The Pokémon Studio Tries Something New

Beast of Reincarnation is the new game from Game Freak, the studio that creates every mainline Pokémon game. But friends, this is nothing like Pokémon. The action-RPG calls to mind series like Dark Souls and Onimusha. Is it… good? Guest Ron Funches joins to help us find out.

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

• 0:00Russ Frushtick?

  Do you think that Pokemon's a very dark storyline? Cause I know on the surface, it seems pretty light and airy.

• 0:08Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:09Russ Frushtick?

  But it basically is a Black Mirror episode, specifically the idea that Pokemon are trapped in this nether realm that we never see.

• 0:18Griffin McElroy?

  Interesting. Expand on that.

• 0:19Russ Frushtick?

  What the fuck is going on inside the Pokeballs?

• 0:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. This is weird. This is weird that you've decided. Is this because it's Game Freak? You know they do it. This is what drives me crazy, man.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  No, let him cook. He talk.

• 0:32Griffin McElroy?

  I'm about to fucking pop, dude. Because everyone's like, why is the Pokemon company doing a game? Why are they doing a real game? And it's like, I'm sorry, first of all, if I see another fucking professional game journalist or critic say that the Pokemon company makes the Pokemon games, I'm gonna lose my fucking mind. I'm gonna flip my gourd. That's a completely separate corporate entity. But the other thing is, they also made Pocket Card Jockey. They also made...

• 1:00Russ Frushtick?

  Come on.

• 1:00Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, hold on. I can do this.

• 1:02Russ Frushtick?

  You can do it.

• 1:02Griffin McElroy?

  I can shit out the name of the rhythm game that they made that one time that wasn't very good. Hold on, let me see if I can do it. Nope, it's not. It's lodged in there.

• 1:11Russ Frushtick?

  Yes. It's fair that they don't make other games, but the majority of their games, I think we can all agree, are Pokemon games.

• 1:17Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:17Russ Frushtick?

  And I don't, like, we've never seen inside the Pokeball.

• 1:20Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, we have.

• 1:21Russ Frushtick?

  No, I don't think we have.

• 1:23Griffin McElroy?

  That, it's insane how authoritative what you're saying this.

• 1:26Russ Frushtick?

  Ron, do you know what it looks like inside a Pokeball? Do you have any idea?

• 1:28Speaker 02

  I have no idea what it looks like inside a Pokeball at all. It feels like, once you are into it, you are transported to another realm. But I think that you are just scratching the surface. We gotta talk about the fact that the Pokemon are just, who, who, who are we to make them fight and work for us?

• 1:45Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, that's fair. That's fair. That's, it's a dark, that aspect is incredibly dark as well. I was hoping for like a Slimer Ghostbusters nether realm situation inside the Pokeball, but the better option would just be like a luxury hotel. But we don't, we don't know.

• 2:01Griffin McElroy?

  We do know. You're driving me crazy, man. It's like, you're just saying stuff and you're like, this is true about the Pokemon world. You have not put in the hours you've not read them.

• 2:09Russ Frushtick?

  I put in the fucking hours?

• 2:09Griffin McElroy?

  You've not read them, though.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  I thought I was right, and I am. The Game Freak did make one other game that I think is incredible, Drill Dozer.

• 2:16Griffin McElroy?

  Drill Dozer, dude. Yes, absolutely. What if instead of Pokeballs, we had like those little Hellraiser pain cubes? And that's where they come from. That's where they live.

• 2:28Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, that explains a lot, because they tend to be pretty pissed when they come out of the ball.

• 2:31Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 2:49Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:54Speaker 02

  My name's Ron Funches. I also am familiar with the best game of the week.

• 2:58Russ Frushtick?

  My name is Russ Ferschek. I know the best game of the week.

• 3:01Griffin McElroy?

  Welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club. Just by listening, you have become a member. We are delighted and honored, once again, to be joined by Ron Funches, honorary bestie. Thank you, Ron, for taking time out of your busy schedule to come and discuss Beast of Reincarnation.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Act like I don't ask you guys.

• 3:24Griffin McElroy?

  We can still be honored and delighted for you to join us for this, for this discussion. I mean, Chris isn't here. I can take a swing at it.

• 3:33Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, please do, because God.

• 3:35Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, Beast of Reincarnation is, is a new game from Game Freak. Yes, the studio largely known for Pokemon, but also Pocket Card Jockey, which slaps ass, and Drill Dozer, apparently, and I think a rhythm game that I can't remember the name of. But this time, they've made a AAA action RPG blockbuster in the vein of a Nier, or a Sekiro, or a any Stellar Blade, or any number of, you know, extremely sort of fast-paced action RPGs, maybe lightly Souls-y sort of inspired things. And they have done so in a, in a way, I, I have never seen such critical consensus of mediocrity, maybe in my entire career covering

• 4:20Griffin McElroy?

  video games. Not to, not to put a finger on the scale before we really get into the discussion.

• 4:26Russ Frushtick?

  We are gonna talk about other games as well, so buckle up for that.

• 4:29Griffin McElroy?

  It's not just gonna be a dump fest. We know y'all don't like that. So let's take a quick break, and then we're gonna do the dirty work.

• 4:34Russ Frushtick?

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

• 5:22Russ Frushtick?

  Ron, if you wouldn't mind starting the segment by just summarizing the story of Beast of

• 5:27Speaker 02

  I love that. Okay. Yeah, this one thing's I've been doing on my YouTube, on my What You're Playing series, where I summarize games for people who don't understand them, are for me, who only half pay the attention while I play them. So what I have gathered as a father and a man who works and plays this game, and the text is, "Too small."

• 5:47Griffin McElroy?

  Wait, holy shit, so small.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  It's so small. So I would say, do you like games like Nier Automata, or Stellar Blade, or Souls-like, but you think those games are too hard, or too stylish, or have too much soul and individuality? Do you wanna play a game like Stellar Blade, but you're like, those are too sexy, and I have a wife or a significant other that will be mad if they see boobs bouncing around? And instead, when you go in to take a shower, you go in fully clothed with your wolf dog. This is the game for you. If you wanna play a game that you go, huh, I actually have better versions of this sitting on my computer right

• 6:30Speaker 02

  now. Maybe I could be, I kinda wanna play Liza P again now because of this. This is a game for that. It's basically action Souls-like, where you have control of your wolf dog. You are someone that everybody is mad at, no matter who you talk to. They don't seem to like you and call you cursed and stained. But it is your job, to what I gather, kill these blighted, these people who are spreading the blight. And by people, I mean gigantic deer and monsters, and robots who also seem like they are good robots who got tainted by the blight. Because some of the robots you just talked to, and they're kind, but then the other ones, you have to murder. And then you have some mostly standard action,

• 7:14Speaker 02

  move the shoulder action buttons, which I've come to accept, even though I'm a face-button action person at heart. I'm a Devil May Cry action person. And then you also have control of your wolf, who you can build up and get new attacks as well. It brings a little more of like, I would say, like an action turn-based mechanic to it. And you guys learn and board, which also your wolf talks to you, and you learn about each other. And sometimes it brings you back to life. And then you kill one deer, and then they tell you, gotta go kill a bunch of other Nishki, which are the demons. And then I decided to stop playing after that.

• 7:51Griffin McElroy?

  That's about the arc that I followed with the game as well. I really, I found the subversion of, one, the shower mechanic to be a true delight. It's one of my favorite things about the game, is that you roll up until you have this walker, this giant robot mech thing that's sort of your home base.

• 8:10Russ Frushtick?

  Cause it's set in the future.

• 8:11Griffin McElroy?

  It is set in the future.

• 8:12Russ Frushtick?

  It's not like a fantasy world. It's like Apocalypse.

• 8:15Griffin McElroy?

  When I, when I saw there was a shower, I thought, in the grand tradition of like, I'm about to see, this is gonna be like a nude Norman Reedus Death Stranding situation, but instead, it's, it's more like you're at a PetSmart, and you go in fully clothed, and you wash off the, all the blood off of your dog, which I appreciate. I, I feel like the, the game is doing some cool stuff. I was kind of interested in it at face value, because the, the world, the post-apocalypse that they're kind of depicting, I thought was pretty interesting in a sort of annihilation-esque way, where like, plants have taken over the world and are mutating, you know, everything. You'll be running around, and just trees will shrink into the ground and shoot out in other places. And it's like, oh, that's

• 8:58Griffin McElroy?

  interesting. And there's people who have like, plant hybrid kind of curses, and you are one of those people, which lets you sort of shoot your, your vine hair out into like a whip that you can then traverse across, and you can sort of grappling hook with it, and you can do like a cool jump up into the air, and then just kind of rise up from the ground on your, like, all that.

• 9:20Russ Frushtick?

  You basically have Poison Ivy powers, which is actually pretty dope.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're fun.

• 9:24Griffin McElroy?

  But it's like, okay, so that's, is that the thing that's going on? Because when the game starts, the game starts with this like, opening monologue that's like, humans have divested themselves of emotion. And it's like, okay, so wait, hold on. Are we doing like, is it like an annihilation thing? Or is it a, what's that Christian Bale movie where no one's allowed to have emotions with like, all the Gunkata shit? Like, is, are we doing that? And now everyone's robots, and the robots are getting cursed? It's, it got, it was, would be like, two or three too many kind of like, big ideas just in the story, which I think is maybe representative of kind of the whole game, because it's doing a ton of shit, and it's doing it all okay.

• 10:03Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, Ron sort of alluded to it, but it feels like they played a lot of games that are in this genre, or at least look like this kind of game. And just like, took a little bit from this, and this, and this, and this, and jammed them all in there, because you need leveling up at a fire shrine. You need picking up items that you don't necessarily know what the fuck they do, but you're just gonna keep picking them up, because that's what you do. And some of them, you feed to your dog, and some of them, you eat yourself, and some of them, upgrade your sword. And you've also got the giant monsters that you have to parry, Sekiro-style, and.

• 10:37Griffin McElroy?

  You're building up like, break, you're building up like, break meters to like, do instant executions, also very Sekiro.

• 10:44Russ Frushtick?

  There's even like, fucking Batman Arkham Asylum shit in this game, where you'll like, be in an area, and it's like, sneakily take out these six enemies to unlock the next area. But they don't respond really bizarre.

• 10:58Griffin McElroy?

  It's really, I don't know if there's a better version of this game that does half as, half as much stuff. I suspect it is. I suspect so. I think if you maybe made the game move twice as fast, it would be a better game. Uh, because my main issue with it, I think the combat's pretty fun. I think the parry feels great. And there's like a lot of cool ways that you can customize the, the, your, your, your character so that like when they parry, uh, you know, they're not only avoiding damage and building up their like energy meter that they're going to spend on these, uh, almost FF7 remake style, like quick, uh, uh, turn based, like attacks that you're making Koo, your dog do. Uh, but you can also customize like, okay, so when I parry, it activates this special ability or it does this. Um,

• 11:43Griffin McElroy?

  there's a dodge too, which doesn't feel very good. And also it doesn't give you all these incredible other benefits. So you almost never use it.

• 11:50Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, the dodge, I don't think.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  The feedback on the dodge is terrible. It just gives a small little sign. It doesn't like, you know, Bayonetta, I think is the queen of the dodge mechanic because you felt it right every time, right?

• 12:01Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Well, and it activates that dope witch time. Like it does, it feels good to do that. It just feels bad to dodge. And sometimes you have to, especially when you're doing like the big boss fights against the big deer monsters. Uh, the issue is like, all this stuff that like customization, the upgrading, you're unlocking new skills, you're unlocking, I felt like I didn't need any of that shit because the parry windows are like really forgiving. There's not a ton of enemies in the game and the enemies that are in the game really only have a handful of attacks and you learn them pretty quick. I did not struggle really with the combat side of things so much at all.

• 12:34Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. I actually, I like the fact that it wasn't so hard.

• 12:40Griffin McElroy?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 12:41Russ Frushtick?

  I kinda liked that. It was a nice change of pace to be able to learn the three moves that the first boss had and like really be able to parry them to the point where I was able to beat it, I think on the first try. So like, that was not a nice change of pace from all these like whoa, long fallen dynasty, all of these games where you fucking kill yourself on that first boss.

• 13:03Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 13:04Russ Frushtick?

  To like learn all the mechanics. I don't like that. Like I like being eased into it. So I thought that was a good decision, but.

• 13:11Griffin McElroy?

  I, I guess so. It just kinda undermines the RPG side of things. I feel like, like in a, in a, uh, I, I think it's unfair. First of all, I don't think this game is especially soulsy outside of the fact that there's like campfires that you stop at. Like you're not losing your, you're not losing anything when you die. Like there's not really, it's not penalizing you for, for anything. But at the same time, like the reason that those games work, the reason that the difficulty of FromSoft games like work is because they make every little incremental upgrade, every little, uh, you know, item that you find, everything that you can potentially do to like increase your build. It makes it so necessary because it's hard, it's so hard and it's so punishing. And I understand not, not liking that stuff.

• 13:55Griffin McElroy?

  I would definitely not want this game to be that level of difficulty because I don't think it's good enough. Like I wouldn't, I simply would not hang with it. Uh, but, but it really makes it so that like, when I find some item laying on the ground or I upgrade my weapon and now its attack is like 5% stronger or whatever. It's like, who gives a shit? Like I don't need, I don't really need that. I didn't really use any of the new abilities I unlocked because the ones that you start out with are pretty good. I, I just, it, it's, it, it's just kind of a.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  Well, like what you, I mean, you, you just said it real quick, but I think that is one of the things that is very disappointing early in the game is when you go to upgrade, you know, you've got to upgrade your bow or your crossbow thing. And then you see the only change. There's not even like a real like, a lot of times people add like a fancy animation, something to make you feel like you accomplished something. And it literally just goes from like 200 to 204.

• 14:46Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Well, that doesn't even feel good.

• 14:50Griffin McElroy?

