The Strange State of YouTube Gaming Content

 

While I'm at my office I like to put on long form YouTube videos about video games.  Reviews, retrospectives or just long ramblings about some game that the user enjoys, its nice background noise to break up the monotony of putting together road infrastucture and recreating bits of Japan in Blender.  I have my usual suspects that I like to rotate through, just comfy listening while I work but sometimes my brain craves some fresh blood and I go clicking around the suggested videos to see if I can find a new creator whos channel I can ransack with my ears.  While occasionally I do find some new stuff that I find interesting, I've started to notice something worrying about the YouTube video game video essay and if its starting to infect this genre of content I'm sure its probably way worse in other places

Before I start ranting though, let me put some usernames out there for people that I think are cool.  At time of writing I've just finished re-binging most of the videos of ThorHighHeels, a guy who covers various video game oddities and has a very chill, very positive outlook on the medium that may inspire you to look at some games a bit differently than you usually would.  Then there's a user called KBash who I quite like.  Again, he covers various oddities in a sort of review format.  I discovered him when he did a video on fucking Red Ninja of all things.  That alone didn't get me to hit the subscribe button but then he did a MASSIVE video on JUST Ys 1 which is an undertaking I would never be willing to take on myself and I respect the effort put in to a game that only a small number of people give a shit about.  I've also been quite fond of a user called ZERO who does challenge videos for the Resident Evil games.  His video where he beat Resident Evil 7 without running is extremely cool and this man has an iron will when it comes to bullshit Resident Evil challenges.  One final suggestion is Civvie11 who does review style content almost exclusively for boomer shooters.  He's pretty funny, clearly is steeped in the ancient texts of the genre and through his channel I've tried a number of games that I've ended up really enjoying.  There's plenty more users than this whos content I enjoy but if I was to go through every YouTuber I liked then I'd be here all fucking day and that's not what I'm here to yap about.

What I'm not here to complain about is just people I don't gel with.  For example there's a guy I can't stand called Jacob Geller but I'm not concieted enough to put him on blast for being shit.  He's not shit and clearly puts a lot of effort into his stuff, I just don't like it.  The users that I'm about to talk about I'm not going to name because 1) I don't have proof of what I think they are doing and 2) if they are doing it, I don't want people giving them any views but I have run these videos by a few people I know and we all are suspecting the same thing.  

So I hope we're all on the same page about generative AI being complete fucking bullshit right?  Not that I'm a complete AI hater, I can see there being use cases for such a thing existing but the majority of people using it are doing it for bad purposes; generating shit that can then be easily packaged in the form of an article or video that can then be served onto a social media platform for the purpose of generating clicks and therefore generating money.  "Slop", the kids these days tend to call it.   

What I've noticed in the last few weeks when clicking around and looking for new content is that there are a lot of videos out there with human voice over but that sound like the scripts have been generated by AI.  Weird sentences, information that's incorrect or missing important points, delivery that sounds like a high school student reading a presentation where they Ctrl C Ctrl V'd a wikipedia page.  Not so subtle hints that these users are just going to GPT and asking a vague question to the machine rather than going out and engaging with gaming and then forming opinions on their own.  The one other big hint I have that AI is being used in this way is that I had one user in my discord (username related to Lovecraft, for the regulars) who was begging for info on a game from the General channel because GPT wasn't giving him enough to work with.

Another bit of evidence I have to indicate that this is going on is that I found one video about "disturbing video games" and I clicked out of the video about 15 minutes in because the things the guy were saying sounded just sort of...off? its hard to describe.  So when I started writing this post I went to ChatGPT and asked it about disturbing video games and the result I got not only matched his list, but the bullet points I got for each game matched pretty closely the things he was saying in his script.  A real "copy my homework but change it a little bit" ass moment.  

