Yes, Queen’s Domain Really Is That Good

The boys catch up on some exciting indies: Virtue and a Sledgehammer and Queen’s Domain. Sledgehammer is a narrative-heavy game that asks questions about how much we should be willing to give up (and destroy) in order to save society from artificial intelligence. Also, you get to smash robots with a sledgehammer. Queen’s Domain is a spiritual follow-up to the King’s Field series, which From Software produced in the decades before Dark Souls. Unlike King’s Field games, Queen’s Domain is extremely enjoyable without a guide and/or bashing your skull against the TV.

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

• 0:00Griffin McElroy?

  I mean, are you guys ready for the mainstream news reporting on GTA 6? Are you guys, have you guys begun the process of really battening down the hatches? And preparing yourself for how the lame stream media is going to cover GTA 6? Cause I can already feel the douche chills deep in my spine.

• 0:21Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so there's a non-zero chance that I'm going to be the mainstream media talking about GTA 6.

• 0:29Chris Plante?

  You are the problem. You are the problem. You're gonna be out here and you're gonna be like, "Oh, can you believe it? Your husband's dating a video game." And then the BBC is gonna be like, "Ay, blimey, for real?"

• 0:40Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, this is good. Chris and I can help work through some of the talking points.

• 0:44Russ Frushtick?

  Please, yeah, let me make sure I check the boxes.

• 0:48Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, my name is Chus Keston and I'm here with my co-host, friend James. And together we are Friend James and Chet Jeston. And we're here, we've heard about this new, hey friend, you heard about this new game Grand Theft Auto 6?

• 1:04Chris Plante?

  Well, I sure have. The little one's been talking about it all year.

• 1:09Griffin McElroy?

  My two little ones can't stop yelling at each other about it and I wanna buy it for them. And it seems like a fun, it looks like a fortnight. Here joining us in the studios, Russ Frushtick. Russ, welcome to the Chet and Friend News Hour.

• 1:25Chris Plante?

  Good to have you.

• 1:26Russ Frushtick?

  Thanks for having me, guys. I appreciate it.

• 1:29Griffin McElroy?

  So what's the deal? This thing causing all the mass shootings or what?

• 1:33Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, no, I mean, it's, you know, it's a big game. There is violence in it, but it's what?

• 1:38Griffin McElroy?

  Stop, stop. You already fucked up, man.

• 1:40Russ Frushtick?

  What?

• 1:40Chris Plante?

  You fucked up big time.

• 1:41Griffin McElroy?

  Too mealy-mouthed, dude. You need to shut that shit down right away. I wanna see the claws come out.

• 1:47Chris Plante?

  You wanna try it again? You wanna try it again?

• 1:49Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. So what's the deal? This causing all the mass shootings or what?

• 1:53Russ Frushtick?

  Yes.

• 1:55Chris Plante?

  Oh.

• 1:56Griffin McElroy?

  He's ready.

• 1:58Chris Plante?

  He's so ready.

• 2:19Griffin McElroy?

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

• 2:22Chris Plante?

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

• 2:25Russ Frushtick?

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

• 2:29Griffin McElroy?

  Welcome to the besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It is a game of the year club. Just by listening, you've become a member. This week, we're doing one of our classic grab bags. And just a, just a GORP of games that you can take with you on the trail, reach in, and you're gonna get crunchy notes of narrative.

• 2:49Russ Frushtick?

  Is it GORP if there's only two ingredients to the GORP? Cause I think we only have two games.

• 2:53Chris Plante?

  GORP means two. You know this. You know the besties dictionary. GORP is two. Okay, so yeah. Is three and Quizop is four.

• 3:02Griffin McElroy?

  I didn't realize that we put, I don't know, the same stuff in the GORP. Like, I didn't realize we only had two GORP. And can I say something? In the GORP sort of world, I think that granola and raisins are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I do not care if they're the only two left at the end of the day.

• 3:20Russ Frushtick?

  What about M&Ms?

• 3:21Griffin McElroy?

  No, cause I'm an adult. So this is, this is grrr. And it's just two games. What are we talking about today, Chris?

• 3:27Chris Plante?

  We're talking about Queen's Domain, which is a spiritual follow-up to Kingsfield. And we're talking about Virtua and a Sledgehammer, which is a narrative-heavy game with a hammer that it wants to take to artificial intelligence.

• 3:40Russ Frushtick?

  A lot of heavy things.

• 3:41Griffin McElroy?

  I can't believe Justin is not here for the Kingsfield-based discussion. I'm sure he'll be heartbroken. Let's take a quick break and get into it.

• 3:50Russ Frushtick?

  So I do wanna say, I did speak briefly to Justin about this game. This is Queen's Domain. He has not played it. As of this recording, he has not played it. I think he's savoring it for a potential stream coming up. But it does entice him greatly.

• 4:05Griffin McElroy?

  Yum, yum, gimme some. This looks great. I've never, so Justin's tried to get me on the Kingsfield sort of express. And I haven't done it because of how bad those games feel to play.

• 4:16Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, how do you feel about 12 frames a second? Is that an entice?

• 4:19Griffin McElroy?

  The frame rate is not bothering me so much, right? Like, I played Lunacid, which was the other, is it the same developer?

• 4:28Russ Frushtick?

  No, it's a different developer, but in the same genre, yes. I like that game.

• 4:32Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I like that game a lot. And so like, I definitely like that. And I respect, obviously, the lineage that brought us to Dark Souls.

• 4:39Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 4:41Griffin McElroy?

  So like, how much of that is here, I guess?

• 4:43Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, man. This game, ah, this is a very special game. You know that scene in Hamilton? When the Skylers are like, "I'm about to change your life," you know, was beside, she comes over? And she said that to Hamilton, the guy, the lead guy. Griffin, I'm about to change your life.

• 5:05Griffin McElroy?

  Wow, okay. So, um, okay.

• 5:08Russ Frushtick?

  This game is really fucking good.

• 5:09Griffin McElroy?

  Okay, cool.

• 5:10Chris Plante?

  Oh, okay.

• 5:11Russ Frushtick?

  It's a long walk.

• 5:12Griffin McElroy?

  Wow, I can feel it. It's happening.

• 5:16Chris Plante?

  Griffin's skin is crawling back from his fingers. He's radiating.

• 5:20Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, Queen's Gambit is a first-person shit.

• 5:23Chris Plante?

  You try.

• 5:25Russ Frushtick?

  Queen's Domain is a first-person, as we said. I would, I would describe it as a Souls-like. I knew people compare it to Kingsfield, but a lot of people haven't played Kingsfield games. So this is, I would say, if you've played a Souls-like, this will feel very similar insofar as, you know, big, open environment, lots of shortcuts, lots of ways through, lots of hidden secrets.

• 5:47Chris Plante?

