Dispatch's Second Chance (and The Game Awards Predictions)

Some of The Besties were skeptical of Dispatch, the spiritual follow-up to Telltale titles like The Walking Dead. But this new, TV-like superhero series won us over with each new episode. Plus, we share our predictions for winners and announcements at The Game Awards.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Did you guys know that normally, I've just discovered a new feature in Riverside? Like normally I have the chat with all four of us up and that's good. I was trying to figure out a way to hide myself from the chat and I removed myself from the whole call. So I was pretty fucked up and but I have discovered that if you want, you can just pin Russ. So it's just, you can just make Russ bit, you can pin Russ and that way you're getting like a direct feed.

• 0:26Russ Frushtick?

  It's like a wicked for good situation where you see my giant face.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  You can also full screen pop out Russ so you don't have to see any other guys. And you can really focus on how Russ is reacting to everything they're saying. It makes for a business opportunity for us.

• 0:41Russ Frushtick?

  It's mostly eyebrows.

• 0:42Chris Plante?

  What if we just had a full time Russ feed that, you know, like the real top in best use subscribers could get, right? I think that's probably worth seven, eight dollars.

• 0:54Russ Frushtick?

  Fat bear week, but just Russ.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  I'm just telling you guys, if, if on this episode, it seems like Russ and I are like really grooving. I'm reading his like micro aggressions, the like tiny fractal eyelash blink that lets me know he wants, he's a, he wants me to reference New York giraffe or something.

• 1:13Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I'm also wearing Justin's aura ring. So his entire being is sufficed into my being, uh, which is lovely.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's really cool. And I've got his aura frame. It's right behind me. You know, gift giving season is just around the corner.

• 1:48Speaker 00

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

• 1:51Chris Plante?

  My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game awards of the week. My name is Russ Fraschik. I know the best game of the week.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club, you know, just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member. I'm so happy to have you here today to talk about a couple of things. First off, we're going to lead off with a, a, a dispatch, dispatch. What's that Chris Plant?

• 2:21Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, is that how you pronounce that word?

• 2:23Speaker 00

  Dispatch.

• 2:24Russ Frushtick?

  Is it meant to be like a double entourage?

• 2:28Griffin McElroy?

  What?

• 2:28Russ Frushtick?

  What do you mean?

• 2:29Griffin McElroy?

  What?

• 2:29Russ Frushtick?

  Well, to dispatch, when you say it like that, it sounds like you're killing someone versus dispatch, which is when you're sending like taxis out like on the show Taxi.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  Ah. Now I'm gonna be dispatch, dispatch.

• 2:46Griffin McElroy?

  Dispatch.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  You ruined it. Dispatch, dispatch, Mickey.

• 2:50Griffin McElroy?

  Chris, Chris, tell us all about that.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Chris Pratt, tell us about Chris Pratt.

• 2:55Chris Plante?

  You want something like those classic telltale games that you used to love? You want that Walking Dead flavor, that Sam and Max, not the original games, but the adventure ones? Well, you can get it right now in the form of an entirely original superhero city, superhero story? There we go, set in the city of Los Angeles.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  That's right, Chris Pratt. We're gonna talk about that and a little bit about the Game Awards. That's all coming up right after this.

• 3:27Russ Frushtick?

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

• 4:12Russ Frushtick?

  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.

• 4:49Griffin McElroy?

  I hope these characters make it in the next poker night at the inventory. I don't think that's too much to ask. I want to see them up there with-

• 4:55Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, whoa, that really-

• 4:57Griffin McElroy?

  I want to see them up there with Strong Bad. Want to see them up there with-

• 5:01Russ Frushtick?

  Poker Night Inventory. Sheesh, that's what me back.

• 5:04Griffin McElroy?

  The Heavy from fucking TF2.

• 5:08Griffin McElroy?

  I feel like this is my hat in hand sort of mea culpa game of the year. Of being one that I felt pretty rock solid certain I wasn't gonna like and wasn't gonna be for me. And was so not excited by any of the trailers or anything I'd seen about the game. But was so sort of shocked by how much buzz and positive reaction had gotten. And I'm very glad that I gave it a shot because I have finished, I think, six or so episodes of the eight episodes in this first season in about three or four days. Very, very, very, very into Dispatch.

• 5:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 5:53Griffin McElroy?

  And I'm very glad that I managed to get it in here before our considerations.

• 5:57Russ Frushtick?

  I do want to make a slight tweak to what Chris Plante said earlier in the episode describing Dispatch. Because what his pitch for it, which is what I've basically heard the entire time this game has been out-

• 6:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 6:12Russ Frushtick?

  Is like Telltale-esque. And I don't actually know that that's entirely the best way to view it.

• 6:20Griffin McElroy?

  Interesting. Why's that?

• 6:21Russ Frushtick?

  Because at least what I've played, and I don't know if this changes dramatically, but at least what I've played, it is much less interactive than a Telltale thing. It feels more like an interactive, like you're watching a show and occasionally you have options to like choose dialogue. And then there's obviously, there's a game element to it that we'll get into.

• 6:41Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 6:41Russ Frushtick?

  But it doesn't, the thing about Telltale was like, you were like literally walking around these environments and like clicking on things and like-

• 6:50Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 6:51Russ Frushtick?

  Stuff like that, which this is not, like, this is a much more directed.

• 6:55Griffin McElroy?

  This is very, very much, that, that, that is what turned me off from it at first. Is like, that doesn't sound great to me. And honestly, for me, Telltale has a weird track record where I thought the, like, first season of Walking Dead was one of, that was like my game of the year that came out, the, the, the year that came out. I, I really liked season two. And then pretty much every other thing that they made, I never finished. I never got all the way through.

• 7:18Russ Frushtick?

  I liked Wolf Among Us.

• 7:18Griffin McElroy?

  Even though I recognize, Wolf Among Us, yeah, it was great. The, the Borderlands one, surprisingly, really great, really fun. I just never, like, they never hooked me. And so knowing that, like, I didn't feel like I wanted to get invested in a lightly interactive superhero show, another, like, a genre that I also kind of don't give a shit about anymore. And have been like, pretty well turned off by, regardless of whether it's movies, or TV, or comics, or games, or whatever. But against all odds, I think they actually do a, a really smart thing in how interactive it is.

• 7:59Griffin McElroy?

  To set it up a little bit, it, it is familiar to those Telltale games where it is, it is telling a story with important kind of like junction points and conversation choices and decisions that you will make that will sort of branch things off. You are running a superhero team called the Z Team of former villains who have turned things around and become heroes, most of them kind of, you know, dragging their feet along the way. And you are basically their manager. You are the guy in the chair telling them where to go as these calls come in. You are assigning them to different jobs, making those decisions based on their, like, different superhero stats that you can level up as they go and they do a good job. But like, the narrative layer on top of that

• 8:40Griffin McElroy?

  is that it is very much like a workplace comedy, I think.

• 8:45Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 8:46Griffin McElroy?

  Not that, not that it isn't funny, it is funny. It's just like, I don't know if that's the genre. It would, it's a lot squarely into.

• 8:51Russ Frushtick?

  It's not, uh, the, the, when I think of comedy, probably something closer to like a Harley Quinn, the comic, the animated show. It's not like joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke. It's a lot of like. It has uncomfortable bits. Character setups and things like that.

• 9:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. The game layer, I think, is really smart because the bit where you are.

• 9:10Russ Frushtick?

  I would say light drama.

• 9:11Griffin McElroy?

  Light drama. Yeah, that's fair. Um, I mean, it takes some pretty fucking heavy, heavy, heavy swings in the later episodes.

• 9:17Russ Frushtick?

  For the love of God, Griffin.

• 9:20Griffin McElroy?

  The, the management part-

• 9:21Speaker 00

  It's serious mostly and sometimes there's jokes.

• 9:25Griffin McElroy?

