on the subject of Dying Light 2, this is what kills it for me.
It's a bummer when it becomes abundantly clear a video game is bloated, and won't give you its best tools until you invest dozens of hours. This is how I feel after 13 hours of Dying Light 2.
The review lays out everything the author thinks about its problems, why it's "content" rather than gameplay for the most part, and why that matters when you can see glimpses of careful work by developers gleaming through. It doesn't belabor its points, but the entire argument is definitely there.
It's a review of capitalism, not the game.
it's both!
Sorry, but any writing that does more than one thing is inherently poorer for it. All the time spent on symbolism and metaphor in a novel could have been put into making the characters' voices read more distinctly, and made the plot the more exciting.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
The review lays out everything the author thinks about its problems, why it's "content" rather than gameplay for the most part, and why that matters when you can see glimpses of careful work by developers gleaming through. It doesn't belabor its points, but the entire argument is definitely there.
It's a review of capitalism, not the game.
it's both!
Sorry, but any writing that does more than one thing is inherently poorer for it. All the time spent on symbolism and metaphor in a novel could have been put into making the characters' voices read more distinctly, and made the plot the more exciting.
I wasn't aware you read game reviews for their thrilling narratives and character development.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
The review lays out everything the author thinks about its problems, why it's "content" rather than gameplay for the most part, and why that matters when you can see glimpses of careful work by developers gleaming through. It doesn't belabor its points, but the entire argument is definitely there.
It's a review of capitalism, not the game.
it's both!
Sorry, but any writing that does more than one thing is inherently poorer for it. All the time spent on symbolism and metaphor in a novel could have been put into making the characters' voices read more distinctly, and made the plot the more exciting.
The review lays out everything the author thinks about its problems, why it's "content" rather than gameplay for the most part, and why that matters when you can see glimpses of careful work by developers gleaming through. It doesn't belabor its points, but the entire argument is definitely there.
It's a review of capitalism, not the game.
it's both!
Sorry, but any writing that does more than one thing is inherently poorer for it. All the time spent on symbolism and metaphor in a novel could have been put into making the characters' voices read more distinctly, and made the plot the more exciting.
I wasn't aware you read game reviews for their thrilling narratives and character development.
When you get prickly and pedantic about people lightly poking fun at your opinions, does that lead to engendering more sympathy towards your opinion? I forget how it typically works out for you.
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
The review lays out everything the author thinks about its problems, why it's "content" rather than gameplay for the most part, and why that matters when you can see glimpses of careful work by developers gleaming through. It doesn't belabor its points, but the entire argument is definitely there.
It's a review of capitalism, not the game.
it's both!
Sorry, but any writing that does more than one thing is inherently poorer for it. All the time spent on symbolism and metaphor in a novel could have been put into making the characters' voices read more distinctly, and made the plot the more exciting.
I wasn't aware you read game reviews for their thrilling narratives and character development.
When you get prickly and pedantic about people lightly poking fun at your opinions, does that lead to engendering more sympathy towards your opinion? I forget how it typically works out for you.
My reply had the exact same tone and tenor as yours, and if you neglect to see that then you need to do some self reflection.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
The issue I have with that DL2 review is that it's written in the style of a long-form deep dive essay intended to prove its case to a wide audience, but with the substance/argument of a short illustration to reinforce an existing (and justified) belief.
"Hey, you know the awesome movement in Dying Light? They have that for a few hours in Dying Light 2 and it's awesome, then they move you to an area where it's useless and give you a glider because some executive saw how popular Breath of the Wild is, even though it totally invalidates the actually cool, original systems they designed for the game and makes it more generic" is a perfectly coherent argument and the core of the piece, and I'd tend to agree with it! It'd do great as a forum post or tweet thread. But that's not enough scaffolding for an article trying to explain how DL2 is creatively bankrupt to a broader audience that isn't going to immediately make a bunch of mental connections linking an underwhelming glider feature with the broader state of open-world #Content driven mush all converging on similar bland features.
I ate an engineer
+3
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
The review lays out everything the author thinks about its problems, why it's "content" rather than gameplay for the most part, and why that matters when you can see glimpses of careful work by developers gleaming through. It doesn't belabor its points, but the entire argument is definitely there.
It's a review of capitalism, not the game.
it's both!
