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Chris and Shamus engage in the Arkham Origins equivalent of a filler arc.
It’s a good thing I stopped trying to stream as my primary content. I found it exhausting hearing myself talk over and over about how I was feeling sick, and if I found myself exhausting to hear then I can only imagine how others must have felt.
There was so little to say this episode that Shamus effectively gave me the post on his blog for the week. It was an opportunity to express my feelings regarding the combat in writing, though it also naturally led to some debate in the comments section. For some, these issues were not exclusive to Arkham Origins – and I would agree, they are issues that persist in the other games as well. However, there’s a polish in those games that mitigates the flaws whereas Origins manages to amplify them. Still there were others that insisted these flaws didn’t exist and it was effectively a skill issue.
At the very least, Shamus, who was far more familiar with the combat systems of all four games than I will ever be, could confirm that there was just something off with the mechanics of Origins. I take comfort in that.
I take only confusion from this week’s play session. The bridge might be one of the better set pieces of the game, but that’s not exactly a high bar to clear.
Part four of our Arkham Origins saga cannot help but begin to completely collapse on itself, supported by too many villains, nonsensical motivations, a complete lack of logic, and everything is on fire. Why is everything always on fire?
Another video, another technical problem. Aside from the poor framerate, I had also forgotten to adjust my audio delay from a prior stream. This would result in Batman punching a thug but the sound of impact coming well after it should have. Typically this audio delay was the result of my playing on console with friends, where the Elgato device I used at the time had an automatic delay in its video and audio feed. I implemented an audio delay to my voice and those of my friends on Discord, but as I was playing Arkham Origins on PC, it led to the PC game’s audio being out of alignment as well.
Fortunately I don’t have to worry about such issues with my current Elgato, but I’m also not really streaming that often these days either. Such is life.
I’m going to be honest, despite some of the technical stumbles, fumbling over our own words, and my uncanny inability to concentrate on speech and gameplay at the same time, this might be my favorite episode of streaming this game. We hit a lot of design elements, and I think actually analyzing a level with Shamus has better helped me to stop and consider a game’s environment or narrative better today.
In our third episode of Batman: Arkham Origins, which doesn't really tell the origin of Arkham Asylum at all, we experience cut-scene ineptitude on the part of the writers, ask obvious questions that cause all of the plausibility to fall apart, and struggle with yet another boss fight. Exciting!
Though we stumble into another series of bitrate problems in this stream, the real technical difficulty is my own brain. My mind is one of digressions, and it is because I am easily distracted by the smallest threads. In regards to streaming, my thoughts can immediately be interrupted by trying to work out the problem immediately in front of me. Even when I’m trying to focus on finally making my point to Shamus regarding proportions of objects in the Arkham series level design, I am frequently tugging on every little thread that distracts from my attention within the game world.
I can only imagine how frustrating it is to be the person I’m trying to speak with in these circumstances, let alone the person having to watch and listen. Over a year later I’m listening to myself and all I can think is “get to the point already!”
It really is a curiosity to see what happens when a game with a specific art team and style is passed off to an entirely different team now tasked with recreating that style, but are instructed to do so on a schedule. As we can see with Gotham Knights, Warner Bros. Interactive Montreal pulled off a far more consistent, if less imaginative, world since they were allowed to define their interpretation of Gotham from the ground up. Here, however, they may not have had enough time to properly study and consult Rocksteady’s own concept art and approach to the world of Gotham, and as such we see objects in strange proportions that result in a world that never quite feels right.
The real villain of episode two are the technical difficulties, from Shamus' audio being blown out to the constant dropping of frames. Join Chris and the late and great Shamus as they battle cops and streaming problems alike.
Our second stream is, naturally, where all the technical difficulties had arisen, with the primary one being Shamus’ blown out mic gain. We tried several times to fix his audio, but unfortunately no matter how it sounded for us, it did not sound well on the actual stream. Additionally, trying to screen share with him and Twitch led to some frequent frame drops.
This happens with every group stream I have with friends. No matter what audio settings remain unchanged between streams, the volume of friends will vary. I have a feeling there’s something going on with Discord between each call, but only because that’s the common source of the call.
It is for this reason I tend to proselytize the Elgato Wave:3 as much as I do, because no matter how loud I set the volume I come in nice and clear. Simultaneously, I don’t need to set the gain very high for it to capture my voice at a decent volume. The only thing missing are sound absorbers to reduce echo, which is barely an issue under most circumstances. It’s a top notch, “affordable” mic (compared to what most professional level microphones are asking for), and I got better quality than similarly priced Snowball and other model microphones frequently used by streamers.
At the end of 2021 Shamus and I had begun doing a collaborative stream discussing and analyzing Batman: Arkham Origins. I'm now uploading those archive videos to YouTube for increased visibility of one of my favorite series of streams. In the first episode, we marvel at the nonsensical nature of Penguin's hideaway and the frustrating boss fight that is Deathstroke.
Rewatching this stream makes me wish I had reached out to Shamus Young for such things much sooner. I’ve had a lot of great and fun streams with friends, but Shamus was someone special in that I had looked up to him for a long time, and the two of us had the same approach to analyzing a game’s narrative and design. He was far stronger than I am at pointing out logical flaws in the plot or world-building, but I always understood what he meant to convey and found our difference of perspective on game design complementary.
Batman: Arkham Origins was a perfect game to begin with because we both found it to be filled with shortcomings compared to its Rocksteady developed predecessors. It was also the perfect sort of game for a pair of fellows that enjoy constructive griping.
Listening to the two of us chatter away, it really makes me miss him and wish there had just been a bit more time. Granted, the loss of Shamus would always have been too soon, and in the end my regret is only that I had waited so long to muster the courage to reach out to him.
Still, I think he would be most honored if this memorial upload were accompanied by his most famous of activities: griping.
Chris first shares his thoughts on the Super Mario Bros. movie before digging into the nitty gritty with Joey about the Resident Evil 4 remake. The discussion is split into spoiler-free content and then spoiler content.
The onslaught of 2023 releases continues to strike, as Chris, Joey, and Steve gather to discuss the likes of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Like a Dragon: Ishin!, and Gal Guardians: Demon Purge. However, they also discover some titles of last year as well as some old favorites.
Get ready to call it one of our worst episodes of the year, because Chris and Steve have nothing worthwhile to talk about. We bounce around several topics with Sony's State of Play at the center, and how ultimately disappointing it was.
After two-and-a-half years of silence, I've not only released a new video, but my most extensive analysis yet. This post documents some of the lessons learned while giving some behind-the-scenes thoughts on the struggles presented in creating this deep dive look into one of my favorite games.
It is not a joke to say that this video has been two-and-a-half years in the making. More, actually. Though the primary footage I used from the Nintendo Switch version of the game is dated August of 2020, I had actually decided to make a video during a random play through in 2019. It was then that I first began to notice my little, nit-picking gripes with the Twilight Cathedral, but in order to properly convey my thoughts I needed footage from the 3D Zelda games. This is what kick-started the intended Zelda series, beginning with A Link to the Past and intended to conclude with Twilight Princess, then leading into Darksiders.
Unfortunately this did not come to pass for many reasons, some of which I’ve already gone into. Getting laid off pre-Covid, depression, and undue pressure upon myself with each video made led to the lengthy absence from YouTube. Nonetheless, in August of 2020, at least, I was contemplating just cutting ahead to Darksiders anyway.
In truth, I needed that time away to make this video. The baggage dragging me down and causing each video to be more stressful than enjoyable needed to be unpacked and sorted out. There was no way I’d have dared make a video this long, and I would have been tempted to give up at the script level as I tried to condense all of my thoughts into something far shorter.
It is not perfect, but this lengthy deep-dive look at one of my favorite games is precisely what I needed it to be.
Chris and Joey discuss many of the games they're drowning in as 2023 begins, highlighting recent releases such as Hi-Fi Rush, Dead Space, Metroid Prime Remastered, last year's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and more.
It's strange that it would take so long for me to watch an anime like Claymore, whose components are so precisely within my interest level. Unfortunately, the only thing holding it back are the adherence to exhausting shounen-fighting story-telling methods.
It’s a mystery why it has taken so long for me to watch and read Claymore. I’ve been hunting for high fantasy anime that can scratch the same itch as the original Record of Lodoss War OVAs for years, and while Claymore is more shounen-fighting style dark fantasy, it leans closer to my craving than most Isekai or video game influenced anime currently being produced. Perhaps I missed the day my university’s anime club had played the introductory four episodes, assuming they had shown it at all, but this show has only been on the fringes of my anime radar. I’d occasionally see it on streaming services, but for some reason I never gave it a watch.
However, as much as I enjoyed finally watching the anime and reading the manga, I certainly found the earliest arcs of the narrative more enjoyable than the latter. This has less to do with the quality of the characters or plot and more to do with the prominence of that shounen-fighting sub-genre in which this story occupies. In fact, I have Claymore to thank for helping me understand why I have lost interest in arguably the most popular anime and manga genre: shounen-fighting stories are exhausting.
If you’re not quite certain what I mean by “shounen-fighting”, I’m referring to works such as Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, Bleach, and My Hero Academia. Much like a Kung-Fu flick, the primary draw to these works are the fights. Unfortunately, the pace of these stories is to primarily focus on fights or training arcs with barely any reprieve. All plot and character development occurs while fists and blades are clashing, or while protagonists are endeavoring to develop some new technique or surpass the current limit of their power. Once one phase ends, the next must begin. The bulk of all narrative is in the fighting, posturing, or training. If you’re lucky, there’s an episode where the characters visit a ramen shop or something, though you’re more likely to just get a beach episode these days.
By the time I was in College and Naruto was the new hotness, I found this formula to be tiresome. Now that I’m an adult, I find it outright exhausting and the one thing holding Claymore back from “surpassing its limit”.
Chris, Steve, and Joey discuss what are mostly Chris' predictions for the year of 2023. We'll loop back around next year to see how right and how wrong he was!
Chris, Steve, and Joey gather to discuss their favorite games released throughout 2022! Plus, Chris gets a bit heated towards the end!
Joey and Chris look back on the major gaming news and events of 2022, discuss their own personal growth, and take a look at what's coming in 2023.
Though it will no doubt fly by the radar of most outlets, influencers, and players this year, Soulstice is definitely one of the most finely-tuned gaming experiences to be released in 2022.
There are times I have to wonder if my contrarian nature is somehow programmed into me, or if it is a mere coincidence that my tastes often rub more mainstream proclivities the wrong way. To say that I enjoyed Soulstice more than I enjoyed any lone Devil May Cry game is no doubt going to cause many character-action aficionados to scoff, and I most certainly had a better time with it than I had the first two Bayonetta titles. One might even call me “basic” for this feeling.
Admittedly, there are no doubt aspects of Soulstice that hold it back from being “as good” as, say, Devil May Cry 5 on a technical, objective level. Writing, for starters. Building upon the drama established in Devil May Cry 3 and familial lore added in Devil May Cry 4, there’s some sense of climactic finality to Devil May Cry 5 and its memorable characters that leaves fans old and recent with a level of catharsis and closure, and all delivered with a bombastic sense of style that other games fail to approach the imagination of.
Which, perhaps, would be one of the first perceived “failings” of Soulstice. It is far more subdued than its character-action compatriots, relying less on the roller-coaster zaniness and “how much more kuh-razy can these narrative loop-de-loops get?”, delivering instead a somber tale of a young warrior woman and her spectral sister’s bond. Briar is sardonic in expression and speech, contrasting with the innocent optimism and youthful wisdom of her deceased sister. Their mission is to investigate and put an end to the corruption and collapse of one of the world’s great three cities, a dimensional tear having opened above from which wraiths descend upon the populace to slaughter, contaminate, and possess.
Despite the abundance of demons or apocalyptic conflict in Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, respectively, the jovial wit of our protagonists always conveys a sense of fun in the carnage and makes a mockery of the villains responsible. The characters, setting, and narrative of Soulstice do not possess such levity, but I can assure you, the gameplay itself is such a delight that I believe it deserves to be held as an equal sibling to such franchises.
