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In Defense of Janky Games | Windbreaker Podcast
3.3k Plays1 month ago
On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, JM8, and Marty chat about the good kind of jank, the bad kind of jank, and every kind of jank in between.
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Transcript
Introduction to GameMaker Sponsorship
00:00:00
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This video is brought to you by Game Maker. The free, fast, and easy to use 2D game engine that helps power modern classics like Undertale, Hotline Miami, and Hyper Light Drifter. Starter templates, official asset bundles, and a wealth of tutorials are available to help bring your ideas to life. And you can export and share your game for free on all non-console platforms. But you don't have to take my word for it, I'm just some jerk. We have an actual bonafide Game Maker-er on hand. Oh shit, that's me. Yes, I've been using GameMaker for a long time. It's probably the most powerful and easiest to use engine for making 2D games out there, suitable for both amateurs and hardcore coders, and with all the Steam and console integration stuff for when you're ready to start monetizing your hobbies. I used it to make my recently released game, Starstruck Vagabond, which has already delighted thousands of sci-fi cosy game aficionados, thanks to GameMaker being so bloody great. Head on over to the GameMaker link in the description to begin your game development journey today.
Beginning of Woodbreakers Podcast
00:01:00
Speaker
Hello everyone, welcome to the Woodbreakers podcast. I'm your Atty Croesher, I'm John by JN Marty. Typical opening, typical opening.
00:01:08
Speaker
and And this week, it's Marty's idea for the topic, which was ah in defense of Jank in games.
What is 'Jank' in Games?
00:01:16
Speaker
And you said you wanted to define Jank before we pressed on, so please, by all means. No, no, no, no, no. I said I wanted to to try to define Jank because to me, Jank is like porno, where I don't know how to define it, but I know it when I see it. But Jay, you you I don't want to say you have more, you you probably have more experience in in ah describing jank in living in the jank. How would you describe jank to folks? um I think rather fittingly jank is something ah that is inherently jank to define like it's something that you
00:01:53
Speaker
You see, it's something where there's an issue with a product, I guess. It's something that's wrong with the thing. So in our in our terms, it's games. There is ah maybe a visual glitch or something with the audio, yeah but it's not like game break game breaking. It's just, I guess it's for me, it's quaint. It's like a bit of jank is that it's a bit difficult to use or it's something's breaking, but in a way that doesn't break the game for you. It's just like, yeah. a queen obtuse, you know? It's not quite the same as being buggy. It's something going wrong in a way that one finds weirdly endearing. Yeah.
Jank in Indie vs AAA Games
00:02:34
Speaker
So does that mean that a thing being jank and buggy is purely the difference between jank and buggy is purely in the eye of the beholder?
00:02:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think so like we we call things janky instead of buggy because we come at them with, you know, a little bit of reverence, maybe because of the developer behind it or because a team was small or circumstances or a franchise. Whereas if it happens in a Ubisoft game, Ubisoft is incapable of jank. That's bugs. it's It's a topic that I do find interesting. yeah in In my mind, it's kind of like, it's just,
00:03:06
Speaker
Jank is when you start seeing the math behind the scenes, when you are taken out of experience because you start being like, Oh, video games are just made of ones and twos and held together by fucking spin girls. Yeah. I suppose specifically Jank is sort of, uh, four floors in the context of the developers having overlooked something or not having as many resources as you could have liked, which is why we don't really say AAA games at Janky.
00:03:37
Speaker
yeah Yeah, for me, I know what I don't know if I can define what junk is, but I can define what it isn't. Okay. And what it isn't is when a game feels polished. And when a game feels overly polished, that's something that I tend not to like. Okay, you don't like those corners being rounded off you like a ah little bit of sharp jank edge. I don't like a game that restricts your movement,
00:04:03
Speaker
uh, with invisible walls, because if you walked on top of all the like bits of furniture and stuff, then you, then you would experience ja something, you would see something janky. Okay. So you're talking like kind of like Sony first party games, which I don't think anyone would argue are not very polished, but there's no jank in a lot of them because of that restricted nature.
00:04:25
Speaker
Yeah, it's sort of a camp-ness, sort of where the player's freedom allows them to do to create scenarios that the game wasn't really prepared for,
Jank from Game Mechanics
00:04:35
Speaker
like jumping on top of people's heads during Half-Life cutscenes. It feels jank, but it's fun. Yeah, and I guess that's like the difference between player-driven jank, which I agree, Yachts, I think that should be something that should be embraced. We kind of...
00:04:51
Speaker
When you, when you do that as a player, you kind of understand that you were doing something that wasn't intended and you in a way are expecting the jank and it's kind of like a reward, but there's also the jank. You feel like seeing a cut scene and then randomly an NPC in the background goes into the T pose or a pose for a split second. And then it goes back to their animation that always gets a laugh out on me. Like, yeah, that shouldn't be happening. It's an animation mistake, but reminds me, I love it.
00:05:21
Speaker
Let's go to some specifics, because the one thing that leads to my mind when you mentioned that is when I was first playing Assassin's Creed Unity, which was when it first came out. yeah And when I was playing it on the initially on PC, it had this issue where it would just like freeze for like a second every few seconds. And then when it unfroze, all the like the physics would sort of cue all the stuff that had queued up during the pause would happen at once. So I've been watching it, I've been watching a cut scene with a bunch of noble, like dignified assassins talking to each other. And then every few seconds it would freeze for a second and then all the tops of their hoods would just go whoop. Just go whoop. Yeah, so I was about to say, was that janky in a charming way or buggy in an annoying way?
00:06:07
Speaker
Well, it was annoying in gameplay. I eventually sort of caved and bought like the PlayStation version. Yeah. So I wouldn't have to put up with it. But in the cutscenes, it made me laugh. And, you know, I always appreciate things like that because it makes you go, oh, no. Games trying so hard. Oh. And it gives you a positive feeling towards the game. Yeah. And there's like a. Karamai.
00:06:32
Speaker
Oh no, I was, I was, uh, no, no, no. Continue with that. Cause I was kind of kind of rail us down a different track. Well, let's get into it. I was also going to do that. Let's let's talk about more specific examples. Cause there's three, like the three pronged Hydra that brought this topic up was stalker two, which, uh, I think we've all been playing a little bit, which, uh, that's its own criteria. of jng oh yeah j It is. Yeah.
00:06:56
Speaker
Stalker 2, which of course was people were complaining about on launch because it wasn't properly QA'd. Also, you and I, Marty, have been playing Slitterhead lately, which is a game remarkably old-school in its sensibilities, including Jank. Oh, it's very janky, is it? Oh, yeah. And of course, today's Battle Masters, in which Jamaite got a face full of the worst kind of Jank, trying to get the bloody game running.
00:07:19
Speaker
all versions of the game I had to buy for. But then when you see that horse wilding out, that's good junk. That's the good. you know No, no, no, no. Okay. Okay. The, the good junk is initially loading in and going, ha ha ha horse spin. And then that happening for half an hour straight trying to troubleshoot why it's happening and not being able to do anything. that' but Yeah, that's buggy, but- Yeah, in the AAA realm, I think Bethesda is probably the the developer who yeah people's minds go to immediately. And I feel like ah they they have ridden the spectrum of jank to where at a certain point, maybe when they were considered more like underdogs, the jank was very charming. And now in that day, not only purchased a shit ton of companies under them, but then got purchased by one of the biggest companies in the world in Microsoft. Now the jank is like, how dare you?
00:08:07
Speaker
How dare you have a box act weird in Starfield?
00:08:13
Speaker
yeah that's That's not endearing, Jank. Because as I say, Jank is something that I feel like we miss so much these days because the AAA games tend to be overly polished. And if there is Jank, it's just the annoying kind.
00:08:30
Speaker
but like if it impedes gameplay, it, it strides the line of not being jank anymore and becomes buggy and annoying. Like you said, Yachts with unity, once it started in bleeding gameplay, you had to go buy another version of the game. That is just terrible. yeah Like that's really bad. Yeah. If you need progress, let's if you need to to go back to an older save, if you're having hard crashes, like those like those are indefensible janks in my mind. Like those are not, no one can find those endearing where a character wiling out in the background yeah or physics getting you off for a bit. But would you rather have jank in all its wonderful spectrum of jankiness or ah games that just restrict what the player can do half the time in order to avoid jank? So I mean, this, this ah
00:09:21
Speaker
centers around something you bring up a lot where you'd rather have a a bad game than a bland game, right? And right some of that jank can, if the jank is a product of a reach, a developer's creative reach extending their they practical grasp, ah then I think that's something that you could be like, oh, I see what you tried to do here. And it was actually like a ah pretty neat idea. But because of time, because of resources, because maybe you were just a little too early to the idea, this thing does not feel great. And I feel like yeah and I'm much happier giving that a pass. Shall we talk about Slitterhead?
00:09:58
Speaker
I would love to talk about Slitterhead. Yeah, fill me in. I am right from a view that's going to come out, but, uh, and, uh, I don't want to spoil myself here, but Slitterhead's main mechanic is a possession. It is a possess them up. What of the few? abouts yeah Yeah. I think the only two possess them ups I can think of are Messiah and driver San Francisco. And I love san francisco that's possessing things in driver San Francisco. they me too I love that game. Second site was a good possess them up back in the day.
