Matthewmatosis
Fitzthistlewits
MechaGameZilla
Yahtzee's let's plays
Action Points
Instig8iveJournalism
-
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
The Errant Signal Thread
- Thread starter Infinitron
- Start date
Matthewmatosis
Fitzthistlewits
MechaGameZilla
Yahtzee's let's plays
Action Points
Instig8iveJournalism
I like watching Yahtzee's Let's Drown Out series, if only because there's a great chemistry between him and Gabriel. Always funny to hear Yahtzee try to mock Gabriel for something, only for Gab to turn it back on him and call him out on how much of a bitter, narcissistic cunt he is.
buzz
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2012
- Messages
- 4,234
Beware, long-ass rant.
Like seriously, could a typical Codexer for once move past his usual routine of spouting cliches and usual bullshit in order to do something like a retrospective research, or a proper analysis of the situation?
In other words, actually check his first fucking videos. I just did.
His first videos is about Duke Nukem Forever. The first half is about the typical criticisms people throw about the game and how they don't really matter, like whether or not it plays like a proper shooter, or if it's actually good, if the graphics are up to par and so on. He mentions them and barely discusses them, mostly with some kind of AAA bias. See this quote:
Anyway, so after that boring tripe, the real meat of his video comes. You know the real actual reason for hating this game? Let me quote again
fucking seriously. He complains about the fact there's a joke regarding rape, about the fact that Duke Nukem gets his dick sucked in a glory hole or gets a BJ at the beginning of the game, or that there are lots of tits everywhere and you can slap chick's asses. Yeah bro, he was a cool video content creator and now he's gone full SJW 
.
------------
His second video, about Half Life, now that's a real gem of retardation.
First argument: "Gordon Freeman is kind of a Mary Sue"
He proceeds to rant about this, comparing the mute with Westley Crusher, The Lone Gunman and Bella Swan. As in, Twilight Bella Swan if you weren't aware of that is. Goes on to describe Freeman even though the only times you see him is in promotional artwork rather than actually in the fucking game, complains that the people in the first game respect him for being a fellow co-worker or one of the few still giving them a chance of surviving. Then he wonders why is he so praised in the second game. Yeah, a guy who (by their account) died saving everyone's asses in Black Mesa and fought a shit-ton of aliens, giving everyone courage to form a resistance, now has come back to life? No no, he's no hero.
Then, comes the really great part: the Alyx rant. Hey, nice video faggots, but where the gameplay discussion at?
"When gamers think of a typical female in video games, what do they picture?"
Hmm, what do you guys picture indeed? Maybe it's the video game equivalent of the fairy tale princesses, like Zelda or Peach? Maybe it's Metroid, or a strong adventurer like Lara Croft? The Female Sheperd in Mass Effect or other equally viable and equally fun female chars in most RPGs?
Maybe it's April Ryan from TLJ, or Jade from Beyond Good and Evil.
No, that would be simple and logical. What he shows us instead is a little video with funny Benny Hill-type song, footage from some hentai game, and some fighting games.
I'm not fucking kidding, look it up in the video. He shows Ivy Valentine from Soul Calibur IV (a game where most look insane and over the top, check out this dude ), some bouncing titties from Dead or Alive IV (a franchise that has video games about virtual chicks being half naked at the beach and playing volleyball) and Oppai Slider 2, A LITERAL FUCKING PORNO GAME.
"Ugh yes, something about that. In comparison, she's a freaking role model."
"To start off, she's fully clothed, which believe it or not, it is seen as a major victory against sexism in this medium."
Then he proceeds to rant some more minutes about Alyx not being too conflicted, "She has no emotional baggage to speak off. " or that she's a neat, flirty girl or some other bullshit he keeps spewing more and more. Ends the whole thing with this quote
The guy was Anita before Anita was a thing. You just weren't aware of it because back then, liberal and "socially conscious" ideas weren't viewed as the scourge of humanity.
