Wanderstop Performs an Autopsy on the Cozy Game Genre

Wanderstop is the new game from developer Ivy Road, founded by Davey Wreden, Karla Zimonja, and C418. What looks like a farming game is an exploration of burnout, anxiety, and the "to-do" list nature of video games. It's not for everyone but it might be for you!

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I got a, um, a rogue ally X, cause I'm gonna be traveling.

• 0:07Russ Frushtick?

  It's a, it's a cause your brother got one and you were, you felt a little jealous?

• 0:10Griffin McElroy?

  Exactly, not even a question. I won't even, I'm 44 years old. I'm done pretending. Yeah. A hundred percent. He had one. I didn't even know what it was. Didn't even know if I wanted it. Just sounded fun. He had it.

• 0:19Russ Frushtick?

  It's like letters.

• 0:20Griffin McElroy?

  I can't have one on tour and then Justin not sees it and is like, he doesn't have it. Cause then he'll have to find a best buy that night.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  This is easy. Like, yeah, yeah, Russ, yeah. But then I am gonna be traveling to Ireland and I got a hard, I got a case for it. Obviously, cause wanna be safe. And then I was like, this is gonna be perfect. And then I got the case.

• 0:42Russ Frushtick?

  Uh oh.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  And I don't actually think that I'm actually going to be, I don't think I'm going to be having a giant case.

• 0:51Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Justin's currently, for our audio listeners, which is everyone, uh, Justin is currently holding up a case, the dimensions of which I would say about six inches deep, maybe eight inches wide. And then about a foot and a half long. And it does have a big strap around it that says Republic of Gamers in enormous, un- unignorable letters. So...

• 1:13Speaker 00

  That's me from the Republic of Gamers. This is my briefcase. We've come with an offer to you.

• 1:20Griffin McElroy?

  It does look like, it does look like something that, uh, uh, they, they, they would use in Pulp Fiction to, uh, to hide the true motivations of the Deuteragonist.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  So what I'm saying is I'm just gonna let it bounce around with the Cheetos dust and the cookie crumbs and the chapstick. That's what I'm saying. I'd rather, I'd rather grind chapstick into the fence than walk around with a, a giant, uh, chastity pouch.

• 1:49Russ Frushtick?

  Well, you also mentioned you were going to Ireland and that was my immediate thought was like, I, I don't know.

• 1:56Griffin McElroy?

  The, in the Republic of Gamers and the Republic of Ireland? You're a little worried.

• 1:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's rough, right?

• 2:01Griffin McElroy?

  You're a little worried. You don't know enough about global geopolitical conflict.

• 2:05Russ Frushtick?

  I had to Google, it seems that the Republicans in Ireland don't care for England very much.

• 2:12Speaker 00

  Oh, okay. This is good. This is a rich vein that we should explore.

• 2:16Griffin McElroy?

  Let's go further. Yeah. And I'm gonna leave.

• 2:22Russ Frushtick?

  That was my first thought when you started. I was like, oh.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  Oh, Griffin said he's gonna leave and none of us are gonna talk.

• 2:29Russ Frushtick?

  Talk anymore, okay, Russ? Oh, goodbye, Griffin.

• 2:50Speaker 00

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

• 2:53Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:56Chris Plante?

  My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know a fine cup of tea.

• 3:00Russ Frushtick?

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

• 3:03Speaker 00

  Oh, man. You know what I should have said? Here's the tea. This game is really fun and nice.

• 3:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  Like, that would have been good. We're gonna be talking about Wanderstop this week. And Chris Plant, what is Wanderstop?

• 3:16Chris Plante?

  Wanderstop presents itself as a cozy game where you manage a farm effectively, growing different plants and shrubs, keeping things clean, and ultimately, making nice cups of teas for people who come through the area. But you see, it is much more than that game, and we'll explain why and how after the break.

• 3:36Griffin McElroy?

  First things first, we got all the cheat codes for Wanderstop. If you want to know...

• 3:41Speaker 00

  Let's go tea flavors. First, if you're not grinding green seeds from the first frames of this game, then you're already a noob. The rusted key can be cleaned off in the teapot to open the shed with the bazooka in it. If you kill Borro, you can take his money and buy a second tea station.

• 4:01Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, man. Can I try to set this one up?

• 4:06Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 4:06Griffin McElroy?

  Okay. This is a... This is very much, I would say, a narrative-forward game in that there's not a lot of emphasis placed on mechanics, and you very, very much need to get on its level, I think, pretty quickly. I feel like this is gonna be a pretty divisive game because of... For that very reason. I also see where it kind of fits in in the pantheon of, you know, Stanley Parable or Beginner's Guide, the rest of sort of Davey Redden's... Am I saying his name right? I'm never quite sure. I've only ever... I've met him, and I know...

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Hey, hit me with that last name.

• 4:50Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, hit me with that last name pronunciation, please. It is a game about burnout.

• 4:58Griffin McElroy?

  Primarily. It's about some other stuff, too. But it is, uh, it, it, it features, uh, a young woman who has been a fighter her whole life, has fought her way up the sort of gladiatorial ranks and has put every ounce of her time and energy and herself into mastering the blade, uh, and becoming the world's greatest fighter, uh, to remain undefeated. Uh, and that is a great way for her to live until she starts to lose a couple of fights and it shakes her. She doesn't know what to do. She goes to look for this master in the woods to teach her what she's doing wrong and instead gets lost and trapped basically in Wanderstop, a tea shop in a clearing in the middle of the woods where she then

• 5:39Chris Plante?

  She quite literally cannot carry her sword anymore.

• 5:43Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 5:43Chris Plante?

  The, the weight of it, for whatever reason, in her hands becomes unbearable and untenable. And that is what kind of gets her stuck in this

• 5:52Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 5:52Chris Plante?

  weird clearing in the middle of nowhere.

• 5:55Griffin McElroy?

  So her mission is to chill. Her, her, her objective is to rest and relax, right? And so the extent to which that informs the rest of the game is, is really bold and completely comprehensive. You manage a tea shop. You make cups of tea for people to their specifications. You can grow different plants to make different types of tea, but there's no tea, there's no farming skill that you improve. You don't unlock a watering can with bigger volume. You don't get shears for cutting weeds that do it faster. There is no mechanical progression to the game.

• 6:40Russ Frushtick?

  There's not even, just to be clear, there's not even days. So

• 6:44Griffin McElroy?

  There's not days, yeah.

• 6:44Russ Frushtick?

  If you feel like you're, whoa, I need to finish this cup of tea before the clock runs out for the day, nope.

• 6:50Griffin McElroy?

  Nope, and the game will also frequently throw at you um sort of chapter breaks in the narrative, after which you're basically gonna start over.

• 7:01Chris Plante?

  Right.

• 7:02Griffin McElroy?

  Um, not the story of the game, but like those plants you grew are gone and the place is dirty again and.

• 7:08Chris Plante?

  Some of the people you chatted with are gone and you maybe probably didn't even get to the end of whatever your journey was with them.

• 7:16Griffin McElroy?

  Right, and that's not because you fucked up. That's just the game. The game is you meet a person, you learn about them, you learn a little something about them yourself, and then they go and you, most of the time, you don't see those people again. So like.

• 7:31Chris Plante?

  As in real life, you do not solve the problems of everyone you meet, you might have a small impact on them.

• 7:38Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 7:39Chris Plante?

  Along the way.

• 7:40Griffin McElroy?

  It's all part of a bigger picture and a bigger sort of story that this game tells about burnout, which is an incredibly difficult, incredibly nuanced topic to cover in a piece of, of, I mean, cover at all, narrative, non, nonfiction, whatever, right? Like, it's a hard thing to say something new about, it's a hard thing to address, like, well, you, you do have to work hard and, and be ambitious to get where you wanna be in life. How do you balance that with also not making yourself miserable and having an incredibly detrimental impact on you? It's hard to say something about that that is not incredibly trite or incredibly unhelpful.

