Fortnite's Humongous Simpsons Update Raises an Awkward Question

Speaker 1 I think that I hit the right note in

Speaker 1 Let It Go in the shower this morning, and no one was there to witness it. And I don't know.

Speaker 1 I think I hit it. I'm like, I think you should let me know.
Are you talking about the past is in the past? That one? Do you harmonize with it? Yes, or are you right there with Adina?

Speaker 1 Are you guys cresting the wave together?

Speaker 1 I can't sing it now because I'm worried from just a rights issue.

Speaker 2 Well, that's bullshit.

Speaker 1 It would be a tonal match that AI would be. I match it perfectly to Adina.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I I think it would be okay, actually.

Speaker 2 Rachel has like a filter she can apply to songs to make them not get snagged by the algae.

Speaker 1 I think that's too close to AI, and I don't trust it. Quite honestly.
No, it's all it's all physical.

Speaker 2 Like, she puts it in a crank and she cranks it through it.

Speaker 1 And so you should sing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so give me a past is in the past. Like, I've done it like three times now, and it's not.

Speaker 1 I know, but it's not. I'm sick, too.
So, like, I can't. Acoustically speaking, I know I set this recording booth up for that specific purpose, but acoustically speaking.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's post-processing for that too. She can add reverb and like

Speaker 3 I know what the problem is.

Speaker 3 You want to feel like you're in the shower.

Speaker 1 No, I don't.

Speaker 1 Wet water. Russ, honey, I'm about to flush.

Speaker 1 Russ.

Speaker 1 Russ! I'm about to flush out.

Speaker 1 Wet hair. Dad, open your door.
Open the door. Open that door.
It's me, aside.

Speaker 1 Let it go.

Speaker 1 Oh, you're right.

Speaker 1 It was good, right? It was good.

Speaker 1 I think you're right. Fuck yeah, that was good, dude.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah, dude.

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

Speaker 3 My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week.

Speaker 1 My name is Russell 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.

Speaker 1 It's a video game club, and just by listening, you have become a member. This year, we're talking about what if a very old video game was about a much older TV show.
And here we are.

Speaker 1 The Simpsons have invaded Fortnite. Chris Plant,

Speaker 1 remind me about The Simpsons.

Speaker 3 Oh, well, it all started a long time ago when a man named David Sli. Look, it's called Fartnight.
That's what you need to know.

Speaker 3 Fortnite has been sitting on the Fartnight pun for years and years, wondering

Speaker 3 when are we going to get to use it? And old El Barto came up and spray painted that thing and changed the world. and now it's all anybody wants to talk about.

Speaker 1 We'll be among them right after this

Speaker 1 this episode of the besties is sponsored by Alienware. You know Alienware's biggest sale of the season lets you unleash peak performance at Black Friday savings.

Speaker 1 Save on select Alienware PCs like the groundbreaking Alienware 16 Area 51 gaming laptop, taking performance to the next level with Intel Core Ultra processors.

Speaker 1 Plus, you can save on all all the latest accessories and displays like the Alienware 27 4K QD OLED gaming monitor. Visit alienware.com/slash deals before those time-limited savings end.

Speaker 1 I don't want my cheeky intro to be mistaken for cynicism because when you jump out of the bus and it's all a Springfield, it's cool. Yeah.
I liked it.

Speaker 1 It was fun. You can go to The Simpsons' house and run around.
And y'all, being in The Simpsons' house is weird because I know how to get around The Simpsons' house.

Speaker 1 That was a very surreal moment. It's like clearing

Speaker 1 Bart's room, like slicing the pie into Omer and Marge's room.

Speaker 2 Does it put a thumb on the scale of where players drop? when you kind of like turn the different destinations into

Speaker 2 a bit of like tourism in that way because I mean it'll be a real hot spot Well, they have

Speaker 1 Fortnite always has like

Speaker 1 hot spots, if you will, that people are meant to gravitate towards. But it's not just the house.
There's also like the power plant. There is so

Speaker 1 city hall and all sorts of stuff are represented.

Speaker 3 The Simpsons fans have been chasing this dream since like the first year that this damn show came out.

Speaker 3 And we've got a lot of versions of this, you know, beginning with my favorite 3D recreation, the 3D Simpsons PC game that moved at about four frames per second, but it did let you go around a version of The Simpsons house.

Speaker 3 Then we got Simpsons hit and run. We have so many damn games.
What is wild about this, and I think I said this to you, Frush while we were playing, is...

Speaker 3 Oh, this is what happens if you have that AAA budget or you have that Grand Theft Auto style sense of awe where every time you crest a hill, you are stunned that they put that much effort into whatever you're seeing.

Speaker 1 I want to take a step back before we get too deep into it because I think

Speaker 1 a lot of it is.

Speaker 2 I did not play Simpsons Fortnite.

Speaker 2 I covered some other stuff for this week. So I am desperate to hear, like, is it a season? Is it sure?

Speaker 1 I think there are a lot of people that haven't played Fortnite in a while. I, for what it's worth, have been, I like started playing Fortnite when it...

Speaker 1 Battle Royale started launching, and then I went dark for like two years. But I've been basically playing every season for the last like three years.

Speaker 1 So as you

Speaker 1 know, it's fun to talk about, it's just fun to play.

Speaker 1 It's not fun to podcast about, it's just fun to play and enjoy.

Speaker 2 Except now it's so out of pocket. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think it, yeah, I got this. I think this year this year is

Speaker 1 a pretty extreme moment.

Speaker 1 So in this case, normally a season is about three months, but they've been doing these mini-seasons that usually occur right around this time of year that focus on like a specific franchise.

Speaker 1 So last year was a Star Star Wars

Speaker 2 Darth Vader say fuck.

Speaker 1 Yes, right. Or Darth Vader.
I was reading about that. And he had thoughts about cryptocurrency.
So that was last year. And this year they're doing Simpsons.

Speaker 1 And I think last year the map was like had like mostly Star Wars stuff, but there was still like a lot of Fortnite stuff carried through. This was like they started from zero and built

Speaker 1 Springfield from scratch within the whole map at Griff is like any big landmark from Springfield you can think about is there.

Speaker 1 It's all rendered in like a pretty large scale and like crucial characters are in the world at those locations and there's quests how to like going to find them so not even just the macro but also the micro so if you were to walk into the quickie mart for example there would be show accurate magazines and snacks and shit like that that's that's it's profoundly wild it's like wildly detailed every environment is like that like you can run around springfield elementary you can walk around oh fucking the the what the best one right i parachuted onto the side of

Speaker 1 uh the the power plant onto a balcony right walked into the huge glass doors into mr burns's office hit the button on his desk to drop the trapdoor in front of him then drop down the trap door to where the uh oh first of all i released the hounds there's a button to release the hounds which makes hounds go around the area and attack people who are at the, the, in the region.

Speaker 1 And they, I think that's at the burns, the burns manor. And then you can push the button for the trapdoor and go down into the trapdoor, and there's like treasure down there.

