Re: Humble Choice for August 2024

On 06/08/2024 20:51, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

 Last month I said that the first-Tuesday-of-the-month was rapidly
becoming my favorite day of the month, and the HumbleChoice's July
selection made me all the more certain of that statement. But will
August live up to that assumption? Let's see what they have for us
this time!
           * SIFU
     https://store.steampowered.com/app/2138710/Sifu/
           The one with the Kung-Fu fighting. Unleash your inner
           Bruce Lee in this stylish brawler. It's an extremely
           well-made, if somewhat limited in scope, and the only
           downside is that I'm not that much of a fan of
           brawling games. But I'm willing to give this one a
           chance; it just looks too cool to miss out on.
>

Fighting games are a genre I just don't get on with since Way of the Exploding Fist on the Specky 48k. I have tried some in the arcades but I didn't get into the whole learning combo's thing. They also seem more suited to a two player experience.

  * High On Life
   https://store.steampowered.com/app/1583230/High_On_Life/
  The one with the talking gun. Coarse and sophomoric,
  its style belies its solid gameplay, but damn you'd
  better be able to stomach the stupid jokes and visuals.
  It's not half as funny as it thinks it is (well, unless
  you play it while high, in which case you'll probably
  have a blast). But the shootie-shoot-shoot bits are
  well done.
 

Actual humour in games is pretty rare in my opinion. What is far more common is attempted humour that only appeals to the type of person that thinks knob gags are the way to go. Some games that I found at least amusing though are Tales From The Borderlands and Portal I/II. Not laugh out loud funny but more raise a smile funny and possibly a titter.
Overall there's just something about computer games that doesn't lend them to the type of emotional responses that other media does, at least for me. The nearest I've had is the ending of Telltales The Walking Dead, I wasn't expecting a good ending but still.
As an aside I did see an interesting video of why games generally don't do an 'evil' approach well. The short version is that most people are naturally good and therefore see the consequences of their actions even if these don't lead in in-game consequences.
The example that they used of where it can was GTA where they really aren't any consequences at all. So you dragged a driver out of their car and stole it, they'll get over it before just disappearing from the game world to be replaced by another one.
I kinda agree but one of the issues I have is that a lot of the time the evil approach has the consequence that you miss out of things so it's either do the good thing and get this quest/trinket or do the evil thing and don't. One that handled it better than most was Disco Elysium where the different paths (ever fancied playing as fascist or how about a communist?) you could take still lead to interesting outcomes.

 I'll admit it; these choices are challenging my 'favorite-day-
of-the-month' theory. It hasn't overturned it entirely, though;
although not generally my style, "Sifu" is too good to not grab, and
"High on Life" and "Blacktail" are worth grabbing even if they aren't
/great/ games. As I've said, one of the things I /like/ about
HumbleChoice is how it exposes me to games I normally wouldn't
purchase because I'd rather put my money to games more suited to my
tastes. These curated selections make me expand my horizons, and
that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's definitely worth the pittance
I spend each month.
 

It the same type of reason I like Amazon Prime. The games I'm mainly interested in are ones that I just haven't heard of but look like my type of game and ones they I wasn't sure if they'd be my type of game. The ones that generally hold no interest are the bigger hitters where it's a case of if I wanted to play it I would own it already.