- Joined
- Sep 6, 2018
Well, Phil is basically a one type of game streamer. He just wants to claim he's a variety guy, but he's a walking sim and baby's first game guy. The market has gotten pretty damn competitive, and he's not wrong about how shills with early review copies have basically obliterated any fairness remaining in the playing field for everyone else: By the time Phil slooooowly wrapped up his pre-stream and post-pre-stream break, did some SHAWTAUTS, and calmly meandered onto Lost Judgment, it had already been beaten four entire-ass times by DevilLeon on youtube. It was also done with 0 commentary by both Shirrako and MKIceAndFire, both players who while not the cream of the crop skill wise, are more than competent enough to tear through Normal difficulty in 10 hours.
It's been said a lot but Yakuza in general is a fuck awful game for streaming unless you're willing to put yourself through the wringer of mastering the combat system (Compare Phil's Chug N' Slug fighting style) and doing all the side content in a timely manner. It's a game series primarily aimed at men, so it'd help if you had some experience or insight into you know, being a man. You can also succeed by being a super thirsty fujoshi/legbeard over all the PRETTY MANLY MUSCLE MEN in the game, of course. Basically adding some entertainment value to what is usually a fairly cut and dry crime drama with a backdrop of crazy wackiness in the sidequests.
Best Phil can do in that regard is his classic Pause N' Pigsplain khambo where the characters will go "You see, the main problem here is Phil's a loser, Phil's a beggar, Phil's a scammer, DSP's a pedophile, DSP's a greedy fuck." and then he will, without missing a beat, pause, look at camera, put the controller down and tell us "OOOOH I SEEE, so what they're saying is Phil's a loser, Phil's a beggar, Phil's a scammer, DSP's a pedophile, and DSP's a greedy fuck. Tuhuh!". Sorry for the meta example, you obviously wasted a bit of your time reading that second part, but that tiny bit of frustration any reader will feel is what happens to every single one of his 100ish viewers every fucking time he sums up what has quite literally just been said. Not to mention Phil's best commentary on anything plot related would be to see the hell Makoto Makimura has been through and proclaim, as if he was a wizened sage with thousands of lifetimes of experience, that "That's fucked up". Well yeah Phil, you know, a few people died in World War 2. It is what it is. Happy D-Day!
It would also help if you just edited the good bits out, but Phil's happy to leave all of his fucking around in. Ever since Resident Evil Village he does this thing where he closely inspects the environments as well, and that just adds to how much he stalls everything. He khamboes that into having to stop for the occasional begment, of course, and he reads every single fucking line of text out loud. Yakuza is a good game, and it applies game design with great cunning. They basically are making a GTA clone out of cardboard and cello tape, and the thing holds up remarkably well, but when a guy like Phil puts his hands on it, all of the problems with the game are front and center and the fun stuff is at the bottom of the back row. He won't even discuss the amount of takeout the characters eat, a staple of media directed at men, and arguably the ONE thing he could offer any entertaining commentary on.
All of this on Normal, of course. Phil's main draw was always being a salt factory, and his obstinate refusal to provide any entertainment value will eventually be his downfall. New console gens always kidify their games, trying to appeal to a new generation because the previous one has likely moved on and isn't gonna purchase a new console. There are adults who consume gaming media, but by Phil's own handicaps and scheduling he can not appeal to them. He refuses to do any game with staying power with adults (Namely fighting and strategy, but MOBA and Action titles are seeing quite a bit of adults who still play lately) and he refuses to do anything but playing the hottest releases on normal. His prestream is feature movie length. His break is enough time to watch an entire episode of a weekly series. Literally nobody but teenagers have time to watch this shit. He might as well go back to being a slice of salted pork, because he's not gonna get the Max Dood clout he so desperately desires by lazily playing walking sims. Again, this can not be underlined enough: You have to spend nearly 6 hours at Phil's stream to get 2 hours of gameplay out of him. The adult audience he wants doesn't fucking have six whole hours to waste on his pudgy ass. He's lucky so many of us run him as background noise through a mirror while doing other shit.
