By John Walker on May 22nd, 2008 at 12:02 am.
EDIT: Now with added demo impressions!
My inane comments about the comic below the jump, let’s make this post more useful. You can get the demo of Penny Arcade Adventure: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One here.
It’s about half an hour’s tutorial, introducing the combination of point-n-click interaction and turn-based combat, as well as letting you play with the character creator. It’s fair to say the demo doesn’t give you the scope of the game – it teases you with that at the very end, in the way demos are supposed to – so the demo is mostly hitting dustbins, and robots that look like dustbins. But wow, the animation is gorgeous. They’ve done a really decent job of blurring 2D and 3D, and the art direction is pretty stunning. Plus, there’s a few nice gags in the pop-up descriptions.
The dialogue, however, didn’t do it for me. But I think that ties in with my not much getting on with the dialogue in the strip either. The banter between Tycho and Gabe seems in tune with the strip. Which leads me to last night’s comments…
I don’t much enjoy Penny Arcade. The guys behind it seem nice, and the essays on the site are worth reading. But the comic? It’s a sort of… I get nothing from it. (And I stopped thinking saying “fuck” replaced a punchline quite a while back). But I appear to be quite alone. (Edit: Okay, no I don’t, and people who hate it are idiots). Many of my colleagues in this dizzying and important world of writing about playing adore it. They forward the strips to one another with glee. Occasionally one reaches me and I think, “Well, they’re not all incredibly stupid, maybe this’ll be funny.” And then: meh. It’s not objectional. Just… it doesn’t appear to do it for me. So I guess I’m missing out. (xkcd ftw btw).
Demo’s here, and does a good job of making the full game seem intriguing.
22/05/2008 at 00:05 terry says:
at least 14 years too late
22/05/2008 at 00:09 Alex says:
Don’t worry, John, we’re not all rabid PA fanboys. I’m not a big fan myself – they sometimes make me laugh, they mostly don’t. In the end what really turns me off is there’s a kind of smugness over everything they do, but maybe that’s just me.
22/05/2008 at 00:10 Fumarole says:
You can’t please all the people all the time.
22/05/2008 at 00:14 Bob Arctor says:
Not funny.
22/05/2008 at 00:18 Andrew says:
Oh John, you were doing so well until you held up xkcd as an example of a better comic. :(
22/05/2008 at 00:18 Down Rodeo says:
Some of the Penny Arcade stuff is good (some not so much) but I really do like xkcd.
Oh wait, the demo? I don’t know; Ubuntu laptops are not awesome gaming machines. Does anyone know how it plays?
22/05/2008 at 00:22 Nick says:
I find most webcomics are fairly awful.
Earlier Order of the Stick was good for the nerdy injokes.. thats about the only story based one I’ve read for more than 7 or so strips before stopping in disgust.
Still, at least it’s not ctrl-alt-del.
22/05/2008 at 00:23 CLLMM says:
I used to love PA, but yeah after awhile it gets old. And then they buy macs and complain that PC gaming is for rich idiots that cannot fathom the awesomeness of ICO, or Final Fantasy, or Wii gaming, etc. And then, there are Angry People On The Internet that disagree with them, thus proving how right their points are. I respect them for what they have built, but I just don’t see things from their POV anymore.
22/05/2008 at 00:23 Rook says:
Is it cool to hate PA yet? It must be about time.
Either way their podcasts are pretty good when they do get around to recording one.
22/05/2008 at 00:25 Myrn says:
I read the essays, but the comics all seem like the middle child of a serial daily comic. As if every single one they release is saying “ok, we had to have this comic to progress the story, and we threw something kinda funny in because it is a comic after all.” But the problem is, they don’t have a story! I don’t know what they are humor for, but it certainly isn’t continuity.
22/05/2008 at 00:28 smorgasbord says:
Penny Arcade is ok i guess. Funnier than Ctrl Alt Del anyway. My favourite webcomic though? Definitely this one
Order Of The Stick
For DnD fans it’s a must read.
It even has an overarching storyline which is something most webcomics hopelessly lack
22/05/2008 at 00:28 James T says:
I’m with you, John; PA’s been bollocks ever since I can remember, and not “the dog’s”, unfortunately. Only webcomics I bother with these days are ‘This Modern World’ and ‘Tom the Dancing Bug’ (MUST BE A COMMUNIST — CALL THE POLICE). Oh, and old Strafe Lefts, natch.
22/05/2008 at 00:29 Dan Bruno says:
I find the comic moderately enjoyable, but I’ll cheerfully admit that I really stick around for the essays (and, when they get around to releasing them, the podcasts).
I do think they’re funny guys, though, and I’m excited to try out the game.
22/05/2008 at 00:36 Masked Dave says:
The comics have always been sidenotes to the articles really, I started to find them much funnier when I put them in the context of the accompanying post.
Also this demo made me laugh out loud at least three times, and smile to myself throughout. And it’s about half an hour long at best!
I can only hope Telltale play it. Lots.
22/05/2008 at 00:38 Ted says:
You’re definitely not alone. In fact, pretty much everyone hates PA at this point.
22/05/2008 at 00:39 Scott says:
I quite like most PA, I certainly agree that some are very meh-ish, but you get that with all webcomics. My favorites besides PA are XKCD, Dino Comics, and White Ninja.
22/05/2008 at 00:43 Kadayi says:
I had the mixed pleasure of meeting them online to give them a guided tour of an MMO I was working on, and all I can remember is one of them (I can’t remember which) just dribbling on like a sugar addled 7 year old about how fan-fucking-tastic SWG was going to be all the way through (and that wasn’t even in beta at the time). Immensely annoying, and disrespectful at the same time.
Comic is occasionally funny, but I’d say they have an exaggerated sense as to how funny they are, and often the jokes are unintelligible (though better than Ctrl-Alt-Twat by a long way).
I’m quite surprised they’ve decided to give the finger to Steam (given their comics on it), and instead try and launch their own Digital distribution platform. Sure they don’t have to pay Valve a cent as a result (which seems to be the issue according to what I read on Neogaf), but they’d hit corners of the internet Steam reaches where penny arcade doesn’t even mean anything. Faintly bizarre really.
22/05/2008 at 00:44 Albides says:
Always hated Penny Arcade. It’s like the only punchline is that there’s a comic… about gamer knowledge. This is somehow meant to be inherently hilarious.
22/05/2008 at 01:02 The Shed says:
The latest shoot of webcomic sweetness is Castle Vidcons. Definately a classic.
At times PA is genius that makes me laugh over and over, but it’s more often than not a bit dull. Ctrl Alt Del has become a complete one-joke show, although it was nice in the start. VGCats is still pretty awesome (God, how I love this strip). And xkcd is pretty awesome, along with Order Of The Stick. This is all imho, btw.
Still, this demo is definately worth downloading. I grabbed it on XBL, and it was great fun. Much more original than I expected.
22/05/2008 at 01:06 Lars Balker Rasmussen says:
Kadayi, I suppose one of the points of not using Steam is that they support Linux and Mac as well. Which is nice – my Windows box is way noisy, so if I can play the occasional title on my 24″ iMac, I’m happy.
Not really sure if I want to buy the game though – the demo left me somewhat lukewarm.
Edit: The pinnacle of gaming comics is http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=254
22/05/2008 at 01:09 Mike P says:
It’s OK to hate the comic. I like the comic. But I’m not going to hate you for not liking it.
