Open the Besties Treasure Trove

Hey guys, you want to kind of see something?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we're not going to talk about what we're seeing, we're just going to bask in it.

Yeah,

what the hell?

I was looking at this.

Holy shit, guys, Justin's got a gun.

Jesus Christ.

Look at this.

This is the Retro Shooter Reaper.

Look at this.

It's got a button here.

Got here.

So this is got two buttons here.

Yeah.

It's got a trigger here.

Yeah.

And it's got this here.

And I, Griffin, I just want to say, I haven't shown it to Travis yet.

Okay.

So if you wanted to call dibs on it,

this could be like the one you use whenever you come over.

I'm not like a big gun guy.

And I'm like excited for you.

Like, I know that you're really into it.

Look at, wait, hold on.

Look how tough I look at this.

Whoa, that was quick.

No, for sure.

And I'm like stoked.

You're so into the 3D printing scene, but I do need to tell you.

This is not 3D printed.

This is a screen.

No, no, no.

Are you kidding me?

I will.

That's a ghost gun, Justin.

I read about that in Reader's Digest, and they're super illegal.

You can go.

If you don't want to call Dibs, just don't call Dibs.

It's fine.

I'll let Travis use it.

And you'll have one of the crappy ones.

I mean, I don't want a crappy one, though.

I'm not a big gun guy.

So, do you want to call Bibbs on?

If I was a gun guy, I'd want a good one.

It does have a few things, and you have to look pretty closely.

It does have a few things about it that tell you it's not a real gun.

Yeah.

Like, one, there are buttons all along the side, buttons all over it.

Yeah.

Oh, Robocops gun had cords.

Yeah.

Guns, I don't think, have.

Do guns have cords?

Usually, do you have to put it?

Robocops guns do have cords.

But RoboCop ain't real.

Now, so, Griff, did you call?

It did.

I did.

It did.

I might as well.

Well.

Oh, shit, man.

You fucking got me.

Justin's got a doozy.

Justin's got it.

What is that?

An MP5?

MP5.

Oh, God dang.

God, they're quite the collection there, Justin.

I don't know what you're going to whip out next.

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

My name is Griffin Macker.

I know the best game of like February.

My name is Christer Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of somewhere between 2020 and 2025.

My name is Ross Frostlick.

I know the best game of the week.

Hello.

Welcome to The Besties,

where we examine the latest and greatest in the home interactive entertainment field.

Today, rather than talk about a new game, we're going to talk about old games.

We were going to talk about a game.

We were going to talk about a new game.

An old, new,

an old, timey, new, new, old game.

Set in the past.

Set in the old.

This is what I'm saying.

It's an old, timey, new, old game.

Yeah.

But as it turns out, the Doom Slayer slays more than demons and

evil robots and stuff.

Sometimes he'll slay your actual real-life shit, which I think is a bold innovation in gaming.

We were playing some pre-release code, and let's just say this game came in hot.

So hot that I'm not sure what it did to my computer, but I'm not blaming it.

It made it hot.

I am legally not blaming this pre-release code.

But those just blacklisted me for years when I talked about getting stuck in an elevator in a Fallout game.

I don't need any of that shit right now.

I'm sure the game runs perfectly fine.

We're just going to talk about it next week.

Okay.

Yes, I agree.

We should talk about it next week, but that's okay.

We've figured out a good backup plan

as always.

And we're going to call it...

What are we calling it, Justin?

We're going to call it the treasure trove.

It's the treasure trove.

It's much like a backlog, but it sounds more like something you would want to listen to.

Backlog sounds, yeah, very negative, unless, no, entirely negative.

There's really no way to.

Yeah, but effectively it is a backlog, which is a term that people understand, but it's a good backlog.

In fact, it's a great backlog because it's all somewhat slightly older games that are great and in some ways glitter like treasure.

I like that.

Wow.

That's nice.

Like beautiful, beautiful games.

It's much better than Dookie Box, which we were thinking about.

Yes, that was the original Outcast album title, and they decided to push for a new game.

The Love Belove.

Early push for a new games.

Hey, Hoops,

what have you been playing this week?

Did we take a commercial break?

I don't feel like we did.

No.

No, we didn't.

Should we?

We are now.

Justin.

So, yeah, as Steve.

Originator of the Treasure Trove labeling, I feel like the pressure is on for you to bring some true fucking fire to the mix.

Yeah.

Yes.

My little brother Travis has been playing this game called Planet Crafter, and he has been highly recommending that if you need something like kind of pleasant, relaxing to check out,

it is it is a great one to uh explore seems like a lot of work just to build a planet from scratch right probably planet cajoler might be more accurate planet planet shape okay so the planet's already there but but it could be

there the crafting here is really more terraforming So when you crash land on the this uh this barren planet, it is basically utterly uninhabitable.

Think like uh uh

the Martian.

You know what I mean?

That kind of idea where you're stranded on this uninhabitable planet.

The ship that you came in that had a lot of your equipment is destroyed on entry and spread out over the surface of the planet.

And you basically are tasked with making this planet livable, with improving the environment in such a way that it becomes habitable by living beings.

So when you start out, it's very, you have a little like, you know, all-purpose mining, building laser, and you use that on the small bits of detritus lying around on the planet's surface that lets you get like base minerals, things like silicon and iron and cobalt, things like that.

And then you use those base minerals to make basic tools, you know, a habitat, things like that.

But then you start making, the overarching goal is to make things that will make the planet's atmosphere improve for, you know, living beings.

So you are crafting heaters to try to expand,

increase the heat.

You're making drills that create, by drilling into the planet's surface, are creating pressure, like more of a pressurized atmosphere.

You know what I mean?

You're creating more atmosphere.

It's a planet colonizer, and they just didn't want to call it that.

