Runescape and a Competitor to Limbo? It's a Grab Bag, Y'all

Did we all kind of queue up a burp at the same time there?

That's crazy, dude.

I definitely have one in the chamber.

Crazy.

Wow, Russ had said he had a cold open and he was time-sensitive.

He really wanted to do it, but then we all fired off.

We all had one in the chamber when we did our count.

We didn't launch it.

Like, we wouldn't.

We're audio professionals, we wouldn't lie, but we all got a little choked up there.

It was funny.

It was like we all burped, and now Russ can't do the one that he wanted to do.

No, I really wanted to hear it, too.

Guys, I want to talk about persecution.

Okay, just the idea of it.

Honestly, if I need an expert in that, Russ, you are the one I turn to.

What do you guys know about me?

What do you think?

If you were thinking of facts that you know about Russ Frost Chicken and things that he likes,

what's one thing that you would say he likes?

The steam from scrambled eggs.

The steam that comes off an egg when that hits your eye like a big pizza pie.

He loves that.

We know this.

His children.

One child.

It's tough to keep track of it.

You hit it in one.

You hit it in one.

I got one kid and likes that.

Likes video games.

Roguelike.

the the secret likes hurting himself with video games that's true the secret uh about uh the eggs theme is that it does require eggs which is to say i like eggs indirectly i like eggs it's funny from the reflection of griffin's glasses in his computer monitors i can tell when his mind is wandering and that's interesting because i can just see the flash i'm looking at it's looking for any tab that might delete nothing but my boys right now

So I don't know if you guys are aware, but there's been a bit of an egg shortage in America lately,

such that for certain supermarkets, including the one that is within walking distance of me, it's a Trader Joe's, there's been a sincere egg shortage such that you have to kind of get there right at opening to get a carton of eggs.

You're limited to one carton.

I get that.

I have no objections to that.

Obviously, the eggs should be shared among wide and all.

I don't feel that way.

I feel like if I get there early and have the most money, I should be able to buy all the eggs.

I realize that.

I also don't think vegans should be buying them, period.

I need those, those are for Justin and Russia for me.

Russ needs them to live.

I don't think vegans can buy them, right?

So, was there a whole point to your story, or was there

okay?

So, I went to the supermarket.

This is the week leading up to Easter.

I went to Trader Joe's to go buy eggs, right at opening, and I arrive, and there is a line of no exaggeration, 312 people in line at Trader Joe's.

Wait a minute.

Hold on.

Hold on.

How did you, how could you say exaggeration and then say 312?

Did they give you a ticket that said 313 on it, or did you go head by head?

They were counting people as they went through the door.

They had a counter, a ticker, to make sure it didn't get overflowed.

Legit, legit.

I'm sorry, Russ.

I was out of line.

Speaking of persecution, here we are.

This is a cold open.

So I arrive and I'm like, this seems awful.

There's too many people here for right early in the morning just to buy eggs.

Normally, there's like a dozen people that are pretty jazzed about buying eggs, but otherwise no.

Turns out Trader Joe's was selling an Easter themed tote bag that was specially released and people were really fucking jazzed about it.

You know who wasn't jazzed about it?

Who?

The guy who came just to get eggs.

Oh, that's yeah.

And I had to wait in the line.

It took like 25 minutes to wait in this line.

Now, Russ, why wasn't there two lines?

They know there's an egg problem.

I would be really TO'd if I was you.

That's what I said.

Why isn't there a tote bag line and an everything else line?

Yeah.

But honestly, I think it was fitting for the holiday for me to be suffering in this way.

Okay.

I thought it was an appropriate connection to the holiday that at least one person was being subjected to something truly awful.

And in my case, waiting 25 minutes in line

to buy the tote bag.

And then three days later.

Okay, and the worst part of it is by the end.

The worst part of it was, I do know already, but go on.

No, the worst part of it was after 20 minutes of waiting in line, I got to be honest, I kind of wanted the tote bag.

And they announced, I was five minutes away from the end of the line.

They announced, I'm sorry, everyone.

We're out of tote bags.

Did that at least clear out the line so you could go on finish your

people were like pot committed at that point.

They were like,

I hope they have video epitaphs by the time that you die.

I want a video tombstone that just plays you telling that story.

It's just like, this is the refreshing experience.

It was the worst day of my life.

Did you try to buy one off of somebody else?

No, I should have fucking eBay that shit.

What were they charging?

It's like $3,

idiots.

Damn, that's it.

They could have really raked them over the coals.

My name is Justin McElroy.

I know the best games of the week.

My name is Griffin McElright.

I know the best game of the week.

My name is Russ Rush.

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.

Just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member.

This week we have a melange for you, one of our beloved grab bag episodes where we talk about a bunch of different games that we're enjoying, none of which you care enough about to make a whole episode round.

That's the truth.

That's the algorithm.

That's it.

That's not us.

You might care about them, but not right now.

Currently, you don't.

You have to plural you.

Currently, you don't.

But maybe at the end, you will enough to be like, that should have been a whole episode.

Yeah, perhaps.

Well, there's only one way to find out, and it's to take a quick break and then come back and then do the dang thing.

