The Year of the Video Game Ninja

The first of two new Ninja Gaiden games has arrived! The developers of Blasphemous have produced a 2D retro-inspired action game worthy of the original entries on the NES. Are we living in a golden age of ninja games? Is there such a thing as too many ninjas? The Besties investigate!

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  It feels counterintuitive to miss Russ, but.

• 0:04Griffin McElroy?

  What, but how do you mean?

• 0:07Speaker 00

  You know, it's like we complain so much about him being here, both to his face and behind his back. And it's like, when he's not here, it feels weird that that wouldn't be like a relief, considering everything.

• 0:20Griffin McElroy?

  Well, don't always seem to go that you don't know the rest you've got till he's a parking lot.

• 0:26Griffin McElroy?

  Is how I feel. That's personally how I feel. And it's like, farmer, farmer, put away your DDTs. I don't care about Russ's in my apples. Leave me the birds and the bees. You know?

• 0:36Speaker 00

  Chris, you probably know Russ personally a little better than.

• 0:41Chris Plante?

  Somebody at the door?

• 0:42Griffin McElroy?

  It sounds like someone's at the door. I don't know who.

• 0:45Chris Plante?

  Justin, you mind opening it?

• 0:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'll get it.

• 0:47Chris Plante?

  Creak. Hey, what's up? It's a Newark giraffe. You remember me? I live right across the, the river.

• 0:57Griffin McElroy?

  How cowardly of you. How cowardly of you to conjure him when Russ isn't, it means you're afraid of Russ. Like the fact that you're bringing this out now.

• 1:09Chris Plante?

  Are you telling me my two best friends? New York giraffe and Russ Fruschnick are not here?

• 1:19Speaker 00

  It's like the parts in Rocky when he can't add anymore.

• 1:21Chris Plante?

  I'm here to collect debt.

• 1:23Speaker 00

  You're in Rocky six? You know, in Rocky six, when he can't add anymore? Yeah, it's like, it's like watching that. It's like, that was a podcast.

• 1:31Chris Plante?

  Oh, um, Newark giraffe. I, I believe that, um, the death that you're looking for, it's right out that window. Would you mind just looking right out?

• 1:39Speaker 00

  He always does this. He kills.

• 1:40Griffin McElroy?

  And he kills a fucking kill.

• 1:42Chris Plante?

  The window is shut right on his neck.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  How did we, how does he grow?

• 1:47Griffin McElroy?

  He's got a dead giraffe in his arms.

• 1:49Chris Plante?

  And how he fell out the window and to think that we were caught on the 30th floor.

• 1:54Griffin McElroy?

  Can you even imagine being scared of a giraffe?

• 2:18Speaker 00

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

• 2:20Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:22Chris Plante?

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

• 2:25Speaker 00

  And sadly, Russ Fraschik is not here, but this is still the besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It is a video game club and just by listening to you, my friend, have become one of our illustrious members. This week, we're going to be talking about Ninja Gaiden Ragebound. Chris Plant, what's that?

• 2:44Chris Plante?

  Ninja Gaiden is back, but it's not in 3D like it's been for you past few decades. It's back in 2D. Like the true fans remember it. And not only that, but it's actually fun to play.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  Yes. Whoa.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Exciting.

• 3:00Griffin McElroy?

  Huge change.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  We'll talk about that and so much more right after this.

• 3:06Chris Plante?

  Y'all, I was worried about this one.

• 3:09Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 3:10Chris Plante?

  Like

• 3:10Griffin McElroy?

  Same.

• 3:11Chris Plante?

  Ninja Gaiden, the NES games, the 2D ones, they're not especially fun going back. I'll be honest, even as a kid, they were not my favorite. They were just so mean and so tough and they had a kind of funky movement. I just didn't know if I was ready to go back.

• 3:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I feel like a lot of 2D side-scrolling action games are trying to capture the like imagined fluidity of Ninja Gaiden, or like the fluidity of maybe like the animation in Ninja Gaiden has given them the impression that those games are very like fluid to play and comfortable to play, but they're not. They're very like stodgy action games.

• 3:47Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it's a lot of jumping way high up real fast and then touching an enemy and going flying backwards 15 feet. It, it, uh, yeah, it's, it's not the most satisfying, but man, they done something, they cooked up something good in that game kitchen. They did, they did some yummy work for us today. Yeah, Hoops, can you describe kinda like how it works this go around?

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, so you, it is not unlike the ninja guide and games of yore in that you're a little ninja and you're running back and forth in a 2D plane. Which is a pivot from the most recent ninja guide and games that have been a little bit like 3D action based. This looks kind of like if you're looking at it like a dead cells kinda thing. But it's more, I would say, kind of like level based, not a rogue like in that, in that sense. But it's a very fluid sort of action game. It's doing some interesting things with like, in addition to the, the main, you know, your, your Hayabusa descendant Ken.

