Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Oddly Coded Podcast where, oh shit, I don't have an intro, where the only thing that's oversaturated here is my thick fucking cheeks.
Speaker: And speaking of which, today we're going to be talking primarily about oversaturated game markets.
Speaker: Just markets that we think like a lot of games have been made for, maybe sometimes too many games.
Speaker: We're going to be talking about what games did it the best, what games maybe did it the worst for each of those types of markets or genres.
Speaker: But before we do that, we've got a couple of things that we have to do.
Speaker: Some housekeeping, if you will.
Speaker: First of all, I'd like to introduce my co-hosts here.
Speaker: We've got Dan.
Speaker: Say hello.
Speaker: It's me!
Speaker: I'm in a new space, my dudes.
Speaker: You are in a new space.
Speaker: So me and my girlfriend, she got her own office space out in the sunroom that we now have, which is nice.
Speaker: And so that has left this entire space for me to use in any way that I see fit.
Speaker: So this is what we're going with for now.
Speaker: We're very happy for you.
Speaker: I want to show off party time later on.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Sounds good.
Speaker: And also I'm joined by Lyle.
Speaker: Hello, Lyle.
Speaker: Hi, hello, that's me.
Speaker: I do things.
Speaker: You sure do, and you're going to do more stuff today, primarily talk, I would hope, I would imagine.
Speaker: And I'm Steej.
Speaker: Hi, I haven't changed much since the last time we saw each other.
Speaker: Maybe an inch taller.
Speaker: Uh, doubtful.
Speaker: Uh, so the commenter of the week is the next thing.
Speaker: Uh, yeah, I was going to say, and it's shorter if anything else.
Speaker: Uh, this week's commenter of the week is going to be coming from, uh, the, not the last video or the video before that, but the video before that, um,
Speaker: From the first video that we did for who would win.
Speaker: This one comes to us from Master Megabyte.
Speaker: Who says, regarding our argument about Soldier 76 versus Kirby.
Speaker: He says, think about it like this.
Speaker: If Soldier 76 is shooting, what if Kirby inhales the bullets?
Speaker: Kirby can become a bullet bill and impale Soldier 76.
Speaker: Done.
Speaker: Would he become a bullet bill or a bonsai bill?
Speaker: I don't know, and this isn't a Who Would Win episode, so we're not gonna go too far into it.
Speaker: Thank you, Master Megabyte, for being a consistent viewer and commenter on the YouTube videos.
Speaker: We appreciate you.
Speaker: And moving right along, since Lyle and I weren't here last time, last time it was only Dan and Matt.
Speaker: Great episode, by the way.
Speaker: Thanks, dude.
Speaker: Very good.
Speaker: Speaking of which, as you can see, Matt isn't here this time.
Speaker: It was his turn to be banished into the void.
Speaker: I'm sure he'll be back at some point.
Speaker: I wanted to... I did a little bit of research.
Speaker: You guys were looking at your Steam backlogs and trying to calculate how expensive your Steam backlogs were.
Speaker: And I don't know if you guys actually did every single thing and came up with a grand total or not, or you were just going off of what you had mentioned in the stream.
Speaker: But I actually did go through at least my Steam backlog.
Speaker: Like, you know, not anything else, just Steam.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Went back through everything, looked at the actual prices I paid for everything.
Speaker: Because I get most of my Steam stuff on sale, right?
Speaker: I usually wait for deals.
Speaker: My total Steam backlog is $463.79.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: which I believe is about $100 more than Dan's.
Speaker: Wait, actually not $100.
Speaker: Yours was about $400.
Speaker: So about $60 more.
Speaker: About $60 more.
Speaker: Hey, I'll take that.
Speaker: That's like one AAA game.
Speaker: So that's really not that much if you think about it.
Speaker: That's pretty good, depending on if it was a gift.
Speaker: So the moral of the story is I need to play some fucking video games.
Speaker: Let's do a series where you start from A to Z.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: That's already been done.
Speaker: Man, that shit sounds like so much fun, though.
Speaker: I don't give a fuck if it's already been done.
Speaker: It doesn't mean you have to finish the games, because if you play it and you end up not vibing it, just get rid of it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I actually have tried in the past couple of months to pick up a game here or there that I haven't played yet from my Steam library.
Speaker: And one of the ones that I picked up very recently was Tunic.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which I think I told you about.
Speaker: For those of you who don't know, it is an indie title that is very much inspired by old Legend of Zelda games.
Speaker: But it's also kind of a Souls-like in its difficulty.
Speaker: It's so weird.
Speaker: but it's also adorable because you're playing as a little Fox dude.
Speaker: That's in like a green tunic, like link.
Speaker: Um, and, uh, and the art style was very kind of retro.
Speaker: We very cool.
Speaker: It is three dimensional.
Speaker: It's like, um, what do you call it?
Speaker: I would say it's more isometric 3d isometric.
Speaker: That's what I was looking for.
Speaker: Cause the camera's fixed.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's isometric 3d.
Speaker: Um, kind of like, you know, Hades or whatever, but, uh, you got to play tunic.
Speaker: Yeah, man, I got to play it.
Speaker: And, uh,
Speaker: It was on Xbox Game Pass.
Speaker: And I have Game Pass, and so I was looking through that library.
Speaker: It might not have been my Steam library.
Speaker: I need to get in here and actually play some of these fucking games, because I have some of them.
Speaker: Some of these, like, I've booted up maybe once.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And like we were saying in the episode, it was just like a lot of it was like, okay, I'm getting this to record it.
Speaker: And then I never fucking filmed it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: You and Matt talked about that a little bit last time where it was just like, how many games did you get?
Speaker: Because you're just like, oh, I could stream this.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: And then like, that was such a horrible thing for me back whenever I streamed.
Speaker: I was like, I don't want to play this because I could stream it where I'm just like, right there.
Speaker: Now,
Speaker: Man, no, I'm just going to play the games.
Speaker: I'm just going to enjoy it.
Speaker: I don't care.
Speaker: Maybe someday I'll go back to streaming, but if and when I do, I'll just stream whatever I have.
Speaker: Or, yeah, Hades for the 130th time.
Speaker: Spin that fucking wheel, dude.
Speaker: Yeah!
Speaker: Okay, well, enough about that, because that's old news.
Speaker: I just wanted to bring that up because I was interested in my own sins.
Speaker: So, let's move on to today's topic.
Speaker: Today, we are going to be talking about...
Speaker: oversaturated game genres.
Speaker: There are quite a few of them.
Speaker: And just because something's oversaturated doesn't mean that they have all the games are bad necessarily.
Speaker: It's just that you see one game do something really, really, really right.
Speaker: And then you see a bunch of other games try to capitalize on that.
Speaker: And some of them are great.
Speaker: Some of them are not so great.
Speaker: It's a timing thing, really.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah, that has something.
Speaker: We can talk about that.
Speaker: That has something to do with it.
Speaker: So instead of me rambling on, because I've already talked for a little while, I actually presented some questions to Lyo and Dan here before the stream so that they had some time to come up with some interesting topics or interesting points.
Speaker: And so I think this time we'll start with Dan, because you said you had some good stuff for this.
Speaker: Yes, I do.
Speaker: You don't sound so sure.
Speaker: Well, I had started to get some good ideas for this and then reality kicked in.
Speaker: Oh yeah, I'm at work and I shouldn't be doing this.
Speaker: Okay, well, is there a specific... Whenever I say, like, oh my god, this game genre is so oversaturated, what's, like, the first thing that comes to mind for you?
Speaker: Open world games.
Speaker: Yes!
Speaker: Bro, true.
Speaker: Yes!
Speaker: Oh my god.
Speaker: Like, in every fucking sense of the word, I feel like the...
Speaker: Lyle is now exploring his open world.
Speaker: No, no, no, no, you're good, go on.
Speaker: This man saw something shiny up a cliff and he's just like, if I run fast enough, I can get up there.
Speaker: One of my Yotsubas knocked over and I didn't hear it.
Speaker: Oh, fuck.
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: That's terrible.
Speaker: Anyway, Dan, what were you saying about open world games?
Speaker: If only you didn't keep them up on a top shelf.
Speaker: Look, she... Okay.
Speaker: Yeah, you're chilling.
Speaker: It's okay, buddy.
Speaker: You fix your stuff.
Speaker: We're chilling.
Speaker: Alright.
Speaker: So, what was I saying?
Speaker: You were saying about open world games.
Speaker: Oversaturated.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Okay, so...
Speaker: Whenever you think of an open world game, the first genre of that entire thing would be something like RPG.
Speaker: So, in my case, it is Elder Scrolls.
Speaker: Fucking Fallout.
Speaker: The Bethesda Pantheon out this way, right?
Speaker: Basically every Bethesda game, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Every single one.
Speaker: Starfield for like 20 minutes.
Speaker: Uh...
Speaker: Let's see.
Speaker: And then for other people, totally not like myself, action-oriented open-world games, you've got Spider-Man, Spider-Man Miles Morales and Spider-Man 2 on the PS5.
Speaker: Jesus, I sound like I'm doing an ad for Sony.
Speaker: What's wrong with me?
Speaker: Jesus Christ.
Speaker: You are a walking Sony ad.
Speaker: Who are you kidding?
Speaker: Yeah, sure, sure.
Speaker: Whatever.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: But I bring peace among the consoles, okay?
Speaker: Don't forget... As you have your colors in the background for blue for Sony, green for Xbox.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Look at that.
Speaker: Look at that piece.
Speaker: But I mean, then there's also... There's also Breath of the Wild.
Speaker: So, okay.
Speaker: If I may interject on this open word.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: Surprise, surprise.
Speaker: In Lyle's personal opinion...
Speaker: The open world is predominantly a concept.
Speaker: It's not necessarily a genre.
Speaker: Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That's a little nitpicky, but that's... No, no, no, you're right.
Speaker: You're absolutely right.
Speaker: I absolutely think that it's a concept that is overused, and it's everywhere.
Speaker: However... It falls into the category of a trope in some situations.
Speaker: I mean, it's absolutely true, though.
Speaker: Because...
Speaker: you have games and franchises that want to become relevant again or have a resurgence.
Speaker: You have companies like Ubisoft that, you know, for a while they have like two or three Assassin's Creed games that like, oh, we're going to capitulate, we're going to capitalize on this open world concept.
Speaker: And they end up shying away from what made their games great to begin with.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Like, which was the actual gameplay, not the fact that you could go to this mountain that you see 300 miles away.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then you have...
Speaker: You have older racing games that tried to capitalize on this as well.
Speaker: So you have like, um, wow, fuck.
Speaker: It wasn't burnout three.
Speaker: It was burnout paradise, burnout, paradise is dope.
Speaker: Burnout paradise.
Speaker: It's a fun game because it uses the fun game mechanics of the previous non open world racing games in an open world setting, which I think opened up the map.
Speaker: It opened the map, but it made it unfun.
Speaker: It made it, I felt like I was playing grand theft auto.
Speaker: Like I just couldn't get out of the car.
Speaker: It was horrible.
Speaker: But a lot of people think that open world is new to Zelda specifically, and I'm the Zelda guy, so people are thinking that Breath of the Wild really brought open world into the fray, when in actuality, the original 1986 Legend of Zelda was an open world game in and of itself.
Speaker: You could go to dungeons out of order.
Speaker: You could explore any part of the map, I would say for the most part, maybe at least 60% of the map.
Speaker: You were...
Speaker: given little to no exposition in the beginning of Breath of the Wild, you were given little to no exposition in the beginning.
Speaker: You met up with the old man who was the king of Hyrule in Breath of the Wild in the beginning.
Speaker: You walked into a cave and saw an old man who gave you your first sword and said, hey, it's dangerous to go alone.
Speaker: Take this.
Speaker: And that was it.
Speaker: And then you were left to your own devices in both the older game and the newer game.
Speaker: So when people complain saying that linearity is lost in games, it's not because...
Speaker: the game itself has inherently become bad.
Speaker: It's because the company wants to try to take a popular and trendy concept and they don't do anything with it.
Speaker: It's, it sucks because they don't apply it to what they've already learned that.
Speaker: And they don't build the world around the concepts that they come up with for the gameplay.
Speaker: So like,
Speaker: I made the mistake back in 2017 when Breath of the Wild first came out with Horizon Zero Dawn.
Speaker: I played Horizon Zero Dawn immediately after Breath of the Wild.
Speaker: Breath of the Wild has an amazing open world concept where you can literally climb 98% of anything you find.
Speaker: I went from playing Breath of the Wild to playing Horizon Zero Dawn.
Speaker: Horizon Zero Dawn has this beautiful open world, very little inside of it to do,
Speaker: and you can only climb what has like yellow spray paint on it.
Speaker: So like if a cliffside, if your objective is on top of this cliffside and it doesn't have any of those yellow spray painted handholds, you can't climb that cliffside to get to where you need to be.
Speaker: You have to find the linear path.
Speaker: To me, that's not letting the player explore this open world.
Speaker: That's saying, hey, you have this world with a specific way to do things.
Speaker: You're being taken...
Speaker: for to quote someone else somewhere else with their content, you're being taken on a tour.
Speaker: Like you're not, you're not being allowed to explore it yourself.
Speaker: Um, and yeah, so open world is very, it's still, it's still a trendy thing.
Speaker: That's kind of dying off, which I'm, I'm grateful for companies.
Speaker: They're starting to realize that the linearity and the, the, the inherent fun from the gameplay needs to come back.
Speaker: Um, but they're still trying to keep that open world aspect in hopes that the popularity
Speaker: grips the player and keeps the player in there.
Speaker: The thing about open world is that whenever it first kind of started coming around, and I'm sure that y'all saw this, most levels in a game where you're in a part of a map or your specific areas of shit, the first thing that I can think of is Silent Hill.
Speaker: Just as off the top of my head.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: There's an entire level in it where you're just a dude walking through either rain or snow or something.
Speaker: Yeah, fog, something.
Speaker: Ton of particles everywhere you can barely see and you're just walking.
Speaker: Open world concept in my head is just lifting the fog after a while and there's also shit this way that you hadn't seen before.
Speaker: If that makes sense.
Speaker: You're only going in a straight line in this one level, but the concept that I at least remember and how it was cool.
Speaker: So you're saying, what are you saying was like, for lack of a better way to put it, inherently good or bad about what they did?
Speaker: I personally prefer, just as another example, the open world idea of Uncharted 4 specifically.
Speaker: Because as the Uncharted series got longer and longer with other games, they kind of improved upon each, every one, up until Uncharted 4, where it was just like from here all the way to up to here, because it was a launch title for the PS4, right?
Speaker: Yeah, I never played the fourth one.
Speaker: I only played it for three.
Speaker: For its time, it was fucking beautiful.
Speaker: Can I ask a question?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Can I ask a question?
Speaker: So, is what you're saying that your idea of a really fun, engaging open world is one where there is linearity in maybe the main story, but in that level or in that area, you can branch off and go do other things and just kind of eventually make your way back to the main story?
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Oh, like Breath of the Wild.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that's quite a few open world games.
Speaker: I mean, that's Skyrim, basically.
