The Good, the Sad and the Smugly

so today i'm gonna do something a little unorthodox i'm playing three indie games today and they all centralize the theme of hiking but they interpret it in vastly different ways this first game is a short hike this is the one that i don't know much about whereas the other two i know many things and will enthrall you with trivia i never get tired of this view i can i just say i don't want to start off immediately with criticism lowercase single eyes always bother me i like always uppercase my eyes every once in a while i'll like accidentally slip out a lowercase one and i'm like no even though i don't capitalize my sentences i don't know what it is it's like a weird quirk all right well here we are this game looks very nice oh i like it already i like it already got a little bit of jank da okay i'm done there's no reception out here wait what yeah i mean pretty much no reception you might be able to get some at hawk peak yeah i guess but that's pretty far isn't it it's not that far it's a short hook you guys ever heard the phrase a scout mile also all the dialogue in this is written as though it's somebody's like discord chat and it is kind of irritating me i'm not gonna lie y'all y'all ever heard a scout mile okay i'll explain a scout mile it's this stupid [ __ ] thing that they used to tell us in boy scouts andrew lark knows all about this it's whatever the distance is between you and the end of the trail is a scout mile it's basically it's it's the [ __ ] like we'll get there when we get there answer for whatever you're like how much longer is on the trail oh just one scout what the [ __ ] up that's me shooting myself as a boy scout whenever i got told that i was a scout mile away from the end and i'm so negative instantly like i've gotten nothing but whoa got nothing but negative things to say no this is delightful already do i have like a glide i think i have like a little yeah look at that i looked at how long to beat dot com and it said oh look there's animal crossing fish that's literally the fish salad from animal crossing like verbatim oh this is the cell phone tower i found it game's over i did it no it's cables [ __ ] it was cables so i'm just going to take this guy's treasure damn treasure map what kind of sick [ __ ] keeps a treasure map in a treasure chest i see the gorons from the legend of zelda have been hired to do some of the backing vocals for this music you know what i'm going to [ __ ] soar as far as i can go [ __ ] whoa whoa i'm diving whoa i didn't mean to dive what's happening what is happening okay i must say i you know chopped down the cherry tree made my teeth out of it i cannot tell a lie i really kind of hate the dialogue in this game but everything else is delightful this music is very wind waker too i'm loving this uh butthole all right i'll take my paycheck my youtuber paycheck please like all the inserted uh and um and okay is all very uh i don't know it makes me feel old it's like zoomer talk i i looked at the wikipedia page and it said in reception uh oh look at that that people criticized it for its length i'm like bruh do you not know what you're getting into with a short hike golden feather got it oh it really is animal crossing [ __ ] this is okay well folks it's very animal crossing i just got two upgrades at once and if i get more then i'll be able to okay oh and damn all right now i'm playing celeste i get it this is the rabbit from fury [Music] so everybody's lost their thing and we need to go find their thing i like the the little wisps of wind going through the air that's a good touch oh hell yeah wow oh weird they actually let you go into first person damn all right this music is awesome and it looks great i i [ __ ] you not when i joined boy scouts it was because i saw an advertisement that had garfield as a cub scout i mean i guess i should say i joined cub scouts but there was an advertisement i remember clear as day it was me and my dad we were walking past uh it was it was that safeway it was near our house gotta be a korok seed here right okay yeah uh and there was this advertisement that said join cub scouts and it had like a picture of garfield in like a cub scout outfit it was like his arms folded and my dad was like do you want to join boy scouts and i was like sure and then that was the entire path in my life that i just went down because of garfield this is just delightful oh my god [Music] it's the music dynamic i think it's dynamic garfield made me the man i am today you know weird sentence kind of true oh it's getting cold that's fun that's something that happens on hikes sometimes it just you get to a certain altitude where like the cloud layer is just there and then all of a sudden it's snowy sploosh [Music] wow oh [ __ ] also there is a bush inside this rock watch it's gonna yep it's clipping out of the rock cool goth bird hey kid you wanna buy some golden feathers hey the prevalence of hat is bothering me oh i just made the louie sound from uh pikmin 2. every once in a while they just goes oh oh oh oh ah