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Utnayan

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Indeed I do. It was a unique (almost jarringly so) departure from "conventional" video games, which I happen to appreciate a lot. Don't get me wrong, it's not a fantastic game, it's very short and once you pass it there's very little reason to ever play it again. I definitely would NOT pay 15 bucks for it. But I got it as part of a bundle and it was well worth playing through. The story itself, as pointed out, is nothing terribly ground-breaking, but the way it is presented is. The setup that has you exploring an unfamiliar house to learn about the people that live there works well. Both the parents and the younger sister have back stories that are genuinely fun to learn about, in a voyeuristic way. Since the game presents you with very little to actually "figure out" in order to progress, pretty much everything you do is player-motivated, and that's oddly satisfying. You actually do feel like you're exploring a family's house, filled with convincing details that give you all kinds of insight as to what's going on in there.

It's not for everybody, that's for sure. But I LOVE when people do creative things with the video game medium. I generally prefer a mediocre but unique game to an above-average game I've played a hundred variations of before. I'm glad games like Gone Home are enjoying the success they've earned, as they will no doubt encourage more developers to create more unconventional and imaginative games, and that is an objectively good thing.


Dude, I highly question your ability to perceive and understand information. First of all, you claim to have played the game but somehow completely and totally failed to understand what was even going on. Then you read that review and make bizarre statements that don't come close to anything actually said in the review. The reviewer does not "go on and on about how we need more games like this". Why would you even say that? Here's an actual quote:

It was a well-written review that makes explicitly clear exactly what the reviewer liked about the game. If you can read that review and figure that the game won't appeal to you, then that's a job well done on the reviewer's part. If you're able to get a good idea what the game is about and decide it's not worth your time, that's a good thing. Other people (like me) can read that review and actually get intrigued and consider giving the game a shot, which is also a good thing. It's good that Gone Home exists, and it's good that the reviews let you know exactly what you get. Win-win all around and zero fucking reason to complain. Unless, of course, you get off on complaining.
I would have really liked it if I could have humped some chick lesbian style and then turned the entire game into an episode of deadly women, and shoot the lesbian lover I just gave 20 bucks too and took the money back. And then my character saying to her before doing all that, "Sorry you have mommy issues."

Win win all around.

Until then, keep the lesbian emo shit out of my games. I've got Bronchitis. Ain't nobody got time for that!

Go play The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. At least the kid you are looking for isn't some retard emo punk hopped up on anti depressants.


(FYI as far as Gone home, "beat" the game in 97 minutes. 97 minutes I will never, ever get back)
 

Sebudai

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The fact that Anita's embarrassing master's thesis was green-lit should result in most reasonable people who read it wondering what the fuck is going on with modern sociology, at the very least.
 

khalid

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I think you might benefit from the realization that maybe not all games are meant for you. Just like not all music, books or movies are meant for you.
This is rich coming from the guy saying it was really stupid for someone to make a movie mocking the leader of NK.
 

Utnayan

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I think you might benefit from the realization that maybe not all games are meant for you. Just like not all music, books or movies are meant for you.
Oh I realize that. I also realize the description of the game before I purchased it was: "June 7th, 1995. 1:15 AM You arrive home after a year abroad. You expect your family to greet you, but the house is empty. Something's not right. Where is everyone? And what's happened here? Unravel the mystery for yourself in Gone Home, a story exploration game from The Fullbright Company."

Which sounds intriguing. What happened to my family? Why is everything so off? It's kind of scary in here, let's explore and find out what happened. Thinking to myself this could be a murder mystery, this could be a haunting, this could be * ANYTHING *. WHOOHOO! LETS FIND OUT.

Oh wait, it's a lesbian love affair with fucked up parents. The only twist was the sound of my wallet's stomach being infected with the norovirus, and the only people that found it fun were runaways hanging out on the corner of 7th and Lake Street, our resident SJW Troll, and a transgender reviewer from Gamespot of which rated it higher than any other game known to gamerkind because the story "cut deep". Meaning, "holy shit did someone read my Facebook meme's and make a game out of my life? 9.5!" And this Lawlworthy comment: ""I never expected to see myself - or such a strong reflection of myself and my own life - in a video game."
10/10 - Polygon "

Makes me want to hug the Polygon guy/gal/whatever the fuck, and say, "Sorry your family left for France when they realized you were a sell out douchebag like your website"

Now THAT cuts deep!
 

Szlia

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Khalid, you seem to have a problem with complexity. I am a good customer for stupid politically incorrect comedies, so I suspect I might very well enjoy The Interview (like I enjoyed Team America, South Park: The Movie or Don't Mess With The Zohan), but I still think it is a really irresponsible idea for a film. Is a buck and a laugh really worth making the work of the state department harder? Also it's not about mocking the leader of North Korea, it's about assassinating him. Are you surprised they fail to see the comedy in that?
 

Utnayan

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Also it's not about mocking the leader of North Korea, it's about assassinating him. Are you surprised they fail to see the comedy in that?
Considering everyone but the glorious leader wants that to happen in the country, they probably wouldn't see the comedy in it. They would get all excited dreaming of it being for real. You are saying "they" when there isn't any "they". "They" are afraid to take a shit without asking while trying to figure out how to get the fuck out of that shithole.
 

Szlia

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I am not sure what your problem is Utnayan. The description said the game was a "story exploration game", you knew the story could be about "ANYTHING" and after buying and playing the game you were not interested by the story it told. That's just the cost of doing business when being adventurous, no matter the medium.

As for you claim that just about no one enjoyed the game I think we both know you are being disingenuous. Journalist reviews of the game have been overwhelmingly positives and as I write this post 79% of the 9684 consumer reviews on Steam have been positive (an info that was just bellow the meta data you cut & pasted).
 

Mario Speedwagon

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I disagree with pretty much everything tan said about gone home. I don't see how it's unconventional or original in any way. It's not like a story centric adventure game has never been made before. The story is a terribly clich?d forbidden love story that I refuse to believe that anyone is genuinely enthralled by unless the game is literally the first piece of media that person has ever consumed. If it was a heterosexual love story nobody would have given a fuck about this game. The reviews on it are clearly agenda driven.
 

Utnayan

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I am not sure what your problem is Utnayan. The description said the game was a "story exploration game", you knew the story could be about "ANYTHING" and after buying and playing the game you were not interested by the story it told. That's just the cost of doing business when being adventurous, no matter the medium.

As for you claim that just about no one enjoyed the game I think we both know you are being disingenuous. Journalist reviews of the game have been overwhelmingly positives and as I write this post 79% of the 9684 consumer reviews on Steam have been positive (an info that was just bellow the meta data you cut & pasted).
Yeah I saw that. That's all well and good. I am not debasing people for liking it, just saying why * I * didn't. And knowing the crowd here, why they might not like it either. The suspense was being alone in a creepy house, and the atmosphere was fantastic. They nailed the 90's ERA. Complete with the trading of Nintendo games. Which should be expected considering it came from irrational vets (Which is also why I bought it) But when you make a story based game, giving away the entire fucking thing about 5 minutes in while having absolutely no twists whatsoever and then having a few folks saying what a great story it was because it fulfilled the SJW itch to bring in a "Hey we don't talk about about Lesbians and Family acceptance much, let's make a statement", well, I can get that by hopping onto CNN. The story itself fucking sucked. And it even wasn't so much the content, it was the delivery and the complete lack of giving a flying shit what happened other than hoping something wicked would happen at the end with a resounding thud of, "Someone wrote this while crying in their soup about their personal life".

I mean shit, we may as well make a game about Tanoomba where we explore his house and try to find all the autographed posters of Anita Sarkeesian. "You have found 5 of 10,232 - your time is up". You get an achievement when you find the other 10,226 that read, "I am the Al Sharpton of the Misongynist movement." He hid those very well.
 

Tanoomba

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Utnayan, here's where you lose credibility for me, personally: You're plopped into a game where the first objects you are exposed to establish who you are (your luggage and your passport with your name and photo). Shortly after that, you learn that the house you are exploring is inhabited by your parents and your younger sister (none of whom are home). You even see a family portrait including both yourself and your younger sister in the main hallway. You and your sister have different names which are constantly referenced in things like the postcards your character sent home from her trip and the stories your sister wrote for school, among many other things. For Christ's sake, the highlight of the game (for me, at least) was the contrast between a school assignment written by your character and (separately) your younger sister based on the description of the female menstrual cycle. It was hilarious, it was insightful, and it only works at all if you pay a little bit of attention towho these people are.

(Spoiler alert, do not read if you haven't played but still intend to play Gone Home)
You also say "there was no twist". What does it take to qualify something as a "twist" to you? You go in knowing nothing, and everything you learn is something new. You learn your dad is an author who had mild success with one novel, less success with a follow-up, and has since been trying and failing to remain relevant, leading to apparent alcoholism. You learn that your mom went to bat for one guy she worked with to get him promoted, she very likely had an affair with him, and it seems in the end that he was just trying to promote his own career while he ended up marrying another woman. If you're curious enough and make the effort, you learn that your dad's uncle (the original owner of the house) may very well have molested your dad at a young age and committed suicide to escape his own drug-induced demons. There's more going on here than "teenage girl falls for other teenage girl, angst ensues", but it seems like it all flew over your head. It just seems to me like you were looking for an excuse to say "keep the lesbian emo shit out of my games".

I'm not even saying you would like the game more if you had a more open mind. It seems ridiculously obvious this isn't your type of game. I just take issue when you talk about "your games". They're not "your games". They're just fucking "games". You're not going to like them all. Get the fuck over it. Some people happen to appreciate a story told through an unconventional method. If you took a chance on a game you didn't know much about and ended up regretting it, well... welcome to being a gamer. Not everything is suited to your personal and highly subjective tastes. Maybe next time you can read a review about a game you know nothing about before buying it.
 

Utnayan

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Well, according to the one Utnayan himselffucking linked to, they were pretty fucking descriptive of what exactly the gameplay and mechanics were like and what exactly one should expect when playing the game. Who would have thunk, huh?
You sure are taking a lot of offense for me not liking your game. I love atmospheric games. The story sucks. Vanishing of Ethan carter was much better and the point stands that if this story wasn't about Lesbians and gay people and family acceptance, and would have been about some straight couple, it would have been blasted as a ridiculous story. Throw in a switch hitter and all of a sudden it becomes a masterpiece. That's my issue with it.

A nice twist would have been anything but the obvious where one knew everything within about ten minutes of playing. It took all the suspense out of it. After that I was playing to see if the story was going somewhere unexpected. Sorry dude, I have played Esther, Ethan, and many other similar games. This one was poorly written.

And what do I mean by twist? What you explained was nothing. There wasn't any character development with any of that shit, and it didn't make me give a crap about the protagonist. A twist in my world is watching an old twilight zone where this old lady is being attacked by little robots for 25 minutes out of a 30 minute episode and you fear for her safety after a ufo crashes on her house. Only to find out right at the end when she manages to finally kill one and chase another back to the top of her house, killing and smashing the space ship, it zooms in on the UFO where it has a "U.S, Air Force" logo on it and it turns out WE were the little robots. That shit rocks. We need more of that.

Pop up Amazon prime or Netflix and hit up twilight Zone season five episode 9. "Night call". I saw that when I was nine. I remember it. Why? Awesome. Translate some of that shit into a game like this. Now we're talking.
 

Tanoomba

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You sure are taking a lot of offense for me not liking your game. I love atmospheric games. The story sucks. Vanishing of Ethan carter was much better and the point stands that if this story wasn't about Lesbians and gay people and family acceptance, and would have been about some straight couple, it would have been blasted as a ridiculous story. Throw in a switch hitter and all of a sudden it becomes a masterpiece. That's my issue with it.
I take zero offense at you not liking Gone Home. I can very easily see why many people would not like it. I take offense at how you frame your reasoning, though. You misrepresent a reviewer's stance to imply that she's trying to take your games away, which is bullshit. You presume to have the authority to say "We do not need real life emo shenanigans", as though you speak for all gamers, again with the implication that the very existence of Gone Home somehow threatens other types of games. Then Arbitrary jumps in to imply that the positive reviews were somehow "tricking" people into playing a terrible, worthless game. All of that,all of it, is bullshit. Somebody made an unconventional niche title that a lot of people happened to really enjoy. That's literally the whole story.

And yes, if you changed the love story into a "straight" one, it would not have worked. If Brad Pitt and Edward Norton didn't end up being the same person, Fight Club wouldn't have worked either. If Bruce Willis had been alive throughout The Sixth Sense, nobody would have given a shit. Believe it or not, a story about a teenager slowly coming to terms with her own sexuality and all the confusion and conflict that causes is a very different story from that of a teenager just falling for a guy. I honestly don't understand how you see these as being interchangeable.

Anyway, I'm sorry I came off so aggressive. We're just talking about games, after all. Shouldn't we be grateful that all types of games are being made and finding appreciative audiences, even games we hate? Isn't one of the best qualities of the game industry how inclusive and varied it is? It just rubs me the wrong way when people choose to politicize something for no apparent reason.