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It's weird to me how there are things I really dislike but everyone else do like and they wonder why I don't like it even though I seem to be the targeted audie

• mey 4y ago
  Mister Bean is slapstick stick/cringe comedy. Monty Python is absurdist/surealism comedy Stanley parable is a meta parody about video games narrative choice (or lack thereof) Rick & Morty is high fantasy sci-fi comedy The Witness is a environmental puzzle game with light environmental story telling. Dear Esther is entirely environmental story telling. (Only commenting on things I am familiar with) There is nothing wrong with not liking things others like, but other than being in the nerd zeitgeist, I wouldn't say they are targeting the same thing. Based on your stated games may I suggest looking at the following if you haven't previously - Tacoma - Braid - Fez - Quadrilateral Cowboy
  • spartanatreyu 4y ago
    Just to add to your comment: > Rick & Morty is high fantasy sci-fi comedy It's also full of meta commentary of the world and society from the perspective of the writer through the medium of sci-fi. > The Witness is a environmental puzzle game with light environmental story telling. It's also contains a lot of _ruminations_ about perception and the mind.
  • johnchristopher 4y ago
    Thanks, Tacoma and Fez are already on my to-play list, I played and enjoyed Braid when it was released and I haven't heard of Quadrilateral Cowboy so I will have a look.
    • lloeki 4y ago
      May I add The Swapper to the list
• xdfgh1112 4y ago
  The first three are all British comedies, so maybe that's why. I'm not a fan either, but I loved Gris. It was pretentious but also beautiful and fun.
  • johnchristopher 4y ago
    To be fair, there is a monty python sketch that I like, the one with people arguing who had it worst as children and one of them was saying they used to live in a match box :D.
    • mbg721 4y ago
      (This is the "Four Yorkshiremen" sketch, in case anyone is looking to search for it.)
      • jameshart 4y ago
        And it’s technically not a Monty Python sketch. It was originally from ‘At Last the 1948 Show’, and was co-written by two people who would go on to be in Python, but also Tim Brooke-Taylor, Marty Feldman, and quite possibly Barry Cryer. It was re-performed by the Monty Python team later. Possibly one of the only real comedy versions of a cover version being more famous than the original. anyway, it suggests that if you like that but not Python, maybe you would be better off exploring the comedy of ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’ instead…
        • johnchristopher 4y ago
          > anyway, it suggests that if you like that but not Python, maybe you would be better off exploring the comedy of ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’ instead… Oh, thanks for the suggestion ! I think I have seen some random bits of it on meme sites, I'll have a look.
• gibb0n 4y ago
  British: - Monty python - Mister Bean - Stanley Parable American: - Rick and Morty - Star Trek lower deck - The Witness - What happened to Edith Finch
  • jfoutz 4y ago
    I’ve made comments about the dangers of yaml, primarily about truncation. I really don’t know how to parse Finch, or what the defaults would be for the missing data.
• bombcar 4y ago
  Much of Monty python is more accessible to someone with a British education or a so-called classical education.
  • beaconstudios 4y ago
    It's mostly just silly, there are some British cultural references but it's not classics except Holy Grail being a long reference to the Arthurian legend.
    • patrec 4y ago
      Whilst you can enjoy most of Monty Python without a high-brow education, as you'd somewhat expect from a troupe made out of graduates of the two top universities in Britain, there are several sketches that are only funny if you have read Proust (summarize Proust competition) know some Latin (romanes eunt domus), or know the most famous English poems (ant poetry reading) etc.
      • beaconstudios 4y ago
        They only ever use these things as set dressing from what I've seen - you could substitute Proust for any overly high-minded literature, the centurion is just being pedantic about the graffiti and so on.
        • kadoban 4y ago
          Yeah, I have no idea who Proust even is, and the extent of my Latin knowledge is that I can usually spell "per se" correctly, but the centurion scene is still one of my favorites, and the Proust one is worth a few chuckles. I think you just have to be willing to figure out the context from feel.
          • patrec 4y ago
            It's a sliding scale thing. Even if you never heard of Proust, you can probably still get a chuckle out the choral society trying to summarize his magnum opus in 15s and never getting past the "Proust in his first book, fa la la". But if you find it already amusing knowing nothing about it, you'd probably find it a bit funnier if you knew that, on the one hand, In Search of Lost time is thousands of pages and takes weeks or months to read, and, on the other, isn't exactly action-heavy. And probably still more if you could relate the attempted plot summaries to the book(s). And I don't think the ant poetry sketch would be funny at all to someone who doesn't recognize "Look on my feelers, termites, and despair" or any of the other lines and understands none of the Queen Victoria jokes.
• emsy 4y ago
  I don't like the word pretentious. Pretending to be what? What I would agree to is that it isn't as deep as everyone recommending it making it out to be (I'm talking about the original, I haven't played the new version).
  • beaconstudios 4y ago
    Typically people mean something that people engage with it not for its own merit, but to cultivate an image. So, people acting like Stanley Parable is great to look like they have depth of taste because on the surface it's not that great a game. Of course it could be that you genuinely enjoy artsy comedic narrative games, which I'm sure is usually the case.
• DavidVoid 4y ago
  How is Gris empty and pretentious? Empty-ish, sure, mechanically it's a rather simple game, but pretentious? It's just an aesthetically beautiful and simple indie game, it's not something that tries to portray itself as being much "deeper" or more intelligent than it actually is.
  • johnchristopher 4y ago
    Every people I have talked about it (IRL) portray the game as being deep though (n=3) and so did some reviews I read. I have the same opinion of Celeste and Oldman's Journey. Very weak story line, no subtlety in their outlook on humane emotions. Not deep enough to me or not deep enough for what matters to me I'd rather say. More than 10 years ago I played a little game that was developed (I think) over a week-end. A side-scrolling game, 4 block high, one spritey character that can only go forward and walk around obstacles (block of colours). The character gets older and older and always dies in the end. There are weird items you can pick up and seems to increase your lifespan but that's it. At some point you can meet another character and if you choose to walk with her then there are less path you can take. But if your character dies then you switch to that other character. The author said it was to show there are things you can't do or have to differently when you become a couple. The game was 2 minutes long, top and it was some kind of comment on life, nothing more, nothing less but I still think it had a deeper connection to the player than Gris, Celeste or Oldman's Journey could ever have (well at least it did with me). I think those games just scream to the player what to feel and when and I think it's less interesting. End of rambling ^^. I am trying to find the game back by looking at IGF festival archives but no lock so far.
    • SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
      I mean it makes sense that Gris (a game sold on vibes) would have detractors primarily by the people who didn’t vibe with it, and is beloved by people who did. Art is subjective, yknow? You don’t have to like art that you don’t like. If you fundamentally don’t understand where it’s coming from that’s a different question altogether.
      • 4y ago
• caslon 4y ago
  The items in the latter section seem a lot more popular than the former section. Are you really that shocked if we reframe this as you not enjoying a game that started out as a niche Half-Life mod, but enjoying a television show made by the most popular television network amongst young adults? "I like popular things" shouldn't seem weird to you. It's natural: They're made to be easy to digest. That's why they're popular! That the only stuff you like is American, while the stuff you dislike is entirely foreign, shouldn't come as a surprise, either. Pop culture isn't global, not yet.
  • johnchristopher 4y ago
    > Are you really that shocked if we reframe this as you not enjoying a game that started out as a niche Half-Life mod, but enjoying a television show made by the most popular television network amongst young adults? No, I am okay with that :). There are some niche things (the OA, Dishwasher vampire smile) I definitely like and some popular things I really dislike (GoT and Stranger things come to mind). On that note: no one around me (IRL) seems to like Rick and Morty :(. > That the only stuff you like is American, while the stuff you dislike is entirely foreign, shouldn't come as a surprise, either. Pop culture isn't global, not yet. Well, for what it's worth I am neither American nor living in the US :). At the moment I am into scifi german tv shows (Dark and Tribes of Europa) (buuuut also waiting for the new Star Trek Pike TV show while snobing Star Trek Michael).
    • Aeolun 4y ago
      Rick and Morty, and that whole genre seems like some warped form of trying to make comedy out of abuse to me.
• jesse_faden 4y ago
  What remains of Edith Finch was such a great game. I loved it. Firewatch is another one that I would add to that list.
  • johnchristopher 4y ago
    I really liked Firewatch ! This is the game that made me remember to look into "walker simulation" every now and then.
  • NikolaNovak 4y ago
    Firewatch is one on my all time favourites. I played it with my significant other in one day and it just formed such a strong binding memory and shared experience :-). Beautiful landscapes and lovely human story.
• ohgodplsno 4y ago
  You're the kind of person that needs a skip button.
• k__ 4y ago
  I liked Soma. I you haven't played it, I would strongly recommend.
