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The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Grind | Windbreaker Podcast
8.4k Plays10 months ago
On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Frost, and Marty chat about grinding in games, and what separates the good kind that keeps us coming back for more, versus the bad kind that makes us want to walk away.
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Transcript
Merch Launch and Promotion
00:00:00
Speaker
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00:00:38
Speaker
Head over to sharkrobot.com slash second dash wind, or click on the link in the description to check out all the new merch today. Act fast because some of it is only available for a limited time, just like our fragile lives, floating on a rock in a void of nothingness. How peaceful. Yes, yes, there we are. Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Jack, for that lovely trailer. It's nice that he puts the effort in, isn't it?
Introduction to Podcast and Hosts
00:01:08
Speaker
And welcome to the Whipbreakers Podcast. I'm Yachty Croshaw, and joined by Matty Sleeper and Spasticy Drews. Hello, everyone.
00:01:17
Speaker
I'm sorry, I was really emphatic on that. Hello, my apologies. I didn't know if I was supposed to harmonize with you, but you ended faster than you started. Sorry, I've sort of introduced you both individually. But I can never tell who's gonna pick up what I'm laying down. Apparently, only one of us has done media training
Deep Dive into Game Grinding
00:01:35
Speaker
around here. Anyway, welcome to Windbreaker podcast, where this week, fittingly for the week, everyone's back to work. We are talking about the subject of grind.
00:01:47
Speaker
the good grinds and the bad grinds. How does Webster's dictionary define grind, would you say, Marty? What's Webster to know about grinds? To me, grinding is a pretty broad topic, but I think it is a repeated singular action for the sake of goals, which are usually numbers going up or fake items going up.
00:02:14
Speaker
And the question is, what separates the good grind from the bad? Because when you say grind is just repeating a thing over and over again, that's basically just a gameplay loop. That is a primary gameplay loop. The gameplay loop also practice, you know, you can grind on a flute to your master it. So yeah, grinding.
00:02:34
Speaker
I think grinding on your slate. Oh my god, already we are only minutes into this podcast. You're already hubba hubbing. Uh, yeah, I think grinding immediately has a negative connotation with people, but then everyone's going to be like, well, grinding is bad except for these games where I like grinding. So I kind of want to get into the psychology of those specific things that we are like, this kind of grinding is fine, but, but that grinding is bad. I've actually got the games.
00:03:00
Speaker
Well, there are plenty of games that entirely design themselves around green-to-the-grind experience. Powerwash Simulator is the title that springs to mind. That's basically nothing but grind. Oh, you went there. I would say any of those podcast games you talk about yet are ostensibly grinding games. Well, quite. I mean, I wouldn't play them without a podcast, but, you know, that's what they're there for. Yeah.
00:03:23
Speaker
So in my view, that's, that's when I appreciate a grind. But as for whether I'd appreciate it inherently, if I didn't have a podcast to listen to, probably not so much. I like having a thing I can fidget with with my hands, but at the same time, I also appreciate, you know, a meaningful story experience, which makes me go, Oh, gonna have to pause the podcast for this.
00:03:47
Speaker
could have played during it. I've sort of quantified it into like three points in the first off, what caused the need for grind in the sense of like,
00:03:57
Speaker
your power washer, it's because you just wanted it, right? But for other things, it's like, okay, I'm not strong enough, or I'm lacking items or whatever. And then the grind itself. And then what happens after because those are the three things that always like, what, when do I like it? When do I not? Like, I absolutely hate grind for the sake of grind. Those those are my least favorite. And honestly, grind for the sake of grind is the worst one right below grind because the developer wants me to pay money.
00:04:23
Speaker
A grind that I can't stop, that I can't even put my credit card into is just sick. Well of course the traditional grind in the RPG sense is having to stop progressing and kill a load of random monsters over and over again in order to build up your levels to make yourself competitive with the upcoming challenge.
00:04:44
Speaker
Yeah, well, and there's the difference between feeling like you have to do it, which in my opinion means that something wonky went wrong in the design process versus feeling compelled to or wanting to do it because you like that kind of min-maxing and you like seeing your numbers go up and walking into the next dungeon and just, you know.
00:05:07
Speaker
Well, for me, in games where I want to grind are the games that have the strong primary gameplay loop thing where it's just fun and cathartic to keep doing the primary loop. It's something like, um, uh, bomber cyber funk or spider man. Yeah. I just, if you could call just randomly going around the city, doing stunts and stuff grinding, but it's fun to do. I could like lose myself for hours doing that.
00:05:35
Speaker
Yeah, and it's also like, what is the end of it? Like, what is the grinding for? Like, are you grinding towards, I just want to get stronger? Like, this sort of nebula stronger? Or do you have a goal in mind? Like, are you grinding because you want 100 blanks so that you can craft a blank? Or you're grinding because you want enough souls to level up your arcane so that you can use this sick new spell?
00:05:59
Speaker
Or are you grinding superchats so that we can hit our $10,000 donation goal so that we can go to Adventures and I live on location in March? Aren't we supposed to have an overlay for that these days? I don't know if on these talk shows we have space for the overlays yet. Okay. Well, if we did have an overlay, it would say, hey, donate money through superchats and shit so we can reach our target of $10,000 to go and film season four of Adventures and I. And stay in a haunted area.
00:06:30
Speaker
But as for what you're grinding for, that depends on what you play games for. And this goes back to the different kinds of gamer that I've occasionally seen catalogued in books on game design theory. Because everyone goes in with different motivations. Some people go in to get to the end of the story. And I like to think I'm one of those. I'm a story chaser type. Some people play games because they want to master a skill.
00:06:56
Speaker
Some people play games just because they want to kill time, I suppose. I feel something in this cold, cruel world. But because it goes to time, I was actually going to think maybe we start there. What games or maybe archetype of Grind do you guys like? Because I feel we're like different ones.
00:07:15
Speaker
Crack out a title, yeah, it's grinding for the story. Crack any of them. Okay. The Witcher 3. There you go. Funny enough, that's why my grind for that game was also like, I want to see more of the story, not the loot, nothing else for the narrative. The problem I had with The Witcher 3, there was...
00:07:35
Speaker
What it did was that I did a couple of side missions, like, just to enjoy the stories and stuff, and to make sure my character was, like, properly equipped and properly levelled. But very quickly I found that I was over levelled for the main campaign. And I was like, well now I feel like I don't want to do the rest of the side missions and experience those stories, because that'll only make me even more over levelled. Those stories are good.
00:08:01
Speaker
It's funny because there's some people where that is the point for them. Like they want to feel like they're constantly overleveled because they put in the work at the beginning. Whereas you want to like kind of walk that knife's edge of you want to feel like you're, you're constantly like on the verge of maybe falling over, but, but not quite. But maybe ideal like difficulty curve is where you're always like winning by the skin of your teeth. That shows a very competently designed, um,
00:08:31
Speaker
difficulty curve, as I say. If you're, if you're just like dying over and over again, it's just frustrating. But if you're like winning with, like 75% of your health every single boss fight, then I feel unchallenged. I want to I want to feel like I'm being challenged just enough without, you know, being a roadblock. Yeah. So sometimes, you know,
00:08:57
Speaker
There's a lot of like Ubisoft-style sandboxes that have the level-based system where you can't continue to the next bit of the plot until you reach levels such and such. And I'll occasionally just do just enough side stuff to get me up to the right level for the next bit of the Critical Power campaign. It's always like a mild feeling of resentment, though. Yeah.
00:09:20
Speaker
Go back to your question for us. I feel like I don't, by and large, I am that person who tries to finish a game to see the ending and then I'm done. I'm not a completionist. I don't have a sense of mastery in things.
00:09:34
Speaker
But of course, like I mentioned earlier, we all have our exceptions to the rules. And I find it kind of cathartic to grind in classic turn-based JRPGs, especially if I'm second screening them. I like replaying those older games on my Switch or on a Steam Deck or
00:09:52
Speaker
any sort of handheld thing while I'm watching something else, while I'm watching sports, while I'm watching... What is the grind in CRPGs? For those who don't... Oh, CRPGs or JRPGs? Because I don't have any CRPGs. You said CRPG, didn't you? No, I think... No, he said JRPGs. I wouldn't be called dead with a CRPG. Of course not, this is not who we're talking about. No, the grind is relatively simple loops, like Persona 5, take for example. Yeah.
00:10:20
Speaker
I was perfectly happy grinding up dungeons in Persona 4 just to make sure I had it unlocked every single Persona.
00:10:29
Speaker
There was a satisfaction in doing that because in the past I've had trouble with JRPGs, like when I have to actually think about what I'm doing and strategize a fight. And the satisfaction in going through Persona 4, knowing that every single random fight you do is making you a little bit stronger. And every step you take is making you better equipped for the next big fight.
00:10:51
Speaker
Persona 4 I like specifically is an example because there's no central grinding location like a Mementos or anything. And so you go through each of the dungeons the first time. And it's generally like, you know, quasi difficult. Like you have to keep your wits about you and you need to exploit weaknesses and everything. Oh look at that fancy new toffee cam that's showing off crazy things we're talking about.
00:11:14
Speaker
Incredible. But then the second time you go through, if you're grinding again, you are a couple of levels higher. You know what to expect. And so it feels almost like a victory lap through those. And so you're playing through the same locations, but it's like a different endorphin rush you're getting instead of kind of having to pay full attention to what's going on. You're able to relax a little bit and sort of loosen your grip on the wheel, which is usually dangerous. But in that case, it's not.
00:11:43
Speaker
Yeah, you're an interesting one, because I had asked you before, I was like, Marty, how do you get so many games done? But you just kind of, you go and you go, you say you don't have a forever game, whereas that's actually quite common nowadays, having those forever live service games. Would you say, though, you grind franchises now? I've seen you go on the other side. Yeah. Self-imposed, yeah. Self-imposed franchise grinding. Yeah, I went through some of the Sonic games, the Zelda games, the Mario games. I'm going through all the Final Fantasy 7 games right now.
00:12:11
Speaker
Yeah, if we're counting that as grinding, but that's more of like I have a head injury. It grinds you in joy though, so I think it's worth it. Yeah, yeah. Funny that Final Fantasy 7 is like 19 games.
00:12:25
Speaker
Yeah, some of them are pretty bad. Dirge of Cerberus. Oh, yeah. Third person shooter. Not not great. No. That was the Vincent Valentine game, right? It was. Yeah, it was very mid very mid aughts in terms of it was it's very brown. It is very boring. And it is very emo. So I do get satisfaction in grinding if I know I'm getting stronger. I think games like Earthbound, I enjoyed that as well.
00:12:54
Speaker
Because, you know, as long as you can, like, just you can easily get back and get all your health back. That's, uh, that's what about what about games that make you feels like the grind makes you smarter. Slay the spire.
00:13:11
Speaker
Oh, like Dark Souls. You just have to keep trying a boss until you've... Yeah, I do get a satisfaction of constantly banging my head against a boss fight until I've memorized all the attack patterns.
00:13:27
Speaker
That's why I don't appreciate like Souls likes to sort of penalize you for dying too much. Like Dark Souls 2 like makes your maximum health go down if you keep dying. So I'd like equip the one ring that like stabilizes it at 75% and never took it off the entire game.
00:13:44
Speaker
That was my gripe with like Bloodborne was like here you have no vials now go grind for them. I was like, why? You ruined it. Everything was going so well. I just want to be free to memorize all the boss fight attacks and memorize the exact right move to make when it happens. You brought up a responder earlier. I always I always like how you
00:14:06
Speaker
You see your character growth, not just based on your stats going up and you causing more damage, but when you go and fight lower leveled enemies, once you're a few levels above them, if you attack them from behind, there is no battle. There's like, it goes like the color thing instead of going to like black goes to green and then it just blips and you just win. And so there is no battle. You are just so strong that it says you don't need to fight this thing. Like you, we will give you the XP, we'll give you the loot, like you have proven yourself. And I always really love that.
00:14:34
Speaker
It's funny, there's so many like big games that are like what I would call gear grinders now where you have to keep your gear score up. But the sense of actually feeling like you've gotten stronger from equipping something with the higher numbers or leveling up always seems to be lost in these games. Because your your numbers increase so infinitesimally. Yeah, it doesn't actually feel like you when you actually get down to do the fighting, you don't actually feel like you're doing that much more damage than you did before.
00:15:03
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that makes me the sick puppy because I'm the one that does play the games as a service. The actual idle games, I've got like three on my phone, one I've had for like a year and I do play a bunch of like roguelike runners and I feel like even that gear score thing, that infinitesimal
00:15:20
Speaker
grind for 0.1% increase in whatever has even taken over in the in the like rogue sort of area to the point where I can point to the Binding of Isaac had great upgrade systems in that you can do something like take two devil deals in one run and you unlocked a new character that now plays different to your base character you've unlocked more of the game
00:15:40
Speaker
And then, Rotato does that as well now, where it's like, heal 200 times in one run, you've unlocked the doctor character, which plays a whole different way. Whereas, funny, we use this for the thumbnail, Hades is just, well, you grind for currency, and then that currency you can spend to be 5% stronger, 10% stronger. And it's more so like, why are you grinding? It's to feel like I didn't lose everything.
00:16:07
Speaker
Fighting of Isaac is almost unique in that it does actually feel like every run is different. Because it's got a fairly basic gameplay loop and everything you pick up fundamentally changes the way you fight and the way you move. And that's rare to see in rival roguelites because most of them are just, you know, get the sword or get the hammer. One of them is fast and one of them is slow.
00:16:34
Speaker
That's why I find it odd. I used to think I was almost unsatisfied because I just do like every now and then just numbers go up.
00:16:41
Speaker
But it felt like I tried Suicide Squad and not Suicide, Gotham Knights and a few other ones. I was like, they all just do this. Well, no, this one's purple, but it's really no different. Whereas I'm looking for kind of like Borderlands that the gameplay is actually opening up and it's now exploding every time I shoot or some new effect or other. It's a difference, I guess, between like a Wow Raid
00:17:05
Speaker
and Terraria, where it's like, okay, I farmed a boss, now I can make different outfits with it. Where it's fun, but at a WoW raid, the grind itself is what's annoying. You have to get 50 people to fight online with you, you have to wait in line, and you might not get it, you know? Yeah, it's annoying enough getting five people together to play board games every other weekend. Right. I mean, does the grind change when you're grinding with friends, or is that one of those things that it's not the grind that's any better, it's the friends
00:17:35
Speaker
that are better you know that is another job have you ever wow rated marty have you met a well i have not i played i played about 30 hours a while the year it came out and sure nothing i have seen of wow rating has made it seem attractive to want to get into you gotta be a like a militant type
00:17:55
Speaker
that's the kind in there but that's why I sort of like those are my three things for grind why am I grinding if it's just like Lords of the Fallen was an interesting one because of you can go into the
00:18:08
Speaker
Fucking what else is it called? Gary, Indiana. You can go into the umbral and everything's harder, but it just keeps popping up and you can kill it and you can essentially grind to be a little bit stronger. But that's at your own volition. That's at like, Oh, I just need one more level. So I'm just going to pop it in the umbral real quick, kill some things pop out. So like, why am I grinding? How is the grind? And then what's the point after the fact?
00:18:34
Speaker
Hey, Eric found the overlay for the, for the donation. Nice one. Give us cash. Assholes. Give us the money grinds. Grind money into this overlay and watch it. The number go up. So we know what you like. A few people earlier mentioned grinding and farming is grinding. In my opinion, grinding is when the things you get are just numbers. So it's either money or XP or whatever.
00:19:01
Speaker
And then farming is you get items. So they're like ostensibly the same things, but it's like getting presents instead of money. You can grind to farm, but can you farm to grind? I'd say if you're playing Stardew Valley and you want to get to level 10 farming, you could potentially grind to farm. Level 10 farming. What the hell do you do? Do you just get the best hosin' down? Ababa.
00:19:28
Speaker
No, seriously, what happens at level 10 farming? Well, you get a bunch of bonuses, like you unlock new crafting recipes, you become more efficient at collecting stuff. What's the end goal in Stardew? Well, there isn't one, that's kind of the point. Did that be haunted by your grandpa?
00:19:44
Speaker
Well, after three years, the ghost of your grandpa shows up and judges you, conservative old bastard as he is. Sure, sure. That's not the end of the game, you just keep going. You do other things on that farm, right? Like you help people do their things. Yeah, yeah. It's grinds, helping you help them. Well, the point of the game is you find the activity you want to do, I suppose, and some people just like to live a fairly balanced existence, that's what I usually do.
00:20:09
Speaker
You attend your farm, you plant stuff, you sell vegetables, you look after animals and sell their products, you build up money and you spend the money on upgrades to your house. And once your house is fully upgraded, you can marry someone and have two kids and then you've built up your basically the ideal farming life. I feel like
00:20:29
Speaker
Farming is the positive connotation of a grind for the joy of just the thing that you are doing. People who farm their Pokemons or literal farming or whatever or not. Well, when Marty brought up farming, he was talking about... Like loot is farming loot. Yeah, endlessly killing a certain enemy in the hope of getting a certain random drop. Right. Yeah, Diablo has it, Destiny has it.
00:20:55
Speaker
Yeah, so so and you're asking if that's like the difference between that and grinding is just like numbers going up or if you get an actual item? Yeah, yeah, they don't see because a couple of people asked that at the top of the chat and I was thinking about that and I was like, they seem relatively similar to me. Sure, yeah. I like a game that that gives me some control over the
00:21:20
Speaker
the temperature of the water when I want to grow. A lot of these older Final Fantasy releases have the ability to increase speed of battles, completely turn off battles, increase the battle rate, increase the amount of XP you get
00:21:37
Speaker
guild stuff like that. Even like newer games like Bravely Default had like a encounter rate slider, which I really liked. Like if you wanted to grind, you could set it to nine and every step you'd insta insta get a battle or you could set it to zero and you could walk around a dungeon and never encounter an enemy, which that sort of flexibility is nice.
00:21:56
Speaker
Well, then we're getting into what I would call meta grind, because you have got the grind, which is the thing that some people enjoy. But then there's another like meta grinding experience that some people like my wife seems to like it, where the the challenge is to find the most optimal way to grind. Like my wife used to really like playing cookie cookie clicker. And she took it so seriously. She likes she had spreadsheets set up. She'd like calc she was because she's like a math graduate, she calculated the like optimal
00:22:26
Speaker
process for max to maximize cookie profits. Incredible. On a weekend of spreadsheets and things. And that's how some people enjoy that. And that's like almost one level above grinding. It's grinding your grind. Finding your ability to grind. You are a spreadsheet. You're like a spreadsheet. But I'm a nasty spreadsheet. I've got friends who are like very much like that is beautiful mine. I treat it like a paper, pencil, napkin. Yeah.
00:22:54
Speaker
And it's like, yeah, mine are disgusting, but I found a game called Time is Honey. It is like Cookie Clicker, but it's just bees. You're keeping bees. And with a bit of money, you can open up card packs that give you three bees. And this is what I chase for, is feeling smarter?
00:23:10
Speaker
then the that is that optimization i found that is the money doesn't come so much from getting nice bees it's from. Lipping bees and open up more card packs and getting a legendary so then i did the game just change completely wasn't idle game anymore and they're like okay how fast am i opening this okay if i can get him to this level then it gives me my money back.
00:23:30
Speaker
But now I've gotten so much money, I've increased my upgrades so much that it's a waste of time to even bother leveling these. So just throw them out and you just go mad for that. It is, uh, like instead of... Do you ever feel like you're a prisoner of a game at that point? No, because some of them have endings. Those are nice. The ones that go forever, I'm like, that's my weekend. No, I'm not a prisoner. Sometimes the beatings stop. Sometimes they, you know, they have all the Harry Potter books in prison.
00:23:59
Speaker
It's not that bad.
Game Economics and Player Experience
00:24:01
Speaker
Was that news story the winter and a while back that some prison banned the prisoners for playing D&D? And the reason they gave was because it might cause them to fantasize about escaping? Because they're definitely not doing that outside of D&D.
00:24:18
Speaker
That's incredible. They might be able to like form a strategy with the right DM. They could form a strategy on how to escape. That's how they were going to plan their escape attempt, like sort of the same way like those arriving militias coordinate things online and say in Minecraft at the end for the sake of deniability. Yeah, exactly. Did you know you can escape? And I think it's Sweden. They won't hold it against you because they think that's a natural response to being imprisoned.
00:24:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's just that, well, obviously they'll try to recapture you, but you don't get additional years added to your sentence for escaping. If you like break things and, you know, hold people hostage. Yeah, they'll hold that against you. The act of trying to get out like, you know, I would too. Sure. Yeah.
00:25:01
Speaker
Yeah, I see that. If I think I do that, if this doesn't pan out, I'm just going to go to a Swedish prison and just Yeah, let's see how much Well, if they designed prisons where they gave you like an exercise bike in every room and just display in front of the exercise bike a screen saying the amount you rode this week and then your personal best to the left. I think a lot of people wouldn't escape from prison if you gave them that. Don't know if I prison. Yeah, yeah, we grind a five prison.
00:25:27
Speaker
So wait, so bouncing off this, we've talked about the grinds that we relate to, our own personal grinds that we don't mind. What are bad grinds in your mind? For me, the first thing that comes up is sort of that false sense of FOMO that comes from like a battle pass or sort of feeling people like they need to log in every day or else they're gonna fuck up their streak or anything.
00:25:56
Speaker
people being like, oh, I only have 30 days to do this much in Fortnite because I'm not going to get my fucking Captain America costume or whatever. Um, yeah, the ones like that feels like it plays on people's, um, out of psychosis, I guess.
00:26:10
Speaker
But I have to ask, would you forgive that if the game was fun to play? If we were dealing with something like Spider-Man 2 and they were saying, hey, if you swing and do athletics for like an hour every day, you get an extra prize. I'd be like, well, I could do that because that's what I like doing anyway.
00:26:32
Speaker
I mean, I think that's certain games like Destiny or Fortnite or Genshin even, I think you mentioned Frost. I think the people who are hardcore into those games do find it fun. Like, Bungie's gameplay is fun. Well, you gotta hope so.
00:26:48
Speaker
Yeah, I would I would hope so But like man when I think of like the only game that kind of hooked me into that daily weekly thing was and granted It was during the pandemics. I was depressed, but it was the fucking Avengers game, which is bad. It was bad It was not fun I was not having fun while doing it But I would log in every day and like sometimes every six hours to make sure I did my things So that I could get my things so I could get more orbs so that maybe I can unlock this new Iron Man costume that I didn't care about I
00:27:17
Speaker
Great use of time it's proved to be. I was a prisoner. Now I don't think any of that exists anymore, which is fine. It's probably for the best. Those were dark times.
00:27:27
Speaker
could have learned to bake bread like everyone else. But he'd done that and stuff. To me, definitely once that gets to that point of you're making more demands of my time and my money and not really giving me much back an amusement, then I was like, what's the point there? There was a game I reviewed at the old place, I forgot what it were, that it felt like the most predatory gotcha game mechanics, but at no point could I put in the credit cards. I was like, you're just sick?
00:27:57
Speaker
I can't even get out of here with my wallet. What's happening? Yeah. You're torturing me. It's not for information. You're not trying to make me talk. You just don't know what you're doing. I guess that they've just sort of trained people to want that experience now. Like I was convinced Gotham Knights was a live service, but people were saying, no, stop calling it a live service. It's not actually online.
00:28:15
Speaker
I was like, well, why does it feel like a live service then? Why does it play like one? All the bad parts with none of the like minor good parts. And not even the predatory parts. So it's like, what are you? What is this? Yeah, I mean, it's like that. You assume it was one thing. It's methadone for people trying to get off the heroin.
00:28:34
Speaker
I guess so, yeah. There you go. Yeah, you could wean off gambling addictions with those. Actually, there was some guy who said his granny used to waste all their money at the casino until he showed her Pokemon, the casino and that. And she would just every now and then would lose all the money and that would just tell her grandson, hey, could you give me more coins in this? And he would just turn around some coins and yeah, she'd have a good time. Never went to a casino again.
00:29:00
Speaker
I like how the Pokémon casino is the simplest casino ever. We could take her to games that have much more robust casinos, but no, keep her in the Pokémon. Gaming could rehabilitate. It's the nicotine patch for gambling. Yeah. Well, yeah. But then they find all those games that actually do have real gambling in.
00:29:20
Speaker
Well, you know, some people, you know, they wean on with nicotine. It's a little smoother going in. You know, I've been looking into becoming addicted to nicotine lately. What would you recommend us for a beginner? The gum.
00:29:36
Speaker
I can see how it happens actually. I was a social smoker for a while in that I didn't actually buy cigarettes for myself, but if I was at a party and I was hanging out with my mates outside, I'd just bum a smoke off them to be part of the conversation. I can see how someone could like become addicted by that route. I worked at a coffee shop that people who smoked just got extra breaks.
00:30:01
Speaker
And I was like, well, I'm gonna start smoking. So I get extra bricks. And then I was like, wait, this is a good day. I'm paying money and I'm smoking. I don't have gummy bears. I was like, oh, we're doing this. I just have a couple back for it. Hey, if you let smoke, let smokers go out for a break every five minutes. People who like gummy bears should be allowed to have gummy bears for five minutes. Yeah, they were down. I'd pass around gummy bears that have the smokes. It later just came to I just carry a lighter around. And they were like, fuck it. He's always got a light. When do you
00:30:32
Speaker
Are there games where it starts off and sometimes like the grind to me feels like that thing if you enter a new relationship and there's like a thing your partner does and you find it like cute and endearing and then as time goes on it starts to like grate at you a little bit and you're like oh that like cracking knuckles all the time like isn't as cute and endearing as I thought it was and actually every time I hear it it drives me off the fucking wall
00:30:55
Speaker
Is there gameplay mechanics that do that for you, where for the first couple of hours you're really into it, and then you're like, oh no, I don't want to do this anymore? For me, this is in the little things. I was playing Hogwarts Legacy, and I was enjoying it for a while, but then it gets into the grindy second half, or it's just constantly copy-pasted combat arenas.
00:31:15
Speaker
against like three different enemy factions. And what I found was starting to really get on my nerves at that point was the menu interface. When you press start, there'd be this animation where you'd see a book open and all the pages would fall into place before they'd make the map appear. And I'm like, I just want to go to the fucking objective market of the next bit. That went with the fucking page turning animations. Yeah. So it started out really cute. And then it's like, this is too much. This is like inevitable. Like, let's say,
00:31:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was Red Dead. He makes a big ol' fuss of going through people's pockets and stuff, and like, I'm just trying to loot right now, please. Opening every drawer and coming. Get on with it, yeah. I think it's just improper planning in that way.
00:31:57
Speaker
In that vein of like bad grind grinds that make me feel like inevitably I had to grind before I started
Game Strategies and Player Preferences
00:32:06
Speaker
the game. I know people love this game Like with all their hearts huge fan base dead cells it feels like I have to put it on the babiest mode and Grind out all the currencies and find all the weapons and then I get to actually play dead cells is just there's just too much stuff on it and
00:32:21
Speaker
And it is- You need to get good, scrub. No, because I play like an idle game. The most efficient way to do it is to just put the ego away, put it on the baby mode, and it's faster. It's faster than everything else. The only suckers is like just grind out the hardest for- there you go. Yeah, I mean, games, like, there's a- Well, I'm feeling a little bit attacked by that, man. You like narratives, you don't care about your skill.
00:32:47
Speaker
Maybe that's part of it. I like a blend, you know? That's why I don't really get on with visual novels or like 2-0 adventure games like what David Cage makes. I appreciate the point where interactivity and the gameplay grind meets narrative. Sure. Sure. So I like, you know, I like a Dark Souls grind. I like all of that. I mean, do you think grind can ever be... That's interesting. Like I never associate grind with story. Hmm.
00:33:15
Speaker
Do you like funny? Yeah, Metroidvanias, you grind out for the ending. Yeah, they consistently give you three endings. And yeah, a lot of it is kind of grinding. I suppose I see getting to the next story point as sort of my motivation for the grinding. That's sort of how I've designed Starstruck vagabond. You do deliveries to build up enough money so you can buy the next engine upgrade that gets you to the next story point is my vision there.
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can like that. I don't know. I'm trying to think of the games where the grind, I guess maybe less story and more of like,
00:33:55
Speaker
while grinding, the experience of doing it is giving me something that is, take like Death Stranding. The game is kind of built, most of what you're doing is like based in altruism of say I'm trying to kind of put together the pieces of a broken world and you're trying to help people out and you're building roads and supplies and tools for strangers who are gonna come behind you. And there was a grind to that that I really liked because I was
00:34:25
Speaker
maybe it's because it's timing coming right near the beginning of the pandemic was like, you were helping anonymous strangers. And there was something about it that really touched me in a way to where it's like, I wasn't grinding to try to get bigger swords or try to get more money or shit. I was grinding to try to make the world a slightly better place. And that's, I don't know. Yeah. And that really appealed to me in a way that
00:34:48
Speaker
Kojima kind of touched that with the sort of communal grinding in Metal Gear Solid 5, where it was like, can we reach full... What was the whole thing? Everyone gets rid of their nukes, and there's a secret ending if every player reaches 100% nuclear disarmament, which I always found is a funny thing for a guy like him to...
00:35:10
Speaker
Yeah. Um, when, to the original point of grind for story, I guess the only one I know that exists is Hades. You, you can't, you literally have to get the rest of the story. You have to grind out runs to the point where you can just die. You don't even have to win and you can, yeah, that looks pretty well. Cause the, the story is very much on the ground in that you like converse with gods every time you get one of their upgrades at the end of every room.
00:35:36
Speaker
So it's not just like a distant thing you're working towards, it's a thing that's a constant presence. Until the later end, where you do, because it's got that relationship, the affinity, you have to grind out the resource, find the gods, and then that's how you actually unlock some of the later weapons. And it's like, wow, that's a lot. The game doesn't change.
00:35:59
Speaker
I love it. Just saying, that's not the most egregious. I would put that in the middle where I'm like, okay, I can handle it. Sure. I know. Yeah. Frost, did you talk about Brotato yet? Uh, like twice. I feel like you, you might be the world's number one Brotato defender in my mind. Like what is, not even defender, just number one. Brotato mentioner. Like what is it about that game that, that, that tickles your fancy so much.
00:36:28
Speaker
I'd say 80s.
00:36:32
Speaker
Because I used to be a more pro gamer, and that was all about the mastery of your hands in Rocket League and shooting. You shoot better every time. It's a very personal thing there. But then there's other games that you grind to feel smarter, so to speak. And as you learn the systems and how they operate, it is like you're messing with stats, you're messing with builds, where it's just like, OK, this does this, and my stats are here now. So how can I plan? It is the most that feels like
00:36:59
Speaker
Slay the Spire and the Binding of Isaac, all that emergent gameplay that comes out of it because of all the different systems in it. But it's just in one room, and it's super fast. It's got, like, the most depth for how quick it is, honestly. It's probably the best bullet heaven game, because it just has so many varying things where you go, okay, am I gonna try and be the bullet god, or am I just gonna try and be a tank and survive for the 60 seconds, you know?
00:37:26
Speaker
Of those that came out of the survivors, that's probably the best one. Even vampire survivor, it is you grind for currency so you can get 5% more of movement speed from the start.
00:37:38
Speaker
You know, um, who, I think it was Yahtzee actually that said, I might've been talking about dead cells where he says, the thing about the roguelike is when you die, you should be looking forward to that the next run instead of just like, Oh God, I got to start from zero again. I may have said that. I've said a lot of things. You just do say many things. Uh, and, and yeah, that's, that's how it feels like you start in the center of the thing and you can go in so many directions instead of just.
00:38:06
Speaker
Rogue Lights, not blaming Hades, but with its popularity, people seem to think that, oh, people like that 5% and get some progress even though you lose, but all we're doing is sort of raising the floor. The game's not changing. You're closer to the end goal than when you started, but not by much. Yeah, yeah.
00:38:29
Speaker
Yes. And yeah, there was a couple of interesting points there, but I liked the one of like where failure doesn't feel like a setback failure.
00:38:38
Speaker
They make you want to keep going as opposed to feeling defeated. They make you feel inspired instead of defeated, I guess. You can also win in different ways. A game that lets you define your own wins, I think that's what helps a grind. And usually it's like, oh, you have to beat it. No, this is like, oh, I unlocked the doctor because I just did a health build this time around.
00:38:59
Speaker
My goal isn't to win now, my goal is to take 5,000 things of damage. A lot of that's in how the flow of the game is organized. I find it very difficult to stop playing something like Stardew Valley. Because you get through the day, you go to bed, and then a new day starts and I'm like, how? I might as well just do another day because I've already got my list of things to do already. And then the next thing you know, it's midnight and the children are dead.
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, that the children or the game? Both, as you no longer distinguish the difference. Oh, no. Yeah, there is creating that sort of feedback loop that gives you the endorphin drip at a regular basis.
00:39:41
Speaker
And so it doesn't feel like you're ever biting off too much more. It's always like, oh, I can have another slice. I can have another slice. I guess it's like the World of Warcraft experience bar. You get a nice flashy reward, and then immediately faced with the next challenge. Like, empty bar now. Start again. Yeah. Yeah, but oh. That's what keeps you going. Yeah, that in the sense. There's also resentment that can form. So like imagine, what was it? Power wash simulator.
00:40:08
Speaker
You don't have to do 100% of the entire vehicle, but it's like 99, 98, but Rogue Lights to me feel like 50%, and it's like, all right, onto the next one, and you're like, I kinda, kinda wanted, you know? Like, I wish you'd put a little more effort into making me want to keep going.
00:40:27
Speaker
With Roguelites, it just feels it's just far too half-assed. I'm like, oh, I just don't want you to feel bad. There is no actual extra content, but here's this thing that feels like a grind, like it's something that you can have, and that's...
00:40:41
Speaker
It is, I think at some point, maybe someone did a games developer conference where they go, players don't like feeling like they lost everything. So they just put in this mechanic that's meant to just sort of be a consolation prize. That's how I see them. They're not really meant to be something you grind for. It's a consolation prize. But because it can be completed, you mentally make it a task. You mentally turn it into a grind. And the longer it takes to do it, the more you resent it.
00:41:11
Speaker
Because I think as much as anything else, we have to remember, we're in the games for fun. Some people's grind can just be mental. Like, burn myself out on Assassin's Creed 1, trying to get all the flags. That was on me.
00:41:29
Speaker
Yeah. And I feel like it was also, it's, it was a little bit different when it was like you maybe only had a finite amount of games to play or at your disposal or if you're on a tight income or you're a kid and you only get one game for Christmas where it's now. I did all the sliding tile puzzles in Zelda Wind Wager.
00:41:47
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Whereas now, even if you have no money, you can download infinite entertainment on your phone, on your PC, on any console, like there are so many free to play things or incredibly cheap things that
00:42:01
Speaker
That sort of isn't a part of it anymore, in my mind. Honestly, I just kind of like doing sliding tile puzzles, if I'm honest. They are nice. Yeah, like Talos said, I think it's good, but just move on. Or what was it? Yeah, you almost seem offended when you're like, I like these puzzles. It's good you like them. There's nothing against them.
00:42:20
Speaker
Yes, yes, they're fine. As it goes, sometimes you just enjoy that kind of stuff. To the cynical side, do you think there's a trend in this increase of grind because it is a way to pad out game time? Let's not deny that you can, you can fluff your time a bit.
00:42:38
Speaker
Well, there are a lot of games, certainly, that seem to be leaning on trying to pat themselves out as much as possible these days. And in the sense of something like God of War Ragnarok, the grind comes in the form of endless dungeons in between story moments. Okay, from one corridor to the next. Isn't that new rogue mode, Marty? Like grinding for the narrative? Isn't that...
00:43:04
Speaker
Yeah, Valhalla is interesting because in leaning on a rogue mode, it creates a more compact narrative than the game itself, which just feels really strange. Like the Valhalla, like the five-hour rogue DLC tells a tighter and less padded story than the actual relatively linear story itself, which I find
00:43:33
Speaker
strange because in the main game you are constantly, like Yasu said, that's a prime example of one of those things where you're constantly going into your inventory and constantly going into your menu and being like, oh, I got this thing, which is 5% more, you know, burn damage, or I got this armor, which gives me a 2% quicker cooldown on something. And like I had to, I think we talked about this the other year, but like I had to be like, when I'm playing this game, I can only go to my menu once an hour.
00:43:59
Speaker
Otherwise, I'm gonna be in this fucking thing after every battle. Like, I can only go in and change my equipment once an hour because I do not want this to become a game where I'm, you know, using a fake-ass cursor to navigate a menu and constantly min-max my little dress-up doll. Yeah, you didn't play Diablo, did you?
00:44:18
Speaker
Yeah, that was the whole thing. Because Lou drops all the time. If you try to min max all the time, you will waste all your time. So you're supposed to kind of just get to the end of the story and then diddle. Or if you get a big piece that actually changes something like, oh, now you got five blades swinging out. Yeah, sure, sure. Like a brand new weapon. Instead of just like, hey, it's plus two stronger.
00:44:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that doesn't do anything for me. But I know for some people it does. That could be nice. I mean, I've always thought like a good game design curve is to sort of go up and down in terms of energy. And if you take a break from combat to sort through your inventory, that could be one way of doing that. Self-impose in that way. Because if it's just like constant noise, then you tend to get overstimulated.
00:45:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you need those moments of downtime, whether it's, you know, bite sized levels, or you opening a menu and sort of creating your own moments of downtime. Yeah, it's just gonna be worth it. You know, it gets to be too much like in, you know, Borderlands, you don't start looking at every piece of loot. You get to a point where it's like, was it orange? Was it green? Okay.
00:45:27
Speaker
number go up, number go up, that's all better. Shall we go to Super Chats? It's been meandering a bit. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah. And as a reminder, everyone, you can see that bar at the top of the screen. Thank you, everyone who donates on this stream and all of our other streams, your Super Chats for the foreseeable future are going towards adventure is nice season four on location, being filmed very soon. So we appreciate everyone's don't know us over there.
00:45:55
Speaker
Also buy merch. Buy all the merch. Buy all the merch. And then there will be no longer. There's frost, there's cold take merch. You can get cold take hat, you can spend my Rambo zipper. Not a zipper. You get a hoodie or a jumper. We got lanyards, yeah. Oh no. Come on, lanyards. How do you keep your keys? There you go, lanyards.
00:46:20
Speaker
Anyway, starting with jumbly wobbly with $5 who says pop quiz hot shot.
Gaming Nostalgia and Memorable Titles
00:46:27
Speaker
The year is 2001 off the top of your head top five best, blandest and worst clocks ticking yards against the games. Geez, I can't remember.
00:46:40
Speaker
That was the one was it's not on a hill to Metal Gear Solid to Halo. Hang on, 2001. Go to Dexter. Let's look at it too. There you go. Crazy taxi to on Amusha.
00:47:00
Speaker
Grand Theft Auto 3, Halo Combat Evolved, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Conker's Bad Fur Day. Oh damn, you started the awards in 2008. There's Silent Hill 2. Final Fantasy X, that was a big year.
00:47:16
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, Max Payne and Shenmue 2. It's crazy to think that there were games like 2000, just the 2000 bit. I feel the games from the 90s and the 80s and everything be after the 2010s. 2000 was a strange year for me. Weird, weird like Hayes. Yeah, it was. And Tetris. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of Tetris likes. Mm-hmm. I think Silent Hill 2 came out the same year as Sonic Adventure 2.
00:47:44
Speaker
Two peas and a pod. Couple of characters murdering their wives. Uh, yes. Except for Sonic Adventure 2. No, he killed it. I think he killed it. Amy passed away in that game. Uh, also, Slizer. Thank you so much for gifting 10 memberships over in YouTube. Holy smokes. Thank you, Slizer.
00:48:06
Speaker
Check out Mr. Community. Humane shield gives 199 and says xcom grind plus naming characters equals broken heart.
00:48:19
Speaker
Oh, that's funny. There's some stakes in that grinding. Yeah, it's like it's like Darkest Dungeon. You're grinding for your morals because if you really care about your characters, you're going to want to build them up so you don't lose them. Except me. I go capitalist asshole. I'm like, all right. In theory, yeah, you get attached to characters and want to save them. But then what if you just have a bad day and just zone out for a bit and then they just die because you would name them after like friends or colleagues or do that. Oh, God.
00:48:50
Speaker
I just go with whatever name the default name is in XCOM. Because, you know... You don't feel bad putting them through the meat grinder. I will learn to love them. I itemize them. I'm just like, best boy. You know, this is the best one. And then shitlicker. Shitlicker. SVsgo 2000 gives five euros. Does it count as a good difficulty design if the game dynamically and secretly lowers the difficulty after you fail a certain number of times?
00:49:18
Speaker
That's not. Is that grinding? No, that's just a question. No, because we were talking about how like, in my view, a perfect difficulty curve is where I'm just winning all the way. Well, you have to die a few times for the game to start doing that. The tricky part is on the game's part is detecting that a player is having trouble, I suppose.
00:49:45
Speaker
and what the player is having trouble with. Resident Evil 4 will have fewer enemies in certain encounters if you're having trouble. It will give you more ammo if you are running out on ammo, and these are things that it does under the hood that it doesn't tell you about. But if the player's just pissing about and just fires a rocket at their own feet three times going, hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo. Yeah, what can we really learn from that? Because they're taking the piss. And would the game get easier if they did that?
00:50:14
Speaker
Yeah, if it just amounts to death as a death. Yeah. But how can the game differentiate between that behavior and serious play? Sure. Dude, do you guys like, I like to bask in the spoils. It's like, um, I forgot what game it was, but it was chasing me across the screen and it didn't matter how good I got at it. It would always, always just be at that exact like distance away from me. And I was like, I've mastered this course. And I feel like by now I should have gotten like a pretty sizable gap that I could visually see instead of it for you to be like this close always.
00:50:44
Speaker
That's, uh, rubber banding is what you're describing. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. One word for all the ones I just said. Yeah. And those are the, that's to me always like a good chase scene, a good set piece, a good sort of quick platforming, everything's crumbling around me thing is where you constantly feel like you're about to fail, but don't. And like that, in my opinion, that takes like real expert design. Cause I've been playing some games where it's like, I just keep fucking up every.
00:51:10
Speaker
two or three screens. And then I'm just like, well, where are you starting? I guess I'll just learn how to do this. I'll learn exactly where you want me to jump and what to grab on to. Those give me anxiety. It's like those bad dreams we don't know how to run proper. Yeah. I'd say Resident Evil 7 and 8 were very good at making sure I was constantly felt like I was about to run out of ammo without actually running out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's just something Capcom is good at.
00:51:36
Speaker
Uh, Wojtek. Good old Wojtek. Oh, hang on. I think I missed one. We had Fox D. Yes. Fox D gives $5 and says it would like to see one of these Jiminy Cockfoot resource grind RPGs just bolt a cozy game on as it's crafting system like my time at Ubisoft.
00:51:53
Speaker
See, there are certain things that don't really blend out well. I mean, I remember saying when Jedi Survivor came out, they seemed to be trying to, like, take influence from cosy games in there because you got, like, your home base where you can plant flowers. Yeah, but then in order to get all the flowers, you have to go out of the field and get murdered by robots while searching for flowers, and that's where it sort of breaks down for me.
00:52:15
Speaker
There's a VR game, I believe, that's kind of like Moonlighter. You're a shopkeeper with all these guns and stuff, and you just sell guns, but I think at night you get ran out by robots, so you're just blasting them away, and then you sell them for better parts in the morning to people. It's just like, okay, quite the loop. Jared Jones also sent a final Arduino on Ko-Fi. Thank you so much, Jared.
00:52:40
Speaker
Nice. And then Vojtek with his $10 donation says Happy New Year. Always thought the worst grinds were the ones rewarded by a cosmetic. I mean, that's what you want, you know, right? It depends on the thing. It cooks like if it's saying, OK, beat this race in five seconds, jump 50 times, you know, that sort of challenges for unlocks. I'm down for it. If it's just grind for currency for the cosmetic. Oh.
00:53:05
Speaker
god it was more annoying playing again jedi fallen order and jedi survivor where i'd uh find a hidden chest by cleverly seeing the secret path uh through whatever and then the only reward in the chest is like a diff a slightly different grip for your lightsaber the different colored poncho oh the lightsaber things are the worst you can't even see us yeah the second one the second one at least had
00:53:32
Speaker
Some like outfits that looked a little bit different it made you look like Han Solo or made you look like Dash Renda or whereas like the first one I'm just like what are you doing? Like I don't want any of this. Or would there be a new beard? Christ knows how it was in a box at the bottom of a lake but uh... A wet used beard.
00:53:49
Speaker
There was a super land with like these tiny little playground characters and you'd find their dead bodies but they were wearing like Han Solo's outfit now that you reminded me of it or He-Man or something like that. Again, it's not so much the thing you're grinding for but how you do it. Grinding for currency is probably the lamest one. Eloise gives two British pounds and says, grinding to platinum again.
00:54:18
Speaker
Okay. That's what a lot of those like achievements kind of a lot of them build themselves around grinding. Yeah. Wasn't there a famously the first dead rising game had an achievement where you had to kill?
00:54:30
Speaker
It was like something like 30,000 zombies and it was because that was the population of the town the game took place in. Yeah, it was on the dialogue at the start of the game where they tell you what the population of the town is and if you kill any zombies you get an achievement. Yeah, grinding out achievements is like for the specific kind of gamer who just wants to 100% complete stuff.
00:54:50
Speaker
Yeah, as their primary motivator. I think the game's made for it. I'm down. I would have said Metroidvani is earlier. Obviously that's very careful to make sure I unlock every single square on the map when I'm playing Symphony of the Night.
00:55:05
Speaker
Even the ones where you have to like turn into a bat and like fuck around in the corners of rooms. Turn into a bat and float up into the corner of the sky where there's nothing to do and nothing to get. Yeah. Just because otherwise there'd be a big empty space on the map. Cause that's how you navigate in Metroidvanias. That's how you know where you haven't been yet and where to go back to. Yeah. Yeah, that is true. It's more involved and more inspired. I'll take it.
00:55:30
Speaker
Mappy 1964 gives $5 and says, my favorite grindy game is the original Resident Evil 4, which you can go back through the game with the Chicago typewriter and the infinite rockets. Well, that's just catharsis and, you know, arctic time killing. Yeah, victory lap. Because I remember playing through it at least once with the infinite rocket launcher just because I could. I was Yeah, those are things that are given to you like after you've already proven that you've kind of mastered the game. Like three times to afford it. Jesus.
00:56:03
Speaker
Some Japanese characters I don't understand gives 100 Swedish krona and says Yahtzee insulting chat make money go. That is the idea. It's true. The findome is strong in you.
00:56:19
Speaker
And then Hunter Roach comes with $10 and says, I usually find the grinding RPGs turns me off. But I also find a quarrying lots of stone to build within something like Minecraft. You guys have not played the mods where you literally you quarry stone so you can quarry most more stone and you you take stone and if you combine four of them you get compact stone and then if you combine four of those you get compactor stone and it just that's the whole thing. It's a
00:56:45
Speaker
I've been playing a mod that introduced gadgets like an automatic mining device that basically functioned like a Roomba. It would just go around in a big square and sucking up all the rocks as it went. Like ultimately creating a factory. Yeah.
00:57:01
Speaker
There's a VR game that came out a year or two ago, and this might be called clockwork something, but you are kind of creating these automatons to try to create kind of like this, this chain, a factory chain in a room to solve a puzzle. But the automatons, when they create, you kind of record an action in VR, and then that is what
00:57:23
Speaker
the robot does. And so you record catching something and throwing it to the side. And then when you walk away, all of a sudden, there's a robot who catches something and throws it to the side at that exact speed. And then you go to where that thing throws it, and you create a robot that catches that and puts it on a conveyor belt. And so you're slowly creating this entire, I think Eric's literally showing it right now. That is the game. That sounds really cool, actually. Yeah, Jacob Geller was a big fan of that game.
00:57:52
Speaker
If only we could remember what it's fucking called. It's not called that.
00:58:02
Speaker
the last clockwinder thing available yeah it is the last clockwinder now that was a terrible fucking title what did you prefer clocky walkie because it just makes me think of the last airbender yeah i think clocky walkie would have been a better title because you're not familiar with the first clockwinder if you knew the story of the first clockwinder you would feel emotional with this last clockwinder there's a story clockwinder it's like saying sex haver
00:58:26
Speaker
Which, yes, that's on my, that was on my own Tinder profile. It's Haver of Sex. My Twitter is opinion Haver, so there you go. Yeah, Mother of Dragon, Haver of Sex. Anyway, Captain Seasick gives 50 Swedish Corona and says the way I see it, if a game ever feels like a chore, stroke, obligation, stroke, second job, it's probably best to just not play it. That's why I ended up hating Red Dead 2.
00:58:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's a weird example. Captain CZ I think a lot of people will with you until you said that. Wait, what's the grind in Red Dead? Yeah, I'm not too sure. I just know that it's a really big open world. So it takes ages to get anywhere. Is it like what skids or something? Are you a fur trader?
00:59:08
Speaker
Is that what you're grinding? Yeah, that is a little job. I feel like it would be pretty easy to play Red Dead Redemption 2 without doing that. Yeah, that's actually what helped me overcome Far Cry Theater.
Game Mechanics and Unique Experiences
00:59:18
Speaker
I remember I played it when it came out. And I just put it away because I was like, I'm not getting all the locations and all this nonsense. But this time I'm playing it with just story. And I only go off the beaten path if I need an upgrade. So it's like, again, some grinds are in your mind. I'm not sure what you're grinding Red Dead. I haven't played it.
00:59:38
Speaker
Oh, I'm sorry. I missed a comment with the co-fi donation as well. Nick didn't send it to me. Apologies for that. I find that the difference between farming and grinding is time. Farming is a short-term goal that you may not do again while grinding is longer compared directly to farming. You ever farmed a brother? Usually it's the other way.
00:59:59
Speaker
If you want a grindy podcast game, Farming Simulator will do the job pretty well as you go back and forth along the field in your automatic planting device. I'd almost say grind is supposed to be the short-term one, and that's why if it just goes on for too long, it makes me mad. Yeah. Symantec's Symantec's. Yeah. Anyway, Joel Rowe gives five euros and says, I like the grind for better gear more than grinding for RPG stats like in Balding's Gate 3.
01:00:29
Speaker
I also like the sexual grind at Karlak. Oh? Yeah? Is Karlak a sneeze? Fair enough. That's a character, no. A bad grind ruins knives, lap dances and video games. Nice. Yeah, that's the kind of grinding I like. You're nice. Grinding up against another fully clothed model in a video game. I like grinding me axe with people.
01:00:53
Speaker
Uh, will cooling gives two British pounds. It says you've been following the meta grinding to beat Tetris. Huh. I did have some story about some kid actually getting to the last level of Tetris for the first time in history. Yeah. He froze the game. I just ran out of code. Right. Yeah. Cause the famously Pac-Man does that. If you get to level 250 or something, doesn't it like start fading and like start, it's not working. Like it falls apart the further you go in.
01:01:23
Speaker
That's cool. More games should do that. Just lets you push it to the brink. That was actually the mark of a good roguelike in the earlier days. If you could get so strong, it crashes your PC. Yeah, that's good. Risk of rain. Break the whole fucking thing. Yeah, break the whole game. That was the ultimate goal.
01:01:43
Speaker
Ben R gives five US dollars says if the game stops until I do a tedious grind that I'm no longer playing a game I'm doing a reverse job Yeah, but isn't the satisfaction of eventually beating the game all the sweeter for having put work in?
01:02:01
Speaker
It's illustrative. If progress is a straight line, I'm okay with a grind that feels like it goes off to the side and then it comes back in. If it feels like it goes straight to the side and I'm not going to cut back in through, that's not good visually. I keep catching all this thing with like all of these are like in the eye of the beholder because like a grind to one person might be like, it is insane to be watching a TV show while also holding your switch.
01:02:26
Speaker
and leveling up your little digital men in a dungeon. And I'm like, no, I like that. And then other people would be like, oh, I need to do my dailies every morning with my buds in Destiny. And I'm like, that sounds fucking awful. I don't want to talk to my buds every morning. So again, I the beholder. Not in the morning. I have no morning buds. Only evening and nighttime buds. You're not a social dailier, like social smokers.
01:02:49
Speaker
No, I was with the Avengers. You were alone though, Marty. No, I played with some friends and then they stopped playing and I kept playing, which was all the sadder because they were like, no, we've moved on. Some grinds are tolerant if they let you bring someone, you know? Yeah. There should be prison. If you get a prison sentence, you should be able to bring a friend.
01:03:12
Speaker
of moral support. Like a bud, yeah, bring a roommate. Yeah, so we can jump the biggest guy in this bitch. Jacob Alexander Tice gives five dollars and says Yahtzee, your doggo looks like you as a doggo. Never pictured you as a chihuahua.
01:03:35
Speaker
Don't dogs like resemble a lot of people's He always looks bored he's dead fantasy. Yeah, you think coffee would be a good good author a good writer
01:03:49
Speaker
Well, he expresses himself a lot. Throsomosis, yeah. I think he could do it. He was inspired by Wishbone. Like, does he look up to Wishbone? The crime solving dog rider? Is that who Wishbone was? I think Toffee would rather just go to sleep at this point. Yeah. I think he wants to go back in the jacket. I love how sleepy he always looks, like one eye open. All right, Toffee, the internet made me wake you up. For money. I'd say at least 50 bucks don't offer that.
01:04:18
Speaker
Too sweet. You're embarrassing me on the internet. Not in front of my friends. There's people who listen to this. There's people who just listen to this every week. And it's like, what was that? You got to come to youtube.com slash this URL. I don't know. A meal. She'll, the Hanson gives 10 Danish Corona and says now I think, thank you Emil.
01:04:45
Speaker
Thanks for the money anyway. Max KO gives 10 US dollars says what do you guys think of grinds that limit you to only a few times a week? I play FF 14. And when they put down new raids and gear, they limit the amount of currency you can earn each week to get armor.
01:04:58
Speaker
Oh, man. See, I know it's for my own good. Yeah, it's socially responsible, but let me do that. Like, let me get weird with it on me. Like, just just one weekend. Raise the cap a little. It's the purge. The game is lawless. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's also dickheads when it's like you're capped out and then you can pay for more. Come on now.
01:05:22
Speaker
That's like how Nintendo games are always like, hey, stop playing every few hours or you might die somehow. Yeah. Check on the elderly, make sure they're OK. Yeah. And Blizzard gives you offline bonuses to incentivize you to get off and come back. Is Nintendo one of the few companies that has avoided the grind? Well, yeah, I guess you can grind in like in Breath of the Wild.
01:05:51
Speaker
to use the kingdom stuff grind super mario but the speed runs don't sure wait oh no yeah the coins like the mario galaxy is that not a grind
01:06:02
Speaker
No, I mean, usually there's like 120 stars, and that's just the goal of the game. Like coins just give you extra lives. Over collectathon, because every star is acquired a different way. Yeah, the 900 moons, Jomly and Mario Odyssey might be the closest thing. But again, that's like a finite goal of the game, which feels different than like... Yeah, and again, each moon is acquired a different way, so it's not grinding the same thing.
01:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, should have more games with Jeff Goldblum at the end. He's like, what are you doing? It's over. Go home. Go home. Palash T gives $1.99. It says CDPR's grind was just very well done side missions. Fair enough. Put thought into the grind. I like going witchering. Very blue color of him.
01:06:56
Speaker
So I was just, uh, distracted by some correspondence for a second. Uh, where was I?
01:07:08
Speaker
Icedcoacher, yes, who gives $10 to say Muddy. I missed the opportunity to ask this in the last Firelink podcast, but is Aiden Chronicles a game you're looking forward to this year? It's the Suikoden spiritual successor. Yes, you big weeb. Explain about this game you love. The Suikoden, which have nothing to do with Suikoden, there's no watermelons in these games, were a series of
01:07:31
Speaker
Beloved PS1 and beyond, Jeropegis from Konami, and Iodine Chronicles is the sort of bloodstain slash mighty number nine slash ukulele of this where a lot of the original creators
01:07:44
Speaker
crowdfunded a spiritual successor that sort of hones in on the same thing of 108 playable party members you can gather and town building and all that thing all that jazz and it is coming out I believe this spring. Also Konami is doing a Suikoden 1 and 2 HD remasters so it feels like those are almost
01:08:01
Speaker
in harmony together. But yeah, I'm looking forward to it. A lot of times those kind of spiritual successors don't land the ship. Bloodstain never really did it for me. Mighty No. 9 is a disaster. Ukulele, I don't know, same thing. Bomber Cyberfunk, I feel like, gathered the same energy as JetSight Radio, but it was just none of those creators. So I don't know. I'm cautiously optimistic about it, I would say. Speaking of Grind,
01:08:29
Speaker
You'd literally grind on things in that game. That is real grinding, that's beautiful. Venom Mon Killer gives $5, says, I bought Hades just last year and put in 200 some odd runs with around 100 clears and heat level 12 plus heat on all weapons just for the story. Well la-di-da, Venom Mon Killer. What do you want, a medal?
01:08:52
Speaker
I mean, that took a round of applause. That was that was my issue is I beat row beat Hades on the third run. And there was still so much more story. Oh, man. So all that was left for me was to grind narrative. Well, it's got a thing as any better than grinding numbers, I suppose. Hmm. Oh, no.
01:09:13
Speaker
Oh, the games give us $4.99 and says frost. The best bullet heaven game is bullet heaven to made by an indie dev who got his start making flash games like epic battle fantasy 1234 and five. That's funny. I don't think that's an actual bullet heaven though, as we know them now. That was just called bullet heaven. It was a bullet hell. Is there a bullet purgatory?
01:09:41
Speaker
What would you even do in Bullet Purgatory? Is that where all the bullets just stay still and you have to move around them? Yeah, what? Is that super hot? That's Bullet Purgatory. Yeah, I think that's the in-between.
01:09:56
Speaker
I had an idea for a game based around that once where you're like some kind of super fast ninja and first thing that happens is like a bunch of dudes burst in and like fire assault weapons at you for a few seconds and then you go into like super slow-mo, super fast reflexes mode and then it's basically about navigating an organic maze of bullets to kill all the dudes. I like that. I like it. Sounds nice.
01:10:19
Speaker
But anyway. Your 87 gives 20 Danish krona and says just one more turn. That's civilization for you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I never been into that sort of then. Keeps you up on the sun's coming up. Extension cable gives 10 euros says I cleared Hades about 20 times. Where's everyone waving their Hades pain all of a sudden? That's the real good thing. Put it in the art. Wanda beans for the art.
01:10:47
Speaker
Wanted to keep going, but then I remember the sticks levels and then I get put off again. Yeah. Sticks is all right. Well, you ain't going to be in the professional Hades quarter finals. It's fine. I think last year, somebody beat the game on all skulls, highest difficulty. We've given up waiting for Hades to... Yeah, it's done.
01:11:10
Speaker
Race Car Lock gives $5. I like the grind of hardcore racing sims like the R Factor series, Automobilista series, and Assetto Corsa, a series where progress is measured in time. Assetto Corsa is a racing game?
01:11:24
Speaker
I thought it was like a JRPG series that I never played because the Yahtzee's brought that series up before in the grand scheme of the ACs. And I always just assumed it was some, some shit I never played. It's a fairly straight racing game as it goes on. No, I appreciate it.
01:11:43
Speaker
I do appreciate the grind of trying to beat your best time, like in Neon White and racing games like that. And I just had a quick go on Kick Bastards the other day, which had a similar sort of feel.
01:11:59
Speaker
Mm-hmm. But I'll probably be playing more of that on Wednesday. Oh, a tease! Can you imagine? Tease, tease. Uh, Zach, uh, Veer Heller, thank you so much for joining the tip jar. Appreciate it, Zach. Uh, Palasz T gives 1.99 and says, least fave characters in Stardew, I nominate Lewis. I'll probably one of the, like, Bachelorette's mums that you can't seduce.
01:12:25
Speaker
What's the point of having characters you can't shag in that game, especially when they're hot milfs? Yeah. Great. That's a great question. Grandpa? Grandpa Ghost? Poor character.
01:12:39
Speaker
Well, nobody wants to seduce Grandpa Ghost. Is this Grandpa Ghost an actual thing? Yeah, there's a whole thing you inherited the farm from your dead grandpa, and then three years later he's like, I'm checking in on you. How have you done? Oh, but let's not distract from the hot milfs. There's a whole bunch of like married women in that game and you can't use any of them. I hope there's a mod.
01:13:02
Speaker
There's a mod where you... Yeah, I want... basically I want the Mother Daughter Threesome mod. Sure, if they've modded Skyrim to where you can kick the children, I don't know why you can't have your MILF mod. Excuse me? What? Yeah. Because you can't hurt kids in the base Skyrim. So modded is pretty good. Yeah, they just... all damage just bounces off them. Or what I would hope would be obvious reasons.
01:13:32
Speaker
Anyway, Pepper Blood gives 99 euro cents. Thanks, Pepper Blood. Venomon Killer also re-upped their membership. Thank you so much, Venomon Killer is catching Pokemon a grind. I love that, to be honest.
01:13:45
Speaker
Well, yeah, got to catch them all. Well, see, you guys say catching them, but I will literally sit, I'll get the grass or the fire type and I'll sit in the beginning area and I'll just keep on doing that training XP stuff until, you know, I'll just fly right on by. Grind is as much the results as anything else, like grinding an actual knife. You just want to gawk at how sharp it is and you look for things to cut like paper and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah. There's the like grind of also shinies of like one out of every
01:14:15
Speaker
whatever thousand battles, you'll get a shiny Pokemon that you can catch, which are extremely rare. And then Pokemon even like alleviated some of the grind of battles by introducing XP Share, like an item that allows everyone in the party to level up, not just people who participated in the battle, not people, Pokemon, but whatever. Pokemon is actually leveled up.
01:14:39
Speaker
Anyways, well, I got shit tons of these still to read out. You're so good. Matthew C. Snow gives $4.99. Well, it's almost like I'm a professional reader of things. You are. Well, I finished my pickups for my next audio book over the weekend. Matthew C. Snow gives $4.99 US and says for games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Rogue Trader, there's times I roll up my sleeves, put on a podcast and do my clean out inventory stroke level up characters time.
01:15:06
Speaker
That's fun. Self-imposed and inspired. Oh yeah.
01:15:13
Speaker
Raskaly Scramp gives $10. There's a question for Frost. In one of the previous episodes, you talked about a eugenics-style dating sim or something like that. Was it Lakeburg Legacies, and what did you think? Had my eye on it for a bit. That is actually it, yep. That is exactly... Eric's got the game up on screen right now. That is exactly the game that I was talking about, where you are... You're building a city, but to, like, instead of... You, like, you need a baker, so you need to...
01:15:43
Speaker
create a couple, be a matchmaker, and one of them is a baker. You have to play God. Yeah, so you're playing matchmaker is what you're doing, but then it's like, wait, I'm playing God because I am breeding better bakers and all this other stuff. I just played the demo. I don't want to judge it too much, but it was interesting. That's funny. That's a mechanic in Fire Emblem games as well, isn't it? You can match make and dive their offspring, get specific abilities. Yeah, the 3DS versions.
01:16:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's fine when it's like peas and stuff, when it's people, I don't know. But outside of that, yeah, it seemed interesting. At least the demo, I don't know if it's out now. Loki's Wager gives five US dollars. It's nice to have you back, gentlemen. Has there ever been a game where you get to the end and want there to be more grinding? Nothing leaps to mind. But then I'm a story chaser, as I said.
01:16:34
Speaker
Yeah, I can't. Honestly, I can rarely think of a game where I've gotten to the end and been like, this should have been longer. Like if I like a game, I'm like, great. Thank you for providing a great experience with me. Just Dredge in recent memory. Just Dredge. Wondering how replayable Dredge is going to be because I really enjoyed my one playthrough and I've had as of yet no desire to go back.
01:16:56
Speaker
DLC is out. I think a grind should inevitably come to a stop. We've talked about good endings. You know, I don't think it should just be something you do forever. I'll play a hunting games. They don't really have an ending or anything. It's the thing that you're doing. Yeah.
01:17:19
Speaker
Uh, Rayendo gives 25,000 PYGGs, whatever they are, and says Yati, thanks for all the content over the years and Frost, oh Christ, you'd like to forgive my accent here, Cuantos Sigurillos Aldia Necessito para tenor esa vols. It's like Mexican Michael Caine himself, hermit.
01:17:42
Speaker
But I can't say anything else, but I don't know how many you say. Do you smoke a day? I don't. Don't be smoking. It's bad for you. Cause it's cancer or something. Unless you get extra breaks at the coffee shop. Take gummy bears instead. Oh yeah. Forgot about that. Mr. Venom 1998 gives $5. Says my favorite grindy game is Kenshi. It always feels great in that game to start as a total loser to the feared man in the world. I don't even know what Kenshi is.
01:18:12
Speaker
And it's a racing game. No, no, no. It's one of those like immersive sim things. Oh, geez. Yeah, looks like it. I've never heard of it. Spree roaming squad based RPG. Okay. Yeah. Chili head gaming gives five euros is worse grinds are when you have to grind meaningless uninspired side quests just so you can progress main story. Looking at you. Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
01:18:41
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like locking, uh, locking the next step of the journey behind like, well, you got to get to this level or you gotta, you gotta do side quests until the town's ready to open its gates to you. Um, that's, that's always feels like that's when, when padding. Yeah. Got to go around listening to people's bullshit problems. So I don't like, uh, MMOs too much. So okay. I've got the check-ins now.
01:19:09
Speaker
untitled gives 999 us says Yahtzee I know you enjoy your classic British sci fi humorist. Do you have an opinion on Kurt Vonnegut? PS enjoyed the recommendation of the man who was Thursday's. Kurt Vonnegut was slaughterhouse five right? Right. Breakfast champions. I have read slaughterhouse five and I remember liking it. Yeah, Kurt Vonnegut's okay with me. It's great. Big thumb up.
01:19:37
Speaker
Okay, tighto the toe taker gives $2 and says the VR game is called the last clock winder. Oh, we will get it 20 minutes ago. Oh, maybe he rewound the clock and he's actually one of his own little automatons. Think about that. You let them pay to say anything they want.
01:19:58
Speaker
John Connor gives five Canadian dollars, says, more money if adventure is nigh, can't wait for the season three finale after 84 years. Oh, don't be so hyperbolic, John Connor. New episodes coming in February. The last three episodes of the season. Yeah, then we have to shoot straight off and record another bloody season. Apparently you're gonna have to do a level up session as well. It's like doing the laundry, it's the chore that's never actually done.
01:20:23
Speaker
It's true. By the time it's done, there's more laundry to do. Yeah. Wiping your ass. All of a sudden there's more ass to wipe. There you go. Why wipe? Yeah. Why wipe? Well, that's why I have a bee day.
01:20:37
Speaker
When you say B-Day, it sounds like D-Day. Oh, it sounds like D-Day. Boys are landing at Normandy. There's certain pronunciation I am rigid on. I've been leaning more towards yogurt lately, but I'm sticking to B-Day like glue. You don't want to say yogurt anymore. Well, I tend to think of it as yogurt is how you pronounce it if there's an H in it, and yogurt is how you pronounce it if there isn't an H in it.
01:21:05
Speaker
Well, so I was watching Ted Lasso and one of the fellows, the way he would say his, his ending, his name was Jamie. How would you say Jamie? I would say Jamie. Yeah. He, his accent, he was Gemma, like up. He goes upwards. That's like a Scottish accent. No, he was, he was English. I want to say he was a Mank. I'm not sure. Yeah. Jamie. Jamie. Jamie. Jamie.
01:21:32
Speaker
Well, that's just saying Jamie, but with a specific accent. I'm not sure where it was. It was regional, but yeah. Yeah. Joseph Ashby gives five New Zealand dollars and says, Hi, guys, love your work. Would you consider Shadows of Doubt a grindy game? You said that once you know the patterns, it becomes more work a day. I did. I also said that's kind of what I liked about it, become the sort of post-ad grindy work game that feels like it reflects more like what actual private detective work is like.
01:22:00
Speaker
just going down lists of names and calling them all up and seeing if any of them are the one you're looking for. It's good old, good old classic, non glamorous boots on the ground detective work. Yeah, like if it if it feels like work, first check, are you playing one of these post dad games? Because that's kind of the point. Yeah, farming simulator, you know, I feel like work up to the point. Yeah, it's fun.
01:22:26
Speaker
Bag of Dex gears $2 and says used to grind Destiny 1 and 2 then I got better. Well, congratulations on your recovery. Bag of Dex. You just wait till that delivery comes out. Oh god. Layton joined the Green Gang. Thank you so much. Layton and raffle gifted a second one second one membership over in YouTube. Thank you so much, fellas.
01:22:46
Speaker
Thank you very much. And Taito the toe taker comes back with $5 and says I found the robot automation game. It's the last clock winder. I hate unanswered mysteries. I appreciate you Taito the toe taker because I did not know that thank you. I remember that like we already knew the title was at the time you posted your first super chat. It was at the end of the video Eric played we all saw it. What was the name of that one automaton game? The last clock winder.
01:23:14
Speaker
Near automata, I think. It's clocky ducky. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hickory dickory clock. It should have been called. Oh, no. It's not the worst thing. You're talking about your wingus. Leighton 591 gives $5 and says realize I've been member for two months on second with live never here for some reason.
01:23:37
Speaker
weird anime emoji thing. I'm glad more money I pay for subs goes to you guys.
01:23:45
Speaker
We like that too. Make sure you're subscribed to both channels because you get some of the live things here, but most of it's going to be over there, including Yahtzee Tries, including Hidden Gems 2.0 tonight at 6pm. Oh boy. Yeah, we recently updated the policy on that. So Yahtzee Tries, the live stream goes out on Second Wind Live channel, but the edited highlights video with mini reviews goes out here on the main channel. All right. Sounds great to me.
01:24:16
Speaker
Uh, Humane Shield gives $1.99 and says, the book Dune is dense grind. Some people like it. I heard that about, um, what was it? The magic circle? No. What's that? Prime thing? Wheel of fantasy. Wheel of Time? That's the one. Wheel of Fortune?
01:24:37
Speaker
Well, unfortunately, it's got a grind, dude. It has no ending. Yeah. Well, it's been going on for who knows how fucking long. You know, poor Vanoite. Ivar gives 100 Norwegian Corona and says, I grinded. That always sounds wrong to me, I would say. Yeah, that also sounds wrong. I don't think there's any way you can see it where it sounds right. I had a grind. I had a grind.
01:25:06
Speaker
You know, the other thing is that when mice, when you're talking about computer mice, saying mice just sounds wrong, but then saying mouses sounds wrong as well. Yeah. Anyway, I grinded 4,000 plus hours of Destiny 2. At the beginning, it was fun to play while I was grinding. After several game updates and content blended together, the playing stopped and it only became a grind. Was it after 4,000 hours or did it become a grind after the first 1,000 and you had to make sure with the extra 3,000?
01:25:34
Speaker
That's a crazy amount of hours. That's so many hours. It's like drugs, right? Drugs are a grind, aren't they? You always chase the eye until eventually you're like, I'm too in, I'm too, no content updates. This is enough. Some drugs will grind with others. No content updates.
01:25:51
Speaker
Uh, good luck 13, gears $10, and says, I've played Pokémon for years and found a handful of shinier but only while replaying Soul Silver did I find Pokerus, a temporary condition that doubles a Pokémon stat.
01:26:04
Speaker
Oh god, I think I have to lose my mind. Uh, over at our launch day stream of Pokemon Legends Arceus, Nick caught a shiny and just was ambivalent to it. And like me and the chat were just like losing our shit. Cause we're like, this is like a one in 20,000 thing that you just did. Like this is incredibly impressive, Nick.
01:26:21
Speaker
He did it within the first, like, hour. Well done, Nick. So good. Is it the free one? I hate when games do that. Ooh. They give you the mandatory rare one. Yeah. How rare can it be? Everyone gets it. First taste is free. Yeah.
01:26:39
Speaker
Lewis gives five British pounds and says, I got a dressing gown for Christmas and wearing it every day. Yahtzee, as a gamer, do have tech for pooping easily in it. It's a cold experience. We call them techs, it's like it's speed running or something. Yeah, I got some good pooing in a bathrobe strats. Basically, I just hike it up at the back and drape it over my knees. Yeah, wear no underwear makes it easier.
01:27:04
Speaker
Well, that's
Game Masterpieces Discussion
01:27:05
Speaker
for the serious speed runner. That's like the any% run. Yeah, no glitch. Nothing. 100%. Of course, I should hope there's no glitches. Any% means any% Marty, anything could go further. Yeah, I think the speed run for any% is just do it on the floor. Just where you are right there. That one's about to bring up don't shit your pants. That two takes adventure game.
01:27:32
Speaker
Because the speed run for that was just shit on the floor. Sure. Oh, OK. Hey, but you didn't shit your pants, so think about that. Yeah, the game absolutely lampshades that. Wait, next adventure, like Zork? It's like a joke, like text me to play in a browser. I think it's by the guys who've made Rogue Legacy.
01:27:55
Speaker
But yeah, it's just a very short text adventure where you have to go to the toilet in a limited number of turns without shitting your pants. And the meta game is like there's a bunch of different achievements to find. You have to find all the different ways to beat the game. And one of the ways to beat the game is to take your pants off and shit on the floor. What is it? Yeah, if you go to a meeting, how about it? Look, this is like a diary time loop game. We gotta figure out
01:28:26
Speaker
Basically, yeah. Because then you immediately reload and then you have to, it's like Slay the Princess almost, you've got to find, now we have to not shit our pants in a subtly different way to unlock a different ending.
01:28:39
Speaker
That's a fun grind. Alternate endings? Sure. Yeah. Isn't that near? Near has a lot of them. One for every letter of the alphabet. How long's the base game? You can get one ending by removing. If you go into your inventory, you have an operating system chip and you're equipped. And if you unequip it, you die and you get one of the endings. Yeah. So not all the endings are going through the whole game.
01:29:06
Speaker
Okay, fun. Afix gives $10 and says, in my opinion, there are only two masterpieces in the last decade. Death Stranding and Red Dead Redemption 2. Additions, stroke thoughts. You're wrong, Afix. In the last decade, Tetris is pretty fucking banger.
01:29:26
Speaker
just watch the movie. I would say I thought the movie was nice. I loved both those games. I would say even that year had an extra one with Outer Wilds, the aforementioned Outer Wilds. There's no other good games every year.
01:29:40
Speaker
Masterpiece in the eye of the beholder. What hell would you die on as far as a masterpiece goes? Portal. Portal is a masterpiece. That was before 2013 though. Oh, that's right. Last decade. Undertale? No, wait, that's 2011 as well, isn't it? Yeah, that's when games stop. That's when games stop being good. Return of the Obra Dinn. Return of the Obra Dinn is a masterpiece. That's clean. That's one. Yeah, I would say Breath of the Wild.
01:30:06
Speaker
I would say that's training Outer Wilds, personally. So your Return of the Obedin, I'll take Undertale, because it was 2015. I would say the implication of Masterpiece is that it comes from an auteur, because it's like the work created by an artist that shows that that person is a master. We've talked about that before, I disagree with that. Well, let's agree to disagree and move on. We're so close to being done. I would like you, you just had to bring out those big guns. We would have been out if you just wouldn't have brought the biggies out.
01:30:34
Speaker
Eric Weihart, our cheeky, cheeky producer, gives 20 ARS dollars to pipe in that, are we still talking about The Last Clockwinder? That was the name of it. That game, the other one on screen right now. Yeah, I'd entirely forgotten in the last 12 seconds. That was the name of it. CC gives 99 cents and nothing else, not even a comment. What a loser.
01:31:03
Speaker
Just be nice. This is how we get to the finish line by being nice. That's couch change right there. He didn't pay me enough to be nice. If it's a dark blue super chat, they're taking the piss. That's discrimination. Anyway, here's a much nicer orange super chat from Citrus who gives 140 Zara dollars and says petition to make the past tense of grind ground.
01:31:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, fine. Let's just standardize that from now on. It's like hanging hung, yeah. Let's add that to the style guide. Sure. Ground. Galdon Yetich gives $2 and says progression is tolerable as long as I'm having fun. I say I've got a problem with using humans as the litmus test because they're so different.
01:31:53
Speaker
Uh, Wolfie in you gives a hundred another hundred and forty Zarrad dollars. Maybe if there's a tax break, if you give exactly a hundred and forty Zarras and says, I see ground and I raise big grinded it. That's going to take off. Big round. I think it needs another hard constant in the end. I grunted for 4,000 hours now.
01:32:21
Speaker
Well, I think, well, if you're doing that on the toilet, then I think you should probably see a doctor. Yeah, I'm lucky with the achievement. Yeah. And then dig it to give it gives five British pounds and says common misconception. It's the last clock winders monster. That's a good goof.
01:32:47
Speaker
That's good. What a jolly goof to end on. Oh, well, it would be if there hadn't been another one. Right after that. Centurion Zen gives $2 and says tanks in games, they should be better, right? Are you working for that world of tanks, people? Are you parking a big tank? What was the last time you guys played a tank in a game?
01:33:09
Speaker
Uh, good question. I can't remember. There certainly haven't been very many tank-centric games besides World of Tanks. Some people built tanks in Tears of the Kingdom. I was never smart enough to do that, but I've seen some cool games. Oh, yeah. Yeah, also started villages. I mainly just built, like, gliders in Tears of the Kingdom. Yeah. And then I mainly just built automatons with huge, with just huge donks. Because the total number of tanks is they're not terribly maneuverable.
01:33:34
Speaker
No, the way most games are designed. The cows of war. Yeah, no, probably battlefield. Been a long time, like 10 years since I've been in a tank. Yeah, I recommend Casey mentioned, I was all tank, I didn't like that tank, get that thing out here. I was more of an armored car. All right, what is going on? I don't know. I'm gonna say it's not a real tank if it's not on Caterpillar tracks.
01:34:00
Speaker
Not all of them are on those. Hashtag not all tanks. Tell me I'm wrong. Not all tanks. You're wrong. What is the official definition of a tank? What does it separate armored car from tank? Oh no, is tank an acronym? Like ATM machine? No, I don't think so. I think so. Oh yeah, armored core. Are any of those things tanks if you put treads on those boys? There you go. No, they're mechas. Damn. They're mechas, surely.
01:34:29
Speaker
Well, why don't we leave this debate to the comments in their spare time so we can piss off and get on with our days? Yeah, because I googled
Podcast Wrap-up and Future Events
01:34:36
Speaker
tank and it gave me a water tank. That's what it ends on. It's time to wrap it up.
01:34:41
Speaker
Well, thanks for listening to the windbreakers podcast. We're all happy to be starting a big new year on second wind and we were always gratified to see the reactions and the super jets from you guys. You're the reason we do it week in week out. You're make it worth it. Well, most of you. Yeah, most of you besides the ones with the fucking couch change super jets. Okay, time. Anyway,
01:35:09
Speaker
I'm Yahtzee Croshaw, you can see me later this week on Fully Ramblamatic. I got a new one of those coming out. And I think I've got a new semi ramblamatic this week as well on Thursday. And on Wednesday, I'll be streaming game on Yahtzee tries. Oh, and later this week, I think, did we agree we were doing it Thursday or Friday? The the first QA stream, in which I bug someone into playing Starstruck Vagabond and watch them play it and take notes.
01:35:39
Speaker
Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, we'll figure that out. We should just talk about that in the meeting this morning. Big exclusive exposure of Starstruck Vagabond this week. That'll be either Thursday or Friday morning around this time, I think. Definitely. And then we get to play Marty's game and we just keep rotating. Yeah. What's your game, Marty? It's called, I just made 24 hours without crying.
01:36:02
Speaker
That's good. Yeah. That's a title that does sound like a title that you'd give like a game on itch.io or something. Yep. I'm working on one called the last clock winder. I'm not sure what it's going to be, but I like the title. Kyrail at 007 says tank a heavy armored fighting vehicle carrying guns and moving on a continuous articulated metal track. Eat it. Yeah. Definitions evolve. Words change. Jazz.
01:36:32
Speaker
I mean, the definition of dictionary is that these words are made up. Well, I've plugged all my stuff. You two plug your stuff. Marty, you plug first.
01:36:42
Speaker
uh, later today, uh, 6 PM central go to the aforementioned, uh, second wind live channel. And you can hang out with Casey, Jesse, and Jess as they play grand blue fantasy versus colon rising is a fighting game in the grand blue universe. It's made by arc system works who make a guilty gear games, which are beloved fighting games. See if that is a hidden J or not.
01:37:07
Speaker
versus colon rising what a name yeah there's a lot there's a lot going on there and then we're never sure tomorrow something rising in my colon oh is it gonna be oh don't shoot your pants simulator oh no oh no uh yeah and then we'll have streams all week nick will be back uh tomorrow around three p.m central for
01:37:25
Speaker
uh, kicking off the back log. Uh, we have, yeah, streams all day. And then Sunday, uh, starting at 10 AM central, a big day of streaming Nick's next persona punishment stream all day. Yeah. What about you for us?
01:37:39
Speaker
Oh yeah, I probably should have gone because I have nothing new as this is the week of making it all for next week. So you have that to look forward to. Well, what did you put out last week that people might not have seen yet? Last week I pulled out an old cold take talking about the preservation paradox. Isn't it just weird now? These games don't last as well as the old plastic.
01:38:02
Speaker
Mmm. Funny that. I swapped to digital for a reason. Oh well. Be sure to check that out. All right. Well, I got to go walk the dog and have lunch and then play my review copy of the new Prince of Persia game that I've got because I'm connected and great. Nick, I'm coming for you. And we're late. Well, I'm connected and great because I'm connected to you guys who get the games. As you be connected. Ah, walk, walk, walk. Bye everyone. Bye.
01:38:49
Speaker
you