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Can’t Get You Out of My Head | Windbreaker Podcast
6.5k Plays4 months ago
On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Frost, and Marty chat about the slightly-obscure games and moments that they keep thinking about years later.
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Transcript
Introduction & Ad for 'Union of Gnomes'
00:00:00
Speaker
this video is brought to you by union of gnomes the deck building roguelike where you stack together groups of bearded men to bring down your favorite fairy tale characters the treacherous snow white has used her enchanting voice to enslave your kind and it's up to you to lead the gnome uprising Free your fellow height-impaired comrades, gain new cards and playable heroes as they join your ranks, and work towards putting a stop to her oppressive rule. See the end of the gnome oppression in the story mode or try to survive the infinite gameplay of Never Ending Nightmare.
00:00:36
Speaker
It's up to you to build a deck with perfect, game-breaking synergy as what I assume is a group of non-speaking rappers. You know, because in Union of Gnomes, the G is silent. oh um A demo is available right now and Union of Gnomes hits early access on July 18th, so head on over to the Steam page and start your uprising today. Boo all you want.
00:01:04
Speaker
Hello
Introduction to Windbreak Podcast & Discussion on Memorable Games
00:01:05
Speaker
everyone, welcome to the Windbreak Podcast, a day late, and hopefully not a dollar short. I'm Yarti Krosjor, I'm joined by Ross Adubati. Hello. A short A short dollar? Yes. Yarti and the short dollars, there you go, that's our 60s beat combo. And this week, this week, we are talking about the games we can't get out of our head. Not ah games that we like and think are good. Lord knows you've heard enough from us about the games we like and think are good. I like Silent Hill 2, he likes Persona 5, he likes Fighting of Isaac. ah There, we mentioned them, we don't have to again. yeah the The games that we still think about, despite them not being particularly noteworthy or interesting. That was a very, ah, he remembered kind of moment there.
00:01:52
Speaker
yeah Yeah, does listen. Yeah. Occasionally. Yeah. who So who wants to go first? um I think I'm sure we've all got some things in mind. Yeah. I have a, I have a bunch on my list. So do we want to just go kind of like round robin or I guess, do we want to talk about like from a top level view? Like what do we mean by the, like, why do we think there are certain elements in these things that we can't stop thinking about? Oh, this session. Really? Like this is what's going on. I like that. Yeah. Tell me about the game. Yeah.
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, this is cheaper than therapy. Well, for me, I've got two games in my mind. yeah um might I might think of more. But two games that when I think back to ah not necessarily good games that stick out in my memory, but that I tend to come back to. One of them because of story reasons and one of them because of gameplay reasons. So if you've got a whole bunch, maybe you should start. Well, I'm kind of curious about the the difference between your story reasons in your and your ah gameplay reasons. But going just go for it. Well, go ahead. Well, it sounded like you were launching into something. No, I was gonna say there's there's ah but sort of an overarching thing for some of my picks is ah there's there's something about kind of bad and janky games that I find ah really endearing. And as a critic, I feel like playing them in a non ironic way is
00:03:19
Speaker
Ultimately good for sort of almost like readjusting yourself like like cleansing your palate or like so You know, we talked about this a lot I think it was last year when we had that sort of gradual.
Enjoyment of Playing Bad Games
00:03:31
Speaker
This is the worst game of all time No, this is the worst game of all time No this is and when you sit down and play some of them like that Lord of the Rings golem game that everyone was like Oh, this is the um Like this is a harbinger of doom for the video game industry. And then I sat down and I played, I think I did a stream with Frost and I played through the entire thing myself. And I was like, this is just kind of regular bad in a way we used to get a lot. And we used to get a lot and I would just rent it from the store and play it. And it wouldn't be this thing I would have to kind of, um,
00:04:03
Speaker
explain for myself or a thing that became this topic of conversation. It was just like, here is kind of the junk food game that you eat and you pass through. And there's something about that that it doesn't feel like we get a lot anymore. And I kind of missed it. And so Gollum is a game I keep thinking about in Bell and Wonderworld from a few years ago. It's a game I keep thinking about in that same direction. Now I'm definitely with you on that. I've often said it's practically one of my catchphrases that bad is better than bland when it comes to being a critic. because ah bad get When i I'm playing a game, I realize it's just plain bad, just plain like Gollum.
00:04:45
Speaker
horribly designed, buggy, really cringe worthy story. My first instinct is to feel very positive. Like, oh, this is gonna be a fun review to write. I'm really gonna be sharpening the old testicle hammer on this. Yeah, it's, a it's the i'm sharpening the back of the hammer. It's a claw hammer, is it? they So, and yeah, I mean, you say people were talking about Gollum like it was the Herald at the end of the industry, bland games feel more like that to me. Everything's getting churned into a big gray machine. You have a healthy relationship with bad games, it seems.
00:05:21
Speaker
Because mine is is you're like, oh, historic, it's free. You do whatever you've already shit the bed. What's a little wee, you know, you've you've already done it. Me, if it just keeps getting worse, I was like, I'd rather not talk about you because I have to be the bad guy. You're making me hurt you. like you are Why how would you do this? Hey, it's nice being the heel. It's much more cathartic. But if I'm always if i'm always the heel, there was the catharsis. Well, you can like work your frustrations out on it. ah Just turns into a yearning of hopes and dreams. You say go defend you. Ain't no one going to defend you. Gollum. I'm going to kick you right in the nuts. Oh, he's not that bad of a boy warranted bullying. Is that what that was? Also, he's definitely been castrated at some point. I feel like I was tortured enough. He doesn't have nuts to kick anymore. I'm not bullying anyone who made Gollum.
00:06:18
Speaker
Sure. You are not your work and all that. To talk about bullying a game ah is sort of like, it was like feeding into that whole corporate narrative where if you talk shit about the Ghostbusters remake, it means you're a misogynist. No, I think, I think maybe what Frost is getting to is the, like, there's like a salivating kind of dog pile. It feels like one or two games every year is becomes the sacrificial lamb. And it just last year, it just felt like we had several in a row from, from four spoken and this and, uh, and I've been thinking about four.
00:06:55
Speaker
I've been thinking about Four Spoken again lately because I've been reviewing Flint, Flintlock the Siege of Dawn, which feels like it has since about a lot of comparisons between the two. Yeah. and Like even that year, worst game, like as far as like jank and not working, Redfall was really rough, that Kong game, you know, but we went for Gollum. So yeah this is a little unfounded. You're making me have to equalize it. I think and I could imagine some people finding fun in Redfall. I could imagine at a pinch, someone finding fun in Forspoken. I could not imagine anyone finding fun in Gollum. Gollum is a universally terrible experience. We found love in Middle Earth.
00:07:40
Speaker
we found Willough being a little slimy guy climbing up walls and and water wheels. yeah Yeah. But anyway, let's get to our personal specifics, because as we might have given away, the game I want to talk about for story, I want to talk about because it is a bad story. But bad in a really interesting way. And that game is Bionic Commando on the PS3. But the original, the remake that was also called Bionic Commando just to confuse everyone.
00:08:11
Speaker
Because for some reason, oh, we'll get to that. But for some reason, someone decided that the best approach to take for the Bionic Commando remake would be a sort of what was it? Bomberman equivalent, gratification of what was originally a colorful and nice n NES game. Yeah, the original Bionic Commando in which he played the character radical Spencer. ah was, ah you know, a nice, colourful, fun adventure where you were a dude with a grappling hook arm fighting XP Nazis. And you wore sunglasses. You were like a Duke Nukem-style hero.
00:08:53
Speaker
And then, in the remake, ah they you are Nathan Radical Spencer, and it is a direct sequel to the n NES game, and suddenly you're like this PTSD-afflicted, a gritty, angry, Kratos-style man who's fighting ah for the liberation of bionically enhanced people in a hideous, apocalyptic city.
