-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Jimpressions: We Happy Few - A Joyless Broken Disaster
- Thread starter Toumari
- Start date
I guess you could say the Xbox One's rather empty slate of first party titles led Microsoft to make a Compulsive purchase.
Seriously though, I can understand why Microsoft decided to buy Compulsion. We Happy Few turned a lot of heads when it appeared on their stage at E3 last year, with its unique premise and colourful art style. They decided to take a gamble with the positive buzz that demo received.
Compulsion clearly houses creatives with interesting ideas, so I really hope Microsoft lets that shine in the studio's future output, while insisting on a level of polish that Gearbox isn't exactly renowned for post-Colonial Marines.
I must just only be seeing the ones he doesnt (which are entertaining)
If i had to guess it's their ability in creating worlds and characters. We Happy Few has a fuckton of problems, but if you strip them out and only leave the world, narrative and characters they actually created something really fucking cool. It's a shame that the mechanics around it are so bad.
Is Jim Sterling capable of any comment more insightful than "lazy devs, DLC/micro-transactions are evil" with a lot of cursing thrown in the middle of it?
Yes, which you'd know if you actually listened to or read the mountain of content he's produced over the years.
And Compulsion Games even responded to him (even though by a Youtube comment) :
"Hi Jim, We think you missed the point of what our writer was saying. More than happy to have a chat about it."
As someone pointed I was wrong about my comment.
But I've listened to a lot of his content (even his podcast) and that link was the first time I heard him say anything interesting.
I don't appreciate the "let's curse a bunch" style either way. But, besides that, I don't associate him with quality criticism at all. Altought perhaps this makes him more money without a doubt.
I'm curious as to whether they mean anti-depressants or opiods / adderall / etc - which are also prescription drugs, but being mis-used. Opiod addiction tends to get called "prescription drug issues" along with folks who are snorting adderall or whatever else mind you. If they're talking about the latter, then I get that (especially as someone in recovery myself, if not specifically for drugs).
Speaking of Gearbox, didn't they just a few weeks ago fix Aliens Colonial Marines so that the AI wasn't terrible, and the bugs mostly gone? Fucking 5 years later after the release of the game?
Look at the other reviews out there, its for their storytelling mostly, which by many accounts is excellent.
Still, there isn't much excuse for the technical state of the game at launch. Hopefully that's a non issue going forward as 1st party.
OT - Jim seems to be over-reacting a little. As usual.
I remember my playthrough on 360 of wolf among us.
The game would do a cutscene, then freeze frame for 20 seconds and I find out I missed entire conversations and just auto get pushed into attack at several instances.
-------
but yes, we happy few looks really bad, like, all they need are some decent people that do some basic QA before even sending it to the QA to fix some things. yikes
Of course. Pillars of Eternity, Shovel Knight, Divinity: Original Sin, RCR: Underground, La Mulana 2, FTL, Kentucky Route Zero, you name it. The bad stuff just gets more publicity.
A shame because, by all accounts, the story is very much worthwhile. The game it's wrapped around, not so much sadly. I suppose this is a perfect example for the good story/bad game thread.
User Warned: Thread whining
Don't really care what some you tuber/twitch personality (aka blowhard) says, so far I've enjoyed what I've played and don't see any of theee bugs that was mentioned.
Ya'll let these "reviewers" rule what you touch/play/see don't you?
If something looks interesting try it out yourself don't wait to hear what others think about it
Ya'll let these "reviewers" rule what you touch/play/see don't you?
If something looks interesting try it out yourself don't wait to hear what others think about it
Apparently the story and writing is really good, so maybe MS is interested in them from that perspective and will put more resources into (or less emphasis on) gameplay next time.
But other than that I've really got nothing. This game has never looked good in my opinion, despite the interesting concept.
This might be true for Contrast, but not so much for We Happy Few.
A lot of the concepts of "sadness" the developers discuss is better told in other games, no more so than LISA - for which the concept of "Joy" as drug, effects and consequences are taken from in the first place. Although in narrative, the game is more poignant and based much more in dark humour, exploring much more about a very different society:
but it still does! & maybe, just maybe, some upcoming year or other, they'll actually finish it! :) ...
Jim's early access video (from before the E3 trailer) had a mechanic where the player would have to answer greetings and such to pretend he's not a downer (and from the sound of it using too much Joy would make your character forget about his quest and go back to his old life, losing the game?), seems now the mechanic is just that you have to keep taking Joy to keep the facade up? Certainly makes it more understandable why Australia's censors suspected a pro-drugs message in WHF.
While I posted in the other thread it's an interesting topic for discussion, I would have thought Jim recusing himself from covering the game like any other because he was involved in development (cut content or not) would have been the better course of action.
On a related note I just saw him credited with appearing in 2064 which I just got off the eshop. Looking forward to coming across his character/s.
Briefly on topic - it's no surprise at all that the recent spate of 'Triple-Triple A' (gag, cough) releases are repeatedly glitchy and full of glaringly obvious faults to the end user at launch.
We've seen for a few years now the best and most popular games either cut just enough corners to gather a lot of steam (ie PUBG, Fortnite) or the once gold standard (a game we would have called AAA during the transition between gens, say) has fallen so much we get bugs and glitches in games once airtight and pristine.
You should expect more and more house-of-cards situations the more dazzling these games become, ie Red Dead 2 is going to be full of stuff that people would never had accepted four or five years ago.
On a related note I just saw him credited with appearing in 2064 which I just got off the eshop. Looking forward to coming across his character/s.
Briefly on topic - it's no surprise at all that the recent spate of 'Triple-Triple A' (gag, cough) releases are repeatedly glitchy and full of glaringly obvious faults to the end user at launch.
We've seen for a few years now the best and most popular games either cut just enough corners to gather a lot of steam (ie PUBG, Fortnite) or the once gold standard (a game we would have called AAA during the transition between gens, say) has fallen so much we get bugs and glitches in games once airtight and pristine.
You should expect more and more house-of-cards situations the more dazzling these games become, ie Red Dead 2 is going to be full of stuff that people would never had accepted four or five years ago.
This might be true for Contrast, but not so much for We Happy Few.
A lot of the concepts of "sadness" the developers discuss is better told in other games, no more so than LISA - for which the concept of "Joy" as drug, effects and consequences are taken from in the first place. Although in narrative, the game is more poignant and based much more in dark humour, exploring much more about a very different society:
Yes, thank you for mentioning LISA! One of the best stories in video games, imo.
You're asking peopleto spend a load of cash and time which they might otherwise not have on a game that has had a spotty reception to say the least. And Jim's not the only one who has come across the issues this game seems to have, one off glitches are one thing (Like what happened in his initial Hellblade review) but it happens regularly.
Trusting one reviewer is a bad idea, but making an informed decision after hearing from several is a different story.
Damn right. One of my favourite games. Very little like it, and certainly a shame that so much of what LISA is and its core concepts are not recognised compared to We Happy Few, which liberally borrows
That's not really fair. The concept of Joy as a pill is shared but otherwise they're very different games. Both very dark and humorous in their own way.
LISA! Which amusingly is what I already posted about - a game which We Happy Few borrows concepts from liberally
This might be true for Contrast, but not so much for We Happy Few.
A lot of the concepts of "sadness" the developers discuss is better told in other games, no more so than LISA - for which the concept of "Joy" as drug, effects and consequences are taken from in the first place. Although in narrative, the game is more poignant and based much more in dark humour, exploring much more about a very different society:
To name a few more:
Undertale
Pillars of Eternity 1 / 2
Superhot
Shovel Knight
FTL
Divinity Original Sin 1 / 2
Darkest Dungeon
Hyperlight Drifter
Bloodstained
Kingdom Come
Shadowrun Returns
Sunless Sea
There's a bunch. Shovel Knight, Undertale, Banner Saga, Pillars of Eternity, Battle Chef Brigade, Battle Chasers, Superhot, Hollow Knight, Darkest Dungeon, Thimbleweed Park and many, many more.
Hollow Knight among others.
This is where I'm at too. The procedural stuff, I feel, hurts it too. Just tons of cookie cutter houses (that you can't enter) jammed together to make a rat maze... maybe it's a metaphor.
The recent season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 was pretty good.