I didn't even realize I was heading downhill until after reaching |END.Sometimes I'll just rewatch old episodes of The Final Bosman kinda out of nowhere. Kyle's visual representation of MGSV's story will always be one of my favorite things.
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Easy Allies |OT| The New Era
- Thread starter Auctopus
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GOTY hot takes:
I think Zelda is clearly the best game of the year. I think the "dungeons are weak" argument is not a good one, Mario also "has bad dungeons" (lol), is it just people's expectations of a Zelda game that makes BOTW lesser for its refusal to obey convention? And if so, why do your expectations matter for evaluating a quality of a game?
Some other arguments against BOTW I place more value in -- weapon durability is a tough thing to deal with (I personally think it works well), lack of theming in shrines is disappointing in retrospect, and any scene involving voice acting is kinda bad. But it's still an 11/10, so, GOTY
Odyssey I think is fatally flawed. Moons being super easy to find is a double edged sword. It works brilliantly up to the credits, acting as a hybrid of health recovery, save point, and progress. But it's not a dopamine hit once you hit postgame -- at least not for me -- moons became korok seeds. I usually go for 100% in Mario games, not this time. Burned out pretty quick looking for fun new levels and instead finding another damn moon under a park bench. Maybe in a few years.
Persona 5 I still haven't played (Atlus...), but I have made a point to watch a lot of streams (I will buy it used, Atlus). I think it has a chance to win as a compromise choice. All it takes is a coalition!
I think nothing else has a chance in hell
I think Zelda is clearly the best game of the year. I think the "dungeons are weak" argument is not a good one, Mario also "has bad dungeons" (lol), is it just people's expectations of a Zelda game that makes BOTW lesser for its refusal to obey convention? And if so, why do your expectations matter for evaluating a quality of a game?
Some other arguments against BOTW I place more value in -- weapon durability is a tough thing to deal with (I personally think it works well), lack of theming in shrines is disappointing in retrospect, and any scene involving voice acting is kinda bad. But it's still an 11/10, so, GOTY
Odyssey I think is fatally flawed. Moons being super easy to find is a double edged sword. It works brilliantly up to the credits, acting as a hybrid of health recovery, save point, and progress. But it's not a dopamine hit once you hit postgame -- at least not for me -- moons became korok seeds. I usually go for 100% in Mario games, not this time. Burned out pretty quick looking for fun new levels and instead finding another damn moon under a park bench. Maybe in a few years.
Persona 5 I still haven't played (Atlus...), but I have made a point to watch a lot of streams (I will buy it used, Atlus). I think it has a chance to win as a compromise choice. All it takes is a coalition!
I think nothing else has a chance in hell
Persona 5 legitimately being in the running is pretty wild to me. Really curious how that will play out. Think it would be safe to say that a lot of the gratification in P5 comes from an intangible emotional investment in its characters and story, and that's something that Zelda and Mario really don't have going for them. Not that it singlehandedly puts Persona over the top or anything, but it could be a unique angle of attack...though maybe difficult to articulate convincingly.
ya. I've been saying that for months.
I do think it's a three way race, and Mario and Persona will be close... but Zelda is going to be in every allies top 3, and get the most #1 votes. there's no way it doesn't come out on top.
The irony of it all that 2017 was a golden year of gaming in general.
Going into last years GOTY I didn't expect The Last Guardian so I dunno I'm open to being surprised this year but yeah I'm expecting Zelda. I think Persona will end up higher than Mario though. If anything is gonna upset Zelda I think it will be Persona. Huber will push HARD.
It's pretty funny to think back to the start of 2017, shit was crazy. There was Resident Evil 7, Yakuza 0, Nioh, Gravity Rush 2, Kingdom Hearts 2.8, Tales of Berseria, For Honor, Horizon Zero Dawn and other smaller stuff just in the first 2 months. It was crazy.
2018 start is way more laid back. There are a few big ones like Monster Hunter World, Dragon Ball Fighterz, Shadow of the Colossus... but overall it's a much slower start. And I'm kinda glad, there is so much stuff from last year to catch up.
And of course easier for the allies to focus on Weekly Hunts!
2018 start is way more laid back. There are a few big ones like Monster Hunter World, Dragon Ball Fighterz, Shadow of the Colossus... but overall it's a much slower start. And I'm kinda glad, there is so much stuff from last year to catch up.
And of course easier for the allies to focus on Weekly Hunts!
