Control Resonant Rewards Your Patience

Control Resonant is technically a sequel to 2019’s Control. But developer Remedy has (as they often do) opted to stretch the definition of sequel as far as possible, converting the third-person shooter series into an open-world action game. Shockingly, it works… once you get your sea-legs. Plus, we talk about how the release of Gears of War: E-DAY falls in the shadow of the brutal layoffs and changes at Xbox.

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

• 0:00Russ Frushtick?

  So I mentioned last week that I went to the Nintendo store with my child.

• 0:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:05Russ Frushtick?

  While we were there, I got very stressed out because I wasn't sure if he was gonna make a decision.

• 0:09Griffin McElroy?

  And also because there were 350 people in there. If it's anything like the times I've been to the Nintendo.

• 0:13Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 0:14Griffin McElroy?

  It was half the, half of Manhattan.

• 0:15Russ Frushtick?

  Total fucking zoo. But while we were there, half of my eye is like scanning the rows, looking for things that I would go back and buy.

• 0:24Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 0:24Russ Frushtick?

  Maybe for him, but maybe for me, but I definitely didn't want to buy a bunch of stuff while I was there with him. Cause you know, you, you know.

• 0:30Griffin McElroy?

  You don't, you can't buy a bunch of Xenoblade babe models.

• 0:33Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 0:34Griffin McElroy?

  While you're there with your.

• 0:35Russ Frushtick?

  Okay. So one of the things that was there was Zelda Blind Box Bags. And largely, they were like six bucks for like Zelda keychain things of like a Master or whatever it is. I am pretty vehemently against Blind Box stuff because of the obvious like stressful. You don't get what you want. It's gambling, et cetera, et cetera. Certainly don't want to introduce that to him because he's gonna look on the back of the package and be like, why didn't I get fucking Link?

• 1:02Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04Russ Frushtick?

  But I was like, well, it's six bucks and I like 90% of the things in here. Except for one thing. So it's Wind Waker Link, it's Wind Waker Zelda, it's Wind Waker Gannon, Sword, Shield, and then there's like a stack of bombs. And I'm like, I would take anything but that stack of bombs.

• 1:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:25Russ Frushtick?

  And ordinarily Blind Boxes oftentimes are in boxes, but these were in like packages, right?

• 1:31Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, you gave it a grab. You gave it a little touchy.

• 1:33Russ Frushtick?

  Okay. So I start like going through and I'm, yeah, feeling to see, is it the bombs? I'm squeezing them. And I'm like, well.

• 1:42Griffin McElroy?

  You're doing your own Hurt Locker, but for dorks. And where is your kid at this point?

• 1:47Russ Frushtick?

  No, no, he's gone. So I've come back.

• 1:49Griffin McElroy?

  This is a solo mish.

• 1:51Russ Frushtick?

  He's gone.

• 1:52Griffin McElroy?

  He had to come back solo to fondle the Zelda bags.

• 1:55Russ Frushtick?

  My dentist is conveniently two blocks away from the Nintendo store, so it worked out nicely. So just me and I'm feeling the bags pretty shamelessly. Like I have, I have no compunction about doing this.

• 2:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 2:07Russ Frushtick?

  Until a Nintendo employee walks over and is like, hey, man. Squeezing those bags, huh?

• 2:17Griffin McElroy?

  He said squeezing those bags, huh?

• 2:19Russ Frushtick?

  I swear to God, he said squeeze those bags.

• 2:23Griffin McElroy?

  And then did you just turn into like a little shrimp or a little bug and skitter away shamefully?

• 2:30Russ Frushtick?

  Could not have been more ashamed. And he's like, yeah, man, feel for what you got. And suddenly I felt worse.

• 2:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, of course. Getting, getting permission from the Nintendo store employees gotta feel worse.

• 2:41Russ Frushtick?

  Worse. And I was like, oh yeah. I mean, I want everything. I just don't want the bombs. And he's like, bombs are pretty cool though. And I was like, oh.

• 2:50Griffin McElroy?

  Uh oh. Did you tell some, hey, I've been in New York a bunch of times and people tell you while you're there that if you hear some shit, you have to say some shit.

• 2:58Russ Frushtick?

  I know.

• 2:59Griffin McElroy?

  And even if it's a Nintendo store employee saying, I love, I love bombs. Even I feel weird saying that now.

• 3:05Russ Frushtick?

  I've got Zeron on speed dial, so I'm gonna do it.

• 3:08Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. All right.

• 3:09Russ Frushtick?

  So yeah, it was an awful experience. I did end up getting one, just like shot in the dark.

• 3:16Griffin McElroy?

  What was it?

• 3:17Russ Frushtick?

  And I, and I got a Gannon. So that's a win. I'll take a Gannon.

• 3:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Was it, well, I guess, was it worth it?

• 3:24Russ Frushtick?

  No, as far as like psychic damage, 100% not worth it.

• 3:29Chris Plante?

  Did they, did they put a little Burger King crown on your head on the way out and tell you that you're a good boy? Are you gonna go to the dentist now?

• 3:36Russ Frushtick?

  I was the new king of Hyrule.

• 3:39Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Griffin McElroy?

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

• 4:00Chris Plante?

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

• 4:03Russ Frushtick?

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

• 4:07Griffin McElroy?

  Welcome to The Besties, a podcast where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club. And just by listening to this podcast, you become a member of the game of the year club called The Besties. This week, we're gonna be discussing Remedy's latest, a game called Control Resonant, which I will be the first to admit, I didn't know fucking anything about until booting that bad boy up. Chris, maybe you can illuminate people who are in similar shoes of what this game is.

• 4:36Chris Plante?

  Control is a sequel. Control Resonant is a sequel to Control, even though it feels very little like that game. Because what I'm realizing, and we'll talk about it, is Remedy cannot make the same game twice, even though they make tons of sequels. This time they needed to make an action game and an open world starring the brother slash bad guy from the previous game. And that's, that's the basic gist.

• 5:03Griffin McElroy?

  That's all you need to know. We're gonna kick down the doors of the oldest house and tell you all about it just after this short break.

• 5:11Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of The Besties is sponsored by Alienware. You know, gaming today isn't one thing. It moves between cozy, chaotic, and everything in between. One minute you're exploring something slow and immersive, the next you're in a fast paced match. And somewhere in there, you might be creating, streaming, or seeing where the session goes. That's why Alienware systems are built with the performance to handle it all. With Nvidia GeForce RTX, it delivers powerful graphics that bring every world to life while optimizing battery life. So whether you're playing, creating, or jumping between both, everything runs the way it should. No interruptions, no slowing down. You don't have to adjust the way you play. You just keep gaming your way, however that looks in the moment. Be more Alien at Alienware.com/gameYourWay.

• 5:59Chris Plante?

  Tonight, before we get started, can I just say congratulations to whoever is at Business Development at Remedy? Because I enjoy these games, but I've noticed a little strange thing, which is nobody foots the bill for these games like more than once. We got Rockstar, we got Microsoft and Xbox. We've got Epic Games. Now we got Annapurna, who, man, talk about really figuring it out. They didn't even get the publisher credit on Steam on this thing, despite I guess kind for half of it or whatever.

• 6:32Griffin McElroy?

  They are going vine to vine, truly, and really figuring it out as they go.

• 6:37Russ Frushtick?

  Good for them.

• 6:38Griffin McElroy?

