GWJ Conference Call Episode 469

Donation Drive 2015!, SOMA, Rainbow Six: Siege, Lego Dimensions, Prison Architect, Cities Skylines: After Dark, Shooty Shoot Shoot Games & Why We Play Less, Your Emails and More!

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This week Sean Sands, Julian Murdoch, Allen Cook and Shawn Andrich talk a whole mess of games and why they don't play realistic shooters quite so much.

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Comments

Something the crew never brought up in re Prison Architect, was the fact that a tutorial prisoner in jail for murdering his wife and her lover, may have been a homage to Shawshank Redemption and Andy Dufresne perhaps? I have not played the game but hearing that description reminded me of it. IIRC, Dufrense was convicted of that same crime but never shown to be innocent or guilty. If you kicked off the game that way, I like the shades of gray it would provide.

I just assume everyone has seen that movie since it's the best Stephen King adaption.

BillTheConqueror wrote:

the best Stephen King adaption.

Nice try.

Certis what is going on with you lately ?
Has playing Alien Isolation opened you up to enjoying horror games ?
Soma has been described as pretty horrifying, and Alien Isolation was pant wettingly scary for most.
Are you now starting to enjoy looking into the dark corners ?

00:01:10 Donation Drive
00:06:24 Valiant Hearts
00:06:47 The Beginner's Guide
00:09:10 Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
00:09:45 Lego Dimensions
00:26:12 Rainbow Six: Siege
00:31:52 Prison Architect
00:40:55 Cities Skylines: After Dark
00:46:12 SOMA
00:50:58 Why Are We Playing Fewer Shooters?
01:12:56 Your Emails

Grrrr that Lego Dimensions talk. I don't want to want that game! I have always appreciated the Lego games on an aesthetic level, but I have never actually enjoyed playing them. The level design really does not work for me, because every time I play one of those games, I repeatedly get stuck for long periods in spots where I just cannot manage to figure out how I'm supposed to advance. (I fully acknowledge the problem may just be that I am a dummy, but whatever the cause, I tend to not have anywhere near as much fun as I feel like I should be having when I play those games). But this one has Doctor Who, and Portal, and the Simpsons? With real VO by the cast that matters? Maybe the starter kit will be on sale for $40-50 at Black Friday or post-Xmas.

Prison Architect is a game that has been on my Steam wishlist forever, but the discussion on this cast sealed my decision not to buy it. From Shawn's detailed description of some scenes of the game, that sounds like the game is far too heavy-handed in its messaging. I appreciate having a political perspective and challenging players to think about real issues, but it sounds like Prison Architect is just a blanket "this is a bad thing and you are a bad person for doing it," which doesn't strike me as a particularly sophisticated message that I need to engage with. Papers Please occupied similar thematic territory, but it was more nuanced--you would probably feel awful about your choice, but it could because you kept someone out of the country, or you broke apart a family, or you let a terrorist into your borders, or you could failed to meet your quotas and thus let your family starve. Granted, you would probably feel bad about whatever choice you made, but by having both the challenge to determine whether the person in your booth met the requirements for entry, and the freedom to choose to accept or reject that person regardless, your actions felt meaningful, so the results of my choices meant something to me. But if, as Allen suggests, the game is basically just saying "Execute this guy. Oh, you did that? What an asshole!" that doesn't seem like it's worth my time.

During E3 I saw a gameplay trailer for the new Doom game and I could easily have seen the person I was fifteen to twenty years ago going crazy over it, but now I can't tell if that genre feels dated and overdone to me or if I've moved on from it like so many other things I was into during my youth.

The comments about Rainbow Six: Siege are discouraging.

I was excited for Evolve as well, but multi-player only means I have to play with random schmucks, must be connected to the Internet, and it's really just the same activity over and over again.

I loved Terrorist Hunt in R6V2, but what got me hooked on the game in the first place was the ability to customize and upgrade your character in single-player and the fact you earned those upgrades just playing the regular game. If you didn't want to deal with multi-player nonsense you didn't need to. Terrorist hunt was a great multi-player experience that didn't require you to shoot each other. Honestly, I get tired of killing random strangers. I also get tired of them killing me.

Considering Evolve is struggling as a new franchise despite 2K saying it will stick around, the idea of R6V2 releasing at full price for a limited experience with the promise of future content (that they will likely charge even more money for despite what they say) is a big reason to stay away. Did I miss something and all of the online shooters suddenly vanish? Seems like it's been a very crowded market for awhile now.

I've never understood a business model that looks at something everyone else is doing and decides "Hey, you know what this crowded market needs? One more vendor!"

Then again, e-cig stores are still popping up at unsustainable long-terms rates, so maybe it takes longer to hit oversaturation than I think it does.

