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DeafNote posted:- I did wonder if the gamer guy was supposed to be a mouthpiece for the game's creator and his love of the 90s. It just struck me that Alex is a dead ringer for Ernest Cline visually and philosophically. This game does kind of feel a bit like Ready Player One but for the 90s rather than the 80s (which itself is more about the late 70s if you actually examine all the things Cline really focuses on, so it’s also as unfocused as YIIK). It’s also got the same lovely takes on women, minorities and people who aren’t the main character, and even more blatant and obnoxious nerd gatekeeping of ideas. The only difference is people recognized this a turd upon launch, while RP1 took about 5 years of cultural digestion and a movie coming out for people to really come to terms with the fact that it sucked.
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Feb 9, 2019 20:17
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Combat Lobster posted:Who's in the mood for another taste of combat? So you know how almost every action requires you to play a minigame first? What if one of them breaks and you can't do anything about it? Well, you're hosed. Also peep these damage values. I remember I described those enemies to someone and they thought I was joking.
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Feb 9, 2019 20:18
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 this game is terrible.
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Feb 9, 2019 20:20
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Samovar posted:
I love this so much. The best mansplain emoticon. Watching your video makes me question my life choices, combat. Eesh
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Feb 9, 2019 20:26
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So the panda just makes you invincible. But you still have to play all the lovely minigames.
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Feb 9, 2019 20:30
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:So the panda just makes you invincible. But you still have to play all the lovely minigames. Actually, because it negates damage it also skips the defensive minigames--the greatest power of all, because they are all deeply awful for a variety of reasons
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Feb 9, 2019 20:33
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I’m just disappointed that no one has made a Panda Bear-ier pun yet, especially after Diacorn called out Panda as this game’s knockoff Teddy in the other thread.
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Feb 9, 2019 20:36
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Right, but didn't Earthbound just auto resolve combats you couldn't possibly lose? Wait, that is good so we cannot rip it off.
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Feb 9, 2019 20:36
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haha look there's pong. get it. because pong is old gaem. look at this flashing applause sign, old gamers
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Feb 9, 2019 20:38
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GrandmaParty posted:Watching your video makes me question my life choices, combat. Eesh Tip: Video games are not a waste of time. fluffyDeathbringer posted:haha look there's pong. get it. because pong is old gaem. look at this flashing applause sign, old gamers It doesn't even control that well.
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Feb 9, 2019 20:41
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nine-gear crow posted:It just struck me that Alex is a dead ringer for Ernest Cline visually and philosophically. This game does kind of feel a bit like Ready Player One but for the 90s rather than the 80s (which itself is more about the late 70s if you actually examine all the things Cline really focuses on, so it’s also as unfocused as YIIK). This is depressingly apt. Both of them are definitely coming from the same kind of ideological space; I'm not sure I want to think about the fact that multiple people decided to make these ideas the backbone of creative works, but it definitely says something about how widespread this kind of thinking can be.
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Feb 9, 2019 20:45
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Explopyro posted:This is depressingly apt. Both of them are definitely coming from the same kind of ideological space; I'm not sure I want to think about the fact that multiple people decided to make these ideas the backbone of creative works, but it definitely says something about how widespread this kind of thinking can be. Every generation gets nostalgic for and wants to try and recapture an idealized version of their past through creative expression. I’ve taken to calling it Johnny Rocket Nostalgia because Johnny Rocket restaurants are kind of the perfect physical embodiment of the philosophy in action: they were designed to let elderly Baby Boomers feel like teenagers again more than to invite younger generations into an encapsulated moment of time and explore it for themselves. And you’re seeing that play out in backwards-yearning works like Ready Player One and YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG as well, and will probably get more prominent as Gen Xers and Millennials enter their 30s and 40s and realize their childhoods are truly over. Only because they were nerds, you get stuff that apes old video games and science fiction and TV shows rather than chrome-plated malt diners. Thus you get stuff like this which people have rightly criticized as the ramblings of a dude in his mid-30s playing dress up with the turn of the millennium as an aesthetic over an actually very modern and contemporary game, rather than use it properly explore the cultural landscape of the late 1990s through a 2019 lens. Because remembering and recapturing stuff from 20 years ago is hard, but right now is happening right now, so that’s so much easier. So just pretend it’s the 90s and don’t worry about it, okay?
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Feb 9, 2019 21:01
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I was thinking more about the misogyny and gatekeeping (and fandom-knowledge superiority complexes) than nostalgia per se, but point taken. Edit: I just watched the video Combat Lobster posted. gently caress this game. I have no words to describe what I just saw. Explopyro fucked around with this message at 21:10 on Feb 9, 2019 |
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Feb 9, 2019 21:06
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yeah the gatekeeping is so stupid, and it's hilarious when I notice a lot of gatekeepers have pretty drat shallow knowledge of the things they're protecting (like that image going around of nerd rage over a 'girly steampunk joker' and someone schooling them on it's Duela Dent), but yeah it's so aggravating as these morons keep chasing people off.
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Feb 9, 2019 21:10
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Explopyro posted:I was thinking more about the misogyny and gatekeeping (and fandom-knowledge superiority complexes) than nostalgia per se, but point taken. Hah. Yeah, you’re right on that one too. And I suspect that will become more prominent as well as the Gamergate generation comes of age and enters their 30s and 40s down the road and begins to look back on their own overly-prolonged childhoods, because that was one giant training camp for creating a generation of misogynist gatekeepers like Alex (who’s been described in a whole bunch of places now as a straight up Incel).
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Feb 9, 2019 21:16
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Combat Lobster posted:Tip: Video games are not a waste of time. Remember when Nier: Automata asked if video games were a waste of time and you yelled at your screen "gently caress NO" because you were invested in the characters and the game? I feel like this game is trying to ape that.
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Feb 9, 2019 21:28
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SSNeoman posted:Remember when Nier: Automata asked if video games were a waste of time and you yelled at your screen "gently caress NO" because you were invested in the characters and the game? I read it more like the patronizing loading screens in Spec-Ops: The Line. The ones that just start mocking and judging you the further into the game you go and the more you persist in helping everything turn to poo poo.
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Feb 9, 2019 21:38
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DeafNote posted:Made a checklist of things I hate I did? Maybe it's different in the US where apparently you got a free N64 if you had a SNES or something.
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Feb 9, 2019 21:39
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I’m honestly surprised there wasn’t a Sega Saturn on there given how it is kind of the ur hipster “ had a lot of good material but was never given a chance because the general public has bad taste” console. That would have been right up a dink like Alex’s alley.
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Feb 9, 2019 21:46
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Zanzibar Ham posted:I did? Maybe it's different in the US where apparently you got a free N64 if you had a SNES or something. Also, the SNES had a giant library of great games and the N64...not so much.
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Feb 9, 2019 21:51
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Fair enough then. Also the narration is getting even worse. Breaking every rule of "show dont tell" and then some. Also taking time away from other characters and forcing me to listen to more Alex, ugh.
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Feb 9, 2019 22:01
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DeafNote posted:Fair enough then. Next episode is 34 minutes. There's one fight in it. I didn't have to edit it. Hope you like Alex talking. It'll be up either Sunday night or Monday morning.
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Feb 9, 2019 22:33
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Combat Lobster posted:Who's in the mood for another taste of combat? So you know how almost every action requires you to play a minigame first? What if one of them breaks and you can't do anything about it? Well, you're hosed. Also peep these damage values. I've been trying to figure out the damage formulae with some other people (so if there's a way for GrandaParty to speed battles up, no matter how small it may be, they can do that), and yeah, your damage output is awful. Haven't figured it out entirely, but your attack stat apparently gets quartered at the beginning of it. Oh and succeeding at the minigames possibly does jack poo poo unless your base damage is high (which most attacks don't have.)
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Feb 9, 2019 22:54
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Dr. Fetus posted:I've been trying to figure out the damage formulae with some other people (so if there's a way for GrandaParty to speed battles up, no matter how small it may be, they can do that), and yeah, your damage output is awful. Haven't figured it out entirely, but your attack stat apparently gets quartered at the beginning of it. Oh and succeeding at the minigames possibly does jack poo poo unless your base damage is high (which most attacks don't have.) I appreciate that. I'll still be editing the majority of the battles out except for significant ones and ones that show off new party members. There's a speed up button but it still sucks.
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Feb 9, 2019 23:02
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Didnt even notice hatelists were already adopted. I agree with all of these. Especially his screwed up priorities with: missing person<>new arcade!!!fluffyDeathbringer posted:new things I hate
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Feb 10, 2019 01:00
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Alex is supposed to be a bad person, which is successful, but I think the devs failed to realize you have to make them at least somewhat compelling or nobody will care if they can improve at some nebulous point in the future. He's not a coward who needs to be brave, and he's not likeably assholeish. He's bad in a really boring and tedious way that just makes you want to leave. In an indie movie he'd improve over two hours and maybe that could be ok but here it's stretched out beyond any possibility of interest. And another problem is that many of his flaws are just internal. Yeah he says lovely things sometimes but as far as we can tell people get along with him alright, and his worst stuff is saved for monologues that people can't react to. Compare this with Scott Pilgrim (a thing I also don't like): Scott's sole motivation is to date a hot girl, and doing all the stuff even though we see her not being into it makes him an rear end in a top hat... but, you know, one who is somewhat relatable and who can change. That is a flaw which can have a clear, effective cathartic moment, where he realizes this and learns how awful his motivations have been. Unlike Scott, Alex is apparently trying to do the right thing--he is directly asked for help and tries to provide it. But that undermines the possibility of making it into him doing this poo poo as a weird obsession with a girl he saw, like Scott, and also removes a chance for a clear depiction of character growth for the audience. Alex does things because there is an actual real danger and he is 100% behind solving it. His real flaw is just that he is boring and lacks emotional intelligence, which I guess is realistic but not actually super interesting. If he improves, all that he will do is stop talking so loving much, which would obviously be an improvement but is a pretty hard thing to depict narratively. corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 01:24 on Feb 10, 2019 |
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Feb 10, 2019 01:21
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oh and if I'm being obnoxious with the longposting apologies for that, I'll curb it in the future
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Feb 10, 2019 01:32
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fluffyDeathbringer posted:oh and if I'm being obnoxious with the longposting apologies for that, I'll curb it in the future No. Let your hate flow
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Feb 10, 2019 02:09
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The one small thing that really bugs me is that there's no flavor to the flavor text. When a character examines a bookshelf in their house it's an opportunity to tell us something about the person who lives there, or at least make a few lame puns. Instead it just restates what the object is, which is self-evident from the graphics. The worst case is that the only reason the phone is a save point is to reference Earthbound. Alex isn't calling anyone, while Earthbound linked the gameplay element of saving your game with the character element of a child away from home calling his father.
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Feb 10, 2019 02:16
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GrandmaParty posted:No. Let your hate flow okay good because I think I've got another one in me "the protag is a bad person and that's the point" stories only work if either 1) the protagonist's shitness is egregious enough that it can't possibly be confused for the writer trying to make a more traditionally relatable and sympathetic protagonist or 2) the protagonist's poo poo traits are actually called out and deconstructed in the text of the game, resulting in development of some sort panda berating alex into going out to save the girl reads like it was intended to be 2, but it doesn't work because 1) alex hasn't had a chance to be really overtly lovely about not!elisa's disappearance yet, he saw it, went home, looked at footage with no reaction, went to bed, and woke up to being shat on by this obnoxious gently caress 2) nothing actually unreasonable or toxic that alex is doing or thinking is being attacked here. this isn't his inner mastication of the women in his life or his aversion to responsibility being attacked here. this is him seeing loving cthulhus from behind the world take a poo poo on everything he thought he knew about reality and the laws of nature. and he still actually made an attempt, flacid and too late though it was, to save not!elisa from her grisly fate. this is like if someone in a lovecraft story got emotionally beaten down for running away from, I dunno, yog soghoth instead of fighting him to a standstill. and somehow I suspect that the narrative will side with panda uncritically. fluffyDeathbringer fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Feb 10, 2019 |
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Feb 10, 2019 02:32
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Microcline posted:The one small thing that really bugs me is that there's no flavor to the flavor text. When a character examines a bookshelf in their house it's an opportunity to tell us something about the person who lives there, or at least make a few lame puns. Instead it just restates what the object is, which is self-evident from the graphics. it's pretty funny how similar to ready player one the whole approach to the game is. all the surface aesthetics of an object/era of nostalgia, with crucial details missing and no substance.
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Feb 10, 2019 02:33
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Microcline posted:
Ness also calls his mother frequently—to stave off the “homesickness” malus from a Doylian perspective, yes, but also to establish that he loves his family and worries about them while he’s on his globetrotting quest. Alex, in contrast, seems to think of his mom as a tiresome harridan who asks him to pick up groceries just to annoy him, UUUGHHH
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Feb 10, 2019 09:57
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SatansOnion posted:Ness also calls his mother frequently—to stave off the “homesickness” malus from a Doylian perspective, yes, but also to establish that he loves his family and worries about them while he’s on his globetrotting quest. Alex, in contrast, seems to think of his mom as a tiresome harridan who asks him to pick up groceries just to annoy him, UUUGHHH Seeing him complain about the note politely asking him to pick up some groceries as his mother "barking orders at (him)" frustrated me to no end. Earn your keep, you ungrateful prick!
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Feb 10, 2019 19:16
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It's really grating how outwardly Alex is taciturn, but cordial to those around him, but then we as players are subjected to his internal monologue where he demonstrates that he is a weapons-grade manchild. So far he's shown us that he thinks everyone is beneath him, even the girl he's supposedly trying to save. Oh wow this game is making my blood boil, thanks for taking us through it GrandmaParty.
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Feb 10, 2019 21:11
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and that's the other nail in the coffin in the narrative of him possiblity being redeemed, because it shows he is well aware that he's a raging dickbag because he keeps that poo poo to himself.
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Feb 10, 2019 21:42
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The hate for this game is odd. But I suppose those that hate it will never play the game through to understand it. I won't mention any spoilers but the game is obviously the two creators mocking themselves and showing deep regret for the kind of persons they used to be. A life changing event happened to them IRL and changed their perspectives. I believe some of the hate shown to the game is players seeing themselves in the protagonist. The mini game frustration is known, but once you get used to it it's not so bad. Still pretty clunky. Choices of graphics and character backstories can be odd. Theres nothing that makes it unplayable. It really doesn't deserve the "worst game ever" distinction.
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Feb 10, 2019 22:37
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Source your quotes.
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Feb 10, 2019 22:40
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MachuPikacchu posted:It's really grating how outwardly Alex is taciturn, but cordial to those around him, but then we as players are subjected to his internal monologue where he demonstrates that he is a weapons-grade manchild. So far he's shown us that he thinks everyone is beneath him, even the girl he's supposedly trying to save. It almost makes me wonder if someone were to do an "External Alex Only" cut of the game, would that improve his character even marginally?
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Feb 10, 2019 22:46
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Docahedron posted:The hate for this game is odd. But I suppose those that hate it will never play the game through to understand it. I won't mention any spoilers but the game is obviously the two creators mocking themselves and showing deep regret for the kind of persons they used to be. A life changing event happened to them IRL and changed their perspectives. dog, - we're looking at the game and seeing its dialogue and aesthetics and hearing its music already, we don't need to physically be tapping the buttons on the keyboard to be able to form an opinion based on those things - you can't both insinuate that people disliking the game is invalid because they haven't seen spoilery parts yet and coyly refuse to actually provide this context you think redeems the game without being a useless prick who's more in love with wanking their own hipster tastes than with actually defending them in any potentially convincing capacity - if we're gonna play the "your opinion that I don't like on this game I do like clearly means something about your character as a human being" game, you leaping to the defence of this bad writing when we're one dungeon into the game says volumes about what you attach your self-identity to, to the point of needing to attack the personalities of online randos. " you need to waste tens of hours of your life into playing through this unappealing game or your opinion on its first hour-ish is invalid" isn't helpful to anyone
fluffyDeathbringer fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Feb 10, 2019 |
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Feb 10, 2019 22:55
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irl I am a series of ponderous minigames that make random battles last for ten minutes and feel like an hour
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Feb 10, 2019 22:57
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