Is Outer Worlds 2 the Second Coming of Fallout New Vegas?

Here's what I'm saying. This is my problem with all games like this. Okay. The moment I get a spaceship. Yeah. I'm not gonna do anything anybody wants me to. Ever again. Forever. Right. The moment I get a spaceship, why am I concerning myself with these petty terrestrial concerns? Yeah. There's a little thing called gas money. Yeah. Okay. How are you gonna fucking power your spaceship? Are you? Did you find a secret fucking? Only fans, only fans. Oh. Did you find a secret menu option in the game that makes you put gas in the hub ship? I'm playing on realism mode. Oh, you're playing on it. You gotta harvest anodine tablets from the ground in the process of making a journey. I get so tired when I walk around the planets. I get so tired. Yeah. I just need a fucking nap. I'm just saying if I get a spaceship and somebody's like, we need it. You heard there's a border dispute out and go fuck yourself. No way. Like, are you kidding me? I'm on Mars. I don't even remember you. Like, I'm gone. I'm in space. I'm captain Harlock. You know what I mean? I'm gone. Starfield was a bad game by traditional standards, but it did kind of nail that one part of space exploration, which is you get your ship and then you just kind of fuck around. And honestly, better. So it was like, what happened to Justin? I haven't seen him in a while. It's like, actually he got a spaceship and he started going to these crazy planets so far out. There's nothing on them except power-ups and he would like fly to these planets and I think he prayed or something. And then when he came back, he could float, dude. That's what I'm doing with the spaceship. I'm gonna find those planets. Maybe we were too hard on Starfield. Yeah, when you say it in that specific, and it only takes 20 seconds to say, it's pretty good. Yeah. Now we weren't. No, that can't be part of the song. Hey. My name is Justin McRae. I did the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McRae. I did not know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Froschek. Ah. I did not know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties. Where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club. And just by listening, you my friend have become a member. This week we are talking about Outer Worlds 2. Normally, this is when Chris Plant would describe the game. He's not here, so Rush Frustic, it follows to you. What is Outer Worlds 2? I don't know what Outer Worlds 2 is, but I know what the Outer Worlds 2 is. It's the sequel to the Outer Worlds. Are you for serious? I'll be right back with the Pain in the Ass, Rush Frustic and the one I'm still talking to, Griffin, right after this. Oh. This episode of the Besties is sponsored by Lisa. Oh boy, Lisa is really frickin' great. Here's the backstory. I've told this before, but bear with me. My son was aging out of his toddler bed and needed a legit bed. And it was around this time that Lisa was like, hey, you wanna try one of our mattress? And I was like, well, I've got a mattress, but my son needs a mattress. And they were like, okay, we'll send a twin mattress to you guys and you can try it out that way. Here's what happened. The mattress came and I rested on it to test it before he tried it out. And holy crap, this is a damn comfortable mattress. Somehow my four and a half year old son is in a more comfortable mattress than I am in. And I am very, very jealous of him. Came in a box. It was very easy to set up and unpack. I didn't need a lot of help. And if that's something that sounds good to you, you should go to lisa.com for 20% off plus an extra $50 off with promo code besties, exclusive to our listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com promo code besties for 20% off plus an extra $50 off. Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. Lisa.com promo code besties. Outer worlds to me has always been really interesting because I feel like it's one that I really liked. And I think a lot of people really liked, but it didn't for whatever reason, at least for me, seemed to have as much of the staying power. I know the music kicked around for quite some time, but I felt like the foothold, the song, there's a couple of songs from it that became very like big on YouTube and TikTok and stuff. But like, I don't know, it seemed like just sort of an obsessive fandom or something. If I'm remembering the timeline kind of correctly, didn't Outer Worlds come out sort of shortly after Fallout 76 was either out or announced. And I remember a lot of the response to that game was in conversation with like the stuff that, Bethesda's not really doing so much these days. And so there was a, I don't know, it became a point of comparison, like an inflection point about that. And it does feel like Outer Worlds 2 is free from a lot of that baggage and benefits from it. I think there was also an element of, there was an expectation and this is on them because it was marketed this way, of this being like New Vegas 2, in fact, the first game was New Vegas 2. And given the fact that they were building this new game in a genre that they hadn't really fully explored in quite a while, it kind of felt like that promise wasn't totally met, even though there were elements of that in the first game, it felt a little more narrow than something you would see in Outer Worlds. Can I set up, can I try and set up what Outer Worlds is? Because I think that there's probably folks who either don't know or do get it confused with Outer Wilds, which is a different game. But Outer Worlds is from Obsidian, the creators of Fallout New Vegas, and it is a first person sort of action RPG exploration game in the vein of a Fallout. You have a character with a set of skills that you invest points in every time you level up, giving you access to perks that change like your character. There's a bunch of different weapons, bunch of different factions for you to work with, bunch of stuff to explore. That's the basic setup of the game. Yes, and I would say that tonally, and I don't know, this is maybe a bit more controversial, but you guys