Game News Othercide Released

[Infinitron]

Tags: Focus Home Interactive; Lightbulb Crew; Othercide

Othercide, the surreal horror-themed tactical RPG from French studio Lightbulb Crew, is out tonight thanks to an unusual midnight release schedule. Over the past month, Focus Home Interactive have released a whole bunch of trailers, dev diaries and community videos to promote the game. The best one is the gameplay overview trailer from two weeks ago, which offers a solid introduction to the game's unique combat and character development features, including its focus on manipulating the turn queue to set up powerful combos.

​

Othercide's review scores vary but are generally on the positive side, including an eye-popping 9/10 from IGN who describe it as the best turn-based tactics game of the year so far. Here's a list of all the launch day reviews I was able to find:

DualShockers 6/10
GameSpew 5/10
GameWatcher 6/10
GamingTrend 90/100
Hardcore Gamer 4.5/5
IGN 9/10
Noisy Pixel 8.5/10
PC Invasion 7/10
PlayStation LifeStyle 8.5/10
PlayStation Universe 8.5/10
Push Square 8/10
Windows Central 4/5
​

Othercide is available on Steam now for $35. It seems pretty cool and likely to be overlooked. I'd say give it a try if you're a fan of tactical RPGs with unique takes on combat, or if you're just too impatient to wait for August's bigger releases.

 

[Drowed]

This came completely out of nowhere. I don't remember seeing anything about it even here on Codex. Too bad that for its price, they made an almost direct conversion of the value from USD to the local currency here, the value is absurd for an indie game. Well, 75% off it is, then.

 

[entr0py]

Looks really interesting and I like the aesthetics very much too, will certainly try it out!

 

[mediocrepoet]

including an eye-popping 9/10 from IGN

Yeah, that's crazy. Since when has IGN started giving out high scores?

 

[Whisper]

How can be _same_ game rated as 5/10 and 90/100?

Somone is lying. Same game cant be both, at same time, 5/10 and 90/100.

 

[Metro]

Just because something is turn-based doesn't mean it's good.

 

[CRD]

I played the beta for a few, and the game is just mediocre, not even close to the 9 of ign

simplistic combat without exciting abilities at all, and limited classes, just 3 of them
constantly repeated maps
confusing ui
easy but with forced grinding

were the most blatant problems.

This game will try to sell more based on the looks than of the gameplay quality. There are dozens of games that I would recommend to anyone before this. But that said, is not a disaster either, if you like the eye candy and don't ask for a very depth game, may be for you.

just a meh

 

[Drowed]

How can be _same_ game rated as 5/10 and 90/100?

It is not as if there is a universal standard of analysis, games that for Codex are a 9/10 are classified as 6/10 elsewhere. I mean, Underrail received at least three 6/10 ratings, but for Codex is the 16th best CRPG ever released. It is less a question of who is lying and more a question of you deciding who you will trust, or who is competent enough to do that analysis.

 

[Nortar]

This came completely out of nowhere. I don't remember seeing anything about it even here on Codex.

There's a discussion thread here.

 

[cvv]

simplistic combat without exciting abilities at all, and limited classes
repeated maps
confusing ui
super easy

Just like Iratus then.

Was initially ignoring the game in Steam since the art style is a bit too close to anime for my tastes but then I noticed it's actually a TB tactic game and got exited. Sadly it does seem it's more style than substance, that 9/10 IGN score is a warning sign.

 

[TheGameSquid]

I had this one on my radar, hoping that it would at the very least be a decent or moderately entertaining game.

 

[Thac0]

This is one of those games I will keep on my wishlist until it drops below 50% discount. Than, in its properly patched state, I will enjoy it. Looks cool tho, nice artstyle and all.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

It looks visually like the dozen of other games, sometimes good ones. No style of its own. This feels ridiculous, every detail, taken from Dark Souls to The Void, from Nier to Silent Hill, everything I see in that trailer is a postmodern quotation from somewhere. Ehm. Okay.

 

[Tyranicon]

My only gripe from the limited information I've seen so far is the limited party/squad size. Does it go beyond three characters or are we stuck with that the entire game?

 

[Whisper]

It is not as if there is a universal standard of analysis, games that for Codex are a 9/10 are classified as 6/10 elsewhere. I mean, Underrail received at least three 6/10 ratings, but for Codex is the 16th best CRPG ever released. It is less a question of who is lying and more a question of you deciding who you will trust, or who is competent enough to do that analysis.

But shouldnt there be universal truth?
You cant point at red apple and say that is green stone?

 

[Drowed]

But shouldnt there be universal truth?
You cant point at red apple and say that is green stone?

Are we really gonna get into that kind of analysis here? We can go straight to "what's an RPG, discuss" if that's the case.

Yes, the apple is objectively red, the banana is objectively yellow, but when you try to justify how tasty they are on an arbitrary scale or which is better of the two fruits, it is a futile debate. It is easier for you to find people who have a taste similar to yours and use them as a parameter to inform yourself. Not even in places where there's supposed to be a hivemind (like Codex) we have a consensus about what is or isn't good design and what are the best games. Even worse is trying to compare the ratings of random sites on the internet. The same single "truth" can be experienced in different ways, in the same way that two people can look at the same object and describe it completely differently, none of which being exactly a lie but also none being a complete representation of the truth.

 

[thesheeep]

But shouldnt there be universal truth?
You cant point at red apple and say that is green stone?

Are we really gonna get into that kind of analysis here? We can go straight to "what's an RPG, discuss" if that's the case.

Yes, the apple is objectively red, the banana is objectively yellow, but when you try to justify how tasty they are on an arbitrary scale or which is better of the two fruits, it is a futile debate. It is easier for you to find people who have a taste similar to yours and use them as a parameter to inform yourself. Not even in places where there's supposed to be a hivemind (like Codex) we have a consensus about what is or isn't good design and what are the best games. Even worse is trying to compare the ratings of random sites on the internet. The same single "truth" can be experienced in different ways, in the same way that two people can look at the same object and describe it completely differently, none of which being exactly a lie but also none being a complete representation of the truth.

The problem with these ratings is also that they stem from two very different approaches.

One is trying to go for an objective approach, judging the game's individual parts and coming up with a combined score. This is the most reasonable approach, as there is a lot about games that can be objectively judged and rated. But it also requires the reviewer to be very knowledgeable about the topic. As close as you can get to a universal truth in this matter.
The other approach is measuring one's own fun with the game. Did the author have lots of fun? 10/10! This approach is of course entirely worthless for trying to find out how good a game really is. It only has any use if you know your own biases in relation to the reviewer. This is what mostly happens nowadays as games "journalism" continues to decline and actually knowing what you review has become entirely optional, it's basically a more elaborate user "review".

Both kinds of reviews are thrown together, of course, which makes these combined scores utterly useless.
And you are also not really able to tell what kind of review a review is before reading it, or knowing the source well, so only glancing at the score doesn't really help, either.

In the end, the best score is probably the user score (if you can filter out review bombing, which, yes, is an actual problem in some cases) - if most actual players liked a game, it probably succeeded at what it wanted to achieve and is therefore likely not a crappy game.

 

[JarlFrank]

simplistic combat without exciting abilities at all, and limited classes
repeated maps
confusing ui
super easy

Just like Iratus then.

Was initially ignoring the game in Steam since the art style is a bit too close to anime for my tastes but then I noticed it's actually a TB tactic game and got exited. Sadly it does seem it's more style than substance, that 9/10 IGN score is a warning sign.

Try Troubleshooter instead.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

simplistic combat without exciting abilities at all, and limited classes
repeated maps
confusing ui
super easy

Just like Iratus then.

Was initially ignoring the game in Steam since the art style is a bit too close to anime for my tastes but then I noticed it's actually a TB tactic game and got exited. Sadly it does seem it's more style than substance, that 9/10 IGN score is a warning sign.

Try Troubleshooter instead.

Is it so good i could overlook that weaboo shit?

 

[JarlFrank]

simplistic combat without exciting abilities at all, and limited classes
repeated maps
confusing ui
super easy

Just like Iratus then.

Was initially ignoring the game in Steam since the art style is a bit too close to anime for my tastes but then I noticed it's actually a TB tactic game and got exited. Sadly it does seem it's more style than substance, that 9/10 IGN score is a warning sign.

Try Troubleshooter instead.

Is it so good i could overlook that weaboo shit?

Yes. Luckmann Jasede if you need a second opinion.

 

[Infinitron]

including an eye-popping 9/10 from IGN

Yeah, that's crazy. Since when has IGN started giving out high scores?

For an unknown game from a no-name dev? Unironically yes.

 

[Nortar]

Try Troubleshooter instead.

Is it so good i could overlook that weaboo shit?

Yeah, Troubleshooter is great. It's a wonder why it's so low profile.
And if you have to choose between Troubleshooter and Othercide, hell between Troubleshooter and any other TB tactics released last couple of years - go for Troubleshooter.

 

[cvv]

This approach is of course entirely worthless for trying to find out how good a game really is. It only has any use if you know your own biases in relation to the reviewer.

Your knowing the bias of your favourite reviewer won't help you. 3/10 cases he will love something you'll hate and vice versa.

In reality there's no such thing as "good" games or "bad" games. It's all subjective.

Is Fallout 76 a bad game? Heaps of people spend most of their gaming time on Fallout 76. That means for those people Fallout 76 is the greatest game they could be playing right now. Same for "good" games. I wouldn't touch TLoU2 unless someone paid me 10k dollars or more, despite 10/10s across the board. Everybody is jizzing over Ghost of Tsushima. I think it has THE most boring open world in its genre.

Reviews are pointless. User rating are useless. Game awards are retarded. There are no good or bad games, only games YOU like or don't like to play.

 

[cvv]

Try Troubleshooter instead.

Me:

--> :steamsearch: -->

-->

 

[thesheeep]

In reality there's no such thing as "good" games or "bad" games. It's all subjective.

No, it isn't.
Games can very much be objectively good and objectively bad.
tl;dr: Games that achieve what they set out to do (design-wise) are good, those that fail to achieve that are bad.
Obviously, anything in-between is possible.

Rating the art aspect of something isn't really possible, but games are not purely art.
There are dozens, maybe hundreds of things about games that are purely craft-based and can be rated just like any other product from a chair to a hairdryer.

Of course, that won't tell you if you'd like the game, but it gives you a good estimate of how likely it is that you'll like it.
Enjoyment is indeed fully subjective.