Having not yet listened to the episode: I'm not some frothing-at-the-mouth big-G Gamer, but you all got this wrong originally. Not so much the bugs part, although I played it at launch and did not have any T-posing or anything like that. More that the systems were pretty fun (if extremely weird, like crafting and upgrading) and the story was really good. It might be the best Keanu performance of any media, something about him just works in this game. I rarely play these huge games twice and I had just as much fun with a second character years later as I did originally playing it, maybe more fun. I will say in terms of the original critiques, beyond the fair criticism of launch problems, Ron Funches criticism about doing jobs for the police was dead-on. That did feel wrong and Ron put his finger right on it. Kudos on that observation... for a game about fighting world-dominating corpos, you do spend most of your time killing strivers like yourself.
Now, however, comes the huge caveat: I have never understood what this setting offers to the younger audience. Like, if you didn't grow up in that moment in the late 80s and 90s when Cyberpunk and Shadowrun were TTRPGs, phreakers like Captain Crunch were already legends, growing up on stories like Steve Jackson Games being raided by the FBI... Cyberpunk 2077 is 100% built on nostalgia for that era. Back then it still seemed like a distant but distinct possibility that corpos would monitor and control all aspects of our political and social lives. We essentially now live in that dystopia except the boringest version. I'm always surprised that this game resonates for anyone under the age of 40. Anyway thanks for the venue, that's been on my mind since launch.
1. Griffin is wild for recommending The Thing lmao
2. For a spooky-but-not-scary movie, I would highly recommend the Japanese thriller Cure.
3. This is a questions specifically for The Resties: What do you both think games journalism will look like in the next 5-10 years? It feels like there's more options than ever for people to engage with games criticism (streamers, YT reviews, TikTok, etc.), so I wanted to know if y'all had any thoughts on what that might look like in the future.
This is meant as no offense of course, but I feel like my gaming tastes line up less with Justin’s than anyone’s on the show. But when he recommended Sea of Stars, something piqued my interest. I’ve gotta say, I’m absolutely loving it. The action RPG element keeps me engaged in combat rather than just X-mashing through fights, and the nostalgia is real. I also find it enjoyable to tackle a game that I feel like I can finish rather than something like Tears of the Kingdom which I absolutely loved but feel like with two young children will never have time to finish. Thanks for the recommendation!
This is a retro game question, probably mostly for Griffin, but I'd be thrilled to hear everyone's perspective: I recently managed to purchase an Analogue Pocket in transparent purple, and I'm wondering what games y'all would recommend for it? Thanks!
You know its funny, I preordered cyberpunk on stadia. I played through 2 times with no bugs or issues at all.
Now at 2.0 I repurchased on steam and I've run into a dozen bugs in less than 10 hours. When I summon my car it clips inside other vehicles and causes absolute chaos, and similar bugs. Nothing really game breaking, had to reload saves a few times.
It's also wild how much content they've ganked from the anime and jammed in here, feels like when a book doesn't sell very well but the movie is a smash hit so they reprint the book with the movie poster kinda thing
I had a similar scenario. I loved the game and played it through several times. Now, I got bugs coming out of the wazoo! Still, great game. I have no regrets. Definitely going to play it again this weekend.
How do the Besties keep up with this year? With all these game releases I'm getting overwhelmed and just end up going back to to Risk of Rain 2 for another hundred hours...
Hey besties! I was listening to this week's episode when someone asked you about some horror recommendations for people who don't really like horror. As a longstanding person who's always hated watching scary movies because I'm a big scaredy-cat and never quite understood people who are obsessed with horror genre and slasher movies etc etc I recently had an epiphany! I have been reading a manga series called Dai Dark by Hayashida Q the same mangaka for Dodohedoro. The series revolves around some very interesting and funny characters and is almost slice of life to an extent but the context for everything is that to everyone else they are some of the most feared monsters and Boogeyman in this grim dark space reality. Having such jovial and funny main characters that are a joy to watch interact mixed in with very dark settings and scenario and lots of gore and horror elements has really opened my mind to this possibly being the separation people are able to make when they enjoy horror movies and it also helped me make this separation when watching older campy horror movies. I was wondering if you've ever read the manga or any other manga that are good recommendations for horror? Also what draws you to watching horror movies is it the thrill of the rush of adrenaline of being scared or are you able to separate the campiness of the fact that it's a prescribed horror movie and that all the gore and stuff is over the top and not actually be scared of what's going on?
Wondering if you've checked out Chants of Senaar? The gameplay feels so unique as it's based on the construction of language. Living in the US as a native english speaker, I'm almost always surrounded by those who speak my language. This game has helped me gain perspective on what it's like to learn a language through exploration and context clues. Would love to hear the Besties thoughts!
Hey Besties, there's a couple indie games I'm interested in that I'm not sure if you've talked about on the show. Interested to hear your takes on Chats of Senaar, and the upcoming games Thirsty Suitors and Schim!
Speaking of DLCs, Case of the Golden Idol has had two DLCs since it was last discussed on Besties. I seem to remember Griffin remarking "gimme one of these monthly". It would be nice to hear at least one of you talk about them and what you think might be next for Color Gray Games.
I think I’m perfectly OK with companies releasing broken games as long as they disclose that fact at the point of sale. Internal quality assurance simply can’t compete with the effectiveness of a huge amount of users playing a game and reporting the issues online. It has become, at least in the short term, profitable to push the role of quality assurance onto the end user, when fans are more than happy to pay to test your game at a level of depth that a team of QA testers could never achieve.
While as a consumer it is satisfying to be able to buy a game on release and have a near flawless user experience, from a business perspective I imagine the cost / value proposition it makes almost no sense to maintain a reputation of bug-free releases unless there’s a long-standing precedent. For example, I bet Nintendo would suffer far more from a moderately buggy TofK release than Bethesda would have if Starfield had been a complete mess from day one.
Aa big part of Nintendo being able to uphold their reputation is because they control the hardware their games are played on. For the majority of studios targeting several platforms, there is a massive variety of hardware that needs to be tested, and the result is that making an equally polished experience is far more expensive. Depending on the studio or scope of the game, it may be near impossible. Making perfectly portable software is no small feat, hence why web applications dominate these days. Game engines do not mitigate the need to consider a user’s hardware to the extent that web browsers do.
Slapping Early Access on your game and selling it at a small discount seems like a no brainer and ultimately results in a better product.
I put this on my Christmas list on like early November of 2020 and forgot about it, the reviews came out ripping it to shreds, I was glad I didn't buy it.
Christmas Day, it turned out my wife had ended up buying it.
I never even opened it, and I eventually lost it completely. Now I actually want to play it, and I gotta buy it digitally because I have a series S and my Xbox One has since shit the bed. Life is funny.
I meant to leave a comment last week telling them to please not review phantom liberty after their review of the base game. But they loved it now? I am happily surprised they loved all the parts I loved about cyberpunk now.
Griffin at one point says this update "doesn't reinvent the wheel" and that's a truly crazy take; this update foundationally changes almost everything about the game. It crashed literally one hundred times for me in 30 hours. Clothes don't appear on characters at the same speed characters appear, so you're talking to naked people sometimes. It's insane to hear people praise this effort. I feel like I'm losing my mind. I loved the story a lot but it's so buggy and the Steam comments are hundreds of people having the same experience. I was certain I'd wake up to a podcast about that but it's just full-throated praise.
Having not yet listened to the episode: I'm not some frothing-at-the-mouth big-G Gamer, but you all got this wrong originally. Not so much the bugs part, although I played it at launch and did not have any T-posing or anything like that. More that the systems were pretty fun (if extremely weird, like crafting and upgrading) and the story was really good. It might be the best Keanu performance of any media, something about him just works in this game. I rarely play these huge games twice and I had just as much fun with a second character years later as I did originally playing it, maybe more fun. I will say in terms of the original critiques, beyond the fair criticism of launch problems, Ron Funches criticism about doing jobs for the police was dead-on. That did feel wrong and Ron put his finger right on it. Kudos on that observation... for a game about fighting world-dominating corpos, you do spend most of your time killing strivers like yourself.
Now, however, comes the huge caveat: I have never understood what this setting offers to the younger audience. Like, if you didn't grow up in that moment in the late 80s and 90s when Cyberpunk and Shadowrun were TTRPGs, phreakers like Captain Crunch were already legends, growing up on stories like Steve Jackson Games being raided by the FBI... Cyberpunk 2077 is 100% built on nostalgia for that era. Back then it still seemed like a distant but distinct possibility that corpos would monitor and control all aspects of our political and social lives. We essentially now live in that dystopia except the boringest version. I'm always surprised that this game resonates for anyone under the age of 40. Anyway thanks for the venue, that's been on my mind since launch.
1. Griffin is wild for recommending The Thing lmao
2. For a spooky-but-not-scary movie, I would highly recommend the Japanese thriller Cure.
3. This is a questions specifically for The Resties: What do you both think games journalism will look like in the next 5-10 years? It feels like there's more options than ever for people to engage with games criticism (streamers, YT reviews, TikTok, etc.), so I wanted to know if y'all had any thoughts on what that might look like in the future.
This is meant as no offense of course, but I feel like my gaming tastes line up less with Justin’s than anyone’s on the show. But when he recommended Sea of Stars, something piqued my interest. I’ve gotta say, I’m absolutely loving it. The action RPG element keeps me engaged in combat rather than just X-mashing through fights, and the nostalgia is real. I also find it enjoyable to tackle a game that I feel like I can finish rather than something like Tears of the Kingdom which I absolutely loved but feel like with two young children will never have time to finish. Thanks for the recommendation!
This is a retro game question, probably mostly for Griffin, but I'd be thrilled to hear everyone's perspective: I recently managed to purchase an Analogue Pocket in transparent purple, and I'm wondering what games y'all would recommend for it? Thanks!
You know its funny, I preordered cyberpunk on stadia. I played through 2 times with no bugs or issues at all.
Now at 2.0 I repurchased on steam and I've run into a dozen bugs in less than 10 hours. When I summon my car it clips inside other vehicles and causes absolute chaos, and similar bugs. Nothing really game breaking, had to reload saves a few times.