  There are these stones that you can find that like are kind of, uh, like accessories that will like benefit you in some way. But again, like the upgrades are like you have a, a 4% faster dodge animation or like they're so, so, so small and not very meaningful. Um, but I think if, again, if the game was just more combat focused and they maybe added a little bit more variety in the, the enemies, I think that would be interesting. The biggest thing that this game fails at is just the pacing is, is really astonishingly bad. Uh, from a like, there are nested flashbacks. Like the game starts you off sort of in media res and then it goes back in time a little bit. And then it continues to go a little

• 15:35Griffin McElroy?

  bit more back in time, like a couple layers, like inception style to a point where it's like, goddamn, I've been doing this flashback for a while, haven't I? And there is a, what would you guys say is the duration of pause between every line of dialogue?

• 15:49Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:50Griffin McElroy?

  Cause I think it's, it's definitely more than two seconds.

• 15:53Russ Frushtick?

  It is pregnant.

• 15:54Griffin McElroy?

  Every single time. And it is, it is really insufferable. It's really, really, really insufferable.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'd say this game does, one of the worst things it does is that it does not start well. It like, it starts slow. It starts super easy, uh, in a way that makes you feel, and then not in a way where you feel like, a lot of Metroid games are like that where you start off with feeling more powerful than the enemies and you get your power stripped away.

• 16:19Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Whereas this though, I never felt like a badass. I just felt that the enemies were too easy. Um, I immediately upped it to hard and was just trying to see if that did anything. And that, all of that did was just up the damage that I received anytime I did take a hit. It didn't, where I was looking for more like increased attacks, more attack animations, more varied attacks. It didn't do any of that. Um, but I will say one thing that I think this company is good at is building a world. That world is beautiful and fun to, to be in. And I think this game, I would just say is a good first try. And if this was a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive, I'd be like, oh, this is great. There's not that many like FromSoft type of games on the Switch 2. Like this would be something that you can, they can

• 17:04Speaker 02

  claim as their own. But the fact that this is a multi-platform game that you, when there's so many games where you can get a, you know, you can get Liza P for like $20, you can get near three, you know, there's so many things that you can get that do this better.

• 17:19Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Liza P is so fucking good. Every time, you're right. When I was playing this, I was like, oh my God, Liza P was so fucking good. Every aspect of it. That game rolls.

• 17:28Griffin McElroy?

  I also found myself wanting to be playing other better, better games. Pretty much the whole time I was, I was with Beast of Reincarnation.

• 17:35Russ Frushtick?

  I, I do wanna, I guess, end this segment because it's probably the last time we'll ever think or talk about this game by exploring the idea that Ron, you got to experience something that we, Griffin and I have had to do for many years, just as a career. And that is play a game that you weren't really like.

• 17:53Griffin McElroy?

  Play a deep seven.

• 17:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 17:55Griffin McElroy?

  Play a deep seven.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, this is the first, cause I get excited to come here, but every time that we've talked about games here, it's always been a game I've already been playing or a game that I was heavily interested and then just reach out to see if you guys can give me a code. Uh, but this was the first time where it was like, oh, I hadn't even heard of this game until you asked about it. And it was very interesting to me because in my youth, there was a time where I was like, oh, that's all I wanted to do is be like a games journalist, wanted to be sushi X and come up with the rumors.

• 18:27Griffin McElroy?

  Hell, yeah.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  And.

• 18:29Griffin McElroy?

  You just, you just aged all of us.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Oh, we're old as hell. I've been noticing that. Oh, come, come to my shows. They're all, we're all getting old. Uh, to play a game and immediately be like, oh, if I didn't, if I wasn't coming here, I wouldn't play this was an interesting experience. And it made me feel like, um, it made me think a lot more about game reviews in general and how like, how hard, how hard it must be for a game. A game must have to be really good if you don't, if you're not immediately interested for it to like win you over and to bring you into a new space. And I, I think I just like the way that you guys do it more than like the general like score and what

• 19:15Speaker 02

  you're doing. Cause I'm like, oh, like I would be like, oh, you made me play this? I want to give this game a five. Like, but it's not. It's like, it, there's good parts to it and there's bad parts to it. I think there are people who will play this game and really like the aesthetics of it and like the art style of it. And maybe like the relationship with Koo and, and it will be a game for them. There are people who this game would be for. But, uh, to have to play something and just not hit it off. I was like, oh, this is, I'm glad I don't have to do this for.

• 19:44Russ Frushtick?

  Honestly, there's no comparable, uh, in criticism because if you're watching a movie that sucks, you're watching it and then it's over in two hours and you can like roll your eyes at it or even like an album. I guess if you're reading a book that's really bad, that might be brutal, but like, man.

• 19:58Griffin McElroy?

  This is a 30 hour game, man. Like, yeah.

• 20:00Russ Frushtick?

  Having to play a game, I mean, we did not play that much, but having to play a game that you really don't like because you have to, woof.

• 20:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 20:08Russ Frushtick?

  It's pretty bad.

• 20:09Griffin McElroy?

  I wanna say, I, I wanna be clear. This is far from the worst game that I've.

• 20:12Russ Frushtick?

  Correct.

• 20:13Griffin McElroy?

  Played. Like even this year, it's far from the wor, like it's, it's fine. There are times that I really, I, I did enjoy like the combat, the exploration, like feels good. It, it just like, I don't know. You can say like, oh, it's a great first effort from Game Freak, but Game Freak has also developed. Uh, and you know, there's probably multiple studios. I don't know if the infrastructure of Game Freak as a studio is like particularly public knowledge or not. But like, there's some stuff like, there's, I have heard maybe three songs in my entire, like there's looking around song, there's fighting song. Uh, there's like cut scenes. Like there's weird little stuff that's like, okay, that's, that's crazy. Like that seems like something you should know better than at this point than to just

• 20:57Griffin McElroy?

  have a few, a handful of songs in the game that you're spending this much time in. It, there's just some stuff that's just seems kinda, I don't know, a weird miss from a company that has been around as long as Game Freak has been around.

• 21:09Russ Frushtick?

  I think we've made the point. I think we've, we've made the case and people can kinda decide based on that. Griffin, I know that you played something else that I actually hadn't heard of and I guess has been early, in early access for quite a while.

• 21:23Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 21:24Russ Frushtick?

  But sounded pretty great.

• 21:25Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I don't know if we want, do we want to do that here? Or we want to take a quick break and come back? I don't know if we had a business in the B block.

• 21:31Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Yeah. We can take a quick break. Why don't we do that?

• 21:33Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 21:35Russ Frushtick?

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• 22:17Russ Frushtick?

  This is the Alienware experience distilled into one iconic machine. Visit Alienware.com/15 today.

• 22:28Griffin McElroy?

  The game I've been playing is EverQuest Legend. No, I'm just kidding. I will be talking about in the honorable mentions. Don't worry about that. I've been playing a game called Sephira, which does sound like a fragrance brand.

• 22:40Russ Frushtick?

  I was gonna say shampoo, but yeah.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  I was gonna say a new version of syphilis.

• 22:45Griffin McElroy?

