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The Besties
Saros is More Bullet Heaven Than Bullet Hell
01:00:16
Saros is the continuation of decades of bullet-dodging action games from Housemarque. But it has most in common with the team’s previous game, Returnal. Is this game welcoming enough to bring newcomers into the pseudo-series? We find out! Plus, a humongous collection of other stuff we’re playing and watching, including a Korean reality TV series that pits different types of spirit mediums against one another! Look, we’re just as surprised, confused, and delighted as you are.
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- [00:00]
Christopher Thomas Plant
The other day was May 4, you know, Star Wars Day.
- [00:03]
Ross Freshy
Yes.
- [00:04]
Christopher Thomas Plant
So I, I thought I would go and celebrate. Now I go to Disneyland because the people are going to be dressed up. It's a day that you can actually, as an adult, dress up in Disneyland. There's going to be some, you know, Kylo's there, There's going to be some Darth Vader's, right?
- [00:16]
Ross Freshy
Oh, you can actually dress up. You don't need to color block or anything like that. You could just dress up as the characters.
- [00:20]
Christopher Thomas Plant
You can fully dress up. I'm talking about helmets.
- [00:24]
Ross Freshy
Can I be stitched?
- [00:25]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Like cast characters?
- [00:27]
Griffin McElroy
I think you have to be a Star wars guy. Right. You can't just show up dressed as that.
- [00:32]
Christopher Thomas Plant
That was my problem. Right. So I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. Like Kylo. I get it. Ren, who is Kylo?
- [00:40]
Ross Freshy
Same character. Same person.
- [00:41]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah, same person.
- [00:42]
Griffin McElroy
I get it.
- [00:44]
Christopher Thomas Plant
So I'm walking around and out of nowhere I see a full on Predator.
- [00:51]
Ross Freshy
Awesome.
- [00:51]
Christopher Thomas Plant
The most awesome elaborate Predator costume I have ever seen, any of the Star wars characters. I mean, this looks like it was gonna bite my face clean.
- [01:03]
Ross Freshy
I love it.
- [01:04]
Griffin McElroy
They have the face tentacles in it, all that shit.
- [01:07]
Ross Freshy
He doesn't, to be fair, he doesn't bite faces. He does steal skulls.
- [01:10]
Griffin McElroy
So we need to be very clear. He's got a whole spine out. He's Predator's crazy, man.
- [01:15]
Christopher Thomas Plant
But where do you draw the line, you know, because like, is this the new world? Is this the world of corporate mergers that we've been asking for?
- [01:25]
Ross Freshy
It does seem like a loophole that no one really considered when they were like, anyone could dress up as anything. Like, could I dress up as the Magic Castle?
- [01:34]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It looked like the people who were working there were also questioning, is this a loophole? There was a lot of Disney people who looked very stressed out about what do we do?
- [01:47]
Ross Freshy
They're in the back checking all the fine print.
- [01:49]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Can you imagine if you went up to him and you're like, hey, you can't be here. You're not Star Wars. And he's like, well, actually an issue 234. Yeah. Star Wars x Predator. And then you're screwed.
- [02:02]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [02:03]
Ross Freshy
I mean, they would throw him in. They would throw him in the Disney jail. They're just, it's pretty easy. They just throw him in the Disney jail.
- [02:09]
Griffin McElroy
There's a special Disney jail for Predator. For specific. They have created a special kind of. It's like a tank sort of for suspending the Predator because otherwise he'll get out, man.
- [02:19]
Ross Freshy
He's. He's a. He's a fucker.
- [02:21]
Griffin McElroy
I didn't realize Disney even owned Predator, but they definitely do own Predator.
- [02:25]
Ross Freshy
Good for them.
- [02:26]
Griffin McElroy
Good for them. When are they gonna make their super smash brothers? I guess that's what Kingdom hearts.
- [02:35]
Ross Freshy
Yeah, they thought. Yeah.
- [02:36]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Well, ye.
- [02:55]
Griffin McElroy
My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week.
- [02:58]
Christopher Thomas Plant
My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week.
- [03:02]
Ross Freshy
My name is Ross Freshy. I know the best game of the week.
- [03:05]
Griffin McElroy
Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club and you, my friend, just by listening, have become a member. We this week are talking about. Let me check my notes. The first, first party PlayStation 5 game in 17 years called Seiros or perhaps Soros. The critics aren't. They have not reached a consensus. I've been playing the game for a long time and I don't know that I've heard anyone say it out loud yet.
- [03:36]
Ross Freshy
It's one of those.
- [03:38]
Griffin McElroy
Okay, Chris, what is Seiros?
- [03:40]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It is the latest game from Housemarque, the studio that built its name on kind of arcadey classic twin stick shooters, but then at a certain point said, we want to go big or we will go to home or house. And they did returnal and then they did this. And they're all in this line of I don't know you. And I'm realizing hard to talk about this sort of game succinctly. So how about we just go right to the.
- [04:07]
Griffin McElroy
You know how smart games have red and blue balls in them. This one has red balls.
- [04:10]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah, that's a good way of doing it.
- [04:12]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [04:12]
Ross Freshy
Yeah, buddy.
- [04:12]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It's a game about those balls.
- [04:14]
Griffin McElroy
It's a game about avoiding or sometimes collecting red and blue balls very, very quickly.
- [04:19]
Ross Freshy
And we'll talk about also trauma.
- [04:21]
Griffin McElroy
Also Trauma, of course, in Lovecraft.
- [04:22]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah, yeah.
- [04:23]
Griffin McElroy
So we're gonna talk about what all that, how that all comes together after this short break.
- [04:28]
Ross Freshy
This episode of the Besties is sponsored by Reddit. Literally. It's. Reddit is the sponsor of this episode. I'm sure you've heard of it before, but maybe you haven't used it in the way that I've used it, which is to do like incredibly deep dives on mechanics and lore of the games I love and strategy and just to find like a new community to talk about the game. There are over 47 million members on R gaming and Reddit is the front page for gaming news updates, rumors, leaks, all discussed in real time by people who actually play. There are subs for every game genre, niche, MMOs, shooters, RPGs, speedruns, modding, lore. Every single thing there is a subreddit for. It's real players sharing, real tips, fixes and discoveries. I will speak for myself. Two subreddits I use all the time are SBC Gaming, which is a subreddit dedicated to handheld gaming, the sorts of handhelds we talk about all the time here. Very, very cool subreddit. Also, the R eldenring subreddit is also excellent, has very cool deep dive lore things if you're into Elden Ring, if you're into Soulsboard games, things like that. So really, anything you can think of, there's probably a dedicated subreddit for you. And if all that sounds good, Reddit is the place to go for gaming deep dives. Download the Reddit app and dive into R sbcgaming or R eldenring for the latest gaming updates or whatever you want to learn about. Download the Reddit app today.
- [05:55]
Griffin McElroy
Can one of the two I did not play a ton of Returnal.
- [05:58]
Ross Freshy
Okay, I finished returnal.
- [06:00]
Griffin McElroy
Okay, like 10 minutes ago. Oh, about 10 minutes ago.
- [06:04]
Ross Freshy
Yeah. I was like, I'm close, I can do it. And I did it.
- [06:07]
Griffin McElroy
You finished Returnal?
- [06:08]
Ross Freshy
Oh, sorry. I finished Seros and Returnal. I finished both of them.
