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jennegatron

Contradiction - The best of hammy actors

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So Sunday night, Ewokskick & I played Contradiction together! They have recently changed the interface options, and judging from other's responses, greatly improved the experience.

 

This game was delightful and bananas! We got stuck once at 93% and had to look up a hint, and we can talk about where we stumbled.

 

We didn't make the connection between the CD & the threshold testing as it had been too long between when the CD played and when we talked to Paul, who was my favorite.

 

James was a gift from the heavens, and I want a game just about his weird self.

 

This was also the moment that I accidentally pressed the bottom left corner keys of my keyboard, and for some reason that restarted the game, losing our progress, sending us back to my last save which was at 19%! So that was awful. We ended up watching the last of the game on youtube in a lets play as it was already past midnight and we didn't want to redo what we had already done.

 

Has anyone else played this? I highly recommend playing it with someone, like many people did with Her Story.

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I subscribed to Giant Bomb for a month just to watch their videos on this game. It was hugely entertaining. I should probably throw a few bucks the developers' way too. Paul was amazing.

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I bought it, but I watched the game on GB instead of playing. Also, the GB forums for the game have some weird supplementary videos made by the actors that are worth watching.

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I bought it, played it and then watched the GB East guys play through it as well. Their reactions to the utter madness that is this game were very enjoyable.

 

I definitely liked it and would love to see more, I do think the ending felt a bit odd considering the way the game leans towards the end but it still made enough sense that I felt OK about it. What kind of interface changes have they made now? Was going to write up some stuff and put it on the GB forums (the lead dev seems to hang around there quite a bit) but they might already have fixed all the stuff I was thinking about.

 

 

This game was delightful and bananas! We got stuck once at 93% and had to look up a hint, and we can talk about where we stumbled.

 

We didn't make the connection between the CD & the threshold testing as it had been too long between when the CD played and when we talked to Paul, who was my favorite.

 

 I got stuck at the exact same spot. Felt like a weakness in the UI there, hopefully something they sort out for an hypothetical sequel.

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So I read Justin McElroy's polygon review of it, and the little of a lets play to see the end of it, and here are the biggest things:

Mouse support - in Justin's review there's mention that there was no mouse support, this is no longer true. We played the game entirely through mouse use

Statement selection - you no longer horizontally scroll through topics, instead it is a vertical, and you can just click on statements to "nominate" them to be part of a contradiction, there's not a "use" button.

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I enjoyed it a whole lot.  It's a very decent mystery.  I really enjoyed some of the characters in it.  The acting was pretty good.  It felt kind of like stage acting or soap acting in that it was all a bit melodramatic.  That gave it a kind of Twin Peaks flair (and I think some of the score was reminiscent of that too).  There were a few things that I think it could have done better/without.  I am not entirely sure why he had to call the police chief every hour or so.  You basically called him to summarize what you'd done and then he'd send you along.  I am not sure it added much to the game.

 

I think it is interesting to compare this game to Her Story as they are both recent FMV games.  They both use it very effectively.  In my opinion, they have complete opposite strengths.  Where Her Story was a realistically acted extremely bad story with unique mechanics.  This had less innovative mechanics with more exaggerated acting, but a much better story carried by a suite of great characters.  In the end, I think I enjoyed this game more.  Her Story is more interesting, but in the end a worse game.  This has a more clear vision and execution.  Her Story just had an interesting mechanic with iffy follow through.  Either way, both games have made me excited about the future of FMV games, as weird as that is to say.

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I am not entirely sure why he had to call the police chief every hour or so.  You basically called him to summarize what you'd done and then he'd send you along.  I am not sure it added much to the game.

Dear, I don't think we actually had to call the chief, I think that was their more explicit hint system.

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Indeed, it's just another hint system in the game trying to gently prod you in the direction of where you should direct your inquiries.

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Dear, I don't think we actually had to call the chief, I think that was their more explicit hint system.

 

Did it ever give useful hints?

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Did it ever give useful hints?

 

I think between the two of us, we always knew where we needed to go except for that time we got stuck which I mentioned above. It mostly gave you a rundown of everything you just did, and highlighted some stuff that if you were stuck might push you to connect things you didn't see a connection between before.

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It will point out stuff like "This person said this thing... I don't buy it. Push on that topic." and similar.

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That makes sense.  I thought it was weird he was always saying stuff we knew, but I guess it'd be even more useful if you didn't play it in one sitting.  So you could call him up for a quick reminder.

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I think it is interesting to compare this game to Her Story as they are both recent FMV games.  They both use it very effectively.  In my opinion, they have complete opposite strengths.  Where Her Story was a realistically acted extremely bad story with unique mechanics.  This had less innovative mechanics with more exaggerated acting, but a much better story carried by a suite of great characters.  In the end, I think I enjoyed this game more.  Her Story is more interesting, but in the end a worse game.  This has a more clear vision and execution.  Her Story just had an interesting mechanic with iffy follow through.  Either way, both games have made me excited about the future of FMV games, as weird as that is to say.

 

I had meant to write an email saying something similar for the Her Story spoliercast. Her story ended up leaving such a lasting negative impression for me in spite of how taken I was by its formal elements initially. In comparison, Contradiction is just so much better of a complete game. It isn't nearly as ambitious, but it knows the goofy but still intriguing story it is capable of telling and it just nails it. 

 

As an aside, this video of the actors doing Doctor Who impressions just makes me smile.

 

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Once again comparing Her Story and Contradiction, and specifically the endings (spoilers for both)

I think I would have really liked it if the two games switched their endings. Having Her Story, which tells a very mundane tale, slowly slide into soap opera twins felt like a robbery of a serious story. However, Contradiction was really embracing the soap opera schlock and a sudden revelation like that seems like it would fit in really well in that world. Still, I really enjoyed how Contradiction showed that this town is really weird but, in the end, it was just one seemingly normal person who went a little off-kilter.

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Tim Follin gave an interview recently about the production process. I was surprised to learn that he had originally planned on including adventure-game style puzzles:

 

"I had all these physical puzzles involving all kinds of things; switching on lights, moving things around in the court and someone appearing, a workman at one point leaving something behind. All this stuff that was written in that we just didn't have anywhere near the time to be able to film it."

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^^ I actually really like that they were unable to do the more game-y stuff. I think the enjoyment of the experience, even as a fan of adventure games, would have have been diluted if I was constantly getting stuck on some adventure game logic bullshit.

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