Silksong is an Exceptional Metroidvania (If You Endure its Challenges)

After years of anticipation, Hollow Knight: Silksong has arrived. And it’s difficult! The Besties talk about what makes the game so appealing, the early spike in difficulty, and the appeal of discovering small upgrades in an inhospitable (but beautiful) world.

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

• 0:00Russ Frushtick?

  Justin, do you feel bad?

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:02Russ Frushtick?

  Just in general.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  How did you know? It's a good guess, honestly.

• 0:06Russ Frushtick?

  I'm gonna tell, talk a little bit about my Silk Song day. The day that Silk Song came out.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:12Russ Frushtick?

  This is how the day went. Uh, I woke up in the morning. I was like, I'm gonna download Silk Song at 10 a.m. Eastern. Steam totally shit the bed and wouldn't let me buy it. And then I had to record with Chris Plant, an episode of Rusty's. And then I got off of that and couldn't download it. And then my aftercare for my child fell through, so I had to babysit my child.

• 0:37Chris Plante?

  Well, I don't think you babysit your child.

• 0:39Griffin McElroy?

  That's a tough, that's, we gotta take a big stop right there, my man, because you actually can't babysit your child. You can only parent them.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  I think Russ was having some Andrew Dice Clay style fun there, guys. I don't wanna hang later on it too much, okay? He's the bad boy in the way.

• 0:56Chris Plante?

  Okay, Dice man, keep going, keep going, keep going.

• 0:58Griffin McElroy?

  I just wanted to make it explicitly clear for the listener, they've done some Andrew Dice Clay shit.

• 1:03Chris Plante?

  It might help if, and people don't get to hear it very often, but if you actually use your natural accent, you do the kind of-

• 1:09Griffin McElroy?

  Use a nasty voice. If you're gonna say nasty stuff, do a nasty voice.

• 1:12Russ Frushtick?

  Hickory dickory dock, I had to babysit my child.

• 1:16Griffin McElroy?

  Great.

• 1:18Chris Plante?

  Now, now it makes sense.

• 1:20Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  You know, in 2025, maybe that is edgy, you know? I don't know.

• 1:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  We allowed to even say that anymore?

• 1:26Russ Frushtick?

  So, we go through the whole process and 8:30 rolls around and my child is sleeping in his bed. It's time. I've got, finally, I've been able to download Silk Song. It downloads to the Steam Deck. I'm ready to start playing. I literally turn the lights off, put headphones on, and I'm gonna like, be in it. And I suddenly hear a click, a click, click, click, click, coming from my bathroom. And I go in there and water is pouring out of my outlet.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:58Russ Frushtick?

  Which is not a good thing.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  No, Russ.

• 2:00Griffin McElroy?

  That's crazy, because for me, for me, electricity comes out.

• 2:03Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. This is literally, I'm not joking, 30 seconds into playing the game.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 2:08Russ Frushtick?

  I haven't even gotten through the intro cutscene. Apparently, there was a pipe that broke several floors above me in my apartment building.

• 2:15Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 2:16Russ Frushtick?

  And water was flowing down.

• 2:17Griffin McElroy?

  Is it all the drilling? It's all the drilling that's been happening here?

• 2:20Russ Frushtick?

  Yes, part of the drilling. We've heard the drilling before. Okay, so that happens. I call the downstairs, I talk to the super. We're figuring out what it is.

• 2:28Griffin McElroy?

  Pause, pause, pause, pause. You do let them know that it's Silk Song Day, right?

• 2:33Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I let them know.

• 2:34Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:34Russ Frushtick?

  I let them know. I mean, I sent them an email two weeks ago, making sure they were aware, and yet this still happened. Takes about an hour for things to calm down. Water is no longer pouring from my outlet. Hooray.

• 2:47Russ Frushtick?

  And I'm able to play about, hmm, probably 30 minutes of that.

• 2:51Griffin McElroy?

  Nice.

• 2:51Russ Frushtick?

  Of Silk Song.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  I imagine, I imagine him starting to play in like a rocking chair and he's like, "Time to game."

• 2:58Russ Frushtick?

  Well, actually, not what happened.

• 2:59Griffin McElroy?

  His little sleeping cap falls over.

• 3:01Russ Frushtick?

  So, so here's where I'm at.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Comes out of his nose.

• 3:04Russ Frushtick?

  And then suddenly I get a notification on my phone, and someone has sent a Slack message to the besties. Now, I know, if it's a Slack message, it must be important, work-related information.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Oh, no. I just remembered. Okay.

• 3:23Russ Frushtick?

  Now, as we all know, I'm not a big fan of spoilers. At 11:09 PM on that night, what does Justin send? Justin, you want to do it?

• 3:34Speaker 01

  I'd rather not.

• 3:35Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so Justin sent, "Pro tip: The yo-yo is OP once you get the chain."

• 3:44Griffin McElroy?

  Listener, this is not a real... This is not a... First of all, listener, you probably don't care about this as much as Russ would.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  That's so fucking fun. Now that you've told me contextualize it, that's actually one of the best jokes I ever did. Oh, man.

• 4:00Griffin McElroy?

  Russ, that story tells so much about you. I think the ending is the most demonstrative because it is so not a spoiler and yet it is enough to really cap off your-

• 4:10Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, it's literally not a spoiler because it was bullshit.

• 4:13Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 4:14Russ Frushtick?

  But how would I know that?

• 4:16Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 4:16Chris Plante?

  Especially when you're kind of like fading in and out of this gentle slumber.

• 4:21Russ Frushtick?

  Yes. So I sent a very snippy Slack message to Justin at 7:00 in the morning.

• 4:27Griffin McElroy?

  Really good.

• 4:27Russ Frushtick?

  Well, not to Justin. I sent it broadly to the room.

• 4:31Chris Plante?

  Yeah, sure, the group.

• 4:32Russ Frushtick?

  "Don't talk about Silk Song in here," and Justin admitted that he was baiting me.

• 4:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 4:37Russ Frushtick?

  So that was my Silk Song day. How was your guys' day? Fun?

• 4:41Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, pretty good, but we should probably talk about the game, too.

• 4:44Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, fair enough.

• 5:02Speaker 01

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

• 5:05Griffin McElroy?

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

• 5:08Chris Plante?

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

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome to the Besties, a Besties episode long awaited, long anticipated. We are talking about Hollow Knight: Silk Song. Chris Plant, I don't know if it even needs explanation this way, but what is Hollow Knight Silk Song?

• 5:33Chris Plante?

  We've been talking about this game for years. It's a sequel to Hollow Knight and it finally came out, but it's faster and harder. Unless it's not harder and it's easier and it's better. Unless it's not better and the discourse is hot and fast. And we're gonna get right to it after this, wait, not after this break.

