Metal Gear Solid Delta is Peak Remake

Oh, he's pulling out his acoustic guitar now.

I wrote the cold open for you guys.

Okay, I guess we have to.

We never put this stuff in the show.

Yeah.

You do this every episode, but we usually don't want the

same include my songs, okay?

But I did want to.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you so much.

I will.

Thank you.

Okay?

Thanks.

So I will send a better version to Rachel, too, so in case she wants it for her own files, you know.

Sure.

So, if you're like, the sound quality is not great.

It's more about the sentiment that I really need you guys to hear, okay?

Yeah.

Because emotions,

sometimes you got to communicate them with music because words just don't do it.

You know what I mean?

You want to pull the guitar up to the mic a little bit more?

Well, I don't want to blow it out.

Okay.

How's that?

That's better.

That's beautiful.

Okay, good.

It gives you a nice Bob Dylan hunch, too, which.

Nice.

Cause like this cutscene has been going for a month, and I'd really like to play.

Please, then you come around again and say, Justin, they fixed it and it's really fun to play.

Trust me, if they trim that month on cutscene to a day, I say, I'll try it, I'll load it, it could be a goatee.

Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.

You made me play again this week, but ooh,

ooh, ooh.

This time I'm telling you, I'm telling you, we are never, ever, ever

playing more snake eater.

We are never, ever, ever

playing more snake eater.

You crawl through the grass, look like an ass.

I'll play some wee,

but we are never, ever, ever

playing more snake eater

is beautiful and also not true.

They're definitely going to crank out another one of these on PS6, baby.

And we're going to be back.

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

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

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

My name is France Frostick.

I know the best game of the week.

Hey folks, this is the monster hunter that is really gonna turn you up.

I swear this is the no sorry.

I misread it.

This is the iteration of Metal Gear Solid 3 that you're really gonna get it this time.

Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater.

Chris, what is that?

I feel like I've kind of summed it up, but what is that?

Konami is back.

They said we can't wait for Kajima to come back.

We got to do this on our own this time.

And by do it on our own, they mean just kind of remake it exactly how it was before.

And some of us maybe not into that.

And some of us very into that.

And maybe we'll do a performance of the Snake Eater theme before the end of the show if we're lucky.

Right after this break.

I thought for sure that's the way that was going.

I did too.

Oh boy, this is going to be interesting.

This is going to be real interesting.

So I'm going to start it off.

Please do this.

I take a slight issue with Chris Plant's introduction of the game there because it is not an exact recreation.

I would put the recreation quotient for Metal Gear Solid Delta at 85%.

85% of the game is the same game.

They've changed two significant areas that are immediately obvious.

Area one, the graphics look better.

It's like Unreal Engine.

It's lighting.

It looks pretty.

Area two, the controls are not total fucking batshit, which the original controls, even in subsistence, pretty fucking bat shit.

Now the controls, if you played Metal Gear Solid V, the controls are basically comparable to that.

You can do third-person aiming.

You can crouch walk.

Remarkably, that was never in the original game.

You can do all the things you would expect you could do in a...

modern-ish

stealth game from a control standpoint.

Some smart streamlining, I think, of some of the systems for making those accessible on the fly rather than having to dig through menus quite as much.

Correct.

Yes, just being able to hold the up button and change your camouflage and it shows you, hey, this is the highest percentage camouflage you have.

It really, really, really, really helps make that system that I found so annoying.

It actually made it kind of fun.

Yeah.

So in defense of Chris Plant earlier, this is the same game in that the same cutscenes, the the same level design.

Well, they redid the cutscenes, but the enemies, cinematography, yeah.

You could follow a Game Facts walkthrough from 2007 or whatever, and you will get through it just fine.

Correct.

Yes, yes.

Which is a little unusual compared to what we have started to see from other studios like Capcom with the Resident Evil.

Yeah, I thought about that a bit where I was like,

you know, certainly when it was first

teased, like we first saw that trailer, I'm like, oh, so they're doing a Resident Evil 2 style total remake of this game, and that's pretty exciting.

But the amount of, I can't even imagine the amount of total reframing that this game would require from tip to tail for it to make sense, for it to like still like track as a Metal Gear Solid 3 remake.

Because it is so fucking weird and its own thing.

And I don't know.

It just, I'm not not saying they shouldn't have done that.

I'm just saying.

This is a quibble that's actually separate from the product itself, but does bother me.

I feel like if you're going to, especially if you're going to hew this closely to the source material,

and I know I get the gimmick with Delta and three or whatever, you shouldn't change the name, especially when Kojima is not there, right?

Like,

this is a work.

This has a name.

This is Metal Gear Solid 3.

You know, like, I, to me, I feel like it's an unmooring from history that makes these things easier to like recycle and regurgitate.

So if they don't have numbers, you can just put them back out whenever.

But I really, I feel like it's important to, if you're going to do an update like this, that like it should be called what it is.

And that's a quibble, but like, I think it's kind of weird.

And

sorry, it's a quibble, but it's also

taking issue with the fact that it has Delta in the name.

But it's not called Metal Gear Solid 3.

It should be called Metal Gear Solid 3.

It's Metal Gear Solid 3.

It's like, that is what this game is.

And I feel like it is,

The fact that they took the liberty to change the three

to something else to like update that.

That's fair.

It's that is shitty and market.

Like it's bad for a historical preservation sense, too.

You know what I mean?

Like you're changing the name of something that you didn't like, you didn't redo the work.