00:09:21
Speaker
And then, of course, there's the twist. I mean, the game's got a really really dumb storytelling up to the end, but then there's the twist in which Radical Spencer has been really angsty and his usual gritty self the whole time because he's very angry about ah his wife having left him. His wife having just left without a word with no explanation. It's the seed for his entire character and the angst therein. And then it turns out that the reason why his wife disappeared is because his superiors took her brain and put it in his bionic arm.
00:10:01
Speaker
Bionic arms only only work if they have the brain of a close relative inside it. There's another character who's got the little brother in their leg.
00:10:13
Speaker
And, you know, where do you start? I mean, when you talk about, like, the the really bad, ah the best bad stories are the ones that inspire yelling questions at the screen. And I have a whole raft of questions to yell at the screen on this one. Why do you need a brain
Game Critiques: 'Bionic Commando' & 'Shadow of the Damned'
00:10:31
Speaker
inside a ah fucking winch to make the winch work? bio Keep in mind, it's bionic. I don't know what that is, but just keep making sure. No, the Lumiere winch.
00:10:46
Speaker
It's, and you know what? There's a way it could have worked. There's a relatively simple way it could have worked. And that's if they'd actually characterize the arm. If the, if the arm had had like a little rook computer AI voice that could talk to the, to the player, I think it established that the AI voice is the one that's like organizing all your mission ah readouts and huds and stuff. So it's more than just a fucking winch. But no, you this little hint the yeah. yes it is a um has's been Yeah. arm has been a silent tool this entire time.
00:11:26
Speaker
I mean, wow when you get down to it, The first thought you're going to have when you realise his wife is his arm is how their sex life is going to unfold from now on. Sure. It's masturbating. It's quite cranking off. win she mama whenhima i'm I'm always curious. I don't know if there's ever been like post-sports on that of like, what? Like, did they think it would land like ah emotionally? Like, did they think this would be sort of like a You know, this is, I feel like a lot of games of the PS3 360 era, um, had a lot of those kinds of AAA games needed to like, had some kind of twist, you know, and maybe the other one that leaps to mind is inversion. Do you remember that one?
00:12:11
Speaker
And with the game, I don't think I played it. It was a generically third-person shooter where you're a dude fighting of an army in a post-public setting. His city gets invaded by bad guys, very gives a glory. Sort of like an anti-gravity gimmick where you fight them on walls every now and again. And the twist in that game was that you spend the whole game looking for your missing daughter. And then it turns out she was dead all along and your side character knew and just didn't want to tell you. Oh, that's just rude. That's just extremely rude. And it was in pursuit of this that we've basically like decimated the entire enemy army and put ourselves through hell. And it turns out all along our side character could have just said, hey, ah just a thing.
00:12:56
Speaker
there just been if they just communicated this the whole thing could have been avoided. I remember there's a scene in the story where your main characters like they're at they're at the lowest point and the main character on his sidekick could feel like there's no more hope. The main character stands up and goes, Come on, we've got to do this for my daughter. And the sidekick just sort of gives him this very sort of weary look. He's dead. And then goes, all right, fine. I'm like, you know, ah ah you could really once you know the twist, you could really get a sense of what's going through that guy's head. It's like this is has gone on lots too long that um I can't really bring it up anymore.
00:13:35
Speaker
I think a better twist would also be if the guy, if the main character was like the guy from Memento. So the partner's just sick and tired because he has to be the one to reveal it every day. I'm like, yep, your daughter's dead. I was like, there's some Nolan type romance. like really All my bedside manners been thrown out the window after the thousandth time of trying to handle this delicately. So I'm really regretting this little white lie that spiral out of control. You know, I almost relished the PS3 era of dodgy ah story focused shooters ah because they felt like they had to but try to have like an interesting story as opposed to these days when they just say, hey, now finish the side quests. Oh, yeah.
00:14:18
Speaker
Yeah, where it almost feels like you could separate the, like you could be like, well, the the game is just the game and then we'll try to pepper in the story through the side quests and never the twinge on me. Oh, I'll pick up that baton from the narrative side of things. Mine was no place for bravery. I always get that one confused with no country for old men. But it does this weird thing where, so wife dies, daughter's been kidnapped, and I'm bloodthirsty, seeking out vengeance. But one of the main mechanics is that there's always a story option to just end it. Not end yourself, but just like, you know what, what you have now is fine, right? So at the beginning bit, it's your friend, he's like, we could just let it go, you know? And you select that, and he's like, and he recovered, and he's fine, and credits roll.
00:15:03
Speaker
but then you have to play the whole damn thing all over again if you actually want to do get rest of the game. But it does this constantly and you're never really sure which one is the like, like, okay, is he just, is this just dialogue or is this the game ending one? It has to keep going and you have to keep going multiple times over. So like, do I kill this woman? No, don't kill her. You know what? I have seen the error of my ways. I'm gone like, damn you fine. So like you're supposed to get through the game. You have to be heinous. You have to be awful. And then by the end you find the thing that that stole your daughter and it is your daughter that you're fighting. And if you get all the way through, she's like, you're a bad man, dad. I ran away because he was so hateful. Why would you do that? And then the game was like, why would you do that, player? And I'm like, what do you mean? Because I wanted to see the game.
00:15:47
Speaker
It was, it'ss it didn't help that it also bugged a lot, but I'm sticking to the story thing. What a very strange way of going for ludonarrative cohesion. It is bad to be an aggressive angry man and to seek out, kind but constantly seek out revenge. You should just walk away from it. But if you want to see the rest of the game, you have to make these bad choices. I'm like, come on, come on. Well, at least the game gives you the choice. I mean, Spec Ops the line, everyone complains about in that area. Like it makes you do bad things and then talks it about you for doing bad things. Sure. But it's like I did a bad thing. Like I killed an old man and then later they're like, you know, you were kind of really brutal about that. It's like, you know what? Yeah, you're right. I'm going to go chill now.
00:16:31
Speaker
So on what level, that sort of an exploration of interactive storytelling as a concept that I kind of appreciate, sort of right up there with the Bioshock, would you kindly twist? like Hey, if art makes you think, then it's done its job. You were being sincere. so secret so i Yeah. So I don't think it's a, Yeah, I don't think you can complain about a game that ah accuses you of badness for doing bad things that it made you do.
00:17:02
Speaker
I think that's a way to approach interactive storytelling that's actually pretty interesting. and was was now with the main complains and blaous behind the genocide It provokes a reaction. That's the point. I mean, in Last of Us 2's case, it provoked a negative reaction. said I never said Last of Us 2 wasn't art. Oh, I mean, we are talking memorable games, so that one stands out to me. I've brought that game up more than other games that were just, you know, a decent story and whatnot. So I made a lasting impression. That's for sure a very confusing one. But I like bringing it up at bars. It's great.
00:17:39
Speaker
and you You look like Abby. Um, there was, uh, in the, there was like a stretch in the, in the, uh, like 2011, 2012, the, the late 360 PS3 generation where a couple of games in a row came out that I was really excited for. And that just did not hit the mark for me, but I, there are small parts of them. I still think about daily shadows of the damned, which was one of those like on paper, like, Oh, this is a melding of, of this is Suda five one, and this is Shinji makami And this is like an original kind of like horror action story like this. This can be cool. And for me, the game was a ah giant mess, except for Akira Yamaoka's incredible score. And and obviously Akira Yamaoka of the Silent Hill franchise. But um he's he's a guy who's like gone on to sort of, he he'll make music for anything. like
00:18:32
Speaker
I kind of respect how much he's like, just pay me, you know, and I'll put up a little ditty for you. um But there's there's one song specifically where these these little like light up slugs you have to follow through the dark and the music through there through that section is like one of my favorite. musical tracks in games of that decade, even though the game itself is just like totally like, I know a remaster is coming out and ah maybe I'll revisit it, but it's just one of those games that like gameplay wise just did not stick with me, despite the fact that I loved all of its disparate pieces, I think. Yeah, there's a lot of things I remember about Shadow of the Damned, like there's one specific moment I'm thinking of where the main character, whose name was Garcia Hotspur, was that it?