Speaker 1 And it's, that's all fully rendered too. And you have to dig your way out of it.
Like, it's

Speaker 1 truly wild. The fact that they made this engine

Speaker 3 so complete also that they need to still have Fortnite stuff in it because that is ultimately their brand. So they have made Simpsons versions of Fortnite characters.

Speaker 3 Yes, like the Peely.

Speaker 1 Peely.

Speaker 1 Well, Peely, but Peely, it is later revealed, might just be Professor Frank who transformed himself into a banana. I do like that a lot.

Speaker 1 The story's still unfortunate.

Speaker 2 Can I say, I've been, I was going to play this already.

Speaker 2 Russ, that pushed me over the edge to where I might actually sort of download in the middle of this podcast. That's very, very strong.

Speaker 3 Very, very strong. And then there are Disney Plus animated shorts set also within this stuff.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they made like several

Speaker 1 four-minute shorts.

Speaker 2 So explain what that means. How do you watch? Does it just like appear? Is it like a cutscene?

Speaker 3 You can go to Disney Plus, and because Simpsons is on Disney Plus,

Speaker 3 and then they have shorts that they release, you know, like every couple months. And they have Fortnite shorts that are appearing every week that are related to Transmania.

Speaker 1 And you can also watch them in the game as well.

Speaker 2 Okay, that's what I was more curious about.

Speaker 1 There's There's also a lot of Battle Pass stuff.

Speaker 1 There's characters, there's like increasingly specific references, like the Battle Pass, it starts out with like basic characters, and you get like Ned Flanders, and then you get like Zombie Marge, and then there's like Homer in a devil costume.

Speaker 1 And the Ned Flanders stuff is like,

Speaker 1 man, like the glider is a huge mustache. It's just like has trimming shooting out of it.

Speaker 3 Like, there's a all-his alternate costume is nothing at all. Is the ski suit? Yeah,

Speaker 1 his, his like all the props are so there's like a left-handed emergency kit that's like his back piece that flanders wear like that's just that one character like there's so many different like unlockable like little in-gags like that uh for for the show so yeah russ you might be able to speak more to this having played like all these seasons what is the fate of this

Speaker 1 content once this you know mini season is over yeah that's a good question so traditionally it basically vanishes there is an element that I'm not 100% up on on the creative side of Fortnite, where people like can make their own maps and things like that.

Speaker 1 Whether that means that it could be playable or experienceable after the fact. I know part of the challenge here is like just keeping download sizes down.
Like you can't just keep this map.

Speaker 1 downloadable for everyone forever because it just makes the scale of the Fortnite download too huge.

Speaker 1 But it would be, as Plant said when we were playing, it would be a real shame if hardcore simpsons fans only found out about this a month later like this the season ends at the end of november so realistically this is your chance right if you found the game in december uh

Speaker 1 and you wouldn't be able to play this map that's a real damn shame

Speaker 1 i think that they will i would i mean obviously they could bring it back but i i i feel like they'll leave it i was interested it's been a long time since i logged into fortnite uh and i was really interested to see the extent to which those experiences

Speaker 1 uh it's starting to look a lot, it's beginning to look a lot like Roblox. Like the a lot of the

Speaker 1 those experiences that are like there's a sort of role-playing category, and it's like all those like obbies and like K-pop, demon hunter, grow a garden, tycoon, all that stuff from Roblox is happening since Fortnite with just like better mechanics.

Speaker 1 And like there's actually a recent lawsuit over a game called Steal the Brain Rot, which apparently is very big in Roblox that also got ported to Fortnite and who owns the rights to that.

Speaker 1 uh so it's getting very dicey on that front as well yeah but there was more experiences that like i actually got my kids into fortnite like they both played we played trios and got a victory royale it was crazy like it was it was a lot of fun so that matching is still working like really well because us three dorks were able to get in and have a have a good match so i don't know we have to share that yesterday justin got in the Vessie Slack and excitedly shared that him and Charlie got a Victory Royale.

Speaker 2 And then 21 minutes or 20 minutes later, Ruz said, this was my win from yesterday and put up a video of him winning a victory royale.

Speaker 2 And plant, you did point out fairly that Justin got a victory royale with his kid

Speaker 2 flexed with a solo royale.

Speaker 2 It was a really, and as me, like as a spectator to that whole thing, it was so uncomfortable, guys.

Speaker 1 So I stopped paying attention to it. I didn't even see all that stuff play out.
I just told you guys about the great stuff in my life in the movie.

Speaker 1 I know, and I was sharing the great stuff in my life, too.

Speaker 1 It doesn't mean a it's a flex or a challenge i'm rusty i didn't take it that way i didn't i didn't take it that way either i didn't take it at all but had i taken it i wouldn't have taken it that way we can all have good moments in our lives it's okay there is this part of me whenever i play fortnite there's this part of me it's like man are we wasting our time should we have stopped here this is fun you know like i feel like we there is i should i would be a happier person if i was like i'm just gonna play some fortnite this month and i'm not gonna do other stuff i'm not gonna play I can't Fortnite is like working so hard to just be fun and play it and I was like why do I put keep putting myself Justin this this pays our bills there is not an insignificant number of people who listen to this very show who do only have time to play fortnite and maybe like two other games and then they listen to us because it's our job to go out bravely I might add into the world to play those other games on their behalf and then to come back and to tell them hey don't worry, we got you covered.

Speaker 3 We can tell you what to say at the cocktail parties you're all going to. You keep playing Fortnite.
We're here for you.

Speaker 1 You know, this is great.

Speaker 2 We need a new heuristic here on the besties that we apply to every game we talk about, which is, is it worth...

Speaker 2 Pulling yourself away for a few minutes from the sweet, glowing pleasure box of Fortnite, this incredible,

Speaker 2 joyous sandbox.

Speaker 2 Is it worth a little bit of that sweet Fortnite time or not?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Justin, I have a question for you specifically. Hit me.

Speaker 1 Last year, during Game of the Year period and before it, there was a little game called Astrobot. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And one of the points you made about Astrobot, which is not totally off base, I definitely can see your perspective, is that it really is just one giant fucking ad for PlayStation and its brand.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 How do you feel about Fortnite, which is not just a Simpsons ad at this point, but also a multimedia

Speaker 1 brand ad for like Marvel and Disney, you name it? I mean, it's pretty whack,

Speaker 1 obviously. I think, I think, it's all pretty whack.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, it is, but it is also like

Speaker 1 if you're a fan of something and you do like, like, this is a very, to me, okay, okay, okay. For me, here's the difference.

Speaker 1 This is a very like healthy and like rewarding way of engaging with something something that people love right this isn't like this feels less like capitalizing on and more like i mean they do do capitalization they do capitalize on but it's like simps like it's celebratory to me this feels like it's very and there's like to me there's so much more in here

Speaker 1 than you could ever like like

Speaker 1 uh just kind of experience in one run. It's like very loving, very like thoughtfully recreated, very richly detailed, and also like

Speaker 1 free.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And Astrobot.
So long as you have willpower, it's free.

Speaker 2 Also, Russ, you should know this, that when we're trying to lobby and position games in the game of the year discussion, we all say a lot of shit we don't mean.

Speaker 1 We will say fucking anything to get. Truth about Astrobots, I just didn't like it because I like guns and coins and stuff.
Yeah, coins.

Speaker 3 There's one other detail here, too, which is Astrobot doesn't have like Mario coming in and then punching Astrobot in the dawn.

Speaker 1 That's cycle. Yeah, you're a husband.

Speaker 3 What makes this work weirdly for me is a sensation that there were people on every single creative team that has partnered with Fortnite and Epic that was pissed about a decision that still ended up going through in the game.

Speaker 3 There are so many people who would be thrilled if it was just

Speaker 3 their IP during their IP time. And you couldn't have the crossovers or you couldn't have your characters have guns or you couldn't do all I mean there are I would say rumors

Speaker 1 of very very intense fights over which characters could wear shoes once they added shoes because of like very uh specific partnerships with like Nike and Reebok I mean it's very clear like LeBron has a person in the game yeah the fact that he can wear a fucking I don't know what he has to deal with Adidas is like so counter to the idea of like that would never be allowed in an advertisement, on court, whatever it is.

Speaker 1 But because Fortnite got so fucking big, Epic was able to use their legal strong arming to just let them do whatever.

Speaker 3 And so this isn't the like, you know, IP free or like a lawyer-free

Speaker 3 that some people would like.

Speaker 3 It is also not just being able to play with your toys, but it is so leaps and bounds further than any other one of these sorts of collaborations that it feels still

Speaker 3 funky and weird and unlike anything else, which I think allows it to stay fresh despite it being a collision of a thousand different commercials.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's really the reason why I've been playing Fortnite for the last whatever, however many years is just they do a very good job of keeping it fresh in ways that like PUBG didn't.

Speaker 1 Like they just didn't know how to scale it or the engine couldn't handle it, whatever it is.

Speaker 1 And here, every month or two, the game is changing in either minor or major ways such that I can remain interested. And also I just use it as a, it's my golf equivalent.

Speaker 1 Like I have, I take meetings during it and like discuss actual work.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Crazy.
Yeah, I do a job too.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's. No, you do.

Speaker 1 I've been on those calls with you. It's kind of incredible.

Speaker 1 I think there's also something to be said, though, for like these, these things are going, like, I want to bring up the roadblocks thing again.

Speaker 1 These sorts of like IP mashup, mashup like capitalizations will happen outside of the stakeholders in those things

Speaker 1 and i think that a lot of the the ways that you like i've seen my kids try to play games on roblox that are like just utter garbage with like the thinnest veneer of some ip that they like put onto it i think there's a big difference like there was a mini there was like a disneyland adventure within fortnite right yeah and i when i went into that i i had never seen this but like you go in it's like kind of a cool recreation of the park, and there's uh, it's like dropping you into mini games that are set in the attractions.

Speaker 1 So you're like, like running around, you know, realized versions of these and like doing little mini games and stuff. But it's like, it's so much better.
I mean, it's just better.

Speaker 1 It's like better content. It's like better stuff.
It's, it's worthwhile. It's more attractive.
It's like more pleasurable to engage with.

Speaker 1 And I think that that is a meaningful difference where it's like not some AI garbage that some robot is cranking out based on whatever IP you plug into it, but it's like people who at least care about these properties are doing something interesting with them

Speaker 1 in Fortnite. Yeah, it's also, by the way, the Roblox parallel is a little bit off because Roblox is almost instant because the assets are endemic to Roblox.

Speaker 1 And a lot of these Fortnite mini experiences that they want to try to lure kids into like this, there's a download that you have to do before you can get into it because there's a lot more assets in the Fortnite experiences than the Roblox experiences.

Speaker 1 So I don't know if they're going to get there because it's like, it's tough when your friends like, come play this with me.

Speaker 1 And there's a couple minutes where you got to wait for it to download where Roblox is always like so seamless. It's like, I jumped into this.
Come jump in with me.

Speaker 2 The number, when we used to stream Fortnite, the number of streams we had to start late because one of us wouldn't realize that there was a fucking, you know, 25 gigabyte patch to get Peter Griffin in the mix

Speaker 2 was quite frequent.

Speaker 1 Last thing I'll say on this, as definitely a fan of what they're doing, obviously I'm still,

Speaker 1 you know, there's no better representation of the consolidation of power within the games industry than like Epic and Fortnite and what they're doing.

Speaker 1 So I'm, there's also that like a little bit bitter pill in the aspect, but with that power, they are making a good game. So I feel a little bit torn on that front.

Speaker 1 But I will say I watched a YouTube video. It was just like a YouTube short of someone playing as Goku, gliding in, landing on the Simpsons.

Speaker 1 roof, going through the door and sitting on the couch with like fucking Darth Vader and several other like known characters and the Simpsons theme playing like it was the beginning of like a Simpsons couch gag and I three years ago if I had seen that video I'd be like oh that was that's fucking AI like that's a joke and the fact that it exists in the real world as like a legitimate game is wild

Speaker 1 so that's kind of the it really is the peak of what they've been trying to do for many years am I gonna be if I start playing now am I going to be like way behind that

Speaker 1 time there's no behind in I'll play this afternoon. It's Fortnite.
You just play.

Speaker 3 It depends on how long it's been. If it's like you haven't played since the beginning, you're like, oh, wait, there's you can super jump and there are cars.

Speaker 1 No, I mean, I can look and see the last time we streamed. You can eat a blinky fish and do teleport jumps now.
You can

Speaker 1 squishy and have super speed.

Speaker 1 Also, if you haven't played in a while, I'm not going to tell this to Justin because it might hurt his feelings, but if you haven't played in a while, they'll probably match you with bots.

Speaker 1 So it'll be a little bit more. Oh, yeah.
Dude, there's a little argument in my head about that. Sorry, was I sorry? Was I no, it seemed like all bots.
Everyone was like that.

Speaker 1 I think the last person, the last like three people we killed seemed like they were angry. So they might have been real, but pretty much everybody else just kind of took it.

Speaker 1 I was playing with a 7- and 11-year-old, man. I was not bragging.
I'm just saying it's a really, it's a great matchmaking experience. It is.
That's the only thing I wanted to point out.

Speaker 2 Is there a better fucking moment? I play some.

Speaker 2 uh competitive games with henry on roblox sometimes is there a better moment than when you can fucking clutch up a win in front of your child in that experience? Holy shit, man.

Speaker 1 I feel so tall. I feel so tall

Speaker 1 because it was too intense. She turned it off.

Speaker 3 Is there a better moment than you see that joy in your kid's eye and then you turn to them and go, Yeah, but they were all bots.

Speaker 1 So a lot of

Speaker 1 Uncle Russ texted them to let him know privately. They got to know the truth.
It's important.

Speaker 2 Can we take a break and then I'll talk about the future of esports?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 This episode of the Besties is sponsored by Alienware. You know, Alienware's biggest sale of the season lets you unleash peak performance at Black Friday savings.

Speaker 1 Save on select Alienware PCs like the groundbreaking Alienware 16 Area 51 gaming laptop, taking performance to the next level with Intel Core Ultra processors.

Speaker 1 Plus, you can save on all the latest accessories and displays like the Alienware 27 4K QD OLED gaming monitor. Visit alienware.com/slash deals before those time-limited savings end.

Speaker 2 I haven't played a game in my life that has turned me off faster than QUP.

Speaker 2 Have you guys fucked with it yet?

Speaker 1 No, I tried to, but it wouldn't work on Steam Deck. You needed mouse and keyboards real quick.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's no controller support, which is a huge bummer because it would.

Speaker 2 I was actually playing it on my ROG ally last night. You can like kind of move the cursor around.

Speaker 2 Anyway, that's a weird way to to start.

Speaker 2 You start the game up, and it asks you to like

Speaker 2 do some settings, like come up with this random number for a random number generator. There's like some gag shit of like

Speaker 2 turn up mouse sensitivity, rate the game, but then you can turn up developer sensitivity. And the higher you turn it, the more stars you end up giving the game.

Speaker 2 It is like so full of these gags about modern games as service kind of contrivances that are objectively very funny, but then it drops you into the game with fucking

Speaker 2 no explanation as to what's going on or what you're doing here. And it is very much a game about kind of like unpacking what's happening here.

Speaker 3 And what's happening is you are flipping coins.

Speaker 2 You're flipping a coin, and it's either going to be heads or tails, Q or up in this game.

Speaker 1 Wait, which one is Q and which one is up?

Speaker 2 It doesn't fucking matter, man. Q is heads and up is tails.
Okay. I think

Speaker 2 that's probably the best thing.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay, maybe.

Speaker 2 You are, you queue. You genuinely do join a matchmaking queue because this game does have.
Is it real? I believe it's, yeah, so it has online play.

Speaker 2 I believe it's like asynchronous, where like once you queue up with a team, like it automatically runs all the math of what's going to happen.

Speaker 2 I don't think it's actually happening in real time because there's certain prompts you can like dismiss or not dismiss.

Speaker 2 And I don't see how that would happen if eight players were all kind of doing the same thing. So you're put on a team of four, and then first to three wins after coin flips

Speaker 2 wins the match. And then you go back to the

Speaker 2 you know fucking Fortnite splash screen sort of games of service menu where you can look at the shop and you can check your messages and you can form a party.

Speaker 2 And like it has all of these trappings that make you think like

Speaker 2 they've genuinely made like an overwatch of coin flipping.

Speaker 1 Um, so that's how did you feel? How did that make you feel

Speaker 1 bad?

Speaker 2 Bad and not good, and confused, and not great.

Speaker 3 Is it a

Speaker 3 messages pretty quickly?

Speaker 1 Then you start getting messages, right? Uh-oh.

Speaker 2 And that's where you start to get some explanations for the rules in these messages. Like, hey, when you have these skills that activate at these certain points, here's what that actually means.

Speaker 2 Here's what these different currencies are actually for. Here's what's actually going on.

Speaker 2 You get messages from like people who are like, wow, you seem like you're winning maybe a little bit too much. Here's some currencies for you to use.

Speaker 2 You start to invest in the that side of things, the not coin-flipping side of things.

Speaker 2 And that's when the game kind of reveals itself for what it is, which is an incremental game, the new jam from Frank Lance, who made Universal Paperclips, which I think kind of established a lot of the norms of the genre of incremental idol games.

Speaker 2 Only

Speaker 2 the incremental,

Speaker 2 the building that you're doing, the strengthening that you're doing is all entirely personal. So

Speaker 2 you have a hero that you pick, sort of Overwatch style. You only have a handful unlocked at the beginning.
You can unlock more as you go along.

Speaker 2 Each hero has like a different little modifier, a different little thing. But for the most part, a lot of the payoff comes in this huge skill grid.

Speaker 2 Each hero has like certain special skills, but then you'll unlock skills that you can place in the grid wherever you want. Those skills will trigger on wins.

Speaker 2 So if your team wins a flip, it'll trigger this skill.

Speaker 2 Some of them trigger on losses. Some of them trigger when the game starts.
Some of them trigger when the game ends.

Speaker 2 Genuinely, anything you can think that could happen in a very simple

Speaker 2 first to three coin flip challenge, they have found a way to make a game mechanic out of it. in some way.
Sometimes you'll have skills that trigger other skills.

Speaker 2 So it'll say like on a loss, this one will activate all the skills surrounding this node. And you start to build these insane chain reactions to like maximize the currencies that you get

Speaker 2 for each win and loss and match win and match loss, right?

Speaker 2 So you can get a bunch of skills, or there's also gear, there's items that you buy in a shop that you like have a loadout equipped that basically do kind of the same thing.

Speaker 2 Like, this will give you 500 XP each round that will be multiplied maybe by your skills.

Speaker 2 You're trying to like build these multipliers and build these chain reactions and utilize your heroes' like special abilities, but like

Speaker 2 none of that shit

Speaker 2 affects the coin flip.

Speaker 2 You don't get a skill that makes you win more coin flips.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 Vitally. You don't get any kind of ability that will make it more likely that your team will win a coin flip.
The coin flips are going to happen.

Speaker 2 And then the points that you get for the result of that coin flip are entirely your shit, entirely your build, entirely everything.

Speaker 1 So like the only kind of like.

Speaker 3 Messages, if I can just hop in really quickly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, please, please.

Speaker 3 The messages that you will get will be from the game creators.

Speaker 3 And if, let's say that you lose four rounds in a row, and each round, you lose in a shutout. Like you didn't get a single coin flip right.

Speaker 3 You will get a message that's like, fairness is our top priority. Something seems to be amiss here.

Speaker 3 We've rejiggered the flibble flops and we are assuring you that there is peak fairness happening at all times. And as

Speaker 3 a sign of gratitude, take these coins.

Speaker 3 And then you will take those coins and there will be a EULA, which if you actually read the EULA thousands of words at the bottom it will be like and also we now own all of the like rounds of your game we own all of your personal data we and all of this shit which then will have a link to another story and that's the other side of the game which is the visual novel side of yeah so there's there's a whole news feed where you will see like on the splash screen like of all the legal trouble that like the company that made this game is getting in but it's like a fake, it's a real website, but it's like a fictionalized unit, like in-universe sort of coverage of the Q-Up esport.

Speaker 1 What all of that is like,

Speaker 2 it's really funny, and it's like really, really, it, uh,

Speaker 2 it once you kind of understand what it is and, and

Speaker 2 how it doesn't really impact the coin flips or like the build shit that you get into, these like chain reactions you try to build between your skills and your items and your hero skills to make it so

Speaker 2 you can get like billions and billions and billions of points with a single match of queue up, whether you win or lose. You could have a setup where like

Speaker 2 you have items that trigger on losses and you have skills that trigger on losses so that when you lose, you get more points than you do when you win.

Speaker 2 It's all about like how your build allows you to harvest resources from the matches, whether you win or you lose.

Speaker 2 And engaging with that stuff is so confusing at the start because it doesn't explain fucking anything and it kind of slow rolls that shit out to you.

