Repo and Inzoi Will Terrify You – For Very Different Reasons

Summary

Summary of "Repo and Inzoi Will Terrify You – For Very Different Reasons"

Podcast: The Besties
Hosts: Chris Plante, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Russ Frushtick
Episode Title: Repo and Inzoi Will Terrify You – For Very Different Reasons
Release Date: March 21, 2025

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Introduction

In this lively episode of The Besties, Griffin McElroy and Russ Frushtick dive into two contrasting video games: Repo and Inzoi. Through a blend of humor, personal anecdotes, and detailed game analysis, they explore what makes each game unique and why they might resonate differently with players.

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Repo: Survival Multiplayer Horror Robot Game

Overview:
Repo is introduced as a survival multiplayer horror game where players control robot characters navigating through procedurally generated levels to collect valuables and reach extraction points while evading terrifying monsters. Inspired by games like Lethal Company, Repo differentiates itself with its physics-based interactions and comedic elements.

Key Features & Discussions:

1. Gameplay Mechanics:

   • Extraction-Based Survival: Players must gather valuables and escape before being killed by monsters.
   • Physics-Based Challenges: Items like lamps can be thrown at monsters, though they may break, adding a strategic layer.
   • Quote: Griffin humorously explains the fragility of items, stating, “If you are carrying a lamp, you can chuck that lamp right at that fucking monster, bonk him right in the head a few times. Maybe you'll kill him. Probably not. You might daze him.”

2. Multiplayer Dynamics:

   • Proximity Chat: Encourages teamwork and communication but adds tension when teammates are eliminated.
   • Quote: Griffin describes the proximity chat system, “If someone gets too far away, you can't hear them as well anymore. You hear someone turn a corner in the distance and be like, hey, what's that?”

3. Humor and Difficulty:

   • Humorous Elements: The game incorporates funny interactions, such as fragile treasures causing chaos when mishandled.
   • High Difficulty: Monsters like the Huntsman can kill players in one hit, making the game intensely challenging.
   • Quote: Russ shares his frustration, “I turned a corner. There's a huntsman, he shoots me before I even have a chance to like duck and hide under a thing.”

4. Replayability and Community:

   • The roguelike nature ensures each playthrough is different, enhancing replay value.
   • Potential for streaming and community engagement due to its humorous and unpredictable nature.

Conclusion on Repo:
Both hosts agree that Repo offers a unique blend of horror and comedy, making it an entertaining choice for multiplayer gaming. Priced at an affordable $10, they recommend it highly, anticipating its popularity among streamers and gaming communities.

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Inzoi: Advanced Life Simulation Game

Overview:
Inzoi is presented as a sophisticated life simulation game akin to The Sims, developed by Inzoi Studio and published by Krafton. Utilizing Unreal Engine 5, it promises highly realistic character models and advanced AI interactions, setting it apart from traditional life sims.

Key Features & Discussions:

1. Realistic Character Models and Animations:

   • High Fidelity Graphics: Characters feature detailed facial animations and realistic movements.
   • Integration with Facial Capture: Players can use webcams to map their facial expressions to in-game characters.
   • Quote: Griffin marvels, “It's like a vtuber where you're seeing your full facial animations within the character model of the game.”

2. Customization and Generative AI:

   • Extensive Customization: Players can design cities, homes, and characters with a high degree of freedom.
   • Generative AI Features: Allows importing real-life images and creating unique in-game items through AI, raising discussions about ethical implications.
   • Quote: Russ questions the AI's role, “I honestly don't know where this is being pulled from. They say it's internal copyright-free stuff, right.”

3. Gameplay Mechanics:

   • Direct Controls vs. Point-and-Click: Unlike The Sims, Inzoi uses WASD controls for more direct interaction.
   • Needs and Moods Management: Players must manage their characters' needs, such as hygiene, hunger, and validation, which influence behavior and interactions.
   • Quote: Griffin highlights the complexity, “You have a needs meter. There's eight needs. Your hygiene, your hunger, your... you manage your moods.”

4. Cultural Diversity and Expansions:

   • Diverse Settings: Includes cities inspired by Seoul and other Asian locales, offering a fresh perspective compared to the Western-centric Sims.
   • Potential for Expansion: Extensive customization tools hint at future content and community-driven expansions.
   • Quote: Griffin notes, “They are very much kicking off Korean game publisher. They publish PUBG.”

Challenges and Concerns:

• Learning Curve: Both hosts acknowledge that Inzoi might be daunting for new players due to its depth and complexity.
• AI Ethical Considerations: The use of generative AI for content creation brings up concerns about originality and the impact on artists.

Conclusion on Inzoi:
While Inzoi impresses with its graphical prowess and detailed simulation, the hosts recognize a significant learning curve that might limit its immediate appeal. However, its innovative features and cultural diversity position it as a promising contender in the life simulation genre.

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Other Mentions and Final Thoughts

Additional Game Discussions:

• Blueprints: A new game mentioned under an embargo, generating curiosity among the hosts.
• Fuser: Griffin discusses his enthusiasm for the delisted DJ game Fuser, praising its creative music mixing tools.
• Enter the Gungeon & Noita: Russ shares his experiences with action roguelikes, highlighting the importance of community mods in enhancing gameplay.

Community and Support:

• Patreon Acknowledgments: The hosts thank new Patreon supporters, fostering a sense of community and appreciation.
• Upcoming Content: They tease future episodes, including a new Bracket Battles episode and collaborative streams.

Quotes:

• Russ on Inzoi’s AI: “There is a lot that the game does not bluntly explain to you that will eventually spread through word of mouth.”
• Griffin on multiplayer fun: “Seeing someone hit another person with a baseball bat and watching their tiny little robot body just fly 300ft into the sky... It's truly hysterical.”

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Conclusion

In this episode, Griffin McElroy and Russ Frushtick provide a comprehensive and entertaining analysis of Repo and Inzoi, highlighting their distinct genres and unique features. Through their engaging dialogue, they offer valuable insights for gamers seeking both thrilling multiplayer experiences and deep simulation gameplay. Whether you're into survival horror or intricate life sims, this episode of The Besties ensures you're well-informed about the latest offerings in the gaming world.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Russ [00:00]: “Griffin, I found myself in possession of 726 big mouth Billy Basses...”
• Griffin [06:14]: Introduction to Repo and its similarities to Lethal Company.
• Griffin [09:11]: Explaining proximity chat in Repo.
• Russ [22:14]: “I think people are gonna be playing this game for a while...”
• Griffin [28:24]: Discussing "Inzoi's" realistic character models.
• Russ [43:39]: Concerns about generative AI in Inzoi.
• Griffin [57:00]: Praise for Fuser and its creative potential.

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For more detailed insights and future episode updates, be sure to subscribe to The Besties podcast on your preferred streaming platform!

Transcript

[Russ Rashigan]

Griffin, I found myself in possession of 726 big mouth Billy Basses, and I want to know what you think I should do with them. Well, and sorry I messed up. It's actually Big Mouth Billy's bass. It's like attorneys general.

[Griffin McElroy]

Is that true?

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's interesting. I think that. First of all, how handy are you with a pair of pliers and tools? Not at all.

[Russ Rashigan]

Okay.

[Griffin McElroy]

I was gonna say you could crack all of those and, like, there's probably just trace amounts of rare earth minerals inside of each Big Mouth Billy bass.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

But it's. You know, you add it all up over time, and all of a sudden you're. You're a very wealthy man.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, sure. I should mention, I don't actually have physical contact with the boxes.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Rashigan]

It's more. More an assurance or a verbal promise.

[Griffin McElroy]

You have a verbal promise from a Big Mouth Billy's bass supplier?

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah. Pretty esteemed. Okay. Out in Hackensack.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

What are they doing. What are they doing with them now?

