No one noticed when it started to go wrong. The 1990s were loud, familiar and dangerously comfortable. While the world watched headlines scroll across TV screens, other crimes slipped through the cracks. Cases never meant to be remembered.
Stories that faded before the truth could surface. This podcast brings them back. I'm Simone Taylor and this is 90s crime time. This edition of Giant Bombs Game of the year 2018 coverage is brought to you by You.
That's right. You the giant bomb premium subscriber. Seriously glad you helped. We wouldn't be here, you know, we wouldn't be able to do stuff like this or any of the other things we do.
So just wanted to take a moment here to thank you for riding with us for all these years, whether you've been here all along or whether you're just coming on. Thanks so much and yeah, we hope you enjoy the following proceedings. All right, here we are, day two of Jaibons game of the year 2018. We're all here, fresh up close.
Good morning. Good breakfast. Good solid. Yeah.
16 ribs breakfast. Only a couple hours. Yeah. Here we are, ready to go.
Fresh cobbletops, popwets, a bunch more games. I Love games from 2018. That's this year. Oh, I don't know if you knew.
Oh, that's the year we're still living in. That's a shame. We're still playing Monster Hunter this time. Couple more weeks at least.
No, we're almost done, actually. Yeah. This time you're here to the last half of the year. We're wrapping it up.
Who knows what the next year will hold in games. But we do know what happened this year. We're going to talk about it. Anthems come out.
Anthems come out. That looks kind of some things there. Next year. No, I sure fortunately get into it.
But will it be good enough? Oh, I know that you don't know. It's true. If we wait one full year until we come back here.
That's right. That's right. The only time we will wait, we will not render opinions. That's right.
See you next year. Yeah, we are as detailed yesterday. We're going to basically talk through a giant list of games that matter to us, matter to the world. They're one of the same.
Mostly to us. Yeah. If they didn't matter to us, did they truly matter to the world? You know, we are the world.
Yeah, but Brad, will there be spoilers? There might be spoilers. I can't guarantee spoilers. Okay.
I can guarantee the risk of spoilers. I can't guarantee that you'll be spoiling something. Beware any of the games that we talk about today we may get into. I plan to only talk about the endings of games.
Oh, boy. Great. I knew you were here to be a spoiler. There's a seventh piece.
Yeah, there are 30 games that 50 games we talk about and you unplug it and care. Turn off the podcast. Nah, just kind of take your head. Continually cough until we're done with sessions.
I say listen more intently. Let us ruin everything for you. It doesn't put it anyway, whatever you made the name of that planet, just close the book on the year. Just be warned.
Play 2019 games in 2019. Please don't listen to the year list. That's terrible. Or 1989 games.
Okay, well, Brad, what else will we be doing aside from just talking about these games? Other week Catacomb categories. Okay? Nothing, baby.
All right. That's right. There are only 10 catacombs here now. We'll read them out as soon as I find them.
Wait, who's been the document you have is it best style? Start here. Best. Then your best debut, hottest mess, best moment or sequence, best story, best ongoing game.
You know, just live games. Best looking, most disappointing and best games. Those already categories are confirmed now that I've located them in the sub document. So as we talk about all these fantastic games and maybe not so fantastic ones, we will be deciding if they maybe warrant discussion in a category later on.
Yes, we will casually nominate things to go in categories, but that doesn't mean that we can't add more stuff later or take it off. This is just a preliminary selection process. Yeah, it's a process we used to not record before. We're now recording it and providing it to you.
It used to be people just typing things into Google Doc. Now it's kind of deleting them and saying, well, I just want to put that on there for a little bit. I don't even have a laptop. I've got a pen and a paper.
I can't erase anything for Google Doc with this. I have the power to declare that we're talking about for King. No, no. Which is God war.
20th. Okay. April 20th. Yeah.
It's the best game of the year. God War is a fantastic game. I like God of War a lot. Yeah, I like.
I think for me, if we were talking about nominations for categories just right out the gate here, I would put it in for best game. Yes. Best story. I would put it in for best music, but only because I remember enjoying it and I would have to go back and really kind of sort of best moment or sequence.
Best looking, I think. Definitely best looking. Yep. Best in their place for best stories.
