Muzman on 23/4/2011 at 04:54
The new Ice Pick Lodge game is out and it looks surprisingly hilarious.
Apparently it's all about bringing 'fun' to a tribe of weird midgets in a strange archipelago. You can do this by playing music, catapulting them through the air, booting them up the arse and dragging them behind vehicles you build from junk lying around. That last one is the major aspect of the game by the looks and helps you get around and solve puzzles on the different islands.
Also increasing the amount of 'fun' will bring back mass to a whole lot of floating shit which will then fall to the ground.
...yeah.
(given these guys surrealist/situationist art pedigree I can't help but think that they are having a huge dig at game design trends somehow by tying fun to gravity like this)
Anyway, it came out with so little fanfare I thought it would be worth mentioning.
Best I can do is RPS at the moment (there's also a fairly horrible trailer in there somewhere that the devs don't like, but has some gameplay).
(
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/22/a-naked-truth-cargo-released-impressions/)
Angel Dust on 23/4/2011 at 05:28
Yeah, saw that RPS post too and bought it last night. I'm a big fan of their previous games, particularly The Void, and had been anticipating this but it is surprising how little fanfare it's generated. I mean, obviously I'm not expecting major coverage on Kotaku or anything but I would have thought the RPS chaps would have been alerted, considering how much coverage they've given to both Pathologic and The Void. Anyway, its downloaded and ready to go for tonights gaming session. :thumb:
Aerothorn on 23/4/2011 at 13:47
Let us know how it is - I still mean to pick up Pathologic despite the crappy translation, and I actually got The Void in one of the Steam sales, though I certainly won't be able to significantly progress because of my colorblindness (sigh).
Muzman on 25/4/2011 at 09:02
Someone's put up some gameplay videos now so folks can have a better look at it.
Definite echos of Rare and Shiny/Planet Moon games in there. And no bad thing too. Although this is less comedic and more WTF.
(
http://youtu.be/U_0XaiHHG5E)
edit: Oh and there's this too.
(
http://youtu.be/QMRamENH9ig)
..which shows how you can use any tune you like to make the buddies dance until they explode with delight, all the while shit falling from the sky.
Angel Dust on 26/4/2011 at 12:15
Played about 5 hours so far, so some impressions:
* It's very weird. Not just visually weird but the characters all talk in that obtuse way Ice-Pick Lodge characters always do, so you never quite know what the hell is going on. Depending on your preference this could be either frustrating or intriguing; I fall into the latter category.
* In another departure from the Ice-Pick Lodge formula, it's pretty easy. Your character can't, as far as I can tell, die and the various missions/mini-games don't offer much of a challenge. Creating workable vehicles that can tow a maximum number of buddies (those little fat, naked, bald dudes) can be tricky though.
* The mechanics for generating FUN (the games currency) are a bit repetitive but it's fairly easy to amass a huge amount of FUN so it never gets grindy. I'm also not sure if Ice-Pick Lodge aren't taking the piss a bit here, since things like "Work, Work, Create some FUN" appear on the screen from time to time.
* As is the norm for an Ice-Pick Lodge game, it looks great (artistically rather than technically), voice acting is good (but odd) and the music is fantastic. There is also an option to import 60 second segments of songs from your collection for playing when throwing 'parties' for the buddies.
* It seems like it's going to be a fairly short game. I'm currently up to Spring which presumably only leaves Summer.
Overall I'm enjoying it quite a lot and the low difficulty means I can just kick back and soak up the weirdness while mucking around creating goofy vehicles.
Muzman on 27/4/2011 at 05:15
Yeah, the first thing that sprang to mind about that FUN thing was that was like something Keiron Gillen was talking about in an article on Bioshock from a while ago. In it he was talking about how people just weren't taking the time to enjoy the mechanics (by grinding away with just the wrench or whatever) and kill creatively, try out plasmids etc. I'd argue it was such a sidetrack from the general feel of the game, you don't do delighted murder creativity in your linear atmospheric survival-horror shooter. But it must be a constant worry if you're incorporating that sort of thing in a game; "what if no one plays with it?!"
These guys have said you need to go out and muck about in order to progress and even called it 'creating fun'.
Very cute.
I can't really justify picking this up yet. Maybe soon. The fact that the engineer is voiced by the same breathy chick who did some of the sisters and the tutorials in The Void is kinda unsettling though.
Pyrian on 27/4/2011 at 22:05
That's an interesting observation. (Well, interesting to me, anyway.) I remember that I ended up particularly enjoying the portion of Bioshock where you get random plasmids. In Portal (and its sequel), the portal gun may be essentially constant, but the environmental tools they give you to manipulate with it change all the time. (I could blue-gel turrets all day!)
And yet it flies into the face of the notion of completing a game using a particular style, a la many RPG's. Generally speaking in an RPG you have a selection of possible abilities, and specialization is encouraged, to the point where I, for one, get really annoyed if a specific section forces you into a different playstyle.
Not sure where I'm going with this. Just kind of intrigued.
