- Joined
- Apr 19, 2019
This is like walking into a BLM gathering and screaming Nigger.
Let's Sperg JAIMAS PLAYS A TERRIBLE GAME: EXTREME MEATPUNKS FOREVER by Heather Flowers - TFW You Make James Corbett Seem Like a Good Writer by Comparison
- Thread starter Jaimas
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- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
It actively pisses me off that the word "meatpunk" and this drawing actually seem pretty cool on their own. If I saw this picture on steam or something I'd probably click on it to learn more, even if the full title is dumb. Monstrous meatmech battles? Sign me up!
Aaaaaaaaand then the final result is garbage with no on screen biohorror shit. The characters are just regular dudes in regular clothes that look slightly gay, the ascii backgrounds have no personality whatsoever or even a theme beyond "generic city", and that cool fleshy robot just looks like this in game
Atari games have a better aesthetic than this. They even resemble their box art more and that's saying a lot. I wonder if Flowers commissioned the meatmech from a different person than whoever did the character art and backgrounds.
Aaaaaaaaand then the final result is garbage with no on screen biohorror shit. The characters are just regular dudes in regular clothes that look slightly gay, the ascii backgrounds have no personality whatsoever or even a theme beyond "generic city", and that cool fleshy robot just looks like this in game
Atari games have a better aesthetic than this. They even resemble their box art more and that's saying a lot. I wonder if Flowers commissioned the meatmech from a different person than whoever did the character art and backgrounds.
No prob, if you want I can give you some more recommendations.
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2014
Gladly, the pack appeared a little after Cyberpunk 2077 was out for reasons that no one cared
The guy is a unfunny "writer" with a failed patreon and his twitter is full of TDS
The pack is absolutely garbage and somehow managed to get 50k dollars
I correct my last statement i thought it was in this pack but i crossed my cables, it was actually added to another bundle, the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality that is worse than this one
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
Jaimas, I'll let you finish, but I want to hijack this for a game of-
Let's Fix Meatpunk
The rules are simple. Let's propose ideas of how to fix the game. Obvious things like "put some more time, effort, and money into it" and "don't make it at all" will be pushed aside for now. Let's take the stated concept and run with it, changing as little as possible from a budget point of view.
The "meat" in meatpunk
It should go without saying, but the good initial idea of meaty bio mechs is wasted, and if what Jaimas said is true, it was included simply because the dev has a guro fetish. Putting your fetish into your angry political screed is bad because it confuses the issue at best, and undermines it at worst. This can easily be shown by replacing the guro elements with any other fetish.
"We're going to bash the fash and teach those nazi's what for by sending dick pics to random women online!"
So either the meat element has to go, or the political element has to go.
New Guy 2
Jaimas already covered this, but the opening with "the fash" is bad. Simply being the main character doesn't make them a good guy. I could go on at length about this, talking about how they could justify the main characters actions with scenes of the Fishmen Against Salmon and Haddock being evil, how "show don't tell" applies to the "racist joke", but let's skip right to the fix.
The scene should be the other way around. The main characters should be minding their own business when the Fash comes looking for a fight. After the fight, have the police refuse to help and threaten the main characters. This would be as cringy as one of those Law and Order "message" episodes, but at least it would make sense.
This also applies to the post fight recruitment scene. The characters aren't quirky, they're insane.
Let's Fix Meatpunk
The rules are simple. Let's propose ideas of how to fix the game. Obvious things like "put some more time, effort, and money into it" and "don't make it at all" will be pushed aside for now. Let's take the stated concept and run with it, changing as little as possible from a budget point of view.
The "meat" in meatpunk
It should go without saying, but the good initial idea of meaty bio mechs is wasted, and if what Jaimas said is true, it was included simply because the dev has a guro fetish. Putting your fetish into your angry political screed is bad because it confuses the issue at best, and undermines it at worst. This can easily be shown by replacing the guro elements with any other fetish.
"We're going to bash the fash and teach those nazi's what for by sending dick pics to random women online!"
So either the meat element has to go, or the political element has to go.
New Guy 2
Jaimas already covered this, but the opening with "the fash" is bad. Simply being the main character doesn't make them a good guy. I could go on at length about this, talking about how they could justify the main characters actions with scenes of the Fishmen Against Salmon and Haddock being evil, how "show don't tell" applies to the "racist joke", but let's skip right to the fix.
The scene should be the other way around. The main characters should be minding their own business when the Fash comes looking for a fight. After the fight, have the police refuse to help and threaten the main characters. This would be as cringy as one of those Law and Order "message" episodes, but at least it would make sense.
This also applies to the post fight recruitment scene. The characters aren't quirky, they're insane.
