Jim Sterling / James "Stephanie" Sterling / James Stanton/Sexton & in memoriam TotalBiscuit (John Bain) - One Gaming Lolcow Thread

[Oliver Onions]

I think Conrad's Twitter bio describes him best "Mercenary creative", he almost certainly is only attached to Jim Sterling in anyway because he can keep making money out of half arsedly appearing once a week on a podcast and he can piggyback off Jim's online store to sell his garbage (like LKD does).

I scrolled through his twitter feed and was honestly surprised by how levelheaded he is, I was expecting him being a lefty and attached to Jim Sterling to be pushing out the same kind of room temperature IQ takes as Jim but he's perfectly reasonable.

He always came across as the most normal of the trio back in the Podtoid days. Jonathan Holmes seems like a nice, normal guy too but he is a complete pushover so he'll bend whichever way the politically correct wind blows him.

Good for Konrad though, I guess, although whatever they're paying him it wouldn't be enough for me to tard-wrangle Jim and Laura Kate Dale on a regular basis.

 

[Just_a_Bored_Guy]

Jim uses the Yuji Naka scandal as a launchpad to reiterate their grievances with Square Enix. Who do they think they are, Razorfist?

 

[HanSolo]

I guess this means that next week's video will be about how it's capitalism's fault for over 25 years of Game Freak's inability to code properly. The Pokemon Company apparently enforcing the launch of a new generation every 3 years for merchandising reasons could be considered the fault of capitalism but we all know that communism wouldn't change the whole notion of if it sells well despite being broken then don't bother fixing it.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I guess this means that next week's video will be about how it's capitalism's fault for over 25 years of Game Freak's inability to code properly. The Pokemon Company apparently enforcing the launch of a new generation every 3 years for merchandising reasons could be considered the fault of capitalism but we all know that communism wouldn't change the whole notion of if it sells well despite being broken then don't bother fixing it.

So, what you're saying is... the Pokemon Company has a set of 3-year plans? How Soviet of them.

 

[Prince Vegeta]

Kudos to Jim, he is dressed like a frumpy middle aged woman today, so he has two out of three down.

You can make a similar argument for Soulslike games. The challenge is integral to their entire design, if you compromise on that for people that can't play then you risk diminishing the very thing the game is trying to be. So again we come to our simple solution, just don't play it. Play games that are for you, everyone will get what they want that way.

Spoiler: hopefully endearing anecdote about games that are too hard

My mum loves gaming. She got me into games decades ago. She's geriatric now. Her eye hand coordination is shot. She used to be the queen of bullet hell. But she aged. She survived early Mass Effects, Witcher stuff, but Dark Souls kicked her butt. She tried. She tried days and days. But she couldn't do it. We talked about her getting older. She really wanted to play Dark Souls. I decided to play together. She was in charge of tactics, equipment, planning, resources. I'd execute it. She warmed up to the idea fast once I stopped getting my ass handed to me too and we got somewhere. My mum really enjoyed developing tactics for the bosses and figuring out the story. I suppose you need a mum's patience to watch me flake on a dodge the twentieth time and get crushed and still smile. My point here is that, counter intuitive as it may feel to say this: there is more than one way to enjoy a game. And it doesn't require nerfing it.

As I've said before they are ironically the most bigoted people you'll ever meet, they just think they're doing it for the right reasons.

I call this: the Bitter Irony of Woke

 

[Oliver Onions]

This might be my pettiest gripe to date but it's pissing me off that the thumbnail layers are out of order so Sonic is over the Jimquisition title. (This is also a big no-no for accessibility Jim, you ableist twat.)

Combine that with the awful candid shot of Jim, where it looks like the weight of all his bad decisions has finally hit him at once, and I can't tell if this is more of his trademark 'it's deliberately shit and therefore funny' schtick or if he really just doesn't give any kind of a fuck any more.

 

[Counterfeit Obol]

edit: Hell, one of the most recent popular fad games was full of random assets from different people and even though they didn't go together, not a single soul even noticed. By Jim's logic though, it's an asset flip. Because buying assets to make a game with just never happens. The only purpose for store assets is to sit there and look pretty and nobody should ever buy them.

OT, but can someone please enlighten me on this?

 

[Moja Zemlja]

Jim uses the Yuji Naka scandal as a launchpad to reiterate their grievances with Square Enix. Who do they think they are, Razorfist?

In one ear and out the other, its getting very tiresome to listen to Jim claim about big companies over and over again.

Kudos to Jim, he is dressed like a frumpy middle aged woman today, so he has two out of three down.

I thought he looked like a rape victim and the joke would be that Sonic Frontier was so bad he feels raped.

 

[Ersatz]

I usually don't like to do the whole 'thing vs thing Japan' routine, but its kind of illuminating that Elden Ring was released with uncompromising difficulty and a near total lack of player handholding that relied on the player to figure out the best routes forward and best way to handle the voluminous threats before them, and later on in the year God of War Ragnarok was released with a comical amount of carefully directing the player to make sure that they never had to activate their brain even once with an extremely on-rails experience where every minor character just tells you exactly what you need to do to proceed. Its night and day, Jim already whined about the fact that Elden Ring doesn't have an explicit easy mode with all the typically retarded arguments around that, will he whine about GOW going a zillion miles in the opposite direction to the point that everybody is posting clips of the most absurd fake QTE events and player being told exactly what to do to proceed at any given time because the developers have absolutely no trust that the player isn't a fucking idiot? I mean GOW is super accessible thanks to all that crap, isn't it?

Both of the new God of War games have an interesting story but the gameplay loop is tiring. It's not like devil may cry where you have a bunch of tools at your disposal and are allowed to use them however you want. It's extremely restrictive and every weapon has one or two possible combos (the second one is usually unlocked about 10 hours in). I don't understand how this game can be nominated for GOTY when it drags so fucking hard. Also I hate all of the non-puzzles that aren't challenging and only exist to extend the playtime artificially. GoW has terrible pacing. Copy and pasted puzzles and only 2 weapons. Game awards are and always have been bought and paid for by Sony.

 

[White-Kettle Shufflepunk]

I call this: the Bitter Irony of Woke

Off-topic, but your mum sounds like a cool chick.

 

[Ersatz]

To be fair to Jim, I know what he means regarding Sonic Frontiers. The hyper-realistic hub environments look heavily at odds with the neon-coloured woodland creatures running around them so it looks like you just dropped Sonic's model in a prefab environment, but that's been a problem with Sonic games going all the way back to Adventure (it was even kind of an issue in Mario Odyssey with New Donk City.)

I think it's just more apparent now because graphics have advanced so much so if you want realistic environments there's really nothing you can do with Sonic's design to make him more detailed without straying into Uncanny Valley horrors like his original movie design.

It's super extra championship edition ironic because Jim's favourite game of the year --a game he even worked on, recently-- is Vampire Survivors, which literally uses palette-swapped Castlevania sprites.

It's actually pretty patronising that they dumb it down to that extent imo. There are ways to be considerate of people's phobias, disabilities etc without treating them like a braindead child, but that's standard MO for shitlibs. As I've said before they are ironically the most bigoted people you'll ever meet, they just think they're doing it for the right reasons.

I'd have rather they kept the spiders and got rid of Mr X, because he scared the shit out of me (at least until I realised how easy it was to manipulate his AI).

I'm quietly confident Konrad is only in it for the money now. I think he's basically Jim's agent and handles all his bookings and stuff, but beyond that he's probably burnt out on being shackled to the dude for more than a decade.

Nemesis in RE3make had way better ai but nowhere near the scare factor. Mr. X was cool because of his scripted moments. But when he just follows you around Raccoon PD he just looks like a dumb oaf.

