Game Under Podcast 58

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Intro
0:00:14 Who Are These Guys?

Trademark Banter
0:01:04 Scott Pilgrim Review on Gameunder.net NOW. Kinda.
0:01:52 How Great Is Windows 10?
0:02:43 Scott Pilgrim Review Proper
0:08:23 Phil Fogg Buys Games
0:09:45 Gamespot, Endless Backlog Talk
0:10:55 Dubious Ads on Endless and Laserlemming.com
0:13:09 Episode 57.5
0:13:45 Futbol in Australia
0:16:08 Saving Mr. Banks Comments, Subversiveness, Moral Spell Checks, Political discourse Obscenity.

Final Impressions
0:20:56 Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012
0:26:36 Back to Bed

Featurette
0:40:21 Fogg's Ideal Game (and Call of Duty Black Ops Review).

Final Impressions
0:51:28 Sir, You Are Being Hunted

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to episode 58 of The Game Under Podcast, the official podcast of gameunder.net.

It's really a...

It's actually a...

The website is more of an official website of our podcast, because our podcast is the reason why we do this.

It's not really like the adjunct to the website, as is often the case, you know?

Like...

Yeah, but I think the reason we call it the official podcast of gameunder.net is it's the easiest and most succinct way of shilling the website.

Yeah, just...

Because if they go into a long, awkward description like you did, they're going to think, well, if they're this verbose when speaking, obviously...

God knows what they're like on a website.

They probably have several posts per day on various different topics and all the rest of it.

Exactly.

Like, did you see my recent review of Scott Pilgrim vs.

The World movie on gameunder.net?

No, I did not.

gameunder.net?

I don't go to the website.

Oh, well...

Why would anyone go to gameunder.net?

I don't know.

Maybe if they go there, they'll see that review.

Or not.

Maybe I've taken it down.

Well, they're not, because it's not on the front page.

So...

Well, I haven't written it yet.

Well, I haven't finished watching it yet.

But have you finished watching Scott Pilgrim vs.

The World, the movie?

Well, seeing it in your notes, I then, in fact, did watch it.

Yeah, our notes from our podcast that we were going to record two weeks ago.

Correct.

And then last week we...

Was it only two weeks ago?

No, it was just last week, actually.

And then we went to record...

You know, one of the funny things is about the notes that we had for the podcast, I was going to talk about how great Windows 10 was.

Like, I was just going to say, hey, look, smooth sailing, folks.

Go ahead, go ahead and download it.

Because I recently used a computer that didn't have Windows 10.

I was like, oh, wow, this really is different.

You know, you...

Yeah, so I was like, oh, wow.

You know, it's part of our endless trademark banter.

Wait a second.

As a part of our trademark banter, I should probably mention that Windows 10 is safe for all to use.

But then, lo and behold, Skype now doesn't work with the latest version of Windows 10.

So after lots of monkeying around, we didn't actually get to record last week.

But in those notes, I did mention that I'd seen Scott Pilgrim.

So you went ahead and you watched it?

Correct.

Okay, was it on the internet or something like that?

I downloaded it naturally.

This is the 21st century.

Now in my notes, I said it was the best rendering of gaming culture in a non-interactive form.

I thought it was a lot like basically no more heroes or the closest thing that a movie could do to doing no more heroes.

Basically a tribute to the interactive arts.

I think saying it was like no more heroes is perhaps underplaying the similarities.

Yeah, really.

I would say so.

I mean, what was no more heroes referencing with the coins?

Was that a reference to a particular game or just a general thing?

No, no, I was talking about no more heroes, the Suda 51 game.

Yeah, I'm saying in Suda 51, when you kill enemies and they become coins, was that referencing a specific game?

No, because in the, didn't they get rid of the coins?

In the second one, they got rid of the coins.

In the shitty American version, they replaced it with blood, I believe.

Yeah, right.

They censored their free expression of enemies becoming coins by making them bleed to death.

That's right.

But the point being, surely that would be a direct reference to No More Heroes.

Well, if it is-

I mean, it was made after No More Heroes, wasn't it?

Almost definitely, yeah.

And it's based on some other form of media, like a comic book or something like that.

It was originally a comic book.

That's a comparison I stumbled into in this recording.

I hadn't really drawn that comparison, you know, before.

But I should have, because in No More Heroes, you're going around killing all of these assassins to impress a girl.

And in Scott Pilgrim vs.

the World, you're going around killing a bunch of ex-boyfriends.

For that matter, No More Heroes could well be referencing the comic book of Scott Pilgrim.

Yeah, but it's Japanese, so I don't know.

Suda is a Japanese Weeble equivalent, though.

So there's no reason to assume he would be unfamiliar with it.

He's a Weeble?

Weebo.

Weebo?

The Japanese version.

What's Weebo?

Weebo, I believe, is a derogatory term for someone who is obsessed with Japanese or otherwise Asian culture, to the point where they wish they were a part of it.

I thought that was Otaku.

No, Otaku is just a nerd, basically.

So I thought Weebo was like a knockoff Chinese digital video recorder.

So, but no, not the Weebo.

No.

So, no, I think that Suda51 may even well predate the comic book Scott Pilgrim versus the world comic book.

Well, the question is whether No More Hero does, because Suda51 certainly predates.

That's true.

He's about my age.

He's an old man.

So, oh, well.

Anyway, from what I saw of it, I didn't see all of it.

And you know, I'm not much of a movies guy.

And particularly, I usually find the portrayal of video games or gaming culture in non-interactive forms to be, you know, highly derogatory for the most part.

And for the hour or so I watched of it, I was greatly impressed of it.

Excellent, because the only kind thing I can say about it was the fight scene looked nice.

Everything else, I utterly despised.

And bear in mind, I've met basically not a single person except for family members in real life who are in-drew gamers we do.

And if that is an accurate depiction of gaming culture, apparently that is actually a very, very good thing.

Well, see, the thing is this, though.

It didn't actually depict him as being a gamer.

It was more of an appreciation of gaming tropes and applying them in a non-interactive form.

So it could have just been a game.

In fact, you know, it was, but to a much limited extent.

Well, what you're saying is he was just your average obnoxious Canadian.

Yeah, because he was just a dude trying to impress a girl.

Like, there was nothing about video gaming really in the game.

Except for all the references.

Well, except for all the references, but it wasn't...

And there is one other final flaw I just have to mention in regards to its depiction of gaming culture.

If we go back to the whole Weibo thing, at the end, do you mind if I give you a spoiler ending or will I get that to myself?

Well, you don't really want to spoil it, but I mean, I'm going to go and buy the DVD because, you know, I believe in buying things in a 3D form.

But yeah, go ahead and spoil it.

I don't give a shit.

Okay, well, you know Knives, the Chinese person, right?

Um, is that the female?

Yep.

Okay, yep.

That's the girlfriend at the start of the film.

Yep, not good with names.

Um, at the end, he has the opportunity to end up with either Knives or the green-haired woman, whatever she was called, I can't remember.

Well, let's call her Sparky.

Sparky, of course.

And he chooses Sparky, whereas if it was game culture, given the fetishization of everything Asian, surely he would have gone with the Asian.

Yeah, but she was clearly bright from the start, such a two-dimensional kind of person.

You didn't, you know, no one could...

So was the other one, and every single character in the film.

I think she was 25D, Sparky.

You think Sparky was 25D?

I think so, I think she had an add level of dimensionality over the Asian schoolgirl.

I wouldn't say so.

Not based on what happens in...

I think the first impression is certainly that, when they're presenting her as a mysterious character, when the mystery dies away, I would say they're pretty even.

Yes, well, you're probably right, to coin a catchphrase.

I bought some games, so I don't know, this is probably a spoiler for what my final thoughts of Heavy Rain are, but I bought Beyond.

So you hated Heavy Rain so much, you wanted to see if Beyond was as bad.

Yeah, that's true, because it's going to be such a good fighter for our podcast, I figured, you know what, just as you will play Killzone Skyfall eventually, I have to play this just because it's, you know, I have to.

And the other thing is, I mistakenly thought it came out this year, so I was like, oh well, I better play it that way, I'm playing a current game, but it was actually last year.

And I picked up Splinter Cell Blacklist for $11, which is the worst $11 I've spent for quite a few months.

I mean, I wish I was recording what I was doing.

But basically, I got to the first interactive part of the game, where they want you to press X, and I was just walking around in a one square meter part of the video game, punching X continuously, trying to get it to trigger.

And that was just so I could climb up a ladder.

Is this the hobo one or the return to form?

The apparent return to form that was recently released.

This was the Kevin Van Aard gives an 8.5, a return to greatness, no longer voiced by Ironsides.

You know, this is the one, the action one, you know.

Okay, well, speaking of Kevin Van Aard, if I may go in a completely different direction, did you listen to the Endless Backlog slash Pedal to the Meta podcast?

No.

Because I was shocked to find on there until I realized that the people on the podcast, apart from the Endless Backlog alumni, were from System Wars, that people were actually making positive comments about Kevin Van Aard's reviews.

That just blew my mind.

Well, I mean, the only reason to hate on Kevin Van Aard's reviews is the fact that he works for GameSpot, you know.

But that's the point.

Yeah, that is the point.

I mean, where do you find positive comments about GameSpot reviews?

When I was at GameSpot, I don't remember reading any positive comments about GameSpot reviews, and that was when they still had some writers that people liked.

Greg Kassavin.

Who sucks?

But yeah, besides that, it was pretty thin on the ground.

You know, it's hard to even...

You know, at this point, it's funny, it's hard to even remember Ryan Davis actually writing a review for the site, you know, to the point where it's like, did he ever write reviews for that site, or was he just like a video guy, you know?

Well, he's a dead guy now.

He can't...

Dead men tell no tales, and they certainly don't review any games.

So, I was at laserloving.com, and, you know, I was also at endlessbacklog.com.

What it is with advertising at these sites these days?

Because they have the same ads running on both sites, which is the meet Asian girls, you know, click here, you know, get a male or a bride.

What did I tell you about knives a second ago?

I guess they know their demographic.

If you want to know your demographic, you look at what advertisers are going for, right?

Yeah, and, you know, you have to be careful about this kind of thing now, mentioning this kind of thing, because, you know, these ads are targeted, so they know what other sites you've been to.

So, I say, hey, what it is, I go to CNN, I see all these things about Asian women wanting to be my bride.

Hey, and you're like, really?

Because all I get is biographies about political heroes everywhere I go.

Well, enough about that.

But you don't have any insight about laserleaming.com.

I assume it's just all an agency type thing, right?

I mean, that's all stuff that Chris Langner handles?

Well, given the content, I'm assuming it's personal choices by Chris Langner.

That's my assumption.

I don't know about that.

They also have ads for like, have you seen this game?

It's like an MMO and it's like got this barely dressed woman.

Yeah.

It's like warning for men only, you know, this video game.

It's called Famousy World or something like that.

I guess it works, right?

Apparently.

Generally websites of that size go to ad agencies and they pick the ads rather than the websites.

We don't have any ads, do we?

On our site?

No.

Yep.

We're excellent.

So we're clearly superior to both Laser Lemming and Endless Backlog.

If you want to go to a website that does not have ads of Asian women and CGI scantily clad characters, I assume, then go to gameunder.net where we give you no bullshit.

No, no bullshit.

And we do not use pictures of scantily clad women to entice you to listen to previously published podcasts from other websites.

Never.

At all.

And that is irrelevant.

That piece of art is from Rob, and so he owns the rights to that.

If we're posting softcore pornography, it's at least softcore pornography that we or one of our associates have produced.

That is correct.

Did you happen to listen to episode 57 and a half?

No, I did not.

Well, I posted it because it was actually the return of us recording after a long hiatus.

And it was just basically filler.

So I didn't put it on the feed.

I didn't put it in the Twitter.

So if anyone wants to listen to that, they can just check that out through the regular RSS.

And as I said, this is the time of year where soccer has returned to Australia, am I right?

Correct.

So I assume that we'll go back to our once every six week recording schedule?

Well, you already are on that apparently.

Yeah, and is there any news about the A-League that you wish to share with our listeners who have been crying out for this sort of content for months on end?

Well, Melbourne is going to win the league.

Didn't they play the Raw the other day?

That was the shitty Melbourne team, the fake Melbourne team.

The Melbourne Heart?

Melbourne City now.

Well, they've changed their name.

So good they had to change their name and colours.

Now you're with the Melbourne Faith, right?

Yes.

The traditional Catholic team.

You're with the Victory, the Melbourne Victory?

Yes.

I mean, as bad as that name is, as you just mentioned before, at least it's not Brisbane Raw.

And that's R-A-W, just so everyone knows.

It's not R-O-A-R.

Brisbane Raw would actually be pretty good.

It would.

It would be better than Raw, at least.

Okay, so your team really is named Victory.

Unfortunately.

And at some point, they never considered that they might be shooting themselves in the foot by calling themselves Victory.

Apparently not.

That was the best way they could link the team's name with the rest of Victoria.

It's like Danny Glover naming his retirement boat I'm Gonna Live Forever or naming a ship the Titanic.

You know?

Victory.

Come on.

Have you been following the Raw?

I only from what I saw on the TV over the weekend.

No, so not.

Okay, because wonderfully, they've lost their first four matches and the team is the Shambles.

Yeah, well, didn't they win it all last year?

That or the year before?

And that was after several years of dominance.

So for the rest of the great, the rest of the league, fans of other teams, this is a great cathartic moment.

It's always good to see a dynasty or dynastic team pull apart at the seams.

Exactly.

Well, while we're on the topic of films, I have to bring up one thing we mentioned in the past.

I believe in the context of Harlan Alisson's wonderful rant on saving Mr.

Banks.

Yeah, that was excellent.

So you went off and watched that?

That was great.

Yeah, he's crazy.

He is just brilliant.

And it was quite accurate in what he said.

It is a completely bizarre propaganda piece.

And it's bizarre because it, apart from quite easily avoiding any accusations of anti-Semitism or being a complete dick, it doesn't really paper over the fact that he took her film, her book, completely raped it, was a complete asshole to her.

It doesn't cover up any of that.

Despite being a propaganda piece for the legacy of Disney and how he saved her character apparently.

Which is where the fanciful stuff comes in.

You know what I would like to see?

Even in universities these days, people are getting in trouble for speaking their minds and things like that.

And I say even in university because it's supposed to be a place where ideas are explored, just as in newspapers and such.

This is supposed to be a place where we can explore ideas.

And you said, despite the...

What did you say about anti-Semitism?

I said they managed to avoid any anti-Semitic content in regards to Walt Disney's depiction.

So they avoided the more controversial things, but didn't attempt to avoid making him seem like something of a complete dick.

Right.

And when you said that, it prompted in my mind, talking about the Citizens of Mount Pius, is that there seems to be a...

it's almost like a spell check that's on the public dialogue these days, where no one's listening to anything you're saying.

They're just listening to the things that you're saying that could be flagged as objectionable, and then deriving all meaning from what you've said surrounding that statement to that comment.

You know?

Yep.

And anyway, that was my...

So what you're saying is, if this had been made a few years in the past, he would have been an anti-Semite.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think so.

And the film would have been better for it.

Yeah, it would have been.

But that's all come up before in the past as well anyway.

And we would...

Yep.

Yep.

Can I ask you, what do you think of Mary Poppins?

I think it's a...

You know, it's a...

It's a psychedelic work.

It's a work of psychedelia, basically.

So it fits in with, you know, the work of Warhol, The Grateful Dead to a lesser extent, you know.

And the work of Disney.

And the work of Disney, yeah.

So basically, it's...

You know, it's a psychotropic fantasy, basically.

And, you know, that's my position on it.

You know, and that's kind of...

It was kind of a neat time, because right now, our media is so full of subversive things that they're no longer subversive.

Whereas back then, everything was proper.

So everyone assumed that everything was proper.

So you could do highly subversive things in plain sight, and everyone would go, oh, what a sweet movie.

And if something's subversive, if the norm is subversion, then if you were being subversive, you were not being subversive.

So the point being, there's just as much room to be subversive today but you can't be subversive as you would have been in the past because what is considered subversive now is what was considered subversive in the past.

So I think what you're referring to is more along the line of allusions and references.

Yeah.

Becoming the norm, which I think is slightly different to subversion.

I would agree with that.

I would just say that possibly that outrage and faux outrage has become the shortcut to attention.

Yeah.

And so everyone expects everything to be outrageous and over the top and ridiculous and crazy and obscene.

Yeah.

In fact, to get attention, you have to be obscene.

And if you look at political discourse in the United States right now, all of the statements regarding and surrounding politics are obscenities.

Yeah.

Because there's no discourse anymore, so you just have to say obscenities to get attention.

So, yeah, that was my point there.

So, but any case, back to...

I've been playing Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012.

Have you heard of this game?

No, I haven't.

Rogue Trip:?

Rogue Trip:.

Rogue Trip:.

I have not heard of it.

Vacation 2012.

It comes from the million-selling developer of car combat.

It was developed by GT Interactive Software for the PlayStation 1, and it was published in 1998.

That's why I haven't heard of it.

And EGM said, What's more important, the name or the game?

That's their pull quote.

And essentially, you know, I mean, it's the old well-worn trail.

You're an auto mercenary helping on showing tourists the hotspots of the radioactive charbroiled future.

I'm getting pretty sick of this cliché.

But what's funny about this game is it's actually, it looks very good.

It has a lot of sound-alike music in it.

And when I say a lot, I mean a single track.

They have a single track that is a rip-off of a sublime song, and they play it over and over and over again.

And basically, it's a vehicular combat game, as you would expect from the makers of the million-selling developer of Car Combat.

Car Combat is a vehicular combat game.

I probably should have said that.

I shouldn't have assumed that.

But anyway, Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012.

And the funny thing is that I was playing it on my PlayStation 1, and it controls quite well.

The game is fairly poor.

I mean, it has just standard tropes like school bus, tank, hot rod, future car.

And basically you have to...

It's capture the flag, where a tourist is the flag.

So it's quite difficult.

It does also have the music of the Mighty Mighty Boss tones.

So it does actually have music as well as sound like music.

Maybe Mighty Mighty Boss tones actually sound like for Sublime.

That's probably more the case.

Well, if there's only one song, that must be the case.

Yeah, it should say featuring a song by the Mighty Mighty Boss tones.

That is actually a song by Sublime.

So what do you think about a video game called Vacation 2012?

I think it was certainly made at least 10 years in the past.

Yeah, 1998, so I can't do the math, but yeah, weird.

