Is Outer Worlds 2 the Second Coming of Fallout New Vegas?

Here's what I'm saying. This is my problem with all games like this.
Okay.

The moment I get a spaceship. Yeah.

I'm not going to do anything anybody wants me to. Ever again.
Forever. Right.

The moment I get a spaceship, why am I concerning myself with these petty terrestrial concerns? Yeah. There's a little thing called gas money.
Yeah. Okay.

How are you going to fucking power your spaceship?

Did you find a secret fucking OnlyFans?

Did you find a secret menu option in the game that makes you put gas in the

hub ship?

I'm playing on

realism mode. Oh, you're playing on.
You got to harvest anodyne tablets from the ground to access them. I'm so tired when I walk around the planets.
I get so tired. Yeah.

I just needed a fucking nap.

I'm just saying if I get a spaceship and somebody's like, we need it. We heard there's a border dispute out and go fuck yourself.
No way. Like, are you kidding me? I'm on Mars.

I don't even remember you. Like, I'm gone.
I'm in space. I'm Captain Harlock.
You know what I mean? I'm gone.

Starfield was a bad game by traditional standards, but it did kind of nail that one part of space exploration, which is you get your ship and then you just kind of fuck around.

And I think somebody's like, what happened to Justin? I haven't seen him in a while. It's like, actually, he got a spaceship and he started going to these crazy planets so far out.

There's nothing on them except power-ups.

And he would like fly to these planets and I think he prayed or something and then when he came back he could float dude That's what I'm doing with the spaceship. I'm gonna find those planets.

Hey, maybe we were too hard on Starfield. Yeah, when you say it in that specific and it only takes 20 seconds to say it's pretty good.
Yeah,

we weren't too hard. No, that didn't fucking suck.

My name is Justin Ackeray. I know the best game of the week.
My name is Griffin McCarray. I know the best game of the week.
My name is Russ Frushik. I know the best game of the week.

And welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club.
And just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member.

This week, we are talking about Outer Worlds 2. Normally, this is when Chris Plant would describe the game.
He's not here. So, Russ Frushdick, it falls to you.
What is Outer Worlds 2?

I don't know what Outer Worlds 2 is, but I know what the Outer Worlds 2 is. It's the sequel to The Outer Worlds.
Are you for serious?

I'll be right back with the pain in the ass, Rush Fresh Dick, and the one I'm still talking to, Griffin, right after this.

Outer Worlds to me has always been really interesting because I feel like it's one that I really liked, and I think a lot of people really liked, but it didn't, for whatever reason, at least for me, seem to have as much of the staying power.

I know the music kicked around for quite some time, but I felt like the foothold, the song, there's a couple of songs from it that became very like big on YouTube and TikTok and stuff.

But like, I don't know. It seemed like just sort of an obsessive fandom or something.

If I'm remembering the timeline kind of correctly, didn't Outer Worlds come out sort of shortly after Fallout 76?

uh

was either out or announced and i remember a lot of the response to that game was in conversation with like the stuff that, you know, Bethes is not really doing so much these days.

And so there was a, I don't know, it was, it became a point of comparison, like an inflection point about that.

And it does feel like Outer Worlds 2 is free from a lot of that baggage and benefits from it a bit.

I think there was also an element of there was an expectation, and this is on them because it was marketed this way, of this being like

New Vegas 2, effectively. Right.
Like the first game was New Vegas 2. And given the fact that they were building this new game

in a genre that they hadn't really fully explored in quite a while, it kind of felt like that promise wasn't totally met.

Even though there were elements of that in the first game, it felt a little more narrow than something you would see in Outer Worlds.

Can I try and set up what Outer Worlds is? Because I think that there's probably folks who either don't know or do get it confused with Outer Wilds, which is a different game.

But Outer Worlds is from Obsidian,

the creators of Fallout New Vegas, and

it is a first-person sort of action RPG exploration game

in the vein of a Fallout. You have a character with a set of skills that you invest points in every time you level up, giving you access to perks that change your character.

There's a bunch of different weapons, a bunch of different factions for you to work with,

a bunch of stuff to explore. That's the basic setup of the game.
Yes. And I would say that tonally, and I don't know, this is maybe a bit more controversial, but you guys tell me.

I've always felt like when Bethesda took over Fallout, it lost a lot of the humor and the cheek that was part of that series to begin with.

And it's still in the DNA, but it's not as like, I think when you're making a game as big as Fallout, I don't think they also wanted to make it as sort of like satirical.

Yeah, I mean, Fallout 2 got fucking downright wacky at times.

Yeah, so for me, I have felt like Outer Worlds is like, in some ways, a more fitting sequel to Fallout because it's got a perspective and it is about consumerism in a way that Fallout games used to be, but now it's just sort of like, I don't know, it's laughing at its own jokes a lot.

I feel like Outer Worlds is like, there is a perspective. It is like a relentless.

capitalist satire that is very focused on this one specific this one specific yeah i think even uh outer worlds 2 does it better than outer worlds 1 i found the tone of outer worlds 1 a little bit grading because it was such a cartoonish

uh like corporate hellscape and that is definitely still the case here

but the way that they have kind of consolidated some of the factions right in the first game there were a bunch of different corporations vying for control of this one uh you know multi-planetary system uh and in this game you're the the game starts off with a bang, and then there's like 10 years that you sleep through essentially.

And when you come back,

Antes,

what is it?

Anti's choice. Anti's choice, which is made up of a corporate merger of Spacer's choice and

anti-something,

now like rules the galaxy. It is like making an incursion into this authoritarian

factions, like solar system that you are now in the middle of their great war. And also there's this like religion based on math that's like kicking around in there too.

It's like everyone is, everyone's sort of intention is extremely clearly laid out right from the jump, but it's not only played for laughs. Like it's not only

silly. Yeah.

What did you guys think of this game, The Outer Worlds 2?

Sounds like you're setting us up. I am because I feel like a lot of this is shoe leather to establish its kind of like fallout.
Yeah, that's fair. That's totally.
Thank you.

I liked it.

I like it. I'm still playing it.

I like it more than I liked Outer Worlds 1.

Outer Worlds 1 was a fine game that I feel like constantly pigeonholed me and my character into certain choices or locked me out of certain things because of how I was or was not built, leading to an ending that is like pretty widely panned.

I'm pretty, I feel like for that game,

where it's like so clear, like you do the talking the bad guy out of it ending, or you do the shoot the bad guy ending.

Here, it's like, I don't know, it feels like they have done a much better job of making the world so much more interactive, regardless of which way you've decided to build your character.

It feels like there's a million ways to go about stuff, and that singular improvement has made the game like a lot more enjoyable for me.

Yeah, that's where the richest differences lie for me between this game and like

recent Bethesda Game Studios Open World RPGs is because Bethesda's games have gotten so huge, I think from a scale standpoint, they feel like they can't offer those six solutions to a given side quest.

And here, because

you know, the areas aren't, it's not one giant open streaming map. Right.

They can do much more focused stories. And with more focused stories, they're able to have a lot more variance in the solutions for a given thing.
I also think the writing is just a lot stronger. So,

I'm really,

I think to me, the thing that stands out the most while I'm playing this, and it is the thing that I am, I like, I really appreciate, but I'm probably struggling with it more than I should, is that it feels less directed than a lot of games like this would be.

And I mean that in the sense of like, I'll give you an example.

There is a, I'm not going to use any specifics here, but there is a calamitous event where a ship that you're you're on is about to be brought down on a populated area.

And the person that you're with says, you got to do something. And you're like, yes, absolutely.
I'll do something. And then the only thing that's indicated on your HUD is an escape, right?

There is a computer in the room that you can use, but the only thing that's on the HUD is one place. And I just kind of assumed like, well, I guess I figure it out outside of here, but whatever.

And then I got out the door and she was like, you just let it crash. I was like, yeah, I guess there was.
You did say I should do something on there. Now that I think about it, so I reloaded my save.

I looked around and yeah, I'll be damned. There's a computer there you can use to fix it.
But, but the game wasn't like flashing it. It wasn't like, hey, this is pretty early on.

So it's not a knock on the game. I hadn't sort of realized this was the level of like.
of load of, I wasn't playing with the blanks, basically. Right.

But that's cool. I do like that it does that.
I do, I actually really like that moment a lot because it does establish this feeling of like, there's, you could be doing something.

there is some if you run into a building and there's a big armored dude in there and he's like you wandered into the wrong building now i'm gonna fuck you up that's usually an indicator that like you could have found like a vent that you snuck in or you could have better at hiding that though it's better a lot of these like deus X where it can be like there's a grate on the left hand side that you can pull off with your strength and then on the back there's a computer that you can hack over the door and on the left there's a window you can sneak into you know it's not like it masks it better than that yeah it feels more organic in the level design i i agree there's a lot of uh situations where it'll be like uh theoretically an enemy base and obviously you can present like a fake id to get in but within that enemy base there's just so much other side content that you can find if you just take the time to do it that's that's they also make skills so important in conversation and not just skills like your talking skill, but like how aware you are of, I mean, almost every skill seems to play into dialogue a lot of the time.

So it made me want to increase my skills just so I would know what I was talking about in conversations, which is not something I'd usually think.

There's also attached to every skill, some sort of mechanical benefit. So like your speech skill doesn't just unlock certain conversation options.

