Worth Reading: 02/28/2014

this is pretty much exactly how i feel about the game. i think the aesthetic is kinda gross. which is a weird thing for me to say because i'm generally not really bothered by, for example, gore in horror movies.

i guess it just isn't for me.

And I tried that Ridiculous Glitching game out. This wasn't that difficult to get:

Bet ya'll can beat me.

That was exactly Edmund's intent to a degree. Read this for some insight into why he likes drawing those things: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-06-29-the-binding-of-edmund-mcmillen

Lets not forget comma splicing ala This is, on some level, slightly surprising to me, since it reminds me of Ren & Stimpy, which I used to love. It seems that no one else has an issue with the grammatical sloppiness of this great feature. Again, I love this feature and I think Patrick is fantastic but his pieces have to be edited (in the most basic way).

Can we make a pledge to never take anything from Kotaku seriously, ever again?

They're pretty much the Fox News of gaming journalism, with the constant posts of agenda-driven bullshit designed to make other people look bad on a regular basis. They've got a handful of editors who, in my opinion, are completely fucking terrible, Jason Schreier and Patricia Hernandez being particularly of note, and for as much as I used to like Totilo, his website has just kind of turned into a toilet full of clickbait with the occassional decent writeup by Kirk Hamilton or Brian Ashcraft.

I guess i've met my quota of propaganda and bullshit for awhile, and that Final Fantasy editorial was the icing on the cake.

thanks for the link. interesting read. but this doesn't affect my opinion on the art-style of the game. of course he can do whatever he feels like with his game and its art, and i respect that. i'm glad people enjoy it and that some people might get the meaning behind it. but for me, personally, i just don't enjoy looking at it.

edit: I just wanted to add that the art style doesn't offend me or anything. i honestly don't care enough about the art style of a video games to be offended by it. it's just more of a taste thing that i don't enjoy it.

I think most people have better things to do with their time than check Worth Reading for correct comma usage.

More Junior Anti-Sex League telling nerds to feel bad about sexuality. Telling the most bullied and repressed kids to feel bad about their sexual impulses is like shooting fish in a barrel with a rail gun.

@excast: this was exactly the type of high handed response i was expecting. Screw being consistent right. I do not understand how my observation is trivial. Professional sites need some kind of standard when it comes to this stuff and i do not think it is a sense of entitlement to that drives me to this. It is not simply this feature. It is numerous features that get posted with fundamental grammatical errors but fuck me right? This issue is systemic and i won't be bullied by your condescending remarks.

Like honestly any criticism of this site no matter how constructive and parsed with compliments is automatically poo pooed

@tonimckernt: Oh. Yeah, it isn't the best artwork. Kinda bland colors and low frames of animation.

Patrick,

Re: god items in Binding of Isaac (no spoilers), there ARE a few very powerful items that can dramatically change your run early on, but they are rare, and some of them have to be unlocked by getting other items or accomplishing other tasks first.

Re: other games to play, I vote for FTL. That seems like a good length of game to support streaming, and a nice mix of luck and skill. It's a prime candidate, in my opinion. You could call the segment FTP: Faster Than Patrick. :)

People are saying that they don't find The Binding of Isaac funny, or the aesthetic appealing, and I don't either. The thing is, I don't think it's intending to really go for either of those things. I think it's intentionally very unsettling. Like, when you see a mess of blood and poop, and then pick up some meme-based joke item, you don't laugh. You just kind of go, "what the hell is this?" and I think that's what it's trying to do. The fact that picking up "Mom's Pad" made Patrick want to come up with some other name for it, just because it made him uncomfortable, is exactly what The Binding of Isaac is going for.

Kind of like how Papers, Please wasn't supposed to be fun, I think Binding of Isaac's art isn't supposed to be appealing. I mean, if you're looking at BoI and trying to get comfortable with the aesthetic, I think you're kind of missing the point.

That said, if that keeps you away from the game, that is completely and totally valid. I couldn't finish Paper's Please due to it's complete lack of fun, even knowing full well that that was the point of the experience. I don't, however, think it's valid to be straight-up dismissive of it, though. There is value in The Binding of Isaac's artistic design, even if you (or I) are not a fan of it.

That Stanely Parable article reminds me of something Susan Arendt said on the Escapist podcast: "creative people are massively insecure." I guess it comes with the territory. I know I've experienced it myself; you have trouble coming to terms with the world so you create something to better express it.

@chocolaterhinovampire: It did come off as extremely nitpicky. Come on, man, you yourself said that you were expecting that type of response. To refer to a single person pointing out how small the thing you were correcting was as "bullying" is incredibly hyperbolic.

Anyone, on any website, is going to call out the people pointing out tiny grammatical errors in the website. If you just want him to correct it, you could have done it in a PM, rather than broadcast your intense knowledge of the English language on the comments section.