  It is not a new version of syphilis. It is much more, much more enjoyable than that. It is a top down action sort of RPG rogue like from the studio that made Dung greed? Dunge greed? Like dungeon greed? I don't know. It was a sort of an indie game that that came out on Steam and was quite successful. And this one is, it's really, really good. Imagine a game that kind of has the sort of pace and I don't know, mechanics of like a hyper, hyper light drifter almost, or a Enter the Gungeon.

• 23:29Russ Frushtick?

  Kind of looks like Nuclear Throne at a glance.

• 23:31Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, sort of a lot of dashing around and, you know, doing these melee combos. And there's different weapons that you're using throughout the game. And each of them has like an interesting sort of parry mechanic sort of associated with it. You're going down into this dungeon that is more or less the same every time, like the rooms are different and the path that you're following sort of slay the spire, sort of like choosing like, oh, I want to go this way so I can, you know, try and get this anvil that's going to upgrade my weapon or whatever. And every time you level up, you're like drafting different like relics that you can synergize into like different builds. Everything is sort of, everyone is woodland animals.

• 24:14Griffin McElroy?

  You're like a bunny and you're in like a bunny village, but also you are the sort of servant of this like Kabbalah sort of Jewish mysticism tree god. So there's some like interesting sort of tonal stuff going on there.

• 24:31Russ Frushtick?

  Wait, is it explicitly a Kabbalah Jewish mysticism?

• 24:34Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, it's called Sephiroth, not the Final Fantasy villain, but the like, the, the aspect of Kabbalah.

• 24:43Russ Frushtick?

  I was not familiar that there was an aspect of Kabbalah that was called Sephiroth.

• 24:47Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. And it's like the good one, but then there's like Keith off. I don't know. I don't know much about Kabbalah. I'm discovering while playing this game. But then you're also like, you know, there's skill tree and there's lots of stuff that you're upgrading. It's interesting now that I'm saying all of this stuff, like it's obviously a way different game in terms of genre and look, but like a lot of that stuff is also true of Beast of Preignation. It's just that this game really has a scale and a pace that I have really been enjoying. I've not gotten this deep into a rogue like like this since like Heroes of Hammer Watch 2, which funny enough just got DLC, just got an update that has added some new stuff. I tried to get back into it and, and really just kind of struggled to, because I spent enough time with it when I first started playing the game.

• 25:32Griffin McElroy?

  This has just been really fast paced and really slick. All the weapons like feel really great and it's in 1.0 now. That's what happened is I think July 30th, it came out 1.0, but it's been around for, for a while. But yeah, it's called Sephira, sort of spelled like Sephiroth, but with an E at the end of it. It's been a really good time.

• 25:57Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. While you're talking about it, it reminded me of Spirits Abyss, which I played a few weeks ago and recommended that basically no one seemingly has heard of, because it had like 400 reviews on Steam.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Always bringing up games that I'm like, I don't, I think they just make up names.

• 26:13Russ Frushtick?

  Ron, do you, I actually don't know. Do you fuck with Spelunky at all?

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:17Russ Frushtick?

  Okay. If you like Spelunky, but you get a little bit frustrated by the fact that Spelunky kind of bends you over a little bit, man, Spirits Abyss is really, really great.

• 26:29Griffin McElroy?

  Is that the one from the Nidhogg? The Nidhogg developer?

• 26:33Russ Frushtick?

  That game is not out yet. That's Blood Dungeon. Spirits Abyss is basically a mashup of Spelunky and Binding of Isaac. But like, I was just doing a run before we recorded where I had like 50 health and 40 bombs and all these like comboing passive abilities and things like that. I think the big difference here is you pick individual classes and those classes have unique attacks and upgrades. So I could do a mage with like a long range shotgun attack or like a Samurai type of class with like short range, but high damage. So it really makes runs feel very different, but mostly you can just like see a lot more without having to know every aspect of the game.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  I like the art style.

• 27:13Russ Frushtick?

  And yeah, the art style is really cool and it's like eight bucks. And I feel like it just never had too much shine on it for whatever reason, but I'm, I've been really, really impressed with it. I'm like six or seven hours into it.

• 27:25Griffin McElroy?

  Sick. Do we have, you, you mentioned we had some reader mail.

• 27:28Russ Frushtick?

  Well, I want to see.

• 27:29Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:29Russ Frushtick?

  Ron, is there anything else that you've been playing?

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I play games. I play games, Griffin.

• 27:36Griffin McElroy?

  I know, I know.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  I've been playing the Avatar Legends, the fighting game. I've been really into that as a fan of the Avatar, the last Airbender series.

• 27:46Griffin McElroy?

  Didn't know that there was a fighting game.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Nice, I brought news to you. Nice.

• 27:53Griffin McElroy?

  And I love Avatar.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  You love Avatar?

• 27:55Griffin McElroy?

  I do.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  Me too. And now, and you like the fighting in it?

• 28:00Griffin McElroy?

  Hell yeah. All the bending, sure.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  You like the hand drawn art style?

• 28:04Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, you bet.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  Well, then this, I got a game for you. It's called Avatar Legends and it's the best Avatar video game that they've ever made because most of them have been terrible.

• 28:15Griffin McElroy?

  Not a great legacy there, yeah.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  This one is a snappy fighting game that has its own like unique, I think every good fighting game builds off of like one mechanic and then they do it well. And this one for that is called the flow state where every character has a dedicated flow button. They all can be used to dodge attacks and special attacks, but each character has a unique like way that they use their flow. There's characters that can use it to basically double jump. There's character Ozai who can kind of like, he can eight directional jump. So he can basically fly across the whole map. And then every character plays how they looked in, in scene in this show.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Toph is strong and has these rock attacks and can use a pillar to lift herself up above the playing field and throw rocks down at your opponent below. Kiyoshi is like 12 feet tall. It's just a great game and they're going to keep adding characters. Iroh's coming in, which is who I'm looking out for. I need my uncle in there. And as a big fan of the show and to watch not only every game suck, but also seemingly every non-animated project

• 29:33Speaker 02

  just be terrible. It's nice to have something with the game or with the franchise that seems to do the series justice. So I've been really enjoying it.

• 29:44Russ Frushtick?

  So it basically pulls from each like Cora and the original and they're mostly young or do they do like the older characters too?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  No, everybody's at their normal age or isn't like an older ong or ang. That was the joke that they did that made me laugh so much. They have a joke based off of the M. Night Shyamalan movie where the characters keep calling him ong and he gets mad.

• 30:10Russ Frushtick?

  That was the first time I experienced Avatar was in a screening of that movie.

• 30:14Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, that's a fricking shame, dude.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  That's, oh my God, what a bad way.

• 30:18Russ Frushtick?

  15 years later, someone was like, no, seriously wipe that from your memory and just start with the anime. And man, it fucking ruined it.

• 30:26Griffin McElroy?

  How, my nine year old Henry is like really into Avatar right now. And it's, it's a pretty new thing that mostly came from like, I don't know. He started watching YouTube shorts of people talking about Avatar and was like, hey, this seems cool. He's also gotten super into Animaniacs through the same vector and that's been fucking rad for me. I've been enjoying that a lot, but he doesn't play a ton of fighting games. He loves Smash, but I was showing him this game because we're about to go on this road trip and I wanted him to have something to play. And he was sort of nervous about, you know, playing a fighting game, which is not sort of a genre he is particularly familiar with or adept at. Would you say it's like somewhat accessible to like folks like that? Or does it feel more kind of like hardcore for folks who are like already, you know,

• 31:11Griffin McElroy?

  fighting, fighting game pros?

• 31:13Speaker 02

  I mean, the online for sure is really hardcore. You don't probably want him going in there. And I'd say the story, I would say that you probably want to sit down together as father and son and like just walk through with them together, play a couple of rounds, because there are a lot of mechanics to learn as far as dealing with the flow state. And the one thing I would say as a detriment, and they probably, I imagine will adjust this soon, is that there's no difficulty like settings at all.

• 31:44Russ Frushtick?

  For the arcade or whatever.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. So you go in there and I would say my first couple of rounds in arcade, I was getting my ass handed to me because I just didn't know any of the mechanics. So I had to go in to do the tutorial for sure.

• 31:56Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I'm trying to remember what the first like, I guess I mostly just Street Fighter 2 and then some Mortal Kombat was like early on, but I never, I barely knew the moves. I knew like maybe the scorpion throw and that was it. So I'm sure it's gotten much more complicated, especially for kids getting into it.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  But it is fun. I love when your kids find out stuff that you didn't know. My son's been doing the same. My son now is deeply into Pokemon and been playing a lot of Pokemon Go. His whole room now is Pokemon based. And that just came in suddenly out of the blue because someone handed him Pokemon cards when he walked by a video game store. And so I appreciate them very much.

• 32:35Griffin McElroy?

  That sounds seedy, the way you put that.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  I know. They hooked them. First packs free.

• 32:42Russ Frushtick?

  Little plastic baggie.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Everybody also been watching tin fish reviews.

• 32:50Griffin McElroy?

  Dude, yeah, tin fish reviews. I love those guys.

• 32:52Russ Frushtick?

  I don't know what that is.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  He's four years old. He's like, put on the video that goes tin squid in a pan, in a can from Japan. And I was like, oh, I know.

• 33:01Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, mine is there's two dudes that just sit and have like almost a romantic candle at dinner and they provide, they provide in-depth reviews of different, uh, brands of premium tinned fish. I wish, I can't remember the name of the.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  There's one guy who wears a fez and he has a dog and a dog also wears a fez.

• 33:17Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, that's good. I like that a lot.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:21Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, well, that's lovely. Thank you, Ron, for bringing that game that I had no idea existed.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  I'm happy to help.

• 33:27Russ Frushtick?

  Seems like my jam. Um, okay. So Ron, earlier on, you were talking about face buttons versus trigger buttons for attacking. Cause you're right. Trigger buttons are becoming the norm. And it actually came up last week. I was mentioning that whenever I play a Metroidvania or search action game, I use right bumper for attack because it makes doing jump attacks much easier for me.

• 33:46Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 33:47Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, and I was asking, we were asking specifically if anyone out there,

• 33:53Russ Frushtick?

  um, inverts their X axis, because we know a lot of people that invert their Y axis. What, what, do you have a preference? Do you just keep it normal?

• 34:00Speaker 02

  I keep it normal. I keep it normal. I don't mess with it. I just let it go and let, I mean, I do, I'm a big fan and having customizable button options. I love it if they let you switch from face to shoulders or like you do what you want. Uh, I just don't like it sometimes when they just immediately push you to the shoulder buttons when it feels to me like more of a face button game. Um, but I get used to it. Like Crimson Desert does it well, where you do a mix of both, where you use the shoulders for your weapons and then you use the face buttons for your fists. And I like that a lot. I love, I love the action in Crimson Desert. I don't know if you guys stuck with that at all or even played it.

• 34:41Griffin McElroy?

  I've played a bit of it. I, I did bounce off of it. Yeah. It just, I don't know. I wasn't ready for it. I feel like everyone I had talked to about the game was like, yeah, man, you gotta, you gotta put in the 60, 70 hours to, I don't know. It's, it's, it was at a very competitive time, uh, for, for, for gaming time in my life.

• 34:59Russ Frushtick?

  I will say that the new Stranger, uh, the new, um, what is it? Uh, Yakuza, whatever, what's it called?

• 35:06Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, Stranger in Heaven.

• 35:08Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. The new Stranger in Heaven, which I played at SGF, had the most bizarre control scheme where like every button was like a hand or your head or your feet. So you're like fighting off one guy and then kicking with your left foot and the other guy. And it was like, they're doing some fucking wild shit with controls in that game. I, I, it's interesting to see them take risks, but man, I'm curious how people get into it. Um, we do, about this topic in particular, we do have some reader mail because we asked for people to write in to see if there was any X inverter people. Glass Funyon writes in to say, I am a mythical Y and X inverted player. Uh, I think it started with Spyro on PS1, which has flight levels.

• 35:50Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, as I'd never played a fight sim, it also makes more sense to me if you imagine the joystick attached to the back of the player's head, inverted correlates to how their head would move if you push the stick.

• 36:02Griffin McElroy?

  Sure. I understand that. I think that this is a, this has to only just be a situation of like, if you play a game long enough to like get this ingrained in your, in your brain, then it's going to get stuck there. And then all of a sudden you need every other game to kind of go the same way. I just think that it's rare that, that that happens, but yeah, you know, I think the PS1 era, especially like the early 3D platformer era, I think we, there was no consensus on which way the camera should move when you move a stick in a certain direction.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Love the beginning of all those games. Are they just like, hey, look over here. Okay, we got it. We got which way.

• 36:39Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I think Halo was the first time I saw that. That was like very smart, good solution. Actually, uh, related to this, pretty interesting. Uh, this one comes from Aaron. In regards to inverted controls, I learned something recently. I thought you might find interesting. My nine-year-old son just started playing first-person games. Growing up, I learned to play 3D games first on my dad's PC with games like Fight Simulator and Tie Fighter, and then Mario 64. Uh, all these games used inverted Y axis and I use that inversion ever since. Knowing that most current games default to non-inverted controls, I, like Chris Plant, uh, didn't want to subject my son to the same issues I have when getting into a new game. So when, when he wanted to play Indiana Jones on Switch, I left the settings as is. To my great surprise, he played a bit, uh, before switching the controls back to inverted.

• 37:25Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, actually, apparently there is a scientific study regarding this that details why people do this and which are more advantageous for people. They concluded that standard controls allowed for higher speed while inverted controls resulted in higher accuracy. The basic gist of the study was that your brain has to translate the unnatural inversion slowing you down and forcing you to be more careful and precise.

• 37:48Griffin McElroy?

  Interesting.

• 37:48Russ Frushtick?

  Whereas standard controls skip that step in your brain, uh, speeding up your play, but at the same time creating more movement errors and requiring you to consciously slow down for precision.

• 37:58Griffin McElroy?

  That's great. You have a, now you have an excuse if you're like a total fucking scrub at a game. You can be like, ah, it's because it's not inverted. My brain's not moving slow enough. If anything, if anything, my brain's too lightning fast at Fortnite.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  I got too much conversion going on.

• 38:14Griffin McElroy?