[Russ Rashigan]

As far as I'm aware, they're just storing them because they've got a warehouse and they. They're really just, like, looking to unload.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay.

[Russ Rashigan]

And they did show me one, and it was in very good shape. And then they showed me a bunch of boxes, which I was assured also had Big Mouth Billy's bass in them.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, I think they may. This sounds like a shell game. They may be scamming you a little bit. Where they show you one piece of the. And this happened to me.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

With the new Furbies.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

Where I had a supplier, and they were like, yeah, all 600 of these boxes are filled with the new Furbies. Here's one to look at. I was like, hell, yeah. I dished out probably $350,000 for that.

[Russ Rashigan]

Worth it. Worth it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes. But then I open up the other 600 boxes. You're not gonna believe this. Rocks. In every single one, there was rocks.

[Russ Rashigan]

Sometimes some of the Furby variants do look like rocks, so it's possible.

[Griffin McElroy]

But I was gonna do, like, my thing with the 600, and I guess one furbies was going to be sort of, you know, fetish related. Not for myself, but like, for production of content for the.

[Russ Rashigan]

For people that. Like that.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, for people that. And I'm not gonna yuck any. Yum. Actually, I will yuck this one. Yum.

[Russ Rashigan]

Really? The Furby? Yum.

[Griffin McElroy]

I will yuck this one. Yum.

[Russ Rashigan]

Okay, don't.

[Griffin McElroy]

Hey, you put that down. Stop it. Yeah, that's a Furby, there's nothing for you there.

[Russ Rashigan]

You can fuck these fish though.

[Griffin McElroy]

What started this? What started this? In your mind? You don't have it. You're just shaking your head.

[Russ Rashigan]

I'm inside the bit I've been singing. Give me back that filet o fish. Give me that fish to my son Such that. Now he sings it back to me.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's beautiful, man.

[Russ Rashigan]

Just. It went from there.

[Griffin McElroy]

What a. What a well adjusted child you're creating over there. My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best games of the week.

[Russ Rashigan]

My name is Russ Rashigan. Of the best games of the week. What a quick introduction.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's fucking right.

[Russ Rashigan]

Guys, maybe that should be how it is all the time.

[Griffin McElroy]

There's just two. Just the two of us talking about some random games because Justin and Chris fell into the same toilet. Yeah, but that's okay. We're going to be doing a just a really cash hang sesh with Du Bois and we're going to be talking mostly about two games that Russ and I have been playing this week. One is topping the Steam charts and one almost certainly will top the Steam charts when it officially launches, I believe next week. We are talking about Repo, the survival multiplayer horror robot people game. Robot people game. We're also talking about Enzo, which is also sort of a robot people game by way of the Sims, but also unreal5 and it is pretty wild. We're gonna talk about both of those games after this quick break.

[Justin McElroy]

Hi, my name is Justin McElroy and I'm a paid endorser. You know, we talk a lot about the numbers going up and the fun of that here on the Besties, but you could really put that to good use if you're somebody that loves working with numbers and spreadsheets. See the. You get experience points, you get the gems, you get the coins. It's the same thing you'd be learning at UNC Kenan Flagler Business School Master of Accounting Program. If you're a sort of gamer that likes poring over inventory and character stats, you got an analytical mind. Maybe. And maybe you'd make an awesome accountant. You know, no matter the state of the job market, every industry needs accountants. You need to know where the money's going.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right?

[Justin McElroy]

You can't have a good business unless you got a money person who's like, we don't have an enough, we gotta make more. And you know, accountants are always in demand, so it's a great opportunity to start a career. UNC Keenan Flagler offers a top rank online Master of Accounting degree. And if you're thinking of switching industries, going for a new career, pick up a program with a proven ROI and a 98% job placement rate. You could be a Tar Heel in less than one year, folks. Learn more at Accounting. UNC edit you.

[Russ Rashigan]

Repo. Repo is apparently an acronym and I don't know what it stands for.

[Griffin McElroy]

Really. Excellent.

[Russ Rashigan]

It's got periods in the title.

[Griffin McElroy]

Pick up orders. Yeah, this is. So did you play much? What was it called? Not Brutal Company. Was that what it was called?

[Russ Rashigan]

Lethal Company.

[Griffin McElroy]

Lethal Company, yes. Did you play much of that?

[Russ Rashigan]

I didn't. I do have. For some reason. I have the Fortnite skin and that's really where my knowledge begins and ends. I'm not sure why that happened.

[Griffin McElroy]

I played it a few times, mostly for like Stream with Justin and Travis. And I feel like it's important to talk about this before we get into repo because it does feel like there's a lot of sort of similarities. My knowledge of this like, subgenre, this very specific subgenre of like multiplayer survival horror sort of treasure hunts, it's like an extraction. An extraction game. Yeah. I guess that is a good way of putting it. It's quite limited, but this game really does feel like it was informed by Lethal Company.

[Russ Rashigan]

I think that's right.

[Griffin McElroy]

Like Lethal Company. In repo you control a little robot guy. It is.

[Russ Rashigan]

But you were robots in Lethal Company.

[Griffin McElroy]

Those people? No, I don't believe so. I think you were just sort of like faceless clones, sort of. In repo, you play as these little robots and it is fully a roguelike. Every run you start over from scratch. You go into one of a selection of levels that are randomly selected for you.

[Russ Rashigan]

They've got. What is it, A wizard castle. They've got a haunted mansion.

[Griffin McElroy]

There's a scientific facility. There's all kinds of stuff. Yeah, you and I think up to like six players.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah. Max is out at six, which is wild. Seems chaos.

[Griffin McElroy]

But yeah, you. You go through these different locations and you try to collect valuables and get them to an extraction point where they will be cashed out. And then you get back on your truck that you came in on and you get the hell out of there. And then you get to shop for wonderful little upgrades and tools and weapons and stuff like that. Things that set Repo apart. That was all true of Lethal Company. Two things that set Repo apart. It is entirely physics based. So if you are creeping along and you see one of the many horrible monsters that will absolutely Kill you in one hit. In this game, if you are carrying a lamp, you can chuck that lamp right at that fucking monster, bonk him right in the head a few times. Maybe you'll kill him. Probably not. You might daze him. I'll tell you what will happen. That lamp's gonna break. That is the other sort of like humor vector of Repo is that you are trying to get all of these little extremely fragile items into a hovering cart that you can take back to the extraction point. And man, if you bonk anything with them, they are going to shatter and you will lose the money from. Is hysterically funny when all of these things start happening all at the same time.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah. So you've got those base gameplay mechanics, but then they also layer in just like silly voice chat visuals because you're playing as these characters that are, as Griffin mentioned, they're robots. They kind of look like the alien on the Android logo. That's like the closest I can think.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes. The way that they talk. So this is another sort of lethal company thing is like, you are encouraged not to use Discord or whatever while you play this game. In fact, I would say it's pretty much necessary that you don't use Discord or something like that while you play this game because it is proximity chat based with your team. And what that means is when you talk, like into your microphone, you see the character's mouth move, sort of like Terrence and Philip style, just like opening and closing a trash can lid. But it also means, like, if someone gets too far away, you can't hear them as well anymore. And so you hear like, someone turn a corner in the distance and be like, hey, what's that? And you're like, well, did they just leave my proximity or were they just murdered by a monster? Because if it's the latter, you're not gonna hear them anymore.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, if someone gets knocked off a cliff, you'll like hear their. Yeah, it'll trail off automatically.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's really, really, really funny. But then there's also lots of stuff where like, some of the treasures do wild shit to you. Right. Some of the valuables that you're trying to collect do wild shit. There's like a doll that it's worth a lot of money, but as soon as you pick it up, it starts throwing a fucking crazy tantrum. And anything it touches, it will just sort of obliterate as it whirls its arms and legs around. Including you or other players.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, I don't even know the Strat, I guess you have to, like, fling.

