Tanukitsune

Quitter's Club: Don't be ashamed to quit the game.

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That's a good idea! Given how linear it is (each disc is it's own chapter, and all progression is equal), a save file at the start of disc 3 or 4 would get me right back to where I needed to be!

 

EDIT: But the only save file I can find says "100% Complete". Good thought, though.

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I believe both the Phantasmagoria games have videos on Giant Bomb Premium as well. Puzzle of Flesh in particular ends with some incomprehensible puzzles. 

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Maybe one day I'll finally grab that premium membership. Do they play them all the way to the end?

 

Back in this thread because I am the king of quitting adventure games, as I am done with Read Only Memories. Though in this case my problem is that it really isn't an adventure game at all but a visual novel. And I'd be down with that, because I dig the world and tone, but apparently it's a 10+ hour game? I don't have the patience to click through nearly a dozen hours of story that I don't feel like I have meaningful control over. 

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You could also just search for a walkthough or LP of the game?

I really would give Read Only Memories another go, since it's it's Snatcher only better, the game changes depending on how you treat people on how you solve some puzzles and has several endings.

Think of it like a Telltale Game with text?

Come to think of it, they are working on an update with voice acting, maybe you could wait until then?

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I didn't like Read Only Memories, and wish I had skipped it. My playthrough was 9 hours, but someone more competent than me would probably finish it in 8 or so?

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8 hours ago, Tanukitsune said:

You could also just search for a walkthough or LP of the game?

I really would give Read Only Memories another go, since it's it's Snatcher only better, the game changes depending on how you treat people on how you solve some puzzles and has several endings.

Think of it like a Telltale Game with text?

Come to think of it, they are working on an update with voice acting, maybe you could wait until then?

 

The only Telltale game I've played (besides Puzzle Agent) is The Walking Dead S.1, and I always felt more expressive in that game than I do Read Only Memories. Even if R.O.M. technically has more endings, by the time I was 90 minutes into The Walking Dead I felt like I was playing more and making more decisions than I have my 90 minutes into R.O.M. Even if it isn't actually true, all my dialogue options feel arbitrary, and the minimalist presentation keeps me at a distance from the story. Maybe voice acting would help that.

 

7 minutes ago, jennegatron said:

I didn't like Read Only Memories, and wish I had skipped it. My playthrough was 9 hours, but someone more competent than me would probably finish it in 8 or so?

 

HowLongToBeat.com places it at 8 - 10 hours depending on how much extra stuff you do. I don't have a lot of experience with visual novels, but that seems like an awfully long playtime for one.

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Visual novels tend to be fairly long. 10 sounds short! Haha.

 

Disclaimer: I'm mostly talking Japanese visual novels. Most of the Phoenix Wright games are 15-20! Clannad is 70 according to HowLongToBeat??? Holy fuck. Steins;gate pretty long, too...

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Wow! In that case I guess it's just a Me problem. I always assumed VNs were designed to be played through in just a couple sittings. I can't think of the last actual book I read that took me 70 hours to read.

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17 hours ago, Patrick R said:

Maybe one day I'll finally grab that premium membership. Do they play them all the way to the end?

 

Back in this thread because I am the king of quitting adventure games, as I am done with Read Only Memories. Though in this case my problem is that it really isn't an adventure game at all but a visual novel. And I'd be down with that, because I dig the world and tone, but apparently it's a 10+ hour game? I don't have the patience to click through nearly a dozen hours of story that I don't feel like I have meaningful control over. 

 

Both of them until the end, though they end up having to consult a walkthrough.

 

Looks like the first ep of Puzzle of Flesh is free, if you want a taste.

http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/choose-our-own-adventure-10282015-phantasmagoria-a/2300-10816/

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34 minutes ago, Patrick R said:

Wow! In that case I guess it's just a Me problem. I always assumed VNs were designed to be played through in just a couple sittings. I can't think of the last actual book I read that took me 70 hours to read.

 

Hahaha nah I feel you. Conceptually there's a lot I like about visual novels, but I'm real put off by just READING a GAME nonstop and then making minor choices that lead to MORE READING.

 

And I love reading! D:

 

FWIW, I think a lot of more recent western indie visual novels are shorter, as in 5 hours or less.

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Patrick, I would gladly follow a Tumblr series of you quitting adventure games with a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit. I doubt I'm alone.

 

46 minutes ago, Twig said:

Hahaha nah I feel you. Conceptually there's a lot I like about visual novels, but I'm real put off by just READING a GAME nonstop and then making minor choices that lead to MORE READING.

