The Big Switch 2 Episode – Plus the Best of SGF

They used to come with games.

They used to come with games.

Do you know how many games they used to come with when it was at NES?

How many?

It came with so many games they had to shove two onto one

and it came with a robot.

Both.

And it came with a robot and Super Mario Brothers and DuckTunt.

They used to be begging for you to buy these things.

Desperate for you to buy them.

You're on your own, buddy.

This is the new age.

What do you mean I'm on my own in the podcast or on my own in the in the hellscape?

It's like Imagine Dragons.

I said this is the new age.

Do you like Imagine Dragons?

Fuck, I

love Imagine Dragons.

Imagine Dragon D's nuts on your face.

I'm so excited for this new gaming console, guys.

Yo.

My name is Justin McEwen.

I know the best game of the week.

My name is Griffin Macro.

I know the best gaming console of the week.

My name is Ross Fraschika.

I know the best game of the week.

My name is not Chris Plant.

And that's it.

Yeah, that's Chris Grant.

He's just the closest we could get, guys.

The first name's the same.

The last name rhymes.

It's pretty close, don't you think, gang?

Sonically,

it's really actually very close.

Like the phonetics of the name are actually uncanny.

I'm pretty proud of that.

Yeah.

Body size-wise, two completely different silhouettes these fellas carve.

Just saying, one's bigger than the other one.

I don't know why that is a shameful thing.

It's beautiful.

Both of you guys have beautiful bodies.

I want to say that.

Thank you.

That's such an interesting thing for you to be talking about right now, Griffin.

I think that's so bad.

And Chris, you didn't say thank you when I said that.

No, I did.

I'm blushing.

I noticed that too, Chris.

You want to speak about that?

I have a lot of body shame, so I'm still coming to terms with what you just said.

It's hard for me.

Not, you don't need it, pal.

Shed that.

Shed those layers.

Feel the rain on your skin.

Good for you, Chris.

What are we talking about this week?

It's the Nintendo Switch 2.

Russ, what's that?

The Nintendo Switch 2 is the new console from Nintendo, the makers of cards and that weird grabbing toy you can get for $5 a target.

They've made a new console.

It's very wide, it's very tall, it's very big, and it has cars on it not cards cars

thanks for clearing that up man i'm so glad to know it has cars that's cool and we'll be and man i've never missed chris plant more than right now and we'll be back to talk about this console right after this

chris grant you've been someone who's been watching the video game space and hardware you're very smart about hardware and video games and a great student of that industry you've covered it for many many many years How does the feel?

I want to talk about the vibe first.

How's the vibe of this launch compared to other launches that you've been alive for?

I'm going to say sleepy.

It's sleepy.

Sleepy.

Okay, interesting.

Yeah, nobody else thinks it's sleepy?

Just from a, like a, like, you're less, you're not as bid, like, not as busy having to grind on the coverage.

Well, there's, that's true.

That's true.

Yeah.

I'm busy.

It's got to be nice, right?

To just like fucking kick back, pop open open a cold blade and place a switch to without having to worry about the content.

Except here you are.

Got you.

Having to worry about the content.

Holding back in for one more job, one more high speed.

No, I mean, I think just talking to people, there's a lot of sort of, is that out?

Like a lot of this question of like, is that a real console?

I think some of that is that it doesn't have a major hook on it.

It's a bigger, quite literally bigger, faster Switch 2 or Switch.

Yeah.

And I think when you tell people what's unique about it, the answer is it's a gooder Switch.

And that's it.

And like there's a lot more you can say about that.

And so how do you get people hyped about a gooder Switch?

I think you have to have exclusive software that pulls them in.

I don't think a Gooder Mario Kart is that just yet.

Will people play it and buy it?

Yes, they will.

But that's not going to be the thing that gets people really amped about Switch 2, I think.

So I think what we have now is like a relatively slow and sleepy launch based on the pre-order chaos.

Like, can we swear on this podcast?

This is a swear podcast.

Can we swear on the podcast?

Yeah, you can swear.

Oh, yeah, we love that.

That's so great.

The pre-order shit show.

The idea.

Whoa, you didn't say S-bombs, dude?

Okay.

And Bastard.

You can do two bastards, and then there they go.

I'll pay the fine.

Based on that, it was surprising for me to walk into a Best Buy on release day two hours after the store opened and just get, just buy one with money you are not the only person i have heard say that and it's wild yeah because i was caught up in the pre-order show it was up until like 1 30 in the morning uh one morning just refreshing furiously fortunately walmart did come through for for me but then i heard like so many people like yeah i just went to fucking i just went over to the costco and they had a whole pyramid built out of them yeah mine was in stock at the uh at the best buy when i i went to go get a memory card of SD Express.

Oh, those are fucking.

I was not prepared for the rush on those.

Those aren't anywhere.

You cannot find one of these special SD Express cards.

Yeah, it was a hot ticket, but they had them.

You could just buy them.

Also, based on like,

not just the pre-orders, but people getting the pre-orders canceled.

Like, even like the day, a couple days before, hours before, it still seemed like it was going to be a...

a scarcity.

So I don't know, I remain pretty surprised that you can just walk in and pick them up.

Yeah,

I had a pre-order and it came, I think, a day or two post-release.

So not too bad, but yeah, like I could have just gone to the store and gotten one.

Obviously, the anxiety of knowing whether you could get one on launch day was very present, and I think I regret nothing.

What it did mean is I had to fly to California to go to Summer Game Fest without it, and I had to beg for scraps from Jason Schreier, whose switch I used a few times.

So

let me touch it.

Let me touch it.

They somehow sideloaded blueprints on that shit.

Man has a sickness.

He's a wizard.

Serious illness.

What was y'all's first impressions?

It's not the most impressive launch lineup in the world, but

I was pleasantly surprised by

the performance of it, I think.

One of the first things.

By what?

In what sense?

Well, sir, the first thing I booted up was Tears of the Kingdom Switch 2 Edition, which is a, I think, a $10 upgrade, unless you are a Nintendo Switch Online member and then it's free.

And seeing that game run at, you know, I think 120 FPS, butter smooth with like real fast load times

was fucking pretty great.

Pretty exciting.

uh not not quite you know as juicy as my my rogali X probably but uh you know I'm not gonna be able to play Zelda on that so there's there you go in addition to like the games that they said they were gonna patch i have been very impressed by the games they didn't say they were gonna patch but immediately got improvements regardless of patch so so like animal crossing for example animal crossing's load times dramatically shorter i haven't done the math but they're like absurdly shorter and

If people will recall, I became a little bit scary with my island design to the point where the game would consistently run at around 15 FPS when I was running around the island.

Oh, shit.

I didn't even think about it.

It's no longer an issue.

The game runs.

I put too many waterfalls on my island.

That shit wouldn't even work.

I'd just waterfall the ass out of it.

You'll be fine.

It's funny.

I played with Henry, him on the Switch 2, me on my Switch Lite.

