.

Right.

Right.

An update that the podcast is going to be monthly now.

That's going to be hard to hear.

We need more towel time, guys, because we've tried to think of a second towel.

Guess what?

We fucking can't.

It's

a second time.

We've tried so hard.

Sorry.

Yes.

We were originally going to be monthly, but we decided we needed more towel segments.

I had had one that said I got that drip on it.

And then people were like, but you don't, the towel shouldn't say that.

And also it doesn't mean anything.

And it's not as good as you dry.

I got to be honest, though, Griffin, I kind of like that towel.

I had one that said Mega Man towel on it.

And it had a picture of Mega Man on it because I was trying to get back into a gamer house.

I think that's legally binding trademark.

Yeah, no, I mean, you can't.

Obviously, that one didn't make it to the factory floor.

Yeah.

No.

Is there a Yoshi towel you have in mind?

No, but that's a good one.

It should look like his tongue.

Yeah.

Fuck.

It could just be a dinosaur.

A regular dinosaur with that big, beautiful tongue coming out of it.

Yeah.

Anyway, if you want the towel, there's a pre-order link now.

You could pre-order it and it'll make it.

How much longer do we have to do the podcast is the question on my mind.

This is the entire

finish episode.

Okay, fair enough.

This is just all on towel stuff.

So

I'm trying to think if there's any terry cloth.

No, the terry cloth situation's fine.

Yeah.

No, we're good.

We're good.

That's it on towels.

Awesome.

Well, that's been your towel update.

Those of you who only wanted that and don't give a shit about video games, tune out now.

Already to get through the album.

Get the fuck out of here.

There's going to be less towels from this point on.

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

My name is Griffin McElroy.

I know the best game of the week.

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

My name is Russ Frostick, and I know the best game of the week.

Welcome to the besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment.

It's a video game club, and just by listening, my friend, you have become a member.

This week, we've got a potpourri grab bag for you of great new hit releases.

Some new, new something something old something new something borrowed

something

blue justin just opened a tab on his computer that illuminated him like he was after all the other games for all the other games we were talking about yeah how do we

like work on my base while i'm that's the light of the google duck shining upon you what's a what's a grab bag chris A grab bag?

Well, it is when we talk about all sorts of different games because there's just too much great stuff for us to put into one episode.

We have to, you know, spread the word.

It's not a cop-out.

You're a cop-out.

Okay, we'll be back right after this.

I feel like Grab Bag diminishes some of the games that we have on here.

Specifically, there is one of them that y'all have been asking us to discuss for quite some time.

It's not finished is the thing.

Yeah, people have wanted Deltarune.

I didn't know that, but you informed me last week.

Like, hey, people are saying, why do you guys hate Deltarune?

And that's

simply not the case.

But I now have played through fucking all of it.

Well, no, no.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I've played through the four of seven chapters that are currently available of Deltarune.

You're at like Winds of Winter, basically.

Yes, just past the halfway point.

Who else checked it out?

Me.

Okay.

I played through the first episode and then some of the second episode, which is quite good so far.

Yes.

So yeah, four episodes are out.

The first one came out a while ago.

I don't know exactly when.

It has this episodic structure.

I was kind of not, I'm recapping a lot of stuff I mentioned in the honorable mentions last week, but

I was not sold on the sort of episodic structure of it.

And I was like, you know what?

I'm just going to fucking come back.

when the whole thing is out.

And now it's 2025 and the third and fourth chapters dropped

about a month ago or so.

And

chapter five is due to come out next year.

And then six and seven will be out at, you know, whenever they're out, I guess.

But I am very genuine thank you to our listeners for asking us to come back to this one because I'm very, very glad I did because now I've played through the whole, all that is available, the four chapters that are available.

And I am, I am just gaga about this, about this game.

I played Undertale

throughout, and I liked it.

It was fun and cute and good,

but I was not bowled over.

And mostly that's just a genre issue with me.

As we know, turn-based RPG is not my necessarily favorite.

I am curious to know whether this is going to hit differently for me, or is it more or less the same with a new story?

Juice, did you play Undertale?

Because maybe it's not.

You know what's funny, Griffin?

I made a couple of attempts at Undertale over the years, and neither one of them was successful.

I have never really gotten into it.

I never really got the angle.

I don't know why.

I will say that this, I will say

mechanically, it's hard for me to compare.

I will say narratively, it's a much more,

or at least it seemed to me,

a little bit more linear and relatable story that was

talking about this one.

I found Delta Rune to be easier to sort of follow and sort of parse what was happening in a

game narrative sense.

