Game Under Podcast 46

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript

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

I am Phil Fogg.

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

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

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

Senior lucrative analyst.

No, it's not only gareth.

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

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

Adam Burton, he posts some stuff as well.

Yep.

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

Oh, okay.

Well, I can see that would be taxing.

So, that would be fine.

Well, now, episode 46.

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

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

From Software, you probably know what it is.

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

Obviously, not any of those.

We can rule them out.

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

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

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

Okay.

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

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

You cannot access the internet.

So I'm like a Rip Van Winkle.

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

Yep.

There are 797 unread stories in my gaming feed.

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

All 791?

797.

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

Just to see what's been going.

Sounds like a bad idea to me.

It sounds like an excellent idea.

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

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

You had some really salient points in there.

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

Are you still on this game of the year idea?

No, no, no, no, no.

I thought you had some really good points.

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

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

Life, Shakespeare.

In general.

Adam Sessler.

All sorts of things.

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

Well, I do have to bring up one thing.

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

Well, can I explain to our American listeners?

Most of our listeners are from America.

So 2020 cricket is basically...

You know how baseball takes three hours.

An average cricket game takes about five to seven days.

So what Cricket Australia came up with...

I don't...

Cricket Australia invented...

I'm going to say so.

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

And who wouldn't?

Yeah.

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

Actually, it was probably Packer.

Yeah, Kerry Packer.

He invented the One Day series.

Channel 9.

So let's just say he invented...

Not 2020.

Well, One Day is better.

Let me just explain what it is.

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

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

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

And that was One Day Cricket, right?

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

That's an acceptable compromise, I would say.

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

And it was an enjoyable viewing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

So that also.

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

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

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

Yeah.

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

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

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

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

And that was the Civil War.

That was the one day Cricket World Cup.

And that was before we had television.

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

And let's just say...

So, catharsis at last.

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

Correct.

Yeah, so...

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

Oh, Sri Lanka?

Or Sri Lanka?

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

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

Yep.

And then, I'm going...

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

It goes Sri Lankar, Sri Lankar.

Yep.

That sounds authentic, doesn't it?

Sri Lankar.

Not bad.

Yeah, not bad.

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

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

One is Sri Lankar.

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

But...

That put you off.

Yeah, it did.

But I've always loved Sri Lanka.

I love the concept of it.

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

I just think Sri Lanka is great.

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

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

Well, and it's on an island too.

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

Yes.

Something similar to it at least.

But everywhere has a caste system.

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

So that everyone whinges about it.

Exactly.

Exactly.

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

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

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

In your case, it's Broken Age.

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

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

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

Correct.

Okay.

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

Okay.

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

Okay?

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

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

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

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

Okay, here's one.

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

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

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

So, game engines are now autonomous.

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

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

That's official now.

Yep.

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

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

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

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

So completely-

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

Exactly.

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

So-

We've got to give them credit for that.

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

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

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

That would be the what?

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

We're now on Generation 8.

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

I mean, that's a statement of fact.

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

This is, they're exactly right.

They must be measuring generations from PlayStation.

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

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

No, no, no.

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

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

I get what you're saying now, yes.

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

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

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

But is it a backhanded compliment?

Yes.

Okay.

It is.

Peter Moore said it was stupid.

He's no longer working for Microsoft, right?

Peter Moore, no, he works for EA.

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

No, he would not have commented.

Exactly.

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

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

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

Oh, really?

Of Persona 4.

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

Probably.

Sony survey hints at possible PlayStation 4 features.

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

So, cross-platform chat.

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

And several features that are already available.

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

Yes, exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

Ooh, yes, I know.

I'm multinational reviewer.

Now, we've been going through...

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

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

So, we've been going through the news.

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

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

Yes.

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

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

So...

I've been all over.

How much was Meta Gear Solid Two Hours at retail?

Yeah, at retail, $30.

Oh, 30?

Retail and digital, yeah.

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

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

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

60 bucks?

60, yeah.

Oh, that's pretty good.

That's really good.

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

Which game would you want the most?

Metal Gear.

It wasn't even close.

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

Zelda and Metal Gear, those are my two favorites.

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

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

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

That game is fun as hell.

The gameplay has been taken to another level.

I cannot wait for Metal Gear Solid 5.

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

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

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

I mean, what is the gameplay?

Is it third-person action?

Is it stealth?

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

Yeah, the gameplay has changed a lot.

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

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

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

That was introduced in Metal Gear Solid 4.

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

So the controls are a lot more modern and fluid.

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

Now Snake moves a lot smoother.

He can hop on things, jump around.

It's just much easier to control.

It makes a lot more sense.

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

And the stealth has been-

As good as Max Payne 3?

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

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

And that's the entire point of that game.

That's not the point of Metal Gear.

Yes, shooting is better.

It's still basic.

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

It's not as good as Max Payne 3.

So, what's the next game?

So why are we talking about it?

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

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

Exactly.

So it gets concessioned.

But they took away the jokiness, right?

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

That is a problem with this version.

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

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

We love the story of Metal Gear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's all streamlined, very basic stuff.

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

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

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

Yes.

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

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

No, that's fine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, yes.

Obviously, there's that.

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

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

Okay, so, yes.

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

I do think that they're not screwing consumers.

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

Absolutely, yes, I understand.

From that point of view, you're correct.

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

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

It could have packaged it in.

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

Some prologues are being made just to sell the main game, like with Gran Turismo.

So they probably needed that little cushion of time and money, so this kind of gives them that.

And at first, I was very afraid that this would harm the brand, like if people had no clue what was going on.

They end up, hey, look, a cheap Metal Gear game.

They buy it and they're like, it's over in like two hours.

And they're watching the credits for old and they're like, what the hell just happened?

Because they weren't like informed.

I thought that would hurt the brand, but I think they got the word out enough in at least most of the websites.

And honestly, the replay value is so much fun.

Like I don't see how $30 felt worth it.

Like I love it.

The price is a big indicator too, even to the Madden exclusive buyer.

He's going to know that he's getting less.

And when he goes up to the counter and goes, oh, this is only $30, the guy at the counter is going to go, oh yeah, it's basically just a couple of hours.

It's just a demo.

It's like that Resident Evil game that was only playable online that I bought for the PlayStation 2.

Yeah, outbreak.

It was cheaper.

And when you went up to the front, the clerk always said, hey, you know this is only online, right?

You know, that sort of thing and I think $30, everyone knows what they're getting into at that point.

I think that that's a fine price to kind of indicate to the end consumer.

And the other thing is, I didn't think Konami did this as a cash grab.

I think they did this to keep the brand relevant because how long has it been since Metal Gear Solid 4?

2008 and the next game is going to be released in 2015.

So, I think this was a good move.

I think it's a good price.

And I think other than the criticisms of the length.

Yeah, I'll say that.

