Russ Frushtick (2:14)

And you did change the black pyramid to be called Cameo, so you could kind of work it in that way, too.

Christopher Thomas Plant (2:20)

Yeah, every time.

Griffin McElroy (2:21)

That was like, I got him. That one was three different cameos because I had to get the in one. And then like black was like a different one. And then pyramid. That pyramid was tricky. Tricky how to say into. But I did manage to get that one in there.

Russ Frushtick (2:35)

Thank God.

Griffin McElroy (2:36)

Doing a thing about the food pyramid for my nephew.

Christopher Thomas Plant (2:39)

He has really complicated views about that. So we probably shouldn't go any further.

Griffin McElroy (2:43)

Yeah, no, but Dinklage would have helped. My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week.

Christopher Thomas Plant (3:07)

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and

Griffin McElroy (3:08)

I took a glass. I saw you take down a hardy gull.

Russ Frushtick (3:12)

He's so used to having that Justin beat. Yeah, that's my water.

Christopher Thomas Plant (3:17)

Ready?

Griffin McElroy (3:18)

Yeah.

Russ Frushtick (3:19)

You want to take it again, Chris?

Griffin McElroy (3:20)

No, it's good.

Christopher Thomas Plant (3:21)

No, no, no, no, no. I'm really happy with it.

Russ Frushtick (3:23)

Okay.

Griffin McElroy (3:23)

Just say your name.

Russ Frushtick (3:24)

My name is Russ Freshwick. I know the best game of the week.

Griffin McElroy (3:27)

Welcome to the Besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive intergamen.

Russ Frushtick (3:31)

Justin's recovery continues. He is not.

Griffin McElroy (3:34)

Yeah, this is maybe the worst possible game for him to try to play.

Russ Frushtick (3:38)

Slow going, a twitch based, intense, very

Griffin McElroy (3:43)

demanding shooter, Very punishing, very time consuming shooter. There's a lot of heats that this thing was breaking that juice was not able to sort of.

Russ Frushtick (3:52)

If anything, it was kind of mean of us. But I think we would click on Chris Plant, who was the one that suggests that we play this game.

Griffin McElroy (3:59)

So rather than, you know, the three of us speak enthusiastically about this cyberpunk extraction shooter while one of us just kind of sits and waits for the bit to be over, we're gonna be rocking trio mod, just like in Marathon. Chris, what the heck is Marathon, dude?

Christopher Thomas Plant (4:18)

Marathon's latest first person shooter from Bungie. The people who brought you Halo and Destiny and Destiny 2. But this time they are going after a new multiplayer trend. They're going after the extraction shooter where you land on a terrifying terrain of enemies and other players. You try to collect lots of good loot, complete a little mission or two, and then get the hell out of there without dying.

Griffin McElroy (4:42)

If you don't care about extraction shooters and I don't, there's some really wild choices that this game makes that I think are interesting to talk about and we will get all up into that and more after this short break. Can I try and set the scene for like the vibe before Marathon's release? And it's been out for what, a few weeks now? Couple weeks now. So I was playing Destiny 2 pretty actively when they announced that they were working on Marathon. This was already when the. I don't know Vibe around Bungie in general had started to get a little bit weird just because there'd been some like higher up changes at Destiny 2 and some really, really, really shitty decisions made for that game. I remember it being announced during a sort of not great period. And so there was already kind of that vibe hanging around. I think people were not so stoked about Marathon as a problem.

Russ Frushtick (5:36)

I mean, I think people were had no opinions about Marathon because it had been dormant for 30 years.

Griffin McElroy (5:42)

It had been dormant for a very long time. And then when the news came out that it was an extraction shooter, I feel like that was also a little bit tough. And then there was the thing where it turned out that some of the art from the game had been plagiarized. And so there's just been kind of a lot of. I have been very hesitant to check this game out despite my thousands of hours I have logged across Destiny 1 and 2 because of that stuff. And I don't know, I think it's another object lesson that like a reputation should maybe not precede a game when you are in the position of talking about games professionally. Cause it has surprised me that I've been having some fun with Marathon.

Russ Frushtick (6:24)

I was totally ready to fully skip it because of a lot of the things you mentioned and emphasis on me not really liking the genre. The fact that Chris Plant, of all people, the last person I would ever think Topsy Turv to be into an extraction shooter. And we talked about it last week, so obviously we know we were all surprised about that. But the fact that he was into it genuinely was the most peaking of my interest for this game. That is what got me to be like, okay, I've got to see where Chris Plant's brain is for this to be clicking for him so hard.

Griffin McElroy (7:00)

Could we do Chris? Could you set up sort of what the Extraction shooter model is before you kind of get into what works about this for you? I think we all have sort of

Christopher Thomas Plant (7:12)

what I thought it was and then what I think it is now. After falling in love with this game, I thought an extraction shooter was collect lots of loot and then lose lots of loot. And therefore it's a waste of time that you go into a really terrifying map full of really hardcore NPCs and also other players who are absolutely ruthless. And you try to find rare guns that you can then use in another round where you will die and then they will steal those guns and suddenly you're back to where you started. And that didn't sound super fun.

Russ Frushtick (7:50)

And for what it's worth, there are those games like extraction shooters like what you described do definitely exist. In fact, I would say that's kind of the norm in a lot of ways.

Christopher Thomas Plant (7:58)

Yeah, for sure. What I read this game as is closer to a game with a campaign that takes place inside of what I just described. So before you go into any mission with your buds or solo, you can select a variety of missions for different corporate leaders. And it might be as simple as like break 20 windows or it might be more complicated, like a four point process where you need to go back and forth across the map, loading different computer terminals, triggering various enemy things. These are not complex.

Russ Frushtick (8:35)

Is one of the missions really break 20 windows? Because that's.

Griffin McElroy (8:38)

Yeah. One of the onboarding missions for one of the factions is like everything you need to know about us is we're bad boys. Go break 20 Tau Ceti 4 windows. It's like, holy shit, man. Why is this your whole deal?

