Pretentious games

What makes a game pretentious? I feel that any game that tries to deconstruct "videogame tropes" (how I hate that fucking word) is trying way too hard to get some sort of point across like the pointless exercise in repetition that is MGS2 and its convoluted conspiracy plot or Drakengard which are both fucking boring games, don't even get me started on a certain somewhat popular game that came out this year.

So, you have no idea the actual point both games are trying to make and just want to sound pretentious yourself, OP. Also,
If you have enough working braincells you can figure this shit out easily. Go off yourself, OP.

I don't care about "the point" that they were trying to make, I care about the games being fun and they sure as fuck are not. If you want to make "a point" then make a fucking movie or something, games are supposed to be fun not a pretentious piece of trash.

Drakengard wasn't that pretentious. Nier definitely pushed it, but the narrative was still high quality. Did you have any specific issus?

it's popular and not western.

planet escape tournament is pretentious tbqh

The bland gameplay which according to some fags here froma previous thread was "purposely" bland and repetitive.

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it's stupid and it's japanese (how I hate that fucking word)

Oh wait, my bad

Dumb doesn't mean pretentious user

literally AAA undertale

I'm almost certain Taro confirmed in an interview that DoD is modeled after musou because the killing is supposed to feel repetitive

I dunno. Nier endings is kind of tame compared to this game because it wil

drakengard isn't pretentious, it's just so wtf is wrong with you fucks that you wanna keep going. the gameplay is hot ass though. mgs2 yeah I can see that. but at least it was a joy to play.

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Well that doesn't help me like the guy because drakengard was modeled after musous the same way radioactive waste is modeled after porridge.

Any game by Team Ico. Just awful games.

Also depends on when you played the game. At that time it was pretty different from what you'd expect from a musou game where you play as fucked in the head characters with multiple endings and a big fuck you ultimate fight and ending. Now with everyone going TOOoooBeeePUSSY they'll try to fit in by playing the classics. That's what started the OP's fascination of farts and queefs.

You should know better than accept random headcanons and theories from people on the internet as reality, this isn't fucking Game Theory. The 'Drakengard intentionally plays like shit' meme is a false one, it only resulted in that because of the B-tier development team behind it. What was intended is to have you kill armies of mooks, but not necessarily through shit-ass gameplay, though it didn't help that it modeled itself after musou games. If you want an example of a game which intentionally doesn't do much interesting with its gameplay so it can deliver its message, see

Tell me why like this user did

I've been thinking and I can't find an answer, why is it that OP is always a cocksucking faggot?

Yeah that's totally the only reason.

Anything made by Ice-Pick Lodge.

*it only ended up with shit gameplay because of the B-tier development team behind it

It's not as if they were intentionally trying to make a bland and repetitive as possible clone like Spec Ops as some kind of parody. Else they wouldn't have really bothered with letting you fly as a dragon.

The game was originally just going to have the flying segments, but because Square saw how good Dynasty Warriors was doing they told Taro and team to include that kind of combat.

back to OP's question
Going against expectations to the point of going against common sense and good taste as well.
Guilt tripping the player, killing off important characters, showing obnoxious things off for no reason, breaking or neglecting the gameplay, breaking the interface, basically crippling any part of the game for no reason, including the story.
The target audience for this sort of thing is exclusively teenagers, because a pretentious game has to be your first in order for it to work. You're playing a prank on your audience, one that gets old very fast.

No, the first two did not go out of their way to be bad. You got exactly what you signed up for. The more ambitious bits were simply there for you to notice, not shoved in your face as the only redeeming factor.
No opinion on TLG because I don't have a memestation.

Earthbound and MM are hipsterfags favourite games.

What exactly is pretentious about Drakengard?
Literally everything about it is in your face.

The fact so many cuckolds are going back to play a 10 (?) year old blist Japanese game disgruntles me to no end.

Leave my childhood in peace and let Drakengard remain a shitty cult classic. Its better that way.

You might be a hipster faggot.

OP is just a retard who thinks a game being bad means it is pretentious.

Liking games that you played as a kid makes you a hipster faggot?

Pls get dead and stay dead.

Not wanting other people to play those games definitely satisfies the faggot condition.

Nope, the rest of your post does.

It's a shame pretentious has lost all meaning, because it's the main describer for games like gone homo, life is Tumblr and kike in the hoods story and pretty every aspect that isn't gameplay, which can be described as non-existent.

Telling people not to play trash games doesn't seem like a faggoty thing to me user

Look at my ID you mongoloid

You mean the genX that can only speak in mehmeh? I would love it if they hate the game I fondly play as a kid.

I have forced anonymity on

Earthbound has been one of my favorite games since before Smash Brothers was developed. It's led me to have some sympathy for those people that (for reasons I cannot understand) legitimately loved Undertale as a game before the rabid fanbase got their hands on all public discussion.