16 years ago.

So that's my first and final impressions of Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012.

I'd say that if you're looking for something to play on the PlayStation 1, if you've played all the other games and you like vehicular combat, but haven't got around yet to playing Twisted Metal Black or Vigilante 8, or Car Combat, or Vigilante 8, be sure to pick up a copy of Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012.

It also has an Elvis zombie in it.

Excellent.

That sounds like an amazing game.

Yeah, yeah.

And you know, I've got to say though, I'm disappointed in the game developers of 1998 that they were not able to conjure up a realistic depiction of what 2012 was like.

Well, your descriptions sounded very accurate, so I don't know what you're talking about.

Well, there is a...

Were you in Australia in 2012?

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Okay, because I was going to say, that's Inner City Melbourne 2012 to a T.

Well, I didn't say that you're going around running down Indians.

I said tourists.

So it's not a student killing.

It's Indian tourists.

It has a full color manual.

It has a manual.

It's 32 pages long and it's full color.

Oh, okay, and it features an advertisement for a band called The Nashville Pussy.

From their album, Let Them Eat...

So Snake Eyes is a song that appears in this game.

I wonder what those guys are doing now.

They're probably dead.

Don't just play the game and master it.

Get Rogue Trip: Exclusive Strategy Guide from GW Press.

Does that have an address you can send?

Just a website.

If you want to go there, it's www.wpress.com.

So it's got a website in 1998?

Yeah, www.wpress.com.

I'm guessing they're dead now then.

One of the cars is the Meat Wagon, which is a traditional New York yellow cab with a large hot dog on top of it wearing a Jason Voorhees mask.

Or a Frankfurter, as it would be called in Valley of Tarts.

Frankfurter, and it's driven by Dick Biggs.

Dick Biggs.

And it says, Dick Biggs, don't be fooled by size.

In Biggs' case, a little dick goes a long way indeed.

It stands up against even the toughest adversaries.

If you think Biggs is easily taken out of the game, well, you don't know Dick.

So, very clever writing as well.

You know, it's not just about the entertainment.

So, this was written...

Well, people say, um, video game writing has progressed a long way, right?

Yeah, well...

That's, I think, better erotic fiction than the dialogue from the upcoming Dragon Age Inquisition.

Is it supposed to be an erotic game?

The upcoming Dragon Age, uh, whatever?

Apparently.

All right, are you ready to give me...

You've been playing some pretty hot games.

Surely you've got some first impressions, or do you only have final impressions?

I've got a game called Back to Bed, and in the notes I've got the word blowjobs, so I think that's a pretty natural thing to move on to.

Yeah, let's move on to a game called Back to Bed.

And Back to Bed is a puzzle game, which I think was originally released as a touchpad game for mobile phones before it was possibly for free as well, before it has now been ported to PC as a fully-fledged game that you can buy on Steam and presumably various other places.

And on Laser Lemming, friend of the podcast Arnie reviewed the game.

Really?

Correct, and by Arnie.

Yeah, you did a cameo review?

Well, I somehow convinced Chris to get him onto the website, and he did several reviews.

And when I say he reviewed Back to Bed, I mean, he played the game, didn't rewrite the review for three months, I mean, while I pezzed him the whole time, and then I eventually wrote several paragraphs to finish it for him.

Oh, shit, so you could get me a job over there.

Correct, I could probably get anyone a job over there.

Okay, so listeners...

If you want to become a fully professional, fully-fledged game journalist, contact Tom Towers.

Tom Towers is at Game Under Phil on Twitter.

That's Game Under Phil on Twitter, the official Twitter account of Tom Towers.

So clearly I should be a freelance writer agent.

Yeah, why not?

If such a thing exists.

Now, looking at the screens of this, it's like an MC Escher-like, isometric puzzle type thing, right?

Slash data.

Yes, yep.

Do you have melting clocks?

Yes, you do.

And does it have cigars and pipes?

Yes, it does.

Not only does it have cigars and pipes, one of the gameplay mechanics, which the Blowjobs was alluding to, is there are pairs of lips which are perpetually blowing and you use them to push the character you're directing around the levels.

So that's even better than a cigar, I would say, because then you are the cigar.

Well, sometimes the cigar is just a cigar, and this is not a pipe.

Correct.

And the reason, or rather, the way you use these blowing lips is how each level starts is, this guy, this sleepwalker, slash, Nykoleptic, spawns in a set area and begins to walk forwards.

And the levels are basically set out as grids with various obstacles, and if you fall off the edge, or rather if he falls off the edge, then they go back to the spawn point and start all over again.

And so your objective is to direct this person to his bed, so that he can go back to bed and not kill himself sleepwalking, I presume.

And the way you direct him is either with apples, which you place in certain areas, or fishes, which you use as bridges across gaps or over obstacles.

And as you play through the game, there begin to be more complicated obstacles such as moving clocks and dogs, which will kill the person, and train tracks.

And if the sleepwalker gets killed, then rather than simply respawning, you have to start the level again.

And what I've described is extremely simple, right?

Yes.

So the thing that makes the simplicity work and be enjoyable is the great flow to the game, which is of course achieved by whenever you fail, they immediately respawn.

And because the mechanics feel pretty good, despite being extremely simple, it creates this really good flow that even though what you're doing is pretty easy to figure out, it's fun because everything moves so quickly.

Once you've figured something out and you've got the pathway all set out, you can fast forward, which has the guy walk really quickly through the level, which looks really cool and is fun to do.

But when you come to these levels where you have to restart, that messes up the flow, and because it's still really obvious, especially at the time what you're meant to be doing, then it just becomes awkward and not so fun.

Now, that's still pretty rare and it's a really short game, so that doesn't happen too much.

So as you play through the game, that's fun, pretty mediocre, but it's enjoyable, right?

But when you finish the game, you unlock what is called Nightmare Mode, and Nightmare Mode gives you more objectives in the levels, where you have to pick up one or two or three keys within the level before you can open the door and complete the level.

This completely changes the game and adds a really fun tactile challenge to it, because the majority of the game in the normal game, you don't actually need to play with any skill whatsoever because the person respawns if they die, so you don't need to worry about them dying.

Generally, you can set up the whole level so that they can walk through the level once you've set everything up without you having to do anything, right?

Yep, and that's one of the reasons for fast-forwarding this fun.

But the way they place the keys, you need to collect all of the keys before they get to the end, and when they fall off the edge, they lose the key.

And because the levels haven't changed, you've often got to be using the items that you use to redirect them in a much faster way, where if you aren't fast enough in placing something, they're going to walk off the edge.

And that could be, sometimes, the speed you need is within one or two tiles, which is probably about one second or under a second.

So it adds an element of skill and tactility to it as well as the simple, basic puzzle of the original pathways that you're using, as well as slightly more complex puzzles of how to figure out how to get him to get all the keys in the one run.

So then it becomes a genuinely good and really enjoyable and tactile puzzle game.

But you have to play through the pretty mediocre, normal game to unlock it.

That's unfortunate because, first of all, I find it absolutely delicious that the higher difficulty mode is called nightmare mode.

I mean, it's such a clear, obvious choice, and they went with it anyway.

And it's the sort of thing that you'd find in a first person shooter.

You've unlocked nightmare mode.

But my thing was, well, it sounds like that's the real game.

And if you have to unlock it to get to it, most people aren't going to do that.

Yep.

I mean, I was assuming that this game had 12 levels in total.

It sounds more like it has, what, 6 levels and then you play the 6 levels again.

It's got much more than 6 levels.

I think there's 30 levels or so.

There's 2 basic areas, I think, and each has about 15 levels.

And the levels are...

One of the reasons the flow works so well, despite the game being extremely easy, is those levels, a lot of them, will take you like 15 seconds or 30 seconds to beat, which results in a nice flow of positive feedback.

And judging from the visuals, it looks like it was...

You know, initially you said it was for touch interfaces and whatnot.

And it certainly looks like that.

Does it suffer at all from coming over from...

to a PC to a more interactive...

Were you using a controller for this?

I was using a controller.

I tried it briefly with a mouse, and I think with a mouse it definitely suffers because it does the old isometric RPG control style where you hold and click down to move, or you click to move the character in a certain direction, right?

Which I think would make the nightmare mode extremely awkward to play.

It's satisfactory for the normal mode, but it doesn't have the tactility that the controller does.

And the controller, I think, works exceptionally well, probably as well as it would have worked in a touch control, with a touch control.

And what's the name of this game?

Back to Bed?

Back to Bed.

It's from Bedtime Digital Games, and they seem to be, like, Nordic, if you judge their last names, the guys that made this, which we generally have a predilection for those kinds of games, if you look at Star Breeze's games and other such things.

It's Steam World Dink.

Yep, and the guy you interviewed, Klaus Oversteem, or whatever his name was.

Ooster Tag.

Yeah.

Juss van Dongen.

Yeah, that's it.

He's Dutch.

Okay, well, it's the same thing.

It's all Nordic.

It's not the same thing.

It's Nordic.

It's that little chunk of the world that's really rich and cold.

All right, so, I mean, it sounds like, it actually sounds like a return to the kinds of games, like a real puzzle-type platforming game, like a Lenin's or Lost Vikings.

It also reminded me of Cooler World.

What?

Oh, a Cool World or a Cooler World?

KULA World, wasn't it?

Cooler's got another name.

I can't remember what the other one was.

Are you sure this isn't some Australian theme park with a Koala mascot?

You're thinking a Koala World.

No, I'm not.

I'll tell you what it is, because you couldn't mistake it for another game.

You are directing a beach ball around platforms.

I remember you talking about this.

I remember you talking about this.

It came out, what, for the PlayStation?

PlayStation 1.

Original PlayStation.

And it's just like a Marvel Madness type game?

Nope, there's no tilting involved.

It's like a monkey balls game.

It is like a monkey balls game, except it's not tilting.

What the hell?

Where's the fun in that?

You just move the blocks to move the ball around?

It got pretty complicated.

It is actually a very good puzzle game.

Alright, Koala World?

It doesn't look like it, but when you were playing it, it works very well.

Koala World.

Also known as Rollaway in America and Koala Quest in Japan.

Excellent, because you know what's great for a brand?

Having three different names and three different territories.

Like Hot Shot Golf is called Everyone Golfs or We Golf in Europe, and it's called whatever else in Japan.

Everybody's Golf, you mean?

Yes.

Is that what it's called here?

I think so.

In America, it's called Hot Shot Golf.

The one final thing on Back to Bed I have to mention is they managed to include one of the...

The atmosphere, as you can tell from the visuals, is incredibly derivative, obviously, but that's what makes it quite fun.

And an example of that is the one final brilliant cliché they included, what has now become a cliché, I suppose, is the backwards talking that you then reverse originally from Twin Peaks.

Exactly, which fits very well.

Did they ever do that in Deadly Premonition?

I can't remember.

They fucked up then.

No, so the silks, you're not gonna want to eat.

Yeah.

I will tweet the makers of the game and let them know that we are going to be posting a score for Koala World, uh...

For Back to Bed in this podcast.

Just don't mention our association with Nell.

I'll say that we're part of GameSpot Australia.

No one will know the difference.

Fuck yeah, we made it onto GameSpot.

Alright, where'd you get?

Wait, I'm gonna guess, you know, just be normal here, alright?

I'm gonna guess you are gonna give this a 7 out of 10.

You are close.

I'm going to give it a 6 out of 10.

Aww, what could they have done differently?

They are listening to this podcast now.

What do you know about video games?

I mean, what could they have done differently?

I'm then gonna give it a 6.5 out of 10.

Alright, thank you.

Now, what could they have done differently?

Just purely for the money, I assume, they are gonna send us as a fully professional, large website GameSpot.

Yeah, well, if they want us to start putting that...

I'm gonna rephrase this.

If you are listening, developers of Back to Bed, I will change my score to 6.5 for $6.50.

You can contact me at Game Under Phil, the official Twitter account for Tom Towers.

I am Phil Fogg, incidentally, and I am joined, as always, by my co-host Tom Towers, senior contributing editor at laserlemming.com, freelance writer, as well as being a very good guy.

We weren't meant to mention the laserlemming part, so now you've just cost me $6.00.

Well, that's the intro.

That was the intro for the show.

We forgot to do it earlier.

Now, honestly, though, this is a legitimate question.

If they had added a heart-tugging story with CGI cutscenes, would that have moved them either?

No.

If they had made it so you could play Nightmare Mode to begin with, it would have got a 6.5.

If they had added a dog that is your friend throughout the whole game that ultimately you get to choose whether or not to save his life at the end of the game, would that have helped?

Well, you are a dog, something like a dog, and you are, essentially, the friend of the sleepwalker, so that's sort of already there.

All right, so what if the dog had a friend, a bird, a friendly bird friend, a magpuck?

No.

No?

No.

That hurts.

Before we get to the point, I've got to mention one final thing that I think I'm going to give a 6.5 anyway, because the credit sequence, you can not only skip, but you can actually fast forward through using the same mechanic as is in the game.

Remember the time we came up with how to fix Max Payne, like ideas for Max Payne 4?

Yep.

What if in a game...

We created probably the best Rockstar game.

Yeah.

Yeah, ever.

And I also, on VG Press the other day, I said what my ideal game would be.

I don't know if we want to talk about that here.

But did you see that post, incidentally?

I did, indeed.

So maybe you could look that up if you think it's worth talking about.

If it's not, then we won't.

But maybe that would be a good feature for a game, which is not only can you...

You can skip the credits, but you can also insert yourself in the credits if you do it fast enough.

So it would have to be a PC game.

So, you know, you could type your name in and...

No, here's what it should be.

If you watch all the credits, there's a final credits section listing the people who watched all the credits.

You get to put your name in.

Yep, like the fly.

And it updates via Steam or whatever else.

It has to work on PC, because it just won't work any other way.

People who watched all of the credits.

And the thing is, it would eventually go for like 24 hours, because as word got out, people would watch all the credits so they could get their username onto the credits.

And it would just keep growing.

It would be like Nobby Nobby Boy.

The whole world would be contributing to something that expands to the moon.

Yep.

Awesome.

Do you have that post open incidentally?

I think our listeners should probably be exposed to that.

I don't, but you go ahead.

Yeah, I'll go ahead while you talk about something else, possibly from our trademark banter list.

But someone had asked on vgpress.com, which is basically where we hang out in terms of community.

You know, what is...

Design your dream game.

And the poster, one of our good friends who have been on the show before, D.

Vader, has this huge wall of text describing in exact detail the game he would design.

Which I would have read, but I just knew he was going to write Zelda.

TLDR.

I didn't need to.

And guess what?

They've already made that game.

It's called Darksiders.

So, sorry.

I think it's called Zelda.

I thought about posting my idea for a video game, but I still think that there's a chance that I might be able to do something with it.

So I did not post my actual idea for a video game.

I posted basically what I've said all along, and long-term listeners will know what I want.

So it's Skyrim with an ATV and a sniper rifle and a shotgun.

Right?

I mean, you knew that that's where I would start.

Naturally.

You get extra money for combos on the ATV, a la Tony Hawk, right?

Yep.

And extra money for headshots.

So you're playing Skyrim.

Do you get extra money if you headshot someone with the ATV in a jump doing a trick?

Yeah, yeah.

Like if you're doing a reverse knack-knack on the ATV and then you pull off a sniper shot, absolutely.

No, no, you don't pull off a sniper shot.

You do the reverse knack-knack onto the person's head.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

That would be given...

You'd be getting like a...

it'd be like called Watermelon's, you know, combo or something like that, where you crush their skulls with the ATV.

You can choose to beat the game by not doing any of the story missions and by shooting the issuing party in the head as they describe the mission they wish to give you.

So by shooting the party in the head while they're giving you the mission, you have completed the mission.

So in effect, you could finish the game in 17 minutes.

Which is my fantasy.

You can enter cheat codes that are widely distributed on the web.

In fact, on the back cover that make the ATV look like an actual burro.

So instead of an ATV, you're now riding a donkey.

But it's a burro.

Which is an in-joke of the VG press.

Is it?

For the listeners out there.

Well, the burro is the mating of a horse and a donkey.

And the burro cannot make its own burros.

It cannot make any burritos.

No little burros.

There are five second snippets of hardcore porn that appear on the screen at random intervals.

So you're just playing and then all of a sudden hardcore porn for five seconds and then back to the game.

Do you get an achievement if you pause on the hardcore porn so that it remains on the screen for longer?

You can pause them.

But you can, in a Halo Forge-like method, if you enter the right combo while the porn is playing, dub your own voice effects over it and then republish that to the web.

So the next person who watches it has to watch that with your audio over it.

With this online system in mind, can I make a suggestion for your game?

You use my credit system.

Okay, how's that going to work?

For the credits.

When the credits are playing.

I thought you meant for the porn.

Oh yeah, the credit thing is in there.

Forget that.

It's done.

If you enter the correct QTE, so at random intervals, you're walking around and they put up a QTE.

If you get it right.

Actually, in a similar vein, I've got a slight alteration to your porn idea.

Obviously, this is going to be using usernames and the like.

So when you're dubbing your voice, not only is your voice dubbed in, but your gamertag or whatever it is, is displayed on screen.

So eventually, the hardcore porn becomes a wall of text that is only gamertags and the sound is completely the dubbing.

And then if you press another QTE while those random porn segments are showing, the usernames disappear.

Yep.

If you enter the correct QTE at random intervals, you get to play Space Invaders, Frogger or Geometry Wars until you reach the score of 5000.

So it's already a good game if it features the full length of all those games.

Yes.

Yep.

You get Geometry Wars for free.

It's all worked out.

I worked out all the licensing and everything.

So when you reach the score of 5000 in any of those games, it goes back to the regular game.

Whenever you miss a headshot...

So until you reach that, you have to play it.

Yeah, you have to play it.

You're stuck playing Space Invaders.

But you entered the correct QTE, so you know what you're doing.

Turn-based combat occurs whenever you miss a headshot.

So if you're going for a headshot, if it registered that you pulled up the sniper rifle and were aiming and you miss, then it turns into turn-based combat.

I cannot really fully explain how that works, but, you know...

Now, this next one I'm a bit shaking on.

Basically, Shaquille O'Neal voices the role of narrator.

This can be substituted by anyone you want, really.

What about the player?

The player?

What player?

The player.

Who voices what?

Is the narrator.

Okay, sure.

So you put up the narration on the screen and you get to talk it into the headline?

You get rated on how accurate you are to the script.

I'm not sure about that one yet, but I'm pretty confident that we could do something like that.

