Daryl Talks Games

Elevators are unsung heroes in games. They are strange little places that we all find ourselves for a brief moment in passing. In some cases they just hide a loading screen or move us from floor to floor, but today, I want to send a big weird love letter to the elevators in games that go above and beyond. And hopefully, by doing so, I can convince you that I am not insane for being oddly obsessed with them…

For months now, a great many of you have been asking when I would finally play Outer Wilds. After a lot of milking it to gain interest- I MEAN, after a lot of eagerly anticipating giving it a go, I finally sat down to play it. Here is my experience with… a game that I only started to enjoy when I stopped treating it like a game.

Time travel is usually used in fiction to mystify and captivate the audience by taking advantage of situations that are not possible in reality. What if you met yourself? Can the future be changed? Will multiple timelines be created? But if a narrative makes that time travel irreversible and in many ways, unwelcome… you might see something completely and totally heart wrenching that will only plant the seeds for something much more profound. Why yes, I am going to convince you that an Adam Sandler comedy is actually deep using anime.

The hype just before a new game release is one of the most spellbinding parts of being a gamer. There is nothing quite like grasping at every little piece of information leading up to that release date, every trailer, every rumor, every theory. But despite how fun that song and dance is, is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Let’s talk about your brain on new game hype, appropriately, one week before the long awaited release of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.

Tears of the Kingdom makes me feel like I’m cheating. I want to like that about it, but something in me just won’t allow it. So I made a video exploring why I feel this way, how I got past this feeling, and perhaps, how you can too if you feel the same.

What game is this for you? “I hate this game so much…” proceeds to play for hours It seems we all have at least one title that we simply cannot pull ourselves away from despite our distaste for it. Maybe it’s that you have to prove something to yourself about that game, maybe it’s that you have to prove a point to someone else. Maybe it’s that you just want to understand the buzz and maybe… it’s because you feel like you’ve sunk too much time into it to walk away. Whatever the case is, you probably have a game like this in your life and today, we’re gonna talk about why exactly that is.

What game is this for you? “I hate this game so much…” proceeds to play for hours It seems we all have at least one title that we simply cannot pull ourselves away from despite our distaste for it. Maybe it’s that you have to prove something to yourself about that game, maybe it’s that you have to prove a point to someone else. Maybe it’s that you just want to understand the buzz and maybe… it’s because you feel like you’ve sunk too much time into it to walk away. Whatever the case is, you probably have a game like this in your life and today, we’re gonna talk about why exactly that is.

I’m going to be honest. This was one of the most difficult videos I’ve ever written or edited because I’m trying to describe a particular sensation that I get when I wake up some mornings. This is a video about that sensation, how the game Soma started it, and how a few other pieces of media made it worse and then… somehow helped me come to peace with it. It’s taken me about a year to finally write this and that’s because it is deeply personal and esoteric. I hope you enjoy it.

Video game reviews and opinions are practically inescapable these days and frankly, they have become a massive part of the overall experience, to me. But what exactly does that do to our perception of games and is it a bad thing? Let's take a look at some psych studies on the topic and discuss how reviews really affect your time gaming.

A year ago, I made you all a promise. I told you that in one year’s time, for better or for worse, I was going to have given my absolute best effort on finishing my backlog. And in this video, I’ll take you through everything that happened… and didn’t happen. This was a journey. Thank you for coming with me.

Something I run into often is getting caught between enjoying a game and analyzing a game. And it happens for TV and movies as well. It’s like I can’t turn my brain off and just enjoy things for what they’re worth, and instead can’t help but critically think about all of the details behind how it was made/developer decisions/writing directions, etc. Let’s talk about that.