I played We Happy Few for a couple of hours last night, and I'm fairly impressed. The demo was so disappointing that I wasn't sure if they'd be able to pull off reworking the whole game in time for release, but it's looking like they've done a good job of it. It's not amazing so far, but it's solid, and I still love the concept of the story.

I'm still far too early in the game to give real impressions, but kneejerk reaction after really pessimistic expectations: We Happy Few? Whee! Happy. Phew!

What's the duder consensus thus far?

I have it but haven't had a chance to play it yet. Will probably dig into it next week

Definitely interested in hearing more on this one.

the reviews haven't been kind so far, this game has such a great styyyyyyyle, it would be a real shame if they didn't keep it going through the whole game and really only used it during that intro.

I bought Vampyr based on its setting and atmosphere alone, in spite of reviews saying it tended towards mediocrity, and I came out of it being pretty impressed. I plan to give this the same chance for the same reasons! It is expensive, though. I'll wait for a price drop in the next month or so.

Same here, regarding Vampyr. It got lost in the shuffle, so I haven't played much, admittedly, but I *really* like what I have played. After Wii Happy U, I'll get back to that.

I want to play this game but most likely wait for a sale.

I'm about 20 hours in on PS4, been mostly exploring and doing side stuff. It definitely is no Bioshock in terms of production quality but I have been enjoying it and find the world quite curious/entertaining.

It definitely still has its share of bugs, Ive had a couple occurrences of getting stuck in geometry, but luckily have been able to worm my way out of it. Most baffling is that all completed quest/dig site markers will not disappear from the map until you have quit the game (and while there is a Save menu, there is no Load menu, so you have to quit out to the main menu to load an auto/manual save).

I would prob recommend waiting a few weeks for them to hopefully patch up some things and for the inevitable price drop.

It's cool so far, been playing on PC since I bought it in early access ages ago for cheap, didn't really like it much then. Now the reviews definitely were right in saying the narrative/story was great, and thats the main thing keeping me playing. About 8 or so hours in, it kind of just keeps getting better in terms of story and the world getting more interesting. It has its fair share of weird bugs, but nothing crazy. The melee combat is, well, lets just say it leaves much to be desired.

The crafting elements are fine so far, in terms of them being fairly simplistic and never really feeling in the way of enjoying the game's exploration and narrative. If the story goes where I think it's going it could end up one of my favorites in recent years.

Gonna wait for a sale. I don't know why, but I was surprised to see it at full price.

@shagge: I feel narratively ambitious games like this and Vampyr by smaller studios put so much time into drenching their world with atmosphere and style that they can suffer in the gameplay department, which makes them easier to fall off of in a way because there's not a stable loop to reward the player, but that's part of their rough charm. On Eurogamer I referred to them as (paraphrasing) "imperfect brain-fruit that challenges your taste," which are often my favourite games.

Still, that 4/10 Gamespot review is brutal. I'm sure that must sting a lot to be brushed aside by one of the big game sites after all the work they put into creating this bonkers, Kubrickian dystopia. I hope it doesn't sour the more positive feedback elsewhere too much. I'm thinking of buying it in the next week to support them and give it a fair crack, as I just don't believe it can be that bad.

I'll post my impressions when I get my hands on it.

To be honest, it has been getting lukewarm to a bad reception that I was thinking 'well, at least I don't have to spend money right now then'. Maybe I'll play it at some point. If I wasn't skeptical about it before reviews I probably would have wanted to get it by now, but I kind of want to save up some money for other games this year.

The Polygon reviewer raved about this game but then he more or less got outed by the Comments section where they pointed out that he only talked about the one story mode protagonist and seemed unaware that there are 3 protagonists with different play styles that you play sequentially to complete the story mode. If you want to argue about whether playing only part of a game is enough to rave about the narrative, I would direct you to the Polygon Comments.

To paraphrase a film critic: "Atmosphere is when the game has no soul but we gotta fill it with something."

@brunothethird: Well said, and I totally agree. I grew up on 90s adventure games, which are that very thing to a T, and I think that's why I'm so forgiving of games like these. If the world is engaging enough, I can look past subpar gameplay, but I'm also more likely to leave them unfinished (while still praising them for what they are).

That said, after playing more of Us Joyful Minority, I'm starting to sour on it a little. Thank god I didn't pay full price, or I'd be Me Unhappy One. I went through this exact thing with Agony (which I *did* unfortunately pay full price for).

The way Dan was playing in the QL it didn't look like a very good game. But watching people play on youtube in a purely stealth fashion it looks pretty good. I will play it when it comes on sale for <= $20.