And there's a really cool,

I will say they do a really good job of introducing little mechanics throughout.

I mean, constantly, when you're defending in this game, there's like you're kind of doing like shoot-em-up style dodging

as your

bullet held.

Bullet held dodging, I guess, more accurately.

And that's how you like, that's the dodging.

So that's kind of cool.

Every enemy has like different patterns.

That was a little bit an undertale.

That was an undertale.

Yeah, it is just, it is extremely fleshed out in this one and constantly evolving and constantly changing chapter to chapter.

It's also cool, like trying to figure out how to finish the enemies without attacking them.

In Undertale, I just got the sense of like, I don't know, it felt worse

to spare enemies.

It felt like you were doing something the game didn't want you to do, kind of, but did want you to do.

I don't know.

I like to feel like I'm doing a good job.

It telegraphs.

I think Deltarune

really achieves a lot of the stuff that Undertale, you know, conceptually went for and largely succeeded at.

People adore that game, myself included.

But I think that they do just about everything better in Deltarune.

To that point, in Undertale, if you wanted to spare somebody, it would give you a list of like options of actions you can do.

And then you had to kind of guess, like,

I should be mean to this frog, but nice to this one.

All the fights in Deltarune, like they really telegraph kind of like what is is kind of the correct choice or it'll show you like this one will make them dial this one will make them tired and if they get tired you can use this spell and it will put them to sleep which is the same thing as as as you know sparing them um a lot of the time almost all of the acts that you do to like build up the mercy meter uh require you to like do some little mini game real quick or like you're gonna dodge all these bullets but pick up the green ones like there's so it's really very active and very involved and i you don't really feel like you're doing a ton of guesswork throughout it because of the episodic structure does it change dramatically from episode to episode in terms of what you're doing?

The core, like combat mechanics, no.

Everything else?

Yeah, kind of.

It is, it is, the reason I'm here for the episodic structure is one,

I just finished episode four, like an hour and a half ago, and it was like five or six hours.

It was huge.

Like for a chap, for a chapter of a seven-chapter like video game,

I think the chapters themselves are comparable in length to Undertale, right?

So So like there's a lot of stuff happening there.

The reason I'm so sold on the structure is that every episode feels self-contained and it feels so different.

Like the first one is like kind of more Undertale-y, like it's sort of easing you into kind of what's going on.

And then the second one takes place inside of a computer.

And then the third one is like kind of a bottle episode game show.

thing.

And then the fourth one is like this grand like cathedral adventure fantasy thing.

Like each one totally does a different thing.

The combat and all that stuff is

roughly the same, but each like boss fight will throw like a different weird mechanic at you.

Like for this one, to get your energy up, you're going to play Pac-Man.

Like it's almost turns WarioWare-esque in the way that it takes.

It takes it seriously.

And that was something that like I got the sense with Undertale where like it was always kind of like,

if you felt invested in the mechanics, I feel like it was almost a little bit like goofing on you.

Like it wasn't taking its own mechanics seriously.

So it felt sort of like it was harder to engage with because it all seemed like kind of a joke.

This, you, you, I'll give you a good example.

There's a, at one point, a, uh, a little, this little round guy, uh, he's a cute little dude.

He's a checker checker piece, and he puts on a crown and he gets it turns into a big checkerpiece.

So he kings him and turns him into a crown.

And you can bow to him, and that will knock off, uh, that will wiggle his crown a little bit.

Or you can together, two characters can do a big bow and then he'll do a big one and like bow more.

Or there is a chance to throw a character at his hat and you have to

like

aim the shot exactly right.

And if you hit the hat, then you'll do a large amount of damage to knocking off the hat.

So it's like a risk-reward thing of like, okay, I'm going to try that for the big like hat

knocking off thing.

And that feels like a fully fleshed-out mechanic, not like avoiding it.

Like, it makes it so clear early on.

It says repeatedly, like, in this world, you don't have to attack stuff, you don't have to attack things.

Like, combat is optional.

Yeah.

Uh, and they really hit that pretty hard, but they make it fun, I think, to avoid it.

Broad strokes, I think, mechanically, the game is genuinely very, very fun to play.

Um, yeah, the

does it have jokes?

The writing is spectacular, yeah,

And it is also as varied as like the individual chapters are from a sort of like mechanical thematic standpoint.

The first one is like, it eases you in.

It's pretty funny.

You get to meet some like really great characters.

The second chapter is the funniest fucking like video game thing I have played in recent memory.

It's it's genuine.

I was playing it

by myself and had moments of just gut-busting lols, guys.

Out loud for real.

