What is the strangest game you've ever played? Please explain.
- Thread starter Andrew Giarrusso
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The Void.
If I had to sum it up, I'd sat it's a bit like playing Okami while tripping on bad acid.
I have no fucking clue what it was or what was happening. I think it was supposed to take place in limbo or something similar. You wander around this bleak and surreal world in first person. You use mouse 'gestures' to paint symbols to activate various plants and machine with (I think) the end goal of gathering various kinds of energy to fuel your abilities.
Some of the areas had these creepy women who I think were referred to as "sisters". They were all real weird, either malformed or growing out of trees of with animal bits. They would convert different energies for you.
Then there were the "brothers" who were these creatures that looked like a cross of something you'd find in Silent Hill and Dark Souls. They'd supposedly hunt you through the world, but I never ran into one outside of a cutscene.
If this sounds good then don't be fooled. The game was a piece of crap. As I said, the whole thing just made no damn sense. The gesture system was inconsistent as hell, half the time they wouldn't register and even if they did that was no guarantee that they'd do what they were supposed to. The energy system was never explained properly. The controls were stiff. And, to cap it all off, it had crazy performance issues.
Still, I guess I can't deny that it left an impression.
If I had to sum it up, I'd sat it's a bit like playing Okami while tripping on bad acid.
I have no fucking clue what it was or what was happening. I think it was supposed to take place in limbo or something similar. You wander around this bleak and surreal world in first person. You use mouse 'gestures' to paint symbols to activate various plants and machine with (I think) the end goal of gathering various kinds of energy to fuel your abilities.
Some of the areas had these creepy women who I think were referred to as "sisters". They were all real weird, either malformed or growing out of trees of with animal bits. They would convert different energies for you.
Then there were the "brothers" who were these creatures that looked like a cross of something you'd find in Silent Hill and Dark Souls. They'd supposedly hunt you through the world, but I never ran into one outside of a cutscene.
If this sounds good then don't be fooled. The game was a piece of crap. As I said, the whole thing just made no damn sense. The gesture system was inconsistent as hell, half the time they wouldn't register and even if they did that was no guarantee that they'd do what they were supposed to. The energy system was never explained properly. The controls were stiff. And, to cap it all off, it had crazy performance issues.
Still, I guess I can't deny that it left an impression.
Zeno Clash.
I played the entire game in one evening but all it was so bizarre that all I could use to explain it would be the vague impressions my memories give me.
I remember a prehistoric looking world filled with strange and ugly creatures. There were giant mouse-giraffe-elephants and pebble-ghosts that ate electricity but feared fire. There was a giant crow-man that wish it was female and a tribe of one-track minds.
Overall, it was a surreal blur punctuated by fistfights and the occasional explosion.
I played the entire game in one evening but all it was so bizarre that all I could use to explain it would be the vague impressions my memories give me.
I remember a prehistoric looking world filled with strange and ugly creatures. There were giant mouse-giraffe-elephants and pebble-ghosts that ate electricity but feared fire. There was a giant crow-man that wish it was female and a tribe of one-track minds.
Overall, it was a surreal blur punctuated by fistfights and the occasional explosion.
It's an Ice-Pick Lodge title. They never explain anything about what's going on, and half the time they don't explain the mechanics at all. This is intentional.Zhukov said:
Same people did Knock-knock, Pathologic, and Cargo! The quest for gravity!
I 'unno, Cargo! seems a little more straightforward. Naked Verne Troyer lookalikes notwithstanding.Schadrach said:
Darn ninja'd already.Zhukov said:
Although the sister aren't malformed. The first dose live in a tree though.
The gaol was to collect enough colour and draw a certain glyph to ascended to a higher plane of existence (which seems to be the real world). The plants were how you farm colour. They decay and give you lower yields the more you use them so it's easy to screw yourself over long before you know it. The brother are from a lower plane of existence (nightmare) which is why they are malformed and consider the void a paradise and see the use of colour which slowly destroys the void to be blasphemy. The don't hunt you initially because think you are a brother. They start offing sisters after a certain point and they sometimes destroy you gardens. Interesting concept, not really a fun game though and feels half finished. Being told things after you actually need to know them and npc's occasionally lying to you about how things work was intentional but still rather annoying
Yume Nikki was pretty odd. The environments were often very abstract or otherwise simply eerily sinister, exploring varied dream worlds, collecting the rare and scattered items for no apparent reason. Despite the complete lack of context or apparent goal, I enjoyed the game. It had a very emotionally charged feel to it, even if there was basically nothing happening but exploring the various areas, looking for new places to go, paired with a supremely surreal aesthetic.
Since you said Katamari (certainly one of the first that comes to my mind), I'll say Rez.Johnny Novgorod said:
If you asked the 6 year old me with the atari stick in his hand what he thought video games would be like in the year 2000, he would describe something like Rez. It's like a mix of shooter, rave, and acid trip.
My 6 year old self however would not have predicted the vibrating pleasure brick that come with the original release. You would've had to have checked on my 13 year old self for that one.
For me, it has to be Duel Blasters 3000.
It's kind of like pong on acid, or something.
The person who wrote this write up did a good job explaining why it's strange: http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=385
Be aware that Duel Blasters 3000 is NSFW, and the link has a NSFW screenshot in it too.
I do love the music in the game.
It's kind of like pong on acid, or something.
The person who wrote this write up did a good job explaining why it's strange: http://auntiepixelante.com/?p=385
Be aware that Duel Blasters 3000 is NSFW, and the link has a NSFW screenshot in it too.
I do love the music in the game.
Noby Noby Boy was... odd.
You're a worm in some weird static slab of land in a void somewhere and you eat stuff, and then... uh...
Ah fuck it, I can't explain this shit, here's the video;
You're a worm in some weird static slab of land in a void somewhere and you eat stuff, and then... uh...
Ah fuck it, I can't explain this shit, here's the video;
metal gear rising, I was sort of following the plot until I got to the last boss and things just got so ridiculous I can't even explain what happened, it actually made me say "WHAT IS HAPPENING?" out loud
Easy. Easy easy easy. Atlantis II, or "Beyond Atlantis", an old point-and-click adventure game made by Cryo Interactive while they were buried in cocaine.
You play an amnesiac young man (standard) who watches a boat fall from the sky (...) and then finds out that he's actually the chosen one (-__-) and is destined to unlock Atlantis (?) but first must retrieve stones by having his spirit flung into a Mayan warrior under dying king (???), a Chinese scholar trapped in a monastery by a demon (?????) and an Irish monk at a monastery on a set of islands under assault by the Old Celtic Gods (???!!??!!!???!???)
In the Mayan section, you must save your crops and curry the gods' favor before your enemies attack and before your king kills himself with sacrifices (;___
. To do this, you have to ingest a burning dust that sends you to the spirit realm without killing you (??) and hunt down the sleeping God and wake him up. To get the "information" needed to do this from the Frog God, you have to solve/cheat several puzzles involving dancing around a spiderweb with a giant spider chasing you in first person (?????), and then find all the stars laying on the ground in one section to complete a constellation on a rock which summons the relevant god. (?!?!?) Your gift for doing this: The rock.
In the Chinese section, you have to walk an abstract pathway in a sacred room of the monastery to access a map room. You can fall into the map, manipulating this to talk to various dolls that speak in riddles (??????) that allow you to cross a bridge. You then fly across the map and find the exorcist who requires you to retrieve a permit from Hell (????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????). It turns out that Hell is a bureaucracy, and the puzzle involves navigating the bureaucracy (complete with ceiling walking as the souls of the Damned whiz around, having gone entirely insane). Once you get the permit, you can exorcise the demon and find the rock.
The Irish section...
The...
The Iri...
...
The Irish section requires you to reconstruct the skull of a dead king from pieces around the island (?????????????????) with no hints (-____-) and then finding a druid stick and smacking a rock so hard that a horse falls out (??????????????????????????????????????????????????) and then riding the horse across the ocean (???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????) to an island populated by a single man who mistakes himself to be a blackbird (????????????????????????) who gives you a divining stick that explodes a well out of the ground (??????????????????????????????????????) so you can recapture a relic that you need to allow the blacksmith in the book you were illustrating (which you can fall into) (????????????) so you can rearm (literally) the king so that he can lead his people again. Other tasks include outwitting an ancient goddess so that she reverses a curse that turned a woman (in the book again) to stone, so you can give her a salmon (??????????) which she makes into an amulet (?). The stone just... kind of appears at the end.
Then, you wander around baffled for a bit before you divine that each section had a spot that you needed to activate your Chekov's Crystal Globe at, so you go back and do that. Doing so flings you into space (I broke my question mark key) for no adequate reason.
Finally, you gain access to Shambhala, and are promptly thrown through "off" versions of your previous locations where you pick up random objects from random locations with random NPCs spouting random lines before going underwater to Atlantis where you kill a giant octopus and then the earth is cleansed and you become Adam with a random naked girl added in to be Eve.
Please translate the above paragraph, if you can. I wrote it, but I don't understand it.
I highly recommend playing it with a walkthrough, it's an experience unparalleled by any other medium.
You play an amnesiac young man (standard) who watches a boat fall from the sky (...) and then finds out that he's actually the chosen one (-__-) and is destined to unlock Atlantis (?) but first must retrieve stones by having his spirit flung into a Mayan warrior under dying king (???), a Chinese scholar trapped in a monastery by a demon (?????) and an Irish monk at a monastery on a set of islands under assault by the Old Celtic Gods (???!!??!!!???!???)