And then that's. I think that's fair. Yeah. Most disappointing goes there.
No. I mean, no. All I need to say is that I eventually found that game to be incredibly boring. My piece, my pick the piece here.
I've played all of the God of Wars. I've not fully enjoyed all of these Gods of Wars. This one I fully enjoyed. This is my favorite of.
This was the closest I came to enjoying a God of War game at all. Which is to say, like, for a while I was like, this is really cool. Until it wasn't. Until I was like, man, I'm done with this game.
I got to the point where I was like, I might be done with this, but for the most part I have loved every God, including the order ones, I guess the meta house, the fun ones. Canonical. Never played that one. We were like noki one.
It's one of my favorite, favorite series of all time. Kratos, one of my favorite characters of all time. They probably could have kept making games like that. Even like by the time Ascension came out and everyone's kind of bored of the formula.
If it has made one of those every like three years. The first time I play Mont Hell off. You are a ludus. It speaks to me in that it is a video game ass video game where you're upgrading and fighting big ass bosses and the combat is really tight and the character's cool.
I could not finish three. Let me give you a difference. I probably wanted them in the same place. I have had mixed opinions on the various God of War games.
Some of them were good, some of them were bad. I really enjoyed this game. Some of my favorite games this year and it also happens to be God of War games. But on the complete other end of the spectrum, where I actively disliked the old God of War games, I thought they were mashy and kind of boring.
But I think this game is incredible. Hi, my name is Alex Tavoro. I reviewed a couple of the God of War games. I enjoyed them.
I fell off the series after and with this one I really wanted to like it. And there are a lot of things about it that I very much admire, but it just didn't do it for me. Like I just trailed off with it and never felt a strong desire to go back to it. I'm kind of with you.
I liked a lot of what I played of it, but some kind of life stuff. Got in the way and I fell off of it back then. I never came back to it. I tried to go back.
I think it's very well made in every aspect. But there is nothing that I felt was truly remarkable or new about it. I think that's new is that it's a decrement for God of War. And it was cool.
Like, they revitalized the series. Actually, the setting, like, the move to a different apology I think is amazing. Yes. I got myself really unhappy with the, like, performance and visual quality settings on the PS4 Pro.
I am totally with you. I hate to get into, like, graphical. The frame rate on frame rate mode was not high enough and it was not fun to play on the other mode. And it just.
I hate that this is a. Neither option is good. A thousand percent with you. I didn't run into that at all.
The game looks so good. I was so happy with how much color is in that game, especially since they have their own colors. It's so colvid. It's so saturated.
It just looks really, really nice. The issues I have with it are more with the story. Like, I like a lot of the story, but the interpersonal beats, I don't love. And I don't love how it treats a lot of the women in the game or really the few women that are in the game.
The mom who's dead at the start. There's the other lady. Spoiler alert. Who thanks her son for, like, choking her out.
And then, like, all the Valkyries who are like, thank you for murdering me. Which is, like, not the best thing. That's like, yeah, they are free from a curse. I don't necessarily agree with all your points.
I will say, if they were the only women represented in the game, I would be more forgiving. The mom is, like, the main badass character that d. Yeah, the whole thing about it's such a regressive trope of, like, there's a name for it, like, fridging the person. What is that?
Green Lantern, where it was like, the whole character's motivation is, like, the enemy or the bad guy, like, chopped up his wife and put her in a fridge. Like, I think that's what it is. That's for this. This is for the mom.
Yeah. The mom is, like, dead from the start. Like, that's the whole motivation. You're gonna bring her ashes at the top.
It's not revenge. Hi, my name's Andrew Dunkley, the host of the Space Nuts Podcast. Hoping you can join me and Professor Fred Watson every week in Fact, twice a week for a regular dose of astronomy and space science. Yeah, we talk serious topics, but it doesn't always go according to plan.
This could turn the whole understanding of the cosmological model upside down, basically. Oh, Geordie's upset by that. No, no, you've hit the nail on the head there. I think that's agreement is that I'm really sorry.
Yeah, we do have a bit of fun, but we also talk serious topics every week. And our second show of the week is always dedicated to audience questions. We welcome those with open arms. So if you'd like to join us, Space Nuts, the podcast, you can download it from your favorite podcasting platform.
See you soon. Sure. But, like, that's the whole motivation for this character. I'm not trying to get into the nitty gritty.
People are gonna fucking transfer me for the rest of my career. I just wanna understand what bothered you about that. I do agree with you. The turn on Baldur's mom on have it end with her, like, I love you, as he's, like, choking around.
It's, like, so shitty. I mean, as a parent, I think that for me was like, I get that whole part protecting a kid and, like, part of the mentality. But like I said, if it wasn't the only one character, I need, like, a real conversation from the beginning. Like, I would be more forgiving of it.
And then also, just the Valkyries was such a bummer for me of, like, why, like, I hate, like, women who are like, thank you so much for fucking killing me. That seems reasonable. Yeah. Yeah.
I guess I didn't take that from the Valkyrie part. Like, they are the warriors who bring people through into Valhalla, and they were corrupted. Like, that's what I got. Sure.
But, like, it's just another trope that's, like, kind of aggressive. And like I said, if there were more women in the game, I think I'd be more forgiving. But it was like, I really enjoyed my time, especially the side mission. So to have that, like, sprinkled in was just, like.
I think for me, I think some of my appeal, the thing that appealed to me about the Sorina is that there are just few characters in it. I mean, there are, like, five characters. One of them is a woman, one of them's Kratos. One of them's a little boy, one of them's a heads.
There are a lot of enemies, though, that are also male. Right. Like, all the fucking fairies you fight. They can have women fairies too.
Like, have women, whatever the Warriors. They all seem pretty masculine from what I remember of it. But anyway, that's like, not my biggest takeaway from this game. Like, I loved a lot of the side missions.
Like, that's where the game really started clicking for me. Like, I felt like it was such a slow start in the beginning. I was like, the world opened up to me. I can go explore the side missions and like, do all that and stuff.
I would go as far as to say that until I got too late. I found the game almost internal because it is nothing but just trudge forward through this tiny bit. Very much has a slow start. But once I got to the lake and I was like, oh, there side stuff.
I can sail around and find things and do these little, like, there's a dragon in there. And once you get mirrors in your party, like, the sailing becomes even better because you start hearing these stories and just like out of Norse legends that are so cool, I would just not dock. I would sit in that boat and let the guy finish the story. I'd never do that in games.
When you're like, in Red Dead and you're riding on horse and I got my decision, I just hop off and move on. But, like, I would sit there and just attentively listen because the delivery, the story themselves are like, you know, old and written or whatever, but just mirrors and a style of storytelling. It's really fun. It's a fascinating character that I think they delivered on the kind of traversing the world in a good way to do some decent amounts on the boat.
And the way they handle interruptions in the story, I think it's also handled very well. You know, they will contextually say, hey, we'll get back and come back to another. Well, like Red Dead does that. Yeah, they're talking about the thing where they write a lot of dialogue.
They have original dialogue that recaps some of the things that they said. As I was saying, tell me more about them. That's. That's where it's fine.
I think you'll probably disagree here, Jeff, but I feel like this game just felt so good to play. Like, every act of it, like, catching the actors had a real weight to it. It felt good. It all sounded good.
The audio designer game was really phenomenal. We have just like, the combat just fell. Once you start upgrading stuff, once you start getting the traces, different types of arrows, and you're swapping between those styles. And like, I turned off.
The thing I like most about combat, surprisingly to me, was once I turned off all the hud stuff. And it was just like Atreus and Mimiro both call stuff out in the battle. Like there's contacts and stuff behind you and you know, there's little arrow indicators on by default. But I turned those off because I want more immersion.
And I was just like listening to my companions telling me where I need to look in battle. Like I was, you know, ready to pivot. So the reason I want to bring up that, like I would have been fine with them continuing to do just that same formula for a few years is because while I would have been fine with that, would have enjoyed that and pretty easily pleased, they keep giving me that stuff. But then I got back with Ascension even I was kind of like, okay, I don't have the same excitement levels.
I also seem to play them but in crazy ways. But yeah, there was fatigue, exciting. And I would have continued to play them and enjoy them. But I don't think I realized how much like this vast, you know, complete change, like almost the genre could do this.