Well, that's an extremely loaded term to level against a planet that does have no discernible culture.

I don't know why we would want to.

Yeah, it's very judgmental of all of you.

Correct.

I think that the so that's the basic idea is you are finding tools that will improve the planet's atmosphere.

As you are improving the atmosphere, you gain access to more powerful tools that let you know that let you drill faster or grow plants.

You're finding seeds throughout the planet's surface that you can put in habitats, and those habitats will create oxygen.

so that's how you're creating oxygen you're creating heat you're creating trying to create an atmosphere and you're doing it with all the basic like survival mechanics i think subnautica is a pretty good like comparison here with it's but it's more uh i would say more guided than subnautica subnautica is very you never lose that sort of like uh exploration edge.

I felt like you always felt a little bit more in peril.

This is a bit more chill as you, you know, it's not too hard to find oxygen and water line around.

How would you describe these visuals?

Because I'm getting kind of like 1990s PC gaming magazine vibes when I look at this.

Yeah, it's funny.

You know what?

It kind of reminds me of like, it kind of looks like Half-Life 2 to me.

Like it kind of looks, it has that like

that sort of look.

And it's not, it is pretty barren.

I think the worlds are pretty barren, but the, that allows them to do a lot of like planet-wide.

It's not super detailed, detailed but the scope is always really impressive right so if you see like there are occasionally like meteor showers on the face of the planet and when you look outside it looks like there's a meteor shower outside that sucks and it's scary yeah uh but they are yeah they're probably sacrificing some detail for scope i think yeah

it has that weird 1990s pre-rendered thing where people are like yeah we can like render an entire environment we don't know how to add textures yet Yeah, but we can make it beautiful.

I like that thing big and beautiful.

Oh, I say that as a compliment.

It looks fun fun and beautiful.

There are also like big differences in, like really unbelievable differences, I will say, in like the biomes.

So you'll like take a step and all of a sudden you'll be in like a neon green, crazy spider columns emerging everywhere.

And then over here, it's like a bunch of lava stuff.

There's a,

it's cool to explore.

like the the crashed parts of your ship you have to really like ready a little expedition with like your oxygen and your water to make sure you're like set to go explore and pillage oh so it's like like dragon's dogma

it is well i mean it's just like any other survival the reason i uh was interested because what you're describing on paper sounds a lot like the game we played last week which is revenge of the savage planet because you land on a planet you don't have anything you got to like kind of build up from scratch but obviously the the core structure of like building out your base and all that i mean that's really interesting russ like i it they they are so different that it did not the comparison didn't even occur to me because like where that game had very little in the way of meaningful mechanics that kind of kept you engaged and was really kind of relying on your innate curiosity and whatever narrative it has, like, you really do get a sense of like you're, it's a virtuous cycle of you making the planet more livable makes exploration easier.

So, in this case, like, what is pressurizing the atmosphere do from a like a playability standpoint for you?

So, you, it is as you are improving the overall pressure of the planet, uh, you are primarily with pressure,

it's contributing to an overall

habitability score.

So there's like oxygen and pressure and those feed into heat, and those three factors feed into that.

And as you're, that is improving, you're granted access by your employers to like better equipment, better, you know,

and it also, though, drains as the environment improves,

you like, for example, your oxygen oxygen stat will drain slower

because it makes better etc.

Yeah.

Is this like a fruit less quickly?

Is this like a persistent server multiplayer sort of experience by design?

Do you think that could be?

Yeah,

I'm pretty sure it could be.

It's not how I played it, but like, I think there's some multiplayer.

It looks like it supports up to 10 players.

Wow.

Cool.

Be neat.

It was really, I really, it clicked for me in a big way.

It felt, it's really fun.

It's the

stuff like the base minerals all look very distinct.

So like ice looks like a big chunk of ice, like a big white blob.

And you see, like, it's very easy to parse the environment and see like, oh, there's something way out there that I'm going to try to get to.

And it is really intense when you're like halfway back with all your new crap and you are almost out of oxygen.

And you can like build lakes and shit in this game.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a lot of like the options get really, if you compare a starting planet with someone who's been playing for like a hundred days in world or whatever, it's a huge difference.

I mean, the planet itself is really which is you know, we talk about a mechanical improvement, and I think that like it is more about like the aesthetic, sort of like bonsai gardening effect of just feeling like you're contributing overall and that being the

pleasure of that and seeing how you're like improving in environment.

That's always really nice.

I love it.

It's called Planet Crafter.

The Planet Crafter, Crafter, right?

The Planet Crafter?

Yeah,

it's a remake.

It goes back to the gritty origins of Planet Crafter.

No, okay.

Travis said the Planet Crafter.

If I looked at Steam, the logo looks like Planet Crafter.

The title of the game is a lot of people.

They might have Facebooked it.

The Planet Crafter.

Oh, yeah.

It's the the.

No matter what?

They Facebooked it.

They got the the.

It's a billion-dollar idea.

Yeah.

Did you never watch Justin Timberlake?

Did you ever have to watch it, man?

I lived.

I lived it.

Yeah.

The logo, which I will say for me, a logo should be the final straw.

The logo says Planet Crafter.

There's no the.

Yeah.

But everything about the game says the.

So I don't know.

I don't know, man.

Noticing a problem.

So Justin has been pretending to be RoboCop this week.

I have been RoboCop this week in RoboCop, Rogue City.

Heck yeah, man.

That game really.

We've like briefly touched on this game a few times.

You definitely brought it as like a...

You've also been playing it, right?

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but it's fun.

It's super fun.

It is a RoboCop.

Honestly, the closest we've gotten, I think, to a good RoboCop sequel is this video game.

It gets the assignment, it gets the energy, it gets the tone, it gets the pacing.

You are, yes, doing a first-person shooter is RoboCop, but there's a good deal of story in this game that doesn't suck.