Speaker 2 The multiplayer aspect of it is really great because there is like a ranking system, sort of like Google watching.

Speaker 1 Sorry, for a second, do we know for sure that the multiplayer is real multiplayer?

Speaker 2 Yes, it is real multiplayer. And the reason that you know that, my favorite part about the multiplayer is you will see people on your team and people on the other team

Speaker 2 like you'll win a flip and then you will see that they have just earned 72 quadrillion points.

Speaker 1 And it's like, how the fuck, what is your setup? Yeah.

Speaker 2 That you were able to get that, right?

Speaker 2 So it's like, imagine you're playing universal paperclips, only there was like asynchronous multiplayer, and you could see that like this person was getting shit in the like exponential Googleplex, like,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 there's also certain interactions. Like one of the characters has a skill called, I think, meta awareness.
And what that skill does is you pick one of the playable characters in the game.

Speaker 2 And if that player is on the other team when you start, it adds a point to this like meta-awareness stat that will then like multiply your score or do like all this other shit.

Speaker 2 But if you guess wrong and that player is not on the team, that stat resets. So it's genuinely like knowing like, okay, which characters are people playing the most?

Speaker 2 And if I pick that, then it's actually going to give me this stat. Like that is what that whole character is kind of based around.

Speaker 2 It's just like...

Speaker 2 It's all this stuff about the coin flip esports and the Overwatch sort of pastiche and all that shit is all a a joke but they also have made a game mechanic out of

Speaker 2 the trappings of it the system of

Speaker 3 the menus of it it's a thing at the end of any game where it adds up your score and it has all these different bonuses except for you are designing the contraption that creates that math yeah right that's the whole game is is creating the bonus chain and optimizing it knowing that you can actually have it go the other way too you can actually design a chain that that destroys

Speaker 2 when you lose, it gives you a base score of like minus 500 points to your ranking, right?

Speaker 2 If you have like a bunch of shit that like just multiplies your score, then that will go, you will lose so many points.

Speaker 2 You have to have shit in there that will just like add some base score to counteract that because you don't want to like multiply a negative number because it'll really fuck you over.

Speaker 2 So like that is, that is the side of things. That is the incremental part of things.
You're earning gold that you use to buy items.

Speaker 2 You're earning XP to like level up your heroes and get the the skills.

Speaker 1 But the end results, and I realize this is a weird thing to ask about an idle game, but

Speaker 1 the end goal, I should say, is learning more about the universe, the visual games.

Speaker 2 I mean, the end goal is to build these insane chain reactions things with your skills and items. That is the end goal of this as an incremental game, right?

Speaker 3 And then for narrative,

Speaker 3 I think what Frank and his team are getting at is

Speaker 3 one, the absurdity of fairness in competitive games, that you have people who want fairness, but then also want upgrade pass constantly.

Speaker 3 And then also the way that if a game does have fairness, how it can loop you into all of these other mechanisms that are the separate metagame that you can play that keeps you spending money and keeps you buying coins and all of that stuff.

Speaker 3 It is a game that is very much grappling with the anxiety

Speaker 1 of

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 2 Overwatch is a more apt apt comparison than like obviously it's saying a lot about games as service and the sort of intrusiveness of that kind of formula um

Speaker 2 but i i for me it feels less like a shot at fortnite and more a shot at esports and petty spice sure yeah yeah that makes sense um but like also when you build a chain reaction that gives you a fucking ton of points it feels pretty it does scratch that you know uh that universal paperclips incremental game like holy shit i just i'm rich Like, it does hit the number go up, itch.

Speaker 1 That's the trick, right, though?

Speaker 3 That's what Frank is so good at.

Speaker 3 And I think of Lucas Pope is so good at with something like Papers Plays, where it's, hey, we are going to make the thing that we are critiquing feel good so you get how it became

Speaker 1 powerful. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 It's a really interesting game. I do wish there was controller support because I think I would play it a lot more,

Speaker 2 you know, on my ROG Ally X, but it's, it's, uh, it's, it's one of the more compelling incremental games I've played in in a while.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's very interesting. Do you want to dive into some reader mail? Yeah, I like that if you don't mind.
This letter comes from Alexander. Hi, Besties.

Speaker 1 My parents have never played a video game in their life, but they are now retired and they've developed an interest in trying some out. They even went so far as to buy an Xbox Series X.

Speaker 1 I'm glad they're still selling, y'all. Yeah.
And two controllers. My question for you guys is, what are some games you'd recommend that are simple enough

Speaker 1 to be fun for people who are learning to use a controller and understand game language, but whose content and themes are interesting and engaging for adults, which I think is a different request than we've gotten past about teaching kids to play games.

Speaker 1 So far, I've gotten the portal two, but would love some other suggestions. Two prayer games would be a specially welcome thanks.

Speaker 1 I have one, although I hesitate to give it.

Speaker 1 Is it

Speaker 1 two?

Speaker 1 It's either it takes two or special fiction. Oh, God.
I hesitate to give it.

Speaker 1 Did you edit on a part where they say they don't love their parents?

Speaker 1 I think for someone that has really never played games much at all. Or heard a story before.
Like, that's the problem with split fiction is, like, that's very insulting if they've read a bunch of.

Speaker 1 I have to assume they've ingested other media if they haven't been playing games this whole time, right? So, like,

Speaker 2 missing the split fiction episode of this podcast has truly put a pretty wide gap between me and I feel like the rest. I feel like something happened in that episode.

Speaker 1 The gap is between you and the listeners. I feel like that's where the gap is.
We're over here in the game. Some of the listeners agree with us.
Some of them don't. That's okay.
Chilling.

Speaker 1 Because I think the man, I am continually kind of bowled over by how good the Jackbox games are at getting non-gamers into games by using a device that they already feel comfortable with.

Speaker 1 Like, we played the,

Speaker 1 not to get into honorable mentions, but I played the 11

Speaker 1 compilation that came out for my birthday. We had some people over, and it was like a wide range of people, never played a game before, but there's like a

Speaker 1 they have a new sort of like murder mystery game in there where you have to answer, they you have to answer personal questions about yourself, and then one of you is the murderer, and the way they hint at people is they reveal answers that this person gave to the personality quiz.

Speaker 1 So you're like trying to find the criminal by how well you know their personality, and there's one in every round that's a lie. So you have to try to like figure out there's like fake information.

Speaker 1 But that's like, that's like a parlor game that's right on the edge of digital. And like, I think that that's a really good place to get people in for stuff.

Speaker 1 Although it doesn't use a controller, right? You're using phones for that. So yeah, you can use phones.
And what I think is...

Speaker 1 For me, I think the best thing about them is that they are like on streaming services. Like they're not just on Steam.

Speaker 1 Because for me, I don't have it like endemic that Steam can be on my living room TV, right?

Speaker 2 It takes a few cords being plugged in but i can just press a button on the apple tv and like the jackbox will will start up there so that's that's kind of nice um i i feel like portal 2 is a wild first first pick it's obviously a great game and i think you you get there but i mean

Speaker 2 In introducing games to, you know, both of my kids at this point, like, there's a certain amount of easing in to like familiarity with a controller before operating two thumbsticks at at the same time, and one of those thumbs has to move over to buttons, and one of them has to move over to a secondary d-pad.

