What Even Is a Video Game?! (Grab Bag!)

This week, we talk about a mystery game that feels like a book, a historic epic that plays like a movie, and a simulator that takes the place of our favorite chores. No surprise, The Besties find themselves wondering what a video game even is.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey, you think Mom and Dami is gonna make you egg steams are?

• 0:05Russ Frushtick?

  Is that a question for me?

• 0:07Speaker 00

  No, dude, it's a question for Griffin, cuz I'm an idiot.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  Cuz I'm a cuz you've known me for you've known me 20 years and I'm a huge idiot.

• 0:19Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 0:19Speaker 00

  Who always says the wrong stupidest thing to the at the worst times while it's being recorded. Cuz he's a fucking clown.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  Yes, it was to you, Russ, cuz you loved the steam from eggs, pervert.

• 0:39Griffin McElroy?

  So this past Halloween, I was hanging out with Clock Tower Scissor Man.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was us. That was before the cold open. We started what Griffin just did was the beginning of the cold open before that was the coldest open.

• 0:56Griffin McElroy?

  Strong. It's a strong premise. What's up with Clock Tower Scissor Man?

• 1:00Russ Frushtick?

  What are you talking about?

• 1:02Griffin McElroy?

  Huh?

• 1:02Russ Frushtick?

  I don't know what you're talking about.

• 1:04Griffin McElroy?

  Clock Tower game?

• 1:05Russ Frushtick?

  I know there's a game called Clock Tower.

• 1:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, scissors.

• 1:08Chris Plante?

  And then the Scissor Man on the front cover.

• 1:10Griffin McElroy?

  He's a bad guy from Clock Tower. He's got a big pair of scissors and he chases you around like.

• 1:14Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, you know what's terrible to fix a clock is scissors. What do you? Why?

• 1:18Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that's why I when I hung out with him, he's fucking bummed out.

• 1:22Russ Frushtick?

  Did he talk about maybe he brought the wrong tool for the job?

• 1:25Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe.

• 1:26Chris Plante?

  I gotta go take a big doll.

• 1:29Griffin McElroy?

  God damn it.

• 1:29Russ Frushtick?

  We need to find a way to not integrate poop as a staple of the introduction to the show.

• 1:36Griffin McElroy?

  Isn't it staple?

• 1:37Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 1:37Chris Plante?

  I kind of feels like it.

• 1:39Russ Frushtick?

  But maybe shouldn't be.

• 1:57Speaker 00

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

• 2:00Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:04Chris Plante?

  My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know how this cold open works.

• 2:07Russ Frushtick?

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

• 2:11Speaker 00

  Welcome. To the besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club and just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member. This week on the video game club, it's a kind of a grab bag, a potpourri, as we invented the term. Chris Plant, what is potpourri?

• 2:29Chris Plante?

  A potpourri often found in the bathroom can be so many other things, a collection, a mishmash, a collage of wonderful treats. And this week, that potpourri or potpourri includes Sands of Lake Manor, Power, our simulator 2, and so many other wonderful games, including Road to Empress, book one? I should have mentioned that up top.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, but now they're all been mentioned. There's nothing else other than those. So we've really covered the whole gamut. And we'll be right back to talk about that right after this.

• 3:03Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of the besties is sponsored by Lisa. You know, we are starting to get into the cooler months of the year. And you know what I love in the cool months of the year? An incredibly cozy mattress that you can just cozy up into. You got the blankets and everything. And I will speak from experience, but maybe not my experience because Lisa sent me one of their mattresses. But it was timed as such where actually my son, who was becoming a toddler and needed like an actual bed, needed a mattress. So we had him use the Lisa mattress. And every time that I get into that bed to read him a story at night, I am incredibly jealous of his mattress.

• 3:47Russ Frushtick?

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• 4:26Russ Frushtick?

  I feel like the biggest one, we have a lot of big games to talk about, but I feel like the biggest one, just from a buzz standpoint these days, is a little game called Seance at Blake Manor.

• 4:37Griffin McElroy?

  It's the seance of Blake Manor. The article can shift, I think, based on the user's preference, but it is-

• 4:43Russ Frushtick?

  I like "of."

• 4:44Griffin McElroy?

  "Of" is strong for me. Yeah, I'm extremely into Seance of Blake Manor. Actually, I was extremely into it. I finished it this morning, and I am the world's greatest detective. And I think it's a, I think it's a fucking banger of a game.

• 5:01Chris Plante?

  So for people who are only vaguely familiar with this, you might see a trailer for it and think, "Oh, I remember that." Blueprint, published by Raw Fury, you go into a big mansion, has that general look. Totally different game. This is, it's a narrative game, a deduction game, kind of in the style of Golden Idol, where you're piecing together the words and clues that you collect. But unlike Golden Idol, you are walking around this beautiful manor, meeting all sorts of characters, a lot, a lot of guests.

• 5:31Griffin McElroy?

  A lot of characters.

• 5:32Chris Plante?

  You're pulling a Guess Who, where you're figuring out who isn't the evil one, the target.

• 5:41Griffin McElroy?

  The culprit.

• 5:42Chris Plante?

  The culprit, narrowing it down piece by piece over the course of these hour-long chunks of a weekend. That's the basic gist.

• 5:50Griffin McElroy?

  I, the timetable thing is interesting to me, because I see that, and it was pretty quickly, sort of a turnoff. The idea is, as you do things in the manor, as you are solving the disappearance of a woman named Evelyn Dean, in the days leading up to this big seance event, that has brought everybody to this, to this manor, in the Irish countryside, in, you know, around of the, the turn of the 20th century, or wait, 19th century? One of those centuries. Every time you do something, it takes a minute, and you have only a certain amount of time to solve the mystery. And also, people move around the manor. Every hour, the whole house changes. Sometimes

• 6:35Griffin McElroy?

  there's events, sometimes people are doing speeches. Sometimes you need to go in someone's room, but you can't do that because they're fucking in there. And so like, I don't know, that that whole system kind of stressed me out at first. But as I got a little bit further into the game, and I sort of started to learn like, what was stuff I was wasting my time on, and what was like, actually helping me get through the cases, I started to kind of appreciate it for what it was, which is like, the only kind of like tension that they can apply to this this style of detective.

• 7:06Russ Frushtick?

  So can you, I guess, whenever I hear like, a time mechanic, like, using time and time's running out, what happens if you do run out of time?

• 7:16Griffin McElroy?

  Game over. Yeah, I mean, there's fail states in the game, which is really interesting. You can hit one pretty much instantly. And I find it really funny that they sort of allow you to do that. Like, if you go in someone's room, and they're in there, they're like, hey, what the fuck, they called the hotel manager, you get kicked out of the hotel, game over. So like, there are

• 7:34Russ Frushtick?

  That seems like an escalation. You could just knock, I mean, I've gone in rooms with people before, it's

• 7:40Griffin McElroy?

  What the game have?

• 7:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Griffin McElroy?

  Well, strangers. Probably invited, though. What's really great is how they kind of have mechanics to sort of make all this stuff work. Each character has their own mystery that you have to like, get into and solve, in addition to these other bigger supernatural mysteries happening around the house. And you have this like, wild, huge web, like connecting every little piece and every little detail that you have. And sometimes like, you're, the detective will have thoughts like, I should go focus on this for a while. So like, there's definitely, there's a lot of breadcrumbs that the game leaves you to make sure that you are not going to, you know, completely blow it. Which I very much appreciated, but also did take away a little bit from the

• 8:27Griffin McElroy?

  Did actual deduction side of things, I think.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  They unroll a lot of tools and I got overwhelmed by them. And I think the thing that I tell me this is is correct, because obviously you've played a lot more. I mistook a lot of those as like more mechanical than supportive. And a lot of it seems more like supportive rather than additional mechanics that you have to engage with. A lot of it's like mechanics to help you keep track of information rather than things you have to kind of like worry about too much if you don't feel compelled to.

• 9:01Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, it is a bit muddy, like what, what, what clues do what? The system that Chris was talking about with the like Golden Idol style, like fill in the blanks. The words you use are the clues that you found by talking to other people. When you talk to someone, you get a list of basically you can ask them about most of the pieces of evidence that you have, or you can ask them about anybody else in the house. It'll cost you a minute, right? And so you want to be smart about like what you're doing. But sometimes you'll get like a clue that will then provide you a word that you can use in the fill in the blank mystery. Sometimes it'll just be like, hey, there's this new topic. You can go look up at the library and maybe that'll get you something, maybe that doesn't.

• 9:42Griffin McElroy?

  It kind of, but then the tools that you're like saying are like, you can set reminders on the timetable of like, oh, this character is going to be at this place at this time. And then when the clock changes to that next hour, it'll say like, hey, don't forget, you're supposed to go to the stables to meet with so and so. Yeah, that is cool. I like that. It is cool. It's they do give you a lot of tools, but I, it is such a different game from Blueprints. I think it's a wildly different game.

