A Great Game for Every Genre

Want a prehistoric riff on Metroidvanias? Crave a life-consuming multiplayer survival adventure? Yearn for the olden times of point-and-click adventures? This week, The Besties spotlight new delectable delicacies from across the video game spectrum. Music featured: "Primal Planet (Reprise)" by Michael Kirby Ward from Primal Planet: https://michaelkirbyward.bandcamp.com/

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

• 0:00Chris Plante?

  You got any gross food stuff, Rush?

• 0:02Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I'd really rather not.

• 0:03Russ Frushtick?

  I don't, I don't, I don't.

• 0:05Chris Plante?

  That's too bad. I mean, what do we even talk about without Hoops? We don't got gross food stuff. We don't got-

• 0:10Griffin McElroy?

  I can all agree, Hoops is the, is the thread that binds us together.

• 0:14Chris Plante?

  It truly is.

• 0:15Griffin McElroy?

  Like, you guys have always felt more like Hoops' friends. And I know that, like, to you, it's, for me, it's like, I'm Hoops' little, little bro.

• 0:25Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 0:25Griffin McElroy?

  And like, I come over sometimes to like, watch you guys skateboard or whatever, but like, he is kind of the middle, the middle ground that we all kind of meet on. And I'm glad we have a safe space to like, finally just kind of air all this stuff out.

• 0:39Russ Frushtick?

  I'm so fucking good at skateboarding, you have no idea.

• 0:42Griffin McElroy?

  Russ can do ten kickflips, and even when Chris was my neighbor, it still was sort of like Juice was the spirit in the room. That was always kind of like, the topic on our lips.

• 0:54Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Well, we did have, between the two of our houses, a little kind of Hoops mural.

• 1:00Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:00Chris Plante?

  Place where we could, you know-

• 1:01Griffin McElroy?

  And there were houses between ours, but like, if you were driving fast enough down our road before they put the speed bumps in, you could, you, it would sort of blend and blur.

• 1:10Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's like that Mad Magazine, if you fold the page at the end, it kind of makes it into one.

• 1:15Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:15Chris Plante?

  That's probably why that car drove into my house, is they were trying to see the Hoops mural by going at the top speed. And then they just lost control, and, you know, crashed into my room.

• 1:26Griffin McElroy?

  As they, as they came just sort of barrel-rolling into your bedroom, they were like, "Sorry, Chris, I really wanted to see the mural of Hoops in the way that it was intended." And you were like, "No, no, for sure. I get it. I get it. I understand."

• 1:39Chris Plante?

  The only way I could do it was by having a blood alcohol percentage of 90%, you know, being strung out.

• 1:47Griffin McElroy?

  It helps, it helps get the Hoops mural together, because otherwise you're like, well, there's, uh, it looks like a really lovingly painted picture of, uh, Justin with his hand up, but if you don't see your house with Tony Hawk on the other side, holding his hand up for the high five, it's like, what's it all mean?

• 2:02Chris Plante?

  Why'd you even bother, right?

• 2:03Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 2:04Chris Plante?

  I mean, it is the, the, the best, the best way to go, is, you know, 150 miles per hour, seeing Hoops giving a high five to Tony Hawk before you-

• 2:14Griffin McElroy?

  Chris, I know this was a terrible, terrible, traumatic thing that happened to you. I do feel like every time you tell us about it, the speed increases, the size of the car increases.

• 2:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it does seem like you're kind of blowing out of proportion.

• 2:25Griffin McElroy?

  You put a little extra mustard on it every time.

• 2:48Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:52Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:55Russ Frushtick?

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

• 2:59Griffin McElroy?

  Welcome back, everybody, to The Besties, a show where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's the game of the year club. And just by listening, you, my dear friend, are a member. This week, we are sans one Justin McRoy, but we are whatever the opposite of sans is. We are pro so many games, and we're going to talk about all of them in just a little bit. I guess a quick rundown, quick teaser of what we're going to be discussing this week. Grounded 2. Chris, like, three words. What's that? A small survival game. Cool. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tactical Takedown. What is that? It's a Ninja Turtle tactics.

• 3:39Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, you're doing it.

• 3:39Griffin McElroy?

  System Shock 2 Remastered, huh? System Shock More. The Drifter. I'll do this one. Australian adventure mystery. And Primal Planet? Survival Metroid Castlevania. Amazing. Why don't we only do it this way from now on? Because it gets the people what they need, and it gets them right out the door. We're going to talk about all those games and more coming up just after this short break.

• 4:09Russ Frushtick?

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

• 4:50Russ Frushtick?

  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 dot 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.

• 5:30Russ Frushtick?

  Why didn't I not play Primal Planet after that pitch?

• 5:34Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I know. Well, he didn't give you the three power words.

• 5:37Chris Plante?

  Yeah, if only somebody had handed you a code and said, literally this and said, fresh. This is your thing, but somebody's a real big shot now. Somebody's gone full Hollywood, full Hollywood weird and doesn't have time for old Chris Plant.

• 5:53Griffin McElroy?

  He says, I, he says, I can only play the games that kind of funny guy says I'm allowed to play. I'm like, damn, Russ, what kind of fucking?

• 5:59Russ Frushtick?

  To approve them.

• 6:01Griffin McElroy?

  What kind of deal did they give you, man? That's crazy.

• 6:03Russ Frushtick?

  Emphasis on kinda. Yeah. Here we are. We're here to talk about some video games.

• 6:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Can we start with Primal Planet? Cause I am actually, I have this one downloaded and it is next on the list. But I was playing a lot of stuff this week. What am I in for when I tune into Primal Planet, Chris?

• 6:21Chris Plante?

  Not sure why I picked this one because I'm not a big survival game or a Metroidvania person. But it turns out when you put those flavors together, you get something delicious. It is, it looks like the Super Nintendo Sega Genesis 2D platformers of yours. Salmon Mac, I think Bonk.

• 6:40Russ Frushtick?

  I'm gonna go way back and say, my immediate thought was like Abuse. You ever play that game Abuse with the aliens and the 360 aiming?

• 6:49Griffin McElroy?

  No, sir. But it sounds made up and it sounds like a bad dream you had.

• 6:55Russ Frushtick?

  This is gonna be an old person listening that remembers.

• 6:57Chris Plante?

  Okay, describe the game a little bit more, just so we don't leave on, have you ever played Abuse?

• 7:02Russ Frushtick?

  It's got din- oh, wait, you wanna know about Abuse?

• 7:06Chris Plante?

  Sure, just tell us why you think this.

• 7:06Chris Plante?

  Specifically, the dinosaur game.

• 7:08Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, just like art-wise, it's kinda of that era. It is like between NES and SNES.

• 7:14Chris Plante?

