Wolverine Is a Disaster

0:00What you laughing? What you giggling about, I believe Chris? Yeah, remember how like the Nintendo seal approval kind of like saved the video game industry with like, oh, the darkest of times, the Nintendo seal approval, it's building trust where trust is needed. Yeah, just a little backstory, historical backstory. In case you're not a hundred years old. Yeah, yeah. The Nintendo introduced the seal of approval because when the video game crashed happened in the 80s, all these game companies were releasing these very shitty slop-weir titles that were like clones of one another. So when you saw the Nintendo seal approval, you knew this was something that was officially sanctioned by Nintendo. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm just sending you something like right now. And you tell me if you think this passes the Nintendo seal of approval because it's popping up on the Nintendo eShop. So the new Nintendo eShop game that everyone is into is called Hintide Project 6.7. 6.7. And it costs $4. It's 80% off. Normally it's 1999.

1:01So you better grab it now. It's you're losing money not by. And the title Hintide Project 6.7, the logo has the hands behind the 6.7, doing the thing. Yeah. And that's cool. This is the face is AI. This is AI art of 100%. Absolutely no doubt in my mind. Only AI could dream of Kazambas that humongous. And it's just guys, it's fucking, it's really, really wild. I just got a spreadsheet of every Nintendo Switch game ever released to use on every game ever. And it is not a joke. You really have to hunt for my pal like Donkey Kong on there. He is in the vast minority. Now Hintide Projects 1 through 66. Yeah, he's gonna say that's the problem with this game. You are gonna have to spend a lot of time catching up on the lore of Hintide Projects 1 through 66.

2:03The mid 30s is where it kind of peaked. That was the height. In the 30s. Yeah, I mean when Peter Mardi took over in the mid 30s, like that's for me when it really started popping. Yeah. You can create your own tentacles and imagine them. Where might they go? Who knows? The tentacles grow and move on that. Oh. We need to practice our Peter Mardi on Dresher, do. My name is Griffith McRoy and I play the game this week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the worst game of the week. Oh no. Oh god damn shots. My name is Russ Froschic. I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest and home interactive entertainment.

3:04It's a game of the year club just by listening. You have become a member of that club this week. We're talking about Wolverine for the PlayStation 5 developed by Insomniac Games, a big tent pole console exclusive for Sony. And it's an I keep stepping on your business, Chris. I'll remind you to just be gentle and be well Griffin. You are a good the mean thing. And also you're speaking in a minor key. So everyone knows where things are going. There's a few things happened here. Let's let's analyze. Griffin spoke in a minor key. Griffin didn't have anything planned to step on my toes and Griffin quickly passed to me, which he has said in his own words. Is a sign that he does not give a shit about his name. Here comes the rock, Chris. I do. I have strong fucking feelings about this. He cares. I just don't want this one to be a bummer front to back. Chris plant. What the fuck is Marvel's Wolverine for the PlayStation 5 Wolverine is an action game for

4:05the PlayStation 5 in which you play as the titular Logan slash Wolverine who actually goes by another name, but I always forget what it actually is. Anyway, this time he is working for Team X, not Professor Xavier. Mr. Boulevard Trask is ready to get hunted down. But wait, is that right? Yeah, you're good. Yeah, because then you're working with Dr. Nathaniel A.Six, who's played by Troy Baker. And look, there could be a lot of cool stuff that we're about to talk about. Omega Red, Lady Death Strike, Tiger Tiger. This could be one of our favorite games yet. And you're going to have to follow up if you want to hear more. All right. I can't wait. Quick break will be right back. It is the fall season, which means that my dog will now unfortunately need to humor me with adorable Halloween Thanksgiving and Christmas outfits. Those are just the rules. If you are a pet owner, I'm sure you can relate. Now, if you have ever owned a pet, you know that they run on their own logic.

5:10They jump first. They think later. They ask questions. Never. It is part of what makes them so lovable. And it is also how you end up with the surprise vet visits that you didn't see coming. That is why ASPCA Pet Health Insurance helps cover eligible vet expenses so that when those moments happen, you can focus on getting your pet the care they may need instead of stressing over the cost. Today's episode is sponsored by the ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Program. The ASPCA Pet Health Insurance Program offers customizable accident and illness plans that can fit your budget, your lifestyle, and even your pet's particular quirks. Because let's be honest, vet bills can add up fast. ASPCA Pet Health Insurance has been around for almost 30 years and has covered over 1 million pets. And when it is time to submit a claim, it is easy. Just use their app and receive reimbursement for eligible vet bills directly into your

6:12bank account so you can get back to focusing on what really matters. Your pet takes floor coverage, visit ASPCA Pet Insurance dot com slash besties. That is ASPCA Pet Insurance dot com slash besties. Again, that is ASPCA Pet Insurance dot com slash besties. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company or United States Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency. It's all limited. The ASPCA is not an insurer, it does not engage in the business of insurance. It fucking sucks. It's really not going to be bad to play. I've not felt this strongly about a game and it's like, I know that we're coming in this game came out last week, but this is the nature of how we record the show. Sometimes it doesn't quite match up so that there's a bit of a laugh. I mean, the game is out as of this week. So like the humans have played it at this point.

7:13I was terrified that this was going to be a star field situation because I literally was my entire time at this game. I was like, wow, I'm really not having a fucking lick of fun. I'm really, really, really super duper not enjoying this. What if everyone comes out as like, this is absolutely my shit. But it seems like this game has been kind of a criticized left right and center. We should table set a little bit for people that don't know anything about like the structure of the game, how this fits into the insomniac, development, whatever, just so people understand before we get into the sort of things that may or may not have landed with one of us. As Plano alluded to in the beginning, this is a third person action game. I think if you've played any of the Spider-Man games, the linear chunks of the Spider-Man games, I think are relatively representative of the sorts of game play you're experiencing here. Although obviously you are Wolverine, so you have Wolverine powers, cause, etc.

8:14But it lacks, fully lacks the any open world exploration that I think the Spider-Man games are most known for. Yes. Yeah, no. Yeah, it is a very linear sort of experience. That's not necessarily a bad thing, except in the case of this. I genuinely don't really know where to start, but I suppose that that's a good sort of like transition point is talking about the linearity of the game and how it kind of wants to have its cake and eat it to a little bit in that you are being constantly held by the nose and pulled along. Quite literally, he's following his nose with his incredible Wolverine senses. The internet has called them Fart Gasses. Fart Gasses is, the internet has not been particularly helpful in having the conversation about whether it's okay to have trails of light telling you where you should be going in the game, cause sometimes that's good. Like in a, you know, a Spider-Man where you're in a giant open city, whether or not you

9:18need that on a straight road through a dilapidated sort of a jungle or whatever that really only has the kind of one way to go. Maybe we don't need that. No. It's bad. It's just, okay. Can I, there are people who are going to listen to this and they'll be like, yeah, but the game works and it looks good. In the story is like pretty fine. And to that, I just want to like set a thing which we at the show, I think you all agree with me on this, try to judge a game based off of what it set out to do. Like what it actually set out to do when what this game set out to do was be a big spectacular action game with all these rich animations and compelling story and thrilling combat that you want to keep playing and in any action game, combat that will allow you to kind of express yourself. What is the appeal of big action games like only Mooshore or Devil May Cry is that there are so many options that it becomes a very expressive form of play and it does basically

10:24none of that. The story is utterly torture when you are having to walk around and do nothing and just get pulled from scene to scene which is a specific example. I need to give a specific example. So the game begins and the first chunk of levels is set in a military base and you're killing a bunch of guys. I actually was like, okay, this is okay. I'm like, okay, you're not hating it. The immediately after you are dropped into the home base of Team X and Alaska, the snowy beautiful chalet filled with Nerdu Wells like Sabertooth, etc. and you as Logan, known feral, fast, deadly creature that you are, get the pleasure of walking at a true snail's plate pace through this house looking for clues and talking to people. And maybe the most glacial exposition sequence I've ever experienced in a video game. Fucking crazy.

11:24There's one part where you walk down a hallway and then Sabertooth knocks a refrigerator over and so you can't walk around or jump over the refrigerator. You have to back up and go down a different part of the hallway. That one 25 second long little segment of interactivity was enough for me to, I really probably would have put the game down at that exact moment. It's not just that the game makes you not stab dudes a million times for long stretches of the game. It is that the writing is pretty good. The acting is great. I can't remember the guy's name. He plays Wolfrein, but I think he does a really interesting job with it. The pauses between every goddamn line of dialogue between Wolfrein and Nathaniel Essex are like, octomom, preg. Not a joke, two and a half seconds. Between every, remember when I found you in the woods? Like every single line of dialogue, it was beyond belief truly.

12:28I would like to, at this point, copyright a rule that I think should extend from here on out. I don't know if you want to copyright it. You might want to make it open source. Okay, it's an open source. I don't want people to adopt this. Everyone can adopt this. It's the rust-freshed, slow walk rule. And here it is. You ready? Yeah. Your video game gets two slow walks in total. I wouldn't recommend using both, but I'll allow it. You get two. If you're more than two, you have too many slow walks. This counts. All those Assassin's Creed games from years back where this slow walking was tons. The fucking last God of War Ragnarark game had a ton of slow walks. You get two people. You get two. And you better fucking use them good. Maybe Kratos twists his ankle or something and you can use it for dramatic narrative effect. That's all that's taking away the slowness of that stuff. My biggest issue with this game. It's weirdly not the thing that I feel like a lot of people are talking about, but it

13:29is not fun to play. Kill lots of guys as wolf-free. The combat is extremely repetitive. You have the square button, I suppose, does his main attack and you can really do stab guys pretty fast when you're jamming on that button. Then you have a diving attack that you can use to move from enemy to enemy. You have a dodge. It does the Batman thing or red flash. You got a dodge because someone is about to shoot at you. Yellow attack means get ready to parry because you can shred this guy if you get him weakened or whatever. The biggest problem with all of that is even when they throw special abilities that you can unlock and all that. It just is so repetitive that it stops being fun very quickly. But also, everyone is really tanky. It doesn't even deliver this thing that I felt like was going to be the shit based on all

14:31the trailers that I had watched for the game of like, you're just going to be tearing through groups of dudes. They're going to throw so many guys at you and it's like a question of stringing them all together and doing stylish. No, if you're fucking Wolverine, you should be chopping heads off. You should have one hit. I should. It's so every rank and file enemy is going to take a few hits. To knock down and then like the slightly stronger enemies take way more and then the boss fights are hand crampingly repetitive. Before we get to the boss fights, because that's a whole other thing. I want to talk about this combat because I think I figured out what it's trying to do. It took me a while to figure out like what is the actual gameplay loop other than like smashing buttons and killing people. And weirdly, I think the gameplay's hook is to undermine the entire power fantasy of Wolverine where you get overwhelmed kind of like a neo agent Smith style. They send in more and more and more enemies and while this happens, you then like build

15:33up your rage and then you get a hit a button that makes you super rage. And then you finally get to like cut through enemies and like one hit right and then you lose your rage and then you get a whole bunch of enemies thrown at you again. And sometimes you turn back into Wolverine baby when you lose your life. You turn back into Wolverine baby. And sometimes you don't even need the rage. You just end up just kind of bashing your head against the wall of these like swarms. I think the problem is it would be like if you were like, okay, we're going to make a Spider-Man game. What is the power fantasy of Spider-Man? And somebody said it's beating up the regular just dudes on the street and they picked no. The power fantasy of Spider-Man is swinging through the city. The power fantasy of Wolverine is not just that you get to like slice up people. The power fantasy is that you are literally unstoppable force going up against immovable objects. The best Wolverine stories Wolverine and Hulk is popular for a reason, right? Because Wolverine and Deadpool is popular for a reason.

