There’s Always a Lighthouse, a Pokémon, a City

What are you guys going for, Halloween? Oh, no. Genuinely, I have a big problem. Because my big concern was that, and I think I talked a bit on resty, is that my son would pull a curveball and not wanna dress up as the thing he was asking to dress up as. Oh, yeah. Which happened last year. That's kid law, dude. Kids get messages, kids get WhatsApps about, my kid didn't even have WhatsApps, he gets WhatsApp messages and she's like, well, dang it, I gotta change. Says. So this happened last year, and this was after we bought a Yoshi costume for him, and then we last minute dressed him up as Link from Legend of Zelda, this year, somehow I was able to mind trick him into wearing the Yoshi costume from last year, which still fits. Whoa. So he's into that. The problem is I've spent all this mental energy, and I have no fucking idea what I'm gonna dress as. Oh, yeah. Okay, well, there's still time. What is going on in this year? My son is a firm rule in the house. He says, I am a ghost. Pasta, our dog is a ghost. Mommy and daddy are not ghosts. They are parents. And I say, that is fair, I'm happy with that. I like that he sounds like Dracula though. He has been watching a lot of very classic Universal Monster movies, so he might be kind of picking up that cadence. Yeah, it's working. How about you, Hoops? Well, my kids are gonna be K-pop demon hunters. Yeah, sure. Wait, wait, wait, wait, was there an argument over, because there's only two of them. So what about the third one? What? Oh, oh, sorry, yes, I understand the question now. Sorry, it took me a second for my brain to catch up. There are only two of them. You meant my children that I brought into the house with my lords. Third, unrepresented K-pop demon. That's my wife, and I'm their manager, Bobby. Right, so this is. I am disappointed. It's a great gig for me. I'm so stoked, because Bobby, the classic look for Bobby is just kind of a robe with T-shirt and sweats, man. I'm feeling it, I'm really excited about the role. Yeah, you're living large. Sydney and I are also gonna do Mothman and Braxy. Who's Braxy? Braxy is the, no, sorry. Braxy is the Braxton monster. She is going to be the flat monster. Does California have folklore monsters? I feel like the East Coast has all these amazing folk monsters, and then I moved to California and it's like, you're the five freeway. My wife is going to be the Flatwoods monster who is also known as Braxy. Got it. Because they're from Braxton County. And there we go. Yeah. That's the clarification for you. I don't know about Braxy. Braxy is from Braxton County. Let's see, according to the Wiki, because I want to give you just like facts, because if I give you hearsay, then that's not really gonna tell you much. Sure. From Flatwoods, West Virginia, got a big sort of pointed head with two big yellow eyes, small little claw hands. There's a huge chair in Braxton County that looks like the Flatwoods monster that you can sit in. Give you guys that. Is Braxy gonna be pissed if I sit in his chair? It's more of a throne. Oh, so definitely pissed. So more pissed, yeah, because there is some symbolic power. Hold on. Oh no, I found a picture of it, and it's not what I want my kids sitting. All the photos are like three kids having time as a dead-eyed giant colossal monster leers over them. Yeah, it's awesome. Wow, what in the setting of the little critter? Giant critter. Now, Braxy rules. So we're gonna be Braxy mothman. Okay. It's gonna be good. I'll include this. And picture in the newsletter, because jeez. Do the Braxy sound. Braxy, the Flatwoods monster. Wait, no, I mean, what does Braxy say? Oh, Braxy's, oh, okay, oh, the famous saying? Yeah. Yeah. Braxy's famous saying? Uh-huh. Well, actually guys, I'm not actually supposed to be talking about this. I forgot that this is not a West Virginia safe space, and Braxy would prefer that we not talk outside of West Virginia. That's very fair. Forget I said anything. I respect that. Here, Min and Black. Not dead. Listener, if you're still listening to this, rewind it and listen to the Min and Black sound again. Then fast forward past this part. No, listen, if you're still listening, you have to skip ahead. One of those will work. I'm sorry. [?]. My name is Justin McRoy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Chris Potamas-Flandt, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Froschek, I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the best seas, 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 of the club. Here's what happened. OK. Griffin caught so many Pokemon that his back broke, and now he can't move anymore. Can't carry the show, can't carry all the Pokemon, so he's not with us to talk about a Pokemon game. Sorry, I actually locked him out of the studio. He's pounding on the door outside. The saddest thing about it, too, is he had all the Pokemon but one on his back and his hands just juggling all the Pokeballs, and then he just had to get that last one. He had to collect them all. Despite the warning, you can't collect them all, and he reached for it. And let me tell you, the weird thing about it, it was at the top of these stairs, about 300 stairs, and then he reached for it, and then all the balls just went down the stairs. And it was Weedle, surprisingly. It was Weedle. And it was Weedle. So, guys, when you come up and you yank, you yank the microphone out of my hand like that, you've got to keep the show moving towards, like, because we do have to do the parts where we say the name of the game. No, you're right, you're right. Remember? Yes. Russ was like, he got up on stage like, Kanye, he ripped it out of my hands like, wait, wait, wait, hold on, what's going on? We've got the latest and the greatest, but this week we're talking about Pokemon Z to A and Keeper. What is Pokemon Z to A, Chris Plant? Well, thank you so much for asking. Pokemon Z to A or Z, A or Zed, Alpha, or whatever you want to call it, is the latest Pokemon entry, and it is a follow-up to Pokemon Legends Arceus. But where that one was in the past, this one is in the pseudo future. And we've got another great game for you. We have Keeper, the latest game from Double Fine. That's right. Tim Schafer is still making games. He's never going to die. Lee Petty made this game, Chris Plant. Come on. Oh yeah, from the creator of Stacked, which was I enjoyed in other games. Stacked, that was my adult porno game. Stacking was the one that was in game. Stacked was my pet house. Interactive adventure. Man, you get griffin' off the end, you get punchy. Can I take the break? No, you can't, because we just want to give you a moment to know that we are also available on Patreon. And if you want this comedic greatness, you can get it for $5 a month, or you don't want ads. Hey, there's a $10 tier in its live right now, every episode ad free. Anyway, hey, Justin, take it away. We'll be right back. That'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 4.5 year old son is in a more comfortable mattress than I am in, and I am very, very jealous of him. I 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 leesa.com for 20% off plus an extra $50 off with promo code BESTYS, exclusive to our listeners. That's L E E S A dot com promo code BESTYS for 20% off plus an extra $50 off. Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. Leesa dot com promo code BESTYS. I want to say that there was more I could have done to stop Chris Plante earlier, but I get high off of Russ being mad at somebody other than me sometimes. I love the feeling of it. I just want to fan the flames of the... Sure, sure, sure, sure. Okay, Pokemon Legends Zah. The Legendary Zah. I'm going to ask questions as a Pokemon idiot. And pretend that that's me, okay? Which flavor of Pokemon is this? Okay, good question. Which kind of a Pokemon? Sure. So there's the mainline turn-based Pokemon. This is not that. This is the new, I guess, action, more action inspired Pokemon game, which first started off with Pokemon Legends Arceus, which was a, again, more action. Was that the Western? That was the one that was set in like ancient Japan-ish. Okay, yes. We played that one, right? Yes. And I didn't hate it. It didn't make me as sad as some of the other ones, right? It looks like a real video game, notably, where the other Pokemons look like a baby, kind of a... I mean, it has 3D graphics, so in that way it does. Thank you. Yeah. So it is the... Okay, so I'm remembering this now. So it's kind of Pokemon a little bit more of a modern vibe aesthetically. Is that fair to say? Well, Arceus was not, or Arceus was like ancient Japan. Sorry, I guess I meant technically speaking, but yes, I understand the... Oh, we'll get to it. Like 3D... Let me dive in on the top level and we'll handle the top level questions and then we'll get to it below. Pokemon Legends ZA is set in the city that I think was first appeared in Pokemon X, whatever. It's a fucking French city that has appeared in a previous Pokemon game and the entire game takes place in this city and the premise of the city is that humans and Pokemon live together in this city in harmony. They have these wild areas where the Pokemon generally chill out and then they have like city areas and then you'll see like a bunch of Pokemon just walking around within the city. From a gameplay standpoint, this continues the stuff that they were doing in Legends, Arceus, where all of your battles are taking place in real time, your moves are on cooldown, so you'll do like a fire attack move and then you can't use that for five seconds, so maybe you'll do a different move and you're fighting Pokemon at the same... Like other Pokemon at the same time. So it feels much more, I guess, action-y than you would find in like the turn-based. I pick confusion. They pick, blah, blah, blah, and goes back and forth like that. So it's a pretty significant change and this is the first time... This is, I guess, the first major mainline Pokemon game coming to Switch 2. It's also on Switch 1 for what it's worth, but that is, I think, a noteworthy moment. My impression of the Arceus was that it was like overall a much faster moving experience, right? Like it felt a lot snappier and more fluid, both in like running around and the combat and stuff. Is this like still that? Yeah. Like does it still have the fast pace? Yeah, the movement, everything like that, if you played Arceus, moving around the world, things like that, are still very fast paced. I know Plant played a little bit of it and the... It's very fast paced once you get past the first three hours, which is, to be fair, the rule of all Pokemon games. Yeah, I don't think... Like this was Arceus 2 or Arceus or whatever. Yeah, I don't think it's... It's probably closer to two hours. It might have felt like three hours. I was genuinely timing it because I was curious when they actually let the wheels off. I was starting to catch Pokemon and do things within like an hour and a half, which not great, don't get me wrong. TTP, TTP, TTC. Not great. You forget. But it does kind of come with the territory of this franchise. But once I was, I felt like I had a lot of freedom. I could go literally anywhere in the city whenever I wanted to. Granted, there were Pokemon that was much higher level and I had no chance of catching them, but I did have the freedom to like go around and find locations and find items and all sorts of stuff much earlier than I think you do even in a normal Pokemon game, which tends to be very siloed off. Yeah. Yeah. That's a big difference. There is, I think, a big element to this that I know Griffin probably would have spoken to if he was on this episode. And that's the divide between the Legends series, which for lack of a better term, there are now two games in that series, and the like core mainline turn-based Pokemon games, the Pokemon Sword and Shield and the X and Y, etc., etc. Right now it feels like the overall amount of content in the Legends series is much, much less than you would see in a turn-based Pokemon, like core Pokemon game. Just in terms of areas that you're finding, the sheer number of Pokemon, like things that you're doing to like really mix it up. I was actually kind of blown away because, you know, I mentioned that the entire game takes place in the city. The city is like a very simple, like generously could look like a PS2 game, PS3 maybe. It's really simple. I think that's honestly the part that hurts that intro a bit, because again, I did like RCS. How do I say it? I think it's RCS, but who cares? It's a made-up Pokemon. Even though that game looks worse, it has the advantage of being in the past and being in a really open space. So your mind can fill that in, the visual fidelity. In the beginning of this game, you're walking through streets and it's like that bit in the Simpsons were like, well, have you ever noticed in cartoons when they run out of money? They start using the same hallway over and over and over and over again. The street decorations to convey this city is lots of lit windows and trash cans. I mean, it's a Parisian city. You can tell that it's inspired by Paris, but it is a lot of repetition of assets and things like that. In the same way that the miraculous mobile game is set in Paris, this too is set in Paris. Is this sort of like the horizons of Pokemon? Are there people that prefer this style of game over franchise? There are and those people are me. I've played probably every mainline turn based Pokemon game ever and right around sun and moon, maybe the one after that, I started losing steam. My level of interest was like kind of flagging just because there's only so many fucking times you can play that game over and over again. Now, again, speaking for Griffin, he could play that game over and over again till the cows come home. And I'm sure he would tell us all about Pokemon breeding and how the DNA of this attack speed versus this Pokemon's attack speed is vastly different and that is super engaging to him. I don't want to be dismissive of the people that look, it's a much deeper game when you're playing the turn based game. For me to get me engaged in it, it needed to change dramatically. Well, it's appealing and being in the world, right? I think this is the thing that a large chunk of Pokemon players myself included wanted really