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2025-11-20(Thu)15:22:03
No.
67
<section>I've liked some of MatthewMatosis' work (and it's cool he released his own game very recently - Logic Bombs), so I figured I'd do something interesting:
I'll transcribe his "Mega Microvideos" videos here.
I figure the format would work well for this; over time as I transcribe the videos, I'll show what I mean.
I'll keep it locked for now, then after enough has been put in place, I'll open it up for comments.
Expect unmarked spoilers for whatever games are covered.
EDIT:
Whew! Finally I'm done with the transcriptions. I'll unlock the thread now.
It's been a journey, but I'm happy I did this.
Next I ought to do his "Context Sensitivity" and "Extrinsic Motivation" videos. But maybe another time.</section>
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2025-11-23(Sun)06:59:29
No.
73
<section>#1
Mega Microvideos
2018-Oct-10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHzqtvcGqXQ<span class="post-quote">
>This video is probably more enjoyable if you don't know what games are covered. Microvideos from minute 14 onwards have spoilers, if you're worried and want the full spoiler list read below.</span><span class="post-quote">
>Spoiler List:</span><span class="post-quote">
>Phoenix Wright Case 1</span><span class="post-quote">
>Full spoilers for Demon's Souls and Bloodborne</span><span class="post-quote">
>Full spoilers for Flower, Journey, and Abzu.</span><span class="post-quote">
>Full spoilers for Katamari Damacy, although most people probably don't think of it as a spoiler.</span><span class="post-quote">
>The final segment is inspired by an interview with Hirokazu Yasuhara I read many years ago which has stuck in my mind as one of the best developer insights I've come across.</span>
https://web.archive.org/web/20141112070829/http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132163/game_design_psychology_the_full_.php?page=1</section>
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2025-11-23(Sun)07:01:16
No.
74
<section>#2
Mega Microvideos 2
2019-Sep-21
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1kXYFjduXQ<span class="post-quote">
>Mikami's advice to focus on the good was brought up in this interview:</span>
https://web.archive.org/web/20180815201353/http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/06/06/the-future-of-platinumgames-ign-first</section>
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2025-11-23(Sun)07:05:01
No.
75
<section>#3
Meta Microvideos
2021-Jan-03
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGv4ixLllWo<span class="post-quote">
>You decide to read the video description and find it predictably meta.</span><span class="post-quote">
>It warns you that the video contains major spoilers for The Witness, moderate spoilers for Metal Gear Solid 2, Axiom Verge and Katamari Damacy.</span><span class="post-quote">
>It also has spoilers for Matthewmatosis, whatever that means.</span></section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:09:36
No.
76
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#73">>>73</a></span>
1.1 - Without Warning [00:00]
Although it's called "Made in Wario" in Japan, the International subtitle for WarioWare - "Mega Microgame$!" - captures the idea far better. Before we get into that though, let's establish why you might want to play WarioWare in the first place. The story is practically nonexistent: Wario, ever the greedy antagonist, thinks that games might be a good get-rich-quick scheme, so he sets out to make some which are presumably what you play. The art is utterly bonkers and often completely inconsistent. If this resonates with you, it may come across as endearing, but it would be fair to say it's not a strong selling point. The music performs its job admirably, but is really just a collection of short jingles timed to accentuate the action.
It would be fair to say you don't play WarioWare for the story, art, or music. Instead, you play it for the gameplay, which is why it's so fascinating that it's as devoid of depth as you can possibly imagine. Some microgames require only a single button press to successfully complete. Get lucky and you might accidentally beat a few by doing nothing at all. The core gameplay of many games boils down to a sort of reaction test. An enemy swings their weapon and you dodge at the right time to succeed, but the skill-set required for WarioWare is completely different.
Most games bank on our innate ability to predict future events based on the current state of play. It's a bit like if someone wants to toss you a set of keys from the other side of the room. They'll probably politely call your name, wait until they have your attention, then tell you they're going to throw something over to you, before doing it. You might even have to wait for them to give you a few courtesy practice gestures so you can get a feel for where they'll land. WarioWare waits until your back is turned, says "Catch!" and immediately launches them from a catapult directly towards your hand. In both cases, you're more than capable of grabbing the keys, but your ability to quickly process brand new information will be the deciding factor in the latter. This is the appeal of WarioWare; it tests a skill that other games simply don't, and in the process, it becomes the very definition of something which is greater than the sum of its parts. Individually, most of the microgames aren't even remotely interesting, but rapidly swap between them at an ever quickening pace, and they take on a whole new life.
Who knows? Maybe this formula is so effective, it even has some merits OUTSIDE of games.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:11:51
No.
77
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#76">>>76</a></span>
1.2 - Aping Ape Escape [02:14]
Ape Escape is novel in more ways than one. Being the first PlayStation title to require a dual-stick controller, it was built from the ground up to get as much mileage out of the then-new control scheme as possible. This was at a wonderful time when there were no preconceived notions about what those sticks "should" be used for, so the camera got mapped to the D-pad, Jump got bound to R1, and the sticks were freed up for other uses. Every gadget requires you to use the right analog stick in some way, which ends up sacrificing responsiveness for a greater sense of "one-ness" with the character's actions. If you want to twirl the propeller, you'll have to twirl that stick and maybe you'll feel a little more connected to the game as a result. It has its pros and cons, but as interesting as this is, it sort of overshadowed the other half of the equation: the apes. Or monkeys, or whatever they are.
Like every platformer, Ape Escape is about getting from point A to point B, only in this case, point B is an AI-controlled character. Maybe the monkeys were inspired by this Star from Mario 64 [Tall Tall Mountain -> Mystery of the Monkey Cage], but by applying this concept to all major collectibles, Ape Escape manages to eclipse the Mario series in at least one small way. On top of all the platforming and gimmickry, each chimp presents its own miniature challenge. Even the simplest ones will drop bananas behind them as they flee, creating an obstacle the player needs to weave around. Is this some insanely complex mechanic which adds a bunch of meaningful content to the game? Not at all, but is it better than wandering to a certain part of the map and landing directly on the correct XYZ co-ordinate? I think so. Of course, this ignores the fact the the Mario series often has way more enjoyable movement, but who's to say a platformer couldn't have both the smooth, intrinsically fun locomotion of Mario, and Ape Escape's fun quirk waiting at the end of the gauntlet?
Not only does Ape Escape present a fascinating alternative to standard collectible, but it actually executes the idea really well. The siren light on a monkey's head indicates the alert level in a simple, intuitive way without the need for a heads-up display. Their pants, items, and accessories tell you how they'll behave once they notice you. Some are much faster than average, encouraging a stealthier approach, while others are more perceptive and will fight back. A higher general level of alertness would've been welcome, but otherwise the AI is well crafted, with monkeys actually looking behind themselves as they flee, allowing you to circle around as one method of capture. They can even jump across platforms, dive into water, and swim all the way back to dry land, which is kind of impressive even by modern standards. As much as I want to champion this idea, they took the right approach where they're not so clever as to be frustrating to catch. The point isn't to make the chase the MAIN source of challenge, at least not the majority of the time; it's just a simple way of enhancing tension. Even if a monkey doesn't put up much of a fight, you have no way of knowing that beforehand; it's not a sure thing until they're firmly in the net. There's this little build-up which then pays off at the relief of capturing them.
When you break it down, it sounds almost meaningless, but generating those little climaxes is extremely valuable, and Ape Escape's method stands out as one of the best. By the way, if you happen to be making a platformer and you watched this bit, don't steal my idea of ripping off Ape Escape. I came up with it first.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:13:55
No.
78
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#77">>>77</a></span>
1.3 - The Tiberium Must Grow [05:06]
If you're anything like me, games are your primary hobby in this life. I've spent more time with games than I have films, books, and music combined. Still, it's nice to change things up from time to time. Variety is the spice of life, so the saying goes, and he who controls the spice controls the universe. Or at least, that's how it is in Dune, which I just read for the first time recently.
It gets a thumbs-up from me, if only for its well fleshed-out universe unraveled over the course of its story. Being the ludophile I am, my first exposure to this franchise was actually "Dune 2000", a real-time strategy game developed by Westwood, best known for Command & Conquer. I'd go on to play "Emperor: Battle for Dune" when that came out, and eventually learned that "Dune II" - an earlier Westwood game - is considered the progenitor of the real-time strategy genre. Some would say "Herzog Zwei" deserves that title instead, but I'm not here to debate such a pointless point.
Instead, we're going to look ahead to Warcraft and Starcraft - probably the most famous real-time strategy games, which themselves were building on Westwood's legacy. If you've played - or even just watched - any considerable amount of Starcraft, then you'll know that one of the keystones of its design is the idea of "harassment". Workers need to gather minerals, but the opposition can come in and disrupt them; this adds another layer of decision-making. Players in an offensive position have the choice of either attacking head-on, or going for the drones. Tech choices are informed by these decisions, and overall it plays a large part in the outcome of any match, especially at the highest levels of play.
There's other ways to handle this kind of resource component, like Dawn of War, which uses a capture point system instead, but little harvesters going out to do their job is the default, and it's the default because of Dune. If Frank Herbert had never written about the Spice harvesters, Westwood would never have been compelled to include them, and so we might not have peasants, peons, and probes to protect. Given how many strategy games have implemented a similar harvesting mechanic, maybe this kind of setup was inevitable, but maybe not. If not for Dune, the strategy genre might look unrecognizable today. At the very least, it would've started evolving from a different title instead, and nobody can say where that path might've lead us.
It's fascinating that a book written around the dawn of computer games ended up codifying one of the most prolific and important mechanics of the strategy genre. Herbert died in 1986, so he never even knew this. Makes you wonder what kind of inspiration can be derived from other works that might seem totally obvious in retrospect.
If only we could see the road not traveled.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:16:15
No.
79
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#78">>>78</a></span>
1.4 - Point Blank Crisis [07:19]
Some games just barely exist anymore.
What you're seeing right now is "Point Blank", a light gun game released in 1993. As with many arcade games, it got a console port which I then picked up. I had initially gotten a light gun for "Time Crisis", only picking up "Point Blank" and "Ghoul Panic" later to get more use out of the peripheral. "Time Crisis" and "House of the Dead" are the ones most commonly associated with light guns, but if you ask me, "Point Blank" and "Ghoul Panic" are much better.
Time Crisis is more or less the same thing the whole way through: bad guys pop up and you shoot them to knock them down like a more modern take on Whack-a-Mole. Point Blank has stages like that, but you'll occasionally be asked to take a single precise shot instead. It's constantly mixing things up, sometimes in ways which are quite clever. A favorite of mine is one where you spell words with a keyboard by shooting it. Another challenge asks you to beat up a car with your gun, requiring you to rapid-fire as quickly as possible. Basically, it gets more mileage out of the controller, testing your skills with it in various ways. It's overall pretty polished, and it's even got a rudimentary but decent scoring system.
Maybe Point Blank 2 and 3 are even better, but at this point, I'll probably never be able to say for sure. Right now, I don't have them, or the CRT TV I'd need to get my light gun working again, and this is the problem: Point Blank is fading away because it's not something that can be perfectly replicated with current hardware. In case you're unaware, old light guns were reliant on CRT TVs because of the way they calculate whether you hit your target or not. The infrared solution of the Wii-mote is good for what it is, but it's not quite the same thing. There's a sort of one-to-one precision with older guns which could make the Wii hard to adapt to if you were used to them.