Christopher Thomas Plant (8:50)

So when you go in and you complete those missions, you do not have to exfiltrate to have completed that mission. So right away, the most hardcore thing about it is, is gone. Which is go in, you can do the mission and then if you die, that's terrible. If you happen to get out with lots of cool weapons that will help you in your next mission, that's great. That's the real gravy. And you can do that over and over and over again. What is interesting about the missions is they start to establish what the meta is and why people are doing what they're doing. So another. The bad boys of Marathon have a mission that's like you need to go and not just down 10 people, but you need to execute them on the ground, which is a rough move to do because it immediately puts you in the fire of like whoever they were with. Right. Like, it's probably gonna get you killed trying to show off doing that. But once you do that, you then know the next time you get executed. Ah, they were probably. They were probably just getting. I'm pretty happy for them. And it completely changes your mindset about kind of hostile behavior that you're going up against. There is this equalizing that you start to feel in the game of, I get it. We're all here to get our job done. So I would say that's the top level.

Griffin McElroy (10:13)

We could talk for the whole episode just about that. That is a core pillar of the extraction shooter model that this game kind of just handles with vibes, right? Two things are true simultaneously. One would turn me off of this game and did I fucking hated my first couple hours with this game and I haven't had time to play it. I've played like maybe five hours because I'll talk about this later. Tough to fit into the routine.

Russ Frushtick (10:41)

Yeah.

Griffin McElroy (10:42)

But like I have not had a single encounter with another player that did not begin and end with one of us shooting and killing each other. Like I have not in Arc Raiders that I've played a little bit of. You always have that moment when you roll up on someone like hey, I'm chill. In this game there's like there is a dedicated hey I'm chill button that you could do. You could just like say like friendly, friendly but like it's never. They just fucking drop you because the time to kill is insanely short, so why not? And 2 it just kind of seems to be the weird ingrained behavior in this community where there is no doubt that you are going to shoot and you're going to kill people. There's a class that is basically just a kind of hunter of other classes which is very interesting. But what makes that not so bad is that the game gives you so many ways to like soften the blow of that. There are sponsored loadouts that you can get for free that will just like fill you up with some basic shit and you can go out there and if you die it's like eh, whatever. If you live usually you'll get a reward from that sponsor. So that's great. There's a whole class that you don't equip loadouts at all. So you're not going in and losing a bunch of stuff. That class is just kinda about going in there solo, picking up what you can and getting out of there. So this hangup I have in my mind of too stressful. I don't want to work to get a bunch of shit and then lose it or I don't want to go down on the map and find something dope and then get killed. The game kind of has an answer for all of that stuff and I don't know, it is what has made me want to keep playing the game. It is the single most sort of like defining feature of the game so

Russ Frushtick (12:14)

far to me where I've kind of run. I don't know how to approach this necessarily because I don't want to come off as negative because there are certainly

Christopher Thomas Plant (12:23)

no, no, no Fresh. Fresh, go full throated on this. I want to hear your real opinion because Fresh has had a journey.

Griffin McElroy (12:31)

This game also has huge problems that I do want to get into, but

Russ Frushtick (12:35)

the game is unquestionably. I've played a lot for this podcast and in general played a lot of video games. Maybe top five worst onboarding games I've ever played in my life. Like horrible, indiscernible onboarding where the UI makes no sense. You don't know where you need to look for your inventory or where quests are or where assignments are, or what these people are that are talking to you and why they're talking to you. It requires a good, I would say two hours of like someone, in this case Chris Plant, walking you through each and every screen and where you should be looking and what icons mean and which things to pick up and what not to pick up. And if you don't have that, I guess you could probably watch a YouTube video for an hour. But Christ. For. For. Given the fact that like Bungie made Destiny and spent a long ass time getting the onboarding of Destiny in a really good place, came up with like

Griffin McElroy (13:36)

six different onboarding solutions.

Russ Frushtick (13:39)

They kept trying to nail it and. And here it feels like they did not even try. And in its place is genuinely one of the most stunning games to look at and also one of the most interesting UIs to look at. But from a actual like navigating it standpoint, horrendous, like really bad.

Griffin McElroy (13:58)

There's a question of like, what's the loop of the game? The loop of the game is obviously like an extraction shooter. Okay. I go down, I pick stuff up. The question of like, what do I prioritize picking up? Because my inventory space is like super duper low. Okay, well, okay, I got out, I got a bunch of stuff. What do I do? Like, what do I do with this? There's an upgrade screen, but I can't really get. Oh, I need 12 unstable biomass. Jesus Christ. Like that stuff is. So there is no visible carrot for most of that sort of early period of the game. And so you're just kind of playing. Cause it's. The guns feel good.

Christopher Thomas Plant (14:32)

I would actually say there are. There's a carrot and then there's about 30 other carrots and you're in the middle of them and you're like, which fucking carrot?

Russ Frushtick (14:39)

Yeah, which carrot? While you're getting shot at by robots. The what? I'll point to an example that I think would have been better, which is another extraction shooter. The game is Helldivers 2. Helldivers 2 has three upgrade resources. Common, rare, ultra rare, whatever the it was called. And this game seemingly has 30. And there's only one resource that you really want early in the game, and it's unstable diodes. I want to say. I don't know what they're called, but you're drowning in other things. And if the game was just kind enough to throw you a bone and highlight the things that you need for an upgrade, for example, those are the sorts of things that I think would make the onboarding a lot.

Christopher Thomas Plant (15:21)

Yes, I have theories about all of this. One, I had a very simple onboarding experience, but I increasingly think it was rare. I think it was like I just was playing with the right people and it all felt natural. And it was definitely people giving me the onboarding experience.

Griffin McElroy (15:38)

Sure.

