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.
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I've already been in a pitiful emotional state for days now, reading real nonsense about Charles' talent is putting me even more on edge. I do think I understand why he's so hard on himself, it's because everyone is waiting for him to come around and never let him make a mistake like he has to be a war machine.
I would love to see these people criticizing him, behind the wheel to see if they do better. Then to compare him to Max or Lewis as if they never made a mistake, is a real bullshit. Has everyone forgotten Max's debut?
He wanted to be on top all the time so badly in his early days, that it earned him the nickname crashstappen. It was a horrible nickname. What allowed Max to reach the top was the evolution of his mind as he got older and wiser. He was able to let go at certain levels.
Because Charles crashed during free practice and made a mistake at the French GP, so that's it, he's finished and he'll never become world champion? No, but seriously, you'd think Rome was built in a day. One day it's Charles, one day it's the team, one day it's Fred who doesn't make decisions fast enough, one day it's Carlos (even if I don’t have him in my heart, he's still a good punching bag for people it needs be say).
At some point, you have to give time to time and the right to make mistakes. Even if I love Max, I wish we could stop comparing them in this way. They didn't have the same education, nor the same background. Max arrived very young in F1, he had more years to perfect himself (this is not a bad criticism, it's a fact) and above all he has a team that lets him make mistakes because he is HUMAN. A diamond needs to be polished to become a jewel, that's exactly the case with Max. I’m proud of what Max became and how he succeeded to just let it go some things that allow to him the champion he’s today. And it will be the case of Charles, I’m sure. It drives me crazy to read that Charles doesn't have the mind. The mind of what??? LOL anyone in his place would have gone crazy with what happened at Ferrari. I would have just crying at each interview and insulting everyone.
Lewis is already having a hard time with what is happening at Mercedes, even though he is an immense champion. Can you imagine how he would have finished if he had been with a team like Ferrari? Charles has the best mental state, as does Pierre, who has been suffering for years. It's a miracle that he hasn't been spun around in an interview or on the radio. Then let's stop criticizing Vasseur, he's the only Ferrari director for a while who takes his balls to say stop. We don't fire everyone in one day to hire the first person who comes along.
I repeat, Rome was not built in a day, a concrete plan, a strategy is worked on over months. People are too bad with Charles, they can't find a fault, so we need someone who doesn't fit into the cliché of the virulent and aggressive pilot off the track. So clearly we are still in the policy that being humble and calm is being weak. I understand better now why people are rotten to the bone, this vision of thinking represents well the problems that affects F1 for years that only gets worse. We criticize the FIA, but these kind of "fans" contribute to this degradation.
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