  • johnchristopher 4y ago
    Thanks, I own the game but haven't played it yet :(.
  • shadowofneptune 4y ago
    An unusual case where the horror game parts actually hurt the experience of the game. Perhaps in another time it would have been an adventure game instead.
    • Toutouxc 4y ago
      A few years after its release Soma got an update that introduced "Safe Mode". It pretty much transforms the game into an adventure with spooky visuals.
    • k__ 4y ago
      Yes, the horror felt a bit forced. It's like they came from Amnesia, wanted to make something like it, but set in the future, but then their story was better than they hoped.
  • arlcode 4y ago
    Oh man. I've always wanted to play Soma because the story was pointed out to me as being excellent, however anything with jumpscares just isn't for me.
    • bentcorner 4y ago
      Note that there's a safe mode where the monsters can't hurt you. The jumpscares don't go away but they lose all sense of danger. Personally for me it was exactly what I needed to play and finish the game.
• mlindner 4y ago
  I like - Monty Python - Stanley Parable - The Witness out of your list so I'm not sure what that makes me. Never heard of Gris or the last one in your other list. Also, how do you get that formatting on hacker news? What formatting is allowed?
  • mgdlbp 4y ago
    duo-space indent ⟹ monospace text https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
• moonbug 4y ago
  not weird, you're just a youngish american.
• kevingadd 4y ago
  Aside from the other good recommendations in the replies, I would suggest 999/Virtue's Last Reward (if you can handle some Anime tropes) for a story-focused game with some puzzle gameplay (the third one is... bad, but skippable) and perhaps Nier or Nier Automata if you want something with a lot of robust (albeit not best-in-class) action gameplay paired with its story. All of the above (except maybe Automata) can be finished in a dozen hours or less, and 999 has a port that removes the puzzles entirely if you dislike them. (I think the puzzles are a core part of the experience, personally.) For Nier Automata there is an 'easy automatic' mode that lets you have the game automatically control parts of the combat system for you if you really just want to plow through the story.
• remoquete 4y ago
  Also recommended: Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture.
• mgdlbp 4y ago
  Outer Wilds--often see it recommended enthusiastically. Same publisher as Edith Finch, also won a bunch of awards.
• hibernator935 4y ago
  Some other great games that people in this thread might like, but that were not yet mentioned: * Outer Wilds (not to be confused with Outer Worlds) * Talos Principle (especially the add-on Road to Gehenna) * RiME (warning: sad ending!) * Portal 1 & 2 (Yes, these are old, but maybe there is someone here from the happy 10_000)
  • Zecc 4y ago
    I was recently one of the lucky 10_000 who first heard of the Portal Reloaded, and Portal Stories Mel mods for Portal 2. I also recommend the Talos Principle (as well as Road to Gehenna) and Outer Wilds (which I'm currently playing. no spoilers!)
    • johnchristopher 4y ago
      Ohooo, I am another 10_000 for Portal Reloaded and Stories Mel. Haven't even had time to play Portal 2 yet.
• acomjean 4y ago
  I enjoyed the Stanley parable and what remains of Edith Finch. Both were fun, interesting explore titles. TSP is absurd. (The go outside award is for not playing the game for 10 years?) Stanley parables self commentary I thought was pretty funny. If the humor runs you the wrong way it will be annoying. If you are looking for a nice ending or a completionist it can be frustrating. I played a bunch and haven’t gone back in a while.
• robonerd 4y ago
  Mockumentaries, e.g. Spinal Tap. It seems like everybody loves these movies yet they give me migraines. The brain pain these movies cause me is so strong, I hesitate to even bring them up. Even thinking of them makes me wince. I didn't know "painfully unfunny" was a literal sensation until I saw Best in Show, and all subsequent mockumenaries I've seen have been just as bad if not worse. I now refuse to watch another for the rest of my life.
• ModernMech 4y ago
  Curious in which list you would place Douglas Adams.
  • johnchristopher 4y ago
    Hi, I would place it in the dislike list but for the wrong reasons: I have only seen the movie and read a chapter or two a loooong time ago and I am utterly fed up with 42 jokes so I am not going to get into it any time soon I think. I liked the reverse depressed robot in the move "I am so sad to inform you we are going to crash and burn \o/ :)".
    • capableweb 4y ago
      The trilogy of books is very different from the movies and tv shows, so don't let that stop you from giving the books a try. I've haven't laughed out loud when reading any books besides HHGTTG.