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The Besties
What Even Is a Video Game?! (Grab Bag!)
01:11:31
This week, we talk about a mystery game that feels like a book, a historic epic that plays like a movie, and a simulator that takes the place of our favorite chores. No surprise, The Besties find themselves wondering what a video game even is.
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- [00:00]
Justin McElroy
Anything, Mom. Domi's gonna make you Egg Steam Czar.
- [00:05]
Russ Frushtick
Is that a question for me?
- [00:07]
Justin McElroy
No, dude, it's a question for Griffin. Cause I'm an idiot. Because you've known me for. You've known me 20 years, and I'm a huge idiot who always says the wrong, stupidest thing at the worst times while it's being recorded. Cause he's a fucking clown. Yes, it was to you, Russ. Cause you love the steam from eggs.
- [00:35]
Chris Plant
Pervert.
- [00:40]
Griffin McElroy
So this past Halloween, I was hanging out with Clocktower Scissor Man.
- [00:48]
Justin McElroy
Yeah, that was before the Cold Open we started recording. What Griffin just did was the beginning of the Cold Open. Before that was the Coldest Open.
- [00:57]
Griffin McElroy
That's strong. It's a. What's up with Clock Tower? Scissor Man.
- [01:01]
Russ Frushtick
What are you talking about?
- [01:01]
Griffin McElroy
No one knows, Huh?
- [01:03]
Russ Frushtick
I don't know what you're talking about.
- [01:04]
Griffin McElroy
Clock Tower game.
- [01:06]
Russ Frushtick
I know there's a game called Clock Tower.
- [01:08]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah. Scissors.
- [01:09]
Chris Plant
Scissor man on the front cover.
- [01:11]
Griffin McElroy
He's a bad guy from Clock Tower. He's got a big pair of scissors and he chases you around like.
- [01:15]
Russ Frushtick
Yeah, you know what's terrible to fix a clock is scissors. What do you. Why?
- [01:19]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, that's why. When I hung out with him, he was fucking bummed out.
- [01:22]
Russ Frushtick
Did he talk about maybe he brought the wrong tool for the job?
- [01:25]
Justin McElroy
Maybe.
- [01:26]
Chris Plant
I gotta go take a big doll.
- [01:29]
Griffin McElroy
God damn it.
- [01:30]
Russ Frushtick
We need to find a way to not integrate poop as a staple of the introduction to the show.
- [01:36]
Chris Plant
Is it a staple?
- [01:37]
Russ Frushtick
No.
- [01:38]
Griffin McElroy
I kind of feels like it, but maybe shouldn't be.
- [01:58]
Justin McElroy
My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week.
- [02:01]
Griffin McElroy
My name is Griffin McRoy. I know the best game of the week.
- [02:04]
Chris Plant
My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know how this Cold Open works.
- [02:08]
Russ Frushtick
My name is Russ Freshwick. I know the best game of the week.
- [02:12]
Justin McElroy
Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club, and just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member. This week on the Video Game Club. Kind of a grab bag, a potpourri, as we invented the term. Chris Plant. What is potpourri?
- [02:30]
Chris Plant
Potpourri, often found in the bathroom, can be so many other things. A collection, a mishmash, a collage of wonderful treats. And this week, that potpourri, or potpourri, includes Sands of Blake Manor, power hour simulator 2, and so many other wonderful games, including Road to Empress, Book One. I should have mentioned that. Up top.
- [02:52]
Justin McElroy
Yeah. But now they're all been mentioned. There's nothing else other than those. So we've really covered the whole gamut. And we'll be right back to talk about that right after this.
- [03:02]
Russ Frushtick
This episode of the Besties is sponsored by Alienware. You know, Alienware's biggest sale of the season lets you unleash peak performance at Black Friday savings. Prices start at $899.99 on select Alienware PCs like the groundbreaking Alienware 16 Aurora Gaming LA Laptop, taking performance to the next level with Intel Core processors. Plus you can save on all the latest accessories and displays like the Alienware 32.4K QD OLED gaming monitor. I have personally used that gaming monitor. It is freaking gorgeous. I am blown away every time I turn it on. If that sounds good to you, you should visit alienware.comdeals before these limited time savings end. That's alienware.com deals. Thanks to Alienware for sponsoring this episode. I feel like the biggest one. We have a lot of big games to talk about, but I feel like the biggest one just from a buzz standpoint these days is a little game called Seance at Blake Manor.
- [04:11]
Griffin McElroy
It's the Seance of Blake Manor. The article can shift, I think, based on the user's preference, but it is I like of love is strong for me. Yeah, I'm extremely into Seance of Blake man. Actually, I was extremely into it. I finished it this morning. And I am the world's greatest detective and I think it's a fucking banger of a game.
- [04:35]
Chris Plant
So for people who are only vaguely familiar with this, you might see a trailer for it and think, ah, I remember that Blue Prince published by Raw Fury. You go into a big mansion, has that general look. Totally different game. This is a. It's a narrative game, a deduction game, kind of in the style of Golden Idol, where you're piecing together the words and clues that you collect. But unlike Golden Isle, you are walking around this beautiful manor meeting all sorts of characters. A lot. A lot of guests, a lot of characters. You're pulling a guess who. Where you're figuring out who isn't the evil one. The target, the culprit. The culprit. Narrowing it down piece by piece over the course of these hour long chunks of a weekend. That's the basic gist.
- [05:24]
Griffin McElroy
The timetable thing is interesting to me because I see that and it was pretty quickly sort of a turnoff. The idea is as you do things in the manor, as you are solving the disappearance of a woman named Evelyn Dean in the days leading up to this big seance event that has brought everybody to this manor in the Irish countryside in around the turn of the 20th century. Or wait, 19th century, one of those centuries. Every time you do something, it takes a minute. And you have only a certain amount of time to solve the mystery. And also people move around the manor every hour. The whole house changes. Sometimes there's events, sometimes people are doing speeches. Sometimes you need to go in someone's room, but you can't do that. Cause they're fucking in there. And so, like, I don't know that. That whole system kind of stressed me out at first. But as I got a little bit further into the game and I sort of started to learn, like, what was stuff I was wasting my time on and what was like, actually helping me get through the cases. I started to kind of appreciate it for what it was. Which is like, the only kind of, like, tension that they can apply to this. This style of detective.
- [06:40]
Russ Frushtick
So can you. I guess whenever I hear, like, a time mechanic, like, using time, and time's running out. What happens if you do run out of time?
- [06:50]
Chris Plant
You Game over.
- [06:51]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, I mean, there's fail states in the game, which is really interesting. You can hit one pretty much instantly. And I find it really funny that they sort of allow you to do that. Like, if you go in someone's room and they're in there, they're like, hey, what the fuck? They call the hotel manager. You get kicked out of the hotel, Game over. So, like, there are definitely, like, an escalation.
- [07:10]
Russ Frushtick
You could just knock. I mean, I've gone in rooms with people before.
- [07:14]
Griffin McElroy
What'd the game have?
- [07:15]
Chris Plant
Yeah, strangers.
- [07:18]
Griffin McElroy
Probably invited, though. What's really great is how they kind of have mechanics to sort of make all this stuff work. Each character has their own mystery that you have to, like, get into and solve, in addition to these other bigger supernatural mysteries happening around the house. And you have this, like, wild, huge web, like, connecting every little piece and every little detail that you have. And sometimes the detective will have thoughts like, I should go focus on this for a while. So, like, there's definitely. There's a lot of breadcrumbs that the game leaves you to make sure that you are not going to, you know, completely blow it. Which I very much appreciated, but also did take away a little bit from the actual deduction side of things.
- [08:03]
Justin McElroy
I think they unroll a lot of tools, and I got overwhelmed by them. And I think the thing that I. Tell me this is correct, Griffin, because obviously you played a lot more. I mistook a lot of those as more mechanical than supportive. And a lot of it seems more like supportive rather than additional mechanics that you have to engage with. A lot of it's mechanics to help you keep track of information rather than things you have to worry about too much if you don't feel compelled to.
- [08:35]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, no, it is a bit muddy. Like what, what, what clues do what? The system that Chris was talking about with the, like, golden idol style, like, fill in the blanks. The words you use are the clues that you found by talking to other people. When you talk to someone, you get a list of. Basically you can ask them about most of the pieces of evidence that you have, or you can ask them about anybody else in the house. It'll cost you a minute. Right. And so you want to be smart about, like, what you're doing. But sometimes you'll get like a clue that will then provide you a word that you can use in the fill in the blank mystery. Sometimes it'll just be like, hey, there's this new topic you can go look up at the library and maybe that'll get you something. Maybe that doesn't. It kind of. But then the tools that you're like, saying are like, you can set reminders on the timetable of like, oh, this character's gonna be at this place at this time. And then when the clock changes to that next hour, it'll say, like, hey, don't forget you're supposed to go to the stables to meet with so and so.
- [09:30]
Russ Frushtick
Yeah, that is cool. I like that.
- [09:31]
Griffin McElroy
It is cool. They do give you a lot of tools, but it is such a different game from blueprints. I think it's a wildly different game.
- [09:39]
Chris Plant
Completely different from blueprints other than just that very superficial look. I think it has one of the toughest onboardings of a game that I've loved in a long time. And I'm glad that I stuck with it because it hammers you not just with all these systems where it's like, here is a map of this world that you haven't fully explored. Here is a list of tons and tons of people who. Many of whom you haven't even met.
- [10:04]
Justin McElroy
Oh, my God. That part's exhausting.
- [10:06]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah. The opening.
- [10:07]
Justin McElroy
Sydney and I almost closed the computer because I had, like, lured her into this. And she looked at. She kind of gave me a look like three fourths of the way through the character list, which is very not well handled. It's just a. It's like a laundry list of everybody there. And it's so overwhelming. And it's kind of panic inducing, like, oh, my God, should I be remembering all of this? This is an insane amount of exposition with all the mechanics that you're also dumping on.
- [10:29]
Griffin McElroy
Absolutely.
- [10:30]
Chris Plant
You get that web, and when you get the web, you realize that there are a certain number of things to learn about each character. So it might have like a number next to them, like 22 things that you need to learn about them. So you see that big list, you see the big web, you see all of that. And then when you start talking to people, it feels at first like almost impossible because you can bring up pretty much anything when you are talking to someone. You'll see all of the things that you have uncovered, you'll see all the other characters and you'll be able to analyze their clothes and find additional clues and bring up that. It allows for so much. But. Well, and one other, I guess, hard part is you are hitting these fail states. It wants you early on to feel the pressure of this timetable in a way that it doesn't, I find, later.
- [11:18]
Russ Frushtick
In the game, I guess. Can you just clarify what happens when you hit the pressure pressure?
- [11:23]
Chris Plant
What the timetable is actually doing is they're early in the game. There'll be a thing like, I need this mystery solved by the end of the hour, this one part of the mystery. And if you don't do that by the end of the hour, you will game over and it will revert to an AutoSave with about 15 minutes left.
- [11:43]
Griffin McElroy
One thing to bring up when you do load, it lets you either load a save that you had or scour back to a time point of autosaves that it has made. So it is not hard to do that after the point that Chris is describing. It's way, way, way lighter touch on that stuff. And for what it's worth, I finished the whole thing and all of the mysteries and stuff and had like a good four hours or so left to spare. And that is like, you know, 240 actions that like, you speed ran it.
- [12:14]
Chris Plant
Yeah. What it's teaching you with the game over ends up being helpful, which is wants you to not get too distracted. There are so many things in the manner that you could be doing that the game could become unwieldy very quickly. And what it's teaching you is to pursue a mystery in a chunk to like be focused on a thing. And then you can get a little distracted towards the end of your hour if you have extra time. But it's showing you, like, don't do the thing that you will be tempted to do in so many open world games. Which is what? Well, just go talk to everybody. No, it's like decide what's the next thing that you want to solve and work towards that. And once I started, I feel like.
- [12:54]
Russ Frushtick
The solve in other games for this sort of problem is to like start with a very narrow challenge and then widen out from there. Like Obra Dinn obviously is a good example of this where it's like a very specific narrow window.
- [13:08]
Griffin McElroy
So they have some ways of guard railing you a little bit. Like there's a luncheon on the second day and if you go to attend the lunch you'll sit down at a table with these two characters and you'll start to unpack their thing. And they're actually pretty good characters to start with because they branch out into other things. What were you going to say, Juice?
- [13:27]
Justin McElroy
I think at a certain point it's just the kind of person you are. But it's rough for me to play a game like this and feel like every time I do any investigation I'm spending a currency.
- [13:41]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [13:41]
Justin McElroy
And. And it feels bad. I think it feels bad because I want to be thorough. And like if you think about like detective and observation stuff in general, a lot of it is about like looking closer at things and like giving things a second look. Like. And I feel like if your game is about detection, it's weird to penalize for like being thorough in your investigation. That and to me it's like this. It's. It's a. It limits the pleasure of playing the game because I feel like every single like thing that I look at, I'm having to make this value judgment on whether or not it is worth pressing the investigate button. And a lot of the times it's like it just isn't and it just was a waste. You know what I mean? So it's like a weird. That's more my brain but it is like it's tough for me to get past it.
- [14:31]
Chris Plant
That makes perfect sense for, for me. I'm curious if you had the same experience, Griffin, similar to like other games where you get more powerful. I felt like I was less worried about time as the game progressed because I was getting better at playing the game and I had more and more mysteries solved. There was probably a mid game mystery that I solved very early ahead, way ahead of schedule. And then it freed up my time for large chunks of the game because an entire chunk was already off the table. I figured it out so I didn't need to Ask a bunch of questions.
- [15:08]
Griffin McElroy
The time thing, I think, is such a. It's a mixed bag. I think you gotta have some. I understand from a mechanical design standpoint, you gotta have some sort of pressure or some sort of, you know, thing that you can do poorly so that when you do it correctly, it feels good. That's like, basic sort of gaming design shit. And this is their solve for it. The truth is that I think you have way more time than you need. And if you blow a few minutes here and there, like, inspecting some towels, like, it feels bad, but it feels. What's going on with those towels eventually, honestly, how I felt when I finished it is like, there are actually a lot of guardrails on this thing. There's a lot of breadcrumbs. There's a lot of ways that I will be talking to someone and they will just mention something off the top of their head, or the detective will have a thought that will lead me in the right direction, and it would be pretty hard for me to really, really fuck this up. But if that's the case, then why do the timing thing sort of at all? Why not handle it in sort of a different way? My bigger issue with the game was the lack of real sort of, like, deduction that it requires, because a lot of it is finding all the clues for this character. Like, Russ said, There's 22 clues for this character. Fuck, yeah. I'm gonna find them all. I find them all, and then it's like, okay, now piece together the thing. He blanked his blank so that he could blank his blank. And it's like, that's four things that I can kind of go through in trial and error. Just kind of like, Dr. Drop those in. It doesn't feel like, aha, I've solved it.
- [16:36]
Chris Plant
When you have to trial and error, by the time you have the 22 clues, it's.
- [16:43]
Griffin McElroy
I want to finish the thought. I do think it's cool. This is a huge fucking game. It's a huge detective story with, like, a bunch of interlocking parts. I think it's really impressive the way this thing hangs together. And I really did enjoy my time with it. The vibe, the story, the writing, all the Irish mythology was like, shit I'm learning about is very, very, very cool. It just wasn't like. I don't know, I didn't have to use my brain a ton in the way that I did with Obra Dinn or Blueprints or even Golden Idol some of the time. So it had more of a Sort of visual novel kind of vibe for me.
- [17:16]
Justin McElroy
Yeah. The atmosphere is really cool. All the accents are lovely. Like it is set in like a place in Ireland that's not like represented in games a lot. So it's kind of cool.
- [17:25]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [17:27]
Justin McElroy
Sure, yeah.
- [17:28]
Russ Frushtick
What else I'll talk about. I think a good segue. Power wash simulator 2.
- [17:34]
Griffin McElroy
Heck yeah.
- [17:35]
Russ Frushtick
Perfect.
- [17:36]
Justin McElroy
The sequel that I think everyone's demanding.
- [17:38]
Russ Frushtick
Like, I mean, you know, maybe not.
- [17:41]
Griffin McElroy
A lot of people. Yeah, for sure.
- [17:42]
Russ Frushtick
Kind of. Yeah.
- [17:43]
Justin McElroy
Well, I just. I want to know what limits they were running up against. Where the fans were like, we need this. And they were like, the engine will not, as we've said, it would require a server wipe of Power Wash one to give you all the fidelity you crave.
- [17:58]
Chris Plant
Yeah.
- [18:00]
Russ Frushtick
So they added my save carries over. They added a hub world so you can earn like furniture, but you got to clean the furniture in your hub world. There are actual. So there's some of the differences are like, as you'd expect, visual improvements like the water effects and things like that look nicer. There are actually gameplay improvements that I found personally very smart. So in the first game, it sounds so silly to say in the first game, soap is a big deal. You have to buy soap with the money that you earn and it's consumable. So if you buy a bunch of wood soap and you use it up, you have to buy more to use more wood soap. And soap makes you more effective at the cleaning of the thing. They've changed it wisely and now soap is no longer a material specific. So you don't have to buy wood soap or whatever, plastic soap, whatever the fuck. They also set it so that it's just a. On a cooldown thing. So if you use a bunch of soap, you just have to wait whatever, 10 minutes and it comes back. And while you're doing that, obviously you can just be cleaning normally with your normal powers and things like that. It's very difficult for me to explain for those that haven't gotten into this game why it feels so satisfying. But it is just like, like dopamine hit to the direct dome in ways that like I think are not necessarily maybe the most healthy just because it's like so simple. But I do find it very personally rewarding. I would also add it's actually a good hangout game. The whole game can play, be played in co op. And I think that experience is actually the best because. Because it's so low, like does not require a lot of coordination. Obviously you can just sort of like chat and give it gives you something to do with your hands while you're doing it. So I thought that was really nice.
- [19:56]
Griffin McElroy
I like that this game's out there. It makes me feel good every time I see this show up on the old steam charts. It's not me. What?
- [20:06]
Justin McElroy
Not me?
- [20:07]
Russ Frushtick
No.
- [20:08]
Griffin McElroy
You want these people out there actually Power Washington.
- [20:12]
Russ Frushtick
I mean, I would love.
- [20:13]
Justin McElroy
I don't want that. I don't want them to. I'm telling them that they're going to play this game for a while. They won't have a clean house to look at. They'll feel bad. If you go out with a real power washer and you power wash your shit, you'll feel good.
- [20:25]
Russ Frushtick
I don't have clean Justin. I don't have the luxury. What am I? How New York City Power Washington.
- [20:33]
Justin McElroy
You could clean in your home. That would make you feel productive. I promise you that.
- [20:37]
Chris Plant
Think about what you just said. Picture in his apartment.
- [20:41]
Justin McElroy
Yeah.
- [20:42]
Chris Plant
Spraying a power washer.
- [20:44]
Griffin McElroy
It could be any.
- [20:44]
Russ Frushtick
You just mean cleaning in general.
- [20:46]
Chris Plant
Yeah, just being productive.
- [20:48]
Justin McElroy
It freaks me out, man. It's crazy. This is not a game.
- [20:52]
Chris Plant
This is the appeal of simulators though, right?
- [20:55]
Russ Frushtick
Not just the simulators. Hold on one second. It's not just the simulators. It's Fortnite is the same thing like.
- [21:02]
Justin McElroy
Fortnite gun game where you shoot people with guns.
- [21:04]
Griffin McElroy
That's real Russian. That's real.
- [21:07]
Russ Frushtick
Okay. But that is as much of a fantasy to me as Power Wash simulator is because I'm not going to fucking use a power.
- [21:13]
Chris Plant
This is all a video game. So.
- [21:15]
Russ Frushtick
Yes, that's what I'm saying. People use it as a wind down tool. And you could. You could accuse this claim of all video games. Like Griffin solved a crime in a mansion and he felt good about himself.
- [21:28]
Justin McElroy
He could have been learned about art. I learned about Irish mythology. Griffin learned about Irish mythology. Griffin engaged parts of his brain that require deduction. You sprayed water to pretend house, Russ. I'm sorry, Russ.
- [21:40]
Russ Frushtick
Griffin punched dirt as a monkey.
- [21:43]
Griffin McElroy
I love you, you're my brother and all that stuff, but I don't want to be on your team for this one. That's fine.
- [21:50]
Justin McElroy
You can go over there if you want. That's fine.
- [21:52]
Russ Frushtick
I'm just saying.
- [21:53]
Griffin McElroy
Usually I'll definitely ride or die, but I think it's great.
- [21:59]
Russ Frushtick
I think it's the same as doing a jigsaw puzzle.
- [22:02]
Justin McElroy
Hey, listen, do you want me to start on jigsaw puzzles?
- [22:04]
Russ Frushtick
Well, you better because I have another game to talk about called strange jigsaws.
- [22:07]
Justin McElroy
Get ready that's good for your brain. That's good for your brain. Your problem solving.
- [22:10]
Russ Frushtick
Okay. That's good to keep Power Wash Simulator. There's problem solving in Power Simulator. I'm not, look, I'm not saying it's the headiest game imaginable, but I think at the end of a long day, you could drink a glass of whiskey or you could power wash some shit. Probably better to power wash some shit.
- [22:26]
Griffin McElroy
This is the only two options.
- [22:27]
Justin McElroy
This is the only two options. One of our sit by yourself and drink in silence.
- [22:33]
Griffin McElroy
Truly, truly. One of our most unhinged discussions.
- [22:37]
Chris Plant
Should we take a break and come back and talk about some other. We do. Oh, we do have jigsaws to talk about after this. Hell yes.
- [22:44]
Russ Frushtick
I was not kidding.
- [22:47]
Justin McElroy
You know, you factor a whole bunch of different stuff into your day already. If you're anything like me, you're factoring in the kids and the work and the. You got to run the errands and you got to go pick up the thing. Can I ask you to factor in one more thing for me? If I, if I may be so bold as to ask you to factor in a little quality eating, maybe a little quality nutrition, maybe you factor in the time for that with, you guessed it, factor. Now, Justin, I don't have a lot of time to eat. Well, I understand that folks, we're all, we're all pretty busy, but this is a great time to try some new foods and you're going to be able to do it fast. You don't need a lot of time with factor because in just two minutes you could be eating a chef inspired meal with a lot of bold flavors. They got some new ones inspired by China and Thailand that are really delicious and they have a wider selection of weekly meal options. If you've checked them out before, you should give it another look because they really do have a really wide variety of stuff. Whatever you like to eat, I think you're going to find something on there that you, that you really like. I have enjoyed the meals that I've gotten from Factor and I feel really good eating them. It's like a satisfying lunch at the middle of the day that doesn't take.
- [23:57]
Griffin McElroy
A lot of time.
- [23:59]
Justin McElroy
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- [24:24]
Griffin McElroy
You deserve a decadent treat. You've been working so hard lately and you're so tired from all the work. And that's why you deserve the most decadent, sweet, tasty treat. And maybe it's not sweet. Maybe you like it bitter. Maybe you like it funky. I'm talking about coffee and I'm talking about the best way to get that, which is trade coffee. Because with trade, you. You get matched to incredible coffees from independent roasters all over the US Delivered fresh and perfectly suited to your taste. It's thoughtful, it's personal, and it's delicious. If you've never tried trade coffee, it is a far cry from the store bought stuff where you get it, you open it up and maybe it smells a little bit like coffee and you're like, oh, this is gonna get me going. Trade coffee. You tear that sweet roasted bag right open, the smell of those beans are gonna knock you on your ass. But in a good way, in a fun way. Right now, trade is offering 50% off a one month trial at drinktrade.com besties and 10% off gifts. That's drinktrade.com besties to get 50% off one month and 10% off gifts. Drinktrade.com besties.
- [25:31]
Russ Frushtick
Who are you talking about?
- [25:33]
Chris Plant
Road to Empress.
- [25:35]
Justin McElroy
I want to hear about strange jigsaws. There's a perfect segue. What is so strange about these jigsaws?
- [25:40]
Russ Frushtick
These are fucking strange jigsaws.
- [25:44]
Justin McElroy
You think you've seen some weird jigsaws in the past? Well, hold on.
- [25:47]
Russ Frushtick
I'm gonna really struggle to describe this game and I'm gonna do my best. Strange jigsaws uses the premise of jigsaw puzzles, but approaches them in very different ways. It's a bunch of mini puzzle challenges. The example that jumps in my mind is the easiest to explain. So you're presented with a jigsaw puzzle. There are four missing pieces. For those four missing pieces, you have four pieces from other jigsaw puzzles. So not the puzzle that you're currently doing. Those pieces are from other jigsaw puzzles, but you can paint the pieces such that they end up fitting in this puzzle. You understand?
- [26:27]
Chris Plant
Yes.
- [26:28]
Russ Frushtick
So you're trying to basically recreate pieces that you're currently missing from the existing puzzle. In another jigsaw puzzle, you're trying to build hamburgers using, like logic stuff like the meat can't be next to the lettuce and The Bubba buck can't be next to the da da da. So it's really just like using jigsaws as a platform for, like, fun logic puzzles.
- [26:49]
Justin McElroy
Is it, like, narratively connected, or is it, like, more like a. You've solved this one, do the next one.
- [26:53]
Russ Frushtick
There's like, an overarching, like, you're using a computer, but it's very light, narratively speaking. It's like you're just trying to unlock more of these puzzles. Essentially, it's very light. But if you like problem solving games, this is like. There's a ton of, like, really interesting approaches.
- [27:12]
Justin McElroy
Is it one of those where, like, all the mechanics are being rolled out over time, or do you kind of have all the things at the beginning? It's like a.
- [27:18]
Russ Frushtick
So when you start, you're presented, you've got, like, a starting puzzle that's relatively simple, and then you've. You're given, like, four different puzzle options, but each of the puzzles use completely different mechanics. Like, every single one is its own very contained mechanic. So it's not really a rollout as much as it is, like, hey, I get to do more puzzles in the way that, like, Professor Layton always has, like, different, you know, puzzle mechanics to it. One of them you're using. The puzzle has gravity to it, so you're having to, like, build the jigsaw puzzle while, like, certain pieces are falling down to the bottom. So you have to figure out ways to, like, prop up the puzzle to hold it up and clip things in.
- [28:01]
Griffin McElroy
I love that shit. On Survivor when they're like, build this tower puzzle and they start from the top. It's like, come on, guys.
- [28:07]
Russ Frushtick
So, yeah, I thought. I mean, I found my. I felt a little dumb because there were definitely puzzles. I got kind of stumped on and frustrated a little bit, but it didn't feel like it was because the puzzles were poorly designed. It just felt like my brain isn't quite there yet. Yeah. But I found it really good.
- [28:23]
Justin McElroy
Amros. What? That doesn't mean you're dumb.
- [28:26]
Russ Frushtick
I do want to also mention my skill.
- [28:27]
Justin McElroy
You're not dumb. Maybe a super smart guy. I don't.
- [28:30]
Russ Frushtick
Maybe all that power wash time I spent.
- [28:31]
Justin McElroy
Don't let mysterious jigsaws do.
- [28:33]
Russ Frushtick
I might be now a dullard because of the power washing. The other thing I want to mention, better colorblind settings than blueprints insofar as they exist. So well done.
- [28:45]
Griffin McElroy
Still kind of wild that. That's.
- [28:48]
Justin McElroy
It's so hard. It's got to be so hard.
- [28:53]
Russ Frushtick
Play it. It's fine.
- [28:54]
Griffin McElroy
I just don't play it.
- [28:54]
Justin McElroy
Yeah, no, I'm saying it's. I try to think about it sometimes just as a thought experiment. It's weird.
- [29:00]
Russ Frushtick
Oh, how to do it?
- [29:01]
Justin McElroy
Just blueprints.
- [29:02]
Griffin McElroy
I don't.
- [29:03]
Justin McElroy
I genuinely. Unless it was a different game, I don't know how they do it.
- [29:05]
Russ Frushtick
Here's how I would do it. As a true game designer that has made a lot of games and knows how to make games.
- [29:10]
Chris Plant
Right?
- [29:11]
Griffin McElroy
Sure.
- [29:11]
Justin McElroy
The best in the biz.
- [29:12]
Russ Frushtick
I have an app on my phone that I can point at things and they tell me what color the things are. So theoretically that same logic could apply maybe to whatever you're pointing at somewhere.
- [29:24]
Griffin McElroy
Ask Man.
- [29:24]
Justin McElroy
I don't know. The Frostbite engine.
- [29:26]
Griffin McElroy
Are you sure?
- [29:26]
Justin McElroy
I'm not sure I can.
- [29:29]
Griffin McElroy
This thing's pushing so many polygons for us.
- [29:31]
Russ Frushtick
I use that app all the time when I'm clothes shopping so I don't.
- [29:34]
Griffin McElroy
Have to ask people what color they are.
- [29:35]
Chris Plant
Can I hear about Road to Empress now?
- [29:37]
Justin McElroy
Okay, sure, yeah, if you want.
- [29:40]
Chris Plant
I do.
- [29:41]
Justin McElroy
Road to Empress is. I gave a pretend pitch on Road to Empress last week where I gave my generic FMV pitch. But let me tell you sincerely about Road to Empress, because a lot of FMV games. I know, I know. Listen, I say this a lot, but a lot of FMV games are not very good. And here's what I will say. Road to Empress is not really a lot of game. It is very much more of a visual novel, I would say. But the way it handles things, like a branching storyline that it's presenting to you is done in a very. It gets out of the way and lets you really experience this. This visual. This visual novel. What I would say a visual novel is overstating it, but it's. It's an interactive film. I mean, these are terms that got so beaten to death when FMV games started that it's really hard to talk about these in a way that sounds like real. Basically, you are. And by the way, this is based on a real historical thing and I am so beyond ignorant of this time period, the people in it, the nations involved. So I'm gonna do my best as someone who was literally learning about this from a game they bought on Steam an hour ago. Do you understand? Please understand me. Okay, yeah. Okay. It is about a bunch of people that live in a very large palace looking thing and there is a court of women who are all vying for the approval of both the emperor and different people in his court. So the story is about your rise up through this court, up through the ranks of courtly intrigue, and that the decisions that you're making are very much about who's on your side, who's against you, who can you trust? I'll give you an example. One of the very first thing that happens in the game is you show up at this court and you're very new there, and you run into a friend of yours who's like, almost like a friend of the family, lifelong friend. And they're so happy to see you. And they say, here, as a gift for you, take this hairpin. My mother gave it to me. And you're kind of hesitant at first. It's like a big gift, and you have a choice whether or not you're going to take it or refuse it. And then basically you, the woman who is in charge of all the. This area of the court, shows up and she sees this hairpin on the ground and asks who it belongs to because she loves it so much. And she will gift someone who has this hairpin. And then before you can say anything, one of the other girls says, it's hers. And then she gets in huge trouble and they punish her because only this lady is allowed to wear peony hairpins. So then you have to look at your friend and be like, hey, did you know this? Were you trying to set me up?
- [32:45]
Russ Frushtick
Yeah.
- [32:46]
Justin McElroy
So you're having to. These are the kinds of decisions.
- [32:48]
Russ Frushtick
Little fingers.
- [32:49]
Justin McElroy
Your friend insists it was innocent. Right. But then you frequently die in this game. You die a lot. Wrote to Empress there's. Okay, I'll give you simple. There's a bit where you have to show a talent to the court. And you can sing a song beautifully, or you can play an instrument very poorly, or you can do an okay job with dancing. You can dance kind of good, you can sing really good, or you can play an instrument really bad. If you play the instrument really bad, they're like, you're making a joke of the emperor. Go to jail. And then when you go to jail, that's. That's kind of like a game over state.
- [33:26]
Chris Plant
Right.
- [33:27]
Justin McElroy
And then there's. And if you sing really good, people are like, wow, that was awesome. Maybe too awesome. Go to jail. Yeah. So that's the. I'm oversimplifying, but that. That is the kind of idea. Or like, you will. But because there are rules to this court that are life and death that you don't know. So it is like you're trying to like navigate an extremely life or death social situation.
- [33:51]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [33:51]
Justin McElroy
And the way. And if you mess up what's cool is like while, like during a cinematic, at any point you can click a button and go back to a very well laid out story map that shows exactly the different outcomes that you've gotten to and exactly how and how you died. Yeah. So you can see. Yeah, exactly. Like you're not going to be repeating stuff. It is. There is full control over the speed of the cinematics. You can crank them up to 2.0, you can tap the arrow keys to just like fast forward through them if you want. If it's like something that you just want to see a little bit of or you. You want to see how it goes. But it, it really does remove the idea of. And this is why game I hesitate to use because it really does remove the idea of like a fail state is really not like the end. You really just kind of scoot back and see something else. Right. So it's not like a. There's almost no penalty to it. It's more like seeing how the story changes with your different decisions. It's hard for me to say how well performed it is because it's not in English, it's subtitled. It. It's very nice to look at. The costumes are beautiful. I like that. I feel like I'm learning something about it. I mean, who knows how accurate it is. But seeing as this is the only awareness of it I have, it seems like it's better than absolutely none.
- [35:04]
Russ Frushtick
I know you. I don't speak. What is it? Is it Mandarin or do you know?
- [35:08]
Justin McElroy
I will not even. You don't understand.
- [35:10]
Russ Frushtick
I know, but you could like, like I've watched foreign language films and you could like tell if they're being believable or not.
- [35:17]
Justin McElroy
You know what it is? It's the. So much of it is in the court that I don't know. That is like. It's very arch. Yeah, Very practice. Yeah, arch is a good word for it. Like, it's very like stiff. Stiff and stoic and like. And especially in this exact time period in this place, like stillness of movement seems to be very prized amongst the court. But I think it's really interesting and it is well done in the way that they like show the repercussions of your actions and they're really. It's very fast how quickly the bottom drops out on you. So it's not like a long journey to find out that you've messed up. But seeing the different scenes and seeing the story, I don't know how long this Story goes, apparently this is following your character until they are I guess the only female boss in the countries.
- [36:16]
Griffin McElroy
I would assume Empress, right? If that's the name of it.
- [36:18]
Russ Frushtick
Seems like a rose Empress.
- [36:20]
Justin McElroy
You can do that if you want. I just don't know. It sounds so good when you're saying it. Griff. I hope it's the Empress.
- [36:26]
Griffin McElroy
I hope that's the name of the game. I think you're probably good.
- [36:28]
Justin McElroy
I hope you're right, man. I hope you're right. It's a really interesting kind of thing. If you don't mind watching your entertainment with some light interaction. I think it's. I think it's pretty neat.
- [36:46]
Chris Plant
Chris Plant Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat They're a new. That's what I have been. I've been playing, watching. I too like hoops have been on a journey of Am I playing a game or am I watching a documentary? The Mortal Kombat collection is out and it is yet another one of those games histories. You can play all the original Mortal Kombat games in pretty much every form. You want to play Mortal Kombat 2 on the SNES or the game gear, go right ahead. You want to play the I think it's called Wave Net unreleased version of ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Let me tell you, it's waiting right here for you. But what I did with the vast majority of my time was watch the documentaries about Mortal Kombat, which there are plenty of. The way that the game works is you can go into the Mortal Kombat play mode or you can go into this timeline and the historical timeline will have bits that are like one or two sentences with an image of like hey, at this moment they came up with the idea of Mortal Kombat and then out of every like two or three of those there will be assets. So it might be a five to ten minute documentary clip. It might be like the actual pitch documents like scanned in at ultra high resolution for you to read through. It might be the original comic book that the creators of Mortal Kombat made and then self distributed like around the release of Mortal Kombat. It could be the original commercial for Mortal Kombat where they scream in financial district. It is such a great time warp to this moment where Mortal Kombat truly felt like the biggest thing on the planet. If you were into video games it was inescapable. And this does such an excellent job at making you really honestly feel that like feel the relevance, not just be told the relevance and the Documentary work in it is a blast. Friend of the show, Mike Drucker is in it, Jeff Gerstman, a whole bunch of other folks. It's a bunch of old heads being able to kind of relive their. Their childhoods.
- [39:13]
Russ Frushtick
It does sound, based on the reception I'm hearing online, is that everyone is saying what you're saying, which is as a historical document, it is fantastic. They're also saying as a game has some pretty serious issues.
- [39:25]
Griffin McElroy
Specifically what is the game part of it.
- [39:28]
Chris Plant
Yeah. Okay. So if you are a very, very hardcore Mortal Kombat head who is worried about like the tightest details of.
- [39:40]
Russ Frushtick
I mean, they're calling out input lag specifically.
- [39:43]
Chris Plant
I know there, there is. If I sound hesitant, it's because this is the sort of subreddit campaign where you mention one thing about this game on the Internet and then the Same like random 500 people let you know how wrong and evil you are. And then other people are saying, this is completely not noticeable. This is some weird fan rage. So I don't want to. I would not. I would not say it is end all, be all. These games are unplayable. That's not even close to true. I played these games especially in single player and had a blast. I was able to get through them. These are like difficult games. They still play just how I remembered them.
- [40:24]
Justin McElroy
So just to like blast through it, there's like five Mortal Kombats, five Mortal Kombat twos, a few Mortal Kombat threes, a couple of Ultimo Ultimate Mortal Kombat threes, and then from PS1 they have Trilogy, Mortal Kombat Mythology Sub Zero, Fuck yeah. And Special Forces, which I think is cool. That is on there.
- [40:44]
Griffin McElroy
And Deadly Alliance.
- [40:45]
Justin McElroy
From the gba they have Mortal Kombat Advance, Deadly alliance and Mortal Kombat Tournament Edition. So that's like the.
- [40:52]
Griffin McElroy
The.
- [40:52]
Justin McElroy
And then there's. That's the assortment. So there's like a lot of Mortal Kombat. Yeah.
- [40:56]
Chris Plant
I would say if you are a hyper, hyper competitive player, sure, you should avoid it. If you are literally anybody else who is curious about Mortal Kombat or the Vibe or revisiting these games, you will be very happy with it.
- [41:11]
Russ Frushtick
I'm a top tier Cyrax, so I'm a little wary.
- [41:14]
Chris Plant
That's what they do say about you, that you dressed as that for Halloween, right?
- [41:17]
Russ Frushtick
Every Halloween for the last 20 years, Cyrax.
- [41:19]
Chris Plant
I mean you spend $5,000 on that costume. You gotta get your use of it.
- [41:23]
Russ Frushtick
The bombs come out right out of the Chest. It's so fucking cool.
- [41:26]
Griffin McElroy
Can I talk about Nessus?
- [41:27]
Russ Frushtick
Yeah. Is that how you pronounce it?
- [41:29]
Justin McElroy
What is that?
- [41:29]
Griffin McElroy
I just assumed playing that necess. N, E, C, E, S, S, E. I just assume. I don't know how else you could really hit that. I guess I went and clicked on.
- [41:39]
Justin McElroy
The store page after I saw you playing it. It's so wild to see these games that's like they've been out for seven years and a bajillion people have played them and now they're in 1.0. I've never heard of this before.
- [41:50]
Griffin McElroy
No, it's funny. So I actually this game was in Early Access for a long time. I played it back when it was in Early Access and I did not care for it, didn't really vibe with it and so I bounced off of it. But then, you know, it started to get more Buzz with this 1.0 launch that happened, I think mid October. And so I went back and checked it out. Now I do vibe with it. Now I do kind of get what it's putting down. Necess is I've been playing it on Steam. It is a game that takes a lot of cues from Terraria and it takes a lot of cues from Rimworld, both of which are, you know, pretty major players in the, you know, Steam indie. I mean Terraria is on every platform ever. But I think those two games are kind of like beloved by a similar kind of audience where Terraria is kind of first in class of that open world survivalcraft 2D platformer sort of genre. And Rimworld is very much like a settlement management sim.
- [42:57]
Russ Frushtick
Rimworld's like absurdly complicated, right?
- [42:59]
Griffin McElroy
Like it's really. Well, I mean it's not. I don't think it's dwarf fortress level convocated, but it's like it's too much for me. I've never really gotten into Rimworld and I've tried a bunch of times. When you start up Necess, I think that it presents a lot more of those mechanics at the front, which is what scared me off a little bit because I didn't really care for Rimworld. So I was like, I won't really vibe. But once you get into the more familiar Terraria level stuff, it is, it really all starts to come together really nicely. It is a top down sort of action sort of game. When you are down in the dungeons or exploring the Overworld, you're going around, you're collecting resources, you take back to your base to build up your base to build new weapons and Armor and crafting stations and that whole loop is preserved very well. Other stuff from Terraria is like there's different classes of gear so you can have this summoner set which is like about summoning in little helpers. And there's magic and ranged and melee and so you're like making decisions based on the loot you find of like, oh, I could go after this. There's trinkets like stuff that it's. You have a mount equipment slot and like it's really very, very Terraria in. In all of that way. Except in this sort of like top down format instead of this 2D platformer format.
- [44:16]
Russ Frushtick
The city management stuff is like yeah, way more involved than anything. Terraria.
- [44:22]
Griffin McElroy
Yes. So Terraria did have that thing where you had to build rooms for the NPCs that would come and live at your settlement whenever you cleared certain benchmarks or beat certain world bosses, which is the thing in necessarily a diets tab.
- [44:38]
Justin McElroy
Yes.
- [44:39]
Griffin McElroy
I think the game gives you a lot of freedom to do that stuff. So if you are a Rimworld fan and you do want to determine who in your settlement can eat one, what types of food, you can get that nasty on it. I have actually really been enjoying the settlement building side of things because of how it feeds back into the Terraria side of things. For example, now I have it set so that certain villagers that I have living in my place, I built them rooms and gave them the stuff that they needed. I set up animal husbandry zones and I said, you take care of the sheep and you harvest wool for me. And that way when I come back I don't have to do that shit myself. I just have all these resources to build armor. This is a lumber yard and I've dragged and dropped a little box over it that said, this is the lumber yard. This is where you plant your trees and you cut them down and when you bring them back, you put them in this chest. It has a lot of really good quality of life stuff. Like building near a chest that has shit in it lets you just pull it straight from there. There's simple single click options for like dump everything in my inventory into these nearby chests. Like everything that has been sort of modded into games like Terraria and Stardew Valley and like all that shit that if you're familiar with, comes bog standard in this S 1.0.
- [45:55]
Russ Frushtick
Is this controller pleasant?
- [45:58]
Griffin McElroy
I've been playing it, yeah. I mean I've been playing it on controller, but I think again similar to Terraria, if you mouse and keyboard it you will have a certain fidelity of control in certain parts of the game and that will be sort of lacking. But the controllers support is really great. I've played I think 14 or so hours just on the Rog Ally X and it's been holding up. It's a little bit. The settlement side thing is very, very cool. It's tough playing this game that is so similar to Terraria because Terraria has been out for so long and has gotten so much content and is such a rich, exciting game to explore because you are constantly finding new shit, you're constantly escalating in power and changing your build based on all of this stuff. And the cess has a lot of that stuff, but it's not quite as dense. It feels like there's a lot of, I don't know, stretches where I'm just not feeling like I'm getting any stronger. I haven't found any cool thing. And you know, this world boss doesn't actually drop anything that interesting. But again like that is comparing to a game that has been out forever and has gotten so many updates and so many releases.
- [47:02]
Russ Frushtick
I mean this game was in the first. I was scrolling back through news posts. December 2019 was when it first came out.
- [47:10]
Chris Plant
Yeah.
- [47:10]
Griffin McElroy
So they've been, they've been working on it for a while. I've really been digging it. I've really been digging a lot. I was pulled away from it by seance, but I'm probably gonna get back into it. Haven't played multiplayer, but the idea of having like a settlement that you share with other players that you are all managing is like really fucking cool.
- [47:28]
Russ Frushtick
It is cool looking back at these news posts because you can see how much the game absurdly progressed over that time. It is like so raw at the beginning and it's pretty interesting.
- [47:37]
Griffin McElroy
I love a game like this in my sort of like gaming diet. Like Core Keeper was this for me, I think either earlier this year or late last year. This game is a bit more mechanically like managerial than Core Keeper which is much more kind of like fast paced, action oriented, sort of lighter on the base building stuff. But I love games like this and I think that they, they've done a great job and I think it speaks to the fact that like I bounced off it so fast in early access and now it's like I get it. And they onboard you really well and you just get to the good stuff really fast.
- [48:13]
Russ Frushtick
Yeah.
- [48:14]
Griffin McElroy
If you are a fan of this genre, I think it's a pretty easy recommendation.
- [48:18]
Russ Frushtick
Cool.
- [48:19]
Griffin McElroy
Nice.
- [48:20]
Justin McElroy
Okay.
- [48:20]
Russ Frushtick
I think that's the grab bag. One piece of reader mail. This goes to Griffin specifically. It's from James W. Dang. I'm so bummed Griffin wasn't here for the Pokemon episode.
- [48:31]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, that's true. I was also bummed. I've been sick for so long and so have most of my kids. And so I did miss last week and I was bummed. Frankly. I don't have a ton to say about it. I think.
- [48:49]
Justin McElroy
Trouble in paradise, man.
- [48:51]
Griffin McElroy
Go back and listen to the fucking Scarlet Violet episode. I was throwing heaters. I think it's got some really great ideas. I think it's got some cool ideas. I think it has some cool moments. The big like Rogue Mega Evolution real time battles, like that's cool shit. They run a little bit longer than Tooth, but that's really cool. And there's some mechanics here that are really, really fucking neat and exciting for like what the promise of future Pokemon games could be. But also how many times man, can you. I said this. This is the exact same shit I said with Scarlet and Violet, which is like how many times can they get away with like putting out this kind of like unambitious, I guess is the word I would use. Game where like clearly parts of it are just not there. Clearly parts of it are not. Do not have the level of polish that could have been applied if it had been in development longer or more focused or it had more resources. It's the biggest media property fucking on the planet. And it is still so disappointing to see them kind of just like, I don't know, pitch these half baked sort of games in that have some really cool ideas. I think Scarlet and Violet got really good with the DLC. I think now it's on Switch 2 and it runs great. Yeah, those are great games they got there with that one. But I don't know that there's a salvageable sort of thing here. Henry really likes it, but we've also bounced off it. We don't really play it as much anymore. This game is competing with Roblox forever now as are all games that are ostensibly for a kid based audience and. And like this ain't got the staying power for it.
- [50:23]
Russ Frushtick
So not enough blocks.
- [50:24]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, pretty. Pretty disappointed again. Pretty disappointed again by a Pokemon game that has really fucking cool ideas that are very exciting. But still feeling like I am waiting for the next big good Pokemon game or at least like the next game that is trying to be the big.
- [50:42]
Russ Frushtick
I mean I'll tell you what is on my list for that and it's the Minecraft.
- [50:46]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, sure. I mean, that's its own thing.
- [50:48]
Justin McElroy
You know, it's funny, it reminds me of Doctor who because Disney just exited a deal that they signed with Dr. With the BBC to like co produce Doctor who. And the idea was that it's like a this huge property that a bunch of people like love and there's gotta be more there and maybe if they like invested a bunch into would explode and build out like a whole universe and stuff. And they've just backed off of this deal because it didn't really take the way that they had wanted to. And it reminds me of Pokemon in that way where like Doctor who fans are now have now returned to where they belong, right? In that, like, you guys have exactly enough. We're going to give this show exactly as much budget as it takes to keep the people who watch it watching it. And I feel like that is where Doctor who will return to. And I feel like that's the. It feels like Pokemon. As an outside observer, and please tell me if I'm misjudging, but it feels that set, that story seems to repeat with Pokemon. It feels like where the die hards, like are ready for the next thing, but it feels like they keep getting enough to just keep them coming back for the next one.
- [51:55]
Russ Frushtick
It feels to me like they have mathematically figured out the exact dollar amount to invest in these games where they still sell really fucking well. And no more than that. More so than like any other. I mean, arguably this is not a fully Nintendo property. So in that way, I mean, these are like. I think the big difference between this and Doctor who is Pokemon, including this game, continues to sell like astonishingly well to huge swaths of people. I think the only game that has sold better on Switch 2 is Mario Kart World. And that in some ways is almost a pack in.
- [52:33]
Griffin McElroy
So every, every. This is how I would summarize the thing and Russ is right where it's like, it's a weird staple. It's a weird thing in the Nintendo lineup, right? But every other Nintendo property, every other one, Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Metroid, like, they have had these moments of like, oh, shit, the game done changed, right? Like Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the Wild comes out and it's like, holy shit, this is like the big Mario Odyssey, the first Metroid prime, like Kirby and the forgotten land, like, moments where it's like they fucking did it. Like, this is the game I've wanted for a long time now. I don't think they've ever done that.
- [53:12]
Russ Frushtick
With Pokemon, if they made Tears of the Kingdom, it would have been like, and here's three more enemies.
- [53:20]
Chris Plant
The Game Boy Dance games are that right? Like, that's the era of that.
- [53:24]
Griffin McElroy
Sure. For sure. But that's like so far, like that's such a long time ago. It just feels like if they. I think it's different from Doctor who insofar as the fans of this franchise are very outspoken about what they want. And it's not like.
- [53:40]
Justin McElroy
Sorry, what?
- [53:41]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, no, I mean, it's not.
- [53:42]
Justin McElroy
That's a. That dude.
- [53:43]
Griffin McElroy
That is. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. And. And the ideas that they have are like pretty solid and reasonable things I think to be asking for.
- [53:52]
Justin McElroy
So this is okay to draw the parallel, which I think is a little bit different, but it's similar. The people who like Doctor who don't really. They want the investment, but they don't want it to change. And I think that's the thing with Pokemon. If they were to invest more, what they would want is more people. And what that has to look like is. It's not. I don't think it. That would look like what Die hards want Pokemon. So it does feel like a little bit of a damned.
- [54:19]
Griffin McElroy
They do.
- [54:19]
Justin McElroy
Damn. They don't. Where if they invest more, they have to broaden the audience. And if they broaden the audience, I'm not sure it's going to be the game that. That people want it to be.
- [54:26]
Russ Frushtick
So this is actually kind of interesting.
- [54:28]
Justin McElroy
And this is, by the way, talking out of my ass.
- [54:31]
Griffin McElroy
I think it's a great conversation though. But I don't know the way people.
- [54:34]
Justin McElroy
Pay off if you invest it.
- [54:35]
Russ Frushtick
The way Pokemon works as a franchise is there's basically stakeholders in Nintendo, in Pokemon company. And whatever the company is that does the cards. I forget the name of the company, Game freaks, whatever it is. And they all kind of come together and agree what the future of Pokemon is. And I think there is this, you know, group mentality of like, well, we're all working together, we want to make money, we want to make a successful product. I don't think that they have any interest in risk in a big way. No. Because for all the reasons that we've.
- [55:05]
Griffin McElroy
Mentioned, it's if they did, they would do what I think is like the most reasonable thing, which is like invest a fucking lot into Pokemon as a platform as Pokemon, as Pokemon by way of Fortnite. Not insofar as like a Pokemon battle royale, but like a serve, like a service. They have something called Pokemon Home, which is kind of similar. Like it's your bank of Pokemon that moves with you from game to game. Like build something around that.
- [55:30]
Russ Frushtick
Build a.
- [55:31]
Griffin McElroy
Build a world around that. Build like an online shared, easy communal experience that folds in fucking everything that's been good that people are trying to.
- [55:39]
Justin McElroy
Date the Pokemon, y'.
- [55:42]
Chris Plant
All. You're thinking so big and that's never going to happen. What they want is they want something proven. They want no risk, but they want everybody to be happy. It's sitting right there. Every three years, just release another Game Boy advance game. Just make an old school pixel game that everybody used to love. Go big with it. It's not gonna cost you as much.
- [56:05]
Russ Frushtick
I don't want to play those games.
- [56:06]
Griffin McElroy
I mean, they've been doing that. Yeah, they've been doing re releases. Not pixel remakes.
- [56:10]
Chris Plant
But no, I'm saying new, not remakes. I want new pixel GBA style games. Just give me that sweet, sweet flavor that I keep craving. And I want to go back to.
- [56:21]
Russ Frushtick
I can't keep playing those games again. It's all the same fucking game over and over again. I'm sorry. I like the cute Pokemon, but it was all downhill since Pig Night.
- [56:30]
Chris Plant
Damn.
- [56:32]
Griffin McElroy
So many flamin hot takes.
- [56:35]
Chris Plant
Is it Tombow? Who's the name of the rhino? The game freak character. Not Tombow. That's delivery service.
- [56:42]
Russ Frushtick
Shall we do honorable mentions?
- [56:44]
Chris Plant
Let's do it.
- [56:45]
Russ Frushtick
Okay. I wanted to call out a theater experience. Oh, I saw a theater experience in New York City. It's called Masquerade and it is basically a immersive theater retelling of Phantom of the Opera.
- [57:00]
Griffin McElroy
Oh, boy.
- [57:01]
Russ Frushtick
I went in. Profoundly skeptical. I am a huge fan, as you.
- [57:06]
Justin McElroy
Listener no doubt currently are feeling.
- [57:09]
Russ Frushtick
I'm a huge fan. I really, really loved Sleep no More, which is an immersive experience that Justin saw about 60 times. I went probably three or four times and loved it. Totally blown away.
- [57:21]
Griffin McElroy
I love that you had to frame it that Justin went 60 times so that your three or four times didn't seem as buckwild.
- [57:26]
Justin McElroy
That's okay. That's a quick forearm shiver to the day, man. Keep on going. It's all right.
- [57:31]
Griffin McElroy
Cold one between the shoulder blades.
- [57:32]
Justin McElroy
It's a quick cold one between the shoulder blades. It's about your business.
- [57:34]
Russ Frushtick
Since then, I have not had an immersive experience in theater. That is anywhere in your life.
- [57:39]
Justin McElroy
In my life, you see everything through a bubble. You're never present.
- [57:45]
Russ Frushtick
I have not had a good immersive theater experience until this one. I like Phantom of the Opera. Okay. And I Left like fucking kind of a little bit obsessed about Phantom of the Opera.
- [57:56]
Griffin McElroy
Oh, right.
- [57:57]
Russ Frushtick
The closest comparison I can say is like, it felt like I was able to be on stage with a Broadway caliber production as all of the people were up in my space like, doing their thing, singing.
- [58:12]
Justin McElroy
Many of the cast members are people who have played these roles.
- [58:15]
Griffin McElroy
Have you seen it Juice on stage? Yeah.
- [58:17]
Justin McElroy
Yes, I saw it. It's. It's pretty phenomenal. And I'm not a big Phantom person either. But the ways in which they have rethought it to bring it closer to you is like, it feels like, oh, this is definitely a way that theater can keep going and evolve for another 50 years. Like, it's a very. It's a very interesting, bracing, like, kind of like transportative way of seeing a show. It's really, really fascinating.
- [58:41]
Griffin McElroy
Do the narrative hooks hit you a little bit stronger in this than Sleep no More? Because I like Sleep no More. I went to it a few times, but I never.
- [58:46]
Russ Frushtick
So this is a linear experience. So they are guiding you through. They'll like open doors and like push you through in the way that Sleep no More is much more nonlinear. You can go wherever the fuck you want, basically. That being said, you start off in a group of, I want to say, like 40. Ish, 30. 40 people, something like that. And then as you're going through and you're getting led into different rooms, they'll like subdivide you without you even realizing it. So suddenly you're in a room with 12 people and you're seeing something that the other 30 people are not seeing. And it's like a different.
- [59:15]
Griffin McElroy
But the story is cogent without you having to do.
- [59:19]
Justin McElroy
You know exactly. You know exactly where. It's almost literalism. I mean, like, you know where you're at. Like when you're going through the. The Phantom's catacombs, for example, you go down an escalator that leads you into them and you see like his boat going through the fire.
- [59:34]
Russ Frushtick
I literally, as I saw that, I was like, amazing. Holy. Like out loud. Holy shit.
- [59:39]
Justin McElroy
It's really. And see. And honestly, seeing these performers perform this close is like a really rare opportunity. And seeing it is kind of like incredible because you realize what a full body thing it is to like be performing at this level. It's also really to give an example. Like, there's a scene where in the show where you discover the Phantom has killed someone in the cast to take their place. And you, like, the way that information is revealed to you is like Someone opens a closet and the body falls out and is like, there's with you. Like, you are like. That is the way the. Like, it is a very literal. Like, you're not. It's not like kind of amorphous, like sleep no more. Some of the others like you. You're in the scene.
- [60:19]
Russ Frushtick
And from my perspective, that's not how I found that out. I found it out because I saw the Phantom kidnap the guy.
- [60:25]
Griffin McElroy
Oh, really?
- [60:26]
Justin McElroy
I didn't see that scene. Oh, that's so cool.
- [60:27]
Russ Frushtick
So it's a totally different scene. So you're getting the same story. Logistically, I want to read an entire article about how they pull it off.
- [60:33]
Justin McElroy
You have multiple casts going between the. It's fascinating.
- [60:36]
Russ Frushtick
Really interesting. So, yeah, if you're in New York, you're visiting or something like that, I really, really would recommend it. I think it's running right now. It's been extended a few times until February, so you might have a chance.
- [60:47]
Chris Plant
To see it so one person doesn't have to do the, like, kidnapping scene over and over and over again. The actors actually get to have an emotional journey too.
- [60:54]
Russ Frushtick
Well, the fan, the Phantom and Christine stay consistent throughout your entire performance. I think there are certain smaller parts that get used for all the groups you follow.
- [61:05]
Justin McElroy
Your Phantom, your fandom is just going through the one thing, but some of the other players are doing double duty between people who are going through their version, which is time delayed to yours because new shows are starting every 15 minutes.
- [61:20]
Russ Frushtick
There are six Phantoms and six Christines and they rotate the Christines with a sub, like a minor part female character, all for one night. So it's really like, again, logistically, like, fucking fascinating.
- [61:33]
Justin McElroy
Really fascinating thing.
- [61:34]
Russ Frushtick
Highly recommend it. It's called Masquerade. You can try to get tickets on the website, which will include in the newsletter.
- [61:40]
Griffin McElroy
I have a few things. One really quick. I got in my AYN Thor and I've been having a fucking great time setting that up and going through my DS3DS catalog. It works so well and it is so fun to go back through those games. I've been playing the Stamp Rally in Clubhouse games. Just like. I'll just keep that on there and just kind of like pick it up and play a little bit of.
- [62:00]
Russ Frushtick
I don't even remember what that game is.
- [62:02]
Griffin McElroy
Clubhouse games.
- [62:03]
Russ Frushtick
No, Stamp Rally.
- [62:05]
Griffin McElroy
Oh, Stamp rally is the mode where, like, you play the games and if you win, you get stamps and it moves you further down the track so you, like, go through all the games.
- [62:12]
Russ Frushtick
Got it.
- [62:12]
Griffin McElroy
It's very good I finished Outer Worlds 2. I don't know if you guys stuck with it.
- [62:18]
Russ Frushtick
I haven't. I was on, like, Planet two when I kind of fell off.
- [62:24]
Chris Plant
Yeah.
- [62:26]
Griffin McElroy
I really liked it. I think that the wheels fell off a little bit, like, halfway through, honestly, if I'm being completely honest. And everything after that kind of felt pretty samey.
- [62:40]
Justin McElroy
But you really liked it?
- [62:41]
Griffin McElroy
Well, I mean, I basically turned the difficulty all the way down once I hit that point to see it through. Honestly, I feel about it pretty much the same way I feel about Outer Worlds 1. I think that the RPG Mechan, I think that the way they integrate your choices into how you explore the world is better. But I also think that that trick only works a few dozen times, and then it all kind of really starts to blur together. There's one entire planet that just felt like total filler, that just felt like everything I'm doing here is so inconsequential. And it just kept going and going and going and going that I was honestly kind of sick of it.
- [63:22]
Justin McElroy
And.
- [63:23]
Griffin McElroy
And it made me wish that there was, like, almost a conceptual change in how Obsidian makes games, which is like, I would love a much shorter, much tighter version of this experience that I feel compelled to go back and replay as a different character with different skills and a different build, because I do not think. I just simply don't think that the experience can be sustained for a full, you know, 30 or so hour.
- [63:50]
Chris Plant
Pentiment, if you will.
- [63:53]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, a pentiment.
- [63:54]
Justin McElroy
Yes.
- [63:54]
Griffin McElroy
Thank you, Chris. The thing I really want to talk about is physical fun Pentiment. A fun pentiment. Thing I want to talk about real bad is Physical Asia. If you guys have watched physical 100 or if you haven't, it's a Korean reality competition show where 100 athletes from different disciplines get together to battle in different kind of ways to see who is the best person at athleticism. It's a great show with incredible production quality. Truly, truly through the roof. Physical Asia brings back a lot of contestants from the past two seasons of Physical 100. Only they are on a team of Korean contestants. And then there are seven other teams from seven other countries. And they. It is a team battle sort of style version of the game. There's teams from Mongolia, Japan, Thailand, Australia, the Philippines. The team from Japan has some competitors from a different Netflix reality show called Final Draft that I think I talked about on this program. That is very fun to see them back on my tv. It's just a really. There's really nothing like it on television. In terms of production quality and the dramatics that they kind of like, put behind these athletic competitions is really unparalleled. So I'm like four episodes in or so, and it's been really, really neat to watch.
- [65:26]
Justin McElroy
I have almost finished the second book in a series that Griffin got me started on, which is called the Shadow of the Leviathan is the series. The first book is called the Tainted cup, and this one is called A Drop of Corruption. Have you talked about these in the show, Griff?
- [65:44]
Griffin McElroy
I talked about the first one. I don't know if I talked about.
- [65:47]
Justin McElroy
The second one, so I won't assume that you've heard anything. But basically it is a fantasy mystery series. And I say fantasy only in the sense that their world is very much not like ours. But it's about two investigators. One is a really supremely brilliant woman who has to limit some of her senses so that she doesn't get, like, overwhelmed by the world. And her partner who works for her is named Din, and he is sort of magically altered so that he remembers everything he experiences with perfect clarity and recall. And so she very much does not enjoy going out into the world. So it's Din that usually goes out into the world and is just acting on her wishes and observing the things that he has asked her to observe without really bringing a deductive acumen to it. So they're kind of working together, right. She's at home thinking about these things, and he's out in the world experiencing them. What's cool about the series. And they are sort of police for this empire. And they.
- [66:51]
Griffin McElroy
When they're like internal affairs.
- [66:53]
Justin McElroy
Internal affairs is probably a better way of putting it. Yeah. So they investigate when something has gone wrong within the. The officers of this empire, they are the ones that investigate what has happened. And so if it's. It's. They are kind of working on their own outside the empire. But what is cool about this series? For me, there's a lot cool. The relationship between the two characters is cool. The effect of remembering everything is very on Din. The effect of that on Din is very pronounced and interesting to read about. But what I really dig about it is that this empire developed because there are these huge leviathans that wander out of the sea and would, like, just destroy wide swaths of land. And so people had to work together to figure out how to fight these Leviathans. And then now they figured out not only how to fight these Leviathans, but how to stop and harvest them and use their magics for our own so this is an empire that is forged from necessity. It's an empire. It's forged out of countries that need to work together and societies that need to work together. And so the empire is overall a good and in almost like so rare in fantasy, sci fi, almost anything I read. And really in the world today, to have any sort of to. To see an empire or government represented with anything that seems like worth protecting is really refreshing to read about. And so really it feels nice, if a little bit escapist to read about a. A sort of society, a government that is basically functional and the people that like work to keep it functioning and what that means. And it's a complicated conversation. I think it's asking as many questions as it answers about the nature of empire and society and faith and all this stuff. But it's supremely well written. It's a really fascinating mystery and the relationships between all the characters are really, really good. The first one you should read first is called the Tainted cup. And the second one is called A Drop of Corruption.
- [68:52]
Griffin McElroy
Robert Jackson Bennett has a bunch of different series. He's the author of these books. He's probably my favorite sort of like fantasy author. I can't recommend any of this.
- [69:02]
Justin McElroy
I read the last book. The last book you recommended. The City of Fair.
- [69:06]
Russ Frushtick
Divine Cities.
- [69:07]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, yeah.
- [69:07]
Justin McElroy
Divine City. That was a lot denser and drier than this. This is a bit pulpier and I've really enjoyed it a great deal more.
- [69:14]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, I mean, this also being a mystery, it's just so smart having a magical mystery where one character gets all the clues and one character figures out the crimes. Like it does something to the detective story format. That is very cool. It's not my genre at all and I've been really, really addicted to these books. They're really good.
- [69:37]
Justin McElroy
They're great.
- [69:39]
Russ Frushtick
Plant.
- [69:40]
Chris Plant
Very quick. King Sorrow by Joel Hill. Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King and he has written a bunch of horror books over the years.
- [69:54]
Justin McElroy
It's funny, man. No matter how big of a success that dude is. And he's gigantic at this point because I still think of it the same way. Stephen King's son, who is also a multi millionaire in his own right, Stephen King, who also deadass, looks 100% like Stephen King.
- [70:10]
Griffin McElroy
It's crazy.
- [70:10]
Justin McElroy
It's very distracting. He looks so much like Stephen King. I feel like I'm a kid every time one of his videos pops up.
- [70:15]
Chris Plant
It's also super relevant for this book because the title King Sorrow feels like it is a play on Stephen King himself. This is a book that is 100% in conversation with it. This is Joe Hill doing it. It is a book that spans decades.
- [70:33]
Griffin McElroy
Whoa, nice, dude.
- [70:34]
Justin McElroy
It's Joe Hill doing it.
- [70:37]
Chris Plant
Instead of a clown, it is a dragon that is conjured by these group of college friends. And then the decision to do that affects the rest of their life. And it is terrifying. It's legit. A good scary horror novel. If you are an audiobook person, I super recommend it because the book is over 800 pages long, so 25 hours of audio. And they have done a ton of ton of work on the audio version.
- [71:10]
Justin McElroy
So whenever it goes, audiobooks are really getting a lot better. They advanced leaps and bounds.
- [71:16]
Chris Plant
When it gets into a very tense situation, it basically becomes kind of a full showcase of the audio. You're getting new voices brought in, you're getting sound design, all sorts of things. So when it really needs to pull you in, it makes that effort to really, really pull you close. And if you are a fan of Stephen King at all, this is such a cool read because.
- [71:40]
Russ Frushtick
Yeah.
- [71:41]
Chris Plant
On top of just being a page turner, it is in conversation with one of the most successful writers ever. It's great. Really? Really.
- [71:50]
Griffin McElroy
Y' all watch welcome to Derry?
- [71:52]
Chris Plant
No.
- [71:53]
Russ Frushtick
Okay.
- [71:53]
Griffin McElroy
No, I've seen clips. It looks too scary.
- [71:56]
Russ Frushtick
Yeah, it's too scary.
- [71:57]
Chris Plant
I've heard of it. It is B a D bad.
- [72:01]
Russ Frushtick
Oh, one second. I gotta thank the members. Some new members to the Patreon. We have Ollie B. We have Patrick S. We have Henry, and we have John K. Thank you for being members of the Patreon. You can go to patreon.com the besties. We have a new bracket battles episode that is live right now. We'll put a clip in right here in this episode so you can hear a brief clip of it.
- [72:21]
Chris Plant
Okay, Next up.
- [72:22]
Griffin McElroy
Jesus. This is gonna be a fucking bloodbath.
- [72:25]
Chris Plant
Yeah. If these. Next up, we have gwent from the Witcher 3. And also from Gwent. And we have Lickitung. Sushi. Or I think it's called Sushi Go Round. Maybe.
- [72:38]
Justin McElroy
Can we not say that word anymore?
- [72:41]
Griffin McElroy
It's called Sushi Go Round. We don't have to say the name of. Everyone actually does need to get on the mic and say Lickitung's name.
- [72:46]
Justin McElroy
I don't want to hear it and I don't want to say Lickitung. There's my one. Okay. But I don't want to hear it anymore. All right.
- [72:52]
Russ Frushtick
Does licking tongue help?
- [72:56]
Chris Plant
Can you imagine?
- [72:56]
Justin McElroy
From now on, it's Sushi Go Round.
- [72:58]
Russ Frushtick
Okay.
- [72:58]
Chris Plant
Yeah. Sushi go Round.
- [73:01]
Griffin McElroy
I will say of the Pokemon Stadium minigames, I think there was a Magikarp. Wasn't there a Magikarp Leap one that then actually did get spun off into its own full ass mobile game?
- [73:12]
Chris Plant
I think so.
- [73:12]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [73:14]
Russ Frushtick
But I suspiciously didn't involve a certain Pokemon eating a bunch of sushi.
- [73:18]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah.
- [73:19]
Justin McElroy
Lick your tongue is like Hungry Hungry Hippos. If pellets were sushi and in a circle surrounding the hippos and you got points for the best balls to eat and you could get combos for eating similar balls in order.
- [73:35]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah, I definitely played this game a lot, but that was mostly because Pokemon Stadium was kind of busted. And so sometimes I would just kind of need a break.
- [73:47]
Justin McElroy
Like mom already bought you Pokemon Stadium, so you just like, you had to play something. Right. So you might as well do Lickitung Stadium.
- [73:55]
Griffin McElroy
Yeah. And you didn't get anything for doing it. But it was a break from how busted Pokemon Stadium was at times.
- [74:03]
Russ Frushtick
And yeah. Thank you for being members. If you already are, please join us. If you're not already. You can also get an ad free feed of all of our content at the $10 tier if you're interested. But otherwise we're happy to have you next week.
- [74:18]
Justin McElroy
Next week is none of your business and I'm tired of you being so pushy about this kind of thing. Okay, we'll figure it out and then we'll tell you. We actually already know. We just don't tell you everything.
- [74:28]
Griffin McElroy
Back off. Wild vibe. Wild vibe.
- [74:32]
Justin McElroy
Back off. It's gonna do it for this week on the Besties. Be sure to join us again next time for the Besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Sam.