• Member Since 22nd Jan, 2013
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Bradel


Ceci n'est pas un cheval.

More Blog Posts144

Dec
28th
2015

Bradel Presents – Video Games You Won't Enjoy · 10:27pm Dec 28th, 2015

So I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but I was stupid and started playing video games a couple months back. I haven't played video games in years, but over the last month I've gotten precious little done that wasn't statistics work or video gaming[1].

As a born-again gamer, I've been enjoying loving the heck out of the Steam Winter Sale, though. I've picked up four or five new games. There are three, though, that I want to mention to you guys. Not because they're fun—they're not—but because I think they're worth playing. None of them are new, but they're all new to me.

There's a unifying theme here: the breakdown of civilization.





Analogue: A Hate Story (2012)

Do you like dating sims with cute AI girls on a derelict Korean colony ship? Do you think women are troublesome and irrational, and should respect men more? Do you like reading long blocks of text and interpreting social context from them? Then this game is for you!

Analogue has very little actual gameplay except for a few command line entry sections and some relatively generic decision points in conversations. The graphics are nothing to write home about. Unless you're used to dealing with Korean names, it can be a pain to keep straight who's who here. There are a lot of reasons why someone might not like this game.

I started playing it around midnight last night, it sucked me in, and I went to bed around 6:00am. And I felt like throwing up.

Here's the premise. Back in the bad old days of Earth, the Korean space agency launched a generation ship to found a colony on a new world. Things were good for a while, until some sort of unspecified social breakdown occurred (there's a sequel exploring this point). In the aftermath, the colonists reverted to a more traditional social model to try to keep cohesion. What they wound up with was the Joseon Kingdom in space.

This is a game about being a big fish in a small pond, about politics and family, and about the role of women in society. I haven't accessed all the log files yet, but there are two stories that really stood out among them: a romance between a magistrate's wife and one of his prostitutes, and a tragedy about a misunderstood little girl whose family forced her into a marriage she didn't want. Both really brought home the powerlessness of women in this society—a society very much based on fact. After the credits, the game designer provides citations on the role of women in the Joseon Kingdom.

I suspect most men aren't as interested in this sort of thing—explorations of the role of women in society—but to me, this is really powerful stuff. Most of my closest friends are women, and I've heard a lot of stories about things they have to face that I'd never dream of. The idea of my friends having to live in a society like this is profoundly horrifying to me. And it's a safe bet that there are still plenty of places on Earth today where women have to face this sort of cultural environment. That bothers me a lot.





Papers, Please (2013)

This looked good to me when it first crossed my Steam queue. I saw that Horizon already owned it, and I asked him about it. This is what he said:

Papers Please is like nothing else you've ever played and I would rate a must buy.

So what's going on with this one? Well, here's the setup. You are a resident of the communist nation of Arztotska, and you have just won the October labor lottery. You've been given a job as a border patrol agent, at the boundary between West and East Grestin (think West and East Berlin). You need to examine passports and travel documents, and decide who will and won't be admitted to Arztotska.

There are some complications.

First, terrorists from neighboring countries want to attack Arztotska. You don't want to let these people through, for obvious reasons.

Second, the government of Arztotska is (understandably, then) a little paranoid about its borders. They will fine you for making mistakes. They will also enact increasingly byzantine travel restrictions as the game continues, forcing you to check more and more documents to verify that people looking to cross the border are validly allowed to do so.

Third, you get paid very little, and you need to support your family of five. Your pay is directly tied to how many people you see at your border control station each day, so speed in dealing with them is imperative. Which is hard to manage, when you're trying to not make mistakes. And remember: if you make mistakes, you get fined. Which means not being able to buy food for your family, or medicine for your sick wife, or not being able to pay for heating as the winter approaches, or not being able to pay the rent on the new apartment you received with your new job. (Spoiler: you'll almost never be able to pay for all the things you need.)

Fourth, you have to deal with stories of real human tragedy. A husband-and-wife pair fleeing violence from their home country, but only one has valid entry papers. A foreign strip club worker coming into the country with her new boss, who she thinks is planning to steal her documents and force her into slavery as soon as she's inside Arztotska. Day in and day out, you need to decide what to do with these cases. Do you follow the rules you've been given, heartless as they may seem? Or do you take a chance on helping these people, knowing it will cost you money that you need to feed your family, and risking the possibility that these people are terrorists.

When you're done with your job, if you're lucky, you'll be hailed as a hero of the people. More likely, your family will die of sickness or starvation, and you'll be executed as a traitor to Arztotska.

Glory to Arztotska.





This War of Mine (2014)

In the last ten years, war simulation games like Call of Duty and Modern Warfare have gotten really popular. My roommate owns a PS3, and those are the only games he plays. “This War of Mine” is a war simulation game too, but very different from what most people want to play. It’s about being a civilian in a war zone.

Honestly, I thought this was going to be the most soul-crushing of the three, but based on my first couple hours in-game it's not nearly as bad as I'd expected. I'm sure it'll become much more terrible later, as I'm forced to make harder choices, but there's a lot more game here than with either of the other two.

You start with a "household" of three men—one of whom is sick and one of whom is wounded. You need to try to turn your abandoned building into something resembling a home so that you can survive. This involves gathering supplies, mostly on nighttime scavenging missions, and crafting items that you can use to feed your people, keep them rested, keep them healthy, protect them from the elements, etc. It's also important to keep them from losing hope. Books, cigarettes, alcohol, and other minor creature comforts are good for that.

If you can get enough resources, you can survive pretty well despite the war raging around you. You can build a decent stove, catch rainwater, trap rats for food, make moonshine and cigarettes... Okay, maybe that's not exactly the lap of luxury, but it feels that way based on how you start out.

The mechanical level is much more substantial here, and it takes more attention to navigate, but there's still a lot of flavor—which is really what this game is all about. My neighbors came over a couple days into my game, a woman and a little girl, and asked for my help boarding up the blast holes in their house so they can protect themselves from scavengers (and rapists) in the night. I sent one of my three people to help them, which made all three happy. Your people want to be civilized in this game, and they will react badly when they lose more and more of their basic humanity. Helping people is good.

But it's hard to be an altruist and stay alive in a war zone. As the game goes on, you find it harder and harder to get supplies. You'll become tempted to raid the homes of other survivors, instead of just scavenging from the ruins. Other survivors will occasionally raid your home at night and take your things, unless you set a sentry to stay up at night and defend you. You may be called upon to kill people, if you want to stay alive. You may lose your own people to a sniper's bullet, or to hunger or sickness. Or to suicide, if they become too broken to live with what they've done.

After years of seeing games that celebrate war, it was hard for me to pass up a game that took a deeper look at the horrors of war. I'm glad I did, though I'm not sure it'll help me sleep any better at night.





And that's it for my Steam Sale roundup. If any of these games sound interesting to you guys, I totally encourage you to try them out. But be aware that my taste has clearly begun running toward video-games-as-art, not video-games-as-mindless-play.

Maybe I should go back to doing something safer with my time, like reading plain old non-interactive dystopian fiction.


[1] Unfortunately that's resulted in me doing much less pony writing than I'd planned. No writeoffs, no "War", no "Bell, Book & Candle".

Comments ( 36 )

I own "Papers, Please" and it's one of my favorite games. I'm not kidding, I love it to bits.

[1] Unfortunately that's resulted in me doing much less pony writing than I'd planned. No writeoffs, no "War", no "Bell, Book & Candle".

:fluttercry:

3648655
Hey, at least I gave it a sneaky mention, finally, to indicate that I'm "working on it" again!

There is an Equestrian mod called "Ponies, Please."

Just FYI.

3648665
Unfortunately, that was just an animation tiarawhy did.
Do feel free to prove me wrong, though; I would play that if it were real.

Having owned This War Of Mine, playing multiple games and beating the game a few times now... my life is richer for the experience.

3648709 my dreams, they are crushed

Oooo.

Two out of three are exceedingly excellent choices. Can't say about the first pick, though. Never played it at all.

Also, steam name?

~Skeeter The Lurker

I wish I'd had more time to explain why I considered it a must-buy when you e-mailed me, but it sounds like you picked it up and got hit between the eyes by it the same way I did, so yay.

The answer is: it's exquisitely crafted to generate narrative out of gameplay. All of these wrenching decisions you're making? All of these lives you're irrevocably affecting? They boil down to a single red or green stamp, or a single checkbox in the between-day financial planning. That the story can imbue those decisions with such gravitas is powerful. And that it's doing it with nothing more than government forms and crude pixel art is magical.

I don't know that I'd call the gameplay fun, either. (Although I enjoyed every minute of it, because it appealed straight to the OCD/puzzle-deductive center of my brain.) But it's got more story in fewer words than 90% of games I've played this year put together.

I don't actually own the other two, but based on why you liked them I'm going to be giving them a serious look.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

That third one sounds great. :O

3648821
Papers, Please is pretty incredible. I agree that the gameplay is kind of terrible, but the actual fun (well, if you can call it "fun" when it is entirely soul-crushing) is the narrative that the gameplay creates, and the desperate situation you're put into and the horrible things you have to deal with.

I think my favorite character was Jorji, though. He was just such a lovable scoundrel, and he added some much-needed levity (and humanity) into the game, and when he offered to help me out in the end, it felt really good.

Ooo... I'm liking the looks of these games. They sound thought provoking and deep.

3648905
Jorji is such an integral part of that game's genuine human charm.

Cobrastan is best stan.

The indie game market is where a lot of innovation in gaming is being done. With a smaller budget and tons of competition with thousands of other indie games vying for attention, programmers really have to think differently to stand out.

Of course, even in indie gaming, you have your mammoth cash cows that ruin wallets. Clash of Clans, Candy Crush, and, closer to bronies, the MLP game, their ilk are engineered specifically to raise addiction and squeeze out lots of cash over a long term period. Or in the short term, given the pay-to-win model.

It's a good time to be a gamer. Lots of choices for games that cater to story, gameplay, or both.

3648882

This War Of Mine does for military narrative on the flip side of things what Undertale does for the RPG genre: Make you question whether what you're doing is right... or necessary.

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Jorji is pretty great. I'm not too surprised that he has a potential role to play in the end. The second time he came to my booth, I loved him. The third time, I felt legitimately bad that I wasn't letting him into Arztotska.


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Having put some more time into it, This War of Mine does get a bit ploddy as it goes on. I suspect this is because it has a genuinely decent game system, whereas I went into the other two I mentioned knowing full well that they'd be ploddy, so it didn't bother me when they were. That said, TWoM is still really good; I just wish I were better at it. The first two games are genuinely hope-killing. TWoM is just harsh, but with flickers of hope. It's so frustrating that I can't fan those flickers into a real flame, though. Which is, of course, the tragedy of the situation. But with the other two that feels more painful and inevitable to me; with TWoM I can't escape the feeling that I just suck at getting through it.

I love Papers, Please. I haven't finished playing it, but I need to. I do actually enjoy the gameplay, personally.

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Incidentally, one of the coolest things about that game is the emergent gameplay of how incredibly tempting bribes become when your family might starve or freeze to death if you don't take them, but how you might be arrested or executed if you're caught taking bribes from the wrong person.

And of course the corruption of your superiors, and the question of whether or not to go along with their badness.

3649080

It took me somewhere around 40 hours and an absolute fuckton of planning everything down to the tiniest detail to even get close on my first couple of serious tries. It's very much trial and error gameplay. What I liked doing was taking notes of what supplies were where. Medicine here, weapons there, lots of lockers to break into with valuables there... Keeping a shovel and a crowbar handy were essential.

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3648821

I've only played one of the three as well, but it was Analogue: A Hate Story. I even have 13 out of 14 achievements, and the one I missed wasn't 2 Girls, 1 Core: Do the impossible by unlocking the harem ending. You see, one of the key things here is that you are going through the logs with one of two ai's: Mute or Hyun-ae, and usually you can take one of the two back with you. There's a key point after which you only can have one or the other running, and what logs you access is dependent on which one you have.

As I recall, though, Mute hates Hyun-ae, who was actually a real girl who uploaded her brain into the computer, and can't be convinced to bring her along normally.

However, if you did a playthrough with Hyun-ae first, there's one log entry that shows the absolute brutal truth about what was done to her, and if you write the number down for it, you can manually bring it up on a playthrough with Mute. It's enough to get the ending with both of them.

I have to agree with Bradel on this one. What happened to Hyun-ae was horrifying.

--arcum42
Edit: I own the other two. I just haven't played them. I must have picked them up at some point. I'll have to make sure to check them out.

Also, I believe the log in question was 7-EUX25.

3649464

Also, I believe the log in question was 7-EUX25.

It was.

I... uh... did a little cheating and got that ending first myself. I wound up in a position where I was stuck on the *Mute path, but I'd really wanted to go for *Hyun-ae (because obviously). Since I couldn't save *Hyun-ae normally, I resigned myself to saving her in the only way left to me, with a tiny bit of cheating. Of course, I had a weird play-through since I guessed the admin password well before I was actually supposed to have learned it, and I'd been assuming that contagion did in the crew right up until the last few logs got revealed. The actual fate of the colonists took me by surprise (and felt like a punch to the gut at that point).

3649490

I seem to remember playing it more then the number of hours in steam shows, but I played it in 2012 or so, anyways, so I could easily be misremembering. I'm pretty sure I did two playthroughs and a couple times reverted back and different options, because I was trying to get all the achievements, and explore all the logs. Didn't quite manage all the logs, though.

I think I'd pretty much gotten the fate of the colonists earlier, but her fate, not so much...

i have the sequel, and really need to get to it at some point. I have a habit of buying things on steam when they are on sale and then forgetting about them. I do like games that make you think.

Looking though some of my games, Winter Voices was a very mixed, slow paced rpg that I found interesting, You'd probably note that the reviews say "Mixed", and there are reasons for that. It's one you should try the demo for to see if you are interested, as it's not for everyone.

The Talos Principle, now, I can unequivocally recommend. Puzzles that remind you of Portal, mixed in with a story about ai and consciousness...

--arcum42

Skeeter's review of the Talos Principle:
Recommended
64.2 hrs on record
Posted: April 11
This is what Portal wishes it could be.

~STL

3649464 3649490
Okay, so, I do have to ask about Analogue: I'm getting seriously mixed messages about how meta-aware the game itself seems to be of the gender commentary. I mean, I can't imagine that there isn't tension between the dating-sim escapism and ego-stroking and the social condemnation that you're reading into it. How much of an asshole are you forced to be ... erm, maybe that's not the right question exactly ... how much is the misogyny foregrounded as you play through? Are even the good paths/endings uncomfortable, or is it just embedded in a historically well-researched and problematic background that you can ignore if you take non-dickish actions, or what?

3649538

Bradel's played it more recently, so his memory of the game is going to be less muddled then mine, but you are not from the same society, and are investigating way after the fact. The society they came from colors their opinion of things, but while you can treat them like a jerk (and get an achievement!) you don't have to. Most of the misogyny is in the logs you're reading about what happened in the colony a long time ago.

The two ai's have completely different attitudes about it, too.

Of course, you can decide if you are male or female in the game, and whether you are even actually interested in dating them.

--arcum42

3649538
3649556

Most of the misogyny is in the logs you're reading about what happened in the colony a long time ago.

The two ai's have completely different attitudes about it, too.

Of course, you can decide if you are male or female in the game, and whether you are even actually interested in dating them.

This sums up a lot of the situation. I do have to admit that the choice to structure the thing like... well, it's really more of a "visual novel" than a "dating sim", but the ending I've seen is certainly consistent with a "dating sim"... the choice to structure it that way is very odd. Though I suppose it might be a matter of sneaky audience targeting—that the game designer (who is female, by the way) might have thought the message she wanted to convey would be best directed at the sorts of people who buy dating sim games. I think that'd tend to be a fair point, if that were her intention.

As the PC, you're actually given a lot of flexibility about the attitude you express toward the social status of women in the logs you're reading. That probably amounts to at least 25% of the choices your character is asked to make, maybe more. One of the two AI's is pretty obviously opposed to the way women were being treated, and the other is pretty obviously drinking the Kool-Aid. The game goes out of its way to try to be non-judgmental on their viewpoints at the beginning—though from the citation list and the notes that come with it, it seems pretty obvious what the game designer thinks.

If I'm reading your question correctly, though, I think it's fair to respond by saying there's little risk of fridge horror here. There's certainly plenty of opportunity for horror, but you (or at least I) never get the feeling that any of what's on screen lacks intentionality. The game (at least in as far as I've seen) never makes an open acknowledgement of the slight(?) creepiness of setting this up like a romance story, but given what's in the logs and the game's own title, I'm pretty sure the creator was fully aware of what she was doing.


ETA:

Are even the good paths/endings uncomfortable?

Actually, the closest the game gets to a romantic "good ending" is the same route that gives you the most horrifying log entry in the game, for my money. So yeah, the only way to avoid it is to skip out without engaging with the characters at all, basically.

I enjoyed Analogue: A Hate Story. Well, for the definition of 'enjoy' that includes reading the horrifying bits. I've also played the sequel. It was a while ago, but I don't remember it having any similar gut-punch moments. Though overall it's just as wrenching. Mostly because you know how things end up. So it's like watching a car wreck in slow motion. Basically, if the first one was what happened to *Hyun-ae, then the sequel is about the much earlier story about what happened to *Mute. Which is, guh, almost as bad. Though less visceral.

I also really liked how they limit the player to how much they can play at a time. Games that do that well are some of my favorites.

3648821

I adored Papers please for this very reason. It's... to everything I just said, I have to add "Undertale" as another example of really pulling off the concept. I just do. It's not nearly so dark about it, but it does what it does very, very well.

Here's a few other games, though, that I think might pique your interest, Bradel, all under 10AUD at the moment!

The Beginner's Guide (2015):

It's an essay on Death of the Author in a 2 hour game format. I can't tell you any more than that.

The Stanley Parable: This right here

An essay by the same creator on the interaction between an audience and an author in an interactive medium. Also short, incredibly funny, very simple, I've yet to meet anyone who didn't enjoy it immensely.

Gunpoint (2013):

It's scored 10/10 on Steam. It's incredibly fun and simple. Play a level or play the entire game in one sitting. This one isn't for story or wit, but because I think this is the sort of game that suits your personality if you want something fun. It's why I'm not reccommending Factorio or SpaceChem, actually: The problem is that you'd probably enjoy it. And that would be Very Bad Indeed.

Quantum Conundrum is also overlooked. It's Portal Lite -- made by the original Portal team too, I think! -- voiced and narrated by a grumpy John De Lancie. It's a science puzzle game with Discord.

EDIT: Oh! And Thomas was Alone! Can't forget that one.

3649770
Can confirm Gunpoint as entertaining and relatively short. It's a 2d action stealth game with a noir detective storyline.

3649556 3649630
Much obliged.

Just thought, while I was thinking about it, that I'd point out the game "Among the Sleep" on steam. It's usually $14.99, but is on sale for $5.99 at the moment. It's a bit polarizing on whether you like it. I'd hesitate to recommend it at the higher price point, because I've played the game for seven and a half hours, won, and got all the achievements. It's rather short, and could be won in 3-4 hours, without much replay value.

It's a psychological horror game comparable to Amnesia:The Dark Descent. However, you are playing it as a two year old. Door knobs can be a challenge. And you gradually get an idea of the things going on in the kids life as you play...

--arcum42

3653585
Hey! Having been going through my Steam queue constantly to get trading cards, I gots a question for you.

What the heck is "rogue-like"? I've kind of figured out the style after seeing a lot of them, but I don't know what "Rogue" was in this sense for these other games to be "like" it.

Also, glad I could be useful!

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Note: evil steam game is evil.

Pony Island

--arcum42

3665688 And the last dreams thereof? :raritywink:

At any rate, looks interesting (though I'm not generally a horror fan)!

3667683

It is. I've played all the way through it now, and I have to wonder how many people turned it off at one point and didn't complete it because they thought it crashed. Someone really creative came up with this one. Genre's rather tricky with this one, too, because it really is more in the tradition of other games mentioned in this blog.

Anyways, it has ponies in it, and it has satan in it. And clever fix/hack the game puzzles. Certainly worth the $4.99 I paid for it.:scootangel:

--arcum42

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