Combine FF games penchant for reinventing language for each game with the world of fighting game lingo and you achieve something so spectacularly nonsense and jargon filled it is unparalleled.
Seriously you could take this video and show it to people who are familiar with video games and it still sounds like a quantum physics dissertation in a foreign language.
I do wonder though if we are going to see any more Japanese VNs in it.... it seems strange that for a genre where 99% of the output comes from Japan that the only game so far to be played from there is a parody game with pigeon boyfriends. I know the series is leaning a bit more towards comedy than not but I think it would be cool to see some of the best dating games from the people who pioneered the genre.
For me it is a really good idea to go back to snes/ps1 era JRPGs, evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and possibly take a different direction than JRPGs have taken since then. HOWEVER these games seem to not do that final step. There are a lot of good things about those old rpgs that have been kinda lost over the years in the genre but this seems to be another game just straight up aping the time period with no attempt to take it anywhere new (and honestly, not getting exactly what made them fun). The problem there is that plenty of JRPGs that were very good from back then still exist and most people haven't played all the classics outside of Square games.... so why play this over checking out a series you missed out on?
I kinda wondered if doing videos for these would be a good idea, and I am starting to think not. People already read waaaay too much into how heated it can get GOTY time, but having video to go along with it and see their expressions probably makes it worse!
Some thoughts (i.e. my turn to read too much into it!):
- Brad's ultimatums during these never stop being funny, and I am always waiting on someone to ask why he gets to make them. Though still a successful strategy it seemed to work less this year with more people involved.
- I feel for Dan a bit because the way he enjoys games seems very emotionally driven leaving him with not much more than how fun something was as his argument. His arguments about VNs fell apart under his own scrutiny while making them! His big games were always going to be in the top 5 though so he didn't seem as involved in the big fights.
- Abby did great navigating this gauntlet for the first time. Getting Dream Daddy on the list (with an assist from Vinny..... but really it was all her) was SUPER impressive, she put her foot down and argued it on. She could have picked some fights better though, going hard after Nier and PUBG even when it became very apparent that they weren't going to budge from the top 4 led to a lot of circular arguments that could have been avoided.
- Jeff..... weird year for him. Didn't seem like he really needed to argue much as PUBG and Nier had plenty of people making cases for them, he was the guy that got games locked into positions the most by throwing down at the right moment to increase (or decrease) support.
- Ben. Probably the biggest winner this year, and he achieved it by being the most positive person at the table. Rarely taking games down mostly just talking games up, helping others with their arguments when they agreed, and fostering positive alliances. He is one to watch in the future. I am not even sure if the strategy was intentional, but man did it work.
- Vinny was a bit all over the map on this one. At one point it seemed like he released some real anger about Nier a game he actually liked.... then made fun of the outburst the rest of the way? I am not sure here it seemed legit to me.... it was surprising to see some frustration actually boil over like that. He really didn't seem to go to bat for his games that much in the finale, kinda letting Pyre slide.... seemed a bit exhausted.
- Alex is this years king of the impassioned argument. He joked on the waypoint spoilercast for Nier that he would enlist Austin and Patricks help to build an argument for the game, I would not be surprised if that came to pass. He was pretty diplomatic and picked his couple of big battles. He also continues to be the Dad of these proceedings jumping in to calm down debates and keep it smooth.
- Jason wasn't in this one but his letter about PUBG was probably the funniest thing for the entire 5 hours.
- Jan. Amazing work keeping those cameras switching (and making great faces) for how fucking long this went on for. Would love to hear you pipe in more in the future!
I thought I wanted to play Destiny 2 and do the raid but now I'm questioning why I do anything and I don't know if I want to play video games ever again.
@lazyimperial: unfortunately the average gamer is that myopic, short-sighted, easily distracted and whatever else that lends us to being exploited so easily. There's also just something about a game as big as Destiny with this cult of personality surrounding it, it has this kind of gravitational pull that sucks people into it because all these other people are playing it and talking about it (that many people can't be wrong) and eventually some time into the grind you start to fool yourself into thinking you're having a better time than what you really are because to admit otherwise is to say maybe you have some weaknesses and you've just wasted part of your life so you go along with that 2% increase in your stats because maybe somewhere down the line it'll lead to some form of happiness.
It's dumb, really dumb, but I am still thinking about doing the raid. Just because it's there. Just because I want to know if I can. Just so I can show off to nobody that I've done it. Just because I feel like if I could beat the raid, I'll be a more complete human being than I was before.
Because I don't know what else to do with my life but I know what Destiny 2 is and I know it can't hurt me.
I think that this completely misses the actual point, and the thing that people just dont really talk about with Destiny as much as they should. No one would put this much time into a game and go through challenges that are pretty player unfriendly (but really just in the raids) if the core combat gameplay wasn't best in class. Yeah its easy to reduce the game down to being a skinner box and call it a day, but the reality is that it is highly enjoyable gameplay and combat design with those things layered on top for a continual pat on the back. People aren't REALLY playing it for the 2% armor increases they enjoy the actual act of playing the game.
It tends to be an issue with how all anyone talks about with Destiny is the meta game and surrounding systems. I think this ends up being the case because the gameplay itself is so good that people have very little to say about it or criticize about it.
I am starting to get a bit bummed that it seems like the Beast crew doesn't know how similar these games are, they are/were essentially an annual game series for a long time. Like I love the games but expectations need to be managed about how much is new game to game.
That's kinda what I want from it though. It's the next chapter in an on-going story - I wouldn't really want, e.g, the combat mechanics to get overhauled every time.
I wasn't being critical, its just a fact of the series that I think people should know going in. People pop in Yakuza 0 and are excited by the amount of things you can do, all the silly side stories, and a long refined battle system..... then they go to the other games and are surprised that its largely the same. The series is a testament to the gains of iterative design, but I think western audiences are not used to a series going 8+ installments without huge changes..... I mean every game features Kamurocho, 1 and 4 ONLY feature Kamurocho and really only Yakuza 5 has a substantial amount of areas other than it.
I am starting to get a bit bummed that it seems like the Beast crew doesn't know how similar these games are, they are/were essentially an annual game series for a long time. Like I love the games but expectations need to be managed about how much is new game to game. I think people sometimes get fooled into thinking these are AAA games because any individual game by itself will seem that way (especially more recent ones) but the reality is that the series has never been rebooted or completely retooled so recent games have a lot of very refined systems and lots of activities in them that have been iterated on for 13 years by the same team and eventually piled up into having a huge game with lots of diverse activities in them.
Basically every 2-3 main series games they do a major refresh/overhaul of the engine and systems, between those its mostly small incremental improvements but VERY similar everything else. I would basically group the games like this which each group being a fresh overhaul over the last. (western releases only)
Yakuza 1 and 2
Yakuza 3,4, and Dead Souls
Yakuza 5, 0, and Kiwami
Yakuza 6
I would actually be more interested in seeing them play a bit of the original Yakuza 1. Not necessarily a full play through or anything but it is really interesting to see how far the series has come since the ps2 games.
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