Triple Click - Is The Video Game Review System Broken?

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

Why do video game reviews often feel rushed? What's the deal with drug trips in video games? And what are some good JRPGs for beginners? This week, Jason, Kirk, and Maddy answer some of YOUR Burning Questions on all that and more.One More Thing: Kirk: Death Stranding Director’s CutMaddy: Marvel’s Guardians of the GalaxyJason: ElecHeadLinks:Mega64’s Uncharted 3 Drug Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPubpR6-V-g&ab_channel=Mega64Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/ Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Dictionary.com defines burning question as an urgent or crucial issue under heated discussion, which is pretty much every episode of this show. Welcome to Triple Click where we bring the games to you. This week we are opening up the mailbag and taking some of your questions on all sorts of things, including what is the deal with game reviews and embargoes. I'm Jason Shire. I'm Kirk Hamilton. And I'm Maddie Myers.

And we are back. Hello. Hey. Hey. Yay, it's us. It's us. It's lovely to see you both as we come to the end of October. The year's almost over, you guys.

We're almost here. I know. I've been planning a few things out just related to various projects, and they're going into 2022. You know, the first time you do that is always kind of a big moment. I was like, oh, I'm like scheduling something through February of next year. It's just a weird feeling. Are you just scheduling, like, time off for Eldon Ring?

Like, just maybe like weeks and weeks of time. Yeah, that's it. I'm really scheduling my gaming time. That's what I'm doing. I was going to say same here, except I'm scheduling time to make you guys both play Sweet Godin 2 when I win. So confident. You know what I didn't see a Switch Pro come out this year? That's the only prediction I made that I remember. I think that means I'm winning.

So I'm not going to worry about it. I don't remember mine that well either. Maddie, if I remember correctly, I haven't read them in a while. But if I remember correctly, you. Yeah, that's part of the game. You thought that a PS5 would be widely available before vaccines. I don't want to talk about it. I don't remember that.

We don't need to talk about this until the day comes that we talk about our predictions. We're getting ahead of ourselves. That's not what this episode is. Yeah, that's true. You're right. Hey, if you like listening to us babble about our predictions and you like supporting the show, you should know that Triple Click is entirely supported by you, all the listeners. We are part of the Maximum Fun Network.

and if you become a maximum fun member, you can help us support, help support us. Help us make this show possible. And if you do that, not only do you feel real good about yourself, you also get a bonus episode every single month from us. You also get access to a whole bunch of other cool bonus stuff from our sister shows,

but we do a bonus episode every month. And in fact, this month we are doing an episode where we spill the beans, aka do a spoiler cast on Outer Wilds, one of our favorite games, all three of our favorite games. Including. And the expansion, the new expansion, Echoes of the Eye. We will be getting into all of that stuff.

Very excited. That should be up for subscribers, for MaxFund members. That should be up by the end of this month, probably next week. Right, Kirk? When is that going to be up Monday? This coming Monday, right? I believe, yes, it will be up this coming Monday, unless something goes horribly wrong in the editing process.

And can I just say, because it's not going to be my one more thing and I don't want to paywall this, I know the only time that we've talked about Echoes of the Eye, was Jason when you said you'd played part of it and then you got to something you really didn't like. I just want to say that I thought it was absolutely incredible. And now everybody listening to the show can know that I think that... Strong agree.

So good. And if you want to hear us really talk about it, beans cast. Yeah. It's also one of those games that you can't talk about without spoiling it, quite frankly. So that is just about all we could even say. So don't feel like you're missing out,

but also you totally are missing out because you should play it first of all and then listen to the cast. Yeah, play it, then listen to the beanscast. Well, play it become a maximum fun. member maximum fun.org slash join. I mean, whatever order you want to do those things. I don't know.

Whatever works for you. Enter a black hole. Go back in time. Have already become a member. You have to carry the object to become a max fund member. Yeah, you carry your little membership card. Yeah. If you want to become a member, if you want to hear, by the way, I'm a little bit more down on

it than you guys are, but we'll discuss. Yeah, well, you already got to complain about that on the show. Go to maximum fun. that or slash join to become a member. Help us make this show happen. Thank you all so much to those of you who do that. And thank you to those of you who just listen. That's totally fine too. We appreciate you no matter what. Yes. All right. On with the show. This week, we are reaching into that old mailbag, that big old bag full of letters and answering some of your burning questions. We are taking some listener questions today. And yeah, we have a whole bunch of questions about all sorts of things.

just so you know, if you out there listen or want to submit a question to the show, just send it to triple click at maximum fund.org. Brevity appreciated. The shorter, the better. Yeah, but send us questions. Send us weird questions. I want more weird. These are some good ones.

Yeah, send us weird ones. Just unexpected topics. We do. Yeah, we have some good ones this week. Yeah, I don't expect we're talking. Good. Weird is good. But, yes, short, please.

One paragraph is ideal. If you want to maximize your chances. This is spoken like a guy who has to go through the mail. back for the show. Yeah, Kirk and I were like, what do you mean? Make them as long as you want. Jason's like, ah, please. I remember the show, Maddie, since you have volunteered to read the long ones here, you can, you can start off of this one. Sure. Okay. So this message is from Alan, who writes. So he was paraphrasing, I paraphrase this at the beginning, but basically he was just talking about cyberpunk. Yeah, this is starting in the middle of a thought, Alan. My

apologies. But anyway, Alan is writing to us about video game reviews and deadlines. And continues, I know a lot of times journalists will get advanced copies, but they can be without the all-important day-one patch. And for those that don't send advanced copies, you'll still see the all-important metacritic score pop up within a day. In the case of larger open-world games or JRP's, etc., surely they're not meant to be played by rushing through and trying to hit a deadline so you can write a 7 out of 10 review for the internet to then scream at you. Another example I saw of this was Yakuza Like a Dragon, which by a number of major critical, Critics was critiqued for its difficulty spike, but I found this wasn't the case if you leveled up

through its abundance of side quest, which maybe some didn't get to finish because they were playing the game ASAP to get a review live. I have noticed Metacritic blocks user reviews on games for a couple of days to encourage people to play. Do you think they could do that for professional reviews? Or is the day one review too important for clicks and discussion perhaps to the detriment of the score of a game. So I want to start with Kirk on this one because I think Kirk has reviewed the most games out of any of us.

Not that it's a contest. I think those are just the facts. And I'm sure you have a lot of thoughts about this ongoing issue. But before, Kirk, before you give your thoughts, can you just explain to listeners out there who might not know how the process works? Sure.

This is how the process worked, I guess, three years ago when I last reviewed a game, two years ago. So maybe it's completely changed, but I gather from the two of you that it hasn't. You reach out to the PR rep. There's usually a whole system in place for each of these major publishers. They send you, usually ahead of time, they'll give you a sense, like, oh, you know, we're going to have review copies at X date. But a lot of times the games are kind of coming in hot.

So there's a lot of just sort of technical wrangling, especially these days, because they're all coming digitally. But it's like, well, this doesn't have the day one patch. So there's a review guide that we're going to send you that's embargoed as well. And you can never really share that. It's like an internal document. You read through it, it sort of tells you, okay, these bugs exist in the game, but they're going to be fixed on day one. But we're getting you this game early so that you can play it. So you're kind of playing sometimes a weird version of the game.

Sometimes the online features aren't activated, things like that. So you get all these caveats. Then you get a code for the game. You download it. Hopefully it just works. Sometimes it's just the whole game and it totally works. And you just get to play it well in advance. Sometimes you get it like three days before the review embargo lives.

So anyways, that's kind of how it works. It's all something that you agree with with the publisher in the interest of getting the advanced copy and they want to kind of control the flow of information and also have it not be a total free-for-all. But the result of that, it kind of varies depending on what game you're reviewing and what the circumstances are. It could be a game where you really just are not going to have a sense of some fundamental aspects of it when the review embargo lifts, which absolutely happens.

At Kataku, we would often, if memory serves at least, we would often push the review back if that was the case. The reviewer would go to usually Stephen, when Stephen Totillo was our editor-in-chief, and be like, look, I am not going to be able to give a solid sense of this game. So you would maybe run up, like, review in progress or something. There's all these kind of weird workarounds to it to try to get around this process that Alan is asking about, which is absolutely an imperfect process and a very difficult one to work through. At Katako, it's worth noting there that at Katako, we had the luxury to do that because we were just, we had so many dedicated readers that like we weren't relying on that Metacritic day one traffic the way that a lot of

other sites do. We didn't need to care about that as much. Right. Though I think that, well, that gives an interesting perspective on this question just because I think that if you're working at a site where you're just like totally, you know, tethered to Metacritic into the whole process of like getting a day one review up and like really chasing clicks and your site's survival depends on it, like you're trapped in a very, or at least pretty dysfunctional.

system that if we're talking about solutions and ways to make this better, at least my personal experience with this sort of a thing is in a much better situation, even though it's still got problems. Like, it's good to be looking at it from a kind of best case scenario. Sure, but that's rare is my point. Like, I don't even think an IGN could get away with doing something like that. Yeah. Right.

I don't really know, I guess, because I've never worked there. But so anyways, yeah, I think this question is a good one because, you know, it gets at a lot of the practicalities of review writing and what a game review is actually for, which is something I certainly thought about a lot back when I was writing a lot of them. And, you know, that was always kind of my main area of focus when I was at Kataku. I didn't do a ton of journalism or anything like that. I mostly did criticism and wrote reviews. And, you know, especially when I was doing more managerial stuff and making more decisions for the sort of brief period of time I was doing that, a lot of it was about reviews. I actually got rid of the yes, no, maybe system.

That was like my one act as deputy editor for the nine months that I was deputy editor of Kataku was getting rid of that system. Because I, you know, that's review scores is kind of a separate thing. But this stuff is all kind of related. It is, I think. Because scores are so fraught and they're part of that pressure that you experience as a reviewer. So yes. And so that is the problem with review scores.

And I think it'd be good for us to try to keep focus on the timing thing, only because I think you're right that the score is like an essential part of this. because you're under a time pressure to stamp something definitive that cannot be changed. Did you see, by the way, like pitchfork just changed this review scores and a bunch of their old album reviews? It's really, really funny. They're like, okay, actually fine, this was kind of a masterpiece. And it just underlines the critical uselessness of scores. Even while scores, I totally acknowledge offer use to some people who like to go to just go to Metacritic and see what is a good game for this system.

and then you kind of do get a sense of it. I look at Rotten Tomatoes whenever I'm deciding what movies to watch, even though I hate scores. It's just one of those central tensions. Well, what's funny is, I was just looking at this the other day, the score for cyberpunk, at least on PC, is like an 86 on Metacritic right now. It's like it's beaten like the Forgotten City,

like some of my favorite games of this year. It's beating them. Which just shows you how pointless it actually is and how you can never really know if you're going to enjoy something. Right. Well, and it kind of, And this cuts into the time thing, right? Because that score is a moment in time. And it was the moment in time when people had played the PC version of

Cyberpunk 2077. They weren't aware of how jacked up the console version was. And they played it in a few days. So they pretty much only played the mainline quests, which actually hanged together significantly better than if you try to play some of the side quests that sort of interrupt the flow of it. And that does contribute to how you feel. police.

