Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
They say there's no two episodes of TripleClick exactly the same, but can they say that for sure? Because they'd have to get them all together, and obviously that's not possible, even with computers! Welcome to TripleClick, where we bring the games to you.
This week we're opening up the mailbag and taking some of your questions about whether to go to Summer Games Fest, classic and educational games that should be remade today, and much more.
I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton.
And I'm Maddie Myers. Hello.
Hello. Hello, my friends. We're back for another episode. A couple of things up front. First of all, it is Maximum Fun Drive. So we're not going to do our usual spiel up front. Instead, we'll save it for a little bit later in the episode.
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Chapter 2: Why do players like Crimson Desert more than critics?
But just so you know, now is a very good time to become a supporter of TripleClick. One other thing is we are doing a little bit of traveling, or at least I'm doing a little bit of traveling this week, so we get to shuffle some things around. We will be talking about Saros, the new PlayStation 5 exclusive, next week. And this week we're doing a Burning Questions episode.
One other thing you should know as we record this is that on May 1st, which is the day after this episode airs, at 8 p.m. Eastern, we will be doing a live stream where we play some games. Maybe Kirk plays some games and we make fun of him. On the YouTube channel, TripleClickPod. At TripleClickPod is our YouTube channel. So check that out. Friday night, May 1st at 8 p.m. Eastern.
So yes, I'm sorry to everybody out there who will have to wait another week to find out how many times Kirk has died in Saros.
It's still being calculated as you're listening to this.
Yeah, I haven't played enough to be able to, I was about to say it's more than seven because it's going to be more than seven, but I haven't played enough to actually, it hasn't been seven yet.
Oh, okay. Remains to be seen. It could be only seven still. We shall see.
It could be six. So once again, we are going to take some listener questions. We have a nice healthy backlog of great questions. So we appreciate all of you out there for sending them in. If you want to send in a question, you can reach us at tripleclickatmaximumfun.org. All right. On with it. Kirk, you want to start with this first one?
Sure. This question comes from Kevin, who writes, Hi, Tripsies. I'm a dad in my late 40s who has picked up gaming as a serious hobby within the last three years. I'm now at a point where I am listening to multiple gaming podcasts, following all the new releases in industry news, and generally diving headfirst into all things gaming.
The one thing I've never done, for which I have intense curiosity... is attend a gaming convention or expo. From what I hear, the experience sounds like a ton of fun. Unfortunately, given my hobby is still somewhat in its infancy, I don't have many gaming friends, so a trip would likely be solo. In the last few weeks, I have been looking at Summer Game Fest and the events surrounding it.
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Chapter 3: Is it worth attending Summer Game Fest as a non-media attendee?
But there's nothing that's really replaced that in terms of just the sheer spectacle of it all. Yeah. All right.
Next question. Maddie, can you read this one? Sure. This one is from Gray, who writes, including lowercase G gamers like myself. Jason, I know you fell off quickly. Totally valid. Those opening hours are pretty rough. But I, like many others, have loved the sense of adventure and exploration.
Why do the three of you think there has been such a big difference between the review scores and the way the game has actually been received? All the best to you all. P.S. Please come do a live show in the UK. I hope we can someday.
Yeah, man. One day.
So what do we think?
Yeah, what do we think? This is an interesting one. I mean, I think there's a narrative with games like this that I think it's important to consider the type of game that Crimson Desert is. So what Gray is talking about is that Crimson Desert did not get very strong reviews. There are plenty of people who have been like, You know, it's really pretty, but there's not a lot going on.
It seems like it was written by ChatGPT. There's like no personality. Yeah, 77 on Metacritic. I played like an hour of this because I had a copy, a press copy, and was just like, okay, well, I'll try this out. I would come back to it. This is the kind of thing I could see myself getting into. But I think this kind of game, like Crimson Desert, is very much a game where They did everything.
Like it has every mechanic ever. You can fly. There's like gliding. There's puzzles. There's combat. There's like Souls kind of combat. And it's a gigantic open world. It's incredibly pretty. There's like a billion just endless side quests that you can do. You can explore and find little hidden things. There are, I think, some genuinely cool little things hidden in this game.
That's the exact kind of game to me that seems most primed for a reviewer. To play it and be like, man, this main character sucks. This writing is pretty mid. It wastes a lot of your time. And to just be like, whatever, 7 out of 10. I don't really like this. And then for a lot of players to be like, I wanted exactly this.
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Chapter 4: What are the differences between Summer Game Fest and E3?
Do you think maybe it's because of just the inherent limitations of reviewing a game, which are that you only have a limited time? And so if a game starts slow or has the first 5 to 10 hours that are bad, it's really hard to overcome that first impression, especially if you're cramming in a whole lot of time. And I mean, these are all the pitfalls that we describe constantly.
And it's harder to notice or even appreciate some of the little things about the game that might be interesting. In that context where you're already like, this isn't hitting me right, because it requires you to take several weeks of time.
I mean, for what it's worth, like IGN, I think they said they played 110 hours.
Yeah, this is part of why I'm hesitant to even make my case because I'm like, I don't know if I can.
Yeah, I don't think this is a case where critics did give it a chance. Like, I mean, I said up front and I said on social media that I only played a couple hours and really bounced off of it hard. But I didn't review the game. I mean, people who reviewed it, I think, gave it a much more fair shake. So I don't know if that's necessarily it. I don't know.
I guess I haven't played enough to put my finger on why. But I have talked to friends who are into it. And yeah, the way they describe it, it sounds like one of those games where it's just really fun for people to just kind of turn their brain off and just go and do stuff for a while. It's very much like a just doing stuff kind of game. Yeah.
I also, I mean, a lot of people have said like those opening hours are just really bad and then it gets much better after chapter three, which I mean, okay, fair enough. I didn't feel incentivized to play much more than that, but that's why I was very upfront about only having played a couple hours before I stopped.
Yeah, I think it's something related to the size of the game for sure. I'm thinking of that old Mad Max game that came out in the 2010s.
Oh yeah, that's kind of like a cult hit now, right?
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Chapter 5: What educational games should be remade today?
It was the first console in the 21st century that provided a significant graphical update in a mid-cycle refresh, 1080p to 4K HDR. No other mid-cycle refresh did this beforehand, which is why the PS5's launch felt lukewarm, quote-unquote, comparatively. A wacky way to sum this up, the PS4 Pro is the actual PS5, the PS5 is essentially a mid-cycle refresh, and the PS5 Pro is the PS6 in disguise.
Thoughts? P.S. been listening since this was screen days and you threw your hands down the best video game podcast out there. Would love to go to a live episode if you're ever in Minneapolis.
I love all the suggestions.
I know. I love these places.
UK, Minneapolis.
I feel like we should do like a demographic survey or something and maybe that would be fun. Yeah. But hey, what do we think? What do we think of Joe's interpretation?
The PS4 Pro is the PS5, and the PS5 Pro is the PS6 in disguise. I think there's something here in the sense that these iterations have just made it way less interesting and exciting to get a new piece of hardware because the power increases only so much. It makes it feel more like phone iterations than console iterations. I guess the big difference, though, is that
there were no games that only ran on PS4 Pro, whereas there were games, not many, but there were games that ran only on PS5. Similarly, now there's a PS5 Pro. There's nothing that only runs on PS5 Pro.
So without that playing into it, you can't really make much of a case as far as different iterations of the console, because at the end of the day, the exclusives are the only thing that separates these things from, like, I don't know, your computer, right?
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Chapter 6: Why might critics rate games differently than players?
You'd just be like, Maddie, come on. Maddie, what are you doing?
He just shakes his head in disappointment.
Wearing a cool jacket.
That's a good one. I think I would pick Ghost from Destiny, but specifically Peter Dinklage Ghost, not Nolan North Ghost, because I want that kind of melancholy vibe that the Dinklebot brought to early Destiny. And Ghost is also really convenient, the opposite of The Last Guardian, because he just materializes when it's time to talk to you.
Also, he can bring you back to life.
Right. I guess it would mean that I'm an immortal undead soldier. But just to have him kind of, you know, I'm like hiking up Mount Tabor and he just appears and says, ah, Tabor, in the day this used to be a space station as far as the eyes can see. Sort of waxing poetic about whatever I'm looking at. And then the hive got here. Right. I'd be like, oh, I have to get back to record for TripleClick.
It's almost time. And he'd say, time? Time. That can't be right.
and it would be wonderful so that's my pick is it would be ghost from destiny okay great all right uh that is it for the mailbag once again you can send us questions at triple click at maximum fun dot org for future episodes uh we're gonna take a little break where we talk about max fun and how cool it is and why you should support us for maximum fun drive and then we'll be back with one more thing
All right, Kirk, Maddie, it is Maximum Fun Drive. This is the final week of our annual pledge drive that our network does. For those of you out there who don't know, we are a listener supported podcast. We're part of the Maximum Fun Network. And that means that we make the show. The show is only possible because of people out there who subscribe.
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Chapter 7: How do narrative design issues affect game reviews?
Cool. Well, yeah, I will see you both at the stream and then I'll see you next week after that. See you next week. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ.
Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. TripleClick is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at MaximumFun.org slash join.
Email us at TripleClick at MaximumFun.org and find links to our merch store and our Discord server in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.
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