• 4:53Speaker 00

  There's another ninja that has like a long range attack that feels different from what we would traditionally expect for one of these. It gives it a bit more of like a shooter running gun kinda feel. Kumori, I believe is her, is her name. But there are cool upgrades, all those kinda like modern things that you'd expect. But it does have a very like retro like look and feel with some like modern ideas that I think are kinda cool.

• 5:18Griffin McElroy?

  It looks, it looks fucking great. The, the game kitchen is the developer who I referenced earlier made the blasphemous games. Which are also pretty, you know, gorgeous pixely little snacks. I really, really, really enjoy this game, mostly because like, you know, the, the ninja guidance sort of loop of like run around really fast, climb up on that ceiling, dodge a bunch of, you know, bad guys hopping out of walls and smashing towards you. I, I find it to be like, I don't know, it's hard, but it's also like fairly straightforward. But every level like throws little challenges at you and has little,

• 6:01Griffin McElroy?

  little scarabs and skulls to find that are hidden everywhere that you spend on these like permanent, equipable upgrades that you can shop for between, between levels. I feel like adding that layer of Kind of modern stuff, uh, really made the rest of the classic, pretty tough as nails ninja guide and experience like a hit pretty good.

• 6:24Speaker 00

  Another thing that I think is cool that they have brought over is like your character kind of like magnetically sticks to ceilings and walls, which is a facet of the original ninja guide and that feels very on brand, but they, they, if that helps it, I think to feel different from a lot of other games. Cause you have to kind of think a little bit more vertically.

• 6:41Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  When you're.

• 6:43Griffin McElroy?

  You also have a, a aerial attack that you activate, like a double jump. And if you hit something with it, it gives you an extra sort of, I think it's called a guillotine boost.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:52Griffin McElroy?

  Which is a fucking kick ass name for a thing. So like you spend a lot of time in these levels chaining together these aerial attacks and, uh, you know, sticking to the ceiling for a while and, uh, you know, dropping down to, to collect some treasure and, you know, looking for all these secret things. I, I don't know. I, I've never really given much of a shit about this franchise at all, but, uh, this, this one has really hit for me.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  It also like is, it looks so, it's like, I, I mentioned like retro, but that doesn't even feel like, uh, it's so, there's like so richly animated. The detail is amazing. It almost look, feels more like a, a cartoon, like the way it's like, I know that this feels a little trite, but like, there is so much animation in every frame of this, so much to look at. It's like super colorful, uh, and just like, it's a joy to look at.

• 7:43Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. It slices in a lot of cartoon visuals too. So while it does have that like chunky pixelated aesthetic while you're playing, when you do special moves or you go into cutscenes, it's like somewhere between the NES style cutscenes and like 1990s anime from that period, like Ninja Scroll, which again is, I think kind of.

• 8:06Chris Plante?

  Actually creating the thing that you were probably imagining while you were playing Ninja Kaijin.

• 8:10Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, right.

• 8:11Chris Plante?

  If you were alive back then.

• 8:13Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Blasphemous did that a lot, too, of like blending together different animation styles to, like, a lot of, like, you know, rotoscope-inspired shit that would just kind of like appear out of nowhere, or a boss who just, like, you know, visually doesn't quite mesh with the rest of the, you know, Gothic environment that you're exploring. I feel like this game throws that at you a lot.

• 8:33Chris Plante?

  Oh, yeah. For people who played the original, the appeal was like the flow state of this game, especially in the early days compared to whatever else was available, because, yes, like, any damage basically meant you were wrecked. You had to just be sprinting like a ninja through the course, slashing, memorizing the layout of the thing. It was kind of like a proto-speedrun-y type of platform-y game. And this does a really good job of that in that if you do get hit, it doesn't immediately mean death. You do have a health bar, and you can refill it at these various checkpoints. But more importantly, it adds kind of systems

• 9:14Chris Plante?

  to complicate that, the lines, the flows that you're creating. So what I mean by that is there's like very, very heavy enemies, enemies that have shields that you either can't break through, or they will take tons and tons of hits. But there are special attacks that you can unlock that are tied to weaker enemies. So you might see like a little bat that has a glowing red ember above it. You shoot that with your little projectile, and suddenly now you have a superpowered projectile for whatever your next damage is. So it becomes this like flow of, okay, I see that heavy coming up, but I don't want to take them on directly, so I'm gonna look for weaker enemies to unlock my super move, to then

• 9:57Chris Plante?

  take out that heavy, and just keep this constant sense of motion, rather than like ever stopping to just spam the attack button.

• 10:06Griffin McElroy?

