#uboa took so long and i was so done

[lekopoofball]

Me killing Poniko the first time: Me killing her 22 minutes later:

[maniacalmagician]

EVERHOOD: Pinocchio in Psychedelic Purgatory: the Rock Opera Adventure. OR: I walked backwards into hell, and felt euphoria as I became privvy to the Divine Truths

Hello tumblr people. I’ve been Away. I played a game recently and I wanted to talk about it.   damnit i really wanted to put pictures into this mini essay. ive been away from this garbage site for too long, i dont know how to do it lol.  ok anyway    First, I want to say to the developers and anyone else that this has quickly become one of my all time favorite games. Currently writing I have personally never felt a greater emotional attachment to an experience with a piece of software. Perhaps it is the extreme idiosyncratic nature of it, perhaps it is the deeply intriguing storyline, mostly however it is a combination of those in addition to some of the most outstanding psychedelic visuals I have ever seen, particularly in the finale sequence, and a killer soundtrack that combines many genres but focuses mostly to being as bangers as possible. I will be upfront and say this game comes with a boatload of trigger warnings, and thus the aforementioned idiosyncratic nature of it may not appeal to everyone, however I feel it necessary to indicate potential content warnings here as I would hate for people to be triggered: epilepsy is the big one, I myself have mild stutter based epilepsy and it didn't cause health problems or anything but my case is not universal. Anyway. That is a hard warning on epilepsy. I do it because The Incredibles 2 did not, lmao (that's an example of the kind of visuals that trigger me personally. An aside ) Other things include (spoilers): arachnophobia, misophonia (screeches, unsettling sounds), themes of death, immortality, suicide. Some game mechanics are not immediately intuitive and puzzles require some pretty clever but sometimes obtuse solutions. Direction is not always super clear either. People have complained of performance issues but I am leaving this review after playing the switch port, which played smoothly other than some awkwardly long loading times here and there. What I have played of PC so far runs smooth but as of writing, performance for me was fine (my pc is a lowend budget build). There is a difficulty to it. Even playing on easier modes, it can be quite unforgiving. If you're a fan of hard games (I am but I suck at them) and rhythm games (this is, uh, Not? That? Almost functions as half walking sim, half rhythm Game, dodgy shoot em up kinda feels. Truly unique gameplay I think. Constantly switches things up, too. But yes I also adore rhythm games, and yes i also do suck at those too.), half of it is that. The devs troll you with puzzles. It's truly a wild experience as it advertises, one of a kind. And yet, however.... This game wears, much like its heart,, its references, on its sleeve. If you are not into that kind of thing, you will probably be annoyed by this game. It also loves to delv into meta, as many puzzles and interactions are references to the UI of the game itself. Personally, I'm not wild about meta but I appreciate the ernestness here, so I'm willing to roll with whatever this game throws at me because every turn feels unexpected, fresh, funky, somber, and wildly intelligent, with boldly sincere ludonarrative choices, script and art direction. If you like Geno from super Mario Brothers, which, guess what, narrator here LOVES Geno from Super Mario Brothers, this is functionally the game you've always wanted that Nintendo could never make because Square has held Geno hostage in some kind of underground torture facility since 1995. Turns out they were rather right to do so, because when that puppet is out serving a higher authroity, he can be quite dangerous. Narrarively it borrows much from its sources but I would argue there's proof the writers have spent time thinking about the implications of their source materials worlds, and that reflection casts itself back to create this, experience that is wholly unique even if we know Red is Geno and "Gaster" (who was based on Uboa from Yume Nikki or princess mononokes forest spirits), and some kind of disco Marceline character who changes their identity frequently, skeleton brothers- well undead brothers, really - We have to remember in the creation and consumption of media sometimes, influences and archetypes are ever present and Everhood almost itself is a realm that would indulge in the idea of self referential material. It makes for this very Jungian experience of friendly archetypes we're familiar with, which works well with this setting of an immortal realm. Thats not to say the personalities we do meet aren't expounded upon - they are, heavily, and become uniquely their own. (Spoiler) if my theory is to be believed this world is a purgatory where people have made their own artificial vessels and as time has made them bored (though some seem to be having a good time) while typical strains of the Pinocchio myth are thrown in about questions of identity and death - and probably even more so towards Timothy Learys concept of the Ego Death, or the return to the collective soup of unconcious being. Undertale will probably always be a reccomendation even by its own reference to it so comparisons to it will be littered through here. It feels like the developers were emboldened by Toby Foxs spirit in game development (his creative energy is rather infectious) and shared many similar ideas, but this feels far more aimed towards a maturer audience (references to the things I mentioned in the trigger warning list) and focused on achieving this feeling that its predecesors have as well. Yume nikki. Lisa. Earthbound. Toby's games. super Mario rpg in its humor, Cat Soup in its psychedellic depressive vibes, all this cool indie cult classicy kinda mash up soup.  bizarre antics and then these characters who have surprising depth the further you go. It has been 6 years since Undertale came out, and the developers for Everhood have called a lot of the "what ifs" that fans of that game ask, an answer in their own game. (What if No Mercy was forced, for example? What if going against destiny is the wrong thing to do? Why is Death such a Bad Thing? etc!) And the further along you progress, the smarter the story gets, the more complex the narrative threads and characters. This game knows how to write compelling literature and that wasn't an element I expecting but god am I so glad for it. Literally my pea brain saw Red's design flipping around some frets on a streamers videocapture (shoutout to based fellow tampa native Charles White, thank you for being witty and having good taste and your Floridian comisery.) one night and went "oh i like." But the experience I got in exchange was, so, so much more than that (but the tetris effect won't let that image disappear from my eyelids quite yet haha.) I hear there are multiple endings and one requires a 3 hour long trek. I'm not done with the game at the time of reviewing. You bet your sweet ass I am going to find out the Ultimate Truth. I found a way to deal with some of the bullshit in other games, I may not be great at games but I want to see whatever imagery these guys put on screen so it compels me to seek out all the alternative routes. I am going to be following these developers projects very closely. If this is their debut, their next project will be ... ... I would hate to force expectations, like if you just made a magnum opus like this it'd be perfectly alright to retire, but I just once again want to say thank you to the developers for putting your heart on display for the world to see. I see it. I have dealt with struggles similar to the ones in the stories this game articulates about anxiety and depression, existentialism and dread, dissociation and all the heavy themes that were risky to include narratively - I'm certaintly glad you took the risks you did. May update this review as I get further along the story but yeah. Tl;dr: haha pinocchio myth done well make brain go brrr. 9.99999999999998/10. I am taking an infitisimal fraction of a point off because of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spider in the monster maze. that thing was abhorrent, but I won't let it deter anyone else who wants to play.

