You Didn't Notice Silksong's Biggest Flaw

0:00 All right, so Silkong has been out for about a month now,

0:03 and after around 50 hours of devouring something

0:06 that some of us have been waiting upwards

0:07 of 8 years for, I think it's safe to say that the game's pretty good, isn't it?

0:12 Silkong is gorgeous.

0:13 It's got loads of cool surprises.

0:15 It's got great combat, and it's even got this good girl.

0:18 All things that make it well worth the near

0:20 decade of development time it took to finally finish,

0:22 and also all of that Silk sanity that was

0:24 slowly taking over the internet for a bit back there.

0:26 I can say with absolute confidence

0:28 that some of Silkong's amazingly designed boss fights, its cool law reveals,

0:32 and its incredible hidden areas that don't worry, I won't spoil.

0:35 I'm only going to be talking about things from act one in this video,

0:37 are going to be among some of my favorite gaming moments of the year,

0:40 as I, let's be honest, sort of expected they would be.

0:43 But the one thing about Silkong that I don't think anyone expected was

0:47 for a single part of the game to end up standing out above all the others.

0:51 for one teeny tiny strand of Silkong to become more memorable,

0:55 emotionally evocative,

0:56 and dare I say, controversial than anything else in the entire game.

1:00 What am I obliquely referring to?

1:02 Well, of course, I'm talking about an otherwise unsuspecting

1:06 early game area by a name you might recognize, and that name is Hunter's March.

1:11 Now, for people who might not be familiar

1:12 or who have suppressed their trauma from that place,

1:15 Hunter March is a zone that can be located just off the top of the Marrows,

1:18 which is the first real area of the game.

1:19 And in comparison to that place, which is filled with nice, simple bony boys,

1:23 Hunter's M represents, and I'm going to use a technical term here,

1:26 a completely absurd difficulty spike.

1:29 It's got some really punishing platforming filled with spike traps.

1:31 It's got some really tough enemies, like these guys with a million health.

1:34 These ones that you can't hit, and these ones,

1:36 which make the already tricky bouncing even harder.

1:38 And that's not even considering the zone's guardian boss

1:40 who wiped me so many times that I lost count.

1:43 The place is hard.

1:44 Really hard.

1:45 And as you might expect,

1:47 this has caused a lot of people from both casual and professional

1:50 sides of the gaming world to come out and say that Hunter's March,

1:52 as well as a couple of other problem parts of Silkong,

1:55 are way too hard and much too punishing.

1:57 And while from a certain perspective, these people definitely have a point,

2:01 in spite of all that complaining I just laid on you,

2:04 I'm not entirely sure I agree.

2:05 Don't get the wrong idea.

2:06 Silkong is a tough game, and even though yes,

2:09 I did manage to beat the true ending and all

2:11 of these problem bosses without breaking too much of a sweat.

2:13 Oh.

2:14 Oh my god.

2:14 Oh wow.

2:15 Oh, you shouldn't have a trophy for me.

2:17 Wow.

2:18 I'm not about to say that the game is too easy and that everyone

2:21 who had trouble needs to get good or go back to playing Kirby's Epic Yum.

2:24 However, I am going to say that I think the root

2:27 cause of some of people's more frustrating Silkong experiences and the Achilles

2:31 heel of an otherwise fantastic game goes a little bit deeper

2:34 than it just being a bit overtuned in the difficulty department.

2:37 I think rather than Silkong being too hard

2:40 and punishing even when you're doing everything right,

2:42 I think instead that Silkong is all too easy for us to play wrong.

2:47 All right, back up.

2:48 That sounds confusing, doesn't it?

2:50 Essentially, what I mean is that while

2:51 Silkong is absolutely a pretty challenging game,

2:53 and while it does a perfectly fine job of teaching you the controls,

2:56 it does a much sloppier job of teaching players how

2:59 to think about the various problems it presents them with.

3:01 And that leads to people playing the game in a way that doesn't make full use

3:04 of their toolkit and getting trapped in patterns

3:06 of behavior that make the game less fun.