since the Nintendo 64, which was, oh, you have the ability to drop me into a 3D world. I'm in a Pokemon game where I get to walk around and see all the Pokemon out and about and interact with them and have the fights happen in the real world. Get me out of these menus. And it does that for the most part. Yeah, there's a little menu stuff. Largely, yeah, you're summoning Pokemon without going into menus. You're switching between Pokemon. All that stuff is happening really at real time, which helps a lot. It's interesting though when you talk about the environments, right? Like looking at the city environments, it reminds you of, and this is maybe like too cynical of a take on Pokemon, but part of that static nature of the franchise seems like so intentional because when they do evolve it beyond that, it's like they have to start comparing it to what else has been happening. Like if they stay in that rigid sort of like what Pokemon is, quote unquote, then there's a lot of ways in which they don't have to evolve because it's like, no, this is what Pokemon this like it doesn't have. You don't have to compare it to modern games because this is a Pokemon game. So like it's a deliberate thing. But when you start putting it in a 3D environment, then I think it's very natural to start comparing it to other 3D environments to say like this really can't compare. I mean, it does not look like a modern game. I think there are. So it has been in 3D for quite a while. This is not a new thing that's a 3D game. It's worth knowing that the latest Pokemon games that have been in 3D like the last several have run like fiery dog shit, including Arceus did not run great. Like it ran pretty poorly. The fact that this is able to run relatively steady on a switch one and then at 60 FPS on a switch two, I think it's possible that some of the design decisions that they made in addition to what we were just talking about was also this is the only way we can get this fucking game running properly because I don't think the engine is very good. So I think there is. Yeah, that's true. They're making some decisions there as well. I think the like fans of the game would agree with you who's generally on the while they're not putting a ton of money into this and it is kind of repeating the same thing over and over again. But there's a reason that people keep coming back to these things, which is the Pokemon are very cute and cool and interesting or maybe the story is like fresh. What about this one? Are you like it works here versus. Okay, so this is the this is the thing that I can't necessarily explain to someone like Justin who I can try, but you're going to have to put yourself in the shoes of someone that grew up with Pokemon, which I know you didn't try to pretend to be like my brother. Yeah, try to pretend to be your brother. So when you look at a Pokemon game, you're kind of taking it at face value, which is to say like taking it just as a gameplay experience. You have no super. Well, first of all, I'm super horny. Super. Oh yeah. I'm right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. I'll give you a copy of a stack. No, he's a sucker too. He's just not on the call. I can't bully him. I'll call him later and bully him if you want. I agree that there is 100% a weird taking advantage in the nostalgia to sell toys or sell games or whatever it is, but it is checking the box for me in ways that like no Pokemon game of the last several years has done for me. So like, I guess about like why, I'm just curious why, like what is the, I think the introduction of the new gameplay in a way, it like the fact that it's action-y and then you throw in the fact that like, I'm directly controlling all these Pokemon that I have an emotional connection with, works for me in ways that's not just- And it actually runs well this time. And it runs well. Like, RCS was a great proof of concept. This actually- Yeah, it's real. I mean, and- I mean, you liked RCS. Did you stick with RCS for us? Did you just put a lot of time into it? No, but because it ran like shit. That was my big sticking point with it. It's also worth remembering, and we've said this before, but I will reiterate it, these games are made for kids. And when I play with my child, who's four, he's fucking loves it. He loves watching, he loves asking me to catch certain Pokemon. He loves asking me what types of Pokemon they are. And I do think for that sort of youngster, I would say from like four to 10, this is like fucking pure catnip. And the simplicity of the world that we see as like, oh, this is basic ass shit, is actually, well, for them- It's legible. It's legible. No, it's a great point. It's played. You know what, Russ, it's a really good, that's so good to remember. And it really should be the start and the beginning of these. Like the start and the end of these discussions is like, they are contextualizing experience that kids should be able to continue to have just because they are getting older and time is evolving. Like they should be able to have like a, their own version of it without adults being like, time to add guns. Yeah, or even time to add like the complexity of like, oh, breeding and SP rates and whatever the fuck else that get added in the main line. The main line is so heavy with that stuff now. And this is really a, how do you raise the friendship of a Pokemon in this game? You take them to a cafe and you drink tea with them. That's how you do it. Just so you know Hoops, next week we will be playing, I wanna make sure I get the title right. Digimon Story Time Stranger. So I figured you probably wanna make like 50, 60 hours for that. If Griffin has not started playing this actually, honestly, I will be crushed. I really wanna know what he thinks about the Digimon game because somebody is coming just a little bit for that Pokemon lunch. They're ready to try it out. Just to put a bow on this, I think for people that really liked RSCS, they'll probably walk away really happy here. I think for people that are lapsed Pokemon fans, they might find something interesting here. You should watch some gameplay and see if it would be compelling to you. Is this a game I'm gonna spend 60 fucking hours on? No, absolutely not. Would I be playing more of it if my son weren't super invested in it? Probably not. I think it's interesting. I like the way this is going. I would love to see this scaled out into a more full featured Pokemon game. But right now it feels like they are moving in the right direction, but still not quite there yet. But still, I've been enjoying it. I will also say the simplicity of this design does help to make the action more legible because there's a lot going on once you get several Pokemon cooking here. I'm watching it like gameplay footage. Yeah, it's easy to kind of understand types and the attacks you have available to you. This really, the HUD is actually pretty clean, all things considered. Hey, should we take a quick break and then come back and talk about a lighthouse that came to life? A life house. That's nice. 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 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. Keeper is the new game from Double Fine. It is directed by Lee Petty who's done art on many, many Double Fine games, but he was the lead on stacking. Headlander? Headlander and Rad, which I did not play Rad, but I don't know why I didn't play Rad. It looks like it was a roguelike where like a post-apocalypse roguelike with kids in it. I didn't play Rad, so I don't know what the deal was with Rad, but it has been, I guess, six years since Rad. This is the next game that Lee Petty was the lead on, which I know we don't mention on a lot of games. I only kind of mention because I feel like Tim Schaeffer and Double Fine are sort of some of the very last studios that can still hang a name to a game. I feel like Double Fine is kind of able to do that with Lee Petty just because they've been able to. They have done it repeatedly. It's also interesting because this came up a little bit. If you watch Double Fine the documentary, what was it called? The Double Fine Journey, whatever that was on YouTube. This came up because they ended up at one point pulling team members from this game into the Psychonauts development to make sure that it actually came out. So this game was massively delayed because of the scale of the Psychonauts project. Also tied to the Double Fine documentary, the Double Fine documentarian who then turns into a game designer midway through the documentary worked on this game too, I believe. So it is a game where you are a lighthouse that is animated through some sort of magic that is not really explained to you. But you are clearly like sentient. There is a relationship. It is a, you are personifying this lighthouse in a sense, right? There's the legs. There's the light which is sort of a face and an all-purpose eye. There's not a time of emotion that is being communicated by that light, but there is a lot through the physicality of this lighthouse which is not really designed to be ambulating around the environment. So whenever you see the lighthouse moving, like whenever you're controlling it, it always feels like you're just on the edge of like toppling over. It's that kind of movement. That is actually around. Yeah, exactly. And it's much more prominent like early on. So it's not really about like control fidelity, but it isn't trying to like intentionally sort of like make it unpleasant to control. It's just not a mechanically like super dense game. The main thing that you're doing as you sort of like make your way through the environment. And you are led by, I don't know, there's not really an overall sort of like thing that seems to be pulling you through. It's a journey, but you're not really sure like sort of where you're headed. It's a very sort of like shaggy dog sort of thing. It's a walking simulator. And like the truest sense of the word, not as negative, like if we think of that as a genre, it is moving forward from point A to point B with just the lightest amount of puzzles between point A and point B. I would say, I mean, God, I hate using that term on a simple plan because I do feel like it is so dismissive. And I actually don't think is, for me, that's a much more narrative thing. But a walking simulator, I think there's a lot of story that's tied to that. And this is super not that. And in fact, I would say that like any attempts to sort of like project narrative onto it, it is working pretty hard to- It wants feelings, not stories. Yeah, for sure. Like in the way that you interact with the world as the lighthouse is really like mainly shining a light, like you're projecting your light and you can intensify it and focus on something. But that is the main thing you're doing in the environment. Now, you can like, you know, classic video game stuff, like you kill bad plants that have grown over things with your sunlight, you know, that kind of deal. But you also have this bird that flies around with you and hangs out on the lighthouse and will like help you with like switches and will follow your instructions to go like, do some mild interactions and do some like puzzle solving that way. So like there are, it is not just a like, you know, floating through an amorphous environment, like pinging up, there's actual puzzles, you're flipping switches and doing lever system stuff. When I say walking simulator, I mean, I wish there was a better term for this, but it's a showcase for something other than the gameplay. So most walking simulators or whatever we want to call these, yeah, it's typically a showcase for narrative. Here, this is a showcase for art. It is like a beautiful picture book or art book, coffee table book. You would keep on your table. Yeah, absolutely, it's a better parallel sort of the sea. That sort of thing, I think, sort of the sea is a lot more fluid than this, but like that fluidity is part of what they want you to experience in the aesthetics. And this is very much about like letting you make your way through a really outrageously, generously, gorgeous world. And they do a few things to emphasize that. One is, yeah, it's just changing from moment to moment. The sheer variety of things that you will see in this game is incredible. I cannot imagine how much time they spent just making these spaces. I never stop in games. I don't, like I don't stop in games to look, but like I actually a couple of times like went back, did I just, hold on, I gotta go look at that again, because there's like background and foreground. You couldn't take it all in as design. Like you have to slow down. Like Vistas, we're talking about? Vistas, but like the depth of things. And it's not just that. The density. The density and also there are very few pinnings to our world in the aesthetics of this world, right? So it's not like you're seeing, it's not like there's trees, but they're pink. You will walk through what appears to be a, you know, a hundred yard field of taffy that like will pull and stretch with you. And like the world is so unlike what you have seen, you can't just like parse it as you're going through. You really have to like stop and look. What's the Lovecraft phrase? It's like non-Euclidean architecture or something. It looks like of a different. Like a dream scape. Yes, but like very, very tangible. So alien and foreign. Like it reminds me kind of like, if you watch Scavengers Rain, like the way the biology of that show is like so foreign to ours that it was almost kind of hard to grok. This is like that. Like you are, it is so much about the aesthetics of what you are seeing. Like the beauty and the way it all interacts together. They do two other things to emphasize. Again, this is a game about looking. One, the camera is more like a classic resident evil type of thing where it is positioning itself. So it's really controlled visuals of they want you to see the world in this way. They also in theory need to do it because the way you control your character, you're controlling the light on the lighthouse, which is the second part of if you want to make a game about looking and the idea of like spotlighting wherever you're looking, making a game about a lighthouse is the way that you do that. So you are quite literally focusing the lighthouse, your character on the