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Jake

Idle Thumbs 88: Lacks Restraint

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It's not like any of the Thumbs denied there was fun to be had in the game - they said the core shooting mechanics were stupendous and praised the stuff like the animal/AI interactions that resulted in crazy stuff happening.

Not to single you out, but perhaps to single Caspar out: just because people say bad things about a video game (or about anything) doesn't mean there's nothing good about the game. Even if three people spend half an hour discussing everything they hate about a game, this doesn't mean they hate everything about a game. You don't really need to say "there is still a ton of fun to be had in that game" unless people get the wrong impression from criticism like the kind in this latest episode. If anyone listens to Sean, Chris, and Jake talk about Far Cry 3 and comes away with the impression that there's nothing fun about it, they honestly weren't really listening to the criticism or understanding what was being critiqued. Video games are not undifferentiated masses that must be taken or left as wholes. We can break them up into parts and examine the parts that didn't work.

I think when it comes to video game criticism, there are at least two kinds of people. One kind of person wants to know "is it a good game or not?" and this kind of person will listen to people talking about games and try to figure out whether they like the game or not. If they listen to Idle Thumbs 88 they will probably think that the Thumbs don't like Far Cry 3 and think it's not a good game, so then they might post on a forum somewhere and say "hey, I had fun with Far Cry 3" or "Far Cry 3 actually is a great game" or "Congrats Nick" or something. Another kind of person approaches games criticism not from a "is the game good or not" angle but from a "what in this game is good and what in this game isn't good" angle. Those kinds of people will hear this podcast and learn that there's a lot of stuff in Far Cry 3 that the Thumbs don't like, and that all this stuff actually hurts their enjoyment of what they see as fairly indisputably great basic mechanics. This second kind of person will maybe go onto forums and post "I agree with you guys about the UI popups" or "actually I thought those worked pretty well" or "those gun vending machines aren't too awful, in fact they aren't very different from the gun boxes in Far Cry 2."

I tend to fall into the second camp more than the first - I don't really care if a game is "good" or "bad" full stop, because that's such a nebulous notion and because I don't know why I should care unless I'm a fanboy or really worried about making sure people call a game "good" rather than "not good." What I am interested in is discussing things in games that work and that don't, and I don't let that discussion get in the way of enjoying a game - I could think that 95% of the features in a game are a total failure, and spend half an hour talking about them, and yet still enjoy the game. Alpha Protocol is one of my favorite games of all time but I could make a list as long as your arm of things it fucked up worse than Far Cry 3 fucked things up. Does that mean it's a bad game? Who fucking cares?

So yes, there is a lot of fun to be had in Far Cry 3. I don't think any of the people in the podcast denied that, though, and I'm not sure how that's relevant when it comes to the specific criticisms that the Idle Thumbs episode brought up.

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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.

Yeah, as far as that goes, I'm not turned off at all when they dwell on a single game for a while, and I'd love it if they revisited the game in two weeks now that they've released the less-hud patch and the bizarre writer interviews have appeared.

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If a grenade rolls down a hill, and there aren't any thumbs to discuss it, did it really happen?

Where there's smoke, there's fire propagation.

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This is hopefully the beginning of the long anticipated Idle Thumbs Phaedrus ARG, as the icons on the bottom of the front page will continue to link to things, resulting in the beginning of a second (third?) countdown to tears.

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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.

I'm not sure I really take your point, since that discussion was paired with discussion of another game that we sincerely enjoyed, so clearly we aren't out to sandbag games at all cost. Negative critique isn't my "default" position, it's the position I take when I very much dislike a game.

The questions you ask towards the end of your post are not ones to which I would have charitable answers in the case of Far Cry 3, and having already spent more than four hours in that game, I'm not inclined to spend even more of my limited time on the off-chance that might change. If it's your claim that it is "intellectually lazy" to criticize a game I find obnoxious, heavy-handed, unfocused, and crass, then we'll just have to disagree on that. I'm not going to do mental barrel rolls to strip away 75% of an off-putting game to find the remainder of the game that connects with me, at least not this game. In the case of something that feels more honest and restrained, I do often make that effort.

There are plenty more criticisms I have of it that didn't make it into the podcast, but past a point it's probably not worth enumerating them.

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The gun vending machines felt like a developer compromise to me. Like, they set up this open world game on a big island, and it doesn't really make sense that the island would have multiple gun stores, but then in playtesting, people just hated having to go back to the stupid village to buy ammo every fifteen minutes, and the higher ups didn't want to make a game that frustrated people, so there were a hundred arguments in conference rooms that ended in somebody saying "Fine, fuck it, how about a goddamned stupid Coke machine that sells guns in every fucking building on the fucking island. Would that make you happy?"

