A long time ago, back in the 80s, was a game. It was called "Real Life".
Today, this reviewer pulls it out of the musky garage, dusts it off, and returns from the hospital after being bitter by a funnelweb.
The Good:
Soundtrack is excellent, and you can load your own songs.
AI is spectacular--you never know what to expect.
Deep puzzle-solving elements.
Strong social element.
A veritable hoard of minigames!
The Bad:
Fidelity deteriorates with age.
Constant problems with audio noise.
Physically demanding.
Graphics can become heavily blurred.
AI, while sophisticated, can become tedious.
Long tutorial period.
Developers seem to need to release patches at an alarming rate, often changing the playing field.
Social structures are disenchanting.
The Ugly:
That hideous woman-thing I slept with last night. Might've been your mother, or it might've the dirty laundry from yesteryear. Smell was about the same.
Real Life is a peculiar game. It is quite possibly unlike anything currently available on the market, short of The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang.
For the uninformed, ignorant masses, Real Life is a role-playing game, with development credited to Anonymous, a no-doubt prolific designer, director, publisher, composer, writer, avatar, and golden calf. The game's major pitch is that it allows mostly free-form sandbox play, something which I believe is being flogged a bit too much as of late.
Running in the Real World, Real Life comes absolutely free. Potentially the biggest cost, though, is the strange inability to leave the game's vast environments without significant difficulty. Technical stability is superb--and, indeed, the only crashes that occur are when attempting to forcibly close Real Life, something Anonymous evidently did not expect.
First, the most outstanding feature is the AI. The characters are vivid and lifelike, with erratic agendas and often chaotic interactions with eachother. For example, during the middle stages of the tutorial period, the AI will make the actors coalesce into social nuclei. However, it is slightly disappointing that these gangs do not have much external interactions. My character haunted the highschool's dungeon-esque area, but nobody really ever popped round to say "Hi!".
The graphics are largely of an excellent standard, with special note going to the vivid, tactile textures that you can literally reach out and grab. Also interesting is how the quality remains consistent regardless of scaling! Incredibly busy scenes, too, do not suffer from any amount of slowdown. This seems to have been designed to facilitate the many realistic explosions, ranging from UXOs blowing the legs off a Charlie, to the arrogant, diplomatic faction's detonation of powerful warheads over islands nobody cares about.
Audio is mostly of a breathtaking standard. Conveyed with 5.1 surround sound, the sounds of wind and waves at the beach have never been more transporting, and your mother's muffled moans of pleasure were amusingly true-to-life. Real Life also facilitates the loading of MP3s, too, so if the native ambient soundtrack is not to your liking, you can simply load in your favourite tunes!
What truly enthralled me, though, was the rich lore of Real Life! The ancient Aryans with their Vedas and the Mahabharata seem like something out of Bollywood, and the various histories of the European nations ("Nation" is the game's designation for an NPC superfaction) evoke a spiritually profound sense of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic trilogy.
I like to keep things brief, however. With a pricetag that is literally free, and a countless number of hours of playtime, you'd be stupid not to play this masterpiece of design and quality.
EDIT:
The initial review was of low quality, having failed to discuss either what the game is, or what sort of game it is. These elements have been rectified, with thanks to NecroSwanson.
Today, this reviewer pulls it out of the musky garage, dusts it off, and returns from the hospital after being bitter by a funnelweb.
The Good:
Soundtrack is excellent, and you can load your own songs.
AI is spectacular--you never know what to expect.
Deep puzzle-solving elements.
Strong social element.
A veritable hoard of minigames!
The Bad:
Fidelity deteriorates with age.
Constant problems with audio noise.
Physically demanding.
Graphics can become heavily blurred.
AI, while sophisticated, can become tedious.
Long tutorial period.
Developers seem to need to release patches at an alarming rate, often changing the playing field.
Social structures are disenchanting.
The Ugly:
That hideous woman-thing I slept with last night. Might've been your mother, or it might've the dirty laundry from yesteryear. Smell was about the same.
Real Life is a peculiar game. It is quite possibly unlike anything currently available on the market, short of The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang.
For the uninformed, ignorant masses, Real Life is a role-playing game, with development credited to Anonymous, a no-doubt prolific designer, director, publisher, composer, writer, avatar, and golden calf. The game's major pitch is that it allows mostly free-form sandbox play, something which I believe is being flogged a bit too much as of late.
Running in the Real World, Real Life comes absolutely free. Potentially the biggest cost, though, is the strange inability to leave the game's vast environments without significant difficulty. Technical stability is superb--and, indeed, the only crashes that occur are when attempting to forcibly close Real Life, something Anonymous evidently did not expect.
First, the most outstanding feature is the AI. The characters are vivid and lifelike, with erratic agendas and often chaotic interactions with eachother. For example, during the middle stages of the tutorial period, the AI will make the actors coalesce into social nuclei. However, it is slightly disappointing that these gangs do not have much external interactions. My character haunted the highschool's dungeon-esque area, but nobody really ever popped round to say "Hi!".
The graphics are largely of an excellent standard, with special note going to the vivid, tactile textures that you can literally reach out and grab. Also interesting is how the quality remains consistent regardless of scaling! Incredibly busy scenes, too, do not suffer from any amount of slowdown. This seems to have been designed to facilitate the many realistic explosions, ranging from UXOs blowing the legs off a Charlie, to the arrogant, diplomatic faction's detonation of powerful warheads over islands nobody cares about.
Audio is mostly of a breathtaking standard. Conveyed with 5.1 surround sound, the sounds of wind and waves at the beach have never been more transporting, and your mother's muffled moans of pleasure were amusingly true-to-life. Real Life also facilitates the loading of MP3s, too, so if the native ambient soundtrack is not to your liking, you can simply load in your favourite tunes!
What truly enthralled me, though, was the rich lore of Real Life! The ancient Aryans with their Vedas and the Mahabharata seem like something out of Bollywood, and the various histories of the European nations ("Nation" is the game's designation for an NPC superfaction) evoke a spiritually profound sense of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic trilogy.
I like to keep things brief, however. With a pricetag that is literally free, and a countless number of hours of playtime, you'd be stupid not to play this masterpiece of design and quality.
EDIT:
The initial review was of low quality, having failed to discuss either what the game is, or what sort of game it is. These elements have been rectified, with thanks to NecroSwanson.