  Okay, I'm looking at this, kind of. I see what you're saying. So, yeah, the way of thinking about it is, uh, pixel graphic game, side-scrolling, uh, but you are gear-gated, or doing the Metroidvania shtick, by collecting materials and then crafting it. So for me, it really helped once I started to think of it as, oh, all the materials are just different currencies that I spend to buy the new upgrades that I'm gonna need to go further into the game. And once it clicked for that, it stopped being, oh, this is stressful like so many survival games, which feel like work to me, and feel like a bit of a grind,

• 7:53Chris Plante?

  where this is much more about exploration. As you're exploring, you're going to find the materials that you need to progress through the game. It's just kind of more of an aesthetic hook for it.

• 8:05Russ Frushtick?

  It's structurally like, did you play, um, Subnautica? Sounds like that.

• 8:10Chris Plante?

  Oh, but even lighter in terms of the

• 8:14Russ Frushtick?

  Survival.

• 8:15Chris Plante?

  Survival expectations here. Because again, it is a 2D Metroidvania game. So you start out and it's like, well, you need to create a spear to be able to fight certain enemies. And then you can light that spear on fire to create a torch, and torches create kind of like save points or community points. And then you need different types of poisons to fight bosses. So you're just getting different unlocks that are going to make it so that you can actually get past the different barriers in the Metroidvania type of world. And then there is a little bit of like, build a hut where your characters can live, but really what that's doing is closer to the, um...

• 8:59Chris Plante?

  Assassin's Creed did this where you would like build out a city and then you get like

• 9:03Griffin McElroy?

  It's not like you get to choose where to build the hut and like design it yourself.

• 9:07Chris Plante?

  It's already there. You just put in the resources and it's gonna give you some different awards. There's a bunch of different upgrades.

• 9:13Griffin McElroy?

  Pretty light on the survival craft kind of. It seems like that is a

• 9:17Chris Plante?

  It sounds like Terraria level in terms of like how

• 9:19Griffin McElroy?

  Well, no, because in Terraria you can pretty much build whatever the fuck you want, wherever you want. But this is like you are getting the stuff you need to build the house that is already there.

• 9:27Chris Plante?

  Yes. Yes. It is definitely illusory, the survival bins, which I like. Yeah, I like that too. I don't like survival. Stressful. Yes. And I, but on the flip side, it made me enjoy the Metroidvania stuff, which fresh, I know you enjoy these games much more than I do. But it felt less rote. For me, sometimes Metroidvania feels like, okay, I'm running from one into the next to get the things so that I can progress. And it feels like a bit of a chore list to do because I can see the mechanisms of the game. In Cheer, it felt much more like exploring, even though, once I kind of zoomed out and could look at the map, I was doing the exact same thing. Yeah.

• 10:09Chris Plante?

  A thing that I, I surprisingly really enjoyed about this game is the way it conveys its story. It is dialogue free, but these pixelated characters interact with each other in a really sweet way. So you are a, I guess, like caveman or whatever. Sure. And you are separated at first from your family, your, your wife and I think your daughter. And once you reunite with them, the characters will just hug each other if they're standing still. Hugging's been around for so long. It's been around for so long, but rarely a feature in a video game. Is it? It has just, what? I feel like hugging's been in games.

• 10:52Chris Plante?

  Oh, come, no. You're telling me that you went back and played Joe and Mac or whatever it was back then? And they're just hugging each other? No.

• 11:00Griffin McElroy?

  I don't think there's much caveman hugging representation in these games.

• 11:03Chris Plante?

  There just isn't. The other thing that I enjoyed about the game, great soundtrack, and there are space aliens. That's right. Couldn't just have enough with the dinosaurs. They said Unelsus needs, it needs aliens with giant powerful laser guns. Are the cave people surprised about the aliens or is that just part of their day to day? You know, I think

• 11:25Russ Frushtick?

  I don't want you to speculate. This is not an improv. I'm genuinely curious.

• 11:29Chris Plante?

  No, I'm not. I'm not trying to be funny. No, we saved that for hoops and he's not here. And Griffin's much-

• 11:36Russ Frushtick?

  I wouldn't get it. I wouldn't get the jokes, guys.

• 11:38Chris Plante?

  Thank you. That's-

• 11:39Russ Frushtick?

  Too young.

• 11:42Russ Frushtick?

  Too little. Mostly I'm asking, yeah, well, here's what I'm asking.

• 11:45Chris Plante?

  I'm like, I'm like giving you a real answer here, which is like, no, they're not surprised because everything is a fucking surprise. They're cave people. They look at the stars and it's a miracle.

• 11:55Russ Frushtick?

  What I, what I'm asking is, is this a dinosaur world that eventually gets invaded by UFOs? Or when you arrive, is it like a half dinosaur, half UFO world?

• 12:05Chris Plante?

  I think we're supposed to believe that it is a dinosaur world that is being invaded by UFOs. And I'm glad that you got that clarification.

• 12:12Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, yeah. Very important.

• 12:14Griffin McElroy?

  Um, this looks really great. I love the pixel art style a whole bunch.

• 12:18Chris Plante?

  I'll, I'll include some music in the, um, the show notes because it is, it is my new background music for like working and chilling out. It is such a good vibe.

• 12:43Chris Plante?

  So yeah, I enjoyed it, but speaking of survival games that are way more survival.

• 12:47Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 12:48Chris Plante?

  I want to hear about Grounded 2.

• 12:50Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, man. Um, I played quite a bit of this. The early access version of Grounded 2 launched on July 29th. Uh, I, I've been really looking forward to this one because I like, I don't know if it was earlier this year or later last year, but I just played through all of Grounded 1, uh, sort of after giving it a shot, right after it came out of early access and then not playing it when they added like a bunch of shit to it. And, uh, it's, Grounded 1 is one of my favorite- Games in this whole, you know, open world survivor, survival craft genre, uh, which if you're not familiar, like Chris and Russ kind of suggested earlier, it's a, a genre where you are able to collect resources and build and upgrade tools and armor and weapons.

• 13:35Griffin McElroy?

  And you build a base and you outfit that base with everything you need to survive.

• 13:39Russ Frushtick?

  And it, and it had the stuff the plant was talking about, right? The like metroidvania, like exploration, you need this unlocked to explore in this area.

• 13:47Griffin McElroy?

  So there were story beats and through those story beats, you would unlock new kind of like systems in the game. Like one of them was like a zip line that would allow you to like quickly traverse from one area to another. Um, and I would not say it was remotely sort of like metroidvania focused. Like I think if you, but there was a critical path through the game insofar as like, well, in order to, to beat the game, you have to do this underwater lab. In order to do the underwater lab, you have to kill this one bug to unlock the blueprint for the diving mask. And then you would need to, so like that, that is kind of like how the whole genre handles that. Same with, uh, your subnautica's, uh, the forest, uh, I mean Minecraft to, to, uh, not to put too fine a point on it.