It is well written, it's clever.

RoboCop is going through kind of a

psychological episode and trying to figure out like what the hell he or it is.

And meanwhile, the city of Detroit is struggling.

Would you believe it?

In this alternate future.

The cool thing about the game is it doesn't just play like a traditional first-person shooter, in like in a lot of ways.

One, the actual going around and shooting is much closer to like a mech game or a tank almost.

You

really can't die.

Like it's pretty damn hard for you to get knocked down.

So you move around very slowly.

You can actually hear the thud of each step.

that you take.

And then you go into this analyze mode that you could use for detective stuff, but you can also use to find people's heads.

Sure.

And then you pop them.

Is there a dick setting, though, in true Robocop fashion?

Of course, there is an achievement for blasting off dicks.

I mean, they know exactly what it is.

I can't tell if you're joking, but I hope that's.

No, there is.

No, there is.

They know.

The impact that just your pistol hits with.

The pistol sounds like almost a rocket launch.

Like, it sounds louder than all the other guns.

And you will like breach into a room and you'll shoot someone's head clean off.

You'll shoot someone's arm clean off.

And then you'll miss and hit somebody in the leg.

But it hits with such impact that they flip like three times in the air and then like fall off a building.

It is so completely over the top.

It kicks ass.

It also looks great, like visually.

It's doing the thing.

It's funny that you were holding up the light gun, hoops, because even though you're walking around, it reminds me so much of like Virtual Cop or those light gun games of that era.

Because again, you're not hiding.

You're kind of just going from scene to scene and then just shooting at whatever you see.

And like games like Virtual Cop and

Medal of Honor or Soldier of Fortune, that yeah, Soldier of Fortune of that era, it knows that like the pleasure is in the actual feel of destroying the environment.

So you'll, the opening level is in a TV station and there's just so much shit that can be destroyed.

There's the glass walls, there's the papers in the air, there are computers which you can shoot and blow up, or you can just pick one up and throw it like a hundred feet and just nail somebody in the face with it.

Is it the most complicated game ever?

No.

Can I, as Robocop, issue a parking ticket in the middle of me slaughtering all of these people?

Yes, I can.

And I can go back to the office where everybody's like kind of uncomfortable with that I'm there.

And I can like help them solve really tiny personal problems.

And they go, oh, RomoCop, you fixed the vending machine.

You're not so bad.

You seem like a pretty okay guy.

And I go, thank you.

And then he starts hitting on the vending machine.

He just loves to help out.

Wow.

That's how you get health in the game by you walk up to a vending machine, you push a few of its buttons, and a sign says, go for it.

And then you smooch it.

And you get smooched health back from smooching um that sounds great this seems like a game a very fun game it did remind me brief segue uh i have a little anecdote from when i interned at the esrb when i was in high school uh did you guys know that i did this i did but i forgot about it i interned at the esrb and when i was there soldier of fortune the pc game made by raven i believe made it yeah um came out and the way they they basically evaluated the violence is they were sent vhs tapes of like the worst parts of the game.

And Soldier of Fortune was noteworthy because it allowed you to like fully dismember people with bullets.

And the key.

Games used to be so cool, man.

Fuck.

Yeah, man.

The key

determining factor of the rating was how long would the like leg pieces stay on the ground before fading away?

And man, they really pushed the needle on that one.

It was like a full minute of leg pieces you could just stare at.

And that was enough to guarantee.

Were you sitting there and stopping?

I think it was two minutes.

You got to go adults only.

I think that was the line.

Because of how much, how long the leg meat stayed?

Yes.

That was one of the variables that they had to factor in.

Is the idea that if you look at leg meat for too long, it'll make you violent?

Maybe.

And make you sick.

It might.

I've never tested it.

I looked away when they were showing the VHS tape.

Yeah.

Good idea.

It's the only safe thing to do.

Do you know the name of the engine that powered the leg meat?

Oh, God.

Ghoul.

Oh, yeah, it was the ghoul engine, right?

The ghoul engine.

They knew what they were doing.

They did.

Should we take a quick break?

Yes.

Let's do that.

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What about the rest of you?

You play any video games or what?

Yeah, man.

I've got a couple W's for you.

And by that, I mean W titled video games.

We'll start with...

I forget if I brought this, but if not, I think it's worth rehighlighting.

The game is called Wilmot Works It Out.

Have we talked about this?

I've never heard of this.

We talked about Wilmot's Warehouse.

Yeah, okay.

So it's the same developer as Wilmot's Warehouse.

This one's Wilmot Works It Out, and it is a puzzle game, and I mean that in the most literal sense, you are putting puzzle pieces together.

You are a little man in your house, and someone keeps delivering pieces of puzzles to you, and you just have to like rotate them and snap them together until they make pretty, pretty pictures.

And some of the puzzle pieces come in and they apply to like puzzles you'll only get in like three packages from now.

So you kind of have to like separate those out and arrange them in this open space.

There's no time limits.

There's no like stress about it.

And when you're done building the puzzle, you get to place it on your wall wherever you'd like to place it.

So there's a very meditative experience to it.

I feel like how are you moving stuff?

Is it just like a click and drag situation?

I played it on Steam Deck.

So it works with controller.

There's like a hold down to drag kind of thing, and you can like rotate things with the bumpers, things like that.

But I'd imagine on PC, it probably is just click and drag stuff.

But it's not like one of those, like, I think Sokoban is the name of it, where you're like actually pushing shit around.

It does, to some extent, feel like a Sokoban game, but it's not like, oh, you know, you can only move this box two squares.

It's more just like an organizing the area kind of game, if that makes any sense.

I love that this is a genre.

I love the like a little to the left sort of just like tidying sort of game.

This kind of seems like that.

