Penny Arcade - PATV - First 15 – Spy Chameleon

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Penny Arcade - PATV - First 15 – Spy Chameleon

Gabe and Tycho play a game for 15 minutes and then judge it accordingly. This week they play Spy Chameleon. You can watch the full length version of this episode here.

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angryrooster

Just a heads up, the annotations at the end of the video appear to not be working.

metroidkillah

I'm really enjoying the First 15 series. It's shown me a couple games that look really interesting, and Mike and Jerry's commentary is usually pretty entertaining. But I fear it suffers a little bit from the same problem Game Grumps does. Specifically, the hosts are so focused on being witty and entertaining that they wind up ignoring part of the game that a "regular" player would likely notice. It's a small thing, obviously; but it's more than a little eye roll-inducing when they develop an entire line of inquisition about a game feature that is fairly clearly explained on the "Results" screen.

At least those moments usually turn pretty silly, so they've got that going for them. Which is nice. Keep up the good and funny work, guys.

WordLust

metroidkillah wrote: »

I'm really enjoying the First 15 series. It's shown me a couple games that look really interesting, and Mike and Jerry's commentary is usually pretty entertaining. But I fear it suffers a little bit from the same problem Game Grumps does. Specifically, the hosts are so focused on being witty and entertaining that they wind up ignoring part of the game that a "regular" player would likely notice. It's a small thing, obviously; but it's more than a little eye roll-inducing when they develop an entire line of inquisition about a game feature that is fairly clearly explained on the "Results" screen.

At least those moments usually turn pretty silly, so they've got that going for them. Which is nice. Keep up the good and funny work, guys.

I dunno... I think if they were trying to make a video that was more like a review or a demonstration, then they would focus more on being informative and breaking stuff like the ladybugs down.

What I like about First 15 is that it's sort of like the bit on Conan. They're not really so much interested in explaining or marketing the game to you. It's just two guys playing 15 minutes of a game, and you get to see what their experience is like. So whereas in another video they might simply explain the ladybug thing in the process of picking them up, these videos are different in that we see two players who completely miss that information even though it's right there. That is so real.

It's funny, because it's sort of like watching game testing. Can you imagine how the developers feel watching this video, knowing that they tried to make the ladybug feature and how it works as clear as possible? And yet you have a couple of dive-in-head-first-and-ask-questions-later goofballs who completely overlook or do not understand the messaging for several minutes. The end user is an obnoxious beast.

I like that we get to see that, because players getting confused by things (even if they are things that you personally did not get confused by) can be an interesting thing to see. It's sort of like giving us a tiny glimpse of the game testing hell devs have to experience, and that's kind of interesting.

metroidkillah

@WordLust: No, I can dig that. But I still think the presence of a camera/audience is inhibiting their observational skills a bit. Though maybe not? Mike and Jerry strike me as the kind of friends that act like that pretty much everywhere under every circumstance.

WordLust

*edit*

sigh... accidental double post.

WordLust

WordLust wrote: »

metroidkillah wrote: »

@WordLust: No, I can dig that. But I still think the presence of a camera/audience is inhibiting their observational skills a bit. Though maybe not? Mike and Jerry strike me as the kind of friends that act like that pretty much everywhere under every circumstance.

It's perhaps a product of Mike holding the controller instead of Jerry. My impression is that Jerry loves the texts and the concepts of games almost more than he enjoys actually playing them. He likes reading about and feeling out their systems intellectually, until he has digested the design and lore, and then in most cases he is done there, like reaching the end of the book. The end of the game for Jerry isn't the end credits or the end of the challenges/levels. The end of the game for Jerry seems to be when the game ceases to provide him with satisfying new ideas to chew on, be they mechanical or textual.

Conversely, Mike doesn't seem to care about that stuff most of the time. Mike is mostly interested in two things: 1) Amazing visual art, 2) For the game to shut up and let him start punching things. <---This second item is perhaps a factor in the "observational skills", in both this case and in the case of exploding zoo.

I mean, they could take the time to sit through the tutorials and just edit that part out if they wanted, but I suspect including the shots of Mike just blindly tapping A through the tutorials while saying, "yeah yeah shut up shut up blah blah blah" to get into the game is just a depiction of how Mike plays games.

Just my own hunch, though. I'm sure the format affects their performance at least in the sense of them vocalizing thoughts and reactions more (especially in humorous form), so it's not inconceivable that it's affecting their relationship with the game while the camera is on. I guess for me it's a question of whether that is happening for them more than it would happen to just anyone making this kind of video.

Hawk one

I am surprised that people have not been drawing more attention to

"Don't tell me what to do... GODDAMMIT WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?!?!"

It is such a classic Mike moment right there, isn't it?