  Happy for them. God Games, that was, Max Payne, I think, was published by God Games. Yeah, man, this is a, um, this is a wild one. I didn't, I did not love Control. I know that I'm probably in the minority there. I love Remedy's games. I love how fucking weird they are, but I rarely am like, will go to bat for them. Like Alan Wake 2 is a bonkers game that I'm glad I played because it did shit. That is just so fully out of pocket that I appreciated it at face value for that reason. But my only issue with most of their games is that they're not traditionally fun to play. They're not, they don't traditionally feel very good to play. Were you guys Control fans?

• 7:21Russ Frushtick?

  I liked Control a lot, but the part that I liked of Control the most was the story and the vibes and the visuals and the music and all that stuff. I didn't think, I thought the gameplay of Control was better than usual for Remedy, which tends to be, you're right. Stilted, somewhat stilted gameplay, but I thought it was better than usual. I think Control Resonant is even further in the direction of they are really figuring out how to make a very fun game while doing their weird ass shit.

• 7:49Griffin McElroy?

  Right. What about you, Chris?

• 7:50Chris Plante?

  I still can't believe they did it because they do not in the past get action and gameplay done well. And then to say, we got it. We heard you. We know that what our weakness is. And that's why we're gonna do an open world action combat game. Maybe the most difficult type of game to do well, if you want to focus on gameplay.

• 8:13Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, I, I don't want to sell them short because I would say like, look, Max Payne 1 and 2, I think are pretty fucking fun. I think even Quantum Break, a game that I really did not like, I thought had pretty good action, pretty good combat.

• 8:29Griffin McElroy?

  And but Alan Wake is, that's never been the strong suit there.

• 8:32Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, wait. Oh, yeah, with Alan Wake. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

• 8:34Griffin McElroy?

  I found it really kind of, I don't know, slow in Control, the original, but this is so different. So in this game you're playing is Dylan Faden, who is the brother of Jesse, the star and director of the Federal Bureau of Control from the first Control.

• 8:47Russ Frushtick?

  It's basically like an MIB organization.

• 8:50Griffin McElroy?

  Sort of an MIB situation. The, it takes place in the oldest house, which is this secret government building that investigates altered world events, which is just like weird shit that happens in the world and objects of power, which are just mundane objects that get these incredible powers.

• 9:06Russ Frushtick?

  The superphone.

• 9:07Griffin McElroy?

  Superphone or slide projector that the things it projects are portals to other worlds. Like it's, it's, that, that shit is back in full effect. Only this time, the weird shit has broken containment. The first game takes place completely within the oldest house and you are trying desperately to keep this, this weird shit and a force called the Hiss, which is like, I don't know, a bad, a, a, guys, there's so many fucking proper nouns in this thing. I was fighting for my life.

• 9:39Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, I can simplify. I can simplify. The hiss is basically discordance or chaos or even like,

• 9:48Russ Frushtick?

  Static, personified. So, anything that his-

• 9:51Griffin McElroy?

  It turns you into a red monster. It turns you into a red monster.

• 9:53Russ Frushtick?

  But it-

• 9:53Chris Plante?

  Yeah, but it's noise until it's not always anymore.

• 9:56Russ Frushtick?

  Correct. That's why it's called the hiss. It's like noise.

• 9:59Griffin McElroy?

  But then there are hedrons, which are crazy. They look like, uh, very, very machine-like, very mirror-

• 10:06Russ Frushtick?

  You're talking about the resonances?

• 10:07Griffin McElroy?

  Illusion, the resonances. And those are, those are also up in the, anyway, all this shit-

• 10:11Russ Frushtick?

  Those are the opposite. I'm just trying, those are the opposite of the hiss. So that's structure and order to the extreme.

• 10:18Griffin McElroy?

  Both things are bad for New York because this shit gets out into Manhattan.

• 10:22Russ Frushtick?

  We love hot dogs, we love taxis-

• 10:25Griffin McElroy?

  We love egg steaks.

• 10:26Russ Frushtick?

  The New York Mets.

• 10:27Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. What we don't love is when the city folds in on itself in a tesseract. It's not our favorite. So that is like the big thing in the game is you are Dylan, you wake up from this coma, basically, and you are given, uh, an object of power that is basically a pipe, but it can shapeshift into different weapons. You go out into Manhattan where shit has broken containment. Things have been patterned, is the word they use for it, which basically means like, you know, in Inception or Pepriko, where the city folds on itself and now all of a sudden, like, you're walking up a wall and now you're up on the ceiling and, oh shit, that building's sideways. Uh, that has happened and destroyed the city and the FBC is doing everything they can to keep it from spreading beyond Manhattan.

• 11:09Griffin McElroy?

  So now it's an open world game in Manhattan. You're jumping between these different zones where all kinds of freaky shit's happening. Uh, Central Park has become a mold-infested wasteland. Uh, there's a part of the city that they were using as an evacuation zone, only, uh-oh, things went so bad. Uh, there's a sinkhole where the patterning went down into the ground and turned an apartment building into like an insane, uh, subterranean labyrinth. Uh, you are, you are moving between a lot of places.

• 11:37Chris Plante?

  And all, all of that is very good and very cool, in my opinion. Unfortunately, to get to that, you are gonna have to get past the first hour of this game where you are underpowered, the combat does not work very well, and you are in a world that is designed for maximum movement abilities, which you'll get later, and you don't even know about if you have not been paying attention to the game.

• 12:00Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 12:01Chris Plante?

  So i- i- it is bad. It's like, the first hour-

• 12:04Griffin McElroy?

  It's like, imagine if you, you played the new Spider-Man games, only like for the first hour, it was like, okay, you gotta, you do have to walk over here before you can start swinging webs between buildings. Once you get that shit, this game just gets better the more you play it. I'm nearing the end and I'm having a fucking great time with it. But like, I cannot recommend enough that you have to, when you play this game, go hunt down the chasms, I think they're called, which is where you get the traversal abilities. There's only a handful of them.

• 12:34Russ Frushtick?

  If you will.

• 12:34Griffin McElroy?

  The Jesse missions, and then you do those, and now all of a sudden you can walk on walls. Now all of a sudden you have this, uh, like psychic grappling hook you can use to whip yourself around, uh, from point A to point B. And now the game is really actually very fun to get around. And reminds me a lot, I know this is a comparison we all made while talking about this game, of like Prototype, uh, the Activision action game that came out around the same time as Infamous. I don't know that I'd go so far as to say, give it the Infamous kind of, uh, uh, comparison, because Infamous has like a million traversal mechanics and this game only has a handful. But it's fucking cool, once you're able to warp around this like all folded up freaky city and do fights in, in three dimensions.

• 13:17Griffin McElroy?

  Like, it's genuinely, it's, it gets so neat. You just gotta really get to that shit fast, because it's not great until then.

• 13:24Russ Frushtick?

  So I want to talk about my general rule of thumb, especially with open world games. And it started, the very first time I ever did this, and it was the best decision I ever made for my life, was with Red Faction Guerrilla. And it was, man, I really like feeling like a badass, but dying in this game is the least fun thing imaginable. So with this game, I dialed it, uh, basically, I played on normal, and until I hit like the first combat sequence that gave me any sort of static, I was like, nope. Dialed it down to easy in the settings and had the best possible time, really from the jump, maybe 10 minutes in. I was like, this does not appeal to me to feel like I need a combat challenge. I want to experience this world and feel like a total badass.

• 14:10Chris Plante?

