Wolverine Is a Disaster

Most of the time, we chat about games we enjoy. So many games debut every week, and picking promising new ones is relatively easy. But every so often, a game with high expectations ends up being a colossal disappointment. Wolverine, we’re sad to say, is one of those games. And yet, we’re making lemonade from lemons. Because all of Wolverine’s flaws make for a good conversation about what we expect (and hope for) from video games. Especially ones that cost so much. Speaking of expensive stuff: Frush shares hands-on impressions with the Steam Frame.

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

• 0:00Griffin McElroy?

  Why are you laughing? What are you giggling about over there, Chris?

• 0:02Chris Plante?

  Yeah, you remember how like the Nintendo seal of approval kind of like saved the video game industry? We're like, oh, the darkest of times, Nintendo seal of approval. It's building trust where trust is needed.

• 0:12Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, just a little backstory, historical backstory.

• 0:15Griffin McElroy?

  In case you're not 100 years old.

• 0:16Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 0:16Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 0:17Russ Frushtick?

  They Nintendo introduced the seal of approval because when the video game crash happened in the 80s, all these game companies were releasing these very shitty slopware titles that were like clones of one another. So when you saw the Nintendo seal approval, you knew this was something that was officially sanctioned by Nintendo.

• 0:34Chris Plante?

  Yeah. Yeah, I'm just sending you something like right now. And you tell me if you think this passes the Nintendo seal of approval because it's popping up on the Nintendo eShop.

• 0:47Griffin McElroy?

  So the new Nintendo eShop game that everyone is into is called Hintai Project 67.

• 0:53Russ Frushtick?

  67.

• 0:55Griffin McElroy?

  And it costs $4.

• 0:57Chris Plante?

  It's 80% off. Normally it's $19.99. So you better grab it now.

• 1:02Griffin McElroy?

  You're losing money not buying. And the title Hintai Project 67, the logo has the hands behind the 67 doing the thing.

• 1:09Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 1:09Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. And that's, that's cool. This is a, the face is AI. This is AI art. 100 fucking percent. Absolutely no doubt in my mind. Um, only AI could dream of Gzamba's that humongous. And it's just, guys, it's fucking, it's really, really wild. I, I just got a spreadsheet of every Nintendo Switch game ever released to use on every game ever. And it is not a joke. You really have to hunt for my pal like Donkey Kong on there. He is, uh, he is in the vast minority. Now to Hintai Projects 1 through 66.

• 1:54Chris Plante?

  I was gonna say, that's the problem with this game. You are gonna have to spend a lot of time catching up on the lore of Hintai Projects 1 through 66.

• 2:03Russ Frushtick?

  The mid 30s is where it kind of peaked. That was the height.

• 2:07Griffin McElroy?

  The 30s, yeah. I mean, when Peter Molyneux took over in the mid 30s, like that's for me when it really started popping.

• 2:14Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 2:16Russ Frushtick?

  You can create your own tentacles and imagine them. Where might they go? Who knows?

• 2:21Griffin McElroy?

  Tentacles grow and move on their own.

• 2:26Chris Plante?

  We need to practice our Peter Molyneux impression.

• 2:28Russ Frushtick?

  We do.

• 2:46Griffin McElroy?

  My name is Griffin McElroy and I played a game this week.

• 2:51Chris Plante?

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

• 2:54Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, no.

• 2:56Griffin McElroy?

  Goddamn shots fired.

• 2:57Russ Frushtick?

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

• 3:00Griffin McElroy?

  Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club just by listening. You have become a member of that club this week. We're talking about Wolverine for the PlayStation 5, uh, developed by Insomniac Games, a big tent pole, uh, console exclusive for Sony and, uh, it's, and I, I keep stepping on your business, Chris, but I'll remind you to just be gentle and be Christian about it.

• 3:29Chris Plante?

  You did the mean thing.

• 3:31Russ Frushtick?

  And also you're speaking in a minor key. So everyone knows where things are going.

• 3:35Chris Plante?

  There's a few things that happened here. Let's, let's analyze. Griffin spoke in a minor key. Griffin didn't have anything planned to step on my toes and Griffin quickly passed to me, which he has said in his own words is a sign that he does not give a shit about this game.

• 3:52Griffin McElroy?

  Here comes the rock, Chris. I do, I have strong fucking feelings about this game. I just don't want this one to be a bummer front to back. Chris Plant, what the fuck is Marvel's Wolverine for the PlayStation 5?

• 4:03Chris Plante?

  Wolverine is an action game for the PlayStation 5 in which you play as the titular Logan slash Wolverine, who actually goes by another name, but I always forget what it actually is. Anyway, this time he is working for Team X, not Professor Xavier. Mr. Boulevard Trask is ready to get hunted down. But wait, is that right? Yeah, I think it's that. Yeah. Yeah. Because then you're working with Dr. Nathaniel Essex, who's played by Troy Baker. And look, there could be a lot of cool stuff that we're about to talk about. Omega Red, Lady Deathstrike, Tiger Tiger. This could be one of our favorite games yet. And you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to follow up if you want to hear more.

• 4:46Griffin McElroy?

  All right. I can't wait. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back.

• 4:50Russ Frushtick?

  This episode of the besties is sponsored by Alienware. Start your Alienware journey with the streamlined Alienware 15. They designed this machine to refine the essentials, creating a more focused gaming laptop for players who demand quality without the clutter. They engineered a brilliant 15.3 inch, 165 hertz display seamlessly into a portable 15 inch body. You get a larger immersive window into your game that still travels easily wherever your mission takes you. Step into the future of gaming with up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 laptop GPUs. Designed to push boundaries, the RTX 50 series with Nvidia Max Q delivers jaw dropping graphics while optimizing battery life.

• 5:31Russ Frushtick?

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

• 5:42Griffin McElroy?

  It fucking sucks. It's really, really bad to play. I've not felt this strongly about a game. And it's like, I know that we're coming in, this game came out last week, but this is the nature of how we record the show. Sometimes it doesn't quite match up so that there's a bit of a lag.

• 5:56Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, the game is out as of this week. So like the humans have played it at this point.

• 6:01Griffin McElroy?

  I was terrified that this was going to be a Starfield situation because I literally was, my entire time with this game, I was like, wow, I'm really not having a fucking lick of fun. I'm really, really, really super duper not enjoying this. What if everyone comes out and is like, this is absolutely my shit? But it seems like this, this game has been kind of, uh, criticized left, right and center.

• 6:25Russ Frushtick?

  We should table set a little bit for people that don't know anything about like the structure of the game, how this fits into the Insomniac development, whatever, just so people understand before we get into the sort of things that may or may not have landed with one of us. Uh, as Plant alluded to in the beginning, this is a third person action game. I think if you've played any of the Spider-Man games, uh, the like linear chunks of the Spider-Man games, I think are relatively representative of the sorts of gameplay you're experiencing here. Although obviously you are Wolverine, so you have Wolverine powers, claws, et cetera. But it, it lacks, fully lacks the, any open world exploration that I think, uh, the Spider-Man games are most known for.

