Quick Look: Tacoma

that thumbnail tho

@springfart: Wiki entry for dakimakura!

Something about this game looks like a downgrade from their past games.

is that Amarisse Sullivan modeling as a body pillow?

This rewinding mechanic seems incredibly tedious.

Looks comfy.

that AI is an upside down Bill Cipher, it can't not be evil

*listens to last Beastcast where Dan tried to not admit that he doesn't like reading.*

*isn't on this quick look*

lol

@mister_v: I don't find it to be, personally. None of the vignettes are more than a few minutes long, and I've enjoyed exploring the different perspectives in each one.

@alex: That's cool, It's just the idea of having to rewind and then follow each person's point of view for each one that I don't find appealing. I guess I would rather each AR bit be in a single location so I could see it once and then move on. This kind of reminds me of the worst parts parts of the detective vision from the batman games. But this game may just not be for me.

And nothing of value was lost.

@vinny: The Fountains of Paradise is a novel by Arthur C. Clarke about the construction of a space elevator.

Is that Agent 47 as the AI? Sounds familiar

@vinny The Tacoma Dome is also a thing in real life, the ingame bit is a little nod towards it in case you weren't aware. It's like the expo center of Tacoma, Washington. Hosts concerts and such. I keep expecting someone to mention Tacoma, WA, but so far nothing!

I thought that was a thumbnail for that weird Japaneses fighting game for a second.

It looks way too dry to be captivating for any length of time. Very little interactivity, just a lot of walking and watching. Like going to a virtual museum, not playing a game.

I had no clue this had yet to come out.

I knew that AI's voice sounded familiar. It's Charles Milton Porter from Bioshock 2/Minerva's Den.

Now you've said that, I can't not see the guy on the right as a Dong Dong Never Die sprite.

The aroma of Tacoma...

Alex was explicitly not there for the insane spaceship talk on the Beastcast.

Edit: This isn't winning me over the way Edith Finch's quick look did. More of these games should have first person cats and squid monsters.

How were they playing pool in space?

Exactly the same I felt. I like some narrative-focused games, but this one just seems to be so dull...

Yeah, that's the exact game I was thinking of, but couldn't remember the name of.

Brooch and Broach are pronounced the same way. What a confounding pair of words.

This looks very uninteresting

Why are the hosts of Talk-coma not in this?! Why even bother watching it... /s

Is the Illuminati pyramid AI named ODIN some kind of burn on Aaron Hernandez?

@alex: Though you can tell that Sleep No More inspired Tacoma from at least one interview where Steve Gaynor mentions this, there's also totally a reference to Sleep No More in this Quick Look. The song that E.V. St. James is playing, "Is That All There Is?", is sung in Sleep No More simultaneously by Hecate and the Boy Witch while they're on different floors of the hotel.

I'm starting to feel like Fullbright designs their games around not having to ever show you an actual human.

Is it just me or does this game seem like it's trying so damn hard to be diverse that it's coming across as a little pandering? These characters seem so neutral and inoffensive they kinda seem a bit dull and flat.

ew gross, take it away

Agreed. I feel like I'm watching a retail training video set in space. I'm going to pass on this unless some Event Horizon or Sunshine shit starts happening.

Cats in space? Are they gonna talk about Felicette?

Played through it last night. Thoroughly disappointed. Loved gone home. This isnt that. A lot of the time in gone home I would examine the space while listening to something while in this game it kind of forces you to watch what's happening as you want to know when they use keypads or when they split up. And what your watching is highly tedious as there is no emotion just blank colorful shapes. I do like the voice acting but you lose so much when you are watching shapes and it's far more noticeable especially as the game wants you to look at the facsimiles instead of the environment.

As for the actual story if you have seen any sci fi/ corporation movie from the last 40 years you will be painfully reminded of better things in a more emotional format that is better edited.

@emphulio Sure does seem like her. You can see her piercing.

They had a neat idea and there was probably a fun game somewhere there but it seems to have gotten lost along the way and what's left is basically the sum of its parts rather than a compelling and coherent whole.

Added to the top of my backlog stack. Been really looking forward to this for quite a while. And $20 price tag helps as well.

