Seven Years of NOCLIP - Spacetember in March

Some people say seven is a lucky number. I’m not sure where that comes from, but I’d say this was a pretty lucky year for us. We talked about your suggested games in Fanbruary, found our true niche with hit theme month Ape-ril, and were actually able to talk about a FROM Software game while it was still in the zeitgeist. We also won the lottery, the NOCLIP Awards finally got onto Spike TV to replace their terrible awards show and the film adaptation of the Super Mario Cereal episode is entering the final stages of production.

Okay, half of that is accurate, but we are very happy with the direction the podcast is headed as far as our content goes. This year featured a huge number of really interesting games both new and old, and we unironically think Fanbruary was a great success. Your suggestions have made up an increasingly large number of the games we talk about, and it’s upped the variety and generally rounded out our experience with games overall. So, as NOCLIP Day comes and goes, as it does every year, we reflect on the impact these games made on us, good, bad and sometimes stupid, with this bloopers episode. We’ve got TV show pitches, impromptu song parodies, and our usual technical issues, so if that sounds enjoyable to you, then today is the best day of the year on our podcast. We’re in the month of horror, so the upcoming few episodes will be on some scary games, but as always, I hope this serves as some comic relief and we hope to see you again next year!

NOCLIP Pocket E67 - The Heretic Pages - Games by David Szymanski

The whole podcast is made of a single piece of iron.

Welcome to the spoooookiest month of the year! To kick things off, we’re going to be playing four very short games by the same developer. David Szymanski is probably more well known now for developing “DUSK,” a horror FPS game that specifically harks back to the early days of Id shooters like Doom and Hexen, but his solo efforts, which stretch as far back as 2014 are more appropriate for our purposes here. They tend toward walking simulators in terms of genre, but have a focus that feels demonstrably different than most other horror games. Specifically, they focus on narrative and tension building in a low fidelity setting. These are games that do not go out of their way to wow you with impressive graphics or intricate systems. They are simple, and rely on your understanding of the story, as well as setting and sound to unnerve the player, rather than make them feel in imminent danger. This is true for all four games, though the way they go about it is different, whether through an eerie and oppressive atmosphere (a desolate island in a storm, or a place where the rain hurts you) or a crushing sense of claustrophobia (submarine, underground tunnels). Each game manages to get that creeping dread into the player, assuming you meet them at face value, and all within an hour and a half or less. We’re going to be talking about the difference in production value between each game as time goes on, the use of text and sound to do the heavy lifting in an atmosphere-reliant genre, and for the longtime fans, we touch on another video game character who is ambiguously a motor vehicle.

Thank you for joining us again this week, and for another month of horror titles! We always look forward to this time of year because we collect ideas for October over the course of time and finally get to do all of them at once. It’s very exciting. Were you also sucked into the Szymanski-verse through finding Fingerbones for free or playing Dusk and wondering “what else has this guy done?” or is this the first you’ve heard the name? We do recommend trying these games out due to the extremely low barrier to entry both in cost and time investment, so let us know in the comments or over in our Discord server what you think of them. Next time, we’re going to be talking about Bendy and the Ink Machine, similarly in the adventure genre, but with a much higher emphasis placed on visuals to sell its world, so we hope you’ll join us again for that.

Episode 136 - Ape Arms - Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Alright, I’ll start the podcast from here next time.

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, an action adventure game that was released in 2003 and was one of the biggest triple A titles of the time. Sands of Time is a sort of reboot of a game that was released way back in 1989 on the Apple II and the creator of that original game actually worked on this one. Knowing this, you can see some design philosophies that apply to both in an interesting way. Both feature platforming and combat, with an emphasis on a smooth motion and context sensitive actions, and that smoothness is one of the things that really propelled this game to the heights it achieved at the time of its release. Not a lot of other games looked like Prince of Persia did, with the Prince running across walls and jumping between ledges in a way that felt almost realistic. And that is really the selling point. The platforming is close to movement based puzzle solving: the levels of the game are less likely to be described like playgrounds as you might in other platformers and come off more as prescribed challenges. This is still very fun though, as the Prince is responsive and stages are satisfying to complete. The places the game suffers are in all the other aspects of its design. It contains a lot of systems that developers tended to think were just necessary parts of games at the time, like combat and puzzle solving, and story that never really gets off the ground, even with an interesting setup. This game feels like a relic of the past, and a useful one at that, showing us that for a lot of games, having a focus on what you want to accomplish and cutting the things that don’t work is usually the path to a better game. We’re going to be talking about the game’s movement and camera and how they stack up against other platformers of the time, the combat system and its layers of unnecessary complications, and we debate what types of magic the final boss neglected to learn.

