We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

I'm guessing it means FPS where story is told largely through prescripted scenes that play out when certain conditions are met, some while you have full control and some where you don't, and there's the occasional puzzle or downtime to break up the shooty parts.

This guy deserves your full attention. I really admire him for his ability to keep a critique of a game interesting (and intelligent) for 40 minutes.

Well, I had to push aside time in my day... (I also don’t particularly like things in video format like this since I read/think ~800 WPM on a good day, which all goes out the window when it’s audio—also most reviewers on the Internet have no real credibility because they are just some person on the Internet who for all I know sniffed glue before running their mouth *the hypocrisy is duly acknowledged).

THE FOLLOWING IS LONG AND PROBABLY ANNOYING AS HELL THAT’S WHAT MY BRAIN IS LIKE ON THE INSIDE OLD AND CRANKY AT HEART I USUALLY TEMPER MYSELF A BIT BETTER

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Spoiler
times are approximate, the following are not necessarily complete bulletproof critiques so much as my initial impression

- 0-3 - yes, you can’t step on toes without stepping on toes and why they decided not to step on toes here can only be attributed to their constant wishes to sell, just like that box art decision.
- 3-6 - this is a debatable point—affordances are the kind of thing you need to worry about as a designer, so not presenting just two choices may make the player own the choice more, but I think the whole point of that sequence in the game was that you/Booker are going to be coerced into a lot of things throughout the game. I personally question the notion many people have that everything that is undesirable yet noticeable to the player is bad game design. It may be contributing to a bigger picture, and in this particular instance, I would say it is. This game makes an incredible number of things happen off-camera, including where Elizabeth goes.
- 6-8 - The enemies are concentrating on the guy with the gun instead of trying to capture a girl who Watsons around the place. Okay, it is kind of the easy way out to make Elizabeth, but come on, if you are asking for a fun “escort mission”, you have to have an companion who acts like a human. And maybe, just maybe, she is equally as competent as you if not more so despite everything that has conspired to make it not so. (also BI is an easy-ish swashbuckling adventure more than it is a sequel to a sequel to one of the scariest survival horror games of all time. I think reinvention is okay, and this game got rewritten so many times it had to ship out in some form, warts and all.)
- 8-9 - he criticized a number of things that could have just as easily been a criticism of what made Halo (CE) good; I these parts are misdirected and not at all the game thinking you’re too dumb to cycle through more than two weapons. It is a problem with BI, though. The thing is, in BI running out of ammo is a chore since you can just pick up a new weapon any time, and in Halo—where you also have two weapons and run out of ammo readily—weapon selection was an “interesting choice”, to use Sid Meier’s definition (this is especially true if you have not yet memorized the levels), since you have to worry about scarcity, the choice is pretty clear once you know what each weapon does, and the way you use weapons, unlike BI (as he rightly points out), is a bit more advanced than just pointing and shooting, and enemies react way better. The way medkits work in Halo is also better; since the mechanics regarding that are only slightly different (BI lets you upgrade, and also it is obviously better in every way to max shield before ever touching health, removing one interesting choice that “could have been”), I have to conclude that it is bad balance in BI. These are all meant to be short responses, but I’ll cut it off soon after dispensing a bit of wisdom paraphrased from a designer of them 90s shooters, said in the 90s: the best place for an ammo pack is right where the player has run out (I suspect it follows that a med kit should be similarly situated). Again—being undesirable to the player is not necessarily bad design.
- 10-11 - if that is one of the most poorly thought out engagements you’ve ever had in a video game for real, there is nothing I can say that won’t sound catty.
- 12-13 - again with the two weapons thing, which is not the wrong thing per se. Encouraging you to pour money into upgrades only to find that the choice back then was not presented to you clearly is what went wrong, and definitely agree that Vox weapons are a cruel and pointless thing to have.
- 18 - lets slide the thing I wouldn’t have
- 19-20 - could not disagree more. particularly shameful—“you couldn’t formulate a more counterintuitive nonsensical cop-out if you tried; it runs totally in opposition to the concept of parallel worlds.” (1) try me (2) so does visiting parallel worlds
- 21-25 - huge exercise in point-missing, and if I could object to everything, I’d be here all day, plus were I such a great writer I’d say what was good in a long-ass article of my own, but I’m not, and could not possibly convince anyone that reading a poorly organized 12000 word apologia of a game that wasn’t completely that great is a good use of their time.
- 25-26 - something like a fair point, but there have been stranger cases in real life; plus she seems to have had some social contact in her golden cage and is established as having read plenty, and has more naïveté than she seems to be credited with in this short portion.
- 26-26:30 - plot holes, yup.
- 26:30-26:45 - didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, either, but can more easily be excused than he is willing to do here (ties into one of the points missed during the point-missing session).
- 26:45-27 - yep, none of those vigor enemies were given a proper introduction, there is absolutely no stated reason the vigors are there, and it seems only freaks use them for the glory of fighting Columbia’s enemies.
- 27:10-27:20 - There was a reason Columbia was in the sky and this was stated in the game through various hints that you have to hunt for and reconstruct; it was isolation, much like Rapture, but unlike Rapture they had an army to build, a cult to expand, and terrestrial industries to support the city. That is not the WTF part of a flying city at all—at such a high altitude, you’d get frostbite, not be able to breathe, have the city spotted with the unaided eye for miles around (and trackable by governments worldwide), the list goes on. The only part of that that’s really explained away is that the Lutece exploited something or other to make it float in a way that isn’t energy prohibitive.
- 27:20-27:50 - This certainly has been making less and less sense since SS1
- 27:50-27:55 - Funny, but (1) it’s not like this sort of thing hasn’t been the bread and butter of lazy game webcomics since the 90s and (2) this is a thing you chose to do in a way and you aren’t really obligated or directed to do it; the compulsion is largely your own even if it is how most people including myself end up playing the. So it runs contrary to the idea had in 3-6 the way I see things—if you own the decision where to throw the baseball, you own the decision to eat out of trash cans. Even if it’s uh... not really a story point and the stakes are lower so ownership of decisions is not so important.
- 28-34 - holy crap, not going to touch everything, having been at this for a few hours already, but needless to say Bioshock’s shallow and dubious “moral” choice system kicked off a long trend of similarly shallow and dubious “moral” choice systems that were in no way fun to play, and I’m glad BI didn’t have it. The false choice segments in BI seems to me a wink and a sardonic smile that they have taken it out back and shot it forever.
- 34-35 - Oddworld got plenty of press and marketing back in the day, so I don’t know exactly what he’s on about here? Seriously, I didn’t open a game magazine for months that didn’t have an ad. It is no surprise to me that more than a decade down the road people just don’t talk about an old franchise that hasn’t seen a new release in some time and people didn’t really consider super great back in the day; pop culture discussions have a short shelf life. Nice that it got a comparison, I guess. I think it would have been stronger to slip it earlier in the critique, but that’s not my call. Games journalism and a lack of proper non-ecstatic criticism on this game, on the other hand, oh boy yes. Unfortunately, liking Bioshock Infinite is kind of like liking Quentin Tarantino films; you never know if the person who professes liking such things is really a fan of experiments with the limits of taste, or just has no taste at all. But then you get into games and you are almost always getting a feeling it’s the latter.
- 35-36 - fair enough, I was pretty sick of the age of everything being a bad platformer, too. But it’s possible BI is part of a last hurrah for the single-player FPS genre if you think the “genre cycle” applies.
- 36-37 - I don’t know whether this was meant seriously, because it doesn’t seem as serious as the rest, thus I will not rip it because that would be a serious treatment.

So here’s the thing: nearly anything I agreed on is actually something very few reviewers even disagreed on (didn’t list all of them above, only the things I felt like saying something about). Most of the video I could not agree with no matter how well or poorly supported. I also find it strange that he never touched on the game’s use of religion, since... well, most mass media simply gives it a clumsy treatment at best, and.

But there are signs of a functioning brain and not a whole lot of grasping at straws, plus I liked the first three minutes, plus I like his accent so he’s not exactly on my “Never do that again” list (I guess audio is good for something).

I actually like MGS2's story after seeing his review.

I will play MGS2 one day, so I think I’ll refrain, but I hear so many complaints about it that I already think it can’t be as bad as I’ve heard.

(An interesting argument I have heard, though: MGS2 makes a good deal more sense in its cultural context. That is not to say that it went over any better in Japan, really. At any rate, if you want to think of a game that makes daring steps, BI really cannot hold a candle to MGS2.)

Mind going into more detail on that?

So in the FPS genre, there are a few strains of game. Taking multiplayer out of the equation (which is an important part of the genre and a huge contributor to its longevity), as well as excluding the first person role-playing games which bear a lot of semblance to FPSes (e.g. The Elder Scrolls, arguably Borderlands, etc.), you are left with two major variations the way I’ve seen it, with some mixing allowed between the two and certainly a lot of permutations allowed within the primary mechanics.

Wolfenstein 3D, the game that popularized the genre, predates these variations and perhaps could be said to lie between the two if you had to go back today; you have to be methodical about killing enemies since they can drop you pretty easily and ammo is not plentiful. You have three weapons that all take the same ammo; the difference is the rate of fire.

Doom is the progenitor example of one variation. Let’s call it old-school (pretty sure some people already call it that). You get out there, you shoot everything in sight, the visuals can often be described as a bloodbath, you mow down swarms of enemies, you typically have several weapons (hooked up to hotkeys) and you carry all of them, level design is not necessarily particularly scenic and (most of these games being pretty old by now) to beat a level, you will probably need to find a keycard and put it in a door, which isn’t too exciting but what is exciting is that a lot of these levels had easter eggs and hidden powerups you really had to go out of your way to find. You will really want to know the circle-strafing technique, if enemy weapons are slower than instant (hit-scan). PROTIP: To defeat the Cyberdemon, shoot at it until it dies. Some other games of this type: Doom II, Quake, Serious Sam, Painkiller, Duke Nukem 3D.

Half-Life is arguably a highly influential old example if not the first of the other variation. I am not sure what to call it; cinematic, new-school, modern, I don’t know. The enemies are not really so fast, taking cover becomes very important, you are likely to have some restrictions in your weapons, you may have a shield/armor as well as health more regularly than in the other variation, one of these may regenerate on its own, you are more likely to have elements borrowed from other gameplay genres such as quest listings (I discounted RPGs because they started cross-pollinating very early on), but one thing that particularly stands out is what Half-Life did first: have lots and lots of set pieces that give the impression of a living world. Some others of this type: Call of Duty, Halo, Gears of War.

Again, these are just general categories, perhaps more like a spectrum. When I say we are making Half-Life over and over again, what I mean is that it is rare to see another “old-school” FPS made these days, even though there is the occasional return to form. Although not all the constantly recycled mechanics come from just this one game, all these games owe a lot to it. And yes, a lot of the mechanics really do seem recycled to me. It could be said there isn’t a whole lot you can mix up with FPSes, and it’s true that the mass market seems not to be too tired of them still, and yet I can’t help but think there might be something missing that could be added.

(I actually don’t much care for FPS anyway, so what would I know? oh god i am nervous to submit such a foolish megapost)

Off-topic: I'm becoming increasingly aware of the fact that post-game content (mainly in RPGs) tends to feel extremely hollow. But it's kind of a dilemma, because if you don't have at least some sort of extension, it'll suck because people can't go back for things they missed, whereas if you do have it, there's often a lack of motivation?

It can work, but the thing is, every aspect in the game has to remain relevant or the experience feels hollow. I've been replaying Recettear and, while I do want to play to the end of every dungeon for plot stuff, and maybe go for 100% completion (I probably won't because ITEM FARMING BLUH) there's... basically no reason for me to open the shop anymore? The impending doom of "MAKE A PROFIT" is gone. It feels like, say, playing a Pikmin game after you've gotten all the parts/treasures/what-have-you; yes, it's possible that there is still technically stuff to do, but there isn't much of a reason to do it.

Really I think it's only a problem when the direction is totally taken away. If there's some extra levels and a good plot reason or something to keep going then yeah sure, but if it's just "okay you can go replay things now, except with no character motivation" I just... don't get the point.

I thought that was what new game+ was for

It sucks that i haven't played any Metal Gear game because i want to hear him talk about games so bad. My favourite part was when he talked about Link's nose in OoT, i love the fact that he uses jokes sparingly, it keeps the videos from being too dry but without making them stupid.

I think they're on psn, i'll check if they're expensive. Are the gamecube remakes/ports any good?

I thought that was what new game+ was for

New Game+ in Recettear would be a lot more compelling if you couldn't get enough money to pay back the entire debt in like two weeks, with all the upgrades and pre-owned booty and upgraded adventurers and stuff.

Honestly New Game+ in general is pretty pointless unless 1) the difficulty is upgraded to match, or 2) gameplay is fast-paced enough that you can get a thrill just by speedrunning old stuff with your vastly improved skills and laugh as no enemy can touch you. But Recettear definitely doesn't do the latter, and I'm fairly sure it doesn't do the former either (you have to go Survival for that, which I'm not especially interested in either).

That's a ragequit.

Kill on win? That’s a ragequit.
Unwelcome change of game genre? That's a ragequit.
Punishing my choice that was presented as equally valid? That's a ragequit.
Getting angry that I’m winning and leaving before I can get the win registered? Oh, you better believe that's a ragequit.

That's a ragequit.

Kill on win? That’s a ragequit.
Unwelcome change of game genre? That's a ragequit.
Punishing my choice that was presented as equally valid? That's a ragequit.
Getting angry that I’m winning and leaving before I can get the win registered? Oh, you better believe that's a ragequit.

I'm a bit confused. Is there something meta going on here?

I've been replaying Bioshock recently, and I've decided that my favorite section was probably the short stroll wherein your plasmid selection was locked and you'd swap to a different one every 30-40 seconds. I really enjoyed how it wound up forcing me to use plasmids I'd never really thought about seriously in ways I hadn't considered. It was also something I never did afterwards, because as soon as my plasmid selection was unlocked again I just settled right back into what I'd been using before, which was a mix of "necessary" ones (to avoid being locked out of bonus areas with electric locks, etc.) and "fun" ones (because there's no situation you can't improve by throwing bees at your enemies).

This is more just me musing on something rather than suggesting any course of action. The game was clearly intended to only have that be a short segment, given how quickly I ran out of medkits. Although, to be perfectly honest, it really did make it very exciting, because then the last part of the journey devolved into a mad scramble towards the finish line with a Big Daddy and a bunch of angry splicers clamoring for my head while I was stuck throwing out decoys and setting cyclone traps.

For fuck's sake, people really don't seem to understand what causes something to be immersive, do they?

It's not about fucking force feedback, it's about the quality and depth of the setting and maybe the graphics as an extension of that, thought not necessarily.

Not everything has to be immersive anyway! Some genres and games are just less suited for it. Immersion is probably the least of my concerns in pretty much any game but I guess what do I know, what with my desire for silly outdated concepts like gameplay. Then again, I tend to find devices intended to enhance my immersion (e.g. Silent Protagonists) only distract me, so maybe I'm a bad example.

For fuck's sake, people really don't seem to understand what causes something to be immersive, do they?

It's not about fucking force feedback

Are you telling me the VHS Nintendo sent me about Sony and Sega reps trying to steal the Rumble Pak was lying to me : (

When fighting games were the rage, we had our own boondoggles that at best seem like a good idea for however long it takes you to get exhausted, or realize how your reaction time is no longer as good as it was on a controller, or suddenly find that you need a new coffee table, your friend’s leg isn’t bending the right way, and your arm is broken in seven places.

Not everything has to be immersive anyway! Some genres and games are just less suited for it. Immersion is probably the least of my concerns in pretty much any game but I guess what do I know, what with my desire for silly outdated concepts like gameplay. Then again, I tend to find devices intended to enhance my immersion (e.g. Silent Protagonists) only distract me, so maybe I'm a bad example.

It’s been called “the immersive fallacy” in one of the standard texts since at least 2003, so you have some bigwig academics on your side? As academic as video games get, anyhow.

Robert Yang recently put it well: “The game industry argues that games ‘immerse’, but immersion theory confuses realism for presence, and production value for realism.” Ouch!

