transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] What are y'all doing with Easter?

Speaker 2:
[00:04] What do you mean, what are we doing with Easter? Easter's done!

Speaker 3:
[00:07] This could be just a cold open, man. This is a bonus episode. I can't, yes, tell me everything. Tell me, if you will, Russ, tell me all your thoughts on God.

Speaker 1:
[00:19] What are you, so I am a middle-aged man, and I had my very first, A middle-aged Jewish man. Middle-aged Jewish man, it should be noted, sure.

Speaker 2:
[00:31] Okay, yeah. That is right.

Speaker 1:
[00:32] I had my very, very first Easter egg hunting experience, and what the fuck are you guys doing to these children?

Speaker 3:
[00:42] Okay. Well, let me stop you here. It's your first Easter egg hunting experience. Have you hunted eggs in a completely agnostic context?

Speaker 1:
[00:52] Well, that's a fair question. No, I haven't. So I guess it is my first egg hunting.

Speaker 2:
[00:55] Second question. Before that, you said you are a 40-year-old middle-aged man, and you participated in an Easter egg hunt, presumably with children. Do you think maybe what was kind of weird about it?

Speaker 1:
[01:10] I was physically there, Chris Plante. I wasn't actually stealing eggs from kids, although there was a moment when it started where I was like, am I supposed to take the eggs?

Speaker 3:
[01:18] You are.

Speaker 1:
[01:20] Genuinely, I didn't know. I mean, all these people are running around.

Speaker 3:
[01:24] The wild thing about eggs is there is, I mean, to your credit, Russ, absolutely zero consistency. Some of these bad boys, you could peel and eat. Some are plastic with candy. Some are plastic and empty. Some are plastic with coupons for hugs. Some are chocolate, right? They're just foil-wrapped big chunks of chocolate. Some are, and this is the wild ones, used to be real, then are filled with confetti, and you're supposed to smash those in your head. I mean, there's just no primer reason.

Speaker 4:
[01:52] Flour is well sometimes.

Speaker 3:
[01:54] Flour?

Speaker 4:
[01:55] Yeah. Those are the prank ones.

Speaker 3:
[01:58] Prank ones. Prank ones.

Speaker 1:
[02:00] And shouldn't you give the kids like a quota? Like shouldn't the kids be like five is enough and then let the other kids have some? Because right now it seems like unfettered capitalism.

Speaker 2:
[02:12] No, no, no, Andy, I do want to hear here because we did bring you on for expertise.

Speaker 4:
[02:18] Well, I as a fan of the cloth, I'm not trying to push my beliefs on anybody, guys. I can't recall the quote I'm looking for.

Speaker 3:
[02:29] Andy's the rare guest that will push his religious beliefs on people before he's been introduced.

Speaker 1:
[02:38] There was a moment as we were waiting in line, I was waiting in line and the line was long and we were nowhere near the front of it. And there was a couple of parents right behind me that whispered to themselves, if we miss this, they will never forgive us. And then proceeded to find ways to cut the line. And that is not a very well-spirited event. That is a stressful nightmare of an event that you're teaching children from an early age. No defense? You all agree that this is a bad idea?

Speaker 2:
[03:11] I didn't hear anything you just said because I was googling Ecclesiastes Easter egg quote just to see if there was one.

Speaker 4:
[03:19] And is that how you pronounce the word? I think I said something different.

Speaker 3:
[03:24] I'm pretty sure you have been in Ecclesiastes.

Speaker 1:
[03:28] It counts.

Speaker 3:
[03:29] One of the Gnostic Gospels was getting bad boys.

Speaker 4:
[03:32] Yeah, that was in the Book of Job.

Speaker 2:
[03:35] Right after the Book of Thomas, when were the Jesus Blinds dude? Just because he can.

Speaker 4:
[03:40] King James won. He's going for another title this year, guys.

Speaker 1:
[03:43] Oh, hell yeah.

Speaker 2:
[03:44] Ah, and now we're back to games, you know?

Speaker 3:
[04:06] My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week.

Speaker 2:
[04:09] My name is Christopher Thomas Plante and I know the best game of the week.

Speaker 1:
[04:12] My name is Russ Frushtick, I know the best game of the week. Andy, get in there.

Speaker 4:
[04:17] My name is Andy and I know the best game of the week.

Speaker 1:
[04:20] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[04:20] Welcome to The Besties where we talk about the latest and the greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club and just by listening, you just become a member, just like that. This week, talking about Pragma, ta ta ta, what is that?

Speaker 2:
[04:34] Six years ago, Capcom announced that it's going to make another game, which means this game has been in development for seven or eight years. Imagine Dead Space, but a little bit more humanist, a little more anti-AI, and a little more Mega Man.

Speaker 3:
[04:51] What? Well, we'll hear about that and so much more right after this. What the heck? How could you interrupt me while I'm eating? Don't you know that I worked for hours to make this food? Try a bite. See if I'm lying. What did I tell you? No, I didn't spend hours cooking it. You stupid idiot. I really pulled the wool over your eyes. Hi, I'm Justin McElroy, paid endorser for factor meals. If you want a real meal, a real lunch, real dinner, something that really tastes like a human being made it, not something that came out of like a factory, then a factor meal is going to come to you, not frozen, but ready to cook in like less than two minutes. And I got a lot of different options for you. Over a hundred rotating weekly meals, a lot of different globally inspired flavors. If you want to head over to the Mediterranean and sample the wares there, you're more than welcome to through the power of Factor. They're delivered straight to your door and ready to eat in two minutes. So if you have more time for everything you want to do, you want to slave over a hot stove, it's spring. You want to get out there and in the sun, let it bask bask in the warmth. I think if I know you and I would say I do head to factor meals.com/besties50 off and use code besties 50 off to get 50% off and free daily greens per box with new subscription only while supplies last until September 27th, 2026. See website for more details.

Speaker 1:
[06:24] Before we start this segment, I want to introduce our very special guest who is joining us. It's Andy Cortez. Thank you for joining us, Andy. Hi.

Speaker 4:
[06:32] Hello, everybody. I've been listening to The Besties since 2012. I think I'm the oldest guest to have ever been on a show.

Speaker 3:
[06:41] Wow. For us, I guess.

Speaker 2:
[06:44] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[06:45] Huge for us.

Speaker 4:
[06:46] It's massive.

Speaker 2:
[06:46] You don't look 60. You look like a solid 28, 29.

Speaker 4:
[06:52] It was college time. It was college time 2012. Yeah. It's a good time.

Speaker 1:
[06:55] While we're holding it down, we appreciate it. People can experience Andy's magic on Kind of Funny. You also have a very good Twitch channel. You want to direct people to the Twitch channel?

Speaker 4:
[07:04] Sure. Andy Cortez on Twitch and then we do Kind of Funny games every day. We talk about industry news. It's usually unfortunately layoff news for the past couple of years, but there's always some good news sprinkled through out there. So Kind of Funny games daily for all of the gaming news and gaming reviews.