  That's good. I think the way, the, the like gameplay of sending out heroes and assigning them to different jobs on these like long shifts is actually a really smart, like synergistic way of kind of telling the story they're telling, where you start to get invested in these characters based on the writing and acting, which is, you know, they're both really great, but also like you begin to form these attachments to like, oh, well, Golem's my dog, like Golem is my dog when I know things are getting like hairy and I need someone who I can depend on, like that's my dude I send into those jobs. And that kind of, I don't know, that like lends itself into you giving a shit about the characters in a way that is, is really effective.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Some people are, some of the, the heroes are like more professional. Um, and so you know, like this is, if this breaks bad, it would be really bad. So I need somebody who can like keep their composure and they're pretty clear upfront, like the mission description about like, you know, they're protecting the governor. So you need somebody, the, the way that's expressed is sort of with a pentagonal skill graph with like their toughness and their fighting ability and their peer strength and charisma and intellect, I think, uh, on like a chart. And that is how their success or failure in a mission is determined. There's, but it's not like yes or no, there is a random element. So basically if you imagine that Pentagon, the requirements of the job will take up a certain area of the Pentagon depending

• 10:54Speaker 00

  on what skills are needed for it. And your character also has their own, you know, shape represented by their skills. And in that overlap, there is a, a percentage overlap. So they overlap by like 70%, right?

• 11:07Russ Frushtick?

  It's basically a chance to succeed is really what-

• 11:09Speaker 00

  A chance to succeed, basically. Yeah, exactly.

• 11:12Russ Frushtick?

  Um, yeah, I, I, I found that mo- that like game and I need to do more of it a little bit stressful. I found the like actual show of it interesting. Uh, I need to spend more time with it. Really? I'm still very early. Uh, but animation wise, like through the roof.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  Holy shit.

• 11:27Russ Frushtick?

  Wow. Incredible and shot really well. Like the framing is like, this is professional. These people know how to do a show. Um, I'm actually surprised that they didn't like partner with a, a streaming network at the same time. And I'm sure they will now, especially after the success of it. Cause it really is very well done.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  Um, I don't know that they will. I mean, I don't, cause this is the, it feels like one of those where this is the best version of it. I mean, who knows, right? If there's money to be made.

• 11:56Russ Frushtick?

  It, it'll get optioned and they could turn this universe into something certainly.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  But it, it really is, I don't want to overstate it, but like, uh, at first I started playing it. I was like, mm, don't, don't, didn't click with me because it seemed so lightly interactive. Once I realized that this is like, it is a, it's a interactive TV show, like in a real sense where you're making narrative decisions that I, I don't know how they would write around. It seems so gigantic. I mean, there's not a ton of those, but like, there's enough that it, it feels like you're really in not a, not a like a, a performer, almost like a director position, you know, like who you are interested in, in the story? Who do you want to keep around in the story? Who do you want to keep seeing like evolve in the story?

• 12:42Speaker 00

  And once I got my head into that, where they're making concessions, like the let, the, the, the, the chapters are pretty con- or episodes are pretty concretely like 45 minutes. I mean, like the, the length is like pretty

• 12:56Russ Frushtick?

  The length is perfect.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  You know what it is? You know what it is when you're sitting down for one, like you have a sense of the thing. I think what clicked for me is when I realized that there was nothing.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  Really to be mechanically gained from anything like your performance in the the like main mode, the dispatch thing is really more about how it like impacts the narrative and what you're interested in the narrative, but like you're not going to get too good or too bad. Like it's not going to change the story that much, right? It's much more about like keeping you engaged with the story, but a fail like I was getting frustrated by how often failure seemed random, but then it's it doesn't matter like it's not it's that's not the the essential thing.

• 13:41Russ Frushtick?

  And realistically, like from a logistical standpoint, like if they were programming a bunch of fail points like that's that dovetails the narrative out into 60 different options. So they did have to kind of pen it in a little bit. I want to ask one, so, so the first choice you make in the game is the setting choice. So you can play as as like, I think it's interactive or like traditional. I don't remember what the two options are.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  And this is what I wanted to ask.

• 14:06Russ Frushtick?

  Interactive is, um, so you'll, you'll, I think in both modes, you're still obviously making choices. You're making dialogue choices, you're making like moment choices, but in interactive, you're also doing like almost quick time of quick time event style things where someone throws a punch and you have to like hit B for lack of a better example. Um, and if you don't get hit B, you'll get punched. I tried it as the interactive thing and found it to be like kind of cute. And they do animate like fail states in that, like you'll get punched if you miss the thing. I was intentionally missing things just to see how it plays out. I don't know that it makes a long-term impact, how well you do at those moments.

• 14:47Russ Frushtick?

  I think it just makes, might make you feel a little more engaged, but I, you guys played the other mode.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  But that is a very, that is a super deep, and I've always kind of felt this way, basically all the way back to Shenmue one of like, that's not really a game.

• 15:03Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  Like it's, it's the lightest, lightest imaginable layer of interactivity. And honestly, this has been.

• 15:12Russ Frushtick?

  They hit you with a disproportionately high, I wanted to express to Russ, because I know that he hasn't played quite as far like.

• 15:18Speaker 00

  They hit you with a disproportionately high number of those in the first like 20 minutes of this episode, of the first episode. Oh, okay. There are way more, I, I, Griffin, tell me if I'm wrong, but like, there's a bunch of like putting on your suit and buckling this and fighting this and like, there's a lot more of those like quicker, quick time things. Like it still pops up, but it's, it's a lot more rare.

• 15:37Griffin McElroy?

  So I, I actually wouldn't know because I turned that shit right off. Uh, because, no, because I, I-

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Well, I didn't and I, and it almost, it very rarely popped up. Okay, that's good to know.

• 15:47Griffin McElroy?

  I think it is the fact that it does rarely pop up and like, I have been really, really enjoying playing, watching, playing this game while, uh, like eating and it is, I don't want to be shaken out of my chill dispatch sesh because like, all of a sudden the, a big A prompt appears on the screen.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  Are your, what happens in your like dialogue choices? Are they timed still?

• 16:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, there's still time. Those are still time. The only other setting that there is is there's like a hacking mini game that you will do sometimes while you are dispatching, which you can do sort of in lieu of like taking a guess at whether or not your heroes are going to be up to this particular challenge. You just do this hacking mini game. You can affect like, you can, you know, choose an option of whether or not those have like fail states or, or not.

• 16:34Speaker 00

  I like those.

• 16:35Griffin McElroy?

  Um, yeah, those are, they're, they're-

• 16:37Speaker 00

  It could use, it could use a few more of those, I think. It could use a couple more engaging mini games like that, I think, to keep things. But that's not the exact thing they're making, of course.

• 16:46Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, it, it's, it's, uh, that stuff is light and it, I think gets by being light because truly, um, the, just the writing and acting is just really, really, really fucking great. Really super good. Aaron Paul plays the, the main character and brings a, a level of-

• 17:07Speaker 00

  He's really turning into like one of the like top tier, like voice talent wise. Oh, he crushes it, yeah. He's got great, it's, um- It's a great control for a character that isn't extremely ostentatious. He's like a lot more reserved and but it's really interesting, like really accomplished nuance. He's doing like with with not a ton dynamically like from an emotional sense. Yeah, he was very good in Bojack as well, so he definitely has the roots.

• 17:34Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, for sure. Jeffrey, Jeffrey Wright is also in it and he's fantastic. There's also like a lot of casting. There's a lot of the critical role folks who are in here, which like obviously like they know what the fuck they're doing. Laura Bailey turns in a powerhouse, truly hysterical performance. There's a running gag where her character can't think of like funny, cool catchphrases to say in the heat of battle. That like lands every single time, like every joke. But then there's also like some more, a term we learned when we were vying to get in the Trolls 2 movie of stunt casting of like some streamers like Jack Septic Guy who plays Punch Up.

• 18:16Griffin McElroy?

