I really think ya'lls experience with Mario Maker is far to unrelatable compared to how regular people experience being able to Tweet out levels and get thousands to play is something normal people can't at all relate to.
I think the community aspect of the game is something everyone can relate to if they want to. Numerous Youtubers have been taking level selections, and you can always pass a level around to challenge your friends with. And I think the community aspects of the game are a major part of what makes the game so good. Watching other people's feuds is almost as fun as having your own.
Sure, I can't post a level and get immediate feedback on it from strangers like these guys can. I can however get immediate feedback from friends and family and the satisfaction of seeing one of your levels start to be recognized when you don't have any kind of net-fame is quite strong, too. I don't have any smash-hits or anything, But I've got a level with around 400 plays and 40-is stars on it and knowing that's all from people stumbling onto it and liking it and not at all from any sort of social media thing is cool in its own right.
I think my ability to participate in GB's play of this game is rad, too. The fact that the guys can tweet a level out and I can play it right off the bad is just as much of a pro for me as it is for them to get that feedback, I think. Everyone gets to be in on this game, regardless of popularity.
Wow, that's crazy. A game that two of them loved but the rest didn't seem to even play or care about at all beat a game that was on all of their personal lists. Jeff has a ridiculous amount of sway in these things. Time to listen to see how that happened.
Keep in mind, he lost the Skyrim vs Saint's Row argument.
I imagine the discussion around this choice is pretty intense, though.
@shadowkirby: I'm seriously just listening to it over and over and swearing because it's so good and I can't figure out how to express how good I think it is other than shouting expletives every time any note in that song plays.
I haven't entirely finished listening to the first segment of the podcast yet, so I don't know if they brought this up, but HOLY SHIT this track in Undertale is so good. It's so, so, so good. Every time I hear it, I just melt inside, and I don't even have the same love for that game that most people do. This song is so goddamn good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLd89aYTAhs
EDIT: So yes, they do bring this song up. It's so good.
I tried to play AC: Syndicate on my PC, and apparently my PC isn't up to snuff; things went horribly, horribly awry. Polygons everywhere, man. And I'm a console gamer at heart, so sleuthing around to try and find a fix was a little beyond me. Fortunately I managed to get a refund within the hour of me requesting one, but I'm super bummed that I can't play it right now.
We're family friends with the guy who made Burgle Bros. (Tim Fowers.) His last game, Paperback is also rad. It's kind of a Dominion/Scrabble mashup, though that's being kind of reductive.
I can't think of anything super significant to answer your question at the moment, though I'm sure something will pop into my head at some point, and I'll head back here when that happens. For now, I have a fairly recent example, but it wasn't the most impactful thing in the world.
Pokemon Picross for the 3DS is a free-to-play nightmare. It is wrought with timers and after the initial handout at the beginning of the game, it eeks out its paid currency extremely slowly. That said, not only does the game offer a workaround of these systems by paying for it, it offers a complete workaround of these systems once you invest a certain amount of money into it. Once you've spent about the price of a full game (around 30-35 dollars) the energy meter becomes infinite and the game gives you the paid currency for free (I haven't quite gotten to that point yet, so I'm not sure how much it actually gives out) and you can play the game like a real-ass video game. And when you do that, it actually does play that way! Which is far different from a Farmville or other F2P system, where once you break the progression by spending money, you realize that the entire game is nothing but a treadmill and spending money to run on that treadmill a little faster for a while is entirely meaningless.
Once I "bought" Pokemon Picross, it became an enjoyable game for me, whereas before, it was really truly upsetting. I wish more F2P games had a ceiling on the amount they expect you to spend, so that you could eventually buy the damn game and play it for real like you can in this case.
I understand how this game works now, but as a kid who randomly owned a loose copy of it without a manual, it was really obtuse. All of the mistakes Dan is making here now, I totally made as a kid. You have to stumble upon the solutions to the bad interface and guess at what the hell the mechanics want you to do, and if you aren't lucky enough to accidentally figue it out, you're going to wander around wondering what the hell is going on.
Like, you can talk to every person in town, but Dan tried it and happened to be facing the wrong way, so he thought you couldn't. This is totally reasonable. It's like if you tried to open a door, couldn't turn the handle and assumed it was locked, when really it's just an old and shitty doorknob that you have to crank really hard to get moving. You're not going to try that door again just in case you did something wrong; you're brain is going to file that door under the "I can't open this shit" area and you're not going to think twice about it. This whole game works under the assumption that you've either read the manual or lucked into doing things the correct way the first time. And as someone who owned the game but no manual as a kid, I appreciate Dan's approach to this EB. His confusion is exactly what I felt. It feels like a really accurate representation of what this game was back in the day.
But even if it wasn't difficult to understand, there'd be no reason to defend this game. It's just awful. It doesn't deserve a fair shake with him finding an online manual and and playing through it with precision. That's not what this game was. That wouldn't be showing this game in an accurate light, in my opinion.
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