What are the most pretentious games ever made?

[Big Brown Schlub]

I'd say the Great Ace Attorney duology is kind of pretentious. It's set in Victorian England for the sole purpose of being a shitty Sherlock Holmes fanfic and a shoehorning in a story about racism. They turn Sherlock Holmes (Herlock Sholmes due to copyright) into a complete retard and the racism story is handled with all the subtlety and nuance of a brick to the face. Said brick has the words "You are Japanese" engraved into it and is wielded by a drunken ballerina.

Spoiler: said drunken ballerina

View attachment 6004224View attachment 6004223
All I can think when he does that is how easy it would be to just tip him over.

Victorian England was fucking terrifying. Your wallpaper could kill you. It was fashionable to build guns into everyday objects like canes and rings. You could shoot someone with your ring. The limitations of the time period are null and void because Herlock Sholmes and his partner Iris Wilson can just invent shit to do anything and everything. I despise Great Ace Attorney. I fucking love every other game in the Ace Attorney franchise, but GAA is just garbage. To this day, I cannot say the words "assassin exchange" with a straight face. It sounds like somewhere you'd take your broken 47 for a replacement.

Baron van Zieks was based beyond belief. The only prosecutor in the series who only ever buck broke your arguments with pure logic rather than asspulling some hidden piece of evidence outta nowhere.

 

[My cravat doesn't flutter]

Ace Attorney is silly for silliness sake. It never tries to say anything. Plus Sholmes is the usual anime "acts like a retard but manipulates everyone without their knowing".

Great Ace Attorney paralleled the first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney game (DLC included) and failed so miserably. They tried to shove Miles Edgeworth and Mia Fey into one character (Kazuma) and it was clunky as hell. Not to mention the fact that it takes 3 cases to get to the game's real trial mechanics. We start with your typical Ace Attorney tutorial level, then it takes a turn for the Ace Attorney Investigations with less exploitable sprite mechanics, then we get to the trial mechanics that are used for the rest of the game. The author/student guy whose name I can't be bothered to look up (Natsume?) could've been removed completely. His trials only served to introduce 2 pieces of evidence.

Spoiler: exploitable sprite mechanics

Baron van Zieks was based beyond belief. The only prosecutor in the series who only ever buck broke your arguments with pure logic rather than asspulling some hidden piece of evidence outta nowhere.

Take a shot every time Barok von Zieks says "My learned Nipponese friend." You'll be out before the trial ends.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Great Ace Attorney paralleled the first Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney game (DLC included) and failed so miserably. They tried to shove Miles Edgeworth and Mia Fey into one character (Kazuma) and it was clunky as hell. Not to mention the fact that it takes 3 cases to get to the game's real trial mechanics. We start with your typical Ace Attorney tutorial level, then it takes a turn for the Ace Attorney Investigations with less exploitable sprite mechanics, then we get to the trial mechanics that are used for the rest of the game. The author/student guy whose name I can't be bothered to look up (Natsume?) could've been removed completely. His trials only served to introduce 2 pieces of evidence.

The first half of the duology was absolute ass. But the second half somewhat makes up for it.

 

[Jerri's Kid]

I did like van Zieks in spite of the constant "my learned Nipponese friend," but the first game left such a sour taste in my mouth that it might take awhile before I'm tempted to play these again. The first case in the duology was so long and boring from padding that I nodded off in the middle of it. It felt like 80% of it was Naruhodo presses witness - witness says something racist - the Winston Payne stand in agrees with witness and grovels like a dog - the Winston Payne stand in insults Naruhodo - Naruhodo looks like he's been slapped. Repeat ad nauseam for every statement. Also, the little Wilson girl is precocious in an annoying way because she doesn't have Trucy's charm. Still, the third case was pretty fun and I liked the music overall.

 

[Forsaken Wanderer]

@wtfNeedSignUp Yeah that is the one!


For fuck sake it makes Pong look like Sega's Virtua Tennis. Thomas was alone? Was he? What, the light red square wasn't welcomed in a warm embrace by the blue square, or the orange, purple or green? And who is the darker red bar that is lying down and why is it on a staircase? Are they a murder victim? It could be a McChicken sandwich for all I know!

But if you believe the gaming press this is some deep shit, this is like War and Peace, it will change your life man!