I started playing this game thinking it might just be like new perspective, a new weapon. And so like five hours in I was kind of wondering if I was going to even like this because at that point you haven't really upgrade much. The combat hasn't really evolved much into any act stuff. And based on serious history, I thought like, oh, long have we done eight hours here and like the combat like that kind of a big part of that series for me.
I was like, man, if this doesn't open up for something, I don't like this one. But in five hours in you've barely seen shit. And once you get to the lake and you start realizing how much like cool side stuff there is around there and the game keeps going and going and then the combat does start evolving. Atreus becomes a bigger part of the combat and obviously the time get the blades and everything.
Like when you start realizing the scope and how much they have changed this series as a whole, that one really dawns on you to what it wouldn't accomplish. I don't know how much they crammed in there to disservice the combat though. Because there's so many upgrades and so many abilities, not all the skill free stuff does. And my biggest complaint about the game is that the crafting stuff is not the best framework of stocking gins and things.
My iron for yourself and my armor for the boy and how things. It's just one too many layers of shit that I don't like. I personally convoluted, like I thought it let me play towards my style more. Like I was interested in a lot.
I was doing primarily unarmed. I felt like that was the most fun for me. Just stunning people and executing them and being able to slot for that play style was really cool. I'm sure with time that's fine.
My litness test for that was when I did come back to it months later and look at all that stuff and my eyes just started glazing over and I was like, I don't want to wear all this again. Just one, two big thing. I found myself like unlocking just everything and like I never had, you know, the situation where I had to like choose something over, you know, like one place out or the other. You just get it all.
Yeah, you just get it all well. And once you start socking and stuff, like you can really begin. You can nudge it inwards direction. And I think you really see just how nuanced and deep the combat system is.
Once you are trying to get that kind of like late game armor and stuff and you get those two very specific like kind of bonus areas of the nephilim and the fire, the fireplace and the fog place. Basically I spent probably 15, 20 hours total just doing that shit where it's all so combat focused. This one trying to go as fast as possible. This one has like six different tiers of challenges.
I think that as well. But I think that's a very particular deep dive into that game where that is. I love that as well. But I think the thing that did keep me going is a lot of the narrative stuff.
In the beginning of the game I was pretty off put by not necessarily the female tropes, but like salty dad tropes. I find a lot of those interpersonal cliches just kind of dull. So Kratos's relationship with Atreus just seems like, oh, here we go. Bad drunk dad is trying to see him reach for him.
Which was only coupled by the kind of mom in the sun thing, which was just like, I get this but we don't need to go there with Boulder at the end, right? But the spider, that stuff like the Brock and Sindri stuff was fantastic. All the side missions there. The serpent interactions with the serpent were great.
Audio design of the serpent. One of the cool things in this game. But like every time the lake lower and you just realize like you go back to areas you went the first time and they're just completely different. It's a relatively small open world.
It's difficult to tell us an open world game, but it does open up at a point, but once the lake lowers, you start to realize how complex and tight everything is and how each area has certain levels to it. I thought of a lot of like operand time wise where that's your Hyrule field. Basically it's an opera that one calls an open world game. But you can kind of go where everyone to different places will open up based on what you've got and everything in terms of scope and everything that is similar.
Yeah, I think that makes. That's a fair comparison of that. And I think this game just has really like bombastic big moments that I think are amazing, but also the kind of subtle moments. They're like.
One of my favorite moments from this year in gaming is when there's a bit of sense of. Kratos goes into this shaft of light. It's in the eld, right? And he's.
He's there, he's having a flashback. He's kind of in this nightmare scenario and that whole thing isn't so great. But he leaves Atreus outside with an axe and he's like, hold on, I'll be right back. And he comes back and there's just a pile of corpses and Atreus is just standing there with axe and just his own death.
And it's just like, where the fuck were you? How are you gonna leave me alone with all these things? Like, I've gone for like 30 seconds. No, you were gone for hours.
Which then just kicks off this whole Atreus. Atreus being a dick. I was so turned off by knowing that kid was. I ended up coming back to it.
But like that was the first time I quit. That part where you realize he has powers. I like that moment fine. Oh, I hated him being like, I'm a God.
I'm a little God. I'm a little D. Because think about it, like his character is all about how weak he is. And Kratos is just like giving him so much shit for how he can't hunt and how he's weak and a little like, you know, punk.
And then he gets this power and of course he's gonna abuse it because he's just been beaten down by the world. He lost his mom. He's like filled with rage and just. I don't know, I thought it made a lot of sense.
I thought it was a complete winding down the character. And either way, even if it makes sense that he was fucking annoying as hell. I don't particularly care for kids. And I was like, dude, you know, shut the fuck up, like, all the stuff coming out of that light and the character change that he went through there, when he became like, fuck you, dad.
I was just like, fuck this game. So I ended up taking, like, a week off and coming back to him playing more of it, probably back into it. And I was like, that was where that game lost me. So that's why my favorite moment of the year in the games, in that whole moment, the soaking part was annoying.
Like, having an annoying companion is not fun. They get to the other end of it. I think it's, for me, just in a, you know, deep dive into the deep myth of Kratos is an interesting thing about a battle he can't win with force, right? It's an interaction that he can't just rip somebody in half.
Well, I don't know. That could be pretty strong. You see the pile of El corpses out there. But to me, it was an interesting part of, like, oh, he's off his guard.
What does he do? And some of it played into, like, weird, like, I can't put my hand around you stuff, which was, again, not my favorite stuff. But it was a very earned moment in that initial part. I just feel like a lot of the, like, son and dad stuff was, like, really ham fit for sure.
And especially for how much, like, time they spent on that. And then also the time they spent talking about how important that was to the game around it, which is, you know, that's not really on here, but it's just like, all right, dude. Yeah, this stuff's not as fucking deep and amazing as you're looking like, it's deep and amazing compared to the character work in any of the other. God, at least there's great ingredients to the anger here that I think works, right?
I think it's better. I do think they build out a main piece of the story with big blocks that are carved from stereotypes. Right. There are definitely parts of, like, the Freya bit and the Kratos bit and some of the other, like, sun complexes are in this game.
But I think it is. It is decorated with so many great smaller moments that I'm willing to look past some of them. I think I really enjoyed, like, the Nordic lore. I enjoyed those kind of, like, the Goblin characters.
I don't remember what he was saying. So, like, goblin characters, the head guy, like, I loved all of these characters. I love Freya before the end. Like, it was a real bummer.
I like the ending a lot. I thought it was speaking about downplay, like, the fight, whatever. But the stuff where you get to where you're trying to get and you know, you're looking at the stuff on the walls. I thought that stuff is very tasteful.
I think as someone who didn't know much about Nordic thing, I. The reveal of like he's Thorin or whatever, Loki, I was like, okay, is this a big deal? Well, go ahead. Like that, I think was apparently like a big impact for a lot of people.
But for me, as someone who came in not knowing anything about Norman Explorer, I was like, okay, he's a fairly noteworthy figure in Norse mythology and just Loki generally. Yes, definitely a huge deal in the like current Marvel era. I thought like it was supposed to be like a big hit. It was Loki and the mom being a giant with like the big.
Like these are huge things. Maybe that's why the mom is a very important character in the game. She sets up a lot for. I don't know if she's not a foreign character.
I'm saying when everyone in the game, there's like fucking people. She's either dead or like people are killing her or there's violence against her is like gonna turn me off the game of it. And if we're talking about elements, I just want everybody though. Sure, whatever.
But I don't fucking care. Freya not being Freya taking that charge. Yes. I just wanted to mention, as somebody who had no reverence for the history of God war, I didn't care about those old games.
The scene where you row back to the house and get the blades when the thing attacked me was probably the part that I had the least because I didn't really know who she is. Where the history was there. But just that scene, like the whole. It's a little gimmicky with Whole game has no cuts.
Right. But that just a. I didn't realize how close I was at home. So that was cool.
I was like, oh, this is a big long river thing. But you kind of. It reigns the world in a little bit. Makes it feel like more impactful and real.
But just that sequence where the weather changes and the music kicks in, it was just. It's the moment when they say like you're eat something that's going to burn stuff. And they're like, oh shit, is it going to happen? Is it going to happen?
I wanted to ask because I'd seem to have played the least of this game here. But the most interesting thing that game does is the fish out of water aspect of a God from one pantheon getting fucked up by God. So hearing I would ask like, do they play on that more? But hearing that they backslide into the Greek stuff again.
They don't. They don't. That's not the only part where it sounds like a fan service to me. I would disagree because I think fans will love it's this moment where he has been beaten down by this world and all these other gods just keep kicking his ass.
And so it's like, well, I had one thing that worked for me. And they allude to it early, like when he's like, you never go in the basement. Do not ever go in the basement. Yeah, a lot of rubbing down his arms and yeah, oh yeah.
A lot of like bandages falling off his arms. But I think, I think it works in the context of like he's a stranger in a strange land and he does have to go back to like. I would be mad if they didn't acknowledge the boots at all. Right.
Because you don't really know when he starts to see like it's just a full on reboot or they acknowledging that all that shit happened and then it's deep into the game. It's like, oh, Athena. Oh, they're talking about Zeus. Oh, you see Zeus.
Hearing all that stuff makes me not want to finish this game because that bums me out. Oh man. What I loved about the beginning of the game is that is only alluded to. Like you the player know all of this history because he played those other games.
But like, who's the dude that shows up at this hospital? Like he talks in vague terms about like who you are type stuff. I thought that was amazing. But to have them just go whole hog with it.
It's not like the CNN series are constantly around. Like they are shown enough to let you know that hey, yeah, this is the Senkredo. Same universe and all that. But outside of the blades, there's no constant like hey, remember old games?
Also the end puts a whole different spin on that I know who you are thing. It's like actually changes the narrative of the game completely in a really cool way. Yeah, I think they do. I think they executed very well on what they were trying to accomplish.
The combat. I enjoyed it. I went kind of deep like Dan into the part where I'm starting to spec for like stamina or with stun. Right.
And you do kind of go deeper. You know, I wouldn't expect everybody to go in and start building builds of Kratos, but I found that fun doing the challenges I narrative despite some, you know, kind of tripping over itself. And trying to ham fist parental relationships which felt unearned at points makes up for it in the wider scope of the game. Like all of the side stuff in it felt flesh out in a way that I really.
It had that like Mass Effect 2 feel of like you're doing this stuff. All this stuff has like a narrative. Like doing this stuff for Broken Syndria. And it's because it's like, here's this lore behind this thing.
You're getting it. Nothing feels like a fetch quest. I really like that the stuff with the serpent is just wild. The way they weave, you know, they've done this in previous games.
They've been hit or miss. But the way they kind of twist Norse mythology to fit into a new take on it, it's interesting, you know, like they have to bend stuff to make it fit their narrative. You know, they always put this kind of darker twist on it where everybody's an asshole. Like there are no good people in this world.
And that's addressed in the story. That is addressed with Atreus as being like, there are no good people here. Everybody fucking sucks. God.
Yeah, that's a whole creative thing, right? All gods are assholes. Nobody should have this much power. No one person should have this much.
Yes, definitely. You know, and that kind of plays into the gods. Just toy with people. And that's Kratos whole chip on each other, right?
Atreus, you cannot be a God because gods are evil. And that's the whole part of him holding back and him holding Atreus that he knows that he's gonna be a God. And that's his word for him. He's like, gods will suck.
All the stories about Thor and Odin that Mimir tells you just really reinforce how much of an asshole how shitty the brothers are. Like Thor's sons are fucking. I wrote them down. Was Magnum's nephews, right?
God, they're the fucking worst than toy maker. Yeah. I don't know. It kept me propelled in a way that few games this year have.
Cool. I mean, I think the gameplay in the combat never hangs enough for Pelzog. I don't remember a lot of the story beats. I don't know anything about Norse anthology, but I mean just the general exploration and combat and everything on top of all the individuals, Nadia and everything being top notch.
The only complaint I have about this entire game is the graphic system. Graphic. It is definitely game of the year. I wish I could have gotten more into it.
I will say as someone who was actively turned off by some of the cliche moments in the story. I still really love this game a lot. I found it so satisfying to play. It just felt good.
I really liked exploring a lot and I really enjoyed my time with it. Yeah, Bifrost a lot. That whole mechanism was fun. Like turn the bridge and they're lowing.
Yeah, I probably got about eight or 10 hours. Sounds like my feelings tracked pretty closely to Jeff's. I hate. I hate that those graphics modes distracted from my experience, but they totally didn't.
It's just like that game never felt neither one of those modes is where it needs to be. I wish they had like abandoned one in favor of making the other one work right. But like, yeah, we're kind of gonna have 4K TV. Even though I was using the performance mode.
But the frame rate is so inconsistent that it's like a smooth one. And the next minute it's jerking down where you lock it at 30 and go with like 4K visuals, which is like, oh, this looks nice. But like I can't. I don't like the way it plays.
Barely hitting 30 in the performance mode performance, but it's still just inconsistent enough to where it just didn't feel good. Also high enough. I also had to grasp this game for making me go buy another fucking PS4 Pro because the fan on mine was so goddamn loud. That was another reason I stopped playing games straight up.
I think that's a bit of a Plane's Got a War on that. That game is notorious for being like the worst offender at swiping that shit. I literally had headphones on and I could hear it roaring through headphones. You should try playing that thing on.
Not Pro. Yeah, I played on a regular and it was wrong. Like that's how good it all is. I went out a couple weeks ago and bought one of the new silent ones because I wanted to finish God 4.
I was like. I was like, alright, I'm more likely to finish this game if I'm quiet. I had the same end but a different reason. I bought a Pro because I thought this game looked so good normally.
I wanted to see it. I feel like I got my Pro on the same time too. And yeah, it was definitely one of the games that like sold. I think a lot of people on it just conceptually like, okay, this.
They've done some work here. The visuals are fantastic. Excellent harvest line for sure. I wish the tricking mechanic works better.
Hitting the angles and then we're going down snatching stuff and that can feel so good. Give him some chests to punch through. If you don't run the wrong way. I pop them up and then have a trans.
Like I've ever got that before. Then we punch the shield and send them back. Yes. Yeah.
That never clicks for me. I think with Jeff as well. I don't know what it was. I thought it was competent.
Yeah. But it didn't blow my mind. It's alright. I hate it by any means.
But it's more deliberate than it was. I like it way better than Old God. Horror Animal. Super stuff is really cool.
It's difficult for me to nail it down. It's not the deliberateness of it. I don't mind a slower paced action game. I don't mind the idea of meticulously kind of going at bosses.
But like just think about just the way the animation and the movement and the feel of overall like just the hits in that game just never quite did it for me. I thought all the parry stuff, like we time it right and hit that stuff. I thought the impacts and stuff were exceptionally done. Yeah.
I don't know. I don't know. They still evidently were going for guardruntrols because we moved all these axes. But I feel like they should have gone further in that direction.
I think I rebounded a lot. Easier for me to sing. Yeah. I always felt like I was unlocking like yet another thing on the skill tree.
That was another combat option that didn't feel great. It was just like, oh, here's more options that don't seem. Now that kind of attack is a little bit wider. Right.
That's a more. Okay. But I don't remember much. I think I got all like the obvious ones like pretty early.
Is like kind of level kid and get him up there and. Yeah. But this is the other options. Oh, look at this.
Do this. Nope, nope, nope. All right. That comes along like.
Yes, it is. It looks like. Okay. See some hand pumping going on over there for ni no kuni 2.
Yeah. Did I wanna play that? I did. I did.
Okay. I still want to. Yeah. So this is the Follow up to niokuni1.
Kind of IBLI looking RPG. Same universe, different story completely. I think this game had a lot going for it that really clicked with me. But then there was some stuff that just was a big bummer.
My biggest problem with the game is really easy. They eventually addressed it with a difficulty patch. But I just hit a point where. So it's kind of.
It has some base building stuff which will generate resources and then you can use those resources to craft items and stuff like that and I guess I kind of cheated the system a little bit by letting it idle while I was cleaning and stuff. I just hear PS4 at your desk, just having this game. I turn the bomb cast. I'm like, you can't do it.
You have to come back, you know, collect your coffers and no reset and stuff like that. But I just got to a point about halfway in the game. Warpers. You don't have to play.
Yeah, but it was kind of awarded because it made a lot of the combat inconsequential. About halfway through, it was a little breezy. I mean, you broke the game. I was gonna say that sounds like a side of the stupid thing I would also do, but I don't know if how much you hold anything.
I feel like those mechanics are the weaker part of the game. I kind of liked that I had all these options, but some of them felt a little mobile game of like, I just have to fucking find fizzy work to do while this timer runs out. I don't understand why you were like, I'm just gonna let run. It goes without saying, the timer stop when you close the game.
Yes. They all resume second you get back in. Or do you lose that progress if you don't finish? I don't know.
I don't think you lose the progress. I think like, oh, my castle's like, I ordered people to like, make fucking bread or whatever it is. And, like, I'm gonna go and do my stuff and come back 20 minutes later and like, the shit upgraded or whatever. I don't remember exactly what they do.
I think it was like, upgrading, like, making supplies for you, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. As far as the story goes, I thought that game started out with an incredible beginning. Like, the first scene in that game is you are the President of the United States in a motorcade.
Yes, you're in your motorcade. I'm on your way to a peace meeting in the UN and a nuke hits the city, basically. And you like, blackout and wake up in this fantasy kingdom where this little boy whose father was the king. The king has been murdered.
And they're playing a rebell. Basically, the rat people. It's the rat people uprising against the cat people. And so you show up and, like, in this little boy king's room, and you basically escort him out of there because you realize what's going on.
You're president. You're like, oh, shit, I can recognize a coup. And I see one. So you don't have a safety.
And then it's like, you gather in your party and kind of the king's quest for the little boy at Evan. At Evan. Evan's goal is to create a world without war. He wants to create a United Kingdom.
It's worked out so well. The European Union. It'll never work. The president has a gun, by the way.
I know. That turned me off so much because it's like this beautiful, like, whimsical world with, like, swords and everything. And, like, early on, your, like, little boy's about to get hurt, and it's like, witch, like, steps in front of him to, like, block a thing. And then the president fucking pulls out a gun and shoots the guy in the eye.
It's like this terrible dance is mocking out. It's like, why does that happen? As soon as I could. And I came out of his way.
No, he gets more whimsical stuff. It was like, such a thing that took me out of the whimsy of the world. And he looked like he was a ponytail. He starts out, like a 9 millimeter straight up.
And then eventually you get, like, fantasy guns. You know, it's like whimsical rifles and stuff like that. They do not follow through with that character at all. I was very glad for that.
I was like, see you later. I like my advisor. And I was fine to just, like, carry on with my catboy, but did they ever explain why you're in the fucking, like, the nuclear explosion sent you to Fantasy Kingdom. It's kind of like the first game where there are two worlds in our world and the Ni no Kumi world.
And the two worlds are intertwined in their destinies. So is the same universe as the person. Ding dong. Go.
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. No Mr.
No over references to. There's like, little nods here and there, but yeah, I think by the end. So basically, the structure is every town, every dungeon, you find the one person who you realize is eventually gonna join your party and help them overthrow their corrupt leader. And it got a little samey as you went on.
Like, I just can tell the beats are gonna kind of hit the. Cool. There were exceptions. I think the Water Kingdom stuff was really cool.
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Mmm, Podcasts. I don't have to spoil this game because I'M not really gonna push it in story and stuff like that. I think people just play on their own. But it does do some clever things here and there.
But it never just feels. It never takes risks. I think I really enjoyed it. Like I said, I also found it pretty easy.
I don't think I died really at all in the time I played it. Unless I was like, clearly going after something that was like, way too powerful. Even then it's like, nice. Pretty easily put it out of a hard mode patch.
I remember people were like hacking it on PC to get harder. I think Rory did that. Visually, what do you think it stands? The first one was stunt for two without Ghibli.
It's not fair. I think it still has the whimsy. I think it's still a really sweet game. Designs, character designs.
But it's not like you don't have those, like, beautiful hand animated cutscenes anymore. This looks fine, but it's like there's no Jibliso. Oh, there's no. I still like the aesthetics of it, but it' departure from the other game.
I feel like I've definitely nominated this for best music, though. It does have some incredible music. Is it the very standard JRPG kind of vibe? Yeah, I can go for that.
I'm just curious. Yeah. All right. I'd put that there and then check the categories up again just to make sure I'm not missing anything.
Yeah, I think it looks nice. I don't think it's the best looking. It has good style. I don't think it's the best style.