Member Interviews: breakingthegreen

[Charizarzar]

Hey PSNP! Welcome back to another member interview. Our current interviewee is @breakingthegreen!

 

breakingthegreen

 

Standard Questions

How did you come up with your PSN name?

My PSN name is actually my second from after the PSN hack of 2011, my brother happened to change hard drives on the PS3 during the event and I did not remember my account password. (The old account was gold11481.)

 

So in designing my new account name, I opted to steal mine from the (at the time) popular Youtuber, RayWilliamJohnson. His vlog channel was called BreakingNYC. While I didn’t watch the channel, I knew and liked the name, so I adapted it to the name of my small town, which accounts for the “thegreen” section of my name, and you can probably guess that I am not a city person.

 

What games convinced you to get your PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5?

I’ve mentioned that I grew up with the PS1 and PS2, and because of this I had fallen in love with a bunch of PS2 classics which I had expected to continue onto the PS3, which led me to never ask for an Xbox 360. I was vindicated when Tools of Destruction launched. As for Vita, I was old enough to ask for it as a birthday gift when I turned 15 (from my local Blockbuster because I’m old,) I wanted it entirely because of Littlebigplanet Vita. The PS4 was bought by my brother near launch for himself, but I had finally got my own one as an 18th birthday gift. The PS5 was the first console that I bought entirely myself.

 

What are your top 5 game series and why?

What I’m counting as a series is a game series with 3 or more games:

 

1. Sly Cooper 

 

 

A lot of my favourite things have a lot of basis in nostalgia, I admit, but there really hasn’t been a game like Sly, specifically 2 onwards. What I love is everything you do is all part of a larger plan, with everything culminating in the final heist of the level. It’s also funny and somewhat dark, but the characters have always been the main draw of the story. General Tsao is (in my eyes) the best hateable villain ever.

 

2. Kingdom Hearts 

 

 

The classic Disney x Final Fantasy crossover, as stylish as it is fun to play. With a heavy lean on Disney in this relationship. Often praised and criticised for its intricate and mad story, I for one love the insanity. Something that made young Breakingthegreen enjoy the games back in their PS2 days is the fact that it’s quite linear which made the RPG elements not overwhelming. 

 

3. Ratchet & Clank 

 

 

The Playstation series that could be fairly considered Playstation’s unofficial mascot, I’ve played every single game and enjoyed all of them a lot, even the weird two before Nexus. The announcement of Rift Apart was what made me buy the PS5 right after the showcase. Among the 3+ rated games, it felt unique in how the game felt like it never talked down to the audience, and as I got older I realised how genuinely adult the game was, from its mature themes of corporate greed, and immature sex puns.

 

4. Professor Layton 

 

 

I said that I like logic puzzles, so of course I love Layton (Lost Future and Azran Legacy are the best ones.) I loved the puzzles and how smart as well as dumb they made me feel. And the stories are fantastic, and also insane. I can’t explain without spoilers, but if you’re expecting a normal twist when you’re playing, then you are in for a hell of a treat.

 

5. Persona

 

 

The thing about Persona is that it’s a spin-off that’s dwarfed its parent series, and even then there’s series within series that I could have narrowed it down to. I have a preference for number 4, but I like 3 & 5 as well, (I wish there was an easy way to get 1 and 2 on modern consoles.) There’s also a fun thing where if you want to experience all of 3,4 or 5’s cast, then you have to get into a whole bunch of different genres: fighting, rhythm, and Dynasty Warriors. The balance of everyday dating sim elements and the RPG dungeon crawling is what makes this so much more enjoyable than other Atlus RPGs for me.

 

What are your top 5 games and why?

I’m avoiding anything in my top 5 series:

 

1. Super Mario Galaxy (1 or 2)

 

 

Pure platforming bliss, with motion controls that still works well. It’s just so good and looks incredible, especially for a Wii game. The OST is lovely and one of my go-to study music.

 

2. Heavy Rain

 

 

I feel like I’m one of the few people that are able to take this game seriously, in spite of aged performance and story choices, but I still really like the game. Maybe it’s just nostalgia (now that I think about it, probably nostalgia since I knowingly admit Detroit Become Human is the better game). It was the first time that I experienced multiple endings in games, and missable levels, it was so cool to me. And as a lover of TV and movies, the presentation really appealed to me.

 

3. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

 

 

Would you believe me if I said I never really got into a Zelda game? I thought the same would hold true when I played Breath of the Wild. I loved it. The exploration is incredibly organic, I looked at a place that looked interesting, then I went there. I’ve played no other open world game that way.

 

4. Road 96

 

 

I’ve been recommending this like an unpaid spokesman, a roguelike adventure game, the chances of any of us experiencing the same story in the same way is very unlikely. Aggressively political, and unafraid to criticise extremism in many overt and subtle ways, we see this totalitarian world from many points of view, of people who are a part of that system, and those whose lives are consequences of it.

 

5. Life is Strange

 

 

I have stated that I like Telltale games, but the first Life is Strange has an interesting spin which I adore. I’m not gonna mention the story and characters, just take for granted that I like both. The time travel mechanic is what I love. With it, choices aren’t about which you think will be the better outcome, instead, it’s a balancing act you have to perform about short-term consequences that you know versus long-term consequences that you can only predict. There’s also a scene in episode 2 that I really like which removes the time travel and tests whether you care enough to pay attention to your character's friends. 

 

Which unreleased game(s) are you looking forward to the most and why?

I do like the Dark Pictures games despite the horror that makes me squirm, and as such, I am looking forward to the next game The Devil in Me, and the fact that it seems to be taking inspiration from older horror games like Resident Evil and Clock Tower.