It's also wild how much content they've ganked from the anime and jammed in here, feels like when a book doesn't sell very well but the movie is a smash hit so they reprint the book with the movie poster kinda thing
Yeah, I love the guys and have listened since the launch of the show but this one was wild. It's so buggy and they didn't mention it even once.
I had a similar scenario. I loved the game and played it through several times. Now, I got bugs coming out of the wazoo! Still, great game. I have no regrets. Definitely going to play it again this weekend.
How do the Besties keep up with this year? With all these game releases I'm getting overwhelmed and just end up going back to to Risk of Rain 2 for another hundred hours...
Chants of Sennaar looks like an absolutely Russ (and his companion notebook) kind of game.
Hey besties! I was listening to this week's episode when someone asked you about some horror recommendations for people who don't really like horror. As a longstanding person who's always hated watching scary movies because I'm a big scaredy-cat and never quite understood people who are obsessed with horror genre and slasher movies etc etc I recently had an epiphany! I have been reading a manga series called Dai Dark by Hayashida Q the same mangaka for Dodohedoro. The series revolves around some very interesting and funny characters and is almost slice of life to an extent but the context for everything is that to everyone else they are some of the most feared monsters and Boogeyman in this grim dark space reality. Having such jovial and funny main characters that are a joy to watch interact mixed in with very dark settings and scenario and lots of gore and horror elements has really opened my mind to this possibly being the separation people are able to make when they enjoy horror movies and it also helped me make this separation when watching older campy horror movies. I was wondering if you've ever read the manga or any other manga that are good recommendations for horror? Also what draws you to watching horror movies is it the thrill of the rush of adrenaline of being scared or are you able to separate the campiness of the fact that it's a prescribed horror movie and that all the gore and stuff is over the top and not actually be scared of what's going on?
On the subject of indie games, can I trick the Besties into playing Rimworld if I say it's a Stardew Valley mod?
Real shame one of the best, most popular indies on Steam has gotten no mention on this podcast.
Hi y'all,
Wondering if you've checked out Chants of Senaar? The gameplay feels so unique as it's based on the construction of language. Living in the US as a native english speaker, I'm almost always surrounded by those who speak my language. This game has helped me gain perspective on what it's like to learn a language through exploration and context clues. Would love to hear the Besties thoughts!
Hey Besties, there's a couple indie games I'm interested in that I'm not sure if you've talked about on the show. Interested to hear your takes on Chats of Senaar, and the upcoming games Thirsty Suitors and Schim!
Speaking of DLCs, Case of the Golden Idol has had two DLCs since it was last discussed on Besties. I seem to remember Griffin remarking "gimme one of these monthly". It would be nice to hear at least one of you talk about them and what you think might be next for Color Gray Games.
I think I’m perfectly OK with companies releasing broken games as long as they disclose that fact at the point of sale. Internal quality assurance simply can’t compete with the effectiveness of a huge amount of users playing a game and reporting the issues online. It has become, at least in the short term, profitable to push the role of quality assurance onto the end user, when fans are more than happy to pay to test your game at a level of depth that a team of QA testers could never achieve.
While as a consumer it is satisfying to be able to buy a game on release and have a near flawless user experience, from a business perspective I imagine the cost / value proposition it makes almost no sense to maintain a reputation of bug-free releases unless there’s a long-standing precedent. For example, I bet Nintendo would suffer far more from a moderately buggy TofK release than Bethesda would have if Starfield had been a complete mess from day one.
Aa big part of Nintendo being able to uphold their reputation is because they control the hardware their games are played on. For the majority of studios targeting several platforms, there is a massive variety of hardware that needs to be tested, and the result is that making an equally polished experience is far more expensive. Depending on the studio or scope of the game, it may be near impossible. Making perfectly portable software is no small feat, hence why web applications dominate these days. Game engines do not mitigate the need to consider a user’s hardware to the extent that web browsers do.
Slapping Early Access on your game and selling it at a small discount seems like a no brainer and ultimately results in a better product.
I put this on my Christmas list on like early November of 2020 and forgot about it, the reviews came out ripping it to shreds, I was glad I didn't buy it.
Christmas Day, it turned out my wife had ended up buying it.
I never even opened it, and I eventually lost it completely. Now I actually want to play it, and I gotta buy it digitally because I have a series S and my Xbox One has since shit the bed. Life is funny.
I meant to leave a comment last week telling them to please not review phantom liberty after their review of the base game. But they loved it now? I am happily surprised they loved all the parts I loved about cyberpunk now.
Griffin at one point says this update "doesn't reinvent the wheel" and that's a truly crazy take; this update foundationally changes almost everything about the game. It crashed literally one hundred times for me in 30 hours. Clothes don't appear on characters at the same speed characters appear, so you're talking to naked people sometimes. It's insane to hear people praise this effort. I feel like I'm losing my mind. I loved the story a lot but it's so buggy and the Steam comments are hundreds of people having the same experience. I was certain I'd wake up to a podcast about that but it's just full-throated praise.
I believe he was talking about the new skill tree specifically.