00:10:26
Speaker
Was it site? Wasn't second site? Cy apps. Were those possess some ups? Geist? No, I'm thinking that Geist Geist was a possess them up on the game. I was a geist them up. Well, I don't remember that one, but, uh, yeah, I really enjoyed how the possessing in drivers have Francisco allowed you to, uh, uh, not skip a beat in the gameplay. It was a driving game. So if you, you could drive into a wall and usually that would mean, Oh, the, the flow has been lost. Now I have to reverse out, rejoin traffic. And I've lost however much distance on the person I'm pursuing, not in drivers have Francisco, just hop out, possess the next dude on the road and get right back into the action. That's what I loved about it. All weird premise. I love him.
00:11:06
Speaker
That's sort of the experience I get in Slitterhead combat as well. Things going wrong? Not anymore. So you you switch between bodies. That's not me. Yeah, so you have like core characters. You can bring up the two core characters into a mission and they are like, characters are upgrading and stuff, story characters. But then you can possess just random NPCs wandering around the city. So when you get into a battle, you have your two core characters, but you can also possess an NPC who's cowering in fear behind the monster and you'll possess them and they'll have some abilities and weapons and they won't be as strong as your core characters, but you can use them in combat, use them in traversal.
00:11:42
Speaker
You can jump off a roof and right before you're about to hit the ground, just possess someone else. Then you're like, I don't know what happened to that guy. He just jumped off the roof. That wasn't me. That's awesome. I guess the jank running through possess most to me is ah sort of context-based because like morally this is completely indefensible. Sure. We're just like leaving a a prolonged sequence of dudes to die.
00:12:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. We're taking over their bodies without consent. It's pretty, it's pretty fucked up. Yeah. But the plot, like Dravid's have this go particularly sort of necessarily has to frame us as the good guy. And, uh, it really, it really doesn't come across in like the actual, it's it's a bit of ludonarrative dissonance. I think, uh, that particular flavor of junk.
00:12:25
Speaker
Yeah, we, uh, I, I, I compared, uh, Slitterhead to a lot of games of the PS3 era that it felt like a lot of the, like, we're, we're, we're trying to do a triple A thing, but we might not have the triple A resources. And that's where you get the jank of, of your vampire reigns and your, uh, your, your mind jacks. Platinum games kind of touched that realm for me, like a lot of platinum games.
00:12:52
Speaker
Yeah, so there's certain developers that have like a, ja like Suda has a little bit of jank around him, Swery has a little command. yeah um Yeah. But that's good jank, I think. Then of course, obviously you rise. It's good jank. It could jank who comes out of an experimental spirit. And for me Slitterhead more embodies the more experimental spirit of like the PS2 era.
00:13:13
Speaker
Uh, where, you know, there was a lower barrier to entry. There was much more better third party support. So there are all kinds of people will experiment with all kinds of crazy ideas. We were still ah somewhat new to the realms of 3d gameplay. Yeah. So you'd be more likely to see fun stuff like a God hand catamari Damacy, a shadow of the Colossus really exploring the potential in the game space that you don't get so much of these days now that everything's uh, invisible walls and ultra realistic buckets. Shadow, shadow. The class is one of my favorite games of all time. And I think that is undeniably janky because it is trying something that ah barely any games are trying now. Like yeah the scale and scope and freedom of movement and climbing up a thing's grundle. Like even when I play that game now, I'm like, what is, where am I? Like you get stuck in the fur and you don't know which way you're facing. Um,
00:14:07
Speaker
I think it strides this line between exactly what Yachts was saying with experimental but also ambition, like how ambitious how ambitious the project is, what they're trying to do. um It might be something that's been done before but just on a completely different scale like with Shadow of the Colossus but that also is directly correlated to budget like if you're trying to do something incredibly ambitious with a huge budget I think you push through that jank barrier and just get into you guys weren't managing your resources correctly like you had an infinite amount of money and you you just fucked up rather than you're a small team team trying to do this ambitious thing and it's a bit jank you know there's a it's such a weird line you can push through do you guys have like a like
00:14:55
Speaker
well Do you have early memories of janky games? Like, it's funny for me, like there's some 2D games, but I feel like jank is an inherently 3D thing. And maybe that's just because so many more ah like possibilities get introduced in a 3D game than a 2D game. As we say, it feels like jank is a result of ambition and exploring new spaces. And yeah in 2D world, everything was much more tightly under control.
00:15:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think of a lot of, a lot, a lot, a lot of early 3D games. The N64, the PS1, the Dreamcast, even in the PS2, had Cenk in them trying to figure out how do we make a game of 3D, like, you know. Yeah, I mean, the earliest days of, like, PlayStation 1 3D games now, those were Cenk.
00:15:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. When looking at like what what, like what Nintendo took out of the oven in Mario 64 and being like, well, shit, how do we do that? And it's like, Oh, let's try. And then it turns out being like, Oh, we don't actually know how to do this. So we're going to try it. Castlevania, Castlevania 64 was just like absolute jank or like races in the 64 area, like Beatle adventure racing or even Diddy Kong racing had, I remember,
00:16:08
Speaker
you know, animations, bugging out in Diddy Kong racing and like clipping through the walls constantly based on speed and angle and stuff like that. But it never. Well, I think it was mainly because I was a child. It never really angered me. It was like, oh, I've done something. Jank has this kind of like naughty quality to it. Like you're saying, you're doing something you shouldn't be. I love clipping out of bounds by accident in games. I feel like I've discovered like a secret. You know, um yeah there's a wonderful YouTube show that does that.
00:16:38
Speaker
players love feeling like they've gotten one over the game. oh yeah There was a time when developers tried to make games where you could be the bad guy and like games like Overlord and Evil Genius. And I always felt like those were sort of missing the point. They were trying to ah give the player the opportunity to be naughty, but yeah as long as they were doing it within the constraints they defined, then it didn't feel like being naughty. yeah Being naughty meant jumping on people's heads in half-life. It meant you know being a bad guy in GTA, ah not because the game made you, but because you could.
00:17:15
Speaker
Yeah, i mean I feel like a lot of it is like allowing ah players the freedom and expression to make their own fun. And whether that is going out of bounds, whether that is like, you know, fucking around and just being a menace or anything like that. And and those, I feel like good jank comes from there, like the the ah the players being able to like slip through the wrinkles and create their own little pockets of fun. I've got a great example of this. So like these things can objectively ruin an experience for you and I did this in Elden Ring so
00:17:50
Speaker
um We we were playing it. um I think we had like an early copy and I was this is before there was, you know, guides and stuff like that. And um they patched this out incredibly quick. But Moog, the blood lord guy, um I saw all of the um like graves around his arena like before you enter. And I was jumping and parkouring up and I managed to jump into his arena so that his A.I. doesn't trigger. Yeah. So I could just walk up to him and I killed him. Yeah. And I was laughing the entire time and I objectively missed out on, I did it on subsequent playthroughs, but I missed out on a really good fight. But that memory of me accidentally doing that and ruining that boss fight is something that I hold in my mind is a fond, happy memory because I, I got one up on the game. Yeah. Before they patched it, you could exploit it. Yeah.
00:18:45
Speaker
previously There's a couple of boss fights in Dark Souls where you can see the boss before you enter into the arena. If you get to at the right angle and you can, if you just snipe them with an f bow and arrow, you can just kill them before you even enter the fight. And the game allows for it. Like the game goes, okay, that counts. You beat the boss. Yeah. I mean, FromSoft is definitely probably a across it. Like FromSoft might be the biggest triple A beloved developer who also still has jank in their games. And it's like acceptable jank. people are ah rarely mad at Jank in FromSoft games. And honestly, Jank is a lot of the character of FromSoft games. Like a lot of the like weird physics situations you find yourself in or sort of the physical comedy that comes from playing the games yeah can can come from that. Whereas, ah you know, like we mentioned before, when it's in a Bethesda game or even like, I don't know, I'll be curious to see
00:19:36
Speaker
Obviously Witcher 3 was beloved, even though it had plenty of bugs and glitches and and wrinkles to it. But I feel like warmly received, whereas when Cyberpunk dropped, that was lambasted for coming out of the coming out of the oven way too early and charging full price to the point where they had to pull it out of the store shelves of of specific consoles. um And so I'm curious, it feels like CD Projekt might have passed that that point where Bethesda has where it's like, oh, you're kind of held to a different standard maybe level of accountability they're not the indies anymore they're not the they're not the tryhards they're the establishment we expect we expect a certain amount of polish from the establishment yeah yeah because otherwise also yeah
00:20:21
Speaker
I get this feeling as well of, I don't know what it is if it's just like entitlement as a gamer, but once I understand that a company has made so much money off of a product, I stop tolerating jank. So I've been playing begrudgingly. ah yeah I say that been playing a lot of dead by daylight at the moment. And that game is jank has crazy bad UI and stuff like that. Hello, Jess.
