Let's Save Cats From Oblivion!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Besties – "Let's Save Cats From Oblivion!"

Release Date: May 2, 2025

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Hosts:

• Justin McElroy
• Griffin McElroy
• Chris Plant
• Russ Frushtick

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Overview

In the "Let's Save Cats From Oblivion!" episode of The Besties, hosts Justin McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Chris Plant, and Russ Frushtick delve deep into the remaster of the classic game "The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion" and explore a new title, "Skin Deep." The discussion covers intricate gameplay mechanics, design philosophies, comparisons to other seminal games, and the challenges faced during development. This episode offers both nostalgic insights and fresh perspectives, making it a must-listen for fans of the series and newcomers alike.

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1. Introduction to The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remaster and Skin Deep

The episode kicks off with the hosts introducing the focal points: the remastered version of "The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion" and a new game titled "Skin Deep." Chris Plant prompts Justin to explain these two projects succinctly.

Notable Quote:

Chris Plant [03:37]: "What is The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion remaster in Skin Deep?"

Justin McElroy [03:38]: "One is a remaster of a very old game. One is a new game that is very inspired by old games."

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2. Gameplay Mechanics and Innovations

Justin and Russell delve into the unique gameplay mechanics introduced in the remastered "Oblivion." Unlike its inspirations like BioShock and System Shock, "Oblivion Remaster" positions players as underpowered insurance agents tasked with saving cats from pirate-attacked spaceships. The game emphasizes stealth, environmental interaction, and resourcefulness over brute force.

Key Features Discussed:

• Stealth and Environmental Interaction: Players must navigate spaceships stealthily, using objects like bananas to distract enemies.
• Unique Combat Dynamics: After neutralizing enemies, players must manage their disembodied heads, disposing of them appropriately to prevent regeneration.
• Physics-Based Gameplay: Every object interacts realistically, adding depth and unpredictability to encounters.

Notable Quote:

Russell [12:10]: "If you haven't played those games, a couple of those differences, you're not running around BioShock style with magical powers where you can just blow everything up. You are quite underpowered."

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3. Design Philosophy and Aesthetic

The hosts commend the game's design for maintaining the original's quirky charm while enhancing its visual appeal. Justin highlights the "barely together" DIY aesthetic, likening it to games built with "tape and cardboard," which adds to the game's unique identity.

Notable Quote:

Justin McElroy [08:48]: "There's another facet to these, I think a lot of these games where they feel sort of like barely together... a DIY aesthetic that I feel like is permeates all the."

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4. Comparison to Other Games

Comparisons are drawn between "Oblivion Remaster" and other titles like "Quadrilateral Cowboy," "SteamWorld Heist 2," and "Pizza Tower." The discussion centers on how these games handle pacing, challenge escalation, and player engagement through staged missions and escalating difficulties.

Notable Quote:

Russell [16:48]: "The biggest challenge leap comes when they introduce the idea of... the ship gets invaded and a boarding party will join... it's incredibly difficult."

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5. Challenges and Difficulty Scaling

Russell discusses how "Oblivion Remaster" addresses difficulty scaling differently by avoiding level-to-level progression. Instead, players start fresh with each level, requiring constant reevaluation of strategies and adapting to the tools available within each mission. This design choice makes the game feel more like a puzzle game, enhancing replayability and strategic depth.

Notable Quote:

Russell [14:16]: "I think the biggest difference... this game does not have level to level progression. You're basically starting from scratch at the beginning of every level."

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6. Narrative and World-Building

The game boasts a rich narrative tapestry, with side quests and character interactions that add depth to the gameplay experience. Chris Plant and Griffin McElroy share anecdotes about memorable in-game characters, such as the "goth cat" and the troublemaker cat "Gurbo," highlighting the game's ability to blend humor with storytelling.

Notable Quote:

Chris Plant [20:19]: "There's a little goth cat who's pretended to be a ghost, and there's a little troublemaker cat named, I think, like, Gurbo or something."

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7. Technical Aspects and Engine Use

Russell reveals that "Oblivion Remaster" is built on the Doom 3 engine (ID Tech 4), which explains its nostalgic yet polished visual style. This choice underscores the developers' commitment to preserving the game's original feel while leveraging modern enhancements.

Notable Quote:

Russell [19:17]: "This game is built on the Doom 3 engine, if you can believe it. It's ID tech 4, which was what they used for Doom 3."

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8. Overall Reception and Final Thoughts

Griffin McElroy shares his mixed feelings about the game's evolution, appreciating the preservation efforts while acknowledging the challenges in balancing nostalgia with modern gameplay expectations. Justin emphasizes the game's value proposition, priced reasonably at $18 on Steam, making it accessible for both longtime fans and new players.

Notable Quote:

Justin McElroy [18:24]: "I think it's really, really worth kind of like messing around with and experimenting."

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Conclusion

The Besties' episode "Let's Save Cats From Oblivion!" offers an in-depth exploration of "The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remaster" and "Skin Deep," blending technical analysis with personal anecdotes. The hosts celebrate the remaster's fidelity to the original while appreciating the innovative twists that set it apart in the immersive sim genre. Their balanced critique provides listeners with a comprehensive understanding of what makes these games noteworthy additions to the modern gaming landscape.

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Note: This summary excludes promotional segments, advertisements, and non-content discussions to focus solely on the episode's core content.

Transcript

[Justin McElroy]

This is the first time I feel like in quite a while we haven't had to lead off with, like, a reboot. Maybe the past few times it's been a little bit better. Is that in my imagination, or does it seem to be what your reboot.

[Chris Plant]

Is, the four of us being here together?

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. I mean, I'm on that fucking Pentagon, crunchy pipes shit.

[Justin McElroy]

Like, you know what's hard? Sometimes I. I forget the way we do with the cold open in this show. And sometimes I feel like I'm talking to my brother.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

And then all of a sudden, I'm talking to Griffin McElroy, and it's like. Do you know what I'm saying? I didn't realize.

[Griffin McElroy]

Just to demonstrate the difference. Cause this would be useful for me when I'm out in the world and people see me. So give me that again. That was clearly Griffin McRoy, the Internet Persona, right? Cause you were like, yeah, so give me that question again. I'll do it like, normal style.

[Justin McElroy]

Okay, what was the question?

[Griffin McElroy]

It was like, has your Internet gotten a little bit faster?

[Justin McElroy]

Oh, yeah, Grif. I feel like your Internet has gotten a little bit better. Is that in my imagination?

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, baby. Going zoom, zoom, zoom.

[Justin McElroy]

That's when I know the problem is that once you. Once I realize I'm Talking to Griffin McElroy, I melt away and Justin McElroy is there. You know what I mean? So I'm. We're already in that entertainment.

[Russell]

It's like a severance situation.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, exactly.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's very, very much a severance.

[Chris Plant]

Have people actually ever heard the real Justin?

[Griffin McElroy]

I don't think so. I don't think Justin has aired. He's very careful not to put that on the. On the air.

[Chris Plant]

Should we invite him onto the mic? I think this is the right place to do it, you know? Now?

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. I mean, I can just say, like, juice. Have you been messing around with more Linux stuff, man?

[Justin McElroy]

Fuck yeah, dude. You know what I actually did? I accidentally hacked my neighbor's WI fi with this little fucking flipper zero. I gotta put out a little sniffer pk.

[Griffin McElroy]

That just sounds like Justin. If I'm not.

[Russell]

That's the same guy. That's what we're saying. He's the same guy on and off.

[Griffin McElroy]

So I'm the only one who wears a mask.

[Russell]

Yeah.

[Chris Plant]

Persona frustrating is a fucking giraffe from New York half the time.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Justin McElroy]

I just don't realize it. You know the difference. I can't remember the last time my brother tried to make me happy, you know?

[Chris Plant]

What?

[Justin McElroy]

I mean, like.

[Griffin McElroy]

But Griffin McElroy all the time. Tries really hard all the time.

[Justin McElroy]

Griffin McElroy is very amusing.

[Russell]

Put it on the back of the Diplomatic.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's what the AI Google search says when you look me up.

[Justin McElroy]

Popular banana eater. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game games of the week.

[Griffin McElroy]

My name is Griffin McRo. I know the best games of the week.

[Chris Plant]

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best games of the week.

[Russell]

My name is Russell. I know the game of the week.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, Your ears did not deceive you. That's those four besties back together again. The Fearsome Foursome.

[Russell]

I got so excited.

[Chris Plant]

They haven't lost a beat.

[Justin McElroy]

They still have a haven't lost a step. They're exactly as good as they've always been. This week, this video game club that we are a member of and you are a member of just by listening, we're going to be discussing the remaster of the Elder Scrolls 4, Oblivion and Skin Deep, Chris Plant. What is The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion remaster in Skin Deep?

[Chris Plant]

Such a great question.

[Justin McElroy]

Describe those two things in a sentence, please.

[Chris Plant]

One is a remaster of a very old game. One is a new game that is very inspired by old games.

[Justin McElroy]

Got it. And we are going to be talking about both of those right after this. So don't go away. My friends, it's time. It's time to think about the mother in your life. It's Mother's Day, almost, not quite. But it will be soon. And it's time to get your gift. And I'm gonna make it really easy for you. Just get an aura frame. A U R a name. The best digital photo frame by Wirecutter. It's easy to see why. Here's what you do. This guy, you set him up before you give the gift to somebody. Maybe you get their WI FI stuff ahead of time or you just get it preloaded, however you want to set it up. Once it's set up, it's done. And you'll be able to send photos to that digital frame wirelessly from your phone whenever you want. So you take a new picture, it's great. You want to send it to Mom. You think that she would love to see and she'd cry and say, wow, you're the best kid. I love you so much. I approve of you. I'm proud of you. Whatever you need to hear, you're going to hear it if you get this frame as a gift. Here's the thing, folks. Right now, there's a great deal that you don't want to miss out on. For a limited time. Listeners could save on the perfect gift by visiting our frames.com to get $35 off plus free shipping on their best selling Carver mat frame. That's auraframes.com promo code. Besties support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Okay, I'm really worried that I'm going to forget to say this, so I'll just tell you guys right now. You know that big, you know that big IV that they put up to hype the press conference for the Elder Scrolls for Oblivion?

[Russell]

Yes.

[Justin McElroy]

Okay. I absolutely saw that image and absolutely parsed it as vi. So like the whole day I was.

[Russell]

Like, here it goes.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, here we go.

[Russell]

You forgot your Roman numerals.

[Justin McElroy]

And then I saw the story go by Polygon about the Oblivion remaster. And then I'm like, dang. Oblivion remaster and Elder Scrolls VI the same day.

[Griffin McElroy]

Todd, you've done it.

[Justin McElroy]

Todd, you shouldn't have. And we shouldn't have. I shouldn't have let off with that. We should have said. It's also been 10 years since I've been wanting to play this new game, Skin Deep.

[Russell]

That's right.

[Griffin McElroy]

Can someone give me a brief history of Blendo's sort of body of work? Cause it's quite singular.

[Chris Plant]

That has to be Justin, right?

[Justin McElroy]

Yes. So it is singular and it is a suite of games that really I think about as like when I was in game journalism professionally, because these were very much like games I think of as joystick games. These were. And like Polygon, early Polygon games, these were like the ones we would get fixated on. They're not directly connected, most of these. And the ones I'm thinking of here are like 30 flights of loving gravity bone. There are a couple of Blendo games, Flotilla and Flotilla two, that are a little bit more like strategy type things. Quadrilateral Cowboy was the last one. But these are like first person, first person action adventure games where the sort of hallmark of them besides the technically they get a lot deeper as they go forward. There's like an editing style that is consistent throughout these games. It's a sort of an aesthetic, like sort of blocky aesthetic. And this idea of like editing where you wouldn't necessarily expect it in video games like that. And it's a little bit disconcerting I think, the first few times it happens if you're not used to it. But it's interesting to see that sort of like aspect come Back.

[Russell]

What does that mean? Editing.

[Chris Plant]

Oh, so like if you picture a movie when you're watching a film and somebody is talking and then snap, you cut and you're in a different scene.

[Russell]

Oh, sure.

[Chris Plant]

And that's like not. Your brain is just used to moving from scene to scene. That way when you're playing a video game and you're walking and you're moving towards what you think is a goal and bam, snap, there's a cut and you're suddenly somewhere else pursuing a different goal. Feels really strange.

[Griffin McElroy]

Jazz punk painted with that particular brush. Quite. Quite a bit.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's a good example.

[Chris Plant]

I would say the thing that unifies other games is these are PC gamer ass games, no matter where they go. So they might be. Yes, hardcore strategy. The first person games. You know, their origins are in Quake mods and then at the same time they are us games. Because, Justin, you mentioned Gravity Bone. Like that used in the Mood for Loves Music, the One Car why Movie? Like, they're very heady weirdos. They seem to love both like 1950s through 1970s tackiness and then also love like modern art house stuff.

[Justin McElroy]

There's another facet to these, I think a lot of these games where they feel sort of like barely together. Like they're barely holding together. There's a certain. It almost feels like they've been sweeted. Like the games are barely sort of like sucked together with tape and cardboard. It's like a DIY aesthetic that I feel like is. It permeates all the.

[Russell]

And silly. Right. We haven't really talked about it, but tonally, like, their games tend to be very like almost Monty Python silly. Almost? You don't think so?

[Chris Plant]

Well, let's be careful where we throw around the Monty Python, especially in this room. We have some real critics.

[Griffin McElroy]

I could not want to talk about that lesson. Okay, so Skin Deep, I feel like, goes. I mean, let's dig into. Unlike the name specifically.

[Justin McElroy]

Yes.

[Griffin McElroy]

What the name suggests, it actually, I think is levels beyond the sort of immersive stuff they've done.

[Justin McElroy]

Heads up, heads above. Heads above. You might, you know, because there's a.

[Griffin McElroy]

Lot of heads in the game.

