Chilling in the Grab Bag with Kingdom Come Deliverance 3

I got a question for you all.

Okay.

It's kind of a tricky scenario.

You go to a movie theater, right?

And it's nice and quiet.

You're watching the movie.

Is this?

Are we you?

Are we at a snobby movie theater that's showing some sort of black and white documentary?

I haven't

finished the premise yet.

Oh, sorry.

And you're already just tonking it down.

Let me finish the premise.

And you can see that

you are in the scenario.

Okay, sorry, Mario.

You're at a movie, and you're near the front.

There are a lot of people behind you,

and there are two people in front of you, but everybody else, they're all behind you.

In front of you, one of those people starts snoring.

And like, at first it's soft.

Maybe you only, you hear it.

So what you're saying is you are at a black and white documentary boring film.

Then they start snoring.

Right.

But everybody is behind you.

So they think you might be part of the snore.

Maybe like they think it's you or it's like it's your responsibility to kind of with them.

and and then you can kind of defend yourself by like well yeah but i'm not the person that they're with like they surely have like the most obligation right they might be asleep yeah too well i kind of like wave my hand around like a twirl in the air like a yes yes

um yeah but then here's the problem both of them

start snoring they are now both asleep on each other and it you truly are now

the the the divider between the the awake and the asleep.

Yeah.

I know we give you a hard time, Chris, for the, you know, the types of cinema that you do consume, but I would actually like to know the answer to what was the film that you were watching.

This was a while ago.

This was the monkey.

Oh, okay.

Well, never mind then.

That's lit.

It's actually Le Monkey.

So it's actually.

Wait, wait, wait.

Is it the kick-ass one with all the violence and stuff?

Or is it one about like, you know, a French acrobat and they call call him Monkay.

Monkey.

Oh, okay.

The Mikey.

No,

it is the monkey.

It's the monkey.

It's where everybody gets their heads blown off.

Yeah.

People just falling asleep right in the front.

Oh, Twist.

Turns out I watch movies and people like, what a surprise.

By accident, you just wandered in there.

But what do you do?

Like, I don't want to wake somebody.

That feels like bad.

I feel like you're walking?

Of course not, Chris.

You have no legal right to wake someone up who's asleep.

You could kick both seats at the same time.

Yeah, man.

If you're right behind them, dare them good.

And then you'd be like, ooh, ooh, ah, ah, ah.

Right in their ear, and they'll be like, oh, fuck, we fell asleep in the monkeys movie.

He's so mad, he's going to explode our heads.

Yeah, it's good.

What if I grabbed both their hands and then kind of made them like slap each other at the same time?

Yeah.

Yeah, like they do in the monkey.

Like they do in the monkey.

Yeah.

This is good.

Yeah.

No, this is, this is really, I really just sat through it.

They did it for like 20 minutes and then they woke up and left.

Good for them, man.

Yeah, no, they got some good rest.

They got what they needed out of that film.

Maybe it was too scary, too violent.

They had to fall asleep as a defense mechanism.

That's so true.

I bet that's right.

Or maybe it was like their way of screaming and it just sounded like snores, right?

That would be kind of like troubling if you were falling off a building and

as you like splatted on the pavement.

That's the only time I can think of when people scream.

Listen, I watch the monkey.

You have a new reputation, and now it's not.

You watch art house films, is that you watch so much violent stuff that it has turned you into a real nasty little grin.

Turned me on, is what you're saying.

Whoa, she's the only way I can feel alive.

Whoa, can we talk about the video games now?

I'd love to.

Thank you.

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

My name is Griffin Macro.

I know the best game of the week.

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I am awake and ready for this episode.

My name is Ross Fresh.

I know the best game of the week.

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

This, well, not the latest.

Now, people, this is the best.

Yeah, good point.

Good point.

You probably came here thinking, I can't wait to hear my boys get in here and discuss The Legend of Zelda, The Hero's Blade, or Metroid 9.

Sanesis gets it.

I can't believe how much Kirby gets it.

Kirby ate so much.

Kirby X Kirby.

Wait, did you say Kirby ate so much?

Because I'm into it.

If it's a new bloodboy.

You want to hear us talk about that?

You want to hear us talk about Mario Paint 2?

I'm just going to start jazzing a little.

I'm going to start jazzing.

What are we not talking about today?

I'm just going to start jazzing in in case I get one of these right.

And then people will be like, oh, shit.

Because we're recording this before

the Nintendo Director.

They talk about all the Switch 2 stuff.

Dobby Dobby Man.

So if you are playing a Switch 2 now, like if they're like, and everyone in your mailbox, they're out there.

Kind of Fega Saturn style.

They're like, look under your seat.

You're like, oh shit, how'd you get my house?

What are we doing instead, boys?

Instead, we're going to do a bit of a grab bag, a bit of a,

we recorded this before the events.

It's not because we don't.

It's not some sort of weird protest.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, we're on tour.

And so we had to record early.

But we'll talk about the Switch 2 eventually, probably when it's out, right?

And next week as well.

And next week, yeah, probably.

Yeah.

But today we're doing a potpourri, a grab bag.

I'm not going to ask Chris Playette what that means because it's insulting.

We've talked enough.

But after the break, we'll talk about an assortment of games we've been enjoying.

And so much more right after this.

Okay, I'm looking at the top of this list and I see the series series of words Nubby's Number Factory.

Yeah.

I have a lot of questions, but I feel like I should get an explanation first.

Stepping up to the plate here.

Yeah.

Nubby's Number Factory.