 

[Chilson]

Both of the new God of War games have an interesting story but the gameplay loop is tiring. It's not like devil may cry where you have a bunch of tools at your disposal and are allowed to use them however you want. It's extremely restrictive and every weapon has one or two possible combos (the second one is usually unlocked about 10 hours in). I don't understand how this game can be nominated for GOTY when it drags so fucking hard. Also I hate all of the non-puzzles that aren't challenging and only exist to extend the playtime artificially. GoW has terrible pacing. Copy and pasted puzzles and only 2 weapons. Game awards are and always have been bought and paid for by Sony.

Because "characters" and "story". Ignoring that the only thing these new God of War games really has going for them is characters (and even then, only half the cast is actually well written) because the story is hamfisted nonsense filled with mcguffins, obvious metaphors and deus ex machina plot resolutions. Games "Journalists" are just bitter old wannabe movie reviewers who hate actual video games and being handed a wannabe movie that is forced to be a game almost always wins GOTY these days because its the only games these jagoffs actually like.

 

[Oliver Onions]

Nemesis in RE3make had way better ai but nowhere near the scare factor. Mr. X was cool because of his scripted moments. But when he just follows you around Raccoon PD he just looks like a dumb oaf.

I think Nemesis failed for me for the same reason Lady D did RE8: I already figured out all the tricks of how to deal with the stalker-type enemy with Jack in RE7, and once you realise you can just kite them while you do whatever you need to do and where they'll always despawn/not enter it takes all the tension out.

I kind of wish they'd fucked with people in RE3/8 by having Nemesis or Lady D burst into one of the save rooms.

 

[Gloria The Glorious]

I think Nemesis failed for me for the same reason Lady D did RE8: I already figured out all the tricks of how to deal with the stalker-type enemy with Jack in RE7, and once you realise you can just kite them while you do whatever you need to do and where they'll always despawn/not enter it takes all the tension out.

I kind of wish they'd fucked with people in RE3/8 by having Nemesis or Lady D burst into one of the save rooms.

Hot Take: Nemesis was better as the optional super boss who gave you better gear to make up for the resources he took to down than the remake making him the bastard love child of a Bloodborne boss (dodge at the last frame or lose half your health bar to stun lock lol git gud or fuck off) and slenderman (stalks you throughout levels because constantly stopping what you're doing to kite around the same 3 rooms for 3 minutes is totally scary and not at all making me wish I was playing something else)

 

[Burt Offerings]

I'm going to say it, invincible stalker enemies are garbage and not even remotely fun. Waiting in an airing cupboard for a few minutes while the timer ticks down for the AI to despawn is not compelling gameplay. Perhaps if I had spent my childhood hiding from a drunk uncle it would resonate with me a bit more, but as it is it's just boring. I hope it's a horror trend that is starting to die out.

 

[BScCollateral]

I'm going to say it, invincible stalker enemies are garbage and not even remotely fun.

Evil Otto weeps a single tear.

 

[Corn Flakes]

I'm going to say it, invincible stalker enemies are garbage and not even remotely fun. Waiting in an airing cupboard for a few minutes while the timer ticks down for the AI to despawn is not compelling gameplay. Perhaps if I had spent my childhood hiding from a drunk uncle it would resonate with me a bit more, but as it is it's just boring. I hope it's a horror trend that is starting to die out.

Everybody thinks they're the next Alien Isolation, while ignoring what made that game good.

(And also ignoring how long it dragged on, but I digress.)

 

[Burt Offerings]

Everybody thinks they're the next Alien Isolation, while ignoring what made that game good.

I don't know why either, Alien Isolation was just pretty good. I don't think it would have been as well-received without the Alien paint. I mean if you wanted to be reductionist and unhelpful, those cat-and-mouse horror games are essentially just Pac Man.

 

[Prince Vegeta]

I don't know why either, Alien Isolation was just pretty good. I don't think it would have been as well-received without the Alien paint. I mean if you wanted to be reductionist and unhelpful, those cat-and-mouse horror games are essentially just Pac Man.

You already made the point I wanted to make but better. It was good, but not 'let's all be that now quick quick while it's popular' good.

 

[Boom Boss]

In one ear and out the other, its getting very tiresome to listen to Jim claim about big companies over and over again.

I'm tired of Jim repeating 3 day old Reddit news.