Yes, I do realize that a large portion of my love of Earthbound is little more than blind nostalgia. But the heart wants what the heart wants.

Earthbound has a fantastic soundtrack like nothing else and it feels like both parody and a love letter to (mostly) american culture, I don't see how it's pretentious, Itoi is one of the more down to earth persons that i've read off.

Every game promoted as ground breaking in some way, which turns out to be more of the same could be considered pretentious by definition.

I generally only call games pretentious when they try to be deep, but only throw some Jaden Smith level philosophy, or strongly biased politically opinions in your face.

Literally anything you can do in storytelling is a trope, there is no originality at this point in time.

Even the Greeks understood this, so they focused on telling the best and most interesting version of a story that they could.

Itoi is a cool dude, but I don't know how down to earth he is
He spent a small fortune on a failed treasure hunt for Tokugawa gold

Probably. Gotta admit I never thought I'd be the dude to say I liked X before it was cool, but I really don't get going back to play an ancient game and then complaining about outdated mechanics.

Let's start by giving the definition of pretentious Pretentious is:
a : making usually unjustified or excessive claims (as of value or standing)
b : expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature

With that in mind, lots of Sony games, most notably Journey, Flower, Fl0w, The Last of Us, etc are pretentious. Everyone wanks off about how great TLOU's story is, and how it supposedly set a precedent for its literary prestige, but it's really just your typical action movie blockbuster. It doesn't make you think, it doesn't ask difficult questions, and it doesn't make any incredible commentary on reality, or on trends in video games, or anything like that. It's a typical action movie with hurr stronk independent wymyn pandering and very predictable "emotional" scenes for lazy character motivation. This is Mario tier writing; "hurr your daughter has to die in the opening scene so we can shoehorn in a main character that plays off your vulnerability, which we can later exploit to portray you as a selfish bastard" is about as deep as "hurr the princess has been kidnapped! You have to save her!"

As for Journey, it begins by giving the player a clearly defined goal, whose importance is quite vague, and then tries to make implications about what might've happened on this planet through visions and artifacts. It tries to use environmental storytelling that leaves room for interpretation, but I think it fails because there's not enough information to make any manner of contextually meaningful explanations about anything the game throws at you. You're just supposed to look at its entirety and say, "aww, what beautiful visuals and music and theme! it's 2depp4u masterfully crafted art"

As much as I love Dark Souls, its literary elements are quite pretentious, given that there's no true merit behind each piece of information that can cohesively tie events and characters together. It suffers from the same problems as Journey; that is to say, there's not enough relevant information to make sense of the world. In Dark Soul's case, there's very basic information about the world, but we don't have enough to make relevant connections between Lordran, the Lords, the nature of the Undead curse, and other major concepts. People take very basic information and try to extrapolate, and it's annoying as shit. Dark Souls and the "lore community" that is built around it are both pretentious.

He was just following his dreams while bothering no one.

He wasn't quietly pursuing a weird hobby, he had a show about his treasure hunt on TBS
I love the dude but he ended up a laughing stock on nip media for a couple years

And he learned from it, he put tidbits of his life experiences on the games.

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Fuck off, cucktard.

I wanted to ask what part of Drakengard was pretentious, but I can see how ending E was some really pretentious shit.

I just played Scanner Sombre.
The first line in the description was "Inspired by Gone Home and Dear Esther, Scanner Sombre is a cave exploration experience." So I pirated it instead of buying it.
Pretty sure I just beat it in under an hour.
Very minor platforming bits.
It is pretty and that is about it.
The story is of a guy who died in a spooky cave and is doomed to relive his last moments exploring the spooky cave and being sad that he can't see his wife and kids who at the ending are throwing rose petals into a pond.
It is the kind of thing that makes me think someone in a turtleneck is furiously masturbating at the art they have created.

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don't even remind me
at least they seem to be making an actual game now, this was a side project when they were updating Prison Architect apparently

I never complained about "outdated mechanics", if I did then I wouldn't have so many hours on Armored Core 1.

Wasn't specifically referring to you, chief.

But the game has a character that thinks just like you so its good!

I don't think Dark Souls is that pretentious, the community is for sure, but the Dark Souls game is just your average dark fantasy setting that went for the less is more narrative and did a good job at it.
The more you try to explain the worse shit gets unless you have a really good writer so their stance of barely giving you hints through item descriptions does the job well enough.

Let's not forget that even in cases were the audience or critics are pretentious doesn't necessarily mean the source is as well.

I think so, yeah.
If I remember correctly, the mine in the desert and liar x aggerate's treasure hunt are based on his experience.
I could be wrong on this one, but I think the manu manu statue is based on a gold statue that was supposedly with the tokugawa treasure

Say hello to the wider audience. Tell them to shut the fuck up while you're at it.

Unlikely. Yes, this is autism.

Cod and battlefield are the only non pretentious games just plain bad

Trips confirm