Jake

Idle Thumbs 226: "Console Wars and Hedge Dog" or "The New Far Cry 2"

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Idle Thumbs 226:

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"Console Wars and Hedge Dog" or "The New Far Cry 2"

Get carried away on our balloon of delight as we dive into Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, a game that stirs up memories of something we loved dearly, long ago. Then, we'll let you in on the "Sad Space Dads" craze that has taken the gaming world by storm. If that isn't enough, stick with us for the time Chris and Nick chatted with Jeff Goldblum about Thomas Pynchon novels.

Games Discussed: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Far Cry 2, Corpse of Discovery, Stasis, Super Mario Maker, Lara Croft: Go, Fallout Shelter, Sonic - The Hedge Dog

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I feel like Hitman (Pre-absolution anyway) actually did a good job of giving you a chance to keep things under control when you get spotted. You have to be fast and knock unconscious/kill the person who spotted you, but I have pulled this off many times and still finished missions without having to shoot my way out. There have even been times where the alarm was raised I shot my way through several guards, then during a lull ran away and changed disguises to continue the mission.

Dues Ex Human Revolution also had this, but its because the AI wasn't great so even if you shot up the previous room enemies further on won't know anything is wrong.

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Loved all the MGSV discussion! While playing I was wondering if you guys were going to make a Far Cry 2 comparison. From what I understand of MGSV's systems I think that while you can get surprised a lot, the game actually has predictable patterns that you can plan around if you're thorough enough. For example, knowing a truck's route and stops allows you to find the perfect moment to plant some C4 on it to blow something up down the road. I hope you guys end up having some Far Cry 2-like stories to share on the show.

 

I went to the panel for Lara Croft Go at PAX where the devs talk a bit about how Hitman Go came to be. It sounded like people at the top basically said "Hey, we should try making a mobile game with a small team." Then the game director Daniel Lutz and Lead Engineer Antoine Routon came up with the premise for Hitman Go and pitched it. They said they feel like an indie team that just happens to be owned by Square Enix with access to all the IP they own.

 

They said they really liked the pace of turning a game around in one year rather than spending 3-4 years on a game. Also the art director for Lara Croft Go, Thierry Doizon had previously worked on a pre-reboot Tomb Raider game. He said it was funny that the Tomb Raider games he's worked on both ended up being low-poly even though they were separated by several years.

 

Oh and also this was the free swag they gave away. It has shots of a levels from Lara Croft Go in 3D.

 

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I loved the opening of the MGS5 discussion because it helped put into words how I've felt about the series this whole time. I liken it now to how I feel about Neon Genesis Evangelion (which by the way, good call on the "it's anime" thing). That series is frustrating for me to watch because it is all over the place in its tone and handling of itself (ha, masturbation). One episode will be light-hearted and comedic, and the next will be a psychotic mind-trip, but then the next will be a standard awesome-action-show. I don't crave that kind of mess from any content I digest, and Metal Gear Solid as a series was showing signs of it by the end of part 2 onward. There's parts of those games that I admire and appreciate but on the whole... Let's just say Kojima is far from the "genius" that people laud him to be. I think he's a creative personality who doesn't know what he wants to focus on and also lacks the ability to self-edit.

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Let's just say Kojima is far from the "genius" that people laud him to be. I think he's a creative personality who doesn't know what he wants to focus on and also lacks the ability to self-edit.

Kojima is the George Lucas of video games?

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Kojima is the George Lucas of video games?

In some respects. But at least when Lucas declared he was quitting he stuck to it.

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Deus Ex: The Fall was garbage. Bad writing, bad acting, bad UI (at least on the PC port). So little work was done when porting it that when the devs reworked the microtransaction system to use in-game money, they forgot that they could no longer rely on an OS-level alert system to require purchase confirmation, and it was possible to just accidentally flush all your money into a gold-level ammo pack because you clicked on a picture in a menu. It's currently on sale for $2 on Steam, and I would recommend buying four rolls of pennies and trying to eat them instead.

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Deus Ex: The Fall was garbage. Bad writing, bad acting, bad UI (at least on the PC port). So little work was done when porting it that when the devs reworked the microtransaction system to use in-game money, they forgot that they could no longer rely on an OS-level alert system to require purchase confirmation, and it was possible to just accidentally flush all your money into a gold-level ammo pack because you clicked on a picture in a menu. It's currently on sale for $2 on Steam, and I would recommend buying four rolls of pennies and trying to eat them instead.

