Wanderstop Performs an Autopsy on the Cozy Game Genre

I got a um

a rogue ally X

because I'm gonna be traveling.

It's a cuz it's it's because your brother got one and you were you felt a little exactly not even a question.

I won't even I'm 44 years old.

I'm done pretending.

Yeah, yeah, 100.

He had one.

I didn't even know what it was, didn't even know if I wanted it, just sounded fun.

He had it.

I can't have one on tour and then Justin not sees it and it's like he doesn't.

Because then he'll have to find a best buy that.

This is easy.

Like, yeah, yeah, Russ, yeah.

But then I am going to be traveling to ireland and

i got a hard i got a case for it obviously because i want to be safe and then i was like this is going to be perfect and then i got the case uh oh and i don't actually think oh no that i am actually going to be

I don't think I'm going to be having a judge case.

Yeah, Justin's currently for our audio listeners, which is everyone, Justin is currently holding up a case, the dimensions of which I would say about six six inches deep, maybe eight inches wide, and then about a foot and a half long.

And it does have a big strap around it that says Republic of Gamers in enormous, unignorable letters.

So that's me from the Republic of Gamers.

This is my briefcase.

We've come with an offer.

to you.

It does look like something that

they would use in pulp fiction to

hide the true motivations of the deuteraggedness so what i'm saying is i'm just gonna let it bounce around with the cheeto dust and the cookie crumbs and the chapstick you know that's what i'm saying i'd rather i'd rather grind chapstick into the fence than walk around with a a giant uh chastity pouch well you also mentioned you were going to ireland and that was my immediate thought was like

I don't know.

The Republic of Gamers and the Republic of Ireland?

You're a little worried.

Not I.

Let's worry, right?

You're a little worried.

You don't know enough about global geopolitical conflicts.

I had to go.

It seems that the Republicans in Ireland don't care for England very much.

Oh, okay.

This is good.

This is a rich vein that we should explore.

No further.

Yeah, and I'm going to leave.

That was my first thought when you showed it.

I was like, oh.

Oh, Griffin said he's going to leave and none of us are going to talk anymore.

Okay, Russ?

Oh, oh.

Goodbye, Griffin.

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

My name is Griffin McElroy.

I know the best game of the week.

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know a fine cup of tea.

My name is Ross Rosha.

I know the best game of the week.

Oh man, you know what I should have said?

Here's the tea.

This game is really fun and nice.

Yeah.

Like that would have been good.

We're going to be talking about Wanderstop this week.

And Chris Plant,

what is Wanderstop?

Wanderstop presents itself as a cozy game where you manage a farm effectively, growing different plants and shrubs, keeping things clean, and ultimately making nice cups of teas for people who come through the area.

But you see, it is much more than that game, and we'll explain why and how after the break.

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First things first, we got all the cheat codes for Wonderstock.

If you want to know if you're- Let's go go tea flavors first, if you're not grinding green seeds from the first frames of this game, then you're already a noob.

The rusted key can be cleaned off in the teapot to open the shed with the bazooka in it.

If you kill Boro, you can take his money and buy a second tea station.

Oh, man.

Can I try to set this one up?

Sure.

Okay.

This is very very much, I would say, a narrative forward game in that there's not a lot of emphasis placed on mechanics, and you very, very much need to get on its level, I think, pretty quickly.

I feel like this is going to be a pretty divisive game because of,

for that very reason.

I also see where it kind of fits in in the pantheon of, you know, a Stanley Parable

or Beginner's Guide, the rest of sort of Davey Redden's.

Am I saying his name right?

I'm never quite sure.

I've only ever, I've met him and

I know.

I'm going to say, hey, hit me with that last name.

Hey, hit me with that last name pronunciation, please.

It is a game about

burnout,

primarily.

It's about some other stuff too, but

it features a young woman who has been a fighter her whole life, has fought her way up the sort of gladiatorial ranks, and has put every ounce of her time and energy and herself into mastering the blade and becoming the world's greatest fighter to remain undefeated.

And that is a great way for her to live until she starts to lose a couple fights and it shakes her.

She doesn't know what to do.

She goes to look for this master in the woods to teach her what she's doing wrong and instead gets lost and trapped.

basically in Wonderstop, a tea shop in a clearing in the middle of the woods where she

quite literally cannot carry her sword anymore.

Yes.

The weight of it, for whatever reason, in her hands becomes unbearable and untenable.

And that is what kind of gets her stuck in this

weird clearing in the middle of nowhere.

So her mission is to chill.

Her objective is to rest and relax, right?

And so

the extent to which that informs the rest of the game is is really bold and completely comprehensive.

You manage a tea shop, you make cups of tea for people to their specifications, you can grow different plants to make different types of tea, but there's no

tea, there's no farming skill that you improve.

You don't unlock a watering can with bigger volume.

You don't get shears for cutting weeds that do it faster.

There is no mechanical progression to the game.

There's not even, just to be clear, there's not even days.

So there's not even a day.

If you feel like you're, whoa, I need to finish this cup of tea before the clock runs out for the day.

Nope.

Nope.

And the game will also frequently throw at you

sort of chapter breaks in the narrative, after which you're basically going to start over.

Right.

Not the story of the game, but like those plants you grew are gone and the place is dirty again.

Some of the people you chatted with are gone.

And you maybe probably didn't even get to the end of whatever your journey was with them.

Life just right.

And that's not because you fucked up.

That's just the game.

The game is you meet a person, you learn about them, you learn a little something about yourself, and then they go.

And you most of the time, you don't see those people again.

So, like.

As in real life, you do not solve the problems of everyone you meet.

You might have a small impact on them

along the way.

It's all part of a bigger picture and a bigger sort of story that this game tells about burnout, which is

an incredibly difficult, incredibly nuanced topic to cover in a piece of,

I mean, cover at all, narrative, non, non-fiction, whatever, right?

Like, it's a hard thing to say something new about.

It's a hard thing to address, like, well, you, you do have to work hard and be ambitious to get where you want to be in life.

How do you balance that with also not

making yourself miserable and having an incredibly detrimental impact on you?

It's hard to say something about that that is not incredibly trite or incredibly unhelpful.

But the way that this game goes all in

on that conversation and the way that it bucks conventions and expectations

for what

personally I demand from games, right?

Like I need to feel like I'm being productive in a game.

I like getting the stronger gun with the better stat.

Like I am such a sucker for that.

And I had to put all that shit aside to meet this game where it's at.

