The whole group is together again in the effort to make this podcast more succinct. We will keep working at this, so feel free to let us know how we do. You may be confused about the title, but Sam lovingly

Remember, if you would like to send us a question or comment to be read on the air, you may do so at thetexturepop@gmail.com. Even if you don’t want it read out loud, feel free to drop us a line if you want to communicate with us.

0:02:05 Gaming News
Deadpool movie costume finally revealed:
Chris, as our comic book guy, seems rather optimistic about the production. After seeing this picture, I can understand why.

X-Files reboot is actually happened:
Sam does bring up a point about “Why does this need to exist?” Most fans of the show agree that the show went out on a whimper after its last two seasons, so a reboot may not be advised. However, it could be interesting to see how they work within the context of the modern world and more contemporary conspiracy theories. For an aliens-themed show, The X-Files aged well, but aliens are still out of favor. I’m interested in what they do with these six new episodes.
Also, David Duchovny did an interview after we record the podcast on David Letterman, talking a bit more about it.

0:14:05 I played a bit of Hitman: Blood Money.
Hitman has been a weird franchise. Even though it’s never really been a big seller, it is almost always brought up as an example of good stealth game design. If you haven’t played Blood Money, it’s worth checking out. The previous games are okay, but never play the first (Codename 47). It’s awful.

0:18:01 I played Final Fantasy III
I like the pacing of a lot of the NES/SNES JRPGs, because they are not meant to take up a lot of time. Considering how much games seek to give tons of content, without much depth or variety, it was nice to play a game that didn’t try to be much longer than it had too.

0:22:30 I played Dragon Age: Inquisition
Despite how irritating it is for me to have to make so many different video game accounts, I am having a blast with Inquisition.
The Hinterlands criticism isn’t exactly new, but it is worth reiterating. It’s a massive trap that designers should have known players would fall for. Somehow, that slipped the net. The rest of the game has been pretty good, but the Hinterlands is a terrible starting area.

0:31:10 Garrett discovers that a rare Beetles CD is stolen.
He didn’t do the stealing. Someone stole it before he could buy it.
Sam had a similar story, coincidentally.

0:37:30 Garrett took his friends through Second Life.
I know what you’re all thinking: “Second Life is still around?” Yes, it is. I don’t go on it, but there are people who still do.
Personally, I’m waiting on Third Life.

0:41:00 Garrett talks about the rest of his week.

0:42:30 Chris talks about Chrono Cross
Note: He did not actually play the game. Yet the conversation we had was worth it.
For reference: The Chrono Cross opening theme.

0:57:19 Sam played Drakengard with a PS2 emulator.
Though it is not a very fun game to play, I remember playing Drakengard just for how darkly compelling it was at the time. You need to play through a lot of mediocre game to get to those interesting bits, but dear god they make it worth it.
I’m also glad Sam used the phrase “,,.how much of a [weeaboo] he is, like me….” He’s become self-aware.

1:06:35 Sam played Bloodborne.
I think Sam’s thoughts on it are interesting. As someone who never played a Souls games, I can’t comment on it with any authority. However, I appreciate that they exist and I am weirdly interesting in listening to people talk about them.

1:23:20 Wrapping Up.
Garrett is starting up a Twitch channel.
My Dragon Age pacing article is here.
Sam’s Bloodborne article is here.
Interactive Friction is here.

In this episode, we begin to talk a bit more about the side characters in the game.

This is also our first experiment with doing some slight editing of the footage. Mostly, we cut segments of combat, or of loading screens, where nothing interesting was happening in the game and we weren’t making any observations or commentary. Without Sam’s editing, this episode would have been a half-hour long, as is evidenced by the fact that “We’re 14 minutes in,” when you’ve only seen 7 minutes worth of show.

Watching both the uncut and cut versions back to back, it’s obvious that the cut version is noticeably better. In the future, we hope to further improve our craft, resulting in better videos from here on out. Feel free to let us know your thoughts in the comments, as all feedback is appreciated.

In this episode, Sam and I talk about some of the more uncomfortable parts of the game.

As I said in the episode, Tomb Raider (2013) makes most of Lara’s deaths look much more brutal than we’re used to seeing in video games. The ones we show off in this episode are the most gruesome, but they are not the only such fatalities on display.

I believe that the reason the deaths in these games are so uncomfortable because of the way the game lingers on them. In most games, the developers would be in a hurry to fade to black before we see the character start to suffer, and begin to start at the last checkpoint (or save game). Though resets are pretty quick in Tomb Raider, we also see, in vivid detail, just how much Lara suffers as she slowly dies. The death isn’t immediate, and that suffering is uncomfortable to watch.

The way theses scenes cause discomfort in the player is clearly intentional. Not only does it provide an even stronger disincentive to fool around in these scenes (more than usual), but it also helps to sell the feeling that the island is a giant hazard, just doing its best to kill Lara. It is a very interesting way to make the mechanics reinforce the story.

The voice acting, animation, and shot composition are also top-notch in both the deaths and the cauterization scene. Though that scene isn’t a death, it’s another fantastic scene how Lara is beginning to change her way of thinking in order to survive on the island.

Some time ago, I played Dragon Age: Origins. Back then, I expressedissueswith how it was paced, citing The Fade and The Deep Roads in particular as two segments of bad filler content. Recently, I have revisited the franchise with Dragon Age 2. Despite being in the same series, the two have quite different forms of pacing. Because of their differences, I think that taking a moment to compare the two of them and their structures should be interesting.
With Origins, the plot structure was modular. After the initial tutorial missions, the player is given free reign to take on the four plot branches that compose the middle of the game in any order they choose. Each of these modules has its own plot and locations, separate from the rest aside from one or two instances. At the end of the game, the player’s actions in these individual segments will be reflected back in the form of how each faction thinks of them and how much they are willing to help in the grand finale. The result is a fairly free-form gaming experience, within limits.
This structure allows Origins to give each module its own feel, but there is a drawback to this classic role-playing approach. When these sections can be so thoroughly quarantined from the others, it grants the developers freedom to make each part longer than it should be. In particular, the designers have the leeway to create overly long exploration and dungeon locations. Dragon Age: Origins had this problem in spades. Often, any single area could take several hours to complete, more-so if the player is going for total completion. Players could spend entire game sessions feeling that nothing was accomplished in that time. Obvious padding like The Fade and The Deep Roads, during the Circle Tower and Orzammar scenarios respectively, are chief examples of how this structure permitted Bioware to do this.
On the other hand, Dragon Age 2 manages to skirt that pitfall with its narrative structure, yet introduces new ones all the same. Rather than expand on Origin’s modularity, DA2 takes a different approach. Players spend all of Dragon Age 2 in the city of Kirkwall, watching it develop over the course of years. Each of the game’s three acts details key events of a particular year in Kirkwall’s history through the eyes of Hawke, the game’s customizable, yet constant, protagonist. With a distinct beginning, middle, and end, these acts serve as the way Bioware chosen to divide the story.
What is neat about this structure is that it forces a more focused plot. Since any given act has to feed into its successors, it cannot afford to tarry around with plot points that may never be touched on again in the future. Gradually, they all, by necessity, get woven together as the story progresses. Combined with the obvious signs of a limited development cycle, this focus carried on into the dungeon-crawling as well. While a single area could take hours in Origins, DA2 takes a more succinct approach. Locations will rarely, if ever, take over a half-hour to complete, which gives a much greater sense of accomplishment when checking the quest log after a long session. Individual plot elements and their handling can be debated on, but there is no denying that the plot structure for Dragon Age 2 lends to a faster pacing than its predecessor.
Having said that, pacing is in more than just a game’s narrative structure. Combat also tends to have its own tempo in RPGs like Dragon Age. Origins in particular had a slower, more methodical system. Enemies tended to have a fairly high amount of health, so even fights against small parties could take some time. Unfortunately for Bioware, since skill and equipment setups mattered significantly more than tactical planning mid-battle, conflicts were often decided from the outset.
Rather than go the route of its direct predecessor, Dragon Age 2 takes inspiration from its contemporaries, most notably the likes of Mass Effect 2. As with Origins, equipment and skill setups are important to one’s quality of life when going up against enemies. The difference here is that the moment-to-moment action has become equally as important, with an emphasis on faster combat. It can still be said that the player will steamroll most encounters in the game, but it feels more smooth than than of the previous game in the franchise, largely due to its accelerated pace.
Even if the overall combat’s pace is improved, there is problem that adversely affects it: Foes have a strong tendency to spawn in waves. When playing Dragon Age: Origins, the types and number of enemies in a given location was usually set in stone. Because players could see what they were about to fight, they could better plan their attack. Even if a single target took some time to beat down, it was possible to guess how long it will take to win.
This is not the case in Dragon Age 2. In most engagements, players will clear out a given set of enemies only to find that another group has spawned in, ready to fight to the death. Typically, any one fight will be composed of three waves in total. Though individual foes, and sometimes enemy groups, can be felled quickly, the fact that more will inevitably appear immediately afterwards makes it more difficult to anticipate how long a given encounter will take to complete. As a result, even if a fight is not long, it can be made to feel long thanks to how many mooks participate in a single battle. Even if Dragon Age 2 is better paced than Origins, this misstep starts to agitate after playing for a long time.

In terms of both story and combat, Dragon Age 2 drastically improves on the pacing of the game that came before. Enhancing the original structure by focusing the overall plot line and streamlining the fighting resulted in a much smoother flow. Though certain elements like the ending and obvious, blatant reuse of assets can be rightfully criticized by detractors, Dragon Age 2 is certainly worth defending in how it gives the player a strong feeling of progress.

In this episode, we discuss the puzzle design.

Puzzle design in video games is very difficult to get right. In the ideal world, each individual puzzle room will show you everything you’ll need to know in order to understand how to solve the puzzle. Because every person things has their own way of thinking, it is incredibly difficult to do this without outright telling the player how to solve it.

Lean too far in the direction of making the puzzle abstract, and there is a risk that the player won’t have the first clue in how to solve it. Going too far in the other direction, and make the solution obvious, will make the player feel stupid.

Tomb Raider seems to do a very good job of towing that middle ground. Most people I know didn’t have too much trouble solving these challenges, but they still felt smart for solving them. Again, that’s difficult to get right. Even with Uncharted, Sam felt that the puzzles were a little on the hard side, but not overly so. I, on the other hand, felt like the puzzles were too easy. That’s not saying that Sam’s any more or less intelligent than I am. It means that the puzzles in Uncharted were better suited to the way I think than they were to Sam’s. This difference in people is what makes good puzzle design so hard, and Tomb Raider should be applauded for how it gets that right.

Sam was completely exhausted when we recorded this episode. Because of that, he had to miss out on the podcast. A shame, because we talk about a lot of topics which call for his input.

0:02:30 Viewer Questions
“Have any of you guys played Ori and the Blind Forest?”
Guess what? Sam did. And next week, he may even talk about it. As someone who hasn’t I have to admit it looks really good and I’d love to play it.

Have you guys seen the trailer for Pixels?
I am open to this being a good movie. However, Adam Sandler does not exactly have the best track record. I will be watching how this develops with guarded expectations.

0:12:50 Gaming News
Hideo Kojima will be leaving Konami after Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain
Like I said in the podcast, I would say this is the beginning of the end for Konami. Aside from the YuGiOh card game (and video games), they don’t have much else. With Kojima gone, I have no idea what Konami is going to do with Silent Hills now, since they just let go of the guy who was supposed to make it. It’s not looking good.

PlayStation Vue is Sony’s answer to cable.
And it’s dumb. With far too few channels at far too great a price, I have no idea how Sony plans to make that work. I’m not even sure who the target market is for this service. It’s confusing, to say the least.

0:30:50 Garrett discusses his computer troubles.
Turns out it is an issue with the latest update to the drivers for his graphics card. We’ve all haad issues like this, and it’s good to vent about them when they happen. Also, congrats to Garrett for starting his Twitch channel.

0:39:40 Garrett talks about the rest of his week.

0:44:40 I finished Dragon Age 2.
I wish Sam was here, because it would’ve been a much more interesting conversation than it was. I like Dragon Age 2 is a good game, but it has a lot of flaws. It’s paced so much better than Origins was. At the same time, it’s ending is complete garbage.
Where Chris thinks the game is garbage, and Sam likes it, I’m somewhere in the middle. There will be an article about it soon.

0:57:30 I played Valiant Hearts: The Great War.
It’s a game worth playing, but it bizarre issues with keeping a consistent tone. The puzzles also really wreak the pacing of the game.
While awkward, the game is still good. I’m also working on an article for this game.

1:06:10 Chris talks about playing Punch-Out, featuring Mr. Dream.
And he talk about that for a bit.

1:20:00 Wrapping Up.
Interactive Friction can be found here.
My Resident Evil 5 article is here.

In this episode, we climb the only tower that exists in this entire game. Despite that, I still take a potshot at Ubisoft and their goddamn towers.

We spent a fair amount of time talking about the scene where Lara sits while the pilot of the rescue plane is slaughtered right in front of her. To be clear, not everything we discuss is necessarily a problem. And even if it is, it might not even be a big concern worth addressing with anything more than a passing glance. This is one of those complaints.

Though we occasionally have portions of the game where we have a rough idea of what we want to talk about, the vast majority of our commentary is completely spur of the moment. Because of that, there is absolutely no connection between how often or how long we speak about a specific topic or mechanic and how strong our feelings about it are. We might end up spending whole sections talking about relatively minor complements and complaints. Likewise, we could mention major problems in passing if the conversation doesn’t lend itself to us talking about them.

For example, when I discussed how silly it is for different animal hides to make different bags in Far Cry 3, I do not think that making every animal produce a general hide to make whatever would have improved the game. In fact, it would make the game worse because one could get all the bags at the start. With the pilot issue, it is not a huge problem since he’s a minor, irrelevant character. However, it is worth pointing out just to acknowledge it and move on.

In this episode, we remember Radioshack for a brief moment, further reminding ourselves of its irrelevancy. It’s so irrelevant, that Chrome’s built-in spell check thinks it’s a typo.

For the record, Tomb Raider is the very first game I’ve ever played that used automatic cover. Personally, this game sold me on the mechanic. I’d like to see more games used a feature like this in the future. As somebody who has played many cover-based shooters and action-adventure games in the vein of Uncharted, I think that there could be many uses. In those games, I often find the cover mechanics to be a little sticky. With automatic cover, I could imagine adding a new sense of mobility to a lot of games, as we see in a number of sections in this game.

On that topic, we mention Uncharted a lot in this episode, and the comparisons for this game is unavoidable. In the way that Naughty Dog took much inspiration from the old Tomb Raider games when making Uncharted, Crystal Dynamics took a large amount of inspiration from Uncharted when making the new Tomb Raider reboot. Still, even though they both have the same sense of style, there are enough differences, both big and small, between the two franchises to give them their own flavors.

Lastly, I cannot take credit for “What do they eat?” That’s something I took from Shamus Young after watching a lot of Spoiler Warning, another Let’s Play series that you might enjoy. Generally speaking, it is a good question to ask in order to see how much a writer has fleshed out their world. If the explanations for how people acquire resources stretch credulity, then the odds are that the game world in question wasn’t thought out very well. There are always exceptions to rules like this, but it can be a reasonable barometer.

Apparently, spoopy “horror” games are slowly becoming more and more of an area-of-expertise for me. If you were to ask me about these kinds of games even one year ago, I would only be able to talk about them through second-hand experiences. Now, I have gained a limited amount of experience. Thanks to my co-op partner, I was “convinced” to continue this education by playing Resident Evil 5: Gold Edition. For your mild entertainment, I amused this option. While playing it, I found that in many respects, it felt like it was trapped in the past of its genre. This week, I will discuss why this is the case.
But first, a bit of information about the game. Released in early 2009, Resident Evil 5 came out to high expectations after its predecessor became so popular in the previous generation. Taking place in Somewhere, Africa, the game follows protagonist Chris Redfield and his current partner, Sheva Alomar, as they work together to investigate a mysterious incident on the continent while looking for Chris’s old comrade, Jill Valentine, who was previously assumed dead. The two have to work together to find out what is going on, solving puzzles and fighting zom… infected along the way. The Gold Version, which is what I used for the purpose of this article, was released a year later and included all of the DLC for the game.
The story for RE5 was just a thoughtless overuse of old, established horror cliches. The villain just felt like a cardboard cutout of the villain from every super-hero comic book published before 1980. The game even acknowledges this when Chris mocks him for it during the final boss. One who has even a passing familiarity with fiction involving mutagenic bio-weapons is likely already knowledgeable of the stock excuses for such silly plans, and Resident Evil 5 uses almost all of them. Even on that level, Resident Evil 5 relies too heavily on tropes without distinguishing itself.
Having said that, the gameplay that the story exists to mildly justify is pretty interesting. With the help of either an AI partner or another human being, players use limited resources to either fight or flee from zom… infected. Since each protagonist has only 9 inventory slots, space is limited. This makes it so that even in the event where players find excess resources, they must be careful when choosing what to allocate space to. Though this limited inventory does feel like a holdover from the days when Resident Evil could be considered a survival horror game, it does work to force players to use good aim and tactics to conserve resources.
Unfortunately, the other parts of the gameplay have flaws on their own. Gunplay, as an example, works similarly to Deadly Premonition’s. When aiming at enemies, players must stand still, unable to move. Again, in the context of a survival horror game, this would be an interesting decision. Players would need to be more conscious of the fight or flight dynamics, since standing one’s ground exists entirely in opposition to running away from or through a group of enemies. However, in the more action-oriented environment of Resident Evil 5, it feels somewhat out of place. That said, this lack of movement does make it easier to aim in this game as opposed to other games out there. Despite the added benefit, I feel that the game would have been better served removing this restriction. When later sections turn fighting into an awkward third-person shooter, it demonstrates just how awkward the game really is.
On top of that, there are a couple of other old conventions that just feel either poorly tacked on or silly in context. The less egregious of these two elements are the Quicktime Events, which is saying something. The player who assumes the role of Chris has their own prompts, as does the one who plays Sheva. Sometimes they will have the same prompts, but this is not always the case. Failure to complete any one of the button inputs will result in an automatic instant-death, with the need to retry the event from the beginning. These are, almost without exception, never fun. Honestly, I do not understand why Quicktime Events have gotten very popular, especially when losing results in game over. Since the game came out in 2009, before the practice started to lose favor, I can somewhat understand why they were included. After all, it was still a fairly popular mechanic back in that era. In the modern context, it just does not work, and this is great example of why that is the case.

The other tired trope Resident Evil 5 heavily utilized was frequent instant death. Many of the larger enemies in the game have attacks that will automatically kill either player, no matter how much health they have, and without the possibility of the other player resuscitating them. Fighting these enemies becomes a major annoyance as a result, especially since the irreversible end of either player results in a game over. Certain environmental obstacles also have this effect. One particular example from the middle of the game comes to mind. As games of this ilk are wont to do, Resident Evil 5 includes a light-bending puzzle. With the help of reflective mirrors, the player team is required to point a beam of light towards a trigger mechanism in order to proceed. Unfortunately, the light is also a death ray that will kill either player on touch, resetting the entire puzzle. When this fact can only be discovered by falling victim to it, annoyance and frustration is guaranteed. Like in the above instance, most of the other instant death traps in Resident Evil 5 feel cheap.

Resident Evil 5 is not a bad game. It just does not do anything to really stand out among its contemporaries, even from the period in which the game was published. As a co-op game, it is functional, serving as a good excuse to get together with a friend and have some good time. On the whole, its overuse of old mechanics and stories from the grand list of scary movie/game cliches demonstrates a sheer lack of creativity from the designers.

In this episode, we talk about playing pretty dress-up with video game protagonists.

It is a nice touch that Roth is the one who duel-wields pistols instead of Lara. Roth is the one who taught Lara everything she knows about fighting. He’s the grizzled veteran who’s gone through tough situations before, not Lara. It’s a sign of how tough he is as a fighter. Once Lara eventually gains experience after enduring all of these trials, she’s earned her ability to do the same in the game’s finale.

The other big thing we talk about in the beginning is that unlike Far Cry 3, the game does an excellent job of telling you why our protagonist does not or cannot just stop and leave. In Far Cry 3, there are several points in the game where Jason could resolve all of his problems and leave the island, but instead deliberately chooses not to for completely contrived reasons. In Tomb Raider (2013), Lara is always put in circumstances that not only explain why she has to keep going, but why she can’t hand the reins over to people who might otherwise be more experienced.

Furthermore, because Roth is a Lara’s mentor, and she is born into a family of adventurers, she has enough people in her life that it makes sense for her to naturally pick up skills like basic first aid and combat. Jason Brody might be able to get by with Grant, but the game never explicitly states why he is just so good when he’s never shot a weapon of any kind before.

The rest of our commentary this episode stands on its own. This was a pretty good episode and we made a lot of good commentary on it.
Page 116 of 138...113114115116117118119...