Gaming Under The Influence

Is Bloodborne the best Fromsoft game? To answer this question, Alex and Mike compare chalice dungeons and caves, the secondary content in Bloodborne and Elden Ring respectively.

Whether you are new to the genre or revisiting it after a prolonged absence, you can join Alex & Mike for a run down of five essential tips to help you succeed at Soulslike games Gaming Under the Influence @ Green Dragon CVR with Mike + Alex; SUPPORT GreenDragonCVR https://greendragoncvr.com/store/support-green-dragon-cvr Website: https://greendragoncvr.com/

Alex & Mike discuss three promising Soulslike games featured at the Game Awards 2023

The original Dark Souls is refreshing to return to in 2023. Recent and acclaimed titles (like Alan Wake 2 and Tears of the Kingdom) exhibit disproportion between gameplay mechanics and fiction or worldbuilding. Fromsoft's 2011 masterpiece, on the other hand, is the marriage of focused mechanics and a tight gameplay loop with an awe-inspiring world they are perfectly suited to express.

Alan Wake II features the most revolutionary interaction between fictional and mechanical elements since Death Stranding. Join Alex & Mike for a discussion of the Mind Place, Overlap, AWEs, how Remedy expresses these ideas though multiple layers of in-game reality and multimedia depictions.

We've played every 3D soulslike game at GreenDragonCVR. None have been so terrible as 2023's Lords of the Fallen. A total absence of enemy and boss variety; tedious progression and level design; a goofy and cartoonish world conveyed with comically poor writing,; these factors combine to make this the singular worst soulslike game made in the history of the genre.

Alex & Mike speculate on potential game of the year nominees for 2023

Playing Soulslike games is not about skill nor strength of will. It is entirely about state of mind: [about] enjoying the act of playing, with no concern for outcomes. Join Alex and Mike for a discussion of how to approach and ejoy soulslike games.

Join Alex & Mike for a review of the best soulslike games from developers other than FromSoftware. Science-fictional settings, impressive scale, directional parrying & third-person shooting are amongst the features that make these games stand out in an increasingly crowded genre.

Lies of P is the first true equal of Fromsoft's own games, capturing the themes and mechanical complexities that make Miyazaki's work special. Further, it is the hardest soulslike ever made, particularly for parry design, boss patterns and the commitment required to best even mid-game bosses.

Phil Spencer’s ambition to acquire Nintendo for Xbox has been the talk of the town this week. Join Alex & Mike for a discussion of why such an acquisition would lead to the production of sub par games. When creatives lack control of their own financial interests, they inevitably become the instrument of another party’s financial ambitions.

Outsiders view the soulslike genre as impenetrable, and for good reason. Steep learning curves, absent tutorials, abstract themes and storytelling all make it difficult for newcomers to begin playing games in the genre. Join Alex and Mike for an introduction to soulslike games via five of the most accessible titles. Only “pure soulslike” games (with no easy mode) are included.

Expectations were high for these long-awaited releases from Bethesda and Fromsoft. Both are clear successes. Join Mike and Alex for a discussion of worldbuilding, story and gameplay in Armored Core 6 and Starfield. Gaming Under the Influence @ Green Dragon CVR with Mike + Alex; SUPPORT GreenDragonCVR https://greendragoncvr.com/store/support-green-dragon-cvr

Join Alex & Mike for a review of 2023's Remnant II, a soulslike with procedural level generation and third-person shooting from Gunfire Games.

Alex and Mike return to the lore of Final Fantasy XVI. After some initial disappointment with the worldbuilding, the boys have come to appreciate the broader strokes of the story and world, despite some lingering distaste for bearer-related plot beats.

Valheim recently received its biggest update since launch, containing the titular Mistlands biome long-time players have waited many months to explore. The new zone is weird & awe-inspiring, with rocky peaks jutting into a purple sky from an ocean of impenetrable mist, where man-sized insects war with the dverger (a dwarf-like race of initially-friendly npcs) amidst the skeletons of giants. The co...

The Game Awards 2022 were the best iteration of the show yet. Activistic filler content was minimal, awards were well-distributed and the industry's greatest developers presented their current projects. We were left with many reasons to be excited about the future of video games. Join Mike & Alex for a recap of the most interesting announcements from the Game Awards 2022.

Evil West is a refreshing game to play in 2022. While, as its marketing has noted, it lacks secondary monetization features of any kind, it also recalls games developed in the PS2 era, before the advent of contemporary information technology: when developers lacked the ability to monitor community opinion or concurrent steam players and instead had no choice but to focus on the integrity and self-...

At the AAA scale, both Kojima & Miyazaki have attained an unusual degree of financial & creative freedom over the games they make.: Miyazaki is president of FromSoft, while Kojima owns his own studio. Join Mike & Alex for an optimistic treatment of the future this makes possible.

Alex & Mike at GreenDragonCVR present a list of the absolute best games yet to launch in 2022. From JRPGs to farming sims, from Pokemon to survival horror, some of the most important games of the year will be released in November & December. Are you ready? Harvestella [Developed by Square Enix, Live Wire] The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me [Supermassive Games] Pokemon: Scarlet & Violet [...

Join Mike & Alex for a discussion of the top 10 games of 2022 so far. From soulslike to survival to pokemon to FPS, this year has been packed with outstanding games we could not be happier to share our thoughts on. Tune in next week for a list of the most exciting games left to release this year.

Playing a game involves two things: gameplay on the one hand and, on the other, the world, story & meaning which gameplay conveys. Gameplay, like the words in a book or paint on a canvas, is the medium the game-maker uses to communicate his concept. Even where gameplay mechanics are similar, as between entries in the same genre, each game is distinct at least to the extent that its mechanics are u...

What does the failure that is Stadia have in common with the firing of Kurvitz, Hindpere & Rostov from ZU/AM? They both result from an industry fixation on market-immanent metrics of a product’s ‘success’ at the expense of the integrity of the work. Join Alex & Mike for a discussion of streaming services & sh*t-canned creators, both of which manifest a profoundly sick & degenerate video game devel...

Alex & Mike discuss bloat in contemporary open world games & the tension they often exhibit between narrative & systems. While survival games & soulslikes convey the intelligible content of the world & plot via the player’s tactile engagement with a virtual space, western open world games with heavy narrative focus put forth an unhappy and contradictory marriage of needlessly dense systems and cin...

Gaming Under the Influence @ Green Dragon CVR with Mike + Alex; Developers out of 343 Industries have recently offered insight into why they believe “games are harder to make these days”[i]. Amongst the items on their list of reasons are enhanced technical expectations and the intricacies of running, updating or maintaining online games. Not one of these things is integral to a good game; this ser...