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Jake

Idle Thumbs 157: Molymoto

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Another great episode.  I could talk for days on Demon's to Dark to Dark II Souls games.

 

I really enjoyed the little bit of fire I could hear in Sean's voice when talking about Dark Souls II. I've missed one of the Thumbs being obsessed with a game at the same time in the same way that I am or was, so even that little bit was something great.

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"It's not like fish in general are like, happy and have faces. Some of them are just fish, but some of them are, like, Finding Nemos" is the funniest thing I have heard in a long time. And the part where the "EAT AM" discussion kept getting interrupted by the "Video gaaaaaaaaaaames" interstitial thing had me in stitches.

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Actually, snorkeling has given me the impression that some fish are somewhat aware and have personalities. I think that captivity makes them dead to most stimulus. Following through with my hypothesis, because we are typically only exposed to fish when have been trapped in a small container and fed artificially for the entireity of their experience or when they have been impaled and removed from their breathing medium, we have false impressions of what they are actually like in normalacy.

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Yeah, I realized that after I posted it. I think I've been wanting to say that anyway and I hadn't had a good reason to yet. I guess I still haven't had a good reason to.

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"It's not like fish in general are like, happy and have faces. Some of them are just fish, but some of them are, like, Finding Nemos" is the funniest thing I have heard in a long time. And the part where the "EAT AM" discussion kept getting interrupted by the "Video gaaaaaaaaaaames" interstitial thing had me in stitches.

 

My favorite part was hearing Chris continually say "gimme that" while Sean was talking about the Goldfish mascot, to the point that Sean had to say "I'm gonna give them to you in one second" like he was talking to a 5 year old.  I imagined Chris pawing the air and reaching for the box while Sean was holding them away.

 

Also Nick's licorice babies have arrived at the office.  So the set is now complete.

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I don't know if Dark Souls 2 is harder, but it definitely pissed me off more with its crappy dodge roll and hit boxes. It's as if the hit boxes of the player character slightly lags behind the model, so often I'd get hit by an attack despite cleanly dodging it, which would never have happened in Dark Souls or Demon Souls. It's definitely one part of the game that screams "developed by B-team", and it's disapointing because a good dodge move is so important to 3d action games.

 

On the decline of Japanese games: While it's true that the major Japanese publishers have been declining in relevence, I think part of the problem is that even when Japanese developers do great work, it often goes unrecognized by everyone except fans. Really, Platinum Game's entire body of work could be used as examples. Last year they released not one, but two incredible action games, Metal Gear Rising and The Wonderful 101. Looking at the GDC awards, The Wonderful 101 got an honorable mention for visual design and MGR got nothing (Surprised it didn't even get an honorable mention for audio, at least).

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I don't know if Dark Souls 2 is harder, but it definitely pissed me off more with its crappy dodge roll and hit boxes. It's as if the hit boxes of the player character slightly lags behind the model, so often I'd get hit by an attack despite cleanly dodging it, which would never have happened in Dark Souls or Demon Souls. It's definitely one part of the game that screams "developed by B-team", and it's disapointing because a good dodge move is so important to 3d action games.

 

We were just discussing this in the DS2 thread.  Dodge is now tied to a stat, Adaptability.  After having run a bunch of characters with ultra-low adaptability, I finally took one up to 38, and it is a big difference.  Rolling feels much closer to DS1 now.

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On the whole, I found Dark Souls II a lot easier than Dark Souls 1. Specifically the disappearing enemies make it so much less of a hassle/danger to get to bosses, you can simply grind your way into safe passage. Combine that with teleportation from the beginning and a far more gradual incline in challenge you get a game that's a lot more playerfriendly than Dark Souls.

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Jake mentioning Christian Doom clones reminded me of the fact that there are actually a ton of them.

 

The best one I remember isn't in that list, but I can't remember what it was called. I think you played Jesus or at least some high-up dude, and instead of a gun you carried a bible, and your ammo were quotes from various verses that dispelled the demons and heretics. Coool game.

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It is fucking fascinating to me that Super 3D Noah's Ark not only existed, but actually got reprinted twenty years later.

 

Also, fun trivia: those religious clone games released on the NES actually worked by deliberately frying the lockout chip. They could potentially damage your system.