Griffin, you played an old game, a game that's been out for like 30 years at this point with like 2D graphics and shit no i understand your confusion um but when i saw this pop up on steam with you playing it griffin i just assumed they renamed blueprints

no i have uh i i think i beat blueprints um i am gonna talk this week about rune scape dragon wilds and if you say the full title of that your underwear goes up your own butt.

It kind of is like an auto-wedgie situation.

Are you guys at all familiar with RuneScape?

All I know about RuneScape is the Reddit community for the original game is very active and like memes will bubble up to the like homepage of Reddit.

Right.

But I won't understand any of them.

So I think the main reason for that is old school RuneScape is sort of the re-released version of just that, old, the original RuneScape that is out on iOS where it works like pretty well and sort of like really revived the community.

RuneScape 3 is also kind of still available, but from what I can tell, old school RuneScape is sort of the

supreme game.

And are those MMOs?

Or are they just like...

So yes, they are MMOs.

RuneScape was a very just primordial MMO

that had a sort of like top, not quite top-down, sort of like isometric perspective.

You had your character.

There were no like classes or anything like that, but instead it kind of spearheaded this idea of you have like a two dozen skills and the skills can be like logging and tailoring.

I've seen

archery

tailor, and as you like do those things, those specific skills level up.

Uh, to and and so, like, that's a lot of the game's content, and it also like sort of inspired a lot of other games that would then come after the game.

Uh, sure, yeah, absolutely.

Uh, but it is an MMO.

Um, so what is very cool about RuneScape Dragon Wilds is if you are at all familiar with RuneScape or old school Runescape, um, there's a lot there that has been like adapted in a weird way that is sort of non-traditional for like, I don't know, new games in a franchise.

It is not an MMO, it is an open world survival crafting game in the vein of your enshroudeds,

your, you know, rusts, things, things along that line.

So you're going around, you're collecting wood and stone to make a thing to chop down a bigger thing and XYZ.

However, it does have that same skilling system as

RuneScape.

So like anytime you do anything in this game, you are constantly leveling up these skills and unlocking these little passive bonuses or unlocking new spells or unlocking, you know, X, Y, or Z.

And so like those,

this game is interesting because there's a lot of ways that like the logic and rules of old school RuneScape actually lend themselves really, really well to this particular genre of game.

Not only that, like sometimes you'll find a quest that is like a quest from old school RuneScape.

I don't know that you will like necessarily vibe with that if you don't give a shit about that.

Probably not.

But it does some stuff that is sort of like, it does some stuff that's interesting.

Sorry, what is a quest of like, like, is it like, oh, I remember that time.

That guy asked me for vlogs and I went fucking nuts.

So you're showing your ass a little bit here right now because RuneScape was weird in that like its quests were not straightforward.

They were not like, go here, do this thing.

It was like you would find a ghost and it'd be like, here's an amulet, find my body.

And you wouldn't get fucking anything else from it.

Yeah, that is that.

That sounds like that.

Yeah, no, I mean, and, and I genuinely think like old school RuneScape is free to play on your phone or iPad.

And I do think like there's a lot there that's interesting as sort of a historical document.

But, you know, that stuff will obviously be lost on you if you didn't play that game.

One thing that's really neat is that there is magic in this game.

And the way the magic system work is you like collect these runes, which are sort of like your ammunition for casting these different spells.

You unlock these spells by leveling up different skills.

So, for instance, the first spell I unlocked by leveling up my wood cutting skill summons a magic axe that you kind of swirl in front of you and then throw forwards.

And it chops down every tree right in front of you that you sort of aim it at.

And then you get a spell that causes the trees that fall down to explode so you can just grab all the lumber without having to chop stuff down.

There's a spell that lets you just do one really high jump,

which really sort of makes exploration and stuff a lot lot more interesting.

There's a lot of really interesting kind of

applications of

magic in the game.

And I think overall, it feels pretty good.

It was sort of a stealth launch.

Jagex, I believe, is the name of

the team who makes RuneScape.

Those Jags.

Those Jags.

They kind of just stealth launched it and were like, yeah, give it a try.

It's early access.

Let us know what you think.

And it's like solid.

It's genuinely pretty fun.

I do like that it's colorful.

Yeah, sure.

No, it's

quite vibrant.

These sort of games, like even Enshrouded, which is a game I really liked, does have like a kind of a filter over it that kind of jumps a lot, which is more realistic, certainly, but this is like more

in line with that era.

It's also the design of like the main characters and stuff, it feels less

like...

We've gotten so kludgy with character design lately, like the

piling on of accessories and bands and everything.

There's a lot of iconic silhouettes here.

Like it's like iconic fantasy game like, if you will.

You know how like Final Fantasy games these days all want to have it have their cake and eat it too?

Like

leather jackets and swords.

Like that never happened.

Yeah, because they have the UniClove brand deal like after the film.

Right, exactly.

That is not the case.

And a lot of the armor from RuneScape is in the game.

A lot of the weapons from RuneScape are in the game.

And so like that is why that stuff kind of looks sort of like

90s camp fantasy is because like that's exactly where it was pulled from.

It looks like, you know what it kind of reminds me of is the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon.

Yes, for sure.

And so like I have, I didn't play RuneScape when I was a kid.

I played old school RuneScape.

And so like, I don't know, I've always been very charmed by that world.

I think the aesthetic is really kind of something, something neat.

And I think that this game is really promising.

I do think it is a bit

content-light at the moment.

You can't level up all the skills to like max level.

Some of the skills are like missing entirely.

Like, there's no, you can shoot bows and stuff, but there's no like ranged skill to like level up alongside that.

And from what I can understand, like, you can get through most of the content of the game, like, relatively quickly.

Is it what is the like paint?

Is it just like buy once and you're good, or is there a yeah, no, it's not an MMO.

It's, it's, it's buy once and you're good.

I think it's like 30 bucks, I want to say.

But like, I don't know.

I have been enjoying it.

I don't think it is hitting quite as hard as like Enshrouded, I think, is in a really good spot right now and kind of does a lot of this stuff better and has like better building and more to kind of do.

But I do think that it's a really sort of,

ironically, like it has a lot of original ideas, or I guess RuneScape had a lot of original ideas and this one has adapted them very smartly.

Yeah.

And so, yeah,

I've been enjoying it.

I've been playing on my Rogue Ally.

It

works pretty well.

Rob.

Yeah, I was going to say Rogue Ally, a new addition.

That does seem neat.

You know, I get a little bit overwhelmed by all of the survival, whatever the genre is, the survival RPG genre.

Yeah.

But it's good to see something that does at least visually stick out from the pack in that way.

Yeah.

And it's also like, I don't know, I think it's fun that fans of this franchise who have not really had anything to snack on

since, you know, RuneScape 3 dropped a million billion years ago

just get this like huge kind of exciting thing.

Do they seem happy?

Because oftentimes they're not.

Yeah, no, it's been, it's the response has been like incredible.

I can't imagine trying to make an audience like that.

Like, that's pretty fucking impressive.

I do think it's kind of incredible that like...

an audience can just keep their busted, broken down thing going long enough with a great circle of time comes back around and like, wait, people still like rune scape well i mean just make more of this old school rune scape really like set that ablaze and i'll say like really set the uh you know the tone for world of war craft classic that you know did kind of the same thing eq i think did sort of the same thing um but i i don't know old school rune scape it just works so well on like a touch device and i think that's why the community is still as like fired up about it as lord british what the fuck are you doing what are you doing though time man sitting on the toilet doing nothing get in it make your own remake

lord he's lost in his magic house that's what happened Griffin here's the great the great question I have for you what is your plan for this game going forward is this something you're gonna hang with now that you've talked about Lord British was ultimate online I know I was saying he hasn't thrown his he's like not making something oh I see like where is he needs to get ultimate back going fell into a trapdoor in his fancy house and now he can't get out again

very close friends Yeah, true.

So, my question to you, Griffin, because you weren't listening because you were looking up facts about Richard Garriott.

My question once more is

now that the episode is completed,

do you think that this is something you're going to hop right back in and play some more of?

Or do you feel like we'll check back in in six months?

Where are you at?

Yeah,

it's definitely a check back in scenario.

I've put maybe 10, 12 hours in it and, you know, built a cool base and done some of the story stuff and found a dope weapon and did that.

But it is tough to dedicate a lot of time, at least personally speaking, it's tough to dedicate a lot of time to a game that you know is going to be better in

some amount of time once it's gotten some updates.

So yeah, I am probably going to put this one to bed for now until

it is more active.

But that said, I've had fun with it and I wouldn't let that stop you if you're interested.

With Enshrouded, have you gone back to...

Like, I'm waiting for...

Yes, I've gone back to Enshroud.

Enshrouded has gotten a ton of shit.

Because I'm just waiting for 1.0 on that like I don't want to as soon as that drops yeah that's gonna be that's gonna be huge uh I did return to Intradded a little bit earlier this year uh when I got the Rog Ally and wanted to you know play some stuff on it and yeah it's it's in good shape too but same sort of thing like I'm in the same boat I would love for 1.0 to drop so I feel like okay all the time I invest in this is is makes sense because this is like the capital G game yeah

What else are you talking about?

I checked out something this week called Sunderfolk.

It was part of an Easter Easter celebration, an impromptu Easter celebration, because I was stuck at my house by other people swam.

So

I started an impromptu Sunderfolk party.

What is Sunderfolk, Justin?

Well, thank you.

I would ask.

Go ahead.

You didn't really leave much up.

I was being their listener.

What is Sunderfolk?

Yeah, sorry.

In my head, that was the listener.

Oh, okay.

Not you guys who should have asked.

I was distracted by Griffin's funky conk shirt and couldn't ask anything.

So Sunderfolk, developed by Secret Dor,

who has done Sunderfolk.

You may know them from.

You may know them from Sunderfolk.

Okay, so imagine a game that is halfway between,

like, you don't know Jack and

Four Swords, Legends of Four Swords.

So the idea is like you start the game on a

computer or laptop or what have you.

I think the ideal scenario is you're running it into a TV with an HDMI out, but you could run it off the laptop regardless.

And then is it on I could you do like an Apple TV situation or

oh you know, I mean I don't I as far as I know this is just coming to Steam right now but so and this is part of the I guess Dream Haven franchise.

Oh sure Dream Haven.

So that's a whole I don't need to tell you

about Dream Haven.

So when you boot up the game it basically starts a campaign and the campaign has a QR code on the screen.

