Gaming Podcast Discussion

[madkevin]

ZODIAC MOTHERFUCKER is an (in)famous poster on The Onion AV Club.

[Eric_Majkut]

When Scott made the comment he was referring to people who were telling him the Debriefings were funny, but they were still voting for the “overweight guys in jorts”. I don’t think the 4 Player Podcast was even on his radar at the time, so I’m sure he was talking about Giant Bomb. I thought that GB would win, too. I’d never heard of 4PP until they won that award. Bromley probably hadn’t either.

Bromley explained his comment in a later episode of either Gamespy Debriefings or maybe on the recent Rebel FM. He doesn’t really strike me as the kind of guy who would talk shit about another podcast and then back down if someone called him on it. He was laughing because there’s apparently a huge thread on Giant Bomb bitching about him, yet he never directed the comment at them in the first place.

[MSUSteve]

Giant Bombcast’s day one deliberations was pretty good, though I kind of wanted to smack Brad Shoemaker at a number of points. Also I found myself trying to remember who Morton in ME2 was until they started talking about his plot and then I realized none of them were saying his damn name correctly.

Yeah, Ryan Davis was saying MorDin, but the others failed to catch on that he was trying to correct them.

This is pretty fair. I was on Jeff’s side this year when he was going off on how much he hated Limbo. Oddly enough though, I was on Brad’s side last year when he was the only one standing up for Flower. Usually I love Vinny, but he really seemed to hate that game.

I thought Brad was a little petulant and snotty, but I think Gerstmann topped him by orders of magnitude during the Limbo discussion. I’m not Limbo’s biggest fan by any stretch, but I appreciate what it did. For me the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the game is brilliant. It became progressively less fun and interesting after the forest, spider and devil children disappeared.

Still, I thought Gerstmann’s hate-on of Limbo was way off target and pretty inconsistent. He seemed to be saying it was all flash and no substance, but then admitted the mood and atmosphere were great.

He also tried to say that Super Meat Boy did better in what Limbo was attempting, despite Brad’s vociferous (and I think correct) argument that the two games are completely different. Gerstmann refused to concede that Super Meat Boy’s hardcore platforming was not the same as Limbo’s slower paced and more thoughtful puzzling.

Gerstmann came off as a guy that not only hated Limbo, but hated the whole games as art crowd, even decrying that Limbo is “yet another” indie platformer with an interesting style to it. It reminded me a lot of Vinny’s irrational hate of Fl0wer (which I absolutely loved, by the way). I was surprised that neither Ryan nor Vinny had much to say on the matter. To me it was pretty clear that Jeff was being a jerk and just digging in his heels because he didn’t like Limbo very much. Not liking it is fine. I just don’t understand making false and ridiculous arguments to support that feeling.

Plus with the GiantBomb podcasts you have a Brad who pretty much sleepwalks through the podcast all year and all of a sudden just turns into a bully and starts dominating the casts. I’ve pretty much opted out the GotY podcasts at this point though I may listen to the final one depending on who they end up giving it to.

I felt sort of bad for Brad during the Day One cast because he always seemed to be outnumbered. He liked Tychus. He liked Limbo. He thought John Marston was the best character of the year. The guy just couldn’t get his way on anything.

[Bahimiron]

He got Minerva’s Den.

[MSUSteve]

He got Minerva’s Den.

I’m not finished with the Day One podcast yet. I’m way behind.

[Jamie_Madigan]

Gerstmann came off as a guy that not only hated Limbo, but hated the whole games as art crowd, even decrying that Limbo is “yet another” indie platformer with an interesting style to it

He does that occasionally, and not just with indie or artsy games. I remember him going on a snooty screed about iPhone games once, which suggests that his idea of what constitutes a “game” worth considering is not all encompassing.

I really enjoyed the podcasts, but it did seem a few times like they were manufacturing disagreements for the sake of drama and entertainment.

On an unrelated note, I tried listening to the Four Player Podcast as someone upstream had recommended. I don’t think I’ll be going back. First, I didn’t really care for the early discussions of Super Metroid wall jumping and other old games. Ditto for the hardcore DS jRPG discussion. What really did it for me, though, was when they started playing it blue and talking about putting animal crackers in Liv Tyler’s vagina over each other’s snickering.

Is it too much to ask for grown ups talking about video games like grown ups? I guess I’m still shopping for something to displace Weekend Confirmed, then.

[Rob_Merritt]

I’m on day 5 of the gaint bomb cast game of the year debates. They are wearing me down. Did they really need to podcast in this much detail?

[Brian_Seiler]

I think that’s the joke. They didn’t used to do this many.

[MSUSteve]

He does that occasionally, and not just with indie or artsy games. I remember him going on a snooty screed about iPhone games once, which suggests that his idea of what constitutes a “game” worth considering is not all encompassing.

It was just weird to me that he had to work to manufacture and even weave from whole cloth reasons that Limbo wasn’t in the top three best original games of the year. I wouldn’t put Limbo up there either, but I’d simply cite to the weak second half of the game as my reasoning. I certainly wouldn’t just make shit up because I for some reason hate what I think the game represents.

[Brian_Seiler]

It was just weird to me that he had to work to manufacture and even weave from whole cloth reasons that Limbo wasn’t in the top three best original games of the year. I wouldn’t put Limbo up there either, but I’d simply cite to the weak second half of the game as my reasoning. I certainly wouldn’t just make shit up because I for some reason hate what I think the game represents.

I’d agree, except not liking Limbo, while perhaps not a majority position, is hardly on the fringe. At least one significant games blogger (I want to say it was Krpata - and it turns out it was, so hooray for not being entirely senile yet) criticized it harshly. Even beyond what he says, the game is offputting in the same way a Werner Herzog film is, and it begs for the kind of reaction Jeff has to it, and it’s largely justified. It’s exactly the kind of reaction that I’d expect from him. I think that if you want your games to be “fun” in whatever generic sense that calls The Path boring and God of War excellent (note: I’m not sure I don’t agree with that evaluation, but having only heard at great length about The Path from every single damned human on the face of the Earth I feel I am unqualified to judge it, nor will I ever be, because I never want to play it), everything about Limbo is designed to piss directly into your eye sockets. The aesthetic of Limbo hates that player in a very open way (I mean, for crying out loud, it eschews color entirely, is almost silent, and doesn’t teach you anything about how to do it mechanically - it’s effectively the opposite of most popular games), and I’m not surprised to see that player hate it right back.

[MSUSteve]

I can’t really agree that Gerstmann’s hate of Limbo was at all rational. His justification for it sounded like mad grasping at straws. It’s one thing not to be able to articulate what you don’t like about a game, but then to go on and make false comparisons to a completely different type of game (Super Meat Boy in this case) to justify your nebulously reasoned, but intense dislike for a game is pretty ridiculous.

I’m still not sure what Gerstmann hated so much about Limbo except that it was “boring”. It was weird that he dug in so completely in his discussion with Brad, who presented a good argument for why Limbo was a good game (even though, again, I’m not a big Limbo fan myself). Hell, I wanted to be on Jeff’s side, but while I agreed with him that Limbo wasn’t all that great (at least in total; the first 1/2 is brilliant) I couldn’t get behind any of the terrible reasoning for his opinion. It was almost like him and Brad had some personal beef and Jeff simply argued with Brad to mess with him.

I can’t really agree that the aesthetic of Limbo hates the player and thus engenders feelings of hate for the game in the player. At its best Limbo is a singularly wondersome (yeah, I made up a word) experience. And Gerstmann even seemed to admit that, aesthetically, Limbo was good. The game itself is pretty straightforward control wise. It’s also got the most forgiving checkpointing I can recall in a game. I mean, what exactly is so hateful about the Limbo experience? I certainly never felt like it was “pissing in my eye sockets”.

[MSUSteve]

I really enjoyed the review you linked to by Mitch Krpata. I agree wholeheartedly with his assessment here:

The bedrock of good game design is feedback. A game will provide you a skill, challenge you to use it, and then find different ways to test your mastery. Think of how Super Mario Bros. layers challenges one on top of another: first you jump over a block, then over a pit, and then over a pit onto a narrow landing. Limbo follows no such logic or progression. Its puzzles exist in a vacuum. Never do they build on what came before, and sometimes they contradict one another.

In one breathtaking example of, let’s say, non-traditional design, stepping on one switch prevents your character from being squashed flat whereas steeping on an identical one gets him killed instantly. So, great, once you’ve learned this exception to the rule, what do you do with it? Nothing. Nothing like it ever comes up again. The only lessons you need to learn are those that solve the puzzle at hand, and then you have to unlearn them. Some individual parts are clever, granted, but I’d have been happier playing a game that took the time to develop its mechanics, such as the shifting gravitational fields in the final puzzle. Every good idea Limbo has it flicks away like a cigarette butt.

If Jeff Gerstmann had provided anything close to this sort of reasoning I’d have been cheering in my car while listening to the podcast. Krpata really nails it and articulates a lot of my own feelings on the game in a way that I never could.

[MSUSteve]

Weird double post. Sorry!

[sinfony]

He got Minerva’s Den.

And he got them to seriously talk about Starcraft 2 as game of the year.

[Jamie_Madigan]

In one breathtaking example of, let’s say, non-traditional design, stepping on one switch prevents your character from being squashed flat whereas steeping on an identical one gets him killed instantly. So, great, once you’ve learned this exception to the rule, what do you do with it? Nothing. Nothing like it ever comes up again.

I’m glad I’m not the only person for whom this stood out as weird and annoying. There was absolutely no apparent reason for those two switches to behave differently, other than to challenge you to remember which was which when you had to flee back over them a few seconds later.

[Moggraider]

What really did it for me, though, was when they started playing it blue and talking about putting animal crackers in Liv Tyler’s vagina over each other’s snickering.

Armageddon jokes are timeless, man.

Is it too much to ask for grown ups talking about video games like grown ups? I guess I’m still shopping for something to displace Weekend Confirmed, then.

Dead air does quite nicely.

And he got them to seriously talk about Starcraft 2 as game of the year.

No, don’t be silly. They were just doing it because they felt they should. Ryan, I think, hasn’t even played it, right? I kept waiting for the “b-u-u-u-ut…”

[sinfony]

What’s clear is that they don’t really play PC games in general, and strategy games in particular.

[Jamie_Madigan]

Dead air does quite nicely.

It’s an improvement, I agree.

[Sander_001]

The Giantbomb guys are really respectful of one another, I appreciate their ability to not take things too far. Then sometimes I wonder if it’s because Jeff Gerstman is the boss and not to be argued with too much, as wikipedia says he’s the founder of Giantbomb. Does anybody know?

[OrfBC]

The Giantbomb guys are really respectful of one another, I appreciate their ability to not take things too far. Then sometimes I wonder if it’s because Jeff Gerstman is the boss and not to be argued with too much, as wikipedia says he’s the founder of Giantbomb. Does anybody know?

Know what? If Jeff Gerstmann is terrifying to work for? He seems nice enough on the podcast and videos.