April 2024 Podcast: Dragon's Dogma 2 is open worlds done well & how to onboard us with new games

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, and welcome to the Digitally Uploaded.
Podcast, the companion podcast to digitallydownloaded.net.
My name is Alan, I'm your host this week, and with me, of course,
as always, is the Editor-in-Chief, Matt Sainsbury. Hello, Matt, how are you?
Ooh, how you doing, Alan? Yeah, not too bad, kicking along.
It's a lovely Good Friday as we are recording this, so that's a little bit of

(00:29):
a look behind the curtains, but yeah, had a bit of time to play some games,
and a bit of time to talk about them. So it's rather exciting.
You been playing anything good?
No. Well, yes. No. I've been playing Learn How to Make My Own Game,
which has been my kind of project for the last couple of weeks in between all
the reviews I've been doing.
It's been a lot of big games coming out. But yeah, I've been finally sitting

(00:51):
down to actually program this damn thing.
I've had to learn Python and stuff.
I'm learning Python to make this happen. So adding a skill to my skill list.
So I'm pretty happy about that.
That's fantastic that's really cool yeah very happy it's coming together nicely
that's a little plug am i allowed to advertise on this podcast is that the thing

(01:11):
i mean do i need to pay myself you you own it i guess i guess i can then yeah
two hours is going to be one purely long ad,
yeah get ready yeah and then of course we've also got another guest a regular
guest a regular regular co-hosts, some might say.

(01:31):
It's Harvard. Hello, Harvard. Hello, good morning. It's nice to be regular.
Yeah, you are regular. Everything that's regular is good, usually.
Usually. I consider you a good thing. Thank you. Wasn't sure before. Yeah. Yeah.
What have you been playing this month, Harvard? This is... I've been playing

(01:52):
the Japan only sequel to the Game Boy Color Pokemon Trading Card game.
This is a very normal thing to say there was a
sequel yeah that was there was japan only sequel that
included a bunch of extra cards and it is
very good proof that pokemon trading card game is not
a good game but i've been slugging all the way through this how dare you say

(02:14):
that it's just not a very cool design game i can't i can't get over the fact
that every round i'm flipping like 20 plus coins and so many games are just
like, if I get heads, I win, and if I get tails, I lose.
That's just what it boils down to. I am deeply offended by this now.
They might have fixed it in later sections. You were talking about my favorite

(02:35):
Game Boy Color game, Mr. Harvard.
Yeah, it's a good game, but it's also a bad game. Well, the first one.
I haven't played the sequel. I didn't even know there was a sequel.
I'm going to go and find the sequel now. Yeah, there's a sequel.
You've killed my productivity, Harvard. It's just more of the first one.
I'm not doing my game anymore.
I'm going to find this thing and play it.
What about you, Alan? What have you been playing? Oh, just Tekken.

(02:55):
It's always Tekken. Tekken?
Yeah, it's very exciting. Have you been quite taken by Tekken? Yes, I have.
I've got now like 60 hours in that game, which for a fighting game,
for me, is insane. Especially after, what, like two months?
So that's about, what, three rounds once you factor in the cutscenes for the super attacks?

(03:15):
Yes, Matt. no it's uh it's fantastic i just beat the story mode today on stream
and it was absolutely fantastic it's a brilliant brilliant fighting game and
they've got eddie gordo coming out.
On a monday i believe so i'm very excited
yet no there's no lucky club there's there's
coffee chloe coffee chloe yeah azucena

(03:36):
she's a coffee queen now i
like the new girl rain yeah rain is pretty
good but i just like her a lot but yeah
game's fantastic and also just still in the overwatch minds
still hating myself with that but you know
that's just how we go that's how we move totally i did jump back into totally
random thing alan i was watching

(03:58):
a documentary on nhk world about a
couple a couple of weeks ago now and they're actually talking about the
martial art that reina's movesets based on and it's a
pretty decent looking martial art it's wild how
much kicking and stuff they do in it it's really cool yeah that's
for the best part about tekken is like finding these cool different martial
arts that are actually in the real world because i would never have known

(04:19):
about capoeira had i not played tekken oh really i
wouldn't i never would have known about it and then you know just all the other
cool stuff like looking at the karateka stuff that's in seven as well which
i'm hoping they have my polish queen back in for tekken 8 but i don't know if
they will but regardless it's it's a great game it's so good it's i cannot I'll
recommend it enough if you've not played it in any sort of fighting game.

(04:42):
Yeah, it's a pretty good filler until the next Dead or Alive comes out.
Which will probably never.
Music.

(07:48):
It always surprises me when we do a new podcast, because I remember that we're
at the beginning of a new month, and of course, it is the new month of April.
So, the games are coming out, because of course they always are.
It's already been massive this year. I don't know what to do.
There's too many things coming out.
But I believe Matt has the list. Matt.
Yeah, it's nuts how many games are coming out. It's just, last week,

(08:14):
as we record this now, was a week where I had to review Dragon's Dogma 2,
Rise of the Ronin, the Princess Peach game, and then also, well,
what was the other one? I can't remember now. Oh, Lone and the Dark.
They all came out in like one week. And then there was like Unicorn Overlord
just a couple of days before that.
And then the Alliance Alive HD Remastered was just released as well.

(08:38):
So it's been a very tiring couple of weeks.
It's mental. There's no way that you could play all of those,
except if you need somehow and don't sleep.
And have huge long lead-ins for some of these games. But, yeah,
I don't know how some people keep up.
I forgot that Lord of the Dark was coming out. Good game.
It's actually quite short. Alan, you'll like it. I actually don't know if you'll

(09:01):
like it, to be honest, because it is very old school in terms of the way it
does the kind of horror game-y thing.
So it's all about finding keys and solving puzzles and moving from room to room
and checking the map and seeing all the kind of, you haven't completed this
room yet in your life, but I have completed this room.
How can there possibly be more to do in this room? and then you've got
to go back to that room again and then you go yeah it's it's that kind of you

(09:21):
know risen evil one original style game yeah i like that sort of stuff oh cool
well then you like this one the combat on it isn't isn't particularly good but
then you're pretty i'm pretty sure they only put the combat in there because
like the ceo of thq nordic and embrace groups that you've got to have combat
in there so they did it but they didn't want to.
No but they're half-assed it yeah that kind of good for them yeah that kind

(09:46):
of level of combat But it's very much about the story and the stuff.
And David Harbour rocks. He's just the coolest dude.
He's great. Yeah. Anyway, that was last month. Let's talk about this month.
This? Yes. So, on April 2, another horror game's coming out.
Actually, it looks pretty decent.
I only just found out about it right before this podcast, but now I'm keen on giving it a go.
It's called Wuthering Rooms. and it's

(10:08):
um it's got it's got this victorian aesthetic and
it's a 2.5d horror actiony
game where you've got to wander through there's a chick with a shield and a
mace or something in the screenshots and anyway it looks really neat from a
quick look at the screenshots and things so i am suddenly keen about this it's

(10:29):
coming out on april 2 we're scrolling through we're We're scrolling through.
We've got a game called Deceit 2 coming out on April 3.
Which is another horror game, I believe, since it looks like there's a horror
theme to the start of this month.
Don't know much about that one, but it's a bit of a cult ritual that happens in an asylum.

(10:51):
So we all know that those are very safe, very safe environments.
On April 4, we have Tengoku Struggle
Strayside, which sounds like it's something to do with Japan to me.
Oh, hang on. Before that, or actually on the same day,
we've got freedom planet 2 oh that's the sonic game it's not a sonic game is

(11:15):
it yeah okay i don't know much about it but something about it's ringing the
bell i might have heard about freedom planet so i guess original one came out
a while ago like i think we're talking like 2017 2018 gotcha,
also on april 4 we've got doll explorer which is a turn-based strategy game
in which players conquer dungeons by combining various actions such as take

(11:38):
one step forward and attack in front of a player.
So it's one of those mechanical games, I think, where you just give commands
and then watch them play out in front of you in real time or something.
I wish they had little screenshots so I could see if these games are actually
interesting or not. I'm just looking at the titles and I'm going off that.
On April 4, we've got Neko Girls Puzzle, which is going to be Alan's favourite

(11:59):
game of the month, I'm sure.
Why are they still making these? Who is this for?
It's for you, Alan. It's not for me. They made it specifically for you.
You know how some game genres, they make one, and then you're like,
okay, they've explored this concept to its entirety, let's go on to new and better things.
Whereas this genre just seems to keep going.

(12:20):
Because they cost about $3 to make now with the benefits of AI.
How many times, though, can you look at a Catgirl and that be the main gameplay?
There's still one person out there buying every single anime girl puzzle game on the Switch.
There really is. I know. It's not me. I swear, even I've given up on them.

(12:41):
Like, surely Easy to Suck is putting out a game and being like,
well, we made zero sales, but we'll do another one.
Well, they do physical editions of them, too. What? Yeah.
It's like its entire genre of physical collections. There's people that have
like a thousand Switch games and 99% of them are these things.
Someone used to make a puzzle game on the Switch, which is just normal people

(13:04):
looking confused at the fact that there's physical editions of these games.
It's just photos of alan it's just photos of
regular people looking bewildered it's just photos of alan looking at the screen
at these things that's a good idea you know the the emoji of like the crazy
face being like oh i'm so crazy it's just that that with a copy of one of these

(13:25):
fucking nico titty games whatever the heck they're called.
Also on April 4th, if Neko Girls Puzzle or whatever the hell it's called wasn't
for you, there's World War 2 Airplane Flight.
Don't know about the title of that. The two genders.
It's been a long time since I played a flight shooty thingy.

(13:48):
And I'm not saying this one will be a good one, but I'm actually in the mood
for one at the moment now that I see that title.
So, I don't know. Maybe I'll give it a go. It's been Ace Combat whatever the last one was.
It was a long time ago. 7 was literally like 34 years ago. I wanted to say it was last year.
Please don't tell me it was like 10 years ago. It was a long time ago at this point.

(14:08):
It was good. I enjoyed it. It'd be good for another one.
Skies Unknown is yeah, Jesus Christ. 5 years ago.
So there you go. If you like your brawlers, moving on, on April 4,
you've got Double Dragon Gaiden Rise of the Dragons Sacred Reunion.
I don't know which one where this fits in the series and

(14:30):
i've lost track of this but there's a new double dragon coming
out is the point there which will be fun
because you get to punch people in the face and there's something that will
be always enjoyable enjoyable about doing
that where i'm scrolling scrolling i've
actually not played a double dragon game for years really i think the last one

(14:51):
i played was the neon which i didn't really like okay yeah yeah i've lost track
of the series entirely i don't know how many have come out since neon for all
i know there's been like 70 of them chances are.
On april we're still on april 4 we've got cats organized
neatly which is a little puzzle game about placing cats

(15:11):
in shapes i do like placing cats in shapes that's my kind of thing to describe
it it's got charm this looks really cute it is yeah it does i'm part of me that's
like this is just another neko puzzle no it's the it's the neko puzzle pipeline yeah.

(15:32):
So, yeah, that's cool. Slightly admirable of Icecat Puzzle.
If you like your train sims, then on April 4, there's a Korean one coming out.
Now, that's interesting. I've never played a Korean train driving sim.
Korean Rail Driving Tour, L-T, and I'm not even going to try and pronounce the
name of the rail line that it is recreating because I would screw it up and

(15:58):
embarrass myself greatly.
But, yeah, I've played lots of Japanese rail sims. have
played the train driving sim the
dovetail games one that takes you to all parts of europe and america
have not played a korean one so that'll
be interesting a new thing for you stew i like
them because you actually get to see the scenery and stuff as you kind of drive
your little train around and it's kind of a form of tourism i guess yeah yeah

(16:24):
they're fun i like them i genuinely like train sims they're also like it's just
a modern version of having a train set kind of but But you actually get to sit
in their train, which is cool.
Even better. Yeah, that's the way it should be. You can't sit on your little
train models. You break them.
You can always give it a shot, see how it goes. What could possibly go wrong?

(16:46):
Scrolling on. There's a lot of shovelware, which I have to scroll past these
days. There should be like a shovelware filter on Metacritic to make it easier for me.
But they don't. It's wild that there's that much crap that just comes in.
I don't know how these...
House Flipper 2 comes out on April 10. That's a game. People like that. My fiancee loves that.

(17:08):
You just go in and you take a house and you fix it up and then you sell it to
make money so you can buy a bigger house so you can fix it up and sell it to make money.
Right. That sounds like the Australian dream to go. The millennial fantasy.
Yeah, literally. You can't afford to do this in real life, so here's a game about it.
It is very true.

(17:29):
Wild. wild. On April 11 we got Loretta. I don't know what Loretta is.
Let's find out at that point.
Let's look at Loretta. Seems like a horror game.
I think it's a horror game. A psychological thriller. There we go.
Oh, that doesn't look bad, actually. Yeah. It's got a 2D kind of vibe to it.

(17:50):
It's got its own art style.
It's not feeling like it's anything else. It's published by an interesting group.
They do a lot of like rpg maker rpgs did you find some third power as charlotte
bug fables they publish oh okay bug fables is all right.

(18:12):
So that's coming out on April 11. On April 11 as well, Steins Gate 15th Anniversary
Double Pack. If you haven't played Steins Gate yet.
15 years. It's been 15 years since it came out. A very important visual novel
that is genuinely good, and everybody
should play it, even if you're not usually a fan of visual novels.

(18:32):
That's crazy. To me, 15 years ago is like Cowboy Bebop and Red Hot Jelly Lepers.
Yeah, no, 15 years. Just this thing being 15 years old just makes me feel old.
But yeah, it's coming out on Switch and it's a double pack. So you get all the
stones getting in there. You haven't played it, have you, Evan?
No, I'm not a big visual novel guy. I know you're not a big visual novel guy.

(18:53):
That's why I'm saying you should play this one. Maybe.
You might like some of this one, but the start of it does have a lot of very
mid-2000s otaku comedy BS you might hate. Oh, no.
I'm not touching it. So it's making fun of that. It's not like...
But it's one of the first games that has that theme, or one of the earlier games

(19:16):
that has this theme, so it hasn't gotten all the way around the irony cycle just yet.
Oh, I don't know about that. Oh, I don't know, man. I cringed the first two
chapters before the plot started.
Yeah, but that's the point. You're meant to cringe. That's the whole thing.
The whole thing is it's a cringe at the start, and then it gets,
like, darkly serious very quickly.

(19:37):
Yeah, it's good. It's a really good game. Very good.
If you haven't played it yet, then your chance is coming up on April. What did I say?
April 14th. Oh, 11th. 11th.
Not quite at the halfway mark of the month yet.
On April 16, we've got Grounded, which I have to say I know something about,

(20:00):
but I don't. That's the Obsidian game, the four-player co-op Obsidian game where
you are a tiny child. It's like Shiny, I Shrunk the Kids.
It might be getting a console release then. Oh, that'll be it.
Yeah, because it's got a lot of reviews already on Steam.
53,000 reviews, 9 out of 10 ratings, so obviously it's pretty popular.
Yeah it's like a survival game cool yeah so it's coming it's coming out on other

(20:23):
platforms let's find out what other platforms while we're here explore playstation
on xbox so it'll be playstation it won't be switch no actually it's coming to
switch apparently oh cool there you go then.
On april 17 we've got dead island 2 solar don't know what solar must be a it's
like a dlc pack DLC back. DLC back? Dead Island 2? Yeah.

(20:44):
If you like Dead Island 2. Didn't everyone famously dislike this game when it
came out like five years ago? No, no, this is the new sick Dead Island 2, isn't it?
Did they like screw up Dead Island 2 so they got rid of that one and then they
did another Dead Island 2 and now it's okay?
So what they did is they originally had Dead Island and they made Dead Island
Riptide, which was like an expansion pack. It was like 1.5 essentially.

(21:04):
And then they spent about 10 years making Dead Island
2 because the original developers for dead island tech land
left the project and made the dying
light series and it was handed around to about 17 different devs
and then it suddenly came out and was like oh it's out okay okay yeah cool can

(21:25):
i just say you make so much fun of all the the japanese visual novels with their
weird names and their lore and stuff horror games are just as bad no they are 100%,
i'm not going to hide the fact that a lot of things are very dumb.
Anyway this one apparently takes place in the californian music

(21:45):
festival which is the perfect place to put zombies i think yeah it's
coming out on april 17th on april 18th we got another horror game
coming it's skrr ritual skrr ritual
what so this is like a spin-off
sequel of sorts to made of skr which was
a horror game about welsh i

(22:07):
want to say welsh kind of storytelling mythology and
stuff this one is an action shooter
take on it i don't know why the original didn't really need to go action shooter
but they've done that and yeah so the first one was actually quite good it was
it won actually narrative awards and stuff it's actually a really decent kind

(22:29):
of narrative. Why would you make this?
So I'm not sure why they've felt the need to go and do the exact opposite of
an award winning horror game, but that's what they've done.
Oh, this is a weird game. I don't know why you'd make that after making the Mater skirt.
Yeah, that's me too. But they've done what they've done, so you can play it and you can like it.

(22:52):
Weird. The next major expansion for Final Fantasy... No, hang on.
This is DLC for Final Fantasy XVI.
I was looking at the Roman numerals wrong. I thought it was Final Fantasy XIV.
No, the DLC for Final Fantasy XVI is coming out on April 18. The Rising Tide.
Yeah. That would be cool. Cool. That's Clive takes on the levy.

(23:13):
Yeah. Leviathan. The Leviathan. I can never say that properly.
So yeah. Clive hits big fish in the head. That'll be fun.
I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. Wouldn't the big fish have kind of the advantage against flame guy?
Like, isn't that just the, like, this would be a pretty tough fight for Clive.
Do you reckon it would just be like, it's just a real big fish and it's just Aaron, Darren.

(23:36):
And he's a skanking all over the fucking world and that's what's causing the fucking rot,
looking forward to that it'd be fun to scar jokes,
where are we up to we're up to april 18 and we've got a tale of paper refolded

(23:58):
which is a puzzle platformer where you play as a magical character made of paper
who can can use origami to change its shape.
Transcend film into a frog, a rocket, a bird, and other such animals.
And other such animals? And other such animals. Wow!

(24:18):
It could be fun. Who doesn't like a puzzle platformer sometimes?
Oh, damn. On April 18th. Okay, so I clicked on the Metacritic to pull up the
next kind of line of games coming out.
And then it pulled up the names of all the games. And one of them was Bunny Garden.
And I was thinking, oh, this could be good and wholesome with bunnies. It's not.

(24:40):
I guarantee it's not. No, it's not. It's one of those. What is it? With the anime girls.
I'm looking it up. And big poobs. That kind of. I just looked up Bunny Garden.
I just found a place called The Bunny Garden, which just has a lot of bunnies.
I don't even know what a bunny garden is. It's delightful until you Google bunny garden game.

(25:00):
Okay. Okay.
Yeah, that's not. Yeah. That's about what I expected.
Isn't Curiate like a good developer? If you want to play a bunny garden game
that is an actual bunny garden game, go and get the game called Bun House.
It's available on PC and Switch and all the other consoles. souls
it's genuinely nice game where you play as

(25:22):
a bunny who's kind of running a greenhouse growing plants
and stuff and doing a bit of yoga it's a really sweet little game so if you're
like me and just wanted a bunny garden his actual bunny garden then there you
go i'm done that's another one of the visual novels so good on them i guess
making the dream happen doing their thing,

(25:45):
Oh, on April 19, Figment 1 and 2 comes out on Switch. So, collection.
If you haven't played Figment, which I have not, then you can now play them in one go, in one pack.
How convenient. Exciting. Yeah.
Lunar Lander Beyond comes out on April 23.
Lunar Lander? As in, like, the old game where you had to, like,
use physics and stuff to land on the moon? Yeah, I think so.

(26:08):
That's cool. But I didn't really know that was... You know the RBG series? is?
I wish it was that, but in a spaceship trying to land it on the moon.
It's like commit hard to the bit. No, Lunar Lander Beyond really does look like
it is that game, but it's exactly the modernization of it.
It's the one that every single kid learning game maker makes in the first four hours.

(26:34):
You're so true. That is definitely what Lunar Lander is.
So there you go. finally here's a big game that's
actually coming out that's actually worth getting excited about and i
can't pronounce it properly i don't think iudin chronicle iudin
chronicle haunted haunted heroes hundred
heroes that finally comes out which is great this is the spiritual successor

(26:57):
to suikoden didn't the guy who made suikoden also pass away recently did he
i don't know did not know that thanks for the downer alan i'm sorry yes he did
recently possibly february 6th,
rest in peace to him hopefully this game i guess
is nice tribute to him because we've been looking forward to a new suikoden

(27:18):
for ever in a day and konami refuses to make them so here we go i'm looking
forward to this i actually haven't played the little kind of yeah the the teaser
action game I don't know if it was a good idea for them to check it out,
because it seems to have gotten very, like, lukewarm reception.

(27:39):
I guess they wanted to establish the characters and world. Yeah. Yeah.
Because I think when you come out saying that it's a spiritual success,
so we could do it, everyone's got big expectations for that.
So to start out with just like a roll-off that everyone's kind of like,
oh, it's nice, I guess. Like it makes that name.
I mean, let's be honest. It's probably not going to live up to those expectations.

(28:01):
Yeah. No. The Mega Man one certainly didn't. The Castlevania one didn't quite live up to that.
I thought it was pretty good. It was a ride, but it didn't quite get there.
Let's be honest. It's not Castlevania good, but it's pretty good. No.
No, but it's not Castlevania good is the point. It's the most like,
yeah, it's good, but it's not the thing that we want it to be.
Yeah. And being realistic here, this is what I'm hoping for with this one.

(28:23):
I'm kind of hoping that it just kind of- Like a good game. Yeah.
It's good. It does the thing, but it's not really, you know,
it's, it's, I would be very surprised if it lives up to the top of the Suikoden.
It'll scratch the itch but it won't make a new itch
he's saying that in saying that
vanilla wear certainly did that by basically doing ogre battle

(28:44):
with that is wild we're gonna
have to talk about that game at some point oh that is i want to i want to know
about it blindingly good game it actually yeah it just blew me away as somebody's
been asking for an ogre battle game forever and a day that one actually delivered
so who knows maybe they'll do that maybe this is this is another vanilla ware in the making.

(29:06):
Not likely. There's only one vanilla ware out there.
But anyway, I'll definitely be playing that one, that's for sure.
Tales of Kanzera Zao comes out on April 23rd. Is that a new Tales game?
Is it? Is it a new Tales game? Because those are fun. Sounds like.
Tales of Kan... That can't be right. No, I don't think so.

(29:29):
Oh. It's an electronic arts game. What the hell?
It's an upcoming Metroidvania video game developed by Surgeon Studios and published
by Electronic Arts under its EA labels.
Tales of Kanzera, colon.
Kanzera. Tales of Kanzera, trademark, colon, ZAU, capitals.
If I was a Bandai, I would be kind of like, hey, you know, lawyers,

(29:53):
you're kind of sure we should be letting this through?
Because that's definitely... I don't think they can sit on the whole Tales of
Aircraft. Are you sure about that, Harvard? Are you sure lawyers can't sit on things?
Because they did to all kinds of things.
Like Skrulls. Remember Skrulls? Oh, yeah, with the Elder Skrulls. Yeah. Yeah.
Remember the, I mean, he's a horrible guy, so I don't want to be out there defending

(30:15):
him, but the Minecraft guy, he
made a game called Scrolls and Bethesda's like, no, Scrolls is our word.
So if they can claim Scrolls, I'm sure, I'm sure Bandai Namco can claim Tales
of is our words, our phrase, our thing. Oh, our no monster. Our intellectual property.
Monster Angel Drinks claiming monster, monsters.

(30:37):
That's right. gods and monsters they did in little phoenix rising
which is definitely the same name yes that's right
see you can claim words now stupid i hate
the world of corporate politics i'm i swear to god i'm gonna get some lawyers
i'm gonna claim that two is my word every time somebody uses the word two they
have to pay me they should do that yeah i'm definitely gonna do that i'm gonna

(31:00):
become a patent troll that's my thing come back next month for matt being being
mysteriously dead in a ditch.
We've got lots more anime visual novels, which are great, but I'm not going
to go and talk through them all because every time Alan will get mad at me.
I'm not going to get mad at you. I'm just going to question why.

(31:21):
SOL, Search of Light, comes out on April 25.
This is a steampunk slash dark fantasy setting adventure and a combination of
resource management and narrative mechanics.
That we define as adventure management. Wow. That's an interesting way to write a blurb for a game.
Why would you write a blurb like that? A game developer's like,

(31:42):
we're going to put a definition of these out here.
This is what this means. What?
Some game developers need better writers. Some? Some. Some PR writers,
I mean, marketing writers, copywriters.
There's a lot of stuff coming out that I'd question. And it's like,
who writes this stuff and then thinks, yes, I'm happy with this. This is good.

(32:06):
The later part of the month, the really end of the month. So it's been a pretty
quiet month, I think we can agree so far.
But the later bit is actually looking a bit better. So on April 26th,
we've got Clash of Heroes 1 and 2 Complete Edition.
Now that's a dungeon crawler series. It's actually quite well regarded.
I think the originals were PSP games.
You're talking kind of wizardry style dungeon crawler. you know first person

(32:28):
like first person then there's a grim rock sort of thing yep that's
the one with turn-based combat and all of that those are
actually pretty well regarded games so putting them together the
first two in a package would be pretty should it
should do pretty well i think with the dungeon crawler fan base on april 26
we got top spin 2k 25 if you like your tennis then 2k is bringing it back it's

(32:52):
been a long time since the last top spin the last was before microtransactions
so you can look forward to microtransactions absolutely,
freaking ruin in this game because it's 2k remember they did
once it did a basketball game and haven't been
playable for a long time because of the lottery systems
that they've thrown in there so i'm certainly looking forward to topspin
doing that and that's going to be april 26

(33:15):
i did look at some of the footage of it and it looks decent certainly got the
production values there but yeah I just don't trust 2k to do anything right
anymore yeah I wouldn't there's something about any like modern tennis game
that comes out that I just am instantly very questioning of.
I don't know what it is. The fact it's an impossible sport to do as a game?

(33:40):
It's just not exciting. It's just really difficult. As a game.
Because when you think about it, right, the good sports games are generally
team-based games, right?
So, FIFA and football and basketball and ice hockey and all the rest of them,
right? Where you've got quite a lot of stuff going on.
There's all kinds of systems playing. All the different characters have their
own roles on the football field. There's kind of tactics that you build and

(34:01):
all of that kind of stuff. stuff.
Tennis is really just a one-on-one kind of game.
It's basically pong.
I know what you mean. Glorified pong.
And it's really difficult to get the nuances of tennis, the stuff that tennis
players work on in their careers and to become good at this sport and kind of

(34:23):
differentiate themselves from the other players.
That stuff doesn't really go into a game in any way.
You you can't really you can't really manufacture it
in kind of systems and stuff so as a result video game tennis games become pong
yeah it's like you know dance sport you can't really do a dance sport game or
a figure skating game because the stuff that the mechanics of those sports doesn't

(34:46):
work there's button inputs and there's nothing else beyond that you know not to be like Like,
but what if they made it like Tekken style controls?
What, for tennis? It was like, no, yeah, like you have to like input certain
button commands to do different like styles of hit.
And then you have like a 30 hour cut scene for the big special shot.

(35:09):
Yeah. And then you get kicked off a cliff by your dad because he didn't win the tournament.
That would be worse. You're telling me that this isn't the greatest idea you've
ever heard? Battle tennis. Yeah, I'm all for that.
Why not that's like battle tennis sounds like a game that
would have come out in like 2005 on the ps2 with
like a budget of 25 isn't this

(35:30):
you know what i mean tennis it is kind of just
mario tennis but i'm also getting kicked off a cliff for
your dad actually no but
it's the best character in that game yeah did you
just say bowser is mario's dad no bowser jr on
it's mario's dad yeah not
like the real bowser like the the the mario bros movie to bowser they desperately

(35:54):
need to do this it's like a plot twist like the 50th mario game or something
it's just like star wars scene where bowser's like mario i am your father and
mario's like oh that would be Mamma mia!
There's something really, really blessed about that. I really enjoy that.

(36:17):
Moving on. On April 26th, Demon Slayer Sweep the Board comes out.
This is a, basically it's Mario Party, but Demon Slayer, which is the super
popular anime series. What?
Yeah, yeah. I played it at Tokyo Game Show last year. It's actually really good
fun. I'm looking forward to this a lot.
You pick your favorite Demon Slayer character, and they're like your Mario characters.

(36:38):
And then you go around the board collecting monies and things and doing minigames.
The difference is there's boss battles and things as well.
And yeah, it's pretty good. I really enjoyed it.
I only got to play it for 20 minutes at Tokyo Game Show, which is a couple of
turns and a couple of minigames.
So I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing of it. But if it's as good
as I enjoyed it in that little piece I got, then I'm definitely going to have

(37:04):
a good time with this one.
I didn't find it wild that they would make a Mario Party out of Demon Slayer. Yeah, I know.
I did not expect this to get an English release at all. I really thought it
was just going to be this weird little quirky Japan-only game.
Western fans love Demon Slayer.
I know Western fans love Demon Slayer, but do Western fans want to play a Demon
Slayer Mario Party clone is the question.

(37:26):
And I didn't think that the publisher would see the value in localizing that.
I can imagine a large amount of people saying hell yeah to that concept.
Okay well i'm saying hell yeah i'm definitely you're talking to the one the
one guy in australia that's saying hell yeah to it so yes that comes on april
26th on april 26th stellar blade comes out this is the booby game that's the

(37:49):
that's the titty game that people are saying is going to.
For some reason sony is publishing and
i love it i love that so you've been doing this it's it's
about time sony used to do this kind of thing where they publish
these weird and quirky games that were not necessarily
the big budgets wildly mr mosquito
yeah these are those games sony's

(38:10):
back in form i'm looking forward to this this is a korean developed
game that has been getting all kinds of hate because it's not even hate it's
just like weird people thinking that there is like hate for it yeah yeah that's
what i mean it's a groovy game it's it's getting hate by like creating all this
toxic environment and then people all of a sudden or you people idiots and And then for me.

(38:33):
Coming up with a manufactured outrage about this uh it's so
weird i don't know who is like who these
people are but they don't feel like they're real like it's
so insane it's like someone says hey i think that the butt's a little bit much
on this character now like oh you triggered western woman it's like what the
fuck is wrong with you god that's like the sydney side it's the sydney sweeney

(38:55):
thing oh god yeah because her boobs are killing leftism aren't they no that
was that's It's been so surreal.
It's been like, so she did a thing on SNL and I think a lot of conservatives
discovered it for the first time because of that, because her movies have been
anything but what conservatives like to watch in the past.
I was about to say, because have they, have they heard about what euphoria is like?

(39:17):
Well, not just that, but the one that she recently did, the kind of the Shakespeare
modernization one. I can't remember the name of it now.
So she, she's, you know, 10 Things I Hate About You from a couple of decades ago.
There's a new kind of that kind of approach to film.
Sydney Sweeney's done one. I think it's based on Without Nothing,

(39:41):
which Shakespeare plays about,
Much Ado About Nothing, I think. It's a kind of modernization of that.
Anyway, in it, the kind of central concept is all the characters are together
for this wedding. The wedding is between two women.
So, of course, the conservatives are never going to watch this kind of thing. It's very woke.
Anyway, that's been Sidney Sweeney's kind of film and television thing because

(40:04):
Euphoria is another example of it.
So, they finally discovered who she is because she did this SNL thing and they
discovered she's got these big chest.
Yes. Yes, and all of a sudden, apparently the entire left wing must hate her
because she's got breasts, and it's just been so surreal watching them have
a meltdown on behalf of the Wokes.
It's just odd. It's so funny. I don't understand. I think Stellar Blade's pretty

(40:28):
similar in that I don't think the actual Wokes really give a crap.
In fact, they're probably going to play it and enjoy it because it looks fun.
And the Conservatives will have a meltdown on behalf of us and spend all their
time on Twitter rather than playing the game.
Good on them congratulations i did see
a very this is a bit of a divergence but i
did see a very very good tweet by that fucking insane idiot the

(40:51):
gamergate 2 guy who was saying that games
yeah was saying that it's really really good
that that games are
not political like helldivers 2 and i
i about to shit my pants helldivers 2
is so the so the starship troopers of

(41:11):
video video game industry yeah it's going to go it's going to be just like starship troopers
every couple of years somebody's going to be like oh starship troopers
is not political it was used to be it's a good action film from the days when
action films were not woke they're going to do the same thing with helldivers
too it's just it's inevitable oh they've um they also i read a bit more about
the lore of that game as well because i thought it was really funny but basically

(41:31):
the The bugs have element 710,
which if you reverse it, it's just oil.
So, like, it's perfect. The game is perfect. Everyone go play Helldivers. Yeah, me too.
Next up, we've got, on April 28th, we've got El Shaddai, Ascension of the Metra.

(41:51):
What the hell? That's coming out? On Switch.
What? Yes. Yes, it's coming out on Switch. Who asked for it?
Me. That's a game that no one's ever played. I know.
But the two or three people that have played it have massive respect for it
because it is, it's one of those games, you know. It's a weird game.
It's one of those games. It's one of those art games that's like genuinely art

(42:12):
in the art sense. It would be in a gallery if there was a gallery for art, for video games.
And yeah, nobody's bought it because it's art and nobody actually buys art.
So the fact that it's coming out on Switch means that nobody's going to buy
it, but at least you'll be able to play it on Switch.
That's such a weird shout, but yeah, heck yeah. I'm looking forward to it.

(42:33):
It's a really striking game. I think it's going to be absolutely gorgeous on
my Switch's OLED screen.
Yes. The art style of that game is just made for OLED.
It's the most don't play this late at night sort of game because you will get
a headache with all the white.
Yeah, but it's going to be just look so nice, like very bright white on the OLED, yes.

(42:56):
On April 30, Braid Anniversary Edition by, for example, the video game Milkshake Duck.
Well, not quite. I don't know if he was racist as such, but he's certainly out
of this. Oh, no, there he is. Oh, is he? There we go. Oh, yeah.
He's a piece of shit. There we go. Mr. Jonathan Blow, who actually did make
a very good game with Braid, but then did things and now nobody likes him anymore.

(43:20):
That's coming out on April 30.
So there you go. If you haven't played that before, then you get a chance. Yay.
It's a good game. It is a good game. It also gave us the best clip I've ever
seen in my life where it's just a soldier boy saying, oh, he's going backwards.
Have you seen that? It's an indie game, the movie. Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.

(43:44):
And then finally for the month, we've got Sea of Thieves coming out on April 30.
I mean, Sea of Thieves coming out, I mean, on other platforms.
It's obviously been on Xbox for a very long time.
But microsoft being finally taking that step to say we're not going to really do
consoles anymore we're moving all our stuff to multi-platform sea
of thieves is one of the first up for that people still play this

(44:04):
don't they yeah it's a great game it's honestly like one
of the few like live service games that's really done well
and like rebuilt itself because it
wasn't very good when it launched but it was fantastic when i played it
maybe like three years ago very very fun game it's the
perfect game that you play for like a
couple of couple of hours every few months you know

(44:26):
what i mean right it's good enough that
it's worth it there you go will i give it a go who knows the interesting it'll
be interesting to see if people can actually step into it at this point like
new i guess oh you totally can the game is like it's not a rpg at all you just
go and you sail and you find stuff and you collect it and and run back and customise

(44:46):
your ship. It's not a very, like...
You make your own goals in it, which is why I think it's so effective as a fun
experience every so often with friends.
Gotcha. You do need friends, though, because piloting a ship by yourself is really hard.
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. And then just to finish off, since we need an extra
game, it's been pretty, it's generally a pretty quiet month in April, which is good.

(45:08):
People have got a lot of games to pick up on, but yeah, not too many coming
out in the month ahead, but on May 2, so a little bit, just a little bit after,
we may not talk about it in our next podcast.
We've got Endless Oceans Luminous coming out on Switch.
As in like the Wii series where you were like a diver?
Yes, yes. they announced that they're doing a new one of those in direct earlier in the year and,

(45:31):
yeah i'm looking forward to that that's nice that's kind
of neat yeah yeah the the original was
one of those games that was enjoyable yeah it was it was very sweet yeah yeah
just a very nice game so we need games that are more just nice games this one
will give you the chance to encounter and learn about over 500 species of marine

(45:52):
life so it'll be a bit educational for you too which which is okay.
Don't worry. It's okay to learn things. Not nuts.
Says the teacher. Yeah, exactly. Learning is for nerds, is all I'm going to say.
And it'll be, it looks pretty. Like the graphics and stuff are nice.
So there you go. Okay. I always found that. That? Yeah. Alan,
what are you going to pick up this month?