16:34These things are like nobody can win. So Wolverine has to be clever and a game where you are given any space to have thoughts or creativity would be what you would want from a Wolverine game. And instead they have made it the most they have reduced Wolverine to the most id mindless button smasher. And that is I would even say I would even say I wish they were used to the most id mindless button smasher. But like because of Griffin's point of like the most of the enemies, even the normal ones take three or four or even five hits. Like the economy wants just a fucking like dynasty warriors Wolverine game where it's like a thousand guys. So much more sense would be a dynasty like when you do a game superhero games where the superheroes like main thing is either invincibility or in the case of Wolverine, this like mutant healing factor that makes him famously pretty hard to kill.

17:35Okay, how do you make that into a video game where you can have failed states if the character if the player doesn't do a good enough job with the fights in this game, your rage bar which is like a separate meter from from your health. You build it by like hitting enemies. You lose it for like taking hits and it's like separated into different chunks like Chris said, you fill the bar and you go into the super rage mode where now you can run around in one shot guys. Some guys some guys it doesn't work on and that shit even doesn't feel good. If your rage bar is has at least one segment filled when your health, if it goes all the way down, you get like a last stand where you fall and you see faces like the metal skeleton underneath and you jam on the square button and then he stands back up, right? But if you don't have enough rage, then he falls down and the screen cuts to black and it starts it starts the fight over again. That is the guys it's fucking we that's insane. That's absolutely a crazy bullshit way to handle this whole idea of how do you have a character

18:35who's basically invulnerable? How do we make that interesting and you didn't like and it's beyond I they did such a good job with Spider-Man. I think the Spider-Man games kick absolute ass because they focus on the stuff that works and feels good about Spider-Man and they did it better than anyone else ever has. But this like I would say though, I don't think anyone on the planet was like, you know, I love the open world stuff in Spider-Man but give me that linear that like I want a whole game of that. And if you think back to those linear mission Spider-Man, they're fine. I wouldn't say they're as bad as this highlight. But they're definitely not the highlight. I would say this project seemed to suffer across the board on a lot of different levels. I know there was leadership turnover. But the larger issue is it's really hard for me to imagine that even in like a white box early testing format, this game was ever fun. It's really hard for me to imagine that. And so someone should have stepped in and been like, this is not working. I realize this is a smaller scale project than an old huge open world Spider-Man game.

19:39But we're either going to move forward with this or not. Realistically, I think Insomnet will be fine. They have a venom game that they're working on. I'm sure they'll have another Spider-Man game, maybe more Russian Clank who knows. There are quality, this is truly shocking. Yes, truly good games. Yes. I feel like maybe with the leadership turnover thing, maybe there was a too many cook situation that would explain the weird nightmare trial level. Oh, I'm sorry Chris, did you have something? I mean, I was just going to say, I agree with you 100% fresh of when was this game good? Like even passable good because the combat is not as good as what is in Spider-Man, right? Like if you get rid of all the web of singing everything else, it's not even remotely close to his good and is interesting in his varied as what's in Spider-Man, which bonkers. But then also, there are basic design choices in this game that you struggle to imagine

20:43getting past play tests. There are XP batteries and other various objects later in the game that you destroy for XP. It's one of the most ridiculous choices I've ever confronted in a video game. I felt like I was losing it. I was texting fresh about this having, I don't know, like a panic attack of what is going on because the game already isn't fun, but at least there's a logic to it until you find these XP containers, which are scattered seemingly randomly. In the fucking woods, there's a glowing garbage can. It will rink and hit to get to get it. It's like, it'll be in the middle of a battlefield that you're supposed to be sneaking around. So it isn't incentivizing you to not play the game, the way that the game would like you to play it, the way that would be supposedly fun. And here's the weirdest shit. You get the XP containers, you build up your like, you know, upgrade points, and then you're introduced to a skill tree that is basically linear that might as well just be unlocking automatically. It's like an incest skill tree.

21:44Well, that's an insane way to save it. Because it has no branches. No, I understand. No, wait, it's just fucking deranged. You get more XP from doing these going out of your way, making the game less fun. And then you open the skill tree and it's like, sorry, you haven't unlocked, like you haven't proceeded far enough to unlock your skills. So your reward for making the game less fun, collecting these crappy items, getting more XP, is to find out that you can't immediately use it to become a stronger character because it's ultimately kind of decided when you should be getting your upgrades anyway. And we talk about the nightmare trials. It's the crazy thing in this game. I feel like you are off your nut, Chris, if you think that that's the craziest thing. Yeah, the nightmare trials are really hard to dial it in. Sometimes you'll be running along in a level chasing like a high, you have just seen a bunch of mutants killed and kidnapped and you're chasing the perpetrators who have done it. And then a glowing purple vine appears and it leads you by the nose to a door and you

22:48go in a magic door. A magic door that fucking, Mr. Sinister made for you or whatever. And it's actually your memories inside a cabin, you're in your memory cabin. Inside your memory cabin, what you do is you do little trials, time trials. And those time trials, sometimes it's like, fight a bunch of guys until you reach Max rage and then kill 10 guys. And if you do it fast enough, you'll get more skill points. But sometimes they're traversal challenges, like half the time they are traversal challenges. And then here's a rundown on Wolverine's traversal abilities. Jump. And it's not even a good jump. It's not a great jump because it's really hard to tell where he's going to land. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, let me just hop it right here. There's another like, what's going on? You do have the ability as Wolverine to jump like 500 feet. If it is at an enemy and yet your normal jump as Wolverine is one of the lowest jumps, your normal jump sucks unless you see a little tiny, tiny, tiny ramp.