In the grand tradition of

a Pachinko sort of rogue, roguelite.

Roguelike.

Yeah, sure.

A pachinko roguelike.

With elements of Balatro and Ballionaire and other games with ball in it.

Here comes Nubby's Number Factory.

It looks like a vaporwave calculator and it's my obsession.

I stayed up too late last night, partially because of a tummy ache and partially because of Nubby's Number Factory.

We were actually

turned onto this game by

a few members of our staff

who spotted it.

And it is really scratching that itch for me uh of of a of a bellatro of a go do this simple thing over and over again while collecting synergistic items to make crazy shit happen and get very good scores the difference here is balatro is made by a caring genius that wants to create an intricate series of puzzles for you to unpack and enjoy and nubby's number factory seems to be made by an insane dirt bag that knows that sees you for exactly the the numbers pervert that you are uh it's by mogdog blog Productions.

He's the name of the developer of this one.

So, brass tacks,

you have a board with a bunch of little pegs on it, and the pegs have numbers, and you shoot Nubby.

He's a little bouncy ball from the top of the screen.

You aim him, shoot him, peggle style.

He bounces off the pegs, earning points for the numbers that he pops.

Each time you hit a peg, it gets cut in half.

And then

if you beat the score that is required of you that round, then you get more pegs that combine and make even higher numbers.

You can also really fuck up that score and make it re-rack those pegs like six or seven times before you move on to the next round.

All of a sudden, you're way ahead of the curve.

You've got numbers so high that you couldn't even believe it.

Every few rounds, you go to a shop and you'll be able to buy stuff.

This is where the game really goes bananas.

You have an inventory of like seven items that you can have equipped at any given time.

And the things are all very tactile.

They're all very physical.

And they come in sort of like different

strategic kind of columns.

You can find items that are like every time you hit the wall, you double the lowest peg on the board, or you double the highest peg on the board.

Or sometimes it'll be things that actually help you hit more pegs.

So like this one will shoot lasers out of Nubby and it will get you the score for the things without popping the pegs.

So you can keep those high numbers on the board a little bit longer.

But there's dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of these items.

and there's little passive upgrades that you get each run.

Um, and

I don't know, gang, it's it's one of those games where everybody was talking about it.

I was, I saw uh, Northern Lion playing it a bunch, I was like, I'll check, I'll check this out.

And then I played it once and didn't get it, and I played it a second time and didn't get it, and I played it a third time, and I was up until one in the morning playing Nubby's number factory.

Is that because you weren't putting like runs together, or just the gameplay wasn't quite it?

Takes, um, yeah, I mean, it is a

weird, um

it's a weird thing to strategize right like when you start playing this game you are not going to know how to succeed um all of the usual kind of like you know um

forebrain shit that you would probably like factor in while like deciding what items to buy or what synergies to go for uh will end up actually screwing you over.

It's a lot more about like, you know, making sure that

your numbers are high, that your board is stocked, and that you are

able to really maximize what it is that the board gives you instead of just going for, like, oh, well, this one shoots a sword out and it hits all the pegs around it.

That's fine, but if those pegs are worth eight points, then it's not going to do you a whole lot of good.

Um, talking about numbies number factory is uh boring

because it's uh because it's a game about shooting bubbles at numbers to make them get higher.

But does it does it have the like game feel that Peggle does, where it like actually feels good to watch the ball bounce around?

It does feel good to watch the ball bounce around.

It feels good when you can really trap it.

A lot of the items activate at set intervals.

So this item is really strong, but you have to stay on the board for three seconds.

It activates every three seconds.

So now all of a sudden you don't want a bunch of items that pop a bunch of pegs.

You want your

nubby to just kind of keep bouncing around

helplessly as you kind of like accrue these like other bonuses for these like time-gated items.

So like, yeah, I mean, it's it's fucking satisfying.

Watching, there's a little meter that fills up as you hit the goal for the round, and then watching it kind of lap and go like times nine, times 10, times 11 as you like have these perfect, perfect synergistic shots.

It really is a tremendous dopamine hit.

And I don't know, I'm pretty self-aware of that,

but it is still very enjoyable all the same.

There's a certain aesthetic, I don't know if I would call it like elementary school library aesthetic.

Yeah.

That when I see it in a modern game, I expect there to be a secret game hidden underneath it at this point.

Yeah, it looks like snood.

Snood?

It does look like snood, but I'm more glad to be like fucking imagine a game called snood.

You guys, you down with that?

Juice, you're muted.

I don't know if you were trying to rap about snood.

It looks like snood.

I mean, that's my incredible contribution that I was trying to say is that it does indeed look like snood.

It was basically a confirmation of snoodiness.

It's, I mean, yeah, I love it.

I think this shit rules.

I can't get.

Who's the guy?

Huh?

I'm looking at screenshots.

Who's the guy on the left?

I think his name is Todd.

Okay, he's not nubby.

Is it Todd?

Tony.

Maybe it's Tony.

No, there's a Tony, and I think there's a Todd.

Anyway, your best friend is fucking last.

It could be.

No, no.

You work at the number factory.

With the ball.

You were kind kind of implying that the ball is nubby.

The ball is nubby, yeah.

Okay, so that's to be respected because honestly, that's like a CEO getting down in the trenches and like working with undercover.

Yeah, I mean, his name's right on the 10.

One fun thing

is that I can't get it to work on the Raw Galaxy fucking power.

The horsepower of this thing is not capable of handling Nubby's number factory, mostly because it's, you know, mouse and keyboard controls.

