It Gets Good After 30 Hours (The Jimquisition)
With special guest, The Stupendium! (YouTube.com/TheStupendium)
An Evening with Commander Sterling: www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Manchester/HEAD/An-Evening-with-Commander-Stephanie-Sterling/36355242/
Is a game worth playing if it doesn't get good until you've played thirty hours of it? Inspired by Final Fantasy discourse, I tackle this thorny issue with the grace and balance you've come to expect!
Comments (9)
When a game allegedly "gets good" after N hours, does it actually improve, or is that a form of Gamer's Stockholm Syndrome setting in: "I paid between $60 and $120 for this game. If it was shit, then that would have been a lot of wasted money. I don't want to have wasted my money. Therefore, the experience I'm currently having MUST be the one designated as 'fun'. Q.E.D."
I find, as a general rule it means one of two things, either...it gets good 2-3 hours in means...once you get past the tutorial area and can just play the game properly or, it's an rpg that leaves you in the dark while doing a metric ton of world building for the first act, before getting to the plot in the second. MMO's are a major offender here.
Way back in the mists of time (about a decade ago) The Spoony One gave the only necessary answer to this in his video series on FF13: "The game gets good X hours in?! FUCK THAT! Why game be good right goddamn now?"
Just because yupi put your hand on your stove for 30 hours and stop feeling pain doesn't mean things are fine.
I thought of FFXIII the moment I saw the title 😂
I'm a fountain pen nerd and easily distracted (I trust this community can understand that). Does anyone know what the pen is at 2:42 in the video? It kind of looks like a Pilot Vanishing Point but I've not seen one with a barrel / grip like that. Maybe an older generation?
I think the only time somebody told me "It gets good after XX hours" and it actually turned out to be true for me was Bojack Horseman. I had watched the first 4-5 episodes and was sort of lukewarm on it, and not particularly motivated to keep watching, when somebody told me it gets good around episode 6, so I gave it another shot and ended up loving it. But as you pointed out, TV shows are a different medium, and different rules apply. I also think, because watching a TV show is a more passive form of entertainment, that it's easier to bear a slow start or a couple of boring episodes, whereas with a video game you have to actively play the boring bits, and if the gameplay is not that great, that is a much bigger chore. Also, with TV shows you can skip the boring bits on re-watch, like you pointed out with Breaking Bad, whereas with a game you can usually only do that with modding. I replay Dragon Age: Origins and VtM:B quite regularly, but have mods installed to skip the fade and the sewers respectively, because I find those levels unbearable, even in games I otherwise love.
I had to pause the video after that banger of a start. JFC.
Steph, you're our favorite antagonistic little bitch.