- [06:13]
Griffin McElroy
So please understand I'm trying to set up a completely different thing, which is
- [06:17]
Ross Freshy
I finished both of them.
- [06:18]
Griffin McElroy
I did not play much of Returnal. So obviously this is a spiritual successor, if not a narrative one to any degree that I found so far. And I'm curious sort of what the as a setup for what Seiros is how it kind of has evolved on the Returnal sort of premise.
- [06:38]
Ross Freshy
Sure. Okay. So if for those that played Returnal, which wasn't a ton of people, so I will kind of backtrack a little bit. Returnal was basically a roguelike in the style of like a Binding of Isaac or something like that. But the gameplay was bullet hell style, third person action. Pretty straightforward.
- [06:56]
Griffin McElroy
Sort of Risk of Rain two esque.
- [06:59]
Ross Freshy
Yeah, but with like actual levels and exploration and like build crafting. I mean, Risk of Rain has that, but build crafting was a big part of Returnal. Here's the thing about Returnal. It turned off a lot of people for two reasons. One, it was very hard, which I get. And the other one is they made a pretty boneheaded decision in the development cycle of not letting you save or quit a run in the middle of a run. And Runs could take, like, three or four hours.
- [07:25]
Griffin McElroy
It's just incompatible with my life, man. And I could not fuck with Returnal for that very reason.
- [07:31]
Ross Freshy
They have since fixed that. So if you go and play Returnal today, you can quit a run in the middle of it. And indeed, the first thing you see when you boot up Saros is, hey, by the way, you need to stop a run. You can do that so long as you don't quit in the middle of a boss fight.
- [07:46]
Griffin McElroy
Right.
- [07:47]
Ross Freshy
If you do that, you will lose everything, but otherwise, you can stop whenever you want and it's all chill. So good decision, y'. All. At a glance, they might seem like very, very, very similar games, but structurally, they're actually very different. Yeah, Returnal was a game where you basically start from scratch every single time. There was very little in the way of, like, permanent progression, and you more or less just, like, had to have a really good run to make it through. This game is all about permanent progression. Every single run, you're earning currency, which you then spend on stats and upgrades and things that'll make subsequent runs faster. And also, you're not doing runs from scratch. You're doing runs you'll unlock, like a checkpoint. You can start from that checkpoint.
- [08:29]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, there's a really interesting kind of, like, this is very much, or at least in my experience, like a game about sort of farming, because those upgrades are pretty important. There is a stat called. What is it called? Not mastery, but something.
- [08:44]
Ross Freshy
Proficiency.
- [08:45]
Griffin McElroy
Proficiency, yeah. That you are sort of leveling up. You can get these permanent sort of like starting upgrades to your proficiency. But as you kill enemies and you pick up Lucite, which is the Lucinite.
- [08:56]
Ross Freshy
Oh, boy.
- [08:57]
Griffin McElroy
Lucite is the fucking stuff that they make Pizza Hut cups out of.
- [09:01]
Ross Freshy
I think that's what you're collecting.
- [09:02]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, I think you're collecting Pizza Hut cups. As you down enemies, you're building this proficiency bonus. And then every weapon or, like, special power that drops will drop at that strength level. So there's a reason to, like, you could. If you just started the third sort of level, you can teleport to that and just, like, rocket from there. Or a sort of more consistent strategy is like, start a little bit earlier and farm up all this stuff. You're also picking up artifacts, which you have a set number that you can pick up that usually will give you some statistical benefit, some sort of more intangible benefit, like you're invincible for a second after you dash or whatever. And then a lot of the times, a negative detriment. That is also associated with it. Like, now you take fall damage or your gun jams whenever you take damage. And so it also becomes a question of, like, well, do I want to pick this up? Because I'm early in my run and I'll probably find something a little bit stronger, you know, a little bit later on. So you're doing a lot of sort of on the ground decisions as well.
- [10:05]
Christopher Thomas Plant
If people are listening and they're like, that sounds like quite a bit of systems. The answer is you're right. Yep. And the challenge with this game, it has grown on me a lot after watching many videos and many conflicting videos, including one that we'll talk about that Fresh gave me. That ruined, I would say, about two to three hours of my experience with this game.
- [10:23]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah. Oh.
- [10:24]
Ross Freshy
Oh, no.
- [10:24]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Oh, it was. It completely ruined it. But we'll talk about it. It's not your fault.
- [10:28]
Ross Freshy
It's not your fault. Oh, thank you.
- [10:31]
Christopher Thomas Plant
The challenge with this game is, in theory, you're going in and you're dodging the red and the blue balls, and then you're using a shield that can block some of them, but not all of them. And some of them need a parry. That's, like, very familiar gameplay mechanics. And then you're also going into a run and then you're collecting whatever the credits are and then doing the upgrades. That all should be pretty straightforward. And yet it's not entirely because of the things that you just talked about. The weapons that have some have upgrades and some have detriments. Well, that's only true once you've entered basically the quote, like red moon or red sun era.
- [11:11]
Ross Freshy
Yeah. You turn on hard mode in the middle of a run and suddenly everything drops. More currency. But the things you pick up can have these negative effects.
- [11:18]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah, Right. Or you could just spend the time dodging. But if you shield certain types of blue bullets, you can collect the blue bullets and then you can use that to charge a special weapon. Cool. But if you watch Fresh's video that ruined my life, I didn't make the
- [11:35]
Ross Freshy
video to be fair.
- [11:37]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Punch the bullets.
- [11:38]
Ross Freshy
Oh, yeah, Bad idea.
- [11:39]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Don't take any charge. I was like, oh, that's.
- [11:41]
Griffin McElroy
That's how.
- [11:42]
Christopher Thomas Plant
That's how you're supposed to play this. Horrible.
- [11:44]
Griffin McElroy
No, you got to use a shield, man.
- [11:45]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It's a good. And then there. There are yellow bullets that when you take them on, even if you shield them, they can, like, stick to you, and then they can lower your health, but you can recharge your health if you fire weapon. I could Go on and on and on. And these systems ultimately are really interesting, but a thing that I think it struggles with compared to a Hades or similar roguelikes, and it struggles with this in the story department too, is it kind of hits you with it all at once. And where I feel like traditionally in these games, it's like you do a short run and then you go back and you meet a new character who's waiting there for you. And they're like, hey, have you ever heard of yellow orbs? And you're like, oh, interesting. And then you go and do that run. We're here before you even go into the first run. It's like a whole camp there. And they're like, do you want to go talk to 20 people? And it's like, I think you actually
- [12:37]
Ross Freshy
kill someone before you even do a run. I think you literally, literally like someone's gone crazy and you're like, well, I gotta kill him. And you kill him and then you do a run. The systems plan is right. The systems are insane. There's systems in there that I watched this 10 minute video and many of them I didn't understand. Part of the problem is they decided to label everything in very funky ways.
- [12:58]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah.
- [12:59]
Ross Freshy
Do you know what stat, just for argument's sake, what would you name a stat that increases your maximum shield time? Shield.
- [13:06]
Griffin McElroy
Shield. Stat.
- [13:07]
Ross Freshy
Okay. Would you name it Command? That's what they call that.
