Pod Insights The Besties What Genre Is Kirby Air Riders?! About this episode Most people will tell you Kirby Air Riders is a racing game. But on today’s Besties, one brave soul dares to speak the truth. Plus, Sektori is the best Geometry Wars game since the original. We explain why you should make time for this modern-retro masterpiece in the busiest season of the year.
Transcript 11,453 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Russ Frushtick? Real quick, before we dive into the show itself, I want to do a big call out.
0:04 Griffin McElroy? This isn't the cold open.
0:06 Russ Frushtick? I know.
0:07 Griffin McElroy? No, I know. I want them to know, this isn't the cold open. It's not gonna be funny. There's gonna be funny stuff later, but this is just an announcement.
0:12 Russ Frushtick? You think it's gonna be at the beginning of the show?
0:14 Griffin McElroy? This is a cold, cold open. Don't you think?
0:16 Chris Plante? This isn't a cold open.
0:18 Griffin McElroy? So stop trying to make it what it is.
0:20 Chris Plante? What is happening right now is, it is a frozen.
0:22 Russ Frushtick? Sounds pretty cold. Okay, shut up all you. We have a huge discount going on for Black Friday. It's only gonna be happening for Black Friday through Cyber Monday. We have a big, big discount on our Patreon. It's an 80% discount for both tiers. So if you want to get the $5 tier, it's only $1 for your first month. If you want to get the $10 tier, it's only $2 for your first month. Holy cow, that is a big discount. Uh, yeah, so plant remind me, we should probably put it at the top of the show. So we've done that. Cold open coming at you right now.
0:53 Chris Plante? Oh, and it's a good.
0:55 Griffin McElroy? This, here it comes, and it's a barn burner. I don't remember what we said. It was an hour ago.
1:03 Russ Frushtick? Griffin, I'm disappointed because we were just starting to record.
1:06 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
1:07 Russ Frushtick? Oh, oh, actually, I'm no longer disappointed because right before we recorded, you took the toothpick out of your mouth like it was, you were like a hayseed bumpkin hitching a ride on the side of the road, and you've since decided, no, no, no, let's put that, let's put it back in.
1:24 Griffin McElroy? It's cool, right?
1:25 Russ Frushtick? It is cool.
1:26 Griffin McElroy? I want to get it out there to teens that it's not just vapes.
1:33 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
1:34 Griffin McElroy? There's so many things you can put in there and look cool and have it be kind of like an affectation.
1:39 Russ Frushtick? Sure, sure, sure.
1:40 Griffin McElroy? Like a toothpick, I got out because I ate some leftover turkey from a potluck dinner that my wife went to, which, by the way, sweetest deal ever for me. I did not go to the thing, and yet I got to eat their succulent smoked turkey.
1:54 Russ Frushtick? Truly the luckiest of all.
1:55 Griffin McElroy? The luckiest of all. It got in my teeth a little bit, put the thing in there, the toothpick, and you know what I realized? It's cool to have it in there.
2:03 Russ Frushtick? It is, it is. What else can you put in there?
2:05 Griffin McElroy? Uh, vape, I said that, right?
2:08 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, you said vape.
2:08 Chris Plante? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:09 Griffin McElroy? Uh, so there's vape, there's toothpick, uh, food, obviously one of my favorites, turkey, because I already said I'd put that, uh, juice, and that's it. Juice, juice, food, vape, toothpick, those are the four major food groups. Those are the, yeah.
2:26 Russ Frushtick? What do you think about like a long flower?
2:30 Griffin McElroy? Okay, so if I'm doing a long flower, are we going in sort of cross, like across the mouth? Like, I can't have it sticking-
2:36 Russ Frushtick? Well, across the mouth, I think, is the traditional way to do it, but I don't think it has the panache of just a long dangling flower, like a big sunflower-
2:44 Griffin McElroy? As if it's kind of growing out of your throat. Yeah, no, that's not typically how one does a flower. I mean, it is cool, and it lets people know- Like, when I'm out on the street and I have like a single rose clutched in my teeth, it lets people know what a sort of passionate man I am. It says, "Hey, everybody, I ate a Pikmin." "I ate a Pikmin." I'm- well, no, okay, again, you are still thinking of, "I have taken the flower straight down, right down the barrel." I am still thinking sort of clasped, longwise- More of a romantic, like I bit a Pikmin's head off- A romantic, I'm letting you know, hey, look out, I'm not going to seduce you or anything like that.
3:21 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
3:22 Griffin McElroy? But like, I want you to know that like, I am a romantic man. I aim all that romance at a single person, which is my wife, but I do, I have it to spare. Sorry, do you want to take that one one more time? A vable do that too! My wife, one more time.
3:40 Griffin McElroy? I am not some fucking puppet for you to shove your hand in-
3:44 Russ Frushtick? Amen.
3:45 Griffin McElroy? To make me do whatever joke you want me to do.
3:49 Russ Frushtick? A more.
3:49 Griffin McElroy? Unless you want me to do, if you want me to do Bruno references, I'll do Bruno. I don't do Borat anymore. I don't do Borat, and you know that. So I'm not gonna fucking dance for- I'm not your organ grinder monkey. You put a penny in the slot and I do my little dance. Unless it's Bruno, I'll do Bruno all day.
4:10 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
4:11 Griffin McElroy? This reminds me of a line-
4:12 Russ Frushtick? You can put a toothpick in the slot if you want.
4:14 Griffin McElroy? You can put a tooth- if the penny gets stuck in the slot, sometimes you gotta put a toothpick in there.
4:17 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
4:18 Griffin McElroy? Now I have to get rid of the fucking toothpick, because you made such a big deal. It reminds me of a line from a movie. G-U-R-U-T-M. That's good shit, Ru. I love that shit. Let's get to the show.
4:34 Griffin McElroy? I love when you decide, like, and that's the quote from the love guru, it has to be the button.
4:40 Russ Frushtick? There's not even a question, not even a doubt. Such confidence.
5:03 Griffin McElroy? My name is Griffin McElroy. I know the best game of the week.
5:06 Chris Plante? My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best games of the week.
5:10 Griffin McElroy? My name is Ross Fraschek. I know the best game of the week. Justin Couldn't Play Kirby Air Riders Not Good Enough at Games made him scared. The Warp Star made him scared. He thought King DDD was gonna come out and kill him. So it's just the three of us this week, talking about Kirby Air Riders and some other fun, exciting games that took us by surprise. Games like Sektori, which I'm very excited to talk about as well. But Chris, before we get to that, what is Kirby Air Riders?
5:36 Chris Plante? Kirby Air Riders is a sequel reboot, requal of sorts of the Kirby Air Riders game that came out long, long ago on a little system called the GameCube. You might not remember that old piece of junk, but you will like this new masterpiece from the director of the Super Smash Brothers series.
5:54 Griffin McElroy? That, the things you just said alone, have made me very excited for the conversation that is to follow, which is going to take place right after this quick break.