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I have some insight into the development of Hitman GO that has not been widely reported as far as I know. I've talked to one of the developers of the original version of the game that was in development at a studio in Vancouver BC. The original version of the game was more along the lines of Deus Ex: The Fall, it was trying to mimic the console / PC games but with touch controls and virtual sticks. It got relatively far into development on the Unity engine and was fairly full featured but the controls never came together so Square Enix canned it.

 

The version of Hitman GO developed by Square Enix Montreal was designed as a reaction to the previous failed attempt which is why its a Hitman game stripped down to its essentials and then built back up into a puzzle game with swipe controls.

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Kojima yeah, feels like animé, especially in the way animé doesn't seem to value plot development or resolution anywhere nearly as much as creating kinda pantomime tableaus strung together. So many interesting premises, so few really interesting season arcs. But where animé tends to be more surrealist, Kojima feels like almost dadaist formal experimentation, with a little bit of just stream-of-kojima's-conciousness added. 

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Actually it's http://www.kodie.me/. Though I admit that I also went to codie.me first. Also I saw he did a thing for Baman Piderman which is a freakin great absurdist series of animated shorts.

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I gotta say listening to Nick's enthusiasm for the game was amazing because when he likes something he seems very passionate about it and maybe I haven't listened in a while but I think there hasn't been a game he's been super into and amazed by since MGS5. Also hilarious was Danielle's and Jake's questions about it because they haven't played the game. I know Danielle says she's been watching her GF play the game but I heavily recommend she play it as well. 

 

I wish Sean was on the episode or at least will be on next week if he has had any time with MGS5 because I am very interested to hear what he has to say. Episode was fantastic. Also really enjoyed Chris talking about MGS5 because he and Nick were going crazy and it made for good podcasting. 

 

Someone needs to make a youtube clip or animate the Jeff Goldblum story because I died laughing listening to it. Especially when Danielle asked for them to explain what they meant by "Goldblum-ing the fuck out" and Chris and Nick going hard lmao. GOOD SHOW

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I just watched the Lara Croft GO quick look and I'm a little confused by some of the choices. I loved Hitman GO and even with the challenges that game never really stumped me until the Hitman 2 pack. LCG removes that challenge system, and then replaces the 'figure out how to go to this tile and get the briefcase' challenge with collectables in the background. It looks nice, but that doesn't seem as fun for a game about doing puzzles. I really enjoyed the challenge system in Hitman GO because it meant you were solving a level 4 completely different ways sometimes: your initial run, the run that comes under the turn limit (which usually involved really clever movement routes), the run that gets the briefcase and then whatever x-factor challenge (kill all guards, kill no guards, kill no dogs, etc.). I get that the repetition of a level doesn't really fit with Tomb Raider as well as Hitman, but I found it so fun that I wish they had found some way to put it in the game.

 

Otherwise, the game looks great, love the aesthetics and the new mechanics look like fun. I can see the platform-moving levers adding a lot to the game design.

 

Glad to hear they're adding wrinkles to the design of Fallout Shelter, but putting the removal of a bad mechanic behind a paywall is a bit disappointing. I don't really think tapping on rooms to collect resources adds anything to the design other than tedium, esp when there's usually nothing else going on to distract you from it. I still would've really liked if the rooms had functional uses that would cause the characters to move around to make the world feel more real.

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I just watched the Lara Croft GO quick look and I'm a little confused by some of the choices. I loved Hitman GO and even with the challenges that game never really stumped me until the Hitman 2 pack. LCG removes that challenge system, and then replaces the 'figure out how to go to this tile and get the briefcase' challenge with collectables in the background. It looks nice, but that doesn't seem as fun for a game about doing puzzles. I really enjoyed the challenge system in Hitman GO because it meant you were solving a level 4 completely different ways sometimes: your initial run, the run that comes under the turn limit (which usually involved really clever movement routes), the run that gets the briefcase and then whatever x-factor challenge (kill all guards, kill no guards, kill no dogs, etc.). I get that the repetition of a level doesn't really fit with Tomb Raider as well as Hitman, but I found it so fun that I wish they had found some way to put it in the game.

 

Otherwise, the game looks great, love the aesthetics and the new mechanics look like fun. I can see the platform-moving levers adding a lot to the game design.

 

Glad to hear they're adding wrinkles to the design of Fallout Shelter, but putting the removal of a bad mechanic behind a paywall is a bit disappointing. I don't really think tapping on rooms to collect resources adds anything to the design other than tedium, esp when there's usually nothing else going on to distract you from it. I still would've really liked if the rooms had functional uses that would cause the characters to move around to make the world feel more real.

The Lara Croft game, from my experience playing it at least, seems primarily concerned with you exploring the space and feekubg out how the puzzle of the room works and completing it, whereas Hitman Go was maybe more about gaining a holistic understanding of a level and then surgically exploiting it?

Maybe it's something like this, for me? I was put off by Lara Croft Go for a while because I was trying to play it like Hitman Go, but once I started playing it like Monument Valley my enjoyment went way up.

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The Lara Croft game, from my experience playing it at least, seems primarily concerned with you exploring the space and feekubg out how the puzzle of the room works and completing it, whereas Hitman Go was maybe more about gaining a holistic understanding of a level and then surgically exploiting it?

 

I read this, and imagined that whilst typing, Jake was taken by the robots and then immediately replaced by a robo simulacrum.

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The other anime-like thing Metal Gear has going for it (besides everything) is its use of Western literature in a way that feels like someone giving a book report without having read the book. I'm about 10 episodes into MGSV, but their Moby Dick references feel like they're on the same superficial level as Evangelion's use of religious imagery and terminology. I haven't studied much about religion but Evangelion feels to me like someone who got a book on religion, and went through cherry picking say "This looks cool, this looks cool, ooo and I'll put this in too!"

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The other anime-like thing Metal Gear has going for it (besides everything) is its use of Western literature in a way that feels like someone giving a book report without having read the book. I'm about 10 episodes into MGSV, but their Moby Dick references feel like they're on the same superficial level as Evangelion's use of religious imagery and terminology. I haven't studied much about religion but Evangelion feels to me like someone who got a book on religion, and went through cherry picking say "This looks cool, this looks cool, ooo and I'll put this in too!"

Yes so much this! I have always been annoyed with the sloppy application of literature and/or philosophy in Japanese games. "feels like someone giving a book report without having read the book" is a great definition of this.

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It's a little bit weird that anime is being used so broadly to explain everything that doesn't really work thematically in the new Metal Gear Solid. I mean, I'm not surprised that two types of work originating from the same culture share some common ground (and common weaknesses), but I don't know about relying on generalizations about a massive medium, especially typified by a singular work like Neon Genesis Evangelion, to explain so many of the weird, inconsistent, or disappointing parts of a single work from a different medium, mostly because they share that culture.

 

Honestly, I'd rather venture that NGE and MGS feel so similar in places is because they're both made by intellectual and eccentric Japanese auteurs with a love of military hardware and science fiction who were born in the early 1960s, not "lol anime" or whatever.

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It's a little bit weird that anime is being used so broadly to explain everything that doesn't really work thematically in the new Metal Gear Solid. I mean, I'm not surprised that two types of work originating from the same culture share some common ground (and common weaknesses), but I don't know about relying on generalizations about a massive medium, especially typified by a singular work like Neon Genesis Evangelion, to explain so many of the weird, inconsistent, or disappointing parts of a single work from a different medium, mostly because they share that culture.

Honestly, I'd rather venture that NGE and MGS feel so similar in places is because they're both made by intellectual and eccentric Japanese auteurs with a love of military hardware and science fiction who were born in the early 1960s, not "lol anime" or whatever.

this this and this.

Also, a lot of lit, especially the Emil Coiran quote at the beginning, fits somewhat well tonally and thematic wise.

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Honestly, I'd rather venture that NGE and MGS feel so similar in places is because they're both made by intellectual and eccentric Japanese auteurs with a love of military hardware and science fiction who were born in the early 1960s, not "lol anime" or whatever.

 

Very good point! Bad on me for generalizing something not localized strictly to Japanese media. I'm sure it's easy to find several examples across modern stories where you can tell the author only sorta understood what they were inspired by. For example, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a game I love but its use of the Journey to the West story pretty much just takes the iconic images and very basic framework of the story. 

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