Speaker 1:
[07:25] Well, thank you, Andy. We have a very special game that, as Plante alluded to, was long delayed and comes from the team over at Capcom. It is Pragmata. Andy, you want to take a stab at summarizing what the fuck this thing is?

Speaker 4:
[07:41] Sure. Pragmata is a third person action shooter game. It's got similar story tropes to what it's the older father figure with the daughter who maybe he doesn't really care for her at the start, but then he warms up to her and you're just battling through a space station that has been kind of in disarray and there's a lot of 3D printing all over the place.

Speaker 1:
[08:12] It is very pro and anti 3D printing at the same time. It's kind of impressive that they walk that line. I think it is most notable at a glance for being the game where as you're shooting 3D printed creatures, you're also doing like pipe dream style mini games.

Speaker 4:
[08:31] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[08:31] Wow. That is a poll that I think no one but our oldest listener Andy would know the reference to.

Speaker 3:
[08:39] What a tragedy that he doesn't get to listen to this one episode.

Speaker 4:
[08:44] I was going to be bummed out about it when I told him.

Speaker 1:
[08:48] When I saw that feature, I was like, oh Justin, this is not a game Justin's going to be able to play. Like physically not. I think that ended up being true, correct, Justin?

Speaker 2:
[08:56] Can you describe the pipe dream a little bit more for people? Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[09:00] So imagine like a Gears of War over the shoulder, third person shooter. And then when you aim at something, a grid shows up. Imagine like a-

Speaker 2:
[09:09] A two dimensional grid.

Speaker 1:
[09:10] Yeah, like an eight by eight grid. And in that grid, there are like nodes. And the idea is to hack the enemy. You have to push face buttons or whatever you're using. To-

Speaker 2:
[09:20] A, B, X, Y.

Speaker 1:
[09:22] Yeah. To move through these nodes and eventually land on like an endpoint, which in turn hacks the enemy, leaves them susceptible to damage, might stun them, might do a variety of other things to them. So, it's not like a puzzle. I mean, it is in the lightest sense of the word. Like you can finish them in two seconds. But it is interesting to have to juggle that while you're in combat.

Speaker 2:
[09:45] It's closer to a maze than a puzzle. And that like you're navigating this 2D space getting from point A to point B. But even on like a maze, you can for the most part go wherever you want. It's like, do you want to build up the nodes on the way to the endpoint? So these nodes also have special capabilities that could maybe slow down an enemy or hack multiple enemies at once or put little blue postules on them that make them take even more damage.

Speaker 1:
[10:14] I never want to hear you say the word postule again, if you could just.

Speaker 2:
[10:17] Postule, postule?

Speaker 4:
[10:18] Man, that's in my, like, that's a word I'm constantly going to.

Speaker 1:
[10:23] Oh, no.

Speaker 2:
[10:24] Yeah, kind of like damp towelette postule.

Speaker 4:
[10:28] It's definitely like a vocal tick of mine. I'm always saying postule, man.

Speaker 1:
[10:32] You picked the wrong guest.

Speaker 2:
[10:35] So the comparison to like Dead Space that I made up top, I think holds true in two ways. One is the game, it's like the story. You are literally in space, you are a big bulky dude, space marine type, and you need to find out what happened to this colony that is like now basically abandoned. So story-wise, it's playing with a lot of the same ideas. You're picking up random audio diaries or written diaries, little hologram diaries. And even like so many diaries.

Speaker 1:
[11:07] Dead Space style like those like projected diaries, which is used in Dead Space as well.

Speaker 2:
[11:13] The other comparison is this shooting itself builds off of something that I think kind of got abandoned post-Dead Space. I wish more games do, which is we want you to think about shooting as strategy, not just like aim for the head. In Dead Space, I think conceals this pretty well, but if you go back and think about it, the goal is to de-limb the enemies, right? That you want to cut them off in certain ways and there is a strategy on top of the usual shoot for the head. Here, and because of that, the enemies move slower. Here, a similar thing is happening. The enemies move slower or you're incentivized to find ways to get them to move slower so that you can both shoot them and do a secondary thing. And I'm kind of surprised there just hasn't been more games like this. I was trying to think, were there other games that kind of did this, hey, we want your brain to do two things at once, shooters?

Speaker 1:
[12:10] I can't, I don't know, man. Andy, Justin?

Speaker 4:
[12:13] I mean, aside from just the hacking mini games in Nier Automata, where you are actively, I can just be hacking and slashing all these dudes, or I could, as the character, go into your mainframe and do the little, which is another arcade-y thing, because the hacking here always reminds me of Snake, and in Nier Automata, you're just playing asteroids or whatever. But that's not a simultaneous thing. So it's kind of a, I don't know, I don't really know of another comparison.

Speaker 1:
[12:42] I think Bioshock 2 had, when you're hacking the turrets and things like that, it was real-time timing mini games and things like that. Or even you look at Gears of War, the active reload is somewhat of this.

Speaker 4:
[12:57] Held Divers has the little people people things, you know, the air strikes things.

Speaker 1:
[13:02] That's true. No, it's interesting.

Speaker 2:
[13:06] I'm curious what y'all thought of the story because the story is coherent. I will say that.

Speaker 1:
[13:13] It's also fast. When I started playing this, I was like, oh boy, I'm in, this might be a situation where I have to play five hours before anything happens or I get to control the game. It starts really quickly and like gives you the controls really quickly, which I did appreciate. Narratively, you mentioned Dead Space. Totally different from a tone standpoint than Dead Space. I think it's important to realize that like, this is a much brighter and more optimistic tone. It doesn't have the gore elements of Dead Space in it. Thematically, obviously, has ties, but tonally, very, very different.

Speaker 2:
[13:51] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for me, it rang as like a game about adoption, which is not what I expected. And well, that's a surprise, and it's not. So like, you, yes, you are just...

Speaker 1:
[14:04] It's just funny. I laugh only because the writing in this game is so ham handed that like, he multiple times is like, I was adopted. You know what that means.

Speaker 2:
[14:13] So I don't think it's ham handed for that reason. I was so happy to have a game where it actually said what it wanted to be about, instead of just being the kind of metaphor that doesn't quite work. I think there's a worse version of this game where they're like, it's about adoption because you get it, he's a space marine and he finds this little girl and then he takes her on the way. And we never pointed out, but you kind of know what it is. But if you actually unpack the metaphor, it doesn't work at all. It's incomplete. And I admired that the writing had the gumption for him to be like, hey, I was an orphan and I had a very similar experience to you. And now we as characters are coming together. Instead of this kind of usual like lone wolf and cub, stoic man, child relationship. It's like, hey, we actually have just a lot in common. And I'm learning from you, you're learning from me, which I think is just, it's a twist on this formula that it just, it's that extra step that I didn't expect to get from it.