[Griffin McElroy]

It, just yeet it and hope for the best. Yeah, I usually do not pick that one up because usually it does more damage to the valuables I've already collected than it is worth. My favorite is there's an hourglass that when you pick it up, it makes you move very slowly, but it also makes your voice extremely low and slow, which is when that first happened, when Russ and I were playing together. It was so unexpected and so fucking funny that we just passed the hourglass back and forth for a while so everybody could hear what it sounded like.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, there's some other. I looked on YouTube. I didn't know this when we were playing, but there are other pro strats where it's like, if you're looking up, it'll pitch your voice up, and if you're looking down, it'll pitch your voice down.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's very, very funny.

[Russ Rashigan]

There's also voice to speech, text to speech. So if you're typing, it'll automatically use robot voice to communicate to the other players.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes, I like that a lot. There is a thing about. There's a few things about this genre of games, these extraction roguelikes that do not. I don't know, they don't really light my fire, particularly. This is a roguelike, as far as I can tell, there is no progression between runs.

[Russ Rashigan]

Not that we've seen.

[Griffin McElroy]

Not that I've seen. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I have not played enough of this maybe, to speak about it.

[Russ Rashigan]

It seems counter to the spirit. I could see them adding cosmetics or whatever, but.

[Griffin McElroy]

And that's fine. Right? I like stuff like that in a game, but since playing Wonder Stop, I'm trying to put away my childish thing. No, I like that kind of stuff in a game, especially one that is as brutal and difficult as repo is. Because the other thing is, the monsters in this game will fuck you up really fast. There's one called the Huntsman, which is just a guy, and he walks around and he has a shotgun, and if he shoots you, you die and you run. If you're playing single player, your run's over. If you're playing with other players, they could run in and grab your head so that you can revive. But it is a hard, hard game, which lends itself to the fear factor of it. Right. It makes every monster encounter pretty scary. Right. And as you play through the game, you get money and you go to a shop between each level where you can buy things. There's exorbitantly expensive stuff like a shotgun. Right. Like, that's pretty obviously useful, but then there's like grenades and stuff like that. But when you start out, you have very little in the way of defending yourself or. Which I understand that there's sort of a power curve to it, but I have had so many runs where just in the first level, I turned a corner. There's a huntsman, he shoots me before I even have a chance to like duck and hide under a thing. Which is sort of the go to Strat when you start out. And then my run's over and that's not as specially fun.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah. It does make me wonder if it's a spelunky thing or even like a Noida thing. I've been playing no Eat A recently where there are mechanics that we just don't know.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sure.

[Russ Rashigan]

That will make those earlier runs much more fair.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes. Right. Like.

[Russ Rashigan]

Like we didn't know the thing where you could pick each other up.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right. Yeah. So you can. There's only certain objects that you can pick up. Right. Valuables you can pick up and then items that you can use, like health packs and grenades and whatever those might be scattered throughout later levels. I have not found any, but you can also. There's a button where you can turn yourself basically into an object that other players can then pick up and throw around and put up on high shelves and do all that stuff.

[Russ Rashigan]

You could also launch yourself with that button.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes. As like a projectile tumble, dive. Right. So there's as if you're sprinting forward and you hit that. Now you can use that to damage an enemy or knock them over. It also does damage to you. It is hard. It's hard to pull off. Right. There are ways to counter each of the monsters that you face. As far as I know. I'm sure I could watch a YouTube video that could inform me what to do when that fucking horrible little duck starts following me around.

[Russ Rashigan]

I think the point with the duck is that so long as you don't touch it, it's just chill. It's like psyduck.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay, well, that hasn't been my experience.

[Russ Rashigan]

Again, I think that's sort of my point is I think there's a lot that the game does not bluntly explain to you that will eventually spread through word of mouth.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right. That's cool. It is a really funny multiplayer. I think that it has its own sort of siloed off single player mode.

[Russ Rashigan]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, it does. And it's not really any different from the multiplayer mode, except that it doesn't make you wait around quite as much, I suppose. Oh, sure, yeah. But I don't really like that at all.

[Russ Rashigan]

It's not really the point.

[Griffin McElroy]

It simply is not the point. The point is, like, it is a really funny, stressful game to play with, like, buddies, and I think it fills that role very, very nicely. And I think that that was also true of Lethal Company. But I don't know. This probably speaks more to my own kind of, like, preference and where I am at with my gaming time and gaming habits, where, like, I don't really spend a lot of time plunked down in front of my computer and microphone playing online games with a bunch of friends. And so, like, I don't know how. How hooked it's going to continue to keep me aside from, like, I. I can see us streaming this one, like, on. On Clubhouse and stuff quite a bit.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, that would be very good. I. I also think when you and I played, obviously just two players, I think it is designed with the difficulty in my. I think it's designed for, like, three or four.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes.

[Russ Rashigan]

Because I could see there's an element of, like, I'm gonna draw enemies away from the pack to, like, distract them. Or you kind of gang up on enemies to, like, take it out. When it's two people, one person instantly gets killed.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right. And the other person just kind of like, well, do I. Yeah. Can I save them or should I.

[Russ Rashigan]

Just, like, invariably, it just ends the run very quickly. So that is sort of a pro tip, I think, from a core. Like, in the way that Helldivers, I think, is a really perfect, like, oh, we've got 45 minutes. No one has been, like, leveling up their character. It's not like destiny where you have to be caught up. I think this fills that role really nicely. Like, this is the sort of thing that I could easily see someone filming an evening with with a bunch of friends, rather than having to. Yeah, again, go through the process of making sure everyone's, like, ready and kitted out and things like that.

[Griffin McElroy]

I think if you are familiar with Lethal Company, I have been enjoying Repo much more than that one, because that one was. It felt a lot more like a lot more sort of slow creeping around, cautious, maneuvering around different things, trying not to fall down off a broken bridge and die instantly. And this one is much more. I don't know. If a monster spots you, you can run and crouch and hide under a table, and the game is pretty tactile.

[Russ Rashigan]

I can't hide in anything. I was kind of Stunned, because you can get your body to be so tiny, like, at the tiniest little cupboard you can get into.

[Griffin McElroy]

And it's also, I think, just because of the physics and the, you know, hiding under a table with someone else and looking at them as they whisper to you and seeing their tiny little robot mouth flapping. When Russ and I were playing yesterday, he was, like, adjusting his headset or something, and it was making this awful, awful, awful racket over the microphone. And while that was happening, his character's robot mouth was just like. It is just a very, very, very funny, very funny game.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah. It gives me hope that, like, people. I mean, this has happened time and time again with a bunch of different genres, Battle Royale and whatever, roguelikes, et cetera, that, you know, one installment comes out and it's kind of like a base version of the concept.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right.

[Russ Rashigan]

And I'm not saying I don't know the history well enough to know if Lethal Company was like, first take on this, like, micro roguelike extraction game horror thing.

[Griffin McElroy]

I mean, clear. That has been a mode I. I know in, like, lots and lots and lots of different games.

[Russ Rashigan]

I'm getting the fuck out, I think is also similar to that, for sure.

[Griffin McElroy]

But I cannot believe you said the full name, the full title of that.

[Russ Rashigan]

Maybe it's not. Maybe that's not what it stands for. I don't know. Yeah, but this one, I think, is, like, just an evolution of that genre in a way that is, like, very creative and looks completely different from any other games in that genre. It has, like, a PS1 3D.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, it's more. I would say it's more early PS2, maybe. I don't know. It's a little bit slicker than that. Than all that. It definitely has, like, a sort of stylistic kind of graininess to it that I think it looks great. And also genuinely pretty scary in the way that when you're on a Dark Souls run and you have, you know, a million souls and you're just trying to get to a bonfire, all of a sudden, every enemy that you run into is the scariest thing ever. Like, in Repo, when you have a cart full of valuables and you turn a corner and, you know, fucking no Face is standing there waiting for you. It's terrifying because you are so stressed out. You're so.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, this is not good. No Face. This is not nice. No Face.

