Nintendo Is Playing the B-Sides

Rhythm Heaven returns after an eleven-year hiatus with Rhythm Heaven Groove. It’s a fun game, but something’s changed. The series? The boys? Nintendo? We find the answer. Plus, Frushtick talks about life with the Steam Machine. It’s neat! It’s expensive! And it’s a reflection of the moment!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Russ Frushtick?

  I have a case of Bigfoot and I don't know what to do about it.

• 0:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, man. I knew this was going to be, I knew this was going to be the introduction. I knew this from the moment I received the JPG on my phone, which I won't get into details, but came at a hysterically inopportune time. I knew that we were going to be spending a little bit of, a little bit of our time with it here on the

• 0:25Chris Plante?

  I don't want to be pedantic here and I should, you know, choose my words wisely because I only have so many of them.

• 0:33Chris Plante?

  Are you Bigfoot or are you Big Toe?

• 0:37Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, it's Bigfoot. It started as Big Toe and now it's Bigfoot.

• 0:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, and I want to be, I do want to be podantic and hear about your foot.

• 0:46Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, I love that. Here's what happened. A bee stung me on my toe, my middle toe.

• 0:53Griffin McElroy?

  You trying to steal his honey? You trying to get up in the hive and get a little bit of?

• 0:56Russ Frushtick?

  I was putting those little footsies in the hives, see what I could grab out with them.

• 1:00Griffin McElroy?

  Why did you use your footsies to get the sticky, sticky goo out of the hive?

• 1:03Russ Frushtick?

  I thought they wouldn't expect it. My thinking was, they always see hands. They know what hands look like. They don't know what feet look like. They're always in shoes.

• 1:11Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:12Russ Frushtick?

  And here we are now.

• 1:14Griffin McElroy?

  What if some of the bees really liked it? What if that was actually what the bee movie was about? Was Jerry Seinfeld like, "Listen, guys, you're not gonna believe this."

• 1:24Russ Frushtick?

  It's not far off.

• 1:25Chris Plante?

  We're gonna get rich selling pictures of these things.

• 1:27Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:28Russ Frushtick?

  It's not far off. I'm hobbling around on a giant foot. It seems to maybe be getting better, but it's still pretty big. It's definitely much bigger than the other foot.

• 1:36Griffin McElroy?

  Ross, this is your Rookie of the Year moment. Have you tried kicking a football? You could be the new NFL All-Star kicker punter, Russ Frushtick.

• 1:47Russ Frushtick?

  And for a very limited time, the Super, the World Cup is happening right now. I know it's gonna go away eventually, but now is the time.

• 1:54Griffin McElroy?

  I.

• 1:55Russ Frushtick?

  Watch out, Pele.

• 1:57Griffin McElroy?

  So I was doing a sort of football Norte Americano thing, but yeah, for sure you could, yeah, for sure you could do it.

• 2:02Russ Frushtick?

  Football. They're in Norte Americano.

• 2:06Griffin McElroy?

  That's true. That's true. And they're ba-da-bop-ba-ba loving it. And who can blame them?

• 2:11Russ Frushtick?

  I'll be fine.

• 2:13Chris Plante?

  Did you at one point think about maybe seeing if you could get those bees to sting your other foot? And just make this the new you?

• 2:19Russ Frushtick?

  Chris Plant, you sound like shit.

• 2:21Griffin McElroy?

  You sound so bad, dude.

• 2:41Griffin McElroy?

  My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:44Chris Plante?

  My name is Christopher Thomas Plant.

• 2:46Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:47Chris Plante?

  Game of the week.

• 2:48Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, my name is Ross Frusich. I know the best game of the week. Chris Plant literally has laryngitis. He says he feels better, but we all know that he doesn't sound better.

• 2:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 2:57Russ Frushtick?

  I've literally never heard him sound worse.

• 2:59Griffin McElroy?

  Welcome.

• 3:00Chris Plante?

  Really?

• 3:00Griffin McElroy?

  To the besties. I've heard him sound worse. Welcome to the besties, though, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. I'm still like learning the ropes of doing the intro, guys.

• 3:08Russ Frushtick?

  You're doing great.

• 3:08Griffin McElroy?

  You can't throw all this, you can't throw bits.

• 3:11Russ Frushtick?

  You're doing it.

• 3:12Griffin McElroy?

  At me in the middle of it because it messes my timing off and I'm all about that rhythm.

• 3:15Russ Frushtick?

  I know.

• 3:15Griffin McElroy?

  Because of the game we've been playing this week, which is Rhythm Heaven Groove. Maybe, Chris, you could.

• 3:21Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, no.

• 3:21Griffin McElroy?

  Instead of having to use your words to describe the game.

• 3:25Russ Frushtick?

  Do you have flags? We could do semaphore.

• 3:27Griffin McElroy?

  Stomps and claps.

• 3:28Chris Plante?

  How about this?

• 3:29Griffin McElroy?

  To rhythm?

• 3:30Chris Plante?

  Bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop.

• 3:33Griffin McElroy?

  You're still using your voice. It's just you have so many ways of making music with your body.

• 3:37Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, he's snapping now.

• 3:38Griffin McElroy?

  Dude, can I say? That's good shit.

• 3:40Russ Frushtick?

  That was good shit.

• 3:41Chris Plante?

  Thank you.

• 3:41Russ Frushtick?

  People know what Rhythm Heaven Groove is now.

• 3:43Griffin McElroy?

  You put all four of those on the floor. It's a Switch game and Switch 2. And it's Rhythm Heaven and they've got a bunch of new modes and stuff, but for the most part, it's Rhythm Heaven. So we're going to talk a lot about what that means and a whole bunch more right after this short break.

• 3:57Chris Plante?

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• 4:36Chris Plante?

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• 5:09Chris Plante?

  off a two-year plan when you go to protonvpn.com/besties. That is P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P-N.com/besties for 70% off your two-year plan. That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 5:32Russ Frushtick?

  Before we jump into it, we talked about it last week, but I do want to re-highlight the fact that we, and by we, I mean Griffin McElroy, Christopher Thomas Plant, Russ Fraschek, and none other than our executive producer, Justin McElroy, are doing a live show in New

• 5:49Griffin McElroy?

  Hell, yes.

• 5:51Russ Frushtick?

  It's happening in New York City.

• 5:52Griffin McElroy?

  Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to get in there, my enthusiasm for this project. It's been a long time coming, baby.

• 5:57Russ Frushtick?

  It has. It has. It's going to be October 9th. That's a Friday. It's at the Town Hall, which is a venue in New York City. It's the same weekend as New York Comic Con. Tickets are available now. Please make sure you don't go to a ticket reseller. They suck. Just go to like the venue website. Or as a matter of fact, I'm sure Plant will drop in the legit link in our newsletter as well.

• 6:18Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, you gotta be on the newsletter.

• 6:19Russ Frushtick?

  You gotta be on that newsletter.

• 6:20Griffin McElroy?

  You gotta get on the newsletter.

• 6:22Russ Frushtick?

  Besties.fan for that newsletter. It's gonna be a lot of fun.

• 6:24Griffin McElroy?

  We don't know what it's gonna be yet. We got some big ideas.

• 6:28Russ Frushtick?

  And here's what I will promise you. Special guests.

• 6:31Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, wow. We haven't really even talked about that. So that, but I guess we're promising, I guess we are making promises.

• 6:36Russ Frushtick?

  Everyone gets a car.

• 6:38Chris Plante?

  Since we're on Broadway, like, maybe I should bring out some of those high school theater audition monologues.

• 6:43Griffin McElroy?

  I think that's a good idea, man.

• 6:45Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I got Richard III just cooking.

• 6:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, man, and do it. You should record those now. You should do it. You should record some sides.

• 6:54Chris Plante?

  Just content. Yeah, baby.

• 6:57Russ Frushtick?

  He'll probably be better by then.

• 6:59Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Rhythm Heaven Groove. Okay, are we ready?

• 7:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 7:02Griffin McElroy?

  How much Rhythm Heaven had you guys played?

• 7:04Russ Frushtick?

  I remember playing it on, I guess, DS.

• 7:08Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 7:09Russ Frushtick?

  And having a really good time. I actually think I, the copy that I got for DS, I went to GDC one year, and I think Shigeru Miyamoto gave a speech at GDC, and they just gave everyone in the audience copies of Rhythm Heaven, and I was like, what the fuck is this? And it ended up being a fucking blast, and I loved it.

• 7:25Griffin McElroy?

  It's great. It's great. Yeah, there was the original Rhythm Heaven, which I think was only released in Japan at first before it came to, I think it came over here as Rhythm Heaven. It was Rhythm Tengoku before. And then it came to the DS in 2008. There was Rhythm Heaven Fever on the Wii in 2011. There was Rhythm Heaven Mega Mix on the 3DS, which was sort of a combo platter, if you will. And then this is the first one in 11 years. The first Rhythm Heaven game in 11 years.

• 7:56Russ Frushtick?

  Incredible. Wow.

• 7:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. If you've not played a Rhythm Heaven game, I think it's actually pretty easy to explain what it is, which is a very short form, very straightforward for the most part, rhythm-based mini-game. Usually using only one or two buttons, and most of the time, you're to the beat of a song, you're popping bubbles with your fingers, or you're popping frogs up off lily pads, or you're bouncing fruit off your big oily biceps. And you are doing so to a rhythm that is sort of defined in a brief intro package for each of the little, each of the little mini-games.

• 8:31Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, there's a little tutorial for it, so you can get the timing down.

• 8:34Griffin McElroy?

  A little isn't the word I would use. I would say my biggest issue with this game is the, is the tutorialization for just how, how much they make sure you know what you're doing before they'll let you get in there and make a big mess out of things. I feel like there's maybe a little bit of time padding happening when the, in the tutorial sections.

• 8:50Russ Frushtick?

  You can thankfully skip them once you get it down.

• 8:52Griffin McElroy?

  You can skip them.

• 8:53Russ Frushtick?

  And you could even watch a video of them doing it properly. That's probably a faster way to do it. But once you do get it down, yeah, as you said, the, the games are very simple. Like, this is not Guitar Hero. It is literally one or two buttons for basically every game. Which I actually think is to a benefit. Like, I think the simplicity of it works for this game in a lot of ways.

• 9:13Griffin McElroy?

  It is what the franchise is like. It is the defining feature, I think, of Rhythm Heaven.

• 9:17Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 9:17Griffin McElroy?

  Is, is the relative simplicity of the, of the mini games.

• 9:21Russ Frushtick?

  In the same way that like WarioWare.

• 9:23Griffin McElroy?

  In the same way as WarioWare, right? My favorite part of, of this game and all of the Rhythm Heaven games is it separates these songs, these, you know, mini game levels out into sets of four, I believe. In, in this game, it's sets of four with a remix that you then get to do that then combines the sort of, you know, the animations and the different kind of rhythms of the four preceding songs into one kind of mix. And it jumps between them all sort of in a random sequence and, well, not random. I guess it's predefined based on whatever the song is.

• 9:57Russ Frushtick?

  It turns it into like a music video featuring all of the mini games you just played.

• 10:01Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. And that's, to me, that is like, I, I really, I really do enjoy Rhythm Heaven. I enjoy the, the vibe and the aesthetic of it is like really, really charming and bizarre. There's a lot about kind of the art style that reminds me of like the soft sort of painterly style of the like Katamari Damacy sort of world.

• 10:24Russ Frushtick?

  Or even like Flash game era, like there's not that crudeness to it, but the, it's, it's, I guess, very welcoming.

• 10:31Griffin McElroy?

  There's a surrealism to it.

• 10:32Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 10:32Griffin McElroy?

  And the music is, the music is, for the most part, like, I think, really great. They do license a few, like, songs in, in this one that are a real highlight. Some of the levels music, it doesn't, is not something that I would ever want to go back and listen to again, let alone go back and play again. But I would say on the whole, like, the music and the way that it kind of asks you to interact with it is, is still as fun now as it was, you know, back in, oh, God, whenever the, 2008, when, when the first Rhythm Heaven first, first came to the stage.

• 11:07Russ Frushtick?

  Is there a scenario in particular that jumped out to you, Griffin, that you liked?

• 11:11Griffin McElroy?

  I really like Stop and Go and Stop.

• 11:12Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 11:13Griffin McElroy?

  In that one, you're driving a car for a commercial. Shoot and to the beat of music, you have to stop your car and start your car. Just a great, great track, great music on that one. Just felt really good. Um, I liked the vegetable chopping one when it would throw those, those triplets at you, those paradiddles. I did appreciate those. I really like any of the ones that involve like holding in the, the bubble popping one coming down the conveyor belt. I like, uh, I like all of those.

• 11:40Russ Frushtick?

  Did you do the sneezing moon one?

• 11:42Griffin McElroy?

  A sneezing moon one is a bit scary.

• 11:43Russ Frushtick?

  Okay. So the sneezing, I just need to set up the sneezing moon. So the premise of the sneezing moon is that you're controlling. I guess they're like cult members, like little people dressed up to pray to this sneezing moon. And you need to watch the sneezing moons, like cadence of sneeze.

• 12:04Griffin McElroy?

  Of his huh, huh, huh, chew.

• 12:06Russ Frushtick?

  And then you dash, uh, in front of it, like.

• 12:09Griffin McElroy?

  On the chew.

• 12:09Russ Frushtick?

  And if you miss, you get struck by lightning and everyone's sad. That's the like weird fucking tone of this entire game, some weirder than others, but like it goes for it.

• 12:20Griffin McElroy?

  But to, to really, I think dial down on like the mechanics of it, that level in particular will also throw at you like half measure.

• 12:28Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 12:28Griffin McElroy?

  Sort of sequences where instead of doing like three wind up like huh, huh, huh, chew. He only does one.

• 12:33Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 12:34Griffin McElroy?

  So you have to be like really paying attention to, and then also he will throw, um, like an offbeat sort of set of, uh, you know, sneezes at you that you have to also be kind of ready for. So it's, it does involve, you do have to be paying very, very close attention.

• 12:49Russ Frushtick?

  Well, though even like the remove elements. So they'll like, there's one that's set on a beach with crabs. And at one point in the front of frame, someone like puts a Coke can down in front of your character.

• 12:59Griffin McElroy?

  Someone just sets a soda down right there. Yeah.

• 13:01Russ Frushtick?

  And you just can't see. So you have to like still use the beat, obviously.

• 13:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 13:05Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, so it's, yeah, it's a very smart, uh, way to sort of evolve the challenge as it goes.

• 13:11Griffin McElroy?

  That is, that's the core, like rhythm, rhythm heaven.

• 13:14Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 13:14Griffin McElroy?

  Sort of stuff going on here. I think there's eight sets of, uh, of the four levels and a remix for each one of the sets.

• 13:21Russ Frushtick?

  It's a lot. Uh, it's more than, my understanding is it's more than have been in any rhythm heaven game previously.

• 13:27Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I really do enjoy it, especially the remixes. I really, those are genuinely thrilling because you're having to go in a split second like, oh, fuck, like, what do I do when the vegetable chopping lady gets a yellow bell pepper? Oh, that's right. Like, you do have to be constantly bouncing between stuff and it is fun and really exciting when you're able to kind of string stuff together. It is also really demanding of accuracy.

• 13:52Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 13:53Griffin McElroy?

  It is tighter than, you know, you may be, you may be used to from a, like a Guitar Hero or something like that.

• 13:59Russ Frushtick?

  Not for a kid's game.

• 14:00Griffin McElroy?

  Not a lot of rhythm games here to compare it to.

• 14:03Chris Plante?

  I gotta, I gotta offer a small critique, small critique. I think this is a trend across a lot of what Nintendo's been doing over the last five years, but it's cool. They're making the weird game. It's cool. We're getting a rhythm heaven for the first time in 11 years. The kind of stuff around the game is so streamlined and not weird anymore. Like, the actual menus, the being in the game is like oddly sterile.

• 14:31Griffin McElroy?

  The main menu is the weirdest.

• 14:33Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 14:34Griffin McElroy?

  The main menu seems weirdly unfinished, where you're like selecting like

• 14:38Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 14:39Griffin McElroy?

  a bunch of options on a plain white screen. I don't even think there's any music playing.

• 14:43Russ Frushtick?

  It looks like when I would test, when I would test like early indie games, like that's what it looks like.

• 14:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 14:48Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, we're like.

• 14:49Chris Plante?

  I just think about this in relation to like the Wii versus being on the Switch to like main UI, right?

• 14:56Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Chris Plante?

  Like, you used to get into like a Nintendo UI and it was like, wow, this is so weird. There is cool music and there's like bips and bops and there are these little distractions. I think about the Game Boy Cameras UI, which was like, kind of looked like a role playing game weirdly.

• 15:14Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 15:15Chris Plante?

  And just like that, the experimentation that you would associate with these games, top to bottom, seems to have been kind of condensed into these little like safe packets.

• 15:26Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 15:26Chris Plante?

  And it's not the worst thing in the world, but it is certainly a strange change.

• 15:30Russ Frushtick?

  Change.

• 15:30Griffin McElroy?

  It's it's it is the begin it is like part of a bigger critique of like it really feels like as cool as this is and I do enjoy just kind of plugging into rhythm heaven and and going with it and just like playing it for an hour and going through it like a dozen levels or so and you know trying to get the medals on the amazing ranks like trying to get perfect scores on all this stuff like I really do enjoy that but it really does feel like they could do more like there could be something more and there is other stuff in here right let's touch on that real quick because there's there's a multiplayer mode that I will be frank I did not play at all because I tried to get my kids my youngest my five year old Gus loves music he has a drum set his rhythm is actually really

• 16:12Griffin McElroy?

  good but he could not keep up with the very first mini game

• 16:16Russ Frushtick?

  It's hard.

• 16:16Griffin McElroy?

  For some reason throws you like a five count instead of a four four sort of traditional thing it's kind of weird or weird one to start with and my other son doesn't didn't like it very much at all so I didn't I didn't play much of the multiplayer.

• 16:29Russ Frushtick?

  I played a lot of the multiplayer with my wife while my son watched.

• 16:34Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 16:34Russ Frushtick?

  And I will say this unabashedly it's one of the best multiplayer experiences I've had on the switch two and with the switch quite frankly unquestionably like super super fun immediately very little preamble very

• 16:49Griffin McElroy?

  It looks great.

• 16:49Russ Frushtick?

  Very easy to get into they tutorialize but you can skip all the tutorials they do like when it's different people's turns they'll do the like voiceover of that person's like character and they use the like Tamadachi style like voice a text into voice thing so there's just like that silliness to it but obviously you have the layer of both cooperative and competitive and I do want to call out about half of the levels that are in multiplayer are cooperative and half of them are competitive and so having those options is actually really great because you can

• 17:21Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 17:21Russ Frushtick?

  Remove the like oh you suck and really have like an actual competition to it.

• 17:27Griffin McElroy?

  I like that are you spending the medals that you earn to like unlock stuff in the multiplayer?

• 17:32Russ Frushtick?

  Oh yeah so the so the in the multiplayer you're earning another currency which is rings.

• 17:37Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 17:37Russ Frushtick?

  And the rings unlock like other mini games in multiplayer but it feels pretty optional.

• 17:44Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 17:44Russ Frushtick?

  And nothing like worth writing home about I think it's more just about like this is a very good party game I would say better part of game than like Mario Kart in a lot of ways because it doesn't have that like intensive setup phase.

• 17:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 17:57Russ Frushtick?

  And was like really fun. We were like played it for like two hours. It was like really, I thought they did a really, really good job. I did a great, we did a great one where it's cake and you're supposed to pick up the cake at a specific time.

• 18:12Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 18:13Russ Frushtick?

  And it like starts the timer at 10, nine, eight, seven, six, and then suddenly like the voice fades out and you just have to like try to sense when 10 is. And so like that was hilarious every time and we'd like get it perfectly or be like a tiny, tiny bit off. And that was like really fun. This like a lot of multiplayer stuff that I think for me, that's more of the draw. I like the single player. I had fun with the single player, but I wouldn't necessarily have to stick to itiveness to perfect it. The multiplayer is like, this is one of at the top of my list of like games I would trot out if I was having a multiplayer night.

• 18:47Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe I'll give it a shot with Rachel.

• 18:49Chris Plante?

  I'm curious how this plays with younger Nintendo fans because I do think it is at odds with modern Nintendo and their design focus, which is, I think about expression and freedom. It is about, you can go anywhere. You can create lots of things. There are not wrong answers in a thing like Bonanza or Zelda, right? And this is about like rhythm heaven is about precision. It is about competition. There is a right way to do it. And I was trying to think of like, what is, what does a rhythm game look like that would fit modern Nintendo? And actually what came to mind is Elite Beat Agents.

• 19:29Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, interesting. That's interesting. I thought you were gonna say Wii Music.

• 19:33Chris Plante?

  No, no, I mean, yes.

• 19:35Griffin McElroy?

  Get out of here, Robbie Drums.

• 19:36Chris Plante?

  I think Elite Beat Agents has a little bit more flow. There's a little more room for some physical expression while you are still meeting the rhythm. It is not as hardcore. I don't know if that'll ever come back because I don't know how the rights worked with that game. But yeah, I am not surprised to hear Griffin that your kids were down top because I just don't think there are a lot of games that ask this. Level of precision of their players, like pretty much exclusively, like that's what the game is.

• 20:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, there is another, so there's some other single player kind of bonus stuff on the fringes like there's like a little silly kind of sequencer thing and you can just spend some metals to unlock more of those like little mini games, none of which really I found particularly compelling. The thing about the game that I found most disappointing that I was like kind of looking for like kind of interested in based on what I heard was Beat Spell, which is a game mode that unlocks very early and it purports to be sort of a RPG where you play this this this young wizard and you can cast spells, sequences of spells by pressing buttons as you know to to a 44 beat.

• 20:51Griffin McElroy?

  You know, there's like a fire spell to damage enemies and a healing spell and every time you, you know, defeat an enemy and you level up, you can upgrade one of your spells and you're kind of, you know, seeing how far you can get into a run. And then there's like things like you get critical hits if you hit it right on the beat, which is really fucking hard to do. And I thought that sounded neat. I thought that sounded really cool.

• 21:10Russ Frushtick?

  It sounded to me like I thought it was going to be like the Metopia stuff.

• 21:15Griffin McElroy?

  Sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That is, that is sort of the bar that I was expecting was the, the, the Metopia. You know, whether it was the simpler street pass version of Metopia or like the full blown, Find Me, I guess it was called. Or, or Metopia, and it really isn't. It is, it is, it is barely there. It is not very fleshed out at all. It is just another, it is just another rhythm mini game, basically with sort of RPG trappings, but it is not, it is not rich or honestly, it's very tedious because the fights can go on for a while and yeah, I, I really, really found that mode to be kind of a bummer.

• 21:55Russ Frushtick?

  I do find it interesting though, because Nintendo continues to experiment with the price of their games.

• 22:01Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 22:01Russ Frushtick?

  And so, so we just did Star Fox last week. Star Fox is a $50 digital game. This game is $40 digital.

• 22:10Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 22:10Russ Frushtick?

  And then obviously they have like the bigger releases at 70 or even $80. How do you guys feel about like this? I kind of like, I like the fact that there's that flexibility. I think at $40, this is a good deal personally, but I'm curious what you guys think.

• 22:27Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know. I'm not going to get into the like, how much money is it worth? I will say that like, I pretty recently played through all of Rhythm Doctor, which is a Rhythm Heaven inspired indie game that's on Steam and it's on sale for $15.99 right now. And it fucking rules. I loved every second of my time with that game and has like a kick ass story and the music is like amazing. Like it did, I think it eats this. It's not entirely the exact same thing, but it is so inspired by it. It is going to stick around in my memory a lot longer than Rhythm Heaven Groove is because ultimately like, I've enjoyed the time I spent playing through the levels of Rhythm Heaven Groove.

• 23:08Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe I'll dip back in for the multiplayer stuff, but it is not, it is not something I'm going to stick with.

• 23:14Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Fresh, for the broader conversation of the money, I think Nintendo realizes if they're not going to do sales very often. And they're doing more than they used to, but they still don't do them a lot and they certainly don't do steep discounts.

• 23:27Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 23:28Chris Plante?

  They need to start distinguishing. Yeah, the prices have to be very distinguished because they can't have a scenario where like, well, Rhythm Heaven goes on sale for half off, but Mario Kart never does. So I think this is them trying to find that balance of how do we create some clarification of value? If we want to keep these prizes more or less locked in.

• 23:53Russ Frushtick?

  For sure.

• 23:54Griffin McElroy?

  Understand that for sure, but if you're competing with, if you're competing with other, you know, folks in the hardware space like, okay, that's fine. PlayStation 5 games are pretty expensive too. Like I get it. But if you're competing with all the, I don't know, man, all the Necro Dancer games on Steam and all the other kind of like, really fucking rad.

• 24:15Russ Frushtick?

  Eventually like Rhythm Dance or Rhythm Doctor will come to switch, I imagine.

• 24:19Chris Plante?

  I think the harsh reality is that most of the people who hear of Rhythm Heaven have not and probably will not hear of those games.

• 24:28Russ Frushtick?

  Just by virtue of them being smaller. Freaks out there. Look at Griffin.

• 24:31Chris Plante?

  There's, there's.

• 24:33Russ Frushtick?

  This is a free key franchise.

• 24:36Chris Plante?

  There's a huge audience. I'm just saying Nintendo automatically, fair or not, has the benefit of. You open the e-shop and you're our friends who never look into video games and you see a new Nintendo game came out?

• 24:49Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 24:49Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, I'll, I'll, forty dollars is a lot of, is a lot of money.

• 24:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 24:54Griffin McElroy?

  And I, I, I, I'm sitting with it here. I don't know if this is, I don't, I, I don't feel necessarily like I have gotten a ton of time out of this, out of this game, or we'll continue to put much time into. So like, I don't know.

• 25:07Russ Frushtick?

  I am not saying-

• 25:08Chris Plante?

  And like you said, Griffin, there are like many other of them games on Steam.

• 25:11Griffin McElroy?

  There, there are.

• 25:13Chris Plante?

  There are a variety, yeah.

• 25:14Russ Frushtick?

  I am not saying it is necessarily worth it. I, I would recommend though, Griffin, if you get the chance to try to do some multiplayer, I do think it helps to elevate. I'm not saying it reaches the forty dollar, whatever, but it does elevate the product.

• 25:27Griffin McElroy?

  I gotta try unbeatable. Unbeatable is another one that came out, uh, I think actually.

• 25:32Chris Plante?

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:32Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, late last year, at the beginning of this one, I never, it was on my wishlist. It was like one of the first games I ever wish listed and I never, uh, I have not dipped into that one either. Yeah, there, there's so many, there's just so many games doing this stuff on, and, and the indie sort of like ecosystem, financially speaking, is like completely on a whole other level than

• 25:51Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 25:52Griffin McElroy?

  A fifty, we didn't, I wasn't here for the Star Fox episode, but fifty dollars for the Star Fox remake also feels a bit out of pocket to me, but let's not, I guess, relitigate that. Let's take maybe a brief break and then we can come back and talk about things that you can feel great spending an exorbitant amount of money on.

• 26:10Russ Frushtick?

  Maybe.

• 26:11Griffin McElroy?

  Let's, I want to hear about the Steam machine, which Russ has been spending some time with, uh, but, but first let's take this quick break.

• 26:18Russ Frushtick?

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• 26:40Russ Frushtick?

  Me one of their mattresses, but it was timed as such where actually my son, who was becoming a toddler and needed like an actual bed, needed a mattress. So we had him use the Lisa mattress and every time that I get into that bed to read him a story at night, I am incredibly jealous of his mattress because holy cow, that thing is incredibly comfortable. Lisa was awarded the best hybrid and best memory foam mattress by New York Times Wire Cutter and is featured by West Elm as their go-to mattress partner. You can go to lisa.com for 25% off select mattresses plus get an extra $50 off with promo code BESTIES exclusive to our listeners.

• 27:23Russ Frushtick?

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• 27:39Russ Frushtick?

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• 28:25Russ Frushtick?

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• 28:31Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so I'm about a week or so, maybe 10 days into using the Steam Machine, which is Valve's TV side computer. I don't know that I need to, do I need to describe it for the people?

• 28:45Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, maybe, dude. They announced it a long time ago and then did not say anything about it for a long time.

• 28:49Russ Frushtick?

  That's true.

• 28:49Chris Plante?

  And Steam Machine used to mean something different, so hardcore listeners, yeah.

• 28:53Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so the Steam Machine that Valve just released is a computer that runs Linux. It runs SteamOS, which we should be familiar with through, that's what's running on a Steam Deck. But this one is designed specifically to plug into a TV. So the idea would be you would have a Steam Machine in your living room and you plug it into the TV and suddenly you have all of the things that were in your Steam library accessible on this box. Obviously, there are many other ways to have a computer gaming experience in your living room. You can plug a laptop in, you can plug a desktop computer in, there are a number of different ways. But I think Steam's goal was, Valve's goal, was to make this as easy as possible for people to have this experience

• 29:37Russ Frushtick?

  that aren't interested in like juggling a lot of setup or wires or whatever.

• 29:41Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 29:41Russ Frushtick?

  You plug it in and it works. And I will say from my experience, they did achieve that goal. It is incredibly easy. I was playing No Man's Sky in like seven minutes after unboxing this thing.

• 29:54Griffin McElroy?

  You may not have played No Man's Sky recently enough to have a feeling about this, but isn't the, the, like, latest, like, five updates they've done on that game just fucking crazy?

• 30:03Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah, fucking.

• 30:04Griffin McElroy?

  I don't think I've talked about it on this, maybe I did.

• 30:06Russ Frushtick?

  I think a little bit, you mentioned it. The fact that you can jump out of a spaceship from orbit.

• 30:10Griffin McElroy?

  Build your own Corvette, jump out into space and just free float around while catching space Pikachus. It's fucking crazy, that game.

• 30:18Russ Frushtick?

  But, yes, I was able to start playing that game immediately and I have just gobs of games, just covering games for as long as we have, just untold numbers of games that are on my Steam library that I was able to boot up. And mostly, the way I've been using it is not for me necessarily. It's more for, there's a ton of games that I know my son would enjoy, but for what. Whatever reason, it was a pain in the ass to set it up on the TV and now I can put, we were just playing Unpacking the other day, which is a really fun puzzle game where you basically empty boxes in a room and like put clothing and toys and things away in your house.

• 30:56Russ Frushtick?

  Very simple game. Really loved it when I played it on Steam, however long ago that was, and then promptly forgot about it and it disappeared into my giant library of games. And now I can go and scroll through my library and he can see all the thumbnails and be like, oh, let's play that. And when he wants to play Death Stranding, I say, oh, maybe not. And then I picked something else.

• 31:16Chris Plante?

  Right.

• 31:17Russ Frushtick?

  And so he picked, uh, he picked Unpacking and we also played Earthion. Do you remember that game Earthion Plant?

• 31:23Chris Plante?

  Not at all.

• 31:23Russ Frushtick?

  You might remember that game.

• 31:24Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 31:25Russ Frushtick?

  Earthion is a shmup, uh, that actually runs on native Genesis hardware. If you were to like get the ROM.

• 31:32Chris Plante?

  Oh, cool.

• 31:32Russ Frushtick?

  It actually runs, but it is made obviously with very modern design tenants and it is fucking awesome. I'm not really a shmup guy. But apparently my son is now a shmup guy because he fucking loved it and we played that.

• 31:43Chris Plante?

  Can I tell you that just real quick, the game that you should play? I don't want to say with your son. Drainus. Do you remember Drainus?

• 31:52Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 31:53Chris Plante?

  This sounds made up. Drainus? Uh, Drainus is one of the best shmups of the last decade.

• 32:00Russ Frushtick?

  It's called Drainus?

• 32:02Chris Plante?

  Drainus, like anus, but with a drain. Okay. I know you may not like us talking about your voice a whole lot, Chris, but when you get happy, when you get happy with this voice, your voice compresses into something so small and adorable. I just want to put like a little tiny cup over it and carry it outside.

• 32:20Russ Frushtick?

  Now, here is the deal. I do think he would probably love Drainus. Now that I'm looking at it right now.

• 32:25Chris Plante?

  Who doesn't love Drainus?

• 32:26Russ Frushtick?

  This looks pretty good. Okay. So that's the like top line understanding of what the Steam machine is. I think most people will probably have that user experience. We will get to the price. Don't worry.

• 32:37Chris Plante?

  I think it's a million.

• 32:38Russ Frushtick?

  It's a million trillion fucking dollars. The other aspect that I want to mention before we get to the price is if you're willing to start tinkering, I think the Steam machine gets increasingly even more valuable because you can turn into an enormously capable emulation machine, ROM playing machine, whatever.

• 32:58Russ Frushtick?

  Or turn it into a media set top box where you're not even using like an Apple TV anymore. You're just using that to like launch Netflix and whatever else. So there are, I think, a lot of, there's a lot of utility so long as you're willing to like, go a little bit deeper, but even if you aren't, hey, poof, you have a pretty damn good Steam playing thing, so long as you are not necessarily interested in pushing the hardware. Because if you try to play games like 007 First Light, or even Death Stranding 2, it can run, it's not going to be pretty. You're talking about like low settings, maybe 1080p to get a 60, a clean 60 FPS on like a modern 3D big game like that. Okay. So that's the consideration you're doing.

• 33:43Russ Frushtick?

  You can, you know, again, play these like 2D games, or even a lot of 3D games that came out like two or three years ago. But if you're trying to play modern games, you are going to take a hit. I would say you can certainly run a lot more than you can on a Steam Deck, but that's not saying a whole lot these days. Right. That's that part of it. And then there's the price part of it, which is 100% valid. The price is, starts at $1,050. Yeah. Which is high. People have done, I have not done this myself, but people have done a ton of like side by side comparisons of what's more powerful as PS5 or a Steam machine. Obviously, the PS5, maybe not obviously, the PS5 is noticeably more powerful than a Steam machine is. They've also done the thing where they're like, we're going to build our own Steam

• 34:27Russ Frushtick?

  machine using parts off the shelf. And it's, and they end up building a much more powerful device for the same amount of money. Right. Valve doesn't seem to have a problem with that. In fact, Valve released SteamOS to fully support any, any computer with an AMD chip in it. So if you want to build an AMD computer as a Steam Deck that is arguably more powerful, you can do that. And in fact, Valve is like, that's part of the reason Valve isn't taking that 30% into consideration when they're like pricing this thing. They didn't lower the price because they didn't know necessarily what people were going to do with it. I, I mean, who's it for? I, I think if you've listened to all of this.

• 35:08Russ Frushtick?

  You probably know, are you the sort of person that like, likes the convenience of playing older Steam games in an easy way and could maybe like drop a bunch of emulators on this thing? It's very convenient. Are you gonna be more careful with how you spend your money? And you want to like, get the most bang for your buck? 100% you will be able to find something better elsewhere. And even as the years go by, even six months from now, I'm willing to bet that there will be like off the shelf Steam machine competitors that will do pretty well. So this, those are really the considerations. I don't know. Do you guys have questions?

• 35:45Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, are you using the new Steam controller?

• 35:47Russ Frushtick?

  I'm using the Steam controller. We've talked about the Steam controller in the past. It is fully compatible with the Steam machine, as you'd imagine. I fucking love this controller. I've used it basically non-stop since it first came out a few months ago. One of my favorite controllers ever made unquestionably. It's very ugly. If you, yeah, sure. Very ugly, but I love holding it. I love the buttons. It feels great. Very flexible with the trackpads if you want to use those. So

• 36:11Griffin McElroy?

  I do kinda, I do kinda want one of those. It's pretty great. Cause it looks cool.

• 36:14Russ Frushtick?

  I, I give a glowing recommendation for the controller unquestionably and a, I would say hesitant recommendation for the Steam machine, only if that's what you're looking to accomplish.

• 36:25Griffin McElroy?

  I ju, my beef is not with the Steam machine. Okay. I want one. I mean, it looks great.

• 36:29Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 36:30Griffin McElroy?

  I truly do. And I think it fills a need that, that I, you know, have in my kind of like gaming space. I, I guess I could dock my Rog Ally X to the, to like my living room TV if I wanted to like play PC games.

• 36:45Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I've had that use case and in my experience, I just don't end up doing that because

• 36:50Griffin McElroy?

  I just don't end up doing it. Cause it's, yeah. And it can be a pain in the ass to set up. And, and then also the, I don't know if this is true, but using Bazite on the Rog Ally X sometimes after docking it, it, and then undocking it, it likes, it has trouble getting back into kind of, uh, undocked, like using the onboard controller and

• 37:11Russ Frushtick?

  The iOS does fully support the Rog Ally X now, by the way. Just, just letting you know, if you want to leave Bazite behind. It does fully support.

• 37:19Griffin McElroy?

  That's been pretty good to me.

• 37:20Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 37:20Griffin McElroy?

  My, my, my beef is not with Steam Machine or Valve or this price point.

• 37:25Russ Frushtick?

  With Gabe.

• 37:25Griffin McElroy?

  I think it, or with Gabe, like it's a lot of money, but and when you compare it to like the Rog Ally X, or I don't know how much the new Xbox Rog Ally is, or the, you know, the PS5, you know, whatever. It's, it's a lot of money, but everything costs a lot of money now that has RAM in it.

• 37:43Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 37:43Griffin McElroy?

  It just feels, I, I, I don't know when I'm gonna feel like great about dropping a bunch of money on a thing that has obviously had its price jacked into the fucking stratosphere by a global economic sort of crisis is maybe a strong word. And I know that it is the kind of nature of, of this thing that you don't really know. No one really knows when the RAM shortage will begin to sort of resolve. But it, I don't know, it feels bad to think about buying a new PC or buying a, you know, buying even that Switch 2 right now to the increase the price.

• 38:24Griffin McElroy?

  It's, it's something that has never really happened in my lifetime before where a game console gets more expensive after they release it. And it, it just feels so bad to imagine spending money on that when ostensibly you could wait, but.

• 38:40Chris Plante?

  I, well, I'm, I'm gonna make it worse for everyone, which is you might not be able to wait because Lenovo has said that they don't expect prices to ever to come down. And Lenovo is incentivized to say that for reasons, but that is also how inflation works. When prices go up, rarely, if ever, does the market want to bring them back down. They're not incentivized to. They would much sooner keep the profits than they would bring the prices back down. The other thing that I think we have to be aware of for like who this is for.

• 39:17Chris Plante?

  The bummer here is, this is for people who want to get into PCs, which should be a growing audience. And the Steam machine itself was never going to replace the Xbox or the PlayStation. But the idea of SteamOS and moving to PC has been gradually doing that. And as consoles themselves become a thousand dollars, and as consoles get worse and worse, and like, let's be clear, they've gotten much worse this year, they're going to get significantly worse over the limitations over the next three years. Moving to PC-

• 39:55Griffin McElroy?

  By worse, you mean price worse?

• 39:57Chris Plante?

  Not just price, they will have less features than they've ever had. You won't be able to play retail discs in your product. You have even less clarity on how your digital rights work, right? The, these are not great times for a console owner. We're not talking about Nintendo, that's a whole different thing. And for that reason, like, it would be a great time to jump into a relatively easy, more welcoming PC experience like Steam, so you can benefit from the sales. It is digital sales, but they have a much longer history of digital rights-

• 40:35Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 40:35Chris Plante?

  -maintenance for you, right? There's a lot of reasons for you to do it-

• 40:39Griffin McElroy?

  Which are still pretty draconian, but at least they're all in one place, like-

• 40:43Chris Plante?

  And they're consistent.

• 40:44Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 40:45Russ Frushtick?

  I would also add that you don't have to pay a subscription fee to play online games, which is another way-

• 40:50Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 40:51Russ Frushtick?

  -you can save some of that money. I think that there is value in this. The other thing to keep in mind is because of the prices being so extreme, I think you will see way fewer developers, apart from like, the rock stars of the world-

• 41:07Russ Frushtick?

  Pushing hardware in extreme ways, I think you're going to see people design games, continue to design games to be very scalable such that hardware from a few years ago, which Steam Machine arguably is, because it's not top of the shelf stuff right now, can still run those games. So I think you will get more life out of this than you think. But yeah, again, you are still, you won't be just playing, it's a new computer, but you won't be playing games with all settings max by any means.

• 41:36Chris Plante?

  Can, this is my theory, and I'm going to sound like a bonkers person, but I think over the next year or two, we're going to see more things pop up that we've seen in other countries where people are better about repurposing the hardware they already have. And I won't be surprised if those computer shops that you see, or repair shops that you see in your neighborhood or in your city, if they start saying, hey, you can come in and we'll wipe your old laptop or your old PC and we will convert it into a Steam Machine, or something like this for you, because the process isn't so easy that the average person is going to do it. But if that becomes something

• 42:21Chris Plante?

  that your local vendor can do on your behalf, that's a great option. Like, a lot of people have old hardware in their home that is not being used to the best of its capability, and that would run a lot of older stuff and accomplish a lot of these things.

• 42:38Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Man, shit's really rough.

• 42:40Chris Plante?

  It's rough, dude.

• 42:41Griffin McElroy?

  Sort of industry-wide, like, it is sort of a bummer thing to prophesize about like what the future holds. I do, I do want one of the, I think, I like the form factor of it, and I think it looks rad and everything, but I don't know that the need for it justifies the, justifies the price for me personally, speaking.

• 43:03Russ Frushtick?

  I think a lot of people are going to make that decision, and I think that's right. Like, if I was buying an easy PC for a friend that doesn't know anything about PCs, yes, Steam Machine makes total sense.

• 43:13Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 43:14Russ Frushtick?

  But I'm mindful that like, there's a lot of people that could do a little bit of heavy lifting and get a more powerful machine out of it. But it's, I think it's great that this is here, and I think it sets a standard. For the industry, for the PC gaming industry and like Microsoft and whoever else sets a standard to be like, "Hey, dummies, we can make this incredibly easy for people. You don't need to overcomplicate it by making them install fucking stock widgets every time they launch their computer. Let's just like give them the games they paid for." So I do appreciate Valve on that front of designing a system that is like as smooth as it could possibly be.

• 43:53Griffin McElroy?

  I also like, if I'm gonna spend an outrageous amount of money on a Steam thing, I'm probably gonna wait for that VR headset, because that thing does look pretty tight. I don't have a need for that either. That would justify, whatever the price of that will almost certainly be quite, quite large as well. But I don't know, that stuff gets me, that stuff gets me real excited.

• 44:14Russ Frushtick?

  We have a little bit of reader mail. Paul wrote in to say, "You mentioned liking puzzle games this week, and I know you guys have tried TR49, Enchanted Sonar in the past. My friend turned me on to a recently released game, The Message from Deep Space, which is on Steam. It's a puzzle game where you are decoding messages being sent from a meteor. You will know in the first 15 minutes if it's a game for you, but if it is, it's great. Otherwise, bail and you can see what you got."

• 44:41Griffin McElroy?

  There's a demo.

• 44:42Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 44:43Griffin McElroy?

  I just looked it up.

• 44:43Russ Frushtick?

  It looks very cool. Definitely worth checking out.

• 44:46Griffin McElroy?

  This does look cool. Yeah, this looks neat. There's a few of these, I feel like, language-based, translation-based games that have dropped over the last year. I think Enchanted Sonar really, I don't know, set the genre ablaze.

• 45:01Russ Frushtick?

  One more reader mail, email. This one comes from Bass Toad, Bass Toad maybe. "Has anyone in the besties played Mechachameleon, the biggest indie hit of the year? It has 15 million sales worldwide in a single month. I have not played it yet, but I have seen it many times."

• 45:19Griffin McElroy?

  Oh yeah. I mean, I've seen, my kids watch videos of Mechachameleon, a lot.

• 45:23Chris Plante?

  Yeah, it rocks. We should, we should play it together in the, in the coming weeks. Sometime before the end of the summer, we will, we'll play it.

• 45:30Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. For those that don't know, it's a hide and seek game where when you go to hide, you can basically like draw on yourself and design your own camouflage such that you fit in with the scene. So you could like draw half a hydrant and like kind of blend in with the scene better. And then the other person tries to find you. It's very clever.

• 45:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, some people are really good at it. I've also seen some people have developed a hack technology that will like screen print exactly what you're standing in front of in like a weird kind of line by line dot matrix style.

• 46:02Russ Frushtick?

  That's so funny.

• 46:03Griffin McElroy?

  Um, which I'm sure is frustrating for the hardcore Mecha Chameleon community.

• 46:07Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 46:07Griffin McElroy?

  Um, but I, I enjoyed the ingenuity of it.

• 46:10Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, we talk about price stuff and like capabilities of computers these days. Like this is what we're going to see more of is weird ass experimental things.

• 46:19Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 46:19Russ Frushtick?

  That do not require you to have a modern PC.

• 46:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 46:22Russ Frushtick?

  And that's good. Keeping in mind like the odds of another indie game having this level of success, fucking very, very low, if not zero.

• 46:32Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 46:33Russ Frushtick?

  Just keep that in mind.

• 46:35Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, there's always one every year, at least. There's always at least one.

• 46:38Russ Frushtick?

  Usually there's one, not to this level. 15 million sounds is fucking crazy.

• 46:40Griffin McElroy?

  This is the video games equivalent of, well, actually I guess the video games equivalent of Backgrooms is Backgrooms, but in terms of what that has done to the film industry, that and um, oh shit, what's the one with the Wish Willow? Did they snap it? Obsession?

• 46:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 46:54Griffin McElroy?

  Where it's like, we need indie horror stuff. I don't know. I feel like that also does happen every year where then the big players in the space are like, shit guys, we got it making Among Us and we got a month and a half to do it.

• 47:05Chris Plante?

  Also, just a little, a little thing with uh, Metcha Chameleon, a little Japanese here. It's pronounced Metcha and that means like, oh, very chameleon or like, it's totally a mess of a chameleon.

• 47:19Griffin McElroy?

  That's fun. I had no idea.

• 47:20Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, that explains the extra C, I guess.

• 47:23Griffin McElroy?

  I'm glad you told me that before I said the name of the game, like in public or something, like picking my kids up from school.

• 47:30Chris Plante?

  Really embarrassing.

• 47:30Griffin McElroy?

  Would have been really humiliating.

• 47:32Russ Frushtick?

  Chris Pine, is this your version of saying karate correctly?

• 47:35Chris Plante?

  Uh, no, this is my version of saying near automata.

• 47:38Griffin McElroy?

  Oh boy.

• 47:40Russ Frushtick?

  Honorable.

• 47:40Griffin McElroy?

  We got any honorable mentions?

• 47:42Russ Frushtick?

  Mentions. Uh, I've been playing a game called, it's called Blueprints. It's a first person puzzle game where you explore apps. Where are we at? I have all the sigils done. The sigil doors are done.

• 47:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:58Russ Frushtick?

  And I'm currently saving money for a blue skin of my tents.

• 48:03Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, that's such a good one. That's a real good one to have, man. Can I tell you? The blue tents really opened the game up for you. Everything before that is basically the two.

• 48:12Chris Plante?

  Oh, yeah. It's filler, basically. Yeah.

• 48:15Griffin McElroy?

  I do actually really like, I mean, I won't tell you what happens when you get those, but it's, it's, it is truly pretty transformative for like what the game has to offer.

• 48:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I'm pretty excited. We're a day like 60 something. And obviously, look, it couldn't last forever. As of right now, we are currently like kind of up again. I'm sure there's stuff we've missed, but like I would say 90% of the threads we have pulled and seen what the end of the thread is. So I am waiting for that shoe to drop a little bit, but we'll see.

• 48:46Chris Plante?

  If you ever want tender sort of.

• 48:48Russ Frushtick?

  I don't.

• 48:49Chris Plante?

  No, no, I'm not, not hints, but just like, I don't know.

• 48:52Russ Frushtick?

  I don't want those.

• 48:53Chris Plante?

  Not nudges, just confirmation of whether or not you're done, done.

• 48:56Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I, I know, I know. Cause you guys were struggling because you beat the game and had no idea that you beat it. Um, so I, I, we will get to that point. Before I quit, I will ask someone, uh, whether we are at that point.

• 49:10Chris Plante?

  I, this is a little tease for, uh, resties, which I hopefully will have my voice back for by the time we record that. But I have been playing Ace Combat 7 again, and I am going to teach Russ Frushtick.

• 49:26Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 49:26Chris Plante?

  The history of the Ace Combat series on the upcoming resties to prepare everyone. Because I understand that you might think, how will I be ready for thev? If I haven't played Ace Combats 1 through 7 and you, I mean, for a mere $5 can listen to the resties and you will find out, you know what game fucking rocks? Ace Combat 7. That game rocks. So unbelievably hard. Um, I really had forgotten just how much I enjoyed it and being sick sucks. Uh, but being sick and getting to play Ace Combat 7 again has been a total joy.

• 50:08Griffin McElroy?

  I don't, I don't think I spent a ton of time with Ace Combat 7. But yeah, but you have, you have good taste in games, Chris.

• 50:17Russ Frushtick?

  Sometimes.

• 50:17Chris Plante?

  I mean, you can, you can just wait for, well, actually you don't need to wait for eight. You could, oh, Griffin, are you ready for this? Ace Combat 7 runs on the Einthor.

• 50:28Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, shit.

• 50:29Chris Plante?

  I, I don't know how, but magic dreams are possible.

• 50:33Griffin McElroy?

  If I'm in a cockpit, dude, I, I do want it to surround me. I don't want to hold a tiny little Nintendo DS in my hands.

• 50:39Chris Plante?

  Well, you hold it like two inches from your face and you go, pew, pew.

• 50:43Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, that game is seven years old. Of course it runs on the handheld from, it's old.

• 50:47Griffin McElroy?

  It looks really, it looks good.

• 50:50Russ Frushtick?

  I'm just saying, Griffin, anything you want to shout out?

• 50:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I got a few. I, uh, they, they've just opened up the open beta for EverQuest Legends, the kind of like, uh, EQ for dads, uh, for, for people who preorder the game. And I spent some more time with it, but they're going to wipe all the progress from the beta on the 21st, I think, before the game goes live on the 28th for real. So I think I, I've kind of stopped because I don't want to, I played quite a bit of the closed beta and I don't want to burn myself out, but, uh, really, really, really, really fun. Really enjoying that, that game a lot and seeing the community kind of come, come to life. There's always been like hardcore EQ players, but it's been fairly insular. Now I feel like they've broken containment in a way and it's, uh, I don't know.

• 51:33Griffin McElroy?

  It's, it's, it is, it is really enjoyable and it's cool how many kind of quality of life things they've, they've done. Diablo four has a new season that I've spent a couple hours playing and I don't like it. So I'm gonna stop. Um, and there's been quite a bit of, I would say, pushback against this. They did some weird stuff like changing how like the unique items that, that drop work. And now, uh, mythic items, uh, drop differently and they're not dropping for a lot of people at all. And the seasonal activity is not very fun and it's just kind of a weak one. What I did play and finish that I really enjoyed was Delta Rune, the new chapter, chapter five of Delta Rune, which I don't know, man, how do you talk about the fifth chapter of a game that no one else on your podcast has played?

• 52:19Griffin McElroy?

  Do so sort of quickly and respectfully. No, it's great. It, I would say more than any other chapter, it is the one that kind of like deals with Undertale stuff.

• 52:29Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, interesting.

• 52:29Griffin McElroy?

  More like that's always been a kind of. Somewhat weird thing about this game that is an anagram of Undertale is Delta Rune.

• 52:38Russ Frushtick?

  I did forget that.

• 52:39Griffin McElroy?

  Is like, oh, it takes place in a different world, but a lot of the characters are the same. And there's references like nonstop. So what, what is going on? This, this is one that does that. I'm not going to talk really anything about the, the, the main hook of this, of this one chapter and kind of the characters that, that come in and are featured. I really enjoyed it. The writing continues to be hysterically funny and really warm hearted and just kind of nice. This chapter does some really fun mechanical things. Jump ahead if you, if you don't want to be spoiled on it. If you think you'll play it, but partway through the chapter, you unlock an item that allows you to switch perspective from the kind of top down, you know, RPG style that Undertale and Delta Rune to this point have had.

• 53:21Griffin McElroy?

  And then it goes into a side scrolling platform and it shifts it sort of like in real time, sort of Fez style. And then you have to like, you know, do, do a platforming segment. There's like boss fights that you do in platforming mode. It's very mechanically sort of ambitious. It is, it doesn't do a lot to kind of move the overarching plot forward. This is a game that is like full of mysteries that people are kind of trying to unpack and figure out. And I don't know that it gives folks a ton to chew on. Not, not as much as four, which I, I really, really liked, but man, I just, I just think it's, I just think it's exceptional. The music is so good and this, this game, as weird as its sort of release strategy is like,

• 54:03Griffin McElroy?

  it's so polished and so unlike anything else that anyone else is making. And I don't know when it will be finished, but.

• 54:12Russ Frushtick?

  They've said it's six chapters. Is that right?

• 54:15Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I thought it was seven.

• 54:17Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, okay.

• 54:17Griffin McElroy?

  I'm pretty sure it's seven. I don't think it makes sense to hold off on it just because these games, it took me like a few hours to get through this, this chapter. Maybe four or five or so. It's big. It's like the length of Undertale. And so like, I don't, I feel like almost waiting until it's all out and trying to play through all of it would actually be kind of rough. Because now it's shaping up to be, I mean, I can look at my Steam playtime for Delta Rune so far, but you know, five, five chapters in. And I'm actually curious to see what that, what that figure is. Yeah. 24.9 hours, five for five chapters. So like, would seven are all here? That's like, I don't know, a pretty big time commitment. I don't know.

• 54:58Griffin McElroy?

  I liked it a lot. I think it's fucking great. And if you've played Delta Rune and finished chapter four, got a new one for you. It's great.

• 55:06Russ Frushtick?

  Maybe during Christmas break. That seems like a good time to maybe try to catch up.

• 55:13Griffin McElroy?

  Game. I can see that.

• 55:14Chris Plante?

  Lucky you talking like me, acting like you're gonna play that game.

• 55:19Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I do feel like to Griffin's point, like I do feel some obligation, especially if it eventually ends to like

• 55:26Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, it will.

• 55:27Russ Frushtick?

  this thing that specifically Griffin has been in love with.

• 55:30Chris Plante?

  Oh, you'll definitely experience it when it ends, but you're not gonna, you're not gonna start it until it ends.

• 55:35Russ Frushtick?

  But I know if I, Griffin's right. I know if I wait until the end, it's gonna come out and I'll be like, oh, fuck, I gotta play chapter one first. And then I'm gonna have 30 hours.

• 55:44Griffin McElroy?

  A lot of, a lot of, of Delta Rune.

• 55:47Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's a lot before I get to the new stuff.

• 55:49Griffin McElroy?

  I am very hesitant about things like early access, right? Like, I'm not gonna touch Fields of Mystery again until it's out 1.0. I'm not gonna touch Enshrouded again until it's out 1.0. I have games that I'm like waited on baited, waiting on bated breath to be finished before I like really put my time into playing it. The episodes are so, are so, um, self-contained is not the exact right word, but they're

• 56:11Russ Frushtick?

  They're done.

• 56:12Griffin McElroy?

  complete packages. They feel like full games. Like, I spent a long time with this latest chapter, and now I am like really excited and really looking forward to the next one. And to me, that is a different sort of pattern, because that stuff is not gonna change, right? They're not gonna do much to adjust, I imagine, the first five chapters of the game. It's just, you know, there's more stuff coming.

• 56:32Russ Frushtick?

  Cool.

• 56:33Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, thank you so much for listening to our show, which is called The Besties. We sure do appreciate you. Chris, do you want me to go through and talk about all the games?

• 56:41Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 56:42Russ Frushtick?

  Actually, before we do that,

• 56:44Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, shit.

• 56:44Russ Frushtick?

  I do want to throw to the fact that we have a brand new Bracket Battles episode, which is live currently. We have a very special guest, Mary Kish, from the Fire Escape Podcast, joined us. It's excellent, and we have a clip here for it.

• 56:57Griffin McElroy?

  It's impossible to put yourself in the shoes of a person in 1985, playing this game and beating four levels of the game.

• 57:04Speaker 03

  You do it all the time. Pretend that you are a child playing the game.

• 57:09Griffin McElroy?

  Well, okay, that is fair. That's fair. That's a, that was before I was alive. So that's like a huge, a huge leap backwards. Very fun.

• 57:18Russ Frushtick?

  Super fun.

• 57:18Griffin McElroy?

  Go to Patreon.com slash the besties if you haven't already. That's where you can get access to those bracket episodes as well as episodes of the resties that Chris and Russ do, talking about games that we don't cover here on, on, on the besties. This week on the besties, we talked about rhythm heaven groove, touched a little bit on rhythm doctor and unbeatable. Russ detailed his time with the steam machine, talked about the message from deep space, talked about Metcha chameleon, which is pronounced Metcha chameleon, I think. We talked about Ace Combat 7. We talked about Everquest Legends, talked about Delta Rune, Chapter 5, talked about Blue Prince, once again, and, and will continue to until Russ has slain, slain that dragon. Russ and Alex, I do want to give, I'm sure that she is.

• 58:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, she is the bulk of the effort.

• 58:04Griffin McElroy?

  The driving force, the brain, the real brain power of your duo.

• 58:07Russ Frushtick?

  She's crushing it.

• 58:08Chris Plante?

  And now fresh, where can people see pictures of your foot? That could be traveling, touring.

• 58:13Russ Frushtick?

  I think you, we need another Patreon just for my foot is what I'm, honestly, I think that makes sense.

• 58:19Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Lonely, lonely fans? Is that anything?

• 58:24Griffin McElroy?

  There's gotta be something there.

• 58:26Russ Frushtick?

  Speaking of people paying money, I want to thank some backers that have recently supported us. We have Adam N, we have Steven T, we have Source4mini, and we have Kieran. Thank you for being backers of the Patreon at Patreon.com slash the besties. And thank you to everyone else who has supported our show. Please remember to check the newsletter about the live show tickets, which are going fast. You want to make sure you get a good seat. Now is the time to do so. And yeah, next week, we are going to be doing two games. We're going to be talking about the Assassin's Creed 4 remake, which I believe is called Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. And we're also talking about Dench Attack, where you-

• 59:08Griffin McElroy?

  Just the Judi Dench simulator. She, and she's pissed off with a thirst for blood-

• 59:14Russ Frushtick?

  That's right.

• 59:14Griffin McElroy?

  And vengeance.

• 59:16Russ Frushtick?

  And I think you are-

• 59:17Griffin McElroy?

  She's kicking ass.

• 59:18Russ Frushtick?

  She's also a train that grinds rails.

• 59:21Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, she is a train. She's a train that grinds rails. So yeah, join us again next week for the besties for that and more, because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?