Here's an eight year old heap of crap of a game that probably IS already forgotten.
The role-playing game "The Fall – Last Days of Gaia" was released for PC in Germany in 2004 by Silver Style Entertainment. It was a questionable honor. The press was rather enthusiastic, which still amazes me. They ignored a load of bugs which made the game unplayable for months after release and necessitated a total of ten patches up to 1 GB in size. However, that was hardly the game's greatest failure. What the designers concocted as a storyline was hardly worthy of a 12 year old, and I still wonder how grown men in the entertainment industry can come up with something like this and still write "enthralling, non-linear storyline" on their product packaging.
"The Fall" has a post-apocalyptic setting. The future world is a desert filled with technological waste. Gangs fight for ascendancy; assorted lunatic sects have formed. An ambitioned yet delicate attempt is made to establish a new government. Though hardly consisting of a handful of men, a few jeeps and some chickens, the "Government of the New Order" already has a president. It also has a declared enemy: Mutated humans, called "Shadows". These grey-skinned people are much better acclimatized to the heat and are apparently formidable fighters. The unnamed main character is searching for his gang-abducted sister and gladly helps the new government in their struggle against human gangs and the ominous, seemingly aggressive Shadows.
So far, so good. Now let us take a step back and evaluate what Silver Style was trying to achieve in their story. The player is set up and recognizes this relatively late in the game. The new president is his enemy, while the Shadows are an essentially peaceful race. Once the player – I'll call him "John" for the sake of convenience – finds out that he was betrayed, he has no problems killing the people of the "New Order" whenever he meets them.
The way this story unfolds raises more than one eyebrow. What the Shadows actually do in this game is so despicable that a psychologically stable player who judges what happens on-screen would not ever wish to take their side. Still John necessarily does and never ever comments on the obvious moral shortcomings of his new Allies. In the city of Copper Hill, his team finds heaps of human corpses resulting from genetic experiments gone awry. There’s no doubt the Shadows did this: they wish to turn every human into their own kind as a means to end the conflict. The writers later uphold the impression that this is a very natural and understandable thing to do. Humans die in those experiments by the dozen or even hundreds – John doesn’t care. Those few who survive have their life expectancy cut in half – well, those fourty years didn’t mean anything anyway.
A central victim of those genetic experiments is, surprise, John’s sister Anie. She is used as a prisoner, entirely against her will, survives against the odds and turns into a Shadow. The writers' insane logic immediately makes her decide that she belongs to this race now. No hard feelings, these are my brothers and sisters now and I’ll fight for them until I die. That sure is one perverted case of Stockholm syndrome. The development also facilitates John’s switching sides, because he will fight for his sister, so he is now fighting for the Shadows until the game ends.
I am sure I’ve never seen a more dangerously naïve approach to storytelling. Gaming magazines have ignored this morally depraved narrative, calling it "rich in twists". Individual reviewers have also praised the story as innovative or did not mention it at all in their overly positive reviews.
If you're conveying the story correctly, which I'm sure you are, then wow. What bollocks. That's quite an internally inconsistent story that seems far removed from ethics.
Rare ruined my childhood by releasing this poor excuse for a sequel. Don't get me wrong It's a fine game on it's own provided you're looking for some $60 Lego Racing simulator, but putting Banjo Kazooie branding and imagery all over this game in hopes that it would sell better is quite possibly the biggest insult to old time Banjo Kazooie fans I can think of, not to mention it's a pretty sleazy sales tactic. I can thank this game for one thing though, causing me to stop denying that Rare was only a shell of it's former self and the only reason the Rare name is still used is so people will stop and think "Oh hey, Those guys made all those classic Nintendo games, I bet this game is good!"when passing by one of their games in the store.
You know this game didn't sell all that well, right? People knew it wasn't the same. The demo proved that - I played it and just thought 'THIS IS NOT BANJO-KAZOOIE'. I still rented it and once I gave it a try found it to be quite fun, but yeah, it's not the BK (hey, that sounds like DK - intentional?) game we wanted and I'm amazed Rare thought it would do well. They actually make fun of the fact that they probably won't make another sequel in the ending - check it out. Actual bit's around the 1:45 mark.
