|
Why do these cyberpunk dumpster fire games have such good soundtracks? First this, then leetspeak Valhalla. I'm annoyed and baffled.
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2016 13:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 21:50 |
|
|
Hang on wait if there's straight up nobody living outside Post-Cyberpocalypse Bulgarian City I Can't Remember The Name Of, why are there even steaks left to ban?
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2016 14:04
|
|
|
At this point I'm pretty much convinced that the incoherent writing is coming from laziness rather than confusion, between people having the same incidental dialogue everywhere even when it doesn't make sense (see: characters who we've been told are themselves snowflakes complaining about snowflakes) and the visual design of the characters consisting of stereotypes thoughtlessly jumbled together (why is the most respectability-oriented trans woman in the bar the one with a full beard? why are so many of the TERFs sporting hair colours not found in nature when the specific branch of feminists the writer is ostensibly caricaturing tend to be pretty down on cosmetics in general and go for low-maintenance presentation? if you're gonna tell a story about the internal politics of radical and marginalised communities it helps if you know enough about different political tendencies to tell them apart). And then it turns out shapeshifting aliens are running everything anyway. The developers clearly have a strong enough aesthetic sense that they could have made something that holds together as a depiction of a world familiar to but different from our own, they just... didn't, and I don't think they tried very hard. There seems to be a lot of effort put into the art and a fair bit put into the gameplay (even if it doesn't always work) but not much into the story. It feels like the devs wanted to make a stylish stealthy actiony platformy game and settled on the feminist dystopia plotline not because they had anything in particular they really wanted to say about feminism but as a gimmick to get people talking about the game and drive sales, so they just threw together a bunch of hot takes and called it a setting. Thuryl fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Aug 1, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2016 15:28
|
|
|
I am probably looking a bit too much into one throwaway line, but when Ceyda coerces the reporter into reading the documents and says "a good reporter just tells the facts and ignores personal opinions" or whatever, that is like the core idea that gators try use to legitimize their movement. Part of the whole "ethics in games journalism" was pushing for more "objective" reviews, so seeing it here makes me wonder if that's more of the channer influence on the game or if that's the writers' stance. Either way, not so good. Also, do they have some kind of a cloning system or something to make new people? The reporter talks about kids being killed before Ceyda takes her hostage, but how are there kids? Like, this may be a more delicate topic than I usually tackle so please let me know if I'm loving up somewhere, but if there's nobody alive outside the city and inside the city is all women, that's some serious negatives in the population growth charts. I know not all trans women choose to (or are able to) undergo reassignment surgery so somewhere in the city I'm sure a woman has impregnated another woman, but that seems like it would be HEAVILY frowned-on at best in this setting, and it's probably not happening enough to create a sustainable population in the long-term. Unless we're gonna find out there's some secret government dude ranch where genetic material is harvested and tinkered with, or it turns out that people in the city are actually immortal (which would explain everyone's nonchalance with death), the fact that no human will be alive in 80 years at most is kind of a heavy thing for an entire city (or a lovely game writer) to ignore. Even if there are actually lots of people alive outside the city and the documents are falsified in some lovely twist where the shapeshifters knew you'd come looking for "the truth" in a conveniently-bundled form, and what a lovely twist that would be, I feel like leaving the city to get knocked up and them come right back to Plovdiv alive also goes against the grain of what this terribly-written place stands for. poo poo's not sustainable is all I'm saying.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2016 16:57
|
|
|
In principle, an all-female population could be sustainable with some assistance. You'd need to take two eggs, extract the DNA from one, inject it into the other, and then apply the other biological changes to the egg that insemination introduces, probably by injecting, or leaving the egg in an environment containing, various artificially synthesized proteins. Then you implant the inseminated-without-semen egg into one of the women. The child would of course be guaranteed to be female because there's no Y chromosome available. I think this all might actually be doable with modern techniques. It'd be horrendously expensive and of relatively niche demand though, especially the bit where you have to imitate the actions of sperm without having any sperm available. It'd probably be easier to take "natural" sperm, remove its DNA, and insert the DNA from the egg. And you'd do it many times (replicating the DNA using PCR or similar techniques) since as I recall part of the action of creating a viable inseminated egg involves multiple sperm interacting with the egg. As far as this game is concerned, there's shapeshifting slime monsters, so I'm not going to worry too hard about particulars.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2016 17:37
|
|
|
Why does everyone have bags under their eyes? In the dark feminist future does everyone suffer from insomnia?
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2016 18:21
|
|
|
Lynx Winters posted:I am probably looking a bit too much into one throwaway line, but when Ceyda coerces the reporter into reading the documents and says "a good reporter just tells the facts and ignores personal opinions" or whatever, that is like the core idea that gators try use to legitimize their movement. Part of the whole "ethics in games journalism" was pushing for more "objective" reviews, so seeing it here makes me wonder if that's more of the channer influence on the game or if that's the writers' stance. Either way, not so good. Nonono, you're on to something. Like, here's the thing! One line about JOURNALISTS SHOULD JUST REPORT THE FACTS LEAVE YR OPINION OUT OF IT is a coincidence. One line like that as a followup to SECRET MEN BLEW UP A HELICOPTER FULL OF CHILDREN AND PUPPIES, NEXT UP: IS HAM PROBLEMATIC? *and* a Vivian James cameo *and* the teehee line about "ethics in gratuitous violence" is a pattern. I mean, I think it's more bad ideas and chan runoff and maybe trying to be cute than the writer being some kind of diehard grumblygiorgio booster, but it's still a pattern. The thing that kind of gnaws at me more than 'how are there kids' (it's the turbomisandrist space future, i'm sure there's a way) is where are the kids? Or elderly people? Like with the exception of Melinda Mcsadbeard and mmmmmaybe the politician at the rally, literally everyone in this world appears to be either (a) in their 20s or 30s or (b) an ageless shapeshifter, surprise! And I honestly can't tell if that was some kind of show-don't-tell design decision or if it's just a dumb coincidence.  as to the idea of the shapeshifters going 'hahaha WHY THE poo poo WOULD WE JUST KEEP OUR SECRETS NEATLY BUNDLED IN THE SECRET EVIL PLANS BOX AT WORK,' i mean, that'd at least sssssort of go against Usual Videogame Expectations for this kind of stuff? Thuryl posted:At this point I'm pretty much convinced that the incoherent writing is coming from laziness rather than confusion, between people having the same incidental dialogue everywhere even when it doesn't make sense (see: characters who we've been told are themselves snowflakes complaining about snowflakes) and the visual design of the characters consisting of stereotypes thoughtlessly jumbled together (why is the most respectability-oriented trans woman in the bar the one with a full beard? why are so many of the TERFs sporting hair colours not found in nature when the specific branch of feminists the writer is ostensibly caricaturing tend to be pretty down on cosmetics in general and go for low-maintenance presentation? if you're gonna tell a story about the internal politics of radical and marginalised communities it helps if you know enough about different political tendencies to tell them apart). And then it turns out shapeshifting aliens are running everything anyway. Let me put it this way: my initial reaction as I got further in was 'holy poo poo did their research entail talking to some dude who totally spent five minutes on tumblr once and going okay close enough good enough' Ningyou fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Aug 1, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2016 22:03
|
|
|
Ningyou posted:The thing that kind of gnaws at me more than 'how are there kids' (it's the turbomisandrist space future, i'm sure there's a way) is where are the kids? Or elderly people? Like with the exception of Melinda Mcsadbeard and mmmmmaybe the politician at the rally, literally everyone in this world appears to be either (a) in their 20s or 30s or (b) an ageless shapeshifter, surprise! And I honestly can't tell if that was some kind of show-don't-tell design decision or if it's just a dumb coincidence. To be fair, lots of games have huge populations of apparently-15-to-30-year-olds and less than 5 characters outside of that range.
