Uh Oh! We're Drowning in Games Again

This week, we throw our own summer festival of video games by opening the grab bag! There was so much stuff to play, it took all three Besties working on different piles to separate the “Yes!” from the “Yuck!” Want a meta Sherlock Holmes mystery? How about overlooked DLC to a Besties favorite? Or maybe you want to hear about Steam running on Android emulators? Friends, we have something for everyone!

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

• 0:00Russ Frushtick?

  Don't you think there should be more berries?

• 0:03Chris Plante?

  Like different types of berries?

• 0:05Griffin McElroy?

  Like in life?

• 0:06Russ Frushtick?

  Just like there are prime berries, right? We can all agree on the prime berries.

• 0:11Griffin McElroy?

  Straw, blue, black.

• 0:12Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 0:13Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 0:14Russ Frushtick?

  Seems like too few.

• 0:16Griffin McElroy?

  You want the whole rainbow.

• 0:18Russ Frushtick?

  It's just like for a genre of, that is such a staple of, for example, cereal, to have so few options to pick from?

• 0:26Griffin McElroy?

  Well, there's the bullshit classifications. And before you, dear listener, pushing, pushing your glasses up, I'm actually a banana is technically a berry. Like, I'm not, no, small, plump, juicy, sweet. These are berries. I don't need like an apple slipping in there because its seeds are, you know, in the right place.

• 0:43Russ Frushtick?

  There needs to be a, a drawing of it when you open the encyclopedia, like a stipple drawing of an actual berry. No one's putting a fucking stipple apple in your encyclopedia.

• 0:52Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Is strawberry a berry, though?

• 0:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 0:55Griffin McElroy?

  Straw, I'm not, I don't, Chris, I just explicitly said I don't give a shit.

• 0:59Chris Plante?

  I just find out about aggregates, but it's okay.

• 1:01Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's an aggregate berry. It's a super berry.

• 1:04Griffin McElroy?

  Give me an orange berry. Ooh, I don't even know what an orange berry would be, but it would, just imagine the exotic flavor that it could possess.

• 1:10Russ Frushtick?

  Would not be good in cereal, though. It would make the milk curdle.

• 1:14Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15Russ Frushtick?

  It's not a stipulation. It doesn't need to be good in cereal, but.

• 1:19Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, but that's your main, that's your main berry consumption.

• 1:21Russ Frushtick?

  It should be.

• 1:23Chris Plante?

  I feel like there are a lot of green berries, but you probably shouldn't eat any green berry. Wait, wait, is a grape? Is a grape a berry?

• 1:31Griffin McElroy?

  Again, I can't, I don't, I can't stress this enough. I don't care. Yes, a grape is a berry. Look at it. Juicy, plump, sweet.

• 1:38Chris Plante?

  That's why I asked.

• 1:40Russ Frushtick?

  It is a berry, especially champagne grapes are like great berries.

• 1:44Chris Plante?

  Oh, yeah, those are.

• 1:46Russ Frushtick?

  There might be a science. No, I don't care about the science. I care about what feels like a berry to me and my heart and my soul.

• 1:51Griffin McElroy?

  Like a berry. Watermelon's berry. No, it's not. Watermelon's not a berry. It's too heavy for me to pick up.

• 1:56Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 1:58Chris Plante?

  Can't buy right into it either.

• 1:59Griffin McElroy?

  How can that be a berry? We need to be drying, we need to be raisining more stuff also, because raisins slap ass. They are so good. And I think they're the best byproduct of grapes in time. And I know that's a controversial position. I, I love me a cran raisin, but let's, cranberries.

• 2:22Griffin McElroy?

  Gimme a dried up, uh, gimme a dried up blackberry. Gimme a dried up, uh, banana. Gimme, we dry, dry everything up. Let's see what's good. Let's see what's not. We gotta stop living in fear of, of dry, dry food.

• 2:35Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I, I am frequently astounded by the experiments that Trader Joe's does on dried fruit. And it worries me to some extent because they might be going too far.

• 2:46Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, dry mango, that's okay.

• 2:48Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's fine.

• 2:49Griffin McElroy?

  Dry papaya, dry papaya is kinda nothing.

• 2:52Russ Frushtick?

  Hold on, dried pineapple? No.

• 2:55Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Russ Frushtick?

  Can't allow it.

• 2:56Griffin McElroy?

  I do absolutely can't.

• 2:57Russ Frushtick?

  Can't allow it.

• 2:58Griffin McElroy?

  I'm all about it.

• 2:59Chris Plante?

  Anyway, I think we have another 10 minutes on a new topic. Why don't we have more nanas?

• 3:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. You know, I don't have any anymore.

• 3:08Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, no.

• 3:28Griffin McElroy?

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

• 3:31Chris Plante?

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

• 3:34Russ Frushtick?

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

• 3:38Griffin 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. And just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member of said club. This week, uh, we're going to be talking about a bunch of different stuff. We've all played a handful of games here in a, one of our classic grab bag segments. Uh, so we're going to be covering a ton of stuff. Then we're going to circle back in the B block to talk a little bit about the adventures of Elliot, the millennium tales. Uh, so, so a big one, stuff to the gills this app. Um, but maybe we should take a break first and catch our breath because that was two and a half minutes of recording we just did and I'm freaking tired.

• 4:16Russ Frushtick?

  I'm exhausted too, just listening to it.

• 4:17Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 4:20Chris Plante?

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• 5:05Chris Plante?

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• 5:39Chris Plante?

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• 5:55Russ Frushtick?

  Where do we want to start with this magical grab bag episode that we've planned for the team? I think we should start with the new.

• 6:03Chris Plante?

  I want to go back and I want to go back in time.

• 6:05Russ Frushtick?

  I want to be crushed in time. That is my fetish.

• 6:08Griffin McElroy?

  It's funny that you guys said the opposite shit. It's, it's really funny how Russ was like, I want to start with something new. And Chris was like, I want to start with something old.

• 6:16Chris Plante?

  And we could just be crushed in time. You know, I think, I think we should, I think we should start with being crushed in time.

• 6:23Griffin McElroy?

  Okay. I would love to talk about crushing time. I played through all of it. Mostly over this past weekend, I was traveling, as was Chris, to go to our friend's wedding in Austin. Sorry, you didn't get the invite, Russ. I tried.

• 6:37Russ Frushtick?

  I was there at the window banging and no one heard me.

• 6:41Griffin McElroy?

  Um, yeah. It's because it's a game that's fun. We thought it was the win to go, but now that I know that it was you, that makes a lot more sense. Uh, Crushed in Time is the new adventure game, sort of inspired by classic point and clicks, created by Draw Me a Pixel, whose name you may not recognize, but is a studio that made a really delightful adventure game called There Is No Game, where There Is No Game dealt with, I don't know, the state of modern gaming in a sort of, uh, parodical way. You went through like a handful of different gaming genres, solving, uh, different classic

• 7:22Griffin McElroy?

  adventure game style puzzles, uh, all the while, kind of like dismantling the games in which, uh, you, you are exploring. Uh, Crushed in Time does a very similar thing, uh, in a way that I thought was a lot more sort of cogent than There Is No Game. Did either of you guys play it yet?

• 7:39Russ Frushtick?

  No, I haven't had the chance. I love There Is No Game, but yeah, I did get the sense that like, it was like five or six disparate ideas sort of melded together into an anthology.

• 7:49Griffin McElroy?