  It wants you to also be running. You can also charge to harm yourself, which will temporarily get, put you in that supercharged state. And man, like going through a whole screen in the way you can tell the developer sort of intended of like chaining together, like you kill that enemy to get supercharged and then you use that supercharged attack to kill this other enemy, which unlocks the next wave of supercharged. So you can chain it right to the next guy. Like it feels, it feels very, very, very, you feel very good at video games whenever it pans out. And that's a very satisfying feeling. Did any of you do the bonus content or the extra levels? Yeah. So one of the things hidden in each of the levels, in addition to like the currency

• 10:48Griffin McElroy?

  you spend on these equipable upgrades, you can find secret ops, which are usually, I can't tell if they, do they use the same maps or is it just sort of like the same texture backgrounds? Same assets, but different. Yeah. But usually with like way more specific, like usually way more difficult challenges. Like sometimes you'll get in a level that will be quite short, but it's like a really intense platforming section. And one of the challenges is like, don't get hit at all. And as you, when you complete those challenges, you get like a ranking at the end of every level. And if you rank high enough, then it adds more stuff to the shop. And so it all kind of feeds back into itself. Yeah, no, I've been really, everything I've been unlocking

• 11:33Griffin McElroy?

  in this game, I have been dipping back into, mostly because I want to keep getting the weapons. What did you think of the difficulty curve for the bosses? So fucking hard, man. Holy shit, dude. They don't play around. Like some of the levels are tough, but most of the time you can die without any sort of, you know, repercussions. Maybe you'll fail a mission if one of the missions for the level is like, don't die.

• 11:58Griffin McElroy?

  But you can sort of, you eventually figure what your way out and you get through it and you get to the bosses.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Usually it's like, it's kind of a fool me once, shame on you kind of situation. You'll rush into something too fast, like, ah dang it. Okay. I get what we're doing here. And then you try again, you nail it.

• 12:11Griffin McElroy?

  You'll hit the bosses and the bosses are very much, you know, pattern recognition that you, you know, have to learn. You have to figure out what it means when the boss starts to charge up this thing, what you should be ready to do, how you can get a supercharge and how you can like, use it to interrupt some attack. Like, all that stuff is kind of what you'd expect from a game of this genre, but your attacks do a, a just baby shit damage. And so you have to maintain this perfect state of pattern recognition and like, getting in your hits when you can for really long extended periods of time. And it is, uh,

• 12:44Chris Plante?

  Which is, it's only a bummer because it feels like you're playing a different game for a little bit. It feels like the fluidity and the speed that sort of like makes the game work so well. Like, not to, not to say everything has to be the same, but like, you know, you would never see like a Dead Cells slow down for so long and like stop you for so long. Uh, when like a run is so much about like fluidity, but.

• 13:08Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, it was, it definitely the biggest hangups for me. There is an accessibility sort of menu where you can go in and I, I really appreciate when games do this. And you can go in and like very granularly adjust stuff, um, to make the game sort of, to the level of difficulty that you want it. Um, you can't turn up how much damage you do, but you can like turn down how much damage you take and how long your, you know, supercharge lasts after you, uh, after you get it. If you don't use your supercharge in an attack like quickly enough, it goes away, but you can extend that amount of time, which makes like, you know, chaining together some of the sections a little bit easier. Um, and so I did, I did dip into those to, uh, get past one or two of the bosses

• 13:52Griffin McElroy?

  because they really, uh, beat my ass up and down.

• 13:55Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I, I spent probably an hour last night on just one boss. Mostly because I, I feel like it's a troll. Maybe there's a way to play this quote, right? But it's this giant creature who throws, um, spikes into the walls. And one of the three spikes that he will throw allows you to get that supercharge.

• 14:14Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 14:15Chris Plante?

  So then you want to like get that and then knock him down. The problem is it's all a trap. Every time, one, there's spikes. So if you jump at them, you will get hit half the time you're even trying to chop them up. Two, he charges at whatever, wherever he's throwing the spikes. So it took me, I don't know, 30 minutes of finally just accepting, oh. I need to just ignore this entirely and just like stick and poke him over and over and over again. And then I did great, which on one hand is like clever and on the other hand, a very weird thing, like you said hoops, to have a boss fight. Literally, the, the strategy is ignore everything that you've learned so far.

• 14:55Griffin McElroy?

  Right. Yeah.

• 14:56Chris Plante?

  Um, it doesn't feel, it, it feels kind of like shit after that, that another hour of that.

• 15:04Griffin McElroy?

  Um, super fun writing, which I wasn't really expecting.

• 15:07Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 15:08Griffin McElroy?

  The premise is that you are Ryu Hayabusa's not son.

• 15:14Chris Plante?

  No.

• 15:15Griffin McElroy?

  Is the relationship established? You're like in his clan.

• 15:18Chris Plante?

  You defend the village while he's out and about.

• 15:22Griffin McElroy?

  Doing cool adventures. But you go out on your own adventure and in so doing, you meet this ninja from an opposing, you know, evil corporate clan, uh, who ends up kind of like merging with you a little bit, uh, to sort of like blend y'all's powers and the conversations between the two of them. I don't know. I feel like the game really shifted on a dime. Uh, as soon as she comes along and kind of like joins your, your body, I guess, uh, because then it becomes like a, a conflict between the two of them sharing one, sharing one form. I, I don't know. I, I was surprised. I was not expecting like pleasant writing from the ninja guide and rage bound game, but.

• 16:02Chris Plante?

  It knows just the right amount of talky.

• 16:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yes. Yeah. Start of each level. You get like four sentences and then it's time to go.

• 16:10Speaker 00

  Uh, it's, it's interesting. This franchise too. Uh, it's, it's worth talking about. I think, uh, we should have like maybe discussed this during the, the historical section, but it is wild. The amount of time this franchise has been like dormant. I mean, and we have, uh, three games this year, but it's, you know what I mean? Like the last one was, uh, like the Yagiba Ninja Gaiden Z in 2014, which is like a non-entity.

• 16:40Griffin McElroy?

  That's crazy. Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah. I mean, like the Ninja Gaiden four is coming out later this year, which is a significant. A sequel to Ninja Gaiden 3 from 2012. So it's like, it's wild.

• 16:49Griffin McElroy?

  It's getting the Prince of Persia glow up. It's all just hitting all at the same time. Um, I'm here for it, man. I think Game Kitchen makes tight ass 2D platformers and they could have done this with any, any franchise and it would have, uh, it would have been great. And I think that they have done a, I don't know what like, the Ninja Gaiden hard cores think about it because it, there is an element of forgiveness to it. I feel like in the way that you can like, uh, you know, modify your loadout to make things a little bit easier here and there. And like, there's no lives. So it's not like dying is the most punishing thing in the world.

• 17:30Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I, I found it, you know, the boss fights are tough as shit, but otherwise I found it like surprisingly approachable. And I don't know if that's a, a thing that the, you know, devotees of this, of this, uh, series are, are going to be a fan of, but I, I don't know. I, I think it's great. And I'm glad I didn't let the Ninja Gaiden name sort of scare me off because that is not one that I find sort of, uh, appealing.

• 17:54Chris Plante?

  They, I, I will say for the hardcore out there, there are unlocks similar to skulls in Halo that can make the game harder.

• 18:01Griffin McElroy?

  True. Yeah.

• 18:02Chris Plante?

  Like that, that's your path. If you are that sort of, you know, sicko.

• 18:06Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. It's one of the things you can buy with the currency of the game. And I bought a couple of them thinking like, because if you beat a level with the skull, you know, these, these hard modifiers unlocked, then it increases your ranking at the end of the level. I was like, hell yeah, man. I'm gonna, I put them on for one level. I was like, no way, man. No way, dude.

• 18:22Speaker 00

  So it's 25, it looks like on Switch. I'm, I'm assuming that that's pretty, like across the board, the, the, for, for that 25 is like, feels about right, right? It's a look, cause it's kind of like in the, in the, in that weird middle ground, uh, Between the AAA and the like real indie stuff.

• 18:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, super, super polished, I think.

• 18:44Chris Plante?

  Yeah, the publisher dot emu has like, kind of owned this $25 space. They released Rage 4 for that. They have Metal Slug Tactics that came out for that. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Shredder's Revenge. It seems like they are designing and budgeting games for a kind of a price point that they're own, like creating.

• 19:08Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:10Griffin McElroy?

  Cool.

• 19:11Speaker 00

  Cool, very cool. Um, let's take a break. And then when we come back, uh, we can go ape.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  So Griffin and I were out last week while you and Fresh Dick, uh, got to talk about Donkey Kong. Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben, Ninja. And, uh, Griffin and I spent, you know, quite a bit of time playing it. And we thought that we could like, kind of see what, see what each other thought about it. See whatever, where was, let me start with this as a catch up. Where did you and Rush shake out?

• 19:43Chris Plante?

  You know what? Pretty good. I'm going to say Nintendo, they still got it. They haven't lost a fastball, you know? No, I mean, we, we, we talked about all of the basics and you go start wherever you'd like.

• 19:56Griffin McElroy?

  This, it, this is a fun one because this is, I think, maybe the first game we have covered on this show. Where, you know, it, it, Henry is old enough, Henry's eight and he's old enough now that like, he can follow gaming news and he like, knew this game was coming out, was excited. We were excited to play it together. Um, and then we did. And then, um, he kept playing it by himself so much that I found it quite difficult to formulate, uh, cogent thoughts. Cause I would be playing it with him and be like, oh, this is great. I get it. I get what this game's all about. And then I would come back and he would be like a fucking huge, super hot, super muscular zebra man. And it's like, what the, what hap- what, who is that guy? What happened?