Thank you for joining us again this week! Often when we dip back to this era of games it’s due to a favorite we remembered from our pasts or because something was suggested to us, but in this case it was the game’s reputation. If you played games during the early 2000’s, Prince of Persia was a game you knew about and was considered a tentpole release at the time. Playing it back then would have likely been a different experience for us, but as two first time players, it’s interesting to see how far we’ve come in terms of design and development. Do you think the game holds up? Was the game at the time more palatable, and do you think that it had an influence on other games at the time? Let us know in the comments, or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re heading into our favorite month of the year, and beginning our selection of Halloween games! We’re going to be starting off with The Evil Within 2, so be sure to check back in with us then.

NOCLIP Pocket E66 - Old Man Territory - Audiosurf

Ride your podcast.

Welcome back to the podcast! This week, we’re talking about Audiosurf, a procedurally generated rhythm game that uses your music as the seed for all its levels. No need to worry about spoilers on this one, as Audiosurf doesn’t have anything in terms of a plot and all game modes are unlocked right from the start. In fact, that is part of what makes this game feel sort of weird in the overall landscape of games. It feels more like a piece of utility software than a traditional game at times, with it’s function essentially being applying a point system to listening to music. The game was extremely popular among the PC crowd around the time of its release because of its novelty, and there’s a lot of impressive tech going on to make it work, but it’s rhythm game elements are pretty soft. Difficulty can largely be determined in any given song by looking at tempo and the sort of noisiness of the track, and it ends up feeling a bit linear once you understand that. Not that there isn’t merit to what Audiosurf is doing. It’s a way to engage with music in a way that passive listening can’t accomplish, making you think more about the songs before you play them and letting you appreciate the nuances of each one that led to what its track looks like. It’s an extremely cool thing, and the different playable ships bring a ton of varying mechanics giving it a lot of depth in terms of practicing and getting better and it’s well worth checking out if you can get it running on modern hardware. We’re going to be talking about how your musical taste can influence the difficulty, sometimes without you even realizing, why most of the character choices can feel overwhelming, and how the bygone staple of leaderboards can make you feel like a World Famous Gamer(TM).

Thank you for joining us again this week! We’re trying to inject some variety into Pocket in the time leading up to Halloween here, and Audiosurf was a game we’ve had on the list for years and years and just never got around to actually talking about. For us, this is a definite nostalgia pick, something that we played years ago and remembered loving and getting to sit back down with it again did bring back a lot of those positive memories. Do you have any positive memories of Audiosurf, or other rhythm games you played when you were younger? Let us know in the Discord, or down there in the comments! Next time, we’re going to be talking about New Pokémon Snap in our quest to play every rail shooter photography game, so join us then and let us know if there are any others in that genre we’ve missed because this pointless objective is for some reason really important to me.

Episode 135 - The Headful Horseman - Xenoblade Chronicles 3

He is not a podcast, but a concept.

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the most recent release in the series and the game that is supposed to end the story that started in Xenoblade Chronicles. Comparisons to the earlier games in the series are bound to happen, with the two main factions in the game taking their aesthetics and even combat mechanics from each previous title specifically. However, even with many direct calls back to the earlier games, this game manages to be its own unique thing. With 6-7 characters active in combat all at the same time and the ability to freely switch between them, combat is even more active than it ever has been, managing “arts” to maximize damage and keep everyone alive. The world itself is a mashup of the titans featured in XCs 1 and 2, but still feels like a distinct place with an open world design that has an entirely different feel to it. It’s the rare game that has made its prequels a immutable part of its identity, but manages to incorporate them without it feeling like a pile of references and nudges to the player. The game is less noisy in combat, less stupid than the gashapon girl blades of two, and more accessible to the average player. Probably. We’re a bit too deep in at this point to be sure. We’re going to be talking about the feeling of the world and how it feels differently designed to the similar worlds of previous games, the potential and troubles with the class system for the ways we each engaged with it, and how enemies in these games compare to water balloons, or sandbags full of blood.

Thank you for joining us! If Xenoblade isn’t your bag, we’re happy to say that we’re done with it for the time being. This game really took over our lives, and with me playing the second one not that long before, I’ve been livin’ on Alrest for quite some time. If you’ve played it, did this game make you interested in the series, or have you been along for the long and occasionally bumpy ride Monolithsoft have taken us on the past decade? Where does this land in the grand scheme of Xenoblade, and do you think it’s a fitting conclusion to the story? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re going to be reeling it way in and talking about Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, a pretty classic title that was about as far away from the games we’ve recently covered as we could think of. So we hope your palette will be cleansed then.

Bonus Episode - A Little Bit Tasteful - Xenoblade Chronicles 2

This game makes me feel all blushy-crushy.

