What are the most pretentious games ever made?

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Haze is remembered for just being another shitty attempt at a "halo killer" from the nogaems PS3 era; but it had a pretty shitty and generic pretentious story about "corporations bad". It's kinda like what Spec Ops The Line did; except worse and extremely unsatisfying.

Spoiler: a shitty summary of haze's story

Protagonist joins big PMC company because advertising made them seem like heroic freedom fighter world police and the player wanted to be a real hero boy
protagonist gets a power armor suit that injects the PMC company's magic soldier drug and goes to fight rebels in Africa
protagonist discovered the drug is a mind control drug; which hid the protagonist from seeing the massacre of innocent civilians
joins the bad guy rebels he was just fighting
it is revealed that the company exists just to make the drug and wants to make it an everyday consumer drug to make infinite money and indirectly rule the world or something to that end
the PMC is, in-effect, just soldiers for the corporation killing the natives of the land where the ingredient to make the drug is located
protagonist kills all the evil PMC soldiers and their leaders
the leader of the rebels then declares his intent to make the drug himself so then he can have infinite money and whatever
game ends

If you want to witness the story yourself, I only even remembered this game (and only know it's story) because of this video I watched a little while ago:

It's not really pretentious. "Military industrial complex bad" is just about the most safe moral in media possible, and no one will argue Haze is intelligent, which I think is the bare minimum for a game to be seen as pretentious (ie, have at least one idiot try to paint it as deep).

 

[Lammy]

It's not really pretentious. "Military industrial complex bad" is just about the most safe moral in media possible, and no one will argue Haze is intelligent, which I think is the bare minimum for a game to be seen as pretentious (ie, have at least one idiot try to paint it as deep).

I think the part that makes it pretentious is the ending of "the rebel leader just takes over making the drug from the corpo and ultimately nothing was accomplished".
It comes across as "so like, endless conflict and cycles of violence and everyone in war is bad, dude" to me; but it's done so poorly it's just a shitty anticlimax.

I do agree though that nobody would argue the game is intelligent, mostly because the actual game part of the game is so bad that it just makes the game laughable; but I still feel like the writers were trying to make something with some kind of lame message along the lines of "your efforts are ultimately wasted at the end, because you lose because you partook in war as a soldier and war is like bad and stuff".

 

[Colon capital V]

Alright I just remembered something waaay far back in the recesses of my brain:
Autism Simulator:

A game that simulates you having autism featuring low-poly unity-asset tier models and blarring earrape and static when you get close to other kids.
Now look, I understand this game is more "educational" showing what it's like for a person to have autism. But surely whoever made this could've done it with a bit more work and "finesse", you know? Regardless people in the comments harold this as being "good and accurate portrayal" of autism, which is fine but surely they know way better media is out there that portrays their 'ism better I assume.

 

[Fastest Hand In The East]

Alsmot all walking simulators.
The only decent ones are horrors like Paratopic.

 

[Coolio55]

Alright I just remembered something waaay far back in the recesses of my brain:
Autism Simulator:

A game that simulates you having autism featuring low-poly unity-asset tier models and blarring earrape and static when you get close to other kids.
Now look, I understand this game is more "educational" showing what it's like for a person to have autism. But surely whoever made this could've done it with a bit more work and "finesse", you know? Regardless people in the comments harold this as being "good and accurate portrayal" of autism, which is fine but surely they know way better media is out there that portrays their 'ism better I assume.

I like to imagine that all the distorted audio that plays is actually the protagonist's autistic screeching.

 

[Shining Wit]

Gonna add Skullgirls to the list. Super pretentious wanna be competitive game. OuR cOmBoS gO aLl ThE wAy To OnE hUnDrEd!"

New devs came in and removed the reason why people bought this game; sexy females and gratuitous panty/cleavage shots. Can't have any of that in a serious, competitive game.

Dont forget removing the Soviet Announcer because of the ukraine invasion

Because a hokey bad russian accent in your game is clearly an affront to all those poor ukrainians

 

[Something Awful]

Alright I just remembered something waaay far back in the recesses of my brain:
Autism Simulator:

A game that simulates you having autism featuring low-poly unity-asset tier models and blarring earrape and static when you get close to other kids.
Now look, I understand this game is more "educational" showing what it's like for a person to have autism. But surely whoever made this could've done it with a bit more work and "finesse", you know? Regardless people in the comments harold this as being "good and accurate portrayal" of autism, which is fine but surely they know way better media is out there that portrays their 'ism better I assume.