  There's way too much conversion happening on the ground.

• 38:17Russ Frushtick?

  If anything is interesting for you guys, we'll actually drop the link to the study, which appears to be NIH, uh, study that was done relatively recently. So you can take a look at that.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Oh, if I, if I, if I know your fan base, they interested.

• 38:32Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, right up their alley. Okay. Uh, question actually for both of you. Uh, this comes from Christina. Hey besties, I've recently found myself back in the trap of mobile games that aren't very fun and bombard me with fake ads for even worse mobile games. I've been listening to the backlog and good quality mobile games don't come off as often as they used to. Do you have any recommendations for good mobile games nowadays that will scratch the itch of something to play between meetings, things like that?

• 39:01Griffin McElroy?

  All right. I mean, do you, if, I've been playing this game Idol Obelisk Miner for months now. It's, it is an idle game. It's an incremental game and it's, it's pretty much the best one I've, uh, played. Sorry. I noticed here you've just typed into the document I D O L Obelisk Miner. It, it is not, you're not collecting, you're not drilling into Hatsune Mikus to like drain them of their, of their blue essence.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  Wait, hold on. We got a game here.

• 39:28Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, there it is. Spinoff.

• 39:30Griffin McElroy?

  On paper, I don't think it sounds like it does really anything that novel. It is a game about sort of like mining into these different ore deposits and then you use the stuff to upgrade your digging abilities. You unlock drones that can sort of begin to, uh, you know, handle that stuff for you. What is so incredible about the game is that it begins to layer on like 16 different kind of, uh, gameplay elements that all sort of interconnect. So like you will unlock like, uh, pets that, that then will, uh, help you out with different benefits. You will start spawning in stars that appear, uh, sometimes whenever you, uh, mine through a thing.

• 40:11Griffin McElroy?

  And then the benefits you get from the stars also benefit all the other things. There's like a fishing thing. There's like an archaeology sort of like digging thing. There's so many different layers and it is so, just, just the math of the game, just the math behind this game is so, um, detailed and so like rewarding and satisfying. It has been my go-to like pick it up when I get a notification that like my, you know, offline benefits have stacked up to a certain point and cash those in, get some stuff and dip out like two or three minutes. It's a great turlet game. When you're sitting down on the turlet, you can, you can just knock out a little bit of, of time on it.

• 40:50Russ Frushtick?

  And it, and it, you can turn off ads.

• 40:53Griffin McElroy?

  I don't, I haven't seen a single ad. I don't think, like the way that it monetizes, it is a premium game. There are like, you know, there's like a founder's pack that you can, uh, buy, uh, that I eventually did because frankly, the amount of time I've spent playing this game is outrageous, uh, cause it, it does sort of add up over time. And I don't mind, you know, supporting a, uh, a, a studio that has really, uh, enriched my, enriched my days as much as, as this game has. It's got like a pretty hardcore community out there, like pretty helpful, um, because it is a bit complex, the way that like all of these different systems sort of interlock. Um, but that has been my go-to sort of like recent jam.

• 41:33Russ Frushtick?

  That's pretty cool. Ron, is there anything you play on mobile? I know you travel a bunch.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  I don't play any phone games besides, I mean, even though I travel almost every weekend of the year, I don't play any mobile games. I think the last mobile game that I put really any time to was like Fallout Shelter. I tend to either travel with my Steam Deck or if I'm not carrying a bigger bag, I'll have my, my AYN Thor on me.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  And I'm just a big, I think like my favorite. I'm not a good person for this question because all my favorite mobile games will be just like ports like

• 42:09Griffin McElroy?

  Ports of other shit, yeah.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but I would say as an alternate thing, maybe come on over to the emulation side. Just grab you a fifty, sixty dollar amber nick, throw it in your bag, throw in your purse, throw it in whatever you got and you get, you can just throw a bunch of GBA games on there, whatever, whatever has you. Like, it's one of the things my girlfriend, um, I did for her and she says one of the best gifts I ever gave her. I just had an old amber nick sitting in my closet. So I, she had a long flight. She had like a 12 hour flight. So I just, um, kept asking her what her favorite PlayStation one games were when she was a kid. And then I went and downloaded them and put them on the amber nick for her and had them on there for her flight and she loved it.

• 42:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's very thoughtful.

• 42:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, the, the, I would say there's two things working against the mobile game space. One is that like, it's never been easier to play actual real games sort of in a portable fashion. I do like everything on, on the Rog Ally X that I have because it runs basically. I play Beast of reincarnation on that mostly and that game is a bit demanding.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, played it on my Steam day.

• 43:15Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it runs like pretty well. Uh, but the other reason is I just think that market has, has really kind of crashed a bit. Uh, maybe not crash. Maybe that's not a fair thing to say because there are games coming out that I'm still sort of interested in, in iOS, but it's never been harder to find out about those games.

• 43:33Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 43:33Griffin McElroy?

  Um, largely because a lot of the, you know, gaming verticals that focused on that industry are not around anymore. Um, and also just kind of like the way that it has been inundated with either slop or extremely predatory, you know, uh, in-app purchases or, you know, whatever.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Anti-consumer.

• 43:54Griffin McElroy?

  It's hugely, hugely anti-consumer. Um, so yeah, it's, it's, they are few and far between these days, I'll say.

• 44:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Um, okay. Well, that's it for the reader mail. Uh, we have our dedicated honorable mentions section. Um,

• 44:08Speaker 02

  I wanted to, can I ask a question?

• 44:10Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  We love to. Have a thing because I'd like to talk about it in front of people who may

• 44:15Griffin McElroy?

  Please.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  have thoughts about it.

• 44:17Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 44:17Speaker 02

  Um, we don't have to go far on this, but I was sitting and thinking about the game industry, where we are right now. We've talked about it with the mobile space, the anti-consumerism, which I think is, has bled over into the console and PC world as well. And then we dealing with the prices of RAM and the, uh, the, talking about the PS6 being over a grand, being the new systems and nobody even buying Xboxes. What if we just stopped making hardware?

• 44:48Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  And we just kept making games.

• 44:51Griffin McElroy?

  You'll find no argument, I think, from any of us, any of us here. And honestly, probably not much argument from a lot of people like covering the industry. It just feels so antiquated.

• 45:03Russ Frushtick?

  And even, I think game publishers think that because I think game publishers would rather develop hard, uh, games for hardware that people bought five or 10 years ago than develop for the new brand spanking whatever that only like 3% of people actually have. So I think it's a good thing to keep looking back and making games scalable. Yeah, we've talked a little bit about it, but I'm all for it. Like, forget about the new fucking console. I don't care.

• 45:29Griffin McElroy?

  There's examples that buck this sort of trend, right? Like, and I don't know that people necessarily love the like kind of walled garden ecosystem that like Nintendo has, right? Where Nintendo, Nintendo, I think, uh, bucks the trend that has like completely swept the rest of the industry where they are making their own hardware and they do have like a huge focus on first party games and they're putting a lot of money into like R and D and have had somewhat mixed success, but like, I, I don't think anyone could argue that. I think they're doing the best of this idea of like having a platform and making the games for it and really focusing on that and not kind of like proliferating all of

• 46:12Griffin McElroy?

  their software onto any device that you want to play it on, right? Uh, and I think, I don't know why they are. I mean, there's a ton of reasons why they are like they just have the kind of legacy of it. And I think that they have a focus that benefits them and they have done a decent job of like not going all in on a bunch of shit that has failed, like, uh, you know, Kinect or like, uh, uh, you know, having a, having an always online connected platform that you have, like all that stuff that people, you know, soundly kind of turned away and said, hey, no, thank you. Um, sorry, your whole like gaming console is based around that. We don't like it.

• 46:52Russ Frushtick?

  I would also say that their games largely, not every game, but most of them, much, much cheaper to make than a

• 47:00Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 47:00Russ Frushtick?

  Naughty Dog, high, like age, every room is precisely crafted, even though you're going to see it for six seconds, it's going to be the best fucking room you've ever seen. If you walk into a room of Tears of the Kingdom and it's got one picture frame on the wall, you don't care. It's fine.

• 47:16Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 47:16Russ Frushtick?

  And all that stuff makes the games

• 47:18Griffin McElroy?

  It's not entirely altruistic though, right? Because they are still charging like 80 bucks for the new Mario Kart game and they had to increase the price of the Switch 2.

• 47:25Russ Frushtick?

  I'm not saying it's altruistic. I'm saying from a business standpoint, why they're able to keep things exclusive to the platform and not consider multi-platform is because they don't necessarily need that added revenue because they are not spending as much on the actual development.

• 47:39Griffin McElroy?

  The thing I'm looking forward to most in the entire industry is not a game. It is not, um, some, some big update from, from a hardware from like Nintendo or whoever. It is the release of SteamOS onto

• 47:52Russ Frushtick?

  Yo.

• 47:53Griffin McElroy?

  any Linux or Android device that I wanted on.

• 47:55Russ Frushtick?

  Ron, are you aware of this?

• 47:57Speaker 02

  I heard of this, yes, yes.

• 47:59Griffin McElroy?

  It's, it's like, there are, there are hacks. There's like game native and there's like ways of doing this that, do you fuck with that on your Thor, uh, Ron? The, the game native and all that like streaming Steam platform stuff?

• 48:10Speaker 02

  Uh, I've done a bit of it, uh, or not a game native there, Game Hub Lite, I think.

• 48:15Griffin McElroy?

  Game Hub, yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've used for it, um, to with varying degrees of success. Um, but sometimes I like, I almost like being limited in my choices. So to me, when I bought my Thor, I was like, oh, this is for DS games. This is for Game Boy Advance games. This is for older game, games where I can use the dual screen functionality. I wasn't necessarily looking to play, um, PC games, but then I was like, I, I do want to play Bellatro. So yeah, I did add it on there. Yeah.

• 48:44Russ Frushtick?

  But the idea that you're like this process, whenever you get a new handheld of like, I'm going to spend a half a day setting it up and installing that Android setting, blah, blah, blah. The idea that that would essentially go away and you would just install SteamOS and log in and poof, there's all your Steam games.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 49:01Russ Frushtick?

  That I agree. Like I'm fucking psyched.

• 49:04Griffin McElroy?

  Well, and it's also just having the option of like playing the game I bought on whatever the fuck I want to play it. Like, this Saphira game is dope. I don't need this to play. Like, I don't need this

• 49:13Russ Frushtick?

  Giant handheld, yeah.

• 49:14Griffin McElroy?

  15 pound hammer of a, of a game console. Like, let me throw it on one of my

• 49:19Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 49:19Griffin McElroy?

  five ounce sort of little, little, uh, Android devices. And I, I don't know, when that option is available. So that's like the ultimate kind of like democratization of play your games wherever you, wherever you want to. You're still going to run into stuff like Steam is still going to be a pretty monopolized platform in that regard. Not that they've been like the worst stewards of that. Um, but yeah, man, like I don't play my PlayStation five. I don't play my Xbox. I play the Switch because like there's still games coming out on this. I picked up Pocopia because that DLC just dropped. I've been playing that. Henry plays it. It's easy to play like local multiplayer stuff on because of the, the way the controller snap out, like all of that stuff. But that's

• 50:00Griffin McElroy?

  like it. That's the only one, everything else I am doing on, on PC and on Bazai, the like Linux hack of SteamOS or Rog Ally X. It's like you're jumping through so many hoops to do a thing. And I, I think that's just kind of what people want now.

• 50:14Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Um, I think we've talked about a lot of stuff that we are all excited for, apart from the games we've discussed, but I did want to ask Ron any honorable mentions of other things you wanted to shout out specifically like movies you've seen, the TV show, book, whatever.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  I don't watch anything. I don't do anything. I work a lot. I'm always just either working or gaming. Um, I would say I'm excited to watch a movie called The Furious. It's, I bought it. I can't wait to see it. It's supposed to be a great action film. Um, and then I'm excited to watch the new season of King of the Hill and X-Men 97. And then I just had a thought that made me happy, which was that I think if you were new to this country, you've never been to America before, or you're just, you don't live in America and you want to learn about America, I would say watch full series of King of the Hill and then the full series of The Boondocks back to back. And you got pretty much

• 51:10Griffin McElroy?

  It's everything you need. Yeah.

• 51:11Speaker 02

  That's everything you know.

• 51:12Griffin McElroy?

  It's a, it's a real sort of cultural education of everything that America has to offer you. Welcome to our wonderful country.

• 51:21Griffin McElroy?

  You've picked a great time.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had someone, I did a cameo for someone who just became a citizen and I was like, "All right."

• 51:33Griffin McElroy?

  You're sure?

• 51:34Russ Frushtick?

  Good luck with that.

• 51:36Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I've been doing a bunch more EverQuest Legends. I'm not gonna actually keep, continue to talk about it, I don't think, like, on the show, but it's been out for a week and it's been fucking great. I've really, really, really, really liked getting back into that game. Uh, they've done so many smart things and have made it so almost arcadey, like, in how much the progression has become like faster and more enjoyable and really focused on not wasting the time of, uh, dads like me, uh, which I appreciate. I've also been playing a game called AK Solotl, like Axolotl, uh, with Henry, that is a, another kind of rogue-like, uh, sort of Into the Gungeon-style action game, uh, on, on the Switch 2 that

• 52:19Griffin McElroy?

  has been pretty fun. It's an old game, I think it came out in like 2023, uh, but it's cute. You're like going around and you're doing all the usual sort of rogue-like shooter stuff, but also you're finding like eggs that you're nurturing into other, uh, usually, uh, reptilian or amphibious sort of creatures that then become sort of playable characters with new sort of abilities and, uh, it's been fun. Hasn't been too difficult. There's a difficulty setting that you can choose, which I appreciate. Uh, Into the Gungeon was too difficult for him, but, uh, we've been playing this one together. It's been great.

• 52:50Russ Frushtick?

  Um, real quick, I'm still playing a game called Blueprints, set in a house. You walk around the two rooms, keys. Uh, this is like round 97 of this game. This game is fucking life-changing. Ron, did you get into Blueprints at all?

• 53:01Speaker 02

  I did. I enjoyed it very much. I never finished it. Never got even into the last room, which I know is not the end of the game, uh, but I think it's a great puzzle game, a great couple game to just like hang out and watch.

• 53:15Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's how I'm playing it, yeah.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  Um, I, I really, yeah, I enjoyed Blueprints quite a bit.

• 53:20Russ Frushtick?

  We're at day 102.

• 53:22Griffin McElroy?

  Wow, man. I'm so proud of you.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Been living here for months now.

• 53:27Griffin McElroy?

  Did you, I see you wrote Retroid Pocket Nova. Did you get yours?

• 53:30Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, so I wanted to just mention it, cause I've only, only, only just started messing with it, so there's not a lot to say.

• 53:37Griffin McElroy?

  Mine shipped this morning. I am very, very excited for it.

• 53:39Russ Frushtick?

  But I will say, just in the hand feels fantastic. Uh, my understanding is it is basically designed, if you want to play anything like PS2 and earlier, uh, so GameCube-

• 53:48Griffin McElroy?

  Four by three, anything in that sort of game.

• 53:49Russ Frushtick?

  Four by three predominantly. You could probably get away with 16 by 9, but it's gonna be a little small, but predominantly is designed for 4x3 gaming and, uh, just out of the box, it's been pretty delightful to hold, so I'm very encouraged to try it.

• 54:00Griffin McElroy?

  What colors you go with?

• 54:01Russ Frushtick?

  The 16-bit, the SNES style, which I am quite fond of.

• 54:05Griffin McElroy?

  I got that transparent clear. Looking forward to it.

• 54:08Russ Frushtick?

  Cool.

• 54:09Griffin McElroy?

  All right, let's, let's wrap up. Thank you so much for listening and thank you to all of our patrons. You can go over to patreon.com/thbesties. If you are not already a member, you can get access to the bi-weekly Besties episodes, where Russ and Chris talk about the games that we do not cover here, uh, on, on the, on the Besties. Uh, we also do monthly bracket battle episodes and there is a new one, I think, as you're hearing this?

• 54:31Russ Frushtick?

  Featuring Jacob Geller. Uh, it was, uh, Best Rivals in Games and we'll drop a clip in right here.

• 54:38Griffin McElroy?

  That's not even what I'm sa- I was saying, I didn't want to sit near kids, uh, for the annoyance factor specifically.

• 54:44Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 54:44Griffin McElroy?

  In this case-

• 54:45Speaker 03

  Fox and Falco are gonna be annoying as shit.

• 54:47Griffin McElroy?

  They're gonna be dicks, dude. Is this as fast as this thing goes?

• 54:51Speaker 03

  See, that sounds great.

• 54:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, they're gonna be talking about the plane, how they can fly it better.

• 54:56Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:56Speaker 03

  That sounds awesome. Do we want to factor in that you don't want them both jockeying to take over the front of the plane?

• 55:04Griffin McElroy?

  No, and I'll tell you why.

• 55:06Speaker 03

  Sir, you are legally need to sit down.

• 55:08Russ Frushtick?

  Sir, you are legally a bird.

• 55:10Speaker 03

  You cannot fly this plane.

• 55:12Griffin McElroy?

  This is what I'm saying. I, I think there's a good chance that any flight Fox and Falco are on is going to get grounded before it reaches its destination.

• 55:22Speaker 03

  100%.

• 55:22Griffin McElroy?

  And I cannot be bothered with that. I simply need my flight to land in the place where it's supposed to go. I can't have it be redirected to Las Vegas because of an on-flight emergency of two bipedal animals shouting about how they're gonna fly the plane and they're gonna blast all the other planes out of the sky. Like, I can't have that getting in my way.

• 55:43Russ Frushtick?

  And Ron joined us. If you're, if you're a little bit late for, uh, the bracket battles from a few months ago, Ron joined us for one of these bracket battles and that was so much fun as well and we appreciate, uh, you joining in. I forget the topic that you came on for.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  I forget it too, but it was fun.

• 55:58Russ Frushtick?

  We've done a bunch of them.

• 55:59Griffin McElroy?

  We've done a lot.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  About who you would want to be friends with and the things.

• 56:03Griffin McElroy?

  Roommates, best roommates.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Roommates.

• 56:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that was a, that was a great one.

• 56:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:06Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that was fun. I want to thank, uh, just a couple backers. Uh, these are some new backers at patreon.com/thbesties. Kristin S., Lucy C., Hebes, I want to say is how that's pronounced, and Selin B's. Thank you for being, uh, backers of the Besties. I also want to thank a man named Ron Funches, who is lovely and currently on tour, and you can see Ron in a show that I can personally vouch for, cause I just saw him a couple weeks ago in New York City and it was fucking awesome.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  He saw me.

• 56:36Russ Frushtick?

  You can go to ronfunches.com. It's got the tour dates and everything. You're going to London, is that right?

• 56:42Speaker 02

  I'm going to the UK. Let me do this real quick, if you don't mind.

• 56:47Griffin McElroy?

  Do it, do it, do it.

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Uh, before I go to the UK, I'm gonna be in Milwaukee. If you live near there, come on by. I'll also be in Appleton, Wisconsin. Uh, again, ronfunches.com, but I'm really going on a UK tour. I never go there that often, so if you come support me, I would truly love it. I will be in Dublin, Ireland. Uh, I forgot, let me do this right. Yes, Dublin, Ireland, August 26th. I will be in London, August 29th. I will be in Cardiff on the September 1st and then Manchester as well, and then I'll be going to Istanbul to go get my second hair transplant done. So if you want to come watch that as well, you're welcome to come and hang out.

• 57:27Russ Frushtick?

  Live stream it.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, ronfunches.com.

• 57:30Griffin McElroy?

  Tickets to your hair transplant?

• 57:31Speaker 02

  Probably. They'll let you in, yeah.

• 57:33Griffin McElroy?

  Hell yeah. Awesome. Oh, hey, wait, we're gonna be doing a live show also. Do we want to talk about that?

• 57:38Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 57:38Griffin McElroy?

  Bit.ly/besties on Broadway on October 8th. We're gonna be at the Town Hall in New York City, uh, doing our first and maybe last ever Besties live show. Um, it's, we've never done one before and it's gonna be a blast.

• 57:52Russ Frushtick?

  It's gonna be really fun.

• 57:53Griffin McElroy?

  Executive producer Justin McRoy is gonna return to the stage, uh, with us and we're gonna do, we got a bunch of fun, fun stuff planned, so come see us, bit.ly/besties on Broadway. Next week, Big Walk, the new sort of, I don't even know if Friends Slop is accurate.

• 58:08Russ Frushtick?

  It's not Friends Slop. It is a co-op game, but, and it looks like Friends Slop at a glance, but it is actually like a much headier version of that genre.

• 58:14Griffin McElroy?

  Amazing. Uh, I'm excited to talk about it and play it and I'm excited for everyone listening right now to come on back next week and every week here on the Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?

• 58:26Speaker 02

  No.

• 58:27Russ Frushtick?

  Whoa.