People scan the QR code on their phones, and that prompts them to download an app that is the Sunderfolk controller.

So then when you start, this is also, I think there's some parallels to the stuff that

Until Dawn.

Is it super massive?

Yeah, yeah.

Some parallels to what they did with hidden...

Ah, somebody looked that up.

You know the one I'm talking about.

Yeah, the anthology, right?

That they did.

Hidden pictures.

There was like one where you had a, it was an investigation thing where you had a secret agenda that you were trying to complete and the other players.

Anyway,

as you play through the game, the main interactions of it are basically a hex.

The dark pictures anthology.

Thank you.

That's not the one you're talking about.

I was talking about.

But anyway,

in Sunderfolk, it's a hex, the combat is like a hex-based system where you choose a character class, all pretty bog standard stuff, right?

You got a bard, you got a wizard, you got a fighter, what have you.

And then the campaign starts.

Each person is controlling a character

and they can make like dialogue choices, stuff like that throughout on the phone.

But then when you're playing the game, the phone becomes basically like a touch screen controller where you're manipulating what's on the screen.

So you're not doing much of the interaction on your phone, right?

You're not staring at your phone the whole time.

You're looking at the screen, but you're using the touch screen to move your character, choose things that you want to do.

And then your spells and actions are all like card-based on the phone.

So you're swiping up the things that you want to do.

Okay.

I was going to ask, it doesn't, I don't understand why this needed to be a phone and not a controller until you

well, the thing is, if you are, it's the setting, right?

It's the, it's the,

it's a phone, not a controller, because people have phones.

And so you can get, it's the same model as like, I mean, you don't know Jack could be a controller too, right?

But the, the model is different because you can bring people in for a couch co-op thing where the phone, you don't have to pair a bunch of controllers and hook it up and everything uh you is it adversarial at all or is it so there is definitely an aspect of uh collaboration uh but there is an aspect where uh the first person to touch the gold or the first person to interact with the treasure chest keeps it and then your gold is specific to you so there's definitely this element of like I really should come help you with that, but I really want this gold.

And so there's a little bit of like back and forth as far as that goes on.

And you've got

the character.

There's a story being told, right?

There's a campaign story where you can like hop in and hop out and control the characters.

What I don't know is like, I played it with Slice for like an hour and a half, I would say.

And it took us just a little bit to kind of figure out the basics.

Mechanically, if you were playing this like solo, if it didn't have the other elements, I think you would be like, I don't know what the, you know, most of it is just kind of functional, right?

It seems like the focus was just making it happen.

But it was a really interesting way of like playing together without having to like,

it's very similar to, I think, a lot of board game experiences, just, you know, in a digital way that makes it easier to set up and easier to play.

You can do a lot of the

sort of boring character management stuff on your phone where it's not slowing people.

Yeah.

Right.

So when you both level up, you're doing your own level up stuff on your phone.

You're waiting for the other person to do it, but you can actually go to the shop and buy things while they're doing that.

It sounds like playing multiplayer Baldur's Gate 3 was a similar.

Obviously, this is easier because it's just on phones, but from a logistics standpoint, it does seem kinder in that way.

So my issue, I think, the thing that worries me after playing it, the thing that I'm unconvinced about, this is

out, by the way.

You can go play this.

Try this if you want.

I don't know how easy it would be to onboard someone who wasn't already already in the room.

I'm not sure this is like a party game.

Yeah.

I think this is more like

I have friends over to do this or like have a plan.

This is not like, you know, you don't know Jack or some of the other

Jackpot stuff.

It's kind of like, you know, the dinner didn't go as long as you thought it was going to.

There's like an hour before everybody's going to leave.

So like, let's, let's just, you know, goof around.

This is not that.

This feels a little bit more dedicated.

But you have friends that would get into this kind of thing.

I think

it's pretty accessible and i think it's well worth well well worth trying i think it's it's pretty cool yeah there aren't too many of these that are you know like this format but also like pretty approachable i guess jackbox is the like the epitome but this feels like a different experience entirely this is more of an rpg i also think if you have kids this would be a really great

balance between like interacting with screens but still like interacting with each other.

I'm always looking for stuff like that that can kind of engage them, but we can still sort of hang out throughout.

So I think that would be a good fit if the kids are a little bit older.

I think it's not super,

I feel like 12 plus if I had to guess, like it's not super

and you know, I'd extend that not just ages, but like familiarity with games overall, right?

This is not something you're going to hand it to your grandmother who just likes Peggle or something and she shouldn't be able to play it at the same time.

That's not judgmental.

Like you can hand Jackbox to, you know, you can get, you can onboard someone with that in 10 seconds.

And this is not that.

that right but it is very cool yeah it looks neat it's a is there like a long campaign or is it just like individual play sessions where it's like here's that's the thing that i don't know it feels like we have a campaign that we could return to yeah i don't know if i started a different campaign if it would be that different right and i assume it would i mean obviously there's branching narrative choices so like yes it would be very different but like i don't know the long tail on it but sometimes those branching narratives are like not really right right it may be the dragon age thing of like yeah i don't know it's just a bunch of ai generated crap

doesn't mean anything not to say dragon age was that but yeah you get it yeah interesting um yeah that seems cool i think we have one more game we can talk about uh and we'll do that after the break

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Okay, so the last game today that we are talking about is called Bionic Bay.