What do you think of the game?
Seems to be OK – I think I got my $20 worth – although they make a couple of newbie mistakes (slow combat, slow item collecting).
22/05/2008 at 01:09 Naurgul says:
I love Order of the Stick. I love xkcd even more. Penny Arcade is a bit hit and miss with me. I stopped following Ctrl+Alt+Del a few weeks ago in disgust.
The PA game? The download just finished. Perhaps I’ll post a comment again after I give it a go.
22/05/2008 at 01:10 Noc says:
I used to hate PA, (mostly ’cause it seemed the cool, indie thing to do) . . . but then I started reading it again and realized that I kind of like it. I think Masked Dave has the right of it; the comics seem to go hand-in-hand with the articles, and they’re both better for it. Especially since as often as not they’re making jokes about something I haven’t heard of. I don’t hang on to their every word and use them as a source for all of my opinions . . . but then again, I don’t agree with everything YOU jerks say either.
Consequentially: I can understand anyone reading it and feeling a bit, for lack of a better word, “meh.” Even not really liking it. But hate is a little silly. Especially since the prevailing argument seems to be “I HATE them because they’re, uh, mediocre.” Does that read as silly to any of you?
But shame on all of you for bringing up OoTS but failing to mention Erfworld. Seriously.
22/05/2008 at 01:18 Morningoil says:
Wow, a lot of PA hate on here :o
I’d hardly hold it up as being the single funniest thing ever to tumble out of the spin cycle of human creation, but it often makes me chuckle, and sometimes chuckle quite a lot.
The webcomic that I really loved (and discovered via the the tender ministrations of RPS) is A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible. (If anyone now wants to say, omg, ALIL sucks, there’s webcomic X which is similar but much better, I’m all ears).
22/05/2008 at 01:21 sana says:
I’ve only read a few of the comics and didn’t find the art style and humour appealing at all.
But The Perry Bible Fellowship.. that’s the creme de la creme of webcomics, imho!
22/05/2008 at 01:25 Ging says:
I just finished off the first episode – there’s a good few hours of play in there, I’ll probably go back to finish up finding the findable stuff at some point too. Well worth the money really.
22/05/2008 at 01:31 popcorn says:
You _like_ XKCD_? And I thought it was bad that you published Strafe Left, but at least most of that stuff’s old enough that a stale joke is okay. This don’t leave you much room to talk, Mr. Walker.
Anyways, the demo’s fine, and I’ll probably buy it. And I’ll continue to, begrudgingly, respect your opinions, Mr. Walker.
;)
22/05/2008 at 01:42 gdr_karami says:
(oh look someone wrote something about the demo how ’bout that)
22/05/2008 at 01:42 raigan says:
Have you seen this one? http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/06/08/
The satirical ones are always better..
22/05/2008 at 01:45 Kitt Basch says:
I just find Penny Arcade’s three panel gaming commentary useful, it saves me having to trawl through several paragraphs of subjective opinion, like Penny Arcade’s blog.
Bashing Penny Arcade isn’t new, I think someone summed it up in a three panel comic somewhere once.
22/05/2008 at 01:47 Naurgul says:
I played it a bit. I doubt I’ll try it again. The combat system seems awful to me. :( There’s something about making a skill out of how fast you can click on the action icons in a semi-turn-based game that I really dislike.
The narration and story are fine, It seems like they could be done better, or at least a bit more succinct and a little less random.
Then again, please note: These are impressions coming from a half-hour session of the demo. So, I guess, I’m not even in the position to fully convince myself not to go back, let alone anyone else.
22/05/2008 at 01:55 Rewired says:
@Noc
Personally I hate PA because they harassed the writer of A Modest Destiny (a comic that was actually funny) until he got fed up and stopped making comics.
also because they’re smug and unfunny, that too.
22/05/2008 at 01:58 Jim says:
Penny Arcade has come full circle on the hipness meter: they’re long past the point where it’s cool to like them, but also also past the point where it’s cool to hate them. Now they’re just there, like it or not. Final Fantasy 7, for reference, has overflowed the hipness meter at least twice, and now who’s cool and who’s not is all up in the air.
As for the game, well. The demo consists of you running down a street, paced out by inane JRPG combat. The gameplay is complex but meaningless; I never used an item except the orange as instructed by the tutorial, and I never dropped below 90% health. According to reviews, even the boss battles are trivial.
And the street you’re running down, it’s, well, the most boring kind of content imaginable. Except that every few feet you run into another trash can or fire hydrant with a unique and often amusing description. The game is basically a delivery system for Tycho’s prose.
I like Tycho’s prose a lot. I’d probably pay $10 for the game. Unfortunately, it’s $20.
22/05/2008 at 01:59 Pace says:
Not a gaming comic, but I think sufficiently geeky to mention in this context; Monty is one of my favorites.
22/05/2008 at 01:59 whitebrice says:
I’m glad someone mentioned Perry Bible Fellowship; it’s the only webcomic that consistently makes me laugh.
I really have to agree with you about Penny Arcade, Walker. The essays are insightful, but the comic itself can barely make me grin.
22/05/2008 at 02:12 Dave says:
The comic doesnt really make me laugh but the demo made me chuckle a lot…even laugh out loud a few times!
I really enjoyed the look of the thing, as if you are playing a comic!
Even if you dont like PA give the demo a spin! Its free and imho pretty damn good entertainment!
22/05/2008 at 02:13 Doug F says:
Rewired:
I had to google A Modest Destiny to make sure you were talking about who I was thinking of. By “harrased”, do you mean when Gabe replied to threats & accusations of copyright infringment regarding a sprite-based avatar of a forum user whose feet happened to resemble the sprite based feet of Squidi’s comic characters?
Or do you mean later that day, when he tried to give the guy advice for dealing with something that is pretty much guaranteed to happen when you post art that people like online?
Or maybe a year and a bit later, when he congratulated the guy on the birth of his child?
I think there was something in between where he mentioned a panel that Squidi and some other artists were taking part in that he wished he could go to. But that doesn’t seem vary harrasment-y to me.
22/05/2008 at 02:15 SuperNashwan says:
I can’t remember PA ever raising so much as a smirk from me, although it was quite fun when they butted heads with Jack Thompson. It’s certainly no Brian’s Guide.
22/05/2008 at 02:18 The_B says:
I find PA a bit meh really. Can’t say I hate them, but I don’t like them enough for a game on them to register anything other than “oh, they’re releasing a game of it” on my radar.
It’s quite a nice radar too, actually. Comes with it’s own power supply and everything…
22/05/2008 at 02:25 El Stevo says:
Web comics are very divisive things. (The Perry Bible Fellowship not included, of course. It’s impossible not to like that.)
I think Penny Arcade is OK sometimes.
22/05/2008 at 02:26 Xagarath says:
The best webcomics often aren’t purely humourous, to my mind. Scary Go Round, Gunnerkrigg Court and Girl Genius are among the top strata.
22/05/2008 at 02:34 Ben Hazell says:
Mm, I agree with Xagarath because I still love the teenage emo charms of A Softer World. They don’t have to always be funny.
Unless they’re trying to be.
PA does someting important for me – it makes me feel less geeky when I don’t get it half the time. And the posts don’t always do much to help.
Can we vote? Do we do votes here? I’m all with xkcd.