In the Mayan section, you must save your crops and curry the gods' favor before your enemies attack and before your king kills himself with sacrifices (;___
. To do this, you have to ingest a burning dust that sends you to the spirit realm without killing you (??) and hunt down the sleeping God and wake him up. To get the "information" needed to do this from the Frog God, you have to solve/cheat several puzzles involving dancing around a spiderweb with a giant spider chasing you in first person (?????), and then find all the stars laying on the ground in one section to complete a constellation on a rock which summons the relevant god. (?!?!?) Your gift for doing this: The rock.In the Chinese section, you have to walk an abstract pathway in a sacred room of the monastery to access a map room. You can fall into the map, manipulating this to talk to various dolls that speak in riddles (??????) that allow you to cross a bridge. You then fly across the map and find the exorcist who requires you to retrieve a permit from Hell (????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????). It turns out that Hell is a bureaucracy, and the puzzle involves navigating the bureaucracy (complete with ceiling walking as the souls of the Damned whiz around, having gone entirely insane). Once you get the permit, you can exorcise the demon and find the rock.
The Irish section...
The...
The Iri...
...
The Irish section requires you to reconstruct the skull of a dead king from pieces around the island (?????????????????) with no hints (-____-) and then finding a druid stick and smacking a rock so hard that a horse falls out (??????????????????????????????????????????????????) and then riding the horse across the ocean (???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????) to an island populated by a single man who mistakes himself to be a blackbird (????????????????????????) who gives you a divining stick that explodes a well out of the ground (??????????????????????????????????????) so you can recapture a relic that you need to allow the blacksmith in the book you were illustrating (which you can fall into) (????????????) so you can rearm (literally) the king so that he can lead his people again. Other tasks include outwitting an ancient goddess so that she reverses a curse that turned a woman (in the book again) to stone, so you can give her a salmon (??????????) which she makes into an amulet (?). The stone just... kind of appears at the end.
Then, you wander around baffled for a bit before you divine that each section had a spot that you needed to activate your Chekov's Crystal Globe at, so you go back and do that. Doing so flings you into space (I broke my question mark key) for no adequate reason.
Finally, you gain access to Shambhala, and are promptly thrown through "off" versions of your previous locations where you pick up random objects from random locations with random NPCs spouting random lines before going underwater to Atlantis where you kill a giant octopus and then the earth is cleansed and you become Adam with a random naked girl added in to be Eve.
Please translate the above paragraph, if you can. I wrote it, but I don't understand it.
I highly recommend playing it with a walkthrough, it's an experience unparalleled by any other medium.
Frog Fractions was brilliant. I'm a bit unsure what to think of <link=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/475057068/frog-fractions-2>this, though. What do you think?SirBryghtside said:so just take my recommendation to play them (especially Frog Fractions) and do with it what you want
Robot Alchemic Drive on PS2. It was a miasma of shitty plot, script, loading screens, and voice-acting sitting between you and city-destroying giant robot punch-ups.
Freak Out, AKA Stretch Panic. A game where your magic deamon scarf allows you to stretch anything in the game environment. Also, your enemies are incredibly busty women. Like, their breasts are 3 times the size of their head. They also rotate like helicopter blades, enabling them to fly. No, really.
Thread check and mate.
Thread check and mate.
Killer7 is delightfully strange and nonsensical, to the point where, after three or four playthroughs, I'm still not 100% sure what's happening in the story. Someone launches nuclear missiles at Japan... which is a good thing in this universe, I guess, since everyone seems pretty happy about it? Your main enemy is a terrorist group, presumably formed by humans, but you only ever fight these weird alien-looking things, and for some reason put their blood into a TV to level up. At one point you have to find your target by getting a complete collection of collectible figurines of his, and those are perhaps the sanest bits of the game.
I guess Deadly Premonition might qualify, but that had some kind of twisted logic to it in the same way Twin Peaks does, and I can at least follow the story and understand why people do what they do, even if the conversations they have on the way to said understanding are very much disconnected from both our reality and the strange in-universe reality, with the music almost always being completely inappropriate for the situation.
I guess Deadly Premonition might qualify, but that had some kind of twisted logic to it in the same way Twin Peaks does, and I can at least follow the story and understand why people do what they do, even if the conversations they have on the way to said understanding are very much disconnected from both our reality and the strange in-universe reality, with the music almost always being completely inappropriate for the situation.
There was a game called LSD: Dream Emulator for the playstation 1 that I played in my youth. Apparently it has a bit of a following now, but at the time it was some weird game that some weird kid (me) had found for next to nothing in a bin at Zellers I think. I had purchased it because of the name, and the less than five dollar price tag.
It is... different. There is basically no gameplay, you just walk and walk through surreal landscapes until you run into oldschool slenderman and get booted. I can't really remember if there was an 'end', but I do remember that the game seemed to have some kind of internal logic, where even though the areas weren't consistently connected, doing certain things would get you shifted from one area to another (doorways/interaction with area) and oldschool slenderman could be avoided to some extent.
It is... different. There is basically no gameplay, you just walk and walk through surreal landscapes until you run into oldschool slenderman and get booted. I can't really remember if there was an 'end', but I do remember that the game seemed to have some kind of internal logic, where even though the areas weren't consistently connected, doing certain things would get you shifted from one area to another (doorways/interaction with area) and oldschool slenderman could be avoided to some extent.
South Park stick of truth, I've never in my life played any videogames where you have to go up a guy's anus for a quest.