Speaker 1 Like, that is really pretty difficult to understand if you've really clearly these people are using bumper jumpers, so that's not an issue.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that sounded like I assumed they were using bumper jumpers.

Speaker 1 I sort of get it with Portal 2 because you are for most of the early game in a quote safe space to learn everything.

Speaker 1 The other thing I wanted to call out is that Wanna Break is half TV show.

Speaker 2 That's true. Yeah, you can really relax.

Speaker 1 So you can like, they can like take a break from playing video games if that gets to be a bit much.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Stardew Co-op would probably be another. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I was going to say that too. It's not a bad idea.

Speaker 3 I think also any of the beat-'em-ups, like Castle Crashers, we've talked about quite a few of these lately that I think are solid.

Speaker 3 And yeah, any of the story games, Until Dawn, like, I don't know if Until Dawn's not on Xbox.

Speaker 1 Oh, the first season of Walking Dead would be very good.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah, that's not bad.
I played that essentially in co-op with my wife, and it was a really great experience.

Speaker 2 That was a definite, like,

Speaker 2 easing Rachel into. We played through all of those before we

Speaker 1 needed anything else. I think Blue Prince would be, I mean, it's not two players, but it's definitely a two.

Speaker 1 Like, it's a two-person. It could be, it's a great two-person experience.
I've heard from a ton of people that played it with a partner and really enjoyed it. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 And last one, anything with Lego at the beginning of the title.

Speaker 1 It's good to avoid, yeah. Almost as early as the game.
No, Lego Voyagers and stuff like that. That'll be good.

Speaker 1 Once you've played one of them, you've played them literally all. But I guess if they've never played even one of them, then you could get them one.
There you go. There you go.

Speaker 1 You play Voyagers, Justin. You don't know.
Change the game. It's a delightful game.
Voyagers change the game.

Speaker 3 Y'all, I want to hear some honorable mentions because I know folks have been playing some other stuff. We're watching some good stuff.

Speaker 3 I'm sure, Hoops, you got a good book that you're going to tell me about?

Speaker 1 I know, man. It's a good book.
I only read like really spicy stuff, like really steamy stuff, and I, it wouldn't be appropriate for this audience.

Speaker 1 Um, I just finished Bride, it was very, very, very, very sexy, hot stuff. Meets up next, looking forward to it.
Not the topic today. I want to tell you about Haunted Hotel.
I know, what's that?

Speaker 1 It's a show. It really did come out on Netflix, which is one of the big ones.
Uh, it stars Will Forte as the owner of a

Speaker 1 hotel that is completely overrun with ghosts. And then he, in his like 30s or 40s, dies and leaves the hotel to his sister and her two kids and a demon named Abaddon, who also lives in the hotel.

Speaker 1 So Nathan is a ghost in the hotel and he is getting adjusted to ghost life. And he is sort of the in-between between the ghosts and his sister.
And this is like a long, struggling business.

Speaker 1 It does not do very well because of all the the ghosts. And the stories are really like about the ghosts and how they interact with the family and how Nathan is adjusting to being non-corporeal.

Speaker 1 It's like, it's extremely funny. It's really funny.
It's a little more like tonally, it is not unlike a Gravity Falls or stuff like that. Oh, it's animated.
It's animated. Sorry.

Speaker 1 I should have been more clear about that. Yeah, it is an animated series.
And

Speaker 1 it's more grown up than those. it's it's like a little more adult tonally i think uh there's stuff that's like that would be kind of on the line for for our kids like a beetlejuice tone

Speaker 1 yeah beetlejuice is a close yeah beetlejuice is like right right there um not heavy on like the profanity or stuff but there's like some pretty big questions a lot of it is like for instance there's an area there's an episode where nathan the uh the ghost who who's played by world forte starts sinking into the ground uh and won't and will continue to sink into the core of the ground until he discovers the meaning of life.

Speaker 1 And he's got a few days to figure it out.

Speaker 1 So he and his niece, the one of the, you know, the young girl who is the daughter of the mom who's inherited the hotel, have to figure out the meaning of life in like a few days before he sinks into the earth.

Speaker 1 And there's like murderers that died in the hotel and still try to kill the kids, but they're non-corporeal. So the kids get a big kick out of it.

Speaker 1 That kind of like, it's that kind of a thing, but it's like, it's very, it's just really, really funny. And it's,

Speaker 1 i feel like it's tough to find stuff i think not tough i think people are afraid to do comedy that is on the line of good taste because they don't know how to do it funny enough that they can get a that they can sell it right so there's a lot of shows that i think aren't funny enough to get close to the line of like what is like appropriate what is it and really like push the envelope in a way that

Speaker 1 it's just uncomfortable right it's just like actually trying to make you think about stuff and it's just on the line there, but it is funny enough that it sells it, right?

Speaker 1 That it can get into those like topics that are on the edge and do them with like taste, but like in a really, really genuinely funny way. And I think that that is what this show is.

Speaker 1 It is not like the sort of.

Speaker 1 I think there's an adult animation style that wanted to be so comforting for people that it got never got close to anything that approximated strife.

Speaker 1 You know, it's a very sort of like comfort watch kind of animation that adults have gotten into.

Speaker 1 This, to me, it feels a little bit more like I'm going to say married with children, like that level of edge at that time period, if you know what I'm talking about, where it's like, it's not bad.

Speaker 1 It's just like people don't normally talk about some of this stuff. So it's kind of, it feels bad.
It feels edgier than maybe it is.

Speaker 3 The cast is killer.

Speaker 3 Eliza Coop, Skylar Gizondo, Jimmy Stimson.

Speaker 3 Damn. So Diedrich Vader.
Hell yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, Diedric Vader.

Speaker 3 Show fans stand up.

Speaker 1 There is an episode where

Speaker 1 the son, who's a little bit older, gets into a multiplicity kind of situation because the hotel, because it is haunted and so cursed, like any number of magical things can happen.

Speaker 1 He gets into a multiplicity situation where it's other sides of his own personality and discovers that like his mom prefers almost every other version of of himself to him.

Speaker 1 So, it's him trying to figure out how he can

Speaker 1 kill these other versions of himself because they're, because he's losing his mom's love, or at least that's that is the impression.

Speaker 1 But that's kind of like it's like it's it's it's funny, it's it's like right on the line, and it feels like mature in an actual way.

Speaker 1 But it's like it's called Haunted Hotel, it's on Netflix, and they're making another season

Speaker 1 according to Netflix. So, cool, sounds great.
Yeah, it's great. Can we talk about Luminesse?

Speaker 1 Yes, uh, Did anyone else play Luminess Arise? The new jam? Yeah, I played it. I know Plant played a little bit.
We talked about it on Resti's

Speaker 1 as well, a bit.

Speaker 2 So you've laid the groundwork. It's the new jam from Enhance, which is

Speaker 2 Tetsuya Mizuguchi.