  And I'm gonna hop in, just, just a second. There's a possibility that not everybody here, game history stuff. Kingsfield is the series that preceded Dark Souls from, from the software. But interestingly, not directed by the person responsible for making Dark Souls what Dark Souls is.

• 6:05Griffin McElroy?

  So it's very punishing, first-person dungeon crawlers.

• 6:09Russ Frushtick?

  And noteworthy for being like, interwoven area, like giant open worlds that are like constantly crisscrossing one another in interesting ways.

• 6:17Chris Plante?

  Barely running, as Frushtick said, which is important because Queen's Domain, in fact, runs.

• 6:22Russ Frushtick?

  Yes. Okay, that's good. So this game presents itself in that manner. Like, it is a first-person game, obviously visually and performance-wise runs much better than those games did. At a glance, I would say it's like PS2 maybe era, maybe like PS 1.5 era graphics.

• 6:41Griffin McElroy?

  Cool.

• 6:42Russ Frushtick?

  Where this game, I think, sets itself apart, and I, you mentioned, I'm glad you mentioned Lunacid, cause it's a game that I also played and I can make some comparisons to that. Lunacid had some cool stuff, but level design-wise felt like relatively basic. It was a lot of like, boxy hallways, whatever else. Uh, Queen's Domain adopts much more from the level design tenants of Dark Souls. Insofar as you start at a place and because of the way the shortcuts work and the way the map is designed, you constantly find yourself returning to this place. Oh, but suddenly this elevator's unlocked and suddenly this door is open and suddenly X, Y, and Z. That's the like, basic stuff, the stuff you would expect in a Souls-like game.

• 7:24Russ Frushtick?

  Where the curveball is, and part of the reason that I like, was like, kind of eh, on the first hour of the game, and then it immediately fucking grabs me, is there's a sword that you get that gives you an air dash. And that seems like the dumbest fucking thing to be the draw for this game. But think about like Dark Souls 1, and think about exploration in Dark Souls 1 and how you move through that world. If you had an air dash, what would that do to your options at any given moment from an exploration standpoint?

• 7:57Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. I'm looking at a gameplay trailer that is very dash-heavy.

• 8:02Chris Plante?

  It is the Metroidvania sword. It literally converts the Kingsfield thing into, I saw PC Gamer, I think it's Ted Litchfield at PC Gamer, compared this to Metroid Prime in its level design. And I think that's a pretty fair comparison. Because yes, you do unlock the elevators and, you know, change the geography a little bit to make it faster to move around. But the real change is the sword. Because as you get three or four dashes, suddenly you are cutting across areas that had taken you an hour before to have to deal with all the enemies there. That's the other part. This game makes a rough first impression, like a really, really, really rough one.

• 8:46Chris Plante?

  If you do not take time to learn how it actually wants you to play it. And Freshy, I assume you did not have the problem I had.

• 8:54Russ Frushtick?

  I did.

• 8:54Chris Plante?

  I will just, I will embarrass myself.

• 8:56Russ Frushtick?

  It's cause I'm a smart guy.

• 8:57Chris Plante?

  You're a smart guy. I started this game and I'm hitting enemies, just attacking them like I would in the other game. And the health is not going anywhere. And what I take that to mean in game speak is, oh, this is one of those games where like, you're mostly supposed to run away from enemies. You're not supposed to be able to fight a lot of these things. It's ultra punishing, it's ultra hard. It's like the beginning of a lot of FromSoft games. And what I did not understand until I went back to it after taking a break after the first 30 minutes is there is a stamina system that immediately depletes the second you do anything. You swing your weapon, fully depletes. You dash, fully depletes. Anything, fully depletes. So every time you want to make a move, whether that is run away or attack,

• 9:43Chris Plante?

  you need to wait for it to charge up and then you can charge a like an additional attack on top of it. And once you do that, the game opens up. Suddenly, like, everything makes sense.

• 9:53Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, suddenly you could do damage. It basically like, based on the amount of stamina you have, that's how much damage you're gonna do.

• 10:00Griffin McElroy?

  So it's sort of doing a, almost like a time gated, almost turn-based.

• 10:05Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 10:06Griffin McElroy?

  Like, I understand why this is, it sounds probably terrible on that face value.

• 10:11Russ Frushtick?

  I mean, Souls games do this too. When you like slam the attack button a thousand times, you eventually run out of stamina. This is just kind of front-loading that decision where you really need to make that swing in a meaningful way and make it count the first time.

• 10:25Griffin McElroy?

  But how much is there in terms of like build variety stuff? Like, are you, because that's obviously one of the highlights of the FromSoft games for me.

• 10:34Chris Plante?

  There's so much. There's so much stuff. So you have both like throwing weapons and you have your attack weapons. And the attacks deal either like Pierce, Slash, or Smash. And the various enemies that you kill are going to be either weak or strong against each of those. Like a pretty typical Rochambeau sort of thing. But then on top of that, you are collecting weapons quite regularly throughout the game. And each of those weapons has its own special ability. Like, one can kind of dash forward, extending your dash. One can push you away from enemies so you can get in and out. A lot of the combat we'll get into it is like boxing, where it's not about, well, you can defend in boxing, but it's more about your placement.

• 11:16Russ Frushtick?

  And like baiting out attacks and then you attack after they.

• 11:19Chris Plante?

  Yes. And then there are like weapons that have things like an uppercut that have more ability. Like, they help you get around and continue to kind of break the geography of the game.

• 11:32Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, notably, Griffin, there are no stats that you are personally changing. So you're not investing like points of strength or whatever. So your build, for what it's worth, is basically the weapons that you equip. But some of those weapons, in addition to what Plant said, also evolve. So a shitty rusty sword might evolve into something that has, oh shit, now has a magic spell attached to it that it deals whatever, bleeding damage every time you.

• 11:58Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 11:59Russ Frushtick?

  So that was stuff that was in Luna said. I think it's a staple of having weapons level up. I think is a staple of the Kingsfield games. But that stuff in particular really changed the game because I can have weapons, maybe I'm not using, but they come with like a really powerful passive spell. So I'll switch to them quickly when I'm fighting something noteworthy.

• 12:17Chris Plante?

  And the grind of upgrading the weapons is fast. Like, you can farm, I just did this because I was having trouble with a boss. You can farm a weapon from one to max pretty quickly and then you're getting other rewards while you're doing that. And as you are grinding the weapons, it feels like crackdown? Like that sense of like, you know, you know in crackdown when you're just collecting that, by doing more things, you are getting better at those things? Like, the more you run around, the more powerful you get at running. For this, the more you're just hammering out these weapons, one, your level is increasing. And two, your weapons, each time they increase a level, it is meaningful.

• 12:58Chris Plante?

  It's not the Dark Souls thing of like, oh, I put a point behind this and maybe I'll notice it 20 points in. The weapons get really meaty, really, really quickly. So it feels fun to take an enemy or to take a weapon that is weak and actually just kind of grind it, to grind it? Because the rewards are coming so like fast that you just feel like you are becoming a beast as you smash through a whole bunch of like shitty skeletons and evil snake people.

• 13:29Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I mean, on top of all that stuff, it's doing the stuff that, again, I think Dark Souls games do great, which is like using the environment in smart ways to hide secrets in plain sight or areas in plain sight that you had no idea they were there. There's a spot very close to where you start the very beginning of the game that I was probably six or seven hours into the game, never went there, didn't even occur to me that I could go there. I went back to it and it's this giant, huge, fucking, non-stop, like ginormous area of the map. And because of the air dash and the way that exploration works, you're constantly kind of stumbling on these things. Because they want you to be able to reach like more or less everything you can see.

• 14:14Russ Frushtick?

  So it kind of just requires like a lot of ingenuity. I'm sure there are already guides up because the game is becoming very popular, but it is, again.

• 14:22Griffin McElroy?

  Do you think it's tackleable without, because like, I love what you're describing, that feeling of like, oh shit, there's a whole world beyond this like thing. I don't know what's there.

• 14:30Russ Frushtick?

  I ran into one wall that drove me kind of nuts and I think it personally should get patched because it's not good design.

• 14:37Chris Plante?

  I think it's pretty great. It took me any time. See, you're good at skill, but you know, when it comes to the brains.

• 14:44Russ Frushtick?

  When it comes to finding triangles, Chris Plant is your man.

• 14:47Chris Plante?

  Really good at it.

• 14:48Griffin McElroy?

  Spoilers. God, Russ, you're always Mister No Spoilers and here you're telling us all about the triangles.

• 14:54Russ Frushtick?

  You know me, Griffin. I don't look shit up.

• 14:56Griffin McElroy?

  That's true.

• 14:56Russ Frushtick?

  So, no, it's very doable.

• 14:59Chris Plante?

  As the not like, okay, guides person, you don't need guides for this. Like, it is, it is very manageable.

• 15:05Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's, I'm asking because Kingsfield is, in my opinion, one of the most unplayable games without like something holding your hand and saying like, okay, this is, this is what you need to do to get started.

• 15:18Russ Frushtick?

  That's a good note. The game actually had, the game is not the like obtuse insanity that is Kingsfield. The game actually has in-game guides that will explain to you, here's how weapon damage works. When you kill an enemy for the first time, it'll tell you, oh, it's weak to Pierce and strong against impact or whatever the fuck it is.

• 15:37Griffin McElroy?

  Okay.

• 15:38Russ Frushtick?

  So all that stuff is surfaced within the game itself. There was never really a moment where I was like, how does this work? It's like pretty straightforward, actually, all that.

• 15:47Chris Plante?

  There's already kind of this conversation that I'm seeing on social media around the game's difficulty. And it's hard, but as somebody who like does not finish most Souls games, it's not unforgiving. I think what feels most difficult about the game is having to learn that draw an enemy in to attack you, dodge it, and then attack just feels different than what we're used to. When I say dodge, like, there is no dodge button. There is no block button. You're having to just think about your placement and not drawing too many enemies because you're not gonna be able to take on too many of them at the same time. It really feels like those early battles in a FromSoft game before it gets like overly complex.

• 16:30Chris Plante?

  And there are bosses and they're tough, but it's pretty clear like what the game wants you to do to be able to beat a boss. I mean, it wants you to prepare. Like, it wants you to make sure that you have the right items, that you have everything you need. But if you come prepared, the game is just very manageable. I'm stunned. I was really worried about it eventually putting me off and it has done quite the opposite. I feel more and more comfortable with it the longer I play.

• 16:58Russ Frushtick?

  And I think the limitations it puts on the build stuff is part of that. Because it's not a situation where in Dark Souls or Elden Ring, it's like, oh, I need these six pieces of armor and then I do this buff, this buff, this buff, and then I can go in and I'm doing like 300%. You don't have those options. I mean, there are a couple buffs, but it's just food you eat to increase your damage or whatever. So I think the simplicity of it allows it, again, be more approachable. It's not as overwhelming. But honestly, that's great for me because I prefer the exploration over the like boss fights anyway. So.

• 17:31Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. Uh, cool. I'm gonna definitely get this. I'm pissed that I didn't know about this because I feel like I've been in a bit of a drought for the last like couple of weeks and this seems like something that, and that drought is about to fucking completely disappear. But I definitely want to make time for this because it looks very cool.

• 17:50Russ Frushtick?

  I did not know about it until Chris Plant told me about it. That was the first time. So.

• 17:55Chris Plante?

  Taking pride in this one. Taking pride in this one.

• 17:58Griffin McElroy?

  Also, good find, bro.

• 17:59Chris Plante?

  For the real sickos, this runs unbelievably well on the AYN floor and feels so good. It feels like playing a retro-looking game on that thing, high refresh rate and just.

• 18:10Russ Frushtick?

  I kind of want to play it on the Nova. That'd be fun.

• 18:13Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, that'd be appropriate. That Nova is perfect for PS2 stuff. All right, let's, um, let's take a quick little break and then we're gonna come back and talk a little bit about busting up a robot.

• 18:27Russ Frushtick?

  Did you say making a robot bust?

• 18:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, making a robot totally bust, dude. Um, no, the robots in Virtue and a Sledgehammer do not bust or do any sort of

• 18:39Russ Frushtick?

  Cry?

• 18:39Griffin McElroy?

  You know, bicentennial man-style robot sexual escapades.

• 18:44Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 18:45Griffin McElroy?

  They are, they more or less say stuff, and sometimes that stuff is pleading for their digital life, and sometimes it is a racial epithet, and then they almost always do get smashed with a sledgehammer. I've just described the core gameplay loop of Virtue and a Sledgehammer. Who, who else played, did you play this?

• 19:03Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I played quite a bit of this. Um, did you end up finishing it?

• 19:07Griffin McElroy?

  I did, yeah. It took about three hours or so, I will say.

• 19:10Chris Plante?

  About an hour from the end. I am very curious about where it goes, because

• 19:15Griffin McElroy?

  Sure.

• 19:15Chris Plante?

  It, if you see a trailer for this game, you will think, this is a game that's maybe like Red Faction Guerrilla. You have this sledgehammer, you're walking through small towns, you are literally demolishing homes and buildings, hunting down these robots, maybe fighting them, and maybe there's some story. And that's kind of the game, but for me, what I have experienced was largely a narrative game. This is a narrative game-

• 19:38Griffin McElroy?