Christopher Thomas Plant (15:39)

And not the game itself. The thing that you're talking about fresh with Helldivers, where it's like, well, you have these three things and how much simpler that is. I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to solve for the fact that everybody is splitting the same loot. So with you not having a ton of inventory and there being a wide variety of resources, the odds that you need the same thing as your other players need at any given point are lower. And therefore, like, you're going to grab these things out of the bin, they're going to grab those things. It's going to all, like, equal out the other thing. And I'm not saying this is a defense. I'm just saying, like, this is a sign that they put in the game. They. For the thing of, like, what items do I need? You can go into the upgrade chart and then manually pick an item and then mark it, and then it will show up in the game when you go there and it will even tell you which areas of the game have that material.

Griffin McElroy (16:39)

Would have been cool for the game to tell me that, dude.

Christopher Thomas Plant (16:43)

The weird thing is the game does, at a certain point tell you in big print. Like, it comes up as a whole screen that you have to pop out of. And even when it tells you it, it doesn't really tell you how it works. So it's like, hey, you should probably go and mark your gear. And it's like, yeah, what does that mean? Tell me more.

Griffin McElroy (17:04)

I struggled a lot with the loot economy of this game. I still feel like I'm just playing it because it's kind of fun. I have gotten good enough now that when I'm in a team of three and I roll up on another team of three runners, I actually feel pretty good about my chances. I can hang in there. I had a game with seven Runner eliminations last night. I felt pretty fucking good about that. And that's fun for me. I don't feel like I am getting cooler guns or attachments that are making those guns noticeably more particularly strong, unlocking new abilities or anything like that.

Russ Frushtick (17:38)

I guess it's the perks that you're working for with the.

Griffin McElroy (17:41)

It's the perks, right? And the perks are extremely helpful and they go across all of the characters.

Russ Frushtick (17:46)

It'll be like more inventory space.

Griffin McElroy (17:48)

More inventory space. Your heat, which is like the way that the game keeps you from just sprinting the whole time. That is improved. There's upgrades that just improve the rook, which is the solo only. Go into a middle of a match class, disguise yourself as a robot NPC and try to fucking merc other players and get out with the much more limited time limit that you have. That's how the rook class works. And it's fucking cool. And sometimes the only thing I can play because I will set aside 30 minutes to play this game to knock out a match, which is 30 minutes. And then I'll get my clock clean 10 minutes in and be like, well, I don't have time for another full match. It's rook time. Time to get in there and just get nasty. Like. But those upgrades are the most meaningful thing I think that I am sort of chasing down. It is a far cry from. There's this exotic. I'm trying to get. Or I'm trying to like get enough resources to unlock this class feature. Or I think there are class cores that is like a type of equipment that do kind of modify the. What is there seven different classes that you can equip. But like I'm saying, like, I've been playing this game. I've played maybe a dozen matches. I've gotten okay at it. I do not feel like I am working towards anything super exciting or that I have found anything or I've been like, oh, God damn. Yeah, I'm gonna use this gun until I inevitably am killed and someone takes it from me. Maybe that is a. I don't do a lot of ranked play. Maybe if I'm like moved up the ladder a bit, I do think the loot drops in general are more kind of desirable. But like, I don't know, I just. It doesn't excite me. Which also means if I die and I lose shit, it's like, eh, who cares? I didn't really give a shit if I lost my unstable biomass. That's a pain in the ass. Because I'm trying To get, like, my heat reduction perk upgraded. But, like, I don't know. I don't know if that gets better. Chris, you have played more than me, so maybe you are finding, yeah, I mean, exciting guns and shit like that.

Christopher Thomas Plant (19:34)

The answer to that is not exciting. It's like, it will help you survive more. So on top of being able to upgrade these perks, these permanent buffs, you also unlock the ability to buy items that are significantly better. So you can buy a shield. You start with the lowest possible shield in this game to the point that it's barely even there and barely effective. And you can start every time you drop by being able to buy a much, much, much better shield for relatively cheap. Those are the kind of I don't

Griffin McElroy (20:09)

know about relatively cheap, man. I feel like I'm always dying for credits.

Christopher Thomas Plant (20:13)

I mean, that's. Yeah, as you get on, you will be finding better weapons which you can cash out for, like, more money. But that it's not a sexy, you know, growth trajectory. Right. It's like, congrats, you get to live a little bit longer. I agree with you. I am largely playing it just because it's fun. Like, I am treating this fresh. I think I talked to you about this. Like a single player roguelike that happens to be trapped inside of an Extraction shooter universe. That I have these goals that I am doing as if it were a single player campaign. And I am largely avoiding other human players unless I know I have the jump on them. And because the time to kill is so fast in this game, if you get the jump on somebody, you're gonna knock them down. That's it. Which I love, because I could not stand playing a game like Halo or even Destiny, where if I got the jump on somebody, often they would just kill me because I had not grinded enough hours to have the weapons that I needed to bring them down as fast.

Russ Frushtick (21:17)

I mean, the time to kill was just much longer.

Griffin McElroy (21:19)

Right?

Christopher Thomas Plant (21:20)

But as a result, that means that it is not always about skill. It is about who has the best weapon. And it is.

Griffin McElroy (21:28)

It also lends itself to a general sense of paranoia that you will have the whole time that you play this game. Especially when you make your way to an extraction point, which you have to activate, wait about a minute, and then it will turn, it'll light up, and then you can step near it, and you have to stay near it for 10 seconds before you can extract. And half the time there is somebody camped out hiding with a shotgun waiting to fucking perforate you or a thief with their nasty little drone. Oh my God, I found a fucking cool upgrade. And as I was getting exfilled out, I heard and I was like, what the fuck? And I looked out and it was on the ground. And I picked it up again and then I heard and they yoinked it out and then I teleported away. I was like, no upgrade, please. No. Can we talk about the classes?

Russ Frushtick (22:14)

Yeah, yeah. Cause I think he actually probably played mostly different ones, which should make it for interesting discussion.

