Game Grumps

[Mister Jack]

[Mister Jack]

[CorgiShinobi]

 

I don't watch Steam Train, and I find myself missing episodes of Game Grumps, but there are moments like this that make me wonder if it's worth watching a little Steam Train.

[Mister Jack]

I liked the Space Quest IV series for the most part, but it's still not as good as the main show to me.

[Mister Jack]

http://youtu.be/hJP8NGTIiXE

[Alex Heat]

I just got around to watching the Super Metroid playthrough.

 

Mother.  Of.  God.

[Mister Jack]

Maybe I'm desensitized to their antics by now but what stuck out to you?

[Alex Heat]

It was just incredibly cringe inducing to watch someone else play Super Metroid.  Arin was just way worse about it since he was just wandering around, ignoring doors or attempting to sequence break when he wasn't very good at it (amplified by the fact that he didn't seem to know he could aim diagonally until the last couple episodes).

 

Pretty much a constant stream of things being done repeatedly.

[Mister Jack]

It's been a while since I played Super Metroid but I thought that for Arin, he didn't do that bad.  I'm not gonna say he was that GOOD at it either, but he did manage to finish in a little over four hours.  A lot of times with other games he'll be so clueless to such completely obvious objectives that he'll spend several episodes just wandering around and screaming that he doesn't know what to do.  It drives me insane when he does that, but I thought he did that a lot less with this particular game.

[Mister Jack]

I can't fucking believe that Danny has been playing Punch-Out for five episodes now without ever figuring out that you can press DOWN to DUCK.  God damn it, I don't know why it's so frustrating to see him flounder about without knowing such a simple game mechanic, but it is.  Even a five year old would think to push down at least once just to see if it works.

 

FUCKING PUSH DOWN, DANNY!

[Alex Heat]

I think it would be helpful in general for the Grumps to at least read the damn manuals first.

 

It would significantly cut down on the amount of time spent on totally blowing it.  Granted, I'm impressed that Danny made it as far as he did without ducking.

[CorgiShinobi]

I'm having that feeling of regret for not purchasing Punch-Out!! a few years ago when I saw it on Clearance. Even the Nintendo Selects version of it is out of print. After watching it through the Grumps, it looks good for what would have been $20 in 2011 (and not the $50 in 2009). I'm holding out until Tuesday when I can get back home where some stores I know usually have ancient copies left over.

[Mister Jack]

I bought it when it came out. One of the few Wii games I bothered to beat. I should replay it someone soon.

[Mister Jack]

Normally I wouldn't simply post episode links but I feel like Arin shitting himself in rage is a milestone episode.

 

[CorgiShinobi]

So I'm getting the vibe that the Grump community is at war with itself again over the quality of the Steam Train run of Dark Souls II. It's the typical foray of love-hate fans find themselves in, and also the other half that would lay down their lives in defense. I didn't pay much attention to it, even when Ross made a giant post on the subreddit in the Dark Souls II video link. I thought it was the typical "Heads up, we're going to suck at this game."

 

After watching what we have so far, I'm more disappointed than angry.

 

I swear Ross must really be drunk and Arin isn't exactly enjoying this run so far. Sure, the goofy points are funny, but I'm beginning to see that maybe this is going to be the constant until that promised "better" second recording session Ross made note of in the first video link. It is at this moment that I finally have come to the realization that Grump videos aren't going to be what they use to be. It isn't so much going to be a bunch of friends playing games, but more of a chore for them to get together and "create content" as it were.

[Mister Jack]

I don't care for Dark Souls in the first place and think it's a terrible game for Steam Train, given how incompetent they are with the games they play. Aren't they killing vital NPCs right now? It's not like I expect them to be any good but they've just been dicking around in the same area for a while now which means they have very little to talk about. On top of that, it just isn't funny. I don't find the Arin and Ross team nearly as funny as Arin and Dan. Honestly, I don't really find Ross that funny in the first place. I like his YouTube videos but in front of a mic he just irritates me.

Edited May 9, 2014 by Mister Jack

[Alex Heat]

It is at this moment that I finally have come to the realization that Grump videos aren't going to be what they use to be. It isn't so much going to be a bunch of friends playing games, but more of a chore for them to get together and "create content" as it were.

 

I mostly feel like this when Arin plays games because it seems like he just fucks around a lot and doesn't really try to play (Parodius is a good example of this).

 

Some of the recent VS. episodes have been good though.  Maybe it's just that games that are slower and don't require twitch reflexes are better suited for their style (or at least Arin's because Danny rocked Gun.Smoke).

[Mister Jack]

 

Well, Arin made another sequelitis about Zelda.  He has a few valid points in there but as usual I have a lot of trouble agreeing with Arin's opinions about game design.  I mean, he thinks escort quests are a GOOD thing?  What the fuck?  I feel like a lot of his preferences are a result of his own impatience, and to someone who watches him on Game Grumps some of his gripes can even come off as hypocritical.  How many times have we all seen him scream and whine about how he doesn't know what he's supposed to do next?  He clearly pines for the days of the original Zelda but that game was way too cryptic.  Unless you had Nintendo Power or something there was almost no way you were going to figure out what to do on your own.  He also seems to just hate games with storylines in general, which I think is because he's the kind of person who just sees games differently than I do.  He wants a sandbox, but I think Zelda works better when it isn't one.  Zelda isn't Minecraft.  Sooner or later you're going to get bored of swinging your sword at random enemies because you have absolutely no guidance and thus no idea of what else to do.  I don't see a little nudge in the right direction as a bad thing, although some games admittedly nudge you a little too often (Skyward Sword, cough cough).

 

That's not to say I disagree with everything he says.  He's right about Zelda relying too heavily on the same formula, but that's not exactly a keen insight.  Everyone who has played more than two Zelda games already knows this.

[Alex Heat]

I thought he spent most of the video repeating the same thing in different ways:

 

1) Too much waiting!

 

This is a fair point.  You really should be able to turn off the chest opening animations and there ought to be more to enemies than waiting for that moment where they lower their guard so you can hit them.

 

2) Stop telling me what to dooooooo!

 

Why he singled out Fi is obvious for anyone who played Skyward Sword, but Navi?  The only time she would remind you where to go or what to do is if you hit the prompt when it came up, just like any other time you really interacted with her.

 

Overall, it felt like Arin was just saying 'I am impatient and I hate stories and dialogue and cutscenes and everything that isn't gameplay'.

[Mister Jack]

See, as much as he hates Skyward Sword, it actually DID do something to provide enemies that were more than just "wait until they're vulnerable."  Usually you had to hit them from an angle where their guard wasn't up or strike them in such a way that made them vulnerable to a follow-up attack.  I thought that was pretty cool but clearly he didn't.  People complain about the controls in Skyward Sword, but my personal experience with them really wasn't all that bad.

[TheMightyEthan]

Having played Skyward Sword twice, once with an original Wiimote with the Motion Plus attachment and once with a Motion Plus Wiimote, I can say that it was only about 50% accurate with the attachment, but the one with the built-in Motion Plus was probably 80-90% accurate, so it's possible that's why some people had a good experience and some didn't.

[CorgiShinobi]

I had to prepare myself to watch the video. As soon as I saw the title "A Link to the Past vs. Ocarina of Time," I figured what I would be in for as I watch 30 minutes of Arin talking about one of his favorite Zelda games versus one of his most hated Zelda games, period.

 

Now don't get me wrong and imagine my person as Arin's strawman at the beginning. When it comes to discussion/debate, especially on my favorite video game series, I do my best to recognize personal bias and emotion. The two problems I figured I was going to face was Arin's bias and his views being termed for game design theory. I don't hold him with the same regard in that topic as I do other online personalities.

 

Honestly, most of my criticism you can find on the couple thousands of comments online already, so I won't waste everyone's time. Simply put, yeah, Arin doesn't seem to be a fan of storytelling in his games and any kind of plot element that makes most Zelda games... Zelda games. Yeah, Zelda has a formula, but everyone has bitched about that since Wind Waker so it's nothing new no matter how many of his supporters praise him for calling out all of Nintendo on it. I think they got the hint and that's why A Link Between Worlds offered, and Zelda U is going to offer, us more freedom.

 

P.S.

I've begun to assume that Arin just can't handle the 3rd dimension in Zelda.

[Mister Jack]

I try not to gripe too much about how Dan and Arin play games and comment on them, but has anyone been watching their recent Genesis playthroughs?  They're...not great.  They seem to really hate DecapAttack but have yet to give a single actual reason for it.  It's not so much that I have a personal attachment to the game because I don't, but when they constantly say a game is shit but have no actual argument to support that statement it just makes them sound like a couple of lame AVGN knockoffs.

 

The Toejam and Earl one-off actually pissed me off though.  That game I DO have a personal attachment to, but the fact they didn't like it isn't what bothered me.  What bothers me is that they didn't even try to play the game properly.  TJ&E is a great co-op game, and if they'd actually bothered to OPEN A SINGLE FUCKING PRESENT they might have kept playing it.  I have been wanting them to play that game for ages because I thought it had the potential to be the best co-op playthrough since Goof Troop, and they completely fucked it up.  Ugh.

 

The Grumps just seem to just arbitrarily hate the Genesis sometimes and it's really annoying.

[Alex Heat]

Don't worry, I felt the same way when I saw they were going to play Toejam & Earl.  I was also thinking they were giving Decap Attack an unnecessary about of shit.  It's not even a particularly awful game (also, it was a licensed game in Japan) either.

 

Toejam & Earl though...

 

I get the feeling that maybe they're getting burnt out or they need to stop playing stuff late at night or whatever it is that leaves them just falling back on 'This game sucks because reasons' or seemingly being awful on purpose.

[TornadoCreator]

It's been years since I played the first Toejam & Earl, but I remember it being a rather boring scavenger hunt game with very little actually to it... I think it's aged very poorly, still I'll need to look at it again to really decide.