​To the Moon:

Great concept; story composition (ending loses pacing post-horrible vocal song---stop adding in vocals jarringly see: the walking dead); looks like JRPG; horrible nerd humour; terrible writing​; irrelevent gameplay (tile flipping, pixel hunting and occasional flash-level crap); but I loved it, and would I love a short story of this quality? A short film? Film would be passable; short story would be horrible. Simple moving from scene to scene gives it unique medium-based pacing. Thus these sorts of arguments are redundant and pointless.​

The Walking Dead:

Extremely slow, relaxing: literally a soap opera. It's a midget/doll short of being Passions. Caravaggio, annoying expositional dialogue, and falls in to the trap of choices: having the characters explain to other characters thier reasons WITHOUT giving the player a choice, thus ruining immersion, etc., and the story still basically plays out exactly the same anyway; that could be handled a hell of a lot better. Euthanasia simulator, man.

Extremely slow, relaxing: literally a soap opera. It's a midget/doll short of being Passions.

Telltale can’t help themselves with the jokes: caravaggio and Sam and Max---I mean Duck and Lee.

Expositional dialogue way too much; messes with the tone: “oh, you’re gonna have to decide this” blah blah, and sometimes your choices are explained by Lee without player input meaning that his interpritation of his choice is not necessarily your own. Bad for immresion. The story basically plays out the same way anyway which is disappointing, and it need not. Take dairy farm for instance: instead looking in the barn, Lee could have convinced Kenny to dine with them. The result would have been the same anyway because Mark still gives the game away.

Speaking of Mark; such absolutely ridiculous foreshadowing. You can predict within the first few minutes of every episode exactly what is going to happen because they telegraph it so blatantly.

Vindication: Episode 3’s highlightable areas are placed more intuitively and give you significantly moreclicking space.

Telltale are so shit at pacing. Random jump scares without telegraphing are great, but the shock is removed from the emotional events due to this which is disappoinitng. Duck scene needs discussion in spoilercast; pretty ground breaking content, no? Even though they do their best (and mostly succeed) to remove all impact by having Katja shoot herself first. Cowards.

Clementine: good character...abysmal voice acting.

Episode 4 and 5 are really bad compared to the other chapters because the great character dynamics are gone; there's little chemistry between the remaining charactesr and the new ones. Christa and Omid? TERRIBLE! ​Both end brilliantly. Except fro the final song. Eww.

No faith in season 2. Clementine by herself or with Christa and Omid? MEH. They were lucky with what they achieved more than anything; nothing indicates they'll do it again going by how the episodes unfolded. Eh.​

being a game: gives extra, more reaistic emphasis of physical exertion and passage of time; both important to the game, which is partly why last 2 episodes are so poor: lots of jumps in time, and comic book heroic action.​

Proteus​:

beautiful; game adds to it because it's you​ exploring it, if it was an animation this would be lost, and would lsoe much of tis appeal. Another good thing about it is that ti draws upon Minecraft, and shows that such a graphical style can be used to create a very believable and pseudo-realistic environment. Beautiful.​

Deadly Premonition:​

​Ushah's car--physics engine can't keep up. It's HIlARIOUS! Disabled picture + other picture INCLUDE!

​The QTEs are actually very intense and well done; pacing is good. Can only imagine them with Move.

Intentions correction: of course artist's intentions are important; but do not always succeed, so thorugh sheer serendipity greatness can be achieved completely by accident. it is as brillaint parody of TWin Peaks intentionally or not, just as voice acting in book of unwritten tales follows Japanese techniques; definitely not intentional, but the result is the same.

The design really is mediocre to good; even driving becomes good after upgrades and once you get used to the pace of the game; which is brilliant. People who say it's bad design are totally missing the point.​

One thing very impressive is the reverb on the voice acting in booming indoor areas; maybe it's just my speakers, but very rarely to Western voice productions do that sort of thing; and it's to their detriment.​

Odin Sphere:

Breathtaking sprite-based artwork; amazing animation of characters and the backgrounds. Great draughtsmanship and sense of composition; easily on the level of high quality anime.  Food looks delicious.

Hitoshi Sakimoto redeems himself from his boring as fuck FFXII score with excellent music here that perfectly complements the visual artstyle.

Combat is ridiculously simple (one button for both attack and defend), but it’s so tightly designed. The main challenge is based around figuring out enemy patterns, which is challenging and satisfying. Bosses are just brilliantly hard, requiring use of items, special moves and normal attacks, all while learning the boss’ attacking and defensive patterns. Just so very good. Reviews said it wasn’t button mashy because there’s stamina; too many attacks result in stamina going down, but it is very button mashing; button timing results in extra attacks, but it’s not necessary. This is a good thing, though, as it allows full focus on learning boss patterns etc. for a great experience.

Simple, but effective alchemy system and experience systems.

Great story/characters with a strong feminist undertone.

First 8 hours fall short of being a genuine masterpiece only due to the awkward inventory system (even though inventory management itself is well done) and slowdown which makes fights with large amounts of weak enemies more challenging than boss battles and no load ability, which was surely  a no brainer to compliment the saving anywhere.

And then the next 8 hours are exactly the same; a different character with a different special move with whom you have to start from level 1 again, but the same dungeons and worst of all THE SAME BOSSES. So, so wrong. :( Time to switch to easy except on bosses and blaze through while listening to music. What a disappointment, but saw it coming a mile away.

Archived for article:

Tom Tower’s obscure bullshit:

Scratches:

Notable for being the first commercial video game made in Argentina

(

according to wikipedia). It’s a mixture of esoteric puzzles, dense atmosphere and a whole of pixel hunting, but has garnered a huge cult following due to adventure gaming fans liking obscure bullshit. Agustin Cordes who co-founded Nucleosys with Alejandro Graziani went on to found Senscape which is developing a new horror game set for release this year.

Rule of Rose:

Notable for the controversy it created due to the perceived erotic undertone to the game which featured a cast of minors; for that reason Sony didn’t want to publish it, but Atlus stepped in and took the reins in 2006.

Meanwhile, European Union justice minister criticised the game, saying it cotnained “obscene cruelty and brutality. He also called for the PEGI rating system to be changed which pissed off other European Union members because Franco Frattini is clearly a dick. He’d have to be with a name like that. Three French deputies introduced a bill calling for the game to be banned, claiming that the goal of the game was to “tape, beat up and kill a little girl.” Which sounds a whole lot like a French art house film. Red Ant (now defunct) who were going to distribute the game in Australia and New Zealand decided not to go ahead with the release before it had even faced the OFLC.

In 2007 a group  MEPs presented a motion for a European Parliment resolution on a ban on the sale and distribution of Rule of Rose in Europe, and the creation of a “European Observatory on childhood and minors” which probably consisted of compulsory telescope inspection of children’s rectums for evidence of rape.

Rule of Rose was not released in the UK due to the ridiculous reaction to the game which was used for political purposes by the likes of Franco Frattini. It was nevertheless released in the rest of Europe, and review copies had already been shipped out to reviewers when this announcement was made. PEGI had this to say about the controversy: I have no idea where the suggestion of in-game sadomasochism has come from, nor children being buried underground. These are things that have been completely made up. [...] We’re not worried about our integrity being called into question, because Mr Frattini’s quotes are nonsense

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream:

Adapted from a Harlan Ellison story which he wrote in a single night, making almost no changes from the first draft to the published version. The short story is notable for its use of punchcode tape messages as time-breaks. But read How to Serve Man instead, because it’s a lot better. The game on the other hand is meant to be pretty damn good, winning Digital Hollywood’s Best Dark Game of 1996, and the Computer Game Developers Conference Best Game Adapted from Linear Media award among other accolades. And indeed, I Have No Mouth and Must scream is not linear, with French and German censorship resulting in the “best” ending of the game being unattainable, due to France and Germany being pussies.

Pathologic:

Developed by avant-garde Russian badarses, Ice-Pick Lodge, Pathologic tells the story of three carries who are trying to the source of a terminal illness that has befallen a small town; on the edge of said town is a strange geometric structure which children use as a fortress. Poorly translated, the reception in the West was mixed, but it has an excellent atmosophere, and the Russians fucking loved it. And Russians are awesome.

Sanitarium:

Notable for its bird’s eye view perspective and 2D navigational system; it features multiple worlds, each world with a distinct atmosphere that makes the player question what is real and what is not; it is called Sanitarium after all!

Black Mirror:

A modern adventure game series developed originally in the Czech republic by Future Games (the sequels developed by German company Cranberry Production); the third in the series was released in 2011 showing that there is room yet for new horror games that aren’t shooters. And hey, Yesterday came out recently too!

Outcry: the most HORRIFYING GAME OF ALL TIME as described by Year on the guru3d.com forum: the hardest game i ever played in my entire life (over 20 years of gaming) is OUTCRY its a 360 degree adventure game about alternate states of consciousness.

the game gives no feedback whether you succeeded or not, no help, no hints, nothing at all, you must use your eyes, ears and wits.

for example you must find a code to unlock a machine by READING every single book in the house (each book, multiple pages) and find a word in each book (took me 4 month to find the words) and once you find the words they're actually anagrams and once you activate the machine theres no feedback whether the code is right or the machine is working because you must go check the basement and turn 5 valves to various degrees and fix an electrical board by listening to a whisper from another part of the house......etc etc etc

the game is absurd, illogical, diabolical, it will fvck the brains of anyone who attempt to play it, and yet it's one of those gems i absolutely love, an all time favorite.

took me 1.5 years to finish it (dunno how the hell i did it), i played the game EVERYDAY unlike any other game that i own and not to brag but i consider myself more than a Pro when it comes to adventure games, the game raped my brain sideways but god damn i felt superior to einstein even if for a moment.

there isn't a single game in this thread or that anybody can name harder than OUTCRY. you have my word. infact the game should go straight into the guinness records as hardest game ever.

Outcry redefined the word impossible.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=4092205

ful.