NOCLIP Pocket E84 - Made My Eyeballs Sweat - Ghostrunner

If this is podcast, we never should have climbed down from the
trees. Welcome back to Spooktember in July, the month where we
barely even know what’s going on anymore. Today, we’re talking
about Ghostrunner, a first person platformer action game where you
have to execute difficult platforming while avoiding bullets and
doing cool cyberpunk sword tricks. It is a categorically awesome
concept in all the ways that games can be, really. The obvious
first comparison to make is to Neon White, which we just talked
about a few months ago, and the comparison isn’t a stretch. Both
games necessitate the player repeat sections repeatedly to get them
as close to perfect as they can in order to succeed and move on to
the next level, but Neon White is much more forgiving, and
subjectively, a bit more motivating. Ghostrunner is a much harder
game, something that is obviously a design choice, but because of
that the act of completing a section is often reward enough without
wanting to go back and get all collectibles or improve your time.
This doesn’t make the game bad, however, but it is a much more
daunting experience just to complete. The mechanics are very tight
and their strength comes in the form of trying to get the player
into a flow state, but then the biggest issue facing the game is
that when it does stumble, it breaks that mindset and begins to
feel frustrating more quickly than a more forgiving game might.
This could all be irrelevant to you, though, depending on how tough
you like your challenges to be, and it is a well polished gem if
hard is what you’re looking for. We’re going to talk about boss
fights and why they weren’t as successful as they could be,
difficulty and its necessity to the game on a conceptual level, and
we determine the true identity of the Ghostrunner to be an eighteen
wheeler. Thank you for joining us again this week! This game was
really the lynchpin for the whole “Spooktember in July” bad idea we
had, since we were able to cobble together a theme after wanting to
just talk about the Resident Evil games we did. That said, it’s a
game I’m happy to have played, one because I had a reasonably good
time with it, and also because it’s such a good example of the
razor edge you walk when designing a game with difficulty at its
core. Which side of the fence did you fall on? Were you able to
carry this game out to completion? Let us know in the comments or
over on our Discord! Next time we’re going to be talking about Chop
Goblins, a bit because it’s short and we need some breathing room
for some bigger episodes coming next month, but you can see it as a
bit of a bonus Spooktember game if that suits you. Hope you’ll chop
on down for that one.