← The Besties
The Besties
The Pirate Yakuza Game Has Something for Everyone – Even Newcomers
00:54:37
Ahoy, besties! This week, the crew sets sails with Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, a video game that’s as silly as its name suggests. Unlike its predecessor — our best game of 2024 — this entry features a new(ish) protagonist, old-school action combat, and a potpourri of new min-games that borrow from a wide range of Besties favorites, including Cooking Mama and Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. Note from Plante: Last week’s description said Obsidian, the developer of Avowed, had previously made Fallout 76. It should have said Fallout: New Vegas. Sometimes I only have a chance to write the description/newsletter late, late, late in the night before we publish an episode — not an excuse, just an explanation. Needless to say, the mistake was human error and not the result of my co-hosts replacing me with a Content Bot.
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- [00:00]
Russ Frustick
So it's cold and flu season and I got an important question for you guys.
- [00:04]
Griffin McElroy
Sure.
- [00:05]
Russ Frustick
Where are you putting those sneezes?
- [00:08]
Griffin McElroy
Explain.
- [00:10]
Russ Frustick
Well, it took me about 27 years to realize that. To do the elbow sneeze.
- [00:15]
Griffin McElroy
Crook of your arm.
- [00:17]
Russ Frustick
Crook of your arm.
- [00:17]
Griffin McElroy
Sneeze.
- [00:18]
Russ Frustick
Which is now generally considered to be the healthiest place to sneeze.
- [00:21]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [00:22]
Russ Frustick
Apart from, I guess, the tissue. But then it's in the crook of your arm. So where are you putting that sneeze?
- [00:29]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Oh, well, you kind of zip past the thing that you're probably ashamed of, which you.
- [00:34]
Russ Frustick
What?
- [00:34]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Come on. What you would do back when we worked together, like 10 years ago, Griffin, do you remember this? That fresh would carry around a Ziploc bag and sneeze into it every time.
- [00:45]
Russ Frustick
That's a very nasty.
- [00:46]
Griffin McElroy
He called it his nasty sack.
- [00:48]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah.
- [00:49]
Griffin McElroy
He would carry it around and it was so big that he couldn't put it in his pocket. So he always just had his nasty sack sort of like bundled up.
- [00:57]
Christopher Thomas Plant
And it was a biohazard. So he would just staple them to his bedroom wall across the season until we did a big nasty sack emptying.
- [01:04]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah. So, yeah, I mean that certainly I would hate for you to go. To fall back into your old ways, Russ.
- [01:11]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah.
- [01:12]
Griffin McElroy
The new guidance I've seen coming out of RFK is to get real low down to the ground. Like you're doing a push up and just blast it down onto the ground. Cause your sneeze particles settle. So his point, and I disagree with this clown on a lot of ways, but he says get real low to the ground and just sneeze right on the ground. And then it'll say a push up, sneeze. A push up, sneeze. Yeah. And what he says is really great about that is also you're doing a push up, so you're marginally stronger every time you sneeze.
- [01:37]
Christopher Thomas Plant
And that guy has a game song that they're using to promote this, right?
- [01:42]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah. He goes, push it up, push it up, push it up. Get down on the ground and sneeze, you clown fuck. And I don't know why, like, it makes fun of you at the end of it.
- [01:53]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Well, he wrote it, you know, but.
- [01:55]
Griffin McElroy
I mean, he's so fucking built.
- [01:57]
Russ Frustick
He is. He's so built, really, in one specific area and nowhere else.
- [02:02]
Griffin McElroy
He has a lot of what I call external physical health. And that's gotta count for something, right? My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week.
- [02:30]
Christopher Thomas Plant
My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I Know the best game of the week.
- [02:34]
Russ Frustick
My name is Russ Frustick. I know the best game of the week.
- [02:37]
Griffin McElroy
Welcome to the Best season show where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive intergamement. It's a game of the year club. Just by listening, you, my friend, are a member this week. Very excited. Justin is on the toilet this week. Very excited.
- [02:52]
Russ Frustick
It should be noted, actually. So last week I made a mistake and said that Griffin died. He didn't die. He's here. He's recording with us. Justin died. That was my mistake. I frequently confuse the two.
- [03:02]
Griffin McElroy
I was in case Justin having trouble getting over a respiratory thing until I did my push up sneezes and now I'm all better.
- [03:08]
Russ Frustick
Yeah.
- [03:08]
Griffin McElroy
This week we are talking about like a dragon pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Okay, that one doesn't. It's not as hard to say actually as I thought. It was good.
- [03:17]
Russ Frustick
It covers so many bases.
- [03:18]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It also takes care of my job.
- [03:20]
Griffin McElroy
Because it says exactly what, literally exactly what it is.
- [03:24]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Like a dragon game where you would play as a pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.
- [03:28]
Griffin McElroy
In Hawaii. It covers genre, it covers location, it covers character. Everything you need to know. Ryu, Gaga Toku has done it again. And we're gonna talk more about it after this.
- [03:40]
Russ Frustick
So who wants to bring me up to speed on what old Goro's been up to?
- [03:45]
Griffin McElroy
Okay. I don't know this man. Aside from his appearances in Yakuza. Like a dragon and Like a Dragon, Infinite Wealth. I believe maybe it's Yakuza 0. I don't know where Goro made his first appearance.
- [04:02]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Oh, he's in all of them. He is the kind of canonical other guy, kind of an antagonist, kind of becomes more of a friend along the way. Fast and the Furious, sort of a.
- [04:14]
Griffin McElroy
Mad dog, sort of wild and crazy guy, unhinged Yakuza type. But in this one, he's the protagonist and he's an amnesiac for a little bit. He's kind of an amnesiac through a lot of it. And he washes up on an island and he adopts somebody's son. Basically, he adopts someone who definitely already has a dad and says, I'm your dad now. Come with me.
- [04:43]
Russ Frustick
Jason, you're gonna need to adopts the dad as well.
- [04:45]
Griffin McElroy
He does kind of adopt the dad and then he steals it by rich ship. Because.
- [04:50]
Russ Frustick
Can I ask so in. Because as we know, I didn't finish Infinite Wealth. Does he like crash on a boat in Infinite Wealth? Do we see what happens?
- [04:59]
Griffin McElroy
I don't believe he. I Don't believe we see him crash on a ship. I assume we will find out at some point.
- [05:06]
Russ Frustick
And is like the tiger seen in Infinite Wealth?
