What did you think of it? (The metacritic thread)

[SuperBiasedMan]

So I couldn't find a thread of this I figured I'd start it off. Basically asking if anyone else has experience playing a game you're thinking of buying but you want an actual discussion back and forth rather than an average score out of ten to help figure it out.

 

 

The reason I started thinking about this is because I saw Ether One is on GoG's Summer Sale and I do remember the trailer and general prehype getting me interested, but I can be roped in with the vague psychological flavour to a story pretty easily and after Dear Esther boring the pants off me I want a walking simulator where the story is actually nailed down even if it is mysterious. In Esther it seemed vague and disconnected because it felt like they really didn't know what the story was and I don't want that again, even if Ether One has a mysterious and complicated story I want it to feel grounded in something that more makes sense. So does anyone have any hands on experience of it? Game of the Year or not really a game?

[Gormongous]

I don't have an answer. Instead, I have a question of my own. I'm being tempted by Democracy 3 on the Steam sale, though I know I shouldn't be. I like the promise, the interface, and the sandbox design, but I hear from some reviewers that it is extremely easy and heavily weighted towards a liberal democracy as the only viable form of government.

I don't know, I can see it being good, but I know it's probably just me imagining the best version of such a game. I'm not against games that are easy to master, if Crusader Kings 2 tells me anything, but there has to be something under the surface. Does anybody want to sell me on it?

[clyde]

I love it, a thread of " Convince me to play game [x]". It's going to be like:

- "Actually, it's not very good."

- "Well... I appreciate your opinion, but I'm going to buy it anyway."

I want someone to sell me on Consortium. I loved Mass Effect and what to play games that have more relationship-sim qualities and hard decisions than combat.

[neonrev]

Gormongous: I just picked up Demo 3 for the first time a couple days ago and have been messing with it a bit off and on. It's pretty good, the interface doesn't just look nice, its very responsive and displays a great deal of information just through the flowcharts, and has really detailed charts underneath. It certainly didn't take long to pick up and understand, but I don't think I can speak to whether it's easy or not yet, and I can't tell if it does have a liberal bias (I do, so I might not have noticed), but there are a number of very 'conservative' or very 'liberal' policies you can enact, so it seems like you can go however you like. The default nation you start with is the UK, which felt like a more innately liberal nation in terms of what the population wants than the US did, and the other nations (Canada, Australia, Germany) are also just generally more liberal than the usual US conception of liberal vs conservative, so maybe that effected reviews? It has a little mods tab on the main screen, so I assume there are more diverse and difficult nations people have made and such. I think there's enough there to entertain you for a while, and it was almost worth the ~$5 gog sale price just for the interface. It lacks a certain... personality or drive to keep me super into it (if there were scenarios of some sort, more narrative driven situations and goals I think it'd have me by the lungs, but "here's Germany, better bring up that GDP first!" just tickles my imagination.), but its got a lot there, and you seem to like the open goaled gameplay of stuff more than me. Give it a shot, I'd say, and see if it grabs you better, I'd be fascinated to hear someone smarter and better at that style of game talk on it.

[Gormongous]

I love it, a thread of " Convince me to play game [x]". It's going to be like:

- "Actually, it's not very good."

- "Well... I appreciate your opinion, but I'm going to buy it anyway."

I want someone to sell me on Consortium. I loved Mass Effect and what to play games that have more relationship-sim qualities and hard decisions than combat.

 

I like this thread as a "please try your hardest to sell me on or dissuade me from this game" thing on request. Also, I would like someone to make a hard pitch for or against Consortium, too. I think the Daft Souls podcast had a bit on it, I think, where they said it was consistently and deeply interesting, but not whether it was good or fun or anything that'd make me buy such a peculiar-sounding game.

 

Gormongous: I just picked up Demo 3 for the first time a couple days ago and have been messing with it a bit off and on. It's pretty good, the interface doesn't just look nice, its very responsive and displays a great deal of information just through the flowcharts, and has really detailed charts underneath. It certainly didn't take long to pick up and understand, but I don't think I can speak to whether it's easy or not yet, and I can't tell if it does have a liberal bias (I do, so I might not have noticed), but there are a number of very 'conservative' or very 'liberal' policies you can enact, so it seems like you can go however you like. The default nation you start with is the UK, which felt like a more innately liberal nation in terms of what the population wants than the US did, and the other nations (Canada, Australia, Germany) are also just generally more liberal than the usual US conception of liberal vs conservative, so maybe that effected reviews? It has a little mods tab on the main screen, so I assume there are more diverse and difficult nations people have made and such. I think there's enough there to entertain you for a while, and it was almost worth the ~$5 gog sale price just for the interface. It lacks a certain... personality or drive to keep me super into it (if there were scenarios of some sort, more narrative driven situations and goals I think it'd have me by the lungs, but "here's Germany, better bring up that GDP first!" just tickles my imagination.), but its got a lot there, and you seem to like the open goaled gameplay of stuff more than me. Give it a shot, I'd say, and see if it grabs you better, I'd be fascinated to hear someone smarter and better at that style of game talk on it.

 

I took your review in line with some general forum buzz about where the game's going and decided to wait. I really appreciate it, though! Democracy 3 is going on my wishlist and, pending some deepening mechanics that are surely coming via DLC, I'll buy it come winter or something.

[Ben X]

Should we use this thread if there's already a thread for the game? I just spotted Singularity in a charity shop for £2, and the concept is close enough to being Time Gentlemen, Please!: The FPS that I'm intrigued, but not enough to play an utterly mediocre game... Any thoughts?

[hedgefield]

I haven't played Ether One but I've heard from people (Hot Scoops?) that the world building is really great, when you walk through the town there are notes and things left everywhere with which you can piece together backstory, so that sounds pretty good.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I haven't played Ether One but I've heard from people (Hot Scoops?) that the world building is really great, when you walk through the town there are notes and things left everywhere with which you can piece together backstory, so that sounds pretty good.

 

If it's got real detail that sounds good anyway. I may or may not actually read all the things but I prefer a story to have a foundation even if all I see directly is the surface. It's properly on my radar for the sales now.

 

I love it, a thread of " Convince me to play game [x]". It's going to be like:

- "Actually, it's not very good."

- "Well... I appreciate your opinion, but I'm going to buy it anyway."

I look forward to the sequel to all these conversations where it's the same, except there'll be another person saying

 

"No, X was right and they told me before, don't buy it."

[Mangela Lansbury]

I hear from some reviewers that it is extremely easy and heavily weighted towards a liberal democracy as the only viable form of government.

 

A weighting towards liberal democracy just makes it more realistic, yo. It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism, Western liberal democracy is the final form of human government, etc.

 

My roommate bought Democracy 3 a little while ago. He said he liked it, but had a hard time describing his one major problem with it -- he seemed to be saying that it provided you with a lot of information, but the depth was largely superficial and the robust catalog of information you're given is ultimately not as meaningful as he'd like it to be. He's a big CK2 and EU player though, so who knows what he looks for in games. And looking at his profile on steam, he hasn't played it all that much.

[Gormongous]

A weighting towards liberal democracy just makes it more realistic, yo. It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism, Western liberal democracy is the final form of human government, etc.

 

I guess I misstated other people's complaints. Almost every reviewer noted that every set of choices had a downside except the extremities of liberal democracy. Basically, the only way to get long-term stability is to grow your government as big as your tax base will allow, because there's no modelling for inefficiency or corruption. While my beliefs also tend in the direction of the developer, I don't like that a technocratic welfare state is the only way to "win" the game, much less that Cliffski has flatly said in RPS comment threads and elsewhere that he designed it that way and is not interested in supporting other political ideologies.

[clyde]

Does anyone with experience have reason to believe that a fellow who enjoys first-person-shooters, Katamari's aesthetic, and the Blur campaign would like Lovely Planet?

 

Edit (2 hours later): I figured it out.