Metal Gear Solid Delta is Peak Remake

With practically every “important” PlayStation 2 game being remastered, remade, and reimagined, it wasn’t a surprise when Konami announced Metal Gear Solid Delta. The question wasn’t “would it exist?”, but “should it exist?” This week, The Besties discuss why Metal Gear Solid 3 benefits from a high-definition, low-tweak update. And they debate just how loyal a remake should be to its source material.

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

• 0:00Russ Frushtick?

  Justin's pointing, he's pointing out his acoustic guitar now.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  I wrote the cold open for you guys.

• 0:06Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, I guess we have to.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  We never put this stuff in the show.

• 0:09Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  So.

• 0:10Chris Plante?

  You do this every episode, but we usually don't want the other.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Normally I don't include my, my songs, okay? But I did wanna, I, thank you guys. Thank you so much. I will. Thank you. Okay? Thanks.

• 0:27Speaker 01

  So I will send a better version to Rachel too, so in case she wants it for her own files, you know? So if you're like, the sound quality's not great, it's more about the, the sentiment that I really need you guys to hear, okay?

• 0:37Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 0:38Speaker 01

  Cause emotions. Sometimes you gotta communicate them with music. Cause words just don't do it, you know what I mean?

• 0:46Chris Plante?

  You wanna pull the guitar up to the mic a little bit more?

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Well, I, I don't wanna blow it out, okay? How's that? That's better? That's beautiful. Okay, good. It gives you a nice Bob Dylan hunch too, which, nice.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Remember when we first gave it a try? Oh five, pretty soon I knew I'd had enough. Cause like, this cutscene has been going for a month and I'd really like to play, please? Then you come around again and say, Justin, they fixed it and it's really fun to play. Trust me, they trimmed that Mufun cutscene to a day. I say I'll try it, I'll load it, it could be a goatee. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. You made me play again this week, but ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh. This time, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, we are never, ever, ever playing more Snake Eater. We are never, ever, ever playing more Snake Eater.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  You crawl through the grass, look like an asshole, play some Wii. But we are never, ever, ever playing more Snake Eater.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  It's beautiful and also not true. They're definitely gonna crank out another one of these on PS6, baby. And we're gonna be back.

• 2:27Speaker 01

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

• 2:32Chris Plante?

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

• 2:36Russ Frushtick?

  My name is Frosch Froschik. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Hey folks, this is the Monster Hunter that is really gonna turn ya. I swear, this is the... No, sorry. I'm just reading. This is the iteration of Metal Gear Solid 3 that you're really gonna get it this time. Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater. Chris, what is that? I feel like I've kinda summed it up, but what is that?

• 2:57Chris Plante?

  Konami is back. They said, "We can't wait for Kojima to come back. We about to do this on our own this time." And by "uh, do it on their own," they mean just kinda remake it exactly how it was before. And some of us maybe not into that, and some of us very into that. And maybe we'll do a performance of the Snake Eater theme before the end of the show, if we're lucky, right after this break.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  I thought for sure that's the way that was going.

• 3:22Chris Plante?

  I did too.

• 3:26Chris Plante?

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• 4:09Chris Plante?

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• 4:45Chris Plante?

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• 5:01Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, boy. This is gonna be interesting.

• 5:04Griffin McElroy?

  This is gonna be real interesting.

• 5:05Russ Frushtick?

  So I'm gonna, I'm gonna start it off.

• 5:07Griffin McElroy?

  Please do.

• 5:07Russ Frushtick?

  I take a slight issue with Chris Plant's introduction of the game there because it is not an exact recreation. I would put the recreation quotient for Metal Gear Solid Delta at 85%. 85% of the game is the same game. They've changed two significant areas that are immediately obvious. Area one, the graphics look better. It's like Unreal Engine, it's lighting, it looks pretty. Area two, the controls are not total fucking batshit, which the original controls, even in subsistence, pretty fucking batshit. Now the controls, if you played Metal Gear Solid V, the controls are basically comparable to that.

• 5:49Russ Frushtick?

  You can do third-person aiming, you can crouch walk. Remarkably, that was never in the original game. You can do all the things you would expect you could do in a modern-ish stealth game from a control standpoint.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Some smart streamlining, I think, of some of the systems for like making those accessible, like on the fly, rather than having to like dig through menus quite as much.

• 6:10Griffin McElroy?

  Correct. Yes, just being able to hold the up button and change your camouflage and it show you like, hey, this is the highest percentage camouflage you have.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  It really, really, really, really helps make that system that I found so annoying. It actually made it kind of fun.

• 6:26Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 6:27Chris Plante?

  So in defense of Chris Plant earlier, this is the same game in that the same cutscenes.

• 6:35Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 6:35Chris Plante?

  The same level designs.

• 6:36Russ Frushtick?

  Well, they redid the cutscenes, but the actual cinematography.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  You could follow a GameFAX walkthrough from 2007 or whatever, and you will get through it just fine.

• 6:46Russ Frushtick?

  Correct.

• 6:47Chris Plante?

  Yes, yes, which is a little unusual compared to what we have started to see from other studios like Capcom.

• 6:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I thought about that a bit where I was like, you know, certainly when it was first teased, like we first saw that trailer. I'm like, oh, so they're doing a Resident Evil 2 style total remake of this game, and that's pretty exciting. But the amount of, I can't even imagine the amount of total reframing that this game would require from tip to tail for it to make sense, for it to like still like track as a Metal Gear Solid 3 remake. Cause it is so fucking weird and its own thing. And I don't know, it just, I'm not saying they shouldn't have done that. I'm just saying.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  This is a, this is a quibble that's actually separate from the product itself, but does bother me. I feel like if you're going to, especially if you're going to hew this closely to the source material. You, and I know I get the gimmick with Delta and three or whatever. You shouldn't change the name, especially when Kojima is not there, right? Like this is, this is a work. This has a name. This is Metal Gear Solid 3. You know, like I, to me, I feel like it's an unmooring from history that makes these things easier to like recycle and regurgitate. So if they don't have numbers, you can just put them back out whenever. But I really, I feel like it's important to, if you're gonna do an update like this, that like it should be called what it is. And that's a quibble, but like, I think it's kind of weird and.

• 8:21Russ Frushtick?

  Well, sorry.

• 8:21Chris Plante?

  It's a quibble, but it's also.

• 8:23Russ Frushtick?

  I don't understand what you're taking issue with. The fact that it has Delta in the name?

• 8:27Griffin McElroy?

  Well, it doesn't have three.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  It's not called Metal Gear Solid 3. It should be called Metal Gear Solid 3. It's Metal Gear Solid 3.

• 8:31Griffin McElroy?

  Oh.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  That is what this game is. And I feel like it is, they're, they, the fact that they took the liberty to change the three to something else to like, update that.