  Extremely, 98% narrative game, 2%. Red Faction Guerrilla, it ain't, because you have the sledgehammer, and when you, let's start at the beginning. You play as Pratelle, who is an engineer, sort of roboticist, I guess, because she is, at the beginning of the kind of timeline of this, of this story, working with her sister Nina. The game is all about Pratelle and Nina's relationship, and their relationship with their mother, who has recently died. What you learn throughout the story, and you learn this by collecting either fragments of like, really important memories to the story that's being told,

• 20:22Griffin McElroy?

  or sometimes you will find just sort of standalone memories, you smash those, you are transported into the memory, where sometimes you make choices about like, you know, how you want to respond, but there's not a ton of, you're not putting a lot of English on the ball. The story is about how your sister Nina has created technology that allows people to digitize their consciousness, thereby becoming immortal and living inside of these robot bodies. You, Pratelle, do not like this, have disagreed with this the entire time, and some stuff happens after that that I won't get into, but then you go back to your hometown where everyone has been digitized, everyone has been converted voluntarily, not in some

• 21:06Griffin McElroy?

  sort of like, great sort of kidnapping plot. They are all robots, and you have a sledgehammer, which Pratelle refers to as 20 pounds of physical media, which is fucking excellent, really, really, really, very, very good line. And then you go through and you smash robots and houses clean apart-

• 21:26Russ Frushtick?

  Wow.

• 21:26Griffin McElroy?

  -as you move forward through the story, towards a confrontation with your sister, looking for memories, trying not to get hit by the robots. I never died, because the robots, some robots will kind of fight back, but it ain't too hard to smash.

• 21:42Chris Plante?

  Only barely. A lot of them beg for their lives, though. A lot of them are like, yeah, do you, yeah, go ahead.

• 21:49Griffin McElroy?

  No, I don't want to, I don't want to, Pratelle, on the, this, this whole time. It's, it's, it's not the most gameplay. You have like, your swing, and then you have like, a charge swing you can do, that, some of the later robot models are a little bit more armored and require, you know, an overhead swing, or some like, get cut in half and crawl on the ground.

• 22:12Russ Frushtick?

  Sorry, can I, can I ask, so the, when you say like, there's later robot models that are like armored and things, like, is that a grandma? Are you, like-

• 22:20Griffin McElroy?

  No, it's not, there's no correlation, I guess, to the, to the, the people who have been digitized in the bodies that they've ended up in.

• 22:27Russ Frushtick?

  Okay, so you are not, are you not killing the memories?

• 22:32Griffin McElroy?

  So, welcome, Russ, welcome to the, to the thesis of the game, right?

• 22:36Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 22:36Griffin McElroy?

  That's what it is.

• 22:37Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 22:37Griffin McElroy?

  What is, what does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to, what is a human consciousness? Can that be digital? It is very much a game about, you know, AI, and how, how we are hurtling towards it against our, our will, for the most part, and it's like, it is all about that. Because Pratelle is very much on one side of the, of the argument, and wants to destroy everything in the hometown, and her sister Nina is on the complete, opposite end of the argument, and through going through and smashing everything up, it's kind of up to you, as the player, of like, sort of reflecting on that, I guess?

• 23:18Chris Plante?

  Yeah. I found this game exceptionally difficult to play, and not like, not that I didn't like it, but like, sometimes you go see a movie, and you're like, ooh, that was really tough to get through.

• 23:30Griffin McElroy?

  It's nasty business, for the most part.

• 23:32Chris Plante?

  Yes. And, and what surprised me about the game is, there's a lot of media out there that's about, hey, we need to smash the machines, you know? The data centers obviously suck, AI is bad, we need to destroy it all. And this game opens with very much asking you, the player, the question of, what would you do to stop something that you know is truly heinous? Like, would you hurt your family members, or kill them, if, if you knew that that would stop something truly horrible from happening in the world? And then it sets you down this path of coming across, again, people who voluntarily entered these robot bodies, begging for their lives. You go to a church, and people are like,

• 24:17Chris Plante?

  please don't come in. There, these robots are geriatric minds that were uploaded to these bodies, and they're basically like children now, and you, please, just, please just stay out. And the game, from what I can tell, like, gives you the choice, but it also seems to, it seems to be tilting its hand towards like, smash it all. Like, I know that this is hard, I know it's hard, but it's what we need to do. We need to, we need to smash it all. And what I like about the game is it, even if I think it's showing its hand, I don't largely disagree with it, it's a really messy feeling, because ultimately,

• 24:58Chris Plante?

  you as a character are so confident in your beliefs, that you are saying everybody else is wrong, and you're taking that away from them. And I think kind of what the game is getting at maybe is, well, these people aren't even people anymore. It's not actually them anymore.

• 25:15Griffin McElroy?

  That's, yeah.

• 25:16Chris Plante?

  It's just an AI. So, you're not really actually taking anything away, they're already gone. But, holy moly, is, it's a tough feeling when you are, the game very much is designed where you are a slasher movie villain. You are coming out of the woods, and you are seeing of people inside of a house, thinking they're safe, and you are literally breaking the wall down and destroying them. And that's just so, it is a wild feeling. Again, I'm not, I'm not even like, assigning judgment to it, because I don't think it's bad, but I also don't know how, I, I like, have not fully processed where I landed on it, and I don't think I will until I finish the game.

• 25:55Griffin McElroy?

  I, I think that that's, I feel the same way. I, it was, it was a challenging game. It was very thought-provoking, very quickly, very, all of these kind of like, superlatives, I feel like are super annoying critic things to say, of just like, it's really thought-provoking, it's really poignant and important, right, right now, and it's not like a, it's not a,

• 26:22Griffin McElroy?

  you're a revolutionary who's clearly on the, the side of the better angels, going through and destroying every trace of this kind of digital consciousness movement, but it's also not, like, directly vilifying that. I think it gets you there by how you interact with the, the world and all these robots. I want to push back on one thing, not all the robots beg for their lives. Some of them, some of them absolutely do, and like, how you, you can smash them or not smash them, the game does not necess, it doesn't really care. You're not gonna like, change the ending in some dramatic way, depending on like, how you get through the, get through the world, and how many people you smash. It's really

• 27:05Griffin McElroy?

  just kind of for you to do, and then sit with that. Because sometimes, a robot will come down, standing at the bottom of a road, at the bottom of a hill, and say, hey, my family is up there, can you smash us all? Can you smash us all? I, we, I don't like this, and this is, we made a mistake, can you please smash us all? And then, you'll come across-

• 27:24Chris Plante?

  And my family will try to stop you, also.

