Last Game You Finished and Your Thoughts MKII

Did you read Muss post on the subject even though he doesn't seem to be much of a fan of Firewatch, he does put across a compelling post on these sort of games and why for one I like them.

Muss wrote:

As for Pokemon Smoon, I'm at the stage of collecting the ultra beasts and filling out the Dex. Really enjoyed it, big fan of the HM removal and the trials. Some of them were a bit dumb, but endearingly so, and in my pokemon cannon it makes more sense for a young trainer to be tasked with overcoming an environment of pokemon to earn progression rather than beating up somebody whose meant to be a strong trainer. The game does get off to a very slow start, and some of the music is wank, but those issues aside it's an excellent pokemon game.

Glad you enjoyed it sir: it's a good point that you make about the Pokémon canon.

Out of interest, which Pokémusics did you find w**k? Was thinking of getting myself, Athrun, and Drunka together in the new year to do a big three-person music "week" for S&M - any contributions from yerself would, of course, be gratefully accepted!

Balladeer wrote:

Was thinking of getting myself, Athrun, and Drunka together in the new year to do a big three-person music "week" for S&M - any contributions from yerself would, of course, be gratefully accepted!

I'm gonna be doing that whether you ask me to or not :p

It was some of the early tunes that I didn't really like, which is probably symptomatic of me not playing any of the more recent editions of Pokemon (Diamond & Pearl was my most recent), and so just hearing the modern style was a bit jarring for someone so fond of the gameboy audio. The soundtrack grew on me over time, and to be fair to Smoon if I started it again today I might not find any of the music bad. I can't actually recall specifically what area I muted the audio, but it was very early on.

masofdas wrote:

Did you read Muss post on the subject even though he doesn't seem to be much of a fan of Firewatch, he does put across a compelling post on these sort of games and why for one I like them

Wouldn't blame anyone for avoiding it, it's long and not particularly on topic so I purposefully spoilered it up. It was also just some general musings about how I think approach games and what I think about some general arguments levied against said games.

I think the real difference between people who like and dislike the genre is the ways they approach storytelling. If, like me, you're happy to buy into them as a means of roleplaying a protagonist then games like Firewatch hold a lot of potential for really memorable experiences such that even if they are oftentimes mechanically similar, alternate characters, settings, etc, can make different titles feel special. I think Game of Thrones by Telltale games was one of their weaker titles, but the choices and justifications for said choices Drunka and I made over our respective playthroughs meant we had a lot more to talk about and share than we do about something like X-com, Dynasty Warriors, or even the Witcher 3, games we've doubtles spent more time playing and perhaps had more 'fun' playing too. But unlike those games GoT was really cool and captivating and led to some good chats, but I think Drunka - as I force words down his gullet here -, like me, approached the game in the same way, in terms of role playing, but came up with entirely different choices. For whatever reason the mechanics and storytelling resonated with us in a way that those aforementioned games simply don't.

On the other hand, if your view is that these games diminish player agency too significantly, to the point where you can't buy into the masquerade then they're largely going to be lost on people. It's either going to be up to really good writing, or developer innovation to find ways to draw those people in, but that's fine. It's how games evolve over time. It's about where people find depth in games. For some it's combat mechanics, others exploration, and others still dialogue choices, and varying combinations of all those things and numerous other categories I've ignored. That's what makes games great to talk about, there's a huge magnitude of difference between Doom, Pokemon, Firewatch, Pong, Fifa, and Mario Kart, and innumerable ways we assign significance to those games and their methodologies.

I think Athers point about games as art is where I stand on that sort of thing as well, the idea that there's even a debate is silly. I think art is a pretty nebulous word that doesn't define anything because it can be found in everything. Where there's design there's art, where there's no design there's art. It's everywhere, always watching. But seriously, Games from Pacman to Pikmin, Tetris to Hot Line Miami, they're all art. If people call Dance, Wrestling, Poetry, Football, Music, Films, Books, Photography, and Painting, art, then there isn't really much that isn't art. People start drawing distinctions at what's high art, or low art, what's good and what's bad, but to actually define art is as impractical as defining the best colour, which is green by the way.

I thought it was a great post and said so elsewhere.

The art thing is a little silly, I'm not sure of a better word for things like a Firewatch over a Call of Duty in terms of what it brings to the table. Same goes for movies as Balla talked about The Artist which won a Oscar and Drunka about Nine Lives, both enjoyed those films but clearly their is a difference.

I'm glad you thought it was good, it was just really long so you know.