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7:21 Chris Plante? That is P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P-N.com/besties for 70% off your two-year plan. That's protonvpn.com/besties.
7:37 Griffin McElroy? Important to know, the 2003 original was called Kirby Air Ride.
7:41 Chris Plante? Oh, thank you.
7:42 Griffin McElroy? A very, um, I would say cult classic insofar as I never played it.
7:49 Russ Frushtick? It's so cult.
7:50 Griffin McElroy? It's so cult that I didn't. I didn't play, I had a GameCube, definitely. But there's, there's quite a few like games that I didn't, that I guess I just missed out on. And based on everything I ever saw of Kirby Air Ride, it seemed like that was, I don't know. It made sense for that to be one of them.
8:09 Chris Plante? Do you think it hit at the worst possible time for you age-wise? Like you are like 16, 17 in the GameCube with the Resident Evil stuff over here, right? Comes out and they're like, do you want to play this Kirby game? And you're like, I'm sorry, me not baby.
8:23 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, I, I don't know. I can't remember what games came out in 2003. That was Tony Hawk's Underground, that was Coteur.
8:29 Russ Frushtick? I don't think it was a cool guy thing. I think it was a, we had. Oh, fair. We had Mario Kart and like, do I need another?
8:38 Chris Plante? Kirby was so known to be baby that they had to give him like angry eyes to try to convince you.
8:43 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, I'm not sure that Kirby carried the kind of cultural cachet. Wow, the alliteration is so on point today. Back, back then with me, like, obviously I love this little creep now. A lot of that is because of the heavy lifting he did in Forgotten Land, which is one of my favorite platformers ever.
9:02 Russ Frushtick? Very strong.
9:03 Griffin McElroy? Very, very strong little gentleman. And so that, that was, that's the history of Kirby Air Ride is like, I don't think I'm speaking out of turn in saying it is a cult racing game.
9:16 Chris Plante? Okay.
9:16 Griffin McElroy? For the GameCube.
9:18 Chris Plante? So can I give you my big take of why it's perfect time for it to come out right now?
9:22 Griffin McElroy? Yes, please.
9:23 Chris Plante? Probably not the most original take, which is. The director of this game, Masahiro Sakurai, is now much better known as the director of the Smash Brothers series, the fighting games, right?
9:37 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
9:38 Chris Plante? And has even made this amazing YouTube series about like, how to design games is an icon in the Nintendo world. Not of the Miyamoto status, but just right below it. Is probably the most recognizable living Nintendo game designer other than him.
9:53 Griffin McElroy? The extent to which he plugged into the Smash Brothers world
9:57 Chris Plante? world.
9:58 Griffin McElroy? And sort of really showed his work is, I don't think there's anything quite like it in the history of games, the extent to which he made the process known there.
10:08 Chris Plante? Yes. I think what has happened is this is a fighting game, y'all. This is just a fighting game.
10:15 Griffin McElroy? No.
10:16 Chris Plante? Yes, yes.
10:17 Griffin McElroy? It's not.
10:18 Chris Plante? Let me explain it.
10:19 Russ Frushtick? Okay, we haven't even talked about what this game is.
10:22 Chris Plante? Well, I'm going to.
10:23 Griffin McElroy? He's going to, this is the way we get in.
10:25 Chris Plante? It's called a setup, my friend. It's called, here we go. It looks like a kind of a kart racing game, right? And you're gonna go around a track and you're gonna do various laps and there are enemies that you can collect instead of items and you suck them up Kirby style and you get their powers Kirby style, right? But overall, if you picture Mario Kart with like blocks and you're getting special abilities, it's that. The humongous difference, and where I think that this is very, very similar to fighting games and very similar specifically to Smash Brothers, is the difference in how each vehicle and character controls and how you mash them up is far more significant than it is in the vast majority of racing games where you are tinkering stats.
11:10 Chris Plante? The actual way that you control characters and how they get around the field is wildly, wildly different.
11:18 Russ Frushtick? I agree with that, but that doesn't make it a fucking fighting game.
11:21 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, let's set up what the game is, okay, right? As Plant alluded to, one of the modes is a racing game. I think pretty straightforward, you move forward on a track and you move forward automatically.
11:31 Chris Plante? Why not both?
11:32 Griffin McElroy? Well, it is, there's fighting, you fight while you do it. The big thing about Kirby Air Riders, I would say, from a design standpoint, is that it is a game you play with the stick and one button, and then there's like one extra button that you do one thing with, right? The Y button activates your special ability when you've charged up your special. You use it like once. You use it maybe once or twice a race. And then, I'm pretty sure most of the other buttons are the Kirby Air Riders. It reminds me of those Tiger Electronics games where you would have like, you know, a up and down arrow on one side, and then on the right side, there's a great one for Doug, the Doug Tiger Electronics game,
12:17 Griffin McElroy? where the two buttons on the right side are just called Doug and Faster. So you have the special button, and then you have the Kirby Air Riders button, which does fucking everything else. You break to charge up a boost dash, you suck up enemies with it, you use the skills afforded to you by those enemies with it. You break and reverse with it, it's really. You can get off your cart at times, run around. I think you do that with holding the special button, actually. So that's another instance in which the Y button is used. That is one of the exceptions.
12:51 Chris Plante? They're framing this as a one-button game, even though it's not really one button.
12:54 Griffin McElroy? It's pretty close, pretty close. I think that's the most annoying thing about it for me, is this like adherence to this very unique thing about the original. It's very cool. Obviously, like, the ideas have expanded to a point where they needed to add a second button, so at that point, just go the fuck ahead. There's a spin attack that you can do, and you do that by pushing the left, the stick to the sides real quick, and it feels pretty bad every time you do it. It doesn't feel great to be.
13:25 Chris Plante? It's weak controller ass stuff.
13:26 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, it's like you're steering and you want me to fucking, real quick, do this little flick, because it's like the best way to smash open the ability blocks that you might come across while playing City Trial mode or whatever. Let me put that on a fucking button, that's crazy. There's 16 other buttons you're not using, y'all. There's a million other buttons, let me use a fucking button, dude. Um.
13:43 Russ Frushtick? I think there's a lot of people coming at this, though, that are like, fucking Mario Kart just came out three months ago, whatever it was. Why are we seeing another effectively kart racer? So I think there's, it's a kart racer slash fighting game, but 90% kart racer.
14:01 Russ Frushtick? It does feel, I wouldn't say completely different, I would say like significantly different from Mario Kart. The idea that you're constantly braking to gain boost and then boosting.
14:13 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
14:14 Russ Frushtick? And it has the pace of like an F0 or something like that. It feels much faster than anything I've ever seen in Mario Kart.
14:21 Griffin McElroy? Yes, this, this brake boost maneuver is basically, I think, the, the, the most common use case will be sharp turns, right? It is a drift that you do and you get to, you get a nice boost of speed.
14:32 Russ Frushtick? And obviously there is a drift in Mario Kart.
