Forgive Me Father - Cthulhu-hunting boomer shooter

[Lyric Suite]

Fans of boomer shooters right now:

 

[fork]

Imagine adopting the term 'boomer shooter', ironically or unironically.

 

[Riskbreaker]

Do we actually know with whom the term originated? Who popularized it? There is no specific entry for "boomer shooter" at Know Your Meme.

 

[fork]

I just know it's retarded and doesn't describe in my mind what it's supposed to.

 

[mondblut]

The phrase "boomer shooter" doesn't refer to baby boomers, but rather the "30 year old boomer" meme.

A forced meme based on a very forced meme doesn't actually make any goddam sense.

Anyone who likes something else than <current_month's> ongoing fad is "boomer" to these people.

 

[toughasnails]

Well it just follows from how quickly the trends come and go on social networks... And then imagine someone who grew up with them, and then someone even younger who is now constantly on them thanks to smartphones and p much never knew the world without them. It's safe to say that these people think differently than we do. Neuroplasticity is very much a thing, I remember reading The Shallows by Nicholas Carr years ago when that book was the latest hotness and he cited some interesting studies on the functioning of brans of people who are intensively online compared to those who aren't and so on. It was pretty striking, and this was before smartphones became present everywhere.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Do we actually know with whom the term originated? Who popularized it? There is no specific entry for "boomer shooter" at Know Your Meme.

I'm sure it just took off because of the "quake, yep, that was a good game sips" boomer meme.

 

[Atlantico]

I'm sure it just took off because of the "quake, yep, that was a good game sips" boomer meme.

Forced meme.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Atlantico]

Strangely unappealing graphics, janky animation and overall cheap looking. Hard pass.

 

[Strig]

This is spectacularly botched. The mignolaesque art is actually really good but the animations are very amateurish and unappealing. On top of that they couldn't commit to the style and overloaded the game with truly atrocious particle effects and retina burning bloom like we're still in 2006 or some other such nonsense. For a fair comparison just look at what Fallen Aces achieved with a similar idea or at Void Bastards, a little further removed but still in the same vein. The level design seems to be, again, absolutely terrible with urban areas especially looking like a maze of oversizeed bloomy yellow windows and not much else. The already digested cherry on this turd cake is all this "headshot" Adam West Batman PEW BANG nonsense. It could fit the comic book aesthetic but only if you think there's only one type of comic books. As much as they don't understand Lovecraft I think they don't understand comic books even more. Or maybe they do and just don't care about anything more than cobbling together an incoherent shooter where every element struggles against the other.

 

[Strig]

Oh yeah, I forgot about this absolute golden nugget of visual storytelling. The key is literally on the fucking door, you bloody pillock, what are you even doing?

 

[Infinitron]

https://af.gog.com/game/forgive_me_father?as=1649904300

 

[Drop Duck]

This game rocks. There's one enemy that carries an extra head so when you headshot them and pop their original head like a balloon they just put on the one they had with them as an extra spare. The only problem with the game is that when you buy it you give money to China since 1C is Chinese now.

 

[Viata]

The only problem with the game is that when you buy it

So no problem at all here.

 

[Ravielsk]

Looks like crap.

Funny, the decent lovecraftian games are usually games not explicitly advertised as lovecraftian.

Because the core of the "lovecraftian experience" is the unknown, the mystery and when you announce that you are doing something "lovecraftian" then automatically you cannot have anything unknown or mysterious because you already gave out 75% of whatever could have been the mystery.

Its an incredibly common problem these days for authors to not understand what defines a genre or sub-genre beyond the most surface level ideas. Lovecraft is slimy monsters and nothing else, fantasy is elves and dwarves and nothing else, sci-fi is pew-pew lasers and nothing else... because well I suspect far too many people are allowed to pass film school without being told they are shit and need to improve.

 

[Zlaja]

Here's a 30 min video that contains footage from many of the game's levels. Spoiler central.

 

[gerey]

I havent seen a Lovecraftian game since Clive Barkers Undying in 2001. Which has nothing to do with Lovecraft funnily enough.

Sunless Seas/Skies is Lovecraftian in a somewhat whimsical way, though the games do often veer off into actual horror. Bloodborne is also Lovecraftian. There's Darkwood and World of Horror that have their own unique spin on things (Japanese and IRL Polish country life respectively).

Then you have a bunch of "Lovecraftian" games like Sunken City and Call of Cthulhu (the new one) that beat you over the head with the knowledge that this is indeed a game drawing from H.P. Lovecraft's writings, and thoroughly fuck it up.

I think the issue is less to do with actively using Lovecraft's own characters and critters, and more the fact that once they go down that route the developers feel the need to cram in as much of Lovecraft's lore as possible - Dark Corners of the Earth was particularly egregious in this regard, featuring Deep Ones, Dagon, Shoggoths et al - or blow their entire load too early like Sunken City where you're fighting eldritch abominations from the early game without any character in the game having much of an issue with it.

Throwing everything Lovecraft created at the player ruins the horror of the experience.

Because the core of the "lovecraftian experience" is the unknown, the mystery and when you announce that you are doing something "lovecraftian" then automatically you cannot have anything unknown or mysterious because you already gave out 75% of whatever could have been the mystery.

The problem is that "Lovecraftian" to retarded leftist writers doesn't mean "cosmic horror" but namedropping Cthulhu or Dagon and calling it a day. Now compare it to actually successful Lovecraftian games ala Undying or Bloodborne that, while adhering to the overarching concepts of Lovecraft's writing, also feature their own original content instead of recycling ideas from Lovecraft's own stories.

Also, a lot of writers seem unable to wrap their heads around why Cthulhu is scary. They just go the lazy way and pretend godzilla with tentacles is gonna scare people, while good writers like Charles Stross (even though he's a leftist cocksucker that hasn't written anything good in ages) ratchet up the dread by focusing on what the awakening of Cthulhu would mean for humanity. A Colder War is an especially great example of taking now thoroughly overused Lovecraft critters and making them scary again, and all this through an attempt to quantify what they are.

 

[Riskbreaker]

Aye, Darkwood is perfectly Lovecraftian theme-wise without ever directly refering to any of his creations. Easily one of the most striking evocations of something absolutely, terrifyingly Other that you'll find in a video game.

Spoiler

I'd actually say it does show an influence of one specific text of his, The Colour Out of Space, but in a way that shows that the writers actually got it for once. The depiction of truly alien entity/force, the pollution/perversion of nature, the loss of humanity.

Anyway, as to the problem with the current politically-charged takes on Lovecraft: you aren't allowed to fear the Other. The Other cannot be the source of horror in a horror story, rather the horror must come from the reaction against it which is always seen as conservative, parochial, paranoid, fascist. That is how you get The Shape of Water or that novel where the Deep Ones of Innsmouth are depicted as peaceful wiccans persecuted by teh Fascist Hoomans.
Or you can be some edgy posthumanist variety of progressive and have the Other as indeed monstrous for all intents and purposes and still depict becoming the Other, the loss ("transcendence") of one's humanity as "good". Them orgiastic blood-thirsty cultists did nothing wrong! I've read fiction that is like that.

 

[lightbane]

Another issue, minor at that but still, is that the game ends badly, because wokes do not remember that HP protagonists DO win from time to time. Instead,

Spoiler

the whole game is a whole waste of time because you went crazy and killed everyone in a frenzy hurr durr.

that novel where the Deep Ones of Innsmouth are depicted as peaceful wiccans persecuted by teh Fascist Hoomans.

What.

Or you can be some edgy posthumanist variety of progressive and have the Other as indeed monstrous for all intents and purposes and still depict becoming the Other, the loss ("transcendence") of one's humanity as "good". Them orgiastic blood-thirsty cultists did nothing wrong! I've read fiction that is like that.

WHAT.

What kind of novels you read? And names, to avoid them?

 

[Ravielsk]

the whole game is a whole waste of time because you went crazy and killed everyone in a frenzy hurr durr.

Great so not only does it look like ass its also written like ass(and not the nice 2B one).

 

[Hobknobling]

Here's a 30 min video that contains footage from many of the game's levels. Spoiler central.

Spoiler

The jank animations hurt my eyes and the jank sound design hurt my ears.

 

[Riskbreaker]

lightbane
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29939089-winter-tide
Do read some of those reviews, at least. You'll get the picture.

 

[ghostdog]

Goodreads is fucking cancer tho, full of sjw hipsters that wouldn't know what literature is even if it slammed them on their face.