Yeah, like I think Wilmot's Warehouse was like much more of a traditional puzzle game.

And it was just like very interested in

patterns and blocks and puzzles.

And this is like a jigsaw game, effectively.

And I've turned to it a number of times just because like...

I want something chill for 10 minutes and it saved your progress wherever you are.

So you don't have to like finish the puzzle to save your progress.

And it's just been like a very nice, vibey kind of game.

So if you're looking for something very chill, I definitely recommend Wilmont works it out because he does he does work it out

um total opposite of the spectrum another w game is called wizardum wizardum

okay i'm i'm excited about this one and had wanted to play it yeah please

is neat it is a uh

i still don't like the term boomer shooter but i guess that's what it is it's it's inspired by like early doom or wolfenstein 3d like that style of gameplay but you are a wizard

Well, you're a, you can be a number of classes.

You can be like a cleric, you can be like a sorcerer, but effectively, like, the levels play out very similarly to those like retro first-person shooter games.

You know, you're going through, you're finding ammo, you're finding health, you're pressing into the game.

I mean,

Hexen, yeah,

Hexen checks quest.

Like, it checks quest.

Yeah, but it's worth noting.

So this is not.

I think Hexen was 3D, like with actual polygons, whereas this is the like parallax, like flat character look that like Wolfenstein 3D had.

Yes, even it looks kick-ass.

Yeah, it's really fun.

I've enjoyed it.

And they layered in some more modern mechanics.

So they have, you know, you're collecting gold throughout the levels.

And in past games, like, gold didn't mean fucking anything.

You just got points.

And here, when you get to the end of the level, you can get upgrades and things like that to improve your future runs.

So there is that element.

They've added a few more things where it helps you find all the secrets in a level, for example.

So you're not driving yourself nuts pressing every fucking wall in the level just to get 100

um yeah i've i've i've enjoyed it it seems pretty funny are those are those uh up here i i was curious about this one because i saw it on like tick tock a bunch and was like this is kick-ass so i downloaded the demo yeah and i had a really good time with it do you feel like those

uh are those progression hooks like uh do they carry over run to run or is it they carry over level to level i don't know that i think it's run to run probably not but there's like a full slate Like there are campaigns basically.

So you play through a campaign.

And again, this is like just like in Wolfenstein.

So you'll, you know, over.

Oh, so it's not like a roguelike sort of format.

Correct.

As far as I'm aware, all the levels are like

designed.

I don't think they are randomly generated in that way.

Cool.

It feels so good.

Like it feels amazing.

One of the first weapons you get is like this ice, rapid fire ice spell that you can use to freeze enemies.

And then with the alternate fire, you snap and they all shatter into pieces.

There's a lot of really rad stuff like that.

Yeah, they did a really good job.

It has a great score.

I found the score very good and like kind of

World Warcraft-y

and it's so bright and colorful, which is a nice change of pace from like most of those games, which tend to be very grim and dark.

So I've, yeah, I've enjoyed it.

That one's Wizardom.

W-I-Z-O-R-D-U-M, which is not how I would guess the game would be called.

I thought it would have Wizard in the store, but it's awesome.

I have been playing Rift of the Necro Dancer,

a rhythm game from Brace Yourself Games,

the

successor to Crypt of the Necro Dancer and Cadence of High Rule,

only where those games were sort of like dungeon crawlers with rhythm game elements sort of like superimposed on top of them where you had to move your character to the beat and attack to the beat and all that stuff.

This is a straight up straightforward rhythm game.

It is notes coming down three tracks towards you that you have to hit in time a la

your guitar heroes, if you will.

So there is no like exploration mechanic.

It is pretty unfamiliar.

to the two games that I mentioned before.

Where it stands apart from a guitar hero is that instead of just like little nodes or little beats that come down that you have to hit in time,

there are monsters that come down the track that symbolize the notes.

And the monsters do different shit.

So it's not like you just stay there and you kind of just like wait and you're like, oh, here comes a red one.

Boop.

So there are enemies like bats, where

there are gold bats who will jump between the three tracks as you hit them three times.

And then there's blue slimes you have to hit twice on the beat.

And then there's dragons that are long and you have to hold down the note uh for them and then there's zombies that jump around before they land in the right like space so you have to kind of anticipate where they're going to land when you hit the note on it and then there's harpies that will skip spaces on the track and jump forward two at a time so you got to keep track of those uh to make sure that they don't come at you uh when you're not ready for them uh and then there's red zombies they can jump warp from one track to the far side of the track there's so much there's so much there's three tutorial stages to the game.

You're not attacking them.

You attack them by hitting the buttons in time.

But are they right or down?

Like even when you're like

whatever, hitting the buttons and it's still in time with the music.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's left, up, and right are the only ones.

And then you can hit down to activate all three at the same time.

I thoroughly recommend playing it on mouse and keyboard.

You can play it on controller, but I have an easier time with a rhythm game like this.

All of that stuff that I just laid out, like,

it's so complicated.

And that's, I've mentioned maybe half the mechanics.

Sometimes shit will appear on the tracks, like a patch of fire will appear.

And when an enemy moves through fire, it moves double time.

Or a little arrow will appear on the field.

And whenever an enemy lands on it, they'll move over to the track that the arrow is pointing to.

There's all this shit.

And so you are not just having to hit buttons in time with a rhythm.

You are also constantly, frantically looking at the field and looking at what's coming to you and trying to piece together, like, okay, when I hit that blue bat the first time, it's going to scoot to the side and then I'm going to have to hit both those notes at the same time, but I got a red harpy coming and he's going to get here before the other guy gets here.

And it's really, it is.

At first overwhelming and then as you jump up the difficulty settings, it gets really fucking overwhelming.

I'm pretty good at rhythm games.

I cannot rock.