• 5:53Griffin McElroy?

  Russ Rushdick, please.

• 5:55Russ Frushtick?

  Thank you. We have some news, actually, before the, the ad rolls here, and this will be relevant because we are launching a new tier to our Patreon.

• 6:06Griffin McElroy?

  What?

• 6:07Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 6:08Griffin McElroy?

  What's that even mean, Russ? I'm scared and pissed off, but excited.

• 6:13Russ Frushtick?

  We've been doing this Patreon for about a year and a half now. We love you guys. We really appreciate the support. It's awesome. At this point, there's probably-

• 6:22Griffin McElroy?

  The vibes are great.

• 6:24Russ Frushtick?

  Fifty-five-ish episodes.

• 6:26Griffin McElroy?

  Way more than that. Way more than that.

• 6:29Russ Frushtick?

  I think it's fifty-five.

• 6:31Griffin McElroy?

  I think we're like over like sixty, approaching-

• 6:33Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, maybe sixty. Anyway, a shitload of bonus content that is only available to Patreon subscribers is all there, so that's all-

• 6:39Speaker 01

  They've got the rest. There's a bunch of the resties. There's our monthly besties bracket episodes. There's the resties. There's the Rusties, which is Russ's annual adult video award. He does.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  He does this quarterly, folks. You would think annual would make sense, but he says there's just too much-

• 6:58Griffin McElroy?

  This rocket needs some grease.

• 7:00Russ Frushtick?

  No, we're trying to encourage people here, folks.

• 7:03Griffin McElroy?

  We want people to do this thing.

• 7:04Russ Frushtick?

  Ever since we launched, there's been a request, and that request has been, can we get the main episodes, like the episode you're listening to right now, ad-free? And now you can, because we are launching, we've launched, in theory, assuming everything goes well, we've launched a ten-dollar tier that includes all of the bonus content you're currently beginning, as well as all of the main feed episodes, completely ad-free. So that will be up now. Hopefully, that is something you guys are interested in. I know a bunch of people have asked about it. It should be noted that we are once again just straight copying what Blank Check did on their Patreon, because they seem to be good folks that know what they're doing. So that's what we've done here.

• 7:46Russ Frushtick?

  And yeah, so if that's of interest, I know for people that haven't subscribed yet, or don't have an active subscription, there's a bit of a discount for signing up, things like that. So hop on over to patreon.com/thebesties. For all that cool stuff with the tier and that's it.

• 8:04Griffin McElroy?

  And we should make it clear, if you don't want to do that, you still can listen to the regular episodes with ads.

• 8:09Russ Frushtick?

  Not going anywhere. You'll still have the ad-supported main feed episodes. Those are there, or if you just want to stay at $5, you'll just get the bonus content and the ad-supported episodes of the main feed. This is really just for people that either want to support us more or just want ad-free main feed and they'll all be in, you could actually choose. They'll all be in one giant feed with all the bonus and the regular episodes, or you can separate them out if you want, according to Patreon people that know more than me. That's it. Let's, let's take an ad break. Let's do it.

• 8:39Griffin McElroy?

  Or not.

• 8:41Russ Frushtick?

  Or not.

• 8:41Griffin McElroy?

  If you're a part of the new tier. Wow. Hey, welcome.

• 8:46Chris Plante?

  Here's your chance to try it out.

• 8:50Chris Plante?

  I used to recommend a VPN to like anybody who is traveling because you'll be, I don't know, in Paris or Tokyo. Look at you, big shot, and you'll want to watch your shows and you won't be able to. You'll need a VPN. But now I recommend a VPN for everybody, whether it is your security or whether it is you live in a state where maybe you can't have access to pretty basic websites without weird security checks and all sorts of other headaches. Proton VPN is a secure VPN service designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security. It keeps what you do online private and lets you access the internet

• 9:29Chris Plante?

  like it should work. Open, secure, and on your terms. Unlike most VPNs, Proton is backed by strong European privacy laws and years of expertise creating a safer, faster, and more open internet for everyone. So whether you want to watch content from anywhere, get around blocked sites, or just keep your activity private on public wifi, Proton VPN has you covered. It is easy to get started. Right now, Proton VPN is offering our listeners

• 10:01Chris Plante?

  70% off a two-year plan when you go to protonvpn.com/besties. That is P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P-N.com/besties for 70% off your two-year plan. That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  So Hollow Knight Silk Song is here. The weight is over.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  And it's, what do you guys think? How does it live up to your expectations?

• 10:39Russ Frushtick?

  How do we even tackle this? It's such a heavy thing.

• 10:41Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's tough. We should lay this out first. We are only talking up to a certain point in the game. Obviously with Russ on the line, we're extremely cognizant about spoilers. And so we are not going to go too far past an area that's maybe like halfway through act one, maybe a good like eight or so hours.

• 11:01Russ Frushtick?

  I think we can give town names. I don't think a town name is a spoiler.

• 11:03Griffin McElroy?

  Well, I don't know, man. With you, it's always a moving target, dude.

• 11:05Russ Frushtick?

  It would be a spoiler for me, but I think for most normal people it wouldn't.

• 11:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, you set the boundaries for us. Where are we at?

• 11:11Russ Frushtick?

  Sure. So there's a town called Bellhart, which is like a critical path town. It takes, I mean, depending on skill, probably seven or eight hours to reach. If you played a ton since launch, you've probably reached it already. So we were thinking everything before that we'll cover here. We won't be touching any late game stuff in this conversation, but obviously, you know, anything before reaching Bellhart is fair game. So if you want to wait to listen to this until you've gotten to that point, feel free. If you don't care, like most people, I'm sure, rock and roll.

• 11:41Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, can I, can I kick things off with this? And it's the thing that I keep kind of coming back to as I've played, I think I put about 20 hours into Silk Song at this point, is I, I had forgotten the thing that made Hollow Knight so special and so memorable, which is this, this sense of place and atmosphere and vibe that Team Cherry was able to sort of accomplish of being a little bug in a big, sprawling.

• 12:15Russ Frushtick?

  Figure bug now.

• 12:16Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, bigger bug, slightly bigger bug.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Slightly, yeah.

• 12:19Griffin McElroy?

