What are the most pretentious games ever made?

ShitLurker said:
Holy shit! That honest to God feels like providence!

What a hilarious shitshow, I do remember the "this game is so pretentious I gave me a film school degree" line from somewhere, so I did passively observe the shitshow, but certainly did not know the details nor till this thread know they actually made The Path. I'm just surprised that there isn't a long from essay on the postmorten of the company, I would watch that shit without a problem.

Same deal with the videos dissecting YIIK, won't play that thing ever, but had a lot of fun with OneyPlays and I can't deny some of the visuals of it aren't neat. Fascinating how stuff sometimes is just more entertaining to look at than actually interact with.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the meltdowns from Tale of Tales' buddies in the journosphere were a fucking sight to behold when that happened.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sleazy Car Salesman, Next Task, ducktales4gameboy and 1 other person
cybertoaster said:
Why are used vitas so expensive? did sony only made like 20 or what?
Click to expand...
Huge homebrew and hacking scene. Tons of homebrew ports from older PC games, and even lots of homebrew games. They just finished another game jam a few months ago with cash prizes. The hardware probably sold more after it's EoL than during its life cycle.

Before piracy was possible on Vita, it went on the clearance shelves, and the local walmart had the console with Borderlands 2 for $90. IIRC the bundle was around $250 normally, and very rarely went on sale.
I found out about the clearance online. People in the know were aware that a piracy breakthrough called Vitamin was close (or had just released), and everyone was grabbing them up for resale.
Yak-130 Mitten said:
Why? Honest question. Try to keep it short though.
Click to expand...
Walking sim, feline edition. To be fair, I didnt finish the game. I only played maybe an hour or two into it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 11 Herbs and Spices
1698113250169.png

I cannot think of a close second that was so high on it's own farts with it's self aggrandizing juvenile plot which requires several scenes of exposition where everything up that point needs a recap and every time it gets dumber and dumber.

A strand fedora type game.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
  • Winner
Reactions: Jarch6, Broseph, Mimitchi and 7 others
Jaimas said:
I can't help but notice that if it's a JPATG title or a game I've covered in-depth for this website before, the odds of me covering it in this thread are pretty high.
Click to expand...
to be fair. you've covered some of the most head in ass games i've ever seen and i heard of half of them before you. still tho not much can beat depression quest on the amount of blowjobs every wannabe journo gave it. probably cause quinn either: A). used her journo pals to push it, B). paid them off, or my favorite C). gave each and every one of them some damn good head.
 
  • Agree
  • Like
Reactions: 74164978231, The Foxtrot and Jaimas
Three relatively pretentious (but maybe not quite the biggest offenders of all time) games I haven't seen mentioned in this thread are Haze, Lawbreakers, and Battleborn.

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.
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:


Lawbreakers in the game itself wasn't that pretentious other than it being shaped by liberal world views (diverse cast, gender neutral bathrooms, whatever), but everything around the game's marketing and PR was pretentious as shit.
The tagline "Are You Skilled AF?", the entire design focus of the game being a high-skill Arena FPS with all the garbage of a shitty hero shooter, and just about everything surrounding Cliff Blezenski and his countless choice quotes and decisions.
Describing getting the idea to make the game as going to "make the next multi-million dollar shooter IP", fueled by the hubris of thinking he was responsible for the success of Unreal Tournament and Gears of War
Endlessly repeating how cool it was that the game was 30$ and not like those other "60$ multiplayer only bullshit" games
Changing the game from being planned/marketed as Free to Play to instead being 30$ mid-development
Not releasing the game on Xbox, when the only people that cared about "cliffy b's new game" being Gears of War fans (as he spurned his PC followers and never really had PS followers)
Generally just being sorta combatative with people criticizing the game (or him), especially with any and all comparisons to Overwatch
Overall, the entire game concept of making a hero shooter when it was the oversaturated trend of the now, and making an arena shooter when literally no arena shooter other than Quake 3 (and it's 2 rereleases) have been able to hold a playerbase in a over decade
Crowbcat's video on it puts it the picture together pretty well


Battleborn is just a failed FPS MOBA hero shooter whatever thing from the Borderlands team and has all of the pretentious levels of writing that Borderlands had. I suppose Borderlands already being mentioned kinda covers it, but I thought it was worth remembering that it existed to laugh at it for a moment.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: Jarch6, babadook, Shadfan666xxx000 and 4 others
SpecOps the line was more of a letdown for me, tho still pretentious af specially with that start screen. The game only seems deep during the first half hour or so which is why I guess all journos att were sucking that game off, because they barely play the games at all. But after all its all downhill, its one of the first AAA games to pull the bullshit "you're le bad for playing m'kay?" which tlou2 did again years later but in a more blatant way, as just like specops it didn't give you a way to not being a piece of shit, tho specops did have multiple endings the main story remains unchanged: you're the baddie dude. Gone are the days of actual branching stories because despite muh cinematic games and 2deep4you devs game scriptwriting its at its lowest, writers themselves have never been bigger lazier pieces of shit than they are now. You can't make a game boasting about morality and choice without the actual choice part, and no "not playing the game" isn't a choice when you already paid fucking $60 for it. The white phosphorous scene is the biggest example, its literally impossible to fight your way in and even when you're bombing the soldiers it wont let you stop until you burn the refugees too, its bullshit. And the ending! JFC what were they thinking? again lazy writers who think shyamalan twists and fight club are the apex of creativity so they make a sixth sense/tyler durden mixup that makes no sense, like why would 2 soldiers follow a commander who is seeing shit and talking to a radio with no batteries? its absurd.
Lord Xenu said:
Before piracy was possible on Vita, it went on the clearance shelves, and the local walmart had the console with Borderlands 2 for $90.
Click to expand...
Shit I totally missed that, when did it happen exactly?
Wesker said:
View attachment 5438368

I cannot think of a close second that was so high on it's own farts with it's self aggrandizing juvenile plot which requires several scenes of exposition where everything up that point needs a recap and every time it gets dumber and dumber.

A strand fedora type game.
Click to expand...
I got that game for free and haven't bothered to play it yet.
Lammy said:
and just about everything surrounding Cliff Blezenski
Click to expand...
What's funny is that he used to be the biggest piece of shit "bro" in the industry and then pulled a 180° into the feminism/gender shit, he's a total sociopath who goes wherever its more convenient ATT. Sure GoW had a "fascism bad" bent but it didn't hit you over the head with it.

Point is, why not being a progressive when it was actually a challenge and not just a trend eh cliffy?
 
  • Like
Reactions: UnsufficentBoobage, Jarch6, Shadfan666xxx000 and 6 others
Lammy said:
Battleborn is just a failed FPS MOBA hero shooter whatever thing from the Borderlands team and has all of the pretentious levels of writing that Borderlands had. I suppose Borderlands already being mentioned kinda covers it, but I thought it was worth remembering that it existed to laugh at it for a moment.
Click to expand...
Wasn't that the game where at one point there were more active users on its Rule 34 subreddit than there were playing the game?
 
  • Like
Reactions: UnsufficentBoobage, Da Capo, The Foxtrot and 1 other person
cybertoaster said:
Shit I totally missed that, when did it happen exactly?
Click to expand...
Apparently 7-ish years ago. It certainly didn't seem that long ago to me, so I was a bit off with the timeline. That would put it well before the Vita's official EoL, but at the time it was pretty much on life support. No first party games, and firmware updates were strictly "stability improvements" (AKA patching exploits).

IIRC I heard about it on Reddit. It seems like they nerfed the search or something because I cant find any posts about it. I do recall that it was contemporary with the release of Vitamin and that Github repo was created in Aug. 2016. From my admittedly weak memory, Vitamin was closed source for some time before it went on github. I would estimate it would've been spring/summer 2016. Vita games and accessories went on clearance a while before the console did in the big box stores. PSTV with a controller were going for $20.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: The Foxtrot
Beautiful Border said:
Wasn't that the game where at one point there were more active users on its Rule 34 subreddit than there were playing the game?
Click to expand...
Nah it was the game where the devs themselves paid for porn commissions of the characters because they were that desperate for attention, and everybody was jacking it to widowmaker and d.va from overwatch ATT.

Frankly they would've had more luck dropping the feminist shit and making all female character DOA-levels of thirst trap.
Lord Xenu said:
Apparently 7-ish years ago
Click to expand...
Was stuck in another country due to work, just my luck...

Then again by 2016 any smartphone already ran circles around the Vita, also didn't have as many games as the PSP so it was kind of a bet to buy one expecting to be much of a scene around it besides emulators.
 
  • Like
  • Agree
Reactions: UnsufficentBoobage, Spirelord: Downfall, The Foxtrot and 2 others
I would say the most pretentious games I ever played were Bioshock Infinite and the God of War reboot on PS4. BI was such an average FPS that just dragged on for way too fucking long and the "twist" at the end was very predictable, and God of Soy was just another Sony cinematic walking simulator goyslop. I didn't play GOW until a year or two after it came out when I bought it on Black Friday for $10 and when I finally got around to playing it after what felt like 20+ hours of slogging thru scripted events and QTE's I was like "what the fuck was so special about this game?".
 
  • Feels
Reactions: Lord Xenu
What about Secret Hitler? It uses Democrat voting fraud tactics but makes Hitler and "fascists" the bad guy.
 
Jaimas said:
you won't find crash-prone pieces of shit cobbled together in MSPaint, for example, but you will find games that are a lot more for the spectacle and concept than they are for actual gameplay. Probably the best-known example of their work was The Graveyard, a hideously unfun walking simulator that's more an artistic piece than an actual game, but is still being charged $5 for on Steam right now.
Click to expand...
Thats like the red riding hood one where you walk in the woods and its a metaphor for rape or something. Or that french one where you walk along a beach and sit down to play chess with other people. Theyre basically walking simulators but do the absolute bare minimum to have gameplay. No I dont remember their names they've been buried by the rising tide of time. The flock comes to mind too since its a failed experiment, theres plenty of indie jank.

edit:
Found one: https://store.steampowered.com/app/27000/The_Path/
edit2:

found em both this shit is up its own ass

Wait that first one shares a dev with sunset. WAIT THEY BOTH DO. These memories came back to me from the thumbnail in your video alone.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Next Task and Vecr
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back