Emulation can be fraught with petty frustrations, but for most games it offers a reasonable answer to these kinds of preservation woes. With a quick tweak, you can even get your mouse acting as a light gun, although mine was perpetually misaligned for some reason. This offers a high level of speed/precision, but nothing like aiming down the sights yourself, and it also requires a cursor, which changes everything, especially for Point Blank. Those challenges where you have ONE shot lose all their tension when you can line the red cue up perfectly before pulling the trigger. Firing with an actual peripheral requires a steady hand, especially since you sometimes have to rapid-fire within a small zone. Even the console version differs from the arcade one in this regard, because the cabinet gun had a motorized slide, which would move back with each shot, affecting your aim even more. Maybe virtual reality will one day give us a version of this game that meets or even exceeds the original, but right now it feels like the time for Point Blank is already over.
These issues always seem so far off into the future, but for some games, it's happening today. As of this video, the Etrian Odyssey series is facing an uncertain future, since for many people, the majority of its appeal lies in the cartography, which is currently done with a stylus. No doubt this mechanic can be replicated on other platforms, but without that little imaginary pen to put on your imaginary paper, it'll never feel exactly the same. DS games in general tend to suffer from these kinds of problems to one degree or another. It's great to see games taking full advantage of their hardware like this, but in some cases, it seriously hurts their longevity. That said, I'm not someone who thinks that games should NEVER adopt these sorts of transitory gimmicks - don't get me wrong; they can be detrimental. But they can equally beneficial if done right. It's just a shame it's not economically feasible to continue producing them in their original state.
You might not believe me if you never played it with a light gun, but Point Blank was a genuinely great little game. I'd venture to say I'd put over 50 hours into it as a kid; maybe upwards of a hundred. A single round of the arcade mode took about 15 minutes, which made it incredibly easy to pop in, have a playthrough, and put it away. Do the same thing the next day and see if you get any better. There was something almost therapeutic about looking down the sights, just aiming and squeezing the one button. Easy to learn, hard to master. As long as the arcade cabinets' old light guns and CRTs are still kicking around, Point Blank will exist, but the clock is ticking.
Anyway, I suppose this is my way of encouraging you to play the weirder stuff while you have the chance; you never know how much you'll miss it until it's gone.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:18:06
No.
80
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#79">>>79</a></span>
1.5 - Cast him in Soul Reaver [11:13]
Raziel is overtly cool in that exaggerated comic book way, which is easy to appreciate, but to say that's all this design has going for it would be to sell it tragically short. A good first step when looking at any character is the silhouette.
<div class="media_grid">
<div class="media_grid_row">
<div class="post-image-holder"><span class="post-image-type">PNG</span><img alt="raziel_01.png" class="post-image" data-image-hash="2fda5b1194c86cc0582a0acc69ba01c02d066de3f18050a91dd255a359945e2a" data-media-id="524" data-media-supertype="IMAGE" data-media-type="image/png" data-url-src-full="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_e2a/2fda5b1194c86cc0582a0acc69ba01c02d066de3f18050a91dd255a359945e2a.png" url-src-thumb="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_e2a/t_2fda5b1194c86cc0582a0acc69ba01c02d066de3f18050a91dd255a359945e2a.png" /></div>
<div class="post-image-holder"><span class="post-image-type">PNG</span><img alt="raziel_silhouette.png" class="post-image" data-image-hash="11576bbe3fe505d44c7783206316c200404cd5461269a9ee7bdf35751543062f" data-media-id="523" data-media-supertype="IMAGE" data-media-type="image/png" data-url-src-full="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_62f/11576bbe3fe505d44c7783206316c200404cd5461269a9ee7bdf35751543062f.png" url-src-thumb="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_62f/t_11576bbe3fe505d44c7783206316c200404cd5461269a9ee7bdf35751543062f.png" /></div>
</div>
</div>
Although he's a weird soul vampire, Raziel's silhouette gives the impression of a ninja with his scarf blowing in the breeze. Looking at the character himself, it's really his tattered wings hanging off, but he does have an actual scarf covering his face, again evoking the ninja aesthetic. These hints combine to tell us how Raziel will have to go about accomplishing his goals. He's the underdog; a lone agent working against a larger force.
<div class="post-image-holder"><span class="post-image-type">PNG</span><img alt="raziel_emblem.png" class="post-image" data-image-hash="54ee51b3b804b62cfb35a5e4c58d2f64dca297854b7c588f0062fa7b4d0dde79" data-media-id="526" data-media-supertype="IMAGE" data-media-type="image/png" data-url-src-full="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_e79/54ee51b3b804b62cfb35a5e4c58d2f64dca297854b7c588f0062fa7b4d0dde79.png" url-src-thumb="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_e79/t_54ee51b3b804b62cfb35a5e4c58d2f64dca297854b7c588f0062fa7b4d0dde79.png" /></div>
If you pay attention during the opening sequence, you'll notice that the emblem on his scarf is upside-down when he places it over his face. The lines now stream from his eyes, suggesting the idea of tears, lending a subtle touch of melancholy to his design and reminding us that he's in this position thanks to the betrayal of his brethren. Notice that the emblem itself isn't gigantic teardrops or anything; it's just some misshapen white streak, so if you find this idea too cheesy, you can easily brush it off as something you're just imagining; players who want to see it will, and those who don't won't. Much like the emblem on his face, his goal is now the opposite of what it once was: revenge, instead of kinship.
<div class="post-image-holder"><span class="post-image-type">PNG</span><img alt="raziel_jawless.png" class="post-image" data-image-hash="1e2ac2568e987a74fefe8294d983ac910d5e9e4b26bb438360cab7c64be537b0" data-media-id="525" data-media-supertype="IMAGE" data-media-type="image/png" data-url-src-full="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_7b0/1e2ac2568e987a74fefe8294d983ac910d5e9e4b26bb438360cab7c64be537b0.png" url-src-thumb="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_7b0/t_1e2ac2568e987a74fefe8294d983ac910d5e9e4b26bb438360cab7c64be537b0.png" /></div>
The vampire concept is also inverted by his emaciated body and his missing jaw, which elicits the notion of a perpetual hunger that can never be satiated. This deformity makes him less threatening and more relatable to us humans, but the strongest reminder of his humanity is his hair. Although it's now much more unkempt than before, we can still tell a level of care was put into it at one point. Even if you're only seeing him for the first time, you immediately know he's not just some soulless hell-spawn; he was once a regular person.
<div class="post-image-holder"><span class="post-image-type">PNG</span><img alt="raziel_ps1_model.png" class="post-image" data-image-hash="d85f682972ec1db5640d6d7db74a3df965ceb1e9fc30d37a659e212785b41406" data-media-id="528" data-media-supertype="IMAGE" data-media-type="image/png" data-url-src-full="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_406/d85f682972ec1db5640d6d7db74a3df965ceb1e9fc30d37a659e212785b41406.png" url-src-thumb="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_406/t_d85f682972ec1db5640d6d7db74a3df965ceb1e9fc30d37a659e212785b41406.png" /></div>
The weakest part of this design has to be the arm and leg bindings, which seem somewhat out of place, but may have been a concession to the technical constraints of the time. PS1 characters were as low-poly as it gets, so there wasn't much way to signal detail. Without something to break up the limbs, you just have four blobby blue joints popping out of the middle. Still, the wrapping around the arms don't really say anything about Raziel, either as a human, vampire, or in his current state. They're just sort of there. This could be much much worse, of course, but it's the only thing that sticks out as superfluous.
<div class="post-image-holder"><span class="post-image-type">PNG</span><img alt="raziel_ps1_triptych.png" class="post-image" data-image-hash="b1e74a21cd11d720b78790db119c76759e95362386cee2a7b324299b84a6c69c" data-media-id="527" data-media-supertype="IMAGE" data-media-type="image/png" data-url-src-full="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_69c/b1e74a21cd11d720b78790db119c76759e95362386cee2a7b324299b84a6c69c.png" url-src-thumb="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_69c/t_b1e74a21cd11d720b78790db119c76759e95362386cee2a7b324299b84a6c69c.png" /></div>
Overall, the character translates well to a playable game, with his scarf becoming a gaping mouth to feed on souls, and his broken wings giving enough lift to glide but not fly. All of this without even mentioning the Soul Reaver itself, which taps into that "cool energy weapon" look you'd find in sci-fi, but instead bound to Raziel's arm with magic. Rather than being a tool he can use or discard at will, it's something he literally can't let go of, which plays a large part in the story right the way through. Although, if you want to know what I mean by that, you'll have to see for yourself.
Despite having pointed out every aspect of his design and explained what it adds to his character, I think the true skill here is something more than that; something I'm not sure I can articulate. If you just described Raziel to someone who had never seen him, they'd probably build up a much more amateurish picture in their mind. "Corpse-like soul vampire ninja with broken wings and lightsaber" is something a teenager would scribble in the back of a notebook, and yet the end product is leagues more refined than that. Somehow this "edgy, borderline childish" concept seems destined to be the protagonist of the gothic poetry that is... Soul Reaver.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:20:31
No.
81
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#80">>>80</a></span>
1.6 - Dramatic Edge on a Gumshoe Budget [14:20]<span class="post-quote">
>Spoilers for Phoenix Wright Case 1</span>
There's no more perfect an irony than sitting down to write some thoughts about Phoenix Wright, getting two paragraphs in, and then promptly realizing you've already contradicted yourself. As I write this, the "Objection!" theme tune is still playing in my head, which was the whole point of this segment in the first place. Rather than do a straight-up rewrite to correct the problem, this time it seems more appropriate to first read what I initially wrote, then point out the problem.
Here's what I was GOING to say:<span class="post-quote">
>As someone who goes to great pains to write about games holistically, seeing a review broken into discrete segments causes me some amount of mental anguish. Still there's a certain kernel of truth to it that can't be denied: games are made up of parts; many people are hired to work exclusively on one part or another. Those parts can individually be either good or bad depending on your assessment. Like any of these components, soundtracks exist because they add value to the experience; many games would be worse without some kind of backing music to complement their more important moments. If we were to judge the quality of a soundtrack solely by the amount of value it adds to its game, there's probably no more successful a track than the first "Objection!" theme in Phoenix Wright.</span><span class="post-quote">
>What you might forget about Phoenix Wright is just how inauspiciously it all starts. Wanting to try out "that lawyer game", you pop a cartridge into your DS and are totally unsurprised when just moments later, you find yourself in a courtroom. Time to be an attorney, which, as it turns out, is mostly about listening and talking to people. These games are a perfect example of how to build drama on a shoestring budget, but it's hard to see it in those opening moments when the tutorial case is just getting underway. That is, until the first Objection happens.</span><span class="post-quote">
>I'm gonna play a clip now; have a listen to the music, but ALSO notice the lead-in beforehand which accentuates its impact.</span>
That's as far as I got before I realized my mistake: I wanted to tell you about the "Objection!" theme and how crucial it was to the success of the entire Ace Attorney series, but already I've started mentioning other elements instead. At the risk of sounding conceited, it seems like I had the right idea all along. Even such a powerful, memorable theme tune can't be separated entirely from the rest of its game.
Of course, I WAS going to talk about the music itself. The melody is mainly three repetitive notes in an ascending arrangement, imparting a feeling of perpetual triumph. Any given scene in Phoenix Wright can last an indefinite amount of time, so rather than compose a swell at the start, it just continuously does so. Some light, bubbly synths in the background pop in to evoke the game's think-ier tunes like "Logic and Trick", essentially reminding us that our victory was an intellectual one, not a physical one. Lastly, there's the backing ambience, which smooths everything out and lends the track a more serious vibe, which shines through during later parts of the trial when the stakes are high. It's short, sweet, simple, and catchy, but as great as it is, it doesn't exist in a vacuum.
It's about time I played that clip. Watch carefully for everything that happens before the "Objection!" theme kicks in.<span class="post-quote">
>plays the clip</span>
For a game with just a few simple screens and character poses, this scene is extremely well directed. The iconic, cartoony "Objection!" bubble; the blur on the background as the camera dramatically swings back and forth; the sound of the hands slamming on the desk; the text boxes that pause according to punctuation; the flash and subtle screen shake when Phoenix makes an exclamation; and most importantly... the fact that the music has been completely cut for all of this, building a huge amount of tension. All of these things happen, THEN the "Objection!" theme plays. Even everything I just described is part of a grander picture; the whole point being to reward the player for successfully choosing evidence which contradicts the witness testimony. In fact, we could even rewind further and point out how the prosecution objects to something first, building the player's desire to fire back with one of their own.
It's still true that the individual parts matter; without a strong "Objection!" theme, this scene would fall flat at that crucial moment. This music is the ignition that lights up the whole series; it's the moment when Phoenix Wright goes from "that lawyer game" to something else entirely. Something you suddenly want to play a lot more of. Masakazu Sugimori deserves a round of applause for crafting such an iconic track, but at the same time, we should also recognize that even a great spark is nothing without the right fuel.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:22:42
No.
82
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#81">>>81</a></span>
1.7 - The Demon is in the Details [18:41]<span class="post-quote">
>Full spoilers for Demon's Souls and Bloodborne</span>
The lore of the Souls games and Bloodborne have been well covered by the community, who have dug deep into item descriptions and other elements to figure out what the backstory to each of these worlds are [*is]. At this point, there's probably some people who understand the intricacies more thoroughly than anyone at From Software ever did. It's nice that a community can be so driven to piece things together for themselves, but what CAN get overlooked in this desire to know all the details are the overall themes of each game and what that might communicate to us. The focus of the original Dark Souls on "entropy" and crafting a world that conveys that premise is more important than any of the individual events that occur in the story. In this thematic sense, Bloodborne becomes especially interesting when considering its pedigree.
The antagonist of Demon's Souls is "The Old One"; players aren't given much information about it, and even once we see it at the end, it just looks like some kind of massive tree thing. It never speaks, and its goals or motivations are never made clear. You quickly get the impression that, whatever it is, it's beyond human comprehension. Humanity somehow seems irrelevant by comparison. Apart from the fact that it looks somewhat aesthetically pleasing, it IS - for all intents and purposes - an Eldritch Abomination. When you describe it this way, the parallels to Bloodborne are obvious, however most people would call the Old One a "demon". It's the central antagonist of "DEMON'S Souls"; the bosses are "Demons"; it also stands to reason that the Old One is also a demon. It IS, but that's not the whole story; after all, the word "demon" is just a term we use to describe certain non-human creatures. This is a concept that Bloodborne expands on, knowingly or not.
What's interesting about Bloodborne isn't how different it is from Demon's Souls, but how SIMILAR it is. Reversing your thinking, it's easy to see how Amygdala - a huge, ugly threat to humanity - is - for all intents and purposes - a demon. I know for a fact I'm not the only one who reached Rom and was immediately struck by the parallels between it and the Primeval Demons from Demon's Souls. This is Bloodborne's greatest trick: It doesn't just adapt the gameplay of Demon's Souls to a newer era; it adapts the premise as well, saying something new in the process.
As humanity entered a more scientific age, we became aware of our place in the cosmos. What was once considered to be the center of everything - the Earth - was shown to be just a small part of a vast universe. Even contemplating the sheer scale of this can be enough to send a wave of dread over many people. It's discomforting to know that, in the grand scheme of things, we're almost completely irrelevant to the larger picture. This fear is what HP Lovecraft tapped into when he pioneered the sub-genre of Cosmic Horror. The premise is simple, and all the more terrifying for it. If the universe is incomprehensibly large, then it might also house incomprehensible beings. If those creatures came into contact with humanity, the results could be disastrous.
This is the kind of thinking that might keep you up at night, but when you DO fall asleep, as you inevitably must, there's a chance you'll dream. Research suggests that not only do humans dream, but many MANY other animals do as well. In other words, humans have been dreaming since before we were even human in the first place. In a primitive, more bestial society, lacking the information we have today, the only way to adequately explain dreams and the content within them was with supernatural causes. This goes for nightmares as well. Thousands of years ago, if the line between dream and reality became blurred as you had a terrifying vision of a creature looming over your bed, the best way to explain it was with a religious context. A demon did it. Today, you might start talking about your alien abduction instead. With a total lack of empirical evidence for either, it's safer to assume that demons and aliens have the same origin: human imagination.
The world of Bloodborne has advanced to a point where mankind's place in the universe is known, and this is why it frames these creatures as celestial beings instead. Make no mistake, though; they're not REALLY any different from the Old One. We can't ever understand the mind of either, and both would be equally terrifying to us in reality. The fact that this similarity hasn't even occurred to many people proves just how much context can shape our perception of reality.
There's ALWAYS another way to see things; all it takes is some Insight.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:24:25
No.
83
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#82">>>82</a></span>
1.8 - ABZÛndancy [22:34]<span class="post-quote">
>Full spoilers for Flower, Journey, and Abzu</span>
Can a game be so completely derivative of others so as to lose all value?
Well if that terribly loaded question is anything to go by, yes it can.
There's nothing WRONG with ABZÛ; in fact, there's plenty right with it. The environments are just as beautiful as anything Journey had to offer, which should come as no small surprise since it was helmed by the art director of that game. The movement is simple and feels appropriately response. Setpieces are doled out at a great pace without lingering too long in any one situation. It even manages to one-up Journey in at least one regard by almost entirely eliminating cutscenes. The murals which once took control away from the player are now just presented as part of the environment. If this game had been made BEFORE Journey, it would feel like the next logical step in a chain of that game company's games, but coming afterwards, it just feels redundant.
Thematically, ABZÛ shares more in common with Flower. Both focus on environmentalism, essentially asking players to consider how human construction encroaches on nature. It would be fair to say that both games succeed at accomplishing this to some degree; the message may be very one-sided and heavy-handed, but it's easy to appreciate the simple beauty both present. The only problem with ABZÛ is that Flower already exists. Both games have a minimalist wordless presentation, which is wonderful when taken on its own, but it also means that ABZÛ's value has to come from its particular details, rather than the broad strokes.
It's those details where the similarites to Journey become clear. Both protagonists share some obvious visual similarities, but even their backstories seem practically the same. Both are represented as descendants of some dead civilization which had a special relationship with the creatures of the area. Despite being underwater, the level structure mirrors Journey pretty closely. Somewhat more open areas are interspersed with tunnels you're forced through at a fast pace while the music swells. Small friendly creatures orbit your character while larger ones can be latched onto for a ride. Finding all the collectibles is even rewarded with a white diving suit. The climax is probably the worst offender; it mirrors that of both Flower AND Journey, but with an AI-controlled partner instead of the possibility of another real person. It should be clear by now why the points of comparison are a little troubling.
In strictly literal terms, the existence of one game could never "invalidate" another. ABZÛ is literally not Journey, and as such it does have some identity of its own. For someone with an irrationally strong hatred of deserts and a passionate love of the ocean, that disparity will probably tip the scales. In a pragmatic sense, it could also be argued that the order of release hardly matters. The window of time when Flower and Journey existed but ABZÛ didn't is a comparitively narrow one. It's entirely possible more people will play all three of these games after the release of ABZÛ than did before it. They now have the luxury of being able to do so in any order. Therefore, logically the answer to my snarky question from earlier has to be "no". Still, despite knowing that, it's impossible for me to respect ABZÛ.
Regardless of which came first, it's still clear to me that Journey is the better game, but that's not the point I'm making. At times in the past, I've flip-flopped on whether "originality" is ever really worth anything. If my time with ABZÛ is anything to go by, then it definitely IS. Playing ABZÛ, it's hard to know if it was something the developers were genuinely passionate about, or just what they thought would be a safe bet after the success of Journey. There's sincerity in originality. At the very least, all other things being equal, it's enough to set one apart from the other.
My feelings on this topic have never been more clear than when I played ABZÛ. In a funny way, maybe THAT'S the value it ended up offering me.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:26:56
No.
84
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#83">>>83</a></span>
1.9 - Order & Chaos + 塊 [25:59]<span class="post-quote">
>Full spoilers for Katamari Damacy, although most people probably don't think of it as a spoiler</span>
When trying to talk analytically about games, it's tempting to avoid mentiong any kind of innate human drives. Intuition tells us that there must surely be a better way of describing how to build the perfect game system. A more cold, calculating way that removes us messy humans from the equation. The problem with that line of thinking is that games are ultimately supposed to appeal to human sensibilities. In other words, games are built so that people will find them entertaining. Even when making "educational" videos like this one, it doesn't hurt to throw in a joke once in a while. ...Or not.
Keeping all this mind, psychology is an important factor to consider when talking about whether certain methods of design are worthwhile, or not. One way of viewing game design is to reduce it to two factors: Order and Chaos. And no, this isn't a bit about Shin Megami Tensei. It could be said that many of the most popular games ever made appeal to a human instinct to create Order FROM Chaos. Blocks come in from the top in a disorganized, random pattern, so we move them to the bottom into neat little rows to be swept away. A good Tetris player will craft a huge amount of Order from a Chaotic system. Similar thinking can be applied to many of the most addictive game mechanics out there: collecting coins; clearing up that quest log; killing all the bad guys; and so on and so on. If we stop here, you might think you've found the holy grail of game design, but that's not the end of the story.
We're strange and sometimes contradictory creatures, because even though we often seek Order from Chaos, sometimes we just want the opposite. The immense popularity of Grand Theft Auto is proof enough alone. Millions of GTA players don't boot up the game to obey traffic signals and life a quiet life; they do it to go on a rampage, to walk into a virtual clockwork society and cause as much mayhem as possible. Sandboxes in general are good for this type of stuff, and this destructive drive is also responsible for Griefing in online games.
If only there was some kind of perfect game where you could indulge BOTH desires at the same time...
<span class="post-spoiler">*music builds up, until...*</span> <span class="post-spoiler">塊魂</span>
Dropped into a room littered with objects, your goal is to roll them all up into your magic ball. At first, this only caters to the desire to clean up a messy room, taking the Chaotic arrangement of items and unifying them under the banner of your Katamari, but as the scope expands, so does the appeal.
That annoying cat who knocked you away a minute ago now gets helplessly rolled up into your ever growing clump of junk. Before you know it, you're the pilot of the most cataclysmic event in human history, all while a delightful soundtrack propels you forward.
This psychotic presentation can be interpreted whatever way you want; either you're destroying the world, or you're just doing everybody a favor. Maybe both. This duality is why Katamari is such a joy to play despite its uncompromising simplicity. It's Order and Chaos all rolled into one.<span class="post-quote">
>The final segment is inspired by an interview with Hirokazu Yasuhara I read many years ago which has stuck in my mind as one of the best developer insights I've come across.</span>
https://web.archive.org/web/20141112070829/http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132163/game_design_psychology_the_full_.php?page=1</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:29:22
No.