00:20:44
Speaker
And um I stopped tolerating the jank in that game because people go, oh, it's, you know, it's just jank. They're a scrappy, you know, indie team. And it's like, they've made so much money. Like you, they should be fixing these things. Like it stops being quaint and starts being like, well, there's so many of them and you guys have so much money. You should probably be trying to fix these things rather than just accepting it.
00:21:08
Speaker
Actually, that's not always the case because I just remembered um ah thinking of examples of jank that has made me go, oh, and had more fun was ah one time when I was playing Red Dead Redemption. Now that's triple A by any definition. Oh, yes. But I was playing Red Dead Redemption. And for some reason, ah the euphoria physics just failed the walking animations. And yeah John Marston just started roller skating around the terrain just without moving his without moving his legs. But they were sort of there was a little bit of physics, so they were sort of vibrating as they went along the rough terrain.
00:21:42
Speaker
yeah It's consistent, right? Yeah. And I agree. I also recently just finished the completed the remaster of Red Dead. Um, and the, the frequency as well, I think is also, uh, a component of jank because if that was happening every other time you go out of a cut scene, it would probably stop being funny and start being like, well, you should probably fix this, fix this, but if it happens, yes you know, yes, that's exactly what happened, Eric.
00:22:09
Speaker
shot in a spikey movie. It happened once the whole time I was playing the game and it did not like reduce my opinion of the game at all. Yeah, I don't feel like Rockstar was ever lambasted for their jank until the GTA trilogy remastered, which was not them who developed it, but they signed off on it. They had the money and everything, which came out in like a horrid state.
00:22:37
Speaker
Like was jack that was just bad. So that was just bad. Yeah. So that's like, that's like a clear line of demarcation where this one rockstar thing is considered Jake. And then this other, you know, tangential rockstar thing is like fleecing customers of their money, which has just like recently finally been patched through like several years later. Now, apparently the GTA trilogy definitive edition is good. So yes.
00:23:02
Speaker
Bad is robbing a bank. Running into the bank, waving a gun, your trousers fall down your ankles, and you fall over and shoot yourself in the leg. That's jank. Yeah. But if that happens every day, but it's just not good. Well, it's bad for you to never stop being funny to the people who work in the bank, I'm sure. Yeah. yeah I wanted to also bring up the purposeful jank.
00:23:27
Speaker
games that made their bread and butter out of ah um what weaponizing jank or mechanic. Good. Nice thing. Yeah. That's the word jake on la yeah harnessing the harnessing jake. Well, or mechanic anizing Bennett Foddy, obviously with games like co-op and getting over it and upcoming baby steps and the, the sort of the, the cottage industry genre that's ah So to simulate the simulator, talk to dad, talk to dad. I am Brad chained together, which we played. else I also think mechanical mechanical junk can be expressed by just allowing the player to do things. Baldur's Gate free, I think is an incredibly jank game, but intentionally so they allow for these interactions that probably gameplay wise shouldn't be allowed because they break the game. But the player thinks they could happen. So they allow it happen. They want this junk.
00:24:20
Speaker
these jank interactions to play out. Yeah. See, for me, Goat Simulator feels like it's sort of crosses the line into sort of pandemic two areas where they try too hard to lean into it. Yeah, anyways, it's gone full circle of parody and it's kind of like, what like, what is this game actually saying? Yeah, you're expecting it, right? You're expecting insane. Absolutely crosses that line.
00:24:45
Speaker
Yeah, you can almost feel when a game gets revealed generally in the indie game and you see it during a showcase and you're like, oh, you like this is almost a meme, right? Like the point of this is to I don't know. But then you have something like another crab's treasure, which was like, oh, a soul is like but you play a crab and you can have a gun and on paper you're like, OK, this feels like a little like I'm just trying to to skate off the power of an animated GIF on Twitter. But then the game comes out and it's really good. So yeah. Yeah.
00:25:15
Speaker
Arctic eggs suddenly leapt to mind, as came the weaponized jank. Yeah, yeah, that's the core mechanic of that, of trying to fry your eggs is janky as all fuck, um but I guess purposefully.
00:25:31
Speaker
ah
00:25:34
Speaker
Postal, the Postal 2 would be a game that probably sits on the borderline for me. of playing into the jank. Postal 3 absolutely tries too hard to lean into the jank, and it's just kind of lame and annoying. I also just think there's jank in every single game you'll ever play, ever, because every game is barely being held together with string and straw and is ready to break at any point, and it will. Maybe yours are. Wait, how many patches did you do for Starstruck?
00:26:05
Speaker
Oh, a few. um moment None in the oil. Yes, you know, that's legit really good. No, I mean, I ah i completely agree. Every game like some of the most revered games essentially has. a chick Yeah. But like Breath of the Wild has Jank Half-Life 2 has Jank Elden Ring has Jank. Like I feel like the only way you're really able to I guess the only things without Jank are like the smallest, tightest, like most focused experiences. I don't even know. I don't even know if I can name a game without jank. I think does belaro have jank. I think, but yeah, I guess again, maybe that's weaponized. do I think it's two extremes, right? Like you said, small experiences, but also, uh, as the arts, he mentioned, uh, the top of the pod, it was,
00:26:55
Speaker
AAA games that have all of their corners rounded off that are just about individual mechanical focuses and telling you that story and they don't allow for any of that experimentation, that that doesn't have it either.
00:27:10
Speaker
um Supermassive games make me, is what I think of when I think of overly polished jank avoidance. Like until the iron and stuff? Yeah, because yeah cause they have, there's very tight movement controls. So you can't do anything that doesn't resemble normal human movement. And it's kind of like sluggish to control and annoying. And all you can do yeah is pick stuff up and comment on them.
00:27:36
Speaker
anything else is cut to Yeah, it's funny, I was gonna say, I feel like jank is burst the second you give the player like the tools for player expression and player freedom. And it's funny that those supermassive games have storylines, they're all about player freedom, like this is a choose your own adventure, but There's no jank in them because it's not really player freedom, right? It's a- Yeah. Because obviously they can't allow for every possible thing you could do. Yeah. It's just a choose your own adventure book in video game form. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Shall we go to Super Chats? There's- Yes. Oh, yes. There's like five before we even started it. I have a bunch of topics I haven't brought up, but I saw specifically got mentioned in Super Chat, so I was waiting for that. Everyone's got jank opinions, jank opinions. Jank opinions! That was a good portmanteau.
00:28:24
Speaker
Alex Armstrong gives $5 and says, off topic. Well, great fucking start. Last Thursday was the Nintendo DS's 20th anniversary. Do you think it was a good system at the time? And what were your favorite games on it? I think it was weird as shit. I was like, why are you doing two prints? That's a whole other fucking podcast. Totally. Save that for next week. Yeah, let's save it for next week. I've got months print opinions on the DS. Oh, can we just stop buying NL games next week? That sounds nice. Yeah, let's do it. Basically every Castlevania on the DS.
00:28:54
Speaker
Oh, yes. I don't like how ah is when people are trying to port those games, like it it it takes a bit because you have to figure out, like, what do we do with this fucking bottom screen? You'll screen this was this bottom screen. I've got the press away to emulate, like, even if you try yeah tend to steal them, they're weird.
00:29:11
Speaker
I'll tell you what I did with the bottom screen when I was playing Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow, download a fucking fan patch for the ROM that removes all the fucking touchscreen gimmicks. And the game plays yeah perfectly well without them. What do you know? I got the Dominus collection of Castlevania, which is a bunch of the DS games. And um the at the beginning, it's like, how do you want to display the other screen? And it's just like 10 different ways of doing it. And it's fucking confusing. my Yeah. yeah I've just been replaying, um, circle of the moon in like the earlier GBA, Castlevania collection, actually. Good games. I'm enjoying it as just a thing to do with my hands. I always prefer aria of sorrow though. Circle of the moons a little bit, uh, to copy pasty and the environments for my tastes. Austin, Castlevania. Tune in for more on NL games.
00:30:05
Speaker
Anyway, yes, maybe next week. Gildon Yiddish gives five dollars and says, while being hyped for a broken release is a traumatic experience, I need a janky, ambitious games more than stable reproductions of the tried and true. I agree, Gildon Yiddish. I want to see the stumbling that comes with the process of scientific discovery. yeah don lot of fan That dude hadn't left his moldy Petri dishes around. Would we ever have had penicillin? No, we wouldn't.
00:30:33
Speaker
And a lot like the the birth of those, uh, of, of like beloved, you know, mechanics or ideas might come from a game that originally launched and was, you know, yeah chinky as hell a lot of games realized where the fun was in the process of development.
00:30:49
Speaker
Oh, 100%. Yeah. Look at all those superpowers in the Tears of the Kingdom that were originally DevTools. Yeah. Or how Gunpoint used to be about pointing guns at people. But Midway to to Development to decided that it was more fun to jump through windows and rewire electronics. Yeah, or even a like Jurassic Park Trespasser does like the HUD-less information in a away but to that other games later would ah do but pioneer of tit health That's classic jank for you. bill j
00:31:25
Speaker
Dr. Theo, member for 10 months in Tip Jar. Thank you very much. And then gives, ah well, three $5 superjads in a row. Jank is great for speedrunning. Security breach has a huge speedrunning community because of how jank it all is. Yeah, speedruns of modern Curbs Edges games just aren't fun at all. Boring up, yeah.
00:31:43
Speaker
It's funny, I was going to say, you know, ah in terms of big AAA developers who feel like their games are the least janky, Nintendo was a developer who comes to mind. But like Nintendo games are some of the most speed run and games out there mostly for Ocarina time, Breath of the Wild, all that stuff. And those games thrive on jankiness. I'm like, oh, I'm going to get up the stairs crazy quick by doing backward jumps and cancels or I'm going to teleport from the Deku Tree to the end of the game. Yeah.
00:32:12
Speaker
But those... that jank exists in the two most popular speedrunning games, I think, of All Time and Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time. And the jank exists in those games because they are experimenting to allow the players to have mechanical expression. So there's a direct correlation between those things. I mean, you can speedrun any game, so the most popular speedrun games are generally just the most popular games. The games people have the most nostalgia for and have played the most. Minecraft is somehow a really big speedrunning game because it's so fucking popular.
00:32:43
Speaker
Yeah, ah Dr. Theo then adds astral spiff did the legendary 600% run where you beat security breach six times getting all six endings, but also doing the hundred percent completion each time 17 hour run. Well, that's just mental isn't that isn't security breach the bad ah Yes, but its game it's fucking awful. But you know, the kids and their five, you know, the kids and their Five Nights at Freddy's, they can't get enough of that shit. I mean, I guess maybe if Five Nights at Freddy's is getting kids into horror, which will get them to to find better horror and then getting them into speed running, which will maybe get them into better speed running, then that's good. A net positive. I'm going to say it's a net positive.
00:33:22
Speaker
And Dr. Pio finally adds, also, Jank can lead to literal game mechanics to be used in the future. That's how we got Rocket jumping from Quake. Great. That's a game that benefits from taking the hands off the player and letting them go hog wild. Yeah, <unk> ah that's a great one. ah dale mallow gives ah Dale Mallows also gives three Super Chats in a row. What is this? What is this? What is this? Gives $2 and says, my favorite Jank game is as your dreams on the PS1.
00:33:52
Speaker
And then add I'll listen later, gents, I got to go take a sheer. It spreading that across his second two super chats. As you don't say, don't say spreading it across his his two super chat. I mean, that is literally what he did. Yeah. As your dreams, I actually never played. It was a Konami JRPG. And I remember its box, ah but I never actually played it. And apparently it was a rogue like.
00:34:20
Speaker
RPG, which I don't feel we had a lot of Roguelikes back then. why didn't they just kill it dream ah That's a great question. sounds just Sounds pretentious to me. I mean, RPG titles are all about sounding pretentious, right? Well, there you go. yeah Eternal Sonata. There you go.
00:34:40
Speaker
a Name I'm not even going to try to pronounce, but is presumably Polish. Gives 10 Polish Lotties and says a new cheeky breeky IV Damke. Eurojank. Eurojank. Eurojank. That certainly is a janky super chat. And then Yahtzee will wear a green hand three weeks. I think wasn't it three weeks last week? Yahtzee will wear a green hand three weeks. I mean you're going to see. Keep reading.
00:35:07
Speaker
I think you're slipping because five ah euros and says it's two weeks. Actually, YouTube just doesn't let me change my name anymore. Oh, OK. I think YouTube thinks that you're trying to. Yeah. Yeah. This person is trying to change their name every single week, huh? Are you trying to of avoid banning or what's going on here? Crypties got to be my favorite jank game. Anyway, clock's ticking. Willy Fiddlers. Cryptis. What's that one? Cryptis. Cryptis.
00:35:36
Speaker
It just came out earlier this year. It looks like a shooter, but it's very magenta. It's just literally the color magenta. Well, not magenta in the metaphorical sense. No, magenta in the literal sense. Oh, okay. Yeah. It looks like a 32 bit style shooter that has lots of bright colors in it. Metaphysically magenta.
00:36:03
Speaker
Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says, Jank as Sonic Heroes is, I still have fun with it. kindnic Sonic games, especially 3D Sonic games, tend to tend to have a a lot of- Oh, yes, yes, yes. The ones I really enjoy. It was dense with the worst kind of Jank.
00:36:24
Speaker
That was like where almost jank took a step over into like, oh, this might be actually broken. Whereas 100 percent like Sonic Adventure, very janky, but but charming. I think those games don't really allow you to do much. You most of the time run along a track. So when I'm running along a track and is jank, that's just bad. It's not. That's not like, oh, it's quaint because they they couldn't do this thing like they just can't make you run forward properly. Promise. He got to go fast.
00:36:55
Speaker
and think any day of that I mean, could we maybe not go fast so we just avoid dropping things? What if we just go at like a healthy risk speed? A leisurely pace. A leisurely pace, yeah. I was going through that um the new version of Half-Life 2 with all the developer commentary they added. And I got to like the the chapter where you're driving the buggy around the roads. And they're all like, hey, yeah the key element of this chapter was trying to give the player a sense of speed and powerfulness. Yeah. ah Although,
00:37:30
Speaker
ah If you actually time it, your buggy only moves the maximum speed of 35 miles per hour. my well Shit, why isn't Sonic doing that? Just moving it to nice manageable 35 miles an hour whilst just making you feel like you're going. What is Sonic running from? That's the real question. What are we all running from? Himself. Oh my god. Think about it. One thing he can never escape. Think about it.
00:37:56
Speaker
ah Tom Strader-D gives 25 Polish lotties and says, I think jank is usually used for games that are ambitious and interesting, but lacked budget or resources for polish, generally indie games. Well, thank you for clarifying the definitions there, Tom Strader-D. Tell me a lot of the. Yeah, I guess the indie games that that ah tend to try to do something. ah Yes, yeah and ah like ambitious.
00:38:21
Speaker
I mean, case in point, Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says, would you defend Consuming Shadows janky visuals? No, because my visuals of my game, The Consuming Shadow, were not janky, they were low effort. And I think we established that ambition is the key to jank. And I just really wasn't trying at all when I was doing the art of The Consuming Shadow. Well, and it feels like jank isn't an aesthetic thing as we defined it, right? Like jank isn't visuals or audio, jank is It can be. And that comes from mechanics. I mean, when I think of janky visuals, I think of like early 3D realistic characters where they were trying to create a realistic look, but the characters looked like, well, they looked like Lara Croft and Tomb Raider 1.
00:39:06
Speaker
Yeah. because Interactions, right? Jank can be T-posing. It can be, ah you know, the audio mismatching with the lip sync in one scene, right? It can be free visuals and audio, but it just has it has to be the interactions between the game's systems not quite gelling or like connecting as intended.
00:39:28
Speaker
Um, yeah, but's almost like, uh, Superman 64 is again, this notoriously buggy and janky and everything. And I don't think it's art direction is what people are pointing at. It's like the completely fucked top to bottom physics of flying of Superman moving on the ground of how he looks and everything. Like it's less that building is janky and more of like just the the act of everything thats in this world. yeah life is In this world. Yeah, I brought up Superman 64 when I was talking about um the Sun or to remake in the semi ramblymatic. Because they were doing the same thing with fog. They were like, Oh, we can't render as much as the world. We'll just say it's a foggy day. Yeah. What works in horror turns out doesn't work so well in Superman 64. Stocking.
00:40:20
Speaker
Uh, Halkengard gives $5 and says Unity built-in physics and Unity Asset Store, a patient zero for modern jank. So this is part of the reason I really don't want to try to learn how to make 3D games. I'm happy making 2D pixel art, thank you very much. The extra dimension is hard to get my head around. Yeah.
00:40:42
Speaker
so Don't get me started on Unity. I don't even want to talk about it. Go use a better engine. a What would do you recommend these days for the ones making 3D games? UE5 or Godot. Okay. And I still recommend Game Maker if you're happy to stick with 2D. Yeah, 2D is good. Because they fucking suck. But it's... Game Maker and Godot for 2D, for me. But there's a surprisingly small number of gameplay genres that absolutely need 3D graphics to work.
00:41:16
Speaker
First-person games, yes. ah Flight simulators, yes. ah Otherwise, you could probably get away with just keeping it to 2D, if you ask me. Yeah. Also, if you want a good 3D engine, go back in time, sneak into Konami headquarters, and just steal the Fox engine. That was great. Yeah, easy peasy. Easy peasy. Look at Buzzfeed go around. Ryan Betts gives $2 and says, what second wins verdict on Outlast trials? Fun, jank? Fun and jank?
00:41:48
Speaker
I ain't played it, so... No, not at all. We had a delightful time chatting with the creative director at Red Barrels on one of the last episodes of Breakout be ah back in the old home. ah So my my history with that series is I've i've played the single player games, and i think I think the first one was pretty impressive for the time, the second one's kind of whatever, and the creative director... Second one is very awful. First game's good, second a game...
00:42:15
Speaker
Complete shithouse. I panned it in my review. Yeah. And then I think the third game, uh, the Outlast Riles is a multiplayer game, which is, I mean, why Yahtzee and I tend to not play out of my wheelhouse. It outlasted us. Uh, Polish name. I'm still not going to try to pronounce. Give, oh, no, missed one. alex Alexander John gives $2. It says totally accurate battlegrounds is intentional jank. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that.
00:42:46
Speaker
Because, uh, isn't that totally accurate battle simulator or is battle. They made, they made totally accurate battle simulator. Then they, then for April fools, they made like a pub G ripoff in the same engine, oh but it was actually like a fully functional battle royale game. And like a lot of people played that instead of totally accurate battle simulator. So that's the same team.
00:43:07
Speaker
They did the same thing this year with content warning at the beginning of the year. Like, it's funny that their little, like, goof one-off things end up kind of blowing up and they're making this game called Haste. I mean, this is literally what happened with Fortnite, with the original. It wasn't yeah like the the original game. They made it like a battle royale mode and yeah completely eclipsed the original intended game. Yep. So don't make a joke battle royale mode unless you're willing to commit to it for the rest of your life is the lesson we're learning from all of this.
00:43:39
Speaker
Can I try the next thing? Can I try the next thing? Okay, you try pronouncing it. Arcek Vyapzowy. Oh, you just looked it up. I did not. That's but fucking Polish. I've had to pronounce dumb shit like this my whole life. Sorry, it's not. It's just hard to pronounce names. Well, name Marty just said, gives 25 Polish Laudes and says second wind outlaws versus Stalker 2, which one would you take? Technically, but both in a very similar state of technical fidelity.
00:44:08
Speaker
Well, I haven't played Stalker 2 for very long, but so far I'll take it over Star Wars Outlaws. I'll i'll say that right now. Agreed. I'd take Star Wars because I'm so goddamn sick of post-apocalyptic settings.
00:44:22
Speaker
Oh, well, that was though that was that was actually the rejected topic for this week's podcast behind the scenes information fans. Naturally, technically, my stalker, it doesn't take place in a post apocalyptic society. It's over I think I'm dying. Yeah, the world's fine. I think we all are slowly. ah Yeah, I think Stalker to Stalker to.
00:44:51
Speaker
because of budgetary reasons, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Also, Star Wars Outlaws, uh, feels for me more on the polished side of things. Uh-huh. There's not enough janks, there's not enough shit to do. Yeah, I don't see any jank when I played. i just No, the cities in particular just feel really restrictive. It's just like a hundred game mechanics that are all kind of shallow and none of them really go into enough detail to get something jank. It's also one of those games that um
00:45:23
Speaker
so i'm I'm going to be curious to see how people view this game in a few years because um those which this is an entirely different topic, but like something like No Man's Sky or Final Fantasy XIV, it has been getting consistent updates since launch, including massive like overhauls to the combat and the stealth system and like getting rid of stealth insta-fails, things that it just seems like you should not have released the game when you released it clearly. like You should have waited to do this.
00:45:51
Speaker
Even so, I have a feeling what people are going to be saying about in a few years is, what's that then? Was that one of those straight to Netflix, straight to Disney Plus, Star Wars spinoff series is I didn't watch. Yeah. It's also Ubisoft has become one of those companies where like, I
00:46:09
Speaker
It's hard to find good, actual, real criticism. That isn't just, I have a bone to pick with Ubisoft, like... No, I'm kind of with you there. you so like low head They're like the punching bag, the low-hanging fruit, the, let's jump, everyone let's jump on this thing. You're basically summarizing everything I've said about every Ubisoft game I've reviewed in the last few years. Hey, it's another Ubisoft open world game and it's functional, but it's fucking bland and it sucks. Yeah.
00:46:40
Speaker
Uh, Abdell Corrales gives five hour dollars and says, Hey guys, love your show. How many Skyrim copies does Jamaite own now? Five. Five. An anniversary version. Uh, the anniversary version on and a Switch version and two VR versions. So done it on the Switch version. You could have dressed up as Link. no I didn't even try the Switch version.
00:47:07
Speaker
I had to buy the Anniversary Vision on Steam for this challenge because I hadn't played it since I bought it retail for the PS3 in a box. Jesus.
00:47:19
Speaker
Oh wait, is it the switch? foot No, no, the switch version's one I didn't try. I have two anniversary versions. I had the anniversary version on the PC or on Steam and that didn't work. So I tried the game pass version. So I own it, but I didn't buy it. So I bought four versions, but tried five could have tried six with a switch version, but fuck that. Fuck you, Todd. ah The rod guard. Okay.
00:47:44
Speaker
Uh, frogs disseminating other frogs for friends gives five dollars. It says brainwave. Christmas season is in three weeks. So Yahtzee will wear a green hat is predicting Yahtzee will wear an elf hat. Yahtzee should wear a Santa hat instead. Oh, or I could just not wear a hat. So you could enjoy this lovely haircut I got over the weekend. I didn't know she got a haircut. Look at you. You look shorn. Yes. I know. I look professional.
00:48:14
Speaker
Um, extended pause. Sorry, I thought my, my, I'd accidentally muted my headset or something. That was just the silence of eternity cutting through. Anyway, uh, bookworm 776 gives $5. It says donation to Jamaite's Skyrim deficit for the topic. My personal favorite jank is awkward animation in old JRPGs like Tales of Symphonia. Yeah. Okay.
00:48:45
Speaker
Clipping quite animation. Yeah. Yeah. where' Or where it's like, listen, we only have a handful of animations for this thing for this game. And which we just got to use what we got to use. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm just going to attempt to foil Eric's filter.
00:49:01
Speaker
Oh, he did it. Oh, no, no, no, no. Balaclava Santa. If you become a pirate, he becomes a pirate ninja. He can foil.
00:49:15
Speaker
It's the eyes, it's the eyes that set it off. ah Where was I? Jacob Kitty gives $2 and says, Jermaine needs another dog named Narrative Dissonance. Now you need three dogs, one called Luda, one called Narrative, one called Dissonance. And then that leads that lead to the awkward scenario where two of them die first, and then you're left with a dog called Dissonance, and everyone's like, wow, you must really like Castlevania games. Then you get two more dogs saying harmony and of. Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:45
Speaker
Yeah. And then, and then dissonance and harmony die. And everyone's asking why you've got a game called of. Yeah. Then you got to buy two more dogs called, um, symphony and night. And the. Yeah. And then symphony and the, and all of die. And everyone's saying, Oh, you must really like cyberpunk games and the the process continues. you
00:50:09
Speaker
Re-invent myself free dog ownership. Alexanderungusai dollars says in dev diary you said to only make sequels to expand world and characters What is your rule on prequels and when should reboots and remakes be allowed? um Look if there's a so story that can make a prequel then whatever but there very rarely is because one bit of writing advice I was once given was ah Are you telling us the most interesting thing that has ever happened to the main character? And if not, why aren't you telling us that?
00:50:41
Speaker
And if you've already done that, then the prequel is obviously going to be a less interesting story in the life of this character. And so often the prequels, the whole story is just the stuff that led up to the interesting story. Like fucking rogue one. And why would anyone care? I ask you. Yeah.
00:51:02
Speaker
yeah We can say the sweet shot of Vader coming out of that hallway. yeah We got that sweet shot of Vader, ah which is cool. But yeah, that's about it. like I mean, I mean, you know, if you took away the context of the fact that it's leading up to so was a new hope. but What would you take away from that? You're like, hey, why did you just stop? Just it was getting good. I hate prequels that panda. And if you're going to do one that doesn't pander and just tells a unique story, you might as well just write a new story that doesn't have to connect to something.
00:51:33
Speaker
I don't know, I think I said before, a good sequel sees the original as something to jump off from to explore new worlds. And a bad sequel is just ah wallowing in the original or just repeating it. ah Agreed. Anyway, Dr. Theo gives side orders and says, Remember Surgeon Simulator? That's probably my favorite jank on purpose game back in the day. Surprisingly amazing soundtrack, too. I do remember that. Yeah, I don't remember the soundtrack.
00:52:00
Speaker
No, no sort simulator. I know it's got ported to VR, but VR seems like a realm filled with jank, right? Just based on, it's like the equivalent of early 3d games where it's like, we're learning what we're doing. We're building the railroad tracks in front of us as we go. I feel like certain simulator probably get a lot of easier in VR. Cause like the premise of the original was that you were trying to manipulate your hands with like really awkward mouse controls. Yeah. And if you had like one to one hand movement with your,
00:52:29
Speaker
with your fucking Valve Index ah grippy controllers, then... Surely it would get easy peasy. Jay, was it you who in old videos you were you were writing things on the whiteboards in Half-Life Alyx? Oh, I certainly was doing that. My Half-Life Alyx video, ah which I might remake, is one of the my favorite things because in the video I'm doing diagrams of game dev stuff on the whiteboard and I play the piano in the video to the music in the back of the video. Yeah. I loved making that video. It was so much fun.
00:53:05
Speaker
That's cool. That's not janky. That's just cool. Yeah. Oh, boy, tech gives five dollars. That I do know how to pronounce now. Great morning lads. Just finished watching your bucket hunt. Skyrim always felt like one of the few cases where the jank added to the game experience. Well, I certainly remember that one bit where an old lady sort of sank into the ground as she was going up a flight of stairs. More than I remember anything that happened in the plot of Skyrim.
00:53:32
Speaker
Well, and Skyrim as a whole is an interesting case study for Yahtzee. You mentioned having the PS3 version. The PS3 version famously was the, I think, transcended jank to become a little bit broken. And Bethesda either took a very long time to fix it or possibly just never fixed it on PS3. So I feel like certain and also things might be case by case basis where like, you talked about Assassin's Creed Unity, like I played it on on Xbox one, I think, for a review. And I didn't really have any bugs, so whereas folks who played on PC seem to just have a fucking bevy of bugs. So even after I switched to the console version, I remember falling through the floor at least once. And I think I've fallen through the floor at least once in every year as a screen game thinking about it. Not as a screen game unless you fucking fall to the center of the earth. Yeah. Yeah. Just looking up fruitlessly as you watch the terrain drift away into the sky. Yeah.
00:54:29
Speaker
Halkengard gives $10 and says, how do you guys think you'll feel when Gen AI inevitably gets used for real-time NPC dialogue strong decision-making? Might be cool in Dwarf Fortress or Rimworld, but also soulless, probably. I suspect there's gonna be a whole new dimension of jank coming out of there.
00:54:44
Speaker
i've I've seen it in motion. A lot of the the students at the uni I used to teach at were using um systems to be able to do that because they couldn't afford voice actors because they're poor assh students. yeah It was jank, but you can see that it could get to a point where it's you know, kind of only slightly noticeable in key moments where it could be a little bit jank. I don't think this should be something we should do. I think we should be paying voice actors and artists to to do these things, but it's definitely going to be possible in the next few years, I think. you but Well, AI is always going to be limited. I was watching that Tom Scott video about the things AIs will never understand.
00:55:24
Speaker
Like, uh, like if I were just like his example was that if you say the phrase, I put the trophy in the suitcase to protect it from getting damaged. What is the it in that sentence referring to? Yeah. That an AI would not know because you need, because it would need to know in all sorts of background shit. Like what is the suitcase and what is it primarily used for? Yeah.
00:55:52
Speaker
frog just sorts a Frogs disseminating other frogs for friends gives $2 and says also jank bad game. Unknown nine was wildly awful. That was a recent one. That was one of those games that just that's the one that just born into existence and I'd never played it. Yeah, I remember that that just appeared out of nowhere. Nobody played it and then it disappeared again. But but it sometimes i out of it but had like a pedigree didn't it?
00:56:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it was published by Bandai Namco, like... Yeah, it's... I mean, there's a lot of, like, seems effort that seems to have gone into it. I'm looking at the developer. Oh, no, no other games listed. and Never a mind then. Yeah, I don't know if they were like a studio that came from, like, they worked together on X, Y, or Z beforehand. There was, like, a famous actor in it. Yeah, I'm gonna pin that. Yeah, it seems like there's some of those, when, like, a AA game really tries to be AAA, I feel like that's when we get...
00:56:49
Speaker
I get that blurred line between jank and bugs where it's like a reach. Uh, yeah. like you think crasp um Flintlock the siege of dawn. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or even like a mortals of avium last year. Um, Oh, it starts that lady who played, um, Yennefer in the Witcher TV series. Oh, that's right. Yeah. I clicked on that, that the screenshot on the steam page and I was like, why does she look familiar? Yeah. i got That lady.
00:57:15
Speaker
her Your37 gives 20 Danish kroner and says, is Baldur's Gate 3 janky? Has ton of fun exploits, barrel mancy. Yeah, I think kind of like what Jay said, where it's in in trying to replicate the very ah freeform nature of an actual D and&D game, where you can you can make something happen if you're persuasive enough, and if you have a GM who's you know open to that kind of stuff, and if the the roles go the right way.
00:57:42
Speaker
um And that's, it's one thing for that to happen in your imagination or on ah on a little game board. And then it's another thing to see it happen in a game. Yeah. And then you're not mad about it, right? When, if something does go wrong and there is jank and the game breaks, you're just like, well, I was trying something kind of dumb and stupid. Like I kind of forgive that. And you move on or you try again in a different way. So now we do show pulls his signature move. I think at this point we'd be more annoyed if he did write anything.
00:58:12
Speaker
20 dollars, and no comment. Or maybe saving it all up and just like writing a little novella for us at the end of the year. I have to read. He'd ruin his mystique. Classic douche. Uh, Doron Grossman Naples gives $2 and says, I tend to think of jank in terms of mechanics. Thanks. I think further elaboration.
00:58:31
Speaker
No, but I think, yeah, I think it's mechanics over aesthetics. Oh, sorry. He elaborates in his next super chat where he gives $10 and says, E.J. Dark Souls has tons of weird unexplained mechanics like miracle resonance and grave lording that actually enhance the atmosphere and service foundation resort of community mythology. I think last January.
00:58:50
Speaker
Like, yeah, that's just a ah mechanic that's hidden. I do agree that, as we said earlier, I think jank comes from interactions between either the player or systems having friction and that causing an unintended outcome. Yeah, um that's where it stems from. So in a way, yeah, mechanics. And between those Ryan Betts gives $5. Can we think of a term more condemnatory?
00:59:16
Speaker
I don't think that's a real word. Then Buggy, for cases where a money printing franchise like Pokémon releases a mess like Pokémon Scarlet.
00:59:27
Speaker
I don't know. Pokemon Scarlet, Scarlet and Violet just became the best selling generation of Pokemon ever. Surpassing green glue and- Well, as we learned in recent certain political elections, the general public are just dumb. They just don't care. I don't know what they want or what they're gonna get. yeah Yeah. You just wait till next time. Oh man, those pocket monsters, they're gonna be looking nice.
00:59:52
Speaker
They get what they deserve. The audience gets what they deserve. You can always. Alex Armstrong comes back with $2 and says, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom utilize jank and inventive in crazy ways. Yeah. Yes. I feel like that is weaponizing jank. Yeah. Or harnessing. If you can't beat them, jank them. What would be a game that weaponizes jank?
01:00:16
Speaker
oh
01:00:19
Speaker
ah The Half-Life 2 gravity gun. Ooh, that's good. Yeah, literal weaponizing jank. Yeah. man We we should know should get ourselves in a good old fashioned jank off. we should start jump We should start having a jank off. You know, I've just, I was just thinking that it's been a while since we all janked off together. We hold hands for the holidays. We do a nice, we figured we'd jank off. Christmas jank.
01:00:46
Speaker
hands nice talking about I'm talking about a little tournament to figure out what's the most jank janky games. We should do a jank battle masters episode. So who can find the jankest? Who can jank the And the last one to finish has to eat the biscuit. Oh, no, that's something else. ah Last DeMosa's gives 50 somethings and says Warframe coptering stroke bullet jump is jank done right.
01:01:13
Speaker
Yeah. It seems like movement, a lot, a lot of interesting movement texts and strats have come from. Yeah. come from Like original quake is full of that. The speedrun community. You can get like a speed boost if like an enemy shoots you as you run away from them. that Someone beat E2M1 in like four seconds or something, something ridiculous. there ah Hjorth87 gives 20 Danish krona and says minotaur in a porcelain store was free and janky. I think I remember that. What? That's like the name of the game. Yeah. like play the light so In a china shop. Sure. And you had to keep your business afloat without getting too angry. ah That's tough. Probably gonna knock shit over. Oh, this is not what I thought the game would look like. This is from a long time ago.
01:02:07
Speaker
okay yeah ah Peter gives or 99 and says in love with Stalker 2 most atmospheric a beautiful game. I've played it a while. Also, thanks for your glowing recommendation of Silent Hill 2. So good. That's sarcastic. I need. Yeah, I'm gonna play more Stalker 2 today, I think. You gonna be stalking? Man, if there's something that is jank already, it's probably the fucking voice acting and the range of accents on display.
01:02:35
Speaker
Where's the main character from? I don't know. It's like where he's from, moves 200 miles of every line he says. Yeah, he traveled a lot as a kid. as pre Yeah. Hawkeye Goh gives 100 Swedish krona and says Dragon Age origins can be pretty janky since it tried to translate real time with pause combat from old CRPG into 3D. Also fucking memory leaks making me tear my beard out trying to make it work.
01:03:03
Speaker
See, the endearing bit of jank that always struck me in Dragon Age was after you just killed something and you'd be just completely splattered in blood. Then you go into a conversation and everyone's just doing the old Bioware face completely placid, like a short reverse shot while you were completely splattered in blood. Just covered in gore and viscera. Yeah.
01:03:25
Speaker
but
01:03:28
Speaker
Uh, sovereign gives five euros and says, not sure if it counts as a jank, but Marty and his horse ragdolling down a mountain in today's battle masters certainly had me laughing. Yes. That's just classic Skyrim mountains. Shout out to, you know, shout out to Jesse. I think that was the funniest battle masters episode. i watched Yeah, it was incredibly well edited. Yes. If you haven't watched it yet, don't miss out. Cause I do think this is the best one. I think we're finding our feet. ah Agreed. And unfortunately it was a recorded,
01:03:58
Speaker
Uh, before the amnesia episode. So yes I don't know what that means for if we're getting any better. yeah It was also tough because each, each obviously due to the challenge, each run was an hour. And so, um, yeah, that needed a lot of fucking footage to call through and we felt 35 minute video or whatever. But if you are on the Patreon and why aren't you, you must be, then we usually put out everyone's so complete runs for every four, all the Patreon subscribers to enjoy. I think, uh,
01:04:28
Speaker
The sheer weight of shit that needed to be edited out means you missed out on a lot of funny lines from me in my run. I was doing, I was trying the hard. I was doing my best because I knew they were going to edit down to the highlights. Yeah, that'll be, that'll be a fun one. I think I actually want to watch your own friends. Yuzzi's bucket improv session for a straight hour. Basically.
01:04:54
Speaker
ah Super Afrog is £5 and says, do you think there's a correlation between jank and games that have a dedicated speedrunning community? They often find a lot of fun exploits. As I said, I think it's just really popular games that get the big speedrun communities. But yeah, you can you can cause a lot of excitement by finding a new glitch.
01:05:14
Speaker
Yeah, you see when suddenly like the world record time goes down like an hour, it's oh, because someone found something after years and years and years, which which you know, like, didn't I like one of the like speed running categories I've seen is like 0% where you try to achieve as little and as possible in the game before getting to the ending. and Did you know like the speed run for getting the lowest completion percent in Zelda Twilight Princess is like 60 hours long. ah and The reason for that is someone discovered that if you ah get something out of a chest and get to the screen where it shows Link staring at the thing he he's just found in the chest. Link, during that sequence, moves backwards very, very, very, very slowly. Like a pixel, like every hour or something. then Yeah.
01:06:04
Speaker
And if you leave him to do that for a while in certain places, you can get him to clip through a barrier to get to like clip to the next part of the game without completing that part. You don't find that out. Like literally, how is that discovered? How they just made a made a man. They found it out as you'd expect. Like ah someone got to that screen and just by chance had to go off and have lunch or something.
01:06:31
Speaker
And then when they came back, Link had disappeared through a wall. Backing up a little bit. Stupid link. That's one of the interesting things I know from watching speed run like summary videos. I don't know if the speed runs themselves much because they kind of get dull for me. I love watching videos that explain how the speed runs work. There's a lot you miss just watching people do it. Yeah. There's tons of all these arcane button combos they have to do to get this to get the bunny hopping to work.
01:07:01
Speaker
Anyway, a Polish name I can't pronounce. Again, Marty, if you would. Karczak Wiepzowski. No, I fucked it up there. Wiepzowie. Okay. It gives 10 Polish lotties. It says, I am once again asking Jartz to try Felvydieck. No, I'm playing Stalker 2 this week. It's off.
01:07:25
Speaker
I do not get Felvedec. I play through it in its entirety and it's a game that has a handful of extremely passionate fans. And I'm just like, it's my little Sebastian. I'm like, I don't understand. I don't get it. Still not even sure what it is, to be honest with you. It's ah Eastern European, uh, top down RPG. Oh, okay. Slav Jank.
01:07:45
Speaker
umja there you go Ryan Betts gives fabulous, says Darryl Talks Games has a video essay about IRL Jank, like how each Monday at 1pm EST, Marty's life becomes Jank as he no clips into another universe. Yeah, that is true. Hey, knock on wood. We haven't entered that universe yet, this episode. I hope that doesn't jank us. No. Hey, gimme it. No. You know what I miss? What do you miss? Jammy Wackenwheels. Dude, Wackenwheels, can we get those at the British Impulse shop?
01:08:17
Speaker
Well, I haven't seen them, but if you need something that approximates wagon wheels, then you can try moon pies. moon which I've seen those in the store, but they're not the that the same. No, they have the elements of a wagon wheel, but they're much fatter. Much fatter biscuits, much fatter marshmallows. All right, this is a strange question. How did you eat your wagon wheels? Because I i always like nibbled the chocolate off the edges and then like separated them.
01:08:44
Speaker
Well, obviously, yeah. i I treated it like an Oreo. I would nibble off the top and peel off the marshmallow disc and eat it by itself. Yes. Hell yeah. Although you had to watch out for that in with your jammy wagon wheels because sometimes the jam would cause the marshmallow to tear and you'd be left with a jammy stain on the bottom biscuit. And you don't want that. yeah No. No one wants a jammy stain. It looked like your bottom biscuit was having its period. Not my bottom biscuit.
01:09:12
Speaker
No. Oh no. Something's coming out of my bottom biscuit. Not me.
01:09:20
Speaker
Fucking Ryan Betts. This is all your fault. We could, we could have had it. We could have stayed in one dimension. Mike with a Y gives $1. Thanks for changing the subject. Mike with a Y, even though you didn't say anything. And Fungus Finder gives $2 and says, so art can't be jank, but can story be jank?
01:09:39
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say my example of ah the ludonarrative dissonance in possessor map games feels like a bit of jank on the storytelling side of things.
01:09:50
Speaker
Yeah. Like writing writing can't be jank, right? You can, you can have a janky tone. That's what, that's the possession of the thing. Sure. Yeah. Like wanted dead has a very janky tone of going from one scene to another. And it's like, why am I suddenly doing karaoke after that mission? And oh, this is lasting an entire song. So this is expected it. like colleague poorly translated games to have that essence of, have that feel of being gently written. I've been, I've been watching like, uh, eighties, uh, anime OVA's recently and they have some like just incredibly terrible. Whether, whether W voice actors have to talk very fast to get everything into the original Japanese line. It just doesn't seem like there was any context given to moments. And so there's reactions that just do not make sense to a certain, uh, to a certain occasion.
01:10:40
Speaker
a but Alex Armstrong gives two dollars and says, thoughts on the Doki Doki Literature Club and Cruelty Squad's janky visuals. I wouldn't have said Doki Doki a janky visual unless you count the like the bits where it pretends like the game is bugging out. Yeah, but that's a purposeful choice. Intentional. And Cruelty Squad, that's just well, it's all jank all the time, I suppose. Again, deliberately. Yeah, deliberately going for a tone. So maybe that's an example of maybe there's deliberate visual jank.
01:11:11
Speaker
I don't know. ah Does it count if it's allen like i can all squad? Yeah, if you can't spot anything past the jank, then it's not jank. Jank needs a point of comparison. Is jank all the way down? Yeah. Halberda84 gives two pounds and says Mario 64, amazing. The camera, janky as fudge. Well, they were pioneering. What do you want?
Nintendo's Innovative Hardware
01:11:36
Speaker
They were, yeah. Yeah, yeah. and You know, it ended up being the blueprint for, you know, cameras, even by Nintendo to to make better cameras going into Macarena time. And then obviously once a dual dual analog stick came along, I think it's crazy to think that like a lot of players don't know or forget that the Mario 64 controller was literally designed the way it was to play.
01:12:01
Speaker
that game. Yeah, it's crazy. Like you've never hear of something like that nowadays. And it's because they were pioneering something that had never been done before. It's crazy. Mario 64, even though it does have an incredible amount of jank plays as well as it does. Like it's nuts. Hark, Zeck, we presented we give us 100 Polish lessons and says, you know what? Here you go for that spot on pronunciation, lol.
01:12:29
Speaker
I'm gonna tell
Language Challenges and Humor
01:12:30
Speaker
my mom, she's gonna be so proud of me. She's gonna be so proud of me. Then she's gonna, I'm gonna play it back, that pronunciation. And she's gonna be so ashamed of me. She's gonna be like, this is terrible. You've butchered, you've insulted our country. You've butchered your grandparents' language. I mean, I kind of guessed that the first word was pronounced car check. Car check. Yeah. Never sure what to do with the WYs.
01:12:55
Speaker
The PRZ is, I believe. So it's a V. Show Cool. Show V. Yeah. Language is awesome. Who's that a horror artist whose name I had to learn to pronounce while I was. Pachinsky.
01:13:13
Speaker
butinsky Yeah. b e k and yes that one What's his first name again? Zwatislav, I believe. Yeah, that was it. Yeah. It's got like a Z, some D's, a couple of tubs in there.
01:13:25
Speaker
It's great. Sussyguru2000 gives five euros and says, do you think normal game
Perception of Jank in Older Games
01:13:30
Speaker
design of old can be reclassified as jank in the present? I recently tried to get back into Fallout 2 and I just can't. I i think so. consider yes Certainly old games can feel jank as we're used to a lot of things. I could go back and play like the original Resident Evil 4 on GameCube. The controls for looking around are kind of shit.
01:13:51
Speaker
i think look i think immediately to your left or to you immediately to your right yeah there's I think there's a distinction between jank and something being clunky. Mario 64 is clunky. Resi 4 on the GameCube is clunky. like You don't quite have this one-to-one that they didn't really have the movement down um or like the game feel of making something feel heavy. They didn't have it down. So instead of feeling like you're moving a character and a body through a game feel, you just feel restricted. like It's not quite doing what you intend it to do. So I think there's a distinction between jank and um clunk. Okay. Jank and the clunk.
01:14:29
Speaker
Everyone get note that down for the glossary. They'll sound like two of the shittiest like Batman henchmen. Jack and no, it's the bat.
AAA Game Industry Collapse
01:14:40
Speaker
Mopman 43 is one ninety nine and says, any of you read that IGN article about AAA collapse? No, but if it was making the grand revelation that the AAA industry is in the process of collapsing, then I don't think that would be news to any of us. Hmm. I did not read the article, no.
01:14:59
Speaker
No, me neither. Is it good? I don't know how to read. Uh, yellow gives five pounds and says Jamaite has enough sky rims to get dogs called fuss row and da da. Then they'd fucking fall for the geometry of your apartment. Yeah, man. Fox car. Fuss and road die. And then everyone's like, wow, you must really like Morse code.
01:15:25
Speaker
and
01:15:28
Speaker
Or Fus and Dada and they're like, oh, you really like fish eggs? Or obscure adventures and eye characters. Zul'ro gives two euros and says, good jank for me, early dragon guard or Ego Draconis.
01:15:44
Speaker
Draconis, what the fuck is that? The one very fond of dragon adjacent jank, it seems. Wait, is Ego Draconis? I googled it and it's just Divinity 2? Okay.
01:15:56
Speaker
oh it was ego drconis Well, why didn't you say divinity to then Joel, right? Then we would have known what you were on about. Fucking hell. Her. Uh, and dragon guard is, uh, is pre, uh, pre near dragon guard, two and three prequels to near. Yeah. but Yeah. Three, especially. so What was that game where you play like a lady with a tits out who wrote a dragon all over the place? Boom Raider. Oh shit. Sorry. like everything No, it was something like, I thought it was dragon guard, but um apparently not. ah You played dudes in dragon. go and It's been called drag hand. Like. Drag hand tits. Something like that.
01:16:41
Speaker
There is a game called Drakken. Yeah, it's Drakken, Drakken Order of the Flame. And I've already clicked on it, which means I believe you've brought this up on a podcast before at some points, several years ago. Yahtzee has said the phrase, what's the game with the dragon and the tits? Yeah. And then I think he's gotten himself to Drakken and then I've Googled it and been like, yeah, that's the game with the tits. For some reason, I remember that game very clearly. And there's only one reason why I remember it. There's only one moment I remember from it.
01:17:05
Speaker
was that you had a button for summoning your dragon and you had the ability to press it while standing right in front of him. And if you did that, he'd get kind of testy at you. He'd be like, I'm standing right here.
01:17:17
Speaker
Sick. I like that. Rather than just like rebooting the animation and making them despair. That that team, surreal software, only developed five games. Two of them were dragon games. One was the Lord of the Rings, the fellowship of the ring based on the books, which has like a very large, uh, uh, boss fight against a Tom Bomba bill, I think. And then us by suffering games. Remember the sufferings? Oh, those were good. Those are pretty neat. Yeah.
01:17:43
Speaker
and And yet another small studio, overreached and ended up dying for it. Rips in janklords. Jack and rips. Dragon. Boxdeag is five dollars and says swapped at work today, but here's five bucks to say no game is as janky as this stupid accounting software. yeah Straight up.
01:18:03
Speaker
but which Commiserations, FoxD. Also, uh, fucking I was finishing off design of today because it's this video has been cursed and Premiere deleted.
01:18:17
Speaker
All of the audio from my first audio track in an episode focused on audio and I've had to go through and individually put every clips audio back in and bounce it. I hate premiere. Anybody knows of a good alternative that can also do after effects type stuff. Hit me up. Cause fuck that company is premier. The jankiest program you have to use on a weekly basis here.
Adobe Premiere Glitches
01:18:38
Speaker
That all after effects or Photoshop, anything by Adobe, they suck.
01:18:45
Speaker
Yeah. Why don't they fuck off and go be part of a wall somewhere? That was a good Adobe joke. That was a, that was a real good, that was a good Pueblo. Well, on the subject of stopping pissing about and getting back to work, ah that's the end of the super chats. So, uh, thanks for listening to the web breakers podcast in which I am Yahtzee Croshaw and that's Jay
New Battle Masters Video
01:19:10
Speaker
and that's Marty. We're here and now we're going.
01:19:14
Speaker
but but But stick around on second wind. If you haven't watched today's Battle Masters, Battle Masters being the rare treat video we put out now and again, then check it out because it's good. so has very And I should know because I'm in it.
01:19:31
Speaker
We all are. Yes, we all are, yes. There you go. That just shows how good it is. If you like buy stuff specifically, then once you're done watching that, then look forward to Fully Ramblamatic on Wednesday, which will be on the subject of Mario and Luigi Brothership. And also order the Blu-ray, as Eric reminds us, definitely there.
01:19:56
Speaker
And I've also got my Yahtzee Tries stream on Wednesday afternoon, where I will play some indie games, yet to be determined. And of course, there will be the Yahtzee Tries ah compilation edit going out on Sunday, where Jesse does a very good job putting together the fun clips from the streams. And I do little mini reviews.
Thanksgiving Traditions Humor
01:20:17
Speaker
probably on and i said this week but It's possible the holiday, the holiday, American holiday in the back half of the week might Oh yeah. or mentioned but all stop lay thanks you indeed thanks I think we should just not do Thanksgiving because nobody's thankful for bloody anything anymore. like a medium one i I haven't experienced it yet. It's my first one. Oh, right. one Next year. This is the last thing. I'm going to enjoy this Thanksgiving because it's the last one. I can have one Thanksgiving as a treat. What else have we got to plug?
01:20:49
Speaker
Jay, what do you got going on? Yeah, um streams. I think this week we're going to be starting our Twitch shenanigans.
Upcoming Twitch Streams
01:20:58
Speaker
We're getting that kind of figured out. They're going to be a lot more kind of casual, kind of funky streams happening on Twitch only. So go, you know, follow us over there. And also um I also have a design of out this Friday, which is on the best multiplayer stealth horror game you're not playing.
01:21:16
Speaker
So come and check that out. It's just a positive video, um
Teaser for Review Video
01:21:20
Speaker
you know, been on a bit of a negative streak. So I'm going to be gushing about something I enjoy. And um yeah, just stick about and more adventures night on Saturday. Always check that out. A wonderful show. Yeah. um Later today, 6 p.m. Central in gems crew to be playing Beastie balls, which is apparently volleyball Pokemon.
01:21:42
Speaker
o Oh, I was gonna guess that it involves ah doing serious groinal harm to the Beastie Boys.
Introduction to Beastie Balls
01:21:50
Speaker
Oh, no. Not the PC, but they've endured so much. let Let them enjoy their let final Thanksgiving ever with the rest of us. Well, I guess they have fought for their right to party. They they did. They really Tomorrow, Rewind is back at regular time. We'll be chatting about um yeah we've been chattting about some big movies at the box office. They don't matter because we watched Hot Frosty. And we're going to be chatting about Hot Frosty. Number one movie on Netflix is Hot Frosty. And it's about a woman who puts a scarf on a snowman. And let me tell you, he becomes a hot dude.
01:22:20
Speaker
Oh, shenanigans ensue. Let me tell you, number one movie on Netflix. Fucking roasted. I remember one as well, my speaking of movies that usually aren't very good in or is it an hour and a half? We have our patron movie night, correct? Yeah. So patrons at the Phoenix tier, Eric said 30 minutes, but Eric doesn't know how time works. It's in an hour, 30 minutes and 3 p.m. Central. I'm sorry. I said you don't know how time works. Eric, you're doing so much. You're so good. ah Yeah. 3 p.m. Central. We'll we'll be watching a movie called The Last Dragon, ah which is a Motown produced Kung Fu movie. Nothing goes quite together like Motown. Yeah.
01:22:58
Speaker
And that'll be with our our top tier patrons who will be hanging out in a stream together, watching it spoofing and goofing. It's always another time. Man, I'm really misremembering my dragon things ah today because I thought the last dragon was that film with Sean Connery playing a dragon heart. A dragon heart. You know what? Stick to dragon. and You only care about dragons with big tits. If we don't got big tits, you don't even care.
01:23:21
Speaker
Boy, wow. Where's this coming from? I don't know. It's just sometimes fun to say tits with like a hard T. Now I know i knew why all your Brits do it. It's very fun. But which T is hard? You know what? I can start saying the C word.
01:23:34
Speaker
Do it. It's a great one. I'm not going to. It's scary. I'm not going to say that one. Too scary. And then, uh, yeah, we should have normal Wednesday streams. Yahtzee tries. Um, maybe not for, we're going to do something in the Firelink slot. Casey might not be here this week and it's been a slow news week. So maybe we'll just stream something there. And then obviously no, no Thursday streams this week because of the holiday, but we'll be back next week. Oh, yeah. Cause we're slackers. Uh, one last super chat came in in the last minute there. So security thousand gives two euros and says skill issue.
01:24:05
Speaker
Turned up. What do you think that was in relation to? I have no idea. Yeah.
01:24:12
Speaker
ah Me signing off on a podcast. I like it. bad it is and I I started like three minutes ago. All right. I guess we'll go we see you all next time. Bye. Bye everyone.