[luvcraft]

[8128]

[Cossix]

How can anyone not like this game? It's fucking amazing. York's behavior is just completely surreal and totally awesome.

EDIT: I'm just in the lumbermill and it's already one of the best games I've probably ever played. The combat isn't even that difficult or complicated, and it hasn't gotten that tedious yet.

[Jigsaw]

Man, I want to play this game so bad. You guys have really sold me on it! Too bad I'd need to spend an arm and a leg importing the PS3 version to play it. :/ Doing a quick look the other day I wasn't able to find any place that sold it for less than $60, and then you'd likely to have to add shipping, import tax and/or the shop not shipping here in the first place. I don't think I'll be able to play this anytime soon. :(

[8128]

the combat sections can totally be breezed through with very little difficulty, and I played on hard mode, so.
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[Sketch]

[Jigsaw]

Japanese text is not a great concern for me, but still, that's good to know. My google research had in fact led me to believe that the Asian version did have English text.

[Sketch]

Yes Asia made a mistake with a listing, and a few blog sites took it as fact and then it kinda snowballed. Because I had been thinking/hoping the exact same thing. I'm currently trying to acquire it second-hand.

[ninjafetus]

Oh, wow. Finished tonight. I can't get over how good the total experience was... it's a shame they don't make more like this.

You know a game is good when the inability to share the experience with a friend who's not as far as you is a frustrating experience. I really want to laugh with him about the absurdity of the bone theft quest, but he's not there yet. :p

[oneEIGHTkevin]

I just beat this a few minutes ago. This game did things with the narrative only a video game could do and for that I must applaud it. I think the only other game I've felt this way about would be Earthbound.

The gameplay pretty much sucked aside from driving around town and interacting with the locals which was always fun. The overall experience was kinda similar to how I feel about most Suda 51 games.
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[Kimani]

It's being compared to Earthbound and Killer7! This is some high praise.

I just started Chapter 2 and I'm ready to get into some of these sidequests y'all are talking about. It's sort of hard to get around though, since you can't really zoom out with the map and the car threatens to run out of gas pretty quickly :| It could turn a little faster too.

I love how the police car goes around 50 MPH, but you have a "Boost". It makes the engine rev up and the sirens wail, and you hit 55. You might hit 60 if you're going downhill.

[ninjafetus]

Your car options and overall car performance can be improved. The inability to zoom out on the map does kind of suck, but I treated it like having an actual map in the car. Kind of cumbersome until you learn your way around.

[8128]

game is much better than suda nonsense ;_;

some of the endgame stuff is certainly earthbound-quality
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[Sketch]

For those who've completed it, to what degree did you rely on the text? As in, if it all the written text you read were in Japanese, would it ruin the game?

I'm seriously reaching the point where I'll just luck through it if it's not going to get localised for the PS3.

[luvcraft]

I can't think of anything important in the game that's text-only without accompanying spoken dialogue. I guess you'd miss out on the names of some of the menu items at restaurants, and you'd have to figure out how to play darts on your own.
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[diplo]

well, you also wouldn't know a good chunk of who's who/what's what on the map.

[Ronnoc]

[Sketch]

[luvcraft]

[Red 0]

This game is a real charmer, I enjoyed it.

Do we have terminology to categorize a terrible game that happens to just exert personality so effortlessly that it resonates with more strength than games with better mechanics? There are other games that I consider to be like this, and some of those I consider classics. Maybe there's a term from other types of media that I'm just ignorant of.

[CubaLibre]

Well, no other media have "mechanics." Maybe "cult classic"?
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Let's Play, starring me.

[boojiboy7]

Or possibly lovable B-game (or something like that)? If one wants to draw an analogy between the mechanics of playing a game and the mechanics of filmmaking.

[John Mc.]

Guys I started playing this yesterdy with help from dinghy and smartblue, all while possibly driving Joe up the wall. Game of the century?

[8128]

game is not "terrible" by any means
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[Sketch]

Based on what I've heard (needing to eat, shave and refuel your car), and the youtube videos I've seen of the driving, it doesn't look terrible at all. In fact the mechanics look good.

I want to add that I thought the mechanics of the bike driving sections in Headhunter were at least half the fun in that game - few others thought so though, so they were removed from the sequel.

How does the driving compare to Headhunter's?

[ninjafetus]

The driving (steering) is a hilarious, complicated pain in the ass when you first start. It's much more enjoyable when you get car upgrades. The long open roads are always enjoyable, though I wish they would have had more conversations with yourself available so that they could keep going throughout the game and the epilogue. I've never played Headhunter, though, so I can't compare.

[Red 0]

It's totally terrible, it's also exactly what it needs to be at every point in time, and one of the best things I've put in my 360! I'm not comparing it to "The Room" or an Ed Wood thing here. It's purposefully, genuinely fun.

When you are forced to face two of those incredibly annoying wall zombies in a row, when you get stuck on a crate you didn't push far enough while being chased by an axe murderer, when you go barreling down a forested mountain path at ninety miles per hour testing the limits of physics as you flip and slide around on your roof colliding into the little impassable elevated pieces of land that fence you in while your car tries to magically make itself upright, it's forgiven without a question. I drove with those silly physics the entire game, using the fast-travel only once, to try it out. The atmosphere of the game makes it all fun. In a less fun game it might be annoying or in some cases, contrived!

I don't know if "lovable B-movie" applies to what I'm thinking of but I certainly don't have any better suggestions. The games I was thinking of were, specifically, the first two Suikoden games. They have weak dungeons and boring battles that get auto-battled through, 108 characters to use and a handful worth using, terrible sections with army battles (although the first game used a rock-paper-scissors formula at least it was playable!). This is a comparison that only I would personally make, because I hold those two games more dear than most other videogames. They ooze with personality and soul, and so does this game!

[8128]

wait though it's still not terrible stop saying that
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[Red 0]

It kind of is, though. Would you tolerate that first level from any game that had a Ubisoft staff of hundreds, ads all over the tv, and articles about it's potential as a cultural phenomenon in the New York Times? It works because the game is what it is.

[Lasakon]

[8128]

if I wouldn't have tolerated the first level then I wouldn't have tolerated it

I don't get what you're saying

if it were by a more mainstream developer, the first level wouldn't be tolerable, I guess

also, I don't think the first level was terrible, so
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[Lasakon]

ya rly.
I'm pretty sick of the ironic appreciation this game is getting from certain segments when it in fact is actually really good, like fantastically good.
Even the voice acting and writing is pretty fantastic in the game and it too is seemingly misunderstood as being shit or whatever, and then these same people are probably going on about how good BioWare games are :|.
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[Red 0]

I'm not being ironic and I don't like games about the masturbation habits of dwarves and frog beasts, but I like this game! A lot even!

[8128]

[Red 0]

I can't like it even though I think it's terrible? I have to hate it now because I think there's a lot of room for improvement?

[diplo]

uhh, you can feel however you want about it. of course there's room for improvement; but you have yet to explain how all of the flaws combine into an overall result of terribleness (regardless of how much you still like it), which is on the extreme end of things. i actually can't tell if some parts are the way they are purposefully or not -- like if i'm supposed to laugh every time york smiles -- and that's part of why it's sort of hard to make an absolute critical statement. as i said on the podcast, though, i'm leaning towards legitimately good. i'll explain this in a future post, i guess, since i don't have the time right now. also, was anyone else surprised by stuff like isaac and isaiah actually climbing into kaysen's car -- rather than standing next to it and being teleported inside -- to be driven off?

[Red 0]

Should I say "terrible parts" then? I call it terrible because it has terrible parts. Driving across town to the wilderness park isn't fun because of the driving, but because of the sights along the way and the discussions about the works of Amy Heckerling. I would say similar things about the shooting and chase mechanics. In a whole it's a lovely game. A great game. I think a terrible game can be great. I think there's enough nuance there, but maybe there isn't because I have to explain myself.

(edit: I'm getting lost in myself here, and I've taken this train off the tracks to nowhere particularly interesting. I've been terrible. The mechanics are totally playable and functional, which is actually kind of remarkable because of how low budget it is and the scope it is on. I'm going to go all the way back to my original post, where I was trying to be faux-philosophic.

If we play some games because they have good shooting, or jumping, or good RPG numbers, what would we say is the reason we play this game? "Personality" or "Heart"? Whatever it is, I don't think it can be placed as a bullet point on a spreadsheet for investors. How do we quantify it, how can it even be encouraged in development?)

[ninjafetus]

God damn it, fuck you guys and your semantics.

Red 0's version of terrible: "Not the level of mechanics and design I've become accustomed to from titles of overall high quality."
Your version of terrible: "Not enjoyable."

There, discussion over. You both enjoyed it. Fuck.

[8128]

calling the game "terrible" is just contributing to that whole "it's so bad it's good" argument, as is the distinction between "accidentally good" and "legitimately good"

if someone's using the word terrible differently than i do, then stop using the word terrible retardedly
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[boojiboy7]

lol semantics.

[Fight!]