• 14:32Griffin McElroy?

  Anyway, grounded two, uh, it's in early access. Now what is out is a lot. When grounded launched in early access, it was, it was pretty heavily criticized for being fairly bare bones. This is a lot. Uh, what they have said is that grounded to the, uh, which takes place in a big sort of community park this time around, rather than the backyard of some disgraced scientist, uh, is going to be three times larger than the map in grounded one. And there is about a third of the map available in the early access stuff, as well as a bunch of story quest content, uh, and, and a bunch of, uh, other stuff. I know this is always like a big, I don't know. It is a big hang up for me playing early access games now that I know I'm going to play the shit out of once they are fully featured and released.

• 15:15Griffin McElroy?

  But I do also think that is going to be a while before that happens. And I'm glad that I dipped into grounded two, cause it's doing some pretty neat stuff. How, how much of grounded, I know, I think we all played grounded at some point together, but did you guys like get particularly deep into it? Cause I don't know where to start sort of like explaining the.

• 15:32Russ Frushtick?

  No, I, I didn't. I, I remember, yeah, when we played together, uh, but I didn't play a ton of it. But every time you've talked about it like previously, your time with it sounded very enticing, because I think what scared me off was like, what scares a lot of like me off from a lot of these survival games is even though I feel like I'm progressing, it's like, oh, my house is bigger and I have a silver sword instead of a bronze sword, whatever the fuck. Whereas this had like narrative hooks to it. You were seeing more new stuff. Like, that's really the beat. And then the other thing I think was I found really impressive was just like the building I thought was like-

• 16:08Griffin McElroy?

  The building is next level, really great. The, the, the whole game, if you're not familiar at all, listener with Grounded One, you play as a, a teenager who has been shrunken down, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids style. Uh, and you basically have to figure out what happened, where you are, how to undo the shrinking process. And you go on this great big miniature adventure, uh, fighting against a bunch of bugs and harvesting their, their components and building bases at certain, you know, landmarks around the map. And those landmarks will be like a grill that has toppled over or a picnic table. And like, I don't know, that whole aesthetic is so rad. And by the time that game was like fully, fully, fully finished, it had so much great stuff going for it, uh, as far as like making a base that looked really cool.

• 16:52Griffin McElroy?

  All the gear, uh, felt really different and gave you like certain special abilities. So it wouldn't be just like, well, now my sword is silver. It would be like, well, I just crafted a magic fire staff out of a shard of spicy candy, uh, and I'm using armor that, you know, gives me this benefit and this benefit. Uh, anyway, Grounded Two, uh, very much the sort of pitching the same pitch, right? It's you're a miniaturized teen, the same four teens from the first game. Yeah. They very quickly get through like, and here's why you've been shrunk again in this new place.

• 17:25Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, you do actually get unshrunk in the first game?

• 17:28Griffin McElroy?

  I, I guess spoilers. I think there's multiple endings, but yes, it is possible. The, the ending I got involved being unshrunk. And what they have added is, uh, I, I think it comes in a form of like, and this is not obviously reinventing the wheel as far as sequels go, but like a lot of quality of life stuff as well as like- A few, I think, tent pole features that all seem very fucking cool. Quality of life stuff includes, um, so a big part of the first game is you have tools like an axe and a shovel and a hammer. You use those to chop down this big weed so that you can get the components from it. And you use this hammer so you can smash up a pine cone, but you need a certain strength of hammer to do it.

• 18:12Griffin McElroy?

  And all that stuff like you had to keep in your inventory and you had to keep repaired. So they didn't like break while you're out in the field. In this game, there's none of that. You have what's called, I think, an Omni Tool and you can upgrade that specifically like at little like, uh, you know, science stations or whatever, but it doesn't even show up in your inventory. You just run up to a collectible, interactable item and there's a single button and you automatically like do the thing. It's pretty fucking great.

• 18:38Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 18:40Griffin McElroy?

  The game feels a lot better. Combat feels great. It's all the first game, I think, was only first person or only third person. You have your choice in this one. It is made by, um, Obsidian. And so the combat is, it feels kind of like Elder Scrolls-y a little bit, like it's a lot of hold right click to block, uh, left, left click to.

• 19:02Russ Frushtick?

  Does it feel like the game they just put out? What was it? In Avowed?

• 19:09Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, I, yeah, I guess so. I didn't play a ton of Avowed.

• 19:12Russ Frushtick?

  It felt like a, like a evolution of the Oblivion combat engine.

• 19:16Griffin McElroy?

  That one didn't like super click for me. It is not the deepest combat in the world. What makes it work is the survival element of it of like, oh shit, I'm pretty far from base. And, um, I've got some pretty good stuff on me right now and I just got jumped by a scorpion and I really need this fight to go well for me. Like that, that sort of thing makes the somewhat simple combat of like, you block, there's perfect blocks. If you do it like right before, uh, you get hit and when that happens, like you don't lose any stamina and you can stun your opponent. So you can like get in a few hits. They have made this idea of like, uh, specialties much more, uh, surfaced and a lot more accessible. So whenever you craft a piece of equipment, a piece of armor or whatever, it will show you like this.

• 19:58Griffin McElroy?

  Is warrior armor and that will give you this benefit and then usually if you're crafting, you know, fighter armor or whatever, it will give you a little bit more health, a little bit more, whatever. Then there's like rogue armor, ranged armor. It like tells you pretty much on the tin. Like if you want to play this play style, this is how you do it. And that was not quite as easy to kind of understand in the first game. And it seems like they're putting a lot more emphasis on that, which kind of dovetails with the sort of co-op focus of the game.

• 20:24Russ Frushtick?

  Can you turn off the survival? Like you need water?

• 20:28Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know if you can do that in this early access in grounded. One, you could do whatever the fuck you want to any of the options, which I really did appreciate a lot. I do like some of that stuff. Like I like the economy of having that hunger and thirst. And then all of a sudden, once you build a machine that can harvest, you know, dew drops in the morning, like that feels like a big deal. As artificial as that is, maybe mechanically, like I do enjoy some of that stuff. I don't, I didn't look actually in grounded two early access, but I would be completely shocked if it was not in the game at some point.

• 20:59Russ Frushtick?

  I imagine they also have the arachnophobia mode, which I also.

• 21:03Griffin McElroy?

  Arachnophobia tells you right at the top of the game, as you turn it on, like, hey, if you don't like spiders, this is going to be a rough fucking ride for you, but we have a thing that's going to, I didn't click it. I think it just like blurs them out.

• 21:13Russ Frushtick?

  No, I've used it before. So in the first game, I'm sure it's probably similar in this one. The first game, the more you turn it, the closer they turn into just like big 3D circles.

• 21:23Griffin McElroy?

