Dan's lack of knowledge might've been endearing for some at a point, but this is just too much. Come on. Fuck.
Yeah, aggressive ignorance gets old really quickly.
I don`t really get this. He`s able to find the majority of countries on a map of Europe. I`m guessing that`s pretty average or above average for an American, it`s at least not aggressive ignorance or whatever. Even Jeff said he wouldn`t come close to what Dan did, but no one is shitting on that.
How many countries of Africa would you guys be able to find on a map? Or states in the US?
So I pretty much agree with you, with one small point to make. Did you notice the REASON why Cosmic Trip showed well? It's because it did a step-by-step introduction to each of its mechanics, which allowed Jeff to easily follow them and not really be "allowed" to get sidetracked. If you noticed, SoundStage started going down the "fuck around aimlessly" path, but Jeff found the "how to" buttons on the items and more more less saved the game's showing.
PoolNation has something like that, but it's basically just notations on the controllers and is really easy to shrug off and miss. I really think that all VR games (and frankly, all games in general) should include a mandatory tutorial the first time you launch them, since I had issues with some of the mechanics in PoolNation even after playing 2 or 3 times myself.
Alright guys, I've loved this site since you guys started it but this video is really showing why you need to do some homework before you load some of these games up. You know how you actually at least test out games and get the basic gist before doing most QLs? How you generally try to learn the basics about a game before filming on it? That's a good idea for not giving games a short shrift.
Battledome: You guys didn't even play the main mode of the game, which is like Splatoon and the entire point of the teleport is tied to a paint mechanic where you have to paint squares and then teleport to your team's color. You never even saw this mode or understood how the painting/teleporting is integral to the strategy. This game is pretty popular with overwhelmingly high Steam reviews for a really good reason, but none of it is shown here. Mechanically it's incredibly sound and solid design.
TableTop Sim: There is a full tutorial that would have walked you through all kinds of control nuances. Someone said the VR seemed half baked. This is pretty much objectively false to anyone who spent any time with it (or even just spent 2 minutes going through that tutorial). You can pull objects to you to lock them in place. You can shrink down the size of the table or be a god standing over it. You can pass around in worldVR ipadswith functioning internet browsers to bring up info on game rules or just anything you want to bring up on an actual browser. You can play your own music, use your own environments, and there are just a ton of environmental customization options. When you play with other players you see them all around the table with you in real time. But VR players can also play with non-VR players and there is a ton of flexibility.
HordeZ: You guys played the game on easy and therefore didn't see any of various enemy types nor did it demand much of you on easy because easy is basically casual mode. On easy in the first stage you only get the generic basic type zombie and almost unlimited ammo. Yeah it's a VR zombie shooter but it has support for up to 4 player coop, has 9 distinct levels, and a survivor mode. It's not the most amazing game but for $16 it's pretty full featured and solid, and it at least requires some skill on the harder difficulty levels, none of which comes through when you just fuck around with it for 4 minutes without knowing what it offers or paying attention to the options.
Pool Nation VR. This is a fantastic pool sim. I never even liked pool before playing this game, but I've played it for hours over the last month and it's taught me a lot of nuances of the game. But instead of actually playing it or trying to dig into the mechanics, Jeff hits the ball twice (twice!) and then starts fucking around in the environment, leading Brad to wryly remark "VR is dumb." Yeah it's dumb if you make it dumb. You have that option. Pool Nation lets you fuck around and do stupid shit. It also is a pretty robust pool game with great ball physics and that even has a great online play system and a player level where you get unlocks for leveling up (Viking Helmet FTW!). But you guys didn't see any of that because you didn't respect the game enough to dig into it.
Job Simulator. A very minor correction here but an important one. The game is $40 but it is also free for everyone who buys a Vive. It's a small point, but the fact that none of you knew this kind of shows you haven't been paying attention to this market. You don't even know what the free pack in games are apparently. (For the record, all Vive's come in the West with The Lab, Tilt Brush, Job Simulator, and Fantastic Contraption).
On the plus side, you guys did show me some games I haven't checked out yet. I want to now play Cosmic Trip, which I previously had no idea was as fleshed out as it is. So thanks for that. And Jeff seemed to legitimately give this game a shot and tried to learn the mechanics. And as a result, the game showed pretty great. But a lot of these other games really are more fleshed out then you are giving them credit for and it's not fair to the developers that you get in them, fuck around for 5 minutes trying to entertain your audience and give a poor idea of what the games themselves offer.
I was really looking forward to this Vrodeo but as someone who has played most of these games, I'm pretty bummed about how sloppy you and ill informed guys were when it came to showing them. Spending even 10 minutes with each of them before and maybe looking up the features on the Steam page would have given you a much better idea going in. I'm not claiming they are all pristine polished experience, but you guys seem to have formed the narrative in your head that these early VR games aren't worth your time and are all just dumb things only worth while if you want to fuck around in them, so you treat them all as such and the audience gets a bad impression. It becomes a catch 22. These developers are putting in work and it's fine if you don't like the end product, but I don't think you are giving them a fair shake at all by going into their games uninformed and often not actually trying to understand the mechanics and instead just using their games as a joke for some VR antics.
Remember when Soldier Boy played Braid and talked about how "the game ain't got no point" and is a good game for people who like "drink and get drunk and smoke weed and get high"? That's basically what you guys seem like in this video to anyone who has spent more time with these games.
This is a great sort-of series. Still not sure why people are so nitpicky with and give such hit to brad over things everyone else on the site gets a free pass for. Or why they get so sensitive about it in the first place. Oh well.