• 8:41Griffin McElroy?

  That's fair.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  It's, that is shitty and market, like, it's bad for a historical preservation sense, too. You know what I mean? Like, you're changing the name of something that you didn't, like, you didn't redo the work. You just rebranded it to make it sound cooler or something. I don't know.

• 8:59Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's a, an especially acute problem for this game, which has been remade for a, a, a few different platforms, a few different sort of generations. Um, and I, I'm of two minds about it because I, while I agree with you, and this is, was not something I expected. This was the first version that actually worked for me. This was the first version of this game that I was able to pound through, past, you know, the first couple of hours, uh, and, and really finally feel like I, I get it. And I get why people hold this game in the esteem that they do.

• 9:39Griffin McElroy?

  And I think part of it is that they did shave off a lot of the rough edges from a control standpoint. Like, just being able to play it and not constantly be like, oh, fuck, wait, what, which one is the CQC button? And which one's just like the quick melee attack button? And why are those two different buttons? And like, all of that shit has been really, really filed down and, and now it feels very, not completely filed down, but it does feel more organic and sort of, uh, I don't know, easy to, to remember than it has in past iterations.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Before we go too much further.

• 10:14Griffin McElroy?

  It is better to, it is easier to remember than Metal Gear Solid 3, beloved 04 debacle.

• 10:20Chris Plante?

  I, I know that we have talked about this game a couple of times on the show, but I'm sure there are some people who just literally do not know what Metal Gear Solid 3 is. Does somebody want to give the explainer?

• 10:31Speaker 01

  May I? I feel like I could do it fast.

• 10:34Russ Frushtick?

  Do it nice.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  It's bef- I will, I will. There's the, in the, in this sequence of Metal Gear Solid that we think of the canonical Metal Gear Solid games, Metal Gear Solid on PlayStation, and then you got Metal Gear Solid 2 on PS2. And then this was the third Metal Gear Solid game, but chronologically, it's the first.

• 10:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yep.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  And it takes place in the, the, the 60s and has more of a, I would say like, spy Cold War that is a huge influence on this. And it really feels like more of a, uh, Kojima wanting to do more of like a period piece, but it's still, it is, it is a prequel, but still very much like the themes and the storylines and everything you're learning are, uh, in conversation with the, the, what has happened in, you know, in the future game.

• 11:20Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  You're learning backstory that you didn't have before.

• 11:23Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  It's not just like all prequel-y. I don't know.

• 11:25Russ Frushtick?

  And it's worth considering, like, you're playing as who is effectively the main, if you will, kind of antagonist of the rest of the series. So you're learning about his origins and like why he became who he became. What I find just narratively-

• 11:39Speaker 01

  There's also, the last thing I'll just say mechanically is that there's a big emphasis on, uh, collecting your resources from the environment and scrabbling together things like your own camouflage, your disguises, harvesting food from like the livestock and, and not livestock, but like the creature, the wildlife. Maybe you will. So that's, that's kind of like thematically, uh, one of the big differences.

• 12:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. I do want to say narratively speaking, I think this game is maybe, no, I'm going to go out and say definitely the most cogent Metal Gear Solid game by like a good mile. Cause there's like 5% magic in this, but most of it is just like, in, you know, Cold War spy shit. That doesn't rely on the fact that you know that this person is possessed by the ghost of this person who was a clone of this person who needed to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because this takes place before all of that, there are references to other characters and even like parentage of other characters. But you don't necessarily need to know them to understand what is going on, which is really

• 12:45Russ Frushtick?

  a pretty straightforward super weapon Cold War story.

• 12:48Griffin McElroy?

  It's really, I was surprised because I had never really played in, you know, past, you know, the beginning of the second act of the game or whatever. Uh, I was surprised at how much the story kinda trucks along and I think that I'm in the right context to sort of process that, having played Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2 sort of earlier this year. And didn't we go back and revisit Metal Gear?

• 13:14Speaker 01

  We did.

• 13:14Griffin McElroy?

  I feel like we did.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  We absolutely, yeah, for sure.

• 13:17Griffin McElroy?

  And, and there's like, the cutscenes are still definitely pretty long sometimes, but there's less bloviating about like, just someone talking about their philosophy about like gene sequencing for fucking 20.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  What if you want to save your game, though?

• 13:32Griffin McElroy?

  Well, if you do want to save your game, you do need to hear a quick IMDb recap of a classic, uh, B, B movie of the era. Uh, but-

• 13:41Speaker 01

  It's like in-

• 13:42Griffin McElroy?

  Video games.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  Good games.

• 13:43Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, yeah, sure, sure.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  All games. Good games, all games.

• 13:46Russ Frushtick?

  You need that Letterboxd review, I get it. Uh, I think having played this and beaten it probably four times, this was my fourth time and I did actually beat it. Um, so much of that stuff gets alleviated by the fact that like, I'm not fucking listening about fucking Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. I'm good.

• 14:04Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 14:04Russ Frushtick?

  And you can just skip all that stuff.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Just quick round the horn, how, what was our sort of skip rate on that old dialogue? Cause we've all seen that a lot, but a lot of us started to get a little pretty jisty with it, huh?

• 14:13Griffin McElroy?

  Get kinda jisty our fifth time through it, right?

• 14:16Speaker 01

  I bet it does go pretty smooth when you're just fucking powering the turbo on that circle button, brother.

• 14:21Griffin McElroy?

  You can skip the second time they explain things. So for example, the first hour of this game, I, I really actually love this remake despite maybe my tone. The first hour of this game is a series of awesome, just fucking awesome, computer animated action sequences. Like, finally a Metal Gear movie. And then it's like, okay, I'm glad that we gave you the entire story. Now we're gonna show you a motion comic of two world leaders repeating everything that you just saw for another 15 minutes. And knowing that you can just skip that and be like, I, I remember this. I remember this old trick.

• 15:01Chris Plante?

  No need for me to watch it. That is a huge relief. I think two things about brevity here. One, I do think it is briefer than other Metal Gear games, ironically briefer than Metal Gear Solid 4, which will come out right after this, which is to me the worst offender. It finds its pace as it goes along, but to contradict that, I have a theory about why Kojima games have gotten more and more bearable in terms of story, which is Kojima was a natural born tweeter. Even before Twitter existed, he needed to tweet more than any person has ever needed to tweet in their life. And he would just tweet directly into the game.

• 15:45Chris Plante?

  It just, you want to know why a character is named West or whatever? It's because of this movie that I liked. Just tweets and tweets and tweets. And now, if you actually follow Kojima on Twitter or Instagram, my dude has The Outlet and boy, does he take great use of it. Like just hundreds of stuff all the time. And there's something cool about that where yes, you get a random thing about the Great Escape, but it is, it can wear out its welcome sometimes.

