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No new postsFinding treasure in bad games
There must’ve been some track, some creative mechanic, environmental detail and so on that stood out in that bad game you had the misfortune of paying for.
Devil May Cry 2’s gameplay is infamously bad, but underneath this it’s oozing with rich environmental details calling back to the Divine Comedy, which the franchise took some inspiration from, like Trajan’s Column here, putting it above the other ones in this regard.
The first thing that comes to mind is Mata Hari. The game looked great and started ok, but was badly let down by the story and puzzles. I seem to remember getting on a train and travelling to a different country just to use a telephone at one point. It seemed such a shame that a game with a lot of promise ended up being a seriously bad game.
However, there was indeed treasure to be found in the game in the unlikely form of the inventory system.
As well as having the usual sort of inventory items there were also ‘topics’ and ‘ideas’. The basic idea behind this is that you might come across an idea which, after further investigation you can turn into an inventory item or a topic for discussion. It was definitely weird at first but really interesting.
One of the things I like about it is it goes some way to addressing that problem some games get into with ‘you can’t pick this up yet’. Your heart sinks knowing you’ll have some backtracking to do some time later when you’ve forgotten all about it. In Mata Hari, rather than just a flat no when you know or strongly suspect you’re going to need something later, you can collect the idea and then ‘convert’ it into the inventory item once you learn what you might need the item for.
It’s also similar to the system of long and short term memory used in Resonance and I’ve always wondered if that’s where Resonance got the idea from.
So anyway, there’s a little bit of treasure in a bad game!
3.5 time winner of the “Really Annoying Caption Contest Saboteur” Award!
That sounds so interesting! Other adventure games should try exploring that same mechanic. I remember keeping my eye on its release date because the theme and setting alone had massive potential, but never got to play it. Nor have I played Resonance. Which one you’d say pulls it off better?
That reminds me of the mess that was 2008’s Alone in the Dark. Beneath all its terrible mechanics lies such a cool and flexible inventory system that kept things tense and interactive. And credible too because it depicts in-engine where everything was placed inside Carnby’s jacket:
Another shining treasure in it was its soundtrack, which mostly employed the female choir The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices.
The first thing that comes to mind is Mata Hari.
However, there was indeed treasure to be found in the game in the unlikely form of the inventory system.
As well as having the usual sort of inventory items there were also ‘topics’ and ‘ideas’. The basic idea behind this is that you might come across an idea which, after further investigation you can turn into an inventory item or a topic for discussion. It was definitely weird at first but really interesting.
It’s also similar to the system of long and short term memory used in Resonance and I’ve always wondered if that’s where Resonance got the idea from.
Wouldn’t Diamonds in the Rough need to be credited, because it came out few months before Mata Hari?
From Wikipedia:
“A notable feature explored in Diamonds in the Rough is the ‘thoughts’ panel, a secondary inventory presented as a notice board and representing Jason’s internal thoughts. These thoughts, represented by post-it notes pinned on the board can be treated like inventory items, as players can use them on other objects, people and even other thoughts on the board in order to unlock new insights, dialogue options or even solve puzzles and problems.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamonds_in_the_Rough_(video_game)
Ah very possibly, I haven’t played that game, although it does sound similar from the description.
3.5 time winner of the “Really Annoying Caption Contest Saboteur” Award!
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