Quick Look: Puppeteer

Every time I look at comments I remember why I don't read comments.

It's pretty, but I haven't the attention deficit for it.

Yuuuuuuuup.

Pretty sure the mispronunciation is for comedic effect- especially since at one point she corrects someone else's pronunciation

..I thought the pixie was cute..

This isn't for me. I really tend to want deep mechanics that take time to learn and master from my platformers. Or a strong focus on control and timing. Whereas the focus of this game is jump in and have fun, get wrapped up in the presentation.

I can see the good things about Puppeteer, though. People who want this sort of experience rarely get this level of craft and presumably, budget, applied to their games.

It needs to happen more often, and for other genres that have starved in terms of presentation while catering to the acquired tastes of core gamers. Platformers seem to be accepted now. X-com and Fire Emblem even seem to have even un-ghettoized turn-based strategy for the moment, but flight sims, sports games, and JRPGs all badly need a big budget, simple, streamlined game to get things moving in a healthy direction again.

Fuck 'em Brad. Fuck all of them. You know your shit!

@lovespuds said:

I think I will try it in 3D. It seems like it would be a good fit.

Looking at this makes me wish I had a kid to play it with, and a PS3.

I don't really get Brad's problem with the Sun Princess girl. I like her voice acting and frankly, the way everyone else pronounces Kutaro annoys me because it's a Japanese name.

Yeah, given the number of Japanese developers and the bits of Japanese folklore seeping in she is the only one pronouncing his name right. Japanese only has one pronunciation for each vowel and Ku-ta-roh is right, not Ku-tu-roh. Japanese doesn't have schwas the way English does.

Here, I set up a Google translate for it, just click the listen button: http://translate.google.com/#ja/en/%E3%81%8F%E3%81%86%E3%81%9F%E3%82%8D%E3%81%86

Or the actual Japanese voice actress: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpC0QvE90Mc&feature=youtu.be&t=18s

And yes, the Japanese VA does pronounce it correctly but that's because so is every other Japanese voice actor. That doesn't somehow mean that an argumentum ad populum makes the English VAs right. This is all a really dumb argument and I sorta stopped caring when people pronounce Tokyo To-ki-o instead of To-kyo, but come on, if you're gonna bring it up in the quick look I'll still make an argument.

No character pronounced it with the same amount of stress on each syllable. Unless you speak like a robot, all multisyllabic words, whether in English, Japanese or any other language, have stress by necessity. The princess says Ku-ta-ro, the others say ku-ta-ro. In terms of stress, the latter is the way a Japanese pronounces the name.

Well, it's semantic, but it would be more precise to say that Japanese uses timing and pitch rather than stress. The reason is that in Japanese it's not Kutaro at all, but Kuutarou, and (at least in the Kantou dialect) a 'u' is very lightly pronounced so 'desu' sounds more like 'des' and 'shimasu' sounds more like 'shimas'.

You don't have the lack of attention?

Exactly. While it has great visual style, the screen is really busy.

Literally EVERY other character pronounces a character's name a specific way (with talented voice acting, no less), and the ONE character who Brad describes as a "valley girl" who pronounces it differently is clearly an oversight on the developer's part rather than intentional?

Oh Brad.

I don't know, this game looks and sounds interesting, but the gameplay isn't doing it for me.

Indeed.

Should puppets talk?

Do you also insist the boxer is M. Bison, the guy with claws is Balrog, and the guy in red is Vega? Just because something is a certain way in the JP ver doesn't mean they didn't change it for localization. It seemed like a pretty obvious gag to me. Also this game looks hella dope, one of the best looking current-gen games I've seen. Even putting aside the art style, everything about it is technically impressive.

That said, I probably won't play it because all the cutscenes and dialogue are pretty grating.

@uberexplodey: Sir. It's called a Crown.

Crown.

What are you doing.

The Fairy character is cute and sells me on the game entirely. Just saying.

@k9: That seems to be the joke, where she was correcting everyone and actually saying things correctly. Seems to have been entirely lost on Brad for whatever reason.

Of course she's doing it intentionally.

Man a lot of the games I get excited about are Ps3 exclusives first, which I don't have (this one, demon souls, uncharted, god of war, journey, heavy rain... :> :<<).

Really liking this game so far, just afraid that it'll get trampled by games like Rayman Legends and GTA V. Not that those two wouldn't be great either, but I hope this'll sale well enough as well.

Whatever happened to #TeamBrad? @brad you're still my favorite!

I really love the idea of Brad "Pulling a Brad" in the comments section of a Quick Look.

Man... Patrick moves away, and now Brad's back to being on the shit list. Are people determined to hate at least one of the crew at all times?

Here's me weighing in on the mispronunciation thing:

Who fucking cares?

Game looks cool.

I love Jeff in this quick look :P

Sooo annoying how typically ignorant Brad is...

Are the giant scissors a reference to Clock Tower?

@brad: I've been coming to this website for 5 years and I don't think I've ever had one of the staff from the quick look itself ever respond directly to my comment, let alone positively. Thanks Brad!

Like being right about Japanese pronunciation?

Brad wasn't the best person to lead this Quick Look, in my opinion; it just didn't feel like a Brad game. I wouldn't give Dark Souls 2 to Jeff, either. But "typically ignorant" is hyperbole, I think.

This looks like a Terry Gilliam movie, like someone turned The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen into a video game about puppets. This looks amazing.

This game is a hell of a production, in multiple senses of the word. Gameplay doesn't seem super-duper elaborate, but I bet it's still a hell of an experience. I love when Sony supports weird and out-there games like this, so I will be voting with my wallet and picking this up (plus they were nice enough to discount the price!).

Surprised that no one in this video made a reference to LBP when playing this game. Graphics do look sweet, but I agree they could have done more with the heads and the gameplay seems simple.

As for the pronunciation of Kutaro, the cat seems to say it the same way as the girl in that last part Brad showed. Not that it really matters. Would like to see more gameplay videos of the rest of the chapters just to see the different tile sets (as I doubt I'd ever play through this myself).

Although Brad, to be fair, she was also the only character to be throwing out modern language lingo in the quick look. There was a moment where she said something along the lines of "lets go rap on this reptiles head" Also putting emphasis on the Tar portion of the name is not that weird. The only name I can think of off the top of my head with that character is Hamtaro and that name is pronounced Ham-Tar-O as opposed to Ham-Ta-Row in both English and Japanese.

I love Vinnie's 9 To 5 reference.

Same here.

Jeff & Me: "Brad do the obvious thing that is the biggest thing on the screen"

Brad: "Hang on, I've gotten hung up on this one little thing in the corner that's not important but which I must pull off"

Also this thing is so European it's unbelievable. 2 minutes in all I could think was, "this had to have come from the mind of a British person or a French person". It feels like a European kids book or cartoon.

Although in the beginning it almost seemed too European, like someone was trying too hard with all the weird talking nature-y things with quirky faces jumping in and out of the screen.

Looks great. The companion seemed fine to me, more or less the same as the one in Dust An Elysian Tale which Brad liked a lot, but leave it up to Brad to get so hung up on how a name is pronounced.

Looks great. The companion seemed fine to me, more or less the same as the one in Dust An Elysian Tale which Brad liked a lot, but leave it up to Brad to get so hung up on how a name is pronounced.

Always be cutting.

Sun Pwincess makes this game far more enjoyable, for me. Ying Yang was the annoying one.

I agree with Jeff's "hrrmm". Brad gets a bit carried away when going on about how gorgeous the game is.
It does have a great look though.

I agree with Jeff's "hrrmm". Brad gets a bit carried away when going on about how gorgeous the game is.

It does have a great look though.

edit: just realized that narrator voices someone in the first The Witcher. I think.

Well this seems like a sleeper hit to me, looks like something I'll be interested in playing in the future.

And damn you guys are always so negative in the comments, I thought it was a great Quick look.

This game is charming! It's not weird at all if you're familiar with Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. That masterpiece has a lot of allegories, whether mathematical or literary. The whole theme and presentation of this game is super refreshing. And I think this is a great title to introduce to kids (and adults too!) about plays and an exploration of their imaginations.