T w e n t y S i d e d
Link (YouTube) |
I’m really enjoying this game. I mean, I’m enjoying watching Chris playing it. It looks insufferable to play. Maybe it’s just that I’m still mad about how willfully awful Absolution was, but I find the bugs and dopey adventure game logic to be kind of charming.
I can’t really explain this. Mechanically, Absolution is a better game. Why am I more charitable towards a worse one? That’s an interesting question. I think a big part of it is that it doesn’t look like Absolution was starved for cash. They easily had both the time and budget to make a far better game. In the case of Survival Instinct, it looks like there just wasn’t enough time or money to go around.
The Best of 2017
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2017.
Chainmail Bikini
A horrible, railroading, stupid, contrived, and painfully ill-conceived roleplaying campaign. All in good fun.
This is Why We Can’t Have Short Criticism
Here's how this site grew from short essays to novel-length quasi-analytical retrospectives.
Spoiler Warning
A video Let's Play series I collaborated on from 2009 to 2017.
Trekrospective
A look back at Star Trek, from the Original Series to the Abrams Reboot.
When Chris said “the man upstairs” I just had the sudden image of God appearing in this game just to give you a fetch quest. I suppose if Monty Python is to be believed it wouldn’t be the first time he’s handed out one.
“I Desire… Macaroni Pictures.”
These two episodes were painful to watch. The compass in the corner was pointing to the objective the whole time, I’m pretty sure one of the first tutorial popups said that.
Haha, I came to point out the same thing. The sad thing is, they probably already finished the game so knowing that now is entirely useless.
OK, Chris skipped or didn’t listen to the tutorial; Fair enough. However, the devs chose a poor metaphor for the arrow pointing to the next objective, because compasses point to magnetic north”. They could have just swapped out the graphic.
Maybe the objective is to escape the zombies by going to the north pole?
Yeah but still, that thing seems to track something since it moves as you left or right strafe. Also it only appears if you are given an objective. On top of it all we figured it out and we NEVER played it.
It is hard feeling sorry for the crew on that one. Usually, they play the game ahead of time specifically to avoid silly things like this.
Plus, no-one was paying attention, and Chris seemed happy to just go around in circles when most of the level had not been explored yet. But that’s the whole point of fetch quests, isn’t it? To force you to explore around.
I liked Rutskarn’s constant references to Silent Hills that nobody seemed to pick up on.
I will sometimes play a bad or average game and end up thinking of it a lot more favorably than I should because I feel like they were trying or I latch on to one or two good things it does and praise them.
Hydrophobia: Prophecy was boring but look at that water engine!
Planet Stronghold was a so-so visual novel and RPG, but it was still coherent despite being a three-person project!
Blades of Time had a game-breaking bug and terrible pointless story, but it had some fun mechanics and did a twist on heroine relationships!
Divinity II probably wasn’t all that but the writing was so witty and spirited and they let you be a jerk to NPCs!
Dementium and Dementium 2 were failures as horror games, but look at the engine they achieved on the DS!
Stuff like that. I get to be too nice to games sometimes.
Man, I really tried to get into Hydrophobia, because it was on sale, and because of what I heard about the water engine. The gameplay and story were so bad, I never even got to the first proper water room. I really hope they sold off the engine to somebody else, or published their techniques in a research journal or something. I want proper water in games! :)
I couldn’t escape the very first corridor to flood, I really don’t know what you were supposed to do, but I couldn’t figure it out in the few seconds before you drowned.
Hydrophobia wasn’t completely perfect, there were some areas with flowing water from hull breaches that weren’t adding to the water level in the room. There was also some other bits of cheating here and there. But, yes, the water was pretty damn good. It would properly flow to equalize its level and push objects (and you!) along while it was flowing.
Also you should be thankful then that you never had to bang your head against the final boss of Hydrophobia: Prophecy. It was awful. Really awful.
My Ultimate “Had low expectations so was thoroughly impressed” was Tenchu Z.
The moment I saw that I could switch to camo hakama and a giant afro with a hot dog sheath on a ninja game I immediately set my bar low. But the crazy skills and the strangely enjoyable “stealth” gameplay kept me playing it a long time.
(I say “stealth in airquotes because, while you could play it stealthy, before long your character is completely silent and nearly invisible and you can run around at mach speed murdering people in droves.)
Also, 4 player online play co-op stealth game is… not common. And sometimes i would join a random room and partake in possible the most crazy co-ordinated “stealth murder race” you can imagine. Everyone running at full speed, getting seen pretty much screws your score and nearly every person knows the map so it is a race to get the most kills without being seen.