 

 

A sequel is always nice, one by a different developer is a little worrying, but my favourite Telltale game was Tales from the Borderlands, so naturally I’m looking forward to New Tales from the Borderlands.

 

 

Thirsty Suitors is a game published by Annapurna that really appeals to me, incorporating the relationships into the RPG section. Sounds cool to me.

 

 

Do you have any other hobbies outside of gaming?

I enjoy TV and movies, so much that I often will try to get my family to re-watch shows with me while we eat (I’m unbearable I know). Escape rooms are my most expensive hobby. I’ve done like 9 ish.

 

I’m not really a sporty person, but I do actually like golf, both mini as well as the Pitch & Putt, not the long courses though. I get too distracted wondering about the housing crisis when I’m on that much paid-for land.

 

I’ve been trying to drum up the energy to write an audio drama inspired by a Black Mirror- esque fear I have about uploading your brain to the cloud, but my lack of creative writing skills have been getting in the way of that.

 

Top 5 TV shows, Movies, and/or anime, why, and would you recommend them to people?

I’m shamelessly C&Ping my TV show section from a forum I did before:

 

1. Doctor Who - A show that has to be made on purely creativity, where in one episode, an ill-equipped British army tries to claim Mars for Queen Victoria, and literally the next episode will be about Romans and Celts bonding over the shared threat of a snake-faced wolf.  

 

 

2. Primeval - A fairly blatant attempt by ITV to steal the success of Doctor Who and it successfully managed to grow its own identity. With Earth being covered with the occasional portal to another time period, a group of resourceful but strangely underqualified government workers has to try and return them through the portals. Also, this show did Cordyceps turning people into zombies way before the Last of Us. A major reason I kept watching was the genuinely sweet romance arc that lasted the entire show between Connor and Abby.

 

 

 

3. Taskmaster - Funniest panel show ever in my opinion. 5 funny folks are tasked with a series of challenges in which they earn points, and the contestant with the most points at the end of the series wins a trophy. The tasks are made to be worked around, are creative and typically funny, bringing wreck and ruin in equal measure. For example, "Fill this egg cup with your own sweat." So Sara decided to pay one of the cameramen to buy his sweat off of him.

 

 

 

4. You, Me, & the Apocalypse - A show managing to successfully balance the comedy and tragedy of the upcoming end of the world. We follow 4ish groups who all seem to be connected to each other. As we see that many of them have arrived in a bunker in Slough, more and more get revealed as the series goes until the end of the world occurs. With themes of faith being prominent, emerging from most of the characters, whether it be gaining or loss, it's easy to say that it's not like most other shows.

 

 

 

5. Good Omens - Boundlessly funny and creative, it's the show that can, and does, feature a scene where a witch hunter gets pulled over in his car by some newly arrived extraterrestrials, which delays him on his way to the village that contains the literal spawn of Satan, who has just been convinced to turn a nuclear reactor into a boiled sweet. It's the reason to own Amazon Prime in my opinion.

 

 

 

How about cartoons as a separate top 5 too:

 

1. Gravity Falls - Most of the great modern animated shows take direct inspiration from this one for a good reason, it’s a mystery show with a “monster of the week” format. Very funny and seemingly no bounds on creativity.

 

 

2. Avatar: The Last Airbender - Is it an anime or a cartoon? That is a debate that I don’t care for, but I had more trouble with the anime list so it’s ended up here. Korra is also brilliant, but I prefer the episodic nature of ATLA. Love the characters, incredible action for the era, and so clearly inspired a lot of modern cartoons and movies today.

 

 

3. Harley Quinn - I took way too long to check this series out, it is funny in a way that could be seen as edgy, but never crosses over into tasteless like most adult animation does. It manages a successful serial story while maintaining episodic appeal. And nearly every version of each DC character is my favourite of them, especially Bane.

 

 

 

4. Infinity Train - This show is a blank check when it comes to ideas. Each episode of this pseudo-anthology takes place in a different train car, and anything can be on the inside: a kingdom of corgis or an enormous queue where people who stood in it stayed so long that they died. Why HBO cancelled and then removed it is beyond me.

 

 

5. Hilda - An insanely wholesome and beautifully animated story about a young girl who lives in a world of fantastical animals. Soon she moves to the city and has to deal with problems in a whole new setting where she uses her rural experience.

 

 

 

Top 5 movies now, (also I’m gonna avoid doubling on studios, so WALL-E isn’t included):

 

1. Paddington - Oh look, It’s the best movie of all time. I know a lot of people prefer the sequel, but I always preferred the increased focus of the original as well as the arc of Mr. Curry which was seemingly dropped in number 2. Don’t get me wrong though, both are 10/10 movies. So wholesome!

 

 

2. Inside Out - A movie that came out at the exact right time for me for personal reasons, and personifying aspects of human thought. It’s a perfect movie that felt incredibly creative and also subtle where it counts.

 

 

 

3. Mitchells vs the Machines - I love the 2D-3D art style that was used in Spider-verse before, but this style has a watercolour overlay, in addition to notebook doodling of the main character. It’s beautiful. It’s also a lovely story about a father and daughter learning to understand each other, while surviving the robot uprising.

 

 

 

4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - The best superhero movie by quite some distance. Where most Marvel movies are action and comedy blended together; GotG 2 is one of the few movies that has a constant theme of family. It is also the only Marvel movie that made me cry. So that’s an achievement.

    

   

 

 

5. Forrest Gump - So much has been said about this movie, what can I add? Well as a Brit, I didn’t have a good grasp on American history, so this was both educating and entertaining. This movie is truly make or break on whether you liked Tom Hanks' portrayal of Gump, which you should, there’s a tenderness and bliss in his performance.