Speaker 1 Is that his name?

Speaker 2 His studio creator of Res,

Speaker 2 and most recently, Enhance made Tetris Effect.

Speaker 2 And I would say Luminess Arise is very, very, very much in that same sort of

Speaker 2 trance-like aesthetic vein. I mean, Luminess has always sort of been about that life.

Speaker 2 And Luminess Arise, I think, takes the knob of that trance-like shit and turns it all the way up and then tears it off.

Speaker 1 And you guys talk the core. I feel like it's been a long time since Luminous had an intrigue.
Can you talk about the colours? I'm excited for this.

Speaker 3 I love to see people explaining it.

Speaker 1 I tried doing it on Rusties, and I really struggled. So go for it.
Got it. I believe it.

Speaker 2 In Luminess, you have a board, a grid, where you are dropping blocks. The blocks are two by two blocks, and the segments of those blocks are one of two colors.

Speaker 2 The base bog standard shit is like there'll be white squares and orange squares and some arrangement of those in a two by two little block. You're dropping those into this grid.

Speaker 2 It's affected by gravity. So if you drop half the block on a stack, the other half will fall down to the ground.

Speaker 2 When you create a two by two pattern, at least that is one color, then it kind of locks in.

Speaker 2 And uh, what is also happening is set to the beat of usually trance music, there is a bar that sweeps across the grid.

Speaker 2 As it passes by one of these completed two by two single color blocks, it clears it and you will get points. Uh, if you can do four of those two by two blocks, you get like a multiplier, a combo.

Speaker 2 And if you can do that over multiple, you know, bars of music, these these bars sweeping over, that combo will increase more and more and more and more you also don't want to fill up the grid uh and not have room to place a block because then you will lose you will lose the game um so the point of like getting high scores is setting up these scenarios where you can build a combo where you build this huge structure of one color and then when it clears it drops bricks of the other color onto other ones and they form their own huge bricks and it's building combos and figuring out like when you want to cash out like a little segment that you've been setting up without creating a scenario where you've overfilled the board uh with these like little isolated colors that aren't going to clear now my wife just says it's tetris it's it has many similarities to tetris because tetris you're doing the same thing you're trying to decide when you build and when you cash in so that you don't fuck yourself over luminous is very much doing that however also the the other element to luminous is like it is and this is definitely the case with her eyes it's like it's a it's not just about the gameplay but like the aesthetics that you're creating is like almost part of it.

Speaker 1 Like, if you think about like res itself was based on a win-amp visualizer, this is like, this feels like that, like trying to take the, how can you take the gameplay and make, like, bring it into the visuals and bring it into the sound.

Speaker 1 So it's like a, a stenesthesia kind of, kind of deal.

Speaker 2 That, that, like, I feel like that conversation always gets a little bit dicey in how much of that is just kind of like

Speaker 2 marketing buzz and all that shit. With Luminess, because you are the information you're working with is kind of inherently pretty simple.
It's two colors and you want to keep them together.

Speaker 2 That's the basic premise: you don't want to create these little checkerboard patterns where there's one and one and one and they don't hit. You want to sort of match colors together.

Speaker 2 And that at a very base level is not hard to do. So you start operating with this sort of hind brain

Speaker 2 sort of thought process that then kind of like gets hooked with

Speaker 2 the music that builds and flows and changes as you go. And so, this, I, you know,

Speaker 2 it is trying to lull you into a bit of a puzzle trance, which was very much what Tetris Effect was aiming for as well. Here, I just think it's a little bit more inherent to the structure of Luminesse.

Speaker 2 The other thing that it adds is like, as you clear these things, you're charging up a burst meter that you can activate by pulling a trigger,

Speaker 2 which then kind of freezes time a little bit. So you can drop blocks in to build these huge structures.

Speaker 2 As you widen the structures, you're building of one color, blocks of the other color disappear from the board.

Speaker 2 So you can keep building and building and building and building until like you run out of time in the burst and it clears it in one sort of huge explosion that's like very, very satisfying.

Speaker 1 And then a fucking chameleon comes out and like licks your face.

Speaker 2 A chameleon will come out and lick your face. It is also like an oh shit button that you can pull sometimes if the board is getting too dicey because it's a little bit effective.

Speaker 2 And I really like that addition a lot because

Speaker 2 I don't know, Luminess has felt like a game that can break you out of that trance when you're doing so bad.

Speaker 2 When you drop a few blocks incorrectly and you fuck up your structures and you feel like, oh, God, recovering from this is going to suck.

Speaker 2 It takes you out of the thing knowing that you have this option, this emergency break that you got.

Speaker 1 That's a really good, that's a really good.

Speaker 1 When you're doing Tetris, you're like seeing all these gaps, right?

Speaker 2 And when you mess up a spacing, it's like you just move on to another gap or like another gap is created yeah in a sense and like with luminous it really does you see this ugly funky chunk of blocks no i'll never get to you you suck i hate it yeah there's also uh special blocks that will spawn in sometimes that will chain so it will clear every block of one color as long as they are touching so if you like have been very good and disciplined about like making sure you are not isolating these different colors you can like really really really set up a huge combo with that too um it's fucking great it's really really uh i i got really hooked on this i think on psp and it was like the perfect game on psp because you could just like pick it up pick it up zone out uh

Speaker 2 and you know do a little bit of score chasing there's this whole like element of this game where you have a little avatar who's like this little fucking penguin shaped crystal dude and you'll unlock new parts for him and there's a gotcha pon where you can like unlock new parts and some of the ways it reshapes items like and and like when your blocks merge, the way they merge is like aesthetically really cool.

Speaker 1 I'm flicking through some of the different, like, there's a, there's a, there's one where you're making like vegetables. So you start off like small green things.

Speaker 1 And as you like do a block of four green things, it's like a larger broccoli. And then when the screen clears, it looks as though it's been like chopped in half.
It's very cool.

Speaker 2 I will say the soundtrack to this one hasn't.

Speaker 2 I can remember past Luminous Games playing them and then like saying like, oh, fuck, I gotta, what was that song? And adding it to like a playlist because I, you know, was really vibing with it.

Speaker 2 Shining.

Speaker 2 What's that? Shining.

Speaker 2 Shining.

Speaker 1 That was like the big solo from that. The first game.
I don't know if it's in the game. I haven't played.
I haven't played all the journeys and all the songs yet.

Speaker 2 So, like, maybe I just haven't gotten to them yet, but it's been a slightly, you know,

Speaker 1 you're a dad now. You're out of your house, era.

Speaker 3 When you were playing this original one, you were at the club every night.

Speaker 1 You were hitting up the roof. Yeah, pacifier around.
He was a big Hadaway guy. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Speaker 2 I also wanted to talk about,

Speaker 2 I don't want to go too hard on talking about the AY and Thor shit because we've talked about it so much. It's still infinitely insane to me that we have a 3DS that you can basically do whatever on.

Speaker 2 And to that point, I saw a Reddit post that someone made of them playing Phantasy Star Online on their AY and Thor connected to the internet using a ROM hack they designed for Dolphin GameCube emulation.

