kane_magus | "Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine (N64) James & Mike Mondays"

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I was watching this video and at first I honestly couldn't tell if the game really was as bad as they were saying it was, or if it was merely the case that all three of those guys were simply idiots, at least in this particular instance. The more it went on, though, the more I felt that it was the latter. It took them, like, 10-15 minutes (of the footage they showed anyway, which was edited, so it was probably even longer than that in reality) to realize that the "mysterious timer" that kept killing them was because they had been poisoned by the snake at the beginning of the game. Also, one of the first things I'd do in a situation like that, which is something they didn't do, would be to check to see if there's an inventory with an antidote or something (which there indeed is, at least according to many of the comments under the video).

On the one hand, to be fair, the fact that the game saves the poison state in such a manner and that you reload a checkpoint still poisoned (but at full life again) is indeed pretty broken and stupid, and is something that should have been caught and fixed in testing. But on the other hand, it was rather embarrassing to watch James, Mike, and Ryan flail about like that for almost 20 minutes, not having a clue as to what was going on until near the very end, and even then, still not a one of them thought to try pressing different buttons to see if it brought up an inventory with an antidote or something.

Normally, I really enjoy the James & Mike Mondays videos, yeah, but this particular one was rather painful to watch. This isn't the first video in which they've bashed a game when it was less the game's fault and more their own fault because they didn't look up the controls before starting the game. And these guys aren't the only ones who sometimes aimlessly fuck around in games and waste 20 or 30 or even 60 minutes or more of everyone's time like that without knowing what the hell they're doing (and then blame the game rather than their own ignorance), either. This is also a problem in more than a few SBFP videos and some Spoony videos (and probably in a ton of the other millions of Let's Play videos out there that I don't watch). If you're going to do a Let's Play or whatever you want to call it of a game like this, it's perfectly fine to go in blind without having played it beforehand and all. I have no problem with that. But even so, I still think that the absolute barest minimum of preparation should be to at least look at the goddamn manual to learn the basic controls or, failing that if a manual isn't available, go to GameFAQs or a wiki or somewhere to do the same. If a game is indeed broken shit in the end, that's one thing, but if a game is "unplayable" simply because you didn't take five minutes to look up a control list, then that's your problem, not the game's problem, and you're the ones who look stupid and broken, more so than the game.

People complain about games these days having tutorials that are too extensive and intrusive and pervasive and whatever else, and they bitch about how modern games do too much hand-holding and the like, but in this particular case, I think the game could have done with a bit more hand-holding, if only to inform the player that there is indeed an antidote for poison and such. If nothing else, just a huge flashing "You are poisoned, you dumbass! Use an antidote!" text on the screen would have been helpful, since the skull-and-crossbones symbol over the life indicator (which didn't appear until after they'd gotten bitten by the snake) apparently wasn't good enough. Go figure.

Disclaimer: I've never played or even heard of this N64 Indiana Jones game prior to watching this video, so no, this isn't me fanboying out because they crapped on my favoritestestest game of all time or some shit like that. If anything, I'm more sad that James Rolfe, one of the earliest and best (usually, anyway) game critics on the Internet (either as the AVGN character or as himself) of whom I am kind of a big fanboy (and for more than just the video game-related stuff he does) ended up putting out such a terribly disappointing video as this, which doesn't show him or his friends in the best of lights. Come on, guys, you can do, and indeed have done, so much better than this. Maybe you should give this game another go, once you actually figure out what the fuck you're doing, rather than just pointlessly assing around for nearly 20 minutes.