23:49And if you jump off the tip of that little tiny ramp where the game wants you to jump, jump very, very far. It feels goddamn terrible. And I think anyone could have told you, play test in this game, like, hey, it feels kind of bad to jump as well. Just trying to jump and land on this little bridge, I landed on the side of it and I fell off and that didn't feel very good. So maybe don't make half of your little in-game challenges that interrupt the tension that you are building with the rest of what little tension you were building with the rest of the game to focus on a part of the game that is just a complete fucking nothing burger. Doom, the remake of Doom had the exact same idea, which was you'd like do these little side quests where you'd, here's a little side challenge where you have to kill 500 guys in three minutes or whatever it was. But Doom did not have these narrative sequences they were interrupting. Like even just having Wolverine walk up to a training computer and have the would have made more sense than a fucking magic door in the middle of a dead sprint while you're chasing

24:54fucking Gene Gray. Yeah. Crazy. It's really, it's truly crazy. I can't believe that this got released like that. It really feels like so, so obviously. There's some other historical context. Okay. Yeah, what am I supposed to say? We should slide in here. Which is there was a leak that suggests that there are many more Marvel games coming from Insomniac, like a many, many more that there is a long calendar of games that need to come out. And it would seem that if you're making this game and it's the MCU problem, literally in video game form, where we got to get this one out the door so we can get to the next ones. I don't know like what would have happened. I can't imagine this game would have been further delayed because it's been in development for so long. But I don't, it feels as if it like it had to come out as if there was no choice. This game needed to come out because I know this is pure speculation.

25:56We have a contract with Disney. We're making five or six games. We need this one to come out so we can make the however many more. And I would say like I don't think six months or a year even would have saved this game. I don't know that this game is salvageable. This thing as fuck sense jump street. I truly don't think that there is a core idea here that that can be polished. No. And this is a problem that we've seen over and over again with superhero games, which is not every superhero makes for a good. It's the Superman game problem, right? Like when you're making a superhero game, you have to take a look at the Superman problem, which is how you make a Superman game about an invincible alien who can fly and kill guys with one punch and shoot lasers out of his head and can't be killed or hurt and is faster than anything else in the world. How do you make that a fun game? I don't know, but I do know that you should probably figure it out before you try because a lot of people have just kind of done it and said like here's a character action game and you're Superman. And if he gets hit enough then the guys had kryptonite gloves on or like give me a kryptonite

27:00gloves explanation. Don't make him just fall over cut to black. And then this fight starts. It basically feels like this game was the game that came out a year before Batman, Archimus Island showed everyone that superhero games can be like something dramatically more interesting. Yeah. You know what's weird though? Is that game exists? It's called X-Men Origins Wolverine and it's actually pretty okay. That is the Activision game. Oh yeah, that was not bad actually. You're right. But I think that is also the game that originated, they called it I think like Ferrell since, but where you could like push the joystick in and like see the hidden stuff around you. That's like the big stuff. Okay, so that is, I feel like the big conversation that's happening about this game is how it is perhaps reflective of a trend in AAA game development that they think players are not very smart or good. And so there's things like, I've heard a lot of people talking about like the treasure chest in this game are hidden, but they do like make a noise and they also give off a

28:03radar paint that is so comically large that you can see it from so very far away that it's like not even like a little collectible that you feel great when you find it. It's just like, well, I got to go get that chest because it'll have 50 scrap in it that I can use to maybe make a new. A third of an outfit. A third of an outfit. And it's like I, I, I understand why that conversation is happening and, and you know, all of this, I think that I think it's a conversation worth having, right? I think about the yellow paint on the mountains of the open world segments of Final Fantasy 7 rebirth and being like, why is this here? Why are we even, why are you even doing that? That's, that's never been fun even once. I understand that conversation. But the whole thing is so bad. Like the whole thing is so misguided and not functional that it feels like, I don't know, you're, you're reading too much into a thing, which is this is just not a good video game.

29:05I, I agree. It is, I don't think that it is speaking down to the player intentionally. I think the game is such a mess and was such a salvage job that they had to put in as many of these things as possible, basically to just get you from one point to the other to ensure that you were going to complete the game. I think the, the skill tree, the ancestry is a perfect example of that of this game only works. It's only passable if we basically play it for you. Otherwise it actually would fall off like the wheels are just totally come off. And I know we're being extremely hard. I feel like the reception to this game has been like middleing for the most part. It is, it is coming out after, you know, our last two episodes was Blood of Dawn Walker. And then a, Oh, Nymu, Shia, both of which are fucking fun, well designed, clever, original

30:06action games, action games where you are fighting and killing lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of enemies all at the same time. This isn't, this is not even, not even remotely close. I truly didn't have a second of fun playing, playing this video. It's also very fun to me because this is the introduction of Sony saying we're not going to release single player games on PC anymore. Okay. Like, oh, that's fun. I like with, with a level of confidence that I just don't fully understand. It's, it's for people that like bought a PS5 because we need to play all the PlayStation exclusives like the all the way asked of us and whatever else to have like your one of two games a year be this is like wolf. That is a tough pill to swallow. So before we wrap up this section, just to build off what Griffin said, there are so many great things to play. And even episodes of the show to go back and listen to, we've talked about Star Wars Zero Company, Big Walk, O'Neil, Mousha, Blood of Dawn Walker.