• 20:39Griffin McElroy?

  But from what I have played, it's a lot of fucking fun, especially in the co-op mode that they have introduced, which I think is a brave and bold innovation.

• 20:50Speaker 00

  Utterly chaotic. It's barely even a video game at that point. If you give it to a child, it's really, it's more of like a music visualizer. Like it's no longer.

• 21:00Griffin McElroy?

  Did you all talk about the co-op stuff last week, Chris?

• 21:02Chris Plante?

  We talked about it just that it's so nice to be able to play with a kid and that it's like how, yeah, exactly that. And I think, I think what I'm loving about new Nintendo, and this is the epitome of it, is they do not care if you break their game. And not just break their game in like the old school sense of like, oh, you have too many lives, or the original Mario thing of like, you can exit the game's geometry. But like, on a second to second experience in this game, it looks broken. Like when you are digging through the walls, it looks like it's clipping. And they've just embraced that aesthetic, and it carries in every single direction.

• 21:45Chris Plante?

  They do not care as long as we're having fun.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  Really smart, I think, the directional punching. The up, forward, and down. It seems silly, but like, it is so smart, I think, because what it does is it sort of, it eliminates a lot of that orientation discussion. Because if I can push a button and he'll punch up, I know that's up, right? So I can always go in an up kind of fashion if I need to. Uh, that's really smart, and I feel like these controllers have all these buttons. Yeah, man, thanks. Let me punch in a lot of different ways. That's great. Great fun. Good job. I always want to punch down. Thank you.

• 22:27Griffin McElroy?

  It's such a, like, philosophically, it feels so different from Odyssey, which is, I think, interesting only because, you know, it's made by the same team and has the same kind of look about it. But whereas like Odyssey, I feel like I spent the whole time looking around for stuff that I would be like, oh, there's definitely a moon in there. Like, there's definitely, definitely, definitely something there. In this game, it is not as apparent. And while in Odyssey, when you would get to one of those places, you'd be like, oh, okay, I kind of think I know what I need to do. I kind of think I know what they have set up for me to accomplish here, so I can get this hidden moon. In Bonanza, especially when you're playing in co-op mode where player two is, you know,

• 23:12Griffin McElroy?

  Pauline as an AC 130 just showering the ground with exploding words. It feels like there, I, maybe there is no intended path to this thing, or if there is, like, I am, I have wandered so fucking far from it, and I cannot believe, like, the solution that me and my son have stumbled onto actually worked. Uh, and that's crazy that that is true.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Speaking of surprising solutions, uh, my daughter and I, Cooper and I turned this, it, she turned it into something more like a competitive game where I was trying to compete, to complete the level, and she was absorbing explosives and trying to destroy the things that I needed to make progress. So I would be climbing, she would then blow up the wall, so I couldn't use the wall. And I, she would demand that I would return to explosive creatures to let her absorb their explosive powers. So I would try to avoid those at all costs. So that was the give and take, is that I would try to keep her away from the explosives. And then if she absorbed them, then she would sort of like stop my progress for as long as she could.

• 24:11Griffin McElroy?

  It really, really lets you just fuck a lot of stuff up. There's a lot of places where you get somewhere and be like, oh, I see. Donkey Kong is supposed to go up to this exploding guy and rip out a chunk of him, and then throw it at this pillar so that he can get up high enough to then throw another explosive at this concrete wall. Meanwhile, Henry could just be like, and destroy the thing without having to do any of the extra stuff. Um, I don't know, man. I think it's a, I think it's genuinely, genuinely great. I liked this game okay when I was playing it by myself. I really, really loved it when I was playing it in, in co-op.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  I know it, it probably seems silly, but I play, I have found myself playing this game just for fun. And you know, that's not that common for me anymore, but I just really get a kick out of. Trying to see how much of a thing I can destroy, trying to wipe it clean, seeing what's hidden underneath. It all feels like virtuous cycle, like all of the destruction you do feeds into better capabilities in that. And so like, nothing ever feels like wasted, like you're destroying, but it's all purposeful. Cause like, you're constantly getting stuff that improves the experience.

• 25:21Griffin McElroy?

  Those, and those red faction ass submissions where it's just like, destroy this building as fast as you can. Very much was like zoom into my memories Ratatouille style. On the surface of Mars.

• 25:35Chris Plante?

  The, the art style is so great too. It is this Tex Avery type of approach. It's not doing the Walt Disney preciousness. Like Donkey Kong is a weirdo in this game. He's just weird. He looks, all the little like load screens make him look like a total goofball. It's kind of red and stimpish in a certain way. It's a little gross to look at at times.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  I, I see, I feel like Donkey Kong is just kind of puerile. I think he's just kind of a gross guy. But embracing that is such a great. Just like nasty.

• 26:11Chris Plante?

  I think that's a great choice and he is a dirty boy and you do see his bottom, you know? So like, how could you not make that?

• 26:18Griffin McElroy?

  So fucked up how they give him pants and then immediately take the pants away.

• 26:21Chris Plante?

  Like, no. No, that's, that's part of the tease.

• 26:25Griffin McElroy?

  I think, yeah, I think it's, I think it's just great. It's, I think it will have an interesting legacy because I, I don't think it is, you know, Super Mario Odyssey two, which I know a lot of people are sort of clamoring for. I don't think it is as like, uh, polished in like the mechanics of it. But I, I think that it also has, I don't think Nintendo's made a game quite like it before. Um, and that, that it definitely deserves recognition for that.

• 26:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a great, it's a great playground and it's a lot of fun and it's a great, uh, it is also, and I mean, we knew this would happen, but it has also had this effect of like, it's glow has elevated the Switch two in my approximation, like the Switch two feels more like, I found myself seeking it out in a way that I haven't done and.

• 27:14Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, yeah, if this had been a launch, launch game, I don't know. I think the, the, the conversation about the Switch 2, which was already pretty good, would have been a lot, a lot sweeter on it. Yeah.

• 27:26Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Hey, we got some reader mail. Want me to open the mailbag?

• 27:29Griffin McElroy?

  Please, please.

• 27:31Chris Plante?

  Uh, this one is from Big Five. Easy cheat code to make a new Mother Earthbound game. Get Toby Fox involved. Nintendo already has a pretty good relationship with him, with his involvement with the Pokemon soundtracks and Delta Room being a Switch 2 launch title. And Toby Fox fans will eat up anything with his name on it, but particularly that seems to be the kind of project Toby Fox would love to work on, given how much of his game dev roots come from Earthbound. I think this is good, but does like Toby Fox even need?

• 28:03Griffin McElroy?

  Does he want that?

• 28:04Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 28:04Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know. I mean, that's how, from what I remember, uh, he like started out in the under, uh, not Undertale. That's the one he made, Earthbound, like.

• 28:13Chris Plante?

  Starman.net, probably?

• 28:15Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, like the, the mods and the translations and, and all that jazz. Um, there's, there's definitely a lot of similarities there, but one, I think he's going to be making Delta Room for a good, long fucking time.

• 28:29Griffin McElroy?

  And yeah, two, like, I don't know if that's something he would even want to do.

• 28:33Chris Plante?

  I could see like him doing music for it.

• 28:36Griffin McElroy?

  And it'd be like, oh, I'm gonna get. Fucked up. It would be fucked up if someone made it, though. This is, this is actually a good point. If someone made it and, and he, he was not involved to some extent, that would be, uh, pretty wild.

• 28:48Chris Plante?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, this one we've got from Dayton. Uh, I've been really surprised to hear people confused about the new Kirby Air Ride. I grew up in the GameCube generation and feel a sense of incredible fondness for that game from other people who played it. I wonder if the generation getting nostalgic reboots and re-releases is just aging up. We certainly have plenty of PS1 nostalgia in the past year or two.

• 29:11Griffin McElroy?

  Totally fair observation. Like if you were a kid of a certain age when GameCube came out and you were you were sucking the nutrients out of every release that they deigned to give you, I imagine that the nostalgia factor would be quite high. For me, it is virtually nonexistent. I did not play Kirby's Air Ride, but maybe once or twice at a friend's house.

• 29:36Chris Plante?

  I mean, I'm just excited because Sakurai making a game that's not Smash Brothers is a thing to be excited about.

• 29:42Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I'm excited. But it's purely, you know, we love this pink man. I'm excited anytime anybody's not making Smash Brothers. Yeah, that's weird. I had this thought yesterday. Isn't it kind of weird that there's not like a Switch 2 version of Smash Bros. Ultimate? That doesn't seem kind of weird. Doesn't that seem like a tent pole ass thing that people are still fucking playing that you would want to? Get that money wherever they want to, right? Get an extra 10 bucks a pop out of people for? Wait till they need that money.

• 30:14Chris Plante?

  That's probably it, is that they're gonna, you know, walk this dog for as long as they can. That we'll get that. Maybe that's this Christmas, right? They need some big fancy refresh for Christmas and that seems like the right time to do it.

• 30:30Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, but I don't know that they would have the courage of their convictions to do that without adding more characters to the roster. And they've been so explicit, like, we're fucking done, man. We put Minecraft Steve in there. We can't fucking do anymore.

• 30:46Chris Plante?

  And the chicken jockey, yeah. Should we talk about what else we're playing? Y'all got any other good stuff going on?

• 30:53Griffin McElroy?

  Did y'all talk about Merge Maestro last week?

• 30:56Chris Plante?

  I don't believe so.

• 30:58Griffin McElroy?

  Fuck yeah, dude! Yeah, it's good. Griffin made me play it. It's good. Merge Maestro is an iOS game. I believe it's also on Steam, maybe a couple other platforms. It is sort of like a basic structure of a 3's or 2048.

• 31:20Griffin McElroy?

  Is that the name of the other one? Where you have a board with 16 slots on it. You are dropping these tiles numbered 1 through 8 on it. And you combine like tiles to make the next highest one. If you have a 1 on the board and you drag another 1 on top of it, it turns into a 2. As this is happening, enemies are spawning in slots across from your board. And the point of the game is to take them out before they can attack and kill you. Between each sort of like set of waves of new enemies coming in, you go to a shop where you swap out one of your sort of like featureless numbered tokens for one that gives you some sort of ability, some sort of power.

• 32:04Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe this one does multiple attacks whenever it spawns in. Maybe this one creates some sort of buffing item whenever it is destroyed. There's like a dozen different ways that these things trigger and synergize. And there's like a million different ways that you can kind of like build a strategy to complete a game which goes through 15 different waves of enemies. There's also like, you know, constant perks that you will unlock every 5 waves, which will really inform the strategy that you go with. And they'll be like, you know, your number 3 token triggers 2 more times.

• 32:47Griffin McElroy?

  It's just like, there's also, I think, 10 different sets of 20 tokens. And every time you play, it mixes together 5 of those sets to create like a new deck. So you don't really know what you're gonna have whenever you, you know, start a new round. Then there's like Bellatro style, like different difficulties. And if you get certain win streaks on those difficulties, you'll unlock new challenges and new sets and new boards. And like, there's just so much shit and this game is $3. It's just, and it really, really, really, uh, fully consumed me, I will say. When we were traveling last week, I spent a lot of time in the car, just sort of.

• 33:30Griffin McElroy?

  Trying to knock out some of the challenges on my phone, um, but it is very, it's great, man. It, it has the aesthetic of a super auto pets, sort of like a very emoji. Style interface, but don't let that turn you off. Uh, there's like, there's so, so, so much game here.

• 33:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's very cool.

• 33:51Griffin McElroy?

  I've, I've found myself very, very compelled by it. Uh, also, uh, we finished watching the studio. Have you guys talked about that?

• 33:58Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah.

• 34:00Griffin McElroy?

  The, uh, Seth, Seth Rogen comedy about a team of, uh, creative executives at a high profile movie house, uh, in, in Hollywood and his sort of foibles in trying to run the company. It's very, very funny, very ambitious sort of stuff. I mostly wanted to watch it because every single person who was on it got nominated for Golden Globes, um, some of whom were in an episode featuring fake Golden Globes. So it's very inward looking, this, this program, but I really liked it.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  You guys talked about maze mice last time, right?

• 34:34Griffin McElroy?

  Yes.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's really good for you. You played maze mice?

• 34:37Griffin McElroy?

  I didn't play, I didn't play maze mice.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  Yes, and you've been enjoying it? Man, maze mice is, uh, okay, imagine you're a mouse, okay? And you're on a Pac-Man style maze and you're running around the house maze trying to eat all the delicious cheese in the maze. But here's the thing about it, you're being trailed by cats. And as you pass by other cats, they start trailing you too. Until you have an increasingly long line of cats. But as you are picking up upgrade, as you're picking up the cheese, the power, you're getting more and more powerful. And you're getting upgrades in the fashion of like, uh, vampire survivors. So maybe you start leaving behind a trail of fire to kill cats.

• 35:23Speaker 00

  Or maybe you start shooting spikes at any cats that are near you, et cetera, et cetera. And so you can kind of build a strategy around how you're going to eliminate cats. Now, as long as you can stay ahead of the cats in the maze, you're probably okay. Until the line gets too long and they start to cut you off. That's bad. And then there's also free floating enemies that are not constrained by the mice that are trying to get you. So you're like having to deal with those and eat all the, the power up so you can keep leveling up your, your, you know, your cat killing abilities.

• 35:51Griffin McElroy?

  These are nasty looking cats, by the way. Like, there's probably people hearing this thinking like, that's awful. If you could see these cats.

• 35:57Speaker 00

  They are nasty kitties. So it's a very, it's like a, it's like one of those like two great tastes kind of things. It just like, it just works. It's fun. Uh, it's, it is, uh, it works in a very predictable way, but that doesn't mean that it don't work. So it's, I like it a lot.

• 36:15Griffin McElroy?

  It's the same dev as luck be a landlord also, which is also sort of similar to, uh, merge, merge maestro for sure. But yeah, this looks like, uh, what are you playing this on? Steam?

• 36:24Speaker 00

  Steam deck. Yeah.

• 36:26Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Uh, yeah.

• 36:28Chris Plante?

  Speaking of games that can be broken, one of our listeners sent us a video of it on Steam Deck where they had gotten a perfect build and it was just slowly degrading the Steam Deck's quality. Like literally hands off checking in on it every 15 minutes. After three hours, the Steam Deck was moving at like two frames per second.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  That's great.

• 36:48Chris Plante?

  As hordes of mice or cats got destroyed. It was very good. Um, cool. Yeah. The only thing that I have, and we'll be talking more about this on the next episode of the Resties, but Wheel World, do you know about this?

• 37:02Griffin McElroy?

  Is it a racing game?

• 37:04Chris Plante?

  It, it kinda, yeah. It's a, it's a bike, a cycle racing game, but, uh, Griffin, you'll be most excited because it's the new game from Messhoff, the creator of Midhoff.

• 37:16Griffin McElroy?

  That's what I thought. That's what, just based on the.

• 37:18Chris Plante?

  Yes. And it's just a good chill out video game. I mean, you know me, I love games like that remake of SSX or Steep where you just flow through a really pretty environment and that's this. I mean, it's, um, hoops, speaking in theme park terms, you know the Cars land in Disneyland? When you go and it's like, everything is just owed to Cars?

• 37:45Speaker 00

  I mean, I can imagine. I've never been, but I get what you're saying.

• 37:47Chris Plante?

  Well, now I have to get you out of California. It's like that.

• 37:50Speaker 00

  Oh, no, no, no. I was within five feet of it. I just didn't want to waste my time. I've been to Disney World, so.

• 37:55Griffin McElroy?

  Jesus Christ.

• 37:58Griffin McElroy?

  That's

• 37:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I went to Disney. I went to downtown Disney. I just wasn't gonna walk all the way over to Disneyland. No, thanks, man.

• 38:03Griffin McElroy?

  You weren't gonna walk away the way over to Disneyland because the guilt we would have felt going to Disneyland without our children would have been unbearable.

• 38:10Speaker 00

  Just like, I've been to world, it's like bigger, you know, I can imagine it bigger.

• 38:14Chris Plante?

  Yeah, inherently better. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:17Chris Plante?

  Um, well, so there's this, there's this like, you know, trashy little place called Disneyland and they do have a cars theme park where everything is known to cars. Real world is like that, but for bikes where everything in this world is centered around bike culture from like, the only thing people want to do is talk about bikes. They want to sell bike parts. All of the like ancient statues are based off of bikes. It's just-

• 38:40Speaker 00

  I love that in video games. That's like my favorite video game trip. What was the monster hunting game where it was like, a resort island, but literally every conversation was just always about monster hunting. Cause like, why do you want to talk about other stuff?

• 38:51Griffin McElroy?

  You mean Pokemon? Dungeons of, Dungeons of Hinterberg?

• 38:54Speaker 00

  Dungeons of Hinterberg. God, that was a good game. Yeah.

• 38:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that was a good one.

• 38:58Chris Plante?

  Um, uh, but yeah, I'll be talking about this more with our boy Fresh. Um, so if you want to hear more about this game and other stuff, listen to the resties. That is it. I think we did it. Do we have anything else?

• 39:09Griffin McElroy?

  No.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  No.

• 39:11Griffin McElroy?

  Cool.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  We got some thank yous.

• 39:12Griffin McElroy?

  More, you greedy hog.

• 39:15Speaker 00

  I'd like to thank you more. I could tell them about our Patreon. That's okay.

• 39:18Chris Plante?

  Oh, yeah. Let's do that.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I got a Patreon. If you want to support this show, if you like what we do, you can go to patreon.com slash the besties. You can also gift a membership at patreon.com slash the besties dot gift slot. No, sorry. The besties slash gift. Uh, thanks to members this week, people like Bryson and James and Dave and Freud's hot mom. Next week, what are we doing?

• 39:40Griffin McElroy?

  I, it says, it says here-

• 39:42Speaker 00

  No way, dude. Nay, Fresh, no way, dude.

• 39:44Griffin McElroy?

  It says here, I think next week is gonna be a little bit up for grabs. Uh, there is the System Shock 2 remake, which, um, I don't know that I would have a lot to say about.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  I'll be here. Guys, do whatever you want.

• 39:57Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, that's a good point. Grounded, Grounded 2 just hit early access. I might get into that.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  Next week, Grounded 2.

• 40:02Griffin McElroy?

  Okay. Well, you're not gonna be here, so.

• 40:04Speaker 00

  We'll do both. Double header. Grounded 2 and-

• 40:09Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, yeah, we'll talk about something next week and it's gonna be fucking great. So just like chill out.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  Just be calm. That's gonna do it for us until next time. Be sure to join us again on the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

• 40:51Speaker 00

  Besties.