  In a threatening sprawling world that constantly scares and surprises and overwhelms you. That vibe, like, the fact that they have been able to do that again, and I think much more even effectively than in Hollow Knight, is really above everything else. There's a lot about this game that is working for me so well. I have not felt so transported by a game in a very, very, very long time, if ever. Difficulty is the big conversation about this game, and it's always one that is so fraught

• 12:57Griffin McElroy?

  and turns people into, I don't know, buttholes, sort of, on either side of the conversation. But the way that this game makes you pay attention to everything and care about every hit you take and every jump you make because of that kind of atmosphere that it surrounds you with, is, it is a feat. It is an accomplishment that I think cannot be overstated.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  The way it looks, especially now that you've mentioned the bigger bug and the animation, I kept trying to think, like, what is the vibe that I'm connecting with here? It reminds me of a lot of the non-Disney animation of the 80s. Like Don Bluth stuff? Don Bluth, exactly. Like, that is a very generous, lush kind of animation, you know what I mean? Like, there's almost more frames than you need to really bring across the fluidity of it. Like, you feel that sort of, almost, an almost sort of painterly aspect to it as you're going through.

• 14:02Griffin McElroy?

  And so crazy varied, too. Like, beyond the point we're going to talk about today, you will reach areas that don't look anything like places you have been before, and all of a sudden, it's like, oh, fuck, like, the rules are different here. Thing, this is, I need to be on my fucking toes. And that sense of constant alertness that the game requires, it dovetails, it feeds back into.

• 14:26Chris Plante?

  To uh, just the appreciation for the, for the vibe and the environment.

• 14:31Russ Frushtick?

  I, I mentioned earlier, when I was playing, I plugged in headphones. Did anyone else try playing with headphones?

• 14:38Chris Plante?

  No, I don't think so.

• 14:39Russ Frushtick?

  I don't think I've ever played a game with better audio design than this fucking game. The audio design in this game is fucking through the roof insane. There's a moment very, very early on. Um, when you are going through a cavern or whatever, and you hear in the distance somehow, it's a 2D fucking game. And yet you hear it in the distance, just the echoing of a song from someone that is singing.

• 15:04Chris Plante?

  Ah, tiro ta.

• 15:08Chris Plante?

  Beautiful, Chris.

• 15:09Russ Frushtick?

  And your footsteps are echoing on like the cave floor and you can hear just like the whispers of air sneaking through the cave. And you get closer and closer to this singing voice and you meet the person who turns out to be like your main map fender effectively. And that vibe is just like so precision tuned in ways that I really can't think of a single. Like oral experience that I've ever had that is better than this game.

• 15:41Chris Plante?

  And it's holistic. Yes, I agree. It's, it's incredible how well they do that. And they do that in a lot of other ways. There are lots of subtle audio cues and then there are subtle visual cues. So like when you're meeting this character Chakra, there are little items that serve no real purpose other than to cue you in to you are getting closer and closer to this person. There are large objects in the environment that also cue you in that you are getting closer and closer to this person. It's so incredibly clever.

• 16:13Russ Frushtick?

  I'm, I'm curious, Plant, as someone who we've talked a lot about the fact that these, this genre does not click with you.

• 16:21Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 16:21Russ Frushtick?

  How you found this one in particular, because I, in my experience in playing it, it does feel.

• 16:29Russ Frushtick?

  More directed, although not extremely directed at all, but more directed than Hollow Knight was.

• 16:35Chris Plante?

  Yes, I'm so glad you asked because I bounced off Hollow Knight and there are a few things that have changed. One, didn't just have a kid. Let me tell you, bad time to play a game where you need to remember an entire giant world is when you don't remember anything, including your own name. So that was a huge game changer. Two, you're right, more directed from the drop. This game does a pretty clear job of confining you just enough that you feel like you know what you're doing before you get lost in its world. And most importantly with that confinement, I feel like you have the opportunity to get the core parts of the mapping

• 17:15Chris Plante?

  system before you get thrown out into the murkiness, which I did not feel personally with Hollow Knight. Maybe that is, maybe I'm wrong.

• 17:25Russ Frushtick?

  No, this game gives you the mapping stuff earlier and easier.

• 17:29Chris Plante?

  Yeah, way easier. Yes. I also just found the combat very quickly to be much more exciting. And I, again, I don't remember much of Hollow Knight or why I bounced off. I remember it being a little bit slower or not muddy or because it's not bad in that way. But this reminds me of something closer to a Platinum game, honestly. It feels like pretty intense action combat. The amount of aerial work that I'm doing when I'm playing the game feels like the sort of thing I like doing in action games. And what's really, really blown me away about this game, as somebody who is less interested in the Metroidvania stuff,

• 18:10Chris Plante?

  is your moveset is so small, but it wants you to use every piece of it. So like, I pictured this game as, oh, I'm gonna do the normal like poke, poke, dodge. Like that's the system here. That is not how the combat works. Like it is, at least for me, I have been zipping through it and have maybe had to like retry a boss once or twice. As long as I continue to play really aggressive and I'm like jumping. And I'm doing the dive poke and I'm doing stab stab and then um diving downward actually. Once you get the dash like it's it's wild how much you benefit from just using every little thing that it gives you.

• 18:53Russ Frushtick?

  It it does so well at catering to different play styles and I think there's a lot to talk about there, but I am curious to hear Juice's thoughts about it. Cause I don't, were you a big Hollow Knight?

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I finished it. I played all of it.

• 19:06Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, how is Silk Song treating you?

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, I don't know. I I don't think I'm gonna be able to to to hang with this one. Uh, I really, the um, the, I just found it pretty frustrating. Uh, the boss, whatever that I ran into were like difficult, but like, once you learn the patterns, you like, it was a little bit more manageable. Uh, but I would like, I just kept getting kids. I would need to pace myself a little bit too much. There was like too much distance between the safe point and the boss that I was fighting. And I would like, takes a little bit too long to get back to the guy and I would like die and get hurt on the way back to him and just found it frustrating.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  It felt, I think that it feels more like a Dark Souls or like that level of like, find the perfect route, master the perfect way through. And like, there's things like the uh, the the little platforms that you have to jump at diagonally to like, bout to to move off of.

• 20:08Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, yeah. So just that, just for, just a question. Cause this, you're right, this is before the cutoff. So is the, is the thing that like destroyed you a little bit mentally was this Chapel of the Beast fight?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  I don't know if, no.

• 20:23Russ Frushtick?

  A big bug in a cave?

• 20:25Speaker 01

  No, I beat him.

• 20:26Chris Plante?

  A big bug in a cave?

• 20:28Russ Frushtick?

  Big bug in a cave, you just described.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Oh, a big bug in a cave? Hold on. You described them all. Um, it wasn't, and it wasn't even like, I mean, the first boss fight that I did, the Bell Beast was the first one that I like. And the Bell Beast is like, once you learn it. It feels a little slow, but once you learn it, it's not that hard. Like you, once you learn that there's a pattern and once you get the pattern and once you realize like, oh, this is much more, this is really the kind of experience where, you know, if you look at other metroidvanias or search action, thank you. Those battles, the big fights in there are a lot more about like utilizing tools. A lot of times in there about like pattern memorization.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  And there are some that are like on the harder end, like Prince of Persia was a little bit, not this, not to this level. I don't think at all, but for me, I kind of wanted to do more of the exploration and I felt like so sort of hampered by how careful I had to be all the time that it made it, that sucked some of the, the fun out.

• 21:32Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. For what, for what it's worth, I found the, it's, it's by no means an easy game. It is a hard game. I did find the early parts of the game to be some of the hardest.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  The hardest.

• 21:44Russ Frushtick?

  Because you really don't have much of a kit at all.

• 21:47Griffin McElroy?

  And not just hardest, but like most unpleasant, like not most, least enjoyable. Because before you will, you can reach a point where it's like, okay, I've got some traversal upgrades. I know I can go back and maybe find this mask shard. And if I go into that fight and I have an extra mask, that's gonna, that's gonna help me do that a lot. But when you start the game, you don't, you only have this one, uh, this one.

• 22:09Russ Frushtick?

  Basically Sekiro at the beginning of the game where you're like locked into a play style.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  I also have like 400 of the, I don't know, chits, bucks.

• 22:18Griffin McElroy?

  Rosary beads?

• 22:20Speaker 01

  No, not rosary shards, shards. I got 400 shards. I can't get any more of those. There's a limit. You can't get more. I haven't found any place to use them, but I, there is a limit. And then the rosary beads, you lose those if you die, you know? Uh, and you don't get back to your, your thing, but I was confused about that because it seems like there's a finite number of them, right?

• 22:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. So my, my interpretation, Justin, is you might feel like you're being more critical pathed than you actually are. Because really at this point where you're at, there is a ton specifically involving like you're a ton of aspects involving your actual like kit that you haven't found yet.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 23:01Russ Frushtick?

  That you might think you have to take on these boss fights with what you have, but.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know why we get that impression. It's probably from the getting to them.

• 23:10Chris Plante?

  There's, there's a, a, a item that you get that completely changes how your jump dive kick works that makes it usable.

• 23:19Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 23:19Chris Plante?

  And like, those are the things that I think.

• 23:22Russ Frushtick?

  Or like, you, you don't have any tools and we haven't actually talked about tools, but it's a big, like mechanic.

• 23:27Chris Plante?

  I, I, let's come back to that. I do want to hear, Griffin, fresh. I like you two are the ones who have been waiting a long time.

• 23:34Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 23:35Chris Plante?

  Where are you at on it?

• 23:37Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, I'm, I'm through the roof in, in love with it. I, I've played about as much as Griffin has. Um, and the things that I love about Metroidvania's Cirque's action game, sorry, uh, are all here. It's just done at such a high level of quality and just variety. I'll talk about a couple of things that really stand out to me. I had just played Hollow Knight. I mentioned on the episode last week, I had just played through Hollow Knight before this and I was a little bit worried that like I might be burnt out or something like that. But this game actually takes a lot of turns that Hollow Knight never even approaches. One of which is, and we'll talk about it because it's before that cutoff.

• 24:19Russ Frushtick?

  There's something called crests. So crests, um, are basically subclasses or even classes that you can find in the world. They're items that allow you, that, that allow you to change your primary attack, the gear that you have equipped, how you interact with the world, what your down stab is like, all sorts of aspects of the like way you actually fight that, um, felt like a total like shift from how they were approaching Hollow Knight. Where Hollow Knight's combat point, you kind of mentioned it, was attack, attack, dash, or sometimes cast a spell. Like that was really, there wasn't a lot to it.

• 24:59Chris Plante?

  Right.

• 25:00Russ Frushtick?

  And here you are given so many tools at your disposal to really transform the way you interact with this game that I was not expecting at all. In addition to all the other stuff that I love about Hollow Knight, which is exploration and world design and audio design, et cetera.

• 25:16Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it really didn't click for me until I found one of those because I fucking hated the diagonal down dash. Like that pogo mechanic is so integral to Hollow Knight and this game. And I was like, well, this, I've done it a million times and it still doesn't feel good. But finding one of those crests completely changes your moveset. And also, they are built for different playstyles, which I think is the most brilliant thing. I found a few at this point, and the one that I keep coming back to is the crest of the Reaper. And what that does is after you heal, which you, you know, use some of your silk to heal, it puts you in this state where if you can hit enemies without getting hit, it will spawn extra little silk orbs in the environment. So it creates this playstyle where it's like, I'm gonna

• 26:01Griffin McElroy?

  heal, I'm gonna use my moves, as long as I don't get hit and I keep hitting the enemy, I can just keep this chain going of healing and powers and all this stuff. There's one where after you heal, it puts you into this rage state where you deal extra damage. But the moveset is like really weird because your attacks are like really, really small. Also, there's like different tools that are kind of like the, what were they called in Hollow Knight? Not badges, but something like that.

• 26:28Russ Frushtick?

  Oh yeah, the perks, basically.

• 26:30Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, where like there's different slots, different types of perks, and each crest can equip a certain amount of those. And so like, I don't know, looking at other people talking about the game, it's interesting to see like how people are gravitating towards different playstyles. And as you find more move and abilities, specifically the dash, like that is where the game really took off for me. But I really did not have a good time with this game until I found that stuff. And I think that that is an evidence of like seven years of over tuning, perhaps, the game, as evidenced by the fact that they are patching it to give you more rosaries and reduce the cost of unlocking checkpoints and making a few of their early game bosses a little bit easier. Because I, that stuff

• 27:15Griffin McElroy?

  is just, that stuff is a pretty, pretty solid wall. I am, I am well past that stuff now, and I'm really, really, really liking the game a lot. I do think that there are a couple elements still, though, that are just like too... Punishing, not, not hard. Like there's boss, I have yet to face a boss that, you know, I felt like I can't beat this. But I have faced a boss where I'm like, this is a five-minute fucking run back to this. There's a five-minute run back to this boss and then I have to fight five waves of enemies. And then I get a chance at the bot. Like, that sucks, man. Like, that's not, I'll just, I will leave and maybe I'll come back and do that later.

• 27:52Griffin McElroy?

  But it really sucks to like, put a bunch of work into clearing out an area, hit this point and then feel like, well, okay, this is not, this is, this is a little bit too much for me.

• 28:04Russ Frushtick?

  I have found that, for what it's worth. And again, having played Hollow Knight just recently, it actually helped this. I think I have a good sense now of like, what a normal fight or a normal quote run back should be for them. Based on their design language. And oftentimes, if I feel like a fight is going on so long, even though I know the pattern or whatever it is. It usually means like, it tells me at least, I don't have the right kit for this. I should just come back later when I have more gear or a damage increase or whatever it is. And that has actually helped me, rather than like, throwing myself again and again and again.