31:09We haven't even talked about the Metal Gear Solid Collection in sprawl zero yet. We're true or fantastic. Talked about knit classic, the mermaid mask, Fields of Mysterio, Marvel Tocon, the amount of like good games in the last game in there. Yeah. Yeah. Don't sleep on that. It's, yeah, you can play as Wolverine in a good video game this year. It is just a colossal bummer and disappointment. It's just a huge bummer for Insomniac. It really does feel like there is probably a lot of stories. It's the destiny thing, right? Of like, gosh, I bet you guys didn't really want to make this like this. I'm sure that that's like, well, I don't think they want to make it like this. I think they certainly said like, yeah, we can do a Wolverine game. But when you are being asked to do so many things in this game are so disparate and weird that it does feel like a salvage job. That is true. I truly do like sympathize. I understand that that must be so miserable to like dedicate that much of your time and

32:13life and creative energy into something like this. It's just like, yeah. I mean, as I said, I think the studio will be fine largely like they have a slate of games coming out, including what we'll probably, I don't actually know, but we'll probably be an open world Venom game and based on the Venom sequences that we're in, Spider-Man 2, like fucking count me in. I want an open world crackdown game said in New York City. Like that sounds fucking awesome. Bring it on. So this studio will be fine. They make very good games. This feels like an aberration and hopefully not only them, but Sony and really the AAA world at large will learn a lot of lessons from this game to say like, hey, let's pump the brakes a little bit before things get too far down the road. I do think every game developer is having a conversation about their fart line and whether or not the game needs it. I mean, there are, I think the thing, to some extent, the like white paint thing is overblown because I think there are games that do it very well in a diagetic way that doesn't feel out of place. But yeah, when it's lazy, when it's lazily applied and no other sort of option was considered

33:17like. If you ever get the chance, listen through to like any of the valve like developer commentary tracks in their games because half of them are like player guidance and how do we edge the player in a direction without painting a giant fucking neon arrow on it? Yeah, it's very, very interesting. Some of those nightmare trials have literal glowing arrows, like literal glowing neon arrows for you to follow on this linear path. Okay, I don't want to truly sucks to talk about. Okay, we're done. Games like this. Let's stop. I'm sure it'll come up in goady coverage. So we'll take a quick break and be back with better stuff than that. I am hurtling towards my forties with grace, I think. And a big part of that is me putting away my childish things, not eating so many takis, trying to do better by my own human body. And a big part of that has been getting some help from my friends at ritual. Ritual, you may know them for their amazing vitamins. I've been taking their multi-vitamin for men for years now.

34:22But I have also recently hopped back on the symbiotic plus train. Symbiotic plus is a complete biotic formula. Three in one was clinically to study pre-pro and postbiotics and clinically studied doses to support a balanced gut microbiome. If you don't know this, your gut has a bunch of little guys in there. And they need some help sometimes. And there's, you know, they get a little dysregulated, a little disorganized. Symbiotic plus comes in. It really whips those bad boys into shape. It's one daily mint essence capsule for bloat gut and regularity support. To be completely familiar with GMOs, major allergens, animal products, shady fillers, and artificial colors, I take one every day alongside my multivitamins and I feel pretty good. I also enjoy the minty flavor of these supplements. None of my other daily pills have a refreshing sort of vibe. These ones do. And they keep my stuff balanced. So it's a win-win. Want a balanced gut microbiome with ritual symbiotic plus? Save 25% off your first month today at ritual.com slash besties. That's ritual.com slash besties for 25% off your first month.

35:33You know about rocket money. You'll listen to this show. You know the basics that you can find subscriptions that you don't need or want anymore and get them taken care of. You can get them off the books. You can just start saving some cash. But what you might not know about rocket money is that you can also use it to get your budget in order. And that is what I use it for. It has been a huge help and ongoing help really. Even beyond all the subscription stuff. I am able to categorize my transactions into various categories including custom ones so that I can look back on my spending and see patterns. Where am I spending my cash? Am I spending it all on cost? I'm not spending it all on grocery or let's be real. Am I spending it all on rare vinyl records for popular video games in the 1970s and the 80s movie soundtracks? When it is the latter and I need to get that under control, it becomes very obvious because I will see it in rocket money's visualizations of my spending.

36:34That's the thing. You can literally visualize everything in a single dashboard to give you a clear view of your financial picture. Rocket money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Let rocket money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocket money.com for the SASH Besties. That is rocket money.com SASH Besties. Rocket money.com SASH Besties. Real quick, I have been using the Steam Frame, which is the new VR headset from... This is the one that I cared about of the announcement. I want a Steam machine that would be cool to have, but this is the one thing that I've registered my interest in. This does VR shit. Also explain why you look like the lawnmower man. Yes. I am still wearing it. So just a heads up for people I know are audio. It's so sleek. Steam Frame. The VR headset, it starts at $1,050.

37:37It's actually the exact same price as the Steam machine starting price. It's kind of funny. Here is the... I think the big question is, who is this audience for? Who is the draw for this product? I think the answer is pretty simple. For people that want to do high-end VR gaming, wirelessly, streamed from your computer, I've literally never come close to any stream game experience that is smoother than this. It is peerless and incredible. I was playing Half-Life Alex on Mac settings wirelessly, and I could not notice a difference between that and being wired. Let me ask you a question. I think I remember the answer too, but you can also... It also can play games on it, right? Like an Oculus Quest. It has enough juice in the tank to play games. Correct. The language they use is standalone. Anything that has standalone support, which includes the Half-Life Alex, they actually

38:37designed a version of Half-Life Alex that runs standalone on the headset, you can also do. Those games obviously look good, but not nearly as good as they would if they were being streamed from a beefy gaming PC. Half-Life Alex in particular, yeah. You can notice the difference, but it's very playable. Honestly, as with all things in VR, if you're in it for 10 minutes, you don't see the details. You just sort of are in that world and you kind of forget. That's very cool. I think all the standalone, like on device gaming, to me, does not feel markedly that much better from what I was seeing in like a Quest III, for example, which also obviously has standalone gaming. If you're doing it for that and you already have a Quest III, there's no... I don't think there's any reason to do that. Mark from the fact that, hey, you can also use your Steam library. That's it for me. It's the ecosystem. Whatever it's called now, the meta ecosystem, meta-gaming world-piece VR platform. It's like, I always feel when I buy a game on there, like I've just kind of...

39:41Mark's eyes... That's something and then putting it in a little boat and then pushing that boat into a river, leading to a waterfall of just like, well, I'll never see you again. And also Mark's eyes are on the other side of the headset, staring at the packet. It takes you three inches away. And it's distracting. Yeah, having his glowing eyes in the background of every game that I... But having like, I don't know, the Steam ecosystem on there, like, yeah, that sounds good. That's where the rest of my shit is for better or worse. Yeah. I think if you are... Look, if you play a lot of VR games or you think you're going to play a lot of them, headset is from a comfort standpoint, probably the most comfortable headset I've ever worn. It's still a headset. It's still bulky. But yeah, it's very, very comfortable, incredibly comfortable. Contrary, it can be used as like a normal controller, so you can play flat games as well on it, like on a giant 150-foot tall iMac screen in your living room, that kind of thing. So I think all that stuff is like, from a VR gaming standpoint, like people that love VR gaming, they will find draws in it if they have the money to spare, which is not a small

40:44amount of money. Yeah. So what I've sort of talked about, the larger thing that I'm most interested in is that this will continue to open the door for Steam OS to be running on many, many more devices, specifically ARM devices, which are all like cell phone chip devices, like all the handhelds we've been talking about. Currently you can run Steam OS on a lot of those handhelds, but you have to do workarounds where you're installing like Rocknix or Armada OS. Things like workarounds to do it, but this hopefully will lead to the eventual release of a full on native version of Steam OS on these devices. I'm so happy for us to get a trickle down when you know, tech has been doing all this bullshitery that has made it more expensive and miserable to play video games, and the fact that all of this VR headset has somehow led to, I can play Steam on my phone when I want to finally, that's the good stuff.

41:46I'll take it. I mean, my interest in this thing is way more, I don't know, direct and straightforward in that like I have played VR games that aren't like anything else. Like I've, there aren't, there aren't just not a ton, but there are VR games that I have played that I, you don't, you simply can't sort of have that same experience. Even have my followers. I don't think there's any one-to-one comparison for that game. I know you've played more involved VR games that I can't play. Yeah, but even like taking out the like big major tent pole VR game, like I still will go back and play Superhot VR on the quest because it's fun and it's, there's not anything else like it really in non VR sort of format. So like I don't know, people get so weird talking about VR as a platform, as a potential future for like games. And I know that a lot of that gets bound up in the like Meta's decision to like make it

42:47so intrinsically linked to your Facebook and, and you know, the people who run that platform, I understand all of that. But it's so rad and it's so promising and like I could show you a game on the VR headset that I think would sell you on like this as a thing that would be fun to play other similar games on. But it's so rough right now for game development and it feels like you're really not seeing as many people talking about making games for VR. Not as much as, you know, I think that that was short up by the PSVR. Is that still, are they still making PSVR 2 games? No. No. Okay, I didn't think. But then like, I don't, but there's a lot of the studio that made moss that little mouse VR game. The moss is great, right? Yeah, that's the year just closed. Yeah, so it's like, things are tough for everyone and I feel like the market for, we're going to spend a bunch of time making a game that is on a platform that is maybe not so widely adopted.

43:48And also the like ecosystem is like inherently so fratious of like, well, you got it, it's got to be on meta and then it's got to be on. I think steam sort of stepping back into the game will be very good for this. But that is what I am interested in and what I am hopeful for because I really like playing games in VR, dungeons of eternity. That like multiplayer hack and slash VR first person game is like so fun and so good. And it's risky, I think to make a game like that on a platform that's not so, that's not in everyone's house. But it's, I don't know, it gets me so excited. The challenge with any of these boomer busts, I don't know, moments in gaming and technology is initially there's a ton of investment money coming in from people outside of the hobby and outside of games and something you have a ton of games, you have a whole bunch of big games. And as that money disappears, it's like we've created a false idea of how interesting and popular the platform is. Sure.

44:49And that is what I worry about here is how big is this audience once you pull all that money away and all of those resources. And something you're having to charge people over a grand for this headset and that's the other thing man. Yeah. This is, it's almost twice as much as the Quest 3. Well, and I'll say the Quest 3, notably massively subsidized by Meta, like they would not be able to sell that at that price without that subsidization. Yeah, that's probably not super sustainable in the long term. Correct. But yeah, I don't know, we've seen so many major tech companies, they should have run out of money at something, right? It seems like that, but it doesn't happen and that's weird. Hey, should we talk about some of the stuff that came out in that Nintendo Direct? Yes. That aired after we recorded our last episode. So we were able to talk about the Zelda stuff, but then they announced some new games, including one that has really set this household a light and that is Kirby in the world beyond.

45:51A new 3D Kirby action platformer that looks like maybe an open world version of Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which is one of my favorite games on this way. Yeah, I think we all knew that that Kirby team was working on some 3D follow up to Forgotten Land, or Forgotten Realm, I think is that game? Oh, Forgotten Land. Forgotten Land, sorry. Game, right. Forgotten Realm is like a D&D thing. But I did not expect them, yeah, this game, as described in the trailer, it is an open world game, like giant open fields, breath of the wild style, fucking Kirby game, which is a wild move, given when you look at Kirby and the Forgotten Land, like largely those are relatively linear levels. Yeah. So I mean, with little side path stuff to kind of find an uncover, but yeah, it was level based and this doesn't seem like it. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still somewhat like a hub and spoke kind of thing. Yeah, if you're kind of like entering little spaces that give you more of a traditional Kirby level, we'll see.

46:53The trailer is great because it promises the Truman Show experience for Kirby, suggesting that Kirby has been trapped inside of some smaller reality all along, only to break free from it and then discover the open world waiting for them. Kirby, how did this happen? Like how did we go Kirby being kind of like C in terms of resources committed to the game? Kirby always hit in terms of the merch, but you know, small Kirby games, then we get Forgotten Land, which is one of my favorite games that I ever made. I adore that game. And then to get this even big, I, I'm not arguing. I just don't know how it happened. I mean, maybe they maybe they're like deep in debt to Sakurai for all the smash stuff. So this is the price that he has to make. I don't know. I don't know the reason for it, but like I, I, I, I, Forgotten Land is so good. It's so strong. It's such a great fucking platformer with, with two player functionality that is, is really

47:59just kind of the best, really just kind of the best on the platform. I'm really hoping that that exists in God. By the way, I would be heartbroken if there was not a little, you know, spear toting a bottle day that, you know, you could, you could play on because it, this, that was like one of my favorite games. It was maybe the first game that me and Henry got like really into it and 100% it, because of how fun the co-op stuff was. I really hope that that's in here too. The other big one, Metroid Ravenous, a new 2D Metroid game. It looks a lot like Metroid Dread. But flips it, flips it. Now I'm excited. Metroid Dread, I don't need a horror game. I like horror movies. I don't like horror games where I feel like I'm just having to hide, even for a few seconds to wait for somebody to pass me. This time, you are the horror monster. You are the like the slasher villain. You are hungry as fuck and you're just gonna start, I don't know, eating the souls out of your enemies.

49:00It looks good. I mean, it looks like she has a magic gauntlet. That lets her absorb power or whatever. I mean, spoiler alert for the last game, but she basically like became a Metroid. Yeah. It's been so long for that Dread. Or something. It does rock. They really grow at me. They love Dread. I'm stoked for this. This studio, which is Mercury's theme, has been making these 2D Metroid games since the 3DS1 Metroid Samus Returns where they remade the second Metroid game. And all of them have been bangers. I mean, the first two certainly have been bangers. They also did the Lords of Shadow Castlevania games as well. Yeah, it's a great studio and it is a reminder of like, hey, you can bring in new blood to a franchise and see what they can do with it. And clearly, they have a lot of passion for... Well, except they did do that with Metroid a couple of times with less success. Well, originally Retro, they gave it to Retro and Retro Crush did originally.

50:00And then Retro didn't crush it. Crush it. That's true. There was also another M, which is not. Oh yeah, other M was bad, you're right. But yeah, I mean, this looks fantastic. I'm so excited. It does also. I am generally pretty good about not buying things for my house, but they are selling a $45 Chozo statue that looks fucking awesome. It's an amiibo. It is one to one scale, so it's 9 feet tall. Okay. No, it's about, I don't know, size of a football, something like that. It's big. It's got an orb you can smash. Well, I think you put the orb in there. You can put an orange in there or something. Nice. Looks fucking awesome. But I'm so excited. I love these games and I'm replying dread right now, so it's well timed and it's only... It's January, like it's closed for this title. Yeah. I think those were the only big sort of... Yeah, those were the standout. It's for me. I'm sure. And they announced like Persona 6 is coming. There was a lot of like, and this is coming here too. Monster Hunter Wilds. It's also coming to the switch too.

51:02Metra Camelian. You guys know that one? It's on here now. I was surprised at how quickly that came on. Good for them. Yeah. I think let's jump into honorable mentions. You guys have anything you've been applying or watching or etc. I mean, I'm playing a game that we're going to talk about on Restys. A little game called Metal Gear Solid 4. And here's my little... It's just a little on this bush. I have found the least rust rustic game ever created. It is. I play it. I know. I know. I know. And yet I played it too. And I thought... I don't know what I thought. But I could not wait to talk more about this game. We're going to be talking about that. And then also I've been playing... You all get into that sprawl zero yet. I have not played again. Yeah. I played a little bit of that. It's not my voice. It's not my like thing. It's not my... Yeah. It's not more... It's almost Boomer Shooter-y, which is just kind of not...

52:03I think that's more your jam than my jam. But it is... When you get some shit sort of comboed together, it does feel quite cool. Yes. We'll talk about that more in this episode too. But my short version is Boomer Shooter Bullet Storm. And that is a very good way of putting this. Delicious. Yeah. I've been playing a game called The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. Really? Yeah. I was looking for something. Is it about a house full of puzzles or anything? No. Okay. So I have not touched Blueprints since we got to the point that I last talked about it. Mostly because I have not had any spare time to do the very intricate preparation that I need to do before I can jump into that thing that I'm at. So we're going to pause on Blueprints for a second. I've been playing Breath of the Wild with my son because I was looking for something that I could play with him. And I was like, do I start with Tears of the Kingdom? Do I start with Breath of the Wild? I am so happy that I started with Breath of the Wild because it has given me a new appreciation for this game.

53:04Specifically because the two games are surprisingly different, which I think people sort of got. But I think the general response is like, Tears of Kingdom is just a better version of Breath of the Wild. Like in every way, it's just better. And I think Breath of the Wild in some ways is a more precise scalpel of a game because you're really all you have is like the world around you. Like the environment, the enemies, that's all you have. You don't have, you can't build a fucking helicopter that can drop bombs from the sky. You don't have that option. So you find yourself in these situations where it's like, what can I do? And it just feels so organic. The other day we were playing and we got to the bridge of Hylia, which is a very tall bridge across the lake, and my son, who's five, was like, my turn, grabbed the controller and leapt off the bridge. And we landed on one of the pillars underneath the bridge, but we have no stamina. And so I spent the next like 20 minutes trying to like, math out a way that it somehow get back to the top of the bridge without fast traveling, which felt like cheating.

54:08That shit is cool. Like this game is filled with stuff like that where you really have the problem solve. And especially a master quest, I'm not doing that. I doubt you're playing that, but it really turns it into a true sort of survival game. And like an amazing immersive sim, like one of the best immersive sims I've ever played unquestionably. It's such a cool experience and I'm playing it on the Switch 2. So you got the 60 FPS going and it just looks fucking stunning and sounds great. And I'm like, totally reinvigorated by it. The only other thing I want to mention is I watched and I'm very late on this. But I watched Scott Pilgrim takes off, which was the Netflix series that came out a few years ago, initially build as just an animated version of the original like story, like just like a fun bait and switch. Fun bait and switch. But in fact, you learn after the first episode, it's actually like a semi-sequel side. I don't know. It's like an alternate story that is like completely different from what happened in the

55:10movie. And then loses that first fight against Matthew Patel. And then what mostly what is Ramona do kind of like after that? Yeah. Very charming, beautifully animated. Oh my God, the animation is through the roof insane. They got all the original voice actors from the movie to do all the voice acting. They got the Gucci. They got the Gucci music. Yeah. Yeah, it's really good stuff. That's what I call an demonic gun. And it's getting things for it. Yeah, it's getting things for it. Yeah, I'm the Gucci. So it's great. It's on Netflix. And Netflix with a Rachel called J-sox B&B rules. So there to backstory. During COVID, we watch a show on Netflix called Hyori's Bed and Breakfast where Lee Hyori, who is a very famous Korean pop star and her husband run a bed and breakfast out of their little cabin in the woods of Jeju Island. And it was so charming and so chill. And they really cooked all the meals and cleaned and really worked very hard opening up their

56:11home and making it into a B&B that people could come and say. And they carry B&B shows up. And Gary fucking B&B shows up. Well no, the show ran for two seasons and then people figured out where the house was and then they had to cancel it. J-sox is a UJ-sox. He is a TV variety TV performer. He's been on a fucking ton of Korean reality shows and different sort of TV entertainment things. And it's a very similar style show only instead of having like his house that he's hosting at people at. It is like a special facility. He had built that has like a gymnasium and like a kitchen and it but otherwise it's like four Korean celebrities running a bed and breakfast for 24 guests who have come in and at one point Hyori and her husband show up to like help with one of the like the second half of the season or something like that. I think it's a very acquired taste, a very specific taste but like this format like the

57:13Korean variety show format is one that is like a vibe that I really really do enjoy quite a lot and it's truly entertaining watching celebrities. There's like a moment of realization in the very first episode where they're like, oh no, this is going to be hard. Like we just finished making lunch and now we have to start making dinner. Uh oh. There's a scene where they have to go buy coffee for everyone and they bring like a big container like dispenser to a cafe and get it filled up and then realize while they're driving back up the mountain to where the B and B is like the coffee is just sloshing all over the car and watching them like panic and try. It's like you guys aren't built for this but watching you try to do it to like make a comfortable space for your guests is like is really fun. It sounds so nice. Yeah. Yeah, it's really nice. It's a hell of a vibe. I've also been playing a game called Restore chill electronics repairs.

58:13Yeah. I haven't but I really want to is it good. You run an electronics repair shop in Akihabra and people come to you and they give you their broken electronics and then almost like a auto mechanic simulator style like you you strip them for parts and you clean up the stuff that works and throw out the stuff that doesn't and then you can buy like second hand broken you know versions of that you know maybe a you know an Nintendo DS and you can strip it for parts and combine them into one functional product and then that's hate and buy new stuff and uh the again the vibe is like really cool. The vibe is really fantastic. It looks really uh looks really lovely and I mean. Did you play with the controller or is it like a touch? I tried to play with the controller. Yeah. I downloaded it on the um Rock ally X and it's you can it's just like yeah so much better on mouse and keyboard like dragging shit and dropping it on your little workstation like it just makes so much more sense to do that mouse and keyboard style um but yeah it's

59:17a lot of fun stripping a PSP for parts in a video game and repairing it. And I'll bet they have like fun off brand. Yeah like they can't call anything their actual names. Yeah that's cool. Been playing that one and enjoying it a lot. I think we've done it. Awesome. Playing it you want to recap the games we talked about? Oh my gosh what didn't we talk about? We talked talked about Wolverine. We talked about the steam frame. We talked about the new curvy and Metroid ravenous. Metal Gear Solid 4. Sprawl 0. Uh breath the wild. Scott Pilgrim takes off re-story and Griffin what was the name of the show that you want? J-socks B and B rules. Thank you. We will have all of them. I spelled it out for you in the in the run. It'll be in the show notes. Yeah. We also talked about Hintide projects except. Oh yeah. Oh yeah thank you thank you thank you. Yeah I don't want to sleep on that um folks thank you so much for listening to this episode of the besties. Did you know we have a patreon that you can go and you can support us directly and get

1:00:18access to episodes of the resties that Chris and Russ do where they talk about the games that we don't talk about here on the besties because they're so dirty like um Hintide project 6.7. Um and it's also where we put up our monthly bracket battle episodes where we get special guests to come and help us decide like um which video game has the most delicious looking food because that's all I mean it's all there and it's so much fun at uh besties. What is it patreon.com slash the besties. Yes. Do you want to tell us about some backers? Oh I would love to. Some backers over at patreon.com slash the besties we have Jason K we have Mark we have Erlich or Erlich I'm not sure it's one of those and we have Sean and thank you for being backers. Thank you to everyone else for being backers. You make the show possible you make the main show possible you make the patreon possible the whole shebang. Yeah. Thank you to everyone else for listening. I'm going to add here that it's very possible that name was just Eric. I think it might just be Eric. I think it's just a fan. I'm Ellen R.I. C.H. Right so where was the L that you know Eric yeah you're right it's probably Erlich Erlich

1:01:22Erich Erich Erich. Yeah possibly. Erich is a good guy. I feel I feel E. Rich with the game we're going to be playing next week. I feel rich in electronic entertainment which is it's Fire Emblem fortunes weave and then Nintendo switch to can't fucking wait that'll be all 200 hours of it right. Yeah for sure. I think I might actually do that. So join us again next week and every week here on the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games. Besties!