What are the most pretentious games ever made?

[Coolio55]

Shame. Middens and Gingiva are pretty cool even if the creator is an obvious wacko. (Although to be fair, the journo running that blog has a lot of fucking room to talk. Including the paedo accusations considering they're a tranny.)
Most of the games in this thread aren't really interesting but these two definitely buck that trend. A game doesn't necessarily have to be dull to be pretentious.

Anyway, interesting that "A Boy and His Dog" has similarities to Middens. I'll have to read it...

 

[Sand Mega]

It's a shame because I found Middens' artstyle really cool, I think that with a bit of tightening up in combat and pacing, along with removing some pretentious aspects, it could end up really amazing.

10 pages and I see no mention of one of the worst offenders; the entire Borderlands franchise.

If Reddit: The Animated Series wasn't bad enough already, its incapable of going for give minutes without telling you how self-aware it is.

The problem with Borderlands is that Gearbox never grew past 2012, the self aware writing that was tolerable in that era has got progressively worse and worse as the years progressed, to the point it culminated in the disaster that was Borderlands 3 this famous 4 Chan greentext really summarizes their style

The stupid self aware ironic jokes have gotten worse and more tiresome the more popular they became and more insufferable considering the type that made this garbage worse were reddit and twitter user, it infected Borderlands and turned what could have been a piece of its time in a reminder of how worse it became, people treat Borderlands 1 like they treat Earthbound or the FNAF formula, it's not bad, but now that everyone tries to copy it, you get to see it lost what made people like it, but can't complain about it since it was the first to try it, without knowing what it would turn it's genre into. But the Bordelands 3 just kills whatever sympathy you had for the franchise.

Once again, I'm gonna link this video I watched, it's not perfect but it comes the closest to summarizing how awful this style is (and it also mention Borderlands in it)

 

[God of Nothing]

It's a shame because I found Middens' artstyle really cool, I think that with a bit of tightening up in combat and pacing, along with removing some pretentious aspects, it could end up really amazing.

The problem with Borderlands is that Gearbox never grew past 2012, the self aware writing that was tolerable in that era has got progressively worse and worse as the years progressed, to the point it culminated in the disaster that was Borderlands 3 this famous 4 Chan greentext really summarizes their style

View attachment 5018992

The stupid self aware ironic jokes have gotten worse and more tiresome the more popular they became and more insufferable considering the type that made this garbage worse were reddit and twitter user, it infected Borderlands and turned what could have been a piece of its time in a reminder of how worse it became, people treat Borderlands 1 like they treat Earthbound or the FNAF formula, it's not bad, but now that everyone tries to copy it, you get to see it lost what made people like it, but can't complain about it since it was the first to try it, without knowing what it would turn it's genre into. But the Bordelands 3 just kills whatever sympathy you had for the franchise.

Once again, I'm gonna link this video I watched, it's not perfect but it comes the closest to summarizing how awful this style is (and it also mention Borderlands in it)

just straight up ripped that 4chan post, huh

 

[augment]

This thread completely degraded from "pretentious games" to "game I don't like for the following reasons".

 

[Hummingbird]

Average Maria Individual: It's like Undertale with the misunderstood monsters that it did first. The game is "to provide some relief to the long-standing tyranny of the “traditional game” hero." If "tyranny" means fun gameplay and trying to rescue someone means you don't care about their rights as a person or something.

You can't do anything fun with Maria except kiss a lesbian in the good ending and man, is their version of Mario straw-many.

 

[Mexican_Wizard_711]

This thread completely degraded from "pretentious games" to "game I don't like for the following reasons".

"Yes, CONSOOM product, don't question things"

 

[Soycast Guy]

Disco Elysium, The Stanley Parable, Gone Home, boring games for boring people but they pretend they get something out of being bored to tears.

Doesn’t Stanley Parable have a communist message? I wouldn’t know because I only play games that I enjoy.

 

[John Titor]

I have not played Last of Us 2 but from everything I've seen it really hammers your head with the "revenge is bad mmkay" message.

Gone Home is just a baby's first asset flip. Nothing more. People went apeshit cause it had a lesbian relationship in it. Heck to this day I hear people calling it GotY...

Also Fez. The game is decent, but the creator is a pretentious prick. We don't 'deserve' a Pez 2 apparently, whatever that means...

I was a little reluctant to say Fez because the pretentiousness had more to do with the production and not the actual game itself. The creator seriously loves sucking himself off when he made a basic puzzle platformer game.

 

[Foltest]

The more I hear about YIIK, I get more and more curious about it.
I know it is smugness the game, but I want to see how smug it can be.

 

[Coolio55]

The more I hear about YIIK, I get more and more curious about it.
I know it is smugness the game, but I want to see how smug it can be.

It's a fun watch but make sure you use an lp of 1.0 so it's before they started changing things to react to criticism.
There's a few points where it almost gets good (horrible gameplay notwithstanding) and then you see it immediately fall flat on it's face.

 

[Foltest]

It's a fun watch but make sure you use an lp of 1.0 so it's before they started changing things to react to criticism.
There's a few points where it almost gets good (horrible gameplay notwithstanding) and then you see it immediately fall flat on it's face.

I have now been watchin a LP of it and I will give the game this: The artstyle is pretty damn good and stands out.
The VA is pretty good as well.
And that is all the good things. The writing of the game is so fucking smugggggggg.

 

[moocow]

And the one Far Cry game on the island with that insane guy.

Fucking Vaas. I fucking hated Vaas. His dialogue was terrible. His accent aggravated the fuck out of me. He was a fucking retard throughout the game. The classic "I'll set in motion events that should kill you but won't wait to make sure you actually die, also I'll not only repeat this mistake several times but I'll hang a lampshade on it with my 'le epic definition of insanity meme') gambit. The Evil Overlord list was written decades ago, you fucking hacks.

My understanding is that Vaas was meant to be a one-off character who appeared briefly then got killed off quickly (as he should have), but the voice actor did such a phenomenal job portraying him that they rewrote the story to make Vaas a bigger character. Mad respect to the voice actor -- he knocked it out of the park creating a character I utterly loathe -- but total contempt and hatred to the writers for making such a boring, predictable, uninteresting and thoroughly unintimidating character and smearing him all over the fucking game.

And of course the cherry on top is the fact that your character kills him (without player action) while tripping balls and hallucinating so much you can't even really savor his much-deserved and long-overdue death. It's obscured in a swirl of trippy colors and distortions, so you don't get to enjoy seeing the light fade from the faggot's eyes as you shank him.

Every review i've ever seen recommended is hours long. For how boring and bland that game is everyone seems to love sperging about it and have very many long things to say about it. It has definitely peaked a lot of people.

It truly is impressive about how hard it fails on all fronts and how it's inspired so much analysis. People love a good trainwreck and boy howdy Yiik was one of the best.

GTA5 is the most pretentious shit on the planet and even more wildly popular than GTA4, a distinction i cannot fathom.

THANK YOU!

I couldn't stand GTA5's plot. I only played the game long enough to get into the "open world" part enough to go on a few random killing sprees, realize even the gameplay was kinda crap compared to the earlier games, and then the straw that broke the camel's back was Michael being punished for daring to be upset that his spoiled whore wife was cheating on him and his equally spoiled useless lazy fat-ass son stole a million-dollar yacht from him to try to sell, got scammed and wound up trashing the fucking thing all while bitching at his father as he's rescuing his fat worthless ass.

People he should have thrown out on their asses and cut off immediately (his whore wife and lazy son) continue to treat him like utter dog shit throughout the rest of the game, which he spends trying to work things out with them as if he's the one at fault for any of it. Fucking everyone around him (even his own cunt of a therapist) tells him everything is all his fault, as if no other living creature has any agency or sentience and acts solely based on the inputs they receive from him.

It reeks of that dogshit millennial "nothing is my fault, nothing you do for me or give me is ever enough no matter how good or plentiful it is, you are horrible, and you need me even though I completely depend on you for financial, physical and emotional security, and it's your job to make it up to me as you do all the heavy lifting" thinking I've come to loathe much of western civilization for.

Damn ... feels like I earned some hats for this one.

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

It fundamentally wrong because Ayn Rand never advocates the use of physical violence to defend ideas

Rand was by far the most jewish person to have ever lived

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

And of course the cherry on top is the fact that your character kills him (without player action) while tripping balls and hallucinating so much you can't even really savor his much-deserved and long-overdue death. It's obscured in a swirl of trippy colors and distortions, so you don't get to enjoy seeing the light fade from the faggot's eyes as you shank him.

lol then they apparently retconned it in Far Cry 6 and he survived.