Huh. Is it trying to make the argument that autists should just be euthanized for their own good? Because that's the conclusion I'm coming to.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

An autism simulator is downloading the most complex, tedious Factorio mods and pretending you enjoy every minute of it.

 

[Weltraumfürst]

Spec Ops: The Line is definitely high up on that list. And this is coming from someone who actually enjoyed it. Apocalypse Now is one of my favorite movies, and taking the idea of a rogue military leader getting chased down by a group of elite soldier who slowly lose it to the horrors of war and putting it in a video game is great. For the most part, Spec Ops did that well, and had it been that straightforward game, everything would have been dandy.

But then, of course, the game goes all Fight Club.

Now, Bioshock did something similar, but where Bioshock cleverly posed an interesting question about player agency and free will in a video game without directly asking it, Spec Ops talked down to the player while jacking itself off over how deep it is. Which would be okay if the game had ever offered the opportunity to not follow through with all the war crimes and shit. And to "you can turn off the game", I would answer "eat a dick".

Tl;dr, Far Cry 3 did it better.

Although the marketing campaign's idea of tricking CoD-bros into playing it was pretty funny.

 

[Rick The Stick]

Gonna add Skullgirls to the list. Super pretentious wanna be competitive game. OuR cOmBoS gO aLl ThE wAy To OnE hUnDrEd!"

New devs came in and removed the reason why people bought this game; sexy females and gratuitous panty/cleavage shots. Can't have any of that in a serious, competitive game.

100% combos aren't new or special. Fucking every fighter has them, and they rarely get patched out because only the most turbo autists could ever pull them off outside of training mode. That's all I got on tnat.

Dont forget removing the Soviet Announcer because of the ukraine invasion

Because a hokey bad russian accent in your game is clearly an affront to all those poor ukrainians

Just another reason why I give zero fucks about Ukraine.

 

[lonelyshores]

Anything that Kojima's laid his below average-size hands on. The MGS games will always be hailed as masterpieces when they are either glorified sony movie games or convoluted pseudo-intellectual stories. Anybody who actually enjoys video games would put gameplay above all else in a game. Tired of seeing low-tes soyny retards hailing them as one of the best game series of all time. MGR is superior to most the MGS games, if not all of them.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Dont forget removing the Soviet Announcer because of the ukraine invasion

Because a hokey bad russian accent in your game is clearly an affront to all those poor ukrainians

I don't think most Americans would be able to tell Russian/Ukrainian accents or language apart.

 

[Beautiful Border]

Alright I just remembered something waaay far back in the recesses of my brain:
Autism Simulator:

A game that simulates you having autism featuring low-poly unity-asset tier models and blarring earrape and static when you get close to other kids.
Now look, I understand this game is more "educational" showing what it's like for a person to have autism. But surely whoever made this could've done it with a bit more work and "finesse", you know? Regardless people in the comments harold this as being "good and accurate portrayal" of autism, which is fine but surely they know way better media is out there that portrays their 'ism better I assume.

A game that handled a similar concept much better is "Adventures with Anxiety":

I think it does a great job of showing that an anxiety disorder isn't just a series of isolated "bad thoughts" but a fundamental part of your thought process, where you're constantly mentally dealing with some kind of perceived threat or anticipating one until you're simply too exhausted to carry on. It also makes a good point that, when you're constantly anxious, it clouds your judgement and makes you less able to recognize genuine issues when they do arise.

Even before knowing about this game I've also done the same thing of externalizing my OCD as something separate from myself, so there was an immediate flash of "this person gets it!" when I played through it. It's a game that really resonated with me, you can tell the creator has an intimate understanding of the problem and has figured out how to convey it.

