Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

While gatekeepers do suck, the easy mode argument is once again reminding me that people who can't just be like Jim and say 'this game isn't for me and that's Okay' are just as bad.

Especially problematic is that it drowns out the part of the conversation that matters: Games still have a lot they can do, quite easily, to improve accessibility.

It did bring us a return of Duke Amiel, which is always a nice treat.

Edited by deludedmusings on Apr 15th 2019 at 9:44:51 PM

I did make it to the final level of Furi, overcoming some of the toughest bosses I’ve ever faced in my time playing video-games so I should make more of an effort.

Then again Furi & the Soulsborne seiries have completely different gameplay so it’s not an exact 1 for 1 transition.

Edited by slimcoder on Apr 15th 2019 at 4:42:00 AM

Furi has legit some of the best boss fights I've ever seen in a video game. But the comparison to the souls games is pertinent, in how they treat approach similar things differently. Dark souls makes you walk back to the boss after dying, which can take time and break focus, furi restarts you immediatley in the action. Death is severely punished in souls, while furi's comeback mechanic allows for a lot of practice and experimentation without going out of your way to do so depsite still being hard as balls.

Also, bernard is my favorite videogame boss ever.

Gating stuff behind higher difficutlies is needlessly convoluted and dilutes the experience. Just make stuff optionnal but available from the start. Can you change the difficulty in the middle of the game ? If no, you have to replay the game to see the new stuff, and the stuff you currently have may not be interesting enough to warrant playing the game again. If you can change difficulties on the fly, is the hardest unlocked by default or do you have to play the game twice ? is the hardest difficulty something you can reasonably do on a first playthough ? Why dilute the experience if playing in harder difficulties is going to be the same but more ?

And it also means actually balancing the game in all different difficulties, which is a ton of extra work for a payoff that most players will ignore.

Dark souls 2 (this one again) attempted to do something like that with additionnal ennemies in new game + and while it has some fans who like it because it gives more meaning to the new game + of fromsoft games, it falls in the oppositie pitfall than gating interesting content behind ng+ : none of the additions are interesting enough to convince you to try ng+ if you weren't going for it from the get-go. on the flipside, while I've played the soulborne series more than I care to count, Ng + has never been an enticing option over doing a run with a different build, so if I had to play the game twice everytime I want to fight lady maria with a new weapon booooooooooy would it be the worst thing ever.

Really, just put celeste's assist mode so that everyone can play the same game with options to tailor the difficulty on the fly if the goal is accessibility. That boss seriously isn't fun for you ? Activate the invinciblity or walk through That One Attack and turn it off to ignore the bullshit part of the fight if you still want to kill it more or less by the rules. Feel like you're taking too much damage ? reduce the damage received to 0.5 and be done with it. wanna practice against a boss before fighting it for real ? Become invincible and set your damage output to 0 so you can practice at will. Let the player decides what part of your game needs difficulty tweaking, because everyone will have a different opinion on the matter.

Deluded musings's post sums up my thoughts nicely.

Edited by Yumil on Apr 15th 2019 at 2:13:53 PM

If I had to say one thing about From games and difficulty it's that "the greater the challenge, the greater the reward" is pretty much explicitly their design philosophy, and the kind of gratification they're trying to give to their player. And that exhiliration in victory is obviously a large part of what's gained the Soulsborne games a large and dedicated fanbase. I've seen a lot of people argue against the 'From games are hard' argument, claiming that's reductive, but I think it's quite obvious that From believe that carefully balanced difficulty is a key part of what makes their games enjoyable.

Hidetaka Miyazaki has also addressed the issue of difficulty levels in an interview:

It should also be noted that Sekiro's base gameplay is pretty basic rock-paper-scissors, many people have opined that the only reason it is good at all is because it pushes you and allows much less room for error.

That said, the people judging that guy for 'cheating himself of the true reward' or whatever for modding the game to beat the last boss need to grow up. It's a video game. If someone wants to cheat to enjoy their single-player game, all power to them. The only problem I had with that article was the writer endlessly trying to justify his cheating, as if it was the game that made him do it - rather than shamelessly owning it. But that's neither here nor there.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Apr 17th 2019 at 9:10:39 AM

That whole "you cheated not only the game but yourself" thing sounds like something the fucking Riddler would say to Batman upon solving a pisseasy puzzle. I really wish the originator was just arsing about because othewise, BLEH.

At least it got meme'd into oblivion either way, which to me would indicate most people erred towards "dude chill it's just a video game" on the matter.

I dunno, I could really see a mid teenager try really hard at being thoughtful but coming up with that.

Teenager or not, there are people who do have that mind set and play it straight. To them, anyone that cheats in a single player game are scum of the earth that should have their gamer card revoked.

Hell, ANY video showing someone playing is always going to invoke this. "You're playing it wrong." "If it were ME that was playing, I'd do this." "You fucking moron, you didn't get all the items." "Do this on Expert solo with no deaths."

This is why I tend not to watch L Ps of games I've already played.

No TRUE Scotsman sets arbitrary gatekeeping criteria for video games.

The only LPers I watch is Brainscratch and Somecallmejohnny. They're generally funny and don't talk down at people (well, Ted and Ryan were kinda bad in the early days but still)

Corporate Parasites: Activision Pays Zero Income Tax, Gets A Refund Anyway

I would recommend Nico B too. He tends to play mostly blind with all of his games, and he has funny voices fro games with small amounts of VA’s, like Visual Novels and such, or games with voiceless subquests like Yakuza or Persona.

There is also that he does actually delve rather deep into the games(like, he tends to accidentally 100% games even when he isn't planning to :P) and communicates with the audience. (doesn't help I guess that lot of let's players have recorded whole game in advance so its literally too late for them to hear audience comments. Which tends to infuriate the audience since audience with youtube generally do like the feeling they are being listened)

Like, you sometimes get feeling from let's players that they sometimes don't genuinely like the games they are playing until the end which is just not really fun to watch. Like its already a fact that people play games differently when let's playing them and playing them on their own, but sometimes you get feeling that game is being played just because its what brings add revenue. Or rather, they just want the game over and don't really feel like experimenting with the game mechanics?

But yeah, in general I think people have natural reaction to want "correct" others when they think they are wrong somehow So "Hey, you keep missing health upgrades and you complain about lack of health" is uh... Well, I don't think its wrong for someone to nitpick about it or be annoyed about it, but internet comments certainly do get abusive

Edited by SpookyMask on Apr 16th 2019 at 7:10:14 PM

Watching the video, yet another "shocking" reminder on how the Triple AYYYY industry gets away with avoiding taxes. But just imagine where not only they paid their taxes, but stuff like DLC and microtransactions were taxed as well! The fat cats would have a stroke.

Kirby would be so disappointed in Activision not doing their taxes like he does

Insert Yoshi Tax Fraud Joke

As an aside...how much could we pay Wally Wingert to say that "You cheated not only the game but yourself" guff in his Riddler voice?

Are we sure he hasn't? I know at least one of the Arkham games has him whine about how you probably looked up the answers to his riddles on the internet when you find enough of his collectibles.

There might actually be a sound clip of him saying those words verbatim somewhere in one of those games.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Apr 16th 2019 at 12:39:23 PM

Well I've played Asylum and Knight top to bottom and while he does sort of say things in the spirit of those he doesn't say the entire monologue exactly.

It'd be hilarious if he did though, we go tMike Pollock to say "I HATE THAT HEDGEHOG" and David Hayter to say "Play UNIST."

On the topic of difficulty, one of the games I appreciate most is Copy Kitty. Because Normal and Hard are treated more like separate campaigns. Story dialogue continues where Normal ends, and Hard has frequent level layout changes, new enemies, bosses, and new weapons exclusive to it.

So you can beat the Normal story with enough satisfaction with the final boss that you can stop there, or play Hard and get an even greater spectacle. Also there's tons of anti-frustration features, and the game flat out gives you the option to skip any 5 stages/bosses without penalty if there's a part you just can't get through. As a vision impaired player, it's one of the most accessible games I've ever played.

Also, I really wish this topic would come up more in mainstream game discussion, disability is far too often something people either don't think about or quickly sweep under the rug and ignore.

World War Z- Left 4 Zed (Jimpressions)

So this might seem off-topic but not for long. Looks like Mortal Kombat 11 is going to be a grindy game.

You think Jim will make a video about this? He hasn't shitted on WB games in a while.

Nothing new to me, Injustice 2 was basically the same way.

EDIT: Still massively shit tho, don't get me wrong. I didn't want NRS going down the same shitpath Warner Bros did but them learning sweet fuckall from Shadow of War was obviously gonna happen.

Edited by MightyKombat on Apr 20th 2019 at 5:20:37 PM

You actually couldn’t buy loot-boxes in Injustice 2.