You look at the reaction, everyone's really happy with it.

And it gets everybody excited for the gameplay possibilities of Metal Gear Solid 5.

If this is that much fun with just one little base that you can explore, imagine what happens when they open up the entire world and now you have the boss fights and the story and everything goes along with it.

It's exciting.

So I started off not liking the move and now I think it was genius.

And I'm happy.

As a Metal Gear fan, I needed this.

I needed that little Metal Gear fix.

I've got another question about them releasing in this way.

Is the content in this demo going to be part of the main game in Metal Gear Solid 5?

Right, he has said before that it will be separate content.

Now I am pretty damn sure that there'll be some collector's edition that will include it, or there'll be some pre-order bonus so you get it for free, something like that.

But the plan is that when you buy the actual disc of Metal Gear Solid 5, this part is not in that disc.

Yeah, because that's what actually annoys me about this is because then for someone that does play Metal Gear Solid for the story as much as for the gameplay, while also appreciating the gameplay as top-of-the-line gameplay, that's then going into it with missing a large chunk because I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in either paying $5 or $10 for it as DLC or pre-ordering Metal Gear Solid 5.

Is there enough story in it that will detract from Metal Gear Solid 5, do you think?

There's one important moment in this, the last scene, and that kind of leads into how we get to Metal Gear Solid 5.

Well, I mean, there's YouTube, so just go online and watch it.

No big deal.

The whole point of buying this is to play it.

If you really want to watch the story, you can just hop online right now and watch it.

So, Snake dies again.

Yeah, exactly.

Alright, so, I'm sorry.

So, how does this radically, to get you back into the description of the game, and then we'll leave you alone, how does it radically differ, radically differ from Metal Gear Solid 4?

From Metal Gear Solid 4?

Yeah, before, the way the stealth is handled just feels like a different game, where in Metal Gear Solid 4, you still kind of had the radar.

There wasn't an actual radar, like traditional Metal Gear Solid games, but you still had that little cone of noise, and then you could put the eye radar thing on, and it kind of gives you bleeps of where everybody is.

And you also had the camo index, and the way the level was designed was still kind of, I don't know, smaller sections where guards were kind of always doing their little patrols, their lines, and you could still kind of avoid their line of sight and just how they go.

And it still had that kind of, I don't know, I always describe Metal Gear as sort of a strange take on Pac-Man where you kind of try to avoid their line of sight as you go around them.

Still had that feel.

Metal Gear Solid 5 is now in an open base.

These people can see from a long distance, and there is no, the level design is not set so you have places to hide.

It's just open.

You just need to figure out, use this wall to protect me from that guy over there.

I need to quickly run into that little hallway, so that I mean, so that they can't see me.

It's totally open.

It is completely up to you how to hide from people.

It is just a natural hide behind objects type of thing, like if you would in real life.

From that description, I mean, how does this compare to say Far Cry 3?

Well, Far Cry 3 had a similar type thing where you had to infiltrate enemy bases and use stealth and that was a, why?

Very similar because they took the radar system where if you zoom in on a character from far away, you'll mark them and now you can see them through walls.

And that's kind of the radar, quote unquote radar system of this game.

You need to, from afar, get to a high area, look at all the different troops, you kind of mark them and now you can follow them and you can avoid them.

And in Far Cry it's very similar to that.

So once you have the mark, you can kind of plan your way around the battlefield and get to them one by one.

So what you're saying is this is derivative of what Crytek has already done.

Not derivative, but they've taken, definitely they have taken elements of that and put still, it's still Metal Gear.

So when the action starts up, everything goes crazy.

Well, you know, honestly, for a franchise's story of this, I'd love to see them not taking it in a new direction.

Like, you know, because I argue again, I know you differ with the direction that Final Fantasy has taken.

You'd say that's good and all the rest of it.

You know, I don't like it, but it's good that Konami has looked at other players in the field and adjusted to it and incorporated, you know, good ideas from other players.

So for them to, you know, to borrow from Far Cry or whatever, that's what Western developers do all the time.

And it's quite often what Japanese developers don't do.

So it's actually encouraging to me to hear you talk about, you know, the newer elements that they've been able to be influenced by.

With the stealth, when you're going through the level, given that it's open, in the old Meta Gear Solid games and in most stealth games, like The Last of Us does this as well, generally what they're doing is they put you in your linear environment.

They might have a few pathways.

And the objective is generally simply to reach the next area.

How does that then work if it is, in fact, a completely open area?

Well, you can do what you want.

That's the fun of this.

If you want, I mean, the objective is go to one side of the map, capture, I mean, save a prisoner, go to the other side of the map, save another prisoner, and get them to the extraction point.

How you do this is completely up to you.

You could totally ignore it and just run into the middle of the base, blow up a helicopter, have everybody run at you, and then kind of try to sneak away while everybody's like, and like checking out why did that explosion happen?

You could create anything you want.

You could steal vehicles.

Now you could drive around if you want.

You could hop into a tank and just blow everybody up.

So it's still effectively the same, but just completely open.

Yeah, it's open.

It's just there's a freedom that I never felt in any Metal Gear Solid game.

It's just, I can't wait for it to get into like the major part of the game.

When all the weird, crazy Kojima stuff starts adding, mixing into that, it's just going to be brilliant.

I just can't even imagine what they could do with boss battles in open fields like this.

It should be fantastic.

So the only other thing I've been worrying about then is what effect the regenerating health has on it.

I hardly noticed it at all.

I mean, I always, in past Metal Gear games, I had so many rations.

Like, health is never an issue for me.

So just the fact that it really regenerates, so what?

When you're in the middle of the combat and you start being shot at, I don't know.

You're just going to try to find cover, but if they ambush you, you're dead.

Forget the regen health.

They're going to get you.

They really come at you.

They come out from all different directions.

There's no way to put something towards your back.

They could be coming from the back, from the sides, and if they get you unaware, you're done.

So it's not like it turns you into a superhuman from other third-person centers?

I've never felt like I got superpowers because of it.

And I always felt like if it was a traditional Metal Gear game, I would have just ran around the corner and used the ration and come out the same exact way as I was regenerating.

So it doesn't really make that much of a difference.

That is good.

Before we move on to your impressions of Second Son, the third game in the InFamous series from...

Sucker Punch.

Right.

From an American's perspective, where do you see, quote, the console wars at this point between the PlayStation 4, the Wii U and the Xbox One?

What is the general feel?

I know you've got a lot of friends who like to play Madden and Call of Duty and things like that.

How is it playing out on the ground between these three consoles?

Forget Wii U.

Is the Wii U a GameCube level failure, a Sega Saturn level failure, or a Dreamcast level failure?

Man, Dreamcast level failure is a fantastic failure.

I would say Saturn.

I mean, honestly, it's Saturn right now.

Yeah, I'd agree.