• 8:27Griffin McElroy?

  But the way that this game goes all in on, on that conversation and the way that it bucks conventions and expectations for what personally I demand from games, right? Like, I need to feel like I'm being productive in a game. I like getting the stronger gun with this better stat. Like, I am such a sucker for that and I had to put all that shit aside to meet this game where it's at, and I'm so glad I did because I cannot think of a game that has had a more, like, profound impact on me and the way I think about games and work and stuff than, than Wanderstop. I think it is, I think it is remarkable.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  In a way, it's what's cool. One of the coolest things to me about it is that it is very much continuing a conversation that was started with Stanley Parable, which like Stanley Parable was like about the idea, I think of authorial intent and how that interacts with players and how like the maker of a game like and how they relate to the person playing it, right? And in a lot of ways, the Stanley Parable wasn't a game as much as it was like a protracted criticism, right? And I think that Wanderstop is is sort of, I think it's admirable in that it isn't just

• 9:53Speaker 00

  a commentary and it isn't just a thought starter and it isn't just a criticism. It's like it is, it has the strength to be a game, right? It's it's because for me, what's really like the the burnout angle of it is is very interesting. I think that that's obviously like a huge component of this. What I thought was challenging, I will say about this game, and I honestly think like subversively kind of critical is when you remove all of those motivating things, you really start to wonder why you're playing the game. Like it makes it wants you to wonder that, right? Like, like, it's not even this idea, like, like, characters, right?

• 10:38Speaker 00

  Like, getting to the end of their story is a form of progression, right? Decorating your house where a lot of these cozy games, it's like, yeah, it doesn't have the the typical like motivating factors, right? It's about relaxing and all this stuff, but still like the decoration is a type of progression, right? It's like it's it's still a hoarding. It's a it's a and it's an enacting a control in your environment, right? And it's, I feel like this game by removing those sorts of like motivational structures that games typically use, it really has to take you down to the base level of like, why are you doing this? What are you taking out of this? And I that's really like, I still don't know how I feel about it.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  Like, it's like, a lot of it is like. I don't know, man. Once you realize how much of game design is about just that little dopamine thing.

• 11:31Griffin McElroy?

  Retention, yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  Pulling you along, right? Like, I don't know. I think it's cool that it is critical in a much more subtle way, I think, than Stanley Parable was.

• 11:40Chris Plante?

  Yes. I think it is a game about stillness in being present to the degree that every mechanism in the game went up against the question of, is it being still? Is it being present? Because I think you're right, Hoops. Not just the make number go up, make plant, you know, potted plant get stronger, but everything you can tell that they asked, is this creating a sense of progress? And if so, we need to pull away from it because that is not what we are going for. We are going for the idea of you sitting and being with yourself. I should talk a little bit about how the game works really quick.

• 12:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, please.

• 12:20Griffin McElroy?

  You- Because so far, we're making it sound like wicked fucking boring. And I don't think it's boring. You do do stuff in this game. We should make it clear.

• 12:28Chris Plante?

  Yes. You, so you are tasked with making tea, and the way that you do that is by growing various plants of different colors and mixing and matching the, I guess, splicing the seeds to grow different plants. So depending on the shape that you grow them in, in your yard, you will grow a different type of fruit. And then you will also go around the garden, and you will harvest tea leaves with a basket, and you will take that into your house. You will dry out the tea leaves. I'm not doing any favors to make this sound more exciting.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  No, but I do want to touch-

• 13:03Chris Plante?

  But trust me, it's quite pleasurable.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  To touch on something, though, and this is like, it's just now occurring to me as we're talking about this. You don't wait on stuff to grow, right? It's much more active than it sounds because, interestingly, this game that is about stillness, and it is about like patience and all that stuff, like, you don't have to wait for shit to grow, man. You jam that seed in there, you dump some water on that motherfucker, and he's a, he'll grow that instant, right? There's no way, like, it's, it's active. You're not forced into passivity. Like, there's just no reason to rush.

• 13:36Chris Plante?

  There's also no brewing period for your tea. So you get your, your, your dried up tea leaves. You get the different flavors that you want. You have a recipe book that lets you know, one, how to plant the different type of fruits. And two, what are some of the flavors that you'll see in those fruits? And then you align that knowledge with whatever conversation you're having with somebody. So maybe somebody has an injured leg. And they're like, I just want to not feel pain for like five minutes. Can you give me anything that'll make the pain go away? You look through your recipe book, you find a flavor that matches that. And then you make the tea, which is this giant contraption in the middle of a beautiful house. It is a flubber-esque in its silliness.

• 14:21Griffin McElroy?

  Very whimsical, yeah.

• 14:22Chris Plante?

  Very whimsical. And you make a giant thing of tea by like first warming or pouring the water into the spout.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  It's like a Rube Goldberg machine, kind of, or like?

• 14:33Chris Plante?

  And then warming it up and then tossing each individual ball of tea in. And then putting a cup underneath the spout and then releasing the tea. So it fills just perfectly in it. Do you, if you do any of this like wrong, does it punish you? Absolutely not.

• 14:48Speaker 00

  The aesthetics of all this are sublime, by the way, like watching it, like you can taste it, like the, it's beautiful. Every little thing is like, it's just gorgeous. Like taking it in is such a pleasure.

• 14:59Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, you can, to be fair, you can fuck up a tea. Like you can not.

• 15:03Chris Plante?

  Well, I mean, if you literally don't follow the recipe, what I mean is like, you can't pour in too much water into the tea thing. You can't make it too hot or too cold, like.

• 15:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. And a lot of the like typically with farming game, it's not a farming game in the sense that like, there's no homesteading that makes sense, right? And so like you, it doesn't make sense for you. My first impulse is like, I'm gonna go plant an orchard and I'm gonna have all of the plants, right? And they're gonna be min max. So we're like, my reds are here, my greens are here, my, but you get to a certain point and it erases everything. It's like, it's all gone. It's like, don't do that. There's no reason for you to do that. So when I, when I would get an assignment, right? Or like somebody would want a certain tea.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  It wasn't like, I'll just go to my blue section and grab the blue thing. And like, what I would do is like, ah, they want something that tastes like ice cream. What does that? And I would get a book from upstairs and I'd flip through the book. I'm like, ah, okay, that. And what colors do I need? Okay, I'm gonna go wander around till I find these seeds that I need. There's no reason to go faster. There's no reason to min-max it. There's no reason to not enjoy it. And I think what's, what is maybe the most revolutionary thing about this game is it seems to say like, if you don't enjoy this, you shouldn't be doing it. I don't ca- like, I'm not try- you know what I mean? Like, it's not trying to motivate you in any way other than like, if this brings you pleasure, please continue to do it. But otherwise, like, don't.

• 16:23Russ Frushtick?

  It reminds me of like, if someone were to come home from a long day of work and wanna do like cross stitch, or knitting. That ki- I mean, we're not talking about the narrative, because that's like, I think, separate from this, when the actual gameplay beats feel like something that is entirely self-directed in ways that-

• 16:42Speaker 00

  It's almost more like, like,

• 16:45Speaker 00

  maintaining a zen garden, or like a bot- like, in the, in the impermanence of it, right? Like, crafts where you would create things, I think is where a lot of video games are, like, I feel like Stardew is closer to a cross stitch, right? Because it's like, you've got a pattern, you've got the things that you want-

• 17:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, but there's advancement in Stardew. Like, there's progression.

• 17:05Griffin McElroy?

  There's lots of advancement, yeah, for sure.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  No, but I'm saying, you're working towards something in Stardew. You're not working towards something with this. So I'm like contrasting that from cross stitching. You don't have like a, a thing at the, when you're done with this, you don't have a thing that you can show people and say like,

• 17:18Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 17:19Chris Plante?

  But you are working towards something in the same way with the Zen Garden, which is self-improvement. Right? Like, that you come away from this game, I mean, I came away from this game feeling a lot better about things. Like, this game made me feel better.

• 17:35Speaker 00

  There are things in this game, and it made me feel a little bit, made me feel a little bit sad, but there are things in this game that I hear that I didn't realize I needed to hear. And I heard it from this little video game man, the same, the same box that done made Pac-Man on my TV. And this guy's making me feel things? Come on, David.

• 17:55Griffin McElroy?

  I have been looking forward to talking about this game with you guys, genuinely, because it, so much of it felt targeted towards me, as somebody who, for his entire adult life, has-

• 18:09Griffin McElroy?

  You know, worked from home on my own schedule. The level of, you know, success or whatever I've achieved is directly proportional to like the amount of toil that I put into like, and I think that that is a really common sort of sentiment or trait for lots and lots and lots and lots of people these days. And so I genuinely think there is a message in this game for most of the people I know that is not anything I've ever heard before about this topic that has been spoken about and lectured about and Ted talked about at length for years and years and years and years and

• 18:53Griffin McElroy?

  years. And that's like, that's incredible. To find a game or a piece of fiction or whatever that has something new to say about a topic that has been so thoroughly explored is in and of itself like a pretty massive achievement. I did want to say, speaking of achievements, one of the things this game does that really drives this whole shit home is it has like 10 achievements. You get them. You'll get them. But if you finish the game, you'll get the 10 achievements and it gives them to you at seemingly random intervals. You'll be like just walking around the garden and it'll be like, you'll see the achievement thing pop up and it'll have some sort of obscure text. So it's

• 19:30Speaker 00

  It's always something like, she never thought it would find. Like, it's like, it sounds like an achievement. Like you've done something.

• 19:36Griffin McElroy?

  But then it's, but it's not like, oh, you solved this guy's quest. Bloop. Or like, oh, you've had this moment of incredible catharsis.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  It literally looks like a bug.

• 19:44Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I thought it was. I thought it was because we were playing on some beta branch, but you don't, it's not like someone has this moment of catharsis and then it's like, bloop, you helped the guy.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  Is it because that was also, I want to touch on, there is a mailbox, you get correspondence, and there's a series of novels that you were sent in the correspondence and plants are always smiling. To me, it's fucking infuriating because David Riordan is like, he's already, he's doing this game that is not like on its surface, a gut buster, right? It's not hilarious. It's humane and warm, but it's not like, and then you get these letters, it's this fake detective story, these books of the fake detective story that is

• 20:27Griffin McElroy?

  Fucking leaps and bounds funnier than any game that I've played for months and months and months. And he just like tosses it in the mail. There you get, you get letters in this game that have more quality writing in it than the entirety of split fiction. I mean, like.

• 20:45Chris Plante?

  Not only are they hilarious, they then become self criticism in the same way that the Stanley Parable is, that is as good as any criticism of video games and the culture around video games that you're going to find. I, I, um, if I'll include this in besties.fan, but the entire first book of the Derek Warhard series, uh, we published on Polygon. So people can read that and also Davey talking about adding that stuff to the game. But it is, it is so good and just gets better and better. The ability, and I want to be clear, Davey is, you know, the, a writer of this game,

• 21:28Chris Plante?

  but it's Ivy Road is the studio. And I think that's the, the magic that happened here, right? Is that, that voice and that vision and talent that Davey brings, getting paired with a team that clearly knows game design so inside and out that they can subvert it while still making it just pleasurable enough to keep you going. It's a hell of a trick.

• 21:54Griffin McElroy?

  And it's so risky too. Like if they don't land that one part of it, then the rest of the game is, I think, an infuriating masturbatory, like exploration of self-care, which is like a, a, a term that has almost lost all meaning in how wide-ranging it becomes and, and how in conversations about that thing, you can ignore, you know, going too far in that regard and how then that can become harmful, right? It's, it's such an insane balancing act.

• 22:31Griffin McElroy?

  That I don't know, but at the same time, playing Wanderstop like really quickly, I felt myself trusting this game to like handle it like after the first cycle or whatever, the first story, like, once you kind of see like what this game is, is going for and, and sort of all the different ways it is moving away from what I expect from games. I felt like, okay, I'm fucking, I am on board. I am uncomfortable, but I'm on board. Let's see what happens. And it, it really, I think it rewards that. I want to hear from Russ, because I feel like you and I are cut from the same cloth in terms of like, you know, preferring the, the grind, enjoying progression and a sense of accomplishment

• 23:14Griffin McElroy?

  in games that this moves away from. And I'm curious if you have the same sort of experience.

• 23:18Russ Frushtick?

  Um, so I haven't finished it yet. I think I have seven hours in it, six or seven hours. Um, I find the writing fantastic. I find the visual design fantastic. I think voice acting is really, really strong where it appears. Um, I really struggled with the themes of these, this game because it feels like it's hyper tar- and this might not be wrong. And obviously it landed with you guys more, more than me. But to me, when I was playing it, it felt like it was targeted to me 10 years ago, when I was like, building a, like, start, you know, in the middle of my career and make even making some changes

• 24:03Russ Frushtick?

  in my career. And it was not great for my mental health, but I was kind of just pushing through, pushing through until it got to a point where it was like, oh, this is not right for me. And being at a point now, specifically from like a having a kid standpoint, and again, I'm sure you guys can relate to this too. There's messages in this that are like, take a beat, chill, which is important. I 100% agree, but it's very difficult to play a game without objectives or progression, when I also have a list of 20 things that I need to be doing.

• 24:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sure.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 24:37Russ Frushtick?

  And that was the like, like, whenever I hear Borro being like, just like, relax and put the leaves where you want. I'm like, cool. But also my son needs to be picked up from daycare in 30 minutes.

• 24:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, I think that's interesting, though.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  What we're hitting on, guys, and this is like actually really, really rare. Um, we are reacting to this game.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  In terms of what it is saying in four different ways, right? It hit the four of us in like different ways, right? Like Russ, you saw it, but it wasn't exactly the time you needed to hear it. Griffin, you thought immediately like burnout, you heard burnout. I was like much more interested in the like, the, the ideas of like, what it means for games and game design like. And I don't agree with a lot of the stuff that it is like. If it was like, Justin, do you agree with all this as a message? I think that there, I, I don't know, man. But as a, I think that it's, it's hard because I think if you're a game that does have a message.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  It, it almost has to be like universal because that's so rare, right? Because we don't have this symphony of different thoughts and opinions being put out by video games. Like, we don't have a different video game that's like, actually buck up and, you know what I mean? Like a different philosophy. It's so rare that a philosophy is put forth in a game that it almost feels like it has to be more universal than it is. Than it has to be, right? Like, it doesn't have to be appealing to everyone for it to be successful, I guess.

• 26:16Russ Frushtick?

  I agree.

• 26:16Chris Plante?

  I also don't know if it even buys any singular message in its own game beyond the chill out. It is, for lack of a better word, therapy. And the, the main character that you're working with, Borro, who is just this lovable giant tea maker. Most of what he tells you is, I don't know, what do you think? How does that make you feel? Oh, you didn't do a good job? Well, what is like a good job anyway? It is, if you've ever been in therapy, a lot like therapy. And I, you can see it even with your character and the way that you can respond to questions. And you can, there's dialogue options in this game.

• 27:01Chris Plante?

  And those dialogue options don't seem to inform the story so much as they are there to have you think of. Well, there are a variety of ways I could respond to that and none of them are bad. So I think that is.

• 27:15Chris Plante?

  Again, the tricky part, but I agree with you hoops. What I love about this game is it's so nice to talk about a game and talk about the things it made you feel, that it brought to you, rather than just, is game good? Did it click all of the different things? I will say though, for people who want to play this game,

• 27:37Chris Plante?

  this, I would not want every game to be like this.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  No, god.