Not really impressed by the gameplay footage. Gonna wait for a sub-15-quid sale price.

@vincentvendetta: hard disagree

@vincentvendetta: To pharaprase a game critic: "A movie without atmosphere has no soul."

@jeldh: @fram: So I decided to translate the full paragraph. Keep in mind the original text, "La loi de la jungle: Audiard & Co", was published in the September 2015 issue of the Cahiers du Cinéma, about what they called "The political emptiness of French Cinema" - also I'm not a translator:

Those "genre" films chaining together scenes already made can only come back to one thing: atmosphere. Atmosphere is basically when the movie has no soul but we gotta fill it with something. It is the poison that kills political possibilities. At the beginning of De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) we see three young greedy men going on night shifts like drunk dudes: the car is going through the night, the guys are talking, about real estate, about eviction, they're not very clear, we try to understand, but we understand quickly that it's no use, there's nothing to understand, that what's important is just that car going through the night with drunk people inside. In one scene Audiard (the director) heightens the critical possibility and evacuates it in favour of imagery. The jobs are only pretexts, yet "sellers of goods" is a hot subject that we must hold Audiard accountable to confront, whether it's concerning the eviction of squatters or the reselling of estate in Paris. But the filmmaker only wants to put us in immersion. Atmosphere, atmosphere... Return to the poetic realism of daddy's old cinema. Audiard and his scenarist Tonino Benacquista felt the spirit of the times and found the framework for their vague and, as such, inoffensive equation of "white-collar crime" - not to mention the direction can't hide his fascination for those bad boys: the nightlife, the violence, the masculine friendship. We swim in complete confusion.

tl;dr - a game or a film banks on atmosphere when it has nothing to say. Inside basks in atmosphere, but that's because it has nothing to say. But I can understand how people that think Blade Runner 2049 is a great film can think such a thing (it looks cool, atmosphere son!). Frankly, I gave up on We Happy Few when people started mentioning Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

@vincentvendetta: Well, y'know, it was no Zardoz or Repo Man, but I think you might be baiting people a little there.

Watched the Quick Look and if I wasn't actively interested before, I am even less interested now. The weird 60's Britain mixed with soldiers from WW2 isn't working for me at all.

It looks like a badly put together 2010 Bioshock clone.

Not my type of game at all

@vincentvendetta: You accidentally added a 2049 when you just meant to say Blade Runner

I might have been one of the only people who was into this game when it was still more about "survival" with random quest encounters occurring. I played several hours last night and was sort of bummed about the lack of all that stuff from before. The progression is much more fast paced now. I'm already out of the starting area after basically going through what was in the QL. The story has been kinda interesting, a bit of a spin on a 1984-esque vibe. I know it garners a lot of comparisons between Bioshock but I really don't see much similarity between the two, beyond the loose "fake utopia" theme. But then again that was not something Bioshock created, just a different take. The biggest knock against it are some of the things that Dan brought up during the QL. There are a lot of half baked ideas in here, or seemingly cut corners perhaps for the sake of getting something done. They don't really come together at all, but I wouldn't say I haven't been having fun kinda messing around with the sort of broken AI. They also REALLY spread out the starting area in a way that just makes it feel dead in a sort of disappointing way. However, I've quite enjoyed all the story elements they've put into the game so far. It's just sort of this bizarre wacky game that has some dark undertones that can really shine when they do.

All that said $60 for this game is insane. I think I bought it at the original $30 price tag, which I think is alright for this game.

Is he in the minority with how bad it is, or is this to be expected from this game? I mean, it kind of looks like the next Mass Effect Andromeda if you will, but worse. That said, I had very little issue with Andromeda compared to others. I have to say though, the game still seems like somewhat of a hard sell even if the game ran perfectly. I don't know.

@ntm: He is playing on the PS4 version, which I heard is poorly optimized compared to the PC version (don't know about the XBO).

Are we going to get another No Man's Sky case where we get the "definitive" edition in about a year from now? There is a season pass, so they will have to keep working on this for the near future.

Well, I think im officially done with the game. Beat Arthur's campaign after 25 hours (did almost all the side quests, sadly 2 quest lines got bugged). The second character's intro definitely gives you a new take on the world including one major thing that Arthur's story never touched on. However you have a lot more detriments than Arthur did so I kind of lost all motivation to keep playing. There's already complete playthrough videos of the other two characters so I might just watch those.

Overall 25 hours for a $60 game not a terrible proposition value wise. I just would not recommend it with the technical state it is in right now (on PS4) . I would hope that it will get patched up soon, but if they cant figure out how to remove completed quest objectives/markers from a map, I'm not too hopeful about the game breaking bugs.