They really need to get some other developer to make a new BK game. Make it an XBox Live Arcade game, couple of levels, decent price... Why has Microsoft not done this yet?
I agree on Fatale being crap. It is.
But The Graveyard? That's the best Moonwalk-simulator ever. Tons of fun. And great music.
The Path is one of the scariest games I ever played. I still have to finish it though. The music is excellent. It is so good that I searched everywhere to get a CD of it (only 500 were made and they are kinda hard to get now). I also like how the game gives you a bad grade if you do what it tells you to do.
The Path is seriously a great game. A strange game. Unusual. But great.
I also love this playthrough of the game. This was one of the games that made me upgrade my PC because I needed to experience it. I'm 3 hours in and it beats Portal 2 any day.
*waits for Tom's response to that*
I want you to know that I wrote an excellent reply to this, truly one for the ages, then the forum ate it. The jist was that even though I am very smart and smell excellent I am jaded. But The Graveyard should be a film, Fatale's shit and The Path's the best but I didn't like it, just because.
Well, I can only speak from personal experience, but the action you've mentioned as a means to establish comparison has only been boring in very, very rare cases.
The thing with the Path is it presents this free thinking system in which you're SUPPOSED to deviate, but choosing not to deviate punishes you. So doing your own thing is inherently not an approvede path. There's no game mechanics, the pace is arduously slow and the game is pretentious and condescending. You can hear it screaming "Take me seriously! I want to be art!"
Tale of Tales is living in the shadow of That Game Company, which does games-as-art far better. Although, I'm somewhat intrigued by The Endless Forest that Tale of Tales has out.
I think the best art game i've ever played is The Stanley Parable.
1. It understands what it is, it's something that will hopefully intrigue you for 20 minutes. You are a man who can hear his life and fate being narrated, play with it! It doesn't try to to do anything as lofty as say just for example play out like blimmin' Salome.
2. Actually being a game has meaning here. The player dictates everything, interactivity is the key to this particular game as the player chooses to take heed of the narrator or try to carve their own fate. This is better than walking a granny to a bench reeeealllllyyyyyyy sllllloooowwwwwllllyyyyyyyy then listening to a song.
3. It is not boring as fuck like The Path.
I played the original mod of Dear Esther as well and thought it was was just pure fiddle-farting.
I sometimes wish I could forget that the Football Manager series ever existed so that I could at least get back the 2000+ hours I've put into the last 4 games and the countless hours in the many games before that (say about another 4000 hours going on 500 hours over the last 8 previous titles before the most recent 4). So that's about a solid two thirds of a year playing games belonging to one series (with two different names). Eeek. Excuse me while I go play a match or two...
This game that I got for free with my new graphics card. I'd post what it was, but I already forgot what it was called. I think it was some sort of basketball game.
Huh. I remember, a long time ago, I was introduced to the awesomeness of Messiah and Sacrifice thanks to them coming free with a graphics card. And there were other awesome games that I played thanks to them coming with a graphics card. In fact, I was under impression that only awesome games come free with a graphics card, guess I was wrong.
And now I feel like a weirdo for having never upgraded the graphics card in either of the two desktop computers I've owned. My current one could use an upgrade, but it's not in the cards at the moment.
Sonic Free Riders, The only game in the Sonic series i really really hated. I tried it at my friend's house and it was just awful. Go watch Angry Joe's review of it and you will see why it's so awful.
I'm in the middle of it and my god is it bad. They added "3rd person mode" in the remastered version and it just doesn't work well. You'll be stuck on everything all the time. 1st person mode is better but still doesn't help with the much too large areas that are empty for most of it and the so & so puzzles.
The worst part are the quiz questions you have to answer to progress. Good luck reading those horrible journals & books all over again and then still just guessing the answer. (or just get a walkthrough on Google because that game will not move until you answer correctly)
I also had a crash which was really annoying since the game has no auto saves at all. Same goes for the deaths (you can die once you change the country). No auto saves so good luck when they kill you off for any stupid reason they want to.
Also the one chase sequence through a whole huge town area I had a few hours ago just made me angry to no end.
Comments
If you're conveying the story correctly, which I'm sure you are, then wow. What bollocks. That's quite an internally inconsistent story that seems far removed from ethics.
There was more ridiculous stuff in there, but nothing so perverted.
Rare ruined my childhood by releasing this poor excuse for a sequel. Don't get me wrong It's a fine game on it's own provided you're looking for some $60 Lego Racing simulator, but putting Banjo Kazooie branding and imagery all over this game in hopes that it would sell better is quite possibly the biggest insult to old time Banjo Kazooie fans I can think of, not to mention it's a pretty sleazy sales tactic. I can thank this game for one thing though, causing me to stop denying that Rare was only a shell of it's former self and the only reason the Rare name is still used is so people will stop and think "Oh hey, Those guys made all those classic Nintendo games, I bet this game is good!"when passing by one of their games in the store.
You know this game didn't sell all that well, right? People knew it wasn't the same. The demo proved that - I played it and just thought 'THIS IS NOT BANJO-KAZOOIE'. I still rented it and once I gave it a try found it to be quite fun, but yeah, it's not the BK (hey, that sounds like DK - intentional?) game we wanted and I'm amazed Rare thought it would do well. They actually make fun of the fact that they probably won't make another sequel in the ending - check it out. Actual bit's around the 1:45 mark.
They really need to get some other developer to make a new BK game. Make it an XBox Live Arcade game, couple of levels, decent price... Why has Microsoft not done this yet?
I want you to know that I wrote an excellent reply to this, truly one for the ages, then the forum ate it. The jist was that even though I am very smart and smell excellent I am jaded. But The Graveyard should be a film, Fatale's shit and The Path's the best but I didn't like it, just because.
Well, I can only speak from personal experience, but the action you've mentioned as a means to establish comparison has only been boring in very, very rare cases.
Tale of Tales is living in the shadow of That Game Company, which does games-as-art far better. Although, I'm somewhat intrigued by The Endless Forest that Tale of Tales has out.
1. It understands what it is, it's something that will hopefully intrigue you for 20 minutes. You are a man who can hear his life and fate being narrated, play with it! It doesn't try to to do anything as lofty as say just for example play out like blimmin' Salome.
2. Actually being a game has meaning here. The player dictates everything, interactivity is the key to this particular game as the player chooses to take heed of the narrator or try to carve their own fate. This is better than walking a granny to a bench reeeealllllyyyyyyy sllllloooowwwwwllllyyyyyyyy then listening to a song.
3. It is not boring as fuck like The Path.
I played the original mod of Dear Esther as well and thought it was was just pure fiddle-farting.
Fix'd.
You are very lucky. Would you like a basketball game?
http://angryjoeshow.com/2010/11/sonic-free-riders-review/
I'm in the middle of it and my god is it bad. They added "3rd person mode" in the remastered version and it just doesn't work well. You'll be stuck on everything all the time. 1st person mode is better but still doesn't help with the much too large areas that are empty for most of it and the so & so puzzles.
The worst part are the quiz questions you have to answer to progress. Good luck reading those horrible journals & books all over again and then still just guessing the answer. (or just get a walkthrough on Google because that game will not move until you answer correctly)
I also had a crash which was really annoying since the game has no auto saves at all. Same goes for the deaths (you can die once you change the country). No auto saves so good luck when they kill you off for any stupid reason they want to.
Also the one chase sequence through a whole huge town area I had a few hours ago just made me angry to no end.
this is an old post, but ill reply with:
You can't forget about it because it's not a real game and will never be a real game because it's a scam.
I think this video says enough.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odBDAcOEKuI
It is, the toy line is tying in with it.