Kinda sad it never released to PC.
I am going to try and read your mind about why you are being find a “mechanically” worse game to be better.
1) It TWD:SI doesn’t have the legacy of a series behind it. As far as the game goes it is just another bad adaption. Absolution was in the shadow of Blood Money, which you evidently quite liked, so its failure to come close to its predecessor means it fell farther below your expectations than TWD:SI did.
2) TWD:SI doesn’t try and insert a nonsensical story where it doesn’t belong. It doesn’t have characters that totally contradict themselves. They act stupid, but the way the game plays that is expected.
3) It wasn’t expected to be good. We all know licensed games suck, with exception of course, and that further lowered your expectations.
It comes down to expectations. A mediocre meal in a fine dining establishment is a major let-down. Week-old leftovers from the dodgy take-away restaurant that doesn’t give you food poisoning is awesome!
Aye, right: which is why you get to the point where some people; not naming any names *cough* ludonarrative dissident *cough*; but anyway … some people become willing to mention Revenge of the Sith in the same breath as the clearly vastly superior Iron Man 2…
Basically by the time the third prequel rolled around expectations – having had a loooong way to fall – had punched through rock-bottom and were plummeting towards the inner core.
I think another big part of it is that while a lot of design choices in Walking Dead are just “meh,” (I think someone mentioned last time that it looked like a flash game at times) most of the design choices made by the Hitman team were abhorent. Both are bad games, but one is revolting while the other is merely disappointing, and when held up together, merely disappointing looks positively charming. If they’d just finished playing Telltale’s Walking Dead, I bet this would be insufferable.
4) This isn’t a AAA title sold for $60 with #Amazing_graphics!
*Edit* So I guess I kinda have to take that back, as someone mentioned in another post this game is in fact being sold for $50 on steam. I thought someone in the first episode was saying that they got it for $15, and this is about what I would expect the quality to be for that price.
Even that has its own charm in an “I really think that they really think this is worth that much” kind of way.
As we are talking about “Absolution” being a sequel, we can add: a sequel by the same team (nominally at least). It makes for a different level of disbelief at the quality of the sequel: you were doing it right. Why are you willfully doing it wrong now?
That’s a different kind of disappointment than, for instance, noting how Arkham Origins sucks compared to its two predecessors.
We live in a world where we get to have this, but not Silent Hill starring Norman Reedus, developed by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro. Also, no more Castlevania games.
Thanks, Konami! >_>
I don’t know why it was up so early on YouTube, but I watched this episode before you posted about it here. And I have to say, I haven’t seen much that makes me think the game is all that bad: ninja zombies are pretty much an expectation of Walking Dead media, and the rest seemed more to be Chris’s deficiencies in paying attention / navigation. The field of view does bother me a bit–your camera seems extremely restricted, but otherwise… I don’t know. The survivors thus far seem to act sort of like people, and the conversational emoting is good.
(No offense, Chris. But I did want to yell at the screen during the episode.)
Some of it probably does come down to expectations. I’d heard this was terrible, but seeing someone play it I think “There are some interesting ideas here.”
And then of course I get on Steam to look at its price and oh Lord it’s $50.
That really is what it comes down to.
If this was a indie zombie game made by a small studio for dirt cheap, with an indie price tag; it would get things like “The survivor road trip mechanics are interesting even if the shooting gameplay is derivative and the quest structure is boring; could use some more polish before out of Early Access.”
But it is a full price game with the official TV shows branding. not sure about the size of the team, but small or large, my guess is that the fellow in charge was… less then generous with the schedule.
Yeeeah, sorry about that. I wasn’t expecting this game to be quite so hard to navigate in (and seriously, who uses a compass to point to OBJECTS rather than to an orienting direction in 2015!? It defeats the whole point of a compass!).
In my defense, the whole thing came about rather slap-dash – Josh hadn’t played through our next game just yet, and so it was either no Spoiler Warning for a week or I could try to put something together. So I bought a few goofy games that were on sale (including that TMNT game, this, and Star Wars Republic Commandos) and loaded up the one I thought would have the most entertainment value.
If we do end up doing more zombie games this month before starting the next real season, rest assured any of the games we’ve mentioned I’ve played enough to be able to find my away around in the first few levels of. Hopefully the frustration level will go down if we continue on this path (and yeah, rewatching the footage, I sympathize).
Also there’s at least one really funny moment in the third episode that I think justifies this week, but then I’m super biased.
Honestly, while it can be frustrating to watch, seeing someones initial take on the game is great; though I do agree that at least one person should have at least played a decent amount of the game, even if it isn’t the fellow behind the wheel; so that if it starts to get awkward they can chime in with a helpful hint.
This wasn’t nearly as drawn out as the P.T. episodes, but then that game was *intentionally* being obtuse… not sure which is worse.
Ooo! Republic Commandos… I loved that game, I’m disappointed that it hasn’t been picked up for a sequel yet. Well mostly because they left the end of the game on a complete cliffhanger which in hindsight is really unforgivable but the shooting was fun and I thought it had some really cool ideas with commanding your squad. I find it really hard to get mad at the bogus ending though because the rest of it was so fun.
I actually think it would be really fun to see Spoiler Warning do Republic Commando, or Jedi Outcast/Academy or some other old Star Wars action game. I reckon Josh, at least, would have some interesting things to say about them.
Star Wars Republic Commandos is a fantastic game, or it was when I played it years ago…
Anyway didn’t you mention the compass pointing toward your objective earlier in the video?
What’s sad is that I didn’t even *notice* the compass until people were talking about it in the comments section. I was more just thinking, “Oh, you need to explore that way; it looks like there’s a door / passage there you haven’t checked.” And “the guy clearly motioned that the generator was on the right side of the building; why is he just glancing over there and not going to it.”
All that aside, I’m sure it’s much harder to pay attention with three other people talking over everything you’re doing.
Republic Commandos is still one of my favorite games. I would love to see what you guys had to say about it.
Didn’t the guy in the gas station tell you to open the cage and turn on the generator? I’m assuming ‘jinny cage’ is localese for generator cage?
Between that and all the getting lost, I’m not sure Chris has the sense of orientation to play such a maze game while talking about it to three other people.
As for the quality of the game, it strikes me as on par with the Falling Skies game (an xcom clone wannabe with zero charm and depth, but it uses the show’s voice actors to spout nonsense now and then).
The real lesson is: This is why Josh plays through every game before we cover it on the show, so he doesn’t get “stuck” like this. All four of us went in blind on this game, and this is what happens when you have four people covering a game no one’s actually played before.
True enough. And just to be clear, despite my randomly picked avatar picture, I meant to be helpful, not grumpy :)
I know well that trying to play a game while talking to someone is difficult even when I do know the game. So thanks for the video, I do enjoy watching them!
AND not listening to whats going on(though you cant be blamed for that).
Well, we often criticise games for being too linear, so it’s nice to have one where rather than going in a straight line from A to B you instead go around and around and around…
;D
Like final fantasy xiii.Only this one has more branches.
What I learned is that while blind play-throughs are fun, but made much more difficult when you have three distractions in your ear.
I can actually understand why Chris didn’t pick up that his goal was behind the chain-link fence. After all, every AAA game in a modern setting for the past five years or so has taught us that chain-link fences project an insurmountable force field an infinite distance into the sky.
So, like, has anyone actually seen Shamus and Captain America together at the same time in the same room? (Honestly at times during Age of Lips Why? I was needing to stifle audible laughter at the intermittent but thoroughgoing aptness of that comparison!)
You might be on something there.Wasnt captain americas alter ego some scrawny asthmatic white dude?Hmmmm…
To the bloke known as “Rutskarn”, I am hereby serving you one (1) internet subphoena for blatant plagiarisation of MY drunken idea that I totally had a few months ago, as underlined on the scrabblings on this napkin that I submit to the court as exhibit B, for, quote, “a video game satire where all the fluffy nouns and fancy text is taken out and replaced with “that place”, “that guy” and “that thing” and all dialogue only contains “go to/kill/get” followed by one of those things”. You’ve blatantly plagiarised my not-very-intellectual ravings and I submit my demand for one (1) million (000000)… million (more 0)… things that I like or a smiley face or I’ll see you in court. A food court. Someday.
I’ll be standing around looking at you and you won’t like it.
Now I want to know what Exhibit A was!… :D
This court finds in favor of Police Cops!
Sad to see you guys playing this game so half-assedly just because it got bad reviews. It’s actually pretty decent if you try and play stealthily and try to concentrate a bit. Not a perfect game by any means, but perfectly playable and even fun, I’ve finished it twice.
Sure it can be fun to rag on to a game that everyone hates, but when you stop and really think about it not many people spewing the hatred have actually played the game. They’ve just seen videos from Angry Joe and other folks that make decent living out of expressing polarized views on games.