- [13:10]
Griffin McElroy
Would you call the stat that determines how much Pizza Hut cups the enemies drop? Would you want to call that drive? Because no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't. I don't think I would call it that. Yeah, it's. Yeah, that, that shit. I genuinely, after about two or three runs and I was just like picking up all these items and it's like, oh, you've gotten more resilience. I eventually stopped and I was like, okay. I went through the menus, like, is there like a help section that tells me what the fuck these stats do? And there was like a data lore entry that like kind of, kind of explains sort of what they do.
- [13:44]
Ross Freshy
It's not even just the stats, it's also like the weapons you pick up will have these sub abilities that are incredibly important to their capabilities as weapons. And there's just, it's like expand more information. Oh, you're just going to get the names of what those sub abilities are. You have no idea what they do.
- [13:59]
Griffin McElroy
I do want to say, because this paints like a pretty brutal picture of.
- [14:04]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Before you say the nice thing, do you mind if I just purge One more bit of negativity.
- [14:07]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, of course.
- [14:09]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I gotta get all these yellow orbs off me and then we can get into. There's so much.
- [14:12]
Griffin McElroy
The corruption will build up otherwise.
- [14:14]
Christopher Thomas Plant
The last bit of negativity. The game's story is. Well, it's Lovecraftian, but really it's like weird fiction. And it's supposed to be influenced by the King in Yellow, which, if anybody watched True Detective Season 1, you'll be familiar with this. Mostly it's like they took the names of locations and ideas, like Carcosa is the name of the planet. Anyway, the thing with weird fiction is you need to know what normal is before you get weird. You need to know who the people are before they start losing their minds. And the story from the drop is in chaos town. So you don't know. You have no footing for this story full of all these strange words and people. You early on don't know if people are alive or not. I am nearly certain that there was a bug in my game and a character wasn't showing up. So it was just an empty space. But there was subtitle going on and it took me like an hour after the game to be like, oh, I don't think that was supposed to happen. What was.
- [15:19]
Griffin McElroy
I think that was the invisible guy. Yeah.
- [15:23]
Christopher Thomas Plant
So this is all just to. It is across the game where this insistence on just dive into the deep end is a problem, but once you do get in.
- [15:35]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, the systems being sort of pretty opaque, honestly, stopped being an issue for me once I got pretty good at the game because it's so fucking fun. This game feels so good to go into a room that you have been in a dozen times, like farming up these. These resources or like trying to get through a run and dying to the boss and being like excited to fight the dudes in there because it's just so fun to dash around and then shield to collect some blue projectiles and then launching your power attack at an enemy and then they turn into a little turret and then you dash through the like. It feels so fucking great all the time.
- [16:21]
Ross Freshy
They give you option. The game is mostly linear, like it's not exploration heavy for the most part because contrary to Returnal, but they do give you moments where it's like, oh, this is a side path. You can go here for more currency or maybe another battle or whatever. I always, always, always took the side path because it's just not only more stuff, but also I want to do those fun platforming challenges or those fun
- [16:42]
Griffin McElroy
dodge whatever they are yeah, the movement kept reminding me of like, it kept reminding me of Crackdown. Once you'd been playing for a while and collected like a ton of orbs and you were just running. There's very, very, very, very little aiming down sights that you do like. There is a special function that most guns have that you have to like half pull the trigger, which is a little bit finicky in order to like access. But most of the time, most guns like auto lock on and the bullets will just hit if you are pointed in the general direction of an enemy. And so when that is true, you can spend more brain and hand energy like dodging or, or shielding into blue projectiles to get your power recharged. Man, it feels so good.
- [17:27]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I think the real trick to the way it does 3D platforming and does movement is it handles like a ship in a 2D shmup, which if you have played any 2D games, there's no momentum needed. There's no sense of gaining or lowering speed. You move at this consistent speed so that you can perfectly nail wherever you need to be. You stop on a dime, you start at 100 miles per hour. And that not chasing reality in that one aspect, while letting the game look like maybe the best looking game on the PS5 is such a big choice. I think there are many studios that would say, well, it looks so real. The character needs to look real when they move. And nothing about this character looks real when it moves. The game looks amazing. And then you start hopping around and you are just like, you might as well be a little pylon that happens to have a human face on it.
- [18:25]
Griffin McElroy
It's really fun. Well, that human face belongs to Rahul Kohli who was in fucking Midnight Mass and a bunch of izombie haunting of Hill House. Maybe an actor I recognized pretty much instantly. And then to watch him be like, I'm acting and I'm acting.
- [18:47]
Ross Freshy
Wee.
- [18:47]
Griffin McElroy
Just flinging yourself up 30ft into the air was like, oh, that's great. You're having a lot of fun, man. That's awesome.
- [18:54]
Ross Freshy
Maybe wear a helmet, but otherwise, yeah,
- [18:55]
Griffin McElroy
props that would be safer. Yeah, I bounced off returnal and this is a thing I've heard a lot from people who have played Seiros is like, I bounced off returnal because I felt like one, the not being able to stop in the middle of a run thing was pretty bad. Two, just like it's locked on PS5, right? And my PS5's in my office and it is tough for me to like find Time unless I stay up, you know, super late to like sit down at my office and play this game for, for a long time. But three, like, I just never felt like I was making much progress. I never felt like I was that my next run I would have a better shot at it because the enemies, you could be on the run of your life and fuck up a little bit once and the enemies could just like combo you right into the ground. Whereas here, like, if that happens, it's like, ah, fuck. But taking home all this currency, I'm going to come back stronger, I'm going to have all this stuff. I do wish that the upgrades, I do wish that the upgrades, the artifacts that you were picking up were a little bit more impactful.
- [19:57]
Ross Freshy
Yeah, that was sort of the, you know, in playing this and playing Returnal, like the big takeaway I have in returnal and I 100% get the criticism of like, you feel like you're not necessarily making progress in returnal, but you are making mean of meaningful like build crafting decisions in returnal where, oh, I'm gonna make like a melee centric build or I'm gonna make a whatever one shot kill build, things like that. Whereas this, you can kind of sort of do that. Some of the artifacts kind of have those things, but largely like you're mostly just picking up everything unless there's something that has like a very negative, like a slower dash or something.
- [20:33]
Griffin McElroy
Like there's a re roll mechanic that you like get through the armor upgrade, permanent upgrade thing, which is like now whenever you go into a run, if you find an artifact and you don't want it, you can roll it to try and get it to be something else. And like that's an idea that exists in, you know, so many games in this genre. But it's like, do I want to reroll this artifact that like barely increases my shield capacity and maybe it'll give me one that like makes me a little bit stronger whenever I'm like low health or like it doesn't, it just doesn't. Whereas in Hades it's like every choice you're making is like, well, fuck, okay, well now I, I'm. This is going to be a very Helios sort of centric run. I'm going to be playing this way, this way, which matches with this weapon
- [21:16]
Ross Freshy
style I did find and maybe this is like a personal preference thing. I did find that some of the weapons especially like as you get later into the game, just like I could not get going, I could not make them as Effective as like some of the earlier weapons that I found.
- [21:30]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [21:31]
Ross Freshy
The shotgun for example, like required to get like right up in the face of the enemy and the game does not encourage that at all.
- [21:37]
Griffin McElroy
Well, ok. It does because there's also a stagger mechanic in the game where if you can hit an enemy with a certain heavy enough weapon and shotguns do it with one shot. If you get up close it will stun them which then you later unlock the ability to melee someone in that state and basically one hit.
