Crafting a loadout for fights in Punch Club.An automated fight against a ninja NOT-turtle in Punch Club.Feature-quality idle animation for the main character, Eshe, from Sundered.Some of the amazingly animated enemies from Sundered.
Playing a bit of Thunder Lotus’ gorgeous adventure game, Jotun, live really exposed how scary doing such a thing is.
I listen to plenty of video game podcasts, such as Giant Bombcast (as well as the Giant Beastcast), Vice Gaming’s New Podcast, and Match 3, and they have all talked about––to varying degrees––the stress of playing in front of people. For some reason, I thought I’d be immune, but only once I began to broadcast gameplay did I suddenly became aware that anybody could stroll in and watch me die a whole lot. With each chunk of damage I took, the pinch of worry grew stronger.
I don’t think, in hindsight, that my lack of skill lessens the pure majesty of this game (which I first talked about during Episode 107‘s Week in Geek). About halfway through the stream, I wise up and show off some aspects of the game that really do show off the grandiosity and choices that––if implemented––could really do amazing world-building for a retro-isometric The Legend of Zelda game, if they ever wanted to go back to that.
Even though the player character, Thora, becomes so small that seeing her can become a problem if working through a particularly busy boss battle (ahem), and the top-down camera restrains the field of view, Jotun feels epic in the truest and popular sense of the word through the simplest of choices in, most obviously, art and, more subtly, play with perspective which I show off about halfway through the stream.
I hope to do more streams like this––haphazard hour-long plays with my dog making dog noises in the background. “The Dan & Rusty Video Game Hour” was a concept I bounced around this summer (if only to make myself laugh), and I held from pulling the trigger out of laziness more than anything else. Once I got the gumption, it mostly worked and I hope that––despite the constant deaths that befell me during the hour of play––you get some enjoyment out of it. I’ll need to work out some audio kinks, if they can be worked out (the game audio is incredibly loud), but streaming is still a trial and error thing for Andrew and me, so it’ll only get better, I’m sure.
If I do say so, I have a banger of a joke at the end that I’m still quite proud of. *self high-five*
WEEK IN GEEK: Andrew bides his time until Civilization VI releases by playing a bunch of Blizzard games while Dan swims through the lush animation and Old Norse world of Thunder Lotus Games’ Jotun.
NEWS BLAST – UPDATE – METAL GEAR SURVIVE:Metal Gear series creator and famous non-employee of Konami, Hideo Kojima, boldly said that he has nothing to do with Konami’s upcoming Metal Gear Solid V spinoff, Metal Gear Survive, on stage at this years Tokyo Game Show. Konami retaliated by releasing approximately fifteen minutes of co-op gameplay to a rather tepid response.
LEGACY CHARACTERS 2.0: Building off of the previous conversations about “legacy characters”––superhero mantles that can be passed from person to person rather than being locked to a single identity––in Episode 09 and, tangentially, in Episode 104, Dan and Andrew return to the topic now that the world has a new Superman––officially New Super-Man––and recent Legacy turns with Wolverine and the use of a Legacy character in Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD: Ghost Rider v3.0, Robby Reyes. So, there’s lots of stuff to talk about.
Leave your thoughts about this week’s topics as comments at forallintents.net. Be sure to join the official Facebook page and follow Andrew and D. Bethel on Twitter. Help the show out by leaving a review on the iTunes store. Check out the official YouTube channel, as well!
For all intents and purposes, that was an episode recap.
FEATURED MUSIC:
-“Stayin’ in Black” by Wax Audio
-“New Blood (Here Comes a New Challenger)” by Another Soundscape (Street Fighter II remix)
-“Little Ashes” by Joseph LoDuca (from Army of Darkness)
