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Irongiant909 03-20-2012 10:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marvio (Post 603696)
This is the "game" equivalent of a pretentious art film. Suggestive, yes, but no real weight to back it up.
As others have suggested, it's not a game at all, which in itself is not a problem for me, I have, in the past, enjoyed games which were very light in actual game play, but this is not only NOT a game, but boring too! If all you going to have me do is walk around, please make sure there's something there to engage me, yeah it has pretty good ambiance, but after half an hour it wears really thin when that's all you have.

When I read comments like this I feel so sorry for the poster, ie that he/she couldn't enjoy Dear Esther in the same way as myself and many others have.

It's too easy to dismiss Dear Esther due to it not fitting into one of life's little pigeon-holes, and it's also short-sighted and unfair to dismiss it because of this.

Equally it's very easy to dismiss those who disliked it - for example, I've seen comments elsewhere that basically say that you need to be 'emotionally mature' to properly enjoy Dear Esther, but I feel that's a bit unfair. We're all different. Certainly physical age has nothing to do with - I've seen comments from teenagers on the Dear Esther 'Steam' forum saying that they loved it, and equally from older folks saying that they didn't. Horses for courses and all that.

Either way, it's a game that you need to try for yourself - there really is no other way to see if you'll like it.

It's not as if it's expensive either.

Also worth mentioning is that it won the award for 'Excellence in Visual Art' at the recent Independent Games Festival (and was also nominated in other categories):

http://dear-esther.com/?p=678

Well done to them - they so richly deserved it.

kuze 03-20-2012 11:25 AM

I agree with everything Irongiant said and endorse it.

Irongiant909 04-03-2012 06:50 AM

I see that Dear Esther is now avaiable as a DRM-free (ie non-Steam) download on the dev's site:

http://dear-esther.com/?p=1033

Harleyhog 04-05-2012 02:12 AM

@Irongiant909

Well said!

Someone once remarked to me that in their opinion Orwell's Animal farm was little more than a child's book with talking animals.:frown:

jhetfield21 05-01-2012 05:13 PM

ok just finished it.....i got this game without doing that much research on it beforehand,didn't know the about the mod and judjed it mainly from the graphics.at first i was impressed by the atmosphere and sure it was careless of me to expect more from it without reading about it first but at first the low levels of interactivity do discourage people to move on.at which point i stopped and read some of the comments in this thread.i also checked it out a bit in the web and found about thechineseroom and how they mostly do research on games(and that DE was from a mod too).

having in mind the research pov and some of Monolith's remarks about the point these guys where trying to make with this game and my being impressed with the atmosphere at first and a kind of nostalgic feeling** i said what the heck let's try it till the end.it's definitely interesting at least from a research pov.

as i explored the story was mostly unconnected parts that couldn't make sense.though the graphics and atmosphere was outstanding to make me continue.at one point i started thinking that these guys intentionally or not made a game with many positive and brilliant aspects.as i kept going i thought of more pros and intended to mention them but i won't as i would probably leave out half of what i thought while playing.

i will say this though.the feeling i got at the ending and the opinion for this game was the total opposite from what i had at the beginning.i really hope game designers are going to pay attention to this one and take notes as it shows many ways to achieve immersion that deviate from the norm.Not to mention the art which was beautiful.Briscoe made a marvel out of the island.the natural feeling of the land,the awe inspiring caves,the abandoned houses and all those cans and history books around.......brilliant.

i realise that it far exceeds any kind of measure for an experimental piece but that goes to show how much other game designers(not set on research) would benefit by using some of the points they prove.


**:do you remember the feeling you got as a child where you explored parts of the countryside while finding trash and things that made you wonder...what were the circumstances or the story behind them,how they got there and all those questions you seemed to have even though in the end it wasn't that you needed to know.it just filled the void that your boredom created which in the end made for an interesting experience.
moreover some of the times i got this feeling of mindlesness where you just observed everything around strolling without thinking too much about it and sometimes trying to decipher the story that connected everything around you.it sounds more boring than it was.it was kind of an escape really.
this pretty much explains my feelings for dear esther.

Dara100 05-02-2012 08:22 AM

I posted my comments on the previous page, but I wanted to make a further observation. Playing the game again just to see if I missed anything, on a comp with a new Radeon card, I was surprised to see how alive the caves had become. They looked nice on my other comp, but just popped on this one. Really nice job.

I seemed to like the game a little better as well.


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