And

I flew to his island, and on his screen, it was just like, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

And on my screen, I had to wait the whole time while he just stared at a black screen for a while.

I'll say this from the hardware side, they're doing all of this in software.

This is not a hardware emulation layer.

It's all software, which is like pretty impressive.

Especially when you look at some of Nintendo's more recent emulation foibles, the N64 back compat on the Switch being a bit of a mess.

And so seeing them kind of nail this out of the gate with really high levels of compatibility on pre-existing games is really impressive.

And even pre-patched, they'll start patching some of those gaps that

individual players find on games.

Juice, it seemed like you were

surprised to hear me say that I found the performance of the thing impressive.

Well, it's just, I didn't mean,

I guess I was kind of

like compared to what, I guess, would be the question, because it is like everything on it is bespoke for the

thing.

I mean, compared to the Switch one, like the games I play are the games that I play still a lot with Henry all the time.

And so, like, I don't know.

I, I, most of the gaming I do is either at my PC or on my ROG LAX, like, 95% of it.

And then, like, if I'm playing games with Henry, it's, it's, it, it is on the Switch.

And so having a system that offers a markedly better, like, experience, uh, just from a, you know, load times performance, all that jazz perspective is, is, I don't know, what I feel like I am getting out of it right now.

Um, yeah, I think I have struggled because the whole thing just feels so iterative.

I mean,

I can't think of a time, and

you guys correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't think of a time where Nintendo in a

generational Switch has ever, pardon the the term has ever been this like conservative i mean this is

uh i mean i you have to go back to like the new nintendo ds

for and even count that as a half step console per se but

if you called that the nintendo ds2

or the the nintendo 3ds 2 i i think the reason they didn't do that is because even hearing me say it out loud also

to say the 3ds 2 but i'm saying like that is the i don't think it is more of a leap forward than the than the new 3DS.

I would say 3DS in general.

I think like from a percentages standpoint, like the new 3DS from it like

I'm not talking about flops, but in terms of what it could do versus what the previous version could do, the new 3DS could not do that much.

It was like 20% more.

And the actual exclusive.

Well, I'm not talking about the sort of Murphy's Law of the whole thing.

I'm talking about the actual

console and like what you're gonna Chris you were gonna say something what were you saying I think I would not look to new 3ds to 3ds I'd look at 3ds to DS

right where the basic form factor um software compatibility feature set is almost identical with the lone exception that the 3ds had 3d support which you know most of us just turned right off or we got a 2ds that didn't even support it but i think that is a better paradigm of like what was it and I think they had the gimmick they had the 3d gimmick to try and get people excited I I think the Switch 2 is missing a gimmick.

It has a mouse.

It does have a mouse.

C button.

I mean, I have a mouse at home.

Kids, we got a mouse at home.

We don't.

Yeah, does it work on

your fucking lap, Chris?

It's not a mouse, man.

You can use arrow keys to move a cursor around to make it a matter.

It's not on my lap, Griffin.

It's actually working.

It's blurring it out.

Your camera is, for whatever reason, thinks what you're doing.

Rubbing your mouse on your lap is a pornographic motion.

And can I just say, good call, NetNanny?

I have struggled with the...

okay, when you're an early adopter of a console, there's very little reason to do that logically, right?

You do it because you're a fan, you're an enthusiast, you're excited to play with it.

But I think also you're excited to share it with people, right?

You want to say, like, you want to see this new thing.

I have this new thing.

Do you want to see it?

And since I, I,

you know, since the Switch 2 arrived, like, I have really struggled to figure out what to put in people's hands to say, like, what do you think about this?

Like,

the closest I've had to a novel experience sincerely is like the feel of when it has a ball in the Maracas.

And you can move it around.

You can feel the ball in there.

That's really cool.

That's pretty rough, guys.

It's pretty rough.

I'd be like, yeah,

the Nintendo Switch 2 is amazing.

Give me 10 minutes to get into this Maraca simulator because if I turn it to ball, it's actually

because a bunch of people had them at Summer Game Fest in like various hotel lobbies and things like that.

And I'm not saying this is like a full unique feature, but it did kind of stand out to me in ways I wasn't expecting.

Because of the increased size, specifically the screen size, the idea that you can play a multiplayer game

on tabletop mode with other people and not have it be like a squinting mess is actually kind of a big deal.

Like it actually kind of facilitates a use case that I know Nintendo was pitching for the first Switch, but wasn't the most feasible for most games.

And now, because of that screen size, it is much more feasible.

Adding on also that the Joy-Cons

and the

specifically the trigger buttons on the Joy-Con side profile controls, actually, you can actually use them.

And so, like, I was playing, I forget what game I was playing with Henry, but we were doing that.

And I never, that shit never felt good on Switch 1.

And here, it's still not as good as using a

pro controller or whatever, but it's way way way more doable and so i do think it kind of like

i don't know fulfills the promise uh of some of that novelty from from it seems like unlikely that we will ever have any like

holy shit new console moments in the force like short of like fucking holograms

yeah just because a rust just because you can't dream well apparently neither can any of the other console manufacturers because either the xbox or the ps5 were like basically the same problem, right?

I think this question of diminishing returns has been one that's been plaguing video game hardware iteration for like a really long time.

How do you show off a console

PlayStation 4 to 5 where the games, in a lot of cases, look identical, run a little bit better?

Will anyone spend $500 for that?

And when you tell them, Justin, that the ball demo, which is neat,

can be theirs for the low, low price of 500 US dollars like 510.

Kind of a tough sell.

And so I think that getting to a place where what they're offering you is more broad compatibility with AAA games.

So you can play cyberpunk on it, for example.

Fortnite runs.

Did anyone actually get that and check it out?

The

cyberpunk?

I've heard good things.

I just replayed it, or I'll say probably wouldn't.

Because I had it on PC running at a million frames a second a decade ago.

Like, it's like, it's...

It's late.

And so I think that the sense of what are you buying here, you're buying portability.

And that's really interesting.

And you can sort of offset some of that compute power to portable thresholds.

And that's what they're really offering.

And you can increase the screen size, and that also comes at battery life.

And that's what they're offering.

But at some point, what you're looking at is diminishing returns, where to your point, Griffin, you can play a lot of even PC games like on a portable PC now and get a good enough experience.

That's just what you do.

And the raw horsepower is not really necessary anymore.

It feels like, especially sort of boutique

stuff because it's like the real thing that you're buying here is like access to Nintendo's first-party catalog

played on a system that doesn't feel like a 10-year-old Android phone.

Like it is

at least on par with what

good graphical fidelity was, you know, a year or two ago, maybe, but that still feels considerably better.

And I don't know that that is the best case to make for a, you know, a console.

I think there's one more thing that I wanted to mention.

And it goes back to my earlier point.

I don't think there's any other device that is more like group multiplayer friendly than the Switch 2.

Like bring it to a house and have a multiplayer game.

I can't think of anything that is like better than that.

I bring my Ouya everywhere.

Sure.

That was pretty good too.

