GWJ Conference Call Episode 679

Link’s Awakening, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Dragon Quest XI S, Neo Cab, The Haunted Island: A Frog Detective Game, your emails, and More!

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This week Amanda, Allen, and Lara talk about "gaming catnip," those pure little moments of absolute bliss.

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.

Correction: Date read and file name should be Wednesday October 16th, 2019.

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Comments

Would you consider them a “Hard Boiled“ Frog Detective?

00:01:25 Dragon Quest XI S
00:10:10 Link’s Awakening
00:26:20 Tales of Vesperia
00:16:40 Sayonara Wild Hearts
00:20:42 The Haunted Island: A Frog Detective Game
00:26:34 Neo Cab
00:34:31 Gaming Catnip
00:51:24 Your Emails

For me the show is shifting to too long talks about games I don't like.

Thanks for a lot of years of listening to one of best podcasts in English. Have fun in the next years.

Goodbye,
Marc

Hmmmm. I’ve been trying to think of my gaming Catnip. In multiplayer it’s those moments when I out manoeuvre other players. I can play through a long match of being soundly beaten if I have those one or two moments when I win a tense fire fight or get off a heal at the last second or land a well paced grenade; especially if it’s me and Spikeout working together. Also, dance sessions in the middle of Uncharted matches (I’ve just noticed that Uncharteding is a word my spell checker has learnt. I’m leading it astray.)

and rope melees, sweet, sweet rope melees (loud music.)

I have been listening to the GWJ CC for months now and I'm always very happy when my podcast app informs me about a new episode. (You are super on schedule every week, so it shouldn't come as a surprise...but somehow it still does.) For a while now I have ben contemplating what makes your podcast so special compared to many others. And I think today I came to a bit of a realisation: You're so effin' positive about things! That's really at the core of it. Videogames and the industry itself create so much drama. If you read the news sections you get so much negativity. Right now there is all of this Blizzard fiasko everywhere, people complaning about this and that. And what does the GWJ crew do? They remember that games are about having fun and making the world a better place. Thanks for that!

And coming to your topic of gaming catnip: The description of the level up really resonated with me. I live for character progression and building. Nothing gets me more excited than unlocking the next cool skill, talent or whatever else to change how my character plays. I spent so much time back in the day developing one crazy Diablo II character after another, trying to make the most obscure skills work somehow....I'm still proud of my knock-back-undead-and-charge-after-them-paladin.

I think Lara really downplayed the music aspect of Dragon Quest XI. It's not just "the music from DQ8," it's a fully orchestral rendering of the DQXI soundtrack that isn't available on any other version and it makes a huge difference. It's fantastic!

wtb full length track of "Everything Is Goku," please make it happen

I really want to know who Lara considers the right romance choice in each Bioware game.

While I'd put the third Scarecrow sequence from Batman: Arkham Asylum at the top of the list of greatest video game fourth wall mindf*cks in history, I don't know if I'd call it catnip.*

* = Probably because when I first encountered it 10 years ago, I was playing that game on a refurbished XBox 360 I received about a week prior because my first red ringed.

peanut3141 wrote:

I really want to know who Lara considers the right romance choice in each Bioware game.

IMAGE(https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_crop,h_1684,w_3000,x_0,y_196/f_auto,q_auto,w_1100/v1554733022/shape/mentalfloss/istock-89901308.jpg)

Really enjoyed the podcast this week, it's so nice to have Lara come on more often!!!

The gaming catnip discussion in particular was amazing (for the record, I too have never played a JRPG, Alan, so you're not alone!). In the characters that are "purehearted but dumb as a bag of rocks", my mind went straight to Minsc (Baldur's Gate games). Gosh, I love Minsc (and Boo!).

My own gaming catnip (aside from great stories and complex characters) is epic intro's. Gosh I love an epic introduction. Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

I'm literally getting goosebumps.
Oh, and also otome. <3

Phrozbug wrote:

For me the show is shifting to too long talks about games I don't like.

Thanks for a lot of years of listening to one of best podcasts in English. Have fun in the next years.

Goodbye,
Marc

Not me! I'm glad there isn't a single mention of an Assassin's Creed or a Tom Clancy game (even though I like some of them).

To each their own. Direction has changed, not everyone is going to agree with it. No worries here

I'm always happy to see a Dragon Quest topic in the feed. The more people who support DQ11, the sooner we'll get DQ12.

I had two bits of gaming catnip come to mind, during the podcast.

When battling in Persona 5, I often played a little rhythm game with myself, where I'd try to time it so that the All Out Attack animation would resolve right as the chorus to Last Surprise began. Getting the timing just right gave me a little seratonin rush.

And, in DQ XI, I loved slowly updating the hero's journal. Every time I revealed a ?? on the map, or saw the item and monster list fill up, it just gave me a little bit of joy.

Amoebic wrote:

To each their own. Direction has changed, not everyone is going to agree with it. No worries here :)

Good to know

Amoebic wrote:

To each their own. Direction has changed, not everyone is going to agree with it. No worries here :)

e.g., time to drop another one and a half hour World of Warcraft podcast.

Amoebic wrote:

To each their own. Direction has changed, not everyone is going to agree with it. No worries here :)

FWIW, I could not be more pleased, even though I've never played a JRPG in my life and routinely end up confused.

Here to post some solidarity with the friend of one of the question askers - the one that has trouble with left and right. I'm a full-grown adult, a parent, I own a house with my wife, and I still continue to have trouble with "left" and "right." Years ago one time I gave some out-of-town friends directions to my apartment, and I literally switched every left and right turn. I do not have an automatic knowledge of which side is which, it is just plain not wired in my brain, and I have to specifically spend time to think about it every single time.

Gaming catnip for me = big beautiful vistas. Standing on top of a tower in Assassin's Creed, staring out of a window in a sci-fi game and seeing planets and stars and the whole space station or ship, being on top of a mountain and seeing a big valley in front of me. That's the good stuff.

Solidarity, for real! I still have issues with this, as well. I wanted to get small letters of L and R tattooed on each of my thumbs, but at the time I didn't have enough tattoos for the artists to accept the job comfortably. Maybe I'll get some thumb rings made instead.

Amoebic wrote:

Solidarity, for real! I still have issues with this, as well. I wanted to get small letters of L and R tattooed on each of my thumbs, but at the time I didn't have enough tattoos for the artists to accept the job comfortably. Maybe I'll get some thumb rings made instead.

haha great idea!

d4m0 wrote:

Gaming catnip for me = big beautiful vistas. (...) That's the good stuff.

Have you heard of this little game called Guild Wars 2?

Left is D-pad. Right is face buttons.

Eleima wrote:
d4m0 wrote:

Gaming catnip for me = big beautiful vistas. (...) That's the good stuff.

Have you heard of this little game called Guild Wars 2? :)

Heard of it, but haven't played it! Perhaps it is time to try it out