• 27:27Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, my family will stop you. Don't listen to them, smash them all. You'll come across a bar, and inside the bar, there are robots, not drinking, obviously, but they're chatting, and they're chatting about what a dipshit you are, and then when they see you, they'll start hurling, like, slurs at you, about your, about your ethnicity, about your sexual preference, they will start, and so you see that, and you're like, well, the, well, you're getting fucking smashed, right? And then you come across someone who's like, I'm begging you, I had a, you know, a degenerative illness when I was a human, and every day was agony, and this is the chance that I get to see the world, please, please don't smash me. So like, at one point, you come across what looks like a graveyard, but as you get closer, you realize it's a server farm, and someone tells you like, hey,

• 28:11Griffin McElroy?

  this is where everyone actually is. You have a chance here to stop, do not smash these. And this is like a ways into the game, where you need to know at that point, like, okay, am I smashing everything? Am I not smashing everything? And you're not getting points, and there's not, it's not even particularly satisfying or cathartic to go through and smash everything up, right? So like, on a gameplay perspective, it's three hours that get pretty tedious, pretty, pretty quickly, I will say, but the, the narrative and the thought-provoking nature of the, of the material, I think is pretty stellar. It's really affecting, and not in a, not always in a really great way. There is a content warning on the main

• 28:51Griffin McElroy?

  page of the game that I recommend you, you do take a look at, but it ends with like, a whopper of a, of a sort of decision, that I had to turn the game off, and like, come back to after I had thought about it for a while, because I genuinely like, even after three hours of answering the question in some way or another, like, I, I didn't really know what to do, I didn't really know what to say. I just think that that is like, I don't know, that's a hallmark of a very interesting game, if not like a particularly fun one or ambitious one, I guess.

• 29:26Chris Plante?

  What I really admire about it is I do think, again, it shows its hand. I think I have an idea of where the artists lie. But I love that a game allows space for it to contradict itself. Because so many games can become polemics, and so many media can, you know, like, this is where you are going to land. And what you were saying about, yeah, not all of them beg for their lives. The game really makes an effort to show you that the breadth of these robots is one to one with the breadth of the society. There are going to be racist people at a bar. There are going to be nice people who get mad at you for stepping on a bug. There are going to be people who are

• 30:09Chris Plante?

  there just to help other people. There are going to be people there who are, have their own dreams and motives, and some of them suck and some of them don't. And what is so fascinating about that is at the same time is it's saying, ultimately, this is all just one giant machine, and all of this is fabricated, right? Like, that is how an AI works. It's just random generation based off of prompts. So it, it is shocking how much it wants to tell you it's just a machine, and also how willing it is to show you how far the illusion can go, how much it can look just

• 30:53Chris Plante?

  like life and all of its goods and bads. And I think that's, I think that's very admirable, because I do think it is complicated. And I do worry when we think, see things like people succumbing to AI psychosis. I think it's easy to look at that and be like, how did you fall into that? And weirdly, I like playing this game. It's very easy to see how you could fall into those sorts of things.

• 31:16Griffin McElroy?

  If you're hearing that and thinking, though, that like, this game has some sort of defensive position about like, AI, I don't, I don't, I don't think that that is also really accurate. I think it is, has a lot more to say about like, what it means to be a, a human being. And because all the flashbacks that you're getting are like, important family memories of you and your sister and your mom. And that stuff is all real, that hits like, pretty, pretty good, and is the backbone of this broader kind of, you know, conversation. I don't know that it's like, making a stance necessarily, but I do think that it, it, it goes to great lengths

• 31:59Griffin McElroy?

  to show, you know, warts, warts and all, what a like, human experience is like, and the, you know, immeasurable, irreplaceable value of that.

• 32:11Chris Plante?

  Yeah, I agree with that. I, I think it, for me, it hit a little bit more like, oh, I know what you're trying to say. But at the end of the day, I do think you're right. And it reminds me of, there's been great reporting on people who want to grieve by creating AI chatbots from the like, data of people they loved. And this, yes, I think like, that question is, is the heart of this game. If you strip away the robot scene, strip away the smashing, really, it's getting at that question. That is a question that people are asking themselves now, like, literally today.

• 32:49Griffin McElroy?

  But it's also about what if someone you love more than anyone else in the entire world is on the opposite end of this?

• 32:56Chris Plante?

  Yeah.

• 32:57Griffin McElroy?

  And, and, and what do you do with that? How do you, how do you, like, how do you get over that? How do you accept them or not? Like, I don't know, man, it's, it's, it is interesting in a, in a major way. I'm going to be thinking about this game for a long time. I don't think it's for everyone. Uh, I, I, it's very slow, and there were times where I would have really killed for a sprint button when I would like, doubled back, because I thought I had missed like, a memory shard or whatever, and didn't. And then Patel just kind of continues that, uh, you know, Terminator style, just march back to where I was a little while. Like, it's not, uh, it's really rough around the edges, kind of, uh, interaction wise, I guess. But it, I,

• 33:42Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know that I've had a game really, like, challenge me as frequently and with like, as much success as, as this one has, at least not in, in sort of recent memory.

• 33:53Russ Frushtick?

  Wow. That sounds pretty interesting.

• 33:56Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 33:57Russ Frushtick?

  Also sounds like something-

• 33:58Chris Plante?

  The games are good, you know? That's kind of their thing. That's kind of what they do.

• 34:01Griffin McElroy?

  It also looks really cool.

• 34:03Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I like the visual style. I can see screenshots.

• 34:06Griffin McElroy?

  It reminded me a lot of mouthwashing, but not, I guess, I think that might just be the tone. Like, that's another very, very, very difficult sort of, uh, game about humanity. I don't think there's actually a lot of connective tissue there, except that they are for sale together in a steam bundle.

• 34:23Chris Plante?

  Yeah, it's also this like, aesthetic of like, the very simple polygon with the like, pixel art projected onto the face or mapped onto the face, that, I don't know, I feel like we're seeing more and more of this. I think of games like Fear Effect. Um, there's like, kind of a whole push during the PS1 era. The original Tomb Raider has a similar aesthetic, too.

• 34:42Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah. Uh, speaking of mouthwashing, they are making a movie for mouthwashing. I don't know if you've heard.

• 34:48Griffin McElroy?

  Oh, really?

• 34:48Russ Frushtick?

  Sony and Screen Gems are actually making a movie.

• 34:51Chris Plante?

  Of course they are.

• 34:52Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, man, I think, yeah, I think-

• 34:53Russ Frushtick?

  Could be really cool.

• 34:54Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's gonna be really unpleasant.

• 34:56Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 34:57Griffin McElroy?

  Like, hugely, hugely unpleasant, but I'm good on them, I guess.

• 35:01Russ Frushtick?

  Cool. Uh, that was Virtu and a Sledgehammer. Uh, we have some reader mail. Uh, there are a handful of notes about specifically oatmeal. If you listened to last week's show, we had a lot of discussion about oatmeal, really just me.

• 35:15Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. No, we, we vehemently did not participate in the conversation.

• 35:19Russ Frushtick?