 

[Odd Opossum]

It really all flows back to this idea. Once this idea started to propagate in gaming, writers and producers tried to shoehorn games as art by making them pretty much every medium besides games: Films (Uncharted), tv shows (The Last of Us), Indie films (most of the thread) and literature (Disco Elysium).

The only result was games becoming less fun and devoid of artistic merit, since none of the mediums is intrinsically artistic.

The most artistic game I played in the last half decade is probably Cruelty Squad because it's 99.9% gameplay and has ideas that can be interpreted by the player rather than strictly being about whatever globohomo approved message of the week is.

I feel like Uncharted and The Last of Us are funny cases, since them being video games and having the actors they had made them far more liked then their movie/televison counterparts.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I'm playing the last two No More Heroes again and they are surprisingly pretentious, like having the plot be an expanded universe of all of Suda's work, have an entire level dick sucking Shadows of the Damned and having characters do a podcast about a Japanese film producer. The thing that prevents it being too bad is that the games themselves feel more like a shitpost.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

@moocow Dude I think that was the whole point of Michaels character, he’s surrounded by a shitty parody of the American family and the awful society he’s in wants to side with them.

But the plot still sucked. Meandering nonsense, no point to it. I liked the concept of each character representing a different aspect of the GTA protagonist (deconstruction for Michael, traditional for Franklin, and deconstruction of the player for Trevor), but the actual narrative itself is wank.

 

[Articles and Nudes]

Imo, the GTA games got worse as their commentary and satire turned into outright spite and nihilism. GTA3 poked fun at everything, taking the piss out of capitalism, victim culture, toxic guys, etc, but was done firmly in cheek. The radios were especially great - mocking different genres of music while also showing a clear, actual passion for the source material at the same time.

Gta 5 brings to mind a writer who was absolutely fucking furious about everything, and wasn't stuck to an Internet blog. No humour, levity or wit. Just AMERICA BAD, RICH WORSE again and again and again.

 

[The Foxtrot]

Imo, the GTA games got worse as their commentary and satire turned into outright spite and nihilism. GTA3 poked fun at everything, taking the piss out of capitalism, victim culture, toxic guys, etc, but was done firmly in cheek. The radios were especially great - mocking different genres of music while also showing a clear, actual passion for the source material at the same time.

Gta 5 brings to mind a writer who was absolutely fucking furious about everything, and wasn't stuck to an Internet blog. No humour, levity or wit. Just AMERICA BAD, RICH WORSE again and again and again.

Not to mention Trevor being a "deconstruction of the player" is complete bullshit. He's someone's edgelord OC played completely straight. We get it, the crazy inbred crack baby methhead bastard child carries out acts of complete psychopathy while swearing like a retarded 12 year old for hours on end. But oh, he conveniently has a twagic backstowwy, so the player shouldn't absolutely hate him for being an edgelord OC and should feel bad for him!

Trevor is the same shit type of "character" as Haze from Anonymous Agony if AA had a higher budget and a legion of fanboys to defend it. He's as much a "deconstruction of the player" as The Last Jedi was a "deconstruction" of Star Wars.

 

[BiggerChungus]

Bioshock Infinite was the first time I've ever felt I was playing a game from inside it's own asshole so that one.

Bioshock Infinite's probably the most pretentious AAA release there's ever been. Death Stranding is very, very close, but it feels pretentious in the "this is artsy-fartsy pseudo-intellectual nonsense that doesn't actually mean anything" way, while Infinite is that plus "we're smarter and better people than our stupid audience" arrogance, on top of the condescending and politically-motivated themes.

Not to mention Trevor being a "deconstruction of the player" is complete bullshit. He's someone's edgelord OC played completely straight.

What always got me about Trevor was they acted like, in their whole deconstruction shit, he was representative of every GTA player. They conveniently ignored the fact that one of the biggest, if not the biggest reason Niko was their best-received protagonist was because you didn't have to play him as a complete psychopath, and you had the agency to make him do kind or merciful things. His appeal is the exact opposite of why so many players hated Trevor.