Monster Hunter Wilds is Surprisingly Great in Single-Player

Speaker 1 Russ, why don't you tell everyone what you just told Justin before?

Speaker 2 Exactly. Don't put any more mustard on it than it had.
Just like, tell me how you told me.

Speaker 3 Okay, so Justin, next week we're doing a game called Split Fiction, which is the game from the team that made It Takes Two. It is a exclusively co-op experience.
You can only play it with two people.

Speaker 3 And I know that Griffin's going to be traveling. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And you're going to be playing with Plant, you explained to me.

Speaker 3 And I'm going to be playing.

Speaker 2 this was not even like not a conversation. This is not a conversation.
I want to be clear with this. Like,

Speaker 2 Russ is like, I am playing it with Plant, and everyone in town is supposed to be like, yeah,

Speaker 2 and then you're like, and then go ahead. Go ahead, Russ.
Go ahead with part two.

Speaker 3 And then you can play if you want.

Speaker 2 I guess I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 If I want would have been quite the chocolate coating on that bitter pill. There was not an if you want.
Go on.

Speaker 2 Anyway,

Speaker 2 just to what you'll be doing

Speaker 2 you i i think i say you can play the blendo game that you've been waiting for for now is that kind of a one or two player can is that kind of like a flexible like experience

Speaker 3 justin it's very difficult to coordinate

Speaker 2 no no no i'm not that familiar with it and i just didn't know if it was like something that people with friends can have their friends over to do like a friend activity with or like is it something where like if you know for sure the person doesn't know anybody right that would play a game with them you would pick this game to give to you're implying that you don't have any i'm implying that you don't have any friends to play with

Speaker 2 i think that's that's one of the like five hurtful things there's like five

Speaker 1 very hurtful things i think russ you should have to play split fiction with chris and then play it again with justin

Speaker 2 no no no no no you guys play split fiction and russ and i are going to play it takes too because that's closer to where we're at personally i think yeah in a relationship uh this might have been a moment of pragmatism that gone awry hey you know what that should be on your tombstone first i didn't want to say that

Speaker 2 sorry it's really powerful phrase want to make sure it got etched into history secondly i already asked my friend slice to play it with me and he's going to come over to my house and we're going to play it together on my big screen russ and you know what you're not invited and they're they're gonna eat trash canoes.

Speaker 1 And nachos and just sodas.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and you know who else? I'm gonna FaceTime while I'm playing the video games with my friend Slice. You know, I'm gonna FaceTime Russ.

Speaker 2 I'm gonna FaceTime my personal friend, fucking multi-award winner Lynn Manuel Miranda. Okay, that's what I'm gonna do, Russ.

Speaker 2 I'm gonna FaceTime him on the phone, and he and me and Slice are gonna play together. Okay,

Speaker 2 I'll call some of the other many celebrities that I have by name saved in my phone.

Speaker 4 If we do not have Lynn contributing a guest appearance next week, I do not believe that you are actually friends with one of the greatest musical writers of all time.

Speaker 2 Sorry, okay. I should have been more clear.
I know there's time

Speaker 2 I want to be clear.

Speaker 2 I've been talking about Canadian Lynn Manual.

Speaker 2 Sorry.

Speaker 2 My Lynn Manilbrand is in Canada. Yeah.
Yeah. He's like a Canadian.
You guys wouldn't know him. He did like Canadian Hamilton and like that.
Yeah, it's like different.

Speaker 2 But it's like

Speaker 1 in Canada, they call it Canadian Bakelton.

Speaker 2 That doesn't make any fucking sense.

Speaker 2 Hey, if you've got to put an A in his name to make him Canadian, Linden Man World Random, where is it the funniest? Because I've put it like five different places in my head and it hits every place.

Speaker 2 My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week.

Speaker 1 My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week.

Speaker 4 My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week.

Speaker 2 My name is Russ Fresh.

Speaker 3 I know the best game of the week.

Speaker 2 Welcome to Monster Hunter Wilds.

Speaker 1 Whoa, that's crazy. You usually say the name of the show.

Speaker 2 Hold on, they swap it around. Welcome to the Besties, which is a video game club.
It's a show about the many ways in which interactive entertainment interweaves with our day-to-day lives.

Speaker 2 But today, this one's about Monster Hunter Wilds. Chris Plant, what is that?

Speaker 4 Monster Hunter Wilds is a long-runting, running, multiplayer, grindy action RPG.

Speaker 4 It was most famously available on mobile platforms a long time ago, but now it's on consoles and it's bigger and better than ever. And you get to kill big beasts with your buzz.

Speaker 3 When was it? It started as a PS2 game. What are you talking about? Mobile consoles?

Speaker 4 Yeah, but like its most popular period was when it was on like Nintendo Portables and you could go play it, you know, outside of Fairfield.

Speaker 2 But there's never been a better time than there's God.

Speaker 2 Is this the one?

Speaker 2 Let's talk about is this the Monster Hunter? We'll talk about it after the break.

Speaker 4 Y'all, it is nearly impossible to eat well during the holidays. There is just so much to do.
You gotta get gifts, you gotta prep the decorations, you gotta be ready for your family to come over.

Speaker 4 And there's all these candy canes and things lying around, which is delicious, but that's not a meal.

Speaker 4 That is why I use Factor's chef-prepped dietitian-approved meals to help me stay balanced and energized through the most indulgent time of the year.

Speaker 4 Unlike meal kits that require prep and cooking, Factor delivers fully prepared, ready-to-eat meals in just two minutes.

Speaker 4 You can choose from a wider selection of weekly meal options, including premium seafood choices like salmon and shrimp at no extra cost. That is what I personally go with.

Speaker 4 For the first time, try Asian-inspired meals. Think savory Korean beef bowls or Thai-style coconut curry, a refreshing break from traditional holiday fare.

Speaker 2 I love this stuff.

Speaker 4 It is so good, and it's basically the meals that I always tell myself I'm gonna learn to make, but don't have time to.

Speaker 4 You got stuff like chicken florentine, Monterey spiced chicken, jalapeno lime, cheddar chicken. You can tell that I'm like in that chicken space right now.

Speaker 4 But if you want to go vegan, they got that too.

Speaker 2 They've got all sorts of things.

Speaker 4 Protein plus meals, if you really want to go hard on protein, which is kind of the trend right now, I think that you will enjoy it as much as I do.

Speaker 4 So, if you want to check it out, eat smart at factormeals.com/slash besties50 off.

Speaker 2 That's the number 50.

Speaker 4 And use code besties number 50 off to get 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for one year.

Speaker 4 That is code B-E-S-T-I-E-S-5-0-O-F-F at factormeals.com for 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for a year.

Speaker 4 This exclusive holiday offer won't last to lock in your savings before the new year rush. Offer only valid for new factor customers with code and qualifying auto-renewing subscription purchase.

Speaker 1 Unfortunately, the best time to get on board Monster Hunter was Monster Hunter Generation.

Speaker 2 So you did.

Speaker 1 You missed your windows. Hey, Samuel.

Speaker 2 I wanted to say plant. I'm not sure what long runting means, but I agree with you that the Monster Hunter franchise is long-runting.

Speaker 2 Whatever it means, it feels very apt for this particular series, which has just been sort of like

Speaker 2 a chugging along. I feel like the story of Monster Hunter

Speaker 2 isn't always like, is this the point? Is this the accessible one? And I feel like we've had that.

Speaker 2 conversation enough times that it's not really that helpful because that is the trajectory, right? Sure. I think this wilds is absolutely another

Speaker 2 round of like smoothing off a lot of like rough edges and bringing in a lot of like quality of life improvement.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I it's it's interesting. There is this conversation in the Monster Hunter community, this like theory, frankly, that there are two teams working within Capcom on the Monster Hunter games,

Speaker 1 one of which makes the mainline series, one of which makes the like,

Speaker 1 you know, used to make the handheld ones.

Speaker 1 And so the theory is most recently Worlds was the most recent mainline game, and then Monster Hunter Rise, which, you know, was on Switch and stuff, is the is from the other team.

Speaker 1 I don't think that's actually accurate. I think it's a pretty simple way of looking at it.

Speaker 1 But I do think that Monster Hunter Wilds is much more in the vein of Monster Hunter World, which is to say like much more about story and characters and,

Speaker 1 you know, really getting

Speaker 1 down deep dirty with the like ecology of

Speaker 1 this new world. So make of that what you will.

Speaker 4 For people who are new to this series,

Speaker 4 would you say that the loop is a destiny-like,

Speaker 4 in that

Speaker 4 you, as the character, don't have like various stats and stuff.

Speaker 4 The whole point of the game is to grind out better and better weapons, better and better materials, and then to, before you go into each battle, pick the best weapons and materials that align with the battle that you're going to go into.

Speaker 3 I think if like at a very clinical level, maybe, but it's not what made me fall in love with Monster Hunter. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And I come at this, this is the first time that I've, I'm playing a Monster Hunter game after being Monster Hunter pilled, which I was with Monster Hunter Rise.

Speaker 2 That was the one.

Speaker 3 So this is a very weird, interesting experience to be from the jump on board versus that, like, I'm going to spend 10 hours trying to wrap my head around.

Speaker 2 They hit pretty hard when you're ready to accept them into your heart and you're like at prime for it. Like they're hit pretty hard.

Speaker 3 What I would say to Plant's point is, is this just like a number go up game? I don't think it is. And here's why.
I think the minute to minute of fighting monsters is completely peerless.

Speaker 3 There is no analog for it anywhere in the video game industry. This series, this game is...

Speaker 3 fucking incredible for the way that it recreates what it would feel like to fight a giant fucking chicken.

Speaker 3 And I don't think

Speaker 3 I think it's easy to be like, oh, well, you get better armor from fighting the chicken, and that's why you're doing it. That's not why I'm doing it.

Speaker 2 I do think that it's a really useful

Speaker 2 as a starting point for something that's a little bit more like well-known. I think structurally it makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2 The only way, like the only major difference I would say, is the way in which you have to alter your

Speaker 2 play style to suit the situation. Where I feel like in Destiny, it's much more about like

Speaker 2 deciding what you're going to go with and like kind of charging through whatever. And I feel like this, this game much more rewards

Speaker 2 preparation and getting ready for a battle.

Speaker 1 I wanted to say that I do, there is an element of this is a decent one to jump on board with because I, it has been my experience. I've not had a ton of time with Monster Hunter Wilds.

Speaker 1 I probably put like seven or eight hours into it, which is, I guess, a decent amount of time, but not in the grand scheme of how long I've put into other games in the franchise.

Speaker 2 Similar for me. I've only done like three or four hours because we were traveling and yesterday's servers were down.

Speaker 1 And it does not knock on Steam Deck. Not fucking even a little bit at all.

Speaker 1 It is, I think, a bit easier. I think the difficulty has been smoothed down a little bit.
Part of that is because when you're playing in single player, you can get...

Speaker 1 uh AI co-op buddies and they're actually fucking good like they're really good at killing monsters and warning you when attacks are coming in and helping you like figure out what to do uh I don't I push back against the idea of it being a grindy thing.

Speaker 1 I think it certainly gets to that point once you reach the end game, but this is way, way more a

Speaker 1 story campaign focused affair than really any other monster hunter game I've played.

Speaker 1 And so just by doing the story quest, going out, doing a hunt, you come back home, you can make a new weapon, you can make some new armor.

Speaker 1 It's not, I have not once had to go out and be like, well, I got to go fucking hunt this, hunt this monkey a few more times.

Speaker 3 Or we have to find like three berries before I can do the, you know, to do this side quest to advance the storyline that that's not in the main the main campaign what they have done narratively too i think is so smart because i think that

Speaker 2 so a lot of times when you wander into like the town of a monster hunter there is like an entire ecology you know an entire um economy i should say set up around monster hunting and that's like every level of monster hunter so no matter how deep you are in the systems and it can feel so overwhelming and by putting this on sort of like a it's more like a frontier like you're you're out as it says, wilds, right?

Speaker 2 Right. It, the camp is much more like

Speaker 2 bare essentials. And I think that makes it easier as a player to kind of understand like what you really do need to pay attention to, right?

Speaker 2 Like, yeah, when it's a big deal when someone like has a fire going and they're, they're the person who can do armor and weapons, and it's like very clear to you, like, this is that person.

Speaker 3 Everything's within like 30 feet.

Speaker 2 Yes, exactly. Right.
It's very condensed. It's like, here's all you, there's the monster hunter stuff.

Speaker 4 My question for the longtime monster hunter players here,

Speaker 4 is there a scenario where this is fun for me as a single player experience? Because

Speaker 2 here, let them know. Okay, okay.

Speaker 4 Well, I was going to say, like,

Speaker 4 my experience with this is I bounced off these before.

Speaker 4 I like them moment to moment. I agree.
The combat feels really cool. This one especially just looks beautiful.
It is a world that I want to like stay in.

Speaker 4 But my fear as I started to put more and more time into it was, okay,

Speaker 4 I'm now starting to sink hours into this game. I'm going to 10 hours, however many more.
And I'm going to hit a point where this won't be fun unless I'm playing with friends. And I know my schedule.

Speaker 4 That's just not going to happen. So I should bounce off.
But if you think like there's a scenario where I make it to the credit single player, that's here's what I'm going to say.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It is maybe the best game for elder millennial dads.
There is

Speaker 3 or I'm not the gender.

Speaker 3 Anyone, but uh the fact that the game is designed in 20 minute chunks yeah that i i played exclusively in single player i think most people play in single player i think the multiplayer is like a nice to have and especially when you get to the late late late late late game sure if you want to fight the strongest monster it's probably easier with multiple people yeah but playing in single player You've got like your your horse, which is now like a giant bird.

Speaker 3 You've got your palico little cat friend. And as Griffin said, you can summon AI AI guys to help you out.
Never at any moment did I feel like I needed people.

Speaker 3 Quite honestly, I feel like I'm more productive solo because I'm like very directed in what I'm doing.