I saw it shilled all over progressive social media and resetera. I doubt it raised 50k, but if it did, I wouldn't be surprised if most of it was from a small number of large donors.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jan 4, 2020
I'm still fucking honored. I've lurked this site since 2016 so getting to show Jaimas this and him confirming its shit is extra validating to my tumblr validation card.
Fun fact: I'm a shit head in the indie game community. I found this through my friend who went through game dev college and they recommended it to me. Two years later they are taking testosterone to transition to nonbinary, and is currently helping antifa in some way with their communist roommate. I miss the old them greatly, but thats here nor there.
I checked it out myself in a lets paly and lost it after this chapter. My brain fell out of its skullplace once the Fash came on board: its the most boxy, stilted writing that I though no one could write with a straight face.
The indie game community on itch.io + twitter is so fucking constrictive and critique adverse, especially to lbgtwtfbbq games. I rather be in early newgrounds hell where people shat on each other and called each other fags for the slightest of reasons than this one: at least they said what the fuck was wrong with my game instead of hugboxing. I am fucking dying on itchio, I'm going to focus on gamejolt for my own terrible games so at least I can get called fat and ugly by 5 year olds who make FNAF fangames instead being treated like a good dog if I bring my master a bone on itch.io.
You'd think the game would do better at it considering how much sjw types go crazy for it. But no, there's a reason this game doesn't have many lets plays on youtube.
Please don't, your username is cool and you aren't a mouth breather and make funny post. But as the saying goes, if you flip, film it.
I should have fucking known this. Its so obvious in hindsight.
And damn, thank you. The antagonist fall flat on their face. The game might as well rename the fash scarecrows for how much fucking straw they're made out of. Would make just as much sense probably. Its hard to point out how retarded the villains are on itchio as stated earlier, I feel sanity flowing back into me.
Speaking of not knowing how to interact: The entire writing style is shittly abridged, as if the author wants to skip to the parts she likes and gives no shits about anything else. Its such a weird half assed thought pattern. Like, as if she expects you to already be invested or only needing to know the barest amount of work (like interjecting rp brackets aaa:[inserts them] and shitty grammar). Something tells me miss flowers was turned to transgenderism via the internet and that she spent an awful lot of her life on it due to her own bad social skills, whether from autism or something else.
Lastly Jaimas my man I owe you my life and 100 nice cigars or beers. PLEASE enjoy good shit like Nier and boomer shooters in between these
A) I am 90% sure that Miss Flowers is actually autistic. Example A: the writing. Example B: this is her:
She could be Chris' cousin.
B) Something tells me the color coding is homestuck. The colors of the 4 protagonist match the ones of HS and have a similarish writing style. It all comes back to HS.
If anyone is looking for a copy of this game or others from the BLM summer bundle, hit a gal up. I don't know WHY you want to torture yourself but I am ready to help.
Also godspeed Judge Dredd I'm partway through and I'm liking it more and more.
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2014
I'm still fucking honored. I've lurked this site since 2016 so getting to show Jaimas this and him confirming its shit is extra validating to my tumblr validation card.
Fun fact: I'm a shit head in the indie game community. I found this through my friend who went through game dev college and they recommended it to me. Two years later they are taking testosterone to transition to nonbinary, and is currently helping antifa in some way with their communist roommate. I miss the old them greatly, but thats here nor there.
I checked it out myself in a lets paly and lost it after this chapter. My brain fell out of its skullplace once the Fash came on board: its the most boxy, stilted writing that I though no one could write with a straight face.
The indie game community on itch.io + twitter is so fucking constrictive and critique adverse, especially to lbgtwtfbbq games. I rather be in early newgrounds hell where people shat on each other and called each other fags for the slightest of reasons than this one: at least they said what the fuck was wrong with my game instead of hugboxing. I am fucking dying on itchio, I'm going to focus on gamejolt for my own terrible games so at least I can get called fat and ugly by 5 year olds who make FNAF fangames instead being treated like a good dog if I bring my master a bone on itch.io.
You'd think the game would do better at it considering how much sjw types go crazy for it. But no, there's a reason this game doesn't have many lets plays on youtube.
Please don't, your username is cool and you aren't a mouth breather and make funny post. But as the saying goes, if you flip, film it.
I should have fucking known this. Its so obvious in hindsight.
And damn, thank you. The antagonist fall flat on their face. The game might as well rename the fash scarecrows for how much fucking straw they're made out of. Would make just as much sense probably. Its hard to point out how retarded the villains are on itchio as stated earlier, I feel sanity flowing back into me.
