One Game to Consume All of Your Time

Y'all, do you use Waze or do you use Google Maps?

Which ones are you?

Why, I've lived in the exact same place for 40 years.

The idea that I would use either is wild.

You don't use the GPS to get around, just like in case you just want to don't think about anything, Justin?

I already do that.

It's called driving, baby.

I said it to autopilot.

I just tell myself, go to where the old wards donuts was.

And then I'm there.

I got Waze up here.

I got Waze and means up here.

If people get lost in Huntington, there's actually an app on your phone called JMO.

And when when you press it justin shows up and he can tell you exactly what's like where to go what and like cool stuff you'll see on the important thing is i don't always end up where i thought i was gonna go so this is a very open-ended system that i got um i don't use waze chris because one time i used it and it told me to smash through a shopping mall like a blues brothers did it and i that's also what happened in my house uh when somebody that's true they could have somebody got out of the car and was like damn the ways said i'd be able to smash right through but it seems like this first outer wall was a little bit heavier than Mazza.

Did you guys know one of those Nazis was my acting teacher?

That's true.

Go!

What did you want to say, dude?

I've always loved you.

The I've always loved you guy, the Nazi that says that to the other guy, he taught me everything I know about acting.

Trim and Jack.

But like,

what did you want to talk about?

I was wanting, I wanted to talk about that.

You got to start the podcast.

I'm a Google Maps man, but I think I am ready to switch to Waze because Waze lets you pick different voices to guide you through the world, right?

And they clearly had a long, deep think on what is an appropriate voice to get you from point A to point B safely.

And that's why today they sent me this notification:

Sonic voice navigation.

Fans can now activate voice navigation by Sonic the Hedgehog in English and French.

Now, let me tell you, I see most of

i love my boy sonic

i don't know if he is who i want to take driving instructions from have you listened to

what's are we talking jalil are we talking uh which which sonic do we got you know it doesn't say so i'm going to guess it's not i'm guessing they couldn't get jalil for it you're talking you're talking

two guys that have a lot of experience with Sonic and his relationship to cars.

That's true.

We wrote the book on that.

And I mean, literally, we tried to do a story about Sonic driving, and the Team Sonic had some ideas about how Sonic should relate to cars.

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

My name is Griffin McElroy and yeah, 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 Ross Fruschik.

I know the best game of the week.

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

It's a video game club.

And quick style guide note here, guys.

We got to settle on something just besties wide.

Do we say the X?

Do we say and?

Do we make it silent?

Where are we going?

Good question.

So the game we're talking about is ball X Pit.

And I think it's...

So what's so fascinating is what you did there is exactly what I was trying to fucking avoid.

Like I'm a professional, dude.

I know what I'm doing.

How do I unilaterally?

Yeah, yeah, we have a conversation about it.

But how do I convey what the game is called?

Spy family.

That's why we're going to have a broad conversation.

Check this out.

Check this out.

Bulkspit.

Oh, fucking read it.

It looks like,

hey, guess what, game developers?

If you make your shit look like all one word, I'm going to read it like one word.

Pograph it.

I'm good with that if you guys are yeah balk spit you we always just pronounce the X yeah got to so they would be like that Zillax Kongzilix Kong if you want to make it one word that's fine guys we're gonna say spike's family spike's family XCOM

yeah

yeah yeah that one works too man good yeah absolutely so Chris what's balk spit what's bulk balk spit is uh what if you took vampire survivors and you took breakout and you added an X in the middle and you would get this.

Oh, also, you can build pounds.

Yes, you can.

Besties is about to take a break.

We will catch you right after this.

Oh, I love it.

You got this thing going on inside of you, and it's your gut microbiome.

I'm not going to get any deeper than that.

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It helps with immune support, your mental health, and of course, your digestion.

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Can I set up Box Pit?

I've been thinking about how to do it to someone who isn't familiar.

I can't tell if Devolver is going to be either pissed or thrilled at our new play.

They had their fucking chance to hold it and roll next.

No, this is sorry.

This is universe-wide until the universe bends to my whim.

If you're going to keep putting a stupid ass X in there, I'm going to keep saying the X out loud.

I didn't make it though.

Breakout is a good place to start.

Breakout, you move your paddle along the bottom of the board and you bounce the balls back up at the bricks to break them.

In Bollocks Pit, take those bricks away.

Now they spawn in in rows and they keep moving down towards the bottom of the screen.

If they get too close to you, the character you're playing, or the bottom of the screen, they do damage to you.

Take too much damage and you die.

Your paddle is actually a character, one of like over a dozen characters.

Each one starts with a different special ball and has like different mechanics that change the way the game is played.

They are not bound to the bottom of the screen.

You can move around freely wherever you want and you angle the launch of your many, many balls towards the enemies that spawn in towards towards the top of the screen.

Now throwing in some vampire survivors on that, as enemies die, they drop experience points.

When you level up, you draft either a special ball, which has like different things it can do, like a poison ball that does damage over time, or a laser ball that damages all enemies in a line,

or you can get like a special upgrade that is like a passive sort of bonus thing.

You can get like four of those.

And that's it.

You play through waves of enemies, waves of bricks coming down the screen.

You fight a few bosses.