  What is so cool about the difficulty in this game, and this is becoming more and more normal, I get it, but you can dial everything in this game to your liking. So I kept it on the normal difficulty and overall enjoyed it and was not struggling too much until you get to the bosses. And I am not a Dark Souls player. It's not, I enjoy the games, they're not my like number one thing. I don't like having to bash my head against something.

• 14:37Russ Frushtick?

  He's bad against, we get it. He's bad against.

• 14:38Chris Plante?

  I'm bad, especially, I'm bad at boss fights. And I bash my head against a boss, you know, five or six hours into the game. And then I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna turn the power on to triple whatever I'm doing. And I, and I zipped right through it. And I still got that experience. I had seen everything that that boss fight had to offer. Even with a patch that reduced the, the health or whatever of these things, it was a matter of attrition. Like, okay, I need to do the same thing right 20 times. And that's not fun for me. What's fun is being in the open world.

• 15:15Griffin McElroy?

  It's so funny to say like, I, I, I am having a great time with the combat. I'm at a point now where like, I'm in a really, really, really, really super fucked up Manhattan version and having all of these fights in, in all these different dimensions. And as you do these boss fights, you acquire powers. And now all of a sudden, things like stacking debuffs becomes important. Like, you get mold powers that you can infest enemies with. And then you get fire powers and you can use that on enemies that have infestations and it makes them explode. And there's all kinds of like interactions between the different powers. That stuff is really, really cool. But all the enemies are too spongy. For me, it wasn't like, I, I like hard boss fights.

• 15:57Griffin McElroy?

  And the boss fights in this game are fucking dope. They are very, very, very cool, but they take way too long if you do not juice the shit. But even just every combat encounter on the street, which, uh, respawn every time you beat one of these bosses, which is not, I think, a great decision because the, I don't know, man, if I'm going from one place to another, I don't actually want to fight the same group of guys like over and over and over again. But it takes way too long. It's not a difficulty thing. It's just like, it takes way too long and it doesn't feel great to chip away at the health bars of every enemy you come across. So like, there, the assist mode is what it's called, this like ability to change all of these different settings. And they have presets. I did the Field Agent preset, which is like the first one up that they do that just like boosts some stuff

• 16:42Griffin McElroy?

  and it takes some stuff out and just makes combat move a lot faster and, and make you feel a lot more like a superhero. So like, I, I did that and I would also thoroughly recommend doing that.

• 16:54Russ Frushtick?

  That being said, I think, we talked about, uh, Prototype earlier. Prototype is known for being a game that is like incredibly grim, dark and like hot topic-y in its tone. This game walks a really fun line because the main character is more or less that. Like, he is a very intense dude.

• 17:13Griffin McElroy?

  He's a fucking baby, man. I was just talking to Juice about this before, like, oh, I don't know, Jesse, help. I've got a magic sword that can turn into a huge hammer and I can smash shit and I can-

• 17:26Chris Plante?

  Like, as it went on?

• 17:27Griffin McElroy?

  Did Dylan grow on me?

• 17:29Chris Plante?

  Well, this character of like, I don't, of, I'm just, I'm, I'm real sorry. I'm a real sad, he is hot topic. He, he is not what Hot Topic sets out to be. He is the like cliche Hot Topic customer. And at first, I, it drove me bonkers. But I don't know, it kinda, it charmed me.

• 17:50Griffin McElroy?

  It does a fair job in the back like third of the game to show you like his backstory and his and Jesse's backstory and like the shit that went down in their hometown, which is called Normal, because this is a fucking Remedy game.

• 18:03Russ Frushtick?

  Ordinary?

• 18:03Griffin McElroy?

  It can't be, ordinary, you're right. Sorry, not Normal. Uh, and I, I, I think it does a good job of selling that.

• 18:10Russ Frushtick?

  I think even before that, there's a, there was a moment about three hours into the game that I had, where I was clearing out a, um, I was clearing out a street that was filled with horrible people and there was soldiers fighting against the horrible people. And in the midst of clearing that out, I found a picnic blanket. And next to the picnic blanket were little cat dolls. And Dylan says, hey, this reminds me of a storybook I read. I wonder if I could set it up on these, on this picnic blanket and set up these cat dolls and then draw a picture of it.

• 18:42Griffin McElroy?

  And do a little drawing. Yeah, he stops and do a drawing.

• 18:44Russ Frushtick?

  I'm walking around collecting it. I hear in the background, no, fucking no, my brother, why are you doing that to me? People are dying in the street from these monsters and, and I'm building a little cat stanchion. It's the funniest fucking thing.

• 19:00Griffin McElroy?

  It's really, really good.

• 19:01Russ Frushtick?

  And they do play with like his character, like he'll meet a dog, this random fucking, a golden lab that shows up. And he like has these back and forths that are, I think, intentionally funny. So I think they have some fun with the character, but generally speaking, it's the side characters you meet that bring more levity and interesting things to the world.

• 19:20Chris Plante?

  Even, even when it's serious, it's silly too, because like, you'll, you'll have, um, the kind of the voice in your ear being like, Dylan, I, and I get why people don't like you. I finally read your file. You did horrible things. It's like- Yeah, I'm real, I'm real sorry. I feel real bad. I feel real, and they're like, you killed 526 people. And he's like, yeah, I'm like, really struggling with it, but I'm just here to help. And that voice, it sounds like I'm joking. I can't even do.

• 19:53Griffin McElroy?

  You can't do a good Dylan voice. It's too, it's too, it's too sad.

• 19:56Russ Frushtick?

  He's Eeyore.

• 19:57Griffin McElroy?

  Too sad. He's a very sad man. I, I, I've gotten, I've come to love Dylan.

• 20:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 20:02Griffin McElroy?

  And I've come to really get, I'm very invested in the story. I've been playing it. I was up super late last night because I've hit like a, I hit a really wild part of the game that's like doing some shit that, I don't know, the, the, the back half of the game really is the best shit that the game has to offer. And I would encourage you to kind of like stick with it. But I, I, for me, a weird miss for, personally speaking, for this game is that the writing is at times quite bad. Um, I think the acting overall is like, is, is great. Like Dylan is making some very specific choices, but I think that they, they are earned eventually.

• 20:41Griffin McElroy?

  But there's some shit, the needle drops in this game are so hamfisted, even for like Remedy, like, who deals in needle drops quite frequently, like you'll have a character play a song over your headset without asking you if that's cool or whatever. And then be like, so do you like music? What the, what? Who's, they're also like less.

• 21:05Chris Plante?

  State levels. It, it's like, there's one needle drop in it in particular where you could tell they wanted a Run the Jewels song. And they did not get it.

• 21:15Griffin McElroy?

  Couldn't clear it.

• 21:15Chris Plante?

  And they got something else. And it's so strange how much it wants to be a different song.

• 21:23Russ Frushtick?

  So respectfully, I disagree about the music, specifically because I think it landed with me. Because, because of the tone of the game, and especially the main character being what it is, having any variance from that tone does help. And I would also say, the music thing does sort of, and you've seen it Griffin, I plan, I don't know if you've gotten there, but they're, they do sort of.

• 21:50Griffin McElroy?

  They do a cool thing with the music.

• 21:51Russ Frushtick?

  They do a cool thing with the music that sort of pays off why it was happening earlier. That kind of justifies it.

• 21:57Griffin McElroy?