Speaker 3 It wouldn't, you know, it would be a more social experience, but like from a gameplay standpoint, I think it's a better solo experience.

Speaker 2 I will, I will also say that, and, and, uh, uh, I love the experience in a lot of Monster Hunter games, but this one is really uh hitting it.

Speaker 2 The way that you can be so fluid in combat and like instantly sort of responding to like you'll ride on your horse past

Speaker 2 some sort of like special ammo for your gun and you like whip your whip out and grab the ammo and then put it in your slinger.

Speaker 2 And the way as you get better at that, it's that feeling of expertise being more and more pleasurable. Like you're, it's, uh, I always think of it like the fire swamp in Princess Bride, right? Yeah,

Speaker 2 the lot by the end of it, they're like navigating it really easily. There's a pleasure in that.
There's a joy to that.

Speaker 3 It's like a a spelunky

Speaker 3 learn all the rules and then you know how to react to it.

Speaker 2 Or knowing that you feel like, and I think that this game is, and what I saw, it's great at that.

Speaker 2 And then Monster Hunter is always good, but like the personality of them and feeling like, I know what he's going to do.

Speaker 2 I know what this guy's going to do. He's about to bail.
You watch. He's about to run.

Speaker 1 There is a tempo to the combat that

Speaker 1 I've played Monster Hunter for a long, long time, but it's been a while. And so starting this one up, I really felt like I was getting my sea legs back under me.

Speaker 1 But once you get a feel for that tempo, and you get in there and you bob and weave, and you get, you stick them a few times and then dodge out of the way just in time and give them a big bonk on the head and knock them out.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 1 it's the fucking best.

Speaker 1 It is the best. I do want to return to Justin's thing about you shoot your whip out to collect items while you're running around on the go.
It's never been easier to like, there's an herb,

Speaker 1 you just get it. And that is, I think, a contrivance of the fact that the story involves a lot of just kind of following people on horseback.

Speaker 1 And I think they probably realize, like, this is a little boring. We do need to give them something to do while a Nata is like...

Speaker 2 Sharpening your weapons on horseback is cool.

Speaker 2 That is fun to have some activities.

Speaker 2 I think the story is pretty lackluster.

Speaker 1 I have gotten to the point now where I just kind of skipped the cut seeds because I have not gotten any. The cool thing about this game is

Speaker 1 this like

Speaker 1 almost annihilation-esque like we're in a fucked up like really really really strange landscape there's a a fight that you do it's like one of the first big fights uh in this forest against this spider monster that like i was met with this moment of like holy shit like i'm fighting this already this is a terrifying like thing in a terrifying environment and it it really does feel like you guys are you are strangers in a strange land if they had focused entirely on that, I think the game would have benefited from it.

Speaker 3 Cause I do not care about it does lean in further into the weirdness of it, but I completely agree.

Speaker 3 The story, there are some very cool cutscenes, but anytime anyone is talking, I'm like, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip. I do not care.

Speaker 3 The story goes in places that are like truly insane. There's a character that's like, don't hurt that monster.
He's my friend. Shit like that, which really doesn't jibe with, I've been doing this.

Speaker 2 But I need his

Speaker 2 Unfortunately.

Speaker 2 I wish there was a feature in games like this where it's like, hey, we notice you've skipped 20 lines in a row.

Speaker 2 And we have to imagine at this point, it is going to be pretty hard for you to get back on board with the story. Do you want us to just skip all of it from now on?

Speaker 2 Like, we'll give you like the very bit, like, bad guy, good guy stuff, but like, don't be on that.

Speaker 3 The shame of it, and I'm not.

Speaker 1 um dragging the game for not running on steam deck because i get it like i'll fucking drag it for not playing on steam deck i would would play this game a hundred thousand times more than I am now if this game worked on Steam Deck.

Speaker 3 But at a certain point, like, I don't think it's fair. You need, like, in the same way, we can't drag any game for not being on Switch, which is on ancient hardware.

Speaker 2 So I get it.

Speaker 3 That being said, the part of the reason that I eventually wrapped my head around what Monster Hunter is is because of Rise being a portable thing that I could pick up and put down and not feel like tethered to it when I was like right in front of a screen.

Speaker 3 And I do think,

Speaker 3 even though there have been a lot of strides with this game to make it more accessible, make it more approachable, it's very clear to me that if someone was going in raw with no information whatsoever, they would have a really tough time, an easier time than past, but you're still dealing with

Speaker 3 the item box and the loadout and the bubble.

Speaker 2 This is what I wanted to, I've had kind of an on-again, off-again relationship with this series. There's some that I've played a lot more and some that I've played less.

Speaker 2 I've never gotten to like where I would say an expert level of with any of these. There are weapons that I've learned before, right? Like that's very much Monster Hunter.
I learned Longsword.

Speaker 2 Like I look at it and I remember

Speaker 2 about two-thirds of it. Yeah.
And I'm trying a different weapon.

Speaker 2 And I really wanted to try to go into this without getting on the internet because I have a terrible habit where I want to min-max this.

Speaker 2 And so I'm looking for the best weapon, the best combo, the best this, the best that. And I lose the fun of it, right? So I got the...

Speaker 3 So you're saying you're not going to look up guides?

Speaker 2 Is that dumb? Is that the approach?

Speaker 2 you don't have no i'm i was i was genuinely trying to see how far into like what that experience would be like right

Speaker 2 because i think that's the metric because if if you need to go start looking through the internet to get the most out of the game it's it's just not and for the life of me man i couldn't remember how to make the long sword stuff come together in a way where like a tutorial in 30 seconds would be like here's the core combos right here's what you need to know and i don't there's probably an area that teaches you some of those basics i know but like not in the way that you need it so like functional in past games they have had special hunts that you go on for each weapon that really go do a lot to like teach you some of the intricacies right because as a as a you know a new player you're not going to probably realize like oh i need to store energy in the long sword once this bar is full i can charge it uh in this game those are not there there are no like specialized hunts there is a training area that when you have have a certain weapon equipped, it shows you some of the basic combos.

Speaker 1 I play Hammer as like basically exclusively at this point.

Speaker 1 Although this game does let you carry a secondary weapon around on your mount, so if you want to switch in the middle of a hunt, you're able to do that, which is cool.

Speaker 1 But there's stuff that just doesn't get taught in the training area, which is kind of crazy to me because this game seems so,

Speaker 1 I don't know,

Speaker 1 tooled for beginners, except for the fact that it doesn't teach you how to use the weapons very good I want to hear from plant because I know he struggled yeah

Speaker 4 well I think this is the challenge with the game and I have like a lot of sympathy for the developers and making this is

Speaker 4 the game is just complex Like that's just the reality of it. It's just complex.
This is like if we played Civ and I was like, why can't they just finally make it? So I just know Civ in three minutes.

Speaker 2 And like a lot of like ancient programs, you're building on structures that have been there for a long time.

Speaker 4 Exactly. And I think the challenge that they run into each of these times is

Speaker 4 you can't erase the fact that the game itself is complex unless you just want to, at some point, start destroying parts of the game.

