commentary

Batman: Arkham City – DEBUG MODE

October 31, 2021

After two years, I’m finally continuing this series. Candidly, what took so long was forcing myself to write it. This was really difficult for me compared to the first. Arkham City is great – it’s the best in the series – but a lot of that greatness is improvement on the solid foundation laid down by the previous game. Iteration is less exciting to talk about than revolution.

I had intended to get this up for the game’s 10th anniversary but it took much longer and became much longer than I had anticipated. I thought, since I initially didn’t have much to write about, that it would be shorter than the first video but somehow it ballooned into the longest yet for the channel.

I hope I’ve done the game some justice here. Everyone knows it’s good, but it deserves appreciation a little deeper than that.

I will be doing Arkham Origins. Originally I was only going to cover the Rocksteady games, but on replaying them all I reconsidered. Since this one took so long, I’m not going directly into production on the next one. But I definitely intend to finish the series before the 10th anniversary of Arkham Knight – and even of Origins. Since there’s a new Rocksteady game out next year and a new Bat-family game, it would probably be a good idea to get the series wrapped sooner than later. We’ll see.

A Critique of “DEATHLOOP” – DEBUG MODE

October 3, 2021

Oh Deathloop…

I was so looking forward to this game. Arkane Studios had become one of my favorite developers out there with their last few games. Dishonored 2? Great game with amazing level design. Prey? Even better and it featured the best narrative they’ve ever done.

For me, Deathloop falls flat in nearly every regard. The one way surpassess previous Arkane games is in the feel and flow of the action. That’s not nothing, but it’s not what makes them unique. Arkane making a game with lousy level design and boring player choice is like if Nintendo put out a Mario game that messed up the jumping but for some reason had a lavishly produced story.

This game got rave reviews from critics. Audiences seem to love it too. And that’s great. If I didn’t come to it with a set of expectations… I still think I would have found it lacking as I explain in the video. I’m honestly not sure how people are seeing this game as a masterpiece. If it helps people find Arkane’s older, better games or brings the studio attention for hopefully improved future ones, then that’s ultimately a good thing no matter how I felt about it.

Psychonauts 2 | A great game I don’t love – DEBUG MODE

September 14, 2021

I’ve been looking forward to this game since it was announced waaaay back in 2015. That’s a long time to anticipate release and the anticipation was even stronger because the original game came out waaaay, waaay back in 2005. That game was a bit of a cult classic – big on personality and flavor but not so successful in terms of sales.

This video is a lot of me grappling with why this game didn’t land for me with quite the impact I expected. I think it’s quite good. But it’s one of those sequels that feels like it could have happened shortly after the original but instead there was a weirdly long gap. It reminds me of Incredibles 2 in that regard – although this game doesn’t have that movie’s problem of repeating plot points and thematic elements. It’s definitely its own original story.

My First Final Fantasy – DEBUG MODE

June 9, 2021

I’ve always been kind of curious about Final Fantasy. It’s been around for so long and seems to have been a lot of different things to different players over the years. Since I got my PS5 and re-upped my PS Plus subscription, I got access to Final Fantasy VII Remake – a shiny new version of (probably) the most talked about game in the franchise and decided now was the time to dip a toe into this series.

I know there are a lot of dissenting options that VII isn’t actually all that great. It sounds very much like a band that’s been around for a while with a divided fanbase that stopped listening after a certain point. The series evolving and changing every time seems like one of its strengths even if that means some fans fall off of it.

I tried to inject a little more humor and personality into the video than usual. I’ve mostly stuck to pure analysis in the past. There are a lot of people who mix humor and serious critique together well but I would be foolish to think that’s easy to pull off. Final Fantasy is often goofy though so it was appropriate to bring a little goofiness into the video, I think. And, as I said, I am not well versed in the series so I can’t do the kind of analysis I can with say, Batman… which I need to get back to soon.

On the production end of things, my workflow is continuing to evolve with 4K as the new standard going forward* – for the most part. There are some lingering older projects that have already been captured in regular old HD and I don’t foresee going back to re-capture the footage.

4K is easy. It’s just a lot of space and demand on hardware – but it’s very doable. HDR, on the other hand, is a massive headache. I may write a separate post or even make a video about a game capture HDR workflow at some point. Mine is still not perfected but it’s getting better… I think?

The Final Fantasy VII Remake footage in this video was all captured in HDR but the final video is SDR. I still haven’t figured out that last piece of the workflow to actually put videos out in HDR while still looking “right” in SDR. That’s the next step but I’m trying to keep some sort of pace for the video content. Only so much of the production time can go to researching the workflow.

Remake has a really nice HDR implementation, I think. And I was looking at HDR footage the entire time while I was editing which I then had to conform to SDR at the end. Tragic. Maybe next time… but probably not.

* If the video isn’t available in 4K yet, it’s because YouTube is very slow to process 4K versions of videos – at least for tiny insignificant little channels like mine.

Debug Mode: Games of 2018

December 31, 2018

I’m still doing this Debug Mode video game show thing! In fact, I’ve been working on content for the channel a lot lately. If my plans don’t get too derailed, 2019 should be the biggest year yet (which is to stay I plan on releasing more than 2 videos – hopefully many more than that).

For now, here’s a look back at the games of 2018: the good, the disappointing, and my top 5 favorites. Happy New Year!