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Jake

Idle Thumbs 88: Lacks Restraint

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Long-time listener, first-time poster.

The critique of Far Cry 3 was disappointing in this episode. The discussion of the problems with how the game frames missions, based by all accounts on not that many hours of gameplay, was not edifying. The pirate boat mission, for example, is explicitly set up to be a stealth mission. Sneaking around the boat, taking enemies out one by one, and slowly infiltrating a marvelously designed level is just plain fun. Feeling upset that you swam out of the zone is a bit like being upset that you can't open most doors you encounter in the Walking Dead; the problem is not the game design but expectation. If you accept the parameters of the design and discover how you can innovate within those parameters rather than whining that the design was not what you expected, you will have a different experience. The discussion of the connection between the hunting system and the RPG progression was particularly depressing. FC3 brilliantly links game systems that could have been free-standing, vertical units with little to no impact on each other or the story; instead, these systems are linked horizontally and also contribute to the narrative of the character. Being told that your wallet is too small encourages you to find the animal you need to hunt, which encourages both exploration and attention to the wildlife that populates the game; learning to track and kill these animals trains the protagonist in the skills that later get put to use in the main story. The larger wallet, larger ammunition pouch, and larger arrow quivers all allow the player to attack bigger bases, take on more enemies, and enjoy more success in story missions. Every system brings rewards that are tangible and also aid the RPG progress. If you balance hunting, taking on bases, exploring, and doing story missions, everything fits together incredibly well. I understand that this is not how Far Cry 2 worked, but your refusal to explore this game on its own terms demonstrates the same kind of obstinance that leads to uninformed bro-critiques of games like Journey, Fez, and again, Walking Dead. This game is not FC2, and deserves your serious attention.

More broadly, I feel disappointed by the tendency of Idle Thumbs (which I have been listening to since the reboot, because y'all are the smartest people who talk about video games online, which I deeply appreciate) to turn to critique as a kind of default analytical position, as if saying something negative about a game is better than looking for strengths and positives. "Put a pin in that problem. Oh, we'll get back to it" was the refrain of this episode, uttered almost joyfully. I'm a university professor, and see a similar tendency both among my graduate students and in my profession in general--when a new book comes out, or when an article is under review, it is always easiest to rip it to shreds. The work doesn't do what was expected. It doesn't do what I would have done. It doesn't do what other works do. It has bad grammar, or data, or a boring title, or something. Whatever can be criticized must be highlighted in a patronizing fashion. This is intellectually lazy. The more challenging task in academia, and I suspect in video game critique and production, is to always look for what a game offers on its own terms. What does this game do that other games do not? How does it refine a system or a story or a style in an innovative or exciting way? How am I empowered and constrained in a new formulation when playing this game? As a kind of coda, by all means exercise your critical faculties and wallow in a game's shortcomings. But for that to be the foundation of your articulation of what matters in the game seems counter to your ostensible support of the industry as a whole.

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Far Cry 3 chastising you for leaving the mission area is not the same as The Walking Dead not letting you open every door. It would be like if The Walking Dead gave you a "warning, go back" screen every time you went to any area other than the one you need to be in to move the story forward. Far Cry 3 already has its environment set up but they lock it down when you are on a mission for no good reason. The "parameters of the design" are explicitly about finding your own approach, free-roaming around, and so on, which is why everyone was so disappointed when they tried their own special tactic and the game shut them down. I don't think any of them complained about how the various systems didn't interlock or interact horizontally - their problem was that it's all a bunch of extraneous shit that doesn't need to get shoved into the player's face. That was the whole discussion about the distinction between systems and mechanics: it's fine to have a lot of interesting systems going in your game, but if you turn them all into explicit mechanics, the game just turns into a bloated mess that covers up the good stuff with menu after menu of leather wallet crafting shenanigans.

You say that Idle Thumbs defaults to "critique" as the default analytical position - what you really mean is "negative criticism" or "negative critique" because critique is just talking about what works and what doesn't. But I think you're wrong that Idle Thumbs defaults to negative, because the first half of the podcast was nothing but gushing praise...

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Long-time listener, first-time poster.

