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Reminiscing About the Infamous Series | Windbreaker Podcast
6.7k Plays5 months ago
On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Frost, and Marty discuss the 15th anniversary of Sucker Punch's Infamous, and chat about games/franchises they'd like to see make a comeback.
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Transcript
Introduction and Patreon Plug
00:00:00
Speaker
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Hosts Introduction and Show Start
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello, chaps. Welcome to the Win Break His podcast. I'm Yahtzee Crowshaw, and I'm joined by Maddie Sleever. What happened there? Were you not possessed with the urge to make a funny voice, too, innit? I don't know, just starting anything with Elo immediately sort of sets the tone for the rest of the sentence, I suppose. I thought it was beautiful. Also, Frost is here.
00:00:50
Speaker
I'm putting on an aggressive Michael Caine as well. That's my pomegranate. Yeah, you're supposed to blow the bloody doors off. Anyway, for no real reason, except that it's the...
Infamous Game Anniversary Discussion
00:01:08
Speaker
anniversary of the first game, I believe the 15th anniversary of the first game, we thought we'd reminisce about infamous, which is about the only place you can experience the infamous thing anymore. Because Sony won't fucking rerelease it on anything. Someday, maybe someday. The serious thing is they ended up buying the company. So it's like you you have the IP and you have the company, why don't you just release the games?
00:01:32
Speaker
Well, it's doubly annoying because they just put out Go to Tsushima on Steam, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, I kind of suspect that's why people are suddenly talking about infamous. And I kind of suspect they only put it out on Steam because Ubisoft announced Assassin's Creed, Samurai, or whatever it's called. And Sony wanted to say, hey, we already did that. It's called Go to Tsushima, and here it is. That's not the reason.
00:01:58
Speaker
What is the reason? Because they own a studio named Nixis that's all about porting those games to PC and it's free money.
Game Port Debates and Industry Practices
00:02:05
Speaker
It's not free money because you got to port the game, but you already did most of the artwork. Port that game over to PC, right? Yeah, as easy as that. And while they're at it, they should pull Bloodborne to Steam as well. Well, that's for in case of emergencies.
00:02:20
Speaker
That is, we lost the code and we don't know. Michael's out. Stock is tanking. Quick, give him bloodborne. That's, that's for in case. Maybe they think Infaverse 1 and 2 don't reflect Sony's current standards of visuals or whatever, because those were like PS3 games. Infaverse 1 was a really early PS3 game. I remember my version had the original PS3 box layout. Oh yeah.
00:02:43
Speaker
with the weird red text on the side. Yeah, I did not like that. It came out 15 years ago, 2009. Looking back to 2009, I would say a bit of a week year. We've talked about years like 2007 before, 2011, 2017. 2009, yeah, a bit of a week year, which is I think one of the reasons why Infamous stood out in it.
Infamous vs Prototype Comparisons
00:03:08
Speaker
Not a terrible year, but just
00:03:09
Speaker
But yeah, you're not wrong. You got like X-Men Origins, Wolverine, Left 4 Dead 2, Assassin's Creed 2, Uncharted 2, Brutal Legend ruined it all. All the momentum's gone. Yeah, Demon's Souls, which folks weren't really talking about at the time, Arkham Asylum, which was obviously great. A lot of great in hindsight. Yeah.
00:03:27
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, Akuma Asylum was great when it came out, I'd say. That was like point gave me the year that year. That was 2009, yeah. Even Souls definitely was one of those, like, no, not a whole lot of us played it out. For Borderlands as well, you know? Daring times. Yeah. And there was Prototype as well. Famously, Infamous and Prototype came out around the same time. We were two weeks apart, yeah. And they were both superhero sandbox, traversal-focused sandboxes in which you played a supervillain. I mean,
00:03:57
Speaker
Potentially yeah and without being tied to a Major IP like even though this was sort of when the MCU really started kicking off Yeah, you're both able to tell superhero stories without needing to tether them to a superhero Well, yeah, what a time you even had like what yes, remember what oh yeah? Yeah
00:04:20
Speaker
Now, Infamous was a trading interest in New Ground, because it wasn't the first superhero sandbox game. Spider-Man 2, I want to say, was that. This was an exploration of superhero sandboxing, but from the perspective of a character who wasn't a superhero in the traditional sense. Yeah. And it was also like a landmark title in superhero sandboxing, generally, because of, you know, traversal.
00:04:46
Speaker
It's one of the more interesting approaches to sandboxing, I think, more so than our, say, kingly realistic sandbox where you're stuck on the ground the whole time. And Infamous also had the gimmick of a binary moral choice system, which games don't really do anymore, and it was a kind of a clumsy thing, but, you know, it was part of the identity of the game, so we might as well talk about
Moral Choice Systems in Games
00:05:10
Speaker
it.
00:05:10
Speaker
Yeah, that kind of became a thing de jour around that time. You had the Bioshock a few years earlier and then they became a big part in Bioware games like Mass Effect and everything.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah, the choices, I always appreciated the binary choice nature of do you go good or evil as sort of on paper I appreciated them. I just feel like almost every game they kind of falter in execution. It's just very hard to make both paths interesting while also having an interesting middle ground.
00:05:43
Speaker
I think infamous worked in spite of it and not really in because of it. I mean, you say not really being able to focus on both parts. I think infamous too, did a really good job of making both endings actually really good. And one of the things that appeals to me is the story aspect. I always thought like the good or evil binary choice thing just ends up with you wanting to
00:06:10
Speaker
stick with one or the other. I mean, I didn't see much point in them asking you every time a choice came up, if you wanted to be good or evil. Because in infomerse in particular, there was no advantage to going like halfsies. The only advantage was to be all the way good or all the way evil. That's how you... Yeah, because then you don't like the most interesting things. Yeah. Where's the nuanced gameplay?
00:06:31
Speaker
It's always good or evil. You talked about the worst in your hippies or what was it, totalitarian dickheads. Well, that's what good versus evil sort of evolved into. Everyone decided good versus evil wasn't quite nuanced enough. Then it became fascist versus nutters, which was basically just conservatism versus liberalism.
00:06:55
Speaker
Dang it, it's most extreme ends. But here we are trying to operate in the fray.
Superpowers in Media
00:06:59
Speaker
How much of its success would you weigh in on coming from the success of Hancock in 2008? This is the world's first Hancock-like? This is the Hancock-like. Even when it came through, I was like, is that Hancock the video game?
00:07:14
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the conventional person with superpowers was sort of a subgenre that was sort of blossoming at that time. I'm also thinking of Misfits, the British TV series, and Heroes as well. That's right. The TV series that eventually shat the bed. Yeah. Maybe there's something about, maybe we could infer something about the greater collective unconscious by that.
00:07:40
Speaker
Maybe people have become cynical about superheroes and wanted to really deconstruct the concept. Wank, wank. Wank, wank, nudge, nudge. It was interesting. It was also an example of we saw a lot of developers throughout the 2000s.
00:08:00
Speaker
start with sort of colorful, more family-friendly games. We saw Sucker Punch do this with the Sly trilogy, obviously Naughty Dog had Crash and Jak and Daxter, and then kind of evolving past that with the times as the big games started to be your Grand Theft Auto's, your Call of Duty's, your
00:08:20
Speaker
your Ubisoft games, sort of leaning away from that colorful beginning and going more into gritty realism. Definitely Infamous 1 to me is a game born of the brown era. I think of that game as very brown with splashes of color from your powers. It's funny to say that because in retrospect it's pretty cartoony. It's even like the first one especially had an almost
Infamous Visual Style and Gameplay
00:08:44
Speaker
sort of cel-shaded look.
00:08:47
Speaker
I'd take that. I was a bit stylized over Brown. Yeah. I mean, they had like, like, like the cut scenes were sort of comic based. Yeah, that felt like it was trying to skimp out a little bit of like, well, we're not going to animate these full things. So that's how you, that's how they did it back in the day. If they couldn't like draw graphic novel pages, they just zoom into the concept art a few times with a voiceover.
00:09:09
Speaker
It's interesting, I did a little research on the game this morning and I didn't realize it was originally pitched as not an open world action game like this but more of a almost a superhero take on like Animal Crossing or The Sims where you would be like an animal, you would be like a superhero in a like metropolitan area who has to kind of like cultivate
00:09:32
Speaker
the peace and goodwill around them while doing super heroic things. And then I think it was ultimately like Sony was like, we just, we want you to just do Grand Theft Auto with superpowers, please do that. Yeah, which works. I mean, yeah, I mean, what you're describing there sounds more like a fable sort of situation.
00:09:49
Speaker
Yeah, a little bit, where you really try to like shape the world around you. And I guess some of that was still found in the game itself in, you know, your actions having consequences kind of thing. Yeah, like people running away and screaming from you if you're evil and all that. But I'd say for all like the grittiness in like the main characters, like extremely gravelly boys and general sort of mood, it was a pretty cartoony game at least to play.
00:10:14
Speaker
Oh sure, yeah. You shoot lightning out of your hands, the enemies are all these weird sort of cartoony monsters in hoodies. And everything's got these weird sort of exaggerated walk animations, like sliding along railroad tracks was very fun. Yeah, gliding through the air using your electricity powers. I remember the games fondly as playing very fun and having an interesting story. Infamous 2, I think, had a better story than the first one.
Infamous 2 Storyline and Character Trends
00:10:43
Speaker
Yeah, I would say so, definitely. And like the, I guess it's fine to spoil a 15-year-old game, but I did like the reveal at the end. Kessler, the guy you were chasing, is you, like from an kind of evil you from the future. Yeah, that's a fucking comic book twist, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I feel like Heroes had similar twists as well. But I also really, I liked, it's one of those open world games where your powers and what you can do,
00:11:12
Speaker
Interact really well with the world around you to where you need to like get energy from sources of electricity around the city and it's I don't know It's like a small thing that even I think bleeding through into no matter what you think of like second son I like the idea that your neon powers are sucked up through various things in the city I think that's an interesting way to I guess display your powers in an open world game. Yeah
00:11:36
Speaker
It's a good way to integrate the core mechanics with the environment, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. I tell you what, this was like a big time, too, for these sort of, like, buzz-cut anti-heroes, you know? Oh, God. Looking through this, I'm like, this is the exact same back model for Starkiller. There's like a whole thing of headshots of try to name who these characters were, and there's, like, dozens of them from this universe. Yeah, I've seen that. What's happening, man?
00:12:01
Speaker
Every character in a war shooter and most of the non-warshooters as well. Just a white dude with buzzcut hair and unshaven face. Do you think the buzzcut thing is because it's easier to not worry about hair than to worry about hair?
00:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this was before hair could be made really realistic. But also why some hair? They're never a full bald. Why some hair? It's their choice. I don't know. Fully bald makes you look old, I guess. Makes you look like Agent 47. Yeah. But yeah, this and when a bully come out, it's like he's probably the short king of these. A couple of years before this, Bobby Hill. Yeah.
00:12:44
Speaker
I think of Red Faction Gorilla for some reason, when we took her up as co-protagonist. Yeah. I guess those kind of go hand in hand with the brown era. There's a lot of those, which shout out to Leon Kennedy for still having his nice coiffed bowl cut or whatever the hell he had. Well, it wouldn't be Leon Kennedy without his dumb haircut. Without his very, very dumb haircut. I mean, every protagonist in Resident Evil is pretty fucking interchangeable anyway. If they shaved all their heads, how would you tell them apart?
00:13:11
Speaker
It's funny how prevalent that was at the time because when they ultimately revealed infamous two and being like, oh, this time we're going to New Orleans and it's bigger and it's better than the last one. They revealed the coal with a hair. He had hair and people were upset and they had to change it. They're like, okay, we've taken his hair away. He's got a buzz cut again because people are like, it's not my coal. My coal is not allowed to have hair.
00:13:37
Speaker
It was, it was just, it spoke to the trends where your mass effect as well, the other very... Yeah, yeah, like the core shepherd you think of as male shepherd is bald. I mean, it's bald in this sense. Cole had a look, I guess. Yeah. I don't know. Back when we were like, you know, the military's not complete dickheads around 2008, 2009.
00:14:01
Speaker
I was president. 2008 was shifting into Obama, but yeah, it's interesting too. Even our president had the same. The Obama cut. I rewatched.
00:14:16
Speaker
on stream yesterday. We watched the big three E3 conferences from 2004 out of curiosity. It was funny to see in 2004, there was still kind of a post-9-11 war on terror, kind of Ura patriotism to games and to trailers and stuff.
00:14:32
Speaker
That I feel like by 2008 it started to your characters kind of felt like they were like disaffected like Like that some sort of a system had turned their back on them, which you got in in Resistance you got in an infamous you got in you know the star killer even So I feel like this was like starting to this was almost like the bridge to Then getting to like the hairy dad era of you know of your last of us in your bookers and
00:14:58
Speaker
You're not wrong.
Evolution of Game Themes
00:15:00
Speaker
Even the Call of Duties at the time, this World at War, which would have been preceded by Modern Warfare 2 and then Black Ops, this is that like, oh, military cool and all that, but it's like, what if, what if we're fighting for the wrong side? Yeah. Semper Fi. So you're saying around the time of infamous video games were going through their sort of awkward early 20s, wanting to wear the buzz cuts so that they could look hard on campus. Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:26
Speaker
And then later on would mellow out into their dad era. Yeah, so which I'm very now curious. I think gaming, yeah, I think gaming very much ages almost alongside with its crowd. It's such a young medium. Yeah, it's still like currently the age of the people who most play video games. Which then begs the question, could infamous work now in this hairy dad era?
00:15:51
Speaker
Well, they tried infamous Second Son on the PlayStation 4, and I didn't like that game much at all, I'm afraid. What was it about it that didn't quickly? Well, for one thing, they were still pushing the moral choice thing, and it felt like it didn't really change anything in this case, except for the final cutscene at the very end. Also, the main character was much more annoying.
00:16:20
Speaker
They didn't have a buzz cut, they just had me to wear a beanie the whole time, so they wouldn't have to animate hair still. But he had a beanie, it's fine. Yeah, I thought the choices in particular in Second Son were laughably bad. The opening choice is like, do you take a beating so that everyone else at the reservation doesn't? Or do you sell everyone at your reservation out? And I'm like, what kind of a moral choice is this? Why would anyone want to play as that second character?
00:16:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think, well, I learned over time that the problem with the good or evil choice is that the evil choice never leads to a very satisfying story. Because as human beings, we like stories to have fitting conclusions. And playing as an evil person doesn't feel like, you know, we're getting what we deserve.
00:17:17
Speaker
Yeah. And even, uh, if I'm not mistaken, so that, you know, two could have one of two endings, like a good ending where you sacrifice yourself and, and, uh, the stop the virus or a bad ending where you kind of embrace the beast and, and you know what I really like to be about this.
00:17:32
Speaker
about that infamous too is that there's characters in infamous too like support characters who will sort of represent the moral choice. You've got one goody two shoes lady who with eyes powers and you've got one badass sort of hardcore lady who represents the evil choices who has a different suite of powers and you like borrow both of them at various times in the plot but then just before the final chapter when it turns out uh what's at stake those characters sort of switch sides
00:18:01
Speaker
And the character who was previously good is now advocating for evil in a slightly conservative way. And the character who was previously bad is like, no way, this is too much. The stakes are too high. And is suddenly on the side of good. And so it really sort of messes with your decision making at the end.
00:18:18
Speaker
Yeah, 2, I feel like 2 is, we mentioned some of them earlier, but 2 is one of those games where that sequel feels like they really took a heartbeat and made a hot song. You get your Uncharted 2 in that same era, your Dead Space 2, your Assassin's Creed 2.
00:18:35
Speaker
Stuff that even you know even modern warfare to like stuff it just really felt like a very smart evolution on the same hardware generation which is just something that we get less and less now because development times of bloated so drastically that you know. It's hard to forget that sometimes like they put i think it's miss one two infamous.
