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OK, D3 it is.

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Man, luvcraft, I didn't know all those places were open before the town meeting, so I just went home and went to bed :(.

I will play this some more either tonight or tomorrow.

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Seth, I think they have a lot more in common than you might think, but are targeted slightly differently. DP is to silent hill what killer7 is to resident evil, sort of. But not really.

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Yeah, there is that as well.

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The signs in this game are like a reward for having a decent TV.

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You could try loading up an earlier episode or something the reloading the one you are in, maybe?

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huh, well then. I'd offer you a copy of my save, but I imagine the XBL profile bullcrap won't let us do that. I'm just after that part of the game, too.

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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.

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lol semantics.

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Yeah, but be careful about running into Kaysen and Willie. If you don't have all the bones when willie gets to you, you get no revolver ever, which is weak and saddening.

I had to buy the revolver to beat the game.

Which I did yesterday. Fuck we need a spoiler-ific thread to talk this shit over because whoa.

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Oh shit YORK IS SEAMAN?!?!?

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I wouldn't necessarily call it better than SH2, but it's definitely in the same ball park of horror games doing a lot more than just scaring you (and hell, DP isn't the slightest bit scary).

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Yeah, the photo gallery is interesting, and explains maybe even more of the oddness of the game, as they team largely nailed the look of the town without really understanding the significance of certain architecture or people.

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You guys are making me think about this game now, a game I think I largely liked because I didn't think much when playing it.

I probably enjoyed this game more having never watched Twin Peaks (something I will remedy soon). I completely understand the sexism/misogyny charges thrown at the game, and there is no real defense against them. Certain parts of it were pretty damn offensive. For some reason, it didn't bother me much during the playing of the game (well, except Thomas, which for some reason set off my HOLY SHIT THIS IS KINDA OFFENSIVE radar right away, but (sad to say, maybe) video games have gotten me used to turning that off (I could list a lot of examples here)), but now looking back on it, having had attention drawn to it, I am bothered.

I didn't really find the part with the song all that confusing, but that is a personal thing I guess. Since most of the game was so sloppy, I guess I was just rolling with it at the end, though see spoiler section for more thought on that, though.

The part with "the song" was what really redeemed the game for me, except redeemed is completely the wrong word, because it certainly doesn't excuse a lot of the other shit in the game. What I most enjoyed in that part was seeing the how the past as assumed in the rest of the game is actually a recontextualization of previous events, changing their meaning based on the "winner" of those events. This gets spoiler-y below, and it has been awhile, so correct anything that is wrong:

The original raincoat killer being this guy who somehow doesn't get affected by the purple shit and who is trying to figure out the cause and stop it gets lost over the years as all people recall about him is that he killed people while it rained. I found myself wondering how the story of his original actions got changed to become something much different, and much more sinister. Even the ending of the game doesn't ever go back and explain him. It just lets him be as this strange moment in the past that is never going to be understood outside of the player. By making the player control him, the game sorta forces you into this bizarre territory of dealing with that he is killing people, but eventually seeing a bit why he is killing people, and understanding that in his failure to stop what was happening, he was doomed to become a villain and such. It's kinda heavy handed and such, but I thought that it was the one part of the game that actually rose to being a video game, instead of a game adaptation of something else. Of course, this is undermined a bit by the confusing design of the section, but thinking back on it now, I almost wonder if I took that confusion as intentional, given the confusion the original raincoat must have been feeling at the time.

Thinking back on the game, I guess I just sorta ignored the "present day" story in favor of the "past" story, and mostly because the "present" story was so steeped in those sexist/misogynist tropes that taking it at all seriously would've been hard. The whole fate of George and Thomas is just ridiculous and dumb, and it really did undermine a lot of the game. Turning them into lurid bullshit only reinforces the sexist shit going on in the story for so much of the present, though having George turn into a goddamn DBZ character sorta made me laugh that off. Again, probably a conditioned response to so much of gaming in general, and not something that is good.

I did enjoy York's character genuinely, though I found most of my amusement in him was tied to reaction shots and his facial expressions (and how they were incongruous with his voice), so some of that might be ironic too, though I have to wonder that nobody told the people making the game what they were doing. His past is pretty stock anime tropes, though I found that the way it was executed was pretty decent-ish to me, so I didn't mind. And thankfully his father didn't turn out to be God or the big bad or whatever.

That being said, Adiligian is spot on with the horrid way the game treats rape, and the ending really makes this apparent and terrible. So I find myself divided on the ending now, while thinking back on it. The things I liked about the ending (the recontextualization of the original raincoat killer and Zach, the strange lens of America seen through the eyes of people who understand it largely through its products and not direct experiences (see also Silent Hill games and Vampire Rain)) versus the things I didn't like about it (George/Thomas/shitty treatment of rape as a subject). In the end, I don't know where that leaves me with this game. I enjoyed playing it, but I didn't always enjoy what it was saying, and the more I think about it, the less I like it.

I recently said this game had one of the better endings in games, and partially (the song chapter), I think that is true, but then again I don't. I am very conflicted about this now, which is strangely a place I like to be. I wish I had more people around when I was playing this game to talk to about it. I think this game is a lot more fun to dissect and pick apart than it is to play. It's a mess, but one that gives me a lot to turn over.

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It's pretty terrible, really, though Forrest Kaysen is in it.

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Well, see, at least the base mechanics of DMC2 were fun, even if they fucked so much else up. So much of playing Spy Fiction was just torturous. It's still a funny game, but the actual palying of it is just clunky and annoying after a bit. People should play it if they want to, but don't go in expecting anything near DP.

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Yeah, it sucked, because that gun makes things a lot more tolerable, combat-wise.

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I remember there being sound issues, definitely, and the framerate hiccups were a thing as well.

But yeah "improved engine" is sounding like the opposite of wht is happening here.

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