The critique of Far Cry 3 was disappointing in this episode. The discussion of the problems with how the game frames missions, based by all accounts on not that many hours of gameplay, was not edifying. The pirate boat mission, for example, is explicitly set up to be a stealth mission. Sneaking around the boat, taking enemies out one by one, and slowly infiltrating a marvelously designed level is just plain fun. Feeling upset that you swam out of the zone is a bit like being upset that you can't open most doors you encounter in the Walking Dead; the problem is not the game design but expectation. If you accept the parameters of the design and discover how you can innovate within those parameters rather than whining that the design was not what you expected, you will have a different experience. The discussion of the connection between the hunting system and the RPG progression was particularly depressing. FC3 brilliantly links game systems that could have been free-standing, vertical units with little to no impact on each other or the story; instead, these systems are linked horizontally and also contribute to the narrative of the character. Being told that your wallet is too small encourages you to find the animal you need to hunt, which encourages both exploration and attention to the wildlife that populates the game; learning to track and kill these animals trains the protagonist in the skills that later get put to use in the main story. The larger wallet, larger ammunition pouch, and larger arrow quivers all allow the player to attack bigger bases, take on more enemies, and enjoy more success in story missions. Every system brings rewards that are tangible and also aid the RPG progress. If you balance hunting, taking on bases, exploring, and doing story missions, everything fits together incredibly well. I understand that this is not how Far Cry 2 worked, but your refusal to explore this game on its own terms demonstrates the same kind of obstinance that leads to uninformed bro-critiques of games like Journey, Fez, and again, Walking Dead. This game is not FC2, and deserves your serious attention.

Thanks for writing in!

For me, those kinds of linked systems are brilliant when I'm enjoying all parts that are going on, but are incredibly frustrating when I don't. Something like Deus Ex (or more recently, Dishonored) takes the opposite approach and lets you not just progress your character but also differentiate it in a way that allows you to play in a more enjoyable style. Granted, you do want a game to push you outside of your comfort zone occasionally—such as a botched stealth approach that forces you to fight your way out of it. But from their description of Far Cry 3, it sounds like the game really does want you do everything, all the time, by ping-ponging you from mechanic to mechanic to mechanic.

I think there are ways to accomplish what they set out to do and encourage the player to explore unfamiliar styles of play, but it requires a bit less forcefulness. They tried to be helpful but instead it comes off as Clippy.

clippy.jpg

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Caspar I have to disagree. Chirs and Famous are 100% right in their criticism.

"Lack of restraint" defines Far Cry 3 quite well, but I also think its important to highlight the lack of direction the game has, or as Chris and Shawn explained, a failure to communicate ideas to the player. For instance, the idea of having you hunt as a means to encourage world exploration is a solid idea, but then why tie each item so specifically to different animal leather? Just like Chris, I sat stuck in the build progression of some of my items because while I had boatloads of endangered Tiger and Shark skin, I couldnt find any fucking goats to make the first item (which brings up a whole new level of wtf? If I have the materials to make the biggest wallet, why cant I just make this one. Are they all building on top of each other to form some Frankenstein-ish amalgamation of animal parts?).

The absolute PERFECT "Far Cry 3" (to use that as a term describing the illogical mess of the game) moment happens in the second act when you have to take photos of the traitors meeting on the bridge. At the end of the mission when you have to escape the game decides to do the stupidest thing ever. On my first attempt I jumped right off the bridge into the water below me, because that seemed like the most obvious and most badass choice. For some reason though that gave me a mission fail screen. The game insists you instead fly a few hundred meters with your stupid sugar-glider wings to a jeep across the embankment. But when you get to the jeep the mission ends there! Why INSIST I go to the jeep if the jeep itself is just going to act as some trigger to end the mission and isnt even necessary in the escape itself?

This is exactly the confusion in motivation and resolution that is evident through the entire game. In that mission the objective should be "escape using any of the multitude of ways possible in this open world environment." But instead the objective is "ignore everything about this open world and play the game like its a corridor shooter. Escape exactly the way we tell you to."

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I'm going to chime in and say that even though the Thumbs were right in their criticism, 30+ minutes of wailing about it was too much; even more so when this is the 4th episode in a row that they've talked about FC3 in similar terms.

For instance, Chris's cry of "What game did they think they were doing?!" is very apt but once was probably enough... and like Chris said in the discussion intro, it's not a very pleasant (or enriching) discussion to listen to - actually it's pretty exhausting.

Still, it's completely unfair to say that this is what Idle Thumbs does; because they've got a track record of championing positive aspects of games - of analyzing what works - and when they inspect failure, they mostly focus on why this failure is interesting.

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While it wasent as insightful as some of their other criticisms or as funny I did really enjoy them picking apart Far Cry 3. Mostly because I hate it and its a bad video game.

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I'm a university professor, and see a similar tendency both among my graduate students and in my profession in general--when a new book comes out, or when an article is under review, it is always easiest to rip it to shreds. The work doesn't do what was expected. It doesn't do what I would have done. It doesn't do what other works do. It has bad grammar, or data, or a boring title, or something. Whatever can be criticized must be highlighted in a patronizing fashion. This is intellectually lazy.

