Be Excellent To Each Other

This has been getting a buzz recently.

Has anyone played it?

I'm playing it.

Let's talk about playing together. I say 'play' but it's more like a interactive detective story from what I've been able to discern about it.

As always I've read about it and it looks good and it's on my list but god alone knows when I'll get to it. I'm no use when it comes to taking about new games really am I?

Isn't it on android? Might be perfect mobile fare as the clips you view last mere seconds.

No, PC and iOS only at the moment.

Sucks to be you.

Anyway, some thoughts:

1) I suppose the "fun" here, if you can call it that, is holding multiple threads in your head at any one time. Search terms do sometimes bring up a selection of interview footage that runs about concurrently but, for the most part, you will be juggling a number of different talking points.

2) There's a lot of clips. I don't know how many but ... um ... I'm going to say 150. Or a 100. Somewhere around that. That's a lot of clips to "find" with your key word navigation skillz.

3) So there's your first problem: juggling the threads and the words mentioned in the tens of clips you've watched to remember certain key words that will lead to the next clip or clips. That's the challenge, right? It's like a mental exercise.

4) And that's my problem with it - I'm stuck and I cannot remember what word or words I need to stab in to unlock these last 20 clips that are just out of my reach. There's a set of, say, 5/6 clips in a row I need to find. Can I come up with the right word(s)? Nope. I'm totally blank. So I've got to go back and watch the last 100-odd clips until something clicks or I blindly manage to put in the right word. That would be fine of itself but it does not enable you to easily access any clips you've watched: you've either saved them in a bar along the bottom of the screen or, if you haven't you're fucked and have to find the right search term to find them again. Sure, you can add your own tags to files but, seriously, I cannot be arsed tagging every clip especially a hundred of them. Fuck that. The game even has a graph that charts the clips you've seen but it doesn't identify the clip or any search terms needed to pull it back up. It's just a light on a 150-odd graph. A single light. Utterly meaningless.

5) So whilst I was having fun for an evening, I've hit a brick wall. I can't be bothered to do the entire game all over again (which is essentially what I shall need to do) to see if there's a key word or twenty I missed along the way.

6) But getting that far was difficult right? Nope. Piece of piss. Each clip will normally have a couple of key words (usually at the end of a clip too) to spur you on to key in that word next. "Blah, blah, blah but you don't want my FINGER PRINTS do you? Not the FINGER PRINTS." No other key words in the entire clip just the main word that the game is shouting in your face. That being said the interface is probably what's fucked me over a little. I tried looking at my search terms in the game as you can pull up a list of everything you've smashed in, only problem is as you are working your way down the list clicking on each term again to find what you're looking for it is recognising your click as a new search term so it's filling up the bottom of the list all over again. I swear to god I worked down my search terms and didn't realise that I was stuck in an endless loop clicking on terms I'd just clicked on moments earlier. Frustrating.

You can actually finish the game reasonably quickly once you've hit a few key notes and I've done it but not 100%'ed it. I think I've got the gist of what happened without taking to the internet so, naturally, I took to the internet to find out how to get the clips I'd missed.

7) But fuck me if I wasn't confronted with fan-boy-tastic musings on the game and it's deep hidden meanings. I'm sure that the internet has collectively spaffed their juices over this game and its story but, to me, it isn't as great as these folks seem to be making out. It's been interesting, sure, and if I can find a site that clearly says, Ian search for this to get those missing ones I'll turn it on again and do it to see if I was missing a piece to the puzzle. I probably am, but I still feel that I succeeded in piecing together what happened on a rudimentary level and establish the key characters and motivations.

I shall leave the spaff-fest to the internet fan boys who clearly have more time on their hands than I.

I'm just happy that I succeeded in the mental challenge of holding these ideas, facts, musing and concepts in my head whilst watching this choppy footage. To that end, I was happy I played it. As to the story about twins and shit? Meh.

This better not be some kind of massive spoiler or you're getting a kick in the balls.

It is. There are twins. They enjoy swimming in faecal matter. It's quite out of keeping with the rest.