And thank you everyone for the comic tips. I’m going to go look all the new ones up now :)
22/05/2008 at 02:38 malkav11 says:
I really like the newsposts. The comics are more hit or miss, but I never actively dislike them, and there’s enough that still give me the giggles (the 5/2/08 GTA IV one, for example) that I keep reading. And listening to the podcasts (which are great, and have a lot more laugh-factor than most of the resulting comics, for whatever reason.)
And buying the books, which have more Tycho commentary. And now the game, which has old-school adventure game descriptions everywhere, something which I cannot be too happy about.
And yeah, XKCD is awesome, but I don’t always get that, either. Like today’s.
22/05/2008 at 02:39 Mitch Small says:
I honestly like PA, mostly because of Tycho’s writing, but I don’t think it’s top rung. Can’t say I ever did.
Perry Bible, A Lesson Is Learned, Dinosaur Comics, XKCD, Rice Boy and Dr. McNinja are all excellent beyond compare, but gaming comics are doomed to be one-trick-ponies (CAD, VGCats)…
That said, PA does keep itself relatively fresh. And I love the Deep Crow. Blah.
22/05/2008 at 02:49 Robin says:
I don’t think many people outside of Penny Arcade’s target 13-year-old American demographic think much of it.
The whole idea of a strip cartoon ‘about’ a hobby is doomed to lazy pandering from the outset. (Strafe Left excepted, of course.)
It was quite amusing to read the editor of PC Gamer US trying to reconcile his obvious low opinion of the comic with the presumably lucrative decision to run an issue with ten(!) ‘collectible’ Penny Arcade covers.
(I can see why they’ve not used Steam by the way, they have a prebuilt audience which many of the smaller games on the service conspicuously don’t.)
22/05/2008 at 02:55 Sucram says:
Penny Arcade == The Simpsons
xkcd == Futurama
22/05/2008 at 03:03 wcaypahwat says:
I always enjoy it, bizzarely enough because my housemate and I often find ourselves in strangly similar situations as the characters, but that’s a personal quirk.
Nothings quite grabbed me like Knights of the Dinner Table did, back in my D&D days.
22/05/2008 at 03:21 Zeno says:
Webcomics are okay, and video games are great, but for god’s sake, never mix the two.
22/05/2008 at 03:43 Rewired says:
@Doug F
That doesn’t even scratch the surface of what was going on and only sees it from one viewpoint. Unfortunately Squidi (the writer) deleted all of the old blog posts on the subject in a failed attempt to put the whole fiasco behind him so I don’t have any references on this. What happened basically, was several people took his pixel art, recolored it and called it their own. He tried (not unreasonably) to enforce his copyright, the PA kids took offense and spammed his forums, inbox, etc; for over a year.
Oh, and did I mention? Several people found his phone number and made death threats. Pleasant bunch aren’t they?
22/05/2008 at 03:48 Perry says:
PA has always been bland to me. Good fodder for the sheep that like to be told what is cool.
22/05/2008 at 03:55 gdr_karami says:
Jim: Yep, you can’t actually die in the demo, I tried. If you get hurt it heals you. It is just the tutorial after all.
I think the $20 would seem a lot more reasonable if the closest point of comparison to this game wasn’t free. Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden – review: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=93941 download: http://www.gamingw.net/forums/index.php?topic=68488.0
22/05/2008 at 04:19 etho says:
I like the comic, and the news posts and the podcast. I played the demo and liked it too. If I had money, I’d probably get the full version.
The comic’s not perfect, though. Some of the strips are a miss. But most of them are at least decent, and the best of them are hilarious.
XKCD, on the other hand, is nearly perfect. Every once in a while, there’s one that I am out-and-out too damn stupid for, but that’s rare.
As for other comics… Wondermark is generally pretty good. PBF is sometimes great and sometimes terrible. CAD is terrible. VGCats is ok, but overrated Dinosaur comics is… funny, but does it really count as a comic? I mean, you see the strip once, then you could pretty much get the same effect with the dialogue in straight text form, right? I guess the recurring panels are part of the joke, but it’s not a joke I find especially funny. For story/character based strips, Achewood is one of the better ones, but it takes some work to get into it. Lore Sjoberg has an almost comic called Bad Gods, but I don’t know what the status is with that one. Lately the site has just been used to post Alt-Text videos.
My favorite thing ever that can be described using the words “web” and “comic” is the Comics Curmudgeon.
@Perry My god, you’re right! I am a sheep Penny Arcade isn’t cool or funny, and I only pretend to enjoy it so I can be a cool sheep! Quick kind sir! Tell me, what can I do to actually be cool?
22/05/2008 at 04:22 devlocke says:
I like Penny Arcade alright, I think. I must, since it’s the only webcomic I remember exists often enough to actually check it on a regular basis. But my personal favorite (that I haven’t read in going on four or five years because I keep forgetting it exists) is Sluggy Freelance.
Is that really bad? Every time I see a blog post or article that mentions webcomics I wonder if it will get mentioned and it never does. I read the first couple of years in a multi-week period while I was in college and after it took off, it seemed to have that perfect mix of instant joke and tiny stories with inside jokes and epic stories.
I think I might make starting over from the beginning my next project. After I’m done rewatching all of my old MST3K episodes.
22/05/2008 at 04:33 Lucky Main Street says:
Cat and Girl! Cat and Girl!
22/05/2008 at 04:48 wb says:
It seems that the game — the ostensible reason for this thread in the first place — isn’t getting much discussion here.
FWIW, I think the demo doesn’t do a very good job of showcasing the game’s strengths. The combat hits a sweet spot later in the game, but does tend to depend too much on random drops which are easy (albeit tedious) to replenish. The block mechanism is nonintuitive, and the interface has issues (such as when you’re forced to furiously scrub over tiny item icons in combat while the timer keeps running). But the bizarre setting and writing — kind of a pulp Norman Mailer doing a Lovecraft pastiche — keeps the game moving along, and if the quests are fairly repetitive, the game does a good job of keeping them short, intuitive, and well-mapped. There’s a pleasing variety of enemies, locations and items that keeps the grind from feeling, well, grindy.
Personally, I found it an enjoyable diversion, better than (e.g.) the Sam and Max titles (although $20 is probably $5 too high). For a freshman effort, it’s remarkably polished, and for a game based (very loosely) on a gaming-centered webcomic, it’s both accessible and well-written.
(Oh, and there’s already a game based on xkcd. It’s called “obtain a Master’s in discrete mathematics.”)
22/05/2008 at 06:24 wikiwikiwildwildwest says:
http://www.hlcomic.com/index.php?date=2005-05-01 concerned, the half-life and death of gordon frohman
i hate web comics, but this made me read every erm, issue? episode? page? in one go.
22/05/2008 at 06:25 spd from Russia says:
ok so Iv played the demo – well made. I really like the original comics style of the game and the cutscenes, wich is a welcome change from the overdone cliche fantasy.
But the game mechanics are pretty weak. Zero charachter development – as all the stats and extra abilities are auto-granted to you without any options or choice. And ridiculous combat that represent a bad mix of turn-based and button mashing?
no, thank you
22/05/2008 at 06:40 some guy says:
>_>
22/05/2008 at 06:45 Bas says:
I recently discovered two comics that are actually pretty funny.
http://www.eegra.com/show/sub/do/browse/cat/comics/id/4
http://www.biggercheese.com/
22/05/2008 at 06:56 Zonderic says:
Gaming webcomics’ humor rests on insider knowledge. Penny Arcade does use “fuck” too much. The world would be better if people read more books.