  That's fair. Uh, this letter comes from Grant. "As a Scottish person who has porridge slash oatmeal frequently, are they the same thing? I don't know. The best porridge oats are slowly cooked. Do you want to give your family a crap breakfast, Russ, or a great one? The answer is probably a crap one, because I need to get them off to school. So, sorry."

• 35:38Griffin McElroy?

  Sorry.

• 35:38Russ Frushtick?

  "Steel-cut oats are also Pinhead or Irish oats. They make for a hardier porridge, and I prefer it. But rolled oats, which you usually get in Scotland, are processed and cook a bit faster. Quick cook are the worst and super processed. I'm sure this stuff is lost in that process."

• 35:54Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, think about all the great oats we've lost along the way because of our haste. And that's also what Virtu and a Sledgehammer is about. It's about how we're always in such a hurry, aren't we? And sometimes it's good to slow down and walk very slowly and eat oats that are going to be there waiting for you when you, when you finally get there.

• 36:17Chris Plante?

  "I am the father of the oats, and I need you to eat my baby oat. The baby oat's going to cry and scream, but you need to munch him anyway."

• 36:26Russ Frushtick?

  Alexis wrote in to say, "I bet you've never even heard of oat groats."

• 36:31Griffin McElroy?

  I don't know what that is.

• 36:32Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, we haven't. And they, they sound awful, but I'm sure they're great for you.

• 36:36Griffin McElroy?

  Don't like it.

• 36:37Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, next one comes from Andrew. This is not about oatmeal. "Shouting out tape to tape, the ice hockey rogue-like, which just hit 1.0. Check it out, it's so fun. Did you try this, Griffin? I know you're a hockey fellow."

• 36:49Griffin McElroy?

  I love hockey. I've never really gotten into a hockey video game, though.

• 36:53Russ Frushtick?

  I think it's first person, which is what this one's-

• 36:55Griffin McElroy?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 36:56Russ Frushtick?

  I was not.

• 36:57Griffin McElroy?

  It's a, it's not at all. It's like a top-down, I mean, it looks like a, it looks like a hockey game.

• 37:02Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, it looks like a Genesis era hockey game.

• 37:04Griffin McElroy?

  Well, except the, no, the aesthetic is very sort of, uh, cell-shady cartoonish, it looks like.

• 37:10Chris Plante?

  Yeah, the rogue-like stuff sounds really interesting. I think we should give this game a try at some point, because I feel like a week has not gone by where somebody does not bug us to play this game.

• 37:21Russ Frushtick?

  Might be the same person.

• 37:21Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 37:22Chris Plante?

  Seems, hey, I love hockey, so. Don't worry, for all of the people, I, I, I see you. It seems great.

• 37:29Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 37:30Russ Frushtick?

  JD wrote in to say, "The Discworld games are worth checking out. The first two are 2D graphic adventure games in the style of Monkey Island, starring Eric Idle as Rinsewind, and the third moves into the hybrid of 3D-style like Grim Fandango, with Rob Brydon in the lead role. Uh, it also gets into more of the city watch milieu. You'll definitely bump up against some of the confounding puzzle logic associated with the genre, but they're well-made games, and those CD-ROMs would slot very cleanly into the McElroy Entertainment System."

• 37:59Griffin McElroy?

  Hey, all right. I mean, that sounds, I mean, that sounds very good.

• 38:02Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 38:02Griffin McElroy?

  I'm not like, the world's biggest Monkey Island, sort of LucasArts adventure game guy.

• 38:09Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Griffin McElroy?

  But, um, I'm, I'm, I'm still really enjoying the Discworld books, so.

• 38:14Chris Plante?

  Both will be after you play Perfect Tide: Station to Station, a game that both of you have to play before the end of the year.

• 38:20Griffin McElroy?

  I know, I know.

• 38:21Russ Frushtick?

  Is that in, mentioned in the game?

• 38:24Chris Plante?

  Well, it's a Monkey Island type of game. I'm just, I'm just making sure that I-

• 38:28Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I thought there was a Discworld reference in it.

• 38:31Griffin McElroy?

  If, if we go like, a month without mentioning it, we will forget, it will disappear like the skeleton in Coco.

• 38:38Griffin McElroy?

  Chris, it has to keep Perfect Tides on the affrenda, or else it will.

• 38:43Chris Plante?

  It has to, because I care. I know they've done a lot of it.

• 38:46Griffin McElroy?

  I do want to play it. I do, I promise. Can I go first this week?

• 38:50Russ Frushtick?

  You go first.

• 38:51Griffin McElroy?

  I feel like I have been, I was looking at this week, as we're recording now, and Ocarina of Time remake comes out, WoW Forever comes out. By the way, everyone I know who plays the game has changed their mind and wants to do PVE server alliance. So that's probably where I'm gonna end up, unfortunately.

• 39:08Russ Frushtick?

  I'm sorry, explain what you just said.

• 39:10Griffin McElroy?

  WoW Forever.

• 39:11Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:12Griffin McElroy?

  They're doing a, you know, you get to pick your server. There's not, they're not doing servers in the traditional way where there's like names and it's like, oh, I'm going to Icecrown and

• 39:21Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Griffin McElroy?

  You go to Thorium Brotherhood. It's like, now there's just a PVE world and a PvP world, and a role-playing PvP world, and a role-playing PVE world. Okay, yeah, I think I got all of them. So, yeah, I'm going PVE.

• 39:34Russ Frushtick?

  And sorry, and it's different from WoW Classic.

• 39:37Griffin McElroy?

  It is different from WoW Classic, yeah. I mean, I'll talk more about this next week, almost certainly, but it is a standalone, separate thing from WoW Classic.

• 39:45Russ Frushtick?

  Okay.

• 39:46Griffin McElroy?

  That is not designed to follow the history of WoW in the way that WoW Classic does. They're doing like something different with it. So like, I wanted to clear the decks a little bit, and I played through a game that has been on my radar for a bit, and that is Normal Golf Game.

• 40:04Russ Frushtick?

  Oh.

• 40:06Griffin McElroy?

  I, my son has been sick and waking up at like, the witching hour, and I've been awake for like, so long this week that I've had so much extra gamer time, and so I'm almost like, fully 100%.

• 40:19Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, my gosh, Griffin.

• 40:21Griffin McElroy?

  It's fucking fantastic.

• 40:24Chris Plante?

  What control setup are you using for it?

• 40:27Griffin McElroy?

  So I played maybe the first half of the game in the standard sort of control style. You guys have talked about the game. Have we talked about it here?

• 40:37Russ Frushtick?

  We talked about Arrestes. I don't know that we gave it much attention.

• 40:39Griffin McElroy?

  So it's from Luke Muscat?

• 40:42Russ Frushtick?

  Yep.

• 40:42Griffin McElroy?

  Is that how you pronounce his name? Who is the creator of Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride? And he plays himself in the game, largely just speaking to you over loudspeaker as you explore a nine-hole golf course, and have to participate in a number of like, increasingly ridiculous golfing challenges. It is a physics-based game. Anytime you golf, you can drop your ball anywhere and start golfing. It presents a UI with like, six different panels on it, one of which is your actual golf swing. You can control your club. I'm playing on a controller,

• 41:24Griffin McElroy?

  on the Rog Ally X. You can also play mouse and keyboard, which is what it recommends. I did fine with the controller. And so you use the right stick to move the club, and if you, you know, hit the ball perfectly, it gets a good, good head of steam on it, but if you hit the ground, then it doesn't. Or if you hit the top of the ball, you have to be very accurate with the, the, the speed with which you're hitting the ball, and the accuracy that you're hitting the ball with. But then there's also another panel where you're looking at your sort of wobble, your accuracy of the shot, because you have to keep that going with the triggers and the left stick, keeping your club nice and flat and even, and making sure, so like, it's possible you pay too much attention to the right hand and you get a really good,

• 42:07Griffin McElroy?

  nice connect with it, but you forgot to de-wobble it, and so you hook terribly.

• 42:12Russ Frushtick?

  You gotta de-wobble.

• 42:14Griffin McElroy?

  It took me so long to get to the point where I could do anything, anything with this control scheme, because it's like, it is purposefully antagonistic. But it is doable, and it does feel really, really good when you get those two things working together, because everything feels really fair. And it got to the point where like, I felt like I could put shots where I wanted them to go. And that is, for me, the pinnacle of golf game achievement, when I like, can hit something and it feels good, and I think I know where the ball's gonna go, and the ball does indeed go that way.

• 42:47Russ Frushtick?

  And most golf games, like, you just pick the point that it's going to, and you go that, like, it just goes there realistically, and this-

• 42:53Griffin McElroy?

  Well, yeah, except, you know, in Hot Shots, you get the three-click

• 42:56Russ Frushtick?

  Sure.

• 42:57Griffin McElroy?

  meter thing, so you hit it, and then one is for power, and then accuracy when it comes back, right? Like, so the game kind of has something like that in this insane control scheme. But then the challenge is, you're not just like, playing golf. The challenges will be like, sometimes they'll put like, cardboard cutouts of armed sort of enemies, and you have to like, hit them with the thing. Or you'll be like, way out on the course, and it'll be like, hey, do you think you can hit a ball into the pro shop from here? It's like, 300 yards. Do you think you can actually do it? And you're getting money, that is sort of like, the way that you progress through the story, which is very like, charming. It's all about Luke Muscat realizing he sucks at golf, and wants to learn how to be better

• 43:39Griffin McElroy?

  at golf by watching you golf. At a certain point, I did turn off the wobble meter, because it just got too fucking hard, and I wanted to like, I wanted to keep playing through the game. And I actually like that a lot better, because then you can really just kind of focus on the swinging side of things, without this other thing kind of getting in the way. And even with that thing off, it's still very, very hard. It's still very, very difficult. But it is a game with like, the quickest reset. Like, you fuck up a shot, you press B, boop, you just do it, you just do it again. Sometimes the challenges will be like, you know, this is a par-three hole, so you, if you restart, you'll have to restart the whole thing. But for the most part, it's like, all about, shot, fuck, messed it up.

• 44:19Russ Frushtick?

  It reminded me of Trials. It was like Trials HD.

• 44:21Griffin McElroy?

  Yes, very much like Trials, yeah, in that sort of quick iteration

• 44:24Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 44:25Griffin McElroy?

  sort of thing. I have finished the kind of main story, and then now like, sort of sweeping up some of the challenges that I missed.

• 44:33Chris Plante?

  My favorite challenge, early on in this game, there's all these like, weird challenges, like, yeah, getting the ball into a giant toilet bowl, or breaking all these various things around the course. But then, you just have to hit three normal shots in a row, and it is the cruelest challenge imaginable. Because two, sure, but that third one, that pressure starts coming on.

• 44:56Griffin McElroy?

  I had one that was, I think, impossible level, which is like, the hardest difficulty of the challenges, where you drop your ball, and then a like, sort of billboard appears in front of you, and watermelons begin to shoot up in front of it, and fall down into nothingness. And you have to hit your shot into those watermelons three times in a row, without missing them, or else it reset. It took fucking forever to do that one. Forever! But it was a fun sort of Fruit Ninja callback.

• 45:25Russ Frushtick?

  Oh, yeah, that's funny.

• 45:26Griffin McElroy?

  But yeah, I really, really liked it. I'm looking forward to going through and finishing up the, the challenges I've missed.

• 45:34Russ Frushtick?

  I wanted to call out Curious George. It's about a monkey who gets into shenanigans.

• 45:40Griffin McElroy?

  Book, cartoon.

• 45:41Russ Frushtick?

  Cartoon.

• 45:42Griffin McElroy?

  You never know what's round the bend.

• 45:44Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's that one. I had never seen this before, but my son was getting home from after-school, and apparently during after-school, they had been watching TV, which I didn't realize, until he was like, "I want to watch Curious George." And I was like, "I don't, is that a show? I don't know." And, yeah, was introduced to this show, which is on YouTube, there's a bunch of episodes, and PBS Kids, and various other things. And it's like, here's my number one priority on like, children's programming. It needs to not be like, eyes gougingly brutal to listen to. Like, Cocoon Melon, no, no fucking chance. Even Paw Patrol, I find, like, no, I can't do it.

• 46:23Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah.

• 46:23Russ Frushtick?

  And this is like, a lovely show, that is very self-aware, insofar as they'll be like, like, who else would be able to fix this rocket ship that is broken? We'll call that guy in yellow and his monkey.

• 46:36Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:37Russ Frushtick?

  And so it's really, it's, it's really good. It's produced by Ron Howard, and such a, such a lovely show. I'm always looking for good children's programming that isn't infuriating. Obviously, Bluey is very top of the list, but good to have-

• 46:50Griffin McElroy?

  We, we used to have to have it download the theme song that, "Never know what's round the bend."

• 46:56Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 46:56Griffin McElroy?

  We used to have the, have that downloaded on our phone when we went on flights with Gus, because he would like, want to listen to just the theme song. And it worked, man. Hey, Dr. John always makes me feel less anxious, so-

• 47:09Russ Frushtick?

  Is that Dr. John singing the theme song?

• 47:11Griffin McElroy?

  It is, yeah. Dr. John, the singer behind, "Must have been a right place."

• 47:16Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 47:17Griffin McElroy?

  I'm sort of sick now, so I can get down-

• 47:19Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, you're down there.

• 47:20Griffin McElroy?

  -in this gravelly little register.

• 47:21Russ Frushtick?

  Very impressed.

