The game's play is done through a point and click interface. Players must visit various locations within the game's fictional town of Harvest, which can be done via an overhead map. By speaking to various townspeople and clicking on special "hotspots", players can learn information and collect items that progress the game's story and play. Harvester also features a fighting system where players can attack other characters by selecting a weapon and then clicking on the target. Both the target and the player's character have a limited amount of health available, allowing for either the player or the target to die. Players can choose to progress through the game by solving puzzles or by killing one of the non-playable characters.
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absolutely nothing about this game is "good" -- it's obtuse like most games of its kind and it invites you to softlock yourself. the last act is also hideously awful.
but i still replay it probably once a year. the tasteless gen x humor and cynical outlook on the world is just a car wreck i can't look away from. play this if you want to watch a schlocky horror movie with puzzles
but i still replay it probably once a year. the tasteless gen x humor and cynical outlook on the world is just a car wreck i can't look away from. play this if you want to watch a schlocky horror movie with puzzles
I have a weird love hate relationship with games that pride themselves on being "subversive".
On the one hand I have no problem with media that wants to break social norms and taboos so long as what their making as an overall point to it and isn't just "lol isn't this fucked up, crazy right.". If done right you can get masterpieces of subversive media like A Clockwork Orange, Funny Games, Pink Flamingos and Freddy Got Fingered, unfortunately I can count on one hand the amount of video games I've personally seen that've tried and failed at tackling subversive media. When most games set out to tackle this level of writing and story tell it can either go two ways, It's either by a group of creative individuals who have a strong view of what their game is trying say along with having strong narrative themes that intertwine with the gameplay and narrative, games like Undertale, Cruelty Squad, Death Stranding, Hotline Miami 2, Spec Ops The Line, and Conker's Bad Fur Day. On the other side of the coin you have games that say they have a strong message and a subversive narrative but either fail from sheer incompetence of storytelling and thematic elements and tone deafness; even if they did try to incorporate the gameplay by tying it in with the game’s overall point it can still fail by not having a strong enough concrete vision of their game causing the rest of the game to fall apart in the process, game like Hatred, Twelve Minutes, Postal, Bioshock Infinite, Last of Us 2, Mafia 3, and Saints Row 3.
The real question here is what camp does Harvester fall into.
Harvester is a tough sell for me because while I really love the late 90’s early CG visuals and the use of crunchy FMV for their character sprites and cutscenes; and the acting is………camp, very……very camp. Unfortunately for all the elements of the game I really liked it’s weighed down by the biggest problem with the game being that it’s not a very good game to play plus I don’t respect what the game is trying to say.
As a point and click game it’s way to linear, almost railroading you down one single path with almost no diverging pathways for puzzles unlike other much more simpler point and click games, even better though during the last hour the game changes ganreas from point and click to dungeon crawler. And it has some of the absolute worst combat I've ever played, I’d respect the idea and change if it didn’t feel so half baked and poorly thought out. You also get a wide variety of dialogue options for NPCs even for ones that have no real use in the overall game, but besides a handful of character a lot of them just feel like flavor text and don’t add anything besides giving the town the game takes place feeling a lot more empty; it probably also doesn't help that a lot of the areas in the game only really matter to one puzzle and that’s it or other times some areas will have almost no point at all and are just there for a joke or “irreverence social commentary”, like the towns nuclear missile station run by a PTSD riddled commie heating Vietnam veteran who had entire torso blown and now stand guard and will blow you head off if you enter a conversation with him and mention anything that isn’t wholesome a-ok american pride, and if he does shot you he accidentally falls over and launches the nukes killing every in the town giving you a game over and sending you back to your last save. It’s funny ... .for like the first time but after awhile it just gets tiresome and that can be said for a lot of the games “irreverence social commentary”.
The main games overall message and themes are…I think “violent media does not create violent individuals but rather the people around them create monsters through the act of allowing disgusting degenerate behavior influence their actions”. The game is very much a response to the violent games panic of the 90s and while I do think they did a decent job tying the game’s message and themes into the world of the game and the game itself it still left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It might be because of the really lame twist at the end but I think a large part of it mostly comes from how much of a strawman argument this game feels like at times. Pretty much every other character in the game are inherent violence sociopath with a lot of them either having vices of porn, murder, arson, being racist, incest, child kidnapping, child murder, grooming, being gay?, and since the game takes a page from Blue Velvet where it portrays quiet suburban middle america but under that thin vale it’s a seedy underbelly of degeneracy. But here it’s trying to do its message with the most tone deaf straw man character I’ve seen since Postal and overall it just kinda leaves me feeling like a big fat load of nothing. Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to disagree with the game’s overall intent I just don’t like how they went about executing the set ideas in the most late 90’s way possible, lude, dumb and somehow racist.
I think my overall take away from Harvester is it’s a game I really wanted to like and still do like from a purely visual perspective, but on almost every other side I either just don’t vibe with parts of the game or actively dislike other parts that are very important parts of the game. I know this game had a really rushed development and as a result the late game feels very unfinished but I don’t know I feel like even if I lived in a timeline where it was fully released like the studio wanted I still don’t think I’d really vibe with it. Maybe I’m just getting older and find the absurdist and counter cultural way of telling a story and delivering a message frustrating and annoying………………………..naa I still like Freddy Got Fingered, it’s probably the games fault.
On the one hand I have no problem with media that wants to break social norms and taboos so long as what their making as an overall point to it and isn't just "lol isn't this fucked up, crazy right.". If done right you can get masterpieces of subversive media like A Clockwork Orange, Funny Games, Pink Flamingos and Freddy Got Fingered, unfortunately I can count on one hand the amount of video games I've personally seen that've tried and failed at tackling subversive media. When most games set out to tackle this level of writing and story tell it can either go two ways, It's either by a group of creative individuals who have a strong view of what their game is trying say along with having strong narrative themes that intertwine with the gameplay and narrative, games like Undertale, Cruelty Squad, Death Stranding, Hotline Miami 2, Spec Ops The Line, and Conker's Bad Fur Day. On the other side of the coin you have games that say they have a strong message and a subversive narrative but either fail from sheer incompetence of storytelling and thematic elements and tone deafness; even if they did try to incorporate the gameplay by tying it in with the game’s overall point it can still fail by not having a strong enough concrete vision of their game causing the rest of the game to fall apart in the process, game like Hatred, Twelve Minutes, Postal, Bioshock Infinite, Last of Us 2, Mafia 3, and Saints Row 3.
The real question here is what camp does Harvester fall into.
Harvester is a tough sell for me because while I really love the late 90’s early CG visuals and the use of crunchy FMV for their character sprites and cutscenes; and the acting is………camp, very……very camp. Unfortunately for all the elements of the game I really liked it’s weighed down by the biggest problem with the game being that it’s not a very good game to play plus I don’t respect what the game is trying to say.
As a point and click game it’s way to linear, almost railroading you down one single path with almost no diverging pathways for puzzles unlike other much more simpler point and click games, even better though during the last hour the game changes ganreas from point and click to dungeon crawler. And it has some of the absolute worst combat I've ever played, I’d respect the idea and change if it didn’t feel so half baked and poorly thought out. You also get a wide variety of dialogue options for NPCs even for ones that have no real use in the overall game, but besides a handful of character a lot of them just feel like flavor text and don’t add anything besides giving the town the game takes place feeling a lot more empty; it probably also doesn't help that a lot of the areas in the game only really matter to one puzzle and that’s it or other times some areas will have almost no point at all and are just there for a joke or “irreverence social commentary”, like the towns nuclear missile station run by a PTSD riddled commie heating Vietnam veteran who had entire torso blown and now stand guard and will blow you head off if you enter a conversation with him and mention anything that isn’t wholesome a-ok american pride, and if he does shot you he accidentally falls over and launches the nukes killing every in the town giving you a game over and sending you back to your last save. It’s funny ... .for like the first time but after awhile it just gets tiresome and that can be said for a lot of the games “irreverence social commentary”.
The main games overall message and themes are…I think “violent media does not create violent individuals but rather the people around them create monsters through the act of allowing disgusting degenerate behavior influence their actions”. The game is very much a response to the violent games panic of the 90s and while I do think they did a decent job tying the game’s message and themes into the world of the game and the game itself it still left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It might be because of the really lame twist at the end but I think a large part of it mostly comes from how much of a strawman argument this game feels like at times. Pretty much every other character in the game are inherent violence sociopath with a lot of them either having vices of porn, murder, arson, being racist, incest, child kidnapping, child murder, grooming, being gay?, and since the game takes a page from Blue Velvet where it portrays quiet suburban middle america but under that thin vale it’s a seedy underbelly of degeneracy. But here it’s trying to do its message with the most tone deaf straw man character I’ve seen since Postal and overall it just kinda leaves me feeling like a big fat load of nothing. Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to disagree with the game’s overall intent I just don’t like how they went about executing the set ideas in the most late 90’s way possible, lude, dumb and somehow racist.
I think my overall take away from Harvester is it’s a game I really wanted to like and still do like from a purely visual perspective, but on almost every other side I either just don’t vibe with parts of the game or actively dislike other parts that are very important parts of the game. I know this game had a really rushed development and as a result the late game feels very unfinished but I don’t know I feel like even if I lived in a timeline where it was fully released like the studio wanted I still don’t think I’d really vibe with it. Maybe I’m just getting older and find the absurdist and counter cultural way of telling a story and delivering a message frustrating and annoying………………………..naa I still like Freddy Got Fingered, it’s probably the games fault.
glitchy and cliche, but maybe i'm being a kidder idk
I will be uttering the phrase "You always were a kidder, Steve" well into the foreseeable future.
“You always were a kidder, Steve.”
Kino line.
Kino line.
i wish there were more games like harvester. will be recommending this to every twin peaks fan i meet to the point it becomes obnoxious