00:18:55
Speaker
Second Son came out in the span of four years, maybe? Five years? Oh, I remember that. Yeah, whereas now, you know, yeah, Uncharted 1, 2, 3 and The Last of Us all on the same console, whereas, you know, now it's you're lucky if a studio like that's able to put out one game a generation, which is, you know, I guess a whole, whole other problem. Just play in these, vote with your wallet. Just play Immortals of Avium and pretend, you know? Yeah.
Critique of Infamous Second Son
00:19:22
Speaker
So do we, what are the games now that
00:19:26
Speaker
sort of have a similar vibe to this in terms of like what game of the past few years would you say is like infamous like and it's you know not directly tied to an IP something coming out new something that's well part of the reason I didn't like Second Son is that as I say it was an early ps4 title so it was pushing the realistic graphics and was following the trend of r-sakingly realistic look for everything which lost some of the
00:19:53
Speaker
slightly stylized edge that the reverse one and two, which was part of its appeal. I mean, that's where you want to be in a superior game. You want to, you want things to be stylized and things. You don't want to like be looking at a slightly uncanny valley bait weirdo face staring back at you while you're doing super power catharsis. That's my sidekick you're talking about there. There you go.
00:20:17
Speaker
And I think what games in the current era that create the same effect, you want to look for games that also have a stylized effect. Hi-Fi Rush springs to mind. Oh, good. That's bold. Maybe also Neon White, to a lesser extent. Yeah. You know, we could talk about Sunset Overdrive, if you want. I mean, that was a while ago, though. That was a while ago. No. How about we don't? What a game.
00:20:44
Speaker
But yeah, and the superhero sandbox is at its heart a traversal focused sandbox, so basically anything that embraces the spirit of traversal, I'd say. Fuck the traversal, just cause style traversal, wee! Yeah, even prototype I thought had it at the time too, like I thought both those games kind of worked for me at launch. Yeah, that's why I pit them against each other in a lingerie contest.
00:21:08
Speaker
Egg part. Excuse me? Who won? More importantly, who won? Okay, well, this was back when I was really famous. Well, I did both infamous and prototype Zero Punctuations, and at the end of the last one, I said, you know, they've both got their own strengths. I think I recommend them both. As for which one's best, I can't really decide. So we'll just decide based on which games developer produces the best picture of the other game's protagonist wearing women's clothing.
00:21:35
Speaker
And fair play to them. They were good sports. Both developers submitted entries to the contest. So I judged them. And I think the infamous developers won in the end. Incredible. The whole incident was memorialized in, I believe it was the 2008 Guinness Book of Gamers' World Records. What was the record?
00:22:00
Speaker
Most of bald men? Well, the thing about the Goodest Book of Records is that it's not really a record book. It's not really a reference text. It's just, hey, here's some fun shit that happened. There you go. More of a Ripley's Believe It or Not kind of guy, really.
00:22:16
Speaker
I don't know. Who's kind of, I wouldn't say punk, but who very much like sort of has this unquestioning air of the time that we live in. Who's the hoorah of 2024 is like the vibe that I'm going for. Yeah, the thing is like a lot of games have tried to go for that vibe and it feels like people kind of roll their eyes at it now.
00:22:41
Speaker
I don't know if it's because we see it a lot or it's been sort of corporatized, but I don't know. We had like more spoken coming out. Feel like there was a bit of infamous in there, but obviously did not stick to landing. It was stayed in New York. You really should have. Yeah. Should have just stayed in New York. That was a problem. Shouldn't have got isekai. Isekai. Why not isekai to New York?
00:23:03
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Was it, or was it literally just the main character being such an obnoxious bint that produced the negative response to Falspoken? It was like a handful of out of context clips. Honestly, that sunk the game, in my opinion. And a terrible moral choice at the beginning, where they don't take the money because they're looking for the cat when you very much could have taken them both.
00:23:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't even a choice. They just force you to get the cap when you could very easily pick up the money. I don't know. And I'm not going to fight people on the whole like, oh, no, no, you don't get to pull this one back. But like the world was pretty bland. I thought the traversal mechanics were always cool from the get go. And it was just weird to have this having never played a Final Fantasy game before. I feel like that was a Final Fantasy gator in the middle of nowhere. Yeah.
00:23:56
Speaker
I think these days Triple-A games always try to push personality in their characters, because as we see in games like God of War, Ragnarok, there's constant dialogue between the main character and their entourage. I don't know why anything that's necessary, but there's always an emphasis on character and personality. And if you look back, Infamous, Cole McGrath is very much in every man. He's kind of bland, really. I mean, he'd have to be to reflect whatever moral choices you make, I suppose.
00:24:24
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of the protagonists of that time were, right? This post, kind of Gordon Freeman, Bioshock. Yeah, I'm fully complaint about everyone being the same buzzcut dude. It's true that being more of an everyman makes it easier for the player to project.
00:24:48
Speaker
Yeah. I feel like when you really characterize a character like you do in Full Spoken, you're sort of rolling the dice.
Character Projection and Customization
00:24:55
Speaker
Either people will really like the character or people will hate their guts. If you just stick nice and bland in the middle, you sort of avoid that particular gamble. Yeah, you guys remember when Larian Studios called out its audience for their character creator? They took the data of all the character creation options and they went, congrats, you made the default character. You guys are so bland.
00:25:17
Speaker
And, well, if you're like me, you're just like, whatever, get on with it. But some people are just like, that's it. That's my hair. My eyes. Some people don't care. Just don't care at all. Like in my game starts with Vagabond, available now on Steam. The default appearance is you have just woken up from cryo sleep, so you got crazy bad hair and you're wearing plain white jumpsuit.
00:25:38
Speaker
and you know the first thing you see is a hairdresser and a clothes shop so you can pick something else but I've seen like footage from like players who played like we were really into the game we played like 20 hours and they've just stuck with the default appearance because some people just don't care see I stuck with it but I liked it that was very much my hair in like my early 20s could just get out of bed all right I felt represented
00:26:02
Speaker
I feel like if, uh, if I know, this is kind of a tangent, but if I know a game's going to, uh, give me all sorts of armor and shit to wear, I don't spend it like in a soul's game. I'm like, I don't give a shit. I'm like, I'm going to be just changing my clothes all the time. What is it? I don't care. Well, yeah. I mean, if I'm in a game where you're constantly changing armor and outfits, then you, then you don't care so much, but you take off the home for a minute to trade out for something else. And the clown fro comes out and I forget how ugly I was. Oh yeah.
00:26:31
Speaker
I think big players, some players appreciate being able to have like a fixed look for themselves. I mean, the Saints row players certainly do. Yeah. If it's first person, I don't get where I actually can't see myself. Yeah, that's weird. Even third person, even third person, I'll go for like loud hair, loud back. Yeah. Loud hips. Yeah. Cause you just be looking at you. You just be looking at your back the whole time. Yeah, exactly. Instead of like, Ooh, my mustache has spent so much time on never seeing it.
00:27:03
Speaker
Another thing I jotted down just was that Infamous, along with, I guess, Red Dead, was interesting in having their sort of genre spinoffs, like their sort of small little DLCs that are more genre-focused with the Festival of Blood, which was pretty much fighting vampires, you know, similar to Undead Nightmare.
Game Genre Spinoffs
00:27:26
Speaker
And I think we were talking about that even last week when we were talking about weird games of, like,
00:27:30
Speaker
you know, Far Cry Blood Dragon kind of taking the framework of something relatively normal and being able to do something a little bit riskier with that. And I wish that was just more popularized. Yeah. I mean,
00:27:44
Speaker
you know, corporate design these days. They just don't know how to hang loose anymore. It's funny you say that going through old infamous second son footage. I'm like, Oh my God, was this where we start seeing the creeping of the magenta and the cyan as the magic becomes a lot more.
00:28:01
Speaker
Do you think Sony would be letting the developers participate in a women's clothing art competition this day and age? Something tells me they wouldn't. No. The magenta of it, again, I do think
00:28:18
Speaker
in the same way that the first two were kind of about like using the electricity of the city around you that was using the neon of the city around you so they had to kind of take Seattle and throw in the essence of magenta is that it's when a corporate entity is trying to bring across the spirit of being free-spirited and punky and that's absolutely the effect infamous second son gives me
00:28:39
Speaker
Yeah. Like a Pepsi commercial that's trying to be counter-cultured. It's like, no, you are the biggest thing on the planet. You're not counter-cultured. Yes. You are really generous. I do think Second Son is still very impressive from a technical aspect.
00:28:56
Speaker
I think especially for being a game that came out in the first six months I think of the ps4 like I think it's The city having that wet feel to it and seeing all the lights and everything kind of reflecting off puddles and everything I Went back and played it Replayed some of it a few years ago, and I thought it still looked really good. Yeah
00:29:18
Speaker
With graphics. It looks good, but again, in that Hollywood kind of way of like, oh, I've made it. I have money now. So now I fixed my gap tooth, you know, and I comb my hair and your personality is gone. I don't know, man. I just think it looks way better than if it's one person. Madonna would have gone as far as she did without the gap.
00:29:35
Speaker
Hellblade 2 looks really good. I was in that last week. Really good looking wet rocks in that game, if that's your bag. Still not a good game, but it looks bad. Don't spoil your review!
00:29:51
Speaker
I like that as a spoiler. Wet rocks.
Franchise Longevity and Revivals
00:29:55
Speaker
What are some other, you know, we're talking about the fact that it's kind of crazy that it's been 10 years since Infamous, Second Son came out, 15 years since this game. Like, it felt like for five years it was like, oh, we're going to be getting these forever. And then Sucker Punch moved on to Ghost of Tsushima, and I'm assuming their next game is Ghost of Tsushima 2. So what are, are there any other kind of franchises like this that
00:30:19
Speaker
You kind of roll your eyes up. Does one bad game ruin the bunch? Like, ask, ask, uh, arcane Leon, ask them. Apparently that's how it works when you've won bad game and suddenly that's the end of your franchise. Apparently I want a new thief game. That's good. Like the two was.
00:30:43
Speaker
I just like a good focused stealth game like the two was like not not where stealth is just and one of the things you can do in the sandbox and this actually focuses on giving you the experience like you're a burglar creeping through a quiet house at night
00:31:03
Speaker
and getting surprised by guards. Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is that one of those genres? Is
00:31:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting that there's certain franchises that aren't being revisited, but the indie games have very much kind of picked up the torch. Well, that's indie games' job. Yeah, I mean, I would say that's, you know, 2D Castlevania games. It feels like indie games have picked up the torch with... Yeah, boomer shooters. Boomer shooters, I would have said a few years ago, Jet Set Radio, and then along comes Balmora Cyberfunk. There's another one, isn't there, coming soon? That Rakugaki?
00:31:57
Speaker
Yes, radio-like games. Yeah, first of all, that game is a very bad name. The name comes off the tongue well. Trying to search for the game is not great. Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:11
Speaker
I don't know. To me, I just kind of stay on the whole of the essence. It's an attitude gone. I don't know. I don't know if we'll get it back. I'm not sure who represents that nowadays. It's outside of like a random character in, say, Apex, you know, or Valorant. Yeah.
00:32:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. You almost get little pieces of it in other games, right? It can all exist at the same time, so I have one big moment. Yeah. Hey, it's all just shit mashed together. Let's appeal to as broad an audience as possible. Let's put fucking Jason Voorhees and Agent Smith in our Smash Brothers knockoff. He's so thick. He's so big. Why is he so big? Well, he was always pretty big. I mean, he's like a golem.
00:32:58
Speaker
If you've ever watched Friday the 13th, Part 7, say, he's a fucking gigantic dude. Yeah, but he's like Donkey Kong. Oh, that's why they needed a Donkey Kong character, didn't they? It's just, if you just pal swap him, he's just DK. It's just a naked monkey with guy. You need the character with the jump-heavy attack. So did the Friday the 13th IP owners figure out their shit? Are they gonna bring back Friday the 13th the game anytime soon?
00:33:27
Speaker
Oh yeah. I don't know about the game, but they were like working on a TV series about Camp Crystal Lake and then that sputtered out and now they said they're bringing, they've like announced a new Friday the 13th multimedia initiative. The fact they pulled support from the game was a night, was a criminal. I mean, that was free money. That game kicked ass. It just seems like, yeah, that's crazy. Yelling at toddlers. Is that what it was?
00:33:56
Speaker
I just, well I was, I'm pretty nostalgic for the Jason films anyway, so you know, it's one of the few, it's one of the few multiplayer games I really liked.
00:34:05
Speaker
God, the screeching as you're trying to hunt them down is also very belittling. Isn't that just Dead by Daylight and Texas Chainsaw Massacre? It's not the same. It's a different experience for sure. I mean Dead by Daylight's all got all that bullshit with having to stick people on hooks and all of that. Jason, it's just
00:34:27
Speaker
burst into a cabin and stab all the beds. And someone was hiding under them. What an idiot. Meanwhile, Jason's all thick. Speaking of horror things, I need to come back. What's Capcom doing with Dino Crisis? I feel like Dino... I feel like we are in an era where... We're just, uh... Dino... Primal... What the hell was it called? Primal Fury?
00:34:50
Speaker
I think it's, I think dinosaurs in a horror context is kind of a hard sell because dinosaurs are, you know, they're fun. Little boys like dinosaurs. They got dinosaur pyjamas. I was about to say that. I was like, it's hard to be scary when you have people like Jesse Galina who loves dinosaurs. That's true. You can't. Oh, Exo Primal. Was that what you were thinking? Exo Primal, thank you. No, that's not. I don't want to want, I don't want to have to shoot Dino Primal.
00:35:16
Speaker
I thought the survival horror worked in Dino Crisis 1 and 2. And then the third one, for some reason, went to space. He had to fight space dinos, which I don't know how that happened. Well, that's even sillier. That's like two different kinds of pajamas there. Yeah, exactly. It just seems like Capcom has such success now with Resident Evil and remakes and they're tacking everything and just fucking
00:35:39
Speaker
Just, just right click, uh, change out all the zombies and all the fucking Spaniards with dinosaurs. There you go. Let's, uh, control F replace. Like always get into Skyrim modding. They could probably put some dinosaurs in Skyrim for you if you want. Just Thomas the tank engine. I don't want to play Skyrim.
Rise and Fall of Plastic Instrument Games
00:36:02
Speaker
I don't know. I feel like around that time, something else that we've lost with that attitude is probably like, we're not going to get rock band games anymore. Guitar hero.
00:36:09
Speaker
Yeah, this sort of plastic instrument phase was a phase we all grew out of. Now the plastic's in me. Because you only really need one plastic instrument game and now that's whatever the popular one is now. I think there's like an open source thing that everyone plays now. But for a while they were bringing out new plastic instrument games every couple of years and nobody wanted to keep buying more plastic instruments so that's just sort of died out.
00:36:36
Speaker
You know what plastic instruments were great? The bongos for Donkey Konga and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. They only worked for like two or three games, but man, was it nice having those bongos. Bongo's also not a great way to control a character in a 2D platformer. Bongos are...
00:36:54
Speaker
It's a bad idea to make that game. They'd be Dark Souls games with those things. Yeah, those are like broken sickos who do that. Yeah, the plastic instrument phase was sort of hand in hand with the Wii phase when everyone's living rooms were accruing more and more bits of plastic. All the fucking attachments they brought out to stick on the Wii controller. It could be anything. It could be a gun. It could be a tennis racket. It's also at a time when my house was bigger. We're paying more for less house. There's no room for motion controls these days. Yeah.
00:37:25
Speaker
It was also, that reminded me, I think Infamous 2 ended up getting PlayStation Move support. And I don't even remember what that was like. Yeah, what the fuck would that even do? I don't know if it was like you almost controlled it like Mario to where you moved with one of them and then kind of pointed at where you wanted electricity, you know, controlled like Mario Galaxy or something. I just felt that was probably just like a Sony mandate, like, hey, you have to do this, by the way. That's strange.
00:37:53
Speaker
Hang on, my dogs just did a big stretch, so I have to say big stretch. Oh my god, it was a huge stretch. Big stretch. Toffee. Big stretch. Yeah, big stretch. Yeah. Are we going to see the Chats? Are we going to see the Chats? You know what Chats? Let us know. Yeah, tell us about your infamous memories and tell us about whatever games you want to see. Come back.
00:38:16
Speaker
Doran Gross Nipples, as I like to call him, gives five dollars and says Yahtzee has Scottish ancestry but is himself from England, making him no true Scotsman. You are titular, no true Scotsman. Wow.
National Identity and Gaming
00:38:28
Speaker
From Macbeth. I'm one of those pedants who insists that you are just wherever you were born and raised. I don't have any truck with all those Americans who say they're Irish.
00:38:41
Speaker
when they were, like, born in fucking Wisconsin and lived their whole lives. Where were you born? Why did I take a stray? Where's South Irish? Well, whatever. Where were you born? That's what you are. Live with it. What if you move with your kid? Do you resent it? You've been gone a while. Yeah. I still identify as British.
00:39:05
Speaker
What about, so my mom was born and raised in Poland and moved to America when she was like 26. And she's like, she's almost 70 now. Wait, what is she supposed to still say, thick?
00:39:20
Speaker
I don't know, Polish accent. Well there you go, she's Polish. No she's not, she's an American citizen, she's been here for seven years. I say whatever the thickest part of the accent is, that is your nationality. I don't think so. I think if you came to like, I mean, 26 is like past all your developmental years. If you come to America when you're like, 13, and live that first of your life, then sure, you can be Polish American. That doesn't pass in court of laws, unfortunately. I've been here since I was four.
00:39:51
Speaker
Oh, still an alien. Anyway, ah, gives $2 and says, yeah, it's Mike. He wants to know your thoughts on Black Mesa. It's quite good. I like it. Will that do? Except Zen, right? Zen's too much. They added too much spice to Zen. I mean, it seems like they probably put a lot of effort into it to reflect all the time they spent on it. And that's fine.
00:40:17
Speaker
It does still kind of feel like a whole extra game they added on to the end. But, you know, it's a good game. It's just not much like the game that comes before it. There you go. Dr. Theo who gives two dollars has got my infamous copy from the Sony hack aftermath. Oh, forgot about that. PSN was down for like a month and a half. Like Sony got hacked and their entire online infrastructure was down for like
00:40:46
Speaker
Over a month? I remember that. Yeah, we were making fun of them. Yeah, it's free, but it's now we're up. Yeah. That was in 2011. It lasted 23 days. That's like that fucking power outage that they had in New York in the 70s where they lasted three days and they started throwing riots and looting. But yeah, I believe afterwards you got free games if you had a PSN subscription.
00:41:15
Speaker
from the riots? Yeah, everyone rioted and so you got a free copy of like infamous and everyone looted those little cards with two months of PlayStation live subscription on them. There it is. What'd you get after your power outage here recently, Morney? I didn't get shit. And I don't even know if they're going to, I don't think they're even going to like, well, I guess they wouldn't give me money for the days. I didn't have power because you only pay for, you want to power. They should at least pay you back for any like meat that thawed out.
00:41:41
Speaker
for all the coffee I had to buy at the coffee shop. It was 72 hours. It was out for almost 72 hours. Crazy. Every time we get power outages around these parts, thank you, thank you Toffee for plugging my game, then what usually follows is PG&E releasing an advert saying, hey, sorry about that power outage, but at least we didn't set fire to all the forests this time. You're like, I guess that's good. I think that's good. Yeah.
00:42:09
Speaker
Loki's wager gives two dollars and says, who's up starstruck their vagabond? Jesus, why did that sound so gross?
00:42:17
Speaker
I did see a comic calling it Starscream Vagisil. Yes, yes. I've guess I've earned this to a certain extent. All the titles I've corrupted. Yes, my game is Ash with Vagabond out on Steam right now. I spent the whole weekend fixing it. Most of the bugs are out. If you've been holding out, it's probably safe to get now. Oh, actually, wait till tonight because I figured out how to fix that one bug which made every upgrade unit on derelict spawn at minus one zero.
00:42:46
Speaker
Just a line of code just disappeared from the aim somehow. I don't know why I didn't delete it. Just hit your limit.
00:42:56
Speaker
Anyway, uh, Alex Armstrong gives $2. He says, what would your conduit powers be? Mine's gravity in reference to the infamous games where everyone's got superpowers based on a quote unquote element, but they were pretty fast and loose with Dave in it from a second son. I don't take a broth, banana broth. Like bone broth, bone broth, veggie broth, any kind of broth. I've just brought them all over the place. I mean, one of the other.
00:43:24
Speaker
One of the elemental powers in Second Sun was concrete. And I was like, okay, how does that work? Concrete is like a mix of different substances mixed with water.
00:43:37
Speaker
I mean, can you generate all of those different substances in this specific combination and only that? Don't get me started on video as a power. Oh, that's interesting with the semantics though. But if you see concrete as cake and your conduit is cake, right? Well, can you control eggs, flour and milk? No, just cake. Yeah, what point is it now concrete? At what point is cake cake?
00:44:02
Speaker
Always the weird thing about Captain Planet was like the five kids that their powers were earth, fire, wind, water. And I'm like, yeah, that was all make sense. Classic video game powers. And the last one was heart. And I'm like, what? That's a classic video game power. That's just charm in Hades, isn't it? Yeah, it's blood. Yeah, but like you can't like.
00:44:18
Speaker
You're like, I'm going to shoot fire at these guys. I'm going to put them up in a little sand store or in a little tornado. You fix their brains to make them nicer people. That's what heart does. That's what the Phantom Thieves do. They say heart, but it's really brain powers is what you got there. There you go. Yeah. They didn't never really explored the full potential of heart. I fear they could have like taken over the fucking world. Could have certainly run for president. That's true.
00:44:46
Speaker
Yeah, you're getting pretty easily if you could just heart every crowd you ran into. Was that a Howard Dean noise? Did Howard Dean have the power? He had too much heart. Too much heart, yeah.
00:44:57
Speaker
My conduit power would be Spunk. Squirtle Squad gives $2, Squirtle Squad 420 gives $2, and says, F Zoobs, in reference to something that happens in Stars from Vagabond. Glad to see you all getting engaged on some emotional level. Zoobs a person? No, it's an alien creature that's a recurring hazard.
00:45:26
Speaker
Little dudes you squish, you know? Yeah, the squishy dudes. That was probably one of my favourite missions. It's polarising, but then the entire game is apparently. I like those moments because it feels like I'm a Pep Boys. I can almost imagine like a spin-off where it's like I'm just out here repairing ships, really. Yeah, if you can do that. I like it.
00:45:51
Speaker
all the games gives all 99 and says I still adore the fact that Yahtzee got two triple A developers to participate in a launcher a artwork contest because of his zp review well done Yahtzee yeah as I say for you today yeah as I said they probably wouldn't do it today they've like this might damage our brand have to run it by marketing well
00:46:14
Speaker
Anyway, the bad thing, remember for four months in the Green Gang? There's Morning Lad's WB idea, the bad games we love are windbreakers. I thought you were talking about Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers, that's what I thought. Same, but also we already did that one. The bad games we love.
00:46:32
Speaker
Well, I guess we could always do it again. So it's a good idea, because it was a good episode. You know what? Yeah, I feel like at a point when I was rewatching the X-Files, you'd get to a point where like in season seven, they just kind of redo something they did in season two. And it's just like, we'll just have a similar another shape-shifting guy and we'll get into some high jinks with them. And I feel like at a certain point, we just dig back. We'll start looking at slightly something else topics we like. We're like, fuck it, we're bringing up. Yeah. Like some like British, there's some like British radio. There's a British radio panel show that's been running since
00:47:01
Speaker
the like the 70s and there's like a million different seasons and I was like listening back to them all for something to listen to. And they were reusing a lot of material because they were counting on nobody like archiving everything that ever came out on the radio I suppose.
00:47:21
Speaker
We just hope you didn't remember them all. Yeah, a lot of that older episodic stuff really does do that. I'm watching House and it tends to be a lot of that, like, oh, you shouldn't do the thing. I'm going to do the thing. You shouldn't do it. You're black. And then like, he's just casual racism followed by like, oh, he's going to change his ways. No, he's not going to. Well, it's, you know, formulaic stuff can be comfort food. Look at Columbo. Where's comforting? What do they want?
00:47:46
Speaker
Red Momo who gives $5 and says Sebastian Frosty the Snowman Ruis for Tumblr sexy man whenever that happens. I'd be honored to be right next to Sherlock Holmes and Sans from Undertale. That's an honor. Is a Tumblr heartthrob. Yeah. Tumblr sexy man. Fair enough. Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says best years 2012 because Far Cry 3 and Borderlands 2. Man, I think 2012 would be one of the worst years.
00:48:14
Speaker
I disagree. I would say 2007 is the best year because we got Bioshock and the Orange Box and various other things. That's because you're old. And it was before. I was going to say 98 is the best year and that's even older. Yeah. Everybody, but people my age, well, we hold 2011 to 2013. It's just depends on your upbringing, really. When were you in high school and Marty was in, I don't know, Hawaii years was old. I was in high school in the mid to late nineties, since you ask.
00:48:44
Speaker
Which, which was granted was when Half-Life came out. Boom. It stands. Outside from Maury. Fox D gives side orders and says Fallout 3 had the worst binary moral choice system because the writing on the evil choices was downright atrocious. Like a child's idea of evil. Well, as I say, people started demanding a lot much more nuance in their binary choices from that point onwards.
00:49:13
Speaker
I think Mass Effect was the start of that. Yeah. It was still basically good versus evil, but it was more nuanced, you know, Paragon, Renegade, Goody Goody Two Shoes. Yeah. Yeah. Goody Goody Two Shoes versus gets the job done, but in the way that the police chief would get very angry at. Oh, I love it. Guy that always gets his man, but no, Sergeant don't like him. You're a loose cannon, Commander Shepard. Hand over your space badge.
00:49:44
Speaker
Jackson... Jackson Jewel, a member of Six Months in the Green Gang says, Yahtzee, I finished your new book. Well done. Now you can start on Starstruck Vagabond, which probably has enough writing to be a book. Oh my gosh. Or jam. I think that's good. Fungus Finding is $2. It has rare Misfits mentioned killer theme song. Yeah, people don't talk about Misfits much these days. It was The British Heroes.
00:50:07
Speaker
And it had the guy who played Ramsey Bolton in Game of Thrones, playing a slightly creepy dude. Very good at that. Yeah, he found his, he found his oeuvre. I hope he doesn't like Kevin Spacey at where I go, oh, she'll wear an acting. That was just you. I don't know if it was like, how easy was it to watch when it was first airing? Like, I'm assuming now it's just somewhere streaming, but like,
00:50:34
Speaker
I think back then it was a little bit harder to find British shows. Like I remember even the British office was, you had to kind of go out of your way to find it. Well, I was listening to a podcast the other day about like the internal workings of the BBC. I was like, apparently every other week someone comes up and says, why don't you just like charges a subscription fee to international audiences rather than relying on the license fee. I'm saying only people who pay the license fee in Britain can watch it. And there's just always some dumb bureaucratic reason. Hmm.
00:51:02
Speaker
Strange. Magnum Weight gives $5.00. It says, of the big three second party... Three second party? That doesn't sound like a very interesting celebration. Of the big three second party Sony devs, Sucker Punch always seemed to have the smallest output but a very high quality per game.
00:51:43
Speaker
I'm assuming by a big three second party, you mean them Naughty Dog and Insomniac, maybe?
00:51:50
Speaker
Yeah, just the three developers that produced mascot games for the PS for the PS2. It's like Ratchet and Clank and Crash Bandicoot.
00:52:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would say Sucker Punch had a pretty consistent output until games just became fucking six year projects, right?
Game Development Timelines and ARGs
00:52:12
Speaker
Like we said, like the slide trilogy all on PS2 and the infamous games on PS3. And then once you got into 10 years ago, it's just Ghost of Tsushima took 10 years and the next one will probably take five years and yeah. Sucker Punch definitely seemed to be very efficient jobbers, which you need.
00:52:32
Speaker
They do, they get the job done and all their games basically work. Samiac probably has the quickest output or the like most consistent output. Feels like they put out. Well, on the regular.
00:52:45
Speaker
Well, they've probably got the smallest output of the three. I mean, Naughty Dog's got Uncharted, Last of Us, Crash Bandicoot, the other thing. Insomniac's got Resistance and Ratchet and Clank and all the other things. Spider-Man. Did they do Sunset Overdrive as well? No. Sunset Overdrive. Just in the past 10 years, they did Sunset Overdrive, a couple Ratchet and Clank games, all the Spider-Man games. They had kind of their like indie and VR initiative with that Song of the Deep and then some VR nonsense.
00:53:12
Speaker
So of the three, Sucker Punch seemed to have the fewest strings to their bow. I would say so. Well, at the very least, Naughty Dog's obsessed with going back and remastering their old games, which a little bit of that could be given to Insomnia. Yeah. Let us play these games. Yeah, maybe Sucker Punch could take a leaf out of that book. Yeah, yeah. So we could just fucking play it on Steam. We could play Prototype on Steam. I guess we know who won the contest in the end.
00:53:40
Speaker
You know, put them against each other because prototypes now is technically a first party Microsoft game. Third party, first party. You just let me know when they're public domain. Oh, it was the it was the Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction devs who did. Radical? That's the ones. Not free radical. That's a different guy's. No, expensive radical. Phew.
00:54:07
Speaker
There's too many radical things. They also did the Simpsons hit and run and Simpsons run with both very good. Oh, Jesus. So good. We don't talk about the fighting game, but. No, we don't talk about that one. If you put the head that uncle height gives five euros and says, here's the 20 percent from Starstruck back when I didn't pay. Happy belated birthday, Yahtzee. P.S. Wow, you almost got my name right. First use is said like you in buggy. OK.
00:54:36
Speaker
What do you think? Wow. I got you. The, the bug of the Lord of darkness. I love it. I love, I love comments like that. By the time you get to the end of the sentence, it's too late. I now had to pronounce German. I studied German. It was beautiful.
00:54:58
Speaker
If whenever there's an E and an I together in German, you pronounce the second letter, so if it's E I, it's pronounced I, and if it's I E, it's pronounced E. There's a little fun fact for you German pronouncing dudes. Yes, Germans.
00:55:12
Speaker
Yes. A good thing I set you straight on that one. Alex Armstrong gives $5 and says, tedious as the paper trail in Second Son was. I had fun going to and fro from game to custom puzzle websites a sucker punch made. Sucks the payoffs a jacket. Ah, now this was referring to this sort of semi ARG side quest thing in Second Son. I do not remember that. I thought you were genuinely talking about paper trail, like the new... There's images in the paper trail.
00:55:39
Speaker
And I like it there's like a hidden character whose conduit power was paper and there was this whole like ARG relating to it Apparently I didn't go through it myself. Mm-hmm But it sees much of that these days were they like the Riddler of the whole thing? I don't know myself has like ARGs like this and then there was that I love bees around Halo 2 as that sort of morphed into the games that
00:56:08
Speaker
Just something like animal well, like the puzzles that like a group of people need to solve, you know, games like void stranger or any, any one of those games that kind of get that community. Jesus, man. That's an experience. Yeah. Oh, like I was going to insist that we do an ARG episode, but I feel like it would just be an hour and a half of us going, what the fuck are these things? So I think this time next year, we should at least go through one to have something to talk about. There you go. Okay. We're going to pencil it in.
00:56:37
Speaker
All right. Iero Peltonan gives 10 euros and says, hi. Fairly new fan. Found you after your exodus while looking for game dev content, pursuing a master's in game dev. So I and listen to all your stuff now. Love dev heads. Congrats on the launch yards. Thank you so much. Glad we're getting new fans and it's not just people who stubbornly stuck around for 16 years. Yeah, you cross the old wanks. Same ones over and over.
00:57:07
Speaker
And daringly. I agree, Alexander. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. I disagree. I was... I was Tony Hawk's American wasteland. 2005, I can't remember. Nah, that's a little too early.
00:57:37
Speaker
It was. Yeah, that's going to hit its 10th anniversary. Oh, oh, wow. Guess we'll have to do a podcast on that as well. Oh, I guess if you insist. If we must. Yeah, no, it's very like a Disney rebel, you know, the kind of rebel that you can show on a PG movie. So what we get like, what is that kind of more like Overwatch almost rebellious, but not in a way that would offend the Chinese market. Yes. That's great. You guys are fucking nuts.
00:58:06
Speaker
I don't, for us, I didn't, I was more directed towards that. That's you, you know, that's because you don't like games. See, I see this, but I'm like, you know, I had my American waistline. I'm like Steve Irwin's wife, I forget her name. Terry, yeah. Well, she's like, I had my love. What a sweetie. Oh.
00:58:23
Speaker
So you're never gonna waste land so you're never gonna get remarried? Yeah, so I'm not gonna get remarried. Yeah, I guess I don't think you're ever gonna top Steve Irwin in terms of her husband. So why bother? What about Steve Irwin? Everyone's gonna feel lesser in comparison.
00:58:42
Speaker
I never thought of that. Yeah. He was wrangling Gators, wouldn't he? I'm really talking about the sort of expression of his personality. Oh yeah. He was pure charm, joy, and mullet. You're not going to get that back. You're never going to fill that hole. That's how you feel with Tony Hawk American Wasteland. Yeah, that's how I feel with Sunset Overdrive and American Wasteland. I had my love.
00:59:05
Speaker
Uh, El Cringe gives 15, I think those are shekels, and says, never understood the good stroke, bad moral system. Gameplay wise, there's no reason to do anything but all bad or all good to get the best abilities. I said that, El Cringe. El Cringe has done morality the best.
00:59:22
Speaker
Also, I mentioned something about the bad path never being narratively satisfying. Well, I'll tell you what, I'm going to shout out the suffering, because what I like about the suffering is that it doesn't really affect gameplay and there's a neutral ending as well. Or if you go in between these. Well, when you say explores it the best, you mean mechanically or the story held up?
00:59:43
Speaker
You got like Disco Elysium, you got papers please. Undertale is a great game for a moral aspect. They're not as rare. If you don't go full genocide or full
01:00:02
Speaker
pacifist, is Undertale still satisfying? If you kind of just... I'd say so. I'd say so. It is still pretty charming, yeah. I hear it's the War Thunder one's kind of interesting. Rugtrader, I hear like trying to be good actually comes with punishment in this Corpo Fasho world that you're in, which really kind of sends that message of, is it good if you're only doing it for reward? Will you still be good even when it's not like to your detriment? So it's kind of interesting. Yeah.
01:00:33
Speaker
command line vulpine gives ten dollars and says finally catching a live stream i work night shift so i'm usually sleeping had to wake up early to cover a co-worker shift looking forward to getting home and playing starstruck vagabond well days we didn't need your life story command line vulpine i wanted to know more what do you i love lore i love lore what do you lubricate in that sandwich with big pardon
01:00:56
Speaker
Excuse me. Moving on. Your sandwiches do need moisture. They do need moisture. If you're a dry guy, you get it. Yeah, my wife made my sandwich without butter-like spread and it wasn't the same. That's an attempt on your life, yeah. Well, she did remember to put Branson pickle in it, which is a lubricant of a kind. That's the important thing. Is there a pickle fluid? No. Well, Branson pickle isn't the same as pickle.
01:01:25
Speaker
Why would you call it that? God. Well, pickle is a British word for a kind of chutney. We're in America, you see. I know. You guys not have the word chutney? Use that word instead.
01:01:37
Speaker
Well, we also have chutney, it's just pickle is a kind of chutney. What is this thing? I assume rancid pickle is just like, what's that Australian thing? Vegemite? It's just like peanut butter. It's very different to Vegemite. Vegemite's a yeast extract. It's sort of like the most intense umami hit you'll ever get. Your mommy. Oh, Iowa. What is this stuff? Interesting. I've heard something I look into.
01:02:05
Speaker
It's a, well, it's hard to describe exactly what Branson Pickle is because it's a sort of utterly unique combination of flavors and ingredients. Yeah, I'm seeing it. It's like nothing I've seen before. That's why I have to import it. There's nothing like it's anywhere else. Okay. Later this summer, we'll expense two jars to my house and Frost's house and we'll give, we'll give everyone a full Branson Pickle deep dive. Yeah.
Cultural References and Humor
01:02:29
Speaker
Vegemite's very polarizing, but I think a lot of people who try Branson Pickle come around to it.
01:02:36
Speaker
Uh, eat it with a strong cheese. Oh, it's one of those things, eh? Anyway, Leonard Bloom gives 20 euros, says a week late for one of the most fascinating villains in games is the dessert of Ndisco Elysium. He is unambiguously evil, and yet I can't help but pity him. Everything he says is true, but it is all an excuse for petty spite. Dessert? Hold on. I'm playing it right now, but I'm so bad at names. Which one was he? Like, what part of the map was he in?
01:03:04
Speaker
Wasn't he like the end villain dude? Ain't that the fat boss? No. Yeah, if you're still playing it, you might not have gotten him yet. I know I've beaten it like so long ago. Where was he? He's kind of like a haggard old man. I don't know. It all blends in after a while. Yeah. I also haven't played it in several years. So anyway,
01:03:37
Speaker
Flash! Uh, sorry. David Robaskiewicz gives 5A dollars and says, to be fair, the redesign of Cole in Infamous 2 looked like a generic brown hair twenty-something douchebag. Cole looked better bald.
01:03:55
Speaker
I mean, I just don't hold that character design in very high regard of the era just because so many of them all blend together, like... Us cuts, yeah. Yeah, I don't know, like, say what you will about The Last of Us, but Joel just stands out to me as a character, even though I guess his design even became kind of... It wasn't so much his bald head as Cole's sort of grumpy Grant Mitchell face in the first infamous disorder turned me off, they did.
01:04:25
Speaker
Yeah, sort of screwed up dog like a little pug dog. It's just, again, that time of this like rowdy teenager, we're going to set you straight, get some discipline in here, put you in the military, but he's still kind of crazy, kind of heart-locker, you know? Grandpa, grandma, edgy gravelly voice. There you go. Tsunami Dushic gives $20 and says, no, I think. Thank you very much. Although we've got two likes for his trouble, so that probably counts for something.
01:04:52
Speaker
Could luck 13, remember 6 months in the green gang says people talk about infamous but prototype is better. Tomato, tomato. That's for people who like to hide their tentacle fetish. I think infamous was more fun on sort of what you might call the ground level but prototype was more fun just to sort of traversal around the city.
01:05:09
Speaker
would be my view. It was very much reminiscent of the last game, Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction, which was sort of in the vein of the Spider-Man 2 movie tie-in in terms of city traversal as a superhero.
01:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, and I would say I think Infamous 2 of that whole batch, Infamous 2 is probably my favorite of them. I almost, I might have enjoyed Prototype 1 more than the first Infamous at the time, if only because like you said, it felt like Prototype 1 felt like building upon the blocks of Hulk, whereas Infamous was like them doing open world for the first time, so it was like a pretty drastic departure from something like Sly 3. Stop.
01:05:54
Speaker
Ah, moving on, like I didn't just zone out while you were talking. Fox Day gives $2 and says, can't wait to play Starfield Vagrant Story, Yahtz. Oh, that's a new one. Not the actual title, it's two other game titles smashed together. It is. Alex Armstrong gives $10 and says, about your semi-ramble of Attic on nuance, what are your thoughts on Zinyak from Saints Row 4, specifically the choice he gives to rescue Matt or kill yourself, then shows your past and explains how you were Earth's greatest threat?
01:06:24
Speaker
Yeah, I thought he was pretty cool. I thought he was a fun character. That's what that's the point of that video was that I like villains who are fun. And he was fun. He was operatic and like, just scenery chewing the evil. I like the little detail you can find that it turns out he's a big fan of Jane Austen.
01:06:43
Speaker
That's what I like in my villains. Did you ever get frosted? Did you ever get into Saints Row? Because I most certainly have not. I own them. I don't get it. I own them through the Epic Games thing. But it's one of those things where if you weren't at least slightly interested in the genre, you probably won't get the thing that's satirized as that being your satirical take on it. So yeah, now. One day, not now.
01:07:08
Speaker
It's on your list of, go through the full franchise. Yeah, because I think I would do a disservice to go through it backwards. I feel like I have to play Saints Row more before getting into, or yeah, Grand Theft Auto before getting into Saints Row. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely play Saints Row 2 and 3 and then play Saints Row 4 so you can really appreciate how Saints Row 4 just throws everything into a big bin and stirs it around. Yeah.
01:07:38
Speaker
KingDead42 gives $2 and says, excited for the minus one zero rumour fix. Yeah, look forward to it. The Dogmatic Director gives $5 and says, I named my Starstruck Vagabond character Jacques McKeown as a joke, only to find several references in Starstruck Vagabond abusing the appropriate great work as always, yacht. Yeah, in the alpha version, like the default main character name was Jacques McKeown as a joke. But I changed that for the final release. So that people didn't think it was literally the same character.
01:08:05
Speaker
Well, but you have a lot of Easter eggs referencing him. It might as well be. Yeah, there's a reference to Quantum Tunneling at one point. Aniris Venture is a company in both the game and the books. Yeah. You know, it's just my little thing where I like to shout myself out here and there. Uh, Doran Grossman-Nepals, because he says, I appreciate you shouting out Emesis Bloon and fully rambledmatic a while back. I just watched it last night and it was incredible.
01:08:37
Speaker
It's a machinima about the Team Fortress 2 characters, and it's like a two-hour film, and it's like this incredibly well-done, gritty, horror noir. But with the cast of Team Fortress 2 in it, and it's really engaging stuff, I thought. See, when Yat says he doesn't watch movies anymore, this is what's competing. He watches two hours of Machinima. He watches these. By no time for Dune. I just put it on out of curiosity. It just drew me in.
01:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, it was, it's pretty cool.
01:09:06
Speaker
Oh. Check it out. Humane Shield gives $49.99. Ooh, that's a big one. And says, Yahtzee, enjoying Starstruck, but for the love of God, could you have labeled the space dock console? Because I flew around it for hours looking for a space dock. A sign saying space dock you dumb twat would be great. Otherwise, I enjoying the game. Well, I guess that was important to you if you spent 50 bucks on it.
01:09:30
Speaker
I'll be honest, I don't really know what you're talking about. You mean Jill? Because you can only sell, like you can only dock at very specific places that need your ship stuff. That's probably what they want, just like a bigger sign. Oh, okay. I think the game's pretty well tutorialised, but... You made it, you would. You didn't know how to play it. You made it. Well, the tutorial went through a lot of focus testing.
01:09:59
Speaker
And people have said to me that they like how thorough the tutorial was and how effective it was at teaching against the basics. So, I don't know. You need to find a homeless man who doesn't play games as a pussy. Well, I practically did that when I was showcasing it at the mix and letting randos play it. And that's how I learned I needed to fix the tutorial even further to make it even more obvious. There you go. Meister Kleisterheist Er. He gives five euros and says, German tongue twister. Ooh, here we go.
01:10:28
Speaker
Broutclyde, blight, broutclyde, und blaukraut, blight, blaukraut. What does that mean though? I don't know. I know Kraut. Well. Well, lucky for you. Good on ya. So, I know Kraut. I can deduce the essence. What was that? Holy Moses. Sorry, I'm still coughing up Flem from my cold a week or two back.
01:10:57
Speaker
Erb4nm gives 25 Polish Zlotys and says, I'm a bit behind, but if you cannot pronounce a Polish sentence I'm not even going to attempt, you're better off staying as an American, Marty. No, I'm not saying I'm not. I was born in America. I just am an American. My mom has this. I'm sure she can pronounce this. Do you ever describe yourself as Polish American? No, I describe myself just as American. Listen on Google Translate and give it a go. Okay, have a go.
01:11:26
Speaker
It's pretty close. It's beetle sounds. What? Beetle sounds? Okay.
Infamous Series and Port Desires
01:11:36
Speaker
That certainly sounded like someone from Eastern Europe. I think it's onomatopoeia, yeah. Onomatopoeia, the noises beetles make? I think so. Beautiful. Well, there you go. Oh, well, we got to the end of the superchats. Earlier than normal, I'd say.
01:11:55
Speaker
I guess we didn't go off as much as we thought we would on infamous, but you know, this infamous hasn't been ported to other councils. That's probably more people can experience it. I mean, uh, Hey, Sony, if you just skipped to the end or something, fucking port infamous and infamous to, to stay like now this Memorial day, you know, I mean, you can filter the graphics and they look nicer if you like, if you really must. I mean, that's what thousand year door did.
01:12:24
Speaker
Oh my god, that's such a good game.
Character Redesign Speculations
01:12:27
Speaker
Just let me play the fucking games. I wonder what haircut they'd give him now. Well, they'd give him shaggy hair and a beard, and he would be escorting his daughter. There you go. Yeah, dead cut. Lovely.
Podcast Closure and Announcements
01:12:45
Speaker
We did it. Everyone can have an extra lunch, longer lunch. Extra long walkies for toffee. Extra long walkies for talkies. So yes, thanks for listening to Windbreakers podcast. I almost said slightly something else then, but that's not what this is at all. It's the Windbreakers podcast. I was Yahtzee Croshaw. I was joined by Sebastian Ruiz. It's Amiya. And Marty Zleva. It is also Amiya.
01:13:16
Speaker
Don't forget to watch this week's Fully Ramblabatic. It's gonna be about V-Rising, if you're interested. And also I'll be doing Yahtzee tries on Wednesday afternoon as normal, and of course on Thursday. We're going to have our big six-month fundraiser stream, saying, hey, if you haven't subscribed to the Patreon yet, here's reasons why you should. We're all gonna get together and have fun playing all kinds of shit.
01:13:46
Speaker
Including Dokkopan, the Dokkopan-Strokopan continues. Oh Christ. Dokkopan continues to be kind of lost on me, I'm afraid. Oh, you don't learn it as you play either. Yeah. Just stay there. Yeah, it's meant to be experienced in small chunks once a month. That's how you forget everything in between. Well, that's lucky. We'll probably have some time for some fall guys and some other stuff. Yeah, all sorts of fun shenanigans.
01:14:15
Speaker
Yes, also, I put out a game last week, if anyone noticed. It's on Steam, released on Friday. It's called Starstruck Vagabond. It's a life sim, work sim, post-dad game with an epic sci-fi plot. Check it out if you like any of those things. I fixed most of the bugs. You will find more bugs. That's it for my stuff. You two plug your stuff.
01:14:42
Speaker
You put up a whole cold take this morning. Whole cold take. Get it while it's cold. The future of gaming according to PlayStation because they'd be making some wacky moves and what's the fun of like watching the trends if you can't speculate and maybe make money off of the stock market. But this is not real legal advice. Do not take it as such. But as before, show it to your grandma. What we got going on for the rest of the week, Marty?
01:15:08
Speaker
Uh, later today, we will be back at 6pm central, uh, Hidden Gems. Uh, Jesse's not here today, but I'll be filling in for him with Jess and Casey, playing like a box- like a story-driven boxing game that came out last year called Undisputed. That looks like almost like the fight night.
01:15:26
Speaker
the old Fight Night games that used to exist. So, KCLX is a boxing game, so we'll play in that. And then tomorrow we have a sponsored stream for a game called the Reus 2, which will be at 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. is better with friends back tomorrow or TBD. It'll be, yeah. Okay.
01:15:43
Speaker
normal time of night. And then yeah, as you said, normal streams. And then definitely tune in starting 10 a.m. CT on Thursday for our big anniversary stream. So with tons of announcements for cool shit we have coming up in the pipeline, if you're fans of Adventurer's Knife, if you're fans of Darren Mooney, if you're fans of the stuff we do, we have all sorts of cool stuff to announce. So tune into that.
01:16:07
Speaker
Gosh, why would anyone go to any other YouTube channel? That's the question that haunts me. Some have recipes. I like going to the ones with recipes. I do like the cooking. Oh, yeah. I like a bit of binging with Babish now, honey. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's it from us. See you next time. See you on Wednesday. Bye, everyone. Thanks, Eric. Thanks for being great.
01:16:46
Speaker
you