[Russell]

There's a lot of heads.

[Griffin McElroy]

You gotta do a lot of stuff with heads.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russell]

Skin Deep is an immersive sim. The gameplay mimics games like BioShock, System Shock, things like that. And the idea is you are a insurance agent that's sent in to save various cats from various spaceships that have been attacked by pirates. And the way you do that is by sneaking around those spaceships, hacking devices, opening vents and clearing out rooms, using stealth and thrown objects, things like that, to basically get the upper hand on what is otherwise a very overpowering number of enemies. So if you've played any of those games, you're gonna feel pretty familiar ground here. But there are some very, very specific differences where this game kind of has.

[Chris Plant]

If you haven't played those games, a couple of those differences, you're not running around BioShock style with magical powers where you can just blow everything up. You are quite underpowered. You will eventually find things like a gun or a knife, but for the most part, you're finding a banana, eating it for health, and then throwing it on the floor to make someone slip. And once they've slipped, you jump on their back, you ride them around the room, and you look for things to bash their heads against until they die. And those things that you can break might be, let's say, a thing of hand sanitizer. But when you bash your head against that, it releases hand sanitizer into the air that is combustible. And then you bash their head against something that sparks, and suddenly the entire room is on fire and they're dead. But you nearly are too. And to make matters worse, when characters die in this world, their heads pop off their bodies and they fly to a regeneration station. So after you kill, kill someone, you have to grab their living head and then find a way to dispose of it. So not only do you have to take out enemies, but then you have to be able to carry these heads to very specific disposable centers. So that could be flushing one down a toilet, it could be throwing it in the trash. There's all sorts of ways. So it's just the kind of flow of combat feels very, very, very different from a lot of its inspirations.

[Justin McElroy]

There's no Gears of War curb stomping here either. Yeah, the whole world feels very tactile and physical, like every object in it is beyond. Just like there's a physics aspect to it, I guess, where you're picking up objects. They have a weight, they have a heft, they interact with each other when you, you throw them or whatever. But there's also a lot of, like, tiny signage throughout the game that you can, like, zoom in on with your. Your camera and you can get hints about stuff. But it also feels like very lived in because there's this, like, layer beneath where you can zoom in and everything feels very hand wrought.

[Russell]

Yeah, that's how they do the tooltips, which I'VE never seen this in a game before. I thought it was fucking brilliant.

[Justin McElroy]

Is like really smart.

[Russell]

If you have a, let's say someone, one of the enemy guards drops like a walkie talkie, you can zoom in on that walkie talkie and it might give you just like the instructions on how to use it. Another thing like a, let's say it's a piece of wire. If you zoom on in on it, it'll tell you, hey, if you break, if you hit this against the wall, it'll create sparks and you intuitively know, oh, sparks might ignite the gas from the hand sanitizer thing. So it's all kind of informing you about each object without again pulling you out of the game using like an on screen tooltip or just like floating text or anything like that.

[Griffin McElroy]

I really appreciate. There's also a like running ticker like log of everything that happens.

[Russell]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

All of the. Anytime anything interacts with something else or, you know, you throw something at a character and it hits them like it shows up in a log. Like this character was, you know, bonked by this or this thing was ignited by this. So when things get extremely chaotic and you know, in Chris's explosive hand sanitizer example, like it is actually pretty easy to follow what is happening in that case because you have a little bit.

[Justin McElroy]

Of chaotic but not random.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right.

[Justin McElroy]

Like it feels like you understand the interactions that are happening. And I think that's a part of the problem with games like this. Sometimes it starts to feel a little bit like I threw a bunch of junk together and we're not sure how it's going to interact. Like the interactions make sense. They're just like you may not intend on all of the interactions that you start.

[Russell]

Yeah. I think the biggest difference as well, apart from everything we've talked about, is this game does not have level to level progression. You're basically starting from scratch at the beginning of every level. And the way the levels play out differently is mostly like the things you can find. So, you know, you don't get pistol, you don't get guns for quite a few levels at the beginning of the game. And once you unlock guns, that doesn't mean you'll always have a gun. It just means like you might find more levels with guns in them. And that I think is. It's very interesting because if you played System Shock or you played BioShock, whatever it is, as you're progressing through those games, you, you land on a build, it's like, okay, I'm focused on Whatever. Rifles. And I'm really good at sneaking or I'm really good at hacking, whatever it is. And because there's no progression in this game, you actually are constantly having to reevaluate, like, how you're handling situations. And so that is a big differentiator. I think it is a little challenging. I mean, you. I think it makes it feel more like a puzzle game than it does, like, a immersive sim rpg, which I think a lot of its inspiration comes from.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russell]

Which, you know, has pluses and minuses.

[Griffin McElroy]

To it, I think. Yeah. Lacking that sort of progressive progression sort of element. I feel like that is such a hallmark of the immersive sim genre that it. I don't know, it feels a little bit more puzzle y. I kind of.

[Russell]

Get it though, from a design standpoint. Like, honestly, when I'm late, when I'm late game in like a bioshock, like, I'm using the three things I'm really good at.

[Justin McElroy]

Right.

[Russell]

Like, and that's all you do. And by limiting it to, like, the gear that you pick up along the way of a given mission, it does really force you to, like, see everything. Whether that's to your taste or not is kind of up in the air. But it is an interesting kind of.

[Griffin McElroy]

Approach to that problem later in the game. For those who have gotten there. How does it kind of like, evolve difficulty wise? My favorite Blendo game is probably Quadrilateral Cowboy, just because I really liked the kind of like on the fly hacking sort of mechanic of it. But I also thought that, like, the way that it escalates and requires you to, like, queue up all of these different commands to go off at very specific times, like, got really, really difficult really fast. I don't know if anyone's gotten sort of far enough to comment on this, but does it. Does this game sort of evolve in a similar way or what's the sort of arc like?

[Russell]

I mean, you are fighting more objects. I think the biggest, like, challenge leap comes when they introduce the idea of, like, after you go through and you save all the cats, the ship that you're on gets basically invaded and a boarding party will join where like eight or nine guards will come on the boarding part on the ship and you have to either steal a key from one of them or kill them all, which killing them all is incredibly difficult. So that I think is, like, where part of the challenge comes from. And also just like, once new objects get introduced, those objects can also be used by the guards. So you're kind of juggling a lot of the different mechanics all at once.

[Chris Plant]

I like that phase style of games of these sort of puzzle strategic games. It reminds me of oh, damn the. Your robots. And there's like a million of these. And one of them, SteamWorld SteamWorld Heist 2, where you would, you know, you have the time and the space to solve the first stage of the game, but as you actually complete it and then you need to make your exit that it becomes almost a different strategy altogether as you're avoiding like all the enemies that are flowing in. I don't know, like staged games. I also think of that Pizza the Warioware or not Wario. The Wario Light game.

[Griffin McElroy]

Pizza Tower.

[Chris Plant]

Pizza Tower, yeah, like having that ab. I don't know. It's a really good flow.

