The Path Comes To The Mac

Keane Ng

New member
Sep 11, 2008
5,892
0
0
The Path Comes To The Mac



Tale of Tales' art game The Path is now available on Macs, where its creators hope it will find a welcoming audience. Because, as everybody knows, people who use Macs are all art snobs.

Go let your Macbook Pro owning art school friends know: The Path, one of the most unconventional games we've encountered in a long while, is available now for $9.99 via the GameTreeOnline [http://tale-of-tales.com/ThePath/buy.html].

As Susan Arendt put it in her review [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/5928-Review-The-Path], The Path is not so much "a game in the traditional sense," as "an interactive storytelling experience," and thus exactly the kind of unique experience that developer Tale of Tales thinks is perfectly suited to Mac users.

"We think Mac users are really the natural audience for our work," The Path designers Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn said. "The Path does not involve combat or hard puzzles. It's not about space marines or bikini babes. Instead, The Path is a game that challenges emotions and thoughts. It invites the player to actively explore their own imagination." So what, PC users aren't imaginative? Is that what you're saying, Tale of Tales? I take offense.

The port was engineered by TransGaming and their Cider Engine, which took on the arduous task of wrangling the DirectX-happy Quest3D engine which The Path was built on into cooperation with Mac OS X. This could be good news for PC owners with Macs who had problems meeting the system requirements for the game or getting their video cards to cooperate with it. But of course someone who uses both PCs and Macs couldn't possibly exist.


Permalink
 

Logan Westbrook

Transform, Roll Out, Etc
Feb 21, 2008
17,672
0
0
Keane Ng said:
"We think Mac users are really the natural audience for our work," The Path designers Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn said. "The Path does not involve combat or hard puzzles. It's not about space marines or bikini babes. Instead, The Path is a game that challenges emotions and thoughts. It invites the player to actively explore their own imagination." So what, PC users aren't imaginative? Is that what you're saying, Tale of Tales? I take offense.
While that does sound insulting, it's not exactly glowing praise for Mac owners either. They do imply that Mac owners can't handle combat or difficult puzzles.
 

Logan Westbrook

Transform, Roll Out, Etc
Feb 21, 2008
17,672
0
0
MaxTheReaper said:
Oh, and also: My god, that is a pretty picture.
It's actually a very pretty game. They've made very good use of the engine to give the game real atmosphere and overcome the graphical shortfalls.
 

Internet Kraken

Animalia Mollusca Cephalopada
Mar 18, 2009
6,915
0
0
A pretentious game for a pretentious system.

Still, I'm surprised they are only charging 9.99. If you own a Mac then you have a lot of money to waste, so they could have gotten away with charging more.
 

Logan Westbrook

Transform, Roll Out, Etc
Feb 21, 2008
17,672
0
0
MaxTheReaper said:
nilcypher said:
MaxTheReaper said:
Oh, and also: My god, that is a pretty picture.
It's actually a very pretty game. They've made very good use of the engine to give the game real atmosphere and overcome the graphical shortfalls.
Oh, I believe it.
I'll never see it for myself, of course, because just judging by that picture, there's no way my computer could run it.

Ever.
You'd be surprised. The system requirements are Windows XP or Vista, 2 Ghz CPU, 2 GB RAM, 256 MB Radeon or Geforce videocard of x6xxx type.

Not that bad really.
 

Erana

New member
Feb 28, 2008
8,010
0
0
MaxTheReaper said:
nilcypher said:
MaxTheReaper said:
Oh, and also: My god, that is a pretty picture.
It's actually a very pretty game. They've made very good use of the engine to give the game real atmosphere and overcome the graphical shortfalls.
Oh, I believe it.
I'll never see it for myself, of course, because just judging by that picture, there's no way my computer could run it.

Ever.
I have to turn the atmospheric effects down by one, but even I can run it.
Seriously, its the prettiest, most artsy mindfuck you'll ever play.
 

Liverandbacon

New member
Nov 27, 2008
507
0
0
In my experience, mac users are people who want to be art snobs. The actual art snobs I know tend to just use any computer they can afford.
 