  It's, it's, the needle drops are not my issue. It is that at times the writing is just so, uh, it's not even like weird and inhuman in the way that like people in Alan Wake 2 talk. It's like not even that Lynchian, sort of Twin Peaks level kind of, uh, just abstract weirdness. It just like, sometimes it just really, really falls flat. Um, and it's not always like some of the, some of the characters are incredibly endearing. I love Olivia Pope, who was the researcher in the, uh, in the first game who kind of becomes de facto acting director in this game and is just constantly in a panic.

• 22:34Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 22:34Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, like, that's great. Uh, did you do the mission where you had to find the guy's cat inside the incredibly fucked up? Oh man, it's so funny and so good. Like at times it works really, really well, but I, I, I feel like that is a thing that these games always really do nail, but this game, I don't know, I've just struggled with it.

• 22:54Russ Frushtick?

  The, the things that have jumped out to me in the, in terms of the writing are more that when you go back to like the main bases and things like that, they have a lot of really fun, like random unnamed soldier dialogue between the soldiers talking about like the crazy shit that's going on. Or like, the first time you use a fast travel door.

• 23:15Griffin McElroy?

  So good. Yeah.

• 23:16Russ Frushtick?

  That you come through the door for the very first time and all the soldiers are standing around like, holy shit.

• 23:20Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. It's just a door frame in the middle of nowhere. That's like a portal. So when you come through it, they're all like, whoa, don't do that. That's scary.

• 23:27Russ Frushtick?

  I think in this case, more so than really any other game they've ever made, there is so much more dialogue in general.

• 23:35Griffin McElroy?

  Incidental.

• 23:36Russ Frushtick?

  Whereas with Alan Wake, it's obviously a very guided experience. There's sometimes side stuff, whatever, but largely very guided experience. So they can really fine tune every single thing. And this felt like just a much, much bigger project.

• 23:48Chris Plante?

  I, yes. And there are goods and bads that come with that. I agree. There's, there is plenty of the, the script that's stilted. But there's also a distance from the usual Sam Lake. Oh, I love Stephen King and I love David Lynch, and that's going to be a majority of what you see here. Um, I enjoy Control. I enjoy Alan Wake, but like at times it feels a little bit like a tour of somebody's personal interest in these things. And this felt more fully realized as its own thing. There actually came a point, I don't know, maybe 10 hours in where I was like, oh wow, I am, I'm watching a story of a game that feels like its own.

• 24:32Chris Plante?

  It doesn't feel like it's borrowing from anything. It doesn't feel like it's a continuation, even though it is. It felt like, it felt like a very standalone experience. And I realized how little, how, how rarely I have that experience when I'm playing a video game where it feels up to stuff.

• 24:47Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 24:48Griffin McElroy?

  Um, can we, can, I would love to hear your guys' thoughts on the open world stuff, because I'm, I'm pretty outspoken of like, traditionally not really enjoying that. And there have been a lot of games this year, especially over the last like couple of months, that are sort of dabbling in that shit or focusing on it completely, like your Dawn Walkers and Onimusha. Um, how, how do you, how do you guys feel about the, the open world and the kind of like array of, uh, activities and, and, and things sort of that you, that you can spend your time.

• 25:19Russ Frushtick?

  So what I mentioned earlier about difficulty is not just the fact that I can, um, get through tough combat sequences without really stressing too much. It's also when there's stuff that isn't necessarily landing for me or stuff that feels dull. I can either A, ignore it because it doesn't matter if I'm underpowered, or B, get through it incredibly quickly. So when there's a mission that's like, defend this tower from damage, I don't fucking care. So I'll either skip it or I'll get through it incredibly quickly. And it's fine. So the stuff that I've spent most of my time on are like actual side missions that have, and they detail them in the menu. Like you know, oh, this is a side mission that's going to have actual story to it with interesting things going on.

• 26:03Russ Frushtick?

  The, I think the meta game stuff that they were trying to do in this game feels weird. You like level up each of the neighborhoods based on the missions that you're doing. And that in turn unlocks like new shop items and things like, it's very bizarre.

• 26:16Griffin McElroy?

  It's so, and, and the progression systems are like, I think there's like three or four too many.

• 26:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 26:22Griffin McElroy?

  And it's in, it's inoffensive for the most part. Like I actually really like figuring out like the powers I'm going to use and how they kind of interact. And then, you know, there's a talent tree and it's like, well, okay, I know I like the powers that like summon, uh, turrets that help me. So I'll just spend my points in there. I'm not having to spend like a ton of time deliberating, which is good because like, I don't, one, there's too much shit. Like there's so many different statuses you can enter that I don't know what any of that shit, like you've got dominance. Okay. How did I do that? I could probably go way back down the tree and figure out what I did. So like the more, the material stuff of like picking my powers or picking the weapons, right?

• 27:02Griffin McElroy?

  There's, there's different weapons that your, uh, that your aberrant is the name of the magic pipe that you have, uh, can transform into like that stuff's great. The rest of it, like spending currencies I'm getting by finding them in chests or doing really boring, just like, uh, random activities out in the world. Like I don't like that stuff. I, I haven't enjoyed really any of that.

• 27:24Chris Plante?

  What type of builds did y'all do?

• 27:26Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I went with the, uh, dual knife, uh, knife sort of, uh, fast critical hit focused weapon. And then, uh, for my secondary did the big hammer, uh, which is very good at dealing falter, which like, you know, can break an enemy for an execution, which is very, very cool.

• 27:43Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. I was doing the, I guess dual, it feels like a katana or like just a big pipe essentially. And then secondary was the drill, which again, like the falter stagger thing is kind of the focus of the secondary. And then I was using the shield, which you, you rise up a big shield around you out of rocks and then charge into guys to basically stun them. And that felt, I mean, the combat, I genuinely feels really good. They really did dialogue.

• 28:07Griffin McElroy?

  Very cool. Yeah.

• 28:08Chris Plante?

  Yeah. I, I, I combined those and was a human bulldozer that just was all falter. Like pretty much the second I bash into something, I could do the special move that just killed them.

• 28:18Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 28:19Griffin McElroy?

  I, I am shocked at how much I'm enjoying this game because it is a sequel to a game I didn't care for a lot. And a genre that I think is usually pretty bad. Uh, and there's a lot of stuff about it that I just don't like to the point of like, not interacting with it at all. Uh, namely just like really any activity in the open world that is not a scripted side quest or, or main mission or like big boss fight. And yet like, I'm, I'm, it's, I'm going to see it through. It's probably like the first game that we've done in a while that I'm like, yeah, I'm, I'm actually really, really fucking hooked now.

• 28:57Griffin McElroy?

  And I really want to see what happens at the end of this thing, uh, even though there's a lot about this game that I think is pretty, pretty poorly executed. Um, the stuff that is executed well is so fucking rad and so novel, uh, that, that, I don't know. I just, I can't put it down.

• 29:15Chris Plante?

  I, I want to zip all the way back to that comparison to Prototype and Infamous because that reveals what this game got right and what a game like Wolverine, which we talked about the other week, got wrong. Cause I think they're both kind of chasing something similar. This kind of old school action game, the type of stuff that you saw on the PS3 era, right? And what is so good about this game is you can make it your own. If there's something that you don't like, change the difficulty. You know, zip right past it, skip through the cutscenes, really, and, and be in a world that the world itself is just. Immensely pleasurable. What we barely touched on it because I think we're trying not to spoil

• 29:57Chris Plante?

  it. The things that you see in this world goes so much further than Inception, New York. It gets so strange.

• 30:05Griffin McElroy?

  There's a lot more to the game than the open world map will reveal to you at the beginning of the game. And you're gonna have to play through about half the game before you start to get to that shit.

• 30:15Chris Plante?

  Yes. And you'll enjoy it.

• 30:17Griffin McElroy?

  Not a spoiler, not that first half. That's not all bad. It's fun. It's fun enough to play, but then like the shit I'm going to remember about this game starts about the, I'll say the name of it, not a spoiler, I don't think, but the sinkhole for me is where this game was like, oh, this fucking rules. I'd like, this game is actually, that one point of the game takes it up like 10 notches and then it does not come back down. Like everything they throw at you from that point on is, gets just wilder and wilder and wilder. And it's so ambitious and, I don't know, just really, really, really unique and cool.

• 30:50Russ Frushtick?

  It is, I mean, if it sticks the landing, it is definitely in competition for me for at least top five for me.

• 30:58Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I, yeah, I think so. I mean, of all the games, I guess I finished Dawn Locker, but like all these action games that have been coming out this sort of late summer, early fall have been like pretty fun, but this, this is the one that like I am most excited to, to keep playing and to see through.

• 31:14Russ Frushtick?

  You can also, I didn't, we didn't mention it, you can make him look like a total goofball. Great.

• 31:18Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah. You can customize his hair and shit for a while. He started out as the, looking a lot like the brother from Ozark.

• 31:25Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 31:26Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, but then I gave him a, like a, a center part and then he looked like he worked in IT. I just gave him like a little short Oxford shirt and tie. Uh, it's, I like, I like dressing up little Dylan. Uh, let's take a break and then I want to hear a little bit from Chris Plant about, uh, the new Gears, if that is, if we're all amenable to that.

• 31:48Russ Frushtick?

  Yep.

• 31:49Griffin McElroy?

  Great. Let's do it.

• 31:51Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of the besties is sponsored by Alienware. You know, gaming today isn't one thing. It moves between cozy, chaotic and everything in between. One minute you're exploring something slow and immersive, the next you're in a fast paced match. And somewhere in there, you might be creating, streaming, or seeing where the session goes. That's why Alienware systems are built with the performance to handle it all. With Nvidia GeForce RTX, it delivers powerful graphics that bring every world to life while optimizing battery life. So whether you're playing, creating, or jumping between both, everything runs the way it should. No interruptions, no slowing down. You don't have to adjust the way you play. You just keep gaming your way, however that looks in the moment. Be more Alien at Alienware.com slash game your way.

• 32:39Griffin McElroy?

  Plant, what's up with Gears? What's up with Gears? And also the broader kind of Xbox family of products.

• 32:48Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted to check into this game for a few reasons. I'm not a huge Gears fan, I should say upfront, though I've played through.

• 32:56Griffin McElroy?

  You're a pervert who loves chainsawing dudes.

• 32:59Chris Plante?

  I do, but that's what I like.

• 33:00Russ Frushtick?

  Dom. You love Dom.

• 33:02Chris Plante?

  And those, who can forget those classic characters? Uh, but I don't know if y'all have been following this, but shit has been not good at Microsoft and Xbox. Uh, they had yet another massive round of layoffs. They are still going up the BDS movement and seem to not acknowledge it. There are any number of reasons that Microsoft is a bit of a disaster. And I would say maybe the biggest of them all is that most people don't own an Xbox. The people who own PlayStation far outweigh the number of people who have Xboxes now. And yet they seem to want to pull all of their games back to just that original hardware. So my thinking is these games must.

• 33:44Griffin McElroy?

  Can I just say, cause I, I wanna, I wanna, I, this ran together in my head, but there were 1,600 layoffs in July, followed by another 268, uh, very, very recently in late September. So that's like, these are two separate layoff events.

• 34:01Chris Plante?

  Well, well, the weird thing is there might be more coming because I think it's like part of a years long plan.

• 34:07Griffin McElroy?

  They are targeting a reduction of 3,200 total positions through 2027. So if you work at an Xbox developer, boy, howdy, that's gotta be an uncomfortable position.

• 34:16Chris Plante?

  And you would think making a game like Gears, and I'm gonna talk about it, that you would be relatively, I don't know, safe. Because the way that they're talking about this restructure is that they, they want to focus on the big franchises. You know, they bought all these studios, but like, why don't we have a new Fallout? Why don't we have a new Elder Scrolls like every year? Why don't, why is, why aren't our biggest properties kind of like Call of Duty? Seems to be the message. So Gears, sure, that, that's it. And you have a new one coming out? Great. That team, that makes sense. And yet, that is not what's happening. The Halo team, Halo Studios, which was just named that in 2024,

• 34:56Chris Plante?

  uh, is now basically torn apart and the series is basically part, like mostly handed over to Activision. And then this Gears game, and I'll finally talk about it, the story director or narrative director of the game got laid off as part of this. A couple of weeks before the game comes out. Which is strange because this game is extremely well made. That's what's not making sense to me. I go into the thinking.

• 35:27Russ Frushtick?

  You should tell, say the name for people that aren't aware.

• 35:29Chris Plante?

  The new game is called Gears of War E-Day. And it's, what if we did Gears and it's actually when the big monster attack, when all the monsters came up from underground and they took over the city. And.

• 35:42Russ Frushtick?

  It's a prequel to the inciting incident for the entire franchise, basically.

• 35:47Chris Plante?

  And it, it's doing weird things here because Gears is, I think, very much a in the shadow of 9/11 video game. Here is a game where you are doing, like you are living through the day that the city gets destroyed and you're watching people die on the streets and you are trying to like, kind of be like a, I don't know, like a first responder almost uh, in the first few hours of this game. Not like as a medic, you're still just shooting things. And as far as a Gears game goes, they get the assignment. It looks beautiful. The story moves really fast and quickly. It is kind of like, almost like a reboot of the entire series in a way that feels closer to, uh, it honestly, it feels like

• 36:32Chris Plante?

  if you had, you'd given the series to Sony and been like, what if we just let Insomniac or Naughty Dog make a Gears game? It, it looks better than anything that Xbox has done. It, it moves better and the combat feels really good. So this is where I'm, I'm like, I'm just baffled. Man, like what is, what is going on with the company?

• 36:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. So I think it's, in my opinion, it's pretty clear. Looking at how they reorganized Xbox in general, which is shunting off the popular franchises into, uh, other studios. They basically wanted to gut the part of Xbox that was really struggling all these years, which is the internal development cycle, uh, studios of Xbox. So Microsoft Game Studios, that equivalent has been in charge of things like Game Pass, which was a financial disaster, in charge of things like Halo, which hasn't had a successful Halo installment in god knows how long. So you have all these franchises and there have been wins. Forza, you look at Forza Horizon, that's certainly been a win. And now Forza Horizon gets shunted

• 37:39Russ Frushtick?

  off into its own studio with, uh, Turn 10 and Playground Games fusing into one studio. And then Fallout, yeah, gets shunted off, uh, with Obsidian. Obsidian is now under Bethesda. So you have Obsidian's development with, um, what was the tiny little kid's game where they turned tiny? Griffin, you played it?

• 37:58Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, grounded.

• 37:58Russ Frushtick?

  Grounded. So you have all these franchises that have done okay or done well, that are now being pushed aside into these other studios, which organizationally probably makes the most sense because having this one central head making all these decisions clearly has not been working for them. It's been a total disaster. And so I am not happy that people are losing their jobs. It makes me really super bummed because clearly the higher ups were making very bad calls all along. And this is unfortunately those very bad, bad calls coming home to roost.

