Q&A: December 2nd, 2021 (Should've Been On The 1st)

Apologies for the delay to Thursday, yesterday was an editing session that went on for too long.

NephyrisX Asks
Favourite Forza Horizon intro/initial race?

I'm honestly not the biggest fan of showcases in-general as they really are just Time Trials that are hopelessly forgiving. My vote would likely go to Horizon 2 merely for it being the very first once I ever experienced.

San_Rayncloud Asks
How've you been doin lately?

Pretty average, but still grateful that despite all the challenges I may face in life, my passion and family aren't one of them.

OzarkTempses Asks
Was there a particular twist on the racing genre that you feel could have been exploited more? Also, next F-Zero game when?

I've definitely got no hope for Nintendo to acknowledge F-Zero's existence. For me, the biggest twisted for a racing game would be a proper adaptive narrative. Racing Stories have been great in every other art-form, yet games have continued to struggle, mainly because the answer isn't expensive cutscenes, but reactivity, which is admittedly much easier to request than implement.

The Great Leveler Asks
If you had to lose all of your senses but one which sense would keep and why?

Fuck... that's really tough. I wouldn't want to lose sight or taste, but I think I'd go insane without music.

Ben Felgate Asks
Do you enjoy music mashups? Like the creations from William Maranci Mashups, or Neil Cicierega?

I don't know those names off the top of my head, but I do love me a good mashup, and it is absolutely an art-form and genre. I still revisit the DJ Hero 1 soundtrack to this day.

DaCody Asks
If you had to make the metro series play out in a different country, which country do you think would be the most “interesting”?

Japan would be very neat, and I believe the development team even had ideas to expand the series out to countries like Korea due to it having an even more in-depth Subway System that could theoretically be used as a nuclear shelter. Just hit me that I haven't really seen South Africa in a post-apocalyptic setting.

Paris would be very cool too.

Kizza Lee Asks
Are you as much of a movie fan as you are a gamer? And would you ever do movie reviews in some form?

I'd say I'm a bigger fan of games, but I watch movies all the time, and do analyze them in a similar manner. While I've never considered covering movies on the regular, I've wanted to make a video for years called "Snatch Was My Star Wars", and delving into how that film sparked my interest in the making of film.

I've also got a Documentary Certificate from Uni (not to say it's worth much), so I know a little bit about the production process and have experiences on-set. I learned I'm a pre-post guy, not a set guy.

Godric Asks
The Combat Arms comment is a blast to the past I never expected! I still fondly look back to that game in spite of its significant flaws. Assuming you played it too, do you think there were any good, unique elements to that game which would be fun/fresh in a contemporary implementation?

...Not really no. It's very harsh, but my view always was if somebody loved Combat Arms, it wasn't for being the best, it's because they didn't try anything else. That era exploded with free to play shooters and while Combat Arms might've looked good compared to something like War Rock, there were soon games like AVA, Solider Front, and Wolf Team, that either had more polish, better mechanics, or a more ridiculous gameplay framework to draw enjoyment from.

Those games really did come to predict the modern big budget gaming scene though. They figured out way ahead of time that you simply can't win population numbers with an opening price-tag, it's far easier to convince your friends to join in on something when they don't need to spend anything to try.

I'm sure there's a whole generation of gamers whose first experiences were titles like Combat Arms, and frankly... that's a lot better than the free to play crap I grew up with.

Submit your questions in the comments below, for future Patreon Q&A's.