Games that are great...except for the game part.

[Dirty Hipsters]

I'm just not a fan of gothic/body horror to find any of the FromSoft aesthetics at all appealing. I mean I remember watching Super Butter Buns doing a let's play with her friends of Bloodborne, which was hilarious. But nothing about the games themselves, appeal to me. And when one of her friends, actually described the boss they were fighting, and laid out what the being was I was just like "...but...WHY?! Why would you think of something like that?!" It just feels too edgey edgelord for the sake of edgeness for me to think any of it is actually engaging.

It's not just gothic/body horror. Bloodborne is kind of a love letter to horror in general.

Sure, the gothic and body horror is pretty big there, but you've also got really interesting re-imaginings of class monsters and tons of lovecraftian cosmic horror. There's nods to ghosts stories, vampires, aliens, body snatchers, possession, resident evil, etc.

Also, edginess is kind of a defining trait of horror in general.

 

[happyninja42]

It's not just gothic/body horror. Bloodborne is kind of a love letter to horror in general.

Sure, the gothic and body horror is pretty big there, but you've also got really interesting re-imaginings of class monsters and tons of lovecraftian cosmic horror. There's nods to ghosts stories, vampires, aliens, body snatchers, possession, resident evil, etc.

Also, edginess is kind of a defining trait of horror in general.

Which is why I don't find it all that appealing. When your only color pallette is black/dirt/grey/blood, I start to tune out. Also when your motiff is simply "let's see how many various bits of other things we can jam into one thing and make it a new thing for shock/gross out value" i also start to tune out.

I'm not a fan of horror, never have been. So Bloodborne has no appeal for me. I just see "oh, it's the notebook scribblings of my artist friends from when they were teenagers, made into a video game....yay?"

 

[BrawlMan]

Which is why I don't find it all that appealing. When your only color pallette is black/dirt/grey/blood, I start to tune out. Also when your motiff is simply "let's see how many various bits of other things we can jam into one thing and make it a new thing for shock/gross out value" i also start to tune out.

I'm not a fan of horror, never have been. So Bloodborne has no appeal for me. I just see "oh, it's the notebook scribblings of my artist friends from when they were teenagers, made into a video game....yay?"

If you think that's screwed up, that's nothing compared to the Drakengard games. Specifically the first and third game. More so the first, which also takes plenty of cues from Berserk. A heads up, there are many of Japanese creators, whether it be anime or video games, that were either fans or hugely influenced by the manga.

The Ooze. Sega Technical Institute's last game in another overly difficult one at that. The difficulty even worse than Comix Zone. You basically have an over the head action puzzle game, where you can eat your enemies and grow larger. The problem is that you barely only get a few lives and almost no continues. What's worse is that to get the true ending, you have to find some obscure hidden past, levels, and collect mutated rabbits DNA I think, to even get the true ending. There's a reason why it's Sega Technical Institute doesn't exist anymore. The game didn't exactly sell well. Otherwise, the concept was pretty cool.

​

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Which is why I don't find it all that appealing. When your only color pallette is black/dirt/grey/blood, I start to tune out. Also when your motiff is simply "let's see how many various bits of other things we can jam into one thing and make it a new thing for shock/gross out value" i also start to tune out.

I'm not a fan of horror, never have been. So Bloodborne has no appeal for me. I just see "oh, it's the notebook scribblings of my artist friends from when they were teenagers, made into a video game....yay?"

Well like they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Either way, there’s plenty of post-teenager-level insight into the scribblings and story; for example -

 

[happyninja42]

Well like they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Either way, there’s some insight here into the scribblings and story -

Thanks but I just really don't care. I've seen enough of From Soft's work to know it's not for me, that I think they've got terrible writing, and present it terribly to the player. And they are obsessed with a handful of genres that I give zero fucks about. As you say, one man's trash and all.

 

[BrawlMan]

Thanks but I just really don't care. I've seen enough of From Soft's work to know it's not for me, that I think they've got terrible writing, and present it terribly to the player. And they are obsessed with a handful of genres that I give zero fucks about. As you say, one man's trash and all.

Don't you understand? They're making art! Think happyninja! If they didn't do what they do, then what would they have? What would the fans have? What would you have? Huh?! Huh!

 

[happyninja42]

What would you have? Huh?! Huh!

....everything else in existence?

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Which is why I don't find it all that appealing. When your only color pallette is black/dirt/grey/blood, I start to tune out. Also when your motiff is simply "let's see how many various bits of other things we can jam into one thing and make it a new thing for shock/gross out value" i also start to tune out.

I'm not a fan of horror, never have been. So Bloodborne has no appeal for me. I just see "oh, it's the notebook scribblings of my artist friends from when they were teenagers, made into a video game....yay?"

I get your point about color pallettes. It's part of why Majora's Mask has a special place in my heart because there's some pretty creepy and scary stuff in that game but it uses a lot of bright colors in it's artstyle rather than dull monotone ones. While it's not a horror game itself, I wish people making horror games could learn from it's example when making the art for their games.

 

[happyninja42]

I get your point about color pallettes. It's part of why Majora's Mask has a special place in my heart because there's some pretty creepy and scary stuff in that game but it uses a lot of bright colors in it's artstyle rather than dull monotone ones. While it's not a horror game itself, I wish people making horror games could learn from it's example when making the art for their games.

Well it's partly a vision issue for me. I have issues with dark shades, particularly in gaming. I tend to have serious problems making out any details in something if it's meant to be shadowed, or just dark colors. When a game tells you to "turn the brightness down until you can hardly see the Left symbol" or whatever, I almost always jack it up a few notches above that. Because otherwise, I just visually miss out on a lot of important detail.

So a game, that has black corpses, covered in black/brown blood, layered over ash grey/black architecture, AND also just shadowed because it's suuuper dark and spooooky, I generally just see a dark smudge/blur, as far as how much detail I usually get from it, and brain recognition of the object. I have to actively focus and put in extra effort to try and make out any details....which usually end up being nothing of importance in Souls games, other than "oooh, isn't this disturbing?!" Which, for me...no, it's really not. So it's just a lot of visually unappealing textures and palettes that I'm wandering through, and have little interest in.

I agree you don't need black/grey's for horror, as often juxtaposing bright, vibrant things, with horrible things, works really well to disturb the audience. Like how I've heard people talk about the film Midsommar as being particularly offputting because of that. Well and other reasons of course, but the visuals added to the disturbing aspects.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

....everything else in existence?

Well, sure, if you want to settle for that....

 

[BrawlMan]

The idiotic morality system in Dishonored. Because when you advertise all the deadly weapons you want to use in the game: No! You can't, otherwise you automatically get the bad ending. The game judges you for one of using the cool stuff that was advertised! It's what literally prevented me from buying this game and it's sequels.

 

[Dalisclock]

The idiotic morality system in Dishonored. Because when you advertise all the deadly weapons you want to use in the game: No! You can't, otherwise you automatically get the bad ending. The game judges you for one of using the cool stuff that was advertised! It's what literally prevented me from buying this game and it's sequels.

As someone who likes the games, I totally fucking agree with you on this.
Game: "Here's a bunch of cool toys"
Me: "Can I use them?"
Game: "Only if you want to fuck everything up even more"

It's jusitified per the story/worldbuilding but it still feels like a dick move. Apparently the last game (Death of the Outsider) did away with that but I don't know if it made it any better.

And of course, the Irony is that doing the "Non-Kill" on your targets, at least in the first game, was often more cruel then just offing them. I normally off Lady Boyle for that reason because her fate otherwise is just fucking creepy and gross.

 

[Drathnoxis]

That creature is basically a reference to part Guts's backstory. He came out of his mother's womb as she hanged to death from a tree. His uncle, took care of him at the time, but always secretly hated him. He blamed his sister's death on Guts (even though he was literally a baby that was just born) The uncle tried to kill Guts, but Guts killed himself defense and ran away.

That's hilarious. That's gotta be the most ridiculously dumb backstories I've ever heard. Usually when blaming a child for the death of the mother it's because she died in childbirth, not because she died incidentally to giving birth.

 

[BrawlMan]

That's hilarious. That's gotta be the most ridiculously dumb backstories I've ever heard. Usually when blaming a child for the death of the mother it's because she died in childbirth, not because she died incidentally to giving birth.

Let's just say that Guts's uncle isn't the only one that attacks or hurts others out of disproportionate retribution, perceived slight, or some warped view of morality. Granted, that's kind of the point for most the characters, but yeah.

 

[Dalisclock]

Let's just say that Guts's uncle isn't the only one that attacks or hurts others out of disproportionate retribution, perceived slight, or some warped view of morality. Granted, that's kind of the point for most the characters, but yeah.

Is it wrong for me to point out that it says something about Berserk when the closest thing to a comic relief character(at least in the anime), ADON COBORLWITIZ OF THE BLUE WHALE KNIGHTS WITH A 350 YEAR OLD SUPER SECRET FAMILY TECHNIQUE turns out to be an attempted rapist?

 

[BrawlMan]

Is it wrong for me to point out that it says something about Berserk when the closest thing to a comic relief character(at least in the anime), ADON COBORLWITIZ OF THE BLUE WHALE KNIGHTS WITH A 350 YEAR OLD SUPER SECRET FAMILY TECHNIQUE turns out to be an attempted rapist?

It's gets even crazier when that character's English voice actor goes on to voice Dr. Eggman since 2003. Mike Pollock's Eggman and Adon sound exactly alike. Adds even more to the creep factor unintentionally. I was 18 (2007) when I first saw Berserk (1997 anime) and I flipped my shit and shouted: "That's motherfucking Eggman!". What the hell was he doing in this?

 

[Agema]

The idiotic morality system in Dishonored. Because when you advertise all the deadly weapons you want to use in the game: No! You can't, otherwise you automatically get the bad ending. The game judges you for one of using the cool stuff that was advertised! It's what literally prevented me from buying this game and it's sequels.

I do not agree with this at all.

No game has to allow you to do as you please without any consequences. What sort of world do you want? Remember you will be raising the queen as both a father and chief advisor: you're demonstrating what a sort of person you want to be by how you play the game. And if we look at the real world we might note resolving everything by murder very rarely leads to a happy place. So if you want to use those death tools rampantly - and you can - just suck up the fact you can't also have the peace and light and awesomeness ending you want. Gamers don't need to be treated like spoilt and coddled children who have to be showered with rewards and given everything they want.

In a similar situation I would however object to the game design in the original Deus Ex reboot, where it enables a pacifist achievement where you kill no-one, except you do kill people: it fundamentally undermines the concept by compelling you to kill some of the opponents in boss fights to progress, just decides they "don't count".

I normally off Lady Boyle for that reason because her fate otherwise is just fucking creepy and gross.

Yes. She might be an awful person, but I think even that end for her is a very uncomfortable step. I suspect had Dishonored been made even just five years later, with rapidly changing public attitudes, the devs might have thought up something different.

 

[Bedinsis]

Based on the demo: Bollywood Wannabe

It's rhythm-based game. The premise of the game is that you are a no-budget film crew making a Bollywood musical, and the stages consists of left-to-right-scrolling-levels where you have to navigate the locales while making sure to hit the arrow fitting the background music. The better you perform at hitting the rhythm, the more Indians feel inspired to join in the dancing so you have the amount of Indians dancing along to you acting as a progress bar.

If you are anything like me, at this point a huge grin has likely appeared over your face since this is such wonderfully ridiculous premise that I cannot help smiling.

So how is the game?

Visually, it uses vector based graphics that I thought did the work excellently:


Also, level-design-wise, they used creativity to create levels that did depict different places and had its own interesting background details.

Musically, the developer gathered a variety of Indian-language-based music that fits what I think of when it comes to Bollywood music.

Plot-wise, it is a basic story that is nothing to write home about but it does it sufficiently enough with visual novel style humorous exchanges in-between the stages.

Gameplay-wise, the rhythm-based gameplay is too simple to be engaging, and the actual navigation along the level is confusing and frustrating since the constantly advancing notes acts as a timer. And every challenge is greatly increased if a timer is added. What's more about the rhythm-based gameplay: it does not allow for much creativity. The developer put in much effort to make sure a player could record how they completed a level, no doubt to let people showcase how they chose to express themselves while dancing, yet the options while dancing is so limited. In easy mode it is just pressing one button and your avatar decides what move to make. In hard mode, you only have four options(up, down, left or right) and the only limit is that you cannot press the same button too many times for each set of fours. One would think certain combos in each set-of-four would lead to special moves (perhaps a little twirl or some impromptu breakdancing) or that starting with certain moves would modify the appearance of latter moves in each set-of-four, but no.

 

[BrawlMan]

I do not agree with this at all.

No game has to allow you to do as you please without any consequences. What sort of world do you want? Remember you will be raising the queen as both a father and chief advisor: you're demonstrating what a sort of person you want to be by how you play the game. And if we look at the real world we might note resolving everything by murder very rarely leads to a happy place. So if you want to use those death tools rampantly - and you can - just suck up the fact you can't also have the peace and light and awesomeness ending you want. Gamers don't need to be treated like spoilt and coddled children who have to be showered with rewards and given everything they want.

In a similar situation I would however object to the game design in the original Deus Ex reboot, where it enables a pacifist achievement where you kill no-one, except you do kill people: it fundamentally undermines the concept by compelling you to kill some of the opponents in boss fights to progress, just decides they "don't count".

News flash, 0 fucks given. If you advertise a game that highlights all of the cool shit you can do, only to fuck over the player in a self righteous attempt to pull a stupid "You Bastard" on the player, then you failed as a game designer in my eyes. This was another problem with Generation 7: going too hard on making the player an asshole/bastard. That shit got irritating, tiring, and completely boring. You feel the opposite and claim "that's the point", does not automatically make it good or suddenly "profound". I hate that line of thinking, because it's as if the game or the developers themselves are suddenly immune to criticism. Which they are not. It's a bad game play system and I'm not backing down, so deal with it. Don't bother responding back on the topic of Dishonored, because I won't be listening. You like the game that much, go right ahead.

 

[Agema]

News flash, 0 fucks given. If you advertise a game that highlights all of the cool shit you can don, only to fuck over the player

You clearly do give a fuck, because you're here moaning about it and refusing to play the game because you're upset you can't have your cake and eat it. I care not in the least whether you "back down", I'm quite happy just pointing out your beliefs are at best merely subjective and at worst poorly considered.

The player isn't being fucked over: all that cool shit is there for them to use, it just comes with consequences from excessive use. Deal with it. Whether it's "profound" or not isn't the point. It's a mechanic that provides the player with an element of choice for how they want to approach the game. It can be thought of as an internal difficulty setting: you can make your game a lot easier killing what you feel like, but you might not get the end you want - thus it nudges players to explore ways of playing the game they might not otherwise choose. And, finally, it is simply thematically consistent with the narrative and setting of the game.

In fact, this concept exists in lots of other games, too. In Baldur's Gate 2, you can keep turning yourself into a rampaging, monstrous, death machine and make your combats easier - at the cost that NPCs will increasingly fear and hate you. I played a Cold War strategy game where if you do really well as NATO you can push back the Warsaw Pact far enough through Germany and Poland to invade the USSR... and the game promptly ends in total global thermonuclear war mutual defeat, because that's what would happen.

There are numerous good reasons behind it. The fact you simply don't like it is your problem, but all that really merits is a small