The Free Gaming Thread v3: Check Out Cosmyk's Mustache

[retrolinkx]

Spent the last 14 hours starting and finishing Lisa: The Painful. It should've really been 10 hours, but you'll see why.

Sadly, I feel as if the game was lost on me. I've discovered that if a majority of people tell me a game is sad, or depressing (and thus is very good because of it) I will always find a way to not fit into that mentality. In a way, if a very story heavy game is thrown onto me to play because of the story I will just say it's not as good as people said it was.

In this case, I feel as if the ending was lost on me (although I read more into it, the prequel and the sequel and understand it A LOT more). It's a fine game, nothing special. It just has a great story and gives you a feeling of despair, hopelessness and sadness.

Still, my enjoyment of the game fucking dipped by the 2nd act, holy fucking shit. I'm still pissed off about it.

Spoiler

So, the first act went by very quickly, it was really fun. Had quirky moments that made me laugh, combat was still fresh. It was great. Then the second act comes into play, and wow. How it turned.

As you get to the second act, you find several places have been blocked off by rocks and you have to go get some dynamite. This is around a 10 minute segment that's funny the first time you play it, then you get some dynamite and head off back to town to blow up the several segments.

I should also add that act 2 is really non linear, there are 4 different areas that you need to traverse including the area you're in that you have to go through many many times. So if you get lost, it's most likely because you haven't checked some insignificant thing in an area and you go back to check.

Anyhow, I spend THREE hours looking around to see where to go next, I do everything from recruiting all available people in the act, to even getting some random non story achievements. I did EVERYTHING in search of the next part of the story, but I couldn't find it.

So, it turned out that I needed to get two maps. One map you could only get if you for some reason decided to kill yourself and jump off a specific spot in a swamp that was NOT alluded to in the whole game besides two weeds being placed next to the jump (which to me looked like a place enemies would spawn) To also add more insult to injury, you can get a bike early in the game that lets you jump over small gaps. SO IF YOU HAVE THE BIKE EQUIPPED, YOU WILL GO OVER THE GAP NO MATTER WHAT. 

Still, this map was TOTALLY optional. It's the OTHER map that isn't, and you know what's the worst part about this map? It's that if you do one innocuous thing it basically leads to the destruction of a town, and thus you can't get the other map.

No seriously, two dudes ask if they could have dynamite for 100 magazines. I think it's a decent deal, and give it to them. Uh-oh, they were the bad guys, well that's a shame I guess. I didn't look into it and thus a whole town died because of me. I'll have to accept the fact, and move on with the game.

BUT IT FUCKING LOCKS YOU OUT OF THE GAME. YOU CAN NO LONGER PROGRESS BECAUSE YOU NEED A MAP THAT'S LOCATED IN THAT TOWN AND ONLY THAT TOWN. IF YOU FUCKING DESTROY IT BEFORE YOU GO THERE, YOU LOSE IT AND HAVE TO RELOAD A SAVE, WHICH FOR ME WAS 3 FUCKING HOURS AGO. (It turned out it was optional lol, the walkthrough just had this before the main part of the story)

But, you know what's even WORSE? I HAD TO DEAL WITH ANOTHER TIME WASTER.

So around 3 hours in, you get to a point where a guy beats you over the head and forces you to do russian roulette for a laugh. You have to beat three people in a row, and then you're free. Although you play with your companions. So when I did this, I fucking lucked out and all THREE of my duels ended in my side not dying. I thought it was to show me this event, and no one was actually going to die.

It was actually pretty funny, since I lucked out and the opponent died on their first shot twice in a row. Since the game was quirky like that, I assumed it was just the game, but no. Oh fuck no I was so wrong.

I had to reload 15 saves to get a perfect run, this wasted an ADDITIONAL hour of my time.

And then I had to do the second area again. This time I just couldn't be asked and had to consult a walkthrough to remind myself what the fuck I had to do. I was 9 hours in at this point and wanted to complete it in a day.

The worst part was definitely my mood. It jumped from "Oh shit, I gotta save Buddy" to "I just want this game to fucking end already." That was a big factor in how I felt about the game, and probably rushed through it instead of truly enjoying it for what it was.

The funniest thing, is that I found out that BOTH map were optional, it's just that the walkthrough I looked up to confirm this, made it seem like you had to go to that island, when in fact you just needed to go to another area. When I first went to that area, two fucking dudes ended me in one move and I didn't get a game over. I just assumed that they were unbeatable, but in fact they were just very very strong, and wouldn't end your game.

I'll probably play the DLC when I get a chance, it seems interesting and I did enjoy Buddy as a character, same with Brad.

It's a great game, ignoring all the things in my head to say it's medicore since it's just been tainted with being very tired right now.