nah, you’re good. i poured the last of me out on the previous post.
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Alright I can see how you might see it that way, I still don’t but I can understand. I just don’t really like people justifying bad controls because the game is a genre deconstruction. A big reason I never finished Spec Ops: The Line, that game was so middling it wasn’t worth slogging through it.
It does make sense and you aren’t the first person to point this out, I learnt about it during my semester course on video game analysis. I am not a fan of the need for a game to have a choose-your-own-adventure ending, a nice linear story is sometimes just as nice especially if you are making a game that is about making a bold statement or making the player self reflect. TLOUII would not have been as impactful had you the choice to leave Seattle or kill Abby in Santa Barbara(???). Sometimes you need to have the player see something then deal with it.
I like to think interactivity is just another tool in the medium, it is something you can play with, use and/or subvert at any given point if you feel. Simply being interactive doesn’t mean you can’t still posses linearity, every medium is interactive is you are willing to take enough risks with it. Also sometimes it means you have to make sacrifices so the game isn’t long stretches of nothing.
I am going to leave it here to, you explained everything. I can see why you think that. I have also said my peace.
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For those interested in the upcoming Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (releasing 17 March 2023), Cameron Monaghan, the actor behind Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s Cal Kestis, explains in an interview with Game Informer that “the situation for a Jedi has never been worse than what it is for Cal” in the sequel.
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Hotline Miami is one of my favourite games, but honestly, I think it gets away with the “violence is bad” thing because I don’t think Jacket is meant to be any kind of play surrogate. It’s his story but I don’t think we’re meant to be equated with him, when it’s obvious he has some kind of PTSD (explored more thoroughly in HM2), and that he isn’t a total bastard, like “rescuing” the prostitute or the hospital level where you aren’t allowed to harm civilians. If anything, I think we’re meant to have some kind of sympathy for him, even if the man with the chicken head does not. Frankly, if Jacket could speak, I think we would be aware of what kind of man he is.
Hotline Miami 2 is a bit of a hot mess in terms of story and themes and the number of characters, but it does have one character who can choose to just knock out enemies or out right kill them. The narrative seems to imply they are the only playable character who hasn’t become truly lost to the violence, and their ending changes depending if you kill or not.
Then again, it probably helps that HM revels in its violence and I think wants the player to do so too, with the incredible soundtrack, high octane action, and how the whole thing feels like a drug trip. Which I think is very different from how TLOUS2 looks very grimdark in its whole thing, at least from my impressions.
I hope you at least saw the rest of the game’s plot through Youtube or something. Perhaps the one game I’ve played where all the endings are as great as each other.
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I knew it all before going in, I just wanted to experience it via playing it kind of like a bucket list thing.
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@TheChicken - new game, new post. this doesn’t count! you can’t have me on this ‘un!
(i’m sorry. last one, i promise. unless someone else brings up violence in mgs1)
i don’t think jacket is a surrogate either, but hm largely talks directly to the player, regularly kicking in the fourth wall to make its point.
like, the whole “you like hurting other people, don’t you?” type questions and the conversations with the janitors don’t make quite as much sense to me without being directed primarily at the player. at least, that’s my take away.
up to a point, yeah, i agree.
the repetitive gameplay loop, cartoonish aesthetics and trance-like music seem to have a desensitising, almost hypnotic effect on the player. like, it doesn’t take many restarts for the context of what we’re doing to dissolve into the background; those dudes in white quickly stop being ‘people’ and become points i have to ‘touch’ as quickly as possible in a gruesome game of dot-to-dot.
once the dust clears and everyone is dead, there is a deliberate tonal whip-lash; the music skids to a beat-less halt, and we’re backtracking through our carnage. at the end of every level, we’re shaken out of our frenzied flow state and shown what we did. at that point, i don’t think the game is gleeful about violence or revelling in it; the mood it creates doesn’t fit at all. it is saying “look at what you’ve done.”
now don’t get me wrong: i love all that about it. i think it’s a really clever and well executed way to express the characters’ emotional states through mechanics.
the issue i have - and it’s a really minor one - is that the game isn’t just berating jacket/biker for engaging in the violence; it’s meta-textually berating the player for engaging with the game and violent games in general while simultaneously revelling in it.
while i agree with @Accidental_Kills98 ’s point about games not necessarily needing to give the player narrative control, that doesn’t stop the fact that i’m being moralised at for something i have no control over - other than not playing - in a medium very much defined by its capability to offer me alternative choices. so i know it’s the developers that have deliberately taken any choice away just to make their point, and i’m left feeling a little bit tricked rather than thoughtfully engaging with what they’re trying to get across.
does that make sense? it’s really not a big deal. i adore hotline miami, literally as perfect as a game can be, i just don’t think it quite hits the mark with that particular theme (though in a slightly different way to tlou 2). i’ll leave it there… promise!
…and so i remain on topic, here’s sony’s funky new accessibility focused controller:
that’s ace.
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Oh hey WotC are trying to kill DnD’s OGN, I guess they hate money now.
The last time they even remotely thought of doing this stupid stunt it was with the Fourth Edition and that meant they accidentally led to Pathfinder’s creation and rise in popularity.
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After a complete no show at the Game Awards and the swirling rumours, it looks like Microsoft are really going to do a showcase at the end of the month: 25 January at 12pm PT/ 3pm ET / 8pm GMT.
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If ya didn’t know, videogamedunkey started an Indie video game publishing company back in September.
And they just signed on their first game for publishing: the previously announced pixel-platformer, Animal Well.
It’s already coming to PC and PS5, so I’m not totally sure what the incentive of the dev grabbing a publisher now would be for, but I imagine it can help make it easier to extend that reach to, say, Xbox.
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I watched this in another video and it was so cool to see!
Yeah. I was a Genesis fanboy back in the day, but this is impressive. Now, they just need to redo the Genesis version of Galaxy Force II.
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THIS IS THE BEST FUCKING NEWS EVER!
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Interesting situation. This might means that there will be a new open-world racing game series for all platforms!
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Time to put our 
on - Ubi
Is it though?
The game still feels shallow and it’s getting hate even from Postal fans 
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did notice how it changed the prison section outcomes when you either kill or pacify. it used to be different but now it isn’t. i at least hope they will continue to update it more and more. besides at least it ain’t postal 3.
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They’ll release a handful of AC and Far Cry games and they’ll feel better.
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I feel like Ubisoft wants to can Skull and Bones, but it’s so late into development they can’t lol.
To be fair they are retroactivity make the game better as we get more updates. Running With Scissors has always had good faith with the fanbase albeit how small their fanbase really is for how niche Postal is. I’m not one to dunk on Indie Game Development (let’s be real here for a moment Postal series is a Indie Game) especially when they do large open worlds that are a large under taking especially on limited resources.
My point is RWS know what they are doing and it coming to PlayStation allows another revenue stream for them to refine and better their product further. And we can’t act like they haven’t when they quite literally gave us options such as Corey Cruise and Zach Ward as optional voices.
As for the game feeling shallow there is a real possibility that it’s just the usage of Unreal Engine since it’s the go too generic game engine which either makes your game look high quality or absolute jank. As for the writing I think it’s still on brand for the series albeit it’s dealing the hand’s it’s dealt with the world we’re in today which it was never gonna land with everyone especially postal fans.
Postal writing peaked with the first game and it was largely for its themes being very relevant especially and unfortunately the case when it comes to American culture especially on the topic of mass shootings.
Postal 4 is fine and fun, but imo the game is just not fun to look at compared to Brain Damage where it has a clear art direction. That’s my only real issue with the game.
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I feel that they didn’t really listen to their fanbase when they were told since the earliest alpha build that the levels are just too big and empty and it’s clear they can’t figure out how to fill those empty spaces without ruining the game’s performance and that’s after they added loading zones.
Not to mention they quickly kicked 1.0 out the door when the game was not even close in a finished state. I actually had more issues with 1.0 than with previous builds…
https://twitter.com/notch/status/1611738164661551105?cxt=HHwWgoC8-cjUhd4sAAAA
Whenever you report issues with the game, RWS’ will just respond with a bad joke. Mike J is not fit to be at the helm of a game.
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Pickle Rick!
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You need an above average IQ to understand that you can’t do those things
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