I was actually quite surprised by this statement, to the point that I suspect that I may have missed the point entirely. I don't have nearly as much experience with this stuff as you must have, but I have sat through a dozen or so 15-minute practice talks followed by 45+ minutes of (mostly negative) critique. This is a standard procedure in our lab for everybody who is attending a scientific conference from research assistants to senior research scientist alike. I think all of us know why this is so important and why the focus is on the negative. If you don't fix your problems you are going to be ripped to shreds in the conference or during the peer-review process no matter how cool your figures look like. For example, if you make statements based on "bad data" or even incomplete data, you are simply doomed. There is no excuse. If we fail to address that and instead focus on how strong some other aspects of the presentation or article are, then I feel like we have seriously failed as scientists and colleagues. As a result of this process, the presentations or articles have always come out infinitely stronger in the end. In my opinion, if a scientific article can be ripped to shreds, then it should be, for the benefit of all. The sooner the better.

(I have not played Far Cry 3, nor have I finished this podcast)

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The absolute PERFECT "Far Cry 3" (to use that as a term describing the illogical mess of the game) moment happens in the second act when you have to take photos of the traitors meeting on the bridge. At the end of the mission when you have to escape the game decides to do the stupidest thing ever. On my first attempt I jumped right off the bridge into the water below me, because that seemed like the most obvious and most badass choice. For some reason though that gave me a mission fail screen. The game insists you instead fly a few hundred meters with your stupid sugar-glider wings to a jeep across the embankment. But when you get to the jeep the mission ends there! Why INSIST I go to the jeep if the jeep itself is just going to act as some trigger to end the mission and isnt even necessary in the escape itself?

This is exactly the confusion in motivation and resolution that is evident through the entire game. In that mission the objective should be "escape using any of the multitude of ways possible in this open world environment." But instead the objective is "ignore everything about this open world and play the game like its a corridor shooter. Escape exactly the way we tell you to."

Haha, yeah, I have a big rant in the game's thread about this exact spot. I uninstalled the game once because of it. I missed the popup that told you to jump off the bridge, so I kept fighting respawning guys. Of course I could have ran away easily if that was the goal -- but no, you have to run away using this one particular car!

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Man was I disappointed after buying Cart Life. I agree that the writing is good and the presentation is interesting, but playing it is a huge chore because the difficulty comes from a combination of ridiculously sped up time and it being completely unrealistically difficulty to get stuff you need. Or which town is this that has only one superstore you have to travel by taxi to get to? They didn't even sell food for humans that I noticed. Even living in Finland, I have three stores a short walking distance away. In Britain I had one across the street that was open 24 hours a day. But this guy I can't feed because apparently food is scarce in the US. You'd think the motel had a vending machine, at least.

Rather than speed up time so much, I'd much rather deal with the moments when it gets difficult to do everything you need to, and then also deal with the boredom of sitting in that newsstand for the entire day.

I also think that it fails to see many things which are difficult about moving to a new country, but I suppose that quibble is insane because it's so novel for a game to even approach that issue. In any case, I can't get to the meat of the game because corner stores don't exist and my guy starves to death.

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Buy the granola bars at the store and go to the student food area in the morning where there's a bagel cart.

The sped up time made sense to me, since you still spend around the same blocks of time on things you'd normally be doing. Right about. Work for about 9ish hours, get some food, commute, go to sleep.

One annoying thing, which I can see why that was done, was that I wanted to sell my newspapers for exactly 1 dollar, to make the math easy and because I thought that was a good price. But the 1.00 is missing from the slider. it goes from 0.99 to 1.01. Foiled!!

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Howdy. I'm the one who wrote in about Metroid Prime. Just wanted to clarify a few things.

For starters, I loved Prime's music (especially the BGM for the area mentioned on the cast, Phenandra Drifts). This was my second playthrough and I wanted to try something different. Playing without music makes the game into an entirely different animal. It's most noticeable in the pirate encounters. Normally those fights are telegraphed to you by the distinct Space Pirate theme starting to play long before any pirates actually come within range; without that theme as a tell, you won't know you're in a firefight until you realize you're being shot at. It's particularly intense in areas where you can't see the pirates, but you can hear their occasional idle barks (which I never even noticed my first time through the game). It also completely changes the Meta Ridley fight, which goes from big and bombastic to a very deliberate, quiet showdown in the rain occasionally punctuated by the rhythmic clanging noise made by the stomp attack they gave him in the Trilogy version of the game.

Second, the Other M scene in question was

Adam Malkovich sacrificing himself. It's supposed to be very moving and heroic, but most players at this point had realized that Adam was dangerously incompetent and that his increasing list of poor decisions are very likely the reason why Samus is seemingly the only person to ever survive following orders from him.

I wasn't sure if anyone on the cast had actually played the game or not, since it was talked about only once for the purposes of mocking the trailer; so it may have been a poor point to include. My bad.

Lastly, I'm pleased that you pronounced my name correctly, but you got my gender wrong. Close enough!

Also, that a capella version of HL2 looks incredible.

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So, I feel a little bit guilty for making Sean possibly suspect he was being a baby in last week's thread! I am sorry, I do not think you are a baby! I do think we continue to have different viewpoints on how that scene could/should play out. The way you defined your position (what actions could I take if this was a point'n'click?) made sense. I just think an extra 5-10 seconds of exposition would have been enough to clearly define what you can and can't do. In an FPS, your only interactive options are "deplete health points of mans", but in this situation just a couple of lines will suggest attempting to deplete the health would be suicide. If your brother had said something like "come on, we have to go!" or "what are you doing, get back here?" or even "what good will that do", anything like that, it has made the expectations to me "if you keep doing that something bad will happen". If at that point you go bumble into that guy and he shoots you it is both 1) a valid outcome to your actions and 2) exactly what should have happened. It's something that's only crystallized for me in maybe the last 6 months or so, but I am willing to accept that death/failure as a legitimate option in games. If you put your hand on the stove, it's going to get burnt and I'm ok with that.

I had the EXACT reaction to the turret sequence that Chris did. They were yelling about doing/not doing things that did not match up in the slightest with things I was actually doing. Both the above and this I think are failures of the scripting team to put hooks in the right places. Don't just yell random shit at 9 second intervals, and don't stare lifelessly at me when I'm doing something dumb and about to get killed. I'm starting to really dig into the story, and I don't think I like it very much at all.

With that said, I still REALLY like Far Cry 3. I see all these direct parallels to FC2. It feels so, so incredibly similar. It is somewhat confusing to not hear those parallels being noticed immediately. Once I got going, it was "FUCK YES FC 2 BUT WITH WATER NOW." I had also honestly forgotten that Chris's opinion on Assassin's Creed and mine differ so much. AC2 and AC:Bro are two of my favorite games of all time. Certainly my favorite open world games. I definitely spent a lot (lot) of time collecting shit out of treasure chests in AC2, and I spent a lot (LOT) of time collecting all the diamond caches in FC2. I am about the opposite of a completionist/achievement seeker, too.

The crafting in Far Cry is so much fun. The idea that you aren't ARTIFICIALLY limited to a certain weapon loadout, but that you have a real world limitation and literally do not have the gear needed to carry more than one weapon until you make yourself a holster is completely awesome and the Far Cry-est. Ok now you can holster 3 weapons, but you still don't have the ammo pouches and bandoliers to carry more than 30-50 rounds. But you CAN be self-sufficient and go make yourself new gear. The restrictions on what kinds of leather make what is totally video gamey, but I accept it the same way you need specific crafting materials to have someone make you shit in Dragon Age, or the Big Game Hunter quests in World of Warcraft. What's that? Oh no, not Young Tigers, Stranglethorn Tigers. Well... ok fine.

I would also point out that the "unlock guns, ps there are gun spewing machines everywhere" was in Far Cry 2. They were just your Safe Houses, instead of a Coke machine that has ammo. How did all of your safe houses become identically stocked, everywhere? How did you keep them from being raided? How could you clear out a new safe area, wander around outside for 30 seconds, and then return to find it fully stocked with all the guns and ammo? How do you pay for all of it? The conceit that "it is a video game" is just as acceptable in that instance to me as this one, because they are literally the same. The difference is in one shit is lying on a table, and the other you might have to pay for ammo and they didn't model all the guns every time.

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Cart Life is really good. I'm not sure if I'll ever play it again.

I started it up during a bout of insomnia, and at the point when I had Andrus starving and passing out while trying to keep the price of coffee and papers straight and trying to catch up to a lunch rush that wouldn't end so I could actually feed him... and then finally just saying fuck it and closing shop and going to buy lunch and then coming back and finding out that he was too tired to open the stand back up... and then going back to the motel and going to sleep and waking up I'm not sure when but I suspect like 10 at night since after I bought a slice of pizza everything closed... it started being, I dunno, a little too evocative.

Also, tangentially: When I saw the toy cat in the superstore, the first place my mind went is "Oh this is the item you buy Andrus to keep him from going crazy if his cat dies." No idea if that's the case, but, fuck. Bleak and harrying all the way down.

It's a really good reminder of why most of the games we like to play are escapist fluff. It might just be too real for me.

