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.
A common characteristic of pretentious games is that they are ashamed to be video games. Suda embraces the medium and exaggerating its tropes became a key part of his style. He's an eccentric guy but I wouldn't call him pretentious. The Shadows of the Damned level was not him dick sucking the game. He hated what EA turned that game into.
nier melodraumata
The real shitkicker is when the ironic weeb coomers who have jerked themselves senseless to it try to tell you the gameplay systems are anywhere close to as refined as platinum's games before it, at least the ones with a budget. Imagine playing revengeance but the bosses dont react to you hitting them and you have a mashable invincibility button which cancels out of literally everything. Very skin-deep subtext, themes, references, pretty much every aspect that isn't music. Mortality isn't even a concern for more than half of the story so there isn't tension, and by the time it is a concern I didn't give a shit and definitely wasn't crying at the ending where you shoot the credits like in super smash bros.
Late and gay:
I am a fan of Nier, but I will admit the story of Automata is a lot weaker than Replicant/Gestalt. I don't really think Automata was pretentious at all, maybe the shooting credits with the other people, but I liked the idea of choosing to sacrifice everything to help others. The final ending weakened the themes IMO, but again, none of it was very pretentious. Replicant is better though, even if the story boils down to just kicking you in the nuts over and over.
Late and gay:
I am a fan of Nier, but I will admit the story of Automata is a lot weaker than Replicant/Gestalt. I don't really think Automata was pretentious at all, maybe the shooting credits with the other people, but I liked the idea of choosing to sacrifice everything to help others. The final ending weakened the themes IMO, but again, none of it was very pretentious. Replicant is better though, even if the story boils down to just kicking you in the nuts over and over.
to be fair, it feels like the story of automata was intentionally done the way it was because they knew that barely anyone played the first one. if you played the original before automata then you already basically know the major plot twist before it even happens.
without spoiling the ending you're talking about for anyone who hasn't played it, in the first game it felt meaningful and it was a genuinely fresh thing that i had never seen done before. in automata it just felt like a needless callback to the original game that didn't have nearly as much impact behind it
Late and gay:
I am a fan of Nier, but I will admit the story of Automata is a lot weaker than Replicant/Gestalt. I don't really think Automata was pretentious at all, maybe the shooting credits with the other people, but I liked the idea of choosing to sacrifice everything to help others. The final ending weakened the themes IMO, but again, none of it was very pretentious. Replicant is better though, even if the story boils down to just kicking you in the nuts over and over.
At least the remaster gave you a brief moment of relief by adapting ending E from the artbook as an actual playable ending with Kaine bringing back Nier from his erased state (even if the world is still fucked due to the Gestalt project failing meaning everyone is going to die of the black scrawl)
"There's always a choice," the game reminds you before not giving you a choice and then expecting you to be shocked at what you've done. Also you're delusional and so literally not fully capable of moral behavior, but we'll pretend it's a big deal anyway.
A common characteristic of pretentious games is that they are ashamed to be video games. Suda embraces the medium and exaggerating its tropes became a key part of his style. He's an eccentric guy but I wouldn't call him pretentious. The Shadows of the Damned level was not him dick sucking the game. He hated what EA turned that game into.
"There's always a choice," the game reminds you before not giving you a choice and then expecting you to be shocked at what you've done. Also you're delusional and so literally not fully capable of moral behavior, but we'll pretend it's a big deal anyway.
Remember than in development you actually had a choice between commiting war crimes or not, but the devs threw a tantrum and removed the choice when every tester chose not to commit war crimes, because how dare they go against the devs far huffing, Jack Thompson tier narrative.
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 laso mention Borderlands in it)
So could Hatred count as "pretentious" here? From what I've heard (besides being edgy^10x64) people and journofags genuinely thought this game would cause 6 million school shootings and 9/11s just because Mr. "my name is not important" was gonna cleanse the earth of the human race because misanthropy. I don't know much about the game's story besides surface level knowledge, but I think the beginning speech itself is really all I'd need to know over how schticky the whole thing is.
So could Hatred count as "pretentious" here? From what I've heard (besides being edgy^10x64) people and journofags genuinely thought this game would cause 6 million school shootings and 9/11s just because Mr. "my name is not important" was gonna cleanse the earth of the human race because misanthropy. I don't know much about the game's story besides surface level knowledge, but I think the beginning speech itself is really all I'd need to know over how schticky the whole thing is.
No, it was shock bait. Make a game that everyone would shriek about, and get people to buy it to "own the snowflakes" Same as any exploitation film like Cannibal Holocaust, or Marilan Manson's career. Outrage sells. The game was dog shit, and an obvious cash grab.
Remember than in development you actually had a choice between commiting war crimes or not, but the devs threw a tantrum and removed the choice when every tester chose not to commit war crimes, because how dare they go against the devs far huffing, Jack Thompson tier narrative.
And don't even let you really go very wild it anyway, like disabling grenades in the part where you mow down the civilians who lynched your buddy. What a giant pile of wasted potential.
No, it was shock bait. Make a game that everyone would shriek about, and get people to buy it to "own the snowflakes" Same as any exploitation film like Cannibal Holocaust, or Marilan Manson's career. Outrage sells. The game was dog shit, and an obvious cash grab.
I think I remember the ESRB admitting they overreacted by giving this game an AO rating and offered to tone it down to M, but the devs refused. For reference, Mortal Kombat X was released around the same time and was "merely" rated M, but was far more gory.
These games have nothing in common. Disco Elysium is a massive effortgame. The Stanley Parable has Ideas, Man! You don't have to like either, but they have original content. Gone Home is "English professor contemplating adultery: the game".
Fundamentally disagree, peak pretentiousness must be sincere.
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Here are my three picks. I decided that a qualified candidate has to be a commercial game marketed to normie players (not free, not meme, not streaming ragebait). All of these were sold on at-the-time-choosy GOG.com and have pozzed reviews on Steam.
Undertale [overwhelmingly pozzed]
Peak tranny game, has the ghostly stench of unwashed girldick.
The Lion's Song [very pozzed]
"The Lion's Song: Episode 1 – Silence" tells the story of Wilma, a talented young musician student. Wilma’s talent was discovered by Arthur Caban, a wealthy university professor, who invited her to Vienna. Arthur is profoundly convinced Wilma is going to play a major part in the future of modern music. Since Wilma is fighting writer’s block trying to finish her career defining composition, Arthur sends her to a solitary alpine cabin to recover her inspiration and muse. [The young Wilma is also thirsting for another ride on the professor's sumptuous geriatric cock.]
"The Lion's Song: Episode 2 - Anthology" advances into the depths of the human psyche, uncovered by visual artist Franz Markert. Franz is an aspiring painter at the turn of the 20th century, trying to immortalize his name within Vienna’s high society. His unique ability to perceive the flaws, fears and emotions in so-called “layers” allows him to bring them – layer by layer – onto the canvas.
"The Lion’s Song: Episode 3 – Derivation" dives into the scientific world at the beginning of the 20th century – an era of great achievements, but also dark downfalls. On the eve of World War I mathematician Emma Recniczek enters the academic stage to solve a problem revolving around “change”. In order to discuss her theory with like-minded people Emma tries to gain access to a gentlemen’s club of famous mathematicians. As her request is denied because of her being a woman, she decides to disguise as a man. caption: "if the dog pees, the liquid disappears". The next line is "Genius!"
(The developers are Austrian, this is just the one version I could find. No, I didn't play to this point, I quit in ch1.)
"The Lion’s Song: Episode 4 – Closure" ties the entire season together. A mysterious train ride revisits all introduced characters – Wilma, Franz & Emma - and their emotional storylines. It will take you back into their past and tell you their future destiny. Their lives are being revisited as part of the stories of four men traveling together as strangers on a train, a journey towards an uncertain destiny.
English professor contemplating adultery with extra certified reddit moments (everyone claps, see spoiler). Shockingly the main culprits are males (the reddit subspecies). Here's what I think is an autistic woman telling why it's bad. One extra reason s/he doesn't mention: childlike "cute" characters fucking, the art style making it gross beyond the usual loli shit.
To The Moon [overwhelmingly pozzed]
Dr. Rosalene and Dr. Watts have peculiar jobs: They give people another chance to live, all the way from the very beginning... but only in their patients' heads.
Due to the severity of the operation, the new life becomes the last thing the patients remember before drawing their last breath. Thus, the operation is only done to people on their deathbeds, to fulfill what they wish they had done with their lives, but didn’t.
This particular story follows their attempt to fulfill the dream of an elderly man, Johnny. With each step back in time, a new fragment of Johnny's past is revealed. As the two doctors piece together the puzzled events that spanned a life time, they seek to find out just why the frail old man chose his dying wish to be what it is.
And Johnny's last wish is, of course... to go to the moon.
This was the first and last truly atrocious game I played to the end. The premise here is as in the spoiler: dying people spend a lot of money to have themselves killed while high, while doctors get to watch their memories (with potentially sensitive info and extremely private details of other people's lives -- the game doesn't touch on why this amazing technology isn't used for more benevolent or malicious causes). At the start of the game, Johnny is already in a coma. There are no clever twists, he dies. The game mostly consists of watching Johnny's past and then his hallucination.
Here's the backstory:
- as a young boy, he met a girl his age and eventually fell in love with her
- they married (but IIRC didn't have children) and eventually started building a house at the seashore
- she fell ill (cancer?) and declined to get treatment, telling him to spend the money on finishing the house and live there
- he did so
- she died, he got a housekeeper single mother to move in
- and now he's dying "of old age", and you have to kill him before he does.
Ok, boring but not remarkably terrible so far. But what's with the moon?
Glad you asked (let's pretend you did)!
See, the girl is mentally ill. I seem to remember the game refers to is as "her condition". The developer is an evangelist for some nonexistent autism-like munchie condition that makes one quirkaaaay and speshul. The girl, in the game, has that. It's never clear what the condition does, but the way it plays out is she can't develop beyond the mental equivalent of a 6-year-old. Maybe it's why they never had children (Johnny stayed faithful to his childhood crush but couldn't fuck a tard)? Or maybe it's just bad writing?
(Many reviewers say it's autism or assburger. It's not, the munchie condition was a point of contention at the time of the game's release.)
ANYWAY the girl asked Johnny to build the house because she thought a nearby lighthouse was lonely, and the house was supposed to keep it company.
Likewise, she wanted to go to the moon because she thought the moon was lonely, and she wanted to keep it company, and Johnny wanted to go with her because he loved her.
Instead of constructing this retarded dream, Dr. Rosalene (one of the two interchangeable player characters, the serious negroid female boss) becomes violently opposed to doing her fucking job and goes NPC, and you the player, as her bumbling huwhite beta male subordinate Dr. Watts, have to stop her, in badly scripted RPGMaker action sequences. Drama!!! Sike, when you catch up with her, it turns out it was all a misunderstanding and part of Rosalene's plan. She makes Johnny hallucinate that NASA opened recruitment to retards, he joins the program and meets another recruit, the chick -- so the story of his IRL romance is erased. The game lauds Rosalene for tee hee bending the rules and taking risks for the greater good, and Watts is appropriately humbled for not trusting in her benevolence and unorthodoxy (he 100% agrees with the outcome though).
In Johnny's fantasy, he starts dating the chick during training and they fly to the moon in a Challenger (part of a team of 5). The end is Watts, Rosalene and the housekeeper watching the Challenger take off, from within Johnny's coke dream. Johnny dies before he reaches the moon in the dream, so they don't have to come up with an absurd happy outcome to the moon-mission (like colonists puttering in the flesh of a sentient moon, or moon-men declaring the moon is happy with them and telling the astronauts to fuck off). The housekeeper inherits the house, and Johnny's IRL corpse is buried next to his wife at the foot of the lighthouse.
I'm not sure if I would call David Cage's games "pretentious". David Cage - of course, he's a pretentious dick but his games? I'd say they are super-schlocky and don't try to "play with the convention of storytelling in games" or convey some deep (at least in the creator's mind) message. They are just interactive movies (something already tried in the 90s) with filled with Hollywood tropes and stories that fall apart somewhere in the middle. If he was a movie director like he wants to be he would be somewhere between Tommy Wiseau and Uwe Boll, universally mocked and laughed at.
Be honest. Did you watch an LP or did you just get this through cultural osmosis?
Trannies weren't even en vogue when UNDERTALE was released and there aren't any in the game outside of vague fan theory arguments.
Be honest. Did you watch an LP or did you just get this through cultural osmosis?
Trannies weren't even en vogue when UNDERTALE was released and there aren't any in the game outside of vague fan theory arguments.
I played it blind in March 2016, having bought it on GOG release week following a recommendation. (I was told it was easy, and I get more fun from media I consoom blind. It cost $2.69.)
It was originally released in September 2015. Trannies were already a nuisance in 2014:
I personally played until after the obese dinosaur, read some gross bits on the wiki, and watched the main boss battle on youtube. GOG didn't have refunds back then.
The game had two things which I liked when I played: instances of nice (compared to the rest of the game) pixel art (the ruins and the night maze before and after the town respectively), and some of the skeleton jokes were funny (I got soured on these characters, too).
In the year of Our Lord 2023, you've got to be retarded to deny the art, writing, character design exemplifies the culture of the "dirtbag left", as it's called on wikipedia, or in plain terms tranny shit. When I played it seven years ago, I wasn't aware of it, I thought it was a nasty, gross and pretentious scam.