Speaker: I mean, you know.
Speaker: If a game doesn't allow me to traverse from point A to point B without putting in like a loading screen or a cutscene, that's what I would consider to be like a modern open world like the Elder Scrolls.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So like a part of the map or part of something that can be explored
Speaker: isn't inherently blocked or locked by accomplishing something else in the world by a linear path.
Speaker: Like you could literally do anything, right?
Speaker: And then eventually, once there's nothing else to do, go to the other end of the straight line level.
Speaker: Gotcha.
Speaker: And you'll be meted with the cutscene of Nathan being like, oh god, oh crap, what do we do?
Speaker: Climbs and breaks shit.
Speaker: And then he flips a coin and that's the end.
Speaker: Roll credits.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's all the Uncharted games.
Speaker: So then with Spider-Man, though, you can't do certain things unless you unlock certain upgrades.
Speaker: So that kind of like for, for certain side, for certain side quests.
Speaker: Well, if it's in Spider-Man two, then yes.
Speaker: I haven't, I'm not, I've decided I'm not going to play Spider-Man two.
Speaker: And that's okay.
Speaker: Um, but at least with Spider-Man one and Miles Morales, the, the open world, like you could pretty much go anywhere, but it did get to a point where like, you can't do this side quest yet.
Speaker: You haven't unlocked this power up because it gets unlocked if by playing the story missions.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So like that, that kind of bothers me.
Speaker: Cause it's like, I don't,
Speaker: I just got burned out on doing like five consecutive story missions.
Speaker: Like, let me do some side stuff.
Speaker: But the only side stuff I can do right now requires me to unlock a power up unlocked through the story.
Speaker: I get that.
Speaker: It's like, all right, well, now, now I'm going to turn the game off and play something else because I have this big old open world, but nothing to fucking do in it.
Speaker: What, um, this man said, pfft.
Speaker: Don't get me wrong.
Speaker: Like, I love I love those Spider-Man games.
Speaker: I like.
Speaker: So I've said it multiple times.
Speaker: I've platinum both Spider-Man one and Miles Morales.
Speaker: Like those games are phenomenal.
Speaker: Those are just a couple.
Speaker: Nitpicks, I guess, of of the open world concept that they went with and the direction they went with that I just wasn't a fan of.
Speaker: So are you saying that... I just want to make sure I understand you.
Speaker: Are you saying that you would prefer every single area of an open world be accessible from the beginning?
Speaker: Or are you saying that you would prefer that there be some places that are blocked off just based upon progression?
Speaker: Me or Dan?
Speaker: It really depends.
Speaker: Me, I would be, like, I love the way that Breath of the Wild handled it.
Speaker: I can go, like, yes, it does have a little bit of restriction because it has the Great Plateau, which it teaches you the tutorial.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That you can do whatever you want once you get past the Great Plateau.
Speaker: But that's such a minuscule part of the game that it was negligible.
Speaker: But as soon as you left the Great Plateau, you'll get your shit rocked, but you can absolutely dive right into Hyrule Castle and go fight Ganon right off the bat.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: That encourages exploration.
Speaker: That encourages the player to learn by doing themself without the game saying that I have to do certain things.
Speaker: And even from a smaller... Even from a more minor standpoint than going straight to the final boss, like, if you find yourself going to a place that either has harder enemies or maybe is inaccessible due to, like, the temperature, because they have, like, the temperature system in there, there are multiple ways...
Speaker: to figure out how to deal with that.
Speaker: Like, you can, all you have to do is figure out, like, be inventive.
Speaker: Figure out a way to deal with that, whether it's finding a certain recipe that'll, like, lower or raise your body temperature, whether it's finding a certain kind of clothes, whether it's... Picking up a stick, lighting it on fire, and carrying it with you, because that helps you in the cold.
Speaker: I didn't even know that.
Speaker: Yeah, like, if you pick up a fucking... Which makes sense.
Speaker: You find, like, a pot lid.
Speaker: You find a pot lid, which is an actual item on the ground, which is a very early game, like, low durability shield.
Speaker: You could literally walk through, like, a campfire.
Speaker: It'll catch fire.
Speaker: you can hold the shield out, it's still on fire, and you can traverse a colder region because you have that fire on you or near you, your body temperature is going to be fine for as long as that shield stays a shield.
Speaker: It will eventually break because of the weapon durability, but it is a viable solution.
Speaker: That's the beauty of the encouragement that Nintendo gives you when it comes to problem solving in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
Speaker: So, in order – I want to direct this conversation a little bit.
Speaker: In order to kind of fully encompass at least this genre, the whole open world games – because, like you said, it's less of a genre and more of a – Game design concept.
Speaker: Yeah, game design concept.
Speaker: But it is one that was jumped on.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: And so what –
Speaker: So obviously we had Bethesda games, but they had already been doing it for a while.
Speaker: I don't think Bethesda games necessarily like started that.
Speaker: I mean, they might've started the trend, but they didn't make it like, Oh man.
Speaker: Like at what point did everybody start doing it?
Speaker: Was it after, I think it was after breath of the wild.
Speaker: I noticed an uptick in companies being like this next game is going to be a completely open world.
Speaker: And it was just like, Oh, okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: There's a specific series of a couple of years that I can fully see that starting off.
Speaker: Because if you'll notice, just from the games that I can list off the top of my head, you start all the way out in 2006 with Elder Scrolls Oblivion.
Speaker: Sure, yeah.
Speaker: 2002, Morrowind, whatever.
Speaker: You go from 2006 all the way up to 2015-ish.
Speaker: So this over here starts with Oblivion.
Speaker: There's like so many of these games that just started hopping on the bandwagon and making it a bigger bandwagon that then can get exploited down the line.
Speaker: But it starts with Oblivion, ends with The Witcher 3.
Speaker: at least in my head and then would that include Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2 the top down ones for PlayStation no no those were those were 90s games 90s but they were also open world those I mean those are kind of like rarities in my opinion just like whenever you whenever you think of the games of that era yeah no you're right you're right because it wasn't like I mean
Speaker: I do vaguely remember Grand Theft Auto being a big deal, predominantly because of the subject matter, but for Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2, it wasn't as grotesque because it wasn't a 3D game.
Speaker: Grand Theft Auto 3 is when they started the third person behind the shoulder.
Speaker: And now you can actually see you fucking... The GTA that everybody's used to nowadays.
Speaker: It was definitely more top-down arcade style, but it was still open world.
Speaker: You're still...
Speaker: going wherever you want, doing whatever you want.
Speaker: Um, and that was really technically impressive for what it was like.
Speaker: And that's, that's what I remember it being hailed for back then.
Speaker: Um, because it was a big deal that like people were like, there are no levels.
Speaker: This is, th is is kind of odd.
Speaker: It's just all one big level.
Speaker: Like what?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was very much like, okay, what, what do I do?
Speaker: Uh, and, and the games came out and people were extremely impressed with what Rockstar did.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: Now, sorry, to go along with what we're saying, whether or not that notoriety bled over into promoting or being derivative from something to create something that did have the open world notoriety, who's to say?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, is there a, oh, go ahead, Dan.
Speaker: I'm sorry.
Speaker: There's just definitely like major influences from like what we see now as the open world concept, because it's kind of been muddied over the past couple of years.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: At least in my opinion.
Speaker: Well, to get on, to get on that train of thought a little bit.
Speaker: What are some games with the open world concept that have not gotten it quite right?
Speaker: Because we know the major successes.
Speaker: You've got Skyrim.
Speaker: You've got Breath of the Wild.
Speaker: You've got The Witcher 3, I would say, is a pretty good one.
Speaker: As far as racing games go, the crew is the best one to ever do it.
Speaker: Okay, but what about the worst?
Speaker: Oh, the worst?
Speaker: Yeah, what are like... So, I mentioned it earlier.
Speaker: This is going to sound blasphemy to any player.
Speaker: PlayStation people.
Speaker: Oh no!
Speaker: Alright, everyone duck and cover!
Speaker: Hit the radioactive nuke bomb button, here comes the hot take.
Speaker: No, just the Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, like, phenomenal series.
Speaker: Beautiful story, great games.
Speaker: They just don't really do much with their open worlds.
Speaker: The side quests, which are the meat and bones of the first game, were extremely bland and it made the overworld feel very empty.
Speaker: And just like what I was saying with the whole climbing mechanic, which is a whole other gaming trope, like having something highlighted in the world to be interactable, that's a whole other can of worms.
Speaker: But not being able to climb a very clearly climbable cliff to get to your objective, that really restricts you further in this map.
Speaker: It doesn't really scream open world.
Speaker: It doesn't.
Speaker: It further restricts it.
Speaker: And Horizon Forbidden West had a much larger map
Speaker: but it was a lot of the same.
Speaker: It was a lot of the exact same.
Speaker: And that a lot of people would scream, you know, like Horizon Forbidden West was one of the best games of the year when it came out.
Speaker: And it's like, was it really, or was it just the hype coming from the fact that Zero Dawn was okay?
Speaker: So while, while those games were fun, I would never personally play them again.
Speaker: And I don't think that they were innovative or they did anything to make their open worlds good.
Speaker: you would have just liked to see it be like linear, like a little bit more linear, like purposefully.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like if they, if they, rather than being like, we have this crazy open world and then like not really doing much with it.
Speaker: Cause it kind of dampened it a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I mean, it was like, it did, it did still have its super linear aspects.
Speaker: Like the story itself was the story itself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Obviously still like go here.
Speaker: And it did, it did the trope that I just complained about, which was like, you can't go to this part of the map until you've completed this part of the story.
Speaker: which for the sake of context for that specific game is a-okay.
Speaker: Like I'm not going to go to this uncharted, humans have never been to this area before right off the bat.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That's exposition.
Speaker: But it did a lot of that too.
Speaker: And it had a lot of parts where it caused a lot of backtracking because you didn't get upgrades due to story later on.
Speaker: So like now I got to go back to the starting area where there's not really something to incentivize me coming back here
Speaker: Aside from the fact that like, oh, there might be something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If I feel so compelled to explore, which I should inherently do, but I wasn't.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Dan, you got one?
Speaker: Because I got one if you don't have one.
Speaker: I've been trying to think, but I've got nothing.
Speaker: I yield my time, sir.
Speaker: One that is still rather fresh in everyone's brains because I'm sure a lot of people are still playing it.
Speaker: Good old Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
Speaker: Especially compared to... Listen.
Speaker: Listen.
Speaker: For anybody who doesn't know, maybe this is the first episode.
Speaker: Big Pokemon fan.
Speaker: I've loved Pokemon since I was a kid.
Speaker: Me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm a huge Pokemon fan.
Speaker: I have played every mainline game from every generation.
Speaker: Um, and after Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, I believe that is going to stop.
Speaker: Um, don't listen to him.
Speaker: Pika Link.
Speaker: No, I still love Pokemon.
Speaker: That's just the thing.
Speaker: I am so, and I'm not going to get on a like Pokemon, the state of Pokemon rant right now.
Speaker: I'm not going to do it.
Speaker: I'm not going to do it.
Speaker: If you want to, I've got to, I need to do something real fast.
Speaker: I'll be right back.
Speaker: Gents.
Speaker: Y'all keep going.
Speaker: Y'all keep going.
Speaker: Okay, cool.
Speaker: It'll be the Lyle and Steed show for a couple minutes.
Speaker: Lyle and Steed show.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Or don't.
Speaker: No, you know what?
Speaker: Get out of here.
Speaker: Going out for the boys.
Speaker: No, get out of here.
Speaker: Go away.
Speaker: Fuck you.
Speaker: Fuck you.
Speaker: Yeah, so I'll keep it specifically to Scarlet and Violet because if you want to talk about open worlds that they did nothing with, look no further.
Speaker: Not only did nothing with, but did not take care of.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, that goes without saying that the whole like stuttery buggy mess that was Scarlet and Violet was just laughable, just absolutely laughable.
Speaker: But everyone everyone knows that about it.
Speaker: But like I want to focus more on the the difference between an open world that they did wrong and an open world that they did wrong.
Speaker: Pretty right.
Speaker: Which is the game that came out a year before that one.
Speaker: Pokemon Legends Arceus.
Speaker: Which wasn't a perfect game.
Speaker: And it wasn't a perfect... In fact, it wasn't even a true open world.
Speaker: It had zones.
Speaker: It had, like, open world zones.
Speaker: Which...
Speaker: wasn't bad i didn't mind that honestly i didn't mind that it was just like you go to one zone you catch a certain amount or certain types of pokemon um the story continues you can go to the next zone i didn't mind that too much some people were just like oh it's not really open world and i'm like great it doesn't have to be i watched ashley play a lot of that one it it seemed like like you said i i haven't been in the pokemon for for a while um i think the last one i gave a true shot was sword and shield but uh
Speaker: Legends Arceus, I watched Ashley play, and it seemed decent.
Speaker: I liked the catching mechanics.
Speaker: I liked the battle mechanics.
Speaker: I liked the fact that you were still there while your Pokemon were battling.
Speaker: And so before you threw your Pokemon out, if it was a hostile Pokemon, you had to dodge it.
Speaker: It might try to attack you, which was kind of a crazy idea for a Pokemon game.
Speaker: yeah it really gave that happened to feel shit that happened in the anime like yeah yeah exactly it really gave the feel that oh this is a very you are early in the pokemon timeline this is a very unexplored world and it's alive yeah and like i said could they have done some things better could have there been some things could they have populated the world a little bit more with more things to do rather than just catching the pokemon and following the storyline
Speaker: Yeah, I guess.
Speaker: But they went backwards with Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, in which you're going through this world, and yeah, obviously there's Pokemon to catch.
Speaker: Like, that is one of the main facets of the game.
Speaker: But at the same time, like...
Speaker: That shouldn't be everything that you're doing in this open world game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, yeah, you're getting from point A to point B and in between you're battling trainers and catching Pokemon.
Speaker: But at the same time, they made it even worse with the fact that you don't have to battle trainers.
Speaker: Like, and I don't, because you didn't play this one.
Speaker: But you probably, I'm pretty sure you played like classic Pokemon games, right?
Speaker: Remember how you walk in front of a trainer and the little exclamation point goes above their head and you have to battle them.
Speaker: You don't get out of it.
Speaker: They took that out.
Speaker: There's trainers.
Speaker: There's trainers in the world, but you have to go up to them to initiate.
Speaker: To instigate.
Speaker: And it's just like most of them are standing in spots where it's just like if you wanted to just avoid them, you could.
Speaker: So why did they take that out?
Speaker: It's a three-dimensional world.
Speaker: You could just go around them, you know?
Speaker: But they made it so that it's just like, yeah, you don't have to battle anyone.
Speaker: It's just like that kind of takes the challenge away a little bit.
Speaker: They knew their millennial antisocial audience.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: They knew we don't like people.
Speaker: I don't want to do that.
Speaker: I don't want to talk to you.
Speaker: I don't want to talk to that guy.
Speaker: I want to get stronger, but do I really have to converse?
Speaker: There were some things that I think Pokemon Scarlet and Violet did pretty well with the open world.
Speaker: Like, I mean, I still enjoyed...
Speaker: I mean, I liked the region.
Speaker: The region was cool.
Speaker: One funny aspect of it from an open world perspective is there's technically, from an open world perspective, there's technically places that you shouldn't be able to access.
Speaker: Either based off of, rather than having the HMs where you teach them the Pokemon and they can help you get around the map and stuff.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Instead of that...
Speaker: they had the two legendary Pokemon of the game.
Speaker: What are they?
Speaker: Coridon and Maridon?
Speaker: Yeah, I can't remember what their names are.
Speaker: It's something like that.
Speaker: They turn into these bicycles, which is really funny.
Speaker: It was kind of weird.
Speaker: I'm not going to lie.
Speaker: It was a little strange, just the way that they worked.
Speaker: But you can get around on them.
Speaker: They can climb things.
Speaker: They can fly around.
Speaker: And you unlock those abilities as you go on.
Speaker: I didn't hate the mechanic, but it was really weird that, like, you met... It kind of took the wind out of the sails of meeting the legendary Pokemon.
Speaker: It was just like, oh, they're just this thing that I ride around on like a bike.
Speaker: Like, I don't know.
Speaker: I didn't love it.
Speaker: But funny part about that...
Speaker: The game was so buggy that I found ways to get to places I shouldn't have been able to go to without the proper abilities and stuff.
Speaker: Kind of like taking a horse up a mountain on Skyrim and doing the weird...
Speaker: It's literally like that.
Speaker: One of the things that I did was if you, and they might've patched this, I don't know.
Speaker: But if you were to back, like be on the legendary- The Bike-A-Mon.
Speaker: The Bike-A-Mon, yeah, the Bike-Mon.
Speaker: If you were to be on the Bike-Mon
Speaker: and back up to a cliff that was too steep, if you spam jumped backwards and flicked the joystick in a certain way, you could literally jump backwards up the mountain.
Speaker: And we're still talking about Pokemon, Dan.
Speaker: Welcome back.
Speaker: Sounds about it.
Speaker: And I was able to get to, like, you know, like, hidden TMs and hidden items and stuff like that that I shouldn't have been able to get to.
Speaker: And it was awesome.
Speaker: One of these times, and I don't even know what they were thinking with this because...
Speaker: I definitely shouldn't have been able to do this.
Speaker: I was able to... I can't remember how I did it.
Speaker: It wasn't the same kind of mechanic.
Speaker: I was able to get across a river and go to a town that I shouldn't have been able to go to yet.
Speaker: And beat the gym leader there.
Speaker: And then I backtracked to the place I was supposed to go to before that.
Speaker: Nothing broke.
Speaker: Everything was fine.
Speaker: So, I mean, I guess that was a testament to it being technically open world because it was just like...
Speaker: The game didn't break from me going over there, so I guess they factored in the possibility of being able to get there, but I definitely shouldn't have been able to get there.
Speaker: It was, like, blocked off.
Speaker: It was, like, blockaded off by, like, Team Star or whatever the evil team was called in that game.
Speaker: But I just think that's really funny because it was an open world game, but it had literal barriers to get to places.
Speaker: But I made it an open world game anyway.
Speaker: I was like, no, you're not going to say you're an open world game and then block this off.
Speaker: No, I'll make it in an open world game anyway.
Speaker: And I just went across.
Speaker: I just flew across the river and made my way over to the town.
Speaker: But yeah, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
Speaker: Not great.
Speaker: Just a buggy mess, but we're not talking about that.
Speaker: We're talking more about the open world aspects and they just didn't do it too good.
Speaker: I got one and I thought that was actually kind of very at least I thought it was pretty fascinating.
Speaker: So the concept of killing enemies, whatever, and earning experience points, right?
Speaker: Like early games, you do that, you swipe at an enemy still too early so you don't see the damage hit points or whatever, right?
Speaker: But
Speaker: You kill an enemy, I'll just say Zelda 2, for example.
Speaker: Kill an enemy, you get two experience points.
Speaker: That experience doesn't go away, right?
Speaker: Unless, like, early games, you don't save, you lose all that shit.
Speaker: Games nowadays have, and I'll say the company that has capitulated on this is FromSoftware.
Speaker: Delicious.
Speaker: What the hell was that?
Speaker: I think my cat hissed at me, I'm not sure.
Speaker: Dude.
Speaker: And by my cat, I mean Dan.
Speaker: Dan, you were not muted when you did that.
Speaker: I turned off Phantom Power.
Speaker: I turned off Phantom Power, goddammit.
Speaker: I needed to scratch my throat.
Speaker: I'm so sorry.
Speaker: You can tell by the way that his face, whenever we said, what the hell was that?
Speaker: Like, he didn't even react.
Speaker: He was like, oh, it must not have been me.
Speaker: They couldn't hear me.
Speaker: And probably just like a bead of sweat of relief when I said, oh, that was probably my cat that hissed at me.
Speaker: We're keeping that in, man.
Speaker: There's no way we're not keeping that in.
Speaker: That was so funny.
Speaker: Well, ladies and gentlemen, I should have just stayed gone.
Speaker: But experience points.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: a small way of putting like very basic RPG elements into games that are not at base level RPG style or things that you would think are RPG, right?
Speaker: Um, yeah, the dark souls games from soft games, you, you essentially have experience points, but they're tangible.
Speaker: Now they are your souls.
Speaker: They are the things that you collect after enemies.
Speaker: And because games nowadays and systems nowadays have auto save, you, you almost rarely have to manually save.
Speaker: Um, if, if,
Speaker: if you never lost those upon death, then there's really no risk for the reward.
Speaker: Like you would essentially just have this reward all the time and there's no learning on the player side.
Speaker: So like the souls that you earn are the experience points.
Speaker: And then that's been turned into many different things in many different ways across many different games.
Speaker: And I feel like it's kind of, it's been a hidden,
Speaker: hidden concept.
Speaker: It's weird to think about that many games nowadays are getting an RPG tag attached to it because they have RPG elements that are derived from these older games and these older concepts.
Speaker: I just thought that was interesting.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, you know who does it really well?
Speaker: The truest open world game of them all.
Speaker: Minecraft.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: Because literally, it's absolutely true.
Speaker: You get experience from doing things throughout the world, including, you know, killing enemies, trading with villagers.
Speaker: Mining.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, from mining certain materials, smelting things.
Speaker: And then you use that to actually do something tangible in the world.
Speaker: You enchant items with it, which makes you stronger and you feel more confident going further out into your open world.
Speaker: Build yourself armor, weapons.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So I just, and I, you know, I know that's maybe out of left field, but it was just, you were talking about like,
Speaker: It's absolutely not out of left field.
Speaker: Like it's, it's literally, like I said, it's spread to many different styles and many different games themselves.
Speaker: Like many publishers and devs will be like, okay, well how can we take this concept from this game that we already have, add this to it because it's clearly an addictive gameplay element that many, many players from many different backgrounds love in their games.
Speaker: And you know, it's, it's crazy because you'll see it in, in 2d side scrollers too.
Speaker: There's actually, there's a,
Speaker: There's a Dark Souls game.
Speaker: It's not from software, but it's very much Souls-like, and it flew under the fucking radar, but it's really, really good.
Speaker: It's called Death's Gambit.
Speaker: If you've never played it and you're a Dark Souls fan, play that fucking game.
Speaker: It sounds really familiar.
Speaker: I feel like I've heard of it.
Speaker: I've probably mentioned it to you in the past before or something, but it's beautiful artwork.
Speaker: Its music is really good.
Speaker: It's relatively cheap too.
Speaker: It's not like a full-fledged.
Speaker: It's like, what, maybe 20 bucks?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it had a DLC that came out with it.
Speaker: I think that was free as well.
Speaker: It's like Death's Gambit Afterlife.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Stupidly fun, but it took everything that works from FromSoft games, from past RPG games.
Speaker: It has that Dark Souls leveling up type system and made it its own thing.
Speaker: It's just stupidly good.
Speaker: I can't really think of a, I can't really think of a title that, that tried to fall into that kind of evolution and, and fell flat.
Speaker: Cause we were mentioning, cause we had mentioned earlier, like sometimes when games do fail, trying to follow the trend, a lot of the times it's, it's the timing.
Speaker: Like they may have already come into the market too late when the, the, the saturation of, you know, it was just too much.
Speaker: Like we're seeing too much of it.
Speaker: There's, there's player burnout.
Speaker: They've,
Speaker: Seen too many of those types of games.
Speaker: Can I use that concept to springboard into something else?
Speaker: Dive off that springboard.
Speaker: Because we've been talking about open world for a while, and the idea of this episode was to talk about different genres that are a little oversaturated.
Speaker: But I want to use that concept of maybe coming in at the right time or wrong time, leading to your game not performing as well.
Speaker: And I want to talk about battle royales.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Because one of the most... Whenever Fortnite took off...
Speaker: It changed the landscape of gaming.
Speaker: Like, it changed everything.
Speaker: I mean, there was already things like loot boxes and battle passes, but Fortnite made the battle pass become a staple in, like, every online game as a service ever.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: And they weren't even, like, they weren't even the first to do it.
Speaker: I mean, if we want to talk about, like, the first, I believe the first, I don't even know if it's the first one, but one of the earliest recognized Battle Royales was DayZ.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which I did not play.
Speaker: I never played DayZ.
Speaker: But then after that, they took, I believe it was one of the developed, I believe PlayerUnknown was a developer on DayZ.
Speaker: Oh, PUBG?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And then he made PUBG.
Speaker: I think that's what that was.
Speaker: If anyone is watching this in the comments, let me know if I'm wrong, because I can't remember off the top of my head.
Speaker: Studio audience.
Speaker: Did you know gaming correct us?
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Somebody correct me.
Speaker: But anyway, PUBG...
Speaker: It's a great game.
Speaker: It's really fun.
Speaker: They have since added a battle pass into the game.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I mean, I guess that's one of the best parts about those kinds of things is like you don't have to do that.
Speaker: You don't have to do the battle pass if you don't want to.
Speaker: But we're not here to talk about battle passes.
Speaker: I want to talk about...
Speaker: Battle Royale games.
Speaker: Who did it right?
Speaker: Who did it right but didn't hit it at the right time?
Speaker: Who did it wrong?
Speaker: So, obviously, who did it right?
Speaker: Fortnite.
Speaker: Fortnite did it right.
Speaker: They are the... They set the stage for all of the people who came after them.
Speaker: You know, PUBG did it great and then Fortnite perfected it, basically, and made it super popular with the general public, right?
Speaker: Question.
Speaker: Sorry to interrupt.
Speaker: Would you include games...
Speaker: and this is, one of these will be a horrible example, one of these will be close to the point I want to try to make.
Speaker: Mario Party, in the sense that it's a
Speaker: battle royale so to speak because it is um it is everyone against themselves okay and that's and that's i i don't think that quite counts just because it's like it's so kind of a board game it's not a consistent that is definitely in the world and you're always fighting you know it's yeah it's more of a mini game type thing okay and that was going to lead into my next my other game which was uh fusion frenzy
Speaker: Um, and I think, I think it would have been, I think it was a launch title for the OG Xbox.
Speaker: It was definitely on OG Xbox in 2002, but I think it was because technical limitations that it could have been battle Royale style had it come out maybe nowadays.
Speaker: Um, but it, it basically was that just a, you, you pick your character of like one of the six or one of the eight.
Speaker: and you go through maybe 10 rounds, 8 rounds, 12 rounds of these mini games fighting against each other.
Speaker: It's not like bang bang shoot them up.
Speaker: I think that's what leads into a lot of battle royales in general, the common concept of being a shooter, whether it's third person or first person or whatever.
Speaker: But that's not to say that Battle Royales couldn't be anything other than a shooter.
Speaker: But I definitely, I would personally include Fusion Frenzy as a Battle Royale style game.
Speaker: Because it's, the background story of Fusion Frenzy is that, like, you're part of this underground fighting ring, so to speak.
Speaker: And, like, you are trying to come out on top.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I thought that was, like, a unique historical example that might have fit that palette.
Speaker: I want to pivot slightly because I got curious about something because it was something I heard about and I just looked it up.
Speaker: So we're actually getting some hot off the presses news on the podcast regarding this very topic we're talking about.
Speaker: I say hot off the presses.
Speaker: It was three days ago, but that's still pretty new.
Speaker: They canceled the Halo Battle Royale.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: And also, they canceled Dan because he just disappeared.
Speaker: Yeah, he did.
Speaker: He must have lost internet.
Speaker: Man, canceling the Halo Battle Royale is actually pretty big.
Speaker: Was that not a huge selling point with Halo Infinite when they were first coming out with it?
Speaker: The campaign was obviously huge because it's fucking Halo.
Speaker: But I swore that they were like, yeah, we're going to have regular Halo multiplayer, but we're also working on a Battle Royale mode.
Speaker: I can't remember if they said they were making the Battle Royale before it came out or while the multiplayer had already come out.
Speaker: I can't remember.
Speaker: Also, welcome back, Dan.
Speaker: Hi, buddy.
Speaker: Hi.
Speaker: I'm just fucking going through it.
Speaker: I apologize.
Speaker: You're good.
Speaker: To bring you up to speed, in case I can't remember if you were there to hear it or not, they canceled the Halo Battle Royale that they were planning.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: They were going to be putting a Battle Royale into Halo Infinite, and they canceled it, apparently, after years of development hell.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Oh, and sorry to go along with that.
Speaker: They canceled the Last of Us Battle Royale mode as well.
Speaker: There was going to be a Last of Us Battle Royale?
Speaker: So the Last of Us multiplayer has been a thing for actually a while.
Speaker: It was back in Last of Us.
Speaker: I can't remember what it's specifically called.
Speaker: I didn't even realize that game had multiplayer.
Speaker: It's like Last of Us Battlegrounds or some shit like that.
Speaker: I can't remember the specific name, but people were really... No, there was a huge fan base for the multiplayer for Last of Us.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: what is it?
Speaker: Naughty Dog?
Speaker: Yeah, Naughty Dog.
Speaker: Had been touting that they'd been working on this Battle Royale mode or multiplayer for Last of Us 2 for like, for years.
Speaker: And then it was like, maybe November, maybe early December that they announced that they canceled it.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: And people were fucking floored.
Speaker: Like, Jaws hit the floor.
Speaker: I didn't give a shit, but other people.
Speaker: I didn't care, but a bunch of other people gave a shit.
Speaker: Other people did.
Speaker: And I'm sorry if, you know, that upsets you, but like,
Speaker: They're also a company that's remade the only two games they've made four times.
Speaker: So I have no sympathy for a cancelled battle multiplayer game there.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: They did their best.
Speaker: And then they made Last of Us 2 and that did great.
Speaker: And now they're remastering it.
Speaker: Are they really?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That's hilarious.
Speaker: That's why I said that four times remastering was not- Have you guys ever heard- That four times remastering was not an exaggeration.
Speaker: Steej is about to remaster our ass if we don't shut the hell up, dude.
Speaker: He's fuming over there.
Speaker: My guy is seething.
Speaker: Editor, make his face red.
Speaker: Have you guys- Give him some ear steam.
Speaker: Have you guys ever heard a rumble verse?
Speaker: Is that the Cartoon Network fighting game?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Is it the Nickelodeon fighting game?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: It's a battle royale that got shut down.
Speaker: But it was probably... I never got to play it because I learned about it too late before it ended up getting shut down.
Speaker: But it was not an FPS or third-person shooter based battle royale.
Speaker: It was a wrestling based battle royale.
Speaker: Oh god.
Speaker: So like a high school sleepover?
Speaker: Sounds ridiculous.
Speaker: Yeah, dude.
Speaker: Sounds ridiculous.
Speaker: So I watch a couple of different YouTubers that played it.
Speaker: Because I had never heard of it until I was watching their videos.
Speaker: One of those people is a guy named Yakko Siemen who makes just really great video game related essays.
Speaker: Yakko Siemen?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Any relation to Wacko Seaman or Dot Seaman?
Speaker: I think that is why his name is that, though.
Speaker: I think he named it after Yakko from... I can't remember.
Speaker: Animaniacs.
Speaker: Anyway, so he really liked this game called Rumbleverse.
Speaker: It was a wrestling battle royale where you had this huge, awesome, open-world city that you walked around in.
Speaker: God bless you, Dan.
Speaker: Dan Dabbit on stream.
Speaker: Thanks, God.
Speaker: There were different mechanics where it was like you could do different wrestling moves and you would find people and there was like certain items, I think, you would find people, you would grapple them, you could throw them, and the idea was to do damage to them, obviously.
Speaker: You could throw them out of the storm or whatever they called it in that game.
Speaker: The storm!
Speaker: Well, I mean, it's like a battle royale, so the circle gets smaller.
Speaker: They call it the storm in Fortnite.
Speaker: That's what I call it for every fucking game, whatever.
Speaker: But yeah, so it was really unique.
Speaker: I watched this, and then I learned that it was going to be shutting down, probably due to just not enough...
Speaker: interest just not enough even though it was such a unique awesome type of game where it's this battle royale but it's not shooting it's not fortnite it's not pub g it's literally just wild wacky fun yeah that's what i was saying earlier about like how the battle royale's genre generally tends to have attached to it like a third person over the shooter like shooting shooting guns or first person some kind of or first yeah um but yeah like games like that that what is it um
Speaker: The fighting crab game or something like that?
Speaker: Crab game?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Isn't that like a battle royale, but you're just a bunch of fucking crabs?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I never played that, but it looked really fun.
Speaker: It looked incredibly interesting, and I got invited to play it once, but I never got far with that.
Speaker: Rumbleverse is one, and then the other one, which I don't...
Speaker: I never hopped on this one either.
Speaker: I never ended up hopping on it.
Speaker: But Spellbreak was another one.
Speaker: Did you guys ever hear about Spellbreak?
Speaker: No, sir.
Speaker: So Spellbreak was another battle royale type game.
Speaker: But rather than having guns, you had spells.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It was a wizard battle royale, basically.
Speaker: Swish and flick.
Speaker: And there was, like, I believe the way that it worked is there was, like, I think a couple of different spell types.
Speaker: And you could pick up these gauntlets.
Speaker: And they were, like, a specific element.
Speaker: And I think you could pick up two gauntlets and the spells would, like, combine.
Speaker: Like, you could do, like, combined spells with the two different elements, basically.
Speaker: And you could like jump around and fly around and stuff like that.
Speaker: It was like a wild looking game, but it was just another one of those ones where it was just like, I just don't think the timing was quite right.
Speaker: I think it tried to come out.
Speaker: See, Rumbleverse was a little bit later.
Speaker: That was closer to now, like maybe last year sometime.
Speaker: Whereas Spellbreak was, I think, whenever Fortnite was still like at its peak.
Speaker: And so it was going to be... Well, you're talking about Fortnite's yet to hit its peak numbers.
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: So I think it would have been really hard to pull people away from Fortnite and even PUBG and maybe even at that point Apex Legends at that point.
Speaker: So yeah, this just... I can't remember if that game has shut down or not, but I don't... I'm not... I think it might have.
Speaker: But yeah, those are just two... You were talking about games that try to jump on a certain bandwagon...
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Depends on how hungry you are.
Speaker: If you want.
Speaker: We could also shut the fuck up.
Speaker: We'll do.
Speaker: I'll take that into consideration.
Speaker: Have you considered shut up?
Speaker: We'll take that into consideration, yeah.
Speaker: Are there any... Lyle, I know you don't really play battle royale games.
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Dan, I know that you have because we've played them together.
Speaker: Have you really just kind of stuck to Fortnite or have you played other ones as well?
Speaker: I mean, there was a very brief period of time where you and I played Apex Legends.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Fuck that game.
Speaker: I mean, great game.
Speaker: I'm just so bad at it.
Speaker: Fuck that game.
Speaker: Great game.
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: Fuck that game because I'm bad at it.
Speaker: That game is the definition of mad cause bad.
Speaker: Yeah, no, seriously.
Speaker: That is me.
Speaker: I will admit it.
Speaker: I will put it all out there.
Speaker: I am mad cause bad.
Speaker: I'm so bad at Apex Legends.
Speaker: It is way too fast paced for me.
Speaker: I cannot keep up.
Speaker: there's no possible way like i'd rather play fortnight just because for the most part it's not nearly as fast paced um yeah no and that's just me i'm just i'm i suck um i've i peaked already and my peak was like gold in overwatch so um yeah my guy here's my thing
Speaker: Before you have to give yourself a therapy session after this too.
Speaker: Just play Apex Legends to play as the robot dude.
Speaker: What's his name?
Speaker: Pathfinder?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And just Spider-Man your way around the map like I did.
Speaker: I've never gotten a fucking kill once on Apex Legends.
Speaker: I know you gotta find your own fun.
Speaker: You gotta find your own.
Speaker: Listen, wait, y'all.
Speaker: Whenever I played with you guys, y'all were just like, oh my God, he's in the trees.
Speaker: I'm down.
Speaker: I'm down here in the bushes.
Speaker: The trees, uh, uh, get down.
Speaker: I'm going to, I'm going to be in the fucking med packs.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Here's some good shit.
Speaker: And I'm just like, yo, I wonder if I can get up to that roof.
Speaker: That's a big fucking roof.
Speaker: I could make that.
Speaker: That's a nice roof.
Speaker: That's a nice roof.
Speaker: There could be cool shit up there.
Speaker: I could perch.
Speaker: I could perch on that roof.
Speaker: I could perch on that roof, my guy.
Speaker: That's a good looking roof.
Speaker: Yeah, dead ass.
Speaker: This is how my brain went.
Speaker: And you were just like, oh my god, fuck, I'm down.
Speaker: Dan, where are you at?
Speaker: And I'm just like, I'm on the way.
Speaker: He's not in the tree anymore.
Speaker: He's like, I'm on the roof.
Speaker: That's a problem.
Speaker: I'm on the roof.
Speaker: I'm on the roof.
Speaker: Oh shit, he's on the roof.
Speaker: He's on the roof.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Well, I did want to maybe talk about a few... Let's do some rapid fire.
Speaker: Let's do a little bit of rapid fire because we're winding down on time here.
Speaker: So buckle in.
Speaker: Rapid fire so you don't have to explain yourself.
Speaker: Staple your asses to the seat because it's about to go down.
Speaker: It's about to get rapid.
Speaker: One other...
Speaker: At least one other genre that I wanted to talk about that is absolutely oversaturated.
Speaker: Oversaturated.
Speaker: Oversaturated, if you will, is the Stardew Valley-like games.
Speaker: The cozy farm sim, life sim games.
Speaker: And once again, and we came into this really aggressively, I'm not saying they're all bad.
Speaker: I'm not even saying most of them are bad.
Speaker: But Stardew Valley definitely... I mean, I know Stardew Valley is based on... What's it called?
Speaker: Harvest Moon?
Speaker: I know it has.
Speaker: But Stardew Valley really started the trend of the cozy game, the we gotta have it to where you can build relationships with people in the game, and kind of do your daily chores...
Speaker: and, you know, kind of explore the world a little bit, and there's, like, different little things to do.
Speaker: Stardew Valley is a great game.
Speaker: I love Stardew Valley.
Speaker: But after that came out... Yeah, everybody, he hates it.
Speaker: I would beg to differ and say that... What the fuck is that game series called?
Speaker: Billy Thatcher?
Speaker: Billy Hatcher?
Speaker: Billy Hatcher?
Speaker: Yeah, it's a game series.
Speaker: It's the cozy style.
Speaker: The chicken kid, right?
Speaker: Isn't that the cozy farming sim style as well?
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I never played that game, so maybe.
Speaker: You might be right.
Speaker: But I think it's attributed to the timing.
Speaker: Stardew Valley lit a fuse.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: The aftermath was extraneous.
Speaker: You got games like Sea of Stars now.
Speaker: You got games like... That's not a cozy game.
Speaker: That's an RPG.
Speaker: It's an RPG.
Speaker: What am I thinking of?
Speaker: Personally, I think that Star Evaluant itself is its own RPG.
Speaker: Oh, what's it called?
Speaker: Coral Islands or something?
Speaker: Coral Island.
Speaker: That's the one I'm thinking of.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Coral Islands.
Speaker: My time at Portia.
Speaker: Animal Crossing.
Speaker: Big one.
Speaker: I mean, but Animal Crossing did already exist.
Speaker: It did.
Speaker: We'll give that one a pass.
Speaker: But did it start something?
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I mean, I'm sure it influenced things like Stardew Valley.
Speaker: When did Stardew Valley come out?
Speaker: Stardew Valley was... Just out of curiosity.
Speaker: I thought that was funny.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: We're having a conversation.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Big boys are talking.
Speaker: We're in a podcast.
Speaker: The adults are talking.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: I'll just play Minecraft while you guys are talking.
Speaker: Fuck both of you.
Speaker: We are not here to make jokes.
Speaker: Okay, so Stardew Valley came out before Animal Crossing New Horizons.
Speaker: Which I think was a bigger... Oh, yeah, well before.
Speaker: Which I think Stardew Valley was bigger than Animal Crossing New Horizons, in my opinion.
Speaker: I mean, it might have paved the way for Nintendo to be like, hey, cozy games, like sim games, are really working.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: This is an aesthetic.
Speaker: This is really working.
Speaker: We should make another Animal Crossing game.
Speaker: Yeah, because the GameCube one was fucking fire.
Speaker: Also, the pandemic's going to start in like a year.
Speaker: Yeah, we need to get ready for that.
Speaker: We should be aware of that.
Speaker: We're going to start any minute, guys.
Speaker: We need to make the deadline before.
Speaker: Yeah, we got to make the deadline before the pandemic starts.
Speaker: And honestly, I mean, this is kind of going off topic a little bit, but the fact that that game came out at peak pandemic...
Speaker: oh my god, like, the sales of that game had to be astronomical, because everyone was home.
Speaker: Everyone was home.
Speaker: You know, if they weren't working from home, they were just playing their Switch or whatever, and they were like, oh my god, I get to play a game where I pretend to have a really cool life because I'm not allowed to have a really cool life right now?
Speaker: Animal Crossing.
Speaker: Like, holy shit, what timing.
Speaker: I don't think I've ever seen somebody put faster, like,
Speaker: large amounts of time into a game than Ashley did with the new Animal Crossing.
Speaker: She hit a thousand hours in Animal Crossing so freaking fast.
Speaker: Hell, I played the hell.
Speaker: I mean, I haven't really touched it for a long time, but I played the hell out of it.
Speaker: My girlfriend played the hell out of it.
Speaker: Animal Crossing has been one of the only games that I have seen to really rival, like, captivating people's attention the similar way Minecraft did.
Speaker: Like whenever that Minecraft first came out, everybody was just like, Jesus Christ, how am I so addicted to block game?
Speaker: It's just Nintendo did the Nintendo thing where like they have one of the people's most favoritest thing and then they stop supporting it after X amount of time.
Speaker: And it's like you literally have a free cash cow here and you do nothing with it.
Speaker: Yeah, so they finally did, and the cow was milked.
Speaker: But honestly, great game.
Speaker: It was pretty good.
Speaker: Okay, cool, guys.
Speaker: Thanks, Rick.
Speaker: We are coming to the end of our time.
Speaker: Did we pass?
Speaker: We are coming.
Speaker: You guys did great.
Speaker: Lyle, I give you... Who wins?
Speaker: You get an A-, and Dan, you can have a C+, because you left the classroom.
Speaker: C+, yeah.
Speaker: Dan, I'll give you a C++ because you're more technologically advanced than I am.
Speaker: That was a good joke.
Speaker: That was good.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Normally, good jokes are applauded by laughter, but I'll take it.
Speaker: Ha ha ha!
Speaker: Ha ha ha!
Speaker: All right, Dan.
Speaker: Listen, if you come meet me after class, there might be a way you can bump it up to a B-.
Speaker: Bump, bump, bump, bump, bump it up.
Speaker: Ladies and gentlemen, I do want to leave you with this one statement.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I might not be the smartest guy in the crayon box, but...
Speaker: $20 is $20.
Speaker: Steej, take us out.
Speaker: Go for it, buddy.
Speaker: Thank you for watching and or listening, everybody.
Speaker: And speaking of watching or listening, we are on – I'm used to my camera being there.
Speaker: We are on YouTube.
Speaker: You might already be watching us there, but we're also on Spotify, Apple Music.
Speaker: We're on most of the major streaming platforms.
Speaker: Wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker: We're not on drugs.
Speaker: Wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker: We're just not on drugs yet.
Speaker: So watch us or listen to us wherever you'd like.
Speaker: Leave a comment down below.
Speaker: We're looking for commenters of the week for next week.
Speaker: So tell us about your favorite or least favorite game in any of the genres that we talked about today.
Speaker: Battle Royales, open world type games.
Speaker: Use us as a way to complain.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: Use us as a complaining ground.
Speaker: Just tell us about it.
Speaker: It's very open-ended this time around.
Speaker: Just tell us about it.
Speaker: Vent, rant, get it all out.
Speaker: That's Lyleskink.
Speaker: Whoever is the most passionate about their topic and their comment will be the comment of the week.
Speaker: Use a lot of exclamation points.
Speaker: Whoever says a comment that instigates me enough to make a comment on your comment wins.
Speaker: Use more capital letters than a boomer's Facebook post.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Moving on.
Speaker: Thank you for watching us today.
Speaker: And follow us on all the things.
Speaker: Follow us on Oddly Coded on TikTok and Instagram.
Speaker: And I'll talk to you later.
Speaker: I don't know if these guys will, but I will.
Speaker: I'll talk to you at some point.
Speaker: I hope... Jesus Christ, that's the one thing you never want to say to somebody.
Speaker: I'll talk to you at some point.
Speaker: Alright.
Speaker: Could be now, could be next year.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: My name's Steej, and we'll talk to you at some point.
Speaker: See ya.
Speaker: Bye.