It's always tricky when a discussion of the cultural value of a given film, game or whatever comes up. As you say those films are clearly distinct and enjoyable/unenjoyable for different reasons, and we're all guilty of categorising anything subjective as good, bad, classic, boring, etc. It's frustrating because there's clearly a difference between various works, they each engender uniquely varying degrees of inspiration, enjoyment and emotion from all of us, but perhaps the limits of language constrain us all from time to time in accurately conveying what that difference is.

Games are art sure, and Firewatch definitely falls under that umbrella. But a game can't just be art it needs to do more, it needs fun gameplay mechanics. Firewatch doesn't have that at all really. Even something as basic as "go collect all the cans of beer in your area" would be a big improvement. You could use it as an excuse for some more constructive dialogue with Delilah "whoah, I must've collected a hundred of these cans. Stupid kids blah blah blah". To which delilah might happily respond and congratulate you with a gift that you can go collect at the supply depot or something, maybe a lookout tower decoration. Maybe the decoration gets stolen and ends up in the villain's (I've forgotten his name) hideout at the end of the game. Things like that would really improve the game by leaps and bounds in my opinion.

As you've now played a game in my top 5 of 2016 and not a big fan but also played Inside which I really should play and both sort of fatling under the same umbrella.

I don't know if you will play it or not but would like to know what you think of Oxenfree which is also in the same sort of bracket which at the time I played it, I thought it was just okay then when I came to my GOTY talk, it was one I couldn't stop thinking about.

I'd also give Three Fourths Home a go as well, which was a game I was tempted to talk about in a GOTY sense.

Games are art - they are created things that people are meant to enjoy or reflect on (or both), which is how I've always* defined art. The trouble begins when you compare games to other art forms, which is fundamentally impossible. Games have elements that are not present in other media, so the only way to rate a game as a piece of art is to compare it with other games. I have no idea what elements form the artistic parts of games, apart from those parts that they share with other pieces of art (music, aesthetic, etc). I'm happy to be enlightened.

*From the instant I wrote that sentence, at least.

See Duck, I would just flatly disagree that games require fun gameplay mechanics, or that gameplay mechanics that are considered more fun leads to any sort of objective improvement of a given game.

Tragic films aren't fun, but they can be compelling. For a long time, Titanic, was the world's highest grossing film, but it was a far cry from the traditional entertainment urge that cinema is typically sought to fulfill by the average viewer.

We like a good cry from time to time though, and in that same manner, there's simply no reason why a game has to be fun in the mechanical sense, to be worthy of one's time.

When I downloaded Firewatch my expectation was a form of entertainment certainly, but it wasn't an expectation that correlated with something like Rainbow Six Seige, PES, Shovel Knight, or any number of games whose primary objective is to meet player satisfaction by virtue of a largely mechanical challenge. Those games are great, sure, but in this case I was looking for was a compelling narrative influenced by user interaction so I could participate in a solo role play.

Like I've said, Firewatch didn't sustain that urge for me because somewhere along the line the setting and narrative let me down to varying degrees. However, had the writing been of a higher quality then I really think that's all the game had to have in order to become something much more memorable. To keep me on the edge of my seat, pressing on through it's geography to uncover the underlying mysteries of it's dramatic elements. It still seems like that goal did occur for some though, and that's probably because of how the choices and setting work together. A genuine sense of weakness, isolation, and intrigue all restricted to a plodding protagonist whose sauntering forces the player to contemplate whatever's going on en route to their next destination. On paper, sure, I would have liked more interactivity with the environment, which I did find dull, and for more spontaneous interactions to have been in the game, perhaps like you say altering some of the areas you later enter in some way.

But if I was really enveloped in the plot and the choices presented then I don't think I'd ultimately mind their absence, and indeed could feasibly ignore certain sub-quest like elements which didn't neatly fit the thrust of the narrative. Batman Arkham Knight springs to mind as a game that, for me, had too much sub-quest stuff in it which detracted from the main game. A lot of effort had gone into the main story, it was presented as being of paramount importance, so much so that any deviation to a side objective felt wrong, not like something Batman would do.
There will be those who enjoyed the sub-missions, but I was always rather disappointed when Alfred would send me a message saying the bad guy was in the clear for a spell so maybe do those side quests you've hitherto ignored Batsy? It pulled me out of the fantasy, and reminded me I was playing a game with some mandatory arbitrary objectives. I don't think you or anyone would advocate Firewatch adding an open-world smorgasbord of side stuff, and there'll be others still who really liked all the optional stuff in Batman. For me though, unless thing are woven neatly with the game's main plot in cases where there's a huge emphasis on the main plot, they tend oftentimes tend to detract from my immersion by appearing like arbitrary time wasters. Even if at times minigames or what have you are enjoyable in their own right, their presence can still detract rather than add to the whole.

Good enough storyplay, if gameplay isn't what we label it, can be enough, at least for me, such that fun stuff of more interactivity isn't always better. When considering whatever point or feeling it is the game is trying to convey, excellent writing can be enough to create the memorable out of the spartan. Less can be more.  

But if one's approach to gaming is that they need less storyplay, or perhaps more accurately, a greater focus on gameplay and mechanical ingenuity, then I can definitely see why games of Firewatch or Dear Esther's ilk seem vacuous. It's just that, as I hope my rambling makes clear, claims that games need to be fun are fine for an individual for whom that's important, but it's not at all how I tackle gaming.

Still that's all part of what makes Video Games a fascinating medium; they're so versatile. I've got loads of enjoyment, frustration and amusement from feudal lord simulator, Crusader Kings 2, and I spend the majority of my time in that game staring at maps just thinking about possibilities. That's just not comparable to F-Zero GX, another game I adore for it's inhuman challenge, technical brilliance, and track design intricacy. Nor are either of those comparable to Her Story, my game of the year in 2015, which is a couple of hour database investigation that challenges a lot of the traditional conceptions about what games are. For me at least, games don't have to be fun, they just have to do something, or tell something, interesting and engaging to me. Be that through a Dynasty Warriors power fantasy,or the variability of The Binding of Isaac, there's a vast amount of methodologies available to the medium and an intangible number of things people can take from them.

:shrink:  I'll stop writing loads now. :shrink:

I guess if you want to compare two games as games and nothing else you'll have to imagine them as is with none of the trimmings. For example, picture the scene: You're flying over Mira in a skell on a sunny day. However, you're playing on mute and there are no textures in the environment: green where there is terrain, blue where there is water, grey where there are urban areas etc. The sky is just a big blue dome with a sun. Enemies too are similarly dull, hostiles are coloured in red, neutrals are blue and friendlies are yellow. Your skell is a purple colour. To top it all off, you get given the skell from the get-go with zero explanation.
Sure, flying around in your purple hunk of what is presumably metal and descending occasionally to murder a cluster of red will inevitably be fun but it will never be as fun. The mechanics are there(in this case flying and combat) and they're done really well. That's obvious, equally obvious however is that it's missing something. Now take that same scene and add in the music, the textures, the story and the skell's beautiful metalwork. These things are not in themselves fun, but they bring a great deal to the table. The art part comes in right about now, at least in my opinion a game's art comes from the developer's ability to make their gameplay system bring together the art, music and writing to make something that is greater than the sum of its parts. Good mechanics should be the basis for games development, story telling and other aspects have to take second place otherwise you may as well read a book and listen to some music.

On the games needn't be fun note: you're right they don't. Amnesia: The Dark Descent was not a fun game, it was terrifying. The gameplay mechanics were solid however. Admittedly, most horror games are easy enough to throw together: a light source, something to fuel it and the occasional puzzle are the meat and potatoes of most pant-wetters on the market but it's important to have these down pat or else you'll risk shattering the immersion with the game's plot.
I personally struggle to get much out of a game unless I can feel like I'm in the driver seat - I want to be the one to solve the puzzle or beat the enemy. If my only job is to walk around and maybe hit space occasionally it's hard to feel like anything other than a casual observer, which isn't why I play games. I understand that my reasons for playing games will not be shared among everyone else who plays games because there as many such motivations as there are games themselves, I respect the opinions of others. even if they are wrong

Back to games I just finished:
Three Fourths Home

I feel as though anything I say about my experience with this will just force me to repeat myself, it's got a nice menu system. It supports saving the game and you can toot your horn. The game itself involves driving a car home while on the phone with mumsy whom you haven't talked to in a while it seems. Your character comes from an interesting family comprising a dad without a leg, a younger brother presumably with autism (really made me think of my own brother) and a mum trying to keep it all together. As your driving a tornado sets in and you must hurry home to avoid it and meet up with your family for a long overdue reunion. Just lovely.
Not entirely lovely though, I just spent the duration holding D while picking dialogue options with my free fingers, it was a really nice chat actually I liked the dialogue and the scene it was setting. I didn't like having to hold D incessantly however. Occasionally I would toot my horn at the encroaching storm. My brother told me a story while I pretended to care. Things heated up towards the end as the phone signal got cut off, my house came into view and it was sadly broken to bits. Despite the complaints from my D finger it was a well written story that was nice to read. I tooted my horn in appreciation.
Then came a prologue that had me chatting with mumsy again, this time at a bus stop, I didn't care for this part for I had no horn to toot. It nevertheless told a nice little story. My bus came and I got on it. There ends the game.
2/5
A thoughtfully written story, definitely worth the £1 I spent on it, I can't think of any gameplay I could add that wouldn't detract from the story and art to be honest. And I think the reason for that is it isn't really a game at all, its a touching animation with a vendetta against my index finger.