- [05:09]
Griffin McElroy
No, the tiger, the whole boy family. They are not characters in Like a Dragon. Infinite.
- [05:14]
Russ Frustick
So we don't have a preamble for where the tiger came from?
- [05:17]
Griffin McElroy
No. This game does take place after the events of Like a Infinite Wealth. You learn about Palemaku Island, I believe, which is sort of a big story. Crux of Infinite Wealth.
- [05:30]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah, Story wise. Basically, in Infinite wealth, the main story is about you as Kazuma Kiryu, the rival of the character in this game, and Ichiban. Uncovering. Huh?
- [05:41]
Griffin McElroy
It's Ichiban. Ichiban.
- [05:42]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Kazuma is awesome. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Oh, oh, oh, sorry. Ichiban and Kazuma. Yeah. You are uncovering the mystery of this kind of religious cult that you discover. Spoilers for the next one minute is using a island that is nearly impossible to find in this Pacific Ocean to house former yakuza to do basically like maintenance work on a giant warehouse full of nuclear waste. And all the nations across the world are sending their nuclear waste here to be taken care of and quote, disposed of, which it of course isn't.
- [06:21]
Griffin McElroy
It doesn't matter.
- [06:23]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It matters. It matters. It matters. Listen, I put like 120 hours into this. If I don't get to pretend it matters, then why do I even think it matters?
- [06:31]
Griffin McElroy
Oh, no, no, no. It matters to me a great deal. Infinite wealth is one of my favorite games ever made. This game's connection to it is tangential at best. So far.
- [06:42]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I will say it matters in the sense that this takes place after all of those events. You are going to see a lot of what happened to that religious cult and the fallout of this game. You're also going to meet basically all of the same characters and they're going to do a lot of the same missions and jokes. And part of the gag of this game is, hey, remember when you met this mascot character who asked you to pick up religious pamphlets? Not religious pamphlets, just various pamphlets. Fortunes. You're gonna do that exact exactly again, all over again.
- [07:18]
Griffin McElroy
It is very siloed off this game in that it is. I mean, it's insane. It's patently. You lose perspective on it the longer you spend in pirate yakuza and Hawaii. That it is fucking bonkers that you are this character from this series who's an amnesiac, and in the absence of knowledge that he possesses, he fills it with pirate garbage and he becomes an actual pirate and enlists a pirate crew and goes on pirate adventures for treasure and shit like that. And then also at one point you do roll up on Honolulu and just do all the same shit that Kazuma Kiryu did in like a Infinite Wealth. All this. Most of the mini games, nothing. I haven't hit Dondoko Island. It feels insane for there not to be some. I've met some characters that I met on Dondoko island, but I want to manage another modern animal crossing style City island, please. But like a lot, a lot, a lot of the side quests and big beats from Infinite wealth you will see in the side quests. Once you do finally get to Honolulu, it takes you quite some time to get there.
- [08:25]
Russ Frustick
Yeah. So because I didn't finish Infinite Wealth, I thought I would be lost in this game and not really be able to follow it. But it turns out this has been maybe the most pleasurable Yakuza experience I've ever had.
- [08:38]
Griffin McElroy
Gosh, I'm so glad to hear that, Russ.
- [08:40]
Russ Frustick
It's really quite enjoyable because there's very little. The preamble is like an hour. You spend an hour like on this island kind of getting your feet wet and meeting the little boy and the tiger and his dad, et cetera. And then once you're on the boat the pace dramatically increases.
- [08:57]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [08:58]
Russ Frustick
And you're doing fights and you're doing. You're taking over like islands filled with pirates that have treasure on them and doing mini missions and it's all so fucking buck wild silly. Yeah. I'll give you an example. The title credits, which again happened like an hour in. It's a full on pirate musical.
- [09:17]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [09:18]
Russ Frustick
With singing and dancing and Matt Mercer does the English voice really going as.
- [09:23]
Griffin McElroy
Ham as I've ever heard him go. And that is saying something.
- [09:28]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah.
- [09:29]
Russ Frustick
No part of this game is holding back. And as much as I appreciate the slow character driven build that is a normal Yakuza game, I have no patience for it or time.
- [09:41]
Griffin McElroy
Okay.
- [09:42]
Russ Frustick
So this like light speed, fast and the Furious style pacing, even though it doesn't necessarily earn the character connections that make you love this game and make you not at all, it doesn't earn that stuff. That's fine for me. I'm having an enjoyable time and the gameplay is fun and like it just feels like a romp.
- [10:01]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yes, it is. I think maybe like 20 to 25 hours, not 100 percenting it. You can play this game very, very fast compared to the other Yakuza games and it's not surprising for the reason that you're talking about, because it's almost like somewhere between a weekend tour and a parody of a Yakuza game. And that's. I'm still not sure where I land on this. Oops. All berries. Nature of pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Because love the main character. Love all the silliness. It's why I play the Yakuza games. But I also love, you know, salt and sugar, but I don't want that to be my whole meal. And there was a little bit of that when I was playing this where I did wish it slowed down a little bit so that I could get just a little grounded before it did the thing that it does in every Yakuza game where suddenly the silly mission turns really serious when you realize that someone's dad's terminally sick.
- [10:58]
Griffin McElroy
I mean, yes, the game's characters are wafer thin, I will say, pretty much across the board. Their main motivations usually boil down to, I used to be a pirate, and now I'm not anymore. But this. This amnesiac yakuza here has inspired me to get back out on that. Those big, beautiful ocean waters. And that is, I mean, not anything that I am finding particularly compelling. Whereas I think.
- [11:28]
Russ Frustick
I mean, that's not the plot of Infinite wealth, where he's convincing all these former Yakuzas to, like, have purpose in life.
- [11:33]
Griffin McElroy
Absolutely not. No, it is. I mean, it. It handles that subject matter with a lot more nuance, I will say, dealing with the sort of, like, reality of stigma, a formerly sort of incarcerated individual and all of the bad.
- [11:48]
Russ Frustick
No one more incarcerated than pirates throughout history.
