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The Spoony Experiment

Man... He's really stretching it with FF13.
Putting quotes from the game out of context to prove a point, always fun.
That one at the end where Snow scares off a bunch of civilians is a particularly egregious example.

"The game sets it up like a straight fight." Like hell it does. If it did, why would it give you another tutorial?

And other than that, not a word about the gameplay with which you can and should take much more tangible complaints than with poor attempt at thinking with abstract sprites when making a high-budget modern 3D game.
I don't get the trend of trying to criticize games as movies, even those as cutscene-heavy as Final Fantasy titles.
 
That bit with the incompetent squad leader with the southern accent was just pure gold. Certainly one of Spoony's better reviews.

I know, right. That just made the game look so silly and dated.

It really is a hallway. When the game came out in Japan, I imported FFXIII for $100+. I was able to get past the crash scene in this Spoony review before I dropped it out of boredom. I didn't read or speak any Japanese. I can't imagine the game being even more mind numbingly simple when you're playing it in your own language.
 
http://www.tubechop.com/watch/1127600

YES! YES! YES!

Going to watch it in a bit, glad to hear it's great as usual!

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Dat feel when Spoony releases an actual review
 
The review is quite good. He brings up a lot of points most reviewers seem to glance over, but a lot of his criticisms are typical plot nitpicks. Not even major ones eve, just stuff like "how can you be perfectly fine after jumping off a giant magnetic rail from 30 ft above the ground, but you take fall damage in other spots?" Stuff like that mostly.
His complaints about the violence dissonance and the ending aren't nitpicks
 
This is fucking amazing. Passionate, angry, unlikeable yet still somehow sympathetic. This guy would be a great template for a villain in a film or something.

Yeah, after a while it was just sad for eveybody involved. It felt like he was waiting for the right moment to jump down the guy's throat, and he took it.
 
jesus fucking christ that ff13

how can people possibly insist it's a good game?

I have no idea. I can say I put 12 hours into the game and I could stomach no more. The gameplay was alright, but the story was awful, the characters all unlikeable, and SE relied on a Codex system to explain most of the plot and setting. The problem with the last point was that, unlike Mass Effect, the world was completely boring and sterile, so you weren't slightly interested in following up on things and reading their way-too-long entries.

Oh, and I actually did like Lightning, but only for the sole fact that she felt relatable in that she also hated every single character in the game. (Just kidding, I disliked her too.)
 
awesome, with his Bioshock and FFXIII review he's back to the quality of video's I'm used to.

Keep up the good work Spoony, and I agree 100% on his Bioshock review.
Great graphics, nice story, mediocre and repetitive gameplay

Yea I really enjoyed the Bioshock review. The longer the video the better I say. I've been really enjoying Counter Monkey lately too, even though I don't play pen and paper games. I've pretty much watched all his stuff now.

His most recent videos are very good tho.
 
Man... He's really stretching it with FF13.
Putting quotes from the game out of context to prove a point, always fun.
That one at the end where Snow scares off a bunch of civilians is a particularly egregious example.

"The game sets it up like a straight fight." Like hell it does. If it did, why would it give you another tutorial?

And other than that, not a word about the gameplay with which you can and should take much more tangible complaints than with poor attempt at thinking with abstract sprites when making a high-budget modern 3D game.
I don't get the trend of trying to criticize games as movies, even those as cutscene-heavy as Final Fantasy titles.
He'll probably talk more about the gameplay when he gets to the part where the game trusts you to have more than two characters and choose among them. For the first, what, 30 hours of the game - the story is the only reason to push forward. The only challenging fights, from what I remember, are the ones against your summons.
 
The whole game is dumb.

Yeah, pretty much.

Think he's finally on the right meds too, if I remember right his last doctor wasn't even treating him for the right thing. Nice to see such a big difference.

Good video.

That's good to hear. It's funny to see how Spoony has changed within his videos over the years, and it's nice to see he's back on his way up again after he's told us how bad things have got. Gives a nice hopeful sense of things in general.
 
So glad I gave up on FF13 after "just" 3-5 hours.

After that long I still had no idea what was happening, who these characters were, or what their goal was.

I get that they tried to do a cold open like in FF7 with the reactor attack, but in that game that part was maybe 1 hour before a character explains what is going on.
 
Man, Spoony's new video player sucks ass. Quality is terrible and I can't even watch it on my iPad like with Blip.
 
I hope after all this Counter Monkey and Final Fantasy XIII stuff he goes back to some FMV game reviews.

I personally feel those are his best. Just about all of them are just so enjoyable even when watching multiple times.

Most definitely. I really want to see him do an LP of Black Dahlia. His FMV stuff and shitty movie stuff is the best. Phantasmagoria 2 is the best LP out there. Funny and entertaining. The game is also cool regardless of popular opinion.
 
Most definitely. I really want to see him do an LP of Black Dahlia. His FMV stuff and shitty movie stuff is the best. Phantasmagoria 2 is the best LP out there. Funny and entertaining. The game is also cool regardless of popular opinion.