• 7:11Griffin McElroy?

  Yes. Yeah, no. I mean, yeah, it's, it is a, it is a very linear sort of experience.

• 7:16Russ Frushtick?

  Which not necessarily a bad thing.

• 7:19Griffin McElroy?

  Except in the case of this, I, I, I genuinely don't really know where to start, but I suppose that that's a good sort of like transition point is talking about the linearity of the game and how it kind of wants to have its cake and eat it too a little bit in that, uh, you are being constantly held by the nose and pulled along. Quite literally, he's following his nose with his incredible Wolverine senses.

• 7:46Russ Frushtick?

  The internet has called them fart gases.

• 7:48Griffin McElroy?

  Fart gases is, is, uh, the internet has not been particularly, uh, helpful in having the conversation about whether it's okay to have, uh, trails of light telling you where you should be going in the game. Cause sometimes that's good. Like in a, you know, a Spider-Man where you're in a giant open city.

• 8:06Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Griffin McElroy?

  Whether or not you need that on a straight road through a dilapidated, uh, sort of, uh, jungle or whatever, uh, that really only has the kind of one way to go. Maybe, maybe we don't need that.

• 8:21Chris Plante?

  No.

• 8:23Chris Plante?

  It's bad. It's just, well, okay. Can I, I, there, there are people who are gonna listen to this and they'll be like, yeah, but the game works and it looks good and the story is like pretty fine. And to that, I just want to like, set a thing, which we at the show, I think y'all agree with me on this, try to judge a game based off of what it set out to do. Like what it actually set out to do. And what this game set out to do was be a big spectacular action game with all these rich animations and compelling story and thrilling combat that you want to keep playing. And in, in any action game, combat that will allow you to kind of express yourself. That is the appeal of big action games like Onimush or Devil May Cry is that there are so many options

• 9:08Chris Plante?

  that it becomes a very expressive form of play. And it does basically none of that. The story is utterly torture when you are having to walk around and do nothing and just get pulled from scene to scene, which is.

• 9:22Russ Frushtick?

  Let me give you a specific example. I need to give a specific example. So the game begins and the first chunk of levels is set in a military base and you're killing a bunch of guys. I actually was like, okay, this is okay. I'm like, okay.

• 9:36Chris Plante?

  You're not.

• 9:36Russ Frushtick?

  Not hating it. Immediately after you are dropped into the home base of Team X in Alaska, the snowy, beautiful chalet filled with ne'er do wells like Sabretooth, et cetera. And you as Logan, known feral, fast, deadly creature that you are, get the pleasure of walking at a true snail's pace through this house, looking for clues and talking to people in maybe the most glacial exposition sequence I've ever experienced in a video game.

• 10:12Griffin McElroy?

  Fucking crazy. There's one part where you walk down a hallway and then, uh, Sabretooth knocks a refrigerator over. And so you can't walk around or jump over the refrigerator. You have to back up and go down a different part of the hallway. And it's that one, like 25 second long little like segment of interactivity was enough for me to, I really probably would have put the game down at that exact moment. It's, it's not just that. It's not just that the game makes you, uh, not stab dudes a million times for like long stretches of the game. It is that like the writing is pretty good. The acting is great. Uh, I, I think, uh, I can't remember the guy's name who plays Wolverine, but I think he does a, like a really interesting job with it.

• 10:54Griffin McElroy?

  The pauses between every goddamn line of dialogue between Wolverine and Nathaniel Essex are like Octomom pregnant. Like not a joke, two and a half seconds between every, I remember when I found you in the woods. Yeah, like every single line of dialogue, it was, it was, uh, it was beyond belief, truly.

• 11:16Russ Frushtick?

  I, I would like to, at this point, um, copyright a rule that I think should extend from here on out. We'll call it-

• 11:24Chris Plante?

  I don't know if you want to copyright it, you might want to make it open source.

• 11:27Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, it's an open source.

• 11:28Griffin McElroy?

  We want people to adopt this.

• 11:29Russ Frushtick?

  You're right. Everyone can adopt this. It's the Russ Frushtick slow walk rule, and here it is. You ready?

• 11:34Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 11:35Russ Frushtick?

  Your video game gets two slow walks in total. I wouldn't recommend using both, but I'll allow it. You get two. If you're more than two, you have too many slow walks.

• 11:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 11:49Russ Frushtick?

  This counts all those Assassin's Creed games from years back where the slow walking was tons. The fucking last God of War Ragnarok game had a ton of slow walks. You get two people.

• 11:58Griffin McElroy?

  You get two.

• 11:58Russ Frushtick?

  And you better fucking use them good.

• 12:00Griffin McElroy?

  Maybe Kratos twists his ankle or something and you can like use it for dramatic narrative effect. That's, um, all that, like, taking away the, the slowness of like that stuff. My biggest issue with this game, and it's like weirdly not the thing that I feel like a lot of people are talking about, but it is not fun to kill lots of guys as Wolverine.

• 12:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 12:23Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. The combat is extremely repetitive. You have the X button, which, or sorry, the square button, I suppose, uh, does his sort of like main attack and you can, you really do stab guys pretty fast when you're jamming on that button. And then you have a, like a diving attack that you can use to move from enemy to enemy. You have a dodge. So if you see, and it does the kind of, you know, Batman thing, or if you see a red flash, that means you gotta dodge because someone's about to shoot at you. Uh, yellow attack means get ready to parry because you can, uh, you can absolutely shred this guy if you get him weekend or whatever. Uh, and the biggest problem with all of that is, I mean, one,

• 13:02Griffin McElroy?

  even when they throw like special abilities that you can unlock and all that, like, it just is so, uh, it's so repetitive that it stops being fun very quickly, but also everyone is really tanky.

• 13:14Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 13:14Griffin McElroy?

  And so it doesn't even deliver this thing that I felt like was going to be the shit, uh, based on all the trailers that, that I had watched for the game of like, you're just going to be tearing through groups of dudes. They're going to throw so many guys at you and it's like a question of like stringing them all together and doing stylish. No, like-

• 13:31Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, if you're fucking Wolverine, you should be chopping heads off.

• 13:33Griffin McElroy?

  You should chop shit off. It's so, every, every rank and file enemy, like, is gonna take a few hits to, to knock down. And then like the slightly stronger enemies take way more. And then the boss fights are hand crampingly repetitive.

• 13:49Chris Plante?

  But before we even get to the boss fights, because that's a whole other thing, I want to talk about this combat because I think I figured out what it's trying to do. It took me a while to figure out like, what is the actual gameplay loop other than like smashing buttons and, and killing people? And weirdly, I think the gameplay's hook is to undermine the entire power fantasy of Wolverine, where you get overwhelmed, kind of like, uh, Neo Agent Smith style. They send in more and more and more enemies. And while this happens, you then like build up your rage and then you get to hit a button that makes you super rage. And then you finally get to like cut through enemies and like one hit, right?

• 14:30Chris Plante?