You beat a level.

you get resources, you take those back to town, and you have a little town that you're building where you also kind of play breakout to harvest materials and build new buildings.

And

then you go right back down into the bulks pit, and the cycle continues.

Yeah, the vampire survivors like metagame is very much alive here.

Like, you're going to see a lot of analogs there, but obviously, the actual interaction, the minute to minute, is breakout.

Yeah, it's, it's,

it's not even real.

I mean, it's like like sort of breakout, but even that belies, it's like a hybrid of breakout and space invaders because there's this idea of motion coming towards you, right?

And that's, that being important, and also this threat coming at you and like continuing to push down towards you.

So like, it's adding that layer of sort of like progressing through

the other.

And also the important, the other important thing is like catching, which is such a big part of breakout, is not really, I mean, it's like an element but it's not really important yeah that was the big surprise that i had because when i heard the initial pitch i was like okay i get this vampire survivors breakout you're gonna have to to deal damage you're gonna have to constantly be swatting the ball back and you do do more damage in certain circumstances when you do that when you catch the ball or many balls but it is not like oh game over or you lose a life or even you lose health like there's no real punishment apart from you losing time um the breakout analogy i think is useful because there is a lot of strategy that goes into drafting, right?

You want to get stuff that is synergistic.

We haven't even talked about the, you know, evolution and combination sort of mechanic, which is really fucking rad.

But the breakout comparison, I think, is good because breakout style games require a certain amount of strategy where maybe you want to keep a long back row so you can shoot some balls up in there.

And now they're bouncing back and forth off the top of the screen.

Every time a ball hits a bad guy in this game, it deals damage.

So you're not only trying to build these synergistic builds and leveling up the balls that you, you know, find useful, it's like, okay, I have these balls that shoot lasers or have area of effect damage.

If I can get this behind the back row of enemies, they're going to deal more damage, bounce faster.

Like there is a

shocking amount of sort of

strategy.

Work one of those out.

It feels like you've gotten pulled over a fast one when you can get a ball to like really ricochet through some enemies and really tear them up.

And I would say, I would say like the first

playthrough, the first hour of this game, I think is like, holy shit, I cannot put this down.

And obviously, whether that continues is to be discussed, but the

second you pick it up, there is that same satisfaction that you felt with Vampire Survivors.

We're like, holy shit, there's so much stuff going on on the screen.

And it's very satisfying to see numbers go up and guys get destroyed.

I think I would, I did enjoy this game a lot.

But just to put a pin here, I think I would enjoy this more and be more willing to stick with it if that idea of like catching the ball and being very aware of the ball was a bit more a part of this because I found that especially as you like layered more powerful balls on and like had a lot of different ones going at once, it really just kind of felt like a shooter.

It felt more like a...

just a shooter with a little bit less fidelity of control.

And I feel like having that element of like danger or risk reward or something where you need to be aware of what is happening, I think would make it a little bit hookier on that.

Just the moment-to-moment gameplay.

There's a lot of other reasons that it's compelling, but I think that I would enjoy the,

I would be less likely to kind of zone out sometimes if you're not.

I found a way that they, the game can make catching the ball important because,

yes, when a ball gets past you, it goes all the way to the bottom of the screen.

And if you're up high, it's going to take a moment for it to come back up to you.

And that's where like the catching is key.

It's a CPS lost.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're not, you're not losing.

You don't bounce the ball so much as you shoot it.

So when it gets back to you, you collect it and then you can fire it off in any direction that you want.

There is a

buff, I guess, that turns you into a magnet and not only sucks up more of the XP tokens, but sucks up the balls.

It brings them closer to you.

So it increases, yeah, it spikes your DPS.

And then you can tie that into another benefit where, hey, when you catch a ball, you fire off three mini balls.

No, they're called baby balls.

They're baby balls.

They're probably my biggest gripe with the game.

Yeah, like there's certain characters that don't shoot the baby balls out.

They only use special, they're special balls, which means they're firing less stuff.

And in that case, you gotta catch.

You gotta catch your balls.

Gotta catch

otherwise, you're dealing no damage to yourself.

Gotta catch your balls.

The evolution mechanic of the game, I think, is the raddest sort of idea.

And it's not entirely new because Vampire Survivor had a sort of version of this.

Say you get two different special balls and you reach max level with them.

We gotta just get very much.

We have to just get through this.

You have two special balls.

Oh, okay.

You didn't even get through that.

You understand?

Two special balls, you level them up to max level.

And that means you will find these little power-ups called, I think, fusion cores or something.

And the enemies will drop sometimes that let you combine them.

Sometimes they combine to make a new exciting

ball altogether.

Like if you combine fire, the fire special ball with the iron special ball, it makes a bomb special ball.

Like, it creates a new type.

You can also combine two balls together that don't have like a combination like that, uh, so that you are making like a hybridized ball.

So, you can take the lightning one

and the uh brood mother one that spawns baby balls and you combine them.

It doesn't make like a new all-together ball, but it makes a lightning ex-brood mother.

So, you can combine your set of balls.

What did did I say?

I need to say

Lightning X Brood Mother.

Well, you knew what I meant.

Thanks for putting me on blast.

Sorry for misspeaking, guys.

Thank you.