- [11:51]
Griffin McElroy
I don't think so. I think if they got caught, they pretty much got killed. I don't think there was a lot of jail time suffered by pirates. So, like, I don't know. It is. I love the RPGs. We haven't even talked about the action combat in this game. But I like Infinite wealth and like A Dragon so much because the characters, especially in Infinite wealth, are so well written and so thoughtful and so well developed, and you go on these little side missions with them that really, really make them compelling characters. And also just sort of like the broad storyline of the game, starting in, like, A Dragon, where you are a betrayed Yakuza member having to literally rebuild his life from scratch. Like, that's really good stuff. And it goes hand in hand with the RPG mechanics of, you know, being a powerless hero growing to this, like, demigod by the end of the, like, all that stuff goes hand in hand, really. Really well together. And it's just as. I'm like seven and eight hours in so far, I haven't gotten literally a morsel of that from this game. But it's still fun. It's still very, very fun. And I do, I am enjoying the beat em up sort of combat a lot more than. I still definitely prefer the turn based stuff, especially the kind of hybridized stuff they did in Infinite Wealth. But I don't know, I thought I would get bored with the combat after my first few encounters. But they definitely do add some stuff that makes it a lot more, I don't know, interesting.
- [13:22]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It's quite rich and it's very fast. It feels different than a lot of things that we've had in other Yakuza games. Even ones when you can play as this character most closely resembles the Spy Yakuza game. Yeah, whatever that, yeah, I played it. It has a little bit of that, but even still, it's much faster than that. And there's a lot of different unlocks that you can do and add all these new move sets and stuff. You can also switch on an auto combo feature, which fresh I know that you use if you're the type of person who wants to unlock the cool stuff, but doesn't want to have to memorize XXXY Y Pause Y I think.
- [14:00]
Griffin McElroy
You mean XXX Y Pausyb oh, sorry. Yes.
- [14:03]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah, yeah, that was what I was meaning. But what I think is really useful about this game, and I think it's telling that you got into it fresh is it's a great instruction manual for the Yakuza series. And in the past, Yakuza 0 was the one I recommended for that. Yeah, I think this might be even better because it is so fast and it actually has a clear ui. The Yakuza games, like a Dragon games, have I think struggled with this for a long time. Even Yakuza 0, a game I love, you have a double whammy of the ui, doesn't make a whole lot of sense at first, and you don't really have an excuse to use it for hours and hours and hours. And the way that this game just guides you through all of the kind of fundamental pieces of a Yakuza game. You play this and I think you can be sent off to any other part of the series and the pace will be different, but the overall how to play it, you'll have learned. And I think that's important. With all sorts of games that we've seen from Dark Souls to Persona, half the battle is just Learning how to experience the game.
- [15:12]
Russ Frustick
So I'm gonna get letters over what I'm gonna say. But there's another aspect that makes this one of the best onboarding for Yakuza games that I've played. Oh, no, it does not star Kazuma Kiryu.
- [15:26]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I fucking knew it.
- [15:27]
Griffin McElroy
No, I mean, hey, no, for sure.
- [15:29]
Russ Frustick
I have played a lot of these games because of Chris Plant. Probably four or five of them.
- [15:34]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [15:35]
Russ Frustick
And every time I play one that stars Kazuma Kiryu, I stopped playing. Because you know what isn't fun is spending three hours with a sad, sad man. And that is Kazuma. He has a sad past and he loves to talk about it, but that's the pleasure.
- [15:52]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It's.
- [15:53]
Russ Frustick
But you have to. And that's the thing is like if you have the patience to power through the sadness to get to, oh, he's now hugging a bear and doing a dance. And that's really funny, great. But I don't and I haven't. So here I'm playing as a fucking goofy ass pirate with tons of tattoos that's a total badass, but also silly and loves musicals. I'm in.
- [16:13]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, sure.
- [16:14]
Russ Frustick
And this could potentially be the thing that allows me to play the other games. I mean, look, I enjoyed what I played Of Infinite Wealth. I just didn't have the patience to like see it through. But I played 15 hours of that game and then Kazuma showed up. He's like, man, I'm sad. And also I've got health issues. And I'm like, eh, I'm good.
- [16:31]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It is hilarious that they did design a game specifically for you and that they're like, so how many hours did you play? 15. Got it. And what do you want?
- [16:38]
Griffin McElroy
Oops.
- [16:38]
Christopher Thomas Plant
All berries. Okay, got it. Oh, and new combat. Okay, got it. This game, is this the one you want?
- [16:48]
Russ Frustick
We haven't talked about the comment, but I do want to talk about it briefly. It is fully real time as we've sort of addressed it is a beat em up, which is the style of the original Yakuza games before it switched to turn based.
- [17:00]
Griffin McElroy
Switch to turn based is also kind of a weird way. I feel like a dragon, which was the first RPG and Infinite wealth are their own thing and they are hugely outnumbered by games that do not have turn based RPG combat.
- [17:17]
Russ Frustick
But don't you think like my understanding is like the mainline Yakuza or like a dragon games are now that.
- [17:23]
Griffin McElroy
I mean, yeah, that's true.
- [17:26]
Christopher Thomas Plant
But again, it's even complicated in that the combat Here feels so different than the early Yakuza games.
- [17:34]
Russ Frustick
I mean, you're fighting crowds of like 20 people.
- [17:37]
Griffin McElroy
You can't jump in any of the other Yakuza games as far as I know. And so like, the ability to air juggle in this game gives it a like, you know, Devil May Cry Platinum esque flair that I am finding very, very, very fun.
- [17:53]
Christopher Thomas Plant
There are stages in this game. You drop into an island, you're like, oh yeah, I need to go kill off some pirates. And then suddenly a number pops up on the screen and just starts counting down. 80 Pirates are going to come at you. And then they start dropping from the sky. Rapid fire. Just dozens of pirates.
- [18:11]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah. Once you get into big ship battles. Okay, so there's a part of this game that is also naval combat, right. You have a ship so good, it's like as arcadey, I think, as they possibly could have made it. You have a boost button and you can drift in your pirate ship very easily. And there's rings all over the ocean that you go through to get turbo boosts. And then you have a cannon button on both sides and a machine gun that fires. So like Sea of Thieves, it ain't.
- [18:44]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Forgotten what other feature.
- [18:45]
Griffin McElroy
Oh, right, sure.
- [18:46]
Christopher Thomas Plant
You can at any point shift back into the boat in the middle of all this. So you're like suddenly just walking around the boat. And while you're on the boat, you can just pull out a rocket launcher because. Why not? Why would you not want to do that?
- [19:00]
Griffin McElroy
Because it kind of sucks. It's like hard to actually land shots with that thing. But then sometimes after you finish knocking out the ship of a big. There's also a thing called the Pirate Coliseum, which is like these big featured one on one battles. After you knock out someone's ship, you have to board with your boarding party, which you customize fully. Like, you can unlock new crew members. You can customize the different parts of your ship quite a bit.
- [19:23]
Russ Frustick
You can give them bouquets.
- [19:24]
Griffin McElroy
You can give them bouquets to level them up, which is an insane mechanic. And then all of a sudden, the game turns into fucking Dynasty warriors and you are doing this big 20 on 20 battle on the deck of the enemy ship.
- [19:38]
Russ Frustick
Here's the thing about mainline Yakuza games that I've played. If I have 20 minutes, I am not guaranteed to have a good time in those 20 minutes. In the mainline one.
- [19:47]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Sure.
- [19:47]
Russ Frustick
In this, for sure I'm gonna have a good time.
- [19:50]
Griffin McElroy
Yes. Even if it is the cutscenes. The cutscenes are so fucking Goofy, I just met you go to Madlantis, which is a place sort of reference in Infinite Wealth. It's where the bad guys from Dondoco island came from, I believe. And in this game you meet the queen Michelle, which is great. That's wild. And also the pirate king of Madlantis, who is just played by Samoa Joe. There's just Samoa. I was just watching this cut scene and then all of a sudden getting kudos from actual Samoa Joe. Like, what the fuck? Where did he come? It's so goofy and so weird. It's. It's just like the silly cutscenes, the silly side quest cutscenes, usually from the RPG Yakuza games is the vibe of the main story in this game, which is like, you know, double edged sword. It is not hooking me in terms of like, I actually care about these characters, but it is like, man, it's like popcorn, man. It's just enjoyable to pick it up and play a little bit of it. I'm really enjoying it. I'm glad you are on board with it, Russ. I know that you have not been.
- [21:02]
Russ Frustick
No, it's clicking for me. It does. I'm also just impressed from a logistical standpoint, like how they converted a lot of the assets and content creation that they made for Infinite wealth into another format, obviously so quickly. I'm sure obviously a ton of the development was happening while Infinite wealth was happening, but convert it into something that feels like very, very different but also uses a lot of the same stuff.
- [21:27]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [21:28]
Russ Frustick
Is just like pretty impressive, I will say.
- [21:32]
Griffin McElroy
So. I. After, I don't know, a few hours of the game, you reach Honolulu and then you get basically access to the big wide open world part of Honolulu from Infinite Wealth. And I ran around, I did like a dozen side quests and unlocked a bunch of crewmates and played a bunch of the mini games and stuff. And now that I've done that and moved on to other parts of the story, I don't feel particularly compelled to go back and do a bunch of the other stuff that is there because it is sort of the same stuff that I was doing in Infinite wealth and I played the shit out of that game. And so the idea of going back and replaying all of this stuff that I already spent dozens of hours doing is slightly less compelling to me.
- [22:19]
Russ Frustick
Do you get the sense that it's gonna make you.
- [22:22]
Griffin McElroy
No, I don't get the sense that it's gonna make me. So like, I guess that's the thing. Right. I probably will be one to finish this game fairly quickly just because I'm enjoying it. I am not loving it to the degree where I loved the RPGs where I feel like, well, I gotta fucking unlock every class and I gotta do the photo rallies and I gotta do. I got to do all of. I got to catch some perverts and make them battle each other and then max out my animal crossing island. Like it is. It is a little bit less meaty than all that. And a lot of the meat that is there is meat that I've already eaten in Infinite Wealth.
- [23:00]
Russ Frustick
So I also will say like, I was shocked to find that Infinite wealth does not have a difficulty setting when I played it originally because I wanted to like speed up the process. This does. You can play on easy and we mentioned earlier there's like an assisted combo thing.
- [23:12]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [23:13]
Russ Frustick
And because of that it allows you to not do every single little thing and still keep pace with the game's difficulty, which has been great. I've really enjoyed that option as well. It just allows it to fit into my life better.
- [23:27]
Griffin McElroy
I do think that there's a lot of upgrades and progression and stuff that it definitely hits harder if you are playing without the assisted combos and on a higher difficulty. Like, God, there's so many systems. There's like rings. You have 10 rings.
- [23:44]
Russ Frustick
You can equip every ring, every finger has a ring.
- [23:47]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah. And then like you have to be pretty thoughtful about how you spend your money. Money is how you unlock stat boosts basically for Goro. And so you have to be very thoughtful about that stuff. But also you can just blow right through that shit if you don't care about it, which I do appreciate. Yeah, I like it. I just. It. Honestly, more than anything, this game continues to drive home my just unrepentant adoration for this whole series and what they have done with it. Like it's so. It is leaning into the best instincts and like my favorite shit about this franchise and what this developer does.
- [24:31]
Russ Frustick
And there's just no analog for the tone for the way it's played for like the visual stuff. There's no analog to this anywhere else in the video game industry.
- [24:39]
Griffin McElroy
No, there's nothing. This, I don't know, a game that is this like funny and light hearted usually doesn't have like a ton of other stuff going on for it.
- [24:53]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It also doesn't have the sincerity too. That's the magic sauce, right. For me that it's very funny and goofy and it then surprises you with an uppercut of hey, you know, as you get older, it's harder to make friends, and you really should put in the effort, or else you'll just be lonely forever. And it's like, what the fuck?
- [25:14]
Russ Frustick
Occasionally there's some dissonance, which I had to overcome. I sent Clint a video clip. One of the earliest characters you meet is, like, a chef aboard the pirate ship. And you predictably have to fight the chef until he becomes friends with you. And using my assisted combo thing, I at one point, like, kind of accidentally activated a finishing move where I snap his neck.
- [25:38]
Christopher Thomas Plant
And it doesn't look like he is dead.
- [25:41]
Russ Frustick
His eyes are open when he falls to the ground.
- [25:44]
Griffin McElroy
It's really actually pretty easy to execute that move. If you, like, dodge, step out of the way. It gives you a prompt to do a heat action to snap the person you're fighting, his neck. And sometimes if you do it right in a boss fight, you'll do that four or five times to the same guy. And it's gotta be like, after the third one, just lay down, man.
- [26:02]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Just stop.
- [26:03]
Griffin McElroy
I'm hurting you.
- [26:04]
Russ Frustick
I hope it's more just like a chiropractic adjustment.
- [26:08]
Griffin McElroy
Adjustment.
