Condensed Aggravated Schwa

So I finished one of my projects for work and I decided that I had a couple of hours to spare for a new game. There's a number of options on my list at the moment, so I decided to start at the top and give it a go.

Shadow the Hedgehog is one of the titles at the top of the list, but I definitely want to steam this for Mesk and HKS, one of which I knew was sleeping at the time, so I went to the next one.

Lost Kingdoms 2 was next on the list. Also a Gamecube title, I spent about 20-30 minutes futzing around with the capture cards before I got annoyed that I was wasting my time and decided to dedicate the effort to getting it working again to another day.

After that, I decided Finding Paradise was next on the list. I forgot that RPG maker games need some...special recording settings, so I decided I didn't feel like futzing with that/recording my desktop, especially since I couldn't monitor the recording through OBS on the second monitor due to the windows being juggled around on launch. So I'm saving this for a day I have the patience to do something with it.

So I was down to Age of Empires 2 vs Gothic. I have said for a long time I'd give the Gothic series a try, so I set up the first one. Boy I was not prepared for this.

Let me take you through my Gothic 1 experience. It's apparently a 2001 game. Basically, it looked like an early 90's 3D game to me. Half Life 1 looked better than this and that game came out 3 years earlier. It had so much promise too. The opening cinematic was genuinely the most hilarious thing I've watched in awhile, mostly because it was so chaotic and easy to riff on. After that, things rapidly went downhill.

I can handle terrible graphics and issues with textures and animations. I'll make fun of them, yes, but they aren't a deal breaker for me. This is what happened in the first let's say...10 minutes of gameplay.

1) The initial person you talk to had a hula torso in that the bottom half of his body didn't move as the rest of it gyrated around as he talked. The camera got jammed in his shoulder 4 times and his bow was sticking right through his shoulder. Not only that, but the loading screen, which is just a picture, had the dude's bow going through his shoulder. Like...come on.

2) The controls were ridiculous. The default controls had me moving with the arrow keys. None of my settings had been saved because I didn't realize I had to press "enter" to lock them in (obvious in retrospect tbh).

3) When I quit the game to check the sound balancing (you couldn't alt-tab), I realized it recorded the cinematic and the load screen, but then the rest of the video was stuck on the load screen while the audio continued in the background. At this point, I concluded that I needed to stop and start the recording after every load screen to get it to work, or switch to OBS.

4) I relaunched the game and tried to change the resolution as the default was fairly small. This caused the game to fail to display at all. I could hear the game, do stuff in the game, but all I could see was either my desktop or a blank screen. I couldn't alt-tab still, but thankfully I could click anywhere on the desktop to get out of it and force quit the game. I tried to change the resolution back in the config file, but whatever had happened had irreversibly screwed over the display. I have a feeling this is Windows 10's fault, but I decided to just reinstall the game as it takes about 10 seconds to do so.

5) I get back in the game again, switch all the keybindings to something logical and attempt to play.

6) I get stuck in the water at the beginning and drown 3 times before I figure out how to get out of the water (as I saved while I was in there). Turns out I had to use the arrow keys even though WASD was bound to the EXACT SAME CONTROLS.

7) I never ACTUALLY figured out how to jump, pick up items, open chests, equip weapons or talk to people. I just kind of mashed buttons until something I wanted to happen, happened despite me knowing the bound keys for the actions I wanted to take. I even reset to the default to see if something got messed up along the way. For instance, picking up an item required me not to have a "weapon" ready (i.e. my fists since I never actually figured out how to equip a pickaxe), had to have the item highlighted at the EXACT proper distance, had to hold down the action button and aggressively click until the item got shlupped into my back pocket.

8) Finally figured out some magic combination to open a chest and couldn't figure out how to take the items from the chest.

9) Quit the game in rage because I couldn't take it anymore.

At the end of this multi-hour adventure I was like "well, at least I have some hilarious footage of my model freaking out, getting stuck, having the camera jammed in the world space and a lot of Schwa rage. I checked the recordings and saw, despite my efforts to start/stop the recordings, all I had was an image of a load screen with the game's audio in the background.

I promptly uninstalled the game and went upstairs to eat.

I'll try Gothic 2 and see if it fares any better. All it needs to do is have controls that actually function and records with little issue. I'm setting the bar low here.

I want to say that this game must have performed better on older versions of windows, but, I have a feeling all the controls and such were exactly the same. How...how did anyone get through this? Changing the keybindings should have solved the issues, but it didn't. This game has super high ratings on...virtually everything. Is it nostalgia? Is there something I don't know? Are people trolling me?

Likely all of the above. Either way, I'm too frustrated to try again, so...I'll be moving on to greener pastures. Keep in mind: I MADE IT THROUGH SONIC 2006. The difference was, even though Sonic 2006 was a pile of shit and controlled like a yacht sliding down a greasy mountain slope, I could adapt to it. This? I could barely interact with it.

Speaking of games that didn't make the cut...

I tried Cry of Fear last week and posted the two video's worth of footage I got out of it. For a game made by a handful of people, it wasn't THAT bad, but it definitely wasn't for me. In retrospect, the controls were at least FUNCTIONAL. It wasn't particularly scary. It had a few cheap jumpscares ands some flailing balloon head mimes wearing sweaters, but that's about it. I didn't appreciate having to do a tango with every enemy I encountered just to survive. I shouldn't have played on the "difficult" setting as I should have known it would only increase HP of enemies and damage done to you, but I'm stupid and now I've abandoned that endeavour.

In other news, Shauna and I started Lucius. It is hilarious. She'll be editing that one I believe. She's a little concerned about how quickly I think up ways to kill the house staff. Even if it isn't the right answer.

Lastly, continuing Diablo 3 and Divinity 2: OS with Mesk and HKS, although, that may be up in the air for awhile as they have some stuff going on on their end.