85
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#74">>>74</a></span>
2.1 - Another Alliteration [00:00]
While WarioWare is rarely boring, it tends to get better once you've seen the credits. Before that point, most challenges are themed around a certain concept, like using the D-pad, or timing a single button press correctly. These smaller selections of microgames act as an introduction which makes the gameplay more predictable. You only need to keep about 20 microgames in mind, which means you can prepare for them mentally before they appear. The best part of WarioWare happens afterwards, when you unlock the elevator-style challenges which throw EVERY game into the mix.
This is why I think Smooth Moves is the weakest WarioWare. It's admirable to experience how many ways the Wii-mote can be stressed, something that Smooth Moves probably does better than any other Wii game. There's tons of different poses and interactions to learn; so many that this game might vindicate the Wii-mote for you, but it comes at a cost. Since different types of microgames are reliant on the player being in a certain pose before the curtain is drawn, the mega-mix challenges can't quite surprise you to the same degree they can in other installments. Even if you're not familiar with which games use which poses, being forced to shift your body into a certain position hints about what kind of action you'll be asked to perform. If it's "The Samurai", you know you'll have to draw your arm; if it's "The Elephant", you know you'll have to move your head around.
Of course, the developers can't really be blamed for this. It's only natural that a Wii WarioWare would want to get as much use out of the controller as they could, and given that technology, there doesn't seem to be any way of avoiding this unfortunate reality. They minimized the damage it would do by including some simple, easy-to-understand illustrations and names, which help you snap to a new pose as quickly as possible. Even so, I think Smooth Moves demonstrates that the "microgame and instruction" appearing on-screen at the exact same time is a vital part of the WarioWare experience. It's why games like Bishi Bashi or Point Blank aren't quite the same thing, because they explain themselves beforehand. Thanks to the Wii-mote, Smooth Moves sits somewhere in the middle.
Sometimes, in spite of everyone's best efforts, a sequel just can't recapture the appeal of the original. That doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't have been made, but it's always a little disappointing, no matter how much we might brace ourselves for it. WarioWare isn't defined by its microgames; it's defined by the transition between them.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:30:44
No.
86
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#85">>>85</a></span>
2.2 - Imitation Jewel [02:17]
"Pacing" could be described as how something progresses from point A to point B, but what exactly that means is up for debate. Just saying that something has "good pacing" means little by itself, and you could argue it's not even applicable to games as a medium since the pace is often under player control. Technically, most games allow players to loiter around in an area indefinitely before they advance to the next. Even so, some games are clearly better paced than others.
If you've played many JRPGs, I think you'll know what I mean when I say pacing is one of Chrono Trigger's greatest assets. The start might drag on a little too long, but even that pays off with the famous courthouse scene. From there, it's one revelation and change of scenery after the next. Even on a casual first-time play-through, you can easily find yourself pulled into some new situation or back-drop every half an hour or so. This keeps up for longer than you'd think, and makes it the roller-coaster ride of JRPGs. Short simple up-down, and then it's over. I think that's the main reason people love it so much, considering the battle mechanics are nothing to write home about, and the story, while engaging and full of likeable characters, is pretty straightforward.
Before playing Chrono Cross, if I had bet on a single thing it would carry over from the original, it would be that same snappy pacing, but that's not the case. Chrono Cross has a lot of positive qualities. If you said the soundtrack was the greatest ever made, I might not agree, but I wouldn't argue the point either. The coral color scheme is as refreshing now as it was then, and it's also one of those games that mostly gets better as it goes along, right the way to the end. Still, it seems as though the developers got hung up on some ancillary aspects of Chrono Trigger, rather than the big picture. To its credit, it's not filled with trigger pandering or anything so shallow. You can spend the majority of the story unsure of how it even relates to its predecessor, but it has an almost fetishistic reverence for recruiting unlikely party members, which was nothing more than a once-off branching point in the first one.
On top of that, simple elemental attacks were expanded into this whole battlefield system which complicates party management in all the wrong ways while adding little if any tactical depth. Combat continually grinds all progress to a halt, which is hardly an uncommon problem for the genre, but it's exacerbated by a lack of EXP, MP, and an essentially free heal after every battle, causing them all to feel like a total waste of time. Rather than addressing some common problems with the genre, Cross shines a spotlight on them, dragging down what could've been a much more engaging experience.
Maybe to the developers, pacing wasn't what defined Chrono Trigger. After all, it was the brain-child of the so-called "dream team", so it's hard to imagine they all got together and decided that this game would stand tall NOT thanks to its music, combat, characters, or story, but mainly because it flowed well from one moment to the next. Don't get me wrong; those individual elements range from good to great, but the thing Chrono Trigger does UNIQUELY well among JRPGs is that all the gears click into place. It ticks, like clockwork.
That's a tough act to follow, and maybe by the time Cross was in production, it was still too early to say what made Trigger special in the first place. Without knowing that for sure, any attempt at a sequel seems unlikely to surpass its predecessor; some things only become clear in the fullness of time.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:35:53
No.
87
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#86">>>86</a></span>
2.3 - Let's Not, Baby [05:15]
Up until recently, it had been over a decade since I played Devil May Cry 2. Unfortunately, that timer reset when I got the bright idea to discuss it. Being the clever little devil I am, I figured it'd be too obvious to focus on its failings, so instead I'd talk about what it did well. After all, no game is irredeemable... or so you'd think. Even though I get paid to research these kinds of things, I'm currently struggling to push myself past the ninth chapter. At one point, catching a demonic reflection of my silhouette in the TV, I began to question my life choices harder than ever before. ...How did I get here?
Anyway, in a sense that just makes it all the more fascinating. How Capcom went straight from genre-defining classic to nigh-unplayable abomination remains a mystery, probably even to those who worked on it. As far as big-name releases go, we may NEVER see such a drastic dip in quality between two installments of anything ever again. That alone makes it note-worthy. Clearly, everyone knew something was wrong, which is why Hideaki Itsuno was pulled in as director for the final months, but apparently it just couldn't be salvaged in that time-frame, so this is the Devil May Cry 2 we got. Given how obviously troubled development was at that point, one lingering question for me is why Capcom would bother unleashing this punishment on humanity in the first place. Publishers often seem too wrapped up in short-term gains compared to the greater good; A fourth-circle offense, according to Dante. The Devil May Cry brand has since bounced back, but it could just as easily have burned forever thanks to that decision.
Anyway, I first knew that something was amiss with this game the moment I gained control of Dante. His sluggish movement is a huge red flag, and it never gets better. He just sort of flops his way through empty environments, halfheartedly fending off equally limp fodder. Without trying it for yourself, this is a difficult thing to fully convey, but it's as though every time a new action is triggered, his center of gravity snaps to a new position then drifts off-target. Goes to show how much skill is involved to create even passable movement when a supposedly big-name release falls so far from that standard. There's a lot more wrong with the game than that, but if hitting stuff isn't even remotely fun, then the rest was probably doomed anyway. Talking about the first game, I once said that "the devil is in the details". Any doubts you have about that statement should be put to rest upon picking up its sequel.
Conceptually, it's actually not that misguided. Lucia seems superfluous when Trish had just been established as Dante's partner, and his characterization lacks the relaxed appeal of the original, but there's also SOME good ideas here, enough to make an un-embarrassing sequel in the hands of a competent team at least. Caged skeletons are a genuinely cool enemy concept I'd like to see revived, and a remote European village is an uninspired but decent follow-up to Mallet Island. It's not as though they set out to butcher the series; it's a genuine attempt at a sequel, but ideas are only worth so much.
If you could peek behind the curtain, then you'd see that every new game goes through its own Devil May Cry 2 phase, because the hardest part of any creative endeavor is the time spent refining it. The gap between functional and fun is much larger than it appears. This is probably why game sequels have historically turned out better than the sequels of other mediums; once the fun has been found, all those little settings, nuances, and constants can be copied over to a new project with relative ease. For whatever reason, DMC2 seems to have skipped that step, which CAN be done if the new team knows how to make a great game independent of the first, but that's not always the case.
I hope not to touch this travesty again, but if you never have, then you probably SHOULD. Give a younger, more impulsive version of me a chance to delete this game from existence shortly after its release, and I would've leapt at the opportunity, but that would've been a mistake. For better or worse, it's a slice of gaming history, which is why I'm actually glad that Capcom chose to preserve it as part of the HD Collection. A little time in Hell makes Heaven all the sweeter.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:40:28
No.
88
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#87">>>87</a></span>
2.4 - Doom is not Doom [08:54]
Ripping apart demons as a one-man army is a premise we can all get behind, which is why it's a relief that DOOM 2016 is a nice slice of chaotic, cathartic action. It's visceral, it's fun, it does a lot of things right. If that was all I had to say, I obviously wouldn't have brought it up, so here's the catch:
DOOM is not Doom. I suppose it's up for debate what Doom even represents these days after the third installment leaned WAY too hard on the horror aspects, and DOOM 2016 is certainly a step in the right direction compared to that one, but it's not a return to form either. It's a new form; a form where you walk into an arena, demons appear in waves, you rip and tear for a while, then search the map for secrets while you progress to the next skate park. This makes for a perfectly enjoyable gameplay, but it doesn't exemplify the original Doom.
In Doom... y'know, the first one, exploration and combat were more deftly woven together. Each new room could be eerily empty,or have a few sneaky Hellspawn lurking around corners. Progress through levels was still quick, but it often pushed you to be wary of - or utilize - the environment well while fighting enemies. Moments where demons warped in were rare, and usually a low point. Apart from those uncommon occurrences and some more common scripted ambushes, Doom was more about methodically clearing the level of baddies while searching for the exit. Sometimes non-linear map progression would allow players to approach a room full of monsters from a different angle, which could feel like a different encounter altogether. One important reason why that's the case is because enemies are considerably less mobile than their newer incarnations. If you know where an Imp was five seconds ago, you can form a pretty good mental model of where it might be now.
That simply doesn't apply anymore. Despite superficially re-using many enemy designs, their often drastically increased mobility gives the new DOOM a different feel. You need to ALWAYS be on the move, lest something sneak up or even spawn in behind you. When you're always strafing around an arena, every encounter starts to feel similar. Doom used to be less reactionary, more tactical. That's probably the most important distinction between these two games, but there's a few more key differences.
Apart from some asinine weapon challenges, nu-Doom's upgrade system isn't egregious, but it can't match the purity of just picking up a weapon and firing. In an age where every game seems to have some tacked-on RPG elements, a faithfully simplistic Doom would've made for a refreshing change of pace. Demons drop varying amounts of health depending on how much the player needs, which may or may not count as dynamic difficulty, but regardless, it eats away at what should be the satisfaction of a job well done. Fatality animations also seem misguided, partly because they remove control from the player, but mainly because they mess up regular kills as well; instead of being blown apart, enemies often stagger instead, forcing you to waste additional ammo if you don't want to "go for Glory". Exploiting abilities the moment they come off cooldown is about as strategic as it gets, and hopefully it's also self-evident why unskippable story sequences could be seen as an unwelcome inclusion for Doom of all things. Arriving around the time of the "satanic panic", some might say that Doom was a product of its time. That might be true of its setting, but its gameplay was a natural extension of Wolfenstein. Nu-Doom is the opposite; its hammy premise which deifies a mute marine is now novel, but its gameplay alterations are "trendy".
DOOM is not Doom, but maybe it didn't have to be. After all, thanks to ease of modification, there's an endless amount of WADs to pursue and while they won't all be good, they are all essentially Doom. Even Heretic is mostly Doom, and if you really want that extra dimension, there's plenty of Doom to be found in Quake and its derivates. Obviously, I'm not about to say that fans can make an official follow-up just through modding, but it seems more valid that with other mediums. After all, Id themselves endorsed and released fan-made level packs as Final Doom. Fan-fiction is abundant on the internet, some of which must be great if only by sheer chance, but a book's identity is inherently tied to the way a specific author imagines and relates that world to the reader. Games are at least slightly different: make a Doom map, and it IS Doom; it has all the same weapons, enemies, and mechanics. Only the layout changes.
The fact is anyone can make more Doom right now if they so please. With that in mind, it's no wonder DOOM had to make substantial changes to stay relevant. Like any sequel, its refinements can be assessed with a critical eye, but it's not all doom and gloom.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:42:19
No.
89
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#88">>>88</a></span>
2.5 - Both Eyes on the Prize [13:06]
If you look at it a certain way, every improvement makes something either "less bad" or "more good". Shorter loading times, "less bad". Extra polish, "more good". This distinction is arbitrary and depends on whether you feel a certain element is good enough already, but let me use it to stake a claim about Bayonetta and its sequel:
Bayonetta 2 is "less bad" than Bayonetta 1, but it's also "less good".
If you play the Bayonetta games casually, then the second game might come across as superior. Bayonetta as a character is more self-assured and has higher personal stakes in the story than ever before. The plot is more coherent, has more stylish presentation, and retroactively improves the first by fleshing out some important details. Gone is the brown and grey color palette which seemed to plague everything around the time of the original's release; instead there are refreshing blues and vibrant reds. The genre shifts are better contextualized, more succinct, and generally more enjoyable. Up until the finale, it's even more grandiose than its predecessor and boasts at least as much new content. About the only thing it gets wrong on a surface level is a slightly anti-climactic ending, and a mech that arguably wears out its welcome.
Those improvements were agreeable enough that most people moved on with their life, content in the knowledge that Platinum had pumped out the follow-up we'd all hoped for. But that popular perception isn't the reality for some. If you're familiar with the intricacies of Bayonetta, the sequel is a step back in more ways than one. Most of it stems from Umbran Climax, which is far too overpowered, resulting in reduced magic gain, inflated enemy health pools, obselete Torture Attacks, and pointless trinkets. Witch Time is never removed, which makes many encounters a frustrating and repetitive exercise in short restrictive bursts of offense, especially on the highest difficulty. Scoring also got hit by some pretty baffling changes, and these three major regressions combined to have knock-on effects which strike it down compared to its predecessor. There's a lot more to say, but I suppose all those details are a story for another day.
It seems that many of these changes were about doubling down on the spectacle of Bayonetta; an attempt to cram in "more good", which is very much in-line with the series' origin. The director of the first Bayonetta was mentored by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami, and apparently one piece of wisdom passed down from Mikami was to focus more on making the game's strengths stronger than worrying about its weaknesses.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180815201353/http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/06/06/the-future-of-platinumgames-ign-first<span class="post-quote">
>Shinji Mikami instilled an important philosophy in Kamiya while mentoring him at Capcom -- not to get hung up on trying to eliminate every bad aspect of a game, but instead to focus on making the good parts even better. It seems that there is no way for Kamiya to do anything but keep trying to make the best game he can, a guiding principal that he now passes on to his teams as well.</span>
Bayonetta 2 may have attempted to follow in those footsteps, but the end result is actually "less bad, less good".
In spite of that failing, Bayonetta 2 is a great follow-up in many ways, even sometimes with its game-play decisions. Vigrid, which re-appears in the final stretch, ditches the new enemy types by bringing back the old for one chapter. While this tugs on nostalgia, its main benefit is how it capitalizes on already existing assets to expand the amount of variety on offer. Played back-to-back, Bayonetta 1 introduces the first set of opponents which the sequel drops for brand new, exciting content. Then just when the new stuff runs the risk of wearing out its welcome, the old resurfaces, which ends up playing differently anyway since Bayonetta herself is working with new weapons. The introduction of Demons is another great touch, which complements the previous game, expanding the world and allowing for more creative freedom. Enemies across the board suffer from weaker implementation, but conceptually, Hideous, Malicious, Resentment, and Sloth are all well deserving of their place in the bestiary.
Overall, it's that perfectly balanced mixture of old and new which so many sequels strive for but never reach. It may not have succeeded in the ways they hoped when they set out to make it, but regardless, Bayonetta 2 makes a strong argument that alternating between "more good" and "less bad" might be a sensible way for a series to progress. It only became a regression because it inadvertently trampled on some of what made the first game so good. Mikami might be right that "more good" is more important, but there's also diminishing returns. Sometimes the simplest improvements are the most impactful; that was certainly the case for the popular perception of the Bayonetta series, and even the most die-hard fan of the first would have to admit the second got SOME aspects right.
A dogmatic adherence to one side or another is bound to result in an increasingly lopsided series. The steadiest way to make progress is just to take turns putting one foot in front of the other. Although, if you happen to be wearing high heels, it might take some practice before you stop tumbling over.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:47:00
No.
90
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#89">>>89</a></span>
2.6 - Invasion of the Sequel Snatchers [17:14]
"Pride goeth before a fall", unless you happen to be Resident Evil 4, in which case you stick the landing with a glorious suplex.
On a surface level, it retained many of the elements which had defined Resident Evil up to that point: A restrictive inventory, which encourages tactical use of ammo; slow-paced exploration with resource-gathering; and of course, a horror vibe filled to the brim with zombies. It's all there, and yet in spite of those similarities, the kind of enjoyment derived from early Resident Evil titles is different from the kind of Resident Evil 4. At their best, the earlier games were all about good resource management, but while that aspect carries over to 4, it's much more so a tactical shooter. Ammo usage matters, but positioning and accuracy are even more vital. It's action-orientated [sic], primarily enjoyed for those kinds of decisions and skill checks made during combat.
Now, in case you couldn't tell, I find it interesting to think about what the "core" of a series is, because each one occupies a space in the grander constellation of games. Sometimes a series' true value only becomes clear by looking at that larger picture. If I had to sum up the worth of the early Resident Evil titles, I would say they're the most traditionally enjoyable survival horror games. By which I mean, Silent Hill had it beat on atmosphere and scare factor, but Resident Evil was more enjoyable to play moment-to-moment thanks to its combat and level design. Ideally, every series in existence would have its own somewhat unique appeal which it excels at delivering, so it's always a concern to see drastic changes being made which don't align with the series' established identity.
Even so, Resident Evil 4 is proof that if you nail the new thing hard enough... it just doesn't matter. Whether or not Resident Evil 4 is a "good Resident Evil" is still worth discussing, but it's a footnote to the game's actual legacy as an outstanding third-person shooter with an endlessly replayable campaign. Maybe that's mainly because most of us, myself included, didn't miss the old Resident Evil enough to complain. After all, it had a good run, including possibly the greatest remake ever, which seemed to leave little room for further expansion.
Still, it is a valid point to say that Resident Evil 4 didn't NEED to be Resident Evil at all. In fact, they had tried to make it once before, and ended up spinning that off into Devil May Cry. Maybe having already played that card, they were hesitant to do so again, since it would mean an even larger gap between numbered installments of such a flagship franchise, but it might've been the right call long-term. Despite a catastrophic stumble on its second outing, Devil May Cry continued to become a successful series in parallel to Resident Evil. Perhaps the same could've happened here, giving rise to a new third-person shooter IP.
Ultimately, the reason some people get upset when a series changes ISN'T because the new game is new, but because the old games get their future cut off. Sometimes that's alarmist, but sometimes it really does happen. Castlevania lost its identity as a linear action platformer, we might never see another isometric Fallout, and there was an era when Warcraft meant "real-time strategy". I don't hate that Symphony of the Night exists; I hate that Rondo of Blood 2 DOESN'T exist.
Maybe those series were never going to continue along that path due to market trends, developer burnout, or some other factor, but getting a sequel you DON'T want closes the door more definitively than creating a new IP. Nobody wants to see the corpse of something they love puppeted around when it could just be laid to rest.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:49:26
No.
91
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#90">>>90</a></span>
2.7 - Phantom Sequel [20:31]
If you asked me to choose one game I'd prefer remain sequel-LESS, I suppose it would be Ghost Trick. Without getting too deep into spoiler territory, I'll say its conclusion was about as perfect as I could imagine, with only a single dangling plot thread which really wasn't of much importance in the first place. I think everyone has a game like this; that one-off title we'd rather not revisit. Some creators skirt around that preference by making vaguely similar follow-ups as happened with Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian, which may or may not take place in the same world. If you like them all, you're free to connect them together, but if you can't stand even the best of escort missions, then you're free to enjoy Shadow of the Colossus as a solo affair. It's a clever way of doing it, but why SHOULDN'T there be another Ico or Ghost Trick?
One pitfall of criticism is that it relies on the counterfactual; in other words, if you want to say something could be better, you need to imagine a way in which it actually could be improved. When you're pointing out problems, this is easier to do, but tasked with proposing how a sequel to one of our favorite games might look, our imagination often fails us, which is only natural. After all, I didn't dream up Ghost Trick in the first place. It took Shu Takumi and his team years of iterative work to arrive there. It's understandable I wouldn't be able to envision a better sequel, but given enough time, HE might.
None of us can say for sure what the future holds; we can only make decisions based on probability. So the question becomes what kind of bet to place with our time. Takumi is also the creator of the Ace Attorney series, which lends itself well to sequels and has plenty at this point, so another one of those would be the "safe bet". A new Ghost Trick is an unproven, riskier use of time, but there's also a third possibility: something new. After all, if Takumi had contented himself with Ace Attorney sequels forever, we never would've had Ghost Trick in the first place. Every sequel comes with an unseen opportunity cost associated with it: the new thing we COULD'VE gotten had the creators worked on that instead.
It's not a one-to-one conversion rate, though. A sequel should in theory take fewer resources to complete than a brand new venture, since it has an established base to work from. Not to mention a sequel from one corner of a company can provide the funding for something new elsewhere in that same company. It's all one big interconnected economy, but what's the ideal? Personally, I feel a sequel shouldn't be made unless the creators think they can bring it up to par with the first. Naturally they won't always hit that target, but it should at least be the goal.
New things may be more difficult to create, but at least they don't have that "legacy" to uphold. Originality buys you some lenience thanks to its innate sincerity, or at least I think I heard that somewhere before. Maybe it's also the case that originality is a shield since it hampers our ability to gauge its true quality. Who's to say that Ghost Trick is even good at all, if we have nothing to compare it against? It's KIND OF a visual novel, but its admittedly simple gameplay is original enough to defy direct comparisons. Maybe some day, there'll be a whole genre dedicated to interfering with Rube Goldberg machines which will reveal Ghost Trick to be a lackluster take on the concept. Hard to imagine, given how wonderfully convoluted some of the scenarios are already, but it can't be ruled out.
And that I suppose is the merit of sequels, whether it's an official follow-up or a spiritual successor dreamed up by the next generation. We don't live in an ideal world where people can spend endless resources perfecting an idea on the first attempt. Sometimes it's best to rewind, start over, and try again.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:53:17
No.
92
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#91">>>91</a></span>
2.8 - Critic's Latest Dilemma [23:45]
"Life is simply unfair"
With the Zero Escape series on indefinite cliffhanger after Virtue's Last Reward, the only fate worse than NEVER getting the third installment would be getting a DISAPPOINTING one instead. Unfortunately, the coin was unkind; Zero Escape 3 [aka "Zero Time Dilemma"] arrived and landed with a thud. Rather than dwell on its problems, I'm more interested in a sort of "meta-consideration" that's worth mulling over before even thinking about anything else.
