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Intro
0:00:14 Who Are These Guys?
Trademark Banter
0:01:04 Scott Pilgrim Review on Gameunder.net NOW. Kinda.
0:01:52 How Great Is Windows 10?
0:02:43 Scott Pilgrim Review Proper
0:08:23 Phil Fogg Buys Games
0:09:45 Gamespot, Endless Backlog Talk
0:10:55 Dubious Ads on Endless and Laserlemming.com
0:13:09 Episode 57.5
0:13:45 Futbol in Australia
0:16:08 Saving Mr. Banks Comments, Subversiveness, Moral Spell Checks, Political discourse Obscenity.
Final Impressions
0:20:56 Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012
0:26:36 Back to Bed
Featurette
0:40:21 Fogg's Ideal Game (and Call of Duty Black Ops Review).
Final Impressions
0:51:28 Sir, You Are Being Hunted
Transcript
Hello, and welcome to episode 58 of The Game Under Podcast, the official podcast of gameunder.net.
It's really a...
It's actually a...
The website is more of an official website of our podcast, because our podcast is the reason why we do this.
It's not really like the adjunct to the website, as is often the case, you know?
Like...
Yeah, but I think the reason we call it the official podcast of gameunder.net is it's the easiest and most succinct way of shilling the website.
Yeah, just...
Because if they go into a long, awkward description like you did, they're going to think, well, if they're this verbose when speaking, obviously...
God knows what they're like on a website.
They probably have several posts per day on various different topics and all the rest of it.
Exactly.
Like, did you see my recent review of Scott Pilgrim vs.
The World movie on gameunder.net?
No, I did not.
gameunder.net?
I don't go to the website.
Oh, well...
Why would anyone go to gameunder.net?
I don't know.
Maybe if they go there, they'll see that review.
Or not.
Maybe I've taken it down.
Well, they're not, because it's not on the front page.
So...
Well, I haven't written it yet.
Well, I haven't finished watching it yet.
But have you finished watching Scott Pilgrim vs.
The World, the movie?
Well, seeing it in your notes, I then, in fact, did watch it.
Yeah, our notes from our podcast that we were going to record two weeks ago.
Correct.
And then last week we...
Was it only two weeks ago?
No, it was just last week, actually.
And then we went to record...
You know, one of the funny things is about the notes that we had for the podcast, I was going to talk about how great Windows 10 was.
Like, I was just going to say, hey, look, smooth sailing, folks.
Go ahead, go ahead and download it.
Because I recently used a computer that didn't have Windows 10.
I was like, oh, wow, this really is different.
You know, you...
Yeah, so I was like, oh, wow.
You know, it's part of our endless trademark banter.
Wait a second.
As a part of our trademark banter, I should probably mention that Windows 10 is safe for all to use.
But then, lo and behold, Skype now doesn't work with the latest version of Windows 10.
So after lots of monkeying around, we didn't actually get to record last week.
But in those notes, I did mention that I'd seen Scott Pilgrim.
So you went ahead and you watched it?
Correct.
Okay, was it on the internet or something like that?
I downloaded it naturally.
This is the 21st century.
Now in my notes, I said it was the best rendering of gaming culture in a non-interactive form.
I thought it was a lot like basically no more heroes or the closest thing that a movie could do to doing no more heroes.
Basically a tribute to the interactive arts.
I think saying it was like no more heroes is perhaps underplaying the similarities.
Yeah, really.
I would say so.
I mean, what was no more heroes referencing with the coins?
Was that a reference to a particular game or just a general thing?
No, no, I was talking about no more heroes, the Suda 51 game.
Yeah, I'm saying in Suda 51, when you kill enemies and they become coins, was that referencing a specific game?
No, because in the, didn't they get rid of the coins?
In the second one, they got rid of the coins.
In the shitty American version, they replaced it with blood, I believe.
Yeah, right.
They censored their free expression of enemies becoming coins by making them bleed to death.
That's right.
But the point being, surely that would be a direct reference to No More Heroes.
Well, if it is-
I mean, it was made after No More Heroes, wasn't it?
Almost definitely, yeah.
And it's based on some other form of media, like a comic book or something like that.
It was originally a comic book.
That's a comparison I stumbled into in this recording.
I hadn't really drawn that comparison, you know, before.
But I should have, because in No More Heroes, you're going around killing all of these assassins to impress a girl.
And in Scott Pilgrim vs.
the World, you're going around killing a bunch of ex-boyfriends.
For that matter, No More Heroes could well be referencing the comic book of Scott Pilgrim.
Yeah, but it's Japanese, so I don't know.
Suda is a Japanese Weeble equivalent, though.
So there's no reason to assume he would be unfamiliar with it.
He's a Weeble?
Weebo.
Weebo?
The Japanese version.
What's Weebo?
Weebo, I believe, is a derogatory term for someone who is obsessed with Japanese or otherwise Asian culture, to the point where they wish they were a part of it.
I thought that was Otaku.
No, Otaku is just a nerd, basically.
So I thought Weebo was like a knockoff Chinese digital video recorder.
So, but no, not the Weebo.
No.
So, no, I think that Suda51 may even well predate the comic book Scott Pilgrim versus the world comic book.
Well, the question is whether No More Hero does, because Suda51 certainly predates.
That's true.
He's about my age.
He's an old man.
So, oh, well.
Anyway, from what I saw of it, I didn't see all of it.
And you know, I'm not much of a movies guy.
And particularly, I usually find the portrayal of video games or gaming culture in non-interactive forms to be, you know, highly derogatory for the most part.
And for the hour or so I watched of it, I was greatly impressed of it.
Excellent, because the only kind thing I can say about it was the fight scene looked nice.
Everything else, I utterly despised.
And bear in mind, I've met basically not a single person except for family members in real life who are in-drew gamers we do.
And if that is an accurate depiction of gaming culture, apparently that is actually a very, very good thing.
Well, see, the thing is this, though.
It didn't actually depict him as being a gamer.
It was more of an appreciation of gaming tropes and applying them in a non-interactive form.
So it could have just been a game.
In fact, you know, it was, but to a much limited extent.
Well, what you're saying is he was just your average obnoxious Canadian.
Yeah, because he was just a dude trying to impress a girl.
Like, there was nothing about video gaming really in the game.
Except for all the references.
Well, except for all the references, but it wasn't...
And there is one other final flaw I just have to mention in regards to its depiction of gaming culture.
If we go back to the whole Weibo thing, at the end, do you mind if I give you a spoiler ending or will I get that to myself?
Well, you don't really want to spoil it, but I mean, I'm going to go and buy the DVD because, you know, I believe in buying things in a 3D form.
But yeah, go ahead and spoil it.
I don't give a shit.
Okay, well, you know Knives, the Chinese person, right?
Um, is that the female?
Yep.
Okay, yep.
That's the girlfriend at the start of the film.
Yep, not good with names.
Um, at the end, he has the opportunity to end up with either Knives or the green-haired woman, whatever she was called, I can't remember.
Well, let's call her Sparky.
Sparky, of course.
And he chooses Sparky, whereas if it was game culture, given the fetishization of everything Asian, surely he would have gone with the Asian.
Yeah, but she was clearly bright from the start, such a two-dimensional kind of person.
You didn't, you know, no one could...
So was the other one, and every single character in the film.
I think she was 25D, Sparky.
You think Sparky was 25D?
I think so, I think she had an add level of dimensionality over the Asian schoolgirl.
I wouldn't say so.
Not based on what happens in...
I think the first impression is certainly that, when they're presenting her as a mysterious character, when the mystery dies away, I would say they're pretty even.
Yes, well, you're probably right, to coin a catchphrase.
I bought some games, so I don't know, this is probably a spoiler for what my final thoughts of Heavy Rain are, but I bought Beyond.
So you hated Heavy Rain so much, you wanted to see if Beyond was as bad.
Yeah, that's true, because it's going to be such a good fighter for our podcast, I figured, you know what, just as you will play Killzone Skyfall eventually, I have to play this just because it's, you know, I have to.
And the other thing is, I mistakenly thought it came out this year, so I was like, oh well, I better play it that way, I'm playing a current game, but it was actually last year.
