Quick Look: West of Loathing

A quicklook out 3 hours before schedule, I guess all the late starts to live shows all add up and eventually one video on the site has to compensate for it.

I appreciate the simplicity of stick men, but they blend into the scenery too much and you may as well just be controlling a floating head.

okay I guess so

Took around 15 hours for my first playthrough and enjoyed it a lot. There's decent incentive to go back through it, but I'd gotten what I needed at that point.

Heh, the stagecoach that drives past at 17:03 says "C.T. Nelson Coach Co."

This game seems alright.

Based on some of the reviews I've read, there seems to be lot of side quests and exploration to do if you're interested in that kind of stuff. I could potentially spend at least 30 hours in a single playthrough of this.

I definitely took my time and felt like I did as much of the side stuff as I could, but I'm bound to have missed a good amount.

Was that Jeff walking away at the end there in disgust that he himself made a pun?

Damn, this looks really cool, makes me wish I knew about Kingdom of Loathing back in the day.

This looks like the right kind of dumb.

KoL was my life blood in middle/high school. I still remember the day I saved up enough meat and bought a Tiny Plastic Sword...

The memories man.

This game is an 11/10 on the charming and humor scale. I 100% recommend it if you want some laughs.

@pete0r: Quick Looks have come out around this time for a while by now during weekends, with Kingdom Heartache appearing three hours later.

As a longtime fan of Kingdom of Loathing, it's cool to hear that Jeff was a fan too.

WoL is great. It's basically like a light version of Fallout 2 combined with Paper Mario. It's a certain kind of RPG/adventure game hybrid that I'm always looking for but is hard to find. And the writing is really good too.

FUCK ARIAL. TIMES NEW ROMAN 4 LYFE.

It's still around!

I used to really enjoy KoL back in the day. Pleased to hear it's still a thing.

If this looks good to you, the game is very much worth your $15.

I had heard it was short before I bought and played it, but it's longer than I set it up to be. It's quite dense with things to do. Maybe even to its detriment: I found myself wishing I had stats and items that I didn't, in order to do side stuff I was unable to do. There are also quests that require your attention in a way that other games don't, often in a meta way, like pointing out that you probably weren't paying attention, but no you actually needed to remember this very specific combination of things to complete this quest. Not every joke works, but I found the humor funny more often than not, and even having such goofy settings and writing makes for a unique experience even if you're not laughing the whole time. Combat gets tiring, but there are often ways to avoid it or make it inconsequential. Ben is either super underleveled or the Hardhat is making it very hard, because I actually felt overpowered for most battles.

Why would you ever turn off the Stupid Walking option?

Dave G was looking to the sky to safe him.

Just here to chime in that I also loved Kingdom of Loathing. Played a lot of that and (ugh...) AdventureQuest.

This game is so full of character. super great.

I think this might fall in with Jazzpunk as a really funny game. Got to see it at PAX and was hooked.

This really feels like Kingdom of Loathing in CRPG form. The guys still haven't lost their writing touch and the mechanics have largely translated well. I just wish it didn't end so suddenly.

Kingdom of loathing is actually how I found Giantbomb. Giantbomb would come up on their podcast and I eventually started listening, then started watching quick looks, and now I've been premium and watch literally everything that GB puts out. It's nice to see the KoL guys get some love lately.

For those unaware - Video Games Hot Dog is a podcast that features the three guys that did a lot of the work on this game (And KoL) plus the creator of Frog Fractions.

Was this a particularly slower portion of the game and there are funnier parts later on? Or is this just how the whole game is? I didn't get many laughs from this quick look so maybe it is a game you have to play to get the jokes out of.

If you didn't think it was particularly funny during this QL, chances are this particular brand of humour is not for you.

It took me a good 12h for my first playthrough and I'm already planning on starting it again. Best $15 I've spent in a while.

C.T. Nelson Coach Co. has me in tears.

Very good summary of the game. I never tried out Kingdom of Loathing, but the humor hit me like the original Secret of Monkey Island, where the game narrates you through the strangeness in a way that it makes sense. I would've liked more variety and strategy in the combat (the sequence of DnD-style fights at one of the forts shows that the designers clearly had a wicked tactical bent) but the sheer amount and quality of content surprised me.

If anyone has played this game and wants more, seriously go and play some Kingdom of Loathing. It's crazy free and really well written all the way through. If you want to give them money they provide new items every month that add stuff to the game, even entirely new areas to explore. It's probably the only game that I come back to every so often and get waaaaaay into for a while.

On topic, West of Loathing is great. The writing is spot on (if the humor appeals to you, which it does for me) and the RPG mechanics are solid, if not very deep. I bought it right when it came out and should really play it again.

Bump

Their podcast is great and hilarious, I've yet to find funnier/cleverer people on any podcast.

This looks like it'd be fun to (cow)poke around in. To my ever growing steam wishlist!

Did I see a color blind mode? In a game that is black and white?

@sorensyntax said:

I'm pretty sure the joke is it doesn't do anything.

I remeber on the Idle Thumbs podcast, Chris Remo was talking about how he works in the same office as the guy who does the graphics for the Loathing games.

Apparently it is litteraly just him drawing on a piece of regular printing paper, and then scanning them in.

Okay this game looks great. Stupid walking is the new Nemesis system; should be in every game but won't.