The onlyway a crazytaxi game could or should be AAA in any scope should be the budget allocated to getting the soundtrack rights from the original game (aswell as just paying the devs a more than livable wage)
Also, all the rights to the real life locales... well, contemporary ones that don't include places like Tower Records. Actually, no. Include those. Tower Records and Blockbuster and KFC!
@@DefendYoungstown Recreate the real-life areas as they existed in the time of the original. Teleport us back to a world where Tower Records and Blockbuster were still common sights.
@@brittb1696 I don't get it either. For awhile it was actually a feature in games. There's a console command you can use in any Quake Engine game that opens an in-game MP3 player you can use to load a folder or an M3U playlist. Source Engine has the same thing. They almost always work with the media controls on keyboards that have media keys or like my mechanical can generate the media key signals with special key combos. It was when CryEngine, Unity, and the like came around that I stopped seeing that as a feature. Even early Unreal Engine had it but the game had to expose a GUI or it wouldn't load that module.
Did I just see two sailing ships playing chicken, with masts blowing forward firing forward. Nelson's sarcophagus must be registering relativistic spin rates.
@@mat_maxhe was the boat-goat of the 1800 british armada. Known for mastering the art of sailing straight at them and winning, despite it being a very bad idea most times. When he died they out his monument at Trafalgar square, where cars drive around it all day. Presumably as a sort of revenge by what must have been a deep cover french operative infiltrating 1800:s parks and recreations, what with his orogninal drive-towards-them-in-a-line was did against the french. When he died he was more machine than man, although that meant peg leg wood arm glass eye, rather than roboty bits. Hus favourite food is anpan. AB blood, 5,4 waist. Loves: work. Dislikes: Napoleon I. Hates: that there would be three more Napoleons.
you did just remind me of the GDC postmortem on final fantasy 14 1.0 from naoki yoshida, because one of the things he identified as a key failing of the 1.0 team was that their attitude was that it didn't matter if they shipped broken content because 'we can just patch it later' and that mentality was a huge factor in the game being the way it was
I'm not surprised they took that tact. Very few games really pay for being incomplete. Some of the most notable examples, Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky, even turned their public perception around afterward. With people putting up with buggy early access games as well, I can see publishers assuming they can just patch afterward and they largely seem to be continuing to do just that. Square is still doing it as well.
To be 100% fair to Yoshi-P Crystal Tools was a fucking piece of shit that was notoriously difficult to work with to the point that it very nearly caused Square Enix to collapse, just look at the development cycle and history for FFXV and FF Versus XIII (FF13 was supposed to be a Playstation 2 game and Versus 13 started doing promotional material when Kingdom Hearts 2 was launched) It's why they're on Unreal now. I recently went back and played the XIII trilogy which is on Crystal Tools and all of the issues from FF14 1.0 become immediately apparent in 13-2 when any area that's larger than a hallway is available to walk around (the game engine straight up stops to load assets for a second), and by Lightning Returns where the full game is open world it's just an absolute mess (polygon dog being one of the most prominent examples)
Pacific Drive is a great fucking game. I'd argue it's a better adaptation of Roadside Picnic (What the movie Stalker was based on) than the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The Zone isn't something you can fight with a gun. It can only be endured, survived, and experienced.
That last sentence is the exact knowledge that got me to purchase the game. It's not anything you have to FIGHT, just survive. Lol I'm a baby when it comes to horror games when I'm being chased by Big Scary Monster, but being abused by an unstable pocket of reality? SIGN ME UP!
An underrrated achievemnt of Baldur's Gate 3 is the fact is showed exactly how much an expensive game should be expected to have. And I don't even think it IS a 'AAA' title?
The estimated budget for Baldur's Gate 3 is between 100 and 200 million. If you did treat the "A" system as a measure of game production cost, it would be solidly in the AAA space, although not one of the most expensive games ever made.
Triple-aaaayyyyyyy isn't a measure of quality or scope, it's only a measure of money. The money that got put into it and the money they hope to get out of it
Less the first part, more the second one. I highly doubt they actually put enough money to match the amount of time needed. But the top definitely expect a lot of money in return for doing nothing.
@@biocapsule7311 some of these games have budgets equivalent to the GDP of a small country, it's why they can sell millions and still disappoint the publishers
@@aeloswindrunner A lot of things has the GDP of small countries. It's meaningless. Half of the time they spend those money satisfying ridiculous demands from the top. It's the same thing with movie studio interference. The more you keep wanting to change or add stuff (like more micro-transection etc.). The more time it takes and more money spend. But it's almost guaranteed that even as they are willing to pay for the changes, they don't adequately pay the workers for extra effort to fulfill those changes. So they are still not paying what they should be paying.
This is why when "quadruple A" is brought up, it just makes me think they'll be putting in even more micro-transactions for even less content. To be fair though, I'm not their target audience: the last AAA game I bought at full price was XCom 2 in 2016 (mostly from having played the previous titles and Total Biscuit's recommendation).
