Slay the Spire 2, a Big Hole, and a Resident Evil 9 Spoiler Chat!

Welcome to The Besties March grab bag. There are simply too many new games, so to cover as much as possible, we split up the workload. Griffin talks about the surprisingly complete Early Access release of Slay the Spire 2. Plante, of all people, explains how to get into Marathon. And Frushtick . . . well, he found a big hole. To avoid Resident Evil 9 spoilers, skip to ~20 minutes after the return from ad break.

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

• 0:00Russ Frushtick?

  I can't stand small British children.

• 0:04Griffin McElroy?

  Wow, man.

• 0:05Russ Frushtick?

  I'm sorry if I'm coming in hot.

• 0:07Griffin McElroy?

  It's just, it's the first thing people hear. When they turn on their device and they pick besties, the first thing that they expect to hear is like, Mario's got a new hat. And then, but then you come out here with.

• 0:20Russ Frushtick?

  I can't stand small British children, and here's why.

• 0:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:25Russ Frushtick?

  Who do they think they are? Who do they think they are?

• 0:31Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 0:31Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, I was sitting at breakfast. I've got a, I've got an anecdote all lined up to prove to you.

• 0:36Griffin McElroy?

  To prove that all British children are bad. You've got an anecdote lined up to prove that every British child is bad.

• 0:45Russ Frushtick?

  Yes. I was sitting at breakfast with my family.

• 0:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:49Russ Frushtick?

  British family comes and sits next to us. That's all fine. I have no problem with that.

• 0:53Griffin McElroy?

  Thank Christ.

• 0:54Russ Frushtick?

  We were looking out the window of breakfast and out the window was a hummingbird. Fantastic. A moment of pure nature, visiting us in the middle.

• 1:06Griffin McElroy?

  Was it zipping around or was it like still kind of like looking at you?

• 1:09Russ Frushtick?

  It was well, it was healthy.

• 1:11Griffin McElroy?

  Was the bird British?

• 1:12Russ Frushtick?

  I don't believe so. It was flying on the other side.

• 1:15Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 1:16Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, here's the thing. So we're all excited about it. The British family's excited about it also totally fine.

• 1:23Griffin McElroy?

  If this story does not end with the child going outside and eating the bird out of the air, you are not going to prove to me that this anecdote has anything to do with all British children being bad.

• 1:33Russ Frushtick?

  The mother turns to the daughter, who is probably like five or six and says, did you see the hummingbird outside? And the daughter, who again is like five or six, says, no, mommy, I just saw the flutter of a wing. And I was like, who the fuck?

• 1:56Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 1:56Russ Frushtick?

  You think you are?

• 1:58Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:59Russ Frushtick?

  Five year old child saying, I just saw the flutter of a wing like you're a fucking poet?

• 2:04Griffin McElroy?

  You got me, dude. That was exactly what I needed and you got me and you got me there. And the whole audience agrees, dude. That was exactly what I need. The flutter of a wing?

• 2:13Russ Frushtick?

  Jesus Christ.

• 2:14Griffin McElroy?

  Jesus Christ. Uh oh.

• 2:17Russ Frushtick?

  Sylvia Plath over here.

• 2:19Griffin McElroy?

  Wait, yes, let me open the door.

• 2:23Chris Plante?

  Sir, sir. I'm but a young man, may I have some video games?

• 2:31Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, so was the ee sound there the door? Or is that just kinda how you start your?

• 2:36Chris Plante?

  That's how his bones work. Eee, sir.

• 2:43Griffin McElroy?

  Video games?

• 2:48Griffin McElroy?

  Or never, or never. Never before has a boy wanted video games.

• 3:10Griffin McElroy?

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

• 3:12Chris Plante?

  My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week.

• 3:16Russ Frushtick?

  My name is Ross Froschek, I know the best game of the week.

• 3:20Griffin McElroy?

  And welcome to the besties, uh, game of the year club. And you, my friend, by listening, are a member. Justin is, uh, absent this week on a spring break voyage with his wife and children. Uh, but the three of us are not on voyages. We are landlocked and I don't think Justin's on a boat, so I don't know why I said that. Um, but we've been playing a bunch of games this week and what we like to call a grab bag episode. We call it that because you grab it, you upend it, and a bunch of stuff falls out and you never know exactly what that's gonna be. But Chris, let's go ahead and tell them exactly what that's gonna be, like what games we're gonna be talking about.

• 3:54Chris Plante?

  Uh, we're gonna be talking about so many games and one of them is Marathon. And I bet you can't guess which of the three of us is the one talking about that game.

• 4:04Griffin McElroy?

  Spoiler, it's not me. We've also got Slay the Spire 2 and a little game called Berry Berry Berry. Berry Berry Berry, which I'm very excited to hear. I'm Berry.

• 4:14Chris Plante?

  Oh.

• 4:15Griffin McElroy?

  Excited to hear more about. After this quick break.

• 4:19Russ Frushtick?

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• 5:00Russ Frushtick?

  This is the Alienware experience distilled into one iconic machine. Visit Alienware.com/15 today.

• 5:11Russ Frushtick?

  Where do we want to start? Because we have quite the range of games to talk about today. What are people most excited to hear? I think Slay the Spire is the talk of the town.

• 5:21Griffin McElroy?

  I think Slay the Spire 2 upfront, then Berry Berry Berry, and then we finish with the marathon kind of kicker.

• 5:28Russ Frushtick?

  That sounds good.

• 5:28Griffin McElroy?

  That would be a good rock. Okay, well, I've been playing Slay the Spire 2 a bunch. Did some traveling. We did a live show up in Amherst last week, week before last. And then I was in Boston like three days later to promote Stowaway, out now. 10 bucks, get it.

• 5:46Russ Frushtick?

  It's a great book.

• 5:47Griffin McElroy?

  And while I was traveling, thank you, Russ, while I was traveling, I played Slay the Spire 2 pretty much constantly and had myself a great time doing it. I will say this, because I weighed this, I weighed a lot whether or not to actually play it now, because it is in early access. And I really had a rough experience, I feel like, getting into Hades 2 full launch after, you know, we played the shit out of the early access.

• 6:12Russ Frushtick?

  We all remember the catastrophe that was last year in Hades 2.

• 6:16Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, and so like, I didn't want to do that to myself with Slay the Spire. But then I remembered that I have played the original Slay the Spire about 19 different times on 19 different platforms. And so maybe this game would be somewhat immune to that effect of me spoiling spoiling my dinner. And I still feel that way after playing, I don't know, maybe a dozen hours or so with it. And I think I've reached a point where I'm like, okay, I've seen what is going on here and it's fucking rad, but I am going to, instead of getting deep into the ascensions game, I'm gonna call it here, I finished a run with all of the classes and was like, okay, this seems like a pretty good, good, good place to stop. You guys are both familiar

• 7:00Griffin McElroy?

  with Slay the Spire, I imagine?

• 7:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yes, usually do do a very baseline for people that might be joining us.

• 7:06Griffin McElroy?

  I would say that Slay the Spire is the quintessential video game deck builder. You play as different classes, climbing up a series of acts, they're called, which is basically about a dozen or so encounters, and you choose some like branching paths. Some of the encounters will be fights against enemies, some will be random events, some will be shops, some will be boss enemies, and you get to choose like which direction you're going. So you can kind of tailor what the what the run's looking like based on what you need at the time. After every fight, you draft a card from a selection of three and you build a deck. Every turn, you draw some cards, you have a certain number of energy points, you can spend to play those cards, and you want to win fights and not

• 7:48Griffin McElroy?

  die and reach the end of the run. The whole time, you are also collecting relics, which imbue you with sort of upgrades that are not tied to your cards, like this type of card now does more damage, or now you start with one extra energy or what have you. And that formula was enough to sort of cement Slay the Spire's place in the in the in the cosmos. I don't know if it was the first game of its of its type, almost certainly not, right? But it is the one that I think everyone who has made these types of games afterwards have used as the, you know, the identikit.

• 8:24Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it dialed in the format. So it owes a lot to Magic the Gathering and a few other games, but in terms of video game representations of that stuff, yeah, dialed in the form.

• 8:33Griffin McElroy?

  Yes. There were different classes in that game and each one sort of had like different types of strategies that it could employ. And I believe a couple of those classes were added sort of like after the fact. So that's Slayer's Spire 1, one of my favorite games ever, probably one of the games I've spent the most time playing across my whole history of playing games. It's really, really fantastic.