Glad you played one my recommendations and weirdly that was a game which I got all the endings for as normally like Muss said I play a game which has a story once and that was my story.

I don't know if it was because how I played Firewatch and the choices I made even with little consequence made it more enjoyable.

The team behind TFH bracket games have also made things like Letters to Babylon which is a Twine (to me is a text adventure) and I'm not sure I'll play it mainly due to me not really playing PC games but the game addresses and confronts serious subject matter, including abuse, depression, self-harm, and drug use, as well as how relationships influence and are influenced by these experiences.

That was taken from their website and I have been sort of tempted to download and do a day like Drunka play 5 weird games in a day with their other games. What I want talk about is TFH brings up autism and LTB seems to touch on a few subjects, [OUT] from them as well is about coming out and then you have things like Gone Home and even Oxenfree even though its a time travelling adventure game has some serious subjects.

I'm not sure if Firewatch really has any part from the start maybe which leads to depression and this is how Henry is coping.

We could continue to go around and around on what makes a game a game and is this art and what is art but I want to ask is these sort of games the best way to handle more serious subject matter within the medium and needed?

Should these subjects be incorporated anyway now take The Last of Us Ellie is Gay and part from Left Behind you wouldn't really no but does it matter and in Part 2 who knows maybe she has or had a girlfriend who got killed by the fireflies. This isn't really a serious thing, it is just part of normal every day life and I don't know why Naughty Dog decide to make Ellie gay as I've seen people go they only made her Gay to seem cool etc and I now I'm seeing things like Overwatch with Tracer and some outrage and Russia basically banning the game due to LGBT propaganda.

Do we need a Gone Home which you basically hold forward and do a few puzzles to help talk about these things if the AAA games can't do it and possibly in some cases help educate people?

Picross e7



I feel slightly better disposed towards this one than the last one. The music was creepy and the Mega Picross puzzles didn't irritate me as much as they have done in the past. So, yeah.

11/20

I was planning to do a Drunka an play and finish a bunch of games and I downloaded [out], Letters to Babylon, Enter Stage Right and Acceptance. The first two well I have up with [out] rather quickly as I don't mind a visual novel or dating sim but I can't be doing with just a black screen and text, meaning I don't even try LtB.

I moved on to Enter, Stage Right which I don't know if it did a good job or as I gave up due to the fiddly controls of a keyboard but then the game is about anxiety and I think this sort of shown this the difficulties of partying in this case and sort moving in to the group slowly.

The one I did finish was Acceptance not once but twice, once as woman and the other time as man to see what the differences where not a lot really part from a few scenes which also I went for the other option I did on my first run.

I mainly decided to play this due to seeing all the stick LKD gets on twitter for basically doing her job, and sure maybe be angry but starting to stoop so low you bring up her gender is rather harsh, thankfully none of you guys are like that.

And to see what it must be like for her as a person facing these things every day, I know from experience being a overweight, ginger nerd how other people treat you (mainly as a child or a night out with drunks) that I can't imagine what it must be for her and this does give you some insight in to it.

Is it a good game no its a very short visual novel but that isn't the point of it.

Much respect for trying some games about difficult subject matters. I can't imagine just how difficult life is for a Trans person in our culture, but I'll give Acceptance a play, or a read, at some point.

You might've had your fill of these games that are more, informative?, I guess than entertaining but Depression Quest is a free Steam game you might try if you want to try another non-traditional game down the line. It's really more a visual novel as well, and gamifying depression would be pretty tasteless to be honest, but it's a pretty good window into living with the condition from the perspective of the author. Caused much with steam babies so there's that too.

Then there's something like Cibelle which is a sort of interactive diary based on the writer's relationship with another person in an MMO/real life, presented as a game. It's interesting to be put in her shoes. The gamey bits are naff, but that's kind of the point, if you're into story stuff it's interesting. One of those games that defies traditional reviews or a simple as it straddles that line between being for entertainment and being somewhat educational.

Cibelle, I've wanted to play since Drunka talked about and I'll check out the other one as well but as it's on PC it be awhile in till I'll get to them though.

Monster Jam: Crush It on the PS4. What a catastrophe.

I can't believe that a publisher is trying to pass this off as a twenty quid retail game in 2017. This has got much, much less going for it than the last Monster Jam game I played, which was on the Nintendo 64. There's only three types of gameplay mode, and they're all resolutely single player only (a one player racing game...fuck me). Firstly, there's a really shoddy interpretation of Monster Truck arena racing, where the races literally last less time than the loading screens do. You can complete all of these with the top ranks in roughly five minutes. Secondly, there's a Freestyle mode, where you scoot about a really barren arena trying to do tricks off of big ramps. The game doesn't explain how you do tricks though, so all you're doing it trying to stay airbourne for as long as you can. Dogshite. Thirdly is the real 'meat' of the game - the Hill Climb, which is what Trials HD might be if it were made on the cheap for the SEGA Saturn in 1995. All you do here is accelerate forward and occasionally angle your Monster Truck for a very imprecise landing. The Survival mode is cheap as fuck, the time attack can be completed by just holding R2 and the Stunt mode can actually be beaten with a score of 0 points. There's no sense of ironic fun to be had with this either; it's all so poorly executed, and nothing sticks out as being even half-decent. Visually it's boring, but the entire soundtrack takes the piss - three songs that all sound like the shitey nu metal stuff that WWE used back in 2003. Honestly, I had to stick it on mute.

There's only two redeeming qualities. Firstly, I managed to trade it in for a profit (to the same shop I bought it from a fortnight ago, oddly), and it's really, really easy to Platinum; no joke, I played it for half an hour and noticed that I had been awarded 64% of the trophies. I got them all in under two hours. Otherwise, I'll be unfortunate to play another game worse than this in 2017. 2/10.

The Stanley Parable

Pretty easy. Just walked upstairs, walked through a few rooms, escaped.
4/10

I would like some more in-depth analysis after a few playthroughs.

Nah, I completed it, I'm not going back.

Limbo


First things first: this game's art style is absolutely bloody amazing. The design, animation, atmosphere, sounds and visuals, arebloody phenomenal. Despite incredibly simplistic stuff, this was more unsettling than most big, high def horror. By leaving just enough to the imaginations, the gruesome deaths and creepy fates I was at risk of falling to here were genuinely unsettling.

Overall, I am glad I played this game but I can't see myself doing it again. The controls are stiff as anything, which at first I thought was fine for the sedate puzzling but later sections required accuracy and timing which was just frustrating. The number of times I knew I had the solution to a puzzle right away but had to try a dozen times to get the little brat to make the jump . . . infuriating.

The story, such as there is one, is vague and unsatisfying if you look for anything specific but as an atmospheric piece of abstract art, it was successful at making me feel uneasy and curious. Was I in purgatory, or dying, or was this the end of the world or what? Who knows? I'll definitely be thinking about some of the gruesome things I had to do to get there when I go to bed tonight.

I give it a Yeah, I guess out of I dunno.

Of the two games I've played so far today, The Stanley Parable is the one I'd recommend to anyone without hesitation. Limbo certainly had its appeal, but to anyone weaned on Nintendo's top quality platformers I can imagine it testing the patience a bit.

After Limbo, I played the first level of Unravel. Much nicer to control, and absolutely beautiful in a very different way. I don't think I'll play through that in one sitting; I'm going to pace it out over my evenings this week alongside sessions of The Banner Saga, which I'll also start tonight. Before them, though, there's one other oft-discussed thinking man's indie game I want to play . . .

Creepy indie games you say?



After being hit with a jump scare early on (turned out to be the only truly 'scary' one of the game), I thought I'd never finish this.  Well, having got a girlfriend (sorry I promise I'll stopping being sickening soon...ish) who likes horror movies, I thought we could play it together.

It works better as a mobile game, I think.  The gamepad motion controls were fine, but I/we kept wanting to just use the damn stylus.  And it is really short, even if you seek out the alternate ending.  

But it's very atmospheric, and nicely creepy in places.  There were some clever puzzles, and some (the last one before the first ending, for example) which were bobbins.  Good ending too.  Worth a punt if on sale, especially on 'phone.

Plus: if you've got somebody with the right(?) sense of humour to play it with, a grand source of dead baby jokes.

6/10

Drunkalilly wrote:

The Stanley Parable

Pretty easy. Just walked upstairs, walked through a few rooms, escaped.
4/10

Unfriended.

Spoiler:

What? 4/10 is generous for such a short game!

Breaking Kayfabe: