Silent Hill and the Heir to Castle Crashers' Crown

I would consider myself an egg expert.

We've gone over this quite a number of times, and I've spent so much fucking time on one specific topic, and I don't have the answer for it.

Okay.

I have compared extra large eggs to large eggs in the supermarket repeatedly.

Yeah.

And they look the fucking same to me.

Okay.

If I'm fake.

You're mistaken

the cover of the book for what's inside.

Exactly.

Because on those extra large eggs the yolk is like

big fat yolk it's like almost all yolk and it's when you crack thick hard hard yeah and it's dimpled in that way that you look and if you get the extra extra large they kind of like quack at you like

well no that's that's fucked up if you're if you're going to a grocery store that is selling you that Chris, you need to report them to the food.

I don't go to a grocery store to buy eggs.

I go to the eggman.

There's no, it's why?

Okay.

Well, no, because now, hold on, there's like three layers to this thing now because first I want to hear about who the egg man is other than dr.

Robotnik that you're going to and giving you know it Okay, okay

Can I just take it at fake?

Can we maybe just not talk about a bunch of stupid shit?

Take the question

at face value cuz Russ is right.

Like there's two reasons you buy eggs.

Okay

recipe Yeah.

Breakfast.

That's it, right?

You either get it for a recipe, you get it for a breakfast.

principal prank principal halloween prank that's okay i'll grant i'll grant you prank prank third reason to buy egg prank yeah in none of those scenarios even in baking and cooking it doesn't very it very rarely will say don't get large eggs right get extra large eggs if you ask someone how if they want eggs for breakfast you would not say would you like a large egg or an extra large egg it's insane right so like why do you even need to make the distinction when you're shopping between the two yeah well we're talking about the declaration of power right you know yeah oh i'm i'm the sort of person you can get extra large eggs when you're you know milk you for a few more cents i think that's right that's what they do

like a few more dollars in this economy

with eggs yeah especially yeah topic

so they shop in bitcoin no one has any answer to my question it's

it's a weight thing they are oh it's weight by weight by By weight, it's by weight.

So, a denser egg will be an extra large egg?

Yeah, it's like they should go by density, not how though is the chicken inside of it.

That dumb shit we said about yolks may have been right.

It's not a volume thing, it's a density thing.

Yeah, yeah, the albumin can be more tightly sort of packed, less porous.

Yeah, fuck, my world has changed.

Yeah, man, you're about to go on a whole new layer of your egg sandwich every single morning.

Still can't believe that's good for you Journey.

And now you'll be able to tell the difference by eating them.

Can I launch a new tier of the Patreon just so I can have ostrich eggs every morning?

Tier of the Patreon, because if so, no.

No, I don't know.

Just so I can have ostrich eggs every morning.

That is my number one goal because I've seen them.

And man, that is an ambition I want to crush.

Oh, dude, climb.

That's the last mountain for you, huh?

The last tower.

Oh, sorry, Stephanie's dropping off my breakfast.

God, you've got to stop going to that guy, Chris.

It's not good for your soul.

My name is Justin McElroy, another best game of the week.

My name is Griffin McRowe, another best game of the week.

My name is Chris Plant, and Justin's going to act like I'm not going to ask what the glowing-ass controller like is.

I got it moving around.

This is part of my decor.

It's my part of my decor.

I can learn

it.

I found it at the Peddler's Mall for five bucks, dude.

Fuck yeah, dude.

That's it.

All right.

Yeah, go ahead.

I've been trying to get it to...

I guess if I placed it right here, I could get it to read on camera, but I just don't want the glare.

Okay, well, now you need to take another photo and put it in the news.

Sorry, who are you?

You haven't said that.

My name is Russ Fresh.

I know the best game of the week.

And anything visual, we need to put in the newsletter.

That's the rule.

We had so many fucking comments about the bug last week.

We'll get to them in the reader mail section.

But anything visual needs to go in the newsletter, so you need to take a photo of your

other sign that I got then.

Can I get the other sign?

Just go ahead and do some.

Talk about.

Sorry, Justin.

Okay, so this week, we know we said we were going to talk about Silent Hill F.

We are going to talk about Silent Hill F.

And the B segment of this show, because another game scuttled along out of nowhere that we are able to talk about about this week that like a house city sort of more energy like a house city or like a character in silent hill yes exactly uh we were a little bit more energized by it and that game is absalom uh a very very cool roguelike beat-em-up uh rpg uh from the creators of streets of rage 4 and so we're going to talk about okay so show us the other sign juice we vamped as hard as we could This is the first one that I found at the Peddler's Mall.

This is a history of PlayStation.

It's a history of PlayStation.

It's It's every PlayStation Shore from PS1 to PS5.

That's really cool, man.

That's cool, right?

That's not the best thing.

That is a visual version of we used to have jobs cash.

That was 80%.

Yeah, for sure.

Where does that go, Justin?

In your house?

Where does that go?

I mean, in our kind of is shot, I hope.

Oh, yeah.

And lastly.

I have a dream that one day my parents will understand that online games cannot be paused.

That's awesome.

That's a sign that says that.

That's spectacular.

You got to hang that sign up that says that and then start Airbnb in your place because I need someone to find that kind of while poking their head around in the house they're going to be sleeping in that night and understand what it means for them.

We'll get it going.

Yeah, no, this goes in the art.

I'm going to, I need to get rid of this dumb sound baffling.

I'm kidding myself.

This doesn't do anything.

All right, we're going to take a quick break and then talk about Epsilon.

Absolutely.

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Had you all heard of this game before we before we got code?

I've gotten emails about it, but I got to admit, just the title alone made me seemingly not really super care.

And then at one point I read in one of the emails that said, hey, this is by the the team that made TMNT, Shredder's Revenge, and a bunch of other incredible beat-em-ups, but it's their original IP.

And I was like, oh, okay, I'm interested now.

Yes.

So it is made by Guard Crush, who worked on Streets of Rage for Dot Emu, who, or Emu.

I guess it's supposed to be like Mu later.

Yeah, I don't think it's like an Emu, like the bird.

Maybe.

And Supermonks,

and

who want...

Do you all want me to set up what the game is?

I can do it.

Okay, go for it, Russ.

The structurally, the game, I'm sure there's a narrative, but we're not going to focus on that right now that structurally the game is picture a hades like

but instead of it being a top-down isometric like action kind of game it's a beat-em-up in the style of x-men arcade or simpson's arcade or tmnt shredder's revenge it's that um so you go out into the world you do runs you'll find currencies you'll uh unlock new uh abilities you're picking perks as you go through the runs and uh just progress in this world yeah there's a lot of really good uh sort of micro and macro progression hooks.

Like certain things are per run, like the rituals you find that give you special sort of abilities bound to your character's moveset.

Those are like per run.

So you're trying to put together a synergistic sort of thing.

Like, oh, this build, when I use my heavy attack, it puts the enemies in a bubble.

And then when that bubble pops, because of this thing, it shoots out a wave and it increases how much water knocks people.

You're trying to like put together a general strategy by enhancing yourself.

But then there's, you go back to base and you can spend your currencies to like permanently add health to your your pool or unlock new moves for the characters yeah i don't my shortened version is hades plus castle crashers that's a really

yeah pretty good succinct version of it yeah it seems very clear that hades was a big inspiration specifically because very not only the the upgrade systems and all that stuff but the idea that like you're building up this hub world that slowly gets filled with npcs and the npcs obviously have different you know reasons to talk to them, upgrade reasons to talk to them, but also they're also delivering narrative, and the story progresses as you go through it.

Insanity on quests and people who love these sorts of games, you just take a break.

People who do not like these games, come a little closer because you're probably thinking, hey, I can skip to the Silent Hill part of this episode.

Usually, what people don't like about these games is they're just super repetitive, right?

Like you're just doing the same thing over and over and over again.

And this game has one of the most brilliant fixes for a major problem for a genre that I've ever seen, which is while you are going through these runs, not only are you incentivized to go through them over and over and again to learn story beats like you would in Hades, but then also

your point A to point B branch in a variety of number ways, kind of FTL-like.

So you'll be seeing different spots.

And when you go to those spots, new events will happen that you don't expect.

You'll discover new enemies.

Maybe a new branch will appear.

Maybe a different character will materialize.

Maybe an entire boss fight will happen.

So you are going through, you're going from point A to point B over and over and over again, but it feels different every time to the point that you were incentivized to do it.

And by a certain point, you actually have quests where it's like, hey, on the next run, I really want to make sure I stop by the waterfall before I get to the end because I want to accomplish something there.

It makes it feel like

a game game and not an arcade game, which is, again, the fret of the game.

That is a huge distinction.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What do you think?

Juicy, you and I had a chance to play it a bit yesterday, co-op, which it does have two-player online and local.

The online is pretty clever, if we could talk about that in a bit.

Yeah, you should probably describe like set it up.

We played through a level of it, and I guess we're pretty different level-wise, but it still felt pretty.

You had a lot more health than me, and you were able to stay alive a lot longer, but it still felt like we were both doing stuff.

Yeah, it synchronizes, it doesn't synchronize your thing, it basically takes the world of the lower-level player.

Uh, and so the higher-level player, like they're not really uh completing quests or doing things along those lines, but like the currencies that you find and the things that you discover and unlock, those are progressive.

So, it's like you can play with another player and not have one of you just not be progressing in some way, which is, I think, kind of how these things usually go in online, you know, multiplayer beat-em-ups, especially.

It's just a very, very clever fix, I think.

I will say I know that I'm sure that there gets to be more layers, but

as you go on, but with the direct comparison to Hades, I do still feel like the one vestige of beat-em-ups that this hasn't really figured out a way to rethink is for me, just the moment-to-moment playing of it doesn't feel quite dynamic enough.

You do have like

a regular attack and kind of a special attack kind of thing, and then like a magic that you can build up.

And there are, as you like unlock abilities and stuff, there's like lots of ways that those can layer on top of each other in interesting ways.

But a lot of the ways they layer on

top of each other are interesting in sort of a meta way, but not necessarily like, I just felt like the moment to moment playing of it without the layering those things on top of it, still a lot of time felt like I was just kind of pounding on the attack button and trying to hit as many people as possible, which I understand is every video game ever made.

But I well, but not right.

The Hades comparison here is apt because Hades doesn't really do that to you.

Hades, when you start playing, you know, you're finding all the different, you know, divinities, like upgrades that you get.

Like there's a huge amount there for you.

In this game, you start with.

virtually nothing.

And by going through the different routes, you are like unlocking new types of rituals and new types of things because it does add those things, but you do got to get there.

And considering it's a beat-em-up game that you want to be pretty fun right away.

Yeah.

It's

a good thing.

It has also wants you to do stuff like dodge and incorporates more elements like that.

And where this is early on, especially like there is a dodge, but it's not something you necessarily are wanting.