This was a hard episode to listen to. Like... video games can be vapid and dumb, we get it. But pointing to every single thing about Far Cry 3 that reminds you that it's a video game, and saying "This is vapid and dumb, because video game..." I dunno. It really is Skyrim with guns. The systems in Skyrim are only not ridiculous because we don't live in a medieval fantasy world where we recognize all the stupid bullshit that doesn't make any sense. "Why do I need a GRAND soul gem to make this sword catch fire. Why isn't a NORMAL soul gem sufficient." Because it has to be a game in order to be a game. If you could make the best wallet out of chipmunk leather, there wouldn't be any reason to kill bears. And killing bears is fun. So the systems send you to some bears to kill.

I generally have no interest at all in video games set in the real world, where you kill guys by shooting them in the head with real models of gun that you can buy at a real gun store. And I kinda like Far Cry 3, explicitly because of all the stupid video game garbage.

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I'd argue that Skyrim, despite being dragons and magic, is a much more realistic world. Your soul gem arguement doesn't really fly. That is a completely fictional thing, they can set rules about it and not make you think it's complete crazy. The wallet thing... That's a real world item, and if you somehow stuff it full, you logically can just throw loose cash in pockets. Far cry being more based in reality makes those ridiculous gaming conceits stand out waaaay more. That can be fine, but far cry is constantly wishing you to care about it's reality while vomiting insane amounts of Video Game at you. It doesn't quite know what it wants to be, so it tries to be everything at once. I do enjoy things about far cry, but there is some weird stuff there that kind of hurt the experience.

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I think they should have tied the slaughter of endangered animals to the Rakyat plotline. That way, your joining of the tribe would have seemed like a more gradual process.

Another thing they could have tried is have Jason Brody standing around in the main menu, always looking like he should look like in your game. So when you start, he's just this kid. After a while, he has colourful fur all over the place and huge also colourful guns hanging off holsters made of tigers. Tattoos and all, looking increasingly brooding and also increasingly ridiculous as the game goes on. That would have sold the supposed satire aspect of the game at least a little bit.

EDIT: It's odd that the privateers don't wonder about the rookie running around with a dire boar backpack and unicorn grenade harness.

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Could have pushed a lot more on the survivalist aspect too. They just kind of dip their toe in with "uhh guess he has to hunt to make holsters, and gather leaves for medicine!" I thought a bit more about the game after my last post and it got more ridiculous. This is completely insane to say but, Skyrim's leveling system seems more real. You shoot a lot of arrows and you get better at archery. In far cry you can run around shotgunning dudes, and then put a point in to archery to get better at that. Or a tattoo that teaches you take less damage from explosions. I wish I had just abandoned the talents in Far Cry 3 after getting takedown, it's been too easy for me, it was more fun when I was trying to take out an outpost with minimal access to skills and a low arrow count.

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The gun vending machines felt like a developer compromise to me. Like, they set up this open world game on a big island, and it doesn't really make sense that the island would have multiple gun stores, but then in playtesting, people just hated having to go back to the stupid village to buy ammo every fifteen minutes, and the higher ups didn't want to make a game that frustrated people, so there were a hundred arguments in conference rooms that ended in somebody saying "Fine, fuck it, how about a goddamned stupid Coke machine that sells guns in every fucking building on the fucking island. Would that make you happy?"

This was a hard episode to listen to. Like... video games can be vapid and dumb, we get it. But pointing to every single thing about Far Cry 3 that reminds you that it's a video game, and saying "This is vapid and dumb, because video game..." I dunno. It really is Skyrim with guns. The systems in Skyrim are only not ridiculous because we don't live in a medieval fantasy world where we recognize all the stupid bullshit that doesn't make any sense. "Why do I need a GRAND soul gem to make this sword catch fire. Why isn't a NORMAL soul gem sufficient." Because it has to be a game in order to be a game. If you could make the best wallet out of chipmunk leather, there wouldn't be any reason to kill bears. And killing bears is fun. So the systems send you to some bears to kill.

I generally have no interest at all in video games set in the real world, where you kill guys by shooting them in the head with real models of gun that you can buy at a real gun store. And I kinda like Far Cry 3, explicitly because of all the stupid video game garbage.

I don't agree that it's "Skyrim with guns," at least not beyond the kind of funny observation whose response is either "Haha yeah it kind of is", or a goofy tangent about dumb shit like wizards with semiautomatics, which is certainly in our wheelhouse.