I'm not trying to be a dick here, but the fact that you were so ready to jump on anyone calling you out and then blame the entire community for his response is more than a little frustrating.

I agree with this, and your previous comments on this piece. There are some glaring errors that detract from the craft of the rest of the work. A little more care would go a long way in improving the feature. Honestly, love your work, @patrickklepek.

Actually, it's the Internet.

Thank you also! Very cool especially because Super Meat Boy is one of my all time favorite platformers ever.

@generic_username: point taken but i do not agree that i am being nitpicky. It is true that people on this site will immediately label any criticism as trollish or negative. Secondly, i am not showing off my 'mastery of english', simply that the errors are so

fundamentally basic that even one proof

reading would benefit the whole. That is not nitpicking but my wanting some semblance of ownership be taken for the feature. Alex does not have this issue. If it gets posted with numerous errors it bothers me because they are such simple errors. Thanks for being polite in your critique and i will watch where i air my grievances in the future.

Sometimes I forget that. I should go outside more.

(Also, @video_game_king, mento's newest blog is up)

@generic_username: i maintain that criticism of anything on this site occupies a weird no mans land in the community

Every time I see that PBS/Digital show person I ask myself if there are actually lenses in those glasses. Glad he kind of explained that at the end.

@video_game_king: this is the exact hyperbole i will admit i am guilty of. Lazy response and seriously people do not like hearing any criticism of this site. The lazy knee jerk reaction of 'the internet, right guys' is not constructive

@chocolaterhinovampire:

Unfortunately, from what I've seen, that's what the Internet is. Anger begets anger. Aggression begets aggression. (Which, I'm noting, is permeating into this very post. What the hell, me?) Let it be known that I was tempted to include this in my response. (I didn't because non-sequitur.)

Just like hipster and sjw, the internet being terrible as a catchall criticism has lost meaning and is just plain lazy

While @chocolaterhinovampire could have conveyed it more tactfully, the consistently poor editing and syntax of practically everything Patrick writes bugs me as well. I gave up on trying to point it out a while ago, but it hasn't improved at all. I'm not a grammar nazi, and god knows nobody's perfect, but I straight-up find Patrick's stuff difficult to read at times. The first few paragraphs of this piece are kind of a mess, and it bugs me that Patrick (and in terms of editorial responsibility, Jeff?) thinks this kind of stuff is acceptable.

@video_game_king: agreed. I guess i cant better articulate my answer

I like how this comment section turned out

@hailinel: By the sounds of it, Lightning Returns handles it the best way by giving the player the option. The problem with Schreier and his ilk is that they think their opinion on how women should be dressed, whether in real life or in any media, including games, is the correct one.

I can say that I would like to see more female characters dressed appropriately depending on the context. For example, a female Spartan in the next Halo game shouldn't be the only character wearing bikini armor to indicate that that one is a woman. However, there is nothing inherently wrong with a character dressing sexy, like Bayonetta.

Instead of being hung up on trying to remove sexualization of female characters (or any characters really, since both genders are often sexualized), they should be asking for a diverse representation on how women are presented, since not all women want to dress the same way. I know women who like having sexy characters in games, and they're not wrong for wanting that. Just like some women aren't wrong for wanting a more conservatively dressed character.

I saw this comic this morning. I think she says it better than me in fewer words.

I agree i could have been more tactful but the consistent mistakes show a lack of respect for the process. I feel that my response was not unwarranted in the sense that so little care goes into the presentation of these pieces. I would have been tactful if the author actually respected the craft and how poorly these mistakes reflect on his fantastic journalism

I agree 100%. Patrick's articles are often hard to read because his writing is technically sloppy. I used to point out errors in the comments with an "@patrickklepek" so he would see it, but corrections were never made, so I stopped doing that. And stopped reading his articles regularly.

Patrick makes his living as a writer, but he has shown little effort to improve the technical aspects of his craft. His articles still suffer from the same awkward errors that they did 2 years ago. It's disappointing.

It's also disappointing that this stuff gets a pass editorially from Giant Bomb. That's part of the reason I don't subscribe to the site. I understand that informality is part of the spirit of the site, but carelessness should not be. The sloppiness of editing exhibited in Patrick's articles reeks of carelessness.

There are other aspects of the site that suffer from similar issues. For example, livestreams frequently don't start on time. You'd think that a few years of livestreaming experience would have done something to improve this, but somehow something always seems to come up. Another example, is lack of preparation and attention in some Quick Looks. A Quick Look where half the time is spent banging against a wall and complaining about the game being opaque because the players talked over and buttoned past any instructions is NOT valuable to someone who is trying to decide whether to get the game. If the game has a steep learning curve, it's better to simply say that and to demonstrate what the game has to offer once the player gets past that steep curve than to spend the Quick Look stuck in the learning phase.