• 8:56Chris Plante?

  Before we go into two, did you feel like, oh, this game is great, but we need a sequel?

• 9:05Griffin McElroy?

  It felt like it was going to happen, right? Like, there is a, there's an argument to be made that like you could just keep adding stuff to Slayer's Spire 1. But there are some surprisingly subtle kind of systemic changes in Slayer's Spire 2 that I think would be very difficult to sort of retrofit on to Slayer's Spire 1.

• 9:25Griffin McElroy?

  As for like whether it could use a sequel, I don't know, man, like so many different places have made this exact type of game so many times. And a lot of them absolutely rip ass in a good way. And I kind of like, I don't know, I was stoked when they announced that.

• 9:40Russ Frushtick?

  I also like, I know Chris doesn't really care, but I also like when hardworking game developers are able to sustain their business.

• 9:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, Chris famously hates when game developers are able to sustain their business.

• 9:53Chris Plante?

  I'm not asking that. I'm asking like, there are a lot of games right now where they just keep adding on to it and then they keep making money by adding on to it. And I'm, from what I understand as an outsider who is not like, this is not my number one genre. Part of what makes it a sequel is, is the multiplayer? Is that right?

• 10:10Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I don't know. If, I think that's, oh man, I don't know. I didn't fuck with that at all. Yeah, I did not do that at all. So that'll be a fun, that'll be a fun, I played it on airplanes almost exclusively. So I don't even know how that would have worked.

• 10:23Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I am most curious specifically about the systemic stuff because, you know, unlike a Fortnite or something where everything gets added on. But realistically, the stuff that's being added are like cosmetics and things like that. You can't. Constantly add gameplay altering cards without there being some sort of major long-term impact. Whether that's a skill curve growth or things like that.

• 10:46Griffin McElroy?

  Power creep. Like, yeah, there's a lot of different.

• 10:47Russ Frushtick?

  That ends up kind of killing these games, so I'm fine starting scratch.

• 10:50Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I love the fact that Slay this buyer one is its own, like, it's gold, right? It's like cemented in, locked in. It is, it is the game that it is and there's not going to be, it's not going to become like Hearthstone, which is not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination. But like, I can't play Hearthstone. If I tried to play Hearthstone now. Every time I see people talking about the new Hearthstone expansion, they put up a card and it's like, "Oh, well, this card has fitness nine." It's like, "I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, man. I don't know what that means." Slay this buyer two, again, surprisingly, doesn't change so much of the fundamentals. You are still drafting a deck, you are still going through these branching pathways and drafting cards after fights.

• 11:35Griffin McElroy?

  Like, it is in so many ways, like, a direct sort of mechanical successor to Slay this buyer one. The things that it does differently, I think, would be maybe hard to pinpoint if you did not play a lot of the original. It is things like adding way more variety to the random events, right? These represent maybe half of the things that you're going to be doing as you're moving through the map. And I feel like I saw all of them in the original Slay this, but like, there's a ton of them. But they would all boil down to like, you know, some sort of devil's bargain, right? Like, you're gonna lose half your HP, but you're gonna get these cards that heal you.

• 12:14Griffin McElroy?

  Or you take damage, you might get into a fight and here's a low percent chance to get a relic. Like, stuff like that, that would either just like, it was like a chance card in Monopoly. It's either gonna like, help you out a decent amount, or it's gonna just like, totally fuck you over. Or sometimes it's just a treasure chest or a surprise fight or whatever, right? In this game, in Slay this buyer two, I don't know that I've seen the same random event twice in all the time that I've been playing it. And they are truly, truly wild in their variety and the impact.

• 12:46Griffin McElroy?

  That they can have on your run. You are making some pretty major decisions. While you are going through and it is stuff that can really make or break your build or like force you to kind of like change your strategy. There's one event where you're going across a rickety bridge. This I lied. This is the only one I've seen twice. You're going across a rickety bridge and you your two options to go across are lose this card that we pick out for you. Or you're going to take like five damage and we'll pick another random card for you and then you can decide if that's the one that you want. So like, that's a really good example of a very smart event, right? Because a big part of these types of games is thinning out your deck. Maybe you do want to like lose that card and that's awesome, but maybe that's like a card that is sort of important to your build.

• 13:31Griffin McElroy?

  So you take a little bit of damage. Now all of a sudden you're removing a different card that is chosen at random. But you still get to confirm it before it goes, right? That is the kind of stuff that is like so great. Certain things that are really important strategically like deck management. You get so many more opportunities to do that across these different events and you know, the shops and everything. And so like it does, I've not had the experience so much that I had in the original slay aspire where like I would be halfway through act one. And I'd be like, this isn't fucking coming together. Like I'm not getting, I'm not getting the relics I need. I've taken way too much damage. I'm not getting the right cards. I'm just going to scrap this.

• 14:06Russ Frushtick?

  You're trying to get a build going and it never comes off the ground, basically.

• 14:09Griffin McElroy?

  Right, exactly. I, I, that has not been happening as much in this one. Another thing that's different sort of structurally is you start each run off by talking to the big whale. He's back. We love big whale. And he gives you like a few boons that you can choose from, but then at the start of each additional act, you are talking to another major NPC who gives you a different choice of boons. And they are like themed to like what that guy does. Like there's one who is, all of his stuff is like wax based. And so there's a relic that's like, uh, this will last only for this act, but you'll have an extra energy the whole time. Or you will get five relics randomly, but they are made of wax and one will melt after every other combat encounter, right? Some of it, one of them is like all about wealth and opulence.

• 14:53Griffin McElroy?

  And it's like the next vendor that you go to, you are going to automatically buy everything that they have at their stock for free. And I picked that one. I was like, fuck yeah, baby. Let's get, and it wrecked my deck. Ruined my deck because I picked up all these cards that I definitely did not want.

• 15:07Russ Frushtick?

  Very funny.

• 15:08Griffin McElroy?

  It's so, there's so much more variety in that stuff. And that is, to me, like, the big, kind of, the selling point for it. There's a new method for unlocking stuff. In the original, say, the Spire, you are playing as the different classes, leveling up those classes individually, and then unlocking cards and relics sort of related to that class. Now, there is a thing called the Timeline, which reminds me of, like, more recent Mortal Kombat-style, like, purchase, sort of, walls. You're not spending currency. Each little block on the Timeline, you unlock by finishing acts as the different classes, or getting through a run. But then there's, like, other ones that are more, kind of, like, context-sensitive, like, beat 15 elites as this class, or whatever.

• 15:53Griffin McElroy?

  And those are gonna unlock, like, new NPCs that you meet at the beginning of the acts. They unlock new cards, new relics, new, like, areas for you to go down. As far as an early access game, this sounds massive. Yeah, it is huge. The early access stuff actually shows up a lot in the Timeline, because each, like, thing you unlock has a piece of key art. And I would say about 75% of the key art in it is just, like, straight-up, five-year-old fucking doodles. Genuinely, like, played, I think, a little bit for laughs. Yeah. And I've hit a couple of things on the Timeline, like, unlocks that are, like, this is, this straight-up isn't here yet. But the things that are there are amazing. The other big thing is there are two new classes.

• 16:35Griffin McElroy?

  There's three returning classes, the Ironclad, the Silent, and the Defect, I believe. That's the one with, like, orbs and stuff. Orbs, yeah. Then there is the Regent. The Regent is one of the new classes, who is all about casting spells with, like, a secondary energy pool that you can, kind of, manage, and also summoning a giant floating sword that you can, kind of, empower as you go through the fight, which is very cool. My favorite is the Necro-Binder, which is, probably, I think, going to be everyone's favorite class, which is like a Necromancer-style class that can inflict doom on an enemy, which is like, it covers up their health bar, and if their health reaches that point, they die instantly. Yeah, cool. So instead of having to deal a bunch of damage, you can just make their, like, death point lower.

• 17:18Griffin McElroy?

  He also gets a skeleton that that she she summons a little skeletal hand that you can like buff up and the skeletal hand takes damage before you do. And it can also attack for its damage value. So you want to like fucking boost boost it up, get it super strong. So it can be both a shield and like an insane weapon for like, it's so satisfying. It's so, so great.

• 17:37Chris Plante?