 

And I love reading! D:

 

FWIW, I think a lot of more recent western indie visual novels are shorter, as in 5 hours or less.

 

I was going to suggest VA-11 Hall-A as an example of the latter, but it clocks in around ten. It's extremely well-written, though, which is what makes it different from both Western VNs and Japanese VNs, which are largely either underwritten or poorly translated. For example, as treasured as it is, Muv-Luv is so long and nearly unreadable.

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On 11/1/2015 at 8:24 PM, jennegatron said:

Bought and played a bunch of Read Only Memories today. Quit when the resolution of the game became a bullshit minigame. Don't care about the story enough to try more than twice especially when I have to sit through repeated slow ass dialogue. Fuck you ROM.

 

I did eventually go back and finish it, but the end of the game really soured the opinion I had of it, and even before that I was only lukewarm on the story. If you don't think the story is very interesting, bail and don't look back.

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1 hour ago, Twig said:

 

Hahaha nah I feel you. Conceptually there's a lot I like about visual novels, but I'm real put off by just READING a GAME nonstop and then making minor choices that lead to MORE READING.

 

And I love reading! D:

 

FWIW, I think a lot of more recent western indie visual novels are shorter, as in 5 hours or less.

Reading in games has kept me from enjoying so many indie titles, I just really don't like reading in games for some reason.

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20 minutes ago, Cordeos said:

Reading in games has kept me from enjoying so many indie titles, I just really don't like reading in games for some reason.

 

Most games make awful design choices when it comes to reading text on a screen. I've been playing Caves of Qud a lot and that is a game with a lot of text to read, and they get this right. No matter what resolution you play the game in they make sure that the text size is really large. That makes a world of difference. People are consistently too wedded to 12 and 16 point font sizes even though those font sizes are really inappropriate for a lot of viewing devices.

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Wow. I was really not expecting to be back in this thread so soon on some ridiculous adventure game bullshit, but about 75 minutes into Dear Esther I fell off the pathway and in between a bunch of rocks that left me completely immobile, no way to move in any way. If there was a jump button I would have been able to continue no problem but Dear Esther is a #seriousgame and what kind of #seriousgame allows it's player character to escape a prison of 9 inch tall rocks? The protagonist of Dear Esther is too morose to climb out of such a fiendish obstacle. I guess he figured just starving to death by the shore would be preferable than finally making his way to the blinking red light.

 

But whatever, mistakes happen. "No problem!" I say to myself, "I'll just restart the game and load from the most recent auto-save!" Except apparently there are no saves in Dear Esther? And not only that but, though the game gives you the option of starting from one of four chapters, my game apparently doesn't believe me that I've already seen the caves and such, because it's only lets me start from the very beginning, with the other three chapters all darkened out.

 

I wanted to play Dear Esther because I'm about 2/3's through Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs and was curious about Chinese Room's previous game, which I understood was short enough to do in one sitting. And while I really appreciated the beautiful natural setting (even as a total nature hater) and gorgeous music, I will be damned if I slog through another 75 minutes of that terrible garbage nonsensical writing again just so I can see the final 15 and discover that it's all post-apocalyptic or the narrator murdered his wife or invented the atomic bomb or whatever bullshit twist awaits me.

 

JUMP BUTTONS. IN REAL LIVES, EVEN #SERIOUS ONES, THERE IS SOMETIMES A CALL TO JUMP. JUST A THOUGHT.

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10 hours ago, jennegatron said:

 

I did eventually go back and finish it, but the end of the game really soured the opinion I had of it, and even before that I was only lukewarm on the story. If you don't think the story is very interesting, bail and don't look back.

 

I didn't find Read Only Memories very interesting, but I was impressed with the economy of usage.  The way the supporting cast was re-used didn't cheapen those characters. Of course, it also meant the main story had nowhere to go but in circles.

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9 hours ago, Patrick R said:

Wow. I was really not expecting to be back in this thread so soon on some ridiculous adventure game bullshit, but about 75 minutes into Dear Esther I fell off the pathway and in between a bunch of rocks that left me completely immobile, no way to move in any way. If there was a jump button I would have been able to continue no problem but Dear Esther is a #seriousgame and what kind of #seriousgame allows it's player character to escape a prison of 9 inch tall rocks? The protagonist of Dear Esther is too morose to climb out of such a fiendish obstacle. I guess he figured just starving to death by the shore would be preferable than finally making his way to the blinking red light.

 

But whatever, mistakes happen. "No problem!" I say to myself, "I'll just restart the game and load from the most recent auto-save!" Except apparently there are no saves in Dear Esther? And not only that but, though the game gives you the option of starting from one of four chapters, my game apparently doesn't believe me that I've already seen the caves and such, because it's only lets me start from the very beginning, with the other three chapters all darkened out.

 

I wanted to play Dear Esther because I'm about 2/3's through Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs and was curious about Chinese Room's previous game, which I understood was short enough to do in one sitting. And while I really appreciated the beautiful natural setting (even as a total nature hater) and gorgeous music, I will be damned if I slog through another 75 minutes of that terrible garbage nonsensical writing again just so I can see the final 15 and discover that it's all post-apocalyptic or the narrator murdered his wife or invented the atomic bomb or whatever bullshit twist awaits me.

 

JUMP BUTTONS. IN REAL LIVES, EVEN #SERIOUS ONES, THERE IS SOMETIMES A CALL TO JUMP. JUST A THOUGHT.

 

This is a real problem I have with narrative games in general. They are never as user friendly as books.

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14 hours ago, sclpls said:

 

This is a real problem I have with narrative games in general. They are never as user friendly as books.

 

I'm enjoying blowing out that comparison:

 

Handing someone a book and telling them that there's probably lots of typos and logical leaps in structure/narrative that most books of that genre use due to the fact that "writing books is hard" that they have to overlook to squeeze out any enjoyment.

 

It's a slightly masochistic hobby until the medium gets a bit more mature.

 

On the note of the jumping mechanic:

 

It's gotta be a tough call as a developer. By putting in a jump button for the reason you're mentioning, that would mean admitting that their game is buggy. Also if I were playing Dear Esther for the first time and there was a jump button, I'd waste time trying to climb up things. Then I'd finish it and go, why did this game have a jump button?

 

Sorry you lost your save, Patrick! I never finished Dear Esther due to the timing of a family emergency and then never getting back to it, but given the unstructured narrative up to where I stopped, I felt completely satisfied without an ending.

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3 hours ago, ariskany_evan said:

 

It's gotta be a tough call as a developer. By putting in a jump button for the reason you're mentioning, that would mean admitting that their game is buggy. Also if I were playing Dear Esther for the first time and there was a jump button, I'd waste time trying to climb up things. Then I'd finish it and go, why did this game have a jump button?

 

 

 

I think probably they were freed up to create more stunning and natural looking environments because they didn't have to worry about people Skyrim diagonal crouch-jumping and getting places they shouldn't. But also, they are making a craggy mountain environment and maybe an emergency "enable jumping/climbing if player character is stuck in place" function would have been an smarter idea than just assuming someone won't get stuck.  OR figure out a save function that works after every narration bit, so that it doesn't matter.

 

As for narrative satisfaction, I felt the narrative was not just unstructured but completely untethered from anything, and the only thing that was keeping me playing was knowing that the ending wasn't far off and maybe it would wrap it together into something less nonsensical. While a little mystery is a good thing, I couldn't even figure out if the narrator was the same as the player character, if you were hearing things from the past or present, what were letters and what were thoughts and what were memories, what was supposed to be metaphorical flowery language and what was supposed to be interpreted as reality, where I was, why chemical structures were drawn everywhere, etc. etc. etc. 

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If it helps, the ending has nothing revelatory. There is an ending of sorts, but it doesn't give any additional context if you hadn't been enjoying it up to there.

 

I think Dear Esther laid some foundation for further walking sim games but I don't put much stock in it.

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I quit the first Uncharted game. It's just not holding my interest, and I find the constant gunplay really boring. If I don't like this one, is it worth playing the later entries or should I just forget about it?

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I haven't played the Uncharted games, but having watched my wife play the whole series my only partially-informed opinion is that the gameplay looked the same in all the games.

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I think Uncharted 4 is fucking incredible, and in general the games get better with each one, but they all have a lot of shooting.

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I played through Uncharted 1 and 3. I agree whole-heartedly about the combat being dullsville for both entries. Quick looks of U:4 looked like more of the same, though if you're into the world/story that sounds like it was great for people who have been into that in the past.

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On 03/12/2016 at 1:37 AM, Mike Danger said:

I quit the first Uncharted game. It's just not holding my interest, and I find the constant gunplay really boring. If I don't like this one, is it worth playing the later entries or should I just forget about it?

 

I played the first 3 back-to-back. The first is really dull to play, the second is much better, but the third doesn't bring anything new to the table and looked worse in places than 2.

 

Even though 2 is good, if you are finding the shooting tedious in 1 then don't bother continuing. There is a line about clowns that is awesome but you can just Youtube it instead of playing 20 hours of games that you don't like.

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