22/05/2008 at 07:00 Lukasz says:
I don’t like PA either. from time to time I’ll check it out, maybe smile. but that’s it. I read quite few webcomics but I enjoy mostly Minus (great great stuff.) Post-Nuke, Breakfast of the Gods (It is a must read: http://www.webcomicsnation.com/poyorick/ so here is the link. Tony the Tiger Captain and few others try to fight off evil Count Chukula. Epic) and lolivsvenom. Rest I meh.
anyhow
on topic
The game has no appeal to me. I’ll probably try demo but full version? nope
22/05/2008 at 07:04 sathanas says:
I am always reminded of those huge VGCats hate threads at GAF for every single new comic. I keep thinking ‘if you guys hate the comic so much, why do you keep making threads about it?’ People just can’t leave things they dislike well enough alone. It’s what the literature refers to as a ‘stupid internet thing.’
22/05/2008 at 07:08 yutt says:
I love how you had to go out of your way to insult the Penny Arcade fan base while at the same time repeating a self-fulfilling prophecy that you would be ridiculed by the rabid childish fans.
Try reading the replies, you are far from alone in your ivory tower of elite humor. It is quite trendy to vocally announce how superior to Penny Arcade and its crass humor you are. Swear words!? Gracious!
Yes, all Penny Arcade fans are puerile idiots who lack your sophisticated sense of humor and wit. If only we fools could all be a bit more pretentious we could enjoy life a little less, like you.
I don’t hate you, you’re just sort of nothingness to me.
Anyhow, I have enjoyed the comic for years, and enjoyed the game greatly. It is sort of a Final Fantasy/Adventure game in a Penny Arcade/Lovecraftian/Steampunk universe. I recommend trying out the demo.
22/05/2008 at 07:22 sathanas says:
yutt
..I think I love you.
22/05/2008 at 07:24 Jason Russell says:
yeah so penny arcade sucks they seem to have flown away up there own arses at some point and dont show any signs of coming down.
I have tried the demo and it was a bit boring to be honest, i’m really losing my tollerance for JRPG’s and this a western RPG emulating a JRPG is just a dilution too far. considering all the pissing and moaning they do about other peoples games you think they’d make something fun.
QC FTW
22/05/2008 at 07:53 yutt says:
I’m just kind of appalled as I’ve never seen this sort of mean-spirited article on RPS before.
The game is an excellent, polished, fun, work of honest love by Jerry and Mike and the talented folks at Hothead Studios. Every single person involved was in it to make the most entertaining and enjoyable experience they could for the players.
This is an indie PC game, and life achievement from two of the most dedicated, well-known, and honest people in the PC critic industry; and they get this petty, insulting tirade as an introduction to their game.
This article truly is an embarrassment to RPS, and its usual enthusiastic, optimistic, and higher quality standards. I hope it is redacted.
22/05/2008 at 08:02 sathanas says:
I kind of feel the same way about a lot of the comments i read here that are usually bog-standard internet fanboy generalizations and irrational bias towards things that merit absolutely none. As one of the few PC-centric sites left (not focused solely on WoW), it is kind of disheartening to see the community behave this way.
22/05/2008 at 08:10 Albides says:
Whoa there, Yutt, what’s mean-spirited about the article, and where did the writer bash an indie game? Yes, John rather nervously voiced his dislike for the webcomic, while repeatedly stating he was in the minority, but only used it to segue into a very neutral description of the game.
Just because you don’t like the fact that most commenters don’t think the comic is terribly funny (it isn’t, this coming from someone who still chuckles at some of the older White Ninja strips), and maybe think the game shot by its own premise, doesn’t mean the entire article is “an embarrassment to RPS”. Geez.
22/05/2008 at 08:13 Turin Turambar says:
I like PA. The strips are usually funny, amusing, insightful or smart (or all of them). Most of the time, at least. And both the prose and the art are top notch for a web comic.
The game, well, i played the demo, and it wasn’t bad, but it was only the tutorial, which it is a very linear and easy experience. I doubt the full game is only like that.
/Summmons cat. Dooming or grooming!
22/05/2008 at 08:52 Morph says:
I would comment on the actual PA game, but some bug meant my cursor disappeared and I couldn’t carry on. Pity because it started out good. So I’ll have to talk about webcomics instead.
PA – it can be pretty funny when they aren’t talking about WoW or the WoW card game. Yawn. Still there are much better reads out there.
My recommendations are Scary go Round and Dinosaur Comics. Though xkcd, Sluggy Freelance, Perry Bible Fellowship and Questionable Content are all up there as well.
22/05/2008 at 09:14 Butler` says:
“But I appear to be quite alone.”
Seemingly not as alone as me, I don’t read web comics. :[
22/05/2008 at 09:29 Tim says:
Yay PA!
22/05/2008 at 09:32 James G says:
Not a great PA fan, although don’t hate it either. Sometimes they are funny, other times they are just meh. Xkcd however is very much ftw. The Perry Bible Fellowship is also good, in a slightly disturbing kind of way.
22/05/2008 at 09:34 Kieron Gillen says:
Jim: “Penny Arcade has come full circle on the hipness meter: they’re long past the point where it’s cool to like them, but also also past the point where it’s cool to hate them. Now they’re just there, like it or not”
Quoted as Jim’s stated my opinion on the matter. Doubly surprised that John thinks his peers all love Penny Arcade though – at least in RPS, I suspect we’re all in the “Occasionaly cute” category rather than actively following it. It’s just there, y’know.
Admitedly, Jim R and I do use the “I’m like a shark – I can’t stop making metaphors” line when randomly walking around the house, but that’s because we can’t stop making metaphors.
EDIT: Haven’t played the game yet though. Interested in everyone else’s take on the matter.
KG
22/05/2008 at 09:35 Finncognito says:
xkcd is pretty bad. It doesn’t really have jokes, most of the time it just references some obscure stuff only nerds like me would get. Or it does some really bad strip about love and deep thoughts (again, without jokes or any actual insight). Could be worse, at least it’s not CAD or Questionable Content.
22/05/2008 at 09:36 Alec Meer says:
One day we’ll just be there, like it or not.
22/05/2008 at 09:37 Kieron Gillen says:
To me, Alec, you’re already there, like it or not.
KG
22/05/2008 at 09:39 roryok says:
Yeah I agree with alex about the smugness, it shines through more in the written stuff than in the comic, and then much more from tycho than gabe. I listened to their podcast once and that sealed it for me. Gabe/Mike was laid back and didnt care too much Tycho/Jerry sounded like teenager with a bug up his ass, practically looking for stuff to knock in his very effluent way.
And I also completely agree that xkcd is a lot better. And if any of you don’t like it, you’re not geek enough.
No, don’t argue. just accept it. It could be taken as a compliment. so take it that way. take it and like it.
As for other comics, I occasionally read other stuff. I read the always controversial and sometimes hilarious explosm.net / cyanide & happiness although I went off it for a bit when they had their butt sex week (don’t ask), also I read the odd Dino Comics, Perry Bible Fellowship, White Ninja etc.
