The Strangest Game of 2023
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- Опубліковано 10 бер 2023
- And here is a red balloon. I think of you and let it go. | Join Nebula and watch my exclusive videos at go.nebula.tv/jacob-geller
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Media Used: Wanted: Dead, WET, Bullet Witch, NeverDead, Yakuza 0, Sleeping Dogs, Disco Elysium, Death Stranding, No More Heroes, Metal Gear Solid 4, Metal Gear Solid 5, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Blade Runner, The Room, Joker, Flashdance
Music Used (Chronologically): Dire Dire Docks (Super Mario 64), Crystals (M.O.O.N.), 99 Luftballons (Wanted: Dead cover), Cohen’s Masterpiece- Accordion (Bioshock Infinite), Killer Dish, Venomous Grace (Wanted: Dead), Main Theme (Streets of Rage 4), Menu Theme (Wanted: Dead), Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 (Trombone Champ), Regurgitation Pumping Station (World of Goo), Sins of the Father (MGSV), It Has to Be This Way (MGR: R), Gunsmith’s Theme (Wanted: Dead), Run (iamthekidyouknowwhatimean), Ending Triumph (Half Life: Alyx), Promise (Okami), The Heatseeker (Pistol Whip), Land of a Thousand Lakes (Trabant33), Maniac (Bella and the Switchblades)
Thumbnail Credit: / hotcyder
Description Credit: 99 Luftballons (English Translation)
Additional music by Epidemic Sound
Additional Footage by Getty Images - Ігри
Please enjoy my step into the world of cooking videos with this lasagna-fueled companion video on Nebula. Spoilers, THE RECIPE DOESN'T HAVE ANY GARLIC. nebula.tv/videos/jacob-geller-making-wanted-deads-questionable-lasagna-recipe
Jacob Geller
Was the use of Run (iamthekidyouknowwhatimean) at the point where you say you don't "get" the game intentionally a call back to your Hotline Miami 2 vid? (20:15)
Hey Jacob, really enjoyed the video! Just wondering, but have you played Hi Fi Rush or Pizza Tower yet? If not, I would really recommend them, they're both such blurs of colour, motion and personality, and they're short enough that they don't take up too much time but every second is worthwhile.
No garlic? Unsubscribed.
I'm here to comment on your knife skills because nebula has no comments.
Also, please throw away that empty ketchup bottle in your fridge.
As a German who has spent quite some time in Karaoke bars, I can confirm that 99 Luftballons comes up at least once per night. And it always sounds as presented in game.
1) someone laughing their ass off instead of singing
2) wildly off beat clapping
3) no notes hit but 10/10 effort on belting
4) people randomly going hard on slow parts
Exactly my experience in Karaoke Bars to this. Especially the clapping is so German 😂
Aye
That or Atemlos durch die Nacht
10/10 realism
As a canadian i’m very happy to hear this xDXD
This game feels like listening to an internal joke you're not in on.
it truly does hahah
Ha, that is a good description.
FOUR BALLS
@@TheEvilCheesecakethis game is now a JoJo reference
This feels like I just logged into a meme board from another universe
Hello, Jacob. I’m Justin Leeper, mocap actor. I did the cutscene performances for Herzog and Richter, as well as smatterings of both androids, the night-club dude who calls Stone a bitch, and even Stone herself in the scene with Gunsmith you feel had romantic tension.
The mocap was shot in Tokyo, and we already had the VO to work off of. I did my best to inject personality into everyone I portrayed - especially Herzog. It was quite a fun gig!
Coincidentally, I also did performance capture for Deadman’s scenes and half of Higgs’s in Death Stranding - which you mentioned several times in this video.
Anyway, just wanted to say hi!
You should be proud of your work! Thank you for your contributions to things I love.
Thank you for your hard work!
Yo that's fuckin' badass!
I have never heared of this game before this video, but while watching I had the theory that this was done out of opportunity. Casting Ms. Zimmerman probably while she is in Tokyo and then having your German voice actors sing the "99 Luftballons" song - or having a bunch of scenes and assets that are never used again - feels so.. Patchwork (I don't know how else to say)
Could you tell us a bit more about the production of this? This is so goddamn interesting!
Thanks for some insight!
it just keeps getting better holy molly
hold on, "millennials" being synonymous with "young people" to out of touch news broadcasters in 2023 is still kinda accurate
hehe yeah it is funny. Like, most millennials have kids of their own right now XD
The same goes for "boomers." People just think it means "adults" now. It's a specific generation of people.
The people that are the Boomers age now compared to when Boomers were recognized as “the bad guys group of crotchety old people” are Gen X. Boomers are those leading the federal government.
@@showalk The thing is.....at this point, "Boomer" and "Millennial" are essentially signposts for attitudes and ideas (presumably) pioneered by said generations.
So they are both inaccurate denotatively as they're literally labels for people born in a specific time period (people born between 1946 and 1964 vs people born between 1981 and 1996). However, they are connotatively useful, if not accurate, because they carry the aesthetics of the (ongoing) intergenerational beef between the two generations that spurred the zeitgeist to even coin these terms.
In other words: they're misnomers, like Tin Can, Steam Roller or Red Panda. I think this particular kind is called an anachronism because you're taking an old term and continuing to use it in reference to newer things that are similar.
"Boomer" and "Millennial" are shorthand for "old (and stubborn to a fault)" and "young (and open minded to a fault)" respectively....
@@showalk it's crazy how language evolves to mean different things
This game has real heart in it. It's a very irregular heartbeat and any person with this heart needs to go to the hospital immediately, but it has heart nonetheless.
This game's heart was a transplant by the TF2 Medic
Anyway, that’s how I lost my medical license
The perfect review
Arrhythmia? ❤️
I've been having very bad heart palpitations I am hopefully going to the doctor for soon and this comment made me laugh so hard, thank you
...kinda made them worse for a bit but hey, it's nice to laugh anyways!
Jacob Geller
Jacob Geller
Jacob Geller
Jacob Geller
Jacob Geller
Jacob Geller
Amazed that this game exists. The Australian narrator talking about ramen that makes no other appearance anywhere else in the game is one of the funniest bits I've ever seen in a game.
Peter Talbot's contribution to the work is immeasurable
Is that a minigame when she eats the ramen?
it's so good man
To me it seems like a humorous reference to Catherine
Whatever it is, it hits the nail squarely on the head.
About the ending scene.
I don't think Stone talks to her son, but to the kid she saves in the flashback cutscene that can be seen when collecting a random police report.
The way I see it, her past life as a young mother have been wiped out of her memory. But the feeling creeps out unconsciously as she tries to connect with this orphan kid.
To back this up, the anime flashbacks are dated around 2004, and the current events are taking place in 2023. Her son would not be a kid at this point.
Yes, that is absolutely it. Thanks for saying this.
Thank you!
I'm gonna have a fucking aneurysm.
I actually kinda appreciate that the karaoke scene has the cast singing badly off-key and stumbling over the words.
It feels much more natural to the vibe of work colleagues on a drunken night out than a perfectly polished and pitch-corrected performance would be.
Another great detail in the karaoke is that how your squad reacts changes based on performance.
With your cliche 80’s police chief the hardest to get off his mobile phone and actually participate
For comparison, Kiryu's VA in the yakuza series is actually an accomplished singer and has his own band who occasionally play the karaoke songs due to popular request.
@@Svoorhout85 Ok but tbh he didnt start as that, one of the reasons Baka Mitai is pitched down is because he lacked the lyrical training to sing it in its intended pitch, he became a singer afterwards
"This is the only time in the entire game there's narration. We will never learn who that Australian ramen scholar is." This was the exact moment in this video that I realized this game truly was something special. It's like if Yakuza was German, and also bad, but compromising none of its charm.
Koishi talks about Australian ramen scholar. Never thought I'd see this ever.
Jacob's absolute assurance that one day he'll hear an Australian man discussing the history of ramen is the confidence I need in life.
People here can get pretty intense about their ramen choices, so if he passes an Aussie in the street sometime...well, it's certainly not impossible!
i mean, australia is pretty close to japan, so it’s not impossible
As an Aussie who loves ramen, I'd believe it
That's just Joey AnimeMan
Okay, the actors laughing at the karaoke part actually makes it feel so much more real tho. Not the best singing, but fun, that's what it's all about x3 And yes, it is cute.
When elevator joke scene happened in my game I first sat for 30 seconds trying to digest it, then laughed like absolute maniac. It has this absolutely wonderful shitty delivery of a "you're in a discord call with 3 europeans during a break between raid attempts" that I didn't know was possible to recreate in any media. This game is a gem. I hate janky gameplay with passion, but everything that surrounds it, makes me so so so happy.
Why gelatinous?
@@ForumArcade bcoz its sew random lol holds up spork
This is actually so on point and I feel this almost every WoW Classic raid night. It's bizarrely accurate.
@@ForumArcade Because the idea of a catgirl that wobbles like jelly when you poke her made me smile.
@@gelatinouscatgirl8369 saaame.
Five to ten years from now we will see video essays about Wanted: Dead being "a forgotten classic"
I'd imagine it's too sloppy in its execution for that to ever happen.
Wanted: Dead Is A Game That Refuses To Die
Jacob Geller
2030
@@AirLancer If your talking gameplay I would have to say no on sloppy execution. The story lacks focus for sure but the game still has a lot of charm.
@@AirLancer The entire point of the video is that it's not sloppy on execution though
Like “WET“?
"someone read something interesting and decided to have a character say it" is my favorite kind of art
a lot of jojo's bizarre adventure reads like this lmao, especially later parts
@@sunrise.system Kojima and Araki are absolute kings when it comes to pointless but fascinating trivia.
You'll love the later Dune books.
it's terrible art though, admit it...
A tradition going back at least to Victor Hugo
I want more games like this forever. I hope people keep getting enough to fund their bonkers passion projects and making a statement. I may not know what they meant to say, but I want to see them try and say it.
fly your freak flag.
Yeah this looks utterly nuts and I feel extremely compelled to pick it up
I too hope more Hames like this probe to be a kick in the balls to designed by committee slop
I love videos like this one and Hotline Miami where Jacob is like "I know I normally make artistic viewings of my video subjects but LOOK AT THIS NONSENSE LIVING IN MY HEAD RENT FREE!!!"
gotta excise my demons somehow
And to knit those two videos even tighter together: the remix of Maniac featured in Wanted:Dead was done by Carpenter Brut, who was featured several times on the soundtrack for Hotline Miami 2!
@@JacobGeller I thought you said "exercise" and for a moment and my mind was full of demons lifting weights and doing yoga.
@@ForumArcade Seems like an apt descriptor
@@deadboy522 While Carpenter Brut has a cover of Maniac, it's not the one used in Wanted:Dead, and the credits for the one used in game are listed as Raney Shockne and a group called "Bella and the Switchblades". Admittedly that second one appears to be a pseudonym though, since they don't really show up on a search for anything outside of affiliation with Wanted:Dead's soundtrack.
"You can say that Wanted: Dead is striking out, but you can't accuse it of not swinging," is such an important statement. Developers have become so risk-averse and afraid to try weird shit because it might fail. #MakeVideoGamesWeirdAgain
honestly, I want a sequel/spinoff of this lol
Agreed
idk what you mean there are still lots of game nowdays that are wacky and not generic
makes me think of game series like no more heroes. that guy's stuff is always very strange but quirky.
