A Fashion's Creed (4Player Podcast #575)

This is regarding the Harry Potter episode (I am a little behind because I try to listen to the podcasts exclusively when I am making the breakfast at my family's hotel so that I always have guaranteed entertainment when I do:). Anyway, you guys were talking about detective games and how they, for the most part, don't require critical thinking and you began trying to talk about the few games that do it right. I was astonished nobody mentioned the Ace Attorney games. I just started them and I am thoroughly enjoying how you're forced to connect the dots as you go. You have to pay attention to every little detail in the evidence to find holes in testimonies and you get that iconic finger point. Shinji Mikami is fantastic.

Nick sounded horrified about eating raw pasta last week. It's actually something I do a lot, whole wheat tastes better raw than normal. Spaghetti, my favourite, can be a bit risky though, because sometimes you will accidentally bite on a short piece that is facing vertically, up towards the roof of your mouth, and jam it up there like a nail. It's way worse than say biting your tongue.

Glad "Crunch Culture" is starting to become a bigger thing in the mainstream. Similar (albeit mirrored) trends are happening in the restaurant, supermarket, and veterinary industries where they'll schedule less and less people because "it reduces hours and seems to work just as well." There is just no empathy from higher ups as they are never there to witness the chaos from bare-boning a staff.

I understand that (1) all companies are destined to shut down, (2) maximizing profits is very important, and (3) lazy workers exist, but as you guys said: life is finite. Companies who recognize this moral value and adapt it to their business model shine bright in my eyes. Sorry for the rant, but it's just a shitty thing happening in most industries and needs to be recognized.

Back to games: Just finished Symphony of The Night for the first time because of Brad's moaner boner for it. Played it straight through in one sitting due to it being simply AMAZING.

Thank you 4PP for all your recommendations.

Since you dicks were talking about older entries for Assassins Creed on the podcast I’m using this as a platform to vent my frustration. I only played AC 1 and 2 back in the day and haven’t kept up with the releases since. Itching to play the current games but my OCD won’t allow me to skip any entries. Don’t remember anything relating to story so I’m doing a series run and plowing through all the games to catch up to the current release. I have to put in so much fucking research in figuring out what game fits where in the series. Frustrating that a lot of games in the series aren’t numbered but rather Assassins Creed: “subtitle”. Fucking number that shit Ubisoft. Not sure if anyone else has this issue but it grinds my gears.

With love,
TheMetalButton

The discussion around multiplayer revivial made me excited about the non existant prospect that Valve would release left for dead 3. Which is a part of Valve's perpetual fear of the number 3.

It also made me think of Dark messiah of might and magic for some reason. Even though it's not a great multiplayer game. The feel of the combat in that game stuck with me though.

Hey wangless you're not the only one in this here yonder parts with an XBOX ONE
When my disc laser finally dies though, you might be though.

Also, there are actually some union workers in the gaming industry, mainly voice actors.
And since many of those are unionized, some video game companies avoid them because they'd rather not pay as much for them... tis a sad choice sometimes, in my opinion.

Regarding video game hallucinations in your heads, I would, while lying down in my bed, actually envision myself driving on a certain course in the Initial D Arcade games, back when I played them basically every week. Of course there was Eurobeat.

Seeing as crunch is getting to overwhelming levels due to the insane scale of these games now and into the future, I can't help but wonder what sort of methods devs can begin implementing to take some of the load off, and make their jobs easier without sacrificing the quality of the end product. Game engines that are super dev friendly is a great start (isn't Unreal Engine 4 good at this?). At the end of the day, one can at least hope their work environments are comfortable and positive enough to be in to make those 100 hour weeks a little more tolerable.