- [21:53]
Ross Freshy
Right. But then you're risking getting hit.
- [21:55]
Griffin McElroy
Right. You're not making a bunch of other choices that are like okay, I've built this guy to be an up close high health. You could maybe try and get a lot of resilience through the.
- [22:06]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I'm going to watch like, like late game builds or like I don't know, YouTube builds of this stuff because they emphasize melee so much. Yeah. In the game like you can get this upgraded arm that I keep thinking there must be a way to play that is much more melee focused.
- [22:24]
Ross Freshy
You do get to a point at some point I guess spoilers on just functionality where if you stagger enemies you can melee them basically from any distance and you'll dash right to them in melee, which is effective. It's good. But I just found like I'm pretty risk averse in these sorts of games. So like I was doing incredibly well just hanging back and anytime I like got up close I would like get hit, lose a combo, lose whatever it was.
- [22:49]
Griffin McElroy
The adrenaline. Yeah, yeah.
- [22:51]
Ross Freshy
Things like that.
- [22:52]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I want to add one quick thing on the stats and upgrades too for people who are listening, who are like me, who do not like roguelikes where it feels like artificial growth, where it's like oh, I play and then I get good by just doing the grind and I get better and better and better. This game does that. Like you're. You're going to need to grind to not just get like your stats increase but to like unlock your basic abilities like a grappling hook and things like that. But. And it's a big but it moves, it moves very fast. Like you get a lot of upgrades very, very quickly each time you're coming back from the run. And I found that to be a bit. It felt like a nice compromise for me. Even if that's not my personal preference for how to play roguelikes. I felt like it was upgrading me at pace with about how good I was at the game. So versus what I was saying early on. Like I was like, yeah, I Mean, it would be nice to have the grappling hook, but like, I'm not going to get much further than this either way in that. Yeah, I don't know. The balance there worked pretty well for me.
- [24:02]
Ross Freshy
Did either of you guys get through the second boss by any chance?
- [24:06]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, the last thing I got is. I mean, I don't know if it's a spoiler because it's so obvious from the start of the game that there's a grappling hook thing that you will eventually get. So I am now on that sort of level. The third and fourth actually sort of chunks of the game. And that is crazy. There's a mechanic that unlocks there that lets you put modifiers on and there's positive ones and negative ones and you have to kind of balance them out. And that has made the game so much more enjoyable for me. And it's not something that is available to you until you can beat that
- [24:39]
Ross Freshy
second boss, which is a weird choice that it takes a good six or seven hours to get to that point. And then what you're able to do is, let's say, for example, you don't do a lot of the sucking up the blue balls thing with the shield. You can turn it so that like, oh. Instead of being able to do that as much as you want, you're getting more currency overall if that fits your play style. So you can really craft it in a way that fits your play style. And once I started doing that, I was flying through the game.
- [25:08]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah. One of them is a damage boost. Just a flat damage boost and you can like level it three times and then you do have to pick quite a few negative modifiers to weigh it out. But like, man, the game's pretty fucking fun when you can just mow down guys. There's a lot of sort of quality of lifestyle stuff that you can grab in there. It's a very smart system.
- [25:29]
Ross Freshy
Yeah, I like that a lot.
- [25:30]
Christopher Thomas Plant
A last thing before we wrap. We haven't even talked about the biomes and how this game looks.
- [25:36]
Griffin McElroy
It makes me so sad that they have not announced a bloodborne remaster in the style of Demon's Souls. It's really. There's so much, especially once you go into like spooky eclipse mode. Like, so much of that shit. Just like, man, I'd love to. I'd love to see Yharnam in this. In this light.
- [25:55]
Ross Freshy
I mean, the. The boss fights especially, like, man, there are some boss fights in this game that are unquestionably the best looking visual Things I've seen in a video game, bar none like stunning, jaw dropping, look like they could easily be the final, final boss of the game. And in fact it's just halfway through the. Because there are so many of those, the art design of those in particular, I was just really floored by. I will admit that from an environmental standpoint, I didn't think the environments themselves quite lived up to that. Like there's some cool vistas, but largely it's like, you know, metal pipes and like craggy rock, moon face things and like.
- [26:39]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I mean it's environmental thing, right? Where it's like not like. Well, it's not full procedural generation. Like it's like lining up different pieces.
- [26:46]
Ross Freshy
Yeah, they're picking up different pieces, right?
- [26:48]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I liked, I liked the general themes. Like the first one that Griffin is referencing is kind of bloodborne, decrepit castles, stonework, you know, gnarly trees, wasted landscapes. The second one is underground. Basically the. The real world in the Matrix.
- [27:11]
Ross Freshy
Right. That was my thought. Yeah.
- [27:12]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Which is like I enjoy kind of tour of just cool sci fi fantasy places. I'm down for. It works for me. Again, not entirely sure how it connects to the weird fiction sci fi stuff, but hey, sure, I'm ready for a vacation.
- [27:30]
Griffin McElroy
I've really been enjoying this game. I'm probably gonna keep playing it. It's been a fun exercise bike game for me, which I think is saying something because I can't usually fuck with super twitchy games and this game is about as twitchy as they come. But I don't know, like House Market does such a good job at taking systems that are somewhat like there's a lot of systems, there's a lot of things you can do in this game. But like it's not that hard to kind of get something going. Yeah, it's not that hard to because you can always sort of dash away from a problem and then there's like a lot of things you can do if you dash towards that problem if you want to like take a slightly bigger risk. But it just. Man, it's such a good feeling game and I want to keep coming back to it just to like see what the new power is, to see what the new weapon is.
- [28:26]
Ross Freshy
I am kind of dying now that I've finished this game to go back to Returnal because I think this game is like almost a really good tutorial for getting very good at Returnal. Unfortunately, I think this game might never come to PC, which is just a new strategy that Sony is doing where they're not necessarily bringing their exclusives to PC, but Returnal is on PC. It's on Steam. And so if you play through this game and you're like, wow, this is really good, I want more of it. Check out Returnal. I fucking love that game. And I think narratively Returnal kind of sticks the landing a little better than this one. But overall this game is fun as shit. I loved it.
- [29:03]
Griffin McElroy
Let's take a brief break and then when we come back we can talk about more of Housemarque's Red and Blue ball lineage,
- [29:13]
Christopher Thomas Plant
y'. All. A few days ago at 4 in the morning, my son woke my wife and I up by presenting us with the sandwich he made. And it was real nice of him. Unfortunately, it was inspired by Looney Tunes, so it was two slices of bread with an entire rotisserie chicken right in the middle, a knife going through all of it, which a little dangerous and intimidating at 4am Even though I wholly trust him as a chef. What I'm saying is I took a picture right away because it was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. Terrifying but super cute. And then I uploaded it to our two aura frames because we are those people in this house. Aura Frame it is the perfect Mother's Day gift to capture the chaos that all of us have put my wife through and that I have put my mother through. It's my way of saying, yes, I'm a little stinker, but also I'm adorable and so is my son. Aura frames have meticulously calibrated high resolution displays. Unless you look really closely or see photo transitions, you'd never know it's a screen. You can change photos, view details like photos and more with a simple tap or swipe on the edge of the frame and you can keep your display smudge free. And like I said earlier, you can upload images from the app. It's incredible whether that is in your house or from my mom half a country away named Number One by Wirecutter, you can save on the gifts moms love by visiting auraframes.com for a limited time. Listeners can get $25 off the best best selling Carver Mat frame with code besties that is auraframes.com promo code besties support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.