In Zero Time Dilemma, the core them is the unfairness of it all. No matter what anybody does, some people will branch into happier universes and others won't be so lucky. The same idea could be applied to a series itself, since a sequel is the moment an IP goes from being a point to a line. It no longer has just a position, but a trajectory; a path. And sometimes we can't help but feel like we ended up on the wrong one.
Anyway, let's not get bogged down with details here. All I'll say is my favorite part of Virtue's Last Reward was later dismissed by the writer as non-canon meta-fiction. Regardless, Zero Time Dilemma failed to offer a satisfying conclusion to the series' overarching plot, but it was Virtue's Last Reward which established most of those threads, even ending on a cliffhanger. It's tempting to say that the blame lies entirely on the Zero Time Dilemma side of the equation, but I'm not sure that's really true.
I know that, as much as I enjoyed Virtue's Last Reward, the ending did leave me skeptical that things could ever be neatly wrapped up. It might be fair to say that the series had already crossed a line from which there could be no perfect conclusion, while still hinting that such a thing might come to pass. If that's the case, then Zero Time Dilemma can hardly be blamed for not delivering on an empty promise. Not that the ending is the ONLY thing wrong with Zero Time Dilemma, but it does have some genuinely cool, positive qualities, enough that if it had stuck the landing, it would've been a worthwhile close to the trilogy.
I'm probably not gonna talk about these games any further, but it's still an important issue in my mind, because if I were to review them, the logical way to break it up would be on a title-by-title basis. In other words, there would be a Virtue's Last Reward review, and a Zero Time Dilemma review. For a narrative-heavy title that ends on a cliff-hanger - essentially leaving its most important element incomplete until the next installment, this seems like a problem. It's natural to talk about and review games on an individual basis, but the intuitive way of doing things isn't always the best. What's even worse about this is that, at the time Virtue's Last Reward released, you'd have no choice but to consider it separately from its then non-existent sequel. Personally, despite my skepticism, I gave it the benefit of the doubt, assuming it was some surprising plan in place which would tie it together. In a sense, all the former Virtue's Last Reward reviews are as incomplete as the story was at that time.
Here come the plot twist: even though it looks unlikely there'd be any more installments, who's to say I'm not making the exact same mistake right now? It's theoretically possible some new entry will appear and vindicate Zero Time Dilemma after the fact. Unless you overthink the review process quite as hard as I do, this shouldn't keep you up at night, but it's an interesting problem, one to which I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer. Is Virtue's Last Reward worse now that we know the ending, or is it the same as it ever was? See, the difference between a point and a line is that a line goes on forever. A series is never TRULY over; there's always a chance to course-correct by adding more points. Maybe which universe we end up in is just a matter of chance, but I'd prefer to think we can steer each line the right way for the benefit of everyone. That still doesn't answer my question of how to review each part, but luckily for me, I can just walk away at this point.
I suppose the only definitive lesson to be learned is that you probably SHOULDN'T end things on a cli</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)15:58:25
No.
93
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#75">>>75</a></span>
3.1 - Yes You [00:00]<span class="post-quote">
>Lemme tell you a tale. It took place 360,000... No. 14,000 years ago.</span><span class="post-quote">
>Well, to me it seems like only yestereday. To you, could be tomorrow.</span>
Hello, viewer. Take a look at this beautiful El Shaddai footage while I talk about something unrelated.
Since we're at the start, maybe I should break the ice by telling you about my personal life, in order to endear you to me, or maybe I should wait until the end, so you're more inclined to subscribe or donate. You probably noticed I don't normally make those kinds of appeals, but I could. If I wanted to, I could address you at any point; sometimes I kind of do. Occasionally I used phrases like "if you ask me" or "if you're anything like me", where we ALMOST have a dialogue.The main reason I do that is because using the pronoun "one" instead of "you" sounds a bit strange with my accent. One requires a more pompous tone for that to sound natural.
Anyway, interacting with you is the point of these videos, and yet, I usually have a sort of barrier between us, as though I'm actually talking to a brick wall or something, which is their reality as I record this. Of course, I don't know who you are, but this video must be watched to be understood, so I know the only way these words have meaning is because someone is there to hear them. It's kinda like when you're not sure if you're alone, so you go... <span class="post-spoiler">"I know you're listenin'"</span>. Because there's nothing to lose; Either someone really IS there to hear you, or else nobody can witness you embarrassing yourself. Except you, of course.
Anyway, you could be anyone, but at the very least, I can say you're listening to me as I speak. By now, you probably think this is all a bit strange or tiresome, but that's only because of the way I've phrased this and how unusual it is for me. If I did it more casually and more often, you'd think it was normal; I'd be a vlogger. Here's an example of what that might sound like:
*clears throat*
That's the old uh... fake throat-clearing so you know we've switched over to a different style of delivery.
Anyway the thing I wanted to say is... I tend to relate everything to games, so right now I'm thinking about the intro video to Metal Gear Solid 2.
You know, it opens up with all these historical ways that information has been recorded; y'know, writings or carvings or that or whatever else, and then it contrasts that against stuff like double helixes and code and chemical diagrams, so you end up with this impression that, basically everything is information, when you break it down enough.
Of course, one of the themes of the game is how humans have this ability to interpret information or choose which information we pass on from one to another, which is basically what we're doing right now.
See? That wasn't so weird, was it?
*clears throat*
Here's a dirty secret about creativity: 'meta' is EASY. 'Meta' might just be the easiest thing you can do.
Actors spend their whole careers resisting the urge to look at the camera; going 'meta' just means giving in to those natural temptations.
'Meta' might seem clever, as deep as an endlessly recursive hole, but I think it's more like an infinity mirror: surprisingly easy to set up and gives the ILLUSION of depth by just reflecting back on itself.
That perceived cleverness makes 'meta' a highly prized gimmick, which means if you want to min-max the effort-to-payoff ratio, there's no better way than 'meta'.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)16:01:39
No.
94
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#93">>>93</a></span>
3.2 - Clickerbait [03:17]
Assuming you're at least somewhat interested in game design, which is hopefully the case if you're watching this, then I'd like to take this opportunity to encourage you to play an "idler" like Cookie Clicker here for at least an hour or two. Don't worry, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you they're hidden gems or anything, but they DO illustrate a point about game design in general. If one were to ask me, clickers bear the most resemblance to the RPG genre; play something like Final Fantasy or Diablo, and a large part of the appeal is finally reaching that next level you've been anticipating. Things tend to be measured in Experience Points, with little bars displaying progress you can grind towards.
Somewhere along the way, these elements which used to be exclusive to RPGs began to migrate outwards, slowly permeating everything. At this point, this assimilation seems more or less complete. Now many games have something similar; level up to increase your damage, or get a new loot-box, or just so your icon will look a little more fancy. In some cases, these leveling systems don't even affect the game-play at all, which leads to the question of why they exist in the first place. The answer is pretty obvious: people used to play Quake 3 all the time just because they enjoyed it. It didn't need anything else to keep them hooked. Now if we imagine two identical versions of Quake happen to release on the same day - one WITH a progress system and one WITHOUT, it's easy to guess which one would win a larger player-base, even if both audiences were still small. While some players won't care about the difference, others will be drawn to the progression system, in which case that version has a greater chance of surviving while the more minimalist one fades into irrelevancy.
Economics fuel much of this problem; with a progression system comes unlockables, and with unlockables comes micro-transactions to acquire them immediately. That income can be used to extend development, updating the game with more content, providing a feedback loop of success. This probably doesn't come as a surprise to you, but there's a more sinister way of thinking about it which you may not have struck upon yet. In a sense, games are evolving to exploit us; even if no individual person agrees that progression systems are a good thing, they tap into a simple desire we all have to one degree or another.
If you're a fan of the Metal Gear series, then I don't have to explain the true meaning of the word "meme" to you, but for everyone else, a quick rundown: the basic premise is that ideas are a little like genes; successful ones get passed down to future generations, while unsuccessful ones disappear. Keep in mind, this doesn't mean the idea is beneficial or detrimental to humanity; just that it perpetuates itself somehow. Progression systems could be seen as a successful meme which will be difficult to eradicate. Ironically, even the Metal Gear series itself fell prey to this particular trend. Now that most games have something like this, it's hard to envision how another game can compete without it. Even if you create something enjoyable enough to survive without this meme, someone else can come along, create a clone of your game, slap a progression system on it, and steal your audience.
Much like clickbait, it's a selection pressure that will seemingly never go away anymore. If one were to ask me, that doesn't excuse developers or critics who rely on such tactics, but it's a reality we need to confront sooner or later. On paper, wouldn't we all agree that getting better at a game yourself is much more rewarding than pretending you've gotten better by unlocking more upgrades? It's worth examining whether your behavior aligns with your answer to that question. This is why playing an idler can be beneficial, because there's few better ways to break the spell than to confront the absurdity of it all. After you've baked a billion cookies per second, killing a skeleton for 25 XP doesn't hold quite as much significance.
Despite how it might seem at times, games AREN'T the shit you pick up while you play them; the actual game is what happens IN-BETWEEN those moments. When you recognize that just clicking on a cookie, and watching the number increment can be enjoyable, you recognize that there's something exploitable about the way many of us are wired. As a species, we have these collective weaknesses, and now more than ever, games are tapping into them. So either you make a conscious effort to push back, or get rolled over like so much squashed dough.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)16:03:11
No.
95
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#94">>>94</a></span>
3.3 - How to Enjoy Matthewmatosis [07:11]
Around the time I released my comparison of "Axiom Verge" and "Environmental Station Alpha", Hollow Knight was reaching the height of its popularity. Naturally, comments arrived saying it would be great if I reviewed Hollow Knight next.
This wasn't a surprise, but I had already considered the idea, and decided to do these two [i.e. Axiom Verge vs Environmental Station Alpha] instead. In fact, that video began its life as a comparison between many different Metroid-style games.
It's a sub-genre I'm very familiar with, and I played even more of them as research, but in the end, it came down to JUST Axiom Verge and Station Alpha, because to me, they represented two ends of a spectrum. If you imagine Super Metroid somewhere in the middle, it's obvious that Axiom Verge is more about doubling down on the discovery element of that game. You get weird new skills, see weird new places, and never really know what's going to come next. By contrast, Station Alpha is more straightforward but it offers a better challenge, which enhances the feeling of being dropped into a harsh alien landscape while struggling to stay alive. If you watch my comparison, you'll see there's more nuance to both games, but that's about the gist of it.
Hollow Knight falls much more firmly into that second category; it doesn't have any groundbreaking skills or reveals, but it does have a close-range weapon which is used to fight a lot of good bosses.
It's not as though there nothing more to be said about Hollow Knight; the map system in particular is noteworthy. While there might be some better iteration on this idea waiting to be discovered, it's nice to see a developer address the problem of players spending too much time staring at a map rather than the actual contents of the world. This is something I'd be happy to see exported to other entries in the genres.
Conversely, while I'd be perfectly fine without any RPG elements in these games, I think the Charm system presented a reasonable enough middle-ground. It offers meaningful options without a bunch of boring number-crunching or excessive menu use.
On the whole, I think Hollow Knight's appeal lies mostly in being "less bad" rather than "more good", which is fine, but doesn't make it a great example for exploring the genre conceptually. There's always more to say about any given game, but my point is these videos have NEVER been about telling you what to think, and I hope they're not JUST about what I think either.
They're supposed to be an exploration of what makes games work, one game at a time. The reason I've historically focused on individual titles is because I believe an identical mechanic might be beneficial in one, but detrimental in another, even if those two games seem similar on a surface level. No matter how popular certain trends might be, there's always an opportunity for a phenomenal game to come along which flouts convention, [???] I'm not sure an exceptional game has ever been made JUST by following a blueprint.
Preconceptions about "good game design" or "bad game design" are just shortcuts which happen to arrive at the correct answer more often than not.
This is why a good test requires you to write down your process along with the answer, because you can't be sure you'll get the next one right unless you know how to derive the solution. Leveling up your Intelligence is good, but make sure to point some points in Wisdom as well.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)16:04:38
No.
96
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#95">>>95</a></span>
3.4 - One Purpose of Abstraction [10:05]
The Witness can be enjoyed solely for its cornucopia of puzzles, but there is a thematic layer to be uncovered. Those familiar with the concept of "mindfulness" may make a connection between the audio-visual logs and the second layer of puzzles, as a way of understanding one of this game's major themes: Basically, the present moment, with all its sensory experience, can be obscured by a distracted mind, in much the same way those other puzzles remain hidden, until you take the time to simply observe. More specifically, one might say the different types of puzzles show how the practical and transcendental can co-exist. Maybe you have a different interpretation, but just for the sake of argument, imagine I'm right, and that this is what Jonathan Blow was thinking about as he constructed the island. Why is that worthwhile? And no, this isn't some shot at The Witness; I mean why bother conveying an idea this way at all?
It was seven years between the release of Braid and The Witness, during which time I assume Jonathan worked pretty hard. Multiple people were involved in its construction; it required a lot of specialized knowledge to create, and yet IF I'm right, I've been able to tell you the core idea in under a minute. Of course I can't recapture all of the nuances, but it IS possible to communicate in a more direct, more efficient way. Like it or not, at least SOME of the value in art comes NOT just from the particular way it explores its ideas, but also the way it OBSCURES them.
Don't take MY word for it though; here's some writing advice from the Robot Devil:<span class="post-quote">
>Your lyrics lack subtlety! You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel ANGRY!</span>
One actually CAN have one's characters announce how they feel, and not just for the sake of comedy - Thought Bubbles are a common device in comics. But, one's story will be expected to make this up some other way, like visual symbolism. Every medium has its own versions of this problem, but why do we WANT this layer of abstraction? Is it the knowledge of being in an exclusive club of people who "get it"? Is it the implied respect a creator has for an audience they're willing to challenge? Is it just masturbatory? Maybe it's all of the above and more.
My theory is that we need a certain level of difficulty between us and the actual substance of the experience simply to keep us mentally engaged. When we're not clicking cookies, we're comparatively smart creatures, so unless our faculties are being taxed, our minds are more likely to wander away from whatever the creator was attempting to express.
HEY! PAY ATTENTION!
When you think about it this way, all that high-brow symbolism, the "show, don't tell" approach, exists for a surprisingly LOW-brow reason. I suppose the game equivalent of Fry's dialogue might be a simple text-based tutorial which spoils the mechanics of its game, something The Witness sought to rectify.
You can't just announce how your game works! That makes me feel bored!</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)16:06:15
No.
97
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#96">>>96</a></span>
3.5 - An Esoteric Text on Criticism [12:45]
A game's quality can be assessed from any angle, but hopefully we can all agree that it would be misguided to review Sekiro as though it were a puzzle game. That notion is absurd, because EVERY game is bad in an endless number of things and ONLY good in the few ways it was crafted to be. Sekiro is a terrible racing game, it has no turn-based strategy, and it's a lackluster platformer. Rather than critiquing it for failing in those areas, we're better off examining it based on what it does WELL. That might sound too lenient, but we can invoke similar games as a guideline for what level of quality can be expected.
When I first started reviewing games, I tried to imagine what the developers were going for and judge it based on those merits. This isn't the right reasoning, but it WAS close to being the right approach. In order to begin critiquing something, what you need more than anything else is a reference point. Imagine you spent your entire life blind, up until this very instant. If I locked you in a room with Sekiro the moment you gained vision, you'd be able to play it, but would you be able to give an adequate review? Nobody could stop you from relaying your subjective experience, and it might even be interesting to hear such a unique perspective, but it probably wouldn't provide a useful assessment for those of us with decades of experience to pull from. In all likelihood, you'd be far more impressed by the graphics than anyone else, which would be totally justifiable from your perspective, but not useful information.
There could be all kinds of things you don't know about games, like the fact that guards could follow snowy footstep as early as the PS1, or that some titles dropped the pretense of being anything BUT a boss rush. Comparisons like this can be helpful because every game is ultimately competing against every OTHER game for a player's time. When I would imagine what the developers were going for, what I was really doing was drawing on a lifetime of knowledge to arrive at the most charitable interpretation of a game. Doesn't always sound that way, given how pedantic I can be at times, but if I can find fault with Devil Daggers or Obra Dinn, then NOTHING is going to emerge unscathed.
My point is: in order to know what a game is good at, you have to know what games are capable of. You need a baseline, and the more you play, the more accurate your baseline becomes. I would even say that playing games alone isn't enough. After all, it seems foolish to review a visual novel without ever having read a book. If one were to ask me, I'd say there's a lot more to a good critic than just consuming a bunch of media, but it's a necessary part of the equation.
Perhaps this theory sound flawed, or as though it could be just be one of many approaches to criticism. For example, you might be thinking it's not my place to decide what a game is good at. There's definitely gaps in my knowledge, and we're all capable of making mistakes. Maybe it really IS less than ideal; maybe there IS a more detached way of reviewing everything.
But I'm going to assert that such an assessment is beyond the grasp of human beings. In order to refute that claim, you have to come up with an alternative explanation for why nobody has reviewed Sekiro as a puzzle game. The real answer is obvious: because it's not a good puzzle game. Everybody knows that already, so instead we focus on the aspects we think are ACTUALLY noteworthy instead, which can vary from person to person depending on their experience.
Unless you're willing to go through an infinite list of comparisons to every other game and genre in existence, these implicit judgments happen in every review, because something ALWAYS gets left out. What gets omitted, or focused on, tells you as much about the critic as it does about the game.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)16:07:58
No.
98
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#97">>>97</a></span>
3.6 - Many Years Later [15:57]<span class="post-quote">
>[Clair de Lune starts]</span>
Gaming criticism is beginning to face an insurmountable problem: a person born in 2020 stands no chance at being able to play ALL of the titles we currently consider "classics" by the time they're old enough to become a critc.
We could go as far back as "Spacewar!" for a thorough understanding of gaming history, but even starting with "Space Invaders", you're looking at over 40 years of releases. By comparison, film critcs have it easy; they have a longer history to explore, but even the 3-hour run-time of Amadeus is short compared to an average game. Not to mention that a film is the same every time, whereas part of fully experiencing a game is seeing how it might diverge on subsequent playthroughs.
Thanks to an abundance of lengthy RPGs - and a profileration of RPG mechanics into non-RPGs, the average completion time across single-player releases maybe stretches past the 20-hour mark. Right now, an average working week in a developed country is about 40 to 50 hours; that's enough time to watch roughly 20 movies if you set your mind to it, or alternatively, you could get less than halfway through an RPG, and keep in mind: that's just a single playthrough.
This job is time-consuming, especially if you want to do it WELL.
As of now: I have over 100 hours in Dustforce, with a couple of levels left unfinished; I spent months producing 3-hour commentaries to Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe, while learning new things about them right away to the end; it took me over 200 hours to play Breath of the Wild enough to do a review, and the Legend of Zelda series has nearly 20 mainline installments by now.<span class="post-quote">
>Younger MatthewMatosis: "There's a lot of elements common to most of the series like Heart Containers, Sword play, Dungeons, and Mini-games. Even though these can cause the series to feel a little same-y, especially considering how many installments there are, the Zelda games are not afraid of change."</span>
Even though I've done almost nothing but play games since I could hold a controller, I've had a lot of difficulty keeping up. I'm still not as familiar with shoot-em-ups, fighting games, or CRPGs as I'd ideally like to be, but I think I arrived at a time when it was possible to dig into stuff from before my birth while still staying abreast of new releases.
If one were to ask me, it all really begins with the so-called "golden age of arcade games". Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Defender, Q-Bert, Frogger, Donkey Kong, and so on. It might seem frivolous to play all of these games as research, but I can name much more obscure ones which have directly influenced - or at least suspiciously similar to - later releases.
Many of us have at least dabbled with Classical music on a rainy afternoon, so one might be familiar with names such as Mozart, Chopin, and Satie. To us, this is all "classical music", but actually, none of those men were even alive at the same time.
<div class="post-image-holder"><span class="post-image-type">PNG</span><img alt="mozart_chopin_satie.png" class="post-image" data-image-hash="22938f95801c7171e4850767bac15f8348aab63c9dfc0a932e96db7f4b53d7fa" data-media-id="520" data-media-supertype="IMAGE" data-media-type="image/png" data-url-src-full="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_7fa/22938f95801c7171e4850767bac15f8348aab63c9dfc0a932e96db7f4b53d7fa.png" url-src-thumb="https://media.jovian-embers.net/up_7fa/t_22938f95801c7171e4850767bac15f8348aab63c9dfc0a932e96db7f4b53d7fa.png" /></div>
This is like putting Shigeru Miyamoto in the same category as a person who won't even be born for another hundred years.
Thankfully, knowledge of history can be crowd-sourced to all of humanity, but even this collective memory has its limits. Over time, the past gets more and more "compressed" until ONLY the most important points remain. You can think of every "classic" as a peak on a mountain; the tide keeps rising, drowning out all the lower peaks. As the water gets higher, the average distance between peaks just keeps getting wider. To the casual music listener, most of Mozart's contemporaries - like Sallieri, have drowned, and some day, he might too. Of course, Mozart's creativity lives on in all the things that were inspired by him, and even if the man himself is forgotten some day, his influence on history will remain immeasurable.
Still, I feel privileged to have lived in a time when a single person COULD have comprehensive experience with the entire medium of games. Some genuinely amazing titles like "Alien Soldier" are already struggling to stay afloat in the collective consciousness. Give it a hundred years, and even dedicated critics probably won't have time to explore the Mega Drive's library for themselves. Keep in mind, new Mega Drive games are STILL being released, and the rate of total releases for all platforms has increased over time. There WILL come a day when some prominent critic won't even know what a Mega Drive was. In that future, they'll have to rely on "retro-specialists" to highlight the best games available for each old platform. This necessitates a certain level of co-operation and trust; you have to place your faith in those specialists to do their job well.
If you happen to be listening to this from the world of tomorrow, then you might pity me for the games I never got a chance to play, but there WAS an advantage to living NOW. I've completed a comparitively large percentage of the total games ever released. Given the amount of shovelware, that number might not even crack 1 percent, but it's relatively high; higher than it ever will be for subsequent generations. There's something reassuring about having such a self-contained baseline.
If games have taught me anything, it's that the good guys have a way of winning in the end, but it doesn't happen without struggle. Highlighting the TRULY outstanding titles of today is a necessity to avoid stagnation, because EVERYTHING stands on the shoulders of what came before. If we can all help the cream rise to the top, then we'll all collectively benefit from better games in the long term too.<span class="post-quote">
>[Clair de Lune finishes]</span></section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)16:09:31
No.
99
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#98">>>98</a></span>
3.7 - Unrelated [21:04]
Good news, everyone! I have a convoluted and dated metaphor to explain!
Games are like pennies in the "take a penny, leave a penny" tray. Some developers leave a cent behind, whereas others are just grabbing whatever they can. Growing up on restrictive JRPGs like Final Fantasy 7, I had initially assumed that the "role-play" in RPG meant that players had to take on the role of a fixed character like Cloud, who, despite having dialogue options from time to time, clearly had his own backstory and personality to some degree. In other words, my goal was to think like Cloud. It seems stupid now, but in my defense I was only a kid at the time.
Often, these kinds of choices are surface-level, only having the bare minimum of acknowledgement before resuming the prescribed route every player will take. Western RPGs were much better in this regards. They might be the first games to leave a penny instead of taking one, but my experience with them was more limited and even so, they could sometimes be guilty of the same things.
One overlooked aspect of the Souls series is its commitment to a single save file, which means that a player's action - or even inaction - can lead to dire, permanent consequences. I'd be lying if I said I understood that from the moment I began playing Demon Souls, but it did manage to pull me in and make me take it more seriously than usual thanks to its grounded tone and punishing checkpoints.
Over time, I came to understand that my actions really were affecting the world to some degree, because rescued NPCs would appear in the Nexus. Having that experience behind me, when Dark Souls rolled around, you better believe I took every choice seriously. It's RPGs like Fallout, or maybe even adventure games like Zork, which deserve credit for pioneering this approach to choice and consequence. That lineage continues through spiritual successors, but nowadays these ideas might be best represented by games like Undertale or OneShot. Wherever it happens, we all know that narrative divergences based on a player's actions can be engaging, but my penny analogy isn't really about any SINGLE game.
I'm saying that these developers left a penny, because their games have a positive effect on the entire medium. Without prior knowledge, it's impossible to know whether or not a game will honor decisions before playing it. Once you know that a thoughtless response to dialogue really CAN lead to drastic consequences, you're more likely to be cautious next time, even if you're playing an entirely different game. In other words, anyone who plays a game with choice and consequence ironically has NO choice but to assume their decisions WILL matter in the next game they play, even if those two games are unrelated. Other media have a similar duality with good and bad endings. If every film had a happy ending, then there'd be no stakes. We need the downers, not just to explore it outside of life, but also to make the happy endings more meaningful.
Likewise, games which present the ILLUSION of choice and consequence are simply taking pennies. They're riding on the coattails of others, because if those other developers didn't go to those extra lengths, then everyone would see through the illusion. We mainly play along, because we've been conditioned by those games which punish or reward certain choices, and in so doing, they leave a penny for another game to take.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)16:11:18
No.
100
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#99">>>99</a></span>
3.8 - Seven Years Earlier [24:04]<span class="post-quote">
>Younger MatthewMatosis: "Hello, ladies and gentlemen! This is the second in a series of five reviews that I'm doing on the Legend of Zelda. If you haven't watched any of these videos before, then I'd recommend starting with my Ocarina of Time video instead. In this video, I'll be talking about Majora's Mask in depth, so spoilers for the entire game will follow."</span>
They say every cell in your body is replaced over the course of seven years. Seems to be an exaggeration, but it's a good excuse to praise my own Majora's Mask review, since it was practically done by a different person. As far as I'm concerned, the most salient point I've made in the "God of War" [the 4th one with Atreus] case study was that: "the amount of effort put into something doesn't necessarily determine its quality". There must be some kind of relationship between the two, and I certainly labor under the assumption that there is, but occasionally, you just strike it lucky or strike out.
You would not believe the amount of effort I put into my "Antichamber" review, considering how forgettable it is. At the time I made this video, it had by far the most work put into it per minute of any video up to that point, but the end result is boring. In a way, that was valuable, because I resolved never to make a video that dull again, and to this day, I think I've lived up to that ideal. If I were to make my Majora's Mask review NOW, I'd probably put five times as much effort into it than I did back then, but despite that, the end result holds up pretty well, I think.
There's a nice bit of serendipity here, because Majora's Mask itself was made in a blisteringly fast time-scale compared to other Zelda games, yet it too holds up pretty well. The bit towards the end of my review where I play the "Final Hours" music while discussing the atmosphere and its value as a sequel is something I'd still be happy to have produced today, and probably justifies the video's existence by itself. More importantly for me, this was the moment when I realized my reviews could "reflect" the game they talked about; something I try to sneak in wherever possible. It's not a coincidence that the Sonic Dreams Collection one is overtly funny, or that Noby Noby Boy's intrusion on Death Stranding could be described as "quantum bran" [I got no clue what he said here].
It's a nice challenge to try to "capture" the essence of a game through an analytical format, but it's important not to stray TOO far into that territory, otherwise the analysis becomes a pale imitation of the thing it's discussing. Even the most immaculately crafted exploration of a game's standout element could never substitute for ACTUALLY playing that game. The real value of analysis is just to put vague concepts into words, because words are like a mental hand-hold; once you get a grip of something using language, that grip feels more "secure" somehow. Even so, no matter how much a game might be understood on an intellectual level, there remains an ineffable qualia provided by interactivity, which CAN'T be experienced second-hand. Don't fool yourself into thinking otherwise.
Anyway, the delusion that more work leads to a better product can be so strong, I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of the Majora's Mask team refuse to believe it's actually as good as fans say. Even if they feel that way, they'll probably never admit as much, which is a valid course of action. As you might imagine, I've been doing this job long enough that I'm not entirely happy with some of the things I made in the past, but as long as I don't say what I don't like about them, then your perception won't be tainted by that knowledge. This is just baseless speculation, but maybe with an extra year of development, all those Ocarina of Time NPCs would've been replaced by fresh character models. It's not hard to imagine them second-guessing that decision if given more time to think about it, but from my perspective, that would be a tragedy. Seeing those familiar faces in a different situation only ADDS to the unsettling atmosphere.
Similarly, maybe you like something about an older video of mine that I don't; maybe you think I lost my way somewhere. Given the sheer number of people I've attracted over the years, there must be at least one former fan who no longer cares enough to even watch this video. I would tell them there's no hard feelings, but they'll never hear this anyway. No matter which direction you go, you lose some people along the way. Trying to avoid that just leads to stagnation, which eventually has the same result [i.e. you lose people]. The way I see it, if there's no hope of holding on to everyone, then there's no point worrying about it. That's one reason why I like the Zelda series so much; because even though some installments resonate more or less with me, they always seem willing to alienate a portion of the audience in pursuit of something better. Speaking from experience, I can say this isn't done out of malice. Some people just prefer to challenge themselves. That desire for improvement is part of what draws us to games in the first place.
If you've ever wondered, I don't find criticism to be creatively satisfying, which might explain why I've resorted to a weirder format like this one. That said, regardless of how I feel, criticism IS creative work; It just unfortunately happens to be creative work where the creativity is the LEAST important part. Some clever editing or a well timed joke might help a viewer pay more attention, but it's the observations and explanations that count at the end of the day.
In case you haven't figured it out, this is advice for you aspiring analysts out there. Good analysis doesn't have to be difficult to read or watch, but it WILL sometimes be difficult to make. Steer away from that difficulty too hard, and you'll end up with plenty of style, but no substance.</section>
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2025-11-24(Mon)16:17:12
No.
101
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#100">>>100</a></span>
3.9 - Mega Microvideos: Revelations [29:03]
Here's a dirty secret about creativity: much of it is just seizing on connections you don't really feel responsible for.
You might be wondering why you're watching Futurama right now. Brace yourself for this one because it's gonna blow your mind, unless you're re-watching the video in which case you already know what I'm about to say. Futurama was the inspiration for Microvideos; it had nothing to do with WarioWare in the beginning. Back in 2017, I was watching this "anthology of interest" episode, which is a series of short stories.<span class="post-quote">
>You watched it! You can't un-watch it! Stay tuned for more TALES OF INTEREST!</span>
Not only was WarioWare NOT the inspiration, it wasn't even planned to be in the first collection. Initially, I was going to split them into sets of 5, and WarioWare was about the 8th or 9th one I wrote. In the end, I changed my mind, thinking that a longer run-time would help the "Microvideo" concept shine. If I hadn't made that decision, then this whole thing wouldn't have kicked off with Wario. Hard to even imagine that now.
That was a little difficult to admit, because it's probably gonna have an effect on how you view all this, but let's break down what actually happened. First of all, it's not a blind coincidence that I wrote a 'Microvideo' about WarioWare of all things. I had wanted to do a recommendation of it for quite a while, but didn't feel there was enough material to write a longer script. At the same time, I also wanted to squeeze in a recommendation AS a Microvideo, because recommending stuff is one of my favorite parts of the job.
WarioWare is obviously the perfect fit, which didn't take me long to figure out. It was only when I decided to go beyond 5 videos at a time that all the pieces fell into place. Now WarioWare was part of the first collection and the question was what the track listing should be. Maybe it should be a really short one that goes in the middle as a sort of rhythm-breaker, or maybe it should be... the very first one. Cut and paste Wario to the top of the script, and suddenly the light bulb moment happens. Voila! Mega Microvideos is born!
Apart from the fact that it all started with Futurama, each step in the chain is logical, and yet in a way, it feels tremendously "lucky". As if that wasn't enough, the Katamari closer wasn't part of the initial plan either. Originally I was gonna close on Zero Time Dilemma, but decided to delay that one as Mega Microvideos 2 was conceptualized.
Katamari happened to be the last one left, partly because I ordered them what I consider to be ascending levels of spoilers.
Most people know how the final levels of a Katamari game play out by now, but I figured if I could preserve it as a surprise for at least one person, it was worth saving until the end.
Again, I realized how appropriate it was to tie everything up into that Katamari observation of combining order and chaos, but the process which took me there seems a little meandering.
If you're not a creatively-minded person, this must sound like a damning condemnation of myself. I must be a woeful hack who just stumbled his way into something good. That is, assuming you think Mega Microvideos is good in the first place; if not, I have to wonder what you're still doing here.
Really though, I'm just exposing something that exists everywhere. If you think less of Mega Microvideos now that I've divulged those secrets, then you should be prepared to think less of everything you've ever consumed.
A similar event must have happened at least once in the making of your favorite game. If I had to bet, I'd say that any creator putting in the time runs up against a situation like this every day, if you define it broadly enough.
We can't control the circumstances around us, or the connections formed in our own minds, so all that's really left is just seizing the good, while letting the bad drift away.
I think the most important skill to making something worthwhile is just recognizing when you actually HAVE something good.
If you know your work is subpar, you're driven to improve it; if you know it's acceptable, you won't throw it away.
Repeat that self-reflection process enough times and the other details hardly matter.
You might not end up with what you expected, but at least you end up with something good, maybe something better than you imagined in the first place.
Anyway, I'm thankful for the process which led us here, but before I finish rolling up this Katamari, I want to say what I think is the most important thing you'll ever hear... <span class="post-spoiler">Please remember to Like, Comment, and Subscribe!</span></section>
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2025-11-29(Sat)11:33:34
No.
106
<section><span class="post-quote"><a class="post-backlink" href="#100">>>100</a></span>
Fun fact, "qualia" is the plural form of "quale" (kwah-lee).
On TheFreeDictionary and Merriam-Webster at least.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quale
https://www.thefreedictionary.com/qualia</section>