Crazy Taxi will always be linked to the American sports pub chain Beef O’Brady’s because from 2000 (maybe earlier) until they closed just before the pandemic, they had an original Crazy Taxi arcade cabinet. I remember patiently waiting in line with my quarter up to sit on the hard plastic, duct-taped bucket seat and the steering wheel whose foam rubber was disintegrating into a gritty black powder. The cabinet itself was so broken as to barely be usable, and was still my favorite cabinet in any arcade in town
As someone who has watched Knightmare and played the original Crazy Taxi, I would complain about being made to feel old but I care more about the nearly 10 months I've been on HRT than my actual age.
5:48 love the detail that (intentionally or not) the German dictionary there shows the entry for "verächtlich" meaning "detestable" or "contemptible". Exactly the way we think about the AAA subject matter.
I knew Pacific Drive was going to be amazing when I learnt Paul Dean formerly of Shut Up & Sit Down was involved. The man is a 2000 carat diamond writer.
*CDi Mario:* "Nice of Steph to invite us to this roadside picnic, eh Luigi?" *CDi Luigi:* "I hope she brought lotsa shade to throw at the games industry!"
The original Crazy Taxi was an arcade game designed to kick you off the machine in 10 minutes or less. "Expanding the scope" and making a game designed for multi-hour sessions just feels like it would be so out of character for the game. To consider a similar genre with roots in the arcade, developers of brawling games are getting it right. Games like Streets of Rage 4, River City Girls, and TMNT Shredder's Revenge, they know that their games are satisfying to play for a limited amount of time, and charge a price that fits this.
Crazy taxi is the kind of short game i wanna play in bed or on the toilet and as an indie/AA developer/publisher i understand this well. Its why for every major top down RPG, Shooter, or Big platformer i make i wanna have small games like a game & watch style collection on mobile with no MTX, DLC, or Up front cost because i am making it for fun and to learn coding that can be played and ended in 5 minutes and be fun as well as challenging in the later levels.
Would love to start a game development studio called 7th gen gaming that has the scope of the games of that generation where they were big enough to be entertaining but tight enough that entire trilogies were able to be completed in a single generation.
You all want a modern send up to Crazy Taxi go play its homage mini game in Infinite Wealth. Now to sit back and wait till Hi-Fi Rush comes out on PS5.
My friend and I both grew up watching Knightmare. Coincidentally he now lives in the same village as Treguard. They both go drinking together on a regular basis.
I used to watch you a lot in middle school and it’s very nice to see that you are still posting. Keep up the great work!!! I was always excited to come home from a long day of school and watch you
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is exactly what you want out of a modern Jet Set Radio i wish big companies would underatand not every game needs to be 100+hours with road maps
If Nina Struthers walked out onto the floor of a Devolver Digital press conference proclaiming their games are QUADRUPLE AAAA!!!! we would laugh at the satirical absurdity of it. But this is real. A real CEO used that phrase and somehow expected people to not laugh at it.
3:16 -- That is exactly how I felt about that new Dune game that was announced awhile back. "New Dune game!" "Awesome!" "It's an open-world survival MMO!" "Fuck!" Come to think of it, I haven't heard anything about that since it was first announced.
The narrative speaks to me as a lifelong gamer. The editor speaks to my attention defections. The ongoing "Lee" jokes throughout multiple videos are killing me! Too good!
I got a code for the Avatar game (can't even remember the full title off hand) when I upgraded my CPU a few months ago. Downloaded it. Played ~2 hours and was bored and decided to play something else. As soon as I got to the outside, it quickly felt like the "typical Ubisoft game". The thing I remember most is just being impressed with the visuals and performance and the snowdrop engine in general. Game looks beautiful and runs smooth as silk for me maxed out (7800X3D/RTX 3080 1440p), but If you had set me down to play the game right at that part and told me to guess who made the game (Honestly didn't even know it existed until I saw it came with the 7800X3D) my first guess would be Ubisoft. Shouldn't have to say this but it's the internet, if you like the game I'm not saying you're "wrong" or anything. And Pacific Drive looks really cool, had never heard of it.
I think the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in Pacific Drive was when one of those fucking mannequins appeared out of nowhere and…handed me a spare tire. You laugh, but it’s genuinely unnerving.
This episode reminds me of Sterling's video on the perfect pasta sauce; there is no perfect pasta sauce, only perfect pasta sauces. Variety is the spice of life, which also means that not every release needs or even can be a blockbuster succes.
Beautifuly multitasked on this episode, Steph. Sold me a game, gave me a favorable opinion on something Sony did, while still doing the regular sermon on AAA games sucking, that is a hard truth. And you really felt a bit happy on this episode. Cheers to you!
I want to point out one thing about that chart at 6:50. It seems most 'AAA' games skip the top part, the 'better experience' and go straight for the 'more engagement', they don't care if their games are fun or if the people playing them are actually enjoying themselves, they care about pushing the grind as much as possible while giving the kind of incentives usually reserved for free to play games to build habits in order to boost the almighty 'engagement metric'
3:53 Well that just confirms it's part of Sega's "Super Game" metaverse project that Sapporo is working on. Which likely means the other games in the long-neglected IPs are too. I mean why else would a studio that's only worked on PSO2 and the "Super Game" be working on Crazy Taxi and JSR?
Honestly I’m more interested in the fact that they seem to have put the folks who worked Streets of Rage 4 on the Shinobi remakes which means it’s almost guaranteed to be superb unless Sega suddenly decides to take a monster dump on it by doing something completely insane. I am concerned.
I still use the glowy star decals on my car because it lets me find it in darkness due to them glowing in the dark. When I get those situations where I lose my bearings (and lose that little arrow that tells you where your car is) I can often spot the car from a mile away due to the gaudy deco. lol
Stephanie this is one of your best recent video. Purely because I feel like you are having fun again and not drag yourself through a shitty game which you hate. Also i really love how you mixed the reviews. You had me!
My first PD mannequin experience was parking and walking right up next to a group, getting 2 feet up to them to get a good close up look, THEN reading their anomaly report still feet away from them until my heart sunk when I read the part of what happens when you touch them D:
Forspoken is a good game though and it's not really live-service driven like the others mentioned so it does not really fit in with Jim's overall comparison.
Fantastic video. But the entire second half my blasted ND brain had grabbed on to that pop-up notif from Grindr and wanted to know what it was Thomas said he felt like sometimes too and I'm not sure I paid attention as much as I should have to "American STALKER Vs the Weeping Mannequins" game review...
Kind of want to set up an entire Monitoring and Evaluation Team for Stephanie's prediction at the end there, about Pacific Drive getting snubbed by the end of the year. I'm not really into games that much (because I'm too poor to afford them anyway), but Stephanie has been in this krap for years and seem to know how most things go by experience. I want to go back to this video at the cusp of 2025.
Wow, okay, completely fell for the Suicide Squad gag. I was sitting there just absorbing the fact that mainstream game reviews are finally feeling comfortable using "live service" as a negative point in their write-ups, and then come to find out it's not one but TWO half baked games so generic that their reviews are interchangeable!!
The guy who made Umarangi Generations was talking about AAA games recently and brought this idea to my attention alongside another commenter on twitter, and I think it really fits with modern AAA as they exist now, "AAA games are just merchandising commercials now, they are a Happy Meal in which other franchises are stuffed in in order to attract your purchase. The game, as it exists, is just the cardboard which they stuff Predator, Niki Minaj, and eventually Ronald McDonald into."
Me my friend applied to the last season of Knightmare I was gonna wear the helmet and everything then the show was cancelled and we got a letter saying sorry didn't even give us a tickets to watch Funhouse or somthing like that
That intro reminded me of the intros to the US version of Shameless. You've got to give them this, the big budget gaming industry does like to continually upstage itself by sinking even lower.
Steph this is spooky because it was only last week that watched a reptrospective on Knightmare and now it is in this weeks jimquisition! what a great show that was growing up
Damn it Stephanie! I had only recently broken my decades old habit of saying or thinking Leeloo Dallas Multipass anytime I heard the word, but here you are bringing it back. "I. Am. Very disappointed!"
Here's my hot take on Pacific Drive: it's everything you love about Soulsborne games without everything you hated from the Soulsborne games. And I appreciate that.
The Triple A Scope is a $10.99 DLC for Fartnote Rawnoze that you attach onto the Assault Clipazine class weapons that raises your DPS by a factor of 4.55555 over 420 meaning 60% of the time you get a critical hit 5% of the time. It's actually a laser sight.
It feels like there's a whole untapped genre in the "road trip" game. You've got games like Jalopy and Pacific Drive, but I struggle to think of others, which is a shame because having a vehicle that needs very specific maintenance so it can take you to where you're going is just... endearing? I don't know. Just by having the vehicle be tactile and having more nuance to its upkeep than "hold E to repair car" just makes me feel happy, and I'm not even the kind of person who fawns over his own car.
You know what game I've been playing the past few days? Monkey Kong Band 2... for Gameboy. It's got color palettes on the SGB. It also is just a game I can play from start to finish in a weekend, even though it's hard and has lots of secrets to find. I'm in it's post game, which involves finding all those secrets and am in the secret world, which is just more levels, but harder. It's a fun game that doesn't ask anything of me except to play it. Only complaint I have is I need to get a couple in-game coins to save the game, easily found in a couple minutes. I spent my time well compared to getting Bulk & Skull. After this? I'm playing Simon the Wagon 1-3, or maybe Cash Bazooka's trilogy. I'm into retro games not because they're perfect, but because they're still good and there's no grind. That's right, I'm calling old SNES and PS1 era RPGs "no grind", because compared to literally playing for weeks or months like in modern live service games, especially MMOs, their grind barely registers.
Hey, Steph? Thanks for the Pacific Drive recommendation - none of my friends had heard of it and I'm enjoying the fuck out of it. That one NPC sounds exactly like Z. Mann Zilla too which is entirely surreal.
Crazy Taxi as a ‘AAA’ game?
That’s like seeing a piece of graffiti, that turns out to be an advertisement for AT&T.
Speaking of graffiti, a new Jet Set Radio is planned and it's gonna be 'AAA in scope' as well
lmao, sony tried exactly that in 2005 and got rightly bodied
@@Nov-5062it's like SEGA is actively trying to destroy my childhood. 😢
That made me sick to read
It says something that "the developers are talking out of their asses" is the GOOD alternative.
The amount of A's in a game only really increases how much I don't trust them.
And looking at Skull and Bones and Kill the Justice league rightly so.
Alan Wake has 3 but is pretty good though.
Medal of honour allied assault has 4 and that's brilliant.
Yeah! Aandy the Aardvark's Aamerican Aadventures in Aarkansas can fuck off!
That is a good wisdom.
@@Huwbacca an exception doesn't mean that general distrust isn't generally justified.
The onlyway a crazytaxi game could or should be AAA in any scope should be the budget allocated to getting the soundtrack rights from the original game (aswell as just paying the devs a more than livable wage)
Crazy Taxi without the (All I want by Offspring) Is no game I want to play!
Also, all the rights to the real life locales... well, contemporary ones that don't include places like Tower Records.
Actually, no. Include those. Tower Records and Blockbuster and KFC!
@@DefendYoungstownI never thought Id see the day where people want ads and product placment in their games...
@@DefendYoungstown Recreate the real-life areas as they existed in the time of the original. Teleport us back to a world where Tower Records and Blockbuster were still common sights.
@@brittb1696 I don't get it either. For awhile it was actually a feature in games. There's a console command you can use in any Quake Engine game that opens an in-game MP3 player you can use to load a folder or an M3U playlist. Source Engine has the same thing. They almost always work with the media controls on keyboards that have media keys or like my mechanical can generate the media key signals with special key combos. It was when CryEngine, Unity, and the like came around that I stopped seeing that as a feature. Even early Unreal Engine had it but the game had to expose a GUI or it wouldn't load that module.
Did I just see two sailing ships playing chicken, with masts blowing forward firing forward. Nelson's sarcophagus must be registering relativistic spin rates.
And at the speed of a modern day speed boat no less.
Who's nelson
@@mat_max Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson
@@mat_maxhe was the boat-goat of the 1800 british armada. Known for mastering the art of sailing straight at them and winning, despite it being a very bad idea most times.
When he died they out his monument at Trafalgar square, where cars drive around it all day. Presumably as a sort of revenge by what must have been a deep cover french operative infiltrating 1800:s parks and recreations, what with his orogninal drive-towards-them-in-a-line was did against the french.
When he died he was more machine than man, although that meant peg leg wood arm glass eye, rather than roboty bits.
Hus favourite food is anpan. AB blood, 5,4 waist. Loves: work. Dislikes: Napoleon I. Hates: that there would be three more Napoleons.
you did just remind me of the GDC postmortem on final fantasy 14 1.0 from naoki yoshida, because one of the things he identified as a key failing of the 1.0 team was that their attitude was that it didn't matter if they shipped broken content because 'we can just patch it later' and that mentality was a huge factor in the game being the way it was
I'm not surprised they took that tact. Very few games really pay for being incomplete. Some of the most notable examples, Cyberpunk and No Man's Sky, even turned their public perception around afterward. With people putting up with buggy early access games as well, I can see publishers assuming they can just patch afterward and they largely seem to be continuing to do just that. Square is still doing it as well.
And it was still a mess by the end of all the updates.
And ironically he then made FFXVI which... yeah...
To be 100% fair to Yoshi-P Crystal Tools was a fucking piece of shit that was notoriously difficult to work with to the point that it very nearly caused Square Enix to collapse, just look at the development cycle and history for FFXV and FF Versus XIII (FF13 was supposed to be a Playstation 2 game and Versus 13 started doing promotional material when Kingdom Hearts 2 was launched)
It's why they're on Unreal now.
I recently went back and played the XIII trilogy which is on Crystal Tools and all of the issues from FF14 1.0 become immediately apparent in 13-2 when any area that's larger than a hallway is available to walk around (the game engine straight up stops to load assets for a second), and by Lightning Returns where the full game is open world it's just an absolute mess (polygon dog being one of the most prominent examples)
It's what's been killing Total War silently too. The source code is a branched, untraceable mess
Pacific Drive is a great fucking game. I'd argue it's a better adaptation of Roadside Picnic (What the movie Stalker was based on) than the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The Zone isn't something you can fight with a gun. It can only be endured, survived, and experienced.
the inner zone is hell. it's just a portal to the depths of despair and suffering... also meteorites.
It does sound like a Roadside Picnic game.
That last sentence is the exact knowledge that got me to purchase the game. It's not anything you have to FIGHT, just survive. Lol I'm a baby when it comes to horror games when I'm being chased by Big Scary Monster, but being abused by an unstable pocket of reality? SIGN ME UP!
@@xethier I got there last night and between Blacksmiths and Meteor Squalls, I might have trauma.
I tried the demo, I love the atmosphere but I wish there was actual driving between locations and not fast travel :(
An underrrated achievemnt of Baldur's Gate 3 is the fact is showed exactly how much an expensive game should be expected to have.
And I don't even think it IS a 'AAA' title?
The estimated budget for Baldur's Gate 3 is between 100 and 200 million. If you did treat the "A" system as a measure of game production cost, it would be solidly in the AAA space, although not one of the most expensive games ever made.
And now Unicorn Overlord is taking the torch for this year.^^
@@mitrovarrThanks, had no idea about the budget.
TBF only thing I knew about AAA is 'this costs butload more'. xD
Really that it costs the _consumers_ a buttload more.
Triple-aaaayyyyyyy isn't a measure of quality or scope, it's only a measure of money. The money that got put into it and the money they hope to get out of it
Less the first part, more the second one. I highly doubt they actually put enough money to match the amount of time needed. But the top definitely expect a lot of money in return for doing nothing.
@@biocapsule7311 some of these games have budgets equivalent to the GDP of a small country, it's why they can sell millions and still disappoint the publishers
Since the term is based on arbitrary bank credit rating of a company's or nations ability to pay debts timely. It's credit score for the 1%
@@aeloswindrunner A lot of things has the GDP of small countries. It's meaningless. Half of the time they spend those money satisfying ridiculous demands from the top. It's the same thing with movie studio interference. The more you keep wanting to change or add stuff (like more micro-transection etc.). The more time it takes and more money spend. But it's almost guaranteed that even as they are willing to pay for the changes, they don't adequately pay the workers for extra effort to fulfill those changes. So they are still not paying what they should be paying.
This is why when "quadruple A" is brought up, it just makes me think they'll be putting in even more micro-transactions for even less content. To be fair though, I'm not their target audience: the last AAA game I bought at full price was XCom 2 in 2016 (mostly from having played the previous titles and Total Biscuit's recommendation).
I think Gonzo is an underrated muppet.
I mean, he’s one of the main cast, and he had an entire movie dedicated to his origin.
Meep. Really though for me it'd be a tie between Statler and Waldorf.
"Meep" sounds more like a Beaker sound than a Gonzo one.
Sweetums!
Anyone who identifies as a weirdo is pretty cool in my book
"fare play" is a funny pun when you consider microtransAAActions oh god I lost the will to live whilst writing this.
A couple friends of mine did programming on Pacific Drive, glad you enjoyed it!
The Dreamcast version introduced me to Bad Religion and The Offspring, and for that I will love it forever.
RIP to a real one.
I know right!? Felt sad when they they said the soundtrack was bad, i think its a banger!
TEN IN TWENTY TEN!
@@ketchupkatsup9805pop punk isn't for everyone, but everyone should respect Bad Religion.
YA YA YA YA YAAA!
Crazy Taxi will always be linked to the American sports pub chain Beef O’Brady’s because from 2000 (maybe earlier) until they closed just before the pandemic, they had an original Crazy Taxi arcade cabinet. I remember patiently waiting in line with my quarter up to sit on the hard plastic, duct-taped bucket seat and the steering wheel whose foam rubber was disintegrating into a gritty black powder. The cabinet itself was so broken as to barely be usable, and was still my favorite cabinet in any arcade in town
Oskar the Grouch is by far the best muppet. Although I do wonder if he can even afford that trashcan anymore given housing prices...
Hes a hobo.
As someone who has watched Knightmare and played the original Crazy Taxi, I would complain about being made to feel old but I care more about the nearly 10 months I've been on HRT than my actual age.
congrats
ain't that the truth 🙏
Congrats! Literally about to have my first appointment tomorrow!
U get it
@@lunasophia9002 Good luck. I'm doing DIY because I've been on an NHS waiting list since 2019.
5:48 love the detail that (intentionally or not) the German dictionary there shows the entry for "verächtlich" meaning "detestable" or "contemptible". Exactly the way we think about the AAA subject matter.
I knew Pacific Drive was going to be amazing when I learnt Paul Dean formerly of Shut Up & Sit Down was involved. The man is a 2000 carat diamond writer.
I hadn't heard of this game before this video. I instantly wanted it. Now I triple-want it with Paul involved.
Paul has a video talking about it. Really had the game on my radar since then.
Sounds cool! Is it possible to toggleoff the shaky camera?
@@klisterklister2367 Yes you can
There's a board game review channel called Shut Up & Sit Down. Are you talking about the same one?
I appreciate the Fifth Element reference. It is a contemporary and very timely reference. I'm adamant about that.
I just saw Fifth Element in theatres last week, so I reckon you're right.
Pass the copium homie, I’m starting to doubt half life 3 will come out.
The 5th Element tie in game was on the original PlayStation. The one without any numbers.
References to The Fifth Element are green, super green, emerald green
I haven't watched it yet so to me it's not even a brand new movie it's a movie that hasn't come out yet
*CDi Mario:* "Nice of Steph to invite us to this roadside picnic, eh Luigi?"
*CDi Luigi:* "I hope she brought lotsa shade to throw at the games industry!"
The original Crazy Taxi was an arcade game designed to kick you off the machine in 10 minutes or less. "Expanding the scope" and making a game designed for multi-hour sessions just feels like it would be so out of character for the game. To consider a similar genre with roots in the arcade, developers of brawling games are getting it right. Games like Streets of Rage 4, River City Girls, and TMNT Shredder's Revenge, they know that their games are satisfying to play for a limited amount of time, and charge a price that fits this.
Crazy taxi is the kind of short game i wanna play in bed or on the toilet and as an indie/AA developer/publisher i understand this well. Its why for every major top down RPG, Shooter, or Big platformer i make i wanna have small games like a game & watch style collection on mobile with no MTX, DLC, or Up front cost because i am making it for fun and to learn coding that can be played and ended in 5 minutes and be fun as well as challenging in the later levels.
Would love to start a game development studio called 7th gen gaming that has the scope of the games of that generation where they were big enough to be entertaining but tight enough that entire trilogies were able to be completed in a single generation.
You all want a modern send up to Crazy Taxi go play its homage mini game in Infinite Wealth. Now to sit back and wait till Hi-Fi Rush comes out on PS5.
That one's great!
I'll stick to the real crazy taxi sequel.
The Simpsons Road Rage.
The parody that was good enough to just be an installment 🤣
@@stingerjohnny9951 Heck, the GBA version is incredibly good, way more than it deserves to be.
Loved Road Rage. Great Shout!
There's no comparison between the two. It's okay, but I don't understand the hype for crazy taxi, IMO.
5:50 Props to the editor for depicting the german words for "disdain/contempt" here.
"Tripple A-ness"... chefs kiss given how it is spoken...
My friend and I both grew up watching Knightmare. Coincidentally he now lives in the same village as Treguard. They both go drinking together on a regular basis.
I used to watch you a lot in middle school and it’s very nice to see that you are still posting. Keep up the great work!!! I was always excited to come home from a long day of school and watch you
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is exactly what you want out of a modern Jet Set Radio i wish big companies would underatand not every game needs to be 100+hours with road maps
If Nina Struthers walked out onto the floor of a Devolver Digital press conference proclaiming their games are QUADRUPLE AAAA!!!! we would laugh at the satirical absurdity of it. But this is real. A real CEO used that phrase and somehow expected people to not laugh at it.
That twist about the Suicide Squad reviews was BRILLIANT xD this was one of your better videos, enjoyed every minute!
Favourite muppet? Boober. I had a plushie of him as a kid.
3:16 -- That is exactly how I felt about that new Dune game that was announced awhile back. "New Dune game!" "Awesome!" "It's an open-world survival MMO!" "Fuck!"
Come to think of it, I haven't heard anything about that since it was first announced.
the way I found out Skull n Bones came out was seeing it second hand in CEX, classic
the grindr notification on that mobile game💀
The narrative speaks to me as a lifelong gamer. The editor speaks to my attention defections. The ongoing "Lee" jokes throughout multiple videos are killing me! Too good!
best muppet has to be the two old guys in the balcony seats
Statler and Waldorf.
@@Viceroy_Sundercles_IIIthats the one!
"What was your favourite part of the game?"
"The part where I uninstalled it!"
"DOH-HO-HO-HO!"
I got a code for the Avatar game (can't even remember the full title off hand) when I upgraded my CPU a few months ago. Downloaded it. Played ~2 hours and was bored and decided to play something else. As soon as I got to the outside, it quickly felt like the "typical Ubisoft game". The thing I remember most is just being impressed with the visuals and performance and the snowdrop engine in general. Game looks beautiful and runs smooth as silk for me maxed out (7800X3D/RTX 3080 1440p), but If you had set me down to play the game right at that part and told me to guess who made the game (Honestly didn't even know it existed until I saw it came with the 7800X3D) my first guess would be Ubisoft. Shouldn't have to say this but it's the internet, if you like the game I'm not saying you're "wrong" or anything. And Pacific Drive looks really cool, had never heard of it.
I think the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in Pacific Drive was when one of those fucking mannequins appeared out of nowhere and…handed me a spare tire.
You laugh, but it’s genuinely unnerving.
I like to imagine it also had a sign that said "do be careful 'round here traveler, this place can be dangerous from time to time"
You left a Grindr notification in at 6:46... I hope Thomas is well...
I almost didn't click the video because of the weird title, but it turned out to be my favourite of the last months of the Jimquisition.
This episode reminds me of Sterling's video on the perfect pasta sauce; there is no perfect pasta sauce, only perfect pasta sauces. Variety is the spice of life, which also means that not every release needs or even can be a blockbuster succes.
"You've heard this same hype from games you've already forgotten about" sums this up about right.
Beautifuly multitasked on this episode, Steph. Sold me a game, gave me a favorable opinion on something Sony did, while still doing the regular sermon on AAA games sucking, that is a hard truth. And you really felt a bit happy on this episode. Cheers to you!
I want to point out one thing about that chart at 6:50. It seems most 'AAA' games skip the top part, the 'better experience' and go straight for the 'more engagement', they don't care if their games are fun or if the people playing them are actually enjoying themselves, they care about pushing the grind as much as possible while giving the kind of incentives usually reserved for free to play games to build habits in order to boost the almighty 'engagement metric'
3:53 Well that just confirms it's part of Sega's "Super Game" metaverse project that Sapporo is working on. Which likely means the other games in the long-neglected IPs are too. I mean why else would a studio that's only worked on PSO2 and the "Super Game" be working on Crazy Taxi and JSR?
Honestly I’m more interested in the fact that they seem to have put the folks who worked Streets of Rage 4 on the Shinobi remakes which means it’s almost guaranteed to be superb unless Sega suddenly decides to take a monster dump on it by doing something completely insane.
I am concerned.
I'll never get tired of how you say "fucking shiiiiit" :D
Thank God.... For another excellent video..... and also for you.
And Thank you to the team behind the scenes. Be well
Love how the stock footage of a dictionary used in this video includes an entry for "Venusberg", meaning pubic mound (5:50)
I still use the glowy star decals on my car because it lets me find it in darkness due to them glowing in the dark.
When I get those situations where I lose my bearings (and lose that little arrow that tells you where your car is) I can often spot the car from a mile away due to the gaudy deco. lol
Group: "No, Chris!"
Chris: "What?"
The genuine innocence of how he replied killed me. 🤣
4:02 "Yadda yadda yadda... NOTHING!!!"
Loved it. This is how I always react to corpospeak :D
Stephanie this is one of your best recent video. Purely because I feel like you are having fun again and not drag yourself through a shitty game which you hate. Also i really love how you mixed the reviews. You had me!
My first PD mannequin experience was parking and walking right up next to a group, getting 2 feet up to them to get a good close up look, THEN reading their anomaly report still feet away from them until my heart sunk when I read the part of what happens when you touch them D:
i love your videos- They always tickle my nostalgia bone. Bless
"AAAness" is a brilliant term.
Forspoken is a good game though and it's not really live-service driven like the others mentioned so it does not really fit in with Jim's overall comparison.
I thought you made a grave error not having Treygard say "ooooo nasty" until the clip at the end. You win this round Z. Mann!
I don't now what story a Bulk & Skull game would tell, but now I want one because I love them. Slapstick bumbling investigator game or something.
Great video, Steph. I too have been playing the crap out of Pacific Drive. Kinda weird to see my home in a game.
I remember my only friend who owned a dreamcast was into Crazy Taxi. And Shenmue.
That grinder notification tho 😂
Robot Chicken reference! What a twist!
Loved your Playstation Portal review, btw. *chef's kiss*
"Loot-burden"
That's perfectly apt. I'm definitely using this.
that suicide sqad twist was savage
Oh my, breaking out the Video Toaster clips to geezer-tease us in the first two minutes is quite the bold gambit you've employed there, Jim/Steph.
Fantastic video.
But the entire second half my blasted ND brain had grabbed on to that pop-up notif from Grindr and wanted to know what it was Thomas said he felt like sometimes too and I'm not sure I paid attention as much as I should have to "American STALKER Vs the Weeping Mannequins" game review...
Great vid! Definitely need to check out Pacific Drive.
Also, Floyd Pepper was the original based bassist.
Thank you, Z. Mann Zilla, for reminding me of the genius of Andy Kaufman.
We all need reminding from time to time.
Kind of want to set up an entire Monitoring and Evaluation Team for Stephanie's prediction at the end there, about Pacific Drive getting snubbed by the end of the year. I'm not really into games that much (because I'm too poor to afford them anyway), but Stephanie has been in this krap for years and seem to know how most things go by experience. I want to go back to this video at the cusp of 2025.
Wow, okay, completely fell for the Suicide Squad gag. I was sitting there just absorbing the fact that mainstream game reviews are finally feeling comfortable using "live service" as a negative point in their write-ups, and then come to find out it's not one but TWO half baked games so generic that their reviews are interchangeable!!
The guy who made Umarangi Generations was talking about AAA games recently and brought this idea to my attention alongside another commenter on twitter, and I think it really fits with modern AAA as they exist now,
"AAA games are just merchandising commercials now, they are a Happy Meal in which other franchises are stuffed in in order to attract your purchase. The game, as it exists, is just the cardboard which they stuff Predator, Niki Minaj, and eventually Ronald McDonald into."
Me my friend applied to the last season of Knightmare I was gonna wear the helmet and everything then the show was cancelled and we got a letter saying sorry didn't even give us a tickets to watch Funhouse or somthing like that
happy to hear you're enjoying Pacific Drive so much!
The only way this is a Triple A game is if we're all being trolled hard & the Triple A's stand for Axles, Alignments & Action.
I have a hard time picking my favorite muppet, though I'd have to say as a kid it was probably beaker. So, I'll stick with that.
I guess it's Kermit, Steph.
Or the old guys at the theatre.
That intro reminded me of the intros to the US version of Shameless.
You've got to give them this, the big budget gaming industry does like to continually upstage itself by sinking even lower.
Steph this is spooky because it was only last week that watched a reptrospective on Knightmare and now it is in this weeks jimquisition! what a great show that was growing up
Cheeky Grindr notification there 😂 how’s Tony ?
Was "roundabout" in an episode about taxis deliberate? :)
AAA just means pointlessly expensive and risky.
That Tobias guy from Pacific Drive sounds just like Z. Mann ZIlla
Damn it Stephanie! I had only recently broken my decades old habit of saying or thinking Leeloo Dallas Multipass anytime I heard the word, but here you are bringing it back. "I. Am. Very disappointed!"
S-Club 7 is the cod reggae equivalent of New Kids on The Block. Prove me wrong
A random note about how Radikal Bikers precedes both Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio. Now that would be a combination worth playing.
Bobby Kotick probably saw that edit of himself jizzing money and unironically thought it was cool.
Thank you for the heads-up on Pacific Drive! Also you need a Fonzie drop for "triple ayyyyy."
Here's my hot take on Pacific Drive: it's everything you love about Soulsborne games without everything you hated from the Soulsborne games. And I appreciate that.
If Steph had actually just stood there playing an unseen game for 17 minutes only to say "link in the description" I would have died.
The Jonathan Holmes pic fucking sent me, exquisite stuff
Lmao when grinder notif pooped up
It’s the Grindr notification for me 🥴
The Knightmare theme at the end; right in the nostalgias!! I was 10 again and life wasn't horrible! :D
The Triple A Scope is a $10.99 DLC for Fartnote Rawnoze that you attach onto the Assault Clipazine class weapons that raises your DPS by a factor of 4.55555 over 420 meaning 60% of the time you get a critical hit 5% of the time.
It's actually a laser sight.
Unless there is a Zeitgeist going on with Nightmare in the public again, Stephanie is listening to This Week in Retro. :D
The Offspring? Bad Religion was the stand out band on the Crazy Taxi soundtrack! Also was not expecting Mulligan and O'Hare :D
It feels like there's a whole untapped genre in the "road trip" game. You've got games like Jalopy and Pacific Drive, but I struggle to think of others, which is a shame because having a vehicle that needs very specific maintenance so it can take you to where you're going is just... endearing? I don't know. Just by having the vehicle be tactile and having more nuance to its upkeep than "hold E to repair car" just makes me feel happy, and I'm not even the kind of person who fawns over his own car.
You know what game I've been playing the past few days? Monkey Kong Band 2... for Gameboy. It's got color palettes on the SGB. It also is just a game I can play from start to finish in a weekend, even though it's hard and has lots of secrets to find. I'm in it's post game, which involves finding all those secrets and am in the secret world, which is just more levels, but harder. It's a fun game that doesn't ask anything of me except to play it. Only complaint I have is I need to get a couple in-game coins to save the game, easily found in a couple minutes.
I spent my time well compared to getting Bulk & Skull. After this? I'm playing Simon the Wagon 1-3, or maybe Cash Bazooka's trilogy. I'm into retro games not because they're perfect, but because they're still good and there's no grind. That's right, I'm calling old SNES and PS1 era RPGs "no grind", because compared to literally playing for weeks or months like in modern live service games, especially MMOs, their grind barely registers.
I hate driving IRL and usually driving games, but you've made Pacific Drive look worth looking at Steph.
Hey, Steph?
Thanks for the Pacific Drive recommendation - none of my friends had heard of it and I'm enjoying the fuck out of it.
That one NPC sounds exactly like Z. Mann Zilla too which is entirely surreal.
Fav Muppet is Gonzo. Muppet I most relate to is probably Grover