A Golden Age for Card Game Sickos

This week, The Besties shuffle the deck and deal a hand of fun new video games. First, they discuss two new card games that have little in common beyond the cards themselves: Monster Train 2 and StarVaders. Then, Frushtick tells us about the oddball new multiplayer game in the From Soft universe, Elden Ring: Nightreign.

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

• 0:00Griffin McElroy?

  Damn it, guys. Damn it.

• 0:02Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 0:02Griffin McElroy?

  Shit. It happened again. I got the Switch 2 in my hot little hands.

• 0:09Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, you got it.

• 0:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, delivered fresh and hot this morning from Kmart. And I got out my

• 0:19Griffin McElroy?

  katana and was unboxing it. Cut the damn thing in half.

• 0:23Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 0:25Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:25Russ Frushtick?

  Cause they have that picture on the outside of the box and it says no katanas.

• 0:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, they, yeah, so I actually had the box upside down. Cause I was sort of beauty blogging it and I cut the whole thing. I cut it in half and Kmart won't take it back. And so I'm gonna have to give this one a zero out of 10. Because it couldn't withstand a single strike from my blade.

• 0:48Chris Plante?

  I mean, this is why, I get it. I know that you love to sharpen your blade every night before you go to bed.

• 0:55Griffin McElroy?

  It's important.

• 0:56Chris Plante?

  In theory, it's important, but when you have a blade that is so sharp that you merely drop the box on it and it slices directly through everything.

• 1:04Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, no, I used it in a distinct chopping motion. And I did, and it was, there was a certain amount of user error. Because I was trying, I was trying to get it like the bamboo that I go after.

• 1:14Russ Frushtick?

  It was a Fruit Ninja.

• 1:16Griffin McElroy?

  It was a Fruit Ninja, only a $550 game of Fruit Ninja.

• 1:21Chris Plante?

  Damn, that's a shame.

• 1:23Russ Frushtick?

  We should mention, we're recording this early, so like, we don't have.

• 1:26Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I don't have a fucking Switch.

• 1:27Russ Frushtick?

  We don't have fucking anything.

• 1:28Griffin McElroy?

  I don't have anything, dude.

• 1:29Russ Frushtick?

  But it came out today, so if you're listening to this, guess what? There's a new Nintendo console and we'll be talking about it next week, but we don't have anything right now.

• 1:36Griffin McElroy?

  Do we, we never do what you're doing right now.

• 1:38Russ Frushtick?

  Well, we don't acknowledge.

• 1:39Griffin McElroy?

  It's using the cold open for promotional, this is supposed to be a safe place where we can just kind of goof off. And you did business here and it feels fucked up.

• 1:46Russ Frushtick?

  I did reality here.

• 1:47Griffin McElroy?

  It feels weird.

• 1:48Russ Frushtick?

  I brought reality into the fun zone.

• 1:50Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, but not, but you understand that we keep those two things pretty separate.

• 1:53Chris Plante?

  I, I do want to note that Griffin does not have a katana that could cut a man in half.

• 1:59Griffin McElroy?

  Thank you, Chris.

• 2:00Chris Plante?

  I just wanna let, I, I wanna let everyone know.

• 2:02Russ Frushtick?

  Is that what I sound like?

• 2:04Griffin McElroy?

  Just now, yeah.

• 2:22Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:24Chris Plante?

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

• 2:28Russ Frushtick?

  My name is Russ Fruschek. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:31Griffin McElroy?

  Justin's in the toilet. He texted me, says peeing.

• 2:34Russ Frushtick?

  It's a long pee.

• 2:35Griffin McElroy?

  He said it won't stop coming out.

• 2:37Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it just keeps coming.

• 2:38Griffin McElroy?

  So it's just the three of us this week and we're going to be talking about so many games. We're talking about hot, hot deck builders like Monster Train 2 and Star Vaders. We're going to be talking about Elden Ring Night Rain, the universally beloved. Russ just put his forehead directly into his palm.

• 2:58Russ Frushtick?

  Sorry.

• 2:59Griffin McElroy?

  An unrelated grimace of pain from Russ Fruschek. We're going to be talking about a lot of games, but first we're going to take a quick break. So stay with us. Let's start things off on a high note by talking about Monster Train 2. I hope that's not presumptive of me that that's going to be.

• 3:17Russ Frushtick?

  It actually might be, but we'll go.

• 3:19Griffin McElroy?

  Is it really? Okay. How familiar are you guys with the original?

• 3:22Russ Frushtick?

  I played the original.

• 3:24Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 3:24Russ Frushtick?

  I did probably like 10 runs of the original, so I know the basic structure.

• 3:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 3:29Russ Frushtick?

  Of it.

• 3:32Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, if you're not familiar, listeners at home, Monster Train is a deck builder rogue-like in the vein of a Slay the Spire. You have cards that represent units and spells and equipment. And you play them to defend a four-tiered train from waves of oncoming enemies.

• 3:53Russ Frushtick?

  Terrible way to design a train, by the way.

• 3:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, the train's usually not an up and down situation.

• 3:58Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 3:59Griffin McElroy?

  Typically, we're talking about forward, backwards, and that's basically it. Here, you have a few levels to defend by placing down your units and casting spells and equipping those units with stuff.

• 4:12Russ Frushtick?

  It should be an elevator. Why is it not an elevator?

• 4:15Griffin McElroy?

  Monster elevator doesn't, actually, that is a kick-ass name for it.

• 4:19Russ Frushtick?

  You can shorten it, Monster Vader.

• 4:20Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, Monster Vader, you've lost it.

• 4:24Griffin McElroy?

  And yeah, I mean, it's sort of iterates on that slay the spire format with this almost like, uh, it's not, it's not quite, uh, tower defense, but you, you are building up, you know, multiple levels of defenses, uh, because after, uh, you finish all the waves of enemies, there's a boss and that boss will just keep hitting, you know, whatever level it is on until it kills everything on it. And so you have to have built a strong enough defense before that happens. That's the basic premise. Add on, you know, you're going through different tracks to choose, oh, I'm going to pick up some weapon upgrades or I'm going to go down this track that gives me spell upgrades or heals my, uh, pyre, which is the thing you have at the top of your train that if enemies reach it, they'll do damage.

• 5:07Russ Frushtick?

  The middle game of it feels much closer to, I think, most of the, like the slay the spires of the world.

• 5:13Griffin McElroy?

  Very, very much so. In, in so far as there's a little thing at the top of the screen that shows you all your artifacts that you have. And those are like permanent kind of modifiers that, uh, that, that go, uh, over everything. Uh, there are, I believe, 10 different like factions. And when you start playing, you choose two and you can choose a, uh, like a special unit that's like free to play, that it becomes kind of a, uh, you know, cornerstone of whatever your build ends up being. Uh, and that, you know, hero unit will get stronger and stronger too. Um, there are different, uh, ways you can upgrade your pyre permanently to like, like weird little modifiers on it. There's so much shit.