14:33 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, of course. It's, it's, but it's a completely different feeling drift. In so far as like in this game, you really slow down a lot going around those curves. Because, you know, the, the drift in Mario Kart, it just feels like completely different. This, this idea of dashing and smashing into stuff is a kind of like tactile action that I think does set Kirby air riders apart, especially because like we've only talked about the, you know, air ride mode, which is the sort of standard road. There's a weird top down mode that feels, I don't know, maybe it's a beloved feature of the game from the original, but feels like a bit of an afterthought.
15:11 Russ Frushtick? Before we get into the other modes, I do want to mention one other big significant difference that we haven't talked about. Is to gain boost meter or whatever, speed, to gain speed as you're racing, there are multiple ways to do it. We mentioned the like drift, brake, and then get a boost of speed. The other way, which I think is very significant, is to attack enemies and deal damage to enemies using the items that you pick up as you go. So what it ends up feeling is like closer to like a burnout almost, where you are really trying to like fuck up the waddle D's that are making their way across this course and the various other people that you're racing against. And that's really the only way you're going to gain on people is by like really fucking up people.
15:50 Griffin McElroy? Yes.
15:51 Russ Frushtick? Otherwise in Mario. Kart like realistically, it's mostly you use it as a way to like act as a nuisance to other people, but it's not going to help your speed.
15:59 Griffin McElroy? This is a, this is, I think the main offender of the single button scheme for me is the fact that the boost brake slide button is the same button as suck up and attack enemies.
16:11 Griffin McElroy? So it becomes all of a sudden a sort of context sensitive thing where if you press the brake boost button and you're close enough to an enemy, you will suck them up and then you can launch them or absorb their power. But if you hit it when you're not close enough to an enemy, you bring yourself to a complete stop. Like it just, it just seems so wild to me that they wouldn't just make that a separate, make that a separate input. But um, yes, I do agree that that sets it apart and it does make it unique. And it, when it works, it feels like really good to get like a good line of chugging between enemies and building up speed and going fast and all that. Like it is, it is generally pretty thrilling.
16:48 Chris Plante? I, I'm so torn on the button thing and my instinct is just say they should let you remap and do whatever you want. That's that. I also do think that the longer you play, the more you start to have the feel for it. And it is, it's just, it's a very different thing than any of the kart racing games. Some might say it's closer to like a combat type of game. I'm trying to think of the genre. The, I want, I do want to talk about the drifting though, and like how it's different between each characters. Cause I think that's, that, that's why.
17:22 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, it's pretty significant.
17:24 Chris Plante? Well, that's why the single button thing can work because you can have a character where, okay, you drift and it feels like, yes, like you're in a burnout game or an outrun game. You can have a character where you basically 90 degree angle on a, on the dime.
17:38 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, like there's no, there's, you get instant friction basically.
17:41 Chris Plante? Yeah. Yeah. You could have one where it's a really slow, but you have a powerful charge. You could have one that has no charge, but it raises all your stats. And that is. I think the appeal of the game is finding the machine for you. I think what is weird, I think it's like one of the best kids games and that a kid's gonna tinker with that and find that feel. I think adults are more likely to bounce off this game because that's so antithetical to what we're used to, that you, you have to unlock the thing that might actually be how you like to play this game.
18:16 Griffin McElroy? I do like that, by the way, I do, there's a ton of fucking stuff to unlock in this game and it is distributed in a very Smash Bros. manner. This game looks so much like Smash Bros., it's fucking crazy. And sounds, and it sounds so much like it. They brought the guy back. Yeah.
18:30 Chris Plante? I love it. You're like, turn the game on and it's like, achievement unlocked, you downloaded Kirby.
18:36 Griffin McElroy? And it plays that bubba sound. Yeah, it's, it really is, it makes it self-known very, very clearly. I, I, I will say sort of anecdotally, uh, this game has not been a hit with Henry, who is a huge Kirby fan, uh, because he, first of all, there's like a lot of tutorialization, which is tough for him to hang with, uh, but it's kind of necessary because the control scheme is so, uh, weird. Uh, he likes the very Smash Bros-y, like extremely dramatic anime Kirby story that is happening and likes seeing all the characters and is excited about all the unlocks, but it has very much been
19:17 Griffin McElroy? a game that he wants me to play while he watches, which is still fun, which is still like a, a, a cool way to do it, but it doesn't, uh, I don't know, it hasn't been the can't put it down sort of experience that other Kirby projects, uh, have been.
19:33 Chris Plante? A recommendation to, to the grownups, I can't speak for the kids here. When you load this game, if you've never played any of these games, it will want you to go to the tutorial, do that, don't play any of it, just look at the menu and it will tell you everything that you are gonna learn in these tutorials. The tutorials are so slow and they are literally turn left, turn right. You will get a feel for the game the sooner you hop into the game, having just read those tutorials.
20:00 Griffin McElroy? I think that's good advice, yeah.
20:01 Russ Frushtick? Doing the tutorials reminded me when I was doing admin work where my company forced me to like, fill in the like IT security questions of like, should you give your USB to someone? And there's like a slow meter of the video playing.
20:15 Griffin McElroy? There's also no amount of tutorialization, I think, that can really prepare you for what a Kirby Air Riders Race is like, as evidenced by the fact that the final chapter of the tutorial is now do this little practice race. And it took us like fucking four tries to actually do it, because it's insane. It's so weird to loop all of these different ideas together. It is so unlike any other racing game. And once it does click, it does feel cool, like it does feel good. And I feel like there's a lot of depth that I am more interested in learning about than I am in like a Mario Kart World, which I picked up, played a little bit, and never touched it again after we talked about it.
20:54 Chris Plante? So I just, one, one final thing I want to throw in here. It's absurdly beautiful if you are into chaotic, curvy aesthetic. The second level of this game is a like pirate shipwreck in the ocean, but the water has been split and is going in every direction. Gravity is being busted. And you discover that if you, you like are piping through this huge split, you know, splitting of the seas, and you can go into the water, they're not hard walls. And that moment was, for me, that's when like the game just immediately clicked for me. I was like, I'm gonna love this shit.
21:32 Chris Plante? Pure vibes.
21:33 Russ Frushtick? It is also notable because it is probably the only racing game I've played in recent memory that has like a pretty significant single player mode.
21:41 Griffin McElroy? Yes, so that's what I wanted to talk about, is there's, there's kind of two other modes that we haven't talked about yet. The first is City Trial, which was a beloved mode from the original and is so inscrutable. Thing in the game because it is five minutes on this open world map. You're racing around, you're picking up other cars, you're doing little challenges, you're picking up power ups for your vehicle. And then once the five minutes are over, you do like. Like a challenge.
22:05 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
22:06 Griffin McElroy? And the challenge lasts sometimes for like 30 seconds and then that's the end of the match, of the whole match. It's like a weird, uh, I, I think you have to be very, very, very into how, how the game feels and works so that like all the work you're doing in the let's build up my car and make it super strong or, or, uh, air, air rider, like to make that land. But the road trip mode, I do think is really great. And that's the thing that I've been enjoying the most.
22:32 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, I played a lot of it as well.