3:08 To show you what I'm talking about here, take my and I'm sure several

3:11 other people's experience fighting the savage beastfly,

3:14 one of the major denisens of Hunter's March.

3:17 Because the boss fight is in a spooky,

3:18 intimidating temple that required a new skill

3:20 to access and represented yet another difficulty spike.

3:23 I became under the impression that it was a mandatory barrier to progression.

3:26 And that meant that I felt I had no other option than to keep trying to beat it,

3:30 even though it was really hard and I only had five measly hit points.

3:33 Furthermore, whenever I died to the savage beastfly, which was pretty often,

3:37 I would be forced to run all the way through bug Vietnam back from the marrows.

3:42 A truly monumental trip because I was under the impression

3:45 that the only bench in Hunter's March wasn't actually a bench at all.

3:48 It was a trap.

3:49 a series of frustrating experiences compounded by the fact that in Silkong,

3:53 much like in other Souls inspired titles,

3:55 you drop all your precious rosaries when you die.

3:58 Meaning that I felt compelled to keep fighting

3:59 the boss rather than retreating and exploring elsewhere.

4:02 Because if I did, I would lose out on a bunch of cash,

4:04 locking me in this endless,

4:06 torturous cycle of running through an area I didn't want

4:08 to be in, to fight a boss I knew was too hard,

4:10 only to die and felt that I had no choice but to do it all over again.

4:14 These three assumptions that I a had to fight the savage beastfly,

4:18 that b hunter's march had no respawn points,

4:21 and c that I couldn't afford to not go

4:23 back and pick up my corpse were taught to me

4:25 through my experiences with the game and led

4:27 to me playing in a way that wasn't much fun,

4:29 only for me to later learn that each of these assumptions were,

4:31 not to put too fine of a point on it,

4:33 completely wrong, and that I'd actually been through

4:36 no fault of my own playing the game incorrectly.

4:39 Firstly, you really don't have to worry

4:40 about rosaries that much in the early game.

4:42 They're very easy to come by later on and all the stuff

4:44 that you actually need to pay for like bellway entrances are very affordable.

4:48 Second, you can actually fix the hunter's march bench.

4:50 It's really easy if you know where to look and it cuts

4:52 the run back to the savage beast light in slightly more than half.

4:55 And thirdly, the savage beast flight isn't even mandatory at all.

4:58 In fact, I'm pretty sure you can roll credits without

5:00 so much as stepping into Hunter's Marsh to begin with.

5:02 Three kind of important pieces of information that the game

5:06 doesn't really make much of an effort to teach you.

5:08 What this means is that in essence, Silkong taught me how to play incorrectly.

5:12 It has systems and gameplay concepts that appear to punish exploration

5:16 and experimentation when in reality they're

5:18 fundamental to any good player success.

5:20 And I started to not just find

5:22 the game much easier when I abandoned my intuition

5:24 and started to run away from fights I

5:26 found too hard to go and do something else,

5:27 but I was able to appreciate the game's

5:29 brilliantly designed world and its really well-paced difficulty

5:32 once I started playing in the way I was supposed to be doing the entire time.

5:36 Basically, what I'm talking about here is the idea

5:39 that video games can be engaged with incorrectly.

5:42 They're possible to play wrong,

5:43 and unless you're going to count reading a book backwards,

5:45 starting from the middle, that makes them pretty unique.

5:48 There are key gameplay lessons that games need

5:50 to teach us that go beyond mechanical interaction.

5:52 If we're not taught how to respond to obstacles

5:54 and how to approach certain gameplay concepts in the right way,

5:57 then we end up not interfacing with the game as well

5:59 as we could be and having a bad time as a result.

6:02 And Silkong, which I must stress is a great game that I really like,

6:06 is a very clear example of how important it can be to get this stuff

6:09 right and how disastrous it can be

6:11 when this hidden aspect of teaching goes wrong.

6:14 And so to demonstrate my point and to highlight what I

6:17 think is an underappreciated part of the design of our favorite games,

6:20 what I want to do is to talk about some of the hidden ways that our favorite

6:22 titles are able to condition us to play

6:24 in certain ways without us ever really noticing.

