Doom: The Dark Ages is a (Shotgun) Blast

So he's not a doom guy.

He's the doom slayer or the slayer.

Yes.

Okay.

But he's not ever Doctor Doom.

That's true.

Speak on that.

I just feel like

if you can earn a doctorate for kicking ass,

then he should be, at this point, Dr.

Doom.

Oh, so you think he's studied Doom so extensively?

Yeah.

It's an honorary whatever he's doing yeah i think he probably has it he just doesn't want to be like a jerk about it he does want to be like honorary like after every like on honorary sorry honorary doctor sorry yeah yeah like it's like you know you have a doctorate in world history but if you say that you're doctor world history it seems a little yeah this is a good point is you don't typically when you become a doctor and you should know this because you're married to one you don't um you typically just append doctor to the beginning of your name.

And I don't think his name is Doom.

As cool as that would be,

they would be like, What is his name?

Dr.

Slayer?

No, I think

it's Greg.

Didn't it?

Wasn't in one of the, I don't normally read them, but I think I read one that said Greg.

Dr.

Greg Doom and Schmartz.

Can you become a doctor of stuff you kill?

Yes.

If you kill stuff.

He's not a doctor in that.

What do you think?

He's a doctor in the killing of them.

Yeah.

Have you not seen a fisherman, a doctor fisherman, a doctor of fishing can't get in there and like dissect a fish and bring it back to life.

You know what I mean?

He's just experienced hunting the fish.

Like, you know, in the Marvel movies, there's Dr.

America who

kills everyone who's not like an American.

You've seen these movies?

Yeah, yeah, I've seen him.

Yeah.

He's a problematic, problematic fave you would have to kill everyone in america for to be doctor america under that premise because do doom guy is killing everyone in doom oh wait they're just demons they're not really it's not called doom what do you mean

planet doom

maybe

no not maybe it's like it's

definitely not planet doom yeah maybe that's that's the cold oh that's like how they after the credits they reveal yeah there's a sign it pulls back i'll tell you what it is it pulls back and it says says, you've been killing dudes on Doom.

And then the Doom, and then Dr.

Doom winks.

Yep.

Yeah.

Cool.

What a cool game and a cool world.

Thanks for letting us live in it and play around in it, dude.

Oh, shit.

I just looked at the Wikipedia and he's a lawyer.

God damn it.

Dr.

Doom, attorney at law.

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

My name is Chris McElroy.

I know the best game of the week.

My name is Chris Player and I know the best rock song about a Doom Lord game.

What?

All right.

About a Doom Lord game.

My name is Ross Fruschik.

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, you have become a member.

This week, we're going to be talking about Doom the Middle Ages.

Chris Plant, what is that?

Are they doomed the Middle Age?

Doom the Dark Age.

Doom the Dark Age.

Middle Age is coming next.

We have Doom the Dark Ages.

You just broke a huge NDA.

Yeah, that's okay.

Dark Ages, yes.

What is this?

The Dark Ages.

Yeah.

Doom is back.

The new Doom, the Doom 2016,

is back for a second sequel to Doom 2016.

This isn't a sequel to Doom.

It's a sequel to the sequel to Doom 2016.

And this time, you are standing and fighting.

The last time you were running and sprinting, and now you're standing and guarding.

You know, when you said new Doom, I kind of want to play that game.

Nude Doom?

Yeah, nude Doom.

Computer, can you generate a nude doom?

We'll talk about that in so much more right after this.

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y'all can i just tell you right up front two things

love this game was really prepared to hate this game yeah

i i the The previous two, I love the Modern Doom series.

And it was on the trajectory that was so my speed.

It was, let's do Doom as fast as possible, where you were sprinting across the room like Tony Hawk with a shotgun and a chainsaw, and you're just killing everything.

You're getting in there.

And then they're like, hey, you know what we're going to do for the next one?

Big open spaces, and you're going to parry.

a lot.

And I was like, well, that seems like a terrible idea.

And then it turns out it was a brilliant idea.

Is 2025 the year of the parry?

I think we probably need a new Sekiro if that was going to be the case.

July 11th, Perry White.

Doing work at the Daily Planet.

I mean, I've begun, I've, um,

I've just spent a lot of this year parrying so far.

And this game, I wasn't expecting it for me.

What other parry games have we done?

Fucking Expedition 33 is the parryingest game I've ever played.

Is there another parry game?

I think it needs to be a three for it to be a three.

Yeah, we'll get Seki Row 2 in here.

Because it'll

you know what I like about the parry in this game though what's how insanely forgiving it is just is it's basically just hitting the shield button yeah you know within a good like second and a half long window of a green projectile getting even remotely close

it's shocking how forgiving it is it's not shocking if you think about it if in a sword game or another melee focused game where pairing would be an ever-present thought it's one of you know three or four tools in your toolbox, right?

And this, there are so many different

ways you could approach any given situation.

I think that you need more time to flash through.

You're like, okay, there's something coming at me.

There's one of eight different ways I could deal with this situation.

Yeah.

And like, you got to pull up parrying, right?

Like, it takes a little while.

I guess that's true.

I think it's also a consideration.

I'm not like a huge Doom guy.

The one guy looking at you.

All right, man.

Jesus.

I'm not like a huge Doom player, but I was not ready for like the number of huge kind of enemy-filled arenas

I would be fighting in, as opposed to, you know, you walk into a room and kind of have an idea of where the demons are.

I think one of the reasons why the pairing is so forgiving is that you're going to be getting shot in a full 360-degree radius at all times.

And so maybe they need it to be a little little bit easier for you to block shots as you see Kimming Eye.