I've not reached the level where I can routinely complete one of these on like hard setting

because the stuff that they throw at you is so crazy.

Where this game really, really succeeds is one, the soundtrack fucking bangs.

If there is a better video game soundtrack that comes out this year, I will eat my hat.

It's Danny Baronowski,

like the other NecroDancer games with a lot of different guest tracks, runs the gamut of a bunch of different genres, but like they're all fantastic and where it really takes off is you know that moment that you have sometime when you're playing like guitar hero or rock band where you're trying to keep up with the notes and feeling overwhelmed but then you kind of like tell yourself like if i just kind of listen to the music and try and play along with the music instead of focusing so much on the visuals of like the notes coming at me i can

i will manage to hit them more um

you know you got to cut out the pathway that is recognizing the notes and just kind of like directly connect to the correct connect it to the beats of the music right like you have to do that at a certain point with this game right so you'll see um sometimes enemies will come at you and they'll have a little diamond outline that means that they come at you off beat they come at you like on half men on half beats sometimes they'll have a little star under them that means they're coming at you in triplets uh so like those once those show up it's like man like how am i supposed to possibly like keep up with this but if you listen to the lead like guitar in the song it's like you're just playing it along with that.

And once you do that, you start doing better than you could do just looking at the field of the monsters.

And it creates this like left brain, right, but like it creates a center lobe of your brain

that is so you get into the groove so fucking deep.

It is really, really

hypnotic.

And

it really entices you to like keep plugging away at a song, right?

Because you'll hit a really hard section and boom, you'll fail.

You have like 10 hit points.

And once those are gone, you have to restart the song.

But you'll be like, but I got that riff now.

Like, now I know what to look out for.

I know that riff.

I can totally fucking take this on.

So there's no, in terms of the inputs, there's no randomness, really, right?

No, it's the same.

It's, it's tracked.

It is like tracked like a guitar hero song is tracked or like a rock band song is tracked.

It's just.

It's just that the notes move around because they're monsters and sometimes you have to hit them on triplet beats and sometimes you have to hit them three times in a row.

And I don't know.

It's really pretty.

The monster shit is crazy, right?

But like other, other than that, it is a straightforward rhythm game.

There is a story mode that is fine.

It throws in these like rhythm heaven style mini games into the mix, but not like a ton of them.

They're kind of a sideshow for

the main game.

I

really, really, it's been a while since I've played a rhythm game that I've gotten really into.

And stuff like Cadence of High Rule is neat, but it's still more of a dungeon crawler, you know,

adventure game than it is a rhythm game.

And this is just a rhythm game.

It is just you trying to vibe with the music to keep track of all these different rules that the monsters kind of represent.

And once you make that connection, man, it feels really, really, really, really good.

I guess they've done a bunch of collabs because they have like

Pizza Tower and Celeste.

Yeah.

That's pretty cool.

There's some Super Meat Boy tracks in there as well.

Some of it is DLC.

It's a huge soundtrack, though, even without that stuff.

I have not finished playing all the songs.

I've played maybe two-thirds of them.

But really, just really, really, really, really good stuff.

And the kind of game I think I'll keep around for a while.

I don't know if I will ever be good enough to move up to the next difficulty setting.

There's an expert level above hard that I don't know what else they could possibly throw at you there.

But I've seen some videos of people like trying expert mode, and it seems like

really, really wild.

Um, but yeah, if you like rhythm games, it's been a while since I have played one like this, uh, and it's it's been honestly kind of nostalgic to like, I don't know, get in, get into a game in this genre again.

Hey, I have my own reader mail question.

Did you write it?

Well, no, I didn't write it down.

I'm like,

you're just off the dome.

Yeah, it's a voicemail talking.

Okay, it's called a voicemail.

Oh, wow.

A voicemail.

Blueprints.

Yeah.

What happened with it?

Did people beat it?

Did anybody hear like fully beat it?

I still haven't played it.

Where are we at on it?

As far as I'm aware, it still does not have colorblind settings.

Oh, wow.

That sucks.

Yeah.

Okay.

I did everything in that game you can do.

As far as the community knows, I have done everything in that game that you can do.

Okay.

So I guess you're using a lot of cheats, Griffin.

If you're using a lot of reliance on the cheese,

you're just using guides.

This was like the reviewer, pre-release reviewers, Discord.

I don't know.

I have not kept up with the game.

Maybe the community has found more shit, but I feel pretty confident that I

exhausted what that game had to offer.

Cool.

Yeah, we'll come back to it.

Yeah, I guess once Frash has had a chance to play it.

But I was curious kind of where the story went on.

I beat it.

Do we have other stuff?

We have more reader mail, actual written letters from people.

This one comes from Dustin.

Dustin wrote, I don't really worry about the backlog anymore.

UFO 50 kind of did the magic trick to my brain where it really made me have fun playing games again in a way that I hadn't really in a long time.

So I still pick at games, but I'm not worried about checking any of them off like a list.

I let myself get sucked into a game like Blueprints.

But I'll dip out and play some indie Metroidvania that's been in my library from Humble Bundle and I that I probably bought years ago.

And if I want to make sure that I'm up to date on the latest and greatest interactive entertainment, I pay someone else to do that for me.

So thanks for that.

And thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome.

It's a living.

That's a good mentality to be in.

I think we all have quite a bit of like steam sale backlog things that just live in there and never leave.

I bought

Black Mesa for $2 this week, which is the fan-made remake of Half-Life 1

that I don't know when I'm going to play, but it was $2.

And I remember playing it years ago for Resties and really enjoying it.

So I'm sure I will go back and play.

It's also a good, good, this question answer kind of touches on it, but it's good to remember like the way that we consume and think about games should not be the way that a health person thinks or consumes games.

Like I, I,

so few, like, I, maybe four games I would ever play.