  And I forget the guy's Charlie Moist Critical Guy plays Sonar, one of the characters. Like I feel like everyone is, it like turns in a great performance and the writing is truly very, very compelling. I keep coming back to it and it's not just that it's like compelling, cliffhanger-y, good storytelling. It's like, I don't know, it's a story about a bunch of fuckups who are kind of nice to each, like eventually form a pretty sort of loving misfit family. And that format has been beaten to death and done so many different times. And so I think it's like pretty remarkable how good a job it does telling that sort of familiar tale.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  As people who like, as somebody who is very into like interactive cinematic storytelling and thinks about that a lot. Cause like a lot of FMV games, I think are in that territory. This, I feel like is maybe the most successful in terms of interactive TV. Like if you're talking about an interactive TV show, I can't tell you something that's worked better than this. And like the closest you get is like. What's the quantum break? You know, that that I think is like the closest. I mean, I can't think of anything else that's even in the in the in the neck this neck of the woods. But like, yeah, uh, uh, by by hewing closer to TV. And making it less like a video game. I think they actually made it more successful.

• 19:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, like quantum quantum break seemed to want to bring more game into it. And I feel like that made the pacing just.

• 19:49Russ Frushtick?

  Well, it's also a budget issue like the second you make it more like a video game. Suddenly you're making levels and fucking environments and characters and animations above. I mean, they're still doing animations.

• 19:58Speaker 00

  I mean, that's the secret sauce of dispatch, right? All the heavy action definitely is covered in like a map. Like the high, high octane action sequences are usually like a circle moving around a map.

• 20:10Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, and even if they weren't, it's obviously much cheaper to do a lockdown. Uh, animated scene than it is to like fully program the whole level.

• 20:17Griffin McElroy?

  Sure, yeah. There are some great fight scenes. There's also there's, I think, a secret splinter cell inside of ad hoc, which is the studio. Uh, that that made dispatch that is, uh, from what I understand, formed from a lot of former sort of telltale folks. There's someone in there who wants so badly to make a mecha anime, uh, game. There's so many close ups on fingers punching in fucking that cowboy beat up ass like launch sequence.

• 20:44Russ Frushtick?

  Pushing a thruster forward.

• 20:46Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's so cool. It's, uh, I'm I'm fucking wild about this game and I tried. It has, it is a revitalizing experience for me because it doesn't happen super often where I write a game off as completely, uh, being a genre I don't care about, about a genre of fiction I don't care about and a genre of game I don't care about and thinking like, well, this kind of looks like, you know, I don't really groove with like invincible or, uh, you know, a lot of those kind of like edgy, funny, cool, nasty superhero. I thought, oh, it's just gonna be like one of those. Um, and it it it has truly surprised me and and made me feel like, you know, I need to be more open minded about this.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  Who's your favorite, uh, character?

• 21:27Griffin McElroy?

  God, uh, shit.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, God is, when he shows up, I was like, shit.

• 21:33Griffin McElroy?

  There's one character who is just kind of a, um, ki- kind of a, I don't know how to describe him. Waterboy is a character in the game.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  Waterboy, that's my favorite too.

• 21:43Griffin McElroy?

  Who is extremely nervous and wants so badly to be a superhero, but is like so, uh, uh, self-conscious and stumbles through every single line of dialogue that he has. And, uh, he, he is very good. There's also just great moments between like the more kind of like minor character members of the team. There's two named, uh, Prism and, um, Malevola, who have like a bunch of really great beats. That kind of like, uh, Burton, Ernie, and It's a Wonderful Life, just kind of like talking after the main characters have left the scene and just like delivering some great jokes to you. There's, there's, there is a lot of characters to, uh, to, to love in this game.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  It actually makes for me the specialness of the interactivity more, cause I feel like the things that I'm seeing feel special, a little bit more special, cause it's like, I don't know what scene I would be getting otherwise, but like, this is my experience and it's good enough that that actually means something, where like a lot of other games, you're like, oh, who gives a fuck? I get my, I'm a lizard man or a dinosaur man, I don't, I don't know.

• 22:42Griffin McElroy?

  And even though the episodes are short, there's eight of them, like, I still feel like it gives them enough room to like, give them arcs.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  When you say short.

• 22:50Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, 45 minutes is fairly short for, I feel like, a Telltale episode.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  It's very, yeah, that usually those are like an hour or two, or like two or three hours. What was the last Telltale episodic game that we are comparing those to?

• 23:02Griffin McElroy?

  I, I think I'm thinking of like Walking Dead, Season Two. Those were, those were beefy, those were, those, I remember those being slightly more significant.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  I just, I wanna be careful because what I, it, it is exactly the length of a television episode. Yeah. That's the length. Correct. It's not sure, I'm, I'm pushing back against short because like, what they are doing, like, I feel like it is the exact right length for, for what it is.

• 23:23Griffin McElroy?

  I am over. I'm comparing, I'm comparing it to other games. In the narrative adventure.

• 23:28Russ Frushtick?

  Or like if you have an episodic game, generally speaking, they're usually much longer than an hour. I think this length is perfect because it is exactly the sort of patience that you would have to absorb a narrative and feel like you get to an endpoint. And you can stop at that moment or you can keep going, whatever you want to do, you want to binge it.

• 23:46Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 23:46Russ Frushtick?

  But you don't feel like whenever I was playing Telltale games, I always felt halfway through an episode, I'd be like, I'm gonna take a break. And it was never at a good point. It was just like, just because it went on too long.

• 23:57Griffin McElroy?

  The dispatch part of the game actually is like a really helpful sort of pacing block where you will have like an intro scene. It'll be like, this is what this episode is going to be about. Here's some bit with the characters. Now you're going to dispatch them. And there's going to be lots of dialogue and lots of stuff that is like going to build up to the events that will happen in the scenes after the dispatch part. Or maybe you'll do like one shift and it will go really shitty and then you'll come back and fire up the troops and then go out for a second dispatch shift in the episode. It creates like a, I don't know, like a, an expectation to, to the pacing that I think is, is also just really, really, really smart and well designed.

• 24:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. But you really got to meet it on its own terms. That's what I discovered because I, I blew it off at first. It's like, ah, I'm, I'm playing games in 10 minute spurts. I don't have time for this. But if you sit down and engage with it, you know, clear an hour, I think it's really, really worth it.

• 24:44Griffin McElroy?

  Or, or, I mean, genuinely, I don't think I would have gotten into the game if I didn't, I'm not watching anything right now that I'm like watching solo. And so I just like put it on my Rog Ally X and propped it up while I ate lunch one day and was like, oh, okay. If I turn off the, the QTEs, this is like actually kind of perfect. This is actually, I can knock one of these out a day. No problem. Yeah.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Cool.

• 25:06Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Should we?

• 25:07Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about the video game awards.

• 25:12Chris Plante?

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• 25:55Chris Plante?

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• 26:40Chris Plante?

  That's protonvpn.com slash besties.

• 26:47Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, we're going to be talking a little bit about the Big Jeff Game Awards that are happening next week, but before- That's what they call them.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  Why did they change the title? That's the name, that's the question that raised mine. Why did they change it to the Big Jeff Awards?

• 27:00Russ Frushtick?

  You know, you'd have to ask Big Jeff. Only he knows. Yeah, sure. The BGGAs? Before we- Yeah. Before we get into that, though, we have some Besties Game of the Year talk to discuss. Chris Plant, what's going on?

• 27:15Chris Plante?

  We are finishing up our bracket. We have already chosen 12 games that will be in the bracket. What are they? Wouldn't you like to know? You'll be finding out soon enough, but you have a chance to vote on four additional games that will round out the 16 seed bracket. And if you're listening to this right when the episode goes up, you can actually still cast a vote. Polls close tonight, Friday at 11:30 PM Pacific time, so you still have a little bit of time. But if you are already a subscriber to the newsletter or the Patreon, you already know all this. It's in your email inbox, which is all the more reason to subscribe to either of those.

• 27:55Russ Frushtick?