• 47:22Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah. What about you, Chris?

• 47:23Chris Plante?

  Uh, I've been watching The Third Man. You ever see this movie?

• 47:27Russ Frushtick?

  The movie? Yeah, I've seen it.

• 47:29Chris Plante?

  You know what?

• 47:29Griffin McElroy?

  Nope.

• 47:30Chris Plante?

  It's a, it's a film noir with Orson Welles in it, and, you know, it feels like an amazing film noir. The whole time you're, you're watching this, you're like, yeah, yeah, it's a classic old movie. And then they get on a Ferris wheel, and they, Orson Welles says some of the scariest shit. Ever set on film, it is so evil. What is said, the, the, the kind of beating heart of this mystery is so profoundly dark. Uh, I was, uh, shook by it. And then I realized, oh, it was written by Graham Greene,

• 48:10Chris Plante?

  the third man, and he did the screenplay. And yes, that makes so much more sense. It feels as dark as things like Brighton Rock and a lot of Graham Greene's other work. It's just, it's jarring to see a film from this period that really has a central nastiness to it. Set to one of the like, what is it? A zither? The, like, the type of instrument you hear in like, career enthusiasm?

• 48:39Russ Frushtick?

  A zither, yeah.

• 48:40Chris Plante?

  Yes. And it's, it is so strange and disorienting and absolutely fantastic. And I got to see it last night on a big screen and, and wow, what a, what a film.

• 48:50Russ Frushtick?

  Two things I want to say, yeah, uh, I, I've seen that movie and it does, I think of that time period, there are very few movies that like really grapple with like the war, the outcome of World War II and like what happened afterwards. And I think that movie does a very good job. I would also add, uh, there is an incredible episode of Pinky in the Brain that is an almost shot for shot recreation called The Third Mouse.

• 49:14Griffin McElroy?

  Oh my God. Okay. The whole time you were describing that, Chris, I was like, have I seen this fucking flick? But no, I'm pretty sure I've seen the pinky in the brain. Oh, man, that's a story fantastic.

• 49:26Russ Frushtick?

  Once you've, now that you've seen the movie, plant, you have to go back and watch it because it is like, the whole thing is just constant nods to this movie.

• 49:34Griffin McElroy?

  I love that.

• 49:35Russ Frushtick?

  So good. Really good.

• 49:37Griffin McElroy?

  I think that's gonna do it for us this week here on The Besties. Chris, do you want to recap all the stuff we've talked about today?

• 49:44Chris Plante?

  Oh man, we talked about so much good stuff. We talked about Queen's Domain. We talked about Virtua and a sledgehammer, also Curious George and The Third Man and The Third Mouse. And then game wise, we got WoW Forever and Normal Golf Game.

• 49:59Griffin McElroy?

  I haven't even begun to talk about WoW Forever. I'm gonna do that shit next week.

• 50:02Russ Frushtick?

  I'm excited.

• 50:03Griffin McElroy?

  Assuming I have time, because there's also another huge goddamn game coming up in about 24 hours, uh, as the crow flies. So man, it's, it's about to go, November's gonna go bananas, y'all.

• 50:16Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a weird time of year. Uh, I do want to call out some of our, uh, patrons over at patreon.com slash the besties. Uh, these are some, uh, recent, uh, paid backers. We thank you for your support. Uh, we all appreciate everyone. Uh, but yes, uh, appreciate these folks, ONS, Hannah L, Keegan L, and Timothy D. Timothy D.

• 50:39Griffin McElroy?

  Thank you so much. Go to patreon.com slash the besties. You can, uh, join and support us directly, get access to episodes of The Resties, where Russ and Chris talk about the games we don't get around to here on the show. Uh, and also monthly bracket battle episodes where we decide, uh, really, really, uh, inane sort of video game, uh, conversations.

• 50:57Russ Frushtick?

  As a matter of fact, there is a new bracket battle episode with Mike Drucker, uh, debating the best birds in video games, which is live.

• 51:03Griffin McElroy?

  It's a barnstormer. It's a fucking all time classic.

• 51:06Russ Frushtick?

  Uh, we will, here, here's a clip from it.

• 51:09Speaker 03

  For tiebreaker, I will suggest that, uh, a goose would taste better. Cause that's more of like, you know, yeah, Christmas goose. It's a special time. You gotta get that special bird.

• 51:18Chris Plante?

  Oh, yes, yes, yes.

• 51:20Griffin McElroy?

  Are you guys all sort of Victorian, uh, gentlemen of leisure?

• 51:26Russ Frushtick?

  I don't think I've ever eaten a goose. Have you eaten a goose, Mike?

• 51:29Griffin McElroy?

  I've had duck before.

• 51:30Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah, I've had duck.

• 51:31Griffin McElroy?

  It's great. It's, it's quite good. I've never had goose, but I have to imagine it's like a bigger, longer duck, right?

• 51:39Russ Frushtick?

  More neck, certainly.

• 51:40Chris Plante?

  Ooh, and that's the best part.

• 51:42Russ Frushtick?

  Yeah.

• 51:43Griffin McElroy?

  Are people, I think, I don't know that even in the new Breath of the Wild and, uh, Tears of the Kingdom, I don't know that you're eating, you're eating cockos. I guess you can kill one and it'll drop like bird meat or something, right? Okay. Yeah. But they're, all that just kind of becomes.

• 51:57Russ Frushtick?

  It's pretty mid, uh, meat when it comes to Zelda. So I think taste wise, if it's gonna go to the tiebreaker, it goes to the goose.

• 52:04Griffin McElroy?

  I think it's gonna go to the entire goose.

• 52:05Chris Plante?

  I just Googled roast goose and let me tell you, it looks good.

• 52:09Griffin McElroy?

  It looks fantastic.

• 52:10Chris Plante?

  It looks like, it looks like the, the best looking chicken you've ever had. It looks crispy.

• 52:17Griffin McElroy?

  There's a reason these guys dip out for half the year and it's not because of some sort of like biological impulse or anything. It's, they gotta get away from us when in that cold, in those cold months. Give me that hot grease, that hot goose grease. So go check that out, patreon.com slash the besties. And then next week, it's gonna be the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time remake. I'm assuming, I'm actually not looking at the document.

• 52:43Russ Frushtick?

  You can look at it and see what I wrote.

• 52:45Griffin McElroy?

  You wrote, okay, you wrote, "Irmer glur bler zelder."

• 52:50Chris Plante?

  It's good. It's good.

• 52:51Russ Frushtick?

  I'm a millennial.

• 52:52Griffin McElroy?

  Yeah, you sure are, pal.

• 52:53Chris Plante?

  You really nailed it. I'm proud of you.

• 52:55Griffin McElroy?

  So join us again next time for that awesome sauce, uh, here on The Besties. Uh, because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games?