  And then you lose your rage and then you get a whole bunch of enemies thrown at you again. And sometimes-

• 14:35Russ Frushtick?

  You turn back into Wolverine baby when you lose your-

• 14:37Chris Plante?

  You turn back into Wolverine baby. And, and sometimes you don't even need the rage. You just end up just kind of bashing your head against the wall of, of these like swarms. I think the problem is, it would be like if you, you were like, okay, we're gonna make a Spider-Man game. What is the, the power fantasy of Spider-Man? And somebody said, it's beating up the regular just dudes on the street. And they're like, no, the power fantasy of Spider-Man is swinging through the city. The, the power fantasy of Wolverine is not just that you get to like slice up people. The, the power fantasy is that you are literally unstoppable force going up against immovable objects. The best Wolverine stories, Wolverine and Hulk is popular for a reason, right?

• 15:20Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 15:20Chris Plante?

  Because Wolverine and Deadpool is popular for a reason. These things are, it's like, nobody can win, so Wolverine has to be clever. And a game where you are given any space to have thoughts or creativity would be what you would want from a Wolverine game. And instead they have made it the most, they have reduced Wolverine to the most id, mindless button smasher. And that is, it's simply just not what the character is.

• 15:47Russ Frushtick?

  I would even say, I wish they reduced him to the most id, mindless button smasher. But like, because of Griffin's point of like, the, most of the enemies, even the normal ones, take three or four, even five hits. Like, a part of me wants just a fucking, like Dynasty Warriors Wolverine game where it's like, a thousand guys.

• 16:07Griffin McElroy?

  So much more sense. Would be a Dynasty, like, when you do a game, superhero games where the superheroes like main thing is either invincibility, or in the case of Wolverine, this like mutant healing factor that makes him famously pretty hard to kill. Okay, how do you make that into a video game where you can have fail states? If the character, if the player doesn't do a good enough job with the, with the, the fights. In this game, your rage bar, which is like a separate meter from, from your health, you build it by like hitting enemies. Uh, you lose it for like taking hits and it's like separated into different chunks. Like Chris said, you fill the bar and you go into this super rage mode where now you can run around and one-shot guys. Uh, some guys, some guys it doesn't work on and it, that shit even doesn't feel good.

• 16:52Griffin McElroy?

  If your rage bar is, has at least one segment filled, when your health, if it goes all the way down, you get like a last stand where you fall and you see his face is like, he's got the metal skeleton underneath and you jam on the square button and then he stands back up, right? Um, but if you don't have enough rage, then he falls down and the screen cuts to black.

• 17:11Russ Frushtick?

  Takes a nap.

• 17:12Griffin McElroy?

  Starts, it starts the fight over again.

• 17:13Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 17:14Griffin McElroy?

  That is the mo-, guys, it's fucking, we, that's insane. That's absolutely a crazy bullshit way to handle this whole idea of how do you have a character who's basically invulnerable? How do we make that interesting? And you didn't, like, and it's beyond, I, they did such a good job with Spider-Man. I think the Spider-Man games kick absolute ass because they focus on the stuff that works and feels good about Spider-Man and they did it better than anyone else ever has. But this, like-

• 17:43Russ Frushtick?

  I would say though, I don't think anyone on the planet was like, you know, I love the open world stuff in Spider-Man, but give me that linear, that like, I want a whole game of that. And if you think back to those linear missions Spider-Man, they're fine. I wouldn't say they're as bad as this.

• 17:58Griffin McElroy?

  Highlight of, yeah.

• 17:59Russ Frushtick?

  But they're definitely not the highlight. I would say this project seemed to suffer across the board on a lot of different levels. I know there was leadership turnover, but the larger issue is it's really hard for me to imagine that even in like a white box, early testing format, this game was ever fun. It's really hard for me to imagine that. And so someone should have stepped in and been like, this is not working. I realize this is a smaller scale project than a huge open world Spider-Man game, but we're either gonna move forward with this or we're not. I, realistically, I think Insomniac will be fine. They have a Venom game that they're working on. I'm sure they'll have another Spider-Man game, maybe more Ratchet and Clank, who knows?

• 18:39Griffin McElroy?

  They're a quality stu-, this is truly shocking. It's truly, truly shocking.

• 18:43Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 18:44Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I, we, I feel like maybe they're, with the, the leadership turnover thing, maybe there was a Too Many Cooks situation that would explain the weird nightmare trial level. Oh, I'm sorry, Chris, did you have something?

• 18:55Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I mean, I, I was just gonna say, I agree with you a hundred percent, Fresh, of when was this game good? Like even passable good, because the combat is not as good as what is in Spider-Man, right? Like, if you, get rid of all the, the web singing, everything else. It's like not even remotely close to as good and as interesting and as varied as what's in Spider-Man, which bonkers. But then also, there are basic design choices in this game that you struggle to imagine getting past playtest. There are XP batteries and other various objects later in the game that you destroy for XP.

• 19:41Chris Plante?

  It's one of the most ridiculous choices I've ever confronted in a video game. I felt like I was losing it. I was texting Fresh about this, having, I don't know, like a panic attack of what is going on? Because the game already isn't fun, but at least there's a logic to it. Until you find these XP containers, which are scattered seemingly randomly throughout the world.

• 20:01Griffin McElroy?

  In the fucking woods, there's a glowing garbage can that Wolverine can hit to get, to get XP. It's like-

• 20:06Chris Plante?

  And they'll be in the middle of a battlefield that you're supposed to be sneaking around. So it is incentivizing you to not play the game, the way that the game would like you to play it, the way that would be supposedly fun. And here's the weirdest shit. You get the XP containers, you build up your like, you know, upgrade points, and then you're introduced to a skill tree that is basically linear, that might as well just be unlocking automatically.

• 20:31Russ Frushtick?

  It's like an incest skill tree.

• 20:35Griffin McElroy?

  That's an insane way to say that, Russ.

• 20:37Russ Frushtick?

  Because it has no branches.

• 20:38Griffin McElroy?

  No, I understand the point. It's just fucking deranged.

• 20:41Chris Plante?

  You, you, you, you get more XP from doing these, uh, going out of your way, making the game less fun. And then you open the skill tree and it's like, sorry, you haven't unlocked, like you haven't proceeded far enough to unlock your skills. So your reward for making the game less fun, collecting these crappy items, getting more XP, is to find out that you can't immediately use it to become a stronger character because it's ultimately kind of decided when you should be getting your upgrades anyway.

• 21:10Griffin McElroy?

  Um, can we talk about the nightmare trial?

• 21:12Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, please.

• 21:13Griffin McElroy?

  It's the, it's like craziest thing in this ga-, I, I feel like you are off your nut, Chris, if you think that that's the craziest thing.

• 21:18Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, the nightmare trial.

• 21:19Griffin McElroy?

  It's really hard to dial it in. Sometimes you'll be running along in a level, chasing like-

• 21:24Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, like a high-

• 21:26Griffin McElroy?

  You have just seen a bunch of mutants killed and kidnapped and you're chasing the perpetrators who have done it. And then a glowing purple vine appears and it leads you by the nose, uh, to a door and you go in.

• 21:37Russ Frushtick?

  A magic door.

• 21:38Griffin McElroy?

  A magic door that fucking, uh, uh, Mr. Sinister made for you or whatever. And it's actually your memories inside a cabin. You're in your memory cabin. And inside your memory cabin, what you do is you do little trials, time trials. And those time trials, sometimes it's, uh, like fight a bunch of guys until you reach max rage and then kill 10 guys. And if you do it fast enough, you'll get more skill points. But sometimes they're traversal challenges, like half the time they are traversal challenges. And then here's, here's a rundown on Wolverine's traversal abilities. Jump.

• 22:14Griffin McElroy?

  And it's not even a good jump. It's not a great jump because it's really hard to tell where he's gonna land.

• 22:18Chris Plante?

  Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Let me just hop in right here. This is another like, oh, what's going on? You do have the ability as Wolverine to jump like 500 feet.

• 22:27Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Chris Plante?

  If it is at an enemy, and yet your normal jump as Wolverine is one of the lowest jumps.

• 22:34Griffin McElroy?

  Your normal jump sucks unless you see a little tiny, tiny, tiny ramp. And if you jump off the tip of that little tiny ramp, where the game wants you to jump, you'll jump very, very far. It's, it feels goddamn terrible. And I think anyone could have told you, playtesting this game, like, hey, it feels kind of bad to jump as well, like, just trying to jump and land on this little bridge. I, it's, I landed on the side of it and I fell off and that didn't feel very good. So maybe don't make half of your like little in-game challenges that interrupt the like tension that you are building with the rest of, of the, what little tension you were building with the rest of the game, uh, to focus on a part of the game that is just a complete fucking nothing burger.

• 23:17Russ Frushtick?

  The Doom, Doom, the remake of Doom had the exact same idea, which was you'd like do these little side quests where you'd, here's a little side challenge where you have to kill 500 guys in three minutes or whatever it was.

• 23:28Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 23:29Russ Frushtick?

  So, but Doom did not have these narrative sequences they're interrupting. Like even just having Wolverine walk up to a training computer and have the, would have made more sense than a fucking magic door in the middle of a dead sprint while you're chasing fucking Jean Grey.

• 23:44Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 23:45Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, crazy.

• 23:46Griffin McElroy?

  It's, it's really, it's truly.

• 23:49Russ Frushtick?

  Crazy.

• 23:50Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, I can't believe that this got, that this got released like that. It really feels like so, so obviously bad.

• 23:58Chris Plante?

  There's some other historical context.

• 24:00Griffin McElroy?

  Okay. What, yeah, what am I missing?

• 24:01Chris Plante?

  We should slide in here, which is, there was a leak, uh, that suggests that there are many more Marvel games coming from Insomniac, like many, many more, that there is a long calendar of games that need to come out. And it would seem that if you're making this game and it's the MCU problem, literally in video game form, we gotta get this one out the door so we can get to the next ones. And I don't know like what would have happened. I can't imagine this game would have been further delayed because it's been in development for so long. But I don't, it feels as if like it had to come out, as if there was no choice.

• 24:40Chris Plante?

  This game needed to come out because I don't, this is pure speculation. We have a contract with Disney. We're making five or six games. We need this one to come out so we can make the however many more.

• 24:51Russ Frushtick?

  And I would say like, I don't think six months or a year even would have saved this game. I don't know that this game is salvageable.

• 24:58Griffin McElroy?

  This thing is fuck sense Jump Street. I truly don't think that there is a, a core idea here that, that can be polished.

• 25:05Chris Plante?

  No. And this is a problem that we've seen over and over again with superhero games, which is not every superhero makes for a good.

• 25:11Griffin McElroy?

  It's the Superman game problem, right? Like when you're making a superhero game, you have to take a look at the Superman problem, which is how you make a Superman game about an invincible alien who can fly and kill guys with one punch and shoot lasers out of his head and can't be killed or hurt and is faster than anything else in the world. How do you make that a fun game? I don't know. But I do know that you should probably figure it out before you try, because a lot of people have just kind of done it and said like, here's a character action game and you're Superman and, uh, uh, uh, if he gets hit enough, then the guy's had kryptonite gloves on or like, give me a kryptonite gloves explanation. Don't make him just fall over, cut to black. And then this fight starts over.

• 25:54Russ Frushtick?

  It basically feels like this game was the game that came out a year before Batman Arkham Asylum showed everyone that superhero games can be like something dramatically more interesting.

• 26:04Chris Plante?

  Yeah. You know what's weird though is that game exists. It's called X-Men Origins Wolverine and it's actually pretty okay. That is the Activision game.

• 26:14Russ Frushtick?

  Oh yeah, that was not bad. Actually, you're right. That was not bad.

• 26:16Chris Plante?

  I think that is also the game that originated, uh, they called it, I think like feral sense, but where you could like push the joystick in and like see the hidden stuff around you.

• 26:26Griffin McElroy?

  That's like the big, okay, so that is, I feel like the big conversation that's happening about this game is how, uh, it is perhaps reflective of a trend in AAA game development that they think players are not very smart uh, or good. And so there's things like, I've heard a lot of people talking about like the treasure chests in this game are hidden, but they do like make a noise and they also give off a radar ping that is so comically large that you can see it from so very far away that it's like, not even like a little collectible that you feel great when you find it. It's just like, well, I gotta go get that chest because it'll have 50 scrap in it that I can use to maybe make a new.

• 27:09Russ Frushtick?

  A third of an outfit.

• 27:11Griffin McElroy?

  A third of an outfit. Um, and it's like, I, I, I understand why that conversation is happening and, and you know, all of this, I think that, I think it's a conversation worth having, right? I think about the yellow paint on the mountains of the open world segments of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and being like, why is this here? Why are we even, why are you even doing that? That's, that's, that's never been fun even once. I understand that conversation. But the whole thing is so bad. Like the whole thing is so misguided and not functional that it feels like, I don't know, you're, you're reading too much into a thing, which is this is just not a good video game.

• 27:53Chris Plante?

  I, I, I agree. It is, I don't think that it is, um, speaking down to the player intentionally. I think the game is such a mess and was such a salvage job that they had to put in as many of these things as possible, basically to just get you from one point to the other, to ensure that you were going to complete the game. I think the, the skill tree, uh, the incest tree is a perfect example of that of, this game only works, it's only passable if we basically play it for you. Otherwise it actually would fall off, like the wheels would just totally come off.

• 28:31Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 28:32Chris Plante?

  And.

• 28:33Griffin McElroy?

  I, I know we're being extremely hard. I feel like the reception of this game has been like middling for the most part. It is, it is coming out after, you know, our last two episodes was Blood of Dawn Walker and then, uh, Onimusha, both of which are fucking fun, well-designed, clever, original action games, action games where you are fighting and killing lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of enemies all at the same time. This isn't, this is not even, not even remotely close. I truly didn't have a second of fun playing, playing this video game.

• 29:09Russ Frushtick?