  Okay, so here's my, here's my problem. Here's my, my, my big problem with everything I'm saying. It sounds real good and I've done a good job of not playing these games. Again, it's not even that I don't like them. I know that they will be all consuming. I know that when I sink myself into something like this, it will take over my very being.

• 17:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 17:59Chris Plante?

  But at the same time, I'm like, maybe, maybe it's time to start, you know, like, maybe it's time to just let go.

• 18:05Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, yeah, man, I think so. Maybe wait for full release. I don't know when that's gonna happen, but like, it's a, it's a, it's a fantastic game and like it, it is. I don't know. There is enough there for me to feel pretty confident. Like this is going to be just as big as the original Slay the Spire and I, I would recommend it. I, I think, you know, even if you don't want to wait. Chris, I think it would be a, a fine jumping on point. I don't know that there's like a ton of. A, a ton of stuff that is going to like really fundamentally change it still yet to come. Um, but it's, it's fucking solid, guys.

• 18:41Russ Frushtick?

  I, I, it should be noted, I also looked up while you were focused on your own experience, what people might experience. In co-op and it sounds like every it. So it's up to four players in co-op and every player has their own deck. And you can like buff other players. The complexity of that sounds.

• 19:00Griffin McElroy?

  I can't imagine.

• 19:01Russ Frushtick?

  Through the roof crazy.

• 19:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I mean, there's a whole element of this game that I don't know yet gang, cause I, I, I just kind of, it was my airplane friend, but.

• 19:09Russ Frushtick?

  No, we're, I think we're going to come back to it certainly at 1.0.

• 19:12Griffin McElroy?

  Oh my God. I mean, of course we are like, we're going to be talking about this game for a very, very, very long time, but I, first impressions are fucking through the roof.

• 19:21Russ Frushtick?

  That's very exciting.

• 19:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. How about Berry Berry Berry?

• 19:25Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so we have a bit of a homonym issue with the name of this game. So I'll do my best.

• 19:31Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, this game- I saw you, I heard you try to sidestep that in the way that you told us this morning, the game you were going to be speaking of.

• 19:38Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Griffin McElroy?

  You hit the, you hit "brrr, brrr."

• 19:41Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 19:42Griffin McElroy?

  You sound like an old southern lawyer.

• 19:44Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, do declare, uh, this game is called Berry Berry Berry. And so the first berry is like the fruit and the second berry is like you're digging a hole and putting something in it. And then the third berry is the fruit again. That's the title.

• 19:59Griffin McElroy?

  It's a good title.

• 20:00Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, it's a good title. Berry Berry Berry is an incremental game. It is in first person. Uh, and your primary goal is to put blueberries in a hole. Uh, this takes place in a small, very colorful, somewhat off-putting environment. Uh, like a children's like TV show set.

• 20:20Griffin McElroy?

  It looked like a Squid Game setting.

• 20:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, but it's clear that there's like a dystopian bit of a saw thing going on. I have not seen any clear violence in it, but uh, it does have that undertone. Like in between days, like the day runs out and you start over again. There's like a VHS tape overlay thing that just makes the whole thing feel very creepy. But I was mostly just enjoying the berry part of it, which is this flower is spewing out these blueberries and you pick them up and you put them in the hole. And like any good incremental game, uh, obviously new elements get added. Uh, pretty soon you're able to buy little berry friends that will scramble around the environment randomly,

• 21:03Russ Frushtick?

  spewing out berries on their own and you can pick those up and drop them in the hole. Obviously it keeps going from there. You eventually-

• 21:11Griffin McElroy?

  Where's the hole go to? Who's at the, who's benefiting from this whole process in the hole? Is it the devil?

• 21:17Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, if you had a hole in there and the hole wanted berries, would you not put berries in the hole?

• 21:23Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, but does it talk to you, the hole? Is it like, "more berries."

• 21:26Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 21:26Griffin McElroy?

  Cause that's the devil dude and I'm not gonna get tricked again.

• 21:29Russ Frushtick?

  The hole does spew out money when you give it berries. So that seems like a good win-win situation. It's kind of a mutual response thing. You eventually get a vacuum, increasing the berry speed as well. You eventually get a methodology for upgrading your berry friends. You can have them start spewing out strawberries, or eventually kiwis, which I don't even think is a berry. Maybe it's a berry. It's got seeds in it. And so you're upgrading that way. And obviously, those count as more money. Where the game starts getting weird is you eventually, within the first half hour, unlock a sledgehammer. And now, now Griffin, I'm gonna ask you. Yeah.

• 22:11Russ Frushtick?

  If you're given a sledgehammer in this environment, what would you do with the sledgehammer? Jump in the hole, kill the devil. Okay. Set everyone free from the burden of sin. That does seem like the right thing to do. Yeah, I solved it. Well, if you jump in the hole, all that happens is you lose the money that you had on that day, and then you start the next day. So that's not an option. So you've still got this sledgehammer. Okay, I squish. I guess I gotta squish the berries. That's terrible, Griffin. How could you do that? What you should be doing is knocking down the very small set that surrounds you to reveal an even larger set that has all sorts of furniture and little garden gnomes scattered around it. I guess that makes sense. And from there, the game changes pretty dramatically, because you now have

• 22:53Russ Frushtick?

  control of where the hole is at any given time. You can move the hole around the map, and suck in elements of the map, like different furniture pieces, which in turn will grant you stars, which in turn will allow you to upgrade your berries faster, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it's sort of a hole.io kind of situation at that point? Right, but it is, I guess, first person. Was hole.io in first person? I don't know, man. It's like a mobile game. Yeah, probably not. I don't think they've figured out first person in mobile games.

• 23:28Russ Frushtick?

  So from there. How are they gonna get another stick on there? You can't. There's a very interesting strategy that goes on where you're trying to move the hole as much as you can. It moves faster if you're feeding it berries. But then, the bigger the map gets, the more scattered your berry friends are. So you have to sort of wrangle that component to it. Eventually, you get a pop gun to shoot the stars, to upgrade the berries, et cetera. You know, kind of a classic incremental thing. But you're also finding these cassette tapes that reveal that there's a narrative going on. The vibes I was getting was like. What's that?

• 24:03Griffin McElroy?

  It seems slime ranchery.

• 24:05Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it feels very slime ranchery. That's true. I got vibes for slime ranchery. I mean, narratively speaking, the vibes I was getting was like, what is it, the back rooms? Kind of felt like that.

• 24:15Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 24:15Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, okay. Where there's like an undercurrent. Yeah. Like the A24 movie? That's not even out yet. How the fuck do you know? From the zeitgeist.

• 24:26Russ Frushtick?

  I don't know how it ends. I haven't beaten it yet. I'm several hours in. I find it very compelling and probably disturbing, unhealthy way. But it's very satisfying to shoot berries down a hole and upgrade the berries. And I like the idea that you get into this weird situation where like the hole isn't quite big enough to fit like the parasol that you want to suck in the hole to get more stars to upgrade the berries. So you have to come up with like fun physics-based ways to like force things down the hole.

• 24:57Griffin McElroy?

  Okay. That's cool. I'm downloading this. It's been a while since I've had a, I don't know, an incremental game absolutely kind of wrecked my shit.

• 25:06Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I will say early on, like in the first 10 minutes, it's kind of miserable to play in a controller just because you were individually picking up the berries. But very quickly, like any incremental game, it gets much easier because you get a vacuum and.

• 25:18Chris Plante?

  Seems like it's not too long. I'm looking at the Steam reviews. Looks like everybody has played for about like between seven to nine hours.

• 25:26Russ Frushtick?

  That's a fucking dream. That's a win. I would say for an incremental game, that's a good, that's a pretty good chunk of time.

• 25:31Chris Plante?

  Yeah, it's good. Sometimes you get into an incremental game. It's like, oh my gosh, 40 hours.

• 25:36Griffin McElroy?

  Well, I mean, there's, there's so, especially on iOS, like games as service incremental games and those, those, those just, they don't do it for me.

• 25:44Russ Frushtick?

  I will say, how I found this game was I frequently, when we're looking for games to play, will go on, I think it's Steam, the Steam database website and just sort by reviews of games that came out recently. And this is.

• 25:57Griffin McElroy?

  People are fucking nuts for this.

• 25:58Russ Frushtick?

  Legit the top reviewed game of 2026 right now on Steam.

• 26:01Griffin McElroy?

  Amazing.

• 26:02Russ Frushtick?

  And I was like, I guess I'll try it. It's pretty fucking fun. And what is it? Eight bucks? It's like, really reasonable. So if you're looking for something that is like a time limited, you know, incremental game, it also reminded me of Dig the Hole, that one.

• 26:17Griffin McElroy?

  You have to.

• 26:18Russ Frushtick?

  You have to dig the hole. Indeed, you do.

• 26:20Griffin McElroy?

  Was that the name of the game? A game about digging a hole?

• 26:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 26:22Griffin McElroy?

  I was thinking of you have to build a boat.

• 26:24Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, different.

• 26:25Chris Plante?

  Understandably, you got this mixed up.

• 26:27Russ Frushtick?

  There is a match three element in this game that I haven't quite figured it out, but I'm sure people have.

• 26:33Griffin McElroy?

  That is such a huge endorsement for me to like get excited about this. Yeah, it does, uh.

• 26:38Russ Frushtick?

  I'm curious.

• 26:39Griffin McElroy?

  There's a slot machine. I don't know, man. There's RPG. I don't really understand.

• 26:43Russ Frushtick?

  I don't get into these usually. I like the fact that everything you're doing is in game. You don't have the thing where it's like you check back in three hours and your thing will have exploded. Like, it's all stuff that you're actually actually doing. So, uh, yeah, I've been enjoying it. It's a good, good afternoon killer.

• 26:57Griffin McElroy?

  I want to hear about Marathon, please. Please give me Marathon now.

• 27:00Chris Plante?

  I want to tell you all about Marathon. How did this happen though? Before we do that, because you two are my Destiny boys. And yet I'm the one here talking about Marathon before we do like a full big episode of it next week. How, what went wrong?

• 27:13Russ Frushtick?

  I, I, yeah, uh, well, a couple of things.

• 27:17Russ Frushtick?

  Even before we jump into why I haven't personally played this game yet, which is a valid question. I do want to clarify the record a little bit. I think I misspoke previously when I said that there was an AI-generated art controversy about this game.

• 27:29Griffin McElroy?

  No.

• 27:29Russ Frushtick?

  There was, it was a plagiarism.

• 27:31Griffin McElroy?

  Plagiarism.

• 27:32Russ Frushtick?

  Issue, and apparently they did.

• 27:34Griffin McElroy?

  Credit the plagiarized artist in question.

• 27:37Russ Frushtick?

  Right, and paid them money. And the artist is happy now. So we did get off with that, huh? Okay, why haven't I played the game? Extraction games scare me.

• 27:46Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 27:46Russ Frushtick?

  Simple.

• 27:47Griffin McElroy?

  Like, I don't want to waste my time.

• 27:49Russ Frushtick?

  Well, and they stress me out. Like, that's.

• 27:51Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, they stress me out because there's a really good possibility of me wasting.

• 27:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yes, that's true.

• 27:55Griffin McElroy?

  I even, I have played some Arc Raiders. I don't know that we've ever talked about it on the show. And it's like, cool. And it's like, really, really, really a super solid game. And I've had some like really fun encounters in there. And I've also had times where I've played for 20 minutes and then lost everything.

• 28:07Russ Frushtick?

  No, no.

• 28:08Griffin McElroy?

  And it's like, I, I simply, uh, I know people bristle when I talk about not having a lot of gaming time on our gaming podcast, but like, my, between the work and the, and the kids and the, the self-care and rest and everything, like, I, I don't, I just don't feel great about playing a game for like a, a, a chunk of time that I have to sit down and do. And then, you know, not having any progress.

• 28:34Russ Frushtick?

  And even if it was like fun, like spare time that I want, like, I want it, I want that spare time to also be used adequately.

• 28:41Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 28:41Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 28:41Chris Plante?

  So I have.

• 28:42Griffin McElroy?

  Faulty reasoning, I admit, but also it's just kind of.

• 28:45Chris Plante?

  No, it's totally reasonable. There's a huge difference between picking out a game on like a handheld and a game like this where it's like you need to know that you are sitting down for at least 20 to 30 minutes. You're getting.

• 28:57Griffin McElroy?

  That's never like the only games I'm really playing these days are on Switch two or my Rogue Ally X. Like I can't sit down and say, well, I'm gonna do this for an hour. It's that that's not reasonable.

• 29:09Chris Plante?

  So here's what we're gonna do. I'm I'm gonna talk briefly about the game. We're gonna do a whole episode on it next week. We're all gonna squat up. It's gonna be great. But before we all do that, I'm gonna give you just like a reframing of your expectations that I think will help and put you in the best place going into this game.

• 29:26Griffin McElroy?

  Can I tell you what my expectations are?

• 29:28Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Griffin McElroy?

  It it gonna it's gonna feel great. It's gonna feel like Destiny and it is also going to be a stressful extraction shooter experience.

• 29:36Chris Plante?

  No, no, no, no. That's what I'm gonna fix. That's what I'm gonna fix.

• 29:39Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, okay, okay.

• 29:40Chris Plante?

  Those are your expectations.

• 29:41Griffin McElroy?

  It's gonna feel terrible.

• 29:42Chris Plante?

  We gotta reframe.

• 29:43Griffin McElroy?

  It's gonna feel so shitty. It's like.

• 29:45Chris Plante?

  You are gonna feel so good for two reasons. One, you've already played Battle Royales, right? You're already used to the idea of playing a game where you don't keep any of the things that you get during it. And then also you lose more often than you win. So you already are doing great in that it's way, way friendlier than a Battle Royale, in my opinion, because everybody in theory could extract. That is totally possible in these games. The other thing that you can help reframe yourself with is there are kind of rogue light um growth, I guess, like XP goals throughout the entire game.

• 30:24Chris Plante?

  So you are gonna go in from the beginning and it's gonna say, hey, your goal is to go to uh this one area, columns, you need to hack some terminal and then you need to like kill five robot enemies. And if you do that and you don't extract, you still complete that goal. So you've you've made progress and you're getting various unlocks. And then the biggest thing is if you are thinking of it as I am going into this game to get, I'm like going into a match to get great items and great guns and all that. Who gives a shit? Because you're just gonna play another round and then lose it all. Or you're gonna just keep it in your bank and never touch it. So it's-

• 31:09Griffin McElroy?

  So you're saying this game has instilled in you a sort of zen-like acceptance approach?

• 31:16Chris Plante?

  Well, it's basically, it's no different than deciding to play a battle royale. I am playing this game because I want to hang out with some friends and then-

• 31:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 31:25Chris Plante?

  Also fill the XP bars that give me new things to play with.

• 31:29Griffin McElroy?

  So tell me about that stuff. I want to hear about, are there classes? What is the, what is the stuff that-

• 31:33Chris Plante?

  Let me tell you about, let me tell you about my, my sweet, sweet thief. So I play as a thief. And there are, I think, like four or five classes, plus a character called Rook, which we'll talk about probably more next week. Again, I don't want to ruin all of it, but I'm gonna sell you on thief. That way you can go in and give this a try. Thief has the ability to grappling hook basically any point in the world. It doesn't have to actually touch anything. Just zips them into the air Titanfall style, right? Um, and that's a recharge, but it's so useful because being able to get elevation and get onto the top of like a really tall building is huge for clearing out whatever your like XP goals and also just avoiding people.

• 32:13Chris Plante?

  Thief also has the ability to turn on a visor that shows you the like top rarity color of anything around you. So if you went, walk in a room, there's like 20 boxes. You flip that visor, you see a purple pop up and you're like, god damn, that's the only one I need to go to. Uh, you can do it from outside buildings, so you don't even have to go into things. Thief also has a drone that you can zip out into the world and basically scout out if there are any humans that you need to worry about. You need SC, the robots that you need to worry about. And you can use that drone to steal shit from other human players and then just bring it back to you. So you didn't have to like go engage with them.

• 32:58Russ Frushtick?

  That sounds nice, but like, but then people are using the drone against me to steal my stuff.

• 33:03Griffin McElroy?

  That feels bad.

• 33:03Chris Plante?

  Very rarely, like that's because there are other classes that people are more incentivized to use. You might want to be an assassin where you can drop smoke grenades and go invisible. And if you want to play that class, great, like you don't even need to get in fights. You can just go do your run, exfil and you're gravy, man.

• 33:22Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, but now people are using invisibility and smoke on me.

• 33:26Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, dude, I think maybe there's a fundamental nature of this format you're struggling with.

• 33:32Chris Plante?

  The problem is you keep thinking that you're gonna come across humans and that's not a guarantee. I, I expo, I'm not good at these games. You've played shooters with me. I expo way more often than I don't. Like it's, I, I am not running into trouble.

• 33:49Griffin McElroy?

  It is the interesting thing about the, this type of game in that, yeah, I think it varies from title to title based on how chill the player base of that game is where like in Arc Raiders, I had very few like really bad experiences with, with other players. Almost always they were cool and willing to kind of like help. And maybe that was just because I was so obviously new to the, to the game. Uh, but they were more willing to help than they were, you know, let's fucking get this guy.

• 34:17Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 34:18Chris Plante?

  Yeah. And, and everybody has different incentives and you're kind of aware of it while you're playing. Like you might be playing for a faction that's like full of chaos. And they're like, hey, you need to go out and you need to like execute eight human players in a certain way. And you also might be in a class where it's like, you just need to go out and break 10 windows and kill three robots. And, and don't worry about any humans.

• 34:41Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 34:42Chris Plante?

  And because you know that the people you're meeting are also on that same page, there's kind of like a, I get it, man. And I, you're, you're in the middle of that run, totally. You're gonna have to, you're gonna have to knife me.

• 34:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Cause if you end up like. Yeah, I guess encountering people like is your general back and forth like kind of a wave nod? Let's go in our separate ways thing?

• 35:05Chris Plante?

  No, it's definitely shoot them and don't even give them a chance to talk to me. So that's the other thing about this game is the time to kill is very short. So if you are bad at competitive shooters, but you're good at strategy and you can get the jump on people. It's not like Halo where it's like, I got the jump on you and you still somehow took me down. I like a short time.

• 35:30Griffin McElroy?

  You seven times with the battle rifle to take you. How have you played enough Destiny and Destiny two to like be able to compare it game feel? Cause I stand by those are my favorite feeling shooters ever.

• 35:43Chris Plante?

  The the actual moment to moment shooting is just so delicious, so much like Destiny. It has the sound as always is incredible and it's everything is like 3D printed. So it has that weird like plasticky clap sound when you fire the guns, just so good. Dude, yeah, I mean, again, I want you all to play.

• 36:06Griffin McElroy?

  This all sounds very fun. I've been willing to.

• 36:09Chris Plante?

  And the story is awesome. The story is like full on Dune shit. You're working for companies like Cyber Acme, which goes by Cyac, which is just the funniest sci fi shit. You're working for a new Caloric, which is just basically McDonald's and Monsanto merged. Good video games.

• 36:29Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, there is a caveat, Griffin. You should know this caveat going in. It will not run on a Steam Deck.

• 36:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, I figure. I mean.

• 36:38Russ Frushtick?

  Or Linux specifically, like it won't run on Linux because the kernel. So if you're running Linux on any handheld.

• 36:42Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, that is also true of Destiny and.

• 36:44Russ Frushtick?

  Yes, it's a Destiny.

• 36:46Griffin McElroy?

  No, I mean, this feels very much like a if I'm playing a multiplayer shooter like this, I'm probably gonna want to do it. You know, I'll have to stay up past my bedtime.

• 36:54Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah. But. Yeah, I am enticed like, look, I was very skeptical going into this because Chris Plant, like realistically, it you're right. Like, as you were saying at the beginning of the show, like Griffin and I would be the one trying to convince Plant that he wanted to play this. Yeah. So it is interesting having it flipped back on us. So I am open.

• 37:14Chris Plante?

  I will be your tour guide of Tau Ceti IV. Just let's perfect a time and a place and I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna walk you around. Okay. All right, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to be talking about Resident Evil Requiem, getting into spoilers. We will make sure to edit in a sort of time code you can jump to in order to avoid those spoilers if you're not interested, but that's the plan. We'll be right back. I used to recommend a VPN to like anybody who is traveling because you'll be, I don't know, in Paris or Tokyo. Look at you, big shot, and you'll want to watch your shows and you won't be able to. You'll need a VPN. But now I recommend a VPN for everybody, whether it is your security

• 37:58Chris Plante?

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• 38:39Chris Plante?

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• 39:16Russ Frushtick?

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• 40:01Russ Frushtick?

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• 40:08Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, and so if we're about to do our talk, if you want to skip ahead, go right ahead. Have you guys both finished? I know Russ finished the game. Chris, how close did you? How close did you get?

• 40:19Chris Plante?

  I'm just so relieved that Leon did not shoot any of Emily's vital organs, you know?

• 40:26Russ Frushtick?

  That sounds like he made it to the end there.

• 40:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah.

• 40:29Russ Frushtick?

  Good work, Chris Plant. I'm very proud of you. I want to take a step back. For those that didn't listen to the first Resident Evil Requiem episode, which came out a couple of weeks ago, at that point, Griffin had been the only one that finished it. I was probably about a little over halfway through, and I think Plant was pretty close to where I was at that time.

• 40:50Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 40:51Russ Frushtick?

  And I will say from my-

• 40:54Griffin McElroy?

  Are you changing your opinion based on having completed the second?

• 40:58Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I will say from my side, Griffin, I was a little bit tough on Griffin because he was really pretty down on the latter half of the game, and I would now concur with this assessment. Of the latter half of the game.

• 41:17Chris Plante?

  Oh, that's good.

• 41:17Russ Frushtick?

  Here, here's, here's, here's, and again, we're gonna go right into spoilers here. The first half of the game is, in my opinion, a 10 out of 10 Resident Evil experience. One of the best Resident Evil experiences I I've had. That, when I say first half of the game, I made everything through the like helicopter action sequence with a fucking Leon kicking people in a church. All that shit, fucking rules.

• 41:39Chris Plante?

  Rules.

• 41:39Griffin McElroy?

  The blood and the bloody lack.

• 41:41Chris Plante?

  City.

• 41:42Russ Frushtick?

  Right.

• 41:42Griffin McElroy?

  That is where, that is where the wheels start to fall off.

• 41:45Russ Frushtick?

  Well, yeah, so I would say, okay, so we had this 10 out of 10 experience, loved it. Leon now arrives in Raccoon City, the outskirts of Raccoon City. And the game turns into something a little bit different. The game turns into an action game where you're earning points to kill zombies and you use those points to upgrade weapons. And to be honest, I liked this part. I thought it was fine. I enjoyed myself playing it. It's like fun gameplay combat. I like upgrading guns, things like that. But I did not think it was as exceptional. I'd give it in like a seven out of 10 if the first.

• 42:18Griffin McElroy?

  I think it overstays its welcome in a major fucking way.

• 42:21Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 42:21Griffin McElroy?

  I think that you, I think that it is, it very intricately sort of designed the sort of routes that you're going to be going through. And there's like a whole chain of like, you need the gasoline to power the generators to get the crank, to get the thing, to get, and so you're constantly looping back around, which is like, cool, to an extent. Around the fifth or sixth go around, I was like, I, I am so ready for the next part. I have been killing the same fucking guys.

• 42:50Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, there's like two enemies in that area. And it's also a drag, because from an art design standpoint, that area is like, looks straight out of Army of Two. It's like all grays and browns.

• 43:00Griffin McElroy?

  Primo brown Xbox 360 shit.

• 43:03Russ Frushtick?

  Just a weird choice. I know Plant, you, you like that area quite a bit.

• 43:08Chris Plante?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, I get, I get what you're saying. I don't think it's so different than the Resident Evil formula in general of go on Easter egg hunt and go back and forth and back and forth. You do that earlier. I think two things are different. Like you said, one aesthetically, because it is this big open space, it doesn't have that, oh, yeah, I'm walking back and forth, but it's in this really. cramped and like very visually dense building, which is cool and exciting. And I've liked learn the space. It's, I'm just going through these big warehouse areas. But I think what it does well is each scrimmage and fight that you have is its own idea.

• 43:52Chris Plante?

  So, oh, hey, we're going to go through the mortar sequence where these giant mortars are being fired at you. And eventually you get to turn the like mortar shelling on the zombies or the sideways skys glass, skyscraper sequence where you're shooting out glass from underneath.

• 44:09Griffin McElroy?

  A shit rules. That is a good one.

• 44:10Chris Plante?

  Yeah, that was great. Like all, I, I think each of those on their own is really interesting. The problem is for me, not that whole sequence. I think that sequence is largely good. It's maybe like 30 minutes too long. You do all of that to then get on a motorcycle and leave. And then you go and do another action sequence that's weaker than that.

• 44:33Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, now, hold on, hold on one second. I need to make sure I need to clarify that you're not saying that the motorcycle fight is a weak action sequence.

• 44:40Chris Plante?

  No. Okay. So here's.

• 44:41Griffin McElroy?

  Cause it's fucking the highlight of the game for me. I can't, I can't.

• 44:45Chris Plante?

  I, I'm definitely not saying that. I think that there is a complete Resident Evil game. If you actually just keep this part, because this is what Resident Evil games do. They start out really small. They get big. People get grumpy about it, but I enjoy like the silliness of it. I still think it's really fun. I think the action is really strong. And such is the build of a Resident Evil game. I really don't have much beef with this second half. I think it is made worse because there is a third sequence that is utterly bizarre.

• 45:22Griffin McElroy?

  Is that the lab, the lab sequence?

• 45:25Chris Plante?

  That is, yes, the.

• 45:26Griffin McElroy?

  Where are you starting that third sequence, that third act, if you will? Where do you start?

• 45:29Chris Plante?

  Yes. Before we get into that, like, is there any other stuff like?

• 45:33Griffin McElroy?

  I, I mean, the big issue for me is like you spend the first half of the game changing perspectives between Grace and Leon every hour. And then this. Marks the point where Grace is not going to show up again. For a very fucking long time. And I, it's just so bizarre to me. It's, I cannot think of a, of a justification for, for that.

• 45:54Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I would be fine with it if, if Leon was given more interesting things to do, but after the motorcycle fight, like you get through that period, which is a fun little.

• 46:02Griffin McElroy?

  You go to the Raccoon City Police Station. That part's cool.

• 46:04Russ Frushtick?

  Well, I actually don't think that part, I think it's bad.

• 46:07Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, okay. I mean, I think it's neat, like getting chased around by, by, by Mr. X again, and then having to fucking fight him. And like the, the flashback scene at the armory shop with the, the dad and the daughter.

• 46:19Russ Frushtick?

  Some of it is my bad, because what I ended up doing in the Raccoon City Police Department was spending like a good two and a half hours trying to figure out this fucking photo puzzle. That requires you to do it in a very specific order of steps. And if you don't do it in that order of steps, you're just gonna be wandering around like an idiot for two and a half hours like me. I did appreciate that the tofu guy shows up in the middle of the police station. That was funny, but I kinda killed all my momentum.

• 46:44Griffin McElroy?

  That's in the lab, I believe.

• 46:45Russ Frushtick?

  No, the tofu, well, maybe he shows up a few places. Definitely in the police station.

• 46:49Griffin McElroy?

  Okay. Um, yeah. And again, you do this big puzzle and the thing that you get for it, which comes back to my, another one of my big complaints from the first time we talked about this game is like, you'll get a charm. That's like, and this makes your thing a little bit stronger. And it's like, that's not fucking even a little bit exciting. Where's my fucking Resident Evil four? You know, uh, auto shotgun, like 12 barrel'd monster shotgun. Like, I don't know, the power fantasy there is just like, during the Leon.

• 47:18Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, weird.

• 47:19Griffin McElroy?

  It's just like not, not great.

• 47:21Russ Frushtick?

  I, I like the Mr. X stuff. I actually don't mind any of the fan service stuff. I think that's all fine.

• 47:25Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's great.

• 47:26Russ Frushtick?

  And like, whatever. There's hunk, wherever the fuck that is. And there's a big spider. Like, that's all fine.

• 47:32Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I got hunk and tofu confused.

• 47:34Russ Frushtick?

  The issue that I have, and Plant, you were kinda getting to this, is like. RCPD, whatever. That was a little bit my bad for being an obsessive weirdo trying to figure out a puzzle. The Ark stuff is genuinely some of the most boring shit in the entire game.

• 47:49Griffin McElroy?

  So explain what the Ark is for people.

• 47:50Russ Frushtick?

  The Ark is the like major scientific home base where this thing that they're trying to get the whole game called Elpis is being developed. And you mostly play in the Ark as, um, what's her name? Grace.

• 48:05Griffin McElroy?

  Grace.

• 48:05Russ Frushtick?

  You mostly play as Grace and her sequences are reasonably go back to like her just having a pistol and having like some bottles to throw to distract enemies and you're mostly, it's like a lot of stealth where you're sneaking around liquors, another throw.

• 48:18Griffin McElroy?

  It adds a new, yeah, liquors is like the main mechanic they add, which are just like fast creepy tongue whipping zombies that you have to, you have to throw acid on in order to like kill them. And so that's.

• 48:32Russ Frushtick?

  And it turns into like, use this computer to find this key to go back here. And it, and in, in hallways, like you counter that to the like environment of the first half of the game. In hallways that are like bland and like white, they're just like white tubes. And Plant, I know you were saying that some of this is like, do they need to pay homage to the movies? Because.

• 48:52Griffin McElroy?

  Well, I mean, there's an art, there's a, you end, I would say, half the Resident Evil games at some weird kind of sterile lab environment.

• 49:00Russ Frushtick?

  Not a fun place to be in. I think if the second half of the game was about two hours long, it would maybe be my favorite Resident Evil game of all time.

• 49:09Griffin McElroy?

  And yeah.

• 49:10Russ Frushtick?

  That's the problem that I have is like, I, whenever I think about the action sequences of Resident Evil games, there's a reason that they're about maybe 10% of the overall runtime. So. Here it's like half.

• 49:20Griffin McElroy?

  I, I, I think part of the problem here is, is action sequences. And I know that's like a thing that I've said before of, yeah, the games eventually they turned to action games and they kind of lose their luster. I would reframe it here that the series.

• 49:34Chris Plante?

  Has gotten really good when it is not about the series, when it is its own original story.

• 49:40Russ Frushtick?

  Agreed.

• 49:40Chris Plante?

  And the first, you know, five or six hours of each of these games is that. And then the further it goes and the longer it goes, the more it gets into like Resident Evil mythos. And sometimes I really like that. Something I've liked about seven and eight is that they are kind of reflections of previous Resident Evil games. I think that's a neat idea that they are working through. The challenge for this game is it is kind of echoing Resident Evil's four, five and six, all in one game. And also feels like they want it to be the end, the conclusion of something. Because the title is Requiem.

• 50:24Chris Plante?

  You ultimately learn about the man who started it all and its connection with the characters that you've been playing. And the, I guess that like big scientific thing that is happening in this lab is that they've figured out how to clone basically everything. And you can buy these things. You can, you know, they are selling liquors or they're selling Mr. X or they're selling all these copies of it. When you see Hunk, it is presumably not Hunk. It is a clone of Hunk. When you see Wesker.

• 50:51Russ Frushtick?

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 50:52Chris Plante?

  It is not Wesker. It's a clone of Wesker.

• 50:55Russ Frushtick?

  Wait, I agree about Wesker, but. You're saying there's infinite hunks?

• 50:59Chris Plante?

  I'm saying they're infinite hunks.

• 51:00Russ Frushtick?

  I thought that was just Hunk and you kill Hunk.

• 51:02Chris Plante?

  I'm, I'm pretty sure it's not Hunk. I'm pretty sure it's a clone of Hunk.

• 51:06Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, okay. I, I, well TBD on that one, but I, I guess, well, what's your point? What is the point?

• 51:12Chris Plante?

  My point is that it, I, I am ready for them after this three series of games of, of, hey, we are using the games to reflect on the series to finally like let go and move on and go do their, a, a new thing. I, I love meta textual stuff. This, this is truly the, the overload of it because that, that is why we end up having these three hours in a very strange, flat corridor is because we need to basically recap.

• 51:48Chris Plante?

  Here's, here are all of the familiar faces. Building to this, this dramatic big conclusion. Cool. If that's the last time we do that, cool.

• 51:57Griffin McElroy?

  Also, I don't give a shit. Like, it's not good, guys. The story, the story's not good. The story that you are telling that now we are slowing down for a few hours to make sure I really, really know who all these fucking people are. Uh, cause I didn't play Resident Evil Outbreak and the payoff for that is a story that is bad. So like.

• 52:15Chris Plante?

  I will, I will say this. It's coherent and that immediately.

• 52:20Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, sure. It's not the worst Resident Evil story by any stretch of the imagination, but like I, I, I would push back at the idea of this game and the last two games being part of some sort of conceptual.

• 52:32Russ Frushtick?

  You mean seven and eight?

• 52:34Griffin McElroy?

  Seven and eight. Yeah. Right. Cause for me, seven and eight are like wild offshoot, super hyper corrections of like the, the franchise's worst sins in Resident Evil six. And then that was seven and then eight was just a bonkers, self-contained kind of Grimm's fairy tales. Thing where like there's not even zombies anymore. Now they're werewolves and shit. Like it was so out of pocket.

• 52:58Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, they do end up linking it in with everything, but in a very light.

• 53:02Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, of course they do, but in a very, very minor way.

• 53:05Chris Plante?

  When I say they're, they're tied, I'm not saying literally story wise. I'm saying seven is a reconception of what Resident Evil one.

• 53:13Griffin McElroy?

  Correct.

• 53:13Chris Plante?

  Like you go to a, a, a building.

• 53:15Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 53:16Chris Plante?

  Spooky scary haunted house. You know, eight is a reconsidering of the weirder like Code Veronica era and past that. And now this is like big corporations, the president might be involved, which is very much five.

• 53:28Russ Frushtick?

  I think I'm going to be, I'm going to play devil's advocate as someone who agrees with everything that has been said about the story of this game. I think what they wanted to do here, and they kind of accomplish it, is say, I never want to hear the names Wesker or Umbrella Corporation ever, ever again. That's the end of it. Shut the fuck up. And so what they do is they end the game by basically closing loop. There's a cure out for everything that Umbrella ever made. And there it is. And you can use it if you want to. And they even end it with a 30 page text document that you can read through from Grace. Saying the entire story, start to finish regarding Umbrella and why you shouldn't care about that stuff anymore. And seven and eight do introduce.

• 54:11Russ Frushtick?

  For lack of a better term, a mold that technically has nothing to do with the thing that Spencer made. He was just like inspired by it. So the Opus thing that they released the cure has, won't cure the mold. So there's still gonna be zombies running around, still gonna be BOWs, whatever the fuck it is. But I think what happened was they were like, well, we gotta wrap this up and we gotta close every little loophole that we've ever had and we're gonna include Mr. X and we're gonna include the spider and we're gonna include whoever else so that we can put this to bed. And I think that's what they were trying to do here. Uh, I agree with mixed results, but hopefully it means that they can kinda, almost kinda start from scratch moving forward. Maybe. I never want to hear the Spencer name again. Like, we're done.

• 54:54Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 54:55Russ Frushtick?

  So.

• 54:55Griffin McElroy?

  It's, it's, these games are so excellently made.

• 54:59Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 55:00Griffin McElroy?

  They are like, they are so polished. It runs, it looks beautiful.

• 55:03Russ Frushtick?

  Feels great to play.

• 55:04Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. And, and I don't know, I feel like the other games, the more recent games have benefited from that more than, than this one. But I don't know. My, for me, the cardinal sin comes back to you had a really, really interesting dynamic. This like, the split between the Leon gameplay and the, not Ashley, the Grace gameplay. And I think of those two, I, I enjoyed the sort of more stressful, more sort of resource conscious Grace gameplay. And then all of a sudden, like, you are going to take a big, long break. And then when you do come back to Grace, it is in the, the most boring environment in the whole game. Uh, it's, it's just a really, really weird series of decisions.

• 55:46Chris Plante?

  If, for whatever reason, people are listening to this and they have not played the game, but they're still thinking about it. I do think you can play the game. Get it on sale or whatever, whenever that happens. Play it up until really the sneaking around the, the police department and then just watch a video of the ending and you're good.

• 56:04Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 56:05Griffin McElroy?

  That's the Chris Plant way. Yeah.

• 56:06Russ Frushtick?

  They call that the Chris Plant special.

• 56:08Chris Plante?

  Just go for it. Like, that's totally, I mean, what, what you get up until that point is better than most big budget video games.

• 56:16Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 56:16Chris Plante?

  And I think it's like a very complete experience.

• 56:19Griffin McElroy?

  Final boss fight's kind of a wet fart. I, I don't know, man. Like, if this is the, the conclusion of the, of the like, this sort of arc of it, it's not a, it's not a very memorable boss fight, guys.

• 56:32Chris Plante?

  We do need to talk about octopuses.

• 56:34Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, so there's two endings, whether you decide to release Elpis, which will then cure the whole world.

• 56:40Russ Frushtick?

  That's a good thing.

• 56:41Griffin McElroy?

  That's good. The password is hope.

• 56:45Russ Frushtick?

  Not even an ampersand or like an exclamation point in there?

• 56:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's really shitty. You would think that they would not even allow him to, like, anything shorter than eight characters is like, what the fuck are you doing? And then that is the good ending. And then you have to, then, you know, Zeno gets killed by the other guy. And then he turns into, get this, a huge monster. And he like sucks up electricity and you just have to like shoot him a bunch of times.

• 57:10Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, and his red.

• 57:12Griffin McElroy?

  I don't really think there's much more to it than that. I don't know, man. Compare that. Oh, the bad ending is you destroy Elpis and then Leon gets fucking massacred.

• 57:24Russ Frushtick?

  You see Leon's head explode in ways you've never seen it explode before.

• 57:27Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, and then you just kind of, then you just kind of leave.

• 57:30Russ Frushtick?

  I kind of like that ending better.

• 57:32Chris Plante?

  In the happy ending, there's a few more details here. You then escape the scene. You're saved by Chris Redfield's agents, basically. Grace goes back to work. And Grace is like, you know, I'm just so sad that Emily, the little girl that turned into a giant monster that Leon brutally, like shot like 5,000 times. I'm sad that she's gone. And Leon says, "Don't worry. I don't think I shot any of her vital organs." Even though the last time we saw this character, it had literally melted into the floor into a pile of goo.

• 58:10Griffin McElroy?

  Turning goo.

• 58:11Russ Frushtick?

  Also, she was covered in like giant mutant, there was no way to tell where the vital organs were.

• 58:16Chris Plante?

  Well, what we, what we, what we learned is that it was, the mutant stuff around her was kind of like a cocoon.

• 58:22Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, sure.

• 58:23Chris Plante?

  And that she was, she was in it, almost like a mech, a biomec.

• 58:27Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:28Chris Plante?

  And now Grace is raising Emily.

• 58:31Russ Frushtick?

  That seems like a good.

• 58:32Griffin McElroy?

  That's nice. That's great.

• 58:34Chris Plante?

  It seems like a really good idea.

• 58:36Griffin McElroy?

  They give us almost no time to like, give a shit about that relationship. This is a, this is a young girl that we did need to solve one puzzle once and then rescue. And like, there's not a ton of, not a ton of kind of death puzzle buildup of that.

• 58:51Chris Plante?

  They were like biologically tied together, but that's not true. We find out.

• 58:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I don't think so.

• 58:57Russ Frushtick?

  I also deeply resent the fact that that puzzle could have very easily been solved just by like elimination, and yet we needed to drag a blind girl through a haunted.

• 59:05Griffin McElroy?

  Through zombie fucking where the world's biggest zombie was like.

• 59:08Chris Plante?

  Problem.

• 59:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 59:10Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I mean, I still, I still, honestly, I still love this game minus that that other part. The highs are just so high and Grace is such a good character. I just love hanging out with Grace. I just love that somebody is finally in the rest of evil world. You just keep feeling like, what the fuck? What?

• 59:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 59:29Chris Plante?

  Why? What?

• 59:31Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's a fun, it's a fun sort of bystander representative of like.

• 59:36Russ Frushtick?

  I think Ethan was that two in seven and eight.

• 59:38Griffin McElroy?

  Ethan was definitely that in one when he gets his arm sawed off. He's like, what? What? Then his arm's back on, he's like, holy shit. Um, yeah, I don't know, man. I'm, I don't know that I'm going to be eager to replay this one in the way that I happen with other Resident Evil games.

• 59:53Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, as well. I thought it was disappointing. Half, half great, half not so much.

• 59:57Griffin McElroy?

  Let's stop the talk here.

• 1:00:00Russ Frushtick?

  We have one piece of reader mail here that I wanted to call out. This comes from Cece. Uh, I have something to add about the way the Pokemon in Pocopia speak. My spouse has been playing the game in Japanese for practice, I guess. And I've been able to compare my own English playthrough with hers. Magic Carp says yo in English because of how it speaks in Japanese using. Chris Plant, can you tell us what is written here? Cause it's in Japanese.

• 1:00:23Chris Plante?

  Uh, English is how it speaks in Japanese using the su instead of desu. So it's like, instead of a polite form, it's using a slightly less polite form.

• 1:00:33Russ Frushtick?

  Right. So they say that other slang that a teen or a part timer might use in fiction. As far as I can tell, most of the Pokemon have stylized modes of speech that you've seen in manga and anime. Some are talking like young boys. Tang Growth has a stereotypical older professor. Greedent is like, almost like a middle aged woman vibe. Localizing these matterisms is notoriously fraught, which I guess is why Kyogre, who talks like an old Japanese man, gets a thick southern accent drawl in English. Uh, none of this is unique to the game or anything, but I mentioned. The magic carp saying yo thing. So CC thought they'd write in. So thank you. That's good insight.

• 1:01:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that's for that is good context.

• 1:01:11Chris Plante?

  I believe Bulbasaur speaks like Yoru, which is like a not quite Jersey Shore girl voice, but not so far off. It's like a very like bleached hair, very, very bold makeup. And I love that Bulbasaur is that going on that.

• 1:01:29Griffin McElroy?

  I will jump off this with my honorable mention, which is I've been playing a lot of Pukopia as well.

• 1:01:36Griffin McElroy?

  And I don't know that I have like a ton to add to my thoughts, but like it continues to get bigger in a, in a way that is just kind of shocking. I think I've unlocked the last area and I am like kinda getting close ish to like the wrapping up the storyline in that area. And then I assumed the storyline of the, of the game. But it's, it's, it's a real special one, y'all. It's a really, really, really super excellent game.

• 1:02:04Russ Frushtick?

  You know what I like about it? And just to contrast it, I know we did a bit of this last week, but to contrast it with Animal Crossing is the tasks that you're given. There's like a very easy way to solve a task that you're given by a Pokemon. Like the Pokemon will be like, I want a toy or I want a house or whatever. And you can do the easy way. You can just make the easiest toy you can make. But because the game is so open in terms of your creativity, like if you decide you want to make a fucking ball or greenhouse for Bulbasaur to live in and like grow his plants, you can fucking do that.

• 1:02:37Griffin McElroy?

  It's fun to build that shit. It's fun to like, it's fun and very easy to build cool stuff. Like there's an area in the game called Palette Town that is basically not like story heavy, nothing really going on there much at all. It's up to you to just kind of like customize it and do whatever you want. When you play multiplayer, like Palette Town is, is, is where you are doing your stuff. And it has become sort of a staging ground for, for Henry and I to like build like, oh, the town needs power. We could just like drop a water wheel here or we could build like a big tall tower and put a windmill at the top of it. And then, you know, come up with a, a, a solution from there or like, oh, we need a workshop where we can set up some sort of automated thing where this Pokemon drops iron ore.

• 1:03:20Griffin McElroy?

  And then this Pokemon will pick it up and throw it in a furnace for you. So there'll be iron bars waiting for you whenever you come back. Like it's so much fun to design that stuff and have it look really great and very functional and.

• 1:03:32Griffin McElroy?

  I keep coming back to it. There is so much other stuff competing for my kind of gaming time and attention and I just keep coming back to Poképia.

• 1:03:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I totally agree. It's been a big hit with my son as well. And it seems like something that's just gonna be a mainstay of like, oh, we can get in 15 minutes and like do a quick build and have fun before dinner or something like that.

• 1:03:55Griffin McElroy?

  It seems also very ripe for like DLC. There's an event going on right now where you are picking up cotton spores that you can trade with Hoppip at the different Pokémon centers. And the stuff for that is not so exciting, but it's still kind of a, I don't know, a blueprint, I guess, of like what events could be and how they could expand.

• 1:04:13Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it's very, like, the game is very obviously designed to be very modular. Like, you could easily just do, oh, here's a DLC and they add an area and it adds new block types and new missions or whatever. I'd be shocked if they don't just do like every six months, they just add a new area.

• 1:04:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it would be smart, yeah. What about you guys?

• 1:04:34Russ Frushtick?

  I have been watching Delicious in Dungeon. I'm almost done with the first season. I think I have one or two episodes left. I watched it with the dub on and I know some people feel strongly one way or the other. I did want to call out Sungwon, ProZD on YouTube, does the voice of Senci in the dub and

• 1:04:56Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, really?

• 1:04:56Russ Frushtick?

  Fucking crushes it. Like, one of the best voice acting performances that I've heard in a long time. He's incredibly talented, but honestly, I find everyone incredibly charming. And just like, story-wise and the art, it's just such a fully thought-through project that is just executed to absolute top-notch precision. I'm very, I don't know how long it's gonna be until season two happens. It might be years, but season one is just...

• 1:05:25Griffin McElroy?

  I watched this one a lot while I was traveling a lot and I watched like one season in the course of like a couple of weeks and then...

• 1:05:32Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's just really, they did a fantastic job. So that's on Netflix. It's Delicious in Dungeon.

• 1:05:37Griffin McElroy?

  Mine is a game actually that we're gonna be talking about on Resties next week, but Screamer, been getting into this. Do you know about this, Griffin?

• 1:05:46Chris Plante?

  I do not. Screamer is basically Dispatch but with racing. So it's doing the kind of like, what if we have a big, interesting story of intrigue? And it has a very anime aesthetic. And you are in the distant future where a mysterious scientist has created a vehicle that even after it explodes, both the car and the driver will be brought from, brought back from the dead. Now, you might be thinking, why, why are they using this technology just for, for racing? I don't know. I think everybody in the game is trying to answer that question. Not like for real, they, everybody's like, we gotta figure out the answer to this question.

• 1:06:28Chris Plante?

  What's cool about it is the racing is sick and you can dig into all of that. If you have ever wanted to get into racing games and you're like, I just don't, I'm not good at it. I don't know how to do it. The campaign for this game is designed for that express purpose. It is, I mean, truly like piece by piece, teaching you how to play a racing game to the point that if you are a hardcore racer, you might find the, the campaign a bit tedious. Um, I find it to be like about the sweet spot. Uh, I am, I'm overall enjoying it. It has a really, well, super, but like it has a unique, um, drifting, uh, style where

• 1:07:11Chris Plante?

  you use both, uh, joysticks to create your drift. So you are, I, I almost recall it like, uh, how MLB, the show or those other games where they like really focus on using sticks versus anything else to control movement. Um, I dig it and the story is overall pretty good. They, they, unlike Dispatch were like 95% of the game's budget went into the storytelling and the visual sequences. And there's just like that, you know, there's, there's some game there, but that's not the focus. This is, uh, I would say more like 50 50. So the animation is not as elaborate.

• 1:07:52Chris Plante?

  There are more sequences where you're looking at static images of people with like text. Um, but everything is voiceover and there's great voice acting on it. Um, and yeah, I'm enjoying it.

• 1:08:05Griffin McElroy?

  This looks really sick. Cool. Well, that's it for the Besties this week. Do we want to thank some patrons?

• 1:08:10Russ Frushtick?

  You bet we do. I wanted to thank Nile, M, Aaron M, Nick D, and Inland Tangerine. Thank you for being patrons of the Besties over at patreon.com/thebesties. As Plant mentioned, we have a new Resties coming at you on Tuesday. We got bracket battles every month. All sorts of fun stuff coming at you. So yeah, we appreciate all your support and everyone that backs the show. Really allows this to happen. So we greatly, greatly appreciate it.

• 1:08:39Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Thanks, everyone. Patreon.com/thebesties. Go get it.

• 1:08:43Russ Frushtick?

  There it is.

• 1:08:43Griffin McElroy?

  Get up on there. Next week, we're going to be playing Marathon and sharing more of our sort of thoughts on that. Maybe a couple of other things, too. There's a lot, there's a lot popping right now.

• 1:08:51Russ Frushtick?

  Yes, it's very busy.

• 1:08:52Griffin McElroy?

  But I think mostly, mostly Marathon. So join us for that, won't you, next week? And join us again, always, here on the Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?