 Hello I'm spooky EFAP, so you know the logos are on where we're checking out a little video game Scorn Oh my goodness, this is this is a game that came out Recently the three of us have played two of us have streamed so if you really want to come out on the 14th Yeah, this is haul off the presses as a yeah review analysis Okay, and we we were looking we were interested in a little discussion And it's kind of reminiscent of amnesia rebate only in the fact that it's a game that we're discussing at Halloween Okay, there's no other connection than that. There's no need to say there's any other connect Why would I suggest anything? So Before starting I suppose it's worth saying that unfortunately, I'm not even well equipped to say this But hopefully we can fill it in between the three of us. It's a game that was pretty anticipated by a lot of people for a long time Yeah, that's what I heard It's one of them. It's been hyped. It's it's its first teaser trailers and stuff have all been Sold on the fact that it's a combination of two very Specific artists who subsets of a very specific art style. It creates very familiar vibe if you've seen Alien or maybe even the thing Kind of gives you a sense for the fleshing maybe a little bit. Yeah But it's something that when people saw the the teasers for they were like, holy shit, this this is so unique Can't wait to see what else they've got in hand. In fact Brenna mine said That when they first saw the teaser they were already sold by the visuals They were now excited to see what kind of story would be in it within this world They could kind of contextualize this on top of just, you know, they Resumably they would put in a standard form of gameplay of some kind wouldn't be a surprise if they Do perhaps combat perhaps puzzle solving exploration Video games are right. We got loads of options. It's a big old world And so it's been anticipated for years I think but first they were gonna release a scorn part one and part two But then really yeah, but then they decided they would delay the release of part one to release it all as a big package That's interesting. I say big package This game is like three to four hours. So it's It goes from You know how you have like films and short films when games get small enough you start like to want to call them arcade games Don't you like or something? Very very what would be the term for games? It demands the sort of caveat that comes along with buying this game if it's a single-player game and every And there's no Multiple endings branching pathways modes of playing. It's not like a roguelike in any sort of way It's just a four-hour game Yeah, I'd have to call it Yeah, it just feels like a yeah indie game, but that almost feels like it was a lot of This is a $40 game that is about four hours long That actually shocked me by the way when I saw the price tag because I played it on because I played it on game pass And then someone's like, what is going on steams like this is 40 40 bucks like yeah, this is like game pass Yeah, that's a pretty steep ask for what we get in that package so it finally comes out and I played it pretty much on release same for rags and metal and We have opinions and what's neat is that you see like We've all played it separate from each other and we completed it separate from each other And you can watch live for at least two of us how our thoughts went from X to Y What I guess I'm trying to say is that You can argue that we have similar tastes and that's why we we get along in life or something But I'm just saying that we didn't exactly copy and paste perspectives here we've We know and then we had well Funnily enough we were streaming at the same exact time and we started basically at the same exact time And that wasn't even planned. It was like when you start. Oh now. It's like, oh me too We had and some people in my chat went like back and forth was like you basically like Head-to-head like by 90 seconds or something and then at some point I died a couple of times And then you went ahead, but yeah, that was fun To see just getting that that feedback from your stream a little bit I was like, oh, do we have the same thoughts because I was Someone starting to like hmm. What's going on here? And then the same info came back From someone in chat. It was just kind of interesting. There is that impending sort of anticipation as you play the game waiting for Something to happen sort of you you get dropped in you have this short cinematic Don't ask me what it means and then you're in the game and you start wandering around and you play for a while You know, all right, this is neat. This is pretty neat And you're waiting for that moment where you get a reveal where you get some explanation where you get some kind of a Some kind of something happens, but it never happens. You're constantly sort of anticipating That something will happen and it never comes a mechanical equivalent I think is so recently started playing God of War 4 on the stream and the opening like hour of the game You have access to your primary weapon, but only it's like basic moves and you don't even get sprint I think you get block but Let's put it this way you have like eight moves in total. This is not true But let's just say it is they give you one for an hour and then at the end of the hour They're like is here's another thing to change up the variables and like oh, okay And at the end of that next hour, it's like here's another thing It's also going to be changing your plate the way you play and also this enemy You can't use that first move on him anymore and you're like oh shit when he does that I have to do that Okay, you know by the time you hit the end of the game You've got a huge varied system that applies for all kinds of encounters and they'll be like look remember this enemy and this Enemy and this enemy encountered different times all three of them are together now and the environment has this You know you can use that to do that and you can switch to this and you've also built up your Power mode so you can use that again, but this is like this game games games work that way They're very chill they introduce everything nice and slow So I thought when I started this game up, we were in the just appreciate the look of the game section Yes, I'm I've got very few mechanics available to me because They want me to appreciate where I'm at and what style we've got and I remember even being asked by Chas like Oh, this seems this seems kind of Kind of weird game and I was like oh this will be This one this one appeal to the mainstream That's okay. Lots of styles of different pieces of media do that And I'm fine with this it's already appeals to me because of the fact that I it's so unique And I'm interested in what it has to offer But yeah, what I guess I'm trying to say is the lack of mechanical depth in even like the first hour or two of the game I figured was Like a prologue. I was like, oh we're gonna begin. Mm-hmm formal stuff, of course game Because it's a game. Yes. Yeah What can I say so yeah, like the the I suppose what we'll try to do here is talk about how the game starts up Which as was mentioned there's a little cinematic of you breaking out of like some stuff and Brawling but then you sort of have a vision of well, it's unclear right because we have no idea what we're doing here Are there alternates between you and someone else or you're having a vision as you're crawling? I don't think the person that you see in the main menu is the same person as you This it's gonna be I don't know how much we can really talk about it because this game doesn't have a story or characters Yeah, and I know that's gonna make some people upset, but it's just fucking true So, you know, I think that's fair that there's not you'll have to go to find some kind of interpretation video basically of What some of this stuff might mean and this this isn't Dark Souls Storytelling where you get limited story and lots of lore Where Dark Souls implies a lot of events as characters with names that talk about people they care about and What betrayals have happened via whatever families and what like this? Dark Souls is practically a full-on book compared to what happens in this which is you are too interpret at your whim Mm-hmm. It's more like a picture book without any text at all. Yeah Sort of but the pictures don't seem to I guess that's probably the difference between environmental storytelling and just being presented a story is that generally What you see Intuitively leads you to think other things We don't know how I don't know how anything in this game relates to anything else in this game You seem to go between three different Zones, I suppose or maybe four depending on how you count them. Yeah, I don't know how they're linked in any way I don't know what's going on. I don't know what did happen. I you just don't know anything and you can only speculate You could only you could only just sort of guess. I wish there were a word to Really imply the level of speculation like you can only speculate speculating Yeah, because you look around and everything is like kind of barren and to some point maybe even Post-apocalyptic because everything is like broken and there's nothing really going on like nothing Nothing human lives here anymore. There's only these fleshy whatever. Yeah, that's the thing I've heard and I'm theories and breakdowns of like all this is clearly posts like like future humans that have tried to reach a transcendence and Things have gone wrong and evolved on their own and stuff. I'm just like Yeah, could be you say so I don't I mean maybe I have no clue You could make all sorts of things up like I don't see why I can't just say well No, it's hell really. It's hell Hopefully like oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah It's about the suffering of the flesh Whatever the first of these areas that you Walk right into is this It's quite again. I'm gonna see I'll keep it in talking about this because I think it's true like it's very striking visually I was like whoa Very and it's probably the biggest strength of the game is how it looks He in a feeling I got from on from it is was very similar to when I first ever washed alien and alien subsequently when you see that space jockey and the the the ship sense of absolute Wonder shock and almost fear of what in the world could all of this mean and Alien and and other will do it all is and that's that's great and cool It's you know, and it's doing fine at this point But you know, I was like, oh, there's a big old thing in the middle of the room So I guess I'll go there first. That's probably the important thing But I got I don't know and then it's like you can Put your hand in a or you look into a terminal and you can control what looks like a little track Okay All right. Yeah, we're controlling a track and it's and its exits Okay, and you also have as well like you walked up to some terminal And you've got like a little spiky thing on your hand now. It's like well, it lets you access terminals Mm-hmm. All right. Yeah, I Guess once you've looked around everywhere, you'll find that there are Devices that will do something to whatever you put on the track And then you can find an elevator that takes you up and you get your first puzzle. Should I say I Think it's fair. Yeah. Yeah, it's a puzzle. Yeah this one Where is in the time This one, I go this is I'm sure there's a name for this kind of puzzle. They probably is Yeah, like a slide puzzle, that's probably what I'll go with. Yeah, sure There are only a certain amount of spaces available to move certain blocks, but you need to get The light blocks up to the the the top left Obviously, I was yeah, I didn't know exactly what it wanted me to do Mm-hmm, which is weird because to me I I once I saw this I was like, oh, I know exactly what I need to do Yeah, it was just a matter of just doing it And I was I enjoyed this puzzle for what it was a nice simple little slide them around rearranging Thing to grab one of these little eggs I was curious if when you ask the machine to move the ones that aren't lit that it would remove them and obviously make it much easier Just eats it as a sort of nope Yeah, I'm gonna slide them around. Yeah, I was engaged by this. I was like alrighty Figure this out long-term. There's a bit of puzzles going on. Alrighty. It's not just well So we'll get into that later because it's it's right after this, but yeah, this part was a nice little puzzle What else can you say? Yeah, we're right, and I'm surprised. I didn't use it More than once I guess I Expected this to come back like at least two more times. I don't know just felt like it's gonna be a standard puzzle We got to do and it's just gets harder But no, that's that's the only place. That's all we get from this one. It's a number of the puzzles They're all one they're there while all one offers pretty much Yeah, yeah I don't really know what else They about this one. It's pretty clear I guess visually from what you have to do you have to move these around until you get the One that's lit up to the location you need it at Yeah way up in the top left so that little hook can Can drag it away and while all this is happening You don't have any context for really what you're doing who you are where you are what's going on what the ultimate goal is Other than just the video game Elements of I know I need to progress, you know what we can do. Oh, this is great Yeah, all three of us played Soma. We don't have to worry about spoilers. Oh, that's true So I can do comparisons because I've I have so many thoughts in my head about how this compares to soma Soma has a similar sort of approach for about an hour of the game on average probably you don't know who you are or why you're there Then you're given quite an extensive understanding of who you are As to why you're there is it's still a little bit vague But by the time you hit like the halfway point it becomes pretty clear especially when you find your recordings You when you died after the brain scan gave you the Whether the solutions and stuff this game, I don't think they ever tell you No, no, what's going on? You're basically some nobody who's walking around With some kind of sentience, I guess because well, you do all these puzzles, right? So But that's all you you you're looking for something Yeah, you seem to be I don't know if your character is Supposed to be here or not supposed to be here. You seem to operate the technology as if you know what it does and a lot of the the stuff in this game wouldn't intuitively be like oh, this is a thing that does this but Completely without any sort of context or reason or explanation. So you're just sort of progressing because it's a game and I need to progress I Recognize that there are buttons to hit. I recognize that there are You know things to do that will lead me forward. So that's really all that's keeping you going right now Yeah, despite the aesthetic. It's there's still a as I said, there's still gamey game things happening It's like, oh, I gotta get this thing to get this thing to get this thing like normal stuff So yeah Information-wise we are very low on it, but you get this and it's a little guy in there and This is again adding to the the creep factor of the game the uncertainty of even Anything is to do with what's going on and you can't imagine anything good is gonna happen to this little guy who's no thing I thought he was gonna be used as some kind of battery like And that's how it works in this world that like the batteries are people or something Just hook them up somewhere and anything yeah When I was playing this I was thinking that we have to use the tracks to transport this Guy in the pod to the next area and that would be our way of getting into the next area was he had to go through the process I guess of getting him out of the pod and Yeah, doing something with him and to Not exactly it's sort of what happens, but not really so Yeah, cuz cuz you're looking at all these little carts and stuff You're like oh, so you put the little pods on the carts and push them and and that's how you get out Do I need him as I like is the progress door only gonna open if I have one of these pods with me So I have to figure out how to take the pod with me and like huh. I wonder what it is but I guess you don't have to think too hard because you kind of just Press the buttons as you come to them almost and it sort of sorts itself out Yeah, yeah, there's not since you spot where he's landed you can just sort of move him Though this sort of is the beginning of noticing something about this game, which is that a lot of the time stuff just sort of Works a particular way and that there's no necessarily like you press action Once you've activated this to pick him up and then you need to hit down to move the arm down Mm-hmm. I didn't realize that first. I was just like what's my option now? Do I need to push the cart to him? Do I need to click him and drag him down? I was like a hundred cent clear on this, but it's like yeah, you need to once it's in the Oh, I gotcha hit direction down to bring the arm down like yeah, okay It's not too much of a complaint I'm also just I didn't I don't Just just it could have been anything. It wasn't necessarily at all clear to me I was just like well luckily with enough of experimentation you can Get through it, but it's it chips away at time which is the thing that I notice There's a lot of things in this game that yeah add to the time say for example. I had Access the terminal and pressed one button and then it did the whole sequence. They could have made it that way, but they didn't You need to press down or left or right and then hit the action button Yeah, and the little circle I guess white once it has a valid thing you can do with it And upon learning that every terminal access now in future. I make sure to press up down left right just in case I don't know if gonna do something else And I think the directions on the little UI that show up on the bottom right will show you the options that you have for direction Well, I'm not Casey. That's just much more clear Yeah Yeah, I see right here left and right it showed there's no up-and-down option. It's just left and right. Oh, okay but again I mean like this it's necessary, but the one we just did it's like why wasn't that just one button instead of technically like three Yeah, there you don't lose anything by just sort of pressing the activate button and having the machine Just do it for you if there's only one thing that you could do anyway Yeah It's it can only cause some level of confusion and time-spending There is no other potential Alternative as to how it could go and it's not something to be solved. It's just that you have to Make sure to hit the you know the controls for the little arm that drops him down into the pod Now we'll come to probably what is the most big criticism of me So Are you both familiar because I wasn't with the fact that this game apparently There was a level of promise from the developers of this game was going to evolve several moral choices. I Only learned about this after the fact and then it's sort of I When I learned about this kind of all scrolling through the reviews after I'd finished the game I Was like, oh, okay, that makes sense I could see where this would have been in a different version of this game But it never came to fruition. It just didn't make it into the final product I was a little bit battle by it. So I was just like what is I don't even recognize choices in this game Yeah, and then I was like the only thing I think I had a choice on that first decision with this little guy But this is it when we call choices. It's like, I don't know if I'd call it a choice I had no idea what was gonna happen on either one or a coin flip Well, I didn't even see it as a coin flip. It was just like, oh, I need to go to this one first Then to the next one because I have two things We're talking about scoop and saw right? Yes, exactly. Yeah, so I thought that the saw was for something else entirely I Had no idea that the saw was actually a part of the pod procedure I thought that the saw would be used in some other Puzzle that we would be because this looks like a sort of big hub area that you're going to be spending a decent amount of time in Yeah, I never saw a A connection to where that you would use use the pot on the saw is like, well, that's dumb Why would why would I bring this guy down in the pod and put them on the car? Just just time like that doesn't make any sense. What's what obviously the size for something different Yeah, that's what I thought after I I scooped him was like, oh, I guess I go back to this later on with something else But hey, that's not the case. I had a different interpretation. I was like I can Possibly scoop and saw him but showing him is just cruel and gonna kill him. So I'm not sure about that and then everyone in chat was lighten up They were like, oh, you're heading toward the scoop you fool. And I was just like, huh? But before we carry on that storyline, we'll go with the yeah There are moral decisions to make that will affect the outcome in this This I was about to say outcomes in this game, but I can't be that generous It's this this just the things that'll happen. It's like so apparently this is one of them There is a moral choice to make with this guy Which is like what like like like how what what is it and chat was saying to me You can't take him to the scoop because it would kill him And I was like why Looks like it looks like it scoops him out or it looks like it gets him out of the thing Yeah, and then I will like you know compare that to the grindy thing. That's just gonna that's just gonna mulch him I don't see how that could possibly like obviously intuitively the scoop will save him and The the soul will kill him If I The thing is even though I even though I didn't piece together that you would want to Saw the pod because why the fuck would you saw the pot? It doesn't make any sense. Why would I want to do that? Whereas I assumed I needed maybe like an empty pod or I needed to deposit him somewhere so that I can proceed I Just assumed this is what you were supposed to do like there wasn't even another option to make yet the tracks were Almost like you had to Divert the tracks in sequence so that you can go to the first Side room then go back change the tracks push it to the next thing then go to the next side room or something along those lines. I Never would have thought that this is it. Yeah I had a bit of a thing with my chat where I had to explain to him like there are there are times where say a glitch happens And they can inform me that I need to do something to fix it or that they can tell me there's a mechanic I missed and I need to do that one to get out of the situation I mean I was like that's all well and good But telling me that I should go and saw him because that will save his life is So out of whack to the intuitive nature of what I'm dealing with right now So yeah, I first of all wasn't even clear that I was gonna be killing like if you if you had told me if the developer Had said oh, no, they're just two ways to kill him the scoop will kill him and so we'll kill him I'd have been like alright, okay, and killing him is something we need to do right harvest is whatever to do something I was like yeah fine. Whatever. I guess that's what we're doing However telling me that I have now made the choice to condemn this little creature to die This is saving him and that is a moral decision. I have made and that's what all of chat was saying I was like that is so far away from Anything that I can see look I even tested it out and I was like this would kill him. There is no way Look at this That's gonna kill him. Yeah, absolutely that'll kill him There's no question And I was like I'm sorry if I'm going to take this game seriously. I can't like Just take you guys is telling me that and go with it because I wouldn't have done that if I was playing on my own I would have gone with what I think is the better choice, which is right now. I'll scoop him Get him out of this thing. So it looks like he's alive It looks like he's suffering and it looks like he wants to get out of this situation and looks like I can do that for him That's my best interpretation However, there's another angle to that that we'll get to in a second. So I opt for the scoop the scoop kills him Pretty gross Yeah, and then I checked a video online and you guys can do the same Where if you use the saw? Oh, no, sorry, I didn't even check a video I actually just boot up the game and did it myself because I was curious this achievement for it as well The saw does indeed destroy the pod. He's in it doesn't destroy him and he escapes How the way the saw goes in there when you test it out It's just right in where he would face like the machine puts in him in backwards and Not only that the saw doesn't go all the way it only goes as far as breaking the Thing so this is just several layers of an intuitive. I would go as far as saying nonsense Yeah, I'm just now learning about it. You know, I have I wouldn't have been a million years I would just would have assumed that the saw kills and I don't know Based on where it goes and I I wouldn't have even guessed. I don't really get how this sort of thing happens It's it's it's one thing to not Tell us like oh, this is the kill room and this is the save room, right? You know that that could be a little bit too over it and silly But it's quite another to be like would you like to use? The health kit on this man or the hammer, you know like well the health kit And then you stuff the health kit down his throat and kill him or use the hammer to break his chains. It's like right Okay So yeah, see there he goes. He's just dead now and he's gone. So I don't know how he died But I okay, and I didn't I didn't approve of throwing him down a little hole Yeah, I I Thought that something would kick the pod in the hole or something. Yep. I know There's all these bodies here, but I don't know what that means You know like and plus they're not all fucked up if you're supposed to be scooped out Then why would there be bodies here? I had no clue that Like that was supposed to I don't know Also, how lucky that that arm just stayed behind exactly. Yeah, that's that's the thing we like what's Apparently by the way, I didn't even I was like, oh, yeah, I guess I need that sure. Okay. Yeah Yeah, the game highlighted it for me. So I said, okay Well, I knew I need that because I looked at all the places before I went here So it's like, oh, I need to I need an extra something here. It's like, oh, I guess I need to put this hand in this device Yeah, no, it's some door. That is the only moral decision in the whole game Yeah, they clearly I'm gonna say this several times. This is the first time hadn't finished the game They wanted to have more I imagine and this was the only one they managed to get complete and it's clearly not complete They if they attested this out, they would have found Players 99% of players would have been like, oh That was a moral choice Then they'd be like, oh, yeah, didn't you get that and then I'd wonder like Intuitively, most people are not gonna want to kill him. You understand that right and then they'd be like, yeah What is that? What are you trying to say? And I'd be like, do you think there are many players who are like, I want to be evil I'm gonna kill him. Hey, and then you'll suffer and make them suffer for it Just to give you an equivalent right bio shock is like if you kill the little sisters, you'll get more resources But that's really mean That's a choice to make you're hitting the fact that they have to kill a little girl against getting more Adam Even though you end up with more Adam, I think if you go good in that game Eventually it catches up So You need something of an incentive, right for both sides Which is kind of its own little discussion on like if you have a video game with moral choices I mean should just the evil options just objectively be the best in terms of what they give you and how easy it is or it should buy design Should or or even like should you just come out with should it be literally harder to do by taking the morally good option? Well, that's like a whole subject on its own, right? Like it's Super interesting one. I love talking about like how choices are contextualized in video games But this one's kind of baffling because I don't I don't think they've realized Do they think that killing this guy is the definitive moral evil in this world? Because I'm not sure It's good question seems like they have like this whole system set up to make that It feels to me like they decided killing him is a moral bad and it's like I guess to me. Yeah, yeah This random guy does seem to be a bad thing. Yeah contextualized in this world I have no clue what any of this exactly So this is this is the big problem as far as I'm concerned it to me intuitively I wouldn't want to kill him. However, if he was able to speak he might be saying kill me kill me Please kill me. I like I beg you please kill me And you'd be like oh shit why and he's like I'm just in constant agony But I don't know I have no idea what's happening here compare that over with something like soma where it has several moral choices throughout the game They they try to give you all the context you need to understand. There's a huge Complicated thing happening and it's really gonna be down to your own personal values as to whether or not you'll press the button or not so to speak As an example right you Run a guy's brain through a program several times because you need to get information out of him And you keep manipulating him until you can finally get it And then at the end when you have what you want you can either like reset the program and put him to sleep sort of thing Or you can delete him and of course Like I think your character is like it's fucked up the the next person who comes along We'll just wake him back up and manipulate him Just like we did to get whatever they want out of him or that he's always here to be used especially in the world of soma which is that Brain scans get uploaded to his flesh creatures of any kind if you delete him He can't suffer if you don't anything could happen to him, but he can still experience things at that point So which is better right to have him have a chance at some form of existence Or to lock off any chance of him being in forms of agony or manipulation stuff That's what they make you think about for a while in this game though They seem to have just said well, no, it's evil to kill him You're like, okay And then you don't even know which one kills him Yeah, yeah, it's bad it like I it's pretty intuitive to pretty much everyone playing this game that you by default Don't want to kill people you come across pretty safe assumption. That's just a really normal thing Yeah, but yeah, it's the soft scoop thing that is not at all intuitive It's the opposite of what I thought it would be it looks like a lot of us thought that There would be the scoop would save him. I don't I just don't understand why they would put it that way Yeah So not a great start I was a little put off by that. I was like well that was that was strange And I guess we're done with that whole area now. That was it So I was kind of hoping in my head like was that the prologue We I guess we're done with sort of I understand that I can access consoles I understand there'll be choices But now what are we gonna do like well new area and lots to appreciate Check this shit out. It was it here is the point where I was not Certain if I was gonna go back to that other area because I was still like, oh, they're still a Like am I done with this area? Is that saw was that an option for him? I So I wasn't even certain that I had finished that area. Yeah, same with me I was like, I mean, we didn't use this saw thingy. So I guess we will be back Well, I guess because for me chat told me that You've opted for the the scoop instead of the saw and that's done now. That's your choice And I was like, yeah, I own it that was the choice I made because I think that was the reasonable choice Yeah, we'll suffer the consequences Yeah, look at that. I'll play through is a different at that point. Yeah definitely You enter this room, which is um you got a Little robot to take little nodes from the floor up into like a pillar and then activate them and you open doors Some people have referred to this as a puzzle It is So, I mean eventually we're going to have to have the discussion. Yeah, what is a puzzle and what is just basic problem-solving? This was a room that took me a while to finish not because there was any sort of difficulty But there was confusion because I had missed the little thing that you stand on Okay, I Just didn't know that that was a thing that you did but as for this part I mean, it's all there's only like one thing you could do anyway There's no puzzle to it. You go up to the little the little pods and the pillar and you do the thing with the floaty basket and That that's that as you can see them I'm hoping this is illustrated as we go through just visually in the background This is how I play video games a lot of the time I really like to look around make sure I catch everything be it Anything that's happening in their environment that should be seen or anything mechanically I often even if there are like three switches in the total in a level I'd like to find them first see if they connect to anything and then decide what I'm going to do first I think May have been trained on this by playing several games like what I'd reference is Bioshock Dead Space God of War these are games where there's a shit ton to collect the shit ton of bonuses and in rooms that aren't anything to do with the plot line and They'll benefit you mechanically but sometimes storytelling wise as well. Oh in a game like this I was like, I'm gonna make sure I check everything so I want to I want to grab up everything in this game And I'm starting to get jaded with that approach different games because yeah, you'll get rewarded for it You don't feel yeah, it's not even just not getting rewarded. It's just like sometimes you'll get punished Which we'll have to get into at some point with this which is unacceptable as far as I'm concerned Yeah, that's a big no-no And so like yeah, I at this point Village and again, we will also get into that we've reached Funnily enough like 20% of the game is done at this point Which is like tam dude Yeah goes quick Meanwhile, I've streamed. I think at this point 16 hours of God of War 4 and I am I've just found the mere Metal that's a chunky game. It is a huge game if you want to especially if you do all the side stuff. It's Really good out of curiosity Ken and on the upload as people are watching this Can they see the timestamp of the video? They can't but I am 50 minutes in to a 4 hour and 50 minute stream But to be fair, I think mine is unusual because of how much time I spend making sure I don't miss anything Yeah, I tend to take my time as well when it comes to games particularly ones like this I like to explore do the side quests. I like to check the nooks and crannies I like to explore and especially a game that presents itself as being really atmospheric and has this cool art style to it Yeah, you want to check it all out. You want to see it and that'll just slow you down Subsequent playthroughs when you don't need to see that stuff or you realize there is nothing to see You'll just I don't know why you fucking play this a second time honestly. Yeah, I will never play this game again That's I don't know play amnesia reboot again. Well, he's a he's a fun little thing Which I haven't mentioned yet at this point. I'm still convinced. This is gonna be a shooter at some point like a full-blown Running around and shooting a lot of things. I knew they would be shooting in it But I had no Expectations of anything for how this game was going to go. I had managed to stay pretty out of the loop on it So I was just gonna take it for what it was Yeah, I was was under the impression. It's it's good I'd only seen some very brief promo like a trailer or two that had shown some gun stuff in it That was very simple And it that was really all I knew I had no clue how deep it would be how good it would be I was like, okay, we're not at that section yet or you're you know, we're not we're not at that Yeah, we're still in pure puzzle-solvy exploration Learn what's going on kind of mode. We're not at that point yet Yeah, you can't consider because I talked about that game a couple of times like I'm gonna play this legs Thing like this horror shooter thing is gonna be great and no one Complain that I said it's a shooter like a full-blown one So I think I'm not alone with thinking it's gonna be like a big Big glory. I'm a bit of a memory thing. Okay. I think yeah when the there was a trailer that came out I remember discussion on it was like I hope they haven't shown us the best stuff because Not a lot is going on I remember that was one of the latest trailers that came out for this and it did relate to the shooting mechanics because they showed a whole bunch of it and that is something that's being discussed right now was was the fact that they Borked or showed a lot of shooting shit. It changed public perception of what to expect from the game Didn't affect mine. You can even hear me defending the game when people are saying this is boring wins the shooting happened I was like, hey, we're doing mine. We're having a look around. This is sort of early game Yeah, I mean if I realized was actually going on. I was like, okay This is more like a survival and a dealio when you yeah, obviously getting weaponry amnesia is famous for starting up or Popularizing I guess the genre of you don't have the weapons. You just solve puzzles solve problems and avoid enemies Yeah, I was more than ready for that. But yeah, this is where you get your first weapon pose Tool, yeah Well, this is your it's it's a tool and it is also your because in survival Horror games are really any survival game. It is generally advised that you do not Present scenarios to the player that causes them to be soft locked so if you have a player in a game where ammo is very scarce and Like you run out of ammo, but you need one bullet in order to shoot Something in the distance to unlock a door then almost every time that will be presented in games There will be at least a bullet lying around for you to pick up so that it's there for you So that way you don't have a scenario where people are just they they're just sort of doomed Yeah, how you balance that out again, it's its own full discussion Do you give players who need it more? Do you always have or or you have something like this? You have that melee weapon that has unlimited ammo and you could I mean if you absolutely need to you can stretch It's used to prevent that sort of soft locked scenario Yeah, and if you look at the way it shoots a little bit reminiscent of the alien in a mouth Yeah, I assume it's a reference in that sense you unlock a whole bunch of these weird things and Well, you're able to use the these little battery things as well and and then complete Like I said the puzzle Well, you have to just moving thing to thing You got you have to hit the floating things with your melee weapon. Oh, yeah, I am You have to break them as you walk past them. I think right Yeah, because it's great flumes everywhere and if you walk through it and you get hurt like steam or something Yeah, you just sort of walk through the little yeah, you walk through here I was getting really confused. I was like, oh, am I supposed to kill him? Yeah, they don't look like you know like they're aggressive or like their enemies I said, I mean I hit it. I killed them I assume that this this happened right after we got our weapons. So I kind of you know These with our weapon Because I guess they're just randomly Floating here spraying this thing. That's a video game barrier when it doesn't seem like it's doing anything whatsoever So, okay, this is a very video gamey thing. All right, I'll hit them and move on and I did and that was that Yeah, you are good access to more of these nodes and in they go and then that unlocks doors and Tree or something. Oh, right It's coming everywhere You open up all the windows. This one doesn't work though, right? It jams I know I flume start to come out of the pillar like it doesn't work correctly. I think something. Yeah, something's not right, I guess Changer the volume Because you go to the left one you press the button like with the rest you turn it and Then a bunch of Tism comes out of the pillar and then it flunks you on the head, right? Something like that. This is This then sends you is this the part where it sends you into the other self? I think so It just doesn't work it It's kind of like the getting the arm From the the pod guy like I guess incidentally we found a Way to progress to the next zone. I don't feel like this is how you're supposed to do it But you know like at least in the context of this universe, you know, I guess we're just sort of you know We made it and I suppose, you know, we got an arm that I guess we needed But yeah, the flume starts spilling out and then you Go to the next Person zone or you get maybe you get put into a pod or you get you wake up in one So I guess you're you might be a different person, but yeah, I'm still unclear on that Because we wake up here and I distinctly remember that this character you're playing When you get to the next door that needs the needle thingy Your character looks at his hands like oh wait, is it gone like okay? I guess I need a new one But it also could mean oh, I don't have the thing that I need so I I don't know if this is us again Person yeah, I guess it is a different person. So different body. Yeah, so that last guy was Can you I wonder if you go back to the little cylinder, right? Would you see him in the? I don't know actually I didn't get checked. I didn't think to really check either But I guess you're a new person so That other person's What did he do? What did he accomplish? Don't know I might even be someone you end up getting back at some point some way I just don't on that's what what you accomplished. You got ganked on and kill someone and welcome to spooky desert Bull guy giga desert. What a fucking waste of time this area is yeah a little bit And again, I think this is where I started to realize I don't think there's any point in looking around There's nothing to get or see really like there's a lot of and I kept looking around for a while I kept it going. I was like no. No, I'm gonna keep doing it. Yeah, I looked here still but like When I was through this I was like, is there even a point in me exploring? Like am I gonna find anything? Well, so I started saying to people like I'm not sure what guess what I would collect at this point considering this kind of game I wonder if they thought collecting things would have been too You gamey game for what is more of what people might call an experience, but I was thinking to myself like This is especially once you get the combat going. There's loads of gamey game stuff in this not Like it's yeah to be taken as a more of a You you just just a visual experience or something. I was like this definitely especially by the way it is a video game It is in a format that it would be