It's rad.

It's really rad, and it really gives you a lot of, I don't know, ability to really fuck up the board and really break a run wide open.

Can we talk about the meta, the harvest meta?

I think it's very interesting, and I don't know what you guys think.

Can you explain sort of what that element of the game is?

You have a, while the main main time that you're spending on the game, you're playing in like this very dynamic setting where the action is coming at you.

You're also tending to a town and your town is sort of like, if you imagine your town like a pinball table, which you can increase the size of and you can place the bumpers.

And the bumpers are buildings that have...

both a direct impact on your gameplay, but also have an impact on how many resources you're about to harvest.

You get one shot to harvest resources, and that is basically practiced the same way you do in the main game, except you're shooting people or workers in a line and you're trying to get them to ping pong off of your different buildings and resources.

So you collect as many resources as you can and you're upgrading those things that they're like ping-ponging against to try to maximize that

the amount they collect, but also like you need them to hit specific buildings to upgrade those buildings.

So you're trying to like, and you get one shot at this.

so after it's done it's like dagger play the game again gotta play the game again so that's kind of the back and forth it's really great i've played a lot of this game uh i don't know how far you go wait i want to know the heart i i'd like to see what you guys thought about that oh i think it's i think i just described it oh yeah sure i was i was going to talk about that i was going to say oh i thought you were talking about the whole thing's no no no no no i i've i've played so much and my town is gargantuan and i think it's like fully expanded and i've built all the shit it does reach a point where of diminishing returns i think where the buildings that you build that give you an upgrade in the like combat part of the game at first they do feel pretty substantial.

And some of them do like crazy shit, like give you an extra slot for another special ball that you can take in, like really huge, pretty impactful ways.

But then there's a lot of that that felt kind of underwhelming to me.

I like building a town and increasing my gains and what have you, but it felt like the payoff for that was

only sometimes felt like significant and satisfying, which kind of like was a bit of a buzzkill.

It's also a bit of a pacebreaker in that being in the machine of the breakout can be so enjoyable.

And then to go back to the

I don't know, like the town design area where it's like, okay, now I'm going to move around like 20 little bits of ore so I can put this building here.

And it's so random.

It feels like I don't know.

I mean, you can move this stuff around and you can kind of get an idea, but like, it's not very fun to move around.

And then, for me, the harvest sections always ended with this feeling of like it was just like this slight disappointment.

Like, I could have done it better.

Like, every time I did it, I feel like, if man, if I had moved that over here, or like, I won't notice that there's an area that's closed off and like everything I wanted to do over there doesn't get done.

And it's, it's just like

I have had so few interactions with that system where where at the end of it, I feel both accomplished and like participatory.

I set this up and it worked the way I wanted it to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought it was interesting and a good contrast to like effectively the same system exists in games like Vampire Survivors or Halls of Torment, but all it is is really just you go back to the main hub and you walk around and spend the gold that you earned in the previous run.

Yeah.

And that is to some extent what's happening here, but obviously, again, you're using the buildings to like ricochet.

Yeah, I like the strategy of it, but you're right, there was an element that was missing that just like took some of the satisfaction out of it.

But I did get excited when like I've built the building that unlocked the character, and then I had a new character to do in the next run.

So, there's like a good logic to it, but there's just an element that's not quite there.

It needed to feel more celebratory.

I don't know.

What did you think, Clant?

Yeah, well, I mean, beyond that, I want to just talk about the high-level game.

The first four hours of this game are some of the most fun I've had in a video game this year.

The next two hours convinced me I needed to delete this game immediately.

And then I did delete this game.

Out of a fear of addiction sort of sampling or

a mix of addiction and extreme frustration.

And I'm curious, maybe I'm just, it's very possible.

I'm just bad at the game and I don't know how to play it.

But the way that these sorts of games work is they

make it difficult when they're working well to tell the difference between your skill increasing and the game's progression loop making you more powerful.

So as you play this game,

you get multiple characters, and then each of those characters has upgrades where they become more powerful the more you play them, and your town is making everything more powerful, and you're unlocking new synergies.

So you're

it's not your skill that is improving.

A lot of the time, it's all these different things.

But what was at least happening for me after that four-hour mark was my,

what it felt like my skill was moving or wanting to progress much faster than the progression loop.

So I was bashing my head against the wall over and over again, feeling like I was doing everything I possibly could to beat a level.

Like I was making great decisions.

I had good shots.

I had, I felt like I had a strategy.

And then I would get towards the end of the level and it was like, nope, this is actually just a grind run.

You know, this is your mistake.

There is a scaling that happens that is a bit unpredictable in each level where you'll feel like, hey, this is a fucking good.

There's one character where they shoot two balls at half damage.

Oh, yeah.

And I feel like that's one where, like, I would tear shit up at the beginning and be like, oh, I'll go for a baby ball run.

I'll get all these upgrades for those.

And then I would hit the like.

Second boss or third wave and it would be like, oh, fuck.

Actually, wow, I wasn't even close to ready for this.

Yeah, it's i know playing it it's it almost feels like those different systems that are supposed to like reward you and make you feel good about playing don't necessarily like

interact with each other in a way where it it's all clicking like and i feel like maybe the the thing i was saying about difficulty maybe would help because maybe that would slow down your facility with like playing the game where i i think the the thing with the harvesting and where it all feels kind of unsatisfying is that my independent runs did seem very much more dependent on the drops that I would get in that run as opposed to whatever upgrades I had gotten in the middle of the thing.

So it's all kind of disconnected in that way.

Yeah, I also think there's a huge gap between the bulk of the game, which is all these tiny enemies and whatever the boss fight is.

So you can have a build that is very intensive direct damage, but that doesn't do you well when you're going up against, you know, hundreds of enemies.

Or you can have the opposite, like area of effect builds, and then you go up against a boss.

And it created this situation where if I built my build for the boss, I would lose early on.

And if I built my build to get to the boss, I would lose at the boss.

And I get like, I get that.

That's a strategy.

The thing is to like create balance.

But what that results in is a lot of 10-minute runs where you get to the end and it's like, well, I thought this build was awesome.

And now I'm here.

I do want to be super clear, though, of

i the reason i deleted this game is because i want to download it again once it is tweaked because now we just know that these sorts of games especially get tweaked endlessly to get balanced based off of players feedback and right this really feels like a game that's going to get tweaked so much over the next year but yes i did want to call out there's a feature in this game that i has maybe appeared in other vampire survivors likes but but I have not seen it before that I absolutely fucking love and needs to be in everything now.

You can directly control the speed of the gameplay at any given time.

So you can go in super fast motion, you can go in normal speed, or you can go in slower speed, akin to like if you were playing like The Sims and you wanted to like just like get through a grindy part.

And what that allows you to do is depending on what you're doing.

So if you're doing like a brand new level you've never done before with an unleveled character, maybe you're going to want to to go slower because like every moment really counts.

But if you've got a super leveled up character and you're playing an early level, fucking go at hyper speed and get through it as quickly as possible.

Like that sort of control I thought was a genius addition.

Yeah, it's very accessible too.

It's just like, yeah, it's just shoulder buttons.

It's great.

It makes a lot of sense.

I mean, it really does.

Like you can do that in Vampire Survivors has tools for that, but it's not at that accessible or that level of, and it's weird to keep bringing up Vampire Survivors.

I know that that's like not that, not that helpful because that game also is kind of constantly evolving.

so i those references aren't as helpful i was going to say plant i i feel like

i

think that the amount of run-based games that i have been playing lately or do play generally has a nerd me to this the the frustration that you're talking about i see it very i feel it very much more on a continuum like if i get to a boss and i don't finish the boss that time i it doesn't really move the needle for me one way or the other because the next time because i'm still layering on some sort of progression, you know what I mean?

And I feel like,

I don't know, that didn't get to me as much because it just did feel like I was going to get, I got something useful out of it and I was going to have a different, you know, experience the next time.

This is so helpful because it builds off of what you were saying about the city, which is if I felt like I had more control of growing my build in the city management area,

I probably wouldn't feel so bad about the end of a run.

But when I end the run, and often I like don't even want to go back to the city management area i'm not actually growing and maybe that's it is like i don't know if it's maybe i need to spend more time in the city management area or again it just needs to make a little more sense the city management i think is too much tool for what it is i feel like they need like big you should have that level of fidelity if you want it but i would also like to just like have an optimal path that you're just kind of laying out for me and i'm upgrading like how many people i get and how many bounces around i get So it feels more like celebratory rather than like, ah, I fucked myself.

Yeah.

You do.

The later upgrades for the city do have more impact on the city building side of things.

Like you can unlock more

attempts, more harvested stuff.

Or I like there's a building where when you hit it first, that's

everything around it.

Yeah.

So you start building around those.

those things and like the strategy for that stuff really does feel good it's just by that point in the game i feel like like I had unlocked most of the meaningful kind of like character combat upgrades.

And so

there's parts of this that are really rough.

I do think there is something kind of undeniable about this fusion.

I think it is, I think it is very, very strong.

And like, you know, you go back to that feeling you had the first time you played Puzzle Quest, where you're like, oh, shit, of course, RPGs and Match 3.

That makes sense.

Like, I feel like this is a, this, this game, I think, really establishes the breakout as uh you know as a sub-genre pretty pretty authoritatively um it's a it's a bit rough in how it's balanced but i don't know i also spent like 30 hours more paddle play next time a little more paddle play is also

i also want to say that uh schmupps just infiltrating every corner of video games i love it i live for it schmupp x ball you can throw i you know plant that's funny i feel like uh schmup is the new light MMORPG elements.

Like, you could just put a schmupp in it.

You know what I mean?

Like, they threw it in on top of the breakout thing.

You're also shooting a thousand bullets.

Yeah.

Just throw it in.

Throw a schmupp on there.

Why not?

Hey, should we take a quick break and then come back and talk about cool stuff?

Or not cool stuff?

I don't know.

Yeah, that would be prudent.

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Okay, I'm gonna

talk a little bit about uh Xbox broadly and Xbox more specifically.

Uh, it's been kind of a tough generation for a number of different reasons that I'm not gonna specifically go into right now for Xbox, not the least of which they are like pretty handily losing the console war to PS5.

I think there's been 2x the number of PS5s that have been sold versus Xbox Series X's, which is not great.

Sorry,

I said not great, not great great

uh

so they're having a tough time than that we've seen layoffs we've seen game cancellations we've seen all sorts of stuff that has been like pretty dire i think the most recent big news was the a dramatic price increase of uh game pass where they increased the price by 50

you know, through in Fortnite crew as part of it.

But obviously that was like a huge sticker shock moment where I think a lot of people probably were like, this is not worth it anymore.

And I think they probably saw a lot of subs.

I think they are at a period right now where they are trying a lot of different things to keep the gaming division of Xbox alive

and

admitting that their previous strategies were not right.

And the latest strategy is the entry into handheld gaming, which outside of Nintendo,

It's been quite a while since a major publisher of video games has jumped into it.

And it's always been PlayStation.

Like, Xbox has really never done the handheld gaming space.

And now they are.

They partnered with Asus and put out a device, which is out this week called the ROG Xbox Ally X.

Right off the tunnel.

It just rolls right off the tongue.

Obviously, people are familiar.

There is already an Asus

ROG ally and an Ally X, but not an Xbox Ally X.

Holy shit.

If you thought the branding was bad for the Xbox Series X and S, welcome to the new age.

They can both be bad.

They're both pretty rotten.

Yeah, so it's worth knowing, just off the top here, a few things.

One, I've been using one for the last five days, a review unit that they sent for the last five days.

This, despite the naming convention, is a more powerful device than the ROG Ally X.

You go to fucking Digital Foundry if you want like a spec rundown or whatever it is, but the general consensus is it's like 20 to 25% more powerful, whatever.

For my purposes, not being like a huge spec head, what that means is I can run a game like, for example, I ran Battlefield 6, brand new 3D full-on game at 60 frames a second on like medium settings in a handheld setting, which is like, I've been using a Steam Deck for the last four years, a pretty dramatic increase.

But having been using a Steam Deck for the last four years, there's something that I haven't personally experienced that I know you guys have, which is Windows handheld gaming.

Yeah.

It fucking sucks, dude.

Yeah.

It's really bad.

I genuinely would have returned my ROG Ally X.

I hate Windows gaming so much that metaphorically, I have spent hundreds of dollars on a thing and then gotten a screwdriver, just banged it into its brain until it died.

And I brought it back with paddles.

I made it forget everything it had ever known.

And I risked its life to do it.

That's how much I hate Windows.

It's not great to do with tools on your desk designed to help you navigate interfaces to do it on a handheld with a touch screen and face buttons and sticks and triggers and shit.

Like, it simply sucks.

It simply is so, so bad.

And Bazite fixes that by just making it Steam OS, which is what I did.

So Xbox agrees and has admitted to that.

And the solve is, I say solve in quotes because we're going to get to it.

The solve is on the ROG Xbox Ally X because it launches with a

it's called the Xbox full screen experience yeah it's called Xbox OX but essentially it's think of big picture mode but for Xbox in the way that Steam has big picture mode and so they create created a system where when you launch the device it launches straight into like a front end that will allow you to launch into your various uh storefronts whether that's Xbox itself or if it's Steam or if it's Epic Game Store or whatever it is.

So, theoretically,

and I say this with a heavy underline: theoretically, you should never have to see the Xbox desk, the Windows desktop ever when you're using this thing.

In practice, that has not been the case because I had to update about 16 times.

It's hard for me to say whether that's going to be the case when it gets unboxed by normal people because I had an earlier version of it, but it

the Steam Deck, the Steam OS experience is so smooth and so pretty fucking flawless.

Yeah.

And when you make an experience that kind of feels in the ball park of that, you kind of need to hit that mark.

And unfortunately, they're not there yet.

There's a lot of like, hit the button, nothing happens.

Hit the button, try to go back.

You're not going back.

Open up another app.

That app is not opening for some reason.

There's still a lot of that.

Once you're actually in a game, it's fine.

I've been, it's been fine.

Can you get in there and like erase it and start it up?

Erase what?

This This wrong Ally Xbox.

It's not like protected or anything, right?

You're right, you're right.

You can get in there and erase its brains and do all of that.

So as I'm testing this device,

as I'm testing this device,

no, dirtier brains.

Not better, dirtier.

As I'm testing this device, all I can think of is

I'm probably just going to fucking wipe this thing and just install Steam OS or Bazite.

Like, that seems like the likely scenario.

Yeah, dude.

If I was that team, man, I would just put my social security number in the boot up screen because nobody's ever going to, that's how quick they're going to try to get rid of it.

You could tell that they're trying,

but it is.

But can you?

Sorry.

I just want to clarify.

Well, would you feel comfortable at this point if it was yours?

Is there enough is the knowledge base out there yet for how to to if you wanted to like wipe this thing clean and baslight on it?

Definitely not.

Probably.

I imagine it'll be relatively quick because Baslight obviously works on a rogue ally.

And I don't think the architecture is that dramatically different.

So, I'm sure within a month or two, there's probably going to be a solution to get Linux on this thing very quickly.

Not pre-release, certainly.

I want to talk about the trying really quick because I know denying that the people who are actually on the ground making this thing are trying and doing their best.

No doubt.