I never understood the GameCube as being a failure because I was such a fan of it that EA was still releasing titles for it and all the rest of it.

I got every game I wanted on it.

At that time, GameCube and Xbox sold about the same $20 million.

That was a very successful system for them.

As a generation, it was an anomaly where every system sold up to $60 million, $70 million.

That's crazy.

That never happens.

No, I loved the GameCube, and it had the closest thing that Nintendo ever had to a conventional controller from that point on, obviously.

And then, the Saturn was kind of stillborn.

I mean, it has great, great, great games, but obviously, I'm feeling that the Wii U is on that Saturn level.

If you want it, there are about six games that you could play for it, but not much more.

It always has a chance to jump from Saturn level to Dreamcast level with the Mario Kart, maybe, but right now, it's at Saturn level.

There's just no demand.

No one cares for it.

It's just there.

There are a few games and those that want it, buy it.

It's a specialty machine.

And so when you say failure, you don't mean literally as a console, but the library, because...

Dreamcast is clearly a larger fail than the Saturn.

Oh, fuck no.

I mean, I'm talking about library.

All I'm talking about is library.

Oh, okay.

I'm talking about sales.

No, fuck sales.

I'm talking about library, because I put Dreamcast on the same level of SNES in terms of the library.

Now, you have a broader range with the SNES, but in terms of the quality titles, the SNES, the Dreamcast and the DS are all on that same level, where at a certain point, you're talking about 12, 14, 15, 20 games where you've got to play them if you want to know what's going on.

You know?

Gamecast is the best failed system on all time.

There's not even a contest.

No, not even a contest.

Yeah.

In terms of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, on the ground, it feels just like last generation.

It seems to be my friends who were Xbox, mostly Xbox gamers bought the Xbox One.

They're still playing Call of Duty and they're playing those shooters type of games on the Xbox with Xbox Live.

The people who like PlayStation bought a PS4.

In terms of sales, yeah, it's clear cut that the PS4 is in the lead and it will probably lead the entire generation.

But it doesn't feel like there's one giant winner right now.

It just feels like last gen.

Except the flip is more people have the PlayStation 4, where last gen more people have the 360 here in America.

But it's still almost 50% good.

Do you think Titanfall changes the equation?

Because my impression from afar is that Titanfall was big in terms of its media push, but in terms of community grasp, has rapidly declined.

Buying that out with the MPD, I can't really tell just being on the ground.

I went to the midnight launch because I wanted to buy Dark Souls, and it was the most pathetic sad midnight launch I've ever seen.

It was like 13 people, really sad.

So it's not Call of Duty levels, but there is some buzz, and people who played it are very excited, and my friends think it was a pretty damn good game, and I'm sure it sold a few Xboxes, but it's not going to be that gigantic.

So it's not Halo level hype?

No, no, no, definitely not.

It could have been a slow burn, like Call of Duty 4 was.

Things kind of started slow and grew and grew and grew into a monster.

So we'll see.

Alright, well back to PlayStation 4.

I mean, arguably the biggest exclusive they've had so far is Sucker Punch's infamous Second Son, the third game in the Sucker Punch franchise.

The first one had Cole, who was a moody bike courier.

The second one had Cole, who was slowly coming to grips with his superpowers.

And the third one presumably is his son.

No, there's no relation whatsoever.

Totally new cast of characters.

Oh, okay.

So why is it called Second Son?

Wow, that's a good question.

So they don't actually address that in the story?

No, there are no sons of anybody in this game.

It's a totally different time period, different world, different city.

Okay.

Now, they mention Cole.

Obviously, the events that occurred in InFamous 2 lead directly to this kind of military state where the conduits are now always put into prison and they're not allowed in the outside.

It's pretty much an X-Men type scenario where mutants' conduits are being rounded up and put away.

And now you discover you're a conduit and now you need to save a bunch of people who are trying to protect you and you need to go hunt down the head person who's trying to round up all the conduits.

All right.

You're not selling any copies here.

This is pretty boring.

I don't want to sell any copies because I think this is the worst InFamous game that there is.

Well, yeah, I mean, the second one was pretty bad though.

Did you beat it?

No, no.

Yeah, I like the second one.

I really like the first two.

Now, I'm probably in the minority where I think the first one is still the best of the InFamous game.

No, the first one is the best.

A lot of people think InFamous 2 is the best one.

Well, a lot of people suck blank, but you know...

There we go.

I agree.

So, I mean, the second one is horrible because it goes into Super Hero League and they've got that woman who's...

I mean, as bad as Trish was in the first one, in the second one, they have this catwoman-like character that is just absolutely bloody horrible.

It's nowhere near as good as the first one.

Yeah, well...

Now you've got that out of your system.

Right, good job.

I like it.

The problem with this game is basically it feels like half a game.

I swear, it feels like Sucker Punch is in the middle of development and Sony gives a call comes in from the way up top management and they're like, we need you to have this game ready for launch.

And they're like, we only have like ten missions.

You have two more months to get this done.

What the fuck, bro?

Shit!

And you know, they're just running around.

Just get this out.

Just add that.

It just feels like half a game.

No, this is how the game goes.

This is how the call...

Yeah, this is Jack Trutton here.

We're about to fire Amy Henning and the game director of Uncharted 4.

Oh, shit!

Doesn't really matter.

It involves some sexual activity with balls on the face in the motion capture studio.

But in any case, we're gonna need you guys to finish up a game here.

Why is he like half Kennedy?

What happened there?

He's Jack Trutton.

Jack F.

Trutton.

Ask not what Sony can do for you, but ask what you can do for Sony.

So basically, the game is structured where it's Seattle, and you have like two islands kind of connected with one bridge.

And every area is...

Okay, it becomes like a grid, and like the island is sectioned off into let's say like eight pieces.

Each piece has a center point where that's where like the guards are.

You have to go to that point, kill everybody there, blow up like the central machine, and now like the little side missions become available in that small section.

And you just do that over and over again, every single section.

Nothing changes.

It's those same steps every single step of the way throughout the game.

And the side missions that open up in each location are identical.

There is no change at all.

And these things are the most simplest stuff.

Stuff like, find the camera and shoot it.

Or, find the guy, like, they give you a picture of a guy on the phone.

So, like, the picture just appears on the top corner of the screen.

And it's just some random guy, and it, like, shows you a circle on the map.

A little small section is, like, look for that guy and shoot him.

Okay.

And you just do that over and over again for the entire game.

And those are your side missions.

And then the actual main missions of the game, there's about 15 of them, and then the game's over.

Whoa, 15?

Yeah.

How long are they each?

It can range from 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the...

If there's a boss fight or just, you know...

Wow, so that's how we end it.

So, I mean, if you want to speed run this thing, you could be done in seven hours, pretty sure.

Shit.

I mean, I don't give a shit about the side missions.

And I find those photo ones, because I had those in Grand Theft Auto V or Saints Row 3, I can't remember now.

We were just like, go steal this car.

Actually, yeah, that was Grand Theft Auto V.

Yeah.

And they show you the photo and you have to figure it out.

It's like, those are the worst side missions ever.

But I mean, those at least have an open world.

Like, they ask you to find that, but you have the whole city to find it, so you kind of have to, like, really look.

Here, they actually, they put a tiny circle.

I mean, literally, it's like two feet long.

Like, it's like a park.

You can see everybody in the park.

You could just clearly just turn the camera around and find it.

Like, there's good effort whatsoever.

It is so basic.

I couldn't believe that's what they, like, attempted to put out there and be like, oh yeah, that's our content.

It just felt like something is missing, something.

And then, like, they actually added content after the game came out.

They added a few missions.

They're slightly better, but it still doesn't make up for just the general lack of content in a big open world game.

Where the whole point is to always have, you know, different missions available.

You can do this, you can do that.

No, there's not much to do.

What about in the context of a limited open world game?

Like, you know, the Hulk games from the fifth generation, you know, from sixth generation, that sort of thing.

Where it's not really about an open world.

It's more about, you know, it's not really competitive.

Yeah, Hulk destruction.

Yeah, Hulk hands, that sort of thing.

Yeah, that had like a combat system and you could grow your character.

I mean, you do that in this game too.

But that one, the combat felt better, honestly.

That game, the Hulk ultimate destruction.

Yeah, hands of destruction.

And I felt that game had a lot more missions.

Just the main missions alone, like almost every open world game, no matter what, they're close to 30 missions.

Plus also the fact that that was 10 years ago.

The fact that there's only 12 missions and they're about 10 minutes each.

And if someone ignores...

Alright, 10 to 20 minutes.

And the fact that someone ignores the side missions, that's just not enough game.

On the...

in the launch window spectrum of, say, a Blue Stinger for the Dreamcast, though, I mean, does it serve the purpose of there's not a lot of games, I want something that's good-looking that I couldn't have gotten on the previous generations?

Does it at least suit that category?

It is the graphical showcase of any other game you could find.

That thing, you want to show people, put that game up.

It's gorgeous.

The particle effects, I've never seen anything like it.

Just the way, like you have a power that absorbs neon light.

So when you go under a neon sign, you just see the light particles that get absorbed from the sign, enter your hand.

It's beautiful.

Beautiful use of lighting and the graphical power of PlayStation 4.

But in terms of game play, you could just play the old ones.

They're better.

I'd say for 60 bucks though in the US, it basically serves the purpose that you've spent $500 on a console, you want to play something that validates your purchase, and it looks good and you can show frames.

I would expect that that's all we can expect at this point from the PlayStation.

I guess.

I mean, I was kind of being reviewed, not reviewed, but previewed as the next big game for this game, and they talked about the multiple powers you're going to get, and it looked like the combat was taking a step forward.

And while the gameplay is very good, and in some ways it's better than the first two, and in some ways it's not, the rest of the structure of the game just takes too much away from the experience.

I think there's good enough core gameplay there, where if they actually put effort into the design of the levels and boss battles and all that and gave you more missions, this would have been one of the best games of the year, and it could have been a AAA title.

I think everything is holding them back.

It's not just the structure that is awful, but the level design as well.

Beyond just a side quest.

Yeah, I think so too.

You've played these types of missions before, it's always like chase the person and then shoot him, or just go into the group of enemies, and there's only like six different enemies in the entire game, and they just keep coming at you the same way over and over again.

And, well, it could be fun because your powers are very destructive, and it's cool, and it's fun, and you can fly, and you can do this, and you can, you know, it just feels like you're a superhero.

They got that far down.

But give me stuff to do, you know?

That's all I ask.

I want an actual game to go around it.

And the boss battles they do have, I have to say, there are a few that are pretty genius, and they're pretty well done, and I just wish there was more than like four of them.

Alright, so if it's 40 bucks, does that change your perspective?

Yeah, yeah, I would have been better.

Right now it's 60, I felt like I got ripped off, and I actually feel Meta Gear was a better deal of the two.

Well, I mean, InFamous did sell a million copies Sony Australia announced in nine days, so, I mean, that's pretty good.

There are people online that think this is the best InFamous game.

I don't know why, the crowd is blown, but there are people that are happy.

There are idiots who are trying to justify their purchase of a, you know, $500 console.

I think they bought the newest, prettiest game on the system, and they're happy to have this pretty game to show off, and they'll just go along with it, and they say, oh, it's almost ten hours, but I love those ten hours, it's fantastic.

And no, it could be so much better.

Like, these types of games are built to last, you know, to have tons of missions, have lots of variety, this game fails in that aspect.

I've got one more question about InFamous.

Yes.

So I've got to ask, on behalf of the Endless Backlog Podcast, in your jet setting, have you been to Seattle?

No, I have not.

Well then, that question's around the corner.

I also...

That's one of the few major cities I've not visited.

I also have not been to Seattle, but I do know that Sucker Punch is based in Seattle.

So, you wish to direct your question to me?

You wouldn't have bothered because you haven't been to Seattle.

And you haven't played the game, so...

But I can...

You're even more used to...

But I can tell you that the game does accurately portray Seattle and captures the feeling of what Seattle is actually like.

Seattle is a bad city to have a video game in.

Because I didn't think the city was that interesting at all.

At least in terms of video game, like Traversal and all that.

So, you've been playing any other video games you want to tell us about?

Well, I have Dark Souls 2.

I finished that after many, many hours of playing.

Well, Tom Towers has already beaten Dark Souls 2.

So, what was your impression?

Yeah, what was your impression?

I loved it.

It's still Dark Souls, so it's still one of my favorite franchises, but I will definitely say it's the worst of the series.

But it's the worst of the series and not in the way of like, oh man, that was really bad.

I mean, it's just third place.

Where do you see it going from here?

They need to put more surprises.

It's gotten to the point where hardcore Souls fans that played every game know all the tricks already.

So, when we go to an area, we're like, okay, I know this guy's going to do that.

I kind of understand what's going to happen here.

I know how to fight this kind of boss.

I know how to...

It's almost like with Zelda, where we already know all the puzzles and how to solve them already.

It's getting to that point with Dark Souls.

I think they need to surprise us.

May I suggest that they will do one more cash-in, and then they'll move on to their next thing?

Yes.

And then that one more cash-in will just be that one that breaks the camel's back.

That's just, okay, that's too much.

They'll have to do one more cash-in.

They'll have to.

Now, I'm playing another Prom Software game right now that I know that you also enjoyed.

And I know, I want your perspective on it, because I'm enjoying this kind of game for the very first time in my life, and that is 3D.GameHeroes.

It's Prom Software.