And I picked up Splinter Cell Blacklist for $11, which is the worst $11 I've spent for quite a few months.
I mean, I wish I was recording what I was doing.
But basically, I got to the first interactive part of the game, where they want you to press X, and I was just walking around in a one square meter part of the video game, punching X continuously, trying to get it to trigger.
And that was just so I could climb up a ladder.
Is this the hobo one or the return to form?
The apparent return to form that was recently released.
This was the Kevin Van Aard gives an 8.5, a return to greatness, no longer voiced by Ironsides.
You know, this is the one, the action one, you know.
Okay, well, speaking of Kevin Van Aard, if I may go in a completely different direction, did you listen to the Endless Backlog slash Pedal to the Meta podcast?
No.
Because I was shocked to find on there until I realized that the people on the podcast, apart from the Endless Backlog alumni, were from System Wars, that people were actually making positive comments about Kevin Van Aard's reviews.
That just blew my mind.
Well, I mean, the only reason to hate on Kevin Van Aard's reviews is the fact that he works for GameSpot, you know.
But that's the point.
Yeah, that is the point.
I mean, where do you find positive comments about GameSpot reviews?
When I was at GameSpot, I don't remember reading any positive comments about GameSpot reviews, and that was when they still had some writers that people liked.
Greg Kassavin.
Who sucks?
But yeah, besides that, it was pretty thin on the ground.
You know, it's hard to even...
You know, at this point, it's funny, it's hard to even remember Ryan Davis actually writing a review for the site, you know, to the point where it's like, did he ever write reviews for that site, or was he just like a video guy, you know?
Well, he's a dead guy now.
He can't...
Dead men tell no tales, and they certainly don't review any games.
So, I was at laserloving.com, and, you know, I was also at endlessbacklog.com.
What it is with advertising at these sites these days?
Because they have the same ads running on both sites, which is the meet Asian girls, you know, click here, you know, get a male or a bride.
What did I tell you about knives a second ago?
I guess they know their demographic.
If you want to know your demographic, you look at what advertisers are going for, right?
Yeah, and, you know, you have to be careful about this kind of thing now, mentioning this kind of thing, because, you know, these ads are targeted, so they know what other sites you've been to.
So, I say, hey, what it is, I go to CNN, I see all these things about Asian women wanting to be my bride.
Hey, and you're like, really?
Because all I get is biographies about political heroes everywhere I go.
Well, enough about that.
But you don't have any insight about laserleaming.com.
I assume it's just all an agency type thing, right?
I mean, that's all stuff that Chris Langner handles?
Well, given the content, I'm assuming it's personal choices by Chris Langner.
That's my assumption.
I don't know about that.
They also have ads for like, have you seen this game?
It's like an MMO and it's like got this barely dressed woman.
Yeah.
It's like warning for men only, you know, this video game.
It's called Famousy World or something like that.
I guess it works, right?
Apparently.
Generally websites of that size go to ad agencies and they pick the ads rather than the websites.
We don't have any ads, do we?
On our site?
No.
Yep.
We're excellent.
So we're clearly superior to both Laser Lemming and Endless Backlog.
If you want to go to a website that does not have ads of Asian women and CGI scantily clad characters, I assume, then go to gameunder.net where we give you no bullshit.
No, no bullshit.
And we do not use pictures of scantily clad women to entice you to listen to previously published podcasts from other websites.
Never.
At all.
And that is irrelevant.
That piece of art is from Rob, and so he owns the rights to that.
If we're posting softcore pornography, it's at least softcore pornography that we or one of our associates have produced.
That is correct.
Did you happen to listen to episode 57 and a half?
No, I did not.
Well, I posted it because it was actually the return of us recording after a long hiatus.
And it was just basically filler.
So I didn't put it on the feed.
I didn't put it in the Twitter.
So if anyone wants to listen to that, they can just check that out through the regular RSS.
And as I said, this is the time of year where soccer has returned to Australia, am I right?
Correct.
So I assume that we'll go back to our once every six week recording schedule?
Well, you already are on that apparently.
Yeah, and is there any news about the A-League that you wish to share with our listeners who have been crying out for this sort of content for months on end?
Well, Melbourne is going to win the league.
Didn't they play the Raw the other day?
That was the shitty Melbourne team, the fake Melbourne team.
The Melbourne Heart?
Melbourne City now.
Well, they've changed their name.
So good they had to change their name and colours.
Now you're with the Melbourne Faith, right?
Yes.
The traditional Catholic team.
You're with the Victory, the Melbourne Victory?
Yes.
I mean, as bad as that name is, as you just mentioned before, at least it's not Brisbane Raw.
And that's R-A-W, just so everyone knows.
It's not R-O-A-R.
Brisbane Raw would actually be pretty good.
It would.
It would be better than Raw, at least.
Okay, so your team really is named Victory.
Unfortunately.
And at some point, they never considered that they might be shooting themselves in the foot by calling themselves Victory.
Apparently not.
That was the best way they could link the team's name with the rest of Victoria.
It's like Danny Glover naming his retirement boat I'm Gonna Live Forever or naming a ship the Titanic.
You know?
Victory.
Come on.
Have you been following the Raw?
I only from what I saw on the TV over the weekend.
No, so not.
Okay, because wonderfully, they've lost their first four matches and the team is the Shambles.
Yeah, well, didn't they win it all last year?
That or the year before?
And that was after several years of dominance.
So for the rest of the great, the rest of the league, fans of other teams, this is a great cathartic moment.
It's always good to see a dynasty or dynastic team pull apart at the seams.
Exactly.
Well, while we're on the topic of films, I have to bring up one thing we mentioned in the past.
I believe in the context of Harlan Alisson's wonderful rant on saving Mr.
Banks.
Yeah, that was excellent.
So you went off and watched that?
That was great.
Yeah, he's crazy.
He is just brilliant.
And it was quite accurate in what he said.
It is a completely bizarre propaganda piece.
And it's bizarre because it, apart from quite easily avoiding any accusations of anti-Semitism or being a complete dick, it doesn't really paper over the fact that he took her film, her book, completely raped it, was a complete asshole to her.
It doesn't cover up any of that.
Despite being a propaganda piece for the legacy of Disney and how he saved her character apparently.
Which is where the fanciful stuff comes in.
You know what I would like to see?
Even in universities these days, people are getting in trouble for speaking their minds and things like that.
And I say even in university because it's supposed to be a place where ideas are explored, just as in newspapers and such.
This is supposed to be a place where we can explore ideas.
And you said, despite the...
What did you say about anti-Semitism?
I said they managed to avoid any anti-Semitic content in regards to Walt Disney's depiction.
So they avoided the more controversial things, but didn't attempt to avoid making him seem like something of a complete dick.
Right.
And when you said that, it prompted in my mind, talking about the Citizens of Mount Pius, is that there seems to be a...
it's almost like a spell check that's on the public dialogue these days, where no one's listening to anything you're saying.
They're just listening to the things that you're saying that could be flagged as objectionable, and then deriving all meaning from what you've said surrounding that statement to that comment.
You know?
Yep.
And anyway, that was my...
So what you're saying is, if this had been made a few years in the past, he would have been an anti-Semite.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think so.
And the film would have been better for it.
Yeah, it would have been.
But that's all come up before in the past as well anyway.
And we would...
Yep.
Yep.
Can I ask you, what do you think of Mary Poppins?
I think it's a...
You know, it's a...
It's a psychedelic work.
It's a work of psychedelia, basically.
So it fits in with, you know, the work of Warhol, The Grateful Dead to a lesser extent, you know.
And the work of Disney.
And the work of Disney, yeah.
So basically, it's...
You know, it's a psychotropic fantasy, basically.
And, you know, that's my position on it.
You know, and that's kind of...
It was kind of a neat time, because right now, our media is so full of subversive things that they're no longer subversive.
Whereas back then, everything was proper.
So everyone assumed that everything was proper.
So you could do highly subversive things in plain sight, and everyone would go, oh, what a sweet movie.
And if something's subversive, if the norm is subversion, then if you were being subversive, you were not being subversive.