- [31:09]
Ross Freshy
Okay, so it is a little bit crazy how long this studio in some fashion has existed.
- [31:16]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah, one of the most senior active studios, I would say, making games today.
- [31:23]
Ross Freshy
Yeah, they've gone through a few name iterations at least early on in their period. They were originally called Blood House, which is a great name.
- [31:32]
Griffin McElroy
That's a good fucking name.
- [31:33]
Ross Freshy
That's when they released the first Stardust, which will come back later. And then they became Terramark, which I
- [31:40]
Christopher Thomas Plant
think they're two separate studios that came together to work with each other.
- [31:44]
Ross Freshy
Right. Hence the name. So I guess, I don't know. Housemarque was what they ended up as, as the fusion of the two studios. And that's where you start seeing more games that you've probably played before. The first game that I remember playing of theirs was Super Stardust HD which came out in 2007.
- [32:02]
Griffin McElroy
Is that a PS3 title?
- [32:04]
Ross Freshy
That was a PS3 title, but apparently Super Stardust came out on Ms. DOS in 1996. Who fucking knew?
- [32:10]
Griffin McElroy
It's crazy.
- [32:10]
Christopher Thomas Plant
And was a sequel to Stardust by blood House in 1993. It was one of the Amiga classics of back in the day.
- [32:19]
Ross Freshy
I think they're most known for that Stardust arcade style arcade game, which is like just score a lot of points, dodge bullets, things like that. Like Sectori in that style, Sector was obviously inspired by House Mark's early stuff.
- [32:34]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Okay.
- [32:35]
Griffin McElroy
I was trying to. I had played Super Stardust HD and I remembered something weird about that and so I was looking it up and found on the games Wikipedia page that Super Stardust HD was one of the games given for free by Sony as part of their welcome back package due to the PlayStation Network outage in 2011. Wow, you guys remember that? You guys remember the PSN?
- [32:56]
Ross Freshy
I vaguely remember it. That's amazing.
- [32:58]
Griffin McElroy
PSN was down for 24 God damn days. And then when they came back they were like, here's a great Housemarque game for free, please.
- [33:08]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I completely forgot about that. That's wild. Yeah, yeah. What's strange about Housemarque is they were so small for so long and how they got to making a game like this is kind of mind blowing. Because they're mostly making arcade games, I guess would be a way of putting it. Like they're keeping the arcade stuff alive, like you said, fresh. Like the twin stick shooter where they start to break away or I guess find some traction is with resogun. I think that's like the. Oh, there might be something more here.
- [33:44]
Ross Freshy
Well, I do want to. Before we get to Resogun, I want to call out one other game which is in 2010, dead nation, which I thought was an interesting. This was a zombie game, but in a lot of ways it was also an arcade game. You like your Combo scoring and all sorts of stuff like that. And giant hordes of enemies. And that felt like kind of a progenitor to where they are now, just in a very small, much smaller scale on the project. Like, that wasn't like a straight arcade game. It felt more like a survival, survive the hordes kind of game. And so they would experiment with other formats as well. Outland is another game that I love. This was a Metroidvania search action game from that team that used red and blue balls, but it was still a search action game. Yeah, that game, notably, I can't find a place I can play it. Oh, wow. They removed it from the Steam store for some reason. It might be on.
- [34:36]
Griffin McElroy
Well, it was probably on the Ubisoft Uplay online thing. Right.
- [34:42]
Ross Freshy
But it would have been. Oh, yeah, maybe it was a Ubisoft
- [34:44]
Griffin McElroy
game that came out in 2011. It was definitely on their. Their dipshit launcher.
- [34:49]
Ross Freshy
Yeah. But that game ruled. And then plant. You can sort of dive in.
- [34:53]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah, well, I guess if we're going to do that. They also. They worked on Angry Birds at a certain point, right before Resogon, which is all just to say this is a studio that seems to be just trying to stay alive.
- [35:04]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [35:04]
Ross Freshy
Like, everybody got to pay the bills,
- [35:06]
Christopher Thomas Plant
even if you got to. Yeah, for sure.
- [35:08]
Griffin McElroy
Contract work.
- [35:08]
Christopher Thomas Plant
They were doing a mobile game, and then Resogun comes along and it's. It's similar to what they've always done. It's like an arcade shooter. But what they said was, you like particle effects. What if he gave you all of the particle effects? What if we took the PlayStation 3 and the 4 and the Vita, whatever it was on, and we pushed it to its absolute limit of what it could throw at you with these, like, spectacular. I don't know if it was actually Voxel, but it has like a Voxel y look of just particles filling the screen as you blow up the world. And suddenly they had this brilliant idea of what if we do a simple game, but make it a graphics showpiece? And because people want to have a graphic showpiece on their system, you can buy it for cheaper than all the other $60 games that were out at the time.
- [36:02]
Griffin McElroy
Well, actually, this was a PS4 launch game. Right. So that takes that idea to the max of people. Like, I want something that looks fucking great. Well, guess what? If you're subscribed to PlayStation plus, it's free. So, like, yeah, there's a reason why I think a lot of people have a lot of affection for this game, and it's because like if you into PlayStation 4 and you had a PlayStation plus membership, you got it for free.
- [36:27]
Ross Freshy
And there weren't a ton of like. I mean we mentioned it.
- [36:30]
Griffin McElroy
No, this was the lot. This was the killer app on PS4 at launch. There was really not much else going on.
- [36:35]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah, I reviewed it for Polygon, I have to check that. But basically the studio then seems to split into two directions in terms of the opportunities they're getting. They're still making these arcade games. This is where they're, you know, the bread is buttered. But then they're like, oh, you know, we should do some other bigger swings. And they do Alienation, which I don't know if any of you remember playing, which is. It was like an isomet. It was also a twin stick shooter, but you could have like four players doing it. And it was a bit more of a not arcadey game, like an earlier Helldon they keep layering on and they're basically layering on, I guess like planes because they do Matterfall, which is a side scroller and then they do Returnal.
- [37:21]
Ross Freshy
And it's notable that when Returnal happened, that was the year that Sony bought them. They became officially part of the Sony family. It's a PlayStation studio now. And so all their stuff is basically exclusive to Sony. And this was like Sony being like, what do you want to do? And they came back with a pretty fucking big swing.
- [37:41]
Griffin McElroy
I don't usually get super stuck into this. The genre of games that Housemarque kind of like specializes in. I don't know that I've ever really score, chased or tried to complete any of the games on this list. But I'm always so fascinated by long running developers who have a weird kind of intangible connecting tissue between all of their games. Whether it's like, oh, the, you know, all these Quintet games use the same sort of sound font library throughout, whether you're playing Act Razor or Illusion of Gaia. Right. I feel like Housemarque's fascination with red and blue projectiles and having different ways of kind of like interacting with those, it truly is a defining feature, I think, of their games. And I don't know, I find that so, so cool. Right. From a historical perspective, but also from a design perspective because you don't, maybe you don't have to teach your players as hard like how this stuff in your game functions. If they've played another Housemarque game before and they already have that like deep reptilian kind of red, bad blue git association.