• 28:44Griffin McElroy?

  I get that. I get that. And I, I, I should be clear, like, I like hard games. I like that this game is, yeah, I like that this game is really challenging. There's an area, uh, pretty well past the point that we're supposed to talk about that. So I won't get too deep into it. But it's like, it's just a really, really, really, really hard challenge that you get a cool thing if you can do it. And I banged my head against it for two hours and I did it and it was fucking great. That's cool. What's not cool is like, I have to, all of this work I have to do to go through this area and then hit this boss and get my ass kicked. And then like, instead of getting another shot at it, uh, I have to do a lot of busy work to, to, to get there. It doesn't feel,

• 29:25Griffin McElroy?

  it feels like, uh, punishing in, in a bad way. And there's not a lot of that in the game, but I have hit a couple of points of it. And it really, it is a, a pretty big kind of like, I don't know, momentum killer.

• 29:37Chris Plante?

  Threading together what you and Frasier are saying, for me. What I don't like about metroidvanias in general, and especially bad ones, which I don't think this is, is I don't like the feeling of wasting my time. I don't like when a game feels like it's larger because it is having me backtrack. And it's a thing I don't like about some Souls games too, for a different reason, is the wasting my time of having to replay and re-grind to make up for the time that I lost. And I think what you are talking about feels like a bit of both those things. That said, because I am so skeptical of the genre, fresh, I've had almost an identical experience to you despite not knowing the language of this game,

• 30:19Chris Plante?

  which is the second I go somewhere and I'm like, right away, I'm like, well, this is harder. This is more challenging than it was before. I turn around and I go a different direction because I'm like, I just even want to fucking deal with it right now. And what is cool about the game is there are a lot of different directions to go. So.

• 30:36Griffin McElroy?

  Did you guys end up in Hunter's? Did you guys end up in Hunter's March? Did you guys make it to that old?

• 30:41Russ Frushtick?

  It sounded like Justin did if he's bounding off, bouncing off.

• 30:43Griffin McElroy?

  Did you hit Hunter's March Juice?

• 30:45Chris Plante?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:46Griffin McElroy?

  Hunter's March is an area that you, no one has any right to go to early in the game, but you can get there pretty easily. And it is a point where it's so fucking brutal. It's so hard. The enemies are.

• 30:59Russ Frushtick?

  I think that's where I am probably, I guess. I don't know.

• 31:02Griffin McElroy?

  It is, it is an area that you can get to fairly early in the game where it, just the difficulty spike is insane. And there's not really, a lot of signposts saying like, turn, turn back, man. Like you're, you ain't ready for this shit. Where it's an area that is just nasty, full of traps and, and crazy fights. And I don't know, I, I, I am of two minds about it because it was so annoying, but I felt like, well, this is the way I'm supposed to go. Cause it's a straight shot from the last boss that I fought. And I did end up sort of like making it pretty far into it before I realized like, wait a second, there's a lot of like platforming shit here that I'm not able to do. So maybe I should turn back.

• 31:39Russ Frushtick?

  Almost always there's, it's so rare that maybe at the very, very beginning of the game, but otherwise it's so rare that there is just one path you have to go to. And you don't have anything else to explore. When I hit that, I hit that cap, I was gonna address what you mentioned earlier, Justin. I hit that cap, that resource cap of the shards, whatever they're called, and I'm like, I'm fighting a boss, but I'm at this cap. This is weird to me. There's no reason I'd be running around with this much currency that I've been collecting and nowhere to use it.

• 32:11Chris Plante?

  Right.

• 32:11Russ Frushtick?

  So instead of fighting that boss, I was like, I'm just gonna like walk around and look in rooms and see what's there until I found a way to actually spend that stuff, which in turn gave me tools that made me more effective in combat, that made me better at exploring. And that's kind of, I mean, I don't know. It's a design language that oftentimes is a little opaque. You really have to be into this kind of game and you kind of have to meet it its own kind of level. And if it's not clicking for you, I probably won't.

• 32:42Russ Frushtick?

  For me, this, I've talked for a long while about like what kind of games I'm into and what like checks my boxes from a game. This is, this is doing it all for me. Like it's, I think it's better than Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight was easily one of my top five games of all time. And I think it does everything in here, apart from which I agree, the intro is a little bit punishing.

• 33:09Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I wanna, I wanna put a vote up because I know that we will probably be talking about it more at the end of the year and I also honestly just wanna play more of it. I am surprised how much I've enjoyed it despite it not being the game that was at the top of my to wait list. I'm still waiting for Mother 3. It's gonna come out. I've been talking with my buddy Doug Bowser and Shigeru Miyamoto with our, you know, usual like weekend lunches and they keep saying, Chris, you just keep waiting. But I guess that this will hold me over for now. You wanna talk about, speaking of, some other games that I will never play? And by that I mean Silk Song 3?

• 33:51Russ Frushtick?

  I would love to, after a quick break or not, depending again on the, on the, on the new tier thing. 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 coming a toddler and needed like an actual bed, needed a mattress. So we had him use the Lisa mattress.

• 34:35Russ Frushtick?

  And every time that I get into that bed to read him a story at night, I am incredibly jealous of his mattress, because holy cow, that thing is incredibly comfortable. Lisa was awarded the best hybrid and best memory foam mattress by New York Times Wirecutter and is featured by West Elm as their go to mattress partner. You can go to lisa.com for 25% off select mattresses plus get an extra $50 off with promo code BESTIES, exclusive to our listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com promo code BESTIES for 25% off. Select mattresses plus an extra $50 off. Let them know we sent you in the survey after checkout. Lisa.com promo code BESTIES.

• 35:22Chris Plante?

  We are back and with Silk Song now available, now taken off of our fantasy dreams of the future. We have to move our hearts to something new, something fresh. So I thought we could talk about the games that we're really excited about coming out between now and the end of the year. And you might be thinking, Chris, this seems like just an excuse for you to talk about Sonic Racing Crossworlds. To which I want to say, yes, it is.

• 35:49Russ Frushtick?

  You don't need an excuse to talk about Sonic. We don't have to give you an excuse to talk about Sonic Racing Crossworlds.

• 35:54Chris Plante?

  So you're saying like 30 minutes is maybe too much.

• 35:58Russ Frushtick?

  If you want to take 30 minutes to talk about Sonic Racing Crossworlds, that's actually great.

• 36:02Chris Plante?