• 27:41Chris Plante?

  You know, like this, it is challenging.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  Boring? I'm sorry, keep making fun games, everybody. Don't get it twisted.

• 27:51Chris Plante?

  It's nice to have a challenging game like this and it's challenging.

• 27:54Speaker 00

  It's challenging?

• 27:55Chris Plante?

  Get good.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  Makes the grain in the player, dude.

• 27:59Chris Plante?

  Get good at chilling the fuck out.

• 28:01Russ Frushtick?

  This game said some stuff about burnout and I was like, yes, I understand. If you didn't, skill issues.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  Skip, skip, skip, skip, skip. Yeah, guys, you can blaze through the fucking dialogue in this game. It does not matter. It is not going to impact your score at the end.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  So here's a question that I, that I've started thinking about, right? Like, we, we play, we have to play new games for this show all the time.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  I don't, the question of whether or not I'm going to finish this, finish this game is interesting to me because that is a type of progression, right? Like, in a game that does seem to be about so much about like, I don't know, it's, you know, do it if you want to do it, or don't.

• 28:39Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  But it's not, like, there is still a bit of have your cake and eat it too of like, well, we are moving towards something, right? There's a story that's being told here. I don't know if that is going to be enough to keep me like playing, like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know if I'm going to stick with it without that motivation.

• 28:57Russ Frushtick?

  I will say-

• 28:57Speaker 00

  And that feels a little, I don't know, contradictory.

• 29:00Russ Frushtick?

  I will say this.

• 29:03Russ Frushtick?

  I think, yeah, we've talked a little about game design. I think it is worth calling out that I think from a beat to beat game feel standpoint, I don't think this game feels very good to play. Like, the physicalities of it, I thought, felt just kind of clumsy. Which is a part of the reason that I, like-

• 29:25Speaker 00

  Didn't stick with it.

• 29:26Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I mean, that was part of the reason is like, okay, enjoy your quiet time and vibe out and like, get to a place that makes you a healthier person. Cool. But there are elements in Stardew Valley, for example, just to like, the noise of a seed plopping into your bag or whatever, just like little stuff that like that, that make the whole experience more pleasurable, that I feel like this game, given the fact that it is about the small things being pleasurable, doesn't quite nail. And a lot of that is interface stuff and like, switching through bags and, oh, my bag is full and, oh, I gotta drop this seed and oops, I planted this seed by accident. There's just like a lot of weirdness to the interface that I think gets in the way a little bit.

• 30:08Speaker 00

  They're trying to simplify so much with like, getting it to like, a single button type thing that you end up futzing with like, if you're in an area where there's several things you want to interact with, that can feel kind of clumsy sometimes, for sure.

• 30:21Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. To share my sort of perspective, I finished the game a long time ago. I was so fascinated by this game that I like, kind of couldn't put it down. I also started playing it while we were traveling, which I thought was a kind of an ideal, because I was separated largely from my parental obligations, which I agree with you, Russ. Like, I don't think this game is particularly, this game doesn't really dabble in those so much necessarily.

• 30:46Russ Frushtick?

  It's not even, like, I'm not locking into parentals. It's more locking, like, dabbling in the idea that there are things and oftentimes, a lot of things that cannot be left.

• 30:57Griffin McElroy?

  Cannot be, yeah. I fully get that. I think having this idea of like, story as motivation, right? Like, well, I gotta find out what happens, right? So I have to keep playing through the story. This game, I'm not going to get into spoilers, but like, I don't even think that that is particularly emphasized by the end of it. What I do think, and the reason that I do think that it is worth seeing through is, I mean, one, from a personal level, there is a moment of, of... Beauty and like catharsis in this game that truly rocked me to my core at like an emotional, I needed to hear this a long time ago level that I don't think I've ever

• 31:42Griffin McElroy?

  seen in a game before. But I also think that like, you know, it throws all these different characters in these different cycles and it doesn't explore all of them fully. Sometimes people come and they go and that's, you know, that's life. I do think this game has a thesis and I do think that that thesis is all pulled in by one of the later moments that happens, one of the final moments that happens. And so I do, I do think it is worth seeing it through to that point, not so you can find out like what, you know, how the story turns out or what happens with this character. Because there's not a ton of emphasis placed upon that. But I do, I think this is a game about a message and I think that, you know, in talking about it, like that is the big thing that this game has to offer is like, it has something to say about a thing.

• 32:27Griffin McElroy?

  And it, it does kind of tie it all together at the end in a way that I found like really, really great. Like really, really good.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  I wasn't really necessarily as interested in like whether or not it sticks the landing as much as like, isn't that just another motivator? You know what I mean? Like my curiosity about that, I feel like is another thing that is keeping me playing it where in a game that is like interested in that, I think it's interesting that that is one sort of consideration that's up there.

• 32:57Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 32:58Chris Plante?

  Do you know that Alan Watts quote about like psychedelics that when you get the message, hang up the phone? Have you ever heard that before? But it's like, I, I feel like that can be a fine rule for a game like this. It's like, if, if you are having that conversation, if it's doing those things for you, it's okay if you don't finish it. At the same time, I think it's great if you do. Like the, the bigger thing I think this game wants is this conversation to happen, right? It wants you to stop and have the conversation. If you finish it, that's great. I can't imagine that the people who made this game would be crushed to hear you didn't finish it and so long as you walked away from it, thinking about your life a little differently.

• 33:39Griffin McElroy?

  I, I've been thinking a lot about like who I recommend this game to and like, I don't know that that is like, I don't even know that that's a thing you can really do with this game. But after finishing it and, you know, talking about it with you guys, like I can't think of another game we've talked about on this show that we've talked about in this like specific way that is divorced from. All, a lot of other shit that we talk about when we talk about games. And I do think that it is like gonna differ person to person on how much of a pass you're willing to give it on the fact that it doesn't feel amazing. And there's not a ton of, I mean, there's literal carrots in the game that you can grow. But it's not, and, and so like, and how challenging that is, right?

• 34:20Griffin McElroy?

  I think that there's people who are gonna hit that and be like, that's not, I'm not, I can see this game being very divisive. I guess this is, is what I'm trying to say. But I also, man, it's so, I'm gonna be thinking about this game for a long fucking time. And to me, that is like a huge point of recommendation of like, if you like playing games that stick with you, and based on what we've said, it doesn't sound like it's gonna turn you off right away. Like, I heartily recommend playing this game because it, it, it will, if you give it the chance to, and it doesn't like, you know, immediately turn you off, like, I do think this is a game that is going to stick with you. Or at least, I don't know, it, it, it certainly will for me. Also, can I, we also, I want to point out the music fucking.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:05Griffin McElroy?

  Tremendous. Huge, I just looked it up on Spotify. It's C418 who made, you know, most of the Minecraft music. And it's like 90 songs, like, it's a ton. I can see this being my new sort of like, working ambient music playlist, but I adore this game.

• 35:23Speaker 00

  All right, well, it's a good one. We're gonna take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about more games.

• 35:32Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, we're back. I pulled a bunch of reader mail, both from the comments and from various other sources that y'all reach us out at. I wanted to call this one, this comes from Krusty Nugget, specifically related to Split Fiction, which is a game we talked about last week. You should listen to that episode if you haven't. And I think our major criticism was specifically to the writing. And so, in response to that, I think you guys are focusing too much on the wrong aspect. Yes, the writing sucks and the story is meh. But that's not what we're here. Me and my girlfriend, we both play video games a lot, by the way, are having a blast. It's just fun to see what kind of new mechanics happen next. There's constant stimuli.

• 36:14Russ Frushtick?