  Right. So the gist is we've picked the 12. You guys are going to vote on your top four and those top four will make it into the full 16 bracket when we do the game of the year. And that'll give us enough time to play some of your picks if we haven't played the picks already. That'll allow us to have some good discussion and see if it gets higher than we would have expected.

• 28:17Chris Plante?

  If you want to see games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle or Dispatch, which we just discussed, you should go vote. You should go do that right now.

• 28:26Russ Frushtick?

  Very important.

• 28:27Griffin McElroy?

  It'd be a huge favor, actually. I've played a lot of Dispatch at this point. If y'all could bump that one up, that would actually be huge.

• 28:33Russ Frushtick?

  Just from an ROI standpoint, it would be.

• 28:35Griffin McElroy?

  Just from a sunk cost fallacy.

• 28:38Chris Plante?

  Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

• 28:40Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, we did this last year, but I thought we'd just make some predictions on the game of the year. The game awards, specifically the game awards picks. I have the list.

• 28:53Chris Plante?

  Are you ready for this? Are you ready? Are you ready? We only need to start. Are you ready?

• 28:56Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm ready.

• 28:57Chris Plante?

  Claire Obscure, Expedition 33. I don't even care what the category is.

• 29:01Griffin McElroy?

  I.

• 29:02Chris Plante?

  It's just gonna win. I think it's just gonna clean sweep basically whatever it's in.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  I think it's not gonna win in hardly anything. I think people are just gonna think, ah, other people will vote for that. I want to rep my favorite. It's so domineering, you know what I mean? They'll think like, I want to vote for a little bit indie, you know? That's the only.

• 29:19Chris Plante?

  Split fiction?

• 29:22Chris Plante?

  It's coming, baby. It's coming.

• 29:26Russ Frushtick?

  Is there a specific genre that you think you guys wanted to tackle?

• 29:31Griffin McElroy?

  Fighting game.

• 29:32Russ Frushtick?

  You want to tackle fighting? Okay. So there are a lot of good, good fighting games here. Most of them came out 30 years ago, but that's okay. Virtual Fighter V, more combat.

• 29:43Griffin McElroy?

  I was kidding. Dude, I don't know fucking any. Dude.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  Dude.

• 29:50Griffin McElroy?

  Come on.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  I, I wanted to talk about my announcement predictions officially.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Later.

• 29:59Griffin McElroy?

  Your announcement prediction is not even the awards?

• 30:01Speaker 00

  All right. No, do you guys want to talk about that? We're gonna talk about War Puzzles first. Okay.

• 30:06Chris Plante?

  I mean, we honestly could just skip right to it because I'm not joking when I say, I think we would go through almost every single thing and it would be Clear Obscure Expedition 33. I think-

• 30:16Griffin McElroy?

  What makes you feel that confident? What makes you feel-

• 30:18Russ Frushtick?

  And to be clear, this is not our game of the year selection. This is just game theorying what the-

• 30:25Chris Plante?

  It has everything it could possibly need. It's a narrative game and narrative games slash role playing games tend to win. It has the quote indie bump. Indie is a funny term there, but right, you feel good voting for it. It has, I believe, the highest Metacritic score of anything there and it has originality. So, you know, it's not going to go up like Hades 2, Ghost of Biote, Death Stranding 2, even Split Fiction. It has all the pieces of what you would expect from a winner in the game of the year awards.

• 31:01Russ Frushtick?

  To me, it feels like it is up against one other serious contender and that's Silk Song. So when it-

• 31:07Griffin McElroy?

  For Godey?

• 31:09Russ Frushtick?

  For Godey, for Indie Game of the Year, like when-

• 31:12Chris Plante?

  It's maybe the love is there.

• 31:14Griffin McElroy?

  It's nominated for Best Debut Indie Game and it feels like such a wild, and also Best Independent Game. Uh, and it's up against Blueprints in both of those categories. That feels like a tough, that feels like a tough putt for old Blueprints. Save for Dispatch. Dispatch is in there with Best Debut Indie Game too. What a wild year.

• 31:35Chris Plante?

  Blueprints basically can't win also, to be like super clear. Like it would be next to impossible for it to win. Because the voting body is international and Blueprints is strictly English game. So just the numbers don't work for it.

• 31:49Russ Frushtick?

  Interesting.

• 31:50Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 31:50Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 31:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I don't know. I could see Silk Song taking it, but I do agree if it doesn't take it, Claire Obscure is gonna take it. The other thing I would keep in mind is there is a, as with the Oscars, there's the game direction category and then the game of the year category. So you could see people splitting that vote where it's like, I'm gonna vote for Claire Obscure for game direction and game of the year for Silk Song, or vice versa, whatever it is.

• 32:16Griffin McElroy?

  Don't you think Silk Song signed up for best game direction? Death Stranding 2 is, I feel like that's maybe the spoiler for that, that could be Claire Obscure Expedition 33 in that particular category?

• 32:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, cuz if it doesn't, if it's not a triumph of like game direction and like figuring out how to make that whole thing work, I don't know what it is.

• 32:36Griffin McElroy?

  So yeah, I don't think it's nominated for like best performance anywhere in there. Is Rita, did Rita's get a bump? Nope.

• 32:43Chris Plante?

  I mean, I completely agree, especially like if we were doing like, what do we actually think should win from these? I would definitely say Death Stranding 2. But again, I think it's, Death Stranding is too divisive of a game. Like there are just, there's a contingent of people who just do not like those games, who do not like Kojima games, and it doesn't have the big emotional pull that the ending of Claire Obscure does. And I think it's kind of the problem that we see with like the Academy Awards, too, where like people aren't actually judging to the category, they're judging to like their emotional feeling in connection with the game.

• 33:19Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 33:19Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, I think, I think you're on to something, Chris, cuz I'm looking at all these categories and it's like, best score and music, like there's a lot of really good stuff in there. Darren Corb, Patis Two, Christopher Larkin, Hall and the Silk Song, yeah, for sure, for sure. But also like, like it's gonna, I feel like Claire Obscure is gonna get in there and get nasty on it.

• 33:39Chris Plante?

  That's another one where I wish Death Stranding 2 had it. I mean, maybe.

• 33:43Griffin McElroy?

  Death Stranding 2 is nominated for best, for best music.

• 33:45Chris Plante?

  It could get it.

• 33:47Griffin McElroy?

  Best performance, best performance is interesting because Erica Ishii's in there for sure, for sure. Troy Baker in there for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Yes, absolutely.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  There's no way he remembers doing that.

• 33:59Griffin McElroy?

  He does not. Panatsukato.

• 34:01Speaker 00

  No way. They told me that I did this with this Indiana Jones game. I'm happy to be here. Am I Batman? No, not this.

• 34:10Griffin McElroy?

  It's doing his Death Stranding voice.

• 34:14Griffin McElroy?

  Then there's been star Charlie Cox and Jennifer English, all clear obscure expedition 33. Half of the nominees. There's no dispatch representation.

• 34:20Russ Frushtick?

  I think dispatch came very late and I think the fan support happened before the critical support.

• 34:26Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, yeah, that's a fair point.

• 34:28Russ Frushtick?

  And that's just what happened. I mean, it has presence in independent game, I believe, and like fan.

• 34:34Chris Plante?

  If there's a split, this is where I feel like it could be and y'all.

• 34:37Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I see.

• 34:38Chris Plante?

  It's almost certain that Indiana Jones is gonna get in through that that listener poll. So I started going back and playing that game.

• 34:46Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's incredible.

• 34:47Russ Frushtick?

  It's super fun.

• 34:48Chris Plante?

  I forgot how bonkers good that game is and his performance is.

• 34:52Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, it's crazy.

• 34:53Chris Plante?

  Nuts. It's not just his impersonation. It's just a great performance.

• 34:58Griffin McElroy?

  It's a really good job.

• 34:59Russ Frushtick?

  I do want to call out one interesting thing that I don't know has ever happened before. At least someone can correct me at the comments if it has. Somebody pulled out of a nomination. They said, I do not want this nomination.

• 35:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 35:09Russ Frushtick?

  And that is the developer of Megabank, who basically said, look, I've made games under different studio names and different titles. I've worked on other titles. So this is not really my debut game, even though it's the first game I'm making as this studio name. So don't vote for me.

• 35:25Griffin McElroy?

  The mystery. The mystery is afoot.

• 35:28Russ Frushtick?

  Kind of interesting.

• 35:28Griffin McElroy?

  Who is the Megabank developer? I mean, I didn't realize the Megabank developer was operating under a certain veil of secrecy. And maybe they don't want to walk onto a stage to be congratulated. I adore Megabank also. It is up against in that category, clear obscure, expedition 33 and what was the other big debut? Oh, Blueprints.

• 35:52Russ Frushtick?

  I would also say you don't need to show up. Like, it's not like local funk showed up for the Bellatro nod. So like.

• 35:58Chris Plante?

  I.

• 35:58Griffin McElroy?

  They did, didn't they? He dressed up like a clown man?

• 36:00Chris Plante?

  He did dress up like a clown.

• 36:02Russ Frushtick?

  Was he? He was there?

• 36:03Griffin McElroy?

  Someone dressed up as a clown to accept an award for Bellatro. Maybe that was like a GDC award.

• 36:08Chris Plante?

  No, no, it was like the spokesperson.

• 36:11Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 00

  Ivy is so inspirational that within the span of a decade, we have gone from women with award winners painted on their bodies to someone withdrawing from consideration to preserve the sanctity of the game awards. Yeah. It's proud tradition of the best. I am no debut, so I cannot take this from another deserving Vigi recipient.

• 36:35Russ Frushtick?

  This is what Big Jeff has been working for, and he's here. He made it.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's, it's happening. I'm, I listen, I'm, I'm kidding on this square, Big Jeff. You know, you know how proud, uh, the J man is of you personally. I tell you in all our texts.

• 36:48Griffin McElroy?

  I hope that we do still get like a beleaguered Samuel L. Jackson onstage handing out the, the Vigi to fucking, uh, fucking umamusume pretty derby for best mobile game. That's, that's a dream.

• 37:00Speaker 00

  Jeff, there's time to call it the Vigi, Jeff. You don't have to, you don't have to get us, you don't have to mention us even, but you could get this year, start calling it the Vigi. I think that that's time. It's time. Um, best adaptation threw me for a loop. Cause did you guys know they did a Splinter Cell cartoon with Liam Shriver as Sam? I didn't think, know about that. Boys are hard knocks. Okay. Like, hey, guys, if us didn't know about the Splinter Cell cartoon on Netflix starring Liam Shriver that came out in October, who did? Who knew? How did these people know about it to nominate it?

• 37:36Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know. I don't know. Let me just check and make sure. No, none of us are still, none of us are content creator of the year. No, we're not. That's, that's fine.

• 37:45Russ Frushtick?

  I actually was and then I pulled out.

• 37:48Griffin McElroy?

  You pulled out. Made room for the burnt peanut. I get it.

• 37:51Chris Plante?

  Do we want to guess some announcements?

• 37:52Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Justin, you have some bold.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  I don't have like, I don't have guesses, but I have some things that I pulled up mainly based on when they, their previous appearances in the VGAs and their relative quiet since then, right? My rationale here being that announced to the VGAs, haven't heard anything for a while. Maybe we hear something and you guys follow more closely. So I want to see what you think. First of all, what about a Max Payne remake trailer? Seems like a good thing for that. We know that there's a remake coming.

• 38:23Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. And, and, uh, that studio remedy has done actually a lot of stuff at game awards. So that wouldn't surprise me.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  What if Prince of Persia Sands of Time remake is there? What do you think about that?

• 38:33Chris Plante?

  Ubisoft certainly will be. I would put like 95% bet on that.

• 38:38Russ Frushtick?

  You should, you should keep in mind the likelihood that Ubisoft won't exist as a company by next week. So that's the other consideration.

• 38:44Chris Plante?

  I would say that we will see that and we will see Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake there. I, I would not be surprised if Ubisoft pulls Bethesda when they are trying to confirm their sale and just announced everything. Do you all remember this before Xbox acquired Bethesda? And they were like, here's next 20 years of games. Ubisoft is just gonna start saying whatever they're working on.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  What about, what about Blade trailer? What about a mention of Blade?

• 39:16Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, I forgot Blade was being made.

• 39:18Chris Plante?

  I would like to see that. Yeah.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  I know. All right. It was Arcane was working on a Blade game. They were confirmed to be working on it as recently as last year. So I don't know.

• 39:29Chris Plante?

  Only reason I think we might not see that is Wolverine is so close that if they're gonna show anything, they might wanna show Wolverine, but possibly. I think we'll see.

• 39:41Russ Frushtick?

  That's a different studio. That's Insomniac is making Wolverine.

• 39:44Chris Plante?

  Right, but they're Marvel games, bud. It's Disney is the one who controls the game and everything.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  Now, what would you guys think about this? Probably some Elder Scrolls Online bullshit.

• 39:57Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 40:00Chris Plante?

  That sounds right.

• 40:01Russ Frushtick?

  So I have a, I have a genuine question.

• 40:04Speaker 00

  I forgot to add the second part that I am excited about until I see the Elder Scrolls Online. Those things get me every fucking year, Big Jeff. You gotta stop teasing like that, buddy. They'll be like, in a world beyond compare, demons and dragons fight for supremacy. I'm like, hell yeah.

• 40:20Russ Frushtick?

  They'll always say Cyradell. They'll say Cyradell very early on.

• 40:24Griffin McElroy?

  The world of Cyradell. Yeah, return, return to the forgotten.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's go.

• 40:29Griffin McElroy?

  Really anile. Yeah, baby.

• 40:31Speaker 00

  Coming this month, the 17th era begins. Like, oh, fuck. Elder Scrolls Online bullshit. Never mind. Change the channel, kids.

• 40:40Russ Frushtick?

  Um, I want to mention, so I don't think historically, there's really ever been major Nintendo announcements during the TGAs, but it does seem like we might get a Dusk Bloods.

• 40:51Speaker 00

  If anybody else has VGAs from now on, I'm gonna kill you. It's Viggy's. Please, we're not gonna get it.

• 40:55Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, the big Jeff Viggy's. It does seem like we might get a Dusk Bloods trailer.

• 41:01Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 41:02Russ Frushtick?

  Given that that's a Switch two exclusive and like a big.

• 41:05Chris Plante?

  And there's always some crumb soft there, right?

• 41:07Russ Frushtick?

  They've already announced it. They haven't really shown gameplay really. So that and, and.

• 41:12Chris Plante?

  My, yeah. My, my other big bet, I think we'll see a lot of Sega stuff. They've been showing up more and more in these things.

• 41:19Speaker 00

  They've got a few properties they could like delve into a little bit. Sega's got their crazy taxi thing and Jet Set Radio thing.

• 41:25Chris Plante?

  Yeah, they made that announcement. We're like, we're bringing back everything. We're bringing back Golden Axe. We're bringing back Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio. There is a, a rollerblade skate shop in downtown Santa Ana that now has what looks like all this licensed Jet Set Radio future stuff all over it. Like they've like liveried the entire outside of the store. And the anniversary is coming up. It just feels like something is on the way there. Um, and then Sonic has 35th anniversary and hasn't had a mainline game in a bit. So I feel like there's a Sonic announcement.

• 41:58Griffin McElroy?

  You think they'll show Persona, new Persona four, uh, I forget, Jesus Christ.

• 42:02Chris Plante?

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:03Griffin McElroy?

  What was the new subtitle of the, I should know this since it's like my favorite game of revival.

• 42:07Chris Plante?

  More golden?

• 42:07Griffin McElroy?

  That's right. Yes, Persona four, more golden revival. I'd love to see that again. It's especially since they didn't show basically fuck all when they announced it at the Xbox game showcase back in June.

• 42:17Chris Plante?

  Yeah, that'd be nice. That'd be nice. Yeah. The only other last thing that I would expect is that new Jurassic Park. Uh, like Survivor game, like was, it might actually just be called that. Survival.

• 42:30Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's like a Dino Crisis Jurassic Park thing.

• 42:34Chris Plante?

  Yeah, anything that ties into movies, I feel like is game award fodder. Cause they're like, we're already in LA. Let's get the celebrities out. Do all that stuff. Um.

• 42:43Griffin McElroy?

  Is there any Fable stuff? Maybe?

• 42:45Chris Plante?

  Ooh, that'd be nice.

• 42:46Griffin McElroy?

  What is the, what was the other game that rare, uh, the like open world?

• 42:51Chris Plante?

  Oh, like I canceled. Yeah.

• 42:52Griffin McElroy?

  Jesus Christ.

• 42:52Russ Frushtick?

  Not Perfect Dark, which also.

• 42:54Griffin McElroy?

  No, it's like a fantasy. Uh, it's like a fantasy.

• 42:58Chris Plante?

  Ever, ever wild?

• 42:59Griffin McElroy?

  Ever, yes, Everwild.

• 43:01Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 43:03Griffin McElroy?

  Oh no, it was cancelled.

• 43:05Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 43:06Griffin McElroy?

  Nevermind, bye everybody.

• 43:07Chris Plante?

  Pretty much like everything, yeah.

• 43:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:09Griffin McElroy?

  And then Viva Pinata, Viva Pinata coming back in a big way, definitely.

• 43:13Chris Plante?

  Shit, everyone, damn, cancelled, that's a bummer.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  Did they feel pain?

• 43:17Chris Plante?

  Uh.

• 43:18Griffin McElroy?

  The pinatas?

• 43:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:20Chris Plante?

  Oh.

• 43:21Griffin McElroy?

  They screamed when you hit them, yeah, for sure.

• 43:23Speaker 00

  That's awful. I-

• 43:25Chris Plante?

  Viva!

• 43:26Griffin McElroy?

  They stayed with screaming.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  I want to hit you guys with a prediction that is way out of left field, but you tell me what you think, because it just feel, this one, I feel in my bones.

• 43:33Griffin McElroy?

  Please.

• 43:34Speaker 00

  And when I wrote it, I just wrote in this document Fortnite movie.

• 43:40Griffin McElroy?

  Wow.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  When I say it, there's some part of you is like, I think big Jeff just got a chill on his spine. He's like, how did he know?

• 43:48Griffin McElroy?

  Say it again so I can receive it.

• 43:50Speaker 00

  Fortnite movie.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, Elimination Studios and Epic partner Fortnite movie. They just did this Kill Bill thing.

• 44:01Russ Frushtick?

  And, and they just did a big event where they basically like reenacted the scene from Ready Player One, but with all their fucking franchises where King Kong, Godzilla, and Marty McFly were like punching a giant monster in the face.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  Right, so I feel like, I just, guys, it just, the, the Simpsons thing and that, like, the scope of it is getting bigger, and I feel like it is at a point where the property, there isn't a big enough property for Fortnite to consume it, you know what I mean? Like, it almost has to be, it has to be the meta property itself, and it feels like there's a Lego Movie opportunity that's just kind of been like-

• 44:37Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  Sitting there if you nail the tone, um, but like, I don't know, it just feels like the Game Awards Fortnite movie.

• 44:46Chris Plante?

  I have one very dumb reason that I don't think it will happen, at least not right away, is I think Epic is proud enough?

• 44:57Chris Plante?

  Or stupid enough that they would demand it be made in Unreal Engine.

• 45:02Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, I think unquestionably.

• 45:03Chris Plante?

  Yeah. I think that they would be like, we're not going to partner with any other studio unless they're making the game in Unreal.

• 45:09Griffin McElroy?

  It's all gonna be machinima.

• 45:11Chris Plante?

  Well, yeah.

• 45:12Russ Frushtick?

  And like, they can, I mean, the Unreal Engine theoretically would be capable of doing a full.

• 45:17Chris Plante?

  It could, but would you, you would have to get some partners who are not Illumination, right? Like, you're gonna have to work with people who are gonna be like, no, we're gonna use our tools.

• 45:24Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:26Griffin McElroy?

  In my mind, it would, that would look like Final Fantasy, the spirits within. And maybe that's unfair that I'm, that I would make that comparison.

• 45:33Russ Frushtick?

  Should be so lucky. That looks so good.

• 45:35Griffin McElroy?

  Cause it looked so good. That's exactly.

• 45:37Chris Plante?

  They'll also export it at 720p. It's gonna be great.

• 45:42Chris Plante?

  Looks so good on my iPhone.

• 45:45Griffin McElroy?

  Can we do our honorable mentions?

• 45:46Russ Frushtick?

  It's gonna be a big show. Um, yeah, we, uh, let me just do two, uh, quick reader mails, uh, and then we'll dive into honorable mentions. First one, this comes from Nick. I'm on my hands and knees begging the besties crew to try out Straf Tat, which I think is a game we played on Rusties. Uh, very cool game. It might be my game of the year solely based on the fun per minute metric. This might be my Tower Fall. I think about it every other day. Uh, I recommend playing the tutorial, which is fine, and then just getting in a lobby together for an hour with all the maps on rotation. Straf Tat, in case you're not aware, is a 1v1 FPS multiplayer game where they just toss you maps like fucking crazy. Like each match lasts about.

• 46:29Griffin McElroy?

  Griffin, did you ever play this?

• 46:30Russ Frushtick?

  12 seconds.

• 46:31Griffin McElroy?

  No, I'm watching a trailer. I mean, it doesn't look like my jam, but it looks, uh, like something that I wish was my jam. It looks like, you know, uh, Counter-Strike or something intense, sort of.

• 46:41Russ Frushtick?

  Genuinely.

• 46:42Chris Plante?

  I think you would enjoy it way more than you think, cause it looks like Counter-Strike, but plays like random Mario Party Goldeneye.

• 46:49Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 46:50Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 46:50Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. If, next time you're in the same room with someone with a Steam Deck, I think it's, is it free?

• 46:55Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 46:56Russ Frushtick?

  Or very inexpensive?

• 46:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, I believe it is.

• 46:59Russ Frushtick?

  Download it and play it with someone in the same room. I think it'd be a fucking blast. So StraphTec is very, very good. Strongly recommend it. The other thing I wanted to mention is from Nick. This is regarding Kirby Air Riders, which we talked about last week. I'm surprised to hear that they, meaning Griffin Plant and I, like the racing more in Kirby Air Riders. I'm under 30 and Air Riders air ride, I guess, was always a friend's house classic. I never owned it, but it was a sleepover classic. And all my friends loved playing the battle mode much more than the racing. I don't think I've ever played the racing mode, but I think the battle mode was a kid's favorite. I think that's probably true in the context of same room, same system multiplayer. Probably a lot of fucking fun, which I think none of us did, for what it's worth.

• 47:40Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I mean, from what I understand, it was the city, um, city shit. Was it the city trials?

• 47:46Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 47:47Griffin McElroy?

  That was like the, the crazy party mode that everybody was, was wild about. And I do think that it is designed for a local sort of couch, but with the magic of game chat, you can recreate that experience so seamlessly with the Nintendo Switch 2 camera. You plug it in and it follows your face in a special dot.

• 48:06Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, we can dive into our honorable mentions. Justin, I want to hear about your rise to fame. Your celebrity status that you've hit in a game called Sectory.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, um, more people need to play Sectory because I should not be in the leaderboard of any game on the world. I mean, like the number 19 on one of the modes is what Russ is referring to. I don't know which, I don't remember which one, but I barely.

• 48:31Russ Frushtick?

  Classic mode, he's number 19.

• 48:33Speaker 00

  I'm number 19 on classic mode. You guys, it's a gag. Everybody's got to play more Sectory. I think it's so fucking good. It's so good. Makes you, it makes you feel good when you play it and I need, and, um, there is a thing about Sectory and I'm, I'm, I don't know.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  The meta game of it, the scoring of it, it's like, it's not like any shooter like this I've ever played because understanding how to score better is like a puzzle in and of itself that you have to solve. Like it doesn't lay out a lot of stuff for you. So understanding it's, think of a geometry wars, but like in geometry wars, a lot of the, the strategy was pretty basic. Like, uh, once you got the basic idea, it was just reflexes, right? And yeah, stay alive, just stay alive. Like, uh, and that, and I love that. That's awesome. Uh, this definitely has that in spades, but each mode has different meta considerations in terms of like, what power ups do you have that are helping you with this situation? Or like,

• 49:37Speaker 00

  how do these, uh, score bonuses like overlap together? If you wait to get this thing, will this thing work better and trigger more? And it is almost like a, it's not to the level of like a Bellatro or something like that, but there's a this, uh, things click where you're like, oh, I've been spinning my wheels. I, because this and this, these two things need to be interconnected. So that understanding is building while you're building the reflexes and, uh, that's very satisfying.

• 50:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, they're almost all kind of predicated on like a push, pull, risk reward type, type thing. Like the mode I love. And it was the same in geometry wars. It's called gates where, and that's the one where you can't shoot. You just fly through gates that spawn in that explode and you kill enemies with it. But the way to score high in that one is to get a combo going, which will persist for a few seconds after you get a kill. So the idea is you want to wait and not fly through any of the gates and let a big fucking crowd of monsters, uh, chase you around. And then at the very last second, when you can't possibly have any more room to wiggle around, you just go through the gates.

• 50:39Speaker 00

  Just nut.

• 50:40Griffin McElroy?

  And you've been black, I mean, black.

• 50:42Speaker 00

  You get, there's a, um, You can get this power up that is tough to get. There's a power up that is cycling through letters and it's spelling a word almost like a pinball table and you have to fly through that power up several times to spell out the word. But when you spell out the word, you enter this rainbow mode that is the most satisfying thing. It reminds me of Peggle back in the day when Peggle would really hit. When this thing hits rainbow mode, aw baby. It is a hell.

• 51:13Russ Frushtick?

  It's literally called rainbow mode. It's not even.

• 51:15Griffin McElroy?

  It's called rainbow. You're so stressed out, especially in campaign mode when you're playing it and you're like, no shields, fucking white knuckle, God almighty, I can't keep up. And then you hit rainbow mode. You get to take a breath.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  And it looks incredible.

• 51:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, please play Sectory.

• 51:30Russ Frushtick?

  The game is not, has not hit a huge mass audience. Please be on the front lines of this fucking fantastic game.

• 51:37Griffin McElroy?

  It's.

• 51:37Russ Frushtick?

  It's truly.

• 51:38Griffin McElroy?

  There's a couple, there's a couple games that we're gonna be talking about that go to considerations that are gonna be kind of wild spoilers because they do everything so right. Like they obviously don't do the most incredible ambitious new groundbreaking thing, but like everything Sectory does, it fucking crushes and nails and it gets its hooks right deep down in your brain and I think could do pretty, um, pretty, pretty well, actually.

• 52:06Griffin McElroy?

  You don't play anything else, Juice?

• 52:08Speaker 00

  No, Dispatch, that. You know, I have been playing a lot of stuff, but it's all contextual for, for Gody. It's like, I went back to like, I will say that just for like context wise, I've been playing a lot more Death Stranding 2, playing a lot more Sectory, playing a lot more Fortnite, cause that new event started and Fortnite could be game of the year any year, you know, if you think about it. Fortnite movie might be the game of the year next year.

• 52:33Griffin McElroy?

  I've returned to Donkey Kong Bonanza. I'm glad I've done that, cause it's been, it's been a different experience playing through it solo without, uh, you know, a child with a rocket launcher sort of.

• 52:44Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's an actual game.

• 52:46Griffin McElroy?

  It's an actual real game at that point. It's very, it's, it's extremely polished and good. Um, have you guys watched Stranger Things yet, the new season?

• 52:53Speaker 00

  Oh, thank goodness somebody's getting the word out.

• 53:00Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's an interesting show. You know what, Gruber? These poor 34 year olds.

• 53:05Russ Frushtick?

  It's between you and my gushers for who's gonna tell me about the new season of Stranger Things.

• 53:13Griffin McElroy?

  It's just, obviously, I'm not here to market Stranger Things. Because it continues to be like, in some ways, just really kind of bad television that I am fully willing to cut the most slack, I'm willing to cut any piece of media ever because I am so like, just fucking like, I'm down, like, I'm down. Yeah, these characters are gonna say things that sound patently insane to be coming out of their, uh, now like, old adult mouths.

• 53:46Griffin McElroy?

  But like, I don't know, I find myself so, I don't know, I'm just in, I'm down for whatever they want to throw, even if it's the same kind of bits, uh, over and over again.

• 53:56Russ Frushtick?

  I'm in a weird spot because I watched the first three seasons and then haven't seen the latest two. And when I say latest, I mean, some of that stuff came out like four or five years ago.

• 54:06Griffin McElroy?

  The last season was great. I think the last season with Vecna was fantastic.

• 54:10Russ Frushtick?

  It's just gonna be very weird for me because if I watch them sequentially, there's gonna be immediate aging from one episode to another.

• 54:18Griffin McElroy?

  Dude, yeah, you'll finish the season finale of season four and then start season five and be like, holy shit, is there a plotline where they all fell into the time hole? Vecna summoned the time hole? Yeah, no. And that is, I think, a great deal of the weirdness, genuinely, is that.

• 54:33Russ Frushtick?

  It's just fine, whatever.

• 54:34Griffin McElroy?

  There is a, it's fine. There's an inherent kind of detachment, it feels like, maybe, from, uh, considering it's been like, I think, in the fiction of the show, like, a couple weeks since the ending of season four. I don't know that they are bringing the urgency, but I think overall it's good. The other thing I really wanted to talk about that I've been playing constantly.

• 54:55Russ Frushtick?

  I'm very excited to hear about this.

• 54:57Griffin McElroy?

  Is the Castle Crashers Painter Boss Paradise DLC that came out earlier this year.

• 55:04Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, I, this makes so much, I saw this pop up on Steam for you and I was like, Griffin, what is happening?

• 55:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, we talked about it. So Castle Crashers is actually one that Henry and I had played before. It was a little too, he didn't like when the, you save a princess at the end of one of the levels and they like make out. He saw that for the first time, I was like, I'm done. But then we played, you know, Scott Pilgrim, the TMNT beat him up, Absalom, like we got real, real into. And so came back to it and was like, hey, have you heard of this DLC? And I remembered we had talked about it on the show, Painter Boss Paradise adds, first of all, like the remastered kind of sheen of, you know, new art and stuff to, to the game. It looks great. But the big thing it does is it lets you customize characters and download customized characters from the Steam Workshop.

• 55:50Griffin McElroy?

  And the way that you customize characters is that it generates a little like sprite sheet where it shows you each different like part. Here's what the head looks like facing forwards and to the sides and then to the side a little bit more. And it shows you like a little outline and you can go through and export it to the drawing app of your choice. Do that, re-upload the PNG and it looks really fucking good. So we've been making characters, we've been downloading.

• 56:12Russ Frushtick?

  Griffin, are you in Castle Crashers right now?

• 56:15Griffin McElroy?

  Like my?

• 56:15Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, you yourself.

• 56:17Griffin McElroy?

  I've not, I've not made myself in Castle Crashers, no. Henry made a character called The Bankist, who is just a very wealthy man with a big top hat. But like, it's really, it's genuinely, it has really given the game a shot in the arm. And we've been playing a lot of it. We're now playing through insane mode together, which is probably too punishing to be enjoyable. But, uh, big, big ups to the Beam for releasing DLC for this, I think 17 year old video game. That is, uh, is truly pretty, pretty ambitious.

• 56:50Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, they're due for a game announcement, right? They're gonna put out something soon.

