NOCLIP Pocket E93 - Yule Ladsona - Cthulhu Saves Christmas

This early in the game, I doubt you have the podcast to back that up.

Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket, and the final episode of the year! We decided to try to do holiday themes this year and based on our success rate, I doubt we’ll go for it again. Cthulhu Saves Christmas is a novelty follow up to another comedy RPG by this developer, Cthulhu Saves the World, but this time it is obviously themed around Christmas. The game is a throwback RPG with turn-based combat and (kind of) random encounters, where you lead Cthulhu and a party of festive followers around locations from different Christmas mythologies to defeat an evil league of ne’er-do-wells. On top of that, the combat has numerous systems, including a character specific mechanic involving building and spending chicken power as well as shifting the moves available to you based on your use of yet another recharge system. If that all seems like a lot for an indie game as short as this one is, well, you’d be right. There are a lot of good ideas present here, but it lacks the focus that’s necessary to really bring it all together into a game that is both novel and fun. That being said, if the game’s particular brand of humor speaks to you and you can appreciate the presentation, with a particular highlight on the music, this could still be worth the pretty low asking price.

Thank you for joining us again this week and this year for NOCLIP Pocket! We hope your holidays are going well (or at least better than the games we chose for this month, lol). I want to spotlight the upcoming Fanbruary event we’re doing here, so if you have suggestions of games we’d like to play, let us know over on our Discord or in the comments (or an email, or wherever else you’re comfortable doing so) and we’ll put those games in the running for an episode. Check out the last two Februarys for some examples of what we chose if you’re looking for inspiration. Thank you for listening this week, and next time we post a pocket, it will be one of the games we chose, so we hope you’ll join us then!

Episode 161 - Combo On Joe Pesci - Trapt

I will podcast unfulfilled!

Happy holidays! To celebrate the season, we’re talking about a game that has at least one time on the internet been compared to Home Alone, and that game is Trapt! Trapt is a game in which you prepare and trigger traps within a 3D environment to attack and kill your enemies. Unlike what you are probably imagining, the game plays nothing like a tower defense game or even a puzzle game. It is instead the clunkiest action game you’ve ever played. As you have to trigger traps manually with most of them affecting only a single tile or a row of tiles, most of the game consists of meticulously leading the pretty manipulable AI into specific parts of the map where all of your traps are set up to trigger them all at once. But this isn’t all bad! Well, the gameplay is kind of a wash, but there is more to the game than that: the narrative and character work are also really bad! But in this case it is a major boon for the game, because if there is a reason to play it, it’s likely for this absolute camp. Every enemy you kill has a backstory and unique entry and death dialogue, with some levels having up to ten enemies, and each stage begins and ends (at least) with a cutscene. There is a lot of story content to enjoy, and while the plot itself is pretty basic, and character’s motivations seem very easily swayed, the melodrama of it all is very worth it. We’re going to be talking about how the game itself plays and what we expected from it, the dialogue we found especially hilarious, and we defend our choice to make this a holiday episode.

Thank you for listening to the podcast this week! We talk a bit of trash on this one, but the game is still doing something unique (even though it’s the fourth in a series, technically) and deserves some flowers for that. We didn’t have a bad time or anything, it’s just a fairly basic execution of the concept. Have you played other games in the “Deception” series? Is the first one you’ve even heard of? Let us know over in our Discord or in the comment section! Next time, we’re going to be rolling out the green carpet for the NOCLIP Awards, so get your bingo cards ready and start making predictions! We hope you’ve had a good year and we’ll see you in 2024 for more episodes!

NOCLIP Pocket E92 - Mash Your Body - The Fall

My intentions are podcast.

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about The Fall. Despite being almost ten years old, I’d consider this to be part of the new wave of adventure games, ones that seek to capture some of the elements of the classic games but without the more obtuse elements. The Fall mostly manages this, using a 2D sidescrolling style which limits the amount of screen searching and navigation you have to do to find all the pieces to each of the puzzles. It’s not without its stumbling points, but for the most part the puzzles are well designed and placed very smoothly into the difficulty curve. Slightly more questionably, it also includes combat mechanics and some exceedingly light platforming, but the mechanic set is well rounded and it’s easy to overlook some of the less polished aspects. The kicker, though, is that what you didn’t know you were actually here for is the narrative. The game is shockingly well written, both for the genre and medium as well as the time period, doing a great job of communicating its themes without dumbing them down for the player to understand. It’s a sci-fi narrative focused around AI that feels very focused, and honestly ahead of its time, and it’s well worth playing just for the story alone. We’re going to be talking about the more misguided elements of the puzzles and mechanic systems, how impressed we are that we cared about the characters at all, and ways to improve coffee…puzzles.

Thank you for joining us again this week! This is a game that had made it onto the Mystery May list for how long we’ve known about it, but having now played it, it’s surprising how little it shows its age. Certainly in some mechanical ways it feels old, but we were impressed by its maturity. Let us know what you thought in the comments section or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re doing what may be our first ever Christmas special, and talking about Cthulhu Saves Christmas, so we hope you’re in the spirit for it then.