Griffin McElroy (22:21)

I think they are interesting, right? Comparing this to a Destiny, right? Which was always struggled with how they are balancing between PvE and PvP and people on both sides of the aisle being kind of pissed off most of the time about the decisions that they were making to benefit the other side. This feels entirely kind of PvP balanced. And as a result there's not these like huge dramatic, like, you know, oh, man, if you're running Warlock, you gotta do Sunsinger. Cause this is like the meta. The powers are like a lot more kind of like subtle, right? There's a triage class that can drop a little healing drone out. And when you heal yourself, it heals your allies too. And then you have an ult where you shoot out like prods to resuscitate someone instantly or found this out yesterday. You can use it to absolutely destroy an enemy. If you're in a tunnel fight and you launch those down the hallway, you will clear them out. But it's not like those take a long time to recharge. They take a really long time. So it's not like you're throwing them down left, right and center. And that's true of all the classes.

Russ Frushtick (23:26)

I think that's the biggest difference with Destiny is in Destiny, what I was used to is I could use my class ability every eight seconds. And here it's like once a minute if you're lucky. A lot of that stuff takes a really long time, so you have to be smart about using it. And I, I have like kind of locked it. So I've been playing as assassin, which is the like, sneaky class. I mostly play it defensively. I'm sure there's a very aggressive way to play assassin where you go invisible and like run up on people mostly. It'll be like, oh, they got the jump on me. I'm going invisible or I'm going to drop smoke or whatever it is.

Griffin McElroy (23:58)

It's a great oh shit button.

Russ Frushtick (23:59)

It's a great oh shit button. And it's worked out like a few times where we were extracting and I dropped a smoke bomb and it saved everyone. There was another time where I think I was alone and there was a whole squad that wiped out Plant. And the other.

Christopher Thomas Plant (24:11)

It was the Benny Hill moment. We were playing last night and all of us got downed and I was like, crash, crash, run, run, run. And he went and assassined, but then just went and hid in a corner, like literally five feet away.

Russ Frushtick (24:23)

It was like I took two right turns and then ran to the nearest corner and went invisible and crouched. That's great. And the whole squad just walked right past me and it was cool. So I like those moments. I think those moments are good for me. I like the power fantasy of using powers more than I do the gunplay. So it is kind of a bummer that it's like, oh, I have to save this invisibility for when I really need it. I understand there's a reason for that from a balance standpoint, but it's just, you know, it's a little bit of a drag that it just takes a little bit of the fun out. And Plant. I know you talked about Thief in

Griffin McElroy (24:57)

the last episode, which sounds you mainly play.

Christopher Thomas Plant (25:00)

Yeah, Thief is where I main. You have the thing that you were talking about a drone that you can use to scout spaces and also use to like things from other people.

Griffin McElroy (25:08)

Oh, as a scout, it's incredible. I feel like the player base has gotten wise and they hear the sound and immediately start looking for the drone in the sky to shoot. But you can tag people while you are flying around with the little loot drone and then be able to get the drop on them, which is pretty incredible.

Christopher Thomas Plant (25:25)

Another fun thing that I'm not sure if they will keep it in or not, but you can put a claymore or a proximity mine on the drone.

Griffin McElroy (25:33)

Oh my God.

Christopher Thomas Plant (25:33)

And then you can start chasing people with it, which is great. But the other power of. Well, the other two things about the Thief is you can put on a visor that shows you the color of gear inside of every box and does it through walls.

Griffin McElroy (25:48)

I'll tell you what I love most about that is it just lights up where the boxes are because they look a lot like the other non interactive boxes. Which is another. Sometimes I play Thief just because I get so fucking fed up of running around a whole station not finding any containers at all and being like, I know they're here. I know that they're here.

Russ Frushtick (26:04)

I had a quest yesterday that was find this key card from this commander, pick it up, and then scan the nearby crate and there were about 30,000 crates within spitting distance and eventually like Plant I guess just walked on it. But there's no indication of what that thing is.

Griffin McElroy (26:23)

It's really tough to find some of that shit. Yeah, that thief ability is like super duper useful.

Russ Frushtick (26:28)

That sounds very useful. I think this game is doing very interesting things. I. I don't think this is my game, like as a genre and I think a lot of it is just because of the amount of focus required. You know, to some extent we look at multiplayer gaming as like just key hangout time with your friends.

Griffin McElroy (26:48)

Right.

Russ Frushtick (26:48)

And Plant was saying this earlier like, it is not a hangout game because there's so much communication that has to happen from minute to minute to be successful that there's like no opportunity to actually have a conversation with anyone. That being said, there's a lot of people that like, wanna wear a headphone, like go like fucking tactical hardcore. And good for them. Like that's this game. It's like you can go fucking beast mode with it and be really successful.

Griffin McElroy (27:17)

It's, it's. It is. If I, if I were in a different phase of my life, I would play this game probably a lot. I find it very enjoyable to play. I actually haven't played it with people I know yet. I've only played in like groups and I've had some actually genuinely pretty great like teamwork encounters that harken back to like, you know, pickup groups for destiny raids and stuff like that. That's like really great when it happens. I would love to play it with friends. We tried to set up a session three or four different times that I was unable to make work due to mostly kid interruptions. And so like, it's simply incompatible. I do think it takes a little bit too long to queue into a match unless you're playing as a rook. Again, why sometimes I'll just dip in as the nasty solo BO because like, I know there's not going to be a queue, it's going to be a shorter match. It is tough for me to sit down and like play a game for, you know, 30, 40 minutes, however long it takes me to get my loadout and shit together before I queue into like. It's.

Russ Frushtick (28:15)

Yeah, there's no. And there's no pausing obviously, or it's a multi part.

Griffin McElroy (28:18)

Yeah, yeah, you better commit. It's. I've really been enjoying it and I've been struggling with it because like, there's stuff about it. I definitely think as much sort of early release time as this game had, like it's weird. Some of the things that haven't been sort of addressed seem kind of weird to me. The fucking aesthetic is through the rest.