Genuinely hysterical.

Genuinely hysterical.

I'll tell you what, to me,

the thing is, and what is so hard about games in, or humoring games, at least as near as I've been able to tell, is that you really can, like, a joke to me is only funny the first time you hear it, right?

And the problem with games is when you're doing

a circuit, you know, you're repeating levels, you're repeating content, like you're going to run into the same scenario and there's going to be a pre-scripted gag and if you've heard it once before it's instantly like the first dub step is right the first dub step gun great great hilarious and then after that i don't know how to say it other than like every line in this game feels like it was written to be read once like you it's it's just written for this one thing that's happening now and but it is like there's value to it right there's nothing uh where you you click through some dialogue and it's like well that was kind of pointless i didn't really get anything out of that it's always like there's always something there and it's always like fresh and original and never recycled and that that really hits and there's not a reason that you would like have to replay a fight where you might see dialogue again there's like super every chapter has like a bonus boss who is like extremely difficult um and you will probably have to retry those a few times and see the same scripted dialogue but i mean if you're doing that.

But I'm like, that's it.

That's if you lose.

I mean, that's one way.

I'm saying like if you lose and you have to go back, that's maybe one thing.

But like, I don't even know outside of that, like where you wouldn't see recycled content.

You know what I mean?

Like gags getting recycled or things that are just like a stand-in for funny.

I'll give you like.

A lot of games will have like a funny name for a prop or like a

joke name for different stats or things like that.

And that's like stuff you're going to encounter over and over and over again where the novelty is completely worn off.

Like you're not, it's not that kind of like comedy, quote unquote.

It's not the

Death Spank rule of 1,000 pieces of bacon is 1,000 times funnier than one piece of bacon.

The only person who enjoys Death Spank just hung up from the call, so I'm kind of bone on that reference.

But hey, what can you do?

I actually have some jokes for you.

Oh, you wrote some jokes?

Well, I'm like, you know, borrowed.

Oh, okay.

Um,

but I decided to share.

Are you about to read jokes from Deltaran?

What do you say when you lose a Nintendo game?

What

I want a Wii match.

That's pretty good.

So, like, that's that's it.

Like, that's Deltaran right there, Chris God.

You're only hearing that once.

All right.

What game do you play after eating Taco Bell?

What's that, Chris?

Fart Night.

Cool.

Okay.

What are you reading?

What are you reading?

What are you reading?

I'm reading daddylife.com.

DaddyLife.com.

Thank you so much for plagiarizing Daddy Life.

I'm going to do a lot video game jokes.

Well, I hope you love the bad jokes.

And does Daddy Life cover any other topics by any chance?

I'm actually afraid to find out because I'm not right.

I'm very worried that it is not a good website.

I think Deltarune is very, very funny.

It also, like Undertale, takes some swings at other like emotions as well.

And I do think it does it like pretty fucking well.

It is able to do the thing where like it builds a very, very, very silly world through the first few chapters.

And then in chapter four, when it starts like throwing haymakers, like it hits because it's catching you off guard and you're like invested in the, in the stuff.

And it does it like really well.

It's kind of scary at times, kind of stressful at times.

Dense too.

Like there's very, very little backtracking.

Like it's, it, it very much feels like you're taking the one path through the thing.

You do the one gag or the one gimmick.

Um, sometimes there's like little mini-games like that, like that.

I wish there was more of, just because it was that pleasurable.

To like, there's a, you know, the word puzzle thing, Griff, where you have to walk over the letters to spell out different codes.

Oh man, I could have done a thousand of those.

Yeah.

How nice is it to play a game and be like, I wish there was more of it.

Yeah.

I mean, that's that.

Ooh, that's good.

I think that

I don't know how much I want to really get into this, but like

Undertale has a

huge fan base, right?

And I think, and that has been the sentiment from them forever of like, and that is why you get these huge fan-made projects.

Someone made a whole Undertale sequel called, I think Undertale Yellow.

There's like a bunch of different games that like people have made and obviously like written fiction about.

And

I feel like there was a part of me that was a bit hesitant because

the

people who were super into Undertale had a reputation for being like pushy or

exasperating about it.

Yeah, I really like, I think the episodic nature really does help because for me,

I really appreciate that like closure and the sense that like I've gotten a full experience and I can return for more of it at some point if I want to.

But I feel like this game was so curated, curated,

the whole experience felt like crafted for me to enjoy and I was like excited to go into the next chapter but I think having that off-ramp is a big engagement point right like I think when you willingly choose to start that second chapter then you're really dialed in I think yes also something I didn't recognize

because I only played chapter one and then didn't pick up chapter two uh your save file can like carry over so like the stuff that you do in one game carries over to the to the next um which is a you know i'm i'm very happy that there's some continuity there.