You just rebranded it to make it sound cooler or something.

I don't know.

I don't know.

It's annoying.

I think it's an especially acute problem for this game, which has been remade

for

a few different platforms, a few different sort of generations.

And

I'm of two minds about it because while I agree with you, and this is was not something I expected, this was the first version that actually worked for me.

This was the first version of this game that I was able to pound through

past, you know, the first couple hours

and really finally feel like

I get it and I get why people hold this game in the esteem that they do.

And I think part of it is that they did shave off a lot of the rough edges from a control standpoint.

Like just being able to play it and not constantly be like, oh, fuck, wait, which one is the CQC button and which one's just like the quick melee attack button?

And why are those two different buttons?

And like all of that shit has been really, really filed down.

And now it feels very not completely filed down, but it does feel more organic and sort of,

I don't know, easy to remember than it has in past iterations.

Before we go too much further,

it is easier to remember than Metal Gear Solid 3, Beloved 04.

It's Barkel.

I know that we have talked about this game a couple times on the show, but I'm sure there are some people who just literally do not know what Metal Gear Solid 3 is.

Does somebody want to give

the explainer?

May I?

I feel like I could do it.

Do it nice.

I will.

I will.

There's the, in this sequence of Metal Gear Solid, that we think of the canonical Metal Gear Solid games, which Metal Gear Solid on

PlayStation, and then you got Metal Gear Solid 2 on PS2.

And then this was the third Metal Gear Solid game, but chronologically, it's the first.

And it takes place in

the 60s and has more of a, I would say, like

spy Cold War that is a huge influence on this.

And it really feels like more of a

Kojima wanting to do more of like a period piece, but it's still, it is, it is a prequel, but still very much like the themes and the storylines and everything you're learning are

in conversation with

what has happened in, you know, in the future games.

Yeah.

You're learning backstory that you didn't have before.

It's not just like all prequel-y.

I don't know.

And it's worth considering.

Like you're playing as who is effectively the main, if you will, kind of antagonist of the rest of the series.

So you're learning about his origins and like why he became who he became.

What I find just narratively.

There's also the last thing I'll just say mechanically is that there's a big emphasis on

collecting your resources from the environment and scrabbling together things like your own camouflage, your disguises, harvesting food from like the livestock and not livestock, but like the creature, the wildlife.

So that's that's kind of like thematically one of the big differences.

Yeah, I do want to say, narratively speaking, I think

this game is maybe,

no, I'm going to go out and say, definitely the most cogent Metal Gear Solid game by like a good mile.

Because there's like 5% magic in this, but most of it is just like,

you know, Cold War spy shit that doesn't rely on the fact that you know that this person is possessed by the ghost of this person who was a clone of this person who needed to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Because this takes place before all of that, there are references to other characters and even like parentage of other characters, but you don't necessarily need to know them to understand what is going on, which is really a pretty straightforward super weapon Cold War story.

It's really, I was surprised because I had never really played in, you know, past, you know, the beginning of the second act of the game or whatever.

I was surprised at how much the story kind of trucks along.

And I think that I'm in the right context to sort of process that, having played Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2 sort of earlier this year.

And didn't we go back and revisit Metal Gear 4?

I feel like we did

it.

Yeah, for sure.

And there's like the cutscenes are still definitely pretty long sometimes, but there's less bloviating about

just someone talking about their philosophy about gene sequencing for free.

What if you want to save your game, though?

Well, if you do want to save your game, you do need to hear a quick IMDb recap of a classic uh uh bb movie of the era uh but it's like in video games good games yeah yeah sure all games it's good games all games you need that letterbox review i get it uh i think having played this and beaten it probably four times this was my fourth time and i did actually beat it um

so much of that stuff gets alleviated by the fact that like i'm not fucking listening about fucking attack of the 50 foot woman i'm good and you can just skip all that

Just quick round the horn.

What was our sort of skip rate on that old dialogue?

Because we've all seen that a lot.

I bet a lot of us started to get a little pretty jisty about it, huh?

Get kind of jisty.

I bet it does go pretty smooth when you're just fucking parroting the turbo on that circle button, brother.

You can skip the second time they explain things.

So, for example, the first hour of this game.

I really actually love this remake, despite maybe my tone.

The first hour of this game is a series of awesome, just fucking awesome computer animated action sequences.

Like finally a Metal Gear movie.

And then it's like, okay, I'm glad that we gave you the entire story.

Now we're going to show you a motion comic of two world leaders repeating everything that you just saw for another 15 minutes.

And knowing that you can just skip that and be like,

I remember this.

I remember this old trick.

No need for me to watch it.

That is a huge relief.

I think two things about Brevity here.

One, I do think it is briefer than other Metal Gear games.

Ironically, briefer than Metal Gear Solid 4, which will come out right after this, which is, to me, the worst offender.

It finds its pace as it goes along.

But to contradict that, I have a theory about why Kojima games have gotten more and more bearable in terms of story,

which is

Kojima was a natural-born tweeter.

Even before Twitter existed,

he needed to tweet more than any person has ever needed to tweet in their life.

And he would just tweet directly into the game.

You want to know why a character is named West or whatever?

It's because of this movie that I liked.

Just tweets and tweets and tweets.

And now, if you actually follow Kojima on Twitter or Instagram, My dude has the outlet and boy does he take great use of it.

Like just hundreds of stuff all the time.

And there's something cool about that where, yes, you get a random thing about the great escape, but it is

it can wear out its welcome sometimes.