[askshalvanic]

Yume Nikki rant/thoughts

Ahh, Yume Nikki, one of the most renowned RPG games in history. While certainly not as nearly as popular as Undertale, it does have its spot within the RPG community, and some people like the game, hell, there’s some who find it inspirational or even life changing. Now, the problem is… I don’t really share this opinion or thoughts on it. In fact I don’t like the game very much. I didn’t really enjoy it, and to be honest, I immediately uninstalled it and wanted to forget about it the moment I was done playing it. The reason for this was that it was mostly a negative experience. I did have a few moments that I enjoyed here and there, so it wasn’t all that negative, but about 80% or so of it did make me think “can’t wait for this piece of shit to be over”. Now, I know this might be an unpopular opinion, but I really, REALLY don’t like Yume Nikki.

I may draw some comparisons to Bioshock Infinite in the sense that this masterpiece of a game that almost everyone and their grandmother consider worthy of a TEN OUT OF FUCKING TEN doesn’t really bode well with me either (I say this mostly because I feel that I’m in the minority when it comes to the people that have played this game and not loved it), and I honestly consider these two the games that I am not willing to play ever again in my life. But this ain’t about Biocunt Integrate, it’s about the dreadful world of Yume Nikki.

Also, I guess as a fair warning, SPOILERS AHEAD IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED IT. This was more than anything meant to be a self reflection on what I thought was wrong with the game, and thus ended up mentioning a lot of spoilers, so if you want to play it blindly, go ahead before reading this, you might take a while though.

I’ll start with the things that personally I liked or made me have some form of respect for the game because it’s easier to list those reasons given there are very few positives, and because I want to get that out of the way first. I guess the positives would be that I liked the atmosphere the game had. It was unnerving, and scarier than most games that claim themselves to be horror games and only rely on cheap and predictable jumpscares and nothing else. And Yume Nikki literally just has some fucking sprites and dark rooms, and yet it’s one of the most disturbing and honestly creepy things I’ve seen. The soundtrack’s just a bunch of looped sounds that doesn’t last too long, but it still adds something to the feel of each world that makes it different from the others. The world designs too are amazing (except for Hell) and each of them looks interesting in their own way. The fact that each effect had its own little details whenever you used them was also pretty cool. The lack of a conventional way to tell a story and just leaving things for you to interpret was an interesting choice from the dev, and the fact that Gast- I mean, Uboa, which is one of the most interesting things about the game isn’t central to the story or you don’t even have to see it to beat the game is actually really cool. Overall I guess it is safe to say it is a pretty unique and well thought out game in general, and I respect it from an artistic point of view.

Now, for the obviously much bigger list of negatives. See, my first problem with the game is how overly complex some things in it are. Several of the events are RNG based, so you basically have to get lucky for some of the most intriguing or interesting moments in the game. Then there’s also the fact that not only events, which are completely optional so there’s not too much of a problem, but also one of the fucking effects that you need to get is tied to an RNG, meaning that you better get lucky and get it at the first try because otherwise it’s gonna be waking up, going to hell, go through the previous world before that one and then get to the actual world again, hoping you get the right one this time. I get it for events that you don’t even need to see to finish the game, BUT FOR ONE OF THE STEPS TO GET TO AN EFFECT TO BE RNG? I sincerely find that pretty bullshit and unnecessary. But that’s a minor issue I had.

The bigger issues are more or less tied to the existence of Hell itself. I mean, it does justice to its name, its a fucking torture to go through it, not only because if you take the wrong turn at any point or don’t have any reference of where you are going or are constantly looking at a fucking map you WILL get lost, but also because it’s so stupidly bright red that after a while of being there your eyes will scream for mercy, and you will more than likely spend a long time in that place, if not because you got lost, then because you essentially need to go through it more than once if you want to actually beat the game. Some people may think it adds to feeling of adventure and danger and excitement, but I simply find it annoying and a nuisance. Essentially, this game isn’t for overly impatient people. You complain about loading screens? Boy, get ready to meet HELL. Admittedly, you do get to do a lot more during the travel from point A to hell to point B, and there is danger there, but I would rather sit through a few moments of a loading screen than have to deal with the bright as the sun red tone in the background designed to either drive you insane or to completely fuck up your eyes, and once you get the stop light effect, the toriningen becomes kind of irrelevant at the price of walking at a normal pace. It can be fixed by just looking at a map but even then it’s still an eye sore and even with the map you can get lost, which happened to me a lot, and the fact that you NEED to go through hell in order to get to other worlds for their respective effects makes it all the more annoying and sigh inducing whenever you see the multi-shaped little shit portal that takes you there.

Another major issue is perhaps the fact that if it wasn’t because a wiki exists or because I had help through most of the game, I would have never figured out where to even get the effects, which ones I was missing, how did they look like or how to get to neat little events that were honestly quite interesting and well made. I know that’s what some people might find charming or the whole point of the game really, to find it out by yourself, but to be honest I would have given up eventually after being unable to find any more stuff because it is all so hidden. I can appreciate when a game goes out of its way to be mysterious, when there’s stuff to find, when it is challenging, but honestly, most of the stuff in this game is far too convoluted for me to give it a pass on that. Aside from the instructions, you are pretty much on your own and therefore entirely fucked. Hell, I would have thought the minigame with the console was somehow important or it would give me something interesting at the end, but reading “nah it’s just a jumpscare” made me realize a lot of this game would be confusing or I’d believe something would be important when really its not. And having somewhat of a trolly person as your guide doesn’t help much either.

Speaking of which, my guide and friend also took part in what makes me not want to play or hear anything about this game ever again. Because of the way he hyped up the ending, even when I started to hate the game a part of me thought “the ending will probably be worth it” to keep going on. The ending, do it for the ending. I’ll talk about the ending later, but needless to say that part of me was wrong, and the ending was somewhat overhyped  him. This was a minor inconvenience however when compared to the one thing that even made me stop mid stream and say “I’m done” and then close the game out of the blue. The god damn insistence on me having to play the game one way, as opposed to how I want to play it. Yes, I might have missed some events that were interesting, but given the fact that he tends to trick me into thinking something when really something else is going on already had me mistrust his guidance to a certain degree, and had me looking up shit on my own to confirm if he was saying the truth. I honestly felt after a while that I was being forced to do things one way instead of doing them by myself and the way I wanted to do it, that is why it was more of a chore than a game, I felt like I was doing some sort of homework that I had to finish at some point, I felt obligated to do it and that made me hate more than anything, the fact that I felt like I HAD to finish it as opposed to wanting to finish it. Feeling forced to do something makes you not want to do it, especially when someone keeps banging over your head “DO IT THIS WAY, DO THIS BECAUSE YES EVEN THOUGH ITS NOT IMPORTANT, DO IT MY WAY NOT YOURS” was a tad overwhelming and made me feel like I was being manipulated and like I needed to do it one single way. Feeling like that sincerely made me want to rush to game, to be done with it, to not have anything to do with it again, and so I did. I started regarding it less like a cool but fucked up game and more like one fucked up homework that I had to do because I had no choice in the matter (sorry if you see this, but you did influence my views in this game a lot).

And this takes me to my final point as to why I dislike this game so much, and this is where I start comparing it to Biodrug Ultimate and its the ending. See, both games have this feeling to me that for some reason if you miss anything or if you don’t do something in specific you will get a bad ending out of however many there could be, because being games that look so creative and unique they probably have more than one ending, right? Well, that is a lie for both of them, but unlike Bioterrorist Influence I didn’t have my expectations high for Yume Nikki. I was already expecting the worst, without much hope for anything because I had Hyoko to tell me at least that there was one and only one ending. And even then the ending still fucked me up, because I didn’t know what, out of all the horrible things that could happen, to expect. And while it was leagues better than the shit show Biodunked Ontimate had to offer for one of the most disappointing endings I’ve ever seen, it doesn’t make it any less depressing or empty. By the time I had finished the game I felt like absolutely nothing that I had done was worth it, like the journey to get here had been void and meaningless. This wasn’t disappointing because I was already expecting nothing from the start, but it did upset me because I had learned nothing and I left with nothing but a bitter taste. Yes some events were pretty cool, same with most of the worlds, it was an interesting concept of visiting a girl’s consciousness through her dreams, and since most dreams tend to be fucked up it would make sense for hers to be pretty bizarre as well. But what was about the effects and about her dreams that drove her to suicide? What did she feel like after exploring all over her own mind and dreams that would make her do that? Why? WHY?! To top it off, I actually felt like it was me the one that drove her to it. Digging so far deep into her consciousness that she felt the only way to deal with her problems was to end with her own life, and that I was the one that pushed her off. I don’t care that she doesn’t actually exist, I don’t care that this all a videogame that I ended up hating, it’s still all so fucked up and it feels awful that with the press of one key I was the one that made her jump into the abyss, never to return again or dream again. I felt empty, sad, upset, thinking about why did things have to turn this way. I hesitated for a while to even make her go up those stairs, but I feel like in the end my own desire to be done with it all, to close the loop, to never come back to this game again made me do it, because I know this is a game, I know many others before me and many more after will press that key to send Madotsuki crashing against the pavement down below, but that doesn’t make it any less horrifying or fucked up that I sent a little girl to her own death. I never did the Genocide Route in Undertale because I felt that after having establishing a bond with such lovable and interesting characters I’d be guilty of not only betraying their trust for my own amusement but that I would also take away that feeling of uniqueness and of having such well thought out and caring characters that sincerely made me cry at the end of the Pacifist Route and turning it all into dust, into void, only to get to that one boss battle that everyone keeps praising and that turned Sans into the actual joke that he’s become now within the Undertale Fandom. But that is a rant for another day. The point is, I didn’t do it because to me Undertale is much more than just an RPG, more than just a game, it meant a lot to me and I cared deeply about the characters, to the point of not wanting to murder them, even though I know its a game and it won’t matter either way in the real world, I feel like not caring would make me even more of a twat, and even though I didn’t enjoy Yume Nikki, that still doesn’t mean I wanted Madotsuki to die. Even when I sent her forward I had hoped for there to be something that saved her or for her to actually not jump out of the balcony even if I told her to. Fuck me for having nice thoughts I guess. Oh I also did make the choice to be a nice Madotsuki that didn’t murder anything even though my friend was insisting that I should be the exact opposite of that but whatever.

In the end, I guess the bad things do overweight the good things for me as far as this game goes, and I still feel this sense of emptiness when I think about it. If there is a message, I am unclear about what it is. The world of dreams is incomprehensible? If you dig too far into your unconscious you won’t like what you’ll find out? No matter what you do the outcome of things is inevitable? That death is the true ending for everything? Life and dreams are meaningless? The more I think about it the more it feels like I’m straying away from whatever meaning there is because it all felt so pointless and just not worth it that I can’t find a meaning to all of it. Like, what was the point of driving Madotsuki to suicide? What was the whole point of gathering the effects if she was going to end up dead anyway? Would anything have changed if I hadn’t looked for the things? Nothing changes no matter what you do in the game, so then what does it matter? Did it happen because she was on a quest to find herself and who she is within these dreams and was unable to find it so she then killed herself? I just don’t really know what the point of it all is, and this is exactly my problem with Bioshock 3: The Electric Boogaloo too, after all I did, and all I went through it seems as if thought it was pointless, like I shouldn’t even have bothered if I wasn’t going to be able to change anything for better or for worse.