  I love it. That's great. Awesome.

• 21:24Russ Frushtick?

  Which they made those fucking spiders heinous in the first game. So I'd imagine.

• 21:28Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. And they're just as scary. There's the same bugs are back in this one. There's new bugs. There's scorpions this time around, uh, who are just fucking awful, really, really terrible. So like quality of life stuff is, is what makes me kind of excited. Um, the big sort of tent pole stuff, uh, the biggest thing of all is now there are mounts, uh, and the mounts are bugs. And the first one you get access to is a red ant, like a soldier ant. You find its egg. You have to go in this mission where you go into a red ant hill. You get the soldier egg and you have to like make it back to your base before every other ant in the whole park kills you. Uh, and then you can ride around on this ant. He's fast as hell. You can use him to fight. Uh, you can. Use him to harvest resources. You can like switch him into basically vacuum mode and he'll

• 22:13Griffin McElroy?

  just kind of like slowly trot around and absorb up everything and keep his own like little inventory slots. And then there's like a, you know, you can build your own like barn essentially for your bugs where they will live and you can call out whenever you need them. And then there's other mounts that are, I think you can ride one of those big orb weaver spiders too. And then they're talking about adding more, more stuff to the game. I, I, I have honestly, to be perfectly blunt, the timing of this is not great because I just played the shit out of grounded one. And I know I'm going to play a lot of grounded two. So I did hit a point where, um, I don't know, maybe after 10 hours or so in grounded to the, the early access. I was like, I think I've good. I think I've seen what I need

• 22:57Griffin McElroy?

  to see. And I'm going to, uh, you know, hop back in as soon as.

• 23:00Russ Frushtick?

  Do you try to get to like a point where it's like, okay, things are relatively stable? I would be able to pick it up from that point in the future?

• 23:07Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I don't actually know because I am not, I'm usually one where if I go a year without playing a game, I'm not going to want to hop back into the same like save that I had, but I am very, very, very much into, like, I spent a lot of time in grounded one, building this like tree top base that I'd like scaled my way up to with like these leafy slanted roof pieces. So I had this incredible, I spent hours and hours and hours on that. And I don't want to do that.

• 23:34Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 23:34Griffin McElroy?

  If I know that I'm going to not finish it on this save or whatever. Um, but I do really, really like what is there. Uh, I played it mostly on my rog ally X and it works great on there. And it seems to be not performing as well on my PC, which I don't know what to make of that. But there, there have been some complaints about like optimization and stuff like that, but, Yeah, I mean, for me, if you're a grounded fan, like, it seems like a no-brainer. I guess the big question is, like, do you wanna, do you wanna wait? And I don't think they've given a timetable for when the full game is going to come out, but I do assume it's going to, like, it probably won't be this year if I were to wager, I guess.

• 24:14Chris Plante?

  Yeah, usually it's like a year is the typical. Yeah, they also just released two games. I mean, well, they released one already, Avowed, and then they have Outer Worlds 2 coming out, so it's like, that's...

• 24:27Griffin McElroy?

  They got a lot cracking. I, this, this whole sort of, like, franchise just really, really works for me. Like, I just really love the idea of a, you know, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids survival game, and I love, like, finding some big, real-world thing and then figuring out, like, wait, is that actually gonna do any, can I use that in my war against the, against the spider folk? Like, that, that stuff, I think, is really, really, I don't know, it hits really good, and they've, they've also done a lot of very smart changes to, to sort of the grounded formula that, I, I don't know. At the very least, this has got me frothing at the mouth for the full release of this

• 25:08Griffin McElroy?

  game, because I know that it is going to have a, have a pretty big impact, I think.

• 25:13Chris Plante?

  Yeah, it sounds great. I love it. Should we take a quick break?

• 25:16Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back and talk about the rest of the stuff we got.

• 25:21Chris 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, you're a big shot, and you'll wanna 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 wanna prioritize their digital privacy and security. It keeps what you do online private and lets you access the internet like it should work. Open, secure, and on your terms.

• 26:05Chris Plante?

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• 26:49Chris Plante?

  That's protonvpn.com/besties.

• 26:56Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, we're back. So the initial plan was to do an entire episode on the game that I'm about to talk about, but I'm pretty glad that we didn't.

• 27:05Russ Frushtick?

  Because.

• 27:07Griffin McElroy?

  I thought I was certain everyone was going to get so mad at me because I played it and I didn't get it and it's such a classic. And it was one of those like uh oh moments.

• 27:17Russ Frushtick?

  Well, okay, so the game we're talking about is System Shock 2 Remastered, which is, it's worth noting, not a reimagining, not a reboot. It's not like Metal Gear Solid Delta where they totally like modernize the whole thing. It is the same game, more or less before, but with like upres graphics and some quality of life changes, broadly speaking. But like the enemies you're facing, the environments you're in are gonna look like a game that came out in the mid 90s.

• 27:50Griffin McElroy?

  In the last millennium. Yeah.

• 27:51Russ Frushtick?

  Yes. I think the big draw for this is the original game became increasingly impossible, or at least very difficult to run on modern devices. So I think for fans of System Shock 2, of which there are many that are probably very old at this point, you can now run it on basically anything. I played it on a Steam Deck, or you can run it on PC, whatever. What I find about, what I find interesting about System Shock 2. Is a lot of the team that worked on this would go on and work on more, I think, currently relevant, or at least quasi-relevant titles like Bioshock, for example.

• 28:29Griffin McElroy?

  This was the precursor to, but like when Bioshock came out, it was, hey, the System Shock team is making this new thing.

• 28:36Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, correct.

• 28:36Chris Plante?

  Which was just an interesting thing because Bioshock was a console game, or it was targeting console gamers.

• 28:42Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 28:43Chris Plante?

  System Shock 2 was hardcore PC.

• 28:45Griffin McElroy?

  Back when that distinction fucking meant anything at all.

• 28:48Chris Plante?

  Yes, but at the time, it was like, having people, you almost needed somebody to translate why it was exciting that Bioshock was being made.

• 28:56Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. With System Shock 2, I think it's interesting because it does feel like the progenitor to Bioshock, and not just in terms of plot. Like, the plot is very similar as well. You basically land on a space station in this case, and you're arriving after shit has popped off, in this case, an AI named Shodan caused some fiasco to go off in the first game, whatever. And it has progressed to the point where she is a major threat and you gotta take her out. And so, once you arrive, the ship already has like fucking zombies running around and psychic monkeys running around, and things are really bad.

• 29:32Griffin McElroy?

  You find bio-regeneration pods that are your checkpoints if you die.

• 29:36Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 29:36Griffin McElroy?

  Which is pretty much right, right across the bow, Bioshock.