But your wallet example is actually a perfect example of what's wrong with this game for me. You just described putting a system in a game as a decision that's basically within a vacuum. "Well, we have animals, and we want the player to fight all the animals, so let's have a crafting system. Well, I guess that means we need stuff to craft. A wallet I guess??"

I mean, is a wallet an appropriate thing to make me craft? Is the amount the wallet can hold before needing a new one appropriately chosen? Was this even the right time to pick that battle about only certain animals needing to be used for certain things in the first place? Even having made all these decisions, should you really be bombarding me with a popup EVERY SINGLE TIME I encounter a pickup that would give me money, reminding me that my stupid wallet isn't big enough for some more scraps of paper? Repeat all of this for the shit with the backpack, thus effectively doubling (or more) the number of times I see those popups, every single time accompanied by an obnoxious whooshing sound effect.

Just because another game that's abstractly similar to this one had a particular system doesn't mean that system is right for this game--or that the specific way it was implemented is right. It isn't even the basic existence of the crafting system that bothers me, it's the ridiculous way it's implemented in the world. I don't remember ever being this irritated by an arbitrary limitation in Skyrim. And if this really were a game about subsistence and limitations, then they sure fucked up the rest of the game because it doesn't communicate that AT ALL.

Here's the thing: Systems in games aren't arbitrary, isolated, and minor things. They aren't just annoying things for me to nitpick--they ARE THE GAME. Far Cry 3 isn't "a sort-of-open-world shooter that also has a crafting game attached to it", the crafting system is part of the game itself. If the systems aren't working together towards some meaningful harmonious whole, then they probably shouldn't be there. Or, if they're going to be there, they shouldn't be shouting shit in my face that I clearly already know, every three seconds, especially when that shit is pretty absurd. By the way the reason I already know this piece of information it's trying to tell me is because it's been shouting it at me for an hour straight, whooshing sound and all.

It's just a style of unconsidered maximalist design that I really have no patience for at this point. I am perfectly happy to have a discussion with someone about why they think the game is good and I don't, but I'm not going to countenance the notion that I'm simply looking for minor things to pick apart in a game that I should otherwise love.

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I say let Thumbs dislike whatever it is they're gonna dislike, and let them talk as long as they want about it!

I found I learned much more about Far Cry 3 during the extended critique than from all the positive reviews that were written up, or even the in-depth examinations of the game's alleged racism (I only stick to alleged since I haven't played the game myself). For example, there were some complaints that wouldn't have bothered me (I'm not too concerned about arbitrary restrictions of where you can explore because of a mission), and others that would bother me. However I came down on whatever particular issue, the Thumbs clearly articulating their stance whether negative or positive will only further enrich my own view of the game, regardless of whether I agree with them.

For me I don't intend to pickup Far Cry 3 simply because of the whole "edgy" vibe that the game designers chose to embue their game with. To me, I have a feeling that is going to result in so many design decisions that I find obnoxious & off-putting. The game won't pass what I call the girlfriend test, namely, will I feel some sort of sense of embarrassment if my girlfriend walks in the room and starts watching me as I'm playing this game? If the answer is yes, than why am I even wasting my time on earth with something that I'm not totally on board with? I think that's an important reality check because I think we're used to just accepting that most games are going to have some ridiculous tropes & conventions (incidentally, I'm also a big fan of those "Conan O'Brien reviews video games" shorts precisely because he is able to so ably play the role of an outsider examining games), and as I get older I find a lot of that stuff just hard to stomach. My sense is that Far Cry 3 has these sorts of elements in spades. Yet reading reviews of the game I don't think I ever saw anyone mention something as banal as a loading screen. Yet that can be important! So kudos to Idle Thumbs!

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...If you could make the best wallet out of chipmunk leather, there wouldn't be any reason to kill bears. And killing bears is fun. So the systems send you to some bears to kill...

I disagree with this statement. If it were fun to kill bears, you wouldn't need an arbitrary system in place to encourage and reward their extermination. After the core killing bears experience is fun enough, you can add systems on top of that such as crafting/looting whatever. Instead it feels like they put the cart before the horse.

Or in this case the wallet before the bear.

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You can get rid of a lot more than the objective marker, just not the minimap or blinking.

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The wallet thing just makes me think of the wallets in Zelda. Are there Gold Skulltulas in this game?

Come to think of it, a wallet is kind of an odd choice for crafting in general since pretty much every real-life wallet will hold the same amount of bills.

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Everything I need to know about Far Cry 3 I learned from this video.

...

Its funny, Far Cry 3 has almost as many emergent moments as Far Cry 2, but not the good kind.

While I have never had anything as ridiculous as this guy in the video I do have tons of experiences where the game just didnt work with itself at all. Guys walking off cliffs, animals appearing out of nowhere, weird shit like this.

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At first, I found it really weird that cart life had music like any other video game would. After hearing it described, I'd expected only ambient sounds, or maybe poignant strings, but what it has is an upbeat chiptune ost. It's the sort of music that I'd expect if I was playing any shop/restaurant running casual type game. Which is pretty much whatever light music they'd choose to use. I'm guessing that's the point, making a game that is similar to those games in a lot of ways while inserting, by gameplay and narrative, the real parts of those stories that are never in those games.

I'm not saying the music is bad, mind you, I just had the preconceived notion that if a game wanted to do the things the Thumbs purported it to do it would have to be this artsy fartsy thing. But no, Cart Life is a video game much like any other, except every part of it is directed at a specific goal/thesis. You don't need much more than that. It really seems to be the perfect foil to Far Cry 3, where it seems things were put in that don't even belong, let alone build together to a specific idea, feeling or goal.

I had an AGS crash so I haven't gotten past the first few days or so, but I'd highly recommend getting some soda to sell, just to see how that is sold, it's a little touch but it's great.

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I didn't bat an eye at the gun vending machines... I felt like I had jumped into Just Cause 3, some toggle was flipped in my brain, and all popups and vending machines and whatever story just bounced off. This game was about fast traveling to outposts and replaying until you nail the stealth bonuses and chain takedowns. Upgrading your wallet has felt weird in every game all the way back to 16 bit zeldas.

FYI, the most recent Far Cry patch lets you banish the popups: http://www.rockpaper...e-patch-is-out/

If you want to go further this will turn off more: http://www.pcgamer.c...ry-3-mods-best/

Really enjoyed the Cart Life discussion, I'll be checking that out over the holidays.

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Another thing they could have tried is have Jason Brody standing around in the main menu, always looking like he should look like in your game. So when you start, he's just this kid. After a while, he has colourful fur all over the place and huge also colourful guns hanging off holsters made of tigers. Tattoos and all, looking increasingly brooding and also increasingly ridiculous as the game goes on. That would have sold the supposed satire aspect of the game at least a little bit.

I think this is actually a good suggestion. I don't think it would've solved a lot of the core issues I have with the game but it would've been an obvious (not necessarily bad) move to make the game about something.

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I disagree with this statement. If it were fun to kill bears, you wouldn't need an arbitrary system in place to encourage and reward their extermination. After the core killing bears experience is fun enough, you can add systems on top of that such as crafting/looting whatever. Instead it feels like they put the cart before the horse.

Or in this case the wallet before the bear.

well, in a perfect game, thats true, But, there aren't that many bears around, the crafting system is an lazy way to encourage the player to go places and kill things they probably wouldn't have killed otherwise, and maybe realize that murdering those things was fun!

Chris seems to have higher, or at least different, standards for a game than I. I noticed most of what he complained about, and thought it was dumb, but didn't get hung up on it and ended up enjoying the game a lot, mostly the exploring and messing around parts. Kinda the same kinda of fun that comes from Just Cause 2. A lot of kind of unexpected vitriol itt from Chris though. Maybe that's actually for the best though, I don't think otherwise popular games get called out for what they do wrong by most of the press, so if on the off chance someone who cares gets the thumbs message, a better game may be made in the future. Maybe. Probably not because I don't think ubisoft cares.

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I disagree with this statement. If it were fun to kill bears, you wouldn't need an arbitrary system in place to encourage and reward their extermination. After the core killing bears experience is fun enough, you can add systems on top of that such as crafting/looting whatever. Instead it feels like they put the cart before the horse.

Or in this case the wallet before the bear.

The first time I fought a bear it was pretty exhilarating. Just randomly wandering though the wilderness then oh shit a bear oh god.

Yet, over time, the kill X bears with Y weapon quests warped any sense of fun that could be had by hunting. It was like that common problem in WoW: you never felt compelled to kill a monster that wasn't related to a quest. Why should I even bother killing this bear if there's probably a bear-killing quest a few towns over. It also didn't help that these quests were no fun at all, and felt ridiculously video gamey. So not only did the game discourage non-quest hunting, but it then drove any desire you had to hunt at all into the ground.

I'm all for interlocking systems, but this game really did lack restraint when it came to arbitrary gamification of an otherwise cool open-world.

Oh, just got the movement mechanic on the second island. It's pretty rad, and it's a shame they buried behind 20 hours of content.

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