Speaker 4 And I think that is a challenge that they've run into here is this version of the game, I think, onboards you much faster than any of them. It gets you in there fast.

Speaker 4 It gets you doing cool stuff fast. It gets you not just doing the cool stuff in the tutorials, but kind of feeling like you're playing on your own out in the world.

Speaker 4 It has a lot of tutorial features in the options menu where you can select like, hey, do you want stuff to keep popping up in case you forget some of it?

Speaker 4 But along the way, it loses the things that Griffin's talking about. And I have just come to the point with a game like this, if you're onboarding, watching a YouTube tutorial is just part of it.

Speaker 4 I also am starting to feel like YouTube tutorials are the new

Speaker 4 video game manuals, like when we were kids, and that you.

Speaker 2 You're offloading that to someone else.

Speaker 4 And they just assume that you will look at it because the reality is most players will, which I.

Speaker 3 I think it just depends on the game. Like, there are obviously a lot of games that, like, you don't need to do that, but certainly games are.

Speaker 1 But you could think you know how to use a weapon in this game or in Rise or in World. And then you go.

Speaker 1 to, you know, Guy Gene Hunter or whatever, like YouTube or RX Gaming, and then you watch a tutorial and you're like, holy shit, this weapon can do 50 things that I did not know about.

Speaker 2 That's interesting. The experience that I had with Dual Blades, which I've never played before, so I went in completely just trying it.

Speaker 2 I am completing the hunts without any problems and I can understand all of the basic things that they have laid out with dual blades.

Speaker 2 I know there's got to be more to it because now I'm at a point where I'm bored and I want another level of complexity. And I don't think it has a really good way of walking me into that, right?

Speaker 2 It got me into that first thing of like having fun, hitting guys with two swords, that's cool.

Speaker 2 But when it's like, okay, I'm ready for this to be a deeper experience, it's not necessarily great at saying, like, okay,

Speaker 2 now that you're ready for this complexity, let us like walk you into it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, they did add something that I think it's was maybe the smartest thing they added of all. Well, they added two features.

Speaker 2 I can't wait to hear what you say.

Speaker 3 So one of them is you can

Speaker 3 automatically, from your radio menu, it'll automatically pick either the best healing item you should use at that given time or the best like support item. Like, oh, I have poison.

Speaker 3 It'll automatically pick an antidote. And previously, you had to scroll through your fucking shit and have a radio of like nine things.
And oh, I have to. So they made that much easier.

Speaker 3 The other thing I want to call out kind of goes to Justin's point. The wound system that they have.

Speaker 2 Oh, fuck. Yeah.
It's so good. That's cool.

Speaker 3 So while you're fighting a monster, these wounds will appear.

Speaker 3 I changed it to colorblind settings. So they're like bright purple for me, but they're probably, I guess, red.
I don't know. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And all you have to do is hold down the left trigger and hit one button while pointing at the wound and you'll do a fucking badass thing.

Speaker 3 So depending on what weapon you're using, when I'm on Longsword, I'll do like a giant slash slash anime style, whatever.

Speaker 3 I know Insect Glaive, you do like a somersault while spinning on your fucking glaive, things like that.

Speaker 3 What's so cool about that is even if you don't know anything and you're just using like basic combos, you can see the wound and hit one button and feel like a badass. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Rather than having to, again, watch a YouTube draw.

Speaker 1 Now, it also lets you get

Speaker 1 like monster parts.

Speaker 1 Every time you destroy a wound, it drops an additional thing.

Speaker 1 So you are really, I've had times where I've been, you know, a monster's been on its last legs, and then I'll open up that focus sort of left trigger to focus to see all the glowing wounds.

Speaker 2 And I'll have like six wounds.

Speaker 1 And it's like, okay, buddy, I need you to hang in there for a little bit longer until I can stock up on some of your scales.

Speaker 3 But that is an approachability feature. Like, that allows people to feel like they're powerful, even if they don't know those combos, which is a really good idea.

Speaker 2 It also makes it a lot of the combos in Monster Hunter.

Speaker 2 There's like it removes that terrible feeling of feeling like you built up to a big payoff of an attack and they move at the last second and you just like do your big attack to nothing.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, that's still very much a thing. If you play Great Sword or Hammer, you know, but I'm saying

Speaker 2 the wound, you know, minimizes that. Yeah, sure, sure.

Speaker 4 They've also clearly heard the the feedback of, hey, this is a game about killing poor animals that just want to chill out by going two directions.

Speaker 4 There's a lot more before a fight of, oh man, this one animal just happens to be a real piece of shit. Yeah.
Like all the other animals are pretty.

Speaker 2 Normally, these things are pretty nice, but this is a real ass.

Speaker 4 And then when you collect materials throughout the game using that

Speaker 4 grappling hook feature, did you notice that with the animations, you'll like take materials off of the animal and then let it go.

Speaker 2 Oh, really?

Speaker 4 So there'll be like a cake, yeah, it'll be like a thing that's covered in goo, and it's like very slight.

Speaker 4 But if you look at the animation, you'll like pour, squeeze the goo out into a little jar and then just like flutter the

Speaker 2 little critter off. Beautiful.

Speaker 1 That's not true of the big monsters. No, those kill graveyard dead or capture.

Speaker 4 And then you carve them up.

Speaker 2 And then you carve them up. Yeah.
I feel

Speaker 2 it still got on my nerves that there were still, there would be things that I knew I could do, but then didn't know how to do.

Speaker 2 and that would make me feel like getting around the the map is still kind of like a nightmare well it's it's oh we haven't even talked about the fact that it is more open world

Speaker 2 than the series has ever been amusingly open world though this is what i'm talking about it this is where it starts to feel that like cruft of history right where To give you an example, if you go out into the open world, right?

Speaker 2 You charge out and you see an animal and like you're messing around and eventually you hit it a few times and a quest starts. And it's like, why?

Speaker 2 Like, why do you need a quest to start for this to be like, I'm just hunting this monster. Like it, the, but the structure of the thing, it only understands in terms of like hunts and quests.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean? Like it, it has to have that because that's how it's built.

Speaker 3 The getting around aspect is interesting. I don't know if Rise had this, and if it did, I just never used it.

Speaker 1 The camps?

Speaker 3 I was going to say, the fact that the Secret, which is your like horse thing,

Speaker 3 will just auto run. Yeah, you hit a one button and it will just like run directly to where you mark on your map.

Speaker 3 So, if you want to find a monster, previously you had to like, oh, there's a footprint, I'm gonna smell the dirt and see where the monster is, and you have to do that a bunch of times, and then eventually you find the monster, and they've like cut all of that out.

Speaker 3 And I know that pissed off a lot of like hardcore monster hunter people. Guess what? I fucking love it.
Yeah, that stuff is great.

Speaker 3 It's like, especially the later maps, it gets so hard to navigate if you're not just like auto-targeting. Yeah, but it does take, I guess, some of the the quote realism out of it.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 1 found myself missing the hub and spoke format of past the like main, like you have your main area and you do your shit there and then you go out on a hunt and it launches you automatically into one of a few biomes.

Speaker 1 And like that stuff is here insofar as like sometimes you'll finish a quest and they'll be like, let's go back to camp. And then the screen will go black and they dip you back at camp.

Speaker 1 Like it's not making you schlep everywhere. There's a system where you can set up pop-up camps.
And then you can use those as fast travel points. You have to spend resources to open them up.

Speaker 1 But monsters will sometimes find those camps and destroy them. And you'll get a little notification like, hey, your camp's under attack.

Speaker 1 And you can either go and defeat that monster or you can just spend, you know, a hundred. license points or whatever back at a home base in order to open up that camp.

Speaker 1 It's, it's, it's neat, but again, like my least favorite part of this game is when you're in town and they're like, okay, let me know when you're ready to go out on a quest.

Speaker 1 You're like, okay, let's do it. And then you're riding on Sacred back for like a few minutes while they talk about some inane shit.

Speaker 1 When it's like, man, I would rather just hang glide off of a pterodactyl and then it's monster time. Like that's the part of the game that beats absolute ass.
And I feel like they can't be.

Speaker 2 I was confused the first time that a quest ended and I didn't go back to camp. I had this like weird, like, well, what do I do now? I just have all these monster parts.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 How do I get back to, where's camp? Like, I don't know. What do I do? You're supposed to teleport me.
Why is there a button to make the quest end? What does that mean? I'm just out here.

Speaker 2 Like, I killed the monster. I took his back or whatever.

Speaker 2 Go away or teleport me home. Pick me up, daddy.

Speaker 3 For what it's worth, I did finish the campaign, which takes about 10 or 12 hours.

Speaker 2 Really? How many chap

Speaker 1 we'll talk about it after a minute?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't know how far.

Speaker 3 Chapters are not a good rubric for knowing how long the game is. Once you finish it, the game just more or less turns into

Speaker 3 hunt this. Like, there's no like lead up.
You're just like in it. There's no slow walking, talk to Nata, whatever.

Speaker 3 And that, I think, turns into like much more traditional

Speaker 3 monster hunter. Oh, I need to kill this monster to get his parts to build the armor to make the armor set to get the perks that I need.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 So if you're looking for that, that does click in pretty dramatically. But I do think the first 10 to 12 hours is like more,

Speaker 3 as Plant said, more welcoming than it's been.

Speaker 3 So long as you can overcome the things of like, oh, I just died and I need to like go in my box and get more potions because the little cats that follow me around can't just like fill my bag up again.

Speaker 1 But they do do that this time. And anytime you hop on your sacred back, it always has a supply pack that you can open up and restock all your stuff.

Speaker 3 Right. But it's not like if I need traps,

Speaker 3 they won't won't tell me. I need to like really refill and it's buried in like three different menus.

Speaker 3 And there's just still stuff that isn't fun in any way that doesn't really need to be as esoteric as it is.

Speaker 2 It starts to feel, a lot of it starts to feel like.

Speaker 2 perfunctory like in the way that like some Christmas traditions are perfunctory like no one's really enjoying this but if you take it away it won't feel like monster hunter like I think you're already hearing some of those in the community right where it's like stuff that isn't fun like isn't a pleasurable thing but like it's part of the experience i feel like monster hunter has so many of those and i do feel like they are constantly pressing to see how many of those they can whittle away to make it like more accessible i think i hope i think and hope they're going to get the message that they've whittled away the palico cat uh kitchen uh and that is a that is a bridge too far uh what are you talking about in in monster hunter world you had like the palico chefs that would cook your meals and you'd get great cutscenes.

Speaker 1 That system is still in the game, only now you'll get invited to eat at these different villages, or you can cook on a portable barbecue grill.

Speaker 1 So, like, in some ways, insane.

Speaker 2 It's sort of little tyrant is displeased with the game because his cat chefs don't make his meals to his exact specifications.

Speaker 1 You're so in the wrong right now. You sound so wild, right?

Speaker 2 Do you know how hard they worked on this? And you're like, the cats aren't cute enough? Go, go.

Speaker 2 I do appreciate the poster of them. What a real cat.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 When you customize your palico, you do get to choose if you want it to just meow and grumble or if you want it to use

Speaker 2 human

Speaker 2 speech.

Speaker 1 And I thoroughly encourage you to go for the former.

Speaker 2 You should have to get into the fucking BIOS of your system to turn on human palico dialogue. It is a nightmare.
It should not be. It should be very like hot coffee style.

Speaker 2 You should need a game shark to make your palico talk human language.

Speaker 3 I do want to mention one other thing that has only gotten better over the years, and that's like cosmetic customization. Sure.

Speaker 3 You can fully, like basically, once you get past the main campaign, any armor set that you craft becomes like a layered armor set. So it acts like a transmog, so you can change any armor piece.

Speaker 3 That applies to armor you're getting for your palico.

Speaker 3 And I dress my palico up like a large farting monkey yeah it carries around a giant banana and that is peerless like you cannot match that experience that's art that's artistry

Speaker 2 i don't know man i i i can't i do i feel a little bit like we haven't i don't know that we have

Speaker 2 i feel like in the sort of like madden-esque iterative discussion on it is very madden i was thinking that same thing it is like very mad it's a there is a madden-esque feature of like well if you want these things to be improved maybe we're going to to cut away some of the weapon training stuff because we're working on this other stuff.

Speaker 2 And maybe next time this will be a, but like

Speaker 2 in this sort of like Madden-esque iteration, I don't want to lose sight of the fact that like this is still very fun. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like it's really fun when you go out and the monsters look so stupid and they're walk around, not stupid, bad, stupid, like you just want to.

Speaker 2 beat them up like they're like idiots and angry and like you're flipping around and you got your horse running around and you're you can like run from a battle and like slingshot some better ammo and then start shooting them with it and like the environments are are uh very dynamic like you you can the landscape really changes the kind of fight you're having which yeah there is literally so cool a monster that it was clearly inspired by wario like it's a large baboon who farts and then throws his farts at you and then he's got like little baboon friends that also fart and so they're like willingness to be so fucking goofy with something that could like tonally feel very serious

Speaker 3 I just, I think they continue to like, I'm just like, so happy this franchise exists because I think, again, there's no real analog for it.

Speaker 3 And for people that love it, I think they're getting everything they want.

Speaker 3 And I do think eventually this franchise will get to a point where it can welcome new people a bit easier and it's getting closer and closer to that.

Speaker 3 Man, this is a very good installment. I think people are going to really enjoy it.

Speaker 2 Yes,

Speaker 2 it is an extremely good video game.

Speaker 1 Let's take a break, and then what are we going to do?

Speaker 2 I don't actually know.

Speaker 4 Oh, I've got a whole thing to tell you about.

Speaker 2 Fucking good.

Speaker 2 I've got in my notes here, Chris Plaint. You have a whole thing to tell us about that's good, and you put seven O's here.
Like,

Speaker 2 good.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's yeah, I heard it my hand.

Speaker 4 It's like I was at the birthday party, and I saw the chips and dip, and I just put my whole hand in the dip and then put it in my mouth.

Speaker 2 That's good.

Speaker 4 Um, I'm telling you about Tokyo Extreme Racer. It is back.
And you're probably wondering, was it ever gone? What's Tokyo Extreme Racer?

Speaker 3 Did it ever exist?

Speaker 4 I guarantee that all three of you, as true gamers, played a Tokyo Extreme Racer game at some point in your life. You were bored.
You were at Blockbuster. You had nothing else to do.

Speaker 4 And you rented one of these games for the PlayStation 2 or the Sega Saturn or the Sega Dreamcast.

Speaker 4 And you probably really enjoyed it, and then you just forgot about it because it was just another racing game in an age of racing games.

Speaker 4 But ladies, gentlemen, friends, countrymen, they do not make games like this anymore. This is a racing game truly of a different era.

Speaker 2 I thought that's the whole point that you're making, Chris Plant, is that they do not, in fact, make games like this. Isn't that what you just said?

Speaker 4 They quite literally do not make this game anymore.

Speaker 2 But now they are making it now, right? Now they're making it.

Speaker 4 Almost 20 years later, the many members of the original team, Genki, have come back to make this game. And here's what I mean when I say it is neither arcade racer nor like full-on simulation.

Speaker 4 It is a combat racing game.

Speaker 2 Here's how it works.

Speaker 4 You're on a highway in beautiful Japan and you flash your lights at a rival car and they say, okay, baby, let's race. I have a need.
I have a need for speed.

Speaker 4 And you start racing and above the screen appears two full health bars just like as if you were in Street Fighter right and as you bump up against each other boom takes a little bit of that health down if you crash into a wall boom takes a little bit of that health down but the way that you really win is if you get far enough ahead of the other car that also starts to deplete their life so it's not about getting to the the finish line it is about getting as far in front of the the racer as you can for as long as possible to deplete their health until it hits zero.

Speaker 3 The brilliant

Speaker 2 winning a race, though are you no, no, what Chris Plant is saying is Rubin is racing in this one or not rubbing being really far ahead.

Speaker 4 So being but the cool thing about this system is again, you also deplete life if you wreck.

Speaker 4 So if you are a player who's going like, I'm going to go 150 miles per hour to get ahead of you, and then I have a whole bunch of hairpin turns ahead,

Speaker 4 you could crash and then still lose so it becomes a game of

Speaker 4 okay i really want to get ahead but do i want to like be a little cautious we've got these turns coming up do i want to give them the chance to catch up on me or do i want to do i want to go all out and i because i got that need that need for the fast and the furious

Speaker 4 it is such a cool game and despite being an unreal engine 5 which is just comical overkill it looks and feels like the rose colored glasses version of a Dreamcast game, which is to say, it has that, you know, you know that type of reflection that cars had in video games and fake reflection things.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but you're like, everything looks wet.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and you're like, I can't believe it'll never look better than this.

Speaker 2 It's so wet.

Speaker 4 It has that. It has this pulsing jungle beat that is just rolling through the whole thing.

Speaker 3 And the so all the races are just two cars?

Speaker 4 Yeah, just two cars. And then it also is set in this Tokyo, like nighttime Tokyo, that I can only describe as Miami Vice the movie aesthetic.

Speaker 4 That like early digital video camera look where the light just like looks really specific. I don't even know a better way of describing it.

Speaker 3 That's the lens flares, yeah.

Speaker 4 Well, kind of. It's like distortions, but it's such a specific thing.

Speaker 4 And speaking of um

Speaker 4 millennial parents

Speaker 4 who can only fit in like 15 minutes of game time

Speaker 4 this is that plus it runs on Steam Deck which is even better right now it's technically in early access I think there's like 30 hours of gameplay here so for most people it might as well be full access but for like the hardcore car nuts I think the full release will be later this year.

Speaker 3 And is the full release going to add a third car or are they good with two?

Speaker 4 I think, oh, that's the wild shit about it is there's dozens of cars and they're licensed huh i mean you need a nissan skyline if it's not if that's not in there i don't know what all all of the cars that you expect to be in this game are in this game i assure you

Speaker 4 um yeah it is great you can also um flash your lights at pretty much anybody so whoa the goal

Speaker 2 the goal is to that's a level of enthusiasm that i i appreciate me too man i can do that with my car no problem.

Speaker 3 People love it.

Speaker 4 It's this new advanced feature.

Speaker 4 You can start a race with just like a crappy, like little, you know, truck and then just shame them for no reason other than like wanting to shame a random person on the highway.

Speaker 2 It's a good game. What's the community like for this right now? Because I don't feel like I've heard anybody but you talk about it ever.

Speaker 4 The community for this game is losing their fucking mind.

Speaker 2 This game has the community for this game just quadruple by you telling us about it, Chris. I'm feeling that way.

Speaker 4 How many reviews do you think this game has on Steam?

Speaker 2 I couldn't even.

Speaker 4 Just check any guess.

Speaker 2 5,000.

Speaker 4 9,353.

Speaker 2 It's not a bad review. Wow.
Not a bad guess. People care about this game.

Speaker 3 95% on Steam.

Speaker 4 That's a good sign. I do think

Speaker 4 this is a game, though, where 10,000 people have been waiting for this game. for the last 20 years.

Speaker 2 They're all playing it right now. They're all playing it right now.

Speaker 2 They're all left their reviews.

Speaker 4 But thank thank you for letting me talk about it because I

Speaker 4 just love this shit. I cannot believe they brought back one of these games.
It was such a cool game on a Dreamcast and to get to play it again just a little bit better, it's living the dream.

Speaker 3 I love it. We have a little bit of reader mail coming at you.

Speaker 3 This comes from

Speaker 3 S. Payne.
For gamers on a budget, I recommend looking at Netflix again.

Speaker 3 When I first found out about games on there, it seemed like mostly mobile shovelware, but but recently found out that there are, quote, real games now.

Speaker 3 Just finished the sequel to Curse of the Golden Idol, and it worked really well on Tablet, Into the Breach, Civ 6, and other great titles.

Speaker 3 If you already have a subscription, it's definitely worth checking out.

Speaker 2 I can't make my brain wrap. Like, I have a Netflix subscription.
And I know... I have played Netflix game.
I can't make my brain wrap around how one accesses Netflix games.

Speaker 2 You see the games advertised to you sometimes where you're watching Netflix on television and you can't make that happen.

Speaker 2 And I know that you can access them, but for some reason, I just can't make, like, I don't, I don't know. It seems like a weird ecosystem.

Speaker 1 You just download them from the app store. They have a little, the Netflix logo sort of on the thumbnail.
That's how you know it's a Netflix one.

Speaker 1 And then when you start playing the game, you have to use your Netflix login.

Speaker 2 That's it. It's weird.
It's fucking crazy.

Speaker 1 They have Into the Breach, they have Dead Cells.

Speaker 2 I mean, there's good stuff.

Speaker 2 Why is that?

Speaker 3 Point P, the from the makers of Download.

Speaker 2 What's irritating is that is probably the most like, that's like the least irritating way of doing it, right? Right, yeah. But there is something about it being a Netflix login that my like

Speaker 2 man. And sometimes

Speaker 2 Dabby's Dollhouse.

Speaker 3 I almost want a hub for like that where I could just see all of the Netflix games.

Speaker 2 It makes it easier to conceptualize the benefit if you can like see them all in one place.

Speaker 3 That might be in the app. I've never looked.

Speaker 2 There you go, Ted Sarandos.

Speaker 3 That one's free. Last note, this comes from Noah.
We were talking last week about reusing maps in future games, as in Tears of the Kingdom,

Speaker 3 from Noah. On the subject of games reusing old maps in areas, trying to think of examples of this, and I realized in almost every case that comes to mind, I actually thought it was really cool.

Speaker 3 In Tears of the Kingdom, I was actually really excited to visit each familiar area to see what was different.

Speaker 3 I still have a crystal clear memory of realizing the whole Kanto region was in Pokemon Gold and Silver. Still familiar, but new and different at the same time.
It makes those places feel real

Speaker 3 to come revisit them after time has passed.

Speaker 3 And then Jackonian wrote: Are you older maps? I love the inclusion of the original locations in Zelda 2 and Dragon Quest II.

Speaker 2 Is that?

Speaker 1 Wait, Zelda 2 had the map from Zelda 2?

Speaker 3 I think it does have a few familiar chunks that it's like are analoged to the original game.

Speaker 1 I didn't know that because that game sucks so bad that I've never been able to play.

Speaker 3 There is a remake I've been meaning to play, like a remaster that someone did that made it good, but I have not done that yet. Really? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Okay, honorable mentions.

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 played through a game I think we're going to talk about in two weeks.

Speaker 1 That,

Speaker 1 so I'll sit on that.

Speaker 2 But I also

Speaker 2 have been playing a lot of Star of Providence. What is that, Griff? I saw it pop up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so that is, it's a game that's actually been around for a while. It used to be called Monolith.
It is a top-down roguelike shooter

Speaker 1 where you are this ship and you fly through through this facility

Speaker 1 basically going from screen to screen. Every screen is like its own little self-contained room with enemies and traps and stuff in it.

Speaker 1 But there's also a bunch of different ways to get stronger each run. You find weapons,

Speaker 1 you find, you know, these cartridges that add these modifiers. You can find a skill that adds a bunch of stuff.

Speaker 1 It is very much a game that by the end of a run, like you have probably done some stuff that you have not done before in the kind of binding of Isaac style.

Speaker 1 It is fast and it feels fucking great to play. I liken it to,

Speaker 1 and maybe this is just the aesthetic, but down well, like that kind of like pace of the gameplay,

Speaker 1 if that was sort of converted to a top-down twin stick shooter.

Speaker 1 And then after each run, like you will unlock some new stuff that you can purchase.

Speaker 1 So like weapons that will now start spawning in or skills that will become like available for you to choose when you find like a skill upgrade spot. Um,

Speaker 2 it is,

Speaker 1 it's just, it's just great. It's just really, really, really fun to play.
It's not like the deepest

Speaker 1 roguelike experience that I've ever had, um, but it is

Speaker 1 I don't know. It's fitting, it is scratching an itch for me right now where like I'm not playing other games like this where I can just pick it up and do one like really sweaty

Speaker 1 run for like 15 minutes and then go on to something else.

Speaker 1 And I do like having one of those kind of in the rotation. So it's on Switch, and I've been playing it on Steam Deck, and it works great, and

Speaker 1 just rules.

Speaker 1 It's published by Big Mode, which is

Speaker 2 how I heard about it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I've been playing

Speaker 4 more of that too. Fresh talked about it a little bit on the resties and got into like the whole very weird history of the game and how it came to be.
But I just, I got to note here for public record.

Speaker 4 Fresh on his first time playing it made it three levels deep, and I made it five levels deep on my first run. So I do think we have a new Resident Best Gamer.

Speaker 2 That's good to let me update. I wanted to make sure that you could update the list in the description.

Speaker 3 Sure.

Speaker 4 Hoops, what have you been enjoying?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 installed Linux on a laptop. Jesus.

Speaker 1 Buckle up, Russ and Chris. This was the whole tour.

Speaker 2 This is just a lot.

Speaker 1 This guy's could turn fucking Linux in such a major way. He's got code.

Speaker 3 Sorry, this is the penguin one you're talking about? What? This is the penguin one?

Speaker 4 Yeah, like the one that's tattooed across his neck right now. The penguin.

Speaker 2 That's why I have the black and white symbolizing.

Speaker 2 No, okay.

Speaker 2 It all goes back to good Russ. He broke my brain when he came on the show and he opened my world to the fact that I'm a computer man and I love these.

Speaker 2 I love these digital wonders and I have been interacting with them in a much more meaningful and profound way.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 know it was, you know, I've been messing around and

Speaker 2 a lot of the stuff that you do with a Raspberry Pi,

Speaker 2 it's running on their, the, the OS of Raspberry Pi is sort of built on a distribution of Linux. And so like with the overlap there,

Speaker 2 I was like, I want to know more about this, the, the Linux OS, because I want to understand how to use that. And at some point, I just decided, you know,

Speaker 2 it's been, I've always kind of like appreciated the idea of open source computing

Speaker 2 and open source like software and all that as like a an ideal, but never really did it like resonate with me. And seeing the way things have gone

Speaker 2 technologically in the past, you know, 12 months, 18 months,

Speaker 2 I really, it, it became incumbent on me. I like, I feel like there's a real value in

Speaker 2 understanding computing and not letting it be something that is completely controlled by oligarchs and billionaires.

Speaker 2 And I feel like that has been a concerted effort to make it something that is controlled by people.

Speaker 2 And I think that as somebody who's always been pretty okay with brands, it's always kind of made sense.

Speaker 2 And then when you see how quickly people, companies make a heel turn, uh, it really reminds you that it's good to take this stuff in your own hands.

Speaker 2 So, I've been trying to learn uh, Linux because it's more based on like open source, there's a community of people who you're relying on rather than you know, whoever is running Microsoft or Apple that that week.

Speaker 2 Uh, so it's been really interesting. I got a cheap laptop, the cheapest one I could get, and I found a distribution of so I don't want to go into this very deeply, but anyway, I put Linux on it.

Speaker 2 I don't want to talk about specifics because like 95% of the people will be bored.

Speaker 3 I'm mostly

Speaker 3 curious about what the like

Speaker 3 and what happens at the end. Like, what do you do with the laptop after you've done all this stuff?

Speaker 2 So, what do I do with the laptop? Put it in the garbage. I throw it away.
No, part of it is learning, right? I understand

Speaker 2 a lot better how computers work because I have this computer that I basically like put everything onto it. Sure, yeah.
And because I have to understand all those parts in a micro, like on a very small

Speaker 2 system,

Speaker 2 I feel like I can understand

Speaker 2 on a larger level how it works. So, part of that is the learning process.
The other thing is, this laptop that I made,

Speaker 2 I was using it on the road. I was using it on tour, and it was super stable and runs super fast and what cost $200.

Speaker 1 And it's like it kicks ass.

Speaker 2 And you just like browse the internet and videos and no, no, Russ. No, okay.
So this is the, this is, this was my impression, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I got Slack, got Spotify, I got Reaper.

Speaker 2 There are video editing tools.

Speaker 2 There are analogs, open source analogs to almost every program like available. So part of the end goal is like I am relying on it.
I trying to adapt to a community that is self-sustaining rather than

Speaker 2 be in a system where it is like spoon-fed and all of it is like owned by corporate interests. So I'm trying to transition as much as I can to take control of that back, right? So

Speaker 2 I've been doing it at my house too, trying to get like, I started trying to do some smart home stuff. And then I realized the first time the internet went down and the whole thing sucked.

Speaker 2 And I was like, okay, I'm starting over. So I've been putting like like Zigbee radios

Speaker 2 any anyway, trying to take that out of the cloud, right? To bring it into my house, to put it into my control.

Speaker 2 But anyway, that's what I've been doing lately. Wow.

Speaker 1 That's really cool. I genuinely think it's

Speaker 1 a valuable, even if nothing comes of it, like a valuable sort of.

Speaker 2 Something, what do you mean, nothing comes of it? What do you, what is that? This is what I'm saying, Griffin. You heard what I'm saying? How smart I am? I know everything about computers.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm saying. That's what comes of it.

Speaker 2 So what did you even mean nothing comes of it? You're being a real Russ right now and I don't want and not good Russ. I'll just say I don't want to

Speaker 2 get confused.

Speaker 1 Enough said, we really fucked things up by bringing another Russ on this show.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that was a mistake.

Speaker 3 I've been playing Slay the Spire. I beat it three times with three different characters.
I'm so glad it finally got you.

Speaker 1 I'm really good about it.

Speaker 2 So glad it finally got you, Russ.

Speaker 1 Wait, is this like your first time?

Speaker 3 I mean, I've played Slay the Spire.

Speaker 2 I've played it, but like, I'm getting texted about it now.

Speaker 2 It's working.

Speaker 3 It's working. I don't feel, now that I've won three times, and I know there's more I could be doing,

Speaker 3 I don't necessarily feel a pull to, like, keep doing it.

Speaker 2 Can I ask?

Speaker 2 What did you beat it with?

Speaker 3 I beat it with the first three characters.

Speaker 2 Like, one time with each of the first three.

Speaker 3 I know there's more. I know there's like another act and you have to do special stuff, but like...

Speaker 2 I mean, if you don't feel the pull, I really got to a point with Slay the Spire, so I understand what you're saying. And I think that is like a completely valid.

Speaker 2 if you're saying, like, I feel like I've reached my off-ramp and I've gotten what I'm going to get. I think that's like.

Speaker 2 I just don't, I don't see what the 300 hours, how, how honestly, Russ, for me, it was, and I never feel this way about games, but this, it's so robust that every time I, it was genuinely for the joy of playing it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's genuinely like.

Speaker 2 Every time that I would build a new deck and I would feel that feeling of like, it's just so well balanced at being able to like pull a working, when you can pull like a working model out of something that was not working, like it's really that is the motivation.

Speaker 2 I, it really is not a,

Speaker 2 there's no achievement for me. There's nothing I'm chasing.
It's just, I like playing it.

Speaker 3 And realistically, that's what Binding of Isaac did for me.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, I totally. Yeah, it's a very good game.

Speaker 3 The mobile interface is, I'm playing on a phone. It feels a little cramped and maybe not the best.
I'm sure on an iPad, it would be better and probably even better with a mouse keyboard.

Speaker 3 But from a convenience standpoint, like having it in my pocket and being able to do a hand fucking clutch.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, it's good stuff. They should make a sequel.
They should make like a follow-up to it. I don't know.
That seems ambitious, but.

Speaker 2 What about you, Chris?

Speaker 3 They're making one.

Speaker 4 I mean, yeah, Star of Provence was my big one.

Speaker 4 And then...

Speaker 1 Have you finished it yet? Have you beaten the like, I guess?

Speaker 4 No, the only problem with that game, and it's not even a problem, it's just the runs are long.

Speaker 4 The runs are like 35, 35-45 minutes.

Speaker 3 You can stop at any time, you can put like stop.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it does let you just turn the game off next time you turn it on. It's like, do you want to continue your

Speaker 4 enjoying that? And then

Speaker 4 there's a movie coming out that I just recommend people check out if it happens to be showing in your area called Ephesus.

Speaker 3 Have you heard about this? How do you spell that?

Speaker 4 E-E-P-H-U-S.

Speaker 4 And it is

Speaker 4 a bunch of like older dudes who have been playing a game of baseball forever and ever and ever. This is in like the 1990s, and their

Speaker 4 very small town baseball stadium is about to get demolished so that they can build a local middle school there. And it's basically just a movie about the last game.

Speaker 4 If you said we want to make a geriatric sand lot,

Speaker 4 you would be very close to this.

Speaker 4 Just as charming as that sounds, it is

Speaker 4 truly weird who is in the cast. There's a guy named Frederick Weissman, who is a documentarian who is 95 years old.
He's one of like the most important

Speaker 4 long feature documentarians alive. Just happens to be in this movie about baseball.

Speaker 2 I don't fully know why.

Speaker 4 But yeah, if you like good vibes and just a chill hangout movie, you really can't do much better than this

Speaker 2 i'm looking at a trailer and it looks like a wes anderson movie the way it's shot kind of it's not quite as um tweet composed but it it it definitely has it has that very um delicate vibe do you think if wes anderson had never become a filmmaker the word twee would have fallen into the dustbin if he wasn't too at this point would we have lost to the use of it

Speaker 3 yeah

Speaker 3 uh okay i think we did it well done us Uh, I wanted to thank some patrons over at patreon.com/slash the besties. We have a new episode of Resties.

Speaker 3 As Plant mentioned, we talked more about Star of Providence and kind of went deep on that, as well as a game called Keep Driving, which is very cool.

Speaker 3 Uh, thank you to new uh subscribers: we have Sam, we have Aiden, we have Paul, and we have Rubber Chicken with a Poly in the Middle.

Speaker 3 Thank you for being supporters of the Patreon, we greatly appreciate it. Uh,

Speaker 3 Justin, what are we doing next week? week?

Speaker 2 Well, we're going to kind of do like a

Speaker 2 split, kind of a two-tiered

Speaker 2 thing for friends and

Speaker 2 others. I guess, like, there's a friends version where they're going to be doing split fiction, and then there's like a

Speaker 3 other before you knew.

Speaker 2 I made up slice. There's no slice, Russ.

Speaker 1 Obviously, there's going to be a person named Slice, Russ.

Speaker 2 You go by hoops.

Speaker 2 So, we're going to be doing split fiction and some sort of sad painting movie, maybe. I don't know.
I don't know what I'll do. Do your computer shit.

Speaker 3 You'll be fun.

Speaker 2 Oh, Justin. I love you.
Oh, man. How can I make other friends when you're already my best one, Russ?

Speaker 2 That's going to do it for us on the besties. Make sure to join us again next week on the besties.
Because should the world's best friends make the world's best games?

Speaker 2 Besties.