Dispatch's Second Chance (and The Game Awards Predictions)

Did you guys know that normally I've just discovered a new feature in Riverside? Like, normally I have the chat with all four of us up, and that's good.

I was trying to figure out a way to hide myself from the chat, and I removed myself from the whole call, so I was pretty fucked up.

But I have discovered that if you want, you can just pin Russ.

So

you can just make Russ bit, you can pin Russ, and that way you're getting like a direct feed. It's like a wicked for good situation where you see my giant face.

You can also full screen pop out Russ so you don't have to see any of the other guys and you can really focus on how Russ is reacting to everything they're saying.

It makes for a real business opportunity for us. It's mostly eyebrows.
What if we just had a full-time Russ feed that, you know, like the real top in best you subscribers could get? Right.

I think that's probably worth seven.

Fat bear week. I'm just Russ.
Tell me guys, if on this episode, it seems like Russ and I are like really grooving.

I'm reading his micro aggressions, the like tiny fractal eyelash blink that lets me know

he wants me to reference New York Giraffe or something. Yeah, I'm also wearing Justin's aura ring.
So his entire being is sufficed into my being,

which is cool. Lovely.
Yeah, it's really cool.

And I've got his aura frame. It's right behind me.

You know, gift-giving season is just around the corner.

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.

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game awards of the week. My name is Russell Frostik.
I know the best game of the week.

Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in Home Interactive Entertainment. It's a video game club.
You know, just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member.

I'm so happy to have you here today to talk about a couple of things. First off, we're going to lead off with a dispatch.

Dispatch. What's that, Chris Plant? Oh, is that how you pronounce that word?

Dispatch.

Is it meant to be like a double enting?

What? What do you mean? What? a double enting.

Dispatch, when you say it like that, it sounds like you're killing someone versus dispatch, which is when you're sending like taxis out like

on the show taxi. Oh, now I'm going to be dispatch.
Dispatch.

Dispatch.

Dispatch.

Chris, tell us all about Chris Pratch. Tell us about Chris Pratch.

You want something like those classic telltale games that you used to love. You want that Walking Dead flavor, that Sam and Max, not the original games, but the adventure ones?

Well, you can get it right now in the form of an entirely original superhero city. Superhero story.
There we go. Set in the city of Los Angeles.
That's right, Chris Plant.

We're going to talk about that and a little bit about the Game Awards. That's all coming up right after this.

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I hope these bias characters make it in the next poker night at the inventory. I don't think that's too much to ask.
I want to see them up there. Oh, whoa, that really...

I want to see them up there with strong bad. Want to see them up there with

inventory? Sheesh, took me back. The heavy from fucking TF2.

I feel like this is my

hat in hand sort of mea culpa game of the year of being one that I felt pretty rock solid, certain I wasn't going to like and wasn't going to be for me. And

was so not excited by any of the trailers or anything I'd seen about the game,

but was so sort of shocked by how much buzz and positive reaction it had gotten.

And I'm very glad that I gave it a shot because I have finished, I think, six or so episodes of the eight episodes in this first season in about three or four days. Wow.

Very, very, very, very into dispatch. And I'm very glad that we managed to get it in here before our considerations.

I do want to make a slight tweak to what what Chris Plant said earlier in the episode describing Dispatch. Because

his pitch for it, which is what I've basically heard the entire time this game has been out, is like telltale-esque.

And I don't actually know that that's entirely the best way to view it. Interesting.
Why is that?

Because at least what I've played, and I don't know if this changes dramatically, but at least what I've played, it is much less

interactive than than a Telltale thing.

It feels more like an interactive, like you're watching a show and occasionally you have options to like choose dialogue. And then there's obviously there's a game element to it that we'll get into.

Right. But it doesn't, the thing about Telltale was like, you were like literally walking around these environments and like clicking on things and like

stuff like that, which this is not. Like this is a much more direct thing.
This is very, very much that that is what turned me off from it at first. It's like, that doesn't sound great to me.

And honestly, for me, Telltale has a weird track record where I thought the first season of Walking Dead was one of that was like my game of the year that came out,

the year that came out. I really liked season two.
And then pretty much every other thing that they made, I never finished. I never got all the way through.
I like the Wolf Among Us.

Even though I recognize Wolf Among Us, yeah, it was great. The Borderlands one, surprisingly, really great, really fun.
I just never, like, they never hooked me.

And so, knowing that, like, I didn't feel like I wanted to get invested in a lightly interactive

superhero show, another, like, a genre that I also kind of don't give a shit about anymore. And I have been, like, pretty well turned off by, uh, regardless of whether it's movies or

TV or comics or games or whatever. But against all odds, I think they actually do a

really smart thing in how

interactive it is. To set it up a little bit, it is familiar to those Telltale games where it is telling a story with important kind of like junction points and

conversation choices and decisions that you will make that will sort of branch things off.

You are running a superhero team called the Z team of former villains who have turned things around and become heroes, most of them kind of, you know, dragging their feet along the way.

And you are basically their manager. You are the guy in the chair telling them where to go as these calls come in.

You are assigning them to different jobs, making those decisions based on their like different superhero stats that you can level up as they go and they do a good job.

But like the narrative layer on top of that is that it is very much like a workplace

comedy, I think.

Yeah.

Not that it isn't funny. It is funny.
It's just like, I don't know if that's the genre it would slot squarely into. It's not the...

When I think of comedy, probably something closer to like a Harley Quinn, the comic, the animated show. It's not like joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke.
It's

uncomfortable bits. Characters.
It does have uncomfortable bits.

The game layer, I think, is really smart because the

light drama. Like drama.

I mean, it takes some pretty fucking heavy, heavy, heavy swings in the light. For the love of God, Griffin.

The management. It's serious mostly, and sometimes there's jokes.

That's good.

I think the way the gameplay of of sending out heroes and assigning them to different jobs on these

long shifts is actually a really smart, like synergistic way of kind of telling the story they're telling, where you start to get invested in these characters based on the writing and acting, which is, you know, they're both really great.

But also like...

you begin to form these attachments to like, oh, well, Golem's my dog. Like Golem is my dog when I know things are getting like hairy and I need someone who I can depend on.

Like, that's my dude I send into those jobs. And that kind of, I don't know, that like lends itself into you giving a shit about the characters in a way that is really effective.

Some people are, some of the heroes are like more professional.

And so, you know, like, this is, if this breaks bad, it would be really bad. So I need somebody who can like keep their composure.

And they're pretty clear up front, like the mission description about, like, you know, they're protecting the governor. So you need somebody.

The way that's expressed is sort of with a

pentagonal skill graph with like their toughness and their fighting ability and their peer strength and charisma and intellect, I think,

on like a chart. And that is how their success or failure in a mission is determined.

But it's not like yes or no. There is a random element.
So basically, if you imagine that Pentagon,

the requirements of the job will take up a certain area of the Pentagon depending on what skills are needed for it. And your character also has their own shape represented by their skills.

And in that overlap, there is a percentage overlap. Say they overlap by like 70%, right? So you're here.
A chance to succeed is really a chance to succeed, basically. Yeah.
Exactly.

Yeah,

I found that mode, that like game, and I need to do more of it a little bit stressful. I found the actual show of it interesting.
I need to spend more time with it, really. I'm still very early.

But animation-wise, like through the

swag incredible and shot really well. Like the framing is like, this is professional.
These people know how to do a show.

I'm actually surprised that they didn't like partner with a streaming network at the same time. And I'm sure they will now, especially after the success of it, because it really is very well done.

I don't know that they will. I mean, I don't, because this is the...

It feels like one of those where this is the best version of it. I mean, who knows, right? If there's money to make it,

it'll get optioned and they could turn this universe into something, certainly. But it really is, I don't want to overstate it, but like, at first, I started playing it.
I was like,

don't, don't, didn't click with me because it seems so lightly interactive. Once I realized that this is like, it is a, it's an interactive TV show, like in a real sense where you're making narrative

decisions that I don't know how they would write around. It seems so gigantic.

I mean, there's not a ton of those, but like, there's enough that it feels like you're really in not a, not a, like a, a performer, almost like a director position, you know, like who you are interested in in the story, who do you want to keep around in the story, who do you want to keep seeing like evolve in the story.

And once I got my head into that, where

they're making concessions like the let the the the the chapters are pretty conc or episodes are pretty concretely like 45 minutes. I mean, like the, the length is like pretty

perfect. Standard.
You know what it is. You know what it is when you're sitting down for one.
Like you have a sense of the thing. I think what clicked for me is when I realized that there was nothing

really to be mechanically gained from anything. Like your performance in the

like main mode, the dispatch thing is really more about how it like impacts the narrative and what you're interested in the narrative. But like you're not going to get

too good or too bad. Like it's not going to change the story that much, right?

It's much more about like keeping you engaged with the story, but a fail, like I was getting frustrated by how often failures seem random, but then it's, it doesn't matter.

Like it's not, it, it's, that's not the, the essential thing.

And realistically, like from a logistical standpoint, like if they were programming a bunch of fail points, like that's, that dovetails the narrative out into 60 different options.

So they did have to kind of pen it in a little bit. I wanted to ask one, so, so the first choice you make in the game is the setting choice.

So you can play as like, I think it's interactive or like traditional. I don't remember what the two options are.
And this is what I want to say. Interactive is.

So

I think in both modes, you're still obviously making choices. You're making dialogue choices.
You're making like moment choices. But in interactive, you're also doing like almost

quick time event style things.

where someone throws a punch and you have to like hit B, for lack of a better example.

And if you don't hit B, you'll get punched. I tried it as the interactive thing and found it to be like kind of cute.
And they do animate like fail states and that.

Like you'll get punched if you miss the thing. I was intentionally missing things just to see how it plays out.
I don't know that it makes a long-term impact how well you do at those moments.

I think it just makes might make you feel a little more engaged. But you guys played the other.
But that is a very, that is a super dupe.

And I've, I've always kind of felt this way, basically all the way back to Shenmue Shenmue one, of like, that's not really

gay. Yeah.
Like, it's the lightest,

lightest imaginable layer of interactivity. And honestly,

this has been. They hit you with a disproportionately high.
I wanted to express to Russ because I know that he hasn't played quite as far.

Like, they hit you with a disproportionately high number of those in the first like 20 minutes of this episode, of the first episode.

There are way more.

Griffin, tell me if I'm wrong, but like there's a bunch of like putting on your suit and buckling this and fighting this. And like, there's a lot more of those like quicker, quick time things.

Like it still pops up, but it's, it's a lot more rare. So I actually wouldn't know because I turned that shit right off.

No, because I.

Well, I didn't. And I, and it almost, it very rarely popped up.
Okay, that's good to know. I think it is the fact that it does rarely pop up.
And like, I have been really,

really enjoying playing, watching, playing this game while like eating.

And it is i don't want to be shaken out of my chill dispatch sesh because like all of a sudden the a big a prompt appears on the screen

are your what happens in your like dialogue choices are they timed still yeah there's still timed those are still timed the only other setting that there is is there's like a hacking mini game that you will do sometimes while you are dispatching which you can do sort of in lieu of like taking a guess at whether or not your heroes are going to be up to this particular challenge you just do this hacking minigame you can affect like you can you know choose an option of whether or not those have like fail states or, or not.

I like those. I think they're pretty affirmative.
Yeah, those are fine.

It could use a few more of those, I think. It could use a couple more engaging minigames like that, I think, to keep things.
But that's not the exact thing they're making, of course.

Yeah, no, it's, it's,

that stuff is light, and it, I think, gets by being light because truly, um, the just the writing and acting is just really, really,

really fucking great. Really super good.
Aaron Paul plays the main character and brings a level of. He's really turning into like one of the like top tier, like voice talent-wise.

Oh, he's really, he's got great, it's, um,

it's a great control for a character that isn't extremely ostentatious. He's like a lot more reserved,

but it's really interesting, like really accomplished nuance he's doing, like, with, with not a ton dynamically, dynamically, like, from an emotional sense. Yeah, he was very.

So, he's definitely

Jeffrey Wright is also in it, and he's an incredible.

There's also like a lot of casting.

There's a lot of the critical role folks who are in here, which like obviously, like, they know what the fuck they're doing. Laura Bailey turns in a powerhouse, truly hysterical performance.

There's a running gag where her character can't think of like funny, cool catchphrases to say in the heat of battle. Uh, that it like lands every single time, like every joke.

But then there's also like some more,

a term we learned when we were vying to get in the Trolls 2 movie of stunt casting of like some streamers like

Jacksepticeye who plays Punch Up and

I forget the guys, Charlie Moist Critical Guy plays Sonar, one of the characters.

I feel like everyone is, it like turns in a great performance and the writing is truly

very, very compelling. I keep coming back to it, and it's not just that it's like compelling, cliffhangery, good storytelling.
It's like

I don't know, it's a story about a bunch of fuck-ups who are kind of nice to each, like eventually form a pretty sort of loving misfit family.

And that format has been beaten to death and done so many different times. And so, I think it's like pretty remarkable how good a job it does telling that sort of

tale.

As people who like, as somebody who uh

is very into like interactive cinematic storytelling and thinks about that a lot because like a lot of fmv games i think are in that territory um this i feel like is maybe the most successful in terms of interactive tv like if you're talking about an interactive tv show i can't tell you something that's worked better than this and like the closest you get is like

What's the quantum break? You know, that I think is like the closest. I mean, I can't think of anything else that's even in the in in this neck of the woods.
But like,

by hewing closer to TV and making it less like a video game, I think they actually made it more successful. Where like

Quantum Break seemed to want to bring more game into it. And I feel like that made the pacing just.

Well, it's also a budget issue.

The second you make it more like a video game, suddenly you're making levels and fucking environments and characters and animations and blah, blah, blah. I mean, they're still doing animation.

I mean, that's the secret secret sauce of Dispatch, right? All the heavy action definitely is covered in like a map. Like the

high-octane action sequences are usually like a circle moving around a map. Yeah, and even if they weren't, it's obviously much cheaper to do a locked-down

animated scene than it is to like fully program the whole level.

Yeah, obviously. There are some great fight scenes.

There's also, there's a, I think, a secret splinter cell inside of ad hoc, which is the studio that made Dispatch that is, from what I understand, formed from a a lot of former sort of Telltale folks.

There's someone in there who wants so badly to make a mecha anime game. There's so many close-ups on fingers punching in fucking that cowboy buff ass like launch sequence.
Pushing a thruster forwards.

Yeah, it's so cool.

I'm fucking wild about this game. And

it is a revitalizing experience for me because it doesn't happen super often where I write a game off as completely

being a genre I don't care about, about a genre of fiction I don't care about, and a genre of game I don't care about, and thinking like, well, this kind of looks like, you know, I don't really groove with like Invincible or,

you know, a lot of those kind of like edgy, funny, cool, nasty superheroes. I thought, oh, this is just going to be like one of those.

And

it has truly surprised me and made me feel like, you know, I need to be more open-minded about this. Who's your favorite character? God.

Shit. Well, yeah, god is when he god is so great

uh there's one character

who is just kind of a um

kind of a i don't know how to describe him water boy is a character

who is extremely nervous and wants so badly to be a superhero but is like

so uh uh self-conscious and stumbles through every single line of dialogue that he has and uh he he is very good there's also just great moments between like the more kind of like minor character members of the team.

There's two named Prism and Malevola, who have like a bunch of really great beats that kind of like Burton Ernie and It's a Wonderful Life, just kind of like talking after the main characters have left the scene and just like delivering some great jokes.

There is a lot of characters to

love in this game.

It actually makes for me the specialness of the interactivity more because I feel like the things that I'm seeing feel special, a little bit more special, because it's like, I don't know what scene I would be getting otherwise, but like, this is my experience, and it's good enough that that actually means something.

Where like a lot of other games, you're like, oh, who gives a fuck? I get my lizard man or a dinosaur man. I don't know.
And even though the episodes are short, there's eight of them.

Like, I still feel like it gives them enough room to like give them arcs. When you say short,

I mean, 45 minutes is fairly short for, I feel like, a telltale episode. It's very, yeah.
Usually those are like an hour or short. I don't even know what you were talking about.

What was the last Telltale episodic game that we are comparing this to?

I think I'm thinking of like Walking Dead Season 2.

Those were beefy.

I remember those borderlands.

I want to be careful because

it is exactly the length of a television episode. That's the length.
And it's not short.

I'm pushing back against short because what they are doing, I feel like it is the exact right length for what it is.

I'm comparing it to other games

in the narrative adventure. Or like if you have an episodic game, generally speaking, they're usually much longer than an hour.

I think this length is perfect because it is exactly the sort of patience that you would have to absorb a narrative and feel like you get to an end point and you can stop at that moment or you can keep going, whatever you want to do.

You want to binge it. Yeah.
But you don't feel like whenever I was playing Telltale games, I always felt halfway through an episode, I'd be like, I'm going to take a break.

And it was never at a good point. It was just like, just because it went on too long.

The dispatch part of the game actually is like a really helpful sort of pacing block where you will have like an intro scene. I'll be like, this is what this episode is going to be about.

Here's some bit with the characters. Now you're going to dispatch them.

And there's going to be lots of dialogue and lots of stuff that is like going to build up to the events that will happen in the scenes after the dispatch part.

Or maybe you'll do like one shift and it will go really shitty. And then you'll come back and fire up the troops and then go out for a second dispatch shift in the episode.

It creates like a, I don't know, like an expectation to the pacing that I think is also just really, really, really smart and uh well designed yeah but you really got to meet it on its own terms that's what i discovered because i i blew it off at first because like yeah i'm playing games in 10 minute spurts i don't have time for this but if you sit down and engage with it you know clear an hour i think it's really really worth it or or i mean genuinely i don't think i would have gotten into the game if i didn't i'm not watching anything right now that i'm like watching solo and so i just like put it on my rog ally x and propped it up while i ate lunch one day and was like oh okay if i turn off the the qtes this is like actually kind of perfect.