Russ Frushtick (28:38)

Yeah, amazing.

Griffin McElroy (28:40)

The music and sound that plays just in the lobby is so transportive and fucking weird. And like asmr. You'll be like listening to it and then you'll hear just a weird atonal plucked string that like, has nothing to do with anything. You're like, what the fuck is going on? I thought I had like a chrome tab open that like had started playing some like, ad, but it was just the game like getting, getting weird with it. Like all that stuff is so, so, so cool.

Russ Frushtick (29:12)

It's a swing, man. And I'll say I for beginners that just want to fuck around a little bit, play rook. I actually like, now that I've played more of it just to like wet your feet a little bit, you're going

Griffin McElroy (29:24)

to die a lot, but like a whole lot.

Russ Frushtick (29:26)

Just figure out like what the UI elements are when you're playing with other people. I think it moves too quick. Like really absorb a lot of that stuff.

Christopher Thomas Plant (29:33)

Yeah, yeah.

Griffin McElroy (29:34)

It'll also take you a long time to figure out like what guns you like. Some of that, some of that. I mean it does. The gunplay does feel similar to Destiny.

Russ Frushtick (29:42)

It does, yeah.

Griffin McElroy (29:43)

A little heavier, a little slower maybe, but like the feel of the guns, like they obviously, they know what the fuck they're doing in that category. But like, it took me not until very, very recently did I start to like pick up a gun and kind of know like, eh, this isn't like I want that like battle rifle. I want that like semi automatic rifle or the bully smg. Like I know some of this stuff now. All that stuff just takes a while to kind of, I don't know, figure out, figure out what you like and what's worth kind of like chasing what's worth going for.

Russ Frushtick (30:16)

There's definitely homework. It's a homework kind of game. It's gonna take a while. And for people that don't have the time or patience, and I'm certainly to some extent one of them, you just need to be aware of that going in.

Griffin McElroy (30:28)

Yeah, yeah.

Christopher Thomas Plant (30:30)

I mean, I agree and I disagree with that just in terms of like, people who are considering this, all of this is true if you're gonna play this game competitively. And I wonder if this is where the difference between y' all having so much experience with Destiny comes in versus me and your expectations of like, how to invest in one of these games. Because for Me, almost none of this is true. I've been playing it in like 15 minute bursts because that's about how long a round is. I have not had to do much homework because I'm kind of just doing whatever the quest line says.

Russ Frushtick (31:04)

Well, well. But you also had a personal person

Christopher Thomas Plant (31:07)

guiding for the first maybe like hour and a half and then a few other matches, but then a lot of solo. I just, I think all of this is true. If you are going and you have a lot of experience with multiplayer games. I am just perpetually surprised by my experience with this game is so the opposite of the experience that people who love these sorts of games have. And I think that is strange. I think it is a reflection of the fact that I do not play these games. So I don't have all the baggage of how to play these games. Well, I don't think I'm measuring was this successful or was this just me like having fun? I don't know what the rub was there. I mean even we talked about Rook but like I never shoot at anybody as Rook. Like to me Rook is just like a scavenge. It's a stealth scavenging simulation.

Griffin McElroy (32:01)

Oh man. If you get the drop on someone who thinks you're a normal ass NPC and then you start moving decidedly unlike an NPC and watch their being get freaked, it's pretty good. I would recommend getting nasty with the ruck. I my. I feel like I would love to check in on this game in like a year. Right. And see if maybe the economy's a little bit more exciting and you know, whatever. But so much of this genre and really any kind of like live service game, I guess this kind of like fits into that sort of category is like will it be around in a year?

Russ Frushtick (32:40)

That's what I was going to say.

Griffin McElroy (32:41)

I know that that's like tough to. I generally don't sort of go for that kind of prognostication of like oh, who knows. But like.

Russ Frushtick (32:50)

Well here's what I'll say.

Griffin McElroy (32:50)

I just check it's sitting at 91 on like the Steam activity chart.

Russ Frushtick (32:55)

Well, I'll say they're at 50, around 50,000 peak concurrence per day right now. And I guarantee when Sony bought Bungie, knowing that they were working on their next shooter and it was going to be all online, they were expecting much higher than 50,000 peak concurrence. That's just on Steam. Obviously it's on consoles as well but. But I'm sure they were expecting more of a phenomenon right? Out of the gate.

Griffin McElroy (33:18)

Yeah. There's three times as many people playing Arc Raider, like, and that's an older, much more established game. But like, I don't know, man. I'm a little. I'm a bit concerned.

Russ Frushtick (33:32)

Yeah, yeah. With the Concord and the. What was the more recent one that just got axed?

Griffin McElroy (33:40)

I don't know.

Christopher Thomas Plant (33:41)

I think these are all like such different things and I worry about comparing every online game being compared to this and it being a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. The game sold over a million copies. The number is going up. Like, I don't know. I just.

Russ Frushtick (33:58)

It's more the investment. If someone's making an investment, whether that's a time investment or whether it's a literal monetary investment and I'm going to buy skins or whatever it is, you would want to know if the game's gonna be around in a year.

Griffin McElroy (34:09)

Yeah. I also think that a lot of this just comes down to that like, reputation stuff that we talked about at the top of the bit because the reviews have been pretty positive for this game. I think it has a very positive score right now on Steam. And I don't know, I was surprised when I saw that because of the just pure disdain that folks had for Marathon and everything it kind of represented. So like, I don't know, maybe it is having a slow start.

Christopher Thomas Plant (34:41)

I think the gap that they have to close and that they are running into now is they said we've done a totally different type of shooter before. We've gone from the competitive multiplayer to the living game MMO style shooter. And it felt like our fans followed us. And now we're doing that again. And what they're finding is that just like both of y' all hardcore Destiny 2 players who almost didn't play this game maybe wouldn't have played this game if not for this podcast. Right, right. And I think that is pretty common. I think there are a lot of people who play Destiny who see an Extraction shooter and they're now even older and they're like, wait, so you want me to get even more hardcore as I am older? No, no, thank you. And the recurring thing that you see is like once people play it, they're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, I can get into this. But that's a big ask for a lot of your fan base, especially as they get older and they're playing fewer and fewer games to say, hey, we need you to try a genre that you're already afraid of. And the first five hours are going to do Practically nothing to ease those concerns. Yeah, that's a big ask. Which again, is why I get to the. Weirdly, I think the people who are finding this game first in these early stages are either other extraction shooter people or weirdos like me who have none of that baggage. And you're like, I don't fucking know.

Griffin McElroy (36:08)

To me, this feels. You just want that. You just like that ghost in the shell shit. You're like, all about that one.

Christopher Thomas Plant (36:12)

Infinitely easier, honestly, infinitely easier to parse this game than to parse Destiny 2. Getting everything that you all are describing was absolute hell in Destiny 2. It was miserable every time I played that game with y'.

Russ Frushtick (36:29)

All.

Christopher Thomas Plant (36:29)

And it was fun because I was hanging out with you. But, like, dear God, if I had to hear about a new type of vendor that I needed to go to, I was just completely barfed out. But again, it's all expectations. And I think Bungie, in deciding to do this, there has to be this moment now where they're like, oh, well, fuck, we chased this genre. And it turns out our core fan base, this is not exactly what they were looking for.

Griffin McElroy (37:00)

But isn't. I mean, yeah, I feel like a lot of people could have. A lot of people could have guessed that, I think, when they first announced. I don't know. I want Bungie is such a. Like, the developers, the like, raw tonnage of talent at Bungie and like, institutional knowledge about what makes shooters feel good. Cause I do think they make the, in my opinion, the best feeling shooters in the business.

Christopher Thomas Plant (37:27)

Good. Bang, bang.

Griffin McElroy (37:28)

That stuff is like, all there. And I'm like, I think that it has been best executed when the people making it are clearly passionate about the thing that they are making. And I'm sure that there's lots of people who were passionate about making this game. And I think that some of that does come through.

Russ Frushtick (37:46)

I mean, the fact that it's such a swing is. I think it's a huge swing. Such a swing.

Griffin McElroy (37:50)

But at the same time, Destiny 3 also would have been a bigger swing. And in my opinion, probably a safer bet for Sony for, like.

Russ Frushtick (37:59)

It's still happening. Griffin.

Griffin McElroy (38:00)

Yeah. I mean, when.

Christopher Thomas Plant (38:02)

Yeah, it'll be a while.

Griffin McElroy (38:03)

Cooper, get off the pot on that one, man. That spring hair isn't as lively.

Christopher Thomas Plant (38:09)

I think that's the bigger question about the speculation of Marathon's life that I'm curious about is Bungie is not that big of a studio. It is not big enough to make Destiny three and make Marathon scale at the same time. So, like, they could be in Pre Pro for sure. And maybe, or even early design. But, like, I think that that is where the bigger decision has to get made about the future of what Bungie wants.

Griffin McElroy (38:36)

What's the studio gonna do? Yeah, for sure.

Christopher Thomas Plant (38:38)

That's tough. That said, the lore fucking rocks. Destiny lore sucks. I'm done with your fantasy Destiny lore fucking rules, dude.

Griffin McElroy (38:46)

Do not talk to me about destiny lore being shitty if you have not watched. If you have not watched a fucking 15 hour long. My name is byfucking Full Lore Breakdown of Sword Logic and don't fuck what part of Jedi.

Christopher Thomas Plant (38:57)

I'm glad that they understand.

Griffin McElroy (38:59)

Yeah.

Christopher Thomas Plant (38:59)

Split the nerds between fantasy and hardened sci fi with their space operas. It's great.

Griffin McElroy (39:05)

I could talk about this game for another hour. I think it does a lot of really interesting shit and it interests me more than arc raiders. I'm not talking about the quality of the thing because I don't know, I think arc raiders honestly has fewer rough edges about it. But there's so much interesting stuff. Even when you get killed, there are times where I'm like, that's interesting, huh? Okay, that's cool. Wow.

Christopher Thomas Plant (39:28)

We haven't even talked about Nona, the silkworm that creates all of your cybernetic suits and tells you, go kill yourself.

Griffin McElroy (39:37)

So, so cool. And like, I don't know, this game's been out for not that long and there is all of this kind of like player etiquette, like, happening. Yeah, Rooks, like, I went on the Discord and there's just like a rook channel on there where people are just like, here's the fucked up shit I did. Here's the dreams I crushed. Like, there's just like a lot of that stuff has already kind of taken root. And I think that that's also very interesting. I don't know. I don't know if this is the extraction shooter that makes me like fall in love with the genre or anything like that, but I am glad I played it and I do want to play some more of it. If we could ever actually get all together in the same room and play.

Christopher Thomas Plant (40:15)

Yeah, Griffin. To wrap up, I have a rook story that I want to share, which is I thought the rook meta was shifting towards rooks protect other rooks, that we're all just vultures out here. Scavenge. It was for about a day, it felt like I was coming across some really happy scenarios. And then I got to an exfil, loaded an exfil. It was guarded by a ton of the NPC robot characters. Big, big beastly Robots. And as I am waiting behind a shipping container, I see on the roof, maybe like 100 yards away from me, a rook with a sniper rifle. And I'm like, what are we doing here? We're both rooks. He knows what I am. I nod at him. He fires at me. I don't fire back. I come back out. He doesn't fire at me. Okay, we get it. We're not here to fight. Put on my. My robot mask. I walk over to the exfil site. We're all good. He's there, I'm there. And then I see that gun raise. Sprint to get into the exfil site. I get downed. Whatever you can exfil in this game. If you're down, that's all. Okay? Five, four, three, two. He fucking executes me right before the exfil pops.

Griffin McElroy (41:31)

Not. Not even enough time to take your shit.

Christopher Thomas Plant (41:33)

Exactly.

Griffin McElroy (41:35)

Just slimed you just to slime you.

Christopher Thomas Plant (41:36)

That's slimed me to slide.

Griffin McElroy (41:37)

That's Brooke shit. 101, man.

Christopher Thomas Plant (41:40)

It's bad when you know, like, oh, man, I'm gonna show up on a highlight video. This sucks.

Griffin McElroy (41:45)

Yeah. Don't trust a brook, basically, ever. That's good. That's my number one marathon pro tip.

Christopher Thomas Plant (41:51)

Should we. Let's take a break.

Griffin McElroy (41:53)

Yeah, let's take a break and we'll answer some reader mail. Crack that bag.

Russ Frushtick (41:58)

Okay, so we've got a bunch of reader mail coming at you. Some of this is from a couple weeks ago, but we wanted to cover as much we could because we've missed a couple about Pacopia. I think in that episode we mentioned that this was one of the only, maybe the only, Pokemon game that does not have Pokemon in the title. And as far as we can tell, there have been two. Thank you, readers. Brian wrote in to say that Pocken Tournament does not have Pokemon title. And Joe wrote in to say that Detective Pikachu also does not.

Griffin McElroy (42:28)

Ah, yes. Yes, you are right.

Russ Frushtick (42:32)

Case wrote in said, my partner and I have been loving Pocopia this past week. We've both been playing on our own Switch 2s, and I'll usually take the handheld shift, which can be more uncomfortable in a longer play session. Does anyone have good recommendations for grips while in handheld mode? I've continued to use the satisfy Zen Grip 2. They make pretty good grip. What's nice about is you can dock it, which is a rare commodity. I know there are a bunch of grips out there. I don't know if you guys have used any, but that is the one

Griffin McElroy (43:01)

that no, but I need one. I've been playing so much Procopia still and after a long sesh in handheld mode, I could feel it, man.

Russ Frushtick (43:08)

I will say the one thing that I've been doing more that I very rarely did with the Switch one is I'll put it on a desk and use a Pro controller. And because of the larger screen size, it's like actually viable and enjoyable. So that's another alternative. We have another letter. This one comes from Christian. Since it came up, you might already have answered this, but do I need to play Death Stranding before playing Death Stranding 2? I'm excited to play the sequel on PC, especially because I've never experienced any Kojima game. What do you guys think?

Griffin McElroy (43:40)

I mean, it helps, but I never finished Death Stranding one, nor do I plan to. So it's a big fucking ask. There is ample like recap shit like from the main menu you can recap the entire plot of the first game.

Russ Frushtick (43:55)

If anything, I think it tells a better story because it's so focused on the actual plot beats of the first game rather than getting lost in the actual game.

Griffin McElroy (44:03)

Which Death Stranding sickos may disagree. I don't. I don't think it's worth it. Play the whole game.

Christopher Thomas Plant (44:07)

I prefer Death Stranding 1 as a game. I think you should play Death Stranding 2 first. Death Training 2 will teach you how to actually just read the game. And then playing Death Training one is almost like playing on hard mode because it's. It. It's way less forgiving. It's also the. The story is you should play Death

Russ Frushtick (44:31)

Stranding and also I would say just largely not as much fun because like combat is a mess and Death Straining one whether intentionally or not, just like

Christopher Thomas Plant (44:38)

it depends on what you want from fun. If. If what you're wanting is the combat and stuff, you definitely play death straining 2. Death straining 1 is much more of

Russ Frushtick (44:45)

just like a stealth game with deliveries.

Christopher Thomas Plant (44:47)

Yes, stealth and construction.

Russ Frushtick (44:49)

I do love it. But yeah, no two I think is much more approachable. We have another letter. This one comes from Samantha. Definitely Recommend sway the Spire 2's co op. It works really well. It's super fun and a different way to engage the game. And there are cards and events specific to multiplayer that change things up to keep it a bit more interesting. My spouse and I have been playing on the couch at night with his Steam link and my Steam deck. That sounds like a good way to do it.

Griffin McElroy (45:12)

That does sound fun. Yeah. No, I want. I'm. I am eager to do it. I still think I'm going to wait. Maybe I'll save that as like the exciting new thing I know is going to be there when I, you know, the game is out in full access.

Russ Frushtick (45:24)

Yeah, it seems like a really fun just multiplayer. Like just the idea that you're like all sharing strategies and things like that would be pretty interesting. And really no one in the genre has attempted it, so it's cool to see. This last letter comes from Mike. I'd like to respectfully disagree with Plant on the differences between a battle royale and an extraction shooter. We were talking about Marathon again last week. I think Plant was making the point that they're similar. I don't remember your initial point. Anyway, for me, the anxiety of an extraction shooter and a battle royale anxiety are not the same. I think the biggest difference is that you start with all the same equipment in a battle royale. And RNG is important for your kit, which takes a bit of the pressure off. And extraction shooters, you either go in with good gear and the fear of losing it or bad gear and you have an automatic disadvantage. This gameplay loop is a lot harder for me and it seems like a larger risk of wasting time rather than loading up a battle royale.

Christopher Thomas Plant (46:20)

Yeah, I think that gets to what we were talking about earlier about the structure of Marathon is if you go into an extraction shooter and you think your experience is about the loot, it's going to be, I think, a pretty miserable experience. Yeah, the loot is the bonus, but the experience is the reward. And the. What I said last week was that you have a better chance of actually, quote, winning in an extraction shooter of getting out than you do in a battle royale, just numbers wise. So it depends on what your. What your goal is. But I, I completely understand this point. If, if you play these games and you're. You're wherever your brain or your heart tugs you at is, the items is the loot, an extraction shooter is gonna be a big ask.

Griffin McElroy (47:10)

Yeah. I still think this game could do more to try and have its cake and eat it too a little bit. But it does also like, I love the sponsored kits. Like, I know that there is a way of playing this game without having to risk the shit that I have and just get in there and get some more experience fighting and like find some more materials for my upgrade. Like, I really do think that this has not been nearly as big of a concern for me as I thought it was going to be.

Russ Frushtick (47:36)

Yeah, I think that's right.

Griffin McElroy (47:38)

Honorable mentions. Anyone been watching? Playing? Did you see Project Hail Mary Chris.

Christopher Thomas Plant (47:45)

I did. Did we talk about that last project? Unfortunately only saw the beginning of it so I won't, I was gonna, I won't spoil for anybody else who sees it. I'll just say that it was a very enjoyable movie and it's so nice to see a big budget blockbuster that's like beautiful as in visually interesting. It has great framing, they use lots of practical effects, they're bright colors. It doesn't have that kind of sludgy pasty look that we've come to expect from a lot of big budget stuff that is not called Avatar. And Ryan Gosling. The most beautiful special effect of all. You know, you gotta look at that face in sweaters and oh, he's just, he's got it all going.

Russ Frushtick (48:33)

I've been watching the, I think it's the fourth season of Shoresy on Hulu. This is the Canadian non professional hockey show from the creator of Letterkenny and it's great. It's like weirdly warm hearted and sweet mixed with like EDM and like kind of shameless sexuality stuff but I don't know, I, I.

Griffin McElroy (48:57)

Capital S. Shameless. Not like the Russ Freshstick is like judging.

Russ Frushtick (49:01)

No, no, yeah.

Griffin McElroy (49:02)

Correct people with their shameless sexual.

Russ Frushtick (49:05)

Yeah, yeah, no, right. They, they don't hold back is what I'm saying. And, and that's fine. Good on them. But yeah, it's really well written and, and lovely characters and I, I'm always happy to see it come up again.

Griffin McElroy (49:18)

I've been playing a few things but I think we've talked about all of them. Barry, Barry, Barry. I got quite into following Russ's recommendation and liked that one a lot. Very self contained which I do appreciate from time to time from my incremental games. A lot of Pocopia. Just a lot. I finished the main story of it and now I don't know, I've just sort of been undergoing projects on the palette town with Henry. We just finished up building a huge nine room apartment complex for all the Eevee and Eeveelutions in Pallet town. It's just like, I don't know. I haven't fucked around building stuff in a game like this since like you know, early Minecraft days. So I'm very much enjoying that. Played a little Diablo 4. You can play as the new Paladin class if you pre order the next expansion which I think is out soonish but I don't know that I've played enough to really comment on how that game has changed. The thing I really do want to talk about on Amazon prime, the new season of Last One Laughing uk. This is the truly, truly brilliant kind of concept for a show, a reality show with comedians. And they were not the first to sort of come up with it. If you're familiar with Documental, the Japanese television program, program is very much the same. They lock 10 comedians in a room for six hours. And if you laugh once, you get a yellow card. If you laugh another time, you get a red card and you are ejected from the competition. And if you watch Taskmaster, you're gonna know about 75% of the cast on this season. Sam Campbell is on it. He's a fucking stone cold killer. Bob Mortimer is back from season one, who is pound for pound, I think the one of the funniest living human beings. Diane Morgan, who plays Philomena Kunk from Kunk on Earth.

Christopher Thomas Plant (51:19)

Wow.

Griffin McElroy (51:19)

Is on this season. Mel Submur's Row right here.

Christopher Thomas Plant (51:24)

This is nuts.

Griffin McElroy (51:25)

It's wild. It's a really, really wild list. And from the jump, it is just like absolutely astonishingly funny. So many people taking so many heavy swings at each other, trying to make each other laugh and then having to literally stand up to remove themselves physically from like the location where the jokes are taking place before they laugh. Like, to me, there is nothing funnier than that. So I think there's only three episodes of it out so far. New episodes are coming on Wednesdays and I am waiting with bated breath because it is hysterical. Plant. What have we talked about this week?

Christopher Thomas Plant (52:01)

Oh, we've talked about so much. We talked about Marathon. We talked about Shoresy. We talked about Last1 laughing IV Pacopia and Project Hail Mary.

Griffin McElroy (52:12)

That's a lot of stuff.

Russ Frushtick (52:13)

A lot of stuff covered.

Griffin McElroy (52:14)

A lot of stuff. If you want to hear us talk about more stuff, may I suggest going to patreon.com thebesties and joining our Patreon. It helps us out a lot. And you also get access to Sweet Boko and episodes of the Resties and just all kinds of bracket battles episode.

Russ Frushtick (52:33)

We have a very good one coming at you. We just, we just did a restes on a very cool racing game called Screamer. And then we have bracket battles coming at you first week of April, which is a really fun one. I'm very excited.

Griffin McElroy (52:46)

Patreon.com TheBestes Again, do you want to shout out some members?

Russ Frushtick (52:50)

Oh, yeah, absolutely. We have. Sorry, I'm going to butcher this. Seroja B. I'm sure there's a better way to pronounce that. But I'm going to just go with that. Eric R. Jacob M. And just the letter V. Could be vendetta. Could be those aliens from the 80s we don't know.

Griffin McElroy (53:05)

Could be. Thank you all so much for supporting us and thank you to our dear listeners now for listening to us next week. I don't know that we have a game selected.

Russ Frushtick (53:16)

I'm actively working on it but it has not been fully confirmed. So we're gonna keep it up in the air. It'll be a mystery episode.

Griffin McElroy (53:24)

Join us for a mystery game next week. That new Legacy of Kain game comes out March 31st.

Russ Frushtick (53:30)

Oh, that might be fit.

Griffin McElroy (53:32)

We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. So join us next week as we play more games and we talk about them to you for you with you here on the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

Christopher Thomas Plant (53:53)

Sam.