So you think just because he has a vent, a steam vent to let him get out these like nonsense ideas, he doesn't put them in the game.

I think he still puts some in the game, but he doesn't have to

have one of them.

It

weeds out the boring thoughts.

Yeah.

And Kevin

Sorry.

Go ahead.

Sorry, Gervin, go ahead.

It weeds out the thoughts that would be boring to see in a video game and leaves in the rad thoughts like, what if all the enemies had superpowers and when you defeated them, they shouted their own name like Pokemon.

While exploding.

While exploding.

It's fucking great.

Like, it really, really, really is.

I feel like it was the shit I enjoyed about Death Stranding 2 when it got like super duper weird.

And this game, I don't know, the ratio of boring exposition to like

wild and silly shit happening is, I is, I don't know, a lot better than I remember it being.

And I think that's only because like I was able to engage with the game more

because I found it so so much

more enjoyable to play because of some of the some of the mechanical change.

It's still not like my favorite game ever, but this genuinely, I'm really glad for this remake because it, i know so many people who hold this game in such high regard and i've always been bored to death by it and i i feel like after there is a certain amount of pushing through you do have to do and it is easier to push through in this this version of it and get to the stuff that makes you see like okay i get why this was a classic of the ps2 era and and is still loved by so many people today i have one other theory about that about why maybe this game benefits from a revisit not just because of the remake which is the game has a lot of mechanical doodads you can do some really silly ass stuff like throw uh

sleeping snakes over at enemies or porno mags to distract them it does not take a lot of time to explain any of the things you can do with its systems it barely even explains some of its core systems you know what's crazy though is that it does have a tips system that when you start playing you like tell it like here's how much mgs i played here's my favorite one you can choose like how often you want tips to appear and if you like die in a boss fight when you start it again the tip will appear like hey press start and you can see a tip of this fight and i would like not look at those and then i would check my tip screen later and it would have like here's five pages on things you can do to beat the fear and i was having the same same problem as you griffin except i would press r1 to look at it kept saying like press r1 to look at the tips and i didn't want to press r1 because i'm 44 my wife could walk in at any moment no i'm sorry so i didn't want to press the r1 to look

that's the r1 is the horny button you could press during cutscene sometimes what did you say to look at base to look at with a p with a p I'm talking about Jerry K.

I'm so sorry okay and installing Griffin I'm so sorry I misheard you I was trying to go with it, but yeah, I did think that was weird that that was still in there, how you could press

when you seems like if you could get in there and change around all the polygons, you could probably take out the one, press R1.

I know you had to remaster the image of the press R1 to look at this person's boobs button.

It's adorable.

I know you had to make a new R1.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But sometimes when you press R1, sometimes when you press R1, sometimes when you press R1 in a cutscene, it does make you check out a babe.

Sometimes when you press it, it gives you the password to escape the prison that you need later.

So it's like

I've been so good.

I've been so good.

There's a song at the beginning that did set a bit of a tone.

I've been so good.

One last thing.

Just one last

mild correction to

saying, yes, you can press one.

There is the horny button.

There is two styles to the game.

Legacy style that's really true to the original.

New style, which makes some changes, including all of the like corny bikini babe posters that were in the game.

When you switch to new style, are pictures from that same woman's family in the real world from like now?

So it's like her with her like kid wearing a cute little bunny outfit, just like a high school photo.

Yep.

Of the person that was in the bikini picture initially?

Yeah, so now it's like fast forward 21 years and it's them with their family.

So there's like a serial killer button you can activate like a detective fishing?

That's no better.

No,

that's clearly so much worse.

Wait, wait, wait.

Look at who's here's here's here's a photo from it.

I just dropped it in our Slack.

I guess that's not too bad.

That's the lady with a baby wearing bunny costume.

It's a freaking cute.

Yeah, it's really cute.

It's cute.

Okay.

Okay.

Now, Hoops, please, go ahead.

So, right.

So, like,

I actually don't have that big of a problem with this thing because I think the, from a preservation standpoint, I think it's great because I think that this is really, really what you want in a sense, because it is like we've, we've taken off a little bit of the rough edges, but like everything else that made this video game, this video game,

it's here.

Like you could get the experience.

And I think personally, that's really cool.

I think that from a preservation standpoint, making it so that people can have these experiences and like make them easier for people to have more accessible, but like you still get as close to the initial, that's great.

Charging $70

for that is not preservation because you have made such a huge wall to accessing that, right?

You are preying on people to get more cash out of them, like because you know you can and it's been enough years, but like you're not,

this is not preserving this work.

It's a like you're just a pachinko company, my dude.

This is what they've been doing for 30 years.

No, you're right.

I'm agreeing with you.

They're right.

It's just funny because it's Konami and they make their money off pachinko.

If you're going to preserve it and say this is released as is then frigging do that and charge a fair amount for that but you didn't make a new video game you're pro you're you didn't even get new voice actors man you're just profiting off the same work of the same people that you know what i mean it's like you didn't make a new thing and you're charging people for a new thing i think that sucks i would also be fine with if they wanted to make a game where it was like a real overhaul and it and it you know it wanted to re-envision this thing i don't think that would be good probably it seems like it'd be really, really weird.

It's just for me, it is a compliment in a sense that I still am bouncing off of this thing because the stuff that is in there is very representative of this initial experience when it came out.

Like, it does not do enough for me to make it like, oh, I'm having fun now, but like, I'm glad it exists.

