It’s the end of the week and I thought it’d be cool to just check in and have a quick chat about the streams and what I’ve been up to!
First up though I wanted to say a huge thank you to the people who have came along to the streams and taken the time to read this little blog, your support is always massively appreciated!
Anyway, onto some gaming chat!
Stream #1 – Two Worlds!
Where to start with this one?
Over the last few years I’ve played a fair few varied games on stream or for my videos, some have been good, some not so good and only a small handful have approached bad. I generally try to avoid anything bad, or that I know will be bad and instead go for titles that either interest me or might be a bit of a hidden gem.
Sometimes that does stray into bad territory, I really didn’t enjoy Shadow Tower when I played that on stream and I found Star Trek: Shattered Universe to be fairly dull. Really though, I want to celebrate games and even when they are rough I try to find something positive to talk about, I made a video last year about 50 Cent: Bulletproof last year, a game lambasted by many outlets but I found some joy in it!
Let’s try this with Two Worlds then. An open world action role playing game which was fairly hyped up before it came out back in 2007, some places saw it as a potential ‘Elder Scrolls’ killer, in the same way outlets do this with any game that happens to be the same genre as [POPULAR GAME IN GENRE}
As you might have guessed, it was now an Elder Scrolls killer, it was poorly received, PC hitting about 65 on Metacritic and the Xbox 360 version doing worse with only a 50 or so.
I remember playing it back in the day on Xbox 360, and I had a decent time with it when I was younger, but I also remember it being janky and weirdly funny, but not in an intentional way. So, I thought it’d be a funny one to try on stream and I’m glad I did.
First of all lets get it out of the way, it’s not a good game, at least not on the Xbox 360, graphically it’s poor, there are constant frame rate drops, poor animations and the voice acting is unintentionally funny. For some reason they’ve adopted a bizarre old english way of speaking throughout the game so expect a vast number of ‘Forstooths’, ‘Verilys’ and ‘Twas’ thrown in there, coupled with your characters voice sounding like he’s eternally pissed off.
Yet, I had an absolutely wonderful time with it.
Two Worlds reminds me of the sort of fodder that you’d see lampooned on MST3K, the films that aren’t great, not even good but there is a weird entertaining heart to them and it makes it hard to really pull your eyes away from it. Two Worlds is the gaming equivilant of a Final Sacrifice or a Pumaman!
It’s not something I could recommend playing, it’s not something I’d play on my own but in context of a stream, it just felt perfect and it’s better to be a funny and weird bad game than a dull one, right?
Stream #2 – Jak & Daxter
We move on from something bad and weirdly wonderful to something just plain wonderful!
Weirdly, up until last night I had never played 2001s Jak & Daxter! I grew up enjoying platformers, and over the console generations I’ve always enjoyed Naughty Dogs output, be it the original Crash trilogy, the Uncharted series or Last Of Us! Yet, for some reason I’ve never played the Jak & Daxter games, it’s always been this blind spot in my gaming history.
In a way, I’m sad I hadn’t played it until now because what a bloody great game but at the same time, it’s always really nice to find something new to love and then share that with others, as mentioned above, I always try to share positivity about gaming and whilst I know Jak & Daxter isn’t exactly a hidden gem with it being an incredibly popular PS2 title, there might be a handful who haven’t tried it who I can maybe prod along to try out.
We only got to play about an hour and a half or so of it, so maybe not fully into the meat of it but I just had a really great time with it, it ticked so many boxes from having fairly tight controls, loads of charm and personality and a fun world and levels to explore, the only issue I really had was the occasional bit of camera jank.
We’ll have to see how it goes in the next few streams but I’m always anticipating having a wonderful time with this one!
So, that was this week in streaming!
I want to try to write more going forward on this site, be it after each stream, when I’m recording for the next video or just thoughts on my personal gaming time! I’ve got some thoughts I want to write up on Silent Hill f and Resident Evil Requiem when I have time but for now let’s keep this one to just the streams!
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the next one!