Episode 160 - Like a Christmas Scarf - Super Mario Bros. Wonder

I’ve got some oomph in my bloom.

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re talking about Super Mario Bros. Wonder, a new 2D Mario platformer, which in a weird way kind of feels like part of a trend of Nintendo making more nostalgic releases, like Pikmin or Metroid Dread and remaking Link’s Awakening and Mario RPG. Mario Wonder is a classic 2D Mario game like we haven’t seen since the New Super Mario Bros. games, but unlike those games, Wonder has a direct goal of making more innovations and changing the basic gameplay of Mario. This is a AAA video game, though, so don’t expect something so radically different and risky, but with a more whimsical aesthetic and a surprising mechanical section in each level, it certainly feels much different than past games. And this is definitely a good thing, Wonder lives up to its name by giving you something new to discover in each course and encourages you to explore to ensure you see as much of it as you can. In addition, the game contains new powerups, a badge system that can change your moveset and the layouts of the world as well. All this to say, this game isn’t the next best thing in the history of platformers or even just Mario. It is refreshing, and fun, and well designed and it looks and sounds very pretty, but it isn’t going to stress your abilities, it isn’t jam-packed with content and much of the gameplay is straight out of previous titles in the series. This makes up the bulk of our conversation: in a very mechanically driven genre, is what Mario Wonder provides different enough to be recommended despite the polish that comes with being a first party Nintendo title, is it too different, with differences in kind appearing partway through every single level while not giving the base platforming room to shine? We’ll discuss this and also be talking about the importance of collectibles and how they influence you as you play, the difficulty management present in the badge and character systems, and we take a hard stance on how Toads are treated in the Mario canon.

Thank you for listening again this week! As one of the more anticipated Nintendo releases this year, we were excited to get into it and it is interesting to see how it compared to each of our expectations. Or maybe it was very boring to see and I’m just trying to drum up excitement to try to convince you to listen to our podcast, who’s to say? Either way, what did you think of Mario Wonder? Are we just extremely old and have been playing platformers for too long, or was this game easier than you would have expected? Let us know in the comments or over in our Discord! We are getting into the holiday season and so next time, we’re going to be getting into the spirit by talking about that classic Christmastime game: Trapt on the PS2. We hope you’ll join us then, if only to figure out how that makes sense.

NOCLIP Pocket E91 - Seventy Percent Gamer - Rollerdrome

The podcast is watching.

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Rollerdrome, a game that mixes the extreme sports of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with the extreme crime of gun violence. In Rollerdrome, you are tasked with eliminating all the enemies that spawn in waves within a level while performing tricks to reload your guns, and doing so quickly to maintain combos and end up with a high score. Maybe the concept doesn’t sound simple at first, because it isn’t, but even so the game is still much harder than you might expect at the outset. The game’s short length means that compared to the amount of time you have to practice for it, the challenge ramps up quickly, with levels in the first round of the game being able to kill you repeatedly if you aren’t careful, and probably still a few times even if you are. Is the game worth learning well enough to push through these difficult stages? I’d say yes. The act of getting better at this game is incredibly satisfying because the mechanics all play so well into each other. Your weapons all serve very distinct purposes and each contain different mechanics to get used to, like timing or charge-up mechanics, but all feed off of the same ammo pool, meaning that managing your resources by sprinkling tricks in wherever possible is a major part of keeping combos up and even just surviving. This means that when it clicks, your runs look very fluid, improvisational, but controlled. We’re going to be talking about, yes, the difficulty and how we each felt it handled it, the game’s light narrative, and we discuss the pros and even better pros of being able to skate on a huge monster’s ass.

Thank you for joining us again this week! Rollerdrome is one of the rare video game ass video games done for Pocket, and one that didn’t really take me by surprise. But just because I got exactly what I expected from it doesn’t mean it isn’t great. Did you feel that Rollerdrome was a satisfying challenge, or are we babies? Let us know in the comments, or over on our Discord! Next time we’re going to be talking about The Fall, which is an ancient (by today’s standards) indie adventure game, so we hope you’ll join us then.

Episode 159 - Frog Zone - Tunic

Use the Holy Pod to follow the Golden Cast

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re talking about Tunic, a game styled very much after the classic 2D Zelda titles, but with some other influences that will become apparent as you play through the game. Tunic is a colorful, cute game, with a fox wearing a shirt as a protagonist and bushes that squish and bounce when you cut them down. This seems to be to lure you into a false sense of security because the game itself is actually much more difficult than its aesthetics would lead you to believe. The combat in this game is simple in terms of your actions, but has depth in execution. Regular enemies can pose a threat early on, some much more than others, but the bosses of the game are all tests of your abilities. Beyond that, the game primarily focuses around navigation puzzles and exploration, rewarding the player with upgrades and items they can use to get stronger, make fights easier or open up further paths for traversal. And you can’t forget what is essentially the selling feature of the game, the instruction manual. There is a booklet programmed into the game itself that you pick up pages from over the course of your adventure. The book mostly isn’t written in a readable language (though it can be deciphered with some dedication), but it gives hints on everything from what you should be doing to how to perform basic actions like the dodge roll, explaining invincibility frames, and what the different parts of the UI mean. Collecting pieces of this manual is a driving force for a lot of reasons, and we’ll get into all the things it means for the experience in the episode. We’ll also be talking about the accessibility of certain features and how much the average player should be accommodated, the ups and downs of the combat and our experience with the bosses, and Dark Souls, Dark Souls, Dark Souls.

Thank you for listening to the podcast again today! This one was always going to happen eventually, and now that it’s done we’re left with some complicated feelings, but this game is genuinely incredible in a lot of ways. How did you get along with Tunic? Was the difficulty on par with what you look for in games, or were you taken aback by the level of challenge? Were you able to solve the end game puzzles or did you leave that for the more cryptographically-minded out there? Let us know down in the comments, or over on our Discord (where you can also suggest games for us to play)! Next time, we’re going to be talking about Super Mario Wonder, the newest Mario platformer, so we hope you’ll join us for that.

NOCLIP Pocket E90 - The Most Famous Windmill Ever Built - Anodyne

I’m just podcasting my Wares.

Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket! Today, we’re talking about Anodyne, a Zelda-like indie game from ten years ago, which, boy does that just feel like forever these days. Anodyne doesn’t so much have a shtick as it just tries to be a solid action adventure game while exploring its mechanics and themes, and realistically that’s all it needs to be. This is a decently well focused game that understands its own scope very well, and because of that it manages to hold up incredibly against the passing of time. Anodyne takes place within a dream and explores a variety of settings from apartment buildings and hotels to fantasy forests and abstract representations of “place,” which keeps each new area feeling fresh which does wonders for keeping the player engaged as they go through it. Its mechanics are mostly simple, as it doesn’t port over the item collection aspects of a Zelda game, but it does have depth in the mechanics it does have, which are both a little surprising and largely unexplained. It manages to hold a bit of mystery all while being a focused, unassuming little game, and is definitely worth playing if you haven’t already. We’re going to be talking about balancing tone in a game with so many different aesthetic elements within it, what areas we felt were most well executed and most unexpected, and we no joke read a definition out of a dictionary, so get absolutely pumped for that.

Thank you again for joining us this week! It’s been a couple months since we’ve done an entirely unthemed pocket, and Anodyne has been on our list for a while (it was relatively new when the podcast started, unbelievably), so we finally got to bring it out. If you played Anodyne, were you early enough to have played before the remaster? If not, do you think the game holds up after so many years? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re going to be talking about Rollerdrome, and for no other reason than we wanted to. Which changes the tone of the end of these descriptions, I’m realizing. I got very used to being able to just sort of follow a formula. But it’s not “Retrovember” where we’re talking about all the games featuring 90’s trends like rollerblading or something, so this will just have to do. We hope you’ll join us then!

Episode 158 - Lowbrow Johnny - Dredge

I’m as podcast as you are.

Welcome back! For our final episode of Halloween, we’re talking about Dredge, the fishing game that takes its aesthetic inspiration from cosmic horror, and of course, H.P. Lovecraft. In Dredge you play as a fisherman and you catch fish to pay for upgrades to your ship, repairs, etc., all while working toward the goal of collecting several relics for a mysterious man who lives on an island by himself. Which isn’t weird at all. The fishing itself is engaging enough, but the atmosphere of the game is where it really shines. There is a sense of foreboding as day turns to night and things start becoming more dangerous. This ends up being the main point of contention as far as how successful the game is, because while the aberrant catches and mysterious strangers are all very interesting, and the darkness always hides an unknown threat, the other half of the game is inventory management and resource collection. The more mechanical half of the game can be satisfying, but the tension is broken during extended periods of supplying metal and wood to upgrade your ship, making sure your fish are perfectly tetris’d in your storage, and managing net catches. The game is pulled in two directions, with one wanting to be an atmospheric, dread inducing horror title and the other wanting to be a pretty decent management sim. None of it is quite enough to make the game bad, or not worth playing, and the narrative makes up for it by being just mysterious enough to lead the player along and make them want to learn more about the characters, but it does feel like a weak spot in an otherwise good game. We’re going to be talking about the curse that is trying to do cosmic horror in a video game, how we engaged with the story of the game and our expectations, and we redesign the Pokemon games to make them better, just as a free bonus. You’re welcome, Game Freak.

Thank you for joining us again this week, and for the month of spooky games that we look forward to all year. And we even kinda did it twice this time. How was everyone’s Halloween? Did you play anything particularly scary, or do anything else to get in the mood of the season? Let us know in the comment section or over on our Discord server! Next time, we’re going to be shifting gears a fair bit, and talking about Tunic, so we hope you’ll join us then.

NOCLIP Pocket E89 - A Weird Skin Disease - Midnight Manor

Welcome home.

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re talking about Midnight Manor, a late entry suggestion for Pocket this Halloween that ended up probably saving our schedule. Midnight Manor is a short horror-themed platformer from a solo developer that encourages players to play the game multiple times in different ways to see all the narrative possibilities it has to offer. Mechanically speaking, the game is simple, revolving around carrying items necessary for progression from place to place and navigating the titular manor. This simple gameplay lends itself, in a way, to the multiple ending-based design of the game, encouraging you to make small optimizations to make each successive run a bit faster, but admittedly does very little to make the game more engaging to go through each time. With no enemies, and therefore no fail state, to speak of, what is left to really engage with lies in its atmosphere, music, art and narrative content. All of these things are subjective, but given the short time investment to actually complete the game, and even seeing all the endings isn’t going to add all that much to your total playtime, it is likely worth the low barrier to entry to playing. We’re going to be talking about how character design can raise questions and eyebrows and our thoughts on the intentionality of it, what vibes the presentational aspects of the game put off, and we theorize on what this game may be a sequel to.

Thank you for joining us again this week! Midnight Manor was a strangely nostalgic experience that harked back to indie games during our more experimental years when we were just trying anything we could find. That said, it’s a mixed bag, though still more polished and with more thought than you might expect from a project that was this tiny. Did Midnight Manor send you back to a simpler time? Did it get you to play through it more than once? Let us know in the comments, or over in the Discord, where the suggestion for this game came from. As I said at the beginning, our time was rather tight this month, and our last Halloween game is going to bleed over into November a little bit, but we’re always happy to try weird things for October and this certainly qualifies. Next time, we’re going to be talking about Anodyne for a bit more of an adventure-y feel for November, so be sure to check back with us then!

Episode 157 - A Big Weed Whacker - Dead Space

Dismember their podcast.

Welcome back to NOCLIP! Today, we’re going to be talking about our first horror title for the Halloween season with Dead Space. Specifically, we’re talking about the 2023 remake of the game with only a limited understanding of the original. That said, this is a game that makes a pretty brutal impression very quickly, so we did pick it up quickly. Dead Space is an action survival horror game in the same vein as Resident Evil 4, with an over the shoulder camera. The game’s hook is centered around its enemies, the necromorphs, forcing the player to cut off their limbs to dispatch them efficiently, and this is accomplished in about the most inelegant way imaginable: with power tools and a phenomenally heavy boot. The game is gory and over the top, and while it stumbles over some of the more nuanced elements of the artform, like character development and story, sometimes an extremely raucous horror title is exactly what you want. Which isn’t to say this game goes full Doom. The violence is extreme, yes, but it has scary moments, sometimes maintaining something resembling quiet for seconds to even minutes at a time. It builds and releases tension in quick bursts, and uniquely handles its music cues so as to allow the player to jump scare themselves at times, making it a perfect game for that mid-October horror kick. We’re going to be talking about the arsenal and how the game’s take on weapons sells its premise and mechanical hook, how the remake’s expanded take on Isaac Clarke impacts its narrative and storytelling, and we produce two extremely professional box quotes for them to use on any future physical releases of the remake.

Thank you for joining us again this week! The remake of this game re-sparked our interest in doing it for Halloween, despite continually putting it off for other things, and honestly I’m pretty glad we waited. The visual spectacle of this game is one of its major selling points and the more modern version of it probably helped it take effect. That said, have you played the original version of the game? Do you think we should have played the original over the remake? Let us know over in our Discord or in the comments! Next time, we’re going to be talking about Dredge, the Lovecraftian fishing game that released earlier this year and took the world by storm. Or at least, by drizzle. By squall? Some people liked it, for sure.

NOCLIP Pocket E88 - Incinerators Hate Him - Signalis

I’m sorry. I couldn’t keep my podcast.

Welcome to Halloween! Our favorite month of year for being our birthday month, it’s also time for us to play just so many, many horror games, starting today with Signalis. Signalis is an indie survival horror game, set in a dystopian sci-fi world in which you play as a “Replika,” a robotic servant, assigned to a pilot of a spacecraft. When laid out like that, a lot about the game’s setting and plot don’t really seem that remarkable. It’s part of the reason I think it’s pretty difficult to really “spoil” this game in the traditional sense, because Signalis is much more of a tone piece than it is a straightforward narrative experience. Yes it has a plot, one that has development and changes and satisfies in its own ways, but the visuals, the cutscenes, the sound, all play into what really makes this game special, in that it creates this eerie, uneasy sense of not really knowing what is and isn’t real. And the other thing that makes this game special is just how well it manages to pull off the classic survival horror style. Limited inventory spaces, enemies that reanimate if you haven’t burned them and specific save rooms are likely pretty familiar to you at this point, but it hasn’t been done this well in a long time. The game isn’t exceptionally difficult, per se, but that classic Resident Evil feeling is definitely there, as you make progress through zones you need to plan routes through as you begin to memorize them, solving puzzles and making tactical decisions about which enemies to kill and which to run away from. It really hits both of its points of focus dead on and is a horror experience I’d recommend to nearly anyone. We’re going to be talking about the game’s clear inspirations and what it does to mimic or improve on their systems, the plot of the game and how it gives you enough to make a certain type of person really want to engage further with it, and we put our belief in the eternal universality of waifus.

Thank you for joining us again this week! We know our output has been somewhat diminished recently, but we will get through four horror titles this year even if we need to leak into November a bit. Signalis came pretty highly recommended from a number of people, so it’s good to see y’all have good taste (please save some of that for Fanbruary!). If you haven’t played Signalis yet, I do highly recommend, it’s a perfect game to get in the mood for the season, likely more so than the other games we’ve got coming up this month, so get on it and let us know what you think down in the comments or over in our Discord, which is actually where our next Pocket game is coming from. Next time, we’re going to be talking about Midnight Manor, so we hope you’ll join us then.

Eight Years of NOCLIP - Crispy Toilet Paper

We are celebrating our eighth birthday here at NOCLIP, but I can’t help but feel like something is off. In computer memory, there are eight bits in a byte, and memory is necessary to run video games. Video games are like stories, but the players can do things. They have verbs. Eight represents the verb in the classic joke about how seven ate nine. An eight looks like two donuts, which are things you might eat. It’s all coalescing around something, I just don’t know what. Coalesce! Eight letters! 8L, 8lesce. Octolesce. Sounds like… Talk less. Is the universe trying to say that we are getting annoying? Or that we should cover Octopath Traveler?

What does the universe know anyway? In radical defiance of nature’s wishes, we are in fact going to expose you to even more talk. Talk that is unrelated almost entirely to video games and which we in fact removed from episodes of the show, only to now regurgitate back to you in the form of a blooper reel. I hope that’s what you wanted, as you can see, the signs are difficult to decipher at times. Regardless, none of this mutes our level of appreciation for those of you who are listening, those who have provided feedback on the show over on our Discord or in comments, and those who have joined us recently, who honestly have gotten the best deal since I feel like we are always improving. I hope this brief gag reel works as a palette cleanser, as I hope every year, and that you will join us for the upcoming Halloween month exploration of games like Signalis and Dead Space. Happy NOCLIP Day, and thank you for sticking with us!

Episode 156 - The Three Genres - Donkey Kong 64

Oooh, banana.

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, for Simian September, we’re going to be talking about Donkey Kong 64, the only 3D Donkey Kong collectathon platformer that’s fit to print. This game certainly has a reputation, it’s almost infamous, so we thought it would be interesting to see if that reputation is warranted coming back to it after all this time. DK 64 is a platformer, as mentioned, and one that is in the vein of Rare’s prior N64 classic Banjo Kazooie. The difference, primarily, is that in DK 64, the game centers around the fact that you have five characters to play as, all with unique abilities, forcing you to swap characters many times to complete objectives and collect all the bananas, coins, golden bananas, etc. (seriously, there’s a lot more). This is probably the most important aspect of its design, because while it opens up a ton of space for design to create a bunch of challenges in a relatively small space, it also forces the player to constantly be mindful of who they’re playing as and what they need to progress. This is cool, for sure, but it can also be extremely annoying and, by design, time-consuming to have to continually swap Kongs to do something as simple as grabbing coins off the ground. It has a solid game underneath it all, though, so depending on your tolerance for these annoyances, it can definitely be worth going back to check out, if for no other reason than the kickass soundtrack and the absurdity that gave this game its cultural impact. We’re going to be talking about games preservation, the signature style of Rare’s music team, and in a stunning return to form, we determine what food DK 64 is most like.

Thank you for joining us again this week! We barely squeaked this one out within Simian September proper, so I hope y’all don’t mind our diminished output recently. We’ve been podcasting remotely for a bit and are still working the kinks out, so give us some time and things should get relatively back to normal. Did you have opinions on DK 64 before you played it? Do you think the game holds up or does it deserve its current status as a meme? Let us know down in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re going to be entering into October, which means horror games, an original concept pioneered by us and no one else, so we’re going to be kicking that off by talking about this year’s Dead Space remake. We hope you’ll join us then…if you dare!

NOCLIP Pocket E87 - Open Your Verbs - The Secret of Monkey Island

That’s the stupidest podcast I’ve ever heard!

Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket! Today, we’re going to be talking about one of the all time classic point and click adventure games, The Secret of Monkey Island as our pocket episode for Simian September, the month that’s like Ape-ril, but in September. Monkey Island is notable for a number of reasons, but it releasing in 1990 means that it was one of the first hits in the genre to really take off and did a lot to popularize Adventure games. It also featured the lighthearted comedic tone that many adventure games, particularly the LucasArts games, would adopt for the rest of the genre’s time in the zeitgeist. That being said, the version of the game we’re playing today is the Special Edition, which infuriatingly came out 19 years later in 2009. This version has updated visuals, making the game look more like a cartoon than the original was able to given technological limitations and added voice acting, which makes the game a bit more accessible for modern audiences. Not so accessible as to make some of the puzzles easier to solve, but I don’t really think anyone expected that from a point and click from 1990. The actual gameplay is where the game shows its age most obviously, though not in the usual way for games of the genre. Monkey Island isn’t a long game, but it is pretty slow, with players needing to meticulously check for items, areas and zones throughout its few maps, but the puzzles never quite get into the outlandish cause and effect logic puzzles of other point and clicks. There is good and bad, but taken as product of its time, the game does surprisingly well, but may not hold up to modern scrutiny. We’re going to be talking about comedy and how the style of this game’s writing manages to make it feel pretty timeless, puzzle difficulty without resorting to pixel hunting or other less-than-logical designs, and we speculate how well fighting a robot fits in with the setting of this game.

Thank you for joining us this week! We’re going through some tumultuous times currently, so only a couple episodes for this month, but Monkey Island has been on our list for a while and it’s good to finally have a place to put it. There are even a few proper monkeys in the game, too, so this was less of a stretch than we maybe originally thought. Are you, well, old, and played this game as a kid or around the time of its release, or were you, like us, someone who heard about it as a classic of the genre? Let us know over in our Discord or in the comments. Next time, we’re entering into the scariest, spookiest month of the year and are going to be talking about Signalis, a game that has been recommended to us by nearly everyone we’ve ever met, so we hope you’ll join us then.

Episode 155 - A Lot of Sauce - Kingdom Hearts 2

A scattered dream that’s like a far off podcast.

Welcome back to the podcast this week! Today we’re doing an episode that was a long time coming and talking about Kingdom Hearts II. The only numbered entry in the series we hadn’t talked about yet and probably the simultaneously most loved and most controversial Kingdom Hearts game. KH2 is an action RPG like its predecessor, but amps up a lot of the mechanical interaction to be much faster and more stylish. At times, it plays like a character action game with you executing 20+ hit combos and flying through the air, but its depth in combat lies in a different area than in those games, focusing more on the different meters and timings as well as your ability to navigate the command menu and just generally being aware of your surroundings. In a way, this is the first game in the series that has a real mechanical hook to latch onto rather than its presentation and IP crossover content. However, that is still present and is a large part of why these games are so loved. The Disney worlds are back and the narrative writing here starts the trend of what people understand to be Kingdom Hearts story writing as a whole. This game introduced Organization XIII, nobodies, and characters like Roxas and Namine to the larger public and whether that stuff is going to float your boat is purely a matter of taste. What is noticed though is a loss of the simplicity and innocence the first game had. Though this could also be a good thing, as the characters introduced add a lot more depth to the storytelling, and lore wonks most likely come back to things said in this game as a basis for many theories, but it is markedly different than it was in Kingdom Hearts and the feel of the game is changed because of it. There are other changes, too. Levels are more open to facilitate the flashier combat, platforming has been all but stripped out, and the gummy ship levels are fully reworked, but these are all things to be played and listened to, so let’s just jump in. We’re going to be talking about the game’s focus on being bigger and bolder and badder and some other b’s too, probably, than its predecessors, the moody character writing and how this actually set the game apart from its contemporaries, and we discuss what part of the game if executed slightly differently would be on the front page of the New York Times.

Thank you for listening this week! It took us a long time to get to this game, but it’s finally done and we’re all better off for it. The legacy of this series is taken pretty seriously by its fans, and that’s something that is difficult to talk around when going back to this game after a long time. While we, when taken as a whole, are very familiar with the game and have nostalgic attachment to it, it is pretty old as far as games go, and while that reflects in some of the design decisions that were made, it absolutely does not diminish the impact this game had both on its own franchise, which was paradigm defining, but also on games as a whole. It has a lot of appeal both for people who already played similar games as well as for people who got into it for the Disney stuff and ended up getting exposed to some of that classic RPG weirdness. So which are you? Did you play this game at the time of its release and grow up with the series as many people my age did, or did you play it retrospectively, or something else? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re going to be devolving into a more primitive state and talking about Donkey Kong 64 as we kick off (and in all likelihood, also end, given our current schedule) Simian September, the spiritual successor to Ape-ril, so we hope you’ll join us for that, and not stop listening for the continuous unhinged themed month ideas.

NOCLIP Pocket E86 - Literal Science - Kingdom Hearts

Podcast go, Sora go, go!