Best Phil can do in that regard is his classic Pause N' Pigsplain khambo where the characters will go "You see, the main problem here is Phil's a loser, Phil's a beggar, Phil's a scammer, DSP's a pedophile, DSP's a greedy fuck." and then he will, without missing a beat, pause, look at camera, put the controller down and tell us "OOOOH I SEEE, so what they're saying is Phil's a loser, Phil's a beggar, Phil's a scammer, DSP's a pedophile, and DSP's a greedy fuck. Tuhuh!". Sorry for the meta example, you obviously wasted a bit of your time reading that second part, but that tiny bit of frustration any reader will feel is what happens to every single one of his 100ish viewers every fucking time he sums up what has quite literally just been said. Not to mention Phil's best commentary on anything plot related would be to see the hell Makoto Makimura has been through and proclaim, as if he was a wizened sage with thousands of lifetimes of experience, that "That's fucked up". Well yeah Phil, you know, a few people died in World War 2. It is what it is. Happy D-Day!
It would also help if you just edited the good bits out, but Phil's happy to leave all of his fucking around in. Ever since Resident Evil Village he does this thing where he closely inspects the environments as well, and that just adds to how much he stalls everything. He khamboes that into having to stop for the occasional begment, of course, and he reads every single fucking line of text out loud. Yakuza is a good game, and it applies game design with great cunning. They basically are making a GTA clone out of cardboard and cello tape, and the thing holds up remarkably well, but when a guy like Phil puts his hands on it, all of the problems with the game are front and center and the fun stuff is at the bottom of the back row. He won't even discuss the amount of takeout the characters eat, a staple of media directed at men, and arguably the ONE thing he could offer any entertaining commentary on.
All of this on Normal, of course. Phil's main draw was always being a salt factory, and his obstinate refusal to provide any entertainment value will eventually be his downfall. New console gens always kidify their games, trying to appeal to a new generation because the previous one has likely moved on and isn't gonna purchase a new console. There are adults who consume gaming media, but by Phil's own handicaps and scheduling he can not appeal to them. He refuses to do any game with staying power with adults (Namely fighting and strategy, but MOBA and Action titles are seeing quite a bit of adults who still play lately) and he refuses to do anything but playing the hottest releases on normal. His prestream is feature movie length. His break is enough time to watch an entire episode of a weekly series. Literally nobody but teenagers have time to watch this shit. He might as well go back to being a slice of salted pork, because he's not gonna get the Max Dood clout he so desperately desires by lazily playing walking sims. Again, this can not be underlined enough: You have to spend nearly 6 hours at Phil's stream to get 2 hours of gameplay out of him. The adult audience he wants doesn't fucking have six whole hours to waste on his pudgy ass. He's lucky so many of us run him as background noise through a mirror while doing other shit.
TL;DR: Phil's obstination with becoming the Max Dood of walking simulators and getting showered in praise and tips is an impossible pipe dream and he should just get back to fighting games, do Fightcade, and just be a laughing stock. Least he'd be popular again, even if it's for the wrong reasons. This whole "Pick only the BEST and EASIEST games for stalling" thing he's been doing for a whole year isn't working out, if his dwindling numbers are anything to go by. With Booof's final bullet to the oddly shaped head, this is just gonna be a freefall unless he actually gets off his ass and does something about it.
At least do somehting he can fail at. Watching him Chug N' Slug his way through Lost Judgment hasn't been fun, and he reads every last line of dialogue. Dude's basically a TTS program, except his voice is annoying and he peppers his speech with snorts. That said, he's not really a variety streamer. He's a kid game and walking sim streamer. A particularly slow and incompetent one at that, therefore his streams are deprived of any tension and nobody wants to watch unironically. He could change this at any point, but likely won't. And there's no doubt in my mind he can do a no death run of Lost Judgment on normal, as long as he keeps stocked on healing items. It's really fucking easy. Kids can manage that much.
