Analysis of games and films, written and produced by Daniel Podgorski
My style of writing and analysis comes from a formal background in literature and philosophy. The videos on this channel range between (1) applying strategies and concepts from literary theory and philosophy in order to provide close readings of games and films, and (2) lighter review-style content.
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I LOVED Transistor the first time I played it, like top 10 best games EVERY contender, back when it was released, but played it again last year and just could not get into it like last time around. I mean I played it all the way through, but the deep mystery that engulfed me back then, felt a bit... ungenerous. Frustrating. Will be replaying Pyre soon, which I consider Supergiants magnum opus, so I'll see how my experience with that game will be this time around. :)
I mostly agree, and I played Hades for maybe 10-15 hours, BUT I stopped, because it felt like I couldn't progress the story with a more chill experience. Like I lost almost all the time, and prefer how much more chill pyre, transistor, and bastion, are, compared to Hades, and therefore I never got to see more of the content. It was just too hectic for me, I'm sad to say. But maybe I'm missing a way to make it more chill?
great stuff, thank you
what a brilliant analysis! this game keeps me up at night....
I think people will return to this film with fresh eyes after "Once Upon a Time in...Hollywood" and appreciating Tarantino's ability to pace a slower film properly
Think of the lost revenue because Elden Ring doesn’t have micro transactions smh think of the share holders
Thermodynamics, Philosophy, and dark souls in one video? Liked, Commented, Subbed This is truly W, Based, sigma content
My lord this is insufferable
i seriously cant tell if some film has been from the remake or the og ps3 version
All of the footage in this video is from the original PS3 game, running at 1080p in RPCS3.
@@TheGemsbok that makes sense, it looks so smooth
I only heard about this film a year ago from TRAILERS FROM HELL, and found a full length copy of it from the web. But I haven't ever been able sit through the whole thing. The films narrative structure makes its a tough slog, even though I don't "hate it" (its the type of movie that right in my wheelhouse as I find this era of history (early 18th century to late 19th century) fascinating. But it feels so all over place and experimental in a half-assed way its like Im watching something that was left unfinished and abandoned. Still, I won't say it "sucks". Thank you for this analysis, as it will help as I give it one more try.
I thought I was the only one who loves this movie! Thank you for this lovely, thoughtful presentation!
Great video, I am surely not in your level of analysis,yet i think that at the end the of the day how you deal with an universe without god and one with god does not differ that much, in a pragmatic sense at least, the best way how to act remains the same in both "universes",and that can be seen by the fact that in demon's souls and dark souls what how to play in the best possible way do not differ. Create friends along the way, tasting the beauty of the soundtrack and the landscapes,enduring and overcoming obstacles, experiencing existence and so on. That is my take, and so the fact that we do not know wich reality is true in our own world, is not really a problem, of course I would love an answer, but in the end it wouldnt really solve anything.
*_"Reviving it when it has been _**_-Killed-_**_ BANISHED requires a crimson flask..."_*
Playing the Witness was a profound experience for me. This video really helped me understand why. Amazing work!
Can you not talk about how easy the puzzles are like that. It makes me feel stupid.
Honestly I don't care about the cons mentioned here. I also stopped at beating all zones mode with Aria, and although my daughter wants to play Coda I just don't care to unlock her. But now I installed 50 mods, probably 30 new characters and 20 that make the game more difficult and I'm still having a ton of fun. I wanted the all zones mode to ignore the progression system. I love the soundtrack more than from Super Meat Boy and Isaac. I don't mind there not being a character in difficulty between Melody and Aria, I love games that give players the ultimate challenge and difficulty, in my opinion that's what keeps games alive, and I think more important than that is that every character has a unique mechanic how to play, which I also love. There's a mod as well that splits Aria into 3 characters A, R and I (lol) with each having only one of the mechanics that make Aria difficult. In my opinion the con is just a minor inconvenience, and there are a few more pros than just 2. All in all an amazing game and one of it's kind.
Found a use for the Torrent double-jump - it is required for platforming on churches and ruins. No combat utility, this just ties into the environmental storytelling component of the game based around observing alignments of objects in the distance. The Church of Elleh and Church of Irith are the easiest places to spot what I mean. You need to stand at the places where the level stone platforms are set at the top of the crumbled walls. Try south corner of Elleh and two north corners of Irith. Also by platforming at the various ruins outside Ranni's Rise there are two tower tops that can be jumped into with Torrent. There's nothing there but again a place to contemplate the environment in relation to a Princess up in a tower guarded by a dragon.
Portal 2 has better story, portal has better asthetics
Nice video!! Do you plan on covering TGC’s other games (Flower and Sky)?
Speaking of manual difficulty tuning on subsequent playthroughs (around 31:30) one of my favorites is getting all tail weapons. Kalameet and Sanctuary Guardians are hard as hell
I have to disagree. Portal 1 is flawless and thats right, cohesive stellar experience. But I found Portal 2 "Game Design" wise superior. Wheatley lines most of the time are cringe and over the top but I liked a lot because it matched the gameplay a lot. Portal 2 is more colorful, funky, random sometimes but as a player I accepted every single moment of it. Because narratives dialogues match every single time the chambers events.
All together we could easily say that DS1 is the best game ever created (and by extension also the other two chapters, although the other two chapters add things to the lore, not much to the meaning, so DS1 is the masterpiece, the other two are echoes). For sure DS1 is so unintentionally and improbable powerful that other games are pale, blur, in comparison. That said, we must also add that unfortunately it is not a "cultural product" like a book or a series of books or essays for instance, but it's a "commercial product". Made for you to consume it. So for example we have those known "development problems" and hurry, affecting the 2nd part of the game... or other things like the amount of glitches or unpatched things. It's imperfect you know. And a since it's a commercial product, well it lacks of internal coherence (so we have at the end 5 totally different possible "meanings") and actually the creator himself never gave an authentic interpretation, his own interpretation, his own meaning of what he created. Instead it's very likely that his final work at the end went well beyond the initial intentions! So what's happening here is, that we are attributing to Miyazaki's work MORE meaning than the creator himself ever gave to it... Nonetheless, this of yours is a great video and a good job. I found it very "useful" and "insightful" no matter what.
And then, it's only a game. Big words (as well as small words) must be proven outside, when you have only one life, no improvements, and no respawn. And when you fail, it's done, it's over, no 2nd chance. The best outcome you can hope to get is that you can try again, but you lost time and other possibilities, as at the crossroads of life you can't pick two roads, or later , to go backwards in time. And the more you invest (to increase your odds) the more you can lose, reducing your chances of having a 2nd try. The system disincentives the all-ins and the big bets. And to make things even worse, not only you can be destroyed by your mistakes, it may occur that you drag others with you, maybe those who you love and care about. Sure, now and then happens, that someone needs only one life to "achieve a victory". This is a powerful invitation to try. What they don't tell you is, that for one who wins, there are millions who don't and got lost. Would you play the game when the odds are so unfair, unfavorable, that it makes no sense to play? And then remember or realize: the outcome is "uncertain". Victory itself is uncertain, because values are uncertain. Imagine you are an Austrian painter named Adolf and you want to fight one life long to enter the history from the main door.. Or imagine you are a black lawyer named Barak Hussein, and you also want to make history.. and all what you leave behind is a guy named Joe and debts. Do you get it? Out there it's just different. The game is only a game. Marginal, irrelevant, winnable. In life you can't win, you can't lose, you can't even quit.
You know this is indeed true philosophical analysis when I don't understand a single word he says and he says it with confidence and nonchalance as if everyone is aware of what he is talking about when everyone just pretends like they do to not look stupid. True philosoper indeed.
I agree with you that I love Portal 1's tone more than Portal 2. I consider Portal 1 my favorite game. But I do have to defend GLaDOS' jokes here. I think they're SUPPOSED to be clunky. GLaDOS isn't a human and doesn't really understand human values exactly. She's saying things that she thinks would make a human upset and on paper it would, but they don't land because she's just throwing them out there without anything to back them up. I think the humor behind it is that they're so ineffective. Anyway, I don't mind the change in her attitude because you see it in game 1 when the morality core gets burned up. Her voice changes and she starts making pettier comments. It is consistent between games.
Pros: incredibly fun, creative, and addicting Cons: hard
i prefer Portal 2, even it's style
Why are some of the clips flopped around ?
Portal 1's tone was so eerie to a point where i was anxious of getting jumpscared, i wish it couldve been longer. Portal 2 is great but the whole part when you were underground was just exhausting i was so happy when i finally got to see Wheatley again, while Portal 1 was just an amazing experience throughout, there was no downs at all (but tbf Portal 1 is a lot shorter)
Honestly, the only thing that bother me in Portal 2 is the atmosphere. I love the adding of new characters, since they are great, as well as the many environment of the game, but the only thing I miss from Portal 1, is the music. The music of Portal 1 is so lonely-esque, eerie and scary. It really gives chills. Adding to this scary easter eggs and secret places... wow.
about the input queuing its funny how they added it to everything you don't want and the one thing that would benifit from a bit of queing is the roll, press roll 0.1 seconds before animation cancels and it will do nothing, press attack button 0.8 seconds before it finishes and you attack again, especially jarring with the jump attack which has an even higher spell queue after it spawn points, every boss should have the respawn be outside the arena, for the majority of the game they do this then on random bosses they don't, moon boss as the worst example, fara dragon boss another and any boss that spawns at night, its funny with the limgrave night horse they added a statue at the location but its useless as it will be daytime when you use it, and even if you spawn at grace you still have to set it to night time again and the ball bearing hunters have been bugged since release that you have to go to night time twice for them to spawn
If you’re going to make a video about eternal recurrence and linguistic relativity (Sapir-Whorf) in the style of a formal critique, you need to add new points. This is the first video I’ve seen of yours, and I’m flabbergasted by your academic fluency, but I already went into this knowing about eternal recurrence, so could you say something in a more entertaining way? And if you’re trying to reach out to a wider audience, dumb it down, because a lot of the words here, “geopolitically”, “extra-temporal”, need their own explanations. You can’t just put hand-wavy words in, especially if you’re going for formal critique. The only thing really carrying this video is the way you talk, but I’d get a more professional dude somewhere else just on KZread, yet I know you take a more educated perspective. Who’s your audience, even? I know I’m in a niche of a niche of a niche here.
This video was created before the Talos Principle 2, I see certain parallels between the first and second game. TP2 is easier and introduces new gadgets with limited use and combination in puzzles and it introduces companions and lots of dialogue. That doesn't mean TP2 is a not a brilliant game. The story and environments are great. I guess both sequels tried to appeal to a broader player base and did succeed but that removed the grittiness and loneliness of the original and most important a sequel can never reproduce the emotions of being thrown into a new unknown game universe.
I like the message of this like, using souls for magic meaning, the imaginary, fantasy, the unreal things leading to a path of doom; and using it for reason, like science, progress etc. leading to a better place for humanity.
I really enjoyed this video, thank you :D
While I found myself saying "hey! That's just unfair" to a lot of your points through this video (and, obviously, disagreeing with them), I think my middle ground would be this: Portal 2 is a candy game. I would much rather do a quick playthrough of portal 2, but that is because it is quickly rewarding without too much effort or difficulty. It feels more polished and less like you have to negotiate with it to get your serotonin out. Thinking of portal 2 conjures images of flinging through the chambers and onto aerial faith plates without effort, and thinking of portal 1 reminds me of trudging through hostile chambers with some flying to look forward to. Importantly, Portal 2 makes me think of the flinging as the substance of the game, where Portal 1 abstracts it further into a reward of the gameplay. I would rather play portal 2, but I see portal 1 as a more enriching and 'real' experience, in the same way we're trained to see healthy foods as superior in a begrudging way to junk food. I see you have a similar video on pikmin 1 and 2, and in fact I feel the same as you on that one! While the difficulty between the games is severely and pointedly ramped up instead of down, the sequel to Pikmin suffers from the same thing as the sequal to Portal. That is, I don't think it suffers at all. It's goofier and that's because it moved on! It's not the same game anymore. The most important thing is that it's not overly sterilized (like I feel 3 and 4 are). Even though Pikmin 2 is much more difficult than its elder sibling, it still feels more like candy compared to a healthy snack. There is simply more to do. Thinking of Pikmin 2 is thinking of fast-paced combat and the joy and thrill of having a pikmin type that obliterates everything. Pikmin 1 conjures thoughts of waiting for walls to fall with the obliteration of enemies as a reward for enduring the waiting.
You beat SpaceChem? Holy shit, people do not understand how insane this is.
This game speaks to me, it sharps my mind and my will. It sharps my faith and my senses. My inner voice tells me imagine that character you created is yourself, take care of him, where would you take him, build him up, you have fought this sword many times how does it move? The first try is the one that matters the most. It represents your strength and shows the decisions you make. Will you make it on one run no deaths?
On my top ten list.
In high school, I auditioned to be Miss Scarlet, & everyone said I was Yvette because of my massive cleavage (LOL) but I did get to be the understudy for Miss Scarlet, & got to wear a $500 custom-made maid outfit just like in the movie.
John Cleese was the one who came up with the idea of turning Cluedo/Clue into a movie, & wrote a script, & he was going to play the butler, but it was all re-written by Landis & Jonathan Lynn after Lynn came aboard
Idk i love the two games
SMBF is one of the best platformers I’ve ever played, I absolutely love everything about the game, except the fact that the unlockable characters are ridiculously hard to unlock, other than that the game is amazing and I enjoyed every moment. I actually prefer this game over the original and I think auto running just fits the game and feels way more fun to play, it’s so SMOOTH. Pulling off intense quick movements in this game to get an A+ or S rank is the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done in a video game. This game could be a 10/10 if the characters were easier to unlock
I think this critic was great but I have a few issues with it, spetially with the parallel between the heat death of the universe and the first flame stinguishment. Firstly I think that implying the age of ancients represents some kind of pre big-bang state is strange, we don’t know if time even existed before the big-bang so suggesting it was an age of equilibrium and fixation is kinda imaginative, I like that you implied dragons were mere forces of nature without any kind of being in them and no conciousness, as some kind of natural state life itself destroyed but is fated to come back, but it is contradicted with the fact that many dragons are still alive like Seath and he is spetially human and he obviously is alive, so that would be like saying the order and “heat” humans brought existed before big bang. But I specially have a problem with the contradictory allegory of the dark age, which you suggest is both the heat death of the universe and nihilism at the same time, which is simply imposible, if the age of darkness represents the end of all order and the end of the world, then how is it posible that there are humans, LIVING CREATURES, that you said are able to survive it through a psychological equilibrium?, this would imply order and life can survive the death of order and life which is a paradox; I prefer much more the abyss representing nihilism, as humans saw the inevitability of the death of the first flame, which represents the incapacity and fall of their gods, humans would embrace this meaninglessness, throwing all volition and desire to become being of pure rage and hate for the world they inhabit (nihilism) while those who accept the abyss but still protect the flame will be able to conserve their humanity after the death of god. I spetially dislike the implications this allegory brings to the table, if there are no more souls to burn and the age of darkness inevitably comes, does that mean that the death of the universe brings with it nihilism, how nihilism, a human phylosophy, is able to survive the death of every human?, if the age of dark is the death of the universe then the correct thing to do is let the first flame banish, as keeping it alive is useless, pathetic and still causing innecesary pain in the world. But if the dark age is the age of nihilism then the correct thing to do is keeping the first flame alive, as it will cease the destruction of humanity and it will even give them time to understand whats happening and accept the end of the age of fire so they survive the age of darkness surpassing nihilism.
The heat death of the universe is an hypothesis, not a truth
There's been more than enough praise for the analytical content of the video so I'd like to praise you on the production. The footage captured, the editing, the timing of injecting NPC dialogue and the choices of dialogue used... all masterful. As someone whose favourite gameplay aspect of Dark Souls is running through it again with unique characters I got especially emotional at the ending where you showed off the various builds with the character select theme in the background. That's really where the game, and by extension life, begins: deciding who you will be. That sequence tied the entire argument together wordlessly, despite there being 1.5hrs of words before it. And bonus points for using PTDE instead of the shitty remaster ;)
I think you hit the nail on the head with a lot of things in this video. I've been looking for a criticism of the "resource acquisition genre" of games. however, i dont like your point at 9:58 of humanity being inherently ecologically destructive. I also dont like this ken hiltner quote how it implies no indigenous societies have had a productive relationship with their environment. although humans everywhere have certainly shaped their ecological communities, given they have been established in their region for generations, human societies have lived sustainably for tens of thousands of years. Many indigenous cultures hold intense acknowledgement of their impact on their land and great respect for it as the land is their livelihood, culture, religion, etc. Viewing humans as completely separate from nature and not a part of our own ecosystem is kind of a uniquely western perspective. point is, I think its not useful to view humanity's relationship with nature as one where we are comepletely separate from it. you might already understand this divide in blame for human environmental devastation, but not acknowledging it makes it sound like humans are just inherently incapable of a healthy ecological relationship. i think it also makes a stronger point to acknowledge the awkward disconnect between humans and nature in resource acquisition games as a whole(some more than others) especially in factorio when it accustoms players to environmental destruction. but like, i didnt go read the [...] parts of the quote so you tell me if he mentions this or not. um anyway good video i love seeing environmentalist perspectives in video games.
That’s interesting, in my experience portal 2 is harder than portal
The last three formal test chambers in Portal 2 are definitely the hardest puzzles in either game. In that sense, it is harder. The point in the video is more about the difficulty curve being flatter across Portal 2 as a whole, not about either game being simply the hardest.
The con is exactly the reason I prefer cadence of hyrule.. you get the songs remixed with iconic Zelda stuff, you get to play as Zelda and save the kingdom yourself and the difficulty does not suddenly spike.
Personally, I think portal 2 is better