Doug

New member
Apr 23, 2008
5,205
0
0
Keane Ng said:
"We think Mac users are really the natural audience for our work," The Path designers Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn said. "The Path does not involve combat or hard puzzles. It's not about space marines or bikini babes. Instead, The Path is a game that challenges emotions and thoughts. It invites the player to actively explore their own imagination."
And to get lost in the fucking woods, stuck in a loop because the sodding minimap only comes up once every 1000 steps, and disappears before you can even read the sodding thing. They can try and hide behind 'art', but I'm calling bullshit on that - just because its an art game doesn't not excuse crappy gameplay elements. I felt physically ill after looping around the same area for the 50th time, damn motion sickness.

Add to that, "explore emotions" means "explore the shit side of humanity". That said, the community around The Path's forum seem determined to interpret ever single thing in the most horrifying way imaginable.
 

level250geek

New member
Jan 8, 2009
184
0
0
Keane Ng said:
The Path Comes To The Mac




"We think Mac users are really the natural audience for our work," The Path designers Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn said. "The Path does not involve combat or hard puzzles. It's not about space marines or bikini babes. Instead, The Path is a game that challenges emotions and thoughts. It invites the player to actively explore their own imagination." So what, PC users aren't imaginative? Is that what you're saying, Tale of Tales? I take offense.

But of course someone who uses both PCs and Macs couldn't possibly exist.


Permalink
1) I'm never buying a Tale of Tales game again. Just like Starbucks' new ad campaign ("Beware a Cheaper Cup of Coffee. It has its own expenses.") made me feel suddenly dirty about buying anything from them, so too does that statement from the designers make me feel about their games.

2) I have a pretty sweet PC I play games on, and a Macbook that I use for work. Yes, yes, I know: Justin Long will have you to believe that the Macbook is all about the fun, but let's face it: the Mac is perfect for doing creative work, but if you want to play games you want a PC.
 

Art Axiv

Cultural Code-Switcher
Dec 25, 2008
662
0
0
level250geek said:
1) I'm never buying a Tale of Tales game again. Just like Starbucks' new ad campaign ("Beware a Cheaper Cup of Coffee. It has its own expenses.") made me feel suddenly dirty about buying anything from them, so too does that statement from the designers make me feel about their games.

2) I have a pretty sweet PC I play games on, and a Macbook that I use for work. Yes, yes, I know: Justin Long will have you to believe that the Macbook is all about the fun, but let's face it: the Mac is perfect for doing creative work, but if you want to play games you want a PC.
He said it folks.
 

JohnyZuper

New member
Jun 14, 2007
4
0
0
Hm. Yeah. I guess that sounds a little odd. Sorry about that. I too use both a Mac and a PC. And I do most of my creative (and imaginative ;) )work on the PC. I guess I was thinking too much about the clichés and not enough about reality when I wrote that. Or trying too hard to suck up to the Mac fans. Forgetting the PC users would read this as well. Oops.

We just have a lot of friends who have never been able to play our games just because they were on Mac. (And yes, they are sort of more artsy types. Clichés are always true in some way.) Simultaneously we constantly get this extremely aggressive attitude from a lot of PC users. So we've had this nagging feeling all along that we were on the wrong OS with our work. While in fact, all of this has probably nothing to do with the choice of operating system whatsoever, but simply with individual personalities and a lot of coincidence.

I apologize to anyone who felt insulted. Especially those of you who never bought a game with space marines in it (and that includes Bioshock).

Michael Samyn.
 

The Wooster

King Snap
Jul 15, 2008
15,305
0
0
The path was a probably the second best example of everything an art game shouldn't be. Needlessly obscure both in story telling, goal and control. The best example would be Fatale, also, interestingly enough, from Tale of tales.

And now it's coming to the Mac? Wonderful.

"Yo Dawg. I heard you liked being pretentious. So I put some pretentiousness in your pretentiousness so you can be pretentious while you're pretentious."