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I would also point out that the "unlock guns, ps there are gun spewing machines everywhere" was in Far Cry 2. They were just your Safe Houses, instead of a Coke machine that has ammo. How did all of your safe houses become identically stocked, everywhere? How did you keep them from being raided? How could you clear out a new safe area, wander around outside for 30 seconds, and then return to find it fully stocked with all the guns and ammo? How do you pay for all of it? The conceit that "it is a video game" is just as acceptable in that instance to me as this one, because they are literally the same. The difference is in one shit is lying on a table, and the other you might have to pay for ammo and they didn't model all the guns every time.

The way I understood it, they made three distinct criticisms of the gun vending machines. The first is that they hated having to scavenge for leather from 8 different species instead of being able to just BUY leather - why are there gun vending machines in everyone's house selling highly advanced tools of destruction, but literally nobody on the entire island has any leather lying around for sale? Why can you sell leather TO the machines but not get it back OUT of them? They didn't like that, "it is a video game" doesn't really remove the tedium of having to scavenge for things you want to just buy because you don't enjoy the scavenging mechanic, and Far Cry 2 never said "you have to find certain things but you can buy as many guns as you want." The only thing you had to find in Far Cry 2 was currency to buy stuff, and missions would give you enough currency to buy whatever you want if you want to skip the scavenging mechanic.

Their second criticism was that it's just bizarre that everyone's house has a vending machine that sells GUNS stocked by some lady on the island, because... why? Is she a supervillain? In Far Cry 2 this made a lot more sense - the country is literally a warzone full of arms dealers. Arms dealers are EVERYWHERE, half your missions are "blow up this arms convoy so that my own arms convoy will be more profitable," and so on. The safe houses themselves are used by the other foreign mercenaries in the country, not just you. It is kind of strange that nobody takes your guns and stuff, but it's much more understandable how a country where convoys of arms dealers drive across the roads constantly would keep safe houses used by foreign mercenaries stocked with guns than it is for why some tropical island has gun vending machines everywhere.

Their third criticism, and maybe the one you seem to be the most focused on, is that the gun vending machines ruin the aesthetic. Did you hear how much they gushed about how AMAZING that estate was, only to be ruined by the stupid gun vending machine in the house? Far Cry 2 doesn't suffer from that at all. The safe houses are weapon, ammo, and medicine repositories, and the crates from arms dealers are just a further reminder that the country has gone to shit and is in the middle of a war.

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I like to think of the Far Cry 2 system as a gun subscription. My hard-earned diamonds are buying me the Heckler & Koch Unlimited MP5 Plan, along with a few optional service upgrades, like Premium Reliability KochCare.

The various dealers around the area are simply honoring my contract, because they have an arrangement with H&K to do so.

edit: It also appears that I'm their only customer and they're stocking the guns just for me, but I'm no businessman! They don't seem to have much overhead since everything is done with those shitty computers.

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I think this considered disagreement is fun, but I don't want the cast dudes second guessing what they're saying. It's never too long!

I haven't played FC3, but they should have let any any material be used for any crafting, but made some more and less optimal. having a drug addled dude with really crummy cobbled pouches could be interesting as well.

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I feel that all the criticisms that the thumbs leveled against far cry 3 were valid, but I love that game, because despite all those problems there is a very fun game in there. Its one of the 5 they tried to make, its the open world fucking around and exploring one. The hunting shit is contrived, but its goofy and fun, jumping into vehicles and off cliffs is great, buy the treasure maps and look for letters and relics, lots of them are in really cool fun places.

I'm kind of surprised Chris didn't try to just explore and mess around. If you stick to the critical path you are only seeing the worst the game has to offer.

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I feel that all the criticisms that the thumbs leveled against far cry 3 were valid, but I love that game, because despite all those problems there is a very fun game in there. Its one of the 5 they tried to make, its the open world fucking around and exploring one. The hunting shit is contrived, but its goofy and fun, jumping into vehicles and off cliffs is great, buy the treasure maps and look for letters and relics, lots of them are in really cool fun places.

I'm kind of surprised Chris didn't try to just explore and mess around. If you stick to the critical path you are only seeing the worst the game has to offer.

He mentioned the omnipresent "here is your next objective" thing which drives him, surprisingly enough, to his next objective rather than exploration. Maybe he could revisit the game when they release the patch to let you turn that off.

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Yeah, hopefully. It didn't bother me that much, but I tend to actively ignore critical paths in games. I gotta do all the stuff first. All the stuff.

I also don't want to let the game off for its terrible story that conflicts with the gameplay, or the bizzare decisions they made in design and mission structure, but there is still a ton of fun to be had in that game.

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