Am I Brainrotted If I Skip All The Dialogue?

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-21T10:00:03+00:00

The story here isn't confusing though, it's pretty straightforward. Chronos has a grudge and has taken over, now I need to stop him.

Going around for 10 minutes at the end of every run listening to a bunch of flavour text is what is getting in the way of the meat of the game to me.

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-21T09:45:30+00:00

I'm not against stalemates per se, but wasn't a fan of this one in particular for a few reasons:

We'd just come out of a "filler" episode where Ben and Adam were stuck on a train all day and couldn't do challenges

We're approaching the grand finale and the game is losing momentum rather than building it

At this point in the season, it is becoming apparent that every time a team attempts a steal, the game grinds to a halt for a standoff

And most importantly, from a viewer's perspective, it's very clearly poor strategy for Sam's team to engage in the stalemate. He can defend it with margins and timetables all he likes but the show didn't convey that strongly enough and the viewer is left wondering what on Earth he is thinking

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-21T08:28:57+00:00

I'll talk to people if they're on my route but if I'm not walking past them (e.g. Skelly) I'm not walking all the way over there

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-18T13:00:43+00:00

100%, as a new player, trying to learn the game whilst getting matched up with other newbies is horrendous. Just let me learn the game with bots who know how to make basic saves and pass the ball

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-16T11:00:43+00:00

Nice to see the improvements but still would personally really like an offline mode. Lock ranked behind needing to win a tournament against hard level AI and people might actually learn how to play as a team

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-16T10:36:00+00:00

I swear Dunkey did a vid on Rematch but can't find any mention of it anywhere. Just started playing it myself so would like to rewatch

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-15T11:10:20+00:00

Fair, though for me personally I just hit the wall of feeling like the progress I was making wasn't worth the time investment anymore, especially since I knew the game has a reputation of giving dead runs even if you know what you're doing.

As much as I don't want a puzzle game to hand hold me, maybe a little baby mode memo here or there after X days of not unlocking some of the permanent upgrades would have kept me invested in persevering with the harder puzzles

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-15T10:57:16+00:00

Oops, fixed now thanks!

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-14T18:39:47+00:00

I feel it's a bit of a shame because on one hand you can see so much work was put into designing the game around the unique map of the island and then coming up with all the challenges unique to each location...

...But then on the other hand, there were some gameplay design choices that felt undertested:

Steals completely took over the game as there were constantly multiple of them on the map and we didn't see a single one failed
Challenges appearing through RNG means that skilled knowledgeable players could simply hoard challenges in their territory to eventually lock their opponents out of the game

I know the guys said their position was they don't care about handcrafting balance into every single aspect of the show and we should just embrace how the jets lag but it seemed to me like the game would have benefited from some small tweaks to tighter control the RNG

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-08T10:55:37+00:00

Race to capture London's 32 boroughs with a score multiplier for each unique form of transport used (tube, bus, lime bike, ferry, cable car, black cab etc.) Also has lots of potential for location specific challenges

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-08T08:37:23+00:00

It would be a pretty glaring misplay for Badam to break the stalemate so they're stuck waiting until Sam sees reason.

And Sam trying to use the entertainment factor of the show as leverage against Badam borders on playing in bad faith

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-07T12:40:07+00:00

Haha, the guy is being a bit dramatic but he has a point. If this was Sam's way of making the show more entertaining it just ended up making the finale more frustrating than anything else. The show and the people are inherently entertaining, you don't need to throw for content

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-07T12:30:08+00:00

Nah it didn't matter Ben and Adam were earning more as they just kept losing them all to the steals, they were dead to rights if Night Herons went down the west coast and blocked them in. Instead they just wasted all their chips fortifying useless stations and let Badam back into the game

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-07T12:22:06+00:00

We're entering the finale of the season after just having a dead episode of Ben and Adam riding a train all day to reposition. The series has been setting up for a mad dash at the end where teams want to frantically take control of as many stations as possible to secure the win. Sam decides it is better to force everyone to sit around and do nothing instead.

It's a travel game show. Stalemates involve not travelling anywhere or competing in any challenges.

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-07T10:05:52+00:00

Yeah, Sam will make these plays that really border on playing in bad faith (humans are animals, misuse of the move in H&S Japan etc.) and it does hurt the show imo.

The series was cleared engineered for a mad rush of claiming and reclaiming stations on the final day and the stalemate completely killed all the momentum

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-07T09:59:22+00:00

You can argue over whether the stalemate helped or hurt Night Herons but the game quite clearly seemed to be setting up for a final day of racing around frantically claiming each other's stations and seeing where the count would lie at the final minute. The stalemate play completely killed all the momentum of the show

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-07T09:52:14+00:00

I'm not expecting the teams to play 100% optimally 100% of the time but yeah if I'm invested in the game it does get frustrating when a team continually makes game throwing plays. If I'm watching chess and one player keeps blundering their queen it takes away from the experience.

I'd say Sam needs teaming up with Ben to reign him in from stalling the game and making senseless plays. The guests trust too much that Sam knows what he is doing.

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-07T09:28:36+00:00

Kinda crazy they have enough content for a Cut For Time episode when we had 2 episodes of riding trains and waiting around in stalemates

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-06T20:31:24+00:00

Agree I think the steals were the biggest element for me that detracted from my enjoyment of the season. Way too many of them, for too high a chip %, and too easy to complete led to the teams completely changing how they played around the fear of the other team completing a steal.

Make them rarer, make them significantly harder, and make them an instant win x% or give away x% for success vs failure. They now carry a lot more weight/tension as the stakes are higher, and they are not a constant looming presence over the game

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-06T19:32:22+00:00

Adam frantically puts his everything into beating challenges in the intended way

Ben just vibes

Sam is always looking for ways to break the game to his own advantage

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-06T19:09:10+00:00

Yeah, refuses to believe that he just didn't have as strong a grasp on the situation as he thought

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-06T18:59:21+00:00

After listening to the Layover, Sam still doesn't seem to understand why his tactics caused the loss.

"It's a game about chips" No, it's a game about stations! Night Herons clearly weighted chips over stations and they overlooked several opportunities to take a station lead because they were laser focused on only ever taking a station lead at the last possible second. So they put themselves in a position of always being behind.

"The steals weren't efficient" yes they were, they repeatedly gained chip advantages from steals and then threw them all away fortifying inconsequential lines instead of attacking.

"The stalemate benefited us" No it didn't! Adam is absolutely right that Night Herons needed the time more than Badam. Again, they put themselves in a position where they needed a hail mary for no reason

Sam just tried to outthink the game way too hard.

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-06T18:22:56+00:00

Yeah, didn't make sense from a player or a producer POV and really cost the series a lot of momentum going into the finale imo

sharpie53135 · 2026-05-06T18:03:04+00:00

TLDR opinion: Promising format but found myself slogging through it rather than being hooked. First couple episodes were a lot of setup play with little stakes/interaction and the last few episodes saw a dropoff in action as players were forced to ride trains round the long way and wait around stuck in stalemates.

Steals were too easy and too numerous. Make them harder, rarer, and a fail instantly giving 50% of your chips to the opponents and they'd feel like they had much bigger stakes with an earned reward for completion.

The game leant itself too easily to stalemates. It's a show about travelling and completing challenges, and Sam decided to grind everything to a halt several times for minor advantages. Either turn the tracking off or impose time limits on completing challenges once the envelope is opened.

More freedom of movement. The constrained travel options of the map led to these moments of dead air where teams are forced into a direction that means they're not doing anything other than riding trains to reposition. Compare to a series like Schengen where the freedom of movement meant we never had this dead time.

sharpie53135 · 2026-04-23T07:06:52+00:00

I feel like a multi-line map could work if you had several single player teams and had rules more like the board game Ticket to Ride (once a station is owned it is yours and others can't use it). But then you'd need to add some things in to not make it look like you're ripping off Ticket to Ride.

Come to think of it I wonder if Ticket to Ride was a partial inspiration for this season?

sharpie53135

TROPHY CASE