There used to be one comic out there (which I havent seen mentioned here) which was on a par with PA but not so smug. It was run by two Northern Irish guys I think – pressstarttoplay.net is the site. its still up but not updated anymore. It wasn’t consistently hilarious, but it did have its moments
PS: Getting loads of names of comics I’d never have seen from this post!
22/05/2008 at 09:42 Okami says:
I really loved XKCD, until he did that stupid strip about techno. Now I just merely like it, having noticed that even a witty and intelligent individual like Randall Munroe isn’t safe from beeing an ignorant twat on some subjects.
As for Penny Arcade: I still kinda like it, but after 6 years of reading every strip, it does get old a bit. I also don’t enjoy reading their blog as much as I did once. It’s ok as long as they write about games (though I don’t allways agree with them, but that’s ok too. Also Tycho’s writing does get old as well. It’s become very predictable and is very often style over substance.), but whenever they leave that territory I can’t help feeling that they guys are rather conservative and reactionary.
I rather prefer Machall and it’s successor http://threepanelsoul.com/ . I’ve really enjoyed following Ian’s carreer from student and web-comic artist to game artist and part time indie game developer (Penny Arcade have their own game? Well, Ian has been releasing Mods for Morrowind and doing little flash games for years. And he’s been doing it all himself, all while really developing his own unique art style, allways experimenting along the way) and I can fully relate to Matt’s bleeding heart liberalism and obsession with justice.
Having said all that, I’ve been wating for the PA game for quite some time now and I desperately want it to be good. Because for all my criticism of PA, I still rather like them.
EDIT: Threepanelsoul did strips about Dwarf Fortress. Now that’s what I call indie gaming comic street cred: http://threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2008-04-21
22/05/2008 at 09:58 John Walker says:
Hi yutt!
I didn’t do any of those things. I said that it doesn’t work for me, and that I’m missing out because of that.
22/05/2008 at 10:16 Xander77 says:
I used to rant in a positive or negative manner about various comics, but now I just link to this:
http://xander77.livejournal.com/10164.html#cutid1
You can safely assume that if a comic is reviewed there, it sucks. :)
22/05/2008 at 10:17 James Lyon says:
Put me in the ‘it doesn’t really do it for me’ camp as well.
Incidentally, I see they’re still putting out MegaTokyo.
22/05/2008 at 10:33 Crispy says:
xkcd is the Frasier of webcomics. You really need to be in the loop to get it half the time, but if you are, it’s very funny.
I don’t know what Penny Arcade is (the Family Guy?), but to follow my analogy through VGCats is probably the Friends of webcomics.
22/05/2008 at 10:36 toxygene says:
PA == meh
CTRL+ALT+DEL == cool
http://www.megatokyo.com/ == best
22/05/2008 at 11:07 Gulag says:
Hmm, seems to me that one of the big cons against this game (I had a go of the demo, will probably splash the cash, why isn’t it on Steam?!) is that it’s a Penny Arcade game. I don’t think it would have mattered what kind of game they made, (RPG, FPS, whatever), it was always going to be saturated in the things that make PA what it is, and thus be a complete turn-on or turn-off depending on pre-existing tastes. In other words, if Penny Arcade is your cup of tea, you will find plenty here to enjoy. If not, then it’s Mehsville.
As for the game (demo) itself, I thought it was a very polished affair, with some unusual design choices that walked a fine line between innovation and familiar ground. The battle system, the core game as it were, (Everything else being a point & click delivery path for the frequently hilarious prose.) took a little getting used to, but manages to turn the quite static, menu-centric JRPG model into something more akin to Whack-A-Mole, with various timers and meters refilling and quick-time events powering the special attacks.
This won’t be every bodies plate of chips, but it definitely shows that the devs, and I suspect the PA lads themselves, have given some thought to how this traditional model works and doesn’t work, and have taken steps to make it familiar to those who have played dozens of games like it, while making it appealing to people who wouldn’t sit through 5 minutes of Final Fantasy 8 if you stapled them to the chair.
(Well, this has run on a bit.)
The writing is pure PA. More impressively the visuals are pure PA, and the game shines because of it, and the demo has little flourishes that show a high level of attention to detail. In the avatar creation screen, the model starts to grab at it’s head as you flip through the various shapes on offer, a bewildered look on it’s face as you reshape it’s noggin with the casual fickleness of a god. That got a laugh from the house, even before I started playing.
Not much else to say about this until I’ve tried the whole thing, except to say that the demo does it’s job; Now I want to try it.
22/05/2008 at 11:29 Rook says:
You know somethings gone wrong when someone tries to use the term “whack-a-mole” to suggest an improvement.
22/05/2008 at 11:30 Vincent Leeuw says:
.::: As I mentioned elsewhere: the demo reminded me of Shadow Madness for the original PlayStation.
22/05/2008 at 11:35 kavika says:
So, I read PA pretty religiously, cause I’m a purile 27 year old male sheep and all. *mleh mleh* (the sound of a sheep giving you the typical anime rude gesture). Yes, I think the word “fuck” isn’t used enough, and can be funny. PA are also very smug, but I like smug. I’m smug, and seeing other smug people makes me feel better about my smugness.
Can’t say much about the game, yet, other than the fact that it looked pretty sweet at PAX, I’m super-excited about them supporting Linux/Mac, and I bought it 30 mins after it was released. Yes, rabid fanboy.
I keep seeing XKCD linked off Bluesnews, and most of the ones he picks are pretty “meh,” or a little chuckle. That, coupled with the non-existent art style, makes me not want to read the comic. However, going through just the last 10-15 comics in the archives made me laugh out loud about 4 times. I think you may have convinced me to give it a chance.
22/05/2008 at 11:40 Gulag says:
@Rook: Forgive me for enjoying fairground distractions over Excel sheet simulators. Each to their own.
22/05/2008 at 12:27 Rook says:
Yeah, because obviously the only choice to be had when making an RPG is excel or whack-a-mole.
22/05/2008 at 12:31 Gap Gen says:
Of course, Scarygoround is the best internet cartoon ever, and Riceboy is also very good.
I’m not sure I enjoy the whole JRPG thing of standing around and taking turns to bash each other, but Anacrhonox did it and was excellent despite it, so I might give this one a go.
22/05/2008 at 12:36 Doug F says:
Rewired – are you seriously holding the creators of the comic responsible for the actions of their fans? Perhaps if you could point to any example of them asking fans to raid Squidi, but otherwise it sounds like you’re blaming them for there being assholes on the internet.
22/05/2008 at 13:02 AbyssUK says:
Sorry I like it, makes be chuckle every so often. Am no die hard fan, but the CTS is the aces and the guy can draw.
Everybody knows the best comic on the internet is DrMcNinja anyway.. come on a doctor who is a ninja! brilliant
22/05/2008 at 13:04 Simonio says:
Have none of you the wit to fathom Virus Comix? http://www.viruscomix.com/
Not specifically gaming related, but about the sort of . . oh fuc
22/05/2008 at 13:35 Albides says:
Meh. The best webcomic is actually Warren Ellis’s Freakangels.
What? Oh, okay. If we’re talking amateur stuff, I don’t think Dresden Codak, Minus, Pictures for Sad Children or Overcompensating have been mentioned.
The best, A Lesson is Learned sadly is on hiatus. And the Perry Bible Fellowship hasn’t updated in a while.