[Justin McElroy]

There's also a lot of sneezing mechanics.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's crazy.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, it's very funny for a stealth game is that you have to like account for how badly you want to sneeze.

[Griffin McElroy]

If you go through somewhere where the air quality index is not favorable, your sneeze meter starts to fill up. Which is it? Honestly get, I don't know, a little bit annoying, but also hysterical.

[Russell]

It does seem like they came up with clever ways around the like, abuse systems of like, oh, you've been spotted. You could just go in a vent, but you can't because you'll. If you stay in the vent for too long, you'll sneeze.

[Justin McElroy]

I know we don't normally talk about the value proposition of a game, but this thing is $18 on Steam. That's a great. If you, if you. If this sounds at all like something you might want to play around with. Like, I think you. They don't make a lot of games like this and I think that it's really, really worth kind of like messing around with and experimenting.

[Russell]

In fact, they haven't made a game like this in so long. This game is built on the Doom 3 engine, if you can believe it.

[Chris Plant]

Wait, What?

[Russell]

Yeah, it's ID tech 4. ID tech 4, which was what they used for Doom 3, which is why it looks like that, which is very funny to me. I also. The other thing I wanted to mention is outside of the just like the normal gameplay loop, the levels are not randomly generated. They're all like created. They made them. And what that allows them to do is have like little side quests within the levels that are totally optional, but you'll have like little narrative beats where you're finding notes and the notes will be like, oh, I Left another note under this guy's whatever. And eventually you're, like, repairing lighthouses and doing all sorts of, like, little side stuff that you don't have to do. But I found compelled because generally you'll find, like, the most fun narrative beats in those.

[Chris Plant]

Just a good little bit of story. Like that lighthouse mission that you're talking about. There's a particular. Well, there's two cats in that mission that I. I would read a little novella about. There's a little goth cat who's pretended to be a ghost, and there's a little troublemaker cat named, I think, like, Gurbo or something.

[Justin McElroy]

The cat. The cat thing is so funny because when I started it, the. When I started playing, I was like, there's a little bit of, like, you know, I like this style, but I kind of miss, like, the wild blocky and then, like, the most. Just, there's no real esthetically insane block cat. The first time you encounter one, it's.

[Russell]

Like, yeah, everyone looks like a Doom 3 model. And then suddenly it's a Minecraft cat that pops out of a cage.

[Justin McElroy]

And it's, like, so well spun. The conversations with the cats are also funny to me. I don't know why it is, but when I see a blocky cat who's like, giving me orders and stuff. Stuff, and is being treated like a vip, I think that's great.

[Russell]

And when you save them, they pop out like Superman and you say meow. With, like a ton of reverb.

[Chris Plant]

No.

[Russell]

And they just fucking crush your design. It's so good.

[Chris Plant]

I wish we still had the Sega Dreamcast virtual memory units so I could get little cat emails throughout my day, wherever I'm going.

[Griffin McElroy]

Really nice.

[Chris Plant]

It's great that they send emails in the game. I just want to have it, you know, if I'm just walking around filling the gas. Check my cat email. Sounds nice.

[Justin McElroy]

We are. We have so much, so much to talk about. I think we should wrap our discussion here, if that's okay by you guys. Is that all right?

[Russell]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay.

[Justin McElroy]

When we come back, Elder Scrolls Oblivion.

[Russell]

This episode of the Besties is sponsored by Cargurus. As someone who has recently, in the last couple years, bought a car, I am well aware of how stressful it is. There's so much going on. There's so much data being thrown at you, what to get, where to get it, so on and so forth. It can be incredibly stressful. I've certainly been there. That is where Cargurus comes in. They help you cut through the noise showing you the best deals and in depth vehicle details so you can feel confident about your purchase. Because when it comes to your big deal, you deserve the best deal. Cargurus will connect you with trusted dealerships when you're ready, ensuring a transparent, hassle free buying experience. With over 4 million listings, CarGurus has more car listings than any other major online automotive marketplace in the US and offers tools, information and data driven deal ratings you need. It's no wonder similar web estimated traffic data shows Cargurus as the number one most visited car shopping site. Buy or sell your next car today with [e-mail] Go to CarGurus.com to make sure your deal is the best deal. That's C A R G u r u s.com cargurus.com.

[Griffin McElroy]

Video games are basically just math. And I'm sorry to break that to you if you're not like a math fiend. But I mean all you're doing is adding up attack points and gemstones and energy cells and it's all just numbers and number crunching. And so if that's sort of your forte, and I'm assuming it is, have you ever considered business school? We're sponsored in part this week by the UNC Kenan Flagler Business School Master of Accounting program. It's a job that's always in demand. We're always counting stuff for our work. And UNC Kenan Flagler offers a top ranked online Master of Accounting degree. Get certified to be a number cruncher of the stars. You could be a Tar Heel in less than one year. Learn more at Accounting Unc Edu.

[Justin McElroy]

So The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yep.

[Justin McElroy]

Not sex.

[Russell]

It's tough. Aluminum worlds are tough, man, because the.

[Justin McElroy]

Order, you don't pay attention very close to stuff.

[Russell]

Order like matters. Here's the problem. You can't fit VI into the lettering of Oblivion. It doesn't work.

[Justin McElroy]

It's true.

[Russell]

Wait, Oblivion?

[Chris Plant]

Oh, you can.

[Russell]

You can though.

[Griffin McElroy]

The message was that the secret, the clues were there all along. This is six.

[Russell]

This is like counting the doctors. They just like went out of order a little bit.

[Justin McElroy]

So I. There was a long time that I said Elder Scrolls for Oblivion was my favorite game of all time. Sort of tied with link between worlds, but it was a really.

[Griffin McElroy]

Link between worlds or link to the past. Cause that's crazy.

[Justin McElroy]

Link to the past. It's not Link between worlds.

[Chris Plant]

Yeah.

[Russell]

Okay.

[Justin McElroy]

So it was released at this weird time where it was right before I moved out. It was like the Last time that all three of us were living in the same roof and it was just sort of happenstance right after my mom had passed away. So the three of us and my dad, like, really spent a lot of time in Oblivion. Like a lot. Like this game was like sort of foundational in like getting us through that time period. Like we. It was that and Hero clicks, that's what we did. We bought a lot of hero clicks and we played a lot.

[Griffin McElroy]

And those hero clicks have only a crude value.

[Russell]

Those heroes, they are basically bitcoin at.

[Justin McElroy]

The range of Clint McElroy Island. Well, I'll tell you what paid for that. Zero clicks.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. I have not played Oblivion. We did it for Monster Factory a few years ago or something at this point. And even then it was like, this is. This feels. It's strange how unfamiliar this feels because we spent so much time at a crazy part of our lives and I was not prepared for just kind of the insane sort of sense memory of walking out of the sewers for the first time. And it's really, I don't think, you know, I'm saying anything that people who have played this remaster have not already said, but, like, it is amazing how much they have captured the weird broken shit about this 19 year old video game and managed to maintain that while also making it more enjoyable to play and look like a million bucks without laughing at it.