And I don't think that's like that is i think how they continue to differentiate differentiate themselves from the other uh consoles is you're not going to log a ps5 over you're not going to set up a screen you have an option to with two to four players or whatever uh have a good multiplayer experience on the go uh in addition to having access to like the first party stuff i have a lot of fifth graders coming to my house on a pretty regular occasion and the amount of times worth just bring your switch specify you have kids by the way I do.

I have children specifically at fifth grader.

Yeah, they're not just strange fifth graders coming to your house.

I mean, some of them are strange.

I'm not going to say they're not strange, but.

Come on down to Grant's Arcade.

Fish chat.

But we have a lot of kids here, and they just bring their Switch everywhere.

And it's really portable, and it has some commonalities.

They can play Minecraft together.

They can play Fortnite.

They can play Smash.

They can trade.

carts or games.

And I think that sense, I'm excited about the Game Share feature.

I think that's really cool.

I think it's a really neat iteration of the Wii U technology.

And, like, how do you reach back into that grab bag of failed ideas and repurpose it for something new?

But to your point, it is a portable system.

It is a system that is often convened in the same space.

So, GameShare starts to make a lot of sense if it is native.

And when you have that extra horsepower, what do you use it for?

The game I've been playing the most on Switch 2 isn't Mario Kart World, which is neat.

And it's not,

it's probably a little bit of Fortnite.

I had my nephew over yesterday and we were playing Fortnite, and it

runs

fine as opposed to the Switch version, which ran really poorly.

Like shit.

Yeah.

Big old, big old file Fortnite, though, for the old Switch internal memory capacity.

40 gigabytes taken up my whole switch.

So if you are unable to find a

SD Express memory card, which you will not be able to do,

then you might want to skip this one.

I did go put Notify Me on all the local stores.

I don't buy SD cards on Amazon anymore because they're always fake.

So probably old notify me on Best Buy and Walmart and Target.

So hopefully I'll get one in.

But I think the game I'm playing the most, which is not really using that hardware, but is one of the few Switch 2 native launch games is Deltarune.

Chapters 34.

And like, it's not using that hardware.

It's just a system that is portable that I'll play, that my son will play and bring places.

And I think the why are we playing it there instead of PC?

Because he wants to bring it to his friends' houses and play with it there.

And so I do think the portability, even more than the hardware, still is unique.

But I say this with a family with two other switches in the house, it is frustrating that the switch 2 dock doesn't work with the switch 1 console.

A little frustrating.

That's like, yeah, I kind of didn't, I don't know.

I guess I missed that detail in all of the preview coverage, but that seems, that's really maddening to me to need to set up two docks that dock that.

dock the same way.

Why couldn't you have just made it compatible?

I really don't understand.

Yeah, I'm I'm glad that a lot of the I have so many fucking pro controllers just from like the fact that the Switch was my if I'm going to a lake house thing with a bunch of friends like I'll bring the switch and all my pro controllers so we can play towerfall or whatever I am glad I do not have to

yeah I'm glad I don't have well there I don't live in Aussie anymore so I don't need all those pro controllers I'm sort of a solo guy now

but all the switch one controllers work with the switch two that is nice which I was glad because I did not fucking buy a switch two pro controller I did.

I did foolishly only because I whiffed on all the Switch 2 pre-orders and didn't get one.

And I was really feeling sorry for myself.

And I did manage to land a Switch 2 Pro Controller pre-order.

So I put that in as a consolation prize.

How is it?

It's nice.

It feels really good.

It has this soft texture, same as on the back of the corner.

Yeah, it's like a brushed plastic.

I worry about it because as somebody who's packing up a bunch of old controllers now, I don't know if you know anything about those plastics with that kind of treatment on them, but after 20 years, they get sticky and gummy.

Yeah.

You guys think about the pro the holder dealy.

The grip.

Yeah.

That's a little guy.

It's not.

It's a bit of a different form factor.

I don't love it so much.

It's also the

grip that you slide the Joy-Con guy.

I think it feels a lot nicer than the Switch 1 grip because the Switch 2 Droi-Cons just feel

nicer.

I got, okay.

I feel like I'm struggling because

early adoption doesn't, like I've said earlier, early adoption doesn't really make sense.

And so you're talking a lot about intangibles.

And I think that one thing that is the Switch is really up against for me personally, and maybe there's other people who are in this scenario, but not, I understand it's not the biggest segment, but like as the

sort of portable computing segment, you're like Steam Deck, portable PC,

you know, ROG, all those guys, as that segment gets better and better and more evolved and more interesting, interesting, I feel like it gets harder for the Switch to or the Switch period to feel like

very impressive.

And I think that it is a market that the Switch really like kind of

carved out in a sense and it really like created a lot of.

But I think at this point where we've had so many really solid handheld PCs with more on the way, we're seeing a lot.

That's what I've been playing most of.

Like that's the Rogali X is like the thing that I play most.

So when I picked up the Switch 2, it's kind of like, yeah you know i just kind of i gotta point out though and it'll end up being worth it when there's a lot of nintendo games which is the oldest story every time you guys say rog ally x i do think you sound like total dweebs though so okay should you say that

if you said republic of gamers ally x i think that would be cool republican gamer that'd be cool i i i mean i agree with you there's not a

there still is not going to be a third-party title that comes out that i'm going to opt to buy on switch 2 uh over

unless there was like a I'll give you an example Virtua Tennis not announced but like if you wanted to play multiplayer Virtua tennis wouldn't you buy it on Switch 2 and not on Shiwar yes you got me in a technicality there Russ Bazinga

it's it's it's like it's hard to talk about because the truth is this right if you really like Mario Kart a lot I think it's

you could no I don't think you could justify it yet no I wouldn't know well but when there's a few Nintendo games you like you can buy it I mean it's really but there is very, very, very little reason to buy this thing right now.

I wouldn't buy this thing right now.

One of the ways I justified it to myself, I'm going to take this on a trip with you guys and tell me if it smells okay.

Nintendo doesn't lower the prices.

If you wait five years for there to be a whole bunch of first-party Nintendo games, guess what?

The Switch 2 is going to cost the same dang price.

It might even be more expensive with tariffs, et cetera.

Yeah.

I mean...

They're not going to lower the price.

And there's a tariff question.

Maybe it's more expensive in a few years.

So if you don't buy one right now, you're losing money.

That's right.

You're still losing.

You're actually losing money.

Can we spend a little bit of time going through some of the games that we have been playing?

I don't think we, I don't know if we're planning on doing like a whole Mario Kart World episode or what, but

I think that that's probably salient, is what we've been planning on.

For sure.

I'll just speak for myself again.

I was sort of playing when I could

over Summer Game Fest.

I landed last night.

So it's just trying to fit it in.

And I played Mario Kart, as you mentioned.

I really enjoyed it.

I think the knockout mode in particular, I was really enjoying.

It's the highlights.

I think it really stands out.

I was a little disappointed by the open world stuff.

I was expecting more.

And I kind of hope that maybe over time.