Speaker 2 Setting that all up took me like two days.

Speaker 2 But now I have a handheld where I can play Phantasy Star Online on the GameCube with this custom rule set called return to rag goal and you can play that shit online on your handheld with other players and that is insane to me that is patently so wild um i've been setting up steam shit with game hub uh on it too which works doing game hub or game hub like uh game hub uh and and that works surprisingly well with some games um but the real highlight for me this week is i have a handheld version of phantasy star online uh in a rom hack that is way more fun to play than the original Phantasy Star Online.

Speaker 3 I'm going to drop in real quick, Fresh, and then I'll throw it to you, but humanity is my pick for this week.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah, dude. Yes.
It's so fucked up. We still got a little something left in us, dude.
Heck yeah, man. I so agree with this.
This is a big choice, man. Good for you.

Speaker 1 Unpopular. Hell yeah.
Probably just from the current vibe, but like. Yeah, but like, fuck it.
What did we do? Did I miss something?

Speaker 3 We, as humanity, are half off on Steam right now. If you want to pick up it,

Speaker 1 so there's a news peg. I love that.

Speaker 3 Before Luminous Arise, the same studio made a video game called Humanity, where you play as a ghost dog, Shiba Inu, and you guide hundreds, if not thousands, of people through lemming-style puzzles.

Speaker 3 It is the most PlayStation 1-ass video game. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 It is a total delight.

Speaker 3 And you can get it now for, I think it's like 15 bucks because of a sale thanks to Luminous. So you should check it out.

Speaker 1 Great.

Speaker 1 Real quick,

Speaker 1 I have two things. The first one is Hades 2, which I'm closing in on the end of Hades 2, which is exciting.

Speaker 1 I think when I finish it, I'll have deeper thoughts, but just keeping the people updated on it. Justin, I would recommend just...

Speaker 1 deleting your 40-hour save starting from scratch but i realize you might not do that um The other thing I want.

Speaker 1 No?

Speaker 1 No, I mean, like, I'm, I,

Speaker 1 I have thought about it. I genuinely have.
We just have so many other things to do. I know.
That's kind of the heartbreaker about it.

Speaker 1 Like, to be honest with you, I would love to say, yeah, I have the time to do that. I just don't.

Speaker 1 I think it's a lesson, is what it is, for the future, which is to say, I think when the opportunity arises next time to play an early access game, maybe we play for three hours and then stop.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Maybe.

Speaker 2 It's a good we will be talking about this a lot next week. Yeah, I imagine.
So

Speaker 1 the other thing I want to do is,

Speaker 1 you know what? Rachel is the only smart one among us because Rachel has been fighting Hades the whole time and like won't even like tries not to listen to the episodes.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure how she does it, but she avoids talking.

Speaker 1 You know, I thought, I thought, oh, you're missing out, but like, I know, there's a definite wisdom there. Definitely.

Speaker 1 The other thing I want to mention is a show called Pluribus, which is on Apple TV. Oh, yeah.
Plus, I don't know what it's called these days, but yeah.

Speaker 1 This is the Vince Gilligan show, the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. He has a new show.
It stars the woman who played Kim on Better Call Saul, if you're familiar with that.

Speaker 1 I forget the actual name.

Speaker 1 Clea?

Speaker 1 Seahorn. I don't.

Speaker 1 Rhea Seahorn. Yeah.
Raya Seahorn. Raya Seahorn.
Thank you. She's a dynamite in this.

Speaker 1 I don't know how much I really want to say, but I feel like if you're a fan of Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, you understand vince gilligan's capability of making a really good show um this one's much more sci-fi from the look definitely more sci-fi this is him doing a damon lindelof style show that was the vibe i was getting what i would say is there's a high concept to the show that i'm not going to talk about right now but the high concept similar to severance is revealed very very very early on

Speaker 1 so i think that high concept is enough that I was like very interested in where the show would go in addition to the fact that like dude knows how to write and produce like a really fucking amazing show.

Speaker 3 So I would recommend anybody who's curious about it, watch the pilot specifically a SAP because word's going to spread around the show and people are just going to start talking about the show for what it is.

Speaker 3 And the pilot, I'm sure, is thrilling if you already know what's happening, but it is especially great to discover what is going on alongside the pilot. It's one of the best pilots I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 It's really

Speaker 1 man, and I really, especially for when you're talking about like, talking about being limited on time, it's really nice to get on board with a show where like I, you know, that the creator knows how to deliver on a full series.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 how to tell a story, knows how to end it, knows how to like do it on his terms. So it's like, yeah, they're confident.

Speaker 1 They're signed up for two seasons through Apple, but he said he has idea for ideas beyond that. But he's also said he knows where, presumably, where it would end.

Speaker 1 So I'm sure he has the seasons at least blocked out in his head um so yeah you know at least you'll get a good actual full story out of it

Speaker 1 sick

Speaker 3 love it

Speaker 1 uh real quick i want to thank the folks over at the patreon uh patreon.com slash the besties uh where you can get new episodes of resties and bracket battles and all sorts of good stuff uh some new members that recently joined we have stephen w we have doug we have michael s and we have cataquack

Speaker 1 Thank you for being members of the Bastards Patreon. We greatly, greatly appreciate it.
As I mentioned, we have a new episode of Resties. We go a bit deeper into Luminous,

Speaker 1 which is there. And we also talk about a game called Escape from Duck Off, which is a genuinely great extraction shooter.

Speaker 1 I was not expecting that.

Speaker 3 Single player extraction shooter.

Speaker 1 Yeah, single player only extraction shooter. I love that.
Featuring a duck.

Speaker 1 Cool.

Speaker 1 Who wants to talk about what we're doing next week?

Speaker 1 I can.

Speaker 1 We're going to start,

Speaker 1 you know, game of the year, it's closer than ever before. And we've got a couple more big releases, but there's a lot of stuff that has come and

Speaker 1 we've enjoyed to different extents.

Speaker 1 And we kind of want to like circle up, take a look at the land, talk about the things that we maybe want to spend more time with, talk about things that we have been enjoying, just kind of take stock of stuff so we can

Speaker 1 figure out how to spend the rest of this year. There's a lot of games.

Speaker 1 I mean, Russ brought up Blue Prince right before we started, which is a really good example of a game that some of us loved and some of us can't play.

Speaker 1 So I don't know how we're going to have those conversations.

Speaker 2 It's going to be a really fucking intense year for Goatee discussion.

Speaker 1 So to save our friendships, we just wanted to do a little table setting, you know?

Speaker 2 We are doing other, like, Kirby's still coming, Metroid's still coming this year. We're not locking shit in, but that is.

Speaker 1 I don't want to hear any numbers. You know, I'm not trying to rank.
I'm just trying to figure out what still needs a little bit of that extra attention. Yep.

Speaker 1 Cool.

Speaker 1 We get it. I'm excited.
I'm looking forward to it. Thanks so much for joining us for this week on The Besties.
Be sure to join us again next week for The Besties.

Speaker 1 Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

Speaker 1 Besties