 

[blablabla]

Anything that Kojima's laid his below average-size hands on. The MGS games will always be hailed as masterpieces when they are either glorified sony movie games or convoluted pseudo-intellectual stories. Anybody who actually enjoys video games would put gameplay above all else in a game. Tired of seeing low-tes soyny retards hailing them as one of the best game series of all time. MGR is superior to most the MGS games, if not all of them.

mgs 1 and 3 are legit.
policenauts and snatcher are also good.

 

[Colon capital V]

A game that handled a similar concept much better is "Adventures with Anxiety":

I think it does a great job of showing that an anxiety disorder isn't just a series of isolated "bad thoughts" but a fundamental part of your thought process, where you're constantly mentally dealing with some kind of perceived threat or anticipating one until you're simply too exhausted to carry on. It also makes a good point that, when you're constantly anxious, it clouds your judgement and makes you less able to recognize genuine issues when they do arise.

Even before knowing about this game I've also done the same thing of externalizing my OCD as something separate from myself, so there was an immediate flash of "this person gets it!" when I played through it. It's a game that really resonated with me, you can tell the creator has an intimate understanding of the problem and has figured out how to convey it.

Game may be made by a troon, but I agree it does a pretty good job of portraying what it's like constantly perceiving threats about shit that's pretty exhausting and annoying in a charming and understandable way.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

How does Kiwi Farms feel about This War of Mine?
It came along at a time when that sort of game as art or game as message was still novel, surprising. 2014, nearly a decade ago. I remember liking it for the short time I played it (then never touched it again).

Going back to it, it feels real wanky. I like stuff that has an art style as its style, but the black-and-white comic booky thing feels so fucking hokey. The morality stuff feels manipulative and clumsy and laughably ineffective. I know you've got to go in with a willingness to play along, I was just surprised at how little it has landed with me.

As a game it's clanky to control, which I think was the biggest reason I stopped playing those years ago.

 

[Beautiful Border]

Game may be made by a troon

Wait, really? It's weird how I feel like I already sort of knew this even when I don't know anything about them. Something about the game just gives off that vibe, I guess.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

Ok, probably Killer 7....but it's also incredible, easily one of my Top Ten. Absolutely bonkers. Japanese insanity at its finest.

 

[Fagnacious D]

There was a very pretentious game called "MODE" Released in 1996. It wanted to take advantage of the up and coming genre of FMV games.

According to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_(video_game)
Users find themselves at the start of the game crashing an exclusive high-society fashion and art party on the top floor of an unnamed hotel hosted by anarchist artist Vito Brevis. The primary mystery at the heart of the event is Vito’s true intentions. He appears cynical and anarchistic, but hidden information can be found that implies that he is actually part of a secret cabal that is using this event as some kind of supernatural ritual.

The player character wanders about in first person and encounter people and have some sort of conversation but, the twist is there is only a "mood bar" instead of a formal written response system. There are 3 types of response.

Red on the left is negative. Blue in the middle is neutral. Green on the right is positive. supposedly there were plans to have at least two more options, neutral negative and neutral positive. They may have run out of time or room on the discs for the conversations. I don't recall what the reason was. Unlike Gone Home, Dear Esther or, Depression Quest, this game is remarkably bad because of how much effort was put into it. It feels like an artist who is so far up his own ass giving himself a hand job and expecting everyone to applaud him.

The behind the scenes video also functions as a trailer. To get an idea of how self congratulatory this game is, take a look.

It appears to have had a limited release. Remarkably Corel Company, known for digital art/design programs such as CorelDraw and CorelDesigner, was involved. They planned on opening up an entertainment division but, this game was so bad it killed any idea of that ever happening.

If you want to try it for yourself there are a couple of download links
My Abandonware
Internet Archive

If you just want to watch there's only one uncommentated video I could find

If you want to see more of the game's story paths then there is a lets play by Something Awful user "SuperGreat Friend" from over a decade ago. It is heavily commentated and done as a series of live streams with users voting on how to respond to the in game characters.
Lets Play [MODE]

 

[Colon capital V]

Wait, really? It's weird how I feel like I already sort of knew this even when I don't know anything about them. Something about the game just gives off that vibe, I guess.

It's made by the same person who made those "The Game" flash games if you ever saw those on YouTube.

They've also made these things on NewGrounds and itch.io


As well as having a youtube channel: