Posts for Falsche

Falsche
He/Him
Joined: 1/15/2017
Posts: 1
Hello. Seeing as most opinions here are from those with a lot of experience with TASes, I thought that a perspective of someone with nothing but a basic knowledge of what a TAS is might be helpful. I apologize in advance if some things are phrased somewhat rudely or overly negative; that's not the intention. So, opinions. First, on each individual run: NES Classic segment was somewhat weird. Primarily because the main show of the segment was the donation incentive - Gradius. What exactly was the plan if the incentive wasn't met? The only thing shown aside from it was the short, simple and not incredibly impressive Galaga run. I mean, it still was entertaining, but the segment was carried by Gradius. Without it, the segment would've been a letdown. In the result, there is the feeling of "we thought it would be really cool to show off NES Classic, but we don't really have that much to show, sorry". Speaking of Gradius, it was incredibly impressive and entertaining... for 5-7 minutes. After that, the constant twitching and weaving around the screen got kind of tiresome. It's an autoscroller, so it's understandable, but still. Super Mario Bros. 3 was a "take over the console" TAS. The "before the takeover" part was entertaining, no complaints here. After, though, we were apparently shown basically a screensaver before being whisked away to the next run. Honestly, it was a bit of a letdown, a "wait, that's it?" moment. The whole thing felt like it was setting up for something, and then it just stopped. Yes, it was later revealed that it was a set-up for the final run, but that was later. Next, Megaman. Again, a takeover. Twice in a row. Still an entertaining takeover, and then a much more entertaining payload. This one is a highlight for me, everything was really amazing there. The only problem with this part I have is how it works together with the previous one. Namely, it overshadows the previous entry. Obsoletes it, if you will. We were shown a takeover, and next we were shown a far more entertaining takeover. That kind of raised a "why were we shown the previous entry, then?" question for me. LoZ: Link to the Past. Takeover. Again. Thrice in a row is just pushing it. Takeover runs might be entertaining, but filling the TASBlock with only these runs is too much. Alright, the takeover went well again. So we get to the main feature of the TASBlock: video feed. So, we were shown two very fast-paced runs. On a low-quality video with lagging. This didn't go very well, to be honest. Yes, the "video feed to a SNES" thing was absolutely incredible from a "wow, they actually did that" standpoint. It's perfectly understandable that of course we're not going to get 1080p HD 60fps videos. And yet, that doesn't change that it wasn't very clear what was going on. Things kind of jumped from here to there, lags and low quality didn't help and commentary... Well, it tried, it really tried, but it couldn't quite fully offset the problem. As a result, I was basically completely lost on any SM64 segments with tricks more advanced than basic platforming and on the whole Portal run. Two runs in a row also felt somewhat boring by the second one, but that might be the problem only because of my lack of understanding what was going on. SkHype part went well. What was shown wasn't incredibly entertaining, but there were no criticisms that I can remember. And Twitch Plays Color-A-Dinosaur was kind of ruined by throwing in emotes. So it went from coloring to just taking emote spam from the chat and transferring it to the main screen, fully obscuring it and losing the Color-A-Dinosaur part. And not everyone likes emote spam. It was briefly amusing, but no more than that. Overall thoughts: This year's TASBlock basically had two separate segments: TAS, and video feed on SNES. Notably a larger focus was put on second segment. This is not really a great thing. That means the focus was kind of diverted from the actual TAS parts, making it less of a speedrunning block and more of a "look at the cool thing we can do with this console" block. Which is a problem because AGDQ is supposed to be a speedrunning marathon. The effect of diverting most focus to a single thing shows on the other. Takeovers were all impressive from the "this is happening" perspective and had good to amazing payloads. On the other side, TAS parts either wore out after a while even by themselves or required an understanding of what was going on to appreciate them. Aside from that, making the whole block around a single thing is not very good. Takeover runs are impressive, but having several takeover runs in a row is a poor idea. Same thing for everything else - I doubt that, say, 1 hour of constant warping between levels would keep everyone entertained for all that time. Someone here compared TASes to magic, but would you really watch a magician who, during his shows, only pulls off a single trick?