So the point being, there's just as much room to be subversive today but you can't be subversive as you would have been in the past because what is considered subversive now is what was considered subversive in the past.
So I think what you're referring to is more along the line of allusions and references.
Yeah.
Becoming the norm, which I think is slightly different to subversion.
I would agree with that.
I would just say that possibly that outrage and faux outrage has become the shortcut to attention.
Yeah.
And so everyone expects everything to be outrageous and over the top and ridiculous and crazy and obscene.
Yeah.
In fact, to get attention, you have to be obscene.
And if you look at political discourse in the United States right now, all of the statements regarding and surrounding politics are obscenities.
Yeah.
Because there's no discourse anymore, so you just have to say obscenities to get attention.
So, yeah, that was my point there.
So, but any case, back to...
I've been playing Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012.
Have you heard of this game?
No, I haven't.
Rogue Trip:?
Rogue Trip:.
Rogue Trip:.
I have not heard of it.
Vacation 2012.
It comes from the million-selling developer of car combat.
It was developed by GT Interactive Software for the PlayStation 1, and it was published in 1998.
That's why I haven't heard of it.
And EGM said, What's more important, the name or the game?
That's their pull quote.
And essentially, you know, I mean, it's the old well-worn trail.
You're an auto mercenary helping on showing tourists the hotspots of the radioactive charbroiled future.
I'm getting pretty sick of this cliché.
But what's funny about this game is it's actually, it looks very good.
It has a lot of sound-alike music in it.
And when I say a lot, I mean a single track.
They have a single track that is a rip-off of a sublime song, and they play it over and over and over again.
And basically, it's a vehicular combat game, as you would expect from the makers of the million-selling developer of Car Combat.
Car Combat is a vehicular combat game.
I probably should have said that.
I shouldn't have assumed that.
But anyway, Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012.
And the funny thing is that I was playing it on my PlayStation 1, and it controls quite well.
The game is fairly poor.
I mean, it has just standard tropes like school bus, tank, hot rod, future car.
And basically you have to...
It's capture the flag, where a tourist is the flag.
So it's quite difficult.
It does also have the music of the Mighty Mighty Boss tones.
So it does actually have music as well as sound like music.
Maybe Mighty Mighty Boss tones actually sound like for Sublime.
That's probably more the case.
Well, if there's only one song, that must be the case.
Yeah, it should say featuring a song by the Mighty Mighty Boss tones.
That is actually a song by Sublime.
So what do you think about a video game called Vacation 2012?
I think it was certainly made at least 10 years in the past.
Yeah, 1998, so I can't do the math, but yeah, weird.
16 years ago.
So that's my first and final impressions of Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012.
I'd say that if you're looking for something to play on the PlayStation 1, if you've played all the other games and you like vehicular combat, but haven't got around yet to playing Twisted Metal Black or Vigilante 8, or Car Combat, or Vigilante 8, be sure to pick up a copy of Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012.
It also has an Elvis zombie in it.
Excellent.
That sounds like an amazing game.
Yeah, yeah.
And you know, I've got to say though, I'm disappointed in the game developers of 1998 that they were not able to conjure up a realistic depiction of what 2012 was like.
Well, your descriptions sounded very accurate, so I don't know what you're talking about.
Well, there is a...
Were you in Australia in 2012?
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Okay, because I was going to say, that's Inner City Melbourne 2012 to a T.
Well, I didn't say that you're going around running down Indians.
I said tourists.
So it's not a student killing.
It's Indian tourists.
It has a full color manual.
It has a manual.
It's 32 pages long and it's full color.
Oh, okay, and it features an advertisement for a band called The Nashville Pussy.
From their album, Let Them Eat...
So Snake Eyes is a song that appears in this game.
I wonder what those guys are doing now.
They're probably dead.
Don't just play the game and master it.
Get Rogue Trip: Exclusive Strategy Guide from GW Press.
Does that have an address you can send?
Just a website.
If you want to go there, it's www.wpress.com.
So it's got a website in 1998?
Yeah, www.wpress.com.
I'm guessing they're dead now then.
One of the cars is the Meat Wagon, which is a traditional New York yellow cab with a large hot dog on top of it wearing a Jason Voorhees mask.
Or a Frankfurter, as it would be called in Valley of Tarts.
Frankfurter, and it's driven by Dick Biggs.
Dick Biggs.
And it says, Dick Biggs, don't be fooled by size.
In Biggs' case, a little dick goes a long way indeed.
It stands up against even the toughest adversaries.
If you think Biggs is easily taken out of the game, well, you don't know Dick.
So, very clever writing as well.
You know, it's not just about the entertainment.
So, this was written...
Well, people say, um, video game writing has progressed a long way, right?
Yeah, well...
That's, I think, better erotic fiction than the dialogue from the upcoming Dragon Age Inquisition.
Is it supposed to be an erotic game?
The upcoming Dragon Age, uh, whatever?
Apparently.
All right, are you ready to give me...
You've been playing some pretty hot games.
Surely you've got some first impressions, or do you only have final impressions?
I've got a game called Back to Bed, and in the notes I've got the word blowjobs, so I think that's a pretty natural thing to move on to.
Yeah, let's move on to a game called Back to Bed.
And Back to Bed is a puzzle game, which I think was originally released as a touchpad game for mobile phones before it was possibly for free as well, before it has now been ported to PC as a fully-fledged game that you can buy on Steam and presumably various other places.
And on Laser Lemming, friend of the podcast Arnie reviewed the game.
Really?
Correct, and by Arnie.
Yeah, you did a cameo review?
Well, I somehow convinced Chris to get him onto the website, and he did several reviews.
And when I say he reviewed Back to Bed, I mean, he played the game, didn't rewrite the review for three months, I mean, while I pezzed him the whole time, and then I eventually wrote several paragraphs to finish it for him.
Oh, shit, so you could get me a job over there.
Correct, I could probably get anyone a job over there.
Okay, so listeners...
If you want to become a fully professional, fully-fledged game journalist, contact Tom Towers.
Tom Towers is at Game Under Phil on Twitter.
That's Game Under Phil on Twitter, the official Twitter account of Tom Towers.
So clearly I should be a freelance writer agent.
Yeah, why not?
If such a thing exists.
Now, looking at the screens of this, it's like an MC Escher-like, isometric puzzle type thing, right?
Slash data.
Yes, yep.
Do you have melting clocks?
Yes, you do.
And does it have cigars and pipes?
Yes, it does.
Not only does it have cigars and pipes, one of the gameplay mechanics, which the Blowjobs was alluding to, is there are pairs of lips which are perpetually blowing and you use them to push the character you're directing around the levels.
So that's even better than a cigar, I would say, because then you are the cigar.
Well, sometimes the cigar is just a cigar, and this is not a pipe.
Correct.
And the reason, or rather, the way you use these blowing lips is how each level starts is, this guy, this sleepwalker, slash, Nykoleptic, spawns in a set area and begins to walk forwards.
And the levels are basically set out as grids with various obstacles, and if you fall off the edge, or rather if he falls off the edge, then they go back to the spawn point and start all over again.
And so your objective is to direct this person to his bed, so that he can go back to bed and not kill himself sleepwalking, I presume.
And the way you direct him is either with apples, which you place in certain areas, or fishes, which you use as bridges across gaps or over obstacles.
And as you play through the game, there begin to be more complicated obstacles such as moving clocks and dogs, which will kill the person, and train tracks.
And if the sleepwalker gets killed, then rather than simply respawning, you have to start the level again.
And what I've described is extremely simple, right?
Yes.
So the thing that makes the simplicity work and be enjoyable is the great flow to the game, which is of course achieved by whenever you fail, they immediately respawn.
And because the mechanics feel pretty good, despite being extremely simple, it creates this really good flow that even though what you're doing is pretty easy to figure out, it's fun because everything moves so quickly.
Once you've figured something out and you've got the pathway all set out, you can fast forward, which has the guy walk really quickly through the level, which looks really cool and is fun to do.
But when you come to these levels where you have to restart, that messes up the flow, and because it's still really obvious, especially at the time what you're meant to be doing, then it just becomes awkward and not so fun.
Now, that's still pretty rare and it's a really short game, so that doesn't happen too much.
So as you play through the game, that's fun, pretty mediocre, but it's enjoyable, right?
But when you finish the game, you unlock what is called Nightmare Mode, and Nightmare Mode gives you more objectives in the levels, where you have to pick up one or two or three keys within the level before you can open the door and complete the level.
This completely changes the game and adds a really fun tactile challenge to it, because the majority of the game in the normal game, you don't actually need to play with any skill whatsoever because the person respawns if they die, so you don't need to worry about them dying.
Generally, you can set up the whole level so that they can walk through the level once you've set everything up without you having to do anything, right?
Yep, and that's one of the reasons for fast-forwarding this fun.
But the way they place the keys, you need to collect all of the keys before they get to the end, and when they fall off the edge, they lose the key.
And because the levels haven't changed, you've often got to be using the items that you use to redirect them in a much faster way, where if you aren't fast enough in placing something, they're going to walk off the edge.
And that could be, sometimes, the speed you need is within one or two tiles, which is probably about one second or under a second.
So it adds an element of skill and tactility to it as well as the simple, basic puzzle of the original pathways that you're using, as well as slightly more complex puzzles of how to figure out how to get him to get all the keys in the one run.
So then it becomes a genuinely good and really enjoyable and tactile puzzle game.
But you have to play through the pretty mediocre, normal game to unlock it.
That's unfortunate because, first of all, I find it absolutely delicious that the higher difficulty mode is called nightmare mode.
I mean, it's such a clear, obvious choice, and they went with it anyway.
And it's the sort of thing that you'd find in a first person shooter.
You've unlocked nightmare mode.
But my thing was, well, it sounds like that's the real game.
And if you have to unlock it to get to it, most people aren't going to do that.
Yep.
I mean, I was assuming that this game had 12 levels in total.
It sounds more like it has, what, 6 levels and then you play the 6 levels again.
It's got much more than 6 levels.
I think there's 30 levels or so.
There's 2 basic areas, I think, and each has about 15 levels.
And the levels are...
One of the reasons the flow works so well, despite the game being extremely easy, is those levels, a lot of them, will take you like 15 seconds or 30 seconds to beat, which results in a nice flow of positive feedback.
And judging from the visuals, it looks like it was...
You know, initially you said it was for touch interfaces and whatnot.
And it certainly looks like that.
Does it suffer at all from coming over from...
to a PC to a more interactive...
Were you using a controller for this?
I was using a controller.
I tried it briefly with a mouse, and I think with a mouse it definitely suffers because it does the old isometric RPG control style where you hold and click down to move, or you click to move the character in a certain direction, right?
Which I think would make the nightmare mode extremely awkward to play.
It's satisfactory for the normal mode, but it doesn't have the tactility that the controller does.
And the controller, I think, works exceptionally well, probably as well as it would have worked in a touch control, with a touch control.
And what's the name of this game?
Back to Bed?
Back to Bed.
It's from Bedtime Digital Games, and they seem to be, like, Nordic, if you judge their last names, the guys that made this, which we generally have a predilection for those kinds of games, if you look at Star Breeze's games and other such things.
It's Steam World Dink.
Yep, and the guy you interviewed, Klaus Oversteem, or whatever his name was.
Ooster Tag.
Yeah.
Juss van Dongen.
Yeah, that's it.
He's Dutch.
Okay, well, it's the same thing.
It's all Nordic.
It's not the same thing.
It's Nordic.
It's that little chunk of the world that's really rich and cold.
All right, so, I mean, it sounds like, it actually sounds like a return to the kinds of games, like a real puzzle-type platforming game, like a Lenin's or Lost Vikings.
It also reminded me of Cooler World.
What?
Oh, a Cool World or a Cooler World?
KULA World, wasn't it?
Cooler's got another name.
I can't remember what the other one was.
Are you sure this isn't some Australian theme park with a Koala mascot?
You're thinking a Koala World.
No, I'm not.
I'll tell you what it is, because you couldn't mistake it for another game.
You are directing a beach ball around platforms.
I remember you talking about this.
I remember you talking about this.
It came out, what, for the PlayStation?
PlayStation 1.
Original PlayStation.
And it's just like a Marvel Madness type game?
Nope, there's no tilting involved.
It's like a monkey balls game.
It is like a monkey balls game, except it's not tilting.
What the hell?
Where's the fun in that?
You just move the blocks to move the ball around?
It got pretty complicated.
It is actually a very good puzzle game.
Alright, Koala World?
It doesn't look like it, but when you were playing it, it works very well.
Koala World.
Also known as Rollaway in America and Koala Quest in Japan.
Excellent, because you know what's great for a brand?
Having three different names and three different territories.
Like Hot Shot Golf is called Everyone Golfs or We Golf in Europe, and it's called whatever else in Japan.
Everybody's Golf, you mean?
Yes.
Is that what it's called here?
I think so.
In America, it's called Hot Shot Golf.
The one final thing on Back to Bed I have to mention is they managed to include one of the...
The atmosphere, as you can tell from the visuals, is incredibly derivative, obviously, but that's what makes it quite fun.
And an example of that is the one final brilliant cliché they included, what has now become a cliché, I suppose, is the backwards talking that you then reverse originally from Twin Peaks.
Exactly, which fits very well.
Did they ever do that in Deadly Premonition?
I can't remember.
They fucked up then.
No, so the silks, you're not gonna want to eat.
Yeah.
I will tweet the makers of the game and let them know that we are going to be posting a score for Koala World, uh...
For Back to Bed in this podcast.
Just don't mention our association with Nell.
I'll say that we're part of GameSpot Australia.
No one will know the difference.
Fuck yeah, we made it onto GameSpot.
Alright, where'd you get?
Wait, I'm gonna guess, you know, just be normal here, alright?
I'm gonna guess you are gonna give this a 7 out of 10.
You are close.
I'm going to give it a 6 out of 10.
Aww, what could they have done differently?
They are listening to this podcast now.
What do you know about video games?
I mean, what could they have done differently?
I'm then gonna give it a 6.5 out of 10.
Alright, thank you.
Now, what could they have done differently?
Just purely for the money, I assume, they are gonna send us as a fully professional, large website GameSpot.
Yeah, well, if they want us to start putting that...
I'm gonna rephrase this.
If you are listening, developers of Back to Bed, I will change my score to 6.5 for $6.50.
You can contact me at Game Under Phil, the official Twitter account for Tom Towers.
I am Phil Fogg, incidentally, and I am joined, as always, by my co-host Tom Towers, senior contributing editor at laserlemming.com, freelance writer, as well as being a very good guy.
We weren't meant to mention the laserlemming part, so now you've just cost me $6.00.
Well, that's the intro.
That was the intro for the show.
We forgot to do it earlier.
Now, honestly, though, this is a legitimate question.
If they had added a heart-tugging story with CGI cutscenes, would that have moved them either?
No.
If they had made it so you could play Nightmare Mode to begin with, it would have got a 6.5.
If they had added a dog that is your friend throughout the whole game that ultimately you get to choose whether or not to save his life at the end of the game, would that have helped?
Well, you are a dog, something like a dog, and you are, essentially, the friend of the sleepwalker, so that's sort of already there.
All right, so what if the dog had a friend, a bird, a friendly bird friend, a magpuck?
No.
No?
No.
That hurts.
Before we get to the point, I've got to mention one final thing that I think I'm going to give a 6.5 anyway, because the credit sequence, you can not only skip, but you can actually fast forward through using the same mechanic as is in the game.
Remember the time we came up with how to fix Max Payne, like ideas for Max Payne 4?
Yep.
What if in a game...
We created probably the best Rockstar game.
Yeah.
Yeah, ever.
And I also, on VG Press the other day, I said what my ideal game would be.
I don't know if we want to talk about that here.
But did you see that post, incidentally?
I did, indeed.
So maybe you could look that up if you think it's worth talking about.
If it's not, then we won't.
But maybe that would be a good feature for a game, which is not only can you...
You can skip the credits, but you can also insert yourself in the credits if you do it fast enough.
So it would have to be a PC game.
So, you know, you could type your name in and...
No, here's what it should be.
If you watch all the credits, there's a final credits section listing the people who watched all the credits.
You get to put your name in.
Yep, like the fly.
And it updates via Steam or whatever else.
It has to work on PC, because it just won't work any other way.
People who watched all of the credits.
And the thing is, it would eventually go for like 24 hours, because as word got out, people would watch all the credits so they could get their username onto the credits.
And it would just keep growing.
It would be like Nobby Nobby Boy.
The whole world would be contributing to something that expands to the moon.
Yep.
Awesome.
Do you have that post open incidentally?
I think our listeners should probably be exposed to that.
I don't, but you go ahead.
Yeah, I'll go ahead while you talk about something else, possibly from our trademark banter list.
But someone had asked on vgpress.com, which is basically where we hang out in terms of community.
You know, what is...
Design your dream game.
And the poster, one of our good friends who have been on the show before, D.
Vader, has this huge wall of text describing in exact detail the game he would design.
Which I would have read, but I just knew he was going to write Zelda.
TLDR.
I didn't need to.
And guess what?
They've already made that game.
It's called Darksiders.
So, sorry.
I think it's called Zelda.
I thought about posting my idea for a video game, but I still think that there's a chance that I might be able to do something with it.
So I did not post my actual idea for a video game.
I posted basically what I've said all along, and long-term listeners will know what I want.
So it's Skyrim with an ATV and a sniper rifle and a shotgun.
Right?
I mean, you knew that that's where I would start.
Naturally.
You get extra money for combos on the ATV, a la Tony Hawk, right?
Yep.
And extra money for headshots.
So you're playing Skyrim.
Do you get extra money if you headshot someone with the ATV in a jump doing a trick?
Yeah, yeah.
Like if you're doing a reverse knack-knack on the ATV and then you pull off a sniper shot, absolutely.
No, no, you don't pull off a sniper shot.
You do the reverse knack-knack onto the person's head.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
That would be given...
You'd be getting like a...
it'd be like called Watermelon's, you know, combo or something like that, where you crush their skulls with the ATV.
You can choose to beat the game by not doing any of the story missions and by shooting the issuing party in the head as they describe the mission they wish to give you.
So by shooting the party in the head while they're giving you the mission, you have completed the mission.
So in effect, you could finish the game in 17 minutes.
Which is my fantasy.
You can enter cheat codes that are widely distributed on the web.
In fact, on the back cover that make the ATV look like an actual burro.
So instead of an ATV, you're now riding a donkey.
But it's a burro.
Which is an in-joke of the VG press.
Is it?
For the listeners out there.
Well, the burro is the mating of a horse and a donkey.
And the burro cannot make its own burros.
It cannot make any burritos.
No little burros.
There are five second snippets of hardcore porn that appear on the screen at random intervals.
So you're just playing and then all of a sudden hardcore porn for five seconds and then back to the game.
Do you get an achievement if you pause on the hardcore porn so that it remains on the screen for longer?
You can pause them.
But you can, in a Halo Forge-like method, if you enter the right combo while the porn is playing, dub your own voice effects over it and then republish that to the web.
So the next person who watches it has to watch that with your audio over it.
With this online system in mind, can I make a suggestion for your game?
You use my credit system.
Okay, how's that going to work?
For the credits.
When the credits are playing.
I thought you meant for the porn.
Oh yeah, the credit thing is in there.
Forget that.
It's done.
If you enter the correct QTE, so at random intervals, you're walking around and they put up a QTE.
If you get it right.
Actually, in a similar vein, I've got a slight alteration to your porn idea.
Obviously, this is going to be using usernames and the like.
So when you're dubbing your voice, not only is your voice dubbed in, but your gamertag or whatever it is, is displayed on screen.
So eventually, the hardcore porn becomes a wall of text that is only gamertags and the sound is completely the dubbing.
And then if you press another QTE while those random porn segments are showing, the usernames disappear.
Yep.
If you enter the correct QTE at random intervals, you get to play Space Invaders, Frogger or Geometry Wars until you reach the score of 5000.
So it's already a good game if it features the full length of all those games.
Yes.
Yep.
You get Geometry Wars for free.
It's all worked out.
I worked out all the licensing and everything.
So when you reach the score of 5000 in any of those games, it goes back to the regular game.
Whenever you miss a headshot...
So until you reach that, you have to play it.
Yeah, you have to play it.
You're stuck playing Space Invaders.
But you entered the correct QTE, so you know what you're doing.
Turn-based combat occurs whenever you miss a headshot.
So if you're going for a headshot, if it registered that you pulled up the sniper rifle and were aiming and you miss, then it turns into turn-based combat.
I cannot really fully explain how that works, but, you know...
Now, this next one I'm a bit shaking on.
Basically, Shaquille O'Neal voices the role of narrator.
This can be substituted by anyone you want, really.
What about the player?
The player?
What player?
The player.
Who voices what?
Is the narrator.
Okay, sure.
So you put up the narration on the screen and you get to talk it into the headline?
You get rated on how accurate you are to the script.
I'm not sure about that one yet, but I'm pretty confident that we could do something like that.
I'm not quite sure.
Maybe you can come up with other voices that we could pay to have in that role.
John Cleese and Snoop Dogg.
Second best perhaps Stephen Fry.
Stephen Fry.
If we're dragging the bottom of a barrel.
He will do anything.
It's as appeared in Fable 3.
Comes with a joystick that has purple LEDs inside of it that glow when you're close to hidden treasure.
You can attach it to an MP3 player, which will make a teddy bear appear on the lower left hand corner of the screen where he lip syncs the lyrics of the songs that you're playing, substituting the C word anytime the word AND appears in a song.
Which C word?
The C word that ends with T, that is four letters.
Which one?
The one that you can't say in America.
Rhymes with Bund.
When you carjack a car, which of course you can do in Skyrim, the car wash music from GTA 2 plays.
Excellent.
And in case you don't know what that music is, I'll play it now.
Alright, here we go.
Alright, now do you remember?
Yes.
I don't, luckily.
Alright, so that was my final impressions of Call of Duty Black Ops.
Do you want to talk about one of your games?
What score are you giving it?
Call of Duty Black Ops?
I will give Call of Duty Black Ops a 6 out of 10.
I was expecting a 10.
No, no, no.
Either a 10 or a 0, going by those impressions.
I actually liked Call of Duty Black Ops, but it's the same thing.
They did some new things with it, and it was actually quite entertaining.
Your description certainly made it sound entertaining.
If only they had done those things.
All we need to say about Call of Duty Black Ops is that I've played it, I liked it a lot, I'm giving it a 6.5 out of 10 because it's on the treadmill.
It was Treyarch's high point so far.
I still have to go and get Black Ops 2 and presumably there's a 3 as well.
I thought they actually did a really good job of it.
I find no problem with their game.
It was like an 8-hour long game.
It was fun, it was good first-person shooting, and it wasn't the ridiculous Call of Duty stuff where they're jumping all over the world and it's just one thing that's bigger than the next.
And it was actually quite clever.
The only thing that let it down was, spoilers, after the cutscene, they cut to a cutscene of Kennedy and Nixon in a room, talking, and Nixon looks like the Nixon rubber mask that you see at protests.
And it's like...
And that let it down?
Yes, because Nixon...
So that was the highlight of the game.
Nixon is probably one of the greatest, you know, Shakespearean-like characters of our time in the late 20th century.
The guy was endlessly complex, and they're just showing him as being this...
Like, they have Kennedy there rendered perfectly, and they have Nixon looking like a rubber mask at a protest.
Well, Kennedy is more easy to render than Nixon.
I don't, yeah, less wrinkles.
Exactly.
But it was disappointing, and also I found that the post-game content was fairly disappointing as well, as it relates to those presidents and what they had them doing, but then I'm a presidential junkie, so of course I'm going to find a multiplayer game where they're killing zombies to be disrespectful.
I would have preferred Kurt Cobain, actually, in the game, shooting zombies, but, you know, that's neither here nor there.
So that's my review of Call of Duty Black Ops.
I give it a 6.5 out of 10.
Excellent.
So, you know, you're going to talk about a game that we've already covered exhaustively in the past.
I know on episode 50, around a 26-minute mark, I talked about this game extensively, and we've gone over and over and over again.
On the comment section of our website, people criticized me for my comments regarding this game.
Do you know what their comment was?
Basically they said that I should have played it with the sound on, so obviously they're a regular listener that knows.
Because I said it had lacked atmosphere and a sense of immersiveness.
I believe they used the F word when referring to me, and then said I should listen to it with the sound on.
The show was episode 50, because I just opened episode 50.
Yeah, it's episode 50.
A great search tool on our website should show you that when you put in Sir, You Are Being Hunted, or just Sir, it will pull up episode 50.
They must have commented on the front page.
Big Show 7.
They commented somewhere, yeah.
Basically, we're talking about Sir, Madam, You Are Being Hunted, to which we have previously dedicated 23 seconds of conversation.
I played the game earlier in the year, and this is a first-person game, and I played it and paid for it full price, because I heard Patrick Kledbick talking about it.
I was like, well, if it's a shooter, a first-person shooter, we've got to talk about it on the site.
And I played it, and it was like, oh, you know, there's all this stuff, like, yeah, you've got to survive, you've got to consume calories.
Can I just interrupt you completely?
I've got the quote here.
They did use the F-word Fogg, and this was actually our famous Hebrew friend, I believe, we refer to it as.
Well, we have more than one.
So this is another one.
Well.
It's all Greek to me, so I can't tell any difference between the names.
Actually, we do only have one.
I was just trying to make...
Make us sound good.
Well, just make us sound less prejudiced.
Yeah, that doesn't make us sound less prejudiced.
Sorry.
But the point being, you promised to try it with the sound on.
Yeah.
Did you?
Yes, I did, actually, because I felt bad, and I did go back and play it with the sound on, and did not find it to add to the atmosphere at all.
So you were true to your word.
I did.
I did try it, and it didn't help.
Excellent.
So, we're calling it So You're Being Hunted.
It's available on Steam.
It's for the PC.
I don't think it's available on any other platforms at this time.
I don't think so.
So what drew you to this first person shooter?
Well, one simple fact that was released in 2014, and I was looking back at the games I had played, released this year, and thinking that none of them stood out as being particularly remarkable.
So I thought I would try what, as you just said, made huge waves on the Giant Bomb podcast.
And we say sir slash madam because as you start the game, on the main menu there is an option to change the game to Madam.
You were being hunted rather than Sir, you were being hunted, which changes the dialogue in game.
And I was actually thinking, now if it had been called Madam, you were being hunted, we would have unfortunately not had our great sitcom discussion, but is that not a more intriguing title?
What's it?
Oh, that's a good one.
Yeah, we do kind of get derailed there with, are you being served, right?
Okay, so, you know, I think it actually, if they'd called it Madam, you were being hunted, I think it would have garnered more attention and sold more copies initially.
Exactly.
I mean, it's perfect for the modern gaming, the political leanings at the moment, and it sounds pretty much as good.
Why wouldn't you go with Madam, you were being hunted?
With the option to call it Sir.
At the very least, that's going to give you a feature on Polygon, on why you chose to make the feminine gender the predominant one.
Polygon and everywhere else.
And also, for the creepy people out there, I mean, a game called Madam, you were being hunted.
I mean, you know, that would have sold.
Maybe that's why they didn't.
Pure interest, yeah, maybe that's why they didn't.
So, is it a first person?
First of all, what is the providence of this game?
Do you know the developer or where they're from?
And then secondarily, like, is this a first person shooter or is this a first person survival game?
I assume they're English, but I don't know.
And it is a first person survival game.
It is not a first person shooter.
And the first person shooting mechanics are awful.
All the guns, I didn't end up getting a machine gun, so maybe the machine guns were different, but the shotgun and the pistol felt absolutely identical to use.
You could use the shotgun at a very long range, and it still did more damage than the pistol, so the pistol, while being described as having more accuracy, may have had more accuracy, but given the great range that you could use a shotgun at, you didn't need more accuracy with the shotgun, of course, due to the wider burst radius, right?
So the guns that I used were completely identical.
The combat generally felt awful, but what was fun with the combat was if you played it as Malay, because...
Go on.
Oh, that's odd, because I never got close enough to anyone to actually engage in Malay combat.
Well, this is the thing, and one of the things that takes away from the survival aspect of the game is how incredibly easy Malay combat is, because even against several robots, if you circle strafe towards them with a Malay weapon, you can easily kill all three robots one by one without getting hit, because they do not ever shoot you if you are circle strafing.
What?
Yep.
The only thing that complicates this is if there is a dog around which can run up and bite you and knock you down, and he's much faster than the robot, so you can't circle strafe or run away from them.
Fucking dogs.
Yep.
Video game dogs.
But, despite that rather taking away from the majority of fights removing any challenge from them rather, the Malay combat actually is a little bit fun mechanically and aesthetically because there's a slight chunkiness of meetingness to when you're hitting the robots, the sound they make when you're hitting them or metal being hit and machinery bouncing around sounds great and they say humorous things and scream in a humorous manner, so the sound is of benefit in this context certainly, and when they fall over, they twitch amusingly, which you can't enjoy as much from a distance.
So the Malay combat is fun, and what I said was perhaps a slight exaggeration in terms of the combat, because you still need to be smart, because it's not completely that if you're circle strafing, you're not going to get hit, because if you're circle strafing from a greater distance, you're more likely to get hit because obviously the angle is easier for them, right?
Right, yeah.
But so you've still got to be clever and smart and stealthy if your plan is to kill them at Malay to get close enough to them to kill them.
And depending on what the environment is like, the area might not be big enough for you to circle strafe easily, so you need to figure out which enemies to kill the first time and so on and so forth.
So it's still very much on the easy side, especially for a survival game, but there is enough challenge and thought required that it is for the most part enjoyable and engaging when you come up an encampment where there are a lot of enemies.
Right?
Right.
Now, one of the reasons that...
Well, my question is, you know, this is described as being an open world, you know, stealth survival game.
I mean...
Would you describe this as being an open world?
I mean, because when I was playing it, basically, it was very clear there was nothing to do but go to the next thing that was being very clearly flagged.
Like, there was nothing to do other than go to the next village or next farm or next area.
Like, yes, it was open world in that you could go anywhere, but there was nothing to do any...
There was nothing to do other than go to the next point that they were directing you to.
Well, that is open world, if you can go anywhere.
Yeah, but if you...
You don't technically need content in those areas to constitute an open world.
Yeah, I would say, though, that if you're in an open world and there's only one option for advancing the game, it's not really open world.
I would still call it open world because open world, as far as the name of it is concerned, doesn't necessarily bring to mind any requirement except that the world is open.
I would think that...
Does it?
It's not open quest.
Well, open world, to me, you know, intimates that the fact that there will be multiple paths for you to take.
And even in a game like Grand Theft Auto, where ultimately you're funneled down to having to take the story missions, there are at least other things that you can do.
Well, you can go to the places you're meant to go to in any order.
So under those rules, it still technically works.
Alright, that works for me.
And there is slightly more to do in the open world, which is perhaps why you died so quickly.
Given the survival elements, you can't just run off to the next objective.
You do need to look for food to eat and game to kill and then cook as food.
And you need to look for ammo and that sort of thing.
So there is a semblance of other things to do within the world.
The problem with that though, and the major problem with the survival elements is that after perhaps the first ten minutes, when I did have to worry a bit about how much food I had and how much ammo I had, although I didn't have a weapon at that point, but once you get a weapon and by that point, you will probably have also accrued enough food to last you the entire game because the speed at which you lose your vitality and need to eat is extremely slow and there is an abundance of edible and nutritious food that can completely refill your vitality meter.
So it's never as if you're really in a jam where you're thinking, where you have to decide between perhaps carrying this amount of ammo or abandoning what you're doing and running off to find a rabbit to kill and cook or running off to ransack houses.
So the balance to actually use the survival mechanics, which are fun in and of themselves, isn't really there, so that the survival never really factors into what you're doing at all, which is a huge missed opportunity because the mechanics themselves, while really simple, are enough to make a pretty engrossing and intense survival game for the simple reason that on each of the five islands that you start on, you cannot save.
The only way to save in the game is either in the center of the starting island where you take back all the items or at the boats that take you to and from each island, right?
They have that stone hinge type thing you have to go back to.
Yeah, exactly.
And so, with the simple mechanics that were there, if you had to go off on a long journey over the islands, and sometimes some of the islands might take you 10 or 15 minutes, so there is still some intensity to it, because you could avoid getting killed for that length of time.
But if that had been there, not just in terms of the combat, but also in terms of survival, where you've really got to be paying attention to your vitality and to managing your ammo and the food you've got and looking for game, that would have then, I think, been an exceptional experience, rather than a reasonably enjoyable, very, very light survival game.
And I can only assume that perhaps, given the simpleness of the mechanics, it was made with the idea of making a very simple and easy alternative to something like Daze, right?
Daze?
You're not familiar with Daze?
Like DayZ?
DayZ, yeah.
I'm not going to fucking call it DayZ.
Alright, that's DayZ then.
That's acceptable.
Alright, thank you.
So, I mean, you couldn't recommend this game.
Well, I'm not finished talking about it yet, quite.
Well, I'm not saying that you should.
Alright, fine.
Did you ever play Tail of the Sun for PlayStation?
No, I didn't.
Tail of the Sun is a very, very similar game to this.
And it was made by Art Dink, which is a Japanese company.
And it's very directionless, but it is open world.
It's not first person, it's third person.
But there's probably only illegal ways to access this game at this point.
So, you know, I can't recommend it.
And if you were to play it on PC, it's probably not worth the effort of going through.
But it is one of these games where you derive a certain pleasure just from survival in the traditional sense.
You know, it's not a matter of survival in terms of fighting off dogs that jump through windows or having limited ammo.
It's a matter of actually going through an environment or a landscape and, you know, having the sun set and the sun rise and, you know, finding food and scuffling around.
Which in Beyond Two Souls, they have a homeless segment, which is actually pretty good in terms of, you know, giving you a sense of what it's like to be homeless.
So, I mean, the sense that I got from this game was that it was more the novelty of it rather than the actual enjoyment of the game that was to be had.
That it was more of a development toy and an experiment and an experience rather than an actual game that you enjoy.
Would you agree with that?
I think that is exactly my first impression, because one, technically it looks fucking awful.
The resolutions are abysmally bad.
It's generally very jaggy, including with aliasing on.
The only vaguely impressive thing about the graphics is some areas have a lot of grass, and this is immediately not impressive, because those areas run at about 10 frames per second.
So not only does it look like complete shit, it runs absolutely awfully for no genuine reason.
On top of that, when you're beginning, it is completely uninteresting and banal.
But once you get to...
This could be a fault of the procedural generation as well, but several of the fragments I had to find, there were enough enemies in a complicated enough environment that I had to come up with really complicated plans to be able to get that fragment away from the enemies that were guarding it.
And the final fragment that I had to get was just an incredible gameplay experience, because the fires that you're using to cook things also distract the enemies, right?
Well, it not only distracts them, it attracts them.
It attracts them.
Yeah.
Yep.
And it took me about 30 minutes of trying, you know, 50 different strategies and eventually coming up with incredibly complicated and complex plans using the traps and items that distract the enemies that they give you, such as toy trains that run along the ground.
All sorts of ridiculous plans until I came up with this really simple thing where I basically ran, attracted the enemies to a certain thing, ran around the island, halfway around the island, through the area and back all the way around again, which sounds perhaps obvious to do and simple and not interesting to do, but the fact that I had gone through all these ridiculous and complicated things because of how complex and ridiculous the amount and the sorts of enemies were there and that way they were placed within the environment leading to the thing and back from it made that an incredibly engrossing and enjoyable experience.
So I think the problem with it is not that it's necessarily an experiment, but that it is very uneven and that's one moment.
There were a few other moments that were not as good as that, but they were good, but most of the time it was basically me just running in with a cricket bat and bashing several robots with pretty bad eye on the head, picking up the item and strolling back to the boat.
Right?
Yeah.
And this is my problem with the game, because this game to me is more like a concept that a developer would bring to a lead developer and say, hey, I had an idea for this game, I've been working on it for a couple of weekends, this is what I've got, what do you think?
And then a developer working for a major publisher would go, well, I see what you're going for here, but it's not going to be commercial, it's not something we can really back for $20 million sort of thing.
So, sorry.
But now there's an outlet for this.
Which is a good thing.
I think it is a good thing, because the ideas that are put forward in this game, which is by Big Robot, which is a British developer, will be picked up in other games.
So people who didn't play Tale of the Sun, it was released back in the 90s, will play this game, and some of those people will be working for studios and be able to incorporate some of the elements of this game.
And they themselves also have the potential to improve upon the idea.
Absolutely.
If they are successful.
So like you could totally see the major element of this game popping up in Far Cry 5 sort of thing.
And it comes back to the conversation we've had many, many times, which is that the products that we know and love will end up just being features in bigger products.
So like with JRPGs, there's scant room for JRPGs anymore, but you'll see JRPG features turning up in other products.
So in that case, you're absolutely right.
It's good that this game is able to get out there and be an influence for greater use.
And did you get off the first island?
Absolutely not.
Do you know what basic type of island the one you were on was?
It was like an English countryside.
Because on the atmosphere, there were two subsets that you could choose from that were, I think, atmospherically very good.
And the reason the country town did not work atmospherically is because, I would say, one, the procedural generation didn't result in a particularly interesting design.
And being a country town in the country, there were a few buildings here, a field there, and so on and so forth.
So unless you are a skillful artist, that's going to require a certain amount of skill to make interesting and atmospheric.
Yeah, because you're just talking about hedgerows and vines.
But there were two subsets that procedural generation worked well with.
One of them, I think, and I could be getting this confused with a different one, was a castle-y sort of area where there was a lot of rocky buildings, which were immediately going to be, as long as they're reasonably large, automatically somewhat imposing in this sort of context where everything is, has a very dull color tone, and so on and so forth.
So that doesn't require as much skill when it comes to placement or design to actually make it interesting.
And the best one, which worked really well, because the one thing that was well done with the graphics, I thought, was the lighting with the way, it went from day to night.
If you put that in an area with other similar visual effects, as this was, you then created a good atmosphere, because this was an industrial area.
So there was a lot of smoke, which nicely complemented the changing light.
And there was a huge amount of factory-looking buildings, and the town was a city town, where the way you're going to invoke a city sort of atmosphere is not through carefully planned architecture, but the opposite of that, of badly planned architecture, where everything has the impression of being stuck together, right?
Which works well with procedural generation.
So those two areas, especially the industrial one, actually had a really good atmosphere and was completely and instantly immersive from the whole time, from the beginning of when you arrived on the island to when you left it.
Okay, so I had an unfortunate choice of picking the worst environment to start the game in.
Which is the default one.
I think industrial, and maybe this is randomly chosen, but industrial wasn't one of the default choices.
I had to manually choose it because I wanted to see all the sets that you could choose from.
Yeah, well with mine, it just felt like a very empty world.
It was not engaging, and then I got to an area and I was underpowered and I got killed.
So, you know, I didn't feel much for this game whatsoever.
And it was built with the Unity engine.
Correct.
And that was my first impression as well, but once you get past that, there is definitely more there.
Not necessarily a huge amount more, but there is more.
Do you think, on the most cynical level, do you think that they chose procedural generation as a bullet point?
I mean, they could have just as easily created these lands, right?
But then they would have left themselves open to criticism of level design.
But by saying, oh no, it's all procedurally generated, then everyone's like, oh wow, yeah, everyone's going to have a different experience, that's cool, man.
But, yeah, but if it's procedurally generated and still bad, then it's bad.
And, you know, I mean, we can't question the motives as to why they chose procedural generation, but I would have to think they would have had a better game with proper layout and proper design.
Well, I would certainly have, um, in theory, as long as they were good game designers, of course, helped with the issues of consistency and the quality of the encounters.
Whether they're good or not, they are designing a game, so they need to own it.
And my thing is, is like, would you live in a procedurally generated house?
You know, would you see a procedurally generated movie?
Would you read a procedurally generated book?
And the answer is, fuck no.
Because it would be absolute gibberish.
Would it be interesting to look at?
Yeah, you'd flick through a few pages.
You'd watch the first 20 minutes.
But, you know, no.
No.
There's no place for procedural generation in video games.
And it's a cop-out.
It's your typical engineer cop-out where you've got a video game developer, where you've got an engineer like John Carmack, who isn't an artist, who isn't creative, and just goes, fuck it, let the code make the world.
Right?
And no, I'm sorry.
You need someone else to come in and create an actual world with the tools you've built.
I think it depends on the sort of game.
From my experience with playing Abyss Odyssey, it would make basically no difference once I figured out what I was doing, whether the world was procedurally generated or not.
And the reason for that is the procedural generation was done within such a limited set of parameters that there were certain architectures and certain archetypes that were repeated that you came to expect anyway, where it wasn't really different to if the game had been made as one level that you were replaying endlessly, because that was the impression you ended up with anyway, right?
So I think if you're making a game where the gameplay is designed, the structure of the game is that you're playing through the same things repeatedly, I'm not saying you're necessarily going to get the same quality of an exceptional game that is doing this, but as far as a good or mediocre game doing this, I don't think there's going to be a huge difference between if you're looking at a well-designed game and a procedurally generated one where the parameters are intelligently chosen.
And that's the other point, when you talk about parameters that are intelligently chosen, this was a game that was kickstarted, right?
And if you look at it, Kickstarter is a procedurally generated way of funding.
No one has to come in and say, look guys, I'm considering to give you $15-20 million to make a video game, so I want to see the plan, it's going to be organized, we're going to have a time frame, we're going to build it.
Instead, Kickstarter is a procedural generation of funds.
A bunch of low-intellect people give a small amount of money, and together, cumulatively, they fund the project.
And as a result, you get this sort of game.
Well, the difference being a small group of people of low-intellect funding games.
Well, I would say...
Do you honestly think that the...
You cannot argue with Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012 from the million-selling developer of Car Combat.
I mean, basically, they made the game.
GT Interactive made Car Combat.
They sold a million copies.
Then they went to some dickhead who had millions of dollars and said, dude, this is a winner.
Basically, this is like a guaranteed money-printing operation.
These guys made Car Combat.
Give us a million dollars, you'll make 20.
And I'm sure Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012 went on to make even more money than Car Combat, despite the lack of a creative name.
But the point being, do you honestly believe there is a discrepancy in quality of game design, not polish, between Kickstarter projects and traditionally published ones?
You said not polish.
Not in terms of polish, in terms of design.
I think that if you look at something, a game like Papers, Please, that obviously you can have games on the highest level of design, regardless of the level of funding.
So, but Kickstarter campaign is basically like a propellant that's irresponsibly applied to ideas that are both good and bad.
How is that any different to traditional publishing?
Because in traditional publishing, you are going to a single source of money where it's their money and they are responsible for it, right?
So, as opposed to Kickstarter, where you've got everyone kicking in 20 cents, there's no responsibility there.
No one gives a shit.
No one cares if it's a good or bad game.
But for the active...
My point is, that doesn't actually affect the quality of the game.
Well, but see, for the bobbycotics of the world and for the Ubisoft shareholders, you know, their feet are going to be held to the fire if they don't come through with a good game or a good selling game or a best selling game.
Watch Dogs.
Yeah, like Watch Dogs.
Best selling new IP of all time.
But these people aren't either, because they're not necessarily going to get funding for a new title.
I'm not going to say...
I can't honestly say that Sir You're Being Hunted is a better game than Watch Dogs.
I can't say that Watch Dogs is a better game than Sir You're Being Hunted.
I played them both for an equal amount of time and found them equally uncompelling.
But at the end of the day, the developers of Sir You're Being Hunted gets to walk away with money in their pocket.
And I guess the guys at Watch Dogs...
As do the developers' Watch Dogs.
Yeah, you're right.
God, that's depressing.
And by the way, Back to Bed, your favorite indie game of the podcast was also a Kickstarter game.
Oh, right on.
See?
So there you go.
So there you go.
Kickstarter.
Patron of the arts.
Yep, and just the final point on procedural generation is the question then has to be, once again, back to design and not engineering wherein, like in Abyss Odyssey, the procedural generation is used to a point, right?
Brilliant, yep.
To achieve something.
Exactly what you just said.
And that is the better articulation of what I'm saying.
Yep, which I think didn't happen in my playthrough of So You Were Being Hunted because the result was unevenness rather than variety, which was presumably the intention of procedural generation.
Right, yep.
And the one final thing...
It's engineering versus design.
I mean, you basically summed it up perfectly.
And if you can find the right balance, then obviously no one cares how you made the motherfucking game as long as the outcome is good.
And the final thing I have to say on Back to Bed is the credits rap song of Call of Duty.
Wait, wait, on Back to Bed?
Ah, Sir, slash Madam, You're Being Hunted.
Sorry.
You remember the rap song in the credits of Call of Duty, right?
Oh, of course.
Easily the greatest credit song in the history of video games.
Right?
I'll go with it for now, yes.
Yep.
Well, that has finally been usurped because Sir You Were Being Hunted has a credits rap song in it, which is even better.
Even better in a funny way?
Even better in a funny way.
Yes.
Yes.
That's what I thought because it's made by people in England.
Exactly.
Oh, God.
So they have a rap closing credit scene.
Now, the last time this was attempted, it was by Rare with DK Country 64.
DK Donkey Kong, you know.
I'd say this is better than that.
Well, it wouldn't be hard.
All right.
So what do you give the end credit song out of ten?
The end credit song, I give it a six out of ten.
Six out of ten, really?
Correct.
Did it have any references to Poppin Cat?
No, that's the Call of Duty one, I believe, that has references to Poppin Caps.
This one was the lyrics were entirely based around the game itself.
All right.
Well, I've gone to lyricsmania.com and looked up the DK Rap lyrics.
Here we go.
So they're finally here performing for you.
If you know the words, you can join in too.
Put your hands together if you want to clap as we take you through this monkey rap.
Huh?
DK Donkey Kong.
He's the leader of the bunch.
You know him well.
He's finally back to kick some tail.
His coconut gun can fire in spurts.
If he shoots you, it's gonna hurt.
He's bigger, faster and stronger too.
He's the first member of the DK crew.
Huh?
DK Donkey Kong.
Now, of course, the only thing I remember was his coconut gun can fire in spurts.
Um, that's all I remember.
But they go through and they sing about every character.
It talks about Kremlins, Walnuts, Peanuts, Chestnuts, you know, Kremlins.
I mean, it goes on and on and on.
But again, all I remember is the Chestnuts and his coconut gun can fire in spurts.
DK Donkey Kong.
So the song gets a 6.5, The Game.
The song gets a 6.
A 6.
I predict that the game will get a 4, or a 3.5 out of 10.
Well, I think you're listening to your impressions when you give that prediction and not mine.
Because I'm giving it...
What did I give Back to Bed?
6.5, because they're listening.
Wasn't it a 6 or did I raise it to a 6.5?
It was a 6, but you said 6.5 if they give you $6.50.
And also the credits.
So I was going to give this a 5.5, but I'm going to raise that to a 6 because of the credits.
I thought you would give it a 5, so that's alright.
That's a reasonable prediction.
You can't really recommend the game though.
I can.
I certainly wouldn't recommend it to you, but to someone who might enjoy a survival game...
To normal people, you would.
And with that, we'll close out episode 58 of The Game Under Podcast.
Thank you for joining me once again, Tom Towers.
Thank you.
I've had a great time talking about Sura, You're Being Hunted, Back to Bed, Call of Duty Black Ops, the other indie title we mentioned.
Surely we talked about...
ATV Simulator, and Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012.
And join us again in another couple of weeks where we're going to be talking about Transistor and other games.
Possibly The Wolf Among Us.
The Wolf Among Us for our adventure followers.
And you've also been playing...
Dark Souls 2.
Dark Souls 2.