Why Loom is one of my favourite games

Sadly no transcript as I decided to improvise the script for this video. In the future I might try and write out a transcription. Let me know if that's something that would interest you.

Dave Critiques - Jazzpunk: Comedy and game design

Transcript

[Hi there! Just a friendly reminder that this is a critique. I will be discussing the game for those who have completed it. If you haven’t, perhaps you should stop this video now, unless of course you’re still interested in what I have to say, and don’t mind the risk of spoilers.]

When I think of my time with Jazzpunk, the word that comes to mind is ‘irreverent’. Jazzpunk is a comedy videogame. Comedy in videogames has always been tricky, and after the fall of the adventure genre in the late 90s, it’s not something that has been attempted often or with much success. To be honest, even in its heyday, the games that were truly funny and could sustain that through their runtime were rare indeed. What this comes down to is the timing problem. Comedy is timing. Even the funniest string of words can fall flat if delivered in the wrong cadence or at the wrong time. Of course the strength of videogames is in giving players the agency to do what they want when they want (within the confines of the game’s rules of course). It’s easy to see why comedy and videogames have often been at odds.

Jazzpunk addresses this issue through unexpected game mechanics. As much of the game as possible is designed to be an opportunity for a joke. It’s not just the dialogue and the objectives of your mission. Interacting with the environment, the bizarre side quests, and even how the game will change reality on you are all examples of loading Jazzpunk up with laughter. It presents so many opportunities for laughter that it's bursting at the seams trying to get the player to burst at the seams with laughter. It’s a digital manifestation of the old rule, “If you only tell one good joke every ten tries, you must be prepared to tell nine bad ones”. With so much going on, and most of it being so odd and out of left field, you might find yourself barking out a laugh in sheer surprise at the absurdity of it all.

Jazzpunk might be about perception. On one level it’s trying to change the perception of how to approach comedy in videogames, but also your character takes hallucinogens in order to travel to a mission. Often the mission will end by snapping back into “reality” from a tranquil interlude once your objectives have been accomplished. The whole thing is a spoof on the 60s spy genre, but it might also be a spoof about playing videogames. So many of your actions seem to be for the sheer ridiculousness of their outcome, and this includes cutaways to playing snippets of other videogames such as Frogger, Space Invaders, and even Quake. It seems to be making a statement that most games are pretty ridiculous in and of themselves, so as a defense mechanism, we mostly sit back and enjoy the ride, trying not to think about it.

It also helps that Jazzpunk is a short game, clocking in at about two hours if you take your time. There are a lot of achievements for interacting with the environment in ridiculous ways, and there is definitely some longevity for those who want to see just how many secrets are embedded within each stage. Jazzpunk does not overstay its welcome, and I have mixed feelings about why. Even by the end of the game, there are jokes that are reused (in some cases these are slight variations on a previous joke). Now this could be deliberate as there is indeed the potential for comedy through repetition (Sideshow Bob and the rakes for example). On the other hand, perhaps they were actually repeating themselves and it’s a good thing that the game ended when it did. I will also admit that it took me forever to find all six items to feed the ego of the editor, making me question if the game was perhaps glitched. Well played Jazzpunk, messing with my perception again.

Dave Critiques - Her Story: Playing detective

Transcript

[Hi there! Just a friendly reminder that this is a critique. I will be discussing the game for those who have completed it. If you haven’t, perhaps you should stop this video now, unless of course you’re still interested in what I have to say, and don’t mind the risk of spoilers.]

This is the first critique I have written based on a game played for one of my impressions videos. If you recall that video, I was unsure of whether Her Story had an ending, and it was that problem that served as an impediment to my playing it further (even though I loved the investigative nature of what was on offer). The solution to my problem was an easy one, Google. Yes, I used a larger search engine to work out information that would help me decide whether I would return to the game’s search engine. During my search I found that there is indeed an ending to the game. A chat program opens up once you have watched enough videos to have pieced together the mystery. Armed with this knowledge, I continued playing.

And I’m glad I did. For most of my initial playthrough, the short nature of the clips resulted in not really paying attention to what Hannah was saying. She had a friend named Eve she grew up with and they were close, she married Simon, and Simon is missing and/or dead. It was only when the main revelation in the game finally clicked (that Eve and Hannah are identical twins, and both are actually being interrogated throughout these clips) that I became heavily invested.

This is when I truly started playing detective. I opened up the notes program on my iPhone and lined out the timeline of the interviews. I searched out identifiers as to which interviews were with Hannah, and which were with Eve. Armed with this knowledge, I re-watched almost every single clip, filling in the timeline of these women leading up to what actually took place. One keyword I searched opened up a clip from a never before seen interview (I had been cataloging them mainly by what the women were wearing), and this blew my mind. Up to the end of my play, I only ever saw one other clip from that interview, so even though I feel I understand the story, there are huge gaps in my archival search. It was enough to open the chat program however.

When chit chat opens, it’s a marker for your progress. At this point you think you should have enough to work out what happened. As I did not (this was a while before I discovered the aforementioned revelation), my efforts to uncover the truth doubled, and I started tackling the search for keywords from different angles (including crime terms such as “alibi” and “motive”). During this search I linked things together, and then found a couple of clips that spell it out completely. I was ready to tell the chat program I had finished.

Once you’re satisfied and tell the person on the other end of the chat that this is the case, one final revelation is mentioned. Namely who you are, and why you were looking into this case in the first place. It’s a nice little coda to the story, and since all the information came from your own searches and your own piecing together of the facts, it feels oddly personal. The coda just acts to add to that feeling. Nothing overstays its welcome, and for a couple hours of work (which of course feels like play), I left Her Story immensely satisfied.