  It's also very funny to me because this is the introduction of Sony, uh, saying, we're not going to release single player games on PC anymore.

• 29:16Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 29:17Russ Frushtick?

  Like, oh, that's like, with, with a level of confidence that I just don't fully understand. Um, I, it's, it, for people that like bought a PS5, because we need to play all of the PlayStation exclusives, like all the Last of Us and whatever else, to have like your one of two games a year be this is like, woof. That is a tough pill to swallow. Um, so.

• 29:44Chris Plante?

  But before we wrap up this section, uh, just to build off what Griffin said, there are so many great things to play and even episodes of the show to go back and listen to. We've talked about Star Wars Zero Company, Big Walk, Onimusha, Blood of Dawn Walker. We haven't even talked about the Metal Gear Solid collection in Sproul Zero yet, which were fantastic. Talked about Knit Classic, The Mermaid Mask, Fields of Mysterio, Marvel Tocoon, the amount of like good games in the last few months.

• 30:11Griffin McElroy?

  Good Marvel game in there.

• 30:12Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 30:13Russ Frushtick?

  Don't sleep on that.

• 30:15Chris Plante?

  It's, it, yeah, you can play as Wolverine in a good video game this year. Um, it's, it is just a colossal bummer, um, and disappointment.

• 30:25Griffin McElroy?

  And just a huge bummer for, for Insomniac. Like I, I, it really does feel like there is, there's probably a lot of stories. It's the destiny thing, right? Of like, gosh, I bet you guys didn't really want to make this like this. I'm sure that that's like.

• 30:40Russ Frushtick?

  Well, I don't think they wanted to make it like this. I think they certainly said like, yeah, we can do a Wolverine game.

• 30:45Griffin McElroy?

  But when, when you are being asked to do, there's so many things in this game are so disparate and weird that it does feel like a, like a salvage job. And that's, that's gotta be, I truly do like sympathize. I, I understand that that must be so miserable to like dedicate that much of your, your time and life and creative energy into something like this. It's, it just like.

• 31:04Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. I mean, as I said, I think the studio will be fine largely, like they have a slate of games coming out, including what will probably, I don't actually know, but will probably be an open world Venom game. And based on the Venom sequences that were in Spider-Man 2, like fucking count me in. I want an open world crackdown game set in New York City. Like that sounds fucking awesome. Bring it on. So, uh, the studio will be fine. They make very good games. This feels like an aberration. And hopefully not only them, but Sony and really the AAA world at large will learn a lot of lessons from this game to say like, hey, let's, let's, uh, pump the brakes a little bit before things get too far down the road.

• 31:43Griffin McElroy?

  I do think every game developer is having a conversation about their fart line and whether or not the game needs it.

• 31:49Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, there are, I, I think the thing to some extent, the like white paint thing is overblown because I think there are games that do it very well in a diegetic way that doesn't feel out of place. But yeah.

• 32:00Griffin McElroy?

  When it's lazy, when it's lazily applied and no other sort of option was considered like.

• 32:06Russ Frushtick?

  If you ever get the chance, listen through to like any of the Valve, uh, like developer commentary tracks in their games. Cause half of them are like player guidance and how do we edge the player in a direction without painting a giant fucking neon arrow on it?

• 32:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Russ Frushtick?

  It's very, very interesting.

• 32:24Griffin McElroy?

  Some of those nightmare trials have literal glowing arrow, like literal glowing neon arrows for you to follow on this little year. Okay. I don't want to, it truly sucks to talk about.

• 32:35Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, we're done.

• 32:36Griffin McElroy?

  Games like this, let's.

• 32:37Russ Frushtick?

  I'm sure it'll come up in goatee conversation.

• 32:40Griffin McElroy?

  We'll take a quick break and be back with better stuff than that.

• 32:44Russ Frushtick?

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

• 33:32Russ Frushtick?

  Real quick, I have been using the Steam Frame, which is the new VR headset from-

• 33:39Griffin McElroy?

  This is the one that I cared about of the announce, like I want a Steam machine that would be cool to have, but like this is the one thing that I've registered my interest in.

• 33:48Chris Plante?

  This does also explain why you look like the lawnmower man.

• 33:52Russ Frushtick?

  Yes, I am still wearing it. So just a heads up for people I know were audio.

• 33:56Griffin McElroy?

  Wow, it's so sleek.

• 33:58Russ Frushtick?

  Um, Steam Frame, yeah, it's a VR headset. It starts at $1,050. It's actually the exact same price as the Steam Machine's starting price, which is kind of funny.

• 34:06Griffin McElroy?

  All right.

• 34:07Russ Frushtick?

  Here is the, I think the big question is like, who is this audience for? Like, who is the draw for this product? Um, and I think the answer is pretty simple.

• 34:18Russ Frushtick?

  For people that want to do high-end VR gaming, wirelessly, like streamed from your computer, I've literally never come close to any stream game experience that is smoother than this. It is peerless and incredible. You can, I was playing Half-Life Alex on Mac settings, wirelessly, and I could not notice a difference between that and being wired. So that-

• 34:46Griffin McElroy?

  Let me ask you, let me ask you a question that I think I remember the answer to, but like you can also, it also can play games on it, right? Like an Oculus Quest, like it has enough juice in the tank to play games.

• 34:57Russ Frushtick?

  Correct. So the language they use is standalone. So anything that has standalone support, which includes Half-Life Alex, they actually designed a version of Half-Life Alex that runs standalone on the headset, you can also do. And those games obviously look good, but not nearly as good as they would if they were being streamed from like a beefy gaming PC.

• 35:16Griffin McElroy?

  Right.

• 35:16Russ Frushtick?

  Um, Half-Life Alex in particular, yeah, you can notice the difference, but it's very playable. And honestly, as with all things in VR, if you're in it for 10 minutes, you don't see the details. You just sort of are in that world and you kind of forget. So that's very cool. I think all the standalone, like on-device gaming, to me, does not feel markedly that much better from what I was seeing in like a Quest 3, for example, which also obviously has standalone gaming. So if you're doing it for that and you already have a Quest 3, there's no, I don't think there's any reason to do that, apart from the fact that, hey, you can also use your Steam library.

• 35:51Griffin McElroy?

  So that's it for me, is the ecosystem, the, whatever it's called now, the meta ecosystem, meta gaming, uh, world peace, VR platform is like, it's like, I always feel when I buy a game on there, like I've just kind of, I don't know, purchasing something and then putting it in a little boat and then pushing that boat into a river, leading to a waterfall of just like, well, I'll never see you again.

• 36:16Russ Frushtick?

  And also Mark's eyes are on the other side of the headset staring back at you three inches away.

• 36:21Griffin McElroy?

  And it's distracting. Yeah. Having his glowing eyes in the background of every game that I put, but having like, I don't know, the, the Steam ecosystem on there, like, yeah, that sounds good. That's where the rest of my shit is, for better or worse.