    

   

 

 

Onto the anime now:

 

1. Erased - A time travel murder mystery that I adore, it’s paced expertly and is beautiful. The idea of getting to redo your life has always been appealing, (I think we all have made mistakes that we wish we could undo.) 

 

 

2. Assassination Classroom - I’ve checked the last interview and they had the same top 2. I think it’s mostly a sign of their quality, rather than plagiarism. There’s a lot to love about Assassination Classroom, a consistent, enormous cast, the mystery of Korosensei, and the metaphorical internalistion of the characters' thoughts.

 

 

3. Spy x Family - Found family at its best, liars lying to everyone, with Anya becoming the audience surrogate since, as a mind reader, there are no secrets kept from her. I’m really looking forward to series 2.

 

 

4. Persona 4: The Animation - Like I’ve said earlier, Persona has a great balance of main RPG story and side relationship sections. The anime was to recreate this, while shortening this 100-hour story into a 26-episode anime.

    

   

 

5. Komi Can't Communicate - I relate to Komi so heavily. Her social anxiety is worse, don’t get me wrong, but I relate to freaking out at inconsequential things.

 

 

Top 5 favorite music bands/group/artists/composers/OST?

The problem with ranking music is that I’m not a music expert (not that I’m a TV or movie expert either,) so the only thing I can say about them is: “They make the noise sound nice.” Here’s a top 5.

 

1. The Killers:-

 

 

2. Lindsey Stirling:-

 

 

3. Owl City:-

 

 

4. The Stupendium:-

 

 

5. They Might Be Giants:-

 

 

Your favorite platinum and why?

The best Platinum I got is a very recent one, Everybody’s Golf (2017). Part of what made it special was the time limit I had, which was just short enough to make it tense that I could fail to complete it before the servers went down. What I also felt proud about for this platinum, is that unlike a lot of people, I did not use a glitched character to get the 3 condors like so many people recommended (because I’m dumb and didn’t work out how to do that.) I have recordings of my real condors and I’m proud of them! 

 

 

Your least favorite platinum and why?

The one I had the least fun during was Hardware Rivals which was a boring grind, of a game I didn’t rate all that highly. The trophy hunting group I found myself in was to a large extent fine, but I felt way too uncomfortable with how angry they got towards the “randoms.” Trophy hunting is meant to be fun, and frankly, I felt like there an underlying hostility that spoilt that game and makes me largely avoid trophy boosting groups. Though I do seem to end up in some nice ones anyway, shout out to the folks I got level 50 in Assassin’s Creed with.

 

 

Have you ever been tempted to switch over to the Xbox/Nintendo/PC gaming ecosystems?

Like a lot of people have said before, I don’t play Playstation due to any brand loyalty, and often play on Nintendo consoles as well. I have a Switch and will play exclusives there. As for a base location when playing multiplatform games, I will stick with Playstation as my main platform.

 

If you could have one game from any gaming generation be remade or re-released, which one would it be and why?

A game I want to be re-released would be The Longest Journey and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, because I played the 3rd game, Dreamfall Chapters, and thought it would have been massively improved if I knew what the hell was going on. There’s no easy way to get the whole story these days.

 

 

How far are you willing to go for a platinum?

The length I go for a platinum is very much limited by my competence. I play a lot of games and while I do have a fairly good natural skill level, what counts for my personal best ability is actually surprisingly low. To break through that barrier, I have to really like a game.

 

Grind is rarely an issue, just stick a radio show on and boom, I’m no longer bored. Multiplayer is often a barrier though, there’s little in the way of a difficulty curve and you can’t predict people. I have to like the game a lot before I’ll consider completing them.

 

If you could give Sony direct feedback on business decisions in the last year, and the latest console generation, what would you tell them?

Sony has recently stopped doing something that I think was a massive positive force for the entire industry, and that is directly producing smaller experimental games. The last game Playstation published that I’d consider a smaller humbler game was Destruction All-Stars, and even then that’s way bigger than any of the games I’m referring to. Playstation used to publish a bunch of smaller interesting games on every console, from Vib-ribbon on the PS1 to Frantics on PS4, and a number of games in between: rain, Frobisher Says, Tumble, Diggs Nightcrawler, Patapon. So yeah… Bring back the smaller games please.

 

What is your favorite thing about PSNP?

Stats! I like watching the numbers get bigger, I thought I’d like watching numbers get bigger in nursing, but it turns out that people’s blood pressure rarely reaches into the 1,000s. So I get all my number satisfaction here. In all seriousness, the metagame of the trophy system is only as fun as the lens it gets viewed from, and PSNP is a very good lens.

 

What is your least favorite thing about PSNP?

Fighting in the forums is never fun, irregardless of my opinion on the topic. The mere presence of the fight itself will stress me the hell out, even if I’ve not commented on it.

 

Is there anyone in the PSNP Community you would like to give a shout-out to and if so, why?

Umm I’ve got no friends on here, no one that I chat with at least…

 

I guess I appreciate @Abby_TheLastofUs for those news forums on such a regular basis. There’s @TA_317 who helped on the Doctor Who trophy guide that I did last year, when we discovered we happened to be writing a guide at the same time, and @Beyondthegrave07 who I’ve done a little correspondence with about a themed charity event on this site. There’s a whole bunch of people I regularly agree with on this site, so rest assured if I follow you, I think you a good’n.

 

And last but not least @Charizarzar and @Dreggit for the guide management and these interviews.

 

Community Questions

When did you start to be interested in trophies and what made you join PSNP?

