Flipping Tables Sunrise Robot

Almost all of George’s critiques fall flat because he clearly missed the point of the game, and he also spent minimal time with it. Than in my opinion Lyon’s counterpoints also don’t do the best job conveying the whole point of the game either. George came in expecting an action game about empowerment and let those expectations drastically influence his review. Lyons than explains that it’s not that type of game and your supposed to feel disempowerment and while that is true to a degree it doesn’t sell the whole story, and then later he claims that even at the end of the game you don’t feel super-powered which in my opinion is straight up untrue. You have a slew of devastating attacks, lasers that shoot through walls, bombs that have a blast radius greater than the entire screen, a deep reservoir of missiles powerful enough to shake the screen when they impact a wall. You are a walking armory who is capable of taking a nap at the bottom of lake of lava.

The “horror/disempowerment” aesthetic that pervades the beginning of the game is so freaking in your face that all of George’s complaints about “This game didn’t feel like Mega Man X, and the aesthetic of the game should have better communicated to me that this is not a Mega Man X game” ring extraordinarily hollow. All you have to do is look at the title screen for all of 5 seconds and you can immediately recognize the theming of this game. It’s conveyed by the environments, (The first 2 are a dimly lit derelict space ship full of dead bodies and a dark cave you enter after landing on a stormy raining planet) & It’s conveyed by the music & other audio, (Seriously just listen to the title screen, the sounds on the spaceship and the storm you land in)

Almost all of George’s suggestions on what he would have wanted to see in this game would have undoubtedly made this game worse. Most of the things he suggested would have overshadowed this games elegant environmental storytelling in favor of ham fisted in your face “Hey did you get it? Did you get that this planet is hostile! Do you understand your situation yet?!“ kind of storytelling.

One of the biggest reasons why all that ham fisted stuff would be awful is because it would sort of ruin the way the game is supposed to make you feel. This game isn’t just about horror or disempowerment. It is also about empowerment, just in a different way than something like Mega Man X is. In Mega Man you start off as “The Mega Man” and you are powerful and then as the game progresses you get even more powerful and throughout the entire game you are the powerful Mega Man and sometimes you are more less powerful but your always mega.

In Super Metroid you eventually become this ultra powerful warrior which is supposed to be in stark contrast to how you started the game. They can’t oversell the threat of the planet because your not supposed to be scared of it forever. You’re supposed to backtrack through these areas once your powered up and think to yourself “Look how far I’ve come. These formerly great challenges are now at most a minor inconvenience.”

Also Lyons incorrectly states that “The ONLY way to get into Florida for the first time is to blow up the glass tube” and then complains that the visual should have been more stark. Well that statement is incorrect, there is indeed another way to enter Florida that is pretty darn accessible and doesn’t require any advanced techniques. So no, the game doesn’t necessarily come to a grinding halt for the players who don’t figure that out.

The X ray scope is clunky and I hate it, and the run button is stupid and I hate it.

But at the end of the day you both said no nostalgia goggles required and that it held up and George acknowledged that just because he hated it that doesn’t make it bad which very mature of him. Good boy George.

Also go check out Nostalgia Goggles

Out of the couple dozen podcasts I subscribe to, this is one of only three I always listen to all of.

Michael & David have great conversational chemistry, [almost] always have interesting topics, and make you want to hear what they're going to say next.

My only complaint is it only comes once a week.

I have been listening to David and Michael for quite a while now (might be ~ a year). I have come to really appreciate their take on tech, games, and the thoughts they provide around the larger context.

Having a host who I would not describe as an Apple enthusiast combined with someone who expresses his liking of the new iPad Pro makes for interesting dynamics in conversations, as an example.

The humorous banter between both hosts has a nice casualness to it, and the occasional snark is just the type of humor that I can appreciate. Personally, I also find it extremely refreshing to hear them talk about tech developments without the usual hyperbole that is so common in this area. When they talk about new app, not everything is either “the next big thing” or the worst thing anybody ever thought of. I frequently hear statements like “I cannot see this being useful for me, but I will give it a shot”, or reports about things they have actually tried.

And can we please agree that their intro music is lovely?