This is actually, I can knock one of these out a day. No problem.

Yeah.

Cool. Okay.
Should we? Yeah, let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about the video game awards.

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Okay, we're going to be talking a little bit about the Big Jeff Game Awards that are happening next week. But before

they change the game,

that's the name. That's the question on everybody's mind.
Why did they change it to the Big Jeff Awards? You know, you'd have to ask Big Jeff. Only he knows.
Yeah, sure.

The BGGAs.

Yeah. Before we get into that, though, we have some besties game of the year talk to discuss.
Chris Point, what's going on?

We are finishing up our bracket. We have already chosen 12 games that will be in the bracket.
What are they? Wouldn't you like to know?

You'll be finding out soon enough, but you have a chance to vote on four additional games that will round out the 16-seed bracket.

And if you're listening to this, right when the episode goes up, you can actually still cast a vote. Polls close tonight, Friday at 11.30 p.m.
Pacific time. So you still have a little bit of time.

But if you're already a subscriber to the newsletter or the Patreon, you already know all this. It's in your email inbox, which is all the more reason to subscribe to either of those.

Right.

So the gist is we've picked the 12. You guys are going to vote on your top four.
And those top four will make it into the full 16 bracket when we do the game of the year.

And that'll give us enough time to play some of your picks. If we haven't played the picks already, that'll allow us to have some good discussion and see if it gets higher than we would have expected.

If you want to see games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle or Dispatch, which we just discussed,

you should go vote. You should go do that right now.
Very important.

It'd be a huge favor, actually.

I've played a lot of Dispatch at this point if y'all could bump that one uh up that would actually be huge just from an roi standpoint it would be just from a yeah sunk cost sunk cost fallacy sort of sure sure sure sure sure

okay

uh we did this last year but uh i thought we'd just make some predictions on the game okay game of the year uh the game awards specifically the game awards picks um

i have the

ready are you ready we don't even need to start style are you ready okay yeah i'm ready clear obscure expedition 33. i don't even care what the category is.
I think it's just going to win.

I think it's just going to clean sweep basically whatever it's in. I think it's not going to win hardly anything.
I think people are just going to think, other people will vote for that.

I want to rep my face. Yeah.
It's so domineering. You know what I mean?

I want to vote for a little bit indie. You know, that's the only split fiction.

It's coming, baby. It's coming.
God.

Is there a specific genre that you think you guys wanted to tackle?

Fighting game. You want to tackle fighting? Okay.
So there are a lot of good

fighting games here. Most of them came out 30 years ago, but that's okay.

Virtual Fighter V,

Mortal Kombat. I was just kidding.
Dude, I don't know fucking anything. Dude.

Dude.

Come on.

I wanted to talk about... My announcement predictions officially

later. Your announcement predictions? not even the awards.
All right. No, do you guys want to talk about? We're going to talk about award predictions first.
Okay.

I mean, we honestly could just skip right to it because I'm not joking when I say

I think we would go through almost every single thing, and it would be Clear Obscure Expedition 33. I think what makes you feel that confident? What makes you what makes you feel like?

And to be clear, this is not our game of the year selection. This is just

game theory.

What the psychic is. It has everything it could possibly need.
It's a narrative game, and narrative narrative games slash role-playing games tend to win. It has the quote, indie bump.

Indie is a funny term there, but right?

You feel good voting for it. It has, I believe, the highest metacritic score of anything there.
And it has originality.

So, you know, it's not going to go up like Hades 2, Ghost of Yote, Death Stranding 2, even Split Fiction.

It has all the pieces of what you would expect from a winner in a Game of the Year award. To me, it feels like it is up against one other serious contender, and that's Silk Song.

So when it comes to

Godie, for Indie Game of the Year, like when it's maybe

nominated for Best Debut Indie Game, and it feels like such a wild, and also best independent game.

And it's up against Blue Prince in both of those categories.

That feels like a tough putt for old Blue Prince. Say for Dispatch.
Dispatch is in there with best debut indie game, too. What a wild.
Blue Prince basically can't win also, to be super clear.

It would be next to impossible for it to win because the voting body is international and Blue Prince is a strictly English game. Oh,

is it? The numbers don't work for it. Interesting.
Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know.

I could see Soak Song taking it, but I do agree if it doesn't take it, Claire Oscar is going to take it.

The other thing I would keep in mind is there is a, as with the Oscars, there's the game direction category and then the game of the year category.

So you could see people splitting that vote where it's like, I'm going to vote for Claire Obscure for Game Direction and Game of the Year for Silk Song or vice versa, whatever it is.

Don't you think Silk Song signed up for best game direction. Death Streaming 2 is.
I feel like that's maybe the

spoiler for that that could be Claire Obscure Expedition 33 in that particular category.

So I'm not sure if that doesn't, if it's not a triumph of like game direction and like figuring out how to make that whole thing work, I don't know what it is.

So yeah, I don't think it's nominated for like best performance anywhere in there.

Did Rita's get a bump? Nope.

I mean, I completely agree, especially like if we were doing like, what do we actually think should win from these, I would definitely say Death Stranding 2.

But again, I think it's Death Stranding is too divisive of a game. Like there are just

there's a contingence of people who just do not not like those games, who do not like Kojima games, and it doesn't have the big emotional pull that the ending of

Claribscrew does.

And I think it's kind of the problem that we see with like the Academy Awards, too, where like people aren't actually judging to the category, they're judging to like their emotional feeling and connection with the game.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gosh, I think I think you're on to something, Chris, because I'm looking at all these categories and it's like

best score and music. Like, there's a lot of really good stuff in there.
Darren Corb, Adies 2. Christopher Larkin, a Hollow Knight Silk song.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. But also, like,

it's going to, I feel like Claire Maskier is going to get in there and get nasty on it. That's another one where I wish Death Stranding 2 had it.
I mean, maybe it...

Death Stranding 2 is nominated for best for best music. It could get it.

Best performance.

Best Performance is interesting because

Erica Ishii is in there for sure, for sure. Troy Baker in there for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
Yes, absolutely. There's no way he remembers doing that.

does not. Natsukata.

They told me that I did this with this Indiana Jones game. I'm happy to be here.
Am I Batman? No, not his voice. His death stranding voice.

Then there's Ben Star, Charlie Cox, and Jennifer English, all Claire, Obscure, Expedition 33, half of the nominees. There's no dispatch representation.

I think dispatch came very late, and I think the fan support happened before the critical support.

But I think it was a bit pushed,

and that's just what happened. I mean, mean, it has presence in independent game, I believe, and

like fan. If there's a split, this is where I feel like it could be.
And y'all,

it's almost certain that Indiana Jones is going to get in through that listener poll. So I started going back and playing that game.
I think it was incredible. It was fun.
Super fun.

I forgot how bonkers good that game is. And his performance is

nuts. It's not just as an impersonation.
It's just a great performance. It's a really good one.
Yeah, it's really good.

I do want to call out one interesting uh thing that i don't know has ever happened before at least uh someone can correct me in the comments if it has somebody pulled out of a nomination they said i do not want this nomination and that is the developer of megabonk who basically said

look i've made games under different studio names and different titles i've worked on other titles so this is not really my debut game even though this is the first game i'm making as this studio name so don't

mystery is afoot kind of interesting who is the megabonk developer? I mean,

I didn't realize the megabonk developer was operating under a certain veil of secrecy. And maybe they don't want to walk onto a stage to be congratulated.
I adore Mega Bonk also.

It is up against, in that category, Clear Obscure, Expedition 33, and

what was the other big debut? Oh, Blueprints.

I was also saying you don't need to show up. Like, it's not like local thunk showed up for the Boatro nod.
So, like, I did. Didn't he dress up like a a clown man? He did dress up like a clown man.

Was he? He was there.

Someone dressed up as a clown to accept an award for Bilatro. Maybe that was the local GDC award.

No, no, it was like the spokesperson. Yeah.
Listen,

I think it's so inspirational that within the span of a decade, we have gone from women with award winners painted on their bodies to someone withdrawing from consideration to preserve the sanctity of the game awards.

It's proud tradition of the best. I am no debut, so I cannot take this from another deserving Viggy recipient.
This is what Big Jeff has been working for, and he's here. He made it.

It's happening. I listen, I'm kidding on the square, Big Jeff.
You know how proud the J-Man is of you personally. I tell you in all our texts.
I hope that we do still get like a beleaguered Samuel L.

Jackson on stage handing out the Viggie to fucking fucking Umamusume pretty derby for best mobile game.

That's a dream I can say. There's time to call it the Viggy, Jeff.

You don't have to get us, you don't have to mention us even, but you could get this year to start calling it the Viggy. I think that that's time.
It's time.

Best adaptation threw me for a loop. Because did you guys know they did a splinter cell cartoon with Liam Shriver?

Sam, I didn't know about that. Oh, card knocks.

Okay, like, hey, guys, if us didn't know about the splinter cell cartoon on Netflix starring Leo Striver that came out in October, who did? Who knew about it?

How did these people know about it to nominate it? I don't know. I don't know.

Let me just check and make sure. No, none of us are still.
None of us are content creator of the year. No, I know.

That's fine.

I actually want to. Do you want to guess some

made room for the burnt bean? I get it. Do we want to guess some announcements? Yeah, Justin, you have some bold.

I don't have, like, I don't have guesses, but I have some things that I pulled up mainly based on when they their previous appearances in the vgas and their relative quiet since then right my rationale here being that announced the vgas haven't heard anything for a while maybe we hear something and you guys follow more closely so i want to see what you think first of all what about a max payne remake trailer Seems like a good thing to do for that.

We know there's a remake coming. Yeah, and that studio Remedy has done actually a lot of stuff at Game Awards.
So that wouldn't surprise me. What if Prince of Persian Sands of Time remake is there?

What do you think about Ubisoft? Oh, Ubisoft certainly will be. I would put like 95% bet on that.

You should keep in mind the likelihood that Ubisoft won't exist as a company by next week, so that's the other consideration.

I would say that we'll see that, and we will see Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake there.

I would not be surprised if Ubisoft pulls Bethesda when they are trying to confirm their sale and just announced everything.

Do you all remember this before Xbox acquired Bethesda and they were like, here's next 20 years of games?

Ubisoft's just going to start saying whatever they're working on. What about, what about

a Blade trailer? What about a mention of Blade? Oh, I forgot Blade was being made. I would like to see that.
Yeah. I know.
All right. It was Arcane was working on a Blade game.

They were confirmed to be working on it as recently as last year. So I don't know.

Only reason

not see that is Wolverine is so close that if they're going to show anything, they might want to show Wolverine, but possibly.

I think we'll see.

That's

a different number.

That's Insomniac is making Wolverine. Right, but they're Marvel games, bud.

It's Disney's the one who controls the game.

And everything.

What would you guys think about this?

Probably some Elder Scrolls Online bullshit.

Yeah.

That's all right. Do you think that'll happen?

I have a Jeff. Do you think? Oh, wait a minute.
I forgot to add the second part that I am excited about until I see that it is the Elder Skulls Online.

Those things get me every fucking year, Big Jeff. You got to stop teasing like that, buddy.
They'll be like, in a world beyond compare, demons and dragons fight for supremacy. I'm like, hell yeah.

They'll always say Cyradel. They'll say Cyridel very early.
In the world of Cyrodel. Yeah, return.

Return to the forgotten world. Let's go.

Yeah, baby. Coming this month, the 17th era begins.
Like, ah, fuck. It's an element scrolls on live bullshit.
Never mind. Change the channel, kids.

I want to mention, so I don't think historically there's really ever been major Nintendo announcements during the TGAs, but

it does seem like we might get a Dusk Bloods trailer. If anybody else has TGAs from now on, I'm going to kill you.
It's Viggies, please. We're not going to get a Viggies.

The Big Jeff Viggies.

It does seem like we might get a Dusk duskbloods trailer uh given that that's a switch to exclusive and like a big and there's always some crumbsoft there right they've already announced they haven't really shown gameplay really

so that and and my yeah

my other big bet i think we'll see a lot of sega stuff They've been showing up more and more in these things. Well, they've got a few properties they could like delve into a little bit.

Sega's got their crazy taxi thing and Jet Set Radio thing. Yeah, they made that announcement.
We're like, we're bringing back everything. We're bringing back Golden Acts.

We're bringing back Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio. There is a

Rollerblade skate shop in downtown Santa Ana that now has what looks like all this licensed Jet Set Radio Future stuff all over it. Like they've like liveried the entire outside of the store.

And the anniversary is coming up. It just feels like something is on the way there.

And then Sonic has 35th anniversary and hasn't had a mainline game in a bit. So I feel like there's a Sonic announcement.

Likely. I think they'll show new Persona 4.

Jesus Christ. Oh, yeah.
What is the new subtitle of the...

I should know this since it's like my favorite game of Revival. More golden? That's right.
But yes, Persona 4, More Golden, Revival.

I'd love to see that again, especially since they didn't show basically fuck all when they announced it at the Xbox Game Showcase back in June. Yeah, that would be nice.
That would be nice. Yeah.

The only other last thing that I would expect is that new Jurassic Park

survivor game.

It might actually just be called that. Survival? Yeah, it's like a dynamic.

Yeah, anything that ties into movies, I feel like is Game Awards fodder. Because we're already in LA, let's get the celebrities out, do all that stuff.

Is there gonna be fable stuff, maybe? Ooh, that would be nice.

What was the other game that rare,

the like open world?

Oh, I got canceled. Jesus Christ.
Not Perfect Dark.

Which also

Wild? Ever. Yes, Everwild.
Yeah. Is that something?

Oh, no, it was canceled. Yeah.
Never mind. Bye, everybody.

Yeah. And then Viva Piñata.
Viva Piñata coming back in a big way. Definitely.

Everwild. Damn, cancel.
That's a bummer. Did they feel pain?

The piñatas? Yeah.

Oh. They screamed when you hit them.
Yeah, for sure. Awful.

Viva!

They stay with screaming. I'm going to hit you guys with a prediction that is way out of left field.
But you tell me what you think.

This one, I feel in my bones.

And when I wrote it, I just wrote in this document, Fortnite movie.

Wow. I wrote, dude, right? When I say it, there's some part of you that's like, I think Big Jeff just got a chill on his spine.
He's like, how did he know? Say it again so I can receive it.

Fortnite movie.

Yeah, Illumination Studios, an epic partner. Fortnite movie.

They just did this kill bill thing where they and and they just did a big event where they basically like reenacted the scene from ready player one but with all their fucking franchises where king kong godzilla and marty mcfly were like punching a giant monster in the face right so i feel like i just guys it just the the the simpsons thing and that like they're the scope of it is getting bigger and i feel like

It is at a point where the property, there isn't a big enough property for Fortnite to consume it. You know what I mean? Like it almost has has to be, it has to be the meta property itself.

And it feels like there's a Lego movie opportunity that's just kind of been like sitting there if you nail the tone. Um, but like, I don't know, it just feels like the Game Awards

Fortnite movie.

I have one very dumb reason that I don't think it will happen, at least not right away. Is I think Epic is proud enough

or stupid enough that they would demand it be made in Unreal Engine. Oh, I think Unreal Engine.

I think that they would be like, we're not going to partner with any other studio unless they are making the game in Unreal Engine. It's all going to be my cinema.

Well, yeah, and like

they can play. I mean, the Unreal Engine theoretically would be capable of doing a fully game.
It could, but would you, you would have to get some partners who are not Illumination. Right.

Like, you're going to have to work on people who are going to be like, no, we're going to use our tools. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In my mind, that would look like Final Fantasy of the Spirits Within. And maybe that's unfair that I would make that comparison.
Sure. Because that looks so good?

Because it looked so good. That's exactly.
They're also exported at 720p. It's going to be great.
It's going to be good stuff. It looks so good on my iPhone.

Can we do our mutants? It's going to be a big show.

Yeah.

Let me just do two quick reader mails and then we'll dive into honorable mentions.

First one, this comes from Nick. I'm on my hands and knees begging the besties crew to try out Straft Hat, which I think is a game we played on Rusty's.

Very cool game. It might be my game of the year solely based on the fun per minute metric.
This might be my tower fall. I think about it every other day.

I recommend playing the tutorial, which is fine. And then just getting in a lobby together for an hour with all the maps on rotation.

Straft Hat, in case you're not aware, is a 1v1 FPS multiplayer game where they just toss you maps like fucking crazy. Like each match lasts.
Frickin, did did you ever play this? 12 seconds.

No, I'm watching a trailer. I mean, it doesn't look like my jam, but it looks like something that I wish was my jam.
It looks like, you know, a Counter-Strike or something intense sort of genuinely

enjoy it way more than you think because it looks like Counter-Strike, but plays like random Mario Party Goldeneye. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah.

Next time you're in the same room with someone with a Steam Deck, I think it's... Is it free? Yeah.

Or very inexpensive? Yes, I believe it is.

Download it and play it with someone in the same room. I think it'd be a fucking blast.
So Straft Head is very, very good. Strongly recommend it.
The other thing I want to mention is from Nick.

This is regarding Kirby Air Riders, which we talked about last week. I'm surprised to hear that they, meaning Griffin, Plant, and I, like the racing more in Kirby Air Riders.

I'm under 30 and Air Riders Air Ride, I guess, was always a friend's house classic. I never owned it, but it was a sleepbel classic.

And all my friends love playing the battle mode much more than the racing. I don't think I've ever played the racing mode, but I think the battle mode was a kid's favorite.

I think that's probably true in the context of same room, same system, multiplayer, probably a lot of fucking fun, which I think none of us did for what it's worth.

Yeah, I mean, from what I understand, it was the city, um,

city shit, was it city trials that was like the crazy party mode that everybody was wild about.

And I, I do think that it is designed for a local sort of couch, but with the magic of game chat, you can recreate that experience so seamlessly with the Nintendo switch 2 camera you plug it in and it follows your face in a special dot

uh okay we can dive into honorable mentions justin i want to hear about your rise to fame your celebrity status that you've hit in a game called

yeah um more people need to play sectori because i should not be in the leaderboard of any game on the world. I mean, like the number 19 on one of the modes is what Russ is referring to.

I don't know which, I don't remember which one, but I barely. Classic mode.
He's number 19. I'm number 19 on classic mode.
You guys, it's got everybody's got to play more Sectori.

I think it's so fucking good. It's so good.
It makes you, it's really good. It makes you feel good when you play it.
And I need, and

there is a thing about Sectori, and I'm, I'm, I don't know,

the meta game of it, the scoring of it, it's like, it's not like any shooter like this I've i've ever played because understanding how to score better is like a puzzle in and of itself that you have to solve like it doesn't lay out a lot of stuff for you so understanding it's think of a geometry wars but like in geometry wars a lot of the the strategy was pretty basic like once you got the basic idea it was just reflexes right and yeah stay alive just stay alive like uh and that and i love that it's awesome uh this definitely has that in spades but each mode has different meta considerations in terms of like, what power-ups do you have that are helping you with this situation?

Or like, how do these score bonuses like overlap together? If you wait to get this thing, will this thing work better and trigger more?

And it is almost like a, it's not to the level of like a Bellatro or something like that, but there's a, this, uh, things click where you're like, oh, I've been spinning my wheels because this and this, these two things need to be interconnected.

So that understanding is building while you're building the reflexes. And that's very satisfying.
Yeah. They're almost all kind of predicated on like a push-pull risk-reward type thing.

Like the mode I love, and it was the same in Geometry Wars, is called Gates, and that's the one where you can't shoot.

You just fly through gates that spawn in, that explode, and you kill enemies with it.

But the way to score high in that one is to get a combo going, which will persist for a few seconds after you get a kill.

So the idea is you want to wait and not fly through any of the gates and let a big fucking crowd of monsters chase you around.

And then, at the very last second, when you can't possibly have any more room to wiggle around, you just go through the gates. You're nuts.
And you blast. You blast.

There's a

you can get this power-up that is tough to get. There's a power-up that is cycling through letters and it's spelling a word almost like a pinball table.

And you have to fly through that power-up several times to spell out the word. But when you spell out the word, you enter this rainbow mode that is the most satisfying thing.

It reminds me of Peggle back in the day when Peggle would really hit. When this thing gets rainbow mode, oh, baby, it is a hill.
Oh, it's literally called rainbow mode. It's not even

a bad thing. You're so stressed out, especially in campaign mode when you're playing it and you're like, no shields, fucking white knuckle, God almighty, I can't keep up.

And then you hit rainbow mode.

You get to take a breath.

And it looks incredible. Yeah, please play Sectori.
The game

has not hit a huge mass audience. Please be on the front lines of this fucking fantastic game.

It's truly.

There's a couple games that we're going to be talking about in the Goody Considerations that are going to be kind of wild spoilers because they do everything so right. Like, they obviously don't do...

the most incredible, ambitious, new groundbreaking thing, but like everything Sectori does, it fucking crushes and nails and it gets its hooks right deep down in your brain. And I think could do

pretty well, actually.

You've been playing anything else, Juice?

No, Dispatch, that. You know, I have been playing a lot of stuff, but it's all contextual for Goty.
It's like I went back to like,

I will say that just for like context-wise, I've been playing a lot more Death Stranding too.

I've been playing a lot more Sectori, playing a lot more

Fortnite because that new event started and Fortnite could be game of the year any year, You know, if you think about it, Fortnite movie might be the game of the year next year.

I've returned to Donkey Kong

Bonanza. I'm glad I've done that because

it's been a different experience playing through it solo without

a child with a rocket launcher. Yeah, it's an actual game.

It's an actual real game at that point.

It's extremely polished and good. Have you guys watched Stranger Things yet, the new season? Oh, thank goodness somebody's getting the word out.

I think it's an interesting show.

You know what, Grimmon?

These poor 34-year-olds. And my gushers for who's going to tell me about the new season of Stranger Things.

It's just, obviously, I'm not here to

market Stranger Things because it continues to be like, in some ways,

Just really kind of bad television that I am fully willing to cut the most slack. I am willing to cut any piece of media ever because I am so like, just fucking like, I'm down.
Like, I'm down.

Yeah, these characters are going to say things that sound patently insane to be coming out of their

now, like, old adult mouths.

But, like, I, I don't know. I, I find myself so.
I don't know. I'm just in.
I'm down for, for whatever they want to throw, even if it's the same kind of bits over and over.

I'm in a weird spot because I watched the first three seasons and then haven't seen the latest two. And when I say latest, I mean some of that stuff came out like four.

The last season was great. I think the last season with Vecna was fantastic.

It's just going to be very weird for me because if I watch them sequentially, there's going to be immediate aging from one episode to another. Dude, yeah.

You'll finish the season finale of season four and then start season five and be like, holy shit, is there a plot line where they all fell into the time hole? Vecna summoned the timehole. Yeah, no.

And And that is, I think, a great deal of the weirdness genuinely. Is that just fine, whatever.
There is a, it's fine.

There is an inherent kind of detachment, it feels like, maybe, from

considering it's been like, I think, in the fiction of the show, like a couple weeks since the ending of season four. I don't know that they are bringing the

urgency, but I think overall it's good. The other thing I really wanted to talk about that I've been playing constantly

is the Castle Crashers Painter Boss Paradise DLC that came out earlier this year?

Okay, this makes so much sense. I saw this pop up on Steam for you, and I was like, Griffin, what is happening?

We talked about it. So, Castle Crashers is actually one that Henry and I had played before.

It was a little too, he didn't like when

you save a princess at the end of one of the levels and they like make out. He saw that for the first time.
He was like, I'm done.

But then we played, you know, Scott Pilgrim, the TMNT beat him up, Absalom, like we got real, real into. And so came back to it and was like, hey, have you heard of this DLC?

And I remembered we had talked about it on the show. Painter Boss Paradise adds, first of all, like the remastered kind of sheen of,

you know, new art and stuff to the game. It looks great.
But the big thing it does is it lets you customize characters and download customized characters from the Steam Workshop.

And the way that you customize characters is that it generates a little like sprite sheet where it shows you each different like part.

Here's what the head looks like facing forwards and to the sides and then to the side a little bit more. And it shows you like a little outline.

And you can go through and export it to the drawing app of your choice, do that, re-upload the PNG, and it looks really fucking good. So we've been making characters.
We've been downloading.

Kevin, are you in Castle Crashers right now?

Like my character.

I've not made myself in Castle Crashers. No.

Henry made a character called The Bankist, who is just a very wealthy man with a big top hat.

But like, it's really,

it's genuinely, it has really given the game a shot in the arm. And we've been playing a lot of it.
We're now playing through insane mode together, which is probably too punishing to be enjoyable. But

big, big ups to the beam for releasing DLC for this, I think, 17-year-old video game

that is

truly pretty ambitious. I mean, they're due for a game announcement, right? They're going to put out something soon.

Yeah, man. I mean, Castle Crashers 2 would blow up.
Well, they put out that Alien Hominid game. yeah

It was pre-Castle Crashers. I think in the vein of what Justin was saying regarding Game of the Year consideration I started playing Root Trees are dead which yes, it's very fucking good.

I really really like it. I think I might be too dumb or ADD for it.
I'm literally ADD. That's not even a neg.
I take medication and everything. So I'm trying.

I think it's incredibly cool, but I am also like, oh my God, I'm getting so overwhelmed by all the options and like things that I could chase down.

But I just execution-wise, they've really fucking crushed it. Like, it's really incredible.
And has me. I would encourage you to

make use of the hint system. I don't think one way that they do hints is actually pretty good.
Okay. It's very light, very light touch.

Very like, you may have noticed in this thing that this mentioned that. Is there anywhere you could look to see if there is a it doesn't say like this guy's this guy's son.
Yeah, yeah.

It's it's pretty uh that's good to know. As you know, hints are anathema to me, but if they're in-game, I feel less bad about it.

No,

I had to make use of it, especially for the

bonus chapter of the game, which is so crazy. It's just conceptually so cool.
Obviously, it's an evolution of the things we saw in Oprah Denn, but just really well done.

To remake the internet, to make a small internet. I'm always fucking down with a game that tries to do that.
So cool. To make an internet.
Play it? You have anything? Yeah. I've been playing

Routine.

Did I hear about this game? It got announced like a million years ago.

Pretty cool.

It looks pretty spooky. Looks pretty scary.

So the way routine works, it's basically

imagine you're set in a Ridley Scott alien, the alien one type of space situation, and you are being hunted, at least at first, by a giant towering robot.

It is one of those horror games where you cannot kill the bad guy that is chasing you. You can just hope to avoid them or stun them for a while.

That's just because you're bad at games, though. Like I would be able to.
For sure.

I mean,

probably. I mean, you know, even without guidance, no less.

But yeah,

it's really good. It is

really good in that I wish it had come out all those years ago because it was so this concept. felt really fresh and ahead of its time.

It had the misfortune of actually being announced before that alien game. Oh, yeah.
The literal alien game that did

this thing. Yeah.
And then like the many, many other horror games that have done versions of this thing.

That said, it has some art direction choices that are just absolutely killer because it is going for this pseudo early digital analog world.

When you want to save, for example, it will project a screen, like a really shitty projector, project like

onto a wall. So it's not just like a screen, it's just a random projection on the wall, which looks amazing using all of the modern graphical whiz-bangs that you can actually use with Unreal Engine 5.

Now, it,

yeah, it's doing a lot with a little.

That said,

I don't know if we'll do like a full episode on it. Not because it's not great, but just because I don't know if, is anybody here like that sort of game person? Does anybody love those sort of things?

Oh, no, I find them horrifying and debilitating. Yeah.

Very, very rarely. Well, I'm like, I have to be in a mood, and I don't know that I am right now.
Yeah. So I'm glad that I gave it a shot.

I doubt I will be finishing it just because I similarly do not have the stomach. It's not this that I find them scary.
It's that I don't like doing puzzles while I'm also just having to evade a thing.

Like, I don't, my brain doesn't personally enjoy that. But if your brain does, you should go check it out because it looks, it's absolutely beautiful to look at.
Yeah, that's it. That's it, right?

That's it. That's it.

Thank you to our patrons over at patreon.com slash the besties. We have a new bracket that is live right now.
You can listen to that

and enjoy it for all your pleasure. Actually, here's a clip.

The fact that the first thing most people did was made penises or pinai, I think gets... It's hard not to.
And gets to your point:

it's a bit more of like a user-generated game than it is like a character creation tool because the time-to-pee ni is like associated with an entire different genre of character or of creation.

Well, except for Conan Exiles, which has a time to pee ni of zero milliseconds. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

I forgot

the hardest edit I've ever had to do in my entire life. Interesting.

Oh, man, Griffless Remake.

Never have you. Never have that.
No, no, no. Is that unrated?

Put it on the paywall. Just put it on the paywall.
Yeah, sure.

That said, that said, the tools that Spore gives you are pretty fucking phenomenal.

Lovely. Such good stuff that we did.
I'm so proud of us.

I want to thank a few new members to the Patreon. We have Daniel S., we have Jeffrey A, we have Laura, and we have Kaylee N.
Thank you for being members. Thank you to everyone else for being members.

We really greatly appreciate you. What are we doing next week? Wow, it's a big week.
Next week, we have Metroid Prime 4. It's actually real.

Speaking of games that have been in development for basically ever, we will actually be able to finally play the new Metroid Prime game, and you'll hear about that next week.

Also, breaking news, Ambernick has just announced the 477M. So can you guys tell me? What can you guys tell me about that device? Go.

4.7-inch screen uh good metal exterior

seventh generation no sorry metal they've just announced the 477v

oh fuck vertical oh it's vertical orientation yeah dude it's the same panel as the 477m but with a vertical orientation dude

what justin i think brother we're talking dimensity 8300

The Dimensity 8300, Russell. It's the same one as the RG477M.

That's gonna do it for us on the besties. Be sure to join us

next week for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friend take the world's best games?

Besties.