• 5:57Russ Frushtick?

  It's unbelievable. Cause I feel like a slay the spire run, you start pretty small and then it kind of grows. And this, within two waves of enemies, you're like balancing a lot.

• 6:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, there, it is definitely more mechanically dense than slay the spire. And there's probably a lot of people listening to that who played slay the spire and are thinking like, well, fuck, that's, slay the spire is already pretty mechanically intense.

• 6:21Chris Plante?

  That's my question. I didn't play the original game. I found this game extremely overwhelming.

• 6:26Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 6:26Chris Plante?

  The metaphor that kept coming to my head was, uh, 3D chess? Is it 4D chess? However, it's like, it's like, I'm playing. Multiple games at once. And it felt like I was, especially in learning the game, having to learn how to play like a lot of systems all at the exact same time.

• 6:45Griffin McElroy?

  It does kind of ask that of you. I will, I will say that it is, there are some strategies that are pretty universally good, right? Like you have three floors basically to work with that you are customizing by putting units on them and then like, you know, modifying those units with your spells and equipment and everything. And strategies basically kind of boil down to like, okay, I'll use that first floor to weaken the enemy or, you know, buff my other units. And then the second floor, I'll be able to, you know, sweep all the little guys out. And then my third floor, that's where my fucking juggernauts are. That's where no one's going to get past that line. And by the time they reach there, they're weakened. And so like, there's, there's strategies that are pretty universal and are, you know, make, make a lot of sense.

• 7:27Chris Plante?

  And kind of your tower defense strategies.

• 7:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sort of, right? It is kind of fulfilling that role a little bit. Uh, what the game does that I really appreciate, and I think makes all of these, you know, hundred systems pretty easily parseable, is before you end your turn, you can see a preview of exactly how the next round is going to shake out, which is important because like, you know, on a boss round, you're going to exchange 40 attacks back and forth. Uh, it doesn't get into the nitty gritty of that. It will just show you like an X on the boss, which means like you will kill the boss if you just hit in turn and, and go about it as, as you are now. Uh, and that is so good and so important and necessary because otherwise the game would be just fucking impossible.

• 8:12Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. As, as someone that played the original,

• 8:17Russ Frushtick?

  it does feel like the sequel is in a lot of ways like designed for people that played the ever love, ever loving fuck out of the original.

• 8:26Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 8:27Russ Frushtick?

  And it does, I, I did some like reading through the forums and things like that. It seems like people are excited about the fact that like the original had tried and true tested strategies of like, always put your strongest guys that on the third tier.

• 8:40Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 8:41Russ Frushtick?

  Et cetera, et cetera. And it sounds like this game, uh, forces you to like mix things up a little bit more.

• 8:47Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, you will hit bosses that if you do have that strategy of, okay, I'm just going to wait and have my heaviest hitters on the final tier. The, the game eventually will start to throw stuff at you that will directly counter that.

• 9:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 9:01Griffin McElroy?

  And that's, uh, that, that I, it does shake things up a bit. I, it is not an easy game. Uh, I've, I have done like probably close to a dozen runs or so, and the runs last a long fucking time, uh, and have only cleared it once. Uh, and the rest of the time I just have been getting my ass absolutely kicked. But that said, I've really been enjoying it.

• 9:23Russ Frushtick?

  What do you see as like the, yeah. What do you see as like the big like improvements that justify the sequel?

• 9:30Griffin McElroy?

  Um, okay. So the game that I have the most X like experience in this genre is Slay the Spire. So if it's okay, I'll use that as kind of like a baseline. Slay the Spire, um, there's obviously like, uh, four or five different characters and there's like different ways you can kind of build them depending on like how your early cards and relics play out, right? But then you start to get into this place where it's like, damn, I was going for this, you know, poison exponential multiplication strategy and, uh, the cards just ain't hitting.

• 10:01Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 10:01Griffin McElroy?

  It ain't there and it's taken too long to get my engines up and running. I feel like Monster Train 2 throws so much shit at you all the time that you really have no excuse for like having something not come together. Your strategy may not be what was correct to like get you through. It may not be the most optimal strategy, but you are constantly making choices. You are constantly, every road that you like choose, uh, to go down will have a shop on it. And those shops allow you to add up to two modifiers to like your units or your spells, and they completely crack the game wide open. You can take any unit in the game and if you put the right modifiers on it, all of a sudden it is a, a beast, right?

• 10:44Griffin McElroy?

  So like with that much flexibility and that much, uh, customization, like it, and opportunity to seize those things, like it is kind of balls in your court. And I love that feeling of like, of, of control and that every choice that I am making has, has some sort of impact. Uh, and you know, learning new things about what strategies work best with which factions, based on like sort of the mechanics that they focus on. I am also pretty overwhelmed by it. Like, I definitely don't feel like I understand it 100% of the time. But I also feel like it is doing a good enough job, you know, kind of like leading me by the nose and showing me like what the results of things are going to be before I do them.

• 11:30Griffin McElroy?

  That I, I don't know, I just feel like I am constantly learning and getting better and just having a really, really, really good time.

• 11:38Chris Plante?

  What do you think of the look and like the vibe of the whole thing? Yeah.

• 11:44Griffin McElroy?

  It's fine.

• 11:44Chris Plante?

  That's fine.

• 11:45Griffin McElroy?

  It's a lot of demons, angels, and they're on a train and it's pretty, pretty basic. I don't know.

• 11:50Russ Frushtick?

  It feels a little like flashy, right? Like, uh...

• 11:52Griffin McElroy?

  A little bit. It's, it's interesting. I mean, it looks like Monster Train 1 and to that extent, they have, as far as I can tell, included all the stuff from, it's, it's sort of like an Evil Dead 2 situation where like, pretty much most of Monster Train 1 is in Monster Train 2. So, yeah, I don't know. That shit's not really that important to me for a game like this. Maybe it should be, but like, I don't know. I played a million hours of Slay the Spire and that was a lightly animated experience, so...

• 12:24Russ Frushtick?

  There was a whale, though.

• 12:25Griffin McElroy?

  There is a big whale and the whale kicks ass.

• 12:27Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 12:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I, I think it's, I think it's great and I'm, I'm,

• 12:34Griffin McElroy?

  I have other stuff going on right now that I can't, I can't surrender myself to the, uh, to the, to the grind of Monster Train 2. So I'm having to forcibly kind of like put it to the side now that I've played it enough to talk about it here. Because once I get back into that game, or I'm, I'm worried it's gonna get me for a while.

• 12:55Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it'll come out on mobile eventually theoretically, right?

• 12:58Griffin McElroy?

  Jesus. And that, that I don't think would work.

• 13:01Russ Frushtick?

  I've played...

• 13:01Griffin McElroy?

  There's too much shit.

• 13:03Russ Frushtick?

  I played the first one on mobile and it was playable.

• 13:06Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, it's just so much shit, man. I have been playing it on, for what it's worth, Rog, my Rog ally, the controller controls are great and very intuitive. So you don't have to, you know, mouse and keyboard it. But yeah, if you played Monster Train 1, Monster Train 2 is like 10 times more sort of dense. And if you liked Monster Train 1, that probably sounds good to you, so.

• 13:29Russ Frushtick?

  So this is actually a good comparison to another game that we were talking about today. That is also a card-based game called Star Vators.

• 13:38Griffin McElroy?

  Hell yeah. Do you want to lead the charge on this one, Chris? Or, did you play it too, Russ?

• 13:42Russ Frushtick?

  I played it as well.

• 13:43Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, cool.

• 13:44Russ Frushtick?

  Play it, you can, why don't you, why don't you give the rundown?

• 13:46Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I'll take a stab at it. So Star Vators is another card game. In theory, it's weird to call any of these things card games because they've gotten so far away from cards. As anything other than the attacks or moves that you're playing. But there is a 5x9 grid. And the look and the feel of the game is imagine space invaders. But instead of you firing up manually, you're using cards to move around the playfield and to like fire bombs or actions. And you take turns dealing out all of your damage and then the enemy getting its turn where it cascades down that 5x9 field, right? So that's the basics.

• 14:31Chris Plante?

  It starts to get more complicated by how you use those cards. So you have a thing called heat. And each card costs a certain amount of heat. So say you want to move, that'll cost you a piece of heat and you'll use the card also. You want to fire a special move, that'll cost you 2 heat. And suddenly you've maxed out your heat gauge. And then you have an option to still spend one more thing and go overheating. And this comes with a risk reward where if you overheat a card, you can use it, but the turn immediately ends after that. And then it goes into the deck and it's now burnt. So if it ever gets shuffled back in, suddenly you have this card that's effectively worthless. Making you have fewer cards the more times that you spend this.

• 15:16Chris Plante?

  But as with all of these games, what makes the game really special is how it complicates that with rules that change over the course of like a really long rogue-like style run.

• 15:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 15:28Chris Plante?

  So you could have a thing where, oh, yeah, you're burning a ton of cards. You in theory don't have anything, but then you get two abilities. You get an ability that allows you to reshuffle your deck back in, which in theory would be bad, right? Like, you don't want those burned cards. But you also get the ability that like ultra powers your the attacks you do have by however many burned cards you're carrying.

• 15:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 15:54Chris Plante?

  So it's-

• 15:55Griffin McElroy?

  I have not gotten that tactic to work out for me quite yet, as sick as it seems.

• 16:00Chris Plante?

  So like, that was, that was one that I think our friends into the ether had had. The ones that I had that was just absolutely killer was I got moves where I could fire bombs on the field, right? And then I would get a random aerial volley of three bombs. And I had a multiplier that whenever I used bombs while I was in the safe space, it would repeat that move. And then I had a double repeat on it. And then I had a thing that only made it so I got one heat for like anything. So basically, each move, I was just firebombing the entire map and ended up beating the game, which doesn't mean much. It is a game that's meant to be beat many, many times-

• 16:45Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 16:45Chris Plante?

  -on my very first run.

• 16:47Griffin McElroy?

  It-

• 16:47Chris Plante?

  And that was the difference between this and Monster Chain. As Monster Chain, I was wildly overwhelmed, but I have a feeling it's maybe a deeper game. In this, I was, I finished my first run, beating it by the skin of my teeth and felt amazing and immediately hopped right back in.

• 17:06Griffin McElroy?

  There's not like insane damage numbers you're tracking, right?

• 17:09Chris Plante?

  Right.

• 17:09Griffin McElroy?

  Like, most of the time, if you shoot an unarmored enemy, they explode.

• 17:13Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 17:14Griffin McElroy?

  And that, that is it. So it's very tactile and very easy to tell like, uh, what, what is going to happen when you use this, this gun card.

• 17:24Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 17:24Griffin McElroy?

  Rarely are you surprised.

• 17:25Russ Frushtick?

  Into the Breach, I think, is a good analogy for that, because you have these very low health enemies, and you know what the next turn is going to result in.

• 17:34Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 17:34Russ Frushtick?

  And can you maneuver with your cards and your heat and use all those resources to get out of it by dealing some damage, but also avoiding damage yourself?

• 17:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, it is also like into the breach in that if the enemies reach the bottom three rows of the field, you accrue doom. And once you have five doom across your whole campaign, it's game over instantly.

• 17:56Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, doom is bad. I found this to be like way more tactile than Monster Train, like way more, I know the impacts that I'm making don't feel as like weirdly ephemeral as they do in a game, even like Slay the Spire. Like, it just feels like, to some extent, numbers going up. And here, I'm like, oh, I'm moving my ship out of the range of this explosion to go over here. And it just felt like I was way more in control of the situation, even though, again, like, you're obviously making all the decisions in Monster Train. It's just like a different style altogether.

• 18:31Chris Plante?

  Yeah, this is where the card misnomer thing comes into play. I mean, by all intents, you could frame this as a action, a tactical action game, where you're not literally dishing out cards. Because you, like you said, you see the enemy's attack coming at you, you literally move around the battlefield and you dish out different attacks. You just happen to do all that with cards that you randomly assigned. Yeah, I found it extremely compelling. It has a very cutesy, kind of retro art style.

• 19:05Russ Frushtick?

  It reminded me of, this is kind of a deep cut. There was a PSP remake of the original Mega Man called Mega Man Powered Up, which had like, chibi Mega Man running around.

• 19:15Griffin McElroy?

  See, I thought more Advance Wars.

• 19:16Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah, I can see Advance Wars as well. That's true.

• 19:20Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's fun to do both of these games, because they're both amazing deck-building, rogue-like games that could not be more different from each other. Whereas like, this one also has like synergies and strategies that when they come together are really great. I had one using the bomber character where I had a card that would shoot a bullet straight up from any bomb I had on the field. And then I had one that turned me into a bomb. So that anytime I took damage, I would explode. But I would also, when I shot this shot, I would shoot two bullets up, because now I'm also technically a bomb. Like, that stuff is very, very sad. It is not as, um, you don't feel like you're breaking the shit wide open as much as like in Monster Train, you get some synergy where you're buffing up your hero character permanently every, every game like,

• 20:06Griffin McElroy?

  uh, it's, it, but again, like, that's a totally different thing, right? That is a totally different genre, basically.

• 20:12Chris Plante?

  Yeah, and I'm curious as you play this more and more, if that changes because you, it is a rogue light, or whatever we want to call that genre.

• 20:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Chris Plante?

  No.

• 20:23Griffin McElroy?

  You're unlocking shit.

• 20:24Chris Plante?

  Unlocking stuff, yeah, and there's a lot of like different difficulty settings, different character types, different cards that you're acquiring, and the game is evolving, and I wonder how, just how powerful you can become by the end of it. Um, one question I have for you, Griffin, because I believe you're a Mega Man Battle Network person.

• 20:45Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, gosh, um, kind, I've played a couple of them.

• 20:49Chris Plante?

  Is, is this much like it? I've had, seen that mentioned a lot with this game.

• 20:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, now that you say that, I, I do believe so. You had, uh, that was like a horizontal grid, and you would have enemies on one side and Mega Man on the other, and then I think you had randomly selected, uh, moves that you, I, God, I don't know, man. I'm, what, that sounds right, but it has been forever since I've played one of those games.

• 21:12Chris Plante?

  Yeah, it made me like, wanted to actually go back and play those games, because I've had them on my list forever. Um, and was so charmed by this, but again, with this one, really, um, for anybody interested in playing it, play through it once, it's a long session, it does have the ability to save in the middle of it, which is important, because a run for me was like 45 minutes to an hour, uh, beginning to end. But also really allow yourself to have fun with it. Like, I was kind of almost stressing out the first run, it was great, really exciting, but I was weary of playing it again, just because it felt like it was asking a lot of me. And then the second one, I was like, why don't care this time? I just want to see what absolutely bonkers shit I can pull off.

• 21:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, and it does reward that.

• 21:59Chris Plante?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it wants you to be trying to find silly ways to break it.

• 22:04Griffin McElroy?

  Card Freak's eating good this week. Should we take a quick break and then talk about Elden Ring Night Rain?

• 22:09Chris Plante?

  Let's do it.

• 22:13Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, Russ is the only one of us. I've been on tour and we did not get

• 22:17Russ Frushtick?

  You could have been a local area networking some Night Rain over there.

• 22:21Griffin McElroy?

  I guess I could have been having my own personal hotel-based Land party. Uh, Elden Ring Night Rain land party. Um, I will be honest, when I got home yesterday afternoon, I did not race to my computer to download Elden Ring Night Rain. Um, can you, can you lead the charge on this, Russ?

• 22:44Russ Frushtick?

  Sure, happy to. Uh, Elden Ring Night Rain is a co-op centric game set in the Elden Ring Universe, whose closest analog is probably Fortnite because you basically fly in with a team of two other people. It's max of three players and there's a big ring that closes in on a giant Elden Ringy map.

• 23:02Griffin McElroy?

  It's the Elden Ring.

• 23:04Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, is it?

• 23:05Griffin McElroy?

  That's what it is. Finally, we know. It's the Fortnite Deathstorm.

• 23:09Russ Frushtick?

  Now we know. Uh, so you land on this map and you very quickly try to level up and get better gear in the end of, as the circle closes closer and closer in, eventually, uh, once the circle's very tiny, you do a boss fight and then the cycle repeats itself, assuming you actually survive that boss fight. And you do that two more times and that's like a full run. And, uh, what you get out of runs is like, you get some, uh, cosmetic upgrade things. You get some permanent like buffable upgrade things, uh, and then you do multiple runs because there's different bosses and different map layouts and things like that. Um, the big difference, there's so many fucking differences from the original Elden Ring.

• 23:53Russ Frushtick?

  Elden Ring is, I think, to all of us, very fond. I probably like it maybe more than everyone here. I don't know. It's close, Griffin.

• 24:01Griffin McElroy?

  I fucking adore Elden Ring.

• 24:05Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, this is so, just from an experience standpoint vastly different, which is weird because our, uh, artistically, like the graphics are identical. You're fighting almost all familiar bosses and enemies, uh, although occasionally they'll throw in like a fun Dark Souls cameo, which is cute.

• 24:23Griffin McElroy?

  And it seems like the character classes themselves have some fun mechanics to them.

• 24:27Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. So that's, I would say like outside of the ring aspect, the like actual gameplay loop. The character classes themselves are the most different part of this. So, uh, instead of generating your own character and starting from scratch, you are picking, uh, identities. Uh, there's like a bird guy and there's like a samurai person and whatever. There's like a bunch of them and each of those identities have very, very unique abilities, uh, that they can, uh, use in the world. So for example, the like, what I feel like is kind of the default all-rounder kind of guy, has a grappling hook that you can use to like latch on to enemies and pull them towards you. Or for bigger enemies, you'll like zip towards them.

• 25:12Russ Frushtick?

  That's like the most basic. Some of them are much more involved. So you'll have one of the characters like uses like Sekiro parrying for

• 25:20Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 25:20Russ Frushtick?

  all of your like special attacks, you have to like utilize that sort of timing.

• 25:26Russ Frushtick?

  I played as the bird guy a bunch of times. I don't remember what the bird guy is called, but the bird guy has the ability, you can't dodge as the bird guy. Uh, I guess birds can't dodge. You can fly, fittingly, uh, and the bird guy can do these like giant like dive bomb attacks. You can also revive people as the bird guy much faster than other people. So each of the classes really does have like specific utilities. Some of them are going to be much more focused on range attacks. Some are way more like tanky. So you really do need to have like a team comp that's going to be able to cover a lot of bases in that. So all that stuff is cool. Like I like the idea of it. Here's the issue. Everything that I love about Elden Ring is not this. I love slowly creeping my ass through

• 26:11Russ Frushtick?

  a cave and oh no, a giant boulder shows up and can I dodge the boulder and oh, behind the boulder was a chest and oh, I'm like looking at all my inventory to see if this sword that I just picked out of this chest is better than the sword that I had and I'm going to upgrade this sword and feel really proud of this sword. No, this is a complete reversion of that, like, just like a total, I wouldn't even say reversion, it's just like a different direction entirely because you have to move so fucking quickly to succeed in this game. Every single second you are in the world should be spent either leveling up, or finding better gear, or upgrading your flasks, or fighting like field bosses

• 26:53Russ Frushtick?

  that give you a bunch of experience and drops. It's just like a fucking, like, someone was like, Elden Ring, but let's take meth first and see what happens.

• 27:02Griffin McElroy?

  I, I really like how in every gameplay video, or people streaming it, that I see, inevitably, whenever a character stops at the, the, not bonfire, whatever they're called, bonfire substitute, the menuing happens like, then they are immediately running away. Every single time, I've never seen a streamer spend more than like a quarter second, like, okay, level up, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I'm gone.

• 27:28Russ Frushtick?

  Well, right, because you're not even picking stats. It's just like, you're just leveling up the number to get more powerful. People are like, realizing like, oh, you don't even need to stop sprinting. As you like sprint past a fire, one of the bonfires, you can level up in that process. So it is incredibly that and it makes sense because it's like you are trying to maximize the power that you will eventually have to use to beat the final boss, which can be really fucking hard.

• 27:54Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 27:56Russ Frushtick?

  I think my immediate question when I first heard about this game was, can I have a good time playing as a solo player?

• 28:04Russ Frushtick?

  Certainly not at launch. I tried playing it at launch. It was basically impossible as a solo player. They have-

• 28:09Griffin McElroy?

  Just for balancing reasons, or?

• 28:10Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, so they did offer some balancing changes, specifically you were a little more powerful, you got more runes. Since then, because I think the blowback was pretty immediate, they've given you other things, like for example, if you're a solo player, you get a revive. Once a day, it'll just like auto revive you. If you die previously, you only have one life and you're fucked.

• 28:32Griffin McElroy?

  That's crazy. That's crazy that they can launch a balance change that quickly-

• 28:39Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 28:39Griffin McElroy?

  And have it not be something that was flagged for them ahead of time.

• 28:44Russ Frushtick?

  Well, they already had items in the game that could do that, so presumably it's just like, almost like just grant everyone that's playing solo.

• 28:49Griffin McElroy?

  I'm not complaining. It's great that they listened to the feedback and changed it, but if the feedback is, it's so impossibly hard to play this solo, that they added this free instant revive-

• 29:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 29:01Griffin McElroy?

  To that experience, that just seems like the kind of thing that would have been caught with enough sort of like-

• 29:08Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, they quite tested it.

• 29:10Griffin McElroy?

  I guess-

• 29:10Chris Plante?

  I wonder if you have post-launch plans for a game like this. Like, if the feedback is, the game is too difficult in this mode, here is a series of things that we will change to adjust for player feedback, or if it truly is like they're winging it.

• 29:27Russ Frushtick?

  Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you, but they had a pub, effectively a public-

• 29:31Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 29:32Russ Frushtick?

  Beta, where I'm sure that feedback was heard.

• 29:35Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 29:36Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's an interesting-

• 29:37Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe just the people who played the beta were like, really good at it.

• 29:40Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that could have been. It's interesting because it's just like, yeah, as you said, how quickly that change came about.

• 29:51Russ Frushtick?

  But even with that change, like, I've played it since, it's definitely a little easier. It's still fucking hard as shit and doesn't feel designed to be played with one player. There's a lot of boss fights in the game that just like- You know, you have to get around shields and there's like two bosses you're fighting at once and it's just like not.

• 30:07Griffin McElroy?

  Do you get spirit summons or anything like that if you play?

• 30:10Russ Frushtick?

  There are like, there are like items you can get that'll like allow you to do similar sort of things, but they're random drops. It's not like a guaranteed thing. Um, and some of the, some of the characters do have something similar as well. But again, none of that is like the intention. It's very clear that the intention is a three-player Elden Ring experience. It's not even two players. You actually can't play as two players. If you, if you queue as two players, it'll drop a random in with you. Which is weird. They, they say they're working on it. Um, all that is to say, like, as a person that adores Elden Ring and basically everything that FromSoft has made, it's really fucking hard for me to get into this. In the same way that like, I didn't do a ton of PvP or multiplayer stuff when I play through any of their games.

• 30:55Russ Frushtick?

  Um, I do it occasionally if I need help, but otherwise no. And I like taking my time and I like going slowly.

• 31:02Griffin McElroy?

  And the idea of playing a FromSoft game without that constant progression hook is so unappealing to me that it makes me kind of reevaluate my relationship with FromSoftware games where if you take away the fact that I'm leveling up a guy and finding all this stuff through exploration and customizing them and having that be something that I do over the run of a 100-hour-long campaign. If you strip that away, it seems so bad, like, oh man, they're not, but that's, it's not fun. I'm only doing it to get tough and buff.

• 31:34Russ Frushtick?

  Not, not to be an armchair developer, but I'm going to do it anyway, just for, just for shits and giggles. If this game allowed me to play solo and didn't have the like intense time limit aspects and was just like kind of a randomly generated Elden Ring game, I'd, I'd be fucking in. Like, that sounds fucking fun. Uh, I'm not saying it's balanced for that. It obviously isn't. And I'm not saying it's easy to do something like that. It's a very big pivot.

• 31:59Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, but you're describing Elden Ring, kind of.

• 32:01Russ Frushtick?

  But like a little bit faster. You're right. You're right. Um, well, I'm just speaking of the length. Uh, another issue specifically for me is if you do a full. Run, it's about 45 minutes and it's as with all Elden Ring, whatever, all that stuff like you can't pause. And in this case, if you want to finish your run with two other people, you better be there for 45 minutes. And it's a commitment. It's like a big fucking commitment.

• 32:28Russ Frushtick?

  It's it's longer than a Fortnite match and even Fortnite matches are kind of a commitment. So that's and and like, not to mention like, there's no in game voice chat. You have to use like Discord. There's very minimal like directions that you can give like, there's no, no, really. There's a pinging system, but the pinging system isn't great. It just feels like someone had a wacky hair. How could we get an Elden Ring game out in like shorter amount of time than it would take like a full sequel? And they had a wacky idea for it and is like very ambitious from a design standpoint, like super ambitious. It's just not necessarily a game I really want to play as a fan of Elden Ring, which is a total fucking drag.

• 33:12Russ Frushtick?

  And it gives me real worries about the Dusk Bloods, which is also multiplayer centric. We don't know what structure it is. It doesn't appear to have a ring or whatever the fuck. But you know, when you, when you hear like multiplayer centric, that tells me that single player is not the priority and you won't have that experience that you know.

• 33:34Chris Plante?

  Can you imagine though, that all of the stuff that you're talking about and it is on Nintendo's online functionality?

• 33:42Russ Frushtick?

  Well, we don't know.

• 33:44Chris Plante?

  I mean, you have to play it on the Switch.

• 33:46Russ Frushtick?

  No, I know, but we don't know what the Switch two's online functionality is.

• 33:50Chris Plante?

  Yeah, you're right. No, it's probably gonna be great.

• 33:52Russ Frushtick?

  You can look at people's faces while they die.

• 33:55Griffin McElroy?

  It's out right now and we're fucking grooving on that C button.

• 33:59Russ Frushtick?

  I'm playing Dusk Bloods right now.

• 34:01Griffin McElroy?

  I'm playing Dusk Bloods also. We got super duper duper early.

• 34:04Chris Plante?

  Oh shit, the Katana's back. Oh shit.