[Chris Plant]

It feels like it's laughing with it, you know, like there's a lot of decisions. What I mean by that is you talk about the broken shit. There's a lot of dialogue, for example, that is rough in this game and it recreates that roughness, but it's recreating it in the same way that if you made a perfect recreation of your favorite childhood stuffed animal, if you took all the effort to make it just, you know, as messy and disheveled as you remembered it. I don't know, there's like care rather than. I think there's a version of this, a kind of like, I don't know, Gearbox version of this where you're actually adding more and being like, can you believe how stupid it was, you know, back in the day that we like this?

[Griffin McElroy]

We're here.

[Chris Plant]

It's like, no, we genuinely love the rough edges.

[Russell]

And I do on the rough edges. Like, I do think part of the reason that I enjoy Oblivion more than Skyrim, certainly more than Starfield, is I think as the studio has grown in size and sold so many fucking copies, you can't even imagine. I think there's a level of like, safety that needs to be enacted to ensure that, like, these games don't launch totally fucking broken. And I think the only way to ensure that is to like, put a lot of guardrails in certain aspects of the game to the point where, like, in this game, like, you can craft any combination of any spell with any other combination of any spell. Yeah, you can. I've talked about this before. You can make a ring that makes you jump so fucking high that you die from the fall damage. Like, there is no limit to how much they are willing to let you kind of bust this thing wide open.

[Justin McElroy]

You know that the practicing spells. I mentioned that in Slack, but like the idea that you're just like, no games do this where you're just like running from A to B and you're like, you know what? On the way, I'm going to cast cure on myself 10 times and I'm going to level that up. Because that's fun, man. It's more fun than walking. Walking around, leveling up, casting Cure. That's great. That's good stuff. Every game should do that.

[Griffin McElroy]

I mean, it's. That's.

[Russell]

Yeah, I guess. I mean, other games have figured out, like, maybe let's just make the walking more enjoyable. Like Elden Ring. You don't need to level up your skills like that in Elden Ring because.

[Chris Plant]

Like, it's a different type of game. When I'm playing this type of game, I want to be able to just be spamming my. My growth potential.

[Russell]

Yeah, there is a. There's a clicker aspect.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah, it's not just a clicker aspect. It's like the. I don't know what it is that's in the secret sauce of this game that makes you feel like, you know what? I am going to go do that. I am going to go like, level that up. Like, I have the ability to do that. If you want to do it that way, you absolutely could. It's a valid way of doing it. Like, it's. It's weird that I still don't think minigames match the. I see a cave over there. Yeah, I'm gonna go look in that cave. Like, it's very rare, but Oblivion, like, makes the world feel consequential enough and it makes the, the reward seem real enough that it's like, yeah, I think. I think I will poke around.

[Russell]

It's also before Bethesda started doing AI generated questing in Skyrim, Skyrim was the first one that did it. And it was like, you Love Skyrim, but you beat all the quests. Good news, we've got infinite quests because we can just generate them using all these little algorithms, whatever. And the second you introduce that, in the back of my head, I'm thinking, is this an AI quest? And is it going to be inconsequential in the way that like all AI quests are? But because in Oblivion there's none of that, you know that everything they made in there is actually like a handcrafted, like has impact piece of content. So it kind of elevates the value of everything you're experiencing.

[Griffin McElroy]

Big standout stuff for me is one adding a sprint button to the game seems like, yep, the original Oblivion's kind of not so enjoyable to play because you feel like you're just going kind of slow most of the time. But the biggest thing is the way they've changed sort of level scaling. The way that leveling In Oblivion works is as you level up your skills, you earn basically like points towards your next level up where you get to increase your stats. But it used to be, if I'm not mistaken, your stats would increase based on which skills you leveled up. And you had to be very careful because if you went on a shopping spree or a lock picking spree, you would level that stat up, level yourself up, level up every enemy in the world and not have any skills to actually be used.

[Justin McElroy]

So wouldn't be related like they. They leveled up, not related to the skills that you had leveled?

[Griffin McElroy]

Well, the, the stats that you. That got increased, I think were related to.

[Justin McElroy]

Oh, you're saying the scaling of the.

[Russell]

If you. For. If you put on like heavy armor and you got hit a bunch of times in heavy armor because you just wanted to see how heavy armor was, it would level you up in heavy armor and give you more strength, even if strength wasn't something you were interested in, right.

[Griffin McElroy]

So you had very little control. Now it's like you have these minor skills that you don't pick and those don't move you towards the next level as quickly. So it's not a big deal if you go and do a bunch of Mercantile stuff. Also, when you level up, you get to pick which stats you increase. Like just. You spend points to do it. And all of that makes. I don't know, there's always this underlying tension when you were playing Original Oblivion of like, you know, I have all this fucking skooma to move, but if I do that, my Mercantile's gonna increase and I'm gonna upgrade my personality. Stat. And I'm gonna get next time I fight, like, a big skeleton or something.

[Chris Plant]

Yeah. I mean, I really have always wanted to get into these games, and I struggle every damn time to really fall in love. But a funny thing happened here. And it's not that I got head over heels for Oblivion. I did return to Avowed. That's what this game did for me. It made me think, like, you know what? I'm more of a. I'm more of an Avowed. I'm more of that studio thing. I like what they're doing here, but I want all of the, like, modern niceties. I don't need as much freedom as this game provides. And it, like, sends me back into that world. But I want to hear Hoops, because Hoops eyes are, like, trying to. They're looking to the sky, trying to figure out how my brain makes that connection.

[Justin McElroy]

I'm thinking about what you just said because I'm trying to parse. I have, like, been trying to go back to Avowed somewhat because I. Not in relation to this, but just because, like, I keep going back to it because I feel like this should be the kind of game that I'm really into. And, like, I do. I like Avowed. I think that there is something about Avowed that seems much more interested in whether or not you are doing quests. Avowed would like you to be doing something. And, like, Oblivion seems perfectly happy to let you just screw around. Like, Oblivion doesn't really care what you're doing. And, like, I feel like Avowed really wants you to like an Avowed. I will say this also, like, the. The scaling of the difficulty in Avowed and the way that all plays out is, like. Is often very frustrating, especially for a modern game. It feels off in a way that this, like, at least if it's off here, you can kind of figure out a way around it or some sort of scam or something.

[Russell]

It feels very, very specific and kind of railroaded in some ways in a Vowed, even though I actually do like a Vowed. Whereas this is like. I mean, quite honestly, like, if I'm doing a quest in Oblivion and these vampires are, like, two shotting me, I'm just going to lower the difficulty because it's. Because the comet is so inconsequential and stupid. And I don't even mean that in a bad way. It's just, like, a little bit mindless that it's not the challenge. It's just the, like, hey, this is a fun thing to do for 30 minutes.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russell]

Whereas I think the combat in Avowed is fucking spectacular. And, like, there's some element that the difficulty adds to that experience.

[Justin McElroy]

I also just. I really. It feels good to level up so specifically the skills that you're using. Like, it feels good to use a bow and arrow and know that I'm getting a little bit better at it every time that I use it. That just, like, for my brain. Like, yeah, that feels, feels, feels really good.