6:27 and why some other games that seem on the surface like

6:29 they've done everything right actually end up being frustrating and confusing.

6:33 Because while they've succeeded in teaching us how to play,

6:35 they've failed to teach us how to think.

6:38 To give a dead simple non-silkong example of how all this works,

6:41 we need only look at fast-paced shooters like Doom,

6:44 Ultrakill, Robocquest, and a few others.

6:46 These games want to be about intense,

6:48 high-risk engagements where you feel awesome

6:50 for surviving on the skin of your teeth.

6:52 And so, the mechanics are designed to promote

6:53 that kind of thinking and that style of play.

6:55 By limiting healing to only being available when you're

6:57 close to enemies or when they get hurt or die,

6:59 and making changes that penalize long-range damage

7:02 and reward being quick instead of methodical,

7:04 these games condition players to not fear taking damage so

7:06 long as they can come out ahead once an enemy

7:08 dies and to treat staying in constant motion to be

7:10 a more effective defensive posture than staying in cover.

7:13 My favorite example of this, by the way, is Robocquest's little grinder bots.

7:17 They only appear at the very start of each fight,

7:20 and they drop a huge payout of health and exp,

7:22 but they disappear after a few seconds.

7:24 This makes the most profitable way to fight to dive

7:26 in before you've even gotten a chance to scan the battlefield,

7:29 making things super chaotic and super fun.

7:31 You absolutely can play all these games in a very static,

7:34 defensive, and safe way.

7:36 It's certainly not impossible,

7:37 but due to the way their systems are designed and the way they

7:39 introduce key mechanics so as to form

7:41 positive associations between aggression and success,

7:44 you'll naturally fall into perceiving enemies and arenas

7:46 through the intended high octane perspective and thus

7:49 respond to situations in a way that makes the most fun use of the mechanics.

7:53 When you learn how to spot it,

7:54 this kind of subtle shaping of our perspective is everywhere

7:57 in games that feel suspiciously intuitive and smooth to play.

8:01 It's not that we just so happen to be

8:03 super smart and instantly understand how these games work.

8:05 It's that we're being subconsciously conditioned

8:07 into perceiving situations and mechanics in particular ways,

8:10 shaping our decision-making, and as a result, our overall experiences.

8:14 Donkey Kong Bonanza stops you from spending the entire

8:17 game underground by using its early levels to teach you

8:20 that staying on the surface is usually a quicker

8:22 and more profitable way to get where you were going.

8:24 Hades and its sequel trick you into doing your between run chores,

8:27 not just every single time,

8:28 but also in a particular order by positioning them in convenient

8:31 places relative to the fastest route back to the real game.

8:34 The reason why Starcraft 2's campaign is so good

8:36 is because it gradually trains you to do more

8:38 than just spam marines or zerglings in every mission

8:41 by making each one a showcase of a particular unit.

8:43 Both teaching you their function and teaching you to respond

8:46 to threats with specific counters

8:48 rather than a generic one-sizefits-all response.

8:51 Of course, in addition to positive reinforcement,

8:53 disincentivizing players doing the wrong thing is also

8:55 a valid way of teaching us what to do,

8:57 so long as it's done with a sufficiently light touch.

8:59 Survival horror games get us paranoid about efficiency.

9:02 Because even though they usually have systems

9:04 to prevent us totally running out of ammo,

9:06 the threat alone is enough to change how we play for the better.

9:09 Many fighting games stop you from spamming certain moves

9:11 by making them lose damage the more you use them,

9:13 forcing you to switch things up and play

9:15 in a more interesting way in order to succeed.

9:17 And well-designed Dota style games scale the payout of farming methods based

9:21 on their level of interactivity with other players and thus their level of fun.

9:25 Hiding alone in the jungle is boring, so it pays out the least.

9:28 Whereas fighting other players and taking

9:30 objectives is where the best gameplay is.

9:31 So that stuff gets rewarded the most.