Would you classify the ai as rogue-lite or rogue-like or rogue-lite-like?

@emphulio said:

That is totally her. She should be added as a credit on this game.

I don't really understand this complaint. How dare Fullbright create a cast of characters that aren't just a group of straight white faces?

It may stand out because it's rare to see in a game, but that is not inherently a bad thing. And when I see complaints like this, it makes it easy to understand why. :\

@worlddude: I think your counter-example is going from one extreme to the other. No one said they were expecting "Leave it to Beaver - Now In Space!" or the like.

Frankly, I thought the same thing Hewitt and 108 did. There's a fine line between inclusiveness and trying-too-hard cliché. That crew roster at the start made me remember elementary school. "How could Odin go rogue," I pondered, "when he has a rainbow of friends?"

Teasing aside, I think Vinny's term of "rummaging simulator" is very apt. I spent the Quicklook waiting for xenomorphs, splicers, cyborgs, and / or necromorphs to burst out of walls... but that isn't this game. It gives me the feeling of watching one of the extended, non-combat, ambience and exposition bits from the beginning of Dead Space or Half Life, only the bit never ends and that's the whole game. Hours of build-up to... your partner falling asleep on the couch.

Frankly, that does nothing for me, and that's okay. Some people really enjoyed collecting audio logs and wandering around Bioshock's setting, digging through desks and dumpsters for information about the world and lore. For those people that wanted more of that without any of the combat and puzzles to get in the way, they have this genre and they're more than welcome to it.

Kind of odd to see these game distillations, though. Doom for combat, The Witness for puzzles, this for walking and rummaging around exposition-village. *shrug*

Edit Addition: You know, I wouldn't mind seeing a full play-through of this during that yearly non-profit gaming marathon event that Giantbomb does. I found Gone Home relentlessly dull on my own, but managed to actually see all of it via Dave Lang's hilarious segment. Granted, he kind of took the piss out of it and kept joking about monsters being just around the corner, but I had such a good time watching him rummage that I immediately went online after his stream and bought... Killer Instinct and a bunch of its DLC. My wallet got monked. :-P

In terms of packing, wouldn't triangular tape be more efficient? Circles can't be packed very densely, which could matter if space is at a premium. The space station seems pretty roomy, but maybe the transport vessels are less so (what with having to escape gravity).

@lazyimperial: I guess I just don't see how an entirely diverse cast of characters is a bad thing. Seems like the problem is less with the game and its focus on representation and on the audience who sees that as an issue. I wasn't trying to jump to an extreme with my original response, but I guarantee it would not be a complaint if half or 2/3rds of the cast was white. Why is that? Why is it that people who perceive things that dare try to do something outside of the status quo in games is now just "pandering" instead of creating the characters that the team wanted to create?

Having finished the game, I don't feel like its being rubbed in the player's face or overemphasized beyond that's just who these characters are. They just come across as people stuck in a shitty situation to me. Sure, throughout the course of the game you learn more about their personal lives, but that is what makes them so endearing, at least to me.

Anyway, I don't mean to stir any shit up, I just can't help but get a little upset when I see the response to a team's intent to represent different people and perspectives in their game as nothing more than a way to win brownie points or something.

This game is wonderful! Finished it in one sitting last night and loved every minute of it. Brilliant atmospherical story-telling.

Looks fun. It definitely is a style of game that you can tell within the first 5 minutes you'd be into or not. Nothing wrong if it doesn't appeal.

I know for me sometimes I just want to explore and relax in space while watching a mystery unfold.

@worlddude: ... and I can guarantee that it would be a complaint if 2/3rds of the cast was white. The moons are in alignment, and it's both an era of internet and an era of outrage at everything. :-P

Also, I have no intention of pretending to know the intent of the Tacoma team. Were they pandering? Were they daredevils railing against "the status quo" and fighting "the man" with Roberta the mechanical engineer? Eh, who knows?

If it worked for you, great. If it made me and some others chuckle and think of trying-too-hard children's books and informational videos, great too. We all got something out of it. The art spoke to us, hehe.

Oh, and pshaw. I know you aren't trying to stir anything up, duder. You're speaking your mind on an internet thread with civility and proper grammar. I applaud it. :-)