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I don't know if Dark Souls 2 is harder, but it definitely pissed me off more with its crappy dodge roll and hit boxes. It's as if the hit boxes of the player character slightly lags behind the model, so often I'd get hit by an attack despite cleanly dodging it, which would never have happened in Dark Souls or Demon Souls. It's definitely one part of the game that screams "developed by B-team", and it's disapointing because a good dodge move is so important to 3d action games.

I've seen video of some hitbox oddities crop up in DS2, but in my own two playthroughs with the game, i've not really experienced anything like that first hand. (I suspect it's an artifact of extremely low agility, perhaps? What's your agility like?) Hitboxes are generally a lot less forgiving than DS1 though, a lot of enemies have very broad attacks that are harder to cleanly maneuver around.

Which brings things to adaptability, which has the derived stat of agility, which in turn governs how many invincibility frames are in your roll and the speed of the animations for consumables. (Including estsus.) Managing your encumbrance to steer clear of the fat roll will still help you a ton, but adaptability is arguably even more important in DS2. (Agility is also raised a small amount by attunement and softcaps at 110.)

 

All that said, i do think the game is actually much easier than DS1, overall.

It's also worth pointing out that Dark Souls 2 isn't really a "b-team" game, because while the director of the first two games is indeed working on a different project, a large majority of the teams from the first two had still remained intact for DS2.

 

 

On the decline of Japanese games: While it's true that the major Japanese publishers have been declining in relevence, I think part of the problem is that even when Japanese developers do great work, it often goes unrecognized by everyone except fans. Really, Platinum Game's entire body of work could be used as examples. Last year they released not one, but two incredible action games, Metal Gear Rising and The Wonderful 101. Looking at the GDC awards, The Wonderful 101 got an honorable mention for visual design and MGR got nothing (Surprised it didn't even get an honorable mention for audio, at least).

THREE. They released three games. Anarchy Reigns was really freakin` cool and nobody played it.

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I'm actually curious about this too. I've been wanting to play both of those games, and I feel like a Thumbs discussion would be the thing to finally push me to play them.

 

Side note: an amalgam of Molyneaux and Miyamoto would be either my favourite game developer of all time or never finish anything.

 

I really recommend 999 anyway, as an unusual and interesting narrative and situation to put characters in then watch what happens.

As a caveat though, I do not recommend trying to work out the ending too hard. It doesn't make total sense in a way you could unpack until the game has lead you through most of the plot. So when a friend of mine played through she hated the ending for the ways it was dumb, but because I was just along for ride I found it a really enjoyable experience.

 

I am also all for the Thumbs taking a look, but this is definitely not a game that breaks away from anime tropes.

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I am also all for the Thumbs taking a look, but this is definitely not a game that breaks away from anime tropes.

 

I don't mean this to jump all over you or anybody else, but I'm beginning to find it a little odd that people are expecting a truly great Japanese game to break away from anime tropes, if only because a lot of those "anime tropes" are actually just Japanese cultural tropes, so to fault a game for them feels like faulting an American or French game for being too American or French. I mean, no one's faulting Sir, You Are Being Hunted for having too many Victorian and/or comedy-of-manners (that is to say, British) tropes.

 

I guess I might be saying that, if the presence of anime tropes in a game turns someone off from it, it might just be for them to admit that they don't like games from Japan  barring the subset of anime tropes in the Nintendo games that they've been playing their whole life, of course.

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I don't mean this to jump all over you or anybody else, but I'm beginning to find it a little odd that people are expecting a truly great Japanese game to break away from anime tropes, if only because a lot of those "anime tropes" are actually just Japanese cultural tropes, so to fault a game for them feels like faulting an American or French game for being too American or French. I mean, no one's faulting Sir, You Are Being Hunted for having too many Victorian and/or comedy-of-manners (that is to say, British) tropes.

 

I guess I might be saying that, if the presence of anime tropes in a game turns someone off from it, it might just be for them to admit that they don't like games from Japan —[/size] barring the subset of anime tropes in the Nintendo games that they've been playing their whole life, of course.

I don't think that's true. That's like saying American cartoon tropes are just American cultural tropes in general; obviously not the case. They may draw from larger cultural elements, but they have become standardized into more predictable and specific forms. There are animated Japanese movies I love, like those from Ghibli, that don't overly rely on the kinds of anime tropes I'm talking about, and non-animated Japanese films about which you can clearly say the same.

I'm sure that games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, and Katamari Damacy, and Silent Hill, and tons of Nintendo stuff, and a billion other Japanese games, share some deep cultural roots with the kind of anime stuff I'm talking about, but they sure aren't poster children for them.

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I don't mean this to jump all over you or anybody else, but I'm beginning to find it a little odd that people are expecting a truly great Japanese game to break away from anime tropes, if only because a lot of those "anime tropes" are actually just Japanese cultural tropes, so to fault a game for them feels like faulting an American or French game for being too American or French. I mean, no one's faulting Sir, You Are Being Hunted for having too many Victorian and/or comedy-of-manners (that is to say, British) tropes.

 

I guess I might be saying that, if the presence of anime tropes in a game turns someone off from it, it might just be for them to admit that they don't like games from Japan  barring the subset of anime tropes in the Nintendo games that they've been playing their whole life, of course.

 

I get what you mean, I only mentioned that because the Thumbs said that was generally a barrier for them, and I'm not sure if you have played 999 but the cast seems to heavily play into tropes intentionally.

I think the writer intentionally played into tropes in order to undermine them later and surprise the player a bit, but doing so means that the tropes are still invoked early on.

 

I personally don't see it as a downside at all, I think in 999 it added a lot to the plot because of what I said above. But I've always been willing to accept the tropes if there's still something I like for me to latch on to. Whereas other people might find it a bit harder.

 

I assume it's mostly that they'd like to have certain aspects of how the Japanese industry approaches games but without other aspects that are less attractive (like the fanservice for example).

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I don't think that's true. That's like saying American cartoon tropes are just American cultural tropes in general; obviously not the case. They may draw from larger cultural elements, but they have become standardized into more predictable and specific forms. There are animated Japanese movies I love, like those from Ghibli, that don't overly rely on the kinds of anime tropes I'm talking about, and non-animated Japanese films about which you can clearly say the same.

I'm sure that games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, and Katamari Damacy, and Silent Hill, and tons of Nintendo stuff, and a billion other Japanese games, share some deep cultural roots with the kind of anime stuff I'm talking about, but they sure aren't poster children for them.

 

I don't think that you're completely wrong, but I think there are some issues with what you're saying. First, anime, manga, and light novels are so much bigger in Japan than comics and cartoons are in the US, without many of the stigmas against them, so that's a little bit of a false equivalency to be making there. I also think that, as cultural outsiders, we're all vulnerable to selection bias by the international market. Saying that a handful of internationally acclaimed Japanese movies don't trade in what could be called "anime tropes", therefore they're probably not that significant in Japanese culture, doesn't actually say that much to me. If I wanted to know what was significant in Japanese culture, I'd be much more inclined to look at one of the most successful film franchises in Japan, like Otoko wa Tsurai yo, which are forty-nine movies and a TV series with completely identical plots about the same traveling salesman meeting a woman and then having her end up with someone else. These do contain a large majority of "anime tropes" like what we're talking about, but they're virtually impossible to find overseas because those tropes are (perhaps rightly) seen as limiting factors for the movie's international appeal. Not to mention, the Tora-san films are so boring, having managed to make it through two myself. Anyway, the presence and proliferation of inwardly-focused cultural works from Japan might be unappealing to many people, because fanservice and tsunderes certainly are tedious, but I really rankle at the implication that it's indicative of some kind of stagnation just because Japanese developers aren't making games better designed for international consumption.

 

Honestly, it is also my feeling (and nothing more than just my feeling, of course) that when people talk about anime tropes taking over a given part of the entertainment industry, they're really just talking about anime tropes that they haven't grown up with and aren't used to. Nintendo stuff is full of bizarre anime shit that you can't say you wouldn't be complaining about if it hadn't been introduced to you in stages by games you've been playing for over two decades.

 

I get what you mean, I only mentioned that because the Thumbs said that was generally a barrier for them, and I'm not sure if you have played 999 but the cast seems to heavily play into tropes intentionally.

I think the writer intentionally played into tropes in order to undermine them later and surprise the player a bit, but doing so means that the tropes are still invoked early on.

 

I personally don't see it as a downside at all, I think in 999 it added a lot to the plot because of what I said above. But I've always been willing to accept the tropes if there's still something I like for me to latch on to. Whereas other people might find it a bit harder.

 

I assume it's mostly that they'd like to have certain aspects of how the Japanese industry approaches games but without other aspects that are less attractive (like the fanservice for example).

 
Yeah, I didn't mean to call you out or anything. I agree with everything you're saying, I just used it as an excuse to go on a jag about people using "anime tropes" to dismiss works from Japan that really just don't appeal to them, which I'm not saying the Thumbs are even doing here. And yeah, after a certain point, I just tune out stuff like the fanservice, but then I show a friend FLCL for the first time and she's disgusted by all the panty shots that I don't even see anymore.

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"Saying that a handful of internationally acclaimed Japanese movies don't trade in what could be called 'anime tropes', therefore they're probably not that significant in Japanese culture"

Where did I ever say that? If that's what you think I meant to communicate, I didn't express myself well. I also didn't grow up with Nintendo games.

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"Saying that a handful of internationally acclaimed Japanese movies don't trade in what could be called 'anime tropes', therefore they're probably not that significant in Japanese culture"

Where did I ever say that? If that's what you think I meant to communicate, I didn't express myself well. I also didn't grow up with Nintendo games.

 

No, that's my bad. I guess I don't understand why you bring up Ghibli, then? I mean, yeah, Miyazaki's movies are pretty different from anime as a whole, but you can pick out filmmakers from any country that don't fit into the mainstream cultural tendencies of that country, I'm just not sure what statement you can make by doing so.

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I'm saying that I don't buy that "anime tropes" is equivalent to "cultural tendencies of Japan", even if it's RELATED to or PART of those tendencies. Same way I don't consider blockbuster action movie tropes to be equivalent to "American culture", even if they are connected to it, and super successful and widely-watched, and an important force in American popular culture.

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I'm saying that I don't buy that "anime tropes" is equivalent to "cultural tendencies of Japan", even if it's RELATED to or PART of those tendencies. Same way I don't consider blockbuster action movie tropes to be equivalent to "American culture", even if they are connected to it, and super successful and widely-watched, and an important force in American popular culture.

 

I didn't say they were equivalent, though. I said a lot of anime tropes are really just cultural tropes for Japan. I guess I really don't see the ultimate point in distinguishing so starkly between the two, especially in a video game, which is tied up so heavily in other forms of visual media. Saying "I like Japanese video games except for all the anime tropes" feels like a really uncertain statement to me, almost like saying "I like American video games except for all the movie tropes." Honestly, I don't even know what a Japanese video game minus all anime tropes would look like, because every Japanese video game I've ever played (which, granted, isn't terribly many) has been crammed full of what I would think of as anime tropes.

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I didn't say they were equivalent, though. I said a lot of anime tropes are really just cultural tropes for Japan. I guess I really don't see the ultimate point in distinguishing so starkly between the two, especially in a video game, which is tied up so heavily in other forms of visual media. Saying "I like Japanese video games except for all the anime tropes" feels like a really uncertain statement to me, almost like saying "I like American video games except for all the movie tropes." Honestly, I don't even know what a Japanese video game minus all anime tropes would look like, because every Japanese video game I've ever played (which, granted, isn't terribly many) has been crammed full of what I would think of as anime tropes.

I didn't say that, I said when I play a lot of modern Japanese games, they seem to lean on that stuff disproportionately. I also almost never like movies that rely on their American equivalent disproportionately, so I don't think I'm being unfair here.

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I didn't say that, I said when I play a lot of modern Japanese games, they seem to lean on that stuff disproportionately. I also almost never like movies that rely on their American equivalent disproportionately, so I don't think I'm being unfair here.

Alright, that's fair. I might be doing the thing where I amalgamate all the Thumbs' opinions into one Frankenstein opinion of questionable accuracy, anyway.

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