• 29:41Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, in many ways, it feels a little bit like a prototype of what they would later do in Bioshock. You're finding notes, you're finding audio logs, you're finding like little keypad codes to type in. This game, when I first played it originally, many, many years ago, I remember it being incredibly, incredibly difficult. And I was like, I've since played so many of these immersive sims that I'm gonna be fine. And man, I was not.

• 30:07Griffin McElroy?

  No.

• 30:09Russ Frushtick?

  I think a lot of the issue is that you start and like, your only weapon, for the most part, is this wrench that you have. You do get other weapons, but ammo is such a valuable commodity that like, using them on a rare, on like, a random zombie that's running around is a total waste.

• 30:25Griffin McElroy?

  Shooting a bullet feels bad.

• 30:26Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 30:27Griffin McElroy?

  It feels like you're fucking up with it.

• 30:29Chris Plante?

  Every shot you take.

• 30:30Russ Frushtick?

  Well, and part of that is because they have a skill system where you're investing the resources that you find throughout the world to level up different skills. And one of those skills is standard weapons that you would pick up like a pistol or whatever. And but to get to like a high enough level where shooting a gun feels okay, requires probably seven or eight hours of like getting through these very difficult levels. So you're just having to min max every tiny little thing. It, I think it feels-

• 30:56Chris Plante?

  You are not told, by the way, what any of the stats do or or mean-

• 31:00Russ Frushtick?

  Correct.

• 31:00Chris Plante?

  As far as I can tell, and then there's skill stats as well. And so like you start the game by making all of these choices of what branch of the military you're going to go into and what you're, what different training regimen you're going to do. And I was like, okay, I guess I'll just do like all tech and like hacking. I'll go like specialize, I'll just take the pick things that make me hack better. And then like the first handful of machines I came up to was like, your hacking skills not high enough, man? I'm like, well, then why the fuck did I just do all that? Why, why, why did I do that then?

• 31:28Russ Frushtick?

  I think they more or less in later games, Bioshock, whatever, streamlined all of the things that like were impossibly obtuse or difficult and just made those choices feel more meaningful the second you were making them. Where you'd instantly know like, oh, I'm better at aiming or oh, I'm better at hacking. And it would like feel palpable and that was like a big change from this original game.

• 31:50Chris Plante?

  They did add a co-op mode, I should say, for this.

• 31:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 31:54Chris Plante?

  Which is in theory, a nice solution where you could have somebody who knows what they're doing, guide you through-

• 32:02Russ Frushtick?

  Show you around, yeah.

• 32:03Chris Plante?

  What, what's happening, right? I mean, Griffin, you did that for me with Grounded 1. Like, that's a great way for me to get into those survival games that I'm otherwise terrible at. But this game was not made for a co-op. And if you look at the reviews or especially just the general player feedback, this is a buggy novelty more than it is a real way that you're going to want to play this game.

• 32:29Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 32:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I don't know. I didn't dip into the co-op mode. I played the single-player story until I just, I really, I want to think I gave it a fair shot because I know that this is a game that like, if I had played it in 99, would have blown my fucking gourd, but there's a lot of games that came out in 1999 that I would still happily play to completion and I didn't, I just didn't get it, guys. Like, I just didn't. I thought everything was so clunky and unpleasant to interact with and I feel like I, I gave it a shot but just could not hang.

• 33:04Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I would unfortunately agree. I don't think it's aged well. I think there is just a ton of other games, Prey and Bioshock games that like do what this game is doing just in a much better way and not just, I mean, I appreciate the like groundbreaking nature of this title, but

• 33:20Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 33:20Russ Frushtick?

  I think this release in particular is just for the hardcore fans that like, don't want to have to go through the hoops of running this game on their device currently, so.

• 33:29Chris Plante?

  I would, you know, earmark this game if you're curious about it though, because there is such an intense fanbase around the System Shock games and even before this remaster, they were doing a ton of modding to do all sorts of cool stuff with it. And I think we will see a similar push from the modding community with this game over the years, but that's more of a, hey, maybe check in in years.

• 33:53Russ Frushtick?

  That's assuming they don't die before they finish the mods because they're very old.

• 33:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, 150.

• 33:59Russ Frushtick?

  Jesus.

• 34:01Griffin McElroy?

  I would love to talk about my next game because it came out of nowhere, blew me the fuck away. And I think is one of the better games I have played in the year 2025 and that game is called The Drifter. The Drifter is a very traditional point and click sort of adventure game. I say sort of because one of the big kind of selling points is that they have also the developer's power hoof, who I believe is just two guys in Melbourne, Australia. Their last big game as far as I can. Tell is Crawl, which came out in 2014. You guys remember that one? It was like a co-op competitive multiplayer dungeon crawling game. Yeah, so one player would control like all the monsters and traps.

• 34:45Griffin McElroy?

  And if you killed one of the adventurers, you got to take their body and take their place. It fucking rules. It's so good and the soundtrack is great. And I didn't realize that until today when I was like trying to look up more about the studio. And it was like, oh shit, I remember that game. That game rules. So the drifter is the point I didn't finish making. They included a special sort of like controller, control mech like design, where you use one stick to move and one stick to kind of look around and then kind of just like point at things you want to interact with. It all works so fucking well. I played the whole thing on my Rog Ally.

• 35:24Griffin McElroy?

  But it is very much in that sort of traditional LucasArts, you know, Monkey Island, The Dig, that whole kind of milieu. It is about a man named Mick Carter, who travels home after stowing away on a train to attend his mother's funeral. And he gets embroiled in this like wild sci-fi conspiracy, where people are going missing and there's been a string of murders of other drifters, you know, living out on their own. And he starts, he realizes that when he dies, he flashes back in time,

• 36:08Griffin McElroy?

  which is kind of how they get around like, oh no, you fucked up. In adventure games, if you mess up and then you die, then you whoosh, fast forward back in time.

• 36:17Russ Frushtick?

  Do they animate the like gory death before you whoosh?

• 36:20Griffin McElroy?

  Oh god, yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, Crawl was pretty gnarly. Like there was a lot of impaling and evisceration. And in this game Mick gets like absolutely destroyed a lot. And it is dark as fuck. Like you need to be ready to hang with that. If that is your interest, I would suggest you watch a trailer for the game. Cause it definitely touches, he is, Mick is- A dude who is running away from this horrible, personal, family tragedy. And a lot of the story is sort of about him and how he ran away. Instead of kind of like dealing with the aftermath of this tragedy and the game really does. I mean, it hits that stuff really very, very, very hard.

• 37:05Griffin McElroy?

  And also has some truly gnarly deaths and, and, and stuff like that happening. But the acting and the writing and the storytelling are all absolutely top notch, fucking amazing stuff.

• 37:16Chris Plante?

  How, how does it not fall into the adventure game, the point and click adventure game traps?

• 37:22Griffin McElroy?

  I think, so I think it does. I think that there are a couple of sequences where there's a lot of like investigating that you're doing. Right? There's a lot of like trying to get to the bottom of this big conspiracy, trying to figure out what is happening to you. Trying to figure out like at one point, one of your family members gets kidnapped. You're trying to figure out what happened to her. And so there's like some sequences that you're kind of bouncing around a map, like getting something from here, taking it to here, trying to figure out. The other sort of like trap that it does fall into, but it does so in a way that I think is kind of cool. Is you do hit these moments of tremendous peril where it's like, uh, there is a group of soldiers who are storming this office where I'm holed up.

• 38:04Griffin McElroy?

  Or I'm handcuffed to this hospital bed and someone is coming to kill me. And if you don't do it exactly right, you get killed. Right? But then those sequences are so short because he can only flashback in time, like a certain amount of time. And so while you do have that frustration of like, okay, I know the game wants me to do something here. I know it's going to involve, you know, uh, reaching to get this remote and then hitting this button. And I know I need to distract this guard so that I can do this, but like, I feel like I keep fucking up what the order is. But because it's hitting you with it in such a short, like easily repeatable burst, like it, it actually kind of works. Like it kind of feels like you are kind of stumbling into

• 38:48Griffin McElroy?

  the solution of like, oh, okay. So I definitely need to do this first so that I can get this and then do this. Those sequences, there's only a handful of them in, in the game, but they end up being like pretty exciting. Because you are, I don't know, you try very desperately not to get killed and you will over and over and over and over and over again.

• 39:08Griffin McElroy?

  It, it is, I, I don't really know, because it is so traditional and it's, it's styling, like I don't know that there's like a lot more to explain. If you look at it, if you watch a trailer for it and you have played any of those old LucasArts games, like I do think it is going to, you know, resonate with some deep part of your, of your core memories.

• 39:29Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 39:30Griffin McElroy?

  I, I will say it looks phenomenal. Uh, the, just all the pixel art and the animation and the, just the lighting effects and just everything looks, looks really tremendous.

• 39:40Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it looks gorgeous.

• 39:41Griffin McElroy?

  But just, it, it is a really, really, really polished thing. And this is not, this is, I have a really hard time, hanging with adventure games. I didn't like, I don't know, I feel like I didn't really click with a lot of the Double Fine stuff, uh, a lot of the, uh, other Telltale stuff, like some of that was, worked for me, some of it didn't. I find the genre to be kind of just like, I, what is the cheapest and easiest and laziest way that we can like tell a story?

• 40:11Russ Frushtick?

  I think there is no game is like the only recent one that I've.

• 40:15Griffin McElroy?

  Which one?

• 40:15Russ Frushtick?

  There is no game Wrong Dimension, that one?

• 40:17Griffin McElroy?

  There is no game Wrong Dimension is a, a great example of not doing that, right? Because like it is a fairly traditional game, but they do it in such a brilliant, like a constantly evolving way. This doesn't even do that. This is just like, this feels like a golden era point and click adventure game. It's just done so fucking well. And all of the production like aspects of it are so top notch. Uh, and I.

• 40:42Griffin McElroy?

  I not only like, I'm surprised not only that like I finished it, but I finished it fairly like breathlessly over like three or four days, like whenever I had free time, it was the thing that I went back to because I was so desperate to like, figure out what was going on and figure out how to get past this sequence that, you know, seemed like this impossible death trap. There's, there's, there's a few clunky puzzles, but they are offset, I will say, by a few really, really great and exciting puzzles. And yeah, this one came out of absolutely nowhere and I, I really, really, really liked it a lot.

• 41:15Chris Plante?

  I just checked, it is playable on Mac too. So like

• 41:18Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, is it real?

• 41:19Chris Plante?

  Immediately from my laptop.

• 41:21Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 41:22Griffin McElroy?

  I will also say, if you have friends that you play games with locally, get Crawl also. Cause that, not very many, many people played that game, I don't think. And it like handles this hack and slash dungeon crawler genre in a way that I think is like, really, really, really novel and fun.

• 41:38Chris Plante?

  I feel like that game, it was just at the tail end of the local multiplayer boom. And maybe missed out on its moment in the sun, but I completely agree. Fresh, you got one more game?

• 41:50Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, one more game. I'm trying, I was trying to remember if we talked about this game or not. It feels like something that Justin would talk about and might've talked about like in honorable mentions, but I just wanted to call it out.

• 42:00Griffin McElroy?

  So the game

• 42:00Chris Plante?

  I don't think we have.

• 42:01Russ Frushtick?

  The game is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tactical Takedown. It came out on PC in like May, but it just got a re-release on consoles. I believe it's on Switch and maybe one other console. It is a turn-based tactics game featuring obviously the Ninja Turtles. What's interesting about it is it uses things that you've seen in turn-based tactical games to like, use this ability, it costs this many action points to whatever, leap over someone on a skateboard and it has this effect. But all of this is presented in, as like a board game. Like the turtles themselves are like board game pieces and the like Foot Clan that you're fighting are like board game pieces. And it gives it kind of a whole, like a, its own kind of vibe in that way.

• 42:46Russ Frushtick?

  It also allows them, I think, to scale the project in such a way that they're not having to animate every single attack or movement that the characters are making. But I just think it's like a smart design approach. There's also this element of,

• 43:01Russ Frushtick?

  Time, which is weird in a turn-based game, but you have to regress through these maps. So you're kind of racing through these maps, killing, or I guess beating up Foot Clan members. And the area behind you will actually start disappearing after like a certain number of turns. So if you're not keeping the pace up where you're constantly moving forward, you will actually lose and you'll like lose a life.

• 43:24Chris Plante?

  What did you play this on?

• 43:26Russ Frushtick?

  I played this on Steam Deck, so it works great with a controller. But it presumably works well on everything. It's not exactly pushing the hardware too hard.

• 43:34Chris Plante?

  Yeah, sure.

• 43:35Russ Frushtick?

  But I do think it's a good example of just like an interesting, unique approach to this genre that I haven't seen before. It's made by the team at Strange Scaffolding, whose games you might know as, they made El Paso Elsewhere, which was that like Max Payne vampire dope game. And they also made I Am Your Beast. So they've been putting out a lot of like really creative games that aren't necessarily what I would consider to be like mass market. And this is-

• 44:06Chris Plante?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're saying that click holding, a game about cucking through clicking, is not mass market?

• 44:14Griffin McElroy?

  That feels pretty mainstream.

• 44:15Russ Frushtick?

  I found it very interesting that they were able to get a studio to agree, specifically like a studio as big as Warner Brothers, whoever owns Ninja Turtles these days, to agree to like control their IP for a project. And they did a really good job with it. It reminds me of Cadence of Hyrule in that way. Where like, oh, man, this indie developer got hold of like a huge property and let's see what they do with it. And they did like a really cool job. I was pretty pleased with it.

• 44:40Chris Plante?

  If you want to hear more about Strange Scaffolding and all the stuff they're doing, I actually did an interview with Zolviar Nelson Jr., who oversees that entire studio.

• 44:49Griffin McElroy?

  Over at Post Games?

• 44:50Chris Plante?

  Over at Post Games, a new podcast. It's just like that. It's the Post Malone of podcasts.

• 44:59Griffin McElroy?

  Looks like you got a piece of reader mail here calling, calling me out, dragging me out to the middle of town for a good old fashioned standoff.

• 45:07Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, so I wasn't here last week, but I guess you had a strong take on Donkey Kong Country.

• 45:12Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I shit talked Donkey Kong.

• 45:14Russ Frushtick?

  Bonanza.

• 45:15Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I love Bonanza, but I did, yeah, let's get into it.

• 45:18Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, this letter comes from Bri Duck. It's an interesting, it's interesting. My take on Donkey Kong is very different from Griffin's. I find the solo mode much more compelling than the pure chaos of co-op. I also think Bazing- I almost said bazinga.

• 45:31Griffin McElroy?

  You almost said bazinga, didn't you?

• 45:33Russ Frushtick?

  Bananas.

• 45:33Griffin McElroy?

  Bazingas.

• 45:35Russ Frushtick?

  Overall, design is superior and at least rivaling Odyssey. My big problem with Odyssey is the vast majority of moons in that game do not utilize Mario's awesome movement at all. The capture mechanic is fun, but most of the capture move sets are not nearly as fun as moving around with Mario. I agree with that. Whereas the majority of Bananas are in some way utilizing DK's core move set, digging and surfing and platforming. And the Bananza abilities are an additive to his move set as compared to the restrictive capture abilities. I think this, in this way, DK is a refinement on this formula.

• 46:07Griffin McElroy?

  I think that's a fine point. I would agree with everything that you said. I think it's just a question of like, I don't know, design philosophy, puzzle, puzzle and collectible design philosophy, where it feels more footloose and fancy free for most of the time in Donkey Kong Bananza. Like just smashing your own way to the thing as opposed to like hitting this very specific line. It's the difference between like having to, you know, having a Tony Hawk challenge where you have to clear this gap versus like a skate challenge where it's like, just get this, get this score or whatever. Like it is a question of, they're both doing the same thing.

• 46:48Griffin McElroy?

  It just, I feel like being able to, I don't know, know exactly what I'm supposed to do is something that I felt like was missing in Bananza. And that's not the worst thing in the world. It's just why I think the co-op mode worked better for me is because playing it with my, my son in that way was very, was very rewarding. I imagine it is harder to, you know, jazz together some bullshit solution to get, to get a banana if you don't have a, you know, bazooka wielding toddler on your shoulder, but yeah.

• 47:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it was also a big co-op hit in our household as well. Yeah, I like the, I like the middle ground because they do have those challenge rooms that feel very like sectioned off and they allow you like have a very specific challenge, but just having the fuck around big areas felt really, really good to me.

• 47:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. And to make it clear, I love Donkey Kong Bananza. I think it's doing two, two different things.

• 47:44Griffin McElroy?

  What do we, do we have some honorable mentions?

• 47:46Russ Frushtick?

  I've continued to play Pippastrello and the cursed Yo-Yo. That game rules.

• 47:52Griffin McElroy?

  It does.

• 47:53Russ Frushtick?

  I just-

• 47:53Griffin McElroy?

  How far have I, I think I got to the third, like, battery or whatever?

• 47:59Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I'm in the, I'm at the third battery area, which is like inspired by like a Comic Con thing.

• 48:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 48:05Russ Frushtick?

  And I think I'm pretty close to the end at this point, but it's the game that like, if I need like a good 20 minutes of like chill out, not think about anything and just like have a fun time, I keep going back to that. I just love the art. I love the controls. The like upgrade systems are very smart. It just feels as close to that GBA era of Zelda as I've seen from an indie developer, which is pretty impressive.

• 48:31Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Um, yeah, I'll probably return to that one. It's, it's, it's definitely one I'm keeping installed because I really liked what I played of it. What are you doing, what are you doing here? Are you copying my thing so you can paste it into a browser?

• 48:44Russ Frushtick?

  I wanted to see what it was.

• 48:45Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 48:46Russ Frushtick?

  I think I've, I've used this and I think I even talked about it.

• 48:49Griffin McElroy?

  Did you really?

• 48:50Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, many, many moons ago.

• 48:51Chris Plante?

  Y'all have too many handhelds. You don't even know which one's so niche.

• 48:55Griffin McElroy?

  They do, man. If, I actually just dug some out of like my office closet to like put them on some shelves that I have in, in the back here and it really sunk in like I have.

• 49:04Russ Frushtick?

  It's a problem. I, I, I take good Russ's advice, which is I hit a certain threshold and then I just give them away to people.

• 49:10Griffin McElroy?

  I think I'm done. Right. I like having one small pocketable one and one powerful one that I can, uh, you know, play whatever the fuck on. Right now for me, that is either the Retroid 5 or the Flip 2, um, both of which I have kitted out to play basically whatever I, I want. Arguably, I could probably do this much, much better on my rog allies, like set it up with some, you know, uh, suite of emulators or whatever, but I wanted a new small one because, uh, all the ones that I have that are kind of pocketable are all vertical lands, uh, vertical orientation. Like your Trim UI brick is like great and one that I would fully recommend. I wanted a horizontal one though, so I got the IONEO Pocket Micro Classic.

• 49:52Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, the IONIO makes great handhelds that are pricier, I would say than, you know, an Ambernic or a lot of the other sort of competition. But you pay for like, pretty great build quality and this thing feels fucking great. I've got it right here. Uh, it's horizontal layout. Imagine sort of like a, a Game Boy Advance micro, but like, you know, scaled, scaled up.

• 50:15Russ Frushtick?

  Scaled to the point where you could actually use it.

• 50:17Griffin McElroy?

  Where you could actually use it. Yeah, like it fits in my hands really great. It's got this sort of like rectangular design, but the edges are all like rounded in a way where it feels pretty, pretty great actually in my hands. They originally, IONIO made the Pocket Micro that had two thumbsticks on it that were okay, but it's not like the most powerful of the, of the, of the handhelds. It can only run up to like a Dreamcast sort of thing, sort of, um, unreliably. But like, I just kind of wanted something that I could play SNES and Game Boy Advance and Genesis and other sort of, uh, games on. And so I didn't need the sticks. They made this new version, the classic, that doesn't have the sticks, which is like

• 51:00Griffin McElroy?

  perfect because now it just slides right in and out of the pocket so easily. Runs Android, which is not my favorite. I would much rather have a Linux like dedicated front end that I could kind of tweak and not have to fuck around with all of the other Android stuff that comes along with it. But I can play some Android games on it, which is, which is cool. Uh, but I just love the form factor. It's, uh, it's full metal, so like it, it feels really solid, really sturdy. The screen looks amazing. Buttons all feel really great. Um, but it's also like, I think it was 220, which is like a trim UI break you can get for like 50, 60 bucks. So it's considerably more expensive.

• 51:38Russ Frushtick?

  Do you know the internals, are they, because the version that I played, that's why I'm remembering it, was the one with the analog sticks. So it was a little while ago.

• 51:45Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's the same. I think it's the same internals. I think the only thing that's different is just, they had a lot of- Reviews that said like, "This thing is great. It feels great. The size is perfect. It's just what I want." And like a horizontal... If you're not like in the scene, like there's a lot of... It's basically like Elvis versus the Beatles, pancakes versus waffles. Like, do you prefer a vertical, old-school Game Boy DMG-style thing, or do you prefer a horizontal, like, original Game Boy Advance style? And I do think I prefer the horizontal, just because it fits in the hands a little bit easier and you don't have to do a lot of-

• 52:21Chris Plante?

  Let's take a Game Gear, if you will.

• 52:22Griffin McElroy?

  A Game Gear is the worst example, because it's actually, it's horizontal, but it's unholdable because of how large it is. But it's my new off-court buddy. It's my new, like, I put it in my pocket and I can actually take it places because it fits really well. I've been playing Final Fantasy VI with the sound restoration-

• 52:41Chris Plante?

  Oh, good. I was worried.

• 52:42Griffin McElroy?

  I did my first ROM hack by finding this project that people had made of fixing the terrible, really, really grainy, hissy, compressed audio that they took from the Super Nintendo version of Final Fantasy, I guess, III in the States. When they put it on Game Boy Advance, just the audio quality, it sounded absolutely like dog dirt. But I do love the Game Boy Advance version of that game. I think it looks great and has some extra stuff. So I downloaded this ROM hack that made the sound sound marginally better. And it's been a while since I've replayed this one, and it is truly, truly a staggering achievement, Final Fantasy VI.

• 53:24Chris Plante?

  I inadvertently have two things that are both recommendations and plugs. The first one is Castle Crashers' new DLC, including the first new character that you can play as since 2011.

• 53:39Griffin McElroy?

  When you say "new"... How new?

• 53:43Chris Plante?

  New, like today.

• 53:45Griffin McElroy?

  August.

• 53:45Chris Plante?

  Painter Boss Paradise came out and it lets you add your own characters that you can design. It has a new playable character that is like new stuff. There is new content in Castle Crashers.

• 53:57Griffin McElroy?

  That is fucking crazy.

• 53:59Chris Plante?

  As of today, my friend.

• 54:01Griffin McElroy?

  That is, listener, I guess listeners maybe haven't heard that. I don't know if that episode has come out yet, but we discussed this game at length as part of our most recent Besties Bracket episode.

• 54:10Chris Plante?

  It is out. That is also out right now. So if you want to listen to an entire episode about co-op games, you will hear about Castle Crashers in that episode. So they, they knew that they were doing it. You know, they wanted to time it with us. They've been sitting on this for probably at least 10 years, you know, waiting for a good moment. They saw that the Besties was out here and they said, let's put it out.

• 54:31Griffin McElroy?

  I love it.

• 54:32Chris Plante?

  Other one I want to shout out is, um, last week on Post Games, I talked with one of the writers of Ambrosia Sky, which have you all been following this game?

• 54:44Griffin McElroy?

  No, I don't think so.

• 54:46Chris Plante?

  So Ambrosia Sky is basically what would happen if you met like merged Power Wash Simulator with System Shock.

• 54:56Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, alright.

• 54:56Chris Plante?

  And it turns out sick that it is a great, great, cool thing. There's a new demo that just went out on Steam. So once again, I think that we are just inspiring people to make things available to the world. This is, I believe the same demo that was shown at Summer Game Fest. It was kind of a hit demo of that show. The story is so grim. You are basically a cleaner of mass death incidents on off-worlds and like the far distant future. And you are using your different like Power Wash tools to clean up these toxic scenarios and recover bodies.

• 55:35Griffin McElroy?

  I fucking love that. That sounds awesome.

• 55:39Chris Plante?

  It's such a cruel, cruel, cruel game.

• 55:42Griffin McElroy?

  This game is nasty. Looks nasty.

• 55:43Chris Plante?

  So yeah, you could check out that game. And if you want to check out an entire podcast about how video games help us process death, you could also go listen to Post Games. Those two things are just waiting for you right now.

• 55:55Griffin McElroy?

  Definitely gonna get over there. Gotta get, gotta get my Post Games. Hey, thank you so much. That's gonna do it for us this week on The Besties. Chris, do you want to try and summarize all the games we talked about this week?

• 56:07Chris Plante?

  Oh, we talked about so many games, but the way I put it is a little bit for everybody. We talked about The System Shock 2 Remaster, The Drifter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tactical Takedown, Primal Planet, Abuse, the video game, Grounded 2, and also PP Strello, the IONEO Pocket Micro Classic with Final Fantasy VI that's been modded and kidded out, Castle Crashers, new DLC, and Ambrosia Sky, the demo is now available.

• 56:38Griffin McElroy?

  That Castle Crashers, that blows my mind, that there's Castle Crashers DLC. It's so great. I haven't thought about that game in years. Talked about it extensively for our Patreon listeners. By the way, patreon.com/thebesties. Thank you to everybody who supports the show directly there. Go, go get yourself a membership. You can gift a membership too, if you go to patreon.com/thebesties/gift. But we do bracket episodes every month, and there's episodes of The Resties that go up there. If you like our show, there's a lot more that you are not hearing if you're not a patron of ours. A couple of quick shout outs for new members. We have Mike, we have Charles, we have Johnny, and we have The Cliff with a K. Thank you all so much. Again, patreon.com/thebesties.

• 57:19Chris Plante?

  There are like 60 episodes now.

• 57:22Griffin McElroy?

  There's a lot.

• 57:23Chris Plante?

  It's bonkers how much stuff you get for signing up for a month of that.

• 57:28Griffin McElroy?

  Next week, join us again. We are going to be discussing, I think, Mafia: The Old Country. Now, let me take you behind the scenes, listener. This is one of those where before we started recording, there was a lot of wringing of hands about whether or not this was going to be the one. And we don't want to lead you down some primrose path. If this is not the game we end up talking about next week, we will find ways to tell you via the social channels. Right now, the plan is Mafia: The Old Country, a game I don't know anything about. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. Find out by joining us again next week for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?