Over the year, they'll like update it with more challenges and more online, whatever it is.

But right now, it feels

really barren.

I couldn't find it.

How did you even get it?

So

on the title screen, on the title screen, I thought the open world was the fact that you could like drive between the different little towns.

I figured that's

on the title screen.

Like if you go into like single player or whatever, it's not one of the options there.

But on the title screen in the bottom corner, it says press plus for free play

for free room.

And then all right, well, you guys keep talking.

Let me go grab my screen.

Yeah, sure.

It is weirdly hidden.

For a game where world is in the title and they kind of marketed it this way.

I was very surprised that I had to hunt for it.

But like Force of Horizon, it is not.

And I think that the interconnected levels is very novel and it benefits a mode like knockout, which is like a

stay above this

place in

the race.

Every time you reach a lap, we're going to knock out places 20 through 24.

So you got to stay ahead of it.

And then those laps are just like one on a course, and then you seamlessly drive to the next course.

So you go through like five and cross the whole country.

It's very, very cool.

But like, I don't know, without a more,

without much more to do in the open world stuff, it feels like a weird thing to kind of anchor the game around that they did not sort of put a lot.

There are P-Switch challenges that you can do to earn stickers you can stick on your car.

And that is just about the only thing that I've found to do in Free Roam.

I have only played a handful of races and all of of the extra costumes I got, I got in Free Roam.

Are those available if you play just Grand Prix if you get food?

Or is that only in Free Roam?

I don't know.

I got a biker, a biker Luigi Waluigi costume from playing a Grand Prix.

And then I was like, I'm good.

I don't need anything.

I got a crab that I did.

I didn't recognize the crab previously, but it was a crab.

Yeah, you can be a crab fully in this one.

The online works great.

I was surprised when you play...

That is the benefit, I think, think, of the free roam mode is that when you play online, it drops you in a lobby with 23 other people

for me.

Like every time I've tried, like fairly quickly, and then you get to just kind of cruise around the open world while you wait for them to finish whatever race they're on.

And then everyone votes on what they want the next race to be.

So you can kind of see like where people are at and cruise around.

And it's like a it's it is a fun little thing to do to spend time while you get the nano

playing like Galaga in the load screen.

Yeah, exactly.

But it works.

I mean, it, I, I think the online is commendable, how much it, how well it works.

And I think the tracks are neat, but

it's hard, I think, to follow Mario Kart 8, which was in many ways like the

Super Smash Bros.

Ultimate of Mario Kart, where it's like, it has fucking everything.

It has 100 tracks and everything you could ever want.

Following up on that,

I see why you need to do something different.

Really great looking menus.

Love the menus.

If that's something that matters to me a lot, really.

My sister pointed out when they had it on the TV, and he said it looks really like, I forget the word he used, but he basically said it looks crisp.

And I was like, you're right.

Like, he was just trying to point out how it looked different.

Yeah, you were running it at 720p before, and now it's not 720p.

Yeah.

I really like Welcome Park.

I think it's still wild.

You have to pay $10 for it.

But like, I think you want to talk about the thing that makes you feel like.

That was $500 well spent is a $10 little game.

It's like, check out every little fucking thing that this little, this little guy can do.

Can we talk about that?

Check it out.

$10?

It seems quite literally unimaginable to me that they're charging $10 for what is effectively a.

Please don't buy Well.

It's a commercial.

Like whatever we say here, don't get Wellcome Park.

Don't buy that.

I welcome Wellcome Park.

Morphin just recommended Wellcome Park.

He said it's the only reason to spend $500.

I like tech.

I'm not saying it is insane that it costs $10.

It is insane that it is not a free thing, which is the literal norm that has been established by every modern game

company on earth.

As a person who likes the moment where you get a new technology, a game where you get to turn into a little guy and climb inside the controller and it's like, yeah, this is what the fucking microchips look like on the inside of it.

I think that's very neat.

I think that that is a very neat experience that is

somewhat fulfilling as a, I don't know, person who is enthusiastic.

It is exclusive.

Like, I think the positivity would be through the ceiling about Welcome Park if there wasn't a price tag on it.

And I know there's like a reputation within Nintendo of like

Reggie claims, this is sort of up in the air in terms of accuracy, but in Reggie's book, he claims that Miyamoto said, we do not give games away for free.

And Reggie convinced him to give Wii Sports away for free.

And that's why it blew up in the States.

And obviously, Reggie died.

Sorry, Reggie.

So we're here having to charge for it.

Reggie did not die.

I do want to say he's not a family.

He died in Nintendo.

He was

in the Nintendo fiction.

So now we have to pay $10.

Crazy to have a game that is a tech demo with a cute little guy who's inside the hardware bouncing around for a $500 console.

And historians of ye olden times in gaming might recall

the PlayStation 5 had a little free pack-in called Astro's Playroom, which was a cute little guy who bounced around inside the hardware and told you about the cool new features.

And the big difference there is, I think that was a much better game with higher production value than Welcome Park.

And it was the

blueprint for the game that won Game of the Year and swept every single publication last year.

And Sony gave that away for free.

Well, you wait for Welcome Park 2 next year, baby.

It's going to blow your fucking game.

Oh, my God.

That little guy that runs around, he's going to be fucking awesome.

I think that the money question

lingers over, casts a pretty long shadow over the Switch 2.

And like, I know that that is not a conversation that we want to get especially mired in but i will just say that i think mario kart world is pretty fun i do not think as a first shot across the bow of can 80 be the standard price of our first party games uh i don't think that it is the strongest fucking argument for that case because uh

it's not It's not, you don't feel, you don't feel that $20 difference in the, you know, when you equip the cow skin and switch it to HDR.

Especially a product that is better the more people that play it.

Yeah, sure.

Right?

Like the more friends that you have playing Mario Kart, the more valuable Mario Kart is.

Did anyone else play anything else that stood out in terms of those were the two games that I played for What's Worth?

I mean, I've been playing tears.

Oh, yeah, you mentioned, yeah.

I mean, it's been just long enough to have forgotten all the puzzles and shit.

Have you been doing Zelda notes?

Yes.

It's very cool.

It truly is.

You can connect to your, I don't know how it connects, but whenever you are playing the game and connected to the internet and you have the Nintendo app on your phone, it will do like a live GPS, show you exactly where you are, and you can see whatever on the map and it will do like voice navigation for you that updates in real time, which is very neat.

Would it let me find all the Koroks?

It would let you find all the Koroks.

It let you find all the cave entrances if you wanted to get rid of it.

I did that already about it.

Yeah, that's true.

I forget.

Oh, God, maybe.

griffin how old was your how old was your tier saved um i started a new one uh oh so oh yeah i mean i played at launch yeah 2023 so i had not gone back in this was kind of surprising to me since august 23.

so firing it back up i kind of i don't know i felt like it was more recent than that but um it it feels fucking great right like i was yeah no it feels great it runs so so so so well and it's like the best game ever so i think the smoothness is a huge w but the load times

like the load times in that game were painful And being able to fire it up and

immediately have the game pop up quickly or die and have it pop up quickly, that was really nice.

The Zelda Notes thing is really cool.

I worry that it's a great,

I don't know, proof of concept for the kinds of things they can do with the Nintendo Switch app.

I don't know if you're going to see a lot of that kind of integration.

Probably not.

This felt like

not for free.

We don't want to redesign the core internals of the game, so we're going to kind of halfway it with an app.

I think that second screen thing is really clever.

I mean, they launched a whole console with that in mind.

And I think adding it is smart.

I just, I don't know if they have enough ideas to extend it and if any other third parties are going to do it.

But yeah, I was really impressed with that.

And Breath of the Wild.

I did some of the GameCube.

I fired up some.

Oh, yeah, how's that?

I fired up some Wind Waker.

I have not, I managed to finally order a GameCube controller, but I didn't get it yet.

I didn't, I wasn't exhaustive, but the emulation seems really good.

It doesn't seem really compromised.

It's fun to get GameCube games on there, and I'm excited for them to add more.

I would love Luigi's Mansion to be available

for spooky season.

I'll see what I can do.

You should check out the ROG LA X.

I mean, I have a GameCube right here.

It's just,

when it's on the Switch, it's really.

You want to play with widescreen?

Up-res?

Widescreen?

Come on, man.

Justin's got some really, really sick shit, man.

Justin, is that...

No, it's just like there's no...

I mean, the truth of the matter is, if, if, if, if Nintendo didn't have a first-party

stable to like fall back on, this is an unimaginable flop.

I mean, it is twice as much as like competitive devices that can play a lot more stuff and have a lot more flexibility.

Literally, no reason to get that.

They are holding it hostage.

They're holding Mario and Link hostage in their expensive box.

Like, and this, and if you think that I'm like being hyper, like, like, like facetious here or overstating it, they are charging you $10 for the tutorial.

They will do anything to get as much money out of you as humanly possible.

And I'm saying that, like, there's no,

this device, you cannot justify it.

I'll say this.

Compared to the PC gaming portable segment, that's your ROG allies and your Steam Decks and everything else.

The Switch 1 outsold the entire category by a bajillion to one.

The forecast on the Switch 2 are that they're going to continue to outsell the entire portable PC gaming category by many orders of magnitude.

So, in some cases, this is a popularization of the concept.

The super dweebs in the house, like you and I, I'm a Steam Deck user still, not I'm not fully Rog Ally pilled.

Um, but we'll we'll play that because we have games on Steam, and I still would rather spend time and money on Steam library than Nintendo Library, even though I will give Nintendo a lot of credit.

I went back before the Switch 2 launched and pulled up my op-ed just before the Wii U launched, and then I wrote another one just before the Switch launched about how bad Nintendo's online capabilities are and how much

it gave me pause with regards to their ability to kind of compete in a modern environment.

But also that used to be the Charlie Brown football with us, I feel like, even as far back as Joy's Dick of like, man, did you hear about this fucking Street Pass stuff at 3DS?

Nintendo's finally figured it out.

And then that and the Monster Hunter, this is the Monster Hunter that everybody's going to get into.

Up until even the Switch, like if you lost your DS, if you lost your 3DS, if you left your portable console at school or on the bus or wherever, all the games you bought on it were gone.

That's insane.

That's like a truly insane prospect.

And so the Switch changed all that and the Switch 2 changed all that.

And I think the idea that your library has some, and the fact that your Switch 1 games work through a software layer on Switch 2 and they work better gives me some confidence that this is a place you can actually put your digital purchases safely.

and not

feel like they're going to disappear in one generation in the way that I think that's part of why a lot of people stick with Steam because those games you bought in 2007 on Steam are still there.

It's still like the stuff all does kind of the same thing, but I do think that there are clearly still two.

I mean, there's more than two, but the ROG AlliX Steam Deck ecosystem is different from the Nintendo Switch ecosystem insofar as you can go to Target and buy the Switch and then you turn it on and Mario's like, here's how to put $80 in to get me to take my clothes off.

And the Steam Deck, if you are not familiar with that world and you're not familiar with that ecosystem and you are not as savvy about that stuff, you know,

it can be a bit imposing, I imagine.

And the ROG, even more so.

Yes.

Fuck yeah, man.

The stuff you have to do.

It's just, you know,

with a Nintendo console, you're not paying for horsepower.

You're not paying for

like, you're paying for the library and the joy, the pleasure, the whimsy.

I actually think that this is the first time that you can make a case that Nintendo is really hardware forward.

Yeah.

They're bragging about the specs of this thing.

Their entire pre-release cycle was about a spec sheet in a way that it normally is not.

And the early readout from your dorks at Digital Foundry, you know, once the smart nerds get a hold of it, is that from a hardware standpoint, this thing is more powerful than a Rog Ally.

And it is more powerful than a Steam Deck.

It won't always be that market will iterate more often than the Switch 2, but for right now, this thing is kind of a beefcake

compared to the Switch 1 at its launch and certainly compared to some of the other current PC gaming counterparts.

What they do with that horsepower, like it's just so hard to just, unless you're dying to get back into those old Nintendo, the Switch 1 games, though, it's just so hard to justify it.

Like, there's so little, it feels so cynical that it's really hard, I think, to get excited

launch because it feels cynical.

It's not my cynicism.

It's like, it feels cynical to me.

Even at the Switch 1 launch, we were like,

you should wait.

Like, you had fucking breath of the wild and people were still saying you could you're fine waiting like wait a year the library will be more filled out it'll be have more you're always fine wait i mean like that is a you know i want to try to separate like the my anti-consumerist impulses here from like i don't i'm not trying to rein on on the parade like it's always you could always wait and the prices the prices are always gonna get better but as they say it at the rv store in my town the price is gonna go up and the kids are gonna grow up and eventually you just gotta pull the trigger and get it.

This one, I just don't know how it's.

I wish I could justify it.

Like, I'd love to get excited about it.

There's just nothing there.

Well, it's a good thing you have a podcast about video games.

So, there's your justified game.

Yeah, dude.

It's fully justified for you.

Do not sweat it, man.

Like, you're good personally.

You don't have to worry about that.

I just wish I could justify endorsing it.

Well, as soon as Super Mario Odyssey 2 comes out later this year, I heard it from my uncle, who does definitely work at Nintendo.

Yeah, I heard at the end of Bonanza.

Donkey Kong gets killed killed by Mario.

Mario from Mario Odyssey.

And then he's like, November 15th, 2025.

And he announces the release date.

That's that one.

So fucking sad.

That's the good stuff.

Yeah, it's so cool.

We should take a break.

Yeah, let's take a break.

We have been going for a while, and we have Summer Game Fest to talk about.

So let's do that.

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So, as I mentioned earlier, I was in California this past weekend for Jeff Keeley and the other gang Summer Game Fest 2025.

Yes, a lot.

God, the announcements.

There's a lot of announcements.

A lot of games.

I didn't play a ton of games, games, but I did watch a lot of trailers.

I don't know.

Did you guys follow any of the news?

Anything that jumped out to you in particular?

Well, they're remaking my favorite video game of all time in Pursuit 4 Revival, which they announced with a trailer that was the equivalent of Atlas saying, like, yeah, we're doing it.

Shut the fuck up.

Shut the fuck up.

It'll be done when it's done.

Persona 6 is coming in 2081.

Fuck you.

It'll be out when it's out.

It was 15 seconds of the protagonist running through the fancy, updated streets of Inaba while one of the songs from Persona played.

And for us, for us, weirdos, that's all.

Do you want to guess when the actual next sequel will happen?

Oh, I mean, I don't know when Persona sequels.

Well, because they do say, in addition to the trailer, that in the letter that they released.

They put out a statement because I think they knew that this trailer, this thing was so thoroughly pre-revealed

via the rumor mill that I think people's expectations were a little bit high.

And the trailer really was, I i think it's 40 seconds long and it is very very very very little footage uh to go off of um and so they did put out a statement that was like hey it's gonna we're working on it really excited we know people like this one a lot and we're still working on the next one too i think probably it's not going to be until like 2027 that we see persona six at the earliest um and i don't i think it would be a shock if revival shows up this year um as excited as that would make me um but yeah i'm glad that that one paid off.

Also, Grounded 2.

Yep.

Grounded 2 would be

awesome.

The games that jumped out to me when we were watching trailers were

Ill.

Did you see that trailer for Ill?

It looks sick.

It looks very cool.

It's a scary first-person shooter.

It looked kind of like Resident Evil.

I'm surprised I spoke to you, Russ, because you're usually such a scary.

Yeah, I'm not going to play it.

I'll be too scared to play it.

Yeah, but I like the idea.

I thought the visuals were very impressive and it just jumped out at me as like because they do like weird crowds of zombie babies.

That it was just working for me.

New Resident Evil, Resident Evil, what's it?

Requiem the name of it?

Resident Evil 9, which I think is a good shorthand.

I got a real

thing for Resident Evil games, just in general, like historically, but ever since 7 and then Remake 2

and 3 and then 8, they're all so

freaking good.

They're all so good.

I go back and I like go, I get weird about completely finding everything, doing all the stuff.

So they showed no gameplay, new characters.

Is this a continuation of the story?

I don't know.

I have no idea.

I think it is.

Yeah, I guess.

I will say they showed gameplay at Summer Game Fest in a back theater that was under embargo.

So,

and there were aspects of that that I can't share, but I am aware of.

Can you tell us this?

So you're just bragging right now.

No,

I didn't see it.

I just heard it through my sources.

Does it have graphics?

So there are graphics and characters.

Can you shoot guys?

Can't say that.

Oh, come on.

Damn it.

No, that's too much.

You weren't even there.

You didn't sign the embargo.

That's true.

I am optimistic of that one because basically every Resident Evil game released recently has been pretty at least good, if not great.

If not excellent.

Some of them have been excellent.

So, I think they're really being very smart with that franchise in ways that for many years they weren't.

Very excited to see Mina the Holloway.

Oh, hell yeah.

The next Yacht Club games, the creators of Shovel Knight, it looks a lot like Shovel Knight, but their take on a sort of more top-down,

what would you say, like almost Zelda looking?

Yeah, it looks like Link's Awakening.

I think it's probably the closest analog.

You're like a little mouse named Mina, I assume.

And there's like a whole open world of dungeons and puzzles and upgrades that you can find for your character.

And man, I loved Shovel Knight so much.

So I kind of have a lot of faith in this developer

to make dope-ass shit.

I think there's actually a demo, a playable demo on Steam right now.

I don't want to play it because demos for games that I really, really want to play seem like spoilers to me.

And you know how I feel about spoilers.

So, but it was really cool.

How about Scott Pilgrim?

I like everything Tribute Games does.

That's

my intro there.

And I know it's not a game that didn't like the World on Fire.

It was just, it was missing for a while.

And they just did the release last year, but two years ago.

But that scratches it for me.

I'll say this.

I don't know if my kids have any affection for beat-em-ups.

And I don't think it

does much for them.

And I'm always like, let's play Street Rage 4.

And they're like, no, that's stupid.

But it does it for me.

Yeah.

And this is a fully new game.

It feels like it's borrowing more from

River City Ransom.

It's got like his RPG elements.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is cool.

I'm into that as well.

I want to talk about Deadpool.

Okay.

He's the bad boy of Marvel.

So Deadpool is the bad boy of Marvel, and he is

back with a new twisted adventure.

in virtual reality.

I think it's developed by Twisted Pixel.

Pretty sure I'm accurate in that.

Does that feel right?

I don't know actually who developed it.

I think I'm right.

Twisted Pixel, yeah.

Okay.

What other games for remind the people what Twisted Pixel has worked on?

So Twisted Pixel did

Wavy Tube Man Chronicles and Wilson's Heart.

Explosion Man.

Loco Cycle and Splosion Man.

And

I'm looking at their website now and they've done some other games that I was not aware of, like Path of the Warrior, Defector, and B-Team.

and then this now we got deadpool vr and um it's a new wade for a new day neil patrick harris is taking over uh as wade wilson and i just want to know how everybody feels about this do we feel betrayed or i want to talk to my biggest deadpool guys and just see where we're at i'm just glad that uh mint mobile is doing okay uh and clearly it's doing okay to the point where he can just set it aside and be like yeah you can get the scraps neil you're good high ends going through a lot right now yeah and so sometimes when that happens you need a friend to to step in and pick up some of the slack so

usually though being deadpool is his outlet you know what i mean that's where he right works through now do you think

do you think in classic deadpool fashion neil patrick harris will allude to the fact that he is not what people think of when i bet we'll get there is hey dude there's no way there's no way that he is going to refer to the fact that there's usually a different guy doing the Deadpool voice.

No way.

I will bust up so he for sure will

say that, and you're going to be busting.

Just

kill yourself.

There was a whole Brian Reynolds already made like a joke video about the whole thing.

I imagine the system is going to run and gag for a while.

You're going to have a good time, Justin.

Good news.

That's good.

Worry not.

That's good.

I played a game.

Yeah.

Did you have anything more to say about the work with the meth?

No.

No.

No, thank you.

I played a game called Art is Rifle.

This was at the, it's called the Mix, or the indie mix, I I guess.

It's like a collection of indie developers showing their stuff.

And I have no fucking idea how this game is played.

I tried playing it and enjoyed shooting paint around.

Yeah, it looks like if Anti-Chamber was like a fun

game.

Sorry, Anti-Chamber.

I love Anti-Chamber, but this looks like if Anti-Chamber was also trapped.

Yeah.

Yeah, it looks fucking sick.

Yeah, it's all these hard lines and weird.

Yeah, Anti-Chamber is a good analogy.

It's on Steam.

You can look it up on the screenshots of it.

I have no, again, no idea how it's played.

I was stuck in an area.

I assume there are puzzles.

And color probably plays a big part, which might preclude me from enjoying myself.

But what I did play was encouraging.

I'm excited about the idea of Killer Inn.

which is a social deduction game.

It looks like there has been a murder and you're like trying to figure out with a bunch of other people.

It looks a little like vibes-wise, not vibes-wise, but like

it seems a little bit like after the shooting has happened, like after the action has happened, you're kind of like trying to put the pieces together.

It's not super specific, but it looks like a really neat idea from the trailer, so I'd like to check more of that out.

I'm excited to play the Liza P some more.

I never finished it, but now there's DLC and it's out now.

Apparently the DLC is too hard for even Liza P's sickos.

They've been complaining about it.

That sucks because I am not one of them.

So they are patching it to make it easier.

So maybe it's a good thing that we haven't played it yet.

But I am excited about that as well.

What was this Lego game?

I didn't actually watch the trailer for Lego Voyagers.

Hey, watch it while we're just sitting here.

It looks really interesting.

It's like you're, it's sort of following a piece, like a Lego piece more literally.

Actually, you're confusing that with the other Lego game.

There were two Lego games.

Sorry to interrupt, but there were two Lego games announced.

How did you psychically know which game?

Because we're looking at the rundowns.

Okay.

Got it.

A good question, though.

Talk about your opinion.

Oh, no, yeah.

No, I was talking about Lego Voyager.

Oh, so I was wrong.

Oh, you are.

So one of us is a clown who knows

better than the other one.

And it turns out it's me.

Wow, I know Griffin better.

Weird.

Lego Viffring better.

There is a game called Lego Party, and I didn't even know that that was a thing.

What is that, Russ?

Yeah, you seem like such a big fan of it, Russia.

I am.

It was on the rundown.

I was such a big fan.

Lego Party is Mario Party, but with Lego and a little less bullshit.

But if you like Mario Party and less bullshit in Mario Party, I really found that quite enjoyable.

I warrior wear.

This Voyagers Voyagers game looks cute, though.

You are like a little piece and you're just going around and you're building stuff and you're solving puzzles with a friend.

It's like Deadpool VR, but

with like a piece of it.

Yeah.

I mean, I get excited about games where I'm like, yeah, that's that Henry will definitely want to play that.

And this seems like one of those for sure.

And Deadpool VR.

You know what other game Henry might be into?

I was thinking.

What's that?

There's a new Wu-Tang game coming out.

Yes.

That was cool as hell.

Yeah, Henry's really excited for it.

At some point, you have to introduce him to Wu-Tang, and I'm not sure.

Different parents, different styles.

I'm not going to tell you when, but it's good to know it'll be there when he's ready.

We do a sort of like when Rachel was still pregnant, we would put Wu-Tang up to the belly.

And so there would be like that way when they were ready for it, they would have some lattice work would be

right.

Some of the support systems.

The scaffolding is there for them to clip right into 36 chambers.

That's good.

It does look fun, though.

also le chefla from casino royale has come to hitman which is very confusing i don't know why they did that it's very wait what

the chef from the bad guy from the mads mickelson bad guy from casino royale who cries blood he's going to be a high value target in hitman god bless you god bless you hitman keep doing your thing man i want to okay hitman if we're doing it let's do it dude let me hunt freddie cougar give me the tools to hunt fred that is not i thought it was going to be fully like let's do a James Bond Hitman game.

I thought that's our mix in the media.

Let's get something.

I like Freddy Cougar.

I like Freddy Kruger because all the Hitman missions happen with people just going about their day-to-day.

So just checking him out and trying to take him out while he's at the library checking out books would be fucking awesome.

I got a better one.

Let's do Freddy Fosbear.

And we could just mix

get the kids, get the, you know, get the gen the zoomers, the alpha gen kids on Hitman.

At some point, you got got to bridge.

Yeah.

Let's do Hitman versus It Follows.

Yes.

And it's like you don't know who the target is until you see someone walking all weird and then you shoot them.

Social deduction game.

I like this.

But it might be

Spy Party 2.

But that might be Hitman disguised as It Follows.

Yeah, sure.

This thing's got legs and layers.

You call it Hit Follows.

Because it's like Hitman.

I would call it that, Chris Grant.

Fuck yeah, man.

I want to talk about the game that wasn't at Summer Games Fest, and it's driving me crazy because I feel like there,

I don't know, torture is a strong word, I don't want to use it lightly, but I feel like there is an abuse going on with a certain games community

from a certain developer, and that is Hollow Knight,

specifically a Silk Song.

It actually was it

was a Game Fest, by the way.

It was to a certain extent.

It was showed on a screen at the Xbox event.

And then the torture is like.

And when's it coming out?

It's coming out later.

Check us out.

They did it this year.

Yeah, sure.

They did this year.

That's adorable.

And it's confirmed.

So wild.

I made a joke in the Slack chat when it showed up on a screen and was like, what if this was the only Hollow Knight silk song that we got during this

wild

or ever?

Yeah.

What if this is the last time we got to see it?

Yeah, no, it's wild that that's not more of a known quantity at this point.

Even Deadpool made fun of Hollow Knight.

Yeah.

It's nothing sacred to that guy.

Was that in the Deadpool VR trailer?

I think it might have been in Jeff Keely's promo for it.

Real quick, Griffin, I'm surprised you didn't mention Stranger Than Heaven, which is the Yakuza in like 19 various decades

in Japan.

Oh, was that at the Canadian?

He showed a new trailer for it.

I don't remember which one.

I didn't catch all of those.

Yeah, yeah.

Stranger Than Heaven looks very cool.

It was originally called Project Century.

Ah, okay.

I think it was

like the idea is that you're going to see Yakuza through different time periods.

Oh, fuck yeah.

This looks rad.

This looks fucking sick.

And there's this looks really cool.

Hey, man.

Thanks.

You're a good games journalist because I didn't know that.

And now I know.

A couple more

to wrap it up.

Mixtape looks very cool.

That's from the Artful Escape developer.

I don't know if you guys played that game, but that game was cool.

Yeah.

Oh, God.

I love Artful Escape.

It's fantastic.

Moonlighter 2, which is obviously the sequel to Moonlighter.

I think that also has a demo on Steam.

That looks fucking sick.

Luminous Arise is

back, baby.

And it looks, it's got chameleons in it.

It looks fucking sick.

It's obviously made by the developers of Tetris Effect.

And then the last game, which I wasn't expecting, especially because it's named so forgettably, is called Crimson Desert.

Crimson Desert basically looks like a medieval game,

but with the gameplay of Breath of the Wild, and you are a single knight, I guess, and but there's a war going on, but you are not part of the war.

The war is like between two factions, and you are like an outside element to that war.

And so, you have all like Breath of the Wild tools and

grappling hooks and such, so on and so forth, and you're going through pretty gorgeous, like, medieval environments as they're fucking like duking it out and I guess trying to like complete missions and stuff.

But I thought it looked really neat.

This looks sick.

Yeah.

Yeah, it looks really neat.

I thought it was

massively multiplayer online game, just because the name of it.

Yeah, I think it is developed by a team that traditionally makes MMOs, but this is not a

well, it's from Black, it's from the Black Desert people, right?

So I'm assuming it's a is it from them?

It's part of the desert verse.

It is, you're right.

Okay, so I'm assuming it's part of the desert verse.

That's great.

I love that there's a desert verse.

I invented that just now.

It may not be a desert verse.

I mean, now there's two games in the desert verse.

I mean, I have two games with desert, and I mean, now I have a desert verse.

Okay, I think that's basically it.

We covered a lot of ground.

Grant, anything you want to mention in honorable mentions before we close it out?

It could be a game, could be a book, could be a piece of machinery that you're using.

TV, movie, whatever.

There's two fun games I've been playing that we didn't get to.

One, it's this

JRPG influence.

It's not Japanese, though,

game, and it has like this really cool, innovative parry system that everyone's been talking about.

Is it called Clarity Obscure?

No, that's not it.

It's

Sea of Stars.

Great game.

Okay, I thought this was setting up it, and it was Sea of Stars.

Just got a new DLC that came out.

It's like eight to 10 hours.

I'm not that far into it yet, but that's what they say.

And it's excellent.

And since I played it last, it has now a three-player couch co-op.

So you can just hop into it with your buds, your fans, right?

And the couch.

The base game was excellent.

So, if you haven't played it, but now there's a whole new expansion.

The expansion also costs Nintendo $0,

which is nice.

So, do you need to, is it one of those things where it picks up at the end of like a finished save file, or can you like start it from scratch and just think you need the save file?

I guess is it standard?

There's a certain chunk of the game you have to get to.

I had beat the game, so I loaded up for my in-game save and went that way.

I forget which platform I beat it on.

So I was struggling to remember.

So there's that, and I've also been playing Solaco, which just had a big patch come out.

And if you were playing Doom and just want to scratch more Doom Itch,

it has a decidedly old school look, but it plays

like a really modern game.

They've been in a long early access period and they've been changing a lot, and there's more stuff to come.

But

I found it.

Is it an aliens game?

No, it's just an indie kind of old school boomer shooter FPS.

But they do a really good...

I thought that was the name of the ship from...

I think it might be a good idea.

Yeah, I think it is a nod to that.

They don't have the rights or anything.

But yeah, great game, a lot of fun, and it scratches that itch.

And I've been going in and just kind of getting all the secrets and min-maxing my runs through the levels and good stuff.

Yeah.

Chris Grant, you would like a game that we played like six months ago with hook shots and grappling and sliding on a hoverboard whose name I don't remember.

Does anyone here remember that name?

No, I don't.

I simply don't.

I simply don't.

I'll go back and listen to every Bessie's episode.

That would be the best thing to talk to.

Yeah.

I don't think that's too much to ask.

I finished and/or season two, which was very good.

Don't spoil anything.

Don't even say that it's good, Russ, because if you say that it's good, I'm going to know exactly what happens at the end.

No, that's fair.

I think that's a fair critique.

I won't.

I won't do it.

It's fucking great, though.

Oh, that's yes.

It's very good.

Oh, oh man it's very good i was i was very uh

engaged with it i also didn't realize that deadramiro who's one of the stars of the show is also the voice of yennefer from witcher 3

yeah she's just making it happen good for good for dead dramiro

that's not her real name that's the character's name no

anyone else have anything uh justin

uh you know what i set up um

the g-force uh nvidia streaming uh which I messed around with a couple of years ago and didn't do much with, but I set it back up now, the GeForce now

set it up, and I set it up on the

Steam Deck.

Just as a, I don't have anything like installed on it now, so I wanted to set it up for streaming.

And it works really, really well.

It has evolved to a point where it is a, it works really great.

And it's also the front end will let you tie in your like game subscriptions.

So, your Steam, your

other, whatever other games you have, like, cloud access to Epic Game Store, whatever.

And then you can play them from that main hub.

So it kind of turns all of your library into a streaming

setup.

And it works really well.

The lag is almost unnoticeable.

And you can play a ton of stuff just like right on the Steam deck.

So that's very convenient and it works super duper well.

It looks What is that called again?

Very

G-Force Now.

We finished Devil's Plan Season 2, fucking rules.

We also finished rehearsal season two, and I do want to just second Russ's full-throated endorsement of that.

It's a rough ride at times, but it is also the most ambitious comedy thing I think I've ever seen.

And it's also like thought-provoking in a very genuine way that has really left it stuck in my craw for, I don't know, like five days after we finished it.

Yeah.

And yeah, I've been playing something else that is not, we can't talk about yet, but,

and then a bunch of Switch 2 shit.

Clubhouse games.

Clubhouse games on the Switch.

Played that on the Switch 2 a little bit.

Mostly because I watched Devil's Planet and they played some Moncala on there.

And I was like, oh, yeah, hell man.

I'd love to tear up some Moncala.

I have ways of doing that now.

You can just find some stones, set up some cups.

I guess I can make my own Mankala board.

Sure, I guess.

Okay, I think we did it.

I wanted to thank Chris Grant for joining us.

It was a pleasure to be here.

It just took us not working together anymore to get an invite.

No big deal.

I wasn't counting the days or anything.

It's fine.

It's not a big deal.

I'm not upset.

It's cool.

You're working in my heart.

No big deal.

I'm so happy that you're here, Chris, to podcast with you as a real gift.

So thank you.

We left it all out on the court today, man, and we did it for you.

Because we did it because we wanted to do a good job for you, boss.

So.

You know what?

Let's just keep this one for me, personal, private stash, and we'll do a whole other episode for the.

Your own vintage.

Yeah.

I also want to thank our Patreon over at patreon.com slash the besties.

We have some new members that have recently joined us.

We have Lindsay.

We have Duncan.

We have Andrina.

I hope I pronounced that right.

And Jameson.

Thank you for being members over at The Besties.

You can go over to.

Did I say it already?

Patreon.com slash The Besties?

I've heard, I'm sure.

You can't say it too many times.

You can't say it too many times.

Yeah, actually, actually, three is too many.

So I hope I didn't hit three.

Okay, next week,

we are going to keep it vague for y'all because we're still kind of figuring out the whole plan.

But at the very least, I guarantee at least one game will be discussed.

Is that fair to say?

Wow.

Guaranteed.

Yeah, man.

I think we can pretty much offer that

for all of our episodes.

I do think we've at least hit on one game at some point in the runtime.

I also know that I'm going to be playing a Switch that isn't owned by Jason Schreier.

So that is something that I'm I'm really looking forward to because he got his meaty grips all over that guy.

Yeah, wet.

I mean, it wasn't wet.

They were meaty.

It was a meaty Switch.

It was wet when I knew it.

Please take us out at the show, Justin.

Thank you.

That's going to do it for us this week.

Be sure to join us again next week for the besties.

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

Besties