2019/11/6: 3DO: Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

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VideoGameCritic
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2019/11/6: 3DO: Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

Postby VideoGameCritic » November 6th, 2019, 7:23 pm

Let's hear your thoughts on my latest 3DO review.

Buttermancan
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Re: 2019/11/6: 3DO: Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

Postby Buttermancan » November 7th, 2019, 7:28 am

Great review. I appreciate that you highlighted the game's positives - potentially the way the human race evolves with regards to downloading human consciousness etc! It has themes that could be interesting to many but perhaps not executed in a way that makes the game fun! Still..... now I want to check the title out!!!

Verm3
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Re: 2019/11/6: 3DO: Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

Postby Verm3 » November 7th, 2019, 12:03 pm

The review is great, but the final score seems a bit low based on it.

Yes, it's one of those complaining about the review posts :p

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Matchstick
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Re: 2019/11/6: 3DO: Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

Postby Matchstick » November 7th, 2019, 4:19 pm

I love this review! Absolutely one of my favorites in recent memory, and not just because I kinda / sorta hyped this game up on the boards a few months back. I feel like the text really covers all the bases and makes good mention of what the game has to offer. I don't even mind the relatively low score, as I feel like this is the kind of game that can be enjoyed for what it is, in spite of its shortcomings.

Not sure if it was intentional or not, but the Blade Runner super-nerd inside of me is positively giddy that a review for a game calling itself "A Cyberpunk Thriller" was posted in November 2019. Nice touch, Critic.

I remember trying this one out a few times when I was younger, and while I have a hard time remembering specific moments from the game, the environments and world the developers created really stuck with me. It's certainly a game with a great sense of style and digital stage-dressing. Nice to see some of its more ahead-of-their-time aspects of the game world directly addressed in the review, as well. While the graphics and gameplay might be a bit dated, for a game that's now over 25 years old, it seemed to really nail down some of the then-futuristic nuances of the in-game world.

My favorite moments from the review:

"You travel to Hell... but it looks suspiciously like Earth!" Ya don't say...

"Oddball games like Hell are the reason we play the 3DO." Man, you can say that again. Well, the oddball games along with the OG Need For Speed and Road Rash. For me, at least. If any game console represents a "time capsule" of the era in which it was created, for my money, it's the 3DO. And it's not even close.

Dammit, Critic, you've already got me looking on eBay for a cheap junker console - and right around the time of pre-holiday pricing hikes! So be it. I'd love to have one of these suckers again. Maybe I can convince the wife it's an "us" present if I really play my cards right. Really, reaaaaaaaaally right.

goldenband
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Re: 2019/11/6: 3DO: Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

Postby goldenband » November 7th, 2019, 5:00 pm

This review makes me excited to play the game. :) Only played it for 15-20 minutes once with my wife, who will often join me for graphic adventures and the like.

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Stalvern
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Re: 2019/11/6: 3DO: Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

Postby Stalvern » November 7th, 2019, 6:19 pm

Matchstick wrote:Not sure if it was intentional or not, but the Blade Runner super-nerd inside of me is positively giddy that a review for a game calling itself "A Cyberpunk Thriller" was posted in November 2019. Nice touch, Critic.

As a Blade Runner super-nerd myself, I get annoyed whenever people call it cyberpunk. Cyberpunk copied the smoggy visuals, but there's nothing "cyber" about the movie. Deckard is introduced reading the newspaper!

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Matchstick
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Re: 2019/11/6: 3DO: Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

Postby Matchstick » November 8th, 2019, 5:42 pm

Hey, goldenband, your wife likes adventure games, too? That's great! Mine never cared much for watching me play Maniac Mansion or the Myst series over the years, but she did get a kick out of Shadowgate and Deja Vu. It was Grim Fandango, though, that really pushed her "over the edge." She loved it, and we had a blast playing through it together a few years ago. Since then, we've also taken on the newer Sam & Max games as well as Full Throttle, and I feel like Grim is due for another playthrough soon, too. They're not the only type of game we play together, but they're probably the genre we have the most fun with.

Not sure if she'd go for Hell, though the game is sort of my key argument in describing a 3DO console purchase as a purchase "for us." Heh, we'll see how that one goes.

Stalvern, you make a good point. "They don't advertise for killers in the newspaper..." Funny how BR is considered one of the main Cyberpunk influences, if not "the" influence, but is missing some of the key features of the genre. No Matrix, no obvious cyber enhancements for us "little people," etc. One of those things where I guess you just have to kind of let people have it their way, even if you don't agree with it. I feel a similar way when people try to label the Metroid Prime games as First Person Shooters - they're adventure games, dammit!! Albeit in first-person, with some shooting involved...

ThePixelatedGenocide
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Re: 2019/11/6: 3DO: Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

Postby ThePixelatedGenocide » November 10th, 2019, 5:04 pm

Stalvern wrote:As a Blade Runner super-nerd myself, I get annoyed whenever people call it cyberpunk. Cyberpunk copied the smoggy visuals, but there's nothing "cyber" about the movie. Deckard is introduced reading the newspaper!


I'd count it. "Cyber-" is more than just cyborg enhancement and the internet.

cybernetics

n.
The theoretical study of communication and control processes in biological, mechanical, and electronic systems, especially the comparison of these processes in biological and artificial systems.


Blade Runner is obsessed with the topic.

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Stalvern
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Re: 2019/11/6: 3DO: Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

Postby Stalvern » November 10th, 2019, 9:59 pm

ThePixelatedGenocide wrote:I'd count it. "Cyber-" is more than just cyborg enhancement and the internet.

That standard would include most science fiction and a lot more. If Blade Runner is cyberpunk because it involves "communication and control processes", why wouldn't Star Wars be cyberpunk? Heck, why not Schindler's List? Cybernetics as a broad discipline has little to do with the cyberpunk subgenre's appropriation of the prefix from the context of computer networking, which is cyberpunk's primary focus. It's nowhere in Blade Runner.

Edit: If you're going to quote a dictionary definition of cybernetics, why not see what the OED has to say about cyberpunk itself?

Image

ThePixelatedGenocide
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Re: 2019/11/6: 3DO: Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller

Postby ThePixelatedGenocide » November 11th, 2019, 1:05 pm

That's a fair point, but isn't computer technology what makes those androids possible? And you can't get the clear multimedia experience of those cities without some computers behind the scenes.

Sure, Blade Runner failed to anticipate how radically computers would change our lives, but everything else is there in spades. The dark contrast between state of the art high tech and the lives of those who fall through the cracks. The powerful preying on the vulnerable, through their own pawns. The questions of what it means to be human, in a time where it becomes increasingly easy to program an accurate simulation of that humanity.

And a cautionary tale about how easy it is to program actual humanity itself.

To classify it as anything besides cyberpunk, would be like claiming every historical novel with elements that further research later discredited instantly becomes another genre entirely.


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