- [38:53]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah, I was bummed when they decided to leave behind the arcade stuff. I think the last one that they made was Nex Machina. Did y' all remember that one?
- [39:04]
Griffin McElroy
No.
- [39:04]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It is fantastic. If you want a taste of, like, what this studio could do at the top of its powers, they partnered with Eugene Jarvis, who is the designer of Defender and Robotron and Narc and Smash tv and like, let's just make one more great classic arcade style twin stick shooter. It's fantastic. It did not do nearly as well as the games we're talking about today. And they're like, okay, we're gonna move on. And I was bummed. But now we get to have both because one of the former designers of Housemarque went on to be the designer of Sectori. So basically, you gotta have it both ways. You can have their, like, fancy awesome games like Soros, Sorrows, whatever, and then Sectori is, I mean, a perfect heir to. To what they were doing in the past.
- [39:56]
Ross Freshy
And obviously, like, Sarah's has like a lot of that DNA as well. Even though it's not structured like a score chase game. Like, it wouldn't surprise me if DLC came out in a few months that was like, oh, and now you can play it in this way and it's just high scores and shit like that. Yeah, it's a pretty remarkable studio. I'm a big fan of what they've been doing and narratively speaking, they take swings in ways that you don't often see in AAA development anymore, which I love to see. It doesn't always land, but largely pretty risky, especially for one of the few PlayStation exclusives. There are not many that come out. Maybe two or three a year, if that. So the fact that one of them is this weird, trippy, dealing with trauma and also on a fucking space planet thing is pretty sick. I'm very impressed with what they're doing. Very excited for the future. It does slightly bum me out because maybe there's no better studio to make a third person Metroid game than Housemarque. That would fucking rule. But I'll let it slide. It's okay. Before we dive into the one reader mail that we have, we got a ton of other reader mail. I can't read them all because there's so much of just like people shouting out Justin. And Justin being great. And we completely agree. Justin is great.
- [41:17]
Griffin McElroy
I'll pass that along. Yeah, next time I see him.
- [41:20]
Ross Freshy
I know. And obviously we appreciate you guys sticking with us, evolving the show into whatever it's going to become. Obviously besties goes through a lot of changes over the years. This was not the most fun one because we all love Justin, but we're, we're doing the best we can and we thank you all and certainly we'll pass along all the messages to Justin in case he didn't see them in the comments. Okay, this letter comes from Zach. Hey, besties. Just wanted to drop a wreck in the comments because I know many of you are on our Taskmaster fans, but I'm not sure you've mentioned checking out the New Zealand version yet. Season one is good, but season two features honorary McElroy brother Guy Montgomery and is considered to be one of the best all time seasons of Taskmaster from any country. Best of all, it's on YouTube for free, so there's really no reason to check it out. Thank you, Zach. That is a great recommendation. Have you guys experienced?
- [42:16]
Griffin McElroy
Oh, yeah, I watched that for sure. Partially because, like, I don't know, we'd been watching Taskmaster a lot at that point and then we found out fucking Guy Montgomery was on it, who, you know, we're pals with. And I was like, yeah, I'll give this a shot. And it's great, man. It's really great. They have a different Taskmaster. I mean, it's not Greg.
- [42:38]
Ross Freshy
And I mean, I wouldn't imagine it's a long flight.
- [42:42]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, yeah, I guess so. But it's still. I don't know, it has its own kind of flavor and it's just really, really strong tv.
- [42:48]
Ross Freshy
Seems like something Rhys Darby would do, but I guess it's not him either. Maybe he would guess at some point.
- [42:54]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, it's great. It's a really, really, really good season of Taskmaster. Really solid.
- [42:59]
Ross Freshy
Cool. Should we dive into honorable mentions?
- [43:03]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Let's do it, dude.
- [43:05]
Ross Freshy
I started playing blueprints.
- [43:08]
Griffin McElroy
So how's it going?
- [43:11]
Ross Freshy
Okay. So funny story. So the patch came out, but the patch as of right now is still only on PC. And I do not have a great way to play PC games in my living room right now. I theoretically can move it in, but I don't want to deal with that.
- [43:25]
Griffin McElroy
A Steam deck or something.
- [43:27]
Ross Freshy
I mean, I do, but like, is a Steam get. I don't know. Anyway, I. I've been playing it on Switch 2. It is on Switch 2. The patch is not out on Switch 2, which is okay because I've been playing it exclusively with my wife. It is like the one okay game that we're playing, but it should be out this week.
- [43:45]
Griffin McElroy
Right?
- [43:45]
Ross Freshy
That's what they should be out this week. Yeah. So any minute. And obviously, if you're playing with someone who can see colors, not. You don't necessarily need it. I will say, though, that there have been puzzles where she'll be like, making leaps and making decisions, and I'll be like, stop everything you're doing. Why did you pick seven?
- [44:03]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah.
- [44:04]
Griffin McElroy
Right.
- [44:04]
Ross Freshy
Because I cannot. For the. I mean, there's a. I will. This is not really a spoiler, but there's a dartboard puzzle.
- [44:11]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah.
- [44:11]
Ross Freshy
And, like, genuinely could not see that some of the numbers were highlighted in certain ways. Right. That will be fixed once the patch drops, which should be any day now. Might be actually out by the time you listen to this. But, guys, that game's pretty good, I gotta say.
- [44:27]
Griffin McElroy
Have you had, like, a. I don't know what the statute of limitations on blueprint spoilies is. Obviously. I don't want us to get into anything too crazy, but, like, I don't
- [44:37]
Christopher Thomas Plant
think Fresh has seen any major, major spoilies.
- [44:41]
Griffin McElroy
Have you had, like, any kind of oh, shit moment of, like, something comes together or you realize something?
- [44:47]
Ross Freshy
Sure.
- [44:47]
Griffin McElroy
Okay.
- [44:48]
Ross Freshy
Yeah, absolutely. How do I even convey this in a way?
- [44:53]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Don't worry about spoiling. You're not going to spoil anything big.
- [44:56]
Griffin McElroy
Any of the permanent upgrade style.
- [44:59]
Ross Freshy
Yeah. I don't know anything. I mean, we upgraded a room to give you an idea. One of the rooms is upgraded. The last big discovery that we made was the code to get into the garden in the back.
- [45:13]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yes.
- [45:14]
Ross Freshy
Of the house.
- [45:14]
Griffin McElroy
Got you. Got you.
- [45:15]
Ross Freshy
Which we use the magnifying light. So. And so forth. So that was like the big reveal that we made most recently. But I love the experience of, like, trying to min. Max your resources in the house has just been. We had this moment where we were going and, like, we were down to, like, two steps and we open a door and it's the fucking dining room. And the fucking turkey dinner shows up in the dining room. And we're like, yes. Life so cool. The systems in it are. Yeah. Once you start. I think I'm very good at, like, the, like, meta game, like, min. Maxing the, like, resources. And she's very good at the, like, raw puzzle stuff. And so doing that back and forth has been so much fun. And it's a good game. I'm glad I'm the first to discover it. Yeah. So you guys should probably check it out. I would recommend it.
- [46:06]
Griffin McElroy
I anticipate the day where I will have forgotten a lot of shit about blueprints so I can go back and play it again. I had that moment with Obra Dinn a couple of years ago where I finally had kind of purged it from the old memory banks. I think blueprints will take me a little while longer to get out of there, but.
- [46:27]
Ross Freshy
Yeah, yeah, it's tough with things like blueprints and like, outer wilds.
- [46:33]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, outer wilds. I may never be able. Like, there's some. There's some discoveries you make in outer wilds that are so. Oh, it's been staring me in the face the whole time that I don't know that I'll ever.
- [46:43]
Ross Freshy
Really hard to ignore. But yeah, it's a. It's fucking good, man. I'm. I'm really excited to play more of it.
- [46:50]
Griffin McElroy
It's.
- [46:50]
Ross Freshy
It's the perfect, like, we'll just do a day or two structure that makes it really easy to put down. You don't need to, like, binge it necessarily. Yeah. So it's just been a good night. Ender.
- [47:02]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I am really looking forward to you in like two or three weeks.
- [47:06]
Griffin McElroy
Please, every cool moment you have, please text us. I've seen everything that that game has to offer. You will not spoil anything for me.
- [47:13]
Ross Freshy
Sounds good.
- [47:15]
Griffin McElroy
I have a few things if I can run through them real quick.
- [47:17]
Christopher Thomas Plant
One, please.
- [47:19]
Griffin McElroy
There's a lot of iOS stuff that's come out recently, some ports, and I've been playing an incremental game called Idle Obelisk Miner that a lot of people recommended to me after talking about incremental games a couple episod ago. Just a really good, very, very traditional, kind of like you're mining stuff to get stronger, but they keep layering systems and systems and systems and systems on for a really slow burn kind of incremental experience that I've been enjoying. But the two big ones are Nubby's number factories on iOS now, and that is a good one for iOS play. I finally finished a run for the first time. And that game's so cool because it's. If you're not familiar, kind of like Peggle, where you're like shooting a ball down into a board of pegs that are increasing in sort of number size and combining every round to form larger and larger numbers. But you're also drafting these sort of upgrades that will trigger certain things. Like now Nubby shoots out a big wall of radioactive energy on his first hit. Or like the lowest score peg on the board doubles every second and a half. Like you're. You're trying to combine all that stuff into something that can really break the game wide open. And, yeah, it's really, really good on iOS. Gambonanza is out. This is one that Russ recommended to me a while ago before it had launched. This is Chess Balatro. You start out by spinning a roulette or a slot machine reel to draft three pieces chess pieces on a 5x5 board. And then the game is split up into very, very short sort of chess battle sequences where all the pieces move in the traditional sort of chess like way. You have to take out all the enemy pieces without losing all of your pieces. And then between each round you are buying new pieces or you are buying tiles that have special properties on the chessboard or you are buying upgrades that have different modifiers. Like whenever you capture a piece with a pawn, you get an extra turn or stuff along those lines.
- [49:19]
Ross Freshy
Yeah, we're going to be doing a deeper dive into this game specifically during resties for an upcoming episode. It's I guess the episode that comes out in a little bit. So keep an eye on it. But I do agree. Yeah, it's been a steady mainstay on my phone as well.
- [49:36]
Griffin McElroy
It's been really solid.
- [49:37]
Ross Freshy
Really solid. Really, really good. Yeah.
- [49:39]
Griffin McElroy
The last thing is a show, a Korean reality competition show. Stop me if you've heard this one before. It's on the Disney network. Disney is how we are watching it. It may be other places as well. It is called Battle of Fates and it is a Korean survival show in that sort of survival 100 sort of milieu. Very, very over the top production values. But it is a show about fortune telling. So they have 49 fate readers of different disciplines. So there's tarot card readers, there's people.
- [50:22]
Ross Freshy
It didn't occur to me that people, someone would be good at tarot and not good at like crystal ball, really.
- [50:28]
Griffin McElroy
So the way that they handle that is very, very good. And I will get into that. But they have Saju, which is a I believe traditional Korean sort of birthday fortune telling. Take a look at all these different charts. There's shamanism, there's a lot of shamans representing different sort of like spirits. There are face readers, name readers. There's like people who are sort of of this discipline but like across these various different techniques. Right. And the game, the show starts with like a disclaimer saying like this is entertainment purposes. We didn't give anybody sort of advance notice about whatever. And the game starts and what they have to do is just do a reading based on a certain thing. So maybe they will show you a picture of a kid and it'll be like here's his birthday. What did he grow up to be? Or a person. They'll bring out five people and they say, one of these people won the lottery and one of these people was struck by lightning. Identify who it is. And so like, they. One of them is just pictures of feet and you have to do a reading based on that. It is a somewhat gnarly hang from time to time. Because the first one of these readings is they show a picture of a woman and her name and her birthday who has died, who has actually passed away. And they have to divine the nature of her death. And it's like, apparently they did a bunch of those and people. There was a lot of backlash from people who were like, that's fucking gross. So they only left one in the show. And it is indeed like, it's the first one they show you. And it is so fucking wild.
- [52:14]
Ross Freshy
Okay. And just for my edification as a man of science.
- [52:18]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [52:19]
Ross Freshy
Aren't people just constantly like, they're all getting it wrong?
- [52:22]
Griffin McElroy
So here's what's great, right? There's 49 people and every like, round you get to buzz in if you think you got something good, if you like, feel like you got a good spirit. And then they let seven people give their readings and from that they let one person advance.
- [52:35]
Ross Freshy
Okay.
- [52:36]
Griffin McElroy
So like closest. What's wild about the show is they don't really show the bad readings. Sometimes they'll like do a round and it'll be like, which of these five people are students at this university? And they'll only show like one person who gets it like dead on, right? And they do not show the other. So like by. By what they are editing in and what they are showing. It really paints a picture of these sort of like fortune telling disciplines that have like, wow, this shit's really good. What's interesting, like, it's an interesting concept for a show, right?
- [53:09]
Ross Freshy
Sure it is.
- [53:10]
Griffin McElroy
I'm learning so much about like shit I did not know about, like, like Korean shamanism and Saju and like all of these different things. It's really interesting watching people coming at this sort of concept from way different angles sort of talk, right? And so like tarot card readers feel a certain way about something or they'll get like a fortune thing or like, I don't know how to even do this because our thing is like people draw cards and then it's important that they interact with. Whereas shamans would be like, I have this granny spirit and she is mad at me, but she told me that his he has ulcers in his. You know, whatever. It's.
- [53:50]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I.
- [53:50]
Griffin McElroy
It is. I don't know. It's a fascinating subject that is obviously fraught as fuck. And the show doesn't do a ton to kind of like, get you over that hump, but it's also like, again, super high touch, super high production value. Korea reality competitions.
- [54:07]
Christopher Thomas Plant
What was it called again? I need battle of fates. Okay.
- [54:12]
Ross Freshy
And we trust the Korean live reality show organization to, like, I don't know what's. I know in the US There are laws about, like, not putting a thumb on the scale.
- [54:23]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah.
- [54:24]
Ross Freshy
Do we know if those laws exist?
- [54:26]
Griffin McElroy
I don't know, man. I mean, couching all of this is like. I watch a lot of Korean reality competition survival programs, and I am not at all knowledgeable about kind of like, not in the way that, like, I feel pretty comfortable. I know Survivor or Bachelor kind of back and forth. There are cultural barriers there. There's a lot of things that I don't really understand. They have the disclaimer, but, like, I don't know.
- [54:54]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Griffin, did you watch Dandadon at all?