(46:13):
Necco Girls, right? In all honesty, yeah, Necco Girls. You got me. How'd you know?
I knew it. I knew it. As soon as I said it, I was like, this is Alan's game.
He's definitely going to play this.
After years of waiting, I'm finally there. there because there certainly wasn't
any other neko based games on the switch that i could play,
you know no i don't i genuinely don't know there's nothing that that you know
jumps out at me maybe the swickerton game iudan chronicles probably is like

(46:37):
the one that i'm like the most interested in,
but even then it's sort of like i'm just glad to have a month where i don't
have a game i need to buy because i mean we're gonna talk about dragon's dogma
later but like god damn it that's to be honest i'm kind of glad that april's
a relatively quiet month because it's just a chance to catch up on everything. Aye.
So many games. What are you going to get, Matt?

(47:01):
To be honest, I am genuinely interested in Stellar Blade. It's not just because
of the video. It might be good.
And I've heard people who've played the demo. There's a demo out,
apparently. I haven't touched it, but there is a demo out, and people are saying
it's actually pretty good.
So I will give that a go, and I will enjoy it.
And then I will write a review, which I'm sure will attract some great comments one way or the other.

(47:23):
It's going to be a very normal conversation in the comments section for that game.
But anyway, I am looking forward to that. And I've got to say,
I get two because Harvard's not here, so I get to pick one for him.
He stepped away for a minute. So the other one I'm picking is Demon Slayer, the board game. Yeah.
I really like Mario Party, you know? I know you do.
I'm really looking forward to seeing if this one can last the distance like

(47:46):
Mario Party. Do you reckon it's going to have the same sort of music where it's like...
And it's really joyful and exciting? I couldn't hear the music in Tokyo Game
Show because Tokyo Game Show is a pretty loud space, but the colours,
like the graphics are exactly Mario Party.
Like it's got that very vibrant, bubbly kind of bright appearance. So it's like chibi?

(48:08):
No, no. Is Demon Slayer like a violent show? No, no, it's not chibi,
but it's not violent like Demon Slayer's kind of action moments.
It is kind of a celebration of the characters being pretty nicely drawn characters
and the environments and stuff being very kind of Japanese anime.
I guess the thing for me is will it have enough boards is the big thing,

(48:30):
like Mario Party game there's been a whole lot of Mario Party games yeah there's
been a whole lot of Mario Party games in the past and some of them only have
one or two boards for some reason and that's kind of the,
that's just stupid why do that it'll need at least four or five boards and they'll
need to be good so yeah but I have my fingers crossed it might be good I have my fingers crossed.

(48:51):
You're back so what's one game that you're excited for this
month i don't know if anyone is saying chronicle but
i made i did oh okay but i have
nothing else i have nothing else to add to the conversation everything seems
like i feel like i've seen a lot of this stuff before i hate to say it no that's
what that's literally the vibe is like there's nothing that's like massively

(49:13):
world ending coming out this month which is nice yeah it's genuinely nice it's,
it's just nice to have a couple of weeks where you can just play games.
Wild concept. I mean, people will still be playing Dragon's Dogma for the next seven years anyway.
It's just a ridiculously long game.

(49:36):
I mean, think about it. If you didn't play that, then there's also the open
worlds of Yakuza and also Final Fantasy 7.
7 just came out. Bloody Rise of the Ronin is another big game,
which is also very much worthwhile.
It kind of got lost in the conversation, which is weird because it's a Sony
published thing by the guys that made Nioh and Wolong.

(49:56):
And yet people kind of just lost over that one a bit, but it's actually a very
good game in its own right. And it's also very big.
So there's just so many big, big games to play. It's time to actually like relax. Yeah.
Play them. Play an old game. By old, I mean two weeks old. Play an old game.

(50:18):
That's the worst thing about the industry now, or not the worst thing,
a bad thing about the industry, is that you'll hear a game and you go,
oh, I've been meaning to play that.
And when did it come out? Either six months ago or three weeks ago or 15 years ago.
Or it's like a decade ago. It's like in 14 or something like that.
Music.

(57:31):
Release of the year so far i'd say probably most controversial release
of the year so far actually which is wild to me is dragons
dogma 2 now harvard and
myself we have not played dragons dogma 2 but
we both have played dragons dogma 1 so matt is
now the resident expert of 2 we have a bit of chat about it see what was
making it successful what makes it not so successful and yeah

(57:54):
can i just say it sucks that it's been like the
high profile game because that's not the right thing for
it if that makes sense no it doesn't seem like it looks like
a game like a niche ps3 game and
that's what made dragon's dogma so successful right because it
got released virtually nobody played it
the reviews of it were pretty mid middling but then

(58:14):
word of mouth kind of spread it and the right people
found it and it became this massive kind of really popular game
as a result of that but it
was never meant to be a game that everybody was meant to play if that
makes sense it felt like he was trying to and failed and
then succeeded based on the weird things that it
just happened as a result yeah unintentional success

(58:36):
yeah in a way but um i think so yeah so i mean what what makes dragon's dogma
2 worth playing at the moment matt well basically because it's dragon's dogma
i mean as i said in my review the thing that i really loved about this game
was Because they got all this feedback from the original Dragon's Dogma, right?
They got heaps and heaps of feedback from people. There was plenty of criticism of it and all of that.

(59:00):
And they were like, well, screw it. We're still going to make Dragon's Dogma anyway for the sequel.
And they've just doubled down on everything that was in the original.
It's an Odin's time making Devil May Cry. I mean, if they had to listen to the
feedback, then Dragon's Dogma
2 would have been more like an Assassin's Creed or Witcher or whatever.
You know, it'd be this open world thing that was all meticulously designed and

(59:24):
boring as batshit to kind of explore as a result.
Whereas Dragon's Dogma 2, they're just like, well, no, we're going to make more Dragon's Dogma.
And as a result, weird crap happens to you all the time in it.
It's clumsy and clunky in a lot of ways, but that's what gives it a charm.
And they force you to really kind of experience it because the only fast travel

(59:45):
that's available is from the cities and you've got to pay, you know,
a chunky amount of money to do so.
So for the most part, you're kind of forced to go everywhere on foot and then
backtrack back on foot at the end of a quest or whatever.
And the reason that that's good is,
is because you have no idea what's going to happen to you on the way back.

(01:00:06):
You'll run into a stupidly powerful monster one time, and it'll just wipe the floor with you.
And then the next time there'll be nothing, or there'll be some goblins,
or there'll be some weird person wandering by, giving you some additional quest or whatever.
You just don't know. And that's what I really like about it.
And that's what I think open world games should be more about,

(01:00:27):
is more about the world is dynamic around you, and you're just a participant in it,
I think a lot of kind of open world games are very much focused on making you
the center point of the entire world.
Which doesn't make sense. Yeah, and nothing happens unless you are actively making it happen.

(01:00:47):
Which is, it's not to say that it can't be a bad game as a result.
I mean, Elden Ring is a perfect example of that.
Like the entire world in Elden Ring exists around your character and what they're doing.
And that's okay. but what I love about Dragon's Dogma is there's this sense
that you're just You're a little idiot dickhead.
You're a schlub. You're just a dude in the middle of all kinds of random stuff

(01:01:10):
happening and not all of it is going to be nice for you.
As I kind of said in my review, one of my favourite moments has
actually happened to me really early on in the game and really
defined the experience for me that I got to
the first city as a level 12 at that point I
think once you do the tutorial and fight the kind of
tutorial boss then the game opens up anyway you

(01:01:31):
get dropped in the city and you're told to go to these spots on the map you
walk out of the city and the first time i did so there was a massive griffin
that was just kind of chomping down on the wild stock in the farmland just outside
the city and i thought oh no oh i'll do him a favor i'll do him a solid i'll kill this thing.

(01:01:51):
And yeah my characters were nowhere near leveled enough
to do that so i got absolutely slaughtered and
that was just steps outside of the city like right at the start of the game
and that's great because then i reloaded and whatever and i was like well okay
i'm not going to do that again and the griffin wasn't there at all this time
so yeah yeah but it's always the fear of the griffin being there well then from

(01:02:13):
that point on every time i saw a shadow kind of flying overhead i was I was like,
oh, the griffin's here. And yeah, I got panicked.
That's great. I think games are too afraid these days to have a pushback against the player.
Yeah. If you know what I mean? Like you can't have anyone having a negative experience with a game.

(01:02:33):
Like you have to have it be perfect and everyone has to have fun,
which is why things like Pathologic 2 don't succeed money-wise.
Because like it's not meant to be fun all the time. You're meant to get your
shit pushed in. And I love that.
You also mentioned about the fast travel stuff. And I think something else that
you mentioned that makes me even more interested is the idea of the walking
is the gameplay, which is why I'm so interested in the idea of,

(01:02:57):
you know, now that we've had Death Stranding, now we've got Dragon's Dogma 2,
it's like not a, it's not just a case of, you know,
the gameplay is when you fight the monster, but the gameplay is actually making
sure that you don't always have to fight the monster because the monster is
bigger and scarier than you and will munch you.
And I really, really like that as an idea. I remember that
from the original Dragon's Dogma Is that you'd get a quest to go to the city

(01:03:19):
And on your way to the city a bunch of random crap Would happen and you're like
is this supposed to happen It would be Insanely hard for no reason What is going
on why is this so cursed And then all of a sudden You'd just suddenly switch
up to something else There'd be an ogre in your face.
That was the thing You're constantly questioning whether you're Just in a really

(01:03:40):
buggy game When stuff starts to happen I guess maybe that's the thing that never broke through.
But the world isn't supposed to feel like it was designed for you to explore.
It's just kind of a bunch of stuff that happens.
And once you get used to that, then you have fun with it. Is that it?
Yeah, that's really it. It's about learning to kind of fit in with what it's
doing and not kind of – like I said, it doesn't feel like the entire world is

(01:04:05):
centered around what your characters are doing.
It feels like the world exists and then your characters are just pieces within it.
And that's a very different feeling. And it does take some time to get into
the rhythm of, and I think a lot of people are going to really resist that because
it does mean that your characters are going to die for stupid reasons.
It does mean that you're going to bite off more than you chew and you just kind

(01:04:29):
of think, oh yeah, I can take this on. It's in the opening area.
You know, my character should be the right level, right? I've fought every battle
on the way and I've done everything right.
So obviously I'll be able to defeat this enemy. And then they're like,
well, no, no, you, you, you definitely can't like time to reload your game.
You've just lost an hour's worth of progress or whatever.

(01:04:49):
So I can't imagine any other game that has that assumption behind it,
which is that we're not designing this around the player experience.
We're designing a world and make of it what you are a part of it.
Yeah, it does. It feels so different.
Once you play a game like Dragon's Dogma 2 especially, I mean,
Dragon's Dogma 1 was a lot like it, but a little bit raw, I guess, in concept.

(01:05:12):
Dragon's Dogma 2 is more kind of the full realization of what they wanted to do.
But once you play these kinds of games, then going back to an Assassin's Creed
where everything is just nice and neat and just kind of waits for you to do stuff,
the staticness of it is really artificial and really difficult to get across.

(01:05:33):
Cross not even just assassin's creed i mean assassin's creed
isn't not particularly good series of games in the first place but
even something like yakuza which is
excellent like like a dragon or final fantasy 7 rebirth
these are excellent games but the fact
that they all just kind of sit there and wait for you to do things just makes
them feel much more artificial than this kind of living breathing world that

(01:05:55):
dragon's dogma throws at you which isn't always you know perfect but but the
world isn't always perfect matt exactly well yeah exactly that's exactly the
point it's not the perfect experience it will feel like it's raw and and.
Difficult unnecessarily and unfair you

(01:06:15):
know unfair is probably the right word for it there are moments where it'll
feel like everything's just unfair and the game's just been mean to you but
then the next time you do that exact same section it'll suddenly feel like you're
the most powerful thing in the world which is which is great you know the dynamics
of it is is where the appeal lies,
and it's just as well because i mean in every other way the dragon's dogma 2

(01:06:35):
is like the original it's got a shitty story it's just particularly fun to
play through true the pawns are as annoying
as ever like they're just i love that thing about the
dragon plague though the what where they're oh have
you not heard about this do you want to do you want to know
about a cool thing that the game does if you don't pay attention yeah
i'm not going to play this game sorry so basically if

(01:06:57):
your pawn gets sick with a thing called
dragon's blight they're going to start mouthing off at you and not following
instructions and if you don't notice this and kill them
and you go back to a town and you sleep he
kills he or she kills literally every single person
in the town including all the quest givers including all the
traders and that's it and the game saves and you're done wait so so it actually

(01:07:22):
makes progress through the game impossible because there's a critical quest
in there that you actually get locked out and the solution to that is just screw
you start again yep yeah throw your throw your pawn off a cliff.
If you miss it, if you're not paying attention, if you do actually,
like Alan said, if you let this thing happen, then you are literally locked

(01:07:43):
out of progress through the game.
Does the game warn you that this is a thing that can happen? Nope. Nope.
No, it does not. I mean, it does warn you in the sense that the porn suddenly becomes very...
Aggressive and shitty. Aggressive and shitty, and yeah, you do want to kill it anyway.
But there's no little warning box that goes, by the way, your save file will
be destroyed if you don't do these actions right now. Yeah.

(01:08:06):
That's so good. Isn't it good? That's hilarious.
It's unhinged. It doesn't make me want to play it, but I really appreciate that.
But it should make you want to play it. That's the thing. It's so silly and great.
And having consequence to what you're doing actually feels much more.
This is what the Sonic kid was talking about when he said, when do you learn?

(01:08:30):
It does it does actually make
you feel like the decisions that you make have more consequence as well
like in an assassin's creed
in final fantasy whatever in those games where you're
following along with a plot you do the thing and yeah sure the game tells you
you're doing a good thing that you're changing the world and you've made the
right decision and all that kind of stuff right well in dragon's dogma because

(01:08:54):
there's that consequence if you don't do the thing Then when you do the thing
and you save the town and you can continue on with the plot and all those kinds of things,
when you actually make a decision that's the right decision,
you feel like you're actually much more involved with the whole process and
it feels like what you're doing is a lot more important, in a sense.

(01:09:14):
Because you're controlling the action. Because we're in control.
It's not predetermined. It's all on you. It's a proper sandbox.
Exactly. It's great. I like it. I like the fact that it's willing to do that.
It's a complete- It's sort of like in that regard, hey, where the attitude is
just, oh, I see you have some nice conventions, I'm just gonna ignore all those. Yeah.

(01:09:35):
I mean, it's a cool idea, I think the thing about it that gets me is that it's
complete design document-wise completely opposite to something like Grand Theft Auto.
Yeah, or like the most major game developments in general.
Like it's so against everything that
most modern like open worlds

(01:09:56):
are at this point which is very like let's be real here they're
open but they're linear like just because it's
a a world with a lot of space you can run around
doesn't mean that you're still not being funneled down a path to do
something yeah they're like i hear designs right like
you can technically go anywhere but here's the path yeah if you make something
with this lego set that isn't what we ask you to make it's gonna look crap anyway

(01:10:17):
so like just make the thing that we want you to make yeah so it's just nice
that there's more stuff like that now where it's that's because the i mean the
best practice is you know everybody needs to be able to finish the game for one thing that's a,
best practice rule everybody needs to feel empowered at every step of the way.
The challenge needs to be carefully calibrated so that it fits within the appetite

(01:10:42):
and doesn't leave somebody feeling frustrated and so on and so forth. That's silly.
No, everyone should be frustrated every so often. Everyone should be frustrated all the time.
These things are all best practice game design, which they talk about in lectures
at game development conferences and all of that kind of stuff.
And the CEOs insist on it, and the data from the focus groups tell them that

(01:11:05):
this is what people want, and all of that kind of stuff.
Dragon's Dogma does not pay attention to any of that. I don't know if they even
had a focus group while developing it, beyond just making sure that the bugs,
like literal bugs, actual bugs, weren't affecting the game. There aren't that many literal bugs.
There are a lot of things that I think are bugs, but in hindsight, probably weren't.

(01:11:25):
But there's no, like, you're not going to have crashes from the game or whatever.
That's good. Yeah, so I don't know if they focus group this at all.
What I get the sense of as I play it is that this is the vision of the creative
team to actually do something that they wanted to make.
And they're just willing to let the chips lie as they kind of fall,
which is pretty impressive.

(01:11:47):
It's a no saying saying, oh, you guys liked this game?
Oh, you like it? We want more of it. And I think that's it. I think the fact
that Dragon's Dogma 2 took so long to come was simply because.
Dragon's Dogma got to the point where there was obviously a market for this kind of game.
Yeah. And they've just looked purely at the sales numbers and like,

(01:12:10):
well, if we make a new game that's just like this, all those people that bought
Dragon's Dogma for $5, which is what it is now on Steam.
You know, all these people that bought it for $5, maybe they'll be willing to
pay, you know, $50 for a modern version that looks much better.
And it had shit on microtransactions.
Yeah. And then they did that, which is not smart. But it's classic Capcom.

(01:12:33):
They've been doing it for all their bloody games since like 2014.
Yeah. But it is impressive that Capcom greenlit this game. And I think the reason
that they did so was only because the sales of the original one eventually told
them that there was a market for it.
They wouldn't have done so if Dragon's Dogma didn't end up with what's it got
on Steam now? How many reviews?
It's a shit ton. It's massive. That's amazing.

(01:12:56):
I mean, because it had a big resurgence with the Dark Arisen update.
Yeah. So Dark Arisen has 32,000 reviews.
Bloody hell. If they didn't have that many reviews for Dragon's Dogma,
sorry, that many sales for Dark Arisen, Dragon's Dogma 2 wouldn't have happened.
It's not that they, it wouldn't have happened at all. They wouldn't have tried
to do a Dragon's Dogma that fit the best practice because the creative side

(01:13:19):
would have said, no, that's not what we're going to do.
So if we can't make Dragon's Dogma the way that we want to, then we're not going to make that sequel.
I think that's why it took so long for the sequel to come. And it's all genuinely
impressive from Capcom that they actually greenlit this thing.
I maintain that Capcom are at least willing to take risks.
Make weird stuff and i appreciate that i think they

(01:13:40):
are they have a lot of weird things because the thing that this reminded
me of in the conversation was dead rising which is also capcom yeah
that was a zombie game that completely won against the way the zombie games
worked in the heyday of zombie games and yeah they did define what they normalize
after a while yeah the first couple of games in that series was just so weird

(01:14:02):
and bizarre but when you played it you're like Like this is,
this is, this is, it was, it was its own game.
Yeah. Yeah. You have to remember that monster hunter originally was one of those
weird games as well. That's true. Yeah.
Yeah. Like it was a PSP game originally on the PSP.
It was just one of those weird games that nobody in their right mind would have

(01:14:24):
played, I guess, because amongst other things, you had to hold your PSP in a
really awkward position. Like do a claw for it.
To play it properly. and the fact that is just some seriously hardcore kind
of gameplay that you have to do that so the fact that it's been able to grow
into this massive property came from a very weird spot and capcom's always done
it like back on the gamecube era they did that's.

(01:14:46):
Capcom 5 they called it i think i was
yeah sure there was a resident evil in there but it was also beautiful
which was a weird one pnp and oh
especially was a fucking piano that was a a wild weird
game and at the same time on
the playstation 2 they were publishing all kinds of weird horror games like
haunting ground and clock tower 3 and these kind of and these really

(01:15:07):
experimental things that just had
no that they have no right to exist and yet
they would not they would not have been proven horror games or proven kind of
commercial products at the time so that was always capcom trying to find new
markets and create new kind of product categories stories and stuff so they've

(01:15:28):
always been quite good with that and Dragon Stalker is kind of that Heritage,
It really does feel like there's a push towards games now that don't hold your
hand because I'm getting really tired of the old, like, look this way with the
camera, look down, look up.
Because, I mean, all the big games, I mean, bloody Suicide Squad has flopped

(01:15:49):
harder than anything in the world and that is the most focus-tested game of all time. Yellow Walls.
Oh, yeah, Yellow Walls. Yellow Walls.
That's why it failed. Not all the other rubbish. No, no, you're right.
You're definitely right. A lot of these games are... And that's part of the thing, you know.
Focus grouping and best practice will tell you that you need to make a game

(01:16:12):
that everybody can finish, right? That's the basic thing about it.
Or if it's a game that is a live service, so essentially endless,
it needs to be a game that people feel good about playing indefinitely.
But the thing that happens when you...
Yeah, yeah. The thing that happens when you do that is that you can't challenge

(01:16:35):
players, not just in terms of their ability to hit buttons and whatever,
you can't challenge them intellectually.
You can't put a puzzle in a game these days that's too hard to complete.
There has to be some kind of hint system that explains to you how to do the
puzzle, which is nuts when you think about it. It's like the Rocksteady Detect
division that came into every single video game. Yeah.

(01:16:57):
All the bits are highlighted. Absolutely crazy, because if you don't need to
puzzle through a puzzle, then completing the puzzle doesn't have any kind of...
There's no sensory reward from that, which is the entire point of the puzzle game.
One of the reasons that point and click games don't really work anymore is because
they're stuck between either not doing that and then having people not complete the game.

(01:17:22):
So they throw a tantrum on social media and it just doesn't do so well,
or they put the hint system in and then everybody finishes the game without
actually feeling like they've done anything.
Yeah. And it just kind of gets killed the genre. So yeah, you're, you're right.
These modern best practices to make a game that kind
of essentially plays itself and you just feel like you're in for a good ride

(01:17:43):
on the way it's a roller coaster whereas it even applies to the great games
again elden ring is all of these things it's just particularly good at masking
it but when you think about elden ring it's very it doesn't hold your hand,
well it does in a way does it yeah it does how so well it's just that the thing

(01:18:05):
about elden ring is is it's a story of perseverance, right?
Like, as long as you're willing to commit to learning it all.
Then you're going to make progress.
And if you get really stuck, you can just call on the ghosts to do it for you.
So for me, anyway, Elden Ring is an exceptional game,

(01:18:26):
but it is that kind of linear, carefully manicured experience so that everything
is just very carefully calibrated to give you that very specific experience
that you're kind of looking for when you buy a FromSoftware difficult game.
For me, it wasn't a particularly experimental project.

(01:18:48):
It was more a refinement of their formula. I don't know if I agree with you.
Excellent game, but I don't think that it was particularly, it wasn't a creative risk as such.
Whereas Dragon's Dogma is a game that is just willing to ruin.
More stuff can go wrong in Dragon's Dogma.
Well, no, there is the expectation, I think, with the developers made this game

(01:19:11):
knowing full well that there would be a lot of people that didn't finish it, is the point.
Whereas with Elden Ring and all the other games, the goal is to have everybody finish it.
Some people won't, but that's not from lack of effort from the developers.
The goal is to have every single person finish that game, feel good about what
they're doing as they finish the game, and then have a really good time and

(01:19:31):
then rave about it for months and months and months on social media afterwards,
talk about how great the content is or whatever.
Dragon's Dogma, the numbers of people that actually finish it will be way lower.
The percentages will be way lower. Because all their save files are fucked.
Because their save files are fucked, they don't want to restart it. but.
Also because even if they don't screw up the save file they are
they run into a griffin within the first 10 minutes get slammed

(01:19:54):
by it think i'm never going to be able to defeat this thing
so quit you know i think
we've got to be a distinction here as well because effectively what
we're arguing for and i agree with you but we're arguing for a slightly
more inaccessible game and we don't mean
in the sense that it should preclude certain people
from playing it or it should be like oh no difficult

(01:20:16):
to access is more the case of we want
games that might just treat you like
an adult not just that but also that that
provides some kind of resistance in a
way that is that is interesting or entertaining for players rather
than games that go the other way provide
no resistance yeah i

(01:20:38):
want something that genuine genuinely challenges me
and again i don't necessarily mean challenges my ability to
play a game like i'm not talking about the ability to press
buttons or whatever but a game that actually genuinely makes
me think about something you know that i need to how do
i how do i solve this problem and then
yeah doesn't answer that for me is that

(01:20:59):
we have to respect that's really really hard to do as well yeah absolutely it's
it's a lot easier especially with design nowadays that they have these kinds
of assist modes is that There's a temptation to make a level that's impossibly
difficult or just lacking the logic or whatever.
And then relying on that guide as something that will assist the player,

(01:21:23):
that will iron out these deficiencies.
I think Fallout was a great example where the actual go from A to B doesn't
make a whole lot of sense, but they have this quest marker that makes you know
where to go all the time. It allows developers to be.
The kind of macro design principles that make sure the player never gets lost

(01:21:45):
and never gets challenged allows the developer to make less or more concessions
in how complex their system can really be.
Yeah. I mean, I think about New Vegas a lot when I think about getting slapped on the wrist by a game.
And you talk to the people in the town, in the very first town in New Vegas,
and they tell you, do not go north.
If you go north, you're going to get murdered by bugs.

(01:22:07):
It's very scary. Do not go there. and lo and
behold if you say oh no it's fine you go north
there's bugs and then there's death wars and you die instantly and
you can make it through if you're smart enough but it's bloody
hard and it's almost impossible to do if you've got no idea what you're doing
in the game and i really like every every game that
i reviewed for like the last 10 years i've been reviewing things i haven't

(01:22:27):
done it for a while is that the second the game tells me
hey do this my first instinct is to go
i'm not going to do that i'm going to do something else and see what the game
game does in response because so often it'll the game will send a message to
be like walk down this path and i try to knock on this path and it's like i'm
sorry and he told you to walk down this path and you're not walking down this
path go walk down this path and it's just such a strange interaction because

(01:22:49):
you want to play a game that suggests to you you have an open world or you have freedom
and then it just says no yeah for me it's the classic thing a great a great
example of it is is going all the way back, talking retro now, I guess, but Myst,
Myst is an absolute masterpiece for so many ways.

(01:23:12):
But one of the ways that I, one of the reasons that I really,
really love that game is because it doesn't tell you anything.
Like you're literally dropped in this world and you're clicking on things and
stuff's moving around and, you know, you're closing valves, pressing buttons

(01:23:32):
and finding doors and all that kind of stuff.
But the game doesn't actually tell you anything about how to progress through it.
That's for you to kind of figure out as you go on your own. And it is a brutally difficult game.
It took me a long, long time as a kid to slowly piece my way through it.
You can finish it. I think you can speed run it in a couple of minutes.

(01:23:54):
Like it's actually a very short game, but because of the complexity of the puzzles
and because of the lack of handholding, the challenge, the intellectual challenge,
I guess in this case, is just obscene.
And when you get through it, when you finally open that door and spoiler alert,
there's the third book, you feel really good about what you've done with that game.

(01:24:19):
Now, most people won't get to that point.
Or they'll use a guide, and then when they get to the book, they won't feel
that same sense of accomplishment or the same sense that they've been as interactive
with that game as it was meant to be.
But if you play it on its terms, then it's just one of the most memorable games you'll ever play.
And I think Dragon's Dogma, in a lot of ways, is kind of like that,

(01:24:41):
in that there are just so many reasons to put it down.
But if you stick with it and you play with it on its terms and you learn to
adjust to it and you kind of pay attention to it and you piece your way through
it, then by the time you get to kind of the end of it,
you're feeling really good about the experience you've had and you've remembered

(01:25:02):
it is the thing. I don't remember anything I've done. Because it's memorable.
Yeah, I don't remember anything I've done in Assassin's Creed games.
I remember that I like the history side of things and that's why I play them,
but I don't remember anything actually doing them.
I don't remember anything I've done in some of the best open world games of
all. Like, I really enjoyed The Witcher 3, but that was the narrative I was
enjoying. I wasn't- Yeah, exactly.

(01:25:23):
I didn't- I don't remember what I did in that game.
I don't remember the specifics of the world. I don't remember much.
I remember pretty much every pathway I followed walked down in Dragon's Dogma
because half the time it slaughtered me for some reason.
You know, it's like, oh, you walked down this pathway? You're an idiot. Don't push me.
Yeah. It's just an empty road.

(01:25:45):
So that's the thing. I think that's kind of the fundamental difference between these games.
And I feel like Dragon's Dogma is the better game, but the game that has a much
more limited range of appeal.
Yeah, I think that's better. If a publisher is willing to make that,
then they get all the credit in the world.
If they don't, then I kind of understand why. Because I just look at the way

(01:26:07):
that people are talking about Dragon's Dogma 2.
And in a lot of cases, I just think they shouldn't have played it.
That's the thing. it just yeah wasn't a game they should have
played yeah exactly and that's okay
you don't need to be able to play every game you know that's the
thing and i think there's always an echo game just
just speaking more broadly one of the

(01:26:27):
reasons that i really find the kind of the escalating budgets
of video games and the fact that they need to sell god knows how
many million copies to be successful is because
they can't then do a game like dragon's dogma 2 because if
you're not willing lean to if you if you need to sell 10
10 million copies you need to make sure that nobody doesn't

(01:26:47):
want to play this game you know yeah you can't afford to alienate literally
any you have to hit every single market that's exactly it once again the problem
is capitalism it always as it always is we come back to this same topic every
single time it's just capitalism sucks it's ass terrible Terrible capitalism. Us commie bastards.
It's true. Someone get Drew Pavlo onto this.

(01:27:11):
Make that Oppenheimer film.
Music.

(01:28:47):
If you missed out on the last section about Dragon's Dogma, one of the things
that we talked about a little bit there was actually thinking about how we make
games playable for everyone.
And that has led sort of to a discussion about, you know, how do we learn how
to play games? How do we make people know how to play games?
Not necessarily immediately, but within a reasonable space of time.

(01:29:08):
So I'm not going to use the example of Dragon's Dogma again,
but I think a lot of fighting games have this issue where onboarding new people
is very, very difficult.
And because of that a lot
of people bounce off i think newer fighting games are much better at that and that's
why there's a bigger audience for them now but you know back in
the day if you were trying to learn how to play tekken 3 you had no idea how
to do it unless you went to an arcade or unless you had like a strategy guide

(01:29:30):
and even then you wouldn't really know so how do we do that and how do we do
it in a way that isn't like condescending and handholdy and annoying i mean I mean, Harvard,
how would you react?
I've been trying to play new games. I realized that all this year,
all I've been doing is playing riffs of old games that I already know.
I've been replaying GBA games. I'm playing like sequels of things I'm already

(01:29:54):
familiar with. And I'm like, why don't I ever play any new games?
And it's because when I sit down to play a new game, one of two things happens.
It's either option one, it's super duper handholdy. And I spent the first hour
going, you don't need to teach me how to press A when I see something.
Or the other side is that it's not hand-holding at all, and I need to watch
five hours of YouTube tutorials to even know what is happening.

(01:30:17):
So both of those kind of feel like work to me, and neither of them are what
I want to do when I start a new game.
And I'm really curious if you can name any games that avoid one of these two
problems, where you start the game and you're learning mechanics,
but it's still a fun experience and you're still kind of getting something out of that.
I mean, the one that I always think about is Portal. Awesome.

(01:30:39):
That's a good example, but it is also 20 years old. And it is also...
Oh my God, it is. Why would you tell me that?
And it's also not... It assumes, you know, like, double twin sticks or mouse and WSD movements.
Wii Sports as well, but that's also 20 years old.

(01:30:59):
Yeah, but like, what's something recent that came out where you're like,
oh, I don't have to spend a lot of effort learning how this works?
See, I don't think I'm a good person to ask about this just because I play a lot of fucking games.
I think that's the issue is that I really like there's a bit of a step aside,
but the, the new star Wars show that's coming out, the acolyte has a member

(01:31:19):
of the writing team who has never watched anything.
Star Wars related has no idea about the law and is just there to make sure that
things are good on their own.
I think there should be, there should be more of that, but for games, do you know what I mean?
Like I would love to have a review site where it's just like a random person
who has no idea about other games just coming in and saying like,
I thought this was fun because of Blur, or I liked the story here because of Blur.

(01:31:42):
I think there's a lot of value in having a completely blind,
unaware eye to, you know, look over a game and say, oh, this is cool,
or oh, this is like a bit weird.
You know what I mean? I'm also 10 years old now, but when Conan O'Brien did
the Clueless game, I really liked that because it was genuinely just someone
who didn't know anything about what was happening, observing it and being like,

(01:32:04):
hey, that's really cool.
Hey, that's really weird. and I've never seen that perspective before because
I think, like you, I've played a lot of games so I've gotten used to a lot of stuff over the years.
Yeah, you just accept how to play a game.
There's no question in my mind that I could tell you a control scheme for a
first-person shooter on a console right now. I could do it.
But the little things, it's the little things. If I was to pick up Battlefield,

(01:32:28):
for example, I haven't played a Battlefield game in years and years and years.
Is so the tiny things like where
do you go like what kind of what strategies are
effective or like when should i get into a vehicle or
when should i go in this direction or what should i flank like that's something
new i need to learn and yeah just starting

(01:32:48):
a game like that it's not fun until i know what
to do but that communication of
here's what here's what you do is is
just not a solution it's not a solved problem in
a lot of games no absolutely i think
i mean because matt you obviously play a lot of games as well but like
how do you deal with playing like a new genre that you're not

(01:33:10):
really used to there's like
if i gave you a if i gave you a first person shooter like a team-based first
person shooter how would you go about trying to review that from like i think
from your point of view i mean i guess because the the thing i kind of look
for in video games is more to do with the narrative side of things.
The narrative's not really a.

(01:33:32):
Thing that is has that kind of onboarding issue as such probably doesn't i would
probably have no less challenge getting into that kind of game with that being
said i would struggle a great deal to,
to to kind of get into a game that just didn't do narrative at all so if i was
to if somebody would ask me how to go to to write something on fortnight for

(01:33:56):
example i would be pretty lost i I think you'd be fine with that because you'd
find a way to tear it apart.
Yeah, no, I would tear it apart. But then I would probably tear it apart in
a way that's not necessarily fair to what it's trying to do.
And I think that's part of the reason that as I've got older and wiser,
I think I've kind of dialed back on some of the games outside of my area that I review.

(01:34:19):
Review because there is a certain i'm
fully aware that you know what i'm looking for a game isn't necessarily
what a game developer is looking to deliver with a game if
that makes sense and the guys that make fortnite or even
overwatch or suicide squad or the upcoming marvel overwatch clone and all of

(01:34:39):
the rest of which i'm actually excited about yeah yeah i saw that you were excited
about it i saw it and i was like well i couldn't be less excited about it but
that is is because what they're trying to deliver is not necessarily what I'm looking for in a game.
And in recognising that as a weakness in terms of how I would look at the game,
I would generally recluse myself from trying to cover it.

(01:35:02):
So that doesn't really answer your question. A game like Dragon's Lamp,
I don't know what game I got the example, but a game like Dragon's Lamp,
where you start it up and it's different to what you normally expect. How do you get over that?
Well, I mean, the good thing about when you review games is that you have to.
And there is a good question there. You know, would I have actually stuck with

(01:35:23):
Dragon's Dogma if I didn't need to find a way to write words about it?
And that's a good question. Yeah, that's a genuinely good question.
There have been games that I have...
Overlooked for for a long time because i
wasn't the one reviewing them or i didn't do a review at the time and because
of that it became very easy to put it off and if it wasn't something that i
was familiar with then maybe i would have put it off or i have put it off and

(01:35:45):
then i come back to it you know many years later and discover hey i actually
like this game why didn't somebody tell me about it beforehand yeah so yeah
there's definitely that that issue that i have and And somebody who's busy like
everybody else that if something is unfamiliar,
there is definitely the temptation to not look at it unless I have a reason that I kind of have to.

(01:36:07):
Another good example is also kind of getting back into games that I might be
interested in, but would require a lot of work on my part to get across.
Like there has been more than a few times that I've really felt the urge to
load up Final Fantasy XIV and step back into it.
Because I love everything about Final Fantasy XIV. I love the aesthetics.

(01:36:27):
I've been to music concerts of Final Fantasy XIV music.
I've got the CDs. I listen to them constantly. I really love Final Fantasy XIV,
but if I were to step back into it, I know I'd be in for at least a weekend
of solid play to get across everything that's kind of happened since I last
played it, which is a couple of years at this point, and then kind of start
to make sense of everything again.

(01:36:49):
And I just don't have the time for that. And it sucks.
It absolutely sucks. It's like gaming homework, right? It's like before you
can have thought you need to do these prerequisite reading materials and YouTube
videos and do the tutorials that teach you how to do it. And then finally,
you can actually enjoy these mechanics.
I think the thing is finding a way to make the learning process actually fun

(01:37:09):
and not gimping you too much from the start. I think so.
The one that I always think about in terms of mechanics, and it's because there's
a bloody tutorial at the final room of the game is Xenoblade 2.
That game has about a million mechanics going on and
it doesn't open them up until like 75% of
the way through the game and as a result it's really annoying yes yes

(01:37:29):
and i hate the fact that i think like 80% of
the way through that game and every time i try to revisit i'm like what language
are you speaking what the hell is yeah what what what is this yeah
i mean it was much better there's so many balls another good
example is final fantasy 13 i
love final fantasy 13 a lot like I really really love
it I have actually replayed it in the years since I played it the first

(01:37:50):
time but there's an active incentive for me
not to play it again now because the first three quarters of that game is just
an endless sequel of tutorials they just keep introducing new mechanics and
why would I want to play you know a dozen plus hours of a game just going through
endless tutorials before it starts to get to the bit where I feel like I'm kind of,

(01:38:13):
you know, actually free in the world to kind of enjoy playing it on its terms.
Whereas I can pick up Final Fantasy X or XII or the earlier ones,
especially, and just be dropped straight into it.
After the tutorial dungeon, you know, after you beat Ifrit in Final Fantasy
VIII, the whole thing just blows wide open and you're free to kind of engage with it on its terms.

(01:38:35):
So, yeah, there's definitely a disincentive to play Final Fantasy XIII again over all those games.
I think X actually is a uniquely good example of this working well,
because I've played a lot of JRPGs with a lot of weird mechanics,
and Final Fantasy X doesn't have simple mechanics.
It is pretty complicated with the way that you switch characters and each one has different roles.

(01:38:56):
But I think the way that it's integrated with the narrative is really quite
good, because you meet characters organically, they join your quest organically.
When you get the character, they have
a new strategic role that is immediately tested by
the area or by the next boss or something and it's
a boss that makes sense to the story it's not like a here's something

(01:39:17):
we should hold in to teach you how to use the mechanic right like yeah there's
the benefits of making a game super linear linear yeah yeah you can control
that you can actually control the the order that people experience things which
is which is good yeah i mean it's hard for me to play final fantasy 10 again
because i just know that i'm coming up to that laughter the scene and I just, I just die.

(01:39:38):
Matt. It's just so hard. I'm actually at that point now in the replay kind of
been playing it a little bit, you know, over the last couple of weeks,
the last couple of weeks, I've been playing a little bit on and off and I just beat the boat.
Battle oh the bit the bit outside killika yeah yeah yeah
and i just know actually no sorry i've just
got into the the main city just before the i want to

(01:39:59):
say dodge the blitz or the blitzball yeah yeah just before
the tournament so i'm getting close to that laughter scene
and my my my enthusiasm to play on
is dropping like every time i go to learn you get
or on he's the coolest guy of all time but actually
going back to that though that boat battle is such a
great teaching moment moment that doesn't feel like a teaching moment at all like

(01:40:20):
it teaches you how to rotate out your party members it teaches you
how to target different enemies like the logic of final fantasy
10 which is different to a lot of jrpgs is taught
in that battle but at the same time you're like
this is impeding my narrative for a rest into the game
and this is a real threat to the characters i'm
invested in that so even if i dive onto

(01:40:40):
that boss like i'm learning how the game works yeah i think also like that that
a lot of the issue with that as well is that i mean i think about it and my
brain is completely just clouded by the fact that oh yeah no that makes sense
it makes perfect sense but you know if i showed it to my mom she'd be like what the hell is this.

(01:41:01):
Do you know what i mean like i think even then like there's just the there's
a lot of assumptions that we make as gamers, as gamers, about,
like, you know, what we think is acceptable and what we think is not acceptable.
And in all honesty, like, a lot of it isn't.
But at the same time, what else do you do? And we don't really have a solution

(01:41:22):
for that. So I'm really just kind of sitting here being like,
yeah. Well, we do have a solution.
It's just, again, it's not necessarily games that we want to play.
I think Sony's kind of nailed it.
With that third person over the shoulder action character games.
Yeah, yeah. Making these games that anybody, including people who don't play that many games,

(01:41:43):
can pick up and enjoy because they have cinematic qualities or because they
have very generous kind of hand-holding of the player through the game.
The onboarding process is just meticulously designed and so on.
You know, The Last of Us 2 is a very cinematic game.
And the cuts so so much of

(01:42:05):
the action is kind of bored down to quick time events and if you're
feeling like struggling you drop the difficulty level down to
story and you can stealth around people right in front of
their faces and they won't see you and all of that kind of stuff and
it's all very carefully explained it's all very easy to
understand it's all very very accessible in
the onboarding process and and you

(01:42:27):
could feel like it's done like the the early scenes
in the the last of us where you're just walking around and meeting
the characters i realize it's also teaching you how to use the camera but
it's not telling you that yeah yeah so it's actually
you know those games are very very well
designed for what they need to be and that is to be a game that every single
person that has a playstation is going to to pick up or and or they'll hear

(01:42:51):
people talking about it and pick up the playstation to play it so yeah you know
those those things are great and i feel like yeah that's the the difference
between that and some of the stuff that Sony publishes from other partners.
You can see the kind of light and day.
I mean, Death Stranding is a game that I think is absolutely brilliant.
As we all know, it totally changed my opinion of Kojima and it's,

(01:43:12):
you know, it's a... It's one of the funniest things ever going from...
Spectacular game and I am now just... You're just being on him.
I am just so excited for Death Stranding 2 and Sony published it,
but the difference is that game is just not for people who aren't,
you know, deeply... I mean, look at the response to it.
Like the critical response to that game was so mixed yes

(01:43:35):
there's i can't remember what game i saw this in
but i remember starting the game up and they had difficulty option but the way
they phrased them was that i've played a first person shooter before i've never
played a video game before or like i've never this is my first first person
shooter or i want an experience no i know what you're talking about is it was
it like i want to say it's every game i hope it's every game,

(01:43:56):
it's a lot of games now i think that's a lot better i think that is the right
way of going Because amongst other things, it's not kind of insulting to the person.
Yeah, absolutely. That's why, you know, easy mode.
I appreciate that there's an easy mode that someone who's never played a first-person
shooter can play and enjoy.
Well, that's like, easy mode sounds like something that I should not want to play.
Yeah, yeah. Because I am not a stupid person, or I'm not an incapable person, or I'm not, you know.

(01:44:24):
Any other way you know there's no reason that i should need to have the
experience reduced you know so i
can play it yeah but at
the same time so bad i actually enjoy a little baby mode
and like real person yeah you're a
little weird wah wah wee wee man and it was it was
funny when like doom did it you know yeah like

(01:44:45):
all those years ago when doom did you know get me out of here as
the difficulty setting or something to kind of imply that you're weak
and have the the little or the new doom guy through you
know with a baby mask on and all that that was
that was that was funny you know
because it was within the context of the game sense of humor
and the going games attitude and all of that that's fine but for most games

(01:45:07):
then you know you calling things easy mode is kind of insulting whereas it's
not necessarily insulting at all a lot of people would prefer to play things
on easy mode for any number of reasons not because they're They're incapable
just because they don't want to be done.
They want to get through it. That's why I really like how a lot of games call
the easiest mode story mode these days.
Because if you're just there for the story, then that is the optimal setting

(01:45:28):
to enjoy that. And I think that's much better. Much better.
Having said that, though, I'm going to be contro and say not every game needs
to have difficulty options.
Sometimes there are games that need to only have the developer intended difficulty.
I think Dragon's Locker 2 is one of those. But they need to signal that before
you buy it. They need to be like, this game is not going to have difficult settings.
It is a craft experience, and we assume this kind of knowledge of you before you get it.

(01:45:51):
Not that Elden Ring is so obvious, but they should do that. Elden Ring is a
good example of that, too.
I mean, without getting into this debate again, oh my God, why are we doing
this? It's that time of the year again.
Elden Ring didn't need an easy mode. As long as people went in knowing that
they were in for an experience that was going to test their gameplay ability, and that's okay.

(01:46:12):
I think most people did. I mean, the marketing of Elden Ring,
and this is another, I guess, angle to this, whereas a Sony would advertise
The Last of Us to everybody and put it on the side of buses and kind of really promote it that way.
From memory, most of Elden Ring's marketing was focused more towards the gaming
sector and on places where gamers are rather than kind of the mass community.

(01:46:36):
So the chances of somebody picking up a PlayStation and Elden Ring as their
first game ever were pretty limited. They were not high, yeah.
Yeah, so that's the difference. You're not going to buy a console for the first
time and buy Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition.
Like, that's... But in saying that,
it's not like those kind of souls like can't do an easy mode as well.

(01:46:58):
A good example of that is Rise of the Ronin. You...
It has difficulty settings. Unfortunately, they're called easy,
normal, and hard or something or other.
But if you play the game on hard mode, then it is definitely very much like
Woe Long in terms of its speed and challenge setting.
But if you play it on easy mode, it actually plays more like an Assassin's Creed
where it's quite straightforward.

(01:47:18):
And you're not going to be too tested in terms of your ability to time parries.
And even if you miss, then you're not going to be killed like one hit from a boss.
So that it works. It works for it. In a slight detail on this,
if you want to introduce Souls-like, sort of the concept of somebody,
is there a game that you would pick that introduces it better?
Yeah, it's Rise of the Ronin now.

(01:47:39):
Rise of the Ronin now? Yeah, because it has that easy mode.
You can move it up as you play and you want to replay the game if you want.
You can adjust the difficulty setting to where you're comfortable at and it
allows you to kind of get on board with the core concepts of these things,
which is mostly about timing parries and about how to approach a boss battle

(01:48:00):
as a layered thing and not just try and, you know, button mash your way through.
It's about kind of, you know, assessing how you defeat the boss,
kind of planning out your attacks, making sure you use the right items, all that.
Rise of the Ronin actually teaches you that at a very easy level,
on easy mode, and then you slowly kind of test yourself more and more.
By the time you finish the hard
mode, you're probably ready to take on the proper souls likes as such.

(01:48:23):
So I think it's the right gateway drug as far as that's concerned.
I wonder that as well if there are certain gateway games for certain genres
that are just a better starting point.
I mean, I would say probably like Hollow Knight is a really good one because
it's only two dimensions. Yeah, yeah.
It's pretty tough, but it's not unfair. And also because you're only dealing

(01:48:48):
with two dimensions, you have to worry about camera control yet.
That's kind of my reasoning. I would have said something like,
this is not a Souls-like. Something like Bayonetta, where you have more control of your character.
It's a lot more forgiving, but you learn similar controls and you learn eventually
how to dodge and how to parry stuff uh bayonet is too for me too much that game

(01:49:09):
is hard it's just way over the top in terms of its action it's hard to follow,
for a new i think visual clarity is a big thing too that's true like it is really
difficult to follow what's going on in bayonetta until you've got a lot of experience
in yeah following action in games yeah i think i think with with those with
souls likes it's definitely rise to the but Ronin's the way to go now.

(01:49:31):
I can't think of too many others where something doesn't... I think games that have co-op as well.
Yeah. Like Wolong was really, really good as a co-op.
Yeah, Wolong's a good one. The problem with Wolong is just that first boss because
you don't even unlock... It's bloody hard.
You don't even unlock co-op until you've defeated that first boss,
which is just the worst way to onboard people.

(01:49:51):
I guarantee you a lot of people just got tapped out on that one.
Once you get past that boss, it's actually pretty smooth after that.
But pretty smooth and you can help, you can get help with Lubu. So yeah,
pretty smooth. I think that's probably why the original Halo was so successful
as well. It's a console FPS is that you could share it with people.

(01:50:13):
Yeah. Well, I think Goldeneye is another good example.
Goldeneye is good, yeah. You never actually even had to step into the single
player if you didn't want to with Goldeneye.
A lot of people didn't, but you could also use the multiplayer as a way of getting
your head across the controls and all of that before stepping into single player.
And then it was much easier to kind of get into after that.
I don't disagree with Goldeneye because the control still feel alien to me i

(01:50:36):
don't understand oh they didn't back in the day and no one liked that game to
play like it was that game is like great and amazing and a great party game
part of the issue is being like i don't know how to play it well i mean you
know what i mean i never played,
shooters really before before goldeneye i played a little bit of doom and i

(01:50:57):
think there was a period where i played some aliens versus predator but i can't
remember if that was before before or after after I played Goldeneye,
but when I was playing Goldeneye,
it was very, very new to me, and honestly,
it was the same for my brothers and the friend that we used to play multiplayer with most weekends.
None of us really realised that that was not a good control system because we

(01:51:18):
had no frame of reference. We'd never played anything else to kind of compare it to.
So, yeah, it was only after. Like, going back to Goldeneye now is almost impossible.
We tried doing it when it came out on the N64 line thing, and we played it like
two games and then we're like, well, screw this, we're going back to Winback
and we played Winback for a couple of hours instead.
Much better. I think it's also much better. It's definitely like certain control

(01:51:42):
schemes and certain assumptions have become so ingrained in gaming culture.
The more I play any kind of shooter on the Switch that has motion controls,
it makes me think of how Twin Sticks is not a very optimal way to do movement
and counter. It's just the way that everyone kind of settled on.
Yeah, because what was the other option, I guess, is back in the day,
like you you can't do much else. Yeah. So it just became the accepted way.

(01:52:04):
But that's what controllers look like now. That's what, it's just become this feedback loop.
It's funny. It's become very standard also in, even on PC gaming,
where PC gaming actually has the better solution right there with the mouse
and keyboard. And yet still a lot of them.
Almost a fault to controller control. Yeah. Yeah.

(01:52:25):
And I feel the reason for it is we're talking about accessibility,
learning how to use a mouse and keyboard for shooters is bloody difficult.
Yeah. Because mice are that precise.
So then have to get the actual, like the sensitivity, correct.
You also find a keyboard that feels good for you to use.
Well, yeah, it's just the precision that you can achieve with a mouse is just a million times more.

(01:52:48):
And because of that, the complexity of using a mouse in
a game is a million times more a controller is very imprecise
but at the same time it's actually very easy to use so the
challenge is then it's for me it's not
so much about what the gamer should do to learn
how to play a game it's what the developer should make the game accessible
and so yeah it's the responsibility of the developer to make the game playable

(01:53:11):
so for them the controller is a much easier way of making it accessible to a
maximum of number of plays i i did think about this in terms of things like level design and and.
Challenge design as well is that i had a really really frustrating time playing bioshock on console,
because of how many turn like

(01:53:33):
180 turns are involved the level design and that's something
that's a very mouse and keyboard kind of design where it's
really easy to turn all the way around and use the mouse i don't control you
to scroll all the way around to see the guy behind you it's just
little things you know well i mean there was a lot of
people that made a fun fun of fun of hensley 7 rebirth the
new one because of the yellow walls

(01:53:54):
and that's become a joke that's become
a joke that's become a joke across a lot of things in game design that oh they
put yellow walls in it looks artificial anybody can work out that you need to
climb that wall stuff but the thing is not everybody oh my god no they cut no
i'm the worst for this i play a shit ton of games and I if it is not clear where
I'm going I get mad almost instantly I'm like a child,

(01:54:17):
sounds like Final Fantasy XIII is the game for you Alan,
no that game all the way Alan 10's better.
It's true like not everybody can figure out that that wall
is climbable final fantasy 7 rebirth is
an even more extreme example because there are walls that can only be climbed
by the chocobo and they actually put a big

(01:54:37):
ass sign with a chocobo and an arrow pointing up which makes it pretty
obvious that the chocobo can climb that wall and yeah
sure it looks artificial it doesn't look like you know the
real world looks as such but that makes
it so much more playable for people you know it doesn't
make it unplayable for people that maybe could figure out
that they could climb that wall with a chocobo without the sign but it

(01:54:59):
makes it so much more playable for people that would miss it and it
frustrates me it just really frustrates me that
some people seem to think that because they
can figure it out the game should be designed around them if
a developer wants to do that thing great go dragon's
dogma 2 forever i'm an element you know i fully support developers making those

(01:55:20):
creative decisions but if the developer wants to make the game in that way so
that people can very easily figure out where their chocobo can climb or not
then that's fine too i think the thing is that what do you gain from not having it,
like a little bit of more world consistency but even then like is that that's
what's going to make the game weird not the fact that it depends where you can

(01:55:43):
change clothing in a second if it's if it's a mood thing like again elden ring
having big yellow walls all over the place in this kind of a gothic landscape
would be immersion dampening, if not breaking.
I think that's an interesting way to set it back too, is that if you consider
the entirety of the game as one aesthetic experience, whether it's in terms

(01:56:05):
of the gameplay or the story or whichever,
and some games take the learning part of it as just a box that you've got to
wait in for an hour or two before you get to enter that as an experience,
whereas other games find like that's what we're talking about sony
they find a way to include that box as part of
the whole aesthetic experience and there's just other things like not having
a box and making the player watch youtube videos it's like different ways of

(01:56:27):
going about it yeah i think it's just the consistency that's important in terms
of making those kinds of things work as long as the entire world looks like
it's built around that being a feature.
Then whatever, you know. As long as it doesn't break the immersion.
Like I said, I feel like Elden Ring, even if you could climb stuff,

(01:56:50):
I guess they kind of sidestepped that problem by making it like you can't climb things.
But if you could, and then they had those orange things around,
then that would be aesthetically odd, which would kind of break the immersion.
But I don't think, I never, when I was playing Final Fantasy VII Rebirth,
I never thought that any of those things looked out of place anyway.

(01:57:12):
I mean, it's a rundown world of Browns and stuff, you know.
But Final Fantasy Xenoverse is a very gamey kind of game. And it is a gamey game, yes.
At no point are you like, oh, this is not realistic enough for me.
How dare this not look photorealistic.
Yeah, it is a very gamey game. You're totally right about that as well.
Like, the monsters aren't exactly biologically viable individual things.

(01:57:39):
I love how it's always the weirdest shit that gamers lose their mind.
Like if you actually sat on the back of a chocobo, you'd probably break its
back because it's a bird.
Yeah, it's got hollow bones. Yeah, exactly.
I think the one that always gets me is the designers of Dead Space,
when that game came out, copped a lot of flack for the first 15 minutes of the game.
Because the amount of times that the game tells you, don't aim for the head, aim for the limbs.

(01:58:03):
Don't aim for the head, shoot off their limbs.
And it's it's because when they did testing no one did it they put it in once
and no one read it and as a result they were all aiming for the head and being
like oh why is it not dying,
it's because people don't learn i love spiteful game design where you can just
feel developers going you know what fine yeah write it on the walls for the

(01:58:25):
first 15 minutes yeah literally just being mean and being like what you don't
understand what you're doing fine here's how you you do it yeah i can't believe
that people would complain about i find that hilarious,
and sure if you knew that was correct like it would be a fun joke for you at that point.
Yeah, I mean, it's also a case of, like, Dead Space is different to a lot of

(01:58:47):
horror games that came out at that point as well.
So, it makes sense that they had to say it again and again and again.
And the fact that they were ridiculed for it is, like, hilarious.
It's so funny because if they didn't, they'd be screwed.
That's actually a really good example of what we've been talking about,
right? Because people who play a lot of horror games are conditioned to,
especially back in the day, are conditioned to think- Like Resident Evil.

(01:59:07):
Go for the head, you know. Yeah, that's an interesting one.
That's where you aim for the head. Against the conditioning.
But, you know, we're talking about onboarding people onto games and making it
possible so that they can play it and stuff.
If you want to do something differently to go for the head, as Dead Space did,
then if you're not communicating to players what they need to do,
they will give up, you know, because they're busy people with things to do.

(01:59:31):
And if you're not making progress, if you get stuck right at the start,
then it's not incentive to continue to play.
So, yeah, you need to make it clear at the start. You can then,
you know, if you're still doing that same thing 20 hours in,
if you're still saying go for the limbs 20 hours in, then perhaps you're kind of annoying people.

(01:59:51):
But when it's at the start, the responsibility is definitely to make sure that
the players who are coming into it fresh and you who don't understand how to play are able to play.
Because otherwise we have this problem where we need to learn these things and
you get a game like Dragon's Dogma that not everybody should be playing because
they're not going to be able to learn it. And that's a disincentive to play on.

(02:00:14):
Yeah. It really just makes me respect developers who go against trends a lot
more because it shows how difficult it is to even change one high-level thing
about how a game is designed or planned.
Yeah. We're all idiots, gamers. We're all idiots. We're terrible people. Yeah.
I don't know. This is just coming back down to the thing of like,

(02:00:36):
a lot of gamers think they're very smart, but I don't think they realize how little they know. Yeah.
Dunning Kruger. I think we all just kind of get stuck in our own kind of comfort zones.
And if something is going to take us out of that comfort zone,
then we need help getting there.
Yeah. Before we can start to enjoy it. The power fantasy was so used to being

(02:01:00):
told all the time, like you did great.
You made this really difficult thing. And it's always just never actually that challenging. Jenny.
Yeah, it's the zone of proximal development versus the zone of actual development.
Teacher referencing. Yeah, but it's more just like the comfort zone disguised
as the zone of proximal development.
It's like you're not actually doing anything. The game is constantly telling you.

(02:01:21):
Here's a really good example of just how kind of petty these things can be at times or seem at times.
The Hatsune Miku game, right?
For the longest time... The boxing one? Sorry?
The boxing one? No, no, no. I'm talking about the rhythm games,
right? Okay. But for the longest time, they were PlayStation games, right?

(02:01:41):
Oh, I see exactly where you're going with this. The buttons were mapped to the
PlayStation game. You press X, you press square, you press circle, you press triangle.
Because it's a rhythm game, you don't have time to look down at your controller.
So over a long period of time, you build up muscle memory.
You know, this icon means you press this part of the controller.
It just becomes natural. When they release the thing on the Switch,

(02:02:03):
they change it to the Switch buttons, right? So all of a sudden,
you've got to figure out pressing Y, pressing B, pressing A, and pressing X.
And that absolutely threw a lot of people into a spin. It really,
really confused a lot of people. It took me a long time to get over it myself.
To relearn the buttons, because Switch has become my kind of default platform for the Mika games.

(02:02:24):
So I've learned the Switch controls since. But it became such a problem for
them that they actually patched in the original PlayStation controller buttons for the Switch version.
So, you're able to set it so that the Switch version of the game displays X,
square, triangle, and circle, even though those buttons don't actually exist

(02:02:44):
on the Switch controller.
That's how a simple change of just an icon on the screen can really throw people
if they're in that comfort zone and they're used to playing games in a certain way.
Yeah, and I think having those little toggleable things, I know it's a lot more
work for developers, but it's a really good thing to have.
It did make sense for the Mika game, for sure.

(02:03:05):
Yeah, but even with the yellow walls, it reminds me of Mirror's Edge,
which is a game about jumping on things that are colored red.
And there's an option in the menu to turn that off. And so you just aren't told
what poles you can climb and what vents you're supposed to go into.
And it's just, you figure it out for yourself.
And the first few levels, it makes it a puzzle game of how do I get to this point?

(02:03:26):
But after you play it for a while, you learn to read the environment the way
the character would, which is what the red thing is in the universe,
is the character seeing certain poses like this is a good one to play.
The player then develops that skill, and they can start looking at environments
and deciding for themselves what the path should be. I think it's two different
experiences, both of them quite good.
And it's one that's selectable just from menu, from a really small change.

(02:03:48):
To me, that's really, really good design.
Yeah, I think those things are a good idea. like to just have that just
call it all accessibility and give people the option
to turn these things on and off if they want to yeah and
make it not a joke on the player's expense if they want to
use accessibility options yeah that's true and again sony's kind of the leader
with that sony's accessibility options are just brilliant like the amount of

(02:04:11):
stuff that you can tailor and customize to their games that you don't have to
use at all if you don't want to but if you want to then they're all there for
you which is which is really good it.
Yeah. This is interesting. It's like two somewhat related conversations and
how to have fun in a game where one is make it difficult for players and one

(02:04:32):
is make it easy for players. I think it's just setting expectations.
Just as long as people know what they're in for, like ahead of time,
and you don't kind of bait and switch them and say that this game is kind of
a game that everybody can play and then it not be one.
I think that's okay. I think for the most part, people respect creative decisions.
And if a creative decision really is a game that not everybody can play or even

(02:04:54):
only a small percentage of people can kind of enjoy, then that's okay.
I think people are okay with that. But just as long as they're not feeling like
they've been sold something that they can't then use.
I mean nobody expects if you have or here's a really stupid example i guess
but if you have tinnitus if you've got you know ear problems nobody expects

(02:05:19):
you to have the the option to,
turn the sound of f1 cars off in an f1 game you know people kind of take it
on themselves either to mute the sound themselves or just kind of not play the
game and i think that's that's okay too too,
just as long as it's not like the developers going out there saying,
hey, we've made this super accessible F1 game that every single person on the

(02:05:41):
planet can play, and then some people can't because of disability or whatever,
or simply they just can't.
They might not have the reaction times for it. Nobody expects a company to remake
an F1 game so that it feels like you're kind of driving slow.
The whole point is to trust fast, and then if somebody isn't comfortable with

(02:06:02):
the idea of driving fast, then they just don't play the game.
Game's not for you, yeah.
That's okay. Again, as long as it's communicated. As long as it's not like they're
saying, this is a racing game for everyone, when it's not. Yeah, definitely.
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