The Gamer's Quarter

[dessgeega]

. . . you're probably just getting off on orphan girls being cruel to each other.

i've been playing our review copy and i'm not convinced this game has anything that redeems the tediousness and frustration of its gameplay. sure, the game manages to illuminate the role of sadism and submission in the game/player relationship, which is something i'm trying to incorporate in a game i've been working on - but that's why i realize it could be done so much better.

but what if the frustrating combat and near-black screens and utterly confounding navigation are the point, you say! at which point i sock you in the kisser. at least killer7 had the good sense to be on rails. (this is not a killer7 thread.)

sneak preview of my article on rule of rose: it's going to begin with a retelling of the "aristocrats" joke.
_________________

[Dracko]

Doesn't it also contain horrible supernatural beasties which take away from the whole de Sade-like torture and humiliation psychological aspects that the game seemed to be going for in the early trailers?
_________________
"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dessgeega]

yes oh my goddess they do. these things show up and you're expected to fight them apparently just because it's a videogame. usually you want to run past them, but sometimes the doors lock - like zelda! - and you're forced to fight them! and then there's that scene on top of the staircase where you have to run through a gauntlet of enemies with extremely long reaches and you die and then you have to repeat the entire chapter which is incredibly tedious because it's a puzzle-adventure game and you're not learning anything new or doing anything you havn't done before!

also it's kind of hilarious that the other children beat up on jennifer as though she can't fight back but then outside of cutscenes you're lugging around this giant lead pipe that you have equipped as a weapon. jennifer willingly submits most of the time so it's not really parodoxical, but it's still kind of absurd.
_________________

[Dracko]

This is sounding more and more like a standard-fare survival-horror stuck in genre staples instead of overthrowing them.

Should I be giving Clock Tower a go instead or something?
_________________
"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[dessgeega]

clock tower's actually scary.

that's another thing. i'm kind of hesitant to identify this game as "survival horror" or whatnot - admittedly a genre i'm not very experienced with or knowledgable of - because it's not scary at all. and interestingly i'm not really compelled to identify with the protagonist in any way. maybe some of it is because the camera is always looking down on her from above - maybe the player is supposed to be yet another dominant figure in poor unlucky jennifer's life! maybe the game was just created for voyeurs!
_________________

[Mister Toups]

I mostly like the music.

Also it's not so much that the bad control is the point so much as it's the fact that it's a survival horror game so that stuff kind of doesn't matter. I mean particularly in this case, because, you know, her attack animation shows her covering her face in fear and just kind of blindly stabbing, so it would make sense that she barely ever hits anything.

And anyway, 90% of the time you don't need to fight anything and it's easier to just run away.
_________________
where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

[Shapermc]

[dessgeega]

[dessgeega]

just for clarification, yes, i know it makes sense that jennifer's not a very good fighter. why would she be? but why is there combat in this game at all? the enemies make no sense, nor the bosses. they seem thrown in CUZ IT'S A SURVIVAL HORROR GAME AND THAT'S WHAT YOU DO FIGHT ENEMIES WITH SHITTY CONTROLS. i'm sorry, that doesn't fly with me.

and yes it matters when i have to replay an hour's worth of game that requires no skill because of your intentionally(?) crippled combat mechanics (that add nothing to the game and make no sense within its context).
_________________

[simplicio]

Oh hell, if I get back on this game can we write dueling articles? When's the next deadline?

[dessgeega]

this game has some precious load times, lemme tell ya.
_________________

[Mister Toups]

Well, I like what I've played of it anyway.

I think we can agree that it's not universally recommendable, if nothing else.
_________________
where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

[dessgeega]

i would probably only recommend it to people who like to watch schoolgirls punish each other.

actually, i probably wouldn't.
_________________

[Harveyjames]

A compilation of cut-scenes from Rule of Rose was shown at the Annecy Animation festival before any of us knew what Rule of Rose was, and it was pretty impressive in a creepy/sexy/wrong way. Maybe the answer is to get that compilation, watch it whenever you feel the need* and chuck the game away.

[Nana Komatsu]

[dessgeega]

[Dracko]

It also sounds pretentious.

I bet it doesn't even deliver on the Lord of the Flies children cruelty front.
_________________
"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[TOLLMASTER]

So it's like an anti-Devil May Cry.

In the cutscenes, Dante can get stabbed through the heart with a scythe and walk around with it dragging a body across the floor, with Dante later pulling it out to no blood and throwing it effortlessly, but he can barely get bumped by those same blades a few times before dying when in-game.

So our precious schoolgirl can clobber demons with pipes but can't stop little girls? Maybe at the end there is going to be some METAPHYSICAL REVELATION about the demons being an extension of the fear in her own mind or something something and then there will be a blogger who writes an "expose" and there will be flamewars.

[dessgeega]

so i finished the game. via the "real" ending, yes (zomg spoilers).

does the story make any sense? i havn't decided yet, but my answer is probably "no". i feel like the game design staff was provided a checklist of "things survival horror game must have" while the art staff was given a stack of the director's schoolgirl fantasies (hastily scrawled on paper bearing unexplained stains).

now they expect me to replay it, of course. to hunt for film cans that will let me watch the game's cutscenes of jennifer being hurt and humiliated whenever i want. in the cell of pleasure no less. oh, and costumes to dress her up in! OH MY GODDESS.

speaking of movies, there are some scenes that play during the opening "trailer" - like someone's bare foot smothering jennifer's face - that didn't appear during the game. so i have to assume those scenes were rendered for the director's own pleasure!

"save your game?" it asked me. no thanks! i'm going to spend the next week trying to wash this game off me.
_________________

[Quick Shot II Turbo]

[Ketch]

[Harveyjames]

[quote="Ketch"]

[Lackey]

You could always write a design doc or short summary and see if anyone bites.
_________________
| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[Harveyjames]

OK.

[Ketch]

To further go on about Interactive Entertainment, issue #2's Pokemon article talks about how Gold and Silver added context to the gameworld, showing how the features such as the clock (and how it affected creatures) made the 'world' come alive. This is what (I) want to see in this new type adventure.

Back to the topic at hand, if you like orphans experiencing hardships you should read A Series of Unfotunate Events, (or just watch the film).

[helicopterp]

As I recall, it had a pretty good Thomas Newman score. He's becoming one of my favorites, especially for his work on Road to Perdition.
_________________
Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[FortNinety]

[Shapermc]

[quote="FortNinety"]

[FortNinety]

Really? I remember people raving about it.

I still want to try the first two since I find the idea of a cray person with huge scissors cutting people's heads off pretty funny.

Was he in part 3? Never played enough to find out.

[OtakupunkX]

If I remember correctly it was a small person with really big scissors, and yet the game is actually quite scary.

Then again, I only played the SNES version of CT1, and that was only for 2 hours or so.

[dessgeega]

i played clock tower, the original, a little bit. it's an adventure game where half of the examinable objects are booby-trapped. like maybe you'll examine a television set and a giant monster hand will leap out and go BOOGEDY BOOGEDY BOOGEDY. minus 10 health points! the scissors guy is kind of scary though.

some of the enemies in rule of rose wield giant scissors. homage? or just another box on the checklist?
_________________

[Cycle]

I played Clocktower 1 for the PSX, it's pretty scary stuff. The scissorman appears at random points and it's very tense when trying to escape and hide from him. The sound of him clanging those scissors is horrifying, especially when you don't know where it's coming from.

The actual adventure elements pretty much blow, though. The way you get different endings is very arbitrary. I originally thought it would be cool if it had proper adventure conventions but then I played 5 days a stranger and thought, hey, maybe not.

i originally wrote cocktower by mistake, lol!!

[OtakupunkX]

[TOLLMASTER]

[Harveyjames]

They need to make a Rule of Rose art book so I can JO to it on the john.

[Mister Toups]

dude it's j/o not JO what backwater corner of the internet do you come from anyway.
_________________
where were you when nana komatsu got a wii?

[Harveyjames]

Stereolabrat says JO so I just copy her.

[dessgeega]

_________________