• 36:32Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. And I think if you are, look, if you play a lot of VR games or you think you're going to play a lot of them, headset, from a comfort standpoint, probably the most comfortable headset I've ever worn. It's still a headset. It's still bulky, but very, very comfortable, incredibly comfortable. Um, controller can be used as like a normal controller. So you could play flat games as well on it, like on a giant 150-foot tall IMAX screen in your living room, that kind of thing. So I think all that stuff is like, from a VR gaming standpoint, like people that love VR gaming, they will find draws in it if they have the money to spare, which is not a small amount of money.

• 37:11Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 37:12Russ Frushtick?

  As we've sort of talked about, the larger thing that I'm most interested in is that this will continue to open the door for SteamOS to be running on many, many more devices, specifically ARM devices, which are all like cellphone chip devices, like all of the handhelds we've been talking about. Currently, you can run SteamOS on a lot of those handhelds, but you have to do workarounds where you're installing like RocNix or Armada OS. There's like workarounds to do it. But this hopefully will lead to the eventual release of a full-on native version of SteamOS on these devices.

• 37:50Chris Plante?

  I am so happy for us to get a trickle-down win. You know, tech has been doing all this bullshittery that has made it more expensive and miserable to play video games. And the fact that all of this VR headset has somehow led to, I can play Steam on my phone when I want to, finally? That's the good stuff. I'll take it.

• 38:13Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, my interest in this thing is way more, I don't know, uh, direct and straightforward in that like, I have played VR games that aren't like anything else. Like I've, I've, there are, there's not a ton, but there are VR games that I have played that I, you don't, you simply can't sort of have that same experience.

• 38:34Russ Frushtick?

  Even in Half-Life Alex, I don't think there's any one-to-one comparison for that game. I know you've played more involved VR games that I can't play because I throw up.

• 38:42Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, but even like taking out the like big, major tent pole VR game, like I still will go back and play Superhot VR on the Quest, because it's fun and it's, there's not anything else like it really in non-VR sort of format. So like, I don't know, people get so weird talking about VR as a, uh, as a, as a platform, as a potential future for like games. And I know that a lot of that gets bound up in the like Meta's decision to like, make it so intrinsically linked to your Facebook and, and, and, you know, the people who run that platform. I understand all of that. But it's so rad and it's so promising. And like, I could show you a game on the VR headset that I think would sell you

• 39:27Griffin McElroy?

  on like this as a thing that would be fun to play other similar games on. But, but it's so rough right now for game development and it feels like you're really not seeing as many people talking about making games for VR. Not as much as, uh, you know, I think that that was shored up by, uh, the, the PSVR. Is that still, are they still making PSVR 2 games? Is that still a, no, okay, I didn't think so.

• 39:55Griffin McElroy?

  But then like, I don't, but there's-

• 39:56Russ Frushtick?

  Moss, the studio that made Moss, that little mouse VR game.

• 39:59Griffin McElroy?

  Moss is great, right?

• 40:00Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, that studio just closed.

• 40:01Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. So it's like, it's, things are tough for everyone. And I feel like the market for, we're going to spend a bunch of time making a game that is on a platform that is maybe not so widely adopted. And also the like ecosystem is like inherently so fractious of like, well, you got it, it's got to be on Meta and then it's got to be on, I, I think Steam sort of stepping back into the game will be very good for this.

• 40:26Russ Frushtick?

  It helps.

• 40:26Griffin McElroy?

  Um, but I, that, that is what I am interested in and what I am hopeful for, because I really like playing games in VR. Dungeons of Eternity, that like multiplayer hack and slash VR first-person game is like so fun and so good. And I, it, it, it's risky, I think, to make a game like that on a platform that's not so, that's not in everyone's house. But it's, I don't know, it gets me so excited.

• 40:50Chris Plante?

  The, the challenge with any of these boomer bust, I don't know, moments in gaming and technology is initially there's a ton of investment money coming in from people outside of the hobby and outside of games. And suddenly you have a ton of games, you have a whole bunch of big games. And as that money disappears, it's like we've created a false idea of how interesting and popular the platform is.

• 41:15Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 41:15Chris Plante?

  And that is what I worry about here is, how big is this audience? Once you pull all that money away and all of those resources? And suddenly you're having to charge people over a grand for this headset and-

• 41:29Griffin McElroy?

  That's the other thing, man. Yeah. This is, it's, it's almost twice as much as the Quest 3.

• 41:35Russ Frushtick?

  Well, and I'll say the Quest 3 notably massively subsidized by Meta. Like they would not be able to sell that at that price without that subsidization.

• 41:45Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that's probably not super sustainable in the long term.

• 41:48Russ Frushtick?

  Correct. But, yeah.

• 41:49Griffin McElroy?

  Um, I don't know, we've seen so many major tech companies, but they should have run out of money at some point, right? It seems like that and then, but it doesn't happen and that's weird.

• 42:01Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, should we talk about some of the stuff that came out in that Nintendo Direct?

• 42:04Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 42:04Griffin McElroy?

  That aired after we recorded our last episode. So we were able to talk about the Zelda stuff, but then they, they announced some new games, including one that is, has really set this household alight. And that is Kirby and the World Beyond, a new 3D Kirby action platformer. Uh, that looks like an, maybe an open world version of Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which is one of my favorite games on the Switch.

• 42:29Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I think we all knew that that Kirby team was working on some 3D follow-up to Forgotten Land, or Forgotten Realm, I think is that game?

• 42:37Griffin McElroy?

  No, Forgotten Land.

• 42:38Russ Frushtick?

  Forgotten Land, sorry.

• 42:39Griffin McElroy?

  Forgotten Realm is like a D and D thing.

• 42:42Russ Frushtick?

  But I did not expect them. Yeah, this game, as described in the trailer, it is an open world game, like giant open fields, Breath of the Wild style fucking Kirby game, which is a wild move, given when you look at Kirby and the Forgotten Land, like largely those are relatively linear levels.

• 43:00Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. So I mean, with little, little, you know, side path stuff to kind of find and uncover. But yeah, that's, it was level based and this doesn't seem.

• 43:08Chris Plante?

  I wouldn't be surprised if it's still somewhat like.

• 43:12Russ Frushtick?

  Like a hub and spoke kind of thing.

• 43:13Chris Plante?

  Yeah. If you're kind of like entering little spaces that give you more of a traditional Kirby level. We'll see. The, the trailer is great because it promises the Truman Show experience for Kirby, suggesting that Kirby has been trapped inside of some smaller reality all along, only to break free from it and then discover the open world waiting for them. Kirby, how did this happen? Like, how did we go Kirby being kind of like C in terms of resources committed to the game? Kirby always a hit in terms of the merch, but right, you know, small Kirby games. Then we get Forgotten Land, which is one of my favorite games Nintendo

• 43:53Chris Plante?

  has ever made. I adore that game. And then to get this even big, I, I'm not arguing. I just don't know how it happened.

• 44:03Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, maybe they, maybe they're like deep in debt to Sakurai for all the Smash stuff. So this is the, this is the price that he has. I mean, I don't know. I don't, I don't, I don't know the reason for it, but like I, I Forgotten Land is so good. It's so strong. It's such a great fucking platformer with, with two-player functionality that is, is really just kind of the best, really just kind of the best on the platform. I'm really hoping that that exists in here. By the way, I would be heartbroken if there was not a little, you know, spear toting Waddle D that, uh, you know, you could, you could play on because it, this, that was like one of my favorite games. It was maybe the first game

• 44:45Griffin McElroy?

  that me and Henry got like really into and 100%ed, uh, because of how fun the co-op stuff was. I really hope that that's in here too. Um, the other big one, Metroid Ravenous, a new, uh, 2D, uh, Metroid game. It looks a lot like Metroid Dread.

• 45:03Chris Plante?

  But flips it, flips it. And now I'm excited. Metroid Dread, I didn't need a horror game. I like horror movies. I don't like horror games where I feel like I'm just having to hide even for a few seconds to wait for somebody to pass me. This time you are the horror monster. You are like the slasher villain. You are hungry as fuck and you're just gonna start, I don't know, eating the souls out of your enemies? It looks good.

• 45:27Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, it looks like she has a magic gauntlet that lets her absorb power or whatever.

• 45:32Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, spoiler alert for the last game, but she basically like became a Metroid?

• 45:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. It's been so long.

• 45:39Russ Frushtick?

  Or something.

• 45:40Griffin McElroy?

  Dread.

• 45:41Chris Plante?

  It does rock. It, it really grabbed me. I love Dread. I'm stoked for this.

• 45:45Russ Frushtick?

  This studio, which is Mercury Steam, has been making these 2D Metroid games since the 3DS one, uh, Metroid, Samus Returns, where they remade the second Metroid game. And all of them have been bangers. I mean, the first two certainly have been.

• 45:59Griffin McElroy?

  They also did the Lords of Shadow, uh, Castlevania games as well.

• 46:05Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's a great studio and it is a reminder of like, hey, you can bring in new blood to a franchise and see what they can do with it. And clearly they have a lot of passion for.

• 46:16Griffin McElroy?

  Well, except they did do that with Metroid a couple of times with less success.

• 46:22Russ Frushtick?

  Well, originally Retro, they gave it to Retro and Retro crushed it originally. And then Retro didn't crush it.

• 46:29Griffin McElroy?

  Crush it. Um.

• 46:30Russ Frushtick?

  That's true.

• 46:31Griffin McElroy?

  There was also other M, which is not.

• 46:33Russ Frushtick?

  Oh yeah. Other M was bad. You're right.

• 46:36Griffin McElroy?

  But yeah, I mean, this looks fantastic.

• 46:37Russ Frushtick?

  I'm so excited. It does also, they, I am generally pretty good about not buying things for my house, but they are selling a $45 Chozo statue. That looks fucking awesome.

• 46:49Griffin McElroy?

  It's a scale.

• 46:50Russ Frushtick?

  It's an amiibo. It is one-to-one scale, so it's nine feet tall.

• 46:55Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 46:56Russ Frushtick?

  No, it's, it's about, I don't know, size of a football, something like that. It's big.

• 47:00Griffin McElroy?

  It's got an orb you can smash.

• 47:01Russ Frushtick?

  Well, you, I think you put the orb in there. You can put an orange in there or something. Looks fucking awesome, but I'm so excited. I, I love these games and I'm replaying Dread right now, so it's, uh, well timed and it's only, it's January, like it's closed for this title.

• 47:14Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Um, I think those were the only big sort of.

• 47:18Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, those were the standout ones for me.

• 47:20Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, they announced like Persona 6 is coming. There was a lot of like, and this is coming here too. Monster Hunter Wilds. It's also coming, coming to the Switch 2.

• 47:29Griffin McElroy?

  Metra Chameleon, you guys know that one? It's on here now.

• 47:32Russ Frushtick?

  I was surprised at how quickly that came on. Good for them.

• 47:35Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 47:36Russ Frushtick?

  I think let's jump into honorable mentions. You guys have anything you've been playing or watching or et cetera?

• 47:41Chris Plante?

  I mean, I've been playing a game that we're gonna talk about on Resties. A little game called Metal Gear Solid 4. And here's, here's my little, it's just a little muzmush. I have found the least Rust Rustic game ever created. It is astonishing. I know, I know. And yet I played it too. And I thought, I don't know what I thought, but I could not wait to talk more about this game. Um, we're gonna be talking about that. And then also I've been playing, uh, do y'all get into that Sprawl Zero yet?

• 48:17Russ Frushtick?

  I have not played it yet.

• 48:18Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I played a little bit of that. It's not my, it's not my like thing. It's not my shot. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's not more, uh, it's almost boomer shootery, which is just kind of not. I think that's more your jam than my jam, but I, I, it is. When you get some shit sort of comboed together, it does, it does feel quite cool.

• 48:37Chris Plante?

  Well, we'll talk about that more in this episode too, but my short version is Boomer Shooter Bulletstorm. And.

• 48:45Griffin McElroy?

  That is a very good way of putting it.

• 48:47Chris Plante?

  Delicious.

• 48:48Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 48:50Russ Frushtick?

  I've been playing a game called The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild.

• 48:54Griffin McElroy?

  Really?

• 48:54Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. I was looking for something.

• 48:56Griffin McElroy?

  Is it about a house full of puzzles or?

• 48:58Russ Frushtick?

  No. Okay. So I have not touched Blueprints since we got to the point that I last talked about it, mostly because I have not had any spare time to do the very intricate preparation that I need to do before I can jump into that thing that I'm at. So we're gonna, we're gonna pause on Blueprints for a second. I've been playing Breath of the Wild with my son because I was looking for something that I could play with him. And I was like, do I start with Tears of the Kingdom? Do I start with Breath of the Wild? I am so happy that I started with Breath of the Wild because it has given me a new appreciation for this game, specifically because the two games are surprisingly different, which I think people sort of got, but I think the general response is like Tears of the Kingdom, just

• 49:40Russ Frushtick?

  a better version of Breath of the Wild. Like in every way, it's just better. And I think Breath of the Wild in some ways is a more precise scalpel of a game because you're really, all you have is like the world around you, like the environment, the enemies, that's all you have. You don't have, you can't build a fucking helicopter that can drop bombs from the sky. You don't have that option. So you find yourself in these situations where it's like, what can I do? And it just feels so organic. The other day we were playing and we got to the Bridge of Hylia, which is a very tall bridge across the lake. And my son, who's five, was like, my turn, grabbed the controller and leapt off the bridge. And we landed on one of the pillars underneath the bridge, but we have no stamina. And so

• 50:24Russ Frushtick?

  I spent the last, the next like 20 minutes trying to like math out a way that I could somehow get back to the top of the bridge without fast traveling, which felt like cheating. That shit is cool. Like this game is filled with stuff like that where you really have the problem solved. And.

• 50:40Griffin McElroy?

  Especially in master quest mode, which I doubt you're playing that, but it really turns it into a true sort of survival game.

• 50:47Russ Frushtick?

