Dinner Date
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Continuing the discussion from Firewatch: I love narrative games, but this one is annoying as shit:
I was excited for this game.
For Valentine's day, a lot of visual novel type games are on sale. I enjoy the genre, so I picked up a copy of one called Dinner Date.
Here's the store page that enticed me to buy: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/dinnerdate_storefront
Let's go point by point through this, shall we? Spoilers insomuch as that's possible for a turd like this.
Julian Luxemburg has prepared a dinner for two at his place – but things go awry when the date does not show up and he is left waiting at his dinner table, the clock’s ticking growing unbearably loud.
So far, seems like an interesting setup: the cold open has you being stood up on your date.
„Dinner Date” is the character portrait of Julian: by becoming his subconsciousness you gain a clear vantage point on the worries which take a hold of him.
Ooh, now this intrigues me. Is it like Inside Out? Playing as someone's subconscious sounds a bit artsy but also seems to be a reasonable explanation for the disconnect Blakey has mentioned a few times, where I'm playing as the character, but also, they're doing things I wouldn't do.
As the wait for the beautiful girl grows longer it becomes evident that Julian’s real problems may not even begin originate the girl: what of his work and his boss? And what of the headhunter, his fascination with Byron and his friendship with Jerry who, all things considered, was ultimately the person who pushed Julian to go on this date?
And clearly it's not going to stay with this one failed date. This looks like one of those games where one failed date is the jumping-off point to lead to a series of decisions that lead to him turning his life around, or maybe dying (could "headhunter" be literal? Does this game have bounty hunters?!)
You are not merely listening
Wait, why would I be? I'm his subconscious, presumably this is a two-way street here.
in the unprecedented role as his subconsciousness you tap the table, look at the clock and, as Julian bares more of his mind, reluctantly start to eat, your actions resonating with Julian’s thoughts to form an absolutely singular form of intimacy.
...Presumably these are just gameplay examples?
No. They are not. This is literally the entire game.
Julian’s story lasts a fully voiced 25 minutes and is told through various unique animations, set in a real-time 3d environment with the unique interface of playing as a subconsciousness, the first of its kind.
The game is 25 minutes of listening to some random hipster douchebag whine about his date while you control exciting gameplay ideas like "Pick up the spoon. Stir soup clockwise. Stir soup anti-clockwise. Lift spoon to mouth somehow without any soup in it because you did things in the wrong order. Scoop up soup. Oops, time's up, no soup for you."
I'm not even exaggerating. This is actual, thrilling gameplay:
Those bubbles are all you get to figure out what each button will do.
But hey, the animations are unique! As in, each one was created for this game, not ripped off from some other game! So that's like, groundbreaking!
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And from that screenshot, the graphics are state-of-the-art too! If you've time-travelled to 1999, that is.
*gets the feeling the 'game', if it can even be called that, is there simply to cash in on today*
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I might show this screen to my son as an example of what happens to your hand if you insist on holding your spoon like a baby.
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Oh, it's worse than that. See, the main character's first name is also the name of the lead developer, who was inspired to make this game after he was stood up on a date...
And during the 25 agonizing minutes, "Julian" keeps trying to remember a few lines of "She Walks in Beauty". The climax, if there can be said to be one, is him remembering how it goes.
Hipster. Douchebag.
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So the legends are true: there are games worse than Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric…
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Yes, but how many of them are sold as full-price games?
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well, Star Wars: Battlefront is a game that you ahve to pay MORE than full-price to get an actual game and then it's still shit.
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Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric…
ah, but are there any worse than Sonic '06?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CTiRfA0Nc8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_UjciVrS5s
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@RaceProUK said:
Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric…
ah, but are there any worse than Sonic '06?
What about Sonic Dreams Collection?
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What about Sonic Dreams Collection?
Advice to anyone who is curious.Do. Not. Look. This. Up. If you do, it will cost you your sanity.
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Sonic '06
That's not a game; that's an incomplete tech demo that accidentally got released and sold for £40.
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It seems to have been initially released on Nov 17 2010. Sure, that's not 1999, but 1) it's probably not a cash-in for Valentine's Day 2016 and 2) I think that's before engines like Unity and Unreal Engine were widely and (almost) freely available to anyone, which would explain the shitty graphics. Today they would probably just buy a bunch of assets at the Unity store and everything would be made of blocks a la Minecraft.
Anyway, these games rarely fail to disappoint. A few weeks ago I saw this thing on Steam. Positive reviews, "psychological horror", "excellent atmosphere", "disturbing", "creepily relatable"... and it's free to play? Well awesome!
Yeah, no. This turd is like a 14 year old's attempt at being as edgy as possible. It's not creepy, it's not horror, it's laughable. I got it for free and I'm still pissed I spent 30 minutes in the game, trying to find the "psychological horror" in it.
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A few weeks ago I saw this thing on Steam.... I got it for free and I'm still pissed
Yeah, Blakey did a video of that. Not a winner.
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I've had this game sitting in my Steam library for ages because Rantis and I were going to mock the shit out of it, then we never got around to it.
And don't get me wrong, the reason these bad "walking simulator" (as snarky people on Steam tag them) games are so annoying is because SO MANY OF THEM ARE AMAZINGLY GOOD. Gone Home, Dear Esther, SOMA, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter.
When a genre is like 80% good games, the bad ones really stand out.
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Why would you not link to the best Sonic 2006 playthrough.
THE BLAKEYRAT ONE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyfcLi8vcRY&list=PLLIy-EOkH0Zljj7tdOKCHXxCa0o9FChPj
Ok it sucks, but I gotta promo it huh.
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Anyway, these games rarely fail to disappoint. A few weeks ago I saw this thing on Steam. Positive reviews, "psychological horror", "excellent atmosphere", "disturbing", "creepily relatable"... and it's free to play? Well awesome!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rURE5czp4Q0
30 minutes? This video is 13 minutes and the game had MORE than worn out its welcome by then. And I waste a LOT of time exploring and reading dumb book titles.
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Why would you not link to the best Sonic 2006 playthrough.
I did. NerdCubed FTW.
and he has a british accent. double win!
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You're just jelly I have a 100% on Sonic '06 and video evidence to prove it.
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It's actually about 20 minutes, according to Steam. I spent a few extra minutes walking back and forth trying to interact with every possible object, because given the positive feedback that turd got, I was refusing to believe that this was all there is. I was convinced I must have missed something... like the entire game, give or take.
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I had a friend who told me there's some way in the game to get a glimpse of the man in the cage, but after 13 minutes of tedious meaningless bullshit I certainly wasn't gonna play it again.
I was convinced I must have missed something... like the entire game, give or take.
You don't play as many shitty indies as I do, apparently. I've played $10-$15 games even Atari 2600 gamers would have dismissed as being too simplistic. Like that one dungeon game I did a few weeks ago, where the only control is hitting left or right at the right moment. Yawn.
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Why would you not link to the best Sonic 2006 playthrough.
Sure!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fED2EeaTVCM
Dinner Date.
Ah, yeah, I think I've seen that somewhere on YouTube. The most hilarious thing was the comment section going "but it's art! But it's deep! You just don't understand it!"
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Sure!
Eh. Retsupurae was not really into that one. Especially after Slowbeef's PS3 bit the dust and they had that long wait until he got a new one and imported his save. Better than mine, though.
... although it was kind of funny when he was complaining that he paid money on a PS3 solely to play Sonic '06.
Also what's interesting is Slowbeef, who's usually a super mega-genius at games, seriously, this guy can beat Alien Soldier on Genesis in one life while chatting with streaming guests, kept forgetting moves or simply not-getting stuff in Sonic '06 that even I figured out. And I suck at games.
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I wish I had listened to you. That is seriously horrific on soany levels!
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Could be worse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dLFD-304fk
You know the game's gonna be good when it mentions YoYoGames in the title.
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Here's the store page that enticed me to buy: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/dinnerdate_storefront
At the Independent Game Festival 2011, „Dinner Date” has been nominated for the Nuovo award, an award which ‘honors abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development which advances the medium and the way we think about games.’
Nominated. Didn't win. This did:
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Really? Huh. I always just thought that game was the swordfight mechanic from (the original) Prince of Persia with lazy graphics.
Looking at the trailer is not changing my mind.
Then again, I bet nobody who votes at the Independent Games Festival is old enough to have played Prince of Persia.
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Man, I should really watch this category, I love those game rants.
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(the original) Prince of Persia
Can't have been any good; it only took an hour to complete.
(Or else you had to start over. And I don't recall a save function).
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Can't have been any good; it only took an hour to complete.
IIRC, Easy was 90 minutes, Medium was 60 minutes and Hard was 45 minutes. Beating it on Hard required memorization, because if you took a single wrong turn you ran out of time.
The Mac Classic version had a Save function, I'm 99% sure. Unfortunately it also hid the menu bar, so I can't verify that using any screenshots on Google.
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The Mac Classic version had a Save function, I'm 99% sure. Unfortunately it also hid the menu bar, so I can't verify that using any screenshots on Google.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Persia_(1989_video_game)#Gameplay:
a game session may be saved and resumed at a later time only after level 3
So there's that.