This review came out really harsh. My only hope is my own ramblings are more insightful or entertaining than the hot garbage they charged $25 for.
This expansion is honestly so devoid of any meaning that it's made me doubt if Wreden had anything thought-provoking to say ever, or if it was purely my projection that made The Beginner's Guide seem thematically powerful as a kid. It's been months since I played this, but while recently compiling a list of games I've played these past few years I was just overwhelmed by how unfathomably terrible a product this game is the more I thought about it. Genuinely one of the biggest wastes of money you could possibly get, in an industry I didn't think could get any worse with microtransaction hell. Let me try to walk you through just how shallow nearly every new addition to this game is, so that hopefully you can understand just how my jaw is agape thinking about how this unfinished mess was a streamer delight for weeks. Bennett Foddy - whose Getting Over It I still think is the most misunderstood game of the century - foreshadowed the age of "found object" games and now you get shit like this and Only Up! getting millions of views without an ounce of shame.
The skip button section has nothing to say. The narrator adds a skip button in a confined room because some critics were requesting it. Skipping dialogue here doesn't actually affect anything in the game; it's entirely scripted for a five minute section where you are actually FORCED to "skip" to even progress. If you try sitting and listening through his monologue before "skipping", not only are the sections poorly looped where lines cut into one another, he has absolutely nothing to say. Not even some mundane story to tell, the entire monologue is exclusively nonsense. If this is meant to be a comment on artists failing to take criticism and going insane, it's hard to give a shit when there's no original vision that's being altered to include the skip button. So what is the joke here? That the game's writing took a fucking nosedive and removed any specificity whatsoever? In fact, that's a running theme here. This entire expansion just vaguely gestures at "bad game practices" that I can't think of a single other game doing, essentially making this a game that's purposefully bad as "satire" for nothing in particular but itself.
The consequences for skipping dialogue don't make sense either. Time in the game world progresses when you skip, which is supposed to convey what? That players are messing with the logic of the world by doing things on their own terms? Sure, this is probably frustrating as an author, and I don't really respect people who - for example - fast forward through movies. But, at the end of the day, what is the point of making fun of players who skip dialogue? If skipping dialogue doesn't change the fundamental meaning of the scenes, as is the case here, why is a fuss being made about doing so? Skipping dialogue in video games typically happens when someone is replaying and/or trying to go through it faster to reach the more difficult content, yet something this fundamental to the thing he is making fun of is never once brought up.
This is because the entire skip button section isn't actually about the concept of skipping in video games at all, but about some stupid fucking reviews people left on Steam intentionally targeted at the narrator for being annoying. It's the equivalent of a fucking Reddit post making fun of someone's dumb comment about a product, except the guy has a meltdown about it and somehow the meltdown itself isn't even funny. You can't just go "UNFUNNY!???" towards a shitty comment and automatically be considered funny, you have to put effort into writing jokes with some kind of layers supporting them - which I thought Wreden was fully capable of but maybe I was just fucking hallucinating last decade because that could not have been the same person that wrote this shit. The base game arguably had some of this with its premise of the narrator and the player being in an endless battle, with neither coming out that much better. Yet this expansion is no longer interested in that tension between audience and authorial media analysis, if the games were ever interested or just blowing smoke up our asses the entire time. We basically just have a bunch of sections where the narrator decides to make fun of a random fucking player request for an entire level. Here's two more examples:
What about collectibles? What game out there adds collectibles to the base game after a decade and charges you full price for the expansion? Name one game that fits this criteria that the game is supposedly making fun of, because I'd be fucking fuming at that game, but the only game I can think of that pulls such a gross stunt is this one. The closest thing I can think of is when AAA games have prepurchase rewards that include more collectibles, which is still questionable but a very different situation from buying the whole game all over again. We also have varying levels of remasters, with the most egregious probably being The Last of Us which does a graphical overhaul no one asked for and pretty much nothing else. There's also shit like Nintendo Switch ports that charge full price for ports; I guess that could be what's happening here? So, is the game trying to criticize itself for needing to "expand itself" to justify being ported to newer systems, because that would be an actually interesting thing to talk about for indie games especially with how awful game preservation is. If this was indeed an intended theme of the game, it's barely touched on because the game wants to treat these half-hearted "expansions" as funny in and of themselves.