I've got too much going on in my life to get mad about this kind of thing but it is annoying to find a video on a topic I think is going to be cool only for the delivery to sound like its being delivered by a robot thats been through the trash compactor once or twice.  Is this really what people want? To just listen to a guy rattle off the result of a GPT prompt? you don't want something a little more from your media than that?  Maybe hearing the experiences and opinions of people who are interested in the same or similar things to you?  I love, for example, hearing people talk about the Megami Tensei games because which ones we consider to be the best and how we approach each game is interesting to hear about.  It would be considerably less interesting if someone just went "What is the best MegaTen" on GPT and then every video was some monotone fuck head going "Nocturne, Persona 4 and RONDE" every video for hours and hours at a time.

 Demand more out of your media diet.  Find things to inspire or give you new perspective or something.  Something that might get you to try something new and expand your horizons.  Put the fucking skibidi toilet, italian brainrot, 30 second shorts of fat old americans talking about how much they like Chrono Trigger videos down, and pick up something that's even just SLIGHTLY deeper.   Also if you get a whiff of AI, just fuckin close it out, fuck anyone who would use that shit.   

Can't Stop Flippin'

 

When I heard about Unfair Flips I honestly thought it was a joke game, one of those stupid titles that you gift a friend where they play with it for 5 minutes and then it sits in their Steam library unplayed for the rest of time.  For £1.69 on Steam though I had to at least go and give it a look and I was honestly quite surprised at how much I enjoyed it.  

 The premise of the game is extremely simple.  You are given a coin that has a base 20% chance to flip heads when you click it.  When you land a heads you are given a few in-game cents to buy upgrades with and the game ends when you flip heads 10 times in a row.  Flipping heads with a 20% chance each click sounds insane, and it is, so the game allows the player to buy an upgrade to heads chance in 5% increments so you can slowly turn things in your favor although the game likes to emphasize that it is entirely possible for a person to never win.  The chance upgrade will cap out before 100% as well so in a way they really aren't kidding.  On top of that you can upgrade the value of the coins heads result so you can get your upgrades faster and, what is probably the most important upgrade, the speed of the flipping animation so you can do more flips in less time.  

What makes this game really funny is that when you hit your 9th heads combo, the UI falls away and your next flip has a fixed chance to get a certain ending.  You can what these probabilties are in the Steam achievements with the chance to hit a full 10 in a row locked at a pitiful 20%.   Thankfully it's not the only ending there is so I suppose its not really a flat 20% to just "win" but the game can end in a number of ways that don't involve the 10th head.  What makes it even funnier is that what ending you get is chosen at random so if you're REALLY intent on getting that 10th flip then multiple playthroughs are going to be required.

What's surprising about this whole thing is how strangely exhilarating the whole thing is.  When I was clicking after a chain of tails flips and then the counter would start building up and up I could feel myself leaning into my monitor.  Then you hit a 7 or 8 chain when you get a heads and all the tension rushes out of you, it's a weirdly enjoyable feeling.  I think maybe this is how gambling addicts are formed.

While Unfair Flips didn't turn me into an addict, I stopped after a single successful run, it is a game interesting enough where it sits prominently in my memory.  It's one of those games I can see myself coming back to every so often to fiddle with and see which ending I can get this time.  One of the few games in my steam account where I might actually give a shit about getting all the achievements since there is one for each ending

It's a tough game to suggest that people should actually go out and play but if you're open minded and enjoy games of nothing but pure chance then Unfair Flips is a great title to pick up.  Put on an album or a podcast or something and get to flipping, enjoy the thrill when you get your 10 piece.  Worth every penny  

The Plan for 2026

The end of the year approaches once again.  The game awards have crawled out of the sewer to suck the dick of industry shareholders and to affirm the undercooked opinions of the gaming masses.  The end of year sales are churning so that idiots like me can buy stuff 50 to 90% off and then have it rot in the backlog for 2 to 30 years.  Various platforms give us our end of year snapshots to fill our email inboxes with redundant information that serves no purpose to anyone.  A sort of irritating time of year but it’s cozy. 

My plan for 2025 was, at first, to try and finish 365 games within the year.  The idea being I would recreate the October 31 game horror challenge but for every month.  This was then instantly scuppered by finding out my wife was pregnant in mid January and instead of picking games that I could finish quickly, I just played whatever.  Not all bad since I played some cool shit but my best and worst is best kept for another post.  So now I’m thinking how I’m going to approach my 2026 in gaming and I think it’s about high time I tackled something that’s been looming over me for a long time. 

A while ago indie game repository and storefront Itch.io gave away 2 absolutely huge packs of games.  One was around the time of the George Floyd incident and the other when the war in Ukraine started with money raised from these packs used for charitable causes related to these events.  I forget what the exact number of titles were in these packs but it was north of 500 both times and in an instant my already quad digit backlog of games ballooned even harder.   I picked them up because each pack had one game that I wanted and then all the others were a nice bonus. 

These packs have gone mostly untouched since I bought them so I have decided that 2026 will be the year that I rectify that.  Not all of the titles in these packs are video games with some of the entries being table top things or resources for game devs but even with that in mind how many I’ll be able to actually get through is up in the air.  There are many short experiences in there but there’s also some more involved titles too that may eat up decent chunks of my time. 

That said though I think if the only thing I played all year was pc indie games I might go mental so as a secondary goal I think I also want to explore the library of the GBA.  A system I adored in my younger days, a system that has a ton of great games and yet I feel that I’ve only scratched the surface with it.  Plenty of curios on my radar, plenty of titles I’m sure I’ll discover as I dig, I’m excited to revisit this absolute powerhouse of a handheld in the coming year

Of course, not 100% set in stone.  I want to leave myself open to try the new games that come out in the year and maybe pepper in titles from other systems that tickle my fancy in a given month but in terms of a general focus, Itch and the GBA will be dominating my to do lists.  If I can beat my 2025 clear count of around 150 that would be an extra bonus

Here to a good year of good gaming!

The Worst Thing In Japan

My time living in Japan is getting quite long.  At time of writing I’m pushing 15 years and for the most part it’s been incredible.  It’s the very least significantly better than living in my home country of the UK.  For reasons too long to go into here, if you put a gun to my head and asked me to get on a plane back to Manchester or get shot, you would watch me die on the spot. 

That said though, no place is perfect and Japan obviously has its problems, no place in the world could ever be perfect, after all.  For example a pretty serious problem I have here is that as a filthy gaijin, despite having my paychecks drained month to month with all the bullshit taxes and national health insurance, despite having children and owning property, I’m completely disallowed from voting.  Contributing yet having no say in where my tax yennies go is very annoying.  A less serious issue is also Japanse obsession with seasonal or time limited food items.  The day to day stuff is obviously pretty good, Japan is a place known for its cuisine but every so often there will be a thing in a store/restaurant/super market that will be absolutely LIFE CHANGING.  Then you look at the packet or the menu and I see the dreaded 期間限定 and my souls sinks through the floor and into the abyss.  Just make the good shit be forever, there’s no reason why Chocolate Mint Parm is only available some years in summer only, fuck off with that

But the absolute worst thing, by far the biggest bane in my life after living here so long is the company known as Open House, I fucking HATE these guys more than anything in the known universe.  You may think my anger is misplaced, how can I hate a real estate agent? I already own house, surely I don’t have any reason to interact with them? Well you’re right, I don’t, but they are constantly coming to me.  Not just me either, if you’re unlucky enough, native or foreign resident, to be walking down the street and one of their mobile salesmen see you, you’re in for some shit.  When every other salesman in the street sees you they might be like “excuse me, can I have a moment of your time to talk about solar panels?” And you say “no thanks” and they go “ok fine thank you very much”.  But the Open House guys are like, “are you sure?” And then when you say no again they start making small talk while FOLLOWING YOU DOWN THE STREET hoping to steer the conversation back to real estate, the absolute fucking worst.

Here’s an exchange between me and an Open House employee the previous day of writing that inspired this post.  Unless specified with [EN] at the start, the conversation was done in Japanese and while constantly moving down the street

OH: Excise me do you have a moment?

Me [EN]: No thanks (answering in English to hopefully deter the guy from continuing, this has never worked)

OH: Are you interested in purchasing property in this area?

Me: No sorry, I really don’t have the time right now

OH: *shimmying directly into my path, pushing a clipboard into my view and pulling out a pen and offering it to me* So how old is your son? (he was in a carrier on my chest)

Me [EN]: Oh my god can you FUCK OFF?!

OH [EN]: I’m sorry?

Me: Get lost!

OH: It’ll only take a little time!

To which we then reached the supermarket I was walking to and I ignored that last comment and he thankfully didn’t follow me inside.  If I talked to any other salesmen like that I’d feel bad, but with these guys I almost regret not throwing out personal insults or resorting to fists. 

Now you can argue that “they are just doing their jobs, it’s probably their bosses probably telling them to be like that” but I honestly do not fucking care.  Japan is a country where you can literally pay a company like 30 bucks and they will find a selection of jobs FOR YOU, they are choosing to work at a company where their approach to sales is to push as hard as possible and waste as much time as possible.  If the job market was fucked like it is in some other places I’d be more understanding but it’s not, so get fucked.  Encounters like this have happened to me countless times around Nagoya and I’m fucking sick of it.  My example above isn’t even the worst one, I had a woman try to drag me into their offices and sit down for a consultation despite saying no and she DID follow me into a department store up to an escalator.  She got lucky though because at that point I’d only had the Open House harassment like 8 times and the sub 10 count made me less prone to rage

This is the only company in the country to act like this.  It’s happened to me and I’ve seen people being chased around by these guys looking extremely uncomfortable.  Doesn’t matter if you’re in a rush, with kids, bleeding out in the street, the open house guys are coming and they will not rest until they have sold you a property you don’t need at a significantly higher price than other properties in the area.  Even the cell phone plan salesman in AEON malls who can be a bit annoying aren’t this bad.  FUCK OPEN HOUSE, GO BANKRUPT NOW.
 

Return of the King('s Field)

 

A long time ago, before From Software was a household name churning out the massively popular Souls games, they made a series called Kings Field for the PlayStation.  A series of first person person real time dungeon crawlers with a unique vibe that despite looking worse than the Windows95 maze screen saver, really dug its claws into anyone who got their hands on it, including me.  Its a fairly expansive series with games all the way up to the PS2 that also has spin offs like Shadow Tower (PS1) or Eternal Ring (PS2) but it’s a style of game that has been long, LONG dead.  Looking at it you may think it similar to something like Elder Scrolls but you’d be way off base.  If you haven’t played any of them just stop reading this post, go play one and then come back, it’s something worth just seeing for yourself rather than having it described to you. 

Like I said though, it’s a style of game that’s been long dead.  I remember playing Eternal Ring on the PS2 when it was new-ish and then basically nothing in that style for many years. But then in 2023 Lunacid hit the scene, a game very openly inspired by Shadow Tower and Kings Field made by the person who gave us Lost in Vivo.  That combo made me drop everything, buy it instantly and play it immediately rather than letting it sit in the backlog for years.  It’s obviously a modern take on the idea being a lot more fluid than any of the KF games ever were but I enjoyed every minute that I spent with it. Then a free to play sequel (prequel?) was released that I haven’t had the time to play yet but that’s so faithful to the concept that the developer made it on the Sword of Moonlight engine, the Kings Field editor that FromSoft made publicly available back in the day and it’s still usable even in current year.  But I thought that was going to be it.  A fringe enthusiast of esoteric bullshit makes something specifically for my tastes and then the genre goes back to sleep, how wrong I seem to be

I’ve noticed, in the last year or two that there’s been an uptick in games on Steam that are using that old Kings Field style and running with it.  Not QUITE clones, but wearing the inspiration so clearly that unless you have no idea what KF is you can see what these developers are doing.  Games like Monomyth, Verho, Flyknight, Labyrinth of the Demon King and the game that inspired this post at time of writing, Queens Domain (har har).  All games that I’m jumping at the chance to play in the near future simply for just being inspired by the niche yet legendary Kings Field.  I don’t know what started the mini-trend of Field-likes but I’m extremely grateful for it happening. 

So if you’re reading this post and you’ve never played a Kings Field game, the first step is to go fix that and play one.  Buy it, emulate it, I don’t give a fuck what you do, I’m ordering you to go play it.  Then when you’re done with that and you’re now addicted, go support some of these folks trying to start a genre revival and help bring the legacy of Kings Field out from under the shadow of Dark Souls.  Now all I need is one indie dev to rip off Baroque and I can die happy

The Definitive Guide to Japanese Convini Chicken

 

Remember when I used to post about Japan travel stuff? I do, and it’s an aspect of this blog I feel has been neglected for far too long and I’m feeling silly today so let’s talk about Japanese convenience store fried chicken.  There is a great debate about who has the best chicken among both the natives and the gaijin but I’m not interested in any of that.  As a hardcore convini enjoyer, this is the definitive ranking, you can comment, complain, cancel me all you want, I know I’m correct on this and the rankings are FINAL

For the purposes of this post, we’re only considering the following.  Nana-chiki from 7-11, L-Chiki from Lawson and Fami-Chiki from Family Mart.  If you think you know the answer already, you’re a tasteless pleb. 

THE WORST ONE

The award for the worst chicken out of our nominees is easily the Nana-Chiki from 7-11.  It doesn’t taste bad, per se, but it’s the most disappointing of the bunch.  Pretty much all of the fried food in 7-11 sucks ass and I’d rather not eat any of it but that’s ok because their strengths lay elsewhere.  Nana-chiki sucks and if all 7-11s removed their fried food section tomorrow, it would not be missed. 

SIDE NOTE, this isn’t up for discussion, really, but despite what I just said about their fried food, 7-11 does technically have the crown for best chicken of all time when they had the Nana-Chiki Red with Cheese.  It was a different cut of chicken so the texture was better, the coating was spicy and delicious and the melted cheese in the middle was just fucking INCREDIBLE.  The reason I can stand by my previous statements despite this is that that this item was a limited edition thing that has never been brought back.  You were so close to winning 7, but ya fumbled it

THE SOLID SECOND PLACER

Despite what most Hub-Dwelling gaijin or office shackled natives might tell you, fami-chiki is not the best one.  Unlike the 7-11 chicken though, Fami-Chiki is actually incredible though.  The fami chicki is perfect in a pinch, like a warm hug from a loved one on a cold day, you can always count on it to give you something quick and satisfying on the go.  You have to think of the fami-chiki like the shotgun in Doom.  The Doom shotgun is not the best gun in that game but it is the work horse of the load out, old reliable that you can pick up in most situations and get the job done with.  The other thing that elevates the fami-chiki is that all the other fried food in Family Mart sucks.  It stands tall among all the low-rate trash unfit for human consumption behind the glass of the heated cabinet and if not for these glorious cuts of dead bird, Family Mart wouldn’t even be in the conversation

THE SLEEPER WINNER

The L-Chiki from Lawson is the under appreciated gem of Japanese convini chicken.  Slept on by the average native, ignored by the average gaijin, L-Chiki is seriously a food item that you need to have more of in your life.  The regular version tastes incredible with its sort of herby, sort of lemony coating and it always uses perfect cuts of chicken that have an incredible texture.  Maybe it’s unfair to consider it but there is also a Red variant that has a spicy coating that is the closest thing I’m ever going to get to the Nana-Chiki red with cheese.  The problem with the L-Chiki is that its existence is overshadowed by Karaage-Kun, a line of chicken nuggets also sold at Lawson.  I love to eat some karaage-kun as much as anyone but the fact that it’s overshadowing the L-Chiki so hard is a crime.  The marketing department at Lawson HQ belong in prison for this one

Bottom line of this post, eat more L-Chiki.  Don’t argue with me, just go and do it and only talk to me about it after you’ve eaten 1000 pieces.  It’s the best, end of

Onimusha 2 is Insane

 

I'm a big fan of the first Onimusha game.  To sum it up in a pithy, not quite accurate way for anyone who’s never played it, it’s essentially classic Resident Evil but with samurai.  It’s one of those games that I return to at least once a year or so to take up the blade as Samanosuke and show the demons of Gifu Castle what for.  Despite my deep love for the first game though, I have extremely limited experience with the sequels.  I played 2 and 3 briefly at launch, never beat them and then largely forgot about them.  I briefly watched the final moments of Oni 3 in a video game bar a few years ago but I was off my face drunk and not really paying attention so I can’t tell you anything outside of “Jean Reno was there” and you can tell that from the box.  

So recently I decided to make a change to this lapse in my gaming experience and I sat my ass down and played through Onimusha 2 and I did not quite get the experience I was expecting at all.  I hesitate to call the game “bad” per se, but maybe I’ll sink as low as “weird and annoying” 

Right out of the gate, from the moment you hit start the vibes are just off.  Onimusha 1 was a different beast compared to Resident Evil but the DNA was still there.  The horror elements didn't really hit with the fantastical designs and stilted English voice work but an effort was being made.  Oni 2 kicks off with an honest to goodness anime OP but with the vibes of a period drama shown on Japanese tv at 1pm for the housewives circa 1995.  This vibe sticks throughout the whole game with an extremely corny and forced romantic sub plot which is occasionally broken up when it remembers what it’s supposed to be a sequel to.  

The weirdness continues as you are greeted with a gold counter on your menu and the ability to gift items to a number of side characters, which by itself is fine but what makes it weird is that you are totally locked out of the system about 2 hours in.  My 6000 gold from the start of the game sat in my inventory untouched until Nobunaga ate shit at the end.  The other thing is that neglecting this system, because I thought I could engage with it later, completely FUCKED my play through.  I found Onimusha 2 to be brutally difficult, something I wasn’t expecting considering the first game is a free clear.  The ending stats showed me, however, that my neglect for the friendship system locked about half the game out for me which is cool from a replayability standpoint but bad from a first play stress standpoint.  I struggled HARD with the final boss due to a lack of healing resources, a lack I would not have had if the ninja could have opened the trick chests or having extra scenes which I assume would have had more meds and herbs.  

Despite the easily missable game systems, the moment to moment sword play was great.  Basically the same as Oni 1 but the enemies in this game are actually sort of threatening and not just piñatas full of exp to farm as I run from one boss to another.  That said though, the bosses are insufferably shit, feeling mostly unfair rather than posing any kind of interesting challenge.  The worst being the weird pig woman with the umbrella who has attacks that I swear cannot be blocked and does insane damage unless you’ve been pumping your armor and completely ignoring your damage output.  The final form of the final boss also just drops the sword play to turn into a boss fight from Sin and Punishment (N64) but with bad controls which was certainly something I wasn’t wanting or enjoying 

The cutscenes are where things get really unhinged though.  I want to call the English voice work terrible but it’s SO bad that I have to wonder if it’s actually being done on purpose and if that’s true I have to wonder why this game is being treated as such a joke.  The game as many laugh out loud “what the fuck?!” moments that need to be seen to be appreciated such as any scene with the foppish umbrella haircut demon swordsman.  Introduced as what I thought as comic relief, harasses you until the end of the game as a main antagonist where you then have a climactic duel with him in the penultimate area.  The one that got the biggest laugh out of me is when Nobunaga’s first form goes down and he shoots some orbs into a slot machine that spins and then turns into an elephant.  Not a sentence I thought I’d be able to write about Onimusha of all things.  I hate that cliche gag of “were they high when they made this?!” But SOMETHING was being abused in both the writing room and the office of the people making the cutscenes, I’m sure of it.

Overall, I like 2 significantly less than 1.  That said though, I’m excited to go and revisit it now equipped with the hindsight of a first play through.  The weirdness of the presentation is something I don’t think I’ll ever get over but I’ll be interested to replay and re-evaluate in about a year.  Watch this space