• 10:05Chris Plante?

  Completely. Yeah. Other than just that very superficial look. Yeah, I think it has one of the toughest on boardings of a game that I've loved in a long time, and I'm glad that I stuck with it because it hammers you not just with all these systems where it's like, here is a map of this world that you haven't fully explored. Here is a list of tons and tons of people who many of whom you haven't even met yet.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  That part's exhausting.

• 10:32Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, the opening.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Sydney and I almost closed the computer because I had like lured her into this and she looked at, she kind of gave me a look like three fourths of the way through the character list, which is. Very not well handled. It's just a, it's like a laundry list of everybody there and it's so overwhelming. It's, and it's kind of panic inducing. Like, oh my God, should I be remembering all of this? This is an insane amount of exposition with all the mechanics that you're also dumping on me.

• 10:56Griffin McElroy?

  Absolutely.

• 10:56Chris Plante?

  You get that web and when you get the web, you realize that there are a certain number of things to learn about each character. So it might have like a number next to them, like 22 things that you need to learn about them. So you see that big list, you see the big web, you see all of that. And then when you start talking to people, it feels at first like almost impossible because you can bring up pretty much anything. When you are talking to someone, you can, you'll see all of the things that you have uncovered. You'll see all the other characters and you'll be able to analyze their clothes and find additional clues and bring up that. It allows for so much, but well, and one other, I guess, hard part is you are hitting these fail states.

• 11:39Chris Plante?

  It wants you early on to feel the pressure of this timetable in a way that it doesn't, I find later in the game.

• 11:45Russ Frushtick?

  I guess, can you just clarify what happens when you hit the?

• 11:47Chris Plante?

  So what the timetable is actually, what the timetable is actually doing is there, early in the game, there will be a thing like, I need this mystery solved by the end of the hour. This, this one part of the mystery. And if you don't do that by the end of the hour, you will game over and it will revert to an auto save with like about 15 minutes left.

• 12:09Griffin McElroy?

  One thing to bring up, when you do load, it lets you either load a save that you had or scour back to a time point of auto saves that it has made. So it is, it is not hard to do that. I, after the point that Chris is describing, it's way, way, way lighter touch on that stuff. And for what it's worth, I finished the whole thing and all of the mysteries and stuff and had like a good four hours or so left to spare. And that is like, you know, 240 actions that like.

• 12:40Russ Frushtick?

  You speed ran it.

• 12:41Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. What, what it's teaching you with the game over ends up being helpful, which is it.

• 12:46Chris Plante?

  It wants you to not get too distracted. There are so many things in the manner that you could be doing that the game could become unwieldy very quickly. And what it's teaching you is to pursue a mystery in a chunk, to like,

• 13:00Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 13:00Chris Plante?

  be focused on a thing and then you can, you know, get a little distracted towards the end of your hour if you have extra time. But it's showing you like, don't do the thing that you will be tempted to do in so many open world games, which is, well, just go talk to everybody. No, it's like, decide what's the next thing that you want to solve and work towards that.

• 13:19Russ Frushtick?

  It does feel like the solve in other games for this sort of problem is to like, start with a very narrow

• 13:26Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 13:27Russ Frushtick?

  challenge and then widen out from there. Like Oprah Dan, obviously is a good example of this where it's like a very specific narrow window.

• 13:34Griffin McElroy?

  So they have some, they have some ways of guard railing you a little bit, like there's a luncheon on the second day. And if you go to attend the lunch, you'll sit down at a table with these two characters and you'll start to unpack their thing. And they're actually pretty good characters to start with because they branch out into other things. What were you gonna say, Juice?

• 13:51Speaker 00

  Um, I, I think at a certain point, it's just the kind of person you are, but it's, it's, it's rough for me to play a game like this. And feel like every time I do any investigation, I'm spending a currency.

• 14:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  And that, and it feels bad. I think it feels bad because I want to be thorough. And like, if you think about like detective and observation stuff in general, a lot of it is about like, looking closer at things and like giving things a second look like, and, and, and I feel like if your game is about detection, it's weird to penalize for like being thorough in your investigation that, and, and to me, it's like this, it's, it's a, it limits the pleasure of playing the game. Because I feel like every single like thing that I look at, I'm having to make this value judgment on whether or not it is worth pressing the investigate button.

• 14:49Speaker 00

  And a lot of the times it's like, it just isn't, and it just was a waste. You know what I mean? So it's like a weird, that's more my brain, but it is like, it's tough for me to get past it.

• 14:57Chris Plante?

  That makes perfect sense for, for me. I'm curious if you had the same experience, Griffin, similar to like other games where you get more powerful. I, Felt like I was less worried about time as the game progressed because I was getting better at playing the game and I had more and more mysteries solved. There was probably a mid-game mystery that I solved very early, ahead, way ahead of schedule. And then it freed up my time for large chunks of the game because an entire chunk was already off the table. I figured it out, so I didn't need to ask a bunch of questions.

• 15:33Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, the, the time thing I think is such a, is such a, it's a mixed bag. I think you gotta have some, I understand from a mechanical design standpoint, you gotta have some sort of pressure or some sort of, um, you know, thing that you can do poorly so that when you do it correctly, it feels good. That's like basic sort of gaming design shit. And I, this is their solve for it. The truth is that I think you have way more time than you need. And if you blow a few minutes here and there, like inspecting some towels, uh, like it feels bad, but it's like,

• 16:05Russ Frushtick?

  What's going on with those towels?

• 16:05Griffin McElroy?

  Eventually, like, I honestly, how I felt when I finished it is like, there are actually a lot of guardrails on this thing. There's a lot of breadcrumbs. There's a lot of ways that like, I will be talking to someone and they will just mention something off the top of their head. Or the detective will have a thought that will lead me in the right direction. And it would be pretty hard for me to like, really, really fuck this up. But like, if that's the case, then, you know, why do the, the time, the timing thing sort of at all? Why not handle it in sort of a different way? Uh, my, my bigger issue with the game was the, the lack of real sort of like deduction that it requires. Because a lot of it is like finding all the clues for this character. Like Russ said, there's 22 clues for this character. Fuck yeah, I'm gonna find them all. I find them all and then it's like, okay, now piece together the thing.

• 16:49Griffin McElroy?

  He blanked his blank so that he could blank his blank. And it's like, that's four things that like, I can kind of go through and trial and error, just kind of like drop, drop those, it doesn't feel like, aha, I've solved it.

• 17:02Chris Plante?

  Well, you don't even have to trial and error. By the time you have the 22 clues, it's,

• 17:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. And like this, I do, I do enjoy, I want to finish the thought. I, I do think it's cool. This is a huge fucking game. It's a huge detective story with like a bunch of interlocking parts. I think it's really impressive the way this thing hangs together. And I really did enjoy my time with it. The vibe, the story, the writing, all the Irish mythology was like shit I'm learning about is very, very, very cool. It just wasn't like, I don't know. I didn't have to use my brain a ton in the way that I did with Oberden or Blueprints, or even Golden Idol some of the time. So it had more of a sort of visual novel kind of vibe for me.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, the atmospheres are very cool. All the accents are lovely. Like it is set in like a place in Ireland that's not like represented in games a lot. So it's kind of cool.

• 17:51Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  Sure. Yeah. What else?

• 17:55Russ Frushtick?

  I'll talk about, I think a good segue, Power Wash Simulator 2.

• 18:00Griffin McElroy?

  Heck, yeah.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  The sequel that I think everyone's demanding, like, you know.

• 18:06Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe not us, but a lot of people, yeah, for sure.

• 18:08Russ Frushtick?

  Kind of, kind of, yeah.

• 18:09Speaker 00

  Well, I just, I want to know what limits they were running up against where the fans were like, we need this. And they were like, the engine will not, as we've said, it would require a server wipe of Power Wash 1 to give you all the fidelity you crave.

• 18:25Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. So they added-

• 18:27Speaker 00

  I just hope my save carries over.

• 18:28Russ Frushtick?

  They added a hub world. So you can earn like furniture, but you got to clean the furniture in your hub world. There are actual, so there's some of the differences are like, as you'd expect, visual improvements, like the water effects and things like that look nicer. There are actually gameplay improvements that I found personally very smart. So in the first game, it sounds so silly to say, in the first game, soap is a big deal. You have to buy soap with the money that you earn and it's consumable. So if you buy a bunch of wood soap and you use it up, you have to buy more to use more wood soap and soap makes you more effective at the cleaning of the thing. They've changed it wisely. And

• 19:11Russ Frushtick?

  now soap is no longer a material specific. So you don't have to buy wood soap or whatever, plastic soap, whatever the fuck. They also set it so that it's just a, on a cooldown thing. So if you use a bunch of soap, you just have to wait whatever, 10 minutes and it comes back. And while you're doing that, obviously you can just be cleaning normally with your normal powers and things like that.