it's my crow impression nothing wrong here oh [Music] yeah uh-huh is that so all right well your boy found a little bit of jank it's fine did you hear that smash mouth held a concert and was like yeah [ __ ] go the change and then they held a concert like just verb just actually did that that [ __ ] blew my mind i was like come on smash mouth you're better than this and we could all use a little plague oh oh [ __ ] i thought i was the other bird [ __ ] can i restart okay well that's a rip i was like wait they're going a completely different way no no no no no no no no all right oh i don't even get anything wait did they even give me okay i thought i was gonna get like a golden feather or something for that okay well i have pride in my heart that i did it that ride symbol just gets me going whoa whoa [Music] hello my friend [ __ ] vesuvius over here oh look at this row wait is this row of bushes something maybe like hey all this money is this like am i about to get like a mouse trap cage like dropped on my head following a trail of coins it's gonna be like a leprechaun it's gonna punish my greed golden feather you can kidnap me all you want leprechaun it's all the feathers we have uh it's extortion my friends plain and simple oh look at that this one just sitting right here oof there it is knew it was only a certain amount of time before we got an oof okay time to climb i've got a bunch of feathers now [ __ ] yeah oh look at the races happening [ __ ] yeah i don't know which one to root for i like them all [Music] what does this song remind me of it's like twilight princess music boom boom and and now of course we're in true celeste mode which is different from depeche mode it's fun there's there's actual gameplay to this it's not just a walking sim or anything you know it's it's actually got thought put into it which is nice hell yeah whoa i'm here this is it the summit look how the colors change that's awesome i bet you that's a unique fish in that pool too i'm here oh awesome i'm gonna hit you so hard you're gonna see northern lights eh get out that cell phone oh it's gonna be a call to like an estranged family member or something it's gonna get real on us at the end isn't it hi claire mom eh okay not estranged but it is a family member surgery there it is start plucking at those heart strings literally oh the famous hawk peak updraft am i gonna fly into the sky for the credits [Music] oh i'm just gonna get to fly down the whole island ah my feathers are gonna start to warm back up again well this was quite a delightful experience except for when my feathers just froze there for a second this was so cute this is one of the comfier games i've played in quite a long time kiki's delivery service has music possibly similarly cozy vibes yeah if you like if you like animal crossing if you like breath of the wild feel like feeling good i guess then i suggest this this gets my endorsement i hope you all are ready to get real [ __ ] depressed and sad in the next game it's gonna be a big contrast to this [Music] oh look at this wait hold it hold the phone what is out here secret secret piece of trash oh my god who's been littering what did we tell you in boy scouts leave the place better than you found it you scoundrel okay and now after the break we're gonna go play something [ __ ] depressing and scary see you then so now it's time to play really sad depressing game this one's called dear esther and many of you probably already know it this is an old game it started out as a half-life 2 mod i think and then it was made into a full version and then there's the edition that i have which is called the landmark edition which i guess is like a remake or a re-release or something i'm not even sure this game is not very spoopy it's only mildly spoopy uh there will be no jump scares or anything but you will feel sad probably or depending on who you are potentially angry because this is a sort of a flagship title in the stupid argument over whether walking simulators are games or not i don't really give a [ __ ] i find it in an enriching interactive experience regardless so i really don't care but you may have heard this in like stupid shouty arguments on the internet but it's never be a game or whatever i don't really care it's good whatever it is it's good dear esther i sometimes feel as if i've given birth to this island he's got a big but this game has randomized elements so certain things will appear and certain dialogue options will show up that will not show up in subsequent playthroughs so it pays to pay attention i've played through this game once i was kind of lukewarm on it when i played it but then eventually i look at that i wonder what chemical that is uh eventually i watch this really good innuendo studios video essay about dear asther and it really put the game in a good perspective for me and i was like you know what i think this is actually a great game hey you guys want to see something horrible by the way before we start i learned this when i was doing the sound test when you go out to see something just truly magical happens you're gonna love it eventually you stop being able to swim i'm just holding forward right now there we go lost my ability to swim and then this nice stuff happens this really cool stuff happens do you like this chat i really like this when i found it well while doing the audio test good god what do you mean there's no fail state it's a real video game so this game looks nice it's very pretty okay and then it dumps this text on you uh yeah the text does have to do with stuff it is pertinent okay well oh they had a little like [ __ ] like lion king pre-stampede uh rocks clacking around sound effect trash you know how i said half-life 2 had a really good sense of like ambience and atmosphere and room i think this game being a half-life 2 mod originally kind of was inspired by that same attention to uh the atmosphere just feels neat sleeping giants some manualist final dreaming chat what does somnambulist mean so yeah we're reading the main character's reading out a series of letters to his deceased wife i think is the main premise and is this the [ __ ] like the [ __ ] golden ratio so the main arc of this game is that my character learns the infinite rotation a sleepwalker huh some nebulous god damn it i'm a somnambulist you want to see my stamp collection why is a car wheel out here this is something that was pointed out in the insomniac studios video great video essays by the way it's part of a series called story beats that was basically just a big old [ __ ] you to roger ebert disguised as four amazing video essays so yeah the dialogue is randomized in this game each run it gives you a different like set of informations or maybe gives you the same informations but in a different order or something as somebody that lives in the pacific northwest and has been to the coast i know this is supposed to be scotland but uh this reminds me of sort of the ocean shores coast over here oh and i think that red thing is our eventual goal maybe i think that's where we go at the end they cut parallel lines into the cliff oh look at that exposing the white chalk beneath so the people on this island died of some disease and they marched the cliff when they died so this game uh has a very interesting mechanic i'm sort of keeping an eye out for it now uh where you see [ __ ] out of the periphery of your your character's vision so when you they available perfectly mimic the feeling of seeing something in your periphery because that's not how computer screens work dear esther but uh you know i meant also someone in chat informed me it's pronounced esther and it has just been confirmed that is in fact esther and not especially detached on the outskirts of wolverhampton i gotta say a lot of this is going over my head this dialogue and i think it's supposed to what that you know that one video essay i keep talking about it kind of mentions that this whole thing is just a weird exploration of grief and loss and how you can just feel kind of empty and confused when something horrible happens or something tragic you know i think it emulates that feeling pretty well bird that'll be relevant later the spookiest ghost is facing my problems because he's writing to his dead wife who died in a car crash i think there he's talking about how he can't find the actual spot where it happened i got my eyes peeled for ghosts i know i think this is one of the areas where it might happen again there's random elements so it's hard to say also folks we got one someone in chat says is does this even count as a game [Music] i sat the boy in the edge of despair when i thought i would never idiot boys it is a hike though we're taking a hike this game could just as easily been titled a short hike i i do think you walk just a just a hair too slow in this game if i had to give one criticism to the actual gameplay which there's not a lot of it the steering wheel play some mario music and you have been rendered opaque by the car of a drunk kidney stones kidney stones kidney stones kidney stones from jeepers mcbeepers in chat hello gray i am a talent scout for hollywood do you have a moment to talk so this is kind of a classic like the world is a hellscape derived from the main character's mind type situation so all these things that we're seeing are sort of aspects of this character's life i'm pretty sure what is his stupidly slow walk meant to represent the early 70s it's supposed to make you take your time and be contemplating had formalized into a career i agree that it could be a bit faster but i don't mind the forces just on the lineage of migration scandinavians on the uh principle of breeding by the mainlanders like i said a lot of people seem to get angry at this game and hunting eventually that has definitely happened in chat a few times already there's so there's buckets of paint everywhere and there's these weird runes i don't even know what the runes are all about like genuinely like i've played this game and i don't even get what that is so maybe this will elucidate that for me a little better i think the thing that people need to realize is that looking around and observing and taking in a story is gameplay like that can be the substance of an interactive narrative i think that's i think that's valid just depends if it's actually done well or not and and that's when you can start discussing the quality of this you know if the story does or doesn't touch you or if the way that the game works does it doesn't touch you that's fine if you don't like it but just uh you know i don't care for like the the whole argument that just on principle if something doesn't have more in-depth gameplay than just walking around and looking at things then then it's not worth your time or whatever it's kind of silly there's this game going home that always gets the same sort of reaction and that one is even better i think at environmental storytelling i think i like gone home better than dear esther but it's a really compelling story it's well told like the way it's told is very very interesting and i'm not just talking about text dumps like this use makes him an unreliable witness i find myself increasingly drawn into his orbit is is laden a real thing and not from star trek the most embarrassing question i've ever asked in my [ __ ] life that i cannot corroborate this story ooh whoa that's like someone's ashes or something whoa whoa that was kind of cool oh look at that suitcase look at those crusty half-life 2 that's just a jpeg of clothing just slapped in there like a picture frame cool cave oh this is the [ __ ] up part it it's not super [ __ ] up it's not really [ __ ] up at all this is where it gets the most surreal is that supposed to be like me breaking my leg because he just said he fell and broke his leg really awesome looking caves in this game it just looks beautiful i'm glad i'm playing this on my new fancy pc whoa oh it looks awesome oh i'm falling even further down this is the part where it gets really surreal so is there some sort of comparison between his own body and the island going on here [ __ ] narcissist we're inside his kidney right now these are the stones just looks beautiful is this like a crystal cave i'm gonna fight seek the scaleless behold damascus is taken okay yeah whatever man whoa look at this [ __ ] these have got to be they look like something to do with like cell structures like that looks like a cell it's really i'm no i'm no physicist i'm no neurogeneticist so i don't know what the [ __ ] going on here but crazy science mumbo jumbo here's the true fall here it [ __ ] is fall three times and then you get a magic revelation oh did i see something down that path was there a person over there i think i saw a ghost okay well here we go wait can i go around can't go around it okay wow i really [ __ ] got knocked around here we are this is so cool we're here at the site of the accident we're just in that memory now oh and i got booted out but that's that's the spookiest it gets whoa you've seen what i'm seeing right damn i got your desktop wallpaper look at that there's more eyes they love that [ __ ] so there's four chapters in this game i think we are on the fourth now oh my okay lovely it's all just sort of about feeling confused and lost when something horrible happens i think that's just the feeling they were trying to go for and i think they kind of nailed it it's like if you were fighting enemies you might feel a slight bit empowered you know that's not the point they want you to feel bad whoa look at that i think actually isn't there some [ __ ] where when you view the reflections things look different in the reflections or something like that i seem to remember that being a thing [ __ ] maybe you look at that wow there it is awesome effect oh look at that it's these car parts that we found earlier in the in the hike just a nice relaxing hike oh these candles are a fire hazard look at how close that is to the plants you're gonna start a wildfire from here i can see my armada i collected all the letters i'd ever meant to send to you if i'd have ever made it to the mainland but it instead collected at the bottom of my rucksack and i spread them out along the lost beach then i took each and every one and i folded them into boats i folded you into the creases and then as the sun was setting i set the fleet to sail shattered into 21 pieces i consigned you to the atlantic and i sat here until i'd watched all of you sink whoa you can actually read the words on it huh i wonder if these words actually correspond to real dialogue in the game that's some good attention to detail whoa on a sudden a light from heaven shone around him and he fell to the ground eggs it does feel weird playing this in like a warm room i feel like i should be playing this on a cold cliff he was lifeless for 21 minutes 21. certainly longer that keeps showing up on levels is that like some unreliable narratorship nations and delusions of transcendence because everything happens in units of twenty one has become almost unbearably bright oh this you were very you were right there wow just looks like a cardboard cutout now look i'm gonna i'm gonna go up to the tower and i'm gonna get cell reception to call my mom and then i'm gonna glide down to the bottom and was some [Music] oh what oh no i have scoured this stretch of motorway 21 times 21 times that was another thing i never noticed the first time i played this there will be another to these shores to remember me i will rise from the ocean like an island without bottom come together like a stone become an ariel a beacon that they will not forget you we've always been drawn here one day the gulls will return and nest in our bones in our history i will look to my left and see esther donnelly flying beside me i will look to my right and see paul jacobson flying beside me they will leave white lines carved into the air to reach the mainland where help will be sent i really didn't plan this but it is actually remarkably similar to the ending of a short hike i i swear i didn't plan that just a million times more depressing someone said even when you're flying it's slow nice touch it doesn't like zoom out the camera and show that you're a bird but you get that glimpse of the shadows and you get to imply it easily enough yeah look at that he leaves this world where he left his writings man what a [ __ ] sad game [Music] come back now we're gonna do sexy hiking so here it is folks it's sexy hiking this is one of my new favorite games i in fact love this game this is another game about climbing use the hoomer as if you were really climbing something and you'll see [Music] so you may recognize this game concept from another game that is perhaps a little more famous this is a game from 2002 that had the same mobility controls as getting over it and in fact is the game that inspired getting over it uh i've never played getting over it i don't know if i have any plans to but i gotta say i have been enjoying playing this game and it has made me want to play getting over it because the controls in this game are jank as [ __ ] this is like clown funeral music too all the music is like midi files of other songs just ripped off really much like dear esther this game which is not a sentence i thought i would be saying this game has four levels so it should be easy should be easy this is the progenitor i believe this could be termed the first frustration game first like youtuber game you know like this is a whole genre now you got your getting over it you got your jump kings and there's kind of that there's another side of it that's like uh kwop and uh and gurp oh and other such games like i am bread octodad where you have a weird control scheme by the way incidentally i have what's called a limiter on my sound so it makes it so that loud sounds get brought down to a certain volume so it doesn't blow out your eardrums but that is insanely loud for me so this is a game made by a guy named jazuo who is from the czech republic and has made a number of insanely racy games and all of them look really crusty and weird and a lot of them are what he would term erotic games i looked at a few interviews with him or just one on uh on tig source uh about about some of his games and it was it was an interesting read it provided some some amazing insight he said this game is is full of programmers art is how he termed it also yes this is aquatic ambience it's gonna have the [ __ ] like harp coming up and it's gonna sound so bad are you ready are you ready let's listen to it it sounds so much worse like something about the way the midi captured it it just sounds ugly by the way i'm going to do two runs of this game one the normal way where i just go around the route that you're intended to do and a second run with jank because there is so much stupid jank you can do in this game to skip segments it's so [ __ ] dumb and i will say the controls are jank as [ __ ] it actually gets kind of satisfying to play after a couple playthroughs though which is not to say that the first playthrough is not cbt so yes clearly this is the game that inspired getting over it with bennett foddy a man who looks like this okay oh god every time the music loops the game lags for about a second it throws me the hell off every time ah you know what i'm gonna do a skip this is not even the jank skip so it doesn't even it can still i can still do something even more jank for the the speed run run come on there you go okay now this is this is still going to be tricky to do there okay okay and there you go [Applause] [Music] and now here's the level that [ __ ] like hurts my eyes this waterfall pattern just kills me i don't know what it is about it it just something about it really irritates me it like hurts my brain this is like the trickiest that part right there that's like the one of the trickiest parts of the game okay get up there these jumps are real tricky the first time you do them by the way real [ __ ] dumb all right now and there's about 10 ways you can do this now this is i'm not even sure if this is the way you're supposed to do it because there's these things at the top that you could theoretically grapple across doing this the jank way is actually like a thousand times easier than the normal way interestingly enough oh there you go that's how you do it and there's the [ __ ] masterpiece game and now i have never watched this i've clicked no every time i've played this so i genuinely don't know what's coming up so here we go okay so you have finished all levels and we think you deserve some kind of revolt and surely you ask what the reward actually is well we saw you like the game surely yeah so we saw we might show you something out of the crater of this great game the great creator of the great game so here we go oh my [ __ ] god this is the man who made it possible oh god the text is white on a white image for all of us to play this great game he has made many games before and is one of the most belated men in gmc and other wear as well he looks nice and pretty if you look carefully you'll as well understand why some people would call him jesus he have influenced our lives greatly not only by those great games but as well by his little beautiful humble and smile that you see that must be jesus [Music] i don't know what i was expecting is this this do this forever it's not even look at this it's not even like centered properly it's got like crust this is a message from mr jasuo if you would like to make me fun club it's okay don't be shy you are the most welcome to do so and then he said it's great news isn't it well folks we've also got to watch the credits of course before we do the second run so the credits has a fun glitch i don't even know if you guys are gonna be able to see the credits but it doesn't stop the main menu music from playing oh you guys can see it so it's just gonna have a midi x-files theme playing over this original song so fun fact joshua has a youtube channel that he has not posted on since like 2008 i think or something like that and uh it's all this weird it's so [ __ ] weird also it is very flexible that's why we can clean it to very thin layers oh i can feel how it is needed oh so now i'm gonna do the jank play through so this game has so much [ __ ] jank you don't even know you can just pop through the floor like that all over the place you can pop through just about anything i gotta say i've been playing this game way too much the past few days i've played it so many times it's like unhealthy i don't know why i was like so disgusted when i first saw it and and now i'm like weirdly interested and i might actually stream getting over it i know i said i wouldn't there was like a point in time where i said i will never stream getting over it i kind of want to just to see how the game feels in comparison to this you know also there's no jank on this level so this one has some crazy jank as you can see that's what i really wanted to do during the first playthrough was just pop through the ground like that i want to get like a cool yeet finish [Music] no you know it's weird this is a thing when i heard about uh what was that guy it was like socrates or some some [ __ ] person like that some like philosopher mathematician was like give me a a solid place to stand and like a large enough stick and i can move the earth i have often fantasized about having like something like that like a huge like rigid object that you could just have perfect control over i know this sounds like a [ __ ] thing but it's like the gameplay of this is is very similar to that sort of fantasy there you go that's what i was trying to do so now you can get all sorts of good [ __ ] this is like that meme what is the meme of the dude like thrusting and dancing going like or whatever that's what this reminds me of i want to like launch myself into it you know no okay oh yeah you can these moving blocks get out of whack super easily too they get out of like position huh [Music] what's happening wait my arms are stuck up there my arms are stuck okay anytime you can stand under a tree branch like this you can just clip through the ground however you want it's just for free hold on slick there we go gotta get the slick tricks boing boing boing there we go so here's some jank stick that in there and wiggle it all around see what happens i got like some crazy boost jumps actually okay and now i am [ __ ] i'm going to be doomed there we go and into the gray void with me come on yeah ooh a little boost jank oh little boost jank and are you ready for the most jank thing of them all are you ready chat come on do it do it now i'm right here kill me do it i love that [ __ ] when i saw that jank i knew i had to stream this game well folks that was it those were the three hiking games the good the sad and the smuggly uh it goes to show indie games can be anything video games generally can be anything even if they're about climbing a mountain such vastly different interpretations there's truly no limits [ __ ] you roger ebert

Channel: grayfruit

Views: 102,338

Rating: 4.9659991 out of 5

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Id: acsiuUN1Jyw

Length: 42min 2sec (2522 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 06 2020