PigLick on 23/10/2015 at 16:36
has anyone been playing this?
Sulphur on 23/10/2015 at 18:54
Everyday.
For reals though apparently it's pretty unique? I know some folks (*cough* Jesh *cough*) who quite like it and can enthuse about it in detail.
Judith on 23/10/2015 at 19:32
Downloading right now, all five episodes are pretty cheap (20 $/EUR).
henke on 24/10/2015 at 06:16
Seems pretty cool, but out of the last 4 adventure games I've started(Broken Age, Gemini Rue, Wolf Among Us, the first Blackwell game) I've yet to finish one. Starting to realize that adventure games ain't my thing. :erg:
Judith on 3/11/2015 at 21:34
Just finished the last episode, and this is a GOTY for me, despite some flaws. It's really something different. It touches so many subjects, has this incredible wacky story, great characters, and many great moments throughout the story, thanks to good writing and excellent voice acting. You may find the final episode somewhat disappointing, but the whole journey is totally worth it. Now I'm sad because I know the whole story, and I kind of wish I didn't :(
Thirith on 5/11/2015 at 08:46
I can't remember whether I bought this on PC or PS4, but I think it'll be one of the next games I play, and definitely the next adventure.
242 on 5/11/2015 at 14:19
First 2 episodes were rather boring. For now, The Walking Dead f.e. seems more involving than this one. Plus I don't like this hipster theme.
Quote:
For reals though apparently it's pretty unique?
If one didn't play The Walking Dead (exactly same mechanics), or Heavy Rain, Beyond Two Souls, Fahrenheit than yes, it's unique.
Sulphur on 5/11/2015 at 18:26
I've played most all of those, and they're hardly what I'd call unique either. I was talking about its general theme, which seems to have only been dealt with in one game prior to this, and that's Gone Home.
So I played a bit of the first episode, and I can pretty much guarantee that if Gone Home wasn't your kind of thing, this isn't going to be either. LIS starts off with this hook-y gameplay gimmick - you can rewind time at will. But while it is deployed as an obvious gameplay gimmick (you fucked up, now rewind and unfuck up), it also does some quiet, interesting things with it. Choices you make either hide or reveal things about the characters, and not in wholly predictable ways.
And it's in the quiet and interesting things that it seems to shine; it's not the big, brash moments that stand out, but the little ones like exploring a house and reliving past memories of being best friends with someone, compared to the immediate contrast and distance of the present day. Cringey teenage vernacular being deployed without irony. Having little (or big) things prick you about your choices even when you try to make the 'right' ones, and trying to live with that.
It's definitely a slow-burn sort of game. I may be wrong - I haven't even finished the first episode yet! - but it's more about being in the headspace of a shy, slightly repressed teen and exploring the what ifs and the could have beens rather than fighting for survival or solving a murder mystery. Maybe it could be about those too, though. But I'd still be more interested in its ability to take my memories of how we were at that age and make them resonate with whatever's happening on the screen. And maybe that's the best compliment I can pay it.
242 on 5/11/2015 at 22:31
I just finished the 3rd episode and the game seems more cramped than other games with the same game mechanics. So far there were only 6 or 7 tiny areas where the game took place, it tried to compensate that with TONS of items for checking or reading. It's like 80% of the gameplay time you check various items in tiny locs, quite tiresome, and only 20% you do other things. There were no real puzzles or thrill moments so far, except maybe in the very end of the 3rd episode.
JFYI, I love Fahrenheid and HR, and I like The Walking Dead, at least the first season.
Judith on 5/11/2015 at 22:37
I'm not an English native so YMMV, but I like it as a portrait of a small American town, and how it depicts the life and problems of kids in high school/college. I never took the teen slang thing seriously, I thought you can hear this post-ironic wink wink nudge nudge in their voice. The gameplay is basically The Longest Journey: you talk to people, you get to know them and you solve some (relatively simple) puzzles. It's a coming-of-age story that gets from warm to weird, dark, humorous, sentimental to all things in-between. The gameplay is quirky, and pacing is uneven (slow at times), but that sort of reflects Max's personality. IMO they could easily do this without supernatural elements, but the time rewind feature's role is also to emphasize the theme of growing up and aspects of adult relationships in general (without spoiling much, Greek tragedies say hi).
The thing I liked the least was the finale of the 'mystery' plot. Devs kind of fell into a trap here. This part of the story gets 'big plot twist you couldn't see coming', as there were (almost) no clues pointing to it. As a result, you get a cheap surprise, and typical 'bad guy presents his secret motive and becomes a parody of himself' scene.
