#unfairly maligned games

[spacevixenmusic]

Unfairly Maligned Games, Vol. 3

Games I loved that got low scores, review bombed, or have some other weird negative stigma attached to them that I think is unfairly earned.

NOTE: I don't believe in giving games a number score or a letter grade. Maybe I'm just bad at criticism or very easy to please, whatever.

Indivisible [2019]

Mostly only known as the "from the makers of Skullgirls" game, Indivisible is another prime example of a game that was crowdfunded as one thing but turned into another, and gets a bad rap for its association with the ever-present controversiality of Skullgirls' creators. That said, I still think - as always - that it's crucial to view a game for what it is, not what it isn't. And what it IS is an extremely engaging mish-mash of genres and endearing characters, oozing with style and appeal, that fills a very particular void left behind by some of the most classic RPGs of a bygone era.

At its core, Indivisible is a 2D Metroidvania/RPG hybrid with an unusual battle system that plays similarly to an old PSX game series called Valkyrie Profile. During combat, each character's gauge will fill up, allowing them to take action(s). Your four party members are each assigned to one of the four face buttons on a controller (e.g. A, B, X, Y), and pressing that button will - in real-time - execute an attack on the enemy. Using it in combination the D-Pad allows for several different types of attack. All party members' attacks can overlap simultaneously, allowing you to string together combos to really rack up the damage, or juggle enemies to prevent counterattacks and break their defenses. The Metroidvania and platforming portion comprises the rest of the game, with a heavy focus on using those same action skills to scale massive environments, solve platforming puzzles, and dodge spikes. Typical Metroidvania stuff.

Story-wise, in our modern world of RPGs that is dominated almost exclusively by Japanese and Scandinavian narratives, Indivisible is breath of fresh air that focuses heavily on South and East Asian mythology and themes. Heavy inspiration is taken from the cultures of India, Tibet, Mongolia, and the South Pacific. This is reflected not only in the characters and their various ethnicities, but in the game's approach to spirituality, reincarnation, second chances, and being a teenager hellbent on destroying god. Our main protagonist Ajna is a teenager studying martial arts who isn't quite as in touch with her spirituality as her mentor would like her to be. When war strikes the land and burns her home to the ground, she gets pissed and sets out on a quest for retribution, discovering in the process that she actually does possess certain godlike powers of destruction, and also that she can absorb certain people into her head, which is just a cute way of lampshading having a Party System.

I've seen Reviewers and big Opinion-Havers on the internet criticize the game's writing for having a bull-headed protagonist who boldly rushes into confrontation, unleashing her wanton destruction without first considering the catastrophic consequences for civilians. It's almost like they've forgotten what being a teenager and making poor choices is like. But I say fuck 'em. I say we need MORE stories about uninformed teenagers with immense godlike powers and no sense of nuance making rash decisions and fucking up royally. That alone is crucial to understanding the rest of the game's themes about atonement, reincarnation, and understanding why you believe what you believe in. That's what Indivisible is all about. In many ways, I feel like Ajna shares a common story arc with Korra from the Avatar series, and it's very cool to see how she learns to deal with the damage she's caused and what insight that gives her when facing down the Big Bad.

Of course, what is a good story without characters to flesh it out? The characters in this game are absolutely charming and multifaceted, coming from a wide array of different cultures and personalities, many of which are vastly underrepresented in not only RPGs but video games in general. Personal favorites include, but are not limited to, big booba water mom Thorani (based on a buddhist deity of the same name), Leilani the Hawaiian sharknado (spins around in a cyclone attack using a leiomano, a Hawaiian shark-tooth sword), lesbian pirate mom Baozhai (based on the famous Chinese pirate Ching Shih), and of course, local nihilistic swamp witch Razmi (a loose mishmash of Korean and Persian Zoroastrian shamans). The full cast of characters is enormous (well over 20 playable ones alone), and each one comes with a unique moveset and playstyle that not only keeps gameplay interesting, but matches their personality and the role they play in the story.

