Episode 156 - Celebratorium - TRS 3 Year Anniversary! Green Zone, Final Fantasy XIII, Shutter Island, Street Fight IV iPhone & behind-the-scenes [Discussion]

[vikingdt2]

Congrats on the 3 years of radtad rewivews (terible) Great show and I hope you guys keep it going.

but good lord mike.. how long does that whole process take? Are you able to do anything on the weekend? or just work?

[vikingdt2]

Originally Posted by burnedtubes

Hey great episode guys. I really enjoyed the behind the scenes segment with Mike. I really think you should give Mike his own segment or something; the guys has great screen presence. I can only imagine the amount of time he has to put into each episode and as long time fan I say thank you!

agreed!!

[tsmith15]

The only thing I want to say is how badass the intro background is. I'd totally get that as a poster for my room.

[skin87]

This was a good last episode for me. I leave for Navy Boot Camp tomorrow and am going to miss the next 9 episodes :-(, but this was a good one to end on.

I'm kind of glad that I don't have the time to play FFXIII. Final Fantasy games have a special place in my childhood, it reminds me of Christmas breaks from middle school. For some reason, I don't think 13 will live up to those memories, and I highly doubt it can be as good as Lost Odyssey was for me.

[blacksymbiote]

Originally Posted by burnedtubes

Hey great episode guys. I really enjoyed the behind the scenes segment with Mike. I really think you should give Mike his own segment or something; the guy has great screen presence. I can only imagine the amount of time he has to put into each episode and as long time fan I say thank you!

If you thought Mike was good in this week's episode, you should listen to episode 23 of the WeeklyGeekly podcast as Mike was a featured guest had had a lot of air time. Talked more about the making of TRS, and he even reviewed some movies! It's a little like Bizarro world listening to Mike review movies, but he's actually quite good!

[yokai]

First of all, I think you all made some very legit points about Final Fantasy XIII, however I feel like you guys are criticizing the story way too soon. First off,

1) The story is very much supposed to represent the "epic" tales of older Greek stories, in which humans exist among gods. The L'cie are supposed to be those "humans gifted with godly powers" who are supposed to fulfill the gods, or the fal'cie, missions. The overall theme is bending fate, do you do what you must or do what you want? Which, in some ways, is a very Japanese theme, almost Giri vs Ninjou (What you must do vs what you want to do).

2) "Grunting" is probably the worst thing about localized Japanese films / games. In Japanese, it's much more frequent to use "sound effect" type onomatopoeia, which isn't translatable. Stuff like "ara", "wa~" other sounds are common in Japanese speech in real life. In English, we rarely use onomatopoeias except for maybe some slight sounds such as "opps" and "whoa". I guess in other words, It just sounds way less natural in English, and there's no way to translate around that without taking liberties with the story.

3) As The fiction of final fantasy games always start mid-way through the stories.you continue, you begin to figure out what the "universe" is. Sahz and Lightning, in this game, acts as your guide and explains many of the elements of the universe. As you continue, you unlock many elements of the story before hand. With Japanese films, or novels, you may not fully understand the whole story until you finish, which also adds to the replay and rewatchability (Each time you watch, you figure out more about the universe, understand "why" things are the way they are) With SOME stories, you won't understand the story even after watching it all, and will take a few re-watches to figure out "oh so that's why" because often times elements are "explained" but aren't touched up on, to keep the feeling of mystery in which the reader / watcher / listener must "deduce" the reasoning behind actions.

I can totally understand the story method may be off putting, I definitely feel like your judgment about the universe is a bit hasty, and the story is "intended" to start mid way through! That also isn't a story method ONLY for Japanese story telling, it's called "in medias res" which can be found in some of histories BEST stories, such as Odyssey. Even The Great Gatsby has some element of that as well, so to say that it's an "ineffective" story telling method is a bit absurd.

I liked the games story a lot, but I played it in Japanese. When playing it in English, I didn't like how the names were localized (Sahz sounds more like Sazz (almost like Jazz), Vanille (which, in Japanese, they just said Vanira (Vanilla)) is now Van-eel, I think Van-ill would have been a proper translation) and I certainly do not like the voice choices used.

It's unfortunate, I don't think this story really does translate well. As a Japanese Major, I felt the story felt very Japanese in some ways, both in dialogue and concept.

I wish Square Enix would catch up with the times and provide dual audio tracks, I think it's very odd that video games haven't caught up with features that have been available in the home movie experience since the DVD.

idk if TRS crew will even read this, but I feel it's important to highlight some parts of their review that made me cringe a little bit. Overall, you have some very valid points though, and I'd definitely say the game ISN'T perfect. I wrote a long review on it as well, but linking to it may have a moderator remove it due to "advertising" my website, which has happened before, so I will refrain. I'd love to see what you think of the game NEXT week!

Originally Posted by baldmonkey

Is it not terrible game design if it takes 10 hours for the game to become good?
I dont have the patience any longer to suffer through that. There is a lot of great games out there that can be played in ten hours.

Shouldn't take 10 hours for it to get good. about 5 hours in you should be already at the part where it's picking up. The game, imo, was fun right out of the box, but maybe I'm just more tolerate of RPGs compared to some others. A lot of the games "fun" is only achieved if you play it right. You can spend a million hours on a boss battle, but it isn't fun that way, so if you spend too much time on a boss or a fight it's because you are doing it wrong. The whole point of the game is to figure out "what is the best format to beat this boss?" "What will the best party set up be?" "What is this boss's pattern and how can I use this to my advantage?"

Where this game fails in design is it's lack of environment interactivity, lack of non-linear dungeons, No minigames or anything that breaks the game from being "fight this fight that , save, watch a movie", and some non-boss battle are almost boss worthy in difficulty, which can be frustrating.

[murphy1d]

There are only 2 things I envy, musical talent and awesome graphic design. Great work Mike!

[dentistry]

It isn't downloading for me from iTunes, nor is it streaming on the page any longer. :S
However I can download and stream other shows fine. And other podcasts on iTunes. o.O

[heyseuss]

Originally Posted by tsmith15

The only thing I want to say is how badass the intro background is. I'd totally get that as a poster for my room.

Which is the intro background ? The brown screen ? The bubbly brown screen ? The lamp, wall, movie screen, bookcase screen ?

[heyseuss]

Originally Posted by skin87

This was a good last episode for me. I leave for Navy Boot Camp tomorrow and am going to miss the next 9 episodes :-(, but this was a good one to end on.

Think of how cool it will be to have a butt-load of new TRS's backed up to view. 9 ep.'s will require a mighty big bucket of popcorn.