  Sure. It starts out and it's like, you're looking at a main menu and you have to like rip buttons out of the main menu and use it. So like the wrench icon for the, the settings, you pull that off and now you have a wrench item that you can use to, that, that was sort of where, where that game started. Then it went all kinds of different directions. The one you should know about is that there is a point and click adventure game in a very classic LucasArts style, featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, which is the focus entirely of Crushed in Time. The reason it's much more cogent is it's a Sherlock Holmes and Watson story more than it is, uh, anything else, and it sort of sticks to it. The subject that it explores, and if you'd rather go in sort of pure, uh, to this, to

• 8:31Griffin McElroy?

  this thing and not kind of know any of those sort of twists, I'm not going to like fully blow the thing wide open, uh, but you may want to skip forward a couple of minutes. What this game explores is that same style of like, what if video game characters were aware that they were in a virtual simulated sort of style thing? And they were solving, you know, these classic point and click adventure puzzles, but they were doing so while traveling between different versions of the game. So for instance, you might get pulled into Alpha and now like the environment is like all wireframy and like not quite finished. Then you hop into like a brainstorming phase.

• 9:16Griffin McElroy?

  You hop into like the, there's like an eight bit era that you go in and explore. And then a four bit sort of game and watch style era, like you're moving between all of these different things as these characters are sort of learning the truth about the nature of their world. That is kind of the, the hook. It is more about game development as a creative process and kind of everything that goes into that.

• 9:37Chris Plante?

  Sounds like a delight.

• 9:38Russ Frushtick?

  Does it still hold together as like also a Sherlock Holmes mystery?

• 9:44Griffin McElroy?

  Mostly. Yeah, I think so. I mean, this version of Sherlock Holmes is mostly just kind of played up for laughs. Like he is a, he is a total dummy and Watson is the one that like actually knows what is going on.

• 9:57Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, that was always kind of the case.

• 9:59Griffin McElroy?

  Always the case, right? But Sherlock in, in this game is just profoundly useless. And in fact, a lot of the puzzles that you're trying to solve, most of the time are like Sherlock is standing in your way. Sherlock won't let you drive the car. Sherlock won't do this. You have to figure it out. The, so that's like the, the tone of the game, whereas there is no game was sort of a scattershot like, and now this is the microtransaction world. It's an RPG, but everything's microtransactions and we're going to say something about that. This is purely a start to finish. Like here's the creative video game process and the characters in the game are, know that they're in it and they're sort of learning about it.

• 10:34Russ Frushtick?

  That's really cool. I was worried because you know, obviously the is, there is no game format can be done a lot, but it can be also kind of a box that you can get caught in. So them finding a way to make an entire game and an entire narrative that's consistent, but still working in that video game framework is like, cool. That makes me more excited to try it, quite honestly.

• 10:56Griffin McElroy?

  They've made one big choice that I'm a little bit torn on. I finished the game and I really, really enjoyed it. I think it's a great follow-up to there's no game. I think in a lot of ways it like surpasses it.

• 11:06Russ Frushtick?

  Do you have a sense of how long it took you?

• 11:08Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, not too long, maybe five hours or so, five or six hours. And most of that, by the way, I spent on the plane with my son, Henry. And we were just kind of like passing it back and forth, uh, which was like a really fun little time. Uh, cause the puzzles are not so difficult that he like, couldn't quite understand them. But the main, the only means of interaction you have with the world is you're this like omniscient, you know, cursor that they can't see, but they know has some influence that they always explain away like, oh, uh, something slapped me. There must be a bug in here or something. The only interaction you have with the game is grabbing and pulling on things. So like to interact with a button, you have to like grab it and you pull it. And then when it snaps back, it, it like interacts with a thing.

• 11:50Griffin McElroy?

  Or if you're launching a thing, you pull it back in one direction, let go, almost in like a Super Mario 64, like face manipulation.

• 11:57Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 11:57Griffin McElroy?

  Type thing. That's it. Like all the puzzles are like, you have to help, uh, Watson get across this train by like pulling different parts of it into the right place and then launching in between different point, like it's.

• 12:10Chris Plante?

  That sounds like it would run out of options.

• 12:13Griffin McElroy?

  You would think so, but because the game world is changing with every chapter. Like the stuff that you are doing is, uh, is, is, is like pretty, pretty dramatically different. Even though the mechanics of interaction are exactly the same. For instance, there's a prototype world where, because it's a prototype world, like the mechanics are a lot looser. And you can like adjust them and connect different sort of like, uh, this is interactive. This is a button that means this is interactive. I can drag it onto this item. And now that is, I can use that for that. Like it's, it's pretty clever how, um, and, and I feel like there's no game was like this too. Like it doesn't, none of these mechanics or puzzles like overstay their welcome.

• 12:55Chris Plante?

  That's great.

• 12:55Griffin McElroy?

  You get like a handful of pretty clever sort of solutions to these things. And there's a whole hint system in the game too, if you usually bounce off of stuff like that. I feel like maybe there's no game was a bit cleverer because there's not quite as much of the like, I don't know. It was so sick, like popping the screwdriver off the one icon and then turning the computer around and. You could unscrew it and like that felt really, um, I don't know, satisfying and exciting. And the puzzles to the solutions in this game are satisfying too, but I do think it suffers because of this strange choice that they made, which is like, there's only one way to really interact with stuff.

• 13:33Russ Frushtick?

  That makes sense.

• 13:34Griffin McElroy?

  But I had a great time with it. I think it's a fun game and it's got that great sort of like, um, I don't know, sense of humor about it that is a tricky thing to kind of nail.

• 13:44Russ Frushtick?

  I will say their games couldn't be more French. They are the most French games, at least the older ones.

• 13:49Griffin McElroy?

  There is a bit, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the

• 13:51Chris Plante?

  Be careful, Rayman's just waiting behind the corner.

• 13:53Griffin McElroy?

  Rayman is coming soon. Yeah, but that's question time. It's, uh, it's, it's neat. I haven't gotten stuck into like a, you know, point and click adventure game in a while and I'm happy that I checked this one out.

• 14:05Chris Plante?

  Is there a like smartphone version of this on the way?

• 14:09Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know. I mean, there is no game had a smartphone like iOS version.

• 14:13Chris Plante?

  This seems like the sort of game that I would want to play in that.

• 14:15Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, so I played it on my Rog Ally X and it was like you move the cursor with the thumb stick and then you grab with the A button and pull it back. It's not particularly like

• 14:25Russ Frushtick?

  There wasn't any touch port for that?

• 14:27Griffin McElroy?

  There was, but like, I don't know, I don't, I feel silly when I use my Rog Ally X with its thousand buttons and then just use the touchscreen. But it is probably a better sort of experience to, you know, actually point and click.

• 14:39Russ Frushtick?

  It sounds like, uh, there will be, uh, iOS versions coming later this year for

• 14:44Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, perfect. Love it.

• 14:47Russ Frushtick?

  I've got a new release that I wanted to talk about, uh, specifically teardown has a new DLC. I've talked about teardown a lot over the course of the years.

• 14:57Chris Plante?

  Yeah, can't you like really stuck to this game as it's kind of evolved?

• 15:01Griffin McElroy?

  Can you remind folks? Cause it has been

• 15:02Russ Frushtick?

  It has been a while. So teardown is the game where it's, uh, like an open world-ish sandbox environment, uh, and everything's made out of voxels and everything is fully destructible with physics. So for example, you can knock a building down from like the base of it and no matter how tall the building is, it will all fall and crumble and crush in a realistic way. Despite the fact that it has like Minecraft looking graphics. And most of the game, uh, at least the core game is about planning heists where you set up a scene and come up with like the best route through that scene to like steal a bunch of objects in a row. And they have different variants on that.

• 15:44Griffin McElroy?

  The idea being there's like a prep phase where you're smashing routes through the world. And then as soon as you pick up the loot.

• 15:50Russ Frushtick?

  Right.

• 15:50Griffin McElroy?

  The timer starts going and now it's up to you to like execute the route.

• 15:53Russ Frushtick?

  Correct.

• 15:53Griffin McElroy?

  It's very, very clever.

• 15:55Russ Frushtick?

  I absolutely love this game. It has captured me and it's not the sort of game that I play all the time, but they've been very good about releasing updates and DLCs over the course of many years it first came out. The last DLC which came out a couple of months ago is actually multiplayer, which I have sadly not had chance to play, but you can now play it in cooperative multiplayer, which seems like it'd be super, super fun and something that I would want to do probably with my kid once he's a little bit older. But what I have been playing is a new DLC that just came out called Relics of Barcuna. They've had a number of DLCs. I think it's been like five DLC packs and each of them

• 16:36Russ Frushtick?

  has like a different theming to it. So they've done sci-fi, they've done like art heists and things like that. This one is like a straight Indiana Jones riff.

• 16:44Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, wow. I'm looking at the like key art and it's literally voxel Indiana Jones in the best way.

• 16:50Russ Frushtick?

  Totally. So you've got things like hidden objects and traps and, uh, and things like that.

• 16:58Russ Frushtick?

  It uses like an incredible lighting system and lighting things on fire. Like that's all like incredibly natural format and it ties in with obviously the tropes that you would see in an Indiana Jones thing. So, um, yeah, I mean, the reason I bring it up is mostly twofold. One, if you ever played it previously, you should definitely know that it has multiplayer now and I would recommend at least trying it and letting me know how it is because I definitely want to try it. And two, yeah, this, this DLC has been really fun. I'd love how they just keep approaching this relatively simple idea in like completely different ways every single time. Uh, and it's got like a really strong mod component, the modding community.

• 17:37Griffin McElroy?

  Did you play the mod? Did you play much multiplayer?

• 17:39Russ Frushtick?

  No, I haven't. I haven't tried the multiplayer yet.

• 17:41Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, okay.

• 17:41Russ Frushtick?

  But that is something that I've been meaning to try. It seems like it'd be really, really fun in co-op. I don't know that.

• 17:46Griffin McElroy?

  It feels like you would need a lot of great communication to like make that.

• 17:50Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, yes and no. Like this seems like the sort of thing where. If you just wanted to fuck around, it'd be a lot of fun.

• 17:57Chris Plante?

  Like, I think my kid would have a blast just like knocking buildings down.

• 18:01Russ Frushtick?

  Obviously, if you're trying to like do a mission or something like that, it might require more of that. But, you know, I think there's a lot of opportunity to have a lot of fun in this. And I've probably played like 50 or 60 hours of teardown over the years, so it continues to stick with me.

• 18:17Chris Plante?

  Do you have a recommended starting point? Because there is so much stuff, like, should people just play the base game first?

• 18:23Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, just play the base game and see if it's your bag. I think the base game does a very good job of like easing you into the mechanics. I think some of the later DLCs, like there's a Wild West DLC and things like that.

• 18:37Russ Frushtick?

  I get the sense that they kind of assume that you know some of the tricks and stuff from the base game. Even though like most of your gear does not carry over, like you usually start the DLCs with like no gear at all. And you're unlocking new stuff as you go. So, yeah, I would just start at the beginning. It's a very good place to start.

• 18:58Chris Plante?

  I dig it.

• 19:00Chris Plante?

  Hey, y'all, I have to talk about the Einthor again. And I have to talk about it so much that while I was supposed to be enjoying my friend's wedding in Austin, Texas, the first thing I needed to tell Griffin, the second I saw him was, have you heard the good word? Which is that Game Native 1.0 is now available. And at least in my experience, Steam works very well on the Einthor.

• 19:28Russ Frushtick?

  Let's take a step back because like I barely even remember what the Einthor is.

• 19:33Chris Plante?

  A lot of words, a lot of words. Yeah. You see, now that Justin is not here, somebody needs to really step up and be the, there's a new handheld. The Einthor, it came out actually, I think like mid last year, but has developed this humongous following amongst a relatively niche group of people as the hot emulator handheld of the moment. It looks like a Nintendo DS, but unlike a Nintendo DS, it has dual OLED touchscreen screens, which is just total overkill. Everything about it is beautiful and overkill. And the appeal of it as an emulator has been that people have been designing all of this custom stuff for it.

• 20:18Chris Plante?

  So it just looks fantastic. Still not plug and play, like you need to set it up. You need to go watch the retro Game Corpse video for an hour and get it all good to go. But relatively compared to how these things were years ago, really easy. If you watch a video, you're gonna have it set up within an hour.

• 20:37Griffin McElroy?

  It's also a thing where if you set up one of these Android devices, it's, it's pretty easy to set the rest of them up.

• 20:43Chris Plante?

  The, the gamble that I made in finally deciding to do this and selling all my other emulator handhelds was the game native support. And I think we had checked in on it maybe a few months ago, Griffin, where you had tried it out.

• 20:56Griffin McElroy?

  Yes. Uh, yeah, I mean, there's a couple of these types of compatibility layer Steam emulators, I guess, that you connect your Steam account to, and then you can play games, most games, a lot of games on your Android handheld through Game Native, or I forget what the other one is. There's like another one. Game Hub. Game Hub. Thank you. Um, yes.

• 21:20Chris Plante?

  But, but it had issues because you are playing the Steam game with cloud saves and everything. I know that Griffin, your big issue, which is a huge one, was that the save stuff was just not working at all. There were also issues about it being stuck if you were offline, that you couldn't get the game to actually boot was a problem people were having for a while. From what I can tell, most of that stuff is just gone, gone. And also, you can run things that wouldn't be useful in the past because it has things like, I think, full-on frame generation, but it has FSR. So you can make games like

• 22:00Chris Plante?

  Persona 3 Reload, which I have been playing on this little handheld, look and run really well. Um, it still has a little hitching now and then. To be fair to Persona 3 Reload, it was doing that on the Steam Deck too. Um, so this, this machine is able to play some pretty intensive games. And especially if you are up for playing things that are not like super Twitch-based, it's, it's a perfect match. Um, it worked.

• 22:31Chris Plante?

  So well that I was also able to play a number of Steam Fest demos on it.

• 22:37Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, cool.

• 22:38Chris Plante?

  You know, nothing like these are, these are the things that should break that could break on your PC and they're in their working fine here. I'm realizing just how important form factor is to me right now. And I,

• 22:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 22:49Chris Plante?

  I always thought I was the opposite. I thought like Steam Deck is good enough. I'd rather it just work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Man, like y'all, I Griffin, I know that you've been, you've been championing this for a while, but like that ability to just clamshell shut your thing and have it be light. And just toss it in a bag is huge, especially when I have an RPG that I want to be picking at. Throughout the summer, right? Um, and that's exactly how it's worked. I mean, I literally put it in rest and I. Hop in whenever I can, and then I toss it back and I don't worry about it. Uh, it is great.

• 23:24Griffin McElroy?

  I love my Thor. I have been, uh, I got the Retroid Pocket 6, which is kind of now the sort of like entry. Level ish thing that looks fucking amazing and can play a ton of stuff and doesn't cost like $800. Uh, it's like a really nice size. I got it right here. It's like the size of Vita. Uh, I really, really like it a lot.

• 23:44Russ Frushtick?