- [54:57]
Griffin McElroy
Did I watch Danda Dan? A little bit, yeah.
- [54:59]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah. This is giving me Dandadon vibes in a weird way, which is the premise at the beginning, is that there is a high school boy who believes in space aliens and is obsessed with them and a young woman who believes in ghosts. And what I love about that show, even though it disappears very quickly, is that they both think the other one is totally full of shit that, like, their thing is clearly real, but how could there possibly be space aliens?
- [55:24]
Griffin McElroy
Everybody walks out. The stage is like this huge, winding garden path with these circular stone plinths that all of the fortune tellers have. A little table and a little seat, and then they have their bag of ritual tools for the most part. And for the shamans, that's like, they have these five colored flags that they spin around, and then whichever one they draw, there's divining sticks that they shake in whichever way. Like, there's so many different things that they're doing. But the saju guys roll up and they pull out a fucking laptop and they have an app that looks like fucking turbotax that they punch people's shit into. And then they read it like that. The tarot readers have all their different shuffles and different styles. Like, it's interesting if this kind of stuff.
- [56:05]
Ross Freshy
I mean, if the saju guys had Wi Fi, that seems.
- [56:08]
Griffin McElroy
If this stuff doesn't piss you off, and I understand there's lots of people who fully, fully, fully. It does like, you know, your mileage will obviously vary, but like, I don't know. It's deeply, deeply fascinating.
- [56:21]
Ross Freshy
I would definitely check for a cell dongle on those laptops, quite honestly.
- [56:25]
Griffin McElroy
A cell dongle?
- [56:26]
Ross Freshy
Yeah. Someone's connecting to wi fi and getting an edge. That's all someone's.
- [56:30]
Griffin McElroy
I think you can connect to wi Fi.
- [56:31]
Ross Freshy
Well, Yeah, I guess MySpace seems like an advantage.
- [56:34]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, I guess that's true.
- [56:36]
Ross Freshy
Okay, the dividing power versus a card, right?
- [56:39]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah.
- [56:39]
Ross Freshy
The tower. Okay, that's cool. Plant, you have anything?
- [56:43]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah. And just very quick. It's another thing that we'll go in way deeper on the upcoming Rusties. But I gotta get y' all on chain staff. Okay. It's. It's so. It's so good, y'.
- [56:54]
Griffin McElroy
All.
- [56:55]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It's so good. Chainstaff is the latest game from Nathan Fouts who did Mommy's or runs a studio Mommy's Best Games. Nathan was at Sony for Resistance Fall of Man a long, long time ago. And if you've ever been like man, I miss, I miss when they had these absolutely bonkers weapons in my action games. He basically has just continued that on now inside scrolling 2D shooters. And these games are. If you converted the drawings in the back of your high school like workbooks at school into a video game, it would look like this. They're just like hand. Hand drawn in a way that is almost disturbing but also quite beautiful and more so with each passing game. I think this is really his finest work visually. But the attitude is high schooler gone truly cut loose. You in this game are a super soldier shredded muscles who has a like basically a space alien slug that is bitten onto your head and now is just. You don't have it. You just have this space alien slug. And if you were to remove it, you will die. So you need to go through alien worlds saving your fellow soldiers to get powers to both increase your space likeness and also your various weapons. But what matters most is in the title the chain staff which is one of the coolest mechanics in forever. It is a single weapon. It is this like alien chain made of different links and you will shoot it out and you can use it to grappling hook like in Bionic Commando but with like more like physics than Bionic Commando of the past. Cool. Very neat. You can also use it as a ultra charge weapon that is almost a guaranteed one hit kill missile that you can shoot. But again if you do that, you can't swing or you'll drop from your Swing. You can also use it as a shield. So you could plant it in the ground and have it go vertical and suddenly you have this, I mean, fully impenetrable barrier between you and your enemies. Or you could use it as a bridge. It can be used for all of these things. Basically everything you want to do in the game can be done with this object. But again, it can only be doing one thing at a time. So you're constantly having to think about how you're manipulating this incredible tool and prioritizing its various uses while also blasting aliens with increasingly ridiculous weapons. That sounds sick.
- [59:41]
Griffin McElroy
Really, really sick.
- [59:42]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It's absolutely sick. There's so much more I have to say about this game. So like I said, we'll get into it in Rusty's, but in the meantime, I really can't recommend it enough. And I think Nathan, what Mommy's best games has done is like Housemarque, a beacon of survival. His earliest game, weapon of choice came out a long, long time ago, and he's just been, you know, plucking away at this ever since.
- [60:09]
Ross Freshy
Cool. Cool. That's all awesome. I wanted to call out over at the Patreon. We have a new Bracket Battles episode that is live right now. It's actually Justin's not, I won't say final, but we're going to be having special guests join for a lot of the Bracket Battles episodes. Justin will probably join for a few of them each year. He won't be every single month. But this was his final as part of our Besties regular crew. This is very fitting because it was about franchises that should be turned into theme parks. And we have.
- [60:40]
Griffin McElroy
Oh, what a good one.
- [60:42]
Ross Freshy
What a good one.
- [60:42]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Right here is good. Silent Hill would be too big of a bummer. I'm realizing there is a Silent Hill ride, which is Mr. Toad's wild ride, except for for going to jail for, you know, like, driving too fast. You killed your wife.
- [60:56]
Ross Freshy
Yeah.
- [60:57]
Christopher Thomas Plant
But either way, you're getting arrested and going to hell.
- [61:00]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, you're right. And I would do want to eat the green if they made like green licorice herbs that you could just walk around gnawing on green plants and red plants like red licorice golden eggs plants.
- [61:13]
Ross Freshy
I love that briefcase stuff.
- [61:16]
Christopher Thomas Plant
All your life, too.
- [61:17]
Ross Freshy
I love it.
- [61:17]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah.
- [61:18]
Ross Freshy
Yeah.
- [61:18]
Griffin McElroy
And Griffin had that great idea where everybody has a gun. It would be so obvious it was fake, guys. It would be like the Wiimote rifle kind of shell.
- [61:36]
Ross Freshy
Lots of fun to record that episode. We had a good time. So go over, listen to that show Justin some love by supporting the Patreon. It's only five bucks a month if you want to join or you can get ad free episodes of the main show. 10 bucks a month plus all the bonus stuff. And we love all of you guys, especially some new members. We have Karen, we have Abigail, we have Ned, and we have the high techredneck. Thank you for joining and supporting us over@patreon.com thebesties thank you to everyone else who continues to support us. We really appreciate you. Obviously this is a transition time for the show, but we hope to continue entertaining you guys with dope ass games for a long, long time.
- [62:18]
Griffin McElroy
That's exactly right. What are we doing next week though?
- [62:21]
Ross Freshy
Oh boy. Speaking of dope ass games, we have a game called mixtape. This is a narrow first game. I don't even want to preamble it too much but it's really interesting so stay tuned for that next week.
- [62:36]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I am so excited to talk about this game. I don't know when the embargoless but I can say this. Frostchik messaged me right away and was like are you playing this? And like looking into a mirror of my soul.
- [62:49]
Ross Freshy
Yeah. Just because Plant loves it, don't let that scare you because I also feel strongly about it. So keep an eye out for that. That's coming next week.
- [63:00]
Griffin McElroy
Awesome. So join us again next week for the besties. And thank you so much for listening to the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties.