Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory - isometric RPG based on the tabletop game

[Roguey]

(in fact, if you speak to the same person a second time, he'll act like you two met for the first time).

oh my gosh this really is developer baby's first rpg

They couldn't even script and write new dialogue for subsequent conversations. I expect that from amateur NWN modders, not pros.

 

[Lhynn]

So, from what ive seen on the thread the aesthetics arent too bad but the actual gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. Did i get it right? Anybody here pirated the game so i dont have to?

 

[Mortmal]

I don't see how censorship in single player is justifiable in any possible way.

There's no such thing as single player anymore. You know i've come to that shocking conclusion after watching youtubers, that's quite the work of an anthropologist ,i was puzzled by zoomers behaviors i had to study them , dont get it wrong , i still hate them. The youth dont play games by themselves they watch influential youtubers streaming it . Even PC hardware channels ,for exemple advise a 3700 cpu instead of a cheaper and perfectly fine 3600 just for the streaming purpose. Gaming is not the goal anymore, which is why we are more and more disconnected from the mainstream, its being popular and having many likes on your video that matters . Since it's such a big thing , gaming industry has to apply the same Policy as for an online game.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

That just means it's easier than ever to draw a line between poseurs and gamers, though? The poseurs will stream for a few more years and then leave for the next big fad, and the companies catering to poseurs will either move on to a new industry or crash and burn.

 

[Raghar]

I don't see how censorship in single player is justifiable in any possible way.

There's no such thing as single player anymore. You know i've come to that shocking conclusion after watching youtubers, that's quite the work of an anthropologist ,i was puzzled by zoomers behaviors i had to study them , dont get it wrong , i still hate them. The youth dont play games by themselves they watch influential youtubers streaming it . Even PC hardware channels ,for exemple advise a 3700 cpu instead of a cheaper and perfectly fine 3600 just for the streaming purpose. Gaming is not the goal anymore, which is why we are more and more disconnected from the mainstream, its being popular and having many likes on your video that matters . Since it's such a big thing , gaming industry has to apply the same Policy as for an online game.

You know when you have DRM, you either pirate, or watch streamers legally. Why would you pay for games? Even people with money rather avoid paying for Denuvo loaded crap because they can lose access to theirs game because of external factors.

Also when you talk about demography are you talking about millennials, aka people who were born around millennium.

 

[Mortmal]

I don't see how censorship in single player is justifiable in any possible way.

There's no such thing as single player anymore. You know i've come to that shocking conclusion after watching youtubers, that's quite the work of an anthropologist ,i was puzzled by zoomers behaviors i had to study them , dont get it wrong , i still hate them. The youth dont play games by themselves they watch influential youtubers streaming it . Even PC hardware channels ,for exemple advise a 3700 cpu instead of a cheaper and perfectly fine 3600 just for the streaming purpose. Gaming is not the goal anymore, which is why we are more and more disconnected from the mainstream, its being popular and having many likes on your video that matters . Since it's such a big thing , gaming industry has to apply the same Policy as for an online game.

You know when you have DRM, you either pirate, or watch streamers legally. Why would you pay for games? Even people with money rather avoid paying for Denuvo loaded crap because they can lose access to theirs game because of external factors.

Also when you talk about demography are you talking about millennials, aka people who were born around millennium.

Thinking more of generation Z now, post millenium spawns , err kids . As for denuvo i'd rather do without too but look on crackwatch, it works, if you want RDR2 you have to cash in , console or PC . Sorry to say they won.

 

[Lhynn]

Alright, bit the bullet and pirated the damn thing. An hour in and so far its pretty shit. Wombat isnt so bad, but i can see how it can get incredibly old very fast unless it introduces some interesting.
Crafting seems important, as you only get to keep a limited number of stuff at the end of the mission, so turning a bunch mildly useful shit into a more powerful consumable to save space seems like the way to go. Not that it really matters, it seems as long as you arent complete crap at the game you should be able to get by with whatever you are provided for the mission.
Dialogue is for the most part boring crap, tho there are exceptions. By the end of the first mission one of your underlings report you for doing something you HAD to do in order to progress, that was nice, hopefully there is more of that and actual relationships between companions and the PC matter.

Writing in general is pretty forgettable, trying to be funny but often missing the mark, but it is entertaining enough to read. The game so far seems pretty bare, theres not much to do other than the mission objectives, it would have been more fun if every npc in the station had a name and an agenda and the game revolved a bit more bout investigation and interaction with them instead of missions with shotty-talk-shotty-talk-shotty-talk.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

There's no melee combat is there?

 

[Nutria]

What I'm hearing from you guys is that it's not funny. I don't see any reason to play a Paranoia game if it's not funny.

it won't accept "FAG" nor "KKK"

It's nice to see that they understand the overlap between these groups.

 

[Salvo]

Can confirm what has been said above. Dialogue's not funny, gameplay's not interesting.

No reason to play this game.

 

[Skdursh]

Thinking more of generation Z now, post millenium spawns , err kids . As for denuvo i'd rather do without too but look on crackwatch, it works, if you want RDR2 you have to cash in , console or PC . Sorry to say they won.

Denuvo games are cracked literally all the time. I've pirated at least a dozen Denuvo games that I can think of off the top of my head. RDR2 will also be cracked, probably within a week or two, very possibly even sooner. The only Denuvo games that do not get cracked are those that are pure multiplayer or those that no one gives a shit about.

 

[Mortmal]

Thinking more of generation Z now, post millenium spawns , err kids . As for denuvo i'd rather do without too but look on crackwatch, it works, if you want RDR2 you have to cash in , console or PC . Sorry to say they won.

Denuvo games are cracked literally all the time. I've pirated at least a dozen Denuvo games that I can think of off the top of my head. RDR2 will also be cracked, probably within a week or two, very possibly even sooner. The only Denuvo games that do not get cracked are those that are pure multiplayer or those that no one gives a shit about.

https://crackwatch.com/game/anno-1800/comments?comment=XhRXBz3JKatH2h8c4 235 days now maybe it will be someday . But it's enough for anyone who really wants the game , and has the money, to give up and pay. Most sales are in the first month.

 

[Skdursh]

That's a low priority game. Like I said, the only Denuvo games that do not get cracked are pure multiplayer or those that no one gives a shit about. For instance most recently Shenmue III had Denuvo, was cracked in 3 days. The new Star Wars game was cracked in I think 4. Popular games get cracked always. RDR2 will almost certainly be cracked and most likely very soon. Borderlands 3 was cracked, Code Vein, Heavy Rain, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Total War: Three Kingsoms, Metro Exodus, Moons of Madness, Madden, DMC 5, Resident Evil 2 Remake, ect... These are all games that came out very recently with the most up-to-date versions of Denuvo. Most cracked within a week or two of release, the longest one took was Heavy Rain, which took 5 months, but was also low priority because it's a re-release.

 

[Zombra]

Salvo Lhynn RegionalHobo Aside from the overall mediocrity, is there any evidence of the "meta" stuff we were led to expect? In that Greg Costikyan post ... which ... Greg Costikyan's Facebook page no longer exists ... uhh ...

 

[CyberModuled]

https://crackwatch.com/game/anno-1800/comments?comment=XhRXBz3JKatH2h8c4 235 days now maybe it will be someday . But it's enough for anyone who really wants the game , and has the money, to give up and pay. Most sales are in the first month.

I think they just haven't because most people don't give a shit about Anno 1800 to actually do it. Cracking groups at the end of the day have their priorities along with times they aren't active (usually during the Summer) since they do have actual lives, they don't crack games as a living. Also I haven't looked it up, but considering how much Ubi has been trying to pull the "online only" shit again with stuff like Division 2 and Ghost Recon Breakpoint, I wouldn't be surprised if the same applied to 1800.

As for RDR2, it's likely very much in a "Borderlands 3" situation where the only reason why crack groups aren't going out of their way to crack it is due to the shoddy port itself since it doesn't have Denuvo.

For instance most recently Shenmue III had Denuvo

Nah, it didn't (in fact, it got cracked day one). Everything else is pretty much on point as you said though.

 

[Lhynn]

Salvo Lhynn RegionalHobo Aside from the overall mediocrity, is there any evidence of the "meta" stuff we were led to expect? In that Greg Costikyan post ... which ... Greg Costikyan's Facebook page no longer exists ... uhh ...

Well, in the first mission you have to hack to progress, as i said earlier. And the dude will tell on you at the end of the mission, pretty much like he hinted. So i started the game again, and this time the dude had a freak accident in the middle of a fight. Because of that unfortunate accident he could not voice his very mistaken opinion.

On the second mission you have more people to chose from, including the R2 version of the dude that had the freak accident on the last one, because he is a hacker, of course i picked him ((Could be a she, portraits are shit)), considering the fact that if he spoke up again a freak accident could happen. I also chose a loyalist, because they have good talky skills and second mission seems to be an investigation. Sadly i stepped on an orange area without meaning to, so he left the team to tell on me, now im looking for him to keep him from having a freak accident, these things tend to happen often as you probably know.

Other than that, im not sure what you mean by meta stuff.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/12/11/paranoia-happiness-is-mandatory-review/

Wot I Think - Paranoia: Happiness Is Mandatory

A grimly cheerful dystopia is one of the most popular game settings there is, beaten only by densely populated desert wastelands. (This is why grimly cheerful dystopias in densely populated desert wastelands are a sub-genre all on their own.) It’s not hard to see the appeal for developers: it’s loads of fun to write, it allows for levity in an otherwise thoroughly grimdark scenario, and it lets you demonstrate your ability to do “satire” without doing anything so uncouth as to be actually political. But it’s a fine line to walk, isn’t it? For every Void Bastards turning outer space into your local job centre, there’s a Fallout making its cheesy parody of corporate mascots into a fully-fledged corporate mascot.

Paranoia: Happiness Is Mandatory is a CRPG based on a classic tabletop RPG. In the tabletop game, as in the video game, you play a clone assigned as a “Troubleshooter”, making a squad of four. Each has a mutation, and a secret political affiliation. The game is about completing the tasks given to you by Friend Computer, an all powerful AI that is simultaneously a deity and a line manager, while also trying to drop the other party members in it and avoid getting caught yourself. Any attempts at satire during this fall flat.



All the staples are here. There is a bureaucracy; it is incompetent. People live in a colour-coded class hierarchy where those on the level directly above you are snobs and the ones directly below you are scum. Mental health medication is a form of government subjugation. Posters feature smiling, overall-wearing mascots spouting vaguely sinister sounding slogans. Paranoia has everything but the dystopian kitchen sink. But the problem is that despite all this, the jokes aren’t really at the expense of anything – unless it’s Friend Computer, but I don’t think “sinister AI is being sinister” really sticks repeated landings.

Even where the game gets onto more solid ground, with LARP-themed side missions and subplots involving the in-universe World Of Troubleshooters video game, the jokes feel oddly at one remove, as if a prime-time sitcom or one of the lesser CSIs decided to do a gamer episode.



None of this is particularly damning on its own. Plenty of video games have ridden to greatness on a sleigh made of borrowed furniture, and Skyrim was a fantastic game despite having very little to say about the problems of feudalism. But the systems at its heart, the combat and the roleplaying, don’t save Paranoia either. I couldn’t find a lot of depth. It was mostly mouse clicks, in fact.

During missions, mostly a series of fetch quests, you control the squad and click-to-move them around levels (a particularly long journey will often be a case of waiting for the party to slowly walk where you’ve indicated). If there’s a door you need to go through, you know you will have to speak to three people to get it open, via limited dialogue trees that mostly amount to pressing 1 over and over again to get the next line, which does at least give the left mouse button a rest.

Spoiler

The last of these three people will need you to do a favour which probably involves fighting some robots. Combat is, despite the range of weapons and mutant powers available, also usually a question of frantically clicking at everything. Rather than using any actual tactics, you hope against hope that the robots (or sometimes human traitors) die before your party does.

Special mention must be made of the hacking minigame. I’ve completed a lot of arbitrary tasks to open doors in my time: the classic electronic maze, the less common word matching, and even those annoying sliding block puzzles you usually only see in dentist’s waiting rooms. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Paranoia features the worst hacking minigame I’ve encountered. Letters steadily fall, Guitar Hero style, down the screen. You have a few seconds to click the correct ones, but you have to click them at the moment the hit the bottom of the screen. If you fail – which is likely – you can’t attempt it again without enough hacking nanobots, and if you need to make more you need to go hunting for scrap to make them. It is an unfulfilling and frustrating loop.



Paranoia does have some good ideas. Your character has a Treason Meter which tracks how loyal Friend Computer thinks they are. It goes up whenever you go somewhere you shouldn’t, break anything, or answer a question with anything less than enthusiasm. It’s kept ticking over even if you’re trying to be a goody two shoes, because most missions will require you to commit some kind of treason, whether that be hacking a door, or going into a crime scene you’ve been asked to investigate without the proper clearance.

Each mission is capped with a Prisoner’s Dilemma style scenario, where you’re invited to snitch on your fellow party members’ treasons before they get a chance to snitch on yours. It’s a nice idea, but I never never actually felt the weight of snitching up a team mate to have them vaporised, or the, well, paranoia of wondering if someone was going to grass on me.



The problem, I think, is that while successfully adapted pen and paper games like Dungeons & Dragons are very rules and lore heavy, the tabletop version of Paranoia relies more heavily on multiple players engaging in creativity and improvisation. I know of a player group who all spent an hour of their tabletop session unable to leave an unlocked room. A high-ranking executive took them there, painted the door handle of the exit yellow, and left. As none of the player characters had Yellow Authorisation, they happily spent ages figuring out silly possible solutions for escape without touching the doorknob.

Paranoia is geared towards this kind of playful arguments and collaborative storytelling more than it is simulation. You can’t easily replicate scenarios like the above in a video game, so to port the setting into a standard computer RPG requires… more. I do wish Paranoia: Happiness Is Mandatory had been a bit more daring in the attempt.

 

[Roguey]

tl;dr "Where's the politics???????????????"

 

[Trashos]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/12/11/paranoia-happiness-is-mandatory-review/

I read this, as well as the author's other review on the site. Dude can write well, but I am sorry to say that he is no gamer.

 

[Nutria]

I can't think of anything more pathetic than someone who writes game reviews in 2019 designed to appeal to Leonid Brezhnev.

 

[Alphons]

"Skyrim was a fantastic game despite having very little to say about problems of feudalism"

I didn't learn a lot about pros and cons of Paranoia from that review, but I finally understand why I just couldn't enjoy Skyrim.

 

[Theldaran]

In short, it's all about your privilege (not mine, obviously).

 

[Skdursh]

Nah, it didn't (in fact, it got cracked day one). Everything else is pretty much on point as you said though.

Ah, so it doesn't, my mistake. I guess they removed it prior to release due to the public outcry or maybe I'm just losing it, but I could have sworn that at one point they announced that the game would have Denuvo. Regardless, my point still stands.

 

[Theldaran]

Well, correct me if you will, but the original Paranoia, which should have been mid-80s, DID criticise communism when it was still a thing, didn't it?

Fast-forward 30+ years later, and you have all mention of bad communism removed, resulting in an unpalatable product with no meaningful commentary. Maybe even Mizhena is better than this?? Yes, it's propaganda, but at least it fulfills some people... what does this Paranoia game accomplish?

So it seems like we can't talk bad about communism anymore... in the Cold War we did! Since everything about SOVIET RUSSIA was oh top secret, we always wondered if the grass was greener on the other side -like Soviet people did themselves too, obviously. Now we know the truth, but it seems there are quite many people trying to erase it, doesn't it?

In short, this looks like a game with a thin varnish of Paranoia the pen and paper game, but completely missing the point and the historical framework of that game.

 

[Tweed]

Is it any wonder then how Disco Elysium just walked away with four awards? Enjoy your gaming while you still can, soon we'll all be slaving away on collectivized farms while we die of starvation.