The people who are deciding to ship this right now, I have real questions for because the whole pitch of this thing was the best of Xbox and the best of PC.

And this does not play Xbox games.

That is

explain that to me.

I don't understand.

It's to me in

just bonkers.

You cannot play Xbox console video games on this.

You can play PC games that have been ported, but when, let's say, Grand Theft Auto comes out next year and it's not going to be available on PC and it's available on Xbox, you will not be able to to play it on this device.

Correct.

It's a PC game.

All of your other old Xbox games, all of this Xbox Anywhere, the whole this is an Xbox brand is simply not true of their big new hardware.

And that's just so

stupid to me.

And I would also add: if you're going to portray this as Xbox OS, it needs to be as relatively painless as the Xbox's OS on the console, which is relatively painless.

Like you're not dealing with a lot.

Like it just kind of runs.

Yeah, it's a console gaming operating system.

That needed to be the rubric, the mark there.

So when I talk about things like putting this console to sleep, the handheld to sleep, the new Xbox Ally, whatever,

it does sleep as poorly as any Windows handheld.

As the ROG Ally X also.

Which is to say it essentially doesn't have a sleep mode, which is a huge fucking problem for a handheld.

And people will say, like, oh, it has hibernation and it has like this deep sleep mode.

If you do, like,

I don't want to fuck with that stuff.

Like, I simply don't want to fuck with that stuff.

I want to press the button and have it immediately switch off.

And then, when I press the button, immediately switch back on into the game that I am.

And you don't want to worry about it turning on randomly for an update while it's in your bag somewhere and blowing through the battery in 30 minutes.

Like, that's.

I think this gets at the huge problem of this whole this isn't Xbox idea, and how this I feel like is just going to continue to backfire on them is the promise of a video game console is the ease.

If you want anything else, you should be playing it on PC.

You want cheaper stuff, you want it, you know, stuff that runs better, but if you want ease, that's why you buy a video game console.

So, now what they said is, this is an Xbox, everything is an Xbox, and every experience that you have with Xbox is the opposite of video game console.

It either is more of a headache, like this, it's just a PC, or it is the digital streaming to like your phone, which also has its own headaches that is not giving you the guaranteed experience that you're getting from a console.

So, weirdly, this is an Xbox means that nothing is an Xbox.

Is Screams like a biz dev product that wasn't really like conceptualized with a market in mind?

So much as just like, think about it, baby.

It's the best of Xbox with the wrong ally.

It's perfect.

Let's do it.

It's like, why?

Why?

Why?

Why are you doing it?

Why?

I actually disagree.

I think there is a market here.

And I think the market is Xbox trying to reclaim ownership over PC gaming from Steam.

The problem with that goal is you actually need to produce a product that is as good as the competitor you're reaching in the same way that like when you try to launch the Epic Game Store on your computer, it's a pretty miserable experience.

You needed to match what Steam has done.

And when Chris was talking about like painless experiences in PC gaming, The Steam Deck is a pretty fucking painless experience in PC gaming and they figured it out.

So that's the rubric to hit.

Now, to be fair, I'm going to try to be as fair as I can.

When the Steam Deck launched very early on, it was not,

there were issues.

Like, we all remember there was a lot of updates in that first year that brought it to a better state.

But it's, trust me when I say this device is in a much worse state on the software side.

On the hard side,

it's also a rogue ally.

Like,

this has been out.

This has been out there for a while.

Yeah.

But it's not the same device, right?

It's not the same device.

Not quite.

Again, Internals, but I also haven't mentioned the hardware.

The hardware, for what it's worth, it is more comfortable for me to hold than a Steam Deck.

It's heavier, pretty dramatically heavier, but it feels like you're holding an Xbox controller.

Like it feels really nice.

But again, you're dealing with software.

I'm like swiping down to enter a pin code every time I turn the thing on.

Like it's very bizarre.

And I really hope that they get to a place where Steam is, I mean, it's just like

Steam being the only option in the world for like painless PC gaming seems crazy to me.

Yeah.

Well, one, I just think Steam needs to be easier to install on all sorts of other devices.

That was the promise early on, and I want to see

Steam OS, yeah, and that it's just available on more and more.

But to get, to, to Justin's point, I think you're both, it's, it's, both things are true.

This is a huge market opportunity.

Um, but more importantly for players, like, this is like a thing that people like I would like, right?

I would like for Sony and Microsoft to be making handheld devices.

It's deranged that they didn't after the Switch's success.

I think what is so frustrating about it is it just feels like Microsoft is grabbing at anything they can and it needs to happen now.

So it's like, hey, it will take us six years to develop a new hardware, but we can get a handheld out in the market if we partner with ROG and we do this.

And it's like we got to get it out the door by the holidays.

So even though it's not a great experience, we got to get it out.

Oh, the tariffs are happening.

Doesn't matter.

We just need to bounce that price up.

They resisted putting a price on this thing forever.

It's just all, it all just feels so desperate.

And then to actually get the product and for it to be this disappointing.

I'm sorry, I have not played this.

I'm going off of your opinion.

But for it to,

for for it to, on a very high level, not literally do the main thing, which is be an Xbox and be a PC, I just find,

I just find it so frustrating and so disappointing.