objects around you. And some of that is to solve puzzles. A lot of that is just to see the world. Justin, you're a chunk, a good chunk into it, correct? Yeah. So what you've described so far is like something that doesn't, that sounds like it doesn't necessarily evolve from a gameplay standpoint, obviously evolves from a visual standpoint. Is that the case or do they throw in curveballs as you're progressing through it? No, there's definitely curveballs. I just did a pretty, I mean, pretty chunky platforming level. Oh, wow. Okay. And I don't know how it evolves beyond that, but like it is definitely, it is one of those games where a closer to say like, the mechanics are pretty light, but once you get one, it moves, it dispenses with it, moves on and teaches you anything. Like it's very fluid in that sense. It evolves more too, but to like to go into any greater detail would be to spoil kind of the fun because the whole magic is the like, oh, this is the thing that is happening for these five to 15 minutes. But I will say like it evolves a good deal past what it starts as. It's always the same. It's always about moving forward. It's all about being in these worlds. But the way that you do that changes. I will say also that this is, for me, I think the thing that is most notable about Keeper, and this is, you know, it's weird thinking about this as a double fine game because for me, double fine has always been so present throughout my entire like career in game journalism, but it's been four years since the last release from double fine. Four years and Psychonauts too. But I was thinking about, this is the first game from them that I can remember that is not in some way a humorous, like it's not in some way, even if it's not a direct like joke or a joke filled game, there's like an irony or a cool or like a silly or like you're looking for the wink in almost everything. And I feel like a part of that is like the DNA of Tim Schaefer bringing over from like LucasArts and his comedy background there. I feel like that was a huge part of the double fine DNA and I'm not complaining about it, but it is really like, there is a strength of the convictions that this game has that it is not trying to be funny at all and it's not trying to be cute or even winky. It's like, it's really earnestly expecting you to engage with it in a really direct way without trying to be cute about what it's doing or ironic about it, which I think is really, really, really laudable for the studio. That is such a great point. And also I'm realizing this is their Wally or at least the first 30 minutes of Wally. We're like, we've been making these silly, light, fun things. And now here's this. We're all getting older. We're all thinking about death. I mean, you could call it their choice story for another thing that's not really super funny. Whatever, man, forky. You don't like for a rock. I love that movie so much. No, it's a great movie, but you're right. But it's but there is like even that is a comedy, right? Yeah, this is like this really earnestly, it is not using. I think sometimes comedy, you know, games can lean on that. And it's like, well, you can't take anything we're doing too seriously because it's a it's a joke game. It's a goof. It's a goof. And this is really not that it feels like. I mean, I don't want to overstate it, but like I don't. I can't think of a lot of American made games that have gotten this close to like a Miyazaki sort of vibe. But that's that's where it's sitting for me. Or what's his name? The French other world. But oh, my gosh, Borat. He's not. Yeah, he's not French. Chris. Yeah, no, he's not French. Who? Who made that game? Where did you think Borat is French? Is it because Sasha Baron Cohen? It sounds like a French guy. Yeah, Sasha. He does do French acts. He does do French accents in a lot of movies, but no, he's not French. He's Borat. That's kind of coming to me. Great success. It doesn't even sound French. This is very exciting. I spent so much time in the Pokemon Legends world that I didn't get to play this game this week, but I actually really am jazzed about it in hearing about it now. I will say this. It is really a game that like. It doesn't play great on the we have heard anecdotally and personally. It is not great on the handhelds, but I would really say like, don't don't play it on a hand. You want to know a big screen. Don't put it on the big big screen, plug it in and then like do the whole thing. Like do it. Turn the lights down low, light a candle, you know, get some massage oil and just really enjoy it. You know, get in there and and and and Chris, your window for the French person has lost. It's no, it's Eric. Come back. Eric Chahi. Damn, that's good. But my point about how it being an American, the closest Americans got like still stands in because Eric Chahi's French. Yeah, that's how I was making a comparison to an anonymous. I was helping. I was building. OK, Keeper is it's really, really it's really good. And it's and it is if I, you know, you mentioned it and I'm all because you were talking about people getting older or whatever. I will say this is. A level of craft with game design where like and maybe I'm probably too quick to attribute that to double fine because of the documentaries in part because I've seen, you know, those so richly detail the amount of care and love and work that goes into every element of their game is because they're documenting it. Right. So I have more of a sense of a way with the studio, but I will say there is a there is a craft to making you feel things with game design that is not. Numbers based that is not getting better damage, that is not getting a better weapon, that is not. Just progressing, right? It is that like, how do you make a game that rewards play and just like feels good to experiment with and like that is what is here? Like that is what this game has to offer. If you can slow down to engage with it, it is not a like addictive experience. It is a like something you can really like enjoy and rewards. You know, that that enjoyment and rewards that with with I think more depth and more understanding and and if you look for it, a lot more concrete story beneath the surface. If you want to go searching for it, there's also a lot in like achievement text and things like that where they're like fleshing out backstory and things like that. If you're interested. I love that. Yeah, it's cool. Very cool. Cool. We have some reader mail to go through if you guys are interested. Yeah. This one comes from Lily J. I am a second year college student studying music composition and my professor was one of the people hired to write the music for the radio stations in the outer worlds too, which is something Justin, you remember you talked about last week? Yeah. He told me about the process behind it and they basically set had a set of composers hired by composer hired by the studio and he was basically told you have two weeks to make 80 songs, which they were cut down to like eight to 10 that actually made it in the game. Having talked to him, as well as the composer of avowed, I have learned just how much of a quote clusterfuck their words. It is to write music for a huge game like this. And it's something that is rarely talked about. Often composers have very little say into how their music is used and are directed very vaguely with extremely limited time to finish their work. I thought you might find this interesting given the conversation about radio music in the last episode specifically where Justin was wishing that they had more music. I guess they didn't make more music. Yeah. Also, in case you're wondering, he did specifically did the music for the math people where all the songs are about math. I mean, those are all great. Great songs. They're great. It's like, and if I could clarify that complaint, it is not so much that I wanted more of it. It's that they are good enough that you notice them. And once you notice them, you notice them when they loop after 30 minutes. That because they are good because they get in your head and you do stop and take notice. And it's not like welcome to the jungle where like, I can listen to the welcome the jungle 100 times and I'm not going to notice what the jungle is on. Yeah. Good. Very interesting. Yeah, very interesting. This letter comes from Chloe R. Hi, Besties, big fan of the show and post games, of course. I'm wondering if you can speak a bit about how you choose the games of feature in each episode. I know you are enjoying some Hades to my game of the year for sure, as well as some other big releases like what was that Kingdom come deliverance to? We'll talk about it. So I'm curious what makes you pass on a particular game? Is it purely a time constraint issue or is there more strategy involved behind the scenes? OK, I want to go deep on the Hades to because we get a lot of comments and emails asking us why we have not spent a full additional episode on Hades to. So I have gone through several periods of loving Hades to since it hit one point oh, and I am currently in yet another one. The challenge I have and Justin, as the person who spent more time playing Hades games than anyone else, the challenge that I have, I don't know how to speak about Hades to in an interesting way beyond, holy shit, this game is amazing. And we could talk about the gameplay mechanics a little bit, but like I don't know, it's I mean, Hades to is kind of a specific example, but like it has evolved a lot over time. I will say that it is evolved over years and speaking to it like there is an expectation that we are able to speak about games authoritatively. And even as somebody who has followed Hades to religiously, it is really hard for me to speak to the chronology of this is how it is different now from how it was at the beginning. So like trying to speak to people no matter where they got on or off, like trying to be something that is useful to people without knowing how much of what they played or their awareness is really tough because it's such a long story. The problem I have is I really enjoy Hades to whenever I'm playing it. Right. I enjoy Hades one more. I enjoy the combat more. I enjoyed the story certainly more. That's a really bad, boring take that I don't want to go too much further into because it's like, man, I sure do love this nine out of 10, but it's not a 10 out of 10 that the other one was. And I feel like it's for me, it's really hard to talk about Hades to without talking about Hades one. And if I just talk about it on its own, it's just kind of repeating a lot of things that I feel like I've said about these games a million times. It's a great game. There's there's weirdly little that I feel like a pressure to say about it. I will say this and maybe we, I don't know, as somebody who has returned to it several times and. I think that it is overburdened by systems and currencies in a way that betrays how long it was in development for. I think that if you try to get on at this point, there is so much cruft in there that is like, just kind of very plainly giving reasons for you to make multiple runs at it. That is like, I don't feel like a lot of it feels super rewarding to me. And that is, and again, I don't know that that's that interesting because the other half of that conversation is I definitely, definitely, definitely played too much of this game before there was enough to really engage with because I was excited for it. And I don't feel like I'm a bad guy for that, but it is my experience. So I think I played about five hours in early access, give or take. And which is to say not very much. I wouldn't say like a ton enough to like know what was going on in the game. And I think the game, if you started at 1.0, that is the best possible experience you could have had playing the game before 1.0 and then leaving it for a year and then coming back to it is not as good of an experience because all of the mechanics and currencies that Justin is talking about, I do think they do a pretty good job of like easing you into that stuff such that it is cogent. I also agree. You're right. Some of it just feels like, well, you got to make another run to get this currency to get the thing to get the thing. Like that is fair. Right around the time that Hades went to 1.0, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor went to 1.0 and something that was really smart that they did is I saw that it went to 1.0 and when I booted it up, there was a very clear delineation between your pre 1.0 save and starting a new save. They were like very much like 1.0, start a new game. You're going to want to do that. And here's why. We've like, we have made it so that like, you don't want to worry about any of that other shit. Like we've reset all that economy stuff. So it wouldn't make sense for you to like get back into that same. Besides, you started playing this game a year and a half ago. You don't remember any of this shit. And it's all different anyway. So you should restart it. Hades did not, Hades too, did not encourage that. And it would terrify me to do that because I don't remember how boring this stuff is. I don't remember how much I have and have it done. I don't remember what I will and will not remember. I have no idea. I don't know if I want to go through that again, but it really did not incentivize that. I did, whatever, it was only five hours, but I did start totally from scratch and I don't regret it one bit for what it's worth. But again, you played a lot more than I did. 50 hours. I mean, I think I've, but I spent 200 in Hades once. So I don't, I don't know. Sure. Fresh, you might fight with back to the original question. Yeah, please. What I would say here is when you're listening to the show, and first, this is a great question and I appreciate how it was worded very kindly. When we don't talk about a game, it doesn't inherently mean we don't like it. At the end of the day, when we're making a show, a big part of the games we choose is are we going to have good conversations about them? Are these going to be things that we think you're going to enjoy listening to? And sometimes there are good games. That it's like, I don't know. I like, I'm going to end up telling you that Pong is great and then we're done and we need to fill the next, you know, 55 minutes. And I think that is a bit of a challenge here. And I think also we tend to favor things that are interesting and surprising. And to us, to us. Yeah. Like the writer of this letter mentioned Kingdom Come of the Overance 2, which is a game that all of us tried and all of us found really not fun. And that's not all of us. What are you talking about? Oh, you're not a good question. And I noticed a question writer that you referred to it as KD, KCD2. So I'm assuming you've played quite a bit because I don't have an acronym for it and you do. I like it quite a bit. I'll probably talk about it more at the end of the year. What do you call it? If you were writing me an email about it, would you call the Kingdom Come of the Overance 2 or would you type KD? Oh, I caught. Cock to two. Cock to two. OK, got it. Perfect. I'm just saying there is there is also this question of like there are games that are the point with that one specifically I wanted to make is that there are games that are very big that realistically we have one episode per week. And if it takes a vast amount of time to really get the scope of a game, it could be tough to do an episode about it to get all of us like. It has to really get it to us. There is one person on this podcast that is capable of doing a it gets good after 15 hours game and that person is Griffin. He's not here to defend himself, but he's the only person that I think will have any patience to play. What? You will take you will you like to get kicked around a little bit. You know, it depends on the genre. Like, I'll do this. If you call it Yakuza, I'll be like, yeah, no, you don't understand. After 50 hours, it's pretty cool. Mine thing's clicking. If it's clicking or like numerical iteration, like I've got we've all got our week's spot. Yeah. So yeah, there's a lot of layers to it. Interesting conversation, time constraint issue. Did we get Coderoy so we can like kind of prepare a little bit? There's just a lot of levels. Part of it is also like once we see a conversation has really taken place outside of the show and it's like, man, a lot of people are talking about this. A lot of times by the time that has trickled down to us, it's like, well, OK, fine, but like who gives a shit what we have to say at this point? You know, like people listening give a shit. That doesn't know. No, but like you. But the zeitgeist, I'm saying, like we can't it's if it doesn't line up with the zeitgeist, it's not always intentional. It's just like, you know, there's a big conversation about this happening, but like we're not intentionally avoiding that conversation. It's also like if we're like, you know, the conversation has happened for Hades and it's like, OK, and now we're going to come in and tell you like, yeah, we generally like it. You know, one of you can be young like that's not going to be a great bow to the conversation. Yeah. What else we got? Last question. This comes from Leo. I'm surprised that Justin King of FMV has not talked about Road to Empress yet. OK, can we talk about this for a second? Sure. Can I just like I? Yes. Yes. I like I really like FMV games. And yes, when Plant pointed this out to me, I did say like, yes, I'll go get it. The thing is what you have to understand is the FMV thing is you still have to play them with your own human time and hands. And like the people that are using FMV, a lot of them are not doing it for artistic reasons. It's because they they don't want to pay for the full version of Blender, you know what I'm saying? Like I don't I'm not saying that that's the deal with this one, but like I can't keep up with every like, you know, Easter block developer that gets his hand on a handicap and wants to make it. This one does look good, though. I will say this one looks good, but it is like it's a rough tag out there. It is a rough tag on Steam, the FMV tag. It's a rough tag. So I get it. And when I was growing up, somebody like my my aunt decided that my mom really like pineapples. Apparently my mom must have mentioned this offhand. My aunt proceeded to tell all my mom's friends of my other, you know, relatives, cousins, whoever. And then every holiday and every anything, we would just get little pineapple trinkets. It's always like 10 when she cleared the house out of this. And I swear to God, like literally a month later, my aunt was like, Kathy, you love lighthouses, don't you? Well, I've got you a new lighthouse and I let mom know that you love. Game that's absolutely going to freak you be. It's called keeper. Yeah, imagine you're a lighthouse, but you're walking around. All house just full of lighthouse junk and then it gets tossed out. Anyway, I was just to say, I know what you mean. You become that person and something people are like, I just love you. You kind of see this. And it is also like it is also does get a little bit old. I've been doing besties for, you know, what is it? 13 years at this point. And it does get a little bit old. Be like, hey, guys, look at this fucking piece of tritus I found. Does anybody else care? No. OK, well, that's my 30 seconds. Like you get the script, right? Trying to bond. Hey, here. I can do one. Hold on. What's the name of this game? Road to Empress. Guys, I want to tell you real quick about Road to Empress. It's an FMV game that I've been checking out on Steam. And I know that a lot of times these get a rep for like not being that great. But like if you're into those, if you're into FMV games, I can see that the other two are glazing over. So let me just say that like if you're into those and you like that kind of thing, then this is a really good one. But like, obviously, if you don't like these kinds of games and you're not going to like it and you shouldn't waste your time. But thank you. Like check it out. Who needs AI? You can bash these things out whenever you want. Yeah, I've AI'd myself. I've made myself redundant with my unsinicism. Should we talk about what else we've been playing? Sure. OK, good, because I want to tell you all about a terrible title for an interesting game, Onirism, which I just don't like the title. It is French. I don't know how to guess to spell that. O-N-I-R-I-S-M. OK. And if you have been missing kind of a Nintendo 64 platformer or like a Ratchet and Clank or a Jet Force Gemini somewhere around that space, right? Something where you're like, oh, this is a rare game. You hop around, you shoot things, but all your characters are like super soakers or, you know, silly, fun guns. You're a little girl in a fantasy dreamland, a little bit of kind of like a little Nemo sort of aesthetic, too. It is so big and so dense. There is so much here. They've been updating this game in early access forever. So even the game is like, I think 15 bucks. There's like a playground mode. There's an arcade mode where you can do a whole bunch of like high school runs of just like shooting enemies. There's a humongous story mode where you are going through all these different. Again, Nintendo 64-esque levels, but they look like they were made in Unreal Engine 4 or whatever. It is a delight. And if you have a little kid that you are looking for, that kind of classic, easy onboarding point, it is great. But