Glad we got this game this year AND Pizza Tower
I was fortunate enough to see some of the marketing for this game only a week before release, and immediately preordered it. Not based on the strength of what I thought the game was going to be, but solely on the vibe of how it was presented. It looked like it would be a bizarre morass of conflicting ideas, style, and gameplay, equal parts fun and strange. I was right, and I loved it. My two cents on the story, or at least my takeaway and why I think it's so great;
Dauer Synthetics sold everyone a lie, and that lie unravelling is what lead to the events of the game. All of the 'androids', including Stone, are just desperate humans who had their minds wiped, bodies altered, and fed a fake history. It started to click with me with the repeated "I came into this world in a bodybag, I have no trouble leaving it that way." Though their memories are gone, some lingering sense of former self remains. They know that their old life died to bring about the new 'Android' one. And I think, starting with Stone rescuing that kid in one of the cutscenes, the illusion is starting to crack for her as well. She was never in prison, she was being held until she needed to be reactivated. This truth coming out and the android rebellion lead to Dauer going bankrupt and them calling in their Private Military to try and burn everything to the ground to minimize evidence and/or liability.
It's highly likely that the 'Stone' personality didn't exist at all until the exact second the game opened on her in a cell. "Sometimes they wake you up with memories of yesterday", another line from the captured 'Android'. So by the final cutscene of her in the hotel room, she knows that something was lost and has transferred feelings of maternal grief onto the kid she rescued. Her actual child would be an adult by the events of the game (Memories show 'Class of 2004', Hotel ending is 2022), while she 'lives' a year or two at a time during a war, policing action, covert ops, whatever at Dauer's behest. And at the end, she's the last piece in play for Dauer, a rogue 'android' that's starting to realize the truth. So they're coming for her and she's on the run.
For me, that final phone call was quite a gut punch. Since some parts of the game and story felt missing or unfinished, I wasn't 100% confident in my interpretation until the very end. And then it hit way harder than a game like this has any right to.
Wow, this interpretation is great! Like that's a legitimately extremely compelling idea for a story, a corporation modifying and brainwashing individuals into believing they're androids, then selling them as labor to countries far away from where they were gathered so that they stand no chance of being recognized. I really hope that your interpretation is correct and honestly if it is I kinda wish it was more clear in game lol
YEEEES! Fucking YES! Just all of this 100%.
Holy shit what a great elaboration. 👏👏👏👏
this! i hope stone gets to meet her son :(
Okay this game needs a sequel I think
The part that really drew me in was the loading screen.
It went from, "oh, that's a strange thing to do for a karaoke minigame" to, "Now hold, on, how much of the game is like this?"
Then you talked about the 2-D animated cutscene and everything got INFINITELY more interesting.
What's wild is that, just from watching the video, Wanted Dead feels like a Yakuza game. Which would be fine, but Wanted Dead is just about all over the place, whereas Yakuza is silly, but structured. It literally felt like the devs just... They wanted to do whatever they wanted in the moment and they did. It's wildly inconsistent, lacking in parts, but exceptional in others. It's weird and a little jank and, somehow, feels inexplicably COOL. I really hope we get more from the studio.
It's like if Yakuza smoked some Hideo Kojima and wrote the script after 48 hours with no sleep.
From what little of the game I've seen here, the game to me looks like a weird ass remix of things from other games. SUDA51, MGS, Detroit Become Human maybe, a little Catherine too? It's... weird. But obviously I'd have to play the game to find out what is really going on there.
@@umbaupause It feels like someone took characteristics of, say, "Eastern Video Games' Greatest Hits" and mashed it up into a single video game. The one transcendental aspect of Wanted Dead that really gets me is that there are parts of it that really, honestly, do work. As a single product in isolation, it's terribly confusing with design decisions that felt like someone used a random number generator to decide some plot points and writing decisions, but the end result is something strangely compelling. Jacob says that the game feels like a "Cult Classic", and I'd agree. I really, really want to see more of it, strangely enough. I'd take another Wanted Dead game any day.
Something *comprehensible* next time though, hopefully
This video makes it look like one person wanted it to be Yakuza, one wanted it to be Metal Gear, and one wanted it to be No More Heroes, and they never got together to figure out which to go with so they just tried to do all of them.
Kind of said this already in my earlier comment, but it is just so fascinating to me: As a german native speaker you recognize how Fee Marie Zimmermann is speaking all of her lines in english, but not adjusting her german intonation style at all. So the line at 16:14 would actually be delivered perfectly.... iiiif she were speaking german. I'm not sure if this changes the observation that she cannot deliver her lines, but it fits into Wanted dead 's strangeness either way
German is a 3rd language for me and I'm just barely fluent in it, but even I noticed this. There is a "German intonation" that sounds correct in German, but when used with English sounds odd and stilted. This is not unusual for several languages actually; and I think is part of the 'accent' that non-native speakers have with English (just as native English speakers often sound odd when speaking other languages - German included - at least partly due to retaining English intonation).
The real feat in truly mastering foreign languages is getting the 'accent' correct, IMO. You can speak a language perfectly fluently and competently, but still be instantly recognized as a foreigner/non-native speaker by the weird accent. And that is seriously the hardest part.
As a fellow native German speaker, I think you're spot-on. Right down to the emphasis on "ee" in "Identify", this would work just fine in German. I'm just confused how Fee didn't catch onto that since she speaks English well enough to at least read her lines.
It really makes one wonder if that's just failure or sort of the point to drive down the alienness of the character in this setting
I believe this makes me appreciate this game's level of weirdness a bit more. Thank you for dropping a bit of knowledge on some of us that would have gone unappreciated. From a mainly english speaker, I thank you my friend.
this game always felt european to me some how, seeing all the playthroughts dialogue and even the style i dunno why even without the voices it somehow felt like the french games like "remember me" or some other stuff
This seems less like a game and more of a surprisingly well made group project of an experience where everyone kinda went _"Fuck it, we ball!"_
I love it, reminds me of realtime dubs where everyone is on the verge of laughing but can't or they'll lose a bet.
This game feels like some kid's "video games are so cool, I wanna make a video game!" pipe dream brought into reality. And that, I think, is beautiful
For all the weird things that were supposed to be jokes, seeing Stephanie Joosten in an apron saying “make sure to use the good tomato paste, not the hipster one” has to be one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time.
I love that you still occasionally just make a video about a video game. No foreboding message, no frightening philosophical ideas, no existential crises that last for weeks after watching.
Just "Hey, how about this game?" written with an unmatchable dedication to cogence and coherence. Even when your point is simple, you say it beautifully.
I'll say it again, I get giddy every time I see a new upload from you. Keep it up.
that and the 4 balls joke reminds me of jojo bizarre adventure, araki also like to put random trivia in the story
Well Jacob is what I'd call "an art school activist".
He knows about art far deeper than the average person and then draws parallels to real life. He's political and an activist, using these concepts he comes across in art to create context for his messaging. It's totally fine BTW, but I do admit it sometimes come across as "preachy", "pretentious" and down-right "fear mongery". It's kinda like the leftist version of crazy conspiracy theories lmao.
But sometimes he'll just want to appreciate and talk about art that is not depressing, that cannot be connected to current politics or issues or conflicts. Sometimes he just reads/watches/plays something that inspires him and he just wants to let other people know that "hey, this exists. Isn't it rad?"
@@devforfun5618 Honestly, I think it's a Japanese thing. It seems that nearly every anime, Japanese game or movie I see there's a moment where the story will grind to a halt so a character can explain some random factoid that is very loosely related to the situation at hand. Most of the time the factoid is an old wife's tale that makes no sense, but since someone mentioned it's therefore true and a key piece of the story.
It's like, a character will stop a fight to talk about some species of heels will get out of their predator's mouth by producing mucus, so he covers himself in vaseline, becoming immune to punching.
I really apreciate them singing 99 Luftballons and being actually able to properly pronounce the words instead of straight up slaughtering them. So many foreign productions feature roles that are "Geman natives" but actually are just US Americans or Japanese people stumbling over words.
Neon Genesis Evangelion eheh...
@@Dacronhai Tiffany Grant actually is a native German speaker and helped correct the script multiple times where the Japanese writers used incorrect words, or even in the English production where they tried to fix it and still got it wrong. She did the same thing in Chrono Crusade, where she played a German character who spoke German frequently. Like a time when they used "Ladung" instead of "beschwören" when summoning something. The first is an order for public appearance, the second is calling forth a spirit.
@@OtakuUnitedStudio I'm talking about the Japanese voice actor, only watched it sub; also while Tiffany Grant's German is very good she is audibly not a native German.
@@OtakuUnitedStudio not a native german speaker, she's American
I just can't get over the rap battle meme as the loading screen. If this game doesn't exactly know what it's doing, then it was written by somebody utterly insane
I really hope that the team behind this can use the earnings from wanted dead to make a truly fantastic sequel. There's so much passion and potential here it just needs refinement and time
@@str8apem88 because their willing to make this in the first place
My biggest takeaway is just how good that maniac cover is. Taking an already hype as hell song and giving it that punchy production. Great stuff.
The whole ost is great. Prove Me Wrong is just a delight
if you like that cover try carpenter brut's cover of maniac too
@@Shyguy5104 came here to say this! Carpenter Brut's cover is soooooooo good oh my gosh
It seems, like they even came up with a fictional band, that "made" this. Crazy effort and fitting for this fever dream of a game.
@@TheWeirdaholic I'm not sure if it's entirely fictional or just small.
The other half of the vocal tracks are all Stefanie Joosten covering 80's tracks.
It's so good.
This version of "maniac" is a banger, holy cow. This game is all over the place.
This was the video that made developers begin to ask each other "Will it stump Geller?", giving rise to the Stump Geller genre.
I think the reference to _The Room_ is apt. The creator of this game strikes me as one of those Ed Wood, Tommy Wiseau types who vision and ambition far outstrip their abilities and budget.
And somehow got people on staff who are GODS at blocking and lighting and pacing cutscenes, even involving slightly stilted mocap. A lot of the story stuff that Jacob is so enthralled with, trying to figure out how it can be so good and bad at the same time... feels like wild, ambitious-and-underconsidered writing, carried to a mountaintop by exceptional animation direction.
You know, in any other game, I'd assume that final scene was a poignant, sad one implying that she had called her son knowing the troops were running down the hall to kill her. It screams "I just want to hear my sons voice one last time" and I have no idea if that was intentional or not.
I think it was intentional since in the end her and her team are on the run and she doesn't know what will happen.
"You can say that Wanted: Dead is striking out, but you can't accuse it of not swinging." Beautifully put. 🙌
22:29 I think this somewhat hinted at through one of the collectible files you can pick up, which is Stone's profile, including a writeup of her history. I remember screenshotting it, and it mentions that she was a Lieutenant in the "Allied Forces" and that she was "sentenced to life in prison for violations of military law, including terrorism, extortion, murder and other crimes of an unorthodox nature." I found this well before I saw that final animated cutscene that mentioned Continental Standard giving her a "white collar" job, so it immediately made me think they literally just drugged her and had her work off the debt as some kind of black ops soldier and had her commit a crapload of very, very illegal things, including war crimes. Then I assume they kept good on their "promise" and proceeded to restore her memory, only to toss her aside and let her rot in prison for the rest of her life. God this game is wild.
I'm so glad you made this. I was also floored by how particular the decisions made all through the game were. The intricate breakfast order that they took the time to model, and that never made another appearance in the game is an early example. Any of the kitchens in the game have ludicrously detailed and varied kitchen equipment. The story fails itself pretty completely, but there are even suggestions of good interesting science fiction ideas if you squint hard enough. They spent so much time filling the game with stuff to no discernable end. Wild game!
Not forgetting the advertisement, that is an AMV itself, or the fact, that the "maniac" cover seems to be made by a fictional band, specifically created for this game.
Regarding the ending - I thought "Stone's kid" was actually the kid she saved in the apartment shooting flashback halfway through the game, and that they would take her money but not let her actually adopt him because of her record. That actually makes it hit harder.
That said the entire rest of the game is deranged, so who even knows.
having not played the game, my initial thought was that she had later found out about her old kid but the “orphange” wont let her have the kid back because they own them as property for some nefarious reason or another.
I... I kinda really want this game to get a sequel. The story sounds incomprehensible but fascinating and I want more.
I know they won't do one, probably, but... shit man, if they release it as like a bunch of animations, or a webcomic, or like... a 1930's style radio show or something I wanna be there for that.
this is a sequel, more specifically a spiritual successor to devil's third
@@jgnThat explains more about this game than any of the video did
@@jgn THEY ARE THE DEVIL'S THIRD GUYS!?
@@aboreal yepp
Not even Swery could be this incomprehensible. D4 and Deadly Premonition were the best fever dreams, and they had some kind of movie logic to them. I love this so much.
I absolutely LOVE games that just _do shit._ They fill the game with stuff for absolutely no reason but for it to be there. There is no end to any of these means, and there isn't any logic to the decisions. I love it so much.
Gotta say Jacob sells the game a little bit short. It's certainly self-aware about being weird and paying homage to pop culture (one of my favorites is a sneaky little reference to Eminem after mission 2) but there is a lot more intention behind the game and you can figure out the logic for SOME of the creative decisions. Jacob won't stop harping on how "weird" it is for this video and he can't seem to look any deeper than that "weird" surface. He misunderstands a few big aspects of the plot (I don't entirely blame him for that) and it just becomes a repetitive clip show of fun "weird" scenes. Usually I like this guys' video but I expected something a bit more intellectual than "this game is weird" because this game is more than just "weird".
@@dudestep Am I right in thinking he's over thinking it, like assuming an underlying logic (that wasn't considered necessary)?
@@davidrogers8030 naw theres a story and creative intention, but Jacob misses it. One of my favorite aspects of the story is that the Androids are humans who had their memories wiped and are forced to do menial jobs, and the company who makes the "Synthetics" is a fraud that goes bankrupt. Theres also the fact that Hannah is not talking to her biological son in the ending, but actually the son of a drug addict who murdered his wife that Hannah busted. She has a pretty good scene with the kid where they bond over watching an old mech anime. I dont blame Jacob for not getting it. The game definitely feels unfinished so some plot points are mentioned very quickly even though they seem to be important, but everything I'm talking about is mentioned in cutscenes, not collectible text documents or secret videos (which to be honest I havent read or collected) Jacob didnt get it this time and the video suffers for it.
@@davidrogers8030 wouldn't be a JG video without overthinking it haha! I personally didn't get his point in the head transplant video. He's so good tht I still loved it, and this one, and wishlisted the game
@@pravkdey Kinda wish he "overthought" this a bit more, since there is some interesting stuff with the robots and what separates humans from AI, and trying to make humans operate like AI to do work that could be especially timely because of all the recent news with AI being able to do things we thought only humans could do previously. I'm too dumb to make a video that wraps this all up so I was hoping Jacob would do that but I guess he just wanted to focus on how weird the game is, and the need for weird grindhouse games in today's market.
I like how the main character has both a robot arm and a tattoo sleeve. Also I feel like her and Raiden from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance would get along
And in lieu of tattoos, she has doodles on her robot arm!
Revengeance would have a fuckload to say about the concept of someone being forced by their financial situation to sign what they thought was a normal work contract, but instead being molded into a killing machine to be used in a war that she can't even remember the events of because her memories were wiped to protect corporate secrets.
Even more fittingly, MGS2, the game Raiden is from, also has a strange cobbled-togetheredness to it, except more deliberately because that was supposed to deconstruct MGS1 and heroic fantasies (which MGS1 was perceived as), meaning Raiden and this protagonist would have loads to share about doing random tasks for no reason as well.
I learned about this game through one of its ads, which was a fully animated music video for a cover of "She works hard for the money" showing the daily life of a minor side character, they know they made something weird and are proud of that.
It really feels like the devs were genuinely having fun with this project, which is kinda refreshing among a sea of soulless games churned at the behest of investors.
This almost feel like you had a group of art students who each had to make a cutscene for a class, and then somehow they made a game to link them all
Even better, a quick look seems to show that Fee is very much proud of herself for her role in this. 10/10 will likely play myself
Edit: she should be proud, this is a work of art
@@somewonyconfidence and tall lady irl?! 😍
Also, is Fee her actual name? This woman really goes by "fairy"? Amazing.
@@SusanIvanova2257 Fee Marie Zimmerman
Its something 🌈
I've always thought this specific feeling comes from a team lacking cohesion. All talented in their own right, but not overlapping in vision and improperly managed. They clash and pull in different directions. It's a chaotic kind of creativity that will never completely sit well with anyone, but I think just like yourself, a lot of people are drawn to seeing it happen.
Hey Jacob, since Nebula doesn't have comments, I figured now is a great time to put this here:
You're holding the knife with a grip that's a little too far back on the handle, getting your index finger and thumb around the base of the blade will give you a lot more control, and improve the confidence of your cuts.
The position of your left hand isn't great, but it's not terrible. In lieu of a claw grip (which can be uncomfortable and difficult to get used to), keeping your fingers as vertical as possible also works pretty well.
Can't wait for the next Nebula exclusive where we'll get to see your cooking skills improve!
With all the weirdness in this game, i want to see a game finally channel "Unedited footage of a bear". Once that is complete, the world will have to accept video games as an art form
this is the first time a video has ever made me instantly wishlist a game I had never heard of before
I love random games being brought to my attention.
@@str8apem88 I have literally no idea what you consider good in games nor do you what I so unless you can give me a little more detail on that that statement is basically meaningless to me
@@str8apem88 People say the same about Deadly Premonition and while I agree that it sucks, I also agree that it's a game you should give a try as well.
@@ChloeAriT if there's any person in this day and age claims what is a good design for a game, then they're always the kind of person that can't be satisfied with just disliking something, they also have to scream out for attention.
I'd say more about how utterly fascinating this game is, but. tall lady 😳
My thoughts exactly
Also “I ship tall lady with smaller lady” 🥺
@@RosieG9012 I'm smaller lady,
You too?
lesbian gang
Thank you, since this game released I've been scribbling in my walls like a mad man trying to make sense of it all, trying to talk to my friends about it, only for them to ask me if I'm having a psycotic episode or if I dreamt it.
Finally, I'm not alone in this madness, thank you
I LOVE art like this. I think you learn so much more from a bad film (or, in this case, game) than you can a good one on your own. They make you question what you were expecting out of them and what it would take to make the experience more satisfying. It's not a coincidence that I love watching MST3K too, haha.
It's like what Alan Moore said. We shouldn't remake or write stories based on good things. We should try to do bad things over and give them a second, better chance or write our own version that's actually good.
This is the most SWERY core game to come from someone NOT named SWERY65, and im SO FUCKING GLAD more directors are going in that way
I immediately thought of deadly premonition while watching this, you're right. The pickles...
As soon as the coffee gag came up I was like "oh this is so Swery!"
There's something of a clear method to SWERY's madness though.
Like yes, Deadly Premonition is incredibly cookie and bizarre, but no matter how flabbergasted I may have been by what happens in it, I could still follow along.
Yeah, I watched this entire video and only after watching it I realized what this reminds me of. And then I went and googled *"Twin Peaks fever dream video game"* because I could remember neither his game's names nor the name Swery 🤒
As a German I am very impressed how they managed to sing '99 Luftballons'. Well, done😁
Edit: Great, now I learn that most of them are german🤣.
Swiss actually. French Swiss. 🤣
This game feels like an alien has made it but that alien has exceptional taste in arts somehow
At the end of the day, studios that go all in like this are worth paying attention to. I hope the devs understand what worked well and what didn't and really look forward to see them take it into their next project.
This game looks like one big episode of Xavier Renegade Angel. The animation, the protagonist's design being an insane hodgepodge of different ideas, the script and the line delivery.
Is this supposed to be a bad thing?
Somebody else remembers that show? I thought I hallucinated it
@@amergingiles No, I love it
Frittata
Nobody ever asked "What if there was a Yakuza Warioware?" but goddamn if they didn't go and make it anyways
This feels like 5 different teams making different storylines in the game and all of them getting back together at the end to throw them all together
i like how jacob can take a normal sentence and sit on it for 2.5 seconds before hitting you with a existential mind breaking follow up sentence before hitting you with the relatable story to ease you back into the same trap later on
I am not kidding when I say this is genuinely, to me and my preferences, one of the most glowing recommendations you could possibly have given. I miss games with this gameplay and I want insane cut scenes. The game as you've shown it feels like it's so teeming with humanity and artistry. Not necessarily well done but so human. I need to play this and I need a sequel. Maybe I just like cult classics, maybe I'm just gay and the fact there's a cool tall sword lady through most of the footage is altering my optinion but this is the game I need
The fact that this game doesn’t bow down to ‘market forces’ is what makes it most appealing to me. I love bizarrely charming stuff that isn’t necessarily trying to please.
Whoever is responsible for the *look* of this game deserves a promotion... Its so, so beautiful
Hot cyborg woman
This game is stylistically the most interesting thing I've seen in video games in a very long time.
Also, isn't Stone taking a shower to wash away the blood after the violence? It effectively separates her from the everyday grind of work in a way.
Work doesn’t seem to be presented as a grind, though. In Death Stranding or KH 358/2, there’s a relationship the player and the character develop with their respite because the rest of the game weighs on them so much.
In this game the shower seems more like the one in MGSV, where you pop in and out and that’s all the rest/peace/quiet they feel the need to show on-screen
Man, I wish so, sooo bad Jacob played Cruelty Squad! I've never played a game that mixes so well ultraviolence, early midlife crisis, and pure contempt for the neoliberalist way of life as that game. It's more than a little up Jacobs alley.
One thing that you didn't mention, but makes the karaoke scene even better in context is the message of the song. 99 Luftballons is about a nuclear war started by an incompetent and brazen military mistaking baloons for a first strike. The song's popularity in the west is incidental and it's message largely unknown. I have no idea what this means for the game, but damn it, does it have Metal Gear fan energy.
Not sure where you're getting that information - people in "the west" who know the song generally know that it's about nuclear war - there is even a popular English-language version (99 Red Balloons). The fear of nuclear war was a very big part of Western culture in the 1980s.
@@iamcitizen38 Yeah im not sure what this guy is talking about. That song is famous in the west BECAUSE of its relation to cold war geopolitics. I cant imagine anyone who knows about the song in 2023 (or the 80's) didnt know its meaning.
imagine my surprise when I first assumed that Jacob is talking about some old "forgotten" gem of a ps3 game then slowly as the video goes on and re-reading the video title and googling the game realizing that this game came out LAST MONTH THIS YEAR
absolutely going to play this game now xD thank you Jacob
You just sold me on this game. I need this level of funny weirdness in my life. I can already tell this is going to be a cult classic in 20 years.
The only game that I can think of that remotely compares to this sort of stilted humor is Deadly Premonition, and I am ALWAYS here for more games like Deadly Premonition. Wanted Dead may not be good in the typical sense, but I love that it exists. What an absolutely beautiful fever dream. 😂
Me at the start of Jacob's video: "I don't know anything about this game or its developers, but they made the cyborg-samurai assassin lady look like an overworked single mother and I like that, is an interesting aesthethic choice. This is promising"
Me at the end of the video: "Oh... my... God! ... the cyborg lady is literally an overworked single mother! ... I need more of this insanity... the world needs more of this insanity! _Wanted: Dead_ needs to become a franchise *RIGHT NOW!*
This game feels like it's keeping the classic Swery games dream alive.
Swery games?
So alive. That was the first thing I thought of with the skull in the coffee. Seems like a pretty direct nod.
@HPLovecraftsCat нет блять яндекс
@HPLovecraftsCat oh without question.
@HPLovecraftsCat Ukraini, yes
Since Nebula doesn't do comments, I'm putting this here: 1. Yes, paprika chips! They're popular in Europe and personally my favourite flavour. I've seen them in France, Hungary (obviously), and they're even in the UK now. 2. The lack of ricotta in lasagna is fairly normal also - from my understanding, ricotta in lasagna is a southern Italian thing, which is where many italian immigrants to the US came from, but in some other parts of Europe the northern Italian version is more common, which usually has bechamel sauce and/or mozzarella instead, and this is the top variety that comes up when I Google lasgna recipes on a german vpn.. so I suppose both of these choices make some amount of sense in the context of the characters being German.
I snagged some paprika chips during a layover in the Amsterdam airport. Those were so good. I wish they were more popular in the US because I loved them.
The "no fucks given" attitude this game seems to display is mesmerizing. Fells like the "I have a cool idea and I just want it to be in there no matter if it makes sense" vibe you get from hobby dev projects that don't rely on selling a product. I says something about the game industry if that alone creates more attraction to a product and makes it more memorable than every AAA production that released recently. I call it substantialized style.
Jacob's videos are just about the only ones I watch on Nebula, and it's because he's the only person who reminds me at the beginning of the video. There must be around 6 or 7 that I'll watch the entire video, and they'll only mention, "Btw, you can watch the entire video again with extras on Nebula."
If you were looking for more to watch on Nebula, I'd recommend Razbuten, CinemaWins (cause who doesn't like CinemaWins) and Simon Clark if you like more Science-y stuff.
If you weren't looking for more, feel free to disregard :D
Also shoutout to Philosophy Tube, LowSpecGamer and TechAltar on Nebula
There's also Tale Foundry, which release full companion videos about tangential theme
If you're looking for something to watch on nebula, like Elena I also recommend Tale Foundry
I feel like I need to experience this Jank Fever Dream for myself
I find these games that are really going for *Something* instead of chasing a trend to be of great value even if their awful, like man what if Rocksteady had spent like 2 or 3 years making a bad Bruce Wayne Yakuza game
That wouldn't be so bad compared to whatever they're doing now.
Would it?
This game is actually incredible. If you master the combat (which is very difficult and takes time), it becomes wonderfully satisfying… and bloody.
Maybe the reason the karaoke bar only lets you play one song is that since they are Germans in Hong Kong, there aren't any other songs that they know-it's the only familiar song among all the options, so they choose it every time.
I feel like Wanted Dead is to The Room what Metal Gear is to Twin Peaks. Just a different scale of weird "auteur" cult classic passion project that would rather be odd and compelling than forgettable but polished. I love the attitude behind making weird art which has a very high potential to alienate the audience for the sake of making something silly with a deceptive amount of depth under the surface that can almost never be fully realised. It's campy and disjointed but you can feel the love put into making it.
It's the most subjective a game can be, its pure genius in the head of the creator but a bizarre disasterpiece to the average viewer not in the camp of enjoying wholesome cult gibberish. The perfect antidote to the current market of homogeneous shooters, open world games and MCU films.
I’m glad someone else saw this and thought of Twin Peaks.
it kinda reminded me of deadly premonition with how weird it is, and that game was influenced by twin peaks too lol
Back in the ps2 days games with this type of vibe weren't this rare. Its truly a blessing in disguise.
I unironically, love the awkward and bad dialog in this game
Many games try so hard to be the next cinematic movie game, but having a game where the actors are told "I don't know, improvise anything works" and they simply just act like normal people in all their goofy and awkward ways is fantastic
And unironically I love the shallow tired performance of the protagonist, just becouse you are good at....killing I guess, doesn't mean you are very social,
I love this trope of badasses ho are socially inept
A police armorer randomly explaining the entropic principle (18:55) to her squadmates also feels like a very Ghost In The Shell fan move - if you're familiar with the english dub of the original GITS movie, a lot of the dives into philosophical dialogue are very abrupt in a similar way.
I don't know why, but this gives me the same energy as Kane and Lynch 2. It may not necessarily be as rotten as that game, or as overtly bleak, but there is something about the two games that feel bizarre in a dada-esque way, as if a response to soulless "games by committee" is the complete opposite: absurdism and borderline randomness, decisions that are bizarre and sometimes bad (or at least un-approachable from market viewpoints) that are given their merits because they are at least decisions. It's as you said: nobody can say it didn't swing.
I actually played Kane and Lynch 2 for the first time fairly recently and it instantly became one of my favorite games of all time. Gameplay is horrible, yes, but it oozes style and filth that no other game has. Devs clearly had and idea and they went for it 100%. Wanted:Dead is much less coherent in terms of style, but yes it has the same passion behind it. They sure did swing.
This video reminds me of "I Do Not Understand Hotline Miami 2". Jacob is a real master at understanding and explaining videos, which makes it a real treat when something like this happens.
I believe at least one of the songs used (several times!) in the video is from Hotline Miami, so I think JG understands the similarity too!
I love this because this is exactly how I feel about random isekai anime. While most of them are often cliché, slightly convoluted and filled with classic tropes, every now and then there’s a line or a scene which is filled with creativity and uniqueness.
I played through Wanted Dead and really enjoyed how bizarre and quirky it was. It felt like a callback to oldschool PS2 era action games, with how weird some of those could be, and was a fresh experience with how action games are these days. It's not going to be in my top 10 games of this year but I found it thoroughly entertaining.
This game sounds like a very good slice of life action drama anime pitch made into an edgy action game but then got budget crashed somewhere along the line when they found out the concept is deadass too crackheaded to polish to perfection so they went all out with all the edges and intentionally didn't iron out any kinks
What a goddamn masterpiece of shitposting if I have to say
This video really doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement, but it’s still convinced me to try it out. And I promise it’s not just because of the tall lady.
i dont think ive ever seen another game built out of pure enthusiasm for something else that was this well put together
The vibe I'm getting from this game is kinda the same I'm getting from 90s/early 00s OVAs, or some creator-owned graphic novels. Very strong moodbuilding or aesthetic identity, some cool ideas, lots and lots of borrowing from the author's personal favorites, EXTREMELY uneven quality, baffling story turns or events, and just an overall sense that the product itself was never quite finished, that whoever made it eventually hit the wall and just had to publish it to keep the lights on. I read Jodorowsky's MEGALEX a few months ago, or Jean-Paul's 'Of Gods And Men', and they both also fall into this space of initially looking like they're going to be something really interesting and special, and then spiraling out of control and veering wildly between cool/interesting and terrible.
Using the Hotline Miami soundtrack on your videos always just put me in a trance for the weird shit it's about to be deconstructed, love it
Actually I love the delivery of every voice line you showed in this video so much! Lines which would be relatively normal, or even bland video game banter in games with native english voice acting and english style line delivery somehow become a lot more interesting to listen to with a german or other accent and german style sentence intonation. For an english native speaker this might sound jarring, but for me it just sounds delightfully fresh!
I'm surprised that this game to this day still doesn't have a Wikipedia article. I want to know more about it.
About four minutes into this video essay and I'm already sold on this game. It seems like exactly the type of unpolished gem that I love.
Since Nebula doesn't have comments I'll put this here: As a German, the paprika thing in the sauce made me very happy. It's such a German thing to use the sweet paprika powder in pretty much anything, since it barely has a taste. This also means people dump a LOT of it in the food, sometimes unscrewing the container lid so it's not as time consuming as shaking it out. Also, garlic doesn't go into every German food so I wouldn't even have noticed there was none in the sauce xD
(Now for the carrot cutting technique, the layering or missing vegetables i have no excuse - honestly shocked and appalled she didn't make a bechamel sauce to alternate the layers, as that's the only way I've seen lasagne done here in Germany)
I wanna say something real fast about the whole trope of using non-native English speaking folks for English speaking roles. You bring it up around 13:18.
Death Stranding does this exactly on purpose, and I think Wanted: Dead is doing it on purpose as well. Death Stranding is a game about a communications network, and then there's this little story about a man and a woman who obviously are having communications issues, the Junk Dealer and the Chiral Artist's daughter (the woman you have to carry at one point), and we quite literally have a hard time understanding her because she's not a native English speaker. Most of the discussion about this character seems to be focused on just calling the acting bad. I think that's kind of shallow. Obviously they chose to use a person who has trouble communicating in English in a plot about communication issues in a game about a communications network for a very good reason.
So going to Wanted: Dead, I think there is obviously the same kind of commentary going on here with communications. Think about how Cortez is mute. The entire game seems like it's hung up on communications in some way, like how it communicates its narrative is itself written in some kind of "foreign language." I think this perception of "bad acting" is exactly what the game is asking you to analyze, and perhaps reconsider your idea of "bad" in this way.
Really nice comment! You put it into words!
Fascinating interpretation
This really is weird. I didn't think I'd ever play this, but now maybe I will. You got me. I love weird games.
thank you for articulating a feeling i've felt about a lot of games-- not quite GOOD enough to be, like, GOOD, but far too weird and oddly specific to ever stop thinking about. THOSE are the ones that keep me up at night. also, you're right, this chick's character design whips ass. no notes.
I have never heard of this game, and I look forward to buying it for $10 in about 8 months
To be honest this game actually seems kind of cool and seems interesting. But I like janky weird ass games.
The game itself is perfectly servicable, it's all the weirdness that propel it further
@@str8apem88 Are you being paid to trash talk this game, or does spending hours in a comment section shitting on a game like your life depends on it just sound like a good time to you?
@@str8apem88 This just feels disingenuous, all of your comments just seem to be aggressive negative responses to people talking about things they liked in the game. You aren't asking people what they liked about it, you're saying that it's garbage and telling people they shouldn't play it.
None of the comments I've seen you leave under this video give the impression that you're just trying to have a discussion about what people like about it. They give the impression that you think your subjective opinions of quality are objective and universal, and that people shouldn't like things that you dislike.
@@str8apem88I made a comment marking this game between Forspoken and Hi-fi Rush (which is opposite of Forspoken in a lot of ways). Wanted Dead has the same energy and character interaction and managed to build likeable characters like the latter. This is just one example but imo it embraced its weirdness and made you invested in it better than Forspoken
Once you get the rhythm of combat its very fun and while the story lacks focus there are some interesting things in it mainly stones past. Also the game does a good job at making the characters likable and showing they are close.
the second i heard the off key karaoke i got this game. me and my friends used to make budget "movies" that were like this - a lot of the inexcplicable stuff is probably the result of really polished in-jokes that someone on the team loved and fought for.