And this is

a 2D platformer puzzle game in the style of games like Limbo and Inside.

If you're into those games, if you've ever played any of those games, you will feel instantly very at home here.

The game...

Do we need a name for this?

It's a puzzle.

It's a niche subgenre, but I think it's a puzzle platformer is what people call them.

It doesn't seem

atmospheric puzzle platformer.

That's better, yeah.

The problem with that term is that that instantly puts me in the mind of like, I have to shift boxes around.

Which you do in this game.

And you do have boxes.

I mean, they're nice looking boxes, guys, and there's some moody music.

This game kicks off.

You're a scientist in a lab, and something goes wrong, and you, for some reason, get teleported to an alien world

and the alien world looks kind of like zen from half-life one it's just like kind of biomechanical but you know there's a lot of like creatures and lasers and gears that'll kill you and all sorts of shit it hits you with huge out of this world vibes yeah that was my first world vibes really really fast yeah it uh you really just get dropped into this thing and you're like well this is a shitty situation.

How am I going to survive this?

And within five minutes, you were shot with a laser that turns you into like a springy bouncy boy.

Yeah, sure.

It is a really effective, like, when you boot it up, you're like, oh, my God, no, please.

I can't play a whole lot of shit.

When I thought it was the game of, like, we were just doing this game for the week, when I booted it up, I was like, oh, God, I can't play many hours of this, but it's like,

I mean, literally 30 seconds.

It's basically a sight gag.

Yeah, they do like a slow, you're forced to like very slowly walk because all your bones are broken into this laser that like fully heals you and turns you into, yeah, bouncy jumpy boy.

And from there, it just turns into like a much more

platformer-centric game, even than limbo.

Like, there's a lot more of these like moves where you're doing like roll into jump, into dive through the air and try to land on like a tiny grab ledge thing.

These like just very balletic dives.

And that's paired with some special abilities that you get as you play through the game.

The first one that you get is a teleport swap.

So you can tag any item, like any object in the game, and then swap places with it.

Pretty straightforward, but that obviously has tons of like puzzle elements to it.

There's also like, you know, if there's like a tracking rocket, you could like swap at the last second with a box and then the box will like block the rocket.

So it's those sorts of

ideas that you're using while while you're kind of progressing through this game.

Yeah,

a lot of like moments in this game where it uses this like pretty small handful of mechanics in like really clever ways.

Like a lot of moments of like, oh shit, I can't believe that worked moments.

It's quite smart.

Yeah.

Later on, they do mix in, I don't know how many there are, but they do mix in other powers beyond just the teleport power.

You do get like a super strength punch at one point,

which really helped kind of mix things up.

But broadly speaking, you are, yeah, using the jumps and the rolls and the teleport.

Um, I found it just visually very compelling, like immediately grabbing.

They do, I love games where you have like a very, very little character and a giant environment around them because it really gives you the sense of scale.

And they fucking crush that, it looks so gorgeous.

Uh, runs great on a Steam Deck.

I really, but, and I think like an OLED screen really helps this game as well.

There's like really cool contrasts with the art.

Did you guys play online at all?

No.

There's online?

There's offline in this game.

I did not know.

Yeah.

So it's not unlocked at launch or right at the beginning of the game, but once you, I think, beat the first chapter or whatever, you can go back to the main menu and there's an online, it's called like Bionic Bay Online, whatever.

And it's basically like ghost runs of various like levels.

So you can see 30 people doing the same run that you're doing, and you're trying to get the best time.

And

asynchronous or it is asynchronous.

Yeah.

So

I guess technically not online.

No, I mean, that's that having played, you know, Mario Maker online like that, asynchronous seems obviously superior.

Yeah, yeah.

It's asynchronous and just like a nice addition to, I think, this feels like the sort of game that I'm really enjoying and I will probably beat.

But once I beat it, there wasn't necessarily a reason for me to go back.

And this gives me a little bit more of an incentive to like go back and, you know, play.

They have like daily challenges, so people can keep coming back on a daily basis.

There's even like a character customization feature of that where you can like make your character look unique in that like sea of ghost runners.

I really dug this game.

I love games like this, games that like really use physics in fun ways to result in like stupid ragdoll effects and

making you feel kind of epic.

I will also say it is a puzzle platformer and sometimes the puzzle stuff gets a little bit challenging, but I was surprised at how good the parkour kind of feels.

You can really chain together some.

I bet the speedrun of this game is going to be fun as hell to watch because you can really chain stuff together in a way that feels pretty fantastic.

Yeah.

It feels surprisingly good.

Not surprisingly, I guess, but for one of these games, you're not used to them being as fun to play, I think, as this one is.

I was surprised once the Elastic stuff kicks in.

It's like, oh, this is really like, it's, it reminded me of a cannibal in the way that it feels like that, the joy of just like rushing and like sprinting and like throwing yourself forward.

It really has a lot of that.

Yeah, you compare that to like Limbo, which I think is a great game, but also like very slow and kind of pensive.

And there are moments in this where you do have to like take a second to like figure out the situation.

But broadly speaking, it is much more of a sprint through, which I really dig works.

Cool.

That is Bionic Bay, and that is also out on Steam.

All these games are out, right?

Who made it?

The developer is PsychoFlow Studio, and Marina Oi made it.

Awesome.

I don't know their stuff, their previous stuff, but it looks like,

yeah, this might be their first major release.

All right.

Fantastic.

These are great games, guys, and I love video games.

Okay.

Sort of weird thing to

like a weird thing to assert, I guess.

It's almost like it was just like silence, and I didn't know what to do.

We've done this show for so long, we can be comfortable being silent with each other for 10 spurts or not.

Little spurts of time.

Yeah.

Reader mail?

Yeah, I'd love that.

Okay.

We have one letter.

We had many letters, but this is a long one, so I thought it was worth just focusing on.

This one, this comes from,

I guess, bass toad podcast me to heaven

uh so apparently i wasn't here but apparently you guys were talking about building games last week yeah does that sound i also wasn't here last week so there was a question last week about uh games that were about sort of like freeform construction where you can play together and make things cool uh so so bass toad had recommendations for some other games to check out uh vintage story is a take on the minecraft voxel game with more in-depth building tools.

It has a creative mode so you can build freestyle.

There's also Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster with great customization and building tools for designing very intricate landscapes.

Tiny Glade is a great game where you build these little castles and ruins.

I played that one.

That one is really neat.

I like that a lot.

Summerhouse and Townscaper, also in the vein of Tiny Glade.

And a throwback from my childhood is Blockland, a Lego-style building game where you are the size of a minifigure.

And finally, The Sims 4 has very good building tools,

just like a ton of stuff, especially if you

type in the console.

You can just generate whatever you want.

God, Lockland.

I remember playing this game.

It is kind of a trip to see it because I have not thought about it in,

well, 18 years, I guess.

It's on Steam.

Crazy.

Perfect.

Great.

Yeah,

it looks very blocky.

Russ, you play a a lot of I mean, you've played like No Man's Sky and stuff like that.

I think you do have to what is what's your and maybe this is like germane to the conversation you had last week, but like what's the gold standard of you know base building that type of

stuff?

Um

No Man's Sky is pretty good.

I think the best that I've ever played is probably

oh fuck what's the name of the sub the scuba diving game?

Oh, Subnautica.

Subnautica has really incredible base building that

I think where a lot of the base building in games like No Man's Sky get a little distracted for me, I know a lot of people like this, is they lean on like a little more of the roleplay-y stuff where things that you put in your base don't necessarily have like a ton of utility, whereas essentially everything in Subnautica has like some utility to it, which I thought.

I think that speaks to the fact that like Subnautica has a lot of plates you have to kind of spin, and you build things that make spinning those plates a lot easier.

I really think Enshrouded has cornered the market on this.

You can build some stuff in that game that looks

truly pretty fantastic

and really make a space your own.

I remember feeling very intimidated when I first started playing.

This is like right at early access launch, where I felt like my shitty block castle was like very pathetic in comparison to what it could be.

Yeah, I remember

it left a mark.

Have you guys been playing or watching anything else?

Maybe we should say that Oblivion stealth dropped very recently as we are recording this.

And I think we're going to talk about next week's.

I don't think we've spent a ton of time with it, but early impressions are quite positive.

It's crazy how good this game looks.

Yeah, it's weird.

I haven't thought about it.

It's weird to think about returning to Oblivion.

Yeah.

It's a big one.

For a long time, I said it was.

My favorite game.

Whoa, really?

Yeah, for a long time.

It was, it's a, we will end up talking about it next week.

Yeah, we're doing an episode on next week.

But that's that's incredible.

Yeah, I have a TV show.

I talked about it on another podcast, but I the more I watch of it, the more I really like it.

It's called Offline Love.

It's a Japanese reality dating show.

The premise is that there are 10

young Japanese singles, five men, five women, and they spent 10 days together in Nice, France.

And the big sort of conceit of the show is that when they get there, they lock their cell phones in a locker that they can't access until the 10-day trip is over.

And so all correspondence, all kind of like courtship, all planning

and stuff like that has to take place either face-to-face or through letter writing because there's a little mailbox with the box that you lock your phone in.

And that seems like, oh, that seems kind of stupid.

Like, that seems like not enough to sort of hang an entire show on.

But instead, you get these kind of thrilling moments where like they have a map that they will show like two people walking closer and closer and closer together.

And then they'll just miss each other.

And they'll walk right by each other.

Because like, there's no,

there's like a meeting place where they all sort of like drop their letters, but like, there's no guarantee that you're going to see anybody any given day.

And then once you do, like, if two people ask you out on one day, you can't let that first person, you can't text that first person.

You have to write them a letter and hope that they see it so that you don't stand them up.

It has a lot of

not accept the second date, like a classy person.

Yeah, but if you get two letters in your mailbox, you have no, right?

So like that, there's a lot of really great moments that come out of that sort of core idea.

It has huge,

like,

I don't know, chill terrace house vibes.

I know that the shine kind of came off that apple pretty hard.

But it is like really, really polished.

The tour, I don't really have much affinity for, like, I've never traveled to France or like really prioritized that, but it has like a lot of great sort of that virtual tourism kind of element to it.

The commentators are really, really fantastic.

Is like language a factor?

Like,

so it's really interesting because they all speak Japanese when they're with one another.

Right.

And then they will get in moments where like there's one couple that go on a date to a winery and they have to like try and stitch together any kind of conversation with these

married couple that owns the winery, but they don't speak Japanese.

And

the people on the date don't really speak a lot of French.

They all speak a little bit of English.

And so like they're just bouncing between conversation between different languages as

they converse.

Have they done that reality show?

Where no one speaks the same language?

Yes, they have done that reality show.

I think it was called The Language of Love.

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

So glad you got to hear

you're, you've, you've asked the two rightest people that you could ask.

Yeah, I just, it's on Netflix.

Rachel and I have been watching it, and it's been a really lovely way to de-stress from the NHL playoffs, which have been bad to watch as a St.

Louis Blues fan so far.

I mean, fittingly for the name.

What's that?

The name of the team.

It's fitting.

The blues.

Blues, because it makes you feel sad.

Yeah, sometimes they make you feel good.

But yeah,

it's a great show, and I've been liking it a lot.

Cool.

And I think that's it for me.

I have another show to talk about.

I've been watching Daredevil Born Again, which is the new Daredevil show on Disney Plus.

It's basically just like bringing back the Netflix Daredevil show with basically the same cast or a lot of the same cast

in a new adventure.

And all your friends are here except for some of them aren't.

But the most important.

Now you're just reading from the trailer script, Russ.

But the most important person is here, and that is Vincent D'Anofrio, because I do not think there is anyone in the Marvel universe that is more compelling to watch than.

Get this guy in a freaking movie already, please?

I could watch him for...

Let him fight Spider-Man and let me have that film, please.

The like sad but also angry kingpin who's huge and is now mayor of New York City.

Like, all this stuff is working for me so well.

Uh, and it's that canonical to the MCU, I mean, is anything,

yeah.

I mean, there's a continuity of the MCU, I know, but they like dream, oh, this was on Earth 12, so you know, sure, but like, I do need the bullshit if you start hand waving it away.

I would like to know the game.

So, here's what I'm gonna say: it is, I guess, minor, minor spoiler.

Kamala Khan, who is Miss Marvel, her dad has a bit part in this as Kamala Khan's dad.

So I guess it is part of the MCU if you consider it in that vein.

Yeah, it is.

Yes.

Yes.

I heard somewhere, and this was just like, just a

short, I didn't read the article, but I heard somewhere that Ventinofria was saying there was some licensing something or other that was keeping him from movies, but that might just be like he's being coy because he's in fucking the next Avengers movie as like Dr.

Doom's best friend.

Who fucking knows?

I mean, there's always a thing, right?

But there's always like a dollar value attached.

And you know who's very good at solving dollar value problems?

Disney.

Yeah.

They probably have to look around and they own it somewhere, whatever business it is.

So, but I've been enjoying that show.

You know,

it's fun.

It's good to have something like that back again.

Justin, you have anything to share with us?

You know me.

You know me.

I've just been kind of tinkering around

making a little computer, making a little video game consoles.

I made a little portable video game console that was a big hit at Easter, too.

I was a real entertaining guy at Easter.

You made it.

Hyperfixation.

You did it again.

You made a portable game console?

Yeah.

What does that mean?

You see it?

Yeah.

You see it?

Yeah.

I'm going to describe it visually to the audience.

I showed last week, you guys weren't here.

I showed

plant my Daphne, my Laser Disc Arcade cabinet that I made

last week.

Is that still

within arm's reach?

You still have that little beauty.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, it appears to be in a case that you would keep a nuclear football in.

It's like a locked orange,

like a safe case, which seems like overkill for a portable device.

Oh.

Okay, so when you mean portable, you mean like

is it technically a carry-on?

Go on.

Go on.

I mean, it is technically a carry-on you could fit in the overhead compartment, but it's pretty close to not to having to be checked.

I mean, it's going to

set off some alarms.

What are you playing there?

It starts when it boots up with a classic commercial from the 90s.

A random one?

Yeah.

About video games offering.

Like the Paul Rudd commercial or the Jackback commercial.

That kind of thing.

Sometimes it's like Hills where the toys are kind of...

Yeah, this is a Game Gear ad for Joe Montana football.

Oh, the TV tuner for the Game Gear.

Classic.

Classic.

Yeah.

And this is the way you're funding it, right?

Is you're getting some money from Game Gear.

It's from Sega.

We got some Startup Cat.

I've got the two controllers embedded here.

And which controllers?

Those look like APIs.

Those are the key bit doses.

And I carved some holes in the foam for those guys.

The honest description, it looks like a laptop in a case.

It looks kick-ass.

It looks very, very cool.

I'm very impressed by the logistics of this.

Just to show you the inner workings here, this is a battery.

That white thing you see deep in the case is a battery.

Okay.

I got a raspberry pi 5 velcro to the top of that right and then i've got the two controllers paired with with bluetooth uh to this and then i've got this monitor that's a five volt charge running off of the battery too so i'm able to power both of these devices uh with the same battery how big is that monitor huh how big is that monitor

14 inches i i sized it to the case right i bought the case first and then i found a monitor that would work the only thing that was tricky is the the HDMI ports on the side, I had to find a 90-degree HDMI port to make that all work.

But other than that, it's great.

And I can actually play for about

six or seven hours.

We got the Raspberry Pi 5.

You could do up to like Dreamcast, PS2,

pretty confidently.

For six or seven hours?

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

But yeah, if you charge it up before you head out, then you can run it for about eight hours off this.

I've got two other controllers in here, so you could do

four-player if you wanted to.

But yeah, that's the thing I've spent most of my time trying to get going.

Wow, it's very

intimidated by trying to set up Android, and this is you're you're running, you're running circles around me.

We could go to workshop there.

I don't think of it as a competition, Russ.

I think the fact that you see it that way is a little sad.

That's who I am.

Speaking of, though, I'm running Oblivion on my Android device here.

You should check it out.

It runs so smoothly.

Wait, is that remastered Oblivion?

Yeah, remastered.

It's like streaming, though.

It's per no, man.

I got it up and running on this Android.

I had to move around some ones and zeros, okay?

Some bits and bytes.

But I did get it up and running.

Todd called me and he was like, J-Man.

Show me,

what was that device?

Why don't we save it for next week?

Because I am also testing that device, so I think we adjust it.

Well, I don't want to be the only one without a device.

I'll tell you about it after, Griffin.

You didn't even...

You didn't even...

Spoiler for the listener.

Griffin didn't even have his fucking camera on.

And then he saw my cool Game Boy.

I was like, Cool Game Boy now.

It's also funny, you don't even have a device, Griffin, Griffin.

I have a lot of devices.

It's the Retroid Flip 2.

We will talk in depth about it next week as I've spent, I need to spend more time with it.

Are you still able to buy one of these without paying $100,000?

You would probably not

because it would need to ship and land in the United States before, I think, May 4th is the cutoff.

And certainly for the people listening, you're going to even have less time.

I would not be optimistic.

This might be the last

China-manufactured handheld for quite some time that we can actually get on the shores for a reasonable dollar amount.

I refuse to let that reality infect this podcast.

The device will be taken on its own merit.

I mean, realistically, here's what's going to happen is these Chinese companies will find manufacturing companies that aren't in China and then just ship them to America once that works out?

But we live in a world of chaos, so who fucking knows?

Great, cool.

What are we doing next week?

Wait, I want to know what the name of your handheld is.

Your portable.

Sorry, it's not a handheld, it's a portable.

Oh, yeah, have you named it?

The portable?

No, it's based on a design called the Adventure Pie that I saw that was based on a four.

It's

a Raspberry Pi 4.

That creator, if you look that up, his name is Gabes, but he also had a configuration for a joystick sort of setup that you could do uh alternate to the to the controller can i suggest something yeah please what about the just box

no you can do better than that no that was oh i mean uniquely bad yeah

okay

go on go beat the just box

oh i don't i don't have to the juice drive the juice drive you can't that's a false juice drive is pretty good actually i like juice drive juice box juice box i mean it's the juice box oh no it's the juice box i was so close what's What's cool about it is you can find a different, like, I could have different,

it's just based on the SD card that's in the pie as to like what it is.

So I could put in a different SD card with like a different suite of games or different setup or themed differently, whatever.

It's pretty easy.

Have you done like

how much like when you start a new device, how much work do you have to do over again?

Or have you gotten it to a point where you've like have the baseline settings?

I mean,

I have all my stuff organized to like drag games on.

I used to be more fixated on like, I want to try to play everything on this one thing.

Now it's more like, what makes sense on this thing?

And I'm trying to take more of a curation approach.

So like the setting it up is like the reason I'm doing it.

You know what I mean?

Like that's the part that is making the Lego part.

Yeah, that's the part that I enjoy.

And then, yeah.

And honestly, like from a pricing standpoint, maybe not in the future, but for right now, kind of comparable to Lego pricing.

Yeah, sure.

sure i'm odd at a cabinet to an arcade one cabinet i sent griffin a video that yeah

i think we've done it congrats uh i wanted to thank the patrons over at patreon.com slash the besties

uh we love you you can buy gifts for people if you know someone in your life that would enjoy a patron subscription you can go to patreon.com slash the besties slash gift and do that which is very cool uh some members to thank we have dustin we have jennifer we have mark and we have lindsay thank you for being uh new patrons of the the besties.

We really appreciate you.

We appreciate everyone else who is patrons of the besties.

You all have a new Rusties episode, which is already up.

You also have a Bracket Battles episode, which is coming up on Tuesday.

That is the best

video game grunts.

Like, oh, that was funny.

Cannon Fodder enemies.

Not like, we're not like.

Yeah, we're not.

We're not

those.

We could do one on that.

Yeah, that'll be like most iconic efforts.

Yeah.

That'll be next time.

That'll be next time.

The next besties week, what are we playing, Justin?

We're going to be doing

some

Oblivion?

Yeah.

Which we talk about.

It's on the thing.

You could just read it.

Yeah, but I'm not looking at it right now.

Okay.

So if I was looking at it, okay, we're going to be doing the Oblivion Remaster, and we're going to talk about Skin Deep, the new Blendo game that I've been talking about for literally years on this show, and I can't believe it's finally out.

Their last game came out 10 years ago.

Was that Jazz?

Quadrilateral

Cowboys

ago.

Christ.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

I've had that thing wish listed for, I mean, literally, I mean, I think it's eight years.

That's going to be next week.

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