 

[My cravat doesn't flutter]

@wtfNeedSignUp Yeah that is the one!
View attachment 6006060

For fuck sake it makes Pong look like Sega's Virtua Tennis. Thomas was alone? Was he? What, the light red square wasn't welcomed in a warm embrace by the blue square, or the orange, purple or green? And who is the darker red bar that is lying down and why is it on a staircase? Are they a murder victim? It could be a McChicken sandwich for all I know!

But if you believe the gaming press this is some deep shit, this is like War and Peace, it will change your life man!

Jesus cock-sucking Christ. That game is almost 12 years old and he has the balls to charge $9.99 for it.

 

[My cravat doesn't flutter]

The first half of the duology was absolute ass. But the second half somewhat makes up for it.

By the second game, the only enjoyment I could get from GAA was riffing on it with my dad. I tried my damnedest to like it, but watching it fumble the ball with every single attempted parallel to the first PWAA game was just pathetic. The fact that they didn't use its Victorian setting to its full potential was disappointing. Victorian England was fucking terrifying. They could've had so much fun with it but opted to play it safe by having Sholmes and Wilson negate any and all limitations of the era. Not to mention the sheer retardation of Klint van Zieks. "I don't want to face the shame of killing one man, so I'll kill 3 more. I was caught pretty easily the first time around, but I'm sure the next 3 will be fine!"

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

And now that this has been sad, Valiant Hearts is a pretentious pile of shit, written by nitwits with intelligence of six year olds and attempting to tackle one of the most gruesome human conflicts and not only game feels it is necessary to falsify history to make character more invested in war ( the entirety of Anna's story ), best things that braindead morons could've come up with is your universal bouquet of generic statements of "war bad", "people can be cruel" and entire motivation of one of the playable characters is literally "killing is bad,mmmkay" as he murders dozen of pilots before beating up an army general and going back home satisfied that death of his wife and other innocent civilians who died during bombing raids had been rectified with a single act of humiliation of a single military officer.

By the way I've been replaying it and it's awful.

The game simultaneously wants to be some arthouse movie thing where it's got the sad classical music and sad things are always happening, and then it has you fight a flamethrower tank and a zeppelin manned by a villainous Prussian baron with a stereotypical German name and skulls on everything.

It wants to be both that sappy and trite poppy-fields-in-Flanders thing and a comic book adventure and it makes the whole thing very much, like you said, pretentious.

 

[std::string]

I'll toss Sifu and Furi onto the list of "well ackshually you are bad and killing is bad" games.

Furi: The game slowly reveals that actually there was a reason you got locked up in the galaxy's strongest supermax prison. Surprise! You're actually the bad guy and you leave a trail of death behind you (like, literally, the end credits scene has you corrupting everything you walk across.) Oops! Feel bad that you finished the game.

Sifu: Killing people on your quest for vengeance is bad! In order to get the true ending you need to spare every boss. We will not mention the like hundreds of nameless mooks that got tossed off of rooftops or down the stairs or got their guts opened up with a tanto. They're not bosses so they don't matter.

 

[T-21]

Sifu: Killing people on your quest for vengeance is bad! In order to get the true ending you need to spare every boss. We will not mention the like hundreds of nameless mooks that got tossed off of rooftops or down the stairs or got their guts opened up with a tanto. They're not bosses so they don't matter.

Reminds me of The Metro's story line. I kinda liked the first one despite it lacks replayability, but the Last Light really blows when it comes to story and gameplay. You must not kill bosses in order to get yourself best ending or some ayy lmao kid who travels with you in entire story will not help you in the final mission.

But sure, let's forget every nameless thugs and soldiers who got killed, especially one of the bosses which is your former prison break friend who later backstabs you to get your ass tortured by some Nazi faction, which also censored because being a Russian game.

I have nothing to say about Exodus because I haven't play nor watch the walkthrough yet.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Furi

Tbf, you then fight the real cause of the corruption and repair the world (in an horrifically bad final boss encounter) so it's net positive. Plus it's not like you can really blame the protagonist for wanting out or put some gay moral over it.

spare every boss

I fucking hate games doing it. It's just awful design and writing. Either I kill no one or I fail. It doesn't help it's always the gay argument of "killing a murderer doesn't change the amount of murderers in the world". Yeah but me killing 100 murderers does

 

[Spectre Saren]

Also does anyone know if this game is an example, I was attracted by the artstyle, but it looks pretentious and a review I saw seems to backup that claim

I liked Dujanah. Its a trip.

But then again, I liked Spec Ops because I randomly rented it without hearing anything about it. I blame the soys for the bad reputation it has garned. If those faggots kept their shit takes to themselves there'll be no reason to shit on that game. "Don't play it". My ass, it's a game, you are supossed to play it. People shutting down the whole aspect of war bad are just contrarian little misanthropes.

One thing I can't stand is Sony's movie-game slop. With it's extreme zoom ins into character's faces as if you were watching an actor or something. Nigga, I wanna play.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I'll toss Sifu and Furi onto the list of "well ackshually you are bad and killing is bad" games.

Furi: The game slowly reveals that actually there was a reason you got locked up in the galaxy's strongest supermax prison. Surprise! You're actually the bad guy and you leave a trail of death behind you (like, literally, the end credits scene has you corrupting everything you walk across.) Oops! Feel bad that you finished the game.

Sifu: Killing people on your quest for vengeance is bad! In order to get the true ending you need to spare every boss. We will not mention the like hundreds of nameless mooks that got tossed off of rooftops or down the stairs or got their guts opened up with a tanto. They're not bosses so they don't matter.

Aw man, I love Furi. I get why you think it's pretentious but I wasn't bothered by its existential qualities. Great gameplay too. The devs even endorsed a free 16-bit demake that has a single boss battle and it's free. Based French devs.

But you know what I find pretentious? Any Suda51 game. Come at me, nerds.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

But you know what I find pretentious? Any Suda51 game. Come at me, nerds.

Maybe a decade ago someone would have shilled for him but he really pissed away his audience goodwill.

 

[Gog & Magog]

Sifu: Killing people on your quest for vengeance is bad! In order to get the true ending you need to spare every boss. We will not mention the like hundreds of nameless mooks that got tossed off of rooftops or down the stairs or got their guts opened up with a tanto. They're not bosses so they don't matter.

"Killing is bad!!1"
Then why did the devs make it fun?

 

[Bill Kilgore]

Reminds me of The Metro's story line. I kinda liked the first one despite it lacks replayability, but the Last Light really blows when it comes to story and gameplay. You must not kill bosses in order to get yourself best ending or some ayy lmao kid who travels with you in entire story will not help you in the final mission.

But sure, let's forget every nameless thugs and soldiers who got killed, especially one of the bosses which is your former prison break friend who later backstabs you to get your ass tortured by some Nazi faction, which also censored because being a Russian game.

I have nothing to say about Exodus because I haven't play nor watch the walkthrough yet.

I'd never understand the "good guy" route of the Metro series, especially Last Light, like okay the game wanted you to go around and become a Saint and basically forgive and forget the same cunt who betrayed us and left us to be tortured to death? okay.

It's kind of a shame that they cutted Pavel from Exodus, I think it would've been cooler to see him trying to redeem himself in front of Artyom's eyes seeing some character development for him.

and some correction, Pavel is working for the red line (commies of metro) not the Nazis, and the game was developed by hohols, although it was indeed based on a Ruskie novel.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

This article popped up for me, I couldn't think of a better place to post it.

Braid: Anniversary Edition "sold like dog s***", says creator Jonathan Blow (Eurogamer Archive)​

This is probably a disaster for Blow. IIRC this was made partially because he needed more money for his next pretentious puzzle game.

 

[Coolio55]

This article popped up for me, I couldn't think of a better place to post it.

Braid: Anniversary Edition "sold like dog s***", says creator Jonathan Blow (Eurogamer Archive)​

This is probably a disaster for Blow. IIRC this was made partially because he needed more money for his next pretentious puzzle game.

No shit. That game has zero replay value and little staying power outside of the nice art.
The twist was cool but it hasn't aged very well at all. Every game did it to death.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

I feel like it was talked about here, but not sure if it was in this thread or another, but has he even *started* working on his new game yet?

Because last I heard, he was writing his own language so he could build his own engine to THEN work on the game which sounds like the most pretentious shit I've ever heard.

 

[Mexican_Wizard_711]

Fallout New Vegas, simply due to the fact that I can't get these goddamn video essays out of my YouTube recommendations. @xXx: State of the Union you are right, this shit sucks