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2016 22:37
|
|
|
hey guysSSNeoman posted:No that was another thing. That was 4chan inviting some group to design a character. That one was basically Watamote girl crossed with a hentai meme. here. I thought OP's reference was a joke. I now realize it's not. So. They added the "Watamote girl crossed with a hentai meme" character into their game 
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2016 23:19
|
|
|
THE ONLY JOKE IS WHERE MY LIFE HAS GONE FOR THE LAST TWO WEEKS 
|
|
#
?
Aug 1, 2016 23:25
|
|
|
SSNeoman posted:hey guys Did they pay a lot of money for this? Or any money? Though really VJ's presence in the game just fits perfectly with the overall tonal dissonance so it's not like I can call it selling out, either.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2016 00:17
|
|
|
Anoia posted:Did they pay a lot of money for this? Or any money? Some angry nerd literally paid one hundred United States dollars to put Vivian James in this game. Ningyou fucked around with this message at 00:31 on Aug 2, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2016 00:29
|
|
|
Ningyou posted:Oh, they paid money. I think I remember seeing this being mocked ages ago. It wasn't just one nerd, but a bunch of nerds pooling their money together. ...unless they've made multiple attempts to get this drat character put in games and this is the only one that took.  That wouldn't surprise me, really, trying to force media to embrace her like that.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2016 00:34
|
|
|
Anoia posted:I think I remember seeing this being mocked ages ago. It wasn't just one nerd, but a bunch of nerds pooling their money together. So in other news, uh, y'all know that weird little unexplained scene in....the first terf turf video, I think, where Ceyda ventures into the one washroom in all of Plovdiv and the toilet is shaking ominously but gosh whatever manner of paranormal tomfoolery could be afoot what could be haunting this spooky toilet but in the end there are no terrifying spectres in the toilet but then another toilet becomes Giga Toilet and swallows Ceyda whole? So I didn't make this connection my first time through because I was just baffled, but I was recording ahead and realized, uh...if I'm reading things right, the evil toilet eating Ceyda but only kind of is a major plot element that drives one of the endings. And that's arguably the least dumb ending. So, uh, look forward to that, I guess! Ningyou fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Aug 2, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2016 04:25
|
|
|
Ningyou posted:Oh, huh. Still pretty dumb, either way. I can't wait to find out what the actual reason is.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2016 05:22
|
|
|
I started watching the LP and in the first video I see an ad for ROM. Why is there an ad for ROM?
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 03:39
|
|
|
Mraagvpeine posted:I started watching the LP and in the first video I see an ad for ROM. Why is there an ad for ROM?
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 05:11
|
|
|
I'm almost caught up now. My god, this game is awful.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 05:32
|
|
|
Part 6: We're trapped in the belly of this horrible indiegame, and the indiegame is bleeding to death. I'm exhausted. You know, that kind of bone-tired that seeps down into your head and your heart and every inch of your body? I. am. drained. And I'm not *done*, because I don't know how not to burn myself out over pointless nerd spectacle, but-- --but I don't know about this, anymore. There's this moment in the second video -- I pop my head out and this trio of guards starts to run around, frantic long after I'm gone, tossing explosives at the air and at each other and at *nothing* and running and running over the same small stretch of tile, endlessly retracing each other's steps and then just loving shooting each other like it's the weirdest, saddest game of chicken, and-- and I feel like they're trying to tell me something, in this single solitary language of flailing and fumbling and canned dialogue and slow mass suicide they have at their disposal. 'can we not' 'why am i even here, doesn't darkest timeline luigi's mansion have spooky ghosts for this or something' 'oh my GOD how many times are you going to record this' But then, at least they didn't have to fight the crab boss. In which we fight the Actual Worst Boss in the Game, get rewarded with underwhelming exposition, and discover that giant impractically designed murderbots actually make kind of lovely surrogate children? In which everything starts to unravel, including the narrative, crouch/prone controls, enemy AI, and my platforming skills. ....oh, and I guess we murder some raver's stand, ［ＭＡＧＮＥＴＳ ＨＯＷ ＤＯ ＴＨＥＹ ＷＯＲＫ］That happened. In which we learn that the real monster is humanity but also the real monster is literal monsters who can literally shapeshift, and have more adventures in questionable architectural design. We're almost at the end. Now, we have a choice at the end! Two routes, two endings. I'm going to leave it up to y'all as to which one comes first. Do we.... a) Go murder  PRESIDENT FEMINISM with what may or may not be our pal the toiletmonster pokemon we raised from a pooplup?or b) open everyone's eyes to the truth with Our Pal, Definitely Not Giant Baby Satan?