Speaker 4:
[15:19] I think they could have gone the super cliche route and made it the grizzled, angry dude who is pissed off about having to be in this experience. Because who wouldn't be? I think it is kind of nice that they didn't go that cliche route, but then parts of me kind of wishes they did just for better storytelling period. Because this Hugh guy, he really warms up to the fact that you have now kind of pseudo adopted this robot girl. He warms up to the idea of that in about 20 minutes. And he's just like, he just, I keep on making the comment to my coworkers that Hugh feels like a 10 year old in this game. There's just so many moments where little Diana, who is a robot child, you'll experience an action sequence or just, I don't know, something will happen in the game and she'll go, wow, that was really fun. And Hugh will respond with something like, yeah, that was awesome, right? And he just feels so tonally weird to me.

Speaker 2:
[16:27] And he has kind of like, I like ice cream too.

Speaker 4:
[16:29] Yeah, he's seeing the world through a child's eyes as well sometimes and it's like, you know, overall it's really good for the positivity of the story because I feel like this is a very hopeful thing and you never really feel a whole lot of dread in this. This isn't like The Last of Us where you just always feel like garbage. But he just, I don't know, man, I wish I could just be in the room with him as they were doing writing passes on Hugh and just like, I don't know, let's switch this up. But then there are really endearing moments too. So it's kind of a mixed bag for me.

Speaker 1:
[17:03] It's mostly just the dialogue for me, is just like incredibly wooden and not real, like, I mean, I'm fine with them being upbeat and fun, but it's written like we're gonna tell and not show every single story beat in this game. That being said, I did, despite that wooden writing, almost immediately feel a lot of connection to Diana with the little AI girl and like she's very charming. They give you like collect fucking slides and crayons and various other things for her to like hang out in your secret basin. And she's like playing on them and asking questions about them. And like that stuff is very endearing. I don't have a problem with the story. I just found it a little bit funny how blunt. Yeah, it was just blunt.

Speaker 2:
[17:56] There is the other half of the story, which is that they're building New York on the moon. So we should probably talk about like the level design. Frushtick, can you explain kind of like how the game works structurally?

Speaker 1:
[18:08] Sure. You have a, it's like a hub and spoke. So you have a main base called the shelter. And back in the shelter, you can do things you would expect. You can upgrade weapons. You can add new gear. All the collectibles you find live in the shelter. You eventually can unlock like training missions, things like that. And then from the shelter, you go out to these different areas where you have objectives like, oh, rescue or some character, or unlock these doors to activate a radio to the earth, whatever it is. In each of those areas, the levels are like, it doesn't quite feel like Dead Space, which I think Dead Space feels like a very organic, almost grounded portrayal of what a space station would be. This feels a little bit closer, almost like Portal in the way that it is very intentionally designed as a puzzle environment. But they do take big swings where one of the environments is like they 3D printed New York City, and parts of it are sideways, like weird Inception style. Or one of them is like a forest that they generated on this space station. So there's that. But I think it feels more like color to the actual level design, which tends to be pretty boxy for the sake of solving puzzles and opening doors, things like that.

Speaker 2:
[19:30] Yeah. Would you call the level design Metroidvania light? I don't know how to describe this. It's like these mini worlds where you're going to be kind of in some ways looping back. You're going to be...

Speaker 1:
[19:43] Yeah, there are elements of that where you have to unlock powers to access.

Speaker 3:
[19:49] I agree that one. The Siege. Was that what it was called? There was a sequel to it. The Surge.

Speaker 1:
[19:58] Oh yeah, we're ahead.

Speaker 3:
[19:59] Similar idea where like factory biomes that you would unlock with different skill sets as you went on.

Speaker 1:
[20:07] Yeah, and there is an element also where you'll get the ability to decrease the amount of moon filament that's in the middle of a hallway, and that'll allow you in an earlier area... Yeah, this is a video game. That'll allow you to access like a chest that you couldn't get before. It has like God of War 2018 kind of vibes in that as well, where there is a backtracking.

Speaker 4:
[20:33] And super helpful to kind of show you the map with your completion percentage and say, oh, I got a red key for that red dangerous zone, that's kind of a challenge room. Let me go back and backtrack and see what the treasure there was. And I've been really enjoying a lot of the side stuff. Weirdly, I wasn't expecting to want to sort of chase these training missions that are back in the hub world to then unlock cosmetics and things like that. I'm really enjoying that part of it.

Speaker 1:
[21:01] Yeah, they make it very easy.

Speaker 2:
[21:03] The training missions are called training and I guess they are teaching you how to be better at the game, but I think the closer comparison is the kind of VR missions in Metal Gear where it's like, yeah, we want a slow story to exist in this game, but we want a space where you can really video game ass video game it. Like Andy, what were some of the ones that stood out to you that got you to keep doing? Cause there's like 20, 30 of them?

Speaker 4:
[21:30] I mean, there are all sort of different varieties. I think you start off super easy with just platforming ones and you have your jump and your float and your air dashes, Hugh, and you move so swiftly for a big guy. Like you're just a big man and you're moving through really quickly with your kind of cool aerial boosters or whatever. And so some of them will just be a bunch of floating cubes and you're trying, you jump over the gap and then they kind of progressively get tougher where there might be another large block that is kind of an obstacle, get, you know, moving in the way of yourself. And if you fall off and that counts as a death, and maybe part of the challenge to three star that mission is to not fall off or not to get damaged. And so every one of these missions has, you could just do the mission, but there will also be the three sort of meta challenges within the challenge of, well, you also got to the goal and you also shot the six boxes and you also did it within 20 seconds or whatever. And all of that just kind of, you know, it just sort of, it looks at me and it challenged me from across the room. And it says, can you do this? And the unlockables are fun and I wanna get more cosmetics for the characters. So I've been kind of really incentivized to go back into it.

Speaker 2:
[22:45] Yeah, it's kind of like a Flora's Lava game design.

Speaker 4:
[22:48] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[22:48] Where it's like, you could just walk around this room, but what if the floor was lava and you didn't wanna touch it? And you're like, ah damn, you know, I don't wanna touch the floor, even though I definitely can.

Speaker 1:
[23:00] It's in that area that I think plants earlier comparison to Mega Man is most obvious. Like it really feels like a 3D Mega Man X vibe, especially when you're mixing the air dashing with the floating, with the jumping, with the whatever. Obviously, the combat itself is very different, but Capcom is bringing Mega Man back for a reason, and it's kind of interesting to see them also tackling this 3D approach. Not saying it's an official Mega Man game or anything, but design-wise, it does look like one.

Speaker 2:
[23:28] Let's teach the controversy here. There was a lot of hub-aloo. Hullabaloo? Is that the right phrase? Before this game came out? Hub-ub? There we go. Of is this game a Mega Man game? Because the little girl looks Mega Man-esque. She's wearing a big puffy blue coat that is like the Mega Man color. She has a glowing arm that has a magical technological power that looks...

Speaker 3:
[23:59] And her character's name is Megan Man. I didn't play very far.

Speaker 1:
[24:04] That was so weird.

Speaker 3:
[24:05] So that's a guess, but...

Speaker 1:
[24:11] I had no idea that was actually a controversy.

Speaker 3:
[24:13] By the way, PS, by the way, just make this into a Megan game. It's free. You can do this for free, right? Swap it. Easy.

Speaker 1:
[24:21] It's so close. Her eyes need to be bigger, but probably they could figure that out.

Speaker 3:
[24:25] We'll get that in post. That's DLC.

Speaker 4:
[24:27] When the game was being revealed and the man's name was revealed to be Hugh and all of us at Kind of Funny are just trying to like force, to really force this into Omega.

Speaker 3:
[24:38] Something. Shwily.

Speaker 4:
[24:40] Hugh Lights, Dr. Light, like if we were just like, we were really going for it, man.

Speaker 3:
[24:47] Hugh G, disappointment.

Speaker 2:
[24:52] I'm ultimately glad it's not, like I'm glad that they, they've made their own thing and it very much feels like this is the future of something. The game has, it's plenty enjoyable at the beginning, but it has a hell of a build. It feels like kind of a slow, use a pistol puzzle shooter for the first hour. It feels like that Metroidvania light God of War contemporary comparison that Fresh mentioned after that. And by the end, the combat in the game is truly absurd. You have, you know, like seven or eight robots of varying sizes, some flying, some tank-like on the screen, firing, you know, giant missile loads at you. And you're hacking all of it all at once. And it's absurd. At one point, the game becomes basically the movie Tremors, but with robots. It goes for it. And I'm happy to see just a new, a new AAA-style video game that's doing its own thing that doesn't have the number two or further beyond that coming after it. It feels like a minor miracle.

Speaker 1:
[26:08] I mean, Capcom as a company feels like a minor miracle, just the fact that they've been able to keep up the cadence that they have with like a large back. Like they've got Monster Hunter, they've got Resident Evil, they've got this now, which we don't know if it's going to be a success from a monetary standpoint, but critically certainly a success. Fucking Ace Attorney, what else, you know. They're doing very well for a company that for sure I thought was going to go the way of Konami and like just sell Pachinko machines for 20 years, which is kind of crazy.

Speaker 2:
[26:38] Konami's back, baby.

Speaker 1:
[26:40] They are back, they are making actual games again. So good on Konami, they realize there are limits to what those balls can do.

Speaker 2:
[26:47] Before we wrap up this section, Andy, do you have any other final thoughts on the game?

Speaker 4:
[26:51] I mean, I still think that this game would be so much more easy to recommend. First of all, I think the game play is a lot of fun, and I do enjoy the action, and I like the way it's been evolving. I think that if I could look at anybody and say like, yeah, but the writing and the story is actually super awesome. I wish we were in that spot. I think that it really falls short in a lot of different ways. There's a quote that I wrote down at a certain moment where you're dealing with a bad guy and Diana, the little girl, because again, her name is like, I'm model number D-I-A, whatever the hell. And so you go, I'll call you.

Speaker 2:
[27:30] D-I-A-N-A. I'll call you Diana.

Speaker 4:
[27:32] I'll call you Diana. And they deal with like an enemy that's doing lightning and electricity. And she says, hey, I had to write this down. She says, hey, remember when you got hit by lightning, Hugh? That was pretty shocking. And it's a coupon, whatever.

Speaker 1:
[27:52] She's playing with puns for the first time. She just gained sentience.

Speaker 4:
[27:55] And then, but here's the part where Hugh seems more like a non-human. And his reply was, well, you know what they say about lightning, right? Next time, it'll be the bots that get zapped. I was like, Hugh, no, what? Nobody says that first. Like, I don't know what, what do you mean by you know what they say? They don't say that.

Speaker 1:
[28:16] Well, I think the implication is that nothing gets hit by lightning the same time, twice. So the implication is if he already got shocked, certainly, you would have to make something else.

Speaker 2:
[28:28] It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work.

Speaker 4:
[28:31] A lot of inferring here for a little robot Diana, meeting her first human.

Speaker 1:
[28:40] How do you feel just in hearing about it? Is this the sort of game that appeals to you or is it?

Speaker 3:
[28:44] I have a long list of things that I will return to. I do like games like this and I'm always a sucker for compelling single player experience. The dialogue does not fill me with a lot of confidence, I will say.

Speaker 1:
[28:58] Turn on the Japanese and turn off subtitles on your set.

Speaker 3:
[29:02] Let me map my kids' faces onto the girl and then I will be into it because then the kids would love that. The kids would love that if they were sitting on the guy's shoulder blasting people. Let me do that for 10 bucks as DLC.

Speaker 1:
[29:15] Andy, you have just before we wrapped the segment, pulled up a truly horrifying video of what looks like a mod maybe.

Speaker 4:
[29:23] No, this was Pragmata's, Pragmata, sorry. This was their April Fools post. They said Pragmata is a Mega Man game, April Fools and it's Hugh but he's in a very lifelike proportion size Mega Man suit instead of his big astronaut suit. His mask is Mega Man's face and then that goes up and reveals the real tiny face of Hugh in the helmet.

Speaker 1:
[29:52] I mean, that'll for sure get released as DLC or whatever.

Speaker 2:
[29:55] Absolutely. You do not make a Mega Man costume and then refuse to sell it to us. That is some horse armor shit. They're going to be like, you want this for $20, you swine? I'll be like, give it to me.

Speaker 1:
[30:11] Okay, let's take a break and talk about more games with Andy. This episode of the Besties is sponsored by Ritual. You know, it is the time of year where we all go on trips and vacations and things like that. And you know what you don't want to have on a trip or vacation? A problem with your digestive health. Oh, so true. With Ritual Symbiotic Plus, you only need one capsule a day for simple, streamlined gut support. I personally take Symbiotic Plus. It is one of my favorite ways to maintain a healthy gut microbiome. And it has definitely helped internally, as well as just my general energy. It feels like it's doing the right thing. Symbiotic Plus is a three in one biotic formula with pre, pro and post biotics in a critically studied doses to support a balanced gut microbiome. Ritual Symbiotic Plus is formulated with 11 BCFUs of the world's most researched probiotic strains backed by over 100 publications of human clinical trials. One daily minted capsule is all you need to take for bloat, gut and regularity support. Support a balanced gut microbiome with Ritual Symbiotic Plus. Save 25 percent off your first month at ritual.com/besties. That's ritual.com/besties for 25 percent off your first month.

Speaker 2:
[31:38] I love to try new things, which is generally good except for when it's not. Because you see, while I like to subscribe to new streaming services and magazines, maybe some theater, even on occasion, a local newspaper for a city I've never even visited because I just really want to read a single story. It's great. It's great when it works, right? And it's bad when my interest disappears and I forgot that I subscribed to the thing to begin with, which is why I'm grateful for Rocket Money. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions and monitors your spending. And it helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. It can automatically categorize transactions so that you can see wherever it is your money is going. And it's good to know where your money is going these days. You know, you want to be mindful where the cash flow is heading. The app also consolidates all of your accounts into a single dashboard. So you want to see what's going on with your money. Real easy peasy, like right online. It's got you covered. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney.com/besties. That's rocketmoney.com/besties, rocketmoney.com/besties.