I probably wouldn’t have bothered with trophies if the Sly Trilogy weren’t basically three free platinums. I used to rent games from my local library to fill out a bunch more platinums. If you look at my collection, you may be able to guess which ones were rented by me if I only played them for a week from 2011-2013.

 

PSNProfiles was mostly chosen because it was the first result in automated trophy tracking, there was little thought to it if I’m honest.

 

What's your opinion on Brexit?

This is the UK from 2016 onwards:

 

 

Since you're a fan of animation, which animation studio do you think is the best in the business right now?

There's a good deal of studios that make masterpiece after masterpiece, but I’ll only mention one: Cartoon Saloon is a great studio that utilises many topics that are basically unused in western media. Wolfwalkers (their most recent film) probably uses the most known mythology, but even then it uses the Irish variant of werewolves. Please watch it. 

 

 

 

I also wanna add some trailers from other smaller studios that are criminally underrated in the English-speaking world:

 

 

 

 

Are there any of your past GOTY picks that you don't think hold up anymore?

The problem with how I rank games of the year is two-fold. Number one, it’s retroactive and as such, is heavily skewed by nostalgia and nothing's gonna change my past.

 

The second issue is what can make something special to me can be heavily contextual to what’s going on in my life at the time. For example, my game of the year in 2020 is Spiritfarer, a game about guiding souls to the afterlife, and only a few months before, I’d taken a placement in an End of Life ward, so it was near impossible to separate myself from that.

 

If you held a pointy object to my head to remove a game, I’d have to say Marvel’s Spider-Man, since that game is more of a refinement rather than nostalgia bait or something new for me.

 

With the year winding down, what's your current pick for GOTY that you've played, and do you think there's anything new coming this year that might dethrone your current pick?

Had Road 96 not come out on PC and Switch last year, then the choice would have been easy. Alas, I shall not count it. Currently, there are two games competing for my GotY, those being Stray and Kirby and the Forgotten Land. I think you may be able to gather from my picks that I like cute things. I think I’ll make a decision when I complete some more of Kirby. 

 

 

As for what may beat them, I’m not thinking that they are gonna win, but Gotham Knights and A Plague Tale: Requiem do have a higher chance than most.

 

Liz Truss, how much worse than Theresa May and Boris Johnson are you expecting her to be?

If I’m allowed, I with to give my thoughts on Liz Truss in the form of slam poetry:

 

Elizabeth Truss had barely been seen,

Only days after she killed the queen.

She said she was getting the UK back on tracks,

By removing much of the rich’s tax,

The pound fell down far from the max,

Just so Gove can buy more crack(s).

 

That was fun and pointless. Since this question was asked, the pound fell. At least May and Johnson’s failings didn’t occur within a month of them coming into power. (I am kidding with the Queen line, but it’s funny to me imagining Liz Truss meeting the Queen, then the Queen just saying: “F*** this, I’m out.”)

 

Who's one historic British figure beloved by the UK that you think is a wanker?

I’ve got two that are wankers in very different ways:

 

I’ll start with what should be uncontroversial, but an Alan Moore comic seemed to make people forget that the mentioned person was in fact real. This is Guy Fawkes who is known as the face of V for Vendetta or the Hacktivist group Anonymous, but he was only famous for one thing, being a religious extremist who failed at the one thing he tried to do (blow up parliament), then betrayed all his comrades; he should not be the face of any activist organisation that thinks itself to be the good guys, and do you want to know who knew this? Alan Moore. V was not a good person in the comic, and only became a liked figure after the movie came out.

 

The second is someone who worked for the government as opposed to Mr. Fawkes, James Cook. He is known as the man who first travelled to Australia from Europe… He attempted to kidnap a Chief of Hawaii and got killed as a result.

 

Toughest platinum of the year?

Laser League: I was getting the platinum for this game before the servers went down. The grind was unbearable since I had to use my PS5, my brother’s PS4, my PS4, and a Vita to remote play since the TV has only 2 HDMI ports. Having to wait for the computer player to fill in the fourth player slot took so long, I was losing the will to live. I’ve vowed to never play a game if I am no longer having fun while playing after that hell, Yes I should have known to do that earlier.

 

 

Since you say you adore platformers, why haven't you played the best platformer I've ever played? 

Because I have a brother, and I know I’d abandon him in a heartbeat.

 

Are there any games you love but would never even consider getting the platinum for?

I’d say Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance. The major problem getting in the way for me is… skill, (maybe I could just replay them on an easier difficulty…) 

 

Either way, there are too few hours in my life for all that.

 

 

Was there any reason or motivation in particular that made you want to study to become a nurse?

It sounds really soppy, but I wanted a career that consists of helping people, and nursing seemed ideal for it. I probably would have been able to perform better in some kind of office job, but I know I wouldn’t be satisfied with that. 

 

With you being shy IRL & having some issues with communicating like stuttering & wondering if you should have said what you said or not, how do you usually deal with that when meeting new people? And do you think this would affect your ability to communicate with patients/doctors after being a nurse?

 

The thing is with my stuttering and nursing, is that I’m often repeating tasks a lot during the day, so I get to repeat what I’m saying and shift what I’m saying to the same part of my brain that I remember song lyrics in, if that makes sense; that all works for a rotating door of patients, but with doctors and other nurses, I need to pause and will often say “Give me a second,” so I know exactly what I’m going to say before I say it with minimal stuttering.

 

What is your favorite go-to pun?

I used to work in a McDonald’s drive-thru, until a giraffe turned up at the window...

