Ep. 161 - Legalize Bowsette

JoJoestar

Regarding Tim’s recommendation, is the PC Engine mini worth it even without knowledge of japanese?

gsk

JoJoestar Regarding Tim’s recommendation, is the PC Engine mini worth it even without knowledge of japanese?

He specifically recommended the PCE Mini over the TG16 Mini because it exclusively contains Tengai Makyou II and Tokimeki Memorial, but yeah, if you can’t read them then the TG16 Mini’s fine as the content’s essentially identical otherwise and the vast majority of games either have an English option or aren’t text-heavy (aside from Snatcher, which was left completely untranslated on the TG16 Mini).

exodus

yeah, you can switch to american/english games even in the pc engine mini version.

sabertoothalex

me: don’t take what other people think about video games seriously or personally

podcasts, twitter etc: BOTW is actually boring to like

me: :(

JoJoestar

I think I’m gonna get an european one because I can get one of those kinda cheap, even though I’d prefer the japanese version.

sabertoothalex I will say that it is a lot better to like something boring than to like something BAD. And you can like something widely appreciated because of interesting reasons! Subjectivity is all about having an angle/perspective rather than the thing itself, and anyways, never feel bad for liking something as long as you really like it 💪

exodus

I like breath of the wild!! the point wasn’t that it’s boring to like it, it’s that that will soon become the boring “best game of all time” opinion among people who want to have opinions without knowing stuff. the game will still be extremely good, and is the only zelda game I’d ever be interested in playing another of. it was more a comment on The Discourse. (speaking for tim here, heh)

hellojed

I think The Last of Us, the series, is the Watchmen of videogames. I think of Watchmen as the comic that a lot of nerds point to as something that is supposed to Elevate The Medium to serious art and I feel like The Last of Us holds the same level of that for games. It’s brought up a lot alongside Shadow of The Colossus and the aforementioned Bioshock Infinite. To Tim’s point, The Watchmen isn’t fun to read, and a lot of people said The Last of us 2 isn’t fun to play!

I haven’t played The Last Of Us, I did see Tim’s review of it and it still wasn’t enough to get me interested. I have no intention of playing The Last Of Us 2. I remember when the reveal trailer dropped and then immediately having a nightmare about it. I recently watched a critical video on it and saw a lot of gruesome death animations which genuinely ruined my entire day. It makes me depressed! It makes me want to throw my game consoles (all of them) out a window. I could subject myself to 30-40 hours of recreational trauma for the sake of making a point and being informed, but I’m not going to do that to myself.

Syzygy

The Watchmen isn’t fun to read

what

Lordy I wish Wikipedia had a dark mode

http://github.com/StylishThemes/Wikipedia-Dark

yeso

I agree with frank’s idea that watchmen is a pretty good thing that succeeds in its relatively modest goals but has since been the victim (through no fault of its creators) of sophomoric commodification

I don’t think TLOU quite fits because it is itself juvenile and unsuccessful (in my opinion). I think that watchmen is kind of fun, or at least comfortable in its own skin as a pulpy murder mystery comic vs TLOU which is just kind of pathetic in its attempts to escape its nature and be instead “cinematic” or more accurately “prestige television”

It’s not a perfect answer but I’d say the original Fallout is the watchmen of vg. An accomplished and self-contained game that has been distorted into corporate big business nerd form by subsequent custodians

yeso

Also don’t want to overstep my bounds or tell people how to run their business, and I mean this with love in my heart, but tim should consider paying someone to read his emails for him

JoJoestar

Oh man if anyone thinks I’m going to miss the chance to dunk on The Last of Us then THINK AGAIN.

I’m not sure if it’s exactly the “Watchmen of videogames”, as I feel Bioshock feels like a more proper choice of the “thing with some discourse that people take too seriously” phenomenon but I dread the zeitgeist around TLoU a lot more. TLoU was elevated as the new paradigm of great storytelling and presentation by every game critic just because it put so much effort trying to conceal the fact it was a videogame and present itself as an HBO series, as @yeso pointed at. And it WAS a videogame, with all its murders, upgrade systems and carrot hanging on the stick approach to level and game design. It was also a very bad one, with its mandatory “Uncharted tank breaking walls” section, and even a scripted sniper part for god’s sake. That dishonesty and disconnection between its nature as popcorn entertainment (which can be fun if handed well) and all the façade of acting as “more than a game” reflects on the huge inferiority complex this whole medium has suffered for the longest of times.

Looking back, Uncharted and The Last of Us robbed us of a good couple years of good videogames just because how the whole industry focused on trying to replicate what Naughty Dog did with their games before we entered the everything is open world now phase.

connierad

re: leather controllers, wouldn’t sweat quickly ruin the material?

yeso

yeah that is definitely a cinco brand product

maxhully

Idea: “athleisure” controller made out of high-performance sweat-wicking fabrics

billy

esper

I’m not super familiar with how sweat and leather interact because I don’t go to those kinds of bars

exodus

the key is to listen to any judas priest song

yeso

re gagmergate - I remember IC people being some of the only games media persons who cut through the fog and reflexive both-siding that the great majority of outlets projected about it. Yes it was an early sign that the doctrine of providing “balanced consideration” combined with the precarious employment status of the media people would be easy prey for coordinated disingenuous self-victimization. Lots of mealy-mouthed non-condemnations from big outlets, and I could be wrong but I suspect that had giant bomb for example told gg creeps to shut the fuck up, it would have been helpful. Anyway respect to frank who I recall as making some correctly and righteously angry denouncements when it mattered. IC was on the right side of history at least (hence my “brand” loyalty)

exodus

I think maybe in the very early days games media could’ve helped with that, yeah. Frank and I were both big antagonists of that particular movement, and one of my articles was early in that debate (pre-gamergate having a name), and hopefully didn’t further spark it, but it was a discussion that needed having.

Kind of an embarrasing/dated read now because I was trying to appeal to/convince the jerks/“fellow men,” which is impossible, but I stand by 2012 me writing it at the time: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/173227/Opinion_Video_games_and_Male_Gaze__are_we_men_or_boys.php

f10002

I don’t really get the “naughty dog is shitty” thing that appears to be the commom opinion on the english speaking gaming critique circles i’ve come with contact for some years now. I mean, the criticism on the narrative and violence that i read especially on last of us I can understand and agree on, it’s statements like uncharted robbed us of good videogames (and with the open world one suppose assassin creed? elder scrolls? been robbing us of this hypothetical good videogames now). Since I was very young and not even remotely a english reader at that time, there was this same sentiment about game studios chasing market trends, for example, after the psone era with resident evil being all the rage and cloned that “capcom has been robbed us of good games” or when it began the metal gear cinematic aspirations talk also came along this “kojima trying to pretending he’s not selling us a videogame”? Do you guys really believe that good videogames would have been born in the ps3-360 era had not naughty dog and other trend setters of the time “poisoned the well”? Because I read this discussions and sincerelly don’t see this hopeful scenarios coming to fruition.

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