00:19:16
Speaker
That was a name. sort ah And he he has a gun sidekick named Johnson, which is very overtly a penis reference. like his' penis and It's like his penis. and there's There's one sequence where he he holds Johnson in front of his crotch and Johnson transmutes into a much larger cannon form, which is referred to as the big boner. And I know it's called that because every time you fire it, Garcien shouts taste by big boner in a Hispanic accent. That is the moment that sticks out in my memory. Oh my God. It's a big boner, man. Here it comes. The other game that came out right around then that I just lump them all together was Never Dead.
00:20:09
Speaker
which was again, another like sort of like somewhat spooky, more heavily action game felt very kind of campy and B movie ish. But the entire thing was like your character was like ah a reanimated corpse or whatever that you would get blown up, but you would still control. like yourself without certain limbs or just certain limbs and there would be times where you get blown up and you're just ahead and you're just rolling your head around the level and like as ahead you can almost metroidvania get through like instead of turning into a morph ball you just exploded and used your head to like roll through these these tight spaces.
00:20:43
Speaker
Yeah, Never Dead's gimmick was that you were a regenerating immortal who couldn't die, and the only way to get a game over was to get all your arms and legs and the head blown off, and then your head to get eaten by a thing that would basically, like, send it to hell forever. Yeah. So you wouldn't actually die, you'd just be trapped eternally as a head. Which again, like, I think the reason it sticks with me is because it's like, a on paper, it's not bad. It's like, okay, that's kind of neat. It was an interesting idea, but I think its mistake was that it tried to be combat focused.
Underutilized Game Mechanics & 'Never Dead'
00:21:12
Speaker
And the thing about, uh, combat unique combat mechanics is that you shouldn't, uh, you should give the player a chance to bounce back. And that's not going to happen if every time they get hit, they get weakened in like, if you lose a limb, you cause you have suddenly less ability. Yeah.
00:21:35
Speaker
And so that's why the core didn't work. I did think the mechanic of being able to rip off all of your body parts and regenerate would have worked in something like a puzzle game or a traversal focused exploration game. And wouldn't you know it, um a few years later, Swery brought out a game called ah ah the missing J. J. Macfield and the Island of Memories, in which you played a character who could regenerate from any injury and ah use that ability to solve puzzles. They could throw their head into out of reach places and way down switches and stuff like that.
00:22:12
Speaker
Oh, interesting. That's that one free to play game. What was it? Arms? Hands? That you kept trying to make me play, Morty? Handshake. Handshake, yeah. It's not free to play, it's just free. The footprints are doing free to play and free.
00:22:28
Speaker
Yes. So that's what I think was never dad's mistake. Never dad's. Yeah. And then I'm glad to you. Sorry. I was going to, I was going to change the subject. So if you had more to elaborate on there, please go. Okay, so I'm glad you brought up games that have interesting, unique mechanics that didn't really, that they didn't really use to the full, because the other game I wanted to bring up was Alone in the Dark, the PS3 game, which was just called Alone in the Dark. Again, confusing things. It was the one- So there've been three Alone in the Dark, right? There's the original, there was that one, and then there was the one from last year.
00:23:09
Speaker
Okay, there was Alone in the Dark 1, there was Alone in the Dark 2, there was Alone in the Dark 3, that was part of the original that was the original trilogy. yeah And there was Alone in the Dark New Nightmare, which was ah it's like a PS1 era Resident Evil clone. And that was the game I'm talking about, which was just called Alone in the Dark. It had a re-released version that was called Alone in the Dark Inferno. And then the yeah then after that the next load in the dark was alone in the dark um illumination, which was a terrible ah multiplayer bogus game. And then there was the most recent one in the dark. So after all that, again, we're back in the janky ps3 story mode games. I learned the dark is a game I always remember because it has the best fire physics of any game I've ever seen.
Praise for 'Alone in the Dark' Fire Physics
00:23:50
Speaker
You had the ability to like hold wooden items to hold them to a fire. The wooden item would catch fire where you touch the fire. The fire would travel along the wooden item until it eventually burned to ash and you couldn't use it anymore. I was literally watching Eric's footage that he's playing and my first thought was at the beginning was like, damn, that's some good, that's some good looking fire. You could leave trails of gasoline that you could then light. Yeah, you could make ah improvised molotovs. It had it was like basically an immersive sim that was entirely fire focused. Every enemy you went were up against could only be hurt by fire. So you had this like arsenal of different ways you could apply fire to them. Where at the time you just hit them with a burning stick.
00:24:33
Speaker
But you could, you could cover them with gas, you could leave a gas trail, you could, you could sellotape a gas bottle to them and leave the cap off so that they would leave a trail of gasoline for you to light. It was, it was just above and beyond the call of duty for fire alone. And then the rest of the game was just kind of shite. Aw. Started so well. Yeah, fully we just slept with fire and never went anywhere else. I'd like to see a game take those same fire physics and either work them into a larger immersive sim or like something like a tear down. I would say like tear down would probably be another example of excellent physics. And I just don't, I just wonder why you don't see getting a fire physics that good anywhere else. do just What happened to our ambitions? What happened to our fire ambitions?
00:25:28
Speaker
No, like... Is it taxing? Like on your system? Yeah. I assume it must have been, but... Wow, theses these graphics, they smell realistic. i mean the games had a the I mean, the game had a lot of issues, but that might have just been because it was very jankly put together. Like I remember the the car physics were really bad. Like you drive over a hump and your entire chassis would just fly off. I believe that on the fire. I don't know why. I don't know how the fire had something to do with it.
00:26:01
Speaker
um It's. It's interesting that in a single franchise like that, like I don't know what what's what's better or worse. too I guess I appreciate it more that it Silent Hill did the same thing as it went on, of taking of having like a game and taking a big swing with it, or trying to have like a core idea around it that separated it from what came before it and what came afterwards. And that doesn't mean it always was successful. Like, I think sometimes it was successful, like in, uh, um, just until for the room or in, uh, shattered memories. And then other times, like in, what was the, what was the rain one down downpour downfall? Yeah. down to ground Yeah. the Every rain, uh, a little less, but I guess like, I don't know. I, I kind of, I appreciate taking a big swing, which I think it feels like a lot of the games we're talking about are games that
00:26:53
Speaker
set out trying to take a big swing and then ultimately um you know the swing didn't really connect for one reason or another, which is how most big swings I would say go. Games are always trying to impress with new realistic graphics engines and new realistic physics engines. I want to see them actually make the fire work the way fire is supposed to work and I want them to figure out water as well. I want them to figure out how to get water to work the way water actually works. i want if ah I want a game where if a room is flooded with water, you can either swim through it or you can spend like for six hours emptying it with a bucket. Where you just have to pour the water out onto the ground and the water gets absorbed by the dirt. I want a game where I can drink the water faster than flooding the room. Jesus Christ. Most games, if there's water, it's basically just
00:27:50
Speaker
There's this rectangle of blue liquid that you can fly in that's different to air. And I've yet to see a game that makes it look realistic to pass from above water to below. It just feels like you've just passed through a non-corporeal divider that separates one environment from another. Is it fun though? What would you do with that?
00:28:14
Speaker
Well, you can make a game like, um how about a game where you're in a submarine and you have to like, if there's a hole in the wall of the submarine, you have to patch it up or it'll gradually fill up entire rooms if you can't block off like bulkheads and stuff. If you're in a submarine and suddenly there's a hole coming through, I feel like it implodes. No, that's a lot of pressure. Well, I'm not asking for 100% accurate physics. Can I stick my finger on it then? And like you, it's co-op. You don't want to be in an anti-daring sub? Maybe it's a shallow water submarine. Maybe it's just off the coast of the Maldives.
00:28:48
Speaker
Yeah, we'll get there. It does sound a bit like Noida as people are bringing up. It's a pixel pixel based. Yeah, but I'm saying we should ah we they should try to do it in 3d as well. I mean, they could do it with particles pretty easily in 2d like play games, like where's my water or something. I want to see someone trying through there. I mean, we we've got to have the tech by now, if we just focus on that sort of thing and not just I know someone make it. That's your job games. just make
00:29:17
Speaker
I'm with you. I'm with you there. I don't know how to do it. I make shitty 2D games. like was miamo already did it Mario Sunshine, greatest water game ever. We don't need to do 2D games together. and I want a game like Mario Sunshine. That's 20 days! I wanna get like Mario Sunshine, but where if you spray water from the flood, it gradually fills up whatever vessel you sprayed it at. Just naturally, as part of the natural physics. than that one I think the reason for that, and it's tying into those games that I find very memorable, but you know.
00:29:48
Speaker
is ah you take a concept and then there's not much game to it now is there like viewfinder there was only so much that they could have done with that and it still sticks but i'm like i kind of wish dude you've done something further than this i feel that's what your but and water gradually filling a room is a very natural action sequence yeah we've seen it reason why it's a movie and It's a reason why it appears so often in films. I think the best game mechanics sort of recreate classic action movie moments. i like it likes things in like like like Like a lethal company when you're separated from the rest of your crew and you might be alone and there's something scary in the dark. That's a classic movie moment that's recreated naturally by the natural physics and mechanics of the game and that's what I like to see.
00:30:30
Speaker
Yeah, there there you go. There's your streamer bait, quote unquote game. You're on a boat, holes keep popping up and you're just racing to get the water out. There you go. um but And you can use objects, you can use fingers, you can you have like all 10 of your fingers put in the holes. Yeah, just like Ellern and the dog did with fire. If you got something that would theoretically seal a hole, you could seal a hole with it. Yeah. Yep. And you're fighting off a shark, but you might accidentally poke the hole even more. So it's just giving time. You've got tons of stuff to stuff in holes. Sharks are just full of hole stuffers.
00:31:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think we're right there guys. You could grab the shark around the throat, pull it out of the sea and just jam it where the hole is and the shark goes, Hey, I was supposed to eat you. This was not the the way I thought this would turn out. Phenomenal. As it flaps impotently in the hole. Move over chain together. We got to go. Back but to the main thesis before someone steals this game. You can't. This is copyrighted now. i I also have a game I was going to bring up. It's like, Oh, I liked, I liked what you were going for. And then it fell apart completely, but that actually saved the game. And this is an entropy center. It's a very, ah I guess, a quarterly in the first person with a gun a puzzle platformer type of way.
00:31:50
Speaker
And you're just trying to line up these paths so that you can get out of the room and move on. But the whole theme of it is time and entropy and the um the world is... the the sun's about to blow up. And you need these rooms to but to be solved in different multiple ways. That's creating entropy. The the variability of it all, that is creating entropy. But the early ones are so well constructed that there's only ever one way to solve them. Later on, I guess time time was starting to get past them in the development stages. And the rooms were a little clunkier. I could like break through the corners. I could latch on to the weird misshapen physics planes. I could just jump through everything with a trampoline. It was falling apart as a game. You know, from the technical side, I think it was falling apart. These were not well-defined rooms at all.
00:32:33
Speaker
But it was really like I was liking it thematically where I'm like, oh, okay, cool. Yeah, I'm finding different ways that I can actually go through this thing. It is entropy. It's all falling apart around me as I'm getting through there. So thematically, it's a 10 out of 10. The beginning of it, though, really, really hard, really, really hard to get through. Once you get past that halfway point where things start to get really sloppy and fall apart, it is one of the best games that I've ever played that is ah based on time and entropy in that way. I love the idea that or when it gets messy, it starts getting interesting. Like when it, when it feels polished is when it is, is losing you. And then when it's kind of starting to get rickety and falling apart is when you're like, okay, this is something, this is something worth paying attention to. I don't know what to say anymore. Did you have any more to bring up, Marty?
00:33:21
Speaker
Yeah, the last one, ah just ah based on the ah the the thumbnail, and it's a game I love, ah but it's just one of those games that it feels like is is ah considered kind of slight, and that's Astro's Playroom, which was the pack-in game for the PS5. Yes,
Standout Game Demos: 'Astro's Playroom'
00:33:36
Speaker
I remember. Yeah, and it's a short 3D platformer. It's only you could be in like two hours. um And it's ah like one of the charming things about it is it's like a museum piece for Sony history. Like you see a bunch of there's a bunch of small nods to all these old first party Sony games and all these old games we associate with PlayStation and and weird little peripherals and everything. um But the thing in that game that
00:34:01
Speaker
Stuck with me and I just replayed it and I'm still in awe that no one else has come close to it is How it uses all the features like it's ostensibly a tech demo for the dual sense controller in a way that yeah It makes me realize it's so few games out there are like really trying to push the relationship between the player and the input method of a game they play and I get it because like Ultimately, it's not really important. um But when I think back to like one of the memories, like a core memory I have in playing games was the first time I played Star Fox 64 and that was the game that came with the Rumble Pack. And it was the first time I ever played with a controller that rumbled like when you got shot, it would rumble. When you did a barrel roll, it would rumble a little bit and like that felt like
00:34:52
Speaker
that felt to me like one of those immersive steps similar to how people talk about VR and AR. um And ah Astro's Playroom does a similar thing with the DualSense in terms of when you, if you're walking through sand, if if a strong wind is blowing towards you, if ah your're you're you're carrying a bunch of things, if it's raining on you, the controller will react to all of that and feel different. to all of that in a way that like, even if it's subconscious, you're playing the game and you're like, oh, I'm clearly in the middle of a storm right now and I can feel that storm in my hands, or I'm pushing against, you know, I'm i i'm trying to pull something with a lot of resistance and I can feel it in the triggers in a way that it just doesn't feel like other games really try to do that often. um
00:35:41
Speaker
And I don't know, I cant kind of wish more games did. It just feels like an interesting, like you were talking about with water, like an interesting avenue that that no one's really trying to go after. Yeah, bring back the light gun. I mean, honestly, maybe bring back the light gun. Yeah. It's so lame though. well Eh, eh, eh, pew, pew, pew. Well, anything's lame if you make that noise when you do it. You can say, like, oh, the longest man in the world, let's take a wait. Eh, eh, eh. Eh, but he's got it, by God. He's got it. I don't know, I think ah we, I'm pretty much over light gun games since the fucking Kinect stroke Wii era.
00:36:30
Speaker
Yeah. I remember a lot of Wii games and I think it is because, as you said, Marty, this moment where I'm like, this is the future. Yeah. I remember
Impact of Motion Control Gaming
00:36:38
Speaker
playing Tenchu or whatever. And I'm like, Oh my God, I'm the one blocking. I'm doing so well. Yeah. yeah And it's just maybe that technology was too early or just underbaked or it was too much of a hassle to build around. So they just were like, well, i's stick to just It wasn't too early. It wasn't under picked the fundamental issue with that sort of thing is that ah trying to recreate the movement you're supposed to be doing in game in real life is inherently emotion breaking. We want to be turning our bodies off and making movements as small as possible to push our buttons. That's how we get it immersed into an experience. But by swinging a fucking sword like and then hoping that the game will register we're trying to swing a sword in the rig game as well.
00:37:19
Speaker
But I don't think we're saying like every game now needs to do this. I just think there is an a like like anything like to me, motion games weren't the future. It was a new genre and it's a genre that's kind of been left at the wayside. I guess a VR picked that up. um But yeah, but I guess it's also telling that, you know, i don't none of the three of us are really hardcore VR enthusiasts. That's for other reasons. The point of ultra nowhere left to go technology and video games is where we don't have to move at all. Just pop a little spike into our spines, and then we can live like little VR daydreams ah would just by like would with just brain impulses. That's what that's what we want. Jesus. It just sounds like Wally. That's 100% immersion. I don't know if I want that.
00:38:11
Speaker
fucking I think one of the reasons I like handheld games is because I i like not being completely detached from the world around me. I played for a little while. Not not super long though. So I wonder if part of that immersion comes with the sense of kinesthesia of like knowing where your body is. So like being active, I don't really think on it too much. that It's not immersion breaking.
00:38:39
Speaker
Well, anyway, shall we get to super chats? I see chat. What games are burning in your mind? Bellatro is the last one for me. Bellatro and Dark Souls when you finally reconnect back to Firelink Shrine. That's it. Oh my god, that moment. you cookies That's like the moment for me, I think, going back to Firelink Shrine. ah Dr. Theo gave $5 and says, one niche game I've been obsessed with is GTFO, a really hard pseudo stealth co-op horror game that has amazing presentation. It's funny that his next message said, and it has a bad name. And I do, I genuinely think that hurt the game because GTFO when I hear its name, I just kind of roll my eyes. But from people I know who've played the game, they really liked it. Hey, no one complained about the BFG in Doom. That was the name of the BFG.
00:39:30
Speaker
This is a horror game? Yeah, I keep hearing about this, but GTFO is just, just get the fuck out. I'm like, oh, it's a- That's what you need to know, I'd say. Wow. I guess. Yeah, I guess, yeah. Wow. This has got to win the award for like worst game, game name to the point where it undermines it. Because this looks great. Yeah. Yeah. Horrible title. Anyway, a winged potato, member of eight months in the green gang says, yeah, it's his time in Australia made him a Kylie fan. Hey, Kylie Minogue was big in England as well. I knew who Kylie was. And it's funny how when you say Kylie these days, ah people might think you mean Jenna. Oh, can't get you out of my head. I got it. Yes, a lot of podcasts. Ah, tricky, tricky.
00:40:20
Speaker
He's seen the chat says Nick Jesse and I play GTFO with the dev. That can't be true. Impossible. I don't remember that at all. Did you tell him the title? Alex Armstrong gives $5 and says forgot to mention this in your too hard episode. Thoughts on alien hominid. The new grounds when I'm gonna some consider the hardest game in existence. I have never played it. I remember it was like a big, big flash hit. And then they eventually made like, it was one of those early like Xbox live arcade games. Um, yeah, I didn't put a ton of time in it, but I played a lot of castle crashers, which that same developer, the behemoth ended up doing later. I love their stuff. Yeah. Uh, Darwin's dummy. Remember for eight months in the green gang says after seeing Marty played the land, the vibes got me.
00:41:10
Speaker
see There's something, there's something about balance. There's something about these games when you think back to, and you're like, maybe it's Stockholm syndrome. Maybe I was cursed, but I have fond memories of it. It's just bad in a very memorable way. You weren't bored. that's ah I wasn't bored. And that's the important thing in 2024, as long as I'm not bored, that's all I can ask for it. Like I think back to, uh, the N64 notoriously, uh, did not have almost any, uh, RPGs, JRPGs, any RPGs. Like by that point, everyone was like, okay, play stations where we need to go for this. Uh, but they did have a game called quest 64, which was one of its few, um, RPGs and it was, uh,
00:41:51
Speaker
It was like broken at ah at a fundamental level, like every system in the game. It just didn't have money, which if you would tell me like, what's thinking RPG needs to have, I'd be like, probably needs to have money, right? Like, are you an RPG if you don't have money? um But that's one of those games I rented. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to trick myself into really enjoying. And I haven't revisited it in 25 years, but i'm I'm thinking about it every day. I want Quest 64 to know I'm thinking about you. Well, that'll teach the N64 not to have cartridges.
00:42:21
Speaker
That's why there weren't any fucking RPGs on it. Yeah. Just wasn't room on the disc. Uh, where was I? Dr. Theo comes
Nostalgia & Cultural References in Games
00:42:30
Speaker
back with $5 and says, another game I would always remember is the Henry Stickmin collection. It was like a time capsule of my childhood with all the references in it. Henry Stickmin. This also looks like a new ground Z. Um, it's absolutely looks like, looks like a new ground Z thing. So flash representation. Yeah. That's not, that's such a, I think I've talked about another podcast. is That's such a blind spot for me. Like I think I was on the internet then. I was definitely on the internet then, but I don't know what I was doing. in school Yeah, that's a good, like was was yeah. A lot of it is like, Oh, I've got 20 minutes. I can go to the computer lab and everything's blocked, but not this for some reason. That was a cultural thing.
00:43:15
Speaker
Uh, Bogbapog gives $10 and says, shout out to Frost in the chat. Hey, that's a meme. Were you in the chat? Was I in the chat? I'm here now. Shout out to the meme.
00:43:29
Speaker
ah Number 10 gives $5 and says, have you ever heard of yeek a postmodern RPG? Not a good game, but one of the most interesting games I've ever seen. I've never played it, but I've watched the rather excellent video essay on it by to snake error on YouTube. And yes, from having watched that I can see it's well, from a broad perspective, it seems interesting. But the moment to moment experience seems to be as boring as batshit. Oh, look at that. This is one of those games that's got way too much fucking writing because the main director fancied themselves an excellent writer. Oh, it's interesting. Characters talking about their feelings for like six hours at a go. Love hearing about feelings. Chad, if you have feelings, let us know about your feelings. Sound off in the comments below. I feel like by saying a postmodern RPG, that might be much like GTFO. That might be a thing where I'm like, I don't know. What are you doing? It is. Well, I don't want to get into this.
00:44:26
Speaker
I guess the title tells you everything you might suspect about the game in that it is probably one of the most pretentious indie games that you'll ever see. As long as it's aware of it. My attention, I'm here like, you know what? I don't like traditional RPGs. Let's go post-modern. Sure. What about pre-modern? What's pre-modern? Well, you could, you could argue Earthbound was a postmodern RPG and this is very much trying to be that, but in a much less, in a much more forced kind of way. Well, there you go. I feel like at a certain point though, if you're trying to be like all the other postmodern RPGs, you're no longer postmodern, right? Like you're just trying to fit in. And once you call yourself postmodern, then yeah, you're kind of not anymore. No.
00:45:19
Speaker
Anyway, Alex Armstrong gives time dollars and says a moment that sticks with me as the second boss in Fashion Police Squad when you fight a trench coat nerd who fights you with a lightsaber, references and memes. Yeah, Fashion Police Squad is a pretty good game. You should check it out. I think there's something about sprites in 3D environments that I've sort of turned off lately. Probably why I didn't vibe with Sulaco so much. I just feel like, you know, we've been using 3D models long enough to know that it's probably the best way to do this sort of thing.
00:45:50
Speaker
i've I've just kind of gone off sprites. Even in like 2D games? Yeah. Yeah. In 3D games, this classic Doom style sprite based enemies. Yeah. Yeah. it's just kind of There's like specific aesthetics that I've just, that I'm like completely turned off by where if I click on something and see that, um I kind of just step away.
00:46:16
Speaker
But yeah, Fashion Police Squad is actually a very funny game with lots of fun visual gags. One of them being that one of the people we have to use our Fashion Police powers on is a trench coat wearing nerd. Obviously. Because you need to you'd need to that's the kind of person who needs intervention from the Fashion Police. Oh, yes, yes. ah Charlie Gomes gives $4.99 and says Obra Dinn has driven me insane trying to find something, anything to even come close as a detective game. Love detective games, but the average sucks. I know there's nothing quite like it, is there Charlie Gomes? I played the Golden Idol, but it's just not quite the same, is it? It's not 3D, no.
00:47:02
Speaker
You're not Obra dead. You'll have to kind of just settle for those logic puzzles now where it's like Susie left before the Butler, but the Butler is not Tommy. yeah and get a Book of logic puzzles. <unk> not as that and um I'll do the crosswords or do, um, nonograms that there's a deduction based. Or try to try to try to find a serial killer and try to catch him. Like a long legs. Try to catch long legs. Identify the zodiac killer at long last. time He outed himself. Shit talking on IMDb or whatever. Because he was so bored that no one could catch him. Yeah. Every man. Danny123451 gives five pounds and says, for story, I'm thinking death stranding. Excuse me.
00:47:52
Speaker
A fascinating idea told incredibly poorly with terrible dialogue, even more than Kojima's previous work.
00:48:00
Speaker
that would mind yeah I wouldn't mind Kojima's... I wouldn't mind Kojima's verbal diarrhea as much if he'd just played it out over gameplay. What a fucking code of Conversations of Metal Gear Solid. Just let us, like, listen to that while we're exploring ah the rooms looking for secrets. Yeah. Play the log as I'm trying to save my sinking submarine. But if we get if we go under, I want to hear a muted... brutal but So you're encouraged to do good so that you can get crisper audio? yeah actually yeahs yeah yeah Yeah. I think about this training all the time. I think about just wandering around Iceland, even though it's supposed to be America and it's so clearly Iceland. It doesn't matter. It's great.
00:48:46
Speaker
It's post-apocalyptic America. It got isolated. That's true. Alexander Strong is $2 and says, Psychonauts milkman conspiracy comes to mind lol. Yes. I like that. Very funny level. That's real clever. I'm with Psychonauts 2. And this is gonna make me sound like an asshole. But Psychonauts 2 felt like it needed to be more sensitive to the concept of mental illness than Psychonauts 1. It's Agonauts 1, you go into the minds of people who are sort of mentally ill in a very cartoony, sort of insensitive kind of way, like the dude who thinks he's Napoleon, or the dude who's just the like the Millman cause people see the novel just sort of paranoid schizophrenic who believes the government's spying on him. But in the sequel they felt like they had to depict all the characters' mental illnesses with like sensitivity and realism, and I felt like the game sort of lost something as a comedy work because of that.
00:49:42
Speaker
and I mean, in 15 years, you would think that the creators would sort of throw in their nuance of the discussion, especially in a thing like that. I just, you know, what's wrong with having a funny gag about a dude in a straight jacket who thinks he's Napoleon? That's, I mean, that's still funny, isn't it? I thought Psychonauts, I think the first game is still funny. Yeah. But I think Psychonauts 2, I don't think it,
00:50:07
Speaker
I don't know, it didn't feel less funny to me. Granted, I've only played Psychonauts 2 once and I've replayed the first one several times. don' and well I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think anyone was looking to Psychonauts for a realistic depiction of the mentally ill. Oh, it hurt. I get what he's getting at. I think they could have adjusted for the modern sensibilities, but ah instead they sort of lightened the hit. Yeah. ah yeah but i I think it has more heart than the original, like and maybe i wass just with like with else growing up yeah and you're not going sometimes hard. Sometimes you have to be cruel to get to land the hardest hits when it comes to. all this now
00:50:45
Speaker
so I was a little with him, and then he said that, and now I'm back over towards Marty. No, I mean, i think the I think it's creators growing up. I think it's it's your your your outlook on something is different if you look back on the thing 15 years later, right? Well, for me, it's like the first, ah the first game was smacking someone in the face with a frying pan. And the second game was having ah exploring the aftermath of someone having to go through lengthy hospital treatment for having been smacked in the face with a frying pan. Almost begs the question, you know, could have been something else. Maybe I don't know. I'm not against starting with Psychronauts and ending up as Hellblade, you know?
00:51:27
Speaker
It's a process. That would be an intense sequel. That is something I personally would not like to happen. hu
00:51:36
Speaker
Anyway, Zavratha, member for six months in Tip Jar, thank you very much. Tsunami Dusha gives $20 and says nah-thing. And then Ryan Betts gives $2 and says nah-thing. The noise says nah-thing. That he literally
Comedy Games & Rights Issues
00:51:52
Speaker
posted the word nah-thing because I guess I'm getting predictable again.
00:51:57
Speaker
Palash T gives 4.99 and says, speaking of obscure games, I think about NOLF, meaning no one lives forever. And it's NPC convos you can catch if you're sneaky, like the henchman worrying his laugh isn't evil enough. Yes, no one lives forever. And its sequel were pretty good games, pretty good comedy games. Shame they're in ownership rights hell at the moment. and It's nice to see a re-release of those. Them and them and Friday the 13th. Hey, night dive. This is your whole thing. Fucking get on it. I feel i feel like they're they're the ones, right? They can dig into this on Earth. Yeah, those are the guys who have been re-breaking and re-releasing every bloody 90s shooter that's in w rights hell. I could see that. absolutely like Yeah, I could see them getting their teeth into this one.
00:52:47
Speaker
I mean, if no one really knows who owns the rights, just put it out. I mean, if nobody knows, no one's gonna sue you for it, right? Also, then if someone sues us, we know who owns the rights. I tell you, that's how you figure left these things out. We powdered them. As you put a little cheese in a snap and a trap, you'll know you have a mouse after cheese gets eaten.
00:53:11
Speaker
Uh, yes. How are you ever going to know that your bridge will hold at least a 40 ton truck until you drive a 40 ton truck over it? Exactly. ah this regulation f Bridge crashed and did not hold the truck. So bad bridges. Uh, hang on, lost my place again. There we go. pitch Pigeon in B and M gives 10 pounds and says realistic water physics is a lot harder than it sounds. Fluid dynamics are really complicated. Fuckin, where's my water managed it? Just do that in 3D. It's a little bit harder. I feel like it's a little bit harder. You're talking like me and I don't know how to make games. You know how to make games.
00:53:56
Speaker
just, you know, copy paste. and i like you geting when You keep seeing these like CG, like, uh, showpiece, uh, videos of where they've got like a million different particles moving at once, or they got really realistic fluid filling up a Perspex box. just make a game out of that. But I think nothing else exists in that world. Yeah, like I think like you can you can do that because I have to imagine I think it's really resource intensive. Oh, no, I don't know what I'm talking. Well, we'll do that. But then put like a pre-rendered 2D backdrop in the bag like Resident Evil. Now you're talking. Now you speak in my language. Give me more pre-rendered 2D backgrounds. Hell yeah.
00:54:40
Speaker
ah ah Alex Armstrong gives $2 and says remember me's mind puzzles come to mind lol again. Yes, remember me? A relatively interesting game from early Dontnod before they got into the life is strange racket. Every now and again, there'd be like a puzzle sequence where you had to change a person's personality by altering their their memories. I remember that had to go into like, had to go into like a pivotal memory from the back and changed it so they remember it differently. Like the person they thought they'd killed actually killed themselves. Then you don't actually change what happened in reality. You just change their memories of it. So presumably once they found out that the memories no longer sync up with reality, they'd be held to pay. But, uh, the game sort of cuts away before any of that happens. Yeah. It seems like you're like a memory terrorist at that point. Well, basically. Yeah.
00:55:34
Speaker
ah screw Anyway, ah Sean Harriman, member of seven months in the green gang says Half-Life Alex is a high point for VR ah always compared to. Okay. Not sure where that came from, but okay.
Astro's Evolution from VR to PS5
00:55:47
Speaker
I mean, just either you're the numberable I remember that Astro of Astro's Playroom was originally the mascot of the PlayStation VR. I think I'm right in saying. Yeah. So I guess I thought, well, the VR ah didn't work out. But hey, let's make toys out of this. Yeah, exactly.
00:56:07
Speaker
Danny123451 comes back with £5 and says, I just remembered an early PS3 game called Folklore. It's the only PS3 game I ever played that used the six axis well and made it fun. I remember that game. It was like a sort of third person Japanese action RPG thing where you absorbed monsters and use their powers in a sort of area of sorrow kind of way. Yeah. Yeah. I love when you do that. Uh, that was the, um, same, same developer who made Genji, which was the giant enemy crab game, uh, at the, at the launch of the PS3.
00:56:47
Speaker
Yeah. i reallyfu Yeah. you'd You'd take control of the little monsters. I don't think I played this, but it popped back up when I was rewatching some of those, um, some of those E3 press conferences recently. ah kind of I remember having it at one point. I'm not sure I played it. I think I was just like, I just think my housemate at the time played it and I watched them play select bits of it. But yeah, it seemed interesting. It's also like a lot of those PS3 games at the time um are just sort of stuck on that console. um There's always rumblings that Sony's like really investing in like true PS3 emulation. And maybe that's the way to get stuff like Metal Gear Solid 4 and
00:57:26
Speaker
all that shit infamous and everything. But we'll see. Spicy.BP gives $5 and says, I want the immersive VR ah where all I do is catch blue, red, and green fish in a simplistic environment, make my own achievements on how many fish I catch. There's gotta be a game. That's gotta be a game, right? Well, it's a reference to my latest novel. We'll leave the galaxy for good. In which a character is trapped in an immersive VR environment based on like a fishing cozy game. Where all they do is catch fish. Is that like hell? It's a trap. so It's it' presented as something that was intended as like an executive toy for bored office drones, but some someone ends up trapped in it for a hundred years. Oh, worse things to be trapped in.
00:58:15
Speaker
um Pigeon in B and M gives five pounds and says, as for a game which stick in my head, Kitty Horror Show's Anatomy. It's short and gameplay light and experience, if you will, but so dread inducing. I have never heard of that thing. It's like an itchy old game. Kitty Horror Show. I feel like I've heard that name. Oh, it's a little itch dot.io. Oh, this looks spooky. This looks like you're just hanging out in a spooky place. Every other game on itch.io is a spooky concept game. It's great. Pigeon. I'm buying it. I'm doing it. Oh my goodness. I don't have my credit card on me. I don't know what I assumed that it hit the button. It would just be like, sure. Money's taken out of your account. You don't need to give me any information. Guess you should hand out your credit card details to more online services. Uh, it's true.
00:59:10
Speaker
I should put it in chat so that I remember so that I check and tell me my credit card. and just Yeah. Uh, Alex Armstrong. Oh no. Max KO gives $10 and says, for me, that game is murdered soul suspect. The game itself isn't good, but I like how it used the history of its setting for detective story. Just needed better writing and deduction mechanics. Well, the game was and almost entirely writing in deduction mechanics based. So it just needed to be a better game is is what you're saying there. I was thinking that with ah banishers, right? I'm like, I like what you're going for here. It's just. Could have done both. I think both that game and murdered soul suspect suffered from trying to be action combat. Sure. So to also have action combat as well as its deduction stuff. Yeah.
00:59:59
Speaker
i think I remember about the goal suspect. Oh, God. Well, again, I'm thinking of Flint Locksley to dawn because that's the game that really tries to well do way too many things. Yeah. um Murdered. So my review soon, kids. This week. No. Shit. but
01:00:23
Speaker
Uh, murder soul specimen. The thing I remember most is the character design, which I thought was really good because you're like kind of like a bluish gray ghost. Uh, but you have, uh, you got shot to death like a bunch in your chest and out of those bullet wounds, uh, is, is this like golden white. And so you're this sort of like, ghosty looking noir detective with, um, golden light out of your bullet wounds. And I always thought that was pretty neat. Yes. Probably of all the games where you play a recently murdered person who investigates their own murder as a ghost, uh, probably the worst. You want to know the, uh, um, tagline, the hardest murder to solve is your own. too Is your own. Right. ah The landing play, play ghost, play ghost trick phantom detective instead. So good. It's so good.
01:01:12
Speaker
There's a whole genre of these? Okay. but There's like three. There's three games where you're a ghost investigating their own murder. Murder's Souls aspect, Ghost Creek Phantom Detective, and I think there's a text adventure from like the 80s of that. That has the same concept as well. I was going to ask if banishers counted, but you know who killed you there, so. Yeah. No. Anyway, Alex Armstrong gives $5 and says, you have to admit Sonic 06 has transcended game status and is now something that can't leave fans' minds to the point they tried fixing it with Project 06. I guess Sonic 06 lives rent free in the heads of every Sonic fan forever now, because every game that comes out, ah they say, well, at least it's not as bad as 06. And now they're like, but but also we could fix it.
01:02:04
Speaker
It's a cautionary tale, but also we will turn it into a success story. Yeah. Don't fix 06. Use it as a you know ah barometer. That's going to be yeah that's goingnna be what you're running on. Don't fix 06. Yes. There you go. Your platform. to Yeah. I'm a single issue voter.
01:02:26
Speaker
But you know, just keep it because you need something to be at the lowest, the low end of the scale, you know? Yeah. he's gonna say whateverever Where are we on the spectrum between Sonic 06 and Sonic 2? Is that the one you think is the best?
01:02:45
Speaker
You're making a sauce stance. He's a frontier man. We all know he's a frontier man, he's afraid to say it. I'm going to say that individually, taking each game as a whole, the best Sonic game is Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on the Sega Genesis. Damn. You're funny, I'm emblematic. Yeah, if you use an idea, there you go. That's right about Sonic 2.
01:03:08
Speaker
I'm not that invested.
01:03:12
Speaker
Thank you, Eric. Always quick on the funny filter trigger, aren't you? you look pretty He's got that picture on on copy paste. Speed dial, yeah. a Red Dwarf 42 gives $10 and says, Hayes on the PS3 is a game I think about implemented better. It could have been actually interesting. It's what initially attracted me to We Happy Few until it turned out to be a survival game. Another example of a generic shooter from that era that tried to have an interesting story. Maze was a game that sort of, again, was playing around with the whole dynamics of being a player or of a shooter in which you're a dude who's been drugged up to the eyeballs to think that they're shooting basic bad guys in basically a video game setting, when in fact, ah you're just, you've been like brainwashed and have to turn against the army you're originally a part of.
01:04:04
Speaker
Yeah. And it's a, it's a bummer because the, that was free radical who did the, uh, time splitters games who were former rare folks. So they worked on the gold nine perfect dark and stuff. Um, and I feel like the time splitters games and even second site, uh, for the, for the game cube had such personality and charm to them that just haze was completely lacking. Um, It's funny. Yeah. Yes. You start off making the indie focused stuff with your unique, your own unique spin on it. And then you just try to make the same bland guff as everyone else. And inevitably just fade into the background. For more on this subject, look out for my review of Flintlock's Age of Dawn coming soon. This week?
01:04:49
Speaker
No. If I keep asking, maybe it will be. Next. It's going to be next week's review as it happens. I know that week. This week's going to be something that a lot of people have been saying I should review, but I haven't yet. The last few weeks. have we launch so so Someone in the fucking comments has said, hey, why haven't the you done dot dot dot yet? So this week is one of those. Open ring DLC. No. Danging grumpers? No, it's nine souls, all right? They got nine of those souls? Yes, there's a whole nine of them. that much it Anyway, ah Palash T gives 1.99 and says Manhunt 1. Uniquely horrific, very dirty stroke grungy. so yeah Honestly, the game there I think of more from that franchise is Manhunt 2.
01:05:47
Speaker
because it was a lot shittier in terms of story writing and a lot more overt in its storytelling. And it was banded like 90 countries or something. That's good. i admit One thing I miss is I miss when Rockstar was like, all right, we have our games that make us a billion dollars, but then we can also make these small kind of more experimental things. And now it's just, no, we only have our games that make us $10 billion dollars and we will only make those games once every 10 years. That's the gag, isn't it? Because if you look at their record, they put out like a game of year right up until I think it's GTA 5.
01:06:21
Speaker
Yeah. And the and the then it's like six years, six years, but then we did redemption two, then another 12 years. Yeah. Unfortunate. Yeah. Speaking of that style of gaming, I meant to bring it up earlier. Help. I just really, really stuck out for how crass, but also I was like, wait, what are you going for here? Yeah, it was a pretty interesting and pretty solidly designed platformer. It was just really unnecessarily crass.
01:06:52
Speaker
Yeah. That's a thing. That just puts, this just put me off. Like the implication that you're holding a jar of semen. I'm like, I don't want to play a game in which I have to hold a jar of someone's color. Okay. Yeah. Or, and or you find monsters in the shoes that just have shit caked around their mouths. That's not a gag. That just makes me feel sick. Gross. Oh well.
01:07:21
Speaker
Uh, Mr. Sad Face gives $5 and says, I know it means insane man in Latin, but I can't get over that the villains in Death Stranding are called homo de men's. Homo de men's. Only slightly less on the nose than the dude who had a skull for a face whose name was Skull Face. Yeah. What about Die Hard, man? What? one of the One of the main characters. Yeah, no, one of the main characters is Dave Dyerdman. Excuse me. It was the it was D. Hartman. He was German. Of the Munich, Dyerdmans. Okay. Yes. Bogbupog comes back with $10 and says nothing. And then a little emoji of a gorilla. Well. Harambe. Harambe.
01:08:09
Speaker
Doran Grossman Naples gives $2 and says it doesn't beg the question it raises it tat tat language evolves Doran Grossman Naples get with the program. Because I feel like that's funny coming from you because I feel like you call us out on that stuff all the time. Well, that's because our literacy is kind of low. Well, it just, I am slightly annoyed by some kinds of literary snob and the kind of literary snob that insists on using the correct version of beg the question. So is the kind that gets up my nose. where the jersey little Words are jazz. Do whatever you want. There's no word cops.
01:08:42
Speaker
Yes. So originally people say begs the question to means raises the question as in that begs the question. But then the original meaning of begs the question is that it's a sort of a logical fallacy in which ah you state something in which something is implied almost like a no true Scotsman argument classic. No true Scotsman argument begs the question of what a true Scotsman actually is by the speaker's definition. I can't believe you're right. Ah, I mean, it's all wrong.
01:09:12
Speaker
Anyway, Drago, member for eight months in tip jar, thank you very much. So now we do, she gives high dollars and says, an image I'll never forget is the final boss of the PS2 game, Bujingai. You and the boss have a choreographed sword dance and pose for each other. Hot. Okay. I've never even heard of that game. way Sheldon makes on the big bank fairy. No, I've never heard of Bujingai either. Nowadays, that game would have romance options. Look at that. Look at that. Beauty. that's the one piece of romance options. Anyway,
01:09:52
Speaker
anyway ah a superb owner gives $5 and says, speaking of Metroid Prime, what do you not reckon the best way to play Metroid Prime Hunters is these days? That was the DS one, wasn't it? I had on DS or emulate it. Those are your only options. Yeah. for buy Secondhand copy or emulate it. Um, maybe Nintendo will put DS games on the eShop. Like the Wii U had certain DS games on the eShop. I very much doubt they will because the DS kind of hinges on the dual screen thing. Yeah.
01:10:26
Speaker
Literally. There you go. Uh, Alexander Strong is $2 and says monkey islands, sword fighting and spitting contest. yeah that is absolutely well also certainly Pretty iconic puzzles. Those things had. Love an insult, sword fighting. So at a lot of point and click adventure games that were Monkey Island's contemporaries didn't understand was that inventory puzzles were just the foundation of adventure games. If your game is nothing but inventory puzzles, then it kind of sucks. It's like, oh you know, it's like shooting things in a shooter. You got to have and know was some kind of unique selling point or gimmick. So Monkey Island had some really clever ideas like the sword fighting based on picking the right response to an insult.
01:11:18
Speaker
which wasn't quite the same as an inventory puzzle, but at least was ah something interesting to latch onto. But so you can learn more about that in my various extra punctuations on the subject of adventure games that I did back in the day.
01:11:36
Speaker
Anyway, Ryan Betts, member for five months in Tip Jar. And then, Gildon Yidditch gives $5 and says, I recently dipped my toe in the Hoyaverse with Star Rail. I'm not sure if I can't get that out of my head or if I'm trying to make sense of Gacha appeal.
01:11:52
Speaker
Wait, you secondhand experienced the Hoyaverse, right? Yeah, the only thing that so keeps me from not diving in is it's not my genre, right? But i I do wish for other games that would sort of have that very, very thematic, very crazy over the top. ah This is not me condemning condemning or condoning Gotcha. It's more so the base game of it is like, wow, like it's right in your brain. weathering waves. I always got the sense that it was a game. And then there was a gator element sort of bolted onto the side of it for the, for the whales and everything else was just sort of there to create the excuse. Sure. And it feels like the, from what I've seen and played of Genshin and Honkai and Zenless on zero. I just love it. It's called Honkai because it makes me think of a goose makes me think of honkies.
01:12:44
Speaker
A honky tonk. What are you, racist? This honky grandma be trippin' mid-war. Yeah. I was trying to make a nice wholesome goose reference and now you've made it all race weird. Oh no, I didn't mean to make it race weird. Oh no. We did it, we got it at the end. I bet it. Hey, so we did.
Podcast Wrap-Up & Future Projects
01:13:05
Speaker
Well, thanks for listening to slightly something else. A day late, sadly, but thanks for showing up. Uh, I was at a crucial, I was joined by frost ah to me yeah and Marty didn't make a race weird. And, uh, this week, uh, if you, if you like me and like to hear my voice coming out of things, then you might want to watch my, uh, fully ramblymatic this week on the subject of nine souls. I'll also have my usual Yahtzee tri-stream haven't quite decided what I'm going to be playing on that, but you know, we'll figure it out. We always do.
01:13:43
Speaker
Um, what's, what's out this week? Well, anyway, I'll just look at them playing on the, no, I'll bet. Yes, I've also got a semi-ramplamatic dropping this week on Thursday, so check that out. And I'll be ah appearing as Mortimer in Saturday's Adventure is Nigh as per usual. So that's all the ways you can hear my lovely voice this week on Second Wind. I was about to say secondwind.com there, but that didn't really work. Second Wind, the YouTube channel. That's so good. what else filter
01:14:24
Speaker
Look at that filter. Hello, I'm Daniel Day Lewis. How are you? Oh my god, it is. You got a full method. Your majesty. Your majesty.
Appreciation for 'Disco Elysium' & Game Discussions
01:14:36
Speaker
Frost, plug your stuff. I'm gonna plug Kurt first for the five dollar reduce. I think Disco Elysium use of skills as party members voices in your own head was something profound and I wish was in more games. I never thought of that. Yeah, that is kind of your party, isn't it? I don't know if you do wish it was in Morgan's because I feel like most developers would implement it poorly. Yes. So I think it's almost great. Yeah. The concept is great.
01:15:01
Speaker
This is definitely one of those, like, I'm so glad it's here, it's done so well, no one else tried this ever again. Yeah, yeah, you will not be able to do this as well. Yeah, I am. As far as my stuff, you got Cherry, your Monday cold take, you're gonna have a better with friends later today as it is Tuesday, I almost forgot. And then the usual stuff, you know, the newly released, the shoot the shit on the Fridays. Yeah, what you got, Martin? This is gonna be a record. We know what newly released is already. humble That's like six days. And I'm gonna say, if you like animes, you're gonna want to tune in. If you like your Japan-amations, hohachi-machi.
01:15:33
Speaker
um Cool. And then, yeah, rest of the week, normal stuff. We got Firelink tomorrow. DevHeads on Friday. um Casey and I are starting Devil May Cry 5 on Thursday. We've reached the final game of our Devil May Cry journey. Yahtzee, what did you think of DMC Devil May Cry and the Ninja Theory one? Did we did we talk about that at all? I feel like you've asked me that. Uh, I remember very little about it, except a dumb joke where a mob falls on the guy's head and he looks to camera and does a smirk and makes you want to hit him. and Okay. That's fair enough. There you go. Well, I also remember it had a semi-interesting boss fight set in a news ident. It did.
01:16:14
Speaker
I thought it was good. I thought it was charming. Best combat of the of the series so far, too.
Sponsored Stream Announcement for 'Union of Gnomes'
01:16:18
Speaker
People are getting very mad for us for saying that. And then on Thursday at 2 p.m. Central, we're going to have a we're not going to have any Elden Ring because we have a sponsored stream that Jack will be ah helming for Union of Gnomes, the titular Union of Gnomes that you've seen on on various ads such as before this. no i I've been hearing a lot about that game lately. and Jack, I'm gonna tell you, Jack's excited. Jack, as soon as that game came in, Jack was like, I need to play this game because this is a Jack game. So we're gonna see a couple hours of Jack, just jacking it. Oh, jacking it, jacking it, jaggedy Jack, et cetera. All right. ah Well, I guess that's it from us then. Perfect. Nice to see you all. Hi, everyone.
01:17:14
Speaker
you