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 06:48
|
|
|
B
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 07:15
|
|
|
Ningyou posted:But then, at least they didn't have to fight the crab boss. Holy Order of Ecclesia rip-off, Batman!
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 07:16
|
|
|
B I wanna see how bad this can truly get, and a token assassination won't suffice.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 07:27
|
|
|
The description you gave of ending A has led me to choose Knockoff SMT Chaos Route Ending B.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 07:32
|
|
|
I vote B since I want to see just how silly this gets.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 08:04
|
|
|
Those sections in the mansion looked like a pain to play. Ending Bcause WHY NOT.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 09:42
|
|
|
Voting Ending A, because frankly it seems like the more sensible and straightforward of the two options and we should save the worst for last.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 09:42
|
|
|
Thuryl posted:Voting Ending A, because frankly it seems like the more sensible and straightforward of the two options and we should save the worst for last.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 09:43
|
|
|
which was at least partly inspired by Metal Slug 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw8yq1ubQG0&t=564s "Death of the author" is not a valid rebuttal to her point, Ceyda. Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 10:48 on Aug 3, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 10:24
|
|
|
I will admit, I get a small chuckle every time an enemy kills another enemy while trying to kill you.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 14:57
|
|
|
Christ, I was expecting maybe a little bit of the 3rd gen but this was just, beyond any possible reasonable discussion on any level. It's just so silly. I think Thuryl called it when he called it laziness; I mean, what kinda morons would name a district after an insult pinned by their opponents? Ceyda might call it that, but would they really name it that? And the shoddy level layouts, the sad way you get powerups, meh. I don't really care about the ending at this point, because they've already shown themselves to be really dumb about things, with too many empty revelations one after another.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 14:58
|
|
|
Deceitful Penguin posted:
Granted, people got a history of co-opting insults as a point of pride, but I don't think they generally name landmarks after it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 16:13
|
|
|
Yeah, in principle I can buy a group reclaiming an insulting exonym, the same way my university had a Queer Committee, but at this point my trust in the writer having thought things through that far is close to zero. Even in the moments when the writing is clever it's a very shallow kind of cleverness. Also, I'm a she. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 16:19
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:Granted, people got a history of co-opting insults as a point of pride, but I don't think they generally name landmarks after it. TERFs are really odd about having the term applied to them. They don't hide that they despise trans women, and say nasty poo poo about them all day long, but boy do they get mad when you call a spade a spade by calling them TERFs. They're radical feminists, they exclude trans people (trans men, to them, are just misguided women so they pointedly ignore their gender identity). Seems like they respond "gently caress yeah, what of it?" but no. You can't say the word anywhere on social media, in any context, without one popping up to tell you it's a slur, how dare you, you loving t... lover. TERFs aren't very good with irony, either.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 16:31
|
|
|
Mraagvpeine posted:I will admit, I get a small chuckle every time an enemy kills another enemy while trying to kill you. I think I saw one of those eye laser enemies shoot itself with its own laser. It somehow got ahead of the beam.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 17:07
|
|
|
Anoia posted:TERFs are really odd about having the term applied to them. They don't hide that they despise trans women, and say nasty poo poo about them all day long, but boy do they get mad when you call a spade a spade by calling them TERFs. They're radical feminists, they exclude trans people (trans men, to them, are just misguided women so they pointedly ignore their gender identity). Seems like they respond "gently caress yeah, what of it?" but no. Mraagvpeine posted:I will admit, I get a small chuckle every time an enemy kills another enemy while trying to kill you. like the first time i was just like haha this ai but now it's getting downright disconcerting, especially with the lady who charged right into her own bomb because ?????? Anyways, I'm going to leave things open for another day even if chances are "send PRESIDENT FEMINISM to the great womyn-centered music festival in the sky" isn't going to win in a surprise landslide, because I'm lazy and really want to dig into We Happy Few.
Ningyou fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Aug 3, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2016 19:21
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:Granted, people got a history of co-opting insults as a point of pride, but I don't think they generally name landmarks after it. Thuryl posted:Yeah, in principle I can buy a group reclaiming an insulting exonym, the same way my university had a Queer Committee, but at this point my trust in the writer having thought things through that far is close to zero. Even in the moments when the writing is clever it's a very shallow kind of cleverness. And sorry for misgendering ya, though I can't think of a more fitting thread to commit that faux pas Anoia posted:TERFs are really odd about having the term applied to them. They don't hide that they despise trans women, and say nasty poo poo about them all day long, but boy do they get mad when you call a spade a spade by calling them TERFs. They're radical feminists, they exclude trans people (trans men, to them, are just misguided women so they pointedly ignore their gender identity). Seems like they respond "gently caress yeah, what of it?" but no. Like, the whole game happening in Bulgaria while the protag is a Turk. Yet, we haven't gone into issues of religion, ethnicity, xenophobia or anything and for something that you know, probably should include it, it doesn't even talk about gender at all, not in any real sense Like, loving lol, "Is Steak Toxic Masculinity" is just dumb and insulting on so many levels that I can definitely see how this attracted gamergators even if it wasn't intended
|
|
#
?
Aug 4, 2016 04:50
|
|
|
If one good thing has come out of this game it is that every time I think of that line I will eat a steak out of spite This also means I will have to take care not to think of it very often because I only have so much money to spend on steaks (There are probably lots of interesting things that could be said about the gender-marking of foods, but as usual this game does not say any of them and I would not trust it to try.) Thuryl fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Aug 4, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 4, 2016 05:02
|
|
|
Deceitful Penguin posted:Like, the whole game happening in Bulgaria while the protag is a Turk. Yet, we haven't gone into issues of religion, ethnicity, xenophobia or anything and for something that you know, probably should include it, it doesn't even talk about gender at all, not in any real sense It's hard for even a good writer to make any of this poo poo matter in a six hour platformer where the real antagonists are space puddles at the end of the world. To be a bit less charitable, every potential plot hook in this game that's based on real world issues of gender identity, ethnicity, etc is nothing but window dressing to the secret illuminati brainslug story at the core of all this. It's extremely disingenuous to market a game as some flavor of feminist discussion, but marketing is exactly what all of that turned out to be. This whole game is just some kind of intersectional aesthetic draped over about a page or two of very trite and poorly-executed conspiracy theory, which actually makes it funnier to me that various lovely people latched on to it because it doesn't really help their cause to go "we undermined the message of this game" when the actual writers undermined it from the start.
|
|
#
?
Aug 4, 2016 05:15
|
|
|
Thuryl posted:If one good thing has come out of this game it is that every time I think of that line I will eat a steak out of spite  i made this delicious steak sandwich with roasted tomatoes (the tomatoes represent the blood of patriotic Space Bulgarians), but it was actually kind of not great and I just couldn't be arsed after that.  On the bright side, I also bought ingredients for cheesecake and that both (a) does not remind me of this game and (b) is going to be pret~ty fuckin swell, so. It evens out!
|
|
#
?
Aug 4, 2016 05:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 21:50 |
|
|
Thuryl posted:Voting Ending A, because frankly it seems like the more sensible and straightforward of the two options and we should save the worst for last. Gotta go with this, as well.
|
|
#
?
Aug 4, 2016 12:23
|
|
