Well I got hit super hard with the burnout stick these past few months. I reached my point of impact and had a big crash but now I'm back to have my revenge against the burnout paradise I was in.
takedown legends dominator.
That said, I don't have enough energy in my tank to do a full lights and confetti awards blog like![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
xyzzysqrl and kjorteo are doing, so I'll just post something I stated a few days ago in a Telegram chat with them.
So during my meltdown over the past couple of months, I got deep into F2P games mostly, but a few gifts from friends and auspicious bundles led me to also getting Battle Chef Brigade (which I haven't tried), Tales of Berseria (which I may not be able to run) and The Return of the Obra Dinn.
The Return of the Obra Dinn I beat in one night.
Twice.
And I've played two more times to full completion despite the game being entirely static and offering nothing new on replays, just to feel it again.
I've said time and again that the entire reason I bounced off of Papers, Please was because it triggered my anxiety from working high-demand retail/food service jobs and I noped out like, immediately. If Lucas Pope did another game where you could take things at your own pace and just drink in the setting, I would ADORE it.
Well, he did. And I do.
I can't say too much without spoiling either minorly or majorly, and this is a game like Undertale where you want to go into it as unaware as possible. Ultimately, it's a puzzle game. You're an insurance adjuster in the early 1800s, and the titular Obra Dinn has just drifted back into port, derelict and abandoned. You've got a logbook of the sixty people who were on a (now) ghost ship, and a watch that lets you travel back to hear and see a corpse's exact moment of death... as a sound clip and still image. Your job? To find out what happened to each and every person on board and chronicle it. With what amounts to the paranormal equivalent of a binder full of photographs and a cassette tape.
Well, "photographs" is misleading, as the moments of death are more of a moment frozen in time - a fully realized and articulated scene you can walk around in and examine for hints as to who these people are and what happened to them. Usually cause of death is obvious since you can just see it happening or hear someone talk about it, but the how and who is much, much harder to puzzle out.
You will have to take stock of the entire world around you. Keep a notebook handy because the tools the game itself gives you are mildly inadequate and the Macventure-esque dithering effect does make certain details harder to commit to memory or, at times, even to notice. Know about your maritime uniforms and positions at the turn of the 1800s, it will come in handy and actually help you figure out a few people before the game even tells you its own clues for who they are.
But more importantly, drink in these moments in time. Everything about this game is an artistic masterwork, from the deliberately monochrome dithered graphics (with your choice of Old 80s Monitor Settings to color them with!) to the use of chiaroscuro shading for effect, to the music which is appropriately naval and farty enough to bring to mind drunken sea shanties and to piss off Yahtzee, judging by his review (which is always a plus point.) The voice acting, while at times a bit hammy, is perfectly servicable, and the sound effect work is on point. Everything about this game is absolute art, and even if your first playthrough will only take you on average around eight or nine hours (and a 'speedrun' where you know all the answers will take about three given mandatory waiting periods when you enter a new death moment) it's worth every damn minute and every damn penny.
Buy this game, if you can. I haven't recommended a game as hard on this blog as I do now. It's not for everyone (in particular there is a heavy content warning for gore and it can be a bit eyestraining at times as you try to make out details) but it was absolutely exactly what I wanted and needed at this point in time.
takedown legends dominator.
That said, I don't have enough energy in my tank to do a full lights and confetti awards blog like
xyzzysqrl and kjorteo are doing, so I'll just post something I stated a few days ago in a Telegram chat with them.So during my meltdown over the past couple of months, I got deep into F2P games mostly, but a few gifts from friends and auspicious bundles led me to also getting Battle Chef Brigade (which I haven't tried), Tales of Berseria (which I may not be able to run) and The Return of the Obra Dinn.
The Return of the Obra Dinn I beat in one night.
Twice.
And I've played two more times to full completion despite the game being entirely static and offering nothing new on replays, just to feel it again.
I've said time and again that the entire reason I bounced off of Papers, Please was because it triggered my anxiety from working high-demand retail/food service jobs and I noped out like, immediately. If Lucas Pope did another game where you could take things at your own pace and just drink in the setting, I would ADORE it.
Well, he did. And I do.
I can't say too much without spoiling either minorly or majorly, and this is a game like Undertale where you want to go into it as unaware as possible. Ultimately, it's a puzzle game. You're an insurance adjuster in the early 1800s, and the titular Obra Dinn has just drifted back into port, derelict and abandoned. You've got a logbook of the sixty people who were on a (now) ghost ship, and a watch that lets you travel back to hear and see a corpse's exact moment of death... as a sound clip and still image. Your job? To find out what happened to each and every person on board and chronicle it. With what amounts to the paranormal equivalent of a binder full of photographs and a cassette tape.
Well, "photographs" is misleading, as the moments of death are more of a moment frozen in time - a fully realized and articulated scene you can walk around in and examine for hints as to who these people are and what happened to them. Usually cause of death is obvious since you can just see it happening or hear someone talk about it, but the how and who is much, much harder to puzzle out.
You will have to take stock of the entire world around you. Keep a notebook handy because the tools the game itself gives you are mildly inadequate and the Macventure-esque dithering effect does make certain details harder to commit to memory or, at times, even to notice. Know about your maritime uniforms and positions at the turn of the 1800s, it will come in handy and actually help you figure out a few people before the game even tells you its own clues for who they are.
But more importantly, drink in these moments in time. Everything about this game is an artistic masterwork, from the deliberately monochrome dithered graphics (with your choice of Old 80s Monitor Settings to color them with!) to the use of chiaroscuro shading for effect, to the music which is appropriately naval and farty enough to bring to mind drunken sea shanties and to piss off Yahtzee, judging by his review (which is always a plus point.) The voice acting, while at times a bit hammy, is perfectly servicable, and the sound effect work is on point. Everything about this game is absolute art, and even if your first playthrough will only take you on average around eight or nine hours (and a 'speedrun' where you know all the answers will take about three given mandatory waiting periods when you enter a new death moment) it's worth every damn minute and every damn penny.
Buy this game, if you can. I haven't recommended a game as hard on this blog as I do now. It's not for everyone (in particular there is a heavy content warning for gore and it can be a bit eyestraining at times as you try to make out details) but it was absolutely exactly what I wanted and needed at this point in time.
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