I'm not quite sure.

Maybe you can come up with other voices that we could pay to have in that role.

John Cleese and Snoop Dogg.

Second best perhaps Stephen Fry.

Stephen Fry.

If we're dragging the bottom of a barrel.

He will do anything.

It's as appeared in Fable 3.

Comes with a joystick that has purple LEDs inside of it that glow when you're close to hidden treasure.

You can attach it to an MP3 player, which will make a teddy bear appear on the lower left hand corner of the screen where he lip syncs the lyrics of the songs that you're playing, substituting the C word anytime the word AND appears in a song.

Which C word?

The C word that ends with T, that is four letters.

Which one?

The one that you can't say in America.

Rhymes with Bund.

When you carjack a car, which of course you can do in Skyrim, the car wash music from GTA 2 plays.

Excellent.

And in case you don't know what that music is, I'll play it now.

Alright, here we go.

Alright, now do you remember?

Yes.

I don't, luckily.

Alright, so that was my final impressions of Call of Duty Black Ops.

Do you want to talk about one of your games?

What score are you giving it?

Call of Duty Black Ops?

I will give Call of Duty Black Ops a 6 out of 10.

I was expecting a 10.

No, no, no.

Either a 10 or a 0, going by those impressions.

I actually liked Call of Duty Black Ops, but it's the same thing.

They did some new things with it, and it was actually quite entertaining.

Your description certainly made it sound entertaining.

If only they had done those things.

All we need to say about Call of Duty Black Ops is that I've played it, I liked it a lot, I'm giving it a 6.5 out of 10 because it's on the treadmill.

It was Treyarch's high point so far.

I still have to go and get Black Ops 2 and presumably there's a 3 as well.

I thought they actually did a really good job of it.

I find no problem with their game.

It was like an 8-hour long game.

It was fun, it was good first-person shooting, and it wasn't the ridiculous Call of Duty stuff where they're jumping all over the world and it's just one thing that's bigger than the next.

And it was actually quite clever.

The only thing that let it down was, spoilers, after the cutscene, they cut to a cutscene of Kennedy and Nixon in a room, talking, and Nixon looks like the Nixon rubber mask that you see at protests.

And it's like...

And that let it down?

Yes, because Nixon...

So that was the highlight of the game.

Nixon is probably one of the greatest, you know, Shakespearean-like characters of our time in the late 20th century.

The guy was endlessly complex, and they're just showing him as being this...

Like, they have Kennedy there rendered perfectly, and they have Nixon looking like a rubber mask at a protest.

Well, Kennedy is more easy to render than Nixon.

I don't, yeah, less wrinkles.

Exactly.

But it was disappointing, and also I found that the post-game content was fairly disappointing as well, as it relates to those presidents and what they had them doing, but then I'm a presidential junkie, so of course I'm going to find a multiplayer game where they're killing zombies to be disrespectful.

I would have preferred Kurt Cobain, actually, in the game, shooting zombies, but, you know, that's neither here nor there.

So that's my review of Call of Duty Black Ops.

I give it a 6.5 out of 10.

Excellent.

So, you know, you're going to talk about a game that we've already covered exhaustively in the past.

I know on episode 50, around a 26-minute mark, I talked about this game extensively, and we've gone over and over and over again.

On the comment section of our website, people criticized me for my comments regarding this game.

Do you know what their comment was?

Basically they said that I should have played it with the sound on, so obviously they're a regular listener that knows.

Because I said it had lacked atmosphere and a sense of immersiveness.

I believe they used the F word when referring to me, and then said I should listen to it with the sound on.

The show was episode 50, because I just opened episode 50.

Yeah, it's episode 50.

A great search tool on our website should show you that when you put in Sir, You Are Being Hunted, or just Sir, it will pull up episode 50.

They must have commented on the front page.

Big Show 7.

They commented somewhere, yeah.

Basically, we're talking about Sir, Madam, You Are Being Hunted, to which we have previously dedicated 23 seconds of conversation.

I played the game earlier in the year, and this is a first-person game, and I played it and paid for it full price, because I heard Patrick Kledbick talking about it.

I was like, well, if it's a shooter, a first-person shooter, we've got to talk about it on the site.

And I played it, and it was like, oh, you know, there's all this stuff, like, yeah, you've got to survive, you've got to consume calories.

Can I just interrupt you completely?

I've got the quote here.

They did use the F-word Fogg, and this was actually our famous Hebrew friend, I believe, we refer to it as.

Well, we have more than one.

So this is another one.

Well.

It's all Greek to me, so I can't tell any difference between the names.

Actually, we do only have one.

I was just trying to make...

Make us sound good.

Well, just make us sound less prejudiced.

Yeah, that doesn't make us sound less prejudiced.

Sorry.

But the point being, you promised to try it with the sound on.

Yeah.

Did you?

Yes, I did, actually, because I felt bad, and I did go back and play it with the sound on, and did not find it to add to the atmosphere at all.

So you were true to your word.

I did.

I did try it, and it didn't help.

Excellent.

So, we're calling it So You're Being Hunted.

It's available on Steam.

It's for the PC.

I don't think it's available on any other platforms at this time.

I don't think so.

So what drew you to this first person shooter?

Well, one simple fact that was released in 2014, and I was looking back at the games I had played, released this year, and thinking that none of them stood out as being particularly remarkable.

So I thought I would try what, as you just said, made huge waves on the Giant Bomb podcast.

And we say sir slash madam because as you start the game, on the main menu there is an option to change the game to Madam.

You were being hunted rather than Sir, you were being hunted, which changes the dialogue in game.

And I was actually thinking, now if it had been called Madam, you were being hunted, we would have unfortunately not had our great sitcom discussion, but is that not a more intriguing title?

What's it?

Oh, that's a good one.

Yeah, we do kind of get derailed there with, are you being served, right?

Okay, so, you know, I think it actually, if they'd called it Madam, you were being hunted, I think it would have garnered more attention and sold more copies initially.

Exactly.

I mean, it's perfect for the modern gaming, the political leanings at the moment, and it sounds pretty much as good.

Why wouldn't you go with Madam, you were being hunted?

With the option to call it Sir.

At the very least, that's going to give you a feature on Polygon, on why you chose to make the feminine gender the predominant one.

Polygon and everywhere else.

And also, for the creepy people out there, I mean, a game called Madam, you were being hunted.

I mean, you know, that would have sold.

Maybe that's why they didn't.

Pure interest, yeah, maybe that's why they didn't.

So, is it a first person?

First of all, what is the providence of this game?

Do you know the developer or where they're from?

And then secondarily, like, is this a first person shooter or is this a first person survival game?

I assume they're English, but I don't know.

And it is a first person survival game.

It is not a first person shooter.

And the first person shooting mechanics are awful.

All the guns, I didn't end up getting a machine gun, so maybe the machine guns were different, but the shotgun and the pistol felt absolutely identical to use.

You could use the shotgun at a very long range, and it still did more damage than the pistol, so the pistol, while being described as having more accuracy, may have had more accuracy, but given the great range that you could use a shotgun at, you didn't need more accuracy with the shotgun, of course, due to the wider burst radius, right?

So the guns that I used were completely identical.

The combat generally felt awful, but what was fun with the combat was if you played it as Malay, because...

Go on.

Oh, that's odd, because I never got close enough to anyone to actually engage in Malay combat.

Well, this is the thing, and one of the things that takes away from the survival aspect of the game is how incredibly easy Malay combat is, because even against several robots, if you circle strafe towards them with a Malay weapon, you can easily kill all three robots one by one without getting hit, because they do not ever shoot you if you are circle strafing.

What?

Yep.

The only thing that complicates this is if there is a dog around which can run up and bite you and knock you down, and he's much faster than the robot, so you can't circle strafe or run away from them.

Fucking dogs.

Yep.

Video game dogs.

But, despite that rather taking away from the majority of fights removing any challenge from them rather, the Malay combat actually is a little bit fun mechanically and aesthetically because there's a slight chunkiness of meetingness to when you're hitting the robots, the sound they make when you're hitting them or metal being hit and machinery bouncing around sounds great and they say humorous things and scream in a humorous manner, so the sound is of benefit in this context certainly, and when they fall over, they twitch amusingly, which you can't enjoy as much from a distance.

So the Malay combat is fun, and what I said was perhaps a slight exaggeration in terms of the combat, because you still need to be smart, because it's not completely that if you're circle strafing, you're not going to get hit, because if you're circle strafing from a greater distance, you're more likely to get hit because obviously the angle is easier for them, right?

Right, yeah.

But so you've still got to be clever and smart and stealthy if your plan is to kill them at Malay to get close enough to them to kill them.

And depending on what the environment is like, the area might not be big enough for you to circle strafe easily, so you need to figure out which enemies to kill the first time and so on and so forth.

So it's still very much on the easy side, especially for a survival game, but there is enough challenge and thought required that it is for the most part enjoyable and engaging when you come up an encampment where there are a lot of enemies.

Right?

Right.

Now, one of the reasons that...

Well, my question is, you know, this is described as being an open world, you know, stealth survival game.

I mean...

Would you describe this as being an open world?

I mean, because when I was playing it, basically, it was very clear there was nothing to do but go to the next thing that was being very clearly flagged.

Like, there was nothing to do other than go to the next village or next farm or next area.

Like, yes, it was open world in that you could go anywhere, but there was nothing to do any...

There was nothing to do other than go to the next point that they were directing you to.

Well, that is open world, if you can go anywhere.

Yeah, but if you...

You don't technically need content in those areas to constitute an open world.

Yeah, I would say, though, that if you're in an open world and there's only one option for advancing the game, it's not really open world.

I would still call it open world because open world, as far as the name of it is concerned, doesn't necessarily bring to mind any requirement except that the world is open.

I would think that...

Does it?

It's not open quest.

Well, open world, to me, you know, intimates that the fact that there will be multiple paths for you to take.

And even in a game like Grand Theft Auto, where ultimately you're funneled down to having to take the story missions, there are at least other things that you can do.

Well, you can go to the places you're meant to go to in any order.

So under those rules, it still technically works.

Alright, that works for me.

And there is slightly more to do in the open world, which is perhaps why you died so quickly.

Given the survival elements, you can't just run off to the next objective.

You do need to look for food to eat and game to kill and then cook as food.

And you need to look for ammo and that sort of thing.

So there is a semblance of other things to do within the world.

The problem with that though, and the major problem with the survival elements is that after perhaps the first ten minutes, when I did have to worry a bit about how much food I had and how much ammo I had, although I didn't have a weapon at that point, but once you get a weapon and by that point, you will probably have also accrued enough food to last you the entire game because the speed at which you lose your vitality and need to eat is extremely slow and there is an abundance of edible and nutritious food that can completely refill your vitality meter.

So it's never as if you're really in a jam where you're thinking, where you have to decide between perhaps carrying this amount of ammo or abandoning what you're doing and running off to find a rabbit to kill and cook or running off to ransack houses.

So the balance to actually use the survival mechanics, which are fun in and of themselves, isn't really there, so that the survival never really factors into what you're doing at all, which is a huge missed opportunity because the mechanics themselves, while really simple, are enough to make a pretty engrossing and intense survival game for the simple reason that on each of the five islands that you start on, you cannot save.

The only way to save in the game is either in the center of the starting island where you take back all the items or at the boats that take you to and from each island, right?

They have that stone hinge type thing you have to go back to.

Yeah, exactly.

And so, with the simple mechanics that were there, if you had to go off on a long journey over the islands, and sometimes some of the islands might take you 10 or 15 minutes, so there is still some intensity to it, because you could avoid getting killed for that length of time.

But if that had been there, not just in terms of the combat, but also in terms of survival, where you've really got to be paying attention to your vitality and to managing your ammo and the food you've got and looking for game, that would have then, I think, been an exceptional experience, rather than a reasonably enjoyable, very, very light survival game.

And I can only assume that perhaps, given the simpleness of the mechanics, it was made with the idea of making a very simple and easy alternative to something like Daze, right?

Daze?

You're not familiar with Daze?

Like DayZ?

DayZ, yeah.

I'm not going to fucking call it DayZ.

Alright, that's DayZ then.

That's acceptable.

Alright, thank you.

So, I mean, you couldn't recommend this game.

Well, I'm not finished talking about it yet, quite.

Well, I'm not saying that you should.

Alright, fine.

Did you ever play Tail of the Sun for PlayStation?

No, I didn't.

Tail of the Sun is a very, very similar game to this.

And it was made by Art Dink, which is a Japanese company.

And it's very directionless, but it is open world.

It's not first person, it's third person.

But there's probably only illegal ways to access this game at this point.

So, you know, I can't recommend it.

And if you were to play it on PC, it's probably not worth the effort of going through.

But it is one of these games where you derive a certain pleasure just from survival in the traditional sense.

You know, it's not a matter of survival in terms of fighting off dogs that jump through windows or having limited ammo.

It's a matter of actually going through an environment or a landscape and, you know, having the sun set and the sun rise and, you know, finding food and scuffling around.

Which in Beyond Two Souls, they have a homeless segment, which is actually pretty good in terms of, you know, giving you a sense of what it's like to be homeless.

So, I mean, the sense that I got from this game was that it was more the novelty of it rather than the actual enjoyment of the game that was to be had.

That it was more of a development toy and an experiment and an experience rather than an actual game that you enjoy.

Would you agree with that?

I think that is exactly my first impression, because one, technically it looks fucking awful.

The resolutions are abysmally bad.

It's generally very jaggy, including with aliasing on.

The only vaguely impressive thing about the graphics is some areas have a lot of grass, and this is immediately not impressive, because those areas run at about 10 frames per second.

So not only does it look like complete shit, it runs absolutely awfully for no genuine reason.

On top of that, when you're beginning, it is completely uninteresting and banal.

But once you get to...

This could be a fault of the procedural generation as well, but several of the fragments I had to find, there were enough enemies in a complicated enough environment that I had to come up with really complicated plans to be able to get that fragment away from the enemies that were guarding it.

And the final fragment that I had to get was just an incredible gameplay experience, because the fires that you're using to cook things also distract the enemies, right?

Well, it not only distracts them, it attracts them.

It attracts them.

Yeah.

Yep.

And it took me about 30 minutes of trying, you know, 50 different strategies and eventually coming up with incredibly complicated and complex plans using the traps and items that distract the enemies that they give you, such as toy trains that run along the ground.

All sorts of ridiculous plans until I came up with this really simple thing where I basically ran, attracted the enemies to a certain thing, ran around the island, halfway around the island, through the area and back all the way around again, which sounds perhaps obvious to do and simple and not interesting to do, but the fact that I had gone through all these ridiculous and complicated things because of how complex and ridiculous the amount and the sorts of enemies were there and that way they were placed within the environment leading to the thing and back from it made that an incredibly engrossing and enjoyable experience.

So I think the problem with it is not that it's necessarily an experiment, but that it is very uneven and that's one moment.

There were a few other moments that were not as good as that, but they were good, but most of the time it was basically me just running in with a cricket bat and bashing several robots with pretty bad eye on the head, picking up the item and strolling back to the boat.

Right?

Yeah.

And this is my problem with the game, because this game to me is more like a concept that a developer would bring to a lead developer and say, hey, I had an idea for this game, I've been working on it for a couple of weekends, this is what I've got, what do you think?

And then a developer working for a major publisher would go, well, I see what you're going for here, but it's not going to be commercial, it's not something we can really back for $20 million sort of thing.

So, sorry.

But now there's an outlet for this.

Which is a good thing.

I think it is a good thing, because the ideas that are put forward in this game, which is by Big Robot, which is a British developer, will be picked up in other games.

So people who didn't play Tale of the Sun, it was released back in the 90s, will play this game, and some of those people will be working for studios and be able to incorporate some of the elements of this game.

And they themselves also have the potential to improve upon the idea.

Absolutely.

If they are successful.

So like you could totally see the major element of this game popping up in Far Cry 5 sort of thing.

And it comes back to the conversation we've had many, many times, which is that the products that we know and love will end up just being features in bigger products.

So like with JRPGs, there's scant room for JRPGs anymore, but you'll see JRPG features turning up in other products.

So in that case, you're absolutely right.

It's good that this game is able to get out there and be an influence for greater use.

And did you get off the first island?

Absolutely not.

Do you know what basic type of island the one you were on was?

It was like an English countryside.

Because on the atmosphere, there were two subsets that you could choose from that were, I think, atmospherically very good.

And the reason the country town did not work atmospherically is because, I would say, one, the procedural generation didn't result in a particularly interesting design.

And being a country town in the country, there were a few buildings here, a field there, and so on and so forth.

So unless you are a skillful artist, that's going to require a certain amount of skill to make interesting and atmospheric.

Yeah, because you're just talking about hedgerows and vines.

But there were two subsets that procedural generation worked well with.

One of them, I think, and I could be getting this confused with a different one, was a castle-y sort of area where there was a lot of rocky buildings, which were immediately going to be, as long as they're reasonably large, automatically somewhat imposing in this sort of context where everything is, has a very dull color tone, and so on and so forth.

So that doesn't require as much skill when it comes to placement or design to actually make it interesting.

And the best one, which worked really well, because the one thing that was well done with the graphics, I thought, was the lighting with the way, it went from day to night.

If you put that in an area with other similar visual effects, as this was, you then created a good atmosphere, because this was an industrial area.

So there was a lot of smoke, which nicely complemented the changing light.

And there was a huge amount of factory-looking buildings, and the town was a city town, where the way you're going to invoke a city sort of atmosphere is not through carefully planned architecture, but the opposite of that, of badly planned architecture, where everything has the impression of being stuck together, right?

Which works well with procedural generation.

So those two areas, especially the industrial one, actually had a really good atmosphere and was completely and instantly immersive from the whole time, from the beginning of when you arrived on the island to when you left it.

Okay, so I had an unfortunate choice of picking the worst environment to start the game in.

Which is the default one.

I think industrial, and maybe this is randomly chosen, but industrial wasn't one of the default choices.

I had to manually choose it because I wanted to see all the sets that you could choose from.

Yeah, well with mine, it just felt like a very empty world.

It was not engaging, and then I got to an area and I was underpowered and I got killed.

So, you know, I didn't feel much for this game whatsoever.

And it was built with the Unity engine.

Correct.

And that was my first impression as well, but once you get past that, there is definitely more there.

Not necessarily a huge amount more, but there is more.

Do you think, on the most cynical level, do you think that they chose procedural generation as a bullet point?

I mean, they could have just as easily created these lands, right?