I just wish it was like.

they made it fair to, I feel like Konami, it's, they're one of the worst offenders because they are profiting off of just withholding access to this stuff.

And I think that that sucks.

I think what is tricky about this game and any video games now that they cost so much money to make is they have to be so many things at once.

And that's like, yeah, I agree.

Like, part of this is like acting like it's preservation, which I imagine for them was very low, very, very low on the to-do list.

I think a huge part of it for them was we want to ramp up Metal Gear games again, and we eventually want to make our new ones, and we want to do like what 343 did with Halo, which is we train ourselves by remaking the originals.

I think why it's called Metal Gear Solid Delta, back to your original point hoops, is because they're going to release these in a different order, they don't want to do 3, 1, 2, or whatever they're going to do.

They want to change the name.

Then they also want it to be a thing that makes them a lot of money.

So then it's maybe released as if it's a quadruple A game or whatever they want to do.

It's just

when games become this expensive,

the messiness of what the thing is is so tough.

And that makes it hard for us because, oops, I think what you're getting at here, and I think what you get at every episode very well is like our job is to review a thing for whatever it intended to be.

And it's hard when a thing intends to be

everything.

You know, it intends to be so many different things, many of which are inherently conflicting.

I mean, I don't...

This to me feels like a pretty focused project.

Like, it does not feel like this got scope creeped to the point where there's that much more in this.

Yeah, I don't mean

it needs to be everything.

I don't mean scope creep.

I mean, like, existentially, what were you trying to do with the game?

Are you trying to ramp, get a team, train

gear?

Are you trying to preserve it?

Are you trying to, you know, reintroduce a lot of previous

old players to the game?

Are you trying to introduce a bunch of new new players to it?

It's having to do a lot of different things all at the same time.

I think it's part of what soured me on this, and I know that this is not like

this will not be everyone's experience, obviously, but I was looking into like PS2

emulation this week and looking at how there are people in communities that will like work on, they've basically worked on HD texture packs that for specific games, the big ones, because this is a a real labor of love.

They will go in and like remake textures, like remake all the textures in the game and you download the pack and then you're playing this game with like newly handcrafted textures that fans have like gone in and like recreated right.

And that is work that people are like doing because they love the games and they are like they want to preserve them and they want to update the experiences and they want to like, they're doing it for all these great reasons.

And like this kind of work, the things that they're like added to this game or whatever like that there are people that care about this stuff that are doing it for free because they love it and

and those people are the ones that are getting prosecuted by companies like kononomy because they want to be able to keep profiting off of the work somebody did 20 years ago uh rather than keep gatekeeping this product that they own rather than you know actually preserving these works and i think that like to not call it what it is is is not really

fair play because they are asking $70

for something that is a new coat of paint, pretty much.

Check.

It's kind of crappy.

I think that's a little bit dismissive because I do agree that

it is not the boldest remaster, but I do think that a considerable amount of work goes into changing the complete perspective through which all of the gameplay kind of takes place, right?

It is not a

just saying it is a visual overhaul is

also not accurate.

Griffin, given the fact that this is the first time that you've sort of latched onto this,

what was the turning point for you?

Was it literally like the first two minutes and you're like, oh, I can actually walk around and see what I'm doing?

Or was it more gradual than that?

You know, I think it was

getting to the like second Revolver Ocelot boss fight.

The duel on either sides of the cave.

The ravine cave.

And

seeing this man

who is just the biggest dork ever summon his troops to his side by putting his paws up next to his face and going,

it like really clicked in my head of like, oh, this is like a stupid, like, this is a stupid thing that has happened.

I think I was trying to take this game really seriously every time that I've played it in the past.

And because of that, I

don't know.

My perspective was like, well, if I'm supposed to be taking this pretty seriously, I'm actually pretty bored.

I'm just bored.

It is slow.

And a lot of these systems, while they were innovative at the time, aren't that exciting now.

But then when you start to treat it as like...

Hideo Kojima's magical mystery tour of like silly bullshit, which is very much how I engaged with Death Stranding too.

And I enjoyed it that way as well.

Like, I don't know.

I feel like trying to, treating it that way

kind of made me more curious to see what was going to happen next rather than sort of dreading the next like extended gameplay sequence where I was just going to be slowly crawling on my gut from point A to point B and hoping nobody like turned a corner.

Yeah, this was, I think, the first time where like humor was injected into the whole thing.

Like previously, it was like, oh, that guy's pissing.

Why don't you like punch him in the back of the head?

Like that was the extent of the humor.

And here it really feels, and this, I think, this is the beginning of Kojima having a lot of fun with later games you'd see like, oh, I'm going to use a Fulton balloon to like launch a sheep into the air, or even Death Straining 1 and 2 have like a ton of these.

Like, I'm not taking this seriously, and it makes the whole thing more tolerable.

I even think the humor in this, because the systems are pretty flexible, there's humor in just the gameplay of it.

Like, I was doing a non-lethal run and I tranquilized a spider and picked it up and threw it at a guard.

Yeah, full Kevin McAllister bullshit.

It's yeah, yeah, it's it's it's the guard died.

The guard like got poisoned and fell off a cliff, but I still didn't get it.

It doesn't count as a human kill.

I do appreciate what this game calls human kills or not, because that is important to the plot of the game later.

I tranquilized a couple dudes just standing on bridges and watched them fall either to their death by crushing crushing or drowning, but then I check the stats screen and it's like, don't worry, dude, you're cool.