9:34 And as a personal favorite, Consume Me,

9:36 a game about, amongst other things, having an eating disorder,

9:39 uses our natural desire to optimize statistics to trick us into making

9:42 choices that we never would have of our own free will.

9:45 Like punishing Jenny with exercise whenever she breaks

9:47 her diet to get her back under the threshold,

9:49 or juicing your stats by doing stuff like reading

9:51 diet magazines to increase your fullness without actually eating.

9:54 It is brilliantly effective how long it takes you

9:57 to realize the person the game is slowly making you become.

10:00 And that's the power of this sort of conditioning.

10:02 None of these intuitively designed games ever directly enforce their intended

10:06 play style or sit the player down and explain, "Right,

10:08 here's what you're supposed to be doing."

10:10 Because not only would that spoil the fun,

10:11 it would be less effective as a teaching tool.

10:14 Instead, they leverage the human brain's incredible capacity for internalizing

10:17 complex systems by making the psychological path of least resistance,

10:21 also the way the developers want you

10:22 to view the game and think about the mechanics.

10:25 This is important to do because while our brains are

10:27 great at making connections and building an understanding of systems,

10:30 there's no guarantee that we'll interpret the mechanics

10:32 in the way that we're supposed to.

10:33 And once that we've locked ourselves into an incorrect

10:36 interpretation of the game's mechanics and intended play style,

10:38 it can be very difficult to fix that misapprehension.

10:41 Blueprints, one of my other favorite games of this year,

10:44 is very guilty of not taking this into account.

10:46 See, the game is structured like a rogike,

10:48 so many players naturally assume that if they plow through enough random setups,

10:52 eventually they'll be able to reach room 46.

10:55 But the reality is that it's much more important

10:57 to understand Mount Hol's hidden rules and solve its puzzles,

10:59 which don't change from run to run,

11:01 than it is to try and get good room draws on a single day.

11:04 something that is very frustrating to deal with if you think the game works more

11:07 like a mainstream rogike where you can

11:09 expect to get measurably further with each attempt.

11:11 To briefly go back to Silkong, it makes a real tactical error here.

11:15 Many players critically underuse the tools mechanic in the game

11:18 and as a result finding to be less interesting

11:20 and more difficult than it could be because they've decided

11:22 not to use an entire facet of the combat system.

11:25 Why is this?

11:26 Well, it's twofold.

11:27 Early in the game, not only is the tool you're most likely to discover first,

11:30 this one, the straight pin, kind of terrible, but using it consumes shards,

11:35 a resource that you need a lot of to complete an early game quest.

11:38 This not only lends itself to the conclusion that you should be hoarding

11:40 shards instead of spending them with tool

11:42 uses just in case there's another quest,

11:43 but it also dissuades you against using tools in general because the only

11:46 ones you're likely to get during the early game are just more expensive,

11:49 less powerful versions of the silk spear ability,

11:52 which also does horizontal range damage.

11:54 It's just actually good.

11:56 Both of these assumptions are of course false.

11:58 Shards are everywhere and the later game tools are really powerful.

12:01 But once the assumption is set in, it's that much more difficult to unlearn.

12:05 As an aside here, Clare Obscure Expedition 33,

12:08 weirdly another contender for game of the year,

12:10 manages to sidestep these exact sorts of problems by being very

12:13 clear with what it wants players to do right from the outset.

12:16 Clare Obscure Expedition 33's very first upgrade, or Picto is this one,

12:20 which gives you action points for perfect dodging enemy attacks.

12:24 This is an absurdly powerful ability and one that serves as a not

12:27 so subtle nudge in the right direction to treat dodging stuff

12:30 as their default response rather than expecting to just be able to tank

12:32 or heal their way through enemy attacks like in most role playing games.

12:35 If this ability were simply part of the default toolkit,

12:38 then the players that most need to make this connection would never see it.

12:41 But by making it feel like you're

12:42 optimizing your play by exploiting a powerful ability,

12:45 you internalize the lesson that much more effectively.

12:48 Of course, incentivizing particular behaviors

12:50 and disincentivizing others is only half

12:52 the battle when it comes to making sure we play games correctly.

