At least he commented on the lack of mechanics that actually scare you.
AngryBritishAce said:
I admit this game doesn't hold a candle to The Dark Decent, but why this game gets so much hate mystifies me. I loved it, and yes, it wasn't "gamey" or as scary as the predecessor, but I felt that it was at least a good game by itself, at most a worthy enough sequel. And I'm gonna be honest, I preferred the Machine to the dark corridors of Brennenburg Castle; as Yahtzee said, the whole machine did feel like this groaning monster itself.
Vicioussama said:
You liked this atrocious piece of garbage, Yahtzee? lol. Well to each their own, but TheChineseRoom can serious gtfo of the game industry considering it has never made a real game. Just interactive stories. Yes, there is a difference.
Vicioussama said:
Here's the thing, it's not a game. Nor was Dear Esther.
The problem is that we are in the midsts of when a definition is changing or being more properly defined.
Do we consider visual novels games because they're interactive at the bare minimum by providing player choice? What if there are no choices? Doesn't that make it a movie?
I would not consider Gone Home, Dear Esther, The Stanley Parable, or AMFP to be games. I do not consider visual novels to be games (unless there are traditional gameplay elements added to them). I believe Vicious is right in calling them interactive stories. But that is only me.
Alternatively, in the case of games were you are intended to explore (Gone Home, or more classically, Yume Nikki), you could call it an "exploration adventure"
In Minecraft's case, you could call it a construction simulator with minor gameplay elements.
I consider them such because there is no difference from watching a playthrough of them or playing them yourself. TCR makes stories and puts in gameplay as an after thought, the gameplay never feels relevant to what the player is doing or are dumbed down mechanics from whatever game they've modded.
To me, a game requires
1. player agency OR player interactivity <- this is the point that we can all agree on
2. challenges that have solutions encouraged outside trial-and-error bruteforcing, and therefore require strategy (be it situational or consistent) <- this is where it gets tricky, the amount of interactivity versus the results is where people argue. I'm ignoring the existence of failure states because there are games where the only failure state is when the challenge is unsolved (Prince of Persia 2008, Super Wario Land 2-4)
In TDD there is consistent player agency, in AMFP the only agency (other than walking forward and pressing switches) is when you need to escape monster, and are only four major encounters with monsters (and keep in mind it's a 3-4 hour game).
Clovus said:
There are no reviews calling this an atrocious piece of garbage. There is no review claiming that there is no gameplay. I don't get it.
There are many user reviews calling it garbage, I would hesitate to call it such because I can understand that at least work was put into it.
Clovus said:
Would it suddenly be great if the camera shakes when a monster sees you? Suddenly there's "gameplay" because you have to load a previous save?
Cause that's not the only point that they argue, it's one element of gameplay, not the only one.
Clovus said:
There's no inventory, but there are puzzles. Are those not gameplay if they aren't hard enough?
Most of the puzzles in AMFP consist of:
Put this here
or
Hit this switch
The most complex puzzle in the game is partially lifted directly from the first game with one small addition.
Compare it to tetris, except there is one correct place to put the block and you have one block. There is interactivity, but the solution is laid out for you.
But only got stuck on one the put-this-here-type "puzzle" because it was shoddily programmed.