[Griffin McElroy]

No. This is mid sort of gross frog transformation.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, he's not riding the subway in this one.

[Griffin McElroy]

No, he's not. He's in the Baths and he's barfing out gold nuggets.

[Russ Rashigan]

My funniest. The funniest moment that I remember was you were in the other room and you're like, oh, shit. And I'm like, what? And you were like a giant face. I didn't even see it. And I just like, ran away and hid in a cupboard and you join me in the cupboards and we're chilling in this cupboard and then we like do a little peek out and holy shit, it's the biggest fucking face I've ever seen face. It's like an Android face in a tiny little haunted mansion room.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Rashigan]

So funny. I just like. They take so many swings with the different monster types and you really never know what you're going to be up against.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. And I tell you, it feels extremely expandable. This, like, this concept. It seems like there is a lot of stuff you could add into this game, even like new modes and stuff like that. We even talk about the fact that when you are playing multiplayer, if you lose, if everybody dies and you get the game over, which will happen, which will happen over and over and over again before the game is really over. It sends you to this scrapyard arena where you and all of your friends drop into an arena and you have to kill each other using the tools and objects that you have been maybe utilizing against the monsters in the game. And it's really very, very, very funny because you could find a tranquilizer gun off the ground and try and pop one of your friends real fast to knock him out. And then you just kind of pick them up and drop them gingerly over the edge. Or you just like, as someone's coming at you with a sword, you can topple a statue over on top of them. Just all of the different.

[Russ Rashigan]

But the physics is so awkward that trying to do anything deftly is nearly impossible.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right.

[Russ Rashigan]

So it just looks very, very funny.

[Griffin McElroy]

Seeing someone hit another person with a baseball bat and watching their tiny little robot body just fly 300ft into the sky as they scream like Jesse and James blasting off again. It's, it's. It's truly, truly hysterical. And I really appreciate a game where, like, I don't know, humor is so inherent to, like, all of its different systems.

[Russ Rashigan]

I think it's fucking $10.

[Griffin McElroy]

Jesus.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, like, it's great. Yeah, it's really, really good. I'm glad we played it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, me too. That's repo. I think people are gonna be playing this game for a while. I think Streamers are gonna be playing this game for a while and it's 10 bucks. So that gets our seal of approval. I don't know what that means. We don't do that here. And also, it'd be fucked up to give anything the seal of approval without Chris and Justin's endorsement.

[Russ Rashigan]

No, I think we can just do it.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay. I guess we have a quorum.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, we do it.

[Griffin McElroy]

We're going to take a quick break. When we get back, we're going to talk to you about a wildly different game called In Zoe right after this.

[Russ Rashigan]

This episode of the Besties is sponsored by Factor. As you know, I'm not very good at cooking. I oftentimes, you know, don't have the time to cook or I'm bad at it. These two things happen quite a bit. Thankfully, there is Factor. Factor does chef made gourmet meals that make eating well super easy, especially for me. They're dietitian approved, ready to heat and eat in two minutes. And they can fuel you right, and make you feel great no matter what life throws at you. Factor arrives fresh and fully prepared, perfect for any active, busy lifestyle. With 40 options across eight dietary preferences on the menu each week, it's easy to pick meals tailored to your goals. For example, I picked the pork chops meal. Oh my God, it was so good. They're legit. Their meals are fantastic. They also have wholesome smoothies, breakfast grab and go snacks and more add ons if you want to, you know, mix and match. If all that sounds good to you, you can get started@factor meals.com Factor podcast and use code Factor podcast to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code [e-mail] Factorpodcast to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box.

[Griffin McElroy]

It will come as no surprise to you that most, if not all, the hosts of the podcast you're currently listening to have sensitive and delicate little tummies. And it has been my experience that I need to take care of my tummy with special stuff so that it doesn't go absolutely haywire every single day. And good news, ritual's got something to help me do exactly that. It's symbiotic plus a 3 in 1 supplement of clinically studied pre pro and postbiotics designed to help support a balanced gut microbiome with daily use. It features two of the world's most clinically studied probiotic strains to support gut and digestive health. And it's designed with a delayed release capsule to help reach the colon, not the Stomach an ideal place for probiotics to survive and grow. A lot of podcasts won't be comfortable talking about their colon. Not. Not this one baby, but you probably already knew that. I've been taking Ritual multivitamins for quite a while and a probiotic supplement they've offer. I'm excited to get down on Symbiotic for all the little osmosis jones I've got grooving around in my gut. So get your gut going. Support a balanced gut microbiome with Ritual's synbiotic. Plus get 25% off your first month at ritual.combesties that's ritual.combesties for 25% off your first month. Do you know when the last Sims game came out? Do you know?

[Russ Rashigan]

So I think it's Sims 4.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, well, yeah. I mean. Okay, so last mainline Sims game not count like the mobile one and all that?

[Russ Rashigan]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So am I right that it's Sims 4?

[Griffin McElroy]

Sims 4, yes. It's the last mainline one.

[Russ Rashigan]

Okay. I'm gonna guess it came out in 2013.

[Griffin McElroy]

2014. Okay, it came out. That's quite a long time.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, fucking over 10 years. Jesus.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's 11 years ago, basically. 10 and a half years. Came out in September. That's wild. Obviously, that whole kind of franchise has become like, the whole model of it has become different. I just did on Wonderful. I did a segment on the Sims and so I was looking at kind of the history of it, and it was wild to see. Sims comes out and gets seven little fun packs. Then Sims 2 comes out and it gets eight little fun packs. And then Sims 3 comes out and there's 10 little fun packs and then Sims 4 comes out and then nothing else comes out. And it gets like 338 different DLCs and eventually becomes it's free to play now.

[Russ Rashigan]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. So, like, obviously that is sort of the model and Maxis is working on. I think it's called Project Rene. It's like the next Sims title, but there's like, nothing out there about it. And so the market seems pretty pretty ripe. The soil.

[Russ Rashigan]

It's kind of wild that there's. It's kind of wild that there just hasn't been anyone that's like, really tried to go at the Sims.

[Griffin McElroy]

There have been a couple. I don't remember the name of it, but in sort of like playing Inzoi and reading about it, there was one other game that people were talking about as, like, you know, aspiring to the throne a little bit Inzoi is, man, it is pretty wild. It is really very, very, very Sims. It's extremely like explicitly the Sims. Insofar as you make little. They call them Zois. And you have the whole. You got the needs meters. There's a build mode. You can give them jobs.

[Russ Rashigan]

You gotta shit. You gotta talk people shit.

[Griffin McElroy]

And wash your hands.

[Russ Rashigan]

You don't have to wash your hands. Let's go to optional.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's good too. It's good to. So if you have played a Sims game, it is very, very much, very much that it's developed by Krafton, which made.

[Russ Rashigan]

Well. Published by Krafton.

[Griffin McElroy]

Published by krafton, yes.

[Russ Rashigan]

The studio that made it is called Inzoi Studio.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right. So they're kind of kicking off Korean game publisher. They publish Pubg. And Krafton does. Yeah, krafton does. The bar of quality is pretty crazy. It's Unreal Engine 5. The game is quite demanding of your home computer.

[Russ Rashigan]

I mean, let me ask you this, Griffin. Have you ever seen more realistic character models in a video game?

[Griffin McElroy]

It's hard to say. There is an aesthetic to this game and it is very striking. And I don't know how to kind of describe it, aside from comparing it to a lot of kind of like Korean MMOs, I'm thinking like, God, what's it? Black Desert Online or. I feel like there is a kind of like soft beauty to the way that the character creators in those games work that feel very much like this. The facial animations are pretty insane. Are pretty crazy.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah. And you can. You can hold like, you could have a webcam pointing at your face.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes.

[Russ Rashigan]

And it does a face mapping thing.

[Griffin McElroy]

So I don't think it does a. I couldn't get it. I don't know if it does like a face scan and then like the fucking EA game face shit that they had, like.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, no, no, no, it doesn't do that. It does your animation. So if you're like opening your eyes or talk, whatever, you could effectively. It's like a vtuber.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, right.

[Russ Rashigan]

Where you're seeing like your full facial animations within the character model of the game. I wasn't able to get it working for whatever reason.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's crazy.

[Russ Rashigan]

It's a video.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's a single player game too. So like.

[Russ Rashigan]

Oh, there's no multiplayer. I didn't know that. No.

[Griffin McElroy]

So they've talked about like, they may add, you know, down. Down the line. But like, I don't know why you would want to do. I don't know. I. There's probably people who are deep enough into, like, the life sim genre that the idea of face mapping, you know, their facial reactions and stuff, into a game that nobody else is going to interact with, appeals to them. For me, it just kind of feels like a bit of a flex of, like.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah. I mean, it's also unreal. Like, the app already existed, so it's just them taking the data from the app, essentially.

[Griffin McElroy]

So, like, how. I don't know how familiar you are with the Sims, but, like, I feel like.

[Russ Rashigan]

I mean, so I. My experience with the Sims was I played Sims 1.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Rashigan]

Probably like, 10 hours. I, like, had the loop and that was, like, very engaging for those 10 hours and then very depressing right when it ended.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right.

[Russ Rashigan]

And that's not me nagging people that like the Sims. Like, fucking do you.

[Griffin McElroy]

You need different strokes. Right.

[Russ Rashigan]

But my. It just like, was. I was. Any game where I'm like, oh, I'm washing my hands and pooping. Like, I can wash my hands and poop at home. Like.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Rashigan]

It just doesn't feel like a fantasy to me.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sure.

[Russ Rashigan]

But I do get it. Like, I. Designing your house and like, all that stuff. The animal crossing stuff, like, I totally get.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right.

[Russ Rashigan]

So I jumped into this, really. Having almost no context.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, so you didn't play, like, 2, 3, 4. Anything else? Wow. Okay. So, yeah. Okay. This will be interesting because I have played all those games, so I'm curious how this.

[Russ Rashigan]

I didn't know what to do in this, and I don't. It's going to be hard to ask you to do, but please don't try to judge me for what I'm about to say. I didn't know what to do because it's a life sim and I was like, can I. Like, how long is it gonna take for me to fuck someone?

[Griffin McElroy]

So that's interesting. That is a lot.

[Russ Rashigan]

That was my immediate because I was like, or I could go to a job.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, no, I mean, you have a bevy of options available to you. Right. When you create your Zoi. And those options include going to work, becoming a volunteer firefighter, or trying to take one of your thousand beautiful neighbors to Port City. And that's fine that you went that way. I'm not judging you.

[Russ Rashigan]

Okay, good. I appreciate it.

[Griffin McElroy]

I guess you hacked that into the game that is there. It's available to you normal, and you're just, you know, you're a sexual being, Russ.

[Russ Rashigan]

Apparently. Okay, so do you want me to talk through my romance?

[Griffin McElroy]

I want to talk about, actually, anything else. Yeah, I did enjoy the primer that Russ did send me, you know, like, the day we got code. And we should point out that we were playing, like, an early access.

[Russ Rashigan]

It's basically what's going to be available to the public in early access next week.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes.

[Russ Rashigan]

Felt pretty far along to me.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes, absolutely. The release date of Enzo is March 28th. So, yeah, this is next week.

[Russ Rashigan]

I'm going to gist the experience. So I was walking through the town as my izoi.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Rashigan]

And I met someone. I was going. I started on a town that looked like Santa Monica in California.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, the one with the pier. Okay, cool.

[Russ Rashigan]

The pier. And I met a nice lady on the pier, and I started talking to her.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Rashigan]

And she didn't seem interested in talking to me because she kept walking by. And let me just reiterate, this is not my mo. I do not stalk people.

[Griffin McElroy]

Jesus Christ, Russ.

[Russ Rashigan]

I just wanted to see, like, how realistic is this going to be? Because in theory, the realistic scenario is I try to talk to her again, and she's like, get the fuck away from the psychopath.

[Griffin McElroy]

I don't know how you built your character. Every conversation I have had in the game, anytime the options start to lean towards compliment their hair, I do that. And they're like, no. And they run away. They do leave instantly.

[Russ Rashigan]

Okay. So because I knew what my objective was before starting to play, I picked socialite, which is like the social butterfly one.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, sure.

[Russ Rashigan]

Which apparently helped because when I talked to her again, she was really having a good time. And we were chatting, chatting, chatting, chatting, chatting. Touched hair.

[Griffin McElroy]

You touched hair?

[Russ Rashigan]

Touched. Well, not. We didn't touch hair and hair.

[Griffin McElroy]

Slow down, dude. Like a Na'vi. Is that what you mean by lovemaking? You did it. Na'vi style.

[Russ Rashigan]

So I was like, oh, things are going great. You want to go on a date? We set up a date. This is about six minutes into me talking to her. We set up a date. We met at the fountain, which was nearby.

[Griffin McElroy]

Wait, you set up a date? And the date was, let's go over to that fountain in four minutes.

[Russ Rashigan]

Like, it was in about. Yeah, I mean, I think that a Zoi day is, like 96 minutes.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes.

[Russ Rashigan]

So it was probably like, an hour from then in real time.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay.

[Russ Rashigan]

So we set up the date. We meet there. We have paninis. I ask if I can kiss her. She says yes. Then she says, I think we're true loves now. And I agree. And then she texts me, hey, things have been going so great. I don't want to forget about our great memories. And I Text her back like, yes, I completely agree. Things are going great in these 30 minutes that we've known each other.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, it's been special.

[Russ Rashigan]

And then I go home because it's been a long day. I poop. And then I call her and I say, hey, do you want to come over? And then we smash. And then she starts cleaning up.

[Griffin McElroy]

Did you wash your hands after you pooped?

[Russ Rashigan]

No comment. And then she starts cleaning my apartment while I'm asleep after smashing.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay, this is insane.

[Russ Rashigan]

And I have photographic evidence to prove.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, he sent me a. It was Ferris Bueller's Day off style whirlwind romance. It's very strange that that was your experience, because my experience of, like, socializing and when I built my Zoi, my ambitions were much more like personal growth.

[Russ Rashigan]

So maybe be not a fucking monster.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, I was. And maybe it's a skill issue, like, you are a lothario.

[Russ Rashigan]

I was picking some good things, good conversation points.

[Griffin McElroy]

My experience with like, you know, communicating with the other Zois in the game. I don't like saying that word.

[Russ Rashigan]

No, I don't either.

[Griffin McElroy]

It doesn't feel good talking to other people in the game. You know, you have lots of different conversation topics to discuss and it will, like, increase or decrease a few different, like, social meters. So you have like a friend meter and a work colleague meter and a love meter. And I'm really good at the first two, but those things, like, build very, very slowly. Okay, let's start. I very much enjoy that. That was your experience. Just some brass tack stuff, right?

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

There's a needs meter. There's eight needs. Your hygiene, your hunger, your. You know. One of them I thought was interesting was validation. Is it mean? So, like the need to have people kind of like, recognize your stuff.

[Russ Rashigan]

Mission accomplished.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, I guess so.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

I can't imagine any more validating of an experience for a socialite. And so some of the game is kind of managing that stuff, right?

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah. And you can automate it. You do. There's AI where it'll just do that stuff.

[Griffin McElroy]

There is some AI stuff in the game that is like actual AI. And we will. Yeah, we're in a second. We will get to it. So, like, some of the game is managing that stuff. You have moods that you will get into. If you are, you know, if you have to shit and you aren't doing it and the meter gets bad, you'll become uncomfortable. Now you have this mood and that affects, like, your ability to talk to other people or increase these skills or whatever. So you're also kind of trying to manage your moods. Then there's things like ambitions where you. I want to become a great painter and I have a few little side quests for that. And you have little random. I forget what they're called, but just little, small goals that you have, like flex in front of the mirror that will pop up, that are sort of informed by your, you know, your skills and your values and all of this different. It is a pretty complex system that I think works really well.

[Russ Rashigan]

Do you think, like, that stuff feels very different from the Sims?

[Griffin McElroy]

Not, no. That stuff. Not particularly. What does feel different from the Sims is, Gosh, it's honestly kind of tough to come up with stuff.

[Russ Rashigan]

There's a couple things. One, I had a question. So the Sims. And again, I haven't played one in a thousand years.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right.

[Russ Rashigan]

In newer versions of the Sims, are you directly controlling your character or are you using a mouse to just give it points to walk to?

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes. So it's the latter. In this one, you can. There's WASD controls, weirdly, which I cannot. I do like it.

[Russ Rashigan]

I like that it felt a little more direct.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, you can jump. The framing of the game is that you are like this deity that is in charge of a whole city and it views that through the lens of the Sims.

[Russ Rashigan]

Oh, is that what the cat thing is?

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, there's like a weird meta layer of a magic cat and you're managing everything through a computer anyway. That is reflected in your ability to truly change anything about the game. You can change elements of the city. Right. Like everything. Like, oh, that street corner. I want to make it look dilapidated. And that tree should be different. So you have these extremely broad ranging powers of customization. There are studio modes where you can really get granular with character creation or home decoration. And then I believe this is not available in the build that we played. But then you can upload that stuff to what's called Canvas, I think. And then other people can, like, download these prefabs that other players have made. That is also something that is kind of like also in the Sims. But I don't know the amount of stuff you are able to change, especially with the, like, home decor stuff like I want.

[Russ Rashigan]

Or even just clothing. Like the idea that you could have any T shirt. And then like the sleeves. There's like six different sleeve options for any shirt.

[Griffin McElroy]

You can also. And this is where we start to get into some of the generative AI stuff. You can. And I was not able to get this to work and also wasn't particularly interested in it. You can, with your phone linked up to this specific, I guess, Inzoi app, take a picture of a graphic or a shirt or whatever and then get that in a shirt or whatever in the game.

[Russ Rashigan]

I didn't even know you could.

[Griffin McElroy]

Supposedly you can take pictures of objects in real life and then those will. You can put them into the game. I don't know how to do that stuff, but it seems a lot like witchcraft.

[Russ Rashigan]

And then the even more blunt generative stuff is, oh, I want a heart pattern.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes.

[Russ Rashigan]

You could type in hearts for a T shirt. And it'll use generative AI which. Yeah, this is where things get sketchy because I honestly don't know where this is being pulled from. They say it's like, they say it's.

[Griffin McElroy]

All internal copyright free stuff. Right.

[Russ Rashigan]

We just realistically, I don't know how.

[Griffin McElroy]

One checks that, but. Right.

[Russ Rashigan]

There's no way to know for sure.

[Griffin McElroy]

They also say it's all client side. So it is not like the things that you are generating are being, you know, uploaded for other people, I guess, unless you share it on canvas. I don't know. It's. It is.

[Russ Rashigan]

What's weird, here's, here's where I feel obviously the generative AI, like art generation stuff. Like I want human beings designing shows for this.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Rashigan]

There's also the like horror show scenario that the Sims has fallen into which is, oh, you need to pay $6 for a fucking dustbin. Yeah, like upgrade. So like, I don't know, those are probably two different things.

[Griffin McElroy]

But like, I think so this is. I think there's a lot when you start talking about generative AI, especially how it is utilized in games or media in general, there's like a few different angles to it. How is it trained? Is it just wholesale stealing shit from other artists and then using that to like train its AI? They say no, but who fucking knows. The other thing that gets kind of weird is it is being used specifically for user generated content, which is its own kind of kettle of fish. Right. I think that user generated content is very cool because especially in a SIM game like this, it gives you the tools to create and that is very satisfying in a way that just interacting with the thing is not. And so if the generative AI is being used on the user generated content side, the question becomes like, is it replacing, you know, an artist who would be working for this game developer?

[Russ Rashigan]

Right, right.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's the big question. Is it taking away a job from a human being? And because it is being sort of like utilized for ugc. It's like, you know, it gets weird if you say yes to that. Then the question is like, well, does user generated content in general take work away from people? Which. Right. Like, it gets very, very. It spins out very, very wildly. There is also like a reality where you could play this game without fucking with that stuff.

[Russ Rashigan]

I honestly didn't know. Which is not good reporting for me. I was clearly focused on a specific task. But I didn't know that there was the AI stuff until Griffin mentioned it to me.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes.

[Russ Rashigan]

Which isn't. Again, that was my fuck up. But like, it did seem like the offerings. I just like the base game without touching any of that stuff was pretty fucking robust.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yes.

[Russ Rashigan]

So if you don't want to touch any of stuff, but again, you are still supporting a company that is very much engaged with AI stuff. So that is. It's really, again, very tough to talk about this stuff. But we want to kind of.

[Griffin McElroy]

Especially because we are not smart men. We're not. We aren't.

[Russ Rashigan]

We are. One of us is a lothario. But beyond that.

[Griffin McElroy]

And my shit was all about like self improvement, which basically meant I sat in front of my computer. I built my own house. That was cool. I genuinely enjoyed like your real life house. No, not my real life house. But like, you know, I got deep in the gully works of the build mode you did. Which is sort of true to form. Kind of like how I also played the Sims games. Like I would create these wonderful villas for myself and sometimes my family, but mostly myself to live in. And I really love getting in there and really making a space my own. But I did something fucked up where like my SIM wouldn't sit down to eat anywhere except my desk in my office.

[Russ Rashigan]

Oh, no shit.

[Griffin McElroy]

Which felt.

[Russ Rashigan]

Sounds realistic.

[Griffin McElroy]

Which felt like the game clocked me in a way that I was not like really comfortable with. Yeah. Whenever I would like have a gathering of other Sims, like they would only go into my office with me. Like there was some weird shit that got very annoying. One reason why I didn't pursue a lot of social activities is because when you're having a conversation with somebody, you can sort of switch topics at will from this huge list. Sometimes it'll suggest stuff in the list that would be a smooth transition to the next topic. But sometimes when you pick an option from that list, both of the characters who are talking will stop and then turn around and sit down in a chair. And then they will do that part of the conversation and then they will stand up and kind of walk in a circle and then stand somewhere else and then continue that part of the conversation. Like, there's a lot of kind of weirdly clumsy stuff. Anytime I cooked anything, anytime I cooked anything in my kitchen, I would make the food and I would have this plate of, you know, of English breakfast. And then I would walk into my living room and I would set it down on the coffee table, and then I would walk away. Every single time, I'd be like, no fucking. You gotta eat that. And he'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he would walk over it. He'd pick it up off the coffee table, walk right into the fucking office, sit down at the desk to eat his eggplant breakfast. There's some, like. I don't know that pathing shit.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

Is the difficulty of making a game with this, like, complex system of interactions and stuff. It feels like they're. I ran into a lot of that.

[Russ Rashigan]

Shit, but, yeah, it doesn't feel. Again, if. Assuming that the public build is the. Which I'm pretty sure it is the build that we played, it doesn't feel, like, rough. Rough in the way that, like, a lot of early access stuff right when it launches is rough, but it definitely doesn't feel like a 1.0.

[Griffin McElroy]

No. Yeah, it really doesn't. Especially insofar as, like, I don't know. I've played a lot of Sims and I spent my first hour and a half, two hours of this game, like, absolutely spinning my wheels because I was not. There was a lot. There was just enough that was kind of different from how the Sims worked.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

That I was having to kind of. I also haven't played the Sims in a while. Full disclosure. But I was having to kind of, like, relearn how, like, a lot of this stuff worked. And it really drops you into these big cities with very little guidance. And so, like, day one, you feel this paralysis of, like, well, should I get funny? I didn't.

[Russ Rashigan]

I didn't have that problem.

[Griffin McElroy]

No, you didn't, did you?

[Russ Rashigan]

No.

[Griffin McElroy]

Fucking perv. I think it's too soon to tell. I think that it is. It is gorgeous.

[Russ Rashigan]

It is a. I mean, I couldn't. For what it's worth, I had to run it on low. Ray tracing. Yeah, my computer's getting there, so I'm due. But, yeah, my setup's a few years old, and to get a stable framelight, I had to run it on low. But I'm sure if you jack it up, it looks fine. I've seen video and it looks fucking stunning.

[Griffin McElroy]

I didn't have to do that. My load times were pretty bad. Pretty gnarly.

[Russ Rashigan]

Where were you seeing load times, though? Because it's all fluid, right.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sometimes transitioning between build mode and city mode, or looking at one plot and then leaving and going to another plot. Sometimes it instantly loaded, sometimes it did not. I don't know why. And maybe it was, like, caching textures or something. I'm not a smart man.

[Russ Rashigan]

I'm glad we really showed the range of possibilities within, inside, between the two of us.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, right. You can live a sort of, like, eremite existence where you build shitty puzzle apps on your laptop while you eat an English breakfast by yourself, or you can go out and fall in love and boink in the same way.

[Russ Rashigan]

Well, let's not go crazy on the love part, but. Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

Well, it sounded like you guys made a really deep connection.

[Russ Rashigan]

Well, one of us did.

[Griffin McElroy]

Geez, Russ. It is. Yeah. I don't know. It's too soon to tell. I feel like it is a game that a lot of people are going to. A lot of people with more experience in this realm are going to have a lot to say about it.

[Russ Rashigan]

Seems crazy to me. Again, this is me speaking with very little context because I haven't played. It seems crazy to me that Sims people wouldn't definitely at least try it and not find this to be, like, a pretty significant, like, enhancement to what they've been playing for many, many years. Yeah, like, it just.

[Griffin McElroy]

I mean, I don't. Okay, here's the. If we're going to get into that. If you have been playing the Sims 4 for many years and you have the 38 expansion, like, the amount of content available to you is un. Unimaginable. It's. It's so much. And this doesn't.

[Russ Rashigan]

But I think the argument is there's a lot of stuff in here that, like, is either in a lot of those packs that were you had to pay for.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right. Or you can make it. Right.

[Russ Rashigan]

Or you can make it. There's shit in here where, like, you can make a movie theater and then upload a video file and then watch videos in your movie theater.

[Griffin McElroy]

You can make cutscenes in the game. Like, you make a room and then you can put characters in it and kind of, like, make a cut scene. Like, it's. It. It truly gives you the keys to the kingdom.

[Russ Rashigan]

You'll eventually be able to drive, like, cars, like gta. Like actual driving, not just, like, teleporting places.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, really?

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

I didn't know about that.

[Russ Rashigan]

Pretty fucking wild. Again, I don't know, but I think. I think it's. My guess is it's going to be a huge fucking deal. Yeah, I think it's really going to like, do incredibly well for them.

[Griffin McElroy]

It is certainly going to be, I believe, in South Korea, where the publisher is based. I do believe it is going to be a pretty big smash hit. There is something very neat. I will say this to sort of cap this off. There is an element of Korean kind of culture and sightseeing almost, I guess, depending on which city you live in. I lived in. It sounds like we live in different places. There were only two cities available in the build that we played. And you went with the one that is like a beachy California, basically. Yeah. Boardwalk town. And I went with one that is like a metropolitan Korean city.

[Russ Rashigan]

I think it's meant. Yeah. Like inspired by Seoul.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. And it's cool. That's not really an experience I ever had in the Sims.

[Russ Rashigan]

And I think the other city that's in there is also an Asian city. I don't know what.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's more rural, it looks like. I don't believe.

[Russ Rashigan]

But that's. Yeah, that's cool. That it's. Because all the Sims stuff, as far as I'm aware, at least a lot of it is very Western centric.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right.

[Russ Rashigan]

So it's cool that they are.

[Griffin McElroy]

I'm sure that there's DLC packs and stuff that like go out, but I don't know, that has been an element that has like, kept me kind of coming back and playing is like. It's just kind of neat. It's just kind of neat to go in and play and explore. And like, that is. I think the appeal of sandbox games for a lot of people is that, like, it's just kind of neat to hop in there and see what they do. You can set up a schedule for your sim, which I really like. You can say like, okay, every day at 2:00 we're gonna go. We're gonna go to Central park or, you know, whatever. You can augment that schedule however you want to sort of like automate the process. Yeah, like, that stuff's really neat. It has a lot of really, really good ideas. It does not. It has not hooked me in the way that I remember the Sims doing, where it's like, well, I gotta get back home so I can, you know, as soon as I get home from school, I'm boot up the computer and play Sims 2. Like, I don't necessarily feel that way about it.

[Russ Rashigan]

That's more of a you, it feels like where we are in our lives thing than it is.

[Griffin McElroy]

Maybe. But, like, I don't know, I play a lot of other simulation games that I very, very, very much enjoy. It feels like you kind of need to understand this game to, like, have a great time with it, and it feels like there is a bit of a learning curve here.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, I think that's. I think that's.

[Griffin McElroy]

And that's maybe even putting it generously. But, yes, again, in Zoi, a game I think people are going to be talking about for a while, I will be paying attention to how the kind of, like, AI conversation shakes out about the game because, I don't know, I could understand any level of skepticism and distrust around this entire conversation based on some of the bad actors who have been using AI in gross and unethical ways. Yeah. But I think there's going to be a lot of things that people talk about when they talk about this game for probably quite a while. So, you know, get ready for that, I guess.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah.

[Griffin McElroy]

Do we have anything else, Russ, we.

[Russ Rashigan]

Could do some honorable mentions, if you got anything? I've got a couple things to talk about.

[Griffin McElroy]

I've been playing a. I've been playing a lot of a game that we can't talk about yet that is it.

[Russ Rashigan]

Publicly, even, that it exists. Oh, I know what it is.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Rashigan]

We can't talk about it yet, but.

[Griffin McElroy]

I mean, I think there's a demo out on Steam. If that's true, then I think I could talk about it a little bit.

[Russ Rashigan]

I don't even want you to talk about it, quite honest.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, wow.

[Russ Rashigan]

Because it's. I will say, the only way. This game has been described to me as like a new animal.

[Griffin McElroy]

Well, okay.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah, that's kind of the extent to which I want to know about it before I actually start playing. But the embargo is not up for another three weeks.

[Griffin McElroy]

You're right. Okay, then I'll just say I've been playing a game called Blueprints.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yes.

[Griffin McElroy]

And that's all I. Oh, I just got the pun.

[Russ Rashigan]

Did you get the pun?

[Griffin McElroy]

Holy fucking shit, Russ. I've been playing this game. Huh? So much and. No, that's the first time I've said the name of the game out loud.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah. Okay. So it's Blue. B L U, E. Prince. Like a king. Like royal prince.

[Griffin McElroy]

Like a royal prince.

[Russ Rashigan]

But it also has a secret meaning.

[Griffin McElroy]

I think there's a demo.

[Russ Rashigan]

Figure it out.

[Griffin McElroy]

I think there's a demo on Steam.

[Russ Rashigan]

We will talk about it. But again the embargo doesn't lift until mid April so it's going to be a few weeks.

[Griffin McElroy]

It's going to be a while. I have also it is the Max fun drive. It's Max fun drive time. This is not technically a max fund podcast so I'm not going to make the pitch here but you can do it. Part of. Okay. Maximumfun.

[Russ Rashigan]

Org. Jordan, Jesse, go. What do you got? What else? What else is on there?

[Griffin McElroy]

I mean my brother, my brother, me and Taz.

[Russ Rashigan]

Oh, that's probably a pretty good one.

[Griffin McElroy]

Part of that is we stream every day and twice over the drive. I do a DJ set in Fuser and I don't know, I feel like every bestie's around this time of year. Like I talk about Fuser because I get like insanely deep into it where it's like all I can think about.

[Russ Rashigan]

Because I did see a clip on social media of you being a dj.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, it's just a genius, brilliant DJ game from Harmonix that has been delisted. It is not available but my understanding.

[Russ Rashigan]

Is there are some features of Fuse, maybe not one to one that are now in Fortnite or at least some.

[Griffin McElroy]

Element of this together that's being extremely generous I think to what is available in Fortnite. Like you can do some of that stuff like you can do a jam sesh where you have like different parts of different songs but you know the tools available to you to like modulate that stuff in Fuser and throw shit together in the fly is like unparalleled fucking just amazing little toy box. Really, really, really amazing little game to play with music in and you can't buy it anymore. Can't buy it anyway. It's a fucking tragedy, right? Yeah, there's a community of people who build custom songs for Fuser and that is what has kind of like fueled my interest in it for these streams every year because this community is quite small but they are quite enthusiastic and so there's like deep cut shit and you will find people in this community like there's someone who has done a lot of custom songs based off of music from the hotline Miami soundtrack.

[Russ Rashigan]

Oh, sick.

[Griffin McElroy]

That shit all goes very, very hard and then like you can mash that up with. It's a piece of cake to bake with Pretty cake from Lazytown. Like the tools are obscene and they are so brilliant and I genuinely. It is hard to think of a bigger traged in like the loss of games history than the fact that this game that is like the most fun that I've had playing with music in a video game. It's just like you just can't get it anywhere. And I get that there's like licensing issues and shit that make that quite.

[Russ Rashigan]

Difficult, but at least there's sound shapes.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's an insane comparison.

[Russ Rashigan]

I mean, they're music games.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah, but yeah, yeah, they're wildly different music games, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. You got anything?

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah. I wanted to mention two things. One, Josh Johnson, who's a correspondent on the Daily show, also has a YouTube channel where he's been posting his like, sets, his comedy sets. I am fucking blown away by the talent of this gentleman. He is doing like full 45 minute sets on like current events from like the last three days.

[Griffin McElroy]

Wow.

[Russ Rashigan]

That feel like produced in a way that like, these are like special ready. Like you could go up on HBO and I wouldn't be surprised. I'm like. He explains the like the Drake and Kendrick Lamar rap battle in a way that is like fucking hilarious and also like incredibly informative.

[Griffin McElroy]

I prefer that.

[Russ Rashigan]

The edge.

[Griffin McElroy]

I do prefer the Chet Hanks explanation of the Kendrick Drake.

[Russ Rashigan]

Oh, I haven't heard that one.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, fuck, man. I'll send you.

[Russ Rashigan]

But his stuff is great and there's like tons of free shit on his YouTube at length and new stuff is going up every day, so his stuff is awesome. The other thing I want to mention, I mentioned it briefly earlier. I started playing Noida again because I've been on this like action roguelike kick where I played Gungeon Enter the Gungeon for a while. And now I'm playing this Noida, in case you don't remember. Was the wizard side scrolling action roguelike where you like all of the pixels are generated such that they can like be set on fire or you could have pools of water. There's like all sorts of fluid dynamics things. And then you're crafting wands using these different spells to like get you further in levels. The game is like punishingly difficult. Maybe even harder than spelunky when you're starting out. Just because it's so complex.

[Griffin McElroy]

Right.

[Russ Rashigan]

I did go into the Steam Workshop and downloaded two Steam Workshop mods that I found to be make it a lot more approachable.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay. I'm curious to hear this because I have tried Noida a bunch of times and I have never cracked it.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah. One of them adds a mini map, a small top right corner minimap.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay.

[Russ Rashigan]

That just gives you a little more visibility into like what is around you at any given time, you frequently get like one shotted by like a random ass guy across the map. And this kind of helps alleviate that a little bit. And the other upgrade or the other mod I installed was adds just like random health drops occasionally.

[Griffin McElroy]

Okay.

[Russ Rashigan]

Normally you have to go to the end of each level to like fully heal up. And this just allows you to get deeper into the game and experience like the true magic of the game, which is again, the wand crafting, which doesn't happen until you get to those level breaks.

[Griffin McElroy]

I am so after my experience getting deep into Binding of Isaac using some straight up quality of Life, I cannot play that game without the item descriptions mod. That tells you my experience after that, I don't know, has become so much more on the side of this shit. Should be available. This should be available. It helps you play and enjoy the game that you otherwise would not play and enjoy it. People who hardline, you know, say like, oh, you're ruining the. In the intention, like. Yeah, but I didn't like that.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah. Honestly. And I've seen this with Binding of Isaac. I've seen this with Noida's community as well. Those people, those snobs that are like, you're ruining the pure experience, I think are in the minority. I think the majority of the people that love the game and love the community also love the fact that people can make changes to the game in ways that not only prolong the game's life cycle, but also make it more approachable for new players.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah.

[Russ Rashigan]

So I think that stuff is great. I will say, like, my patience for like doing non Steam Workshop games mods is very, very low.

[Griffin McElroy]

Sure.

[Russ Rashigan]

Like, I'm not gonna, generally speaking do that. Although I did, I did replace the missing songs in the GTA remakes. That was like the extent of my willingness.

[Griffin McElroy]

That's great.

[Russ Rashigan]

But any game that has Steam Workshop, I'm almost always dipping in there and seeing like, oh, what are people? Like, what's the most popular mod right now? And that invariably, like, there's going to be two or three quality of life things that'll just make the game a lot more fun.

[Griffin McElroy]

Yeah. So that's great.

[Russ Rashigan]

Are my things.

[Griffin McElroy]

I think that's gonna do it for us this week.

[Russ Rashigan]

Yeah. I want real quick, let me just thank some new members of the patreon [e-mail] thebesties we have John, we have Dave the Birder, we have Trenton, and we have Russ. No relation. Thank you for being supporters of the Patreon and us. And thank you to everyone else who's been great supporters. We have a new Restyz coming to you on Tuesday. We also have a new Bracket Battles episode coming to you in the beginning of April to look forward to. What are we doing next week?

[Griffin McElroy]

Patreon.com the Besties is the link.

[Russ Rashigan]

Oh yeah, I thought I said that.

[Griffin McElroy]

Oh, I don't know. Next week we are putting on the cowl and grabbing our blades to play Assassin's Creed Shadows and hopefully we'll have the whole crew back together for that. Thanks for sticking with us as we ran a lightweight ship this week. We hope you enjoyed yourself and learned something. And stick around next week for the Besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?

[Russ Rashigan]

Besties.