And I'm so glad I did because I cannot think of a game that has had a more like profound impact on me and the way I think about games and work and stuff than Wonderstum.

I think it is remarkable.

In a way, it's what's cool.

One of the coolest things to me about it is that it is very much continuing a conversation that was started with Stanley Parable, which like Stanley Parable was like

about the idea, I think, of

authorial intent and how that interacts with players and how like the maker of a game

like

and how they relate to the person playing it.

Right.

And in a lot of ways, the Stanley Parable wasn't a game as much as it was like a protracted criticism, right?

And I think that Waterstop is sort of, I think it's admirable in that it isn't just a commentary and it isn't just a thought starter and it isn't just a criticism.

It's like,

it has the strength to be a game, right?

It's, it's, because for me, what's really like the, the burnout angle of it is, is very interesting.

I think that that's obviously like a huge component of this.

What I thought was

challenging, I will say, about this game, and I honestly think like subversively kind of

critical is

when you remove all of those

motivating things,

you really start to wonder why you're playing the game.

Like it makes, it wants you to wonder that, right?

Like it's not even this idea like characters, right?

Like getting to the end of their story is a form of progression, right?

Decorating your house, where a lot of these cozy games, it's like, yeah, it doesn't have the, the typical like

motivating factors, right?

It's about relaxing and all this stuff, but still, like, the decoration is a type of progression, right?

It's like, it's, it's still a hoarding.

It's a, it's a, and it's an enacting a control in your environment, right?

And it's, I feel like this game, by removing those sorts of like motivational structures that games typically use, it really has to take you down to the base level of like,

why are you doing this?

What are you taking out of this?

And I, that's really like, I still don't know how I feel about it.

Like, it's like a lot of it is like,

I don't know, man, once you realize how much of game design is about just that little dopamine thing

pulling you along, right?

Like, I don't know.

I think it's cool that it is critical in a much more subtle way, I think, than Stanley Parable was.

Yes.

I think it is a game about stillness in being present to the degree that

every mechanism in the game went up against the question of, is it being still?

Is it being present?

Because I think you're right, Hoops.

Not just the make number go up, make plant, you know, potted plant get stronger, but everything.

You can tell that they asked, is this creating a sense of progress?

And if so, we need to pull away from it because that is not what we are going for.

We are going for the idea of you sitting and being with yourself.

I should talk a little bit about how the game works really quick.

Yeah, please.

Because so far we're making it sound like wicked fucking boring.

And I don't think it's boring.

You do do stuff in this game.

We should make it clear.

Yes.

So you are tasked with making tea.

And the way that you do that is by growing various plants of different colors and mixing and matching the, I guess, splicing the seeds to grow different plants.

so if depending on the shape that you grow them in in your yard you will grow a different type of fruit and then you will also go around the the garden and you will harvest tea leaves with a basket and you will take that into your house you will dry out the tea leaves i'm not doing any favors to make this sound more exciting no but i do want to touch on quite pleasurable to touch on something though and this is like it's just now occurring to me as we're talking about this you don't wait on stuff to grow right?

It's much more active than it sounds because,

interestingly, this game that is about stillness and it is about like patience and all that stuff, like you don't have to wait for shit to grow, man.

You jam that seed in there, you dump some water on that motherfucker, and he's a he'll grow that instant, right?

There's no way, like it's con it's active, you're not forced into passivity.

It is like there's just no reason to rush.

There's also no brewing period for your tea.

So

you get your your dried up tea leaves.

You get the different flavors that you want.

You have a recipe book that lets you know, one, how to plant the different type of fruits, and two, what are some of the flavors that you'll see in those fruits.

And then you align that knowledge with whatever conversation you're having with somebody.

So maybe somebody has an injured leg and they're like, I just want to not feel pain.

for like five minutes.

Can you give me anything that'll make the pain go away?

You look through your recipe book, you find a flavor that matches that, and then you make the tea, which is this giant contraption in the middle of a beautiful house.

It is a flubber-esque in its silliness.

Very whimsical, yeah.

Very whimsical.

And you make a giant thing of tea by like first warming or pouring the water into the spout.

It's like a Rube Goldberg machine, kind of, or like...

Kind of, yeah, and then warming it up.

And then tossing each individual ball of tea in, and then putting a cup underneath the spout, and then releasing the tea so it fills just perfectly in it.

Do you, if you do any of this like wrong, does it punish you?

Absolutely not.

The aesthetics of all this are sublime, by the way.

Like watching it.

You can taste it.

Like the, it's beautiful.

Every little thing is like, it's just gorgeous.

Like taking it in is such a pleasure.

I mean, you can, to be fair, you can fuck up a tea.

Like you can,

I mean, if you literally don't follow the recipe, what I mean is like, you can't pour in too much water into the tea thing.

You can't make it too hot or too cold.

Like, yeah, and a lot of the, like, typically with farming game, it's not a farming game in the sense that, like,

there's no homesteading that makes sense, right?

And so, like, you, it doesn't make sense for you.

My first impulse is like, I'm gonna go play in an orchard and I'm gonna have all the plants, right?

And they're gonna be min-max.

So, we're like, my reds are here, my greens are here.

But you get to a certain point and it erases everything.

Yeah, it's like, it's all gone.

It's like, don't do that.

There's no reason for you to do that.

So, when I, when I would get an assignment, right, or like somebody would want a certain tea,

it wasn't like, I'll just go to my blue section and grab the blue thing.

And like, what I would do is like, oh, they want something that tastes like ice cream.

What does that?

And I would get a book from upstairs and I'd flip through the book.

I'm like, oh, okay, that.

And what colors do I need?

Okay.

I'm going to go wander around until I find these seeds that I need.

There's no reason to go faster.

There's no reason to min-max it.

There's no reason to not enjoy it.

And I think what's

what is maybe the most revolutionary thing about this game is it seems to say like, if you don't enjoy this, you shouldn't be doing it.

I don't care.

Like, I'm not trying, you know what I mean?

Like, it's not trying to motivate you in any way other than like, if this brings you pleasure, please continue to do it.

But otherwise, like, don't.

It reminds me of, like, if someone were to come home from a long day of work and want to do, like, cross stitch or knitting.

That kind of, I mean, we're not talking about the narrative because that's like, I think, separate from this, but the actual gameplay beats feel like something that is entirely self-directed in ways almost more like like

maintaining a Zen garden or like a bomb like in the in the in the impermanence of it right like crafts where you would create things I think is where a lot of video games are like I feel like stardew is closer to a cross stitch right because it's like you've got a pattern you've got the things that you want yeah but there's advancement in stardew like there's there's performance there's lots of advancement yeah for sure no but i'm saying you are working towards something in stardew yeah you're not working towards something with this So I'm like contrasting that from cross-stitching.

You don't have like a thing at the, when you're done with this, you don't have a thing that you can show people and say like,

but you are working towards something in the same way with the Zen Garden, which is self-improvement.

Yes.

Like that you come away from this game.

I mean, I came away from this game feeling a lot better about things.

Like this game made me feel

better.

Yeah.

There are things in this game, and it made me feel a little bit, made me feel a little bit sad, but there are things in this game that I hear that I didn't realize I needed to hear.

Dude, and I heard it from this little video game man,

the same box that done made Pac-Man on my TV.

And this guy's making me feel things?

Come on.

I have been looking forward to talking about this game with you guys genuinely because so much of it felt targeted towards me as somebody who for his entire adult life has,

you know, worked from home on my own own schedule uh the level of you know success or whatever i've achieved is com is directly proportional to like the amount of toil that i i put into it like and i think that that is a really common sort of uh sentiment or trait for lots and lots and lots and lots of people these days and so i i genuinely think there is a message in this game

for most of the people I know that is not anything I've ever heard before about this topic that has been spoken about and lectured about and TED talked about at length for years and years and years and years and years.

And that's like, that's incredible.

To find a game or a piece of fiction or whatever that has something new to say about a topic that has been so thoroughly explored is in and of itself like a pretty massive achievement.

I did want to say, speaking of achievements, one of the things this game does that really drives this whole shit home is it has like 10 achievements.

You get them.

You'll get them.

If you finish the game, you'll get the 10 achievements.

And it gives them to you at seemingly random intervals.

You'll be like just walking around the garden, and it'll be like, you'll see the achievement thing pop up and it'll have some sort of obscure text.

So it's, it's always like, she never thought it would fall.

Like, it's like, it sounds like an achievement.

Like, you're right.

You've done something.

But then it's, but it's not like, oh, you solved this guy's quest.

Bloop.

Or like, oh, you've had this moment.

It literally looks like catharsis.

Yeah, I thought it was, I thought it was because we were playing on some beta branch, but you know, it's not like someone has this moment of catharsis, and then it's like, bloop, you helped the guy.

Is it because that was also

to I want to touch on there, is a mailbox, you get correspondence, and there's a series of novels that you are sent in the correspondence.

And Plants are a smiling.

To me, it's fucking infuriating because Davey Reardon is like, he's already, he's doing this this game that is not like on its surface, a gutbuster, right?

It's not hilarious.

It's humane and warm, but it's not like,

and then you get these letters, it's this fake detective story, these books of the fake detective story that is

fucking leaps and bounds funnier than any game that I've played for months and months and months.

And he just like tosses it in the mail.

You get letters in this game that have more quality writing in it than the entirety of split fiction.

I mean, like...

Not only are they hilarious, they then become self-criticism in the same way that the Stanley Parable is.

That is as good as any criticism of video games and the culture around video games that you're going to find.

I'll include this in besties.fan, but the entire first book of the Dirk Warhard series we published on Polygon.

So people can read that and also Davey talking about adding that stuff to the game.

But

it is so good and just gets better and better.

The ability, and I want to be clear, Davey is, you know,

a writer of this game, but it's Ivy Road is the studio.

And I think that's the magic that happened here, right?

Is that

voice and that vision and talent that Davey brings getting paired with a team that clearly knows game design so inside and out that they can subvert it while still making it just pleasurable enough to keep you going.

It's a hell of a lot of people.

And it's so risky, too.

Like if they don't land that one part of it, then the rest of the game is, I think, an infuriating

masturbatory exploration of self-care, which is like

a term that has almost lost all meaning in how wide-ranging it becomes and how, in conversations about that thing, you can ignore,

you know, going too far in that regard and how then that can become harmful, right?

It's such an insane balancing act

that I don't know.

But at the same time, playing Wonderstop, like really quickly, I felt myself trusting this game to like handle it.

Like after the first cycle or whatever, the first story, like once you kind of see like what this game is is going for and sort of all the different ways it is moving away from what I expect from games, I felt like, okay, I'm fucking, I am on board.

I am uncomfortable, but I'm on board.

Let's see what happens.

And it, it really, I think it rewards that.

I want to hear from Russ because I feel like you and I are cut from the same cloth in terms of like,

you know, preferring the the grind, enjoying progression and a sense of accomplishment in games that this moves away from.

And I'm curious if you have the same sort of experience.

So I haven't finished it yet.

I think I have seven hours in it,

six or seven hours.

I find the writing fantastic.

I find the visual design fantastic.

I think voice acting is really, really strong where it appears.

I really struggled with the themes of this game because

it feels like it's hyper target.

And this might not be wrong.

And obviously it landed with you guys more than me.

But to me, when I was playing it, it felt like it was targeted to me 10 years ago when I was like

building a, like starting, you know, in the middle of my career and even making some changes in my career.

And it was not great for my mental health, but I was kind of just pushing through, pushing through until it got to a point where I was like, oh, this is not right for me.

And being at a point now, specifically from like a having a kid standpoint, and again, I'm sure you guys can relate to this too.

There's messages in this that are like,

take a beat, chill, which is important.

I 100% agree, but it's very difficult to play a game without objectives or progression when I also have a list of 20 things that I need to be doing.

Yeah, sure.

100%.

And that was the like, like whenever I hear Boro being like, just like relax and put the leaves where you want.

I'm like, cool, but also my son needs to be picked up from daycare.

Well, I mean, I think that's interesting, though.

It's like

what we're hitting on, guys, and this is like actually really, really rare.

We are reacting to this game

in terms of what it is saying.

in four different ways, right?

It hit the four of us in like different ways, ways, right?

Like, Russ, you saw it, but it wasn't exactly the time you needed to hear it.

Griffin, you thought immediately, like, burnout, you heard burnout.

I was like much more interested in the like the ideas of like what it means for games and game design.

Like,

and I don't agree with a lot of the stuff that it is.

Like, if it was like, Justin, do you agree with all this as a message?

I think that there, I

don't know, man.

But as a, I think that it's it's hard because I think if you're a game that does have a message,

it, it almost has to be like universal because that's so rare, right?

Because we don't have this symphony of different thoughts and opinions being put out by video games.

Like, we don't have a different video game that's like, actually, buck up and you know what I mean?

Like a different philosophy.