Welcome back! Today, on a not-such-a-surprise-if-you-listened-to-the-last-episode episode, we’re going to be “quickly” (by our standards) running through our thoughts on Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in preparation for our upcoming episode on Xenoblade Chronicles 3. As the third game more directly references the previous games than any other entry in the series, we thought it was important to have at least covered the basics of the second game to lay the groundwork. This week we’re going to be giving a summary of the important plot points and then giving our impressions and takeaways. XC2 is an RPG in the same style of its predecessors in the Chronicles series, but with an overhauled combat system and full of complicated interactions with its main differentiating factor, blades. Blades serve the game both as characters and your classes, in a way, with different blades using different weapons and having a different selection of arts to use, which makes your interactions with them meaningful in both a narrative and mechanical way. They are also largely embarrassingly pornographic. There’s a lot of give and take with this game. Your ability to stomach the more juvenile elements will probably be a deciding factor in how much you enjoy the game, and our feelings toward it are complicated to say the least. There is a lot more to the game than we get into today, but it should serve as a decent refresher and lay out what we’re going to be comparing to next time in the sequel’s episode.

Thank you for joining us for this bonus episode this week. We intend to do a full episode on this game at some point in the future, as the sequel being released early sort of quashed our original plan of doing it before that game came out, so take this one with a grain of salt. Emotions ran high and we took it out on the Nopon. Next time we’re going to be going full length on Xenoblade Chronicles 3, so we hope you’ll look forward to that.

NOCLIP Pocket E65 - Goopy Muck Boy - Hylics

Podcast: probably causes enemies to fall asleep.

Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket! Today, we’re going to be talking about Hylics, the “recreational program with light JRPG elements.” If this game appeals to you at first glance, it will be almost entirely based on its visual style and a promise of something a bit more out of the ordinary. As far as visuals go, it fully meets that expectation. This game has an absurd art style, with a claymation-like aesthetic and designs, both for characters and for props and scenery in the environment, that are colorful, interesting and difficult to parse. Characters lack obvious human qualities, environments look more like someone’s messy desk than traversable locations and in combat actions are punctuated by hand gestures and visual effects that are as beautiful as they are strange. The parts of the game you actually interact with, moving around the world and engaging in combat, are also odd but don’t stand out quite as much. An obvious effort was made to make sure things don’t progress in the way you’d expect them to. You’re rewarded after your first few deaths, traditional leveling systems are absent and combat is pretty unforgiving until you figure out how to gain additional party members (or where to even go to begin this process), and that lack of direction is part of the uneasy feeling this game wants you to have. The combat is more basic, leaning pretty heavily on its aesthetic design to make it feel unique, which it mostly succeeds at doing. Hylics is a game that has earned its reputation and if you think it might be for you, it probably is. We’re going to be talking about the early parts of the game and how confusing and off-putting they can be, the indecipherability of characters and text, and how the game is exactly like Pac-Man.

Thank you for joining us again this week! This one was suggested to us, and falls under that elusive category of “exactly the thing we want to do on Pocket.” It’s short, cheap, and does a lot of things in an unorthodox way, resulting in a something that gives you a lot to chew on. This is one of those games that may not top many people’s favorite games lists, but you do want to go through if you’re interested in things that buck the rules of game design and use the medium in a more freeform way. If you are one of those people, what did you think of Hylics? Did it live up to your expectations? Are you more thoughtful than us and were able to pick out what the game had to say? Let us know over in our Discord server or in the comments below! Next time, we’re going to be talking about one of the earliest indie darlings, Audiosurf, a rhythm game that lets you play on tracks procedurally generated from audio files on your own computer, so be sure to check back in for that!

Episode 134 - Brain Money - Night in the Woods

I believe in a universe that doesn’t care, and a podcast that does.

Welcome back! Today, we’re going to talk about Night in the Woods, and we’re not going to apologize for how late we are covering this. We are late to this, though. Night in the Woods is an indie adventure game with other interactive elements coming in the form of light platforming mechanics and minigames ranging from Guitar Hero style rhythm sections to top down hack-n-slash games. And if you go back through our catalogue, you’ll notice that this is right up our alley. Possibly too far up our alley, because while this is a standout example of the genre, we can’t help but compare it to a half dozen other games we played and talked about on this podcast, some of which came out well after this game and were probably inspired by it. What makes it stand out from the crowd, though? The game’s subject matter focuses squarely on the personal lives of people who are a part of the younger millennial generation living in a world that is explicitly based on our own. They just happen to be like cats and bears and stuff. The way this game faces the struggles of young people attempting to cobble together a life while dealing with economic realities, personal relationships and their own mental health is unique in its bleakness and how closely that bleakness mirrors our own reality. This grounds the characters, with the help of some very strong writing, and makes them relatable to a wide swath of people in their core audience. Oh, and there’s a storyline about a ghost in here as well. We’re going to be talking about how the game handles personal struggle and makes it a main part of its theme, how its mechanics help and hinder the overall experience, and we creatively rename one of the characters in the game and just keep calling them that and don’t look it up.

Thank you for joining us this week! We’re probably going to take some time off from this genre of game because we had a bit of an existential crisis in the middle of this episode because we felt like we might be deeply pigeon-holed. That said, this is still a unique entry in the adventure game genre and one we felt like we needed to cover eventually. Did you play this game when it came out? Maybe even backed it when it was being crowdfunded? Do you feel as strongly about its characters as we do? Did you find a reason to play Demon Tower? Let us know over on our Discord or in the comment section! Next time, we’re going to be talking about Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the recent sequel that supposedly ends the story arc that series has had for almost a decade. And if you need a refresher on how the plot has gone thus far, we intended to do an episode on the second game until the third one got released early, so we’re going to supplement that episode with a bonus on Chronicles 2 that should come out in the next couple weeks, so keep your eyes open for that.

NOCLIP Pocket E64 - Go to Gurt's - Lost Kingdoms

Don’t you have a burly podcast hidden away somewhere?

Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket! Today, we’re going to be talking about a FROM Software title from the olden days of their catalog, where they would release a game about fighting with cards exclusively on the GameCube. And that game is Lost Kingdoms, an RPG where you collect cards to make a deck to take into levels and serves as the kinds of attacks and spells you can perform. It’s got skeletons. It’s got princesses and dragons. it’s an RPG. But the card system is what takes something that could be kind of rote and boring and turns it into something much more interesting. While probably not the absolute first card based game of this sort, it is one of the earliest and you can feel its mechanics reverberating into more modern takes on this style. And with a release in 2002, for a lot of people of a certain age, it is likely the first they had ever played. And all that above not to say it themes and visuals are bad. It’s a very classic fantasy style, but done very well, especially for the time, and with an almost nostalgic Dungeons and Dragons kind of flavor. We’re going to be talking about how the game negotiated with its card mechanics, winning with some designs and losing with others, the nature of a game that seems like it wants you to lose or intentionally replay content to get the most out of it, and how shocked we are at the number of lizards we each have. It’s a lot of lizards!

Thank you for joining us again this week! This was one on the original list for the podcast that we never got around to for a number of reasons, some good and some stupid. Let us know if this is a game you played back in ye olden days of the Gamecube, or if you became aware of it after FROM’s rise to fame. It definitely stood out to me, but I can see it being forgettable for other people. Let us know what you think in the comments or over on our Discord. Next time, we’re going to be taking things in a more abstract direction and talking about Hylics. Also an RPG, but that’s about where the similarities end, so check us out then.

Episode 133 - Bobblehead Sneak King - Tiny Tina's Wonderlands

The coolest sword in the whole world: the Sword of Podcasts,

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Tiny Tina’s Wonderland, an FPS developed by Gearbox and a spin off of the Borderlands franchise. For a spin off title, the game mechanically plays much the same as any other Borderlands game, but with its priorities flipped around a bit and with a different narrative and theme. Rather than the wasteland-y aesthetic the series is known for, this title (while still existing in that universe) has table top role playing games as its central conceit, with you playing a character in a campaign being run by Tiny Tina from Borderlands 2 (and presumably onward). This RPG theming is more than a coat of paint, but not by too much, which could be a good or bad thing depending on your tastes and how much you like the Borderlands franchise. There’s a lot of fantasy style creatures in the form of wyverns and skeletons and the like, but at its core you are still shooting guns, grenades have been replaced by spells which have similarly varied effects like grenade mods. Class mods are armor, shields have become wards, etc. The mechanics are all still present here, but with a flavor overhaul, and the world and story have been restructured to match the fantasy ideas. If you’re familiar with Borderlands, I can’t explain much more about the mechanics you don’t already know, so jump into the podcast to hear us talk about the RPG systems in the form of skill trees and player customization, voice casting in a triple A game and how that effects how we feel about the dialogue and writing, and we use Comedy Algebra to explain the phenomenon of finding something funny when you’re 18 and ceasing to find it funny at 30.

Thank you for joining us again this week! Borderlands isn’t a game in our typical wheelhouse as far as the podcast goes, but the idea of playing a new shooter seemed like it would satisfy a craving for (one of) us, so here we are. Is this the type of game you’d like to hear us talk more about? Are you a Borderlands fan from way back? Did the writing in this game land for you, and did you engage with the endgame content gear grind? Let us know over in our Discord or in the comments below. Next time, we’re curling back up into a ball and getting cozy under the familiar adventure game blanket to talk about Night in the Woods, so we hope you’ll join us for that!

NOCLIP Pocket E63 - Rusty Playground - Solar Ash

Your podcast is a profanity.

Welcome back! Today on NOCLIP Pocket, we’re going to be talking about Solar Ash, a movement-based 3D platformer which was developed by Heart Machine, the developer of Hyperlight Drifter. While the aesthetic and other stylistic elements of this game relate back to Hyperlight Drifter, this game is very much a departure from the type of thing that that game was, and I think it may be this difference that made it fly so far under the radar of so many people, even those that were fans of their first game. Solar Ash is a platformer that places its emphasis strongly on its movement mechanics. Your character skates around the terrain like they have a pair of rocket-powered Heelys, making use of momentum to jump large gaps and navigate tighter obstacles with a host of context sensitive mechanics like grappling hook points and bouncy surfaces. The game also has a unique approach to boss design, mixing the fluid movement with Shadow of the Colossus-style encounters by forcing you to navigate your way up onto them and then accomplish a timed platforming challenge to deal damage. The weakest part of the game, however tends to be in its level design, though there was much disagreement between us as to what specifically we found good and bad, so we encourage you to give it a try if it seems interesting and make your own decision. We’re going to be talking about how movement mechanics really make this game what it is, our favorite and least favorite levels and why we disagree so much on their quality, and we make a quick note of IKEA’s diminishing influence in this developer’s work.

Thank you for joining us again this week! We love to talk about all kinds of games, but the ones that don’t get much attention hold a special place in our heart. And this was no different. We may have fallen into different camps on this game in the end, but it was still a fascinating experience to have and offers insight into how games like this are designed, especially with how different it is from the developer’s previous work and how well the mechanics came together. Did you play this when it came out, or were you one of the many people who seemed to miss this one? Let us know over in our Discord or in the comments! Next time, we’re going back to the GameCube (which would be more novel if we hadn’t just done Monkey Ball a few months ago) and talking about FROM Software’s card game RPG, Lost Kingdoms, so be sure to join us for that, if only to say how much better it would have fit as the Pocket companion for Inscryption and we just barely missed it.

Episode 132 - Past in Games - Inscryption

It’s been so long since I’ve had a podcast.

Welcome back to the podcast! Today we’re going to be talking about Inscryption, and, before moving on I have to say that I will be crucified for writing anything about Inscryption online that people who haven’t played it can see with their virgin eyes and ruin the experience for themselves. So note that this is one of those kinds of games and proceed with caution if you really don’t want to know anything about it, though I’m going to stay as spoiler free as possible in this description. With that out of the way, Inscryption is a… card game. It’s a game with some twists and maybe even a few turns, but at its mechanical heart it is a deck building card game, and a genuinely good one at that. The game is easy to pick up and understand with a level of mechanical depth that can be imposing at times later in the game, and it meshes thematically with the world the game creates exceedingly well. In fact, a lot of what aids in the grokability of the game is how well it fits within the fiction, sparking curiosity in the player and letting that naturally turn into an investigation of the mechanics. Beyond that, it’s hard to talk about this game’s tone without spoiling some of it, but I’ll say that it does remain interesting throughout and is one of the best things about the game. It pulls off “creepy” better than most traditional horror games do and packs an alarming amount of detail into even its smallest environments. The rest I’ll leave to you to find out for yourself. We’re going to be talking about how figuring this game out while not knowing anything at the outset is more enjoyable than most, the card game mechanics and what they do right and when they get complicated, and we fail to make a poop joke which should come as a big relief to everyone.

Thank you for joining us and also for putting up with that vague description! We really liked this game, for the record, so if you’re on the fence about it and our opinion means anything we’d try pushing you in its direction. If you’ve played it, how much did you know about it before going in? Did you find it mysterious and cool? Are you a card game player and did you pick up on all the references and clap your hands or roll your eyes at them? Let us know in the comments or over on Discord! We’re taking a pretty big jump in the style of game we’re talking about next time, and covering Tina Tina’s Wonderland, the Borderland’s spinoff based around fantasy and D&D, which is apparently pretty hot right now, so we hope you’ll join us for that!

NOCLIP Pocket E62 - The Perversion of Pac-Man - Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures

Slow down, Pac-Podcast!

Welcome back NOCLIP Pocket! Today, we’re going to be talking about Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures, which is among the stranger entries in the Pac-Man franchise. In Pac-Man 2, you guide Pac-Man around a world map to accomplish goals, most of which are mundane chores, by shooting at things with a slingshot or directing his attention, making the game a sort of second-person adventure game. You’ll need to identify objects that will help you and avoid the ones that won’t while managing both Pac-Man’s attention as well as his mood. This makes the game fluctuate between being a colorful shooting gallery where you’re often surprised by the results of your actions and a kind of tedious experience once you figure out what needs to be done and just need to make it happen through all the curve balls the game throws at you. Despite this dichotomy, this is still an extremely unique game that uses a familiar character in an extremely unexpected way and is worth taking a look at, particularly if you’re interested in the history of games. We’re going to be talking about the amount of environmental interaction the game encourages with its systems, the strangeness of the concepts and mechanics and we crack into the real Pac-lore this game sheds light on.

Thank you for joining us again this week! This was the game that actually inspired “Fan-bruary” a few months back and we felt like we should definitely do an episode on it even if we didn’t manage to squeeze it in back then. It certainly is an odd one and is appealing in that "you don’t see that very often” kind of way. Have you played this game? Or even heard of it? Let us know in the comments or over on Discord. Next time, we’re going to be talking about Solar Ash, the third-person platformer (kind of?) from the creator of Hyperlight Drifter, so be sure to check back then.

Episode 131 - Dick Holden - Disco Elysium

Maybe we wouldn’t welcome you if you were being chased by men with guns. Or maybe we would, because that’s just the kind of podcast we’ve built.

Welcome back to Mystery May! On June 5th. It happens. For our final mysterious game this month, we’re talking about about Disco Elysium. This is an RPG in the tabletop RPG or CRPG sense where it sets out to mechanically emulate playing a TTRPG with stat checks and many dialog choices, letting you choose where to go and what to do in order to accomplish your goals. Combine this freedom with the massive catalog of stats to increase and you have a game that leans heavily on player choice. As the game checks your stats constantly in the background against a number of possible results, this means that the type of character you choose to play heavily impacts what you end up learning about. A character with many points in Empathy will know more about people while a Motorics based character will learn and interact with many objects, which all play in to your understanding of the world and the case you’re trying to solve. And of course, it wouldn’t be such a good Mystery May game without a case to solve. The world of Disco Elysium is very bleak, and your job as a cop solving a murder isn’t much of a relief from all the darkness around you. This isn’t to say the game doesn’t have levity, it actually has a ton of very well-written jokes, but the overall themes are ones dealing with picking up the pieces of a broken city and a broken mind. This makes a lot of the game feel very heavy, and it can be exhausting to play at times, but it’s worth it to see something unique with a fresh perspective, not just on the RPG genre, but on people and the world they live in as well. We’re going to be talking about how the many stats can be motivating to how you play, how we feel about the mystery contained in this game and its resolution, and we complain about being old and tired and not having time for a game that demands this much of you.

Thank you for joining us this week, and this slow past month of mystery games. As alluded to above, we’ve been very busy personally the last several weeks and it’s impacted our ability to get out episodes at our usual speed, but we’re genuinely really happy with the choices made for this theme this year. This was an, admittedly, kind of expected treat, a game we knew had a lot of hype behind it and seemed up our alley, but the actual contents were still surprising upon playing it. Did you play Disco Elysium when it came out, or when the final cut was released? Is it a game you could see yourself playing for a second time? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord server, where you can also suggest some games for us to play, perhaps for next year’s Mystery May! Next time, we’re going to be talking about Inscryption, a game that is more of a mystery to us than it maybe is in game, but with a trusted recommendation and the assurance you should know as little about it as possible before going in, we’re excited nonetheless.

NOCLIP Pocket E61 - Juice Heads - Gemini Rue

We hope you’ll listen to this podcast so we don’t have to wipe your memory again.

Welcome to Mystery May! This week, we’re going to be talking about Gemini Rue, a detective point and click adventure game with a cyberpunk setting. This game came out during an era that you could call the Adventure game revival period, if you think the genre actually was revived at some point, but the important thing is that it is obvious the design was inspired by classic adventure games. There are several ways to interact with objects in the environment, an inventory system and progress is made by solving puzzles. There are a few wrinkles here, a gunfight mechanic as well as the ability to swap between two playable characters, but these don’t act to really shake up the basic functionality of the genre and the result is something that feels very retro. While the adherence to the old adventure game style is a strength if you are a fan of the genre, the real appeal here is a very competently told story that, yes, contains its fair share of mysteries. It could have done more to work the detective angle and make the player work to figure out the solutions to those mysteries, but watching it unfold is still an entertaining experience. We’re going to be talking about economic use of assets that work from both a design perspective and also fit thematically within the game world itself, voice acting taking the story telling potential of the game to another level, and we construct a food metaphor so deft it will finally get us the recognition we deserve.

Thank you for joining us this week! We’re having a truncated Mystery May this year with only two episodes, but I think the game selection ended up pretty strong nonetheless. Have you played this game before, or were you compelled by this episode to pick it up? Do you find point and click games boring and obtuse, a genre that only appeals to sleepy old men and pedants? Let us know down in the comments or over on Discord! And while you’re over there, drop us a suggestion for a game to play, which I mention because… our next game is the inspiration for Fanbruary (which we’d recommend checking out if you haven’t already), Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures! We hope you’ll join us for that.

Episode 130 - Big Ice Bag - Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze

Podcast juice, huh? I have no idea what it is, dude, but it tastes radical!

Welcome back to the podcast and our final episode in Ape-ril! We’re going to be discussing Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. This is a sequel to Donkey Kong Country Returns which is itself a spiritual follow up to the original series of games from the SNES, which puts this in a fairly odd position as a part of the franchise. A lot of the base elements of the game are tied to those original titles as the new series tries to relate back to what made those games so memorable, but then again the mechanics and designs of DKCR are being iterated on to further polish the game and the “tropical freeze” goes much further than a fresh coat of paint. This sequel-to-a-successor status and strong thematic elements make Tropical Freeze actually a very interesting standalone game, despite it’s close ties to its predecessors. We’re going to be talking about level design and the kind of platformer this strives to be, the way its stages tell stories on both a micro and macro level, and we discover the punchline to a joke about Cranky Kong that started over twenty years ago.

Thank you for joining us again and for closing out this mon(key)th with us! What are your feelings on Retro Studio’s take on the Donkey Kong franchise? Do you think these games are great? Are they overhyped? What about, and this is extremely important, what about Rambi? Do you…do you like Rambi? Let us know in the comments, or over on our Discord server where we talk about the games. Next time, we’re diving into our annual tradition of Mystery May and talking about Disco Elysium, so we hope you’ll join us then!

NOCLIP Pocket E60 - Freshly-Jellied - Ape Escape

What’s happening? What’s wrong with you? Do you realize what you’re saying? Do you know who you’re talking to? Snap out of it! Pull yourself together! Can you hear me?

Welcome back to the podcast! For our second pocket episode for the very cohesive and not stupid in any way themed month of Ape-ril, we’re going to be talking about Ape Escape. This is a Playstation 1 title that necessitates the use of the Dual-Shock analog controller. Which in the grand scheme of things doesn’t necessarily sound all that important of a detail to focus on, but playing the game it becomes very clear that its purpose was really to showcase all of things that were possible by having multiple analog sticks (as well as the L3/R3 button concept), and does so in a really unique way. The control scheme of this game is actually really clever, with the face buttons used to switch between multiple gadgets that can be mapped by the player and all use the right stick to function, as well as having jump mapped to the R1 button to keep the stick always available to be used. It was certainly novel at the time, and since we live in a world now where every modern controller has multiple analog sticks, it’s clear that the Dual Shock has had an impact with Ape Escape having at least a small part in introducing this concept to players. On top of that, the game is just solidly designed, having a lot of mechanical complexity and player abilities, but with a simple concept and mostly very tightly designed levels. This overall simplicity meant that the player can focus on using platforming, stealth, climbing and all of the different gadgets without sacrificing the flow of the level. We’re going to be talking about the successes and failures of the novel control scheme, the legacy of the game and why it’s worth playing, and our desire to see someone in a big foam Spike mascot costume.

Thank you for joining us this week! This game wasn’t an unknown quantity for us coming in, but we were still surprised by just how well this game held up, particularly in the face of some of the older games we’ve played recently. It really is an interesting title with a lot of good ideas that really haven’t been iterated on much outside of its own series. Did this game introduce you to twin stick controllers? Did you have an equally smooth time playing this one in the modern era? Let us know down in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time we’re leaving Ape-ril and entering into Mystery May (and then hopefully taking a fairly long break from themes) and we’re going to be talking about Gemini Rue, so we hope you’ll join us for that!

Episode 129 - The Wheeling Wizpigs - Diddy Kong Racing

You must find 8 podcasts from each level and WIN.