• 56:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, man. I mean, Castle Crashers 2 would blow up.

• 56:57Russ Frushtick?

  Well, they put out that Alien hominid game and yeah.

• 57:01Griffin McElroy?

  That was pre-Castle Crashers.

• 57:02Russ Frushtick?

  I think in the vein of what Justin was saying regarding game of the year consideration, I started playing Root Trees Are Dead, which yes, it's very fucking good. I really, really like it. I think I might be too dumb or ADD for it. I'm literally ADD. That's not even a neg. I take medication and everything. So I'm trying. I think it's incredibly cool, but I am also like, oh my God, I'm getting so overwhelmed by all the options and like, things that I could chase down, but I, just execution wise, they really fucking crushed it. Like, it's really incredible and has me-

• 57:37Griffin McElroy?

  I would encourage you to, to make use of the hint system.

• 57:40Russ Frushtick?

  I was wondering-

• 57:41Griffin McElroy?

  The way that they do hints is actually pretty good.

• 57:43Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 57:44Griffin McElroy?

  It's very light, very light touch, very like, you may have noticed in this thing that this mentioned that, is there anywhere you could look to see if there is a, it doesn't say like, this guy is this guy's son.

• 57:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:53Griffin McElroy?

  It's, it's pretty, uh-

• 57:55Russ Frushtick?

  That's good to know. As you know, hints are anathema to me, but if they're in game, I feel less bad about it. So.

• 58:01Griffin McElroy?

  No, it's, it's, I had to make use of it, especially for the bonus chapter of the game, which is so crazy.

• 58:08Russ Frushtick?

  It's just conceptually so cool. Obviously, it's an evolution of the things we saw in Obedin, but just really well done.

• 58:14Griffin McElroy?

  To remake the internet, to make a small internet, I'm always fucking down with a game that tries to do that.

• 58:19Russ Frushtick?

  So cool.

• 58:20Griffin McElroy?

  To make an internet.

• 58:21Russ Frushtick?

  Plant? You have anything?

• 58:23Chris Plante?

  Yeah. I've been playing, uh, Routine.

• 58:26Griffin McElroy?

  How was that?

• 58:27Chris Plante?

  Y'all hear about this game? Got announced like a million years ago?

• 58:30Griffin McElroy?

  Pretty good. Uh, looks, looks pretty spooky. Looks pretty scary.

• 58:33Chris Plante?

  So the way Routine works, it's basically, uh, imagine you're set in a Ridley Scott Alien, the Alien One type of space situation, and you are being hunted, at least at first, by a giant towering robot. It is one of those horror games where you cannot kill the bad guy that is chasing you. You can just hope to avoid them or stun them for long enough.

• 58:59Russ Frushtick?

  That's just because you're bad at games, though. Like, I would be able to-

• 59:01Chris Plante?

  For sure. I mean, probably. I mean, you know, even without guidance, no less.

• 59:07Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 59:07Chris Plante?

  Um, but yeah, it's, um, it's really good. It is-

• 59:13Chris Plante?

  Really good in that I wish it had come out all those years ago because it was so, this concept felt really fresh and ahead of its time. It had the misfortune of actually being announced before that Alien game.

• 59:29Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:29Chris Plante?

  The literal Alien game that did this thing. Yeah, and then like the many, many other horror games that have done versions of this thing. That said, it has some art direction choices that are just absolutely killer. Because it is going for this pseudo early digital analog world. When you want to save, for example, it will project a screen, like a really shitty projector, project like onto a wall. So it's not just like a screen, it's just a random projection on the wall. Which looks amazing using all of the modern graphical whiz bangs that you can actually use with Unreal Engine 5 now. It, yeah, it's doing a lot with a little.

• 1:00:14Chris Plante?

  That said, I don't know if we'll do like a full episode on it. Not because it's not great, but just because I don't know if, is anybody here like that sort of game person? Does anybody love those sort of horror games?

• 1:00:25Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, no, I find them horrifying and debilitating.

• 1:00:28Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:29Griffin McElroy?

  Very, very rarely. Well, like, like, I have to be in a mood and I don't know that I am right now.

• 1:00:34Chris Plante?

  Yeah, so I'm, I'm, I'm glad that I gave it a shot. I doubt I will be finishing it just because I similarly do not have the stomach. It's not this, I find them scary, it's that I don't like doing puzzles while I'm also just having to evade a thing. Like, I don't, my brain doesn't personally enjoy that. But if your brain does, you should go check it out because it looks, it's absolutely beautiful to look at.

• 1:01:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's it.

• 1:01:03Chris Plante?

  That's it, right?

• 1:01:03Russ Frushtick?

  That's it.

• 1:01:04Chris Plante?

  Yeah, that's it.

• 1:01:05Russ Frushtick?

  Um, thank you to our patrons over at Patreon.com/thebesties. We have a new bracket that is live right now. You can listen to that, uh, and enjoy it for all your pleasure. Actually, here's a clip.

• 1:01:21Chris Plante?

  The fact that the first thing most people did was made penises, or peni, I think gets-

• 1:01:28Griffin McElroy?

  Hard not to.

• 1:01:28Chris Plante?

  And gets to your point of it's a bit more of like a user-generated game than it is like a character creation tool, because the time to peni is like associated with an entirely different genre of character-

• 1:01:41Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 1:01:41Chris Plante?

  -of creation.

• 1:01:43Griffin McElroy?

  Well, except for Conan Exiles, which has a time to peni of zero milliseconds.

• 1:01:47Chris Plante?

  Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

• 1:01:49Griffin McElroy?

  Um-

• 1:01:50Chris Plante?

  I forgot.

• 1:01:52Griffin McElroy?

  The hardest edit I've ever had to do in my entire life.

• 1:01:55Chris Plante?

  Interesting.

• 1:01:56Griffin McElroy?

  Fucking weird choice.

• 1:01:57Chris Plante?

  Oh man, Griff, let's remake.

• 1:01:58Griffin McElroy?

  Never, ever, ever.

• 1:02:01Chris Plante?

  No, no, no, it's unrated.

• 1:02:03Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, put it on the paywall. Just put it on the paywall, yeah, sure. That said, that said, the tools that Spore gives you are pretty fucking phenomenal.

• 1:02:13Russ Frushtick?

  Lovely, such good stuff that we did, I'm so proud of us. Um, I want to thank a few new members to the Patreon, we have Daniel S., we have Jeffrey A., we have Lar, and we have Kaylee N., thank you for being members, thank you to everyone else for being members, uh, we really greatly appreciate you. What are we doing next week? Wow, it's a big week.

• 1:02:33Chris Plante?

  Next week, we have Metroid Prime 4, it's actually real. Speaking of games that have been in development for basically ever, we will actually be able to finally play the new Metroid Prime game, and you'll hear about that next week.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  Uh, also, breaking news, Amber Nick has just announced the 477M. So can you guys tell me, what can you guys tell me about that device? Go.

• 1:02:58Russ Frushtick?

  4.7 inch screen-

• 1:03:00Speaker 00

  Good.

• 1:03:01Russ Frushtick?

  -metal exterior.

• 1:03:03Griffin McElroy?

  Seventh generation metal-

• 1:03:05Chris Plante?

  No, sorry, they've just announced the 477V.

• 1:03:08Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, fuck.

• 1:03:09Chris Plante?

  Oh, it's a vertical?

• 1:03:10Russ Frushtick?

  Vertical orientation.

• 1:03:11Chris Plante?

  Yeah, dude, it's the same panel as the 477M, but with a vertical orientation, dude.

• 1:03:16Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 1:03:17Russ Frushtick?

  Justin, I think you need to end the show because really, I can't even handle-

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  We're talking Dementia 8300. The Dementia 8300, Russell, it's the same one as the RG477M.

• 1:03:32Speaker 00

  That's gonna do it for us on the Besties. Be sure to get it next week for the Besties. Because it's the world's best friend. Take the world's best games.

• 1:04:06Speaker 00

  Besties.