They do make fun of Dark Souls in it, and they do make reference to Prom Software in it, including a semen-covered lady inside of the Prom Studio's cave, which I'm assuming is some sort of violation of workplace hostile environment types, you know?

Not in Japan.

Not in Japan.

And how do they make fun of Dark Souls, given that this was released before Dark Souls?

You come up against a player in a video game store, and she's like, I tried to play this game, but it's too hard and I don't like it.

Do you want to swap it for another game?

And the name of the game is Dark Souls.

Right, well, Dark Souls was coming out of that.

Or Demon Souls.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

So it was Demon Souls.

Yeah, that's better.

And when you walk into Prom Software, you get to talk to all the video game developers, and there's one girl in there who's dressed in pink, and they make a semen joke.

Or a Bukkake joke, basically, which is not very funny.

So as someone who loves Zelda as much as you do, I'm really enjoying the temples.

I'm up to the Desert Temple right now, so I'm about halfway through the game.

And I love this game.

It is just classic Zelda.

Zelda 1, which is something that Nintendo's abandoned.

It just has that kind of feel, like, that it's hard, it's difficult, where a lot of Zelda games now are not.

And the puzzles were pretty, they were basic, but they were still, I don't know, it just worked.

You still had to use your mind, and it was a little bit, it wasn't as laid out for you as it is now.

And graphically, I mean, I think this predates Minecraft, doesn't it?

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's got a lot going for it.

I just think that this game is hugely underrated for a From Software title, and for also its contributions to gaming in general.

I mean, it gives you that isometric view that's somewhat 2D, but also 3D, and it gives you that Lego, you know, Minecraft kind of feel.

But from a gameplay perspective, it's something that completely appreciates Japanese RPGs and the original Zelda.

And I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

I'm about seven hours into it, and absolutely loving it.

And it doesn't actually predate Minecraft, it predates the official final release date, but not when it was available to play over the two year or so beta period.

And Japanese wouldn't have been aware of that anyway.

Just to be clear, From Software didn't exactly develop it.

They had one of these other teams.

They kind of like, they oversaw the project.

I forgot which team it was.

They recently made a game.

I forget which one.

People were like, Oh, they're the guys who did 3D Dark Game Heroes.

And I forget who.

Yeah, Silicon Studios.

Yeah, Japanese development is a lot like that.

You have games that are, quote, developed by Nintendo, but they're really not.

There's a lot of these shadow development studios.

It would never pass in the West, because in the West, everyone's focused on ego and wants to get credit for what they're doing.

Yeah.

All right, well, with that, David, we thank you for your report.

We welcome you back at any time.

Yeah, definitely.

And we're going to plow...

Especially if we're doing a news podcast.

Please come on in.

Yeah, we're going to plow on through the news.

So with that, you may leave us now.

Goodbye.

Well, that was great to hear from Dave.

Indeed it was.

I would...

If it can come on more in the future.

I would like to go back into the news, but now that we're talking about current games and things like that, you know, last time we talked about an hour and a half about Broken Age.

Only an hour of it got into the podcast, and you had only played about 20 minutes of it.

So before we go back into the news, I'd like to hear, you know, ultimately how that went for you.

Have you played much more Broken Age?

I have, in fact, now finished the act one, the first act.

Oh, really?

Indeed.

It's only about four hours long.

That's good.

If you talk to everyone, as I always do, and go through all the item descriptions, etc.

That's really good.

I mean, four hours.

That's the sort of length you'd expect.

Half your average adventure game, modern adventure game length, for this sort of adventure game, they're usually about eight hours long.

So if it's broken up into two halves, you'd expect it to be about four hours.

And so I assume at least part of what made it until last week was how fucking godawful it was in pretty much every facet of its design and being.

I didn't think you were that harsh on it.

I wasn't.

I think I was in parts.

Because you have to remember, of course I then talked about Homefront, but there's different degrees of godawfulness.

Well, for the first adventure game from Double Fine ever, we can say that, and for the first adventure from Tim Schafer in about 15 years, you would expect it to be pretty clunky.

You wouldn't expect it to match modern standards where people have been continuing to work on and build these games for 15 years.

Well, clunky certainly wasn't the problem with it, but I assume at least a little reason why that went into it.

So I'll begin by pointing out a few of things that did improve drastically.

And bearing mind that I started playing as the black woman, so when I say the beginning of the game, I'm referring to the beginning of her part.

The overall music which I mentioned, which was just completely over the top and intrusive, was toned down to a more standard, quirky, humorous background.

It wasn't trying to be dramatic as well, and then fitted the tone of the game much, much better until the end, including during the more dramatic moments as well.

They didn't do the kind of half and half thing they did at the beginning where it was trying to be humorous as well as dark.

Later on when there were dark moments, it was just straight up dramatic.

And let the humor in the dramatic and dark moments come out through the characters and the writing and so on and so forth.

It worked a hell of a lot better.

The voice acting as well.

Apparently they decided to place the awful people at the beginning of the first side of the story.

And it's bizarre because a lot of them at the beginning of the game are good voice actors.

Like Jennifer Hale is playing her mother and is...

her tone of voice and so forth is fine, but beyond that she is fucking awful like everyone else is at the beginning of the game.

Which is huge amount down to the writing there as well.

But once you get past that beginning of the game, the writing also improves practically and is classic Tim Schafer humorous dialogue where he does change style for characters and so on and so forth.

So my only thing I can come up with to explain why the beginning was so fucking awful was the darker, but not so much darker, more vaguely more serious and commentary, social commentary style of the beginning compared to other Tim Schafer stuff, which is not to imply that it, in a different context, could possibly be described as being anything akin to social commentary.

So it could be that he was unable to direct something that did something different to what he'd done in pretty much every single other game he's made.

So this game does have social commentary whereas the others did not?

As far as Tim Schafer is concerned, it does.

As far as anyone else, it does not.

Okay, so what level of bombast does the social commentary reach in this game?

Well, you could interpret it as having some vague comments on feminism and social pressures.

Alright.

Which are most overt at the beginning of the game, and that is where the game fails the most in terms of its presentation.

Yep, so after you get past that, then everything about the presentation becomes enjoyable and they reach the correct balance with the cartooniness of the voice acting with the visual style of the music as well.

So after that, Astralis presentation is concerted is exactly what I was expecting out of a Tim Schafer directed adventure game.

And the nods back to his old adventure games, then you can enjoy as rather than being a cheap attempt at gaining sympathy out of the player through nostalgia, then become an experience that enriches the otherwise more contemporary style.

Because Tim Schafer's games generally are slightly more cartoony than Broken Age is.

And for example, What They Do, which was one of the hallmarks of Tim Schafer games, and there were other games that did this as well, but Tim Schafer, as far as I'm concerned, his games did the best of adventure games at the time, which is when you're walking around the environments, characters aren't just standing there waiting for you to go up to talk to them.

