It amazes me how often people are "too lazy" (read: too undisciplined) to read for 90 seconds, but still bother to even post. You have to be pretty full of yourself to imagine a world where people would care that you haven't read someone's post on the internet.
Thanks for the review, sounds like I game i'm not interested in lol. Seems like it focuses too hard on the "art experience" and not enough on the "game experience". Personally I like story driven games, but if the gameplay isn't good enough, there are plenty of other mediums from which I can get my storytelling fix from.
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Being a game journalist is a tough job. Not as tough as being a miner, but there's always a bunch of people who will never forget if you end up not praising something revolutionary. You miss it, don't like it, don't get it... whatever. You give it a low score and it end up being legendary... well, say goodbye to readers. Some journalist do not care. They write what they think and tell you to f*** off if you don't like it. Those people work for small media, indie websites or their own channels. Then, there are folks who earn their paycheck from a boss, who likes advertisers, who like websites/magazines with a lot of readers, who like when journalists like what they like and are always on top of everything. Those journalists are afraid of not being on top of things. So, more often than not, they give praise to average games, because they remind them of something that might be great. Or they heard someone loved it. Or are pricks who like stupid stuff.
Anyway, I haven't played the game so I have no idea what it's like, but I guess it's not meant for everyone so it will be like it or hate it.
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I do suspect there may be a bit of that, aye. That there maybe was just one person in the game journalism world who really 'got' the game, with all its undertones and subtle hints and symbols, and he tried to share his enthusiasm with his colleagues, but all they got from his explanations was 'it's something pretty unique, and it's written well, what more do you want?'. Maybe some actually praised it just because it was nothing like anything they've seen before - and didn't want to trample on the dreams of innovative authors or something. I can only hope that it's the case, and that I am actually stupid for not understanding the game.
Maybe that's why I'm not a game journalist. Or maybe that's the reason I'm not reading RPS any more (well, along with Gamergate and stuff). I guess that's why I called this outburst a confession: it's a pretty painful hit to one's ego to admit that you're the dim minority.
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Well, there is the part where you see a potential in an indie gem, and you'd feel sorry if most people missed to even try it, so you tell good things about it until you forget to mention the cons. There's even the I'm sorry for these indie guys who made an attempt but did not succeed, but hey there's only two of them so the game was not ever to be perfect, so let's be a bit less strict on them... It happens. I know a guy who buried "Baron Wittard" or something like that, even if every other reviewer said it was more than fine at the time. When asked if he knows that the game was made by only two people, he said - readers want me to tell them if it's worth their money, not how many people made it.
I myself had an experience similar to that. Back in 2008-2010 I wrote for a small local magazine and got to test Fallout 3. Out of 3 pages, I used the entire first one to write about qualities of Fallout 1 and 2, and then used another two pages to compare that to Fallout 3 and decided it's something kids will like a lot at first, but forget in 6 months, while no one of the "old guard" should even bother to play the game in which, to mention some faults, you can shoot a PC monitor and make no damage and use it afterwards, or go forward until you hit the invisible wall and so on.
The more famous reviewer, in a more famous local magazine praised it, of course, and our readers demanded blood, said all kinds of bad stuff about me and all that. 6 months later they hated the game, but could not even remember who wrote the review when they talked in the forums about how the reviewer was correct after all...
Same happened later when I said in a review on our blog that Dragon Age 2 is pure shit. Oh, that one made a shitstorm in the comments. It's hard to find anyone today who will say that DA2 is a great game.
In the end, we are all just people. You like something, someone else does not. The real reviewers play a game several times, try different things, write down everything they notice while first, second and every other play through... Then craft the review based on that. But, lately, there's more and more "professionals" who's first game was LOL or WoW, and who have nothing to compare new titles to, and who think ToEE is a bad game because of 2D graphics, if they even heard of ToEE. They work for media outlets that care only of clicks and income. They write reviews before they finish the game for the first time. They use reviews not to tell you about the game, but to show how witty and smart they are.
That's something I don't like. But new generations like that, they hate to read 3+ pages, and do not care if the game is bad, what's important is that someone famous said it is good. And they also vote with their wallets, just like you and me.
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That's why we've got claqueurs, after all: when you're in a room full of inflated egos, and someone makes a joke, and there's just one person laughing at it - chances are, you'll see people joining in the laughter, rather than people questioning the laughing person as to why he's laughing.
Thing is, though, I'd still get the game even if the same RPS folks concluded that Kentucky Route Zero was absolute tosh. These statements don't really mean anything; not if I consider the 'good' aspects of the game to be important enough to justify the purchase. So I guess the problem is that it's considered something of a mauvais ton to deconstruct a positive impression in a review: you can describe each and every bug you've encountered in great detail, you can find a dozen good metaphors for how bad the voice acting is, and so on, but you don't really explain - using screenshots or audio samples or quotes from the game - what it was that made the voice acting or the writing so good in your opinion. RPS didn't do that. KRZ, being a point-and-clicky and all, is a hard game not to spoil when you're talking about it, so maybe it was their justification for talking in metaphors about a game told in metaphors. I'd quite appreciate it if they wrote a follow-up article explaining how they actually felt about specific events or lines in KRZ, elaborating on why exactly they thought those were good. But they won't.
I think Yahtzee Croshaw found a perfect solution to the conundrum you've described: to call every game you review complete and utter rubbish and make people desensitised to anything but the underlying facts. )
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That's one more thing, no one really cares about the reviews anymore. I mean, yea we care, but we'll get even the bad games when their price gets low enough. Like you said, you'd get it anyway, their writings do not make the difference. The same is even for a really bad games like the Aliens Colonial Marines. Devs fixed it, so if you stumble on a sale that enables you to get it for $2... why the hell not? The only thing review is important right now is to know if it's worth getting on day one... and no game is these days. Also, helps a bit with early access and all that... but that's it in a time when you can get almost every game for a dollar if you wait long enough.
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I guess this warrants a clarification on my part: I was trying to underline that conclusions rarely ever matter, that it rarely ever matters to hear that a game is bad (hence, the relative pointlessness of the Metacritic score and suchlike); what matters is hearing that a certain aspect of that game is bad and why that is so. My idea of a good review is something that looks like a 'light' version of a lecture on game design or literary criticism, deconstructing specific colour choices, dialogue lines, plot elements, pacing, etc. Reviews of KRZ did look somewhat like it. Almost. Sort of. Well, they were aptly cryptic. It was entirely my fault for assuming that the reason that reviewers didn't exactly elaborate too much on any particular aspect of KRZ was that they didn't want to spoil anything, rather than there might be something wrong with their judgement.
In a twisted sense, though, yes, it would be quite correct to take away from my statement that no one cares about so-called professional reviews any more: 'if it's 9/10, I'll pre-order it'. Thank goodness for user reviews on Steam.
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It works the other way around too. Now saying Dragon Age 2 is "pure shit" is the new bandwagon. Try telling people you liked Dragon Age 2 and see what happens.
It has its flaws, but they're no worse than those of games that end up on lists of the "10 best RPGs of all time" lists. Then again I'm not someone who cares that the "dungeons all look the same."
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Being a gaming journalist is easy. You don't even need a journalism degree.
I'm not actually exaggerating on that. Gaming journalism has an incredibly low standard for entry.
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I myself will still play it to the end, in the hope that it somehow picks up all those vague connections between roadside artefacts, and buildings inside other buildings, and Great Depression posters, etc., and somehow manages to knit those into a nice self-contained narrative, something that makes sense within the game itself, without all those references to García Márquez and Gaston Bachelard and other people 'who totally wrote about the things we're showing you'. KRZ does seem like it expects you to be somewhat familiar with the US history (it wouldn't hurt if the in-game characters acknowledged some of the references and commented on those), but I wouldn't rule it out that the vagueness is just a necessary element of build-up, leading to a nice resolution at the end. Not holding my breath, though.
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I'll read this thread later, but here's a review of S&S:EP I wrote if you're interested.
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Yeah, it mirrors my own impression from S&S (and, by extension, KRZ) pretty accurately. '... the game felt like it was trying to convey a bigger thought. [...] That all aside, the game is a experience and a expression.'
I don't mind games that are designed to evoke a certain state of mind, rather than convey a specific idea. But this lingering, gnawing feeling that there's actually something bigger in it, that you're just missing a certain point where all the dangling impressions come together and mean something - it just kills me.
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^^^ This.
Just like Proteus is not a game for everyone, KRZ is not a game for everyone. (No game is, really.) KRZ is more about "the trip" than it is about "the destination." If you are looking to be entertained by "gameplay," KRZ is the wrong place to look. Gameplay is a means to an end in KRZ. If you are not the kind of person who finds deliberating about "What is happening in the game, and why, and what does it all mean?" an entertaining pastime, then this game is not for you.
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That's a pretty condescending assumption to draw from my explanation, especially given that I pre-empted it by saying that I thought KRZ would be perfect for me. I even enjoyed 'Gerry'. But the film doesn't expect agency on your part, you're free to 'deliberate' at your own pace; the game does, however, present you with choices (e.g. in the form of dialogue options) - don't you get the impression that you're making those in the dark, without a proper understanding of the situation your character is in? I'm not referring to the fear of making a mistake: for all I know, every option might be as valid as any other; but I'm referring to the inherent disconnection between the still-pondering you and the protagonist who seems totally on board with everything that is going on, and who regards whichever choice you make as the only logical thing under the circumstances.
Would you mind dropping the 'You should play Mario instead' attitude and explain what it was exactly that you pondered about in KRZ, and why you think the game did a good job at raising those questions and nudging you in a certain direction? What exactly you thought those references of displacement (e.g. 'being both inside and outside', buildings inside buildings) and office floors full of [animals] meant in relation to any other events in the game?
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I seem to have totally botched my attempt at communication. I'll have to try again when I have time to get my words straight.
Second try:
TL;DR: You "got it," but it did nothing for you.
KRZ is an "artsy" game. Your expectations (your reasons for playing the game) were not met, and the itch that game scratches was not an itch you have---or at least, not while you were playing it. It's not so much that you are unable to appreciate it as the fact that the game didn't "work" for you. Even the greatest art (and KRZ is flawed in many respects) doesn't impress everybody.
To be clear, I was not impugning your intelligence or education, I was not being condescending, I was not saying you lack sophistication. I was saying you didn't enjoy the game because the experience it provided was not one you enjoyed. Unlike you, I did not experience a "disconnect" because I was not approaching the game in the same manner you did. I had a different frame of mind going in, and so my perception was different.
For example, you asked, "...don't you get the impression that you're making those [choices] in the dark, without a proper understanding of the situation your character is in?" Yes, I felt I was making those choices (somewhat) in the dark, but rather than bothering me, it pleased me. I did not feel the need to know everything that was going on, the need to feel certain about "the right answer," and the experience of not knowing led me to consider my reaction to being "the gamer" and not knowing. That, in turn, made me think about the juxtaposition of this narrative versus the "omniscient third-person" narrative we usually get in our games and books. And all of that was both intriguing and refreshing to me.
As I tried to say before, this is a game for people who like to think about themselves thinking about thinking. It's definitely not for everyone.
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I wouldn't have brought up condescension if it weren't for the phrase 'If you are looking to be entertained by "gameplay," KRZ is the wrong place to look.' I had no problem interpreting the rest of your post as 'you're approaching the game with a wrong mindset' (meaning that the gameplay does work to the game's favour when seen from a certain perspective), but the mention of 'gameplay as entertainment' left me right in the middle of the Mario territory. No worries, no hard feelings here.
Looking back, it might have been the mindset that prevented me from enjoying it, aye - I mean, my general mindset, the fact that when presented with the choice of feeling mystified or looking for possible clues, I go with the latter. Which brings me to square one: I still have no idea whether it was the fault of the game for not breaking this state of mind from the onset, or whether it was my fault for not noticing/understanding the game's attempt at doing that.
Here's how I see it: suppose the game's developers did intend for the player to 'let go', stop looking for immediate answers, submit to the game's flow, and regard this loss of control, loss of omniscience as the very gameplay mechanic, making half-educated in-game choices as any normal person would in real life, and simply waiting to see the consequences of those. This is quite close to poetry in the form of a game, I'm fine with that. But they would have to allow for the fact that some players may not be approaching their game with this mindset, so they'd have to find a way to break the inner analyst in those players by e.g. breaking their existing notion of a failure state. Okay. So there's something in the very first minutes of the game that attempts to do that - like... say, like the password thing on the petrol station attendant's computer. There's no way to guess that password wrong, and it's a line of poetry - sounds perfect. Except - except that it's not the first thing you do in that game. There's a long conversation with the attendant that precedes this choice, wherein you're asked what the name of your own dog is (which I personally interpreted as an indication that Conway wasn't really interested in getting too personal with the attendant and was making up facts about his life on the spot). You also get to reset the circuit breaker and look for a twenty-sided die that glows in the dark (in hindsight, this could be interpreted as a hint to shut off one's critical thinking in order to see the tiny glowing things, but there's no way this would work subliminally). Number five is facing up. Maybe that's important. Then you're told that you're looking for 'Márquez' - so you're thinking that maybe it's a reference to García Márquez, and maybe Equus Oils is also a reference to something, like a play about personified gods and the dichotomy between what is considered normal and what is considered dull, and maybe you're supposed to have understood something by now. So by the moment I'm entering that short poem of mine as a password that cannot fail - I both appreciate the poetry of what is happening and can't help thinking that I may not have thought it out well enough. It's somewhat of a mixed message, and the game hasn't done anything to break my preconception about failure states in games. So that's the impression I have carried through the first two acts.
The references themselves, sprinkled throughout the game, would be enough to make me suspicious about the actual freedom of interpretation we're given, and about the game's tolerance for things that don't fit into the interpretation we're building. There's this boy, Ezra, that you meet at the end of act two - given the underlying themes of an economic collapse, the dichotomy between natural and artificial, and mentions of displacement, and usury, are we to assume it's a reference to Ezra Pound (complete with a friend named Julian)? After all, he was the one who wrote 'No picture is made to endure nor to live with, but it is made to sell and sell quickly, with usura, sin against nature.' Are we to assume the boy himself is Ezra Pound? Is the structure of the game - divided into relatively short scenes - supposed to imitate Pound's parataxis? If so, why aren't those scenes designed in stark contrast with each other, but rather follow up on each other's theme? If not - why reference a poet at all? And if the name Ezra is not a reference, when are we supposed to concede that after hearing the names Shannon and Weaver (apparently references to the Shannon-Weaver model)? It both feels like it's never safe to infer anything from a reference (not to mention, we can't be expected to recognise each and every reference; I'm just a player, not a theatre critic), and at the same time as though the mere existence of those references nudges us towards looking for a broader perspective on every choice we're given. So... it seems as though the game wants us both to flow with it and to second-guess everything. And if it's actually okay to miss all those references - if the game is actually self-contained and those references are supposed to be regarded as some kind of a literary Easter egg - then the game doesn't seem to be doing a good job at absolving us of drawing parallels with the real world (starting with 'Kentucky' in the game's title).
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"But they would have to allow for the fact that some players may not be approaching their game with this mindset, so they'd have to find a way to break the inner analyst in those players by e.g. breaking their existing notion of a failure state."
And here you have pointed out one of the flaws in this game. Granted, it is a very tricky thing to place your audience into the "proper mindset," but there are still ways to manage it. The fact that this game has trouble accomplishing that very thing only goes to show why it is not a masterpiece of storytelling.
For myself, I realized fairly quickly that I should "turn off some of the analyzing" and was therefore able to relax and enjoy the game. I can, howver, see how others might not "get it" through no fault of their own if they missed that key factor.
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I think it was a combination of things, actually. I've been playing video and computer games since the 70's, so I've seen a lot of different kinds. The dialog reminds me of the text adventure games I used to play. The plot branching reminds me of the "choose your own adventure" books. The fact that the blind man had knowledge of some things he shouldn't and was ignorant of some things he should have known reminds me of many movies, books, and video games where the characters are not what they appear to be. The characters that were there, but not really, reminded me of many, many things, one of which was The Shining.
In short, nothing in the game was a surprise to me, so I took it all in stride.
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Not reading because i dont want to spoil anything about the game
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After reading your post it sounds to me that 'Kentucky Route Zero' is not a game, but in fact a Kinetic or Visual Novel (Based on what you've said about limited player interaction). Perhaps it's been mis-advertised (By both the author and reviewers)?
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There's a grain of truth to that, aye, but the lack of interactivity is not really the core of the problem. If you squint, you could probably call any point-and-click quest a visual novel - they did evolve from text adventures, after all. Our instincts say that the difference is that there's at least some amount of gatekeeping involved in point-and-clickies - that there's something to overcome or solve; and KRZ isn't like that, that's true. It does deny you some parts of the content based on how good you are at navigating, and which dialogue options you pick, though - so in my eyes, it's pretty functional as a game. It's the choices themselves, and the consequences of those choices, that I've got qualms with. To put it into perspective: imagine you're reading a surreal novel - everyone's completely bonkers, all the locations are otherworldly, strange things happen without any particular foreshadowing, and so on. Now, at the end of the novel, the book tells you: 'If you want character X to kill character Y, turn to page 539; if you want character Y to kill X, turn to page 540.' On either of those pages - a short dénouement and 'THE END'. You might feel somewhat confused and hesitant and all, but you'd still know you're given enough to go by, and there would be at least some thought to your decision. Now, imagine if the same book asked you that question at the very beginning, and then proceeded as usual. And at some point through the book you'd find yourself thinking, 'Wait a minute, that's not what I intended.' That's what KRZ feels like at the end of Act II.
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A second mention of Mario in a thread sparked by KRZ. I'm noticing a pattern here. )
I've never actually played Mario past the World 1 myself (although I quite enjoyed Sonic games, so there's that; pleaseleaveyourhatemailatthefrontdoorthankyou), but I think I could deconstruct why I liked the platformers I have played and enjoyed: Adventures of Shuggy, Trine, Giana Sisters, Super Meatboy.
Maybe someone will chime in to add something. These are what I myself was able to pinpoint. )
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I ended up enjoying it a lot more after 'playing' the two free mini pieces The Entertainment and Limits & Demonstrations for context.
http://kentuckyroutezero.com/the-entertainment/
http://kentuckyroutezero.com/limits-and-demonstrations/
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So I got myself a copy of Kentucky Route Zero the other day, having given in to the lavishing praises from RPS and others of that ilk - those who pose themselves as connoisseurs of good art, who care about good writing in their games and who like to treat themselves to a good story with no small amount of complex emotions and ambiguity thrown in for good measure. It sounded like a perfect game for me: a point-and-click quest set on the roadside of the backwoods of America, with a bit of Lynchean symbolism, and some pretty colourful characters. Something that is 'a bit off', enough to weird you out and make you uncomfortable, but still relatable, you know.
What I got in reality (well, after playing the first two acts) was a collage of non-interactive encounters with characters that sound more like archetypes than real people (look, here's a painter who can't get recognition in the world of vulgarity; oh, and here, here's an old poet who could totally get a Nobel's in literature if he cared to), linked with a rather vague common theme of 'travel' and 'weariness' and 'search', but without any clear motivation or background to anyone involved. You've got dialogue options at certain points in the game - but everything is so as-a-matter-of-fact and bereft of any direction that I can't help feeling like I'm choosing those based on how euphonic they sound to me myself, rather than how they fit in the narrative. There are no inventory items, and barely any kind of interaction with the environment. You just travel from one place to another and talk to weary people. Sometimes weird stuff happens. You travel onwards. It looks pretty, it really does, it has some genuinely good writing; and it seems like it's got some very big ideas in it, and that it's desperately trying to explain them to me, and make me feel something, but I just don't get it. I just feel confused. Is this the intended effect of the game? Is it supposed to make people feel like they're travelling and meeting a bunch of strangers who may be connected in some way to each other? That's it? Honestly, I don't get it.
TL;DR: I think I'm too daft for Kentucky Route Zero, and the game leaves me feeling nothing but confusion.
I felt kind of the same way when I played Sword and Sworcery, but at least that game had the courtesy of getting the main character to react to certain things, giving you some context as to what is normal in that world and what isn't.
Feel free to confess to not understanding something in any other game if you like.
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