  And like an amazing immersive sim, like one of the best immersive sims I've ever played unquestionably. Um, it's such a cool experience and I'm playing it on the Switch 2. So you got the 60 FPS going and it just looks fucking stunning and sounds great. And ah, I'm, I'm like totally reinvigorated by it.

• 51:06Russ Frushtick?

  The only other thing I want to mention is I watched, and I'm very late on this, but I watched Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, which was the Netflix series that came out a few years ago. Um, initially billed as a, just an animated version of the original like story, like just like a.

• 51:22Griffin McElroy?

  Fun bait and switch.

• 51:23Russ Frushtick?

  Fun bait and switch, but in, in fact, you learn after the first episode, it's actually like a.

• 51:29Griffin McElroy?

  Semi sequel side, I don't know semi sequel. It's like an alternate reality. Reality story that is like completely different from what happened in the movie. What if, what if Scott Pilgrim loses that first fight against Matthew Patel? Right. And then what, what mostly what does Ramona do? Kind of like after that? Yeah. Very charming, beautifully animated. Oh my God, the animation is through the roof insane. They got all the original voice, the actors from the movie to do all the voice acting. They got the gooch. They got the gooch. The music. Yep. Yeah, it's, it's really good stuff. That's what I call on a monogam. Thanks for explaining.

• 52:02Griffin McElroy?

  Uh, so it's great. It's on Netflix. Um, I've been watching something on Netflix with, uh, Rachel called, uh, JSOC's B and B rules. So there's backstory. Um, during COVID, we watched a show on Netflix called Hiyori's Bed and Breakfast, where, uh, Lee Hiyori, who is a very famous Korean pop star and her husband run, uh, bed and breakfast out of their little cabin, uh, in the woods of Jeju Island. Uh, and it was so charming and so chill. And they really, uh, they like cooked all the meals and cleaned and like really worked very hard opening up their home and making it into, uh, a B and B that people could come and stay at. And Gary Busey shows up. And Gary fucking Busey. Well, no, that the show ran for two seasons and then people figured out where the house was.

• 52:47Griffin McElroy?

  And then they had to cancel it. It was unfortunate. Uh, JSOC is, uh, you JSOC, he is a, uh, like TV, variety TV performer. He's been on a fucking ton of Korean reality shows and different sort of TV entertainment things. Uh, and it's a very similar style show, uh, only instead of having like his house that he's hosting people at, it is like a special facility he had built that has like a gymnasium and like a kitchen and, uh, it, but otherwise it's like four Korean celebrities running a bed and breakfast for 24 guests, uh, who have come in and, uh, at one point Hiyori and her husband show up to like help with one of the, like the second half of the season or something like that.

• 53:33Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's a very acquired taste, a very specific taste, but like I, this, this format, like the Korean variety show format, uh, is one that is like a vibe that I really, really do enjoy quite a lot. And, uh, it's, it's truly entertaining watching celebrities. There's like a moment of realization in the very first episode where they're like, oh no, this is going to be hard. Like we just finished making lunch and now we have to start making dinner. Uh-oh. Uh, there's a scene where they have to go buy coffee for everyone and they bring like a big container, like dispenser to a cafe and get it filled up and then realize while they're driving back up the mountain to where the B and B is, like the coffee is just sloshing all over the car

• 54:18Griffin McElroy?

  and watching them like panic and try. It's like, you guys aren't built for this. Um, but watching you try to do it to like, make a comfortable space for your guests is like, is, is really fun. It sounds so nice. Yeah. Yeah, it's really nice. It's a, it's a, it's a hell of a vibe. Uh, I've also been playing a game called Restore Chill Electronics Repairs. Yeah, I haven't, but I really want to. Is it good? You run, uh, an electronics repair shop in Akihabara and, uh, people come to you and they give you their broken electronics and then almost like, uh, auto mechanic simulator style, like you, you'd strip them for parts and you clean up the stuff that works and throw out the stuff that doesn't. And then

• 55:00Griffin McElroy?

  you can buy like secondhand broken, you know, versions of that, you know, maybe, uh, uh, you know, a Nintendo DS and you can strip it for parts and combine them into one functional product and then get paid and buy new stuff. And, uh, the, again, the vibe is like really cool. The vibe is really fantastic. It looks really, uh, looks really lovely. And I mean. Did you play with a controller or is it like a touch? I tried to play with a controller. I downloaded it on the, um, Rog Ally X and it's, you can, it's just like so much better on mouse and keyboard, like dragging shit and dropping it on your little workstation. Like it just makes so much more sense to do that mouse and keyboard style. Um, but yeah,

• 55:43Griffin McElroy?

  it's a lot of fun. Stripping a PSP for parts in a video game and repairing it. And I'll bet they have like fun off brand. Yeah, like they can't call anything their actual names. Yeah, that's cool. Been playing that one and enjoying it a lot. I think we've done it. Awesome. Play it. You want to recap the games we talked about? Oh my gosh, what didn't we talk about? We talked, talked about Wolverine. We talked about the Steam frame. We talked about the new Kirby and Metroid Ravenous, Metal Gear Solid 4, Sprawl Zero, uh, Breath of the Wild, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Restore. And Griffin, what was the name of the show? JSOC's B and B Rules. Thank you. We will have all of those. I spelled it out for you in the, in the rundown.

• 56:27Griffin McElroy?

  It'll, it'll, it'll be in the show notes. Yeah. We also talked about hentai Project 67. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Don't want to sleep on that. Um, folks, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the besties. Did you know we have a Patreon that you can go and you can support us directly and get access to episodes of the resties that Chris and Russ do, where they talk about the games that we don't talk about here on the besties? Cause they're so dirty, like, um, hentai project six, seven. Um, and it's also where we put up our monthly bracket battle episodes where we get special guests to come and help us decide like, um, which video game has the most delicious looking food? Cause that's all, I mean, it's all there and it's so much fun at, uh, besties. What is it? Patreon.com slash the besties. Yes. Do you, do you want to tell us about some backers?

• 57:12Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, I would love to. Some backers over at Patreon.com slash the besties. We have Jason K. We have Mark. We have Erlich or Erlich. I'm not sure. It's one of those. And we have Sean M. Thank you for being backers. Thank you to everyone else for being backers. You make this show possible. You make the main show possible. You make the Patreon possible. The whole shebang. Yeah. Thank you to everyone else, uh, for listening. I'm going to add here that it's very possible that that name was just Eric. I think it might just be Eric. I think you drew a phantom L in there. E R I C H. Right. So where was the L that you? Oh yeah. No, Eric. Yeah, you're right. It's probably Erich. Anyway, E rich. Yeah, possibly. Um, I feel, I feel E rich with the game we're going to be playing next week.

• 57:56Griffin McElroy?

  I feel rich in like, uh, electronic entertainment, which is, it's Fire Emblem Fortunes Weave and then Nintendo Switch 2. Can't fucking wait. That'll be a good game. You're going to play all 200 hours of it, right? Um, yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think, yeah, I think I might actually do that. Um, so join us again next week and every week here on the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best game?