Welcome back to the podcast, and to our stupidest themed month yet, Ape-ril! Today, we’re going to be talking about Diddy Kong Racing. This is Rare’s effort in the kart racing genre, and we’re willing to bet that if you’re around our age and had an N64, you probably have some positive memories of this game. Cherish them. Those memories betray how soul crushingly difficult this game is to play. The core concepts at play here in this game are very strong, though. With three different vehicles and a large cast of characters to choose from, this has more variety than other games in the genre at the time, and a unique hub for level selection is a very cool addition. The presentation is colorful and fun in the way Rare is known for, with music that is straight out of their heyday. However, the game demands you to be absolutely flawless, completing challenges that would be optional in most other games and compounds with the N64 hardware not allowing for the most responsive controls to make a game that will kick your ass six ways to Sunday as soon as you finish your first time through each course. We’re going to be talking about how each of the three different vehicles feel to pilot and how this variety helps to make this game stand out, how certain elements of the game feel like they’re there to milk as much runtime out of the content as possible, and we cast a movie to let the game’s best character, Wiz Pig, really shine.

Thank you for joining us this week! There’s something about monkeys that makes a game more difficult than most for some reason. Between this and Monkey Ball, we’ve already had two difficult games, but each in their own way. Have you gone back to play DKR at any point in your life? Did you also not remember just how tricky some of the challenges were, or did you stick it out because you aren’t as weak-willed and frail as we are? Let us know down in the comments or over on Discord! Next time, we’re going to be talking about Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, and after what we’ve already put ourselves through this month, that Funky Mode is looking pretty appealing…

NOCLIP Pocket E59 - A Crossover With Lettuce - Super Monkey Ball

Ready? Podcast! Hurry up!

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re starting our hopefully not recurring theme month of Ape-ril by talking about Super Monkey Ball! While we ended up playing a little of the first game and a bit of Banana Mania for this episode, the original games do sort of conglomerate in your head if you’ve played them both, so it seems fair to consider this more of a look at the series rather than a specific game. The Monkey Ball games are defined by their mechanical design: similar to a Marble Madness type game, your goal is to roll the ball from the start to the goal in a physics simulation by tilting the stage and navigating obstacles. Because of this unchanging mechanical throughline, you can almost consider the game’s sequels (apart from Banana Blitz) as expansion packs, adding new stages and mini games but keeping the same core engine that makes the game work. These stages can be absolutely dastardly at times though, with later levels requiring a mix of fast reflexes, careful navigation and a deep understanding of the game’s physics to competently complete. While we were not always competent, we persevered. We’re going to be talking about the style of engagement this game traffics in, the juxtaposition of cute monkeys and colorful presentation with tough as nails level design, and the dystopian banana future the Dole corporation previewed in the original title.

Thank you for joining us again this week! Is Super Monkey Ball the hardest game you’ve ever played, or are we just babies? What was your favorite stage name and what did the level it’s associated with make you feel while looking at it? Let us know over on Discord or in the comments on YouTube! And strap in, because it’s a weird theme month again, so next time we’re going to be talking about Ape Escape and we hope you’ll join us for that.

Episode 128 - The Hill That Killed Me - Elden Ring

Put these podcast ambitions to rest.

Welcome back to the podcast, where we absolutely couldn’t not talk about Elden Ring. This is the latest game from From Software, the developer behind the Dark Souls franchise and the creator of the genre that spawned a million imitators. These are all things you probably knew before going in, though. The surprising thing about Elden Ring though is just how much like Dark Souls it ends up being. The design philosophy behind all of the Souls-like titles is present, but now set in an enormous open world, which is a change that really shouldn’t be discounted. The emphasis on exploration that the Souls games have always had is pushed to a different kind of emphasis now, with a larger than ever amount of optional content and a huge space to work with. This presents some issues, for sure, as all open world games have: things that could be important certain builds can be hard to find, there being a sort of directionless feeling to parts of the game and boss fights repeating themselves in some of the optional dungeons, but these issues rarely come to the forefront of your mind while playing due to the sheer amount of authored content throughout the huge open world. We’re going to be talking about build variety and how the way you choose to play can make the game feel completely different, bosses we like and those we don’t and how the design of the major bosses makes them stand out in a game full of unique enemies, and we flaunt our knowledge and understanding of the game when we talk about the “whatever temple of Marika.”

Thank you, as always, for joining us this week. As we state up front in the podcast, the first time experience of playing Elden Ring is unlike much else in the world of video games, so I’d like to drop at least one more warning that the blind experience is something you want to have and we’d recommend playing the game before listening if you have any intention of doing so. Otherwise I hope you enjoy the episode, all six billion hours of it. How did the game stack up against your expectations? Were you as surprised as we were as to how much like Dark Souls 3 it ended up playing? Was the difficulty in the mama bear, papa bear or baby bear range for you? Let us know down in the comments or over on our Discord server where we talk about the games. Next time, we’re breaking tone pretty severely and entering into another themed month everyone didn’t ask for: it’s Ape-ril, and we’re going to be talking about Diddy Kong Racing, so be ready for that.