Update One Hundred and Thirty-Six: 2 March 2018
Stories Untold
2.4 hours, 13 of 13 achievements
5/10
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
How disappointing this was - so close and yet so far. Great premise - an anthology of interface games that involve breaking the fourth wall and that are all eventually tied together - that is let down by uneven implementation and the story that’s eventually revealed is uninspired, one that I’ve heard from half of the dudes in my screenwriting classes.
I wanted to like it, I really did - I’m a sucker for interface games, and this one started off kind of clever. Whatever goodwill I had toward it is trashed by this fact: if you’re making an interface game, those interfaces need to work properly and not be a pain. Their dial-turning mechanic, whether it was made this way or I had an unfortunate bug, turned agonizingly slowly. Pace-breaking, immersion-ruining, wrist-achingly slowly. There are several puzzles that include turning the dial up large numbers - the worst case was turning from 0 to 8250. It took me a solid three minutes of just clicking, dragging, and holding to do this, with a VO NPC berating me for taking too long chiming in every 30 seconds or so.
Yeah, that’s not a good time. Every time I had to turn a fucking dial, my stomach would sink as I steeled myself for a solid minute or two of watching a tiny number slowly tick up. User interface is important, and it’s nuts to me that this was either let through, or that this bug wasn’t noticed and fixed for computers with lower specs (though everything else ran smoothly).
Beyond trying to do something different with interface games (which is good), and making an anthology game (but is it a TRUE anthology game if ~all the stories end up directly correlating with each other?), everything else feels like a crib, down to even the fucking title logo clearly being a near-direct Stranger Things ripoff. There’s nothing new or fresh with these ideas, and it’s not taking two great tastes and putting them together to make a mindblowing one, like this mashup of the Stranger Things and the Weeknd did. (What I need to do is vibe to this to lower my blood pressure, that’s the smart move.) Vito, I’m on your side; you’re not the only one who didn’t click with this game.
Ugh, I’m having no luck lately.
Next up: Logan Cunningham’s dulcet tones of aural gold will save me.
See you soon!
Yes yes yes, Pyre! You’ll enjoy that!
I’m so excited! I got it as a Christmas present from my girlfriend’s younger brother, and lately he’s been like ‘you haven’t started playing it? What gives?’
I always am way late to the party with Supergiant games, and I don’t know why. I hesitate and hesitate before jumping in… to find myself having an absolute blast. I’m excited to do this here, too.
Sorry to hear that you didn’t like it as well. You more or less point out all the things that I did not like about it as well. And even I noticed the ‘Stranger Things’ ripoff though I haven’t watched it…
Good luck with ‘Pyre’, hope it’s a better experience than the last few
I certainly understamd where you are coming from. I am pretty sure I even gave it a better review than it deserved, because I too really wanted to like it, but let me downin the end. We win some and we lose others. I really look forward to what you have to say about Pyre though. I have been interested in that game for some time. Hope you have more fun ^_^
It’s a fine line to walk between being too forgiving - judging it based on what you thought it was going for or what you wished it was rather than what it is - or being too harsh. But then, if you walk that line TOO hard, you get wrapped up in trying to be impartial or objective, which is impossible when you’re judging art n experiences.
I think if you review based on your emotions, whatever they may be, you’re cool if you’re honest with it - like you say exactly what you just said in your second sentence. It’s true, it’s your perspective, and it’s an emotional response someone might relate to.
… or something. I apologize, I’ve spent the past three hours flinging myself through portals so my brain’s still a little scrambled.
And thank you! I hope so, too. Supergiant games are currently 2 for 2 with their games being masterpieces. I’m going to start Pyre tomorrow.
Yeah I didnt like it either-think I said was it was annoyijg having a text based gsme that didnt use alot of options
Yeah, that part was under-utilized.
… but that was a good thing, because that text moved so slow. I didn’t explore rooms bc I didn’t want to go back and wait to see the same shit type out excruciatingly slowly