[Chris Plant]

What it reminded me of, as somebody who does not have a long history with this game in particular, was, weirdly, Crackdown, the original Crackdown game where, like, everything you did also gave you that feeling. Right. Like, yes, you could go chase experience orbs, but also if you just kept jumping.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Chris Plant]

Got better at jumping and you running. And got better at running. Yeah. And that. There is something to that. You're right. Hoops. That just feels so good and weirdly, not very underused.

[Russell]

They've also made a few smart tweaks to, like, how things leveled up, because previously, like, the only way to level up your mercantile was by selling one item at a time. If so, you had a stack of, like, 400 arrows and you would just sell one, and that was the best way to do it. And now they, like, factor in, like, how much money you're making, which seems obvious, but, you know, it's tricky making games.

[Griffin McElroy]

What was the team who did this remaster?

[Russell]

It's Virtua Virtuos, I think they're called. They've worked on, like, a few others as, like, you know, I don't think they've gotten, like, as much of a spotlight on the team itself.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russell]

But I am incredibly impressed by the work.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. No, again, like, balancing act. Yeah. I think it's hard to do this. I think it's hard to make it so much the quality of life of playing the game so much better, while also, you know, still feeling like it is pretty clunky most of the time.

[Chris Plant]

How are y'all feeling about your appetite for this sort of game right now? And by that, I mean I feel like we don't get this every year. And yet this year we get avowed. We get this, and then this fall, we get The Outer Worlds 2, which.

[Griffin McElroy]

Feels just like, a lot, if I'm being completely honest. I've played it for maybe 15, 20 hours. I completed all the mage guild stuff and started to get silly with. With the spell crafting and enchanting. That stuff really is so fun from a sandbox perspective. You can make a ring that drains your health if you have it on you, and then you can pickpocket someone and put it in their inventory and then just wait a minute, and then they'll just fall down dead. I find stuff like that really, really entertaining. I don't think I'm gonna stick with it just because it is a game I have a lot of nostalgia for, but it is also a game that I feel like. And this is true of Skyrim. And honestly, every Bethesda game, it gets a bit samey after not too long. And so I. And also, there's just, like. There's a lot of other stuff out right now that I don't know that I have it in me to dedicate, you know, 100 hours or so to getting back to.

[Justin McElroy]

I gotta free it from the. I agree with everything you're saying, but it is so heartening, I think, to have a game like this be. Had to have this work done just from a preservation standpoint. And I know that this is a corporation. They're not doing this for. For charity's sake. But, like, it's very. I think this game was. So. We didn't really talk about the context, but, like, this game for console players was, like, the first time really, really, that a game like this felt good. Like Morrowind existed. But, like, it was not. It didn't.

[Russell]

It, like, barely ran on.

[Justin McElroy]

It barely ran. And it felt bad. It felt chunky. This.

[Griffin McElroy]

When.

[Justin McElroy]

When Oblivion came out, it felt like, I didn't know you could do this on a console. And that was like, it's massive. And I think it's really cool that people are able to see that part, that really important thing, and, like, understand where that is coming from. I think is. Is. Is really awesome, even if it's, like, kind of fighting for oxygen with a lot of other stuff. But it seems like people are into. Are, like, you know, people for whom this is not a formative game are still kind of into it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russell]

Yeah. I think it stands astride something like Skyrim. It might be a little bit, again, rough around the edges, but it feels like kind of 80% of the way there in terms of, like, what I felt like when I was playing Skyrim. And honestly, certain things in this game I like more than Skyrim.

[Griffin McElroy]

So, yeah, I like how this game doesn't tell you as much as Skyrim does. Like, it doesn't. The example I always see is to get into the mages guild in Skyrim. You go to a bridge and a woman's like, you're a mage, huh? Shoot a fireball and you do it. And she's like, welcome to the school. And in this one, you have to go get letters of Recommendation from like 8 different universities around the world.

[Russell]

Some of those quests are insane. One of them was like, oh yeah, go collect my ring under this well. And you pick up the ring and it increases your encumbrance by 300. And you're like drowning in the well. Cause the guy sent you on a death death mission.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, yeah.

[Russell]

Like, that's the sort of stuff that they. It feels like they take more swings in these quests.

[Justin McElroy]

There's also like, the permanence is so funny. Like, the way that they handle. It's right on this line between, like real. Okay, I'll give you an example. I go up to a shrine and I see these three people and they look like enemies. So I like, get out my bow and arrow and I snipe one just dead. And then I roll up a little closer and it turns out they were just like other people that were there at this shrine. Right. But they didn't see me kill this person. So they're not mad at me or anything. But I'm mad at myself because they did have a name. And it's like, I would like to know what's going on. But then I've had to return to this shrine as part of a puzzle that I'm doing. I keep having to come back every time there's this corpse. And I'm like, I'm sorry, I didn't know. I didn't understand that. But there's no spell for this. There's no fix. I'm just stuck with this.

[Griffin McElroy]

I was over encumbered right in front of the Mages College in the capital city. And so I just dropped a bunch of garbage right outside the entrance to the mage. And every time I have to come back to the Mages Guild, I have to just wade through this pond of detritus.

[Justin McElroy]

It's also a great reminder of how easily video games can get away with the sort of tropes that would get you laughed out of the room in any other media. But the fact that it's so effective for the. For you to rescue the king by a chance. Prison break. And then as he's dying, he gives you a necklace and is like, find my son. Hell yes. Let's get. That's all I need. Thank you.

[Griffin McElroy]

Like, seriously, I will not. I'm not going to do that for.

[Justin McElroy]

Like, I saw a cave.

[Russell]

It is nice how quick that intro is because, man, that skyrim intro takes so fucking long to get through. And this, you could really blaze through in like 10 minutes.

[Justin McElroy]

Another, I have to say one other thing about Oblivion that is so funny that struck me is like, it does have this reputation for being a game that you, like, want to get out and explore. And that's so true. But it also doesn't feel the compulsion to pat you on the head and tickle your butt and say, you did such a good job, like. Cause like, you could explore a whole cave and not find much of anything. It's like, I don't know. It's a caveat. We didn't tell you to come in here. You came in here on your own.

[Russell]

Here's some tongs.

[Justin McElroy]

There's tongs and skeletons. It's a cave. Other games, if you went into a random cave, it'd be like, ah, yes, you found the Black Wolf Cave where the Black Wolf dagger hides. Good job. Oblivion's like how you want a cup.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's a cave.

[Justin McElroy]

I don't know. It's mud. It's a cave.

[Griffin McElroy]

Should we move on?

[Chris Plant]

Let's do it. Okay. Hey, I'm gonna open up the reader mailbag to talk about a tricky thing that sound. Goodbye, everybody.

[Russell]

Let's do it.

[Chris Plant]

Let's do it. Okay. So we had a few comments in the Besties fan post asking about how and if we would cover this game. Basically, to sum it up, some people asked us to consider, in very specific words, not promoting Bethesda and Microsoft by talking about Oblivion. I want to talk a little bit about, like, what we do here. So first, the context of why that was asked. There is a thing called the BDS movement. You can read about it on Polygon. I'm going to make sure that I drop it in the Besties fan newsletter this week so you can get a link to it. But in short, just summarize the top of the Polygon article. Bds, it's a pro Palestinian human rights movement focused on pressuring Israel to comply with international law by promoting boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the country and its economic partners. One of those economic partners is Microsoft. So there's that. The big thing here is we do not see this show as promoting anything. That's not what our job is. We're not pr. We are not taking advertising money from Microsoft, and we cover a whole variety of games that we have very, very wide range of feelings about the people who make them and the companies that owned them. So we, for this game, didn't buy the game. We're covering it like we cover anything else, as we do as both journalists and critics. And that is it. That's why we covered this. That's why we've covered some games in the past that also had, I would say, substantial controversies around them. So I hope that's clarifying.

[Griffin McElroy]

And yep, I do think it is valuable to. To read that Polygon article just to sort of learn about the links between Microsoft, specifically their Azure cloud stuff and the, you know, Israel military there. There are some. Some very surprising stuff in there.

[Russell]

Okay, I think that was it for your mail. We want to do honorable mentions.

[Griffin McElroy]

Can we talk about the Retroid flip too?

[Russell]

Yes. I kind of. I feel like we teased. We teased the world with this last week, but I had barely had any time to mess with it, and now I have. And I know you guys have both jumped on board the bandwagon just before, right under the wire, before things became swooping in.

[Griffin McElroy]

Way more expensive. Yeah, perilously expensive. I got the. Earlier this year, I think January, I got the Retroid Pocket 5. And so like very recently, I set up a Retroid device and I wasn't really looking forward to doing it again, but it looks so neat. And I was like, man, am I gonna regret this purchase. And now that I've got it set up, I just don't think so. It's insane how much more I wanna use a thing just because I can close a lid on it and be done with it and then reopen that lid anytime I want instantaneous access to the thing. It feels so good every single time to be able to do that.

[Russell]

Yeah, so. So for those that aren't aware it internally, I mean, we talked a lot about the Retroid Pocket 5 the first time around. Internally, the guts of this are identical basically to the Retroid Pocket 5. It can run all the same stuff, same power, etc.

[Justin McElroy]

Screen is the same too.

[Russell]

The screen is the same. The difference here is it is a clamshell form factor. And the control layout on the second half, the bottom half, if you will, is, you know, more offset. The Retroid Pocket 5 was like stacked analog stick, D pad. And this is offset.

[Justin McElroy]

What do you guys think about that?

[Russell]

I think it's a huge.

[Griffin McElroy]

I like it. Yeah, the Retroid I found.

[Justin McElroy]

Wait, hold on. Specifically. So I've got my Rog ally here just to. So we're talking about on the right hand side. These are flipped so the sticks are parallel.

[Russell]

I'm not talking about that. Sorry, sorry. You know, you're talking about the Xbox versus PlayStation model of, like, are the analog sticks in line with one another versus not.

[Chris Plant]

Yes.

[Russell]

Right?

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes.

[Justin McElroy]

Yes. It's where your hand rests.

[Russell]

Right.

[Justin McElroy]

Your hand. Does it rest on two thumbs, or does it rest on a thumb and buttons most naturally.

[Russell]

Right. I was more talking about the fact that if you look at the flip and you could probably see a screenshot. If you're listening at home, the. I believe it's. The D pads are, like, further out to the edges, and the analog stick is closer into the edges.

[Justin McElroy]

Got.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay.

[Justin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russell]

So that means it kind of follows as your thumbs are moving back and forth between the two, you're not making an awkward, like, kind of jamming your thumb in, which you kind of had to do with the Retroid Pocket five, if that's clear.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's kind of a visual thing. I find my thumb just kind of rests exactly where it needs to go on it. It's a bit boxy. I do wish the plastic felt just a little bit. I don't know. More premium, I suppose. It does feel like some of the other kind of handheld, retro handhelds. I've.

[Justin McElroy]

Do you guys like the sticks?

[Griffin McElroy]

You know, for what they are, like recessed sticks that you can close a lid on? I think they're pretty great.

[Russell]

They're better than the Circle pad, certainly.

[Griffin McElroy]

Much, much better than the Circle Pad ever was on the 3Ds. I do think that is. I don't know. The Retroid Pocket 5 probably has sort of preferable sticks, but I think these work exceptionally well for the form factor.

[Justin McElroy]

So what have you been doing with this thing?

[Griffin McElroy]

I have managed to get Vita stuff working on it for the first time. It's the first handheld I've been able to do that, which is really quite difficult to achieve. I only got mine two days ago, so mostly I've been sort of setting it up. But, yeah, I got Persona 4 Golden working on it. And I don't know, man, it feels weird. It feels like I'm playing it on a 3DS, because that is sort of what the form factor suggests.

[Justin McElroy]

The. I tell you, the thing I've used it for the most this week has been streaming. Steam Streaming and the Xbox Streaming also are both fantastic. I mean, it is the best streaming experience I've had on any platform. It works so well.

[Russell]

Yeah, it's interesting that that would be even better than it would be on, like, a Steam Deck or something like that. I just like the fact that, like, I've used a lot of these handhelds, and there are a ton of them out there. Obviously, I Have never used one where I could go between D pad games and analog stick games on the same device with the relative same level of comfort. I found that like, some devices would kind of excel in one versus the other. And this feels like it can do both.

[Chris Plant]

What got you fresh specifically to like, buy this? Because you. Every time we talk about one of these, you're like, resist. You can hold off. There's new hardware coming, there's new chips coming. They're gonna be better. Was it purely the.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's what he says. He sucks shit at following his own suggestions. Cause Russ, I feel like, buys quite.

[Russell]

A few of these. This was a loaner review unit from Reptroid. So this is not my device, for what it's worth.

[Chris Plant]

Okay.

[Russell]

But the reason I was interested in covering it is because I did have to reach out and request it was clamshell. As a, like, you know, I'm carrying around all this stuff, the Steam deck, for example, every time I bring the Steam deck, which I absolutely love. But if I bring it on a trip, it's like a third of my bag. It's huge because you need the protection to keep it safe. And that's the same with the retroid 5 and all these things. And I wanted something that I could play all these games on, but I could feel comfortable, like dropping it in a fanny pack and be cool with it as I always am with fanny packs. Very cool and super cool. Clamshell makes a big difference so long as they designed it. Well, we. I don't think. Look, it's going to be six months before we know if, like, these things are falling apart on the clamshell. But they have made clamshells before. They had some issues in the initial run and then they fixed those issues. So my hope is that things are sort of fixed on the clamshell side. But we'll see. I'm sure good rust will tell us if they're bad.

[Griffin McElroy]

I just, like. It's shocking to me still how important instantaneous access to the game that I'm playing is for me, where I'm at in my life now. I never have a good 20 uninterrupted minutes at all in my day to sit down and play a game. And being like a man who just.

[Justin McElroy]

Installed Bazzite on his rock to.

[Chris Plant]

Right.

[Griffin McElroy]

So that was what I was gonna say. Yeah. So when I play games, playing a blitz on the Rog Ally X, you know, playing it in just the straight up Windows mode, that comes standard on the Rog Ally X, like, if it's in hibernation mode now. All of a sudden there's like 20 seconds of like loading shit that you have to do before you can get back into the game. There's annoying stuff like if you plug it into a charger, it just turns on and then you have to like log into it to turn it back on. Like there's so much shit that was so annoying. And so I followed Justin's lead and installed Bazzite which is a Linux based. It's basically SteamOS. Like it turns your Rog Ally X into a Steam deck. So I dual booted that into it and now when I press that power button I'm back and I'm playing games within like three seconds for those like little two minute chunks of my day where you know, I'm not making chicken tenders or whatever. Like it's not having to open a chicken tender restaurant.

[Justin McElroy]

We sufficient that it's taking up a lot of his time.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's like that is really important to me and I feel like I am always looking for the path of least resistance for actually being able to pick up a game and play it in a small window of time because that's all I really ever have to play games in. And I think that this is the best version of that in the retro handheld world so far. And I'm like, I don't know. I've got it set up now and I feel like sometimes I'll buy one of these devices and I'll get it set up and I'll be like, ah, fuck. I don't actually want to play anything. But now I like, I don't know, I want to play stuff on it because it feels great.

[Chris Plant]

I know it's not video games, but how is Chicken Gryffingers doing as a business?

[Griffin McElroy]

It's doing. Here's the deal. When I made the decision to open Griffin what'd you call it?

[Chris Plant]

Chicken Griffing.

[Griffin McElroy]

I don't think that's the best version of it. Chicken Finger Fingers. When I made the decision to open Chicken Griffingers and I said no sauces. I said the taste of the chicken is good enough by itself that you can't dip. If I see you trying to dip stuff in the restaurant, you'll be kicked out.

[Russell]

You also said it needed to have bird flute. That was the requirement of all the chickens you served.

[Justin McElroy]

Recreating my favorite number from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats. Chicken. My name is Chicken Griffingas. I'm giving you the flu.

[Griffin McElroy]

You don't need no sauce. You don't need.

[Justin McElroy]

You don't need no sauce.

[Griffin McElroy]

They taste good enough already. They taste good enough already. The flu makes them. Well, the flu makes him wet already. So. Anyone else been doing anything else?

[Chris Plant]

I'm gonna share something. Can you just take a look at the besties sock real quick?

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Oh, shit. God dang, Chris, I'm doing it. What are we looking at here? This is like a dream. What, a 21 inch CRTV?

[Chris Plant]

Yeah, yeah. This is a Panasonic CRTV with the VCR.

[Justin McElroy]

Get on down to the Goodwill. Oh, what's up?

[Chris Plant]

Yeah, I mean, everybody's out here saying, you know, you gotta get those like Sony high end models from the TV stations. And I said, what if it just has some scuff marks because it looks like it fell off the back of a truck? Works pretty well. The great thing about it is what I'm playing on it is Promise mascot agency. Because I am running HDMI to S video into the tv. And now I can play all these games, all these games that they're like, we want it to look like it's on an old tv. I put on this, I say, turn off all those settings.

[Justin McElroy]

I've got the old, get it all, get small.

[Griffin McElroy]

Chris, I'm glad to know you, man. I feel like that's such a vibe, man. And I don't know anyone else who would put in the effort.

[Russell]

I mean, his name is Chris Grant. I think you've met him before.

[Chris Plant]

Chris Grant. He goes in that other direction. It's like suddenly you spent most of your child savings making sure that you have pixel perfect ratio recreations of Boogerman. This is a slightly different, some might say a much cheaper approach, but dude, it rules. I've been playing Tokyo Extreme Racer, which is the new game in the series that came out on PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast. And I've played on this TV and let me tell you, it looks like it's just the exact same game. Back then they didn't even need to make a new one.

[Russell]

What resolution do you run these games at?

[Chris Plant]

8. It is at 8. Um, that's. I mean, you got your answer fresh. That's what more you want. I don't. I don't even know how it works, man. It's amazing that it does because I started like clicking random numbers and eventually it started to look pretty. Okay.

[Russell]

Love it.

[Griffin McElroy]

So what are we doing? I mean, I guess I want to.

[Justin McElroy]

Say that this week I played Hotel Dusk, room 215, a game which continues to whip ass. It makes DS has three DS. What is that?

[Griffin McElroy]

DS or 3DS.

[Justin McElroy]

Are you asking what I played it on or what it was designed for?

[Chris Plant]

What?

[Griffin McElroy]

It was designed for the ds, the Nintendo ds.

[Justin McElroy]

You hold it like this, like a book, and you navigate the world. And the music's absolutely funky. All the characters look like they're from the Aha video. And it's such a good game and it is so inaccessible because it's like it's locked to this bizarre form factor. It's worth mentioning, like, part of what got me thinking about this is the despite being very cool, the Retroid Flip 2 still lacks a second screen in the middle to presumably keep the device cost down and not have a capacitive touchscreen at the bottom. But, like, it still can't replicate those. Great. So I got a. And I put the game hotel dusk room 215 into it and played it. It's great.

[Griffin McElroy]

I love that. I love the Notebook style gaming handheld. I feel like Nintendo was only courageous enough to do that trick like two or three different times. And Hotel Casket is one of them.

[Justin McElroy]

What if right before the Switch 2 comes out, they like. They show you just like folding it. It's like taking. It folds.

[Griffin McElroy]

Russ, when you did your hands on with the Switch 2, did you try to fold it?

[Justin McElroy]

Try to fold it?

[Russell]

Of course I tried to fold it.

[Justin McElroy]

Did you ask like, where's the fold?

[Russell]

They didn't like it when I tried to fold it. They were against that, which maybe because they were hiding the truth. Yeah, they wanted to save that as like a day one surprise. Doug Bowser is going to show up and fucking fold that shit.

[Justin McElroy]

He could. What are we doing?

[Russell]

It's so strong. Next week we are doing Claire Obscure Expedition 33.

[Chris Plant]

The paintress is back and so are we. We're finally talking about it.

[Russell]

So don't you worry, Justin. Don't worry. We're also doing Revenge of the Savage Planet. So you don't. You don't have to play the RPG that you don't want to play and I don't want to play. But that's great. We'll play the other one.

[Justin McElroy]

It's so sweet that you think I would have played it without you saying that, but thank you for releasing me.

[Russell]

I want to thank some members over at the Patreon, some new members. We have Connor, we have Oliver, we have Jacob, and we have becoming a Weeb purely through plant osmosis.

[Justin McElroy]

Wow, that's great.

[Chris Plant]

Hell yeah.

[Russell]

Which, you know, I get it. I felt that same instinct before oh, that sounds fantastic.

[Justin McElroy]

I'm looking forward to it. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best game.

[Griffin McElroy]

Besties?