I wasn't sure what would or should have won 2016 but when TLG came up, I realized what the answer was.
Well, in regards of game of my interest, it has only been a 11 days since 2018 started and NT, MHW, and DBFZ alone are going to blow up gaming.
February looks slower with Colossus and Dynasty Warriors(?) but then again, knowing the time sink fighters and a Monster Hunter can be, I don't think this year is a cooldown so far.
I think, RE7 being a soft reboot, Nioh being unproven despite having 3 demos, Gravity Rush not being that popular , Horizon as new IP, a port of a collection of past games, Tales not necessary the hottest role in the game, For Honor being a new IP despite it once upon a time was the unnoficial game of EZA...I can see the quantity of some uncertain and not-as-valued IPs vs the pedigree the first 4 big games of this year can make things feel like the frenzy of highly anticipated not going away (Square and Final Fantasy + fanbase of the fighting spin-off, MONHUN IN HD AND HAS MODERN ONLINE INFRASTRUCTURE, ARCS SYSTEM X DBZ, SHADOW OF THE FUCKING COLOSSUS).
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Yup, looks like Huber is in for the next Monster Hunter World Xrd Beta stream.
I feel like he'll go with the switch-axe.
I feel like he'll go with the switch-axe.
Yeah, I can think of 3 that year I would take over Last Guardian.
i hope Damiani brings it to the table. not to win of course, but at least to acknowledge it. it got buried under the other games everywhere
It was the game that started 2017. Full circle should take effect.
I think even with no expectations around Zelda the dungeons are still weak. If you just played one of them it would be a really awesome moment in the game, but with all 4 they're quite repetitive (as are some other elements of the game). Not to mention the sequences leading up to the dungeons tend to be fairly weak. I think it would be better if the game attempted open world dungeons of sorts, where solving puzzles in a regions slowly reveals a higher density of architecture that you eventually work your way through - just one idea to throw out there, to say there are alternatives to what they did.
I actually think weapon degradation is a bad criticism though. That's just people refusing to play the game on its own terms, and insisting it must be like other games where they get attached to specific weapons. BotW is about freedom and wandering in more ways than one, so I love that moving between weapons plays into that.
Voice acting was awful, and even if it was well done would have felt bad in this game. But hey, at least I feel vindicated in saying Zelda never should have had voice acting. :P
Actually, you could say the english dub was awful, arguably. LatAm spanish and others were really high quality and generally well received.
BOTW is pretty handily my GOTY (2nd being Opus Magnum, then Nier, fwiw), but I can agree with almost everything here. The main issue I had with the dungeons is that they were the only moments in the game that really stuck to a formula, and that predictability undermines a lot of the mystery that shrouds the rest of the game. Like, even when you walk up to your 70th shrine, you're asking yourself "what could be inside this one?" Whereas by dungeon 2, you sorta know that you're going to attack the beast from the outside, infiltrate, and find your way to the 5 terminals. I think they are well-designed puzzles, but the dungeons should feel like landmark climaxes in a game where you spend hours and hours building up to them.
I'm hoping they can integrate the sorta 'journeyman adventuring' of other games in the series with BOTW's incredible sense of 'being lost in a world.' but with all that being said, BOTW's approach to freedom was just so refreshing and necessary for me this year that I still think it's one of gaming's greats, even with very obvious flaws
Oh it's been forgotten...unfortunately. Only a few of us will go to the grave knowing how good that game is.
Even without the context of the rich history of the series, having 4, nearly identical looking dungeons, with similar bosses and the same formula is just bland design, and should rightfully be knocked each time.
There are no dungeons in BOTW in my opinion. There are 125 shrines (pre DLC), 4 of which are beasts and one of which is Hyrule's Castle. I'd knock the game for lacking traditional dungeons only because I would have liked more "special" environments tied to the already marvellously-well designed regions, but not because I missed the concept of dungeons altogether. It's not a perfect game and there's plenty I'm peeved about but the dungeons are at the bottom of that list. Hell, cooking being a pain in the butt is higher up that list.
As for the bosses, I don't know, I liked them as they indeed helped set apart the divine beasts from the regular shrines. It's weird to blame the beasts for their lack of distinction but then also blame what makes them distinctive ^^
That's for instance precisely the approach I don't get. 120 shrines, all done with the same design philosophy and general formula: is that bland as well? I thought it worked very well for what it tried to achieve, acting as challenge rooms in an overworld that's the actual cohesive dungeon, and delivering rewards for solving puzzles which sure gets a bit less valuable by the end of the game but damn me if I wasn't thrilled to get a bundle of arrows and a spirit orb for the first half of the game at least.
As for the bosses, I don't know, I liked them as they indeed helped set apart the divine beasts from the regular shrines. It's weird to blame the beasts for their lack of distinction but then also blame what makes them distinctive ^^
I still have yet to see a convincing argument on major faults with BOTW. Sometimes it feels like those attacking BOTW are just grasping at straws, when all they need to say is the game is not for them.
If you don't like the dungeons, fine, but that's what... maybe 4 hours all together?? Of a 100+ hour game. Not a big deal, especially when the games focus is on exploration. If you don't like exploring open worlds, then yeah, BOTW just might not before you. Which sucks for you because it's one of the best games of the decade.
Having what would have been traditional dungeons split into 120 mini dungeons you can do whenever, most of which are great, keeps the focus on adventuring. I'd hate to have to leave the wild to spend 3 hours finding monkeys in a traditional Zelda style Forest Dungeon. That would feel weird in a game like this and kill the pacing.
That said, I will agree it would be nice if some of the shrines had different environmental themes, and that's something I'd expect to see in the sequel.
If you don't like the dungeons, fine, but that's what... maybe 4 hours all together?? Of a 100+ hour game. Not a big deal, especially when the games focus is on exploration. If you don't like exploring open worlds, then yeah, BOTW just might not before you. Which sucks for you because it's one of the best games of the decade.
Having what would have been traditional dungeons split into 120 mini dungeons you can do whenever, most of which are great, keeps the focus on adventuring. I'd hate to have to leave the wild to spend 3 hours finding monkeys in a traditional Zelda style Forest Dungeon. That would feel weird in a game like this and kill the pacing.
That said, I will agree it would be nice if some of the shrines had different environmental themes, and that's something I'd expect to see in the sequel.
Actually the shrines were pretty bland. Yeah puzzles were great but they all looked the same.
And the issue was not that the dungeons were different from the shrines it was that the dungeons themselves did little to differentiate themselves from each other except a dofferent way to rotate the beast. The bosses were the exact same. Where is twinrova and dodongo or other memorable bosses (I don't want those per se,just that I do not remember anything distinctive about the 4 aspects of Ganon we fought). The beasts were some of the laziest parts of the game in design philosophy .
You literally could randomize every single beast and shrine and you would not know the difference because they took zero design cues from the most beautiful open world game in existence.
And the issue was not that the dungeons were different from the shrines it was that the dungeons themselves did little to differentiate themselves from each other except a dofferent way to rotate the beast. The bosses were the exact same. Where is twinrova and dodongo or other memorable bosses (I don't want those per se,just that I do not remember anything distinctive about the 4 aspects of Ganon we fought). The beasts were some of the laziest parts of the game in design philosophy .
You literally could randomize every single beast and shrine and you would not know the difference because they took zero design cues from the most beautiful open world game in existence.
So, I think this is all fair, but I also think the amplitude of the critique ("I think the Devine beasts are not as good as everything else", if I may attempt to paraphrase) is different from how a lot of people seem to want to use it -- which is as a hammer to prove that the game sux, other 3D zeldas were better, etc. It seems reasonable to say that the Beasts, compared to the rest of the game, are at the very least not good enough (relatively) to merit special treatment.
I found the Beasts interesting -- their usage of the 3D rotation puzzles is a complement to how the rest of the game asks you to visualize the world, in particular while exploring. It's a mechanic the shrines generally stay away from (the one with the rotating wheels being the exception), too, which I think helps.
I'd give the Castle a bit more credit, and say BotW has not 0 but 1 dungeon (it even has a miniboss and an item!), but I agree with most of your post here. I really want them to explore the concept of in-world special areas (e.g. typhlo, eventide, forgotten temple) further in future games. *That* was clearly BotW at its best, IMO.
I guess my summary would be that it's by no means a perfect game, but it's better than many other perfect games by the scope of its ambition.
Some do get bland yes, but really only the combat dungeons, but I mean, of course having that many shrines, with the same cutscenes going in and leaving them and the same room design has the tendency to get bland for some players. I don't really understand what's distinctive about the divine beasts bosses though, they generally have the same design as well. They're fun, albeit a bit easy to fight, but looking the same really hurts their memorability.
Yeah I can understand that people got bored of the concept and presentation if they were looking at completing all the shrines, but to quote Bosman, you're not actively meant to IMO. I think our tendancy to want to do [Gary Oldman "everyone" gif but actually "everything"] is a bit detrimental to open world games and BOTW is no exception.
As for the bosses, sure. I didn't realise they were too similar because to me the fact that they behaved differently was enough, but it's true that I couldn't tell which is which and I would have loved a bit more lore, like fleshed out and corrupted rivals to each champions rather than mere ganon-lites.
Still, none of that bothered me. I don't hold Zelda dungeons in such esteem that I want them to perdure no matter what. What we got and that synergy between the overworld exploration and those little challenge rooms and challenge "beasts" works for me.
As for the bosses, sure. I didn't realise they were too similar because to me the fact that they behaved differently was enough, but it's true that I couldn't tell which is which and I would have loved a bit more lore, like fleshed out and corrupted rivals to each champions rather than mere ganon-lites.
Still, none of that bothered me. I don't hold Zelda dungeons in such esteem that I want them to perdure no matter what. What we got and that synergy between the overworld exploration and those little challenge rooms and challenge "beasts" works for me.
I feel like that was maybe one of the first podcasts they did as Easy Allies for some reason, I think Jones was talking about a mobile game maybe? Don't know which episode or which game it was specifically though, sorry, just a feeling I have.
I definitely remember listening to the podcast where he said that though, because I remember laughing at that line in particular haha.
I definitely remember listening to the podcast where he said that though, because I remember laughing at that line in particular haha.
I feel like the first time we heard "I'm enjoying these microtransactions" at the end of the podcast was the episode (or maybe two) after Jones said it.
I'm excited that the next ez anime epsiode will Be Devilman Crybaby. I finished it last Sunday and I'm still thinking about it. Such a great show. Can't wait for Brad and Ben's take on the show
Is there any word yet on a rough time frame for the return of Tabletop Escapades? Wondering if there has been anything and I just missed it.
As for BOTW I really enjoy the game so far (owned it since release but am only 20ish hours in), it's beautiful and the freedoms it offers are fantastic. That said it's definitely not my pick for GOTY. It gives me an Assassin's Creed-esque vibe of go to the tower, climb the tower, look for collectibles (the shrines in this case) and then rinse repeat over and over. I've only done 2 of the real dungeons so far, so maybe that would change later on, but it just isn't grabbing me. I get so burned out on just finding/completing mini dungeons over and over - there are just way too many shrines. I can see why its winning so much - just not my pick. I'd probably have it around #5-6.
As for BOTW I really enjoy the game so far (owned it since release but am only 20ish hours in), it's beautiful and the freedoms it offers are fantastic. That said it's definitely not my pick for GOTY. It gives me an Assassin's Creed-esque vibe of go to the tower, climb the tower, look for collectibles (the shrines in this case) and then rinse repeat over and over. I've only done 2 of the real dungeons so far, so maybe that would change later on, but it just isn't grabbing me. I get so burned out on just finding/completing mini dungeons over and over - there are just way too many shrines. I can see why its winning so much - just not my pick. I'd probably have it around #5-6.
The biggest disconnect of 2017 for me has to be Doki Doki Literature Club. I see so many people raving about it, but I thought it was absolutely terrible. Sure, it has some interesting ideas, but nothing that hasn't been done before with much better execution. And then there's an even bigger disconnect when I see people saying it handles the subject matters well... I could not disagree more.
Play what you want to play*
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* and if people like things you don't like quietly judge them
Oh no that's just what I do lol
I wasn't trying to call you out
I think this is referring to Atlus' draconian streaming rules for Persona 5 https://atlus.com/note-persona-5-streaming/
Basically threatening people with takedown notices if they streamed past a certain point. They backed down a little after a bunch of outcry, and I don't think they've actually gone after anyone, but still it's super out of touch considering how easy it is to find spoilers and how prevalent twitch streaming is nowadays.
Haha okay. I thought the 'you' was in reference to me, my bad.
Yuuuuppp. I enjoyed the game for what it was but that game was a frickin mess when it comes to handling mental illness.
I really liked some of the
tricks at the end like having to delete files in order to progress the story. I'm sure other games have done similar things but I don't play games on pc very often so I'm not used to them.
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