Yeah, I wonder how much of the humor in these games, because now I want to go back and play more of Metal Gear 1 and 2.

If it's there and I just wasn't ready for it, these games were released in such a weird time in the early 2000s.

Like, peak are video games art, you know, for 2004 whenever this came out, 2003.

And I think that there was a desire to see games as serious.

And the things that people focused on about this game were the serious bits, was the ending.

You know, it was not

as much

here is somebody who can spin their revolvers so fast that they can fend off thousands of hornets by actually fighting a hornet's nest.

Like, that shit, I think, is...

silly and also just looks badass and fun in ultra ultra high definition.

I think there's a lot of humor in this game that like works for me.

And I think it makes it more tolerable that it's overly serious.

And the contrast with the goofy bullshit makes it work.

Because if you, if the whole thing is like 90% serious and then occasionally there's something wacky, this feels closer to almost 50-50 of like wacky shit versus not.

Even just eating random shit off the floor is funny.

Like that's a, you know, the fact that there's high-definition models of him picking up a snake and just taking, or a big fucking arowana fish, just eating it like fucking Fred Flintstone style.

Y'all, we have talked a lot about Metal Gear, and maybe we'll talk about it more another time, but because that's kind of what we do on this show.

Other stuff I want to make sure we have time for.

I want to hear more about this sweet, sweet new Kirby DLC from Fresh.

We got a bunch of stuff in the mailbag.

Cool if we take a break?

Please.

Let's do it.

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Okay, so Kirby and the Forgotten World?

What was the original?

The Forgotten Land, Starcrossed World.

I don't see what's so hard about it.

Can we do it again?

We were professionals.

I kind of knew.

do it again.

I think I need to.

Well, I basically nailed it.

I'm pretty close.

So that game came out a few years ago.

It was fucking great.

We all loved it.

It's an amazing co-op game.

It's an amazing core game.

I had a blast fucking playing it.

There was a problem, though.

It was running on the original Switch, and the best it could do was 30 frames a second, and that could be better.

So Nintendo has gone ahead and released an upgrade pack for the Switch 2 that allows you to play the original game in 60 FPS.

It also adds a new chapter, if you will, expansion pack, if you will, a little side story.

It's called

Kirby's New Nightmare.

It's a new twisted spin.

And so that is in the game as well.

I played a couple hours of this, the first few levels,

and it's a delight.

First of all, my son has been obsessed with playing this game, but having to play it at 30 FPS knowing that a 60 FPS update was coming has been true torture.

So I can finally actually experience it as it was meant and it's glorious.

It's very

looks great, feels great, it's a big improvement.

The actual like level content

are kind of like remixed levels that were in the original game areas that were in the original game, but they've added like new paths through them because you're using these like bicycle meteors, whatever the fuck.

I don't think it's a life-changing update,

but if you love the original Kirby and you want, it's like five-ish hours to play through the campaign, probably seven if you're collecting everything, it's certainly a nice improvement.

For me, the like huge draw was that just playing it at 60 FPS is like a really nice upgrade.

But honestly, like I've been, I think their level design chops are like through the roof great and they continue to be really great.

They do a great job hiding secrets in the

world in like a really neat way.

They added a few Kirby new transformations so you can like be a new mouthful.

Mouthfuls.

You're like a spring at one point.

You're a cog at one point.

And all that stuff is like just transforming the way you interact with the world in fun, interesting ways in the same way that like Astrobot had very similar approach to like different power-ups or upgrades.

Do you think Kirby's a cog these days?

I'm telling you.

Part of of the machine.

I've

been a bit underwhelmed by this DLC.

I do think it looks great and plays great, but

Henry and I like 100%ed this thing, like have played the ever-living shit out of it.

And

it adds like a dozen levels that are sort of remixes of some of the original levels.

But there's not a lot of carrots to pursue as far as I am concerned.

Like there's no new,

you know, copy abilities or anything like that to find in the original.

You were finding like blueprints and you could do these extra challenges to upgrade them.

And I think that that stuff made

the campaign like really propulsive and really exciting to go through.

And

while

the new levels are great and they're fun to play through, it has not gotten its hooks in us in you know, nearly the way that I was sort of expecting.

It does seem like they're

relying on the

Goshapon like collection token capsule toys as like the way to pull you through.

That doesn't do anything for me.

My son, for whatever reason, fucking loves it, and that's like the driving factor for it.

It's all that matters, right?

But I do agree.

It needed a little bit more of a meta component to make it a little more compelling.

But I think just as a game, it still fucking got it.

Like, I think there's elements in here that feel really really good i just wanted to clarify for my because this is a an upgrade you buy it as like a an add-on or you buy it and you're buying so it's a twenty dollar upgrade for if you own the switch one version uh to get the switch two version and the star-crossed world

uh dlc stuff yeah how do you guys feel about this like i this is the sec i i have not done any of the like

up upgrade things that the nintendo has done i didn't check out the zelda thing yeah either either.

Well, the Zelda thing was, if memory serves, if you had a Nintendo Switch Online membership, it was Gratisse.

And I don't think that that is true for this one, for whatever reason.

I think if this had been available day one of the Switch 2 launch,

maybe it would be sort of a different story.

This is truly a

for me, a mismatch of expectation versus what we got.

And this has been like the

killer app, like big thing that we have been really excited for in this household.

And it's just, it hasn't been, uh, it has not set this house on fire in the way that the original Kirby and the Forgotten Land did.