• 34:07Russ Frushtick?

  I'm a weird like doctor and he's got one of those bird masks on.

• 34:11Griffin McElroy?

  I love it. Bloodborne guys in there, even though they won't say that.

• 34:16Russ Frushtick?

  It's Dudborn.

• 34:18Griffin McElroy?

  So.

• 34:19Chris Plante?

  Did you say Doug Born?

• 34:20Russ Frushtick?

  I said Doug Born.

• 34:21Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I'm Doug.

• 34:22Chris Plante?

  I like Doug Born.

• 34:23Griffin McElroy?

  I'm Doug Born. This is my cane blade. Do we have mailbag or do we want to go to honorable mentions?

• 34:30Russ Frushtick?

  Well, there was one game you wanted to talk about. One more game. We've had so many games.

• 34:33Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, oh, I guess I was thinking I would save it for honorable mentions, but I can do it now.

• 34:38Russ Frushtick?

  Let's do it.

• 34:38Griffin McElroy?

  Originally, I was going to put it in here because Justin recommended it to me while we were on the road, and it hooked me real hard. Obviously, Juice is not here right now, so I'll carry the weight. I've been playing a game called Cauldron, and I've been playing it a lot, and it's a real problem. It is a new idle incremental game, only it's also a lot of other things, too.

• 35:03Griffin McElroy?

  The game starts out, you're this little witch in a clearing surrounded by shadow, and if you run up to one of those shadows, you can interact with it, and you'll do a little turn-based battle. Do a little turn-based battle against an enemy. And the further you get from your little home base, the harder the fights get. If you want to get stronger, you have to put ingredients into a cauldron. How do you get those ingredients? By playing a little idle game. And it's not just one idle game, there's five. There's five different idle games. And so you'll go and you'll collect some apples in this idle game, and then you start generating apples for free based on the average of your five highest runs on the apple game. And then you unlock some specific talents for the apple game that make it better at collecting apples. But then you decide, I'm gonna take a break from that. I'm gonna go play the fishing game for a bit.

• 35:44Griffin McElroy?

  And then you go over and you play the fishing game, you get five good scores, start generating some free fish. You go back to the apple game, you've got so many apples you got from the idle process. You dip into that. You come back, the fish have been racking up, you get some free fish upgrades. You go down, you check out the minecart game. It's... It's insidious.

• 36:04Chris Plante?

  I am what? I just had the trailer on.

• 36:07Griffin McElroy?

  It's diabolical.

• 36:08Chris Plante?

  It's disgusting. The chemicals that were oozing out of my brain as...

• 36:14Griffin McElroy?

  It'll fuck you up, fam.

• 36:15Chris Plante?

  As that image, it's just numbers. There's just numbers and flashing things.

• 36:20Griffin McElroy?

  So many nodes.

• 36:21Chris Plante?

  And it looks so cute.

• 36:23Griffin McElroy?

  It's very cute. And then, you know, you go around, you basically play these five different idle games.

• 36:27Griffin McElroy?

  To, uh, you know, make it so that you're, you know, earning idle currencies of these five different types. And then you feed those in your cauldron, you do that, it makes all your characters stronger for the turn-based battle component. You're going out in the world, you're expanding what you can explore, unlocking new characters and finding new mini-games and.

• 36:46Chris Plante?

  The worst part, the games, looking at this, you know, when you're flipping through TikTok and you see a commercial for some iOS game? And it, the whole design of it is like, I don't know how to solve this puzzle. And you're like, I do, let me solve it.

• 37:00Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Chris Plante?

  Like looking at these little games, I'm like, I know how to collect all those apples.

• 37:04Griffin McElroy?

  The five games are totally, the five games are totally different. There's like a, a sort of space invader style, uh, shooter. There is, there's a full ass vampire survivors in here and it's really good. And, uh, I've gotten very, very deeply into that one. Uh, there's like a ridiculous fishing style game, like it's, the five games are really great. And you can seriously just spend a lot of time, like doing five good runs to bump up your average. So that you, the amount you earn incrementally goes up and, you know, unlock some new talents. And you hit these breakpoints where now all of a sudden you're going twice as far in that game than you did before. And oh shit, I haven't gone and played the vampire survivors game in a bit. I'll go down and check that out. Whoa, I have so much currency saved up.

• 37:47Griffin McElroy?

  I can unlock all these upgrades for like, it's just, it has, it is like hell raiser in how many hooks it will embed within you. Does it work? Does the idle part work when the game is off? Uh, I don't know. I have it. Haven't turned the game off. Okay. Been sort of scared to, I got it, uh, just to kind of open here. Yeah. Ready, ready for me to, uh, and boys, I'm looking at some of the numbers I racked up. As soon as I get off this call, I'm about to blow my shit. Apple the fuck out of this guy.

• 38:18Chris Plante?

  I, the, the Steam reviews, incredible experience from start to finish. Oh, cool. This person finished it. What does that look like? A hundred and four hours.

• 38:28Griffin McElroy?

  Oh my God. Yeah, but then when you finish it, you unlock new upgrades for all the different idle games. Um, when you play a different mode, guys, it's called cauldron. How did you know that? It's like 13 bucks, huh? Have you finished it? Uh, I'm getting close. Oh my God. Pretty close. Um, I keep like slacking on the turn base. I'll be straight, I don't enjoy the turn-based combat side of things that much because the battles will become like eight on 24. And it's just so, but you can automate that side of things, you can automate. You know, the upgrade selections, if you don't feel like fucking with that, it lets you pick the stuff that you are into. And I'm into these five different idle games. Uh, and then I'll go and I'll cash all this shit in the culture and I'll go around to all these fights that I was having trouble with

• 39:11Griffin McElroy?

  earlier and the auto computer will just smash through it and it's so satisfying. Uh, it's great, guys. Very, very, very good. I'm not joking. It's treated like a venomous asp because it is a, it is a, a deeply, deeply compelling uh, experience that is genuinely tough to put down.

• 39:32Russ Frushtick?

  Fucking yikes.

• 39:33Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 39:34Russ Frushtick?

  It's not a good time for a game like that.

• 39:36Griffin McElroy?

  It's a bad time for it.

• 39:36Russ Frushtick?

  It's a bad time. There's a new console coming out. We've got a lot going on.

• 39:40Griffin McElroy?

  I tell myself like, you know what? I'll just let it idle. But then I'll start letting it idle and I'll be like, damn, I got a lot of apples if I could probably afford that one upgrade that increases my apple damage.

• 39:52Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, it needs an Apple Watch app.

• 39:54Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 39:55Russ Frushtick?

  Right?

• 39:55Griffin McElroy?

  It needs a, it needs a, a cage that will only unlock every six hours. So you can dip in to see how things are going.

• 40:02Russ Frushtick?

  I think I'm good at that. I have a lot of willpower.

• 40:05Griffin McElroy?

  Um, can't download this. This would ruin me right now. What else are we talking about today?

• 40:12Chris Plante?

  You got any honorable mentions, Prash?

• 40:14Russ Frushtick?

  I watched Murder Bot, which I know we've been talking about, but I started watching it and it's a lovely show. They did a great job on this show. I don't think, uh, the season has ended. I'm caught up with all the episodes. And it just, I, I never watched, I never read the original source material, um, but, uh, I imagine it is pretty consistent with what that was. And, um, I find it very funny and interesting and really well-produced and the acting is dynamite. And, uh, if you're looking, yeah, again, it's like a light 25-minute show, which I am like really hungering for these days. So it's been really nice.

• 40:51Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I still really want to check that out. I have, I, sometimes I have like shows that I feel like, oh, I bet I could get Rachel into that. And then I'll like hold off on watching it until this beautiful imaginary day comes where I, we actually watch that instead of one of the four shows that we watch every night. Um, it hasn't happened yet. I might just have to break and watch all of it. Have you watched Andor yet, you weirdo?

• 41:14Russ Frushtick?

  I know, I'm planning, okay, I'm planning on watching it like, it's like a flight and like spare time during SGF, because it's not a show that my wife is gonna watch, speaking of shows, so I've been saving it for that trip.

• 41:26Griffin McElroy?

  I see.

• 41:26Russ Frushtick?

  So that is my intention, and I will make probably a lot of progress. I'm very excited.

• 41:32Chris Plante?

  I, um, watched this full season of John Mulaney's Everybody's Live.

• 41:39Russ Frushtick?

  It's, that is very interesting, because you don't watch TV regularly, like, with any sort of consistency.

• 41:47Chris Plante?

  No, I don't, and I'm not really sure, well, I think I know how, we, we saw him do, like, a prep set for this in LA, I don't know, a couple of months ago, and then we ended up watching the show, but what a really cool and interesting show.

• 42:01Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 42:02Chris Plante?

  Because it is a late night talk show in the very literal sense, but without any of the obligations that make late night talk shows suck.

• 42:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 42:12Chris Plante?

  And by that, I mean, a late night talk show has to go forever, it has to air every night in the week, and it largely has to have, like, act as a money-making device for, like, network TV.

• 42:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 42:24Chris Plante?

  So that means it has to be cheap to make, it has to promote a whole bunch of, like, random shit, and then hopefully draw in ads from all the stuff it's promoting, and this show runs for, like, I don't know, eight or 10 weeks, and once a week, and they never even mention any of the stuff that people are promoting when they are there for it, and every skit is just...

• 42:46Chris Plante?

  I think the show is very, very, very funny. It is a show that is comfortable knowing that, like, I don't know, maybe a third of its stuff can totally bomb.

• 42:55Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, they were taking a lot of swings.

• 42:57Chris Plante?

  Yes, it would rather take the shot than bomb, and that all builds up to a finale in which John Mulaney fights three teenage boys.

• 43:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 43:07Chris Plante?

  And the whole season, they keep saying this, and he seems pretty okay with it, and there's a moment, maybe five minutes before it happens, where you can, for the first time, really see the fear in his face of, have I really put myself in the dumbest, crappiest corner ever?

• 43:25Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, because you could get really hurt.

• 43:27Chris Plante?

  Well, not just to get hurt, but like, is this just stupid? Like, is this not gonna be funny?

• 43:31Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 43:32Chris Plante?

  Um, and it is really cool to watch somebody who is at a point in their kind of life and career where like, this is clearly what the juice is for him as an artist.

• 43:43Griffin McElroy?

  It is aspirational comedy in the truest sense of like, fuck, man. That's somebody just doing it, doing whatever they, whatever tickles their fancy and they have outrageous support to do so. That's, uh, that's great.

• 43:57Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 43:58Griffin McElroy?

  Good for him.

• 43:59Chris Plante?

  No idea how Netflix decides to fund it or if he will keep doing it.

• 44:03Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I think that's the larger question. It's like, I'm sure a lot of the motivator was like, they want to maintain their relationship with John Mulaney, who obviously brings in for his stand-up specials, quite a lot of attention. I know Netflix is fending off Hulu, which has been like hosting a lot of like major comedy specials lately. So this feels like, you know, Richard Kind's probably not asking for too much. This feels like a relatively cheap way to maintain a relationship with relatively little amounts of harm. Uh, and if he does some fun stuff, I mean, I watched the clips on YouTube, some of the clips on YouTube. It's, some of his stuff is very, very funny.

• 44:38Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, you can tell that the writers room literally will design a sketch only to make the person who happens to be on the show that week laugh.

• 44:49Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 44:49Chris Plante?

  So Pete Davidson is on at one point and they do an entire sketch about like, one of the like, I think it's name is Butterball from Hellraiser series, being his like pizza delivery man. And no one in the audience is laughing at all, but Pete Davidson is like literally hyperventilating. And it's that shit. I just, I live for it. I really do.

• 45:12Russ Frushtick?

  It feels like the sort of show that's gonna get canceled after one season and like for 10 years hence, video essays on YouTube will just be obsessed with it.

• 45:21Chris Plante?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:21Griffin McElroy?

  That may be the best way to consume it, all things considered. Um, I'm still watching Devil's Plan season two, which I still thoroughly recommend to everyone. Um, I'm not gonna give the hard sell on the whole show, but they did play a game that I wanted to tell. Talk about because it's such a good game that I feel like I would just watch a show just about this one game. It was one of the like death match rounds where one player gets eliminated no matter what at the end of it. And it's called Sniper Hold'em and it was just Texas Hold'em like the poker game, you know, you put, you have two cards.

• 45:57Russ Frushtick?

  Don't describe how Texas.

• 45:58Griffin McElroy?

  I'm not going to describe how Texas Hold'em works, but most folks know. What is different is there's no face cards.

• 46:02Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 46:03Griffin McElroy?

  And there's only four community cards instead of five, but otherwise it's the same thing, right? You're trying to put together a hand using your two face down cards and the four community cards. The only, and the whole time you're like placing bets like in Texas Hold'em. And there were only a certain amount of chips to go around. Once you hit 75 chips, you're free from the game. You get to leave and you're safe, right?

• 46:23Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 46:23Griffin McElroy?

  That was the whole thing of the game. What the big twist is, is and what makes it Sniper Hold'em is after, you know, you get your face down cards, community cards. There's a round of betting, two more community cards. And then after all the betting is concluded at the point of the game, where usually in traditional poker, you would then reveal to see who has what. Every player who is still in gets to take a shot and you call a specific type of hand. And that type of hand is neutralized. And if someone else has that hand, they are out. So if you, if there's shit on the table and you're like, I bet you somebody has a full house of aces. Like they have three aces or not aces, because there aren't face cards, but like a full house of eights, right?

• 47:07Griffin McElroy?

  If three eights and a pair of something else and you say, I call full house of eights. And if you get it right, they're out, they can't win the hand. So it is a way of playing poker where if you are actually doing the math and can predict what the other player has. You can win with like a shitty high card.

• 47:27Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 47:27Griffin McElroy?

  As long as your hand doesn't also get sniped. And it is, gang, the most exciting poker video I have ever watched in my entire life. There are huge swings back and forth, huge like miracle shots like that reverse fortunes on these enormous pots. It fucking rules and it like adds this element of excitement to poker. A game that is a billion, billion years old, that has been played a billion times and like it exists in the middle of this as one challenge in this Korean reality competition show.

• 48:03Russ Frushtick?

  So if, just for argument's sake, if there's four spades in the community thing.

• 48:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, yeah. There's no, there's no colors or suits. It's just numbers, one through 10. And so when you call something out, you are just calling like, you know, straight to the eight.

• 48:18Russ Frushtick?

  Got it.

• 48:19Griffin McElroy?

  Or three of a kind nines. You have to be very specific about the hand that you call. You can't just say flush, right?

• 48:24Russ Frushtick?

  That makes sense. That makes sense.

• 48:26Griffin McElroy?

  You have to specify the, the, the hand and the number associated with that.

• 48:31Russ Frushtick?

  Crazy.

• 48:32Griffin McElroy?

  And so, yeah, you'll have like pocket pairs, right? Like I'll have pocket nines and then no one's gonna call that. No one has any way of knowing that you have these pocket nines. So, you know, maybe your, your, your two pair will win out because people don't know that you have this secret shit in reserve. It's really, really, really, really good stuff.

• 48:52Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 48:53Griffin McElroy?

  All the games this season have been rad. There's a, I'm watching, the challenge we're watching right now is a variation of Munkala, where you're earning three distinct pools of points. It's the monster train two of Korean reality competition shows and.

• 49:04Russ Frushtick?

  That's on Netflix or where is that?

• 49:06Griffin McElroy?

  It's on Netflix. Yep. Both, both seasons absolutely kick ass. So, yeah.

• 49:12Chris Plante?

  It's been off of a thought with Munkala, but Griffin, did you see the New York Times officially endorsed Koob this week?

• 49:19Griffin McElroy?

  No.

• 49:19Chris Plante?

  Yes. They, they.

• 49:21Griffin McElroy?

  To what extent can the New York Times?

• 49:24Chris Plante?

  The game that you should be playing this summer is Koob and they are right.

• 49:30Griffin McElroy?

  I love Koob. I miss Koob. I don't know if we've talked about Koob on this show.

• 49:34Russ Frushtick?

  I don't know. We have.

• 49:35Griffin McElroy?

  I think I did a whole wonderful segment about it though.

• 49:36Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 49:38Russ Frushtick?

  How do you spell KUB? Just for the people that are curious.

• 49:40Griffin McElroy?

  K U U B. I mean, do we have time? Do you want to give a brief KUB rundown?

• 49:44Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I mean, sure. KUB, I don't know, it's from Norway or somewhere like that. Vikings played it. You throw sticks at other sticks and there's a big pylon in the middle. And I guess the like lore is that they used to be bones and skulls, but it is fantastic. Explaining the rules is not fun. Actually, just watching someone play it once and then playing it is a blast. It is a game. It is that perfect type of game that can last five minutes or five hours.

• 50:16Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 50:16Chris Plante?

  Depending on if you get into the thick of it.

• 50:18Griffin McElroy?

  It's a momentum game where you are constantly like, yeah.

• 50:22Chris Plante?

  And it is also a one-handed game, so you can play it while having a beverage.

• 50:27Griffin McElroy?

  It is also a, um, there's this king piece that has to be the last thing you knock over. So it has that eight ball rule where someone can also end the game drunkenly at any time with a single wayward toss.

• 50:40Russ Frushtick?

  Tensions. I like that.

• 50:41Griffin McElroy?

  Very, very exciting. It's my favorite yard game by a country mile, fucking rules. Um, all right. That's it. That was so much stuff. You guys really got your money's worth.

• 50:49Chris Plante?

  Busy today.

• 50:51Griffin McElroy?

  Um, if you thought this week was busy, next week's gonna be even wilder because the Nintendo Switch 2 is out the day that you're listening to this probably. And hopefully all of our different retail partners will come through for us.

• 51:05Russ Frushtick?

  TBD.

• 51:05Griffin McElroy?

  And we will all, we will all have Switch 2s.

• 51:08Russ Frushtick?

  I've actually, so in theory, I may be getting a Switch 2 on launch day, but I'm gonna also be flying to Summer Game Fest that very same day. And I'm terrified to move my preorder to another address. So probably all of the impressions that I provide about Switch 2 next week will be on Jason Schreier's Switch 2. So here's hoping.

• 51:28Griffin McElroy?

  You know, he's gonna have overclocked it.

• 51:30Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 51:31Griffin McElroy?

  And modded it and tweaked it.

• 51:33Russ Frushtick?

  He's gonna be fucking King Boo in all the, all over that game.

• 51:36Chris Plante?

  Also, I'm just gonna let people know upfront, I won't be here next week.

• 51:39Russ Frushtick?

  It's because he doesn't like Nintendo.

• 51:42Chris Plante?

  It is because I'm getting a colonoscopy. And if you're over the age of 50, which I'm not.

• 51:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 51:48Chris Plante?

  Do take care of yourself. That's what I'm gonna say.

• 51:51Griffin McElroy?

  Keep your head on a swivel. We will have a different Chris with us, though.

• 51:54Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah, that's true.

• 51:55Griffin McElroy?

  Chris for Chris swap out with Chris Grant. Very excited for that. So, yes, a lot to do next week. Please, if you enjoy our show, consider joining our Patreon at patreon.com/thebesties. Russ, you want to read off some friends who've been supporting us?

• 52:10Russ Frushtick?

  We have some recent members of the Patreon. Thank you again for everyone's support. But here's some recent ones. We have Defiant, we have Stefan, or Stefan, Daniel and Gabby. Thank you all. We really appreciate you. It's a huge fucking help. A huge help.

• 52:26Griffin McElroy?

  Next week, Switch 2 and Summer Game Fest. Are they gonna announce that Persona 4 remake? That has my TikTok algorithm ablaze, ablaze with rumor mongering. Christ, I hope so. You'll find out before us, and then we'll talk about it next Friday on The Besties. So join us then, because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?