In Other Waters and Buyer's Remorse

The title of this little article is perhaps unfair, because In Other Waters isn’t a bad experience. But key to my waning interest in playing it, not least of which is due to Rage 2, Mortal Kombat 1, Pokemon Legends of Arceus, and Pikmin 1+2 all vying for my attention. No the true culprit of my deteriorating drive to play the game is that it’s barely a game.

There are many kinds of bad games, and many kinds of mediocre virtual experiences out there. I’ve been playing games long enough to know that a game that doesn’t work, a game that isn’t fun, and a game that requires too much investment are all different roads to the same destination.

Unfortunately in this era of digital games, and in the US, consumer protection hasn’t caught up with modern era. Where corporations can sell you a dung heap and have no requirement to refund you. Steam, currently, being the only notable example. Although I recently tried to refund a game I spent 50$ on and they declined it, so fuck me right?

Now THIS is a video game.

Even as a child I was absolutely smitten with beautiful pixel art. Tiny characters drawn with small expressions and cool clothing occupying little worlds made me feel like a giant stepping into a small place. Games that do this well are legendary. Earthbound, Pokemon, Advanced Wars, Fire Emblem….etc

The problem is that there are a lot more talented pixel artists out there, than there are talented game designers. And the two usually don’t align. So you get games that are conceptually fine, and visually cute, but are functionally boring.
I got scolded by a friend the other day who said I was being ridiculous. I was unfair. I had said that if a game doesn’t hook me in 5 minutes, I turn it off. I said that I was too busy and too old to be wasting time on games that “get good if you play them long enough”. He said that wasn’t enough time, but I disagree.

While there are games that start bad and get great. Most great games start great. Right from the start they hit the ground running. The last game I gave an earnest, against-my-better-judgement chance to was Bethesda’s new pride and joy Starfield. I had heard from multiple sources that the game starts slow, but improves after the 12 hour mark.

Jesus Christ

The truth is that there are plenty of short, janky, unprofessional, ugly, experimental, and otherwise weird games out there, and more are made every day. Indie games especially ones on PC have been getting steadily weirder and easier to run as time has gone on. And while I’m far from a PC gaming elitist, I know a good thing when I see one. Games like Bloodwash, Faith, Night of Consumers, Clone Drone in the Danger Zone, Nightmare of Decay, Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer, My Friendly Neighborhood, Iron Lung and all manner of Markiplier-approved thumbnail bait are largely solid games that are simply made for a fraction of the budget of AAA fair but still present the player with a great experience in one way or another.

So for goodness sake go download some trash on Steam. Find an indie game dev posting in-progress screenshots and become a fan. I’m not saying “Early Access games are our salvation here”, I’m just saying that I’d rather waste money on something with some artistic merit like Spiritfarer or some Torture Star Video nonsense than something that a AAA studio burped out onto the store for $80 after half a decade of false advertising and hype.

I feel comfortable rambling at this point because I know that the few of you gentle-people who feel the need to cruise on down to the end of this unfocused article are in it for the long-haul, so here’s my closer:

Find something new.

Buyers remorse is here to stay, there’s no cure for it (except for sensible and long-awaited consumer protection laws for digital products) and so, in this increasingly digital era where companies can falsely advertise and then cut and run, you should be digging to find a new experience from people who not only care about what they’re making, but also have control over it. That doesn’t mean kickstarting every terrible zombie game that promises the world.

It means trying something new, getting involved in the community, and acting like you give a damn.

Damn.

Beautiful right? Well get used to it, because this is the entire game.

I digress, but the point I’m making is that In Other Waters, a role-play heavy, 2D, top-down, walking simulator is told through the perspective of a self-aware, artificial intelligence-driven diving suit on an alien world that’s discovered and then occupied by an astronaut who’s looking for her friend. The vast majority of the game is textual descriptions of unseen organisms and locations while you use the admittedly handsome user interface to drive the action. I use the term “action” very loosely here.

I’m no stranger to buyers remorse, I’ve spent probably hundreds of dollars in the last 20 years on garbage that I completely regret. No small amount of that total being video games.
Some of it was falsely advertised: Brink, [Prototype]
Some of it didn’t live up to the hype: Fallout 4, Final Fantasy 7,
Some of it was just fucking boring and not my kinda game: Dustforce and countless others
And Some of it just missed: Undertale

The thing is that the only one I truly, TRULY regret are the ones I can’t return. Digital games. But ignoring that aspect for a moment, I think the worst offenders are the ones for me personally are all the pixel art games.

Starfield is boring. And despite making it past the fabled 12 hour mark, the game failed to materialize. The combat is stilted, Bethesda combat without VATS is unwieldy at the best of times, and outright miserable against tougher enemies. The characters are shockingly dull, not an ounce of charisma in the whole lot. Form your space babysitter who looks like old-lady Jennifer Lawrence, to your funky cowboy friend who felt the need to bring is insufferable daughter onto your ship, the entire game just feels like a misfire. Bethesda hyped up the game for years, teasing trailers, screenshots, and rumors only to release a clunky, first-person version of Mass Effect. What a waste.

Luckily, I was still riding the high from a trio of Game Pass Ultimate tickets I was gifted the previous year, so I didn’t end up paying a dime. And while this technically excludes Starfield from the main crux of this article, I don’t technically have buyer’s remorse since I didn’t buy the game, I think it still serves my point.

There's a meme that’s been going around, and has been for the past few years, that demands “Worse games, and better treatment of employees of game companies”. Which is a sentiment I think isn’t entirely off the mark, but it doesn’t quite bullseye the issue with modern games (or just video games in general).

Sonic you old so and so!

Sleeper hits like Among Us, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Lethal Company, and Cruelty Squad pushed the envelope of simply being a video game and instead becoming full-blown cultural phenomena. Older titles like Terraria, Minecraft, and the Binding of Issac prove that this is a valid route to take. And up-and-coming games and series like Isopod, Slopecrashers, Eco Break, Dying Breed, Last Train Outta Worm Town, and Prehistoric Kingdom loom on the horizon with bright ideas and exciting development stories.

I love these games that aren’t afraid to do something truly ridiculous in order to stand out. It feels like people making art, not just products, and the AAA gaming industry hasn’t felt like that in years. I guess what disappoints me most about something like In Other Waters is that in the process of being an experience, it forgot to be a game. It fulfills all these niche qualities that would ordinarily put it in the “good game” category, but it’s just not fun. And not for a lack of talent, this article does not exist to dump on a small team who made a visually lovely game. It’s just to point out that in order for a game to be at all worth the money (regardless of low little you spend) it has to, at the end of the day, be a GAME.

This the kinda shit I’m on. BOOM!

Is this dinosaur too low res to put at the bottom of the article? Nah it’ll be fine.