Thank you GBeast for making me cackle and laugh until I cry every Friday. You brought joy to my life that you cannot imagine. You helped me through lots of hard times and made me see the silver linings and hopefulness in life when it wasn’t clear. Thank you Giant Bomb for the memories, genuineness, life, and spirit that I didn’t know I needed at the time. Looking back, it’s been a pretty fun and amazing ride, but I look forward to the future!
Thank you Vinny, Brad and Alex for the good times and wonderful memories. You, and Giant Bomb as a whole have gotten me through hard times and have truly changed my life.
@alex, I believe at 19:00ish, it looks like you're wall jumping while holding down a direction with the stick. While I haven't played Sunshine, my experience with Mario games is that you just simply jump with the A button multiple times so that you are not falling off and dying when attempting the wall jump. I've noticed this nearly every time you've wall jumped, so just a friendly tip--to see if it works for you in this game! =)
Don't know how to feel about this series. That last episode was better than I expected, so I had some hope, but most of this episode was mind-numbing, and a lot of it was not the fault of the game. It's just not fun to watch something where the people do not seem remotely engaged with what they're doing.
Hopefully it will get better now that they're off the island though. I want to like this.
Yeah. People were saying the same thing about Blue Bombin' a week or two ago, but I thought the chatter there was pretty much fine. Ben & Jeff chatting about nothing during cutscenes they could be riffing on seems pointless. Brad at least seemed interested in looking for something to enjoy, even if some of it was boring--Jeff just shitting on everything this episode wasn't any fun for me.
I agree with this. Especially the riffing part. I like when Giant Bomb goes off topic to tell fun stories and have silly banter but I think it got out of hand here. Every single cutscene they talked over and could have riffed on. I'm not necessarily defending Kingdom Hearts--and I think their gimmick with the technical difficulties is kind of silly and fun--but the part where they're not even paying attention to the game just kind of feels gross and in bad taste. I get that the very name of this series doesn't lend itself to them receiving this game in a positive way but at least don't be completely apathetic about what's going on?
A little bit of advice for @danryckert, @alex, @vinny. Next time you guys buy health items, get the ones that heal the most amount of health! They are incredibly cheap! Dan has been buying the lower tier ones, which don't really heal that much of your health, so it's worth investing slightly more money in order to save you guys a lot of trouble.
Also, if you're not interested in all the side content then maybe this game and this video series isn't really for you. I think the side quests are great and really well written actually. Who cares if they're unvoiced? That's very odd that you would say that especially since it is a Japanese game with English subtitles--and you would have to read it anyway you silly person! They don't need to timestamp anything! Between all variety of real estate, cabaret, the silly buffoonery with Mr. Libido and Shakedowns, and all the ridiculous side quests, I think it's all fascinating and fun to watch!
oh my god... 10 minutes in and we are doing restaurant management... go in with the story!
1 hour 15 minutes before story starts. I hardly find it fun to read unvoiced boring side quests and management. At least timestamp in video when story starts.
Just a helpful piece of info for you....An easy way to view ALL Heat Actions is to go to "Abilities", then hit "Details" and there's an entire list that shows you every single contextual Heat Action and how to execute it! It also shows you all your moves and such. =D
@bolognarock: Don't make assumptions. I do in fact like Flower and Journey. (I have not played The Witness yet.) But those games support their core ideas through their use of gameplay. They feel like fully realized products that work as a cohesive whole.
Having a deep combo system that the game fails to capitalize on is the exact opposite of that. It is not inherently rewarding to have systems like that in the game merely because they are there. It's a huge fallacy to suggest that discovery is always and inherently rewarding and satisfying. A well designed game needs more than just things to discover for that discovery to actually be satisfying.
Look at the recent Assassin's Creed games. They fill those games to the brim with stuff to "discover", but actually discovering them is one of the least rewarding things ever.
Although frankly I have no idea why you're going on about "rigid, conventional, inside-the box" nonsense when all I'm saying is they should have balanced and designed their encounters better. I'm not arguing they should have made the game a full on brawler, I'm saying the combat encounters that already exist in the game are poor in the moment and poorly prepare you and motivate you for what comes later in the game. There is no way you can argue that is good game design and it has absolutely nothing to do with it being "streamlined".
While you're right about Shenmue not being a cohesive product, I don't believe anyone is even arguing the opposite.
But I would challenge your opinion about the combo system not being well implemented. I think it's perfectly fine for the game to not push you in a certain direction. The game rewards you when you train your moves via practicing or fighting. Your moves go up in effectiveness and they even become more complex as you reach the Moderate and Advanced thresholds. And if you happened to be playing on an import of the Dreamcast version of 1+2 you could even carry over all your learned moves and their stats (which, yeah it sucks that most people didn't get that opportunity state-side).
Fine, maybe the camera sucks during fights and the fighting doesn't have great hit detection and is overall a little sluggish. But I think for a game that has a whole lot else going on for something that came out in 99, the fighting is pretty satisfying. The moves have a great sound when they make impact on enemies, and there's a certain satisfaction to seeing your moves level up and get more complex and deadly. In the next ER episode, even Vinny had a minor revelation that he's curious about learning new moves and exploring the combat more.
The appeal of Shenmue is that you can do whatever you want, when you want (aside from story-based restrictions or cutscenes).
When I play the Metal Gear Solid games, I can choose whether or not I want to be stealthy or guns blazing. Even if the stealth wasn't great until the 4th or 5th game, it was still nice to be able to have options.
The game doesn't need to force you to do anything. But the game does reward you for fighting even if it doesn't directly push you to. Not in the form of XP boosts, or an item, but in terms of you turning into a more badass fighter.
@bolognarock: I don't agree. I don't care if you're an experimental indie game or a AAA blockbuster, if you don't justify the systems you add to your game with rewarding gameplay you are only letting them go to waste.
Having a deep combat system with boring combat encounters you can basically button mash through until the end of the game where they suddenly throw a big difficulty spike at you is not good game design and I doubt there's an argument that would convince me otherwise.
Shenmue may have its merits, but that is not one of them.
Sometimes the reward isn't wholly presented by the game, but more by the player's own satisfaction of discovery. I feel like you would not appreciate great games like Journey, Flower, or the Witness. Games don't have to fit inside this rigid, conventional, inside-the-box way of things. Games can be whatever they want, especially Shenmue, and can still be designed well. Don't expect all games to be this streamlined equality that you're asking for.
bolognarock's comments