Fortnite's Humongous Simpsons Update Raises an Awkward Question

I think that I hit the right note in, let it go in the shower this morning and no one was there to witness it and I don't know. Oh no. I think I hit it. I'm like 90. You should let it go. Are you talking about the past is in the past? That one? Do you harmonize with it? Yes. Are you right there with Adina? Are you guys crashing the wave together? I can't sing it now because I'm worried from just the rights issue. Well that's bullshit. It would be a tonal match. The AI would match it perfectly to Adina. I think it would be okay actually. Rachel has a filter she can apply to songs to make them not get snagged by the alga. I think that's too close to AI and I don't trust it. Quite honestly. No, it's all physical. She puts it in a crank and she cranks it through it and so you should sing. Yeah, so give me a past is in the past. I've done it three times now and it's not. I know but it's not. I'm sick too so like. Acoustically speaking, I know I set this recording booth up for that specific purpose but. So yeah, there's post-processing for that too. She can add reverb and like. I know what the problem is. You wanna feel like you're in there shower. So here. Shh, no I don't. Wet water. Russ honey I'm about to flush. Ruff, ruff, I'm about to flush we got. Wet hair. Dad open the door. Open the door. Open the door, it's really a sun. Staring into the middle distance. Let it go. Oh you're right. It was good right? It was good. Yeah, he's right. Fuck yeah. It was good dude. Hell yeah dude. My name is Justin McRoy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McRoy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Preston Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Froschek and I 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 have become a member. This year we're talking about what if a very old video game was a game of the week? What if a very old video game was about a much older TV show? And here we are. The Simpsons have invaded Fortnite. Chris Plant, remind me about the Simpsons. Oh, well it all started a long time ago when a man named David Sine... Look, it's called Fart Night. That's what you need to know. Fortnite has been sitting on the Fart Night pun for years and years wondering... They gave it to play. When are we gonna get to use it? And ol' El Barto came up and spray painted that thing and changed the world. And now it's all anybody wants to talk about. And when we'll, they will be among them right after this. I don't want my cheeky intro to be mistaken for cynicism because when you jump out of the bus and it's all a spring field, it's cool. Yeah, I liked it. It was fun. You can go to the Simpsons house and run around and y'all, being in the Simpsons house is weird because I know how to get around the Simpsons house. That was a very surreal moment. It's like clearing Bart's room, like slicing the pie into Homer and Marge's room. Does it put a thumb on the scale of where players drop when you kind of like turn the different destinations into a bit of like tourism in that way? Because I mean, it would be a real hot spot. Fortnite always has like hot spots if you will that people are meant to gravitate towards, but it's not just the house. There's also like the power plant and the city hall and all sorts of stuff are represented. The Simpsons fans have been chasing this dream since like the first year that this damn show came out. And we've got a lot of versions of this, you know? Beginning with my favorite 3D recreation, the 3D Simpsons PC game that moved at about four frames per second, but it did let you go around a version of the Simpsons house. Then we got Simpsons hit and run. We have so many damn games. What is wild about this? And I think I said this to you, Fresh, while we were playing is, oh, this is what happens if you have that AAA budget or you have that Grand Theft Auto style sense of awe where every time you crest a hill, you are stunned that they put that much effort into whatever you're seeing. I want to take a step back before we get too deep into it because I think there's probably a lot of people. I did not play Simpsons Fortnite. I covered some other stuff for this week. So I am desperate to hear like, is it a season? Is it a... Sure. I think there are a lot of people that like haven't played Fortnite a while. I, for what it's worth, have been, I like started playing Fortnite when a battle royale started launching and then I went dark for like two years. But I've been basically playing every season for the last like three years. So as you imagine... Fortnite is just fun to talk about, it's just fun to play. That's the problem with Fortnite. It's not fun to podcast about, it's just fun to play it. Except now it's so out of pocket that I think it, yeah, I'd cry for you. I mean, usually. This was a pretty extreme moment. So in this case, normally a season is about three months, but they've been doing these mini seasons that usually occur right around this time of year that focus on like a specific franchise. So last year was a Star Wars... That was the one where you can make Darth Vader say fuck. Yes. Right. Where Darth Vader says fuck. I've been reading about that. And he had thoughts about cryptocurrency. So that was last year. And this year they're doing Simpsons. And I think last year the map was like had like mostly Star Wars stuff, but there were still like a lot of Fortnite stuff carried through. This was like, they started from zero and built a Springfield from scratch within the Fortnite. So the whole map at GRIF is like, any big landmark from Springfield you can think about is there, it's all rendered in like a pretty large scale and like crucial characters are in the world at those locations and there's quests how to like going to find them. So not even just the macro, but also the micro. So if you were to walk into the Quickie Mart, for example, there would be show accurate magazines and snacks and shit like that. That's, it's buckwise. Profoundly wild. It's like absolutely wild. It's like wildly detailed. Every environment is like that. Like you can run around Springfield Elementary, you can walk around. Oh, fucking the best one, right? I parachuted onto the side of the power plant onto a balcony, right? Walked into the huge glass doors, into Mr. Burns' office, hit the button on his desk to drop the trap door in front of him, then drop down the trap door to where the, oh, first of all, I released the hounds. There's a button released to hounds which makes hounds go around the area and attack people who are at the, in the region. And I think that's at the Burns' manor. And then you can push the button for the trap door and go down into the trap door and there's like treasure down there. And that's all fully rendered too. And you have to dig your way out of it. Like it's, it's truly wild. The fact that they made this engine. So complete also that they need to still have Fortnite stuff in it because that is ultimately their brand. So they have made Simpsons versions of Fortnite characters. Yes, like the Peely. Like Peely. Well, Peely, but Peely is later revealed, might just be Professor Frank who transformed himself into a banana. I do like that a lot. The story's still unfolding. Can I say, I've been, I was going to play this already, but the head brush that pushed me over the edge to where I might actually sort of download in the middle of this podcast. That's very very strong. And then there are Disney plus animated shorts set also within this stuff. They made like several four minute shorts. So explain what that means. How do you watch? Does it just like appear? Is it like a cut scene? You can go to Disney Plus and because Simpsons is on Disney Plus, right? And then they have shorts that they release, you know, like every couple months and they have fortnight shorts that are airing every week that are related to trans media. And you can also watch them in the game as well. OK, that's what I was more curious about. Um, there's also a lot of battle pass stuff. There's characters. There's like increasingly specific references like the battle pass. It starts out with like basic characters. And you get like Ned Flanders and then you get like zombie Marge. And then there's like Homer in a devil costume. And the Ned Flanders stuff is like, man, like the glider is a huge mustache. It's just like has trimming shooting out of it. Like there's a alternate costume is nothing at all. Is the the ski suit. Yeah, the ski suit is like all the props are so there's like a left handed emergency kit that's like his back piece that Flanders where like that's just that one character like there's so many different like unlockable like little in gags like that for for the show. So, yeah, Russ, you might be able to speak more to this having played like all these seasons. What is the fate of this content once this, you know, many season is over? Yeah, that's a good question. So traditionally, it basically vanishes. There is an element that I'm not 100% up on on the creative side of Fortnite where people like can make their own maps and things like that, whether that means that it could be playable or experienceable after the fact. I know part of the challenge here is like just keeping download sizes down. Like you can't just keep this map downloadable for everyone forever because it just makes the the scale of the Fortnite download too huge. Right. But it would be as plants said when we were playing, it would be a real shame if hardcore Simpsons fans only found out about this a month later, like this the season ends at the end of November. So realistically, this is your chance. If you found the game in December and you wouldn't be able to play this map, that's a real damn shame. I think that they will. I would, I mean, obviously they could bring it back, but I feel like they'll leave it. I was interested. It's been a long time since I logged into Fortnite and I was really interested to see the extent to which those experiences. It's starting to look a lot. It's beginning to look a lot like Roblox, like the a lot of the those experiences that are like there's a sort of role playing category. And it's like all those like Abbey's and like Kpop Demon Hunter, Grow a Garden, Tycoon, all that stuff from Roblox is happening in Fortnite with just like better mechanics and like. It was actually a recent lawsuit over a game called Steel the Brain Rot, which apparently is very big in Roblox that also got ported to Fortnite and who owns the rights to that. So it's getting very dicey on that front as well. Yeah, but there was more experiences that like I actually got my kids into Fortnite. Like they both played. We played trios and got a victory royale. It was crazy. Like it was it was a lot of fun. So that matching is still working like really well, because us three dorks were able to get in and have a have a good match. So I don't know. We have to share that yesterday Justin got in the Vessie Slack and excitedly shared that him and Charlie got a victory royale. And then 21 minute or 20 minutes later, Russ said this was my win from yesterday and put up a video of him winning a victory royale. And plant, you did point out fairly that Justin got a victory royale with his kid to flex with a solo royale. It was a really and as me, like as a spectator to that whole thing, it was so uncomfortable, guys. So I stopped paying attention. I didn't see all that stuff play out. I just told you guys about the great stuff in my life in the movie. I know. And I was sharing the great stuff in my life, too. It doesn't mean it's a flex or a challenge. I didn't take it that way. I didn't take that way either. I didn't take it at all. But had I taken it, I wouldn't take it that way. We can all have good moments in our lives. It's OK. There is this part of me. Whenever I play Fortnite, there's this part of me that's like, man, are we wasting our time? Should we have stopped here? This is fun, you know, like I feel like we there is I should. I would be a happier person if I was like, I'm just going to play some fucking fortnight this year, and I'm not going to do other stuff. I'm not going to play. I can't. Fortnight is like working so hard to just be fun and play it. And I think why do I keep putting myself? Justin, this this pays our bills. There is not an insignificant number of people who listen to this very show who do only have time to play fortnight and maybe like two other games. And then they listen to us because it's our job to go out bravely, I might add, into the world to play those other games on their behalf. And then they come back and to tell them, hey, don't worry. We got you covered. We can tell you what to say at the cocktail parties you're all going to. You keep playing fortnight. Right here for you. You know, so we need a Chris. We need a new heuristic here on the besties that we apply to every game we talk about, which is, is it worth pulling yourself away for a few minutes from the sweet, glowing pleasure box of fortnight, this incredible, joyous sandbox? Is it worth a little bit of that sweet fortnight time or not? I don't know. I just have a question for you specifically. Hit me. Last year during the year period. And before it, there was a little game called Astro Bot. Yeah. And one of the points you made about Astro Bot, which is not totally off base. I definitely can see your perspective. Is that it really is just one giant fucking ad for PlayStation and its brand. Yeah, right. Well, how do you how do you feel about fortnight, which is not just a Simpsons ad at this point, but also a multimedia brand ad for like Marvel and Disney? You name it. I mean, it's pretty wack. Obviously, I think it's all pretty wack. Yeah, I mean, it is. But it is also like if you're a fan of something and you do like, like this is a very to me. OK, OK, OK. For me, here's the difference. This is a very like healthy and like rewarding way of engaging with something that people love, right? This isn't like this feels less like capitalizing on and more like. I mean, they do do capitalization. They do capitalize on it. It's like Simpsons. Like it's celebratory to me. This feels like it's and there's like to me, there's so much more in here. Then you could ever like like just kind of experience in one run. It's like very loving, very like thoughtfully recreated, very richly detailed and also like. For free. Yeah. An Astro Bot. It's so long as you have willpower. You it's free. Also, Russ, you should know this, that when we're trying to lobby and position games in the game of the year discussion, we all say a lot of shit we don't mean we will say fucking anything to get to like guns and coins and stuff and coins. There's one there's one other detail here, too, which is Astro Bot doesn't have like Mario coming in and then punching Astro Bot in the dawn. That's like, oh, yeah, you're right. That's like what what makes this work weirdly for me is a sensation that there were people on every single creative team that has partnered with with Fortnite and Epic that was pissed about a decision that still ended up going through in the game. There are so many people who would be thrilled if it was just their their IP during their IP time and you couldn't have the crossovers or you couldn't have your characters have guns or you couldn't do all I mean, there are, I would say, rumors of very, very intense fights over which characters could wear shoes once they added shoes because of like very specific partnerships with like Nike and Reebok. I mean, it's very like LeBron has a skin in the game. Yeah. The fact that he can wear a fucking I don't know what he has to deal with. Adidas is like so counter to the idea of like that would never be allowed in an advertisement on court, whatever it is. But because Fortnite got so fucking big, Epic was able to use their legal strong-arming to just let them do whatever. And so this isn't the like, you know, IP free or like a lawyer free free that some people would like. It is also not just being able to play with your toys, but it is so leaps and bounds further than any other one of these sorts of collaborations that it feels still funky and weird and unlike anything else, which I think allows it to stay fresh, despite it being a collision of a thousand different commercials. Yeah, that's really the reason why I've been playing Fortnite for the last whatever, however many years is just they do a very good job of keeping it fresh in ways that like PUBG didn't like, they just didn't know how to scale it or the engine couldn't handle it, whatever it is. And here, every month or two, the game is changing in either minor or major ways such that I can remain interested. And also I just use it as a it's my golf equivalent. Like I have, I take meetings during it and like discuss actual work. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah, I do a job too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not you do. I've been on those calls with you. It's kind of incredible. I think there's also something to be said, though, for like these these things are going like, I want to bring up the Roblox thing again. These sorts of like IP mashup, like capitalizations will happen outside of the stakeholders in those things. And I think that a lot of the ways that you like, I've seen my kids try to play games on Roblox that are like just utter a garbage with like the thinnest veneer of some IP that they like put onto it. I think there's a big difference. Like there was a mini, there was like a Disneyland adventure within Fortnite, right? Yeah. And I when I went into that, I had never seen this, but like you go in and it's like kind of a cool recreation of the park. And there's it's like dropping you into mini games that are set in the attractions. You're like like running around, you know, realized versions of these and like doing little mini games and stuff. It's like it's so much better. I mean, it's just better. It's like better content. It's like better stuff. It's it's worthwhile. It's more attractive. It's like more pleasurable to engage with. And I think that that is a meaningful difference where it's like not some AI garbage that some robot is cranking out based on whatever IP you plug into it. But it's like people who at least care about these these properties are doing something interesting with them in Fortnite. Yeah. It's also, by the way, the Roblox parallel is a little bit off because Roblox is almost instant because the assets are endemic to Roblox. And a lot of these Fortnite like many experiences they want to try to lure kids into like this, there's a download that you have to do before you can like get into it because there's a lot more assets in the fortnight experiences than the Roblox experiences. So I don't know if they're going to get there because it's like it's tough when your friends like come play this with me and there's a couple of minutes where you got to wait for it to download where Roblox is always like so seamless. It's like I jumped into this. Come jump in with me. The number when we used to stream fortnight, the number of streams we had to start late because one of us wouldn't realize that there was a fucking, you know, 25 gigabyte patch to get Peter Griffin in the mix was was quite frequent. Last thing I'll say on this as definitely a fan of what they're doing, obviously, I'm still, you know, there's no better representation of the consolidation of power within the games industry than like Epic and Fortnite and what they're doing. So I'm there's also that like a little bit better pill in the aspect, but with that power, they are making a good game. So I feel a little bit torn on that front. But I will say I watched a YouTube video. It was just like a YouTube short of someone playing as Goku gliding in landing on the Simpsons roof, going through the door and sitting on the couch with like fucking Darth Vader and several other like known characters and the Simpsons theme playing like it was the beginning of like a Simpsons couch gag. And I three years ago, if I'd seen that video, I'd be like, oh, that was, that's fucking AI. Like that's a joke. And the fact that it exists in the real world as like a legitimate game is wild. So that's kind of the it really is the peak of what they've been trying to do for many years. Am I going to be if I start playing now, am I going to be like way behind? You don't have such a good time. There's no behind in. I'll play this afternoon. It's Fortnite. You just play it depends on how long it's been. If it's like you haven't played since the beginning, you're like, oh, wait, there's the can super jump and there are cars. I mean, I look and see the last time we streamed. You can eat a blanky fish and do teleport jumps now. You'll be squishy and have super speed. Also, if you haven't played in a while, I'm not going to tell this to Justin because it might hurt his feelings. But if you haven't played in a while, they'll probably match you with bots. So yeah, I love that argument in my head about that. Sorry, was I sorry, was I know it seemed like all bots. Everyone was bad. But I think the last person, the last like three people we killed seemed like they were angry. So they might have been real, but pretty much everybody else just got it. It's OK. I was playing with a seven and 11 year old man. I was not bragging. I'm just saying it's a really it's a great matchmaking experience. It is the only thing I want to point out. Yeah, is there a better fucking moment? I play some competitive games with Henry on Roblox sometimes. Is there a better moment than when you can fucking clutch up a win in front of your child in that experience? Holy shit, man, I feel so tall. Cooper had to bail because it was too intense. Is there a better moment than you see that joy in your kids' die and then you turn to them and go, yeah, but they were all bots. So. Uncle, Uncle Russ texted them to let him know. Primarily they got another truth. It's important. Can we take a break and then I'll talk about the future of eSports? Yes. I haven't played a game in my life that has turned me off faster than Q up. Have you guys fucked with it yet? No, I tried to, but it wouldn't work on Steam Deck. You needed a mouse and keyboard as well. Yeah, there's no controller support, which is a huge bummer because it would. You could I was actually playing it on my blog ally last night. You can like kind of move the cursor around. And anyway, that's a weird way to start. You start the game up and it asks you to like do some settings, like come up with this random number for a random number generator. There's like some gag shit of like turn up mouse sensitivity, rate the game. But then you can turn up developer sensitivity and the higher you turn it. The more stars you end up giving the game. It is like so full of these gags about modern games as service kind of contrivances that are objectively very funny. But then it drops you into the game with fucking no explanation as to what's going on or what you're doing here. And it is very much a game about kind of like unpacking what's happening here. And what's happening is you are flipping coins. You're you're flipping a coin and it's either going to be heads or tails, Q or up in this game. And wait, which one is Q and which one is up? It doesn't fucking matter, man. Q is heads up as tails. OK, I think that's that's that's probably the best thing I've got backwards. Oh, OK, maybe you are you Q you genuinely do join a matchmaking Q because this game does have real. I believe it's a yeah. So it has online play. I believe it's like asynchronous where like once OK, you queue up with a team, like it automatically runs all the math of what's going to happen. I don't think it's actually happening in real time because there's certain prompts you can like dismiss or not dismiss. And I don't see how that would happen if, you know, eight players were all kind of doing the same thing. So you're put on a team of four and then first to three wins after coin flips wins the match. And then you go back to the the, you know, fucking Fortnite splash screen sort of games of service menu where you can look at the shop and you can check your messages and you can form a party. And like it has all of these trappings that make you think like they've genuinely made like an overwatch of coin flipping. So that's how did you feel? How did that make you feel bad, bad and not good and confused and not great? Is it a joke? It's messages pretty quickly. Then you start getting messages, right? And that's where the you start to get some explanations for the rules in these messages, like, hey, when you have these skills that activate these certain points, here's what that actually means. Here's what these different currencies are actually for. Here's what's actually going on. You get messages from like people who are like, wow, you seem like you're winning maybe a little bit too much. Here's some currencies for you to use. You start to invest in the that side of things, the not coin flipping side of things. And that's when the game kind of reveals itself for what it is, which is an incremental game. The new jam from Frank Lance, who made Universal Paper Clips, which I think kind of established a lot of the norms of the genre of incremental idle games. Only the incremental, the building that you're doing, the strengthening that you're doing is all entirely personal. So you have a hero that you pick sort of overwatch style. You only have a handful unlocked at the beginning. You can unlock more as you go along. Each hero has like a different little modifier, a different little thing. But for the most part, a lot of the payoff comes in this huge skill grid. Each hero has like certain special skills, but then you'll unlock skills that you can place in the grid wherever you want. Those skills will trigger on wins. So if your team wins a flip, it'll trigger this skill. Some of them trigger on losses. Some of them trigger when the game starts. Some of them trigger when the game ends. Genuinely, anything you can think that could happen in a very simple first to three coin flip challenge, they have found a way to make a game mechanic out of it in some way. Sometimes you'll have skills that trigger other skills. So to say like on a loss, this one will activate all the skills surrounding this node and you start to build these insane chain reactions to like maximize the currencies that you get out of for each win and loss and match win and match loss, right? So you can get a bunch of skills or there's also gear. There's items that you buy in a shop that you like have a loadout equipped that basically do kind of the same thing. Like this will give you 500 XP each round that will be multiplied maybe by your skills. You're trying to like build these multipliers and build these chain reactions and utilize your heroes like special abilities. But like none of that shit affects the coin flip. You don't get a skill that makes you win more coin flips. OK, vitally, you don't get any kind of ability that will make it more likely that your team will win a coin flip. The coin flips are going to happen. And then the points that you get for the result of that coin flip are entirely your shit, entirely your build, entirely everything. So the only kind of messages if I can just hop in really quickly. Yeah, please, please. The messages that you will get will be from the game creators. And if let's say that you lose four rounds in a row and each round you lose in a shutout, like you didn't get a single coin flip right. You will get a message that's like fairness is our top priority. Something seems to be amiss here. We've rejiggered the flibble flops and we are assuring you that there is peak fairness happening at all times. And as as you know, a sign of gratitude, take these coins and then you will take those coins and there will be a Yula, which if you actually read the Yula, thousands of words at the bottom will be like, and also we now own all of the like rounds of your game. We own all of your personal data. We own all of this shit, which then we'll have a link to another story. And that's the other side of the game, which is the visual novel side of. Yeah. So there's there's a whole news feed where you will see like on the splash screen, like of all the legal trouble that like the company that made this game is getting in, but it's like a fake. It's a real website, but it's like a fictionalized unit, like in universe sort of coverage of the Q up eSport. What all of that is like, it's really funny. And it's like really, really it. It wants you kind of understand what it is and and how it doesn't really impact the coin flips or like the build shit that you get into these like chain reactions you try to build between your skills and your items and your hero skills to make it so you can get like billions and billions and billions of points with a single match of Q up, whether you win or lose, you could have a setup where like you have items that trigger trigger on losses and you have skills that trigger on losses so that when you lose, you get more points than you do when you win. It's all about like how your build allows you to harvest resources from the matches, whether you win or you or you lose. And engaging with that stuff is so confusing at the start because it doesn't explain fucking anything and it kind of slow rolls that shit out to you. The multiplayer aspect of it is really great because there is like a ranking system sort of like overwatch. Sorry, for a second. Do we know for sure that the multiplayer is real multiplayer? Yes, it is real multiplayer. And the reason that you know that my favorite part about the multiplayer is you will see people on your team and people on the other team, like you'll win a flip and then you will see that they have just earned 72 quadrillion points. And it's like, how the fuck? What is your setup? Yeah. That you were able to get that, right? So it's like, imagine you're playing universal paperclips. Only there was like asynchronous multiplayer and you could see that like this person was getting shit in the like exponential Google Plex like, you know, there's also certain interactions. Like one of the characters has a skill called, I think, meta awareness. And what that skill does is you pick one of the playable characters in the game. And if that player is on the other team, when you start, it adds a point to this like meta awareness stat that will then like multiply your score or do like all this other shit. But if you guess wrong and that player is not on the team, that stat resets. So it's genuinely like knowing like, OK, which characters are people playing the most? And if I pick that, then it's actually going to give me this stat. Like that is what that whole character is kind of based around. It's just like it's all this stuff about the coin flip eSports and the the overwatch sort of pastiche and all that shit is all a joke. But they also have made a game mechanic out of. The trappings of it, the system, your menus of it. It's a thing at the end of any game where it adds up your score and it has all these different bonuses, except for you are designing the contraption that creates that math. Yeah, right. That's the whole game is is creating the bonus chain and optimizing it, knowing that you can actually have it go the other way, too. You can actually design a chain that that destroys. Yes. When you lose, it gives you a base score of like minus 500 points to your ranking, right? If you have like a bunch of shit that like just multiplies your score, then that will go. You will lose so many points. You have to have shit in there that will just like add some base score to counteract that because you don't want to like multiply a negative number. Sure, it'll really fuck you over. So like that is that is the side of things. That is the incremental part of things. You're earning gold that you used to buy items. You're earning XP to like level up your heroes and get these skills. But the like end results. And I realize this is a weird thing to ask about an idle game, but like the end the end goal, I should say, is like learning more about the universe, the like visual and the end goal is to like build these insane chain reaction things with your skills and items. That is the end goal of this as an incremental game. Right. And then for narrative, I think I think what Frank and his team are getting at is one, the absurdity of fairness and competitive games that you have people who want fairness, but then also want upgrade past constantly. And then also the way that if a game does have fairness, how it can loop you into all of these other mechanisms that are the separate metagame that you can play that keeps you spending money and keeps you buying coins and all of that stuff. It is it is a game that is very much grappling with the anxiety of. It's grappling with. I think it's saying less. I think Overwatch is a more apt comparison that like obviously it's saying a lot about games of service and the sort of intrusiveness of that kind of formula. But for me, it feels less like a shot at Fortnite and more a shot. Yeah. E-sports and Pettus plays. Sure. Yeah. That makes sense. But like also when you build a chain reaction that gives you a fucking ton of points, it feels pretty. It does scratch that, you know, that Universal Paper Clips incremental game. Like, holy shit, I just I'm rich. Like it does hit the number go up itch. That's the trick, right? Though that's what Frank is so good at. And I think of Lucas Pope is so good at with something like papers, please, where it's, hey, we are going to make the thing that we are shaking feel good. So you get how it became right. Yeah. Powerful. Absolutely. It's a really interesting game. I do wish there was controller support because I think I would play it a lot more, you know, on my Rock LIX, but it's it's it's one of the more compelling incremental games I've played in a while. Yeah, it's very interesting. Do you want to drive into some reader mail? Yeah, I'd like that if you don't mind. This letter comes from Alexander. Hi, besties. My parents have never played a video game in their life, but they are now retired and they've developed an interest in trying some out. They even went so far as to buy an Xbox Series X. I'm glad they're still selling y'all. Yeah. And two controllers. My question for you guys is what are some games you'd recommend that are simple enough for to be fun for people who are learning to use a controller and understand game language, but whose content and themes are interesting and engaging for adults, which I think is a different request than we've gotten past about teaching. Yeah, should play games. So far, I've gotten the Portal 2, but I would love some other suggestions. Two player games would be especially welcome. Thanks. I have one, although I hesitate to give it. Is it a two? It's either it takes two or split fiction. Oh, God. I hesitate to give it. Did you edit on a part where they said they don't love their parents? I think for someone that has really never played games much at all. Or heard a story before. Like, that's the problem with split fiction is like that's very insulting if they've read a bunch of I have to assume they've ingested other media if they haven't been playing games this whole time, right? So like missing missing the split fiction episode of this podcast has truly put a pretty wide gap between me and I feel like the rest. I feel like something happened in that episode. Gap is between you and the listeners. Like, that's where the gap is. We're over here. The listeners agree with us. Tell them down. That's OK. Because I think that, man, I'm continually like kind of bolt over by how good the Jackbox games are at getting non-gamers into games by using a device that they already feel comfortable with. Like we played the not to get into all the mentions, but I played the 11 compilation that came out for my birthday. I had some people over and it was like a wide range of people. Never played a game before, but there's like a they have a new sort of like murder mystery game in there where you have to answer. You have to answer personal questions about yourself. And then one of you is the murderer. And the way they hit at people is they reveal answers that this person gave to the personality quiz. So you're like trying to find the criminal by how well, you know, their personality and there's one in every round that's a lie. So you have to try to like figure out. There's like fake information. But that's like that's like a parlor game that's right on the edge of digital. And like, I think that that's a really good place to get people in for stuff. Although it doesn't use a controller, right? You're using phones for that. So yeah, you can use phones. And what I think is for me, I think the best thing about them is that they are like on streaming services, like they're not just on Steam. Because for me, I don't have it like endemic that Steam can be on my living room TV, right? It takes a few chords being plugged in. But I can't just press a button on the Apple TV and like the Jackbox will start up there. So that's that's kind of nice. I I feel like Portal 2 is a wild first first pick. It's obviously a great game. And I think you get there. But I mean, in introducing games to, you know, both of my kids at this point, like there is a certain amount of easing in to like familiarity with a controller before operating two thumbsticks at the same time. And one of those thumbs has to move over to buttons and one of them has to move over to a secondary D-pad. Like that is really pretty difficult to understand if you've really. Clearly, these people are using bumper jumper. So that's not an issue. Yeah, that sounded like I assumed they were using bumper jumpers. I sort of get it with Portal 2 because you are for most of the early game in a quote, safe space to like learn everything. The other thing I wanted to call out. On a break is half TV show. That's true. Yeah, you can really relax. So you can like they can like take a break from playing video games if that gets to be a bit much. Yeah. Stardew co-op would probably be another. Yeah, I was going to say that, too. And it's not a bad idea. I think it's also any of the beat them up like castle crashers. We've talked about it quite a few of these lately that I think are solid. And yeah, any of the story games until dawn. And like, I don't know until dawn is not on Xbox. Oh, the first season of Walking Dead would be very good. Yes. Yeah, that's not bad. I played that essentially in co-op with my wife and it was a really great experience. That was a definite like easing Rachel into we played through all of those. And honestly, anything else. I think Blue Prince would be. I mean, it's not two players, but it's definitely a two. Like it's a two part. It could be it's a great two person experience. I've heard from a ton of people that played it with a partner and really enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah. And last one, anything with Lego at the beginning of the title. Good to avoid. Yeah. Almost now Lego Voyagers stuff like that. That'll be good. I once you played one of them, you've played them literally all. But I guess if they've never played even one of them, then you could get them one. There you go. There you go. Voyagers, Justin, you don't know. Change the game. It's delighted. Voyagers change the game. Yeah, I want to hear some honorable mentions because I know folks have been playing some other stuff, watching some good stuff. I'm sure who you got a good book that you're going to tell me about. I know, man, I only read like really spicy stuff, like really steamy stuff. And I it wouldn't be appropriate for this audience. I just finished Pride. It was very, very, very, very sexy hot stuff. Mates up next, looking forward to it. Not the topic today. I want to tell you about Haunted Hotel. I know what's that? It's a show. It really did come out on Netflix, which is one of the big ones. It stars Will Forte as the owner of a hotel that is completely overrun with ghosts. And then he and his like 30s or 40s dies and leaves the hotel to his sister and her two kids and a demon named Abaddon, who also lives in the hotel. So Nathan is a ghost in the hotel and he is getting adjusted to ghost life. And he is sort of the in between between the ghosts and his sister. And this is like a long struggling business. It does not do very well because of all the ghosts. And the stories are really like about the the ghosts and how they interact with the family and how Nathan is adjusting to be non corporeal. It's it's like it's extremely funny. It's really funny. It's a little more like tonally. It is not unlike a Gravity Falls or stuff like that. But it's animated. It's animated. Sorry, I should have been more clear about that. Yeah, it is an animated series and it's it's it's more grown up than those. It's it's like a little more adult tonally. I think there's stuff that's like that would be kind of on the line for for our kids. A Beetlejuice tone. Yeah, Beetlejuice is a club. Yeah, Beetlejuice is like right right there. Not heavy on like the profanity or stuff. But there's like some pretty big questions. A lot of it is like, for instance, there's an area there's an episode where Nathan, the the ghost who who's played by World Forte, starts sinking into the ground and won't and will continue to sink into the core of the ground until he discovers the meaning of life. And he's got a few days to figure it out. So he and his niece, the one of the young girl, who is the daughter of the mom who's inherited the hotel, have to figure out the meaning of life in like a few days. Before he sinks the into the earth. And there's like murderers that died in the hotel and still try to kill the kids. But they're non corporeal. So the kids get a big kick out of it. That kind of like it's that kind of thing. But it's like it's very it's just really, really funny. And it's I feel like it's tough to find stuff. I think not tough. I think people are afraid to do comedy that is on the line of good taste because they don't know how to do it funny enough. That they can get that they can sell it. Right. So there's a lot of shows that I think aren't funny enough to get close to the line of like what is like appropriate? What is it? And really like push the envelope in a way that. It's just uncomfortable. Right. It's just like actually trying to make you think about stuff. And it's just on the line there. But it is funny enough that it sells it, right? That it can get into those like topics that are on the edge and do them with like taste. But like in a really, really, genuinely funny way. And I think that that is what this show is. It is not like the sort of I think there's an adult animation style that wanted to be so comforting for people that it got never got close to anything that approximated strife. You know, it's it's a very sort of like comfort watch kind of animation that adults have gotten into this to me. It feels a little bit more like I've got I'm going to say married with children. Like that level of edge at that time period. If you know what I'm talking about, where it's like it's not bad. It's just like people don't normally talk about some of this stuff. So it's kind of it feels bad. I feel as edgier than maybe it is. The cast is killer. I Elias a coop, Skyler, Giusando, Jimmy Stimson, like some Dietrich Bader, hell, yeah. Oh, yeah. Show fans stand up. There is an episode where the the the son, who's a little bit older, gets into a multiplicity kind of situation because the hotel, because it is haunted and so cursed, like any number of magical things can happen. He gets into a multiplicity situation where it's other sides of his own personality and discovers that like his mom prefers almost every other version of himself to him. So it's him trying to figure out how he can. Kill these other versions of himself because they're because he's losing his mom's love, or at least that's that is the impression. But that's the kind of like it's like it's it's it's funny. It's it's like right on the line and it feels like mature in an actual way. But it's like it's called haunted hotel. It's on Netflix and they're making another season according to Netflix. So cool. Sounds great. Yeah, it's great. Can we talk about Luminous? Yeah. Do anyone else play Luminous arise? The yeah, I played it. I know playing played a little bit. We talked about it on resties. Oh, great. As well a bit. But so you've laid the groundwork. It's it's the new jam from enhance, which is Tetsuya Mizukuchi. Yeah, his name, his studio creator of Rez and most recently enhanced made Tetris Effect. And I would say Luminous arise is very, very, very much in that same sort of trance like aesthetic vein. I mean, Luminous has always sort of been about that life. And Luminous arise, I think, takes the the knob of that trance like shit and turns it all the way up and then tears it off. And you guys talk the core. I feel like it's a long time since Luminous has an entry. Oh, I'm excited for this. I love to see people explain. I tried doing it on resties and I really struggled to go for it. I believe in Luminous. You have a board grid where you are dropping blocks. The blocks are two by two blocks and the segments of those blocks are one of two colors. The base bog standard shit is like there will be white squares and orange squares and some arrangement of those in a two by two little block. You're dropping those into this grid. It's affected by gravity. So if you drop half the block on a stack, the other half will fall down to the ground. When you create a two by two pattern, at least that is one color. Then it kind of locks in. And what is also happening is set to the beat of usually trance music. There is a bar that sweeps across the grid as it passes by one of these completed two by two single color blocks, it clears it and you will get points. If you can do four of those two by two blocks, you get like a multiplier, a combo. And if you can do that over multiple, you know, bars of music, these these bars sweeping over that combo will increase more and more and more and more. You also don't want to fill up the grid and not have room to place a block because then you will lose, you will lose the game. So the point of like getting high scores is setting up these scenarios where you can build a combo where you build this huge structure of one color. And then when it clears, it drops bricks of the other color onto other ones and they form their own huge bricks. And it's building combos and figuring out like when you want to cash out like a little segment that you've been setting up without creating a scenario where you've overfilled the board with these like isolated colors that aren't going to clear. Now, my wife just says it's Tetris. It's it has many similarities to Tetris because Tetris, you're doing the same thing. You're trying to decide when you build and when you cash in so that you don't fuck yourself over. Luminous is very much doing that. However, I would say also the other element to Luminous is like it is and this is definitely the case with their eyes. It's like it's a it's not just about the gameplay, but like the aesthetics that you are creating is like almost part of it. Like if you think about like Rez itself was based on a win amp visualizer. This is like this feels like that like trying to take the how can you take the gameplay and make like bring it into the visuals and bring it into the sound. So it's like a a stenescia kind of kind of deal that that like I feel like that conversation always gets a little bit dicey in how much of that is just kind of like marketing buzz and all that shit. With Luminous, because you are the the information you're working with is kind of inherently pretty simple. It's two colors and you want to keep them together. That's the basic premise is like you don't want to create these little checkerboard patterns where there's one and one and one and they don't hit. You want to sort of match colors together. And that at a very base level is not hard to do. So you start operating with this sort of hind brain sort of thought process that then kind of like gets hooked with the with the music that builds and flows and changes as you go. And so this, you know, it is trying to lull you into a bit of a puzzle trance, which was very much what Tetris Effect was aiming for as well. Here, I just think it's a little bit more inherent to the structure of Luminous. The other thing that it adds is like as you clear these things, you're charging up a burst meter that you can activate by pulling a trigger, which then kind of freezes time a little bit. So you can drop blocks into build these huge structures as you widen the structures. You're building of one color blocks of the other color disappear from the board. So you can keep building and building and building and building until like you run out of time in the burst and it clears it in one sort of huge explosion that's like very, very satisfying. And then a fucking chameleon comes out and like licks your face. A chameleon will come out and lick your face. It is also like an oh shit button that you can pull sometimes if the board is getting too dicey, because it's a little bit of effectives. And I really like that addition a lot because I don't know, Luminous has felt like a game that can break you out of that trance when you're doing so bad. When you drop a few blocks incorrectly and you fuck up your structures and you feel like, oh, God, recovering from this is going to suck. It takes you out of the thing knowing that you have this option, this emergency break that you can pull. That's a really good. That's a really good. When you're doing Tetris, you're like seeing all these gaps, right? And when you mess up a spacing, it's like you just move on to another gap or like another gap is created. Yeah, in a sense. And like with Luminous, it really does. You see this ugly, funky chunk of block. Yeah, right. I'll never get to you. You suck. I hate it. There's also special blocks that will spawn in sometimes that will chain so it will clear every block of one color as long as they are touching. So if you like have been very good and disciplined about like making sure you are not isolating these different colors, you can like really, really, really set up a huge combo with that, too. It's fucking great. It's really, really. I got really hooked on this, I think on PSP and it was like the perfect game on PSP because you could just like pick it up, pick it up, zone out and, you know, do a little bit of score chasing. There's this whole like element of this game where you have a little avatar who's like this little fucking penguin shaped crystal dude and you'll unlock new parts for him and there's a gotcha pawn where you can like unlock new parts and some of the ways it reshapes items like and like when your blocks merge, the way they merge is like aesthetically really cool. I'm flicking through some of the different like there's a there's a there's one where you're making like vegetables. Yeah, start off like small green things. And as you like do a block of four green things, it's like a larger broccoli and then when the screen clears, it looks as though it's been like chopped in half. It's very cool. I will say the soundtrack to this one hasn't. I can remember past Luminous Games playing them and then like saying like, oh, fuck, I got a what was that song and adding it to like a playlist because I, you know, was really vibing with it. Shining. What's that? Shining. Shining. That was like a big solo from that the first game. I haven't played all the journeys and all the songs yet. So like maybe I just haven't gotten to them yet, but I it's been a slightly. And you're, you know, you're you're a dad now. You're out of your house, Sarah. When you were playing this original one, you were at the club every night. You were getting up the rays. Pass a fire around. He was a big Hadaway guy. Yeah, for sure, for sure. I also wanted to talk about I don't want to go too hard on talking about the AYN Thor shit because we've talked about it so much. It's still infinitely insane to me that we have a 3DS that you can basically do whatever on. And to that point, I saw a Reddit post that someone made of them playing Fantasy Star online on their AYN Thor connected to the internet using a Romhack they designed for Dolphin Gamecube emulation. Setting that all up took me like two days, but now I have a handheld where I can play Fantasy Star online on the Gamecube with this custom rule set called return to raggle and you can fucking play that shit online on your handheld with other players. And that is insane to me. That is patently so wild. I've been setting up Steam shit with Gamehub on it too, which works. You doing Gamehub or Gamehub Lite? Gamehub. And that works surprisingly well with some games. But the real highlight for me this week is I have a handheld version of Fantasy Star online in a Romhack that is way more fun to play than the original Fantasy Star. I'm going to drop in real quick, fresh and then I'll throw it to you. But humanity is my pick for this week. Hell yeah, dude. Yes. It's so good. We still got a little something left in us, dude. Heck yeah, man. I so agree with this. This is a big choice, man. Good for you. I'm popular. Hell yeah. Probably just from the current vibe. But like, yeah, but like, fuck it. What did we do? Did I miss something? We as humanity are half off on Steam right now. So there's a news peg. I love that. Before Luminous arise, the same studio made a video game called humanity where you play as a ghost dog, Shiba Inu, and you guide hundreds, if not thousands of people through lemming style puzzles. It is the most PlayStation one ass video game. Oh yeah, man. It is a total delight. And you can get it now for, I think it's like 15 bucks because of a sale. Thanks to Luminous. So you should check it out. Great. Real quick, my, I have two things. The first one is Hades two, which I'm closing in on the end of Hades two, which is exciting. I think when I finish it, I'll have deeper thoughts, but just keeping the people updated on it. Justin, I would recommend just deleting your 40 hour save starting from scratch. But I realize you might not do that. The other thing I want to know. No, I mean, like I'm, I have thought about it. I genuinely have. I would just have so many other things to play. I know. I know. It's kind of a heartbreaker about it. Like to be honest with you, I would love to say, yeah, I have the time to do that. I just don't. I think it's a lesson is what it is for the future, which is to say, I think when the opportunity arises next time to play an early access game, maybe we play for three hours and then stop. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. It's a good. We will be talking about this a lot next week. Yeah, I imagine so. The other thing, you know what? Rachel is the only smart one among us because Rachel has been fighting Hades the whole time and like won't even like tries not to listen to the episodes. I'm not sure how she does it, but she avoids. And I like, you know, I thought, I thought, oh, you're missing out. But like, no, there's a definite wisdom there. Definitely. The other thing I want to mention is a show called Pluribus, which is on Apple TV. Oh, yeah. Plus, I don't know what it's called these days, but yeah. This is the Vince Gilligan show, the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. He has a new show. It stars the woman who played Kim on Better Call Saul. If you're familiar with that, I forget the actual. Reya. Clea. Right. Clea? I don't. Reya Seahorn. Yeah. Reya Seahorn. Some. Yeah. Reya Seahorn. Thank you. She's a dynamite in this. I don't know how much I really want to say, but I feel like if you're a fan of Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, you understand Vince Gilligan's capability of making a really fucking good show. This one's much more sci-fi from the look. Definitely more sci-fi. This is him doing a Damon Lindelof style show. That was the vibe I was getting. What I would say is there's a high concept to the show that I'm not going to talk about right now, but the high concept similar to Severance is revealed very, very, very early on. Okay. So I think that high concept is enough that I was like very interested in where the show would go, in addition to the fact that dude knows how to write and produce a really fucking amazing show. So. I would recommend to anybody who's curious about it, watch the pilot specifically a sap because word's going to spread her out the show and people are just going to start talking about the show for what it is. And the pilot, I'm sure, is thrilling if you already know what's happening, but it is especially great to discover what is going on alongside the pilot. It's one of the best pilots. I've ever seen. It's really. And I really, especially for when you're talking about like talking about being limited on time, it's really nice to get on board with a show where like, I, you know, the creator knows how to deliver on a full series like that, right? How to tell a story, knows how to end it, knows how to like do it on his terms. So it's like, you can feel confident. They're signed up for two seasons through Apple, but he said he has ideas, ideas beyond that, but he's also said he knows where presumably where it would end. So I'm sure he has the seasons at least blocked out in his head. So, yeah, you know, at least you'll get a good actual full story out of it. Sick. Love it. Real quick, I want to thank the folks over at the Patreon, patreon.com, slash the besties, where you can get new episodes of resties and bracket battles and all sorts of good stuff. Some new members that recently joined. We have Steven W. We have Doug, we have Michael S. And we have Katakwack. Thank you for being members of the besties, Patreon. We greatly, greatly appreciate it. As I mentioned, we have a new episode of resties. We go a bit deeper into Luminous, which is there. And we also talk about a game called Escape from Duck Off, which is a genuinely great extraction shooter. I was not expecting that. Single player extraction shooter. Yes. Single player only extraction shooter. I love that. Featuring a duck. Cool. Who wants to talk about what we're doing next week? I can. Um, we're going to start, you know, game of the year, it's closer than ever before. And we've got a couple more big releases, but there's a lot of stuff that has come. And we've enjoyed to different extents. And we kind of want to like circle up, take a little land, talk about the things that we maybe want to spend more time with, talk about things that we have been enjoying, just kind of take stock of stuff so we can figure out how to spend the rest of this year. There's a lot of games. I mean, Russ brought up blueprints right before we started, which is a really good example of a game that some of us loved and some of us can't play. So I don't know how we're going to have those conversations. It's going to be a really fucking intense year for goatee discussion. So to save our friendships, we just want to like do a little table setting, you know. We are doing other like Kirby's still coming, Metroid's still coming this year. We're not locking shit in. But it that is, I don't want to hear any numbers. You know, I'm not trying to rank. I'm just trying to figure out what West still needs a little bit of that extra attention. Yeah. Cool. We did it. I'm excited. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks so much for joining us for this week on the besties. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Besties.