But someone should totally do a game of 8 bit theatre because…oh, oh, wait…
22/05/2008 at 13:45 Shanucore says:
I’ve been reading PA for years. It doesn’t always hit, and a lot of the strips raise little more than a grin, but I think it makes me laugh out loud more consistently than any other webcomic I read – save, possibly, Starslip Crisis, and /definitely/ PBF (which updates so rarely anyway).
I’m loving the PA game thus far – very good fun, even the seen-it-all-before core combat gameplay – and the art, animation and dialogue are all great. (I’m a big fan of Tycho’s writing, myself. And I think it’s unfair to claim that PA punchlines are primarily the word “fuck”. Why, sometimes they say “balls” as well! No, really, I think the use of profanity is usually very well-judged, and fits the interplay between the strip’s main characters perfectly.)
22/05/2008 at 13:50 grumpy says:
What? PA is funny sometimes. Which is better than certain other webcomics. And even when they’re not funny, they’ve got a decent art style, and usually make interesting points about the industry.
And anyone criticizing XKCD just need to die horribly :p
22/05/2008 at 14:07 Sideath says:
Sometimes webcomics don’t have to be funny.
Christ.
22/05/2008 at 14:22 BigBadB says:
I like PA, mainly because Tycho and I seem to have very similar tastes in games, and I find his opinions to be a better guide to whether it’s worth checking something out than most reviews these days. =(
As a few people have mentioned, the strip itself is nearly always related to a post, or vice versa – only reading one or the other doesn’t tend to work very well.
22/05/2008 at 14:43 heartless_ says:
I don’t laugh at all their stuff, but I never have stopped laughing about the present they sent John Smedley at SOE :)
22/05/2008 at 14:44 Smartass McGee says:
XKCD: the webcomic for people who think they’re too smart to read webcomics.
22/05/2008 at 14:49 David McBride says:
John: Any chance of Brian’s Guide making a comeback?
(Eeep – its only returning a lonely 500 error now..)
22/05/2008 at 14:52 Paul says:
No Saturday Morning Breakfast Club or Diesel Sweeties? For shame.
I just got through checking a few comics each of all recommendations I didn’t know and really liked Tom the Dancing Bug, Wondermark and ALiL. Thanks.
Ps: About the techno xkcd comment, read the alt-text. The alt-text really adds to them all, but, granted, it was a fairly lame strip.
22/05/2008 at 14:53 Radiant says:
So… Piracy, Zombies and now Penny Arcade; just who is the other RPS horsemen?
Japanese Porn…sorry Dating games?
Panty Snatcher Zero Alpha was a disastrous entry in the series. The last few clothes pegs where impossible to grab off the washing line so there was no way to attach them to the nipple bot warrior princess… total game breaker.
22/05/2008 at 14:56 Adam Bloom says:
I love Penny Arcade. PA, Yahtzee, and a few good blogs constitute “gaming journalism” for me far more than any of the big gaming websites or magazines.
As someone who manages to get some surface information on almost everything PA makes a joke about, the comics almost always strike the funny. The blog posts are great fun and I love Tycho’s writing style.
I guess I don’t understand people who find “smugness” offensive. Are we so trained to suppress our egos that the slightest hint of one showing through should elicit cries of arrogance? If you disagree with someone or they insult you then by all means dislike them, but disliking someone because of how they write or talk? I don’t get it.
I also loved the game, of course. It has Tycho writing and Tycho dialog. The combat has just the right amount of action and challenge for a light RPG, and the art and style of the world are just great.
Er. I guess I can also mention that I read almost every webcomic that’s been mentioned in the few billion comics that precede me. Does that make me smug? I just don’t know…
22/05/2008 at 14:58 Gap Gen says:
Albides: Overcompensating and Dresden Codak are, if I remember correctly, both professional, in that their authors use the comic as their main income.
I think PBF has semi-retired.
22/05/2008 at 15:28 Yhancik says:
I guess that in order to make everyone happy, what we need is a kind of crossover multi-character platform beat’em-up series called Webcomics Ultimate All-Stars Melee.
22/05/2008 at 15:38 Ian Dorsch says:
I like PA just fine. It’s not the greatest thing since sliced bread or anything, but I usually find it amusing and I think Mike and Jerry are genuinely good guys. I’ll check out their game, why the heck not.
22/05/2008 at 16:05 Dinger says:
Walker’s now proven he can troll with the masters of the art.
Criticizing PA for rarely being funny is like criticizing RPS for rarely having any interesting demos. Yes, in theory that’s why folks read it; in practice the gag part of the comic is only part of PA. There’s also the graphic art. Then there’s the “article”, the massive expo, the charity drive, in short: the empire. Chief in that is the community that uses PA as their focal point for a fan-centered community of videogame enthusiasts. You know, people who like to play games? Sure, developers, publishers and journalists all seek participation in this world, but blogger or not, they’re a couple of gamers who sell a fiction of themselves living the videogame lifestyle. The comic provides access to their populist narrative.
So, no, I don’t follow them regularly, but really, if you’re not getting it, maybe there’s nothing to get?
okay, since the post was modified to talk about the demo, I’ll do the same: Unlike Sam-n-Max, the pacing on this seemed right. The cutscene work was very well done, and the parody aspects were done right: very present, but you don’t feel stupid if you don’t get it. The art is just good. As far as the “fuck” punchline goes: when people are running around, shouting one of a generic 6 lines when you click on it, having one be “HOLY FUCKING SHIT” tends to wear me out. I like swearing, but the art of the writing is in finding le gros mot juste.
22/05/2008 at 16:18 KingMob says:
I like PA, but that’s neither here nor there.
I’ve got the game and it’s kind of fun, haven’t finished it yet. Some of the game mechanics are fiddly and lacking in usability.
Maybe one of the kind gentlemen of RPS will actually buy the game and post a review, and we can talk about the game in that comment thread, rather than this pointless “talking about comics” thread.
22/05/2008 at 16:39 Gap Gen says:
I don’t think expressing an opinion in such a reserved way with so many qualifiers really counts as trolling.
22/05/2008 at 16:45 Michael says:
Most PA comics don’t do much for me. Some are funny though.
Personally, I like Ctrl Alt Del much more as far as gaming comics go. Order of the Stick is also often hilarious.
22/05/2008 at 16:59 Michael says:
For me it’s PA and Sinfest, Order of the stick is pretty cool as well.
22/05/2008 at 17:12 yutt says:
@Sideath
Yes, thank you. Some people have set in their minds that every comic is supposed to cause them have a painful belly laugh as tears of pure bliss stream down their face. A good portion of the Penny Arcade comics aren’t even trying to be humorous.
22/05/2008 at 17:24 Tim Maly says:
About the game.
I downloaded it last night and played through the tutorial and some of the early game. The whole thing is a strange beast. It’s an Adventure-RPG hybrid using Penny Arcade humour set in a kind of 1930s-steampunk-lovecraft universe. So there’s a lot of parts of the Venn diagram that need to intersect for you to love the game.
Is it any good? I’m enjoying it so far. The dialogue is amusing though I haven’t had any laugh out loud moments. The art is beautiful and the setting is cool enough that I want to explore it more.
So, a qualified Buy?
22/05/2008 at 17:25 Michael says:
“every comic is supposed to cause them have a painful belly laugh as tears of pure bliss stream down their face”
Wait… is this what comics are supposed to do? Funny, I’ve been getting than when I beat hookers to death in GTA. Something must be wrong with those comics.