And that's, that's genuinely, like, pretty, uh, pretty disappointing.

I worry that Nintendo is going to go too, if Nintendo goes too hard on these, like, sort of like semi

remakes between their, like, platform generations, they're already pretty iterative.

I worry that their release schedule is going to get even more predictable.

Like, each generation, not only will have its Kirby game, but it's going to have its like remake of the last generations, you know, everything from the last generation getting an update.

Cause I feel like Nintendo's big struggle is always to fill out their release calendar in a way that feels compelling.

And I will be interested to see if they start padding with a lot of these sorts of like half half measure releases.

I think this is a reflection of the challenge every developer is going to face now that you can carry your games over between generation and between hardware, where in the past it was, you know, we'll just resell you Super Mario Bros.

2 every new time that you get a piece of an upgrade and you'll buy it because you love that game.

I mean, Final Fantasy was, you know, the definition of this strategy.

And now that they know, hey, you already have it.

It's going to follow you over.

What we're going to do is we're going to just create a little bit of incentive to incentive to get you to pay that 20 bucks extra.

So we're not just reselling you Final Fantasy VII or Metal or Super Mario Bros.

2.

We're also selling you

these blank extra levels plus the hardware upgrade that maybe you should expect just to happen and maybe you shouldn't.

I think that is

worth it.

It does happen in certain titles.

I think it's really the inconsistency that's confusing here.

Yeah.

What is it?

The Lynx Awakening remake now runs great on Switch 2, and that was a free update to support the.

Yeah, Pokemon, the last Pokemon games, they run much better.

Animal Crossing as well runs much better, but faster load times.

So, yeah, they're trying to make this delineation of like, I'm also going to give you this content, and that's the stuff we're going to charge for.

But again, there's that weird middle ground with Zelda where it was like, well, mostly just an FPS increase, but there was also that weird app integration nonsense.

So I agree, it's messy.

It's like a messy situation right now.

And I also agree at, you know, that's, I wish it was more substantive at,

you know, what they're charging for this expansion pack.

I thought it was fun, but not, I agree.

It didn't fully transform the experience of playing Kirby as much as just like, I just liked playing it at 60 FPS.

Just give me something to chase.

It's also an issue with like, we played the shit out of it.

Yeah.

Like, if we, I think if Henry and I had not gone as hard, because it's one of his favorite games ever, if we had not gone as hard really playing it as much as we had,

then, you know, the lack of incentive kind of like baked into the content itself wouldn't be as big of an issue but some of it is just you also have all the upgrades so you're just like a fucking god king walking really really up with a giant fucking sword just demolishing everything and i kind of wish that they like

you know just like started you from scratch when you were in this area or something just just to like give you a little bit more of a power curve experience yeah

uh we got any mail we do

uh point you want to read some mail yes i would love to uh This one is from Wizzle.

I want to take this opportunity to shout out Stray Children.

It's a spiritual successor to Moon, developed by Onion Games.

I'm so glad it was a game.

Sheesh, man, I'm so glad that was a game.

Holler Street Children.

Kids out there.

Shout out kids.

Like

the Baker Street Irregulars, like the Lost Boys.

Boxcar Children.

Kids from Newsies, just like any stray kids.

Fagan's kids, like all stray kids.

Shout out, man.

Thank you for keeping the street.

Like, keep it the streets.

Moon, developed by Onion Games, came out for the Switch in Japan last December.

They've announced that it's coming out in English later this year, along with the Steam release.

I just can't wait.

Oh, and Moon is also available on modern platforms for anyone interested.

It shares some mechanics with Chibi Robo and is very similar in tone.

P.S.

The subtitle for Okairi Chibi Robo means happy, rich Osoji.

Osoji is basically the Japanese equivalent to spring cleaning, a common custom at the end of the year.

Big, big cleaning project.

Perfect for chibi robo.

Love it.

Love it.

Thank you for the clarification.

This one is for Justin from Frank.

Justin, as a bike pervert, I would love nothing more than hear about your journey getting into biking.

Yeah, so I don't know.

I live on a hill and I miss riding a bike, but realistically, if I rode a bike down my hill, I would have to get a new house away.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or yeah, I'd have to get a new place to live because I wouldn't have a car to get back up the hill.

So I would have to move every time.

So I found the sort of like the lowest barrier e-bike that I could so I could like ride it like normal.

But then when it came time to come back up the hill, that I could have a little extra juice in the tank.

And so that's what I did.

Did you find the process of picking your e-bike challenging at all uh yes i regretted the one i got as soon as i got it um

i went with like a mountain bike type deal which i don't know why i definitely was not gonna do i was definitely not gonna leap from 20 years no biking to shredding the trails behind the huntington museum of art like i don't know why i thought that was necessary because it's quite heavy too the other thing i will say is that i cannot lift my bike by myself very well oh for sure.

So I have to get a little bit of help.

Can you lift it off the ground?

Like if it was on its side?

I can lift it off the ground.

I can't lift it into my car.

Sure.

That is an issue.

So,

yeah.

So, yeah, I don't know.

It's been nice to have an excuse to get out and ride around.

Simple joys, what have you.

Do they explode?

Mine hasn't.

I hear they explode.

No.

Makes me anything can explode.

I mean, I...

I'm sometimes it goes so fast that it leaves like fire behind it, like impacts the future

because I'm going so hard.

I'm riding so hard.

Yeah.

When I bought my e-bike, I did it from a shop around the corner from me, and they were really cool.