I mean, like, maybe four.

You know what I mean?

It's like, it's, it's, I think, I have a, uh, I think we talk about, when we talk about like things we've missed or piles of shame or whatever, I think that should be taken in the context of like, there is a, an onus on us to be somewhat knowledgeable about as much of it as we can.

So I do feel that pressure in that sense.

But like, yeah, don't, don't try.

I mean, I, my, my brain's so fucked up at this point.

It's not fixable because I saw this email and I was like, oh, UFO 50.

Damn, I got like 33 of the cherries in that game.

I really got, got, I see that one pop up in like my queue sometimes and it's like, I fucking, if I do this, I'm going to have to get really good at like turnip delivery.

Like, I fucking can't, man.

I can't do this again with you, UFO50.

I hated turnip delivery.

I have, I have like hydras in my queue where it's in my, in my backlog, where it's like, once I take this on, it's going to be a whole thing.

Yeah.

We have one more letter.

This one comes from Joe.

I finally finished Death Stranding, so I can jump right into Death Stranding 2 and know what's going on.

Jump right in.

Spoiler.

I will still have no idea what's going on with Death Stranding 2, but Griffin is wrong.

Death Stranding is an amazing game, which I agree.

It is.

I'm so glad you found something in that game that resonated with you.

There's so much, Griffin.

I didn't personally.

That's okay.

But I didn't play the Director's Cut, which may be...

I've heard the Director's Cut is a lot smoother.

That's the word on the street.

I've heard it's much better.

Griffin, I think I know you as a person, broadly speaking.

Yeah.

I think if you skipped every fucking cutscene in this game, you would love it.

I will say this.

Someone who played some of Death Stranding and then played a lot of other games is in concert with what we were just saying.

Yes.

I think better equipped to make a decision on whether or not Death Stranding is a good game.

Because Griffin played Death Stranding and 20 other games, and he said, Death Stranding is not good.

You played all of Death Stranding, and it was like, I'm full.

Yeah, you're full.

But

at what terrible cost?

But no, I, I, this is, this is also like Justin said, related to the last question, like, my gaming time is virtually non-existent.

It is like what I can sneak into my day when, like, the kids are eating dinner while I have my Raka ally, like, charged and at the ready.

Uh, I've been playing Expedition 33, like

seven minutes at a time.

Like, that is what I have.

And so, I simply cannot justify playing a game ID.

You got to protect it.

you got to protect that time yeah yeah exactly I feel you that's why I played robocrop yeah

um can I are we is it time for honorable mentions can I talk a little bit about

I've spent a lot um I were I'm afraid to tell you guys I think you're going to need to play this one for goatee consideration I here's what I'm going to say after the pitch of last week because initially was it last week I don't even remember initially we were like Justin and Russ you can skip out it's fine but when you guys were talking about it I was like genuinely intrigued.

I haven't tried it yet, but it did make me more interested.

It's fucking

great.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts, Juice.

I don't know if you picked it up.

No, I really liked what I played of it.

Here is what I had no concept of playing it.

And usually I can get a better sense of it.

But like,

if it is, I just didn't know how long.

If I got invested in it and wanted to see it through to the end, I didn't know how long I was setting myself up for because there's some games that I will not, I'm, I can't, won't, shan't.

And there are too many games where I've sunk 60 hours in and then been staring at another 60 and bailed midway that I feel really crappy about that I just didn't know with this one.

So what I've heard is like 25 to 30 hours?

Not like persona length.

I'm back, baby.

And I guess it depends on like what difficulty you played on and how much of the like exploration and shit that you, that you do.

I don't, if you, I don't know, I would say it is not the most imposing clair obscure

according to howlong to beat.com, which is a pretty reliable source, it says main story 26 hours, main plus sides is uh like 39 hours.

And then if you want to do a completionist, it's like 60, but you know, who's going to do it?

I will just say that is not, that is not a concept on, I mean, that's not a comment on anything other than if a game takes 80 to 100 hours, I think it is offering a certain amount of like stimulation for that time, like return on that investment.

You know what I mean?

And like, if it's going to be constantly engaging, 30 hours is a game that's going to be constantly sort of like, yeah, keeping it.

No, I mean, it's a currency time, right?

Like, I think people always think about like, well, I would want to spend $200 on a game, but less so on would I want to spend 200 hours on a game?

And it's weird because it inverts.

When you're young,

you want to burn that currency, and then you get older, and it's like, dear God, I want to be precious with it.

The one thing I would say about the flow of the game that I found unusual, I started the game immediately in.

Great intro, great grabby story, killer music.

And then there's a dip when you have to learn how the mechanics work that I did not vibe with.

And only after a couple weeks did I go back to it and really grind that out.

And then it gets, it's just all up from there.

But it's a, it's a weird high, low, high that I don't think I have experienced in a lot of RPGs.

The writing is tremendous.

The acting is fantastic.

It continues to deliver moments that are like set your controller down.

Like, fuck, man.

Really, really good from the narrative side of things.

But I will be honest, the thing that has really hooked me is the mechanic side of things.

I have not played an RPG like this in ages that allows you to just fucking break the whole thing wide open, to just like come up with these builds and these strategies that lets you just absolutely just let Hulkamania fucking run wild.

Not since like setting up, you know, eight times Knights of the Roundtable summons in Final Fantasy VII, like that level of shit of like, okay, hold on.

If I use this character to put burn on, that'll up the critical chance so that I can get these stains and then execute this with a mark on the neck.

Like, it's so, you get so fucking into it.

And it's just, I cannot stop playing it.

And that's really where my interest peaks is when I feel like I have direct control over the events of combat.

Like that, which I think a lot of RPGs tend to just be like, well, he's weak to water or whatever.

So use a water spell.

And that's the extent of the knowledge.

It's strategy versus play.

Do you know what I mean by that?

Like

with what you're talking about, the Pokemon thing is like strategy.

It's, oh, well, these things have these weaknesses, and I need to remember all that.

And I need to create a strategy that's going to respond to this scenario that the game has given me.

And I think what this game does well is it lets you actually play within that.

It sounds more like an immersive sim in that way.

Kind of, yeah, I mean, not really.

I think I know what you mean of like you can go about it in different directions.

And like

the way that I played the game and the way that Griffin is playing the game are probably looking quite different in terms of like our builds, is what I mean.

Yeah, so like

there's just more space.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm having an amazing time with it, and

it is definitely going to be

in my top list for sure.

Okay, no more JRPGs, though.

No more louds.

So, well, it's an FRPG, but thank you.

Oh, sorry.

We should probably also play.

All of us should play Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 because I've kept picking at that game, and that game's really good.

I know, Justin.

I'm sorry, but

it's like, I think y'all might like it quite a bit.

You know what?

I didn't do that game justice because I tried to play it on the Steam Deck, and I should have started on a PC to get the hang of it.

That might be a good late summer game for us to come back to, assuming we ever get time in the schedule.

I do want to shout out a different game, Rift Riff.

Have you all heard about this?

No, sounds like Rift of the Necro Dancer.

I know.

Fresh, you're going to be excited about this.

Adrian DeJong has a new game out, and we are huge fans of Adrian DeJong in this house.

Adrian made Hidden Folks.

Yeah, I love Hidden Folks.

Oh, yeah.

Also made Secret Shuffle.

Made a game that allows you to play multiplayer ballet using your iPhone.

Adrian is...

That game is called Boundin', by the way, is one of my favorite...

creative developers just working and had not really released a lot recently.

I think because he's been going through all sorts of different things in his life.

But this game is kind of a traditional but very beautiful and very cleanly designed tower defense game.

It's tower defense that looks a bit like,

what was that game that we played?

Chance of Senar?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It kind of has like a Chance of Sinar type of aesthetic.

But it's just a delight.

And it is, I think, six bucks.

You know, it's just, if you want, if you've been craving craving good tower defense and you want a chill out game, I really couldn't recommend this more.

Cool.

Sick.

Justin, you have anything?

Yeah, I could tell you guys about

the retro shooter guns that I have here.

Who wants to talk about the state of guns?

Tell me about how these work.

So, yeah, so there's a few different options if you're wanting to play light gun games at your house.

One of them is, and probably the most common, I think, is Senden,

which Senden guns have an IR sensor in the gun, and then they create a border, like a white border around the edge of your screen.

So if you're playing a game with a Senden gun, you can activate a white border and it uses that as like a frame of reference.

That's what it's doing math off of to

figure out where it's positioned, right?

So that's a Senden gun.

That's probably the most common.

There are also gun for IR and these that are from a company called RetroShooter.

These are the Retro Shooter Reapers.

They do a smaller gun and they do the

big guy.

Oh, that's it.

I showed you.

Your full SWAT.

Yeah, but I don't know enough about guns to say what it looks like, but it looks like a bigger gun if you're in.

Like a SNG.

Sure, yeah.

And then what these do is they have four IR sensors that connect that attach to like the top and bottom corners of the television.

And that, all those are wired together to one USB cable.

And then the guns themselves have two cables coming off of them.

One is a USB and one is a power for recoil.

Oh, yeah.

And all the guns plug into, like, so they have these two cords.

And then all the guns plug into a single hub that retroshooter also sells.

And then if you want if they come in the kit if you want to do this way there's also little clicky pedals

do stuff like time crisis and stuff like that

i used to use those for transcription oh cool can you just get it to do a five second backwards it was so nice yeah there's not a lot of light gun games made these days uh i always kind of got a kick out of them and when i was started making like my own little home arcade cabinets it was definitely something that i wanted to to look into and i've i the sending guns are okay i definitely think the tracking with these IR guns that have the built-in sensors is better.

It's definitely a specialty kind of thing, but they have a lot of different options.

I will just say, of the guns that I've tried, the Senden guns feel kind of cheap comparatively.

Senden has a model with and without recoil.

The ones with recoil are a lot more expensive.

The retro shooter, so far, these are the best one, best feeling ones that I have tried.

They feel really good.

They go with a lot of different buttons on them that that are nice for menu navigation.

And this one even has

got a thumb stick

built in.

So you can do a lot of stuff.

It looks like a just Dreamcast PS2 era device.

Yes,

that is about the vibe.

It's pretty similar to the GunCon

controller, this mold is.

But yeah,

they're really impressive.

They feel really good.

And if you are looking, probably the best thing to play Gallagher's Gallery with,

if you have not played Gallagher's Gallery, the light gun game where you

fight Gallagher's gallery.

And what is Gallagher using from a combat standpoint?

Does he have any?

Oh, good.

You asked a question about Gallagher's Gallery.

I get to talk about it more.

So here's the deal with Gallagher's Gallery.

It was an American laser game arcade cabinet where there were four different games.

One was food-based.

So you shoot food that Gallagher doesn't like.

What kind of food does Gallagher not like?

spinach and he likes cherry pie so if you see cans of spinach you shoot those but you don't especially lacking one aspect of food that seems like he has a strong uh

oh you're thinking about the melons yeah so that's when you beat all four levels you get to go to the

Here's a true story about Gallagher's gallery.

Last week, I was trying to get some of these different guns and emulation things set up, and I was in a chat room where I was saying, hey, does anybody know why Philip CDI digital video conversion has never been emulated?

And someone in the chat room is like, I don't know, maybe you should offer a cash prize or an olive garden prize to see if you can get someone going.

I'm like, ah, damn, I've been clocked.