I love Giant Bomb, and I want it to be great. But lack of care in craft in some places is holding it back. I don't doubt that the Bomb Squad cares deeply about the site, but, in the quality of some of their content, that care simply doesn't come through sometimes.

@jeff@brad@vinny@drewbert@rorie@patrick

Just to respond to you, I was not attempting to bully or silence you. I was simply responding to your comment about other people not really caring about grammatical errors. And honestly? Yeah, I really don't have the will to proofread Patrick's articles for missing commas and the like. I am able to understand the points he is trying to make and the occasional error does not detract from anything for me.

It just seems a little much to act like this reflects on his level of respect for his craft or for the site. The guy is churning out a tremendous amount of content in interviews, the Morning Show, articles, Worth Reading, Worth Playing, and daily live streams. He has a lot on his plate. At the end of the day, some punctuation errors aren't the end of the world.

I'd say that kind of 'quality' is reserved for their printed reviews. Everything else on this site is for entertainment purposes first, and informational purposes second. I can absolutely understand how their unprofessionalism may be off putting, and if you don't like it, by all means don't pay for it. But for me, it's a core part of what I find so appealing about this site. It's the people as they are, not trying to put on airs, not trying to pretend that they're part of a structured presentation, and because of it, I trust that we're getting their personal true feelings about whatever.

That kind of naked candidness is (for whatever reason) still extremely rare in games coverage, and I wouldn't want it to change at all.

@excast: much thanks for the reply. I understood the sentiment of your post and just wanted to articulate why i chose to say this stuff in the comment section.

@excast: i have already acknowledged how busy he is but at the same time i do not see that as an excuse for consistently poor grammar and structure. Other writers are just as busy ie alex and yet they do not suffer from a consistent and general slopiness. I have done nothing but praise patrick's work in all my posts. I just want him to care about the technical side of his craft (again, something he is very good at). None of my critiques are esoteric but simple and fundamental aspects of effective writing

Patrick, you must love Stephen King then (I do). Half of his main characters are himself (a writer).

I don't know what it is, but I really just connected with the whole Spelunky thing. I loved watching those streams. I looked forward to them. I was, and still am, playing Spelunky. I didn't start playing it until you started streaming it. Lightening in a bottle maybe. Who knows. Either way, the Binding of Isaac just doesn't have that magic. I own that game too, as I did Spelunky when you started streaming it (thank you Steam sales). While I can see why I might want to play Isaac, it just isn't as interesting to watch as Spelunky. It could be as simple as the bullets. They look...inaccurate, and sort of silly, compared to the rest of the game. It makes everything feel sort of cheap. When you get hit...it often feels like there was nothing you could have done to avoid it. When you hit things...it seems as much luck as anything. Spelunky, on the other hand, doesn't have that feel at all. When you got it, it was, and looked like it was, because you messed something up.

Interesting. That really affects how engaging the stream is. The stakes seem much higher, and more interesting, when it's YOU who made a mistake that was totally preventable, vs. Isaac, where getting hit is sort of inevitable. I feel like there's no way you could get through that game without taking a lot of hits. Spelunky seems like the type of game, where if you were good enough, you could never take a hit. As hard as that might be.

I loved The Novelist, and found it pretty relevant even though I'm not a writer. The struggles of creating something are done well, but it's the work/life balance and compromise leading to eventual negatives is what resonated with me more. Was one of my favourite games of 2013.

The article on The Stanley Parable showed fame, even positive, can be emotionally crippling. I hear this a lot from certain directors or actors who make it big, and don't know how to deal with all the attention. There can be a thing such as too much positive reinforcement, for a person who has insecurities. I hope he gets better through his depression and what sounds like impostor syndrome. I can understand him getting obsessed over which outlets praised him for awards, and why the others didn't.

I think The Wolf of Wall Street showed that when the rewards are not tangible like investor shares, these rich people just get addicted to money and there's no maximum level of satisfaction. These things won't buy you happiness. That's an internal thing, and I feel he needs people close to him to acknowledge his achievements or think of working to better his self-esteem.

That's pretty much how I feel, as well. And the comic you linked states that argument clearly and concisely.

The weird narrative subtext of The Binding of Isaac is what brings it from great to all-timer for me. A lot like Dark Souls, it has a narrative there, but it doesn't ask you to follow it, it just makes it available for you to discover if you want to dig into it.

What's fantastic about games that do this is how thematically consistent they become. It really binds (no pun intended) every other design decision. Why does Isaac find so many items from Mom? What's the meaning of the cutscenes between levels? What's with Maggy the character but also Sister Maggy the really weird "option" item you can find? Why the poop and the religious imagery? Why is the level after the darkness "the Womb?"