12:55 Developers also need to make sure to open lines of communication and make

12:58 sure we're able to read and interpret

13:00 the information being delivered to us effectively.

13:02 One of the easiest ways to show you what I mean here is with Metroid Vaniers.

13:06 The whole appeal of this genre lies in exploration, but equally,

13:10 nobody likes getting lost or feeling like they can't

13:12 find out where to go in order to progress.

13:14 Luckily, each upgrade in a Metroid Vania,

13:16 be it a double jump or the ability to turn

13:18 into a fart or just a new kind of beam, can help you work out where to go

13:22 simply by serving as a navigational cue to return

13:24 to an obstacle that you previously couldn't deal

13:26 with, and thus a new area to explore.

13:28 And the best Metroid vanias teach us

13:30 this navigational language as clearly as they can.

13:33 To Silkong's credit for a change, it actually does this really well.

13:36 Stuff like these rings or these gusts of wind are nice,

13:39 memorable landmarks to know to come back

13:40 to later when you get the relevant upgrade.

13:42 And the game even goes out of its way

13:43 to teach you other nice bits of navigational signposting,

13:46 like the fact that Shack with the map vendor is always nearby

13:48 when you hear a song and see her stupid doughut weapons lying around.

13:52 For a more old school take on the same ideas,

13:54 many platformers use an association with collectibles

13:57 to drag you through the intended routes.

13:59 It can be difficult to figure out where you're supposed to be

14:00 going while you're traveling at super speed in a Sonic game,

14:03 and it's surprisingly easy to get lost in some of Mario's 3D adventures.

14:06 But by orienting yourself around the idea

14:08 that rings and coins are always worth grabbing,

14:10 you'll almost always find yourself on the intended smoothest level trajectory.

14:14 Other games can even do this as well,

14:16 like how Piper Strrell and the Cursed Yo-Yo uses lines of cash to illustrate

14:20 unconventional ricochet angles that you may

14:22 not have considered on your first glance,

14:23 which massively cuts down on frustration and leads

14:25 to way less downtime doing yo-yo ballistics maths.

14:28 It's not just what games tell us that establishes

14:31 the foundational patterns of the way we play, though.

14:33 How games communicate information to us can have just

14:35 as large of an effect on the way we end up

14:37 perceiving a game and thus the way we end up

14:39 playing it as what lessons they try to get across.

14:42 Many games, for example, use the pressure of a clock to get us

14:44 thinking about resource management and optimizing our limited time.

14:47 Everything from Majora's Mask to minutes would

14:49 be way less fun without that time pressure

14:51 to give our decisions context and inform

14:53 the way that we're supposed to be playing.

14:55 However, games that introduce timers via a big

14:57 doomsday clock right at the start are going

14:59 to inform the way we play very differently compared

15:01 to games that treat time more as a suggestion.

15:04 Titles like Dead Rising or Unsighted keep players under stress and constantly

15:08 focused on the mission because there is no escape from their big countdown.

15:11 Establishing a mindset that you should be squeezing every

15:13 last bit of efficiency out of every bit of gameplay.

15:15 A very stressful way to play to the point that many players get

15:18 put off games entirely at the mere suggestion of these kinds of limits.

15:21 Conversely, a more slow rolled,

15:23 low-key time limit like in Stargy Valley or Persona

15:26 puts the emphasis much more on getting players

15:28 to choose what activities or people matter

15:29 to the most and to have fun scheduling their day.

15:31 A much more accessible presentation in spite of the fact

15:34 that many of these games limits are no less strict.

15:36 All it takes is motivating us through fear or self-exression for us to view

15:40 optimal play very differently and thus

15:43 having two very different kinds of experience.

15:45 Whether it's by subtly telling us

15:47 stuff or incentivizing particular patterns of play,

15:49 games are constantly talking with us and our understanding of how

15:52 they work and what we're supposed to be doing is always changing.

15:55 But this relationship doesn't end on the mechanical level.

15:58 Every aspect of our play is shaped by the lessons we draw

16:00 from the things we experience and the things that we haven't experienced.