Speaker 1:
[33:12] Andy, I think you play more games than any of us, which doesn't seem possible because we feel like we play a lot of games. And yet you do streaming, you do kind of funny. I think your cadence is more than ours. And I'm sure there are games that you've played this year that we haven't. Is there anything recent that you've played that you would call out as a special release?

Speaker 4:
[33:34] For 2026 games, let me go to the old Steam library.

Speaker 1:
[33:40] Because I know you are currently going through your backlog to better inform yourself for the forthcoming kind of funny 100 Best Games of All Time list. Was there anything recent before we get into that?

Speaker 4:
[33:53] As far as brand new games go, I did just beat Mouse PI for Hire.

Speaker 1:
[34:00] That was the first person who uses like old timey cartoon style, like Cuphead style graphics but Doom gameplay essentially.

Speaker 4:
[34:08] Yes, yes. That's a boomer shooter. Looks like a 1920s, 1930s Disney animation.

Speaker 1:
[34:14] Hopefully not exactly like one.

Speaker 4:
[34:16] Well, Steamboat Willie is fun. We can hit that area. And so that game we, I played recently, that's about a 19, 18 hour ish video game. And I thought it was fine. I thought it was still lacking in a lot of different other spots and that, so that's one that I did recently.

Speaker 1:
[34:37] I think that is the difference between you and I is if you, oh, I guess you were reviewing it, but if I'm playing something that's fine, there is no fucking way I'm spending 20 hours on it.

Speaker 4:
[34:46] Yeah, and that's the thing is that you would be hit with really neat moments, and I would say, oh, cool, maybe we're getting even better here, right? And honestly, we're very similar at Kind of Funny, and that's one of the things that they would always bring up is, back at IGN, you would have to play this, and now we have the freedom of saying, I am not digging this enough to continue on, which was a lot of everybody's experiences with Crimson Desert, where they said, you have to play 10 hours for it to get good? Sorry, man, like maybe after a bunch of patches and things like that, but Crimson Desert's another one that I'm about 12 hours in, and I'm kind of momentarily going back to it, just in hopes that there are more patches and in hopes that it feels better, and it's slowly getting there, but I'm still needing to, I still want to see the magic that everybody on the internet is claiming, like this is some truly like generational type shit, and I just don't, I'm not seeing it quite yet.

Speaker 1:
[35:48] We had a question, a reader mail question a few weeks ago about whether the game Crimson Desert could be saved with patches in the way that Cyberpunk was. Do you think there's a shot of that level of like resurrection?

Speaker 4:
[36:01] I mean, if you ask 80% of people, the game doesn't need saving. Like to them, it's already an amazing video game, and a lot of that I think is just an amalgamation of just a buttload of mechanics and cool looking things with amazing visuals. But mission structure wise, I think it's like one of the weakest things I've ever experienced. And that's because they made Black Desert Online and they're just like an MMO sort of studio. So there's not, playing Crimson Desert after beating the Witcher 3 for the first time was a massive shock to the system.

Speaker 2:
[36:39] What an ideal timing.

Speaker 4:
[36:41] Yeah, yeah, but I mean, gameplay wise, it's so deep and there's just so many wild things you could pull off. It really is like that Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom. Check this shit out. Look what I just did here that I figured out or look at this cool discovery I made. And I'm hoping to get there one day, but at the rate that they're putting out updates, I feel like it will inevitably get to a point that everybody says, all right, now's the time to hop in because movement is better and because now I can button remap. And they've made a decision to not have...

Speaker 1:
[37:14] Sorry, there's something very funny of now I can button remap.

Speaker 4:
[37:17] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[37:18] In the movement it works.

Speaker 4:
[37:19] And the thing is, it's not only just button remapping, it's the fact that the controls are so obtuse and there's no button remapping. Like the things that they have you doing in this game are just really odd. And it's one of those where you go, all right, I applaud you for doing something different, but was it the right choice, you know? But PC mods have been helping out a lot with, for me, like I immediately installed the unlimited stamina outside of battle, which is like, I feel like every game should have that.

Speaker 1:
[37:51] Yeah, no kidding.

Speaker 4:
[37:52] And so I installed that mod, I installed a couple of different mods that help out with the camera angle. But I mean, they're putting out, they've put out like four updates or three updates since it launched. They are, they know that this game could be a better experience. And it's pretty obvious by what they're fixing. So button remapping is already in the works. And that should be here probably within the next couple of weeks or so.

Speaker 2:
[38:19] Do you think that they've considered making it a Mega Man game instead?

Speaker 4:
[38:23] They would have been better off, honestly.

Speaker 2:
[38:25] It's a bold idea, especially not owning the property would have been very bold.

Speaker 4:
[38:30] I mean, well, the game is just, you know, why not throw another IP in there? Because the game has so many other influences that like, yeah, sure, throw in a Mega Man in there as well.

Speaker 3:
[38:40] You got to take big swings, you know?

Speaker 1:
[38:42] That's right.

Speaker 2:
[38:43] What is the best thing that you've played this year so far?

Speaker 4:
[38:47] Oh, it's so because of the backlog and me finally looking at all these blind spots and empty spots in my gaming history and knowing that I want to do them justice because we have a big top 100 thing coming up this year where all of us are going to submit our top 100 games and then we're going to add them all up, add up all the points and then do our own kind of big event that we've always wanted to do. And finally, we're like, all right, let's freaking do it this year. And so this year has been just me looking at my backlog and saying, well, I beat the first playthrough of Nier Automata when the game came out. And then I put it down like many people and everybody said, you got to go back. I'm like, I know. And so this year, I finally did all of the main endings and that and The Witcher 3 are probably my two favorite games that I've played this year. I think they like, I was just so even mechanically for anybody who is worried about combat and the way that The Witcher 3 might feel. I think that's one of the biggest things that everybody, while I was, while I would let them know I'm playing The Witcher 3, they go, oh, how does the combat feel? Because I'm such a Souls-like action RPG type dude. And I think it's like totally fine. It was kind of a non-issue for me. Of course, I would love it to feel like Lies of P does or like any of the Souls games do. But it's totally serviceable enough when the story and the writing and the branching paths are hitting as hard as they do. I was just so blown away by The Witch at Three.

Speaker 1:
[40:23] Yeah, it's pretty staggering that. I mean that and then eventually like Cyberpunk, in my opinion, got pretty damn close to that level as well. Like that game is fantastic. So, you know, I think that studio has a future.

Speaker 4:
[40:35] Yeah, they're doing all right. But yeah, and your Automata was definitely one that blew me away as well. I was just so overtaken by the whole experience and it's just so my shit. And the fact that I waited that long, I felt kind of embarrassed. But like, I'm so glad that I got back to it because I just really enjoyed the story and where it goes and the things that I would call like the Kojima-isms that Yoko Taro does with all of the breaking of the fourth wall and all of those little things that I just like, oh, I love this shit, man. This is like, this is why I could have watched the movie, but I'd prefer to do this because this is so like, this is a video game, you know, like I love that shit.

Speaker 2:
[41:16] Well, the good thing is now you have to watch the movie in the animated series, 8 of the plays, you have to find the story that is locked in the gotcha games.

Speaker 4:
[41:24] And...

Speaker 1:
[41:25] Justin has good tips on the fishing in the first game.

Speaker 3:
[41:27] Oh, yeah, have you ever want to walk through on that?

Speaker 4:
[41:30] Okay, yeah, I'll have to hit you up for that. But I definitely will be going to the orchestra that's coming back on tour. I'm pumped for that. Cause that was one where I'm like, as soon as I beat it, I was like, I have to go watch this like symphony thing, which I only ever really do for games. I never really seek out concerts, but I love for the big gaming experiences. The Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was super sick, and then everybody's like, dude, you just missed it on tour, man. It just kind of ended, but it's coming back in a couple of months, and I'm pretty pumped for that.

Speaker 3:
[42:05] This isn't actually a problem for Nier, because I'm me and I'm on this show. But it always so frustrating when you find a game like that, and it's all you want to talk about, and everybody talked about it two years ago. It's like, hold on, wait, no, no, no, listen. See, there's different ending. So it's like you do them all. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[42:23] And the second one, you think it's gonna be Lion King 1.5, where you're playing as Timon and Pumbaa during the Lion King one, but it's so much different, man. And honestly, the reason I quit back in the day was, I was like, all right, that's neat, but I don't want to play as the dude for another 20 hours, like I just did. And then another gameplay would be another 20 hours, right? And everybody's like, no, just do it, just do it. And luckily, it's not that. So for anybody who's been ever discouraged of saying, well, one playthrough is about 20-ish hours times five, that's a hundred hour game. It's not that. Every game, every next like, play through quote unquote is much shorter and they do different things with it to keep it fresh.

Speaker 2:
[43:06] I do want you to let me play as Timon and Pumbaa in near-Autumn. That'd be fun. Once you put that in my head, you can't just take it away from me.

Speaker 4:
[43:14] What are they doing in those moments?

Speaker 2:
[43:17] It's so true. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Frushtick, you want to dig into the mailbag? Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[43:23] We have a bunch of reader mail. This one's for Justin from John. Season 4 of From is almost here. My girlfriend and I are rewatching this crazy show for that good, good Harold Perrine face. You know what I'm talking about. How do you feel about From, Justin?

Speaker 3:
[43:39] It's so good, man. I actually just, we stopped watching from midway through season three. And the only reason, the only reason is that it was a bad show and not worth watching. But it got, it did that thing where it started popping back up in the, in the algorithm. And you start thinking, uh-oh, is there something in the air? Are we going to get another season of From? And then, you know, there's nothing that makes a show more appealing to me than knowing there's more of it. So it's like, you know what, we've got to get back in, see what all the, it is an absolute, if you ever watched From, or if you ever didn't watch From, here's 30 seconds. It's a town, a village, somewhere in a nowhere place where, when you're driving through the woods, you accidentally teleport there and you can't get out, and everyone is stuck in the little village, and no one knows why they're there or how they got there. There's time travel, there are the wires are hooked up to appliances, but the other end doesn't go anywhere. They just like go into the walls. There's a woman that digs a hole so deep in her house that her house collapses. It's nonsense. The biggest star of the show is Harold Perrineau from Lost.

Speaker 1:
[44:57] Do you think, is it better experienced as a YouTube, like best moments of From, or do you actually have to watch it?

Speaker 3:
[45:05] No, no, no, because it's like, you have to get into the internal logic of it, because if you take something out of context, you will watch and think, well, I'm sure that makes more sense in context. You need to earn, having watched all of From, you need to earn the right to with your chest, 10 toes and say, this does not make any goddamn sense. And that is, and let me say, end of season three, it really picks up to what Andy's here. Crimson Desert. Yeah, 100 hours in, both From and Crimson Desert really pick up, no, the third season, if you ever watch From, finish the third season, or it clarifies what is happening in From, the central mystery of From is revealed, it is unbelievably stupid, but it is there, and there's a whole other season that I have to reckon with it, it's a really wild show, truly, the fact that this has gone on, it's one of those shows that I feel like I forgot to cancel, you know, like I should have canceled it, someone should have, but it's still going, I love it.

Speaker 4:
[46:15] I do appreciate you looking at and discovering more episodes and saying, they didn't give up on it, why should I?

Speaker 3:
[46:23] Andy, there's not even a joke in what you're saying, it's 100% like, hey, listen, they're going to meet me halfway. I'll keep watching their stupid ass show. I'm pretty drunk anyway at that point. It's common courtesy. Yeah, it's like the dignity, they got me through a lot of nights with season one and season two. I owe them, you know what I mean? Sure, I already paid my $7.99 for fucking MGM Plus. What? I swear to God. I swear to God.

Speaker 4:
[46:51] That's not real.

Speaker 3:
[46:53] That's the only show on it, I think.

Speaker 1:
[46:59] Incredible. I'm so happy from Exist. Maybe I'll watch it.

Speaker 3:
[47:02] Yeah, I literally took a year long gap. Came back, took a gap year from, came back, still has nonsense to go through.

Speaker 2:
[47:09] I saw the world, lived some life.

Speaker 1:
[47:13] This next letter comes from Bing Bong, Bing Bong Eggsteam and it is calling out the Baby Steps Developers React seven-minute speed run video which is on IGN's YouTube page. I don't even want to necessarily tell you what happens in this video, apart from saying Gabe Cazillo and Bennett Foddy, the two creators of Baby Steps, also the voice actors that appear throughout Baby Steps, do a seven-minute speed run, like Rewatch, like Dev's React Rewatch video. And if you like the tone and weirdness of Baby Steps as a project, highly recommend you watching this Baby Steps Dev's React, because it is one of the best things I've seen in recent memory.

Speaker 2:
[47:56] It is so funny. It's so funny and so smart in the way that you, every 15 seconds you're like, is this smart or is this dumb? What high wire act are these brilliant people doing? It was great. What a masterpiece.

Speaker 1:
[48:13] Highly recommend it. We'll drop it in the newsletter if you want to watch it. This next letter comes from Jack. I appreciate your commentary on Rat Coin, a game I've been curious about for a while. I highly recommend you check out Omelette You Cook. It's the best thing I've seen come out in response to Bellatro. It's incredibly silly, but serves a big challenge. You can make the most unappetizing omelet and get a ton of points for it. Plus, there's a real-time option for your turns, which I've never seen in a rogue-like deck builder before, and I really enjoyed it, and I appreciate this option. So that's a good. I haven't heard of that game.

Speaker 3:
[48:45] That sounds like a video game.

Speaker 1:
[48:47] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[48:47] Omelette You Cook?

Speaker 1:
[48:48] Omelette You Cook.

Speaker 3:
[48:50] How's it? That sounds good.

Speaker 1:
[48:52] No commas in there, so.

Speaker 3:
[48:54] Even better.

Speaker 1:
[48:54] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[48:55] Sounds like a Justin game.

Speaker 1:
[48:57] Do we have any honorable mentions that people want to call out? Anything you've seen, anything you've watched?

Speaker 3:
[49:04] Let me tell you what I've been doing lately. Listen, Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 10 with security updates. I don't know if you knew this, but Windows 10 no longer getting security updates. There's a lot of hardware that will not run Windows 11 that will no longer get security updates, and I want to encourage you, my friend, if I could, to put Linux on it.

Speaker 2:
[49:23] Oh, there we go.

Speaker 1:
[49:24] So surprised.

Speaker 3:
[49:25] Here's what I wanted to say. Say the word. I just wanted to mention.

Speaker 4:
[49:28] If you had a cal she bet.

Speaker 3:
[49:30] Listen, if you had a cal she bet about, first of all, I'm rich because I always bet on me bringing up Linux. I'm just saying, it doesn't have to be for dorks. I'm the only cool person over here in the Linux world, and I really need more cool people to think about it. Here's what I want you to do. Get a USB drive, search for Linux Mint, go there, follow the instructions, put Linux Mint on the thumb drive, put that thumb drive into some old hardware, load the BIOS, load from that thumb drive, install Linux. You got a whole new operating system. You don't like Linux Mint? Fuck you. Fine. Put a different Linux on top of it. Who cares? Put a bunch. You know what I did? I did one on a really old laptop my kids had, and it was a distribution called Endless OS. It's a Linux distribution that is designed to impart work offline. There's like 23 gigs of encyclopedias and information and coding tools, and programming for kids and kids like games, stuff like that, which would be an amazing resource. It runs great even on old hardware that has been, as part of planned obsolescence, made useless. A lot of these distributions, the lightweight ones still run really easily on it. So experiment today. Go get Linux Mint. Put it on a thumb drive. Put that on some old hardware. Have fun.

Speaker 1:
[50:51] Do you remember when I was talking about how excited I was about Linux, and you asked me what distribution I was on, and I said Bazite, and you made fun of me for 20 minutes?

Speaker 3:
[51:00] Right. Yes. That's true. We're past that. I had 20 minutes.

Speaker 1:
[51:06] Maybe not 20.

Speaker 3:
[51:07] Oh, to be a young man again. I no longer have the Vim and Vigor.

Speaker 1:
[51:13] I have a couple that I wanted to call out. The first one is, and let me be very clear, this is not the new Mario movie, which I still haven't seen. I know you guys talked about it last week. I'm talking about the original Super Mario Brothers movie, but I have a caveat for you. Watch that movie on mute, no audio. You can watch the subtitles if you want. I wouldn't recommend it. Watch it on mute. I think that movie as a, just a visual storytelling medium when you're not listening to the pretty weak-ass script works way better just as like the experience the visuals of it, than it does when you're listening to the actual narrative.

Speaker 3:
[51:55] There's got to be an album. There's got to be an album or a podcast or something that would sync up perfectly.

Speaker 1:
[52:04] That is the dream. The reason I discovered this is because my son was watching it on the airplane when we were on vacation, and we didn't have headphones that would plug into the screen, and he was fine with it. So he watched the whole thing on mute and I was just watching over your shoulder and he had a fucking blast.

Speaker 2:
[52:19] I feel like I read some sort of medical study about how you are more likely to emotionally connect with movies on airplanes because you're in this very vulnerable place and that's why people cry at movies on airplanes or you can find yourself just watching over someone's screen. That was it. That's probably why you like it so much.

Speaker 1:
[52:39] Oh yeah, he was pretty wasted, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 4:
[52:41] I mean, yeah, visually the movie, it looks so much like The Running Man and other 80s sci-fi movies. When we all watched it for work, it was like, man, if you just made the characters not named Mario and Luigi, like this would just be an 80s action sci-fi movie. If you just remove the IP from it all, the set design is crazy in that movie.

Speaker 1:
[53:08] Yeah. The storytelling, like you know what's going on in every single scene of the movie without knowing the actual words that are being said.

Speaker 3:
[53:16] You know what's going on, you just don't care what the next thing that happens.

Speaker 4:
[53:18] Yes. It's just not good, yeah.

Speaker 3:
[53:21] Just irrelevant to you in your life.

Speaker 1:
[53:23] The other thing I wanted to call out is a game called Shattered Pixel Dungeon on iOS. This game has been out for like several years, but I spent a lot of time playing Slice and Dice on my phone and fell totally in love with it. It's a great RPG with dice in it. I was looking for games that were similar, and Shattered Pixel Dungeon is basically in the style of rogue or games of that spirit. But in my opinion, it's much more welcoming to learning the mechanics. I've never gotten into one of those games where you move and they move at the same time, whatever that I guess it's the rogue genre. This is the first time that I've had one click for me a little bit. It's great on iOS. If you're playing on Steam, you would definitely need a mouse because it doesn't work great with a controller. But on mobile devices with touch, it's perfect. And the sort of game, you look at the reviews, people have thousands of hours logged in this game. It scratches that Binding Vizic itch to some extent, but again, it's turn-based, so it makes it really good to pick up and put down. So Shattered Pixel Dungeon is a title that I keep forgetting, but that is indeed the title of the game.

Speaker 2:
[54:34] Nice. Mine is Exit 8 The Movie. Are y'all familiar with this?

Speaker 1:
[54:40] No.

Speaker 2:
[54:42] Yeah, and I had a feeling you were, Andy, because I assume you played the game?

Speaker 4:
[54:47] I just know that it's very back rooms adjacent.

Speaker 2:
[54:51] Yes, yes. So the way Exit 8 The Game works, which came out in 2023, is you are in a Japanese subway station, and you are hoping to get out, but you are caught in a loop that is basically one big hallway. It's kind of like a Z shape if you think about it. Like you turn left, you go down a hallway, you turn left again, and then suddenly you're looping.

Speaker 1:
[55:17] I was about to reference PT, but it's a game that literally no one can play right now and has been out for 10 years. So I don't know that I could reference PT.

Speaker 2:
[55:25] Exit 8 would be the more recognizable game at this point. Yeah. So the way that you get out is as you go down this hallway, you look for anomalies. If you see an anomaly, then that means that you should turn back. If you go backwards, you basically reset the hallway, but you upgrade your number. So it's like, oh, you've gotten through this. Can you get through this eight times? Either recognizing anomalies or saying that there are no anomalies, in which case, go forward and then go through the loop again. The game is like four bucks and it's a solid entry point into the whole back rooms phenomenon of these, like what if the very mundane parts of our world became horror in their mundanity? The movie is really interesting. I will not say it's great. It is in fact not great. It is good. But it is one of the most loyal adaptations of the experience of playing a video game, of like literally the source material to the point that it almost feels like somewhere between a movie and a let's play of this game. It is not animated. It's shot in real life. But you are hopping basically into the shoes. The first five, 10 minutes is first person of this character of why are they in this world? It's like what are they going through emotionally where they need to process getting out of this spot? Yes, it is like they are, I mean, this is not a spoiler. It is the very first thing you hear in the movie. Their ex-girlfriend is pregnant and at the hospital. And it's like, is this guy ready to be a father, basically, or is he going to be a kid forever? And over the course of his journey through the platform, he's going to learn about himself. What it does, it's very clever, is at a certain point, you see that there are other perspectives to being in this hallway, much like there are different people playing the game, which I think is a reflection of if you watch this game on streams, you can watch people stream these sorts of games. And there are people who are like, this is the scariest thing, I'm taking it very seriously. There are people who are playing it and laughing. There are people who are playing it and not talking at all. It is weird how much the movie is a version of the game. And I've never seen anything quite like it. It's in theaters right now. I don't think it's a must for the theater experience, but it's certainly not bad. And with a good crowd, I think you definitely would enjoy it.

Speaker 1:
[58:04] Andy, you got anything?

Speaker 4:
[58:06] I've just been setting up the old AYN Thor. Set that up over the weekend. Downloaded some themes and some icons. And then I was like, I don't like this. So then I just started photoshopping a bunch of icons for myself. And yeah, really digging it so far. I think I've played through the intro of Link to the Past about 1200 times. So I'm further than that again, because I haven't beat the game since I was a kid or whatever. So I'm through the second dungeon on that. That's a pretty cool video game. Link to the Past.

Speaker 1:
[58:44] Yeah, they figured that one out pretty good.

Speaker 4:
[58:46] I've been, oh gosh, in the off time, a lot of marathon has been awesome. I've been, one that I will always sing the praises of that I recommend is a super fun roguelite called The King is Watching. And it kind of just came out of nowhere last year for me. And I fell absolutely in love with it. And they've had like three major releases since then.

Speaker 1:
[59:16] Oh yeah, I remember, I think we talked a little bit about this, this was the one where you have to like, the mouse cursor is determining what's being productive at any given time, is that right?

Speaker 4:
[59:25] Yeah, yeah, you essentially have like a five by five grid that is your kingdom, that you're kind of putting up different things to produce, I don't know, logs or water or stone or whatever, to make your castle stronger and defense better, and the king's gaze is like just a whatever you're focused on are the things that are working on the grid, and you just kind of have to strategically click around there, and that's a game that has kind of been one that I revisit all of the time. It's not the best on Steam Deck because it's definitely more of a mouse game, but I've got it work into where the buttons, I use my finger to just kind of be the mouse cursor.

Speaker 3:
[60:10] What was that called again?

Speaker 4:
[60:11] The King is Watching.

Speaker 3:
[60:13] Sounds cool.

Speaker 4:
[60:13] It's really, really damn good, and it's one that I'm just like, I want this game to just keep on having updates, because every one they put out, they find a new way to kind of reinvent the loop and the gameplay of it while still being The King is Watching, and it is just so much fun, and I really, really dig it.

Speaker 1:
[60:30] Yeah. Cool. Good line up. I wanted to shout out the Patreon over at patreon.com/thebesties. We have two bonus episodes up for the month of April. I did want to call out the bracket episode that I don't think that we did last week and drop in a clip. It was one of our more fun. We've done a lot of fun ones, but this one was particularly fun. This was, if I recall, about space jamming a franchise, which was quite enjoyable. Here is a clip from that episode. In addition to defense, and we're talking right now about basically any ghost Pokemon, but I'm going to go with Haunter because he doesn't have feet. So there's really nothing to worry about tripping on.

Speaker 3:
[61:16] Yeah. What's the point? Passimian is a-

Speaker 1:
[61:19] He's beat point guard.

Speaker 2:
[61:20] Passimian?

Speaker 3:
[61:22] Which Pokemon does the most pass-

Speaker 2:
[61:23] Or which basketball player does the most passing? I don't know much about the different basketball positions, but it seems like Passimian is, I mean-

Speaker 1:
[61:32] Chris Mullen.

Speaker 2:
[61:34] Who?

Speaker 1:
[61:34] The Chris Mullen of the team.

Speaker 2:
[61:36] The Chris Mullen of-

Speaker 3:
[61:37] Maybe if you ask and throw out famous players that have played these positions, then maybe that would help because I don't know. Who's like the best center ever?

Speaker 1:
[61:45] Best center, Dekambe Mutombo is a big center.

Speaker 3:
[61:48] Mutombo is awesome, man, I loved his video game. The Old Spice one, did you guys play that?

Speaker 2:
[61:54] Yeah. It was a good game.

Speaker 3:
[61:55] It was good.

Speaker 1:
[61:57] And if we're gonna look at the tallest Pokemon, that would be Eternatus. He is 66 feet tall.

Speaker 3:
[62:03] Now is that a turn-a-mask, Eternatus? Everybody get up, it's time to sleep now.

Speaker 1:
[62:07] No, that's standard. And yeah, we also have a new Resties in addition that's up. We talked about a very strange game called Robotu. What was it called, Plante?

Speaker 2:
[62:20] Rubato.

Speaker 1:
[62:21] Rubato, thank you, about a frog.

Speaker 2:
[62:23] It is.

Speaker 1:
[62:24] And not about a frog.

Speaker 2:
[62:26] It is, yeah, it is a platformer that is not a platformer at about halfway through. I don't know, it's a very different game than whatever you think it is.

Speaker 1:
[62:36] Yes. Thank you to everyone who's been backing the Patreon. Thank you to new members, we greatly appreciate it. Here's some members that are currently joined. We have Kevin L, we have Eric A, we have Ben R and Moss L. Thank you for being members, we greatly appreciate you. We also greatly appreciate Mr. Andy Cortez for joining us and spending time with us.

Speaker 4:
[62:59] Of course, it's an honor. I've been fans for such a long time and it's really cool to be on the show for the first time and experience it in its grandeur.

Speaker 1:
[63:09] Well, I sincerely hope it won't be the last, but you know what it is. I'm telling you right now, it's the last.

Speaker 2:
[63:16] That's fair.

Speaker 1:
[63:16] Sorry, bud.

Speaker 2:
[63:18] You know it, you're back, baby.

Speaker 4:
[63:20] Was it the Bible references?

Speaker 1:
[63:21] It was the Bible. The Bible did it for me.

Speaker 2:
[63:24] Yeah, Ecclesiastians.

Speaker 3:
[63:26] That's going to do it for us for this week on The Besties. Be sure to join us again next time on The Besties, because you're the world's best friends, pick the world's best games. Besties!