GWJ Conference Call Episode 616

holedown, No Man's Sky Next, Horizon Zero Dawn, Pool Panic, Second Chances, Your Emails and More!

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This week Cory, Amanda and Allen are joined by special guest Shawn Andrich to talk about games that deserve a second chance!

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind.

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00:03:00 Horizon Zero Dawn
00:06:50 No Man's Sky
00:17:32 Pool Panic
00:26:02 World of Warcraft
00:32:25 Holedown
00:34:31 Second Chances
01:01:38 Your Emails

Just listening to Allen describe Pool Panic felt like I was on some kind of drugs.

Rat Boy wrote:

Just listening to Allen describe Pool Panic felt like I was on some kind of drugs.

Mission accomplished.

Oof. Well. I don't want to accidentally shut down another front page thread so I'll just quickly mention that I personally wouldn't touch the new edition of Vampire with a 10' stake, challenge or not, and leave it at that. Suffice to say I think they'd have been a bit more honest rebranding it as "Edgelord : The Dogwhistling" instead.

I'd love for Firaxis to give Civilization: Beyond Earth a second chance and give it the second expansion that traditionally rounds out all contemporary Civilization games. It really improved with Rising Tide, I really want to know what a complete C:BE looks like, but likely never will.

Final Fantasy 14 got a second chance. It was God-awful, then SquEnix fired the top brass (and maybe part of the dev team) and put in a new team. Now it's a substantially different game.

Speaking of fan patches, I remember the Temple of Elemental Evil game had a fan patch (I think called the Circle of 8 mod) that the game was considered unplayable without.

As for a game I would like to see get a second chance, I think I've got a weird one. I'd like to see Fable redone. There were a bunch of things promised that just didn't make it to launch, and a bunch of content got cut. The PC version put some of that stuff back in, but I would love to see a version that actually had the features they advertised.

Speaking of fan patches, I remember the Temple of Elemental Evil game had a fan patch (I think called the Circle of 8 mod) that the game was considered unplayable without.

That's a good pull! For all its faults, ToEE had a really good engine and a neat interface, it just never quite came together. I'd love to see a proper second crack at that.

Careful when buying holedown. There's a clone called Hole Down that I mistakenly bought first. It's identical except it crashes on the first level.

This is Mr. Stephen Flash Stevintendo here, another great Podcast everyone!

I liked the question about second chances. What springs to mind for me is that I'd love to see a patch come out that solves all The Sexy Brutale's issues on Switch. I think it's a great game and I'd love to play through it without any performance problems.

Holedown is great. I’m a sucker for progression systems, so I appreciate the ability to buy more balls.

That intro section was on point, Big Lebowski references and everything. And the discussions were fantastic. What a great episode!

Regarding the silent movies discussion, I don’t think it’s fair to say they are obsolete or irrelevant. Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin are two of the greatest film stars of all time, not just because they were some of the first. I recommend anybody watch “The Kid” and day that it would be better in the modern day. For the same reason, some early games like pong or Pac-Man are timeless and still just as fun today.

I tend to go the same place Shawn did, those first gen PlayStation games are like when CGI was just beginning to creep into movies. Those movies are much more difficult to stomach, as are those blocky, janky games.

pyxistyx wrote:

Oof. Well. I don't want to accidentally shut down another front page thread so (...)

Don't worry, Pyxi, pretty sure I also had a hand in that.

So I'm late to the party, and just listening to it but in what universe is HZD "a couple of years" old? I get it, wires get crossed, so no biggee, but it made me laugh : Horizon Zero Dawn placed third on the 2017 GWJ community GOTY, and **quick Google search** was released on February 28th, 2017.

My name was spoken on the podcast!
kermitflail.gif

Clitch wrote:

Regarding the silent movies discussion, I don’t think it’s fair to say they are obsolete or irrelevant. Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin are two of the greatest film stars of all time, not just because they were some of the first. I recommend anybody watch “The Kid” and day that it would be better in the modern day. For the same reason, some early games like pong or Pac-Man are timeless and still just as fun today.

I agree!

I found the discussion on this topic to be rather shallow. There are many possible reasons silent movies aren't very popular today, other than the lack of spoken dialogue (they weren't actually silent - there was musical accompaniment during the showing).

  • First and foremost, silent movies are old. This means culture, tastes, and even storytelling techniques have moved on and it's harder for today's audience to relate to them. They might find the pacing too slow or the plots hard to get a handle on, for example.
  • People haven't been exposed to good silent movies and therefore don't seek them out. (Interestingly, it's not that hard to get old games and many people still do play them.)
  • Most of the silent movies produced have since been lost, meaning that even if you were interested in watching them, you might not be able to. Remaining copies might be in bad condition or played at the wrong speed which makes them harder to enjoy.
  • Related to the first point, acting has changed a lot in the last 100 years, too. Silent films actors over-emphasized their body language and facial expressions since they couldn't fall back on dialogue.
  • And finally, some of the norms of the early 1900's might be hard to stomach today. Famously, the movie "The BIrth of a Nation", which was incredibly influential in terms of film-making technique, had the KKK literally riding in to save the day.

To extend the silent movie analogy to games, I think it would be appropriate to look not just at graphical style. Obviously pixel graphics aren't turning very many people off since so many games with pixel graphics are still being made and selling well.

  • Clunky user interfaces. Playing Dune II without all the RTS UI conventions that have evolved since is probably frustrating for many. The original XCOM is a bit hard to play now for the same reason.
  • Having to take notes. Not many games require graph paper any more to make maps as you play. Can we imagine a RPG nowadays without an in-game map? I remember having to jot down coordinates of things in Everquest if I wanted to find my way back there. I don't want to do that any more.
  • Badly told stories. I think there will always be room for games with no or minimal story, but as the medium matures, people may lose patience with games that try to tell a story but do so badly.
  • many more but this post is probably long enough as is....