Two Best Friends Play:

Pat versus Sigrun was pretty hype.

Pat and Woolie embark into a legend.

Episode 16 of Detroit: The Humaning is a definite highlight, since the racial allegories go from "on the nose" to "blast your nose straight through the back of your skull". The absolute best is the SBF's reactions to the option to tag buildings with the graffiti "WE HAVE A DREAM" at this point.

Cage is really shameless if he's going to shove an Eric Garner quote in there, in a way that doesn't even really make sense.

See, my first reaction regarding the God Hand LP was 'oh, they broke that glass then' then the first thing Woolie says in the video is "Don't call it a glass break, it's been here for years".

I love how self-aware they are sometimes.

^^ From watching all the Best Friends' David Cage LP's, I get the impression that Cage is shameless by virtue of the fact he's really bad at thinking through the implications of anything he writes. That he creates games by constantly asking "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" and never thinks about the answer long enough to realize, "Well, if I do that, I'll also need to change X, Y, and Z, otherwise everything will be confusing and awful."

He says "Wouldn't it be cool if the future fight for androids' rights had parallels to the American civil rights movement?" but his understanding of both artificial intelligence and the civil rights movement are too shallow to say anything interesting about either topic.

He says "Wouldn't it be cool to play as a CIA agent who defects when you realize your boss has been lying to you? And also, wouldn't it be cool to have a steamy romance with your boss at the CIA?" and never considers about how awkwardly those two ideas intersect.

He says "Wouldn't it be cool to investigate a murder, and the twist ending is that you're the murderer?" and then doesn't go through the whole script with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that character's behavior is consistent with the final reveal.

He says "Wouldn't it be cool if you were caught between dueling secret societies trying to control the world, and you beat them both with sick wire-fu?" and then doesn't foreshadow half of those factions, or the wire-fu, so the second half of the game feels like a non sequitur.

He says "Wouldn't it be cool if your player character is possessing the bodies of people in an alternate universe, and you solve puzzles by jumping into different bodies?" and never considers that killing your current host body merely to move a rock out of the way is just evil.

I'd spoiler tag that Heavy Rain reveal myself

But yeah, he feels a little bit like Zack Snyder, they can see all the cool stuff better creators have made, and really wants to emulate them, but don't get why it's good and just make a skin-deep copy which, in Cage's case, often veer STRAIGHT into Unfortunate Implications, either because he's dumb and bad at seeing the logical consequences of what he's set up, or he's just creepy and bad at hiding that.

Is TBFP good?

What, the channel as a whole? Individual videos? Their style of LPing?

I mean, I think so. They're the only LP channel I regularly watch by now, the three members have a great sense of humour and complement each other well - albeit with a few running gags and in-jokes you might not get - but their interests (anime, wrestling, fighting games, character action games) broadly match up with mine and I enjoy their hype style of reacting to things.

Personally I find them pretty funny. Matt, Woolie, and Liam used to work as game testers so they have some interesting insights and the rotating group dynamic keeps their L Ps fresh. They also make references to other mediums in a way I find amusing, and has helped me look into new series I might not have heard of otherwise.

They're often not very good at the games they play, but that's part of the charm.

I don’t see anything charming about being bad at videogames.

Sometimes it's hard to watch, but there's been some hilarious game overs coming out of them..

I watch the Game Grumps. Compared to them the Best Friends are rocket scientists.

Specially compared to Arin Hanson.

I have a sneaking suspicion Arin can't read.

I discovered them in 2016 and became a big fan due to their hilarious interactions and legit gaming knowhow.

> I have a sneaking suspicion Arin can't read.

We should get him to read Cat in the hat

So as of episode 17 of Detroit, Woolie is the first player to get his protagonist Killed Off for Real.

edited 23rd Jun '18 8:14:00 PM by VeryMelon

I see a lot of comments saying that they're better than Game Grumps, but that doesn't really equate to saying whether or not they're good in my book.

No one's stopping you from looking a some of their videos to decide on your own.

Apparently Woolie's death was the outcome of messing up on prior chapters. During the chapter where Markus broke into the warehouse to steal android supplies, there was an option to convert Josh the security android, but Woolie never saw it because he ran away before looking at all the options. And while breaking into the tower to broadcast his Android Rights message, Woolie got Simon shot by messing up the "fool the guards" scene. (I feel this one wasn't completely Woolie's fault, because the "draw gun" prompt was way too vague.) And even after Simon got shot and left behind, he still could have survived and gotten back to Jericho on his own... if Pat hadn't gone up to the roof and found Simon in the next chapter.

If either Josh or Simon had been saved, they would have taken the bullet for Markus.

In other news, how about that romance between Markus and North? From neutral to lovers in one conversation must be some kind of record for a David Cage game. And Woolie wasn't even trying to seduce her—it's just that the "be nice" prompts are exactly the same as the "I want some of that USB robo-sex" prompts.

I feel like the North romance only makes sense if you were constantly picking options that raised her approval over the course of the game. Being able to raise her to lover that fast really bugs me, especially since I didn't actually dislike it here unlike Cage's past games..

That they're robots and work differently can probably provide some handwaves, but the side characters of Markus's storyline are poorly characterized all around. Markus himself is also pretty bland once he leaves Carl's house. The Markus/North romance is a lot less skeevy than the previous David Cage romances, but it also suffers from being the equivalent of mashing two dolls together and going "NOW KISS!"

I haven't seen it yet but people have said that Connor/North has a lot more chemistry, and it's probably because Connor has a real personality to speak of.

edited 24th Jun '18 12:31:02 PM by AlleyOop

And it helps that Connor is best boy.