  It's a crossword game, right? What if I told you Sonic Racing is back? And you might be a little worried because it's not being made by Sumo Digital, the team that made the really good ones. But you know who is making it? Team fucking Sonic, Sonic Team is making the racing game now. And you're thinking, yeah, but just more Sonic? Don't worry. What if I told you SpongeBob was there? What if I told you Avatar and the Ninja Turtles are gonna pop up and have some fun?

• 36:33Griffin McElroy?

  Wait, they got, they doing Nickelodeon in with the Sonic?

• 36:36Chris Plante?

  Of course they got Nickelodeon in it. Who else would you put in these games?

• 36:39Griffin McElroy?

  Did you say multi curses?

• 36:45Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, yeah, that sounds great, man.

• 36:48Chris Plante?

  If you wanna talk about some other games, I wanna make sure that I give you all time to talk about those two. But we can come back.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  The Outer Worlds, the Outer Worlds 2 is the true star field. I'm gonna say it. Cause Outer Worlds 2, the benefits are, one, no one is gonna be confused and think you're talking about Outer Wilds. That's cause there's no Outer Wilds 2. Very powerful. Second, I feel like Outer Worlds 1 was so close, so close, to really great. Like, the wheels fell off, like, for me, halfway through. It was halfway to being like, truly great. And I feel like Obsidian is on a really solid run, where they're figuring out ways to iterate things that Bethesda is still struggling to sort of figure out how to do with any sort of like soul or character.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  And I feel like Outer Worlds 2 is gonna be very good. That's where I'm at.

• 37:44Russ Frushtick?

  It's crazy that they're releasing two large RP, action RPGs in the same fucking year.

• 37:50Chris Plante?

  And they released that Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

• 37:53Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah, and fucking Grounds as well.

• 37:54Griffin McElroy?

  Really wild.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  What's the other, what's, sorry, what's the, my, my brain is, what's the other biggest Obsidian?

• 37:59Russ Frushtick?

  In Shrek and Slate?

• 38:01Griffin McElroy?

  Avowed.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Ashen?

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Poor Ashen one. Man, that was a real sw- spade of those A-games all at once that didn't come out.

• 38:13Griffin McElroy?

  I'm nervously excited. I am tentatively excited for Pokemon Legends Z to A. Mostly because like Henry and I still play Scarlet and Violet. And so just the idea that I'll be able to play a different Pokemon game is is an exciting notion to me. I can only square off against him in six on six battles with the same fucking team. And pretend like it is a thrilling melee so many times. So I'm looking forward to seeing what they do. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do on new hardware sort of natively because

• 38:56Griffin McElroy?

  the last Pokemon game really was pushing at the seams of what the Switch could kind of do and suffered.

• 39:03Russ Frushtick?

  Is it native? I think it's on both.

• 39:05Griffin McElroy?

  It is. It is on both. Yeah, I guess.

• 39:07Russ Frushtick?

  But is it gonna run like dog shit?

• 39:08Chris Plante?

  Legends also felt like closer to what I want from a modern Pokemon game. When we played that last one, that was the first time I felt like in a long time, oh, I'm.

• 39:15Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it was cool.

• 39:16Chris Plante?

  This feels made for me.

• 39:17Griffin McElroy?

  It was cool. It's also returning to like my favorite generation of Pokemon games, that Pokemon X and Y. You know, early Nintendo 3DS era I thought was really, really good. So.

• 39:29Russ Frushtick?

  I want to call out Mina the Hollower, which is the yacht club game. Makers of Shovel Knight. I just a few weeks ago finished. Pippastrello and the cursed Yo-Yo.

• 39:44Russ Frushtick?

  Which like awakened something in me for this era of game. And I just kind of want more of it. And that game was so fucking good and.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Did that keep evolving, that Pippastrello? I liked it all right at the beginning, but I didn't know where it was going.

• 39:59Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I mean, they kept adding like new movement and puzzle mechanics that like kept it very interesting throughout. I think it was tennis showers.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Miserable this year. I feel like worse than any other year at finishing stuff. I feel like my ability to like actually see things through has been so bad this year. I feel like I keep jumping from, from thing to thing. Maybe that's a testament to the, to the speed of releases. I don't feel like there've been a lot of dry spells, but.

• 40:25Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, they really haven't even, you know, I think our driest spell has been this, you know, past month or so before, you know, before Silk Song. And even then, it was like, there's still stuff to play if you, the backlog for this year for me too, is really quite brutal. It's been a really strong year. It's gonna get even stronger when Kirby Air Riders comes out, because that shit looks good as hell. Doesn't have SpongeBob in it, unfortunately.

• 40:53Russ Frushtick?

  Hmm. We should also mention, there's gonna be a Nintendo Direct happening when this episode goes live. Obviously, we won't have seen it, so who fucking knows what's gonna be in there. It does feel like they're missing, I mean, I guess Metroid theoretically is coming out this year. It does feel like they're missing another holiday title at the moment.

• 41:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 41:12Russ Frushtick?

  So you might see something.

• 41:14Chris Plante?

  Have y'all heard about Cairn? C-A-I-R-N?

• 41:18Griffin McElroy?

  No.

• 41:19Chris Plante?

  Yeah, so it's a mountain climbing game. And look, I just dropped two images in the besties Slack. And I feel like these images are designed to get the juices tingling and a certain type of brain.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  I see a lot of TikToks about Cairns.

• 41:34Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, that's a different, sorry, that's a different thing.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  My kids are always talking about Cairns.

• 41:39Chris Plante?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  There's a haircut.

• 41:42Griffin McElroy?

  This screenshot, the screenshot you sent me is insane. It's a backpack full of pasta noodles.

• 41:50Chris Plante?

  It's, yeah, it's kind of like a Resident Evil style inventory thing, but it looks like it's like physics space where you're kind of just making space for all of your items. And then it is, it's a climbing game. It's all about just climbing mountainsides, but taking, try and try again to like, find your path. It looks to me like a Return of the Strand game. And if we could get two Strand games in the same year, I'm just saying that's big. That's big news for the Strand genre. That is a sharp, that is a hundred percent increase in Strand games.

• 42:23Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Who put Ball X Pit on here?

• 42:26Russ Frushtick?

  I put it on there. I think it's pronounced Ball Pit, in the way that anime often adds like an X for no reason, like Spy Family. But it's just a breakout rogue-like?

• 42:39Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I've seen, I've seen some, some streamers playing it and it looks, uh, really, I guess the demo is out. And it, it looks really, really good.

• 42:49Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I'm pretty excited about that one.

• 42:52Chris Plante?

  What, any, any other, uh, last ones?

• 42:55Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, yeah, Prime 4, assuming it comes out this year.

• 42:59Chris Plante?

  Did they say officially that it is coming out and they just haven't given a release date?

• 43:04Griffin McElroy?

  I don't remember hearing a release date, but I'm also pretty dog shit at keeping track of that stuff.

• 43:08Russ Frushtick?

  I think it might come, uh, that we might hear the release, yeah, I would guess we're gonna hear the release date on this new Nintendo Direct.

• 43:13Chris Plante?

  That seems right.

• 43:14Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that, that is, a cursory Google search does suggest that that is the, uh, that, that is what's going to happen.

• 43:20Chris Plante?

  The point.

• 43:21Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, I'm also very excited about Baby Steps, which got delayed because they wanted to get out of the way of Silk Song, but that comes out, uh, end of September. That's the better body.

• 43:28Chris Plante?

  Did you see our friend Gio took a, an ice long walk with her friend Simone?

• 43:33Russ Frushtick?

  No, I didn't see it.

• 43:34Chris Plante?

  It's very charming.

• 43:36Griffin McElroy?

  I gotta say that.

• 43:36Chris Plante?

  Uh, Gio, um, and Simone, uh, at Polygon went on a long walk with Bennett Foddy, the co-creator of this game. And it's just a great conversation about game design and walking.

• 43:48Russ Frushtick?

  That's awesome.

• 43:48Chris Plante?

  That I really recommend.

• 43:50Griffin McElroy?

  Lots of good stuff.

• 43:51Chris Plante?

  Lots of good stuff.

• 43:53Russ Frushtick?

  Do we have any questions from the mailbag?

• 43:55Chris Plante?

  I think we do. Let me pull this up really quick.

• 43:59Chris Plante?

  This one is from, uh, Thrill Ho. "Hey besties, this question is partially inspired by Chris's excellent interview with the creative multi hyphenate Claire Evans on Post Games, but I think this is a better place to ask."

• 44:12Russ Frushtick?

  Any place to get a promo, huh?

• 44:13Chris Plante?

  I, like many gamers.

• 44:14Russ Frushtick?

  Anything to get a promo.

• 44:16Chris Plante?

  Hey, hey, I just, it was the first question I saw.

• 44:17Griffin McElroy?

  I remember I was enjoying a Lipton iced tea.

• 44:22Griffin McElroy?

  On my Casper mattress.

• 44:25Chris Plante?

  Um, and the question continues, "For a mere $5 a month, you can subscribe to Patreon." That's wild, this is crazy.

• 44:32Griffin McElroy?

  I could subscribe to Save the Rizler? What?

• 44:38Chris Plante?

  I, like many gamers, harbor dreams of making a video game despite knowing nothing about programming or what game development actually entails. It would be an utterly boneheaded thing for me to attempt, both because of my lack of knowledge and how very rare it is for a game to pay off. At the same time, I've somehow managed to be a mildly successful writer, another career where the odds of success are dismal at best. It got me wondering, which is the more quixotic pursuit? Making a financially sexual... Financially successful video game?

• 45:11Griffin McElroy?

  I would say just sort of like with the recent spate of censorship on Steam, making a sexful game is not going to be financially the most sort of sound decision.

• 45:24Chris Plante?

  Making a financially successful video game or writing a financially successful book?

• 45:30Russ Frushtick?

  They seem comparable, but I would say I think writing the book is easier.

• 45:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I've written books. It's hard, like it takes a while, but like, you know, like you don't, I don't need...

• 45:42Russ Frushtick?

  It's just one person, generally.

• 45:44Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, you just be the one person, just write a whole dang book. And that's, that's cool, but you had, there's so many other things you have to do to make it, to make a game. I don't know how to make a financially successful either one of them.

• 45:57Chris Plante?

  I don't think any of them.

• 45:58Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. But, uh, I mean, the game does seem harder in general than the book, so.

• 46:05Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I, I, I will say the, the books make money, but then does anything make money is the big question. So I, you know what, I would, I'm gonna flip this question and say, uh, make things, uh, because it's a great art and, uh, if you can, not worry about the money if you're doing it as a hobby.

• 46:24Russ Frushtick?

  And fuck the art part of it, I would just say make things if it brings joy to your life.

• 46:27Chris Plante?

  Oh, there you go.

• 46:28Russ Frushtick?

  And you feel like you wanna put it into the world. Doesn't need to be art.

• 46:31Chris Plante?

  It could be fart. Do what you feel. That's a great idea. That's a great point. Um, uh, hey, I want to get into honorable mentions and there's a request we've had from a listener about AR glasses and what we think of them. And Hoops, I know that you've actually tried these things. So I was hoping that you could tell us a little bit about it.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I use a pair of X Real. I gotta make sure I'm saying the right things because there's a lot of X Real glasses, the X Real ones. Um, they, uh, I believe that, I don't know if I have this model I'm looking at here, but they're by, they're by X Real. There's several different kinds. Uh, these, there's the X Real One Pros are the new, the new latest and greatest, I think. Those are 650. And I don't know what you're getting that's different with those. Let me tell you what these do. All right. Let me tell you what these, and you will know if this use case will work for you or not, but you got a pair of sunglasses

• 47:31Speaker 01

  that look like big, thick, black sunglasses. They look, they don't look like normal sunglasses, but they don't look like a visor. They look like-

• 47:40Griffin McElroy?

  There's a depth, there's a depth to these glasses.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  The thickness, uh, they look kind of like stupid. They look kind of stupid, but not stupid in the way that like a visor would. They look like stupid sunglasses and they connect via USB C to whatever, anything with a USB C outlet or a USB C video out, I guess I should say. And they will play the video signal from that device and the sound from that device through like bone conduction speakers in the, in this part, right? In the, in the, the ear part. And then the, uh, the glasses will project a large image in front of you that's tandem out to like a seven foot tall

• 48:26Speaker 01

  screen. You can adjust the size in terms of inches. You can make it big enough that you have to like look around to see all of it. Um, you can also do, if you're watching something that's in side by side 3D, you can activate that as like a, as a mode if you like, but mainly the use case is like- Uh, if you are, here's, here's why I, I have found them to be useful for me and why I end up using them a lot. Because if you travel a lot and you don't want, like, if you're trying to like, watch something on a flight, or you want to do something like that, it is, is like, just a fantastic experience. I mean, you plug it in and you're, and you could do it with a Steam Deck, you plug it into a Steam Deck,

• 49:09Speaker 01

  and you're playing the, the latest and greatest video games on a gigantic screen.

• 49:13Russ Frushtick?

  Is it two screens, one for each eye?

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Uh, what do you mean?

• 49:20Russ Frushtick?

  Like, what are you seeing when you?

• 49:21Speaker 01

  You're looking at a, you're looking at a stereoscopic, no, sorry. You're looking at a 2D image, is what you, you're looking at. The, it is two dependent, independent things, but you're like, looking at a regu-, it looks like you're looking at a big floating TV screen in front of you, and if you move your head, the TV-

• 49:39Russ Frushtick?

  If you were to pull your, pull the glasses away from your face, you would see two screens on the inside?

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, sort of like how an Oculus, you know, Quest does it, I imagine. Yeah, yeah, same concept. It's boiled down to the very smallest, you can push a button and like, it'll turn into like, pretty dark sunglasses, so you can see, you know, in front of you, but they're pretty good at shutting the light out. Uh, you know, you don't have to use them in like, a super dark environment. Um, but like, for, you know, if you end up watching a lot of like, TV, movies, video games, and like, hotel rooms, or, or planes, or taxis, or whatever, like, like, we do. Uh, they're, it's pretty cool. I don't know if you would want to necessarily use them in a place where people you know might see you, but like, you know, when you're on a plane or whatever, you don't give a crap.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Uh, it's pretty, pretty cool for that, and gaming is, is a lot of fun, I will say. It feels like you are not, you know, there's that old David Lynch video where he talks about, like, if you watch a movie on your phone, you'll think you'll have seen the film, but you won't have actually seen the film. This does feel like, in this one specific case, when I plug these glasses in, I do feel like I can watch a capital F film.

• 50:55Chris Plante?

  And also cheaper than the Apple Vision Pro, right? Like.

• 50:58Russ Frushtick?

  I mean.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like you are, it is such a more, I mean, I will say this, that's probably what I would use the Apple Vision Pro the most for anyway. I mean, if my history with VR is any example, I have, I'll say this to this. I have used these more than I have ever used any like cumulative hours spent. I have used these more than I've ever used any VR helmet I've ever owned. So that, I mean, this is, this is the way this needs to go, right? This is much closer to the way things need to be, but yeah, they're, they're cool. I have not tried the like best of the best higher end ones, but the ones, I mean, the, the X real ones I used are good. I, I enjoyed them.

• 51:39Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I've been watching KASO, K A S S O. Y'all heard about this shit? It's, it's a, a Japanese competition show. It's on YouTube. That's where I've been watching it. And it's basically, uh, Skateboarding Ninja Warrior is a, is a long skateboard obstacle courses that incredibly talented skateboarders go through. Like one is just a crazy long winding rail that goes around and around and people take runs at it just to see how far they can go before they fall off. And it beats ass because it's a lot of like really, really, really good skateboarders like busting up as people try to do these like ridiculous, uh, challenges.

• 52:23Griffin McElroy?

  It's, it's taken way less seriously than a, you know, a Sasuke or Ninja Warrior or, or, or whatever. It's just like cut, skaters cutting up and doing crazy stunts and it is a good ass time. It's K A S S O on YouTube.

• 52:38Chris Plante?

  I love that.

• 52:40Russ Frushtick?

  I wanted to call out a video, speaking of YouTube, done by our friends over at Secret Base. Um, it is about scoregami.

• 52:49Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:50Russ Frushtick?

  If you're, if you're not familiar with scoregami, it is a concept that John Boyce, uh, invented. It's basically the idea that in football, when there's a score that has never happened before in the history of the NFL, that's. Scoregami, so if no one's ever scored 21 to 6, I'm sure that's happened a lot for argument's sake, that counts as a scoregami. And so they're doing a video series about the concept of scoregami, the history of it, why people are so into it, the weird esoteric moments throughout history. You don't need to care about football.

• 53:26Griffin McElroy?

  God bless John Boyce for making me give a shit about sports that I otherwise would not give a shit about by focusing only on the weird, weird errata that I'm into.

• 53:36Russ Frushtick?

  That whole channel has dynamite stuff in here that will really draw you into the weird esoteric sports stories. And this, this video just went up, so it's definitely worth a watch. It's great.

• 53:50Chris Plante?

  There's so much good stuff.

• 53:52Griffin McElroy?

  What games did we talk about this week, Chris?

• 53:54Russ Frushtick?

  Plant, do you have anything before we?

• 53:55Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:56Chris Plante?

  I mean, it's, it's basically Halloween season. So I'll just throw out like a random recommendation. I think that everybody should watch Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.

• 54:06Griffin McElroy?

  Heck, yeah, man.

• 54:07Chris Plante?

  Jesus Christ, man. It's basically Halloween 2, because Halloween 2 is a direct sequel to Halloween 1, and Halloween 3 is basically the exact opposite. They said, you know what, Halloween, it's just gonna be this random series where we tell different stories, and not all of them are about Michael Myers. And after this one, people got so mad that they didn't do it again, which is a shame, because this movie is a blast, and it is a great way to both start or stop your Halloween season, and you should check it out.

• 54:35Griffin McElroy?

  It's also a great way to stop the Halloween franchise for four decades.

• 54:40Chris Plante?

  Yeah. We should release another one of those then. That might be a good idea. Okay, what did we talk about this week? We talked about so much stuff. We talked about Hollow Knight: Silk Song. We talked about Metroid Prime 4, Baby Steps, Pokemon Legends Z through A, Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, Ball Pit or Ball X Pit, Karen, Mina the Hollow, or Kirby Air Riders: The Outer Worlds 2. Plus, we talked about the Exreal One AR Glasses, Caso, the YouTube TV show about skateboarding challenges, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, and the scoregami video, which will be linked, along with everything else, at besttouse.fan, a

• 55:24Chris Plante?

  newsletter that you can subscribe to for free.

• 55:28Russ Frushtick?

  There's also the Patreon over at Patreon.com/thebesties. I wanted to thank a few members. We have Alden, we have Tanner, we have Sarah, and we have Triosaurus. Thank you for being members of the Patreon. Once again, we have that new tier. If you're interested in getting the main episodes ad-free in addition to all the bonus episodes, the new tier is up. But if you want to just stay at $5, that's also fine, but you do you. Whatever's gonna float your boat. We've got a new bracket episode up about bathroom games, if that's enticing to you. We've also got a new Besties episode up where we played some fun stuff. And yeah, what are we doing next week?

• 56:08Chris Plante?

  Oh, we're doing a grab bag next week. We're doing so much stuff. We're gonna be getting back to some things that people have been asking us to check out, like Abiotic Factor and a bunch of other games.

• 56:19Russ Frushtick?

  Have we talked about the new Hot Shots? We talked a little bit about it on Resties.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Have you played it yet, Griffin?

• 56:26Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, hell yeah.

• 56:27Chris Plante?

  Okay, okay. Then let's talk more about it. It sounds like you had a more successful technical experience than so was Pat. Yeah, I want to talk about Lone Shark. I need to give that a try. There's so much stuff, so many games.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  That is gonna do it for us for this week's episode of 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?