Yeah, this is starting to bother me even more than the guys who constantly bash Dan. Everyone's favorite Vinny plays games like shit a lot of the time, yet no one complains.
And don't get me wrong, I got nothing against Vinny (or anyone else), he's great! I just hate the double standard.
I think it's probably in the execution. Vinny relishes the chaos - even if he misses mechanics or doesn't realize something, he manages to make it work. He remains affable and funny even if the face of failure, while Brad gets (or seems to get) frustrated by his failure and that frustration gets transferred to the viewer.
And really, maybe it's just confirmation bias, but I feel like Vinny picks up on game mechanics way quicker that some of the other GB crew. I think it might be the type of gamers they are, but for example, Brad seems to miss a lot of the little cues Hitman is giving him about when a disguise is safe or not etc.
Vinny likes playing games that require thorough exploration and methodical approaches, making him more likely to figure the games out. I think I remember him mentioning that (like me) he always checks the option menu before starting a game, which demonstrates a certain type personality.
It's something I wish all the GB crew would do more often. They should worry less about making the video interesting/keeping it constantly moving or whatever and check the options/controls and read the texts so that they know what is going on. I think they too often rush into the games and then end up missing whole mechanics or getting stuck somewhere
I would like to just copy-paste this a thousand times in the comment section.
I'd like to un-copy and paste it.
I come here for comedy and crazy dumb shit and fun, not someone meticulously playing a game. If I want that I can hit up youtube.com/gamingpointdexter or some crap.
Let them play how they are, it's fun.
You're missing the point. It's about basic core concepts they are missing, then continue to miss on purpose out of fear of the video not moving fast enough. Resulting in frustration because they don't understand those concepts, which isn't actually that fun to watch.
Not saying this series is shit, it's fun, but it could benefit from a little more understanding of the game's mechanics. Like a regular person would understand it, not some high level player.
Agreed. I wish guys would take some time between videos like this to replay these sections off camera, since they constantly seem to just blow by super helpful gameplay prompts or gloss over mechanics. And with Brad's penchant for making super sweeping generalizations or presumptions about how a game designer wants a game to be played or how a mechanic works (to often be proven at odds with those presumptions by us in the comments), it would allow for some better content overall. Nothing frustrates me more than watching fun Brad videos come to a screeching halt mid-video because he fundamentally misunderstands how the game works.
Watching Brad fumble around with that gun demo was nails on a chalkboard. I agree it's not super intuitive, but even watching from outside, the blue ball definitely seemed like the "grab point." I'm guessing you either didn't have to dump out the other grenade, or Brad could have reached in to grab the spent one with his other hand.
Then again, I've screwed around with this stuff for more than a year now using prototype positional controllers with the Gear VR at our lab.
Brad's m.o. seems to be "I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas."
Just finished the game tonight, and thought I'd chime in with a few hot takes to maybe help people out:
I finished in around 10 hours and collected around 85-90% of the stuff. I have no problem with the length, as I'd rather a short, compelling experience over padded out games.
This game looks amazing. The set pieces are incredible, and honestly, make the game worth playing. The faces and animation are also very well done, there's a pretty good uncanny valley action happening with most of the cast. (Brief early game spoilers: The sequence that plays out the first time you walk into Ground Zero is fucking amazing.)
The game mechanics itself are clumsy. The shooting was mushy, the guns all kind of suck to varying degrees, the platforming is sub-par at best, and the enemies are recycled way too much. Upgraded abilities can be pretty useful, but even after trying to play the game not as a 3rd person shooter but rather as a more actiony game, it just didn't really click with me. That's probably personal preference, though.
You only spend about 20% of the game in combat, the rest of the time you're basically hitting Y every 20 feet looking for collectibles or sources of energy to power up your abilities.
Holy fucking shit, there's an ORGY of stuff to collect in this game. And you'll need to collect most if not all of them to not have glaring holes in the story. One main character's whole explanation is basically contained in 2 or 3 emails you find throughout the game, and a pretty major plot point has maybe 3 words of dialogue and is only explained in any kind of detail through collectibles. Also, if you plan on reading everything, you'll be there a while. I stopped reading most stuff halfway through, it was just too much.
Technically, it has some minor issues (everyone looks fuzzy and swimmy for some reason, and there's some tearing once in a while) and it crashed a couple times on me. It also did a weird thing in the last 3 chapters where the first few minutes of the chapter would load and start, then it would go back to a loading screen after 3 minutes or so while the audio continued. Super weird.
The show is just sort of bad. It doesn't really give you anything you couldn't achieve through in-game cutscenes and focuses on kind of shitty side characters that don't end up meaning much in the end. Also, the streaming quality is just straight up bad, I had a ton of buffering and artifacts throughout. (PRO TIP: If you end up downloading the 72 gig movie pack, PUT IT ON THE SAME STORAGE AS THE GAME OR IT WON'T USE THE LOCAL COPIES. I found that unfortunate piece of information out after I finished.)
LANCE REDDICK IS PRETTY DOPE
The final boss fight is super irritating due to some horseshit insta-kill crap and cluttered environment nonesense. And every time you die, you have to start over with a minute-plus-long load, then skip the cutscene for another 30 second load. It's dumb.
The ending is great if you got/read most of the collectibles, but if you didn't you're probably going to have a lot of questions.
I don't think there's really any replayability, as what I've read the differences in the choice consequences are pretty minor.
All in all, I'd probably say to rent it or buy it cheap ($40?), but it's probably worth a play. Just keep your expectations low and you should be fine.
SkullcrusherMountain's comments