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Graham inflicts the dregs of gaming on an unprepared Alex, who reacts accordingly.

How did you all enjoy the first official episode?

- Air Control
- The Hat Man: Shadow Ward
- Goat Simulator 1.1

Personally, I enjoyed watching Air Control. I didn't enjoy watching Hat Man, as that looked like an awful and boring game. Alex's running commentary was the only thing that kept me going through that.

Goat Sim 1.1 Co-Op was delightful, as always, though I hope you try some more mutators next time.

I could only pay half attention, but I quite enjoyed what I caught of it! I agree with Memo's breakdown, Air Control was insane even though I'd already seen Jim's videos, Hat Man wasn't substantial enough to even get my attention most of the time, and Goat Simulator was a much needed palate cleanser.

Agreed on all three of the videos. The Watch + Plays seem to work best when the game is just kind of insane in it's own right. Air Control managed to thread the needle of not knowing if it's intentional parody or a horrible horrible game. So much stupid stuff. I honestly found it more fun, if less funny, than Prayer Warriors. It felt like really bad Jazzpunk in the best way possible.

Hat Man was just... eh. If the area was actually shifting around as Alex moved through it, that's likely the most interesting thing about the game. That seems like a good and bad mechanic that can easily disorient the player. But it would require really good programming to do it in a way that didn't just end in a cul-de-sac like it normally seemed to. Then again, that might have just been due to poor, same-y level design.

Goat Sim was, as always, a blast. I'm super glad co-op was done too, as I feel it made the entire thing a lot more entertaining. The only thing that seems off is that it doesn't seem like a 'Watch + Play game.' But it was so much fun that the fact it's a good game doesn't matter to me.

Yeah, Goat Sim doesn't seem like a W+P game to me, either, but I think that W+P games have such a potential to be so terrible that something like Goat Sim is necessary after playing 2 horrible games.

Yeah so I enjoyed both the 'bad' games; Air Control was absurd enough to be entertaining in its own right, and The Hat Man was just fodder for Alex (although A&G doing the 'speedrun commentary' was fantastic ).

...I actually nodded off while you went on break to get Goat Sim 1.1 updated, and woke up, blearily looking at splitscreen when graham had found Deadmau5, and I ended up going to bed with the image of a goat with a blue DM head.

(yeah, I later sat down and watched the missed part thanks to twitch's archive)

Great session; I just hope the blandness of the 'mechanically complete but narratively empty' The Hat Man didn't do any permanent damage to Alex.

Dear Dr. Graham I happen to be in possession of a key for a game that's both terrible, boring and has the kind of characters that will probably make Alex tilt.

Obviously I can't tweet it to you, since there are actually bots that look for CD keys on twitter. I've already tried PM-ing it via Twitch a while ago, but I think you missed it.

Should I just send it to info[at]loadingreadyrun.com?

My fear with this is that there are more boring-bad games than funny-bad ones, and that might impact negatively on the show.

The again I find Alex's analysis of why a game is bad very interesting and entretaining.

Certainly true, but there's also just so many terrible games out there, they should be able to cherry-pick out enough funny-bad games to support the show.

I agree with most people in that Air Control was such that the glitches and commentary kept me laughing so hard I was unable to take a breath.

Hat Man was just boring and tedious even with the introduction of Strudel reviews.

I guess we need to find a balance between the ways things are bad. I think that Pray Warriors is still the gold standard for this balance. It was playable and wrong but no one seemed bored by it. Horrified yes but not bored to the point where you just don't feel like continuing.

I think it may be a good idea to have something good like goat sim to finish out a stream if the bad games are too bad to play further.

You've got to be careful, when inflicting a game, not to just inflict boring games, i.e. Hat Man. Air Control, in contrast, is a perfect example of the kind of game you want to inflict.

Having a genuinely good backup game (or back up-up) like Goat Sim every week is also a very good thing.

So aside from Hat Man, it was a really enjoyable stream.

Strudel Reviews should be a thing.

All three Let's Plays were entertaining in different ways.

I was a huge fan of Alex's speedrun commentary, especially after watching a crapton of AGDQ playthroughs.

Until we codify it somehow, send W+P ideas to my Twitter, @Graham_LRR

You could always throw together a Google Doc Form that dumps to a spreadsheet for management.

Master Gunner wrote:You could always throw together a Google Doc Form that dumps to a spreadsheet for management.

That's super easy to do, so I +1 this idea.

Balthasar_Wiseman wrote:I guess we need to find a balance between the ways things are bad. I think that Pray Warriors is still the gold standard for this balance. It was playable and wrong but no one seemed bored by it. Horrified yes but not bored to the point where you just don't feel like continuing.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm worried this show peaked early. As in, peaked with literally the first episode. Is anything ever really going to top Prayer Warriors? Even if it's another game from the same devs, it'll have lost a lot of the surprise value.

But this show is still a ton of fun anyway Air Control worked and hatman: deadly fedoras or whatever it was called (poorly lit empty hallway simulator 2014?) sort of didn't.

Agreed that this show will always sort of need multiple backup plans, in case the game crashes (crappy games tend to do this) or doesn't work or just isn't fun to watch. Goat Sim does seem like a solid fallback in the event nothing else pans out.

I said it before Checkpoint and I'll say it here- I genuinely thought Air Control was worse than Prayer Warriors. Don't get me wrong, the sheer level of insanity present in Prayer Warriors is both unmatched and slightly terrifying, but as you said, it was at least playable (after a fashion). I mean it wasn't good playable, but there were separate missions and it actually functioned as a game. Air Control, judged purely as a game, is the single worst I have ever seen- broken throughout, to the point of unplayability in patches, its controls don't work half the time, its UI is unnavigable and the whole thing is simply hideous in both concept and execution. Prayer Warriors was the king of entertaining streams for how mental it was, but watching Air Control just made me angry and tired- bored at its terribleness. The game they were trying to make was so utterly banal and pathetic that the fact it failed so miserably didn't even pretend to matter.

Eurgh. Clearly it isn't done pissing me off.

Ix summed up my opinions on Air Control. I don't want to watch games that are unplayable, broken messes. I kind of enjoyed Hat Man for that reason. It was bad, but it was serviceable. And it lead to Strudel Reviews, which was fun. Same with Revelations 2012. I missed out on Prayer Warriors, but it at least sounded like it fit that mold as well.

I get your intentions with bringing the latest target of Jim Sterling's ire to this segment... but they're getting that ire for a reason. If it's broken, don't show it.

Now see, I'm of the opposite view - I have a sneaking suspicion (despite the axiom "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence") that Air Control was DELIBERATELY LIKE THAT...maybe a 'parody' of buggy, poorly-thought out game design, or just a frickin' troll. In other words, it is SUPPOSED to be laughed at. There was a point - discovering all the wacky, 'broken', insane and genuinely 'wtf' things in the game.

On the other hand, The Hat Man was functional with regards to graphics and controls and u/i...but BARREN OF GAMEPLAY/STORY/etc. There was no POINT.

And the thing was, alex seemed to hate that MUCH MORE than Air Control - I guess in his view it's better to tell a story badly, then speak eloquently and have nothing to say

I'm with Empath on this one, at least on the point of discovering all the wacky, broken, insane things in the game. At least they were able to make Air Control funny and fun to me. It was so goofy and bad that it was enjoyable to see them play and react to it. Yes, it was a bad game. Though I didn't see the beginning, it seemed less broken than Prayer Warriors. Yes, PW never crashed, and it was technically 'playable.' But the level design was so poor, the entire game was badly coded, and there was no real indication of what to do. PW was lazy game design based on another engine. At least Air Control had some stuff that actually worked (like the 'realistic' mode). It was still lazy, but at least it didn't feel like it was just the worst Quake mod ever.

The Hat Man, on the other hand, was mechanically sound. But it was just flat-out boring to me. Watching them play was still pretty dull, though they managed to make it fun at times. It just felt like it was trying to cash grab. Tell the most base of boring stories and going from there. An enemy that's not even scary starring in a game that's not even that atmospheric (the BIG thing a horror game needs). It feels like exactly what G+A called it: Youtube Bait.

So yea, I'd watch Air Control over Hat Man any day. I'd never actually play either of them though.

Then again, the idea behind Hat Man (a horror house which changes while you're in there) sounds very interesting, and I think, against what Jim Sterling says, that Hat Man isn't trying to get the player with jump scares.
Unfortunately it isn't doing anything else, and the implementation of the other idea is very poor, so the game is as boring as sucking a nail.

So I guess I'm in the minority here, because I enjoyed watching Hat Man precisely because the game was super bland so the entertainment actually came from Alex & Graham?

Air Control had too much "LOL so random type crap in it" which I tend to not enjoy. Then again I'm not particularly fond of Goat Simulator either, for the same reasons. I mean I'd never play it, but I did love watching them play it and have a blast.

ch3m1kal wrote:So I guess I'm in the minority here, because I enjoyed watching Hat Man precisely because the game was super bland so the entertainment actually came from Alex & Graham?

Air Control had too much "LOL so random type crap in it" which I tend to not enjoy. Then again I'm not particularly fond of Goat Simulator either, for the same reasons. I mean I'd never play it, but I did love watching them play it and have a blast.

My problem with Hat Man is that the comedy seemed to dry up when they realized there was nothing more to the game than collecting pages. There were still a couple of funny parts mind you, but largely it was just sort of a grind. While I do agree the random stuff to it, the humor to me was more seeing them react to it. It's kind of the same with Goat Sim. Though that at least has good gameplay and the ability to explore and discover new things as you play in a virtual sandbox. You know, like an actual game has.

If I myself were to play these games, I'd play Hat Man over Air Control any day. Though I'd play Goat Sim over either. I think the thing for me in terms of the stream is "is the streamer having a good time?" If they aren't, then it gets kind of miserable. And Alex clearly wasn't with The Hat Man. If they are, then it's normally a good time, even if the game itself is bad or just weird. Air Control felt like that to me, kind of like how Spin Tires felt during IDDQDerp today.