Chapter Text
[excerpt of transcription of video: “Psychonauts Playthrough – It's Not His Vault He's Psychic”]
“Hello, bonjour and konichiwa to The Playground! You're all most welcome, as always.
Today I'm playing 'Psychonauts' which is, urm, over ten years old! But, I just got it on PS4 because it was way cheap. It's taking a while to boot up, so I'll tell you a bit about it while it does. Oh, originally PS2, look at that! I was too young to play this first time (whispering) if I'd heard of it when I was ten, which I hadn't.
(usual volume) So it's developed by Double Fine. If you haven't heard of them, it's Tim Schaefer, and if you haven't heard of him, then I assume...I dunno what to tell you. It's TIM. FUCKING. SCHAEFER. Dude. You need to get out more.
Nah, nah, just kidding. Okay, so he's well known for Grim Fandango, but he's like, the king of indie games, 'specially point and click. We all know how impatient I get with those, right? But! This is a platformer! So we should be good to go. Running and jumping, yeah? I can do that. With my eyes closed! In fact I did. If you're interested, you can see me complete Super Mario 2 with my eyes closed by clicking on the pop-up I hope Kazu puts in the video. Let's have a graphic of Mario right here please. Click on here to watch.
Oh shit! It's finished loading. Oh my god, this is so 90s already, I LOVE IT. And it wasn't even out in the 90s! 2005? So I...what? Walk around on this brain? This is...oh! Wait, there's a door. I'll just jump in there.
Okay, so this is a platform game. Jumping, running, collecting stuff. Looking online, there's a fuck ton of collectibles, which I don't normally give a shit about, but apparently that's how you level up, so looks like I'm gonna be trying to collect a bunch of crap. I. HATE. COLLECTIBLES.
At least it has analog stick compatibility. You know what I always say – life is too short for games without analog stick compatibility. If you port a PS2 game to PS4, give me my fucking analog stick, or it's not happening. Hmm, the movement is pretty smooth, though! Good job, urm, whoever did this. I've forgotten already. I literally just looked it up before we started streaming.
It's a much better port than Primal. Jesus, dudes, do you lot remember Primal? What an annoying slow piece of garbage that was. Ah, memories. I broke my controller that day. RIP Jemima the controller. We hardly knew ye.
These character designs are crazy, seriously. Have you seen this guy's afro? I really want some goggles and a flying helmet now though. Raz, you are one sick looking motherfucker but you have some smooth aviator style going on there. If anyone wants to tell me where to get freaky goggles like this, comment and tell me! I want some for my playthrough videos.
Also, I would TOTALLY wear that shirt of his.
Okay, so while I'm finding whatever it is I'm looking for, I wasn't really listening...anyway, while I'm titting about showing you the game, let me catch you up on what's been going on. So, you may remember last week I had to take Agro to the vet. Thank you all for your lovely comments, by the way. You're all so lovely to me, even though I'm such a prick.
Anyway, luckily, it's not serious! I was so worried, cause coughing can mean so many things in dogs, but apparently, he's just got a cold. I mean...way to worry me, man, I thought you had kennel cough or something. You big mutt, I love ya.
What else...oh look at that! I think we're getting into the game properly, I'll stop rambling, and do an actual livestream of this gameplay. If you miss this live, don't worry, as always we'll be putting an edit of it up later on. Let's do this!”
–
Yuuji sat back after watching the video Kazu put together. He'd added in the Mario graphic, as requested, even adding a pair of dark glasses. Nice little touch, thought Yuuji, as he scrolled down to see the comments.
People seemed to enjoy the playthrough, although almost every comment was thankful that Agro was doing better. Yuuji swore that dog was more popular than him some days.
One other comment caught his eye. “You should whisper more! OMG you have an amazing whisper, it set off tingles in my head! Please do an ASMR playthrough of something.”
“Hey, Haru! You know what ASMR is?” he shouted through into the living room.
“What?”
“ASMR? You heard of it?”
There was a loud sigh, sounds of shuffling against leather, and then Haru appeared in the doorway to his office. “What are you talking about?”
“Someone said I should do an ASMR playthrough. Never heard of it. Is it a game?”
“Show me.”
Yuuji pointed out the comment on screen, while Haru peered at it. “She says 'ASMR playthrough of something' so I don't think it's a game. Search it.”
He opened another window alongside the YouTube one, and started looking for ASMR. Comments continued to appear below the original one, Haru reading them out as they did.
“'Can you imagine him trying to whisper? Through a whole video,' this one says. They have a point. I bet you couldn't whisper for a minute, let alone an hour.”
“I could whisper that long!”
Kazu wandered in to see where the other two had got to. “You couldn't. I could hear every word you said from in the lounge.”
“Hey!” Yuuji shouted, as if to prove a point. “I'm offended! I'm not always loud. I can be quiet if I have to be!”
“You think? Well, then maybe we should try it. There's plenty of people who seem interested.”
“Is that all it is?” Yuuji carried on scrolling through the results. “Whispering? I could whisper! Are there other gamers who do this ASMR thing?”
They spent the rest of the afternoon researching online, watching videos, and brainstorming games which could be whispered through. Yuuji still wasn't convinced, but with over 400 likes on the comment, many agreeing he had a nice whisper (a compliment he never thought he'd ever hear), they all thought it was probably worth trying.
“There's a few gamers whispering over videos,” Kazu said, leaning over and scrolling through his history. “Mostly girls though. I could only find one bloke. I really think you should give it a go.”
“Things like Minecraft seem popular...”
“I'm not playing Minecraft. I'd rather boil my fingers.”
Haru tutted. “Well, there's plenty of those anyway. I meant, maybe play something similar. Something which won't get you over-excited so you accidentally shout.”
“You know what would be good?” Kazu said, looking up with wide eyes.
“I know exactly what you're thinking,” Haru joined in, both turning to Yuuji. “Come on, it's so obvious!”
Yuuji jumped to his feet and started scanning his shelf full of games, before finding the box he was searching for and holding it in the air triumphantly. “Journey!”
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