and it's the biggest but on the planet. Please don't cut that. I have the big spot. OK, there we go, baby. We got it. And I want to say thank you to Dr. Consolis, he put it in for me and he did such an amazing job. I wanted to have the biggest but on the planet and now I have it. Thank you, Doc. Oh, my gosh, that cake. This is they they steam needs to rethink what early access is. And I like, are there any any way to monitor what a one point? Oh, is this is maybe the worst one point I've ever played of a video game. You open the menu in the U.I. is disastrous. It took me a beat to figure out how to start the game by establishing what difficulty I was playing on and which mode I was playing on. Should then begin the game. You get into the game and like some of the cutscenes don't work. It's really, really, really rough, which is brutal for a game that is meant for kids, because in its current state, I would be hesitant to hand it to my son, because I think he would get frustrated. The second something breaks. And what's so weird about it is there is all of this extra stuff. And they didn't focus on the basics. And again, in that first like 15 minute loop, and it feels like we're seeing more and more of this with game development now that it's easier to make and you can buy assets and all this stuff. Like you get into the space of, oh, our hardcore fans are already passed that 15 minute loop in early access, and they just want more. And they're giving us ideas. They want new vehicles. They want new weapons. They want new enemies. And we're just going to like turn and turn and turn and make more and more and more. But not considering the fact that like, hey, people are going to play this at like for the first time now. And having all that stuff doesn't really matter if nobody gets past the first 30 minutes. That again, and then here's the contradiction. I bought it. I was excited, instantly, extremely frustrated, so ready to cancel it, played through an hour. And then I was like hooked. I was in. I like had been onboarded. I knew it all of its like annoying quirks were. And then I was having a great fun in an Nintendo 64 style game that I have been craving. But wolf, I just wish that more of these games have to kind of say it's a one point of launch actually make it feel like a legit video game. Like these menus feel worse than the games that this is taking inspiration from. And that's just like totally not acceptable. Well, I'm glad you got it. The shine it deserved. Yeah. I wanted to call out a standup routine special that is on YouTube. It's an hour long special by Robbie Hoffman called I'm nervous. It's on YouTube. She is a former Hasidic Jew who is now definitely not a Hasidic Jew and does a very, very, it was just like one of the better routines I've seen. If you watch the show Hacks, Robbie Hoffman plays with the receptionist in the most recent season of Hacks. So that's where she's from, but tremendously good on YouTube. We could drop it in the newsletter if you want to watch it. Justin, anything? Yeah, you know, I watched I like to watch scary movies. So? I'm over here. One of my favorites is the VHS series because I like horror anthologies because they do keep you from getting too narratively invested and you don't have to get too bummed out by them. You can just kind of enjoy the fun of it. And I feel like the really interesting is like practices too. And I think that experiments, I guess you could say. And VHS Halloween has a lot of them that are really fun. It's on Shudder. And this is the eighth VHS movie. I don't actually know anything about this franchise. Really? So it is a it's kind of an offshoot of the found footage thing that paranormal activity ushered in. But it is like it kind of takes that concept and like meditates on it for like a series of anthology films. So like each one, there's usually like four to five short films. This one has a wide variety. There's like four or five different stories. Some are a lot more like a slasher kind of like campy horror. Some are downright like silly. There's one called Fun Size about a monster that turns people into candy. That's truly ghoulish. Is it like Tales from the Crypt style stuff? Sort of. Yeah. And there's there's a framing device in this one. It is the framing. There's always a framing device in the VHS movies that like tie all the stories together in this one. It is testing a new diet soda called Diet Phantasma that has horrifying effects on everyone that tries it. But these these are always really fun. If you like horror at all, I'd say they're always really worth watching. And this is like a really fun one. There's several really good stories. I want to tell you Benium because like if you want to watch it, you can. But like it's it's it's really it's a really good one. If you go back and watch these on Shutter because there are a bunch of them. Yeah, they're a showcase for both like indie talent that doesn't make a lot of movies or makes really indie stuff and cannot usually get funding from big studios or young talent that eventually is going to become famous after making this stuff. Like it is a way for them, I think, to try out a bunch of filmmakers with horror shorts. Alex Ross Perry, who made Listen Up, Philip and Her Smell and Queen of Earth in this year's Pavements. And Christopher Robin. Did he make Christopher Robin? Yeah. Really? Yeah, fun fact. That's great. Wow. That rules. But yeah, the great stuff. Great year for Alex Ross Perry. Two documentaries and a horror short. Damn. It's good. It's a really good VHS. Cool. I think we did it. Griffin will probably be back next week in the meantime. Please head on over to the Patreon. We have a new episode of Resties that is live presently. We have a new Bracket Battles episode that's going up on Tuesday, which is a fun one to record. I wanted to thank a few people over at the Patreon, Patreon.com. So the besties we have Tanner, we have Bader. How do you pronounce that? B-A-D-R Bader. Bader. Bader H. We have Will H. And we have God. Why did I put this? Captain BJ. Captain BJ. Welcome aboard. Thank you. You got he used to be an admiral. That's the sad thing. Yeah. Yes. B.J. Blascour. Yeah. Thank you. I think it's Blowjob, Chris. Oh, sorry, Blowjob Blascovites. Thank you for being. Jumpman is the original name of Mario. And the original name of BJ Blascovites is Blowjob Blascovites. We all know this. Jumpman, John 314. That's the Spartan right, is John 314. Justin, what are we doing next week? Next week, we are going to be talking about we got we got kind of a catch up episode. We got several games to talk about. So we will talk about a few different ones. What's the name of the Seance one that you sent? That looks good. Lake Seance at Brake Manor, I think it's what it's called. That sounds very good. And I'm going to go ahead and play Road to Empress because I do like effing vegan. Yeah, there it is. There it is. I'm going to make you listen to it. I love it. Kept you waiting, Empress. That's going to do it for us for this week on Besties. Be sure to join us again next time for the Besties because shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games? Besties.