You don't need to do that.

It's a beat-em-up.

Like you don't need to do that a lot early on.

The progression of the group is very dead cells.

And for some people, that is something they love.

And that is, for me, a thing I have not liked in the past.

And I'm going to get to why I like it here.

But basically, you have to unlock the fun of the game as you go along.

So, Hoops is right.

At the very beginning, it's pretty straightforward.

As you unlock all these things, you're getting all sorts of new abilities that make it, I would say, much more elaborate in terms of how your combat works, but you have to get there.

I think it was a pure luck situation with my interest in this game that I got an incredible build within 15 minutes.

And you don't always get an incredible build, but the very first time through, I had this build where my character was like sizing and dicing.

And every move I did would

throw a character into a bubble that would make them float across the screen.

Then they would splash against a wall and burst onto somebody.

And then once they popped out of the bubble, they caught on fire.

And when I ran around, fire trailed me.

It was all of this great, like, incredible stuff.

And

I spoke with

Frost and I's buddy Geo at Polygon.

And uh he's playing this game too and was like yeah i played like five rounds before i got a single interesting skill yeah and it did feel just a lot

to me what like my first run that i did was with griffin pretty much in online and because he was more powerful we were able to get a lot further into the run so i also just got a for that just to yeah for that run i got in a fucking insane build where i was spawning like infinite throwable daggers and kill and then when justin and i played yesterday i got some real garbage in like all of my draws and it was we got significantly less far yeah so i think it turbo charging the those early runs do really make a big difference because you get a lot more tools at your disposal much quicker than you would if you yeah kind of fumbled around for the first time i also wish they would funnel those a little bit more early on where like you would it would sort of like default to some sort of interesting yeah build and then you would cut it because I didn't even really understand.

I feel like a lot with the success of Hades specifically, and I think this is a problem for a lot of video games, but this model more than others.

I feel like so many devs are

bringing so much of that game into their games that they don't feel the need to explain it very much.

And that's tough because their Hades, you know, their power curves and their structures and their currencies and everything is, it's all just a little different.

Right.

And I feel like the first time I'm playing, I was still trying to understand the game.

And you're like, you're the gust power of this clash is double this.

And it's like, I don't know any like, you're throwing so much at me.

I'm not going to have any hope of building something.

And they

try to accommodate for that.

There's characters that you can meet in the hub world that will explain things if you go through the menus.

But even still, like, there was a currency that I texted Frush after probably two hours of playing.

I was like,

I straight up do not know what this currency is.

It's a huge upgrade mechanic that really opens the game up, and you do not get access to it until until you beat like the first huge wall of a boss who is a real piece of shit.

I've been sitting there the whole time.

I know.

I do agree that the pacing stuff is bad.

I think that the moment-to-moment gameplay is tight as fuck.

And I think it is like the most fun feeling beat-em-up that I can maybe ever remember playing.

When Russ and I had our run, where like my build really came together, just juggling dudes in the air for like a 200 hit combo and going absolutely ham like it feels it feels fucking great and you are getting new stuff every run you are uh you know putting together a different build that you know if you get far enough like really feels kind of unique by the end of the run like I'm outrageous too it looks so good it looks like so fucking good the best like Generous is the word that kept coming to mind when I was like looking at the animation it's like so many like really lavishly animated frames that are like, everyone looks like a little painting.

It's gorgeous.

The first time you punch a guy, it's amazing.

The first time you punch a guy and see his like hit animation, it's like, oh damn, this is going to be, this is going to be a good one.

It's kind of wild because.emu in particular, they've made such a name out of these like IP-centric titles, Himenti being probably the biggest one.

And this feels like just another level of quality layered on top of what they're already known for, which is kind of wild because they're known for some incredibly high-quality shit.

And I was wondering, like, a lot of that is just like, hey, we don't have to adhere to the limitations that an IP might have.

We don't have to give them a chunk of our end revenue.

Like, this is all on us and the other teams that are working on this.

And it just feels like they just took the governor off and went kind of wild.

The aesthetic is,

let me know if I'm wrong here, but He-Man meets the Adventure Zone was what I kept thinking.

Like, I thought of y'all.

There is a character that hugely resembles Taco from the graphic novel

design.

I will say maybe Carrie Peach's work on the Adventure Zone.

I don't know.

Maybe it is somewhat.

I think it looks really terrific.

And the world is like really strange and kind of rich.

Like, the respawn loop happens because you guys are, your characters are

loops on it.

That would be.

No, that would be too.

uh your characters are like uh uh worshipers of this pregnant goddess who like grants you the gift of rebirth every time you die it's like it's wild and there's like a lot of story apparently they've already uh like licensed out doing an animated series based on it oh wow which I think could be I still don't understand sometimes when people start attacking you why but like so that's still exactly

there's humans sometimes who are like hey fuck these guys and then there's humans who are like hey come on into our tavern We're going to...

It's always a crash shoot.

It's like, look at this guy.

I wonder what his story is.

Let's find out.

Oh, okay, cool.

You're going to sell me a potion.

I do love that using the 2D plan of like, oh, you are going always left to right.

It's a classic arcade game of the first world you're in is a feud between the humans and goblins, I guess.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

And you will have these situations where you are literally just in the middle at the wrong time.

You are moving from left to right.

You're trying to get past a castle.

The goblins come in from behind you and suddenly you're caught in the middle of a battle and you just have to take everyone out.

And that feeling of, it's just like the lightest bit of story, but it's very cool.

But you're right.

So there's a lot of times when you find a camp and it's like, why are you giving me free beer?

I don't know what the thing is here.

I think it's important, though, that it is a light bit of story, but you get it every run.

And it will, things will happen where it's like, if you go down the route that takes you to fight the goblin boss a bunch of times, then the humans will be able to sort of regroup and build a bridge that you can then go on the next time you run.

But if you build that bridge, now they're going to start kicking the goblins' asses.

And like you're going to keep getting updates every time you go through the run, like when you hit these certain hub spots, like, hey, you fucked us over big time because now the sea tribe is coming to beat the shit out of us.

It's, it's, it is not like a rich, sort of lengthy exposition and stuff like that.

But I think given the short-run nature of

the game, that kind of like peppered-on storytelling, I think, goes a long way.

I just have one quick, like, small game design thing because I can't tell if I'm like in my own head on this, if this is even happening.

There's something about the juggling that I love in this game, and I don't know how they pull it off.

So, if you knock characters against a wall in this game, like you'll knock them, they'll hit the wall, they'll take some damage, they'll fly up into the air.

The invisible wall feels like it is inconsistent in a really good way like if you just you want them to hit the wall Yes, you want them to hit the wall and it's like as long as you knock them a certain distance away from the character an invisible wall will basically appear to like deal them damage bounce them and I don't know exactly how it's working, but it is so intuitive like I very quickly realized oh, this is how far I need to hit people to kind of smash them up into into the air and deal all this extra damage.

The boss fights are also really great, which is not something I could say about a lot of beat-em-ups.

Like a lot of beat-em-ups, you're just doing the same thing you're doing to like the standard grunts that come your way, but they have a million times more health.

In this one, almost all the bosses have some sort of shield that you need to break with like enough pressure.

And once you have done that, they will become like...

pretty comboable for a short amount of time.

So like there's a rhythm to it of getting in there, dodging a few attacks, deflecting a few attacks, punishing a few attacks.

There's like three different ways to like counter shit in this game.

It's absurdly complex once you like start reading the tooltips of like the different damage types that you can deal to enemies and how they like combo into your build pressure versus launch versus break versus whatever class and um so yeah if you want to get crazy with it i would also add like

i've been pretty intimidated by some of their games in the past like they uh i thought streets of rage 4 was that the one four Yeah, Streets of Rage 4 definitely got very difficult.

But what's cool about all of these games is that they have accessibility features in them.

So, if you feel like you're struggling or whatever, you can dial down like the amount of damage you take, amount of damage you're giving out, just to like see more of the story.

And that could actually probably smooth over some of the rough edges you might have on the early runs.

It also rewards you for being creative in how you handle things.

And well, it's not cheating because it's what the game can do, but this final boss of the first stage is not easy, and it wants you to learn how to do the dodge to do all these different things or you can do what i did which is you collected 16 uh axes over the course of your run went into the boss very pissed off at it and just spammed it knocked him down just one shot he didn't even have a chance you can you can break it it is hard but it gets easier once you unlock more of those like different types of rituals you could but you can really break this thing right open you can really really fuck it up in some pretty major ways i'm crazy about it i i can't stop playing it i'm excited for it to come out on switch so Henry and I can play it.

He loves beat-em-ups, and this is a really fucking good one that is not like super gory or mature in a way that I think would be too much for him.

Justin, did you run into any like lag issues or anything like that when you played?

No, it was pretty smooth, wasn't it?

Yeah, I could notice that.

I didn't notice any problems.

I mean, I'm farther away from Griffin and I couldn't notice a single like it was like it was also very streamlined, like just like getting in.

I didn't even like know, like, I just started the game and we were together playing in a lobby.

Like, it was no preamble or anything yeah yeah having to like use the invite system or whatever it reminded me more you know it felt like castle crashers in that sense like it reminded me that xbl lay since like jump in jump out it was very streamlined in that sense yeah yeah agreed um

this is a this is a this is a top fiver for me i think of of the year um throwing those out a very lot lately griff i feel like no uh i i've been pretty i've been pretty good about it lately actually really from that taste those plotteds out a lot

Been a real plant over a year.

It's been a real fucking bonkers year.

It's been some good stuff.

Hey, who's ready for some Silent Hill?

Me!

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Does F stand for five?

F stands for fun.

Silent Hill Fun is the new twist.

Silent Hill fear.

Oh, I like fear.

That's cool.

But it's a lowercase fear.

It's like a chill fear.

Yeah.

No, it's Silent Hill fuck.

Silent Hill fuck.

I asked Google and Google said it was Forte, like the like the musical like loud?

It's not even, I think, a loud of the Silent Hill games, I think it is among the quieter ones.

Well, but compared to Fortissimo or Fortissi Sissimo.

That's true.

That's a fair point.

Who wants to set it up?

I mean, Plant, this is your dream game.

Here we have

a, what is it, mid-60s Japan game, set in Japan in a small village featuring classic horror tropes

Silent Hill game.

Like, this seems like right up Chris Plant's alley.

Is it right up your alley, Chris?

No, I mean, yes and no, Sure.

So, yes, it doesn't look like your average Silent Hill game, but let me tell you, it is because there is fog and there is a story about how terrible men are and how

hard it is to be a woman in modern society, which is a theme of Silent Hill games.

You're a high schooler in this one.

Am I doing like just a kind of a full re-intro of what this game is?

What do you mean?

Yeah, I think that would be good.

I think it would be helpful.

Yeah, so you are a high school student in 1960s, Japan.

And as a young woman in this culture, in this small town, life is pretty hard.

Your dad is a tremendous asshole.

It seems like a lot of things are going bad, but then they get worse when the fog comes and practically everybody in town disappears except for your friends.

But you know what is still around?

Like flowers, like evil flowers, red goony flowers, and

monster mannequins that bend in all sorts of uncomfortable waves and often have knives.

And it is your job to figure out what happened.

Where did all the adults go?

How do you protect your friends?

Spoilers, you don't because a lot of people die in this game and it happens pretty early.

And then you solve a lot of puzzles.

So yes, in theory, I should be really into this because I do like horror.

I do love Japanese horror.

Where I bounce off a little bit is it's kind of a puzzle game, my friends.

And

I always forget about that with this series until I start playing it.

And then I'm like, oh, yeah, this game's a puzzle game series.

When you start the game, you pick your difficulty for combat and puzzles separately.

The difficulties are story, hard, and then lost in the fog, I think, which is like super, duper hard.

It's like that tells you it's wrong, even if you get it right.

Right.

It's really twisted.

It's really fucked up.

So it is structurally like Silent Hill, where you are, usually you'll have some area-wide puzzle.

Like you're looking for the password for this door, and you will find it in these different locations across this map, and you will have to find them while you are pursued by fog monsters.

Timeless, classic.

Can't beat it.

Yeah, I think this is the first one.

And Silent Hill fans can correct me if this is incorrect, but I think this is the first one that only has melee combat.

I don't know.

I think the first one maybe did.

This was definitely a talking point about this game.

Is like, we're going back to this kind of like feeling of powerlessness in tight quarters that is sort of a staple of old games.

It is hilarious because there is one thing this game is not about, and that is being powerless.

You are a cold-blooded killer.

This is the single most powerful teenager to have ever walked the earth.

She shadow dances between realms, killing whatever gets in her way.

Your dodge in this game is confusing.

The dodge was the most confusing thing about the entire game to me, literally.

Like, I don't know why she's like,

she's got several classes.

PE, she's got geometry and bayonetta.

And those are the three classes that she has.

So she has to like...

At school, she studied bayonetta moves.

You don't have to get hit if you don't want to, I guess.

I mean, I don't know.

What difficulty did you guys play at?

I played on story combat hard puzzles.

Oh, I did

story just to see as much as I could.

I will say, this is the entire reputation that this game.

People are drawing fanfiction of this main character as a like pure muscle beast.

It is.

Yeah, I'll tell you.

Do you have an example?

It's the kind of thing where you can hold in left trigger to go into like a

slow time focus mode.

And there's a

frame signal that you see where you can combo this attack if you hit the dodge, if you hit the counter at the right time.

They try to do something interesting with it, which is that you have your health meter, which you know what that does, but then you also have a sanity meter, which I'm always excited to see one of those in a horror game because I think we're in for you know some

what was it sanities requiem uh eternal darkness shit uh this doesn't really get into that quite as much but you can use this focus power which will slow down time just a little bit and let you spot those frames where you can counter a little bit easier.

But if you get hit while you're doing that, then your max sanity will decrease.

So it's like looping in that element into it as well.

But it's

it's it's just kind of weird because sometimes they'll do an attack that's counterable and sometimes they'll do an attack that's not.

And you don't really realize that until

it doesn't feel good ever.

Like there's, I have not had a fight that felt great in the game yet.

I am not excusing the combat.

I'm more saying this to put it on the side.

The combat is, by far, the least interesting part of the game.

I don't know why it's there.

Every time I was doing it, I wanted to be doing something else.

It feels to me like the whole hook of this game is the story,

the visuals of it.

And in the puzzles.

So just very quickly on the story and the visuals of it,

not only is this game influenced by, you know, Japanese cinema and Japanese horror,

the way it is like quite literally shot is stunning.

And there's a thing that happens in a lot of video games where it's like at most they figure out their camera position and that's it.

There are choices with where they place the camera here that are so interesting.

There are entire sequences where you will only see a character's legs as if everything above that is missing, which one is kind of unsettling and horrific, but two is Muppet Babies.

I get it.

It's a nanny treatment.

The leering nature of the game, it also gets like you are kind of being infantilized.

It is

doing

so much

with its visual storytelling that the script isn't even there for.

So I really appreciate it for that.

I am curious what people thought of the puzzles, because I'm just not a puzzle person.

I've never really enjoyed the puzzles in any Simon Hill games, and this was sort of the, like, I don't get satisfaction out of it.

It's just like, oh, I figured out the trick to flipping the things around or whatever it is.

Yeah.

And that's just par for the course for me.

Not only Simon Hill, like Resident Evil, whenever they did puzzles, I was like, oh,

okay, I got to get through this before.

You use that term pretty liberally because that term is sometimes used to describe like, you have to go find the token for the machine at the hotel.

And that's not really a puzzle so much.

Maybe you have to decide, like, you have to read a poem and interpret it.

It's really uneven.

I think some of the puzzles in this game are pretty bad and are just designed to make you run around a scary area and get jumped by monsters a dozen times.

And sometimes they're really fucking cool.

Like I really liked the scarecrow puzzle in this game that you hit sort of towards the end of, I don't know, act three or something like that.

Yeah, but it's like a long time.

That's a long time to get there.

Absolutely.

It was really hard for me to shake the feeling while I'm playing this.

Like,

last week we talked about Ghost of Yote.

And Ghost of Yote, one of the things that, as I've continued to play it, is really cool is the way it is that used mechanics to get across a story.

And they used game mechanics to make you feel stuff narratively.

And I'm, I'm always knocked out when that happens.

This feels to me like someone who is deeply inspired by the aesthetics of Japanese horror cinema, but didn't necessarily have a lot of interesting ideas about how to make that a gameplay experience.

Instead, try to capture like the aesthetics of it to give you to like

the idea that the mon the thing that is scary in this game or the elements that I have to overcome are just like the same mob type that is introduced early on is such a retrograde sort of way of approaching.

It's a very like PS1 era idea of horror where like there is this this type of bad guy, and they're free-roaming around this area, and you go and attack them with your pipe.

It's like

you,

I don't feel like a lot of thought has been given to the way you make the game feel interesting or like the sort of Japanese horror cinema that you're trying to capture.

And instead, it's just kind of like the aesthetics are doing a lot of the work, and it's kind of laid over a formula that

feels very

late 90s.

If anything, it feels like it would have been supported more by like

way fewer but more deadly enemies in the way that like Retro Silent Hill relied on like the pyramid headman or whatever.

And that was like a really scary moment.

But here you're constantly facing people.

And yeah, you have like a lot of combat maneuvers, but your weapons are all, they break after a certain amount of time.

You can dodge out of the way, but you're not getting anything from killing anyone.

So there's really no reason to actually fight a lot of these people unless you're forced in like a boss fight or like a, there's like, you know, bloodgating stuff later on.

But the, it just, yeah, it just.

That, that's when it, that's when it hit a point for me where I think that's about where I stopped, where I was like, okay, I actually can't play more of the game until you force me to fight like two to three guys at once.

It just feels like two different faces of it.

Like, I don't understand how these two merged because they feel like so dichotomous to one another.

Did I make that work up?

I don't think so.

I want to diametrically oppose?

Yeah.

I agree with what Chris said.

Like, there is so much this game is doing that I am fully fucking vibing with.

I was really excited when I started playing it because I think it starts really strong.

And the way that it kind of like introduces the creepy supernatural element into the world, like it fucking hits.

And I was like, hell yeah, man, this is going to be, this is going to be a really scary game.

And.

I do think that as much as they nail the fear with the aesthetics and the cinematography and the storytelling and the writing

and the sound design, Jesus Christ, the sound of the monsters as they get close to you is of course good because that's what like Silent Hill sort of has to nail.

It is betrayed, I think, pretty completely by the actual, the actual playing of it because I do think it makes the game less scary

when

combat isn't threatening so much as it is sort of tedious, which is not a good kind of fear, I don't think.

I wasn't, yeah, and to be clear, like I had it set on story difficulty for the combat.

And like, I was not disliking it.

I mean, it was like, it felt kind of weird to be walking around with like 11 or, you know, 11 red pills and three bandages to heal myself with.

Like, I'm fully ready for whatever's happening.

I don't feel really under threat.

And like, it wasn't, I wasn't hating it.

I just didn't like feel a lot in between those areas where I wasn't doing some sort of like.

puzzle thing.

Yeah.

I think it will be a great game to watch.

I I am looking forward to watching the rest of the game.

I bet there's going to be a cutscene, a two-hour-long cutscene supercut you'll be able to watch.

That'll be fucking really, really good.

I will say I skipped ahead and watched some later game moments, and there is one of the grisliest moments I've ever seen in a video game in this game.

So if you're squeamish, maybe no.

What it does with little worms that can come out of your skin is

talk less, Chef.

That's good.

We have some reader mail if we want to to jump into that.

Would love to.

First one comes from Kel.

Justin's bug is a house centipede.

I think we expected that, but I'm glad it was confirmed by many of our readers.

I know they look scary, but they're actually nice friends to have around the house.

They are completely harmless to humans and eat bugs you don't want, like roaches and even wasps.

They use their long legs to capture prey in a technique called lassoing so that you can think of them as little cowboys.

Does that help?

I really do.

Sure, I feel a lot better.

I saw one in my lobby a day later, so they might be invading.

They're everywhere.

But they're little cowboys now, in my mind.

Yeah, I know.

I like them.

I like them.

We got another letter.

This one comes from Chris.

Thanks for the heads up on Q Up.

That was the game, the coin flipping game that Chris Plant mentioned.

Hell yeah.

There is another recent indie release that's all about coin flipping, and I recommend it as a very simple clicker game.

It's called Unfair Flips.

The goal is to flip heads 10 times in a row.

If that's compelling to you,

I've actually seen some streamers playing that one, and I've put it on the list.

And then this last letter comes from Sean.

Y'all might be surprised to learn that not only is there Frog Fractions 3, there is a Frog Fractions 4.

You're just saying it.

There's also a Frog Fractions 5.

Is there?

And a Frog Fractions 6.

You can just say whatever.

You can say whatever shit you want.

You can just say anything.

Do we know if you know if Twain Beard had relates Frog Fractions 4?

I would know.

know.

Wow.

Personally.

Brag.

Do we have any honorable mentions here at the end of our program?

Because I've been playing one that has really got stuck in my head.

It was suggested to us last week in an email, and I'd seen some streamers playing it.

Clover Pit.

Clover Pit, the slot machine,

roguelike.

And it is,

I mean, it's got all this stuff.

I feel like it is lazy, perhaps, to say, like, you know, it does a lot of the roguelike

stuff that you would see in a,

you know, a Slay the Spire or a Luck Be a Landlord or a, what's the one that came out that

Merge Maestro Inscription, absolutely.

It is set in a single room with a slot machine and an ATM in it and a little shop.

And you go and you play slots.

And then between rounds, you go to the shop and you will purchase little upgrades.

And those upgrades upgrades will be things like now cherries when they spawn they'll be 20% likely to have a buff on them that permanently increases how much you get for cherries or a special ability that's whenever you press this button it increases the odds that cherries are going to spawn in and you get both those at the same time and now you're building you know synergies and stuff like that

so as you are playing through these runs you are getting ways to affect the

the rate at which the different symbols appear how much money they give you how much money you get from the different patterns you could get on the slot machine, trying to reach these deadlines in a certain number of spins.

And if you don't, you die.

That's Clover Pit.

And it's really very, very good.

I got through

it.

Maybe not like the true, true ending, but I got through a couple of endings on it and have beaten quite a few runs.

I think I probably only played like eight or nine hours or so.

So I'm not sure how much staying power it's going to have, but like, I can't get enough of these types of games.

And this one does some

it's got a really good, it really, at first it feels like Cheetos.

Like it feels like, oh, this is just, this is dumb.

I'm going to print, like, I'm addicted, but it's going to last 30 minutes.

Yeah.

And what you really do is like, it is actually a lot more nuanced and dynamic than it seems.

Like you really do have to have like, it rewards a pretty active strategy for like how you, how you approach each run.

And it's really dynamic.

like you'll end up with really interesting choices that make it a lot of fun.

It's also, it's also got that like dopamine hit.

Um, yeah, it feels really, really good when the stars align and you get a run where you start getting that Bellatro, like the machine is just making the same noise a hundred million times as your points reach into like exponential scientific notation.

Like, yeah, it does that, and if it's, it feels quite good to pull that off.

Um, yeah,

I wanted to clarify something.

I I went to the hit Polygon story about this question.

Apparently Jim Crawford would the creator of frog fractions would classify frog fractions one as frog fractions, frog fractions two as the search for frog fractions two,

glittermitten grove as frog fractions three,

and the the DLC for frog fractions hops iconic hat as frog fractions four.

So

everyone's that.

Okay, if you want to, listen, if the creator of the game says that wild stuff, then that's his.

Okay.

He's the boss.

Okay.

Good jim.

I love it.

You're in charge.

I have

the entry point for our friend Russ Fruschik into the world of mystery dungeon games.

I think I found it.

That seems really unlikely.

I'm excited to hear this too.

I like a mystery dungeon game.

It's called House of Necrosis,

and it is Resident Evil 1, the Mystery Dungeon game.

To the point that I'm a little worried about a lawsuit.

Oh my God,

man.

Yeah,

but

if you have ever been curious about the Mystery Dungeon genre, which is one of the earliest forms of kind of like a rogue game,

this is it.

This is...

It's something.

If you also just like Resident Evil 1 and you miss that aesthetic, hop into this.

And then don't even ask yourself, what is Mystery Dungeon?

Just let yourself sink into it because it is both one of the most challenging genres and also one of the most rewarding if you are able to get past that barrier.

It's got a demo on Steam.

Yeah.

It's got big demo in it.

Is there more to it?

Like, the core gameplay of Mystery Dungeon has never appealed to me because it is that like turn-based rogue, like rogue style gameplay.

It just hasn't clicked for me.

Is there anything this game is doing apart from the art style to make it more approachable?

It's doing that really well.

The reason that I think you will eventually change your mind on all of this is because you love rogue designs other than the moment-to-moment.

And these games do that top-level, oh,

I am great at this.

I am learning to get better.

Yeah, players coming from me knowing this world.

Yeah.

It does that very, very well.

But I mean, then again, so does Sheer and the Wanderer.

The only problem is you have to play like 100 hours of those games before you understand how to play them.

Yeah.

Yep.

Interesting.

This looks cool.

It does look cool.

Justin, you got anything?

I got in my RG476H this week.

I want to see if I can figure it out.

Okay, it's an Ambernick.

Yeah, go for it.

Do your best.

Let's see what you got.

RG is an Ambernick device.

No, what does RG mean?

I don't remember.

Retro game.

It always means retro game.

But it usually means it's made by Ambernick, correct?

It means retro game.

but it also means that Ambernick made it yes

okay yeah and then what are the other numbers four seven six h okay so the four seven is the size of the screen 4.7 inches that's my man and the inch is a horizontal form factor yeah so that's the six and what what's the six oh there was a six six h oh uh six model

Yes, it's of the sixth generation.

Exactly right.

And crushed it.

You know what?

It's all very logical once you're.

This is just like, this is, this is very similar to something they released uh a while back uh the 477

but that is a

uh same form factor but it has do you guys have a preference on stacked shoulder buttons or inline shoulder buttons i like stacked

i like stacked too stacked is

like when you're holding like a playstation controller that where the contro where the triggers are like behind one another So on a really thin device, they have to be inline.

Yeah.

There's not as much real estate back there.

So that's the trade-off you're making, right?

If you want the stacked, then you're going to have something that's a little less pocketable.

This is stacked compared to the 477, which is inline.

So I like that a little better.

It is a less powerful processor.

But it is capable of playing pretty much up through like PS2 at like regular emulation speed.

And it can play stuff,

all the older stuff with like shaders or what have you.