So, this person that I started talking to is the person that created like the laser disc

library of this particular like emulator.

So, they were like, they have worked in this field a lot.

And as I'm going through the list, I'm like, you know, I noticed Gallagher's gallery is missing.

And the person who does this as a hobby said, what's that?

Like, ah, God, I've gone too deep.

I've I've gone so deep that the people who do this for a living are still, or for a hobby, say, hey, you've gone too deep, pal.

But then I explained Gallagher's Gallery, I'd always wanted to see, and I found videos of it.

And I made a post about the crappy, low-quality videos of Gallagher's Gallery that I found.

And then I wrote a post about it for my own personal video game blog, and I sent it to Chris Grant.

at Joystick.

And I said, hey, you guys should post about this on Joystick.

It's really fascinating.

And then he said, oh, you know what?

I remember you sent me a job application a few months ago.

Do you want to come work here?

So if it weren't for Gallagher's gallery,

I would not have a job.

Sliding doors.

This podcast might not exist.

Sliding doors.

This podcast might not exist.

Were it not for the hilarious, talented, and utterly unimpeachable Gallagher.

Unproblematic, Fave.

Never told a joke that I would not personally 100% endorse.

Take it from me, Justin McElroy.

I fully support Gallagher and everything he stands for.

So I have a couple honorable mentions just to wrap things up.

By the way, just, I don't like Gallagher.

You don't like Gallagher?

Gallagher was extremely problematic.

Gallagher was problematic before.

He's okay now, though, right?

Gallagher is dead, but he did walk out.

Before he died, he walked out of an episode of WTM with Mark Maron,

which ends with Mark Maron in a hotel room by himself saying, oh, come on, Gallagher.

It's really something else.

Something else, man.

Two more cool.

But the melon stuff.

Yeah.

Primo.

Primo.

Two more quick honorable mentions for you.

I'm still playing Tactical Breach Wizards.

I continue picking at it.

It remains...

one of the best narrative games of the last 10 years for me.

Are you able to do that to return to games that are narrative focused like that?

And like be

able to remember each one.

This is a great question.

I'm going to tell you how I'm able to to do it with because I would like to return to that one but I just like I'm gonna tell you how I do it with this game this game has the chart that after a few after like you beat a few levels you have to like pin things to the chart to like remember what is going on narratively and that alone has been so massively helpful to just like rejog my memory of like where all the characters stand so i would i would agree with you most games i'd have a really tough time but this game in particular it's been totally fine talk about a pile of shame that is one that like, that and Wanderstop.

I know if I went back and finished, I would really enjoy.

Yeah, I just played space.

It's been great.

It also got updated with like better controller support, tactical breach wizards.

So props to that.

The other game I want to call out is a game called Animal Crossing New Horizons,

which came out a few years ago, kind of a deep cut.

But I've been looking for things to play with my son, who is three.

And

he's into like watching me play mario and things like that but then i like it occurred to me that i had a

mega island of everything going on and animal crossing new horizons i booted that up and he is riveted he wants to walk through the museum he wants to check the mail he wants to swim in the ocean and look for sea animals i don't know how interested he would be in like a like a bare bones starting from scratch island but us walking around the fucking baller island that i built five years ago and hadn't touched in that long

has been pretty great.

So

Henry is obsessed with this game and has been.

This is back when daddy had free time.

Yeah, no kidding.

This is back when daddy had time to do this.

Definitely before child.

There is a little bit of, oh, I was pretty down when this was going on.

Oh, dude, yeah.

I would love to do like a video series on like revisiting people's COVID islands and just like, oh, fuck, man.

Wow.

Built an army of gnomes.

Yikes.

You've named everyone after your extended family.

That's that's weird

uh yeah it's i think even for kids that are like it's too young for them to play just like visually speaking kids love going to like museums and aquariums and shit and it's basically that you know a great a great game model that we don't get enough of that kids that age really like is peggle i showed uh like when my kids are both that age they both got really into like peggling yeah and then i dug out peggle because it's a great like they can point one time they click the button and then they just watch it a little bit yeah that's that's true.

Yeah, right.

They love it.

Uh, there's been a few recently.

We haven't had a Peggle.

What happened to Peggle?

What happened to PopCap?

We got

Billionaire.

What's the

Bollionaire?

Balillionaire.

Yeah, there's been a few indie spin-offs after Peggle and Peggy.

They're good, but they take too much math for Littles.

Yeah.

Oh, Nubby's Number Factory, I guess, is similar too.

Too much math.

That's not a kid's game for math.

That's a game for grown-ups.

Okay, I think.

I thought your kids liked Nubby's Zimbabwe Factory.

Did we do it?

We did it.

Some

patrons that I want to thank.

We can thank Eric, Noah, Rachel, and Greg.

Thank you for being patrons of the besties.

And thank you to everyone else who is super de-duper great at being patrons.

We have a new episode of The Resties up.

Talked about two very cool, very, very different games,

one of which you have to arrest Satan.

And

you can go over to patreon.com slash the besties if you want to learn more about that.

And we've got bonus episodes.

We do a a bracket every month with the whole gang.

And we love all y'all that are making this all possible.

Genuinely super awesome.

Thank you.

Okay, next week, for real this time,

I think we're going to do Doom the Dark Ages.

For real, real.

For real.

Assuming none of our computers break in the process.

I think it's going to happen.

I've also heard that you can run the game on low, low, low settings on Steam Deck, which I wouldn't recommend because obviously it's a visual spunder.

I'm not planning on on doing that.

But if anyone is at home and only has a Steam Deck, maybe worth looking into.

That's incredible.

I thought, how is that even possible?

Well, low settings and FSR to max.

Cool.

All right, that's going to do it for us this week on the Besties.

Be sure to join us again next time for the Besties, because should the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

Besties