They might be singing a song or talking to each other, and they've got dialogue that plays as audio as well as subtitles and so on and so forth, so that the world feels slightly more alive than it would in other adventure games where you have to manually start a character off to talk directly to you, or even if they're talking to each other, you have to go over to them and click on them, and only then do they start talking to each other.

Okay, so it's more...

it is actually more aware of current adventure game conventions and mechanics.

I wouldn't say that's a current adventure game convention at all, but it is certainly aware of current adventure game conventions in the puzzles, because the puzzles, unfortunately, from the beginning do not improve.

There is pretty much nothing that you could describe as a puzzle that requires any sort of thought whatsoever.

My brain has been conditioned into thinking of puzzles in adventure game terms and being very wary of experimenting, because back in the day, certain experiments could instantly get you killed, right?

Which has been pretty much removed from adventure gaming, the adventure game vocabulary today in terms of puzzle design, but I'm still very cautious about what I'm doing.

So the only time in the entire game that I didn't immediately know the solution to a puzzle, I actually did immediately know the solution to the puzzle, but due to the inherent danger involved in that solution, I thought I'd better try and come up with another way to solve the puzzle.

So pretty much every single puzzle in the game, as soon as you come across it, you know what the solution is.

And often beforehand, in the other side of the game, the man side of the game, it's a much less linear structure than in the woman side.

And there are times where you get up to the solution to a puzzle before you actually have the puzzle.

So there's times where you actually know what you're meant to be doing and what you're going to end up doing, but you can't actually do it because you haven't talked to character X who tells you you've got to go and do this because this problem, we've been presented with this problem.

So it's just really, really uninteresting and basic, boring puzzle design.

I'm not sure it's quite on the level of something like The Walking Dead, but it's certainly close to it.

So when you say the man side of the game, the woman side of the game, there are two main protagonists in this game, one female, one male.

Do you play through the exact same activities as both of them?

What do you mean by activities?

Well, do you play through the game as the female character and then play through the game as the male character, or does it go backwards and forwards?

No, you start, you pick whichever character you want to play as at the beginning, and then you play up until the end of their section of the game, and they are in completely different settings, and they do feature different puzzles, so it's not as if you are repeating the same thing again.

And they do, on top of that, they do present the structure of each character's story in a different way, which makes it much more interesting than it otherwise would be.

So, for example, in the woman's side, you are basically just wandering around from area to area, solving the puzzles that you need to move on to the next area, which is also a problem because the writing of her, she is just completely and utterly uninteresting.

The performance has no charisma in it whatsoever, and there's nothing interesting about her dialogue, her comments are completely banal and dull, she's got no sense of humor whatsoever, and when she does make a humorous comment, it's completely uninteresting and unfunny and unwitty.

And this is a problem because you are just basically moving at a very placid sort of pace from area to area, so there's no real tension in it until the very end of the entire two hour section.

There is absolutely no tension, except at the beginning, but everything else is so shit at the beginning, it doesn't matter that there's tension.

So to me, her side was...

The side characters were enjoyable and humorous, but it was still a chore to plow through it.

Now, on his side, for one thing, Elijah Wood, he's certainly not a good voice actor.

He is a very, very unskilled vocal performer.

When they present him with anything other than dialogue, like him reading out descriptions of items or having to do some exposition or something along those lines, which he wouldn't have as much experience with in his acting, he is just abysmal.

He completely loses the tempo that he does in dialogue elsewhere.

He loses his vocal tone, and he just sounds completely unengaging and shit, which when you're doing exposition and describing items, you need to be doing it as narration rather than dialogue, and he's reading it out as dialogue, and it's not written as dialogue, it's written as exposition and narration, so it sounds fucking awful.

But when he is doing dialogue, he is playing Elijah Wood just as well as he has played Elijah Wood in every other single role, and personally, I've got nothing against Elijah Wood.

I think in the right role, he plays this completely ineffective, mincing, middling persona really, really well in an engaging, humorous, ironic way.

In effectual indeed.

Exactly, yeah.

And so with him there, he's then enough to thrust you through that section.

And on top of that, they also apply a hell of a lot more narrative tension as well through a sense of mystery and discovery, which was not there in the other side whatsoever.

And also in a genuine sense of time, where you've got to achieve certain things, even if it is a complete illusion, you've got to achieve certain things within a time limit, or bad shit is going to happen, which is not there in the other side at all whatsoever.

And the other thing which they do, which makes this Elijah Wood side so much more effective, is they realize that because the puzzles are so utterly banal and uninteresting, they need to do something abstract with the structure.

So Elijah Wood side starts out where you're repeating this Groundhog Day style structure, where you are going through the exact same motions, exact same settings again and again, and each time they're trying to work out what you can do to cause something different to happen and break the cycle, right?

So it's an interesting structural diversion from then when you are just then navigating the one area and going through puzzles or multiple areas as you were in the other side.

Okay, so now, so as you're playing as the female character, you're not really going through the same levels, though, are you?

No, you're not.

They're different levels, but because there's absolutely no tension whatsoever, it doesn't really matter.

The only appeal is finding the slightly different style of humorous characters in each area.

If the puzzle...

And that's a basic adventure game structure, of course, but the reason that that is then interesting in other adventure games is because you come across new and interesting puzzles.

You don't come across new and interesting puzzles.

You come across the same completely uninteresting puzzles that are effectively no different from one another.

And they follow the same exact structure as well.

So in gameplay terms, you could describe it as you're going through the one area again and again.

Okay, so you get all this money from Kickstarter, and you're making an adventure game, right?

Yep, and I will say one thing.

Once again, you could make an argument that they were doing something different with the opening section of the female side, but once again, I would argue that it is so shit that whatever the fuck they were trying in their slightly different structure didn't fucking matter whatsoever.

I was just going to say, you get all this money from Kickstarter, so you're like, okay, we're playing with nostalgia here, but we're a real company as well, and we've been given a lot of money.

Now, we're going to blow a lot of that on a documentary about us making this game, but even so, we are going to make this game.

And a lot of money on Elijah Ward and Jack Black.

Oh, good God.

Jack Black, I would say Jack Black was...

If they'd given him a larger role, he's basically got a cameo role in it, would have been worth the money, because he is excellent in the cameo role, but I really can't see how they can justify spending money on hiring Elijah fucking Ward, when you could have got pretty much any reasonably skilled voice actor to play Elijah Ward voice acting just as well as Elijah Ward plays Elijah Ward voice acting.

And Jack Black probably did it for free.

True.

Well, yeah, he chums with Tim Schafer.

Okay, so my thing is this, right?

If you're Tim Schafer, wouldn't you go to your team?

Okay, I want you to go out there, I want you to play the most recent adventure games, I want you to see where adventure gaming is at.

Now, you know, the common narrative would be that oh, Tim Schafer, video game extraordinaire, adventure game extraordinaire, you know, give him money, just let him make a game, but he's not going to do that.

He is going to experiment, I mean, at least research, or have his people research where the current video game, you know, in terms of the genre of adventure is.

Well, if I, your question was if I was Tim Schafer?

Well, my question is this, do you feel that the people that researched current video games in the adventure genre, do you think they did their job or not?

Well, I think the puzzles would imply that they did because you can, I mean, you would not expect them, if they would have come into this, if Tim Schafer was coming, he's completely and utterly ignorant.

I don't think he would have designed the puzzles that he did because the puzzles have no relation to any Tim Schafer puzzle up until this point.

And let's be realistic, Tim Schafer doesn't design video games.

Of course, but I'm saying, the people that he has hired are doing generic modern puzzle, adventure game puzzles, and they're not doing them well.

So that would imply that they were up on what was currently happening in contemporary adventure games.

And also doing stuff like, you know, splitting it up between two characters as well.

That's a cliche convention often used in adventure games.

1954, which we talked about in the previous episode, a few episodes ago, whenever that was, did the same thing.

Half the game is played as one character and half the game is played as another, but they did it in a more complex way, manner where you can switch between characters.

Goodbye, Deponia did it exceptionally well where they managed to create these brilliantly long and complex puzzles that required you to move through the world as two separate characters and brought them together as well.

That's another convention that they're using that is very common in modern adventure games.

It's entirely contemporary.

The only harking back to old adventure games is the Tim Schafer nostalgia that he includes.

If I can be completely honest, at this point what we're talking about with Double Fine is that Double Fine is a studio of very talented people that Tim Schafer happened to hire.

As long as they're making cutesy stuff that's one degree lower than what Tim Burton does, then everyone's happy, right?

That's the papulum that people are happy to accept.

We just want this costume quest psychonaut bullshit.

As long as it looks kind of quirky, but it's still cute and almost chuckle-worthy, then that's the Tim Schafer production.

Yep.

So that was almost darkly serious, but you know.

I mean, that is what it is in terms of what people want from Tim Schafer these days.

I would put this a lot below something like psychonauts, though.

Oh, of course, of course.

I mean, this entire activity is entirely cynical.

It's basically saying, well, I'm Tim Schafer.

We need money, or we could use some extra money more accurately.

We seem to be on a good thing.

I'm known for adventure games.

Let's go to Kickstarter.

And it got way bigger than they ever expected, and they're out of their league, you know.

But they'll sell by as long as it's Tim Burton Lite.

Indeed.

And as Tim Burton Lite, it is still enjoyable Tim Burton Lite, of course.

So it's not as if they are...

they're doing their niche well, at the very least, you can say.

I would still argue, though, that Tim Burton Lite is not good enough for an entertainment experience in and of itself.

I mean, I think as video gamers, we're kind of cowed to expect a lower level of entertainment.

So then it is within the context of video games.

Okay, you're right.

Acceptable, right?

You're absolutely right.

Okay, well, I mean, but with all these game impressions, we've completely derailed our news-exclusive podcast.

And there must be several people who are really disappointed that we didn't go over the last two weeks of news, 797 stories of news.

But at this point, you know, I've got to accept it.

Most people were connected to the internet over the last two weeks, so I don't want to force them to go over that again.

I mean, Amy Henning now works for EA again.

I mean, that's news, right?

That is news.

And on Amy Henning, by the way, I've got a question for you.

Have you played her previous output before she went to Naughty Dog?

The only thing I've played is Legacy of Kain, you know, under Dreamcast.

What was the writing like on that?

Oh, shit.

I mean, like all video games of the time.

So it wasn't like her present writing?

No, no.

I mean, her current writing is shit also.

I mean, it's just...

Yeah, but I mean...

It's only enabled by the graphic.

By that I mean, what I'm really asking is, did it suffer from the same hilarious inconsistencies that it currently suffers from?

No, because it was completely one-dimensional.

I am Dracula walking through a dungeon.

So it was better then.

So that's really then Naughty Dog, because it blew my mind how the Last of Us script, which was significantly better written than any of the Uncharted scripts, did all the same utterly dumb bullshit every third or fourth line that was there in Uncharted.

So that's apparently a Naughty Dog directive.

I'd say that's a...

It's the Naughty Dog style.

I'd say that's the 21st century style, because if you look at any current TV shows, that's the same thing as well.

You know, that's why...

It is the same thing, but it's done very slightly different.

Mainly because in films and television, generally, if you're looking at better stuff, at least, not the average stuff, the inconsistencies are within the aesthetics and structure as opposed to inconsistencies in character.

And in Uncharted and The Last of Us, the inconsistencies are not only in aesthetics and structure, but also with character in the most hilarious context.

I think you're powder-coating the truth, frankly.

I think that if you look at things like people say it's the best TV ever, like Breaking Bad, I mean, every fourth line is looking straight into the camera going, wink, wink.

Even if it's not, you know, it's all this allusions to, yeah...

But that's the point, because every fourth line is, as opposed to every twentieth, and then a fifth line is doing something completely different.

Right.

And in the old days, I mean, it would have been good enough to have one of those moments per series, if at all, you know?

I mean, God forbid that you watch a series of Faulty Towers and get some social context without the character actually going, wink, wink, do you get what I'm saying?

You know?

Which is basically all of modern games and all of modern TV and all of modern movies.

Yep.

But that's not got anything to do with what I was saying.

Well, okay.

Go ahead.

One more time.

Okay.

Well, what I said was, and I'm referring to, because what you're referring to is a deliberate aesthetic choice, right?

Postmodernism, yes.

Yep.

That's not there by accident.

No.

In Uncharted script and in The Last of Us script, putting aside something like the abysmal postmodern, which you, by the way, greatly enjoy, dialogue between whatever the woman was, Alan or Chloe?

What the fuck was she called?

Alan.

There was Chloe and Alana, right?

Alana and Drake at the end of Uncharted 2.

For example, when Alana meets Chloe, Elena meets Chloe, she says, I'm last year's model.

Yeah.

Right.

But let's use the Alana versus Chloe thing, because that's a better example.

That is entirely a postmodern stroke, where it's not so much that they're looking at the camera, but they've moved into a completely different aesthetic style and genre of comedy, because why not?

It's postmodernism, so you can use whatever you want, right?

Right.

That's a deliberate thing.

It's fucking stupid, as far as I'm concerned, and so poorly done.

But that's a deliberate thing that Amy Henning, or whoever, came up with the idea, said, let's fucking do that.

That would be a hilarious ending, right?

It's not deliberate for In The Last of Us, the moment where...

Spoiler!

I can say it without spoilers, where they've been building up this important relationship, narrative device, between Ali and...

What's the main guy called?

And Joel, where they then completely fucking forget about it, and stick it in as an expositional line of dialogue involving an item.

That's not a deliberate aesthetic choice.

That is their fail to write that in in a successful manner.

Right?

Well, you've unspoiled it so much that I don't know what you're talking about.

Okay, well, what I've described is not a deliberate aesthetic choice, is it?

Yes or no?

No.

No.

And that's what Amy Hennig's writing and The Last of Us is full of constantly throughout.

Now, in the constraints of a television show, I'm presently watching Justin's first episode, Season of Hannibal, which is in many ways terribly, terribly written.

And there are similar moments where they're going through the story.

And they needed advice to advance the plot in a certain way.

And they do this through the most utterly stupid exposition that is shoved in there to the point where it completely destroys the structure of all the writing in that episode.

Whereas in the past, they would have attempted to figure out a better way to put it.

Now, that's the same equivalent as the sort of thing that happened there in The Last of Us.

Right?

As far as I describe it.

But at the same time, in Hannibal, the dialogue, there's no consistency in the script and in the general aesthetic, no, the visual aesthetic is fine, but in the script, there's a lack of consistency in the way it's written, which results in some lines being very effective and some sounding like complete shit.

Now that is there in all media full stop today.

And you can blame postmodernism if you want, but it's an aesthetic failure, whereas postmodernism is a deliberate aesthetic choice that if you're looking at it through various aesthetic lenses is a failure, but it is at least a deliberate thing.

Random lines of bad dialogue are not.

What I was saying was where you've got Hannibal, which is not a greatly written show, and I think it's a really fun show in spite of that, if you then look for a show that is very well written, even though the dialogue is going to be complete and utter shit because it's a modern television show, you're not going to have the moments where they've failed to write it from a narrative perspective successfully, which are there in Naughty Dog and in Hannibal.

And to completely disregard what I was saying, but this is to me just a hilarious choice, a hilarious thing, to get those same failures in Naughty Dog's games as a definable trait of the writing is utterly bizarre because it means to a degree, they must be aware that they're doing this, but either are dumb enough to think that this is actually not completely and utterly aesthetically, structurally, in every single artistic, technical facet, a load of shit, or they know nobody is going to fucking notice this.

Everybody is going to say, The Last of Us Uncharted have the best scripts within gaming.

That's exactly it.

Like all of these Harvard-educated dudes who are the smartest guys in the room, who are on all of these writing committees, you know, they know that they're writing for people who are about 40 levels below them in terms of intelligence.

And they know that people aren't going to notice this, and they know that people aren't going to know why they like it, and on and on and on.

They're not only writing for people that are 40 levels below them in intelligence, they're writing for people who understand aesthetics through the lens entirely of polish, which is what video games, that's the only criteria for success, for critical success in video games, is polish.

That is a podcast in and of itself.

I mean, that is a brilliant statement.

Video games are made for people who are only able to appreciate things in terms of the level of polish.

And you go back to my comments earlier to David about things like Blue Stinger, right?

Oh, this game is shit, but man, it looks good, and all the rest of it.

It's not only about appearance, though, because we'll also credit a game like Serious Sam, which has brilliant mechanics, but fails in a different way.

When I say polish, polish applies to every facet of design.

That's what I'm talking about.

So we'll sadly just cling on to Serious Sam, because it had a great mechanic, even though it failed in every other area.

Whereas in other forms, critics are much less accepting.

If a video game has...

I mean, if a book has extremely derivative plot, but good characters, it's not going to get by.

But a video game can get by with just polish and just polish in one area.

Well, a book will get by with absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Yeah, I don't know about that, because if you look at book sales, they all fail.

Even the top level ones fail.

50 Shades of Grey?

Yeah, come on.

That's a digital distribution only.

So they aren't books?

They're books, but that's a whole different paradigm in terms of sales.

50 Shades of Grey is essentially a website that anyone can go to, and it has a $5 gate on it.

That's what I'm saying.

The only other news story I want to bring up before we go is Amazon's video game console.

No, we're not going to bring that up.

We're not bringing that up.

All you need to know about it is this.

It's a Roku box, or it's one of these basically digital media distribution devices, and all you need to know about it is when Amazon was asked, will you be at E3, they said no, which tells you everything you know about it from a gamer's perspective.

Because if this was a serious gaming console, obviously they'd be at E3, and it's not a video game console.

Just like the Nintendo consoles aren't serious video consoles.

No, that's right, they're not E3 either, so take note.

I'm going to ask you a quick question.

Yes, sir.

To end with, now you are a self-confessed hater of post-modernism, right?

I don't know that I am.

I think that I am.

Because you say this, but to me all evidence points to the complete opposite.

You love Spec Ops The Line.

You could not make a more post-modern game than Spec Ops The Line, right?

You are correct.

What about WarioWare?

Would you say that's a post-modern game?

From the five seconds I played of it, yes.

Absolutely.

I'm a fan of post-modernism.

I like the fact that media is self-aware.

I do.

You are a fan of my blogs as well.

Yes.

Absolutely.

They were incredibly post-modern.

Yes.

You are a post-modernist.

I love it.

But I love it.

I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too.

I think what you've got a problem with is post-post-modernism.

What's that?

Post-post-modernism.

As far as I can tell, it describes the dearth of aesthetic quality that has followed post-modernism.

Okay, where it's nothing more than...

Where post-modernism was a definable art movement.

Yes.

Post-post-modernism, which is what we're currently going through, there is no art movement whatsoever.

So, for example, if you have a television show that points to, let's say, movies for its influence, then I've always been a fan of that.

But if you have a blog about the television show, about the movie, then that's when I start to fall apart.

So, for example, I'll appreciate a video game that's making fun of video game characteristics, but if you're just writing a blog about it and expecting to get the same level of interest, then no, I'm not interested in that.

Unless you're me.

Unless you're you.

But some of the media that is generated, like some games, are on the level of a blog commenting about a video game, commenting about a TV, commenting about a movie.

And basically saying, see, we know stuff, cultural reference.

And that's where Conker's Bad Fur Day...

But it's not backed up by any aesthetic value or content.

No, absolutely.

And if you look at Conker's Bad Fur Day, the whole thing carried on basically saying, see, we're making cultural references, right?

And if you look at Mike Judge's work, Beavis and Butthead was essentially that.

But if you look at King of the Hill, that was true postmodernism, where it set aside the fact that it was so...

It was setting aside its own self-importance.

And instead of just saying, look at us, we're commenting on stuff, it just commented on stuff.

And that's what I'm talking about.

You know?

So just to clarify my position on postmodernism, I'm an absolute fan of it.

And I love it.

But at this point, going on Twitter and saying something about something doesn't make you postmodern, it just makes you someone who's talking in the public sphere.

Yep.

So, well, look at us, Game Under, episode 46.

Talking about postmodernism.

Yep, cross that one off your list.

Is there anything else you want to say before we end this episode?

Not at all.

Me neither.

So that's it.

Goodbye.

You're out.