Half-Life 2's Patch Adds an Incredible Commentary

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Besties – "Half-Life 2's Patch Adds an Incredible Commentary"

Release Date: November 29, 2024

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Introduction

In this episode of The Besties, hosts Chris Plante, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, and Russ Frushtick delve into the recent updates surrounding two beloved franchises: Half-Life 2 and Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) Pocket. Balancing nostalgic reverence with fresh insights, the group explores how modern enhancements breathe new life into classic titles while examining the evolving landscape of collectible card games.

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Half-Life 2 Anniversary Update and Developer Commentary

Initial Impressions and Download Experiences

The conversation kicks off with Russ jokingly discussing "pickle shapes," quickly shifting gears to focus on the Half-Life 2: 20th Anniversary Update. Griffin sets the stage:

Griffin McElroy [05:05]: "We're going to be talking about the 20th anniversary update of Half-Life 2, which includes a documentary and an exhaustive developer commentary."

Chris provides a succinct overview:

Christopher Thomas Plant [05:05]: "Half-Life 2 is a first-person shooter that changed the very idea of first-person shooters. The anniversary update includes a full documentary about its legacy."

Exploring the Developer Commentary

Griffin expresses enthusiasm for the new developer commentary feature:

Griffin McElroy [09:35]: "The big update is the addition of developers' commentary all through the game. It's extremely detailed and even those who aren't die-hard Valve fans will find it fascinating."

Russ echoes this sentiment, highlighting the preservation of institutional knowledge:

Russ Frosh [12:29]: "I'm a little bummed at how much institutional knowledge is lost after a game is developed. Baking it into the game through commentary is massively fascinating."

Key Highlights from the Commentary

The hosts delve into specific anecdotes shared in the commentary, illustrating the game's intricate development process:

• Airboat Sequence Adjustments:

  Russ discusses how the developers tweaked the game's mechanics to enhance player experience:

  Russ Frosh [15:15]: "They adjusted the gravity during the airboat jumps to ensure every jump feels good, preventing player frustration."

• Autosave Mechanics:

  Griffin explains the innovative approach to autosaving:

  Griffin McElroy [17:14]: "They implemented a system where a temporary autosave becomes permanent if the player survives for 30 seconds afterward, ensuring reliability."

• Choreo System Insights:

  Chris compares the developer commentary to storytelling tools:

  Christopher Thomas Plant [18:01]: "Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud inspired them. The game uses its narrative to teach players how video games work."

Impact of the Commentary on Gameplay

Griffin shares how the commentary enhances his replay interest:

Griffin McElroy [20:26]: "The commentary recaptures the magic of the game, offering historical lessons that enrich the playing experience."

Russ emphasizes the value of accessible storytelling within games:

Russ Frosh [25:45]: "It's a behind-the-scenes anecdote kind of thing, making it a perfect resource for fans."

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Pokémon TCG Pocket: A New Frontier in Collectible Card Games

Overview and Gameplay Mechanics

Transitioning to Pokémon TCG Pocket, Griffin provides an overview of this streamlined version:

Griffin McElroy [29:00]: "Pokémon TCG Pocket is a beginner-friendly distillation of the traditional trading card game, focusing on both collecting and playing aspects."

Collecting and Opening Packs

The hosts discuss the tactile joy of collecting and opening card packs:

Griffin McElroy [31:08]: "Opening a pack is a tactile experience with physical cards and immersive features like 3D views and scene animations."

Russ shares his appreciation for the artistry:

Russ Frosh [32:50]: "The artistry involved is impressive, recreating existing cards with creative twists that enhance the collecting experience."

Gameplay Experience and Balancing

Griffin critiques the gameplay balance, particularly in the PvP aspect:

Griffin McElroy [35:52]: "The streamlined combat makes matches fast-paced, but certain decks dominate the meta, reducing PvP diversity."

Russ offers a contrasting perspective on gameplay depth:

Russ Frosh [37:25]: "The combat feels simplistic and can drag on, especially compared to more dynamic card games like Hearthstone."

Monetization and Player Engagement

The discussion touches on the game's monetization model and player engagement strategies:

Griffin McElroy [34:00]: "There are premium passes and Wonder Picks, allowing players to access rare cards and customize their collections."

Russ emphasizes responsible gaming practices:

Russ Frosh [40:26]: "Players should be mindful of spending, especially with free-to-play mechanics that can encourage excessive resource use."

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Listener Mail and Gaming Device Recommendations

Handheld Gaming for UFO 50 Pico 8

Andrew requests advice on handheld devices for playing UFO 50 Pico 8. Russ responds with practical recommendations:

Russ Frosh [40:55]: "I installed UFO 50 on the Anbernic RG35XXH, a Linux-based handheld. It's user-friendly and budget-friendly at around $50."

Griffin adds to the conversation, sharing his experiences with retro handheld gaming:

Griffin McElroy [43:27]: "The handheld gaming scene is rapidly evolving, with companies like Anbernic releasing numerous devices to cater to different console emulations."

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Additional Discussions

Game Pacing and Player Engagement

A listener, Matthew, shares his experiences with Red Dead Redemption 2 and Diablo 4, prompting the hosts to discuss how pacing adjustments can redefine player engagement:

• Russ on GTA Remakes:

  Russ Frosh [47:14]: "The GTA remakes introduced autosave features that significantly improved gameplay pacing, allowing players to enjoy missions without tedious backtracking."

• Griffin on RPG Journeys:

  Griffin McElroy [46:55]: "Returning to games like Yakuza: Like a Dragon with a new approach transformed them into some of my favorite RPGs."

Upcoming Releases and Episode Teasers

Chris shares insights into obscure releases, such as a 4K restoration of The Blair Witch Project, highlighting the quirks of preserving digital originals:

Christopher Thomas Plant [53:35]: "The 4K release captures the original digital file's essence, offering a nostalgic yet flawed viewing experience."

The hosts also tease future episodes, including Game Awards predictions, promising engaging content for gaming enthusiasts.

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Conclusion and Future Episodes

Wrapping up, the hosts express gratitude toward their patrons and recap the episode's key topics:

Griffin McElroy [56:14]: "This week, we discussed Half-Life 2's anniversary update, Pokémon TCG Pocket, UFO 50, Dragon Quest 3 HD remake, and more."

They encourage listeners to subscribe and preview the upcoming episode focused on Game Awards predictions:

Russ Frosh [56:58]: "Join us next week as we predict Game Awards winners and discuss what might be announced."

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Notable Quotes

• Griffin McElroy [09:35]: "The addition of developers' commentary all through the game is not just people talking about graphics cards; it's a deep dive into the game's mechanics and storytelling."

• Russ Frosh [15:15]: "Adjusting the gravity during the airboat jumps ensures every jump feels good, preventing player frustration."

• Griffin McElroy [17:14]: "The temporary autosave becoming permanent after 30 seconds ensures reliability and enhances the gaming experience."

• Christopher Thomas Plant [18:01]: "Half-Life 2's documentary is like a graphic novel for games, teaching players how video games work through interactive storytelling."

• Griffin McElroy [26:16]: "Pokémon TCG Pocket's immersive features make collecting and playing cards a tangible and enjoyable experience."

• Russ Frosh [40:26]: "Players should be mindful of spending, especially with free-to-play mechanics that can encourage excessive resource use."

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Final Thoughts

This episode of The Besties masterfully balances deep technical discussions with lighthearted banter, offering listeners both informative insights and relatable content. Whether you're a long-time fan of Half-Life 2 or curious about the latest in Pokémon TCG, this episode provides a comprehensive exploration of how classic games evolve with modern updates and emerging trends in the gaming industry.

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For more detailed discussions and future episodes, subscribe to The Besties and join their community of passionate gamers.

Transcript

[Russ Frosh]

What do I do with the pickle shapes?

[Griffin McIlroy]

I don't even know. I don't even. I could try and sit here and try and decipher what garbage you're talking about, what you just said, but I don't know.

[Russ Frosh]

I'm a fan of pickles, right. And I like to put them in sandwiches. I'll eat them straight up, you name it. But when all the pickles are gone from the jar and there's just the juice.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Frosh]

At the bottom, there's all sorts of shapes.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay.

[Russ Frosh]

And what am I doing with those shapes? Am I just.

[Griffin McIlroy]

When you say shapes.

[Russ Frosh]

Sure.

[Griffin McIlroy]

What does that mean? What does that mean to you?

[Russ Frosh]

There's rectangles. There's a pickle. No, no, no, no. It's like other stuff.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

What.

[Griffin McIlroy]

What's going. What's going on in your pickle jars? That there's just shape. A shape describes the form of a thing. It doesn't describe the substance of it. So I guess I'm asking what the substance of the shape is.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Unless you are living in an episode of Sesame Street.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Are you in a Sesame street episode?

[Russ Frosh]

I don't think so. I might be. I do a lot of counting.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

What are.

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah, so there's. There's, like, balls, but they're hard. And there's, like, Balls of what?

[Griffin McIlroy]

Balls of what?

[Russ Frosh]

I don't know. I've never eaten them. I don't know.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Onions. Like little onions, maybe.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Like little pearl onions, maybe.

[Russ Frosh]

I don't know what color they are.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You could tell me that There could be ball bearings, brownies, or like, shark's teeth. And you're.

[Russ Frosh]

No, it's not made of metal. It looks like a kind of food, but not really a food that is meant to be eaten by me, maybe by birds.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay.

[Griffin McIlroy]

It could be just like a little pearl onion, though. And that is, I think, okay to eat.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Russ Frosh]

It's very hard, though. It's not soft.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It's like a.

[Griffin McIlroy]

How do you know about the hardness of it?

[Russ Frosh]

I've touched it with a fork.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Okay. And the rectangles. Let's go back to the rectangles, because that's not a naturally occurring shape in most situations.

[Russ Frosh]

Well, they're like long rectangles. What those might be might be onions, maybe a pepper.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Long rectangles does not naturally just equate to onions. This, I feel like what we're discovering is you have been living in an alternate plane near ours, but not in ours for a long time.

[Griffin McIlroy]

That would answer so many of my questions.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Finally getting it. You're calling in from Earth 3?

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like herbs and spices probably, right?

[Griffin McIlroy]

What is the brand of the pickle?

[Russ Frosh]

Oh, it's from Trader Joe's.

[Griffin McIlroy]

That. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, they'll throw. They'll put a bunch of crazy shit in there, man. Including trust Trader Joe.

[Russ Frosh]

They got sprinkles in the bottom there. Floating.

[Griffin McIlroy]

They got. It's. It's. It's brine. It's. That's just brine. Brine friends.

[Russ Frosh]

Okay, so what do I. Okay, so to go back to my original question, what do I do with the pickle shapes?

[Griffin McIlroy]

Is the name of the product Trader Joe's Pickles and Shapes?

[Russ Frosh]

No.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Okay, well, then don't eat the shapes.

[Russ Frosh]

Okay, so I just dump them?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes.

[Griffin McIlroy]

You can throw them away.

[Russ Frosh]

Can they be composted? Composted.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I can compost the. Compost the shapes.

[Russ Frosh]

Okay.

[Griffin McIlroy]

The juice, you could sell. You could resell the juice.

[Russ Frosh]

Okay, that's good.

[Griffin McIlroy]

There should be a local artisanal mom and pop popsicle stand that you can sell the juice to for a dollar.

[Russ Frosh]

And they don't mind that my fingies have been in there.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Are you putting your fingies in the. You're not fishing those out with, like, a special tool? You're using fingies.

[Russ Frosh]

I mean, they're stacking.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Remind me to. Yeah, snackers indeed. Not for me, though. Remind me, you know, if I ever come visit your house, I need you to remind me. And I need you to swear to God you're gonna remind me. Don't eat those pickles. I touch them. I touched them all.

[Russ Frosh]

It's just my family that's sharing the pickles.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Can we talk about video games for all that's holy? Please let us talk about video games.

[Griffin McIlroy]

My name is Griffin McIlroy and I know the best game of 20 years ago and this week.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

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

[Russ Frosh]

My name is Russ Frosh. I have the best game of the week.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Justin McElroy is. He got sucked up by a big tornado. He's gonna be fine, but he couldn't be here this week.

[Russ Frosh]

It's one of the twisters. I'm not sure which one, but it's one of them.

[Griffin McIlroy]

It's one of the twisters from Twisters, which I didn't see, so I just assumed that they were.

[Russ Frosh]

It was one of the B story twisters.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Okay, that's fine then.

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive intergamement. It's A game of the year club. And by listening, you're a member. And this time it's a special double header. We got a game that came out 20 years ago, probably a little bit more than 20 years ago at this point. Half Life 2, which has received an anniversary update and a full ass documentary about the anniversary of Half Life 2. We're also going to be talking about Pokemon, TCG Pocket. Can you, dear listener, guess which one I played more of? You'll never guess, Chris. What is those games?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I think you did a great job. But for anybody who's completely Unfamiliar, Half Life 2 is a first person shooter that changed the very idea of first person shooters. Documentaries are a method of storytelling where we use facts instead of fiction. And Pokemon the card game Pocket is a pocket version of Pokemon the card game. We will talk more about all of that and more right after the break.

[Russ Frosh]

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[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay, so huge thing I did not remember about Half Life 2. Going back to it to the point that I'm wondering if like, did they patch this in? But Hatsune Miku, has she always been your companion through the game? I thought it used to be Alex, but so you.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I. Okay. Where did you download. Where did you download your copy of Half Life 2 anniversary?

[Russ Frosh]

I downloaded the GeoCities website.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I downloaded it on Steam. But then Steam Workshop popped up.

[Russ Frosh]

Was it spelled S T E E M?

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah, it was.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Steam Workshop popped up and there were all these green plus signs, and I was like, I love to click things. So I clicked them. Then I started the game, and then the first thing that I saw was Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Awesome.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And his big face showed up and he said, welcome, Mr. Freeman. And I was like, okay, something feels a little off.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And then I went, the train. You know, you get off the train and you go into the station, and all of the soda machines had these hilarious memes on them.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Cool.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I love memes.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And then Hatsune Miku showed up. And here's the part that surprised me. She had full original voiceover. This was not Alex. In fact, Hatsune Miku.

[Russ Frosh]

They got Hatsune Miku.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Hatsune Miku introduced herself as Hatsune Miku.

[Griffin McIlroy]

They downloaded Hatsune Miku.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Sure.

[Griffin McIlroy]

They didn't get anyone.

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I love Chris, that we. In figuring out what this week's episode was going to be, we're like, let's talk about the 20th anniversary update of Half Life 2, because there's a lot of cool new stuff in there. And you were like, yes, let's do that. And also, I'm going to chop and screw it myself. T paint style to make it an unrecognizable mess to talk about things that are not at all related to the 20th anniversary.

[Russ Frosh]

It's actually fitting Chris Plant, what he did. Yes, it is. Actually is. Because as part of the 20th anniversary update of Half Life 2, they added Steam Workshop support. So even a dummy by Christopher Thomas Plant is able to install his favorite vocaloid into the game.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Gary is holding his mod in his hands and crying and saying, it's not good enough for you anymore. You need easier option to put anime girls into my video game. Me, Gary, who made it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I guess we should talk about the traditional game, but we will come back to Steam Workshop because I feel like the scales have fallen from my eyes and I have seen something beautiful.

[Russ Frosh]

Oh, it's tremendous.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I was not really intending to dive too deep into The Half Life 2 side of this episode, but can I talk about the game part of things? Because I tried to watch the documentary and I got really bored really fast and didn't watch it.

[Russ Frosh]

I liked it.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I have not played Half Life two in a long time. I cannot remember the last time I played Half Life 2. It's not one that I returned to for shits and giggles. So it's probably been honestly since like orange box. So a very, very long time. And with the 20th anniversary update, they've made a few little changes, if the introduction by Gabe Newell is to be believed, like patched a few little things and tweaked a few little things. But the big update, as far as I can tell, is the addition of developers commentary all through the game. And it is. We've obviously seen this feature in lots of different games before. I cannot remember a developer's commentary that is as exhaustive and as ambitious as this developer's commentary is. And it was enough to get me really genuinely very interested in replaying Half Life 2. It's extremely detailed in a way that I think even a person who doesn't care that much about Valve or Half Life 2 will get interested in. Because the cool thing they do from time to time is it's not just people talking about like, well, the graphics card back in 2006 was blah, blah, blah.

[Russ Frosh]

They do do that. For whatever reason, they do do that.

[Griffin McIlroy]

And it is nice that you can just turn on one of those little nodes and it'll tell you the subject of the thing. So it'll be like shader compilation and you can just turn it right off, like, nope. But what it does do from time to time is it'll be like, this is the Choreo system, which is how we set up the basically in game cutscenes where characters are talking. When you show up to Dr. Kleiner's lab and he's like, here's the ATV suit. Let's get on this teleporter. Here's a Vortigaunt and he's all crazy. They will show you behind the scenes, by which I mean the Choreo system is a list of commands they give to different character models that are in the game to. Okay, now you look at Gordon and then you look at Alex when you're talking to Alex and then you move to here, it shows you like a wireframe, like box. Yeah, there's a visualization, a visualization of how they move. Or they'll be like, this is like, you know, this was when graphics cards, like, you know, individual graphics cards became like a thing that you could start to do a lot more. So like here's how we did bump map lighting. And then all of a sudden all of the textures and everything just drop out. And it just shows you like the bump map of the world that you are like walking around. It's really genuinely very cool and insightful in a way that I was not anticipating, like Getting interested in it actually.

[Russ Frosh]

Makes me a little, actually very bummed at the idea of how much institutional knowledge is lost after a game gets developed. Because it's, you know, all this sorts of documentations and anecdotes, whatever, are buried in documentation somewhere on a drive somewhere. And so few companies would have the time or resources to be like, we're going to bake this into this entire 25 hour long game and have hundreds of these anecdotes and give you kind of a history lesson of how this game was made. And it is massively fascinating.

[Griffin McIlroy]

It is massively fascinating. I don't know how useful a lot of this institutional knowledge is, because what was surprising for me is how many of these anecdotes demonstrated that this game was held together with twine and tate in certain cases where they were like, we actually had to use eight different renderers all operating at the same time because this wouldn't do this, but this could do this. And so because of the kind of evolving hardware of the time, they were kind of figuring it out as they went, which for a game as, I don't know, totemic as Half Life 2, you don't think of it being this project where people had to get it across the finish line through sheer force of will, but it really sounds like that's kind of what was required.

[Russ Frosh]

Just to clarify, it's more talking from a historical standpoint, like how this stuff came about. Not necessarily. Oh, you could use this to make your own game today.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah, sure, sure.

[Russ Frosh]

It's like a document.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

The comparison that kept coming to my mind while playing it was, remember that show where they revealed the secrets of magic, but it was always like magic that had been around for 20 years. Right. Like, it's like, we're not gonna ruin something that's like modern. And at this point, I Love Half Life 2. The kind of core magic of it is gone in some ways, while it's still very fun. And now is the time to reveal how it works. And that's what it felt like was being invited on stage and then literally the magician in the stage text and everybody being like, hey, welcome, you're ready. You are now ready to see this and we're going to show it.

[Russ Frosh]

There's a airboat very early in the game for people that have played the game. If you haven't played it, I'd highly recommend it. Maybe you were one of the few that got it for free during this three day period a week or two.

[Griffin McIlroy]

It's ten bucks now. Ten bucks Now I can't believe I didn't own it. I don't know how that's possible.

[Russ Frosh]

Totally worth it. But there's a moment when you're in this air boat, and throughout that whole sequence, there's a number of jumps. You're, like, jumping into the air. And one of the anecdotes that they share is that they wanted to make sure the jumps all felt good, that you didn't get frustrated. So when you go off a jump, they jack down the gravity of the game so that every jump is going to feel good, even if you maybe weren't going necessarily as fast as you should have been going when you hit that jump.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I thought you were going to talk about the bit where there's, like, a node while you're on the air boat, where it talks about motion sickness. How a lot of their early playtesters got really motion sick in the airboat sequence because it goes very fast. And what they figured out was they had to make it so that when you. When your airboat kind of, like, went up on one side or, like, was sort of, like, not super steady on the ground, they had to keep your plane of vision, your field of vision, like, flat, so that it wasn't also tilting and pivoting as the thing rocked, because that is what was making people very motion sick. And they had one person on the staff who suffered from terrible motion sickness that they made play test this over and over again to, like, make sure that they could really whip it. It's. You are right. A lot of the magic of this game is, I think, lost just because it changed the game so much in a way that all future games were sort of informed by it.

[Russ Frosh]

I mean, but how much of that is also you having played it?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Oh, sure.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah. No, for sure. But what I'm saying is, what I think is incredible about the commentary is that it does kind of recapture that stuff, because it does. It hangs a lantern on all of it and is like. You know, there's one great bit where you come to this staircase and the game, the commentary, like, freezes and pivots up the staircase and you get this commentary that's like, if you look up this staircase, there's an enemy up there behind him. You can see the Citadel Tower as it starts to sort of, like, wake up in response to Gordon Freeman's, like, running rampant through City 17. And it was talking about, like, we had this cool idea where if an enemy died, they would also be subject to physics. And so this staircase was an important moment where you shoot this enemy at the top of the stairs and they would ragdoll and fall down the stairs and it's like, yeah, man. That's how all video games, that's how all first person shooters work. But it points out like this was not a thing. This was not a thing. This was the first time that we were like, ooh, what if this enemy died and just kind of slorped down the stairs? Which is a, I don't know, a historic enemy death in this genre.

[Russ Frosh]

I learned how autosaves work.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yes. The autosave danger.

[Russ Frosh]

So fascinating.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Frosh]

Danger, autosave. I've always wondered this. How does a game know while it's active when to place an autosave? If there's, for example, like you're in the middle of a combat sequence that takes six minutes and halfway through there's an autosave that loads you back. How does it know that when it made that autosave, you weren't going to die a second later? And what they figured out was if they made like a temporary autosave and then the player survived for 30 seconds after that, then it would become a permanent autosave.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Frosh]

So that way they knew for sure, oh, the player's not going to die immediately when that save was placed. So many smart approaches to these ideas that are now so commonplace in the industry. It was really, really cool.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It's not a perfect analog, but Understanding comics by Scott McCloud. Have either of you read this book?

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah, I've read it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It's. Oh, Griffin, you're going to love this. It is a graphic novel comic about how comics are made and also kind of how to read them. And I have craved a version of this for games forever. And this is not quite that, but it is the closest I've seen where the game is actually using the game to teach you how video games work. And I would like to think that there are more of these. The reality is I would be shocked to see other studios do this with any regularity for two reasons. One, Valve has a lot of experience doing this. They've been doing this since, I think, Portal One, including various versions of commentaries like this. And two, they have so much money that they can do something purely for.

[Griffin McIlroy]

And I would say time, sure. Not making stuff. They can just do this thing over and over again because they're not making anything else.

[Russ Frosh]

Deathlock. Deathlock.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

There's one thing about the game because we've been talking around the game, but there's one thing in the game that I did want to talk about, which is the way it pulls you through the world is unparalleled. And it's strange how little I see other games borrowing from the Half Life 2 model. And specifically what I mean by that, because you'll see it right away in this game is that when you see what should be your trajectory at any given time, that will not be your trajectory. So you have something that you are always walking toward and then the game pivots you in a new direction. And the way that this works is like in the train station. You're in a train station which has very clear pathways. It's a train station, but as you move forward you realize they've put up impromptu chain link fence. So suddenly you're going to get kind of redirected in weird ways. When you're going down a big hallway in the train station, you see kind of two chain link fences back to back. You go through one, the next one, they close the door on you. You turn around, they close the door on you. Suddenly you realize there is another door to a security checkpoint. This constant turn of okay, you leave the security checkpoint to go to a back room, back room, to an alleyway, you go into a hallway, but you don't just walk down a hallway, you go in and out of apartments. It is constantly making you think that you are not going in a straight line, when in reality you're going in a straight line. And on top of that making you think that there is a very lived in world. Because every time you get to a dead end, it's not just a wall, it is something's going on beyond that world. And it feels like you could have gone that direction maybe if you had hurried just a little bit faster.

[Griffin McIlroy]

There are also no collectibles or reasons really to spend a ton of time in each section. And so you are just kind of blazing through. I actually have really been enjoying my playthrough of Half Life 2 with the commentary on. Because when a commentary node is running, you're invinc. And so you can kind of like see a commentary node, start listening to it and just blaze through the combat section in front of you and think like, as long as Gabe is talking, these man hacks won't chop me apart. And so yeah, that game has a really, really great momentum to it. I think it's just fantastic. It's not like, I don't know, it's not gonna hit my goatie list or anything like that. But as like a, you don't get a lot of Sort of playable history lessons like that.

[Russ Frosh]

I do want to say, for people that have never played Half Life two before, please play Half Life two before you play it with the commentary on. It is like you need to have the experience and then after the fact, you'll have a really great reference point.

[Griffin McIlroy]

But I don't know that I agree with that.

[Russ Frosh]

Really interesting. Yeah.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I mean, I don't know that. I don't think there's many realities in which a person who has never played Half Life 2 is like, okay, I'm curious about this. So I'm going to go ahead and play the whole last game and then I'm going to go ahead and play it right back.

[Russ Frosh]

Well, I mean, play the whole ass game and ask yourself at that point, is this something I want to learn more about?

[Griffin McIlroy]

I think it's fine to go ahead and play it the first time with the commentary on, because it is still. Even if you don't have much attachment to the thing, there is a lot that that has to say about the era in which this game was made. And if you play PC games now and you play shooters now, I think that you still get a lot from learning about that.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Here's the real question.

[Russ Frosh]

I think there were.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Should you play the game before watching the documentary?

[Griffin McIlroy]

I mean, I played the game a few times and tried to watch the documentary and it could not. It did not hook me.

[Russ Frosh]

The documentary has a ton of spoilers in it, so I would not recommend doing the documentary first. I did find. I found it personally very interesting. There's a lot in the documentary, obviously about the development of the game, but there's also a lot about, like, how fucking close Valve was as a company to not existing. Yeah, they were in the midst of a very, very large lawsuit with Vivendi, who had the publishing rights to Half Life one. And there's a moment which I think really shines a light on, like, who Gabe is as a person and why he's so successful. There's a moment where Vivendi sues Gabe and his wife at the time for basically all they have to the point where they're going to have to put up their house. And Gabe was like, eh, okay, that's a bummer. But like, you know, it is what it is and that's how he handles everything. He mentions an anecdote where he was recently scuba diving with sharks and a shark approached him and everyone else in the group was freaking the fuck out. And Gabe was like, all right, well, I'll just like move away from the shark.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Well, he wasn't scared because he had four to five knives on.

[Russ Frosh]

They do mention his knife making. He made some knives for Counter Strike Twos initial announcement, which was about 15 years before Counter Strike 2 actually came out. I, you know, I found it very interesting to, you know, they talk about the Choreo system, they talk about the writing, they talk to a lot of the voice actors. I didn't realize Barney and the G Man were the same person.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Russ Frosh]

I didn't realize the Overwatch voice that you hear throughout City 17. There's a person, Mr. Freeman is in this sector. The woman's voice is the same voice as GlaDOS from Portal. That's where they first worked with her.

[Griffin McIlroy]

So they talked about how originally that was a Microsoft text to speech. Like when they were developing it for a long time that's. But then they realized that they would have to pay to license that. And they were like, oh shit.

[Russ Frosh]

I think you need to be like in a good mind. I. These sorts of docs and the Double Fine documentaries included in this is like for me, the perfect. Like I've got 20 minutes during lunch. I'm going to put it on YouTube and watch it. I wouldn't sit.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I would, I would put a pretty humongous gap between this and the Double Fine documentary. Yeah, they are very different in that. Like this is. And that's not to say that this is bad. It's not. It's just that this is. This is a documentary for the fans. Like this is a gift, I feel like. So it's like less a documentary with a story than like here's all the stuff that you were like maybe not sure about. Did you know that there were gonna be five cities in the game? Did you know that we had to cut a plane sequence after 9 11? Did you know that all the faces are people from around the area that we paid like 600 bucks and now these iconic faces are just random people that. Who knows where they are now.

[Griffin McIlroy]

The Skibidi toilet face was just something toilet.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

So true. But like all.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I'm amazed they don't talk about Skibidi toilet at any point during commentary track.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, it's very interesting but just. Yeah, definitely don't go in expectations narrative I think.

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah. It doesn't come off as a humanist story. Even though obviously a lot of humans sweat blood and tears to make this game. It's more. Yeah. A behind the scenes anecdote kind of thing.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah. 10 bucks for a genuinely unparalleled sort of video game history. Lesson Just for the Game, I think is a pretty easy recommendation for anybody into video games enough to listen to a video game podcast.

[Russ Frosh]

And the documentary is free on YouTube.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. We'll include an embed of it in the newsletter.

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah. Valve needs our help to.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

They desperately need our help. Finally.

[Russ Frosh]

Oh, wait. I wanted to hear more about the mods.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Oh.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Oh, yeah. So all I'll say is I had not really used Steam Workshop on my Steam Deck.

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And holy moly, it is unbelievable. I really did not appreciate that. You go into what is effectively just a library. You can search for. For whatever you want. You click a button and then you're just subscribed to the mod.

[Russ Frosh]

The mod is just in your game now.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

In your game. And you don't have to worry about it at all. It is so easy. As somebody who has not really been modding since, I don't know, probably 10 years ago, the change is I really couldn't get over it specifically on the Steam deck, where I just was fully prepared for it not to work.

[Russ Frosh]

Well, yeah, you're not going to dig through Linux to find a folder to drop the files in and this takes all that out. I've used Steam Workshop probably most on Binding of Isaac, which has like a shitload of amazing mods. Yeah. And I really just like more. I wish more games would take advantage of this.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I do wish that they made it a little more present. I feel like you have to kind of go looking for it.

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah, that's true.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

But otherwise it's fantastic. Okay, now can we take a break? Because I want to hear all about those Pokemans.

[Griffin McIlroy]

You got it. Let's take a break. We're gonna come back with Pokemon TCG Pocket right after this.

[Russ Frosh]

This episode of the Besties is sponsored by Aura Frames. I've talked about Aura Frames before. They are very, very cool. The whole idea, it is a digital picture frame where you basically can load it up with all your favorite pictures and just give it to your parent grandparent, someone who's not very tech savvy. And all the work can be done beforehand. So you basically prep the present. All they have to do is plug it into their wall and they're going to have all these great pictures. Wirecutter called it the best digital photo frame and it's easy to see why. It takes no time to set up and get connected. And then you can add perfect photos and videos yourself from the app. So even at home you can add photo and videos. You don't need to be next to the thing to Be able to add new photos, which is really, really great for again, people that aren't very good at technology like my mom. And for a limited time, you should visit aura frames.com and get $45 off Aura's best selling carver matte frames by using promo code Besties at checkout. That's a U R A frames.com promo code besties. This exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year, so don't miss out. Terms and conditions apply.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I caught them all.

[Russ Frosh]

Whoa.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yesterday. Grabbed my last card of the Genetic Apex set, which is a troubling name for expansion to Genetic Apex. Sounds not great, not great. Pokemon TCG Pocket. I think I talked. Did I talk about it a little bit about Apex last week. So, like, y'all kind of know what it is? It is a, I would say, very, very beginner friendly distillation of the Pokemon trading card game experience. Both the collecting side of things and also the playing side of things. It has, I would say, been extremely successful so far just based on the amount of like, coverage I am seeing of this, of this game. And right now it's just like the first set of cards are out with like some beginner quests and missions and stuff like that. The basic concept is every day, every 12 hours, basically you get to open a pack of five random Pokemon cards from this set. And there's like a few different versions of these expansion packs. There's like a Charizard set and a Mewtwo set and a Pikachu set. And that's basically it. You collect cards by opening up these packs. It's very tactile. Every time you choose to open a pack, you can cycle through different. There's like a thousand wheel that you spin through and you can pick the one. But there's a lot of weird, unknown sort of ritual around it. Like when you are spinning through and picking your pack, is it actually changing the cards inside or is that pretty much predetermined before you? And is there a way that if you tear the package, if you tear the top off the pack in a perfect line, does it increase? Like. No, clearly not.

[Russ Frosh]

But especially since there's a link to their legal documentation which details the percentage rate.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah, sure. But it is genuinely very pleasurable to open up a pack of cards of any trading card game. Right. That is a very.

[Russ Frosh]

You've played a few of these. Is there another card game that comes close to the satisfaction that you get?

[Griffin McIlroy]

No. Right. Like Hearthstone is also like five card packs, but it's like, you buy a pack and then you click it and it explodes. And then cards come out and then there's a little guy who'll be like, epic. Which is like, great. There is something different, though, about picking your pack and then tearing it open and then watching the cards come out. Sometimes if there's a rare card inside the pack, a little light shoots out of the top of it as you tear it open and you're like, oh, fuck, yeah. What's gonna be inside?

[Russ Frosh]

You can also, when you. Before you open the pack, if you flip it around.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Frosh]

You'll only see the backs of the cards. So you can have the moment of, oh, I'm gonna tap it to fl. Flip it around and see what the.

[Griffin McIlroy]

It's up to you how much pomp and circumstance you put into the opening of each pack, which I think is really cool. Once you also have the cards, you can pick them up and move them around, see them in 3D. There are certain cards called immersive cards that are pretty rare. There's only four of them in the game right now where when you open them, it zooms into the card and then all of a sudden you're in this scene where you're living with Mewtwo. Yeah. You're like flying around the lab where Mewtwo escaped. And so, like, I don't know. As a fan of trading card games, I think the way that it kind of like, I don't know, makes it into a tangible experience is very, very cool.

[Russ Frosh]

So I never played Pokemon the card game, ever, obviously. I've played basically every Pokemon game. And as a fan of Pokemon, the franchise, but not of the cards, I was really blown away by just like the artistry involved here.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Frosh]

And the, you know, they're recreating the cards themselves. I assume these are all like existing cards that actually are in the world.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I believe so. I don't know if the like, immersive.

[Russ Frosh]

Cards are, but the they, you know, they're. A lot of them are like, really funny and very creative approaches to, like, different characters. Like, there's like a slowpoke being like a total dumbass and like taking a nap and there's Far fetched with like a bunch of leaks behind him. And so, like, that charm is doing it for me in ways that like, I never got attached to the idea of, like, oh, I'm going to spend five bucks and buy a pack of cards.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah, you're talking about, I believe, the illustrated rares. So, like, outside of the base set, there's like 226 cards in this first set. And then there's also like these bonus illustrated rares which like take Pokemon from that set, but have like the whole card is art and like the text is like sort of like not as featured. You can still play those in your sets if you want to, but those are just sort of like rare pretty bonuses essentially. So there is a premium pass you can get. It's like 10 bucks a month and it gives you more daily missions and an extra pack that you get to open every day.

[Russ Frosh]

Did you do that, Griffin?

[Griffin McIlroy]

I did do that, yeah. I have spent so much fucking time with this game that I have not shied away from. I did that. And then there was one like heavily discounted like Gold Poke gold pack that you could spend to like knock down the clock from time to time that I also spent money on.

[Russ Frosh]

I will say as someone who has only done it as a free to play or have not spent money yet. It's pretty generous if you don't mainline it. Which is to say like, if you're just doing. You're playing for like 20 minutes a day and you open your packs and you do your requests or whatever it is. I am drowning in resources, so I have not felt the urge, which is nice, I would imagine. As with all free to play games like that, tap eventually runs out, so you need to be mindful of that. But the onboarding experience has been pretty good.

[Griffin McIlroy]

In addition to the packs, they also have what are called Wonder Picks, which is you can go through and it's very clever. You can look at a list of recently opened packs by other players and then if you see a pack that has like a card you really want in it, you can spend these things called Golden Hourglasses, which is another resource that recovers over time. To do a Wonder Pick, which is it takes the five cards that were in that pack, shuffles them up and then you pick one and you get to keep whatever card it is. So you can go through and be like, okay, I'm missing Charizard Ex. It's in this pack, I'm going to try and go for it. And when that pays out, it's genuinely pretty fucking thrilling to get cards. And there's also like a resource where you can just buy cards, you know, with these pack points that you get for opening, for opening packs. So it's like it has ways of kind of guaranteeing like you can get the card you want if you are patient enough. There is not trading in the game yet. There's Like a button for it. But it hasn't been implemented, mostly because I think it will complicate the economy of the game in a way that.

[Russ Frosh]

I'm just surprised there's a button like that. I thought for sure there wouldn't be trading at all.

[Griffin McIlroy]

No, there will be trading, as far as I know. They're going to add it early next year, I think, is what I've read. So on top of that, there is also a playable version of the card game that is very streamlined. In a main Pokemon game, basically, you have this bench of five Pokemon, and you have to knock out a certain number of the enemy's Pokemon and get points. And if you get a certain number of points from knocking out enemy Pokemon, you win. This time it's been shortened and there's only three spots on the bench. You only need to get three points to win, which in some cases, there's some Pokemon that are very strong that award two points if you knock them out. So some matches, I mean, I've had matches that have lasted a couple of minutes. It is very, very fast. They've also gotten rid of energy cards, and now you just. Every turn you get one energy that you can attach to your Pokemon. And so your decks are only 20 cards. So it's like a super, super tight, super streamlined version of the game. A lot of the nuance of the trading card game is, I would say, lost here, which has led to certain decks becoming extremely meta and extremely overplayed, which has, I would say, reduced a lot of interest in the PvP side of things. But it does still scratch the itch for me, and it does still connect enough with the collecting side of things that when I get a card that I've been getting my ass kicked by, it's like, oh, thank Christmas. Now finally I can start to wield this, like, completely busted setup that other players are doing.

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah, in my experience, I love the collecting part. I love the opening packs part. Even the, like, building a binder of your favorite cards, I was, like, enjoying once I got to the combat part. First of all, learning the combat is like a 12 step. It doesn't take long, but it's like, long enough that I was like, yeah, this is going to be like homework. It took me several days to work up the courage to actually even try it. It's pretty slow in my experience, really, comparing it to things like Hearthstone or what was the Marvel Snap. Marvel Snap, Yeah. It feels like every step along the way of the numbers popping up on the screen and the card Going down and the energy, everything feels about twice as long as it should. To the point where because the combat is so simplistic, no battle should last more than three minutes. And I've been in battles that last like 10 minutes. Like, they really drag on.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah. I will say at the higher end of things like the PvP where players have collected a shit ton of cards, battles do not last that long because all the cards are extremely strong.

[Russ Frosh]

And that's just because, like, you lucked out on the type matchup or.

[Griffin McIlroy]

No, usually honestly, the type matchup doesn't matter a lot. Right. There is type type strengths and weaknesses, but it basically means like, if you are attacking a Pokemon weak to your type, you just do like 20 extra damage with your attack. Which when you're dealing with Pokemon that have like 180hp, it's like not a huge, huge game changer. Yeah, I think the PvP side of things needs to be balanced. There is a solo mode where you play against the computer, which does introduce some interesting stuff later on where it's like there are challenges of you need to build a deck that only has cards of the base rarity or you have to build a deck that is only comprised of Pokemon weak to the type you're fighting. So like, it introduces some deck building challenges that I found very interesting and very compelling. I'm really, really, really into it. I finished collecting the full set. When you do that, you get like a super rare Mew card which is not obtainable any other way, which I, you know, I'm a sucker for that stuff. And you know, with the promise of more expansion packs coming and more like sets to collect and more, you know, different ways to build out decks and the meta shifting, like, I am really, really enjoying it.

[Russ Frosh]

That's great.

[Griffin McIlroy]

And it is free to play. So like, I don't know if the Pokemon card game is something you ever had any affinity for. I genuinely think it is very, very smart the way that they have, you know, built this one and slimmed it down so that it fits wherever you want to sort of pop it into your day.

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah. Just be mindful of the, you know, if you have free to play tendencies of like being lacking some level of restraint. Yeah, it'll get you probably not a good idea. But. But if, you know, I think if you are relatively patient, don't super care about getting everything real quick, you can do it for free and be fine. Like, I've, I've had a good time playing it.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah. Should we go to how long we've been going, yeah, we should do Mailbox.

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah, we got a mailbox. We got some mail questions, Reader mail. We've got one question for both me and Griffin. This comes from Andrew Request. I am looking for a handheld gaming device to turn into a dedicated UFO 50 Pico 8 machine. Maybe some GBA. Russ has awakened the idea when he mentioned that UFO 50 is on Portmaster.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah, this is such a rad idea. I am at a point where I could not possibly start over with UFO 50. The idea is unthinkable.

[Russ Frosh]

There might be a way to carry your save over or something.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Probably not from Steam Cloud to not Steam. I don't know how that would possibly work.

[Russ Frosh]

So I've set this up. I installed UFO 50 on an Anbernic device which is a Linux based handheld. It's called the RG35XXH. I think I've mentioned it before. It has kind of a similar form factor to like a gba, the original GBA that like that like horizontal form factor. And you can play UFO 50 on it. And I have played UFO 50 on it. I was sort of in the ballpark of Griffin, which is to say like I've played a bunch on my Steam deck and I didn't necessarily want to start from scratch but I also like like playing those games. So the fact that like I didn't have my cherries completed didn't necessarily bother me a ton. But it is a very small screen so if you're worried about like vision and screen size, you might want to look. There's a larger version called the 40xxh which I've heard good things about. But just keep in mind that like portmaster as a thing I'm pretty sure only supports Linux devices. I don't think it is on Android. So just make sure whatever you're getting is a relatively recent Linux device. I'll drop it. We'll drop a link to a video explaining how portmaster works and the sorts of devices that support it in the newsletter. So keep an eye out for that. But if you're looking for a quick and dirty answer, the RG35XX H is like 50 bucks and is very, very good. Just keep in mind you do need to own UFO 50 and you basically would drag and drop the files from Steam onto your device to get it to work with portmaster.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I feel like I have been a little bit out of the retro handheld scene.

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah, it moves so fucking fast.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah, I just loaded up Retro Game Core which is like my go to source on YouTube for this stuff. It's all just fucking unrecognizable.

[Russ Frosh]

Anbernic, the company that made the device I just recommended, has released I think 11 handhelds this year. Something fucking crazy.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It's non stop.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I'm looking at this RG406H yeah and it looks good.

[Russ Frosh]

That's an Android based device.

[Griffin McIlroy]

That and the Odin 2 portal. My Odin is one of my favorite handheld things that I have. I did not know that they were making a new thing that can play everything on it now.

[Russ Frosh]

The best way to experience the handheld gaming emulation world is to buy nothing and just drool over whatever the latest release is because there's going to be another release in about two weeks, but eventually I'll cave and get something new. Just don't drive yourself nuts. I think the mentality to be in is here's where your head should be at what consoles do I want to play? Do I want to play PS2 games? That's going to put you in a certain price bracket for PS2, you're looking at at least like 150 bucks to get a device that does that. If you don't worry about PS2 and you want to play like PSP and.

[Griffin McIlroy]

You can find a $30 thing.

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah, $50, whatever, something like that. So just go into it with that sort of mindset and start cheap and see if it's something you'll actually use or if it's just going to rot in a closet somewhere. Don't get an expensive device off the bat.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I still like my Miyoo Mini plus it's great. I still think that's my I have not played one that has a better form factor.

[Russ Frosh]

It feels excellent. That is one of my favorites as well. Another question We've got another question from Matthew. I recently discovered red Dead Redemption 2, which is slowly becoming one of my favorite games. When it came out, I tried to work my way quickly through the story, but fell off halfway through the game. Recently, on a whim, I decided to take another crack at it. However, this time I played slowly, taking the environment, talking to strangers on the street, playing poker at the saloon all night. It has since morphed into a tabletop esque role playing experience where I have an investment in playing the role of Arthur Morgan. At the time of its release, I remember many complaints about the pacing of the game and this time I'm not fighting against it. The intentionally deliberate pacing. On the flip side, I have also started to enjoy Diablo 4 for the opposite reason. Instead of scrutinizing abilities, upgrades Synergizing myself. I'm just following a build guide. The increased pace at which I'm leveling and moving through dungeons has really enhanced my enjoyment of the game. I'm curious if y'all have some more experiences where an intentional change in the pace of playing a game has fundamentally changed your feelings about the game. I selfishly asked this question to maybe uncover some more brilliant games like red Dead Redemption 2, that I think I was simply playing wrong.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I mean, I got a pretty good answer for this. I tried to play Yakuza like a dragon when it first came out, and I didn't get it. I didn't understand how to play the game and get, like, sort of the most out of it. And I was trying to play it like a lot of other games where I was just going from waypoint to waypoint and trying to progress through. And when you do it that way, it is suboptimal because you are just sort of like, now sitting through a ton of cutscenes, like, not actually doing a lot of stuff that is fun and enjoyable. And then I took a break from it and came back and started over. And this time was like, I'm going to just pop around, you know, Tokyo and check. Check shit out. And then it became one of my favorite RPGs ever made. Yeah, so this is. This is very much in that same. I also don't play Diablo games without using a build guide because I. It is the fatal flaw of those types of games where there is a best way to play it. And if you're. And I don't have the type of gamer brain where I can, like, shut off that. Where it's like, I'll just goof around and play a build that is not very effective and waste my time.

[Russ Frosh]

It doesn't have. It's different from Elden Ring or Dark Souls, whatever, where there's enough other stuff in the game, the exploration, whatever, that you can feel kind of ownership over what you're finding and unlocking. Yeah, this is just like, you level up and you get more power. Like, you're not really doing a lot, so you better kind of do it the optimal way.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, my one note on that is just RPGs in general. And I feel like that's been my journey over the past few years. But, like, I feel like there are. You know what I would say it's not that I return to one game, like the example here with Red Dead, but that I can return to a series and gradually come to appreciate it. And I feel like that is how my journey with Dark Souls was. I feel like that's how my journey was with the Persona games then going into metaphor. But like, sometimes it takes a while of learning how a game works and what it expects of you before you can kind of appreciate what its pace is and meet it on its page, rather than whatever you thought it would be.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yep.

[Russ Frosh]

Yeah. The other thing I wanted to mention, because Red Dead was the example here I've been playing. I've mentioned it before. I've been playing through the GTA trilogy, the remakes, because they recently got patched and they're quite good now. And one pacing aspect that these remakes changed is that you get an autosave whenever you start a mission. And that change alone makes the pacing of those games so much more enjoyable because you no longer have to stress about after every single mission you do, having to drive back to the safe house, do a hard save, and then drive to the next story mission. So you can kind of blaze through it in a pace that actually I think really helps these games maintain your interest rather than having a lot of busy work.

[Griffin McIlroy]

That's cool. Anybody been playing anything else here? For the honorable mentions segment of our.

[Russ Frosh]

Show, I finished Agatha all along, which is on Disney, and I quite enjoyed it. I hadn't really been keeping up with much Marvel stuff over the last several years. Definitely not the TV stuff and really not the movie stuff either. And I know it's kind of the general opinion has fallen off a bit, but I was really impressed. It's like a very different approach to the Marvel format with some pretty amazing actors in it. Patti LuPone in particular is like someone I never really expected would be in a Marvel anything, and she does an amazing job. Aubrey Plaza, amazing job. It's really quite cool and interesting and definitely the most queer friendly Marvel story I've watched in quite a while. So if you feel like that's something that they've kind of not given a lot of attention to, I think they do a really good job here.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I am still kind of picking away at Dragon Quest 3 HD 2D remake. I mean, quick cherry update on UFO 50. I'm at about 24. I think I'm almost halfway through.

[Russ Frosh]

Jesus, got that chain.

[Griffin McIlroy]

What was the most recent, Most recent one I finished, I believe is Block Koala, which is the Sokoban sort of puzzle game, which took a while. I very much enjoyed that though.

[Russ Frosh]

Have there been any of the ones you've cherried that is like, I gotta do this, but this is not working for me.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I mean, yeah, there have been a couple that are not, like, my favorite genre of game. Planet Xoldath is one of those that was not my favorite. I did also just Cherry Mortal, which is.

[Russ Frosh]

Oh, I love Mortal.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I fucking love that. Yeah, I put that one off for a while and I spent so much time. The way that they handle how you accumulate lives in Mortal is so brilliant, and I think reflects a lot of the great game design that goes into so many of the games in UFO 50. Mortal is a game where you have. It's like a platformer, action platformer, and you have these little guys that are trying to get to the end of a level, but you have to use these different rituals to get through it. So there's one that turns your character into stone, so it can make a little block you can stand on. Or there's one that shoots you forward like an arrow, so you can stick into the wall and make, like, a little platform that way. Or you can just explode to kill things. And every time you do that, you lose a life. But you can find more lives as you explore each level. What is very, very smart is, like, you get to the end of the level into level one, and it's like, you made it here with 19 lives, and then you carry those into the next level, right? And you beat level two, and it's like, all right, you have 30 lives. That's great. You in that level, you take 30 lives to the next level. But at any point, you can go back to level one, right? And you can say, well, if I do it this way, I can actually end the level with more lives. So now I end level one with 25 lives. It automatically adds what you sort of, like, added to your top score to every subsequent level, so that it's like imagining, like, okay, so this is what it would be like if you had had five extra lives the whole time instead of making you go through and replay the whole fucking. It's so, so, so smart. And I feel like every fucking game has something like that. I also beat Cherried Valbrace, which I really liked a lot. That was the Dungeon Crawler punch out.

[Russ Frosh]

Really hard, but I like that one a lot.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yeah, it was genuinely pretty tough, but the maps don't change, so you could sort of trial and error figure out.

[Russ Frosh]

Have you done Porgy yet?

[Griffin McIlroy]

I did Porgy.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yep.

[Russ Frosh]

Porgy was my first cherry. I really liked that one.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I liked Porgy a whole lot. I did have to look at some maps online of Porgy because there's. It gets pretty Crazy.

[Russ Frosh]

It does.

[Griffin McIlroy]

But, yeah, I've put off a lot of the very tough, twitchy games I have not dipped into. What's that?

[Russ Frosh]

Ninpec.

[Griffin McIlroy]

I've tried ninpec. NINPEC might be the one that makes me stop trying. No, I'm talking about, like, starwaspier. And what is the caramel? Caramel. A lot of the, like, shooters seem just really fucking weird. But, like, golf area and both golf games I've cherried at this point, which I fucking really, really pinned.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Golf. This is incredible because I am getting a sense of what it feels like for a normal person to listen to our show where you can't tell what's real or what's fake.

[Griffin McIlroy]

This is all real.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

There's games I played some of this. I really want to go back to it this holiday.

[Griffin McIlroy]

It'd be a good time for it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Two quick things very, very, very near the end of metaphor. Refantazio. Finally, Griff and I are going to find some way to talk about some.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Spoilers about that just to have made it worth it, just to have made commercialize the tylose.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

But the other thing that I want to talk about is the most obscure Chris Plant thing imaginable. It is a 4K release of the Blair Witch Project, which you might be thinking, why would I care about that? It was shot on really crappy digital cameras. Why would you need a 4K release of this? Which is exactly what I thought. And then what I learned was when they made the Blair Witch Project to go into theaters, it was still film in theaters. We were not in the digital age that we're in right now.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Right.

[Russ Frosh]

But it was shot on digital, so.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It was shot on digital. And then they took a film print. Imagine setting up a TV or a screen in a controlled environment, filming that with a 35 millimeter camera and then sending that back to digital to make all the DVDs that everybody has in their homes. So this is. They went back and they actually got the masters for the original tapes. And it is like what it actually looks like in its original digital form. So it looks like you're watching a true original digital file.

[Russ Frosh]

But it wasn't 4k originally.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

The 4k is beside the point. You could watch this on.

[Russ Frosh]

It could be RG35XF.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

What you're getting is like the original digital file.

[Russ Frosh]

Okay?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

So it is extremely dorky. It can only play, I think, on Region Chew or Region B or whatever. Blu Ray players. There's no reason to talk about it other than I am endlessly tickled by its existence. And that's it.

[Russ Frosh]

It's a scary movie.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Great.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Hey, let's wrap up. Let's do it. Do we want to thank any patrons?

[Russ Frosh]

Yes, we want to thank the patrons [e-mail] thebesties just a heads up while I collect those names I wanted to shout out because it is holiday season. If you feel like giving a gift to a besties lover in your life, we have a gift link. You can gift them a subscription to our Patreon which has all our bonus [e-mail] thebesties gift gift. Thank you. I want to thank. We've got Evan, we've got Rebecca. Thank you. We've got Ash with two exclamation points. And we've got Demi. Thank you for being patrons of the Besties. We really appreciate your support. I also appreciate that no one made the name super long this week because that was a real pain in the butt.

[Griffin McIlroy]

And I almost forgot. Chris, what games and other shit did we talk about this week?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Oh, this week we talked about so much cool stuff. We talked about Half Life 2, the anniversary patch. We talked about Pokemon, the card game pocket UFO 50, Dragon Quest 3.2dhd remake metaphor, Refantazio. We also talked about Agatha all along second sight, UK Blair Witch 4k restoration and half life 20th anniversary documentary. And lastly but not leastly, we Talked about the RG35XXH and Portmaster which we will include a guide to on the newsletter. You can find that at Besties Fan.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Gotta get that. Next week we're going to be giving our game awards predictions which is, which is going to go great I think.

[Russ Frosh]

Oh it's so much fun. This might be my favorite episode of the year. These are to be clear, this is not our game of the year. No, these are our predictions for what will win the Game Awards.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Game Awards Game of the year, which I believe will happen the night of the episode going up of the besties.

[Russ Frosh]

That's the dream.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Fantastic.

[Russ Frosh]

You can watch and listen at the same time.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I think we'll also have some predictions there for what will be announced at the Game Awards too.

[Russ Frosh]

Oh yeah, that sounds like.

[Griffin McIlroy]

Yes, that makes more sense. We are killing time until we do our goatie shit, but it's good. Hey, if you do wanna hear more of us though, again, patreon.com thebesties we got some fun bracket battle episodes. We just recorded one yesterday that oh my gosh is a silly topic but ended up being some of our most thorough work as game journalists to date.

[Russ Frosh]

Yes, I'm very proud of us.

[Griffin McIlroy]

So join us again next week as we talk about the game awards. And be sure to join us every week for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?