There's a lot of great stuff, like before you go into these little dark worlds where most of the game takes place, you get to wander around your hometown and you'll see from chapter to chapter, like how people's shit is like developing,

which is very, very enjoyable.

I guess for me, it's in the same way that like I don't necessarily want to play, it's not a one-to-one, but like why I don't want to play the early access version of Hades is because I'm going to fucking forget who these characters are or whatever if the thing comes out in a year.

It feels like this is more full, right?

I mean, I'm talking truly out of my ass, but from the outside, it seems like it's being promoted as you can join right now and you're getting like a pretty full experience.

I just finished chapter four this morning, and I think I'm clocked in at 21 hours total for the fourth chapter.

Like, it's a lot of shit.

And I will also say this, and I really do mean it.

I was also worried about that.

That is why I wanted to hold off, right?

It's like, well, I don't want to have to come back and keep replaying these things to remind myself what I don't think I'm going gonna need to.

Like, I think I'll be able to go a year and play the next chapter and pretty much pick it up where I left it off because of how

strong the, like, the writing is and how genuinely great the characters are.

And like, it, it, it is, uh,

I am not so worried anymore after playing what is available now that the four chapters that I have played are just going to like leak out of my ears.

I think it's got some.

And for chapter seven, Hideo Kojima is going to be doing a a kid cap.

Can't even imagine.

I think it's great.

I think that

I can't imagine following up Undertale in a normal way, like in a traditional way, just making an Undertale 2.

This game, you mentioned, is it going to hit better for you because you played Undertale?

Like there is...

The world is kind of familiar and the characters,

there's some characters who show up who are in Undertale, but it's not at all plot relevant.

Like you don't need to know shit that happened in that game to play Deltarune.

It's not really a sequel.

I mean, I barely remember most.

I remember Sans being a silly old skeleton and his buddy.

His brother.

And there was an Evil Flower.

Yeah.

That's basically all I remember.

Yeah, you don't even need to know that shit, but I think it's one of those things where if you have played it, you'll

enjoy the cameos and what have you.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Cool.

It seems like we should take a break there.

That was so full-featured.

And then after the break, we've got more games as well.

Yeah, the Crab Bag had one big front pocket and now we've gone to a deltar rune.

Yeah, this feels like it's now a deltar rune episode.

A little bit.

I think so.

Yeah.

It happens.

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Okay,

uh, I played two games.

Look under this Deltar Rune.

I played two games.

I will play Deltarune eventually.

But yeah, I don't know.

I kind of want to wait.

I don't want to talk about why I can't play Deltarune anymore.

I feel like I already know too much about it.

I played Angry Birds Bounce, which is on Apple Arcade.

Oh, fucking shit.

Yeah, dog.

Holy crap.

It's Sega now, right?

This is Sega shit.

Meaning what?

Oh, that the Angry Birds are everywhere?

No, Sega owns Angry birds this is like the first angry birds game made under sega oh i didn't know that

i think that's right yeah it's kind of interesting it's it's like um bust a move

where you're like flinging the birds on this like puzzle thing and you're guess what they do not like the pigs and you're attacking the pigs but the way it plays out instead of like normal bust a move is you're building like a little mini squad of birds and you're deciding oh i want the explodey bird the red bird and then the white bird and they all get thrown at the same time Wait, hold on.

At the same time?

Yes.

Okay, sorry.

Sorry to interrupt.

Go ahead.

Not individually.

Okay.

It was kind of interesting.

I was kind of into it.

I did, I was put off slightly because they literally do not let you quit the game until they've tutorialized it for you, which I assume is like, how do we make this game as sticky as possible?

And I found that a little untoward.

But other than that,

it was pretty good.

The game that really stood out to me.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Were you financially financially incentivized to tell me about the new Angry Birds game?

I like bust the move and I don't know.

I don't feel any smarter having heard all that.

It's just

the time playing it.

I was just going to try it.

I like if that's the case, I can.

I'm not sure he's getting his value.

I'm going to shit out nine iOS games that I played five minutes of.

Yeah, I didn't know you were talking about the toilet.

I thought we were talking about video from writing off every single day.

You've been there for free.

You've got to get a pay taxes.

For free.

The game does look fun.

I'm going to have a night nightmare here for our boy Fresh, but the game looks fun.

You guys should talk about the iOS games that you play if you enjoyed them.

And I enjoyed this game.

