Yeah, honestly his Reycon headphone ad skits have been the most entertaining content he's put out in recent memory.
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Madman (Arlo) posts AN HOUR and HALF Paper Mario The Origami King review
- Thread starter E_i
- Start date
It's pretty clear to me that one's mileage with TOK is going to vary wildly with how well you take to the ring battle system.
I absolutely loved it as a system and wished the content pushed its possibilities harder. Since the tutorial content in the first world was so dead simple, I took some time to master the battle lab challenges and never, ever used time extensions or hints. And most of my fondest memories of the game revolve around the more inventive variants that come into play with later enemies and bosses, or minigame segments like Shy Guys Finish Last.
You need to enjoy this sort of thing for its own sake to get the most out of TOK, and only a subset of its audience will; not everybody comes into Paper Mario for this. It's no surprise that it's divisive, or that (if this thread is any indication) it's most disliked by people who felt bad at the puzzles or impatient at the obstacles they presented. I happen to love this style of cerebral, quantitative thinking and was directly in the pocket of what this game was trying to achieve. It's so satisfying to click one arrangement after another into place, as in the Speed Rings challenges that train your pattern recognition in no time flat.
Mostly I wish the complexity ramped up faster, but with Nintendo you often need a bit of patience with the parts that are designed to be somebody's first video game. This is the kind of system that could have used a Pit of 100 Trials.
I absolutely loved it as a system and wished the content pushed its possibilities harder. Since the tutorial content in the first world was so dead simple, I took some time to master the battle lab challenges and never, ever used time extensions or hints. And most of my fondest memories of the game revolve around the more inventive variants that come into play with later enemies and bosses, or minigame segments like Shy Guys Finish Last.
You need to enjoy this sort of thing for its own sake to get the most out of TOK, and only a subset of its audience will; not everybody comes into Paper Mario for this. It's no surprise that it's divisive, or that (if this thread is any indication) it's most disliked by people who felt bad at the puzzles or impatient at the obstacles they presented. I happen to love this style of cerebral, quantitative thinking and was directly in the pocket of what this game was trying to achieve. It's so satisfying to click one arrangement after another into place, as in the Speed Rings challenges that train your pattern recognition in no time flat.
Mostly I wish the complexity ramped up faster, but with Nintendo you often need a bit of patience with the parts that are designed to be somebody's first video game. This is the kind of system that could have used a Pit of 100 Trials.
Oooooooooooh boy, era
Cool, I won't express my negative opinion anymore because I don't have to watch it and many people do the same. Thank you for the clarification.
arlo: if they're going to try to make something new, they should go all the way with it and abandon all vestiges of TTYD
era: wow arlo just wants them to make TTYD again
what would a Pit of 100 Trials offer that the Battle Lab doesn't? ammo conservation gameplay with the consumable weapons?
era: wow arlo just wants them to make TTYD again
what would a Pit of 100 Trials offer that the Battle Lab doesn't? ammo conservation gameplay with the consumable weapons?
I think a good comparison point is Caddicarus's recent 90+ minute video on Crash Bandicoot 4. It is a review, and a positive one! But as a Crash superfan, he also does a good (and self-depreciatingly funny) job at outlining why the game is pure agony for fans used to 100% completing Crash games. The criticisms he states toward certain design decisions Toys For Bob made in designing and developing it that turned a a fun 4-5 hours of casual play into a massive 68 hour chore. But he doesn't go on conspiratorial rants or attack the developers for not giving him want he wanted. He got what he wanted. Just far, far too much of it.
toys for bob was pretty invested in making a game that fans of the original 3 crash games would like, and sectioned off its most daring changes (dingodile and cortex) into their own sections of the level without modifying the core Crash gameplay
intelligent systems wanted to make something totally different from the original games, something new and innovative
why would you expect those games to have the same reaction from established fans? they're exact opposites. one is going after established fans, one is trying to attract new ones
Lol pretty much
I think he was spot on with the confetti battles being way more fun than anything else.
It could have been a lot better if those real time arena battles were fleshed out and the game was basically Super Paper Mario 2 and played like that the whole time
Attacking the creators of a work in a critique/review is a big no-no and Arlo goes there over and over and over again. Possibly one of the worst video reviews I have watched. And there's 80 minutes of it!