But then they would have left themselves open to criticism of level design.

But by saying, oh no, it's all procedurally generated, then everyone's like, oh wow, yeah, everyone's going to have a different experience, that's cool, man.

But, yeah, but if it's procedurally generated and still bad, then it's bad.

And, you know, I mean, we can't question the motives as to why they chose procedural generation, but I would have to think they would have had a better game with proper layout and proper design.

Well, I would certainly have, um, in theory, as long as they were good game designers, of course, helped with the issues of consistency and the quality of the encounters.

Whether they're good or not, they are designing a game, so they need to own it.

And my thing is, is like, would you live in a procedurally generated house?

You know, would you see a procedurally generated movie?

Would you read a procedurally generated book?

And the answer is, fuck no.

Because it would be absolute gibberish.

Would it be interesting to look at?

Yeah, you'd flick through a few pages.

You'd watch the first 20 minutes.

But, you know, no.

No.

There's no place for procedural generation in video games.

And it's a cop-out.

It's your typical engineer cop-out where you've got a video game developer, where you've got an engineer like John Carmack, who isn't an artist, who isn't creative, and just goes, fuck it, let the code make the world.

Right?

And no, I'm sorry.

You need someone else to come in and create an actual world with the tools you've built.

I think it depends on the sort of game.

From my experience with playing Abyss Odyssey, it would make basically no difference once I figured out what I was doing, whether the world was procedurally generated or not.

And the reason for that is the procedural generation was done within such a limited set of parameters that there were certain architectures and certain archetypes that were repeated that you came to expect anyway, where it wasn't really different to if the game had been made as one level that you were replaying endlessly, because that was the impression you ended up with anyway, right?

So I think if you're making a game where the gameplay is designed, the structure of the game is that you're playing through the same things repeatedly, I'm not saying you're necessarily going to get the same quality of an exceptional game that is doing this, but as far as a good or mediocre game doing this, I don't think there's going to be a huge difference between if you're looking at a well-designed game and a procedurally generated one where the parameters are intelligently chosen.

And that's the other point, when you talk about parameters that are intelligently chosen, this was a game that was kickstarted, right?

And if you look at it, Kickstarter is a procedurally generated way of funding.

No one has to come in and say, look guys, I'm considering to give you $15-20 million to make a video game, so I want to see the plan, it's going to be organized, we're going to have a time frame, we're going to build it.

Instead, Kickstarter is a procedural generation of funds.

A bunch of low-intellect people give a small amount of money, and together, cumulatively, they fund the project.

And as a result, you get this sort of game.

Well, the difference being a small group of people of low-intellect funding games.

Well, I would say...

Do you honestly think that the...

You cannot argue with Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012 from the million-selling developer of Car Combat.

I mean, basically, they made the game.

GT Interactive made Car Combat.

They sold a million copies.

Then they went to some dickhead who had millions of dollars and said, dude, this is a winner.

Basically, this is like a guaranteed money-printing operation.

These guys made Car Combat.

Give us a million dollars, you'll make 20.

And I'm sure Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012 went on to make even more money than Car Combat, despite the lack of a creative name.

But the point being, do you honestly believe there is a discrepancy in quality of game design, not polish, between Kickstarter projects and traditionally published ones?

You said not polish.

Not in terms of polish, in terms of design.

I think that if you look at something, a game like Papers, Please, that obviously you can have games on the highest level of design, regardless of the level of funding.

So, but Kickstarter campaign is basically like a propellant that's irresponsibly applied to ideas that are both good and bad.

How is that any different to traditional publishing?

Because in traditional publishing, you are going to a single source of money where it's their money and they are responsible for it, right?

So, as opposed to Kickstarter, where you've got everyone kicking in 20 cents, there's no responsibility there.

No one gives a shit.

No one cares if it's a good or bad game.

But for the active...

My point is, that doesn't actually affect the quality of the game.

Well, but see, for the bobbycotics of the world and for the Ubisoft shareholders, you know, their feet are going to be held to the fire if they don't come through with a good game or a good selling game or a best selling game.

Watch Dogs.

Yeah, like Watch Dogs.

Best selling new IP of all time.

But these people aren't either, because they're not necessarily going to get funding for a new title.

I'm not going to say...

I can't honestly say that Sir You're Being Hunted is a better game than Watch Dogs.

I can't say that Watch Dogs is a better game than Sir You're Being Hunted.

I played them both for an equal amount of time and found them equally uncompelling.

But at the end of the day, the developers of Sir You're Being Hunted gets to walk away with money in their pocket.

And I guess the guys at Watch Dogs...

As do the developers' Watch Dogs.

Yeah, you're right.

God, that's depressing.

And by the way, Back to Bed, your favorite indie game of the podcast was also a Kickstarter game.

Oh, right on.

See?

So there you go.

So there you go.

Kickstarter.

Patron of the arts.

Yep, and just the final point on procedural generation is the question then has to be, once again, back to design and not engineering wherein, like in Abyss Odyssey, the procedural generation is used to a point, right?

Brilliant, yep.

To achieve something.

Exactly what you just said.

And that is the better articulation of what I'm saying.

Yep, which I think didn't happen in my playthrough of So You Were Being Hunted because the result was unevenness rather than variety, which was presumably the intention of procedural generation.

Right, yep.

And the one final thing...

It's engineering versus design.

I mean, you basically summed it up perfectly.

And if you can find the right balance, then obviously no one cares how you made the motherfucking game as long as the outcome is good.

And the final thing I have to say on Back to Bed is the credits rap song of Call of Duty.

Wait, wait, on Back to Bed?

Ah, Sir, slash Madam, You're Being Hunted.

Sorry.

You remember the rap song in the credits of Call of Duty, right?

Oh, of course.

Easily the greatest credit song in the history of video games.

Right?

I'll go with it for now, yes.

Yep.

Well, that has finally been usurped because Sir You Were Being Hunted has a credits rap song in it, which is even better.

Even better in a funny way?

Even better in a funny way.

Yes.

Yes.

That's what I thought because it's made by people in England.

Exactly.

Oh, God.

So they have a rap closing credit scene.

Now, the last time this was attempted, it was by Rare with DK Country 64.

DK Donkey Kong, you know.

I'd say this is better than that.

Well, it wouldn't be hard.

All right.

So what do you give the end credit song out of ten?

The end credit song, I give it a six out of ten.

Six out of ten, really?

Correct.

Did it have any references to Poppin Cat?

No, that's the Call of Duty one, I believe, that has references to Poppin Caps.

This one was the lyrics were entirely based around the game itself.

All right.

Well, I've gone to lyricsmania.com and looked up the DK Rap lyrics.

Here we go.

So they're finally here performing for you.

If you know the words, you can join in too.

Put your hands together if you want to clap as we take you through this monkey rap.

Huh?

DK Donkey Kong.

He's the leader of the bunch.

You know him well.

He's finally back to kick some tail.

His coconut gun can fire in spurts.

If he shoots you, it's gonna hurt.

He's bigger, faster and stronger too.

He's the first member of the DK crew.

Huh?

DK Donkey Kong.

Now, of course, the only thing I remember was his coconut gun can fire in spurts.

Um, that's all I remember.

But they go through and they sing about every character.

It talks about Kremlins, Walnuts, Peanuts, Chestnuts, you know, Kremlins.

I mean, it goes on and on and on.

But again, all I remember is the Chestnuts and his coconut gun can fire in spurts.

DK Donkey Kong.

So the song gets a 6.5, The Game.

The song gets a 6.

A 6.

I predict that the game will get a 4, or a 3.5 out of 10.

Well, I think you're listening to your impressions when you give that prediction and not mine.

Because I'm giving it...

What did I give Back to Bed?

6.5, because they're listening.

Wasn't it a 6 or did I raise it to a 6.5?

It was a 6, but you said 6.5 if they give you $6.50.

And also the credits.

So I was going to give this a 5.5, but I'm going to raise that to a 6 because of the credits.

I thought you would give it a 5, so that's alright.

That's a reasonable prediction.

You can't really recommend the game though.

I can.

I certainly wouldn't recommend it to you, but to someone who might enjoy a survival game...

To normal people, you would.

And with that, we'll close out episode 58 of The Game Under Podcast.

Thank you for joining me once again, Tom Towers.

Thank you.

I've had a great time talking about Sura, You're Being Hunted, Back to Bed, Call of Duty Black Ops, the other indie title we mentioned.

Surely we talked about...

ATV Simulator, and Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012.

And join us again in another couple of weeks where we're going to be talking about Transistor and other games.

Possibly The Wolf Among Us.

The Wolf Among Us for our adventure followers.

And you've also been playing...

Dark Souls 2.

Dark Souls 2.

Game Under Podcast 57.5

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This week we present one of our early shows that you likely have not heard. Tom and Phil used to host a different podcast, this is one of our shows from February 2012.

As you can tell not much has changed, but a distinctive part of that podcast was keeping in our breaks and end of show comments.

In this episode we talk about Final Fantasy 7 (PS1), Shadow Hearts (PS2), Game Dev Story (Mobile), Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (360), Halo 3 (360), Killzone 2 (PS3), Yakuza 2 (PS2), Prey (360) and Binary Domain (PS3).  Asura's Wratch also gets our Fake Reviews (TM) segment treatment and much much more.

Oh, re-mastered. If that matters. Oh and kangaroos.

Game Under Podcast 57

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Trademark Banter
0:01:00 Does PC Gaming Contribute to backlog?
0:02:00 Updike
0:03:43 Endless Backlog trolls Fogg
0:07:20 The problem with Best Of Shows...
0:11:50 Heavy Rain
0:16:38 Pathologic Kickstarter
0:17:25 How to play Yakuza
0:23:25 Yakuza Movie
Final Thoughts
0:32:57 Valiant Hearts
1:27:53 Fable III
1:44:26 Asura's Wrath
 

Game Under Podcast 56

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0:00:25 Introduction
Trademark Banter
0:01:52 Windows 10 First Impressions
0:06:25 Gamespot, IGN, VanOrd and Satire
0:18:45 Intel Takes the Bait
0:20:45 Media Options on Aussie Consoles
0:24:32 Pathologic Kickstarter
0:28:19 Bungie
0:48:25 Critical Reception to Shadow of Mordor, Destiny and Smash
0:51:58 Uplay
First Impressions
0:58:51 Valiant Hearts
1:07:57 The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (Some spoilers -- flagged in show)
Aural Review of Shovel Knight
1:34:40 Tom Reviews Shovel Knight
 

Game Under Podcast 55

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Introduction
0:00: Poor Form Fogg

Trademark Banter
0:02:35 Minecraft Monkeys
0:08:50 Tin Drum Film Preamble
0:10:44 Ryan Davis
0:13:30 Giant Bomb These Days, Destiny and Endless Backlog
0:20:16 Destiny and the State of the Current Generation
0:29:19 2013 GOTY
0:31:03 Asura's Wrath
0:32:57 Best Mid-Tier Games
0:34:00 Papers, Please
0:36:30 Third Person Shooter Essentials
0:44:33 Go-Pro Hats in Melbourne
0:46:26 Binary Domain
0:47:47 Darts v Whack-a-Mole
0:49:40 Vanquish
0:54:39 Halo Reach and ODST
0:58:32 Reach's Happy Ending
1:00:32 Halo ODST
1:10:20 -Notes Illegible-
1:11:58 Sleeping Dogs
1:17:50 Steam Terrorism
1:21:49 Shovel Knight
1:25:00 Why the Lack of Diversity in Enemy AI?
1:26:29 Santa Banter Talks About language in reviews
1:34:39 Murdered: Soul Suspect Review
1:56:45 Advent Rising and Barraka Bahma
2:05:39 No Jive.
2:06:21 Bros before Hors d'oeuvres
2:09:16 Phil Fogg's Hookup
2:19:39 Mario Kart Goes to Pot
2:24:54 Nintendo's Dire Straits
2:26:43 Phil Solves Nintendo's Problems (Again).

 

Game Under Podcast 54

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Introduction
0:00:20 Tom Host
Trademark Banter
0:01:20 Endless Pimpage
0:05:16 XB 360 Revisited
0:11:19 Taboos of the Podcast
0:12:00 Literature is Dead
0:15:00 Gamers are Dead
0:23:20 Killzone 2 is Dead
0:25:33 Skate 3 Reprint
0:30:40 One last thing about Wolfenstein: The New Order
First Impressions
0:30:15 Halo: Reach
0:42:50 Shovel Knight Chronicles of Phil Fogg, The Chosen One
News
0:48:40 Nintendo's New 3DS
Tom Towers' Aural Review of Mario Kart 8
0:56:54 ^

 

Game Under Podcast 53

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Introduction
0:01:15 Hello.

Trademark Banter
0:02:15 Big News
0:03:15 Sell Through Numbers. Do the Matter?
0:05:54 PS4 Controller Review
0:10:45 PS4 Media Options
0:13:28 IGN and Phil Fish
0:20:55 Why are consoles selling so well?
0:23:02 FIFA 15 and PES15 Update

First Impressions
0:31:06 PT (Round One)
0:32:15 (Immediate de-railing) Chiastic Structure
0:34:03 The value of addressing graphics in a review.

Final Impressions
0:43:36 Wolfenstein: The New Order
1:03:05 Misogyny Alert

Off-topic
1:04:15 Phil Apologizes to Tom (and explains the intro song)

First Impressions
1:05:24 FFX and Final Fantasy talk
1:13:00 Story, visual presentation and the relationship between the two.

Tom Towers Aural Review - Odin Sphere
1:22:48 Here we go
1:26:15 You can taste the colours
1:29:50 Fogg's hierarchy of personal expression
1:34:30 Scaling ambition to capability
1:42:00 "Pacing is the easiest thing to apply to any structure" - Tom

Final Impressions - PT
1:55:45 Friend of the show Dvader, calls in to review PT.


 



 

Game Under Podcast 52

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Introduction
0:00:21 Tommy Towers

Preamble Banter
0:01:12 Demolition, man.
0:03:12 A letter to Tom.
0:05:52 Duskers - Misfit Attic's New Game Gets Funding.
0:09:40 Endless Backlog Podcast Update.

Trademark Banter
0:12:45 Topics We Will Retire Forever, Starting Today.
0:19:16 Noah's AR-K Chapter 2
0:20:47 Tom May Be Retiring From Video Game Reviews

First Impressions
0:21:28 Stealth in Games.
0:22:44 The 21st hour of Shovel Knight.
0:24:49 Transistor.
0:25:18 Cities XL.

Featurete - Polish
0:26:14 Polish, It's Place in Gaming.

Feature - Video Game Reviews
0:32:20 Magazines, then Internet, Now What?
0:34:06 Personality-Driven Coverage, Authenticity and Entertainment.
0:40:00 4 week, months, years whatever...
0:44:19 The Sort of Reviews Tom Towers Enjoys.
0:55:39 The Importance of Writing Skills.
0:58:58 Journalism and the Exploited.
1:01:57 Phil Fogg Taxonomic Exploration of Reviews.
1:05:52 I've Forgotten What I Started Figthin' For.
1:07:25 Stalin Hated Love.
1:08:10 Polygon's Review of the Last of Us.
1:09:57 Phil's Example of a Workman-like Review.
1:14:42 Tom Tower's Thinks That Criticism is Pretentious.
1:15:55 Tom - But they are still better than most enthusiast press reviews.
1:20:20 Phil - I Mean, Look at Movie Reviews.

From here on you are on your own, I have to get this show online.

Game Under Podcast 51

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Introduction
0:00:07 Phil Fogg Resumes Control Over Game Under Enterprises
0:01:50 Sammy Sosa Softball Slam

Trademark Banter *Some Vague Spoilers for Last of Us^
0:02:05 Best Endings of the Generation
0:04:10 Worst Endings of the Generation
0:15:14 Weird Al Jankowich
0:16:15 Parody in Games
0:17:13 Abyss Odyssey's Problems (No review yet)

Featurette
0:19:47 Cognitive Understanding 2D Vs 3D (Polygonal)
0:23:23 "Don't confuse the presentation of the game to the design sensibilities of the game."

Featurette
0:24:00 No Man's Sky/ Minecraft - Game as ecosystem, not a goal.

First Impressions
0:29:08 Wolfenstein: The New Order
0:30:34 Wolfenstein 3D (Memories of)

Featurette - Phil Fogg Editorial
0:34:34 "Realistic" Video Games are still on the level of Puppet Shows
0:37:30 The Last Gen was on an Increasing Arc of Impressiveness
0:39:32 Tom - A Shift in Direction (films as well)

First Impressions
0:44:13 Wolfenstein: The New Order

Featurette
0:56:17 Gender Roles
1:03:05 Why is There Chick-Lit? (And the hostile environment of gaming)

News
1:14:09 The News

Final Impressions
1:27:27 I Have No Mouth Yet I Must Scream (and extendend analysis of adventure games and literature)

Harlan Ellison Interview
2:22:35 ^

Game Under Podcast 50

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Introduction
0:00:17 Tom Seizes Control of Gameunder.net

Trademark Banter
0:01:45 Retron 5
0:03:46 Tom's Gaming Setup
0:04:42 Playing Consoles on a Monitor.
0:06:15 Phil's NBN Fantasy Comes True.
0:07:56 Wolfenstein.
0:09:26 Back to the Internet.
0:12:47 World Cup .
0:17:03 The State of Soccer/Football/Futbol Video Games.
0:19:10 Top FPS Games of the Generation.
0:20:53 Ludonarrative Dissonance (j/k).
0:23:32 What Makes a FPS? BLSFPS and ALSFPS

First Impressions
0:26:03 Sir You Are Being Hunted
0:26:27 Discussion of Are You Being Served?
0:30:50 Back to Sir You Are Being Hunted
0:34:53 Arrested Development & David Cross Story
0:37:37 Back to Sir You Are Being Hunted

Featurette
0:34:55 Proceedural Generation

First Impressions
0:49:12 Arcade Craft

Correction
0:57:10 Atari: Business is Fun

First Impressions
1:01:15 Shovel Knight

Final Impressions (Spoilers Throughout)
1:30:25 Cormac McCarthy's The Road (A book)
1:55:15 Animal Crossing and The Road
2:02:00 Prose in Video Games

Final Impressions
2:04:00 Last of Us and The Road (Spoilers Throughout)
2:10:30 Last of Us' Advantage Over The Road
2:15:10 The Ending of The Last of Us
2:17:00 Joel, Come Here! Moment
2:21:00 Tom Re-writes Ending

Final Impressions
2:30:50 Criterion's Need for Speed Hot Pursuit
2:35:57 Burnout Paradise
2:45:25 Arcade Racers
2:45:45 Wrecked, Mashed and Destroyed (Tattoo Story)
2:48:00 Future Cop L.A.P.D 2041

 

 

 

 

Game Under Podcast 49

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Introduction
0:00:17 Tom Towers, Archivist.

Trademark Banter
0:03:02 Console Wars Book "Review"
0:08:04 Splatoon
0:13:06 2014 versus 2013
0:14:15 Nomansky
0:19:40 GOTGeneration... Where to start?

First Impressions
24:19 Wii U!!! U! U!!!! WII!!! U!!!

Final Impressions
0:35:47 Dragon's Crown
0:42:40 PS4 Remote Play
0:43:55 Watchdogs
0:52:14 Killzone: Shadowfall

Feature
1:07:30 Nintendo - Recalcitrance, Artistic Choice, Arbitrariness or Brilliance?

Game Under Podcast 48

Stream below or right-click and download here  You can also listen on Stitcher and iTunes. Why not subscribe to us on RSS ? 

Indie Co-founder of Misfits Attic, and creator of A Virus Name Tom, Tim Keenan subjects himself to an interview with Tom Towers. They discuss the game that launched them, the business of being an indie developer and Misfits Attic's upcoming games.

Game Under Podcast 47

Stream below or right-click and download here  You can also listen on Stitcher and iTunes. Why not subscribe to us on RSS ? 

Introduction
0:00:20 Welcome Lucrative Fun

Trademark Banter
0:02:04 Phil Fogg Livin' the Vita Loca (Again)
0:06:01 Taqitos
0:06:11 Credit Roll Discussion Ensues
0:08:45 Sakura Wang
0:09:52 Bum Suk Cho

Final Impressions
0:11:25 Phil Fogg on Tearaway
0:12:47 Harper Lee Deciduously Avoiding Sophomore Slumps
0:16:02 A New Narrator Appears!
0:29:35 Level Design
0:32:40 Handheld Racism

Featurette
0:33:45 FAQS

Featurette 2
0:39:50 Phil Fogg's Beaten Games of 2014

Back to Final Impressions
0:43:05 Tearaway Score

First Impressions
0:46:20 Tom Towers on Warlock II
0:56:45 What is the Business Model? asks Phil Fogg

Featurette 3
1:01:50 Phil's PS4 Aversion

The Feature
1:03:40 Is 2013/14 the 1968 of Gaming? (Grab a drink)
1:28:45 Creativity and Discoverability

Tom Towers' Aural Reivew
1:31:00 50 Cent Blood on the Sand

Game Under Podcast 46

Stream below or right-click and download here  You can also listen on Stitcher and iTunes. Why not subscribe to us on RSS ? 

Trademark Banter
0:03:29 20/20 "Cricket"
0:06:23 Dream Caste System

News
0:09:34 EA Apologizes for Frosbite Tweets Attacking Nintendo
0:10:33 EA Drops Support for Wii U
0:12:45 Persona 4 Coming to PS3 (Not Golden!)
0:13:23 Sony Survey Indicates Som Cross Platform Chat on the Way

This Just In, Final Impressions
0:13:56 David (North American Correspondent) on Metal Gear Solid: Two Hours
0:17:06 Better Than Max Payne 3?
0:19:04 Paying For Demos Not New to MGS
0:22:07 Not a Cash Grab
0:23:00 Seperate, But Not Equal
0:24:24 Radically Different Stealth
0:28:51 The Effect of Regenerating Health

Featurette
0:30:01 Console Wars, News From the Front

Final Impressions
0:34:25 InFAMOUS: Second Son
0:45:32 Dark Souls II - Worst in the Series

First Impressions
0:46:00 3D Dot Game Heroes with Phil Fogg

Final Impressions
0:50:44 Broken Age
0:54:00 Social Commentary
1:09:00 What is a Double Fine Game?
1:10:00 Is Tim Burton-Lite Good Enough for Gamers?

And Now, Back to the News
1:11:00 Amy Hennig's Previous Output
1:13:00 Post-Modernism: Good or Bad?
1:20:20 Is Polish the Only Thing That Matters in Games?
1:22:30 Amazon's Garbage Pail Full of Puke
1:23:00 Post-Modern Phil Fogg

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to The Game Under Podcast, episode 46, the official podcast of gameunder.net.

I am Phil Fogg.

I'm joined as always by Tom Towers, senior lucrative editor of garethnoonman.com.

Oh, wait, no, it's laserlemming.com that you're the senior analyst for.

Close enough, though, that's probably more accurate description of the content.

Senior lucrative analyst.

No, it's not only gareth.

garethnoonman.com is probably a more accurate description of the content.

Gareth does post a lot of stuff, but I do like everything that he does post.

Adam Burton, he posts some stuff as well.

Yep.

He's from a while back and has just returned after the birth of a child.

Oh, okay.

Well, I can see that would be taxing.

So, that would be fine.

Well, now, episode 46.

Basically, today, we're going to follow up with Broken Age.

I've been playing a tremendously enjoyable game from From Software.

From Software, you probably know what it is.

You know, the makers of Demon Souls, Dark Souls 1 and 2.

Obviously, not any of those.

We can rule them out.

And yeah, so, but also, you know, I just wanted an opportunity to open the floor here.

We're going to have a news-centric show because basically, I've been off the internet for two weeks because I ran out of internet.

And what does that mean for anyone not in the third world?

Okay.

Well, what that means is that because of where I live, I have to pay $115 a month for 15 gigabytes of access to the internet.

And once you go over 15 gigabytes, that's it.

You cannot access the internet.

So I'm like a Rip Van Winkle.

So we're just going to go through the gaming news.

Yep.

There are 797 unread stories in my gaming feed.

And we're just going to go through all of them and just basically talk about them.

All 791?

797.

And from such sources as Eurogamer, Gamatsu, Giant Bomb, PC Gamer, Game Informer, things like that.

Just to see what's been going.

Sounds like a bad idea to me.

It sounds like an excellent idea.

Because even if the news isn't interesting, at least we are.

And I've got to say, this morning I was listening to your summation of Homefront.

You had some really salient points in there.

It was very interesting to listen to a second time over from episode 45.

Are you still on this game of the year idea?

No, no, no, no, no.

I thought you had some really good points.

I mean, and what everyone wants to understand, when we say we're going to review Homefront, we just don't talk about Homefront.

We talk about everything related to first person shooters and experiences with them.

Life, Shakespeare.

In general.

Adam Sessler.

All sorts of things.

In any case, what's been going on with you?

Well, I do have to bring up one thing.

We've talked about 2020 cricket in the past and we can put cricket in inverted commas when we say 2020 cricket and...

Well, can I explain to our American listeners?

Most of our listeners are from America.

So 2020 cricket is basically...

You know how baseball takes three hours.

An average cricket game takes about five to seven days.

So what Cricket Australia came up with...

I don't...

Cricket Australia invented...

I'm going to say so.

So because that's where most of the money is in cricket TV, you know, because frankly, you know, United Kingdom, even though they invented cricket, have more interest in football and that sort of thing.

And who wouldn't?

Yeah.

But down here, I think it was the Murdoch media that came up with 2020, or it may have been Alan Bond or Packer.

Actually, it was probably Packer.

Yeah, Kerry Packer.

He invented the One Day series.

Channel 9.

So let's just say he invented...

Not 2020.

Well, One Day is better.

Let me just explain what it is.

So basically, if you take a nine innings game of baseball over three hours, people who like baseball will go, that's acceptable.

People who don't like baseball go, it's slow and it's boring.

So what a TV executive came up with was instead of a nine innings game, let's make it a four innings game.

And that was One Day Cricket, right?

Then that was excellent because you'd start...

That's an acceptable compromise, I would say.

Oh yeah, because you'd start watching it, say, five in the afternoon after you got off from work, and it'd be pretty much over by nine, 30, 10 o'clock.

And it was an enjoyable viewing.

Now 2020 is like taking a nine innings baseball game and turning it into a two innings baseball game.

And from what I can tell, they juiced the ball.

They must be using a different ball because every time they throw it, they're hitting a six, which is like a home run for our American listeners.

I think the reason for that is not so much anything to do with the ball, but the boundary rope is either dragged in much closer to the pitch or they play on smaller fields.

Yeah, it's not just the aggressiveness of the batting also.

I mean, batters are much more aggressive because they know they have to produce in a very small amount of time.

So that also.

It's mainly, as far as I can tell, because of the smaller field, because if you look at Hawkeye's measurements of the distances, they're often hitting like 70 meter sixes, whereas you generally got to hit like 80 meters in a test match or whatever to be getting near the boundary.

In any case, 2020s are an absolute joke for anyone who has any semblance of liking cricket.

It's basically made for people who like Australian football, which is Australian rules or rugby or things like that.

Yeah.

So what is it that you were going to say about it?

Well, I was going to say there's one good thing about 2020 cricket though, and that is that Sri Lanka is actually not only has exceptionally talented cricket players in all forms of the game, but in 2020, because it requires very little tactical thought, Sri Lanka is actually exceptionally good at it.

So the only problem that Sri Lanka then has is its long and powerful history of choking no matter the circumstances when it comes to the crunch.

But after 1996, I believe, was the last time Sri Lanka won anything.

And that was the Civil War.

That was the one day Cricket World Cup.

And that was before we had television.

So this was the first time the 2020-2040 World Cup, that Sri Lanka has actually won anything, despite them being, since the advent of television in Tom Towers' world, are featuring in four World Cup finals.

And let's just say...

So, catharsis at last.

For most of our demographic who's over 70 years old, when he says Sri Lanka, he means Ceylon, okay?

Correct.

Yeah, so...

And I am aware that I'm mispronouncing the name, by the way.

Oh, Sri Lanka?

Or Sri Lanka?

I think it's the Lankar that needs to be slightly different.

Well, first of all, it's Sri, not Shree.

Yep.

And then, I'm going...

Well, that's debatable, I would say, but...

It goes Sri Lankar, Sri Lankar.

Yep.

That sounds authentic, doesn't it?

Sri Lankar.

Not bad.

Yeah, not bad.

I've gotta tell you, I've always had...

There's two places in the world where I wanna go.

One is Sri Lankar.

The other is Madagascar, but less so since that animated movie.

But...

That put you off.

Yeah, it did.

But I've always loved Sri Lanka.

I love the concept of it.

There was an exchange student in my year 11 class from Sri Lanka.

I just think Sri Lanka is great.

So, that's what I have to say about that.

It has all the riches of India without any of the obnoxious arrogance.

Well, and it's on an island too.

And I don't know, do they have the caste system in Sri Lanka?

Yes.

Something similar to it at least.

But everywhere has a caste system.

They just don't think to call it a caste system.

So that everyone whinges about it.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Now, let's people be bored by the news.

At some point, it is likely that we will talk about the games we've been playing.

And in my case, that's Resident Evil 6 and 3D.GameHeroes.

In your case, it's Broken Age.

And what else have you been playing that we can just name drop for a second?

Well, we can name drop 50 Cent, but it's unlikely we will talk about it in this episode.

Whoa, you've been playing 50 Cent Blood on the Sand?

Correct.

Okay.

And also, I have no math on my screen, which will definitely not be in this episode because it deserves a reasonable amount of time.

Okay.

Well, with this, we're now gonna plunge into 797 news stories.

Okay?

Now, because I'm Rip Van Boenkel and I haven't heard of any of these stories, I'm gonna read them, you're gonna react, and then we'll just talk about it.

Well, the thing you're probably not quite right about here is despite me having internet, I have no interest in video gaming news stories.

So, we're both going into this incomplete and other ignorant.

Yeah, well, our listeners know that from listening to our news segments every week.

Okay, here's one.

EA apologizes for Frostbite's stupid, quote, anti-Nintendo April Fools.

EA executive Peter Moore has publicly apologized for a string of April Fools Day messages posted on Twitter by the official Frostbite account.

Now, Frostbite is the game engine used by EA for everything.

So, game engines are now autonomous.

Yes, and like one of the tweets poked fun at the fact that EA no longer supports Wii U games.

So, EA no longer does anything for the Wii U, which is amazing because they're the second largest publisher in the West and they have nothing to do with Wii U.

That's official now.

Yep.

Well, first of all, what do you think of that?

I think it's hilarious given their vocal support of the Wii U at launch.

Well, yes, remember, yeah, you're right.

Well, they actually said that their support, as we've talked about on this podcast, would be at an unprecedented level.

So completely-

Well, this is unprecedented because they're completely and utterly ignoring it.

Exactly.

EA has never completely and utterly ignored a Nintendo console before, so they were true to their promise.

So-

We've got to give them credit for that.

So one of the tweets here is, quote, Frostbite now runs on Wii U since it is the most powerful Gen 4 platform.

Frostbite wrote, and our renderer is now optimized for Mario and Zelda.

Gen 4, I don't even know where they're going with that.

That would be the what?

Well, it's not even accurate because Gen 7 is what the last generation was.

We're now on Generation 8.

So, but the fact is this right, is it a put down for them to say that the Wii U is the most powerful video game system between the PS3 and the 360?

I mean, that's a statement of fact.

Well, they weren't saying, they said Gen 4, so that would be before the PlayStation, right?

This is, they're exactly right.

They must be measuring generations from PlayStation.

So PlayStation would be Generation 1, PlayStation 4 would be Generation 4.

So they're saying that this is more powerful than the consoles coming after the PS4 and the Xbox One.

No, no, no.

They're saying it's more powerful than the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

But that would be Generation 3 if they're going from PlayStation.

I get what you're saying now, yes.

But the fact of the matter is, why is praising the Wii U pranking them?

Shouldn't a Nintendo person go, yeah, that's right, we are more powerful?

Because it's a backhanded compliment, I'd say.

But is it a backhanded compliment?

Yes.

Okay.

It is.

Peter Moore said it was stupid.

He's no longer working for Microsoft, right?

Peter Moore, no, he works for EA.

Okay, because would he have said it was stupid if he was still working at Microsoft?

No, he would not have commented.

Exactly.

Looks like PlayStation 4 is coming to the PlayStation 3, and by that, I mean Persona 4.

So basically, Persona 4 was a PlayStation 2 game, and they're bringing it over to the PlayStation 3, but this is not Persona 4 Golden, which is like the number one highly-scored Metacritic game on the Vita.

And also, apparently, writing a review and giving podcast impressions is not enough for a review copy.

Oh, really?

Of Persona 4.

That's pretty unfortunate, but, because you would have gobbled that shit up, right?

Probably.

Sony survey hints at possible PlayStation 4 features.

A new survey sent out by PlayStation 4 owners hints at features Sony is considering adding.

So, cross-platform chat.

So, if you're on PlayStation 3 or Vita, you could chat with someone on PlayStation 4.

And several features that are already available.

By that, you mean vocal chat, I assume, because it's possible to send messages to each other from PlayStation 4 and 3 and back and forth.

Yes, exactly.

So, this is just strictly, basically party chat is what they're talking about.

So, okay, well, here's some breaking news.

We're now joined by our North America correspondent, David D.

Vader, 954, as he was once known at gamespot.com, Miami Wesker.

David, some of your reviews are even at gameunder.net.

Ooh, yes, I know.

I'm multinational reviewer.

Now, we've been going through...

We've been going through the news because we have...

I haven't been on the internet for two weeks.

So, we've been going through the news.

But I know that you wanted to join us because you've been playing some current games.

You've been playing the Two Hour Meta Gear Solid game.

Yes.

And you've also been playing InFamous Second Son on the PlayStation 4.

Yeah, basically the two big PS4 games that came out this past month.

So...

I've been all over.

How much was Meta Gear Solid Two Hours at retail?

Yeah, at retail, $30.

Oh, 30?

Retail and digital, yeah.

Yeah, they dropped it from $40 in the last...

Two weeks before it came out, they dropped it to $30.

And in the United States, how much is a PlayStation 4 game right now?

60 bucks?

60, yeah.

Oh, that's pretty good.

That's really good.

In terms of value, which one gave you, you're like, all right, if you're gonna spend 30 bucks, you're gonna spend 60 bucks, which game would you play first?

Which game would you want the most?

Metal Gear.

It wasn't even close.

For me, Metal Gear is top two franchises of all time.

Zelda and Metal Gear, those are my two favorites.

Metal Gear Solid, the gameplay is just so exciting and just so fun.

Yes, it's one base, it's one tiny area, and there's only a few missions to play in there, but I have put 30 hours into it already, and I'm still not at 100%.

I've still got a few more things to do.

That game is fun as hell.

The gameplay has been taken to another level.

I cannot wait for Metal Gear Solid 5.

But how much does the PlayStation 4 Metal Gear Solid actually have to do with the history of Metal Gear Solid?

Like, compared to like a Metal Gear Solid, we'll go back to 3.

I mean, would you recognize it if you'd skipped 4 and come back to it?

I mean, what is the gameplay?

Is it third-person action?

Is it stealth?

Yeah, still third-person action, it's definitely stealth.

Yeah, the gameplay has changed a lot.

It's a lot more like Metal Gear Solid 4.

4 is really where it kind of started going away from the classic, you know, camera over the head of the character.

And now it's more like a traditional third-person shooter type of mechanics where, you know, over the shoulder, aiming, kind of crouching behind walls and stuff like that.

That was introduced in Metal Gear Solid 4.

So Metal Gear Solid 5 kind of takes that and just updates everything.

So the controls are a lot more modern and fluid.

Where Metal Gear Solid 4 kind of kept some of the awkward controls from the last games.

Now Snake moves a lot smoother.

He can hop on things, jump around.

It's just much easier to control.

It makes a lot more sense.

The shooting mechanics are as good as basically any third-person shooter out there.

And the stealth has been-

As good as Max Payne 3?

Hey, yeah, no, no, that was good.

Max Payne 3, it's specialized as a shooter and that has all those gameplay mechanics, like the slow motion and all that stuff that's focused entirely on shooting.

And that's the entire point of that game.

That's not the point of Metal Gear.

Yes, shooting is better.

It's still basic.

You're just gonna point the cursor at the guy and shoot at the head, you know, if there's a lot of head shot.

It's not as good as Max Payne 3.

So, what's the next game?

So why are we talking about it?

Okay, so it's not a specialized shooter, so that's okay, it's concession.

Just like with Uncharted, Uncharted is not a specialized shooter.

Exactly.

So it gets concessioned.

But they took away the jokiness, right?

I mean, they took away the, you know...

That is a problem with this version.

Now, a lot of people play Metal Gear for the story.

I mean, I do, obviously, we all do.

We love the story of Metal Gear.

We kind of just get into the whole theatrics of it all.

But I've always been a proponent that Metal Gear is fantastic.

It's the reason why it's one of the best franchises out there is because the gameplay has always been phenomenal.

And every game from one to two to three or four adds new elements, raises the bar a little higher, and this one is no different.

But since this is kind of like a demo and kind of like a small type of a sample, basically, of what you're going to get in the main game, it removed a lot of the funny stuff that comes along with the story and just the awkwardness of it all.

Those random codec calls that just end up in just crazy stories, those are all gone.

It's all streamlined, very basic stuff.

The story itself is like two cutscenes and it may be 20 minutes tops.

So there isn't much there in terms of content to actually have the funny, crazy stuff.

So wait, there's only 20 minutes of cutscenes in it?

Yes.

Which means there's an hour and 40 minutes of gameplay, right?

So that means then it's actually not that much shorter than other Metal Gear Solid games.

No, that's fine.

You know, and before we make too much more fun, I just want to address this issue.

And honestly, this is an honest, honest question, all right?

How do you feel about paying $30 for a demo?

Because you know, when you bought a Zone of the Enders for 50 bucks, you were essentially paying 50 bucks for a demo, right?

Because you got that Metal Gear Solid 2 demo disc in there as well.

And that, I mean, that was why Zone of the Enders sold.

And basically, this is Konami saying, well, we can make some money by releasing an early demo.

Because this game really does service just to keep fan interest in the franchise and be excited about what's to come, right?

But in the old days, you got it for free, now you're having to pay for it.

Yeah, yes.

Obviously, there's that.

Now, this is a little more meaty than an actual demo because it does have actual missions with little fake storylines to it.

There are all sorts of leaderboards and many other things to keep going in terms of actual content.

Okay, so, yes.

To be clear though, I mean, $30 for something that fans are going to enjoy for a game that's not coming out until 2015, I think is a tremendous value.

I do think that they're not screwing consumers.

This is more than a demo, but it is something that serves the purpose of something that would have been previously been produced as a demo, but maybe only an hour long sort of thing.

Absolutely, yes, I understand.

From that point of view, you're correct.

They could have been, before they used to do it, pre-packaged into a different game.

It could have been like with Castlevania or something like that.

It could have packaged it in.

But now we're living in an era where they need to make money.

Some prologues are being made just to sell the main game, like with Gran Turismo.

So they probably needed that little cushion of time and money, so this kind of gives them that.

And at first, I was very afraid that this would harm the brand, like if people had no clue what was going on.

They end up, hey, look, a cheap Metal Gear game.

They buy it and they're like, it's over in like two hours.

And they're watching the credits for old and they're like, what the hell just happened?

Because they weren't like informed.

I thought that would hurt the brand, but I think they got the word out enough in at least most of the websites.

And honestly, the replay value is so much fun.

Like I don't see how $30 felt worth it.

Like I love it.

The price is a big indicator too, even to the Madden exclusive buyer.

He's going to know that he's getting less.

And when he goes up to the counter and goes, oh, this is only $30, the guy at the counter is going to go, oh yeah, it's basically just a couple of hours.

It's just a demo.

It's like that Resident Evil game that was only playable online that I bought for the PlayStation 2.

Yeah, outbreak.

It was cheaper.

And when you went up to the front, the clerk always said, hey, you know this is only online, right?

You know, that sort of thing and I think $30, everyone knows what they're getting into at that point.

I think that that's a fine price to kind of indicate to the end consumer.

And the other thing is, I didn't think Konami did this as a cash grab.

I think they did this to keep the brand relevant because how long has it been since Metal Gear Solid 4?

2008 and the next game is going to be released in 2015.

So, I think this was a good move.

I think it's a good price.

And I think other than the criticisms of the length.

Yeah, I'll say that.

You look at the reaction, everyone's really happy with it.

And it gets everybody excited for the gameplay possibilities of Metal Gear Solid 5.

If this is that much fun with just one little base that you can explore, imagine what happens when they open up the entire world and now you have the boss fights and the story and everything goes along with it.

It's exciting.

So I started off not liking the move and now I think it was genius.

And I'm happy.

As a Metal Gear fan, I needed this.

I needed that little Metal Gear fix.

I've got another question about them releasing in this way.

Is the content in this demo going to be part of the main game in Metal Gear Solid 5?

Right, he has said before that it will be separate content.

Now I am pretty damn sure that there'll be some collector's edition that will include it, or there'll be some pre-order bonus so you get it for free, something like that.

But the plan is that when you buy the actual disc of Metal Gear Solid 5, this part is not in that disc.

Yeah, because that's what actually annoys me about this is because then for someone that does play Metal Gear Solid for the story as much as for the gameplay, while also appreciating the gameplay as top-of-the-line gameplay, that's then going into it with missing a large chunk because I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in either paying $5 or $10 for it as DLC or pre-ordering Metal Gear Solid 5.

Is there enough story in it that will detract from Metal Gear Solid 5, do you think?

There's one important moment in this, the last scene, and that kind of leads into how we get to Metal Gear Solid 5.

Well, I mean, there's YouTube, so just go online and watch it.

No big deal.

The whole point of buying this is to play it.

If you really want to watch the story, you can just hop online right now and watch it.

So, Snake dies again.

Yeah, exactly.

Alright, so, I'm sorry.

So, how does this radically, to get you back into the description of the game, and then we'll leave you alone, how does it radically differ, radically differ from Metal Gear Solid 4?

From Metal Gear Solid 4?

Yeah, before, the way the stealth is handled just feels like a different game, where in Metal Gear Solid 4, you still kind of had the radar.

There wasn't an actual radar, like traditional Metal Gear Solid games, but you still had that little cone of noise, and then you could put the eye radar thing on, and it kind of gives you bleeps of where everybody is.

And you also had the camo index, and the way the level was designed was still kind of, I don't know, smaller sections where guards were kind of always doing their little patrols, their lines, and you could still kind of avoid their line of sight and just how they go.

And it still had that kind of, I don't know, I always describe Metal Gear as sort of a strange take on Pac-Man where you kind of try to avoid their line of sight as you go around them.

Still had that feel.

Metal Gear Solid 5 is now in an open base.

These people can see from a long distance, and there is no, the level design is not set so you have places to hide.

It's just open.

You just need to figure out, use this wall to protect me from that guy over there.

I need to quickly run into that little hallway, so that I mean, so that they can't see me.

It's totally open.

It is completely up to you how to hide from people.

It is just a natural hide behind objects type of thing, like if you would in real life.

From that description, I mean, how does this compare to say Far Cry 3?

Well, Far Cry 3 had a similar type thing where you had to infiltrate enemy bases and use stealth and that was a, why?

Very similar because they took the radar system where if you zoom in on a character from far away, you'll mark them and now you can see them through walls.

And that's kind of the radar, quote unquote radar system of this game.

You need to, from afar, get to a high area, look at all the different troops, you kind of mark them and now you can follow them and you can avoid them.

And in Far Cry it's very similar to that.

So once you have the mark, you can kind of plan your way around the battlefield and get to them one by one.

So what you're saying is this is derivative of what Crytek has already done.

Not derivative, but they've taken, definitely they have taken elements of that and put still, it's still Metal Gear.

So when the action starts up, everything goes crazy.

Well, you know, honestly, for a franchise's story of this, I'd love to see them not taking it in a new direction.

Like, you know, because I argue again, I know you differ with the direction that Final Fantasy has taken.

You'd say that's good and all the rest of it.

You know, I don't like it, but it's good that Konami has looked at other players in the field and adjusted to it and incorporated, you know, good ideas from other players.

So for them to, you know, to borrow from Far Cry or whatever, that's what Western developers do all the time.

And it's quite often what Japanese developers don't do.

So it's actually encouraging to me to hear you talk about, you know, the newer elements that they've been able to be influenced by.

With the stealth, when you're going through the level, given that it's open, in the old Meta Gear Solid games and in most stealth games, like The Last of Us does this as well, generally what they're doing is they put you in your linear environment.

They might have a few pathways.

And the objective is generally simply to reach the next area.

How does that then work if it is, in fact, a completely open area?

Well, you can do what you want.

That's the fun of this.

If you want, I mean, the objective is go to one side of the map, capture, I mean, save a prisoner, go to the other side of the map, save another prisoner, and get them to the extraction point.

How you do this is completely up to you.

You could totally ignore it and just run into the middle of the base, blow up a helicopter, have everybody run at you, and then kind of try to sneak away while everybody's like, and like checking out why did that explosion happen?

You could create anything you want.

You could steal vehicles.

Now you could drive around if you want.

You could hop into a tank and just blow everybody up.

So it's still effectively the same, but just completely open.

Yeah, it's open.

It's just there's a freedom that I never felt in any Metal Gear Solid game.

It's just, I can't wait for it to get into like the major part of the game.

When all the weird, crazy Kojima stuff starts adding, mixing into that, it's just going to be brilliant.

I just can't even imagine what they could do with boss battles in open fields like this.

It should be fantastic.

So the only other thing I've been worrying about then is what effect the regenerating health has on it.

I hardly noticed it at all.

I mean, I always, in past Metal Gear games, I had so many rations.

Like, health is never an issue for me.

So just the fact that it really regenerates, so what?

When you're in the middle of the combat and you start being shot at, I don't know.

You're just going to try to find cover, but if they ambush you, you're dead.

Forget the regen health.

They're going to get you.

They really come at you.

They come out from all different directions.

There's no way to put something towards your back.

They could be coming from the back, from the sides, and if they get you unaware, you're done.

So it's not like it turns you into a superhuman from other third-person centers?

I've never felt like I got superpowers because of it.

And I always felt like if it was a traditional Metal Gear game, I would have just ran around the corner and used the ration and come out the same exact way as I was regenerating.

So it doesn't really make that much of a difference.

That is good.

Before we move on to your impressions of Second Son, the third game in the InFamous series from...

Sucker Punch.

Right.

From an American's perspective, where do you see, quote, the console wars at this point between the PlayStation 4, the Wii U and the Xbox One?

What is the general feel?

I know you've got a lot of friends who like to play Madden and Call of Duty and things like that.

How is it playing out on the ground between these three consoles?

Forget Wii U.

Is the Wii U a GameCube level failure, a Sega Saturn level failure, or a Dreamcast level failure?

Man, Dreamcast level failure is a fantastic failure.

I would say Saturn.

I mean, honestly, it's Saturn right now.

Yeah, I'd agree.

I never understood the GameCube as being a failure because I was such a fan of it that EA was still releasing titles for it and all the rest of it.

I got every game I wanted on it.

At that time, GameCube and Xbox sold about the same $20 million.

That was a very successful system for them.

As a generation, it was an anomaly where every system sold up to $60 million, $70 million.

That's crazy.

That never happens.

No, I loved the GameCube, and it had the closest thing that Nintendo ever had to a conventional controller from that point on, obviously.

And then, the Saturn was kind of stillborn.

I mean, it has great, great, great games, but obviously, I'm feeling that the Wii U is on that Saturn level.

If you want it, there are about six games that you could play for it, but not much more.

It always has a chance to jump from Saturn level to Dreamcast level with the Mario Kart, maybe, but right now, it's at Saturn level.

There's just no demand.

No one cares for it.

It's just there.

There are a few games and those that want it, buy it.

It's a specialty machine.

And so when you say failure, you don't mean literally as a console, but the library, because...

Dreamcast is clearly a larger fail than the Saturn.

Oh, fuck no.

I mean, I'm talking about library.

All I'm talking about is library.

Oh, okay.

I'm talking about sales.

No, fuck sales.

I'm talking about library, because I put Dreamcast on the same level of SNES in terms of the library.

Now, you have a broader range with the SNES, but in terms of the quality titles, the SNES, the Dreamcast and the DS are all on that same level, where at a certain point, you're talking about 12, 14, 15, 20 games where you've got to play them if you want to know what's going on.

You know?

Gamecast is the best failed system on all time.

There's not even a contest.

No, not even a contest.

Yeah.

In terms of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, on the ground, it feels just like last generation.

It seems to be my friends who were Xbox, mostly Xbox gamers bought the Xbox One.

They're still playing Call of Duty and they're playing those shooters type of games on the Xbox with Xbox Live.

The people who like PlayStation bought a PS4.

In terms of sales, yeah, it's clear cut that the PS4 is in the lead and it will probably lead the entire generation.

But it doesn't feel like there's one giant winner right now.

It just feels like last gen.

Except the flip is more people have the PlayStation 4, where last gen more people have the 360 here in America.

But it's still almost 50% good.

Do you think Titanfall changes the equation?

Because my impression from afar is that Titanfall was big in terms of its media push, but in terms of community grasp, has rapidly declined.

Buying that out with the MPD, I can't really tell just being on the ground.

I went to the midnight launch because I wanted to buy Dark Souls, and it was the most pathetic sad midnight launch I've ever seen.

It was like 13 people, really sad.

So it's not Call of Duty levels, but there is some buzz, and people who played it are very excited, and my friends think it was a pretty damn good game, and I'm sure it sold a few Xboxes, but it's not going to be that gigantic.

So it's not Halo level hype?

No, no, no, definitely not.

It could have been a slow burn, like Call of Duty 4 was.

Things kind of started slow and grew and grew and grew into a monster.

So we'll see.

Alright, well back to PlayStation 4.

I mean, arguably the biggest exclusive they've had so far is Sucker Punch's infamous Second Son, the third game in the Sucker Punch franchise.

The first one had Cole, who was a moody bike courier.

The second one had Cole, who was slowly coming to grips with his superpowers.

And the third one presumably is his son.

No, there's no relation whatsoever.

Totally new cast of characters.

Oh, okay.

So why is it called Second Son?

Wow, that's a good question.

So they don't actually address that in the story?

No, there are no sons of anybody in this game.

It's a totally different time period, different world, different city.

Okay.

Now, they mention Cole.

Obviously, the events that occurred in InFamous 2 lead directly to this kind of military state where the conduits are now always put into prison and they're not allowed in the outside.

It's pretty much an X-Men type scenario where mutants' conduits are being rounded up and put away.

And now you discover you're a conduit and now you need to save a bunch of people who are trying to protect you and you need to go hunt down the head person who's trying to round up all the conduits.

All right.

You're not selling any copies here.

This is pretty boring.

I don't want to sell any copies because I think this is the worst InFamous game that there is.

Well, yeah, I mean, the second one was pretty bad though.

Did you beat it?

No, no.

Yeah, I like the second one.

I really like the first two.

Now, I'm probably in the minority where I think the first one is still the best of the InFamous game.

No, the first one is the best.

A lot of people think InFamous 2 is the best one.

Well, a lot of people suck blank, but you know...

There we go.

I agree.

So, I mean, the second one is horrible because it goes into Super Hero League and they've got that woman who's...

I mean, as bad as Trish was in the first one, in the second one, they have this catwoman-like character that is just absolutely bloody horrible.

It's nowhere near as good as the first one.

Yeah, well...

Now you've got that out of your system.

Right, good job.

I like it.

The problem with this game is basically it feels like half a game.

I swear, it feels like Sucker Punch is in the middle of development and Sony gives a call comes in from the way up top management and they're like, we need you to have this game ready for launch.

And they're like, we only have like ten missions.

You have two more months to get this done.

What the fuck, bro?

Shit!

And you know, they're just running around.

Just get this out.

Just add that.

It just feels like half a game.

No, this is how the game goes.

This is how the call...

Yeah, this is Jack Trutton here.

We're about to fire Amy Henning and the game director of Uncharted 4.

Oh, shit!

Doesn't really matter.

It involves some sexual activity with balls on the face in the motion capture studio.

But in any case, we're gonna need you guys to finish up a game here.

Why is he like half Kennedy?

What happened there?

He's Jack Trutton.

Jack F.

Trutton.

Ask not what Sony can do for you, but ask what you can do for Sony.

So basically, the game is structured where it's Seattle, and you have like two islands kind of connected with one bridge.

And every area is...

Okay, it becomes like a grid, and like the island is sectioned off into let's say like eight pieces.

Each piece has a center point where that's where like the guards are.

You have to go to that point, kill everybody there, blow up like the central machine, and now like the little side missions become available in that small section.

And you just do that over and over again, every single section.

Nothing changes.

It's those same steps every single step of the way throughout the game.

And the side missions that open up in each location are identical.

There is no change at all.

And these things are the most simplest stuff.

Stuff like, find the camera and shoot it.

Or, find the guy, like, they give you a picture of a guy on the phone.

So, like, the picture just appears on the top corner of the screen.

And it's just some random guy, and it, like, shows you a circle on the map.

A little small section is, like, look for that guy and shoot him.

Okay.

And you just do that over and over again for the entire game.

And those are your side missions.

And then the actual main missions of the game, there's about 15 of them, and then the game's over.

Whoa, 15?

Yeah.

How long are they each?

It can range from 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the...

If there's a boss fight or just, you know...

Wow, so that's how we end it.

So, I mean, if you want to speed run this thing, you could be done in seven hours, pretty sure.

Shit.

I mean, I don't give a shit about the side missions.

And I find those photo ones, because I had those in Grand Theft Auto V or Saints Row 3, I can't remember now.

We were just like, go steal this car.

Actually, yeah, that was Grand Theft Auto V.

Yeah.

And they show you the photo and you have to figure it out.

It's like, those are the worst side missions ever.

But I mean, those at least have an open world.

Like, they ask you to find that, but you have the whole city to find it, so you kind of have to, like, really look.

Here, they actually, they put a tiny circle.

I mean, literally, it's like two feet long.

Like, it's like a park.

You can see everybody in the park.

You could just clearly just turn the camera around and find it.

Like, there's good effort whatsoever.

It is so basic.

I couldn't believe that's what they, like, attempted to put out there and be like, oh yeah, that's our content.

It just felt like something is missing, something.

And then, like, they actually added content after the game came out.

They added a few missions.

They're slightly better, but it still doesn't make up for just the general lack of content in a big open world game.

Where the whole point is to always have, you know, different missions available.

You can do this, you can do that.

No, there's not much to do.

What about in the context of a limited open world game?

Like, you know, the Hulk games from the fifth generation, you know, from sixth generation, that sort of thing.

Where it's not really about an open world.

It's more about, you know, it's not really competitive.

Yeah, Hulk destruction.

Yeah, Hulk hands, that sort of thing.

Yeah, that had like a combat system and you could grow your character.

I mean, you do that in this game too.

But that one, the combat felt better, honestly.

That game, the Hulk ultimate destruction.

Yeah, hands of destruction.

And I felt that game had a lot more missions.

Just the main missions alone, like almost every open world game, no matter what, they're close to 30 missions.

Plus also the fact that that was 10 years ago.

The fact that there's only 12 missions and they're about 10 minutes each.

And if someone ignores...

Alright, 10 to 20 minutes.

And the fact that someone ignores the side missions, that's just not enough game.

On the...

in the launch window spectrum of, say, a Blue Stinger for the Dreamcast, though, I mean, does it serve the purpose of there's not a lot of games, I want something that's good-looking that I couldn't have gotten on the previous generations?

Does it at least suit that category?

It is the graphical showcase of any other game you could find.

That thing, you want to show people, put that game up.

It's gorgeous.

The particle effects, I've never seen anything like it.

Just the way, like you have a power that absorbs neon light.

So when you go under a neon sign, you just see the light particles that get absorbed from the sign, enter your hand.

It's beautiful.

Beautiful use of lighting and the graphical power of PlayStation 4.

But in terms of game play, you could just play the old ones.

They're better.

I'd say for 60 bucks though in the US, it basically serves the purpose that you've spent $500 on a console, you want to play something that validates your purchase, and it looks good and you can show frames.

I would expect that that's all we can expect at this point from the PlayStation.

I guess.

I mean, I was kind of being reviewed, not reviewed, but previewed as the next big game for this game, and they talked about the multiple powers you're going to get, and it looked like the combat was taking a step forward.

And while the gameplay is very good, and in some ways it's better than the first two, and in some ways it's not, the rest of the structure of the game just takes too much away from the experience.

I think there's good enough core gameplay there, where if they actually put effort into the design of the levels and boss battles and all that and gave you more missions, this would have been one of the best games of the year, and it could have been a AAA title.

I think everything is holding them back.

It's not just the structure that is awful, but the level design as well.

Beyond just a side quest.

Yeah, I think so too.

You've played these types of missions before, it's always like chase the person and then shoot him, or just go into the group of enemies, and there's only like six different enemies in the entire game, and they just keep coming at you the same way over and over again.

And, well, it could be fun because your powers are very destructive, and it's cool, and it's fun, and you can fly, and you can do this, and you can, you know, it just feels like you're a superhero.

They got that far down.

But give me stuff to do, you know?

That's all I ask.

I want an actual game to go around it.

And the boss battles they do have, I have to say, there are a few that are pretty genius, and they're pretty well done, and I just wish there was more than like four of them.

Alright, so if it's 40 bucks, does that change your perspective?

Yeah, yeah, I would have been better.

Right now it's 60, I felt like I got ripped off, and I actually feel Meta Gear was a better deal of the two.

Well, I mean, InFamous did sell a million copies Sony Australia announced in nine days, so, I mean, that's pretty good.

There are people online that think this is the best InFamous game.

I don't know why, the crowd is blown, but there are people that are happy.

There are idiots who are trying to justify their purchase of a, you know, $500 console.

I think they bought the newest, prettiest game on the system, and they're happy to have this pretty game to show off, and they'll just go along with it, and they say, oh, it's almost ten hours, but I love those ten hours, it's fantastic.

And no, it could be so much better.

Like, these types of games are built to last, you know, to have tons of missions, have lots of variety, this game fails in that aspect.

I've got one more question about InFamous.

Yes.

So I've got to ask, on behalf of the Endless Backlog Podcast, in your jet setting, have you been to Seattle?

No, I have not.

Well then, that question's around the corner.

I also...

That's one of the few major cities I've not visited.

I also have not been to Seattle, but I do know that Sucker Punch is based in Seattle.

So, you wish to direct your question to me?

You wouldn't have bothered because you haven't been to Seattle.

And you haven't played the game, so...

But I can...

You're even more used to...

But I can tell you that the game does accurately portray Seattle and captures the feeling of what Seattle is actually like.

Seattle is a bad city to have a video game in.

Because I didn't think the city was that interesting at all.

At least in terms of video game, like Traversal and all that.

So, you've been playing any other video games you want to tell us about?

Well, I have Dark Souls 2.

I finished that after many, many hours of playing.

Well, Tom Towers has already beaten Dark Souls 2.

So, what was your impression?

Yeah, what was your impression?

I loved it.

It's still Dark Souls, so it's still one of my favorite franchises, but I will definitely say it's the worst of the series.

But it's the worst of the series and not in the way of like, oh man, that was really bad.

I mean, it's just third place.

Where do you see it going from here?

They need to put more surprises.

It's gotten to the point where hardcore Souls fans that played every game know all the tricks already.

So, when we go to an area, we're like, okay, I know this guy's going to do that.

I kind of understand what's going to happen here.

I know how to fight this kind of boss.

I know how to...

It's almost like with Zelda, where we already know all the puzzles and how to solve them already.

It's getting to that point with Dark Souls.

I think they need to surprise us.

May I suggest that they will do one more cash-in, and then they'll move on to their next thing?

Yes.

And then that one more cash-in will just be that one that breaks the camel's back.

That's just, okay, that's too much.

They'll have to do one more cash-in.

They'll have to.

Now, I'm playing another Prom Software game right now that I know that you also enjoyed.

And I know, I want your perspective on it, because I'm enjoying this kind of game for the very first time in my life, and that is 3D.GameHeroes.

It's Prom Software.

They do make fun of Dark Souls in it, and they do make reference to Prom Software in it, including a semen-covered lady inside of the Prom Studio's cave, which I'm assuming is some sort of violation of workplace hostile environment types, you know?

Not in Japan.

Not in Japan.

And how do they make fun of Dark Souls, given that this was released before Dark Souls?

You come up against a player in a video game store, and she's like, I tried to play this game, but it's too hard and I don't like it.

Do you want to swap it for another game?

And the name of the game is Dark Souls.

Right, well, Dark Souls was coming out of that.

Or Demon Souls.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

So it was Demon Souls.

Yeah, that's better.

And when you walk into Prom Software, you get to talk to all the video game developers, and there's one girl in there who's dressed in pink, and they make a semen joke.

Or a Bukkake joke, basically, which is not very funny.

So as someone who loves Zelda as much as you do, I'm really enjoying the temples.

I'm up to the Desert Temple right now, so I'm about halfway through the game.

And I love this game.

It is just classic Zelda.

Zelda 1, which is something that Nintendo's abandoned.

It just has that kind of feel, like, that it's hard, it's difficult, where a lot of Zelda games now are not.

And the puzzles were pretty, they were basic, but they were still, I don't know, it just worked.

You still had to use your mind, and it was a little bit, it wasn't as laid out for you as it is now.

And graphically, I mean, I think this predates Minecraft, doesn't it?

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's got a lot going for it.

I just think that this game is hugely underrated for a From Software title, and for also its contributions to gaming in general.

I mean, it gives you that isometric view that's somewhat 2D, but also 3D, and it gives you that Lego, you know, Minecraft kind of feel.

But from a gameplay perspective, it's something that completely appreciates Japanese RPGs and the original Zelda.

And I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

I'm about seven hours into it, and absolutely loving it.

And it doesn't actually predate Minecraft, it predates the official final release date, but not when it was available to play over the two year or so beta period.

And Japanese wouldn't have been aware of that anyway.

Just to be clear, From Software didn't exactly develop it.

They had one of these other teams.

They kind of like, they oversaw the project.

I forgot which team it was.

They recently made a game.

I forget which one.

People were like, Oh, they're the guys who did 3D Dark Game Heroes.

And I forget who.

Yeah, Silicon Studios.

Yeah, Japanese development is a lot like that.

You have games that are, quote, developed by Nintendo, but they're really not.

There's a lot of these shadow development studios.

It would never pass in the West, because in the West, everyone's focused on ego and wants to get credit for what they're doing.

Yeah.

All right, well, with that, David, we thank you for your report.

We welcome you back at any time.

Yeah, definitely.

And we're going to plow...

Especially if we're doing a news podcast.

Please come on in.

Yeah, we're going to plow on through the news.

So with that, you may leave us now.

Goodbye.

Well, that was great to hear from Dave.

Indeed it was.

I would...

If it can come on more in the future.

I would like to go back into the news, but now that we're talking about current games and things like that, you know, last time we talked about an hour and a half about Broken Age.

Only an hour of it got into the podcast, and you had only played about 20 minutes of it.

So before we go back into the news, I'd like to hear, you know, ultimately how that went for you.

Have you played much more Broken Age?

I have, in fact, now finished the act one, the first act.

Oh, really?

Indeed.

It's only about four hours long.

That's good.

If you talk to everyone, as I always do, and go through all the item descriptions, etc.

That's really good.

I mean, four hours.

That's the sort of length you'd expect.

Half your average adventure game, modern adventure game length, for this sort of adventure game, they're usually about eight hours long.

So if it's broken up into two halves, you'd expect it to be about four hours.

And so I assume at least part of what made it until last week was how fucking godawful it was in pretty much every facet of its design and being.

I didn't think you were that harsh on it.

I wasn't.

I think I was in parts.

Because you have to remember, of course I then talked about Homefront, but there's different degrees of godawfulness.

Well, for the first adventure game from Double Fine ever, we can say that, and for the first adventure from Tim Schafer in about 15 years, you would expect it to be pretty clunky.

You wouldn't expect it to match modern standards where people have been continuing to work on and build these games for 15 years.

Well, clunky certainly wasn't the problem with it, but I assume at least a little reason why that went into it.

So I'll begin by pointing out a few of things that did improve drastically.

And bearing mind that I started playing as the black woman, so when I say the beginning of the game, I'm referring to the beginning of her part.

The overall music which I mentioned, which was just completely over the top and intrusive, was toned down to a more standard, quirky, humorous background.

It wasn't trying to be dramatic as well, and then fitted the tone of the game much, much better until the end, including during the more dramatic moments as well.

They didn't do the kind of half and half thing they did at the beginning where it was trying to be humorous as well as dark.

Later on when there were dark moments, it was just straight up dramatic.

And let the humor in the dramatic and dark moments come out through the characters and the writing and so on and so forth.

It worked a hell of a lot better.

The voice acting as well.

Apparently they decided to place the awful people at the beginning of the first side of the story.

And it's bizarre because a lot of them at the beginning of the game are good voice actors.

Like Jennifer Hale is playing her mother and is...

her tone of voice and so forth is fine, but beyond that she is fucking awful like everyone else is at the beginning of the game.

Which is huge amount down to the writing there as well.

But once you get past that beginning of the game, the writing also improves practically and is classic Tim Schafer humorous dialogue where he does change style for characters and so on and so forth.

So my only thing I can come up with to explain why the beginning was so fucking awful was the darker, but not so much darker, more vaguely more serious and commentary, social commentary style of the beginning compared to other Tim Schafer stuff, which is not to imply that it, in a different context, could possibly be described as being anything akin to social commentary.

So it could be that he was unable to direct something that did something different to what he'd done in pretty much every single other game he's made.

So this game does have social commentary whereas the others did not?

As far as Tim Schafer is concerned, it does.

As far as anyone else, it does not.

Okay, so what level of bombast does the social commentary reach in this game?

Well, you could interpret it as having some vague comments on feminism and social pressures.

Alright.

Which are most overt at the beginning of the game, and that is where the game fails the most in terms of its presentation.

Yep, so after you get past that, then everything about the presentation becomes enjoyable and they reach the correct balance with the cartooniness of the voice acting with the visual style of the music as well.

So after that, Astralis presentation is concerted is exactly what I was expecting out of a Tim Schafer directed adventure game.

And the nods back to his old adventure games, then you can enjoy as rather than being a cheap attempt at gaining sympathy out of the player through nostalgia, then become an experience that enriches the otherwise more contemporary style.

Because Tim Schafer's games generally are slightly more cartoony than Broken Age is.

And for example, What They Do, which was one of the hallmarks of Tim Schafer games, and there were other games that did this as well, but Tim Schafer, as far as I'm concerned, his games did the best of adventure games at the time, which is when you're walking around the environments, characters aren't just standing there waiting for you to go up to talk to them.

They might be singing a song or talking to each other, and they've got dialogue that plays as audio as well as subtitles and so on and so forth, so that the world feels slightly more alive than it would in other adventure games where you have to manually start a character off to talk directly to you, or even if they're talking to each other, you have to go over to them and click on them, and only then do they start talking to each other.

Okay, so it's more...

it is actually more aware of current adventure game conventions and mechanics.

I wouldn't say that's a current adventure game convention at all, but it is certainly aware of current adventure game conventions in the puzzles, because the puzzles, unfortunately, from the beginning do not improve.

There is pretty much nothing that you could describe as a puzzle that requires any sort of thought whatsoever.

My brain has been conditioned into thinking of puzzles in adventure game terms and being very wary of experimenting, because back in the day, certain experiments could instantly get you killed, right?

Which has been pretty much removed from adventure gaming, the adventure game vocabulary today in terms of puzzle design, but I'm still very cautious about what I'm doing.

So the only time in the entire game that I didn't immediately know the solution to a puzzle, I actually did immediately know the solution to the puzzle, but due to the inherent danger involved in that solution, I thought I'd better try and come up with another way to solve the puzzle.

So pretty much every single puzzle in the game, as soon as you come across it, you know what the solution is.

And often beforehand, in the other side of the game, the man side of the game, it's a much less linear structure than in the woman side.

And there are times where you get up to the solution to a puzzle before you actually have the puzzle.

So there's times where you actually know what you're meant to be doing and what you're going to end up doing, but you can't actually do it because you haven't talked to character X who tells you you've got to go and do this because this problem, we've been presented with this problem.

So it's just really, really uninteresting and basic, boring puzzle design.

I'm not sure it's quite on the level of something like The Walking Dead, but it's certainly close to it.

So when you say the man side of the game, the woman side of the game, there are two main protagonists in this game, one female, one male.

Do you play through the exact same activities as both of them?

What do you mean by activities?

Well, do you play through the game as the female character and then play through the game as the male character, or does it go backwards and forwards?

No, you start, you pick whichever character you want to play as at the beginning, and then you play up until the end of their section of the game, and they are in completely different settings, and they do feature different puzzles, so it's not as if you are repeating the same thing again.

And they do, on top of that, they do present the structure of each character's story in a different way, which makes it much more interesting than it otherwise would be.

So, for example, in the woman's side, you are basically just wandering around from area to area, solving the puzzles that you need to move on to the next area, which is also a problem because the writing of her, she is just completely and utterly uninteresting.

The performance has no charisma in it whatsoever, and there's nothing interesting about her dialogue, her comments are completely banal and dull, she's got no sense of humor whatsoever, and when she does make a humorous comment, it's completely uninteresting and unfunny and unwitty.

And this is a problem because you are just basically moving at a very placid sort of pace from area to area, so there's no real tension in it until the very end of the entire two hour section.

There is absolutely no tension, except at the beginning, but everything else is so shit at the beginning, it doesn't matter that there's tension.

So to me, her side was...

The side characters were enjoyable and humorous, but it was still a chore to plow through it.

Now, on his side, for one thing, Elijah Wood, he's certainly not a good voice actor.

He is a very, very unskilled vocal performer.

When they present him with anything other than dialogue, like him reading out descriptions of items or having to do some exposition or something along those lines, which he wouldn't have as much experience with in his acting, he is just abysmal.

He completely loses the tempo that he does in dialogue elsewhere.

He loses his vocal tone, and he just sounds completely unengaging and shit, which when you're doing exposition and describing items, you need to be doing it as narration rather than dialogue, and he's reading it out as dialogue, and it's not written as dialogue, it's written as exposition and narration, so it sounds fucking awful.

But when he is doing dialogue, he is playing Elijah Wood just as well as he has played Elijah Wood in every other single role, and personally, I've got nothing against Elijah Wood.

I think in the right role, he plays this completely ineffective, mincing, middling persona really, really well in an engaging, humorous, ironic way.

In effectual indeed.

Exactly, yeah.

And so with him there, he's then enough to thrust you through that section.

And on top of that, they also apply a hell of a lot more narrative tension as well through a sense of mystery and discovery, which was not there in the other side whatsoever.

And also in a genuine sense of time, where you've got to achieve certain things, even if it is a complete illusion, you've got to achieve certain things within a time limit, or bad shit is going to happen, which is not there in the other side at all whatsoever.

And the other thing which they do, which makes this Elijah Wood side so much more effective, is they realize that because the puzzles are so utterly banal and uninteresting, they need to do something abstract with the structure.

So Elijah Wood side starts out where you're repeating this Groundhog Day style structure, where you are going through the exact same motions, exact same settings again and again, and each time they're trying to work out what you can do to cause something different to happen and break the cycle, right?

So it's an interesting structural diversion from then when you are just then navigating the one area and going through puzzles or multiple areas as you were in the other side.

Okay, so now, so as you're playing as the female character, you're not really going through the same levels, though, are you?

No, you're not.

They're different levels, but because there's absolutely no tension whatsoever, it doesn't really matter.

The only appeal is finding the slightly different style of humorous characters in each area.

If the puzzle...

And that's a basic adventure game structure, of course, but the reason that that is then interesting in other adventure games is because you come across new and interesting puzzles.

You don't come across new and interesting puzzles.

You come across the same completely uninteresting puzzles that are effectively no different from one another.

And they follow the same exact structure as well.

So in gameplay terms, you could describe it as you're going through the one area again and again.

Okay, so you get all this money from Kickstarter, and you're making an adventure game, right?

Yep, and I will say one thing.

Once again, you could make an argument that they were doing something different with the opening section of the female side, but once again, I would argue that it is so shit that whatever the fuck they were trying in their slightly different structure didn't fucking matter whatsoever.

I was just going to say, you get all this money from Kickstarter, so you're like, okay, we're playing with nostalgia here, but we're a real company as well, and we've been given a lot of money.

Now, we're going to blow a lot of that on a documentary about us making this game, but even so, we are going to make this game.

And a lot of money on Elijah Ward and Jack Black.

Oh, good God.

Jack Black, I would say Jack Black was...

If they'd given him a larger role, he's basically got a cameo role in it, would have been worth the money, because he is excellent in the cameo role, but I really can't see how they can justify spending money on hiring Elijah fucking Ward, when you could have got pretty much any reasonably skilled voice actor to play Elijah Ward voice acting just as well as Elijah Ward plays Elijah Ward voice acting.

And Jack Black probably did it for free.

True.

Well, yeah, he chums with Tim Schafer.

Okay, so my thing is this, right?

If you're Tim Schafer, wouldn't you go to your team?

Okay, I want you to go out there, I want you to play the most recent adventure games, I want you to see where adventure gaming is at.

Now, you know, the common narrative would be that oh, Tim Schafer, video game extraordinaire, adventure game extraordinaire, you know, give him money, just let him make a game, but he's not going to do that.

He is going to experiment, I mean, at least research, or have his people research where the current video game, you know, in terms of the genre of adventure is.

Well, if I, your question was if I was Tim Schafer?

Well, my question is this, do you feel that the people that researched current video games in the adventure genre, do you think they did their job or not?

Well, I think the puzzles would imply that they did because you can, I mean, you would not expect them, if they would have come into this, if Tim Schafer was coming, he's completely and utterly ignorant.

I don't think he would have designed the puzzles that he did because the puzzles have no relation to any Tim Schafer puzzle up until this point.

And let's be realistic, Tim Schafer doesn't design video games.

Of course, but I'm saying, the people that he has hired are doing generic modern puzzle, adventure game puzzles, and they're not doing them well.

So that would imply that they were up on what was currently happening in contemporary adventure games.

And also doing stuff like, you know, splitting it up between two characters as well.

That's a cliche convention often used in adventure games.

1954, which we talked about in the previous episode, a few episodes ago, whenever that was, did the same thing.

Half the game is played as one character and half the game is played as another, but they did it in a more complex way, manner where you can switch between characters.

Goodbye, Deponia did it exceptionally well where they managed to create these brilliantly long and complex puzzles that required you to move through the world as two separate characters and brought them together as well.

That's another convention that they're using that is very common in modern adventure games.

It's entirely contemporary.

The only harking back to old adventure games is the Tim Schafer nostalgia that he includes.

If I can be completely honest, at this point what we're talking about with Double Fine is that Double Fine is a studio of very talented people that Tim Schafer happened to hire.

As long as they're making cutesy stuff that's one degree lower than what Tim Burton does, then everyone's happy, right?

That's the papulum that people are happy to accept.

We just want this costume quest psychonaut bullshit.

As long as it looks kind of quirky, but it's still cute and almost chuckle-worthy, then that's the Tim Schafer production.

Yep.

So that was almost darkly serious, but you know.

I mean, that is what it is in terms of what people want from Tim Schafer these days.

I would put this a lot below something like psychonauts, though.

Oh, of course, of course.

I mean, this entire activity is entirely cynical.

It's basically saying, well, I'm Tim Schafer.

We need money, or we could use some extra money more accurately.

We seem to be on a good thing.

I'm known for adventure games.

Let's go to Kickstarter.

And it got way bigger than they ever expected, and they're out of their league, you know.

But they'll sell by as long as it's Tim Burton Lite.

Indeed.

And as Tim Burton Lite, it is still enjoyable Tim Burton Lite, of course.

So it's not as if they are...

they're doing their niche well, at the very least, you can say.

I would still argue, though, that Tim Burton Lite is not good enough for an entertainment experience in and of itself.

I mean, I think as video gamers, we're kind of cowed to expect a lower level of entertainment.

So then it is within the context of video games.

Okay, you're right.

Acceptable, right?

You're absolutely right.

Okay, well, I mean, but with all these game impressions, we've completely derailed our news-exclusive podcast.

And there must be several people who are really disappointed that we didn't go over the last two weeks of news, 797 stories of news.

But at this point, you know, I've got to accept it.

Most people were connected to the internet over the last two weeks, so I don't want to force them to go over that again.

I mean, Amy Henning now works for EA again.

I mean, that's news, right?

That is news.

And on Amy Henning, by the way, I've got a question for you.

Have you played her previous output before she went to Naughty Dog?

The only thing I've played is Legacy of Kain, you know, under Dreamcast.

What was the writing like on that?

Oh, shit.

I mean, like all video games of the time.

So it wasn't like her present writing?

No, no.

I mean, her current writing is shit also.

I mean, it's just...

Yeah, but I mean...

It's only enabled by the graphic.

By that I mean, what I'm really asking is, did it suffer from the same hilarious inconsistencies that it currently suffers from?

No, because it was completely one-dimensional.

I am Dracula walking through a dungeon.

So it was better then.

So that's really then Naughty Dog, because it blew my mind how the Last of Us script, which was significantly better written than any of the Uncharted scripts, did all the same utterly dumb bullshit every third or fourth line that was there in Uncharted.

So that's apparently a Naughty Dog directive.

I'd say that's a...

It's the Naughty Dog style.

I'd say that's the 21st century style, because if you look at any current TV shows, that's the same thing as well.

You know, that's why...

It is the same thing, but it's done very slightly different.

Mainly because in films and television, generally, if you're looking at better stuff, at least, not the average stuff, the inconsistencies are within the aesthetics and structure as opposed to inconsistencies in character.

And in Uncharted and The Last of Us, the inconsistencies are not only in aesthetics and structure, but also with character in the most hilarious context.

I think you're powder-coating the truth, frankly.

I think that if you look at things like people say it's the best TV ever, like Breaking Bad, I mean, every fourth line is looking straight into the camera going, wink, wink.

Even if it's not, you know, it's all this allusions to, yeah...

But that's the point, because every fourth line is, as opposed to every twentieth, and then a fifth line is doing something completely different.

Right.

And in the old days, I mean, it would have been good enough to have one of those moments per series, if at all, you know?

I mean, God forbid that you watch a series of Faulty Towers and get some social context without the character actually going, wink, wink, do you get what I'm saying?

You know?

Which is basically all of modern games and all of modern TV and all of modern movies.

Yep.

But that's not got anything to do with what I was saying.

Well, okay.

Go ahead.

One more time.

Okay.

Well, what I said was, and I'm referring to, because what you're referring to is a deliberate aesthetic choice, right?

Postmodernism, yes.

Yep.

That's not there by accident.

No.

In Uncharted script and in The Last of Us script, putting aside something like the abysmal postmodern, which you, by the way, greatly enjoy, dialogue between whatever the woman was, Alan or Chloe?

What the fuck was she called?

Alan.

There was Chloe and Alana, right?

Alana and Drake at the end of Uncharted 2.

For example, when Alana meets Chloe, Elena meets Chloe, she says, I'm last year's model.

Yeah.

Right.

But let's use the Alana versus Chloe thing, because that's a better example.

That is entirely a postmodern stroke, where it's not so much that they're looking at the camera, but they've moved into a completely different aesthetic style and genre of comedy, because why not?

It's postmodernism, so you can use whatever you want, right?

Right.

That's a deliberate thing.

It's fucking stupid, as far as I'm concerned, and so poorly done.

But that's a deliberate thing that Amy Henning, or whoever, came up with the idea, said, let's fucking do that.

That would be a hilarious ending, right?

It's not deliberate for In The Last of Us, the moment where...

Spoiler!

I can say it without spoilers, where they've been building up this important relationship, narrative device, between Ali and...

What's the main guy called?

And Joel, where they then completely fucking forget about it, and stick it in as an expositional line of dialogue involving an item.

That's not a deliberate aesthetic choice.

That is their fail to write that in in a successful manner.

Right?

Well, you've unspoiled it so much that I don't know what you're talking about.

Okay, well, what I've described is not a deliberate aesthetic choice, is it?

Yes or no?

No.

No.

And that's what Amy Hennig's writing and The Last of Us is full of constantly throughout.

Now, in the constraints of a television show, I'm presently watching Justin's first episode, Season of Hannibal, which is in many ways terribly, terribly written.

And there are similar moments where they're going through the story.

And they needed advice to advance the plot in a certain way.

And they do this through the most utterly stupid exposition that is shoved in there to the point where it completely destroys the structure of all the writing in that episode.

Whereas in the past, they would have attempted to figure out a better way to put it.

Now, that's the same equivalent as the sort of thing that happened there in The Last of Us.

Right?

As far as I describe it.

But at the same time, in Hannibal, the dialogue, there's no consistency in the script and in the general aesthetic, no, the visual aesthetic is fine, but in the script, there's a lack of consistency in the way it's written, which results in some lines being very effective and some sounding like complete shit.

Now that is there in all media full stop today.

And you can blame postmodernism if you want, but it's an aesthetic failure, whereas postmodernism is a deliberate aesthetic choice that if you're looking at it through various aesthetic lenses is a failure, but it is at least a deliberate thing.

Random lines of bad dialogue are not.

What I was saying was where you've got Hannibal, which is not a greatly written show, and I think it's a really fun show in spite of that, if you then look for a show that is very well written, even though the dialogue is going to be complete and utter shit because it's a modern television show, you're not going to have the moments where they've failed to write it from a narrative perspective successfully, which are there in Naughty Dog and in Hannibal.

And to completely disregard what I was saying, but this is to me just a hilarious choice, a hilarious thing, to get those same failures in Naughty Dog's games as a definable trait of the writing is utterly bizarre because it means to a degree, they must be aware that they're doing this, but either are dumb enough to think that this is actually not completely and utterly aesthetically, structurally, in every single artistic, technical facet, a load of shit, or they know nobody is going to fucking notice this.

Everybody is going to say, The Last of Us Uncharted have the best scripts within gaming.

That's exactly it.

Like all of these Harvard-educated dudes who are the smartest guys in the room, who are on all of these writing committees, you know, they know that they're writing for people who are about 40 levels below them in terms of intelligence.

And they know that people aren't going to notice this, and they know that people aren't going to know why they like it, and on and on and on.

They're not only writing for people that are 40 levels below them in intelligence, they're writing for people who understand aesthetics through the lens entirely of polish, which is what video games, that's the only criteria for success, for critical success in video games, is polish.

That is a podcast in and of itself.

I mean, that is a brilliant statement.

Video games are made for people who are only able to appreciate things in terms of the level of polish.

And you go back to my comments earlier to David about things like Blue Stinger, right?

Oh, this game is shit, but man, it looks good, and all the rest of it.

It's not only about appearance, though, because we'll also credit a game like Serious Sam, which has brilliant mechanics, but fails in a different way.

When I say polish, polish applies to every facet of design.

That's what I'm talking about.

So we'll sadly just cling on to Serious Sam, because it had a great mechanic, even though it failed in every other area.

Whereas in other forms, critics are much less accepting.

If a video game has...

I mean, if a book has extremely derivative plot, but good characters, it's not going to get by.

But a video game can get by with just polish and just polish in one area.

Well, a book will get by with absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Yeah, I don't know about that, because if you look at book sales, they all fail.

Even the top level ones fail.

50 Shades of Grey?

Yeah, come on.

That's a digital distribution only.

So they aren't books?

They're books, but that's a whole different paradigm in terms of sales.

50 Shades of Grey is essentially a website that anyone can go to, and it has a $5 gate on it.

That's what I'm saying.

The only other news story I want to bring up before we go is Amazon's video game console.

No, we're not going to bring that up.

We're not bringing that up.

All you need to know about it is this.

It's a Roku box, or it's one of these basically digital media distribution devices, and all you need to know about it is when Amazon was asked, will you be at E3, they said no, which tells you everything you know about it from a gamer's perspective.

Because if this was a serious gaming console, obviously they'd be at E3, and it's not a video game console.

Just like the Nintendo consoles aren't serious video consoles.

No, that's right, they're not E3 either, so take note.

I'm going to ask you a quick question.

Yes, sir.

To end with, now you are a self-confessed hater of post-modernism, right?

I don't know that I am.

I think that I am.

Because you say this, but to me all evidence points to the complete opposite.

You love Spec Ops The Line.

You could not make a more post-modern game than Spec Ops The Line, right?

You are correct.

What about WarioWare?

Would you say that's a post-modern game?

From the five seconds I played of it, yes.

Absolutely.

I'm a fan of post-modernism.

I like the fact that media is self-aware.

I do.

You are a fan of my blogs as well.

Yes.

Absolutely.

They were incredibly post-modern.

Yes.

You are a post-modernist.

I love it.

But I love it.

I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too.

I think what you've got a problem with is post-post-modernism.

What's that?

Post-post-modernism.

As far as I can tell, it describes the dearth of aesthetic quality that has followed post-modernism.

Okay, where it's nothing more than...

Where post-modernism was a definable art movement.

Yes.

Post-post-modernism, which is what we're currently going through, there is no art movement whatsoever.

So, for example, if you have a television show that points to, let's say, movies for its influence, then I've always been a fan of that.

But if you have a blog about the television show, about the movie, then that's when I start to fall apart.

So, for example, I'll appreciate a video game that's making fun of video game characteristics, but if you're just writing a blog about it and expecting to get the same level of interest, then no, I'm not interested in that.

Unless you're me.

Unless you're you.

But some of the media that is generated, like some games, are on the level of a blog commenting about a video game, commenting about a TV, commenting about a movie.

And basically saying, see, we know stuff, cultural reference.

And that's where Conker's Bad Fur Day...

But it's not backed up by any aesthetic value or content.

No, absolutely.

And if you look at Conker's Bad Fur Day, the whole thing carried on basically saying, see, we're making cultural references, right?

And if you look at Mike Judge's work, Beavis and Butthead was essentially that.

But if you look at King of the Hill, that was true postmodernism, where it set aside the fact that it was so...

It was setting aside its own self-importance.

And instead of just saying, look at us, we're commenting on stuff, it just commented on stuff.

And that's what I'm talking about.

You know?

So just to clarify my position on postmodernism, I'm an absolute fan of it.

And I love it.

But at this point, going on Twitter and saying something about something doesn't make you postmodern, it just makes you someone who's talking in the public sphere.

Yep.

So, well, look at us, Game Under, episode 46.

Talking about postmodernism.

Yep, cross that one off your list.

Is there anything else you want to say before we end this episode?

Not at all.

Me neither.

So that's it.

Goodbye.

You're out.

Game Under Podcast 45

Stream below or right-click and download here  You can also listen on Stitcher and iTunes. Why not subscribe to us on RSS ? 

Trademark Banter
0:01:00 Self Promotion and otherwise.
0:03:20 VR Hysteria or Justified?
0:04:50 Precise Control Versus Immersiveness.
0:06:40 Tom Says VR Controls are Half-Ass
0:07:55 Kinect 2 the Solution?
0:10:15 No Tomprimises!

News
0:14:00 Oculus Bought for $2 Billion.
0:15:40 Companies as Evil or More Than Facebook.
0:17:45 What if Nintendo Bought Oculus Rift?
0:18:24 I am Error.

First Impressions
0:18:29 Broken Age.
0:18:46 Gaming in the 386 Era.
0:19:34 FAQs Killed Adventure Games?
0:21:44 Patching Games Killed Adventure Games?
0:22:00 Who had more influence on modern adventure games? Sierra or Lucas Arts?
0:23:03 Amatuers Making Games and uncalled for Sessler bashing.
0:24:06 Shiggy is a Fraud.
0:25:03 Why Indy Games are Awesome.
0:25:40 A Hallmark Moment.
0:26:30 Runic Games Breaks Up.
0:27:51 Sony Insider Banned from GAF.
0:31:52 The God of War Curse.
0:33:19 Jesus to Blame?
0:33:47 Back to Sessler - Schafer is a Phony and a Fraud.
0:36:55 Broken Age - The Actual First Impressions.
0:46:40 Back to Deadly Premonition and Shakespear.
0:55:25 Compared to Psychonauts and Grim Fandango.
0:56:03 Scripts Appropriate to Visual Design.
0:57:58 Soundtrack.

Final Impressions
1:01:14 Homefront
1:02:45 Great intro, and straight out of Last of Us.

Game Under Podcast 43

Stream below or right-click and download here  You can also listen on Stitcher and iTunes. Why not subscribe to us on RSS ? 

Introduction
0:00:22 Welcome

Trademark Banter
0:00:40 Trippin' Balls
0:02:37 Australian Podcast? The Thong Song (Jandle Jingle?)
0:07:23 Feetatarian
0:08:00 Titanfall Lack of Scores + Future of Online Only
0:11:35 Tom's Review of EDF 2025 at LaserLemming.com

First Impressions
0:16:52 Tom Yabbers on about Dark Souls II
0:21:48 Found in Translation?
0:29:40 Is Difficulty a Gimmick?

Final Thoughts
0:44:40 Phil on Modern Warfare 3
0:47:45 Tower Records and Guy Pearce

First Impressions
0:51:00 Phil on Resident Evil 6

News
1:01:20 Amy Hennig and Naughty Dog Go into Uncharted Territory
1:10:15 Mafia III Exists
1:12:20 Are you Duke Nukem (a tangent)
1:16:25 Canadians Screwed By Sony
1:19:05 NPD and the Ever-Shrinking Gamer
1:30:25 Aging Gamer - Good or Bad?

Game Under Podcast 42

Stream below or right-click and download here  You can also listen on Stitcher and iTunes. Why not subscribe to us on RSS ? 

Introduction
00:01:00 Tom Towers Fact Checker

Trademark Banter
00:01:14 Retraction
00:04:40 Broken Controllers and Limbs and Karting
00:10:49 Ukraine

First Impressions
00:12:50 Earth Defense Force 2025

Featurette
38:45 Why is the West so bad at making third-person shooters?

News
49:55 Tony Hawk News
56:30 The Development of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2
1:02:50 Diablo 3 Interview
1:03:20 XB1 "Pricedrop"
1:13:30 MGS5 Ground Zeroes Pricedrop
1:16:50 SEGA Money Problems? Not Quite
1:18:00 Pokemon Twitch

Game Under Episode 41

Stream below or right-click and download here  You can also listen on Stitcher and iTunes. Why not subscribe to us on RSS ? 

Introduction
0:02:00 Listener feedback
0:03:13 Tom's New Literary Feature
0:03:41 Mary Poppins, Pub Crawler
0:05:44 Singhinig Praises for some d00d
0:08:23 Olympics

Final Thoughts
0:14:30 Tom and Phil play Gone Home (light spoilers throughout)
0:40:20 Tom plays Double Dragon Neon

First Impressions
0:58:12 Phil Plays Guacamelee

News
1:01:59 Speed News

Final Thoughts
1:19:00 Dear Esther

Game Under Episode 40

Stream below or right-click and download here  You can also listen on Stitcher and iTunes. Why not subscribe to us on RSS ? 

If you want a fully fleshed out review of Resistance 3 then you are in luck, but at the same time, you are going to hear the most non-linear review of a video game ever.

Also, we go over GTAV and Bravely Default, as well as listener feedback and the usual commentary on video game theory.