Botswana wrote:

The comments about Rainbow Six: Siege are discouraging.

I was excited for Evolve as well, but multi-player only means I have to play with random schmucks, must be connected to the Internet, and it's really just the same activity over and over again.

I loved Terrorist Hunt in R6V2, but what got me hooked on the game in the first place was the ability to customize and upgrade your character in single-player and the fact you earned those upgrades just playing the regular game. If you didn't want to deal with multi-player nonsense you didn't need to. Terrorist hunt was a great multi-player experience that didn't require you to shoot each other. Honestly, I get tired of killing random strangers. I also get tired of them killing me.

I didn't listen to the podcast yet but I just wanted to point out that T-Hunt co-op is in RBS: Siege. That is pretty much all I played in the beta. You earn upgrades too.

EvilDead wrote:

I didn't listen to the podcast yet but I just wanted to point out that T-Hunt co-op is in RBS: Siege. That is pretty much all I played in the beta. You earn upgrades too.

Which is a cool mode but not enough for a standalone game. T-hunt by yourself was...challenging.

Yuuup!

I'm pretty much done with military shooters at his point. I've never been one for online competitive anyway, but the 'rahrahrah' jingoism is much the bigger turnoff.

Palette-swap downtown Kabul for the capital city of the planet Twizzthrp, though, and I'm right back in there. I'll shoot aliens in their spiny faces until the six-legged hypercows come home, but any real-world shooter just leaves me cold on a deep, deep, spiritual level. The kind of cold that you worry about whether it'll ever thaw. It's not lost on me that it ought to be ever so slightly worrying how happy I am to commit virtual genocide when the species under threat is conveniently purple and spiky instead of pink and squishy.

I'm trying to play Spec Ops: The Line at the moment, almost as a social experiment on myself, because it reportedly takes a different tack from your standard military shooter, but even then, I'm struggling to want to pick up the controller for more simulated mass-murder. It doesn't matter that the game is going to point out the wrong-ness of what I'm doing, it's still asking me to do it.

I picked up Prison Architect from a friendly Goodjer who had a spare code a few months ago, but only dived into it in any depth in the last week since it launched. And by god, does it leave me with a horrible bitter aftertaste. It's a weird juxtaposition of appreciation for the mechanical aspects of the game design, with a crushing horror at the theme of the game. It feels like playing the best version of Sim Hospital, except with an Auschwitz reskin.

Honestly, I'm kind of relieved that those games feel so abhorrent. Like "thank f*ck, I do have a soul after all".

I'm with Sean: part of the reason I don't play shooters much any more is my skill level has deteriorated to a level where I would just be respawning all the time. I play TF2 because some of the classes don't require the same skill level to be useful but I have no delusions about how good I am. And Shawn, "working harder" doesn't help after you get to a certain point . But I still play because the Goodjers who play are super-fun people to be around and don't seem to mind me being crap.

Rocket League has been a personal example of how poor my twitch skills have gotten. After 70-80 hours in the game I am still lucky to actually hit the ball. At this point I can see what I should do, but by the time I try to put it into practice it is either too late or somebody has already done the thing. Luckily the Goodjers playing RL are also super-fun people who don't seem to mind me being crap.

Btw, our resident farmer is mwdowns. Expect an email from him re: this weeks intro!

Also, I want to play The Beginners Guide, but before I do I have a question for anyone who has played it.
I've played Her Story and Gone Home with my wife and we really enjoyed the experience, I could almost have played Stanley Parable with her, but she has trouble controlling in first person with any proficiency and if there is too much movement going on she can get a little queasy when watching, so I figured it might not be as good a match as the slower pace of Gone Home.
Would Beginners Guide work well as a game to play as a shared experience?

This is the second podcast that has made me really, really consider Lego Dimensions. I'm totally sold on the concept, but am not too fond of the overall investment I'd need to make. A lot of the add-on packs sound really cool. They're hitting all the right franchise notes for me. Part of me wants to watch the content on a non-narrated YouTube video, so I can see the story and not spend $300 on Lego stuff. I'm also trying not to collect more crap, as my one bedroom apartment is getting pretty full as it is. I'm still tempted, and I'm sure a killer Black Friday deal could change my mind.

I love the main topic on shooters too. I find myself playing fewer first person shooters, even though it's still one of my favorite genres. I'm still very into first person games though, and seek out different types of first person experiences like Portal, Gone Home, The Stanley Parable, Amnesia and Soma, etc. I'm especially pumped for VR next year.

I've actually never been into the military shooters much, for a couple of reasons. Partly, I'm not as into the realistic, one shot, dead, gameplay, or round-based matches like in Counter-Strike. My vision also makes some military games hard to play because soldiers often blend into the background, and I'm dead before I see where the bullet came from. If I do play a military shooter like Call of Duty, I often play on lower difficulty levels for that reason.

I also don't care for the progression-based multiplayer that most games use now. You really have to invest a lot of time consistently to keep up with everyone else playing. I'm much more a fan of the classic arena-based shooters like Doom, Quake, and FEAR. I also prefer a general deathmatch/free-for-all game because if it moves, I want to shoot it. Also, again with my vision, it sometimes takes me a second to determine friend or enemy, and by the time I do, I'm dead or pretty close.

I still Love FPS games. I love single player campaigns, deathmatch, and some co-op titles too. Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 are some of my favorite games ever. Doom and Doom II are probably my favorite games of all time. And there's nothing like the CQC of FEAR, running down a hallway with a shotgun, a few grenades, and my trusty dropkick. I really hope the classic 90's style shooters make a come-back because I'd love great looking games in this style, both single and multiplayer.

Oh yeah, and like others have mentioned, my overall twitch skills leave a bit to be desired these days. I tend to get dominated in most multiplayer shooters unless I find a rare few that click with me. Quake III, FEAR, and Chivalry are a few that have clicked with me pretty well.

troubleshot wrote:

Btw, our resident farmer is mwdowns. Expect an email from him re: this weeks intro!

Funny, I was actually going to comment that while I am not a farmer, it was about 7 am when I heard that part of the CC, which is very early (for me anyway).

Rob Zacny always starts Three Moves Ahead with "good evening", too.

tboon wrote:

Rocket League has been a personal example of how poor my twitch skills have gotten. After 70-80 hours in the game I am still lucky to actually hit the ball. At this point I can see what I should do, but by the time I try to put it into practice it is either too late or somebody has already done the thing. Luckily the Goodjers playing RL are also super-fun people who don't seem to mind me being crap.

I've never been good at twitch games. I think the last game like that I played (MP anyway) was Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. And, just like with Rocket League, I only played it because I was with a bunch of other people I knew.

As for the GWJ RL group, other than a few ringers, most of us are too busy laughing at ourselves to get mad at anyone else.

Edit: Regarding the "lack of skill" argument, I think that's part of it. In addition to having Old Man Reflexes, I simply don't have the time to practice these games enough to be competitive. I am certain that even if I had virtually unlimited practice time I might only reach "mildly competent", but the fact that I cannot (or will not) play enough to reach high level is certainly a handicap. This is the same reason I never play in "open" mode in Elite: Dangerous.

I'm with everyone on the shooter thing. I totally fell off the shooter boat when the WWII shooter thing was getting big and I've never really gotten on again. I'm not sure I buy the "it's the lack of skill" argument, at least for me. The lack of skill hasn't kept me from playing a lot of games I suck at, like TF2 or Dota.

While the discussion on the cast was mainly about how the shooter hasn't evolved much, there's also the fact that there's been a ton of interesting stuff that's happened since Quake and Unreal were in their heyday. The whole music game thing came and went and may be coming again. Mobile, the indie explosion, mobas and more happened. There's just so many more options now.

So, I'm a farmer and was actually listening to the intro on my way to a tractor.

Hi! I'm also a farmer and often listen to the CC while driving a tractor. Or while cutting weeds. Or while picking persimmons. I did not appreciate your dismissive tone towards farmers, Game King. I'm going to contact the Farmer Cabal (tm) and make sure you pay extra for your rice this year! Also, I will make your car go all explody next time I see you in Rocket League. To quote a RL player dear to my heart...BALL CAM OFF!

If I was a farmer all I'd do is listen to podcasts.

Certis wrote:

If I was a farmer all I'd do is listen to podcasts.

And farm? You'd be the worst farmer, otherwise.

I think the lack of friends list playing FPS right now is just because there is a slump in content. There are tons of shooters coming out soon and Nielson has Halo and COD as the two most anticipated games of the Holiday season. Certis might have mentioned something along these lines in the podcast. Like sports games people don't post much about them, they just buy and play them.

I found the conversation about the GWJ lukewarmness towards shooters pretty interesting. I for sure play them less then I used to but, when I get hooked on one, I still play it a lot. It does require a group of regulars to keep me pulled in though. The social aspects or "friend hang out night" are a big part of it. The same could be said for multi-player MOBAs or RTS games.

Certis wrote:

If I was a farmer all I'd do is listen to podcasts.

I don't know how agriculture even happened prior to the invention of the podcast.

troubleshot wrote:

Btw, our resident farmer is mwdowns. Expect an email from him re: this weeks intro!

Yeah, and I'm not farmer, but the baby woke me up so I was listening at 5:50 am.

I'm not a farmer, except on my PS4, but occasionally listen in the mornings while I make my lunch for the day, which means it's around 5:30AM.

I listened to the podcast on my way to work (so I heard 'good afternoon' at about 6:30am). And I live in Iowa so I feel like I am farmer adjacent.

Speaking of adjacent, I'm from Nebraska, but not a farmer. Howdy, neighbor!

I don't connect shooters, modern military or not, with reality. For me, playing a modern soldier in a fictional Middle Eastern country is as much a fantasy as playing at the bottom of the ocean or on another planet.

I wonder if, in the UK, there is less distaste with shooters because guns, for the most part, are as much an unreal, inaccessible fantasy item as broadswords and double headed axes.

When I was playing Battlefield heavily I would sometimes have a few days in a row when I could play consistently. At the end of those days my skill level would definitely go up a notch and I'd be taking out players more consistently. I just can't justify the number of hours it takes to get to that level most of the time.

I'm not a farmer.

I started writing up a post on Thursday, and totally forgot this was in my drafts. Better late than never, eh?


​I'm about one minute into the GWJCC, and came specifically to post that I knew of at least one goodjer farmer. Glad to see Mwdowns beat me to it. Also:

KramNesnah wrote:

So, I'm a farmer and was actually listening to the intro on my way to a tractor. :-)

You win, good sir or madam.

I'll go and second Amoebic's vote for Valiant Hearts. I just finished it about a month ago, and although it totally gutted me emotionally, it was a solid game. The puzzle platformer aspect of the game was very nicely done, the game was both entertaining and educational. I loved the art which was "cartoonish" in the very best way, and the art design was just brilliant (you never see the characters' eyes, they always hidden by hair or a hat, save for one particular character at one particular moment - just brilliantly done).

I keep hearing about Prison Architect, and ... while it might scratch that sim / building itch, I just can't. Especially since I just don't appreciate that it forces you to execute prisoners (capital punishment was abolished in France in 1981). I'd much rather fire up Theme Hospital or Sim Tower again.

If it makes you feel better, good sirs, I'm a total coward too, and I just could not play the Amnesia games. Basically fired them up, played for two minutes, and went "nope! I'm out!!!!!"

As for shooters... Yeah, I've been moving away from them. I'm not too bad at them, in fact I'd be in the top players of my TF2 team back in the day, but... I don't know... I'm more into adventure games, visual novels, and puzzle games these days, as I'm sure my GOTY list will attest (not just this year, but last year as well).

I really enjoyed Valiant Hearts (if that's the right word.) I'm a sucker for a great art style.

Eleima wrote:

If it makes you feel better, good sirs, I'm a total coward too, and I just could not play the Amnesia games. Basically fired them up, played for two minutes, and went "nope! I'm out!!!!!" :D

I downloaded the Slender demo on 360 and went in full of bravado. It's just pixels, I thought, This isn't even going to be slightly scary. As the light failed and I ended up in a creepy environment with darkeness beyond curtainless windows (something I always find unsettling) the tension and my dread of something happening became unbearable and I quit the game.

I'm also still very early on in Outlast. I will load the game, explore one corridor and, if I'm feeling brave, a room and then think, Ok, that's enough for tonight and will log out. Three or four weeks later I'll go back into the game and explore another tiny area before my nerve fails me. I'm determined to finish the game but, at this rate it'll be some time in 2027.

With evolution in shooters it occurred to me that, a lot of shooters have evolve to such an extent that they have move into another genre. Deus Ex, Uncharted, Watch_Dogs and even, to an extent, stealth games like Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid are shooting games where so much other stuff has been added into the mix that they are no longer considered to be pure shooters and are instead RPGs, 'cinematic' action or open world games.

Jonman wrote:

Yuuup!

I'm pretty much done with military shooters at his point. I've never been one for online competitive anyway, but the 'rahrahrah' jingoism is much the bigger turnoff.

Palette-swap downtown Kabul for the capital city of the planet Twizzthrp, though, and I'm right back in there. I'll shoot aliens in their spiny faces until the six-legged hypercows come home, but any real-world shooter just leaves me cold on a deep, deep, spiritual level. The kind of cold that you worry about whether it'll ever thaw. It's not lost on me that it ought to be ever so slightly worrying how happy I am to commit virtual genocide when the species under threat is conveniently purple and spiky instead of pink and squishy.

I'm trying to play Spec Ops: The Line at the moment, almost as a social experiment on myself, because it reportedly takes a different tack from your standard military shooter, but even then, I'm struggling to want to pick up the controller for more simulated mass-murder. It doesn't matter that the game is going to point out the wrong-ness of what I'm doing, it's still asking me to do it.

I'd love to hear more about your experiences as you go through that. I think knowing the general plot vectors like that can help you pay more attention to what and how the game does what it does, rather than being overwhelmed by the spectacle of it.