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Penny Arcade - Comic - Early Onset Coot Disease
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - Early Onset Coot Disease
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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Now I'm really curious. Have you just not played it, or is it just one of those mirror neuron things (which is totally plausible and understandable given your history)? Because I'm a cranky old man, and it moved me more than most games manage with their by the numbers movie-script emotional manipulation. It's also got more gameplay and plot than any of your On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness series games.
Maybe you thought it was just trying too hard? It certainly was, but I also enjoyed that earnestness. I can see where that would turn people off though - it's an extremely naive game on the surface. Dig a little deeper, though, and you can see it's so goddamn chipper in /spite/ of being terribly cynical and bleak, and that's what really makes it inspiring.
Or maybe it's just a f@#$ing comic and I'm being too SERIOUS.
I wouldn't call Undertale an earnest game, it's really more of a study in how to make emotional manipulation actually work.
comic tycho is exaggerated from real tycho
I am inherently assuming this to be some kind of swipe at Tumblr, minding it's hard to tell what the intent of that statement was. Either way, Undertale has a massive and really really virulent fanbase on Tumblr.
Don't venture in there or risk madness. What some of those fan artists create can NEVER be unseen.
I don't agree with that, because it's more an attempt to make a world where "enemies" aren't just irrelevant generic "slaughter me" jobbers. It's actually a really interesting idea to try and encourage players to realize these things might, you know, actually have some kind of actual existence beyond "Kill them for XP". Undertale tells you that you're being a bastard, but otherwise doesn't truly give that much of a shit beyond some dialog with a certain NPC and the ending you get - of which the absolute worst is only achievable by very deliberately grinding out every area of the game uniquely. The fact it manages to make so many quirky relatable characters work is a major tick in its narrative strength, which again, sincerely reminds me of another great quirky RPG called Earthbound.
I don't know if Jerry has written about it before, but does he like or "get" Earthbound? If he doesn't like Earthbound, it would be easy to see why he wouldn't like Undertale.
Let's just go one comic without you immediately trying to turn the mood sour
Then he would hate it even more!
He mentions it in panel 2 dude.
I took that to be a descriptive term, or the name of a place. Like the underdark. I did not realize it was a game name.
I'd heard similar complaints on GameFAQs during their 'best game EVER' polling when Undertale squared off against Ocarina of time. From the nature of those complaints I wonder if it was just a matter of, "Oh, 'those' people like this thing, it must be just another of those 'walking simulator' things."
It fills me with determination.
tycho's problem is probably very different from why people on gamefaqs got so mad about it
some didn't like the fandom's rallies messing with the "integrity" of the poll, some had a problem with so recent of a game being in the poll to begin with (though it wasn't the only game in the poll from this year and those complaints didn't really start popping up until undertale started winning, mind you), and many... delightful types dismissed it as an "SJW" or "tumblr" game because there's a pacifism element and some of the characters are gay
tycho presumably just tried it and didn't see what the fuss was about
Wouldn't be the first time.
It wouldn't be the first time.
Ill have to push on then. I got it, played through some of the beginning area and just couldn't grasp what the big deal was and kinda sat it aside as one of those things like Homestuck that I just don't get.
Hey Satan!
Post
Amazon
Steam
I feel for you. You absolutely have to get past that area before it starts to make sense.
I'm a superfan and vocal defender of this game but I can see where the barrage of anime jokes and weird quirky characters totally wouldn't work for someone. I am surprised he didn't like the bullet hell combat mechanic though.
Tube is definitely right about the intro area.
I wonder if the game would have resonated better with Mike since back in the day he was the console guy and Jerry was more into PC. Without appreciating a lot of snes era jrpg tropes and especially Earthbound I can see where it wouldn't click.
Easy to draw parallels to Homestuck too, and not just because Toby worked on it. Similar passion from the fanbase which can be totally confusing to outsiders.
This is precisely why I have no interest in Undertale and I just can't figure out what all of the hoopla is about. I have always been more of a PC gamer rather than a console gamer and this game's presentation hearkens back to the Nintendo console RPGs of yesteryear. I have REALLY tried to be open-minded about the game; I've tried watching multiple people play it on Twitch and I can't even get through 10 minutes of it. If the game is really doing anything amazing with story, or characters, or meta-narrative, I guess I will just miss out on it, because I can't get through the presentation of the game. It looks and sounds like a JRPG from 20 years ago and I really didn't even gravitate toward that kind of game back then. Throw in "bullet hell" and I am running for the hills.
I apologize.
The middle was still strong and the normal ending stronger still but the true ending felt like typical anime garbage.
Back in my day we had to manually save our games uphill both ways and we liked it
(I own Undertake but haven't even started it, I blame Fallout 4).
And I wasn't disappointed. It had good music, great characters, and novel gameplay. I'd never played the games that inspired it, but I didn't feel like that was necessary.
This is one of those things (like Homestuck or Firefly) that suffers from its fan community. It's okay for people to be excited about things, but if they're constantly telling you that this game is so good, man, you have to play it because it's the best EVER -- it's easy to feel like either they're crazy, or you've lost touch.
the usual response is "don't be annoying about it" but what constitutes annoying is always arbitrarily decided by the other person
Without spoiling anything, I did enjoy the game's commentary on the relationship of players and games.(kinda like Bioshock) But I'm not sure I will replay it to get the other two endings.