Welcome back to NOCLIP Epilogue! Today we’re going back to one of our first ten episodes and talking about Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts is an action RPG with a dash of platforming on the side, as exploring the different worlds is a big part of both the goal of the game’s design and the appeal. That being said, the real notable thing about Kingdom Hearts, particularly at the time of its release, is its association with Disney. The game incorporate characters, locations, music and other themes and references to many Disney films throughout its levels and its plot. For a lot of people, this is probably why they got into the games in the first place, and I really can’t blame them. The source material is treated reverently, and at least here in the first game, incorporated into the plot in a way that feels real, necessary and additive. Waiting to see what movie each level is going to take you into is a real selling point for the game and because of their incorporation of characters and music, it really makes the sense of being in a movie you love even more palpable. Aside from this, it’s a game released in 2002. There are some limitations due to original hardware, design trends and other problems of the time, but if you can look past that, it was an extremely unique game and of the sequentially numbered entries in the series (358/2 does not count as numbered, lol) still the one that delivers on its premise the strongest. We’re going to be talking about what can make going back to the game a struggle for some and a joy for others, the game’s dedication to its concepts and unique ideas, and we do everything in the end of the world.

Thank you for joining us again this week! We’ve piled up a few epilogue episodes (thanks to an unlucky roll during Mystery May, one more than we had originally intended) so far this year, so I hope you find it a worthwhile exercise. Let us know in the comments if you’ve been enjoying them or not and if you have suggestions of other games we should revisit! Kingdom Hearts is obviously a huge series and the reason we decided to handle this one now is because our next main episode is going to be on its sequel, which will complete the trilogy of episodes for us, so we hope you’re looking forward to it. Until next time, remember you can leave a comment or join us over on our discord to leave game suggestions or talk about the games we’ve been discussing. Next time, we’re going to be talking about the Secret of Monkey Island, since we’ve been suffering point and click withdrawals recently, so be sure to check us out then!

Episode 154 - A Farm Upstate - Rimworld

A Warg is hunting the podcast for food!

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Rimworld, a colony sim strategy game. Rimworld is one of those games that you probably either already love or have never heard of, which is to say, it is exactly what its audience wants it to be, but appears absolutely inscrutable from the outside looking in. In Rimworld, your goal is predominately just to survive by collecting resources, managing colonists, and handling combat, all of which can become vastly more overwhelming than it appears on the surface. That sense of not being able to quite manage everything feels like it is an intentional decision, though. The game bills itself as a “story generator,” and a well-oiled machine of a colony, while satisfying, doesn’t exactly generate many stories. Having to handle unexpected breaks in the system, and in your colonist’s emotional state, keep things feeling tense and unexpected. As a simulation-heavy game, and one made by an extremely small team, there isn’t much power left for the cutting edge graphics, which have not been pumped up on level three, that you may be used to in modern games, but it’s simplistic style fits well and is part of a presentation that does not slouch in other areas. The sound design in particular is outstanding, with instantly recognizable sound cues for different actions and events, and a soundtrack that will, subjectively, rock you into another dimension. The UI, on the other hand, can be a bit confusing at times and lends the game its notoriety for being immensely difficult to get into if you’re new to the genre. It is a complicated game with a lot of deep systems and a lot of strategies to learn and develop, so you’ll have to listen to see how we adapted. We’re going to be talking about the struggles of starting the game, the wackiness the mechanics can bring to the table, and determine which famous work of Spanish surrealist art it most resembles.

Thank you for listening this week! Once you listen to the episode, it will become abundantly clear that one of us in particular is a massive fan of this game, so it comes highly recommended if you can stomach the learning curve and the amount of time it will suck out of your life. But I also get that it’s a tough game to start, so we’d love to hear your experiences. Have you been playing for years, or did you pick it up recently? Have you played with the DLCs or only vanilla? What do you think about Thrumbos? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord. Next time, we’re going to be finally talking about Kingdom Hearts 2, the last in the main trilogy we haven’t talked about so expect that to be kind of the reverse of this episode. We hope you’ll join us then!

NOCLIP Pocket E85 - Playing Broomstickers - Chop Goblins

Oh no! They podcasted the building down!

Welcome back to the podcast! Today, we’re going to be talking about Chop Goblins, a surprising-in-many-ways FPS by David Szymanski. Chop Goblins is short, with only five levels and five weapons, and can be beaten for the first time in two hours or less, but because of this it never overstays its welcome and keeps introducing new things over the course of the game, including new enemy types. The titular Chop Goblins are not a design that is easy to take seriously, along with most of the rest of the game, but you can see in them that there actually was a lot of care put into making the game feel right. Different kinds of enemies require different strategies to effectively defeat without taking damage, and managing groups of them is core to playing the game well. The game is a “boomer shooter” by definition, but it has a strong core that comes from experience and the love of the genre. I’m not sure how else you’d want me to synopsize Chop Goblins, it’s just a simple, fun game with a better core than you might expect. We’re going to be talking about how the levels and music are used to emphasize the game’s innate silliness and comedy, the feel of all the weapons and what makes them each interesting choices, and we draw a a comparison to one of our favorite games of all time, Rascal.

Thank you for joining us this week! We did this game partly to get through something short because we have a lot of more time-consuming games coming up this month, but also because I played it on release and it has really stuck with me for some reason. Seeing a game this competent with this ridiculous of a premise just really warms my heart. Did you play Chop Goblins? …why not? Let us know down in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re returning to the ole Epilogue well and doing an episode about Kingdom Hearts, sort of in preparation for our next big episode on Kingdom Hearts 2, so we hope you’ll keep an eye out for that!

Episode 153 - Rinko Suave - Ghostwire: Tokyo

Next time we meet, I’ll have lived a good full podcast.

Welcome back to the finale of Spooktember in July! Today, we’re going to be talking about Ghostwire: Tokyo, a first person shooter game from Tango Gameworks, the developer of The Evil Within. Ghostwire is a sort of a horror game, but with an emphasis on magical first-person combat and Japanese culture, which makes it sort of an odd experience because of where its priorities seem to be. The open world parts of the game are in a lot of ways bog standard, with myriad collectibles, “Ubisoft towers” to clear to open new sections of the map, sidequests and other digressions, but on the other hand, there are also pages upon pages of item and character descriptions, full of folklore and details about everyday life in Japan. It makes the actual world of the game feel very realized, and downright educational at times. The combat contains a lot of systems, but not a lot of incentive to engage with that depth, as encounters tend to be fairly easy to overcome either with your basic “elemental weaving” attacks or with stealth, limiting the amount the player will actually experiment with the advanced techniques or other weapon items like the bow and talismans. To some extent, this is a shame, because the game’s setting and visuals are at times captivating, but taken as a whole this still isn’t a bad game and there’s a lot of fun to be had if you’re willing to look past the more banal parts of its design. We’re going to be talking about our perception of how this game was received and its potentially overlooked content update that adds a lot of good things to the game, how the open world both succeeds and fails by following trends in design that are over a decade old, and we address the very real danger of flip-kicking school children.

Thank you for joining us again this week! We had fun cobbling this stupid theme together, and this was the game I’m most happy to have had a reason to play. Not because it’s the best of the games we talked about, but because it’s a title we likely wouldn’t have played otherwise, and one that is pretty fascinating at times. It isn’t groundbreaking, but it focuses on things most games don’t, and it’s always fun to see something in the triple A space trying to do weird things. What did you think of Ghostwire? Did you play at release and if so were you aware of the update that came out? Was I justified in comparing this to No Man’s Sky? Let us know in the comments or over on Discord! Next time, we’re going to be tackling a game on the complete opposite end of the genre spectrum and talking about Rimworld, so we hope you’ll join us for that!

NOCLIP Pocket E84 - Made My Eyeballs Sweat - Ghostrunner

If this is podcast, we never should have climbed down from the trees.

Welcome back to Spooktember in July, the month where we barely even know what’s going on anymore. Today, we’re talking about Ghostrunner, a first person platformer action game where you have to execute difficult platforming while avoiding bullets and doing cool cyberpunk sword tricks. It is a categorically awesome concept in all the ways that games can be, really. The obvious first comparison to make is to Neon White, which we just talked about a few months ago, and the comparison isn’t a stretch. Both games necessitate the player repeat sections repeatedly to get them as close to perfect as they can in order to succeed and move on to the next level, but Neon White is much more forgiving, and subjectively, a bit more motivating. Ghostrunner is a much harder game, something that is obviously a design choice, but because of that the act of completing a section is often reward enough without wanting to go back and get all collectibles or improve your time. This doesn’t make the game bad, however, but it is a much more daunting experience just to complete. The mechanics are very tight and their strength comes in the form of trying to get the player into a flow state, but then the biggest issue facing the game is that when it does stumble, it breaks that mindset and begins to feel frustrating more quickly than a more forgiving game might. This could all be irrelevant to you, though, depending on how tough you like your challenges to be, and it is a well polished gem if hard is what you’re looking for. We’re going to talk about boss fights and why they weren’t as successful as they could be, difficulty and its necessity to the game on a conceptual level, and we determine the true identity of the Ghostrunner to be an eighteen wheeler.

Thank you for joining us again this week! This game was really the lynchpin for the whole “Spooktember in July” bad idea we had, since we were able to cobble together a theme after wanting to just talk about the Resident Evil games we did. That said, it’s a game I’m happy to have played, one because I had a reasonably good time with it, and also because it’s such a good example of the razor edge you walk when designing a game with difficulty at its core. Which side of the fence did you fall on? Were you able to carry this game out to completion? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time we’re going to be talking about Chop Goblins, a bit because it’s short and we need some breathing room for some bigger episodes coming next month, but you can see it as a bit of a bonus Spooktember game if that suits you. Hope you’ll chop on down for that one.