- [26:09]
Christopher Thomas Plant
One last thing before we head out of this section. The series is known for reusing parts of other games that you visit the same location over and over and over across the Yakuza series, and with, like, slight modifications or sometimes substantial. How do y'all feel about this as, like, a practice, especially something as big as Hawaii? I'm a fan of it, to be clear, but I'm curious what y'all are kind of thinking about it.
- [26:38]
Griffin McElroy
It's tough. I. If I had not spent. If the. If the. If Infinite wealth, if the genre of that game and the construction of that game was not sort of did not lend itself to spending over a hundred hours on it, then I might feel a little bit differently. It is not. When you first roll up to Hawaii in Infinite wealth, it is such an insane, humongous playground with all of this just exotic stuff and stories to find and little side quests that you do. And when you discover, like, holy shit, there's a whole crazy taxi game in here, and there's all of these different little side things you can do. It's so thrilling. It's genuinely thrilling. And you can lose dozens of hours right there just of like, I want to see everything that there is to see. And that does not hit remotely as hard this time around. It's still fun to mess around in that, right? But for me, the fun is the enjoyment I'm getting is weirdly like nostalgia for a game I played last year. Not like, I don't know, like the excitement of discovery or whatever.
- [27:53]
Russ Frustick
My MO on this stuff is if you're reusing assets, make sure that for people that saw them the first time, spent a lot of time with them the first time, that there's either something new, like dramatically new there, or make them optional. Don't force people to do the same shit over and over and over again just because you have the assets lying around.
- [28:13]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [28:14]
Russ Frustick
That being said, I have attacked a lot of islands with a lot of pirates that look all basically identical. And I'm kind of.
- [28:21]
Griffin McElroy
The islands and the pirates look identical. Yeah.
- [28:23]
Russ Frustick
I'm kind of fine with it. So it. That doesn't bother me because they're so short and goofy and like just like beat em up areas.
- [28:31]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah, I dig it. And I think the thing that they understand is it can't be the whole game. So in a lot of Yakuza games, yeah, you'll go back to Kamurocho, but you'll also go to new places here. The main island from the previous game isn't the only place you go. No, I do think they're clever in the conversation that they're having with the previous game. So, for example, near where you start in the previous game, there's a bar that you go to over and over and over again. Right next door is this big open lot. And as you progress through the game, you have to get more powerful to go fight the enemies in that lot and go get the treasure. Well, that's just not how this game works. But you know, in your head. Well, there's always treasure in this huge open lot. So you run over in this game, you find a whole bunch of enemies that you can beat the living shit out of, but you also find all these seeds everywhere in it that you can use to fill out your garden, which is a new mini game in this game. So it's rewarding.
- [29:28]
Griffin McElroy
That's being quite generous to say what the garden is.
- [29:31]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yeah, Garden. Thank you. But it is. It's rewarding you for being a previous player. And if you hadn't played the game before this, whatever, you don't need to know that. You don't need to know to go discover that you'll probably find it on your own. I think that is all very clever. I also just think this is something Sega and Atlus also are trying to figure out. I think with how do you fund video games? But we see this with Persona too. Of these games cost so much to make we almost expect to double dip. And we're thinking about that. I assume from the beginning we were thinking of how can we design spaces that serve multiple purposes. That way we can justify these increasingly absurd costs.
- [30:17]
Griffin McElroy
And it's like the way they have done it is so laudable. I cannot think of another example of a studio doing what this game does, which is we're gonna use a lot of the same assets from the last game, but make them its own sort of like standalone thing and handling that with like, we're going to justify that by making the tone absolutely insane and let you do stuff that is so wild and so out of, out of step with the rest of the series that it feels. It feels novel and it feels earned and it feels sort of like justified. It doesn't feel like a, you know, half baked cash grab. Like it is a fully formed idea that is bizarre. But like, that's kind of what is so pleasurable about it.
- [31:02]
Russ Frustick
You know, what it reminds me of is Tears of the Kingdom. I don't know, honestly, if you think when you first heard it's gonna be the same map as Breath of the Wild.
- [31:14]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [31:15]
Russ Frustick
There was a part of you that was like, oh, really? Oh, that's kind of a letdown. And the fact that they were able to not only have the same map, but also make it feel completely different because of the things you were able to do. Granted, not as silly. The tone is very consistent across both games, but from a revamping existing content in a way that like felt really new and different.
- [31:35]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, I guess the comparison doesn't work for me because I think of Tears of the Kingdom as its. I mean, I think of Tears of the Kingdom as maybe the best game ever made. But this definitely has the feel of a side quest. This has the feel of offshoot. And that to me usually is a red flag that usually to me spells. And honestly, there were times where I was playing this game where I kind of wished I was playing just Infinite wealth again, but it would be insane to go back to that already. But it also stands apart. And even though it is very much on its face, a side quest or a spin off or whatever, it's a really good one and I'm so happy that it exists.
- [32:18]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yakuza 0 splits its time between Kazuma Kiryu and this character. And there's a version of Infinite wealth that feels like it could do that with this game. The reason they can't do that is because Infinite wealth already has two full games in it. So, like adding a Third just would start to feel.
- [32:36]
Griffin McElroy
God, how good would a RPG with split characters with Ichiban Kasuga and Goro Machima as the two. And when you played as Goro, it would be a beat em up. It would be a pirate beat em up. And then when you played as Ichiban, it would be a Dragon Quest style rpg.
- [32:53]
Russ Frustick
Walk it in.
- [32:54]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Bring it.
- [32:54]
Griffin McElroy
Yes.
- [32:55]
Russ Frustick
As long as Kiryu's dead, I'm great.
- [32:57]
Griffin McElroy
He'll never die. His health issues have been, I think, dramatically overblown by the press. Hey, let's take a quick break and then maybe talk a little bit about those little critters from Japan that we all love so much called Pokeman.
- [33:17]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Okay, we are back with the big news of the week. Pokemon Go in the games division of Niantic, that's the developer of Pokemon Go, are reportedly being sold to Saudi Arabia owned Scopely Inc. This is based off a report from Bloomberg and it is going to cost Scopely a lot of money. $3.5 billion. Now they're getting the entire Nantic Games division. Sure. But like that at this point pretty much is Pokemon Go. And I thought what we would do is talk about how the hell did we get here because, you know, almost a decade ago, it's 2016. Pokemon Go is the biggest video game on the planet. One of the biggest video game releases of all time. The year it came out, 500 million downloads. That is just a staggering number.