The Battle Lab never actually matches the complexity of some of the three-step ring arrangements in the final chapters. It also makes a difference that you're not tested against real enemy arrangements that make full use of the hammer/jump distinction or encourage you to think about elemental counters or streaks. Speed Rings is purely geometric (a way of teaching no more and no less than the spatial fundamentals) while the boss rematches are just the same bosses under controlled conditions. You don't need a good understanding of standard enemy patterns for either of these. I loved the Battle Lab, but its benchmarks fall pretty easily and it was one of the easier stops en route to 100%.
The main things you could get out of a large-scale stamina challenge like a Pit of 100 Trials would be (a) a health/replenishment pool that gets steadily worn down (thus incentivizing clean and efficient play), and (b) enemy combination variety and ring complexity that gets up to or even exceeds the standard content. You could even have hard-mode variants of some of the standard bosses, like Bonetail was to Hooktail. The battle system is too good conceptually to be as underused as it is. And item conservation could certainly be a part of this, yes.
This is generally how I feel about Origami King too, as someone who likes the pre-Sticker Star games. The best parts of the game are exclusively in the overworld like the Paper Macho enemies and damaging hazards in general. The ring battles feel like they are there just because Paper Mario used to be centered around RPG battles, and it gets old fast (though its use in boss battles is slightly better).
This game would have been better off being a pure Action-Adventure game, not trying to cling to its past identity.
A video review this long is not some achievement - brevity is actually the achievement. It's why books, films, shows all have editors.
oh, I thought Battle Lab covered all the possible arrangements. that's reason enough on its own, then
you've read books/watched films that were under 1:23:03?
The point isn't to compare the length of this against a book or film. It's pointing out that brevity is the hard part. I don't think this being 80 minutes long does it any favors. For many of the topics, I get his point within the first 45 seconds - he doesn't need to belabor it for the next 5-7 minutes
This goes back to other controversial Nintendo games like Other M or Pokemon Sword & Shield, but a person's game criticism should not be legitimized when they go from critiquing the game to launching attacks at the game's creators. No matter how much a game disappointed you it isnt justification to act like a baby and direct your bile at the people who made them.
Arlo is getting flak here because his bullet points regarding the Origami King lose legitimacy when he throws a rage fit at the developers. His video wouldve been a lot better if he edited that stuff out and was able to direct his feelings more thoughtfully.
Arlo is getting flak here because his bullet points regarding the Origami King lose legitimacy when he throws a rage fit at the developers. His video wouldve been a lot better if he edited that stuff out and was able to direct his feelings more thoughtfully.
User Banned (1 month): Inflammatory false equivalence
ain't there a stickied thread at the very top of this forum that's attacking a developer? a very well justified attack?
Comparing CDPR to IS is a joke and a half. You can't be serious.
I'm very curious what Arlo's immediate thought process was when he read Olly's true motives for the first time.
That is a mega false equivalency, and Arlo's "attacks" aren't even that serious so I don't even understand why the discussion got this far.
...are you ACTUALLY comparing transphobia and bigotry to Nintendo not making a Paper Mario game in your preferred style?
is Arlo calling for everyone to decry IS openly and not buy their games, which is the proportionate response to a company being transphobic and bigoted, or is he calling for the developers to listen to their audience, which is a proportional response to a developer consistently not listening to their audience?
I notice people are saying "just get rid of the battle system and make it an action game," but I suspect that is exactly what Nintendo DOESN'T want to do with Paper Mario. It would just be another Mario platformer variant, and they have 3D Mario and 2D Mario games to work with. It certainly wouldn't be seen as positive as some think, what with all the dialogue and story in the midst.
Super Paper Mario is that action Paper Mario game, and while it did well in sales, I feel it did not get positive reactions enough to move onward, and its unique characters and world appeared to be so off-base that Nintendo has reeled the series back in going forward.
So, they compromised - get more action elements but with less RPG-like battles while still isolating battles from the overworld components. Sticker Star went way too far in one direction, Color Splash fixed it up somewhat, and Origami King decided to innovate over those two battle setups. I do think the "one helper with gimmick element (sticker, paint, origami)" may need some shaking up soon, but they do have the general writing down for the situations they encounter.
Super Paper Mario is that action Paper Mario game, and while it did well in sales, I feel it did not get positive reactions enough to move onward, and its unique characters and world appeared to be so off-base that Nintendo has reeled the series back in going forward.
So, they compromised - get more action elements but with less RPG-like battles while still isolating battles from the overworld components. Sticker Star went way too far in one direction, Color Splash fixed it up somewhat, and Origami King decided to innovate over those two battle setups. I do think the "one helper with gimmick element (sticker, paint, origami)" may need some shaking up soon, but they do have the general writing down for the situations they encounter.
i'm so done caring about hating things. i love this game so far. i would love a rerelease of the first two, that would be good. if they were going to do that, they probably would have done it by now, though. :(
This is ridiculous... Nintendo/Intelligent Systems are not transphobic or causing actual harm to a marginalized group in Paper Mario.
You speak as though there are no established PM fans that had interest in TOK. And also, the Paper Mario devs have continuously done different things with the franchise since Super Paper Mario. They apparently aren't nearly as interested in returning to the format of TTYD as much TTYD superfans that post online rants about the devs because they didn't make TTYD2 this time, either.
Again, that is the difference. Caddicarus posted a movie-length review of a game he does love, but caused him agony to 100%. Arlo posted a movie-length review of a game that, while he states positives, he otherwise holds abject disdain for and points conspiratorial fingers at those whom he believes went out of their way to wrong him and fans like him.
as an established PM fan that had interest in TOK, played it, and enjoyed it in spite of its flaws (it gave my favorite mario character more of a spotlight than any other spinoff has!), it is silly to say that there are 'no' fans that were interested in TOK, but that is an obvious extreme. Crash Bandicoot also had a whole host of games between 3 and 4 (Wrath of Cortex, Twinsanity, the beat 'em ups, his guest appearance in Skylanders) and Crash 4 pointedly ignored all the games (except Wrath of Cortex, which had a couple of nods) in favor of the originals.
do you hate the Mr Plinkett Star Wars reviews, too?
Brevity is important but there are valid reasons to go long form. The overwhelming majority of game media is brief already. If you want that you have lots of options. What a long form video should provide is a deep dive into each aspect of a game that makes you think about the game more critically. If you aren't getting your audience to think things over in detail as you explain things then you should have stuck with a shorter video like everyone else but if you do get them to think then it was worthwhile.
I admit that despite posting in this thread, I haven't actually watched the video despite enjoying some of Arlo's content in the distant past. When you put a gigantic timestamp on something like that, I think you take on a certain responsibility to make a truly insightful argument that earns its length and takes you into original territory. I don't get the impression that this is it.
It didn't take long for me to find the backlash to Sticker Star more exhausting than the game itself, because (like Other M before it) you would just constantly hear the same off-the-shelf talking points pulled out from the same stack of bingo cards and become totally numbed to it with time. That's where I am with Arlo and Paper Mario: he's emblematic of a certain clichéd perspective on the series that I don't bother to give a fair hearing anymore because it's so predictable and thereby boring. I adore TTYD, and it's at the absolute summit of the JRPG form in my books, but I consistently stand to learn nothing from this crowd that claims to hold it just as dear.
It's one of the reasons I still lament the total shift in the landscape from written to video content when it comes to design analysis. Writing is easier to skim for the bits that stand a chance of contributing anything original.
There's a knowing irony in saying this when I know full well how long-winded I can be in my own right, but my principle, whether I succeed or fail in meeting it myself, is that you really have to earn the length. And increasingly I find that I've just been tuning out most of these giant running times the way I did long ago with SpamXplain. You can only fool me so many times with the unfulfilled illusion of rigour.
Unless I'm mistaken, Crash Bandicoot 4 is Toys For Bob's first Crash game. They had no history with developing the rest of the series. That is not the same as IS, who have developed every Paper Mario since the original.
Who?
I watched the video over the course of the last couple of days. I think that as much as Arlo's videos are flavored by his unobscured personal tastes, he also has a pretty solid understanding of game design underneath it. I have not played Origami King so I can't pass any judgment on the game itself, but I found it interesting to hear someone break down their perceived failures of its systems and structures. I think that even if I were to feel differently after playing it that his arguments are well supported. Arlo often complains about things I know I would not complain about, but he also is quite good at putting what he doesn't like into respectable terms whose concepts I can easily contend with.
In this video he mentions also being an aspiring game designer and I wonder if his game will turn out any good. Some reviewers who understand games very well go on to make games I have no interest in, like Tim Rogers, but I think I might be interested in an Arlo game considering the sort of things he prioritizes in his assessment of games he's played.
I think this was a strong video from him and while it could have been shorter it was an easy-going watch/listen.
In this video he mentions also being an aspiring game designer and I wonder if his game will turn out any good. Some reviewers who understand games very well go on to make games I have no interest in, like Tim Rogers, but I think I might be interested in an Arlo game considering the sort of things he prioritizes in his assessment of games he's played.
I think this was a strong video from him and while it could have been shorter it was an easy-going watch/listen.
He doesn't. The most he does is call out names of people from Nintendo/IS who might be responsible for certain things about the game. Nowhere does he insult them in any way. All he's doing is trying to understand the thought process of the developers. Yes, it has led to some unfounded assumptions about the game design process that I don't necessarily agree with, but he's not insulting anyone.
The PM community is inclined to pick apart those Tanabe interviews and other press from Nintendo. This isn't always a bad thing, but I've seen it often develop into some toxic territory. On one hand I understand the frustration felt with the developers seemingly tone deaf statements. Though really all you can say is that IS decided to go in a different direction with the series. They have done this for 4 out of the 6 entries.
I think you miss the point. There's a difference between you not wanting to watch an hour long review and not understanding why anyone would ever make one or want to watch one. I was trying to explain to you that these types of long form video reviews have their audience and purpose.
Oh, so it's just people who are making up reasons to justify calling him a manchild?
Because there isn't any, you're just witnessing how toxic the fanbase for this game is.
His critiques of the game design are fair and well thought out but because he's down on it that makes him a man child who can't let go of TTYD, even though he stresses that he would be happy for the series to move on and be its own thing.
Sure, I only skipped through the videideo at 1:15:00 he goes on a rant about how the Devs were too lazy to figure out how to make the game mechanics work and calls it disturbing how lazy the Devs are.
I didn't even bother with the whole video because Arlo but I actually watched at that point out of curiosity and good God, the guy is just not bitter, he's borderline offensive and sorta contradicts himself ("it has good content but is not the content that I like therefore is for kids and has no effort put on it").
Yes, because TOK fans were the ones constantly going into TTYD threads bashing the game (and even if some of them did, at least they actually played TTYD).
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I love how any time someone expresses they like origami king, they're automatically shills who are either trolling or never played the first two.
Meanwhile heaven fucking forbid you critique the first two, or point out how the series has been experimental for the vast majority of its history.
That's not getting into the flaws of the review himself. Or the hypocrisy of him making a video about toxic paper mario discussion, then turning around and knowingly contributing by doing this friggin thing. Bobby just being a bob-omb ruined him? Yeah o fucking k. Normal battles no strategizing yet boss battles have too much trial and error, even though they tell you what to do even without getting the letters. Everything being paper and not being explained is stupid? And ttyd gets a pass for the weird stage and audience thing because...?
Meanwhile heaven fucking forbid you critique the first two, or point out how the series has been experimental for the vast majority of its history.
That's not getting into the flaws of the review himself. Or the hypocrisy of him making a video about toxic paper mario discussion, then turning around and knowingly contributing by doing this friggin thing. Bobby just being a bob-omb ruined him? Yeah o fucking k. Normal battles no strategizing yet boss battles have too much trial and error, even though they tell you what to do even without getting the letters. Everything being paper and not being explained is stupid? And ttyd gets a pass for the weird stage and audience thing because...?
Around the 1 hour and 7 minute mark in, he starts talking about the issues with the game coming down to the ego of a person / people at Nintendo. While he doesn't make a direct claim on who it is (he tosses out Miyamoto, Tanabe, and Risa Tabata as possible suspects) this belief of his runs for the rest of the video. He seems to believe this person is within a position of power at the company that the rest of the development team has to fall in line with their whims.
The points about unchecked egos at Nintendo eventually coalesce to him using The Origami King as the poster child for everything wrong with Nintendo (Star Fox Zero being his previous go-to) in that creators would rather get what they want than solve problems, if solving said problems made Origami King closer to an RPG in this case.
That take is particularly what I find distasteful. Its like lazy devs rhetoric but instead of the creators not trying at all, they instead are too prideful that they would rather knowingly make a game worse as long as it stuck to their design ethos.
there's a part he, verbatim, says
"they didn't wanna think too hard about how to make the game great because in the end that wasn't as important as catering to the all mighty ego"
not sure you folks have watched the video
I have watched the entire video, it's an hour and a half long, so excuse me for not remembering every single thing in there. Gartooth and HMS_Pinafore were very helpful in telling me what the problem was.
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You're right, and that's the type of conspiratorial thinking I don't agree with and wish he'd drop it. I just didn't see it as something to warrant the reaction in this thread. I also didn't remember every single thing he said, so thanks for pointing those out.
I'd 100% prefer to have a new gameplay style rather than these close to RPG attempts, and I say that as someone who was really surprised with how much I enjoyed Origami King. I liked the normal combat a little bit but I'd really prefer something actually new.