Sorry, but any writing that does more than one thing is inherently poorer for it. All the time spent on symbolism and metaphor in a novel could have been put into making the characters' voices read more distinctly, and made the plot the more exciting.
I wasn't aware you read game reviews for their thrilling narratives and character development.
When you get prickly and pedantic about people lightly poking fun at your opinions, does that lead to engendering more sympathy towards your opinion? I forget how it typically works out for you.
My reply had the exact same tone and tenor as yours, and if you neglect to see that then you need to do some self reflection.
Wait, I legitimately thought we were all having fun here.
Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
I think that review is attempting to be artful and erudite and expressive without actually expressing much of what it wants to
I also think Patrick's review isn't even a review and is a more succinct explanation of the game's core problems
Sometimes I think certain critics are more concerned with writing an op-ed on The Absolute State of AAA Games and less concerned with reviewing a single particular game
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
The review lays out everything the author thinks about its problems, why it's "content" rather than gameplay for the most part, and why that matters when you can see glimpses of careful work by developers gleaming through. It doesn't belabor its points, but the entire argument is definitely there.
It's a review of capitalism, not the game.
it's both!
Sorry, but any writing that does more than one thing is inherently poorer for it. All the time spent on symbolism and metaphor in a novel could have been put into making the characters' voices read more distinctly, and made the plot the more exciting.
I wasn't aware you read game reviews for their thrilling narratives and character development.
When you get prickly and pedantic about people lightly poking fun at your opinions, does that lead to engendering more sympathy towards your opinion? I forget how it typically works out for you.
My reply had the exact same tone and tenor as yours, and if you neglect to see that then you need to do some self reflection.
Wait, I legitimately thought we were all having fun here.
Fun is a zero sum game. I cannot have fun without taking it from you. Stop having fun God dammit, that's my fun you're using.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
I never ended up finishing the first game, but I played a bunch of it co-op and had a good time
I feel like that review said everything it needed to. I got a pretty good impression of what the game was like, I don't need every flaw enumerated in a gigantic list.
I think that review is attempting to be artful and erudite and expressive without actually expressing much of what it wants to
I also think Patrick's review isn't even a review and is a more succinct explanation of the game's core problems
Sometimes I think certain critics are more concerned with writing an op-ed on The Absolute State of AAA Games and less concerned with reviewing a single particular game
Patrick's article isn't a "review" in the sense that he didn't beat the game, so you could label it a hands-on impression or something if you want to subscribe to certain sort of semantic wrangling over what it means to call something a "review"
But to suggest that people can't give their professional (nevermind amateur) impressions about their experience playing a game if they haven't rolled the credits seems ludicrous to me. (A suggestion no one in the thread is making, but defenders certainly are out in force on Twitter, etc.)
I think that review is attempting to be artful and erudite and expressive without actually expressing much of what it wants to
I also think Patrick's review isn't even a review and is a more succinct explanation of the game's core problems
Sometimes I think certain critics are more concerned with writing an op-ed on The Absolute State of AAA Games and less concerned with reviewing a single particular game
I mean that’s kind of the point, the game isn’t worth “reviewing” because it’s emblematic of how AAA development can turn the creativity of hundreds of genuinely talented people into beige mush, where it’s clear that the individual components that may have merit are subsumed by a broader compromised directive
Prohass on
+15
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Finished Tales From the Borderlands. Surprisingly entertaining considering I just watched a full playthrough of it immediately prior. I think it might be one of the most fun 'game' experiences I've had? I say 'game' because it feels more like a really long, interactive, animated film to me. Definitely some of my favourite characters and writing. I think I'll end up replaying it quite a lot.
Now to get properly into Disco Elysium and I expect get sad
+19
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StraightziHere we may reign secure, and in my choice,To reign is worth ambition though in HellRegistered Userregular
I think the "Op-Ed on the Absolute State of [media]" is an important style of review
It would probably be bad if it was the only style of review in any given media, but I can't really think of a place where that is true
+5
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Finished Tales From the Borderlands. Surprisingly entertaining considering I just watched a full playthrough of it immediately prior. I think it might be one of the most fun 'game' experiences I've had? I say 'game' because it feels more like a really long, interactive, animated film to me. Definitely some of my favourite characters and writing. I think I'll end up replaying it quite a lot.
Now to get properly into Disco Elysium and I expect get sad
My experience was less sad and more bittersweet melancholy.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
reviewing zombie parkour game 2 without the review being mostly about the nightmare working conditions it was assembled under would be a useless and dishonest piece of journalism
Finished Tales From the Borderlands. Surprisingly entertaining considering I just watched a full playthrough of it immediately prior. I think it might be one of the most fun 'game' experiences I've had? I say 'game' because it feels more like a really long, interactive, animated film to me. Definitely some of my favourite characters and writing. I think I'll end up replaying it quite a lot.
Now to get properly into Disco Elysium and I expect get sad
I'll say that if you haven't really gone into their library prior, there are a handful of other Telltale games I really did unexpectedly enjoy a lot, like their take on Batman
I think that review is attempting to be artful and erudite and expressive without actually expressing much of what it wants to
I also think Patrick's review isn't even a review and is a more succinct explanation of the game's core problems
Sometimes I think certain critics are more concerned with writing an op-ed on The Absolute State of AAA Games and less concerned with reviewing a single particular game
I think that review reads less like "here is a review that can be dropped without additional context into any website/magazine/whatever and will provide its own context, narrative, and conclusion about a video game" and more like "here is your pal telling you their impression of a video game".
When I was younger, and had way more free time, I spent a lot of it reading Rock, Paper, Shotgun. I knew what the original four writers were like, what their tastes were, and how they intersected with mine. I didn't need them to go into minute detail when doing a review, because I pretty much knew if I'd like something based on whether or not one of them liked it. This is something that can only come from a familiarity that grows over time, you can't get that from one single article, but for the most part I find it to be the style of game review that is most useful to me. It's like asking a friend if they liked something - I've known a guy since 7th grade, a two-sentence review from him is enough for me to extrapolate everything I need.
That isn't to say that the "contains all the context you need" review is bad, or that either of them is more or less necessary. Frankly, I'd rather people wrote more kinds of reviews, experimented with style more widely, and so on. I'm fine with "here are pros and cons, here's a score out of 100" reviews, New Games Journalism-style "here is my experience playing this game" reviews, experimental artsy fartsy reviews, all if it. It's all useful to me.
I thought the terse review of Dying Light 2 - although written from 1000 feet in the air and with few details - gave me everything I needed to know about what this person thought about the game. Which - even though I don't know this person at all - was actually all I needed in this particular case.
Tales from the Borderlands is great because they take the "What terrible, chilling decision will you make even though it's ultimately pointless" from the Walking Dead games and turns it into "What ridiculous, dumbass situation do you want to happen, it's alright, it'll get you to the same place in the end" and like magically fixed a lot of the flaws I found in their formula.
+11
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
Finished Tales From the Borderlands. Surprisingly entertaining considering I just watched a full playthrough of it immediately prior. I think it might be one of the most fun 'game' experiences I've had? I say 'game' because it feels more like a really long, interactive, animated film to me. Definitely some of my favourite characters and writing. I think I'll end up replaying it quite a lot.
Now to get properly into Disco Elysium and I expect get sad
I'll say that if you haven't really gone into their library prior, there are a handful of other Telltale games I really did unexpectedly enjoy a lot, like their take on Batman
I have not, except for playing the first episode of Walking Dead, and being immediately put off by the "whatever decision you make something awful will happen" feeling of it. I'll check out Batman, thanks. Any others worth playing?
0
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
The actual best thing about Tales from the Borderlands is that scene that was described to animators as "Rhys runs down the hallway flipping off the monitors", which was intended to be him shutting the monitors off, and the actual result was so good they just kept it
+31
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Finished Tales From the Borderlands. Surprisingly entertaining considering I just watched a full playthrough of it immediately prior. I think it might be one of the most fun 'game' experiences I've had? I say 'game' because it feels more like a really long, interactive, animated film to me. Definitely some of my favourite characters and writing. I think I'll end up replaying it quite a lot.
Now to get properly into Disco Elysium and I expect get sad
I'll say that if you haven't really gone into their library prior, there are a handful of other Telltale games I really did unexpectedly enjoy a lot, like their take on Batman
I have not, except for playing the first episode of Walking Dead, and being immediately put off by the "whatever decision you make something awful will happen" feeling of it. I'll check out Batman, thanks. Any others worth playing?
I also liked The Wolf Among Us, despite the comic it is derived from kind of going sideways
+1
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
The Wolf Among Us is very good. Not for the "choices," necessarily, but it has great characters and storytelling.
+9
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
The actual best thing about Tales from the Borderlands is that scene that was described to animators as "Rhys runs down the hallway flipping off the monitors", which was intended to be him shutting the monitors off, and the actual result was so good they just kept it
Haha, that's great. I also read that the line where Rhys burps halfway through was genuinely Troy Baker belching during the read and they kept it in. The VA work overall was stellar, and the animation, so many little facial expression details that I was surprised to see added in. I guess I underestimated them because of the cartoony look.
Also the scene where
Rhys tears himself apart to get rid of his cybernetics
is one of the gnarliest things I've seen in a game and made me pretty glad it wasn't a more realistic art style.
I watched Wolf Among Us recently, that's what led me to watching Tales. I think there's a sequel coming? So I will probably play it myself when that's about to come out.
Do you need to have played any of the borderlands games to enjoy/understand Tales from the Borderlands?
You can get basically all you need from the story itself.
Here's the basics: Pandora is a shit-hole of a planet, either the creatures or the inhabitants are trying to kill you. It also has Vaults of ancient alien technology on it that makes it worth it to spend any time on it. Super-Corporation Hyperion tried to take over, its director Handsome Jack got killed by Vault Hunters. Everybody on Pandora hates Hyperion, everyone in Hyperion hates Pandora.
And that's it. You may not recognise characters from other games, but Borderlands main game characters aren't very complex and within two lines you generally get what their deal is.
The actual best thing about Tales from the Borderlands is that scene that was described to animators as "Rhys runs down the hallway flipping off the monitors", which was intended to be him shutting the monitors off, and the actual result was so good they just kept it
That's good meta. Finger gun shootout is the most memorable bit of the whole series for me.
SiliconStew on
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
+2
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PaperLuigi44My amazement is at maximum capacity.Registered Userregular
Yeah I never played Pre-Sequel but the characters from there weren't hard to grasp.
One of the many things I love about Tales is
It actually had the guts to make some major waves in the canon, rather than one of those spin-offs that don't/can't even prod the status quo with a feather.
+3
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Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
The actual best thing about Tales from the Borderlands is that scene that was described to animators as "Rhys runs down the hallway flipping off the monitors", which was intended to be him shutting the monitors off, and the actual result was so good they just kept it
That's good meta. Finger gun shootout is the most memorable bit of the whole series for me.
I know it probably wasn't, because finger-gun fights are a common enough thing, but I couldn't help thinking that was an homage to Spaced
hm so I had a thought for once my neutral party moves into BG2. summon spells are sometimes level based, so wouldn't that make haer'dalis beastly as a summoner early on? he can get sword spiders and skeleton warriors way before a wizard can
hm so I had a thought for once my neutral party moves into BG2. summon spells are sometimes level based, so wouldn't that make haer'dalis beastly as a summoner early on? he can get sword spiders and skeleton warriors way before a wizard can
Sword Spider doesn't look that much earlier, but the maxed skeleton warrior he'd get a bit earlier than a mage.
Posts
AV Club's review has an almost identical tone and takeway.
dying light 1 is a perfectly cromulent ubi-style open world game with fun movement
Sorry, but any writing that does more than one thing is inherently poorer for it. All the time spent on symbolism and metaphor in a novel could have been put into making the characters' voices read more distinctly, and made the plot the more exciting.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I wasn't aware you read game reviews for their thrilling narratives and character development.
Also really fun as a coop game
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
When you get prickly and pedantic about people lightly poking fun at your opinions, does that lead to engendering more sympathy towards your opinion? I forget how it typically works out for you.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
My reply had the exact same tone and tenor as yours, and if you neglect to see that then you need to do some self reflection.
"Hey, you know the awesome movement in Dying Light? They have that for a few hours in Dying Light 2 and it's awesome, then they move you to an area where it's useless and give you a glider because some executive saw how popular Breath of the Wild is, even though it totally invalidates the actually cool, original systems they designed for the game and makes it more generic" is a perfectly coherent argument and the core of the piece, and I'd tend to agree with it! It'd do great as a forum post or tweet thread. But that's not enough scaffolding for an article trying to explain how DL2 is creatively bankrupt to a broader audience that isn't going to immediately make a bunch of mental connections linking an underwhelming glider feature with the broader state of open-world #Content driven mush all converging on similar bland features.
Wait, I legitimately thought we were all having fun here.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I also think Patrick's review isn't even a review and is a more succinct explanation of the game's core problems
Sometimes I think certain critics are more concerned with writing an op-ed on The Absolute State of AAA Games and less concerned with reviewing a single particular game
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Fun is a zero sum game. I cannot have fun without taking it from you. Stop having fun God dammit, that's my fun you're using.
Patrick's article isn't a "review" in the sense that he didn't beat the game, so you could label it a hands-on impression or something if you want to subscribe to certain sort of semantic wrangling over what it means to call something a "review"
But to suggest that people can't give their professional (nevermind amateur) impressions about their experience playing a game if they haven't rolled the credits seems ludicrous to me. (A suggestion no one in the thread is making, but defenders certainly are out in force on Twitter, etc.)
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I mean that’s kind of the point, the game isn’t worth “reviewing” because it’s emblematic of how AAA development can turn the creativity of hundreds of genuinely talented people into beige mush, where it’s clear that the individual components that may have merit are subsumed by a broader compromised directive
Now to get properly into Disco Elysium and I expect get sad
It would probably be bad if it was the only style of review in any given media, but I can't really think of a place where that is true
I'll say that if you haven't really gone into their library prior, there are a handful of other Telltale games I really did unexpectedly enjoy a lot, like their take on Batman
When I was younger, and had way more free time, I spent a lot of it reading Rock, Paper, Shotgun. I knew what the original four writers were like, what their tastes were, and how they intersected with mine. I didn't need them to go into minute detail when doing a review, because I pretty much knew if I'd like something based on whether or not one of them liked it. This is something that can only come from a familiarity that grows over time, you can't get that from one single article, but for the most part I find it to be the style of game review that is most useful to me. It's like asking a friend if they liked something - I've known a guy since 7th grade, a two-sentence review from him is enough for me to extrapolate everything I need.
That isn't to say that the "contains all the context you need" review is bad, or that either of them is more or less necessary. Frankly, I'd rather people wrote more kinds of reviews, experimented with style more widely, and so on. I'm fine with "here are pros and cons, here's a score out of 100" reviews, New Games Journalism-style "here is my experience playing this game" reviews, experimental artsy fartsy reviews, all if it. It's all useful to me.
I thought the terse review of Dying Light 2 - although written from 1000 feet in the air and with few details - gave me everything I needed to know about what this person thought about the game. Which - even though I don't know this person at all - was actually all I needed in this particular case.
I have not, except for playing the first episode of Walking Dead, and being immediately put off by the "whatever decision you make something awful will happen" feeling of it. I'll check out Batman, thanks. Any others worth playing?
I also liked The Wolf Among Us, despite the comic it is derived from kind of going sideways
Haha, that's great. I also read that the line where Rhys burps halfway through was genuinely Troy Baker belching during the read and they kept it in. The VA work overall was stellar, and the animation, so many little facial expression details that I was surprised to see added in. I guess I underestimated them because of the cartoony look.
Also the scene where
I watched Wolf Among Us recently, that's what led me to watching Tales. I think there's a sequel coming? So I will probably play it myself when that's about to come out.
You can get basically all you need from the story itself.
Here's the basics: Pandora is a shit-hole of a planet, either the creatures or the inhabitants are trying to kill you. It also has Vaults of ancient alien technology on it that makes it worth it to spend any time on it. Super-Corporation Hyperion tried to take over, its director Handsome Jack got killed by Vault Hunters. Everybody on Pandora hates Hyperion, everyone in Hyperion hates Pandora.
And that's it. You may not recognise characters from other games, but Borderlands main game characters aren't very complex and within two lines you generally get what their deal is.
That's good meta. Finger gun shootout is the most memorable bit of the whole series for me.
One of the many things I love about Tales is
I know it probably wasn't, because finger-gun fights are a common enough thing, but I couldn't help thinking that was an homage to Spaced
Wow it's been a while since I watched these scenes and I never noticed how many cuts there are before. I feel dizzy.
Sword Spider doesn't look that much earlier, but the maxed skeleton warrior he'd get a bit earlier than a mage.