• 19:36Russ Frushtick?

  It's very difficult for me to explain for those that haven't gotten into this game, why it feels so satisfying, but it is just like dopamine hit to the direct dome in ways that like I think are not necessarily maybe the most healthy, just because it's like so simple, but I do find it very personally rewarding. I would also add, it's actually a good hangout game. The whole game can be played in co-op and I think that experience is actually the best because because it's so low, like does not require a lot of coordination, obviously. You can just sort of like chat and it gives you something to do with your

• 20:18Russ Frushtick?

  hands while you're doing it. So I thought that was really nice.

• 20:22Griffin McElroy?

  I like that this game's out there. It makes me feel good every time I see this show up on the old Steam charts.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  Not me.

• 20:32Griffin McElroy?

  What?

• 20:33Speaker 00

  Not me.

• 20:33Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 20:34Griffin McElroy?

  You want these people out there actually power washing.

• 20:37Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I would love.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  I don't want them to. I'm telling them that they're going to play this game for a while. They won't have a clean house to look at. They'll feel bad. If you go out with a real power washer and you power wash your shit, you'll feel good.

• 20:51Russ Frushtick?

  I don't have.

• 20:52Griffin McElroy?

  It's clean.

• 20:53Russ Frushtick?

  Justin, I don't have the luxury. What am I, how New York City and power washing.

• 20:58Speaker 00

  You could clean in your home that would make you feel productive. I promise you listener.

• 21:03Chris Plante?

  Think about what you just said. Picture a fresh dick in his apartment.

• 21:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:08Chris Plante?

  Spraying a power washer.

• 21:10Griffin McElroy?

  It could be anything.

• 21:10Russ Frushtick?

  You just mean cleaning in general.

• 21:12Chris Plante?

  Oh, okay.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  Just being productive. It freaks me out, man. It's crazy. This is not a game.

• 21:19Chris Plante?

  The appeal of simulators though, right?

• 21:21Russ Frushtick?

  Not just the simulators. Hold on one second. It's not just the simulators. It's fucking Fortnite is the same.

• 21:27Speaker 00

  Fortnite is a gun game where you shoot people with guns.

• 21:31Griffin McElroy?

  That's real, Russ. That's different.

• 21:34Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, but that is as much of a fantasy to me as power wash simulator is because I'm not going to fucking use a power wash.

• 21:40Chris Plante?

  This is all a video game, so.

• 21:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yes, that's what I'm saying. People use it as a wind down tool and you could accuse this claim of all video games. Like Griffin solved a crime in a mansion and he felt good about himself. He could have been baking.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  Griffin learned about Irish mythology.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  Griffin engaged parts of his brain that required deduction. You sprayed water to pretend house, Russ. I'm sorry, Russ.

• 22:07Russ Frushtick?

  Griffin punched dirt as a monkey.

• 22:09Griffin McElroy?

  I, I, I love you. You're my brother and all that stuff, but I, I don't want to be on your team for this one.

• 22:15Speaker 00

  That's, that's fine. You can say you can go over there if you want. That's fine.

• 22:18Russ Frushtick?

  I'm just saying.

• 22:19Griffin McElroy?

  I'll usually I'll like definitely but ride or die. Um, but I think it's, I think that's great.

• 22:25Russ Frushtick?

  I think it's the same as doing a jigsaw puzzle.

• 22:28Speaker 00

  Hey, listen, do you want me to start on a jigsaw puzzle?

• 22:30Russ Frushtick?

  Well, you better, because I have another game to talk about called Strange Jigsaws. Get ready.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Good for your brain. That's good for your brain. You're problem solving.

• 22:36Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  That's good.

• 22:37Russ Frushtick?

  I'm problem solving in Power Wash Simulator. There's problem solving in Power Wash Simulator. I'm not, look, I'm not saying it's the headiest game imaginable, but I think at the end of a long day, you could drink a glass of whiskey or you could power wash some shit. That's probably better than power wash some shit.

• 22:52Griffin McElroy?

  There's only two options.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  There's the only two options. One of our truly.

• 22:57Griffin McElroy?

  By yourself and drink in silence. Hey, truly, truly one of our most unhinged discussions.

• 23:03Chris Plante?

  Should we take a break and come back and talk about some other? We do, oh, we do have jigsaws to talk about after the break.

• 23:10Russ Frushtick?

  I was not kidding.

• 23:13Chris Plante?

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• 24:41Chris Plante?

  That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 24:49Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, I want to hear you talk about Road to Empress.

• 24:52Speaker 00

  No, no, I want to hear about strange jigsaws. There's a perfect segue. What is so strange about these jigsaws?

• 24:58Russ Frushtick?

  These are fucking strange jigsaws.

• 25:01Speaker 00

  You think you've seen some weird jigsaws in the past? Well, hold on here.

• 25:05Russ Frushtick?

  I'm gonna really struggle to describe this game, and I'm gonna do my best. Strange Jigsaws uses the premise of jigsaw puzzles, but approaches them in very different ways. It's a bunch of mini puzzle challenges. The example that jumps to my mind is the easiest to explain. So you're presented with a jigsaw puzzle. There are four missing pieces. For those four missing pieces, you have four pieces from other jigsaw puzzles. So not the puzzle that you're currently doing. Those pieces are from other jigsaw puzzles. But you can paint the pieces such that they end up fitting in this puzzle. You understand?

• 25:45Chris Plante?

  Yes.

• 25:45Russ Frushtick?

  So you're trying to basically recreate pieces that you're currently missing from the existing puzzle. In another jigsaw puzzle, you're trying to build hamburgers using like logic stuff like the meat can't be next to the lettuce and the ba ba ba can't be next to the da da da. So it's really just like using jigsaws as a platform for... Like fun logic puzzles.

• 26:07Speaker 00

  Is it like narratively connected?

• 26:08Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  Or is it like more like a you solve this one, do the next one?

• 26:11Russ Frushtick?

  There's like an overarching, like you're using a computer. But it's very light narratively speaking, it's like you're just trying to unlock more of these puzzles. Essentially, it's very light. But if you like problem solving games, uh, this is like, there's a ton of like really interesting approaches.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  Is it one of those where like all the, the mechanics are being rolled out over time? Or do you kind of have all the things at the beginning? It's like a.

• 26:36Russ Frushtick?

  So when you start, you're presented, you, you've got like a starting puzzle. It's relatively simple. And then you've, you're given like four different puzzle options, but each of the puzzles use completely different mechanics. Like every single one is its own very contained mechanic. So you're, it's not really a rollout as much as it is like, hey, I get to do more puzzles. In the way that like Professor Layton always has like different, you know, puzzle mechanics to it. Uh, one of them, uh, you're using, uh, the puzzle has gravity to it. So you're having to like build the jigsaw puzzle while like certain pieces are falling down to the bottom. So you have to figure out ways to like prop up the puzzle to hold it up and clip things in.

• 27:19Griffin McElroy?

  I love that shit on Survivor. When they're like, build this tower puzzle and they start from the top. It's like, come on, guys.

• 27:25Russ Frushtick?

  So, uh, yeah, I thought, I mean, I found my, I felt a little dumb because there were definitely puzzles I got kind of stumped on and frustrated a little bit. But it didn't feel like it was because the puzzles were poorly designed. It just felt like my brain isn't quite there yet.

• 27:39Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 27:39Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, but I found it really good.

• 27:41Griffin McElroy?

  Dumb, Russ.

• 27:42Russ Frushtick?

  What?

• 27:42Griffin McElroy?

  That doesn't mean you're dumb.

• 27:43Russ Frushtick?

  I do want to also mention.

• 27:45Griffin McElroy?

  Skill, you're not dumb.

• 27:46Russ Frushtick?

  Maybe.

• 27:46Griffin McElroy?

  You're like a super smart guy.

• 27:47Russ Frushtick?

  Maybe all that power wash time I spent.

• 27:49Griffin McElroy?

  Don't let mysterious jigsaws.

• 27:51Russ Frushtick?

  I might be a now, now a dullard because of the power washing. The other thing I want to mention, better color blind settings than, um, blueprints insofar as they exist. So.

• 28:01Griffin McElroy?

  How about it?

• 28:02Russ Frushtick?

  Well done.

• 28:02Griffin McElroy?

  Still kind of wild that that's.

• 28:05Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  It's so hard. I've, it's gotta be so hard.

• 28:08Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it's just, I just don't.

• 28:10Speaker 00

  Game.

• 28:10Russ Frushtick?

  Play it. It's fine. I just don't play it.

• 28:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 28:13Speaker 00

  No, I'm saying it's, I, I try to think about it sometimes. It's just a thought experiment. It's, it's weird.

• 28:18Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, how to do it?

• 28:19Speaker 00

  Just blueprints. I don't, I genuinely, unless it was a different game, I don't know how they do it.

• 28:23Russ Frushtick?

  I, here's what, how I would do it as a true game designer that has made a lot of games and knows how to make games.

• 28:28Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  Sure. The best in the biz.

• 28:29Russ Frushtick?

  I have an app on my phone that I can point at things and they tell me what color the things are. So theoretically, that same logic could apply maybe to whatever you're pointing at.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  Somebody ask, man. I don't know. This is on the Frostbite engine. Are you sure? I'm not sure.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  This thing's pushing so many polygons for us.

• 28:49Russ Frushtick?

  I, I use that app all the time when I'm, I'm clothes shopping, so I don't have to ask people what color.

• 28:53Chris Plante?

  Can I hear about Road to Empress now?

• 28:55Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Sure. Yeah. If you want.

• 28:57Chris Plante?

  I do.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  Road to Empress is, I gave a pretend pitch on Road to Empress last week where I was, gave my generic FMV pitch. But let me tell you sincerely about Road to Empress because

• 29:12Speaker 00

  a lot of FMV games, I know, I know. Listen, I say this a lot, but the, a lot of FMV games are not very good. And here's what I will say. Road to Empress is not really a lot of game. It is very much more of a visual novel, I would say, but the way it handles things like a, a branching storyline that it's presenting to you is done in a very, it gets out of the way and lets you really experience this, this visual, this visual novel. What I always say, and a visual novel is overstating it, but it's, it's an interactive film. I mean, these are terms that got so beaten to death when FMV games started, that it's really hard

• 29:57Speaker 00

  to talk about these in a way that sounds like real. Basically you are, and I'm, by the way, this is based on a real historical thing and I am so beyond ignorant of this time period, the people in it, the nations involved. So I'm going to do my best as someone who was literally learning about this from a game they bought on Steam an hour ago. Do you understand? Please understand me. Okay?

• 30:25Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  Okay. It is about. A bunch of people that live in a very large palace looking thing. And there, uh, uh, there is a court of women who are all vying for the approval of both the emperor and different people in his court. So the story is about your rise up through this court, up through the ranks of courtly intrigue. And that, the decisions that you're making are very much about who's on your side, who's against you? Who can you trust? I'll give you an example.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  One of the very first thing that happens in the game is you show up at this court and you're very new there. And you run into a friend of yours who's like, almost like a friend of the family, lifelong friend. And they're so happy to see you. And they say, here, as a gift for you, take this hairpin. My mother gave it to me and you're kind of hesitant at first. It's like, it's a big gift. And you have a choice whether or not you're going to take it or refuse it. And then, uh, uh, basically you, the woman who is in charge of all the, this area of the court shows up. And she sees this hairpin on the ground and asks who it belongs to because she loves it so much. And she will gift someone who has this hairpin. And then before you can say anything, one of the other girls says it's hers.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  And then she gets in huge trouble and they punish her because only this lady is allowed to wear peony hairpins.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 31:57Speaker 00

  So then you have to look at your friend and be like, hey, did you know this? Were you trying to set me up?

• 32:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  So you're having, these are the kinds of decisions that you, of course, your friends, your friend insists it was innocent. Right? But then you frequently die in this game. You die a lot. How? Empress, there's, okay, I'll give you an example. Uh, there's a bit where you have to show a talent to the court and you can sing a song beautifully. Or you can, uh, play an instrument very poorly, or you can do an okay job with dancing. You could dance kind of good. You can sing really good, or you can play an instrument really bad. If you play the instrument really bad, they're like, you're making a joke of the emperor. Go to jail. And then when you go to jail. Uh, that's, that's kind of like a game over state, right?

• 32:44Speaker 00

  And then there's, and if you sing really good, people are like, wow, that was awesome. Maybe too awesome. Go to jail.

• 32:51Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  So that's the, I'm, I'm oversimplifying, but that, that is the kind of idea or like you, but because there are rules to this court that are life and death that you don't know. So it is like, you're trying to like navigate an extremely life or death, social situation.

• 33:08Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  And the way, and if you mess up, what's cool is like, while like during a cinematic, at any point, you can click a button and go back to a very well laid out story map. That shows exactly the different outcomes that you've gotten to. And exactly how they ended and how you died. Yeah. So you can see, yeah, exactly. Like you're not going to be repeating stuff. It is, there is full control over the speed of the cinematics. You can crank them up to 2.0. You can tap the arrow keys to just like fast forward through them. Uh, if you want, if it's like something that you just want to see a little bit of, or you, you want to see how it goes. But it, it really does remove the idea of, and this is why game I hesitate to use because it really does remove the idea of like a fail state is really not like the end.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  You really just kind of scoop back and see something else, right? So it's not like, there's almost no penalty to it. It's more like seeing how the story changes with your different decisions. It's hard for me to say how well performed it is because it's not in English. It's subtitled. It, uh, it's very nice to look at. The costumes are beautiful. I like that. I feel like I'm learning a, a something about it. I mean, who knows how accurate it is, but seeing as this is the only awareness of it I have, it seems like it's better than absolutely none.

• 34:21Russ Frushtick?

  I, I know you, I don't speak, uh, what is it? Uh, is it Mandarin or do you know?

• 34:25Speaker 00

  I will not even, you don't understand.

• 34:28Russ Frushtick?

  I know, but you could like, like I've watched foreign language films and you could like tell if they're being believable or not.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  Uh, you know what it is? It's the, so much of it is in the court that I don't know, that is like, it's very, um, arch. Yeah, very practiced. Yeah, arches is a good word for a plant. It gets very like

• 34:47Griffin McElroy?

  Stiff.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  Stiff and stoic and like and especially in this exact time period in this place like

• 34:52Griffin McElroy?

  Makes sense.

• 34:52Speaker 00

  A stillness of movement is is seems to be very prized amongst the court, but um I think it's really interesting and and it is well done in the way that they like uh show the repercussions of your actions and they're really it's very uh fast how quickly the bottom drops out on you. So it's not like a long journey to find out that you've messed up. Uh but seeing the different like scenes and seeing the story. I don't know how long this story goes. Apparently this is following your character until they are uh the the I guess the only uh female boss in the country's

• 35:33Griffin McElroy?

  I would assume Empress, right? If that's the name of the Seems like a road to Empress.

• 35:37Speaker 00

  You can do that if you want. I just don't know. It sounds so good when you're saying it, Griff. I hope it's Empress. I hope you're

• 35:44Griffin McElroy?

  That's the name of the game. I think you're probably good.

• 35:45Speaker 00

  I hope you're right, man. I hope you're right. Um it uh it's it's it's a really interesting kind of thing. Um if you uh like don't mind watching your entertainment with some light interaction, I think it's I think it's pretty neat.

• 36:04Griffin McElroy?

  Chris Poyant?

• 36:06Chris Plante?

  Mortal Kombat. Mortal Kombat!

• 36:12Griffin McElroy?

  There are new ones?

• 36:13Chris Plante?

  That's what I have been. I've been playing, watching. I too, like hoops, have been on a journey of am I playing a game or am I watching a documentary? The Mortal Kombat Collection is out. Uh and it is yet another one of those games slash histories. You can play all the original Mortal Kombat games in pretty much every form. You want to play Mortal Kombat 2 on the SNES or the Game Gear, go right ahead. You want to play the, I think it's called WaveNet, unreleased version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Let me tell you, it's waiting right here for you.

• 36:51Chris Plante?

  But what I did with the vast majority of my time was watch the documentaries about Mortal Kombat, which there are plenty of. The way that the game works is you can go into the Mortal Kombat play mode, or you can go into this timeline. And the historical timeline will have bits that are like one or two sentences with an image of like, hey, this, at this moment, they came up with the idea of Mortal Kombat. And then out of every like, two or three of those, there will be assets. So it might be a five to 10 minute documentary clip. It might be like the actual pitch documents,

• 37:31Chris Plante?

  like scanned in at ultra high resolution for you to read through. It might be the original comic book that the creators of Mortal Kombat made and then self distributed, like around the release of Mortal Kombat. It could be the original commercial for Mortal Kombat, where they scream in financial district. It is such a great time warp to this moment where Mortal Kombat truly felt like the biggest thing on the planet, if you were into video games. It was inescapable. And this does such an excellent job at making you really honestly feel that, like feel the

• 38:13Chris Plante?

  relevance, not just be told the relevance. And the documentary work in it is a blast. Friend of the show, Mike Drucker, is in it. Jeff Gerstman, a whole bunch of other folks. It's a bunch of old heads being able to kind of relive their, their childhoods.

• 38:31Russ Frushtick?

  It does sound, based on the reception that I'm hearing online, is that everyone is saying what you're saying, which is as a historical document, it is fantastic. They're also saying as a game, has some pretty serious issues, specifically. I, what is the game part of it?

• 38:46Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I, okay. So if you are a very, very hardcore Mortal Kombat head, who is worried about like, the tightest details of.

• 38:58Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, they're, they're calling out input lag specifically.

• 39:01Chris Plante?

  I know. There, there is.

• 39:04Chris Plante?

  If I sound hesitant, it's because this is the sort of subreddit campaign where you mention one thing about this game on the internet and then the same like random 500 people let you know how wrong and evil you are. And then other people are saying this is completely not noticeable. This is some weird fan rage. So I don't want to, I would not, I would not say it is end all be all, these games are unplayable. That's not even close to true. I played these games, especially in single player and had a blast. I was able to get through them. These are like difficult games. They still play just how I remembered them.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  So just to like blast through it, there's like five Mortal Kombat's, five Mortal Kombat 2s, a few Mortal Kombat 3s, a couple of ultimate, ultimate Mortal Kombat 3s. And then from PS1, they have Trilogy, Mortal Kombat Mythology Sub-Zero.

• 39:58Griffin McElroy?

  Fuck yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  And Special Forces, which I think is cool that is on there.

• 40:02Griffin McElroy?

  And Deadly Alliance.

• 40:03Speaker 00

  From the GBA, they have Mortal Kombat Advance, Deadly Alliance, and Mortal Kombat Terminator Edition. So that's like the, and then there's, that's the assortment. So there's like a lot of Mortal Kombat.

• 40:14Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I would say if you are a hyper, hyper competitive player, sure, you should avoid it. If you are literally anybody else who is curious about Mortal Kombat, or the vibe, or revisiting these games, you will be very happy with it.

• 40:28Russ Frushtick?

  I'm a top tier Syrax, so I'm a little wary.

• 40:31Chris Plante?

  That's what they do say about you. You dressed as that for Halloween, right?

• 40:35Russ Frushtick?

  Every Halloween for the last 20 years.

• 40:37Chris Plante?

  I mean, you spend $5,000 on that costume, you gotta get your use of it.

• 40:41Russ Frushtick?

  The bombs come out right out of the chest. It's so fucking cool.

• 40:44Griffin McElroy?

  Can I talk about Neces?

• 40:45Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, is that how you pronounce it?

• 40:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, what is that?

• 40:47Griffin McElroy?

  I just assumed.

• 40:48Speaker 00

  Playing that.

• 40:50Griffin McElroy?

  Neces, N-E-C-E-S-S-E. I just assumed. I don't know how else you could really hit that. I guess.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  I went and clicked on the store page after you, I saw you playing it. It's so wild to see these games. It's like. They've been out for seven years and a bajillion people have played them and now they're in 1.0. I've never heard of this before.

• 41:08Griffin McElroy?

  No, I, it's funny. So I actually, this game was in early access for a long time. I played it back when it was in early access and I did not care for it, didn't really vibe with it. And so I bounced off of it. But then, you know, it started to get more buzz with this 1.0 launch that happened, I think mid-October. And so I went back and checked it out. Now I do vibe with it. Now I do kind of get what it's putting down. Necess is, I've been playing it on Steam. It is a game that takes a lot of cues from Terraria and it takes a lot of cues from RimWorld, both of which are, you know, pretty major players in the, you know,

• 41:52Griffin McElroy?

  Steam indie, I mean Terraria is on every platform ever, but I think those two games are kind of like beloved by a similar kind of audience where Terraria is kind of first in class of that open world survival craft 2D platformer sort of genre. And RimWorld is very much like a settlement management sim.

• 42:15Speaker 00

  RimWorld is like absurdly complicated, right?

• 42:17Griffin McElroy?

  Like, it's really, well, I mean, it's not, I don't think it's Dwarf Fortress level complicated, but it's like, it's too much for me. I've never, I've never really gotten into RimWorld and I've tried a bunch of times. When you start up Necess, I think that it presents a lot more of those mechanics at the front, which is what scared me off a little bit because I didn't really care for RimWorld. So I was like, I won't really vibe. But, once you get into the more familiar Terraria level stuff, it is, it really all starts to come together really nicely. It is a top-down sort of action sort of game when you are down in the dungeons or exploring the overworld. You're going around, you're collecting resources you take back to your base to build up your base, to build new weapons and armor and crafting

• 43:02Griffin McElroy?

  stations. And that whole loop is preserved very well. Other stuff from Terraria is like, there's different classes of gear. So you can have this summoner set, which is like about summoning in. Little helpers and there's magic and ranged and melee. And so you're like making decisions based on the loot you find of like, oh, I could go after this. There's trinkets, like stuff that it's, you have a mount equipment slot and like, it's really very, very terraria in, in all of that way, except in this sort of like top down uh, format instead of this 2D platformer format.

• 43:34Russ Frushtick?

  The city management stuff is like, yeah, way more involved than anything terraria had.

• 43:40Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. So terraria did have that thing where you like, had to build rooms for the NPCs that would come and, and live uh, at your settlement whenever you cleared certain benchmarks or beat certain world bosses, which is a thing in Nissas.

• 43:52Russ Frushtick?

  This is like, there's like a diets tab.

• 43:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yes. I, I think the game gives you a lot of freedom to do that stuff. So if you are a Rimworld fan and you do want to determine who in your settlement can eat what types of food, you can get that nasty on it. I have actually really been enjoying the settlement building side of things because of how it feeds back into the terraria side of things. For example, now I have it set so that um, certain villagers that I have living in my place. I built them rooms and you know, gave them the stuff that they needed. Uh, I set up like animal husbandry zones and I said, you take care of the sheep and you harvest wolf for me. And that way, when I come back, I don't have to do that shit myself. I just have all these resources to build armor.

• 44:38Griffin McElroy?

  This is a lumberyard and I've, you know, dragged and dropped a little box over it that said, this is the lumberyard. This is where you plant your trees and you cut them down. And when you bring them back, you put them in this chest. It has a lot of really good quality of life stuff, like building near a chest that has shit in it. Lets you just pull it straight from there. Uh, there's like simple, single click options for like, dump everything in my inventory into these nearby chests. Like everything that has been sort of modded into games like terraria and stardew valley and like all that shit that if you're familiar with, uh, comes bog standard in Nissas 1.0.

• 45:13Russ Frushtick?

  Is this um, uh, controller? Pleasant.

• 45:16Griffin McElroy?

  I've been playing it. Yeah, I mean, I've been playing it on controller, but I think, again, similar to Terraria, if you mouse and keyboard it, you will have a certain fidelity of control in certain parts of the game and that will be sort of lacking. But the controller's support is really great. I've played, I think, 14 or so hours just on the Rogue Ally X and it's been, it's been holding up. It is, uh, it's a little bit, the settlement side thing is very, very cool. It's tough playing this game that is so similar to Terraria because Terraria has been out for so long and has gotten so much content and is such a rich, exciting game to explore because you are constantly finding new shit. You're constantly escalating in power and changing your like build based on all of this stuff. And this

• 45:58Griffin McElroy?

  has, has a lot of that stuff, but it's not quite as dense, it feels like. There's a lot of, I don't know, stretches where I'm just not feeling like I'm getting any stronger. I haven't found any cool thing and, you know, this world boss doesn't actually drop anything that interesting. Um, but again, like, that is comparing to a game that has been out forever and has gotten so many updates and so many releases.

• 46:19Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, this game was in, the first, I was scrolling back through news posts, December 2019 was when it first came out.

• 46:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. So they've been, they've been working on it for a while. I, I've really been digging it. I've really been digging a lot. I was pulled away from it by séance, um, but I'm, I'm probably going to get back into it. Haven't played multiplayer, uh, but the idea of having like a settlement that you share with other players that you are all managing is like really fucking cool.

• 46:45Russ Frushtick?

  It is cool looking back at these news posts because you can see how much the game absurdly progressed over that time. It is like so raw at the beginning and, uh, yeah, it's pretty interesting.

• 46:55Griffin McElroy?

  I, I love a game like this in my sort of like, uh, gaming diet, like Core Keeper was this for me, I think either earlier this year or late last year. Um, this game has, is a bit more mechanically like managerial, uh, than, than Core Keeper, which is much more kind of like fast paced, action oriented, sort of, uh, lighter on the base building stuff. But I love games like this and I, I think that they, they've done a great job. And I think it speaks to the fact that like, I bounced off it so fast in early access and now it's like, I get it and they onboard you really well and you just get to the good stuff really fast. So, um, if you're a fan of this genre, I think it's a pretty easy recommendation.

• 47:36Russ Frushtick?

  Cool.

• 47:37Griffin McElroy?

  Nice.

• 47:38Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, I think that's the grab bag. One piece of reader mail, this goes to Griffin specifically, it's from James W. "Dang, I'm so bummed Griffin wasn't here for the Pokemon episode."

• 47:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that's true. I was also bummed. I've, I've been sick for so long and so have most of my kids. And so I did miss last week and I was bummed. I, frankly, I don't have a ton to say about it. I think it-

• 48:05Speaker 00

  Sounds rough. Trouble in paradise.

• 48:08Griffin McElroy?

  Man, go back and listen to the fucking Scarlet Violet episode. I was throwing heaters. I think it's got some really great ideas. I think it's got some cool ideas. I think it has some cool moments. The big like rogue mega evolution, real time battles, like that's cool shit. They ran a little bit long in the tooth, but that's really cool. And there's some mechanics here that are really, really fucking neat and exciting for like, what the promise of future Pokemon games could be. But also, how many times, man, can you? I said this, this is the exact same shit I said with Scarlet and Violet, which is like, how many times can they get away with like putting out this kind of like,

• 48:45Griffin McElroy?

  unambitious, I guess is the word I would use, game? Where like clearly, parts of it are just not there. Clearly, parts of it are not, do not have the level of polish-

• 48:55Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 48:56Griffin McElroy?

  -that could have been applied if it had been in development longer or more, more focused, or it had more resources. It's the biggest media property fucking on the planet and it is still so disappointing to see them kind of just like, I don't know, pitch these, these half, half-baked sort of games in that have some really cool ideas. I think Scarlet and Violet got really good with the DLC. I think now it's on Switch 2 and it runs great. Like, yeah, those are great games. They got there with that one, but I don't know that they can, I don't know that there's a salvageable sort of thing here. Henry really likes it, but we've also bounced off it. We don't really play it as much anymore. This game is competing with Roblox forever now, as are all games-

• 49:36Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 49:36Griffin McElroy?

  -that are ostensibly for a kid-based audience and like, this ain't got the staying power for it, so-

• 49:41Russ Frushtick?

  Not enough slots.

• 49:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, pretty, pretty disappointed. Uh, again, pretty disappointed again by a Pokemon game that has really fucking cool ideas that are very exciting, but still feeling like I am waiting for the next like big, good Pokemon game, or at least like the next game that is trying to be the big.

• 49:59Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I'll tell you what, what is on my list for that, and it's Pokopia, the Minecraft.

• 50:04Griffin McElroy?

  Pokopia, yeah, sure. I mean, that's its own thing.

• 50:05Speaker 00

  You know, it's funny. It reminds me of, uh, Doctor Who. Because Disney just exited a deal that they signed with Doctor, with the BBC to like co-produce Doctor Who. And the idea was that it's like a, this huge property that a bunch of people like love, and there's gotta be more there. And maybe if they like invested a bunch into it, it would build, it would explode and build out like a whole universe and stuff. And they've just backed off of this deal because it didn't really take the way that they had, had wanted to. And it, it reminds me of Pokemon in that way where like Doctor Who fans are now, have now returned to where they belong, right? In that like you guys have exactly enough,

• 50:50Speaker 00

  we're gonna give this show exactly as much budget as it takes to keep the people who watch it, watching it. And I feel like that is where Doctor Who will return to. And I feel like that's the, it feels like Pokemon as an outside observer, and please tell me if I'm misjudging, but it feels that that story seems to repeat with Pokemon. It feels like where the diehards like are ready for the next thing, but it feels like they keep getting enough to just keep them coming back for the next one.

• 51:13Russ Frushtick?

  It feels to me like they have mathematically figured out the exact dollar amount to invest in these games where they still sell really fucking well, and no more than that. Uh, more so than like any other, I mean, arguably this is not a fully Nintendo property. So in that way, I mean, these are like, I think the big difference between this and Doctor Who is Pokemon, and including this game, continues to sell like astonishingly well to huge swaths of people. Um, I think the only game that has sold better on Switch 2 is Mario Kart World, and that in some ways is almost a pack in. Um, so.

• 51:52Griffin McElroy?

  Every, every, this is how I would summarize the thing. And Russ is right where it's like, it's a weird staple. It's a weird thing in the Nintendo lineup. Right. But every other Nintendo property, every other one, Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Metroid, like, they have had these moments of like, oh shit, the game done changed, right? Like Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the Wild comes out and it's like, holy shit. This is like the big, this Mario Odyssey, the first Metroid Prime, like Kirby and the Forgotten Land, like moments where it's like, they fucking did it. Like this is the game I've wanted for a long time. I don't think they've ever done that.

• 52:30Russ Frushtick?

  If Pokemon made Tears of the Kingdom, it would have been like, and here's three more enemies.

• 52:37Griffin McElroy?

  The game boy dance games are that, right? Like that's the era of that. Sure, for sure. But that's like so far, but like, that's such a long time ago. It just feels like if they, I think it's different from Doctor Who insofar as the fans of this franchise are very outspoken about what they want. And it's not like,

• 52:57Speaker 00

  sorry, what?

• 52:58Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, I mean, it's not. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. And, and the ideas that they have are like, pretty solid and reasonable things, I think, to be asking for.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  So this is, okay, to draw the parallel, which I think is a little bit different, but it's similar. The people who like Doctor Who don't really, they want the investment, but they don't want it to change. And I think that's the thing with Pokemon. If they were to invest more, what they would want is more people. And what that has to look like is it's not, I don't think that would look like what diehards want Pokemon. So it does feel like a little bit of a damn, they do, damn, they don't, where if they invest more, they have to broaden the audience. And if they broaden the audience, I'm not sure it's going to be the game that, that people want it to.

• 53:44Russ Frushtick?

  So this is actually kind of interesting.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  And this is, by the way, talking out of my ass.

• 53:48Griffin McElroy?

  Fully, fully, fully. I think it's a great conversation.

• 53:50Speaker 00

  Nintendo, but I don't know.

• 53:51Russ Frushtick?

  The way Pokemon.

• 53:52Speaker 00

  Does it pay off if you invest in it?

• 53:53Russ Frushtick?

  The way Pokemon works as a franchise is there's basically stakeholders in Nintendo and Pokemon Company and whatever the company is that does the cards. I forget the name of the company. Game Freaks, whatever it is. And they all kind of come together and agree what the future of Pokemon is. And I think there is this, you know, group mentality of like, well, we're all working together. We want to make money. We want to make a successful product. I don't think that they have any interest in risk in a big way.

• 54:20Griffin McElroy?

  No.

• 54:20Russ Frushtick?

  Because for all the reasons that we mentioned, it's huge.

• 54:23Griffin McElroy?

  If they did, they would do what I think is like the most reasonable thing, which is like invest a fucking lot into Pokemon as a platform, as Pokemon as, Pokemon by way of Fortnite, not insofar as like a Pokemon Battle Royale, but like a service, like a service. They have something called Pokemon Home, which is kind of similar. Like it's your bank of Pokemon that moves with you from game to game. Like build something around that. Build a, build a world around that. Build like an online, shared, easy, communal experience that folds in fucking everything that's been good that people are talking about.

• 54:56Russ Frushtick?

  You can date the Pokemon.

• 54:58Chris Plante?

  I have a solution, y'all. You're, you're thinking so big and that's never going to happen. What they want is they want something proven. They want no risk, but they want everybody to be happy. It's sitting right there. Every three years, just release another Game Boy Advance game. Just make an old school pixel game that everybody used to love. Go big with it. It's, it's not going to cost you as much.

• 55:23Russ Frushtick?

  I don't want to play those games again.

• 55:24Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, they've been doing that. They've been doing remakes, not pixel remakes, but like...

• 55:29Chris Plante?

  No, I'm saying new, not remakes. I want new pixel GBA style games. Just give me that sweet, sweet flavor that I, I keep craving and I want to go back to.

• 55:39Russ Frushtick?

  I can't keep playing those games again. It's all the same fucking game over and over again. I'm sorry. I like the cute Pokemon, but it's all downhill since Pig Night.

• 55:48Griffin McElroy?

  Damn. So many flaming hot takes.

• 55:52Chris Plante?

  Is it Tombow? Who, who's the name of the rhino, the game freak character? Not Tombow. That's, that's a delivery service.

• 56:00Russ Frushtick?

  Shall we do honorable mentions?

• 56:02Chris Plante?

  Let's do it.

• 56:03Russ Frushtick?

  Okay. I wanted to call out a theater experience. Oh. I saw a theater experience in New York City. It's called Masquerade and it is basically a immersive theater retelling of Phantom of the Opera. Oh, boy. Uh, I went in profoundly skeptical.

• 56:22Russ Frushtick?

  I am a huge fan.

• 56:23Speaker 00

  As you listener, no doubt currently are feeling.

• 56:27Russ Frushtick?

  I'm a huge fan. I really, really loved Sleep No More, which was an immersive experience that Justin saw about 60 times. I went probably three or four times and loved it, like totally blown away.

• 56:39Griffin McElroy?

  I love that you had to frame it that Justin went 60 times so that your three or four times didn't seem as buck wild.

• 56:44Speaker 00

  It's okay. Just a quick forearm shiver to the game, man. Keep on going. It's all right.

• 56:49Griffin McElroy?

  Cold one between the shoulder blades.

• 56:50Speaker 00

  Just a quick cold one between the shoulder blades. It's about your business.

• 56:52Russ Frushtick?

  Since then, I have not had an immersive experience in theater that is anywhere.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  In your life.

• 56:57Russ Frushtick?

  In my life.

• 56:58Speaker 00

  You see everything through a bubble. You're never present.

• 57:03Russ Frushtick?

  I have not had a good immersive theater experience until this one. I like Phantom of the Opera, okay. And I left like fucking kind of a little bit obsessed about Phantom of the Opera.

• 57:14Speaker 00

  Oh, right.

• 57:15Russ Frushtick?

  The closest comparison I can say is like, it felt like I was able to be on stage with a Broadway caliber production as all of the people were up in my space, like doing their thing, singing.

• 57:30Speaker 00

  Many of the cast members are people who have played these roles like on stage.

• 57:34Griffin McElroy?

  Have you seen it, Juice?

• 57:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, yes, I saw it. It's a, it's pretty phenomenal. And I'm not a big Phantom person either, but the ways in which they have rethought it to bring it closer to you is like, it feels like, oh, this is definitely a way that theater can, can keep going and evolve for another 50 years. Like, it's a very, it's a very interesting, bracing, like, kind of like, transportative way of seeing a show. It's really, really fascinating.

• 57:59Griffin McElroy?

  Do the narrative hooks hit you a little bit stronger in this than Sleep No More? Cause I like Sleep No More. I went to it a few times, but I never.

• 58:04Russ Frushtick?

  So this is a linear experience. So they are guiding you through. They'll like open doors and like push you through in the way that Sleep No More is much more nonlinear. You can go wherever the fuck you want, basically. That being said, you start off in a group of, I want to say like 40-ish, 30, 40 people, something like that. And then as you're going through and you're getting led into different rooms, they'll like subdivide you without you even realizing it. So suddenly you're in a room with 12 people and you're seeing something that the other 30 people are not seeing. And it's like a different.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  But the story is cogent without you having to do. The story is complete. You know exactly. You know exactly where it's almost literalism. I mean, like, you know where you're at. Like, when you're going through the the Phantom's catacombs, for example, you go down an escalator that leads you into them and you see like his boat going through the fog.

• 58:51Russ Frushtick?

  I literally, as I saw that, I was like, amazing. Holy shit. Like, out loud, holy shit. I could not.

• 58:56Speaker 00

  It's really exciting. And see, and honestly, seeing these performers perform this close is like a really rare opportunity and seeing it is kind of like incredible because you realize what a full body thing it is to like be performing at this level. It's also really, to give an example, like, there's a scene where in the show where you discover the Phantom has killed someone in the cast to take their place. And you, like, the way that information is revealed to you is like someone opens a closet and the body falls out and is like there with you. Like, you are, like, that is the way the story, like, it is a very literal, like, you're not, it's not like kind of amorphous, like, sleep no more than the others, like, you, you're in the scene.

• 59:36Russ Frushtick?

  And from my perspective, that's not how I found that out. I found it out because I saw the Phantom kidnap the guy.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  Oh, really? I didn't see that. Oh, that's so cool.

• 59:45Russ Frushtick?

  So it's a totally different scene. So you're getting the same story. Logistically, I want to read an entire article about how they pull it off.

• 59:50Speaker 00

  They have multiple casts going between the, it's fascinating.

• 59:53Russ Frushtick?

  It's really interesting. So, um, yeah, if you're in New York or visiting or something like that, I really, really would recommend it. I think it's running right now. It's been extended a few times until February, so you might have a chance to see it.

• 1:00:05Chris Plante?

  So one person doesn't have to do the, like, kidnapping scene over and over and over again. The actors actually get to have an emotional journey too.

• 1:00:12Russ Frushtick?

  Well, the Phantom, the Phantom and Christine stay consistent throughout your entire performance. I think there are certain smaller parts that get used for all the groups.

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  You follow your Phantom.

• 1:00:23Russ Frushtick?

  Right.

• 1:00:24Speaker 00

  Like, your Phantom is just going through the one thing, but some of the other players are like, yeah, doing double duty between people who are going through.

• 1:00:32Griffin McElroy?

  Their version, which is time delayed to yours, because new shows are starting every fifteen minutes.

• 1:00:37Russ Frushtick?

  There are six Phantoms and six Christine's and they rotate the Christine's with a sub, like a minor part, a female character, all at the same, all for one night. So it's really like, again, logistically like fucking fascinating.

• 1:00:50Griffin McElroy?

  Fascinating thing.

• 1:00:51Russ Frushtick?

  Highly recommend it. It's called Masquerade. You can try to get tickets on the website, which we'll include in the newsletter.

• 1:00:58Griffin McElroy?

  I have a few things. Uh, one, really quick, I got in my AYN Thor and I've been having a fucking great time setting that up and going through my DS, the 3DS catalog. It works so well and it is so fun to go back through those games. I've been playing the Stamp Rally in Clubhouse Games. Just like, I'll just keep that on there and just kind of like pick it up and play a little bit of-

• 1:01:18Russ Frushtick?

  I don't even remember what that game is.

• 1:01:20Griffin McElroy?

  Clubhouse Games?

• 1:01:21Russ Frushtick?

  No, Stamp Rally.

• 1:01:22Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, Stamp Rally is the mode where like you play the games and if you win, you get stamps and if you lose, you further down the track. So you like go through all the games. It's very good. I finished Outer Worlds 2. I don't know if you guys stuck with it.

• 1:01:36Russ Frushtick?

  I haven't. I was on like Planet 2 when I kind of fell off.

• 1:01:41Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I, I, I, I really liked it. I think that, uh, the wheels fell off a little bit, like halfway through, honestly, if I'm being completely honest and everything after that kind of felt pretty samey.

• 1:01:57Russ Frushtick?

  But you really liked it?

• 1:01:59Griffin McElroy?

  Well, I mean, I basically turned the difficulty all the way down, uh, once I hit that point to see it through. I, I honestly, I feel about it pretty much the same way I feel about Outer Worlds 1. I think that the RPG mechanics are better. I think that the way they integrate your choices into how you explore the world is better, but I also think that that trick only works a few dozen times and then it all kind of really starts to blur together. There's one entire planet that just felt like total filler. That just felt like everything I'm doing here is so, uh, inconsequential and it just kept going and going and going and going that I was, I was honestly kind of sick of

• 1:02:40Griffin McElroy?

  it. And it made me wish that there was like almost a conceptual change in how Obsidian makes games, which is like, I would love a much shorter, much tighter version of this experience that I feel compelled to go back and replay as a different character with different skills and a different Um, because I do not thi- I just simply don't think that it, the, the experience can be sustained for a full, you know, 30 or so hour. Pentament, if you will. Uh, yeah, a pentament. Yes. Thank you, Chris. Um, the thing I really want to talk about is A fun pentament. A fun pentament. Uh, thing I want to talk about real bad is Physical Asia. If you guys have watched Physical 100, or if you haven't, it's a Korean reality competition show where a hundred

• 1:03:25Griffin McElroy?

  athletes from different disciplines get together to, uh, battle in different kind of ways to see who is the best person at athleticism. Uh, it's a great show with incredible production quality, uh, truly, truly, uh, through the roof. Physical Asia brings back a lot of contestants from the past two seasons of Physical 100. Only they are on a team of, uh, of Korean, uh, contestants and then there are seven other teams from seven other countries. Uh, and they, it is a team battle sort of style version of the game. There's teams from, uh, Mongolia, Japan, Thailand, Australia, the Philippines. Um, the team from Japan has some competitors

• 1:04:09Griffin McElroy?

  from a different Netflix reality show called, uh, Final Draft that I think I talked about on this program. Uh, that is very fun to see them back, uh, on, on my TV. Uh, it is, it's just a really, there's really nothing like it on television in terms of like production quality and the dramatics that they kind of like put behind these athletic competitions, uh, is, is, is really unparalleled. So, uh, I'm like four episodes in or so and, uh, it's been really, really neat to watch.

• 1:04:42Speaker 00

  I, uh, finished, uh, I have almost finished the second book in a series that Griffin got me started on, uh, which is called The Shadow of the Leviathan is the series. The first book is called The Tainted Cup, and this one is called A Drop of Corruption. It's, um, have you talked about these on the show, Griff?

• 1:05:02Griffin McElroy?