But if there's one thing I truly want to focus on when I gush about this game, it's this. Indivisible has one thing over most other games of its genre, something that modern RPGs in particular suffer heavily from a severe lack of, and that's its strong commitment to multiculturalism. Indivisible made a clear decision to not only feature characters from around the globe, but to blend their cultures together in interesting and exciting ways that don't diminish or water them down. Every character is allowed to shine in their own way without diluting what makes them stand out in the first place, which is why you can have a game that features a gunblade-wielding cowboy, a Namibian songstress, an armless Chinese dancer, a Kamen Rider knock-off, and a Mongolian archer who people keep mistaking for Pearl from Steven Universe. This sort of melting-pot cultural stew used to be common in classic anime and 90s RPGs, but kind of fell out of fashion with the rise of gacha waifu games and Elder Scrolls derivatives. Now more than ever, I feel like Indivisible is exactly the sort of injection the gaming world needs to rekindle those flames of pure imagination that the old classic era brought us.

All that said, one of the biggest reasons Indivisible will always have a dark mark next to its name is of course due to the fact that its lead designer (the studio head) was involved in a sexual harassment case that resulted in everyone on the team either quitting or being laid off, and the rights to the work and characters getting lost in the shuffle. Additionally, the game was still finished and released as intended, but did not feature any of the guest star characters that were promised during crowdfunding, most of whom were indie darlings of the time (Shovel Knight, Hyper Light Drifter, and Super Time Force to name a few). Naturally, this has left a sour taste in many folks' mouths, so it is somewhat understandable why the game would have a negative stigma attached. There are also a few bizarre and possibly off-putting cameos hidden among the NPCs (a few outdated meme references and Zone-tan, of all people), but these are entirely skippable and serve only as background extras.

Sour grapes aside though, I wholeheartedly recommend Indivisible for anyone looking for a fresh take on action RPGs. The neat hybridization of Metroidvania and real-time RPG with fighting game mechanics gives it a very unique identity, and if the compelling spirituality of the story doesn't grab you, the charm of the characters absolutely will. It certainly took me for a ride. My only word of caution is to follow the game's own suggestion and get good at Blocking in combat as early as you can!

[shitpostingkats]

Man I've been playing through dual destinies and the visceral Apollo and Athena contrasts are making me go insane.

Your name is Apollo Justice. You are a lawyer. You're a pawn. You're a weapon. Your mentor is a jackass and your rival only sees you as a ghost of his brother. You're pushed around town to run chores you aren't being rewarded for. You are volunteered to deliver revenge on behalf of your jackass mentor, who refuses to tell you anything because it might spoil his game. When you falter, everyone tells you to learn to stand up on your own. Your mother finally learns of your existence, but she isn't ready, so everyone agrees not to tell you. After all, it's her feelings that are at stake. Apollo? It's never about Apollo.

Your name is Athena Cykes. You are a lawyer. You got here all by yourself, clawed your way to it all on your own. Your mentor set aside space in his life to take you under his wing, to offer advice and security. He takes over when you falter, and walks you through everything he's doing, so you can one day stand without assistance. You keep working, so so hard, because everyone in the courtroom is a familiar face. Your childhood friend. Your mentor. Your coworker who is slowly losing it, and you're not sure why, but you're pretty sure it's your fault. The man who gave up everything for you. Athena? Everything is about Athena.

Neither of you is okay.

[karlachian]

what i will say. about a charisma caster class. is that if you can’t make it work for you. you are simply maybe bad at the game

[twistedminutia]

Leona and Malleus

Leona and Malleus’ relationship is pretty straightforward in the game: Leona doesn’t like Malleus and Malleus… doesn’t seem to particularly care about that one way or the other. Maybe? Honestly, it’s hard to tell what Malleus specifically thinks of Leona. But Leona’s feelings on Malleus are pretty clear cut. Leona doesn’t like him.

For the most part, Leona’s reasons for not liking Malleus also seem pretty clear cut. Malleus is the crown prince, the heir apparent to Briar Valley, and clearly well-respected in his own right. Leona, meanwhile, is the second born prince who won’t become king and who seems to be pretty unfairly maligned by people for it. He doesn’t like Malleus due to resentment, due to Malleus being everything Leona isn’t and can’t be. Right?

Yes, it’s probably true that Malleus being the crown prince is part of Leona’s dislike, I think there might be another part at play, something a bit more personal to Leona. First, we have to consider the timeline. We know that Leona came to school four years ago, and didn’t come until a year after he received his acceptance letter, which is why he’s two years older than the other third-year students. He wasn’t going to come to NRC at all originally, but he was prompted to come a year later due to the birth of Cheka. He doesn’t stare this explicitly, but the birth of the newest heir to the throne seems to have made things emotionally worse for him- whether the new prince simply made Leona feel his place as the eternal spare was confirmed, or if people started brushing him aside more after Cheka’s birth, we don’t know. We do know that Leona left due to the atmosphere at home, and his inability to pass his previous year was likely due to self-sabotage to remain in school longer, rather than a genuine inability to pass his classes. When he needs to, Leona can demonstrate that he knows the material, so it’s not a matter of not studying.

Leona left home to avoid the likely emotional pain he felt after Cheka solidly took the throne from him, and is taking pains not to return. What does this have to do with Malleus? Consider Leona’s first year at Night Raven. He’s been there for four years, where Malleus has only been there for three, so his freshman year would have been before Malleus attended. Think about this scenario: Leona, after years of being in the shadow of his brother, gets time to himself. He does well in school, maybe, even gets some respect. He’s in Savanaclaw, and they’re a team that’s historically done well in Spelldrive. He plays and he’s a promising athlete, maybe even leading his team to victory. He wins. Savanaclaw wins and he’s a part of that.

For the first time in his life, Leona Kingscholar gets to be first.

And then Malleus arrives the year after that and completely destroys everyone in the Spelldrive tournament. And everything Leona had goes up in green flames.

No wonder Leona hates Malleus. He had something he could be first in- and then another prince who’d had the world handed to him on a silver platter came and took it all away.

This also makes Leona’s decision to trample Malleus a little more personal. He didn’t just want to get Malleus out of the tournament. He wanted Malleus to feel just as crushed as Leona did.

[puckpocketed]

ok the stick story is this

according to The Hockey Media, who as we know do not actually follow any teams closely so know NOTHING, ovechkin was finally hit by father time. he's finally slowing down. he's a shell of his old self. he has old man syndrome. blah blah blah

as a caps fan, i know that this is false, because our russian machine never break. he's a freak. who btw had like 13 goals disallowed or something crazy like that in the first half of last season but i digress

gee i wonder why ovechkin's goals went down? is it because his longtime center and future hall of famer nicklas backstrom retired in all but name? is it because our other top 6 center in evgeny kuznetsov had by far the worst season of his career (from point a game to not even half a point a game) and then went into the player's assistance program before being traded to the canes and then bolting for the KHL?

actually, as it turns out: no.

i mean probably those were factors, but there was another factor. a factor that many caps fans are very aware of but almost no one reported on for some reason (probably because they were too busy writing about how SiDneY CrOsBy was having SuCh an AmaZiNg season for a 36 year old despite ovechkin literally having just as a good a season the year prior at the *checks notes* age of 36. also this is a reminder that one of those two actually led their team to a playoff berth and it wasn't crosby)

ovechkin is, among other things, an elite shooter. like many elite shooters, he is EXTREMELY picky about his sticks. he has been using the same CCM model for the last 7 seasons...and prior to this season they discontinued it.

the first half of the season (roughly), ovi was constantly trying out new sticks from CCM, from Bauer, whoever. he tried quite a few different sticks. results: 8 goals in 43 games.

then, ovechkin found an independent supplier. apparently (i can't remember where this info came out, maybe 32 thoughts?), these guys have an "ovi pro curve" model based on his old stick with CCM and he bought it and tried it out. curve was identical, and it felt right to him. started using those. results: 23 goals in 36 games.

am i saying that he is going to continue on that pace this coming season? probably not. do i think that the rumors of his demise as a goal scorer are greatly exaggerated and almost surely mistaken? yes. am i optimistic that with some stability in our center depth and stability in stick choice, ovechkin will have a 40 goal season again and possibly break wayne gretzky's all time goals record? YES.

what this means for PLD our beloved failhorse wife: he's not getting some washed up old man former great on his wing. he's getting the greatest fucking goal scorer in the history of the sport. and i, for one, am excited to see what they can do together.

link i thought about this all morning during baking and while i was out!! thank you for the stick explanation and all the sources i LOVE citations i am eating them up like theyre cakes at teatime....! more under the cut but heres what i was thinking about when i read this:

thinking about how,, particular some players get about their equipment, how superstitious, it's crazy to me that a manufacturer can just do all that. if it were me and MYE special stick got discontinued id be suing for damages

i was super interested in what actually changed in the second half of the season because i saw ovechkin was back to scoring basically at-will again, so really thank you for explaining.. the bond between a hockey and their stick is so beaugtiful <3

cr-sby is my babygirl-in-law and i fear i will always be fond of him because of this, so i shall tread carefully here (pens friends look away) it DOES suck that they're not recognising your old man for his achievements while that old man gets hyped. is it like, weird anti-russian sentiment? or a more general anti-caps bias? every team fan space i dip into feels unfairly maligned one way or another - which, yeah! clenching my fist of rage.......

you spin such a tale and im VERY excited to see how next szn shakes out in light of all this and also . grabbing dubois by the scruff of his neck like i will stan either way but PLEASE dont embarrass me in front of my cool new friends kjlasdklasdkl....

thank you so much for stopping by and for the warmest welcome ever <3

[interlockingpatches]

i would love to see australian animal patches

wombat… ringtail possum… bandicoot.. redback spider.. cool birds

I would love that also! Australian wildlife has been on my long-list since forever, so to the top of that list it goes, anonymous antipodean and/or australophile!

I have unpublished Kangaroo and Quokka designs from early days, and an Ibis I've been hoping to place — with adjustments, I think that motif could do right by the unfairly-maligned but delightfully-monikered "Bin Chicken."

Wombat is just a sketch, and my sense at first was that it would work up much too large, but then I looked up "wombat scale" and

I see that this fear was unfounded.

I confess also that, when I searched for a "ringtail possum," I expected someone with a striped tail, like a lemur? instead…

i immediately lost The Game.

I'll definitely have a go at Bandicoot and Redback Spider! Off the top of my head I'll also be looking into a Koala, an Emu, a Kookaburra, a Dingo, an Echidna, a Tasmanian Devil and…

… we'll see who stands out in this first round, but if anyone has species to suggest (especially herps, birds and invertebrates), design critiques to offer, or advice and or resources to share on Indigenous protocol/preferences vis-à-vis representation and naming, I'd be very happy for that input!

[sforzesco]

hi!! i’m a classics major and am so entranced by your art and how you interact with history and literature, it really inspires me and expands my brain all the time. SO spicy.

anyways, I was wondering if you’d be comfortable talking a bit about your degree (s) and how they’ve influenced your artistic/critical analytical processes??

oh man, I have exactly zero degrees. like a true jester, I went to a trade art school, so I don't even have an art related degree, I've got a certification of surviving hell completion

the way art and history interact for me is that a lot of it circles back to trying to find ways to talk about something. history doesn't necessarily repeat, but it often rhymes, haunts, and cannibalizes. some eras of history are equal parts history and a stage, and a stage serves as a place to say something without necessarily having to be in it. the bossism politics of the philippines rhymes with the faction politics of the late republic more often than it doesn't. watching the marcoses crawl back into power was like watching the medici return to florence. duterte said he was like julius caesar crossing the rubicon, and over 6,000 were murdered under his regime. somethings are the same.

a lot of it feels like a puzzle, and I like it when pieces come together. more often than not, there's something current going on that prompts me to look back into history for something comparable, either as a stage, or just to feel like I'm not losing my mind, that other people had to deal with this shit too.

I was a teenager when the original assassin's creed games were coming out, and I used to go to libraries with other fans and we'd just sit in the non fiction sections and read everything that was on a shelf, and then go outside or whatever and start talking about where the games diverged from history and try to figure out what the next game would do based on whatever we learned. and I just kind of. kept doing that even when I stopped playing the games because the story sucked ass, but because there's already a second intersection of fiction working along side historical analysis, it unlocks a bunch of other stuff in the back of my mind while I take notes on something.

the gore you read in the thebaid reminds me a lot of imperial chines torture literature, and now we've got imperial horror and while we've moved out of the ancient Mediterranean but it's a whole body of work that I'm now looking at while thinking about rome, and somewhere in there, I'll probably find some literary theme that's cool and I'll start researching whether or not someone's examined like. the renaissance from that lens. what does the gore mean. what happens when history unfairly maligns and scapegoats someone. what happens when a foundational sacrifice goes wrong.

one of the most gut wrenching things I ever read was about how rome took any record of spartacus' words and buried it, and now I spend too much time thinking about what words we put in the mouths of dead people.

[qiu-yan]

16, 17, 22, 23 for the ask game?

choose violence ask game

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

answered here!

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

there's a decent amount of this sort of content already, but i'm always happy to see more content revolving around jiang cheng, jin guangyao, and qin su's coparenting adventures.

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

honestly, i feel like all the parts of canon i enjoy have no shortage of other fans, due simply to how big and diverse this fandom is. that said...

canonically, the yiling patriarch was op as fuck. wei wuxian was not some uwu unfairly maligned defenseless innocent, he was one of the most powerful, genius, and dangerous people of his generation. wei wuxian is not weak! wei wuxian is a once-in-a-lifetime genius who invented entirely new modes of violence and cruelty, and being afraid of him is in fact an entirely understandable response!

one of the things i really appreciate about MDZS is that, from their own flawed and half-informed point of view, the public turning against wei wuxian was not entirely unreasonable. it's very easy to write a story in which The Evil Society turns against the Poor Maligned Protagonist for no good reason, thereby making it look like your fictional universe is inhabited purely by morons, but MXTX did not write that story. MXTX actually put thought into her story, so the internal logic guiding the public's actions, while flawed and morally corrupt, is still something the reader can logically follow. even if we disagree with their conclusions, we can still logically understand how the mob got from point A to point B.

23. ship you've unwillingly come around to

xicheng. for precisely one reason: it would make lan wangji really mad.

i already really enjoy the massive haters-forced-to-become-BILs relationship between lan wangji and jiang cheng. and now you're telling me there's a way we can add even more BIL drama to the mix? we can give lan wangji a reason to beef with jiang cheng that's entirely unrelated to wei wuxian? we can have someone provide snarky asshole commentary on how lan wangji ding dong ditched lan xichen at the end of canon? sign me up. i am already on board.

there are a lot of reasons to ship xicheng, and there are a lot of reasons not to ship xicheng. the xicheng that exists in my mind is just as much of a problem-causing ship as it is a problem-solving ship (a post for another day). but listen. i don't care about any of that. none of that matters to me. the one and only thing that does matter to me is making lan wangji seethe.

i've also come around to lan qiren x jiang cheng for similar (identical) reasons.

[chaifootsteps]

As an ex Hellaverse fan and current DA fan, there’s something so healing about watching these respective audiences realize Stolas (HB) is and always has been a massive piece shit while simultaneously realizing that Solas (DA) is and always has been a genuinely good person who’s been unfairly maligned. What a time to be alive.

Certainly helps that the game actually allows Solas his faults, allows him to be our antagonist, without coddling him and claiming he's never done anything wrong in his life. Also that his kindness and desire to do the right thing exist somewhere other than the creators' head.

[postoctobrist]

What do the unfairly maligned Max Payne games say about masculinity (you should replay them btw)

that masculinity is when you dive through the air firing two guns at the same time

[spacevixenmusic]

Unfairly Maligned Games, Vol. 2

Games I loved that got low scores, review bombed, or have some other weird negative stigma attached to them that I think is unfairly earned.

NOTE: I don't believe in giving games a number score or a letter grade. Maybe I'm just bad at criticism or very easy to please, whatever.

We Happy Few [2018]

Originally advertised as some kind of procedurally-generated stealth horror survival game that people kept insisting was "like BioShock" even though there is literally zero correlation or even vague resemblance to BioShock, this game's crowdfunded development process was a long hard rollercoaster ride through concept and scope changes, getting picked up by major studios and publishers, a constantly evolving marketing campaign, and a loud, rude blasting of negative press right before and right after launch due to bad take misinformation and some game-breaking bugs on Day One.

We Happy Few started as a Kickstarter project from Compulsion Games, a small studio known only for their previous game Contrast. In Contrast, you play as a child's silent imaginary friend in a cabaret dancer costume who can phase in and out of backgrounds to become a shadow on the wall and solve platforming puzzles. Working together, you help the child navigate through her emotions as her parents struggle through their own relation-shit in an early 1900s European port town. Seeing as their first game was stylish as hell and widely praised among indie crowds, it's no surprise that a Kickstarter for a new game from that studio became an instant success, so much so that it caught the eye of several big studios (Microsoft and Gearbox Publishing), and it quickly turned into a vastly bigger project with many more hands working on it. The proc-gen element was downtuned and streamlined, and the main emphasis of the game became about survival, stealth, and story.

And let me tell you. In terms of story, this game is phenomenal. The simple premise is that you play through the lives of three people living in 1950s-60s England, under a government that is forcing everyone to take these candy pills called Joy that make you instantly and excessively cheerful, so you can easily forget about all the horrible things that the government wants you to forget ever happened about The War, the Missing Children, and all the people still actively dying of malnutrition from the ongoing Famine and all that. The people are mandated to forget their worries, grin and bear it, pretend everything's just peachy keen, and if you refuse to take that pill, people will notice your un-cheerful behavior and call the police to track you down and beat you senseless. Can't have any Downers in our perfectly lovely happy town, now can we?

The game's art direction features two stark parallels between a dreary English village and early 60s-70s psychedelia (with a hint of A Clockwork Orange for good measure), and a soundtrack influenced by bands of the era, such as The Doors, The Beatles, The Byrds, etc. The dichotomy of looting dilapidated rural homes while avoiding plague-ridden peasants versus the rainbow streets and lava lamp light show sex dens in the cities is truly astonishing. It's a game about, funnily enough, Contrasts between the bright and cheerful life everyone is forced to think they're living, and the grim depressing reality that lies underneath. Many people initially assumed this meant the game had some kind of anti-drug message about not relying on your depression medication cause pills can't fix everything, but it's clear right from the get-go that's nowhere near the case. We Happy Few is a story about revisionist history, the pressure to conform, submission to a corrupt system that might not even know what it's doing, and the very British notion of Keeping Calm and Carrying On as if major atrocities hadn't just been committed in a massive world war.

Gameplay-wise, this is a strange hybrid of survival and stealth, with combat definitely being present, but taking a backseat for the most part. It's much easier to distract enemies than fight them, and many of the characters excel at hiding in plain sight, provided you don't do anything to make people suspicious, like running and jumping around or breaking into houses to raid them for food. You do have options and skill trees though, so the game does allow you to tailor it to your own playstyle to a degree. I had significantly more fun playing it slow and methodical, sneaking up and choking out enemies, and watching NPCs bump into each other awkwardly while quoting ancient English literature for no apparent reason. Taking it slow, reading every scrap of paper and Journal I found, my final playtime was about 50~ hours.

Again though, let me gush about the story for a second. The base game has three full chapters, each of which has you play as a different character with different strengths and game mechanics (including such wildly inventive ideas as the burden of motherhood taking up inventory space if you don't periodically check on the baby you have to leave at home, and carefully maintaining a balanced blood sugar level so you don't collapse?!). Their stories are all deeply connected in ways that aren't immediately apparent but are cool as hell once the pieces of the puzzle come together. Each chapter more or less takes place at the same time, but the events always play out slightly differently, because memory-altering drugs fuck with your sense of reality and make us all question the reliability of each narrator. If that wasn't already cool enough, the game also features three DLC packages where you play as three ADDITIONAL characters, each of whom is also a recognizable face in the main story if you're paying attention. These DLCs add even more neat mechanics and open up the story events even more in and around the main game. They were honestly all an absolute blast to play, especially if you were already as invested in the story as I was. And the subject material goes all over the place, touching on such highly specific topics as 60s science fiction, gay lovers, Beatlemania, trippy drug-induced murder mysteries, the British occupation of India, and plenty more. I can't stress enough what a unique storytelling experience this game has to offer. It really is unlike anything else I've ever played! But alas, we should probably talk about why nobody else seems to be as enthused about the game as I am...

Aside from the huge misunderstanding about the game's message, We Happy Few was bombed with criticism on Day One due to some major bugs that hadn't been ironed out - remember, for a $60 game backed by some big names in the industry, it was still very much an indie passion project from the start, and it's clear it wasn't given the full AAA treatment at all. Several big-name Game Reviewers (a field I detest almost as much as Cartoon Reviewers) ripped into the game for its bugs, and while I can't fault people for being mad at broken quests and at least one full-on softlock, not everyone experienced those bugs, and many of them were ironed out in later patches. It's almost like chasing those Day One reviews and videos are a bad idea for people who want to Enjoy Games. Sadly, first impressions are all that seem to matter anymore in gaming, so those early negative reviews still sting to this day. But people out there will give games like Skyrim a perfect 10/10 despite a significant number of similar bugs (hell, they're almost a charm of the series at this point), so why should an indie game not be given the same graces?

In closing? We Happy Few is a phenomenal story in a completely fresh setting that really doesn't feel like anything else before it. The game has been criticized to hell and back for its early bugs or for "boring" gameplay or whatever the Review outlets chose to report, but to me it stands out as an extremely unique experience in a sea of Lowest Common Denominator games. I'd rather play an imperfect or buggy game with a unique or highly niche premise than yet another polished piece of pristine pop pleasure, and I genuinely think people would enjoy games like We Happy Few if they just lowered their goddamn expectations for once in their lives.

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

Also notable when talking about John’s solo career being unfairly maligned —— Outside of Tumblr/deep fandom spaces, John probably has the most critically acclaimed solo work, and is pretty close with Paul for most popular.

Well... kind of? Plastic Ono Band is certainly critically acclaimed and regularly makes best album lists and I wouldn't deny that Imagine is the single most popular post-Beatles song and its album did pretty well, but outside that.....? (Although it doesn't help my personal feelings about all this that Imagine is in my view the single most overrated post-Beatles album)

Mind Games and Walls and Bridges were kind of poorly received upon release and Double Fantasy's pre-murder reception was lukewarm, at best.

Also, I feel you're overlooking the fact a fair amount of Paul albums have gotten critical reassessments since their release. To my knowledge this is not much of a thing for the other Beatles. (Vertical Man Renaissance WHEN???????)

John is definitely the most well-known Beatle, but his own legend seems to overshadow a lot of his actual artistry. I do see where you're coming from, but also, there's so many platitudes surrounding John's music that I find myself not always believing people have actually listened to it and assessed it for themselves.

I also think, re: popularity, that most of the Beatles solo work is not all that appreciated outside fandom spaces, at least for generations that came after them. (My early 70s mum does remember a good amount of Wings songs and other singles) In a lot of cases, people know Imagine and Live And Let Die and My Sweet Lord if they're old enough. If they, based on that, say John is their fave that's kind of meaningless to me. So yeah, I'm more interested in intra-fandom discussions here.

[raxistaicho]

Re:Aegir - from what I’ve seen/read, the main consensus is that since the Insurrection was “necessary”/a good thing since Ionius did wipe out an entire household for going against his power consolidation attempt and because of the Slitherers involvement, Aegir is actually completely innocent good boy 😇 who just wants what’s best for the Empire and is being unfairly maligned for *Checks old save*…his actual canonical actions that he showed very little remorse for (or at least in the first game)

Well the funny thing is, they don't even believe Duke Aegir had anything to do with the Hresvelg experiments despite it being the Agarthan MO to work with surface dweller patsies (Rufus and Nemesis, for instance).

[queen-morgana91]

I should have known the asoiaf fandom was beyond help when i said Rhaegar was an interesting character and book!tyrion was one of my favorite characters ever written and they were lambasted within my own circle, because "they are terrible person".

Since when a fictional character’s actions became an indicator as to whether we should find them interesting or not? some form of brain-deteriorating condition that causes people to enjoy characters based on morality and morality alone, i guess.

You'd expect fans of asoiaf would, of all people, know better. They don't.

Y'all, 90% of Game of Thrones/Asoiaf characters are terrible people or they committed atrocities. By the logic of this boring fandom, we are allowed to like only Ser Pounce, Tommen's cat.

It's funny because Tyrion and Rhaegar are not even close to be the worst characters in the series.

Jaime Lannister was happy to go to war (one he pretty much guaranteed by cucking his king for years and impregnating his royal sister three times) and kill thousands upon thousands of people to preserve his incestuous love affair with Cersei; he tries to murder a child, yet his arc becomes all about how he feels unfairly maligned.

Oberyn, an extremely popular character, beats a woman and steals her daughter, leading to said woman unaliving, and sleeps with a sixteen year old (no modern bias here? i heard that Rhaegar was a pedo). No, Oberyn is not Pedro Pascal.

Let's not talk about Robert, Gregor Clegane, Tywin, and Stannis. Meh even the Starks are not saints.

All these men… but RHAEGAR and TYRION is where you draw the line of who is acceptable to like?

If you wanna be insufferable at least be consistent.

[couslande]

in my opinion da/2 was not really an unfairly maligned game and it is, generally, a pretty bad game. BUT I’d rather see a big swing and a miss from a studio than playing it safe and the concept and the parts of the game that do work are good enough to justify people still talking about it. the issue with the da series as a whole really begins when instead of giving the devs more time to play around with interesting approaches to fantasy games, just with more time to cook, ea/bioware decided to play it safe and give us skyrim dragon age inquisition

[dandelion-stuff-and-fluff]

Tag game

Tagged by @mikkeneko ...sort of. In a round-about way.

favourite color: Red, and also its unfairly maligned but no less lovely shade pink.

last song i listened to: "Decembre" by Cecile Corbel. I turned on the working music that doesn't interrupt my thoughts with English words I feel the need to focus on. It did not work.

last film i watched: Ummmmmmmm...fuck it was probably whatever One Piece movie is on Netflix right now because I don't ever control the TV.

currently reading: Still chipping away at the Priory of the Orange Tree, but now adding in The Explosive Child because I am tired of parent-teacher meetings.

currently craving: Cheese and bread. And cheese.

currently watching: Alas, I am in between shows and having difficultly finding something that piques my interest.

coffee or tea: Both. With lots of milk and no sugar.

Tagging: @farenmaddox, @fieldofclover, @konungarike...anyone else who is around here and wants to!