@deadactionjones: yeah I got strong GTFO vibes when I first saw this. It comes off to me as though Ubisoft took a look at GTFO and said, "hey this game's got some great ideas, maybe if it had silenced guns and a progression system people would actually play it."
That said, as someone who has put 300 hours into GTFO, I don't find this game appealing at all.
To Jeff's question at the end: I hadn't seen a second of in-engine footage for this game before this quick look, just the E3 teasers and whatnot, had no understanding of what the game was beforehand. That said, I'm a big immersive sim fan, love Arkane's games and Deus Ex and whatnot, and I have time loop games like Majora's Mask and Outer Wilds firmly up there on my top 10 favourite games of all time list.
Video made plenty of sense. Looks like Dishonored but with a time loop doing what Danny said, in kinda fixing perennial genre issues in a way that seemingly only a time loop can. I'm sold on it, game looks awesome, I'll pick this up at whatever point the rumblings around the PC version seem to get addressed. The more complicated details of exactly how time progresses, how upgrades and progression work, how various systems work and interact and whatnot, that's all stuff I can work out when I get in there. I think Arkane fans are used to weird progression systems and whatnot anyway.
I'll say that I'd probably actually prefer a ticking clock and less hand-holding, but it's probably not that big of a deal.
Opinions and to each to own, but BOTW game of all time? Let's get a few years removed before we declare things like that.
To be fair, we're just over 2 years removed from BotW's launch, which some might argue counts as a few. I think Dan has been pretty obviously holding back on these kinds of proclamations about the game for long enough.
im genuinely shocked people can think breath of the wild is the best game of all time. I have so many issues with it and the game itself has several problems.
I have issues with the game. I want far more enemy diversity, and the game needs better dungeons and a more seamless integration between overworld and dungeons.
But it pushes the state of the art, in terms of world traversal and emergent play, so unprecedentedly far ahead -- and without compromising in software robustness (a feat not managed by Bethesda, Ubisoft, CD Projekt Red, ...) -- that it kinda makes every other advancement in 3D action-adventure development this generation look also-ran by comparison.
I almost thought Dan was going to pull another Train and fluke this level the first run, but then he didn't get the turret room mainframe in advance, and he got terrible RNG on the Natalya defense with guards blowing both side-window entrances open really early. He's got this, he just needs to hold back on detonating the mines until after Natalya's done in the control room, and get more confident about the combat, and otherwise just be patient and focused.
I'll say that Dan's squeamishness about the combat is really holding him back. 00 Agent is really balanced around the assumption that you can confidently gun down guards, it's kinda what you sign up for when you go into 00 and I think it's a bit unfair to trash the game for it if you're out of practice. But if anything Dan has gotten less confident about entering firefights over time. If he'd just go upstairs and gun those two guards down on level 2 of the control room instead of depending on the mines to take them out, he wouldn't have to deal with guards coming through the gaps left by the explosions who ruined at least two of his runs single-handedly. He's even aware of this, but really insists that he's getting something out of not having to confront two idle guards, instead of creating two more openings for guards to pour in when the alarms are going and things are hard.
The combat in Train (probably my second favourite level after Control, so it was sad watching it just get totally trashed) also shouldn't have been nearly as much pain as it was, and I'm still really surprised that Statue wasn't a quick one-and-done run.
That all said, I'm probably acting like one of those people who complains about the crew being bad at puzzle solving during a quick look, so don't mind me. I think I just need to get it all out. Goldeneye was an amazing game, its campaign was years ahead of the rest of the industry in so many ways but there are all of these PC elitists out there intent on roasting it as "that game with the janky console deathmatch mode that console plebs liked".
It's good to see some kinder words being said about the actual game this episode. Goldeneye did so much for the FPS genre, but watching some of the previous episodes you'd think it was just unremarkable trash.
Posting to confirm that NSMB Wii did indeed have an overworld map.
I wish this had been a NSMB anthology with the Wii/DS/3DS games included. I have fond memories of playing the Wii game.
As for the package as it stands, the game looks solid, but at that price I'm probably not going to get lured into ignoring my gigantic pile of unplayed Steam games in order to shell out for a Nintendo game like I usually do.
Dan, starting with Surface II, nearly every level in the rest of the game does that. Small, linear levels like the train don't spawn infinite dudes, but many other maps (especially outside ones) do.
I'm not sure this is morally true. My recollection:
Surface 2: yes.
Bunker 2: only spawns infinite dudes if you're not quiet. Gotta feather that KF7 trigger.
Statue: not sure? I don't think it really matters, you're kinda just making a beeline from the start to Janus, and then back again. I just played it now and didn't encounter many guards.
Archives: similar to Bunker 2.
Streets: I don't think so.
Depot: yes.
Train: no.
Jungle: only at the end when you're trying to get to the elevator door. This can be frustrating, because until you realize what's going on you're likely to find yourself running out of ammo trying to gun down the last guards from a distance. You should probably just make a break for the door after you destroy the auto-gun.
Control: only at the end, i.e. from the start of the "protect Natalya as she aborts the Goldeneye firing sequence" part through to the mad rush to wrap up the level. Basically throughout most of the level you can just methodically execute a plan, but the end is hectic.
Caverns: only at the very end as you're trying to get past some auto-guns to the exit. You can mitigate the issue by closing some doors before triggering the Janus encounter.
Cradle: yes.
Aztec: yes, after killing Jaws.
Egyptian: yes.
Overall I don't think it's really as pervasive as you make out, but given the stakes during the moments when the dude-spawning really kicks in, I could see it causing some major saltiness. Particularly in Depot, Jungle, Control, and (if this show goes into the bonus levels) Aztec.
I'm not sure I agree with the Natalya protecting grievance. She fends for herself in Jungle, you don't have to release her right away in Surface 2 or Archives, and the only other place you have to protect her is in that one notorious part of Control.
--
Interesting bonus fact: in Bunker 2 and Archives, the spawning is actually "clone-spawning", i.e. once you make too much noise, unalerted guards start spawning clones of themselves that home in on you. A dead guard can't spawn clones, so you can stem the tide of spawns completely by eliminating all the guards in the level.
Stopping the clone-spawning is probably too hard to do in Bunker 2 with the auto-gun corridor section protecting some guards, keycard-gated doors hindering your access to certain areas, cameras triggering alarms that bring in tougher dudes, etc., but in Archives it's actually very doable.
I had all but 100%'d this game, the exceptions being that bullshit 2 minute something time for Facility
This one basically requires borderline speedrun routing. Using a couple of the remote mines at earlier stages to clear enemies, aggroing guards to get them to open certain doors early, resetting if Doak RNG doesn't put the doctor in the late section labs, etc. It's actually really novel to think that a game of that era endorsed that kind of play.
That said, hearing you mention Train, I did immediately get flashbacks of going for the target time on that one and constantly getting to the part where you have to laser the door in the floor and being super anxious about whether I would get the door off in time or not.
The real bullshit that makes me single it out, is that it's probably actually impossible to clear the 00 Agent missions -- one requires you to wait until Natalya is completely done hacking, which you just don't have time for -- unless you manage to riddle Xenia with bullets before her and Janus disappear behind the metal barrier. You get maybe a second to gun down Ouromov and get some lead into Xenia, and you have to be careful not to accidentally kill Natalya in the process. It really puts a spotlight on the limitations of the controls. Clearing the rest of the train on target pace for each shot at Xenia is no easy feat, too.
I pulled off the targets for Facility and Archives and Caverns multiple times back in the day, but I think I only ever managed to pull off the target time for Train once.
I contend that this game (and Perfect Dark) are only finishable on 00 Agent if you're a 7-19 year-old who has a lot of free time and only a couple of games to play. It's just sooooo much more irritatingly difficult than the normal difficult. Granted, they can just look up guides if they ever don't understand where to find an objective, but still, some of those later levels and bonus levels are going to be rough to watch Dan play through.
Well, I just now blew through everything up until Control on 00 Agent in a few hours...
...on an emulator on PC with keyboard and mouse controls. >_> (Oh, I bailed at the end of Control because apparently I missed a mainframe, but like hell I did.)
I get what you're saying. They're hard, you die quickly, random bullshit can cause an objective to fail and force a redo, ammo gets pretty tight, the levels actually get pretty long and require really methodical and patient play for several minutes before throwing utter chaos at you at the end (Train, Jungle, Control, and Caverns all more-or-less do this) and if you can't clutch it out then you have to do it all again. Oh, and the controls are a struggle.
But also, I think Goldeneye might be the game that marked that turning point where I became good at video games. It's a game that celebrates doing hard things, and clearing the high bars the game sets feels immensely satisfying. Even playing it now feels rewarding. (But seriously, if you give it a shot, try the emulator with keyboard and mouse route.)
I hope they take note of the "target" time after finishing Facility. I want to see the "that is BULL$#!+" reactions from the crew.
Anyway, I have a bone to pick with the idea that people only ever managed to clear 00 Agent with gamesharks. I was the kid at my primary school who people went to to get the 00 Agent levels cleared and the cheats unlocked, and I didn't have a gameshark. It was hard, but not impossible, and I had a lot of fun doing it.
Except Train. Train is just about impossible. Even just clearing it on 00 Agent is probably going to bring this video series to a standstill.
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