Been hoping for that ever since Ripper finished up. He mentioned back in like...I want to say it was 08', in a seperate video, that he had a copy of Black Dahlia, but couldn't get it up and running. The only thing is that I think he said he remembered it being a pretty good game, so that might be a problem. It's always funnier when the acting and gameplay is super-shitty.
 
Been hoping for that ever since Ripper finished up. He mentioned back in like...I want to say it was 08', in a seperate video, that he had a copy of Black Dahlia, but couldn't get it up and running. The only thing is that I think he said he remembered it being a pretty good game, so that might be a problem. It's always funnier when the acting and gameplay is super-shitty.

I've actually found a patch that makes the game work with Windows 7. I remember that video, believe it was the first FMV Hell he did. Or from Johnny Mnemonic.
 
So much truth in his FFXIII videos. Very reminiscent of my thoughts playing through it cringing at almost every line of dialogue. I did eventually enjoy the combat in gran pulse 40 hours in but man the plot and characters were always terrible to the end.

Looking forward to part 4
 
I've actually found a patch that makes the game work with Windows 7. I remember that video, believe it was the first FMV Hell he did. Or from Johnny Mnemonic.

We need to get a grass-roots twitter thing going then or something. Probably wouldn't start until he finished up FF XIII though.
 
Spoony's FFXIII review so far is pretty spot on. Man, he's not even halfway through this game. Many more parts to go... lol
 
Most definitely. I really want to see him do an LP of Black Dahlia. His FMV stuff and shitty movie stuff is the best. Phantasmagoria 2 is the best LP out there. Funny and entertaining. The game is also cool regardless of popular opinion.

Hopefully he's planning on it when he wraps up FF. would be a good in between before he does 13-2
 
READY....AIM....DON'T FIRE YET!.....WAIT FOR IT....WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T FIRE YET....AH SHE'S GOT A SWORD WHAT DO WE DO!?
 
READY....AIM....DON'T FIRE YET!.....WAIT FOR IT....WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T FIRE YET....AH SHE'S GOT A SWORD WHAT DO WE DO!?

Even stuff like this wouldn't bother me so much if the earlier games like FF7 didn't do this stuff way better. Soldiers would fire at you and people would die/lose their arm because of it. And with that more silly graphical style FF7 could have gotten away with stuff like this easier too.

Why couldn't they even come up with a lame story reason. Like l'cie have magical barrier that can protect from gunfire or something.
 
Even stuff like this wouldn't bother me so much if the earlier games like FF7 didn't do this stuff way better. Soldiers would fire at you and people would die/lose their arm because of it. And with that more silly graphical style FF7 could have gotten away with stuff like this easier too.

Why couldn't they even come up with a lame story reason. Like l'cie have magical barrier that can protect from gunfire or something.

Would have taken too much time to think up.
 
The whole game is dumb.

Actually, the Focus thing made me think of something about the game that I have never thought of before.

So, yeah, Fal'cie give L'Cie's focuses so that they eventually do some vague task. But...
Anima died, and had to have known it was going to die, when it turned the cast into L'cie. For the sake of argument, I'll assume that L'cie brands are on a timer or something.
In this case, if
Anima was going to die and most likely did know that it was one of the few pulse L'cie left on Cocoon, if any,
, wouldn't it be imperative here, more than anywhere else, for Anima to clearly spell out what the party needs to do? It doesn't really make sense to have the focus be all vague when
the thing will be fucking dead and won't be able to give any further guidance.
 
Actually, the Focus thing made me think of something about the game that I have never thought of before.

So, yeah, Fal'cie give L'Cie's focuses so that they eventually do some vague task. But...
Anima died, and had to have known it was going to die, when it turned the cast into L'cie. For the sake of argument, I'll assume that L'cie brands are on a timer or something.
In this case, if
Anima was going to die and most likely did know that it was one of the few pulse L'cie left on Cocoon, if any,
, wouldn't it be imperative here, more than anywhere else, for Anima to clearly spell out what the party needs to do? It doesn't really make sense to have the focus be all vague when
the thing will be fucking dead and won't be able to give any further guidance.

Actually...
It was the god Pulse, not Anima or a Fal'Cie, that gave them their focus and their brands
 
Actually...
It was the god Pulse, not Anima or a Fal'Cie, that gave them their focus and their brands

Pulse is still a fal'Cie actually, albiet and absurdly powerful one that can create other fal'Cie. There were only ever two actual gods in the XIII mythos and one of them already died prior to the game.
 
Actually...
It was the god Pulse, not Anima or a Fal'Cie, that gave them their focus and their brands

Wait, what the hell?

I actually dug out my copy of XIII and pulled up the datalog for this. If your assessment is correct, then the game itself flat out lies to the player about this.
The datalog for Anima pretty much holds Anima responsible for the branding and everything.

Yeah, this shit is bananas.

Edit: Oooh, it's the goddamn Ultimania that actually clears up this detail, and not the game itself.
 
You'd almost think it's meant to be funny.

I like how highlighting the spoilers makes no difference. I know as much as before.
 
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