22:33 Griffin McElroy? Story mode, um, you're constantly going down this, uh, track, moving from event to event, but you get to kind of like choose which event you're going to do next. Like three different ones will be coming at you down a track. You get to pick the one you want to do and it'll give you a certain reward. Uh, it'll be either a race or like a drag race right down a straight track or a mini game where you have to, uh,
22:55 Russ Frushtick? Like a monkey target variant.
22:57 Griffin McElroy? Fly through these different gates and those are just short form enough and constantly unlocking shit that it is, that is the right cycle for me of like dope. And it's also great, like, because Henry only wants to watch me play it. So he gets to see all the story stuff and gets all the unlockable characters and all that stuff like that. I think that mode's really, really great and kind of my favorite way to engage with Kirby here.
23:21 Russ Frushtick? It crushes me that Mario Kart world doesn't have anything even close to the like depth and breadth of it. Like if I was unlocking like customization items and characters and stuff like that in Mario Kart world in a format like this, where it's just a like a bunch of mini challenges, I would have been so fucking all over it.
23:38 Griffin McElroy? Yep.
23:38 Russ Frushtick? And it just feels like all of, I mean, whether it was a time limitation or whatever the decision was, it just feels like all of the effort, uh, wasn't put there and, and it was put in this case. I will say, when I'm doing that mode and, and in general regarding
23:54 Griffin McElroy? The road trip, road trip mode?
23:55 Russ Frushtick? When I'm doing road trip mode and in general on the, for this entire game, when I'm presented with races or maybe like fun, like drag race modes, where anything that's like, feels like racing, I'm pretty into it.
24:06 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
24:07 Russ Frushtick? The second they drop me into an open world area, and open world being like, these are small areas, but like the third person, you Can go in any direction you want. I think the game is not for me fun. I don't like doing that. It makes me feel like I'm not in control. I don't feel like it has the tight precision controls that the racing stuff does. It feels shoehorned, which is ironic because I know the original game also had the city trial. So that's not new stuff. I just, every time it comes up, I'm like, I'm not enjoying this nearly as much as I am the racing, which is fun.
24:39 Griffin McElroy? It is similar conceptually to the fact that like Mario Kart has the battle mode, right?
24:45 Russ Frushtick? Sure.
24:46 Griffin McElroy? But it is much more about battling AI controlled bosses or enemies or whatever. And I don't, I agree with you that the like control scheme is not quite what I want it to be.
25:01 Russ Frushtick? Battle mode was always cloistered into its own like side thing that people barely touch. So it's not like that's weird for this. Like it's, I'm sure there are fans of it and I'm sure there are fans of this mode as well. It just did not click for me at all.
25:14 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, it's, it's the, it's, yeah. I, it's not my favorite. I feel the same way. If there's a race, I always go for the race when, when that is afforded to me. But, but then the bosses are pretty mandatory at certain, at certain points. So you do kind of gotta figure out how to, you know, work around it. And I think unlocking different characters also will help more with this because there's like, Meta Knight has like a three hit sword attack that is completely different from Kirby's like inhaling and launching something forward like.
25:44 Russ Frushtick? Can you play as other characters in the road trip mode? I was not able to figure out how to do that.
25:49 Griffin McElroy? Just, yeah, no, I'm pretty sure you just switch them out before you get, get going, before you get started.
25:53 Russ Frushtick? Change my car, but maybe I'm playing, playing where, where do you, where, where is your head at in terms of the like open world versus racing dynamic? Or you're just like completely over the limit.
26:03 Chris Plante? Yeah, I don't have like a religion on it, mostly because I, I feel like I'm so early in the overall experience. Not in terms of like, oh, I didn't play enough, but like this feels like a game of like, you play this for a very, very, very long time and then you kind of like fall into its vibe. That said, where I'm at right now, I much rather be racing than doing any of the other stuff. It feels. Oh, well, you know what? This is actually a segue to the game that we're gonna talk about in a second, which is Sektory. But it feels like a game full of modes, like they just kept making things. And some of them are good, and some of them are bad, and some of them will have their hardcore fans, and some of them will have their hardcore haters.
26:49 Chris Plante? And I'm not sure it would have benefited, I'm not sure it would have benefited the game for all of that energy to have just gone into the racing. I think that would have been diminishing returns at a certain point, just have more and more courses or something, Mario Kart style. But yeah, I guess it's the second game this year, racing game this year from Nintendo where there's a lot of filler that I don't necessarily need.
27:15 Griffin McElroy? You can change, you can change your character in the Road Trip movie.
27:18 Russ Frushtick? Oh, great, cuz I wanted to play as the fucking hamster so bad and I just couldn't figure out.
27:21 Griffin McElroy? Everyone loves the fucking hamster, man.
27:23 Russ Frushtick? I do wanna mention, you're talking about filler, there is one aspect of filler that I think a lot of people will miss cuz it's fucking really buried in the menus. But for every air rider, which are the cars, you can customize them in really awesome ways.
27:38 Griffin McElroy? I love that shit.
27:39 Russ Frushtick? You can change the texture on them, you could slap fucking lights on them, dangling things, all sorts of aspects, the color that comes out of the back of it, like the whole range.
27:48 Griffin McElroy? The texture of each of the different components, you can really, really chop and chew it.
27:52 Chris Plante? And you can share them online very easily and download other people's. There's like, there's a square cube, a cube if you will, that you, maybe a game cube that you can race on from the very beginning, and like, there's already plenty of game cube, you know, all on there.
28:09 Russ Frushtick? Steam Machine.
28:10 Chris Plante? I think that might honestly already exist, I've seen Xbox and Playstation game cubes too.
28:15 Russ Frushtick? I'm sure it does.
28:16 Griffin McElroy? I am, I am always very, very charmed by games that are so clearly a labor of love. And like, certainly all games have that to an extent because you, they have to be in order to get, a game is so fucking hard to make, to get a game across the finish line, there have to be people working on it who care about it a lot, but this feels like. Like such a and aided by the fact that Sakurai is the best in the biz at sort of communicating with niche fans of his shit. It is such a labor of love. There is so much about it that seems like it is being held up in front of people who have fond memories of the original Kirby Air Ride saying like,
28:58 Griffin McElroy? "Hey, we made this for you." And I think that's rad. I think parts of it are not anything I enjoy at all. I think there's enough there that I do really like that I will keep it, you know, and keep that virtual game card installed and pick it up and play it every once in a while. And I am curious to see like what other unlockables. And I gotta finish that story, guys. Holy shit.
29:19 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, it's really, who knows where it's gonna go.
29:22 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
29:23 Russ Frushtick? Just to close out this segment, I want to talk about one other fighting game that I really like, which is Microsoft Fight Simulator. It really dramatically changes based on which plane you're flying and basically, I mean.
29:35 Griffin McElroy? Just like a fighting game, sure.
29:36 Russ Frushtick? Just like a fighting.
29:37 Griffin McElroy? Salient points made all around today. All the points we made today were equally good.
29:41 Russ Frushtick? I think so.
29:42 Griffin McElroy? And I think we should take a break and talk about other games.
29:48 Griffin McElroy? The face Chris is making.
29:50 Russ Frushtick? Such a grumpy face from Chris.
29:52 Griffin McElroy? Not called Microsoft Fight Simulator. I know why you're confused, Russ.
29:58 Russ 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,
30:39 Russ Frushtick? I am incredibly jealous of his mattress because holy cow, that thing is incredibly comfortable. Lisa was awarded the best hybrid and best memory. Foam mattress by New York Times 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.
31:20 Russ Frushtick? Okay, the next game we're going to talk about is a game that I don't think any of us knew existed as of two weeks ago. Did you know Chris Plant before two weeks ago that this game existed or was coming?
31:30 Chris Plante? No, I can pretend. No, of course not.
31:34 Griffin McElroy? So brutal to do that at the end of November to drop a fucking
31:38 Chris Plante? That's everything. Do you know how many games?
31:41 Griffin McElroy? Like, I know, I know, I know. But to have a surprise this, this late in the game.
31:46 Chris Plante? I know, man. I know.
31:48 Griffin McElroy? It's really, really wild. Uh, it's Sektori.
31:50 Russ Frushtick? Sektori. So.
31:52 Griffin McElroy? S E K T O R I.
31:55 Russ Frushtick? Can't, can't say the branding is super great. The logo is basically illegible. Uh, so a little hard to find on Steam, but if you do, you're in for a fucking treat. Sektori, in my opinion, is the best Geometry Wars like I have played since the original Geometry Wars. I guess Retro Evolved, not the side mode, Retro Evolved. Uh, it is fucking fantastic and detail and has just so much content in it and ways to approach it. And so if, if any of that is appealing to you, an arcade twin stick shooter.
32:27 Chris Plante? Very basic how, how that works. Geometry Wars, which is Sektori, they are more or less the same in a lot of ways. Uh, you are the little ship on a 2D plane and you are inside a closed arena. It's not infinite and it is relatively tight. It's not like Vampire Survivors and you have enemies that are flying at you and the different types have different strategies. So you have some that just kind of float around randomly. You have some that will try to get close to you, but then when you aim at them, they will try to evade and back away.
32:57 Griffin McElroy? Pink squares.
32:57 Chris Plante? Each one has a different movement. Where this game just expands so much on the Geometry Wars formula is.
33:08 Chris Plante? Everything is moving at all times, even the arena. So you are, imagine you're in a square arena and then suddenly you see the outline of a triangle and everything outside of that triangle is glowing red. The arena is about to shapeshift into that triangle and if you're out of it, you are gone. The arena might shapeshift into four separate circles. So you want to get in one of those and you're going to be trapped in that circle with whatever is in that circle until it's your chance to get out.
33:37 Griffin McElroy? All of this, all of this is happening at, all of this is happening as it walks you toward a boss fight at the end of that world. Uh, as this is also kind of a campaign, there is a campaign that is sort of happening.
33:54 Russ Frushtick? Almost a rogue, like, uh, I don't want to use rogue-like necessarily, but, but RPG mechanics that build to boss fights.
34:01 Griffin McElroy? I'll say rogue-like mechanics insofar as you will, at a certain point, unlock ability cards. And you can change, you have like eight stacks of ability cards that you can select before you enter the, the, you know, the, the campaign. And as you hit these like unlock points, you can, uh, spawn those cards into your like drawing deck and then they will give you abilities like this is a bomb drone that will like shoot stuff. So like, I, I do think it wears its rogue-like kind of nature on its sleeve.
34:35 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, there's also, um, uh, another character customization aspect where as you're playing, you'll pick up these pickups that give you a point, an upgrade point, if you will, and you can spend that upgrade point very quickly on the first tier, which is just speed. It'll increase your ship's speed. But if you collect more of them, you can get higher tier upgrades like your blaster or you'll get rocket attacks, things like that, that let you, again, fully enhance and control how your character evolves over time. And those all play, play directly back into the card system, which again is like, oh, you're building a deck around charging around the map, then you're going to want to bring a lot of those cards.
35:12 Griffin McElroy? There's, there's one more piece of the puzzle that I think really makes this game what it is. And it is, it is what sets it apart enough from Geometry Wars that it feels like its own, aside from all the rogue-like shit and the upgrade points and like all that jazz, which is like not progressive. When you die, it's all gone. It's not like you're getting some sort of permanent upgrade cycle. The one other thing is there is a, a strike maneuver that you do. And once you use it, it has to charge back up, but you basically dash a short distance and cause an explosion that kills all the enemies around you. Geometry Wars is very much a game about, uh, like mob management. Like you can't let too many enemies get on the screen at once. You have to always be shredding through them
35:55 Griffin McElroy? because if they outnumber you too, too much, then they will kill you. The, the spawn rate is insane in Sectory and you will have to use this, this strike to manage things. It is the thing where it's like, fuck, there's way too many dudes right over there. I gotta strike into it. But if you strike into a power up that is spawned, it instantly recharges your strike. So now all of a sudden you're deciding like, okay, there's a power up down there. If I get it, it's gonna give me one of these power up cards. It'll give me something sweet bonus that's gonna be like really exciting. I have my strike ready. Can I get through all of those dudes to get down and strike that power up so I can instantly have my strike recharge? Or am I going to have to spend that strike to clear out some of the enemies?
36:37 Griffin McElroy? And make a, and you are having to make that little micro decision fucking constantly.
36:42 Chris Plante? While the literal world around you is changing, while a dozen characters are spawning in, while a boss fight is on the precipice.
36:50 Griffin McElroy? Yeah. It's super duper, uh, it is super duper chaotic, but I do think it still has the benefit that Geometry Wars had going for it, which is that it is like, easy enough to kind of understand what happened, right? When you get blown up, it's like, yeah, I let too many, I let too many guys get in there. The boss fights get a little too like confusing, I think, from time to time where it's like, what the fuck was I supposed to do? How was I possibly supposed to, to deal with that? There's one that every time it spawns in, I'm like, well, okay, that's the run, cause I just simply don't know how to fucking beat this guy.
37:26 Chris Plante? Yeah.
37:26 Griffin McElroy? Uh, but for the most part, it's like, if you blow up, you kinda know what happened and what you could have done differently. And maybe you invested your upgrade points. You, you charged them all up for your blasters, but then you got to that boss fight and your ship wasn't fast enough. So you, you blew up for that reason.
37:40 Chris Plante? So all of that would be enough. And yet, they said, what if we give you many, many more modes? Each of them also excellent and each of them unique. And that's the part where it blows my brain wide open. I mean, fresh, you want to dive into one or two of them?
37:58 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, sure. So for the people that love Geometry Wars and are maybe a little bit stressed out at the prospect of picking perks and stats and whatever it is, there is a mode that is pretty much Geometry Wars, where it'll just constantly auto upgrade you as you play. So you're really just score chasing, but you don't have to worry about upgrading anything. So if you want a very simple mode like that, that's in there. Retro Geometry Wars fans might remember a mode called Gates, where you had to fly through a gate and they would keep spawning in and spawning in. And that was the only way to like deal damage to the area. That's in there. Let's see, there's a boss rush mode.