Yeah, and you notice all the glitches that happen when you drive around and you see like, oh, if I actually look at all the pedestrians, they're all carbon copies of one another and like they behave very strangely under certain circumstances. Like those are the kinds of things you notice if you spend a week with a game. Whereas I know our reviewer, Carolyn Petit only had, I think, three days to beat it. And I told her, like, please do not beat this for embargo. And then she just did it anyway, which that's a whole other thing, where people sometimes are just so, I mean, she's reviewed many games. She's been in the biz for a really long time and

she's fantastic. Works at Kataku now. And it's just like, you're already in it. You're already like, well, I know what the embargo is and I feel like I got to hit it. Like, I've been in that position as well, even though, even if, you know, Stephen or whomever Chris Plant is telling me, like, don't worry about the embargo, you know that date and you're like, I'll just stay up kind of late and I'll just quickly pull something together. And I think I know what I think of this. And then maybe some time goes by and maybe you don't agree with yourself anymore. So yeah, it cuts and it cuts both ways. Like there are games that I like more now than I did when I first play them in games that I like significantly less now. So it can totally get you both ways. And it's interesting that one of the

things that would always, that I would always run into as a reviewer, it wasn't just the time to finish the game. It was the time to write something meaningful and good. And for me, that was always way more time. Like, no matter how long I spent on a game, it was. game, I spent longer writing the review. And so that's additional time that you need to factor in, you know, on top of the length of the game, which sometimes is dozens of hours. Yeah. So to Alan's point, and to answer Alan's question, could something like Metacritic blocking reviews for time, or like people essentially not doing the day one hitting that review embargo could that ever happened? And the answer is no, that's never going to happen because the embargo is like the

all-important thing. The problem is when a game comes in like three days before that embargo hits or less than a week, essentially, before that embargo hits. And what happens is with game publishers, it can vary drastically. We've gotten games like persona five, two months before their embargoes. Yeah, that was so far. That was also nice. I reviewed that one, too, and it was like a hundred hour game. It was amazing. Yeah, it was amazing. And it was like, I mean, that was a game that was already done and released in Japan already, so really they just had to localize it. And then so they could get away with having a super early review schedule. But yeah, that was, that was fantastic.

And then there are games that just come in so hot that, like, they can't get them out to you all that early or they don't want to because they're worried for one reason or another. There are a lot of different, like, decisions that go into the calculus here. Or they're having whatever issues, cert issues, or there could be all sorts of reasons why white code doesn't go out super early. But yeah, that's when things get really tricky. And you sometimes see reviewers just talking about like, oh, spent the last like 80 hours just doing nothing

but playing this game and writing this review. And there's really no solution for that. The only solution for fixing this system is for publishers to get review copies out earlier. I mean, I think the other solution is for publications to be as lenient as possible knowing, that those are the conditions. I mean, of course, we described Stephen at Kataku sometimes allowing writers to write later.

We do that at Polygon as well. I think if more publications did that. Again, easier for the two biggest. I know. I know. But I also feel like that just leads to this larger problem among games writers where it's just become normalized for people to spend 80-hour weeks on something like this. And, like, guides writers in particular really take a beating that is often invisible to

the average person, like the reason you get a walk through on day one when you're beating your head against the walls, is because somebody was playing it completely alone with no help, usually, and they were doing it like two weeks prior or two days prior. And I don't know what the solution is for that. I think it's just like having a humane boss and knowing that if you work at one of these outlets, I know as a boss, I'm like very staunchly in favor of trying to give people a humane work schedule and not encouraging them to overwork themselves for the sake of just hitting an embargo that happens on the PR person say so. Yeah, I think also that it's not exactly a solution in the way that Alan is asking about,

but I do think that the sort of broader sphere of video game critical discourse has expanded to the point that the whole metacritic day one review aspect of it is just one planet in the solar system. And there are so many more ways of getting information about video games, like Triple Click is a great example, but also Twitch streamers and YouTubers and other podcasters. Like, podcasting to me is great because it's such a slow form of media. You have to listen to it. We never worry about embargoes. I mean, unless we happen to have an episode coming out, like when an embargo lives, and we're like, oh, cool, we can talk about this right when the embargo lives. But there's never a sense of like, oh, man, I really got to power through this game.

Like there are, I guess, have been times I'm trying to finish something for a beans cast, but it's not the same at all. Kirk, that's because of all those lovely maximum fun members who help us make the show. And so we don't have to worry about Google Juice. But that's exactly. And that's my point. It's like, we don't have to worry about that. And that's a way better model. And it exists.

I mean, this show exists and we make it. So the more stuff like this and just alternate types of video games media that exist, the more they can consciously move away from that, which is totally something the three of us do. I mean, we're always like, no, we are never going to make. a scenario where we all feel super pressured to like play through something. Because first off, I mean, the two of you have to do that enough for your day jobs, but also that's just a crappy way to consume games. It makes for worse conversation. And in the end, I think what people get out of the conversations we have about games is that they're relaxed

and we just get to play things that we like and sort of talk about them. Or, you know, decide to talk about a game that we don't like and talk about that too. But it doesn't have that same kind of fraught time pressure, you know, competitive part of it. And I think that that just benefits the show. in every way. Which is all well and good if you have a giant platform. If you're Kirk Hamilton and Maddie Myers and Jason Schreier and you can, you have this dedicated base of listeners, right? Like when you're just like a fledgling game site and maybe you get a few thousand hits a month or something like that, suddenly Metacritic day one embargo is going to drive you like more traffic in a single day than

you get all month. And that helps you build your audience and your site. So it's like you create this ecosystem where in order to actually get to the point where you can talk about games in a way that you just described, like the idyllic way you kind of have to play by the rules. That's the problem. I suppose so, but I don't think that it's quite as black and white as that

as either or. I think that you can just you can strive to foster that kind of, like the better kind of video game discussion and that will make your site or your outlet or whatever your podcast better and then you'll have an audience that actually likes it. That's true. If it's good. Yeah.

Okay, well, let's answer a couple more questions, as much as fun as it would be, to just talk about reviews for the entire episode. Yeah, it's an unsolvable quagmire. Kirk, you want to read this next one? Nick writes, Why do so many open world AAA games have extended drug or hallucinogenic sections? Just playing through Far Cry 4,

and there's this whole Yogi and Reggie subplot where you're drugged. Far Cry 3 had something similar. Spider-Man had the sequence with Scorpion, Tomb Raider had the Baba Yaga sequence, et cetera. Why do so many games rely on this crut? Is every video game writer trying to be Hunter S. Thompson of the game world? Are they trying to break up the action and this is just the go-to?

What's the deal? So, yeah, what's the deal? Yeah, I think it's the latter. I remember GTA-5 at a fantastic drug section where these aliens pop up. And I think it's, I think it's, it's, it's, the answer is that, A, yes, people are trying to break up the action. And, like, drugs are a fun way to just, like, create all these new assets and, like, add stuff to, game that doesn't have to feel as real if you're like in a realistic setting and and most of these games have kind of at least semi-realistic at least grounded settings so it's fun to like play around

of that um and the other answer it's just it's fun it's fun to like exercise your creative muscles and get all supernatural and psychedelic and the baba yaga stuff and tomb raider was was super cool i remember it was fun to to play around with um or like any arkum game where you have you have uh hallucinic like hallucinations and scarecrows. Scarecrow is in there and throwing stuff at you. Yeah, I, do you, did you guys ever watch Mega 64 YouTube videos like 15 years ago?

Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, I think I saw like GDC videos. Yeah. There's a video, I think it's from like 2007. I don't know. It's where one of the guys is pretending to be Nathan Drake when Nathan Drake is on drugs.

I think he gets hit with a blow dart. And so he's just sort of wandering around with like one hand over part of his face. And then he's like bumping into people. everywhere he goes and just like, I don't know, asking for his friend's names. And like, I don't even know why, but for some reason they just reenacted this in a public market setting with like a bunch of normal people walking around. And like one of these comedians is just pretending to be on drugs as Nathan Drake and like looks completely absurd. And every time I play a video game sequence like this, I think about this where I'm like, how weird does this character look right now?

Like just walking around this situation, like the only one hallucinating. and just bumping into other people. And it's one of those video game things. Like, there's some, there's definitely something to this question that's like, why, why do video games revolve around your character and they're like, whatever egotistical like adventure there on, which there's nothing more like that than a drug trip? And I say that as a person who's fine with it. Recreation is fine.

Enjoy your lives, listeners. But, like, it is very tapped into that video game hero mold of, like, also, everyone has to tolerate me while I experience whatever weird drug trip I'm on and bump into the NPCs and like make them do what act out is whatever characters I'm imagining that they are as part of my diorama of my personal foibles. I mean most heroes do that without being on drugs. It's just smash into NPCs. It's true. It's true. They do. But like the drugs aspect just takes whatever version of their self-absorbed video game plot is and then heightens it even more by being like, now everyone's wearing masks and they're all a part of your world, you know?

Yes. I think this can be really tiresome and it can also be really amazing. Far Cry 3, I remember the dream sequences in that. And my main memory of that was this is a clever way for them to use assets from the game and then just put them underwater and make them appear and disappear in smoke. And it was all stuff that already existed, but they could just be creative with things that they'd already made, which I always think of Alan Wake, especially the deals. see for Alan Wake where you go into these totally wild nightmare worlds that are really just

scenes from the original game and like assets from the game but they're upside down and floating and weird and like everything looks really cool actually it's like a cool challenge for an art director to take stuff they already made and put it into a dream where it's like the houses are like upside down and built into one another this is something remedies art team they did that in control as well where there's like you know five identical rooms but one has all the stuff like all the furniture on the ceiling and you're like oh They took the one room, but then can sort of cleverly play with it. I think that Arkham Asylum, I think we can't overstate the importance of Arkham Asylum for this trend.

I think that the first moment when Batman is gassed by Scarecrow and then the whole world falls apart and then subsequent sequences in that game, is it all in that game where like he comes upon his parents in the alleyway and they do the alleyway thing, but it's like a hallucination. I think so, yeah. It might be in one of the other ones, but I know what you're talking about. play back through the introduction and the game glitches out. And that's like very psychomantus, I guess. But having it, like using drugs in that way, I guess, can be really cool and can lead to a lot of like really amazing creativity. And then, like, I don't know, it felt more obligatory to me in Spider-Man just because Spider-Man was so Batman inspired in so many ways that once you're doing a drug sequence and it's like, oh, Peter's like coping with his fears. I was like,

okay, I kind of already did this. And even subsequent Arkham games, they were always trying to top that first moment, because he just walks into a room, and I remember he kind of coughs, Batman does, and you're like, weird, why did he cough? And then, like, he, and then just totally, it just starts getting crazy and crazier really slowly. And I think that that is just a clever thing. That can be used in a lot of clever ways.

Last game I want to mention is, and this isn't drugs, but it's specops the line, which builds into its narrative some really amazing stuff where you think you're doing one thing, and then it's revealed that you weren't. And it's really like your character is hallucinating because he's, I guess, losing his mind. But it's like a very, very effective trick of getting you to like you think you're killing bad guys. And then it's revealed that you're not that kind of thing.

And so it can be used really artfully and really creatively, I think, even though sometimes it's just like drugs, ha, ha, ha, L. Like Far Cry 4, you know, you're smoking drugs. Look, it's everything is neon now. There's sitar music playing. Ooh, there's a flying goat. Oh, can you believe it. Which can just kind of can sort of be annoying. Yeah, I feel like it's similar to dream sequences for all the reasons you said where it's like because you can reuse assets.

I mean, it's the same reason why movies do it or television shows do it. You can reuse sets but have something slightly different happen there that tells you something about the character. And that can be really effective. I mean, Silent Hill, too, is the other example I thought of when you were mentioning specops of the line where you have this character who's in this other world and oh, is it similar to our world or not. And what's real and what isn't real. That can be very effective in a horror game or like a support. I would almost classify SpecOps the Line as a horror game, actually, now that I'm finishing this sense.

Absolutely a psychological horror game. It's definitely a horror game. And so I feel like in that way, these kinds of sequences can be very effective, but they can also be cliche. And I think that's really tough. Like, I feel like I've seen a lot of dream sequences in games that suddenly end. Like, I'm thinking of there's a dream sequence at the end of the Last Vest part two. There's nothing to even spoil. It's just like a character suddenly wakes up and you're like,

okay, like that was a little jump scare, you know, we're dealing with some trauma here and what better way to illustrate that a character's traumatized than having a quick dream sequence. Got it. Like, that feels more cliche to me, but then something like Silent Hill, too. I'm like, that game's like weird and rad. So it can be good. It can be really good.

So just do it well. That's my advice. That's the key. Just do this, but good. Have it be good. Do it but good. Good from Maddie Meyer, who's game development consultant. Try being better.

Try being really good. This is okay, but could you make it good? That's my bill is in the mail. Robin says, I wanted to say, I love your podcast so much, and I've listened to almost all the episodes that should look like despite starting a month ago, but I have one question for you all. So I, like Kirk, wasn't allowed to have consoles growing up

and so didn't really get into single-player games until much later. And so I never got into JRPGs. My main question is this. How do you get into a new genre of games you're not used to? How do you feel, find games that are a bit more beginner-friendly, and what are some babies first J-R-PGs? A lot of the games in the genre tend to be complicated and throw a lot at you very rapidly,

and I worry about not being able to stick to it because of that. I assume both of you will immediately answer Final Menacee 6, but I'll let you do that. Probably would not be my recommended first J-R-PG. I want to hear what you guys think, since you guys are less J-R-PG-Officionados than I am. Yeah, I mean, I guess it, I mean, it would help if we knew some of the other games that Robin likes so that we could kind of be like, okay, you're already into X, so try this JRP because it's similar to X or Y. I will say one of the first ones that I liked, I played Final Fantasy 10 and 102, and I liked those.

Kingdom Hearts is also extremely weird and funny, hilarious to me personally and very endearing. And so if you don't mind Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck being in a video game, it's certainly easy. Like it's not like it's difficult to understand how to play the first two Kingdom Hearts games. But I don't know. I mean, those were just where I started, but I don't know if that's necessarily great recommendations for somebody in 2021. There's probably modern examples that are better to go to now. Right. And it kind of, like you said, it's a little tricky not knowing the games that Robin likes.

And it sort of depends also on Robin's goal. Like, if the goal is, I want to play some of these classic games, I agree, actually, Final Fantasy 10 is like, if you want to play your first Final Fantasy game, that's not a bad first one. Seven remake is technically a JRP. And, like, there are modern JRPs like that. And I mean, Scarlet Nexus, a game I just briefly talked about from this year,

or, I mean, near automatic kind of has some JRP elements, right? So both of those games are their action games, but they have a lot of stats, a lot of sort of like JRP type stuff, a lot of optional stuff. They have that sort of density that JRPs have. So maybe I would say those, but then again, if someone's like, what's a good baby's first JRP? It still feels strange to me to be like suggesting action games.

So of course, I think that persona 5 is a great suggestion. It is like a turn-based, straightforward JRP. It's a billion hours long. But it's got, it's just so cool. It's so much fun, especially if you haven't like gotten into those styles of games before. Like, there's just kind of something there for everyone, even though it is a pretty, you know, meat and potatoes turn-based RPG in a lot of ways. I mean, that's a great game. It just also, even that is a little bit different than most other J-R-PGs, right? Like, Persona is

its own whole vibe as well. So Perseona was going to be my big recommendation is like, if you've never played a J-R-R-Page before, this is a good place to start, because the term-based combat in that doesn't feel quite as tedious as it can in even a game like Final Fantasy. I see 10. Right, especially five, because five is like pretty player friendly compared to the earlier ones, though four is still my favorite. Yeah, percent of five, Royal. And if you have a spare 100 hours to just play with a video game.

Who doesn't these days? Another good, if you want the more traditional path, another good like beginners JRP choices, Dragon Quest 11, which is just a really solid kind of traditional style JRPG. Although I will say the music in that game is so bad that it almost ruins it for me. Can I ask you about another series? Tails? I saw Tales from a Rise in my Steam queue and was like, this looks kind of cool. It looked like a kind of, oh, this could be a good starter, JRPG.

I've heard good things. Yeah, I mean, you liked Scarlet Nexus, so you might like it. It's very anime. So if you're into anime, but you've never played a J.R.B. Before, Tails is a really good way to go. If you've never experienced any sort of, like, Japanese media, then Tails might not be super up your alley, because like the acting is is super like hammy and the writing.

It's very, very anime, I will say. Main character of Tales of Rise is played by Ray Chase. Also, Best known, I think, as the voice actor, the narrator of Bloodsod and Pigslist and Press Reset. I thought he wrote Bloodswed and pixels. Yeah, he wrote both of those books and then you read them? I think that's what happened. The other thing that I would recommend for beginners is,

a game called The Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky, which is like a super, super solid, just like entry guide to JRPGs because it's got a very basic, but like addictive term-based battle system. But, and it's also got this giant meaty story and like every single NPC has like a name and a backstory. It's like one of those games where it's just this giant epic that will keep you occupied for many, many hours. You know, also, Fire Emblem.

Does Fire Emblem count as a JRP? I, you know, I almost said that. I don't know if it does. but if you already like sort of turn-based stuff, like turn-based strategy games or like X-com, for example, yeah, or like if you're really into civilization or anything where you're just moving little squares or items around in another game.

You like moving squares. Yeah. She like moving squares around and you're like, I also want to navigate some menus and level up some characters and learn some fun stories in addition to that. Fire Emblem Three Houses, fun video game. Pretty good game. Maybe gets, I wouldn't say it's a JRP, but I think it like heads you there. like after that you could you could play a Final Fantasy 10 and be on board with it I don't know but actually Kirk if someone came up to me and said hey I've never played a jrbj before what should I go with

I would probably actually lean towards one of the action action a games I would give them something like final Fantasy 7 remake or like I don't know a game like cross code or like something else that is that is more like just has really smooth gameplay because that kind of helps you ease into some of the crunchier parts of JRPGs, the stats and the menus and the items and stuff. And then maybe you can start getting into turn-based stuff if you're really, I don't know, turn-based combat is definitely not for everyone. Like it needs to be, you need to be in a certain mind space to enjoy it. It can be fun like while you're watching TV or something like that.

But in general, I think it's something the people of our generation who grew up with the games like myself just kind of like became accustomed to because it was the only option for games back then. we kind of grew fond of these mechanics that I'm not so sure have held up all that great. But some of the games I mentioned, I mean, like there's some really cool spins on the turn-based battle systems, like I mentioned, I mean, Trails in the Sky, persona. Another great one that I just played this year was Bravely Default 2, which despite having a 2 in it is actually totally standalone and you can just play it on its own. and that's like another good example of a game that just plays with the turn-based combat

like adds new spins to turn-based combat to make it a little bit more interesting a little bit more unusual than your average Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest game. But yeah, I mean, if you got to switch, there's so many different directions you can go in. They're like, there's ports and remasters

of all the old school Final Fantasy games. You can check out Final Fantasy 12. Do you worry that we're like overwhelming, poor Robin? I feel like now we've listed. at like 75 games. Just play Final Fantasy 7 remake. They're just so many ways to go. Don't worry about it.

That's kind of the problem, right? It's where we've now got us. It's like, well, and there's this and there's this. I think we've got some good ones nailed down at this point. But the thing is, like, I don't really think it's useful to just have one game recommendation that and that's it. Well, we made like eight game recommendations. No, I know.

I think the best approach would be to like to write all these names down, go look them up on YouTube, watch two minutes of each and see which one like is most appealing to you that way. Yeah, I mean, clearly the best thing to do is to ask Jason Trier this question because he will give you eight answers and then tell you that he actually needs to give you even more answers because there's so much more to say. So you're welcome, Rob. So we barely have any time left. So I'm going to turn this into a rapid fire question. So Matt asked, what are your thoughts on chill games?

Do you have any games that you play to relax? Let's rattle off some chill games, some games we play to relax. Kirk, Maddie? Yeah, so I've actually been finding while playing Outer Wilds, which is such a like in your brain game and requires so much of me that I'm just finding it relaxing. Like I've mentioned this before, but I like just having one Ubisoft style game that I'm just sort of working my way through. It's been ghost of sushi myth for me. Though I played a little more Far Cry 6 as well. And as much as that gave is just sort of, it's like McDonald's almost to me playing it.

I'm just like, all right, this is fine. But it's just a relaxing thing to do for half an hour. So some kind of big open world Ubisofty game where I'm just checking things off and clearing an outpost. I'm finding that very chill lately. That's funny. I have the opposite, exact opposite reaction of those games.

Those games do not feel relaxing to me at all because it's like I have to make a whole production loading up this giant world. I have to figure out where to go next. It's like it's not relaxing at all. Your PC does the loading of the giant world, but I get what you're saying. But then your PC gets all hot.

You know what's relaxing to me? What's relaxing is games that don't set off the PC fans. They're like super low impact. Like I can just out when my PC is getting hot. Because my answer, my answer is I've been playing some phone games before bed. And those games are Tetris, bejeweled, and a game that I think it's, this game is not made by people who speak English. And I don't recommend it. It's called like water switcher or something. And it's like, there's no text in the game. You just have. these different colored like potions and you pour them from beaker to beaker and you have to like

make all the potions line up according to the right colors. I'm explaining it poorly, but it's like it's so relaxing and yet it is also weirdly focusing. Like you could play it forever and ever. It's like one of those games where you're like, why have I been doing this? It's like the perfect game to play before bed when you're just trying to get your brain to just do something for 30 minutes. I don't know. It's, I don't know if I recommend it or not, but that's what I do. if I want to relax is play that kind of game. Flow state only. I'm 100% with you.

My relax game is threes, which I still have not gone a day without playing. I probably have like 4,000 hours locked into that game. I was wondering if you still play that game as much as you used to. I get that. The butterfly mode in bejoled, if people who play Bejolder are going to know what I'm talking about, it's a great mode.

It's fun stuff. Yeah, my wife is in a candy crash. That's her like relax game. Although I make sure she doesn't spend money on it because like that would be, not worth it. And then the other thing, I do like to play some of the old

4X Sinmire games that I liked as a kid to relax as well, like Alpha Centurri, you know, like colonization. Sometimes I'll load those games up on my Mac and just play those while watching TV or something to relax. Okay, that is it for burning questions.

Why don't we take a quick break and then we'll be back with one more thing. Well, hello, I'm Renee Colvert. Hi, I'm Alexis Preston. And we're the host of Can I Put Your Dog. And we got breaking news. We got an expozy. All the beans have been spilled via an Apple podcast review that said,

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It is time for one more thing. Maddie. What is the hot new game that you were playing as your one more thing? It's true. I'm playing the hot new game. I'm playing Square Enix's, Marvel's, Guardians of the Galaxy, and I did get a code from them. And a lot of people really liked this game. And I have played it for three and a half hours.

And I don't like it yet. So I'm going to keep trying, but I'm going to explain to you guys with the deals with this game in a way that will hopefully illustrate to the listener whether or not they think they would like it. So this game is about the Guardians of the Galaxy, you know, the movie with Chris Pratt in it, but he's not in this game. And you are playing a Star Lord, but you're playing as a version of Star Lord that is not played by Chris Pratt and does not look anything like Chris Pratt. He's a totally different like undercut pompadour situation.

People make jokes about the haircut in the game. It's a whole thing. He's a totally different guy. And he also has a different situation in this game than he has in the comics, which is a little confusing for me as somebody who knows the comics a bit, but there's some overlap. Like, there's a new character in this game that I won't spoil, but she doesn't exist in the comics. And I was sort of surprised by her existence and did some Googling and was like, am I crazy? No. So there's, you kind of have to, if you don't know anything about the comics or the movies, you might enjoy this game more.

Or you'll be like me and you know the comics and the movies and you also are playing this game. And you're like, okay, this is a whole other universe, but it looks a whole lot like those other two universes with which I'm familiar. But that's not why I don't like it. There's so much talking in this game. There's constant talking. There's so much like Whedon-esque, or I guess James Gunn-esque, dialogue happening at all times.

And I truly mean at all times to a level that is actually wildly impressive, like the amount of dialogue that they wrote for every single second of this game. Like, U.S. Starlard are walking around the ship, and Groot and Gomorrah are like, talking to one another and like Groot is only saying I am Groot of course and like Gamora's like, you know, wise cracking or whatever and like Rockets in the background like breaking something and like Drax is also that like everyone is constantly arguing with one another and talking and at any moment you can walk up to anyone and make dialogue choices like Mass Effect style or telltale game

series style and it'll be like Rocket will remember that or whatever about like you siding with Drax in an argument or something or like Gamora will get annoyed at you over something and like that'll come up in. missions later. That sounds awesome. Wait. Okay. You don't like this. I just am so tired of it. Like, I feel like I'm going insane. So like I'm trying to play the game. And like, do you know what I mean? Like, I'm like trying to fight in combat and they are

constantly talking at me. And like the combat's kind of tricky at points. Like you have to use every single person's powers. Like it's kind of like a team battle. Like you really need to use everyone and you need to constantly be dodging attacks, a star lord. You can run out of health fairly easily if you don't. And I love that. I love dodging. I love telling everyone what to do. That part of the combat is actually quite fun when you get the hang of it, but they're constantly talking. And like, not all the lines are good and funny. Some of them are very funny. Funny enough that even like my girlfriend walking through the room will hear lines and laugh at them and she doesn't even know these characters. So I consider that a winning endorsement. Like there's

some really good one liners in here. Then there's also Gamora saying knife to meet you when she uses her knife. Not a 10 out of 10 from me on that particular line. And like it's, it feels like they had to write so much dialogue that they can't all be winners, you know? And like, so I'm struggling. But I'm going to keep going. I do really like the combat actually. I think it's fun and interesting. The puzzles are extremely simple, but that's fine because the point of it is not the puzzles to get through like this is a third person, you know, narrative game. I get it. It's all about the talking. It's not about the puzzles that I'm getting from going from one set piece to the next. That's really not the point. Every enemy looks the same. They're not

exciting enemies at all. I've fought like the same square aliens like a billion times and the same like spherical aliens a billion times. That's fine. Super boring. That's not the point. The point is the talking. So I need to either fall in love with the talking or like stop playing this game. That is my take on this. Interesting. You two should play it. You should play it. Yeah, I'm looking forward to playing it. The reviews are better than I expected. We will. No, we're going to we're going to talk more. Yeah. We're going to talk about it on the show. Because I do want to, I mean, I want to know where the story goes. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll talk about it more. Yeah. Kirk, what about you? What's your one more thing? My one more thing is a little game called Death Stranding. Cool. I can't believe it. I can't believe you're playing this again. So this is the third time that I've played Death Stranding. This is an unusual situation, I think, for anybody, because Sony sent me codes for this game three times.

So, like, I would not have bought this game three times. And I don't think most people probably do. And yet here we are because, you know, I'm getting to play it for a third time. So you got a PS4, PC, and then now PS5. Correct. And so now I'm playing the director's cut, which was recently released on PS5, is a finally fully updated version of Hideo Kajima's Strange. I think many people would say masterpiece.

Others would say, like, divisive masterpiece. I'm more and more in Masterpiece Camp playing this game. I have gotten farther in the director's cut than I ever have before. Can you transfer your save from the PS4 version? You know, you can, but I decided not to because it's sort of an onerous process. Like you have to have closed out all your orders on your PS4 save. And I was in the middle of some stuff, and I loaded it up on PS4, and it was like running at 30 FPS.

And I was like, because I already played it on PC. It was like, I can't. I don't care. I'm just going to start over because I know they changed some stuff in the director's cut. So I just started over again. This is the third time that I played through the opening area. so I know it's so well at this point. But now I'm actually farther than I've ever gotten in this game.

And I'm really like, first off, I've really gotten a sense for why people like it so much, just for what is so strange and satisfying about playing it. As much as I, the cutscenes are ridiculous and all the like endless talking is sort of dumb. It's funny, but it's sort of dumb. When you're playing, when I'm playing this game, there's a headspace that I'm in that is not like any other game. And it's, this is the best version of it. by far. Like, it looks incredible. It runs really well on PS5. But the dual sense, the controller, as you might guess, playing this game, is used to great effect. I mean, the vibration is cool,

but the triggers, because you use the triggers to grip Sam's backpack. So, like, you pull tighter, and the heavier your backpack is, like, it starts pulsing through the triggers, like your exertion. You can really feel it. They've done some really cool stuff, which I'm not surprised. I think when the dual sense was announced, people are like, well, this is like, you know, Death Stranding is going to be this showpiece game for this, and it really is, and that makes it cool. But it's just this feeling of this vast, strange landscape that's really hostile that you just have to walk across, and that alone is a very interesting thing to do in a video game, a moment to moment. I mean, it's just like a fun video game experience and challenge, and then you also

get this feeling of conquering it. Like, I've now laid this huge highway through this area that was totally impassable before. And that feeling of like conquering this bizarre landscape while also uncovering this totally bizarre story, it's really like, it's got its hooks in me. I'm totally into it. I'm going to keep playing it and like finding space for it amid other things that I'm playing. I've just finally been like, okay, third time, I guess is the charm. Even though I liked it, fine the first two times, I'm really like, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to finish it. Maddie, I think you've, did you finish the game? I never finished it. I've thought about it. I have heard the director's cut is really good.

And I'm like, maybe this is when I'll go back and finish it. But it can also be very frustrating. I was more in the camp of being like, I love what this game is doing, even though it's absurd. But yeah, I would like to finish it someday. I'll keep playing and see what I think is I get farther. And then maybe if I'm like, yeah, it's so good. You got to see the ending. Or I know the ending is crazy.

But when I get there, maybe that'll inspire you to finish it as well. At this point, I've been spoiled on some of it, which I don't mind at all. Like, I've seen some cutscenes and stuff that I'm just like, I, this is insane. Like, I, like, I. I don't know. So I'm excited for you to get further. Yeah. So anyways, cool game. Kirk, have you just given up on your plan of playing one game at a time? At this point, yes, I'm like disaster right now. Like, it's a total disaster. I'm playing like four different things and it sucks. Like I wish I hadn't had to give up on it. But like, I'm like, well, I really want to play Death Stranding. So here we are. Cool. So my one more thing is another game. And this is pretty funny. So the other day, so I've gotten this game recommended me by, recommended to me by a few people. But the other day, I, There was a tweet that I saw that was like, it was at the three of us or something.

I'm sorry, I don't have that in front of me. So apologies to whoever sent this. But it was basically like, hey, this is a game that Jason will rave to Maddie and Kirk about. And I enjoyed seeing that. I was like, okay, cool. It was a game called ELEC head. And it's a puzzle platforming game. And then shortly after that, we got an email to our triple click at maximum fund.org account

from the PR person behind this game being like, hey, I just saw this tweet saying that this is a game that Jason will rave about to Kirkramati. And then our buddy Russ This is really how the sausage is made. Our buddy Russ fresh stick over at the besties in Polygon.

He also was messaging a couple of us being like, hey, you should play this game. So anyway, so I jumped into this game, like head. It's really cool. It's a fun little puzzle platformer. It would have been cool if after all that you'd been like, it sucks out. I hate it.

Yeah, no. I wouldn't say it's, like mind-blowing or anything. It's not one of those games where I'll be like, I would be like, you guys have to drop everything and play this right now because it's not. It's just like a fun little like two-hour, just like puzzle platformer that you can, it's, it reminds me a lot of box boy in that it's just kind of like a low, low-fi, just like low-impact, relaxing, fun little brain teaser of a game that makes you feel super get that dopamine hit every time you solve a puzzle and like pull something off.

And the concept basically is that like you're this little creature that like electrifies floors and you can use that and all sorts of ways to solve puzzles. And you can like throw your electrified head at walls and stuff. And it's cool. It's a fun little game. Electhead. What are you playing it on PC? PC, yep.

Yeah, I'll check it out. Sweet. Yeah. It's, it's fun. All right. That is it for this week's episode. Just as a reminder, we will be coming back at you on Monday with the Outer World's Beanscast for all you members out there.

Other than that, it's time to say goodbye. We will be back next week when it will already be November. Man. Wow. What a world. Yeah. All right. See you all in November. Bye. Triple Click is produced by

Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy. in the show notes. Triple-click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun podcast network,

and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple-clickpod. Send email the triple-click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximumfund.org. Comedy and culture. Artist-owned. Audience-supported.