Worth Playing: 06/20/2014

I just realized that the "Coming up on giantbomb" schedule is showing local time, so there's that. Now on to video games!

Has some similarities to the movie Shutter Island. Looks like Bioshock Infinite also.

Ronin looks interesting, thanks Patrick.

Ether One looks like it might be worth checking out for a few hours. Thanks, @PatrickKlepek.

I can't figure out hardly anything in Ether One. I have a habit of taking every item in the world that looks somewhat unique back to the case, and I don't think I've used a single one. I don't even know if that's what I'm supposed to be doing.

I've played Ether One and I came pretty far. The game is atmospheric and the story intriguing but the game is a HARDCORE puzzle adventure game.

I want to finish it because of the story but the game sometimes feels more like work instead of a game.

I was sort of on the fence with Ether Oner. Missed it at least once on gog.com summer sale but after this video I really hope it turns up again.

Man, Ronin is rad. It would be fun to play with a level editor.

Ether one kinda gives me a 3D To The Moon with puzzles vibe.

I constantly forget that and think that is just California time.

Picked up Ether One today. Looking forward to getting into that once I clear a few games from my backlog. Ronin also looks really cool. Would be really cool if it got some cool visual upgrades and what not. Not a guy who needs graphics, but think it would be cool to give it a little facelift.

Ether One looks like a really great idea on paper, hopefully the full game lives up to the idea.

Does anyone know where to find Ronin?

@teoball said:

To The Moon had puzzles, albeit simple ones.

Ether One looks kinda intriguing, but was there some problem with how @patrickklepek recorded it? It seemed like it was zoomed in a bit and cutting things off with the narrow FoV. Is that just how it looks or was it some recording problem?

If there was no narration or text in Ether One, I don't think anybody would even guess it had any connection to Alzheimers. That about sums up the depth at which they're tackling the subject.

Yeah, I got motion sick watching that and had to look away through the rest of that part. I sure hope that was just an artifact of the recording, because I would never be able to play the game like that. And I handle Descent just fine.

I hope I'm not misinterpreting this due to English not being my native language, but it seems to me that Ether One presents Alzheimers as a kind of psychological disorder caused by traumatizing memories and experiences. This is, as far as we know, not at all the case. It is a neurological disorder caused by damage to nerve cells, and no kind of psychotherapy can cure it. This, of course, makes for a depressing narrative for a game, but if they want to be honest about it and be taken seriously as a comment on dementia, I think they should not pretend there is some magic thing inside one's mind that just needs to be found to cure dementia. It is an incurable, biological disease. The only thing you can do is learn to cope, both as somebody afflicted or somebody close to them.

It's disappointing to hear that Patrick didn't even attempt solve one of the projector puzzles, because otherwise you're just walking around collecting the ribbons and just listening to the story. Ether One is a really good game that I thought Patrick would have liked a lot. I'm not trying to say that he played it wrong or anything like that, but I think that by skipping the puzzles he missed out on a lot.

Also, you can run in Ether One. I don't know what the buttons are on a controller, but it's 'Shift' on a keyboard.

certainly that is true but maybe the game is about hope

Link for the Ronin game. Took me a bit of finding so thought I would link it here.

@wemibelec90 said:

I disagree. It really kinda didn't.

You would hunt around each scene for the memory trigger things, then the story would advance. It's a tenuous difference, but if you have to use Object 1 on Object 2, and if you use Object 3 instead then nothing happens, that's technically an obstacle with both a solution and a way you can fuck up. To The Moon just has you find things and click on them and then you basically get a sweet checkmark for finding it, which is basically just pixelhunting.

I liked To The Moon a great deal, but it's basically Gone Home made in RPG Maker, in terms of gameplay or lack thereof.

@mrnood1e said:

Yeah, that was kind of a bummer that Patrick was semi-proud that "I skipped the puzzles, because fuck it". I guess the devs allowed for that option in the first place so obviously they're kinda aware that not everybody is up for some tough puzzles, but I feel like Patrick was rather dismissive of them.