I've heard Todd Howard once promised to try making voice actors say the player's name a thing, but has anyone seriously been asking for this enough to make a joke about it? The narrator is taking a shot at self-righteous players who think they're very important by imagining a feature no one asked for. What about all the shit recently with right wing mods removing gender and race options in RPGs, an actual fucking real-life situation you can satirize instead of this lazy nonsense? Is this a joke about Todd Howard and people like him trying to implement a difficult feature that barely does anything but jerk the player off? What's the joke? How can you make fun of writers who cater to audiences when they have nothing to say when that's exactly what's happening here?
Every single issue Ultra Deluxe brings up feels like it focuses on the least interesting party. It focuses on the lazy criticisms from shallow audiences instead of how they affect how the author creates. It focuses on the bad products that result from shitty industry standards rather than how those standards affect artistic creativity. It's like it's asking the audience to give up hope for creativity under these circumstances, even though they've lasted long before this game's release, by intentionally making itself the most noncommittal, boring game you've ever seen. This game is so depressing that I honestly hope Wreden and co. get into a better mindset because this fucking shit is embarrassing for a writer who felt like such an icon in the indie game scene for a little while. Infinite hole scene innocent though.
This expansion is honestly so devoid of any meaning that it's made me doubt if Wreden had anything thought-provoking to say ever, or if it was purely my projection that made The Beginner's Guide seem thematically powerful as a kid. It's been months since I played this, but while recently compiling a list of games I've played these past few years I was just overwhelmed by how unfathomably terrible a product this game is the more I thought about it. Genuinely one of the biggest wastes of money you could possibly get, in an industry I didn't think could get any worse with microtransaction hell. Let me try to walk you through just how shallow nearly every new addition to this game is, so that hopefully you can understand just how my jaw is agape thinking about how this unfinished mess was a streamer delight for weeks. Bennett Foddy - whose Getting Over It I still think is the most misunderstood game of the century - foreshadowed the age of "found object" games and now you get shit like this and Only Up! getting millions of views without an ounce of shame.
The skip button section has nothing to say. The narrator adds a skip button in a confined room because some critics were requesting it. Skipping dialogue here doesn't actually affect anything in the game; it's entirely scripted for a five minute section where you are actually FORCED to "skip" to even progress. If you try sitting and listening through his monologue before "skipping", not only are the sections poorly looped where lines cut into one another, he has absolutely nothing to say. Not even some mundane story to tell, the entire monologue is exclusively nonsense. If this is meant to be a comment on artists failing to take criticism and going insane, it's hard to give a shit when there's no original vision that's being altered to include the skip button. So what is the joke here? That the game's writing took a fucking nosedive and removed any specificity whatsoever? In fact, that's a running theme here. This entire expansion just vaguely gestures at "bad game practices" that I can't think of a single other game doing, essentially making this a game that's purposefully bad as "satire" for nothing in particular but itself.
The consequences for skipping dialogue don't make sense either. Time in the game world progresses when you skip, which is supposed to convey what? That players are messing with the logic of the world by doing things on their own terms? Sure, this is probably frustrating as an author, and I don't really respect people who - for example - fast forward through movies. But, at the end of the day, what is the point of making fun of players who skip dialogue? If skipping dialogue doesn't change the fundamental meaning of the scenes, as is the case here, why is a fuss being made about doing so? Skipping dialogue in video games typically happens when someone is replaying and/or trying to go through it faster to reach the more difficult content, yet something this fundamental to the thing he is making fun of is never once brought up.
This is because the entire skip button section isn't actually about the concept of skipping in video games at all, but about some stupid fucking reviews people left on Steam intentionally targeted at the narrator for being annoying. It's the equivalent of a fucking Reddit post making fun of someone's dumb comment about a product, except the guy has a meltdown about it and somehow the meltdown itself isn't even funny. You can't just go "UNFUNNY!???" towards a shitty comment and automatically be considered funny, you have to put effort into writing jokes with some kind of layers supporting them - which I thought Wreden was fully capable of but maybe I was just fucking hallucinating last decade because that could not have been the same person that wrote this shit. The base game arguably had some of this with its premise of the narrator and the player being in an endless battle, with neither coming out that much better. Yet this expansion is no longer interested in that tension between audience and authorial media analysis, if the games were ever interested or just blowing smoke up our asses the entire time. We basically just have a bunch of sections where the narrator decides to make fun of a random fucking player request for an entire level. Here's two more examples:
What about collectibles? What game out there adds collectibles to the base game after a decade and charges you full price for the expansion? Name one game that fits this criteria that the game is supposedly making fun of, because I'd be fucking fuming at that game, but the only game I can think of that pulls such a gross stunt is this one. The closest thing I can think of is when AAA games have prepurchase rewards that include more collectibles, which is still questionable but a very different situation from buying the whole game all over again. We also have varying levels of remasters, with the most egregious probably being The Last of Us which does a graphical overhaul no one asked for and pretty much nothing else. There's also shit like Nintendo Switch ports that charge full price for ports; I guess that could be what's happening here? So, is the game trying to criticize itself for needing to "expand itself" to justify being ported to newer systems, because that would be an actually interesting thing to talk about for indie games especially with how awful game preservation is. If this was indeed an intended theme of the game, it's barely touched on because the game wants to treat these half-hearted "expansions" as funny in and of themselves.
I've heard Todd Howard once promised to try making voice actors say the player's name a thing, but has anyone seriously been asking for this enough to make a joke about it? The narrator is taking a shot at self-righteous players who think they're very important by imagining a feature no one asked for. What about all the shit recently with right wing mods removing gender and race options in RPGs, an actual fucking real-life situation you can satirize instead of this lazy nonsense? Is this a joke about Todd Howard and people like him trying to implement a difficult feature that barely does anything but jerk the player off? What's the joke? How can you make fun of writers who cater to audiences when they have nothing to say when that's exactly what's happening here?
Every single issue Ultra Deluxe brings up feels like it focuses on the least interesting party. It focuses on the lazy criticisms from shallow audiences instead of how they affect how the author creates. It focuses on the bad products that result from shitty industry standards rather than how those standards affect artistic creativity. It's like it's asking the audience to give up hope for creativity under these circumstances, even though they've lasted long before this game's release, by intentionally making itself the most noncommittal, boring game you've ever seen. This game is so depressing that I honestly hope Wreden and co. get into a better mindset because this fucking shit is embarrassing for a writer who felt like such an icon in the indie game scene for a little while. Infinite hole scene innocent though.
Slowly making my way through this - some ways into Chapter 3 right now - but just wanted to reflect a bit early because a lot's been on my mind playing this. It's fun. I'm playing for the first time on hardcore as I did with my first run of the base campaign, and it's tough in ways that feel both stupidly unfair at times yet riveting. Since finishing the remake I was surprised to find a lot of my peers on here were conflicted about the combat, and on further reflection (now that I have a reason to come back to the game) I can absolutely see why. Sometimes you're backed into a corner and there's just jackshit you can to do avoid taking a hit because stunning someone in the head with a pistol is random, which is poor design.
Sometimes in this DLC there are sections where it's better to just run past people because there's just no way you can take on the enemies, and while I will say it makes for some pretty neat horror to be scared of getting absolutely demolished by a random civilian getting the perfect angled stab into you while you're trying to maneuver past, it does certainly feel unfair when you die as a result of something so unpredictable. So, as a game that people hope to replay over and over, especially when compared to the original's fantastically predictable mechanics that allow you more control over getting better at the game, I can see why people felt like leaving so much up to RNG is just annoying. You see it constantly with the speedrunners when they lose hours of progress due to bullshit. I'm playing another game right now, Persona 3 Portable, on the hard difficulty and it's got a similar problem. Sometimes things are just brutally unfair because the enemy patterns become unnavigable and there's jackshit you can do about it. But I'd be lying if I said the release of tension when I finally figured out a cobbled-together strategy to get past something ridiculous wasn't enthralling. So, I guess maybe that's what a lot of these devs want - even if it results in reloading saves unhappily constantly - and while I don't know if I like the way this is designed overall, when I beat back two chainsaw sisters using nothing but my rifle with all my knives with fully upgraded durability breaking on my first try, knowing how unfair things could get if I failed the good run that had been given to me, it felt like exactly the kind of memorable situation I wanted more out of from the base campaign.
Maybe the DLC will drop the ball in the last two thirds, maybe the new story changes will suck, so I'm definitely writing another review of this when I'm done, but as stupid as some of the fights are, my first 2 and half hours with it have been great and I think this is one time I agree with the big industry review sites that this might be GOTY. Maybe the DLC is so good because it avoids trying to recreate things from the original and the devs have to design encounters with the new combat system more in mind.
Sometimes in this DLC there are sections where it's better to just run past people because there's just no way you can take on the enemies, and while I will say it makes for some pretty neat horror to be scared of getting absolutely demolished by a random civilian getting the perfect angled stab into you while you're trying to maneuver past, it does certainly feel unfair when you die as a result of something so unpredictable. So, as a game that people hope to replay over and over, especially when compared to the original's fantastically predictable mechanics that allow you more control over getting better at the game, I can see why people felt like leaving so much up to RNG is just annoying. You see it constantly with the speedrunners when they lose hours of progress due to bullshit. I'm playing another game right now, Persona 3 Portable, on the hard difficulty and it's got a similar problem. Sometimes things are just brutally unfair because the enemy patterns become unnavigable and there's jackshit you can do about it. But I'd be lying if I said the release of tension when I finally figured out a cobbled-together strategy to get past something ridiculous wasn't enthralling. So, I guess maybe that's what a lot of these devs want - even if it results in reloading saves unhappily constantly - and while I don't know if I like the way this is designed overall, when I beat back two chainsaw sisters using nothing but my rifle with all my knives with fully upgraded durability breaking on my first try, knowing how unfair things could get if I failed the good run that had been given to me, it felt like exactly the kind of memorable situation I wanted more out of from the base campaign.
Maybe the DLC will drop the ball in the last two thirds, maybe the new story changes will suck, so I'm definitely writing another review of this when I'm done, but as stupid as some of the fights are, my first 2 and half hours with it have been great and I think this is one time I agree with the big industry review sites that this might be GOTY. Maybe the DLC is so good because it avoids trying to recreate things from the original and the devs have to design encounters with the new combat system more in mind.
I've been thinking a lot about "unfair deaths" in video games lately, especially video games that send you far back if you fail. This problem has popped up for me while playing Persona 3 Portable and Separate Ways Remake on their hard difficulties, where an encounter designed with RNG as a major component could absolutely screw you over and make you lose up to half an hour of progress if things are not designed to have guaranteed results. While this kind of design feels ridiculous, I think playing through Termina right before both of those games has made me question the value of bullshit like that in games. Roguelikes like Spelunky have systems where, if you get unlucky, enemy mechanics can become so overwhelming that there's nothing you can do to avoid taking lethal damage. However, it's arguable that such unfairness leads to incredible game situations, where you mitigate as many dangers as possible and somehow scrape your way out of a situation you know feels like it could've easily turned unfair if your luck just wasn't good enough.
Fear & Hunger is a series that was probably introduced to a lot of people with this design philosophy in mind. In Termina, there are plenty of consequences for not avoiding an encounter you can't win, for saving at the wrong time, for missing a hit, for saying the wrong thing, for trapping yourself in a corner etc., but the game also offers plenty of consistent freebies if you follow the wikis or explore around enough. I'm curious if this will be a game I come back to more, especially if content expansions start coming out. It would be cool for more character moments to really flesh out their missions. I played a lot of this game on the ADarkRaccoon Easy Mode mod, and it feels like the real challenge of the game isn't from individual encounters (unlike the aforementioned P3P and RE4 remake where I had to reload some saves several times) but from one wrong move sending you back for hours. So when I do come back to this, I want to try doing everything without sleeping and see if that finally gets me the experience I was hoping for from this. Or maybe I just need to dive into the Masochism mode where I seem to have no hope of killing anything at the start.
Fear & Hunger is a series that was probably introduced to a lot of people with this design philosophy in mind. In Termina, there are plenty of consequences for not avoiding an encounter you can't win, for saving at the wrong time, for missing a hit, for saying the wrong thing, for trapping yourself in a corner etc., but the game also offers plenty of consistent freebies if you follow the wikis or explore around enough. I'm curious if this will be a game I come back to more, especially if content expansions start coming out. It would be cool for more character moments to really flesh out their missions. I played a lot of this game on the ADarkRaccoon Easy Mode mod, and it feels like the real challenge of the game isn't from individual encounters (unlike the aforementioned P3P and RE4 remake where I had to reload some saves several times) but from one wrong move sending you back for hours. So when I do come back to this, I want to try doing everything without sleeping and see if that finally gets me the experience I was hoping for from this. Or maybe I just need to dive into the Masochism mode where I seem to have no hope of killing anything at the start.
2022
It's a game about thinking about what could've been, so naturally the ass inside me is going to take this review to reflect a bit on "what could've been" for this game, but I want to supplement that aggressive opener with the fact that the only reason I'm gonna bother being critical is because this is a pretty great game that you should absolutely check out if you like it when visual novels do cool things with the format.
Beacon Pines plays like a choose-your-own-adventure book, except it's mostly pretty linear. What this means is it successfully engages the reader in learning about the world in specific ways, then returns the viewer to points where some delicious dramatic irony can play out as the characters are put in different situations where them not knowing what some characters are hiding is part of the fun. The game does something pretty miraculous in somehow pulling this off without ever going through any scenes of groan-worthy "re-explaining" and maintains that tension largely until its final hour, something I struggle to name a single AAA game in recent memory bothering to put effort into despite constantly advertising themselves as "choices matter" with "immersive worlds". This is just a really cool way to tell a story and fill in background details while still having a central plot that moves along on its own. It's a game that ties this choice of presentation with themes of growing up, thinking about the conversations that could've been, things that could've played out differently if you just had a bit more knowledge of what was going on. If you couldn't tell, the art is also quite pretty, but the real showstopper has to be the soundtrack which I stopped to gawk at a few times.
However, as with a lot of indie games, I just can't help but wish there was more. I wish it went deeper into the body horror (a phrase I notice I've been saying more and more these days when evaluating media but I digress); I wish the game didn't tease so many text options then rarely ever give opportunities where they felt like you were really choosing something significant; I wish they had the courage to not resolve so many plot points in the epilogue; I wish they did more with the juxtaposition between storytelling and reality. It feels like a game I wanted to love, because at the pique of my interest it really excited me, but it ends things fizzling out on a bittersweet note right when things look like they might get more complicated. It accepts the unfortunate cliche of beating the villain by finding out what his plan was and having the story just end there.
Beacon Pines plays like a choose-your-own-adventure book, except it's mostly pretty linear. What this means is it successfully engages the reader in learning about the world in specific ways, then returns the viewer to points where some delicious dramatic irony can play out as the characters are put in different situations where them not knowing what some characters are hiding is part of the fun. The game does something pretty miraculous in somehow pulling this off without ever going through any scenes of groan-worthy "re-explaining" and maintains that tension largely until its final hour, something I struggle to name a single AAA game in recent memory bothering to put effort into despite constantly advertising themselves as "choices matter" with "immersive worlds". This is just a really cool way to tell a story and fill in background details while still having a central plot that moves along on its own. It's a game that ties this choice of presentation with themes of growing up, thinking about the conversations that could've been, things that could've played out differently if you just had a bit more knowledge of what was going on. If you couldn't tell, the art is also quite pretty, but the real showstopper has to be the soundtrack which I stopped to gawk at a few times.
However, as with a lot of indie games, I just can't help but wish there was more. I wish it went deeper into the body horror (a phrase I notice I've been saying more and more these days when evaluating media but I digress); I wish the game didn't tease so many text options then rarely ever give opportunities where they felt like you were really choosing something significant; I wish they had the courage to not resolve so many plot points in the epilogue; I wish they did more with the juxtaposition between storytelling and reality. It feels like a game I wanted to love, because at the pique of my interest it really excited me, but it ends things fizzling out on a bittersweet note right when things look like they might get more complicated. It accepts the unfortunate cliche of beating the villain by finding out what his plan was and having the story just end there.
A bit less enthusiastic about this DLC after finally completing it. Not really any interesting new character developments in the story, and the combat feels a lot less frantic once you fully upgrade your TMP and Stingray. Sometimes grapple melees just don't work, which feels like shit. In the end, it felt like I was just headshotting with the Stingray and not really doing much else, which really is the most boring outcome of the RE4 combat system.
2023
There's enough potential here that I'm looking forward to playing Reload as soon as it releases (even though I'm betting Atlus will force me to buy the game a second time for the eventual expansion they release).
Finally checked out the DLC for this after 13 months since I finished the base game on PC, but didn't want to have to log the time spent replaying the base game and the DLCs separately. Uh... wow. Really disappointed with the added content considering the base game had left a positive impression on me.
None of the characters in any of the new scenarios are making interesting decisions anymore, it's just all Brotherhood conspiracy. The first DLC ending on a cliffhanger is just a really bad look imo, and the case itself is just really weak (interpret a cartoon rather than actually seeing anything happen). Don't think there's anything interesting to justify the colonialist gaze throughout the five DLC cases I finished too.
Getting stuck just feels like shit, same as with in Return to Obra Dinn; idk if there's ever gonna be a game like this that does something entertaining with that emotion. I wish the dream of scouring through levels to really learn about these people and the setting was successful, and I know it must be difficult to accomplish both making these stories interesting and challenging to learn, but I'm just really bitter how detached I felt from this. I was enjoying myself replaying the base game up until I got stuck in Chapter 3 somewhere. I hope one day these types of games can somehow make confirming information a little more than just putting names into slots in a journal, though I don't really know how. There's almost always a point when you're stuck where it just becomes guessing, and I hope sometime soon one of these games can encourage more meaningful interactions as part of the investigation process.
None of the characters in any of the new scenarios are making interesting decisions anymore, it's just all Brotherhood conspiracy. The first DLC ending on a cliffhanger is just a really bad look imo, and the case itself is just really weak (interpret a cartoon rather than actually seeing anything happen). Don't think there's anything interesting to justify the colonialist gaze throughout the five DLC cases I finished too.
Getting stuck just feels like shit, same as with in Return to Obra Dinn; idk if there's ever gonna be a game like this that does something entertaining with that emotion. I wish the dream of scouring through levels to really learn about these people and the setting was successful, and I know it must be difficult to accomplish both making these stories interesting and challenging to learn, but I'm just really bitter how detached I felt from this. I was enjoying myself replaying the base game up until I got stuck in Chapter 3 somewhere. I hope one day these types of games can somehow make confirming information a little more than just putting names into slots in a journal, though I don't really know how. There's almost always a point when you're stuck where it just becomes guessing, and I hope sometime soon one of these games can encourage more meaningful interactions as part of the investigation process.