It like increases the damage you deal to human beings. So like that's,

I think the RPG systems in this game are second to none. I think that I have problems with this game.
This is not one of them. This is a huge fucking issue for RPGs, especially this style of RPG.

And the number of times trying to find that balance between like you're giving people enough stuff that they're doing that it feels like their own unique adventure while also not locking them out of stuff.

Like every time I see a computer that's like, hack it, I'm like, I have zero hack points. It's simply not the way I've gone.

That doesn't bother me, though, because there's also like two or three other things in this room that I can like fuck with and feel like I have interacted with.

That stuff is like so on point in this game.

I think you're talking about like a peerless RPG system. I think the biggest differentiator, and we've talked about this a lot in other games, is

do

like when you level up, does that feel like an exciting moment? Yeah.

Do the perks that you're spending or the points that you're spending, whatever it is, feel like things that would be immediately useful to your gameplay.

And in this case, there are like, I didn't count, I want to say 75 perks in this game that you can see the full list right at the start of the game and work your way up to earning those perks by spending skill points in a variety of different ways.

Which is a cool way of doing it, by the way, where the perks are an offshoot of the way you spent your points.

So you're not like, it reduces the chance that you're going to like spec in a, in a weird way. Right.
It's a, it's building off of something that New Vegas did where once you hit like

level 10 in exploration, it unlocked a bunch of perks that ordinarily you wouldn't be able to get if you didn't have level 10. But here it's revealing all that stuff to you.

So you know, oh, this is something I want to work on.

All that stuff, I think, is done, again, fantastically well in ways that I think this should be held up as a representation of like how to make this idea feel desirable.

Another cool thing that they did that I feel like a lot of games these days don't have the guts to that are in this genre is make ammo matter, where like I was pretty frequently like running out of bullets in a way that like grounded me to the it kept me in the scenario it kept me talking to my compatriots it kept me like really looking at gear because every gear that you get can be turned into scrap metal which you can turn into bullets and a lot of times like i needed bullets because my thing was like a pistol so i'm shooting out like every battle is like 50 bullets so i'm like turning through a lot of ammo but that keeps you like locked into the system it keeps you like in the in the world it keeps you balancing these things i don't think it does as good a job with like itemization and i know we're getting like into the nitty-gritty but this is is like a huge open world RPG.

So it is kind of important. Like there are sort of bog standard versions of different guns.
And some of those guns are like better than others, right?

Like a heavy revolver is just going to do more damage than a light revolver. And they have mod slots that you can equip the guns with that you can either find in the world or craft.

There's like a whole crafting build you can kind of go down in the game.

But it's not like a ton of options.

And then you're also finding sort of unique pieces of gear of like armor and helmets and weapons that have a mod that's like you can't get otherwise that's slotted into them.

So I felt like, well, I should really only be using those because they have like the coolest shit. And then you go a long time without getting stuff.
I put a bunch of points in guns and sneak attack.

And so like I saw my numbers go through the roof, but it wasn't because of the weapons I was using.

Like when I would find a new weapon, it was a little bit less exciting than like, oh, I just got this perk that does like doubles my sneak attack damage if they're looking at a corpse of someone that I killed already.

I will say I spent too much time.

I think you spend way too much time in this game, like trying to get your cursor on an item that is like a very small object, but like kind of slowly looking around a room and slowly picking up the items that are lying around.

I think that it is not fun to try to get your cursor on the exact little bottle that you want to pick up and then pick it up and then look and see if you want to drink it or break it down.

Like it's a little fiddly. It is funny though, because everything that you can pick up has utility.
It's not like Starfield, we're like, you can pick up this microscope if you want to.

Sure, go for it. I love, let me,

this is the way that they handle food in the game, right?

Think about Bioshock, where it's like, you have your healing syringes, but like you find a bag of potato chips, you eat that right away and it heals you or whatever.

In this game, when you pick up food, it goes into your food inventory. And then under your health bar, you'll see a little knife and fork.
You have

a healing inhaler that you use as like your only method of healing. And you can customize the inhaler.
There's like a medicine skill associated with it.

But if you have food in your inventory, it shows you that symbol of the knife and fork.

And then when you press the inhaler button, if you're not in combat, you automatically will eat the food you have in your inventory to heal you to full before you go for any of your meds.

And they use that one button. There's one button for that.
Like that shit's real smart and real, real streamlined and real, real good.

So it's it's a bit of a mixed bag. Did you all listen to the I wanted to hear if you guys listen to the radio much.
Fuck yes. Did you listen to the radio much? Yeah.

A little bit. Yeah.
It's really

I found it to be really interesting because they have a bunch of these like, it's super in-world.

All of it is like, you know, it's ads for Anti's choice. It's like you meet a sort of like faction that's obsessed with numbers and they have a radio station and all their songs are about math.
Yeah.

I wish it is that.

I'm right on the line with it because I love this sort of shit, right? I love it. I love in-world radio stations.
Like I loved like when Laszlo had a station on gta whatever

there's just it's like you have to have it on and it's not background really it's like you're listening to these songs and there's not a ton of them there's like a good amount but like you're playing this game for many many hours like there's not enough radio that it's not like looping and it starts to get a little bit like okay guys i need something yeah that i can tune out i need you to do this you don't have to have it on no yeah i mean i definitely used it on the first planet and then when i got off the first planet i was like i kind of and they'll like tell you like oh you got a new signal if there's like a quest attached to it or something yes this is what i said i lie this was i wanted to i wanted to say like i eventually did turn it off but like when you're listening to it initially it's like it's really great i i i it's it's a fantastic thing i i have to say the thing that is

um

oh i we should mention before i get into sort of like my main gripe i think the gunplay feels fucking good like and that's that is not something that this genre is known for.

I, I felt differently when I started because you start out with like weak, shitty weapons.

But as I have like found different weapons with like different unique perks and gone down a certain build and focus points into guns and unlock some gun perks, like it feels pretty good to get in a gunfight.

It is not like a fallout where once you are spotted and you lose your sneak attack bonus, it's like, oh, fuck, like now I have to shoot these like clumsy guns.

Like I think they've actually done a pretty, pretty good job with the combat side of it. Yeah, there's, they also, I think in this game, added like slide, like combat slides and things like that.

So like the mobility stuff, you have a double jump at one point. So like

a slow motion gadget. It looks like you disagree a bit, Juice.

Yeah, no, I thought it was, I thought they did a really, really good job. They do a good job.
The guns feel powerful. It also feels like your companions are helpful.

They have like special abilities that you can fire off that are nice.

There's not a ton of fidelity. Like they seem to stick to themselves pretty much.

Like there's not a ton of like, can other than like firing off that ability, like, you're not telling them where to go, uh, changing their gear up as much.

So, you do like some basic leveling of them, but you're not like giving them all their equipment, which, as far as I'm concerned, is a boon. Like, I do not want to have to level with that.

What was your garbage? My issue is: this is something that they have not fixed from this genre of games. And I think that there is just a sort of like

there are just some structural issues under the hood with quests and how how all of that is handled it is so rad that you are in this world this like set of planets where you can do whatever and you feel like there is a custom path that you are kind of blazing through it but a lot of times i have been in a a region where I have am talking to people and they are talking to me as if I am like in the middle of a quest that they're supposed to be on that I did not start.

Like, I missed the first kind of part of, and now, like, I'm kind of jumping into the middle.

There's a bit where one of the characters, the main, like, uh, buddy of yours, when you start the game, uh, I think got hung up on a quest or something, and he always had a little speech bubble over his head, like he had something to say to me, and yet he

had that with

the

other companion where she always and that stuff is uh, that stuff is so soul-crushing. I feel like when you are investing as much time into this game as it asks for to feel like

I've put maybe 25 hours into it, I've played quite a bit at this point.

And I feel like for the last few hours, I have been like on a planet where I'm just sort of running around and every quest I'm is like out of order. And I'm pretty sure.

This is 100% my experience. I'm really

saying this, Griffin, because I thought it was in my head, but I'm... The fact that you're at it.
It's not constant.

It's just like there are parts of the game and the part that I am in now just feels like fucking spaghetti. Like, it feels like nothing.

It is, and I've had parts of the game that are cogent where you show up and they say, here's the situation on this planet. Go out here.
Maybe you can find some help here.

Maybe you can find some help there. And it's like, okay, cool.
Those are quest lines that I get on.

And then I've had entire hours-long sections of the game where it just feels like jazz until eventually my main quest updates. And it's like, oh, okay.
So now I guess I go there.

There's also the quests because it is a bit more open-ended.

There are quests that are sort of mutually exclusive that you don't necessarily, it doesn't make clear that are that like if you do them, you're going to rule out a whole other, and maybe if you're like,

you know, if you're thinking about it and like trying to logic it out, you know, maybe you're thinking like, well, if I do this, then that might rule out this other quest.

But like when you're just playing a fucking video game, you're not like, you know, you're just doing the mission. So it's like, there'll be a lot of times where it's, it wouldn't be clear

what to do if my, like me knowing what I wanted to to do narratively, it wasn't clear mechanically how I should be advancing that goal because everything's sort of like conscious.

That would happen a few times in like Fallout where you'd like complete a quest for a companion or whatever, and then suddenly there'd be like 16 pop-ups of like, you failed this quest, you failed this quest.

Right. And this game also does a thing a lot, which is I will talk to someone and they'd be like, we need you to help with this.

We're trying to negotiate with this labor union.

Can you go and help us out? And it's like, sure. But then it it doesn't give you a quest for it.
Like, sometimes you'll be asked to do something and you will not get a quest for it.

And it's like, or it'll just be like something you heard and then you have to kind of like sleuth it out. Or sometimes it's nothing.
But sometimes it wasn't even that. Sometimes it wouldn't be that.

The doctor gave me medicine for a guy and then didn't tell me the guys I had met the guy earlier. That's the only reason I knew where the guy was.
But like.

There were also a couple of times where like, and maybe this is, I don't know if this is like a positive or a negative, I guess, but

there was an area that there would frequently be areas that look intimidating. They look like video game levels, and you're exploring and you're like, okay, I can get into here.

So I'm going to go mess around. And then you'll start finding mechanics of quests, like a switch that flips a thing.

And you're like, okay, I guess I'm flipping switches and then I'll go do this other thing. And you'll go through a whole thing and you're like, I'm fighting a guy.
I win this guy. I don't know.

And then you do, you go find someone who's like, I've got a serious situation. I need you to rectify.
Like, oh, the factory? Yeah, man. I fucking did all that, dude.
This is a huge huge facility.

Found who I think is probably the final NPC for like one of the quest lines in the game. The whole time I'm going through the facility is like, this will be great evidence.
For fucking what?

I don't know because I just found this place. And I was like, this place looks cool.
And I went inside. And I didn't get a guy who showed up like, not yet, not yet.

You're not, I'm going to have some shit for you to do here later.

Don't come in here. It's not ready yet.
I guess the question I would have is, is how much of this stuff is fixable? You guys are for, I think I've played 10 hours.

So you guys are further along than I am. Yeah.
How much of this is like,

you know, with patches over the course of a month or two or whatever?

I found that I feel like it is a friction between the amount of freedom they want to give you and the amount of like direction that some players might want because there's

a lot of the times if you think about it logically, you can usually come up with it.

But more often than not, it would like you'd get to, you know, you'd go for 20 minutes down a road and then you'd hit a skill check that you can't pass.

And it's like, well, I guess I could fail this skill check and get a really shitty ending to this, this, this mission, but I've done all this shit.

I'll just come back when I've improved my speech skill and I'll have a more satisfying ending to that mission. I did that exactly.

I did that exact thing in that facility where my speech skill was 1.2 low to fulfill like a series of checks with like the final boss of the thing.

And I was like, okay, so I left and I did other shit.

And then I come back and the result was like he was, instead of starting a fight with me he's like okay you can have the thing in my office it's like dude i stole that thing from your office three and a half hours ago i did all of that for nothing it is but that's the trade-off right that's the illusion you can't have the system that they have here without having that moment happen to you some of the time that stuff doesn't bother me as much as like

something's going to break. Like something's going to break.

Am I, do I really want to keep playing this game and investing in this character who like, maybe I'm not going to be able to do the rest of his shit.

I have characters who I roll with who i have maxed out all of their stuff and like pretty much finished their quest lines and i'm not particularly like interested in them and then i have my road dogs who like for whatever reason like won't start a conversation with me like hey can you go here so i can meet my old buddy and i can get some new skills

that stuff seems fixable like it does seem fixable it's just like frustrating in the state of the game it's like that level of structural stuff in a game that you spend so much time playing is such a turn off and i i it's a bummer if you're gonna do this stuff about not using a firm hand to guide people, like to use the example I used earlier, right?

If I don't know that that's not a bug,

if I don't know, like, if you're going to give me that level of freedom, your shit has to work perfectly.

Because if I hit a bug where I'm like, well, that's not, that was not me missing something, that was you, then I don't trust anymore. Like, I don't have that trust anymore.

Then I want you to put all the markers down because I don't have the faith that this is all working as intended. I don't know if this is how it's,

I don't know if this is intentionally obfuscated or if it is a bug.

And a lot of times in this game, like I said, just fail safes, even if they are immersion breaking, of like you show up to a facility, get like a fucking phone call or whatever from someone, like, hey, good, you found this facility.

Can you look for this stuff for me? Instead of just like, I went, uh-oh, am I, I don't think I'm supposed to be here yet. Uh-oh.

That guy knows my name. I don't know his.
Fuck.

I think this to me feels like a very strong foundation for something that could certainly be cleaned up over time. I agree there's always going to be issues, especially with a game that's this open.

Yeah.

But I'm trying to be real because this is my shit and I'm going to keep playing it. I love this kind of shit, but it is also the kind of shit that I am most permissive of flaws because it is.

This is the most I have enjoyed one of these games since probably since Fallout 4, probably. It really does say something.

Yeah, I think they've nailed it. I think that it is an experienced hand who have made some really, really clever choices to sidestep a lot of the issues that this genre has faced in the past.

And they've done it in a package that looks good, sounds good, feels really good to play, feels like the things you're doing are meaningful.

And yeah, you're probably right. Like they probably will patch it out or release, you know, their Spacer's Choice premium edition or whatever at some point.

I mean, it's worth knowing also, like, when this episode, this Besties episode comes out, the game still won't be out for another like four days, five days. Yeah.

So that's not an excuse, like the obviously but i also have to couch it a little bit because our experience may be different it is not mostly buggy though in my experience i will say it it was not buggy it was it was a it seemed like a deliberate amount of freedom yeah it it you know i just i watched uh the the danny boyle steve jobs movie that aaron sorkin wrote on the plane home because i was listening to black check and they have this argument that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak have this discussion between number of ports in the system where Steve Jobs wants two because he wants a closed system that they completely control.

Wozniak wants eight because he wants the users to be completely in control. And it's the

how those two like

that it reminded me of this game where it's that thing of like wanting to have a completely polished, smooth

experience versus yeah, of course. Right.
Versus like, what's the other end? It's like Stalker, right? Like or Day Z or something like that where it's like

yes, exactly. Right.
So it's not, it's always that balance. It just feels a little bit on the edge of like, it feels like it was more about

it's impressive that you can keep the immersion and get to the end of it and it still like holds together.

And it seems like that was more important to them than having something that's consistently sort of like pleasant to engage with. I would say.

I'll probably stick with it. Yeah.

I'm genuinely like.

Pretty sucked in.

The writing's great too. I don't know if we talked about that, but like the interactions between people and the

moments and like even data pads and stuff like that are all. I would also add that like this is the third game they've released this year that has been pretty fucking good.
They put out Avowed.

They put out Grounded 2. And this.
That's wild.

No one is doing that these days. Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't let.

Obsidian. Don't let Microsoft know

how well you're doing.

Whatever locks you changed, just leave them changed. Should we take a break? Yep.

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That's rocketmoney.com slash besties.

Rocketmoney.com slash besties.

Justin,

you have a new device.

Thank you for not saying toy like my wife. You have a new doodad that you like.
Oh, gosh. I think that's the color I got too.
That shit looks so good.

So I'm watching, as you can see here, I'm watching a video down on this screen of the AYN Thor. And up here, I'm playing the latest Rich War.
Yeah, can you set up for the folks not seeing?

Yeah, so this is a

device made by a company called AYN. They made, most notably, the

Odin 2 and the Odin 2 Portal and the Odin 2 Mini. But those are their last few devices.
They're very well regarded. This is the Thor, which is a dual-screen console.

And there have been other dual-screen PCs, but this is the first dual-screen Android console. It's like a DS4.
That's what you've got. Basically.

So, yeah, a clamshell form factor. You've got a wide screen at the top, right? And then at the bottom, you've got close to like a four by three kind of square guy here.

So you have two different form factors. When you load a

the two screens are independent. So you can get a game going on the top screen or an app or whatever.
It's whichever is focused is what the controls will do.

So if you tap on the bottom screen and then you use the controls, you're controlling this. If you tap on this screen, use the controls.

And I'm assuming there's emulators like Melon DS and Drastic and like the major sort of DS3DS emulators are able to like use both simultaneously.

Yes, you can set it to use both simultaneously. You can also choose for certain apps that they will always launch in the top or in the bottom or whatever.

And there is also, they've another kind of clever solution that they've done here is there's this button here at the bottom of the screens. And this brings up sort of a home.

It is just for this specific dual screen setup. So there is a button where you can switch from dual screen, bottom screen, top screen.
There's also an audio slider.

where you can choose which screen is doing how much crazy right so if you have like a game on this level and a video on this one you can like choose and then you can also do the brightness independently on on the screens so it's all pretty well like

i mean all pretty well optimized for that uh it feels pretty good to play uh the buttons the only thing that i will say i don't know if you guys can see this very well but look at the answer rounded out just a bit So the, this is like, we've got big, chunky triggers on the twos.

And then we've got some, these guys on the ones. And they're kind of like behind this.
it's not super comfortable when the screen is like this. It's not super comfortable to hit these.

And I will also say that if you're someone that wants to play a lot of D-pad stuff, this is not the most... Yeah, D-pads on the bottom left.
So you got to like curve. D-pads on the bottom left.

It's kind of a reach down here. It's not super, they have traded.
I think it's always a question of like

ergonomics versus pocket. I think that's what you're up against.
And this, they've made a little bit of a concession here, right? You got some bumps for the ergonomics here.

Rounded in the back a little bit, but like it's surprisingly like pretty chunky. I saw it's about the size of a 2DS XL, if you remember that.
Here, I have a DS. Let me grab one.

I have one of these bad boys ordered, and because it is coming from Mainland China, it does take a minute to get your hands on one of these. There's some

fraught relationships, so maybe that's I've heard a little bit about that. Yeah,

speak on that. No.

see what i have handy here uh this is a 3ds so to compare this for you guys i would say i mean oh that's an original that's an original 3ds

so it's original 3ds yeah so probably about 10 it's about the it's about xl size of either the 3ds or the 2ds so this is a 2ds well yeah that's the crazy uh yeah single panel i i think here's here's where i'm

here's where i'm at with these things is

i definitely know know it's about it's also about the same size as this guy the RG the we were talking about the 477M the new ambernet guy. It's about it's about that size

and all this and yeah, it's it's a one-pack.

Here's what I'm gonna say.

At this point, I don't know how to

fit this much tinkering in my life.

And when you're talking about two screens in particular, I'd imagine, and tell me if this is incorrect, even more tinkering required to like really get things working nicely.

No, it is, I will say this. It is surprising.
No. Broadly speaking, no.

Like if you load up a DS ROM in whatever, an emulator for DS games, it works, like it recognizes the second screen and just works?

No, because the part of it is like figuring out how you want to do it, right? Some games work better with like certain screens oriented different ways. Like you have to fiddle with it.

And it is not.

There is like more, there is more tinkering you're 100 right and and i honestly this is probably the most damning thing but russ good russ said it and i i think i agree with it it still doesn't replace the 3ds like it's it's it's not it's not a replacement for the 3ds it's it's a very cool way of experiencing those things and i will say

it's a pretty good use case to have like a

walkthrough or something on one screen and like a game on the other or like something like that or like a

If you have music or something you're zoning out to, all that stuff works really well. It feels good.
The trigger, the thumbsticks are really deep inset.

I don't know if you can tell, but like, to avoid the clamshell design, they're pretty, they're sunk pretty deep in there, which is not my favorite.

But it's a, that's, you kind of have to if you're going to do the clamshell, you kind of have to, right? But, like, I think they executed on this really, really well. I think that

there's different form factor. I always, I hate getting into like the

pricing and all the

the the the kludgy things but there the base of this is like 250 and that that's for like the base model with eight uh gigabytes of memory and or and then 16 uh is with a terabyte of storage for 429 so there's just like a range

there's a range yeah i'm i'm still in this mode of which like i kind of like i have my uh what is it flip to and i it works well and i set it up and i took like whatever a few hours to set that up and it works And so I'm in this like dormant period where I just kind of just want things to work and I don't want to take a lot of time.

But again, like it'll happen like a year or two from now where I'll be like, okay, I'm ready. And I'm going to commit a bunch of time to it.
But for right now, I think I'm.

I think there's a lot of people probably doing that. I think that makes sense.

I think that this is a really,

it's a really good one of those. And I think the dual screen thing is, I will say it's like,

so I agree with you, Russ, in the sense that like it doesn't open up a whole lot of like new doors. But I think that for me, I'm always thinking from like a preservationist standpoint too.

And like, there's a lot of experiences, especially on like the Wii U and the 3DS that are kind of like locked to those consoles. Yeah.

So there is a, there is a respect at which you're right, but there's this other regard in which there's a lot of libraries that are kind of like

that are not as easy to explore.

And like these devices are kind of moving forward, trying to help keep that preserved like so that that part to me is like if you're someone who just wants to play old games and like just wants it to work i think that you can usually like lag behind about a year and it's free how well these things will work i mean people will do it all for you it'll be so easy but if you're somebody likes to screw around new things it's an exciting it's an exciting area of screwing

that catalog is so strong ds and 3ds games are so there's so fucking many good ones and there hasn't been a great way to really do that yet but like it's not coincidence that i have my 3ds like in reach like this way i have my vita within reach like they're still like i don't i have my wii u i don't have a wii u

just kidding why would i have a wii u

we we have some reader mail oh yeah Okay, we have a letter from Andrew. In talking about Steam Nextfest, I have only been able to play one game despite downloading close to 14.

It's called Desktop Defender.

It's basically like a little window. This is me talking.
It's basically like a little window that just shows up in in the corner of your desktop.

And it is like part vampire survivors, part progression game, idle game.

But because it's so minimal, it kind of just sits in the corner of your screen and you like do a little some doodle things on the corner and then you just go back to working whatever you were doing.

You get a gun to shoot incoming things. You get more XP.
You get more upgrades, et cetera. We're all familiar with the format.

I think the interesting thing here is specifically that it is just this like such a minimal like side game, almost like clippy showing up.

And you can have like a little moment and then you just go back to whatever you were doing uh which seems kind of cool it's called desktop defender

is this it's not desktop tower defense desktop no it's called desktop defender it's on steam i have not thought about desktop tower defense in so long i'm freaking out that's it you're playing it you're already playing it desktop tower defense god i haven't thought about that game in a hundred years

March 2007. This other recommendation comes from Caleb.
Regarding Steam NextFest, I got the recommendation in the post-games Patreon for tears of metal. Having played it, it's a blast.

I'm not usually one for hack and slash dynasty warrior stuff, but this one is a greatly simplified version that feels good combined with Slay the Spire-type rogue-like path options.

I had a blast and thought it could be a good diamond in the rough. Now, this does look cool.

Kyle has a quick shout-out to me.

I took Russ's recent advice. Just read your own goddamn emails, Russ.
Fuck. Why don't we have to hear it?

I took Russ's advice and downloaded Luigi's Mansion to play with my four-year-old, and it went great.

She's never really gotten to a game before because she's never clicked with using a controller to navigate a 3D space, but this game seems perfect for the level of

approachability. So she's finally getting it.

If you guys have any other pre-K-friendly game recs, they're always welcome. Luigi's Mansion just hit the,

or it is hitting the

Nintendo Switch Online. like GameCube classics.
Yeah, this was, I think, in context of Luigi's Mansion 3, which has co-op.

Right, yeah, right. Cooper got really into a T.
She really liked that one a lot. Yeah, it's a pretty good one for youngsters.
I think they'd have a lot of fun with that.

Yeah, I mean, Donkey Kong Bonanza, but we've talked quite a bit about that.

Solar Smash is an iPad game where you blow up planets with different things. Kids love that shit.
Kids love blowing up whole planets. It's a big one.
We have one more letter.

Schmorgel sent a bunch of recommendations from Steam NextS, but but I wanted to call out one of them.

Seance of Blake Manor is a first-person puzzle game, sort of like Blueprints and Return to Oberdin. You're gathering clues, finding evidence, interviewing people, all the good stuff.

Time passes when you look at objects, so there is a real sense of tension in your moment-to-moment decisions.

Yeah, I think Plant dropped the trailer for this in the Bestie's channel a bit ago, and it does look

real

good.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, it just seems like it has blueprints, but even spookier.

Spooky blueprints. Whoa.

Check, please. Someday I'll play Blueprints.
It still has not been updated for Colorblind Man. That's

bonkers, man.

Anything else you wanted to talk about for honorable mentions? I'm still playing.

Did we talk about Clover Pit? We did. We have talked about Clover Pit, yes.
Yeah, I'm still playing Clover Pit.

Merge Meist show. Nothing.

I wanted to call out a show called Extraordinary, which is on Hulu.

British people.

It's got British people in it.

Tonally, I think it's probably pretty close to something like what we do in shadows. It's not like a mockumentary format, but otherwise.
What we do in

the

rest is ass.

The premise of the show is basically it's like our world, but every single person on the planet has a power of some sort.

And some of those are weird, like you can, this person can rewind time 12 seconds, and this person can fly, and this person can get blah, blah, blah.

But the main protagonist of the show is 25 and has not received her power yet. So she's like in this state of person development.
But it's very funny and

really well written. And there's two seasons of that.

And so if you're looking for something in the tone of what we do in the shadows, there you go.

I want to call out the

Undertale 10th Anniversary album of remixes that came out, I think, last week or the week before.

Toby Fox got a bunch of different people together and did remixes of songs from Undertale to celebrate the 10th anniversary. And some of them are such fucking club bangers.

There's a version of Death by Glamour on there that absolutely... It fucking shreds.

So we've been listening to quite a bit of that. Is it stuff that Toby remixed or is it like fans?

I don't know. I don't know.

His name's Daniel. I ask mostly because, like, where is Toby finding the fucking time to do all this stuff? Yeah, I don't know, man.
I don't know.

But yeah, I've pretty much only been playing Outer Worlds 2. It kind of demands a lot of your time.

All right. Well, next week, what are we going to be doing next week? Next week, we are going to be playing Keeper.
I think Justin's going to be diving into Keeper, which is the new Double Fine game.

And Griffin and I will be playing Pokemon Legends ZA, which is the new Pokemon game.

I might dip a little toe into Keeper 2 because I do like their games.

Keeper 2, you ain't got it. Shit, dude.

Damn.

But before we wrap up the show, I do want to thank the members over at the Patreon. That's patreon.com/slash the besties.

We want to thank new members, John, Ben, Brennan, B, and Curtis G. Thank you for being members of the Patreon.
We have Resties coming up on Tuesday.

We have a new bracket battles episode coming up real soon for members of the Patreon. You can actually vote on which

bracket battle we're going to do next. So keep an eye out for that for subscribed members.
And we love you a lot. Yep.
Beautiful. All right.
Thanks, y'all. Appreciate you.

Be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

Besties