  Is it the same size as the five?

• 23:47Griffin McElroy?

  The five? Well, I'm glad you asked. Yes, it's virtually, it's almost entirely the same size as the five.

• 23:53Russ Frushtick?

  But they moved the thumbs, they fixed the thumbsticks.

• 23:55Griffin McElroy?

  They did. They, well, you can get a whatever orientation you want. The left thumbstick can be on the top or on the bottom, depending on like what you prefer. Um, I got it because of game native. I got it because of game native and game hub of like, there's types of Steam games that. I don't want to hold my big rogue ally X to play a Mina the Hollower that does not need all of that sort of like raw power. I would wait. Form factor is huge for me. It is so huge. And while I agree that the game native like. Compatibility stuff is insane. I downloaded Dragon Quest 11, uh, cause I hadn't played that one in a really long time and I love the way it looks. And I got it going while I was in Austin after you gave me the recommendation and was playing it a little bit before our flight.

• 24:40Griffin McElroy?

  Um, and then got on our flight and then it lost connection to the Steam servers and then the thing just shut down. And then I couldn't relaunch it again until I got back on the internet. It's that, that is still, uh, and maybe it's game to game, maybe, but this has been my experience like every, every single time. And that is like the context in which I want this. Thing the most is when I'm traveling and want like a little light handheld that I can play like a lightweight Steam game on. It's it's just it's impressive and there are definitely contexts in which I would I would definitely want to use this just sitting around the house. I think I would rather play most Steam games on a smaller device than than the Rog Ally X, but until I feel like until

• 25:24Griffin McElroy?

  Steam native.

• 25:26Russ Frushtick?

  Which is gonna happen.

• 25:26Griffin McElroy?

  Just it's gonna happen, but until that happens, like the compatibility layer thing is just gonna make.

• 25:33Russ Frushtick?

  It's gonna be a little hacky.

• 25:34Chris Plante?

  Yeah, and it's going to be like every emulator handheld thing where I almost certainly know exactly what happened there. You had Wi-Fi on and then you got on a plane.

• 25:46Griffin McElroy?

  A plane.

• 25:47Chris Plante?

  Right. And the like trick, this is not to say that you did it wrong. This is.

• 25:51Russ Frushtick?

  Clearly Griffin did it wrong and doesn't.

• 25:53Chris Plante?

  No, this, no, this is like.

• 25:54Russ Frushtick?

  No, no, Chris, please mansplain Griffin.

• 25:57Chris Plante?

  I know, I want to hear how to fix this. Point that these things like all of the emulator handheld things are like, well, in this case, I just left Wi-Fi off the entire time I was traveling. And then when I got back, I turned it on and then uploaded.

• 26:10Griffin McElroy?

  So wait, with Wi-Fi off, you could still like launch games and stuff?

• 26:14Chris Plante?

  Yeah, so with with the the trick, again, and this is insufferable. I'm sure there are people like, like, this is, why would you even bother? If you just turn off Wi-Fi before you leave your house and before you open your games, and then you go out, you can just open all your games. As long as you've opened them once, you can then continue to open them, but you have to leave Wi-Fi off. But this is exactly the like, that shouldn't be how things work. But for people who use emulator handhelds, that is like, oh, there's always.

• 26:43Griffin McElroy?

  You're used to stuff like, yeah, I did not know that. I assumed if you turned Wi-Fi off, then the whole thing just fell apart, but um, that's.

• 26:49Chris Plante?

  Video games.

• 26:51Griffin McElroy?

  I am still super excited about this world, about like the Android and Linux like gaming handheld world. I feel like everyone is kind of holding their breath a little bit for

• 27:05Griffin McElroy?

  for native Steam.

• 27:06Russ Frushtick?

  It's that's gonna, it's gonna be a fucking-

• 27:08Griffin McElroy?

  The hardware, the hardware advancements since the AYN Thor have not been anything to write like-

• 27:13Russ Frushtick?

  Right.

• 27:14Griffin McElroy?

  Anything. The Retroid Pocket 6 I like a lot, but it's like not, it looks identical to the 5. The screen's way nicer.

• 27:20Russ Frushtick?

  Steam running on every one of these things natively without-

• 27:23Griffin McElroy?

  On whatever you want, right? That's like, that's gonna be fucking huge. And because of the, you know, world economic situation, sort of keeping hardware from, you know, evolving as quickly as it has in the past, like, I feel like this is the thing that everyone's sort of waiting on.

• 27:41Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 27:41Chris Plante?

  They have to be working on it, right?

• 27:43Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, I think, I think so, yeah.

• 27:45Russ Frushtick?

  They are working on it. There's been leaks in ARM versions of Steam.

• 27:49Chris Plante?

  Okay.

• 27:50Russ Frushtick?

  I don't know if they've publicly said it, but it's for sure happening, and just a matter of time.

• 27:56Griffin McElroy?

  I got two quick ones, if I can add on. There is, both of these on Steam. One is called Voidling Bound, which is a third-person sort of run-based action game. You are sort of an astronaut, a space explorer, who is traveling between these planets that have been taken over by this corruption. And the means that your organization has come up with to fight this corruption is to train up space creatures and evolve them in a sort of more kind of Risk of Rain-style third-person action thing, not a turn-based Pokémon-style thing.

• 28:37Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, they don't want to get sued.

• 28:39Griffin McElroy?

  No. So like, the basic loop is you'll, you'll have a, you know, a little critter go into a world and collect a bunch of different like resources and like elemental mutagens, and then you go back to your base and then you spend those to evolve your, your critter and, you know, they get different abilities. You can upgrade sort of their, their stats on a skill tree. You go- Out into the next mission and you find eggs to hatch new creatures and it is, it is very neat. It's had a, it's got a lot of heat this game. And I've played it for a few hours. I really like what they're doing. It feels fantastic and it really encourages you to experiment with like making lots of different voidlings.

• 29:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 29:23Griffin McElroy?

  They're, they're called, so there's a reason to really engage with like the mutation system and all, you know.

• 29:28Russ Frushtick?

  It looks like spore.

• 29:30Griffin McElroy?

  It does. I think the vibe of the game is very spore coded. Yes.

• 29:33Russ Frushtick?

  Which like, I don't even know if that's even a relevant, it's not a relevant reference. I know for sure that's not.

• 29:37Griffin McElroy?

  No.

• 29:38Russ Frushtick?

  But it does look like spore.

• 29:40Griffin McElroy?

  I think I have wrapped up my time with it. It has gotten a little bit repetitive because of this like mission based structure of like, go out, you know, find, find some stuff, destroy this corruption and fight a final boss and then you come home and you get, get your rewards. And that's been a complaint that I've sort of heard leveraged at the game, but I think it's really neat and I'm always excited by a game that can like introduce a fold into this sort of tried and true pet training formula and do it in a way that like feels really great. Cause they're running around and shooting and dodging and all that jazz is, is really terrific. I have also been playing Pronoun Palace, which is a Scrabble combat rogue like.

• 30:26Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 30:27Griffin McElroy?

  And it, and it is, it takes place in this dystopian world where the fascist government has taken away everyone's pronouns. And it is a game that is pretty explicitly about the like bureaucratic barriers that trans folks have when it comes to transitioning.

• 30:47Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 30:48Griffin McElroy?

  And that, that stuff is so, I don't know, unlike stuff that I'm typically exposed to in games while being aware of that sort of.

• 30:58Russ Frushtick?

  Let alone in a puzzle game, like.

• 30:59Griffin McElroy?

  Let alone in a puzzle game, but it is also like a bookworm adventure style. Like you go into combat, you have a set of like 16 tiles with different letters and different like values on them. And so your Scrabble. style like spelling out big, long words. You get access to spells that allow you to sort of like change the board. So like you can replace one tile with a super powerful TH tile and those spells recharge as you like use certain letters. So like to recharge your TH spell, you have to like use a bunch of use. But as you use those that like recharge it. But then there's also like, uh, you know, passive upgrades. It is very rogue likey where you're going through like a few acts on your way to, you know, take on

• 31:41Griffin McElroy?

  the head of the party that is taking away everyone's pronouns. They throw a lot of stuff in there that is very, very, very clever. Like each fight has a different like, uh, this enemy inflicts this kind of status effect. Uh, there's, there's one enemy that makes it, uh, I forget what they're called. It's like a, a pair of enemies and they will change rows into specific colors and you can't touch those same colors together while spelling a word or they'll make letters capital and then those can only be used to start a word. And so you're like trying to figure out ways to get through.

• 32:14Russ Frushtick?

  Holy shit. I'm looking at screenshots right now and this game does not hold back in a pretty incredible way. Just like very dark things that you're fighting that are like

• 32:26Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, sure.

• 32:27Russ Frushtick?

  not pulling punches on, God, there's like a woman in like a coffin and there's like a child connected to her still with the umbilical cord.

• 32:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, no, I mean, they're

• 32:37Russ Frushtick?

  They go for it.

• 32:38Griffin McElroy?

  It goes fucking, it goes fucking hard. And it is like, I don't know, there is a, I think a principled earned kind of rage, maybe.

• 32:47Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, no.

• 32:48Griffin McElroy?

  Happening behind the tone of the thing. But I, it is also like, there are moments of like kind of joy that, that happen on like a successful run in the face of like all of this stuff. I, I don't know. I, I found it incredibly, um, just incredibly fucking cool.

• 33:06Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's really good.

• 33:07Griffin McElroy?

  And it, the, the, I played through, I was up really late, just like trying to finish a run because it was going really well. And then I ended up completing it and it was like 1:30 in the morning and I didn't realize it. Uh, so it can really, really get its hooks into you. Um, but yeah, it's just a, it's a, it's a banger sort of all around.

• 33:25Russ Frushtick?

  That's cool. Yeah, I gotta check this out.

• 33:28Griffin McElroy?

  Let's take a short break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about our old pal Elliot, the time traveling adventurer.

• 33:35Russ Frushtick?

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• 34:19Russ Frushtick?

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• 34:27Russ Frushtick?

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• 35:08Russ Frushtick?

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• 35:49Chris Plante?

  So this game's about Ichii, is that right?

• 35:51Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 35:52Chris Plante?

  Didn't play this one. What the hell are we talking about? Why is Elliot going on adventure?

• 35:59Griffin McElroy?

  Well, he's an adventurer, Chris, so you sound like a real fool. Did you not play Elliot? The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales?

• 36:05Chris Plante?

  No, everybody kept telling me that I shouldn't play the game.

• 36:08Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so this is an amazing moment.

• 36:10Chris Plante?

  I was just trying to listen to my friends, you know.

• 36:13Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I didn't, no, that's fair.

• 36:15Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 36:16Griffin McElroy?

  We originally were going to do a whole episode about this game because I've been looking forward to it for a very long time. Square Enix is new HD 2D, sort of inspired by classic, you know, mana series, inspired by Zelda. Top-down, action, sort of RPG-style thing, like all of that. Yes, yes, check, check, check, check, check. Loving it, loving it. And I have really not enjoyed my time with it. And I think we were all sort of on the same page and didn't just want to dump all over the thing for a whole episode of this show.

• 36:52Russ Frushtick?

  Let me take a step back because I was very excited about this game for one main reason. And as we all know, JRPGs largely don't stick with me. And I understand this is not technically a JRPG, but it has a lot of the elements that are in those games.

• 37:05Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 37:06Russ Frushtick?

  But part of the reason those games don't stick with me is because I don't necessarily find the turn-based combat to be super engaging usually. So the idea of having an action-based combat system, very enticing. And also visually speaking, very enticing. Like, and I think, Griffin, you'll probably agree with me, I think this game looks fucking stunning. Like, it's really nice to look at.

• 37:26Griffin McElroy?

  It does. The game looks stunning, as Octopath looks stunning, as, you know, all the Dragon Quest remakes look stunning. Like, I'm a sucker for this stuff. The pixel work that they do is incredible. It is malpractice.

• 37:40Griffin McElroy?

  To have a game that looks this stunning and then put a absolute fucking toilet tier mobile game ass UI over the entire thing for the entire run of it. It's crazy to me.

• 37:52Chris Plante?

  Yeah, the UI is not pretty to look at.

• 37:55Griffin McElroy?

  And I realize that that is probably a quibbling complaint. The thing, this is why I feel nervous talking about this game because there are a lot of people out there who like it. So please, like, your mileage certainly may vary with this game.

• 38:09Griffin McElroy?

  But there's things about it that just seemed like such bad decisions that ultimately kind of detracted so completely from the the stuff I enjoyed about the game that I just didn't want to stick with it any longer than I absolutely had to.

• 38:24Chris Plante?

  I-

• 38:25Griffin McElroy?

  And the UI is the UI is chief among them because about an eighth of the screen is occupied by a little circle where your helper sits and you get a couple of different helpers throughout the game. One is a princess who has magic healing powers. She's she's pretty chill. And then the second one is a fairy. And they tell you what to do fucking constantly. They tell you what to do all the time.

• 38:46Chris Plante?

  Is there some overlap happening between mobile and like, I guess, portable or even console games that we're not quite piecing together yet? Because here's what I mean. We have that the Octopath Traveler Zero, which is a like pseudo adaptation of a mobile game. We have this new Final Fantasy that just got announced that is also a pseudo adaptation of a mobile game. We have this that is like, sounds like-

• 39:12Griffin McElroy?

  I referenced the mobile game thing. The only similarities that when you are playing the game and you defeat like a certain number of enemies, you activate like a chain bonus and now they drop more currency when you defeat them. And that the way that shows up on the screen, it just looks like a big like banner promoting like a limited time gotcha event in Fire Emblem here. Like, it looks crazy. That is, that's a small complaint. The UI is is pretty bad, but the the main thing is really just the constant-

• 39:46Griffin McElroy?

  Input that you get from the little, the little, the child that lives in the corner of your, of your screen. And I know that there's like this whole trend of like, what if, what if Ocarina of Time was a modern game? I think it'd go a little something like this. Link, you gotta use the small key. You got the small key? Like, I find those largely kind of annoying because I don't think that's particularly representative of modern gaming. But holy shit, guys, you cannot walk past a cracked wall in this game without your little person saying like, "That wall looks like you could get it with a bomb. Thanks. Why, if you do it every single time, like what? Why not just make them doors then? Like..."

• 40:25Chris Plante?

  Okay. Do you think it was meant to be like a starter RPG? Like?

• 40:29Griffin McElroy?

  I think, well, they have talked a lot about their intention being like accessibility. They want the game to be accessible, but like, I, I, that is an insulting interpretation, I think, of, of, of a game being like accessible to a younger generation to have like, you already, the cracked walls thing, I'll use that as an example. They're bright yellow, orange glowing crack. It's not like in, you know, Zelda where like, oh, if you look carefully, you can see it's bright yellow. It looks like a bright neon tree is like coming out of the wall. Like, okay, you've communicated that to me. And then you went ahead and you double communicated it to me. And I know there's people out there thinking, but you can change how much the character talks to you in the settings menu.

• 41:10Griffin McElroy?

  There's a setting called like standard and then one called reticent, which is fucking great. And folks, let me tell you, not nearly reticent enough. Not nee- I did not, I did not notice a difference. I read a Kotaku interview where they were talking about how surprised they were at the fae and reaction that, that this character is, they're, they're chiming in like way, way, way too much because they just love, they just love fae, the fairy. And it's like, man, you're in too deep. This is not good, dude.

• 41:38Chris Plante?

  I love the idea that if you put reticent on fae, the fairy just kind of is like sweating. And it's like, I really want to tell you something about that wall over there.

• 41:47Russ Frushtick?

  I want to talk about this game in the context of me and how this had the potential to sort of open me up to this world. Griffin, you haven't really, apart from the chatty fairy who's there, you haven't really talked about the narrative of this game.

• 42:02Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 42:03Russ Frushtick?

  So the narrative of this game could best be described as like, how in my brain, when I think of a JRPG, and I like copy that over to like what the game is actually like, this is what this game.

• 42:15Griffin McElroy?

  What you imagine.

• 42:16Russ Frushtick?

  What I imagine. The most like trope-y, magic crystal, evil, like secondhand to the king, like.

• 42:24Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, the evil advisor to the king, the mustache twirling advisor to the king, who from line one, you're like.

• 42:31Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, evil.

• 42:32Griffin McElroy?

  That's him.

• 42:33Russ Frushtick?

  I think he has like a pause where he says something like, yes, sir. And you're like, oh, well.

• 42:39Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, okay, so he's the bad one. And Elliot is a, is a pure, unblemished, perfect.

• 42:44Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so that's the crazy thing. I'm like, there's gotta be, when I'm playing these games, I like, I need a little bit of conflict where like, there's some like, someone that's like a little jerky and someone that's too nice, or whatever it is. Elliot is an outside the town adventurer. He goes about, he's basically a Han Solo. He goes completing quests for people, but he doesn't live in town and he's like, people go to him when they're really in need. So I'm expecting like, when Elliot gets introduced, fine, he's gonna be like this rogue. No, he's as fucking gung ho, super, he's basically Superman in terms of tone, like he's Clark Kent. So he goes and saves a bunch of orphans shit, like within minute five, and then continues to be this like utmost sweetheart.

• 43:24Griffin McElroy?

  Just not interesting, like none of the characters are interesting, the story.

• 43:27Russ Frushtick?

  And I don't even blame the voice actors, because I think the voice actors probably directed in a way that just makes everyone seem very flat. My pro tip recommendation comes from friend of the show, Jason Schreier, turn on the Japanese subtitles. Do not drive yourself nuts, both in terms of the chatty angel and also just general VO.

• 43:47Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 43:48Russ Frushtick?

  Assuming, yeah, so.

• 43:49Griffin McElroy?

  But even that, like, I don't know, man. So there's a whole time travel mechanic, so you are going through different versions of the overworld, and there's lots of dungeons, right? Like, so there's a lot of stuff to do. There's a lot of stuff to explore. There are little mini dungeons where you can go and you'll find an item that makes it so. You can equip more accessories or now Faye has learned a new magic spell.

• 44:08Russ Frushtick?

  And there's some interesting stuff in that stuff.

• 44:10Griffin McElroy?

  Sure, absolutely.

• 44:11Russ Frushtick?

  Where you can combo like different passive abilities with active abilities to like really customize. It feels almost like a like a Metroidvania kind of thing.

• 44:19Griffin McElroy?

  You have your sort of action ring like in a mana game where you're switching between the different weapons. Cause you have access to like, I think eight or so different weapons and they all feel different and are useful in different circumstances. And then you have this system called Magisite where you collect these crystals and you take them to a merchant who gotcha style. Draws sort of random upgrades for these weapons that you like equip a certain number of depending on like what your Magisite capacity is. But you're like creating different builds. I'm, I dig all that stuff. The combat is fun. It feels good. I found a sprint spell and now like the world is actually pretty fun to get around. I wasn't loving it before that, but um, I, there, there's a lot about this game that like, I could play a game where I just go into

• 45:01Griffin McElroy?

  different sort of short dungeons and solve a few puzzles and beat some bad guy asses and I get an upgrade for my weapon. Like, cool, man. Like I'm, I'm, I'm down for that. Um, but it gets on my nerves. Okay. It just gets on my nerves all the time.

• 45:17Chris Plante?

  Before we go further, there's a thing that was said earlier that was just so bonkers. I need to make sure I understand this. The advice that Jason Schreier gave you, Fresh Chick, was to turn on the Japanese subtitles.

• 45:28Russ Frushtick?

  No, no, no. Turn on Japanese VO.

• 45:32Chris Plante?

  Okay, okay, sorry. I was just like, I was like, wait, so the trick to liking this game is to not know what's being said.

• 45:38Russ Frushtick?

  Although probably maybe, yes. Here's what I will say about this game.

• 45:42Griffin McElroy?

  I feel better.

• 45:42Russ Frushtick?

  I think there's a version of the game that Griffin just described that you can play right now today. Because unlike a lot of square RPGs, you can skip every fucking cutscene in the game. You could skip all of it and just have objective, chase objective, get upgrade and it is, I think it's fun. I think as that game, it is fun. So if you can ignore the, in my opinion, weak narrative, bad VO and all that stuff. Like it's a pretty fun action RPG and I think there aren't a lot of those these days, especially not in this art style. And it actually. Gives me a little bit of hope that maybe if this game is successful, Square will explore more action RPGs in this format, or other studios will.

• 46:24Russ Frushtick?

  But yeah, just, just turn your ears off if you can, because yikes.

• 46:28Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, okay, but I think it is limiting to say that the only thing's wrong with it is that, you know, the characters are paper thin and the setting isn't particularly interesting.

• 46:38Griffin McElroy?

  Because like, the whole world is, is not interesting. The enemies that you fight aren't very interesting and there's like, I've played for a while and I've run into maybe six different enemies in like different color palettes and like different, you know, they do maybe some different shit here and there. There, there is a lot of stuff that it does beyond the scope of like the, the, the world building or whatever that I, I, I find to be pretty lackluster.

• 47:08Russ Frushtick?

  I don't think it's great. I think it's okay. I think it's like good to okay.

• 47:14Griffin McElroy?

  But that is not like, that's such a huge disappointment.

• 47:17Russ Frushtick?

  I know, I agree.

• 47:18Griffin McElroy?

  To have like Team Asano, who makes stuff that I really like, go after these classic sort of genres. I adore the Mana series. This is not, this does not come anywhere even remotely close to that, in my opinion. I don't know. It just, it feels like so many decisions were made that I, are so perplexingly bad to me. And the, the ultimate sort of nail in the coffin for me being like, why, what joy will I find in exploring this big world that you've filled with like treasure and activities to do if I am being instructed literally constantly what to, how to do it.

• 47:58Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 48:00Griffin McElroy?

  It really is a, a real buzzkill.

• 48:03Russ Frushtick?

  Well, you wouldn't understand what they were saying if they were speaking Japanese.

• 48:07Griffin McElroy?

  That's a fair point. Um, there's a lot, I, I say all this, there's a lot of people who are wicked into the game. And that is, that is cool too. I fully understand why. Uh, it just, it just made a lot of decisions that I, I did not enjoy.

• 48:22Russ Frushtick?

  Hey, people at home.

• 48:25Russ Frushtick?

  Can you drop into the comments? You can go to the newsletter comments if you want, besties.fan. Give me some recommendations of games in this style of action RPG beyond like the Zeldas of the world that you think I would enjoy. Cause I'm genuinely like, I wanna explore this genre more. And yeah, I wanna hear. So please write in.

• 48:46Griffin McElroy?

  Have you played Secret of Mana?

• 48:48Russ Frushtick?

  No.

• 48:49Griffin McElroy?

  Secret of Evermore, those classics?

• 48:50Chris Plante?

  You played Crosscode, right?

• 48:52Russ Frushtick?

  I started playing Crossword. I didn't necessarily care for Crosscode.

• 48:56Chris Plante?

  Okay.

• 48:57Russ Frushtick?

  I'll bet the people at home, I mean, I can, Secret of Mana, maybe that might be an approach. Sure. I'll bet the people at home have some other recs.

• 49:04Chris Plante?

  Thank you, people at home.

• 49:06Russ Frushtick?

  Appreciate you. We have one reader mail question I want to call out. This comes from Wick. "If my partner has played the recent Atlas games and loves Persona and enjoyed Metaphor, which Nier game should she play first?"

• 49:21Chris Plante?

  Hmm. Okay. So this is a question for me, I'm gonna assume here, right?

• 49:25Griffin McElroy?

  I guess so.

• 49:26Chris Plante?

  Sicko. I think you definitely wanna play a game that has Nier in the title, is what I would start with. I don't think you wanna play like Drakkengard 3. I...

• 49:38Russ Frushtick?

  There's just two Nier games, right? Am I wrong?

• 49:41Chris Plante?

  Yeah, basically. There's, yeah, there's Nier Replicant and Nier Automata. Those are gonna be the real choices that you have right now, unless you wanna go back and play older versions of Nier Replicant. I think you should just play which everyone looks the most enjoyable to you. Nier Replicant has kind of a like semi fantasy aesthetic. Nier Automata has a more sci-fi aesthetic. I think you should chase either in either direction. There are advantages to playing either first. Like, you will appreciate some things in Automata if you played Replicant first, and likewise the other way around. I think Automata is like a guaranteed...

• 50:24Chris Plante?

  Banger and like you do need to play through it multiple times. We've talked about this on the show before. When I say multiple times, the game evolved was pretty significantly by round three. Um, but even even at its base level, it's really exciting and entertaining where replicant, I think. At times, it's just based off of an older game, so it can be a little bit more of like a slog. So I'm saying this all out loud. I think near automot is where you want to start.

• 50:52Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I'm gonna pull you over here and just say, I don't think that those games are anything like Persona or.

• 50:59Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that's true. Actually, that's a good point.

• 51:01Chris Plante?

  It's a very great point.

• 51:03Griffin McElroy?

  Metaphor. Yeah, I, there's not a ton of games that do what those games do. That's why they stand apart so much. Uh, there's stuff like, uh, like a rune factory that does like fantasy stuff with social simmy kind of stuff almost. Um, but yeah, I mean, there's a lot of Persona games. Hey, there's a lot of Persona games.

• 51:23Chris Plante?

  Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna unplug a thing. We just did an episode, uh, about Persona Summer at post games in which we talked about all the different Persona type of games like Tokyo Mirage Session. So if you are looking for more info about the sort of games that fall into the Persona camp, I think that'd be helpful for you.

• 51:44Griffin McElroy?

  Guys, I'm so excited for Persona 4 Revival. They keep releasing more and more video of that. I can't wait for that fricking thing, man.

• 51:51Russ Frushtick?

  It's gonna be pretty cool when I play it for the first time.

• 51:54Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 51:54Russ Frushtick?

  This is.

• 51:55Chris Plante?

  You never played the Vita version?

• 51:56Russ Frushtick?

  I played like, uh, four hours of the Vita version.

• 51:59Chris Plante?

  Okay.

• 51:59Russ Frushtick?

  There was a, there was a convenience store. There was a little girl. She seemed excited about the convenience store. Murders started happening and then I fell asleep.

• 52:07Chris Plante?

  I will say actually onboarding now, like having done Persona 3 reloads first 10 hours or so. They've really figured out how to make these games digestible in a way that they just weren't in the past.

• 52:21Griffin McElroy?

  It, yeah. I mean, I think Metaphor did the best.

• 52:23Chris Plante?

  Metaphor's been fantastic.

• 52:25Griffin McElroy?

  God, I've been, I've been having the itch to go back and play Metaphor and that's crazy.

• 52:28Chris Plante?

  Same. I saw that Switch two release. I was like, oh, oh, no.

• 52:32Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, man, I've thought about it. It really feels like that game is due to get its golden or royal or like expanded version of it. There are parts of that game, especially in the back third or so, if my memory serves, that just kind of seem rushed. Uh, it feels like it's ripe for, for one of those. Anyway.

• 52:51Russ Frushtick?

  I agree.

• 52:52Griffin McElroy?

  Do we want to do honorable mentions? I've talked about so many games. I don't know that I've saved anything for this bit.

• 52:59Russ Frushtick?

  Um, I will talk about two games that I've been playing. I continue to play Subnautica with my child. With the passive monster settings on, um, the console command is invisible. In case you want to do the same thing, that's been very effective. It works on Switch two and PC. And it's incredible. We met our first Reaper, and if you've never played Subnautica, you should probably know what a Reaper is. They are 50 foot long, just death machine shark creatures that have giant fangs and teeth and look horrible. And because of the setting, we were able to like just swim up to it and scan it. And he was so excited to read about the description of what it was in the like PDA.

• 53:44Russ Frushtick?

  And it, it's been such a fucking delight. I'm like through the roof, uh, happy about it and so excited to play. So not a two, uh, once it's a little further on in early access. The other game I want to mention is a game called Blueprints. It's a first person puzzle game where you explore a house. Um, blueprint status update. I'm at day 44.

• 54:08Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 54:08Russ Frushtick?

  Continue, uh, playing with my wife. Uh, we have six sanctum doors open. We have two to go. Uh, obviously we don't know what remains after that. We've done some of the things inside the sanctum doors. Some of them remain uncompleted, but progress is being made and it is a very good video game.

• 54:30Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, dog. Yeah, man. I'm so excited for you. I continue to be so excited.

• 54:35Russ Frushtick?

  I want to hear about. I don't know what I'm going to do with my notebook when we're finished, but I, I want to make sure we save it and, uh, keep it safe. Because it is such a fun, uh, visual representation of the journey that we've been on.

• 54:50Griffin McElroy?

  I thought of something I can't talk about. I played a little bit more No Man's Sky, which I think I mentioned last week, having brought, there's a whole thing that they added to the game that I didn't know about and didn't mess around with until after last week's episode. I did learn about it. There's a class of ships called corvettes and you can build them, which is not an entirely new thing, right? Like they've had sort of ship crafting. If you want to make this type of fighter. They have like a freighter, right? A freighter shipbuilder. And then, yes, there is a freighter ship, which is like a huge, like, you know, Star Destroyer sized like ship that is, can be like kind of a mobile base of operations, but it's like, it's enormous and you can customize it and that's like very, very cool.

• 55:34Griffin McElroy?

  Corvettes are something in between and you can build them using parts that you find while like exploring the world. You go out hunting for these parts. There are rewards for missions. You can find derelict ships in space that you can salvage and you're finding all of these different parts. And what you're building is a ship that is smaller and controllable. You don't really control your freighter. Right, just sort of stick around. You can't drive it around. It's just kind of there, a big floating. These you can control. They have stats. They have like the different technology slots that you can like customize. Can they land on a planet? They can land on a planet and you can add whole rooms and furniture and, you

• 56:14Griffin McElroy?

  know, machines that are doing like the different processes that you have to do for your resources. Or you add like a med bay or you add, you know, a room full of plants that you can harvest at will and you can add like a captain's quarters. It can be as big or as small as you want it to be, but you can also now just get up out of the pilot seat at any point while you're flying, while the ship is still moving, you know, set to autopilot, like coasting over the planet side and you go up and like chill up in your room, looking out the bay windows like the ends of the world. That's fucking sick. Or when you're in space, you can step up from the pilot seat, do some shit around the ship and then open up the loading bay doors and just do a quick spacewalk, just like hop out into.

• 56:59Griffin McElroy?

  Free floating in outer space and then come right back to your ship. So like it is the best of both worlds. You have this entirely customizable ship that you can turn into your home base. You can have a whole room that you just fill with cargo containers and now all of a sudden like storage is no longer really a concern anymore. But also then you blast off and now you're doing space fights in it and it can just be sort of.

• 57:22Chris Plante?

  It never, it never gets old that this game is now so much better than even the over promising trailer from the beginning.

• 57:30Griffin McElroy?

  It's insane. It's crazy. It's crazy. And it's, I don't know. I really love coming back and playing this game. I'm done. I don't, I've, I finished the expedition or at least this expedition's a little bit annoying. They're like time gated and you can't complete it until the whole community has come together to like do a certain number of missions, sort of Helldiver style. I don't love that, but like I'll come back and do an expedition. Or when they had a new thing like pet battling, like I'll come back and dip in. And I'm never disappointed, man. I'm always absolutely surprised and delighted by what they've done. And it's fun to just kind of like check in every once in a while.

• 58:05Russ Frushtick?

  I am so curious to see, oh God, I'm so excited for Light No Fire, which is their next game. How the fuck do you go from like all of this to starting a new game? Cause there's no possible way, in the same way that like you think about Destiny two's launch, there's no way to implement all of the stuff that you, your previous game had and some of it thematically wouldn't even make sense. So how do you match just the slate or even come close to the slate that No Man's Sky is offering?

• 58:36Griffin McElroy?

  I don't think they need to, right? Like, I don't think you need to have critter battling in the, like some of the things are so kind of like tacked on that like it does.

• 58:45Russ Frushtick?

  But it does, I think it does set a standard of like, it kind of needs to be a full game. It can't be the like half game that launched.

• 58:51Griffin McElroy?

  That is the thing. That's the thing that like No Man's Sky needs is like a.

• 58:56Russ Frushtick?

  Light No Fire.

• 58:57Griffin McElroy?

  Light No Fire. Well, no, I mean, I'm saying like the difference, the thing, No Man's Sky, they have updated for 10 years and added all these content and it's fulfilled far more than fulfilled the promise of like what those original trailers showed you. It still doesn't feel great to like get in a laser fight.

• 59:11Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 59:11Griffin McElroy?

  Within it. Like, I don't think that the combat is like particularly great. And like, there's, there's just certain parts of it that do feel like still kinda antiquated in the like inventory management side of things. And like, there's like core stuff that like, if they changed it, it wouldn't be No Man's Sky anymore. So the idea of like, a whole new thing that can take the great lessons that they have learned, making updates to No Man's Sky, but have it be built on maybe a stronger foundation? I don't know. Light No Fire is such a, I'm, I don't know anything about it. I don't know that really a lot of people do.

• 59:44Russ Frushtick?

  We just know that it's on a single planet, the size of our Earth, and it's in,

• 59:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 59:49Russ Frushtick?

  There's no scale. Like, it's actually the size of our Earth.

• 59:52Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 59:52Russ Frushtick?

  And everyone's on that same planet.

• 59:54Griffin McElroy?

  Cool. That sounds cool.

• 59:55Russ Frushtick?

  Sounds fucking cool.

• 59:57Griffin McElroy?

  That's not much. But, um, yeah.

• 1:00:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Griffin McElroy?

  Play it. Chris, you been playing anything, watching anything?

• 1:00:03Chris Plante?

  Nah, I, I went and saw Disclosure Day, the new Spielberg movie.

• 1:00:07Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:07Chris Plante?

  Pretty, pretty mixed feelings on it. I love Spielberg. I love even modern Spielberg. This movie, I think, uh, is probably great for every person who has never had to work in a newsroom. And any person who has had to work in a newsroom and, um, does not have faith that people change their minds, um, just because big information is given to them, I think, uh, it will be skeptical. Uh, that said, I do want to offer a different paranoia thriller, which is Cutter's Way, which just got re-released, uh, by Radiance. It is a lost classic, in my opinion, starring Jeff Bridges and the father from Home Alone,

• 1:00:49Chris Plante?

  giving an absolutely bonkers performance. And if you love like 1970's, um, conspiracy thrillers, if you love neo-noirs, honestly, if you love, uh, uh, The Big Lebowski, this is for you, big time. It is an absolutely incredible movie. So if, uh, you see Disclosure Day and you love it, hey, fantastic. If you see it and you're like, I would like something that is getting at conspiracies about how the powerful, uh, uh, keep us under their thumb, I think you should check out Cutter's Way. Cool.

• 1:01:26Griffin McElroy?

  Sick. Um, that's it for this week. Uh, thank you so much for listening to the besties. Do you want to talk about everything we talked about so far, Chris?

• 1:01:35Chris Plante?

  Oh, boy, we talked about so much. We talked about, uh, Crushed in Time, Voidling Bound, Pronoun Palace, new teardown DLC. It's called Relics of Barcuna. Uh, we also talked about traveling with the Iron Thor and playing Persona 3 Reload a little bit, and The Adventures of Elliot. And then for our honorable mentions, we had Subnautica, Blueprints, No Man's Sky, and on the film side, Disclosure Day and Cutter's Way.

• 1:02:03Griffin McElroy?

  Cool. Wow. What a beefy one. Hey, if you still haven't gotten enough of us and our prattling on, you can go to patreon.com/thebesties and you can get access to our monthly bonus, uh, episodes where we do bracket battles on different topics. Uh, and you can also get access to episodes of the resties that Chris and Russ do, talking about games that, uh, that we didn't have time to cover here on the, on the rest of the show. Um, do you want to thank some folks?

• 1:02:28Russ Frushtick?

  You bet. We have some new backers I wanted to thank. We have Andrew A. We have Cooper DeDuper.

• 1:02:33Griffin McElroy?

  Good.

• 1:02:33Russ Frushtick?

  I hope that's your real name. David L., Seven Hemlock, and probably Cool Dad. Uh, thank you for being backers of the besties over at patreon.com/thebesties. And thank you to everyone else who has supported us through the years. You make this show possible to exist, which is-

• 1:02:50Chris Plante?

  What do we got next week?

• 1:02:52Griffin McElroy?

  Next week, we are at the halfway point of 2026, as outrageous as that seems. And so we're going to be taking both a look back at our favorite games of the year so far, start putting together a, you know, a bit of a hit list for each other on what we, you know, should go back and check out. Some of our personal favorites shared with the class. Then we're also going to take a look at what's still due to come in the rest of the year and put together a list of our most anticipated stuff as well. A celebration of time, past, present, and future, much like The Adventures of Elliot, the Millennium Report, will be hopping between eras to find the bad advisor and to stop him. Um, so yeah, stay tuned. Join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?

• 1:04:01Chris Plante?

  Besties!