I think we might be getting a little ahead of ourselves

because we're talking about a very specific aspect to a game that has many specific aspects.

And I think that we should take a step back

and reframe exactly where the first two games landed and how we think this one differs.

So the first game was like, we're going to bring Doom back.

You're going to sprint through these hallways.

You're going to kill guys using mostly traditional Doom mechanics, but you're also going to rip their heads off.

Yes.

That's going to feel really, really good.

Melee feeds into you getting the ammo and the health that you need.

So you have to.

It's not a fallback.

It's part of the loop.

It's like a combat flow thing.

Yes.

The second game had a lot of that stuff, most of it, but it also added traversal stuff.

So air dash, double jump, swinging from rafters, doing fucking crazy grapple swinging, shit like that.

So that, I think, mostly typifies the second game.

Also, you're fighting angels?

Yes.

It's much more skatepark platform-y stuff.

This game adds, we've sort of talked about it a little bit, it adds a shield, it adds, it feels like a number of like new,

almost exotic mechanics to those previous two games.

How do you mean by exotic?

Like vastly different from anything that we experienced in the previous two games.

Giant mech robots, the dragon that we've talked a little about.

Tentacles that are like the size of skyscrapers.

Yeah, this feels

it feels like it has the spirit of Doom, but it doesn't feel like a almost half-step sequel that I think Doom Eternal did.

Yeah, it's so funny because I feel like those last two Doom games were so

were championed and were promoted as being

fast fucking Doom, like fast, nasty Doom.

And this game is still definitely very nasty,

but it feels like Doom Guy is, I mean, it's a prequel, so maybe he just hasn't

hit the cross.

He is fairly fast, but there's such a heft to it.

One of the first mechanics that the game doesn't even really tell you about.

It tutorializes all this stuff, right?

Like you have a melee attack and you have this shield, and you can do a shield dash with the shield, and then you can throw the shield and like all that stuff is cool.

It doesn't tell you that you're such a big fucking beefy boy that if you jump and land from a high enough height, you will obliterate everything around you when you land.

And that's that's cool and great that he does that.

But I was just surprised because I do you not feel like the game feels a bit slower than especially eternal?

I don't feel like it.

I mean, obviously it's slower, but I think the pace is like, I think it's less mobile.

Yeah.

But I think that the thing you are probably being asked to think a bit more quickly, I think, because there are so many different ways to approach like the given situations.

It for me felt,

I think there was such focus on like the dash attack and the throwing of the shield.

And it's weird how I really would oftentimes kind of forget about the gun.

Like I would forget that I had a gun to shoot people with, which isn't bad to make like a gun part of the like overall tool set that you're using.

But it did feel

I was a little less focused on the overall loop, I think, because I was the different tactics that you had other than using your gun

were so varied.

Yeah, so you've got the gun.

You've got the shield, as we mentioned, and you can do a shield dash with that where you like lock onto a guy and just like fly straight at him.

Which you can do from about a million billion.

The range is insane.

You've also got the ability to throw your shield like Captain America.

And you can like stick it in guys.

And while it's like grinding

up inside of them, they're having a good time, but they're also taking damage.

That sentence was the most erotically charged sentence you've ever said out loud on this show, Russ.

You've also got guns, which obviously you have guns, but that is the thing.

It's like, if you've got this melee, you've got this shield can do all these sorts of things, and you're basically switching between like, let's say, two guns at any given time, like there are so many variables that I kind of found myself leaning on the consistencies of, oh, I've got this melee combo attack.

I'm going to upgrade that.

Or, oh, I've got this shield and I always have the shield, so I'm going to keep upgrading that.

Yeah.

Where I felt like, yeah, the guns did feel a little de-emphasized in that way.

I think it's a game about the mid-range, right?

So like if the first one is about, you know, getting in and back out over and over again, so much of this game is about projectiles, like both towards you and away from you.

So you mentioned the shield, but that dash move works best, again, like at a mid-range.

The throw move, when you throw the shield, it will stick into characters, basically like freezing them.

So if there's one character that you're like, I just can't worry about this one right now, you can throw it at them, and it'll stay there for a good long while, unless you recall the shield.

But then on the opposite end,

yeah, there are like the parry is a, it's kind of a weird system because

you do have characters who do melee attacks, but a lot of what is coming at you is these green projectiles.

Which I couldn't see, by the way.

Just a heads up.

Is it not a colorblind mode?

There is one.

I did find it in the settings, but by default, I had no fucking clue

which things were parryable.

And unfortunately, it does put like a full-on filter over all of the graphics, not just like the one thing you can parry.

They just picked very bad colors to delineate.

Anyway, there is a colorblind mode, so that helped.

But

when these are coming at you, it's closer to, I think Ikaruga is the one that does it, of the schmupps, where it's about like changing the color that you're in.

So you're matching a color.

So if you think about it less like parry and more like, oh, when I see a green one, I actually want to run at those projectiles and then shield into them.

It's like a resource

almost.

It's like half damage, half like pickup kind of like.

Yeah.

Yeah, most of the boss fights revolve entirely around that.

That's the only way to do it.

It's wild how much...

A good offense is a strong defense in this game and that it's still fun.

Like, I don't associate defense with being fun.

And in this game, they make it very, very active to do these defensive maneuvers.

Yeah, I think of any franchise, there aren't too many that make like the gunplay, and this has been true since the reboot, feel as fucking good.

Like it's like Destiny and Doom are kind of the like leading the charge.

Like every like every gun.

Like some of the guns are not as purposeful.

Like they don't have as many use cases, I don't think.

Like you get the auto fire like sort of machine gun gun like second or something like that.

And it just doesn't.

When you have a gun, a shotgun that can hit from, you know, 60 yards away and absolutely obliterates every, like, it doesn't feel

like you need to use the other one.

Yeah, some of that is like they get more utility as they get upgraded, but you're right.

Like, from the jump, I'm focusing on anything that is like high-damage, single-shot seems like way more fitting for this game.

I was curious, because you all have played more of this game than I have.

I've only had time to play a few hours, but like,

how do the kind of like core combat mechanics improve as you start getting the upgrades?

Because I was not particularly wowed by like the melee combat in the game.

It's based on like charges, and you can use all your charges to do like a combo, but the it one, it is kind of slow and it makes you stop for a while, and then you have to keep track of how many charges you have before you try to go in for one of these combos.

Combo by default, map pressing R3, which feels kind of weird, like to do melee combos by pressing the stick, the thumbstick repeatedly.

E on mouse and keyboard, which is also also kind of a strange button for for melee but like three clicking in the mouse that is not the default like that's how you do melee in most games so right but like okay if you're doing it three times

three times is what I'm saying like a three-hit combo feels bad and you'll do it even more later in the game okay yeah

but like does stuff like that kind of

A lot of the stuff works for me.

The shield, I think, rules and the guns feel great, but like then there's like one or two parts of this loop that they have designed that don't really do it for me that I tried more or less to just sort of avoid wherever I could, which wasn't especially fruitful because it really feels like they want you to use this like melee

combo stuff.

So I'll hold back just a little bit, but I'll get to answer that, which is comparing this with like Doom Eternal, which Doom Eternal was use all, we're going to give you a ton of weapons and a ton of different enemies, and we want you to use all of these weapons.

And you are like cycling through all the weapons to make sure you're using every bit of ammo to go through everything.

And I think that's where people who didn't like the game really bounced off of it because you could actually spend quite a bit of time in the radial menu just zipping through, right?

In this game,

it's more like there are problems to be solved when you face the enemies.

So there are these enemies that carry shields.

And if you pump enough ammo into them, the shield starts to heat up.

And once the shield is heat and it's glowing orange, you throw your shield at it and it makes it all explode and it will blow up a ton of stuff around it.

There are ones who have plasma shields and there's a weapon for that.

So it's all about kind of matching a weapon to the scenario.

But and this gets to your question about the melee, Griffin,

as you upgrade other the various weapons and stuff, they start to solve different problems for you.

So for me, I have the shield I throw now is so powerful that I can just take out any plasma characters without even using a plasma weapon.

And it bounces and hits like 20 enemies.

Or when I see a character go into that destabilized stance, the kind of like pseudo-unconscious stance, I don't even have to go in with R3 anymore.

I just do that shield charge and zip to them and take them out.

That's not a defense of like, you're right, the pressing R3 four times in a row does not feel good, but there are like more options for how you go about solving it.

It becomes more possible to avoid using this one element of any that I don't and same thing with like the radio menu if you really want to use every weapon to solve every different like scenario you can do that but if you for me I was like I'm pretty cool having like three weapons that I really like and then just using the shield to solve everything else yeah that that is available to what extent do you have enough ability to upgrade where like does that feel like a build that you are working towards or is that like an overall power arc that like anybody would would sort of that was a build I very intentionally worked towards because I didn't like using the plasma weapons.

I didn't, that felt like I was like having to really pull out of the type of game I was playing.

I mostly use the like, there's a super shotgun that feels so meaty.

We didn't even mention it, like you blow pieces of muscle off the enemies.

It's cool, man.

You don't think you're a gross kid anymore until you take a shot with a shotgun.

It blows a demon ass off.

You're like, ah, cool.

I love that.

I mean,

and it kind of has almost match type of clay-ness to the way things just glob off

Yeah, I like my build is very get in there really really strong heavy stuff and then everything at range I do with my shield and that felt like a really conscious decision and when I look at like the other ways that you could go about it there are charge builds where you're using the like rapid fire weapons, but it gets like higher and higher power as you charge things up.

It feels like there are quite a few different builds that you could approach the game with.

I think the flip side of that and complaints that I've seen about the game is

it is a lot easier than Doom Eternal, which I don't think is bad at all.

But if you are the sort of person who is playing these games because you liked the difficulty, it feels to me like they switched the difficulty for like the creativity, which is cool.

But does that mean though, in a game that has like a bajillion different difficulty settings?

Right.

Like if you're playing on the highest difficulty, they're saying it's still too easy.

I mean, the complaints that I

have do not spend a lot of time in these YouTube circles, but the complaints I've seen is that the game is just much, much easier.

But the complaints with Eternal is that it was too difficult.

So I think that's more just

can't win it.

I don't play every game on EZ, but every Doom game I play on EZ because it's super fucking fun to play it that way.

I don't like dying in this game.

It's so insulting.

How can you do that?

They're so mean about it.

When you pick the easy setting, the easy setting is like, I'm a fucking little piss baby.

And they make you say it out loud.

They fucking fucking called me that's it i feel like there's a i'm not a difficulty person who like cares what you played at i do think with a game like this i worry sometimes if i set the difficulty too low then there will be meaningful systems that would are enjoyable that i just run and engage with i i feel like i'm still engaging with systems and still taking damage and like it doesn't feel like it's just like a walk in the park it's definitely easy but uh it's such a power fantasy thing and i want to make sure that i can like beat a level in the 20 minutes that I have.

Be honest, guys, because there's, again, no judgment.

This aesthetic, does this still work for, this is like getting kind of heavy metal, literally, like not heavy metal, the heavy metal with the capital H, capital M, like the music music?

I wanted more,

and maybe this happens later in the game.

Plant, you can maybe speak to this, more traditional, very grounded Dark Ages environments versus like, fucking dragons and shit.

It felt so spacey, so quick.

There's something so interesting about the contrast of like, you have a very normal environment and fucking Doom guy is there like ripping demon heads off.

Like that, like, I want to see him doing it in a fucking office building.

Like that's interesting to me more so than just like, yeah, it's like a fucking yes album cover, basically.

And I get that they

maybe there's flashbacks and shit later in the game.

I should should state again that I didn't play

it through.

But it feels like they missed a trick making a Doom prequel and not having a little bit more at the beginning about like who the fuck this dude like what this dude's origin looked like it's like there's these maker alien guys and they're sort of on your side and the humans are being attacked by hell go doom slayer go get them and it's like

there is i don't know if you've gone down the rabbit hole of like the doomed lore thing The last game in particular like went incredibly far to the point where when this game started and quite honestly still,

the plot of this game makes no fucking sense to me.

I don't know who the organizations are that are working or working against or for the Doom God.

I know there's Hell, and they seem bad.

And then there's this other organization that's like a science-y alien hell.

They also seem bad because they've got the Doom Slayer trapped up in his electric thing.

Yeah, I was never sure of the cinematic

who I work for because everybody seemed pretty down on the Doom Slayer, honestly.

Yeah.

I didn't need it, quite honestly.

Like, if you think about when Doom, the reboot's peak happened, was you break out of your fucking coffin in level one,

you like hear a voice message just like fucking rip and tear, and that like carries you almost the entire game.

But I would prefer, I prefer that to kind of what Dark Age

differs, which is, which is, you are a creation of the Great Maker.

Yes.

But you're on loan today for these dudes, and there's hell demons, and we're telling you

that there's a lot of no story in the gameplay either.

So you really can skip it, at least in what I've played so far.

The thing that you will see in the game, I guess, narrative-wise, is that there are people you can't shoot and they seem to like you.

And that's maybe the entire narrative in the gameplay.

They're like,

those are all your brothers.

Well, the best is like your cousins.

I love building these scenes with big hallways where they're all prepared to go fight.

which they know that they're not going to do.

They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll definitely go.

Once you're done,

we'll go play.

You get them first, loosen them up, and then they're like in a cathedral.

They're all gathered, and then you run into the room from one corner, jump over them, and then just zip out the door.

And they're like, oh, man, that was good.

Thank Christ.

It was getting real close.

It is tough to slot this game into my life with it not working on

any of the portable gaming.

computers that

are in my possession, which I know is not the fairest criticism to leverage anything, but this one especially feels like I think we just need that Steam Deck too.

It would be I'm putting this more on Valve at this point.

We need that Steam Deck too, it's their fault.

I mean, I guess so.

It might, I'm, it, I might be able to get it going on the Rog Ally X.

I was just nervous to do so because of

how hard it was to get it to work on my computer and how scared of it.

Anecdotal evidence.

Uh, I downloaded it on uh my ROG Ally X

on the Bazzite side, the Linux side, and I got a pretty, I it crashed consistently, like as it booted, pretty much.

And I got like a weird bug report error type thing.

They went all in on the ray tracing for the lighting of this game, which is always a silly thing to say.

But I think that's why it's just not going to work on anything.

I don't think so.

Because I'm running it on my gaming PC, which is mid-range to say.

That was just what the digital foundry video said.

I'm just going off of them.

It runs really fucking, it's really well optimized.

I've played a lot of PC, modern new PC games on that computer that have really struggled.

And for whatever reason, I think this game in particular, I mean, I'm running it on much lower settings than I think was intended, but it looks great.

It's a steady 60 FPS, which is more than I can say for it.

It does work.

It works for me now.

I think I'm conflating it with like our pre pre-launch issues where like I couldn't get this fucking thing to work at all until NVIDIA released like one

driver like a day before the game was supposed to come out.

I did.

I did try it on Steam Deck because I heard in like a random forum somewhere, you can actually run it on low at 30 FPS, just with all the settings low.

And I tried it and it was one of the levels where, spoiler alert, you control a giant 50-foot Doomguy mech.

And there were just, the level launched, and I guess a cutscene played, but there were no graphics.

So I could hear dialogue and like little artifacts of like something in the distance.

And they're like, dodge through the shields.

and i was like i don't see shields so yeah unfortunately i don't think that's gonna cut it maybe maybe updates will happen but again given the fact that it runs as well as it does on my kind of shitty gaming pc

i have hopes I have hopes it's gonna run on before we wrap up I want to talk about just where this game goes in its mid-section because the first few levels do feel a bit like the previous doom outside of yes you can get in a giant mech they're kind of these closed off corridor mazes you use a map to go find items.

There comes a point where you ride a dragon and it turns in very briefly into an on real Xbox 360 game, and you think, Yeah, I'm gonna ride a dragon, I know what this is.

And then from there, it opens up into a humongous open-world city in which you fly around as a dragon and then destroy massive battleships, and then land inside of battleships and have entire like level explorations in these standalone worlds, which then gives way to very, very, very large open worlds.

All of which is to say, the game might feel like the original first two dooms at first.

It is increasingly a different thing as you get deeper and deeper into it.

Are you going to stick with it, Chris?

Do you think it is

worth it?

I am like

really in love with this game.

I think it is something special.

I also get why some people have not clicked with it but i i don't know this is what i

i really hope that this is what more franchises can do make a game every four years or whatever and have them be like pretty different like doom doom eternal this these are very different games compared to what so many franchises do the assassin's creed route where it's like

Maybe every 15 years you get a relatively significant change in gameplay and i i like that they like take the risks and that there's creativity in what they're trying to do that each one sets out to feel different i think that's good

fuck i want like an 80s neon infused dude yeah i mean i think going further with the aesthetic would be nice even with this i i feel like it didn't hoops to your point it doesn't really go all yes album either like it does it's not realistic.

It's not full heavy metal album.

It's somewhere in between.

And I wish it went the other one.

one.

It feels like

somebody had a vision at some point that maybe got a little bit

Yeah, pull back our sort of what's the word?

We got a bunch of people putting in their face Jimmy Cook testing product testing

like a testing the product tested.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like maybe they had people like I don't get all the dragons and stuff like okay cut down.

Yeah, make a little more brand.

I don't know.

This is a guess.

I don't know.

Can't all be brutal legend.

But why not is what I say.

Every game should be brutal legend.

Still waiting for Toodle.

Let's take a break.

Yes, let's do that.

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Okay, we're back.

We have a number of emails.

A lot of these are in relation to the backlog episode, sorry, a treasure trove episode that we did last week about things that people are still playing.

The first one comes from James.

I cleared out room 46 in Blue Prince, but it still feels like there's so much to do.

I only just figured out how the pump room works.

And I also need to find huge sums of money somehow.

Claire Obscura is next on my list, probably.

Well, the good news is I could read that and not feel like it's a spoiler because I did see that there was a pump room and I assume that there was a room 46, but

I will play this game eventually.

Do we have anything on the latest about when Russ Rushdick is going to get

let off the league?

See if there's any news.

I can try to speak to this while you are

in a general way that might be helpful for people.

And then Griffin, because Griffin has gone much farther than me.

I'm kind of a middle ground here.

And I think that after you finish it, I think you play one more day.

See how you feel.

Yeah.

See what you feel like doing.

Because I think you play one more day.

And if you feel like you've had your fill, that's fine.

Keep on going there, friend.

I had my fill after about 40 hours altogether.

Saw a lot of really interesting stuff.

Had a great time.

Got my fill of it.

Moved on down the road.

But you can get, you can be a nasty hog like I was, which is eat up all the stuff that this game has on offer.

But I'll warn you, you will reach a point where you're going to keep hogging around looking for more clues, but you'll have found all the clues.

I'm just saying everyone I know has had a tremendously satisfying experience, no matter how much of it where they tapped out.

Except for me.

Except for Russ.

I'm so sorry, Russ.

I think it's really good to keep mentioning it because I

mean, I know, I'm serious because it is like there's a lot of people, as scary as it is, Russ represents a lot of people who can connect with him in this.

And I think we should keep mentioning it because

everybody should be able to play this.

The developer, I think, knows and is aware.

And honestly, I'm not a game designer.

I don't know how hard it would be to implement some sort of like color accuracy thing.

And I think Doom is a good example of this huge studio with this huge backing.

And the best they can come up with was a filter that changed some of the colors in the game.

Yeah, I did.

That wouldn't work in for.

Sometimes I try to think about how Blueprints would do it.

And I get a little, it gets a little powerful.

Here's the only thing that I can think of, because I personally have an app on my phone that's called like Color Picker, whatever the fuck it is.

And it has an AR mode so I can point my camera at things.

So when I'm shopping in the store, I know what color the shirt is that I'm buying.

Okay.

So theoretically, that would be the only implementation I can think of is you would have a pixel reader built into the game and it would tell you what you're playing.

Yeah, that's cool.

That's a cool idea.

Can we do this next one?

Austin emailed and said,

if Griffin loves Rift of the Necro Dancer, he should really try the demo for Unbeatable on Steam right now.

It's a rhythm-based RPG about a punk band in a world where music is banned and I'm i'm in love with it it has a holy original soundtrack and every track is incredible i i i i wanted to read this because i just somebody messaged me uh about this game and i watched a trailer and it does look fucking rad i don't think it's out yet yeah it looks like it's just a demo they do have the demo out uh so i may wait for it to come out uh but the the trailer is uh

pretty badass it does look like exactly my shit so yeah it kind of looks like flcl it's like my i know yeah that's a really good comparison i never uh

do you guys use like wish list stuff?

Like, do you actually, is that a feature you input?

I'm really bad about actually doing that.

And I think it's partially because I took for granted the fact that when I was more actively working in the games industry, I just kind of knew when shit was coming out.

There's also just way more games now.

So it's so hard to remember, oh, this game came out.

Yeah.

I think my.

Instagram ads are largely worthless because everything on there is overpriced and ridiculous, but it has actually helped me from a game discovery standpoint.

Just because you'll see gameplay and I'll just like click right through and wish list the game and then I remember when it actually comes out.

So look at that.

Saving the world, Instagram.

For the first time ever.

We have another letter.

This comes from Bass Toad.

Bass Toad.

Justin, are you still woodworking?

I'm getting my workshop set up and I picked up an old craftsman wood lathe for around $150.

Woodworking is kind of like gaming if you think about it.

Hmm.

Yeah, sure.

I guess.

I mean, anything is metaphorically, I guess.

I have a lathe, and it scared me too much to use it.

And I don't know anybody around here that knows how to use a lathe except for that guy down at Heritage Farm who just sits down there and uses the lathe all day because that's how they did it in Pioneer times.

And I don't want to go talk to that guy because I don't have a good exfiltration strategy because it's a big open farm.

What am I going to do?

Act like I got a business meeting?

I don't.

It's a farm.

So lathe are scary.

I still bought a lathe with that, like, and you're just sitting there?

Huh?

Like, what was your end game when you bought the lathe?

It was a cheap, it was a very cheap lathe that I hoped to learn on.

And then when I started watching videos about it, it was like, and I would try to use it.

It's just kind of daunting.

It's kind of a scary tool.

It spins wood really fast and you don't want to mess it up.

I still woodwork pretty frequently.

It is more of a, I would say, like component of stuff that I do.

I got to a point where um

i don't know kind of leveled out with the stuff i wanted to learn i use it a lot during the summer for like set construction that so i've got a big build coming up for the shows we're doing this summer um but that's i i don't know yeah i guess it was that the question is just like a personal question about my life yeah i guess about you i think probably weirder

but okay sure yeah you're a you're um

you're a lot of people's idol juice like

and you need to be like you know aware of that great grateful yeah you're a wood fluencer yeah i'm learning about i got a multimeter a couple of multimeters i'm trying to learn how to use those and do some electronics work and solder and learn some of that kind of stuff yeah uh so that's where i've been focusing lately this next question really dovetails is our last email it really dovetails into my honorable mention kate says have you all talked about the fact there's a new season of the devil's plan it's called the devil's plan deathroom and it iterates on the first season in some of the best ways i'm obsessed i'm 99 sure someone on this show turned me on to the first season, so I really hope you all are checking out the new one.

Let's talk about the Devil's Plan Deathroom.

Did you guys watch Devil's Plan?

Because I'm almost certain I talked about it on this show.

Yeah, I watched YouTube episodes.

I couldn't quite.

Can you give us the elevator pitch just as a reminder?

Okay, it is

something like 14 or 16

competitors,

usually just really smart people, people who are like this season.

There's like a gaming YouTuber, like a board game player YouTuber.

There's a

like an international go champion, like people whose livelihoods are usually related to games or intellectual pursuits or whatever, live in a house together and they play a series of games.

Some of the games add money to a big prize pot that you get to take home if you win.

Some of the games are more designed to eliminate players.

Everything kind of is built around this currency that you have as the players called pieces, which are these little golden fancy tokens.

And as you play the games, there will be opportunities for you to get more pieces or lose pieces.

They are ways of bribing fellow players to help you out in a game, but if you run out of pieces, you're eliminated immediately.

That's the basic setup, and it's not like the most out there, bold, innovative thing.

The thing that makes this show is the nature of the games that they play throughout it.

Each one is different, and they are so

insanely complex

that

it is a game about these games, and it is about watching people figure out strategies for these games that probably didn't exist before they started playing them.

So, you're watching games, people

learning about games, and on the fly, trying to figure out how to survive them.

And it's very, very, very, very cool to watch.

It is also a, you know, it is a South Korean reality competition show.

I am not super familiar with that language.

And so it is an extremely demanding television show for you to watch because the rules explanations for some of the games will go on for 20 minutes.

And you've got to be pretty dialed in.

The first game this season, this second season, The Death Room, is a hidden role type game.

It is also like, what's that game where there's like a spy and a spy catcher and you're moving around the map and the spy catcher can't see the spy.

So it's like moving around spaces trying to see if they've been there or not.

It's based on that sort of hidaway, hide away, something like that.

And so there's that element, but the police officers are split into three teams and there's secret secret manhunt sounds right.

There's secret

corrupt police officers on the officers team who are feeding their teams like false information.

And like, there's so many different elements.

And each game starts with a 20-minute long explanation of like, here's how it's going to run.

Here's how it's going to work.

It's hard to follow, but once the games start, you start to see people figure it out.

And it's just, it's so, the games, while extremely complicated, lend themselves to these like incredible, tense moments of like strategy and betrayal.

And it really condenses down a lot of the shit that I like about

these types of reality competition shows into like their most distillate kind of nature.

Would it be helpful if, you know how when they're doing like sign language and they have the ASL interpreter like over in the corner?

Would it be helpful if they got Jeff Probes to do that and just like explain stuff?

I feel like this game is the kind of game that

does have a subset of the audience that is like, if you talk about survivor, they're like, well, if you like survivor, you've got to check out devil.

It's nothing at all.

nothing

like survivor nothing at all like survivor here's what devil's plan is okay and i can i watched it here's what it is if you've ever been at somebody's house and they've got a big thick rule book for a board game they want to play

and they've already got 15 pages in and then they're like you know what

we should start playing at this point and we'll pick up the rest as we go and then someone in the room is like no no no no no i think there's got to be more of those rules keep them coming brother and then if that guy is the guy who would like devil's plan that's the guy that's the audience.

I think it is so statistically unlikely that two people who would enjoy this show would marry each other that I think Rachel must be trying to assassinate Griffin.

That's where I'm at currently.

Rachel's very, very deeply into this show, but she does this thing where like

she will start to try to follow the rules and then at a certain point, just kind of let the explanation of the rules wash over her.

Because once you start, once you start playing the game and the second you see someone have to make a decision on like, wait, I think i might be able to get a leg up on this game there's always like a period after they explain the rules for like a half hour you can kind of like mingle and talk about what your game plan is going to be and that's where you see the rubber hit the road of like hey actually i think if we maybe if we alternate rounds that we make these bids we can maximize our chance not to get in each other's way and not waste all of our current like you see people start to make and as people work out like how they can survive and how they can win the rules crystallize like pretty they do crystallize fairly quickly it's interesting because um

speaking of jeff Probes, I have been watching Survivor

as like the only reality show that I watch, so I'm like a total noob.

But they've been doing ads for season 50, which is coming up.

I don't think it's the next season, but in a couple seasons.

They're in 47 right now, right?

So they've been doing ads for season 50, saying, Hey, we want you to get involved and you're going to vote on like the rules, like the way this all works.

Sure.

And one of the most recent ones, they were like, Do you want immunity idols or not?

Because some people apparently want like adjust relationships, like no hidden immunity items.

No mechanics, raw, like just base survivor.

And this seems like the total opposite of that.

Of all the things to trim off of the

model.

People don't realize that those, it is the mechanics that they're introducing are constantly.

That is a back and forth with the audience, I think, and the players, too, of like changing those expectations.

And it keeps things interesting.

You're not just rolling into this.

Or it makes things like convoluted and stupid, and those usually usually don't make it past.

That's what I was thinking.

Because there was that money season where you're like, you have six

Starbucks, whatever, survivor coins.

And that was like, no.

I like to smash the hourglass to reverse tie

your tie reversal cubes.

Now that means that you won the last challenge.

Congratulations.

Remember, Dom Joe.

Remember, actually, that team lost.

That sucks.

I will add there is a whole other element to Devil's Plan that is there's secret shit hidden throughout the house that they all live.

Like there are little puzzles and opportunities for you to get these pieces that are your lifeblood in the

blueprints.

Kind of, right?

Like you see someone walk into their room and then they're like unpacking.

And there's a part where like somebody gets out their clock and they're like, oh, they already have clocks here.

And then he looks at the clock for a while.

He's like, that clock's not moving.

And then he goes over and investigates the clock and there's some shit.

There's like some shit going on.

Like that stuff is so, so full of human dookie.

But inside it, there's a letter E.

What can it be?

If you are able to like dial into a game,

it is a very rewarding experience watching this show.

The first season kicked ass.

We're like three games into the second season.

And the whole death game mechanic this time is like there's one round where it's like one player gets eliminated for sure.

And if you're in prison, you have to play in the death game.

There's a prison, too, that you get sent to if you're not rich enough.

It's very much like life.

Anyway, that's devil's plan, the death room.

It fucking kicks ass on Netflix.

I've also been watching and or season two, which I want to talk about

for a long time.

Yeah, we can't talk about it at all because I've only watched the first half of the first episode of Andor Season 2, and I'm incredibly into it, but I'm dying to watch more, and I just don't want to know anything about it.

Okay, well, that's the same thing.

When you rule this show, actually, it gets harder.

I'm sure there's people at home that agree with me.

I get it.

I get the rest frustrated thing.

There's not ways to talk about why it's good without getting into the.

You can talk about the letters that are.

You can give me a list of things I'm allowed to say about Andor Season 2.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

So you could say, how many letters are in the title.

Everyone's writing these down, by the way.

Yeah.

You could say, is it about space?

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Is it about space?

And how much space is in it versus land stuff?

Okay.

That's it.

I think that's fair.

That's fair.

It's so fucking so good.

If you had the moments during season one of Andor where you're like, wow, I can't believe they made a thing this good in the in the Star Wars universe, I promise you that it has escalated dramatically.

It sucks because it is all over the fucking internet right now and like i know that person oh no i got spoiled pretty pretty bad by a tick tock uh yeah i've been really anytime i see any and or anything i'm like no no no no yeah get the fuck out of there

you will absolutely uh we'll see it covers a lot of ground a lot of territory and it it's just so yeah good and so interesting and so nuanced and uh i i'm like an episode and a half away from finishing and it's like all i can think about is getting off this fucking stupid podcast and going to finish the episode of Adolf that I was make a movie about what happens next.

Yeah, good idea, man.

Thank you.

You can watch this at home.

Okay, I've been watching the rehearsal season two still.

Griffin, I'm glad you finally watched the episode that I was alluding to previously regarding Sully Sullenberger.

Fucking mind-blowingly fantastic episode.

Really, really, really good.

Really fucking good.

The season has been amazing.

I think there were rightful concerns regarding the first season that the impression was such that there was like a, we're a little bit making fun of the subjects of the show.

Right.

And I think over time, and this includes like late in the first season and then into this season, I think it's very clear that they are being, I think, more mindful about not only the people that appear in the show, but also like what it means to even produce this show.

And so it feels like it's very much like a looking inward Nathan Fielder thing, but it's also unclear.

Like,

I mean, he knows a lot of this stuff, but like he presents himself as it's just very layered and interesting.

And again, there's really no analog for it on television right now.

So, I've been really

behind a couple episodes, so I actually need you to not mention anything about people or pilots or planes, uh, whether or not there's jokes, any jokes.

I can talk about whether it's in space or on land, I can help you.

Both.

Uh,

both.

Oops, anything anything else you're enjoying right now uh let's see here um

i watched the last the first two episodes of murder bot i was just about to ask about that

last night with my wife i had read the first couple of books or at least the book that this uh season is based on and she had not so we both were coming out does the season just cover all systems read is that the first one i i feel like yes if i had to guess that's what it feels like but i don't know because I don't know.

All the episodes aren't out, so I don't know.

Yeah, sure.

But that was kind of the vibe with Silo, I think, was doing.

No, no, no, they split the first, but anyway.

Anyway, this seems on pace to do that.

But it is an adaptation.

If you don't remember, I talked about the book series a few months back, weirdly, before I knew there was going to be a TV series.

So that worked out nicely.

But it is about a security robot that

hacks his own programming and is basically working for himself, but fears that if it is ever discovered that he has hacked his own programming and is working for himself, that he'll be destroyed.

So he has to fake that he is still under the thrall of whoever is renting him to provide security.

It's about

he gets hired by a crew of human beings.

We should point out you're saying he because it's played by

Alexander Skarsgaard.

Is that right?

But I do believe that murder bot the character is it or they?

I don't know.

What do they use in the

show?

Everyone is you.

Well, okay.

See, it's tough because it is used.

It is being used in a derogatory fashion amongst the crew.

So it's kind of, anyway, this robot who is played by Alexander Skarsgaard.

The whole thing is kind of an extended metaphor for...

I think for

people on the autism spectrum,

people who are lots of different neurodivergents, I suppose, and sort of the difficulties of relating to people

who may be more typical or neurotypical.

And it's using things like

he has a armor and a mask that he very rarely removes, which is, I know, pretty on the nose in terms of that, but like, yeah, he has to take off the mask at one point to comfort a crew member.

And once they realize that there is a face under the mask, they want Murderbot to keep showing its face constantly, which makes it more uncomfortable.

And the more intimacy the people of the crew want, the less comfortable Murderbot is with it, with the whole situation.

So that's the dynamic is sort of murder bot learning about the crew and the crew learning about it, and Murderbot fearing that the crew will discover that

it's just kind of doing what it wants to do and not working for anybody.

It's really a faithful adaptation from what I could tell.

They get the tone really right.

It's very fun and funny.

Alexander Skarsgaard gives a really, I think, good, nuanced, funny performance.

It really, he sells, I think, what they're doing really well.

And I really enjoyed it.

I look forward to the rest.

And Sid really liked it too.

So that was...

I was wondering if Rachel would enjoy it.

She does not usually go for a lot of sci-fi.

Like we watched all Battlestar together, which I guess is pretty firm sci-fi.

One, one hearty recommendation I can get.

You know what?

I would say it is sci-fi, but like

only in the sense that like Hitchhiker's Guide is sci-fi.

Like the first episode is 30, the episodes are 30 minutes long.

So it's like, it's skewing more action comedy than it is like hard sci-fi.

That's much more about the setting,

but it is like the fundamental human connections are really relatable uh um and and i think come across really really well actor who is in suicide squad and i really enjoy that actor why david dasmalchian do you know this guy uh i know who you're referring to in the cast because i i did not realize his name but i've seen him in a couple of things too and uh yes i yeah he was an ant-man and late night with the devil yeah that's a great face just a killer yeah like that guy's great face yeah a really great that guy any other faces of people you want to to comment on chris uh for being both good and bad no that was pretty much the only face that was like the only face that i really had top of mind right now um

i i i finally played some repo i'm so glad one of us is talking about a video game i was starting to feel a little uh self-conscious i get it i mean i don't have anything to say that we haven't said already other than it's really nice to play a social game.

Oh, I can add this.

I can add this.

We've been doing it.

Our last time we streamed that game, we installed a bunch of mods

suggested by McKay, our merch liaison.

And mods really make that game fucking sing, man.

There's a lot about Repo I enjoy, except for the playing of it,

because of how fucking hard and punishing it is.

And I feel like sometimes in a way that feels so hugely unfair that it's not like, I don't know, enjoyable really anymore.

And with mods, you can really tweak kind of what the game throws at you and what you're able to kind of do in response.

And it's pretty easy to get those up and running.

So, you can also, if you want to preserve the

original vision of the game, you can just download aesthetic mods.

There's one called Moorhead, which lets you add, you can dress up like Batman or Ash Ketchum or, you know, whatever.

So,

what are we playing next week?

We're playing to a T.

Great.

That is the new game from

the

creator of Katamari Domestic.

A lot of people made that game, but the person known for that game,

it looks great.

I played a little bit of this at GDC and really, really, really enjoyed it.

I will also say,

Griffin, if you need a game for the big segment, I know you only have so much time.

Jesus.

Do you know that there is a new fantasy life out?

I'm so sorry.

As soon as you started saying the name of whatever game you just said, I clicked to open a trailer for the Tua T page, and my ears were blasted at 100,000 times.

The exact same thing just happened.

Boop, boop, boop.

Just like, there's this game you're going to love.

It's bad, ba, scadaba.

So what were you, what the fuck did you say?

Fantasy life is back.

Oh, is that new fantasy life out?

It's out.

You can play it right now on Steam.

Level five has a new game, and I am so hyped you want a slow rpg you want 14 different jobs you want to cook and fish maybe fight a dragon if you have to yeah i have that i hold that 3ds game fantasy life so dear to my heart even though it is not very good it is extremely extremely shallow but the ideas behind it were so like promising and neat.

So I'm is it I have not started it yet, but it is not almost overwhelmingly positive on Steam as 92% this says it's out tomorrow what do you don't get me don't get me a little pumped up when it's not out for 20 more hours I mean May 21st oh I see there was a pre-release version of it and now

guys my Arby's is on the front porch oh that's impossible I'm supposed to eat that beef

Be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends eat the world's best beef?

Well, hold on, because we do usually do some other stuff.

I know you want your Arby's.

Do you want the Arby's or not, Griffin?

Do you care or not?

Is it an act?

Because you guys were like, yeah, you got to get your Arby's.

Patreon.com/slash the besties.

Thank you so much for being supporters of the besties.

We really appreciate all of you that have been subscribers and supporters.

And we have got new content coming at you, new resties coming at you on Tuesday.

We got this month's bracket episode is live.

We got another Rusties about Des Pelote and a number of other things.

So thank you all.

Real quick plug.

I launched a new show like right now.

People can listen to it right now.

It's called Post Games.

And you can listen to it at patreon.com forward slash postgames.

Or you can wait till Monday and you can listen to the free version.

But like, you don't want to do that.

You want to go to the game.

Don't do that.

Listen to the nice version.

Yeah, it's the nice version.

I made it extra good.

All right, cool.

All right.

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

Unless anyone else has anything.

No, go get your beef.

And I'll go get that beef.

Be sure to join us again next time for beef.

Shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games?

Besties.