They were really chill.

And they helped me pick out a good one.

I got the turn HSD.

Beautiful, beautiful bike.

Love, you know, trucking around with my kids, taking them to school, doing errands, all that.

And I bought it.

I was like, yeah, this will be great because this place is right around the corner from my house.

If I need any upkeep or help or anything, they'll be right there.

And they shut down two and a half weeks later.

And now, now.

was it like one of those monkey paw stands where they saw you something and then you went back and it was just like yeah, it was a load-bearing e-bike.

It was a

load-bearing commuter vehicle.

We have one more letter.

This one comes from definitely Shrek.

It's awesome to hear Juice talk about 3D printing.

I've been working in the industry for a number of years.

Customer care and helping others make things is a hallmark of the industry.

There's a lot of crossover between gaming and 3D printing.

In fact, y'all taught me about anti-aliasing before the industry did.

I didn't occur to me.

When Shrek wrote this, it didn't occur to me that anti-aliasing was obviously an issue in 3D printing, but it's just like a resolution thing, effectively.

It's just a physical object, right?

It's a really interesting, it's funny because I was talking about like overlap, right?

This is something that just finished.

You guys obviously can see it, but it's a 3D print handle for this Amernik 35XX Plus, but you can see the lines of filament.

And that's a really interesting way of like understanding resolution too, because I could print this finer and it would take longer and it would look smoother, but it would be at a cost of like more filament.

It would slow the whole process down, which is like a pretty good analogy, I would think, for like computer graphics as I understand my limited understanding.

Yeah, higher resolution, it causes more performance chug and things like that.

No, it's it's super interesting.

Uh, anyone playing any other video games?

I went ahead and finished Hollow Knight.

That's crazy.

Wow.

I had the temptation to do that, and then I had a voice in my head that said, that's crazy.

Don't burn yourself out right before Silk Song comes out.

What do you mean by finish?

I didn't do 100%.

I just wanted to get to an ending.

So I think it ended up being like 80%.

You finished it before.

You've yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean it.

And I went ham.

When it first came out on Switch, I went totally nuts ham.

This was more of a like, I want to remember the characters and the narrative and the whatever, just so I like, I'm not coming into silk song fresh the crazy thing about hollow night is it

still

slaps in comparison to the competition in ways that just blow me away it is just like there's been a ton of indie metrovanias that come out since hollow night and there's been some really great ones like blasphemous 2 and uh ender magnolia fantastic ones nothing comes close to holding a candle to what Hollow Knight did just from an art and gameplay and overall package standpoint.

It's really an astonishing thing, and I've remained incredibly dark on what is going on with Silk Song, which comes out this week.

Obviously, we are recording before it's actually out.

So I just wanted, yeah, I wanted to jump in with a little bit of background and

better understand

our gal Hornet.

Yeah, I'm real fucking excited.

And

it's one that I've been scared I'm going to somehow ruin for myself.

Here's the trick.

It's really easy to not ruin it for yourself.

Just don't watch any trailers.

Don't talk to anybody.

And the second you see anything about Silk Song, turn away.

I've been doing it for many, many years.

And fight the urge.

There's going to be a moment when you're playing through Silk Song where it's like, I'm stuck.

I don't know where to go.

Fight the urge.

Just wander around.

Have a good time with the world.

Absorb it.

If I may.

Fucking look it up.

Or don't.

Or don't.

But that's how it is.

Be a nasty dog.

Yeah.

It's not one go-round.

Don't take time management tips from us, guys.

That is true.

It was a delight.

I used guides a little bit for this run of Hollow Knight just because I wanted to get it done before Silk Song came out.

But I had already beaten it.

So it's fine.

It was mostly just me fighting my memory.

Great game.

No, that is a very rewarding.

You know, it's always hard.

I feel like if a game is really well constructed,

I usually agree with you, Russ.

And I think Hollow Knight is that.

I really do.

Like, I would think that for like Animal Well, because the understanding that you're building, you really are cheating cheating yourself.

And I would say that about Silk Song too.

It's just kind of teasing.

Yeah, I agree.

I wanted to tell you guys about something that I thought was kind of neat called Kazeta.

Have you guys heard of Kazeta?

No.

No.

That is a check word for, I'm going to send you a link here in the best teacher.

It's a check word for cartridge.

And it is a new Linux-based operating system that came out this week.

A new operating system, if you can imagine.

And with these little indie operating systems, this person made one called Chimera OS.

It's very popular.

With these indie operating systems, they, you know, you can flash them to a mini PC, but what a lot of people do is they will put the whole thing on like a USB drive.

So you can like run it off a thumb drive and you can pop it into whatever.

And whatever you plug it into, it'll work.

But Kazeta is a really cool one that just came out recently.

And the whole gimmick with it is that you store,

it plays DRM-free games that you store each game individually on an SD card.

And you can make your own little label for it but it's one SD card per game and when you put the SD card in the game starts

that's insane that's crazy so the idea is that people will make their own cartridges because you can make your own cartridges and you could like distribute these collect and share with people you could release in this format if you wanted to physically release this way you can also use usb drives but the metaphor is a little bit uh different but it probably means cassette image to guess is that what that word means?

It does.

It's a Czech word for cassette, which you can have as much fun.

I know, for example, that there are,

as I have tried to get my kids into

games, it is sometimes easier for me to show them a cartridge like on the DS or the 3DS and say, this is this game, put it in and you play it, versus handing them, you know,

10,000 old games that they can like scroll through endlessly and get lost so from like a collection standpoint and like just a fun like the fun of doing it um it it

i i think it's a it's a really fun fun little thing easy to set up pretty slick it's it's got some rough edges it's just getting started but that's kind of the fun with these like open source things is that they continue to like grow and get better and i don't know uh i finished playing final fantasy 5 advance on the ionio pocket ace which i had never finished before it's a weird installment in the series.

It has probably the best fleshed-out job system of any of the Final Fantasy games.

Like, you can make any of the characters be any jobs, or you can mix and match the different abilities, which is like mechanically very fun.

Is this a translation?

Is this a sequel to the original Final Fantasy Tactics?

Final Fantasy V Advance.

Oh, five Advanced.

Sorry.

Yeah, no.

There was Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and then...

A2 for the DS, which is also pretty great.

Five Advance is weird from a narrative standpoint, especially in this translation.

This translation is apparently famous for being like really fucking weird and full of weird pop culture references that were definitely not the original

script of the game.

Like to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles.

And like they gave one of the characters like an insane old prospector accent for no reason.

Like there's a character who just says things like, what in Tarnation?

Like

at the drop.

Someone's got to say that.

No, they really don't.

And it's weird and out of step with the rest of the game.

So, uh, but but I don't know.

I, it was like one of the only Final Fantasy games I had not finished, so I had a good time with it.

I also went to a movie theater and I saw weapons.

That shit slaps.

That shit's really, really good.

I won't say a ton.

Yeah, no, I've been told to not have it

discussed in front of me, but I hear it's pretty good.

Sorry, I forgot to mention I've been playing

when we were doing signings last week during the lulz, the very infrequent luls.

Yeah, well, I played a lot of Who Wants to be a Millionaire third edition on the PlayStation.

It is a really good

thing.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

It's really, really good.

The load times are atrocious, and you barely see any Regis Philbin, and the questions are outdated.

Did you play with the texture pack or no?

No.

Did you download the Regis Philbin texture pack or what was the deal there?

I can tell the day you're going to die.

That's that sucks.

He's so HD that it's like that one is an HD AI pack for Regis, where he's like, he's alive.

And he's like, I'm trapped in here.

What am I?

Don't turn it off, Justin.

But Weapons is really great.

I won't talk about it because I noticed it's sensitive about that stuff.

I want to watch it.

My wife won't watch it.

So I'm waiting for it to go on streaming and then I'll watch it.

It's very exciting to see

Zach Kreger sort of like like do this thing a second time.

With the second sort of like fucking slam dunk hit in this really, really weird fashion, it really,

it establishes him in a way that is,

I don't know, I'm not like a movie buff or anything like that, but even for me, like it is exciting.

Would you recommend I watch one first?

One of them first?

No, I don't think so.

I think they work well in concert with each other, but it is not a I don't think that necessarily one builds on on the other.

I think weapons sort of does the thing barbarian does a little bit more experimentally, but it I don't think there's like this is p.t.

Anderson going from boogeynights to magnolia is what my dude's doing here.

Also, I would recommend you watch some whitest kids you know before you see this movie.

Sure, yeah, I guess if you want to complete the whole thing, I actually think it sets the vibe.

I think that I think it is a good thing to watch.

Um, very quickly for me, Demon School.

We were going to talk about that recently, but we can't.

It was delayed, right?

It was delayed because of

the song.

So I just want to shout it out.

I can't give a review, but what I can say is it's coming out on November 19th.

I am digging into it, and you don't want to lose track of this game.

I think a lot of people who like our show, who also like Persona and tactics games, I think they want to keep an eye on this.

So I know that we will be talking about it more when it does come out.

But yeah, I'm bummed it got delayed.

And I am excited to talk about it more when we have that opportunity.

Thanks, Team Cherry.

Yeah.

I mean, we don't really need to talk about what we're doing next week, right?

Because

it will be Silk Song.

For people, but it will be Silk Song.

That's right.

We are doing Hollow Knight Silk Song,

a video game, which is actually coming out.

I'm not going to give it to you creeps early.

We are not getting it early.

It would be tomorrow.

We're not getting any code.

They're doing

everyone's equal in Team Cherry's eyes.

So

that's beautiful, Team Cherry.

We're going to be playing it alongside y'all, and I'm very excited about that.

So stay tuned.

Also, if you are a Patreon subscriber, you have so much good stuff right now.

You have our Bestie's Battle Bracket, which we just did, which was awesome.

And it's about the best games to play on the toilet, in the bathroom.

and we also have an episode coming up on shinobi the art of vengeance which just ridiculous how many good ninja video games there are in the world right now yes i also wanted to thank some people that are uh patrons over at patreon.com slash the besties we have sorin we have alex we have danielle and we have discount dracula thank you for being patrons of the besties you mean a lot to us uh we have a big announcement happening next week i'm not going to talk about it right now but it's exciting and so stay tuned.

In addition to the Silk Song, we're going to toss in some big news on the Patreon front.

So stay tuned for that.

You can end the show now, Justin.

No, it just sounds...

What is it?

I'm looking forward to it.

You should be excited.

Are you playing Wants to Beg a Millionaire right now?

Is Regis with you?

Is Regis in the room right now?

Is Regis with us?

That is going to do it for us this week on The Besties.

Be sure to join us again next time for The Besties.

Because shouldn't the world's best friend pick the world's best games?

Besties.