It's so rare that a philosophy is put forth in a game that it almost feels like it has to be more universal than it is.

It has to be, right?

Like it doesn't have to be appealing to everyone for it to be successful, I guess.

I agree.

I also don't know if it even buys any singular message in its own game beyond the chill out.

It is,

for lack of a better word, therapy.

And the main character that you're working with, Boro, who is just this lovable giant tea maker most of what he tells you is, I don't know, what do you think?

How does that make you feel?

Oh, you didn't do a good job.

Well, what is like a good job anyway?

It is, if you've ever been in therapy, a lot like therapy.

And I,

you can see it even with your character and the way that you can respond to questions.

Uh, and you can, there's dialogue options in this game, and those dialogue options don't seem to inform the story so much as they are there to have you think of, well, there are a variety of ways I could respond to that, and none of them are bad.

So I think that is,

again, the tricky part, but I agree with you, Hoops.

What I love about this game is it's so nice to talk about a game and talk about the things it made you feel that it brought to you rather than just is game good?

Did it click all of the different things?

I will say, though, for people who want to play this game,

this, I would not want every game to be like this.

Oh, God.

You know, like this, it is challenging.

I'm sorry.

Keep making fun games, everybody.

Don't get it twisted.

It's nice to have a challenging game like this, and it's challenging in that.

Challenging?

Good, good.

It's the green and the blue, dude.

Get good at chilling the fuck out.

This game said some stuff about burnout, and I was like, yes, I understand.

If you didn't, skill issue.

Skip, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip.

Guys, you can blaze through the fucking dialogue in this game.

It does not matter.

It is not going to impact your score at the end.

So here's a question that I've started thinking about, right?

Like

we have to play new games for this show all the time.

I don't,

the question of whether or not I'm going to

finish this game is interesting to me because

that is a type of progression, right?

Like in a game that does seem to be about so much about like, I don't know, it's, you know, do it if you want to do it, but, or don't.

Yeah.

But it's not like there is still still a bit of have your cake and eat it too of like, well, we are moving towards something, right?

There's a story that's being told here.

I don't know if that is going to be enough to keep me like playing.

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, I don't know if I'm going to stick with it without that motivation.

I will say that feels a little, I don't know, contradictory.

I will say this.

I think.

Yeah, we've talked a little about game design.

I think it is worth calling out that I think from a beat-to-beat game feel standpoint, I don't think this game feels very good to play.

Like the physicalities of it, I thought felt just kind of clumsy, which is

part of the reason that I like

didn't.

Yeah, I mean,

that was part of the reason is like, okay, enjoy your quiet time and vibe out and like get to a place that makes you a healthier person.

Cool.

But there are elements in Stardew Valley, for example, just to like the noise of a seed plopping into your bag or whatever, just like little stuff that like that that make the whole experience more pleasurable.

That I feel like this game, given the fact that it is about the small things being pleasurable, doesn't quite nail.

And a lot of that is interface stuff and like switching through bags and, oh, my bag is full.

And oh, I got to drop this seed.

And oops, I planted this seed by accident.

There's just like a lot of.

weirdness to the interface that yeah they're trying to simplify so much with like getting it to like a single button type thing that you end up futzing with like if you're in an area where there's several things you want to interact with, that can feel kind of clumsy sometimes for sure.

To share my sort of perspective, I finished the game a long time ago.

I was so fascinated by this game that I

like kind of couldn't put it down.

I also started playing it while we were traveling, which I thought was a kind of an ideal because I was separated largely from my parental obligations, which I agree with you, Russ.

Like, I don't think this game is particularly, this game doesn't really dabble in those so much necessarily.

It's not even characteristic.

I'm not locking into parentals.

It's more locking, like dabbling in the idea that there are things and oftentimes a lot of things that cannot be left.

Cannot be.

Yeah,

I fully get that.

Yeah.

I think having this idea of like story as

motivation, right?

Like, well, I got to find out what happens, right?

So I have to keep playing through the story.

This game,

I'm not going to get into spoilers, but like, I don't even think that that is particularly emphasized by the end of it.

What I do think, and the reason that I do think that it is worth seeing through, is, I mean, one, from a personal level, there is a moment of

beauty and like catharsis in this game that truly

rocked me to my core at like an emotional, I needed to hear this a long time ago level that I I don't think I've ever seen in a game before.

But I also think that like, you know, it throws all these different characters in these different cycles and it doesn't explore all of them fully.

Sometimes people come and they go and that's, you know, that's life.

I do think this game has a thesis.

And I do think that that thesis is all pulled in by one of the

later moments that happens, one of the final moments that happens.

And so I do think it is worth seeing.

it through to that point, not so you can find out like what, you know, how the story turns out or what happens with this character, uh, because

there's not a ton of emphasis placed upon that.

But I, I do, I think this is a game about a message.

And I think that, you know, in talking about it, like that is the big thing that this game has to offer is like, it has something to say about a thing and it it does kind of tie it all together at the end in a way that I found like

really, really great.

It's really, really good.

I wasn't really necessarily as interested in like whether or not it sticks the landing as much as

like, isn't that just another motivator?

You know what I mean?

Like my curiosity about that, I feel like is another thing that is keeping me playing it.

Where in a game that is like interested in that, I think it's interesting that that is one sort of consideration that's

like.

Do you know that Alan Watts quote about

like psychedelics that when you get the message, hang up the phone?

Have you ever heard that before?

I feel like that can be a fine rule for a game like this.

if it, if you are having that conversation, if it's doing those things for you, it's okay if you don't finish it.

At the same time, I think it's great if you do.

Like the bigger thing that I think this game wants is this conversation to happen, right?

It wants you to stop and have the conversation.

If you finish it, that's great.

I can't imagine that the people who made this game would be crushed to hear you didn't finish it so long as you walked away from it thinking about your life a little differently.

I've been thinking a lot about like who I recommend this game to.

I don't know that that is like, I don't even know that that's a thing you can really do with this game.

But after finishing it and, you know, talking about it with you guys, like, I can't think of another game we've talked about on this show that we've talked about in this like specific way that is divorced from

all a lot of other shit that we talk about when we talk about games.

And I do think that it is like going to differ person to person on how much of a pass you're willing to give it on the fact that it doesn't feel amazing.

And there's not a ton of,

I mean, there's literal carrots in the game that you can grow.

And so like, and how challenging that is, right?

I think that there's people who are going to hit that and be like, that's not, I'm not.

I could see this game being very divisive, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

But I also, man,

it's so, I'm going to be thinking about this game for a long fucking time.

And to me, that is like a huge point of recommendation of like, if you like playing games that stick with you and based on what we've said, it doesn't sound like it's going to turn you off right away.

Like, I heartily recommend playing this game because it, it, it will, if you give it the chance to, and it doesn't, like, you know, immediately turn you off, like, I do think this is a game that is going to stick with you.

Um, or at least, I don't know, it, it, it certainly will for me.

Also, can I, we also, uh, I want to point out the music fucking

tremendous.

Huge, I just looked it up on Spotify.

It's C418 who made, uh, you know, most of the Minecraft music, And it's like 90 songs long.

It's a ton.

I can see this being my new sort of like working ambient music

playlist, but I adore this game.

All right.

Well, that's a good one.

We're going to take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about more games.

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Okay, we're back.

I pulled a bunch of reader mail, both from the comments and from

various other sources that you all reach us out at.

I wanted to call this one, this comes from Krusty Nugget,

specifically related to split fiction, which is a game we talked about last week.

You should listen to that episode if you haven't.

And I think our major criticism was specifically to the writing.

And so in response to that, I think you guys are focusing too much on the wrong aspect.

Yes, the writing sucks and the story is meh, but that's not why we're here.

Me and my girlfriend, we both play video games a lot, by the way, are having a blast.

It's just fun to see what kind of new mechanics happen next.

There's constant stimuli.

It's funny, you mentioned Brothers, a tale of two sons.

We played that for a few hours,

the remake of that, expecting like a Nick Tays 2, but

we found the gameplay to be lacking.

Conclusion, we were just along for the ride, and that is the fun for us.

And we sort of alluded to this when we were talking about the game, Sput Fiction.

I think the best experience you can have is like almost passively listening to the dialogue and story, but entirely just interacting with another person.

And in that scenario, I think you could have a really great time playing this game, so long as you're not, like we all are all critics,

paying attention to the beat-by-beat dialogue, which again,

no, I don't.

You don't think so?

No, if you're going to put dialogue in it, then write it, right?

Like, I mean, don't ask me to listen to some, like, don't put something in that's designed to be ignored.

My time is.

I don't think it was designed to be ignored.

I think they designed it to be as great as they could possibly be.

This person's wrong, then, you know what I mean?

Like, if you're going to do a, if you're going to put writing in it, do a better job of putting writing in it.

We're not wrong.

We're not focusing on the wrong aspect.

It was boring because the story is boring.

What did I miss?

Okay, so, well, we were all for what it's called.

It's a split decision.

No, it wasn't even because we were between us and the listeners who have been wrong about Haze Light games for a fucking decade.

Guys, we're not going to heal this rift.

Everyone listening to this, if you like Haze Light games, you are wrong.

They are poorly written.

We are right.

I am sorry.

It's been 10 years.

I'm tired of this.

The dissonance.

Not everybody.

The Zen ability to

Wonder Stuff would heal me.

Just made me more right.

You didn't finish it, man.

Well, here is the challenge.

You got to get a Geneva healed, dude.

Here's the challenge with Hazelite games specifically.

There is nothing else in them that is this.

No one else is making this format of game.

So if you want this sort of, there are co-op games, don't get me wrong.

There are co-op games, but games that are specifically designed for co-op in mind, there's no other option.

And

so for people looking for this thing, they're kind of stuck with it now.

I saw

100% agree.

I saw commentators comparing comparing it to Mystery Science Theater 3000 approach, which is that you kind of are goofing at the expense of some pretty silly writing.

At the end of the day, it's still quite entertaining.

Like, the action of it is propulsive.

It looks neat.

Yeah.

I can't talk to you.

So I'll put that one on the queue.

Yep, for sure.

I just wish people would expect better for themselves.

Like, you, you, if someone is going to put a story in a game for you to consume and use your minutes on, then they, and if someone's going to spend their minutes writing it, then it should be worthwhile.

It's life, man.

Like, you shouldn't, then we should just have AI generating it, right?

If it's just going to be shit in the background.

Oh, no, hold on.

No, hold on.

Oh, oh, yeah, good.

Let me hear this.

Oh, is it?

Okay, cool.

What I'm saying, what?

I didn't know it was part of the game.

It's part of the game.

The story of the game is literally about should you, should a company steal ideas from the young to fuel an AI machine to write stories.

What I'm saying, the irony is their stories are garbage to be the story is garbage, and this is what where the contradiction is and why split fiction is getting the nasty gram in the way that like a way out and other games did not is because split fiction is all about the power of ideas and narrative and story, and then it shits its pants.

So, like, if you want to make a game about the power of playing co-op games together on the couch, that's the lane you should stay in.

But if you're going to make a game about about the power of ideas and humanity versus AI and all this stuff, then you have to have some ideas that are worth defending.

And narratively, they don't.

They almost would have been better off just making a Tron game where it's like, uh-oh, we're stuck at a computer.

We got to get out.

That sounds kick-ass to me.

Yeah, man.

And not having the layer of like, what's the grounded version of this?

Guys, I don't want to talk about a game I didn't play.

I do want to say we are on the outside of this almost exclusive, us the four besties, or I guess the three besties.

I don't think Griffin played it.

Because this game is universally acclaimed, as was the last game that we also didn't like.

Universally acclaimed.

Do you know why?

Do you know why, Russ?

No.

I'll tell you why if you want to know.

Please tell me.

I'm excited.

Because people are tired of getting yelled at, and they just want people to go away.

So they gave the game a nine or a 10 because they know everybody's going to love it.

And I guarantee people writing reviews of this game, email me secretly.

Shh.

I know that you juice the scores because you're tired of getting yelled at.

It's fine.

I would have done it too.

I used to be in the game.

I know how the game is played.

It's a five.

Like, it's like, you know, it's a five.

It's okay, though.

It's a six.

It's a six.

But, like, you know, they're just afraid to say that because they don't want to get yelled at anymore.

I get it.

It's tough out there.

No one's like supporting you.

I get it.

It's hard.

It's cold.

Man, I love it.

I'm here for you.

I know it's bad.

Call me.

We'll talk about it.

I know.

Y'all fucking opened the genie's lamp last week while I was gone.

Let the fucking monster out.

Okay, we have a.

No, because I had to spend the whole week being, I had to spend the whole episode being nice because they were like, everybody's going to like this game.

And now I get to just like open it up and tell you it's bad.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, man.

Unless you liked it, then it's good.

There you go.

There you go.

Please.

That is a good reminder for all games we talk about.

If you liked the game and we didn't, who gives a shit?

Doesn't matter.

Yeah.

It literally could not matter less.

We have a little bit of a good reason to not email in about it, I guess.

And I say that because the things we say on this show do not end up on Metacritic and impact the scores and salaries of the people who make the

we're just fucking conscious decision, by the way.

I do, for what it's worth, like getting emails from people who disagree with our critiques.

So absolutely.

Yes, me too.

You should love it.

This letter comes from Kaylee.

The tech bros I know say Justin needs a Linux penguin for his sticker collection to be complete.

How do you not have tux on your fucking laptop, Justin?

Yeah.

I am working.

I saw this email like as i was going through the uh the uh

hold on i'll show you guys what i'm what i'm looking at here this is the pack that i just ordered uh pack of stickers yeah i i haven't ordered it yet i'm going to try to find some oh no that's what you need i need well i need a non-bezos reflect what people can't see it's a variety of tux a penguin stickers with some real class goofs like what if tux was the starbucks logo oh yeah or like do you even ssh is good?

That Tux has abs, by the way.

What's up with that?

Yeah, I like a strong Tux.

Yeah, you can't buy this on Amazon.

Oh, an ultra line.

The pioneer rebel spirit

of this symbol.

It's got a little Linux mint on there.

It's got all the great brands.

That's the great thing about open.

Look, can you guys see that one at the bottom?

Linux and Sides.

Jesus loves Linux.

Jesus loves Linux.

Oh, and Tux.

That's probably true.

Tux is carrying a cross.

Tux does have a cross in that.

That one's going on the laptop.

I do think there is something open source about the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Right.

This is my source.

Source is the loaves and fishes, right?

This is my wonder stop.

This is my first distro is fish.

My second distro is these loaves.

This one episode of Bessie's is challenging because they talk a lot about a challenging game, and then Justin takes a huge

literary play a boring game.

Justin takes a huge dump on a beloved listener.

And then Griffin talks about how open source the teachings of Christ are.

This will be a

let me check the let me check the feed.

Yeah, no one's listening.

We got every with that last one, we got

a good fig tree joke coming, and now it's just

so sorry.

It's okay, Justin, what what distro of Linux are you using?

This is a question from Joseph.

Ubuntu.

I have switched a few times.

I was on Ubuntu, and then I switched to Linux Mint because I was interested interested in seeing Linux Mint, but there were a lot, I missed the Snap Store, even though there's a lot of purists that don't like the Snap Store, which is kind of like the App Store, but with a snut at the beginning.

A lot of people don't like it and there's not in Linux Mint, there's a lot of apps that did not have that simplicity like Spotify or Slack.

And so I switched to Kubuntu because it's easier to install apps.

So that's the distro.

The amount of system administrators that have showed up in our comments is staggering.

It's like me having to talk to Verge people, and all they want to do is talk about printers.

It can be kind of a drag.

I'm glad you guys are having fun.

I installed four different Linux distros on different things, but I'm assuming they're asking me about my Linux laptop.

And that is what I'm doing.

I want to let everyone who comments on the newsletter know, I love hearing about Linux distros, and I think It Takes Two is like totally worthy of the Game of the Year award.

I didn't play a single second of It Takes Two, but I think I probably would have liked it.

We have a letter from Peter taking a sharp left turn.

Russ from Retro Game Core, good Russ, if you will, mentioned that he's playing Final Fantasy 16.

I tried it, but stopped playing the minute the main antagonist is introduced.

His name is Kupka.

I'm Polish.

I have a young child.

Kupka is the universal word for poopy.

It's not some obscured word for it.

It is the word.

I can't play an entire game against a poopy.

I just can't.

Wow.

I don't know.

That would have got me to stay.

That's

stuck around for sure.

I think that's basically it for Reader Mail.

Do we have let's do some let's do some honorable mentions.

Let's do it.

I got a Rogaly X

because Henry has been playing a lot of Steam games.

He got very much into this game called Ogu and the Secret Forest, which I played a little bit with him.

It is a very cute little Zelda-like

with lots of stuff to explore and it's very charming and he got got really into it, which meant that he was using by Steam Deck a lot of the time.

I guess follow-up question: Can a little boy use a Steam Deck, or will their arms fall off?

Yeah, no, I mean, he's pretty, I mean, Justin can attest to this, like, he's fucking ripped.

Oh, he's

one of the strongest people I know, like the crazy, like crazy vascularity for an eight-year-old.

Yeah, yeah.

And so, like, he's been playing Steam Deck, and you know, I kind of realized, like, there's a lot of stuff in my account that I could family share that he would probably get, like, really, really into.

So, I got a Rogaly X also so that I could play some games that do not work on Steam Deck, specifically Monster Hunter Wilds.

And I did get Monster Hunter Wilds working on this bad boy.

It took quite a bit of finaglin,

but it runs pretty smoothly.

I would say around 50 FPS or so, which is totally, totally doable.

It looks bad, but I can kill the monsters and get the stuff off of them.

Sure.

Which is great.

I'm really glad that I did this because I've been playing this game a lot more.

I simply do not have much time to sit at my computer and play a video game.

I pretty much only have been playing Steam Deck for a long time now.

And

I fucking love Monster Hunter Wilds now that I have had these sessions where I can sit down and really play it.

There is so much, like a lot of the structural stuff, I still feel the same.

Like I've gotten past the fairly boring part of like low-rank story mode, and I'm very glad to be on the other side of that.

But there are moments in these fights that are so radical.

I don't know if you guys ever played with a weapon that does offset strikes, but they are basically there's like a handful of the weapons that can do them, the bigger, beefier ones, where you charge up an attack.

And if you hit a monster with it as they attack you, you just sort of fuck them up.

You just kind of like smash them out of their attack animation and save the day.

And every time you pull one of those off, it feels so, it is the most tactile, most satisfying feeling in games.

Period.

I'm a bowman now, which is another weapon with lots of good with lots of good feel.

It's so fun to have been playing this and Wonderstop at the same time, which are scratching literally like I it's like a hot and a warm tap on either side of my brain lobes where it's like I have this one for the for the quiet times and I have this one when I just want nasty numbers and gemstones and skills increases and grinds.

Like

I am getting all of my needs met in very different ways.

I don't know if you guys talk more about Monster Hunter Wilds or if you guys are still playing it.

I'm still here and there occasionally.

I think it fucking rules.

I wish I don't have a Rog Allies.

And it definitely came around on Steam Deck.

So that is the thing.

I got hooked on Monster Hunter Rise because it was a portable game, because I could play it on my Switch.

That got me into Monster Hunter as a franchise.

That clicked it for me.

And all I can tell is like this franchise, in the way that Animal Crossing is a portable franchise, should be a portable franchise.

Same thing with Monster Hunter.

It works so perfectly for that.

So someday.

I also have gotten Dragon Sagma 2 running on this Batboy.

I am excited to relitigate that.

I'm excited to find out.

Did you guys know they've added a casual mode to the game?

Uh-oh.

Literally, all it does is it like reduces like every time you die, it says casual.

It reduces like penalties for death and reduces the price of like the fast travel system.

Like it doesn't, as far as I can tell, doesn't change anything difficulty-wise in terms of like you know, stats or content.

If they would just put it in a normal fast travel system, I'd play 80 hours.

As far as I can tell, this casual mode just kind of shaves off the annoying shit.

So, like, is casual the right word for that?

If it shaved out the annoying shit, man, that'd be like a 100-meg download.

It is still a Dragon's Dong game, man.

They got to keep a little something in there, just a TXT file.

I am, I am excited to

get it to that.

That's exciting.

Anyone else?

I am hosting a movie screening at the end of the month, and I want to plug it.

And people who can't come out to this, you should just watch this movie.

But Streets of Fire.

Have you all seen this movie?

Who's seen Streets of Fire?

I saw it.

Fresh.

Is it good?

It's very interesting.

I would not describe it as a ringing endorsement.

Wow.

Okay, I adore it.

But it is interesting.

And it's a fun night out.

I will say it's a fight.

It's a fun night out.

It's a movie by Walter Hill, who made 48 Hours and the Warriors.

And then

this

rock musical starring Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, and Willem Dafoe.

Jesus Christ.

It is incredible.

I agree with Frush that it is not perfect, but it does have, I think,

one of the strongest openings of a movie ever.

And our buddy Patrick H.

Willems agrees.

He made a whole video about this.

I'll be sure to share it in the newsletter.

It also has an absolutely killer ending.

This movie rocks.

This movie would be one of the great canonical rock musicals if not for the lead being an actual

loaf of white bread that got left in a puddle.

Not the best casting for the lead actor, but everything else is so unbelievably cool in this movie.

We'll be hosting it at the Frida, the theater that I help out with in Santa Ana.

And some of y'all came out last time.

It was great.

I would love to see more more people there too.

But if you can't make it, there is a new 4K restoration or just a regular Blu-ray.

And I think you can also find it on like Amazon VOD.

And again, it's called Streets of Fire.

It rocks.

Yeah,

I got a ROG Alliance.

And

have you actually played shit on it?

Or have you just been...

Why would I do that?

I mean,

what are you going to do on it?

Games?

I'm a man.

I'm an adult, Griffin.

Yeah.

What am am I going to do?

No, I didn't play any games.

No, I thought I played games.

I opened it up and I took out the SSD and then I put in a four-terabyte SSD with a

cooling on it.

And then I installed a dual boot of

Windows.

I kept the Windows partition.

And then I put in a

distro called Bazite,

which is a a version of a Linux distribution that basically is like recreating

the

Steam Deck experience as much as possible.

It basically turns it in functionally, turns it into a Steam Deck from a software perspective.

It's running the same way and

you have the same options available to you.

That's a little kludgy, obviously.

You have stuff like button indicators sometimes where like you don't have it on the wrong ally.

Like they'll be indicating a button that isn't there, so it feels a little bit funky in that sense.

But other than that,

it's great.

I have a button, I made a script that creates a non-Steam game that basically shuts the console down, then reboots it in Windows mode.

So it's like a way to switch between pretty easily rather than having to like get into the BIOS and shit.

It's an easier way.

From what I have read, the main reason to do that to get Bazide on there is one, if you know, there's Windows cruft you don't care for, it is a way of sidestepping that.

It is also

the big sort of

experiential difference, I will say, of using Rog Ally X over

Steam Deck, aside from the fact that you can play different, you can play Ubisoft Connect shit on there and the Xbox Store on there.

And Destiny, yeah, is that

when you press the power button on Rog Ally X, it puts it in like a low power sleep mode that eventually turns into a no power hibernation mode that takes a much longer time to come out of.

Then you have to contend with like the Windows lock screen when you turn it back on, which there's like crazy ways of getting rid of that, that sort of post security issues.

With Bazite, it makes it a Steam Deck.

You press the button and it turns and it goes to sleep.

It's in the Linux kernel.

It can do that instant suspend and then bring back where that's not an option that's available to you in Windows.

The other thing I got to say is like,

And I haven't spent a ton of time with it because I've been mainly like on the Windows end of it because I've been mainly setting this up.

but it it's it's also just like windows is not a handheld operating system i mean like it is so crazy to buy this device and get it and then it's window i mean it's like do you want office 365 family plan it's like no i do have like monster hunt they have this front end called armory crate where they've like tried to like make a

experience that is navigable like pretty easily with the controller and stuff and it can default into it but like it's windows and like that feels so crappy.

I mean, like, I keep, I, for a long time, I kept here, yeah, this little

my uh

uh keyboard for the the RII keyboard I have like plugged into it just so I could type constantly because like that feels really bad to do on a touchscreen.

And I know that they are still working on some sort of like actual Windows handheld operating system, but like it, this is not, it's like, it's not there.

It's really weird.

It seems so counter to what Windows has become, which is like

having a handheld operating system because so much of a handheld operating system only works because you're really picking and choosing the things that matter.

And Windows is like, nope, we're going to show you fucking everything.

And every notification and everything gets equal priority.

And the idea that they could somehow winnow that into a tight experience that mimics the Steam Deck seems so unlikely to me.

I wish they can.

I hope they can.

But that is the challenge.

What I will say, I actually think Armory Create's pretty good, specifically in it puts all the tools sort of right at your fingertips, like a single button press away that you need to tweak the

cornucopia of performance settings that you can set globally or like per game.

That process, I was worried, was going to be so annoying that I would regret my purchase, but it is not that hard to toss up a, you know, a little performance panel in the side that's like, okay, you're getting this FPS and this, you know, these heuristics.

And then like, you can tweak that shit really, really quickly to get it where you, where you want it to be.

I have not found the process of getting these games that are,

Monster Hunter Wild's not working on a lot of people's desktop PCs, even with like fairly high-end stuff inside of it.

I was like, there's, maybe there's no way this is going to work on here.

But it genuinely,

that, that process of kind of messing around with stuff, I, I've grown to kind of enjoy because I feel like, oh, there's definitely a way I can squeeze a little bit more juice out of this thing.

I think that the Armory Crate stuff is very functional, but

it simply is not and cannot be the streamlined experience that

the Steam deck offers.

Have you gotten Steam?

Have you downloaded Lossless Scaling, Griffin?

I did download Lossless Scaling.

Lossless Scaling is a game.

It's an app on Steam.

You run it alongside another game that you are playing, and it basically does frame gen for you, which like a lot of modern games like Monster Hunter and I think Dragon's Dogma offer in like the settings, but Lossless Scaling is like an $8 app that will do that with a higher level of sort of like specificity.

And it is pretty fucking good.

I don't use it a ton, partially because I was having some crashing issues on Monster Hunter Wilds, but with other games that I have messed around with, it is pretty insane how well it works.

How do you cycle between the different like power profiles, Griffin?

Like the boost and the and stuff like that?

I mean, it's game by game.

Like for Monster Hunter, I'm using a lot of the, it goes through battery a lot faster.

And, you know, it is, it is consuming a lot more power to run it at the level that, you know, I want it to get you.

Do you change between the modes manually, I guess?

Or is that like, does that happen?

Yeah, but again, like there's a quick access button on the Raw Galax that opens up this panel that you can customize with like your most frequently used like settings, tweaks and stuff like that.

So I have it set up to,

honestly, I don't even have to do that because I have a global setting that works for pretty much everything.

And then when I launch Monster Hunter, it knows, okay, you have these settings set up specifically for Monster Hunter.

We'll go ahead and activate all that shit.

So like you're not actually having to, I'm not having to do like a lot of tweaking on the fly.

It does seem, though, that unless you're trying to play something more intensive,

you're probably better off just sticking with a Steam Deck, right?

Because you can still run you play.

You can still play Microsoft Game Studios games on a Steam Deck.

It just requires a little bit of a title.

we're kind of bearing the lead in that the battery is twice as big i mean it is a it is a juicy it's it's gonna run twice as long and and it's just better power management overall with the with it if you especially if you're in the basite one like oh look at that big brick that's what i'm that's yeah man i don't even know what you're showing me what is it's a battery

huge

i have the small version of that one it's amazing i love that

it's it's the battery that allows me to play steam deck from uh los angeles to new york oh oh it's it's a portable.

You were showing us a portable battery that you got.

It does not look like a portable battery.

It looks like an actual brick.

I would agree that if you're not playing super high-end stuff, Steam Deck is the easier,

in a lot of ways, better option to do that.

But I could count off the top of my head a dozen examples of games that I really wanted to play on the go.

And the Steam Deck simply did not, simply did not allow.

And that was enough to kind of push me over the edge.

There's also what Griffin is talking about with that, like not having time to play games.

More and more, if I'm going to sit down at a TV, what I've been doing is plugging in the Steam Deck to the dock and playing on the TV.

So, using this in that way, then I, then there are games that I'll play a little bit more, right?

Because I can slap this into a dock and start playing it and have much better experience than with the Steam Deck.

Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense for people that are forced because of a static bargain to play a new game every single week.

Right?

I say Tanya Morgan made 12 years ago.

I've not fucked around with like Bazite and dual booting and stuff because I think Steam

something came out where Steam OS beta is expected before May.

Yeah, pretty soon.

Can I just say, Juice, you've done a lot of work on this character lately, this like Linux cockney sort of street urchin.

Don't you want the thrill of knowing that you could break this motherfucker?

Don't you want a tiny ribbon cable that is one hair, one micrometer thin that could destroy this multi-hundred dollar piece of equipment?

I will tear down a switch light to

parts, and I will fucking get as nasty as you want in there because those things are like 200 bucks, which ain't nothing.

This is considerable.

The stakes could not be higher with a ROG Ally X.

So, no, I have not been quite as eager to get as dangerous with it.

I will say this, Ruh.

If you do want to, I'm like kind of joking about the customization.

They make it easy.

And this, the, the ROG Ally X uses a form factor, the MVME

storage.

It's 2280, and it's a little bit more universal.

The ROG Ally used 2230, which is a little bit more specific.

So you can find this storage pretty cheaply with the heatsink and like...

increase the storage of this pretty considerably.

You can also put in, Griffin,

you could put in a terabyte or two terabyte micro SD card that could share between if you use the SD card, it can share between the boots.

That's very cool.

It's very cool.

It was a gigantic pain in the ass.

Like,

took me an entire day, huge pain in the ass because I started doing it not really paying attention and fuck something up so bad that I had to learn a lot about computers really fast.

If I wanted this segment to have a happy ending, I had to

get real smart real fast.

Could have been making tea that whole time.

Last but not least.

That's what I needed.

Like,

shut the fuck up, man.

I just broke this thing.

What do you mean, make tea?

Hey, Boro, how about you get in there and fix my wrong ally X?

It's just a black screen, brother.

I don't know.

I've been playing Enter the Gungeon,

which is a game from seven years ago.

And it runs on fucking everything.

So we don't need a fancy new handheld.

There just aren't.

After finishing Star of Providence and getting close to finishing Binding of Isaac, I don't have a giant list of games that scratch that itch for me.

And Enter the Gungeon is that.

If you found it too hard previously, I think they made it a little easier since the last I played it.

I never finished.

I love that game.

I think they made it easier.

Either that or the final boss, the final boss was such a motherfucker that I got to him a half dozen times and just got my ass whipped and was like, well,

this is not fun.

Okay.

I think we did it.

I want to thank the following members.

We have Kyle, we have Nicholas, we have Kelsey, we have Bred.

Thank you for being new members of the besties at patreon.com slash the besties.

We have a new episode of The Resties out.

You can go listen to that.

We have a new bracket episode that's live already for this month.

I think next week we're going to be doing kind of a grab bag episode of smaller titles, if that's exciting to you.

You should join us.

Are we not doing Assassin's Creed next week?

No, two weeks is Assassin's Creed.

Oh, good.

That's good for me because I'll be out next week because I got Game Developers Conference.

That means I can talk about AC.

I guess it'll be Griffin and I doing Grab Bag.

Hell yeah.

Fuck yeah, man.

It's going to be fucking numbers and upgrades and armor sets that do class item bullshit.

Yeah, baby.

I love it.

Living large.

All right.

Well, I'll be looking forward to that.

I'll be listening.

I'll tune in.

I'll be there.

That's two listeners you got right there.

Two new listeners.

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

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