tell me, I've always felt like when Bethesda took over Fallout, it lost a lot of the humor and the cheek that was part of that series to begin with. And it's still in the DNA, but it's not as like, I think when you're making a game as big as Fallout, I don't think they also wanted to make it as sort of like satirical. Yeah, I mean, Fallout 2 got fucking downright wacky at times. Yeah, so for me, I have felt like Outer Worlds is like, in some ways, a more fitting sequel to Fallout because it's got a perspective and it is about consumerism in a way that Fallout games used to be, but now it's just sort of like, I don't know, it's laughing at its own jokes a lot. I feel like Outer Worlds is like, there is a perspective, it is like a relentless capitalist satire that is very focused on this one specific thing. Yeah, I think even Outer Worlds 2 does it better than Outer Worlds 1. I found the tone of Outer Worlds 1 a little bit grating because it was such a cartoonish, like corporate hellscape, and that is definitely still the case here, but the way that they have kind of consolidated some of the factions, right? In the first game, there were a bunch of different corporations vying for control of this one, you know, multi-planetary system, and in this game, the game starts off with a bang, and then there's like 10 years that you sleep through essentially, and when you come back, Antie's, what is it? Antie's Choice. Antie's Choice, which is made up of a corporate merger of Spacer's Choice and Antie's something. Now rules the galaxy, it is like making an incursion into this authoritarian factions solar system that you are now in the middle of their great war, and also there's this religion based on math that's kicking around in there too. It's like everyone's sort of intention is extremely clearly laid out right from the jump, but it's not only played for laughs. It's not only silly. Yeah. What did you guys think of this game, the Outer Worlds 2? Sounds like you're setting us up. I am because I feel like a lot of this is shoe leather to establish it's kind of like fallout. Yeah, that's fair to say. That's right. Thank you. I liked it. I like it, I'm still playing it. I like it more than I liked Outer Worlds 1. Outer Worlds 1 was a fine game that I feel like constantly pigeonholed me and my character into certain choices, or locked me out of certain things because of how I was or was not built, leading to an ending that is like pretty widely panned, I feel like for that game, where it's like so clear, like you do the talking the bad guy out of it ending, or you do the shoot the bad guy ending. Here it's like, I don't know, it feels like they have done a much better job of making the world so much more interactive, regardless of which way you've decided to build your character. It feels like there's a million ways to go about stuff, and that singular improvement has made the game like a lot more enjoyable for me. Yeah, that's where the richest differences lie for me between this game and like recent Bethesda Game Studios, Open World RPGs is because Bethesda's games have gotten so huge. I think from a scale standpoint, they feel like they can't offer those six solutions to a given side quest. And here, because the areas are, it's not one giant open streaming map, they can do much more focused stories, and with more focused stories, they're able to have a lot more variance in the solutions for a given thing. I also think the writing is just a lot stronger. So it helps a lot. I think to me, the thing that stands out the most while I'm playing this, and it is the thing that I am, I really appreciate, but I'm probably struggling with it more than I should, is that it feels less directed than a lot of games like this would be. And I mean that in the sense of like, I'll give you an example, there is a, I'm not gonna use any specifics here, but there is a calamitous event where a ship that you're on is about to be brought down on a populated area. And the person that you're with says, you gotta do something. And you're like, yes, absolutely, I'll do something. And then the only thing that's indicated on your HUD is an escape, right? There is a computer in the room that you can use, but the only thing that's on the HUD is one place. And I just kind of assumed like, well, I guess I figured it out outside of here, but whatever. And then I got out the door and she was like, you just let it crash. And I was like, yeah, I guess there was, you did say I should do something on there. Now that I think about it, so I reloaded my save, and I looked around and yeah, I'll be damned. There's a computer there you can use to fix it. But the game wasn't like flashing it. It wasn't like, hey, this is pretty early on, so it's not a knock on the game. I hadn't sort of realized this was the level of load, I wasn't playing with the blanks basically. There's a load. But that's cool. I do like that it does that. I actually really liked that moment a lot because it does establish this feeling of like, you could be doing something. There is some, if you run it into a building and there's a big armored dude in there, and he's like, you wandered into the wrong building, now I'm gonna fuck you up. That's usually an indicator that like, you could have found like a vent that you snuck in. Or you could have- It's better at hiding that though. It's better at hiding. A lot of these like Deus Ex, where it can be like, there's a grate on the left hand side that you can pull off with your strength. And then on the back, there's a computer that you can hack over the door. And on the left, there's a window you can sneak into. It's not like it masks it better than that. Yeah, it feels more organic in the level design. I agree. There's a lot of situations where it'll be like a theoretically an enemy base. And obviously you can present like a fake ID to get in. But within that enemy base, there's just so much other side content that you can find if you just take the time to do it. That's- They also make skills so important in conversation. And not just skills like your talking skill, but like how aware you are of, I mean, almost every skill seems to play into dialogue a lot of the time. So it made me wanna increase my skills just so I would know what I was talking about in conversations, which is not something I'd usually think. There's also attached to every skill some sort of mechanical benefit. So like your speech skill doesn't just unlock certain conversation options, it like increases the damage you deal to human beings. So like that's, I think the RPG systems in this game are second to none. I think that I have problems with this game. This is not one of them. This is a huge fucking issue for RPGs, especially this style of RPG. And the number of times, trying to find that balance between like, you're giving people enough stuff that they're doing, that it feels like their own unique adventure, while also not locking them out of stuff. Like every time I see a computer that's like hack it, I'm like, I have zero hack points. It's simply not the way I've gone. That doesn't bother me though, because there's also like two or three other things in this room that I can like fuck with and feel like I have interacted with. That stuff is like, so on point in this game. I think you were talking about like a peerless RPG system. I think the biggest differentiator, and we've talked about this a lot in other games, is do like, when you level up, does that feel like an exciting moment? Yeah. Do the perks that you're spending or the points that you're spending, whatever it is, feel like things that would be immediately useful to your gameplay. And in this case, there are like, I didn't count. I wanna say 75 perks in this game that you can see the full list right at the start of the game. And work your way up to earning those perks by spending skill points in a variety of different things. Which is a cool way of doing it by the way, where the perks are an offshoot of the way you spent your points. So you're not like, it reduces the chance that you're gonna like speck in a weird way. Right, it's building off of something that New Vegas did where once you hit like level 10 in exploration, it unlocked a bunch of perks that ordinarily you wouldn't be able to get if you didn't have level 10. But here it's revealing all that stuff to you. So you know, oh, this is something I wanna work on. All that stuff I think is done, again, fantastically well, in ways that I think this should be held up as a representation of like how to make perks feel desirable. Another cool thing that they did that I feel like a lot of games these days don't have the guts to that are in this genre is make ammo matter. Where like I was pretty frequently like running out of bullets in a way that like grounded me to the, it kept me in the scenario. It kept me talking to my compatriots. It kept me like really looking at gear because every gear that you get can be turned into scrap metal which you can turn into bullets. And a lot of times like I needed bullets because my thing was like a pistol. So I'm shooting out like every battle is like 50 bullets. So I'm like turning through a lot of ammo. But that keeps you like locked into the system. It keeps you like in the world. It keeps you balancing these things. I don't think it does as good a job with like itemization. And I know we're getting like into the nitty gritty but this is like a huge open world RPG. So it is kind of important. Like there are sort of bog standard versions of different guns. And some of those guns are like better than others, right? Like a heavy revolver is just gonna do more damage than a light revolver. And they have mod slots that you can equip the guns with that you can either find in the world or craft. There's like a whole crafting build you can kind of go down in the game. But it's not like a ton of options. And then you're also finding sort of unique pieces of gear of like armor and helmets and weapons that have a mod that's like you can't get otherwise that's slotted into them. So I felt like, well, I should really only be using those cause they have like the coolest shit. And then you go a long time without getting stuff. I put a bunch of points in guns and sneak attack. And so like I saw my numbers go through the roof but it wasn't because of the weapons I was using. Like when I would find a new weapon, it was a little bit less exciting than like, oh, I just got this perk that does like doubles my sneak attack damage if they're looking at a corpse of someone that I killed already. I will say I spent too much time. I think you spend way too much time in this game like trying to get your cursor on an item that is like a very small object, but like kind of slowly looking around a room and slowly picking up the items that are lying around. I think that it is not fun to try to get your cursor on the exact little model that you wanna pick up and then pick it up and then look and see if you wanna drink it or break it down. Like it's a little fiddly. It is funny though because everything that you can pick up has utility, it's not like Starfield where like, you can pick up this microscope if you want to. Sure, go for it. Let me, this is the way that they handle food in the game, right? Think about BioShock where it's like you have your healing syringes but like you find a bag of potato chips, you eat that right away and it heals you or whatever. In this game, when you pick up food, it goes into your food inventory. And then under your health bar, you'll see a little knife and fork. You have a healing inhaler that you use is like your only method of healing and you can customize the inhaler. There's like a medicine skill associated with it. But if you have food in your inventory, it shows you that symbol of the knife and fork. And then when you press the inhaler button, if you're not in combat, you automatically will eat the food you have in your inventory to heal you to full before you go for any of your meds. And they use that, one button, there's one button for that. Like that shit's real smart and real, real streamlined and real, real good. So it's a bit of a mixed bag. Is there? Did you all listen to the, I wanted to hear if you guys listened to the radio much. Fuck yeah, I do. Did you listen to the radio much? Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. It's really, I found it to be really interesting because they have a bunch of these, like it's super in world, all of it is like, you know, it's ads for auntie's choice. It's like, you meet a sort of like faction that's obsessed with numbers and they have a radio station and all their songs are about math. Yeah. I wish it is that I'm right on the line with it because I love this sort of shit, right? I love it. I love in world radio stations. Like I loved like when Lazlo had a station on GTA, whatever, there's just, it's like, you have to have it on and it's not background really. It's like, you're listening to these songs and there's not a ton of them. There's like a good amount, but like, you're playing this game for many, many hours. Like there's not enough radio that it's not like looping. It starts to get a little bit like, okay guys, I need something that I can tune out. That isn't good. You don't have to have it on. No, yeah, I mean, I definitely used it on the first planet. And then when I got off the first planet, I was like, I kind of did. And they'll like tell you like, oh, you got a new signal if there's like a quest attached to it or something. Yes, this is what I'm saying. This was, I wanted to, I wanted to say like, I eventually did turn it off, but like when you're listening to it initially, it's like, it's really great. I, it's a fantastic thing. I have to say the thing that is, oh, we should mention before I get into sort of like my main gripe, I think that gunplay feels fucking good. Like, and that's, that is not something that this genre is known for. I felt differently when I started because you start out with like weak shitty weapons, but as I have like found different weapons with like different unique perks and gone down a certain build and focus points into guns and unlock some gun perks, like it feels pretty good to get in a gun fight. It is not like a fallout where once you are spotted and you lose your sneak attack bonus, it's like, oh fuck, like now I have to shoot these like clumsy guns. Like I think they've actually done a pretty, pretty good job with the combat side of things. Yeah, there's, they also, I think in this game added like slide, like combat slides and things like that. So like the mobility stuff, you have a double jump at one point. So like the mobility stuff. You have a slow motion gadget. It looks like you disagree. A bit juice. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, I thought it was, I thought that it had a really, really good job. They do a good job. The guns feel powerful. It also feels like your companions are helpful. They have like special abilities that you can fire off that are nice. There's not a ton of, like they seem to stick to themselves pretty much. Like there's not a ton of like, other than like firing off that ability. Like you're not telling them where to go. Changing their gear up as much. So you do like some basic leveling of them, but you're not like giving them all their equipment. Which as far as I'm concerned is a boon. Yeah, I do not want to have to love it with that. What was your grade? My issue is, this is something that they have not fixed from this genre of games. And I think that there is just a sort of like, there are just some structural issues under the hood with quests and how all of that is handled. It is so rad that you are in this world, this like set of planets where you can do whatever and you feel like there is a custom path that you are kind of blazing through it. But a lot of times I have been in a region where I am talking to people and they are talking to me as if I am like in the middle of a quest that they're supposed to be on that I did not start. Like I missed the first kind of part of and now like I'm kind of jumping into the middle. There's a bit where one of the characters, the main like buddy of yours when you start the game, I think got hung up on a quest or something and he always had a little speech bubble over his head like he had something to say to me and yet he... I have that with another companion where she always has this. And that stuff is so soul crushing. I feel like when you are investing as much time into this game as it asks for to feel like, I've put maybe 25 hours into it. I've played quite a bit at this point and I feel like for the last few hours I have been like on a planet where I'm just sort of running around and every quest is like out of order and I'm pretty sure... This is a hundred percent my experience. I'm really glad you were saying this, Grimman because I thought it was in my head but the fact that you're actually... It's not constant. It's just like there are parts of the game and the part that I am in now just feels like fucking spaghetti, like it feels like nothing. And I've had parts of the game that are cogent where you show up and they say, here's the situation on this planet, go out here. Maybe you can find some help here. Maybe you can find some help there. And it's like, okay, cool. Those are quest lines that I get on. And then I've had entire hours long sections of the game where it just feels like jazz until eventually my main quest updates. And it's like, oh, okay. So now I guess I go there. There is also the quests because it is a bit more open-ended. There are quests that are sort of mutually exclusive that you don't necessarily... It doesn't make sure that if you do them, you're gonna be rule out a whole other... And maybe if you're thinking about it and trying to logic it out, maybe you're thinking, well, if I do this, then that might rule out this other quest. But when you're just playing a fucking video game, you're not like, you're just doing the mission. That happened a few... So it's like, there'll be a lot of times where it wouldn't be clear what to do. If me knowing what I wanted to do narratively, it wasn't clear mechanically how I should be advancing that goal because everything's sort of like... That would happen a few times in like fallout where you'd like complete a quest for a companion or whatever. And then suddenly there'd be like 16 pop-ups of like, you failed this quest, you failed this quest. Right, right. This game also does a thing a lot, which is I will talk to someone and they'd be like, we need you to help with this... We're trying to negotiate with this labor union. Can you go and help us out? And it's like, sure. But then it doesn't give you a quest for it. Like sometimes you will be asked to do something and you will not get a quest for it. And it's like... Or it'll just be like something you heard and then you have to kind of like sleuth it out. Or sometimes it's nothing. But sometimes it wasn't even that. Sometimes it wouldn't be that. The doctor gave me medicine for a guy and then didn't tell me the guys I had met the guy earlier. That's the only reason I knew where the guy was. But like, there were also a couple of times where like, and maybe this is, I don't know if this is like a positive or a negative, I guess, but there was an area that, there frequently be areas that look intimidating. They look like video game levels and you're exploring and you're like, okay, I can get into here. So I'm gonna go mess around. And then you'll start finding mechanics of quests, like a switch that flips a thing. And you're like, okay, I guess I'm flipping switches. And then I'll go do this other thing. And you'll go through a whole thing and you're like, I'm fighting a guy. Who's this guy? I don't know. And then you go find someone who's like, I've got a serious situation. I need you to rectify. Oh, the factory? Yeah, man, I fucking did all that. I went to this huge facility, found who I think is probably the final NPC for like one of the quest lines in the game. The whole time I'm going through the facility, it's like, this will be great evidence. For fucking what? I don't know. Because I just found this place and I was like, this place looks cool. And I went inside and it's, I didn't get a guy who showed up like, not yet, not yet, you're not, I'm gonna have some shit for you to do here later. Don't come in here. It's not ready yet. I guess the question I would have is, how much of this stuff is fixable? I think I've played 10 hours. So you guys are further along than I am. How much of this is like, with patches over the course of a month or two or whatever? I found that, I feel like it is a friction between the amount of freedom they want to give you and the amount of like direction that some players might want. Because there's, a lot of the times, if you think about it logically, you can usually come up with it, but more often than not, you'd get to, you'd go for 20 minutes down a road and then you'd hit a skill check that you can't pass. And it's like, well, I guess I could fail this skill check and get a really shitty ending to this mission. But I've done all this shit. I'll just come back when I've improved my speech skill and I'll have a more satisfying ending to that mission. I did that exact thing in that facility where my speech skill was 1.2 low to fulfill like a series of checks with like the final boss of the thing. I was like, okay, so I left and I did other shit and then I come back and the result was like, he was, instead of starting a fight with me, he's like, okay, you can have the thing in my office. And it's like, dude, I stole that thing from your office three and a half hours ago. I did all of that for a while, but it is, but that's the trade-off, right? That's the illusion. You can't have the system that they have here without having that moment happen to you some of the time. That stuff doesn't bother me as much as like, something's going to break. Like something's going to break. Do I really want to keep playing this game and investing in this character who like, maybe I'm not going to be able to do the rest of his shit? I have characters who I roll with, who I have maxed out all of their stuff and like pretty much finish their quest lines and I'm not particularly like interested in them. And then I have my road dogs who like, for whatever reason like won't start a conversation with me like, hey, can you go here so I can meet my old buddy and I can get some new skills? That stuff seems fixable. Like that seems like- It does seem fixable. It's just like- Frustrating, real. In the state of the game, it's like that level of structural stuff in a game that you spend so much time playing is such a turn off and it's a bummer. If you're going to do this stuff about not using a firm hand to guide people, like to use the example I used earlier, right? If I don't know that that's not a bug, if I don't know, like if you're going to give me that level of freedom, your shit has to work perfectly. Because if I hit a bug where I'm like, well, that's not, that was not me missing something, that was you, then I don't trust anymore. Like I don't have that trust anymore. Then I want you to put all the markers down because I don't have the faith that this is all working as intended. I don't know if this is how it's, I don't know if this is intentionally obfuscated or if it is a bug. And a lot of times in this game, like- Just fail safes, even if they are immersion breaking of like you show up to a facility, get like a fucking phone call or whatever from someone like, hey, good, you found this facility. Can you look for this stuff for me? Instead of just like, I went, oh, am I, I don't think I'm supposed to be here yet. Uh-oh. That guy knows my name. I don't know his, fuck. I think this to me feels like a very strong foundation for something that could certainly be cleaned up over time. I agree, there's always gonna be issues, especially with a game that's this open. Yeah. But- I'm trying to be real, because this is my shit and I'm gonna keep playing it. I love this kind of shit, but it is also the kind of shit that I am most permissive of flaws because it is, this is the most I have enjoyed one of these games since fallout four probably. It really does say something. Yeah, I think they've nailed it. I think that it is an experienced hand who have made some like really, really clever choices to like sidestep a lot of the issues that this genre has faced in the past. And they've done it in a package that looks good, sounds good, feels really good to play, feels like the things you're doing are meaningful. And yeah, you're probably right. Like they probably will patch it out or release their Spacer's Choice. Premium edition or whatever at some point. I mean, it's worth knowing also like when this episode, this besties episode comes out, the game still won't be out for another like four, five days. So that's not an excuse like obviously, but I also know that- But you have to couch it a little bit because our experience may be different. It is not mostly buggy though. In my experience, I will say it was not buggy. It was a, it seemed like a deliberate amount of freedom. Yeah. You know what I just, I watched the Danny Boyle, Steve Jobs movie that Aaron Sorkin wrote on the plane home because I was listening to Black Check. And they have this argument that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak have this discussion between number of ports in the system where Steve Jobs wants two because he wants a closed system. They completely control Wozniak wants eight because he wants the users to be completely in control. And it's the how those two like that. It reminded me of this game where it's that thing of like wanting to have a completely polished smooth like uncharted versus. Yeah, of course. Right. Versus like, what's the other end? It's like stalker, right? Like or Daisy or something like that. Or it's like that. Yes, exactly. Right? So it's always that balance. It just feels a little bit on the edge of like, it feels like that it was more about, it's impressive that you can keep the immersion and get to the end of it. And it still like holds together. And it seems like that was more important to them than having something that's consistently sort of like pleasant to engage with. I'll probably stick with it. Yeah. I genuinely like pretty sucked in. The writing's great too. I don't know if we talked about that, but like the interactions between people and the moments and like even data pads and stuff like that are all. I would also add that like, this is the third game they've released this year that has been pretty fucking good. They put out a vowed, they put out grounded two and this like no one is doing that these days. Yeah. Yeah. Micros don't let, Obsidian don't let Microsoft know how well you're doing. Whatever locks you changed, just leave them changed. Should we take a break? Yeah. This episode of the besties is sponsored by Lisa. Oh boy. Lisa is really freaking great. Here's the backstory. I've told this before, but bear with me. My son was aging out of his toddler bed and needed a legit bed. And it was around this time that Lisa was like, hey, you want to try one of our mattress? And I was like, well, I've got a mattress, but my son needs a mattress. And they were like, okay, we'll send a twin mattress to you guys and you can try it out that way. Here's what happened. The mattress came and I rested on it to test it before he tried it out and holy crap, this is a damn comfortable mattress. Somehow my four and a half year old son is in a more comfortable mattress than I am in. And I am very, very jealous of him. It came in a box. It was very easy to set up and unpack. I didn't need a lot of help. And if that's something that sounds good to you, you should go to Lisa.com for 20% off, plus an extra $50 off with promo code besties exclusive to our listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com promo code besties for 20% off, plus an extra $50 off. Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. Lisa.com promo code besties. Justin, you have a new device. Mm, thank you for not saying toy like my wife. You have a new doodad that you like and enjoy. Oh gosh, I think that's the color I got too. That shit looks so good. Yeah, that's the rainbow one. So I'm watching, as you can see here, I'm watching a video down on this screen of the AYN Thor. And up here, I'm playing the latest Richard video games. Can you set up for the folks not seeing? Yeah, so this is a device made by a company called AYN. They made, most notably, the Oden 2 and the Oden 2 Portal and the Oden 2 Mini. But those are their last few devices. They're very well regarded. This is the Thor, which is a dual screen console. And there have been other dual screen PCs, but this is the first dual screen Android console. It's like a DS form factor, basically. So yeah, a clamshell form factor. You've got a wide screen at the top, right? And then at the bottom, you've got close to a 4 by 3 square guy here. So you have two different form factors. When you load a, the two screens are independent. So you can get a game going on the top screen or an app or whatever. It's whichever is focused is what the controls will do. So if you tap on the bottom screen, you use the controls. You're controlling this. If you tap on this screen, use the controls. And I'm assuming there's emulators like MelonDS and Drastic and like the major sort of DS3DS emulators are able to like use both simultaneously. Yes, you can set it to use both simultaneously. You can also choose for certain apps that they'll always launch in the top or in the bottom or whatever. And there is also they've another kind of clever solution that they've done here is there's this button here at the bottom of the screens. And this brings up sort of a home. It is just for this specific dual screen setup. So there is a button where you can switch from dual screen, bottom screen, top screen. There's also an audio slider where you can choose which screen is doing how much volume, right? So if you have like a game on this level and a video on this one, you can like choose and then you can also do the brightness independently on the screens. So it's all pretty well like I mean, all pretty well optimized for that. It feels pretty good to play the buttons. The only thing that I will say, I don't know if you guys can see this very well, but look at the other rounded out just a bit. So this is like we've got big chunky triggers on the two's. And then we've got some these guys on the ones and they're kind of like behind this. That's not super comfortable when the screen is like this. It's not super comfortable to hit these. And I will also say that if you're someone that wants to play a lot of D-pad stuff, this is not the most comfortable. He has in the bottom left. So you got to like curve. He has on the bottom left. It's kind of a reach down here of it's not super. They have traded, I think it's always a question of like. Ergonomics versus pocket. I think that's that's what you're up against. And this they've made a little bit of a concession here, right? You got some gloves for the ergonomics here, rounded in the back a little bit. But like it's surprisingly like pretty chunky. I saw it's about the size of a 2DS XL. If you remember that here, I have a DS. Let me grab one. I have one of these bad boys ordered and because it is coming from mainland China, it does take a minute to get your hands on on one of these. It's some some fraught relationships. So maybe I've heard a little bit about that. Yeah, yeah, speak on that. No. See what I have handy here. This is a 3DS. So to compare this for you guys, I would say, I mean, oh, that's an original. Well, that's an original 3DS. So it's original 3DS. So probably about 10 percent bigger than it's about XL size. So if I remember 3DS or the 2DS. So this is a 2DS. Well, yeah, that's the crazy. Yeah, single panel. I think here's here's where I'm at with these things is. I definitely know it's about it's also about the same size as this guy. The RG, the we were talking about the four seven seven M, the new Ambronit guy. It's about it's about that size. Got all this. And yeah, it's it's a one pack. Here's what I say. At this point, I don't know how to. Fit this much tinkering in my life. Yeah, sure. When you're talking about two screens in particular, I'd imagine and tell me if this is incorrect, even more tinkering required to like really get things working nicely. Now, it is I will say this, it is a prop. No, broadly speaking, no. Like if you load up a DS ROM in whatever an emulator for DS games, it works like it recognizes the second screen and just works. No, because the part of it is like figuring out how you want to do it, right? Some some games work better with like certain screens oriented different ways like you have to fiddle with it. And it is not. There is like more there is more tinkering. You're 100 percent right. And I honestly, this is probably the most damning thing, but Russ Good Russ said it. And I think I agree with it. It still doesn't replace it. Yes, like it's it's it's not it's not a replacement for the three. Yes, it's it's a very cool way of experiencing those things. And I will say. It's a pretty good use case to have like a walkthrough or something on one screen and like a game on the other or like something like that or like a if you have music or something you're zoning out to all that stuff works really well. It feels good. The trigger, the thumbsticks are really deep in set. I don't know if you can tell, but like to avoid the clamshell design, they're they're sunk pretty deep in there, which is not my favorite. But it's a that's you kind of have to if you're going to do the clamshell. I kind of have to, right? But like I think they executed on this really, really well. I think that there's different form factor. I always hate getting into like the the. Pricing and I'll be like the the the the kluji things. But they're the base of this is like 250. And that that's for like the base model with eight gigabytes of memory. And and then 16. Is with a terabyte of storage for four twenty nine. So there's a range. There's a range. Yeah, I'm I'm still in this mode of just like I kind of like I have my what is it flip to and it works well and I set it up and I took like whatever a few hours to set that up and it works. And so I'm in this like dormant period where I just kind of just want things to work. And I don't want to take a lot of time. But again, like it'll happen like a year or two from now where I'll be like, OK, I'm ready and I'm going to commit a bunch of time to it. But for right now, I think I'm I think there's a lot of people probably doing that. And I think it makes sense. I think that this is a really. It's a really good one of those. And I think the dual screen thing is I will say it's like. So I agree with you, Russ, in the sense that like it doesn't open up a whole lot of like new doors, but I think that for me, I'm always thinking from like a preservation standpoint, too. And like there's a lot of experiences, especially on like the Wii U and the 3DS that are kind of like locked to those consoles. Yeah. So there is there is a respect at which you're right. But there's this other regard in which there's a lot of libraries that are kind of like. That are not as easy to explore. And like these devices are kind of moving forward, trying to help preserve. Like so that that part to me is like if you're someone who just wants to play old games and like just wants to work, I think that you can usually like lag behind about a year and it's really how well these things will work. I mean, people will do it. It'll be so easy. But if you're somebody who likes to screw around new things, it's an exciting. It's an exciting area of screwing. We're in that. Right. All this is so strong. The SN3DS games are so there's so many good ones and there hasn't been a great way to really do that yet. But like it's not coincidence that I have my 3DS in reach. Like this way I have my Vita within reach. Like there's still like I have my Wii U. I don't have a Wii U. Just kidding. Why would I have a Wii U? We we have some reader mail. Oh, yeah. Okay. We have a letter from Andrew in talking about Steam Next Fest. I have only been able to play one game despite downloading Coast to 14. It's called Desktop Defender. It's basically like a little window. This is me talking. It's basically like a little window that just shows up in the corner of your desktop and it is like part vampire survivors, part progression game, idol game. But because it's so minimal, it kind of just sits in the corner of your screen and you like do a little some doodle things on the corner and then you just go back to working or whatever you were doing. You get a gun to shoot and coming things. You get more XP, you get more upgrades, etc. We're all familiar with the format. I think the interesting thing here is specifically that it is just this like such a minimal like side game almost like Clippy showing up and you can have like a little moment and then you just go back to whatever you were doing, which seems kind of cool. It's called Desktop Defender. Is this? It's not Desktop Tower Defense. Desktop? No. It's called Desktop Defender. It's on Steam. I have not thought about Desktop Tower Defense in so long. I'm freaking out. That's it. You're playing it. You're already playing it. Desktop Tower Defense. God, I haven't thought about that game in a hundred years. March 2007. This other recommendation comes from Caleb regarding Steam Next Fest. I got the recommendation in the post games patron for Tears of Metal. Having played it, it's a blast. I'm not usually one for hack and slash Dynasty Warrior stuff, but this one is a greatly simplified version that feels good combined with Sway the Spire type rogue like path options. I had a blast and thought it could be a good diamond in the rough. Now this does look cool. Kyle has a quick shout out to me. I took Russ's recent advice. Just read your own goddamn emails, Russ. Why don't we have to hear it? I took Russ's advice and downloaded Luigi's Mansion to play with my four year old and went great. She's never really gotten into a game before because she's never clicked with using a controller to navigate a 3D space, but this game seems perfect for the level of approachability. So she's finally getting it. If you guys have any other pre-K friendly game recs, they're always welcome. Luigi's Mansion just hit the or it is hitting the Nintendo Switch online, like GameCube classics. This was, I think, in context of Luigi's Mansion 3, which has co-op. Right. Yeah. Right. Cooper got really into 2-a-T. She really liked that one a lot. Yeah. It's a pretty good one for youngsters. I think they'd have a lot of fun with that. Yeah. I mean, Donkey Kong, Bonanza, but we've talked quite a bit about that. Solar Smash is an iPad game where you blow up planets with different things. Kids love that shit. Kids love blowing up whole planets. It's a big one. We have one more letter. Schmorgel sent a bunch of recommendations from Steam Next Fest, but I want to call out one of them. Seance of Blake Manor is a first-person puzzle game, sort of like blueprints and return to Oberden. Your gathering clues, finding evidence, interviewing people, all the good stuff. Time passes when you look at objects. So there is a real sense of tension in your moment-to-moment decisions. Yeah. I think Plant dropped the trailer for this in the Besties channel a bit ago, and it does look real good. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it just seems like it has blueprints, but even spookier. Spooky blueprints. Check, please. Someday I'll play blueprints. It still has not been updated for Colorblind, but someday. That's bonkers, man. Anything else you want to talk about for honorable mentions? I'm still playing. Did we talk about Clover Pit on the show? We have talked about Clover Pit, yes. I'm still playing Clover Pit. Merge Maestro. I wanted to call out a show called Extraordinary, which is on Hulu. British people. It's got British people in it. Tonally, I think it's probably pretty close to something like what we do in Shadows. It's not like a mockumentary format, but otherwise. What we do in Shadows? That's good, dude. Rast is ass. No, stinker. The premise of the show is basically it's like our world, but every single person on the planet has a power of some sort. And some of those are weird. Like you can, this person can rewind time 12 seconds and this person can fly and this person can blah, blah, blah. But the main protagonist of the show is 25 and has not received her power yet. So she's like in this state of personal development, but it's very funny and really well written. And there's two seasons of that. And so if you're looking for something in the tone of what we do in the shadows, there you go. I want to call out the Undertale 10th anniversary album of remixes that came out, I think last week or the week before that Toby Fox got a bunch of different people together and did remixes of songs from Undertale to celebrate the 10th anniversary. And some of them are such fucking club bangers. There's a version of Death by Glamour on there that absolutely fucking shreds so we've been listening to quite a bit of that. Is it stuff that Toby remixed or is it like fans? I don't know. I don't know. I guess his name is asked mostly because like, where's Toby finding the fucking time to do all this stuff? Yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know. But yeah, I've pretty much only been playing out of worlds too. They kind of demands a lot of your time. All right. Well, next week, what are we going to be doing next week? Next week, we are going to be playing Keeper. I think Justin's going to be diving into Keeper, which is the new double fine game. And Griffin and I will be playing Pokemon Legend Z, A, which is the new Pokemon game. Yeah, I might dip a little toe into Keeper, too, because I am. I do like their games and Keeper, too. You got it. Shit, dude. Damn. But before we wrap up the show, I do want to thank the members over at the Patreon. That's patreon.com. So I ask the besties. You we want to thank new members, John, Ben. Brennan B and Curtis G. Thank you for being members of the Patreon. We have resties coming up on Tuesday. We have a new bracket battles episode coming up real soon for members of the Patreon. You can actually vote on which bracket battle we're going to do next. So keep an eye out for that for subscribed members. And we love you a lot. Yep. Beautiful. All right. Thanks, y'all. Appreciate you. Be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties.