Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Worst Things About our Favorite Games | Windbreaker Podcast
7.9k Plays6 months ago
On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Frost, and Marty chat about the worst things in their favorite games -- from Super Metroid’s wall-jumping, to the Okumura boss in Persona 5, to the final quarter of most From Soft games.
Second Wind is fully independent, employee-owned and fan-funded. Consider supporting us on Patreon for as little as $1/month at patreon.com/SecondWindGroup
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Ground Branch Game Features
00:00:00
Speaker
This video is sponsored by Ground Branch, the uncompromising thinking man's FPS from one of the developers behind the original Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games. Live out your tactical fantasy through eight-player co-op multiplayer, complete with proximity chat and in-depth character and weapon customization. Don't have seven friends to play with? Well, head on down to your local grocery store and start asking strangers in the produce aisle. Also, while you're there, please check to see if the heirloom tomatoes are still on sale. Those juicy little guys are so delicious.
00:00:32
Speaker
Ground Branch is here to put the tactical back into tactical shooter, and the big version 1034 update makes the experience even better thanks to map improvements, additional playable characters, and the new prone stands. So what are you waiting for? Start shouting things like, breach, suppressing fire, and I've got your six to all your new produce aisle pals today in Ground Branch, available now on Steam in early access.
Windbreak Podcast Hosts and Initial Discussion
00:01:01
Speaker
Hello everybody, welcome to the Windbreak Podcast. I'm Järtsi Krosjor, I'm joined by Marty and Frost. Hello, it's me. And this week, we're talking about something that I think is an important learned skill for a lot of people, especially in journalism.
00:01:19
Speaker
Identifying the enormous flaws in the things we otherwise really like. I think there's a tendency when you really like something to sort of make it part of your identity, you know? There's a lot of, if you don't keep this sort of thing in check, you end up jumping all over someone's butt because they didn't like something you like.
Fair-weather Fandom and Game Loyalty
00:01:36
Speaker
Like the experience I had with the Dragon's Doctor 2 community in recent times.
00:01:41
Speaker
Yeah, and the worst thing and you can even get to where it's like I like the thing but I don't like the thing enough You know, what are we doing here? Like this is absurd. Yeah more of a Fairweather fan where it's like, oh this game goaded second third great fourth fell off washed them done I don't take that on people. I'm just like wow, this is disappointing. I Think it's a virtue to be a fair with a fan
00:02:04
Speaker
I think it's on the entertainers to entertain us. It's not on us to be loyal. Oh, God. We've outnumbered you, Marty. Oh,
Dark Souls Design and Boss Critique
00:02:14
Speaker
no. So with all that in mind, we're going to talk about our favorite games and the one thing or more in those games that we really can't stand. Now, who wants to throw me out something that they probably assume I'm going to bring up at some point in this podcast?
00:02:33
Speaker
Dark Souls. Oh, good one. Anything from Soft Adjacent? Yeah. I think specifically Dark Souls. Are you going to say how obtuse it was at the start? No. What I'm going to say is that like every From Soft game.
00:02:51
Speaker
Yes. Thanks for spoiling it, asshole. Sorry, sorry, I thought you were guessing. Dark Souls has really great level design because it designs itself around the fact that you don't have fast travel. And then, guess what? It gives you fast travel and all the level design after that goes pretty severely downhill.
00:03:14
Speaker
I mean, you get that feeling that the last third of that game is rushed, right? You get the feeling that they're like, we need to hit this deadline. And listen, Miyazaki's too busy. He's already thinking about Bloodborne, so let's just wrap up this fucking Lost Izalith. Let's just pause people down here. Let's just reuse some of those bosses. It's fine.
00:03:33
Speaker
If I were to encapsulate it, Lost Izalith, the nadir of Dark Souls. I mean, it starts okay. Nice intro, all full of red lava caverns, the copious discharge, whatever his name is. Fine, Jesus.
00:03:51
Speaker
But then you get down to Lost Eyes of Death itself. There's lots of copy-pasted monster butts running around. There's no real level design except you have to run across some lava at some point. And, uh... Fucking Bed of Chaos. To use its full title, The Fucking Bed of Chaos.
00:04:08
Speaker
Wow. Junior. Nice little fuck bed. It's funny because I also think Dark Souls plays its weaknesses a little bit earlier for a bit as well with the Capra Demon. That boss fight is, I think, genuinely bad. That might be one of the worst boss fights. Capra Demon. It's the one in the closet. The tiny little garden with two dog fuckers who come at you right away.
00:04:36
Speaker
I find, given practice, he doesn't give me any trouble anymore. You just know, as long as you can get past the dogs and up the stairs, then you're pretty much sorted. But it's like a real shit way to fight, to just like, I'm gonna go up the stairs, cheese you with a hit, get you with the stairs. Like, I don't know, it's just...
00:04:53
Speaker
It feels like so many of the boss fights in the game have an elegance to them, and that just lacks that elegance. Elegance, my ass. The double standard, where they be clipping through everything. Meanwhile, I go for a swing and immediately clang like, come on. Sounds like that sounds very elegant to me. All right. The elegance of the symphony that has come off my sword is clanging away. Well, you have to remember, you're the one with the advantage here. You can go back as many times as you want every time you die. The energy is I can unplug this game. That's what I can do. There you go. You can just stop.
00:05:23
Speaker
Yeah.
FromSoft Games: Endings and Systems Analysis
00:05:24
Speaker
Sticking with FromSoft, we joked obviously about how a lot of their endings kind of feel lacking to us. I would say the same thing about Elden Ring and all the stuff. Farmazula is like a really cool place and then everything after that is kind of boring in my mind. But for Bloodborne, I do fundamentally think the blood vials
00:05:47
Speaker
are a major problem in that game until you get really good at it. And it just seems like it punishes you for wanting to get better, which is a really shitty mechanic any time a game uses that.
00:05:58
Speaker
You run out, you have to go back and grind up blood vials in like an earlier easier part of the game. And I hate that shit. Makes you play more like timid. Yeah. Another victim of from software end of game syndrome. I mean, what's all with, what's with all that eating umbilical cords business? Delicious. All about that mother blood. Dow.
00:06:24
Speaker
But I take the philosophy that From Software Games are about the journey rather than the destination, because the ending cinematics almost universally kind of suck.
00:06:33
Speaker
What? And sometimes it's like, well, everything's going to stay the same or everything's going to be different. Who knows? Did you not see the, what was it? That, that screaming fucking eldritch beast at the end of Bloodborne. That's a callback to Kojima when the horse screams out in Metal Gear Solid. Did you not get that? I made a video once of that. It's the exact same thing. Whitefield, you kill the boss and then the horse comes over and no. That's a very sad horse. It's the exact same thing.
00:07:02
Speaker
He's saying the horse is the same as the moon presence in Bloodborne. No, it's just it's just a shout out to him because there was an interview me as Aki did once where he says I love meeting these CEOs and executives because then I designed bosses like that is them. And then everyone was like, who's Kojima? And I'm like, I'm pretty sure it was his Eldritch little beast thing, because that's the exact horse scene. I got it. I don't know if other is, you know, it's going to kind of.
00:07:28
Speaker
Well, anyway, I have a feeling we're going to have a lot to get through on this one.
Persona 5 and Game Design Frustrations
00:07:34
Speaker
So, Muddy, I nominate Persona 5. Oh, my God.
00:07:39
Speaker
specifically Persona 5 Royal, what they did to the Okumura boss fight. It is the only fight in the game that when I reach it, I'm like, is there just a, can I put this on the easiest of easy modes? And the problem is on the easy mode, the boss fight is even harder because what it ends up doing is putting, you have to fight waves and waves of his minions, but you have to kill the minions in like a single turn or else the minions explode and then come back.
00:08:04
Speaker
Yes, I hate that fucking fight. That's the one fight I had to look at the walkthrough for to get like... Can you use almost like specific attacks and specific elements at different phases? And it's incredibly frustrating. I will also say a persona problem
00:08:21
Speaker
That is more so on replays once you really know the games. I noticed in the last month of Persona 3 reload, like the last calendar month of the game, I had kind of done everything. And so I just had to wait till the end of the month and I had my stats were all up. All of the people I could hang out with were gone.
00:08:41
Speaker
Like, I'd either max them out or they were gone, I'd already dated everyone, and so at this point I'm just like, I have nothing to do during the days, so it's just like being depressed in January, which I guess is kind of real. I haven't got anywhere near the end of Persona 3 reload, I've maxed out all my stats. There's only three.
00:08:59
Speaker
Yeah, there's only three and and you get them for doing a lot of a lot of things. So that that almost feels like I think by the time. Yeah, I was following the usual. I was following the usual persona philosophy of trying to keep your stats up with everything you do. So I was eating the fucking place that makes your face greasy a lot. Yeah. And almost that's a maxed out. Yeah. I haven't even unlocked the friendship tracks with the party members yet. They need to
00:09:26
Speaker
They need to incorporate the GTA 3 thing of if you keep eating at the burger place, your character gets fat. Can you not? That's a fable thing. No. That's a GTA San Andreas thing, isn't it? San Andreas, that's what I meant. Not three. I meant three-three. You could do that in fable, give fat on pie. Yeah. I love giving fat on pie. Yeah, yeah. You could certainly do that in fable. Yeah, so that is, as much as I love persona, that is, those are two things that, two nits I like picking.
00:09:55
Speaker
Alright, here's a question for you. What's the creepiest character to romance in every Persona game? Anyone who's like a Futaba in five, I would say, just because there's kind of like a surrogate younger sister vibe to that. Yeah, there's a lot of younger sister characters, I feel. I don't think anyone's creepy in three. There's only like a handful of options. I think romancing a robot's kind of weird in its own way. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:24
Speaker
Yes. Correct. I mean, I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on there. There's a, you know, there's a power differential there cause she's programmed to like you. Yeah. And it's a little thing. Like my whole like prime directive is to protect you. And I'm like, okay, well, do you have any interests that aren't me? You seem to like gardening. Can you do that without me? Like that's some hobbies, some friends.
00:10:49
Speaker
Uh, yeah, I don't, yeah, the fuckbot thing's a little weird. Don't fucking worry. They're also needy. Yeah. I want people to be hanging out, be like, Oh, you, I won't hang out with you tonight. Cause I'm hanging out with two other people. Like, I like that idea. Have your own friends. Play hard to get. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be nice if you could hang out with more than one person at a time and up both your relationships at a time. Yeah. More often in Pacific games. Yeah.
00:11:14
Speaker
Frost, I don't think I actually know this. What's your favorite game?
Stardew Valley Content Update Debate
00:11:18
Speaker
There you go. Probably Binding of Isaac. Binding of Isaac? Mm-hmm. And game makers took it pretty much spot on on the thing that still haunts the developers to this day is that they made the game super obtuse. They're like, we want you guys to find different combinations of items and then tell each other how I went and then experiment some more. And he says that's something and as people would play with wikis up,
00:11:41
Speaker
They would see what the items could do because it wouldn't tell you in the game, so when they made the port, I believe it was Nicholas, he asked, can you make the most popular mod, the one that tells you what the items do, can you make that a standard of the game? I was like, yeah, because rogues are so obtuse and they think it's fun, because, oh, the old ones didn't tell you what the game did, it's because the old ones came with manuals. Well, it's sort of like a Metroid brainier, isn't it? You're supposed to play it over and over again and figure out its secrets.
00:12:11
Speaker
There's so, but there's so, but the gameplay is so, this is so emergent. There's so many items. It's just not feasible. You're going to end up writing it down. You know, it's like tunics, how you got to draw on the map, you know, for a rogue, like you're not going to write all these down. Does, uh, does binding, I've, I've barely played binding with Isaac. Does it keep track of things when you learn them or is it? Not the old one. So it's one of those things where it's like, uh, the onus is on the player too.
00:12:39
Speaker
not only know these things, but remember these things and be able to call back to these things. Exactly. And it's certainly gotten a bit bloated with all the extra versions and extra content updates it's had over the years. I mean, is it possible for a game not to get a bit bloated if it keeps getting updated, right? But then it's fine if it's bloated. It's just your information system now needs a rework, which it got.
00:13:01
Speaker
Well, this gets me to the next game I was going to bring up, actually, which is Stardew Valley. So one of my favorite games just to play, like with a podcast on in the background. I love, like, managing a farm. And the new content updates gave me an excuse to try it out again to get to the new content. But what I'm finding, having gotten to it in my most recent playthrough, is that I don't really care.
00:13:27
Speaker
Like I never played it like since it got the, the, the, the tropical islands content. And I got to that bit and I got to that bit. That's like after I'd, you know, saved the community and all that and unlocked the boat that takes you to the tropical island. And I got there and I walked around at once and I was like,
00:13:47
Speaker
I don't want to do this. I want to tend my farm. I want to do stuff that helps me reconstruct the life I am building with Shane and my two kids. This just feels like a whole separate thing that's been bolted onto the side of the game that I don't particularly want to engage with.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah, you've seen that a lot with games, and we've actually seen that a lot with games this year, whether it's the latest Like a Dragon, although that's kind of been a Yakuza thing forever, or even with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which will be fully-ramble-matic this week. But at a certain point, does having more... Okay, more obviously isn't better.
00:14:31
Speaker
But does having more, even if you don't need to do it, does that, can that ruin an experience? Like even if it's just there, does knowing it's there kind of like ruin or like dilute the thing for you? I think more can certainly have a diluting effect. That's certainly the effects I'm feeling from the Stardew Valley stuff.
00:14:49
Speaker
Yeah. You know, it makes me think of webcomics that have run since 1997 and that started as like a shitty slice of life teenagers who go to a coffee shop thing mentioning their names and then like now it's it's set in space and half the characters of robots and other characters are aliens and there was no like noticeable point where it transitioned along the course of things. It just feels like at a certain point
00:15:12
Speaker
Stop this and make something new. You want to do something new? That's great. I mean, Joss Whedon didn't launch Buffy the Vampire Slayer into space when he wanted to make Firefly. He stopped making Buffy and he made Firefly instead. Right. So you just hit on like my old favorite franchises as they're shifting and shifting. So we have to keep the IP. It's like, no, you could have just made something different. All you got to do is make something new.
00:15:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you've seen that problem a lot with old TV shows too when they had to stick to like the 20 to 25 episode seasons. Like at a certain point, if you've done 200 episodes of a show, you're going to start reusing ideas or shit's going to get kind of dumb. Like when I was rewatching The X-Files, I'm like, oh, you are just now redoing episodes from earlier in the series. Like the same sort of core concept of like, oh no, Mulder swap bodies with someone else and Scully might fuck doppelganger Mulder. Like he did this several
Silent Hill 2 and Puzzle Design Criticism
00:16:05
Speaker
times on this show. How did this happen?
00:16:07
Speaker
And at a certain point, you gotta learn from those mistakes. I think that's a result of the American way of making TV shows, where there has to be like 24 episodes to a season. Yeah, yeah. Or was it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What if they genuinely just think, like, I can do it better this time, though? Hold on. Let me do it. Let me try this again. I mean, yeah, so you can just start re-reviewing all this.
00:16:27
Speaker
Go back to 2007 or whatever year you started this. Just re-review all the games. Just play them again. Honestly, I could probably get away with that, honestly. Yeah. I think it'd kind of be fascinating to see like, well, how have you changed in close to 20 years? How has your opinion changed on things? Well, when it comes to Final Fantasy, not a whole bunch, turns out. Magic. Okay. I want to... Yeah, what's another aspect to you? Did you have any for Silent Hill?
00:16:53
Speaker
Silent Hill 2, one of my most favoritest horror games of all time. Oh yes, I can certainly point to a couple of problems there. I think the inventory puzzles in those games are really, really dumb. And as a system, Silent Hill 2 uses for combining inventory items, which is similarly very, very dumb.
00:17:15
Speaker
The old adventure games of the 90s had this down pad. You click on one inventory item, then you click on the other inventory item. Bam. Easy peasy. In Silent Hill 2, you get to the place where you have to solve the puzzle, and then instead of combining inventory items, you just put all the ones you want to use to solve this puzzle in a list, without any real understanding of how you intend to use any of them.
00:17:39
Speaker
Like there's a there's a puzzle with a trapdoor you have to open and how you solve it is you use a wax doll a lighter and a horse shoe on it If you use any other combination those items or only one of those items the game just went no No Doesn't work try again
00:18:01
Speaker
But you've got to specifically use all those three items at the same time to solve the puzzle. It's not good. That specific puzzle, I don't know. I can't tell you if I would have been able to solve it or not because we talked about the puzzle like a week or two before I was replaying the game. And so when I got to it, I was like, ah, here is the really dumb puzzle Yazzie brought up. And I did it in my mind. I'm like, there's no way I would have put any of this together if you had not have said that. I just would have got frustrated and just looked up a guide and be like, what the fuck do I do with this horse hair?
00:18:31
Speaker
Horseshoot and horse hair. There's horse hair. There's a lot of horse hair everywhere. At least our game doesn't respawn baddies. Imagine if it respawned baddies as you were running back and forth across the map trying to figure this shit out. Yeah. It's funny, because at the same time, Resident Evil has you combining items, and they make sense, right? It would be like, here's a jewelry box with an indentation for something in it. And then you combine it with an emerald that looks like it would fit in there. And then it opens the box or whatever.
00:19:00
Speaker
That at least has like a tangible, it exists in like the real world, whereas that stuff just feels incredibly obtuse. Yeah, I don't remember it ever being a problem playing Resident Evil games. I guess it was always pretty intuitive. Yeah. Agreed.
00:19:17
Speaker
So that's Iron Hill 2. What's another one you like, Marty?
Zelda Series: Design Challenges and Improvements
00:19:20
Speaker
I have a couple for Zelda in general, just to catch all Zelda. One of my favorite franchises. Mine aren't too outlandish in terms of, I think most people would agree with certain ones. Going back to Ocarina of Time, the Water Temple is notoriously, people say is one of the worst temples of all time.
00:19:37
Speaker
I do not think it is because of the design of the water temple, I think it is because on the Super Nintendo, or on the N64 where it originally debuted, the main thing of the water temple is you have to put on and take off these iron boots. They're either like, so you can sink to the bottom and walk on the ground, or you can swim normally. And you can't attach those to like one of the three item slots, you have to go into the menu and equip them.
00:19:59
Speaker
and then go into the menu and unequip them. So it turns this dungeon, which is actually kind of smart, that one thing about it makes navigating the dungeon like an absolute chore, like an absolute pain in the ass. And they did fix it in the 3DS version, which I think is them realizing that like, oh, that's like a major flaw in an otherwise pretty great game.
00:20:21
Speaker
The first time I played through Ocarina of Time was on the 3DS version, and I remember getting through the water dungeon and thinking, well, what was all the fuss about that? Yeah, the fix was you could assign the iron boots just as a regular item that you would use just with one button. It's like one of the face buttons. So you could just put it on and off at the tap of a button, as opposed to going into the menu, tabbing over, unequipping it, and then leaving the menu. Right. That would be fun.
00:20:45
Speaker
I want to say no, right? It's like they also added some guidance to the environment design, I think.
00:20:53
Speaker
I think so, yeah. They do some things with lighting and color to make the dungeons a little more readable, especially their puzzles. Wind Waker has, again, I feel like Nintendo knows the worst parts of their games because they tend to go back and fix them when they do redos. And Wind Waker, the Triforce quest in the last third of the game, is kind of obnoxious in the GameCube version. And then the Wii U version, it's been really streamlined and simplified. Yes. Because in the original version, there was a lot of middlemanning.
00:21:22
Speaker
you'd have to recover buried treasure from the bottom of the ocean, and the buried treasure would be a map, and the map would lead you to a place where you'd find the part. I think in the remake, they switched it to the map was just the part. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, instead of, yeah, like you said, taking out the middleman, because there's no reason for that. What did you think about the fact that they added a sail that automatically changes the wind in the remake?
00:21:48
Speaker
I think I like it because it makes the game more playable. That said,
00:21:55
Speaker
There's certain elements in these other games where I think the friction is important. Breath of the Wild, one of the things that I hate, like I'm fine with weapon degradation actually, is how often I'll randomly start raining and then the game is about climbing and then you just can't climb. And so you're just like, well, I guess I just wait until it's not raining. I'll just go to bed for 12 hours and wake up and see if it's not raining. Same thing with like the wind and the sails and stuff in Windwake.
00:22:24
Speaker
I appreciate them, like the chutzpah, of putting that stuff in, but ultimately I just think it is, it hampers the fun, and so removing it is probably good for the game.
00:22:35
Speaker
Well, you have to, it has to feel like I never minded the long traversal in Wind Waker because I, you know, the sense of crossing the ocean noise lent the game a very dynamic, epic feel for me. And kind of distinct, like that's, there's, there's not a lot of games at that scale that have that kind of like seafaring sense of adventure. And the game is really good at that. And so does streamlining that remove some of that? Does it make it
00:22:59
Speaker
I mean, in many ways, having to fiddle with wind direction is like analogous to having to fix up your car in Pacific Drive, for example. It's part of the game. You do the little fiddly bits, so you can enjoy the bit where you're putting your foot down, trying to escape from a collapsing reality. In Pacific Drive. I mean, not Zelda Wind Waker. Sure, sure. Put your foot down on the King of Red Lions, and he won't be very happy about that.
00:23:25
Speaker
Oh no, a sweet little bow. Ask you to spit on him. Yeah, Frosty Evy, what's other ones to stick out
Hollow Knight's Map Design and Replayability
00:23:32
Speaker
to you? Oh, we got some Hollow Knight here, and I tell you.
00:23:36
Speaker
Love the game, love the game the bits. The map design. Dear God. Open-ended? Okay, sure. Problem with Metroidvanias is you can hit these points where you go, I don't know if I'm lost, if the game's broken, or I'm stupid. Right? And this is what makes it great on replays because on a replay you can go like five different directions and you've took off and you know, you've started to venture in a different permutation as you had before.
00:24:01
Speaker
but maybe the first time you could go a bit more linear just at the start before opening up and then I don't know new game plus is when it's like hey now some of these gates are unlocked and you can go in any direction that you want it could have definitely helped itself in that way and um
00:24:16
Speaker
I think that's my main hang up on it. I was mostly thinking on Minecraft. I think that might just be a perfect game, isn't it? I'm going to take Hollow Knight's map as much as I love it, as much as I'm like, this is at the top for some Metroidvanias. That map is an actual nightmare.
00:24:34
Speaker
How do you feel about the obligation to have to find a dude to unlock the map for the part of the game you're in? See, for me that kind of kills the momentum for me. I was trying to replay it not too long ago and I quickly sort of felt a bit mentally exhausted when what I really wanted was sort of an idle lay about Metroidvania where I could just focus on filling out the map like Symphony of the Night.
00:25:01
Speaker
Funny thing about it was at the corner for I think is his name the map dude He I think his implementation is great And I love it if you are listening to the game if you are trying to play the game while playing podcast because he whistles here
00:25:16
Speaker
And so you'll always be like, oh, he's in this room. Let me fuck around and see why. If you're not listening or not paying attention or the volume's low-ish and you're listening to a podcast, then it's going to be like, oh. There are certain games where I'm like, oh, I need to be listening to what this game is telling me, not just because the music's good or the story's good, but mechanically it is trying to express things via its sound design. Right. Two things, though. You can look for pieces of paper, too, in fairness, before the chat brings it up. But you can hear them humming from three rooms out.
00:25:46
Speaker
and help you locate him in that way. But you know, two things there is you do need him for the map, but you also need to equip a charm to see where you are. Otherwise, you're just going to. Oh, yeah. And I was like, this is a little obtuse for a little. Yeah. And that's why I say great one. It's a great one. But this is not for starters. This is not for someone who's like, oh, what's all what's all this about Metroidvania is like, no, go play. What is it? I mean, you can.
00:26:12
Speaker
You can get away without a map or like a thing that indicates where the player is on the map if you're a game with very distinct environment design like a Dark Souls. You can't get away with it in I'd say a 2D Metroidvania where any live room looks like a million other rooms. It's fairly distinct but also I don't think the map updates until you get to the bench. That's another thing too. No, yeah, because you like sit down and almost like write out the map when you're getting there.
00:26:38
Speaker
That game came out in like, what, 20... It's on the older side. I imagine Silksong is going to have so much more quality of life. And if not, maybe the dev is like scribbling. Oh, I know. It's happening. Those are the only things. I feel like, sure, have your hard games, but you didn't have to be too unbearable for newcomers, you know? Still great.
Half-Life Series: Platforming and Emotional Disconnect
00:27:05
Speaker
Well, I'm going to bring up Half-Life as my next one. But it's a perfect game. No, it isn't. Half-Life 1 is an easy one. People probably expected me to say Zen here. But what I'm going to say is just jumping, generally. Half-Life was still coming off a tradition of 90s first-person duties where they insisted on having jumping challenges all throughout. And Half-Life's full of the fucking things.
00:27:34
Speaker
If it's not trying to navigate a very narrow ledge and leap onto a ladder, it's trying to get through that fucking factory processing area with all the rotating platforms and shit, and then Zen is just platforming up to 11.
00:27:49
Speaker
I never really liked first person platforming, especially in that style of first person game, because you can't see your feet. And there's just a general sort of spatial awareness issue with jumping puzzles in first person games. Yeah, they didn't really. That was like before the era of mantling to where it's like, oh, you're close enough to grab the ledge and pull yourself up.
00:28:12
Speaker
And they still stubbornly insist on not fixing the fact that the game relies on crouch jumping. Which, if you don't do the tutorial like Casey and I didn't do, when you get to that section, you're like, what the fuck is going on here? Exactly. Just a fundamental thing you need to do. And if you don't know about it, you're kind of fucked. Yeah. Half-Life 2 corrects that. There's not so much jumping fuckery in Half-Life 2. Half-Life 2 does have its own issues, though. I don't mind the vehicle sections as much as some people do.
00:28:42
Speaker
I think what it is about Half-Life 2 is that it's got the emotional tone of someone with Asperger's Syndrome. I think, like, they try to, like, play up the personalities and characters in those games, but it always feels like they don't feel real. They don't feel like they're fully engaged with the situations they're in. Everyone's, like, half of everyone else.
00:29:12
Speaker
Well, first of all, I think it's partly that the characters all have like unwavering enthusiasm around a character who doesn't talk and treats him like some kind of unstoppable messiah figure that they all love very much, even though he's got the social skills of 11. And part of it is they're all like living in a hideous, dystopian future where aliens turn them into cenobites and they're all just pissing about and having a good time and having giggles.
00:29:42
Speaker
It just feels like the emotional tone of Half-Life 2 always just feels like a little off to me.
00:30:03
Speaker
you know, for a recent example, like the way Dune does it, like, Paula Trades is a Christ figure, and then you get on, you're like, oh, wait a minute, this isn't going well, like, oh no, are you gonna start doing bad things? Like, that's interesting, whereas we never, I don't know if that was ever the plan with Gordon, but like, Gordon felt infallible, despite the fact that Gordon was initially the one who fucked everything up and caused everything. That was not how that went. Yeah, you caused it, right? You do the test.
00:30:29
Speaker
It's bad at your fault. It's complicated. We have to get into the deep lore. But the intention was never to be a character-focused game in the first game. All the characters just copy-paste of each other. They're just random scientists. There's no real characterization there.
00:30:45
Speaker
It's all more about environmental storytelling and exploring the situation, but Half-Life 2 came back and decided it had to be really character-focused and focus on bringing across personality with the character animations and things, and suddenly Gordon being a mute feels really out of place in that.
00:31:02
Speaker
Yeah, when you're surrounded by people who are very bubbly and especially at the time, really great fleshed out characters. And there's one bit where Alex Vance tells a bad joke and goes, am I right? Am I right? And then seems really deflated when Gordon doesn't react. That's what I was saying. There's the one time people react the way they should around someone who doesn't talk. Someone who just completely sucks the energy out of the room.
00:31:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they talk so much out of weakness. And here comes this man who needs not talk, but Lisan Al Gaim, you know, Lisan Al Gaim. What a character. I think even like Half-Life Alex, the tone was kind of weird, especially when you run into the horror section of the game with Jeff.
00:31:49
Speaker
And the characters are still just being silly about it. Like, Alex just goes, I hate Jeff to herself. I mean, is that like a... Weed-a-ness kind of way. Is that...
00:31:59
Speaker
indicative of a problem across a lot of games, including a lot of games I love, of when you try to change directions and introduce not a mechanic that's going to be there for a while, but a bite-sized tone or mechanic. So stealth in a game that isn't about stealth. Usually those sections across the board are like the Yiga Clan in Breath of the Wild, or even some of the stealth sections in the Spider-Man games, where you're playing as someone who isn't Peter, are
00:32:29
Speaker
fucking bad." And I'm like, why is this here? Why is that turret section in the first Dead Space? Dead Space 1 is great, and then you get to that turret section and you're like, this is stupid. Why are you making me do this? This is not what you were doing this whole time. I think people... Design has fallen into a lot of traps when it comes to creating variety in gameplay. Because if it's variety that doesn't integrate with the core mechanics, then you get what you describe.
00:32:53
Speaker
I do think there's validity in the philosophy of peaks and troughs. Like there has to be like downtime between the really exciting bits. And sometimes that manifests through things like mini games or like easy bits. Oh, peaks and troughs. I heard pigs and troughs.
00:33:11
Speaker
Just give me all of it. Sorry, a little bit mush-mouthed there. Pigs also work with jobs. I mean, again, the whole enjoyment factor in Pacific Drive for me is that you have the exciting drives, but then you can just take your time and have a bit of downtime fixing up the car before you go on the next one. What if that's the stressful part? It brings me back to memories of my dad. Just give me the wrench. Which one?
00:33:36
Speaker
Yeah, I mean I think there's a lot of times those diversions or even those tonal shifts work and I never complain about them when they work because I think like the sort of the dual nature of like a persona system where you're living your normal life and then dungeon crawling like those two work harmoniously in a really great way. I think I've said before that it works for me in Persona because both gameplay threads give me a chance to take a break from the other. Yeah, honestly. That's why I should date multiple people at the same time.
00:34:06
Speaker
If you're always in need of a break from the other, why play? Well, I guess, you know, both Japanese visual novel life simulating and JRPG dungeon crawling are things I can only tolerate for a certain amount of time. Yeah, I guess that's the equivalent of like, you wouldn't eat the same meal every day of the week, right? Even like your favorite meal, eventually you want, you want to take a break and then you come back to it and you're like, oh man, I really miss this meal.
00:34:30
Speaker
You're eating hamburgers every day of the week. You're that dude from Papa. I don't know. It's like having vodka and Diet Coke because I can't stand the taste of Diet Coke and I can't stand the taste of vodka, you know? Yeah, it works. It works. Did you stick with Half-Life? Did you have anything with the Portal games? We kind of mentioned them before we went live.
00:34:52
Speaker
Well, I feel like this is something you could say about a lot of games, but the worst thing about the Portal for me was the fanbase.
00:35:01
Speaker
I was on record when Portal first came out saying, I honestly couldn't think of anything bad to say about it. It's funny, it's short, so it doesn't outstay its welcome. It's got a really mind-blowing gameplay. A gimmick running through it. But then all anyone could do was quote the fucking cake joke. For years, just mentioning cake would set him off.
00:35:28
Speaker
The companion cube too. Yeah, that and that. A lot of people were referencing GLaDOS. That's how I found Portal.
00:35:35
Speaker
I was annoyed when they reference the companion cube joke, because it showed that like mentioning how much they how much they really, really loved their companion cube. And saying that feels like repeating the joke without understanding it. The joke was that GLaDOS didn't understand human emotions. She was trying to get you attached to a fucking box. Yeah. She thought that was how she could manipulate you. Yeah. The joke was that that didn't work. But it did. Because it was a fucking box. And they sell gangbusters at Hot Topic.
Portal Fanbase and Humor Discussion
00:36:06
Speaker
How many of you know someone who has a companion cube farm? I do. I don't know. I don't know someone who has one. You own them. Okay. No, no, no. Um, yeah. That's why I can't watch multi-part on the holy grail anymore and say you've ruined the jokes. How many people like coconuts or what? Honestly, it's almost like,
00:36:27
Speaker
I feel like that could be, we could place this on almost anything. Like anything's worst element is it's rabid fan base or like when something sort of escapes this mind. Not being like a hipster like, oh, I like this before it's cool, but like there's a certain point where like a joke escapes like kind of the small community and then just becomes part of the zeitgeist. And at that point you're like, I don't know when like an RB's brand account is using a joke. You're like, all right, I probably, this has run its course.
00:36:57
Speaker
Yeah. transit glory of Monday. The thing that's most annoying is just how split the fans are and they don't acknowledge each other either. They fight everyone else. So you will just sit here with a nice moderate opinion and you're surrounded by extremists on either side just going like, oh, they had too much of this song. I quite like that. Like for everyone who like portal two over portal one, instead of just saying, yo, these are two bad bitches, we're putting them against each other.
00:37:26
Speaker
Portal 2 was thicker and more luscious whereas the first one looks like she was more form fit, you know? Yeah. Why? Why can't we just love both? Why can't we just love both?
00:37:36
Speaker
Well, I think it's time we switched to Super Chats, because I feel like there's a lot of stuff they're going to bring up. There's a lot of them. Yeah. Pay for your favorite game and we'll find things that we hate. Well, tear apart everything you love. Well, the point is we have to learn to have to teach people to see for themselves what they hate about their favorite games. They'll never look that deep. It's an asterisk. These games are still amazing. We still love these games. We have to be able to acknowledge their flaws. We didn't talk about a single game we didn't love.
00:38:03
Speaker
Exactly. Okay, starting with Dr. Theo, who gives $5 and says, I can speak for everyone when I say that the worst part of whatever game is your favorite, 99% at the time, it's the community. If you count that, of course. Yeah, that's fitting. Good. I try to not get involved with any. Yeah.
00:38:23
Speaker
Dragon's Doctor 2, really vocal defenders, apparently. Oh, that's all games nowadays. Like, the Helldivers 2 community that's actively playing, I love them. I really do.
GTA's Influence and Game Design Critique
00:38:33
Speaker
But the ones that sit there more often than not, just like, this is the greatest game ever, but then also the detractors that feel like they got burned and they must convince you, no, don't date my ex, she's a harlot bitch witch. Yeah. Why did you date her then? Yeah, or why don't you just move on to the next thing? There's a ton of games that go play the game you are liking.
00:38:51
Speaker
Funny of fish in the sea. Jacob Kitty gives $2 and says the worst thing about Tears of the Kingdom is Link can't cross dress.
00:38:59
Speaker
Come on, Nintendo. It's true. I remember seeing like a meme image that just had the logo for Link's Awakening at the top. Then there was a picture of Link wearing the women's outfit from Breath of the Water. Yeah, looking at himself in the mirror. I know it was sexual. It was felt very gender neutral. It's more about the practicality of the clothing than anything else.
00:39:21
Speaker
He is a bit of a girly boy, is that, Link? He's got that Japanese very handsome androgyny thing going on. Why is he green again?
00:39:30
Speaker
Is he a ranger? Because it was the color they could use on the Nintendo palette that wouldn't clash with anything else, I suppose. Fair. I know his design in Link to the Past, or his design in Ocarina of Time, I believe, was inspired by Leonardo DiCaprio in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet. That is at least the, that's Apocryphal. I don't know if that's real or not. Miyamoto just hanging out watching this crushing tape, watching Titanic of the beach. Romeo plus Juliet. Yeah.
00:40:00
Speaker
I don't even know if any of those movies were out or that game. So none of this might be real, but it's fine. Uh, frog 42 gives a, yeah, that's the very one I was talking about. Uh, Eric, well found. Well found, Eric. Uh, frog, frog 42 gives $8 and says, I love you guys. Can't wait to watch this later. I love Minecraft, but it's definitely one of those games you can't play without the Wiki. Yeah. So is that like,
00:40:25
Speaker
I've been playing it quite a few years after my review and discovering they'd like patched in a tutorial at some point. Yeah, you know how effective it is. Handholdy, there's achievements too that kind of guide you through the progression systems of separate things like getting to a cake, getting to diamond, redstone. It's never going to tutorialize how to make a cake, so you kind of do have to look that up.
00:40:47
Speaker
How do you feel about having games where you kind of need another window open? Are you saying a little bit with Binding of Isaac, right?
00:40:59
Speaker
Well, that's another thing that annoyed me about Dark Souls is that the only way to craft boss weapons is to have a wiki open and say which specific weapon you need to get up to level 15 and what specific upgrade item to combine it with to create the boss weapon. That's the Pokemon thing, you know? It's like, here, you have a different legendary. I have a different legendary. Let's pool our resources together. I don't want to talk to you.
00:41:19
Speaker
A couple birds running around. Yeah, I mean, I never play a game with the wiki right by my side. However, I do pull things up all the time. Especially when I start off a game, and if there's a game that has a shit ton of loot, I'm going to look up, what should I not sell?
00:41:34
Speaker
Like what is, did I pick up, is one of these 30 things rare? Is one of these things something I'm going to want to keep to fuse a cool weapon later on? Or is this all like literally junk? I kind of like it when a game like Persona, when you clear out a dungeon, it'll just be like, here's all your junk. It is literally junk. It is just to be sold. And so I'm like, great. Thank you for telling me that. I will sell all of this and not sell anything else because I know this is all junk. This is why we have colored loot.
00:41:59
Speaker
Yeah. This is why we've covered loot. This is the problem. Oh, yeah. I mean, I appreciate a game where the item description says, this is loot. Sell it in a shop. Yeah. But half of them in Dragon's Doctor 2, I noticed this as well. Some of the items would show that, but a lot of the rest of them would be, this is an item used in crafting. I was like, OK, but is it going to be used in crafting something I would want? If it's only used for crafting spears when I'm a sword main? Yeah. Then I'm going to want to sell it, aren't I? Maybe at some point in your life, you want to become a spear guy.
00:42:29
Speaker
No, that's, you know, midlife crisis of the adventurer, I think. Honey, I bought a bunch of spears. The lamest adventurer you could be. How do you get it through the door, I say? Every time. Yeah, I do. That being said, I do like games where I have to keep a little notebook next to me and I jot down notes and thoughts and like, Oh, I'm going to come back. This looks frustrating. The game we were talking about earlier, like I have a similar thing. I have a notebook with like... But you've got a pencil in there.
00:42:56
Speaker
kind of pencil in the game, but like I'm quicker than a digital pencil. That's what they say about me. They like fastest pencil in the West.
00:43:07
Speaker
I do like a map that lets you draw on it and put different statements. You have to write on it and draw a scribble on the thing. That's good on like the DS. I want a tangibility. Like I like the dungeon crawling games on the DS, the persona cues and Etrian Odyssey. You can kind of, you are drawing your own map and writing notes and stuff. I'm with you. I'm a little sicko when it comes to my metroidvanias because there's this funny thing I do where I've got like a gimp opened up on a massive, massive screen and I will go into a room
00:43:37
Speaker
screenshot and put it on my thing and then go into the next screenshot. You're a masked guy. That's real sick. I'm a sicko, absolutely. That's so pretty afterwards. You're just like, oh, that's cool how it flows. Some people like doing that. That's cool. I like that. Anyway, Thief 2 was another game I was going to bring up actually. We'll see if it comes up again. Wesley Thomas gives to Canadian and says, paying full price for half the game's annoying. God knows what they're specifically referring to.
00:44:05
Speaker
Race Carlock gives $5 and says, I love GTA games, but I get the bad feeling they're responsible for the industry's worst instincts. Open worlds, graphic obsessions, crunch budgets. Possibly. Certainly the crunch thing. But I think a lot of the open world games in these days seem to very deliberately not take the right lessons from GTA games. Yeah. I think we're just ripping off the Ubisoft model more than anything else. There's just a checklist of stuff to do.
00:44:31
Speaker
Yeah. Rockstar open worlds always tend to be more about the story. So every side quest is like, there's like a story thread running through it where you have to keep talking to some specific NPC and you very rarely have to unlock all the districts like you would in a Ubisoft game. Yeah. Any complaints for a GTA?
00:44:59
Speaker
Uh, well, I think Red Dead Redemption 2 could have like made the map a bit smaller. So you weren't, didn't have 20 minute commutes everywhere to go. Yeah. I don't think it needed to be that big. Um, GTA, I mean, like GTA San Andreas has some terrible, um, like, uh, remote control plane flying missions. There was a lot of shit in San Andreas, like all the fucking mini games to build your stats. Yeah. Yeah. That definitely felt like one of those,
00:45:27
Speaker
I think that's an experimental period for open world game design and a lot of the stuff it was trying fell flat, I'd say. Yeah. Which again was crazy that they turned out that trilogy on the same, that Three and Five City and that were on the same generation of consoles, whatever, four years apart. San Andreas was sort of the last gasp for that era of graphics, I'd say. I would say so, yeah. After that was like the new HD era.
00:45:54
Speaker
Yes, San Andreas was at the tail end of the PS2. And then by the time four came around, we were obviously on the new consoles and all that. Everything was brown. Everything was brown and covered in bloom lighting effects. Bless the brown. I love it. Red Dwarf 42 gives $1.99 and says, Halo the library with no further comment. Damn. Had to get Nick on and see how that... It's a mission I imagine, right? Yeah, that's like an infamously disliked mission in the original Halo.
00:46:24
Speaker
I think that's where the flutter introduced maybe. Right. The dogmatic director gives $2 and says something that might cause arguments. Bloodborne has the chalice dungeons. That is all. Yeah. What are them? Those are the randomly generated dungeons. I don't mind the chalice dungeons. I think there's a lot of single player games that would benefit from having randomly generated dungeon side content.
00:46:50
Speaker
If you just want to like fuck around, like I like this game a lot. I just want to fuck around. You just want to piss about with the core loops and maybe like grind up your stats a bit. When you grind up your stats and want to buy a new hat, the hats are boring.
00:47:13
Speaker
No, I mean, that rogue-like endgame is starting to become a little bit more popular with even triple-A's than God of War. Yeah, God of War introduced one. Yeah, like Returnal sort of pulled the trigger on that thing. Returnal, yeah, yeah. Red Dwarf 42 gives 189 and says, Breath of the Wild. He's got a lot of opinions there, Red Dwarf 42. Breath of the Wild, weapon durability, the lightning mechanic, and sliding down wet rocks.
00:47:40
Speaker
Yeah, the lightning mechanic is if you get caught in a lightning storm, you have to unequip anything that is metal, including armor, shields, bows, swords, or you'll be struck by lightning. I was fine, though. Does that extend to the baddies? Do they get struck by lightning? It does, yeah. In the middle of a fight, you can disarm an enemy, throw down a metal weapon, they will go to pick up the metal weapon and then get struck by lightning.
00:48:05
Speaker
So that shit, that shit's clever. It's an urgent system. Yeah. He had that word. Marty was like, Oh shit, we're all holding metal. It's not good. Yeah.
00:48:18
Speaker
But weapon durability, definitely. That's still, even as I try to get deeper into the game, I'm just sick of it. Yeah, that's fair enough. I mean, the game is trying to engineer a way for you to engage with its more emergent systems. Yeah, I actually don't mind. Weapon durability is the one thing on the list I don't mind. I do not like wet rocks, though. Get these wet rocks out of here. I think I'd be fine. I'd have more time for weapon durability
00:48:48
Speaker
Like, it didn't just flat out remove a weapon you're in the middle of using. Like, it just like severely nerfed its damage. Like, you could still get out of this particular encounter and then worry about... Yeah, but the sword's edge has been dulled, and so it's not causing shit. And you weren't... Oh no, Yahtzee, you were on record as not being crazy about using kind of the fusion in Tears of the Kingdom. Like, you wanted more from that as opposed to just...
00:49:16
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like there was some missed opportunities there. I feel like if the game had engineered a way we could pick up any item and use it as a melee weapon, that I think would have been part of the spirit of that game, more than just gluing a rock to the end of a sword.
00:49:31
Speaker
Yeah, it misses the male fantasy of being in the woods and finding a really nice stick, you know? That's the missed opportunity there. Like I thought about this many years ago, I was thinking about Banjo-Kazooie nuts and bolts. I was like, what if you had a system like that, but for melee weapons in a game and you like adjusted the physics in accordance with how heavy it was and where you held it, etc.
00:49:54
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Liza P did a bit of that, that mix match, but I know what you mean, where it's like proper engineer and make this thing that just like falls apart and makes a fart sound. I go, oops. Yeah. Like, uh, really like, if you really like, uh, handicap the player, if they went for something ridiculously too big, they're just completely off balance. Like it's just scrap metal on the end of a stick.
00:50:17
Speaker
You just tried to heave it and then- Yeah, and then you could find like strange things that are so off balance it keeps on spinning and you've perpetually motioned yourself. Yeah. John Brooks gears ten dollars, and ten pounds rather, and says Total War franchise. Anti-player bias in AI factions, especially in historic title. They should be dealing with enemies closer to home, but beeline for you on the other end of the map. Are any of us Total War guys? No. Warhammer?
00:50:47
Speaker
No, Total War is just like a franchise. Yeah, Total War is just like historic battles, right? Oh, these. But yeah, this even removed from Total War, that idea of any game where like the enemies seem to know you are the main character and are going after you in
00:51:03
Speaker
a battle where there's a bunch of shit going on. Like, you know, you should be able to sort of become as obscure as any random soldier in a thing like that. So them just making a beeline seems kind of ridiculous. Sweetenly. Sweetenly. Uh, FoxD gives $5 and says Stardew Valley. Every other game in its genre now has adjustable speed settings, but Stardew remains utterly frantic if you want to get things done.
00:51:29
Speaker
Is that cheating? The... Pete settings. Oh, you mean like the day, the day is slower? I mean, you could just pause the game if it's getting on top of you. Yeah. I kind of like that there's a deadline to things. If for me. Yeah. Yeah. It's not just, it's not just, you know, breezing through, not having to care. No.
00:51:54
Speaker
That's just me. Ben S gives 4.99 and says, Elden Ring, tight knight system. Makes all loot boring. Every cool new weapon is useless because it's so much weaker than my starting halberd plus 50. I think that's a larger Dark Souls issue, Ben S. I find. Dark Souls 3 especially, I'd say. I was like using my starting longsword right to the end of the game.
00:52:15
Speaker
And then you have to like look up a wiki of like, Oh, what did the end game weapons do? Like I didn't swap out until I found out you could have that like flaming scimitar
Dark Souls Weapon System and Player Choice
00:52:23
Speaker
thing. You don't really know what's worth putting you the effort into like building up and starting to use without knowing ahead of time.
00:52:53
Speaker
Red Dwarf 42 comes back with 4.99 and says Dark Souls 2 Scholar of the First Sin, adaptability and enemies disappearing after beating them a number of times.
00:53:03
Speaker
Yeah, I'm kind of with you on the disappearing enemies thing. Yeah. It almost felt like I'd let the game down, and it was sort of like... Oh no, I made the game sad. And it was like removing enemies with the sort of air of...
00:53:19
Speaker
Well, we've got to get you through this somehow. I mean, that helped Nick in his playthrough of the horrible lava place. I was like, it's all right, Nick, it's 13 more times and there'll be less. I don't know, get some through eventually. I mean, for Dark Souls 2, as much as I enjoyed it, the bonfire thing is even.
00:53:38
Speaker
More of an issue on that one. Yeah. Yeah. Because you can just go anywhere at any time. So I don't really even remember the map that well in Dark Souls 2. It's just always like a forward progression thing. It's not like in Dark Souls 1 where you go and it's like, oh, so this is what it looks like from the back. It's like never seen the back of your own haircut. Yeah. I mean, that's Dark Souls 2 in a nutshell, right? It's like you were going to throw a bunch of different disparate locations and themes and everything and sort of not join them at all. So you can experience them all separately in their own little bubbles.
00:54:07
Speaker
Never seen the back of your own haircut. Someone doesn't know how to hold up a hand mirror in front of another mirror. A vampire. Actually nothing. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Uh, Hjorth87 gives 20 Danish krona and says, just made you think of Clive Barker's Jericho. Oh no. Oh, having read out the title, I had to think about Clive Barker's Jericho for a second.
00:54:31
Speaker
I think the best way to summarise Clive Barker's Jericho is that Clive Barker once was quoted as saying, subtlety in horror is overrated. And I think that explains a lot. That does, yeah. The Piss Bandit gives $10 and says, pre-hard mode Terraria could be ripped out completely and nobody will miss it. On a more personal note, I had to drop Cuphead because I couldn't stop myself from grinding up the level grades in uni.
00:54:58
Speaker
I wouldn't even say that's something I'd fault a lot of these games for. Games that I love having a score system. Actually, Children of the Sun, its scoring system, if anything, almost took away from the meticulous nature because I saw the longer you spent in the level, the more it would penalize you. And it wasn't until later on where I said, ah, screw your grades that I got to actually like stop in between shots. And I'm like, oh, this is an interesting world that I'm in, you know? Yeah, yeah. Before I was just like shotgunning a rifle, funny enough.
00:55:26
Speaker
Yeah, it almost feels like those things like the score system shouldn't have even popped up until like you'd already beaten the level once. Kind of like you really sit in it and experience the story and the tone and everything. Yeah, it felt like it was just there tacked on, not like neon white where those trophies did something for you.
00:55:46
Speaker
Uh, Patatak13 gives $10, and let's celebrate their first super on a livestream, yay! Oh, I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and while it's been great seeing these characters and this world fully realised, the generic open world stuff, Towers, really overstays its welcome after a while. Well, I know what you should look forward to, Patatak13, and that's this week's Fully Ramblamatic on Wednesday. I think, uh, you will get on with it. You know what? I think we all need to put some respect on Chad Lee's name.
00:56:16
Speaker
Yeah, how is this fucking Chadly dude? Oh, he's just Chadly. You know, as one does. I feel like maybe, because he wasn't in the original game and I feel like someone on the new team has this sort of like OC that he's been hankering to put in something for many years. And that's Chadly. Yeah. My time. We here respect Chadly.
00:56:38
Speaker
Why do we have to do everything Chad Lee tells us to do? He tells us to keep telling us to do boring overworld shit. Maybe Chad Lee's like our our our Jiminy Cricket. I also like how they created a second Chad Lee who annoys Chad Lee. So it's like it's almost like the cycle of grief and revenge. It's like Scrappy Doo has another more annoying Scrappy Doo. Oh God. Strange name. That's an adjective. Yeah. Classic Chad Lee.
00:57:08
Speaker
John Brooks gives 10 pounds and says, forgot Witcher 3! No magic use in the mandatory fistfight scenes, so the expert monster hunter mutant gets his ass kicked by hobos and a card shark. CD Projekt Red fistfighting seemed poor to me anyway. Yeah, that does seem kind of silly. I suppose, but I mean, it's in girls' neutral manner. He doesn't want to just straight up kill everybody.
00:57:30
Speaker
Like, that's a game you'll enjoy if you enjoy his alignment. If you don't, and you're just like, I could kill every last one of you, then you're just gonna broke the emergent, I suppose. Yeah, I guess it depends on how you play, Geralt. You could certainly play him as a psychopath who just swords everyone up. Swords everyone right up.
00:57:53
Speaker
CupcakeKamisama gives £10 and says, I bought a copy of Will Save the Galaxy for food as a reward for submitting my own work to literary agents. Can't wait for that and hi to the whole Windbreak podcast crew from sunny Manchester. Thank you CupcakeKamisama. I hope you enjoy the book. Manchester's not actually sunny.
00:58:09
Speaker
And also the second book and also the third book that came out very recently, if you're interested. Good luck submitting to literary agents. If you're submitting solicited, if you're submitting unsolicited, you'll need all the luck you can get, frankly. So much luck. Ryan Betts gives $2 and says true or false Metroid Prime fixed FPS platforming.
00:58:35
Speaker
Fixed. I mean, I think FPS platforming is kind of bad unless your game is about that. Fixed or succeeded in spite of? Yeah, because you can't say fixed because like that would mean everyone afterwards was like, we got it. All right, we're all just going to do this because I think there's still some platforming in the... Yeah, I disagree with you, Ryan, but it's false. I think it is better than Half-Life.
00:59:00
Speaker
I would say Mirror's Edge was getting towards fixing FPS platforming by focusing less on accurately landing on things and more on just treating the main character as a projectile. We were firing out of our person gun. Yeah. What was that? Infinite Runner? That popular one on mobile? Shoot. Ganobalt?
00:59:23
Speaker
Maybe, I don't know. Yeah, no. I like that, though, that instead of being about precision, it's more about getting your momentum from one spot to the other, very neon white. The first person perspective works better with gameplay based around lining up your line of sight with things. And that's what the parkour maps focused on. So it's less about having to land on a platform and then accidentally continuing to press forward for too long and falling off because you couldn't see your fucking fate.
00:59:54
Speaker
Uh, FoxD gives side orders and says, eating the same thing every day is one thing. Eating at a place like Cracker Barrel every day for a month is another. Best part of games like Persona. If you say so, FoxD. I want a persona where our hideout is in a Cracker Barrel.
01:00:12
Speaker
the mini game, like those little, the little peg mini game where you drive. My mother loves Cracker Bell so much every birthday. I can understand eating, I can understand eating somewhere like the Cheesecake Factory every day because that has such a huge menu. You could eat something different every day. At the same time, any restaurant that has a menu that big, you need to be very cautious of.
01:00:37
Speaker
Because you know it's all coming out of the fucking freezer. Yeah. All the same permutation of stuff. Richard Wells gives $10 and says, fall out. You pick locked doors with bobby pins until you reach a door that says this door needs a key to unlock. All the locked doors needed keys. That's why I picked them.
01:01:01
Speaker
That's a really good point. It's certainly a breakdown of the immersive sim thing. I mean, I think like Deus Ex was pretty good for this sort of thing. But every now and again, you just went to a door that was infinite strength and infinite lockpick strength. So you'd have to find the key for it, which was a bit of a lurch. That was an interesting one. That thing they do where keys are consumable.
01:01:20
Speaker
Right? Where I'm like, okay, I understand if this one key correlates to this one door, but it's like, no, you can only just use the key once on any door. Yeah, a general small key. You can use it on any small key door. It's a personal idiot and they don't know they can pull a key out of the lock after they open the door.
01:01:37
Speaker
That's one of those realism sacrifice for a gameplay mechanic situation. Just puts the key in like damn. From a game design perspective, if you ever have to choose between realism or fun gameplay, 100% always take fun gameplay. Always go as real as possible. Head on their own misery. Yeah.
01:02:02
Speaker
Tsunami do sure gives $10 and says, Splatoon 3! In an online match, most of all players decide to not play a match. Instead, they just walk to center stage jumping around or teabagging. All the wait for non-action is frustrating. Listen, maybe you're just taking a kid's game a little too serious, but alright, you can sign up for tournaments if you want. Well, that reminds me of when they first introduced Konga dancing to Team Fortress 2. And for a while, every server, everyone would just down tools and just Konga dance around the map for a while.
01:02:32
Speaker
Hmm. It's just build. I feel like Splatoon should just build separate modes that are just like dance party mode. Yeah. Play on the dance party map. It's just in smite. They would always say dance party, dance party. If you're not dancing, you're breaking. I would just get a Pentakill because you're all just sitting in the same spot. What's stopping me? Shoot them anyway. So that's what I say. It comes a point where actually playing the game is being a troll. Hmm.
01:03:00
Speaker
Hunter Roach $10 says, my favorite game Super Metroid is great, but there are definitely games that came after it that refined its controls and made the path forward less obtuse. Cool? Yeah. Don't think I ever played through Super Metroid. Oh my god, it's really good. I've played plenty of other Metroidvanias. I've played through Metroid Fusion, but it's the more recent ones. Yeah, it has... Super Metroid also has some optional mechanics that...
01:03:30
Speaker
The environment teaches you, like you find these little critters who are wall jumping and it sort of teaches you, oh, I can wall jump. But the problem is the wall jumping fucking sucks. Like it is the least intuitive wall jumping. Like I played that game probably through 15 times and every time I do it, I'm like, I don't know how to wall jump. I don't know what it wants from me and it's very frustrating.
01:03:49
Speaker
So yeah, I would say that's up there. That's definitely one of those games. When I replay it, I definitely use rewinding and save states because I'm like, listen, the reason I didn't make this jump isn't on me. This is on you. And so I'm just going to, I'm going to keep reloading that save until I make this jump. It's not me. It's not me. This is not my fault. Eric, we stopped talking about Chad Lee. He can go away now. You know what? I would like Chad Lee to stay here. I'm going to sit. I'm going to sick toffee on Chad Lee. Oh no. I feel like Chad Lee would be afraid of dogs. Yes.
01:04:20
Speaker
Rawr! This is off, asshole. Eat, eat, eat, eat, kill, kill, kill, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr, rawr,
01:04:39
Speaker
Steamtastic Vagabond, good name there, gives $6.99 Canadian, and says Minecraft's inventory has been broken for years! The game has far too many different items for a measly 27 slots. Builds a test, idiot. Everything, maybe you're a hoarder.
01:04:56
Speaker
Are there moments in games that make you realize you have actual real world human problems? You're like, oh no, this is a me problem, isn't it? Well, probably something I've mentioned previously that every time I'm given a choice, I just go with whatever choice doesn't disappoint the person I'm currently talking to because I'm afraid of confrontation. Are you? Yes. I have some stubborn phlegm.
01:05:26
Speaker
Nick Noll gives $10 and says, BG3's inventory management system almost made me quit up to five hours on PS5. I'm 500 plus hours now and love the game, but I still loathe playing with my backpacks and pouches like Troika Dolls. Well, not the Red Dead problem, the looting go to bit bogged down later in the game. Yeah, I mean, at a certain point,
01:05:51
Speaker
I mean, that's like the double-edged sword, right? Like, do you want to adhere to that kind of realism where you have to make choices of... Because like sometimes on a little adventure in Dragon's Dogma 2, I'd have to be like, ooh, what do I take with me? How spartan do I want to go out? Like, do I want to risk not having my camping gear on one of my pawns because it hopes that I find one along the way or what? And those kinds of decisions in the moment can be good. No, I meant the actual looting.
01:06:20
Speaker
Oh, like the literal opening drawers? Yeah, yeah. Like some games, it's like, press the button, it's all in your system now. Whereas the other ones, like, all right, I got to fondle the balls and tie the shoes. Some games, you can just walk past the shelf mashing the contextual use button, and everything just gets hoovered up. Every game should have a vacuum, like Luigi and Luigi's Mansion. There we go. Yeah.
01:06:41
Speaker
Ooh, you know what game did have that? Uh, atomic art. You could just vacuum a room instead of having to loot every drawer. That's pretty satisfying. He played it off as a power too of just like... Yeah. Uh, Alex Armstrong gives $5, so then says, even as a fan, where do you start with the worst parts of Sonic? Boost to win, crap dialogue, mismanaged tone, and bugs galore, how incompetent is Sega?
01:07:08
Speaker
See, back to the whole community port. I'm sure some people love that stuff. But that is Sonic to them. Also, Alex, I like the fact that you are a Sonic fan and are still cognizant of all this. This is what we're going for. We just want people to think like this of all their faves.
Sonic Games: Speed and Design Issues
01:07:25
Speaker
Exactly.
01:07:26
Speaker
Zaratha gives us five R dollars and says, I loved Sea of Stars, but F U Garl and the character development allocation that elevates him over everyone else. He's the purest. He has to. He's our Samwise Gamgee. I was definitely getting that vibe. Like they were definitely over focusing on him a bit. Lost his eye. Come on. And like the two other party members were basically just emotionless monks.
01:07:52
Speaker
Mm-hmm. I was so sure he was gonna come up to be bad guy in that game and I was not correct. He was But then like you like don't see him for 10 years then that that seems like a good opportunity for you abandoned me sort of I Guess because I played the demo
01:08:18
Speaker
the demo starts you off like a little oh yeah he's later on he's with me next day he's just your bud yeah oops uh tsunami douche gives ten dollars and says zelda oracles of ages and seasons i love these games but they don't need to be two separate titles huh a lot of extra room left to type here you three are good good chums have a nice week so i think you saw me douche thank you uh yeah oracle the seasons and age i i replayed uh seasons recently because it's on the switch online and uh it
01:08:49
Speaker
It just felt like Diet Zelda. And I'm like, what? There's so many other Zeldas I could play that I like more. Not 100% sure why this exists.
01:08:57
Speaker
Yeah, they did the whole thing. There was two separate games that came out at once, but it wasn't like a Pokemon Red and Blue, where it's like the changes are minimal. Like they're just legitimately two completely separate games that can speak to each other in kind of like a post-game epilogue. Yeah, it was weird. Yeah. Alex Armstrong gives side dollars and says, speaking of Sonic, thoughts on indie devs making fan games to develop skills to make their own games like Spark the Electric Jester and Roll in Rascal?
01:09:23
Speaker
I will say that fan work is a great way to start being a creative. If you're still doing it a few years into being a creative, something's gone wrong.
01:09:36
Speaker
I don't know, maybe you just want to make Knuckles bebald. Like that's all you ever want. Now Sonic bebald, now Amy bebald, now Tails bebald. That's just his destiny. Then just make a game about a bunch of bald animals. No, it's weirder when there's nothing to like inspire it, I guess. Then it's just bald people running around.
VR Engagement Challenges
01:10:00
Speaker
Uh, Gelden Yesich gives $5 and says, my least favorite part of my favorite games is that often VR are enjoyed in full screen, so they impede watching second wind streams simultaneously. Fair enough. VR is a hard thing to second screen. Yeah. You'd have to be a chameleon.
01:10:17
Speaker
You should get one of those AR-like glasses. You just have something playing on a screen in the corner of your vision. There you go. I'd be spinning, just trying to catch it the whole time. Where is it? Like a floater.
Games with Unclear Loss Mechanics
01:10:34
Speaker
Magic Mix 2000 gives £10 and says when the game wants an epic fight but also needs you to lose, so it makes you do the fight, lets you win the combat encounter and then makes you lose in the following cutscene.
01:10:45
Speaker
You know what I hate is, uh, fights where you're supposed to lose, but don't tell you that. And you can still use consumable items in the course of it. Yeah, that's some real bullshit there. I don't know how you fix that. Like maybe just, you can't use items, lock off items. And so you know, this is a, like the final round of the tournament in street fighter, uh, uh, six Springs to mind. Well, you can't in the story campaign. Oh, in the story campaign. Gotcha.
Crafting Systems and Material Grinds
01:11:12
Speaker
Um, yeah.
01:11:14
Speaker
Yeah. I don't, it's like, I don't know how, how do you inform the player that they're supposed to lose this fight without it being silly? Like, yeah. Like Resident Evil six did this all the time as well. Like, uh, you're just, like, you were just supposed to survive like a little while in a boss fight. And then they'd like transition to the next scene. The next bit. I didn't know that I used to pull my fucking like magnum out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a pain.
01:11:42
Speaker
Uh, Lord Mogatron gives side dollars and says, in games with crafting systems, like Tears of the Kingdom, item durability is dumb. What do we put in the chests? More crafting items. And why can't we craft arrows? Yeah, I mean, crafting systems like I do, I guess, open up. They invite those kind of, like, very specific criticisms of, wait, if I can make this thing, why can't I make this other thing? Like... But as we said before, that's a trough. Or is that the... Yeah.
01:12:09
Speaker
Yeah. Don't put the pig before the trough. Trough before the pig? Well, you put the trough before the pig if you want to feed the pig. That's true. But if you put the trough on a treadmill, then the pig will go for a walk. Now you have infinite energy. We figured it out. Trenton Darnall gives $2 and says like a dragon and infinite wealth material grind. I thought the grind felt
01:12:40
Speaker
I didn't feel the material grind in those games are too bad. They do, Infinite Wealth does have the problem of the randomly, like it has their own sort of chalice dungeons that are kind of, kind of butt. They're just boring, like aesthetically they're boring. What you do in them is boring. I guess some of the loot you get is good, but I don't know what I'm doing with this. I didn't mind the underworld dungeons in Infinite Wealth because it was just a fun thing to grind while listening to something.
01:13:07
Speaker
Yeah, I guess if you treat it as a second screen thing, I think it works more. I guess like almost like zoning out and going through Mementos or Tartarus. And then you grind up for a while and then you got like more powerful for the real game.
Stat-Scaled Enemies Debate
01:13:21
Speaker
Wesley Thomas gives to Canadian Dollars and says, any game with stat scaled enemies loses a point. I'm definitely with you on that one Wesley Thomas. I think all games should give you the chance to go back to the starting area and kick the shit out of the things that once bullied you.
01:13:34
Speaker
I also think that if you want to, just stay down there and just goon it out a little bit and show up to the final boss over level. That's your prerogative. Oh, do you want to like grind up pigs for eight days or whatever it is? I want to watch House while I do that, yes. It's just an excuse to watch my shows.
01:13:54
Speaker
I mean, I remember there was that episode of South Park that was about World of Warcraft and the way they beat the villain is by fighting pigs. They each give one experience for like eight days straight. And I was yelling at the screen. I was like, you can't get experience of enemies that are a certain number of levels below you at World of Warcraft South Park.
01:14:15
Speaker
How dare you? Strong loop letter. Imagine my surprise in Elden Ring, because you could farm those little, like, monks on a cliff, and you get tons and tons of it, but the endgame scales with you, and I'm like, well, okay. Uh, Alex Armstrong gets two dollars and says, consuming shadow. Subpar graphics. Maybe a sequel. Oh, you cheeky bitch, Alex Armstrong. Oh, cheek, cheek, cheek.
01:14:40
Speaker
That's a consuming shadow is the game I made and that I have frequently said kind of looks like shit. And I've thought about making a sequel in the past. Did you ever think of not making it look that way? Yeah. Well, if you put better graphic, more graphics. Well, it's easy to just say that, isn't it? This is what feedback's for. Now you know.
01:15:03
Speaker
I thought it was great. As you know, before I got to playing The Witcher 3, I heard that across the fandoms where they're like, this game is shit because the controls are horrendous and I was expecting to touch them and vomit instantly. It wasn't that bad, but it was it was certainly a talking point for the whole time it was out.
01:15:33
Speaker
That was insane. I was expecting, like, I'd lose a finger trying to play this game. We don't know. It seems all right. Manageable-ish enough. I guess for a bit of perspective, did they change anything? Did they patch it? Was it the time it came out in 2013? Were there different ways of playing a game?
01:15:58
Speaker
I really don't remember how, like, the first two Witcher games played. I remember playing them. I remember quite liking the Witcher 3, and finally, and finally feeling like I was getting into the combat. It is a Witcher series, though. I do, yeah, one and two play what they feel awful. Very confident. Okay.
Persona 5 Relationship Management Frustrations
01:16:18
Speaker
Patattack13 gives high dollars and says, how do you guys feel about pretty much needing a guide-stroke wiki to do all the Persona 5 confidants in a single playthrough? Always struck me as frustrating. I think if you're trying to do that, you're sort of missing the point. Yeah, at that point. You don't need to max out every confidant in a single playthrough. You're just supposed to be like going with the flow and doing what you want to do.
01:16:40
Speaker
Yeah, and it's kind of more realistic to like life where it's, you gotta make choices at night. You can go out with your friends or you can go to a batting cage, I guess. But yeah, I feel like at that point you are trying to play a game in the way that is like, wiki necessary. I feel like I never went to the batting cages. Not at all. Nick went every night. Nick just loved those batting cages.
01:17:03
Speaker
Well, as we say, you know, it's, uh, you don't have to play optimally. That's how you, uh, that's how you, you know, refine the fun out of the game. Also, maybe you're like, uh, role-playing as your joker just really likes baseball. There you go. And my main protagonist of Persona 3 really likes eating out, apparently. Definitely not car as an
01:17:33
Speaker
Dot, dot, dot, so maybe there's more to that name. Gives $10. And says, Metal Gear Solid 5.
Metal Gear Solid 5 Gameplay Penalties
01:17:41
Speaker
The game is presented as an action game where stealth is not required, but the post mission score somewhat suffers if you go loud or use some of the tools like the helicopter. I don't think Metal Gear Solid has ever presented itself as a not a stealth game. I think it's always like front-ended the stealth. Sure.
01:18:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, like, arguably by the time 4 came around, it changed a little bit.
01:18:11
Speaker
But yeah, it's funny. In terms of Metal Gear games, there's things I can think of in every Metal Gear game. I love that series, but there's things I can think of. In Metal Gear Solid 1, there's the sort of run back to get the sniper rifle, where if you know what you're doing, it's very quick to get the sniper rifle. But if you don't know what you're doing, you're like, fucking, where do I go to get this thing? Yeah. Yeah. The big shell is kind of ugly and very samey in Metal Gear Solid 2. Every area is just that orange waste disposal plant.
01:18:43
Speaker
Well, there you go. I don't know, Madagasal 3. Maybe escorting Eva at that one point near the end of the game. She's very slow and you just keep feeding her things as she bleeds out. Listen, if you're escorting someone and they're bleeding out, just keep feeding them.
01:18:56
Speaker
Oh, Metal Gear Solid 4, having to follow that dude in the European city. Oh god, yeah. While you're wearing that trench coat. Yeah, real bullshit. Yeah. I guess another alternative title for this stream would have been the one bit of the game where once you get to it, you decide you're done for the day and want to do something else.
Puzzle Skipping in Games
01:19:15
Speaker
Black flag, trailing missions.
01:19:19
Speaker
I replayed The Last of Us Part 2, and I don't know if this was in the original game or just added for the PS5 remaster or whatever, but during any puzzle you can just pause and skip puzzle.
01:19:33
Speaker
And it'll just load an instance and the puzzle is solved and you can just move on. And I'm like, well, this is nice. And because I got there because it was one of those things where I was doing the puzzle correctly, but the game wasn't acknowledging what I was like, it was kind of physics that you had to like throw a rope in a specific place.
01:19:51
Speaker
And I kept throwing the rope because that's where I thought it would be, and the rope just kind of glitched out and came back. And so then I assumed that wasn't what I was supposed to do, and it just turns out I wasn't being precise enough. And so I don't like it when I mentally say, OK, this can't be the solution in a scenario where, oh, it is the solution. I just was slightly off in how I was doing it.
01:20:15
Speaker
FoxD gives $5 and says, AI traffic in realistic city-stroke highway driving games. They drive like idiots. I'm not sure whether that's annoying or just realistic. See, I don't mind that in something like a GTA, because I feel like part of the challenge of a GTA game is getting to the places you need to be and getting there in traffic without causing a massive pile up or crashing into a police car and having to go on a huge tangent, trying to avoid the cops for half an hour before you can get back to what you were trying to do.
01:20:44
Speaker
Oh. Evane, if it's in the south, it's pretty realistic. Terrible drivers. I was raised there. Awful drivers. Everyone's excited to get to Cracker Barrel. Yeah. And then there's LA, where there's
Positive Aspects of Disliked Games
01:20:58
Speaker
no public transport and everyone drives like a maniac. Ah, give us $1.99 and says, now say something nice about your least favorite game.
01:21:10
Speaker
Oh, I did that in the last summer emblematic, actually. I said Wolfenstein Youngblood had a scene early on where they killed a Nazi and then threw up, and I thought that was kind of fun. I thought that opening cutscene of, uh, oh, what's the bad, what's the bad Half-Life fan thing? Uh, Hans van der Freeman. Opening cutscene, they put some work into. They put a little elbow grease into that opening cutscene. Cutscenes are just about the only thing they put anywhere. Yeah!
01:21:36
Speaker
What was it, Last Hero of Nostal Gaia? They did that thing where if you find an item like in Souls games, it has like a sort of riddle-ish kind of thing of where you can go and activate the memory and this activates the weapon and upgrades it. Which I'm like, that should just be a thing any Souls game has. Yeah, but that should be a thing in games that aren't bad. Oh yeah.
01:21:59
Speaker
Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says Wind Waker Sailing's the worst. Come at me yachts. No it isn't. Alex Armstrong.
01:22:09
Speaker
Caesar Espinoza gives five pens. Ooh, I need a pen. I'd like to write on paper with them. And says, I'd love to hear you guys discuss Silent Protagonist as a topic. Who did it well and what even can be considered a Silent Protagonist?
Silent Protagonists in Gaming
01:22:23
Speaker
Love the show. Oh, well. I did an extra punctuation back from who with the escapist on that very topic. Look at that. Perhaps that could hold you over for now. I just generally don't like Silent Protagonist.
01:22:35
Speaker
I think like their era is kind of over. You just played a game where the protagonist was silent. No, no, no, no. But things aren't talking to me. I don't mind being a character in a world. I don't mind being Samus and not talking in Super Metroid because I'm not trying to communicate. This was something I went over in my video, actually. It's only really a silent protagonist if the character is silent as a deliberate artistic choice in a world where other characters can talk and are interacting with them.
01:23:04
Speaker
We're talking about our Gordon Freeman's, our Lynx. Yeah. I don't know.
01:23:10
Speaker
JayPando27 gives $2 and says, Arkham Asylum Riddler Trophies. Ooh, JayPando27, I'm gonna have to refute you there. I've been replaying the Arkham games recently, partly because I just like, once I've finished all the serious superhero bollocks, just unwinding and going on a trophy hunt with a podcast on. It's one of my favorite parts of playing those games. Seems like, that's not like an auxiliary feature, isn't it? It's like caving the flags in Assassin's Creed.
Collecting Challenges in Arkham Series
01:23:38
Speaker
I think Riddler trophies were improved in the sequels because they were more about puzzle challenges. In Arkham Asylum, they're mostly just randomly hidden in spots. And the last time I played through it, I had three Riddler trophies left and they were all, find the last chattering joker teeth in the middle of this level. Oh, that's annoying as hell. This area, this area, and this area. And I was like, I'm not going to fucking do that. I've already seen the ending you get when you find all the Riddler trophies. I'm just going to say I'm done.
01:24:07
Speaker
Yeah, the best thing an open-world game like that could do is pepper the map with little puzzles you gotta solve. I love that, like little shrines and Breath of the Wild, little- And you can do little extra challenges to unlock their locations on the map. So it's not just, you know, blindly hunting for stuff in Arkham City onwards. The Piss Bandit gives $5 and says, surprise, nobody's brought up Pokémon yet! Over a decade of 3D Pokémon and they're still more lifeless and ugly than Gen 5 sprites.
01:24:35
Speaker
This is what's just about favorite games. Yeah, I will say even the Pokemon, the earlier Pokemon games that I really like, I think the sort of the idea of HMs got annoying. HMs were moves you could teach your Pokemon that also you needed to explore the world. So like to destroy a boulder to enter a cave or to be able to surf and swim across lakes. But those moves took up slots.
01:25:03
Speaker
And your character has only had four move slots. So you might need to like have one of your Pokemon be like, I think they're referred to as like HM slaves, where it's like, this is a Pokemon, I'm not using for battle, I'm just teaching all these things. And so we just pull them out to break rocks and to cut grass and swim across lakes. What is my purpose? What is my purpose in life? That's what Chad Lee was created for. It's like grim life for an ambitious Pokemon, I'm sure.
01:25:28
Speaker
Palash T gives $1.99 and says, encumbrance as a concept, especially Bethesda RPGs. All right, sure. If there's no strategy involved, if there's really no point to it, yeah, it feels redundant. I'm annoyed by encumbrance if it doesn't become an issue until you're six hours into the game and you try to pick up something and the game says, no, you have finally reached the limit. And now you're going to have to pick up 100 million things to throw away.
01:25:57
Speaker
I wouldn't mind as much if it was like a small encumbrance, which you hit pretty quick, so it was always something you were dealing with.
RPG Encumbrance Mechanic
01:26:06
Speaker
It's when it sneaks up on you, there's a noise, mate. Well, I guess skull and bones, where it's like, fuck, I got to throw out some planks. Whereas you'd prefer to just like, all right, you can either take this bowling ball or this boulder. You can have both. Yeah. If they front load it at the start, make it an actual core mechanic you have to think about.
01:26:25
Speaker
Like a Silent Hill 4, you've only got like eight inventory slots and bullets don't stack for some stupid reason. Yeah, if you make it matter from the start, sure. If it's later in the game, like I was like, I'm almost done. Why now? Also, just pull a resi and just let me do, let me do Tetris inventory puzzles. Pull a dredge. That's the only encumbrance I want. Spatial encumbrance. Eric, why can't I just give 50 arses? Oh, hi, Eric.
01:26:51
Speaker
Again, you know you can just talk to us, right? It says not anniversary. It says that everyone. It's a lie. I'm liking it. It says not being able to craft with materials in your inventory in Animal Crossing, forcing you to grab these or that you can only do one item at a time. Yeah. Crafting one thing at a time if you want to craft a batch is incredibly fucking annoying in any game. Yeah.
01:27:16
Speaker
And also it being like, oh no, you need to have these things on you, it won't just pull from your inventory. I like that at least in Dragon's Dogma, like all the shit you leave at the inn or put in chests when you go to craft something, it will still acknowledge that all that stuff is part of your crafting. I like a game like Minecraft or Stardew where when you're going to like the crafty shop or whatever, it accounts for everything that's in your base.
Microtransactions in Beloved Games
01:27:39
Speaker
Yes. And not just what you got in your pockets. Yep, yep, yep.
01:27:45
Speaker
Armonia, £1.99. Sorry, my brain cells aren't connecting up the way they used to. Oh no. Armonia gives £1.99 and says, any game with microtransactions, obviously. Armonia, that's not the game we're playing. What game do you love but do microtransactions stick out? I mean, that happened to me.
01:28:10
Speaker
I got played Smite for 10 years, but it was the decisions they made with money at the start of the game that ended up impacting it later in the game. So stuff that you wouldn't anticipate. That's why today's cold take is about just monetization in general, because a lot of these problems you don't see until like way later on. So you kind of want to get them right the first time. Yeah. ZDrakeis199 says, Zelda gets free passes where other games head bashed. Oh, get bashed.
01:28:41
Speaker
I think he mistyped. Yeah. I don't know, like, we've been giving it a few bashes today. Yeah, every game gets a, gets a bash or two. Yeah. Super bash brothers. Doctor Theog is five dollars. There's Half-Life 2 feels like an amusement park ride where everything revolves around you. Everyone knows and loves you, and it feels like I'm in a play.
01:29:04
Speaker
You know what it feels like to me? There was an old Australian improv comedy show on TV called Thank God You're Here, where they'd got improv comedians on, and their job was to walk through a door into a room, and there'd be a set with other characters already set up. And the first thing another character would say is, thank god you're here. And then they'd just have to go along with the scene.
Cyberpunk and Player Agency
01:29:22
Speaker
A lot of those cut scenes in Half-Life remind me of that. But that's how I feel in any like, oh, you're the main protagonist, the last of us. Same. It's like, oh, it's good you're here. It's like, cool, I'm going to get shot.
01:29:35
Speaker
And so are you, chances are. Sean Harriman, member for four months in the Green Gang, says, lack of impactful choices in Cyberpunk, i.e. gangs. Yeah, that's again a slippery slope. If you start introducing choices, you're like, oh, well, how deep does this choice rabbit hole go?
01:29:54
Speaker
Yeah, again, jumping off of Last of Us, the ending, a lot of people were really upset because it's like, where's my player choice? Where's my agency? I was like, well, you didn't really have that much to begin with. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone wants fucking ending Tron 3000 endings or something. I just don't want to be the bad guy, Yahtzee. Well, that was the point, slowly, not to defend Lazarus. I don't like that it made the point with me. I don't care. This is not me.
01:30:25
Speaker
Luisa Azul gives $10 R dollars and says, I still find funny how yachts think Persona 5 has the best story out of all the Persona games and 3 has a mess story.
Persona Series Storyline Debate
01:30:34
Speaker
Meanwhile, the fandom unanimously agree. 5 has the worst story and 3 has the best. Oh, well, I guess I'm in trouble since correctness is decided by majority opinion now. And they know fandom unanimous. It turns like Al Qaeda, Isis, they have factions.
01:30:52
Speaker
Absolutely. It's like the Diablo community where the fandom loves three or two based on who you're talking to. You think five is the worst story and three has the best. That's what you meant. I'm telling you, every fan refuses to acknowledge that other people exist. It is baffling. Fucking parasitials. I think Persona 4 is an incredibly good game.
01:31:19
Speaker
Oh, but Persona 1? Persona 1's kind of fucking gunky. No one cares about Persona before they added waifus. That's true. Persona 1 and 2 and 2 again. No waifus. Get me out of here. What's in them, then? Re-romancing. You're not romancing anything. You're just haunting demons. Everything's fucked. There's none of the life sim element of Persona 3 onwards. That doesn't like that game. You would probably like those because it's like more of like a crunchy dungeon crawler.
01:31:47
Speaker
Radish Baron gives two Canadian dollars and says, Fort Condor in Final Fantasy 7 original. Yeah, the Fort Condor. I've only played Rebirth.
Final Fantasy 7 Minigame Discussion
01:31:57
Speaker
How'd you like Fort Condor and Rebirth? Like getting to that Condor? Scroll. Remind me which bit was Fort Condor. I think it was a minigame, so you might not have needed to do it as a side quest. It's where you get Isakite inside of the video game, where you have to do sort of like a tower defense thing. It's one of the games. Oh, no, I don't think I got to as far as that. Okay. I mean, you can...
01:32:17
Speaker
They're just completely optional in all the areas, so. Okay. There you go. Fat Bot Slim gives 35 Zara's and says, Dishonored, you're a professional assassin, but don't kill anyone or you get the bad ending. I didn't think that game ever goes out and says you're a professional assassin.
01:32:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's just the occupation, right?
Protagonist Role in Dishonored
01:32:38
Speaker
So the key point of assassination is that assassination is about targeted surgical strikes on key targets. Yeah. If you kill everyone, you're not an assassin, you're just a spree killer. That's true. But, you know, you are the queen's guard and you fail miserably right at the start. That's why you have to get a new job as an assassin.
01:33:00
Speaker
No, like the beginning of Dishonored. What was it? You're like a bodyguard or something and immediately get framed because you're wearing a gimp suit or something. You're wearing a gimp suit? Are you talking about Jose Corvo? He's got the ball gag on. He just won't say it wasn't me. You're not wearing a gimp suit from the start. You're just a silent protagonist. No, you were wearing gimp suits as we were playing the game. I thought this was one of those silent protagonist immersive things. They told me it was haptic.
01:33:29
Speaker
Oh, maybe you were. Anyway, Humane Shield gives $1.99 and says, slime tethering the stone cupids in Ghostbusters.
PS3 Era Ghostbusters Game Quality
01:33:37
Speaker
You know, the Ghostbusters video game from like the PS3 era was surprisingly involved and surprisingly good. Oh, I never played it. Although this feels like a phrase you would use to like trigger a Manchurian candidate. Slime tethering the stone cupids in Ghostbusters PS3. Yeah, I don't specifically remember that. I remember the slime tethering being a thing.
01:33:59
Speaker
Boston makes me feel good, everybody. We're so close. Yeah, they really have to think hard to come up with alternative weapons and Ghostbusters besides just shooting thing with laser a lot. Ghostbusters like Blade. If you like. I would love.
01:34:20
Speaker
Estefan Costa gives $5 and says, before stream ends, a shout out to all of you for second wind generally. I like all the work. Ramblamatic, cold, take bite, size, et cetera. Thanks. You're welcome, Estefan Costa. You're a true fan and only true fans like every bit of content that something puts out.
01:34:37
Speaker
Wait a minute. That was, that's the opposite of what we've been talking about. But if you want to see a lot of us together in one place at one time, tune in in 90 minutes to our ground branch stream. Oh shit. Wait, let's wrap this up so I can have my fucking lunch. Breach, breach, breach. Uh, jpanda27 goes to $5 and says, to be fair, I always thought it was funny to imagine the Riddler running around and hiring contractors to hide those things around Gotham. Oh, you think that this was one of those things where he was just like,
01:35:05
Speaker
He was just sort of the brains of the operation and other goons were actually placing them there. Well, we know that was happening because that's the whole mechanic in Arkham City where you beat up Riddler's Henchmen and they tell them where they hid all the puzzles that they personally hid. Don't employ snitches. Part one.
01:35:30
Speaker
Louisa Azul gives five R dollars, since that's not saying you're wrong, just thought it was weird how everyone I meet loved three the most.
Persona 3 Fan Prevalence and Speculation
01:35:36
Speaker
I know a lot of people. Well, maybe you four and five, maybe, maybe you exclusively hang out with weirdos, Louisa. Weirdos. I think it's just emo. I bet it's an age. I wonder if it's just what, what's sub generation. It's on their tender settings. Must like persona three. I keep meeting three lovers. I think your favorite persona story is just whichever one you played first. Yeah. Maybe it's been my experience.
01:36:06
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's it. Well, that's all the super chats. So thanks for listening. I was Yachty Crowshaw. That was Marty and that was Frost.
01:36:19
Speaker
And as Marty just said, yes, we'll all be back in about 90 minutes playing Ground Breach in a big old crossover stream with like eight of us. It'll be crazy. Ground Branch. It's Ground Branch. Breaching is what we're going to be doing. We're breaching. I want ourselves to breach babies. Ground Branch. Well, Ground Branch makes more sense as a title. No, it's called Ground Branch. And we're the breach babies, but we're not going to call ourselves the breach babies on the stream.
01:36:47
Speaker
We're just referring to ourselves as breach babies. Yeah, I was a breach baby. Shout out to breach babies. Clearly. I don't know what I was. Did you say clearly? Clearly you were born upside down with the ability of the court joking you. I think the doctor told my mom I was dead. I don't usually tell that to like a woman who just gave birth because I wasn't dead. I'm right here. I got a bunch of problems, but I'm not dead. What else we got going on?
01:37:16
Speaker
Oh, well, as I was saying, fully ramblamatic this week is on Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. I think that'll be a fun one. And of course, Yahtzee tries as well the same day. That's it for my content this week, I think. We don't have a semi-ram this week. What else have we got? We have the big Thursday stream as well. You're gonna be sick of us by the end of this. Oh shit, I forgot. I'm on the Thursday stream as well. Got so much.
01:37:43
Speaker
A big... An all day stream. A bunch of us will be doing different things. It'll be the return of Dokapon. The Dokapon Strokapon continues. Maybe the closure? I don't know. Maybe the closure? Who knows? No way we end that in four hours. I really have to go back and rewatch those old videos to figure out what's going on. Also the return of some lethal company, which we haven't played on stream in quite a while. Yeah.
01:38:06
Speaker
Uh, yeah. And then Frosty, you have your new cold take today, correct? Yep. New cold take came out talking about monetization. You can't get too fancy with the spices. You know, you might, might lose the flavor. Might, might make a different flavor. You weren't expecting. Who knows? Am I turning to Conan O'Brien and just go nuts? Cause you got too much spice up in you.
01:38:26
Speaker
That's it. Everyone will hang out at the ground branch landing page. And we're all going to be there. We're all going to be there. Ground branch. They're paying his money and I got their name wrong. No, you're fine. You're fine. You get it wrong on this stream. Get it right on that stream. Think about that. It's a little sloppy copy. Maybe I'll just insist on continually calling it the wrong name, just to make it part of my individual quirky personality. There you go.
01:38:55
Speaker
All right, bye everyone. Bye. Bye. Bye. See you soon.