• 38:29Griffin McElroy?

  There's an elephant in the room and it's a, it's an elephant that is incredibly omnipresent. It's an omnipresent elephant, uh, really truly across the board in so many of the different kind of places that we talk about here on Besties, which is that Microsoft's investment in OpenAI has lost them. I think the report from last, this is like a year ago, a $4.1 billion loss from their investments in OpenAI. So like, that's fucking cataclysm. That is such a large amount of money and it really truly feels like, I mean, obviously they've made, they've bungled a lot of things in, in the Xbox division and their gaming division. And so there's lots of reasons why this is happening. But like, I don't know, man,

• 39:13Griffin McElroy?

  when you're losing that much money, it feels like this is, this, this is the place where you've chosen to kind of try and make ends meet or try to get, get back on track. It just, it doesn't make any fucking sense.

• 39:25Chris Plante?

  But I think that is like.

• 39:26Griffin McElroy?

  Fucking sense to me that they, they lost too much money. Okay. But, uh, it seems like there's other places that that could come out.

• 39:33Chris Plante?

  But I, I think this is putting good money after bad here. Like I, I don't think this is a decision like, oh, we lost a lot of money and now we need to cut. I think this is, we still think the ROI, the return on investment for AI is so high and profound in the long term that we need to get every dollar from every other area and pull it in. That they, that it's games, the return just isn't high enough, which is the, the dark and awful thing that the games industry is struggling against as tech just siphons more and more money is it's not about being a profitable company. It is about what is the maximum returns that you can get. And games not seen as having those maximum returns.

• 40:15Chris Plante?

  And it's infuriating. I, I just really quick, want to go back to what Frash said though, because I think all of that is true, but I also think it's worth underlying.

• 40:24Chris Plante?

  How much of these issues are really quarantined to the highest levels? Because yes, did Halo Studios not make like the dream Halo game? Sure, it also was having to change what it, what the company thought Halo should be constantly. The orders for what these games should be were perpetually changing. So that's the weird thing is I, it's almost hard for us to know, oh, were these people not good at making Halo? Or were they not good at making a new entire version of Halo every three or four years?

• 41:02Russ Frushtick?

  You look at the Suicide Squad game that came out, it was a total disaster because they had to inject live service, whatever.

• 41:08Griffin McElroy?

  All of the stuff, right? Yeah, I mean, that's a tale as old as, that's a tale as old as time of game, gaming developers and publishers chasing, chasing the trends like Destiny, which ironically is now, you know, largely kaput.

• 41:21Chris Plante?

  Yes, and that's why the weird thing is so weird to me to have even a single layoff in it before the game comes out is, you know, I haven't finished it, maybe people will have different opinions, but it feels like they, they, they made a machine that actually knows how to make Gears games. After all this time, they, they did the hard part and then to like fuss with that in any way is just so strange. And it makes me think that, and you have every reason to believe this based off what we're seeing. These really are yet again, decisions that are being made at such a high level that they are not accounting for

• 42:01Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 42:02Chris Plante?

  the games themselves or the people who are making them. And that, it's just.

• 42:07Griffin McElroy?

  It's such, it's a, it's a huge, I realize this is a huge oversimplification and I, I recognize that if you start talking about AI shit, there's an expectation that you have a degree in economics and computer sciences and what have you. But like, how many studios could $4.1 billion fund? Just to use that number from a year ago, I'm sure it's a much, much higher number now. I can't Google it in real time while doing this podcast and, and say anything remotely accurately. It's, it, I feel like there are forces so far beyond the shit that we talked about 20 years ago. When we talked about like, oh, boy, uh, they really need to tighten up the graphics on level five to quote the full sale commercial.

• 42:50Griffin McElroy?

  And now it's like, well, due to this fucking sinkhole, uh, that is making everything slightly shittier and take way, way, way longer, uh, they are trying to, and they're, they're making really, really, really, really shitty and short-term decisions that are going to ultimately, I think, hurt, hurt Xbox even more than they are already hurting.

• 43:14Russ Frushtick?

  Look at Windows as a software, as a piece of software, Windows is the perfect representation of what Microsoft is as an organization or has been. Who knows if they end up trimming this stuff, but traditionally, and certainly right now, Windows has fucking widgets and Copilot and Cortana and shit popping out at you every two seconds and needs to be updated on security things every two seconds. Because there are so many different competing priorities within Microsoft to, that everyone needs their little slice of the pie. And this is what's happening with these game studios is all these competing priorities, whether it's AI or whether it's whatever, pull away from other competing priorities.

• 43:57Russ Frushtick?

  I actually do think even it's again, sucks that people got laid off over it, but I do think pushing these franchises into studios like Bethesda, into studios like, um, the Call of Duty studio, like putting Halo there for the future of the Halo franchise. That is a better move than what they were doing because at least you have studios that have built structures for the most part that know how to make profitable things and know how to make fun, successful things. So you are more likely to get a Halo game from this new Activision studio than you ever were necessarily getting it from a studio that was constantly getting drip-fed direction from the higher-ups.

• 44:41Russ Frushtick?

  I'm not saying it's going to work out, but.

• 44:44Chris Plante?

  Flip it with Bethesda and Obsidian because I do think it is funny, like Bethesda should be in somehow in Obsidian. The, the studio that actually ships video games.

• 44:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 44:54Chris Plante?

  I think that would be pretty cool. Um, but yeah, I, I, I know what you mean. It's, I, I'm sure there are folks who are listening to this and like, plant, just talk about Gears, like what is the game? And it, as credit to the people who made this game, again, it's beautiful. This is, I think, the best looking Xbox game. There is architecture in this game that is playing with like art deco mixed with like 1950s kind of atomic age design. That is fantastic that they.

• 45:25Griffin McElroy?

  And the chainsawing dudes, I'm sure is.

• 45:27Chris Plante?

  And the chainsawing dudes is great. It's, it's just so hard.

• 45:31Russ Frushtick?

  Wait, I do have to know, is there an origin story of like, wait, we have these chainsaws and we have these guns. What can we do? Wait a minute, is that in the game?

• 45:44Chris Plante?

  There, um, I would, let's say that there is a, a grocery store slash big box store that is signposted for the first two hours of the game and you eventually get there.

• 45:55Griffin McElroy?

  You're just waiting.

• 45:56Chris Plante?

  So I wonder, I wonder what they might sell in that store.

• 46:00Russ Frushtick?

  That's great.

• 46:01Chris Plante?

  And, and, and it's, it's, it's such a bummer to be playing this and bummer is an understatement.

• 46:08Chris Plante?

  That, that, that just lives over it of holy moly, these people had to make this under such shit circumstances. And then the coalition, the team that made it, they've been doing that for years. They've had changes of leadership. This is like one of endless problems that they've done. And yeah, maybe, maybe we'll be able to talk about it more at some point, but it is, it is a weird feeling.

• 46:32Griffin McElroy?

  There's also the thing where like the layoffs are obviously horrible. And also the people who do not get laid off now, all of a sudden are having to work that much harder, being given that many more sort of responsibilities. And like, it's, it's layoffs are such a, uh, such a fucking drain. And obviously bad for the human beings that are doing it, but just like across the board, it's such a bad sign. We've been doing this for, for long enough that I don't, I can't think of too many instances where these mass layoffs have happened. And then the games that sort of come out after that are like, damn, you can really see the love. You can really see the love that went into this one.

• 47:12Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, yeah, man, it's just a shit time kind of across the board for the big, for the big dogs, it feels like.

• 47:20Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 47:22Griffin McElroy?

  So, hey, you guys been playing anything else or we have any emails?

• 47:27Russ Frushtick?

  We have some emails, actually, we can bring it up a little bit. We have a recommendation, this one comes from Devon, a random recommendation. Uh, I know a lot of you talked about UI RPGs before, and I wanted to put forward database detective minor crimes division on your radar. The game is neat because it's a UI RPG about solving incredibly minor crimes for an absurd police state. But it also teaches you SQL database language, which is actually a really good, good technical skill to have. Uh, as a currently unemployed person, it's been a great resource to learn something I can add to my resume. It's like math blaster for adults.

• 48:02Chris Plante?

  That sounds fucking great.

• 48:03Russ Frushtick?

  That sounds.

• 48:04Chris Plante?

  I love that.

• 48:05Griffin McElroy?

  I like, I like programming in games. I like, you guys, what was the quadrilateral cowboy?

• 48:12Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. God damn, that was a fun game.

• 48:15Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Uh, closest I can get is like Zelda building stuff in Tears of the Kingdom, which I realize is not necessarily programming, but feels a little bit in, kind of in the ballpark of it.

• 48:28Russ Frushtick?

  Brooke wrote in to say, plant, I felt the same way about three houses is in the context of plant not getting into Fire Emblem. I tried twice, but I can't get into all the systems in time. If you still want to give Fire Emblem a shot, I can recommend Fire Emblem Awakening. This was the first Fire Emblem I played and so far, it's the only one that's I stuck with till the end. It's a lot more linear, you can turn off permadeath. Uh, I think this is one of the first series, uh, first in the series to offer that. And I really like the simplicity of unit cohesion. It also has time babies, so there's that.

• 48:59Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, you have babies and then they time travel to become adults instantly. So you can use them in fights. It's a very novel, novel video game concept. I love Awakening.

• 49:09Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's so fucking good.

• 49:09Griffin McElroy?

  I think I like Fates better as, uh, I don't know, as a, as a story and the units, but I really, really appreciate how Awakening is just the one game.

• 49:18Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 49:18Griffin McElroy?

  It's just the one game and it does the thing and you get in and you get out.

• 49:22Chris Plante?

  I should just put this on the AYN door.

• 49:25Griffin McElroy?

  Oh yeah, dog. I can, I can, I can play this right now. You can play this right now if you want to.

• 49:29Russ Frushtick?

  As long as you have a, a game cartridge for it, absolutely.

• 49:32Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I'll, I'll tape that one to the back of the AYN. Yeah.

• 49:36Russ Frushtick?

  Good.

• 49:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 49:37Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, last question, this is a good one. Um, question for the besties, if you didn't have to keep up with the pace of the show and didn't have access to a gaming PC, which platform would you make your default?

• 49:48Griffin McElroy?

  Switch 2 with a bullet. Genuinely, it's just a question of like, I play games almost entirely on handheld. Uh, usually like when, uh, I'm, my kids are doing something else and I have like a few minutes, like my gaming time is very, very rarely like, I got a couple of hours, I'm going to strap down and put like, I'm using the Rog Ally X. And if I'm not using the Rog Ally X, I'm using the Switch 2.

• 50:13Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 50:13Griffin McElroy?

  Switch 2 is also like more affordable than the other ones, I think. And like pretty surprisingly beefy and.

• 50:20Russ Frushtick?

  And more versatile. And I would say if you don't have a gaming PC, which is the case in this example, the Switch 2 is now getting like a shitload of PC games finally coming to Switch because it can run it. So it does sort of check that box as well. I would agree. I remember before the Steam Deck came out, whenever we would, uh, get emails asking which platforms we wanted code for, almost always whenever it was an option, we would pick Switch just because the convenience of it and the, the portability.

• 50:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 50:49Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 50:50Chris Plante?

  Um, okay. Honorable mentions?

• 50:53Griffin McElroy?

  So I'll talk about what we got coming up for, for Resties. Uh, people wanna listen to this in a little bit. We have a little bit done, like, I've been playing that normal golf game, y'all. Luke Muscat, uh, is-

• 51:06Russ Frushtick?

  You should call, you should say what it's actually called.

• 51:09Griffin McElroy?

  Normal golf game?

• 51:10Russ Frushtick?

  What is it actually? I think, is it just nor-

• 51:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's called Normal Golf Game. Yeah.

• 51:15Russ Frushtick?

  Normal Golf Game, you're right. Yeah, it's called Normal Golf Golf Game.

• 51:19Griffin McElroy?

  So quick to cut me at these.

• 51:22Russ Frushtick?

  Well, people wouldn't know, if they didn't know that was a game, you would think that you were just talking about a normal golf game.

• 51:27Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, that, that, that's fair. Luke Muscat made, uh, or was partly responsible for Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride. And Normal Golf Game, I believe, is his, like, first truly independent project. He has been documenting this on YouTube. And this game, at first, you're gonna look at it and think, oh, it's a Bennett Foddy's style game. I think, like, getting over it, uh, where you're going to just get very frustrated and the humor and fun of the game is, like, just bashing your head over and over and over again against a wall. That is not what this is. This is, as the title suggests, an actual normal golf game. As in, it kinda plays like golf.

• 52:11Griffin McElroy?

  And we will talk about what that means and why I think it is so special on Resties.

• 52:16Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I'm excited. Uh, I just dipped into it and it's been a lot of fun. Uh, I will talk about a non-gaming thing. Survivor started again. This is-

• 52:26Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, boy.

• 52:26Russ Frushtick?

  Season 51. And I wanna share to you what my favorite thing to do at the beginning of a Survivor season is.

• 52:34Griffin McElroy?

  I can't wait to hear this.

• 52:35Russ Frushtick?

  I love nothing more than falling asleep during early episodes of a Survivor season.

• 52:42Griffin McElroy?

  Interesting.

• 52:43Russ Frushtick?

  I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the total-

• 52:45Griffin McElroy?

  It's overload.

• 52:46Russ Frushtick?

  There's so many characters, there's so many new people. Anytime there's ever a challenge and suddenly they're running and untieing things and trying to build a puzzle, if it's 9:30 or later at night, I am asleep on the couch. And it is the most restful sleep of my life. There is nothing-

• 53:03Griffin McElroy?

  That's so interesting.

• 53:04Russ Frushtick?

  Going to wake me. And then, as the season progresses, I stay up and I'm like, more in ga- oh, I remember that person, or was that a dream I had? I don't know. But, uh, it's still, this is not a knock on the show. I think the show is still great and very investing and, uh-

• 53:18Griffin McElroy?

  I'll, I'll have to wait and see before I'll-

• 53:21Russ Frushtick?

  Jeff is promising permanent-

• 53:23Griffin McElroy?

  Jeff has lost his goddamn mind and someone needs to step in and intervene and it's the people who are working under him are doing him a great disservice by not taking him by the shoulder and say things like, open era is fucking nothing. You can't just say, the new thing we're doing this year is that anything we've done in past years might show up this year.

• 53:45Russ Frushtick?

  He keeps saying permanent-

• 53:46Griffin McElroy?

  Fucking always, like, how it's always, always, always been-

• 53:50Russ Frushtick?

  Permanent uncertainty is what he, he said it like six or seven times before I fell asleep, so-

• 53:54Griffin McElroy?

  You roll up and you're in exile island. Gotcha. Gotcha. You're in exile, didn't think we'd hit you with exile, did you? I guess not, but-

• 54:02Russ Frushtick?

  It's marketing-

• 54:02Griffin McElroy?

  I guess it's been a while.

• 54:03Russ Frushtick?

  This is what marketing, you're positioning the season to feel like a brand new thing.

• 54:07Griffin McElroy?

  There's certain things also of, like, at one point in the pilot, in the, in the first episode of this new season, everybody's gathered there, he's like, we're gonna leave it up to you guys. We hear a lot that people don't like the fire making challenge. If you don't watch Survivor, this is when they get down to the final four. The winner of the immunity challenge is going to the final three. They pick someone to come to the final three and the other two people have to make fire in a fire making challenge to decide who's the third person that goes to the finale, to the jury, what have you. People don't like the fire making challenge, so we'll leave it up to you guys. Right now, fire making challenge is in. If there's a unanimous decision among the 24 of you or whatever, that they, you don't want it, then we'll get rid of it. And like, five people raise their hands like, yeah, I'd like to get rid of it, I'd like it to be a straight up vote. He's like, see, audience?

• 54:51Griffin McElroy?

  So shut the fuck up. See Reddit? Suck my butt.

• 54:55Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, stop coming up to me in the street at Costco and yelling at me, cuz clearly I was right the whole time.

• 55:01Griffin McElroy?

  And what do you guys think? Should we get rid of all advantages? Because Reddit said mean thing, it's like, dude, you gotta get unplugged. You got a sweet gig and the show is still very fun. You gotta stop, you gotta stop letting it get to you.

• 55:15Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, he's, he's written, written a few too many comments there.

• 55:19Griffin McElroy?

  I guess so. Um, I'll talk about another reality program I've been, uh, enjoying, which is, uh, Physical 100 Mexico. This is the, uh, one of the first international spinoffs of Physical 100, which is a Korean reality competition show where 100 people who are fit in all kinds of different ways, weightlifters who are huge, gymnasts who are not as huge, a lot of CrossFit people, all come together and in a very high production value series of physical challenges, uh, win, winna themselves down until they pick a winner. It's a fucking killer show that is truly, truly one of the best produced reality competition shows ever. The set pieces are insane, the cinematography is like, off the, off the charts.

• 56:04Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, there is currently on Netflix, Physical 100 Mexico and Physical 100 Italy. Uh, and just reading online, it sounded like the Physical 100 Mexico was more enjoyable.

• 56:14Russ Frushtick?

  Are they, like, regionally produced? So is it all, like, people speaking Spanish in the Mexico?

• 56:19Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, yeah, so it's, it's regionally produced in Mexico, but it is a, it is like a, they credit the original show, like, at the end, credit. And it feels exact-

• 56:28Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, sure.

• 56:28Griffin McElroy?

  Like, it feels-

• 56:29Russ Frushtick?

  It's like, everyone loves Raymond being ported over.

• 56:32Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, and the challenges so far have been, like, identical to the challenges in the first season of Physical 100, but it's just such a kick-ass idea for a show because you get 100 people in a room who are, and the original show really helped me kinda come to terms with this, body dorks. Like, there's, there, it's really truly, like, when you reach that level of focus on athleticism, it's, you're a dork about it and people, like, saying, like, damn, man, great huge body.

• 57:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 57:01Griffin McElroy?

  And being like, I don't know, like, cool to each other about that, especially in, like, the team-based challenges. I don't know, there is a unity that comes out of that.

• 57:08Russ Frushtick?

  It's their trains, basically.

• 57:10Griffin McElroy?

  It's their trains and it's just the, again, like, just a fucking rad show to look at. Uh, Mystico is, uh, a luchador Mexican wrestler who's done some AEW stuff as well, uh, shows up as one of the hundred and watching, like, watching him in his mask, like, doing shit is, like, pretty rad also. It's just seeing all these people from all these different disciplines competing, it's, it's just great.

• 57:36Russ Frushtick?

  I think that's what I would be as a Mexican wrestler, if I wanted-

• 57:40Griffin McElroy?

  I don't think that's how it works.

• 57:42Russ Frushtick?

  But like-

• 57:43Griffin McElroy?

  That's really truly not how-

• 57:44Russ Frushtick?

  Because you can walk down the street and be fine, like, I wouldn't be mobbed.

• 57:48Griffin McElroy?

  That's, you would, cuz you'd have the mask-

• 57:50Russ Frushtick?

  No, no, I would take the mask off to be incognito.

• 57:53Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, okay. They do take that very seriously.

• 57:55Russ Frushtick?

  I know, but like, you don't, they're not wearing the mask in their normal, everyday lives.

• 58:00Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 58:01Russ Frushtick?

  Because people don't know.

• 58:02Griffin McElroy?

  You're saying a lot of shit right now that I feel like you have not researched or-

• 58:05Russ Frushtick?

  No, I think I have.

• 58:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. But yeah, I'm digging it. We're about halfway through the season and it's pretty sick.

• 58:14Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I think that's it for this episode of The Besties. Thank you so much for listening. Uh, Chris, you wanna talk about what we talked about this week?

• 58:21Chris Plante?

  This week, we talked about Control Resonant, Gears of War E-Day, Normal Golf Game, that is the title, Survivor, which is back, and Physical 100 Mexico.

• 58:34Griffin McElroy?

  Rad.

• 58:34Russ Frushtick?

  Cool.

• 58:35Griffin McElroy?

  A rad lineup. Um, thank you for listening and thanks to our patrons for supporting us over at patreon.com/thebesties. If you go there, you can support us very directly and also get access to episodes of The Resties, where Russ and Chris talk about games that we, uh, didn't have time for here on the core show. Uh, and also our monthly Bracket Battle episodes, uh, where we get, uh, a guest on to decide incredibly inane, sort of, uh, tournament-style questions. Uh, like, uh, which, which video game healing item probably tastes the best?

• 59:07Russ Frushtick?

  That is coming at you, uh, first week of October, so pretty soon.

• 59:11Griffin McElroy?

  Monday, it's coming at you Monday.

• 59:12Russ Frushtick?

  Tuesday.

• 59:13Griffin McElroy?

  Coming at you Monday, we got special guest Jordan Morris, uh, on Tuesday. Patreon.com/thebesties is where you can go to become a member. Do you wanna thank some of our backers?

• 59:22Russ Frushtick?

  I would love to. We have Bobby D, we have Joe K, we have Marcos O, and we have Seabass.

• 59:29Griffin McElroy?

  Incredible.

• 59:30Russ Frushtick?

  We love you all.

• 59:31Griffin McElroy?

  We love you, thank you. Uh, hey, next week, next Friday, October 9th, we're gonna be at the Town Hall in New York City and we're gonna be doing our very first live show. And, uh, I can't wait, I'm very excited for what we've got lined up.

• 59:46Russ Frushtick?

  It's gonna be very fun.

• 59:47Griffin McElroy?

  You can go to bit.ly/besties on Broadway, there's still a few tickets available. Uh, we'd love to see ya, come out, watch the show, it's gonna be a great time. Next week, Wizard Annie, it's Star Wars Galactic Race.

• 59:59Russ Frushtick?

  We are somehow both doing a live show and releasing a, uh, broadcast on that very same day. I don't know how we're doing it.

• 1:00:07Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know how we're gonna do it. Um, but it's gonna happen and, uh, I, I'm, I'm looking forward to this one. So join us next week on The Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?