I think this is a great, and it's a great, the screen is

The

The great a great form factor for like playing older stuff I think like a budget like a budget it's 150 so that's the thing right for 150 bucks if you don't want to do a bunch of

stuff beyond PlayStation if you want to just do like PlayStation before

um I would say this is a great place to start.

This may be the new like best place to start.

It's 150.

It feels great.

It looks great.

It's got this glass front.

I think it's really slick.

All the the controls feel good.

It feels a lot pricier than it is.

I think it's a great place.

If you just want something to play a bunch of older games on, this is a great device.

But you would say it's okay for PlayStation 2.

You could.

Okay, so this is like hit or miss.

For me personally,

I don't like to play stuff that is.

I want to play stuff in the best form factor for it.

And so I wouldn't play PS2 or PSP or Vita stuff on a 4x3 or 1x1 device.

Like I only play it on like a widescreen.

I guess what I would say is like there are

like cheaper devices, like the brick and things like that, that can handle PS1 and before pretty handily, right?

If you want, I mean,

you're always talking about the metaphor here, right?

So like with a brick, you don't have the thumbsticks.

So like you, so for me, that limits the library a lot.

And the screen's not as good.

Like 4.7-inch 4x3 screen is going to make like your Game Boy GBA GBC like all those games are gonna look amazing like better than you've ever seen them

and I just think it's a really great stage for everything before that once you're into stuff where like even PS2 games that weren't in innately widescreen a lot of them have widescreen hacks that have been developed by the community that are a lot of fun to play with if you're already going to have the juice to do it right so for me i i would stick to widescreen devices if i'm going to be doing anything after

uh uh playstation that makes sense yeah i think it's cool.

It's a really cool, and for 150 bucks, I think it's, and if that's where your interests are at, I think it's a great, like, great advice.

Midline, yeah.

Russ, did you go?

I didn't go.

Uh, I played a little bit of

Super Mario Galaxy 2, which we're going to talk more extensively on Rusties about,

but there is, for the first time in like 15 years, an official playable version of Super Mario Galaxy 2.

Just starting that up and reminding myself, like, oh, fuck, this was like where they really took the limits off of their game design stuff that they introduced in the original Mario Galaxy, which I think kind of takes some time to get going.

Whereas this is like, bam, you're like fucking in it minute one.

So if you're looking for a fucking great 3D Mario game and you haven't played Galaxy 2, because it kind of came at the end of the Wii's life cycle.

Yeah.

It's a good opportunity.

Speaking of taking the limits off, you'll also want to listen to that episode of Restes because we're talking about Sonic Racing Crossworlds.

Let me tell you,

these people took the limits off.

They did.

Minecraft Steve is there.

I mean, they're doing Hatsune Miku.

They do whatever they want.

Fuck Sega.

And I love it.

I think we did it.

I wanted to thank some members.

Actually, before I thank the members, even though I love them very much, I wanted to throw out we have a new episode of the Bracket Battles series that we do.

This one was most practical car in video games, not counting counting racing games.

So there's not a lot of Honda civics and things like that.

But we had a lot of fun with this one.

I will ask our great editor Rachel to drop a clip in here.

We have the tram from Half-Life versus

Battle Bus.

Hold on, I gotta record this.

This is too funny not to record, guys.

I gotta record this conversation.

Okay, now I'm recording.

Start it.

Wait, let's go.

Wait, really?

Yeah, Briff, really.

Let's go on.

Okay, so these are just, you know,

we don't get to drive these in either of the games.

They're amazing.

And the beginning of each game is the tram and Half-Life and the Battle Bus of Fortnite.

Both games begin with both vehicles.

But again, it's not about the games.

So what was I thinking?

That's true.

It's about what they would do for me in real life.

A tram would do jack shit because I don't have to.

How are you not doing the airboat from Half-Life?

Because we're doing the tram.

Yeah.

Okay.

Half-Life 2 has a fucking kick-ass vehicle in it, and we're picking the one that you start the game in

that exists at the airport.

No fucking

ride at the ATL airport.

Here in the Kelly Blue Book, we're excited to announce 2025's vehicle of the year is the Tomorrowland People Mover.

A ride that can't even jet up a 20-minute wait for.

You could move the tram such that it would solve child transport issues for one location.

Sure.

Yeah, no, I get, yeah, that's cool.

That's great.

My kids are going to go to several schools.

So

I will age out of that at some point.

We had a lot of fun.

That was great.

I think it was a great episode.

I think it's some of our most deranged.

Truly project.

Just like really, really, really bad faith.

We had a good time.

But really fun stuff.

We have some members to thank as well over at the Patreon.

We have Graham S, we have Brandon B, we have Joshua S, and we have the dankest Mike.

Thank you for being members of the Besties Patreon.

Thank you to everyone else who supported us.

We really appreciate it.

And I think we can recap what games we talked about.

Plant?

We talked about Silent Hill F, Absalom, Clover Pit, Q-Up, Unfair Flips, House of Necrosis, and Super Mario Galaxy 2, along with the Anvernick RG476H.

You can get links to all of those things and so much more, and photos of stuff that Hoops showed at one point in this show at the newsletter that is at besties.fan.

What are we doing next week, guys?

Next week, we're playing Ball Pit,

which has an X in there.

There's an X in there.

It's wild to not include it.

You know, but yeah, I think you pronounce it Ball Pit.

And so that's happening next week

might might be some other stuff but i think that's going to be the key focus there all right well i'm looking forward to that and i'm looking forward to spending that time with you our beloved listeners be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best game

Besties.