Post by SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman on Dec 28, 2013 13:16:46 GMT -5
It's apparently relatively famous but I only first heard about it today. This is one of those video games that has an interesting concept but the execution is... questionable. The idea is that you play a man or woman invited to your friends' house after years of not seeing them. It's apparent from the start that their relationship isn't going well despite their attempts to hide it (they're showing a façade! Get it?). From here, the goal is to save their marriage by interacting and talking with them in various ways, as they have a Cleverbot-style AI that reacts to what you type (which is how you talk with them) and honestly, they actually recognize quite a lot of words and have an adequate amount of reactions.
However, this game has problems. I'll give the bad graphics a pass as it's obviously more of a "proof of concept" type of game than one that tries to look impressive, but the game's main asset, the interaction with the characters, doesn't really work as well as expected. It's often hard to tell what kind of reply you're supposed to give to express what you want (you often end up saying something you think is a positive answer and they react like you gave a negative one and vice-versa), even though the AIs remember what you said to an extent, it uses this information in a wrong or irrelevant way and much like with Cleverbot, things often get weird. It doesn't help that the characters are awkward to begin with, one of them being for some reason ashamed that he used to be a bartender, them acting like hiding the fact that one of them hid the fact that they made a painting the other thought they bought is on the same range as cheating on the other, etc...
And then there are the ways the game is just plain broken like the two of them stopping to say anything and just staring at you, being able to get the best ending by replying to everything with "yes", the downright incomprehensible interpretation of some of the player's replies (no idea how they get "I disagree with you" from me saying "banana"), the awkward sentence construction, and melons.
Basically, as interesting as the idea behind it is, the fact is that the most enjoyment most people get from it is from dicking around with it and find the most ridiculous things to do during the short time it takes to go through a game (I think it lasts 10 minutes or so on average, unless you go out of your way to get yourself kicked out earlier), and I must say it can be hilarious to play it that way, especially if you try to give your character a gimmick. Also, their reaction to the outrageous stuff you can say is priceless. Anyway, you can download for free at interactivestory.net/ and here's some videos showing the beast in action:
(language warning)
However, this game has problems. I'll give the bad graphics a pass as it's obviously more of a "proof of concept" type of game than one that tries to look impressive, but the game's main asset, the interaction with the characters, doesn't really work as well as expected. It's often hard to tell what kind of reply you're supposed to give to express what you want (you often end up saying something you think is a positive answer and they react like you gave a negative one and vice-versa), even though the AIs remember what you said to an extent, it uses this information in a wrong or irrelevant way and much like with Cleverbot, things often get weird. It doesn't help that the characters are awkward to begin with, one of them being for some reason ashamed that he used to be a bartender, them acting like hiding the fact that one of them hid the fact that they made a painting the other thought they bought is on the same range as cheating on the other, etc...
And then there are the ways the game is just plain broken like the two of them stopping to say anything and just staring at you, being able to get the best ending by replying to everything with "yes", the downright incomprehensible interpretation of some of the player's replies (no idea how they get "I disagree with you" from me saying "banana"), the awkward sentence construction, and melons.
Basically, as interesting as the idea behind it is, the fact is that the most enjoyment most people get from it is from dicking around with it and find the most ridiculous things to do during the short time it takes to go through a game (I think it lasts 10 minutes or so on average, unless you go out of your way to get yourself kicked out earlier), and I must say it can be hilarious to play it that way, especially if you try to give your character a gimmick. Also, their reaction to the outrageous stuff you can say is priceless. Anyway, you can download for free at interactivestory.net/ and here's some videos showing the beast in action:
(language warning)