22/05/2008 at 17:47 Alex says:
Just read that this game has BioShock-like DRM! Online activation (not that weird, seeing as it’s a downloadable game) + limited to 3 installs!
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1676
Especially silly, since as far as I can ascertain, the game has already been cracked.
22/05/2008 at 17:54 scopie says:
I agree with Adam Bloom. I think it’s fine to be a little arrogant and smug if you are excellent at what you do. And, regardless of whether or not you think the content of comic is funny, it would be hard to argue that Gabe is a not a fine artist and Tycho not a good writer.
I especially enjoy reading entries from different eras of the comic and seeing how the art has changed over the years. XKCD is and always will be stick figures, and that’s OK because it’s not the point, but PA has an extra dimension I appreciate there. In the same vein, Perry Bible Fellowship is the freaking Don Giovanni of webcomics.
It’s also worth noting that people who do great work (and know it) usually tend to be a little more self-important than the rest of us. I think they’ve earned it.
22/05/2008 at 18:03 ron says:
penny arcade fucking sucks and so does xkcd.
22/05/2008 at 18:50 randomnine says:
yutt: every videogame out there is someone’s Greatest Thing I’ve Ever Done. There’s new people on every team who are immensely proud to land their first shipped title and hold the box. It’s the job of critics to tell us what’s good and what’s new, not dance around people’s feelings. Even if they are internet celebrities!
PA regularly slate other people’s games on their front page. They know how this all works.
22/05/2008 at 22:24 GothikX says:
Dudes… I thought this was a gaming blog? Huh… anyway, even if I’m completely neutral on PA, hearing about the game did pique my interest. And when the demo ended, I bought the full game and can’t say I’m sorry about it.
As far as the graphics and art direction goes, well it’s good. I’ve always had a weakness for hand-drawn elements in games, cel shading isn’t bad when it works, comic-style panels in cutscenes were a touch of genius; dialogs were… well, PA style, but that didn’t bother me that much. It’s rated mature, so there’s quite a bit of gratuitous four-letter words or even gestures, but hey, I’m sick of bland games so that wasn’t bad either. I’d say fuck too if a possessed cardboard fair attraction said somethin’ about my mother.
Combat? Yeeaaah. Well, it’s not perfect, but I waded through the entire Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8, and there can’t possibly be anything worse. The apparent style of combat might be the same, but it’s a lot more strategic actually – even a little beyond ‘pay attention to each enemy’s resistances and weaknesses’. There are also some QTEs in there, but imho they add diversity and a sense of purpose without really distracting from the action. Combat isn’t great all in all, but it does have the potential to become quite good; remember this is just episode 1, and there’s room for a lot of tweaking.
22/05/2008 at 22:35 hidden_7 says:
I like Penny-Arcade, it’s funnier more often than not, though it’s not the greatest webcomic out there (that would be Achewood), but I played the demo and immediately bought the game, which I don’t really regret. $20 may be a little steep, since I beat it in an evening, but it was fun, I liked the combat, had some nice time management elements going on, and it caused me to laugh out loud more than a couple times, which is rare in a game. If you like the comic I’d consider giving it a buy. If you don’t, then, well, don’t. It really is a game for their fans. This isn’t really that stupid or insular considering how many fans they have.
Sidenotes about webcomics: I really don’t understand people that like CAD more than PA. I can understand people that like niether, or PA and not CAD, but like… CAD is just a poorly done derivitive of PA’s humour, and as much as Gabe and Tycho can kinda be assholes at times (though generally I’d think they are good guys), Buckley is like… a certified card carrying jerk. Look into some of the drama sorrounding his WoW-guild, or just the general way he responds to criticism.
Also, on XKCD, which I do like and read, but MAN is that hit and miss. It’s probably the most hit and miss comic out there. About a third are really genuinely funny, a third are awful musings on like, love and meanings of life and stuff, and a third are probably funny if you have a math degree or something. I don’t have a math degree, nor do I know anyone that does. It seems insane to criticise PA for pandering to a specific audience (gamers) and then praise XKCD, considering how to be in PA’s audience you have to be somewhat in gamer culture (RPS’s audience, for example, would fit into PA’s audience) and to be in XKCD’s audience you need to learn you up some pretty obscure and complicated stuff. Like, honestly, today’s is just a bunch of numbers! That turns into other numbers?! Still, that third that I do get and is funny is great.
22/05/2008 at 22:43 Cargo Cult says:
hidden_7: Are you trying to say that you don’t find jokes like this utterly hilarious?
(And it’s a computer science gag rather than a pure mathematics one, and I still get it despite having studied physics… :-P )
22/05/2008 at 22:49 brog says:
hidden_7: maths, obscure? no way. agree that the current one is noob though. but it can’t be criticised for being unfunny – it’s not attempting to be, it’s just “here’s a way to produce a random location near where you are”.
22/05/2008 at 23:47 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
Wait, wait… what is people’s problem with xkcd, anyway? It’s at least got a better chuckles-to-strips ratio than PA, which is more interesting for its essay posts.
23/05/2008 at 00:21 malkav11 says:
I’m pretty sure that, barring one or two more experimental side-projects like the Cardboard Tube Samurai, Penny Arcade really is meant to be funny every time. Listen to their podcasts – it’s them sitting down and bullshitting while trying to zero in on something that makes them laugh in a way they feel they can translate into comic form. More often than not I don’t think it’s as hilarious as they do, but that’s fine by me. I’ve always felt that creators should primarily create for themselves and they would then naturally acquire an audience that has similar tastes.
23/05/2008 at 01:45 Justin says:
I played the whole game; I liked it. It took me a bit to figure out the combat; I expected a sedate system where you take turns clicking things; the system as it works grew on me over the course of the game. What I found significant was that the whole game is a reflection of two people’s art style; I really like that coherency, and it’s hard to come by in most larger games just because of the way they are made.
That’s why I like adventure games; not because I’m enamored of clicking about the screen or inventory management; it’s because they are an excellent platform on which to draw/write a world based on someone’s vision rather than just providing as real a simulation as possible. Psychonauts comes to mind here as a good example.
Also! While we are talking about comics, I must mention Hark! A Vagrant and Nobody Scores!.
There’s lots more comics (many not completely on the web) that are good for someone who like the PA game pseudo-horror stylings – Girl Genius (already mentioned), Hellboy, Rick Geary’s Treasury of Victorian Murder series, Nocturnals, the Graphic Classics series, Boneyard, From Hell, The Coffin, The Nevermen, The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings/Monsters/etc series, and so on. It’s all worth looking for.
Why oh why doesn’t someone make a game out of Gary Gianni’s Corpus Monstrum? (good luck finding that one; it’s perfection in a book, but very rare.)
23/05/2008 at 02:09 Crispy says:
Cargo, I think it’s fair to say you probably need to have either studied maths as some element of a university/college level course or at least taken a full maths A-level equivalent in the last 4 years to get that comic. Suffice to say it is incredibly esoteric.
I haven’t touched maths since (UK) A level Maths / AS level Physics and I’m completely lost on that punchline.
23/05/2008 at 02:30 Zed says:
Am I the only one who instantly hated the control scheme?
23/05/2008 at 06:55 Cargo Cult says:
Crispy: at risk of killing the joke utterly stone-dead…
It’s about computational complexity. The travelling salesman problem, namely finding the shortest route between a number of destinations and back again, is a seemingly straightforward problem which becomes horribly difficult the more destinations there are to visit.
‘Big O notation’ is a shorthand used to describe how the size of input data affects an algorithm’s running time or memory requirements. Something really easy like, say, finding the furthest destination from your starting point would be O(n) – in other words, doubling the number of destinations would mean it would take twice as long to find the result. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…
A naïve approach to the travelling salesman problem? O(n!) – or put more simply, dear holy mother of arse things get complicated so very quickly. 1, 2, 6, 24, 120, 720…
The sensible approach? Advertising your wares on Ebay so that you don’t have to go anywhere!
Also, velociraptors.
23/05/2008 at 08:33 Morph says:
Have played the game for about 3 hours and am enjoying it.
It looks lovely, a great mix of 2-D and 3-D and the locations and characters are well done. The written descriptions of things are good, though clicking on everything just to read about it (and unlock bonus artwork) breaks the flow somewhat.
The game play is odd (having played only FF7 as comparable), but suits the game well – it gives time between combats to appreciate the visuals and excellent writing. The combat isn’t bad, the little QTEs add a bit of skill.
The game feels a bit linear, it’s basically a case of deciding what order to undertake the fights in. Plus, being used to western RPGs, I was disappointed not to have a say in how a character’s experience is spent.
Overall a fairly cheap purchase that I’ve enjoyed for a few hours so far. Not bad at all.
23/05/2008 at 09:18 Meat Circus says:
Played the demo last night.
Looks absolutely stunning. The demo is easy, but has a great deal of charm. Combat reminiscent of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, and that’s NO BAD THING AT ALL.
Sense of humour perhaps slightly puerile, but you know what, I found it to be actually funny, laughing aloud on several occasions. (Telltale take note).
The game has good pedigree, so based on this evidence, I’ll definitely be splashing out for the full game.
23/05/2008 at 13:29 kadayi says:
Demo. interesting, love the 2D 3D thing, but have yet to be able to make a female character that doesn’t look like she got hit by the ugly stick repeatedly (maybe I’m missing something here…). Pondering purchase, but will give demo a further run before deciding.
On a side note, 1920s Steampunk/Gothic and copious swearing seem at odds tbh. I was expecting more wit.
23/05/2008 at 13:47 Okami says:
Played the demo, bought the game, enjoyed it so far. I like the setting, I like the writing and the art style. The combat is ok, better than most JRPGs and the running around bits in between.. well… I’ve played through Final Fantasy X, which was basically “walk five metres, render cutscene, ingame cutscene, talk to five guys, walk five metres, render cutscene, etc..” so I’m kinda used to this. Doesn’t mean I like it, but I can look over it.
You can’t skip cutscenes, which is a crime punishable by death in some parts of the world.
23/05/2008 at 15:11 GothikX says:
@Okami: Actually, you can skip cutscenes the second time around, I think. Which is fine.
23/05/2008 at 15:39 Okami says:
@GothikX: I guess that would be ok then. Problem is, I played the demo on my office pc and then downloaded the game at home, so I had to sit through all the cutscenes for a second time.
I guess they’ll get away with a five years prison sentence in that case..
23/05/2008 at 15:59 Birdoman says:
http://badwebcomics.blogspot.com/ – All the webcomic criticism you’ll ever need.
The problem with XKCD is that it’s so damn smug with its “oh I do maths, I’m so above you” attitude. Just look at http://xkcd.com/164/ – for a guy who likes to write about philosophy at some level, that’s a strange abdication of morality: the history of science makes it obvious that winning the argument is half the battle, and to think otherwise is mindless positivism. I do read it, I (mostly) understand it, and it is sometime amusing, but damn if it’s not incredibly annoying. Lucid-tv and Nobodyscores! are much more rewarding.
For the game itself, didn’t mind the wandering around, and the rewards for inquisitiveness were enjoyable, but the combat was a bit flat. Great dialogue and art tho’.
23/05/2008 at 16:58 brog says:
Birdoman: huh? because everything a character says in a comic is what the author believes?
23/05/2008 at 17:00 Jaxtrasi says:
Birdoman:
While I’m not much of a fan of xkcd (we have a long-running tradition of pointing out that a given conversation we just had, with stick figures added, would have been considered a fine xkcd by the writer) but that specific comic isn’t so much intellectual elitism as a nervous admission of “bad thoughts”. He’s saying that on a perverse level, knowing you’re right in the long term could feel better than proving yourself right in the short term, even if it’s awful for everyone. I don’t believe this to be his actual philosophical position. If it was, he wouldn’t write the comic that he does.
As long as you don’t expect it to be clever, funny or particularly observant, it’s one of the better ones, specifically for its humility.
23/05/2008 at 17:00 dhex says:
the concept of a penny arcade game is still deeply confusing to me. it’s a sort of ha ha ur ur type funny so, which seems like an odd property to build a game around.
23/05/2008 at 17:03 tWB says:
Birdoman — For my part, I took the title of that xkcd literally: I think he’s actually making an argument based on “mindless positivism” (perhaps “remorseless positivism” might be a better term) as a rhetorical strategy. “Oh, so you’re sure there’s no such thing as runaway anthropogenic warming? Well, let’s just sit here quietly and see if Bangladesh floods out in another decade after the polar ice sheets melt. I’m quite curious to see the results of possible catastrophic oceanic flooding and massive saline intrusion into Gulf Coast farmlands. After all, it’s not every day you get to see billions of persons forcibly relocated by system global catastrophes. But, maybe you’re right and nothing will go wrong. We’ll see.
“Oh, so now you want to talk about carbon offsets? But you were so sure a minute ago….”
Whether such an argument would work is another question, but I don’t think the author actually believes the “devil’s advocate” position he’s taking.
24/05/2008 at 14:37 Winterborn says:
I like some webcomics, mainly Questionable Content, but yeah never got PA. Good articles though.
24/05/2008 at 15:49 Ozzie says:
I never hated them, but often the comics lacked a punchline, or it was all too similar.
Surprisingly though, I like them more now than some years ago.
Haven’t read them for some time in between, though.
25/05/2008 at 06:18 MrMelons says:
I don’t know who Ted talks to but last time i checked in the states PAX was one of the biggest gaming expo’s on, at least the West Coast. So as far as everyone hating them at this point i would step out of the closet Ted because you seem to be in the dark on that matter.
That said i would say they are probably one of the best gaming sites i have ever visited. Through their site alone ive been introduced to a lot of games i would have never even heard of because they were underdog titles. Which brings me to the point that the reason they don’t want to do steam is because they want complete control over their products much like parents want full custody of their children. Also they are planning on using GreenHouse as a gateway for Indie game creators to have their own Steam like system in which to get their names out there. This point should come as pretty cool for at least some of the writers on this site considering i see many posts related to indie games on here all the time.
26/05/2008 at 13:56 Joonas says:
I knew it wasn’t cool to like Penny Arcade, which I do, but I’m surprised at the amount of hate around here, haven’t seen such behavior before. I don’t know about you guys, but I just don’t read comics I don’t like. No point spoiling your days thinking about how much you’re not into them.
26/05/2008 at 14:12 Ben Abraham says:
It’s RPS. Apparently, it’s cool to hate!
12/06/2008 at 08:44 Optimaximal says:
Oh look, it’s now on Steam!
http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=app&AppId=18000&cc=GB