Anyway, he spends 8:45 minutes out of his 15 minute video talking about how Gordon is a Mary Sue and Alyx is not a good female character. NOT ONE SINGLE SECOND WAS SPENT ON GAMEPLAY BY THAT POINT. After that, he begins talking about the gameplay a bit, saying how it's fairly linear, filled with scripted events and shit and that the combat/driving sections are "filler" for the story parts (that usually last 5 or 10 minutes at most and are pretty sparse in the actual game
). Here's another quote and what he truly believes about HL2:
To sum it up, Crapster's argument is that Half Life 2 was a game made of "filler content" like actual gameplay in order to see and swoon about your waifu. He never talks about how awful the gunplay feels, how the game is slow and plodding, how it often feels like a glorified tech demo for the physics engine with its little demonstrative physics puzzle games. He never mentions the subtle handholding of the game (grenades beeping and flashing, required weapons like rocket launchers always being next to the place that demands them etc.) or how a shit-ton of content was cut from the game. He doesn't give a fuck about the lack of enemy variety or proper boss battles or things like that. Because he's an idiot, and has always been so.
---------------------
His GTA IV video is okay, he only merely mentions the "tasteless" humor and focuses more on the gameplay bits, or rather how they don't fit with the story. Again, he mentions the overly-scripted missions and not enough shit to do in the game, but that's not the main focus of his video.
Personally, I disagree with the rest of it and was quite insulted by the stupidity of it, if only because he makes absent-minded arguments with poor research. But I don't really blame him as much as I blame the typical, retarded view of the GTA series by the mainstream. He just tackles the issue altogether from a wrong angle, one that he uses to up his artsy&fartsy "evolving tha medium" message.
His argument is that the "chaotic" style of gameplay and the satire come at odds with the gangster-drama type of story. In his world, things such as dramedies or black comedies don't exist for some reason. Heck, it's not like the most famous satire in human history was dark comedy or anything. The story in IV is not even THAT serious, but even if it war, it doesn't really feels as jarring as you think it does.
Why? Because Crapster and many other people mistake the purpose of these games. They go full stupid and pretend GTA is all about the funny crashes, blowing shit up, beating people with a dildo and so on. And in many ways it is, but it's not the "meat" of the game people think it fucking is.
The first important part are the missions. The missions, most of the time, are fairly fucking straight forward and serious in content. Carjacking, gang wars, assassination, following someone, saving people, bank heists, various robberies, dirty missions for the government and so on.
No, the typical GTA mission is not about you dressing up as a gimp and beating 20 random people with a dildo. At best, you dress as a gimp in order to have sex with a chick and get inside access to a casino you want to rob.
The other important part are the collectibles and side-missions and side-activities. They don't necessarily encourage chaos, just gameplay.
Explore every nook and cranny of the city in order to spray paint tags or dive underwater to collect oysters.
Car races, bike races, boat races, bicycle races there are even fucking triathlons in San Andreas with a swimming/cycling/running sections.
Destruction derby (in a proper stadium), obstacle courses for dirt bikes.
Mod your car.
Gang wars, acquire territory or fight lots of gangsters.
Save people with an ambulance, stop fires with a firetruck, stop criminals as a cop. Work in the quarry.
Play pool, shoot hoops or play mini arcade games.
Gamble, either bet on horses or play roulette/blackjack/slot machines.
Dress up in any way you want. Tattoos, hair styles, clothing.
Buy estates that you give you money or houses.
Learn neat tricks with your car or bike or plane in driving/flying schools.
The only part of the game that encourages destruction are the "rampage" missions, where you get a specific weapon and have to kill a shit-t-on of gansters/destroy many vehicles with it in a specific time set. Even then, it's mostly a controlled thing.
Killing civilians, blowing shit up is mostly optional. I think you can count on fingers the amount of times you actually had to kill an innocent civilian in this game.
The reason why this particular GTA IV video blows hard is because this game is even LESS CHAOTIC and OUTRAGEOUS than the previous ones. Seriously. No fun weapons like chainsaws or minigun, no planes, can't buy property, can't bunny-hop with bicycles over entire cars (shit, you don't even have bicycles) and so on. You only create "funny" accidents if you're a retard who doesn't know how to drive, you don't really provoke chaos because you don't have to toosl required to do so (and escaping the cops is much too easy in GTA IV), the game is the least outrageous of them all. It's a boring day to day gangster game, which fits with the story. The only fun you really get to do is in multiplayer.
--------------------------
Now, he did have some half-way decent videos, and he doesn't always go onto retarded political and story tangents for no reason (or keeps it to a minimum at least). My favorite is the one where he talked at large about Tony Hawk games, really good one focusing on gameplay and the freedom you get on shaping your experience. The one about Doom was also like that. But in general, his videos are poorly researched, filled with smug and pretentious tripe, often too obvious in message in content and more than often slipping into irrelevant bullshit.