16:04 The way games react when we get stuck or fail is a very obvious way

16:08 that games condition us to behave in particular

16:09 ways beyond the context of their mechanics.

16:12 For example, Bennett Fod's Baby Steps, a very tricky game,

16:16 teaches us that messing up isn't a huge deal by setting a bunch

16:19 of what are essentially traps for us

16:21 that send us sliding humiliatingly down the mountain,

16:24 but immediately softening the blow with a funny cut scene,

16:26 helping to establish the lesson that not only are all those weird looking out

16:29 of the way places worth going to because they might have more cut scenes,

16:32 but also that falling down is unavoidable,

16:34 and so you don't need to treat it as a personal failure.

16:36 On the other hand, games with permanent stakes for messing

16:39 up push us to avoid failure by any means possible.

16:42 As I mentioned earlier,

16:43 the prospect of losing cash when you die in a soulike game all

16:46 but forces you to keep trying bosses over and over until you win.

16:49 Something that helps emphasize the game's pattern recognition gameplay,

16:52 but conversely deemphasizes trying to think way around problems

16:55 because there's a permanent consequence to messing it up.

16:58 On that subject, it's just as critical for games to teach

17:01 us what is and is not possible within their confines.

17:04 Because the only thing that feels worse than interpreting

17:06 a game structure incorrectly is finding out that some

17:08 important mechanic or area that would have made the game

17:10 much more fun was an option the whole time,

17:12 but you had no idea that it even existed.

17:15 The excellent horror RPG look outside deals with this really well.

17:19 The game is naturally being a horror

17:21 title all about feeling alone and overwhelmed,

17:23 but this presents a potential issue.

17:25 players can't know whether the monsters they're up against

17:27 feel dangerous because it's a survival horror game or because

17:30 they're just in the wrong area getting owned

17:31 by highle stuff they're not meant to be fighting yet.

17:34 And also because the game is all about being

17:36 trapped in an apartment complex filled with scary monsters,

17:38 they might not realize that some of said monsters are actually friendly

17:41 and are recruitable party members and thus spend the entire game outnumbered.

17:45 Look outside fixes both of these issues

17:47 very cleverly without ever undermining its core themes.

17:50 Firstly, it never tells players where they're supposed to go,

17:53 but it does give them a cryptic

17:54 warning if they're fighting stuff that's too tough,

17:56 letting you gradually triangulate the intended progression path

17:59 based on what doesn't give you a warning.

18:01 And if you are getting beaten up

18:02 and need to spend more time at home recuperating,

18:04 that gives you a much greater chance

18:06 of encountering random visitors who are almost always

18:08 helpful and around half the time will happily join your squad as a party member,

18:11 both helping you out and clueing you

18:13 into the fact that party members are even a mechanic.

18:16 even if said party members are these horrible goth children.

18:19 The incomparable Outer Wilds also uses its design to define

18:22 the scope of a player's exploration without ever spoiling the actual fun.

18:26 In Outer Wilds, you never need to wander around blindly because each clue,

18:29 such as these message boards, serves as a series of breadcrumb trails

18:32 linking to several other avenues of exploration,

18:35 quickly teaching you that if you ever get lost,

18:37 all you need to do is retrace your steps to find the next part of the progress.

18:40 And there's no need to worry if you're

18:42 missing anything because this handy there's more to explore

18:44 reminder is always there to nudge you

18:46 in the direction of anything you've yet to see.

18:48 Not giving the game away,

18:49 but instead empowering us to go and explore for ourselves.

18:52 This is in stark contrast to some of Silkong's

18:55 biggest stumbling blocks in the form of bosses like Morwing,

18:57 who was so mean Team Cherry even had to issue a rare nerf,

19:00 and the last judge, who has a particularly awful runback.

19:03 Both of these act one menaces are actually completely optional,

19:06 but the players who would most benefit

19:07 from this information will never find out.

19:10 Just like in the case of Outer Wilds,

19:11 a hint to players that there's somewhere else they could be

19:14 exploring wouldn't be bailing out players who are worse at the game,

19:16 letting them know there's a fun quest to do to get rid of Morwing

19:19 or a whole new adventure to go on to bypass the last judge.

19:22 It's just letting them play the game as intended.

19:24 Exploring around to new places and using their brains

19:27 to bypass problems rather than endless attempts at the same fight.

19:30 Plus, it's going to be much less frustrating dealing

19:33 with this bastard on the last judge run back

19:35 if you know that you don't have to be

19:36 doing this and that if you're getting too frustrated,

19:38 you can just go and seek out the other option instead,

19:40 who is, in my opinion, much easier, more fun, and more relevant to the plot,

19:44 making it a real shame that so few people even though Phantom exists.

19:48 I guess what I'm saying is to get to the meat of this and to give Silkong,

19:52 which again is arguably my game of the year,

19:54 a bit of a break is that we as a gaming audience tend to overestimate

19:58 our independence in the world of games

19:59 and underestimate our responsibility to make sure they work.

20:03 The interactive nature of video games is a canvas

20:05 for our self-expression and a display of our agency.

20:08 But the experience of playing a game isn't something that we can create alone.

20:12 Before we've ever started playing,

20:13 someone else has laid out our tools and defined the boundaries of our control.

20:17 And without knowing what our silent partner's intent was,

20:20 that unknown would always be working against us instead

20:22 of allowing us to truly flex our creative muscles.

20:25 So, I think rather than assuming implicitly that however we've chosen

20:28 to perceive and strategize around a game systems is automatically the best,

20:32 most optimal, and funnest way to play,

20:34 we should always be questioning whether there might be a better way,

20:37 whether the developers have been trying to tell

20:38 us something that we've been missing the whole time.

20:40 There have been loads of games over the years

20:42 that I thought were terrible and that everyone

20:43 else was totally wrong about until I realized

20:45 that I was actually the one playing them wrong.

20:47 And with a little change of perspective on my part,

20:49 I was finally able to see what the devs were

20:51 going for and have much more fun as a result.

20:54 I decided not to bother parrying anything in Metal

20:56 Gear Rising because I thought it was too hard.

20:58 And as a result, I died a bunch

20:59 to attacks that I should have been able to block.

21:01 And I had way less fun chopping up enemies,

21:03 which is easiest to activate after a parry.

21:05 I initially didn't get why people love Death

21:07 Stranding so much because I thought the cut scenes

21:09 were boring and that slowly delivering one package

21:11 at a time across easy terrain was pretty monotonous.

21:14 But all that changed once I realized the reason why

21:16 there's all sorts of lost packages all over the place

21:18 and all kinds of traversal equipment is that the real fun

21:21 comes from delivering the heaviest loads as fast as you can.

21:24 Pause for a laugh.

21:25 Which turns the tedious walking around into these fantastic endurance odysseies.

21:30 And even in the case of Silkong,

21:31 I was one of those people who thought that Team Cherry

21:34 had let everyone down and that they were washed after just

21:36 their second game until I stopped mashing my face against bosses

21:39 that were too hard and started exploring off the beaten path,

21:42 finding cool routes around problem areas that I didn't want to deal

21:44 with and experimenting with systems that I

21:46 initially written off as not worth using.

21:48 The more I open my mind to what the game was trying to do

21:50 as opposed to what I expected it to be, the more fun I had.

21:54 And that's what makes it such a shame that it's so hard

21:56 to get what Silkong is trying to do on your first go.

21:58 and why it's so important to treat games, like all art,

22:01 as a constantly evolving conversation between the developers and players,

22:05 not a static monolith that can never change.

22:08 So, in the spirit of this video,

22:10 if there's a game out there that you didn't enjoy,

22:12 but you can't escape the nagging feeling

22:13 that you might have been playing it wrong,

22:15 I highly recommend going back and giving it another go with a fresh perspective.

22:19 Who knows, maybe all it's going to take to turn

22:21 a disappointment into a new favorite is a different point of view,

22:24 for you to try a new strategy, to go to a different place,

22:26 or to stop doing things that simply aren't fun.

22:29 Because, take it from me,

22:31 you don't have to fight the Savage Beastfly if you really don't want to.

22:34 He'll just be there in Hunter's March, chilling until you're ready,

22:38 leaving you free to get on with the rest of the really fun.

22:41 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

22:44 They promised he would just be in Hunter's March.

22:46 No, no.

22:47 Oh, god.

22:48 No.

22:50 Hello, hello friends and welcome to the after the video segment.

22:54 That part of every video where I get on my hands

22:56 and knees and beg you to hit the like button, dingle the bell,

23:00 subscribe to the channel, and sacrifice a goat in the name of the YouTube gods

23:03 or whatever animal it is that they're interested in most right now.

23:07 Seriously, it means a lot.

23:08 It's also the time and place where I point you in the direction

23:10 of some cool people that you should be made aware of.

23:13 And this time, it's NoClip 2.

23:15 Wait, I hear you say NoClip is already a very big YouTube channel.

23:19 And you're right.

23:19 But No Clip 2 is a new spin-off endeavor from the same team,

23:22 which is all about indie games, industry previews,

23:24 and all the cool things that games media used to produce,

23:27 but abandoned in favor of more profitable and more boring things instead.

23:30 Basically, all the stuff I like.

23:32 Needless to say, the quality on display here is incredible,

23:34 and the Noclipip team have used their industry reach

23:36 and contacts to secure some pretty amazing early offerings,

23:39 like a massive look at Mugenics, the new game from Edmund McMillan,

23:42 which I am salivating over and cannot wait to get my hands on.

23:46 If that or any of the other things they've got on offer interest you,

23:48 then please do check them out and continue

23:50 to support Independent Games Media because God knows,

23:52 do we need the help right now.

23:54 But some people who absolutely don't need any help

23:56 because they're already awesome are my wonderful fantastic supporters.

24:00 Both the old venerable Patreon patrons

24:02 and the newfangled YouTube member Vanguard.

24:04 Both groups help to keep this channel operating and give me the peace

24:07 of mind I need to make these videos good rather than quickly.

24:09 I took the time out of this one to rewrite some sections

24:12 of this video to make them less boring and more factually accurate.

24:15 And I wouldn't have felt okay doing that if I was

24:17 crippled by the pressure to release things as fast as possible.

24:19 And it means a whole lot that people are willing

24:21 to support videos like this and think that they're worth the money.

24:23 Of course, this whole thing isn't just a one-sided deal.

24:26 If you support the channel,

24:27 you'll get earlier access to videos, extra bonus behind-the-scenes content,

24:30 occasional update videos where I share my most secret salacious thoughts,

24:34 and you know what's coming next.

24:36 Your name in the credits.

24:37 $5 a month gets you credited in text form and $10 a month gets

24:41 you on the special voiced shoutout list

24:43 alongside these fine people who are Ali Wright, Andrew Lebrano, Anna 94,

24:49 Bobby Brian Latarani, Constantin Amend, Cosmic 360, Daniel Metez,

24:54 Daniel Ersen, Durk Jan Carbeld, Diglettier, Diss Ellie,

24:59 Ectton, Edward Franklin Woods, Edwina the Space Bun,

25:03 Eric Walston, Eugene Bulkin, Fullaxi, Furious Hulk, Gaz,

25:08 How Heckit Noah I support trans rights Jacob Dylan Riddle Jinkaloid Kevin help

25:14 us conlov Kangi Luke Kakorin Mason 54 Maxim Philippov Mark Valent may contain

25:21 fox-like substance Mika Oi Michael Cike

25:24 Oxong Nate Graph Oliver Marhoa Patrick Ronberg

25:28 Peter Thomasick Routkull Reedex Regal Reax Seslux

25:33 silvery Tyler Duncan Timus Beexac Whimsical Wisp,

25:38 Zack Brandt, Zack Brandtas, the name mimickers,

25:42 reign of terror continues, I see.

25:44 And ciao.

25:45 Okay, that's all from me for now.

25:46 I will see you next time.

25:48 Bye.