  It's funny, you mentioned Brothers, A Tale of Two Sons. We played that for a few hours, the remake of that, expecting like a next two, but we found it to be game, we found the gameplay to be lacking. Conclusion, we're just along for the ride, and that is the fun for us. And that, we sort of alluded to this when we were talking about the game, split fiction. I think the best experience you can have is like, almost passively listening to the dialogue and story, but entirely just interacting with another person. And in that scenario, I think you could have a really great time playing this game. So long as you're not, like, we are all critics, paying attention to the beat by beat dialogue, which again is-

• 36:59Speaker 00

  No, I don't-

• 37:00Russ Frushtick?

  You don't think so?

• 37:01Speaker 00

  No, if you're gonna put dialogue in it, then write it, right? Like-

• 37:05Russ Frushtick?

  I mean-

• 37:05Speaker 00

  Don't ask me to listen to some, like, don't put something in that's designed to be ignored. My time is-

• 37:11Russ Frushtick?

  I don't think it was designed to be ignored. I think they designed it to be as great as they could possibly make it.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  Do a better, this person's wrong then. You know what I mean? Like, if you're gonna do, if you're gonna put writing in it, do a better job of putting writing in it. We're not, we're not focusing on the wrong aspect. It was boring, because the story was boring. What did I miss?

• 37:28Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so, well, we were all for what it's worth-

• 37:30Speaker 00

  A split decision-

• 37:31Russ Frushtick?

  No, it wasn't even, because we were all-

• 37:33Speaker 00

  Well, between us and the listeners, who have been wrong about hazelite games for a fucking decade! Guys, we're not gonna heal this rift! Everyone listening to this, if you like hazelite games, you are wrong. They are poorly written. We are right. I am sorry. It's been 10 years, I'm tired of this!

• 37:50Griffin McElroy?

  The dissonance-

• 37:51Russ Frushtick?

  Not everybody has the zen, the zen ability to ignore Justin's-

• 37:56Speaker 00

  I thought wonder stuff would heal me. It just made me more right.

• 37:59Griffin McElroy?

  You didn't finish it, man.

• 38:00Russ Frushtick?

  Well, here's the, here is the challenge.

• 38:02Speaker 00

  I gotta go back, I gotta go back to heal, dude.

• 38:05Russ Frushtick?

  Here's the challenge with hazelite games specifically. There is nothing else that is this. No one else is making this format of game. So if you want this sort of, there are co-op games, don't get me wrong, there are co-op games. But games that are specifically designed for co-op in mind, there's no other option. And so for people looking for this thing, they're kind of stuck with it now.

• 38:33Chris Plante?

  I, I saw some commentators.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Hundred percent agree.

• 38:36Chris Plante?

  I saw commentators comparing it to Mystery Science Theater 3000 approach, which is that you kind of are goofing at the expense of some pretty silly writing. At the end of the day, it's still quite entertaining. Like, the action of it is propulsive, it looks neat.

• 38:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 38:55Chris Plante?

  I, I can't.

• 38:56Griffin McElroy?

  So I'll put that one, I'll put that one on the queue.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. I just wish people would expect better for themselves. Like, you, you, if someone is gonna put a story in a game for you to consume and use your minutes on, then they, and if someone's gonna spend their minutes writing it, then it should be worthwhile. It's life, man. Like, you shouldn't, then we should just have AI generating it, right? If it's just gonna be shit in the background.

• 39:23Chris Plante?

  Well.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  Now, now, hold on. Now, now, hold on.

• 39:25Chris Plante?

  Oh, oh, yeah.

• 39:26Griffin McElroy?

  It's actually part of our game.

• 39:28Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, here's.

• 39:28Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, is it? Okay, cool.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  What, what?

• 39:30Griffin McElroy?

  Kick ass. I didn't know it was part of the game.

• 39:32Chris Plante?

  It's part of the game. The story of the game is literally about, should you, should a company steal ideas from the young to fuel an AI machine to write all stories? And the irony is their stories are garbage to begin with.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  The story is garbage. And this is what, where the contradiction is and why Split Fiction is getting the nasty gram in the way that like A Way Out and other games did not, is because Split Fiction is all about the power of ideas and narrative and story, and then it shits its pants. So like, if you want to make a game about the power of playing co-op games together on the couch, that's the lane you should stay in. But if you're gonna make a game about the power of ideas and humanity versus AI and all this stuff, then you have to have some ideas that are worth defending. And narratively, they don't.

• 40:16Russ Frushtick?

  They almost would have been better off just making a Tron game where it's like, oh, oh, we're stuck in a computer, we gotta get out.

• 40:22Griffin McElroy?

  That sounds kick ass to me.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, man.

• 40:23Russ Frushtick?

  And not having the layer of like, what's the grounded version of this? I agree.

• 40:28Griffin McElroy?

  Guys, I don't want to talk about a game I didn't play.

• 40:29Russ Frushtick?

  I do want to say we are on the outside of this almost exclusive, us the four besties, or I guess the three besties, I don't think Griffin played it. Uh, because this game is universally acclaimed, as was the last game that we also didn't like, universally acclaimed.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  Do you know why? Do you know why, Russ?

• 40:46Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  I'll tell you why, if you want to know.

• 40:47Russ Frushtick?

  Please tell me. I'm excited.

• 40:50Speaker 00

  Cause people are tired of getting yelled at, and they just want people to go away. So they gave the game a nine or a 10, because they know everybody's gonna love it. And I guarantee, people writing a review to this game, email me secretly, "Shh, I know that you juice the scores because you're tired of getting yelled at. It's fine. I would've done it too. I used to be in the game. I know how the game is played."

• 41:09Speaker 04

  It's a five.

• 41:10Speaker 00

  Like, it's like, you know, it's a five. It's okay, though. It's a six.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  It's a six.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  But like, you know, they're just afraid to say that because they don't want to get yelled at anymore. I get it. It's tough out there. No one's like, uh, supporting you. I get it. It's hard. It's cold.

• 41:25Griffin McElroy?

  Man, I love when you cork a bottle of fresh juice.

• 41:28Speaker 00

  I'm here for you. I know it's bad. Call me. We'll talk about it.

• 41:29Griffin McElroy?

  I know. You, you, y'all fucking opened the genie's lamp last week while I was gone. Let the fucking monster out.

• 41:37Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, we have a.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  No, because I had to spend the whole week being, I had to spend the whole episode being nice, because they were like, "Everybody's gonna like this game." And now I get to just like, open it up and tell you it's bad.

• 41:47Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, okay.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, man. Unless you liked it, then it's good.

• 41:50Russ Frushtick?

  There you go. There you go. That is a good reminder for all games we talk about. If you liked the game, and we didn't, who gives a shit? Doesn't matter.

• 41:58Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. It literally could not matter less.

• 42:00Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, we have a.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  Real good reason to not email in about it, I guess would be.

• 42:04Griffin McElroy?

  And I say that because our, the things we say on this show do not end up on Metacritic, and it impact the scores and salaries of the people who make the game.

• 42:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 42:12Griffin McElroy?

  We're just fucking running around.

• 42:14Chris Plante?

  Not just decision, by the way.

• 42:15Russ Frushtick?

  I do, for what it's worth, like getting emails from people who disagree with our critiques, so.

• 42:19Griffin McElroy?

  Absolutely.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Yes, me too. I love it.

• 42:23Russ Frushtick?

  This letter comes from Kaylee. The tech bros I know say Justin needs a Linux Penguin for his sticker collection to be complete. How do you not have tux on your fucking laptop, Justin?

• 42:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, I am work. I saw this email like as I was going through the, the, uh, hold on, I'll show you guys what I'm, what I'm looking at here. This is the pack that I just ordered.

• 42:47Griffin McElroy?

  Pack of stickers?

• 42:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I haven't ordered it yet. I'm going to try to find some.

• 42:51Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, no, that's what you need.

• 42:53Speaker 00

  I need, well, I need a non-Besos repository.

• 42:56Chris Plante?

  For what people can't see. It's a variety of tux of Penguin stickers with some real class goofs. Like, what if tux was the Starbucks logo?

• 43:05Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Or like, do you even SSH is good?

• 43:08Russ Frushtick?

  That tux has abs, by the way. What's up with that?

• 43:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, like a strong tux. Yeah, you can't buy this on Amazon.

• 43:13Speaker 00

  An ultra real.

• 43:14Griffin McElroy?

  The pioneer, the pioneer rebel spirit of, of, uh, of this symbol.

• 43:20Speaker 00

  I've got a little, it's got a little Linux mint on there. It's got all the great brands. That's the great thing about open, like, can you guys see that one at the bottom?

• 43:28Russ Frushtick?

  Linux inside.

• 43:29Speaker 00

  Nope.

• 43:29Griffin McElroy?

  No, Jesus loves Linux.

• 43:31Speaker 00

  Jesus loves Linux.

• 43:32Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, and that's probably true.

• 43:33Chris Plante?

  Tux is carrying a cross.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  That one, that one's gold on the laptop.

• 43:45Griffin McElroy?

  I do think there is something open source about the teachings of Jesus Christ.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  Right. He did open source with the loaves and fishes, right?

• 43:52Griffin McElroy?

  This is my wonderstop.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  This is my first distro is fish. My second distro is these loaves.

• 43:59Griffin McElroy?

  This one episode of Bessie's is challenging because they talk a lot about a challenging game and then Justin takes a huge stink line shit.

• 44:07Speaker 00

  Play a boring game. Justin takes a huge dump on a beloved listener.

• 44:11Griffin McElroy?

  And then Griffin talks about how open source the teachings of Christ are.

• 44:15Chris Plante?

  This will be a

• 44:16Griffin McElroy?

  Was that, wait, let me check the, let me check the feed. Yeah, no one's listening. We got every, with that last one, we got

• 44:20Chris Plante?

  Had a good fig tree joke coming and now it's just

• 44:23Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I'm so sorry.

• 44:24Chris Plante?

  Oh, wow.

• 44:24Griffin McElroy?

  I'm so sorry.

• 44:25Russ Frushtick?

  It's okay. Justin, what, what distro of Linux are you using? This is a question from Justin.

• 44:29Speaker 00

  Ubuntu. I have switched a few times. I was on Ubuntu and then I switched to Linux Mint because I was interested in seeing Linux Mint, but there were, I missed the Snap Store, even though there's a lot of purists that don't like the Snap Store, which is kind of like the App Store, but with a snut at the beginning.

• 44:48Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  A lot of people don't like it and there's not, in Linux Mint, there's a lot of apps that did not have that simplicity, like Spotify or Slack. And so I switched to Ubuntu because that, it's easier to install apps. So that's, that's a distro.

• 45:03Russ Frushtick?

  The amount of system administrators that have showed up in our comments is staggering. Uh, it's like me having to talk to Verge people and all they want to do is talk about printers. It can be kind of a drag.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  I mean,

• 45:14Russ Frushtick?

  Glad you guys are having fun.

• 45:16Speaker 00

  I installed four different Linux distros on different things, but I'm assuming they're asking me about my Linux laptop. And that is what I

• 45:23Chris Plante?

  I want to let everyone who comments on the newsletter know, I love hearing about Linux distros and I think It Takes Two is like totally worthy of the game of the year award. I just

• 45:34Speaker 00

  I didn't play a single second of It Takes Two, but I think I probably would have liked it.

• 45:38Russ Frushtick?

  We, we have a letter from Peter, taking a sharp left turn. Uh, Russ from Retro Game Corp, good Russ, if you will, uh, mentioned that he's playing Final Fantasy XVI. I tried it, but stopped playing the minute the main antagonist is introduced. His name is Kupka. Uh, I'm Polish. I have a young child. Kupka is the universal word for poopy. It's not some obscured word for it. It is the word. I can't play an entire game against a poopy. I just can't. Wow.

• 46:06Chris Plante?

  Um, I don't know. That would've got me to stay. That's not good.

• 46:10Griffin McElroy?

  He was stuck around for sure.

• 46:11Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, I think that's basically it for Reader Mail. Do we have any?

• 46:15Griffin McElroy?

  Let's do some, let's do some honorable mentions.

• 46:17Russ Frushtick?

  Let's do it.

• 46:18Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I got a Rogal IX because Henry has been playing a lot of Steam games. Uh, he got very much into this game called Ogu and the Secret Forest, uh, which I, I played a little bit with him. It is a very cute little Zelda-like, uh, with lots of stuff to explore and it's, it's very charming. And he got really into it, which meant that he was using by Steam Deck a lot of the time.

• 46:41Russ Frushtick?

  I guess follow-up question, can a little boy use a Steam Deck or will their arms fall off?

• 46:46Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, I mean, he's, he's pretty, I mean, Justin can attest to this, like, he's fucking ripped.

• 46:50Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, he's ripped.

• 46:50Griffin McElroy?

  He's one of the strongest people I know. Like the crazy, like crazy vascularity for an eight-year-old.

• 46:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:55Griffin McElroy?

  Um, and so like, he's been playing Steam Deck and, you know, I kind of realized like, there's a lot of stuff in my account that I could family share that he would probably get like really, really into. So I got a Rogal IX also so that I could play some games that do not work on Steam Deck specifically. Monster Hunter Wilds. And I did get Monster Hunter Wilds working on this bad boy. It took quite a bit of finaglin, uh, but it runs pretty smoothly. I would say around 50 FPS or so, which is totally, totally doable. It looks bad, but I can kill the monsters and get the stuff off of it.

• 47:27Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 47:28Griffin McElroy?

  Which is great. Uh, I'm really glad that I did this because I've been playing this game a lot more. I simply do not have much time to sit at my computer and play a video game. I pretty much only have been playing Steam Deck for a long time now, uh, and, uh, I fucking love Monster Hunter Wilds now that I have had these sessions where I can sit down and really play it. There is so, like, a lot of the structural stuff, I still feel the same, like, I've gotten past the fairly boring part of like low rank story mode and I'm very glad to be on the other side of that. But there are moments in these fights that are so radical. I don't know if you guys ever played with a weapon that does offset strikes, but they are basically, there's like a handful of the weapons that can do them, the bigger, beefier ones,

• 48:12Griffin McElroy?

  where you charge up and attack and if you hit them on- Monster with it as they attack you, you just sort of fuck them up. You just kind of like smash them out of their attack animation and save the day. And every time you pull one of those off, it feels so, it is the most tactile, most satisfying feeling in games. Period. Uh, I'm, I'm a bow main now, which is another weapon with lots of good, lots of good feel. It's so fun to have been playing this and Wanderstop at the same time, which is scratching liter- Like I, it's like a hot and a warm tap on either side of my brain lobes where it's like, I have this one.

• 48:52Griffin McElroy?

  For the, for the quiet times and I have this one when I just want nasty numbers and gemstones and uh, skill increases and grinds. Like I am a, uh, I am getting all of my needs met in very different ways. Uh, I don't know if you guys talked more about Monster Hunter Wild or if you guys are still playing it.

• 49:10Russ Frushtick?

  I'm still here and there occasionally. I think it fucking rules. I wish, I don't have a rogue allies and it definitely came on on Steam Deck. So that is the thing. I got hooked on Monster Hunter Rise because it was a portable game, because I could play it on my Switch. That got me into Monster Hunter as a franchise that clicked it for me. And all I can tell is like this franchise, in the way that Animal Crossing is a portable franchise, should be a portable franchise. Same thing with Monster Hunter. It works so perfectly for that. Um, so someday.

• 49:42Griffin McElroy?

  I also have gotten Dragon's Dogma 2 running on this bad boy. I am excited to relitigate that.

• 49:47Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, God.

• 49:48Griffin McElroy?

  To find out. They have, did you guys know they've added a casual mode to the game?

• 49:52Russ Frushtick?

  Uh oh.

• 49:53Griffin McElroy?

  With an update. Literally all it does is it like reduces like-

• 49:57Speaker 00

  Every time you die, it says casual.

• 50:00Griffin McElroy?

  It reduces like penalties for death and reduces the price of like the uh, fast travel system. Like it doesn't, as far as I can tell, doesn't change anything difficulty wise in terms of like, you know, stats or combat.

• 50:12Speaker 00

  If they would just put in a normal fast travel system, I'd play 80 hours.

• 50:15Griffin McElroy?

  As far as I can tell, this casual mode just kind of shaves off the annoying shit. So like, is casual the right word for that?

• 50:20Speaker 00

  If it shaved off the annoying shit, man, that'd be like a hundred meg download. It is still a Dragon's Dogma game, man. They gotta keep a little something in there.

• 50:27Russ Frushtick?

  It's just a TXT file.

• 50:28Griffin McElroy?

  I am, I am excited to uh, to get into that.

• 50:33Russ Frushtick?

  That's exciting. Anyone else?

• 50:36Chris Plante?

  I am hosting a movie screening at the end of the month and I want to plug it. And people who can't come out to this, you should just watch this movie. But Streets of Fire, have y'all seen this movie?

• 50:48Russ Frushtick?

  I have.

• 50:48Chris Plante?

  Who's seen Streets of Fire?

• 50:49Russ Frushtick?

  I saw it.

• 50:50Chris Plante?

  Fresh, is it good?

• 50:53Russ Frushtick?

  It's very interesting. I would not describe it as good.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  Ringing endorsement.

• 50:57Chris Plante?

  Wow, okay, so I adore this movie.

• 50:59Russ Frushtick?

  But it is interesting and it's a fun night out. I will say that.

• 51:01Chris Plante?

  It's a fun night out. It's a movie by Walter Hill, who made 48 Hours and The Warriors. And then it made this rock musical starring Diane Lane, Rick Moranis, and Willem Dafoe.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  Dang.

• 51:16Griffin McElroy?

  Jesus Christ.

• 51:17Chris Plante?

  It is incredible. I agree with Fresh that it is not perfect, but it does have, I think, one of the strongest openings of a movie ever. And our buddy Patrick H. Williams agrees. He made a whole video about this. I'll be sure to share it in the newsletter. It also has an absolutely killer ending. This movie rocks. This movie would be one of the great canonical rock musicals if not for the lead being an actual loaf of white bread that got left in a puddle. Not the best casting for the lead actor, but everything else is so unbelievably cool in this movie.

• 51:58Chris Plante?

  We'll be hosting it at the Frida, the theater that I help out with in Santa Ana. And some of y'all came out last time. It was great. I would love to see more people there too. But if you can't make it, there is a new 4K restoration or just a regular Blu-ray. And I think you can also find it on like Amazon VOD. And again, it's called Streets of Fire. It rocks.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I got the, I got a rock Alex and.

• 52:27Griffin McElroy?

  Have you actually played shit on it? Or have you just been?

• 52:29Speaker 00

  Why would I do that? I mean. What am I gonna do on it? What games?

• 52:33Griffin McElroy?

  Great.

• 52:34Speaker 00

  I'm a man. I'm an adult, Griffin.

• 52:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  What am I gonna do? No, I didn't play games on it. Ugh. Uh, no, I'm not playing games on it. Um. I, I opened it up and I took out the SSD and then I put in a four terabyte SSD, the cooling, cooling, uh, cooling on it. And then I installed a dual boot of, uh, Windows. I kept the Windows partition and then I put in a, a distro called Bazite, which is a version of a Linux distribution that basically is like recreating the Steam Deck experience as much as possible. It basically turns it in, functionally turns it into a Steam Deck

• 53:20Speaker 00

  from a software perspective. It's, it's running the same way and, and you know, you, you have the same, uh, options available to you. That's a little kludgy. Obviously you have stuff like button indicators sometimes where like you don't have it on the wrong ally. Like they'll be indicating a button that isn't there. So it feels a little bit funky in that sense, but other than that, uh, it's great. I have a button. I, I made a, a script that creates a non Steam game that basically shuts the console down and then reboots it in Windows mode. So it's like a way to switch between pretty easily rather than having to like get into the BIOS and shit. Um, it's, it's an easier way.

• 53:59Griffin McElroy?

  From what I have read, the main reason to do that, to, to get Bazite on there is one, if, you know, there's Windows cruft you don't care for. It is a way of sidestepping that. It is also, uh, the, the big sort of, uh, experiential difference, I will say of using Rog Ally X over, um, Steam Deck, aside from, you know, the fact that you can play different, you can play, you know, Ubisoft Connect shit on there or in the Xbox Store on there. Uh, and Destiny, yeah, is that, uh, when you press the power button on Rog Ally X, it puts it in like a low power sleep mode that eventually turns into a no power hibernation. Mode that takes a much longer time to come out of.

• 54:39Griffin McElroy?

  Then you have to contend with like the Windows lock screen when you turn it back on, which there's like crazy ways of getting rid of that. That sort of pose security issues with Bazite. It makes it a Steam Deck. You press the button and it turns and it goes to sleep.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  It's in the Linux kernel. It can do that instant suspend and then bring back where that's not an option that's available to you in Windows. The other thing I gotta say is like, and I haven't spent a ton of time with it because I've been mainly like on the Windows end of it because I've been mainly setting this up. But it's, it's also just like Windows is not a handheld operating system. I mean, like it is so crazy to buy this device and get it. And then it's window. I mean, it's like.

• 55:19Griffin McElroy?

  It's like, do you want Office 365 Family Plan? It's like, no, I do have like.

• 55:23Speaker 00

  Monster Hunter. They have this front end called Armory Crate where they've like tried to like make a experience that is navigable. Like pretty easily with the controller and stuff and it can default into it, but like it's Windows. And like, that feels so crappy. I mean, like I keep, I for a long time I kept here. Yeah. This little, uh, my, uh, keyboard for the, the RI keyboard I have like plugged into it just so I could type constantly. Because like, that feels really bad to do on a touchscreen. And I know that they are still working on some sort of like actual Windows handheld operating system, but like it, this is not, it's like, it's not there. It's really weird.

• 56:04Russ Frushtick?

  It seems so counter to what Windows has become, which is like, uh, having a handheld operating system. Because so much of a handheld operating system only works because you're really picking and choosing the things that matter. And Windows is like, no, we're going to show you fucking everything and every notification and everything gets equal priority. And the idea that they could somehow winnow that into a tight experience that mimics the Steam Deck seems so unlikely to me. I wish they can. I hope they can, but that is the challenge.

• 56:35Griffin McElroy?

  What I will say, I, I actually think Armory Crate is pretty good. Specifically in it puts all the tools sort of right at your fingertips, like a single button press away that you need to tweak. The cornucopia of performance settings that you can set globally or like per game. That process I was worried was going to be so annoying that I would regret my, my purchase, but it is not that hard to toss up a, you know, a little performance panel in the side. It's like, okay, you're getting this FPS and this, you know, these heuristics. And then like you can tweak that shit really, really quickly to get it where you, where you want it to be. I have not found the process of getting these games that are, yeah, Monster Hunter Wild's

• 57:19Griffin McElroy?

  not working on a lot of people's desktop PCs, even with like fairly high end stuff inside of it. I was like, there's maybe there's no way this is going to work on here, but it genuinely, that, that process of kind of messing around with stuff, I, I've grown to kind of enjoy because I feel like, oh, there's definitely a way I can squeeze a little bit more juice out of this thing. I think that the, the Armory Crate stuff is very functional, but it is, it simply is not and cannot be the streamlined experience that, that the Steam Deck offers.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  Have you gotten, have you downloaded Lossless Scaling, Griffin?

• 57:53Griffin McElroy?

  I did download Lossless Scaling. Lossless Scaling is a game, it's an app on Steam. You run it alongside another game that you are playing and it basically does frame gen for you, which like a lot of modern games like Monster Hunter and I think Dragon's Dogma offer in like the settings, but Lossless Scaling is like an $8 app that will do that with a higher level of sort of like specificity and it is pretty fucking good. I don't use it a ton, partially because I was having some crashing issues on Monster Hunter Wilds, but with other, other games that I have messed around with, it is pretty insane how, how well it works.

• 58:29Speaker 00

  How do you cycle between the different like power profiles, Griffin? Like the, the boost and the, and stuff like that?

• 58:35Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I mean, it's game by game. Like for Monster Hunter, I'm, I'm using a lot of the, it goes through battery a lot faster and it, you know, it is, it is consuming a lot more power to run it at the, the level that, you know, I want it to get to.

• 58:47Speaker 00

  Do you change between the modes manually, I guess? Or is that like, does that, is that happening?

• 58:52Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, but again, like there's a quick access button on the Rogue LAX that opens up this panel that you can customize. With like your most frequently used like settings tweaks and stuff like that. So I have it set up to, honestly, I don't even have to do that because I have a global setting that works for pretty much everything. And then when I launch Monster Hunter, it knows, okay, you have these settings set up specifically for Monster Hunter. We'll go ahead and activate all that shit. So like you're not actually having to, I'm not having to do like a lot of tweaking on, on the fly.

• 59:18Russ Frushtick?

  It does seem though, that unless you're trying to play something more intensive, you're probably better off just sticking with a Steam Deck, right? Because you can still run Uplay, you can still play Microsoft Game Studios games on a Steam Deck. Just, it just requires like a little bit of.

• 59:35Speaker 00

  I will say that. We're kind of burying the lead in that the battery's twice as big. I mean, it is, it is a juicy. It's, it's gonna run twice as long and it's just better power management overall with the, with, especially if you're in the Bazite, like, oh, look at that big brick. That's what I'm, that's, yeah, man.

• 59:53Russ Frushtick?

  I don't even know what you're showing me.

• 59:54Chris Plante?

  It's a battery.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  Huge.

• 59:56Russ Frushtick?

  A battery of what?

• 59:57Speaker 00

  I have the small version of that one. It's amazing. I love that, that battery.

• 1:00:00Chris Plante?

  It's, it's the battery that allows me to play Steam Deck from Los Angeles to New York.

• 1:00:06Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, it's a portable, you were showing us a portable battery that you got.

• 1:00:10Chris Plante?

  Does not look like a portable battery. It looks like an actual brick.

• 1:00:13Griffin McElroy?

  I, I would agree that like, if you're not playing super high end stuff, Steam Deck is the easier, in a lot of ways, better option to do that. But I can, I could count off the top of my head, a dozen examples of games that I really wanted to play on the go. And the Steam Deck simply did not, simply did not allow, and that was enough to kind of push me over the, the edge.

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  There's also, what Griffin is talking about with that, like not having time to play games. More and more, if I'm gonna sit down at a TV, what I've been doing is plugging in the Steam Deck to the dock and playing on the TV. So using this and that way, then I, then there are games that I'll play a little bit more, right? Cause I can slap this into a dock and, and start playing it and have much better experience than with the, with the Steam Deck.

• 1:00:56Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense for people that are forced because of a static bargain to play a new game every single week.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  Right? I say 10 more than 12 years ago.

• 1:01:07Griffin McElroy?

  I've not fucked around with like Bazite and dual booting and stuff because I think Steam, something came out where SteamOS beta is expected before May.

• 1:01:18Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, pretty soon.

• 1:01:20Griffin McElroy?

  That's what I've read.

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  Can I just say, Juice, you've done a lot of work on this character lately, this like Linux Cockney sort of street urchin. Don't you want the thrill of knowing that you could break this motherfucker? Don't you want a tiny ribbon cable that is one hair, one micrometer thin, that could destroy this multi hundred dollar piece of equipment?

• 1:01:45Griffin McElroy?

  I will tear down a switch light to, to parts and I will fucking get as nasty as you want in there because those things are like 200 bucks, which ain't nothing. This is considerable. The stakes could not be higher with a Rog Ally X. So no, I have not been quite as eager to get as dangerous with it.

• 1:02:02Speaker 00

  I will say this, if you, if you do want to, I'm like kind of joking about the customization. They make it easy and this, the Rog Ally X uses a form factor, the NVMe

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  storage, it's 2280 and it's a little bit more universal. The Rog Ally use 2230, which is a little bit more specific. So you can like find this storage pretty cheaply with the heat sink and like increase the storage of this pretty considerably. You can also put in Griffin, a like, you could put in a terabyte or two terabyte micro SD card.

• 1:02:41Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  That could share between, if you use the SD card, it can share between the boots.

• 1:02:46Griffin McElroy?

  That's very cool.

• 1:02:47Speaker 00

  Very cool. It was a gigantic pain in the ass. Like, took me an entire day, huge pain in the ass because I started doing it, not really paying attention and fucked something up so bad that I had to learn a lot about computers really fast. If I, if I wanted this segment to have a happy ending, I had to get, get real smart, real fast.

• 1:03:09Russ Frushtick?

  Could have been making tea that whole time.

• 1:03:11Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Russ Frushtick?

  Last but not least.

• 1:03:13Speaker 00

  That's what I needed. Like, shut, shut the fuck up, man. I just broke this thing. What do you mean make tea? Hey, Borro, how about you get in there and fix my Rog Ally X?

• 1:03:23Griffin McElroy?

  It's just a black screen, brother. I don't know.

• 1:03:26Russ Frushtick?

  I've been playing Enter the Gungen, uh, which is a game from seven years ago. And it runs on fucking everything. So we don't need a fancy new handheld. Uh, there just aren't, after finishing Star Providence and getting close to finishing Binding of Isaac, I don't have a giant list of games that scratched that itch for me. And Enter the Gungen is that. If you found it too hard previously, I think they made it a little easier since the last I played it.

• 1:03:51Griffin McElroy?

  I never finished it. I love that game.

• 1:03:52Russ Frushtick?

  I think they made it easier. Either that or I'm just great.

• 1:03:55Griffin McElroy?

  The final boss was such a motherfucker that like I got to him a half dozen times and just got my ass whipped and was like, well, I guess it's not fun.

• 1:04:04Russ Frushtick?

  Okay. Uh, I think we did it. I want to thank the following members. Uh, we have Kyle, we have Nicholas, we have Kelsey, we have Brad. Thank you for being new members of the besties at patreon.com slash the besties. We have a new episode of the resties out. You can go listen to that. Uh, we have a new bracket episode that's live already for this month. Uh, I think next week we're going to be doing kind of a grab bag episode of smaller titles. If that's exciting to you, uh, you should join us.

• 1:04:34Chris Plante?

  We're not doing Assassin's Creed next week?

• 1:04:35Russ Frushtick?

  No, two weeks is Assassin's Creed.

• 1:04:37Chris Plante?

  Oh, good. That's good for me because I'll be out next week because I got game developers conference. That means I can talk about AC.

• 1:04:45Russ Frushtick?

  I guess it'll be Griffin and I doing grab bag because Justin is also out. It's going to be fucking numbers and upgrades and armor sets that do class item bullshit.

• 1:04:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, baby.

• 1:04:56Russ Frushtick?

  I love it. Living large.

• 1:04:58Speaker 00

  All right. Well, I'll be looking forward to that. I'll be listening. I'll tune in. I'll be there.

• 1:05:03Chris Plante?

  That's two listeners you got right there.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  Two new listeners. That's going to do it for the besties. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?