  I talked about the first one. I don't know if I talked about the second one.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  So I, if you, I won't assume that you've heard anything, but basically it is a, a fantasy mystery series, and I say fantasy only in the sense that their world is very much not like ours. But, uh, it's, it's about two investigators. One is a, like, really supremely brilliant woman who has to limit some of her senses so that she doesn't get, like, overwhelmed by the world. And her partner, who works for her, is named Din, and he is, uh, sort of magically altered so that he remembers everything he experiences with perfect clarity and recall. And so she very much does not enjoy going out into the world. So it's Din that usually goes out into the world and is just, uh, acting on her wishes

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  and observing the things that he has asked her to observe without really bringing a deductive acumen to it. So they're kind of working together, right? She's at, at home thinking about these things and he's out in the world experiencing them. What's cool about the series, and they're, they're sort of police for this empire. And they, when something happens-

• 1:06:10Griffin McElroy?

  They're like internal affairs for other-

• 1:06:11Speaker 00

  Internal affairs is probably a better way of putting it, yeah. So they investigate when something has gone wrong within the, the officers of this empire. They are the ones that investigate what has happened. And so if it's, it's, they are kind of working on their own outside the empire. But what is cool about this series for me, there's a lot cool. The, the, the relationship between the two characters is cool. The effect of remembering everything, uh, is very, on Din, the effect of that on Din is very pronounced and interesting to read about. But what I, I really dig about it is that this empire developed because there are these huge leviathans that wander out of the sea and would like just destroy wide swaths of land. And so people had to work together to figure out how to fight these leviathans. And then now they've figured out not only how to fight these leviathans, but how to

• 1:06:56Speaker 00

  stop and harvest them and use their magics for our, our own. So this is an empire that is forged from necessity. It's an empire that's forged out of countries like that need to work together and societies that need to work together. And so the empire is overall a good. And in almost like so rare in fantasy, sci fi, almost anything I read and really in the world today, to have any sort of to see an empire or government represented with anything that seems like worth protecting is really refreshing to read about. And so really, it feels nice, i- if a little bit escapist, to read about a, a, a sort of society, a government that is basically functional and the people that like work

• 1:07:41Speaker 00

  to keep it functioning and what that means. And it's a, it's a, it's a complicated conversation. I think it's, it's asking as many questions as it like answers about the nature of empire and society and faith and all this stuff. But it's, it's supremely well-written. It's, it's, it's a really fascinating mystery and the, the relationships within all the characters are really, really good. The first one you, you should read first is called The Tainted Cup and the second one is called A Drop of Corruption.

• 1:08:10Griffin McElroy?

  Robert Jackson Bennett has a bunch of different series. He's the author of this, of these books. He's, he's probably my favorite sort of like fantasy author. I can't recommend any of his stuff enough.

• 1:08:20Speaker 00

  I read the last book, the last book you recommended, the, the, the City of Stairs.

• 1:08:24Griffin McElroy?

  Divine Cities. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:25Speaker 00

  Divine City. I, I, that was a lot denser and drier than this. This is a bit pulpier and I've really enjoyed it a great deal more.

• 1:08:31Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, this, I mean, this also being a mystery, it's just so smart. Having a magical mystery where one character gets all the clues and one character figures out the crimes, like it, it, it does something to the detective story format that like is very cool. It's not my genre at all. And I've been like really, really addicted to these, to these books. They're really good.

• 1:08:55Chris Plante?

  They're great. Play it. Uh, I'm very quick. King's Sorrow by Joel Hill. Uh, Joe Hill is the son of Stephen King. Uh, and he has written a bunch of horror books over the years.

• 1:09:12Speaker 00

  It's funny, man. No matter how big of a success that dude is, and he's gigantic at this point, I, cause I still think of it the same way. Stephen King's son, who is also a multimillionaire.

• 1:09:22Chris Plante?

  Also a writer in his own right.

• 1:09:25Speaker 00

  Who also deadass looks 100% like Stephen King. It's crazy. It's very distracting. He looks so much like Stephen King. I feel like I'm a kid every time one of his videos pops up.

• 1:09:33Chris Plante?

  It's also super relevant for this book because the title, King Sorrow, feels like it is a play on Stephen King himself. This is a book that is 100% in conversation with it. This is Joe Hill doing it. It is a book that spans decades.

• 1:09:51Speaker 00

  Nice dude, it's Joe Hill doing it.

• 1:09:53Chris Plante?

  Instead of a clown, it is a dragon that is conjured by these group of college friends. And then the decision to do that affects the rest of their life. And it is terrifying. It's legit, a good scary horror novel. If you are an audiobook person, I super recommend it because the book is over 800 pages long. So about 25 hours of audio. And they have done a ton of work on the audio version. So whenever it goes into a-

• 1:10:29Speaker 00

  Audiobooks are really getting a lot better. They're advanced leaps and bounds.

• 1:10:33Chris Plante?

  Yeah, when it gets into a very tense situation, it basically becomes kind of a full showcase of the audio. You're getting new voices brought in, you're getting sound design, all sorts of things. So when it really needs to pull you in, it makes that effort to really, really pull you close. And if you are a fan of Stephen King at all, this is such a cool read because, yeah, on top of it just being a page turner, it is in conversation with one of the, you know, most successful writers of ever. It's great. Really, really-

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  Y'all want Welcome to Dairy?

• 1:11:10Chris Plante?

  No.

• 1:11:11Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:11:11Chris Plante?

  No.

• 1:11:11Speaker 00

  I've seen clips. It looks too scary.

• 1:11:13Chris Plante?

  Yeah, it's too scary.

• 1:11:15Speaker 00

  I've heard it is bad.

• 1:11:20Russ Frushtick?

  One second, I gotta thank the members. Some new members to the Patreon. We have Ali B, we have Patrick S, we have Henry, and we have John K. Thank you for being members of the Patreon. You can go to patreon.com/silvestis. We have a new Bracket Battles episode that is live right now. We'll put a clip in right here in this episode, so you can hear a brief clip of it.

• 1:11:39Chris Plante?

  Okay, next up.

• 1:11:40Griffin McElroy?

  Jesus, this is gonna be a fucking bloodbath.

• 1:11:42Chris Plante?

  Yeah, uh, if these... Next up, we have Gwent from The Witcher 3, and also from Gwent. And we have Licky Tongue Sushi, or I think it's called Sushi Go Round, maybe?

• 1:11:56Speaker 00

  Can you, can we not say that word anymore?

• 1:11:58Griffin McElroy?

  It's called Sushi Go Round. We don't have to say the name of... Everyone actually does need to get on the mic and say Licky Tongue's name one.

• 1:12:04Speaker 00

  I don't wanna hear it, and I don't wanna say Licky Tongue. There's my one, okay? But I don't wanna hear it anymore, alright?

• 1:12:10Russ Frushtick?

  Does licking tongue help?

• 1:12:13Speaker 00

  Can you imagine? From now on, it's Sushi Go Round.

• 1:12:15Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 1:12:16Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Sushi Go Round.

• 1:12:17Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I will say of the Pokemon Stadium mini-games, I think there was a Magic Carp... Wasn't there a Magic Carp Leap one that then actually did get spun off into its own?

• 1:12:27Chris Plante?

  Into a mobile game, right?

• 1:12:29Griffin McElroy?

  Mobile game?

• 1:12:29Chris Plante?

  I think so, yeah.

• 1:12:31Griffin McElroy?

  But I, I, I don't know.

• 1:12:33Russ Frushtick?

  Especially if it didn't involve a certain Pokemon eating a bunch of sushi.

• 1:12:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:36Speaker 00

  Licky Tongue is like Hungry Hungry Hippos. If pellets were sushi, and in a circle surrounding the hippos, and you got points for the best balls to eat, and you could get combos for eating similar balls in order.

• 1:12:53Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I definitely played this game a lot, but that was mostly because

• 1:12:57Speaker 00

  It's hot.

• 1:12:58Griffin McElroy?

  Pokemon Stadium was kinda busted. And so, sometimes I would just kinda need a break.

• 1:13:05Speaker 00

  Like, mom already bought you Pokemon Stadium, so you just like, you had to play something, right? So you might as well do Licky Tongue Stadium.

• 1:13:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, and you didn't get anything for doing it, but it was a break from how busted Pokemon Stadium was at times.

• 1:13:21Russ Frushtick?

  And, uh, yeah, thank you for being members if you already are. Please, uh, join us if you're not already. You can also get an ad-free feed of all of our content, uh, at the $10 tier if you're interested, but otherwise, uh, we're happy to have you. Next week.

• 1:13:36Speaker 00

  Next week is none of your business, and I'm tired of you being so pushy about this kinda thing, okay? We'll figure it out, and then we'll tell you. We actually already know, we just don't have to tell you everything. Back off.

• 1:13:47Griffin McElroy?

  Wild vibe, wild vibe.

• 1:13:50Speaker 00

  Back off!

• 1:13:52Speaker 00

  That's gonna do it for this week on The Besties. Be sure to join us again next time for The Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

• 1:14:25Speaker 04

  Besties!