38:35 Griffin McElroy? There's a crash mode where you just use the, the, the strike attack. And it, I think you can use it like multiple times in a row.
38:42 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
38:44 Chris Plante? My favorite mode is like oops all offense. I can't remember what it's called, but you build up.
38:50 Griffin McElroy? Uh, surge.
38:50 Chris Plante? You're very strong. Yes, you're very strong. But then when you collect enough of your XP from killing things, you become like Super Saiyan, right?
38:58 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
38:59 Chris Plante? And the whole point is that you need to basically, at a certain point, be constantly in Super Saiyan, which means you should always be pursuing the biggest, baddest enemies, diving headfirst into them and then sprinting to the next power up and always landing that, that boost move that, that Griffin's talking about.
39:19 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
39:19 Chris Plante? It is so.
39:21 Griffin McElroy? It fucking rules, guys. It's fucking great. The music is, just slaps ass and it really, uh, it is the type of game I would advise you not to play too late at night because it really will fuck you. Like it really will get you, get you fucking psyched out of your mind in this like trance like state where you will lose track of time and you will stay awake too long and then you will get in bed and you will have that thump, thump, thump, still just like fucking pumping in your ears as you try to fall asleep. It is, it is not a good game for that.
39:50 Chris Plante? And the runs, if even if you do the short modes, because you can get 20, 30 minutes in the long run, but if you do the short modes, it's somehow more dangerous because it's like two and a half minutes and you're like, ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then suddenly you don't realize that you've played 30 of these things and that's an hour.
40:05 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, there's a fun metal system where you're trying to like, uh, complete achievements and those in turn unlock like customizations for your ship.
40:12 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
40:13 Russ Frushtick? There are mutators, so if you want to play with like less enemy health or more enemy health or all sorts of variables. I think there's like 50 different mutators you can attach. They just dove so fucking deep into this concept and just kept going and going and going.
40:29 Chris Plante? Did we mention who made the game?
40:31 Griffin McElroy? It's Housemark devs, right?
40:33 Chris Plante? It's a former Housemark dev, maybe. I don't know if it's multiple. Um, but yes, Housemark for, for people who remember Reso Gun, which we talked about, I think, very early, like maybe the first season of The Besties.
40:48 Griffin McElroy? This is a PS4 launch title, right?
40:50 Chris Plante? Correct. Yes. This is a studio that for a long time, this is what they were known for. Games like Super Stardust, uh, Reso, Reso Gun. And then more recently, they have transitioned into, I would say, more traditional games like Returnal, third person shooters, stuff like that. But this feels like the continuation of Housemark.
41:12 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
41:12 Chris Plante? In the best possible way.
41:13 Griffin McElroy? Chemo Factor is the developer listed who made Barbarian, the bear-based hack and slash, uh, game.
41:22 Chris Plante? Yeah.
41:23 Griffin McElroy? Which I do remember. That's a fun one. Um, I do want to say it is really fucking hard. It's really super duper hard and you unlock a lot of the cool stuff through the campaign mode, which even the easy mode is pretty fucking hard. And it is a game that, uh, I don't know, you, you, I, you know what's funny, guys, is I feel like there's a lot of parallels between this discussion and the discussion we just had about Kirby Air Riders. Because it's the same way where it's like, there's a rhythm to it and you have to play enough times to kind of like understand the rhythm to it. And once you do understand it, you kind of see through the matrix and that's like really, really, uh, very exciting.
42:04 Griffin McElroy? I think there's just so much familiar here with all of the like, I mean, some of the, and I'm pretty sure that pink square motherfucker that like dodges out of the way when you aim at him is the same color and shape and behavior as one of the enemies from Geometry Wars. Like it's, it's, uh, it will take you back into that, that trance-like state very, very easily. But there's just, and there's a lot of stuff to do here and it's all. Really, really very fun.
42:33 Chris Plante? Yes, I agree with all that. The only thing that I will tweak on difficulty is there are games that are hard and you're not going to enjoy them for a long time until you get good. Where this game is, it's difficult to reach the end, you will be having fun from the drop. It is not about getting to the end of the level for you to like have enjoyment of this game.
42:58 Griffin McElroy? No, but there are some fun things you unlock by getting the medals, which
43:02 Chris Plante? Okay, yeah.
43:03 Griffin McElroy? Like there, I found myself when I started a little bit frustrated that I couldn't just like do the different modes that I wanted to do because I haven't unlocked enough medals because I can't beat that fucking one boss that sometimes spawn in.
43:15 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, I kind of wish that there was like a half step more of a baby mode so that people could see more of the game earlier rather than having to like, like normal mode feels fucking legit. And I'm sure once you've played 20 hours, normal mode will feel easy and then you're up to a higher mode than that.
43:34 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
43:35 Russ Frushtick? But I do think that people might bounce off a bit based on the difficulty at the jump.
43:41 Griffin McElroy? If you are willing to, if it sounds like something you want to play, right? Like I actually would suggest playing the campaign at the normal difficulty and bash your head out against it for a while and then switch to the easier difficulty. And it's like Luke Skywalker running around with Yoda on his back and then, or Goku taking off the ankle weights and
44:03 Russ Frushtick? I don't think I, I ever tried anything higher than the lowest possible difficulty.
44:07 Griffin McElroy? Yes, it actually, I think when it's like tutorializing, it starts you on experience mode, which is the, the lowest difficulty setting. And then there's like the standard one that is like how sectores intended to be played. And it's like, not how I intend to play sectory because it's beaten my ass down, man.
44:23 Chris Plante? And also you should hold off from that mode outside of the training that Griffin is talking about because if you are a score chasing person, the game has not been balanced for that. So you're actually not rewarded for playing the more hardcore mode if you're trying to like climb. Leaderboard, you're gonna find it much faster.
44:42 Griffin McElroy? But if you are a sicko, if you're a sicko like that, you can spend your upgrade points on score points, which is like, I don't know, a pretty huge flex. I don't need to be faster or have my guns work better, give myself extra shields or missiles. I just want the points, baby.
44:58 Russ Frushtick? I was wondering whether that upgrade increased the frequency you're getting other upgrade.
45:02 Griffin McElroy? I've never gotten it. So maybe it just seems like something for
45:08 Russ Frushtick? It did seem pretty.
45:09 Griffin McElroy? People who are better at the game. I wish I, this is one that I keep playing because I want to get better at it. And that's cool. That doesn't happen to me with a lot of games. So yeah, Sektori is a, damn, a real late, late game dark horse.
45:22 Russ Frushtick? Genuinely, I haven't for sure put it in my top five, but it is a genuine competitor.
45:28 Griffin McElroy? I'm definitely gonna update my top 10 list for sure. I don't know how else it ranks above that.
45:35 Chris Plante? Yeah, I'm really, I'm not saying that this is a recency bias game because I agree with that statement, but the sheer number of games that are coming in at the wire that could make a play for the top 10 is.
45:47 Griffin McElroy? Yeah. Can I read this reader mail from SNES Chalmers who said, I'm surprised no one mentioned Metroid Prime 4 for the list of games still yet to come out that could potentially be contenders for some Cody list? Did it slip everyone's mind or are you just not really excited for it? I am excited for it. I have never finished a Metroid Prime game. It's not my favorite way to play Metroid. But you know, I play all of them and I think they're solid games. I am excited for this one. I just don't, it's coming in so late in the year. I don't, I don't know how to.
46:16 Chris Plante? Be in real with you. I was so certain that game would get delayed at least one more time that I had fully written it out of my brain as a game that is coming out this year.
46:25 Russ Frushtick? It's very late. It's very late.
46:27 Chris Plante? It's very late.
46:27 Russ Frushtick? I'm super duper.
46:30 Griffin McElroy? This may be an Indiana Jones situation where we have to consider it for contention in 2026's deliberations because I don't know, we haven't scheduled out our recordings for the rest of the year, but this game's out December 4th. So.
46:43 Russ Frushtick? I think we will have time to include it for, at least for contention. I think we will have time.
46:49 Griffin McElroy? Probably not to finish it. I don't know.
46:51 Russ Frushtick? I will say, but I mean realistically, we're not gonna finish every game we put up anyway.
46:56 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, sure.
46:56 Russ Frushtick? Finish a bunch of them, but I think it will be something to keep an eye out for. Obviously, we have no idea from a quality standpoint, is it gonna be neck and neck with some of the other games we've talked about? We don't know, but I do like Metroid and I do want more of it.
47:09 Griffin McElroy? Absolutely.
47:10 Russ Frushtick? Um, a letter from Eric here, uh, where'd you get the idea that Expedition 33 is a persona? Persona length 70 hour affair. I beat it in under 40 and I'm very slow with games and I played it on hard. Uh, how to, how long to beat has it under 30? Which is honestly, this is only making me more excited to play more of it.
47:29 Griffin McElroy? Sure, sure, sure.
47:31 Russ Frushtick? Um, it's Griffin, you beat it, right?
47:33 Griffin McElroy? I did. I logged, uh, 51 hours into it.
47:37 Russ Frushtick? You just bad? Is that what's going on?
47:39 Griffin McElroy? I did everything. I, I really, uh, I really wanted to do all of this stuff because I was, uh, but I also hit a point with it where my, I don't know, I had grinded my characters out to be these like demigods. And so the challenge wasn't necessarily there so much for me, but there's like a lot of different little odds and ends you can go do. And the story kind of like takes some, uh, pretty dramatic twists in the like final act of the game. That I feel like you can really only get all of the context for if you go and you do the additional stuff. Um, and so like in doing all that stuff, I, I played it over 50 hours. So yeah, it's not, I mean, it's not persona length, but like,
48:19 Griffin McElroy? uh, that is, I still think a pretty significant amount of time to invest in a, in a, you know, in a game.
48:26 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
48:26 Griffin McElroy? Um, but it is, I will grant you that if you don't want to do all that shit. Uh, and you do want to play it at a, at a, you know, lower difficulty especially, you can, you can.
48:35 Russ Frushtick? That's me.
48:36 Griffin McElroy? You can definitely blaze through it pretty, pretty quickly.
48:39 Chris Plante? While we're on this, I know we did some expectation setting last week. I want to do a little bit more here for Expedition 33, which is, I think whatever game wins game of the year this year, there will probably be one person who did not love it. I think that's like basically bound to happen.
48:56 Russ Frushtick? Yeah.
48:56 Chris Plante? So I would prepare for that, whether that's Expedition 33 or any other game, because I can say right now, not super into it. Didn't like the story.
49:05 Griffin McElroy? You have played in and have not been grooving on it.
49:07 Chris Plante? Yeah, I mean, I was very, I think I was the first person to bring it to the show and I was vibing with it at the very beginning. But ultimately, I'm just not a big Paper Mario fan. Sorry, that is like what it's like. The core mechanic is like going after. And, and the story ultimately did not click for me. I completely get why it clicks for other people. It wasn't really like what I was searching for. It's a game about grief and I think games about, I think any fiction about grief, it's like gonna either click with you or it's really not going to. But I also don't think that rules it out at all for the Gotti this year because I don't think that there is a consensus game.
49:45 Griffin McElroy? It's actually Pip, Pip Y Mario. And yes, I agree, I agree with you. I think the ending and sort of like, I don't know, twist is like, not exactly the word I would use, but like where the story goes, I think has been pretty divisive. And I, I really loved it because I sometimes like a very kind of like, I don't know, philosophical sort of thing.
50:10 Russ Frushtick? You like a big swing.
50:12 Griffin McElroy? I like a big swing. I do. I do like a big swing in a story and I also like people kind of like debating. There's been so much debate about the ending and not in a like Mass Effect 3, like this was shit kind of way. But like, you know, people talking about like, which one do you think is the true, what do you think is the real thing? I don't know. I find that stuff really, really interesting.
50:33 Chris Plante? A thing like this, it matters when it hits you because I don't think Nier Automata is so unlike this in some ways. And I think it hit me at exactly when I needed it and that's just the nature of games that take big swings like these.
50:47 Griffin McElroy? Yeah.
50:48 Chris Plante? But I'm so excited for that conversation.
50:50 Griffin McElroy? Um, hey, have you guys been playing anything else, doing anything else?
50:54 Chris Plante? Dude, dude, I think we'll talk about this more on Rusty's, but I, I need you all to play News Tower. I desperately need you all to play News Tower. This game is so, so good. Okay, so News Tower, it is a management, Sam, where you are managing a newspaper in like the 1930s in New York. And you have to build it up while also building up the tower. And it is everything, like you are building up the floors, you are buying the desks, you are putting vents in there so people are comfortable. You're assigning out all the stories. You have like a telegram that is letting you know that like, oh, there was a boxer passed away in the
51:39 Chris Plante? rural Midwest. Is that worth covering? Or do you want to cover these questions about the stock market in New York? Do you want to stay local? You move out through all the different points of New York and New Jersey's neighborhoods. It is so expansive and also genuinely the closest a video game has ever gotten to what it feels like to actually manage a newsroom. Like very, very much like, are you going to choose this story or that story? Here are like the, the, what the goods and the bads of choosing each. Are you going to choose something that's going to get you a lot of readers, but makes you feel gross? Are you going to publish an unfinished story or a story that needed more sources? Like it goes so deep while then also being like,
52:23 Chris Plante? hey, have you, uh, have you remembered to hire a janitor? Because like someone just took a dump in the, in the closet because you didn't build a bathroom.
52:32 Griffin McElroy? I love the look of it. It's, uh, it's somewhat, uh, I don't know, it's somewhat like Fallout Shelter, except everything kind of looks like sort of sticker paper, like everything you're putting down.
52:44 Chris Plante? The games they've made. And the music is that very, um, uh, I don't know if you ever watched Fantasia 2000, but they have, uh, what is the?
52:54 Chris Plante? Famous, it's just like beautiful, classic New York piano music.
52:59 Russ Frushtick? Venga Bus.
53:00 Chris Plante? Yeah, that was the one that I was looking for. Thank you. It's, it is so, so unbelievably good. A Rabbit City in Blue is the name of the song that I was looking for. But yeah, I, I really hope that you will take a moment, check it out. Also, and this might get you on board for a stick. It runs perfectly fine on a Mac laptop. So it's a game.
53:23 Russ Frushtick? But you do, but it probably doesn't have controller support, would be my guess.
53:27 Chris Plante? No, you're gonna wanna play this with a mouse. You'll definitely wanna play it with a mouse.
53:30 Russ Frushtick? But that is enticing that it runs well on a MacBook Air, because you know, there aren't enough games necessarily that can push the hardware in that way.
53:43 Griffin McElroy? I don't know that I have anything necessarily new. I've been playing a lot more Hades 2 on the, on the AY and Thor, which feels, does that feel appropriate? No, those are different mythologies.
53:56 Russ Frushtick? Thor is, Thor is a different guy.
53:57 Griffin McElroy? Thor is a different guy. It's, it's, I mean, it's pretty fucking great. I still haven't like finished it. I've like finished the routes, but haven't kind of finished the, the meta narrative, I guess. But there's so much shit to, I have, I am so deeply in the new stuff now. And it's, I, I am glad that I burrowed through kind of the shit I was familiar with. Because like, it's, it's definitely got its hooks in me and definitely wormed its way up my list. And just Rachel and I are on the finale of Physical Asia, which I know I've also talked about on this program, but really, really, really beats ass. Really fucking cool challenges.
54:41 Griffin McElroy? Great like camaraderie and kind of spirit of competition between like the eight different nations represented. And I don't know, I love, man, I don't really, aside from, you know, St. Louis Blues hockey, we watch every game of that. And I'm familiar with the roster or whatever. I don't find myself being particularly interested in general in the like story of athletics or athletes. Like I don't watch a lot of the 30, whatever.
55:14 Russ Frushtick? 30 for 30.
55:15 Griffin McElroy? 30 for 30, like all of those things, but. There's something about this show and the original Physical 100, and especially that final draft show that came out of Japan, of just seeing athletes kind of like interact with each other and talk shop in a way that is not like Instagram influencer, like, "Are you fucking cramming your pro?" But just like, I don't know, looking at each other's technique and talking about how like Turkish wrestling, sometimes you actually would send your serum wrestlers over there so they can learn these different ta- it's just so fascinating. And, and again, the production value is unrivaled. So I'm definitely enjoying it.
55:58 Russ Frushtick? If you're listening to this, and normally this is a part of the show where we talk about Patreon, heads up, because we are going to be doing a Black Friday sale, starting this very day that you're listening to this, which is indeed Black Friday. It's going to be running through Monday, I guess you would call it Cyber Monday. And the sale is a big one. It's going to be, we're going to set it up so that it's only $1 for your very first month of Patreon support on the bottom tier, the tier that includes resties and bracket battles, et cetera, et cetera. And if you want to get the ad free, which includes all that other stuff, it's only $2 for your first month, which is an absurd, I think it's an 80% discount, which is wild to me, but you know what?
56:41 Griffin McElroy? You think that $2 is 80% off of $10?
56:46 Russ Frushtick? It's not.
56:47 Griffin McElroy? Know that. You think, you think that $2 is
56:52 Russ Frushtick? I think it is.
56:52 Griffin McElroy? Eight tenths smaller than $10.
56:54 Chris Plante? You know it, in your heart.
56:57 Russ Frushtick? I don't know it in my heart, I'll be honest. I really have to make sure.
57:02 Russ Frushtick? Anyway, really big discount going on. In theory, if you're not already a member, you can sign up for this. I don't think it works for existing members, but this is for new members, a good way to get people in.
57:12 Griffin McElroy? Have we talked about what the most recent bracket episode, or I guess maybe the next bracket episode?
57:16 Russ Frushtick? It will be the one that is coming up this coming Tuesday after you listen to this, is, oh, a very exciting one. You could tease it if you want.
57:23 Griffin McElroy? Yeah, it's, we talked about our favorite aesthetic, basically, character creators in games, and it basically kind of turned into like a-
57:31 Chris Plante? Pretty much every game we talked about was from Monster Factory, so it did turn into a bit of a retrospective on that end also, but yeah, a super duper fun one.
57:39 Russ Frushtick? I wanted to send some love to the Liberty Science Center, which is in New Jersey. It's a bit of a drive for me, but some friends were visiting and we synced up with them. And man, if you have a young one with you and you want to have a really great day and you're within spitting distance of the Liberty Science Center, just really great facility, very spacious, didn't feel super crowded even on a weekend. Great, like, live animal exhibits and fucking dinosaurs. They had a big Sue the T-Rex exhibit going on right now, a giant volcano exhibit, et cetera, et cetera. So I really highly recommend it if you're looking for some kid activities.
58:17 Chris Plante? Amazing.
58:18 Russ Frushtick? Props for folks over at the Patreon that are already members. Thank you to Adeline, Cartoon Henchman, Four-Eyed Forecast, and Elias W. Thank you for being patrons over at patreon.com/thbesties. It's gifting season. If you want to buy a gift from someone, you can do that. You go to patreon.com/thbesties/gift and you can gift your favorite Besties fan a chunk of time as a patron. Get all those bonus features.
58:46 Chris Plante? Thank you all so much. Thank you for listening. Next week...
58:50 Russ Frushtick? I think we're gonna make some fun Game Awards predictions, because next week is gonna be right before the Game Awards happen.
58:55 Chris Plante? Yes. We will not have Metroid. I know that next week Metroid comes out. We will not have it.
59:00 Russ Frushtick? Yeah, we're gonna be playing that on launch day, which is indeed when that episode would go up. So we'll talk about Metroid the following week. But Game Awards, big, big time of year, so.
59:09 Chris Plante? You know what game we might talk a little bit about? Maybe, maybe, maybe. Can't guarantee this. Routine, which has been in development for, I think it's 48 years, 49 years? It's been in development forever. The closest indie games have to a Duke Nukemass vaporware game. It is actually coming out on December 4th.
59:32 Russ Frushtick? He seems very confident that we would be talking about, especially if it's coming out December 4th, we're not gonna be ready for that, but someone to keep an eye on certainly.
59:40 Griffin McElroy? Who knows?
59:41 Russ Frushtick? Game Awards predictions at the very end.
59:42 Griffin McElroy? We're definitely gonna go to the Game Awards, so join us again for the besties next time it comes out, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?
Previous Reflecting on 2025’s Best Games Ahead of GOTY Next Dispatch's Second Chance (and The Game Awards Predictions) Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated