Quick Look: Karmaflow: The Rock Opera Videogame

Man I love when people rip into Tool. The only thing worse than Tool are Tool fans because they insist on defending that artsy trash. Dans right about that, but his 3 pillars sound like he just came straight outta Pennsyltucky.

I don't know if this game is making me want to play it, but it sure as hell is making me want to go back and listen to Dream Theater's Scenes From a Memory. God, what a fucking great album.

Bowie doesn't actually have heterochromia (two differently colored eyes), one of his pupils is just permanently dilated from getting punched in the eye by his friend that was wearing a ring, over a dispute about a girl or something.

Interesting character design.

And gosh they explained the mechanics pretty well I thought. That boss fight seemed pretty easy with some reading... And boy howdy now I'm this guy I guess. Oh well.

Managed to take in all of Dan's shitty opinions and everything that was happening on screen with little problem, and it wound up being really frustrating watching Drew jump into a pit a dozen times and then completely undo his boss puzzle progress because he just couldn't give a shit.

Game has problems. The lack of any sort of stimuli between musical cutscenes is pretty bad, and when Drew decided to jump for a non existent platform that looked like it could be a platform (totally excusable) and then wound up getting disoriented upon respawning because there was no clear way of determining which way he came from besides keeping focused the whole time - that's bad design and could use a rework. Still, the mechanics were simple and very clearly delivered, and this 25 minute quicklook could have been done in 15 had anyone given enough of a shit to just pay attention for a minute. Hell, it could have still been 25 minutes and we might have seen what else the game has to offer, if anything, beyond the obvious tutorial boss.

@danryckert and @drewbert, karma is bull, because while good things tend to happen to good people, and the opposite for bad people, HORRIBLE things have happened to good people and amazing things have happened to horrible people. Also, if someone's bad to certain people, and great to people he/she's close to, then what karma's coming for them?

So Dan, people can only sing about their life? What?? The way you see things is certainly unique, but a good song for me is a good song. I appreciate Drew's attempt to reason with you. Yoko, I think we can agree, sucks. I have actually heard something tolerable from her recently, but her "experimental" work is terrible screeching.

Also, robots existed (more in fiction than reality) before the Synyrd tragedy. The FIRST Skynyrd tragedy, if you're keeping up with recent news.

@blizzvg: You're only saying that because you like them. How tiring would it be to say "I think" or "I believe" or "in my opinion" before everything you say. It's implied that everything he says is his opinion. It's the same when you or I or anyone else speaks too.

Pete Townshend actually wrote Pinball Wizard in a hurry because a critic was going to listen to a preview of Tommy and Townshend heard the critic liked Pinball, and wrote the song in hopes of a positive article written about the upcoming album.

This QL would have been infinity times better if it had been Vinny and Alex. Tell me I'm wrong. There's basically no point doing a QL with Dan unless he's already interested in the game, because if he's not he is sure to derail it. Both John Drake and Dan's father have tried to warn us.

The magic word that comes to mind after watching this Quick Look is philistine. The notion of "good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people" is a false premise. It's a defense mechanism to avoid unpleasant thing that happen in everyday life.

I hope this game gets a revisit in the future, maybe by Alex and Vinny.

yyyyYUP, he's old fashioned and very closed off to creativity in music.
I can appreciate things about well made music even if i don't like it, but for Dan anything different = strong hate.

...

Idk what to say other than - less symphony, MORE ROCK!

Oh, and did anyone else see Drew miss the OBVIOUS no 2 at the boss battle?

Dan should check out a band called 'Nickelback.' They tend to sing about the themes Dan seems to enjoy.

Maaaan, this Quick Look just really... bummed me out. I had heard just a little bit about this game a few months back, seemed like a potentially cool and fairly ambitious concept, and when the QL popped up I was all "oh, neat, this should be fun and interesting!". But I honestly couldn't even get through to like the halfway mark, and it sounds like it just gets worse by the end. It was painful. And it's not necessarily to do with Dan's music opinions, believe it or not! Though immediate complaints based on preconceived notions about what a "rock opera" is or should be set things off on a real bad foot for me, I'm afraid.

Right off the bat: doing the necessary QL intro tomfoolery over the musical intro to a game where the music is such an intrinsic part of the thing, such a key component to the game itself that it's explicitly specified in thetitle... that'd be a somewhat questionable editorial choice in your average QL, but to do so in one that's being run blind is nothing short of egregious.

The key problem with this vid, to my mind, boils down to being a completely blind QL that was carried as if someone had played it before, and that simply didn't work to anything's benefit.

The LA Cops QL, for example, has a lot of fun off-topic discussion going on, but it works because Jeff has already played enough of the game to be able to have those discussions while still understanding and showing how basic mechanics function, and is able to break out of them and explain stuff when necessary. He also already has at least some investment in the game, however minor. I can enjoy the ridiculous tales of stolen doors and D. L. Roth and still get a fine idea of how the game is playing.

But if you're trying to have those discussions while the game is continually and suddenly grinding to a halt because you're too busy going on tangents to have the slightest idea what is happening or what you're doing... well, the QL kinda instantly becomes very frustrating (and arguably even useless) to the viewer, regardless of how entertaining that proceeding discussion might have been. At the bare minimum, surely the whole blind QL idea has completely negated its own premise at that point?

Basically: it's my feeling that if one hasn't played the game enough to be able to speak for it in between whatever tangents one might have been speaking over it with, one needs to make a much more concerted effort to give it room to speak for itself. Otherwise, nobody's interests are really being served.

I don't mean to single you out, just grabbed this quote to represent a fair few people going for the "the game was just so boring that they lost interest!" angle here but... I don't think the argument works on this one, at all.

For one thing: as I already noted in my other comment, the decision was made to speak over the entire operatic intro of the game that neither of them had even played yet, enough that I am fairly sure nobody involved could have even told you the setup at the point control is gained.

The game then went for a slow, atmospheric beginning where the player character, some strange creature seemingly newly birthed (or re-birthed?) in the dark darkness of a snow-swept canyon, begins to explore and discover its new land. There's nothing wrong with this setup, at all, that I can see. Many great games have used it! Surely nobody is expecting that this is going to be the pace of the rest of the game, right? It's the prelude, the tutorial. It's valid to critique or dislike this semi-slow atmospheric kind of setup, but that doesn't make it definitively bad. Just because it's a "rock opera" video game doesn't mean it still isn't a video game; of course it's not going to be balls-to-the-wall music the whole time, that's completely infeasible.

But the real problem here is, it's made for someone to play and experience, to draw them in as they explore the new world of the game along with the newly-formed character. It's not conductive to enabling entertaining interactions with another person about it as it happens, but this is a Quick Look and the people showing it want to make sure it's entertaining, so they have to keep the talk going. Even if they don't have anything to say about the actual game yet because it's just started and they can't even talk about mechanics because they have no idea what they might be.

With many (most?) QLs, non-blind ones, that usually works ok. Hell, for other types of games, fast-paced actiony stuff or something, it'd probably work ok blind too. Here? We watch as someone theoretically tries to absorb what they're playing for the first time but is really just fumbling forward near-mindlessly because they're trying to maintain a tangential conversation with their partner. That doesn't work, because it's nearly impossible. It's simply a terrible way to play something like this for the first time, much less show people HOW something plays as a professional. It's bush-league, snarky Youtube stoner kid stuff, and GB is better than that.

Of course Dan and Drew become disinterested quickly, because literally right from the get-go they were so busy trying to keep QL banter going, they never really had any chance of getting invested in the game in the first place. That's ignoring questionable preconceived notions about what something should be, which is a whole other kettle of shit.

And that's fine, they don't have to be, I can do my own critical thinking and make a judgement based on what I see of the game, regardless of how weirdly dismissive (or enthusiastic, or anything) the crew is. But I can't even do that when the QLers almost immediately fall so deep into the hole of barely-relevant back-and-forth that they can barely even progress in the game, and that is, sadly, pretty much the entirety of this one.

Game deserved better than this. This was kind of a shitty blowoff.

@officermeatbeef

Well said in your above posts. I wanted to see a bit more of the game especially after the tutorial boss, but I quickly shut off the video when Drew was 1 small step away from completing it and he ran around and undid everything. This was frustrating watch.

@danryckert, on paper, based on the criteria you outlined, George Thorogood should be one of your favourite songwriters.

Dan immediately went into. "This is bullshit" mode. I don't think this game was given the smallest chance.

This seems like it should have been a @vinny and @alex QL. Watching Dan and Drew talk over and practically ignore the tutorial was infuriating.

Is there more rock in the game? Is it past this QL? I was expecting something like Brutal Legend where it's on all the time like that is for metal. This seems like a game with a Japanese folkore setting and more suited to Disney, nothing about the aesthetic screams a rock opera. Other reviews have found the "rock opera" part of it lacking. Rayman Legends musical stages are far more exciting than here.

The fuck did I just watch..?

Ugh, every time I get back on board the @danryckert bus he says something that frustrates the hell out of me. "Tool is a garbage ass band" may be the worst yet though. Its totally understandable that someone wouldn't like Tool or Floyd, and everyone is of course entitled to their opinion, but an absolute statement like that about bands that stand up to pretty much any serious critical analysis that you could come up with is, frankly, ignorant. I really hope he learns that there is a difference between stating an opinion: "I really don't like Tool" (fair) and stating a fact: "Tool is a shitty band" (ignorant).

See, your first mistake is listening to rock/metal for the lyrics.

@jesterpc238: Just catching up GB stuff and I couldn't agree more. I love Tool, everyone else can hate them. Don't say they're garbage because you don't like them. Thanks for being another level headed person :)

@neozeon said:

This.