• 16:17Russ Frushtick?

  So you think just because he has a Steam vent to let him get out these like nonsense ideas? He doesn't put them in the game?

• 16:25Chris Plante?

  I think he still puts some in the game, but he doesn't put every single one of them.

• 16:30Griffin McElroy?

  It weeds out the boring thoughts.

• 16:34Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 16:34Griffin McElroy?

  And leaves only-

• 16:35Chris Plante?

  It's the Kevin Smith of-

• 16:36Russ Frushtick?

  Sorry. Go ahead.

• 16:39Russ Frushtick?

  Sorry, Griffin, go ahead.

• 16:40Griffin McElroy?

  It weeds out the thoughts that would be boring to see in a video game and leaves in the rad thoughts like, what if all the enemies had superpowers? And when you defeated them, they shouted their own name like Pokemon.

• 16:53Russ Frushtick?

  While exploding.

• 16:54Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. While exploding. It's fucking great. Like it really, really, really is. I feel like it was the shit I enjoyed about Death Stranding 2 when it got like super duper weird. And this game, I don't know, it, the ratio of boring exposition to like why-

• 17:11Griffin McElroy?

  And silly shit happening is I is I don't know a lot better than I remember it being. And I think that's only because like I was able to engage with the game more. Because I found it so so much more enjoyable to play because of some of the some of the mechanical change. It's still not like my favorite game ever, but this genuinely, I'm really glad for this remake because it. I know so many people who hold this game in such high regard, and I've always been bored to death by it. And I I feel like after there is a certain amount of pushing through you do have to do. And it is easier to push through in this this version of it and get to the stuff that makes you see like, okay.

• 17:53Griffin McElroy?

  I get why this was a classic of the PS2 era and and is still loved by so many people today.

• 17:58Chris Plante?

  I have one other theory about that, about why maybe this game benefits from a revisit, not just because of the remake. Which is the game has a lot of mechanical doodads. You can do some really silly ass stuff like throw. Sleeping snakes over at enemies or porno mags to distract them. It does not take a lot of time to explain any of the things you can do with its systems. It barely even explains some of its core systems.

• 18:28Griffin McElroy?

  You know what's crazy, though, is that it does have a tips system that when you start playing, you like tell it like, here's how much MG has I played. Here's my favorite one. You can choose like how often you want tips to appear. And if you like die in a boss fight, when you start it again, the tip will appear like, hey, press start and you can see a tip about this fight. And I would like not look at those and then I would check my tip screen later and it would have like. Here's five pages on things you can do to beat the fear.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  I was having the same same problem as you, Griffin, except I would press R1 to look at. It kept saying like, press R1 to look at the tips. And I didn't want to press R1 because I'm 44, my wife could walk in at any moment.

• 19:08Griffin McElroy?

  No, I'm sorry, Justin.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  So I didn't want to press the R1.

• 19:10Griffin McElroy?

  You're confused. That's the R1 is the horny button you could press during cut scenes sometimes.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  What? Did you say tips?

• 19:17Griffin McElroy?

  To look at.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  With a P?

• 19:18Griffin McElroy?

  With a P. I'm talking about very gameplay.

• 19:21Chris Plante?

  Sorry, okay.

• 19:22Griffin McElroy?

  And instructions.

• 19:23Chris Plante?

  Griffin, I'm so sorry. I misheard you. I was trying to go with it, but yeah, I did think that was weird that that was still in there. How you could press.

• 19:30Griffin McElroy?

  But sometimes, sometimes when you.

• 19:31Chris Plante?

  Seems like if you could get in there and change around all the polygons, you could probably take out the one, press R1. I know you had to remaster the image of the press R1 to look at this person's boobs button.

• 19:44Griffin McElroy?

  It's adorable. You think that happens once.

• 19:45Chris Plante?

  Make a new R1.

• 19:46Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, yeah. But sometimes when you press R1, sometimes when you press R1 in a cutscene, it does make you check out a babe. Sometimes when you press it, it gives you the password to escape the prison that you need later. So it's like, you never know which one it's gonna be.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  I've been so good. I've been so good, other than the song at the beginning that did set a bit of a tone. I've been so good.

• 20:07Chris Plante?

  One last thing, just one last mild correction to saying, yes, you can press one. There is the horny button. There is two styles to the game. Legacy style, that's really true to the original. New style, which makes some changes, including all of the like horny bikini babe posters that were in the game. When you switch to new style, are pictures from that same woman's family in the real world? From like now, so it's like her with her like kid wearing a cute little bunny outfit. Uh, just like a high school photo. Yep.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Of the person that was in the bikini picture initially?

• 20:49Chris Plante?

  Yes, so now it's like Fast Forward 21 years and it's them with their family.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  So there's a, there's like a serial killer button? You can activate like a detective issue?

• 20:58Griffin McElroy?

  That's not better.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  No, that's worse. That's clearly so much worse.

• 21:02Chris Plante?

  Wait, wait, wait. Look at, here's, here's, here's a photo from it. I just dropped it in our slot.

• 21:08Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I guess that's not too bad. That's the lady with the baby wearing a bunny costume.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  It's a frigging cute. Yeah, it's really cute.

• 21:16Chris Plante?

  It's cute. Okay, okay. Now, Hoops, please, go ahead.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  So, right, so like, uh, I actually don't have that big of a problem with this thing because I think the, from a preservation standpoint, I think it's great. Cause I think that is, this is really, really what you want in a sense, because it is like, we've, we've taken off a little bit of the rough edges, but like everything else that made this video game, this video game, uh, it, it, it's here. Like you could get the experience and I think personally, that's really cool. I think that from a preservation standpoint, making it so that people can have these experiences and like, make them easier for people to have more accessible, but like you still get as close to the initial, that's great. Charging $70 for that is not preservation.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Because you've made such a huge wall to accessing that, right? It, you are preying on people to get more cash out of them. Like, because you know you can and it's been enough years, but like, you're not, this is not preserving this work.

• 22:21Russ Frushtick?

  It's a, it's a Pachinko company, my dude. This is, this is what they've been doing for 30 years. No, you're right. I'm agreeing with you. They're right. It's just funny, cause it's Konami and they're, they make their money off Pachinko.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  If you're gonna preserve it and say, this is a, a release as is, then frigging do that and charge a fair amount for that. But you didn't make a new video game. You're pro, you're, you didn't even get new voice actors, man. You're just profiting off the same work of the same people that, you know what I mean? It's like, you didn't make a new thing and you're charging people for a new thing. I think that sucks. I would also be fine with if they wanted to make a game where it was like, a real overhaul and it, and it, you know, it wanted to re-envision this thing. I don't think that would be good, probably. No, it seems like it'd be really, really weird. It's just, for me, it is a compliment, in a sense, that I still am bouncing off of this thing, because the stuff that is in there

• 23:15Speaker 01

  is very representative of this initial experience when it came out. Like, it does not do enough for me to make it like, oh, I'm having fun now, but like, I'm glad it exists. I just wish it was like. They made it fair to, I feel like Konami, it's, they're one of the worst offenders because they are profiting off of just withholding access to this stuff. And I think that that sucks.

• 23:40Chris Plante?

  I think what is tricky about this game and any video games, now that they cost so much money to make, is they have to be so many things at once. And that's like, yeah, I agree. Like it, part of this is like acting like it's preservation, which I imagine for them was very low, very, very low on the to do list. Um, uh, I think a huge part of it for them was we want to ramp up Metal Gear games again. And we eventually want to make our new ones and we want to do like what, uh, three, four, three did with Halo, which is we train ourselves by remaking the originals. I think why it's called Metal Gear Solid Delta, back to your original point, Hoops, is because they're going to release these in a different order.

• 24:22Chris Plante?

  They don't want to do three, one, two, or whatever they're going to do. They want to change the name. Then they also want it to be a thing that makes them a lot of money. So then it's being released as if it's a quadruple A game or whatever they want to do. It's just, when games become this expensive, the, the messiness of what the thing is, is so tough. And that makes it hard for us because, Hoops, I think what you're getting at here, I think what you get at every episode very well is like, our job is to review a thing for whatever it intended to be. And it's hard when a thing intends to be everything, you know, it intends to be so many different things, many of which are inherently conflicting.

• 25:04Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I don't, this to me feels like a pretty focused project. Like it does not feel like this got scope creeped to the point where there's that much more in this.

• 25:14Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I don't mean, why I say it needs to be everything, I don't mean scope creep, I mean like existentially, what were you trying to do with the game? Are you trying to ramp, get a team trained to make more Metal Gear? Are you trying to preserve it? Are you trying to, you know, reintroduce a lot of previous, like old players to the game? Are you trying to introduce a bunch of new players to it? Like what? It's, it's having to do a lot of different things all at the same time. But like, yeah.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  There is, it is, you know, I think it's part of what soured me on this. I know that this is not like. This will not be everyone's experience, obviously, but I was looking into like PS2 emulation this week and looking at how there are people in communities that will like work on, they've basically worked on HD texture packs that for specific games, the big ones, because this is a real labor of love. They will go in and like remake textures, like remake all the textures in the game and you download the pack and then you're playing this game with like newly handcrafted textures that fans have like gone in like recreated, right? And that is work that

• 26:23Speaker 01

  people are like doing because they love the games and they are like, they want to preserve them and they want to update the experiences and they want to like, they're doing it for all these great reasons. And like, this kind of work, the things that they're like added to this game or whatever, like there are people that care about this stuff that are doing it for free because they love it. And, and those people are the ones that are getting prosecuted by companies like Canon me because they want to be able to keep profiting off of the work somebody did 20 years ago, rather than, and keep gatekeeping this product that they own rather than, you know, actually preserving these works. And I think that like to not call it what it is, is, is not really a fair play because they are asking

• 27:08Speaker 01

  $70 for something that is a new coat of paint, pretty much.

• 27:13Griffin McElroy?

  I think that's a little bit dismissive because I do agree that, you know, it is not the boldest remaster, but I do think that considerable amount of work goes into, you know, changing the complete perspective through which all of the gameplay kind of takes place, right? It is not a, just saying it is a visual overhaul is, is not, is also not accurate.

• 27:37Russ Frushtick?

  Griffin, given the fact that this is the first time that you've sort of latched on to this, what was the turning point for you? Was it literally like the first two minutes? And you're like, oh, I can actually walk around and see what I'm doing? Or was it more gradual than that?

• 27:51Griffin McElroy?

  Um, you know, I think it was, uh, getting to the like second, uh, revolver oscillate boss fight, the duel on either sides of the canyon and seeing this, uh, seeing this man, uh, who is just the biggest dork ever, uh, summoning his troops to his side by putting his paws up next to his face and going, it like really clicked in my head of like, oh, this is like a stu- like this is a stupid thing that is hap- I think I was trying to take this game really seriously every time that I've played it in the past. And because of that, I, I don't

• 28:33Griffin McElroy?

  know, my, my perspective was like, well, if I'm supposed to be taking this pretty seriously, I'm actually pretty bored. Uh, I'm just bored. It is slow and a lot of these systems, while they were innovative at the time, aren't that exciting now. Um, but then when you start to treat it as like Hideo Kojima's magical mystery tour of like silly bullshit, which is very much how I engaged with Death Stranding 2 and I enjoyed it that way as well. Like, I don't know. I feel like trying to, I, I treating it that way, uh, kind of made me more curious to see what was going to happen next rather than sort of, uh, dreading the

• 29:13Griffin McElroy?

  next like extended gameplay sequence where I was just going to be slowly crawling on my gut, uh, from point A to point B and hoping nobody like turned a corner.

• 29:23Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, this was, I think, the first time where like humor was injected into the whole thing. Like previously it was like, oh, that guy's pissing. Why don't you like punch him in the back of the head? Like that was the extent of the humor. And here it really feels, and this, I think this is the beginning of Kojima having a lot of fun with later games, you'd see like, oh, I'm gonna use a Fulton balloon to like launch a sheep into the air or even Death Stranding one and two have like a ton of these like, I'm not taking this seriously and it makes the whole thing more tolerable. I even think the humor in this, because the systems are pretty flexible, there's humor in just the gameplay of it. Like I was doing a non-lethal run and I tranquilized a spider.

• 30:09Russ Frushtick?

  And picked it up and threw it at a guard.

• 30:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, full Kevin McCallister bullshit. It's, yeah, it's, it's, it's.

• 30:16Russ Frushtick?

  The guard died, the guard like got poisoned and fell off a cliff, but I still didn't get.

• 30:22Griffin McElroy?

  That doesn't count as a human kill. I do appreciate what this game calls human kills or not, because that is important to the plot of the game later. I tranquilized a couple dudes just standing on bridges and watched them fall either to their death by crushing or drowning, but then I checked the stat screen and it's like, don't worry, dude, you're cool.

• 30:41Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I wonder how much of the humor in these games, because now I want to go back and play more Metal Gear 1 and 2, if it's there and I just wasn't ready for it. These games were released in such a weird time in early 2000s, like peak our video games art, you know, for 2004, whenever this came out, 2003. And I think that there was a desire to see games as serious and the things that people focused on about this game were the serious bits, was the ending, you know, it was not as much, here is somebody who can spin their revolvers so fast that they can fend off thousands of hornets by actually fighting a hornet's nest.

• 31:26Chris Plante?

  Like, that shit, I think, is silly and it also just looks badass and fun and ultra, ultra-high definition.

• 31:35Russ Frushtick?

  I think there's a lot of humor in this game that like works for me. And I think it makes it more tolerable that it's overly serious and the contrast with the goofy bullshit makes it work, because if you, if the whole thing is like 90% serious and then occasionally there's something wacky, this feels closer to almost 50/50 of like wacky shit versus not. Even just eating random shit off the floor is funny. Like, that's a, you know, the fact that he's like.

• 32:03Griffin McElroy?

  The high-definition models of him picking up a snake and just taking it, or a big fucking Arowana fish, just eating it like fucking Fred Flintstone style.

• 32:13Chris Plante?

  Yeah, we have talked a lot about Metal Gear and maybe we'll talk about it more another time, but because that's kind of what we do on this show. Other stuff I want to make sure we have time for, I want to hear more about this sweet, sweet new Kirby DLC from Frush. We got a bunch of stuff in the mailbag. Cool if we take a break?

• 32:31Griffin McElroy?

  Please.

• 32:32Russ Frushtick?

  Let's do it.

• 32:34Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of The Besties is sponsored by Lisa. You know, we are starting to get into the cooler months of the year. And you know what I love in the cool months of the year? An incredibly cozy mattress that you can just cozy up into. You got the blankets and everything. And I will speak from experience, but maybe not my experience. Because Lisa sent 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.

• 33:18Russ Frushtick?

  Because holy cow, that thing is incredibly comfortable. Lisa was awarded the best hybrid and best memory foam mattress by New York Times Wirecutter 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. That's L E E S A dot com promo code BESTIES for 25% off. Select mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Lisa.com promo code BESTIES.

• 33:56Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so Kirby and the Forgotten World? What was the other one?

• 34:01Griffin McElroy?

  Kirby and the Forgotten Lands, Star Crossed World. I don't see what's on my radar.

• 34:04Russ Frushtick?

  Can we do it again? That's, we are professionals. I kinda, no. That's the first thing you said. I'm not gonna do it again. I think I need to be honest.

• 34:12Griffin McElroy?

  Basically nailed it.

• 34:14Russ Frushtick?

  Pretty close. So that game came out a few years ago. It was fucking great. We all loved it. It's an amazing co-op game. It's amazing core game. I had a blast fucking playing it. There was a problem though. It was running on the original Switch. And the best it could do was 30 frames a second. And that could be better. So Nintendo has gone ahead and released an upgrade pack, pack for the Switch 2 that allows you to play the original game in 60 FPS. It also adds a new chapter, if you will, expansion pack, if you will, a little side story. It's called the new, Kirby's new nightmare. It's a new, it's a new.

• 34:54Chris Plante?

  Twisted spin.

• 34:56Russ Frushtick?

  And so that is in the game as well. I played a couple hours of this, the first few levels. And it's a delight. First of all, my son has been obsessed with playing this game. But having to play it at 30 FPS, knowing that a 60 FPS update was coming has been true torture. So I can finally actually experience it as it was meant. And it's glorious. It's very.

• 35:20Chris Plante?

  Looks great.

• 35:20Russ Frushtick?

  Looks great, feels great. It's a big improvement. The actual like level content are kind of like remixed levels that were in the original game. Areas that were in the original game, but they've added like new paths through them. Because you're using these like bicycle meteors, whatever the fuck. I don't think it's a life changing update. But if you love the original Kirby and you want, it's like five ish hours to play through the campaign. Probably seven, if you're collecting everything. It's certainly a nice improvement. For me, the like huge draw was the just playing it at 60 FPS is like a really nice. Upgrade.

• 36:02Russ Frushtick?

  But honestly, like I've been, I think their level design chops are like through the roof great. And they continue to be really great. They do a great job hiding secrets in the world, in the world in like a really neat way. They added a few Kirby new transformations. So you can like be a.

• 36:17Chris Plante?

  New mouthful.

• 36:18Russ Frushtick?

  Mouthfuls, you're like spring at one point, you're a cog at one point. And all that stuff is like just transforming the way you interact with the world in fun, interesting ways. In the same way that like Astro Bot had very similar approach to like different power ups or upgrades.

• 36:35Chris Plante?

  Kirby's a cog these days?

• 36:37Russ Frushtick?

  I'm telling you, part of the, part of the machine.

• 36:40Griffin McElroy?

  I uh, I we, I've been a bit underwhelmed by, by this DLC. I do think it looks great and plays great, but we, Henry and I like hundred percented this thing, like have played the ever living shit out of it. And it adds like a dozen levels that are sort of remixes of some of the original levels. Um, but there's not a lot of carrots to pursue as far as I am concerned. Like there's no new, um, you know, copy abilities or any, anything like that to find in the original. You were finding like blueprints and you could do these extra challenges to upgrade them. And I

• 37:23Griffin McElroy?

  think that that stuff made, uh, the, the campaign like really propulsive and really exciting to, to go through. And, um, while the levels are, the new levels are great and they're fun to, to play through, like it has not gotten its hooks in us in, you know, nearly the way that I was sort of expecting.

• 37:42Russ Frushtick?

  It does seem like they're relying on the, um, gosh upon like collection token, capsule toys as like the way to pull you through. That doesn't do anything for me. My son, for whatever reason, fucking loves it. And that's like the driving factor.

• 37:57Griffin McElroy?

  That's all that matters, right?

• 37:58Russ Frushtick?

  But I do agree. It needed a little bit more of a meta, uh, component to like make it a little more compelling. But I, I think just as a game, it's still fucking got it. Like I think there's elements in here that feel really, really good.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  I just wanted to clarify from, cause this is a, an upgrade. You buy it as like an add-on or you buy it, you're buying.

• 38:18Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. So it's a $20 upgrade from, if you own the Switch one version, uh, to get the Switch two version and the Star Crossed World, uh, DLC stuff.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  How do you guys feel about this? Like this is the sec, I, I have not done any of the like up, upgrade things that Nintendo has done. I didn't check out the Zelda thing.

• 38:39Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Either.

• 38:40Griffin McElroy?

  Well, the Zelda thing was, if members, if you had a Nintendo Switch online membership, it was gratis. And I don't think that that is true for, for this one, for whatever reason. I think if this had been available day one of the Switch two launch and it, uh, maybe it would be sort of a different story. This is truly a. For me, a mismatch of expectation versus what what we got. And this has been like the the killer app, like big thing that we have been really excited for in this household. And it's, it's just, it hasn't been, uh, it has not set, set this house on fire in the way that the original Kirby in the Forgotten Land did. Um, and that's, that's genuinely like pretty, uh, pretty disappointing.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  I worry that Nintendo is gonna go to, if Nintendo goes too hard on these like, sort of like semi remakes between their like platform generations, they're already pretty iterative. I worry that their release schedule is gonna get even more predictable. Like each generation, not only will have its Kirby game, but it's gonna have its like remake of the last generations, you know, everything from the last generation getting an update. Cause I, I feel like Nintendo's big struggle is always to fill out their release calendar in a way that feels compelling. And I, I will be interested to see if they start padding with a lot of these sorts of like half, half measure releases.

• 39:59Chris Plante?

  I think this is a reflection of the challenge every developer is gonna face now that you can carry your games over between generation and between hardware, where in the past it was, you know, we'll just resell you Super Mario Brothers 2 every new time that you get a piece of an upgrade and you'll buy it because you love that game. I mean, Final Fantasy was, you know, the definition of this, this strategy. And now that they know, hey, you already have it, it's gonna follow you over. What we're gonna do is we're gonna just create a little bit of a incentive to, incentive to, to get you to pay that 20 bucks extra. So we're not just reselling you Final Fantasy VII or Metal, or Super Mario

• 40:40Chris Plante?

  Brothers 2, we're also selling you these blank extra levels, plus the hardware upgrade that maybe you should expect just to happen and maybe you shouldn't. I think that is

• 40:52Speaker 01

  And it does for ones where it does happen in certain titles. I think it's really the inconsistency that's confusing here. Cause like, uh, what is it? The Link's Awakening remake now runs great on Switch 2, and that was a free update to support.

• 41:07Chris Plante?

  Yeah, Pokemon, the last Pokemon games.

• 41:09Griffin McElroy?

  They they run much better.

• 41:10Russ Frushtick?

  Animal Crossing as well runs much better, faster load time. So yeah, they're trying to make this delineation of like, I'm also going to give you this content and that's the stuff we're going to charge for. But again, there's that weird middle ground with Zelda where it was like, well, mostly just an FPS increase, but there was also that weird app integration nonsense. So I agree, it's messy. It's like a messy situation right now. And I also agree at, you know, that's, I wish it was more substantive at, you know, what they're charging for this expansion pack. I thought it was fun, but not, I agree. It didn't fully transform the experience of playing Kirby as much as just like, I just liked playing it at 60 FPS.

• 41:52Griffin McElroy?

  Just give me something to chase. It's also an issue with like, we played the shit out of it.

• 41:55Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 41:56Griffin McElroy?

  Like, I think if Henry and I had not gone as hard, because it's one of his favorite games ever. If we had not gone as hard really playing it as much as we had, then, you know, the lack of incentive kind of like baked into the content itself wouldn't be as big of an issue, but.

• 42:12Russ Frushtick?

  Some of it is just, you also have all the upgrades, so you're just like a fucking god king.

• 42:16Griffin McElroy?

  It's really, really a breeze.

• 42:17Russ Frushtick?

  With a giant fucking sword just demolishing everything. And I kind of wish that they like, you know, just like started you from scratch when you were in this area or something, just, just to like, give you a little bit more of a power curve experience.

• 42:30Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Uh, we got any mail?

• 42:33Russ Frushtick?

  We do. Uh, Point, you want to read some mail?

• 42:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, I would love to. Uh, this one is from Wizzle. I want to take this opportunity to shout out Stray Children. It's a spiritual successor to Moon, developed by Onion Games.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  I'm so glad that was a game. Sheesh, man, I'm so glad that was a game.

• 42:52Griffin McElroy?

  Holler, Stray Children.

• 42:54Russ Frushtick?

  Kids out there doing their thing.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Shout out to kids like the, the Baker Street Irregulars, like the Lost Boys.

• 43:01Griffin McElroy?

  The Boxcar Children.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Kids from Newsies, just like any stray kids, Fagin's kids, like all stray kids. Shout out, man. Thank you for keeping the street, like, keeping the streets.

• 43:13Chris Plante?

  Moon, developed by Nintendo Games, came out for the Switch in Japan last December. They've announced that it's coming out in English later this year, along with the Steam release. I just can't wait. Oh, and Moon is also available on modern platforms for anyone interested. It shares some mechanics with Chibi Robo and is very similar in tone. P.S. The subtitle for Okairi Chibi Robo means happy, rich, Osoji. Osoji is basically the Japanese equivalent to spring cleaning, a common custom at the end of the year. Think big cleaning project. Perfect for Chibi Robo.

• 43:47Griffin McElroy?

  Love it. Thank you for the clarification.

• 43:50Chris Plante?

  Uh, this one is for Justin from Frank. Justin, as a bike pervert, I would love nothing more than to hear about your journey getting into biking.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, so I don't know. I live on a hill and I miss riding a bike, but realistically, if I rode a bike down my hill, I would have to get a new house.

• 44:15Griffin McElroy?

  Throw it away. Yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or yeah, I'd have to get a new place to live because I wouldn't have a car to get back up the hill. So I would have to move every time. So I found the sort of like the lowest barrier e-bike that I could. So I could like ride it like normal, but then when it came time to come back up the hill, that I could have a little extra juice in the tank. And so that's what I did.

• 44:37Griffin McElroy?

  Did you find the process of picking your e-bike challenging at all?

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Uh, yes. I regretted the one I got as soon as I got it. Um, I went with like a mountain bike type deal, which I don't know why. I definitely was not gonna do, I was definitely not gonna leap from 20 years no biking to shredding the trails behind the Huntington Museum of Art. Like, I don't know why I thought that was necessary. It's because it's quite heavy, too. The other thing I will say is that I cannot lift my bike by myself very well.

• 45:09Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, for sure.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Uh, so I have to get a little bit of help.

• 45:12Griffin McElroy?

  Can you lift it off the ground? Like, if it was on its side?

• 45:15Speaker 01

  I can lift it off the ground. I can't lift it into my car.

• 45:17Griffin McElroy?

  Sure. That is an issue.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  So, yeah. So, uh, yeah, I don't know. It's been nice to have an excuse to get out and ride around. Simple joys, what have you.

• 45:26Griffin McElroy?

  Do they explode?

• 45:29Griffin McElroy?

  Mine hasn't.

• 45:29Russ Frushtick?

  I hear they explode.

• 45:31Griffin McElroy?

  No.

• 45:32Russ Frushtick?

  Makes me.

• 45:32Griffin McElroy?

  Anything can explode.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  I mean, I, um, sometimes it goes so fast that it leaves like fire behind it, like in Back to the Future. Cause I'm going so, cause I'm going so hard, I'm riding so hard.

• 45:43Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 45:43Griffin McElroy?

  When I bought my e-bike, I did it from a shop around the corner from me and they were really cool. They were really chill and they helped me pick out a good one. I got the Turn HSD. Uh, beautiful, uh, beautiful bike. Love, you know, uh, trucking around with my kids, taking them to school, doing errands, all that. And I bought it. Uh, I was like, yeah, this will be great. Cause this place is right around the corner from my house. If I need any upkeep or help or anything, they'll be right there. And then they shut down two and a half weeks later. And now, now.

• 46:09Russ Frushtick?

  Was it like one of those monkey paw stands where they sell you something and then you went back and it was just like?

• 46:14Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it was a load bearing e-bike. Uh, it was a load, load bearing commuter, uh, vehicle.

• 46:22Russ Frushtick?

  We have one more letter. This one comes from definitely Shrek. It's awesome to hear Juice talk about 3D printing. I've been working in the industry for a number of years. Customer care and helping others make things is a hallmark of the industry. There's a lot of crossover between gaming and 3D printing. In fact, y'all taught me about anti-aliasing before the industry did. I didn't, didn't occur to me, uh, when Shrek wrote this, uh, it didn't occur to me that any aliasing was obviously an issue in 3D printing, but it's just like a resolution thing effectively. It's just a physical object, right?

• 46:51Speaker 01

  It's a really interesting, uh, it's funny cause I was talking about like overlap, right? This is something that I just finished. It's a, you guys obviously can see it, but it's a 3D print handle for this, this, uh, Amernix 35 XX plus. But you can see the like lines of filament and that's a really interesting way of like understanding resolution too. Because I could print this finer and it would take longer and it would look smoother, but it would be at a cost of like more filament and it would slow the whole process down, which is like a pretty good analogy, I would think for like computer graphics is, as I understand, my limited understanding.

• 47:25Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Higher resolution, it causes more performance chug and things like that. And that's, it's super interesting.

• 47:31Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, anyone been playing any other video games?

• 47:34Russ Frushtick?

  I went ahead and finished Hollow Knight.

• 47:38Griffin McElroy?

  That's crazy.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 47:39Griffin McElroy?

  Can I say, I had the temptation to do that and then I had a voice in my head that said, "That's crazy. Don't burn yourself out right before Silk Song comes out."

• 47:47Speaker 01

  What do you mean by finish?

• 47:48Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, I didn't do 100%. I just wanted to get to an ending. So I think it ended up being like 80.

• 47:54Griffin McElroy?

  You've finished it before. You've played it before.

• 47:56Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I beat it. And I went ham. When it first came, uh, came out on Switch, I went totally nuts ham. This was more of a like, I want to remember the characters and the narrative and the whatever, just so I like, I'm not coming into Silk Song fresh. The crazy thing about Hollow Knight is it fucking still slaps in comparison to the competition in ways that just blow me away. It is just like, there's been a ton of indie metroidvanias that come out since Hollow Knight, and there's been some really great ones like Blasphemous 2 and, uh, Andrew Magnolia, fantastic ones. Nothing comes close to holding a candle to what Hollow Knight did, just from an art and gameplay and overall package

• 48:38Russ Frushtick?

  standpoint. It's really an astonishing thing. And I've remained incredibly dark on what is going on with Silk Song, which comes out, uh, this week. Obviously, we are recording before it's actually out. Uh, so I just wanted, uh, yeah, I wanted to jump in with a little bit of background and, uh, better understand our gal Hornet.

• 49:00Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, yeah, I'm real fucking excited. And I have, I, it's, it's one that I've been scared I'm going to somehow ruin for myself.

• 49:06Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Um, here's, here's the trick. It's really easy to not ruin it for yourself. Don't

• 49:12Griffin McElroy?

  Just don't watch any trailers or talk to anybody.

• 49:14Russ Frushtick?

  At the second you see anything about Silk Song, turn away. I've been doing it for many, many years. Uh, and fight the urge. There's gonna be a moment when you're playing through Silk Song where it's like, I'm stuck. I don't know where to go. Fight the urge. Just wander around. Have a, have a good time with the world. Absorb it.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  If I may, fuckin', look it up.

• 49:32Russ Frushtick?

  Or don't, or don't, but that's how.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Be a nasty dog.

• 49:35Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 49:36Griffin McElroy?

  You only got one go around. Don't, don't take time management tips from us, guys.

• 49:39Russ Frushtick?

  That's, that is, that is true. Uh, it was a delight. I, I used guides a little bit for this run of Hollow Knight just because I wanted to get it done before Silk Song came out. Uh, so, but I had already beaten it. So it's fine. It was mostly just me fighting my memory. Uh, great game.

• 49:54Griffin McElroy?

  Now, that is a very rewarding, you know, it's always hard. I feel like if a game is really well constructed, I, I usually agree with you, Russ.

• 50:01Russ Frushtick?

  And I think Hollow Knight is that. I really do.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Like I would think that for like Animal Well, because the the understanding that you're building, you really are cheating yourself. And I would say that about this little song too. Just kind of teasing. Yeah, I agree. I wanted to tell you guys about something that I thought was kind of neat called Kazeta. Have you guys heard of Kazeta?

• 50:20Griffin McElroy?

  Hmm, no.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  That is a check word for, I'm going to send you a link here in the bestich room, is a check word for cartridge. And it is a new Linux based operating system that came out this week. A new operating system, if you can imagine. And with these like little indie operating systems, this person made one called Chimera OS, it's very popular. With these indie operating systems, they, you know, you can flash them to a mini PC, but what a lot of people do is they will put the whole thing on like a USB drive. So you can like run it off a thumb drive and you can pop it into whatever, and whatever you plug it into, it'll work. But Kazeta is a really cool one that just came out recently. And the whole gimmick with it is that you store, you, you, it plays DRM free games that

• 51:04Speaker 01

  you store each game individually on an SD card. And you can make your own little label for it, but it's one SD card per game. And when you put the SD card in, the game starts.

• 51:14Griffin McElroy?

  That's fucking insane.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  That's crazy. The idea is that people will make their own cartridges, because you can make your own cartridges and you could like distribute these, collect and share with people, you could release in this format if you wanted to physically release this way. You can also use USB drives, but the metaphor is a little bit different, but it Probably means cassette, if I had to guess. Is that what that word means? It does, is a check word for cassette, which you can have as much fun. I know, for example, that there are, as I have tried to get my kids into games, it is sometimes easier for me to show them a cartridge like on the DS or the 3DS and say, this is this

• 52:00Speaker 01

  game. Put it in and you play it versus handing them, you know, 10,000 old games that they can like scroll through endlessly and get lost. So from like a collection standpoint and like just a fun, like the fun of doing it, it

• 52:18Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's a, it's a really fun, fun little thing. Easy to set up, pretty slick. It's, it's got some rough edges. It's just getting started, but that's kind of the fun with these like, open source things is that they continue to like grow and get better and I don't know. Uh, I finished playing Final Fantasy V Advance on the IONEO Pachi Ace, which I had never finished before. It's a weird installment in the series. It has probably the best fleshed out job system of any of the Final Fantasy games. Like you can make any of the characters be any jobs. You can mix and match the different abilities, which is like mechanically very fun.

• 52:50Russ Frushtick?

  Is this a, is this a, a sequel to the original Final Fantasy Tactics?

• 52:56Griffin McElroy?

  Final Fantasy V.

• 52:57Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, V Advance, sorry.

• 52:58Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, not, there, there was Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and then A2 for the, for the DS, which was also pretty great. Uh, V Advance is weird from a narrative standpoint, especially in this translation. This translation is apparently famous for being like, really fucking weird and full of weird pop culture references that were definitely not the original, uh, script of the game. Uh, like to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles. And like they gave one of the characters like an insane old prospector accent for no reason. Like there's a character who just says things like, what in tarnation? Like,

• 53:37Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, someone's gotta say that.

• 53:40Griffin McElroy?

  No, they really don't. And it's weird and out of step with the rest of the game. So, uh, but, but I don't know. It was like one of the only Final Fantasy games I had not finished, so I had a good time with it. I also went to a movie theater and I saw Weapons. That shit slaps. That shit's really, really good. I won't say a ton about it, but.

• 53:58Russ Frushtick?

  I've been told to not have it, uh, discussed in front of me, but I hear it's very good.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Sorry, I forgot to mention, I've been playing, uh, when we were doing signings last week and during the lulls, the very infrequent lull.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, well, I played a lot of Who Wants to be a Millionaire 3rd Edition on the PlayStation. It is a really good.

• 54:23Griffin McElroy?

  Really, really good.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  Who Wants to be a Millionaire. It's really, really good. The load times are atrocious and you barely see any Regis Philbin. And the questions are outdated.

• 54:32Russ Frushtick?

  Did you play with the texture pack or no?

• 54:34Speaker 01

  No.

• 54:34Griffin McElroy?

  Did you download the Regis Philbin texture pack or what was the deal there?

• 54:37Speaker 01

  I can tell the day you're gonna die!

• 54:39Griffin McElroy?

  It sucks. He's so, he's so HD that it's like, that one is an HD AI pack for Regis where he's like, he's smart.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  And he's like, I'm trapped in here. What am I, don't turn it off, Justin.

• 54:55Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, but Weapons is really great. I won't talk about it because I know Russ is sensitive about that stuff.

• 54:59Russ Frushtick?

  I want to watch it. My, my wife won't watch it. So I got, I'm waiting for it to go on streaming and then I'll watch it.

• 55:04Griffin McElroy?

  It's very exciting to see, uh, to see Zach Craig or sort of like do this thing a second time.

• 55:11Russ Frushtick?

  He's cracking it up.

• 55:13Griffin McElroy?

  With the, with the second sort of like fucking slam dunk hit in this really, really weird fashion. It really, it's, it establishes him in a way that is, uh, I don't know. I'm not like a movie buff or anything like that, but even, even for me, like it is exciting.

• 55:28Russ Frushtick?

  Would you recommend I watch one first? One of them first?

• 55:32Griffin McElroy?

  No, I don't think so. I, I, I think they work well in concert with each other, but it's, it's, it is not a, I don't think that necessarily one builds on, on the other. I think Weapons sort of does the thing Barbarian does a little bit more experimentally, but it, I, I don't think there's like.

• 55:48Chris Plante?

  This is P T Anderson going from Boogie Nights to Magnolia is what, is what my dude's doing here. Also, I would recommend you watch some whitest kids you know before you see this movie.

• 55:57Griffin McElroy?

  Sure. Yeah. I guess if you want to complete the whole.

• 55:59Chris Plante?

  I actually think it sets the vibe. I think, I think it is a good thing to watch. Um, very quickly for me, Demon's School. We were going to talk about that recently, but we can't talk about.

• 56:11Griffin McElroy?

  Delayed, right?

• 56:12Chris Plante?

  We, it was delayed because of.

• 56:14Russ Frushtick?

  It got so song.

• 56:16Chris Plante?

  So I just want to shout it out. I can't give a review, but what I can say is it's coming out on November 19th. I am digging into it and you don't want to lose track of this game. I think a lot of people who like our show, who also like Persona and tactics games, I think they want to keep an eye on this. So I know that we will be talking about it more when it does come out, but yeah, I'm bummed it got delayed and I am excited to talk about it more when we have that opportunity.

• 56:46Russ Frushtick?

  Thanks, Team Cherry.

• 56:48Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 56:52Chris Plante?

  I mean, we don't really need to talk about what we're doing next week, right?

• 56:55Russ Frushtick?

  Well, we do for people, but it will be Silk Song. That's right. We are doing Hollow Night Silk Song, a video game, which is actually coming out.

• 57:04Chris Plante?

  I'm not gonna give it to creeps early.

• 57:06Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, we are not getting it early. It would be tomorrow. We're not getting any code. They've the, they're doing a, everyone's equal in Team Cherry's eyes. So, uh,

• 57:18Chris Plante?

  That's beautiful, Team Cherry.

• 57:19Russ Frushtick?

  We're gonna be playing it alongside y'all and I'm very excited about that. So stay tuned for that.

• 57:25Chris Plante?

  Also, if you are a Patreon subscriber, you have so much good stuff right now. You have our Besties Battle Bracket, which we just did, which was awesome. And it's about the best games to play on the toilet in the bathroom. And we also have an episode coming up on Shinobi, The Art of Vengeance, which just ridiculous how many good ninja video games there are in the world right now.

• 57:50Russ Frushtick?

  Yes. I also wanted to thank some people that are patrons over at patreon.com/thebesties. We have Sorin, we have Alex, we have Danielle, and we have Discount Dracula. Thank you for being patrons of the Besties. You mean a lot to us. Uh, we have a big announcement happening next week. I'm not gonna talk about it right now, but it's exciting. And so stay tuned. In addition to the Silk Song, we're gonna toss in some big news on the Patreon front. So stay, stay tuned for that.

• 58:20Russ Frushtick?

  You can end the show now, Justin.

• 58:23Griffin McElroy?

  No, it just sounds, what is it? I'm like, looking forward to it.

• 58:25Russ Frushtick?

  You should be excited.

• 58:27Griffin McElroy?

  Are you playing Who Wants to be a Millionaire right now? Is Regis with you? Is Regis in the room right now? Is Regis with us? That is gonna do it for us this week on The Besties. Be sure to join us again next time for The Besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friend pick the world's best games?