I think leaving Gamespot was the best thing to happen to Jeff Gerstmann, Ryan Davis, Brad Nicholson and Vinny Caravella. Look, I like the 'Spot, but if those five fine folks hadn't skeedaddled, we might never have gotten Giant Bomb and all it's contributed to gaming in barely a year-plus-change of operation.

However, Jeff and Vinny, great people as they are, are running a video feature that threatens to collapse my attempts to convince any and all around us that Persona 4 is the best thing to happen to gaming since the invention of the computer.



They're running a play log.

Entitled "Endurance Run: Persona 4", this set of videos follow the two as they play through the whole of the game, providing running commentary, for as long as the audience (and they) can stand it.

This is a disaster! Not only will people who didn't intend to buy the game (you bastards!) find further reason not to, but their commentary has begun to...expose some of Persona's idiosyncrasies...yes, idiosyncrasies. Not just Persona's, but for jRPGs in general, particularly their penchant for slow starts, dictatorial pacing ("You feel tired. It would be best to go to bed early.") and propensity towards reiterating the obvious.

The worst part of this is that with this post I am going to be an accomplice. I can't help it, the videos are hilarious, especially for series vets.

Before I destroy what I have built, some pre-destruction damage control! By their own admission, jRPGs long ago left the Giant Bomb crew's sphere of interest. One of their nominees for the "Best Game We Didn't Play" award was Tales of Vesperia. They're also making comments to keep it running, to keep stuff funny...right? Vinny himself played some of P4 on his own time, and mentions that it's great as a "slow burn" experience. Slow burns are awesome! Think about crockpot cooking! Throw in awesome ingredients, let it heat for 96 hours, and the resulting meal is hearty and even more awesome...right?

Obviously, there will be spoilers. As of today they're only about 4 hours in, each installment covering roughly 15-20 minutes of gameplay, on Normal difficulty. Continuing at this pace, with new installments daily, they'll be finished around December, lots of time to cancel out the damage with fawning praise and detailed analysis of symbolism posted on our blogs!

Right?

Choice quotes from installments so far:

"I usually name my RPG characters after food."

"Transparent umbrellas! Japan!"

"Usually it's just the substitute teachers that show up and curse a little to prove they're still alive inside."

I'm only embedding the first vid, because Giant Bomb's format breaks C-blogs. The permalinks to the other 9 installments (with one more each day) are below, since the site isn't very good at archives either.

If you aren't going to watch anything else, skip over 18:00 of Part 8. It's a non-spoiler if you've ever seen any box art, and Jeff and Vinny's reactions are priceless

I've faffed about enough, here we go:



Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10

I think I'm going to regret this. I'm sorry Alice!