So have I have to scratch this fucking itch while I am seated at my desk doing my work which is probably honestly for the best if I had Nubby with me anywhere I mean I lost months of my life to Bellatro so I'm not looking to do that again

Mog Dog vlog productions okay I'm gonna I'm gonna follow this developer so I can see what comes up after Nubby's number it's like five bucks also oh yeah and they've already

got a like a handful of times yeah I mean you don't need a demo.

I'll say this.

You don't need a, I'll say this.

If you download the demo for Nubby's Number Factory before buying it for $5,

you're wasting your time.

Look at it.

Look at a video of anyone playing it.

No, no, no.

Just a fucking gut check around the horn looking at Nubby's Number Factory.

Yes or no?

Yes.

And I'll regret it.

Yes, and we'll feel guilty.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, like, yeah,

I appreciate that there's a demo out there.

It's Nubby's Number Factory.

You should know how you feel about Nubby's Number Factory.

I bought it sight unseen just based on the words Nubby's Number Factory.

I mean, branding-wise, they fucking crushed it.

Yeah, they did.

What else have you guys been playing?

Who's talking sulfur?

I'm talking sulfur.

I'm curious about this game.

I feel like I've seen it kind of lingering around, and I don't really know why I haven't picked it up because it seems my shit.

Can you explain top-level what it is?

Sure, top-level is a FPS

uh extraction

shooter RPG.

Uh, basically, you are going through

randomly generated environments with various weapons and throwables and pickups and armor and shit like that, and getting as far as you can and bringing some of that stuff back and upgrading it and improving your runs with meta-persistent abilities and things like that.

I think this all sounds very familiar.

What appeals to me about Sulfur is like the nitty-gritty, you know, kind of fits with stuff we've certainly played before.

Visually speaking, it looks like fantastic.

It looks very much like a adventure time brought to life.

So you have that paired with like these little goblins like showing up around the corner and they're charging at you.

And you've got like a cartoon gun that you're trying to like desperately reload and you're low on ammo and you have all those moments, those like tense moments that you have in a in a roguelike shooter.

But because of the like playful aesthetic, it makes it much more

approachable.

I think why you've been hearing about it, Plan is just because they did a bunch of Steam NextFest demos and they've been in early access for about three or four months, I want to say.

And they've been doing updates in early access as well.

So there's been some churn.

It is not out of early access.

I think it's pretty smooth for early access, but obviously there's still room to grow.

I was trying to remember why I didn't play this and I found the screenshot that scared me away.

Tell me what I'm looking at here.

I I just dropped it in the Slack.

Whoa.

I love you, baby.

What are you talking about?

That's my shit rate.

Man, man, I see a skin.

Yeah, pizza.

This looks and it's yeah, man.

Good game.

Deus ex

grid-based inventory system all day.

Yeah, that's that's what Plant has shared with us.

I see like three shotguns, a bunch of rifles.

This looks fun.

What game is three?

I don't want to listen now.

What are you guys talking about?

Hey, sorry, I zoned out.

I saw five guns.

What is this?

I heard Plant talking.

I assumed it was French.

What are these?

All these guns.

Everything has inventory space.

As Griffin alluded to, it's like Deus Ex, where things take up grids in your inventory.

So a shotgun is going to take up a lot more space than a little pistol.

So you're making those tough calls of like, what am I bringing versus not?

And then back at home, you have like a kind of a...

home base inventory that you can stock up with random shit.

So do I have to spend a lot of time in this or do I spend most of my time shooting and like causing chaos?

I mean, that's up to you.

Do you want to min-max your runs to the great success that you might see in doing that?

Or would you rather just like kind of fuck around?

You can do both.

Okay.

That's good.

I want to.

Yeah.

You might not find

as successful runs there.

I kind of like the satisfaction of like building a run out of like all this stuff, as you know, uh, but it is not for everyone.

It's not a boomer shooter.

Like it, you shouldn't look at it like that.

It is more like a tactical

boomer shooter.

Are you for real?

Yeah, I don't know what that means.

Justin and I don't work at Polygon anymore.

So we're not going to do that.

But you're the target audience.

A boomer shooter is a shooter that is inspired by the era of like from doom to quake to unreal, but now we're getting modern versions of it.

So

I think like, what would be the classic bit?

It's more of a Gen X shooter if you if you really want to get it.

Yeah, I think it's more that you do booming.

It's not that you are a boomer.

But that is a bat

added up to another classic bit of video games industry slang that doesn't make a goddamn bit of sense put it on the pile with roguelights

i kind of agree quite honestly but i mean it's a doom like but it's not in this case it's not a doom like that's good if you said quakeish if we said it's quakeish then i know i'm with you hexanesque hex sex

hexagonal

yeah hexagonal i like that uh it's a cool game i my one minor critique, and I hope they kind of evolve this over time, is it feels like the level design is like pretty simplistic, which doesn't allow like a lot of, like you're kind of like churning through, I wouldn't say corridors, but a little more linear than I would prefer.

I kind of want a little more room to explore and find random shit off the beaten path.

But it's cool.

I've been enjoying it.

Great.

I had a couple of little small things that I thought were kind of neat.

More, more public service announcement type things because I feel like this is another one that won't, these two don't require a lot of explanation.

You're probably going to know if you want to play these or not.

First is Spilled, which is a little independent game

that is just very recently released, 26th of March.

I think this was released.

So it's fairly recent.

It is a,

I guess you'd say a cozy game where you play

the captain of

a little

vessel that's cleaning up waste in a body of water.

So you cruise around these pools of water and you clean up oil spills and find trash with a big scoop.

And then you push the scoop and all the oil and the trash into a recycling station where you are paid for it and given, you guessed it, a bigger scoop.

And a bigger tank to store the oil and some speed upgrades and stuff.

And it's uh and there's like uh if you run across like oil on rocks you can spray the oil off there is no difficulty to this it is uh it reminds me of um a little bit of like a game about digging a hole this idea of just like a pleasant sort of bonsai tree that you can pluck away at and just uh

unwind if you're in the market for something like that then spilled by lente l-e-n-t-e is the developer there what would you call the the visual style here where i assume it was made in 3D, but it looks like it's pixels.

Gosh, you know what?

Plant, the nearest I can say is it kind of looks like

a more detailed

Lucas arts kind of like compute.

Like it's like a more

dialed in, but same aesthetic sense as like a day of the tentacle almost.

Like a scum game made in 3D.

Yeah, there's a bit of a scum game, I think, I think, vibe to it, a little bit, like Dirk Smallwood or something like that.

If you want to get real old school, but yeah, it's a very nice, relaxing experience if you're in the mood.

Uh, the other thing that came out uh this week is called the Chef's Shift,

and it is sorry.

I'm just very glad that you're bringing this because I have a million questions about this one and like literally, how does it work?

Sorry, I cut you off.

No, you didn't cut me off at all.

So, it's a it's like a uh

similar to like overcooked or other sorts of like um

you know keeping the different you got a customer that you're in the in the you're working a restaurant and you've got customers coming in you're also trying to hide the fact that you're a criminal which is story relevant but like not really gameplay relevant um but the way that you interact with the things in the kitchen with your customers with like yeah uh for example if you want to make an espresso you have to go to the especial machine and grind it and then you have to go to the brewing machine and brew the cup and then you serve it but from the moment the game begins, it's all keyboard.

You don't, if you try to use the mouse, it says use the keyboard.

Like, you don't touch the mouse again.

It's all keyboard.

So, all interactions, everything you're doing is through typing.

So, like, you're practicing your typing, you're trying to type as fast and accurately as possible.

And that is how you are like balancing and keeping everything going.

So, a word you chose to use there is practicing.

And that's my like big question around this game.

Is this a game that is a game first, or is it a teaches typing

practice typing game first?

I think this is very much more about like the

balancing the different things that you've got going on in the kitchen and like time management, definitely.

I think that the typing is like an added layer of interactivity where you're like

there's some extra, you know, some extra difficulty and it's a way for the game to balance difficulty and for you to feel like you're more involved in the cooking process and all these different different tasks.

Some of this.

It's more of a fun mechanic than, like, a, oh, we are doing this really as an exercise for you to learn typing.

It feels like a hook in a real sense.

But it does, it also feels like if you were good at typing,

it would be more pleasurable to play.

Like it would probably be a little easier to play.

It's not reinventing the wheel.

It's not particularly like

you probably have a pretty good idea what it is.

The art style is nice.

It reminds me of

it's a little bit like washed out pastoral, a little bit like professor layton i want to almost say

with the with the aesthetics it's like um it's very nice pleasant to look at uh calm kind of like diner dash by way of professor layton that's yeah that's wow that's such a good call yeah yeah yeah if professor layton started a diner dash game that was powered by typing it would be yeah it would be the chef's shift

man that's awesome i'm definitely gonna check that one out um cool uh hey y'all i finally played a game that i've been wanting to play for like, I don't know, two months now, it feels like.

Halo 3.

Got it.

Halo 3.

I played Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, which I will like bash out the backstory here.

We

did not get code for this when it came out, which is a little unusual.

Polygon specifically.

Polygon didn't, but then I don't think we did either, right?

Yeah, but we get ignored all the time.

You can't really tell much about a game from us getting passed over.

Anyway, there was a bunch of other games that came out, and that's not an excuse to not try something.

It's more that there was a ton of games.

So now I finally got a chance to play it, and y'all,

y'all are going to need to play it.

That's like the long story short of it.

I know.

It is.

I think you're going to dig it quite a bit.

It is...

Role-playing game set in 15th century Europe.

You are, you might change characters at some point.

I'm not sure.

But you are basically like

the right hand of who would be the hero in a traditional video game.

And you two are on your first kind of like quest of sorts.

Back in the day, you're going to deliver a message that might just stop war of some kind.

And along the way, things go very, very far south.

And the game is basically like...

you untangling that original sin.

So you go from being, you know, festooned in all this amazing armor and all these powers to having to kind of work your way back up in this society

so that you can find that original message, fight, you know, the evildoer who slayed your family members and deliver this and accomplish whatever it is you were about to accomplish in the first place.

All that is a backdrop to, hey, we want to drop you in a really dense, really active recreation of this world.

And that's the cool shit.

This is, as far as I can tell, the role-playing game for the people who play Elder Scrolls and are like, I wish I could spend more time working as a blacksmith.

And they're like, great.

We have that for you.

You want to go

study?

We have that for you.

You want to go out and just fight people and have like some really, really solid sword combat?

That's there too.

Like, we're not ignoring that type of person, but it is an all-around sort of RPG experience.

I want to ask a question that has helped me to

more quickly understand what a game is in this current landscape.

Is this a thing that you're going to play on a Steam Deck that you could do a controller or is this a mouse and keyboard experience?

It's a controller game.

I haven't tested it on Steam Deck yet.

I think it does run, actually.

I'm more interested in how one interacts with it.

I feel like you have two very different kinds of RPGs.

It is not the true old school RPG where you can only play it with mouse and keyboard.

It is, it's working just fine for me with a controller.

Like it's the first person.

It feels very cinematic.

It's a first person

action game.

The way that the sword combat works is it's effectively like you are leaning your sword left, right, up or down and adjusting against like the person across from you.

And the combat feels like really slick because

You have to be watching the blade of the person who's attacking you.

And if you get surrounded even by two people, which is like real life rules, if you get in a fight with two people, even if you are like really good at fighting, you're probably fucked.

Yeah, it's not good.

I think I can do it.

And that happens, I know you could.

That happens a lot in this game where people just get on your side or in your blind spot while you were watching a sword, and suddenly you're getting your head cut off.

It feels like a realistic environment.

The really nice thing about this game is there are all these systems, and yet the UI is extremely navigable, which I'll spare you like getting into it, but just to say

it kind of introduces things to you right when you need to know them.

And then it provides the explanation sometimes with like literal in-game books where necessary.

It is a game that

you have those games that are like a wave, like a big wave coming at you in the ocean, and you can choose to like, dive under it and just ignore it entirely, or you can try to like ride it and like just get on its wavelength.

And like, that is the way to play this, because there is so much that if I, if I fought it or I worried, like, well, what if I forget any of that?

It would immediately overwhelm me.

But if I just like accept, like, I'm not very good at this, the game will like lend me a hand whenever I clearly need it.

It's right there for me, which is to say, like, again, tutorials are always like right there when you need it.

Whenever you need supplies, they just happen to be around.

You're like constantly beaten up, especially at the beginning of the game.

But it really wants you to just accept that you, like, you again have been completely lowered in status in a society.

So it's okay that you suck and that you're like

failing a lot of like your dialogue prompts and getting the shit kicked out of you.

You just have to go from like a rest fresh dick type to more of a like a just a draft, a New York draft type.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Is it like semi in the way that like you have to eat and drink and shit?

And shit.

Yes, there, there, there is a fair amount of that stuff, but again, not not to the degree that I found it distracting from fun.

It never, the easy way of putting that is

a game then if you didn't distract

shit.

It never felt like work doing any of those things.

They're like...

We get a lot of fiber then because

I'm a psyllium husk man myself, and they just didn't have that in 15th century Europe, so that's a real problem.

That's actually all they had.

All the new bombs.

It's just all

about how you can eat.

It's really promising.

I would like you all to play it.

I'm trying not to go too much deep into it because there's like a lot of story.

And I don't really want to spoil that for people who want to play it.

But

I think you'll dig it.

I mean, I think most people here liked Witcher 3, right?

Loved it.

Yeah.

I mean, do you think the writing is on par as the Witcher for 3 writing?

I don't know.

The cool trick that the writing does, it's also just way more realistic than Witcher 3.

It's not about Fantasy Beast.

But a cool trick that the writing does is I feel like the choices I'm making are having a tremendous impact on the story.

And I don't actually know if they are.

They probably aren't.

But I think that is...

The trick of good writing is that it creates a sense that you are.

It doesn't really matter if there are like five other directions that could go.

So long as I feel like I am telling my story, it's working.

And it does a great job of that.

Where when things go wrong in the like top-level story, I feel like it was because of decisions I made.

And that's, to me, a pretty great sign of writing.

And the dialogue's good, like moment to moment.

It knows when to like get out of its own way.

Well, there's an assortment for you.

There's a bevy of different games you could enjoy.

After the break, we're going to kind of say it, take a moment to remember a friend, look at

his oncoming death, and consider his son's future.

We're after this.

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So, once again, we are obviously recording this before the big Nintendo Direct you all are wondering about, but we did record this after the first Nintendo Direct that happened

in late March that had a surprising number of kind of crazy announcements in it.

Yeah, I think crazy in sort of like every imaginable kind of like read on that word, every possible definition.

There's a lot of shit in there I don't think anyone was expecting.

Sure, yes.

No, I will grant you that.

Absolutely.

It is the, I mean, we were talking recently.

I don't remember if it was on show or not about sort of like the Swan Song kind of games for a console sort of life cycle.

Yeah, the last games that come out at right at the end of the cycle that kind of show off all the hardware's tricks.

And this feels like the Nintendo Direct where they kind of show what that is going to entail.

And

there, I, yeah, man, there's a lot of stuff.

A lot of it is known quantity, like Pokemon Legends, uh, ZA and Metroid Prime 4 beyond, which I guess we haven't seen like actual gameplay footage of until now, right?

Yes.

This is the first kind of debut of that.

Yeah, I turned it off.

Oh, really?

Yeah, I was like, I don't want to watch this.

I'm going to play this game.

So I turned that off, but I did know it was in there.

Okay.

Well, I mean,

earmuffs, I guess, Russ.

No, earmuffs is fine.

I guess Samus has psychic abilities in this one.

There's like psychic powers that you get.

That looks fun.

And then there's a new Rhythm Heaven.

And then there's a new Tomodachi life.

Wait, wait, wait.

I want to hear about Rhythm Heaven because that game had only one installment, right?

Yeah.

Rhythm Heaven?

No.

Have there been multiples before this one?

I'm pretty sure.

You're going to make me go.

Is that the one where the little guys run across the screen and they go ba-ba-ba and you hit the button in time with their bars?

That's exactly right, Russ.

You got it in one.

Crosses Rhythm Heaven groove.

It's a new Rhythm Heaven game.

Not a remake or re-release or anything.

It's coming out on Switch in 2026.

They showed it, and it's Rhythm Heaven.

It's basically about as straightforward a rhythm game as you can possibly imagine.

If only someone did an act out to prove exactly what kind of game it was.

You just did, and you crushed it.

You did so good.

Thank you.

Tomodachi Life, I think

we should get into Tomodachi Life, which is

I never played the original, and I don't fully.

I guess it's The Sims made by Nintendo.

Is that a fair sense of that?

That is a wild.

I think it is The Sims only in

the sense that you have a bunch of little guys.

And then in any other sense, it's not really that.

It is more akin to...

Meetopia,

I believe was the name of that RPG that came out where you had all the Miis.

And in the original Tomodachi Life, you used your Miis and the Miis that I think you could download over the internet, and they would live on a little island together and you could make them date and get married.

And then they would go and they would sing karaoke and you could change the words that they sang when they did karaoke.

And it was just an infinite sort of like comedy.

in shit.

It's a soap opera.

Really, really good shit.

Yes, that's a very good thing.

It's about causing drama between you and all your friends who are represented as me's in this world and then also downloading like lots of famous models of characters so it's like you

and batman and prince okay this all sounds like the sims

it's like it's more it's a more it's like a gamier version of it like it's it's less sim and more about like the human interaction and the stories and the narrative right where like

You're thinking a lot more about like bathroom breaks and hydration, where this is more about like your interests.

It's more like think more

reality show kind of

caring for an ant farm, more

drama, more watching all the chaos sort of unfold like a Rube Goldberg machine kind of thing.

Yes, the hilarious shit about this is it is the final announcement.

It looks at first a little bit like Animal Crossing, which is a great way of getting people excited and then throwing them off.

And then

I was not fooled for it.

Of course not.

I do not think it looks like they announced Tomodachi Life.

You're like, wow, great.

I mean, this must come out tomorrow.

It's that type of game, right?

Like 2026.

We needed to let you know early.

We know that the hype is strong on this one.

So we got Patapon 1 and 2 are getting a re-release.

That's

great.

I'm here for that.

The new Hotshots golf game.

Absolutely.

Okay, I want to.

This was it.

Yeah, Russ, go off chain.

Go off chain.

You're ready, dog.

Let him loose.

Of all the announcements that happened during this press conference, this was the one that I was most excited for.

How obsessed am I with Hotshots Golf?

In addition to playing through

extremely.

I've played through both PSP installments.

I've played through the PS4, everybody's golf, whatever that was called.

I've played through all of them.

How obsessed am I?

I've been trying to count when was the last Clap Hands Golf game, which was the developer of Hotshots Golf.

to figure out like when the next cadence would happen, which it turns out was Fazio not actually making this game.

No, they are not involved in this game.

Sony hired, I don't remember the developer team, but they're working with Namco Bandai to make this game.

Clap Hands has completely been cut out of the franchise they built from scratch.

But I kind of hope that at this point there's enough Hotshots DNA in the world that people know what a good versus bad game in the Hotshots franchise is.

And maybe they can make a good one.

Okay, so this is a

Resident Evil is called Resident Evil in America.

It's called Biohazard in Japan, right?

And eventually we got to

Biohazard, Resident Evil, and Resident Evil, Biohazard, where they, like, the subtitle was the thing.

Yes, they were trying to unify the branding, and that's, I think, what they're doing here, because it's everybody's golf in Japan and Hotshots Golf in the West.

I did not appreciate that it had been everybody's golf this entire time.

Yeah.

This is wild.

So, so Clap Hands is separate from this.

Yeah, Clap Hands is an independent developer.

They've basically made every Hotshots game since

2, because the first game was made by the Intelligent Systems made the first Hotshots Golf game, incredibly.

So they've been making all of them since then, and they've gotten very good at it.

And then they went and made, what is it?

Fucking...

Easy come, Easy Golf was

the iOS version.

It was also on Switch.

So that was their spin-off, I guess, because they don't own the rights to hotshots.

So now Sony's doing their own thing.

This is the first hotshots golf to be multi-platform.

So it's coming to Switch, it's coming to PS5, and it's also coming to Steam,

which is also very exciting because there really aren't any great arcade-y golf games on Steam.

I've really looked.

Wow.

How do you feel about it being made by people who haven't made these games before?

I am cautiously optimistic.

I think there's enough,

I think there's enough on paper to know what a good Hot Shots golf game is that someone could kind of follow it if they were a capable developer.

But who knows?

It's it's kind of hard to say.

It is funny, though, because like Claphands was working off of someone else's work too.

Clap Hands came in after Hotshots 1, made by Intelligent Systems, which went on to make Mario Golf and all that stuff.

So sorry for the rant on this franchise, but there just aren't very many of these style games out there.

So whenever one of them comes along, along, I get very excited.

It's this attention to detail that people listen to the show for.

I guess so.

I'm sorry.

I'm also thrilled.

I love this series and I'm chomping at the bit for the new shit.

Witchbrook, got a trailer.

That looks great.

A little life sim.

I want to talk about, I think it's very interesting, the virtual game card.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Help me understand this.

So the way that they are making it sound is the same way that you can take a game a physical game cartridge out of your switch put it in somebody else's switch and just play it uh they are going to make it possible to do that with a digital title where you can eject it from one switch and then and then put it on another switch

regardless of who that second switch kind of belongs to um

And so it allows you to transfer over digital games.

I'm assuming it is like a license transfer thing, right?

Like I imagine there's a lot of online connectivity.

I imagine there will probably be some gating in terms of how often you are able to do this.

Yeah, so I have some of that background.

You need a

internet connection when you do the connection to the new console.

So you're connecting to another console, you need an internet connection.

And when you do that share, you need an internet connection.

But the person that has it does not need an internet connection while they're playing that game, is my understanding.

Which is the change from right now, which is like the change from right now.

Right now, you need the connection.

So you could have like, you know, if your kid is in the back seat playing Switch, they don't necessarily need an internet connection while they're playing it, but it does automatically revert the game back to you after two weeks.

Okay.

So you can reloan it, but that's sort of how they suspend it.

Oh, I also limit that part.

Yeah, they also limit the, you can only do one game at a time.

So your kid is like, oh, I want to play Zelda.

Here's Zelda for two weeks.

You can play it whenever you want to.

I can't play Zelda while that's happening.

So it's on your thing.

We can't play at the same time.

So you can't permanently sell a game, a digital copy of a game.

Correct.

Yeah.

There's nothing, nothing that would remove your ownership of the game permanently.

Okay.

Okay.

It's very bizarre.

It's also bizarre when you compare it to

like Steam, for example, which has the Steam family system, which is like way more generous.

And it's not as good.

like, can you ask for it back from them?

Physical force.

No, but like if you loan it to, if I loan a game to Griffin and I'm like, actually, I want to play it.

Yeah, I think there must be a way to revert it.

That would be crazy if it was just locked on his system for two weeks.

The whole thing just feels like.

I don't know.

It's definitely more in line with the way like buying and playing video games is going, but it feels like typical Nintendo like

glacial shift that doesn't really seem to address what, like, the need would be.

Um, I mean, it addresses this, which is a family ownership of a Switch.

You've got a, you know, in this case, what's going to be a Switch 2, let's say, and Griffin has the best and brightest, and then he gives the shitty Switch to his child, and he can give the games that he already owns to his child on that shitty Switch.

I think the difference is, though, like when I do that with my kids, and I'm like, here's this shitty iPad for you to mess around with, all the games, all the content is like there.

It's still just as usable.

And like, it's hard.

It's actually hard to get my kids into like other games because all these like hoops you got to jump through.

Whereas with an iPad, it's like, here, you don't have Roblox on there.

Well, here, I can log into Roblox in 30 seconds, and now I'm on this device too, because it's so much less about the devices you're using it on.

Okay, I think I've found one complication here.

If you have two Nintendo Switch and they are both linked to the same Nintendo account, then you can switch it permanently, not the two-week thing.

So like exactly what you were saying, Fresh, like Kirfin has a Nintendo Switch that's, you know, Daddy Switch, and then he has baby Switch, and he wants to make it so that the games belong to Baby Switch, he can switch those over.

This is an insane thing to say.

I don't even know what I'm doing here.

That will be permanent.

But you could do that previously.

Like if you logged into

the same account, you could download any games you own.

Yes, but

you would need to sign on online.

You could have one default Switch.

Right.

Oh, and now you can have more than one default Switch.

We have to have a free part of our podcast because Nintendo doesn't have to be aware of that.

We are being punished.

That's not fair.

We are.

It's not fair that we have to be boring because this doesn't make sense.

Oh, can we talk about Nintendo today?

Let's talk about a cool thing.

I mean, yeah, sounds good.

I mean, that's holy.

I'd rather talk about Nintendo in 10 years when they figure out out internet, but sure, we can help you.

Oh,

okay.

Nintendo Today.

Have you all downloaded it?

The app, Nintendo Today?

Find my Switch first.

They got to come out with an app.

They would come out with a Steam app to help you find your Switch.

You guys are my Nintendo Today, so I don't need it.

I just like that there.

I think it's a great idea for a company like Nintendo to make an app where they say, you know what?

You want something to click on and to scroll, but you don't want it to ruin your life and you want it to only last for like two minutes a day.

And they made a nap that's just that you open it and they're like hey you know what here's a cute pokemon feeling pretty good here's a little here's a little here's a little bit of news here's a little trailer for the c button on the nintendo switch 2 you you have you little i did hear about the fact that they are moving forward with the legends of zelda movie and that did ruin my day so

i don't know how you guys feel about that'll never happen um i don't know i i like i like

this this era of nintendo i like the console transition because we get the like dump of truly some of the weirder stranger.

I can't believe that they decided to put money behind this.

I did not think Tomodachi Life would be returning anytime soon.

I kind of had given up on Rhythm Heaven too.

It feels like a clearing of the decks.

I mean, it's not.

I don't think it's...

I think it's different than that because you look at like a lot of these games are not coming out until after supposedly when the Switch 2 is coming out.

So I think their intention is this is kind of like the next year of both the Switch and Switch 2.

These are just games that will also work on the original Switch.

I just feel like it's frustrating to me because I, I,

these ecosystems are getting easier to navigate everywhere else.

And the idea that I'm going to have to not only like

I mean, I don't, that doesn't sound good to me because it's hard enough for me to keep track of my Switch as it is.

I'm certainly not going to keep track of my Switch and my Switch 2.

Like, it feels feels like

so out of step with the way things are going.

If they want to keep both these platforms going,

I mean, I'm glad they're reducing some of the walls, but it just feels like

I don't know.

It feels out of step, but maybe Nintendo gets to do that because they're Nintendo.

I don't know.

It's also insane that we're having this conversation without knowing what's going to happen in this Switch 2.

Sure, yeah.

For all we know, they could announce in there like all kinds of other wild,

you know anachronistic shit but i think the question is going to be to what extent do i need to keep my switch around if i have a switch too that is that to me is like i think the

not like why would you like none of these games are going to be exclusive to the original switch

like what about no sleep for uh no sleep for koname date from ai the somnium files do you think that that comes out in july do you think that'll be switch one only it's gonna be both

yeah you sure cool why do you think you need your switch apart from like having a kid play it why do you think you need do all my like are all my so all my switch games will will carry over the switch too more or less yeah that's my answer so i might just go ahead and wait for the nintendo direct since you are literally pulling it out of your ass as i'm watching in front of you i'm in camera i i am pulling it out of my ass but they have been pretty clear about like backwards compatibility being like a big deal

Yeah, but I don't even know what backwards compatibility means in terms of just the Switch, right?

Because there's games that don't work because you bought this mini Switch, right?

And so the ones that require the free, uh, the free-floating controls,

the free-floating Joy-Cons, like, don't, don't work, right?

So there's like already a fragmentation there.

And I would just like to know if I buy this new thing, can the old ones go away or will I need to like keep them around to to play some of those like specific experiences?

Yeah, I don't know.

I guess, I guess the listeners know, but we don't.

Isn't that frustrating?

Must be nice.

Must be nice.

Yeah.

Um, Should we do some honorable mentions?

Yeah.

I want to, this is a big one.

Henry got really into Astrobot.

He saw some videos.

I don't know how these things happen.

Some kids at school told him about it, or he saw a video online and he saw about Astrobot.

And he's like, I won't play Astrobot.

So I moved the PS5 out of daddy's office downstairs.

He played through fucking all of Astrobot and got all the bots and all the puzzle pieces 100% at that thing.

He did that really hard platforming sequence at the end.

He definitely needed some help from his old man for some of the

harder challenges.

I did do that, whatever it was called, the master challenge that you unlocked by doing.

It was like we turned screens off at a certain time at night so we can try and wear the boys out before bedtime.

And it was like a few minutes before that.

And he was like all stressed out.

He was like, could you do it, please?

And I was like, man, this level is super hard.

I don't know.

And I took it down.

That shit feels so good.

Yeah.

That's that good dad shit.

But yeah, just a delightful game to play with other people.

I did not necessarily click with it when I played it myself, but

playing it with my, playing it with Henry.

And,

you know, Rachel was enjoying watching it.

Gus was really, really into watching it.

He's still a little too young to play it.

But I just had a delightful time cruising through that whole game, seeing all the stuff it has to offer.

So yeah, that's not anything new, but that's where I'm at.

I've been continuing to play Noita, which I know I've bored you guys a few times about,

but I do want to do a shout out.

Okay, so I had a clean run of Noita.

I beat like a run without mods or anything, and it was very satisfying.

I was like, yeah, that was great.

And then I looked online and realized that there's so much hidden shit in that game that you could spend like nine hours of a run.

just going through and like finding everything,

but you're always at the, there's always the potential potential of you getting one shot by fucking lava coming out from the sky or whatever it is.

So I installed a mod called the meta leveling mod,

which basically allows you to level up in the game, pick perks.

If you level up like a bunch of time, like 10 times in a single run, you get a meta point that allows you to permanently increase a stat.

I see Justin reacting.

This is his shit.

No, it's just really, Russ, it's like really beautiful to watch you and this community try to make this game fun against all odds.

You guys are killing yourselves to try to enjoy this fucking thing.

And honestly, Russ, your determination to derive pleasure from this program when by all external signs, it seems hard to terminate to keep you from doing so in despite a bevy of electronic entertainment options is a daily inspiration to me.

Almost as inspiring as your daily quest to try to rope me in to your fucking Emperor's new fun situation that you have embroiled yourself in.

Not since Biden Isaac have you worked so hard to extract the sap of joy from a stone.

I appreciate that.

It's a good thing.

Please send the links off.

We'll check it out though.

The meta-leveling sounds good.

That sounds good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We'll have the link for the mod in the newsletter there.

Yeah, it's links to like better help and some other resources if you just need someone to talk to or whatever your particular cry for help is.

Man,

I can't talk about blueprints yet.

Next week, baby.

Next week.

We're almost there.

Yeah.

My honorable mention is next week's episode.

So of Bestie's, our first ever four-hour long.

No, we're going to talk about a lot.

There's so many great games.

There's so much fun.

Next week is going to be

also the Switch 2 because I'm going.

I'm going to be there and I'm going to play it.

Hands on.

So

we'll see.

We'll see see what I think.

Perfect one.

Perfect one.

And then I'm going to not participate in the Blueprints conversation because I can't personally play that game right now.

Yeah.

Hopefully they'll figure that out, Russ.

We'll see.

We'll see.

But that will be next week.

Anybody, anything else we need to make the listeners aware of?

Planning.

Yeah, I want to thank some new members to the Patreon.

We have John, we have Amos, we have Jenna, and we have Callie.

Thank you for being members of the Patreon over at patreon.com/slash the besties.

We love you.

You're great.

Uh, we also have a bunch of merch in the merch store.

If you want to check that out, uh, just like besties t-shirts, probably google that that might show up when you search it.

Okay, and uh, it'll also be in the newsletter.

And I think that's the business.

Hey, Fresh, I dropped a dropped a game in the Slack that I think you can play for next week.

I think you'll enjoy it.

Really?

Yeah, I think

it's called Flight Catastrophe.

It gives you a unique opportunity to become a crisis management specialist aboard the passenger plane.

Wow, that is where they're like just designed.

That's all the training was leading up to that moment.

Thank you so much for listening to our podcast.

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

Besties