Yeah, sorry about all this text
, but I really needed to say it out. Too many people in here were praising his early output for no logical reason and it just felt wrong.
Campster was always shit.
Like seriously, could a typical Codexer for once move past his usual routine of spouting cliches and usual bullshit in order to do something like a retrospective research, or a proper analysis of the situation?
In other words, actually check his first fucking videos. I just did.
His first videos is about Duke Nukem Forever. The first half is about the typical criticisms people throw about the game and how they don't really matter, like whether or not it plays like a proper shooter, or if it's actually good, if the graphics are up to par and so on. He mentions them and barely discusses them, mostly with some kind of AAA bias. See this quote:
Anyway, so after that boring tripe, the real meat of his video comes. You know the real actual reason for hating this game? Let me quote again
fucking seriously. He complains about the fact there's a joke regarding rape, about the fact that Duke Nukem gets his dick sucked in a glory hole or gets a BJ at the beginning of the game, or that there are lots of tits everywhere and you can slap chick's asses. Yeah bro, he was a cool video content creator and now he's gone full SJW .------------
His second video, about Half Life, now that's a real gem of retardation.
First argument: "Gordon Freeman is kind of a Mary Sue"
He proceeds to rant about this, comparing the mute with Westley Crusher, The Lone Gunman and Bella Swan. As in, Twilight Bella Swan if you weren't aware of that is
. Goes on to describe Freeman even though the only times you see him is in promotional artwork rather than actually in the fucking game, complains that the people in the first game respect him for being a fellow co-worker or one of the few still giving them a chance of surviving. Then he wonders why is he so praised in the second game. Yeah, a guy who (by their account) died saving everyone's asses in Black Mesa and fought a shit-ton of aliens, giving everyone courage to form a resistance, now has come back to life? No no, he's no hero.Then, comes the really great part: the Alyx rant. Hey, nice video faggots, but where the gameplay discussion at?
"When gamers think of a typical female in video games, what do they picture?"
Hmm, what do you guys picture indeed? Maybe it's the video game equivalent of the fairy tale princesses, like Zelda or Peach? Maybe it's Metroid, or a strong adventurer like Lara Croft? The Female Sheperd in Mass Effect or other equally viable and equally fun female chars in most RPGs?
Maybe it's April Ryan from TLJ, or Jade from Beyond Good and Evil.
No, that would be simple and logical. What he shows us instead is a little video with funny Benny Hill-type song, footage from some hentai game, and some fighting games.
I'm not fucking kidding, look it up in the video. He shows Ivy Valentine from Soul Calibur IV (a game where most look insane and over the top, check out this dude ), some bouncing titties from Dead or Alive IV (a franchise that has video games about virtual chicks being half naked at the beach and playing volleyball) and Oppai Slider 2, A LITERAL FUCKING PORNO GAME.
"Ugh yes, something about that. In comparison, she's a freaking role model."
"To start off, she's fully clothed, which believe it or not, it is seen as a major victory against sexism in this medium."
Then he proceeds to rant some more minutes about Alyx not being too conflicted, "She has no emotional baggage to speak off. " or that she's a neat, flirty girl or some other bullshit he keeps spewing more and more. Ends the whole thing with this quote
The guy was Anita before Anita was a thing. You just weren't aware of it because back then, liberal and "socially conscious" ideas weren't viewed as the scourge of humanity.
Anyway, he spends 8:45 minutes out of his 15 minute video talking about how Gordon is a Mary Sue and Alyx is not a good female character. NOT ONE SINGLE SECOND WAS SPENT ON GAMEPLAY BY THAT POINT. After that, he begins talking about the gameplay a bit, saying how it's fairly linear, filled with scripted events and shit and that the combat/driving sections are "filler" for the story parts (that usually last 5 or 10 minutes at most and are pretty sparse in the actual game
). Here's another quote and what he truly believes about HL2:To sum it up, Crapster's argument is that Half Life 2 was a game made of "filler content" like actual gameplay in order to see and swoon about your waifu
. He never talks about how awful the gunplay feels, how the game is slow and plodding, how it often feels like a glorified tech demo for the physics engine with its little demonstrative physics puzzle games. He never mentions the subtle handholding of the game (grenades beeping and flashing, required weapons like rocket launchers always being next to the place that demands them etc.) or how a shit-ton of content was cut from the game. He doesn't give a fuck about the lack of enemy variety or proper boss battles or things like that. Because he's an idiot, and has always been so.---------------------
His GTA IV video is okay, he only merely mentions the "tasteless" humor and focuses more on the gameplay bits, or rather how they don't fit with the story. Again, he mentions the overly-scripted missions and not enough shit to do in the game, but that's not the main focus of his video.
Personally, I disagree with the rest of it and was quite insulted by the stupidity of it, if only because he makes absent-minded arguments with poor research. But I don't really blame him as much as I blame the typical, retarded view of the GTA series by the mainstream. He just tackles the issue altogether from a wrong angle, one that he uses to up his artsy&fartsy "evolving tha medium" message.
His argument is that the "chaotic" style of gameplay and the satire come at odds with the gangster-drama type of story. In his world, things such as dramedies or black comedies don't exist for some reason. Heck, it's not like the most famous satire in human history was dark comedy or anything. The story in IV is not even THAT serious, but even if it war, it doesn't really feels as jarring as you think it does.
Why? Because Crapster and many other people mistake the purpose of these games. They go full stupid and pretend GTA is all about the funny crashes, blowing shit up, beating people with a dildo and so on. And in many ways it is, but it's not the "meat" of the game people think it fucking is.
The first important part are the missions. The missions, most of the time, are fairly fucking straight forward and serious in content. Carjacking, gang wars, assassination, following someone, saving people, bank heists, various robberies, dirty missions for the government and so on.
No, the typical GTA mission is not about you dressing up as a gimp and beating 20 random people with a dildo. At best, you dress as a gimp in order to have sex with a chick and get inside access to a casino you want to rob.
The other important part are the collectibles and side-missions and side-activities. They don't necessarily encourage chaos, just gameplay.
Explore every nook and cranny of the city in order to spray paint tags or dive underwater to collect oysters.
Car races, bike races, boat races, bicycle races there are even fucking triathlons in San Andreas with a swimming/cycling/running sections.
Destruction derby (in a proper stadium), obstacle courses for dirt bikes.
Mod your car.
Gang wars, acquire territory or fight lots of gangsters.
Save people with an ambulance, stop fires with a firetruck, stop criminals as a cop. Work in the quarry.
Play pool, shoot hoops or play mini arcade games.
Gamble, either bet on horses or play roulette/blackjack/slot machines.
Dress up in any way you want. Tattoos, hair styles, clothing.
Buy estates that you give you money or houses.
Learn neat tricks with your car or bike or plane in driving/flying schools.
The only part of the game that encourages destruction are the "rampage" missions, where you get a specific weapon and have to kill a shit-t-on of gansters/destroy many vehicles with it in a specific time set. Even then, it's mostly a controlled thing.
Killing civilians, blowing shit up is mostly optional. I think you can count on fingers the amount of times you actually had to kill an innocent civilian in this game.
The reason why this particular GTA IV video blows hard is because this game is even LESS CHAOTIC and OUTRAGEOUS than the previous ones. Seriously. No fun weapons like chainsaws or minigun, no planes, can't buy property, can't bunny-hop with bicycles over entire cars (shit, you don't even have bicycles) and so on. You only create "funny" accidents if you're a retard who doesn't know how to drive, you don't really provoke chaos because you don't have to toosl required to do so (and escaping the cops is much too easy in GTA IV), the game is the least outrageous of them all. It's a boring day to day gangster game, which fits with the story. The only fun you really get to do is in multiplayer.
--------------------------
Now, he did have some half-way decent videos, and he doesn't always go onto retarded political and story tangents for no reason (or keeps it to a minimum at least). My favorite is the one where he talked at large about Tony Hawk games, really good one focusing on gameplay and the freedom you get on shaping your experience. The one about Doom was also like that. But in general, his videos are poorly researched, filled with smug and pretentious tripe, often too obvious in message in content and more than often slipping into irrelevant bullshit.
Yeah, sorry about all this text
, but I really needed to say it out. Too many people in here were praising his early output for no logical reason and it just felt wrong.
Last edited:
It's funny, looking back on his stuff the only one I remember with any level of coherence is his video on Invisible Wars, and that's also pretty much the only one where he really talked about how the mechanics of the game were a failure in-depth. He didn't really bother with the story because the story really wasn't all that bad.
AngryEddy
Self-Ejected
Yeah, I've been listening to it this past weekend or so, just because I was looking through his youtube channel and just noticed he had a podcast, and holy shit, is it filled with the most irrelevant, socially-awkward, ramblings. Having these hipsters CONSTANTLY do that awkward breathy laugh after every unfunny joke every 2 minutes is fucking painful to listen to. Also, it's kind of off putting listening to these leeches brag about Patreon and their personal lives, and then George follows that up by being a big fat stick in the mud and not admitting to anything [his age, his job, and other non traceable shit].
I think everyone should listen to it, just to see how you DON'T structure/staff a podcast.
AN4RCHID
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2013
- Messages
- 4,790
Matthewmatosis has been consistently great for the past year or so.
I'd guess there'll be more guys making a career out of it now with Patreon and the Youtube tip jar being more ubiquitous.
Oh hey, it's an actual sorta-interesting topic about storyfags vs. combatfags.
AN4RCHID
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2013
- Messages
- 4,790
The "ludocentrism" tweets he's referencing make me want to self immolate https://storify.com/landonscribbles/ludocentrism-in-games
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 97,443
What the hell are they talking about? What "ludo-fundamentalism"? We're talking about a medium where the ending of Mass Effect 3 was the most important thing in the world for weeks.
I don't know who Frank Lantz is but he just got a new fan.
EDIT: Although this bit:
stinks of relativism.
EDIT: Although this bit:
stinks of relativism.
Last edited:
tuluse
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 20, 2008
- Messages
- 11,400
I think he means you can't just reduce games to a set of ideas (something the codex is often guilty of). The experience of playing determines whether it is good or not.
The "your heart" bit is inches from "it's a matter of taste" is my point.
Gozma
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,951
I kinda like the style but the dude is from that alien Neogaffian strain of game criticism where the relative importance of Nintendo mascot shit has been dialed up by ten times.
Just saw Franklin's video. By and large I agree with him.
UglyBastard
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2014
- Messages
- 821
I love all these hipster buzzwords like ludology/ludocentrism to make oneself look smarter while making empty-headed statements.
buzz
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2012
- Messages
- 4,234
Well, the biggest complain about the ending of ME3 was that your choices didn't matter at all, which arguably ties to gameplay. Also the lack of a final boss was a constant criticism (see the whole Marauder Shields joke)
AN4RCHID
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2013
- Messages
- 4,790
Ian Bogost weighs in - http://bogost.com/writing/blog/game-studies-year-fifteen/
More from Frank Lantz - http://gamedesignadvance.com/?p=2794
The way this guy bends over backwards to pamper the precious ego identities of these people is unreal. Half of the essay is apologizing for triggering people, the other half is an apologetic defense of his right to have an opinion. And then LOL the first comment is still:
Twine devs.
Interesting that youtubers are getting a seat at the big kids table here. I'm guessing Lantz' use of 'Gesamtkunstwerk' was inspired by that Btongue video, but maybe it's a more common word among academics than I realized.
More from Frank Lantz - http://gamedesignadvance.com/?p=2794
The way this guy bends over backwards to pamper the precious ego identities of these people is unreal. Half of the essay is apologizing for triggering people, the other half is an apologetic defense of his right to have an opinion. And then LOL the first comment is still:
Anonymous said:
Twine devs.Interesting that youtubers are getting a seat at the big kids table here. I'm guessing Lantz' use of 'Gesamtkunstwerk' was inspired by that Btongue video, but maybe it's a more common word among academics than I realized.
Machocruz
Arcane
tuluse you have a point. I guess we'll need a Codex list of most ludicaly competent games now.
Frank Lantz is either another effeminate video game male afraid of conflict, or someone told him to tone it down for the sake of his career. The intellectual regard of the medium they so crave will not come to fruition under the stewardship of such wishy-washy care-bearism. Can you imagine a Christoper Hitchens type descending on these types with an opposing view? It would be utter destruction of tender egos and tender anuses. These people, of who the anti-GG/SJW poofs are their kin, are rendered to a state of near tears and existential crisis by merely average minds and common sense.
Frank Lantz is either another effeminate video game male afraid of conflict, or someone told him to tone it down for the sake of his career. The intellectual regard of the medium they so crave will not come to fruition under the stewardship of such wishy-washy care-bearism. Can you imagine a Christoper Hitchens type descending on these types with an opposing view? It would be utter destruction of tender egos and tender anuses. These people, of who the anti-GG/SJW poofs are their kin, are rendered to a state of near tears and existential crisis by merely average minds and common sense.
buzz
Arcane
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2012
- Messages
- 4,234
As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.