 

I’ll tell you what, that was a tall order 

 

What is your opinion on the 13th Doctor, the female one? I know this caused a lot of controversy in the Doctor Who community with a lot of fans boycotting the show & stopped watching altogether.

I want to state that Jodie Whittaker has played the Doctor very well, I’ve never had an issue with the 13th Doctor herself. That being said, the current era has been my least favourite out of all 13 series of NuWho. The flaw with the newer series is that Chris Chibnall is good at writing long-form serial stories and acute character studies. So an ongoing cast in a “Monster of the Week '' is literally Chibnall’s worst possible choice. That being said, there are certainly good episodes, I really like It Takes You Away, Flux and Eve of the Daleks.

 

As for people dropping the series, that has been a regular occurrence for as long as the show’s been going. Even back in the 1960s you can find opinion pieces in newspapers saying things like “The BBC RUINED Doctor Who with Patrick Troughton!” before a single episode even aired. Similar occurrences happened with David Tennant, Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi; the main difference with the outrage at (and even before) Jodie’s announcement was, in my opinion, rooted in misogyny that was amplified through social media. There was something of a similar ageist reaction to both Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi for them being too young and old respectively. My physics teacher even admitted that she stopped watching because she no longer found the Doctor attractive when Capaldi took over the role. The main difference is that those controversies weren’t seen as much. Perhaps ageism isn’t as good culture war content, or Twitter wasn’t as loud, I can’t say why.

 

Dear god, I hope this answer doesn’t cause a fight. Here’s my favourite 13th  Doctor episode:

 

 

If you were to write another guide, is there any game in particular you'd be interested in writing for?

I have absolutely no plans to make a new guide, and if I did there’d be a few conditions: the game would need to be out for a while and not already have a guide, the trophy requirements would need to be objective and not like advice that could easily be wrong, and lastly, the game needs to be relatively short. This is so I can capture images for the guide, I won’t know what’s relevant until I finish.

 

Are there any guides this year you've used that you'd like to give a shout-out to specifically?

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood - Abstergo Employee of the Month Guide by @Lulu and @Langy900.

 

Do you have any memorable escape room stories?

On the first escape room that I did (we lost btw), one puzzle gave us the combination to a briefcase, which neither I nor my brother could figure out how to open. Since we share a teaspoon's worth of brain cells between us, our father had to bail us out with his skill set of “working in an office.”

 

A more successful story featured an escape room with a murder mystery throughout, the ending featuring a magnifying glass as a murder weapon and a magnifying glass-shaped keyhole. My dad was looking through the glass and the keyhole, and with only 12 seconds on the clock left, I guided my dad’s hand into the slot and we won.

 

What was the first game you played that really got you into gaming, if you can remember it? And if so, do you think the game still holds up today?

First game that I can recall playing is Crash Bandicoot 2, and having replayed the PS4 remake, I can easily say it still holds up. I even got the Crash 2 platinum as my 10,000th trophy.

 

Mind you, I still prefer Spyro.

 

What game do you think deserves a full-blown remake?

I want Sly Raccoon (I’m British, sue me) to get a full remake to be more in line with its sequels. As it stands, the first game plays more like an easier stealth-themed Crash Bandicoot, but the future games were mini open world stealth heist games. It would be lovely if there wasn’t such whiplash when going from the first to the second game.

 

  

 

Who is your favourite Doctor and what was your favourite overall season?

I have a book which casually mentions that the best Doctor is whoever the Doctor was when you were nine, or David Tennant. I was nine in 2007 so my nostalgia cannot untangle how much I like the 10th Doctor or series 3. What I like is this is the first companion experiencing the wonder of the universe alongside Tennant, since Rose Tyler was a veteran when Tennant became the Doctor. 

 

 

Non-nostalgia based though… I really like series 9, it’s nearly all 2-parter stories that mostly rock, and it also features my favourite episode, “Heaven Sent”, where the Doctor is pushed to their absolute breaking point far more than any other series; a lot of fans said it was out of character, I say it was a sign of their desperation.

 

 

I kind of fell off the show during Capaldi's run and only sat through a few episodes of Jodie's, but I'm thinking of getting back into it once RTD comes back as showrunner. What have your thoughts been on Jodie's run, and are you excited for next season?

First of all, should we ever meet in real life, imma force you to watch all of the Capaldi run, so don’t ask any nurses you meet about Doctor Who. ;P

 

Jodie’s run, while being my least favourite, did have many interesting things about it, for example: Series 11 went back to the original purpose of the series being an educational series by teaching real-world history and science in various episodes, and Flux’s serialised nature played to Chibnal’s strengths. The older male companions acted as really strong comic relief and the actor for the Master plays them very well. 

 

My major flaws are that for the most part the monster of the week was dropped in the 11th series in favour of a twist reveal of a human being the true evil of the episode, which is fine, but when half the episodes have the same twist… it gets a little predictable.  The other flaw in my opinion is that the major companion, Yaz, has few character traits of her own, her main qualities are being a police officer and developing a crush on the Doctor. This crush only starts to be implied at the end of series 12, and explicit after series 13, so for 2 series she has little in the way of an arc. Yaz has a lot of fans which makes her hard to criticise, but let’s just say that the series 10 companion, Bill, was also an LGBT woman, but she had an actual personality and goals, and Yaz just didn’t for most of the episodes she was in.

 

Looking forward to Davies as showrunner again, especially after the show “Years and Years” which was excellent. I would have watched Sex Education for Ncuti, but my Netflix ran out. I did, however, watch the Horrible Histories movie which had Ncuti as a side character, he seemed pretty decent in that.

 

Least favourite Doctor, episode, and monster/villain?

My least favourite Doctor… hmmm… There’s an issue with the possible answer, if the answer is any non-numbered person who played the Doctor, then we have to include a lot of people. The only thing making the multiple Morbius Doctors any less legitimate than Jo Martin’s Doctor is screen time. So I’ll go with a numbered Doctor: the 6th Doctor, Colin Baker.

 

I wanna make clear that all of the Doctors are good in a lot of ways, and none are bad, and the 6th Doctor is my least favourite purely for his post-regeneration freak out, and to be honest I struggled to forgive him.

 

 

 

My least favourite episode though is easy, Sleep No More. It’s a found footage episode, with a twist. I'm gonna spoil it because it’s not a good twist. Basically, there’s a signal that turns people into sand, starting with the sand that occurs in the corner of your eyes. The crew of the ship turned into sandmen and the Doctor and Clara find the ship appear in the footage and reveal that they are actually being recorded by the sand itself. Long story short, the ship gets destroyed to stop the spread and the episode is secretly a tool to spread the signal. This is never resolved, and the episode that would act as the resolution was replaced with the Empress of Mars.

 

 

 

 

Least favourite monster is the Time Zombies, characters who died in the TARDIS who attack themselves from the past. My major issue is that this would suggest something of a time loop that the Doctor wasn’t able to solve, but he does, so the zombies never existed? Why did the Doctor already know what they were then? A decent idea that breaks as soon as you think about it, worse than a boring or bad idea to me.

 

 

 

If there was going to be a game made based on a particular DW episode, which one would you most like to play?

There is already an episode set in a video game in series 10. It's a good episode so I won’t spoil which episode it is, but that episode I couldn’t actually see making a good game. The popularly hated Love and Monsters on the other hand, I could easily see a game in the style of Her Story or even Sherlock Holmes. It’s a story about a group of Doctor fans being forced to find the Doctor by a seemingly powerful new stranger. The reason why I like this is that I genuinely think that the ability to play as the Doctor will automatically make your game no longer feel like Doctor Who.

 

 

Favourite and least favourite companion(s)?

My favourite companion follows the 9-year-old rule I’ve mentioned earlier. My favourite companion is Martha Jones, as unlike other companions, she always felt like the Doctor’s equal without any element of the Doctor keeping them around for their own sake. While Martha has a one-way romance with the Doctor, the Doctor in turn seems to start relying on her so much that he starts failing to see her own struggles, and she chooses to leave on her own terms when she realises the Doctor hasn’t changed, but she has, and she can’t stick to the Doctor’s routine that he forces himself to live. I really love her for that, it made me question if the Doctor can ever actually understand humans as an immature 9 year old.

 

 

I never like ranking something as bad that people genuinely tried to do well on. I felt icky saying Colin Baker was my least favourite Doctor earlier because of it. Fortunately, Adam Mitchell’s actor is (as of writing this) a

Spoiler

registered sex offender

, so it’s handy that his character is also a prat. His character was basically designed to show that not anyone should be a companion. He attempts to transmit future knowledge into the past, but this backfires and puts himself and the Doctor in danger. The Doctor kicks him out in the same episode and Adam returns as a villain in a 2013 comic book.

 

 

Who would your fancast be to play a future Doctor (or companion)?

I had a think about this and I started thinking about Darren Boyd as a possible Doctor, since he’s been in serious dramas as well as comedies, but I thought it was a bit too safe of a choice, then I remembered his co-star in Outlaws as a good Doctor choice as well, who frankly stole the show for me: Rhianne Barreto.

 

 

Did you also watch/like Torchwood?

I watched bits and pieces but I wasn’t really a fan, the show was incredibly horny and I was just too young to be interested. When I was old enough, the show wasn’t on BBC iPlayer, so I couldn’t watch it.

 

I did watch the other spin-offs, Sarah Jane Adventures and Class. SJA was a brilliant show aimed at a younger audience, but the only real difference was that no one died and the lower budget. None of the other things that made Doctor Who great were lost in translation.

 

 

Class was… fine. Episode 1, 6, 7, and 8 were good, but it was a miracle I stayed when at one point, I only liked 20% of the episodes, but 6 and 7 are genuinely great. They play to the show's strength of being character studies, which were often distractions in the other episodes.

 

 

If GB would be connected by a landbridge, would you prefer it going to France or to Norway?

Norway, we’ve already got a tunnel and a relatively short ferry ride to France, Norway would be far more useful for many.

 

What is the difference between two identical things?

Time and location. If we assume that an item remains the exact same regardless of whatever happens to them, (ie, no memories, no reaction, and no decay), then if they are truly identical in every way, the only difference can be their position in time and space. Or the fact that they will be made of different atoms makes even identical items inherently different.

 

Stack rank your top 10 Taskmaster contestants.

I’m not gonna give reasons for my top 10 since these are real people, even if they are exaggerated versions of themselves:

1. Tim Vine
2. Dave Correos
3. Rose Matafeo
4. Nish Kumar
5. Charlotte Ritchie
6. Paul Sinha
7. Josh Widdicombe
8. Mike Wozniak
9. Sophie Duker
10. Dave Gorman

 

If you had to rank every game you've ever played from best to worst, which one do you think would be in the exact middle?

A game that would be in my exact middle? Hmmm… I’m thinking that it’ll either be a so-so game in a genre I like, or a good game in a genre I don’t. I’m gonna go for the second option, because despite not being into racing games, I played a lot of Need For Speed: Most Wanted and I’m not sure why.

 

 

If you had to pick three videogame NPC characters, with whom you will attend the wedding of one of your exes, and you all have to drive there in a small eco-friendly car, for a minimum of a 13-hour drive, and you have to be the driver the entire way, and you know that one of them will be choosing all the music you listen to, one will get slightly too drunk and loud at the wedding, and one will be picking the outfit you wear, which three do you pick, and why?

Firstly, I think this is a pretty good choice, Tali'zorah vas Normandy:

 

We know that when she’s drunk, the worst she’ll do is try to get a tattoo. If she’s picking the music, it’ll be romantic songs from musicals, which is fine by me. And if my outfit is picked by her, it’ll either be the outfit Mshep wears in the Citadel DLC, which looked fine, or I’ll get a hazmat suit, which is always appreciated.

 

 

Next up is Warren Graham from Life is Strange. Warren’s style and the style of those he crushes on are fairly basic and similar to what I normally wear since I was about the same age as the cast when the game came out. We get to see what he’s like when he’s drunk in episode 4, and it mostly consists of taking selfies, which I can live with. He’s very nerdy so there’s a pretty good chance that the music he picks will be OST from Doctor Who, at least I hope so. 

 

 

Finally, this one I’ve had to think abou. The other two I’d thought of quickly, this one took me a while… and I chose a playable character too because I genuinely racked my brain for 20 minutes and he was the best option I came up with, but they’re Norman Jayden. He is the detective character from Heavy Rain. The style is obvious, snazzy suit and glasses, or he may even dress me in a cagoule to hide my face. He likes to play piano which I don’t hate, I just hope he plays it unlike the way I played it. And he does have a drug problem, but this is probably a good reason to keep him around, he needs someone to help him out and stop him from relapsing; *I can FIX him!*

 

 

What's your opinion of mint chocolate?

Mint Chocolate is proof against the existence of a benevolent God.

 

How many Weetabix is too many Weetabix? 

You can never have enough Weetabix if your goal is to challenge God for allowing Mint Chocolate to exist. But in all seriousness I never have more than four and these days I have two or three.

 

What is a game that everybody seems to love that you really couldn't get into?

For the life of me, I tried to get into The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt multiple times, I beat that griffine and was then sent somewhere else, and I was unbelievably bored, it’s hard to tell if it was the gameplay or story that didn’t grab me, but trust me when I say that I wanted to like it given how much people raved about it.

 

Do you prefer your trophies shaken or stirred??! 

I’m going to take this question 100% seriously and interpret stirred as getting trophies in one game at a time, and interpret the shaken as any trophy from any game at a moment's notice, depending on how I’m feeling at the time. And I absolutely go for shaken, because I get distracted incredibly easily and often get urges to play different games while I’m playing other games.

 

Best Studio Ghibli film?

I have a lot of nostalgia for the more mystical movies like Howl’s Moving Castle and Kiki’s Delivery Service, but I was surprised at my favourite movie being The Wind Rises, which is a historical biography, (with a few liberties taken,) following the famous aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi. What interests me is that he is following his passion of designing planes, but due to the ongoing Second World War, his passion is in many senses corrupted by Japan’s use of his designs to kill people. The conflict of a fulfilling career vs a world where everyone is only a tool for something, whether it’s money or conquest.

 

 

 

What's the worst movie with your favourite actor?

Is it odd that I don’t really have a favourite actor? I guess a product of watching a lot of animated stuff and panel shows is that I don’t watch enough to memorise that many actors. I guess since it’s been noted that I’m a Whovian nutcase, I could mention Matt Smith in Morbius which was genuinely awful. I have watched it (before the memes) and I actually had somewhat high hopes since I knew I liked Venom despite the initial negative reception, but Morbius was unrelentingly dull and the plot felt like a meandering mess. Matt Smith overacting is literally the only highlight.

 

 

What's the best movie with an actor you hate in the lead role?

Baby Driver is a fantastically directed rhythm-based action movie, loads of fun. Two of the leads were accused of not great things. And one of them was Kevin Spacey, and I think it’s safe to say that he did the not great thing. Thank Christ I watched this movie before Spacey was outed as a creep (I’m trying to be vague but if you watched the news at the end of 2017, you know what happened.)

 

Do you like to cheese games as much as Lizzie likes cheese?

What? Is a Cheese game an “EZPZ” game? Who is Lizzie? Is Lizzie the Queen? Is Lizzie Liz Truss?

 

I don’t like cheese except mozzarella, I don’t think there are any good games about cheese.

 

The Queen died, so I don’t think she likes cheese.

 

And the prime minister gets angry at all the foreign cheese like a racist milkman, I have proof of this.

 

 

 

What do Twiglets taste like? I've never had one (we don't have them in NA), but I'm curious to know.

Now’s a fun time to mention that I have no memory when it comes to smell or taste, I only can imagine tastes in words. It’s apparently some less severe form of aphantasia, it doesn’t usually come up unless I’m asked to recall taste. I think it was salty? I know I didn’t like them enough to buy them ever again.

 

I also have a stutter, so I can definitely sympathize with the issues that come with having one. I applaud your willingness to share about it; for most of my life I didn't want to talk about mine because I was embarrassed, but as I get older I'm trying more and more to be as open about it as possible (it's part of who I am, after all). If you're willing to share, I'm curious to know: how do you feel when other people feel the need to finish a sentence for you? Personally, I find it infuriating - I'd much rather people allow me to take the time and finish my thoughts for myself, even though it can be a struggle at times. When they talk on my behalf, it's like they're so uncomfortable with my struggle that they just need to end their own discomfort by speaking for me. How do you feel about it?

It sounds like your stuttering is a lot worse than mine, I mostly stutter in two major circumstances, when I’m at the lower end of a power imbalance, such as when I’m talking to doctors and nurses as the student that I still am, and when I don’t know the person well. In both cases, what I’m saying is usually the information is either important and cannot be interrupted, or unpredictable, unless they are particularly rude, a new person doesn’t usually interrupt me. Usually, with new people, I don’t have much to say anyway, it’s part of the way I deal with it.

 

____________________________________________________________________

Thank you to all who participated in asking questions in this interview! I'll be travelling in Ireland next week so there'll be a slight delay with the next one, but it should still be up next month sometime.

Spoiler

@serrated-banner9 @Baranov_925 @Abby_TheLastofUs @zizimonster @ObsiEez @Rally-Vincent--- @DoctorDrPepper @DrBloodmoney @CptToffer @ZedsDeadStevo @Joe Dubz @KennethMcCormick @ZitMeatloaf

 

Edited October 8, 2022 by Charizarzar

[Breakingthegreen]

The fact that my terrible slam poetry was kept makes me unreasonably happy.

[Beyondthegrave07]

Thank you for the shout out! @breakingthegreen I actually hope others are inspired by my charity events and host other ones that are meaningful to them like @MissShake did with animals. It's always been a pipe dream that we could have charity events going on year round here and people could always be earning plats and participating in these for causes they care about. 

 

Also, good read! You're current GoTY was fascinating since I think almost everyone and their mother has said Elden Ring (which I have not played). The Kirby choice piqued my interest since I have a switch and haven't picked this one up yet.

 

Really liked your choices of anime too. Seemed like you fancy mystery thrillers or action comedies. Haha.

[serrated-banner9]

this has to be the longest thing i have read on this site by a long shot

i was hoping to buy a copy of everybody's golf to do the online but i never got round to it

BTW ever played Burnout paradise? i know it is a racer by heart but god it is fun just messing around when you are bored/

current GOTY pick for me is probably Pokemon legends acreus, i still need to go back and beat

[Speling_Expirt]

Awesome read, and great insight @breakingthegreen. Thankyou

[Breakingthegreen]

1 hour ago, Beyondthegrave07 said:

Also, good read! You're current GoTY was fascinating since I think almost everyone and their mother has said Elden Ring (which I have not played). The Kirby choice piqued my interest since I have a switch and haven't picked this one up yet.

 

Really liked your choices of anime too. Seemed like you fancy mystery thrillers or action comedies. Haha.

I would love to put Elden Ring as my GotY, my problem is that I played Demon Souls on the PS3, someone wrote jump here, I died. Then the next message said trap here, and I ignored it then died. I've decided souls-likes weren't for me from that point on.

My favourite animes are ones I'd call "mum" animes and by that I mean, ones that I'd be happy to watch in front of my mother, and these all fitted the bill, there were others that aren't "mum" animes like Beastars and Danganronpa 3 that I also love though.

 

1 hour ago, serrated-banner9 said:

this has to be the longest thing i have read on this site by a long shot

BTW ever played Burnout paradise? i know it is a racer by heart but god it is fun just messing around when you are bored/

current GOTY pick for me is probably Pokemon legends arceus, i still need to go back and beat

This is literally longer than any essay I've done for nursing, and I wrote some of this in a fugue state while recovering from COVID, It was literal days of writing... hope the next person gets over 7,500 words and beats my record.

I haven't my brother has the PS3 PS Plus version, but I never played it, he also bought himself a physical remaster on PS4, (I'm pretty sure he hasn't played either) I could play that one.

That game did pique my interest, but the best pokemon, Chikorita, is missing :(, JK I'll play at some point

[CptToffer]

@breakingthegreen Glad you don't like mint chocolate. It's terrible eh? Mint is for brushing your teeth and that's it.

 

Thanks for answering my question and (I think) you're in the UK and a nurse so thank you for your service. And if you're in the South-East an extra thanks cause you're looking after me and my family ??

[ObsiEez]

Great read @breakingthegreen! Glad to see another ERASED fan as well. Super underrated anime that I'd honestly just recommend to anyone.

Also for going for the Kingdom Hearts plats (Birth by Sleep & Dream Drop Distance), as someone who platinumed them all I can 100% understand not wanting to do it, especially Birth by Sleep because there is a pretty big skill gap between that one & the rest of the series. 

I also heavily agree on not being able to get into The Witcher 3. I even went as far as to 100% the game & even by the end of it, I still couldn't get fully into it. The entire first arc of the story up until you find Ciri was extremely boring & never grabbed me & the gameplay felt extremely floaty making combat feel like a chore. & don't even get me started trying to do micro movements to pick something up & Geralt decides he wants to gear up for a 500 meter race.

[ZitMeatloaf]

On 10/8/2022 at 0:17 PM, Charizarzar said:

It sounds like your stuttering is a lot worse than mine, I mostly stutter in two major circumstances, when I’m at the lower end of a power imbalance, such as when I’m talking to doctors and nurses as the student that I still am, and when I don’t know the person well. In both cases, what I’m saying is usually the information is either important and cannot be interrupted, or unpredictable, unless they are particularly rude, a new person doesn’t usually interrupt me. Usually, with new people, I don’t have much to say anyway, it’s part of the way I deal with it.

The severity of mine varies from situation to situation and day to day. A lot can depend on whether I'm having a good day or a bad day. Most of the time it either isn't a problem or a minor problem, but sometimes it's a bigger problem than I'd like.

 

I also have the power imbalance situation as a factor. Another one for me is talking on the phone; I'm much more likely to stutter on the phone than in person. Face-to-face is best, video chatting is better than an audio call, and audio-only situations like phone calls and voice chat are the most problematic for me.