This week on Slightly Something Else, Yahtzee and Marty discuss games that make them feel smart.
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I loved Manhunt. Brian Cox as Lionel Starkweather was perfectly evil.
Mortal combat was always ridiculously violent. It was its thing. Ripping people in half, limb explosions and giant fountains of blood.
I think, in Mortal Kombat's case more specifically the more recent iterations they clearly don't look at it as a parody but more "Oooh look at how detailed and realistic we can make these deaths!"
Going from parody to more "Why do you feel like I need to know the detail that occurs when a skull gets ripped off?"
It just leaves a player just going "Why?"
There's no purpose or impact behind needing that level of detail, it just leaves you feeling disturbed that the devs felt the need to have to go that far.
I'll be honest, for all the effort that has gone into making mortal kombat so detailed and gory, there's something about it all that looks really fake.
I will happily give Yahtzee 15 Pound sterling for 150 US Dollar.
Best first three seconds so far.
I'm actually looking forward to the government shutdown because the government totally sucks.
Yahtzee is usually so unflappable that seeing him somewhat uncomfortable made me feel bad for him.
Jeff Gerstmann is really good at solo podcasting.
MK is gore porn, it always has been. Theyve pushed those fields since SNES. Using them as guide point is kinda idiocy in itself. They don't take themselves serious, half the fatalites are parody kills. I think most games do the right amount.
Yahtzee's audio level is much lower than Marty's
I have many fond memories of blasting heads off zombies with a shotgun going back as recently as just 5 years ago and have enjoyed violent video games since I was a kid. Mortal Kombat? GTA? You bet I played those games WAAAAY before I should have. I've been gaming since the 90s and I played many violent video games in the past 20-25 years. I think I was 12 when I played my first GTA game and I was very amused by the hooker mini game (and by running over her with my car when she was done to get my money back). These days though?…. I'm just sorta….
…. bored of it? I mean, just how many times can one truly be amused by watching a bunch of giblets go splat? There's only so much that improvements in graphical fidelity can do in terms of trying to make that interesting. I'm not coming at it from a moral puritan stand point. I don't have any moral objections to it.
I just feel like it's getting boring and also possibly slightly offended that big AAA game publishers seem to think that the only way I could be amused by a video game, is through the most violent and bloody forms of murder they can get their artists to animate. I also think it's one of those things where, "less is more" when it comes to graphical fidelity of the topic. I don't really need an even further hyper realistic depiction of the violence, I actually don't mind it being very stylised and practically cartoon-y, it makes it far more enjoyable, because then my brain isn't saying, "This is very realistic and kinda gross" when I see someone getting their head sawed off at the neck stump in the most graphical depiction possible. If it's very unrealistic, my brain is just giggling at the janky physics of a head rolling around like a golf ball when it pops off someone's body like a head off a barbie doll. Again, another example of AAA's hyper obsession with realistic graphics actually making things worse and not better.
I want to see a Mortal Kombat game that is realistic not just visually, but also tonally. Like, what if Johnny Cage smashing a camera into someone's brains isn't treated as comedy but to show that he is a sadistic psychopath on the level of real serial killers who mutilates their victims?
I have found that I just find non-violent solutions and paths just more rewarding. Maybe because they are usually much harder and usually goes against meta, which is usually bound to "effectiveness".
As for MK it just disgusts me. I am not gonna moralize about it, it just feels cross and sanitises real life violence.
Interesting enough for violence in Cyberpunk 2077, it does not tell you if the victim has survived or not, sometimes you have to make explicit move to finish someone off. Also the fact that body parts fly around after fighting in that game very effectively telegraphs the result of your violence. So the game can show you a mirror for what you are, and it is quite effective in terms of catharsis.
I feel in summary you also have to disconnect gore from violence, because gore in MK is just a show off, because you can't kill anyone really. While in story games where you have a choice to kill someone, it mostly sticks.
Sometimes the messages get missed from tip jar 🙁 nevermind. Happy to support anyway.
I haven't seen much of the video yet, but my thoughts from the first couple minutes are essentially that violence is at a point where it will never be new again.
I'm not even sure you could go bigger from games like Mortal Kombat, Doom, and others. Violence has been done, in every way and every scale imaginable. So I think in terms of innovation, developers should focus on something else. Keep violence if you want, I'm down to rip heads off, but don't try to make blood guts your only selling point anymore.
I won't be surprised if Yahtzee comes out with a similar point by the end.
Voyager is great! It's so wacky and weird and silly, always had a good time when it was on
Yahtzee being extremely socially awkward is the best thing I've seen on this channel.
I think the concept of violence is cheapened by the lack of characterization. Seeing a character you have grown attached to inflicted violence upon is a turn that developers are afraid to do. In Calisto protocol for instance, it would be more impactful if the female partner charter had death scenes because she is actually the main character with emotional stakes, whereas the player character is just a POV crash test dummy.
Something I think is also untapped is the concept of lasting consequences to gore. Fear and Hunger's game play leans into the fact that if you lose an arm, it has dire consequences to the rest of the game for instance.
Mortal Combat completely corners the market as the game you go play at your friends house as kids (the one friend whose mom didn't give a shit).
I find from that angle the tone makes complete sense: Make the gore as cool and brutal as possible and make the dialogue saturday morning cartoon level.
Why do no-one fix the audio issue on Yahtzee's mic? He was so much quieter than Marty
Did nobody mention manhunt at all?
Yahtz trying to awkwardly carry it on his own is precious
Dwayne the rock Johnson was in voyager!
Lol, I'm so sorry you had to endure those few minutes of alone time Yahtzee. Your career has not prepared you for long form solo talking.
One of the most effective uses of violence I've experienced lately was in the visual novel Umineko: When They Cry. There's a scene where a woman is basically caving in the face of a teenage girl, and it was massively uncomfortable to read. It was much more effective than basically all of the fatalities in a Mortal Kombat.
When Mortal Kombat first became controversial for its violence, the so-called "controversial violence" was the fighters bled, and that one guy got his spine torn out of him. Now that Mortal Kombat has become known for its violence, its fighting game is violence for the sake of violence. Now you know what you're getting into if you want to play Mortal Kombat, and it's not big deal. It also didn't help that back then video games were primarily known as a children's toy. Now that video games have become entertainment and a hobby for all ages, people recognize Mortal Kombat as an adult fighting game, and it's just a matter of preference which fighting game you prefer, especially the extra bloody and violent one.
I kind of see God of War going through the same phases. The first God of War did have the over the top violence, but it made sense within the context of its narrative. God of War 2 and 3 (as well as its spin-offs) were just violence for the sake of violence. That's why I'm glad to see the series got the reboot that it did. God of War can still have violence, but it's got to be just 1 aspect of many, including graphics, gameplay mechanics and narrative.
I didn't follow Mortal Kombat, but back when the 1st game came out it was teenage boy : the game, except with its over-the-top violence instead of the usual scantily-clad females fanservice. The story being consequence-free and nonsensical was and still is par for the course if it's still the same demographic targeted…
I was also surprised to notice that, in Street Fighter 6, there is no actual gore (or even blood). I found it weirdly refreshing and it gives an interesting contrast to the rest of the gaming landscape, because I NOTICED there was no gore.