All that stuff is there for a reason, and even if you don't care about the reason --and nobody says you should-- you can totally feel the sense of purpose in it. It's still meant to be funny, but it's funny in a rock-solid meaningful way. Definitely one of my favourite games of its year (and much, much better than Spelunky, damnit).

Me and my friends use the term gamer when were like joking around or when I find Doritos gamer pack at Walmart and I tell them I have to buy it bec am a gamerzz and were gona play better when we eat it.

I feel like growing up as a gay dude gave me a completely different perspective on the whole "being embarrassed by the things I do" thing. I almost don't even see it as some sort of "I just dislike this because it's so silly and dumb." I see someone acting afraid of liking something like anime, or what-have-you, and instead I just see someone who is insecure and needs to get over it.

I had to go through the trials of being publicly (and privately) ostracized for my interests and my own behavior that stood out as peculiar to my friends and family, and it took years for me to realize that I am who I am, and that I like what I like, and people who are going to make fun of me for liking something that seems weird to them can just fuck off.

At some point that life experience and those life lessons just bled over into things like, in this case, being unashamed of liking JRPGs and being proud of it. If there's a bunch of sexy dudes or ladies on screen, or a bunch of kids being all cutesy or colorful, I don't feel like I need to hide it or that I have to come up with some excuse, like this one or two games are just the exception. "I'm not gay in any way, it was just that one guy that one time, it's completely different." I grew up, I'm comfortable in my own interests. But I had to go through a lot of bullshit in my life to get to that point that a lot of straight dudes never did.

It's okay to like whatever you like. Own it. Defend it. Be proud of it. In the latest Breaking Brad, Brad mentioned Princess Mononoke in a slightly lowered voice, and then tried to backpedal by saying "I feel like Miyazake transcends animeness, though, you know?" No, he doesn't. It's anime. You like some anime. Brad likes anime. It's okay. Anyone who makes you feel ashamed for it is a total shit.

The concept of the "guilty" pleasure needs to die.

@subsalicylate: i do not agree with your position on quick looks, etc and i will never have an issue with giving these guys money. I cannot state enough how much i appreciate these guys and this site.

Yay, recognition of The Mary Sue!

Isaac has a slower pace than Spelunky. Where in Spelunky it was not always beneficial worth the time and effort to raid a room of all it's contents, every run in Isaac benefits GREATLY from being as thorough as possible and milking every last thing you can from each floor. However, I have a theory that more viewers will warm up to watching you play it when they learn more about the game and it's mechanics along with you.

As for a jet-pack equivalent, no single item comes to mind. Isaac focuses a lot on synergy between items, some of which you've already discovered. But that's another big difference between Spelunky and Isaac. There are literally hundreds of different items and many of them can be used congruently. Much like Spelunky, a key component of playing Isaac is being able to adapt to new ways of play during each run, but the changes in plays style can change much more frequently in Isaac when you factor in how quickly you pick up new items.

And if you think THIS game is crude and offensive, you should play one of Edmund Mcmillen's previous titles, a flash game simply titled "Cunt." It's pretty horrific. Anyway, Keep it up, Klepek.

I dont have a problem with the Binding of Isaac's style. I just find it completely uninteresting to watch. It's just not all that fun to watch, i'm sure its a fine game to play, but as something to watch, no, it's terrible. Maybe if i was super into the game i might find interest in it, but watching patrick play it for a bit just made me LESS interested in the game.

When he was playing Spelunky, i actually got MORE interested in the game and eventually purchased it myself.

I can get that some people don't want to watch Isaac because of the art, I mean even Edmund has said that he thinks it's not great. Personally, I like how the art design fits the tone of the story and I'm looking forward to the redone graphics in Rebirth.

My god, he really is.

Man, hearing Kevin Smith talk to the PvZ dev team is weird, because I realize it's one of the only times I've seen someone interview a game dev where the interviewer is both A) a writer and not really technically inclined, and B) not knowledgeable about modern games. It's just really crazy because he's so enthusiastic about PvZ and Garden Warfare about almost kind of lacks the vocabulary to talk about them.

Also, it's really...quaint to hear him talk about how he could just stare at the levels of Garden Warfare for hours, because to him it's like, magic that they took the 2D world of PvZ and realized it into what he calls like "a Pixar film". I haven't had that kind of moment since I saw Mario and Zelda go from 2D to 3D, but somehow despite obviously being aware of 3D games, going from PvZ to Garden Warfare is that moment for Kevin Smith.

Also, one of the developers has to explain to Smith and Mewes like, how digital artists do their craft. It's crazy, because as much as I don't think like, my parents necessarily know how digital artists work, Smith is like 15 years younger than my parents, and I figured someone in that age bracket would have a bit of a clue how that stuff works?

You guys should listen to that podcast episode, it's just super strange.