like we're talking about some the film like portions of it just go black Just like okay. That's An idea I suppose just like you kind of an unmuted like Swiss just off Maybe that sounds a little harsh because you can still walk, right? But that's what's always been the discussion about video games like when he's just walking how long before we're not even video games anymore And I don't want to get cynical about yeah, the the idea that this is some sort of a an art thing that transcends Requirements At what point? I mean, maybe it's just easier to sell. I mean, I don't know did they really want to make a game or did they want to just make an an Atmosphere and fill it with stuff It almost feels like the game elements of this are I Don't know they're not done almost Sort of because as far as a game goes it's not an entertaining game The you know, especially as we get into the combat later. It's very simplistic and kind of frustrating. Oh, that's annoying A lot of the design elements for intuitive puzzle work is is not really there There's only a couple real what I would even call a high points in the game But those are sort of isolated puzzles that don't really have anything to do with the environment itself I have a Patience meter as a human being and for every dead end I find when exploring that patience meter goes down Oh, yeah, and It's funny because that patience meter could honestly be satisfied and this this sounds counterintuitive But you see our health bar is like I think it's something like eight nodes something like that eight eight blocks If you removed six of those I only have two right now. That's how harsh the game is. Oh my god but they're a little like Pieces of flesh around a special if you grab them or if you go near them And you can have the first one be that I see it. I look at it It's curious I pick it up in my hand and then it goes and then goes into my hand And I'm like, ah Jesus and then my health bar goes up and it's like, yeah Yeah, why not right? This will just fucking insane I don't think they need to have a justification for why that might work that way And you could even make them, you know different organs or something gross whatever you want people who make this game Mm-hmm, then put them in a distant and hard to reach places and be like, okay Yeah, so I look around and I go oh shit health upgrade nice Yeah, it's interesting you bring it up because we talked about that during my stream with chat It's like hey, it's kind of weird like someone chat mentioned it It's like it's kind of weird that they don't have like a you know health suck mechanic with all this flashiness all around Seems like a no-brainer almost to put that in this game We have like this little I mean you have these weird devices on your hand anyway for Opening up shit, but another one where you suck the blood out of those weird monsters or something And then you get health back that way yeah, and So much equivalent is that it's basically every single place you go there's going to be something storytelling wise happening You'll find diaries you'll find descriptions and reports you'll find the black boxes to play you'll find Offices places that have been lived in and the damage in them will relate to something that's happened in the place The game is heavy on storytelling it constantly wants to tell you a story this game as you guys may have seen up to this point You've been watching the visuals as well Very little to take in other than what's in the visuals now a lot of people would probably argue that is a lot of environmental Storytelling and I would be like I think there's a difference between it's almost like environmental storytelling versus environmental law Kind of yeah a I understand this is a place Let's say you're playing you're playing fallout, right? You're wandering around the post apocalyptic wasteland outside And there's lots of old cars and rusted buildings and Skellington's and stuff like that So you're wandering around just exploring as you do and you come up to a hill in the wilderness You maybe you're following a road in the road turns into a dirt road and then that dirt road Kind of veers off into the woods and then you come across Maybe a big skeleton and a smaller skeleton and they're at this bench and on the bench There's some soda bottles and the There's a BB gun there on the table and a bunch of BBs and nearby on some tree stumps There are an assortment of bottles some broken some not and so you like okay So I guess these two this was I guess this was a father and son most likely They're out here just shooting BB guns at cans all right, and they brought some drinks with them to drink and And that's like a that's like environmental storytelling, right? It's a little tiny Isolated mini thing that you could piece together based on the the context of what's around it You're like, oh, okay little little tiny thing, but that's that's environmental storytelling You haven't been told anything, but it's a story that you can piece together based on what you found Yeah, this game Don't think there's any of that or maybe there is it's not like I can't piece it together I think it's Be able to be reasonable. There's very little you can piece from a rational normal point of view of like how linear Events would be this is pushing it significantly I've already seen people try to piece some stuff together and it's always fronted with like I have no idea if this is me being Crazy, or if this is what it is Meanwhile as you just described they do that a lot in the last of us It'll be like you picked up a note and this note says like you know dear Marjorie if you find this You haven't returned from your you know thing to the local market I assume something may have gone wrong. Please if you find this note, you know come back to me Let me know if I'll do anything. I can't get back to you then another another note It's like we're running out of resources now. There's only a couple days worth left you know our two kids are Having a lot of trouble and blah blah blah and then eventually you find all these notes leading to and then eventually you find a house You unlock a door you can find some resources, but if you look to the right, there's like a you know Maybe two graves that are small and then an inscription that says We just couldn't make it Marjorie. I love you or something and then maybe a skeleton next to them and a gun Or a guy who maybe killed himself. It's the same thing. We were just like oh shit that's a complete story and A lot of it wasn't told to you you have to work as the player to get to it and that's what I was I was looking for in this game. I was like I'm ready to work. I'm ready to read. I was ready to piece things together Yeah, I was waiting for the story. I was waiting for the narrative. I was waiting for That thing to happen, you know, and I'm I'm still in this game and I've gone back in the little shippy thing And I'm still waiting All right, it's really it's gonna happen because I can't just wander around without context or without and there are so many options Especially once they introduced the combat, I don't know why they made it so that you can only ever ammo up from those machines You can never find a stray bullet. It's like flesh. Surely you can yank it out of anything If you imagine like, you know, why not the these creatures some of them have eyes and like, you know You can pilfer the bodies and each eye is worth one bullet in the normal pistol Something okay, why not Yeah, some more game stuff would have been definitely appreciated and Before anybody is just like yeah, so it's not the thing you expected then is it and it's just like a game It's it's just strange that this is the game at this point But you know, it's fine again because I still had no context for how far into the game I had gotten But we're looking at a strong like 30% now In order to access this this series of pods I didn't realize this and I think it's intuitive at all. You need to power up your little device there needs to be more than One tick on it needs to be all four ticks like okay. I Didn't know this yet. I was just gonna explore Yeah Yeah, it looks like it's almost like a timer Because that you don't see that Your character doesn't look at the rings and try to associate the rings with the ones in the cylinder because you have the four red nodes in the In the receptacle and then you eventually accumulate four white nodes onto the cylinder as you progress and then you come back to do this puzzle here But it's one of those. Oh, I don't think this is how that happens. So I'll carry on you know, yeah A lot of the time is just like, you know button Flashy thing this than the other exit and it goes. No, you're like, okay. No guess. I'll continue See you in 30 minutes. I The progress in this for me was indistinguishable from just bashing around at stuff and just kind of hoping a lot of the time I had no ideas. I can recognize when the game is like that ain't it But I wouldn't necessarily if someone a chat had said no, that's supposed to work I'd be like, oh Okay, again, I can't I can't tell the difference. I I don't get a sense that like, oh, of course I need to do blah blah blah. It's like I gotta do something something at some point So yeah, this is uh While you're all doing this again, you just walk in all these dead ends that show you basically nothing It's like, okay, not going this way. Not going this way. Is there anything to collect? No, anything to see? Not really Well, guess I'm going back to the other way until I finally find all these pieces that I need Yeah, this section is I remember what even problem there is to solve. I think you Need to just accumulate the four nodes for the cylinder. Yeah Um, and it's there's like a big old fan running You have to find the switch to turn it off There's like a blocked pathway at one point. You have to put acid on the bodies that are in the way But like it is as simple as pressing a button There's no like remember in like amnesia where it's like you've got to Find out what materials create the acid and then go to each right right area to find those bottles to be able to combine them Yeah, so this here is one of the yeah, that's one of the four and you do for these little spinny puzzles um They do get slightly more complex as you go I suppose with the last one is halfway covered up and you have to Now that you know how it works and the sounds associated with it. You can figure out the left half um, very very simplistic But totally fine in terms of you know acquiring the four Uh nodes for the cylinder with little rings Yeah, yeah, you go to the four places you do four of these and that's that That's uh, that's really it. There's not a there's not like a puzzle so much if you could even call this one A puzzle which i'm hesitant i'm hesitant on this one. Yeah, because it's uh, you'd be like well It kind of is right. You got to wait until they line up and then you hit go and it's like Yeah, yeah, but that's like I said that's sort of that the dividing line between What is a puzzle and what is just sort of the the basic problem solving? Like no one looks at a no one looks at a locked door with a key next to it And like oh that's a puzzle I have to put the key into the door and then turn it so that it unlocks the door and now I can progress like no That's it's not really a puzzle. That's just and if you increase it I've probably mentioned like okay What do you have to turn it left right left to open it like it's still not a puzzle And you're like left right left or left or right depending on deciphering like some other Code on the wall or something you're like still I mean it's getting there something. Yeah, and maybe that's all the puzzles are they're like Solving problems that are much more complex and have like a rule set and are almost games Well, what was um, I wish Mori already was here. He did something on the Puzzles, didn't he he was talking about the puzzle in that one game that didn't seem to make any level of sense Oh, yeah. No, I remember what you're talking about. Didn't we watch the video on eFap? I think um We I think he showed that section to us and tried to have us guess what you were supposed to do Right and in what the puzzle meant and none of us could figure it out Um, it was during that discussion. We had talked about that a good puzzle You sort of have an understanding of what you're supposed to do Because not knowing what you're supposed to do is not just really frustrating But you're already you've you've lost that intuitive element of Knowing what progress looks like or knowing what the ultimate end result should be so that you can work towards it Yeah It didn't think because I just I just played through Silent Hill 1 2 3 And those games have some pretty neat puzzles Uh, where the collection of things is just the beginning of the thing So one of the I think this is the most famous one. That's like one with tarot cards All the way at the end of Silent Hill 3 and you have to collect them all throughout the area blah blah blah and then you have like a Like a note or a book or something and that's like this text where it says Oh, this guy is positioned there and here and there, but it's like vague So you have to figure out where we actually need to put the puzzle the puzzle pieces slash the tarot cards and It can be a bit a bit of a brain scratcher Because you have to actually figure out where you put them like for example Uh The moon is above this creature and then you have to kind of figure out. Okay with the creature. Do they mean this? card or the other card and if he if that goes up there, where can I put the other one and where do I need to Don't put any cards in the uh free spaces and everything and yeah those I would call puzzles and not I'm gonna wait for this pin to be in here and then press the button Ah, and now I do it again and again And now I'll go to the next one. It's like, yeah If you notice the animations feel like everything as much as they are detailed and sometimes even have variations They take a while And when I say a while you might be like really what four seconds and I'm like as opposed to one or two I'll add up Yep, it does add up a lot of the stuff does add up. Um There is a trying to think Here have a sort of like I had a bit of a you know what actually I do know I remember what I was going to say, but we'll get to it a little bit later when we get to what I would call the The hardest puzzle in the game and that's down the road. Though not too far because nothing's too far away in this Very short far Yeah, so you get that fully powered up and then you can oh this this this thing here. This was um The thing I found that one kind of neat. I kind of wish there was more of this one I thought it was yeah, I was hoping I thought I had more potential. I guess is what I would say Yeah, all kinds of things are this If you have these little mini puzzles like this because you have to rotate the cylinder so that eventually at the end All of the nodes uh on the receptacle hit the nodes on the the cylinder itself, right? Like that's neat. I enjoyed doing that and Uh, just just about this puzzle and the one that we were talking about we first did It's like you've got all the animations in place Why haven't you repeated them? That's like free real estate Yeah Yeah, the first one's easy then the second one adds a little like a barrier That might make it a little bit more difficult and then the third one's just even slightly more difficult And then you know, there you go. I mean they sort of did that with uh, yeah How you get the cylinder nodes the the rings where the they spin around and you have to hit them in times Like it's very very basic, but they do technically get more complicated as you go um The degree to which they do is not much But they like they have the right idea Um This guy crawls out and dies Yeah, yeah, I wasn't clear on this. I was just like, okay I was like, oh, what's happening here? That's interesting. He's like, oh, he's dead. Uh I guess I'll leave What what was he in here for? What's the point? I don't I don't he's like in this in this We even call this like a pod No, this pod looks different than the ones from before but he looks different than the guy from before so Yeah, and I don't know we'll discuss it. They're just like, oh, it's the creepy birthing pod and it's like Okay, it sounds like you just described as much as you possibly could that anybody else might be able to also describe Yeah, it sounds like the thing that we all knew about looking at it. Yeah well, maybe you could say those Were supposed to be soldiers at some point because you get the ammo thing right next to the pod. So maybe that's also the health thing Uh, oh, yeah and the health thing. Yeah So maybe maybe some kind of That's why there's health next to them when and that's the thing I don't know how much of it is any any of it is deliberate All right, like is the fact that I'm This gun is this expected and normal of this world or did it congeal? I don't know like in the same way that everything is sort of influx Um, especially when you attach this gun to um The creature the jumps on you, right? Yeah Like oh, okay. Has that even happened yet? I don't think so, right? Nope. Uh, not yet. No Not yet That is a interesting thing as well. That's a thing that happened in the game. That's a thing that happens That's a thing in the game Oh, yeah, this is weird. Yeah, it is. It's weird and gross The fair 40 plus into the game now and it's just like Damn, you know, uh Yeah, at this point I was desperate for something to happen like Yeah, maybe give me something help explain anybody who's finding trouble understanding that it's like oh, it has attached It's up to me. Oh, no, it has that. Okay, wait. What happened that part? Yeah Okay, well, yeah, a little creature jumps on you and like digs itself into you and throughout the game It starts just clawing at your torso Or belly over and it's gradually like taking over you that'll become relevant later on But uh, but you get to use the extra hands Sometimes you get yeah access to two bonus hands. We'll talk about that for sure when we get on later on so Um, yeah, I don't think I've found any consoles yet for ammo or for health. So get that when we get that but Um So someone's probably like what do you mean you want stuff to happen stuff is happening I must be like so this feels incomplete. We've got the explorer exploring a world And some very light puzzle solving I feel like I am playing a very early version of the game Yeah, yeah It's it's interesting because I remember I think james said that in chat while I was playing like when they Announced the game or advertised it. They advertised it as like a like a lived in uh Space you you go through uh Like basically it says there's like people here. Maybe or like creatures. I mean you have creatures, but I wouldn't call it lived in Like if you tell me it's lived in I think about like a bar or a city Where people are rummaging around or there's like random wildlife going around or something like that Lived in means something else in a world of flesh monsters. I don't know I guess I guess the difference between just having a room Uh Like some some just just empty gary's mod room and then going in and filling it with a shelf and a dresser And there's some food and then maybe there's a you know, there's a waste basket with some newspapers on the thing You know, you make it look like people have actually lived here and it's furnished um And it has the it has the the remnants of habitants From before you know that kind of aspect which I guess I I'd certainly call this world lived in For certain but I wonder if I think about this world being lived in in the same way that I would it goes to that environmental Storytelling thing is like well if you have a really lived in world I wonder what sort of emergent clues and stories come out of That you know element Of that your environment And also if you'll give me a moment. I'm gonna top off my drink No problem Yes Which uh takes us to the Usal Is that again? Is that like moving the The fence around or what is it? I'm trying to think of it. It's hard to tell sometimes if this is the sort of connecting area one of the bigger hub areas I think we're almost at one of the bigger hub areas with all the like elevators All those oh, yeah, there they are you just right next to them. Yeah, you're in this big area we have to get the Those capsule elevators whatever you want to call them Yeah, there's um a clear place you're trying to go but the capsule elevator thingy Breaks so you need to find a replacement So you have to go around this whole area moving around one you get To put it on and then you'll be golden to get out but um Yeah, I think a decent amount of uh combat now Mostly in the form of your little pokey gun in there Yeah, and oh boy that pokey thing is Well, that is a thing Yeah, hopefully, uh, I'll be able to show some of that in this Playthrough, but yeah, um you just need to make your way around this place and you'll end up with uh All there they are here we go Oh, I see you you're using the same strats that I did I just need which are the only strats you can do Every time I just wanted corners so that they couldn't buy their bullshit at me Yeah So basically how this fighting works is oh no, there's an enemy they can spit things at you Let me quickly go to cover somewhere if there is any Poke them twice because after that your weapon has to Recharge reload whatever you want to call it Uh And as soon as that happened you have to quickly run towards the enemy again Poke them twice and then run away again Because for some reason they also decided to make it an odd number for kills. It's five hits for these bigger ones So just to fuck you off you have to do it three times And have to be lucky that you don't get hit by these guys Are these guys are not even the These guys are not even the worst ones because there's just a little Fuck the worst ones The little chicken ones the little chicken ones those can fuck right off So um, yeah, as you can see I was just like right I guess that's uh An introduction to the combat dot dot dot Yeah, if you want to call it that sort of a keep going situation, but this is the One of the biggest areas I would say in terms of just like a If one could call it a grand puzzle, but again It's more so just hitting buttons and switching levers sort of thing I think the zone is the biggest in the game probably. Yeah I think this is the biggest in the game. It's also the most annoying because it's got enemies in it lots of them They do that again in a in the area with the big dude who you keep hurting over Korean Right now a lot of enemies in that one too. There's the second enemy type picking man any uh You only takes two hits to kill with this thing, but he also has the projectile that basically never misses Yeah, and can snipe you from pretty far away. Yeah, it tracks you so if you are um If you're moving to the left it will anticipate where you're going So you have to kind of stop moving once it releases. It's you Yeah And if you if you if you run towards those fuckers you better make sure you hit because otherwise Yeah, you'll take two hits of damage for sure if you don't hit Fun. Yeah, so I'm just obviously not just the gameplay in this the combat It's not fun No, it's really tedious I was looking for every opportunity to not fight enemies that I could not because it was oh, it's dangerous and resources are scarce It's like no, it's just not fun to do and it sucks Also, it's a thing. I think moller and I are pretty similar and there was approaches if we're in like in the game that has like Scars resources, especially for weapons I think we both go for melee as much as possible Yeah, not to waste any of the mo you have But in this one it's somewhere. It's like I just I'm going to use all the mo I have because I So sick of running towards the enemies, especially if there's like three of them There's like no way for you to not get hit when there's three of them at once Absolutely once the second enemy enters the mix things get really bad And you you just don't want to engage with the mechanics that have been put into the game You you don't want to put up with it. You don't want to do it I uh, I think as well that A lot of why I was trying to kill them was I didn't want to end up getting like running away from one and then bumping into another and being like Well, I'm dead now and um I want to try and wipe them out as I found them but also because uh, you know, I thought I was fully engaged with the game Let's get these mechanics really run through and Yeah, at this point, I think I'm still relatively positive about it But I'm already feeling like the hmm and I'm hoping we'll see some examples as I play this of of You will run up to him shoot with this thing and it'll just not hit them and you feel like oh That definitely happened with me. Yes, and I I guess maybe out of all of us I came out with the most in terms of resources and stuff Um, probably I'm a pretty shooter oriented person and I'm pretty tactical in the way I approach things And even then like if I if I could tell my past self Something I should say just fucking unload on him man. You just I you ended the you ended the game with full everything I expected there to be more um, I expected there to be more enemies More pickups more things you got It just sort of Once you're done with this zone, you don't ever need it again. It's it's it's it's basically done The guns are only used for this section and nowhere else. What do you mean? Well, it's When you say this section I guess this area this zone Um, yeah, because once you get to the big old castle at the end, you don't need them It's oh, I got it. You just need the plunger to kill the uh, it's weird to say this zone because like In terms of zones, how many would you say there even are? I would say three There's a walking segment in between one and two, but I wouldn't call that its own zone. Okay But yeah, it's already uh Noticeably clunky and you'd be like, well, what's wrong with it? And it's like well, it's the most basic combat possible I have an incredibly small amount of even options to harm something and they have a Very select few ways to attack me And we don't really sink very well, uh, and there's no I think there's someone else that's a good way to describe it. You don't synchronize very well with the enemies You're fighting. It's almost like you belong to um Two different games. You don't feel like you and them sort of belong in the same um game Well, so that's just an annoyance. I got there introducing the tentacle enemy right next to having to deal with this guy when I didn't even Oh, look at this Yep, and they all you only had one shot and you get hit Yeah, this is just not fun at this point Oh, it is really annoying. Um, yeah the the combat like I said It's it is a make every time I saw an enemy I would do what I could to let them waddle around and then leave Um, I I'd let them pass. I'd let them go away Uh, eventually they crawl around and then leave. I found out with these tentacle boys. You just run past them Uh, if you just run past them, I don't think they have enough time to deploy Aim and shoot at you. Okay. Yeah, what I found is that you can indeed Mostly escape most enemies by either waiting until they're gone or running past them and then they despawn anyway, which is just like Oh, wow Yeah, but don't worry guys. At least you don't have to use the shooter mechanics Hooray. Cool. Thanks Yeah, uh So, yeah, this game was becoming uh, it's almost like we've now revealed the I guess I wouldn't have known this at the time But that is basically the full set of mechanics as as much as there are different forms of ammo We still go to get, um It just mean the the potential of we started to engage the uh, there are enemies that are around puzzles to solve And environments to get past like that is the full experience and Arguably we are halfway through the game now Yeah, pretty much. This is pretty much the halfway point Um, which is kind of strange looking back and realizing how little that there actually was When you're playing a game, you don't often have that sort of the perception of time when you're engaged in Playing the game running around doing the little puzzles hitting the buttons But yeah, it's kind of crazy how short it really was mm-hmm So yeah, these little health machines and ammo machines. I've got myself I think I've picked up the ammo, but I haven't picked up the gun yet I was getting a little bit confused Uh, it doesn't matter. We'll get to that in a second. So this is the puzzles the the new set Call this the um, I guess call it the light puzzle because you have to light up all the thingies Uh, when you get to when we get to the last version of this puzzle I think it is easily the most difficult puzzle in the game Uh, in fact, I think so by a considerable margin It stood out to me as a difficulty spike. I liked it a lot. I really enjoyed In fact, I would say that solving the puzzle was The highlight of the game um, oh But I think that it was interesting how the last version of this puzzle where there is an extra Two nodes attached It's so much more difficult than the other puzzles in the game. It kind of it just stood out to me And maybe it was just how I Did the puzzle or I mean, I think I'm pretty good with puzzles, but this one is I I enjoyed figuring it out And it was really satisfying when I finished it, but I was like, wow This is like clearly the most difficult thing in the game Yeah, because the other puzzles, um, once you understand how they work. It's just a matter of time This was the only puzzle where I was like mechanics A little more complicated. Yeah, I have to stop and think I know what things do I need to line them all up Get this rotated this way this rotated this way aligned the little bridge connector this way And then yeah, this one actually took some proper thought Uh, this is it. This is an absolutely this is a standalone sort of puzzle that you'd find That isn't just a like a short mini puzzle And I liked it. It was good. It just yeah stood out as being way more difficult than anything else in the game And once you uh, you have to beat one of these per I think like level slash Lowel Yeah, yeah, I think it's three in total, right? And then you'll unlock. Yeah Yeah, I think they add a node each time that you have to light up so it gets progressively Uh, mechanics remain identical, but it gets more difficult because you have to have them all coordinated, uh better Yeah, and you have more variables to take into account. Yeah Just skip four Yeah, this is still me solving the area I mean, that's what you do in the area you run a Go through you hit the buttons. Yeah Make the do those puzzles Those puzzles were a welcome relief from wandering around Uh, trying to avoid combat as much as possible And just hitting buttons that would progress the game The I legitimately think the two high points in this game were the the light puzzle and the cylinder Oh, you got the you got the gun there. Oh, sorry. Yeah, we've got the pistol now Whatever you want to call it Yeah, it's weird. I'm still unclear if it's actually a pistol or shotgun because the Well, here's the thing The crosshairs is there for a reason and you know how normally when you have cross crosshairs Uh, it's like, oh if you see this this one, I know it's this kind of weapon So and shotguns will often have big open circles like this one knife rifles have a pin point thing I saw rifles have like crosshairs that get bigger as you fire. Yeah, there's a lot of times there's some connection between What's happening what or what the gun's going to do and what your crosshairs look like? Yeah Yeah, but this one when it looks like you have like a pistol kind of thingy in your hand It looks like it has a shotgun A scope thingy circle. I mean also This is another enemy type and this was the first thought I had He just went behind the thing Oh, that works really well He's not very good This um, and I said it on stream at the time This is just game of shit, man. This is what you do I've played so many games that the first thought you have with a lot of enemies is how do they deal with the environment And uh, if you can't as a developer deal with this I'm gonna get exploited. Why wouldn't it be? Yeah, I don't want to die. I consider doing this in real life. Like if a fucking thing was coming at me I would put stuff between us If you didn't program it to be able to go around look at that or since that is a wall There are times where I'm like shooting the thing and it doesn't connect Like yeah, I think annoying I still don't know if the range is inconsistent or the hitboxes of the enemy I think it's the hitbox most likely Um, and there is an element of if you're shooting a moving projectile out of something at what point does Your weapon actually have an active hitbox in it So a lot of the times like as you are like maybe as you're stabbing a sword in a game It has an active hitbox as it is going forward But as you pull it back it doesn't have a hitbox anymore And it's just an animation for you pulling it back to you know then recharging essentially Yeah, um, so I'm not exactly certain how it's sort of programmed Yeah, that's funny. You you made this big guy even easier than He already was because I found these guys actually to be the easiest to fight for the most part Because you kind of just bait their dash, I guess and then you walk to the side hit them twice rinse and repeat Actually annoyed looking at this replay because of how many times the gun doesn't work Yeah It's really fucking annoying It should be generous. It shouldn't be harsh Yeah There's no difficulty selection of this game. I never killed any of the enemies like this I I I think I did what the game wanted you to do and pull up the gate before it could come through um So it's interesting to see my play through Kind of mirrored with yours where we just took two completely different routes Yeah, uh I was very disappointed by this because I was like, uh-oh means that Game's gonna have big old holes in it where I can just take full advantage of it Uh-huh And um one might argue well, then you just choose not to write and it's like I don't think that's how it works Not how that works. We had that Yeah, it's it's not an attitude that you want to foster with players where you Leave it up to players to balance their own experience. Um Yeah, that seems that's something you want to leave to the veteran players Who are trying to go out of their way to give themselves a challenge once they know the mechanics? But especially for a first playthrough You don't want to rely on players to be like no, no, that's not that's not with the spirit of the game to do this you should Test the game and make sure that this sort of thing isn't uh, Isn't doable at all. It's all summons discussion again From Elden Ring with the mimic tier and just those summons in general. Yeah, I just don't need to make fights trivial It's like yeah, but I'm doing my first playthrough I want to use all the things that I can because I know this game is supposed to be really hard because I played all of them But now you took a lot of the difficulty away from me At least that was intentional in this game. That's obviously like the developers. Oh, yeah Oh, and this is the thing about it. I'm like, didn't didn't somebody show you this is possible Did nobody and your playtesters find this out? Do you guys have you not played video games before? And that got a test. Yeah makes you start to wonder Yeah Because I remember that happening to to me with one of those big guys in a different area I think shortly before you go up a little elevator or something and there that guy got stuck on the uh Like just on the little thing that goes a little slope that goes up and couldn't deal with it For like a minute and then at some point says, oh, I guess the ai reactivated and was like, oh, I need to go around. Whoops Oh, the clunky movement there as well. Like I got stuck and then it like pushed me up. I was just like just kill me Fuck this. Like I'm not losing that much health Um Just just awkward So Also, I think that's all the enemy types that you encounter. That's all of them, right? Well, there's one more we'll get to him later. Well, I mean just in the general game Yeah, bossy ones. Uh, that's that's all Baldurus a game like this wouldn't have a boss fight. That's ridiculous. That's crazy So it's literally weird thinking about it. Especially when you realize. Oh, yeah This this game had a boss fight at the end. That was weird So, uh, this is the next big area you've got to act to find a way to activate these three You know, it's something this is kind of annoying, by the way You can access all three of those if you just walked over those little games You need to do a better job at actually presenting me barriers that I can't believe my character would do because if that was my ass I'd be like, yeah, I'm just hopping over and activating all three Not uncommon in video games, but still annoying whenever it comes up. I don't think there's ever an excuse for it It's just a reality that yeah, you could have done better for that But you didn't and there are plenty of opportunities in this game But they have gates that you can't surpass. I was like, why don't you just do more of them? Why did you do one like if you can try get a good look at it here? Like that is easy to get past Yeah, so do we talk about the big the big man in the room even a fat guy can do it Absolutely a fat guy would do it the most because it means less walking less walking. Yeah, baby So do we talk about the big floaty fat guy in the room? Yeah, there's a big old guy who this machine is a pot of I guess and the more you completely think he isn't I think he isn't part of the machine. I think you just he's grown around it. Yeah Like the more you do things with the machine the more you hurt him and the more he's upset and he stares at you Yeah, he watches you as you go from place to place around the room And just stares at you. He he doesn't seem to have god. Look at this. I'm just dead. Oh, yeah this area I've missed a shot. So I'm fucked now because that chicken guy look at this. Oh god. It's so painful But I I wonder if this was also the This is what eventually became of what was going to originally be a moral choice mechanic where you could Circumvent using the machine to to not kill the creature. Yeah, or you can be like fuck it I'm just gonna rip the creature open to get the pathways that I need to get through It gives me the vibe of that original puzzle though. This one is there is no alternate way to do it Yeah, you have no choice. You just make him suffer and you're like, okay. Yeah, and you feel bad, but it's like, okay I guess it seems to be evil world. So whatever the hostile creature just chilling out there on the on the elevator like Oh, I guess I'm just going through his belly with these Tunnels that open up and bridges. I like how close he gets to you like his face swirves around to look at you And he's just like He's like, why are you doing this? Yeah, it's like why was that it was chilling I imagine that too. I was thinking that he was gonna like why are you doing this to me, man? Or if he even understood that you were the one doing this to him and he's just in pain or like man I'm sorry the game just making me do it Yeah, sorry, I don't have a saw sorry don't have a saw for you if he would have a big saw maybe we could have saved you Just keep that scoop away from me. You know those things are deadly They're just yeah Everyone knows that scoops are deadly and saws are good There's probably worth mentioning at this point. Uh, I'm still trying to thoroughly explore hence my Three hour runtime into the stream when the average completion for this is three to four hours And I'm still this is about 60 70 of the way through. Um, I I I look around everywhere and I find something I mean rags talked about this one. This is the one that really kills it for me I don't know what the timestamp is going to be. Um, hopefully we'll see it eventually in fact I'll try and But I find oh, I think this might be it. This is Oh, I know The part of it is because there's only three things to do in the game at all. So I was like I've been rewarded for looking around Yay some ammo wheat This is like literally the uh Oh, no, this is the other place. This is a different place I know the place we're all thinking about This isn't the one it's it's in this zone. It's in this area, but that wasn't the particular way you open it up And then two of the big guys spawn and they're just a swarm of enemy spawns, right? That's the one you mean Yes, it's when you go It's it's in one of the little rings. I think it's almost and I think it is the Only thing that you can find in this game that isn't obvious You have to go around a corner to find it low bar, but you know, it is where it is And then the game punishes you like here's some ammunition. Also, you have to fight two of the big chunguses. They spawn right next to you Yeah, like oh Oh as health. So I'm trying to find. Yeah, this is the one. Oh, this is yeah, the you're exactly where it was just now Yeah, that was the that was the spot The first time you show up and have mercy if you didn't reload your weapons before Because then you need to to hide a little bit and start reloading your shit Because you probably just thought oh, hey, I found something neat here finally ammo and then you just rewarded for exploration This is is this it or am I gonna post it? Oh, I think this is it, right? Oh, I think that's it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is it. Yeah, it should be it Yeah, super super useful and it's just like sweet because I use my ammo relatively I uh, I try to use the physical thing whenever I can but The situation where I need to use this is like, okay, fine um And I think I have no idea what's about to happen fortunately I'm like, okay, cool. This is like a dead end then but really is just for ammo. Alrighty Yeah, big one comes out behind you Right there And there you got hit from behind I think yeah and then another one Yeah, because they both come in from both ends of the hallway. Yeah Then I'm like, all right, you get the fuck out Now luckily this gun does go through them as I discovered Oh, so if you if you shoot right I think you can come out ahead Like this can be worth your while. I think you come out with one shot more than you Entered if you're able to get you really get your values worth on each shot But I don't know if that's intentional or intuitive. I didn't I didn't realize that thing when I played it Yeah, I think I just discovered it. Um I noticed they were lined up and I was gonna shoot anyway So I took care of kind of watching to see if it was You know a thing it was Yeah, this how many times does that pop up virtually never this felt like a betrayal You discover a secret and then they Put enemies in your way that essentially nullifies the secret and costs you health more than likely Yeah, well the the issue is that it costs you the thing that you are there to get Um, if you had a room, let's say you're playing Resident Evil or whatever and you You go into a closet or you go into a little back area and you get a bunch of money, right? There's a bunch of pesetas on the ground Um, however You see that? Yeah, yeah, all that fucking cringe. I hate it So you go into this back room There's a bunch of money on the ground and then enemies come I was like, okay, that's that's fair I you know in exchange for fighting the enemies I get money. All right. Yeah, it would be different where You go into a room or you go into an area You get 10 bullets And nine bullets worth of enemies show up So if you perform excellently you come out with one extra bullet than you did before That's just like don't even bother. Just don't even don't even do it You're you're just you're that's essentially punishing players by wasting their time and likely you know taking their health away if You don't want to you don't want to Consume the thing you're giving players um As a reward, you know yeah, and so, um Exploring has gained me fucking nothing in this and now it's starting to take things away from me uh, which is Making me just a very frustrated player. I don't even want to do this anymore sort of thing In this uh segment here when the enemies come at you I actually went around that left little divot in the corner And they had a lot of path finding trouble trying to get me Uh, so I just kind of hit them while they were trying to Walk towards me when they couldn't for whatever reason Were you hitting while you were stunned on the ground there or did you think so it's unclear I don't even know I don't even know that this game when they made it You're really playing the fire if you do that in a game If you're gonna crowd control a player Then you need to be very careful about how you implement that because there are few things worse than knocking a player down Because they get hit by one move and then you're defenseless and you don't have any control And while you're recovering enemies just wallop on you It's not fun. It could be balanced potentially sure, but it's just one of those Like it's not fun to watch that happen and you should probably avoid it Yep She sees that by the way if you don't hold e for just long enough it'll just undo the the healing and it's like Right, so I didn't imagine that I thought I I imagined that Another when I played So yeah, that's great. Once you once you know that going in I'm fine with that It prevents you accidentally hitting e and healing yourself and you don't want to I found that that would be the a good reason for it, but it wasn't working as well as I would have liked it to it was uh Like I would hold it for like two seconds and be like that's enough right and then it pulls it back out and I was like, oh fuck felt clunky The difference between tapping and holding should be pretty obvious to the game instead of me wondering how long I should be holding it down for And um, I did accidentally give myself two heals once when I didn't want to because I wasn't sure how long I was supposed to be holding Yeah, clearly I'm like trying to find an efficient way through this part The the combat is so Different than you'd expect from and this is so that yeah, this gets to a point where people watching this like you've seen a lot of shooter gameplay This is a shooter Yeah This is I think in just watching your clips you have done far more shooting than I ever did I did everything in my power to avoid fights To the point where like in here I went back up the elevator when I saw the when I saw the enemies coming out I just noped and I ran away and then when I when I came back down they had wandered off um, I was just so unhappy with the actual combat that I just uh Elected to avoid it as much as possible I did not want to engage in the mechanics as they were presented to me Which kind of brings us not generally something you want to have players do It brings us to a conversation about genre How does it work? It's like it's usually descriptive of what events or things are in the actual thing Atmosphere tone genres are yes genres are descriptive not prescriptive important to note And so a lot of people come away saying you shouldn't be calling this game a shooter and I'm just like, um it uh Like I don't know if um if a game was in a position where you could run it in first or third person It's up to you. I think there's a couple games to do that, right? Like I think is gta a game that offered that at some point. They've got um God Why am I blanking on games that done that there's plenty all about front two did that you could be in first person or third person So if someone said What is it first person or third person? It's like well at that point It's just going to be dependent on Which you choose. Yeah, they're both there And if that was to be said about this game, it's like well if you engage the shooter mechanics, it's a shooter But if you don't it's not Very strange, but I guess that's that's a thing and so I mean technically Generally if you have a puzzle game you can't Choose to not engage with the puzzle mechanics because they are critical to progress But I suppose yeah in a shooter game If you want to Yeah, you can get through some games that are shooter games by not shooting either Also question if someone said hey is dishonored a first person shooter I'm like, yeah, it's a first person shooter But it's it has a lot of stealth elements and it's not really a traditional first person shooter But yeah, you could call it that um If one was able to complete let's just say card four by simply running and waiting and then your AI allies will clear the area as long as you get to certain areas And you could complete the whole game by doing that like on easy mode or whatever Um, could you could I then say it's not a shooter. It's a it's a runner or something The genre discussion is it's it's a generally helpful thing to in a quick way describe elements of some Yeah, um piece of media or product So once the usefulness of explaining what the genre is runs out It is no longer something that's really worth discussing uh At least in this context. So if someone was to say Tell me about scorn. Is it a first person shooter? I'd say well, yes but Ultimately that the mechanics are very simple and you'd go into all of the caveats for that because you don't feel But like you wouldn't have to add caveats if someone said hey is Call of Duty 4 a first person shooter You're like, yeah, it is Stop done. Yeah, it perfectly describes that game Or as this game it has the asterisks. Yes, it's a first person shooter But it's only in one section of the game. It's really Simplistic and the enemies are not fun to fight. It's it's it's only through technicality. Is it? Yeah, and um But that so like the reason that comes up is p players frustrations And so people complaining about the combat they're like, yeah, but it's not a shooter And it's like I don't care what it is the combat mechanics are bad Yeah And that's what it's down to it's just bad mechanics. It's awful. The mechanics are present They are to be used at your leisure and they don't work very well It's like the idea that like yeah, and you know what the flying mechanics in Games without flying aren't very good. Are they it's like, no, they're not there. They're just not and that's a different thing These are here and they're not very well done and depending on your approach with the game Which I think is this is I'm not doing something crazy I'm like you gave me guns. You gave me ammo, which by the way, I spend healthy amounts of it and I don't run out So to me all of you know, like if you give me a gun and there's only three shots throughout the entire game of scorn I'd be like, okay, it's not really much of a shooter, but I killed a shit ton of things in this game Absolutely So the idea that it doesn't count as a shooter though, and I'm just like I don't even know what are you trying to say? I'm just Yeah in retrospect I kind of marveled at how stingy I was thinking that there would be more You know elements of the game to shoot Yeah, because you want to you want to preserve your ammo It's like oh, that's maybe we're going to be like a big boss fight or something that you you need the ammo for Yeah, you want to use like in case I need it in case I get to that room where it swamps me with enemies Or if I have to mad dash to complete an objective and I need to expend that ammunition, you know a bit, you know, liberally I've got it, you know Instead of you know, if I don't really need to use it I'll try not to use it. So it makes those more important moments easier on me in the future I feel like I'm kind of making an investment in a way Yeah Expendatory with my ammo That's how I did it while I was playing Silent Hill because that's one of those survival Uh horror thingies like much in the the likes of Resident Evil where you don't have a lot of ammo normally if you just shoot everything But it's Silent Hill it's more it's even more Oh, you probably want to avoid the enemies as much as you can and then fight them head on if you can And then use your ammo sparingly And then the boss fights that came up they I made them much easier because I had tons of shotgun ammo still around And tons of handgun ammo and didn't need to go and close to the boss fights So yeah, as you said, it's an investment Because you want these the big the big the big guns for the big enemies Legit now I'm uh, I'm getting the end game If you know what you're doing, I am about 10 or 15 minutes away from the final cutscene Yeah, probably, uh, yeah, you legitimately are um In the biggest you know the biggest time thing is uh That that final enemy Well, so yeah, this is where I think we're far enough along that I can stop being a lot more critical of what I started to conclude So By the way, I was like thank god. I'm out of that area Yeah, I was very bored of it at this point Uh, so yeah, you this this little train rides takes you to the next area Which is like it's cool and everything but again, I can't help but be very cynical about anything that takes time in this game I'm like yes adding on you train ride need to be this long But look at this is very deliberate It's like visually it's very striking and you already see people sharing this and they're like isn't this incredible and it's like Yeah, cool. It looks nice Looks really cool Interesting Well, you get here and there's already plenty to search through Uh loads of different rooms and pathways, but like most of it is dead ends Nothing to find there is one pathway. Yes In fact, I know that there's one place to go knowing that in retrospect for this big sort of edible looking architecture is really lame. It's like this this just one way to go It's not like you enter a mansion or a palace and you're like wow I need to you know, how am I going to explore this? So I need to organize my travels Do I need to go Clear the left side first then the ride or like no, there's only one place to go. Don't worry about it You can't get lost Excess to this room you got down so the reality of this room Yeah, is that uh You come across two bodies on little slabs and one of them Has a an attachment of a jar of what could be called jelly And it's half filled You're like, okay, uh, you take that jar you just pick it up. You're like, all righty then Then you walk around you find another place the whole machine you put the jar in there nothing else happens Okay And you walk further and you think it even opens up a door and it locks you into this sequence of this room You got a shit ton of ammo here. You got a health boost as well You're like, okay For exactly what's going on And there are these two gars of thing here And uh, the first thought you might have at least I had and I think you did as well rags possibly mel is that Oh, this will go in that machine that we were just looking at earlier. Yeah, of course It seems like it's a appropriately sized object. Yeah, you you put this thing here I don't know why it's a baby. Whatever the slot looks like it mixes. Sure. Let's do that Yeah, there's a little little thing so I do indeed try that at first in fact, I think that this is uh, once I'd already figured it out, but That doesn't work And you have to go around for a while until uh, you you'll eventually just conclude Oh, there is a thing over there with like a belly I'll put it in and it starts going And you're just like Oh my goodness. Yeah, so I thought this was like some form of a generator and we just put a battery into it And it's just a weird flashy aim Yeah, I was like, no, that's how it up. What do I do? Yeah, I want to look around the room now What has changed now that I put the thing in the thing I guess that one gate is a total red herring. You never open up that gate and go in. Yeah, I don't think you do It's never It's never opened Yeah, so you walk around Like nothing really changed. I think I picked that thing up once as well. It's like what to do with this now I think that that gate does open because you need all three of the uh The dudes right you fill up half the jar and then a full jar which takes another two halves Does it eventually open? Oh, oh it opens when you blow up the thing, right? Oh, yeah, okay. That's it. Got you Yeah, yeah, yeah as a gamer. I was like, well, I have dealt with one of the jars I've still got another one and so people in travel like yeah, you got to put the other one in the machine I was like, oh, okay, and then I was like Okay, that's not it. Why can't I do that? Yeah, that can't be it then and it's like but the door's locked and so I Very much don't like being in these situations, but it's not better than others really in the sense of I'm locked in here. There is one obviously here obvious thing. I'm supposed to do and I cannot find it This is driving me nuts. Like what am I supposed to do? I've got the game has limited me To such a small environment with such little mechanics that I should be able to figure this out, right? Like what am I doing wrong? I frantically was searching every nook every granny. I went out to the balcony. I looked around I was I was just meticulously studying every Nook and divot and ridge of every wall and I looked around the floor and I and I just I was I was looking and looking and looking. Where is the button? Do I press an on switch? What have I missed? What have I missed? I've clearly missed something. Where is the button that I've missed? And so, uh, yeah chat was suggesting all kinds of things to me like you've got to try Moving this that place. You got to step on that do this that this by the way I thought was going to open that gate and I was like, no it oh it does this And I even tried shooting them with my normal guns at one point. I was so desperate to have something happen Oh the little rails at the top of the room I thought they would be incorporated into this puzzle area scenario Oh, yeah, I thought I might have to move the guy with the belly thing onto this And I thought maybe I tried as well. I even thought maybe if I drop this little guy on this then it'll open that permanently But you can't drop anything Like to pick them up and slide them out through that door Uh, that opens up when you stand on the pressure plate. I I guess not Oh, yeah, not doing good. Um, luckily for me Someone in chat suggests some things so outlandish And I'm like that's hilarious And then they they're suggesting it for real and then I'm like you Serious and it's like I guess I can give it a shot Because I don't know what else I'm doing in here and to be honest with you. I don't actually know where in the timeline I actually do it. Um I'm still see this where my Simple german brain came in I was just looking around. It's like oh this thing is annoying Stop moving and I and I just I just read this like Stop moving and then it explodes this bell. It's like uh, oh Oh Yeah, it turns out That what you are supposed to do here Is you are supposed to take out the little baby embryo pod Stick it in the belly of this, uh cyborg and then Shoot it or punch it you destroy it So that the baby falls out Which is um something that I only discovered I think I pulled up your stream my I was legitimately like what the fuck am I supposed to do I've searched for so long I feel like half of my game time has been spent Wandering around the room trying to fit is it glitched? I restarted by the way I restarted the uh the level the checkpoint because I I thought that there might be a glitch That uh something was supposed to open when I put in the um when I put in the baby I Was legit shocked by this. I was like you're not serious. What the fuck? Actually, how fucking bizarre and unintuitive is this? Why in the world so just like basic language I would call it for video games This comes across as some kind of battery or power cell And you place it into something that then powers up. Why would I then destroy it? Why the fuck did I need to put it into this thing to destroy it? Why can I just break it as it is? Yeah, it's already You go ahead. Oh, it's because it's already moving inside this thing Yeah, it's not like you need to put it into activated or something. It's just like flumping around But they wanted to put this in there for reasons and then kill it. I was like, okay And you know you want to expect some stuff like this. We just like whoa, I couldn't possibly understand what the hell this means, but seriously And uh, yeah, you just it's it's really confusing that it's just like yeah Now you can shove this into that machine and crush him into jelly Another thing they do here that just kind of throws me off is like the amount of jelly juice that comes out of this guy Which surely fills several of these containers Like look at him. He's huge compared to a point. Yeah Like look how much it fills up the machine and then it drains And it only fills up what half of one of these things. It's like, yeah, okay Definitely more than half of one of these Yeah, I know it's supposed to be an alien world with weird stuff and things are strange but how am I supposed to Piece together that the way that you get the jar of blood to open up the door Is that you have to take a pod with a baby in it Put the jar into a cyborg and then either crush Or engage in mortal combat with the cyborg so that you can then break the pod Take the baby out put the baby in the crusher drain the baby blood And then put that in the cylinder when you want to open a door. It's like what? I I'm just like I I don't No, if if if everything wasn't highlighted with the interactable buttons I have no idea how you'd figure it out. It doesn't make any sense. It's there's nothing intuitive about it And so you want to fill the next jar and uh that means putting the baby into the next cyborg, but he wakes up And uh Then I prompt to just like you start avoiding What he does which is grenade launch at you over and over again And I think that what we'll do is just talk while he's playing But his first phase is that he shoots shoots I think it's four cycles of three grenades is typically what it takes. Um, yep, variation Until he starts reloading and when he reloads Like sacks of pink goo come out of his sides and you just got to hit them with the physical thing I'll shoot with a gun and he'll break and then he's That's phase one complete. But as you can see He struggles Oh, yeah awful ai That has him constantly confused To the point where you have to like handhold the enemy into attacking you which is so embarrassing Then of course it's kind of really boring I'm just waiting for him to expunge his fucking cycle before he is weak again. Oh shit. Oh shit No, and it's like so what happens once that's done like again loads of really long animations Every time these things actually tag you it's just annoying Yeah A lot of waiting Yeah, it's not a very engaging fight at all not fun at all. No You're just walking around waiting for him to deplete his ammo shoot the glowy birds And that's it. Wait, did you need two shots? Yes, which in retrospect is absurd. So that means that that's the same damage as your poker. I use my plunger Yes, I said that because I used a poker and took two and you can do that in one go You don't have to wait another cycle. So using the physical one is actually faster Another thing that I am unbeknownst to at this point is this is the last time you can use your ammo That is true. No, did you say that? Um, so look at me doing this. I'm like, ah The blood was coming out of his head when I was hitting it there, but he's dead anyway So it doesn't matter and it's like well actually he's not dead And so as a gamer you're always looking for them weak spot things and stuff So I was like, okay, so I'm gonna need to stun him slash defeat him by uh You know further damaging him Just pro tip whenever you attack something and blood comes out I feel like that's a signal to the player that um, you're hurting them Especially if they make sounds of like ah When you do it and Yeah, I spent a lot of time trying to like running around poking him in the head shooting him Because it seemed like that was working, but I guess it I know this is a thing too because people in chat were like You keep going for like thighs or shoulders or head or whatever when Uh Others would suggest others so it's let's say I hit in the head It's like I think you got to go for the thighs to make him fall over They go for the thighs. It's like no, I think it's the flash around the shoulders Like it's it's knock his arms off or whatever And then most people like no, it's gotta be the head It is the head blood comes out when you shoot them in the head And eventually I think I use like all my ammo and I'm just like I don't know what the fuck I'm supposed to do Um, there's a strong reality here of what I am supposed to do Uh, that wasn't clear to me. Yeah, I did just fucking wait See he's reloading. I was like, ah, so it's gotta be when he's reloading But what is it and then I was like shooting the back maybe Like nothing there. You keep waiting He'll fuck with his gun Yeah And then wait what wait it wasn't he's supposed to open that thingy there. Hey wait. I'm confused I was very confused at this point. I had no idea what I was doing wrong Wait, I thought I remembered the cycle correctly, but I guess I didn't I don't think it's I don't think it's truly a cycle Uh Because wait it was either He stood back up. He started shooting his thing. I started shooting my weapons at him for a while I was like, okay, this is not working apparently And then he started reloading. It's like, okay, something must have happened now And I think for me in the the first time he reloaded he opened up his little flim flam Look at this you can stagger him Oh, you can and see it's like so I'm supposed to do that question mark. Yeah, there's nothing to it There's no reason to do that. It's Why would you make it this way and this is the other thing I started talking about this I was like When you find out how you actually beat him Why wouldn't you make it so that that's a secondary option? Just you know brute force and it looks like there that it actually is Looks like there it did but like have you seen how much ammo I've spent? I'm nearly out It's a lot No fucking way I can keep to keep this up Yeah, it seemed very inconsistent. I had I was like legit didn't know Also, this gun is supposed to pack an enormous punch and it's just not Man, I got a feeling I got lucky that he opened this You staggered again And yeah, you are starting to notice that right like there's a there's a key to this fight We haven't revealed yet and I don't think I had any reason to think that that was the key to it when I was doing this I think right now. I'm like, this is it. Is it not and then I die and I'm like Fucking hell. I have to do all of that again Like I have to whittle him down that far all over again And I haven't even figured out how I'm supposed to kill him yet Yeah, it's um It's not the most intuitive consider especially considering that he punches with his gun Yes, you have to bait out the punch with the other arm I didn't even know that It's when it when he punches with his other arm That's when he reveals his chest and that's when you have to dodge the punch and then go in for a hit with the uh the plunger That is hilarious because I thought the solution was just to wait and then eventually he opens up his thing Turns out I guess I just accidentally baited out that attack and thought that's the thing I needed to I just needed to wait Because I got close when he did that. Oh he actually And when I finally when I found out this is how you kill him you can you can do it really fast and I was just like What a shit fucking boss Wow But isn't that interesting that that I thought that it's just waiting for him to deplete his ammo and then Get to him and do it I wasn't even aware it's it's the punch. I thought it's just Waiting for him to deplete his ammo and then take advantage of that Yeah Because I did get closer, but I didn't even notice he was doing a punch. I thought he just flunged around Well, so what's funny about this is I said on stream There should have been multiple ways to beat him that included the one I tried and someone in chat said or I think even Super chat. I don't think so. I think it's good that there's the one way. They just needed to make it clearer What's funny is there are multiple ways to beat him It just takes so much ammo that's pretty unlikely that you would ever achieve it the other way as you saw I staggered him and then knocked him down The amount of times that I would have hit him with ammo I would have realized that my returns were not worth the ammo investment and I would have just stopped Which is funny. I'm not supposed to do this because technically they would be this is the last time you can spend ammo But you don't know that at the time as a player. You don't know that. Yeah You want to keep some ammo because you don't know what's up ahead I'm not going to say it's the most because it's probably something else But this is one of the most unintuitive pieces of shit. I have come across in terms of a sequence all of this is so Like if I if I was in the developers sort of like boardroom discussing this whole thing after real play I'd be like we need to redo this. This is so Doesn't make sense and it's not fun. Yeah The fight itself is is dull and boring and it wastes a lot of time A lot of this just flat out doesn't seem to make any sense. It's not intuitive Uh, that's ground up rework To the point. Yeah, we're someone said. Yeah, boy. It's it's eager It's supposed to give a sense of like you don't understand. It's supposed to say you made this a video game So you've got limits on that you actually have to have some things be understandable You know such as humans press forward to move. I'm afraid you have that in the game Pretty understandable and that applies to a lot of stuff Yeah, they lock you in to having the grenade launcher only now Uh, and then you fight another one and you have to put it in his back To kill him after waiting for his cycle to complete and that was a that was a big relief for me Because I was just like I don't want to fucking fight this thing twice Yeah And so that completes his I guess addition to the game. He's the fifth enemy type. I think you Say yeah, yeah more of a boss type Do you fight technically once there are three of these guys one one dies instantly the other one dies Pretty quickly and then the other one's like a full-on fight Awful awful awful, and I never want to have to do it again. So my patience was gone at this point I kind of already hated this game I'd had enough. Um, especially with people telling me I was near the end I was just like this game never gave me anything with while at this point. I didn't get engaged at all with With anything. I was just like these puzzles were pretty simple and very sparse Yeah, your minutes from the end. Yeah, and the combat was just horrendous. Did you ever go back and finish? Yes, actually, but the fact that you've said that implies of course that this Stream ends before I reach the end and for those listening to this they like what why you you're so close It's like true. Well, so As you collect this your left hand there gets covered in that weird stuff And so you no longer use it Now I think that's already strange Because this is the thing it's called ludonarrative dissonance. It happens in a lot of ways But just because your hand is covered in that goo does not mean you can't actually still put that little vial into the thing If you have two flippers, let's say you can still probably do it And then it's gonna be a little tougher. Sure, but you can do it, but no, you're not allowed. It's like, hmm. Okay. That's already annoying But fine The implication of course being this stuff has been growing on you the whole game. So now it's time to get rid of it presumably um Now if you go looking You'll find because you only have the grenade launcher active now. It's like stuck to you There are two different locations for standing on the little levers and opening up a thing And then you can fire the grenade launcher into it and it'll damage it and then open up a gate. So there's two areas to do that um Find the one that I start struggling with for that. Yeah, it's brown about behavior You also find a machine that can cut off this stuff. Now the first thought I had was like, okay. I freed my hand cool Like that was just something I had to do um, I didn't realize this machine was uh Only designed for that. I thought it was for something else and that it had a feature on it that would get rid of the thing Uh, if it were on you So I used it twice there without fully understanding what I was even supposed to do But your health keeps going down Once you've done that and then yeah, I just ran out and I was like, oh Wait, you actually died. Jesus. Yeah, and I was just like whoops and and people were like, why'd you use it twice? And I was like because I didn't realize the machine we've never come across a machine in the whole game That specific design is to cut off a thing on your hand So I thought that machine was designed to do something else and that it had a feature applied to it If ever your hand is covered in stupid goo, it'll cut it off. So I was like, okay fine. I I've learned now but um I'm still kind of like, oh, I've been sent all the way back. That's uh Oh, okay. That's really great Um And as you can imagine it's trying my patience, but that's fine. We get through it We do this we persevere because we're humans. Okay So I do that and unfortunately for me. I'm not soft locked. I am Harsh locked or whatever you want to say I only get one or two tries of this before I get reset again Because I don't know what I'm supposed to do here But I've freed my hand and I'm like, all right, so I can go and do that jar thing now, right? I needed a free hand to do the jar thing and it's really close. So I had there Then it reseals He was like, nope And I'm like, oh and so do you know what this did? Brags metal, do you know what this did? It poisoned my gamer mind because this game isn't very well designed I thought So I get a couple of seconds for freedom. Yeah That's weird. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to be able to do with that couple of seconds Um, I find the the health thing is available in that other area. We've got two doors with lights on them And another machine here that can so this by the way This is where I came so close to actually being able to just Move through if I only used my four light machine here, but Uh, I was still very lost and confused as to how everything worked And I even thought by the way that I needed my hand free to use the health machine But I was like, okay, so I freed myself now. I'll just have to make my way to Whatever's required. There's another door across the room there. You would have seen it for a split second I wonder if I've got footage here of me trying to access. I know I do, but I just don't know I think Yeah, because I can see it over there. You can't use it because your hand is covered in goo So I'm like if I use the machine first Then go and try and use it. It'll work, but it also cuts me off and then I use one that's closer to it Here cuts you off And that is before the timer Releases so I was getting really fucking pissed now because I was like These are both directions. I should be able to go but you're not letting me Yeah Very arbitrarily. Uh, that's five lights So I needed five lights to access it and then uh chat were like not both of them are five lights One of them is four lights and to be fair. I wasn't at all focusing on the four light one I was getting incredibly frustrated The point where I was just gonna kill myself obviously Um, as you do I finally die before your health was drained by the way I die before my health. All right. Well, yeah, there's in the game animations. Don't catch up to you sort of thing I don't think yeah, I think it's um I think I get it this time Not even a hundred percent sure But basically what I'm trying to describe to you here is that the information I've been given is so fucking Goofy compared to what I'm actually supposed to do that it confused the hell out of me Um, but there you go. That's what you're supposed to do You're not allowed to do any of the other options and I fucking died anyway Yeah And this is the thing I was I was locked into having very low health because of checkpoints and other things that had happened Anyway, get myself a bit of health going forward do this all again. It's all working out great Get to this door this time. I'll survive it so Wonderful and so this area I'm so tilted at this point But like it doesn't even matter what mechanics are being presented. I just don't want I want out And this is by the way almost the end of my playthrough, which is not the end of the games You must wonder what's happening. Yeah, you're you are minutes from the end. Yeah, so that's an ammo store there There's a lever here All you're supposed to do is wait until there's an opportunity to fire a grenade launcher And you'll break a thing and you can move on I am I'm so it moves the things. I'm so pissed off. I'm just firing. I'm just blasting I just don't care anymore. So I'm like whatever and Dude, I think yeah, because I'm gonna go three shots I just oh, that's the fuck up and it even hit me Whatever whatever Fuck's sake. Yeah, I guess I'll restock because that's where I was obviously supposed to shoot it I'm just like, all right, and then I go to do it Uh animation's not starting up And now I can't move and yeah Oh Wait, oh, you can't move anymore. Nope. Yeah, he's glitched. Oh That's not good. Now while you watch me fumble with this The other thing I wanted to highlight that kind of went past on accident was um I got so pissed off when I realized that I could still use the health machine And chat were like Calm down different. Remember you've got your uh, your flume arms and your normal arms Your flume arms are able to uh to get access to the health machine But it makes sense and then I got even angrier Why the fuck do I have control of my flume arms enough to be able to do things and interact with whatever I want? Actually, I'm going to roll us back because this is another problem. We will get there Um, why can I do things with my flume arms, but I can't Put the jar in the machine Why can't my flume arm put the jar in the machine? You'll be able to do that Yep, and bear in mind if I could do that That's the end of the game that platform Yeah, your flume arm has been the thing that's been whole it's essentially your inventory storage Whenever you check your inventory your flume farms raise up to you so that you can see what you have in your inventory Now that you ever never need to do that but that is something in the game So on command you can make those arms do you definitely have control over those arms? You do um But no and so that was driving me nuts. I was just like why the fuck Uh when I can solve this problem easily intuitively the game's betraying me and itself in order to make us have more time doing tedious shit I was I was very upset and uh Yeah, and then of course like I said, I'm running out of patience I'm literally at my wit's end and then the I fucking freeze as though god is like Just throw this on too Now This is a pardon me for just a moment. I need to use the lure quick. I'll be right back Okay, this isn't a problem in loads of video games because They know this is a potential this can happen Soft locking as well as just falling into a part of the map that is Inescapable usually you shouldn't be there, but some games come with the chance for you to kill yourself No matter what you'll have like a mechanic that can do so some games come with um, and I reference this in the stream of playing god of war Even god of war one as early as that You press star and you've got load previous checkpoint load pretty up exactly So and that'll take you to something that is more recent likely than your last save saving and checkpoints of different things and luckily For us, uh, this game has a saving system, of course Okay, excellent. And so as you've been seeing when I die I get sent back a certain amount of time Which I think is actually already a problem in this game. Um, there's been I'ms where I get sent back way too fucking far as far as I'm concerned Um, it's hard to say exactly where the line should be with video games, but this one totally went too far. Um Now What happens here is that I'm like I best load My last checkpoint. There's no option for that. There is only load game That load game refers to Autosaves and they happen at the beginning of each act And there are five acts in this four to five hour game Which means I'm losing as much as an hour of gameplay And um, I quickly realized that when I didn't mean by the way to hit load I was kind of hoping to do something else Um, but ultimately didn't really matter because I was I was screwed. There was no way out of this Um, maybe if I went to the main menu, it might have done something else when I hit continue That might have been a way to escape But that's still maybe just a piss-poor sort of Uh Layer intuitive way of of getting me to what I need which should be a low point. That's all you need exactly I just have that in your In your menu. Yeah, it's a form of like kill me and send me to where I was last, but yeah Um, so I I alt tab because I'm sorting something. Uh, I think like chat goes off or whatever and then when I click back in It uh, it counts as clicking the Save file being act five Which you can see it says it says play time three two three meaning three hours and 23 minutes And we are four hours and 43 minutes into the stream So there's a primer a gate an in-game timer in the top right it said four hours 26 So you virtually lost an hour. Yeah, uh, and it was an accident and they didn't ask. Are you sure? One of the most basic fucking things you could ever have in a video game Mm-hmm when and the reason they have are you sure is because this is a bit of a big thing you're doing here Are you sure you want to do this you want to load up a thing that takes you back and out? But nope it just goes yeah, okay And I was like, oh no no no no no No, no, you didn't just do this to me And uh, yeah, we are right at the beginning of act five man Uh, it was not pleasing to me Not at all not in the least I do remember that Uh, and so I was I was done though now funnily enough. I have since completed air got all the achievements as well So we can continue talking about it. I already know what happens, but um, yeah, oh boy. Do you know what happens? I do. I totally understand it completely. It was okay That's good. I mean hopefully did see what happens because he quickly raided my stream. I was like, hey I'm enjoying this What we'll do here is load up a long play as they're called if someone else playing this game We'll just uh Be someone who isn't me complete it while I uh, we can talk over it. So Yeah, that that happened to me. It was an incredibly rough experience at that point I was critical of not only the safe system in several directions But the combat system the lack of puzzles the simplicity of the puzzles The lack of like depth to anything in the in the world design beyond the visual splendor of Eager's artwork along with the the other artists and references I Was so done to the point where I was like, I think it's Pretty weak to call this a video game Uh compared to some of the things we can get in this in this world and some things people are capable of But at the same time, yeah, I'd rather just okay. It's just a shitty game um Which is also when I ever wanted to actually get to the point of saying but um I suppose we'll finish it out before Saying anything like that you you unlock this room, which is the remove the weird thing on your back room That's uh Before you can activate it the uh the creature decides it's gonna rip out your Guts essentially. Mm-hmm as though it knows What you're about to do I guess I don't know. But either way You what can you do but go? Oh That's gross And yeah, and so but you get off the machine you pull it off And then you can uh complete your goal, which is get that jar to the thing And then that raises the platform Oh, fuck. I forgot about this. Sorry guys. It's not as simple because they lock off the shortcut But yeah, you have to move all the way you have to walk All the way around I'm gonna play this part in two times They make you walk very slowly you are currently limping Um Because you've got your guts are torn out and not only like I said, this is on times too They add this little thing of like. Oh boy. Oh geez Oh, man, I hope you make it whoever you are. Yeah, I hope I'll do the thing. I'm I'm doing right now This is so unacceptable. This adds like 10 minutes on to the fucking game It's like so long And you have to draw in the environment because otherwise you just kill yourself through boredom It's like, oh look at this architecture. I'm still like cool. All right. That brought me a few seconds Look at this And they keep adding these little falling over animations Like why did you spend so much time on additional animations instead of you know the mechanics content Also that Yeah, I guess it was different people I suppose or whatever Yeah, uh, probably you know that you're probably right about that actually the the team's on anything to do with each other But yeah, you finally get back here. They delayed you for no reason at all Yep, you're plugging the thing God, I want to get through this so quickly at this point. You you Activate platform you put yourself in this machine. By the way, you have to do this Well, you know the option you were trying to do just doesn't let you do it if you do it that way Yeah, yeah, yeah Check it out. So, yeah, he he's cutting the fuck out of you. You end up getting What do you mean? Put into the hive mind or something Wake up as these two you can switch between them You apply Yeah, the two little bodies from before that you had to put the juice into the blood into They get up and start walking around you can mind control them Then you have one of them keep the door Open-ish and then you grab your past body And use the weight of you and him to get through the door by opening sitting on this little platformy thing Oh this guy didn't do it quite right at first Regardless, you eventually open it you walk through plays a cutscene until you become a flashball Yeah, because that little creature jumps on you as well Yeah, well, it's the one that you remove from you. It actually comes back and stops you at the end So yeah, it just gets you again because fuck you. I don't know what this means Yeah And I was struggling to be able to care I didn't care. I just felt like it was incredibly anti-climatic and I was just like I don't even know what this means. I don't Know what is happening. I guess this is what happened to this guy. I'm not even thinking that this is me at this point Uh, and that's that that is scorn. That's the game. What's it? What's that game? What's that big flash flashy vagina in the background that I'm trying to get to? Yeah, that weird eight does it go some plate your character is clearly trying to get there I guess your character knows something that you don't know clearly Uh, so Yeah, yeah, that's the um, that's the game um Yeah, I mean I don't even know what to say. It's just This happens at the end and I guess you fail at your task and look how cruel this world is I would go as far as saying this is uh It's another one of those ones that just test the limits of how bad or thin a game can be um, there's A lot of understanding of Content that should be in a game and this just doesn't have it and it doesn't care if you want it or not It's done. So um, I know that this has been in production for is it six years Something like that. Yeah, that seems unacceptable to me. I just don't understand how you could have released this after a lot of time That's that's a good 40 minutes of game per year of development I don't know why there's so many it goes beyond uh, whether or not they had time to make more resources They didn't even repeat more resources. They had in in more interesting ways You had a chance to do that the only like we've whether some puzzles They just do once and then leave But there's very few puzzles in the game Most of it is just walking around pressing buttons until things work Pretty much I suppose the atmosphere is worth praising as well as the visuals, but I don't know how much that's gonna go for no helping a game get to a defensible position as uh The gaugeable mechanics Are just not present. We talked about this before but there are some games that have limited mechanics or thin mechanics Um FOMA is going to be one of the better examples That was a complaint that happened when people were playing it when they came out They were like there's this mainly walking pressing buttons accessing terminals a bit of puzzle solving But there's barely anything to it Like yes, but the the mechanics never got in the way and they all engaged in a way that they would Won't quote supposed to it would never pretty diegetic It didn't feel very gamey Which is not that it's bad to feel gamey But if you want to go for particular vibes Then going for something that feels like a game might be Not the route to go And so um I give I've got bad marks for most things Except like a couple and I just don't think the game gets to fly by on being like I'm an atmosphere game Yeah, I know Um, I don't know what that means Does that mean a game that manages to nail an atmosphere and its mechanics and its story becomes like a godlike game? That'd be I guess so But yeah, who knows I think we managed to cover mostly everything about it as we've gone through luckily, but uh Yeah, pretty much it's just like this You go in it's like oh, that's kind of neat. Look how gross and disgusting those looks and in like sometimes when things happen I'm just like oh, that's nasty and look at this flashy thing. You need to put your hand in And then it happens again. It's like, okay, it's so gross and that happens again It's like, okay, I'm well that determines your mileage That right there what you're describing that your ability to To think that the environment is cool and interesting That it that's it that will determine How much or probably what you think of the game Yeah, I mean that's gonna be the thing that carries you through I mean if you go in just want to look at the environments, I mean You have nice things to look at of gross things whatever you want to call them But at some point I just want to see something with the gameplay happening where I I mean if you if you implement a shooting thing in your game, you might as well make it work properly And make it work nicely and make it responsive And not do Well this where you Just fucked if you don't hit an enemy once and then if you try to run away To correct your error You just get hit in the back because these guys have all Ranged attacks except the the the horse thingy Uh, yeah, as he as he said it's like the enemies and you are out of sync That's just uh that game this game is Flipped on me disappointed. It was very diplomatic. Yeah felt very disappointed At the end that was I was like, oh, this is the end It's done. That's it. That's all that the game has to offer and it does I mean repeated playthroughs. You're not gonna It's not like there are secret passageways and extra puzzles and multiple endings Like that's it the difference between a completionist playthrough and a normal playthrough is indistinguishable Yeah, as far as I know if you Save the guy in the beginning He helps you open the door the big door and that's it. That's the only difference of the playthrough as far as I know I'll take your word for it. I don't care enough to check. Oh, yeah, sorry. That is what happens I did because I did it myself. I was curious. Yeah, um, he crawls out of the thing and then you Force his hand into the machine to get the little spike on it Then you force him to access the console to open the door to let you through Which by the way if that is truly considered more moral it looks like he's trapped when you leave him Great curious, um Yeah, so replay replayability in this game is basically zero zero. Yeah Like there's no point. You can just go in the beginning area do this one thing Can look at it and that's it. It's worse than zero because I would start to consider it torture to have to be playing this game again That's fair. Yeah Meanwhile, you'll be a pure finish the game mode because there's nothing else to I get there's no secrets. There's no Multiple endings the only thing that seems to be an option is scoop and saw that seems to be the only thing Uh, and that's so unintuitive that it doesn't feel good to do two very great criticisms I have and when I say great, I mean large significant ones One this game is clearly not finished in several ways Uh, I I can almost because I'm getting real cynical about it Assume that there was intentions to make some kind of binding story And then they just sort of threw that out because they don't have enough time. They didn't even start it There's a chance that that was the case. I don't know. I'm just speculating um Because it just seems to be that there's room to build it be in the form of um notes or consoles giving you information and terminals or different kinds of uh visions and flashes of of events that took place This is this is all a technological place like there's loads of uh perfectly diegetic ways to get that To the the player, but cool. Um, that's just not in it So there's that aspect that's gone the the combat mechanics are incredibly thin like they they feel archaic They're from a very old time where this was starting to Even be discovered by a developer like third person shooter combat Then there's um the puzzles there's so few of them spread across this very small game I don't even know how that's possible that it feels like we barely get any puzzles in a game this small um Shame it really is especially considering as I said, I think they were like the highlight of my uh gameplay was like Oh, thank god a puzzle to solve Yeah, and this way we have been walking around and pressing the occasional button Not only do I think there's not enough of them and I don't think that they Is some of them are way too simple But some of them like they just as we said they they were only used the one time when you could easily have made Developing ones that get harder which they have done with some of them. Yeah, some of them are developing And then there are environments where it's like the last place It's like wow this is so grand and it's like yeah, but there's only the bit to the left that you do anything in in this place And then like the underneath it's like does that not again? All these things make it feel like it's unfinished Like there's more things they were going to do but they've just been cut off and they've released it And they're just hoping that this is enough Um, and then the other thing I would say is that I'm sorry, but the developers have scorn I don't know how familiar they are with video games, but I would guess they're not very They're familiar with artwork and atmosphere Yeah, either they had no time all the people who were I had time bound to be making this game game part of the game Have not played many games In fact, it feels like they may watch some videos about games Feels like the um, they wanted to make art in terms of aesthetic and a really cool environment And they were very passionate about this aesthetic And then they realized along the way. Oh, shit. I have to I have to make a game. I have to program a video game That's a job That's work Um, oh, yeah, uh, I think it's bad. I'll never play it again or would I recommend it? No, not a recommendation from me. No, not even on game pass. Don't touch it a game pass Which thank god I played it on game pass and didn't blow 40 bucks, but uh Yeah, even on game pass and even as short as it is. I mean this We've got um, you know, shirako doing a uh full game walkthrough It is two hours and 40 minutes So yeah, just so people know this is kind of we found this out when I was like planning to have footage of the background This is uh, this is something called a long play where for those who don't know It's just something you can find for every video game with you don't have any commentary It's really good if you want to absorb the story or understand a game without anyone going Hey guys, welcome to part six of my play this is like shut up boys. What's up? It's a boy. They are not speedruns. They are playthroughs They are just people playing through the game at a reasonable pace Sometimes I even wonder how they do them in terms of if you get stuck to they just like You know Pays it so that it cuts to when they actually figure it out or something But um, as you've been seeing from this footage, he seems to be just playing it This is times two speed. So he's just going through normally in fact, he's like The one thing he's doing here that wasn't present in my playthrough that you would have seen is the uh He's definitely kind of rushing past enemies when it doesn't work out when he's killing them or he's sort of Rushing past places he could further explore which I did a lot of and like I said, I feel punished Either I found the one time I found anything. I was given two enemies that fucking sponged all the shit I picked up anyway And I was like like said one time Uh, the rest of it. I was just dead end dead end dead end dead end dead until I got to appointment. Look at that Fucking hell that is annoying. Poor guy has to go through it too Um point being he's playing like a normal person and it took him two hours and 40 minutes Yeah game length is complicated, especially because $40 on 10 per minute as well not just amount of time, but Yeah, $40 for that. That's uh You might you might think wow, maybe it's the greatest thing ever for two two hours and 40 minutes, right? And it's like you've seen what you've seen Let's put it in the perspective. This is worse than a movie Yeah Movies have stories Movies have stories and characters and they also have aesthetics and movies do not have a annoying gameplay that I want to skip So, yeah, um A harsh not recommend, uh, is it better or worse than amnesia rebirth metal rags? What do you think? Oh, better because it's shorter. Yeah, that's probably what I would have said as well. What if we discount length however however, if you were to make this game and uh make a A 10 hour version of it Jesus Christ man, uh, so, um, amnesia rebirth story was strange and annoying and Oftentimes contradictory and yeah and added to a story that I actually quite like so it was annoying me there as well, but It was a story There were some things I liked about rebirth. They were small, but there were some things I think I would agree. Yeah, I think we went over that in our covers that there were definitely Lots of the game that were working for us. I mean, you didn't get punished for exploring for example That's that is true. You actually get to keep They got one of your 10 matches. Yeah, you can only carry 10 remember. Yeah. However, this game does not scorn does not have any, uh Fear flashes. That's true. That is true. Fear flashes. We're actually annoying as fuck But I think the reality should already have set in the fact that we have to think about it Yeah I think I would go with scorn If you were forced to play one again, which would it be my answer, by the way Would be scorn because it's shorter, but I don't know. Yeah, if we ignore that portion of it Yeah, let's say you have to either complete scorn or you have to play Three hours of amnesia rebirth What do you choose? Only amnesia rebirth Did you say four hours of scorn or four hours of rebirth? Sure. Let's just say that. Yeah Legitimately tough So one reason I probably go for rebirth is the fact that I haven't played it in so long It's going to be far more interesting to me Um, even if it is something I don't like but the other aspect as well is that rebirth does have the full set of dimensions It is trying to tell you a story. There are environmental pieces you can pick up to tell you more things There are puzzles to solve. There are monsters to run away from there's a whole set of worlds that change the visuals as you go through Surely rebirth is the better game overall I think overall. Yeah, I think rebirth is the better game. However, this game Excells and it's aesthetic. The problem is that's virtually everything it is. It doesn't have enough puzzles To tide me over Well, there you have it, uh Else I wanted to chat about was what this game's perception was now on release You have me metal rags several others in the world. I'm sure Who felt a particular way? Those people did steam reviews For souls and the game immediately got mixed on the steam which is not good. Yeah, it's It looks like it's it got a I think the lowest was 67 percent positive And I think it's it is just barely creeped over the positive line. It's at like 71 or so percent I think so. Yeah. So what happened was Creeped over that 70 percent mark. Okay. It was still too high. It was that perception And I started reading the reviews and it was a lot of the stuff we've been highlighting And then I checked the subreddit and it was just war outright with the defense of the game This is attacking the game And then uh, we had a change of heart. It seems it is now Uh, mostly positive on steam Something clearly changed So how about we read some of the steam reviews? See what the perception is now Um, I got most helpful reviews in the past day. That's what I'm Boughted by Yeah, I have that here as well Uh, please look at the reviews despite the spoiler warning. There is no major narrative. There is no major combat focus There is no major puzzle elements scorn is an experience on its own is phenomenal It's gritty visuals and depressing aesthetics set a tone and mood that refuses to leave once it makes itself known This atmosphere is carried throughout the game and its mechanics featuring a desolate world That's foreboding and creates a sense of dread and unease of what may be around every corner But that's not what scorn actually is. It's more like an overpriced proof of concept since it sure it's good But at the end i'm left wanting more More of anything really at no point is it ever bad minus some weird balancing But for 40 it's not worth it at best. I suggest waiting for a heavy discount or some schmuck to gift it to you I'm schmuck Some schmuck. What's funny about that is it's not recommended But um, I think they were way too praiseworthy of it. Yeah I think so too. Yeah, not bad. It's like, yeah, it's this though um too generous I would say but uh still kind of a You know, I agree with the idea. There's like, yeah, it's uh, not much of a Oh, no It was like one and a half acts of a game But uh, yeah, don't worry. Oh, we're getting there We're getting there. Uh, next one just says bought for 40 dollars and all I got was ohio simulator Oh, I sort of I sort of for a sentence of the next one. I'm already triggered So then we get to the recommended from kenny and it says tldr any if you like to the experience of soma Then you'll find a lot to love here. If you're looking for a horrific action shooter, then you'll need to look elsewhere boo Do not how dare you stand where you stood exactly soma's incredible this soma's incredible soma this isn't um First the elephant in the room the first trailer on the store page makes the game come across as an action fps It isn't it's a linear exploration game with puzzles thrown in some of the puzzles a pretty basic exploration game Which is interesting with how much shooting Can to be in it, but all right Make sure all the things line up but rotating one rotates two others But the puzzles that involve walking through the environment and using all of this ancient angelian technology are all fantastic Why fantastic? Yeah, I would it's one of those uh kinds of things where you Just want to ask like oh really what makes you say that Almost a fantastic experience the game feels like going through a cyclopean giger Giga-esque world uh through less overtly sexualized than giga's own art I don't know about that there's plenty of sexual shit in this as well, which again is people fucking on the walls Yeah, it's it's fine with me. It's in giga's stuff. It's like, yeah, okay The sounds especially both for basic interactions other living entities are very well done the story is left vague the story is left vague You got that right? Yeah Okay But the overarching theme appears to me that at its core it's about the cycle of death and rebirth in a broader sense I could see someone claiming a theme about societal familial norms and expectations too Oh, okay. If you say so, uh, where did you pull that from? All right, my dude. Sure Um, I noticed that my time spent on the game is roughly double of the average review on here I stopped to take a lot of screenshots of the environment So I would guess if I hadn't done that it would probably be finished in roughly six hours Wow, no six hours of screenshots. What's wrong with you? I would recommend this game to people who enjoy slower paced games with puzzles and very unique environments But I would also recommend waiting for a sale $40 seems a bit too high for the length of this game for most people But don't uh, personally regret buying it or that price experience itself was worth the bitches Good for you. I like that three people found this review funny. Yeah The game looks cool, but it's way too short got all four achievements in four hours pathetic. See that's not how Whether or not I got all the achievements isn't I waited years for this game and they gave me four hours of cool scenery and simple puzzles shake my uh, so Yeah, there's way more positive than there is negative now. This was filled with negatives at first Yeah, but there is a sentiment about The nature of a lot of reviews and you know, I'll I think it's more likely for me to find them Go on subreddit There's one thing that just says this removal not spoil any of the story But we'll give you some info on the game feel it's like yeah, it's not easy not to spoil the story How do you spoil a story? How do you? I don't yeah What is like well, there's a pile of bodies i'm on place and then there's a door in another place And then there's a scoop and it's solid I don't I couldn't begin There there's very very little in terms of a story um Your one thing that I noticed was when you originally get the key on your arm your arm bleeds whenever you um Take over the body Of the new person. I think they get a key as well, but it doesn't bleed uh So I suppose like these things were meant for them and not for you, but you're close enough But that's all i'm already starting to Try and stretch it. I'm desperately trying to put pieces together Oh So um There's plenty of people who have tried to give interpretations of what the story even is It involves just like commentary on how you're um, you're like Uh a pod person that was created as a lower class while the higher class transcends to a higher form of being And you were like a the personified will of the lower class trying to reach them and Transcend as well and that's what happens at the end of the game or something I remember reading it all and being like I have no fucking clue how you gathered any of this shit Yeah, it feels like that that's conclusions you can make if you're familiar with geiger's work, I guess Which I am not at all Scorn reminds me of carl marx Oh, no um Like I have no fucking clue that there's like higher class lower class and this is what I don't fucking know Especially because the middle area is the one that's all fucked up Yeah, not even the lowest area Which seems like an odd. I don't know. I i'm not gonna sit here and try and speculate too much, you know I find the threads I'd read regarding defenses and all different things of this game, but now I'm able to find out There were a little bit Angry ah here it is. Okay, so This post is called psa your inability to solve basic puzzles is not a game design flaw Wrinkle your brain a little bit. This game isn't a first person action game It was never implied to be one I hear about people walking around in the first room going in circles not realizing the giant door Is their objective? Well, the two sets of controls are designed to be used by two sets of hands just come on use your noggin It's a slow game. Give yourself some time to think um So that wasn't our complaint. We managed to no understand all that I'd say the puzzles for the highlight Um, yeah, if yeah, I would say so as well. That's that's the best thing the game had to offer. Um I mean, I guess discounting atmosphere visuals. Yeah, I guess atmosphere and a couple puzzles. Yeah So, um, you got loads of comments saying thank you and true and like yeah people just don't understand it Please you just don't get Snyder's vision. They just don't get scorn's vision Um Yeah, someone else said did anyone else get the ending or the the thing where you killed the creature and get his hand I wanted to do that but my my friend said he managed to do it Um, and the creature was alive and willing but basically just constantly like oh, I guess there's two things you can do um At the very beginning someone said I found out you could not save the guy After playing the game and checking what was uncompleted achievement that I had if you save him You have to lure him into the machines like Yeah, again that that is true and it doesn't seem like You're saving him I mean just the way he phrases it lure him. Yeah Um, and then someone else says you have to force him to get into one of the key implants And then force his hand into the other mechanism where he will be trapped forever killing him is the kinder option You technically kill him both ways but one of them is much more excruciating so You know, I and so these are these by the way, these are fans of the games talking about it like, hmm nice The first few puzzles aren't bad at all per se, but pretty obtuse You have to notice really small details sometimes and it can be a problem in a game where every wall floor ceiling and object Creates visual interest movement feels kind of slow at certain times The egg puzzle kind of rub me the wrong way because the egg you're supposed to use is only distinguished from the others By two tiny white dots that are slightly brighter than the rest of the eggs. I don't actually agree with that I thought it was quite I don't agree with that. I thought it was just yeah, they were very distinctive Yeah, I knew which ones they were at first and I think the first time when you activate it It purposefully fucks up so that you know, which one to go for anyway. Yeah, I had no problems whatsoever knowing which one I I think the only point where I think it's the only point where I was confused for saying it's like, wait, why does this fall down? I was like, oh, there's another one. Okay, fine They follow up saying also getting the egg in place reminded me of playing a phone game And was pretty boring and uncreative in a game with lots of potential for some super out-of-the-box stuff Certainly not perfect, but I'm enjoying it so far What's funny is I was fine with that puzzle. It is probably one of the very few highlights in my memory I was like that was something to solve Oh well Um You got this people already defending poor game design by labeling it a puzzle And then someone else said you can say you feel the puzzles are poorly designed, but it's quite literally a puzzle game It's also quite literally a first-person shooter. Yes Trying to find this there was a negative paragraph in here, but it has been buried on where I think it should have gone full and either I I'd rather go full in one direction or the other be a full puzzle game Or a full shooter game. Don't give me this half-assed shooter. Yeah, it's into every the you know, the occasional puzzle Just make it with like fleeing mechanics and stuff. It's just don't have any shooting going on Oh, I thought you said flame mechanics But yeah, I you're right. It mechanics would be cool to him If it was just running away from enemies, it would be better. Yeah, we had to hide and run As you scroll down and discover more criticism um Nobody expected this to be a full on action game. Who's never advertised as a puzzle game Um, it has literally wait a minute. It was never advertised as a puzzle isn't it? I mean is that puzzles on the trailers, right? If someone asked me what this was advertised as like I said as far as I knew It was going to be shooting in it and there's going to be puzzle solving in it, but I was still You don't have to guess. Uh, I'll go to the steam page. No, no The reason why the reason I say this is because my perception was it could be Equal in all parts of anything like I went in I'm getting tired of people being like you're only upset because of your expectations And I was like no, this could have been anything. It could have been full shooter full action full puzzle full any of those half any of those Because to be honest with you, you can still balance puzzles and shooting, right? Isn't that what God of War really is? Like there's way more combat, but there's loads of puzzle stuff Oh, yeah Um, there's loads of lots of things in that game, but there's loads of games this applies to uh, they break up some gameplay with other gameplay and stuff, but people keep saying It's your expectation of it being an action game, which is what bothers you about it being a puzzle game It's like no, no, no, I'm critical of the puzzles and the amount of them As for what it was advertised as I mean that doesn't actually change how good the game is That's why I want to keep switching focus back, you know Yeah, because we can have bad marketing That's fair. There was a different discussion sort of the trailer certainly shows plenty of um shooting Shooting in it. Yeah Um, the game has like no music. Look, I get wow cool puzzles. Also, I can finally progress Oh boy wouldn't have guessed another puzzle and then I see another puzzle behind that puzzle They're not hard to solve. Shit is just repetitive. The game is pretty bad right now All that has going for it is the art style, but I guess I'm missing something. Oh, that's right Where's the fun at? Isn't this a game? No angry Uh-oh Someone says and dude, do I hate this era of gaming? I think it's better to just watch a let's play of the game and enjoy the same stuff You're enjoying from this I get off work to play this game But I lost my patience with four puzzles and turned it off This they're actually saying this is better to consume as a let's play Oh my that's not um, so My feelings on let's plays are complicated. Let's call them. Let's call them nuanced. That's a safe word to use. Yeah if you watch if Like the let's play we've got on though the watch together, right this um Shirako guy playing through it. Yeah the long play two and a half hours. No commentary This is sort of the ideal way to consume the game. I don't think that Maybe I mean I mean I waver on that a little bit. There is an element of you could get some legitimate value from being in control of a character exploring this world, but Oh, um Yeah, when I May I suppose it It almost applies to scorn But if it's a super narrative heavy game and you watch a long play and get everything about the story and the characters without buying it it does start to Make me go. Hmm Should that be allowed Gameplay is transformative. I'm pretty strong in that camp. I think it would be hard to dissuade me from Well, to be honest with you rags I think if I were to take his video download it and then reupload it with my commentary that I have transformed it more than he Did and I've taken it from Probably there's a yeah, if the if the commentary was yeah, if if it was substantial commentary I think a case could certainly be made Because this isn't a game that that really owes a lot to Personalizing the I mean, yeah, our experiences were mildly different, but not in I would say a meaningful way We're fun to talk about the differences, but they were very small Like oh you cheese this enemy and I ran away from him, you know So this is one of the really downvoted ones I remember it was at the top at one point But now it's all the way at the bottom says that's not the point though The point people are making is that the puzzles are not good and neither is the level design portal is an incredibly popular puzzle game It's not that people are too stupid to play scorn It's that they can see through its bullshit game design What I've seen so far the game is less about using your head to solve puzzles and more about brute-forcing puzzles to work By trial and error that shit sucks. I wanted this game to be good more than anyone. I'm a massive geiger and Geiger and Bixinski I think that's the other artists that got the bigger influence on this fan And generally do enjoy puzzle games. This game is a bad puzzle game and that's what people have a problem with I wouldn't call it a bad puzzle game. I would call it If it depends on how you read that if you had a four-hour puzzle game and there was one good puzzle in it Is bad puzzle game the correct term? What's happening there? Um Probably because this game I'd say it has two decent puzzles in one good one Yeah, they represent a very small amount of the time though, right? And then yes, it's a very very small amount of the time if the dev said to you Um, you completed 50 puzzles in total in the game. Would you not then be like? Oh, well your puzzles are shit Yes, uh, there is an element of is a puzzle so simplistic and easy That it's only a puzzle and technicality and I won't Yeah, you're like, yeah, it's totally a puzzle You're not considering a lot of what people are probably calling bad puzzles as puzzles because you consider them just opening doors and stuff But I think that's what a lot of people think of puzzles When you're opening up the um, oh, it's a section. This guy is in here. Shirako Um, he's in the segment with the big guy that you have to the big The big man and the the big dude in the big room Yeah, and you have to lift up the three screens so to speak and then rotate it while moving the peg That is a very like I liked it, but it's a very simplistic puzzle. It's very easy to do Yeah, um, it's neat to get it, you know, it's a nice little thing And if the game was full of those I would be much kinder to this game but um Get one. Yeah calling that a puzzle is technically true, but it's like No, yeah, I agree with you. So that's the thing I would be comfortable. I'm finally calling it a bad puzzle game or a game with very limited thin puzzles that are far between Whichever gives the idea off, but it's bad mox either way Yeah, it doesn't do either either often enough or well enough when it comes to puzzle or shooter So you got another post here that says I can see how people whining about the puzzles being too difficult and complex Um, I still think that the marketing was incredibly misleading, especially the xbox store trigger warning words lots of words So they start with cohesive lived-in world As a metal mentioned earlier scorn takes place as an open-ended world with different interconnected regions Each region is a maze like structure with various rooms and paths to discover all the storytelling happens in game With no cutscenes to distract you from the grisly reality of the living breathing world You're in but keep your eyes open the game won't show you any sympathy if you miss something important to your uneasy travels So this is just market speak. This is someone who's shilling. That's bullshit. Yeah Yeah, this this is horseshit. It's not at all hide how I would describe and saying all the storytelling happens in game It's like I guess you can say that even when there's no storytelling It's all in game Also, there are cutscenes Um, next thing the god is full body awareness players will experience better immersion being aware of the character's body and movement Interaction with the world is realistic objects are picked up with your hands instead of just floating in mid air What what what? Okay, sure, whatever machines and instruments are operated by grabbing the controls etc. Holy sh Next inventory ammo management Your loadout is defined and limited This plays a big role in keeping the player in an even greater state of awareness throughout the whole game Players will have to think about when to fight and when to take cover and how their actions affect the world around them Different play styles will be needed to advance Different play styles will be needed to which is funny because all three of us had a different approach And they all work Yeah, there's none of them are particularly interesting like I was just like I'll just kill everything gradually right? It's like I'll just avoid everything and mostly works and I think mel you you opted for something between Yeah, yeah, sometimes it ran away. Sometimes I shot them all Um nowhere in any of all that mumbo jumbo is puzzle game or even the word puzzle mentioned The only hints to it being a puzzle game are the words maze and awareness And the awareness is very loosely tied to puzzle not to mention it has a whole dedicated section to weapons and loadouts How can someone not think this is a survival horror like alien isolation? But again about marketing I suppose so if it so if it has them it is that thing. Yeah, I I just don't know. I still know about that Another comment I mean puzzle isn't really the correct word the first puzzle is literally the sliding tile puzzle Which is the lowest form of gaming life. It's the prebiotic ooze of puzzle games Then the following I calm down The following puzzles are better described as walking around until you find the object to interact with That's the next lowest form of puzzle. Then you've got a lot worse than the sliding tile puzzle Because the second one isn't even a puzzle. That's just an immediate puzzle apparently Yeah, then you got the lockpicking mini game, which can only barely be described as puzzles It's really more of a wait until the thing can be interacted with again The issue isn't that it's it's a puzzle game. It's that the puzzles are not very much puzzles Obviously the atmosphere is excellent, but the marketing that implied it was a puzzle game is a real problem It's a walking sim that requires you to occasionally find an object with to interact with the very interesting walk But implying it was a puzzle game is misleading. It's a fairly well done walking sim A good puzzle requires you to think through make initiative intuitive connections or piece things together They must produce an aha moment Born does not have those moments. I'll say there's one or two of those when you uh You know like when sort of but they're they're all isolated to the puzzles themselves. They're only going to be in the puzzles Yeah, yeah, you're not really figuring anything out. You're walking around until you naturally stumble upon the order objects need to be interacted with It's ridiculously generous to call these puzzles Um, I think he's being too harsh. I think some of them are legitimately puzzles. I think I agree with the spirit of it It's just yeah, he's a bit hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Um, I find the wrinkle your brain a little bit rather pretentious Sure to your larger point. There's no problem with it being a puzzle game But other people aren't doing something wrong by having a hard time with certain puzzles Everybody approaches logical deduction differently That's okay to have different takes on the game, but can we stop insulting each other? So yeah, the subreddit has had trouble because this uh Oh soma's gotten mentioned. What's this obtuse trial and error puzzles with frequent non sequiturs are not good game design I wish it was more like soma soma would not have wasted my time playing a claw game with a red herring in the middle Just for multiple minutes to do the same action The game telegraphs that I need to do that sequence is also just so bizarre like why would this machinery Ever be designed like this and require this sort of interaction Just got me frustrated and made me stop believing in the will due to how gamey and out of touch Uh with the tone everything was Yeah, I can certainly feel that I can't agree with that. Yeah I can feel that one I mean that probably sums it up. Uh people are very angry at this game. Um people are also very happy with it And because of that, it's like fostering the other side to become more invested in pushing their side And something I saw that kind of annoyed me is um the developer for Uh he works for He was weak. Oh, so funny enough. This guy is made uh, he was behind gloomwood, which is a game I'm actually interested checking out. I've got it. I need to play it He put out a tweet saying scorn's release is a great cautionary tale that if you are making a puzzle game make damn Sure, people know it's a puzzle game because they will not appreciate being surprised by that lull Um, if it depends on the difficulty of the puzzles Um, if they're if if you are playing a game and you have pretty simple puzzles that you go through I think a lot of gamers will appreciate that breaking up the gameplay But if you buy a game that you think is an action adventure game or a first person shooter and all of a sudden You stumble into ribbon You are absolutely going to have people who are going to be rightfully upset at you Um, and yeah, someone's already shared like this is uh, this is just a cut from some of the several trailers and it's just a series of like action Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely I mean the first trailer on the steam. Yeah, it has plenty of action in it a lot of shooting in you And yeah, and someone's showing that they bought the deluxe edition like kills Someone bought the deluxe edition at 65 dollars Like it's damn. Oh boy. You could have got got a war Sound soundtrack an art book. I think that's it. Yeah Wow So, oh, is it real or digital? Oh, I imagine it's digital. Yeah, oh fuck off so the You know, yeah, the I I saw that tweet and I was just like well for me it was much more about how I uh I didn't care how much focus is going to be on shooting all puzzles. I just wanted them to be good Whatever they chose Exactly I'm with me Um And I think he eventually said like For those who think that Um, the game is shit because of how much focus there is on puzzles in this this horror You know action a game. Maybe they should replay silent hill, which I thought was interesting He said that the implication of course being that Silent hill is much more puzzle focused than you realize and you should hate it as much as you hate this game If you're gonna go that far What do you have to say about that metal? Uh, I thought the puzzles were great in silent hill for the most part There's some really cool puzzles if you asked me about the about the fighting gameplay though That shit is clunky Fuck and didn't really get that much better even up until silent hill three. There might be a really spicy thing to say But the melee combat and specifically in silent hill is Can be infuriating for sure But no puzzles puzzles are awesome Good it's good stuff. Um, but yeah, he's uh And they're actually puzzles He seems to go quite hard in defense of the game and uh, it's it's gone to the point Where it's just like yeah, you just you didn't know you wanted to have an action game Where you kill things that are flashy and stuff and you didn't get what you wanted no again. I'm just sitting you like I just one least favorite part of the game I just wanted a video game. Um, but yeah that about sums it up Um, I doubt e-metal rags will ever talk about scorn in detail again other than quick references not likely passing reference. Yeah Uh, incredibly disappointing. I was kind of looking forward to it. I thought it would be neat But here we are. This is what we got and yeah Yeah, I not a fan wouldn't recommend This game was supposed to be the sludge ender and not a pile a little cherry on top of the sludge pile That's what it ended up being Um, yeah, anything else you guys want to say about it? Honestly, no No There was a lot of mileage that we got out of the rebirth discussion because there were There was a lot more to that game that game was trying to do a lot more there was Story and characters and they tried to tell a you know, like a narrative Um, and also it was linked to other games we played but this game seems like an isolated little disappointment Yeah, I think the the more interesting part To it's not talking about the game But probably more about the whole marketing thing and how long it took to be made And what has been promised maybe in the beginning, which I'm not familiar with but that might be More interesting to look into than into the actual game because I think we pretty much covered everything that has to offer I would go as far as saying, uh, the developers are lucky that enough people are going to defend this that it can escape being said to be um I don't know go as far as saying a scam But absolutely not with the time and investment and absolute price During what you get here's like the the geiger fanbase is so desperate for content for for this kind of thing, especially gaming content that they're like I know grasping for everything they get and then it's just like no, this is great It's like look how cool this looks and they're just and for the looks maybe I don't know just speculating I have no clue, but that's what it feels like So That's that. Thank you for listening. That is that square bonus e-fap episode as you can see no fringy because obviously he hadn't played the game This will go out As soon as possible and it'll put us ahead of the numbers again to the point where we'll have to sort something out of that but um We'll uh, we'll still see you guys on saturday if we're talking about she-hulk. That is the plan Boy Thank you all for listening folks And uh, yeah, I have a spooky wookie fun halloween. I guess Yeah, I have a spooky wookie weenie time Spooky hymer's goodbye Bye. Bye