No, man.

I'm going to do it later in the show just to speak.

There's not a lot of screws in.

Hey, can I say when I do my iOS game later, Rez, I don't have a fucking leg to stand on.

Yeah, no kidding.

Yeah.

You're doing cut the rope.

DX.

The other game that I played is White Knuckle.

It is a first-person climbing game.

It has like one-bit style graphics like,

what's that fucking ship game with the detective work?

Oberdin.

Oberdin.

Looks like Oberdin.

It's first person.

You see your hands

as you're grabbing onto things.

You're basically climbing up like a big silo.

And each of your hands has a stamina meter.

So if you hold on for a while, that hand will get tired and eventually you'll have to drop off.

You have to switch the other hand.

You can use both hands to like pull yourself up onto a ledge, but obviously that will also make you more tired.

And you're basically going through these levels that have some sort of randomness to them.

Like they're not, it's not always the same path exactly.

And there is a pit of slime that is slowly kind of following you up the tunnel.

So there's some stress.

You can't like spend hours and hours kind of perfecting it.

So that's like the basic stuff.

It gets more complicated because you've got an inventory and you've got, you can find like a hammer and pitons that you kind of like hammer into the walls to like create

endpoints sorry no they're like this the spikes yeah it's like a spike if you're like a cliff climber you would like i've seen clips of this game okay okay i got you now sorry i've seen clips of this game a lot and thought it looked very fucking cool but i didn't know the name of it yeah it's it's called white knuckle um it's very hard but i found it to be pretty addicting i did get a little motion sick after my i played for about an hour and I felt a little woozy after that, but that's a more a me problem than anything else.

But I really died.

The visual style I thought really stood out.

There aren't too many climbing games that like

do it like this.

I can't think of a similar one where they're like really tracking like each hand's stamina rate at a given time.

And then you've got again, like, how am I going to use these inventory items as effectively as possible?

You'll get like spikes that you can throw into the wall.

You'll get, there's like a spear that has a rope at the end of it, so you can climb up the rope if you want.

Just a really cool idea.

And then there's also like leaderboards and shit if you get really good at it, which I'm certainly not.

Is there like an upgrade progression?

There's a perk system that I wasn't, I don't think, good enough to unlock too much of.

It's like tied to some of the achievements, and I didn't see if any of the achievements I did get unlocked any.

I got to like 500 meters, which was like four or five of the like individual silo levels.

But the levels, they kind of throw different orders of them at you and i think the inventory also switches around so there's some strategy to it it looks like a it looks like a vr game like it kind of the the moon is so up in it so in that way it's kind of like almost like well and just the disembodied hands floating in front of you really feels um that's true it feels rare lab was that that game yeah yeah that sounds right it's uh cool to get a climbing game it's been it's been forever uh what's next up

a climbing game holy shit is this a a new trend?

Guys, are we in the forefront of the climbing revolution?

I think we're late to the climbing revolution, probably.

I think we're late.

Yeah.

Mine is Peak, which

have y'all seen this game?

Yeah, it's popping off.

It is, I wish we had a term for this, like wobble-likes is like the thing that keeps bouncing in my head.

Games where you play with friends and you play as these little characters who just wobble around.

Oh, like human falls.

No, more like repo.

Well, that, but like, repo, I think, is, like, one where the controls are a little loose.

And

if I'm being generous, like, that's very intentional.

Right.

Um, and it's not a way of covering up, like, really having to hone things in.

Um, and part of the humor is like watching things go wrong with your friends.

It uses local, local voice chat, like a repo does.

Yes, yes.

To great effect.

And playing with friends kind of like

covers maybe some of the game's weaknesses if it were to be a solo player game.

Like because you're chatting, you know, things don't have to be always happening.

Peak, I did play solo, even though the whole premise seems to be like play it multiplayer.

And let me tell you, great.

Great as a solo game.

Because this sort of game is perfect for climbing, because it's all about the awkwardness of like getting around these massive environments.

And the loneliness is kind of the point in these sorts of games where where you just want to go exploring and I don't remember if you all remember um grow home the ubisoft game it is very very much pulling from that vibe where you start at the bottom of a mountain and you look up and you see what looks impossibly high uh this humongous mountain and you say okay i'm going to i am going to climb that thing and the game is not going to show me how to do it and i don't know how i'm going to do it and moment to moment i'm going to make decisions that are going going to get me from point A to point B and the fun of that like oh well I'm kind of sorry to go off about this route and now I'm at a point where I'm going to the only way up is to do this really precarious leap grab onto a vine climb over the vine and then hope I can get on to like a get my footing before my grip goes out

That's fun or you do that and you're like I could go a different direction, but it's gonna add probably 10 minutes to my hike Do I really want to do that?

And making those decisions where when it goes wrong, you realize, I was just so greedy.

Like, why did I, why did I do that?

I knew it wouldn't work.

Feels so, so good.

I want to play it with friends because I think it will play like a very different game.

But I, similar to like Death Stranding, there's something so meditative about these climbing games where you can just like really find a flow and get out of your own head for like a half hour or an hour.

The really cool thing about this game is you get to the top of the first mountain and then the clouds break and there's just another mountain on the mountain.

Love it.

And they become increasingly like ridiculous.

So like the second one is

a mountainside with these just

like an unspooled ball of yarn

of wooden branches that are all spiky and dangerous.

So you're kind of having to like dodge the branches that are like like intersecting, you know, all the different parts of the climb.

And yeah, it's just a good vibe.

There's other stuff in it, you know, like you're managing your health.

There are poison traps, and if you get injured, that reduces how much energy you can spend.

And as your hunger

depletes you, that

reduces how much energy you can spend.

So you're constantly looking for items to manage those things.

But the real bulk of it is just go up.

Like find a way.

It's only first person, right

yes um though uh in a great choice of the again the whatever these wobbly games are you can see your shadow and you look like a total clown yeah um so even in single player you get to enjoy seeing your your little bud just wobble through the environment yeah the only reason i ask is because i do

i don't know i guess there's a place for both of them but i do really like seeing

myself

and but some of that might just be a motion sickness thing.

Like I really enjoyed Juiceant, which is that climbing game.

Oh, yeah.

It's a third person.

So I'm glad that you said this because it's a perfect setup for the other game that I played this week.

Metro Gravity, which looks like indie gravity rush.

Oh, I thought it was a Metro game.

It's not.

Yes.

So, no, I was so excited for this game, and I still am.

I'm enjoying it.

But it is a third-person

platformer gravity manipulation puzzle action.

That would kill us.

And you play as a witch who can

basically any direction that you walk, you just gravity shifts with you.

Oh, God.

So if you walk to a wall and you keep pushing forward, you'll just whoop and start walking up the wall.

And if you get to the ceiling and you just keep pushing forward, whoop, now the ceiling.

Do you have to make the sound?

Whoop.

No,

you unfortunately don't.

And at any point, you can lock the gravity.

So if you say, are on the ceiling and you say, okay, now lock, you hit a button and suddenly gravity is locked in that direction.

And now when you bounce into a wall, you're not going to suddenly stick to it.

It's going to act like a wall.

But it is third person.

It does help.

You would think.

I think it actually might have been easier in first person.

This is...

I do not get motion sickness from video games.

This is the first time in a while where just looking around

making me kind of queasy

because you get tools that further elaborate like

further complicate the way gravity works.

So you are changing your gravity and then you will get say like a pillar of gravity that goes in a different direction and you'll throw that at the wall.

So you can make it so that like a entire pillar of gravity in the environment is going one direction while your gravity is going in another direction.

And just wrapping your head around literally what way is up, but where you should be going and how to get around,

it is a game that requires a real zenness where you are just you're enjoying the confusion and the being lost.

Because if you try to like really have an understanding of the environment like you would in most video games, your brain just, you get a headache.

I really dig it.

It is,

it feels

rough in a way that I think is smart because I don't entirely know how you flesh this out into a like high-touch game.

But yeah,

it is truly an evolution on the Gravity Rush idea rather than just kind of a fanny remake.

And for that, I'm really digging it.

Awesome.

Cool.

What else is going on, guys?

The iOS game I've been playing is Archero 2.

I don't know if anyone played the first Archero.

Oh, yeah.

It's like Archer Hero.

It's a Survivors.

It's a Vampire Survivors, but with like a bunch of hooks and customization progression stuff.

And it is also one of those games that

after you beat a level, it's like, great job.

Here's a limited time offer.

For $100, you can get 50 wish coins.

And every time it pops up, it's like, man, you've already got me.

I am.

playing the game and I'm enjoying it.

I'll drop a buck or two here or there.

We'll just drop it.

Yeah, $100.

Do you want to spend $100 actual American dollars so that you can get more dice for the dice game?

It's got all these little slots.

It's got like 50 different basically slot machines.

And there's no way to like just buy out of that stuff so that it doesn't show up.

No,

that it doesn't show up.

You don't have to do any of the shit.

No, I understand.

Yeah, but it is a good version of the survivor, you know,

vampire survivors style and there's like a shit ton of content and uh it's been an okay like uh

I've got five minutes I'll just like do a level of this here um I also finished uh season four of the bear any guys watch that no but I have been waiting to see if I should because I really didn't dig the last season.

The third season was so bad.

Yeah.

And

this is so bad because I didn't watch it and I didn't know if I should or what.

I didn't care for it.

It's rough, man.

It's a rough ride.

If you did not, what's wrong with that?

I'm not being defensive.

I didn't watch it.

I'm just curious.

No, I know.

It

feels like

a season of setup.

It does feel like a season of setup.

It has a cliffhanger ending, basically.

But nothing really gets accomplished.

There was like one really standout episode that was like a backstory episode, but otherwise it was like kind of just trotting in its own weight of it.

It had the obligatory, bare, like Emmy-worthy episode.

This season's got one as well.

And

it is quite good.

But I think the big issue with season three is that, one, everyone was miserable all the time.

They made the lead character of the show completely fucking detestable and not relatable or enjoyable in any way.

And like nothing happened.

I think season four gets a lot closer to the highs of season two.

There's some really, really good stuff in it.

There's some great moments.

And they do stick the landing on a lot of the things they have been setting up for a while.

It still feels like, I believe it's 10 episodes.

And of that, it feels like there's a good seven episodes of story happening here, which isn't to say the standalone episodes aren't like worthwhile.

There's a great one with Sydney

just like babysitting someone.

And

it just sort of only takes place there.

And it's great.

But there's just, it doesn't, it didn't feel like it had 10 episodes worth of stuff to say or do, and so there are a couple episodes that are just kind of very frustrating, very, very wheel spinny.

Um, did they kind of learn the

fac twins lesson of like maybe ease off a little bit on the fact?

Oh, no, they're they're they are the highlight.

Oh, I also sort of like was mystified when they were like, Why are they spending so much time with these people?

But and here's John Cena, and here's John Cena for some reason.

John Cena doesn't cut back in season for no, um, But yeah, no, it is really good

A minus stuff.

Sure.

And

I believe they've left it open for season five.

I think they could have ended it here, but

I think they have worked their way back into my Good Graces because I was so frustrated with that show after season three and ready to do certain things.

I mean, at this point, I imagine Jeremy Allen White

kind of just wants to go off and do movies.

He needs to do his movies.

Yeah.

I mean, all of them.

I mean, all of them.

Yeah.

I mean, he's a franchise star.

my guy this is legitimately I think he doesn't bail until he has a franchise.

He needs his franchise before he can it's the only movies that get made anymore.

He'll be okay.

He should have been Wonka.

He's Bruce.

He should have been Wonka.

He's the boss.

Yeah, that could be a

wrestling movie he was in.

Yeah, it looked like the most depressing thing I've ever heard of.

Hey, what else, guys?

I beat Death Stranding 2.

How long did it take you?

It ends.

It concludes.

It does conclude.

There is an ending.

It's fucking ridiculous.

It's more ridiculous than the first game's ending if you manage to get to that.

I'm not going to spoil it.

It does end.

I think my play clock was like.

They made a special edition copy of the game, and I'm 99% positive it spoils the end of the game, like the actual toy statue.

And

I'm not a big spoiler person, but I cannot believe that they.

I was also surprised that that was there.

Yeah,

strange.

I mean, it's, yeah, weird.

But as an ending,

it was pretty epic and silly and touching at times.

And I thought it was.

How long am I going to have to play Death Stranding 2 to 2?

Oh, well, this is a good question.

Thanks.

Because my playcock was like 85 hours long.

One.

One more time.

We may have just ended the besties.

We may not be able to move forward from this.

I've never even thought about measuring a penis in our length.

That's true.

I don't know that we can recover.

Anyway,

did you say something about a penis?

My friend,

you did say Gamecock.

What?

You said my Gamecock is 85 hours long.

And we all heard my Gamecock is 85 hours long.

Well,

I mean, it's both my Game Cock and My Gamecock.

No matter what you actually were saying, I'm disgusted.

No matter you.

Whether I miss her or not, I'm equally disgusted.

What I was going to say,

what I was going to say was, if you don't super duper care about like unlocking all the connection, like prizes that you get from leveling up your different people, I'd imagine it's probably beatable in like 45 hours.

Did you like it?

In the future, sane people might just save you some time.

I really enjoyed this game.

I really like it.

I definitely don't 85 hours like it.

I might 45 hours like it.

That's how I'm glad to hear that that is.

I do 85 hours like it and i am finally getting to the point where i'm like there's a point about halfway through where it's not a spoiler i will just say you meet a pizza chef yeah and you can

really

get lost in in that there's so much stuff to be done so many highways to be built so many monorails to be built so many different people to help out and i literally last night was up late playing it and i was like what the fuck am I doing?

Yeah.

Like, I have, I'm not really unlocking much of anything at this point, but I am,

I'm just like in it.

I mean, you do unlock fun stuff from leveling up the people, but none of it is required.

This is not me shitting on the game.

I like Death Stranding 2 a lot.

If it was on Rog Ally, I'd be playing it non-stop.

It is just, it is tough for me to plunk down.

It's a commitment.

Where Plant is at right now, you could...

probably mainline it and beat it in 10 hours, if I had to guess.

Maybe less.

although the ending is like a classic kojim ending where it just keeps going yeah also if you once you meet the pizza chef let me tell you this you're gonna want to max out the pizza chef the pizza chef has some good stuff

in him you're gonna want to take the time to speak hey should we start doing a game tips segment of the besties because I think that would go real smooth max out the pizza chef it's a great game it's my game of the year so far I still haven't played blueprints, so maybe that'll change.

Listen,

I don't normally do this, but I want you guys to click on the link that I just dropped in the chat for you.

I want to talk about a controller real quick.

It's the GameSur Tiganaria Light wired game controller.

Works on Switch, Android, iOS, PCs team.

GameStirs is one of the producers.

It's kind of hit and miss.

It's usually better than it isn't.

But the GameSur Tiganaria Lite wired controller, I heard about it from TechSoup, and I went and got this controller.

It's 15 bucks.

It's the wild thing about this thing.

It's got

Rumble.

It's got Hall Effect sticks.

It feels amazing.

It's got two back buttons that you can program.

It looks like a PS4 controller.

It looks like a PS4 controller, except I would say it is literally, it's probably the best feeling video game controller that I have ever used.

It is 15.

Oh my gosh.

Jesus Christ.

It's wired.

If that is a problem for you, then whatever.

But like, if you like that form factor and you need, like, I like to have a a controller with like a wired controller that I could just like plug in whenever, when I don't want to screw around with dongles or whatever, this is the best for that.

They've got two colorways: one is like a white with light gray and orange buttons, and then there's like a much more PlayStation-like classic PlayStation colorway.

Yeah, a gray, but like, if you look at the buttons, there's like a little bit of accent color that hints at the PlayStation buttons, what they used to be.

Um, but, and, And the gray also looks cool.

The lights on the control look cool.

The buttons feel really good.

It's highly customizable, very mappable.

You can press button combinations that let you activate like turbo for different things, or there's like an Xbox and PC mode, so you can switch between those.

It's a really, really great controller, and it is $15 or $16.

My

Xbox Series X controller that I used to play Fortnite,

I went through like a few of them where I started getting stick drift and I ended up getting a Gameser replacement and I've been incredibly happy with it.

Gamesir and 8-Bit Dough are usually pretty legit.

8-bit Dough

is almost always on point.

Gameser is pretty good.

Sometimes their designs are a little bit like Mad Cat Circa 2006, but this one's amazing.

Some people like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I dig it.

Is that it?

That's it for this week, I think.

That's it for this week.

Okay, next week we are doing Pee-Pistrello and the Cursed Yo-Yo.

I don't know if I pronounced Peepee Strello right.

Peepee Strello and the Cursed Yo-Yo.

Came out back in May.

We're a little late to it, but it'll be good.

Shall we make it clear?

It's because we don't got Bonanza yet.

The episode comes out when Bonanza comes out.

Yeah, we will be getting Bonanza when Bonanza comes out, which means...

Is it Bonanza or Bonana Nanza?

We gotta figure this out, guys.

Is it Bonanza or banana nanza before we wrap the show i do want to thank a few members of the patreon at patreon.com slash the besties we have cecil we have jam we have emmy and seffi we have sammy

and uh towel report we we have still got those pre-orders available for towels just a heads up

we promised them we promised no more towel content we promised them

yeah I mean, everyone needs towels.

Apparently, man, apparently

you've invented towels.

That's how they're selling.

You're selling like these are the only towels in town.

We're done.

Let's get into the besties.

Be sure to join us again next week for the playcock has run out.

Because the play cock has run out.

We've jumped to the end of the tip of the plate.

Hey guys, I think I might have another towel.

Hey, grab your towel because your play cock is exploding.

Be sure to join us again next week for the besties because two of the world's best friends pick the world's best game.

No, actually, I don't think they be allowed to.

Besties.