- [34:14]
Griffin McElroy
It's half a billion. Half a billion down.
- [34:16]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Half a billion. And it did so well for so long. Niantic seemed to be on track. They have games or they had games with Harry Potter. They have currently a Monster Hunter game. They have done other partnerships with Nintendo. They have been funded by Google and Nintendo and the Pokemon company. You think they would be doing great. And yet here we are. What happened?
- [34:42]
Russ Frustick
I mean, let's be real. They are doing great. I mean, last year their revenue was $500 million.
- [34:48]
Christopher Thomas Plant
That's true. You don't get sold for $3.2 billion.
- [34:52]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, it's not a punishment to sold money.
- [34:56]
Christopher Thomas Plant
But I think there's a version of this where Niantic would prefer it to just be a super successful company that doesn't have to sell its game division. You would think. Yeah, yeah.
- [35:05]
Russ Frustick
I mean, internally, it's hard to say what, you know, whether the people that have make these final calls really just want to be done with it. Yeah. I think the important thing to remember is it's not just the fact that they're making $500 million a year. They also have a cache of pretty staggering data regarding the comings and goings and movements of basically every player that's ever played Pokemon Go.
- [35:29]
Christopher Thomas Plant
This is the part that I am so confused about and how this deal is going to happen. Obviously we live in a very different country now, but where everybody was freaked out about TikTok. I can't imagine how people feel about app that literally has players scanning the world around them and creating that data to serve a giant database.
- [35:54]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, I mean, I think we've learned, if anything, over the last six weeks that people's interest in giving a shit about breaches of privacy and data security is sort of select. I will say it is sort of context sensitive. And maybe some folks don't give much of a shit about this, as you might expect.
- [36:19]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Which also might be why Niantic is okay with finally selling its game division. Do you all know the history of this company, how it came to be?
- [36:28]
Griffin McElroy
I did at some point, but I've definitely replaced that information in my brain.
- [36:31]
Christopher Thomas Plant
With other stuff at this point, understandably. A quick recap. John Hanke is the founder, basically of Niantic. But before that, way back in like 2001, he founded a company, I believe, called Keyhole, that would get bought up by Google and would set up Google Maps and Google Earth. Needless to say, he was very successful and could kind of do whatever he wanted. And at Google he goes, hey, I want to make augmented reality video games. And they're like, sure, John, whatever. You made the thing for us go off and tinker with it. He makes a game with his team called Ingress, which did have like, I think, seven, eight million players. A mild success for what it was. And with that success, Google funds them branching off that like, team branching off and becoming Niantic. So this company, in theory, is meant to be a video game studio from the beginning. But what's so weird about this is I have seen him talk at conferences. I've actually done a Q and A with him at a conference, and he doesn't talk much about games. He talks a lot about augmented reality mapping and data collection. And the kind of, I think larger selling point has always been that if you have 500 million people across the world capturing literal data of the world around them using increasingly improved augmented reality focused phones, you are learning how to.
- [38:14]
Russ Frustick
Well, not just the augmented reality, but also the GPS data.
- [38:17]
Christopher Thomas Plant
That is being sure, the GPS data. But I mean, specifically, if you have people using it in their house, you're finding out how many people in the country have uneven foundations because you're getting an idea of the gap between their ceiling and their floor, which is not theoretical.
- [38:32]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, there's always been a really big disconnect for me. I've played quite a bit of Pokemon Go. It was like a big way that I got Henry interested in exploring D.C. when we moved here a few years ago was that unlike living in Austin, in not downtown, there's just fucking nothing you can really do because it's not walkable and there's not a bunch of pokestops everywhere. And here there was. And it was an exciting way to go around. Also, the AR thing, you switch off literally the first couple minutes you play the game and you never turn it back on again because it makes it harder to actually play the game and catch the Pokemon. So there's always been this weird disconnect between the technology and sort of maybe original artistic intention of Pokemon Go versus the reality of what people have wanted when they actually play it. And the speed with which they have tried to rectify that gap has been so cartoonishly sluggish and still, like, not something that they stick the landing on fucking 20% of the time. It's always been a weird thing for me where it's like you guys have a mondo hit on your hands, and also you do not know what your players want out of it a lot of the time.
- [39:47]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I think they also expected the technology to move much, much faster than it did. And I do think I'm talking about all this data. I don't want to be so crass as to say there wasn't an alignment between collect data and make the game they want to. Because the big goal for the company was to be able to create basically situations where you could have an augmented reality experience in Austin, Texas, and one in Washington, D.C. and one in Orange County, California. And all of us would be out in our parks, but we would be having a shared experience in augmented reality. So if we wanted to have a Pokemon battle out in a park, we could all pull out our phones in all these different places and create, like, shared augmented spaces.
- [40:32]
Griffin McElroy
Very cool.
- [40:32]
Christopher Thomas Plant
A wild.
- [40:33]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, it's just not what people want.
- [40:36]
Russ Frustick
I can't even fucking trade Pikachu to Griffin if I wanted to, because he's in far away.
- [40:41]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Yes. The other problem is you couldn't even have a shared space in the same park with the degree of believability that you would want. Like, it would be great to go to a park and have Pokemon and be able to have a Pokemon Battle that actually looks like a Pokemon battle in front of you in augmented reality. That is not like what we got. They will, I assume, be fine. On top of the $3.2 billion, assuming the sale goes through, they also have started feeding all of that data into what they're calling, I believe, a large geospatial model. Will you be surprised to hear that they are using AI tools to basically create an AI version of mapping? No, of course not. So I think that is probably why they got the juice from the orange and now they can pass on the rind. But yeah, it's weird. It wasn't on my bingo card for this year's news.
- [41:37]
Griffin McElroy
No, but if you still have a bingo card for the news, the hubris you are exhibiting is frankly unhinged.
- [41:46]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I did have last year Robbie Williams makes a movie where he makes it entirely as a monkey and nailed it.
- [41:53]
Griffin McElroy
You did have that. That's so fucking.
- [41:55]
Russ Frustick
But he thought it was going to be a big success in the U.S. i did.
- [41:58]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Unfortunately, not even a joke. I really thought it would hit.
- [42:02]
Russ Frustick
We have a good piece of reader mail. This comes from Jonah. There's a question. Love the idea of an FPS first person snapper. This was in the context of talking about photograph games. Are there more others that people know of? And Jakey responded with a few other suggestions. Some good photography games toem Generation Paparazzi ones I haven't played, but I heard they're good. Might fit the description Season. Did you play Season?
- [42:30]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I thought you did. Maybe not. I don't know if I remember that one.
- [42:33]
Russ Frustick
A Letter to the Future and torypon.
- [42:36]
Griffin McElroy
I believe Season A Letter to the Future is the full.
- [42:38]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Oh, that game. Yeah, I really liked that game. Yes, you ride around on a bike and take photos of a world that is basically doomed and create a scrapbook that you put into Fallout Shelter more or less for future generations to look over. It is fun. It has like a nice vibe.
- [43:00]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, sure.
- [43:01]
Russ Frustick
Jakey also mentions the Fatal Frame games if you want to get scared.
- [43:05]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Wait, did anybody say Panko Park? Did Jakey say there was a lot of great games? Panko Park. We've talked about this on, I believe, the Resties, but if you've ever wanted kind of like an Edward Gorey Pokemon Snap, Panko park rules. Strongly recommend it. And it is a true Pokemon Snap type.
- [43:24]
Russ Frustick
Love it.
- [43:25]
Griffin McElroy
Beyond good and evil is like an oversight. Not being featured on this list. It feels like, how dare you, Jakey. That game's sort of approach to photojournalism is fucking rad. Is very, very, very good.
- [43:38]
Russ Frustick
Doesn't age well.
- [43:39]
Griffin McElroy
You don't think so?
- [43:40]
Russ Frustick
I played it for the first time, like 10 years after the game came out, and it was not. It felt like very dinosaur in terms.
- [43:48]
Griffin McElroy
Of well beyond good and evil 2. When it comes out, I'm sure it's gonna be great.
- [43:52]
Russ Frustick
It's gonna be real good. Real good.
- [43:53]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Real good.
- [43:55]
Griffin McElroy
Should we do some honorable mentions?
- [43:56]
Russ Frustick
Yeah. Do you have any honorable.
- [43:57]
Griffin McElroy
I got a big one.
- [43:58]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Oh, boy.
- [43:59]
Griffin McElroy
In the. My house has become a den of plague, and it has since mid January. So I have had a lot of time on the couch playing Steam Deck as everyone kind of convalesces. And I got hugely, deeply into grounded, a game that I played a bit of. I know that I think we all sort of played together, had like a server or something.
- [44:27]
Russ Frustick
It's the Honey I Shrunk the Kids game.
- [44:28]
Griffin McElroy
This is the Honey I Shrunk the Kids game from Obsidian. And it was a, you know, a survival craft sort of game where you are in this yard and you have to find resources to build armor and weapons and you can build a fort and, you know, you're trying to figure out the mystery of where you are and how to get big. The game is like fully feature complete now in what they call Fully Yoked Edition.
- [44:54]
Russ Frustick
Is that a joke? Like an egg joke?
- [44:57]
Griffin McElroy
I don't know. It's like part of this in game fiction TV show. I don't know. The game has made for Saturday morning cartoon sort of vibes a little bit, but I'm not 100% sure what is different in the game now compared to when I first originally played it. But it feels just really, really, really good to play that game. There is so much quality of life stuff that makes every element of the game really fun and meaningful. So basic stuff like when you're building a base, there's like a single button that you press to immediately, like, dispense everything in your inventory into nearby boxes that you might have that is very, like, smart and context sensitive. And then when you're crafting something, it automatically pulls stuff from your nearby inventory stuff. And the building system is so rich. And so, you know, there's so many practical uses for all of these things that I ended up like, there's a big tree in the middle of the yard, and so I built a ramp up to like, halfway up that tree. And then I built a little tree house in that. And then I built a walkway that went all the way around the circumference of the tree so I could Run zip lines from that walkway. Because there's no fast travel in the game. You have to build these little zip lines that go. So by the end of the game, I had this spider web of zip lines going all across the yard.
- [46:27]
Russ Frustick
Sounds like someone's ready to play Death Strang again, I was going to say.
- [46:30]
Griffin McElroy
Man, I don't know.
- [46:31]
Russ Frustick
That's what it sounds like.
- [46:32]
Christopher Thomas Plant
It sounds like it.
- [46:33]
Griffin McElroy
It's also just like discovering stuff in that game is so exciting because it is hard. Like the world is turned against you. You are a. It constantly drives home this feeling of you are a little guy and if you come across the wrong bug while you're out there, you're going to get fucking smoked. And so when you find a new armor set or you find a new like, weapon schematic that like, it really feels super, super meaningful.
- [46:57]
Russ Frustick
Did they tone down the hunger stuff? Because that was something that I.
- [47:01]
Griffin McElroy
So the game's like, different systems are like customizable. There's definitely ways of turning off that stuff if you do not like it. I forget what setting I played on. I think mild maybe where that system is in the game. But it's very easy. You can build a dew catcher in your base that then basically you never.
- [47:21]
Russ Frustick
Have to worry about dew. Gross.
- [47:23]
Griffin McElroy
Dew. Dew. The sweet, clear stuff. I just. I think it's astounding. I think it is a fantastic game.
- [47:31]
Russ Frustick
Are you mostly playing solo?
- [47:32]
Griffin McElroy
I played entirely solo. I finished the game. I like genuinely start to finish crazy. Like really explored the shit out of the yard because again, I had a ton of time to kill while I was sick.
- [47:44]
Russ Frustick
Were you playing on Steam Deck?
- [47:45]
Griffin McElroy
Played it all on Steam Deck. Runs perfectly. I think it is probably better multiplayer. Like there's.
- [47:52]
Russ Frustick
Well, we played multiplayer a little bit. It was.
- [47:54]
Griffin McElroy
We did, yeah.
- [47:54]
Russ Frustick
But it was early.
- [47:55]
Griffin McElroy
I really, really enjoy the base building stuff and I think like having buddies to do that stuff with and feel this sense of ownership over the backyard. That's the main thing that this game does is it gives you this feeling of mastery over the wilds. And I think that that's the intention behind a lot of. I mean, the whole survival craft. Open world survival craft, I believe is the full title of that genre. And I think this game does it better than anything else. And I just. Man, I really loved the shit out of. Out of my time with this game.
- [48:30]
Russ Frustick
That's cool.
- [48:30]
Griffin McElroy
So. So if you did not play grounded, it is in a really, really good spot right now.
- [48:35]
Christopher Thomas Plant
That rules.
- [48:37]
Russ Frustick
I played Mario's Picross, which is a Game Boy game.
- [48:41]
Griffin McElroy
All right.
- [48:42]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Okay.
- [48:42]
Russ Frustick
It's just a picross game. It might be the first picross game that Nintendo has sold, obviously came out many moons ago, but it's a great introduction to picross as a genre and, like, just learning the rules of picross. And if you get into it, there are a million, like, mobile versions of it and things like that that you can get into. But I just really find it very soothing. And it's kind of like a. It's like sudoku, but at the end of it, you get a cute little picture of a cat. And that's great.
- [49:12]
Griffin McElroy
I like that. Yeah. I think I had this game and I didn't understand how it worked.
- [49:17]
Russ Frustick
Yeah, you could probably handle it now. Griffin, I believe in you.
- [49:20]
Griffin McElroy
Is it scratching the itch in the way, like, I played the, like, 3Ds one, so people.
- [49:26]
Russ Frustick
Yeah, they evolved into, like, more 3D picross games, which I haven't played, but I know a lot of people get obsessed with them, it feels like. My guess is once you evolve into that, it's kind of hard to go back the other way because it'd be so simple. But there are 3D. They're called nonograms. There are 3D nonogram games on iOS that I, if I had played any of them, would recommend to you right now. But maybe people in the comments will recommend.
- [49:53]
Christopher Thomas Plant
And you're recommending the Game One or the Super Nintendo one?
- [49:57]
Russ Frustick
Well, I haven't played the Super Nintendo one. I only played the Game Boy one.
- [50:00]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I think the Super Nintendo one is. It was released exclusively in Japan, but I think they released it on the Switch. Yeah, I think it. Yeah, it came out on Switch online in September 2020, if you sub to that.
- [50:14]
Russ Frustick
And it's on Super Nintendo, so you probably don't need the Ultra Edition. You can play that. That sounds like fun. Nice monograms.
- [50:24]
Christopher Thomas Plant
I've been watching this show called Severance. Oh, wow. We're not allowed to talk about it. I'm not gonna say any spoilers or anything. I'm just gonna say it's a pretty good show.
- [50:35]
Russ Frustick
Okay, that's it.
- [50:36]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Watch.
- [50:36]
Russ Frustick
Just shining a light on an unheralded piece of media.
- [50:39]
Griffin McElroy
Good. I'm glad Ben Stiller's getting his flowers. Fine. Yeah. It's fucking astonishing. Every episode of this show feels like the season finale of the show. A really remarkable achievement.
- [50:55]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Which is funny because that's how I felt about Parks and Recreation, too. That every four episodes, because they thought they were gonna get canceled, they were like, yeah, here's another season finale. And, oh, we're not canceled. We're gonna keep making more episodes. Great. Adam Scott, man, I could just look at that guy's face forever.
- [51:12]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah. And he has two faces in this show, which is crazy. He has his weathered, outy face and his fresh, inny face.
- [51:20]
Christopher Thomas Plant
How do you do that?
- [51:21]
Griffin McElroy
How do you do that with your friends?
- [51:22]
Russ Frustick
It's like listening to people talk about Balatro. If you haven't played Balatro, it's just like a fever dream.
- [51:28]
Griffin McElroy
You should play Balatro and you should watch Severe.
- [51:31]
Russ Frustick
It's the best shit out there now. I know, I know.
- [51:34]
Griffin McElroy
Do you not watch? Have you not seen it?
- [51:35]
Russ Frustick
I know.
- [51:36]
Griffin McElroy
You're watching the first season, though, right?
- [51:37]
Russ Frustick
Nope, haven't watched it. I want to. It's really hard because it's not. I've mentioned it before. I'm in a movie club, and we have to watch movies, and I have to watch. I'm halfway through Three Colors Blue, which I'm sure Clint is, like, a huge fan of.
- [51:51]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Mm, no, it's complicated. Anyway, that's homework.
- [51:55]
Russ Frustick
Outside of the besties and outside of normal work and outside of raising my child, I have movie homework.
- [51:59]
Griffin McElroy
This show is already homework. It's fucked up that you have built more homework into your life. It's fun. This show's fun homework, and I love to do it, but you can't have many sources of assigned media consumption.
- [52:11]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Too much hard work.
- [52:12]
Russ Frustick
Well, here I am. This is where I'm stuck.
- [52:15]
Griffin McElroy
I'm not saying walk away from besties. I'm saying walk away from your movie friends, obviously. Thank you so much for listening to the besties. We got some friends.
- [52:27]
Russ Frustick
Oh, yeah. We got some Patreon friends. Let me call them out. Thank you to new subscribers. We have Oliver, we have Miles, we have Mike, Chuck, and we have Orville. Thank you for being patrons of the besties. You can go on over to patreon.com.
- [52:38]
Griffin McElroy
Thebesties what did we talk about this week, Chris?
- [52:41]
Russ Frustick
Oh, man, so much stuff.
- [52:43]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Oh, my gosh. What did we talk about? We talked about so much stuff. We talked about, like, a dragon pirate, Yakuza in Hawaii. We talked about Panko park in Grounded and Beyond Good and Evil, Mario Picross, Super Mario Picross, Toem Umaru Generation, Paparazzi season, the Letter to the Future, Tory Pon, the Fatal Frame series, and the TV show Severance, plus Pokemon Go. You can find a list of all of those things and more over at the newsletter, including a mia culpa from me, because last week I was a little sleepy. And I wrote that Obsidian made Fallout 76. Obviously, they didn't. I know it. I don't need any conspiracy theories about how I've turned into some AI robot who doesn't know my video games from my whatsapps. I got it. Go read the newsletter. It's fantastic.
- [53:33]
Griffin McElroy
And if you want to become a patron, patreon.com thebesties is the link that you can go to next week. Monster Hunter Wilds.
- [53:39]
Russ Frustick
Oh, man, there's a big one out there.
- [53:41]
Griffin McElroy
Gonna Kill a Jaguar is gonna be.
- [53:43]
Russ Frustick
The game that gets people into Monster Hunter.
- [53:45]
Griffin McElroy
This one. This one's the one for sure.
- [53:49]
Russ Frustick
I actually do. I mean, it is every. Every installment becomes a little more easy.
- [53:53]
Griffin McElroy
To get into, but I like World's Better than Rise. But we'll see how this one treats us. Okay, we're gonna talk all about it next week, so join us then. Till next time, join us for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?
- [54:35]
Christopher Thomas Plant
Besties.