Ep. 223 - Game of the Year 2021

hammy

Happy to hear Tim’s endorsement of the recent Hitman trilogy of games; they’re terrific. Shame they’re held back by the always-online framework; I just want to cosplay a murder flamingo without being subjected to a leaderboard, dang it!

whatsarobot

treefroggy

I think it’s as simple as good writing versus bad writing.

i agree with a lot of what you said in your comments about worldliness, but this single comment is it, for me. Itoi Shigesato is, first and foremost, a thoughtful and eloquent writer. his life experience has fueled that, and allowed him to become a celebrity and company president in Japan. he is a singular figure, and an author with intent, and his Mother games resonated with so many because of those elements. he can be imitated, but not replicated, regardless of how attractive your sprite work is or how funky your music samples are.

(source: i have watched Itoi give multiple television interviews, follow him on twitter, and read his work in the Hobonichi Techo, which i have purchased every year since 2018.)

treefroggy

Yeah what I was saying at first was kind of gatekeepey against anyone who is more privileged than me, and that is wrong, and writing doesn’t always have to rely completely on first hand experience. But the writer does need to be worldly, sincere, wise, virtuous etc. in order to write that stuff. I’m glad you guys still liked it and got my point though!♥

It’s also what I loved about the first Animal Crossing translation. the tone and voice of the writing in that one is sooo much better, more poetic, worldly and downright deep. Whereas now it’s pretty mediocre.

I always wished more of Itoi’s stuff was available to be read in english. I did the techo for a few years but decided I can’t afford it and can just get a generic A6 grid paper notebook to slide into my techo cover.

AbandonedRocketship

2501 I’m with you! I’m kind of a huge weenie who shys away from all kinds of games because of frictions like the stamina in Moon (I don’t have a lot of time or money, so, in parlance of this episode, I stick to the stuff that goes down smooth for the most part), but I didn’t find it too tough to manage. The pace at which your stamina increases is fairly brisk, too. Just about everything else in Moon more than motivated me to press through to keep going.

Added all up, Moon was my 2020 GOTY, so it does confuse and intrigue me why Tim would change his tune on it so much. I’ll cross my fingers that it comes up in some way in his Earthbound review.

Also, Moon is the only game on the list I’ve played.

rejj

AbandonedRocketship it does confuse and intrigue me why Tim would change his tune on it so much

I’m going to put out the alternative here - I suspect Tim was deliberately not pumping it because he worked on the game and did not want to seem improper in any way.

2501

AbandonedRocketship Yeah also Moon gives you easy access to stamina restoratives; at first I was super disciplined about accumulating these but by the end of my playthrough I had hilariously more of them than I would ever need again. The game is just way less forbidding than it seems on first impression, or rather as it goes along the main source of difficulty shifts from the stamina management to the puzzles themselves.

rejj Tim sure was not shy about pumping Ziggurat and Videoball at every opportunity so idk about that explanation…

I don’t think he’s ever trolling about loving weird spiritual successors to 90s JRPGs tho lol. “Low-budget furry game” would be a pretty hard anti-pitch to me under normal circumstances but just from skimming Fuga’s Wikipedia page, the jarringly grim “Bokurano/Valkyrie Profile DS”-like premise (sacrifice a child party member every chapter to activate trump card superweapon) has me seriously intrigued, enough to probably check it out once it hits the bargain bin. I didn’t play the PSX or DS games either so there’s no nostalgia factor for me. (Wish they kept the Chrono Cross artist though.)

Also, I will enthusiastically echo the “play Nocturne before V” take, although if you have the appropriate hardware I’d maybe go a step further and say “play IV before Nocturne” (it explains its mechanics better and has an early-game twist that hits hardest if it’s your first mainline SMT)

AbandonedRocketship

Really had a blast with this lavish listen. I wanted to 1. thank esper l for sprucing it up, and 2. echo kory RE: getting the nitty gritty new games talk all in one go. Best 2021 Podcast GOTY Episode goes to IC for sure.

Hearing the gang talk about #12, #14, and #15 has pushed me over the fence to give them a shot when I’m able. I’ll get into #2 at some point, but I still haven’t decided if I want to try Nocturne HD first or not (feel free to give me your opinion if you have one there). I look forward to playing #8 in the future when I have the hardware for it.

kory

AbandonedRocketship if I want to try Nocturne HD first or not

For me, I figure that the zeit has pretty well geisted right past me with V, so I’m taking my time to get to it. Shin Megami Tensei Three Nocturne High Definition Remaster for Nintendo Switch was probably my personal 2021 game of the year for what it’s worth :)

yeso

AbandonedRocketship your opinion

Make Nocturne the priority

whatsarobot

i still can’t shake the feeling that tim was trolling us when he said Fuga was his GOTY. full disclosure: i have not played Fuga. but man, Fuga looks real bad to me!

tim is usually trolling us, but not always, so it can be hard to tell.

xhekros

whatsarobot I highly doubt he was trolling on that one. Seems a good Game and damn if the Game itself doesn’t Scream Bokurano vibes.

Fran

Like many listeners, I’m intrigued by Brandon and the panel’s Balan Wonderworld talk. Is the game worth trying on the Switch? I’m a bit too lazy to get it going on the PS4.

exodus

Fran Switch is the worst platform for it because the game is not optimized, so in addition to whatever annoys you about it, you will have a bad framerate. So… if you can do PS4 that’d be preferable. It goes on sale to like $10 pretty frequently!

@Lesmocon @TracyDMcGrath you’ll have to wait until the next-next episode for that!

Lesmocon

OOPS a couple of days late to this party, guess I shouldn’t rely on my Youtube inbox to tell me when these are out. Glad Esper didn’t try and edit a 3 hour video on top of the podcast release though.

I was so baffled by the round of beatings Balan WonderWorld got, I bought it on release for full price (honk) and yea it has a ton of obvious problems but it’s got such a chill, non-confrontational vibe to it everyone trying to Angry Video Game Nerd all over it just came off as phony.

And even though it didn’t come out in 2021 happy that Astro’s Playroom got a shoutout, game owns a lot when y’all get your PS5s in 6 years be sure to play it it’s free!

Also, not that I think it should have been on the list but pretty intrigued that The Mario wasn’t mentioned at all, would love to know what Tim thought of Bowser’s Fury guess I’ll have to become one of those weirdos in his inbox.

Funbil

Lesmocon He did a stream of it a year ago (almost exactly to the day - wow!) which you can find on his stream archive channel. His thoughts about it may have changed after letting it percolate for a while, but getting someone’s impressions during an actual play session is a surefire way to get a completely honest response. It’s a fun watch either way!

esper

Lesmocon oh, the youtube version is still coming (tomorrow morning, if everything goes well). it’s just a very big file!!

gonna be one of the standard watch-the-list-update-in-real-time kinda things i’ve whipped up, like the console ranking episode was. sorry for the delay!!

TracyDMcGrath

Bowser’s Fury was pretty high up on my list. Shame it kind of got buried as an add on, it’s one of my favorite 3d platformers ever honestly

Fran

TracyDMcGrath Bowser’s Fury is great except Bowser forcing me to fight him every 5 mins or so. It got old quickly.

First time playing Super Mario 3D World… I love it. The stages are brisk enough to hit the spot like an old school Mario game. I acknowledge the excellence and beauty of Odyssey, but this one is just a joy to play. Multiple-player option is also a childhood dream come true.

treefroggy

@AbandonedRocketship 👀I see your taiyo matsumoto mother 1 avatar.

yeso

exodus platonic 7/10 episode.

maybe a ranking episode of best/most 7/10 games. Could take listener submissions like the PS2 and horror game eps

◉◉maru

Fran I still think 3D World is the greatest achievement of that team.

Odyssey is probably (well, demonstrably: it sold 20+ Million copies) a better commercial product that can reach a wider audience and answers the current zeitgeist, but 3D World jumped over a way higher barrier of difficulty when it succeeded at making 3D stages as fun to enjoy for 1, 2, 3 or 4 simultaneous players AND limit the controls to one stick + two essential action buttons AND forego camera controls entirely. It’s a gigantic game design flex.

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