I think Microsoft is in a weird, I mean, they've been in a weird spot, but

for me, this device kind of clarifies that.

And you all are smart people in games, so tell me if this resonates with you, but I feel like Microsoft right now wants to be in the position where they can have Xbox as a completely generic, amorphous label that just means video games.

Correct.

And it can be a storefront to them

where they are selling video games.

They would love for that to be a consistent online thing across all your devices, but it's called Steam.

Right.

But

it's their version of Steam.

Right.

But they simul, but that would not be a problem, except that they are simultaneously trying to keep a large portion of their fan base convinced that they are not doing that.

Like they have to, it seems like there's a group of people they need to keep reassuring.

And this is true in a sense, right?

That they will continue to sell those people a box that says Xbox on it for as long as they will continue to give them the money to do that, right?

It's not like Microsoft is not saying we're getting out of the console game unless people don't buy them and then they just won't.

But I don't think they want to communicate their strategy.

And they, and that's that's keeping one foot in both of these worlds, right?

If they would just say, we're the Xbox boxes, don't worry about that anymore.

All your Xbox games, you can play everywhere.

I don't think they've done the deals to support that.

So I don't think that's been their strategy.

So I don't know where they go from here, but it just feels like they won't, they don't want to tell their audience what they are doing.

Meanwhile, like quietly, retailers are just not selling Xboxes anymore.

Like,

yeah, yeah.

Costco pulled them from the it is on, they have been in such a weird spot for so long.

I've heard other retailers too.

It continues to be strange to me that, that no major, it feels like there's a move here, right?

And I, I don't know what it is off the top of my head.

If I did, I would be in a completely different sector of this business, but it feels like

the stable is big and the experience and everything.

Like, it feels like there should be a move here.

It's just that the move, I think if I was Microsoft and this isn't the, like, this isn't where they need to be, but like both of their online offerings, Sony and Microsoft need to be, have impressive enough online offerings that a compelling device would be a go-anywhere experience that you can just play all your library whenever you want to, right?

But like, I don't know why Microsoft also wants to be subsidizing the like PC hardware to be playing it in your hands.

I don't know.

I feel like that is always, that is just a stopgap that we are going to have to move past in our, in our cloud future.

What do you mean by subsidizing?

Like

they're paying for the, okay, they're paying, this is maybe our Wi-Fi infrastructure isn't at a point, but where this is like realistic for everyone, but like they're subsidizing the hardware that is physically in your hands, but that hardware could be

somewhere else, right?

And not, you're not paying for that hardware, right?

So, so you are buying the hardware that you have in front of you and carrying it physically, like the weight of that, right?

And you've bought those chips and you've bought all that hardware when like you don't need to own that hardware you just need to be able to play the games in it especially in like a handheld format i'm getting to a point where these these things i can't even hold them easily anymore it like i i struggle with like carpal tunnel and stuff like that like these this form factor is starting to get unpleasant and i i just feel like streaming is a much more realistic like path forward than trying to like subs like put pcs into people's hands interesting yeah i mean yeah i think i think either way it just needs to be a good experience like they're also crazy expensive, and it's like wild.

They can do streaming, but it needs to be better.

They can do this with the traditional OS, but it needs to be better.

Whatever it is,

the experience needs to be way more comfortable.

I'm having really, really good streaming experiences on Android devices these days.

Like,

they're getting really good, especially with like

Android, like Game Hub on Android has gotten to a point where like if your Steam credentials are there, you tap the game that you own and it will download the files and convert them for you.

And then you're playing them, and it's streaming beautifully.

Not streaming, it's on your device.

It's like you're playing it, but it's nice.

It's a much more pleasant experience.

Do we want to talk about other stuff we've been playing?

Yeah, sure.

Or do we have reader mail?

We have a couple quick reader mails.

First one comes from Jakey.

Some people reposting a comment I left a few weeks ago of non-horror Halloween games that you might want to try if you are looking for something something this season.

Most of them are quite old, but a few of them are playable on some form of modern consoles.

Arkham Knight, Night in the Woods, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Oogie's Revenge, Simpsons Hit and Run, and Costume Quest 1 and 2 are all games of varying quality that actually take place at least in part on Halloween.

Other typical horror games, I always think of Luigi's Mansion games and Medieval.

And then some mentions to Grab by the Ghoulies, Stubs the Zombie,

some classic ones first.

I want to mention Luigi's Mansion specifically personally because I've been playing it with my son,

and that is a great fucking co-op game.

I would really, really recommend if you've, if it's been sitting on your Switch for five years because he played through it when it first came out, and you want to try it in co-op,

you can do almost the entire game in co-op with the other player controlling Guigi, and it's been a fucking delight.

I want to, hey, can I piggyback off that with a similar recommendation for a Halloween sort of thing that I've also been playing this week with my kids.

The 99 Nights in the Forest is a Roblox experience.

And the way it's structured is that it's a day and night cycle where you have a camp where you're trying to chop wood in the forest, bring it back to your camp and chuck enough wood into the fire that it will stay lit throughout the night and protect you from the deer.

and cultists that are trying to attack you.

But there are four missing children in the forests that you have to venture out to find.

So the game is about going out to find these children and harvesting resources, resources, then bring back to camp and then trying to stay alive through the night and get back in time so you can survive.

And then at the daytime, trying to find these missing kids.

It's a goofy Roblox thing, but as a like slightly semi-scary thing to just kind of like chill out and play with your kids, I don't know if you do that with your children, but if you do, and they're probably already playing 99 Nights of the Force, but if not, think about flexing on your kids with a Roblox game they haven't played.

Can you imagine if one of us was on the ground floor of a Roblox experience?

How much our relevance and sort of just,

you know, cachet just completely fucking explode overnight um

i have been playing uh quite a bit more absalom with henry now we got it on the switch 2 uh and so i basically started over because i'd played it on the rog ally

and uh

it it has really lived up to my expectations as being like a really tight as hell like uh couch couch co-op beat-em-up that is accessible enough for an eight-year-old who doesn't have like a ton of experience with the genre.

We played through all of Scott Pilgrim a couple times, actually.

And so, like, he really, really likes that model of game.

And

he has gotten so fucking deep into this.

And it's been cool watching him like say, like, oh, I'm a cider-mane.

Like, and seeing him kind of have that experience with the game has been very cool.

And yeah, it's just, that game's just fun as hell.

I've also been playing on Apple Arcade,

the Japanese Rural Life Adventure.

Oh,

this game came out a while ago.

Wow.

I believe it's been updated.

There's quite a few things going on.

Oh, I can't go back to Japanese Rural Life Adventure, Griff.

I don't know, boss.

If you never played it, it is sort of a life sim game about living out in the Japanese countryside and sort of like helping to rebuild a town, but it doesn't really have necessarily a lot of the mechanical or economic hooks of a Stardew Valley or an Animal Crossing.

It is mostly just a chill vibe game going around and, like, you know,

I sold enough fish to buy a,

you know, a millstone so I can make, I can pound mochi now.

Like, it really is very sort of slow and vibey.

And

I really like it.

And

nice.

Fresh?

You go first.

You know, it's that time of the year when you just gotta make a nice glass of warm cider and play some puzzle bobble 2 arcade edition.

You know, sometimes you just got to pop those bubbles.

You know what?

I'm realizing after playing Bollocks Pit,

I needed another game that let me fire bubbles up into the air while they come down at me and crush me.

And I found the perfect one.

It's Puzzle Bob Bubble 2.

Great thing about that game is you load it, and if you played it on Dreamcast, you actually are transported back to 1999 when you play it.

Wow.

I didn't know that games could do that.

Yeah, this one can.

Very cool.

I've been busy playing games that we can't talk about yet because they're under embargo, but I do have a request for the people at home.

Steam Nextfest is going on right now.

There's a shitload of new demos that are out and about and playable.

Please, in the comments for this newsletter,

share the games you played for Steam Nextfest and really liked because we're always looking out for new, cool.

games to check out.

And I always get buried during Steam Next Fest.

It always makes me a little depressed how many fucking good games there are and knowing that I won't be able to play them all.

So please call out the good games and why they are good in the comments.

Juice.

Oh, can I tell you guys about one other thing that was neat?

Retroassembly.com is a website where you can either use their website or you can download a self-hosted tool that you can have on your own network addressable server

server.

So like if you have,

you know, you can set this up.

You basically can upload ROMs from Super Nintendo, Genesis, Famicom,

SG1000, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Band, a bunch of a bunch, a bunch of platforms.

And they're playable either in a cloud format anywhere that you have a browser access, or if you put them on a home server, you can play them anywhere you connect to the server.

And you can do them through this tool and have it like set up.

So it's kind of like having your own little streaming arcade in your cloud at home.

It's a really neat tool.

And it's I always think it's cool when people make this stuff for no reason other than it's neat.

So they're not hosting the ROMs.

Like you said you upload the ROMs.

Are they?

They can't.

They will.

They can upload the.

Is that not like a issue?

Like a legal issue?

Are you going to get in trouble, Justin?

Are you asking me?

I mean, I'm not asking you, Justin.

I'm asking RetroAssembly if they're hosting a bunch of ROMs they don't own.

Oh my God.

No, it's tied to my Google Drive.

So that's what it's pulling from, right?

So this is like a translation layer between you have ROMs on your Google Drive.

Yeah, for games that I legally own.

Remember that day when I told you I had bought all the games and then threw them away?

Well,

okay, that's going to do it for us for this week on the besties.

Wait, wait, wait.

I want to thank some Patreon people real quick.

Not this time, Buster.

Patreon.com/slash the besties.

Thank you to some

new or existing members that have maybe they upgraded.

Maybe they're just newly joined.

Abigail S.

Parker T, Ashley A, and Chocoboba T, which is a very funny name.

Thank you for being members of the Patreon.

We've got new bracket battles coming out every single month.

We've got Rest These episodes twice a month.

It's all sorts of fun going on in there.

So please join us if you haven't yet.

Do we know what we're talking about next week?

Yes.

Now, next week we're going to be talking about Outer Worlds 2.

So that'll be very exciting and then after that well you'll just have to see won't you

sorry

that's gonna do it for this week that was really cute dude thanks dude that's gonna do it for this week on the besties be sure to join us get next week for the besties because should the world's best friends pick the world's best games

Besties.