Silent protagonists suck. Except Dillon, because he's actually silent. As in it's part of his personality, and he isn't reduced to having other characters do the talking for him through parroting. I'm looking at you, Mario. You and your unintelligible Italian gibberish.

I think someone brought up the fact that Bowser has a deeper character than Mario. I mean, that's probably because Mario is Nintendo's Mickey Mouse. But then there's Link and uh other people. Like the protagonists of the Elder Scrolls series. Kinda.

Commander Shepard from Mass Effect is great, though. We need more protagonists like him/her (i play her), where you can conceivably construct a different personality every playthrough, but it's still capable of being associated with him/her.

You can disagree, but I think that the whole Paragon/Renegade thing is pretty neat, as well as the thing where making a tiny decision affects a lot of future events. That's immersion done right.

I will admit that his/her characterization could be a little bit better, though, if that's what you were getting at? I mean, I'm not trying to defend anything here. I just happen to like all the characters in Mass Effect.

In other news, my Backloggery fortune cookie rolled Pokemon Quartz. This is going to be great.

I think he meant they were a good example of a blank slate character that still expresses some kind of personality?
I'd say in that regard they are definitely more successful than Mario or Link (although he's better at it in some games depending on the art style) but wouldn't go so far as to say Shepard was a "good character"

I think he meant they were a good example of a blank slate character that still expresses some kind of personality?
I'd say in that regard they are definitely more successful than Mario or Link (although he's better at it in some games depending on the art style) but wouldn't go so far as to say Shepard was a "good character"

Well, yes, that. I kinda thought it was obvious from context but I guess not. So, yes, what I meant was that Shepard has the same function as Mario in terms of "immersion", but pulled it off much better simply by virtue of being allowed to speak and have a personality. Yes, this personality is very mix-and-match, but at least it's there.

Note: I happen to like my particular iteration of Shepard very much, even if a lot of the details of the character are mostly in my head.

Ok.
This automatically means that Commander Shepard is more successful at being a character without a set personality that can have a personality.

I'm not sure why you quoted me to disagree, as we are actually in agreement.

I don't think that Mario having no personality is a bad thing, as it works in the platforming games, which obviously do not have the plot at the foreground. It just irks me a little bit in the RPG games like Paper Mario or Mario and Luigi, and even then it doesn't take away from the game at all, just a personal quirk I suppose.

I suppose Mario wasn't the best example, as he's too well-known, but there are other more obscure games that also have a faceless protagonist in a game where there should be a lot of story, and that is what I don't really like. But again, that's probably more of a personal thing, rather than a campaign to belittle all those games. Sorry if I came off as overly critical or condescending.

ps: A clear line should probably be made here between protagonists with no set personality and protagonists with no personality at all.

I don't think that Mario having no personality is a bad thing, as it works in the platforming games, which obviously do not have the plot at the foreground. It just irks me a little bit in the RPG games like Paper Mario or Mario and Luigi, and even then it doesn't take away from the game at all, just a personal quirk I suppose.

Eh, to be fair I think the RPGs - especially in Paper Mario, where you can be a snarky little motherfucker and it's the best thing - do a pretty decent job of characterizing him, even if it's in a broad, slapstick sort of way. Like, he's technically silent, but he manages to get the concept across in a pantomime, intonation-of-Italianesque-gibberish sort of way?

Mario lacking any personality whatsoever in the RPGs results in him being basically nothing but a contrast to his brother

Honestly, I like Luigi more than I will ever like mario (or have liked) because he actually has an established personality

This is part of why I think Sticker Star really didn't work
instead of giving mario a bunch of partners to have personality for what little he has to play off, you get... Navi.

okay whatshername isn't THAT bad but she's basically an indignant sticker. whee. what a personality.

Eh, i dunno, you could argue Mario has as much personality as Luigi does. Mario is a super brave, righteous dude, sometimes a bit too much, he's overall an all around nice dude but never to the extreme. I think that's a comparable personality to Luigi's, whose personality is pretty much just "he's a coward".

Question time, vidya thread:

If you could design your ideal handheld system, what would it look like? Assume budget/practicality are no object.

If we're just talking about design, the PS Vita looks pretty comfortable to me.