Speaking of not knowing how to interact: The entire writing style is shittly abridged, as if the author wants to skip to the parts she likes and gives no shits about anything else. Its such a weird half assed thought pattern. Like, as if she expects you to already be invested or only needing to know the barest amount of work (like interjecting rp brackets aaa:[inserts them] and shitty grammar). Something tells me miss flowers was turned to transgenderism via the internet and that she spent an awful lot of her life on it due to her own bad social skills, whether from autism or something else.
Lastly Jaimas my man I owe you my life and 100 nice cigars or beers. PLEASE enjoy good shit like Nier and boomer shooters in between these
A) I am 90% sure that Miss Flowers is actually autistic. Example A: the writing. Example B: this is her:
View attachment 1864356
She could be Chris' cousin.
B) Something tells me the color coding is homestuck. The colors of the 4 protagonist match the ones of HS and have a similarish writing style. It all comes back to HS.
If anyone is looking for a copy of this game or others from the BLM summer bundle, hit a gal up. I don't know WHY you want to torture yourself but I am ready to help.
Also godspeed Judge Dredd I'm partway through and I'm liking it more and more.
This is also her:
Careful lass, don't wanna cut yourself on all that edge.
.....Episode 2 tomorrow if everything goes according to plan.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
I know I've said this before, but Homestuck ruined a generation of artists.
- Joined
- Jun 27, 2014
Nothing to it but to do it, and let's get done with Chapter 2. We open on Cass and Lianna, who literally have around 12 pages of ".........." before Cass breaks the monotony with the following:
We're just doing great. At some point the two of them discuss why the meeting was in a church when Lianna elects to check off another diversity checkbox.
Do you know how earlier, that one bit of dialogue from one of the "Fash" made me stop for a minute to bring up how bad the writing for this game was? Meet someone who brings that feeling with every single utterance. This, gentle readers, is Brad.
.....This character fucking broke me. After fifteen, maybe twenty terrible games for Jaimas Plays a Terrible Game, I thought I was ready for anything. "I managed to tank ReGiCiDe, I can deal with this," I thought. But this game managed to do something I have never seen before in my entire life. It was so insane that I had to go back and look at the screenshots I took, and I'm still not entirely convinced this is real:
He communicates entirely in Twitter-speak.
The second I saw this, I genuinely expected to wake up in a hospital with @lolwut and @BOLDYSPICY! nearby, wearing labcoats and bearing clipboards, congratulating me on escaping some kind of simulation. I do not know how to fucking respond to this. Bad dialogue is one thing, but he communicates entirely in Twitterisms. For no fucking reason.
That is writing so bad that it is a bigger antagonist in this game than the alleged Fash.
As it turns out, Sam and Lianna have a history and immediately deal with it like the healthy, well-adjusted adults that they are.
Gradually the pair calm down as Brad and Cass dispel the situation and Sam talks to Brad for a bit.
Probably the first bit of actual worldbuilding this game has, and it's completely glossed over as Sam realizes he did something bad.
The group wraps up for the night, and things progress as you expected them to.
We're going to start a new drinking game here.
Every time the game's writing wants the "Fash" to be simultaneously transparently evil without any attempt to humanize them while also ensuring they remain completely pathetic and impossible to take seriously, you take a shot.
Since your team actually almost gets away with this - yes, really - if you respond with "no" to the above question:
Take a shot.
Things escalate when Cass insists on proper pronouns and everything goes off the rails.
Take another shot.
You get to pick your hero here. Because I want him to die, I choose Brad.
......The game says "No" and gives me Lianna instead as she demands to handle this fight. Even though you get to try to argue you use someone else, the game won't let you. Lianna only. No Items. Final Destination.
|
....Her character model is the exact same as Sam's. This fight is actually even easier than the previous one because you start above them, the enemy has to push you out, and the enemy has the cliff right behind them. Even funnier, the enemy here wandered south and killed themselves when the battle started. Ignore the other Mechs, they're just terrain obstacles. Once he dies, you move to the arrow and teleport to the next area.
Lianna's ability is notably shittier than Sam's, in that it boosts her movement speed. No fancy drift racing. In return, however, her melee does like twice the knockback range, which makes her ridiculously overpowered in this game. I didn't even have time to take a screenshot this go-gound, Lianna ended it that quick.
Again, the enemy literally cannot kill you if you have your back to the wall, which is basically how it starts. These fights are a joke.
Finally, we encounter a 2v1 with the dreaded HAT FASH. His mech literally has a hat. A white hat.
I zoom in in order to take a better look:
While I admittedly added the text for the sake of a joke, zooming in allowed me to see that that is unmistakably a fedora.
This intimidating boss goes down in exactly six seconds. Fucking amazing.
All right, let's take a step back a moment, and analyze things here:
Jason, a drunken gay idiot, goaded a local hoodlum into a fight, then threw his friend Sam in to fight his battles. Apropos of nothing, the other hoodlum that escaped then came back with his friends to start shit with Sam for beating the shit out of his friend. Due to Lianna being an asshole, the group ended their meeting early and wandering into said hoodlum group, after they weren't able to find Sam earlier. They don't recognize Sam when he's right in front of them, and only got into a fight because our heroes chose to escalate, despite the fact that one of the "Fash" was very clearly the son of a local law enforcement official.
Scorekeepers might note: At no point did the "Fash" do anything other than be assholes in direct response to the protagonist and his associates being bigger assholes. Brad is the only one who is innocent in all this, and Brad's a fucking sped who talks entirely in Twitterisms. This does, on balance, make him the most likable member of the cast, and that revelation makes my brain feel hurty.
The game takes this as some gigantic "OMG THEY'RE IN SUCH DANGUR" situation. No one fucking died. This is some Jeff the Killer "I GO FOR WINNING!!" shit. The idiocy of this and the preceding chapter is being treated like some gigantic event of earth-shattering significance, like the group is on the run from a murder they didn't commit, when it's the characters mostly running from the consequences of their actions, which given the developer's outbursts on the Twitterbox, kind of make a bit more sense with this in mind.
Unfortunately for the plot, Sam is negligibly better written and thus has a sense of personal responsibility, and realizes the situation isn't that serious. Unfortunately for Brad, his is in this game. He is thusly browbeaten into a road trip by the other characters, especially Brad, because "i dun wanna see u murdered."
So this is how we wind up on the other side of the fence, eh? Getting into a squabble with a literal fedora-wearing stereotype of what a Twitter loon thinks Fascists are. Fucking magical. If you ever need concrete proof of why itch.io is shit, take a good, hard look at games like this and remind yourself that you will more-than-likely be banned if you criticize this game in any capacity.
Thank GodJesus Bearchrist. I need to detox.
Part of me is still recovering from Brad, so instead of a treatise on why his character dialogue gave me the memetic version of cancer, we're going to focus on the antagonist faction in the Chapter 2 episode of Why Extreme Meatpunks Forever Does Not Fucking Work.
The Fash. We've touched upon them a few times, but they're possibly one of the least threatening antagonist groups in the history of video games. They are incompetent, petty, as subtle as a Captain Planet villain, vindictive, recalcitrant, and wholly unbelievable. They are also taken completely seriously by the protagonists..... and have no ability to be taken seriously by the player.
You might be surprised to learn that this is not an isolated incident with this game, nor is it a singular phenomenon. It's actually really common with modern writers, and while modern academia arguing that personal agency does not exist has a lot to do with it, the biggest culprit is inexperience and having a very limited field of view, rather than being an untalented hack. The thing is, Heather Flowers doesn't have that defense. She's actually fairly well-read, and has mentioned reading everything from Terry Pratchett to Tolkien.
So how the fuck does this happen?
.....By blatantly appealing to Twitter, that's how.
The dirty secret of the Fash in this game is that the way they're written is solely to appeal to Twitter. Twitter demands that those who would appeal to it paint their scrappy protagonists as underdogs, and also demands that anyone who defies their chosen ones be shown zero respect whatsoever. The end result of this insane duality is that they make the their antagonists a quite literal strawman that their heroes will have no difficulty whatsoever defeating, and will be in no way actually threatened by. While this was originally a common phenomenon to see on Tumblr and Wattpad, this problem has gotten so endemic that you now regularly see it in movies with multi-million dollar budgets and professional works that should, at least in theory, need to see the desk of an editor at some point before release.
The problem is that choosing to make your villains this way utterly retards their ability to be effective and hamstrings any impact they can have. There is no attempt to humanize them, so there is no capacity for reflection via their actions. There is no attempt to establish them as anything other than mindlessly evil, so we're left solely going by the actions of the protagonists, who may or may not be portrayed, via their actions, as even worse in-universe.
As a corollary, since the heroes can't possibly lose, and the writer isn't going to make bad shit happen to their beloved characters less they piss off one of the represented diversity checkboxes, there's minimal stakes. The end result is writing that makes Sonichu look brilliant in comparison, because Chris fucking lost sometimes.
It's not impossible to make a villain that is both hilarious and utterly terrifying. Anyone who's played Final Fantasy VI will vouch for that shit, but that takes much better writing and way more care than most are willing to devote, as well as a need to explore some of the most horrifying aspects of human nature in great detail and understand the thought processes behind them. So since miss Flowers is trying to establish a not-so-subtle Nazi faction within her setting (while not being able to actually portray what a fascist actually is), let's take a look at a game with Nazis and which actually leverages them correctly, in the Metro series.
In Metro 2033, Artyom has to slip through both the Red Line and Reich stations - a faction of communists affiliated with the old Soviet bloc, and a faction of actual fucking Nazis - that are currently at war with one another. You can't afford a completely hands-off approach here, since both sides will happily murder your ass if they see you, assuming you're one of the enemy. It's kill or be killed if you get spotted, so stealthing it is far and away the better option, since otherwise you will need to gun down dozens of people in a game where you can die in like 4 bullets. If you do take the time to stealth it, you run across why both factions are absolute fucking maniacs that people would be best staying the fuck away from, but also why anyone would see either of these factions as attractive alternatives to how things are. Life in the Metro fucking sucks, dealing with mutants and brigands, and radiation and starvation and god knows what else lurks in the fucking tunnels, and the surface is unlivable right now. Settlements "go dark" all the fucking time and get wiped the fuck out by things with claws in the goddamn tunnels, opportunistic raiders, and supernatural phenomena. While wealthier stations like Polis can get away with hiring mercenaries, everyone else is eking out a living in a shithole. Both sides are an alternative to this, but both sides are, ultimately, two sides of the same coin and lead to the same outcome: A totalitarian shithole. The people serving them are for the most part, not mindlessly evil, but desperate people convinced they're doing the right thing, if not being outright forced to do so and having no other choice, lest they be shot by the commissar or their associates for being found wanting.
So let's analyze. How can we make the Fash in this game.... Y'know, not shit? The way to handle this would be to fundamentally change the entire gameplay paradigm, which Heather Flowers is most-assuredly not going to do - she wants the game's story to be shit because it makes her feel good and that's ultimately all that matters to her.
Nonetheless, I'll take a stab at it. I would have led the game off by having them be in the background for most of the game while doing the initial setting-building. Have them not be mindlessly evil,for one. Establish why there are fascist elements in this setting. Establish why they've been tolerated and are an insulated power in this setting. Explain how the situation came to be as the story unfolds. Set things up in a way that what leads to the crisis point is not a combination of the protagonist's dipshit friend and plot convenience, but something smoother and more natural. Put more effort into your villains than "less than Jaimas spent reviewing this game."
If you, as the setting's creator, can't care enough, then neither should anyone else.
Shots Taken: 2
We're just doing great. At some point the two of them discuss why the meeting was in a church when Lianna elects to check off another diversity checkbox.
Do you know how earlier, that one bit of dialogue from one of the "Fash" made me stop for a minute to bring up how bad the writing for this game was? Meet someone who brings that feeling with every single utterance. This, gentle readers, is Brad.
.....This character fucking broke me. After fifteen, maybe twenty terrible games for Jaimas Plays a Terrible Game, I thought I was ready for anything. "I managed to tank ReGiCiDe, I can deal with this," I thought. But this game managed to do something I have never seen before in my entire life. It was so insane that I had to go back and look at the screenshots I took, and I'm still not entirely convinced this is real:
He communicates entirely in Twitter-speak.
The second I saw this, I genuinely expected to wake up in a hospital with @lolwut and @BOLDYSPICY! nearby, wearing labcoats and bearing clipboards, congratulating me on escaping some kind of simulation. I do not know how to fucking respond to this. Bad dialogue is one thing, but he communicates entirely in Twitterisms. For no fucking reason.
That is writing so bad that it is a bigger antagonist in this game than the alleged Fash.
As it turns out, Sam and Lianna have a history and immediately deal with it like the healthy, well-adjusted adults that they are.
Gradually the pair calm down as Brad and Cass dispel the situation and Sam talks to Brad for a bit.
Probably the first bit of actual worldbuilding this game has, and it's completely glossed over as Sam realizes he did something bad.
The group wraps up for the night, and things progress as you expected them to.
We're going to start a new drinking game here.
Every time the game's writing wants the "Fash" to be simultaneously transparently evil without any attempt to humanize them while also ensuring they remain completely pathetic and impossible to take seriously, you take a shot.
Since your team actually almost gets away with this - yes, really - if you respond with "no" to the above question:
Take a shot.
Things escalate when Cass insists on proper pronouns and everything goes off the rails.
Take another shot.
You get to pick your hero here. Because I want him to die, I choose Brad.
......The game says "No" and gives me Lianna instead as she demands to handle this fight. Even though you get to try to argue you use someone else, the game won't let you. Lianna only. No Items. Final Destination.
|....Her character model is the exact same as Sam's. This fight is actually even easier than the previous one because you start above them, the enemy has to push you out, and the enemy has the cliff right behind them. Even funnier, the enemy here wandered south and killed themselves when the battle started. Ignore the other Mechs, they're just terrain obstacles. Once he dies, you move to the arrow and teleport to the next area.
Lianna's ability is notably shittier than Sam's, in that it boosts her movement speed. No fancy drift racing. In return, however, her melee does like twice the knockback range, which makes her ridiculously overpowered in this game. I didn't even have time to take a screenshot this go-gound, Lianna ended it that quick.
Again, the enemy literally cannot kill you if you have your back to the wall, which is basically how it starts. These fights are a joke.
Finally, we encounter a 2v1 with the dreaded HAT FASH. His mech literally has a hat. A white hat.
I zoom in in order to take a better look:
While I admittedly added the text for the sake of a joke, zooming in allowed me to see that that is unmistakably a fedora.
This intimidating boss goes down in exactly six seconds. Fucking amazing.
All right, let's take a step back a moment, and analyze things here:
Jason, a drunken gay idiot, goaded a local hoodlum into a fight, then threw his friend Sam in to fight his battles. Apropos of nothing, the other hoodlum that escaped then came back with his friends to start shit with Sam for beating the shit out of his friend. Due to Lianna being an asshole, the group ended their meeting early and wandering into said hoodlum group, after they weren't able to find Sam earlier. They don't recognize Sam when he's right in front of them, and only got into a fight because our heroes chose to escalate, despite the fact that one of the "Fash" was very clearly the son of a local law enforcement official.
Scorekeepers might note: At no point did the "Fash" do anything other than be assholes in direct response to the protagonist and his associates being bigger assholes. Brad is the only one who is innocent in all this, and Brad's a fucking sped who talks entirely in Twitterisms. This does, on balance, make him the most likable member of the cast, and that revelation makes my brain feel hurty.
The game takes this as some gigantic "OMG THEY'RE IN SUCH DANGUR" situation. No one fucking died. This is some Jeff the Killer "I GO FOR WINNING!!" shit. The idiocy of this and the preceding chapter is being treated like some gigantic event of earth-shattering significance, like the group is on the run from a murder they didn't commit, when it's the characters mostly running from the consequences of their actions, which given the developer's outbursts on the Twitterbox, kind of make a bit more sense with this in mind.
Unfortunately for the plot, Sam is negligibly better written and thus has a sense of personal responsibility, and realizes the situation isn't that serious. Unfortunately for Brad, his is in this game. He is thusly browbeaten into a road trip by the other characters, especially Brad, because "i dun wanna see u murdered."
So this is how we wind up on the other side of the fence, eh? Getting into a squabble with a literal fedora-wearing stereotype of what a Twitter loon thinks Fascists are. Fucking magical. If you ever need concrete proof of why itch.io is shit, take a good, hard look at games like this and remind yourself that you will more-than-likely be banned if you criticize this game in any capacity.
Thank GodJesus Bearchrist. I need to detox.
Part of me is still recovering from Brad, so instead of a treatise on why his character dialogue gave me the memetic version of cancer, we're going to focus on the antagonist faction in the Chapter 2 episode of Why Extreme Meatpunks Forever Does Not Fucking Work.
The Fash. We've touched upon them a few times, but they're possibly one of the least threatening antagonist groups in the history of video games. They are incompetent, petty, as subtle as a Captain Planet villain, vindictive, recalcitrant, and wholly unbelievable. They are also taken completely seriously by the protagonists..... and have no ability to be taken seriously by the player.
You might be surprised to learn that this is not an isolated incident with this game, nor is it a singular phenomenon. It's actually really common with modern writers, and while modern academia arguing that personal agency does not exist has a lot to do with it, the biggest culprit is inexperience and having a very limited field of view, rather than being an untalented hack. The thing is, Heather Flowers doesn't have that defense. She's actually fairly well-read, and has mentioned reading everything from Terry Pratchett to Tolkien.
So how the fuck does this happen?
.....By blatantly appealing to Twitter, that's how.
The dirty secret of the Fash in this game is that the way they're written is solely to appeal to Twitter. Twitter demands that those who would appeal to it paint their scrappy protagonists as underdogs, and also demands that anyone who defies their chosen ones be shown zero respect whatsoever. The end result of this insane duality is that they make the their antagonists a quite literal strawman that their heroes will have no difficulty whatsoever defeating, and will be in no way actually threatened by. While this was originally a common phenomenon to see on Tumblr and Wattpad, this problem has gotten so endemic that you now regularly see it in movies with multi-million dollar budgets and professional works that should, at least in theory, need to see the desk of an editor at some point before release.
The problem is that choosing to make your villains this way utterly retards their ability to be effective and hamstrings any impact they can have. There is no attempt to humanize them, so there is no capacity for reflection via their actions. There is no attempt to establish them as anything other than mindlessly evil, so we're left solely going by the actions of the protagonists, who may or may not be portrayed, via their actions, as even worse in-universe.
As a corollary, since the heroes can't possibly lose, and the writer isn't going to make bad shit happen to their beloved characters less they piss off one of the represented diversity checkboxes, there's minimal stakes. The end result is writing that makes Sonichu look brilliant in comparison, because Chris fucking lost sometimes.
It's not impossible to make a villain that is both hilarious and utterly terrifying. Anyone who's played Final Fantasy VI will vouch for that shit, but that takes much better writing and way more care than most are willing to devote, as well as a need to explore some of the most horrifying aspects of human nature in great detail and understand the thought processes behind them. So since miss Flowers is trying to establish a not-so-subtle Nazi faction within her setting (while not being able to actually portray what a fascist actually is), let's take a look at a game with Nazis and which actually leverages them correctly, in the Metro series.
In Metro 2033, Artyom has to slip through both the Red Line and Reich stations - a faction of communists affiliated with the old Soviet bloc, and a faction of actual fucking Nazis - that are currently at war with one another. You can't afford a completely hands-off approach here, since both sides will happily murder your ass if they see you, assuming you're one of the enemy. It's kill or be killed if you get spotted, so stealthing it is far and away the better option, since otherwise you will need to gun down dozens of people in a game where you can die in like 4 bullets. If you do take the time to stealth it, you run across why both factions are absolute fucking maniacs that people would be best staying the fuck away from, but also why anyone would see either of these factions as attractive alternatives to how things are. Life in the Metro fucking sucks, dealing with mutants and brigands, and radiation and starvation and god knows what else lurks in the fucking tunnels, and the surface is unlivable right now. Settlements "go dark" all the fucking time and get wiped the fuck out by things with claws in the goddamn tunnels, opportunistic raiders, and supernatural phenomena. While wealthier stations like Polis can get away with hiring mercenaries, everyone else is eking out a living in a shithole. Both sides are an alternative to this, but both sides are, ultimately, two sides of the same coin and lead to the same outcome: A totalitarian shithole. The people serving them are for the most part, not mindlessly evil, but desperate people convinced they're doing the right thing, if not being outright forced to do so and having no other choice, lest they be shot by the commissar or their associates for being found wanting.
So let's analyze. How can we make the Fash in this game.... Y'know, not shit? The way to handle this would be to fundamentally change the entire gameplay paradigm, which Heather Flowers is most-assuredly not going to do - she wants the game's story to be shit because it makes her feel good and that's ultimately all that matters to her.
Nonetheless, I'll take a stab at it. I would have led the game off by having them be in the background for most of the game while doing the initial setting-building. Have them not be mindlessly evil,for one. Establish why there are fascist elements in this setting. Establish why they've been tolerated and are an insulated power in this setting. Explain how the situation came to be as the story unfolds. Set things up in a way that what leads to the crisis point is not a combination of the protagonist's dipshit friend and plot convenience, but something smoother and more natural. Put more effort into your villains than "less than Jaimas spent reviewing this game."
If you, as the setting's creator, can't care enough, then neither should anyone else.
Shots Taken: 2
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- Nov 14, 2019
Where do you even find this obscure shit? I read your thread on 'Blood Pact' and was like... what the fuck?
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- Jun 27, 2014
It all dates back to a few years ago, when @BOLDYSPICY! and I used to review shitty games put out by Lolcows because nobody else wanted to play that shit. It was quickly determined that this was funny shit, and had a tendency to cause the Lolcows covered to chimp out, making it win-win. I don't mind because it's a good thing to play an unabashedly terrible game every once in a while to establish context, allowing you to love good games all the more and appreciate games you would have overlooked.
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- May 9, 2017
You know what? If it ever comes to that, I'll do an extra flip, just for you.
The game's art style reminds me of this obscure game I own, and while I haven't played Meatpunks and the two games are radically different I can still tell that 486 had far more effort put into it than this shitfest.
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- Jun 27, 2014
The real LP was the flips we made along the way.
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- Nov 14, 2019
I wonder how well this would translate to video form...
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- Jan 4, 2020
Fuck he's dying and trying to take us down with him, he's gone too far.
I'm sure this was highly praised by some reviewers for combining gameplay and story. Railroading the player isn't good ludonarrative synchronization.
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who watched bad creepypasta.
Bolding this for my own selfish pain.
This is one of the biggest fucking problems in SJW media and any other media that pushes an agenda: the motto of "If we humanize the villain or make them look cool, then people will be convinced to join them." I'm not kidding when I say these types fear that you thinking the Empire and Order in star wars is cool means you will suddenly develop fashcist sympathies, or heaven forbid, vote republican.
Take Heaven Will Be Mine, another sj game written by a trans lesbian and a cis lesbian (forgive the tv tropes, its the best way of giving a summary of autism without touching it). Here's one of the villains, a man who wants to kill gays IN SPACE.
So, Aaa0, why is his face blurred out?
They were deathly afraid that people would find him hot.
It's as retarded as it sounds. Fiction can affect reality, but only those with mental divergences or instabilities (honestly a fraction of both - most autistic and mentally ill people can tell the difference between fantasy and reality) change their entire world view based on their favorite fictional characters. This game has overwhelmingly positive reviews on steam since the only people who play it are people who are into this shit, same with MEATPUNKS.
EDIT: This really brings up the question of how the creator sees people who joined up with the nazis in Nazi Germany because they had to to survive? Are they still bastards? Do they turn into chuckling monsters as soon as they're hired? God.
The inability to understand or sympathize with their opponent kneecaps their narratives. They won't convert anyone to their side, nor will they create complex villains. This will lead to people bot giving a shit about their writing and therefore not giving a flying flip about their fucking gospel.
Oh! Fun fact about Brad:
Later tonight I might post a bit more about Ms. Flowers. I find her fascinating.
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She says she's read everything from Pratchett to Tolkien.
I think I'd want to see some bona fides first.
I think I'd want to see some bona fides first.
Fictional Character
kiwifarms.net
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- Jun 13, 2020
Jeff the Killer vs. Extreme Meatpunks. I'll write the creepypasta.
Not surprisingly, game journalists were enthusiastic about Extreme Meatpunks. Because it's a piss-easy game written at baby level.
You know how sometimes you try to read something and because you're tired the words leave no impact? I imagine that's how the author reads everything.
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- Jan 5, 2019
I'm surprised her acting like a scene girl, and the fact that she goes by Heather Flowers didn't tip you off sooner.
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- Jan 4, 2020
Some more information about creator Heather Flowers (aka Heather Roberts) I'm not making a thread so I didn't archive everything, sorry.
Heather doesnt seem like a Narcissit, this is how people on queer twitter talk.
Older Selfies:
I'm sorry Heather, but I have bad news for you.
I wish I knew what the above meant.
There are not enough rainbows in the world for this statement.
Maximum Ride became a giant fillabuster for fighting climate change towards the end if I recall correctly.
There's selling a product and then there's believing other's hype about yourself too much.
Glad she set her sites narrower, the destruction of capitalism will have to come before I call her a good writer.
Tempting me to make my own shitty game about meatpunk, but on the Moonman Doom side of things.
Also, no. A good story writer isn't their message: its how they use their words and the quality of narrative they produce. Fuck off.
At least she enjoys what she's creating, but man, really worried it's a fetish.
Does this mean if I'm a fascist I give up my artist card? Probably.
Caffinated Otter isn't wrong at all.
Imagine only seeing the world like this.
There's more but I can look at those when we have more context later.
@Jaimas , you might enjoy an interview with Ms. Flowers and her music friend, it includes some of the "why" to the "why the fuck do you write like this". You are also correct.
Homestuck ruins writing again. Fuck this.
Heather doesnt seem like a Narcissit, this is how people on queer twitter talk.
Older Selfies:
I'm sorry Heather, but I have bad news for you.
I wish I knew what the above meant.
There are not enough rainbows in the world for this statement.
Maximum Ride became a giant fillabuster for fighting climate change towards the end if I recall correctly.
There's selling a product and then there's believing other's hype about yourself too much.
Glad she set her sites narrower, the destruction of capitalism will have to come before I call her a good writer.
Tempting me to make my own shitty game about meatpunk, but on the Moonman Doom side of things.
Also, no. A good story writer isn't their message: its how they use their words and the quality of narrative they produce. Fuck off.
At least she enjoys what she's creating, but man, really worried it's a fetish.
Does this mean if I'm a fascist I give up my artist card? Probably.
Caffinated Otter isn't wrong at all.
Imagine only seeing the world like this.
There's more but I can look at those when we have more context later.
@Jaimas , you might enjoy an interview with Ms. Flowers and her music friend, it includes some of the "why" to the "why the fuck do you write like this". You are also correct.
Homestuck ruins writing again. Fuck this.
