Review: The Path (PC)

The Path
Publisher: Tale of Tales
Developer: Tale of Tales
Genre: Adventure
Release Date 03/18/2009


I’ve been waiting for The Path for about a year now. This game promised to return the tale of Little Red Riding Hood to its darker roots. From a brief look at the game’s website one can see that as there are six girls to play with (Sadly that double entendre is far more apropos that you might suspect.). This means the game is not based of the Grimm or Perrault version of the tale, but Der Wolf und die sieben Geißlein.

Charles Perrault was the first man to put the tale of Little Red Riding Hood to print. At the end of Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, Perrault explained, IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, the metaphor for the story:

From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, and it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition “… neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!

Okay. The moral is: Don’t talk to or trust strangers. Well, that’s not really the moral or metaphor in The Path.

I knew going into this that the development team, Tale of Tales, made some Avant-Garde artsy titles that really aren’t games per say. The Graveyard, for example, is a game where all you do is sit and wait to die. Although you might not. Compelling, no? Well, the weirdness of The Graveyard is nothing compared to the what awaits you in The Path. I’m going to warn you all now that instead of the original metaphor for LRRH, that The Path is nothing more than one giant metaphor for rape. Rape and murder. All you do in the game is walk around, get a girl raped, and then you take her bleeding battered form to Granny’s house where she gets murdered. Young children and sensitive folk should probably stop here. Hell, *I* should probably stop here, but I promised to review the game and review it I will.

What follows is my commentary on easily the worst game I have ever played. Yes. THE. WORST. This game made me long for Hoshigami and Wrestlemania XXI.

Let’s Review

1. Story

I should warn you there is no real plot to this game. The Path assumes you know enough about LRRH to already know the story and what you need to do, so you do not recieve any instructions. You just have to play the game. You have two options from here. The first is that you can walk the path to Granny’s house and deliver a basket and spend time with her, to which the game scolds you for failing at the important task of getting your character raped and killed. Then you have to play as her (or one of the other girls) until you get the job done right. Please note that walking to grandmother’s house takes about ten minutes of just pressing the arrow key and the shift button down so that your girl runs. God only knows how long it will take if you were to walk at the exceptionally slow speed the game otherwise moves at.

Then there is the “right” way to play the game. This involves going off the path into the woods and getting lost, while picking up flowers and objects that may or may not (depending on the girl you chose) unlock new rooms in granny’s house. All this means is you have a longer ending sequence by doing this, which you will come to reget.

Each girl has three specific locations they can visit within the forest. It will take a lot of time to find them. In one of these three locations the “wolf” will be waiting for you. I should point out that in only one of the six cases is there an actual wolf. The others are all sexual predators in one form or another that rape and beat the girl.

For example, one girl’s wolf is triggered by interacting with a rowboat. Here you get on the boat and row around. Then a cloud comes down from the sky, takes on a humanoid form and plays with the girl, whisking her into the sky with a twirl and a flair of artsy farsty-ness.

Then the screen goes black and when it comes back on, the girl is lying in the rain, beaten and injured and obviously raped.

Another example is with the oldest of the girls. You find an amphitheatre in the forest along with a piano. If you sit down to play the piano, an elf comes up to you, flirts with you, and then you start playing the piano together. The curtain of the stage slowly starts to come down while you play and then it fades out.

Then the screen goes black and when it comes back on, the girl is lying in the rain, beaten and injured and obviously raped.

Each girl has a rape scene like this. I’m glad they don’t show the rape, but Jesus, I’ve written enough folklore and literary criticism papers in my life to get what’s going on here, and so have the dozen other people I’ve shown the rape metaphor scenes to without telling them what they were about to watch.

After the girl is raped, or “ravaged” as the game calls it so as to avoid controversy, you have to drag the girl to grandmother’s house. You can’t run – you can only walk, and even that is at a fraction of the normal ungodly slow pace the game played at. Once you get to the house the game is what the developers call a, “Rail shooter” but what is really you watching another ten minute walking scene through a house until you getting to the bedroom and then murdered. Remember those unlockable rooms I mentioned? Well, all they do is add more time and visuals to the already crazy long walking sequence. After the girl is dead, you get a success screen and now you get to play as one of the other girls.

Good god, this is awful. There is no character development, nor any plot, nor any real dialogue save for the rare sentence or three over a few select objects in the game. It’s just, “Wander around until the girl gets raped and then sit for a very long time pressing the up arrow key until she dies.”

I get the metaphor. I get the attempt at trying to go back to the roots of Little Red Riding Hood. However, ToT has missed what the original story was about, instead choosing to go even darker and giving us a game that anti-video game nuts out there will go even more ballistic over than GTA simply because they will take this as a rape simulator ala Rapealay. Sadly, the game is as boring and dull as it is potentially offensive. No redeeming qualities here at all for plot.

Story Rating: Worthless

2. Graphics

Funny story. My computer can play Left 4 Dead without the slightest hiccup. The Path? Not so much. It’s not that The Path is graphically intensive or takes like four gigs of RAM to play. It’s just the opposite. The game has the usual low level Adventure game requirements and the game looks like a very early PSX or Sega Saturn game, so it’s not killing my graphics card. Yet, I had to turn most of the graphical settings to medium or low in order to decrease the insane amount of lag in this game. At full blast there was a fifteen to sometimes THIRTY SECOND lag between a button press (such as escape to pull up the menu). Hell, I even thought the exceptionally slow movements of the girls was due to my computer being on the fritz or something dying. Sadly, no, this wasn’t the case.

The artistic style of the game is obviously inspired by American McGee’s Alice – if that game was done with both half the budget and talent. Character models are interesting and diverse, but they’re all six different shades of goth gal. Not that I mind that particularly, but it would have been nice to show a range of girls and character designs.

So besides suffering from lag, graphical slowdown, and graphics that would have been decent nearly a decade ago, what else is there? Well, background designs aren’t very good. In fact, it’s quite rubbish. Compare the visuals here to The Cemetery and you’ll notice a severe drop in graphical quality between the two projects. The graphics here are very dull, lacking a lot of detail and rather bland. Also please note that this is with the quality turned UP rather than at the minimum. You don’t really want my thoughts on the low end of the spectrum.

When you get close enough to an interactive object, a large transparent representation will appear on the screen. It will either be of that object, or a portrait of one of the other girls reminding you to go there with that choice rather than your current little girl. Sometimes though, the picture shows up way too soon. A good example of this is Grandmother’s house. In Safe Mode (meaning you haven’t been raped), the house shows up on your screen, with the transparent image taking up nearly all the screen even when you still have several minutes of walking ahead of you. Okay then.

So the graphics are a decade or so old in style and quality, the character designs are ripped from American McGee’s Alice, and there’s a crazy amount of slowdown. Just. Plain. Bad.

Graphics Rating: Bad

3. Sound

There’s no voice acting in the game. There’re just a few different musical tracks, some of which feature girls giggling, girls chanting in what appears to be the faux latin you find in B-horror movies, and some special music during the cut scenes of rape and/or death. None of the music is very good and to be honest, the tracks become irritating as hell when you are wandering through the woods, unable to find the third and final location your girl can go to which is also the one with the wolf and you really REALLY don’t feel like losing the two hours of walking you’ve just done.

The cracking voice of a bad singer when you select a girl, the background static that sounds like a New York Subway (even though you are in a remote forest), the poorly playing violins that sound like a string is going to break at any second. It’s all annoyingly bad to the point where you will mute the game by the time you play as your third girl, if not sooner. The saddest part is that the music comes from Jarboe, who non-goths still wouldn’t know even if I said, “She used to be in The Swans.” The funny thing is Jarboe really IS tone deaf. How would the developers NOT KNOW THIS?

Sound Rating: Bad

4. Control and Gameplay

This is one of the buggiest pieces of crap I have ever played. There are three controls schemes, or at least that is what the game tells us. Neither the Mouse nor 360 Controller schemes work for this game. Only the arrow key worked for controlling the girls, if you can even call it that.

The game moves amazingly slow at walking speed. This is literally the slowest game I have ever played. I have never played a game where walking is this slow. Running, which is the Up arrow and the Shift buttons used in conjunction, is ALMOST as fast as walking in a normal game. Part of the reason this game takes one to two hours per girl is because of how maddingly slow this is. You are literally spending your time just moving at a snail’s pace. It gets worse when you realize you can only walk in the three special locations per girl, and after being “ravaged” you move as one-tenth your normal walking speed, making even the most patient gamer go, “GET ON WITH IT!”

Another problem with running is that when you do so, the game shifts from a third person view, to a bird’s eye top down view, meaning that most of your running time is spent with your vision shrouded by trees and black blurs. You also can’t see collectable objects or locations from this position, making it near useless unless you memorize how far an object was away from you and playing guess and check to pick it up.

Object interaction is amazingly buggy. Supposedly you just stand near an object and you will interact with it. This works half the time. The other half your character just stands there while the game flashes the object wondering why you don’t do anything with it. These even happened to me with the wolf! I spent half an hour trying to get the ravage to happen, but the game just ignored even though I was standing right next to him. I took his hat. I drank three beers. I started a fire. NOTHING. This is so amazingly poorly done and bug ridden, you have to wonder how even the developers could stand to go through this thing with even a single lass.

There’s also the girl in white. Supposedly all you have to do is stand still near here and she will take you back to the path. This works even less than the item interaction. I would stand next to her with several girls and nothing. Then when nothing was around but forest, I quickly went to the bathroom and when I came back, this one time she actually had taken me back to the path. The one time I didn’t want it. Sigh. Even worse, with one of your characters, the girl in white turns out to be the wolf so when you try to get “ravaged,” she takes you back to the path. I can’t tell you how often I had to do that one.

If you hold down the shift button, you can see the items you collected, but nothing else with it. Every so often (100 in game meters) you’ll get a brief look of your trail, but these 100 meters would be several MILES in other games that clock walking (Like say Shadow Hearts), making it rare and useless.

Besides all of the aforementioned issues and bugs, there’s still more. You can get stuck between objects, and then never move again. The camera angles are fixed in certain locations at certain times, meaning you can suddenly disappear from the game and then never be seen again. The bottom line is this is about as unplayable a game as I have ever encountered.

Then there are the “awesome” rail shooter bits, where again, all you do is VERY SLOWLY move to your doom. The developers say this is to mimic you pushing an unwilling girl towards her grisly fate, which I guess is their justification for the game moving slower at this point than any other game I have ever encountered in my years of gaming. You can’t do anything except hit that up arrow key and even then, due to the utter lack of responsiveness in this game, you sit there wondering if you’re actually doing anything, if the game is just that slow, or if you have once again entered glitch city.

The Path is the most worthless gaming experience I have ever sat through. It is barely playable, and even then, that’s me trying to be somewhat kind to this. It is awful in every possible way a game can be awful.

Control and Gameplay Rating: Worthless

5. Replayability

If you truly have the masochistic desire and self loathing to sit through six chapters, each involving an hour to two of hitting arrow keys and then watching an artsy implied rape sequence for each girl followed by murder, then hey, you can get a seventh chapter or epilogue where you can play as a “hero.” Oh goody. To be honest, most gamers will give this up by the first girl, and only the most insane will make it to this “bonus content.”

However, I should point out that all of this torture is a single game. In a second game, you’ll find locations in the same spot, and everything will unfold in the exact same way, save for the order you use the girls. Even the biggest fan of this, of which such a thing is as likely to exists as mermaids or flying monkeys, would be hard pressed to admit there is any real replay value due to the game being a fairly linear excruciating mess.

There is some potential for replay, but due to the game being so god awful, it’s lost in the mess.

Replayability Rating: Bad

6. Balance

Between the bugs, the intolerable length, the lackluster and often unresponsive gameplay, and the fact that you are more a bystander watching the gaming equivalent of Andy Wharhol’s Dracula means that this game has little to no balance. There’s no actual playing of the game save for the rare bit of interaction, and even that doesn’t work half the time. Yes I know you want me to do something with the TV, but my girl is just standing there. Maybe if you were functioning properly and weren’t such a buggy rape factory, I would be able to do something faster than the speed of compost decaying.

As the game is flawed in every way possible. From being the slowest moving game ever, to two out of the three control schemes not functioning properly, this is yet another category where the game can only receive the lowest possible marks we give here. Stay the hell away from this. Hide your money and save your sanity.

Balance Rating: Worthless

7. Originality

Okay, it’s rather sad that I can think of multiple rape games available to consumers. However this is the only one where rape is done in an artsy Eastern-European sort of way. I guess that’s SOMETHING. Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel at least does the ghoul on hooker rape in a way that is obviously meant to be Police Academy funny. Take that for what you will.

I can thankfully think of other games where legends and folk tales are brought back to their original (or even slightly darker) stories. Best of all the dual Persona 2 games in this regard. I can also think of a myriad of better Adventure games that do these latter two things quite well. Prisoner of Ice is a good example.

The truth is, The Path wanted to be an artsy circling back to the original portents variant of the Little Red Riding Hood legend. However, it fails in this regard by missing the true moral of the story, and then it continues to fail in every way possible with lag, subpar graphics, a lack of any real plot and some of the slowest and most unresponsive gameplay in the history of this industry.

This is the only rape-based game I can think of that has made it to the states besides Rapealay and Psychotic and that’s a good thing. In The Path‘s defense, it does a lot of the rape metaphorically and it doesn’t show anything graphic. In Rapealay‘s defense, it’s actually a well made game even though the content should offend damn near everyone.

Basically The Path isn’t as original as Tale of Tales would have you believe. There’s a spark of originality, but all of the things in this game, including the rape sim aspects, have been done before and in far better ways.

Originality Rating: Mediocre

8. Addictiveness

I have never enjoyed myself less with a game. I have never wanted to stop playing a game more. ANY game that involves an hour of doing nothing but staring at a screen while watching a character walk, pick up flowers and then get raped followed by death is about as bad as a game can get. Really? Who would find this fun? Who would want to play more than a single girl’s story and witness their grisly demise? The game is just so slow, so buggy, and so inane, that there were times this thing made me want to quit writing about games completely. IT’S THAT BAD.

Again, I have never disliked my time with a game more. Even other things that I gave exceptionally low scores to, like Hellboy: Science of Evil, had SOME redeeming qualities. Not The Path.

Addictiveness Rating: Worthless

9. Appeal Factor

Okay, let’s play a game. Raise your hand if you want to play a game based on Little Red Riding Hood. Hey look at that – lots of hands are up. Okay. Who wants to play a DARK version of that story akin to the original tellings? Still lots of hands. Okay, who wants to play a game where there is massive lag between button pressing and the actual reaction from the game? Oh. Less hands. Who wants to play a game where the interactivity only works half the time. Even less hands. Who wants to play a game with all this and involves you pushing your main characters, some as young as seven or nine years old to be raped by creepy pedophiles and then you make them crawl to their last bastion of hope and solace only to have them be murdered in a place they would otherwise consider safe? Wow. Are there any hands left up? If so, I seriously suggest you getting psychological help. NOW.

There is nothing about this game that any sane person would enjoy. There is nothing fun or interesting. It’s just a massive pile of crap interspersed with the rape and killing of LITTLE GIRLS. How can anyone find that appealing?

Appeal Factor Rating: Worthless

10. Miscellaneous

What more can be said? I’ve already pointed out that the game is excruciatingly slow, that it is buggy as hell, that the controls barely work, that it’s ugly, that the music is awful, that the game will offend the vast majority of people that encounter it, and that it is easily the worst game I have ever played since I first picked up an Atari 2600 controller nearly three decades ago.

This is one of those video games to avoid at all costs. I’m sure I’ll get some apologist for why the game is so buggy or telling me that I didn’t get it and that it’s okay to play a game where the goal is to steer your protagonists into rape and death when these girls should be learning basic multiplication or thinking about getting their driver’s license. That I sucked at the game even though I’ve beaten it. In the end all those people are really saying is, “It’s okay to make a hideously flawed game that features rape as the climax of all six chapters if it’s done in an artsy manner.” No it’s not okay. It’s never okay. It’s shit like this that gets ignorant congressmen and senators to raise holy hell about a genre of entertainment they have never tried, much less know anything about. This is just ammunition for the ignorant and angry mobs. Thank god it’s such an independent game, that it will never raise any real fuss. Let’s all keep it as little known as we possibly we can.

Miscellaneous Rating: Worthless

The Scores
Story/Modes: Worthless
Graphics: Bad
Sound: Bad
Control and Gameplay: Worthless
Replayability: Bad
Balance: Worthless
Originality: Mediocre
Addictiveness: Worthless
Appeal Factor: Worthless
Miscellaneous: Worthless
FINAL SCORE: DREADFUL GAME

Short Attention Span Summary

A game that lacks any redeeming qualities whatsoever, The Path should not have been made. It’s buggy, unresponsive, ugly, amazingly dull ,and worst of all your goal is to get little girls between the ages of 7 and 19 raped and killed. Tale of Tales may think they have recaptured the original meaning of Little Red Riding Hood when Charles Perrault first put pen to paper, but they are so far off, the Frenchman would be disgusted and aghast to see what he has inspired. This is easily the worst game I have ever played and it saddens me to write the following sentence: “If you really want a rape sim, there are better games out there for you to experience.” The Path may put rape in an artsy metaphorical way, but any gamer that finds any sort of rape and murder of children as entertainment should be kept as far away from our collective fandom as possible lest Jack Thompson finds them before the police do.

UPDATE 3/23/2009, 8:13PM EST: Jarboe commented to me a few minutes ago that the conversation we had before the review went up never took place. As it was done over email, Jarboe says that the person I spoke to must have been a fake. In fact, the email I had the “rape and murder” conversation is ever so slightly different one from the email I just recieved from her. As such, there is a chance that the person I spoke to about the game that was claiming to be Jarboe was a magical internet fraudster. If this turns out to be true, then I need to apologize to Jarboe for hurting her feelings and let you, our readers, know that two of the comments in the thread below are erroneous. I’m going to do a little investigating and until I know for sure, I’m going to turn off comments until I know if it turns out I was tricked.

Update 3/23/2009 8:48PM EST Okay. It appears I’ve hurt the feelings of someone I thought was my friend, and to be honest, that’s not cool on my part. A review is about the product and not the people that made the game. The fact I hurt someone’s personal and not professional feelings with this review doesn’t sit well with me, so I do want to apologize to anyone who was hurt by my review in Tale of Tales. I still think the game is god awful, but please know I don’t think any of YOU that made the game are. Call this covering my bases.

So I would like to make it clear that the Jarboe that made this “Of course this is just a rape and murder game” was someone pretending to be her, most likely in an attempt to create more drama and negative attention for this game (Like MY REVIEW wasn’t enough) and that I hurt the real one’s feelings by making the “tone deaf” comment which was meant to be a joke. Sorry about that Jarboe. It was meant to be light hearted in an otherwise very critical review. None of this was meant to be mean towards you.


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75 responses to “Review: The Path (PC)”

  1. Lewis Avatar

    An enormously interesting take on the game, one that contrasts starkly with my own. A far cry from being sick or exploitive, I found there to be a certain poetic tastefulness to the proceedings. I also worry you’ve misrepresented it a bit: while a couple of the chapters definitely allude to rape and murder, others very obviously have nothing to do with it. Feels a little like you’ve picked up on an aspect you don’t like, then tried to extend it across as much of the game as possible.

    I disagree with you on largely everything you wrote, except for that the movement speed is pushing it a bit. That’s fine: horses for courses, and all that. But you didn’t like the way it looks?! Man!

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      Dude, considering I talked to the composer IRL and what her particular issues are and why she signed on for this game, it’s pretty safe to say that directly from the horse’s mouth this was “A rape and murder game. How did you not know that going into this Alex?”

      The fact you found poetic tastefulness to this worries me a great deal. Especially since the press packet given to us warns that each chapter has a highly mature sexual theme. If it had been say, adults…then maybe there would be a bit of “poetic tastefulness.” But seven year old girls? Dude, that’s not cool and some overly conservative or overly liberal american is going to find this game and decry it as smut and filth, giving gamers yet another black eye o’ doom. There’s no way around that.

  2. Lewis Avatar

    Oh, additionally:

    “Please note that walking to grandmother’s house takes about ten minutes of just pressing the arrow key and the shift button down so that your girl runs. God only knows how long it will take if you were to walk at the exceptionally slow speed the game otherwise moves at.”

    That’s quite simply a lie, though, isn’t it? It takes about a minute and a half to run it, about three to walk it.

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      Actually we timed it. It was myself and two friends. After two hours in the forest being unable to trigger the woodcutter wolf, we went back to the beginning and timed the walk. Nine minutes, 43 seconds. At three minutes in the house appeared and then it took another seven minutes for the fence to finally show up. Maybe this was due to the extreme bugs in the game that make it barely functional, but I never had a trip to granny’s take less than five minutes, and that was post rape.

  3. Lewis Avatar

    Thanks for taking the time to reply, Alex.

    You know Jarboe in real life? How interesting! How does she feel about your slating her work?

    I think you’re right that certain people might use this as an opportunity to level criticism about the content of games. And I think that’s a shame. What I find interesting is how you immediately jumped to the “rape/murder” conclusions. It’s been repeatedly suggested by the developer that, while these aspects are definitely used in the game, there are layered, suggestive meanings to be interpreted, not all of which involve such ugly acts of violence.

    Without giving anything away, how would you interpret Ginger’s “wolf”, and what happened to her? I’m really struggling on that one. There didn’t seem to be any connotations of violence or evil; just friendship, and finding happiness. What happens in the stretch of time between then and reaching the house is a very intriguing prospect.

    I think Carmen’s is the most overtly worrying one in the way you mention. Ruby’s is slightly different, and horrible for other reasons. Scarlet’s… well, I think I took that very differently from you.

    Did you not find that, in between the incredibly uncomfortable sections, there were brilliantly poignant pieces of joy to be found? Robin’s comments about death at the graveyard made me smile, her childlike naivety resonating with more truth than most adults would show in their dialogue about such a morbid subject matter.

    I find it incredibly strange that it took you so long to reach the house when running. No more than a couple of minutes for me, ever.

    Going back to the review, I thought the controls were really interesting. As you say, it’s obviously a ploy to make the player feel how awkwardly these girls actually move. I also think it was a brave decision to make the controls so deliberately obtuse. Particularly in the on-rails section, where anything you do makes you move forward into somewhere you don’t really want to explore. Whether they pulled this off or not is another matter entirely, but I think it’s a shame you didn’t seem to try to engage with what the developer was trying to achieve in the title.

    And you don’t like the way it looks. Once again: man!

  4. Alex Lucard Avatar

    I’ve known Jarboe since she was with the Swans. It’s a professional respect. In my younger years I was best known for my work within the Goth subculture and so a lot of my friends are or were musicians or singers from that genre of music. To be honest I sent an email warning about the review (respect and all) after recieving a general email from her and she understood. She actually laughed at the tone deaf comment.

    I also appreciate you, as a fellow reviewer and writer to take the time out and debate/discuss the game, especially as you have such a different outlook. I know after my first playthrough my first reaction was, “There has to be more to this game? I’m a pretty liberal bohemian kind of dude. Why is the first thing I’m thinking of is child rape?”

    So I showed it to a friend with a Masters in Women’s Studies…who was immediately horrified and offended, a friend who actually toured with Jarboe and whose reaction was, “Man, she’s still got the same issues doesn’t she?” (I really don’t want to know what he meant by that) and several others and the unanimous conclusion, without mentioning my thoughts on the game was, “DId I just get that little girl raped and killed? What the &*^*^?”

    I just was also shocked at the sheer number of bugs in the game. That, more than the rape, bothered me. Take a look at the second screen shot, the one of the shack. That’s not a press packet screenshot. That’s one from my own computer. Carmen just walked behind the shed in an automatic action and never returned to my screen. That plus the slowdown, and the clipping issues, and the lack of any real substance besides the metaphorical commentary on rape and death did it in for me.

    To be honest with Ginger, I took that as friend based rape. For example, the girl in white is usually your friend. Even with Ginger, she is your friend and takes you back to the path. Then the one time you let your guard down it turns out it’s not your friend, but someone taking advantage of you when you aren’t just emotionally vulnerable to them (being lost) but you’ve grown to trust them not only as your own friend, but friend to your family (as she usually is a source of protection and aid). That one actually disturbed me the most.

    I didn’t really find much joy in the game, mainly because I was having too many issues with the metaphorical implications and the fact neither the mouse nor the controller configurations worked for me without severe (and I mean SEVERE) lag time between pressing something and the action occuring on the screen. I liken it to Soylant Green where you spend two hours waiting for Charlton Heston to say “Soylant Green is made of people!” but then by the time he says it, it’s anticlimactic and your a bit bored due to all the mediocre stuff that ran in the time before it.

    As for the art, I’m not a fan because it’s very generic Goth art. I’ve seen very similar character designs thousands of times before, and as I said in my review, it was a poor man’s American McGee’s Alice in style and that’s nearly a decade old. because the game uses very outdated graphics, has the clipping issues, the lag, and the various other graphical issues, one has to knock down the score pretty drastically. I can’t grade on style alone, especially when that style has been done countless times before by practically every goth with a decent amount of artistic talent I’ve ever encountered.

    So in a nutshell, it’s hard to find little pieces of joy when they are so overshadowed by the bleak, the despair and the eventual death and downfall of these mostly innocent kids. It’s totally cool that you found something positive in the game. As you said, different strokes for different folks.

    I should actually see what you think of the games *I* actually find artsy. I’ll stick to Adventure games as that’s the only thing I know (from this conversation) that you for sure play. Barrow Hill. The Lost Crown. Theresia.

    In fact, I think Theresia is everything The Path was supposed to be, but it was done better in every single way. Better controls, better graphics, a better story and yet every thing is still rather an allusion or with multiple layered meanings. It took the implied sexual deviance, but in a different manner.

  5. Lewis Avatar

    I’ve never heard of Theresia, so thanks for the tip-off. I’ll definitely check it out.

    For what it’s worth, I think you’ve conveyed and explained your reaction to the game far better in these comments than in the actual review. I wonder if it’s maybe the style and format of this website that lends itself to what I found to be a slightly awkward review, rather than the way you specifically chose to write it. It’s not really a “gameplay, graphics, sound” release, is it?

    Funnily enough, your reaction of repulsion is actually quite similar to another review I read of this yesterday, only in that one the writer praises the game for its ability to so brutally shock its audience without resorting to cheap scare tactics. Like me, he didn’t equate all the scenarios to rape and murder, though he did say he struggled to come up with anything *positive* that may have happened, simply going by the sequence as you walk towards grandmother’s house afterwards.

    In case you’re interested in reading it, I’ll include the link below. It’s rather interesting how you cover a lot of the same ground (in terms of the content, not the stability) as this reviewer, yet draw very different conclusions about the game’s quality.

    As I said before, if nothing else, The Path is going to generate a LOT of intelligent discussion about “games as art”, something that can only be a good thing.

  6. Alex Lucard Avatar

    Yeah, by all means. I’d love to see that link. it seems like a good middle ground between our two viewpoints.

    I also think it’s a nice showing that we can have a friendly respectful conservation about our opinions which is a nice contrast to the “*^*&*& you!” stereotypes on gaming message boards. :-)

    I agree that an open ended review might have been a better format for this particular game. I let my staff choose between the break down and the free flowing. For me, the categorical seperation keeps me from rambling (even though this was a 4,000 word review, so maybe it doesn’t help that much…) and lets readers go to a specific section that they care about.

    I am looking forward to the ToT’s RPG, especially if they keep going the non interaction route of this and the graveyard. As much as I utterly hated this game, I enjoy their thinking far outside the box, even if it doesn’t jibe with me.

  7. Gregg Avatar
    Gregg

    Hi Alex, read your review and comments and I’m somewhat glad I didn’t indulge my curiosity on this, though in some ways this review and Lewis’ comments have made me a little more curious!

    I’m intrigued though; what games do you regard highly in contrast to this? After Braid comes out at the end of the month and I’ve got through the wonderful World of Goo I’ll have some time to check out a few other games.

  8. Alex Lucard Avatar

    By highly regard, do you mean games that deal with philosophical subjects or just really good games in general?

    Here’s a quick list –

    The Lost Crown (PC)
    Theresia (NDS)
    Persona 2: Innocent Sin and/or Eternal Punishment (PSX)
    Lunacy (Sega Saturn)
    Ogre Tactics – The Knight of Lodis (NDS)
    Valkyrie Profile (PSX)
    Guardian Heroes (Saturn)
    Flower (PS3)
    Darkfall (PC)

    That’s just ten off the top of my head.

  9. Gregg Avatar
    Gregg

    To be honest just good ol’ games in general. I’ve just been reading your reviews and 2008 roundup, some interesting titles. I played the Valkyrie Chronicles demo and while I could see the potential of the strategy mechanics (I love the Advance Wars series, not particularly for the plot) I just couldn’t handle the sugary script and characters given the situation (though based on your comments I’d expect things to improve in the full game!)

    There’s something about Japanese characterisations that have never agreed with me. I finished FFVI a few months ago and was really dissappointed considering it was so highly recommended. I’m expecting greater things from Chrono Trigger when I get that. The most impressed I’ve been with regards to story and characters was Planescape: Torment. The quality of the writing was just stunning. The experience has really stayed with me.

    Therisia and The Lost Crown I’m rather interested in from your reviews – it’s been awhile since I played an adventure game – not to mention I’ve never played a horror one! Dark Seed and Waxworks really scared me as a kid…

  10. Alex Lucard Avatar

    I never actually played the Valkyria Chronicles demo. For me, is was a game made by arguably the best development team Sega has left and I loved the mechanics. I promise you the story isn’t that sugary sweet for long. It gets pretty dark at times, as it is a war game, but the beginning of the game is quite cute.

    I love Planescape: Torment. That’s a great little RPG. I’m not really that impressed by FFVi either, but I’ve never really been a fan of FF save for I, II and XII.

    I’d say my favorite games of all time are Guardian Heroes, Valkyrie Profile, Pokemon Crystal, Persona 2 (both versions), Shining Force 2, Eternal Champions, Super Street Fighter 2, King of Fighters ’98, KoF 2002, SNK vs Capcom: Match of the Millenium, Gradius V, and Sakura Taisen.

    If you’re interested in an adventure game but unsure about doing a horror title, there are other great options out there for you. Secret Files: Tunguska, The Sinking Island (Probably the best mystery game I’ve ever played), Nikopol and if you are looking for something weird and existential like The Path, trying the Russian game Outcry. I’m also looking forward to Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel in a few months.

  11. William Avatar
    William

    How does the “Hero” portion of the game play out, does it have at least a little uplifting note?

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      I’d rather not spoil the epilogue of the game as my review already pretty much spoils the rest of the game in every way possible except for giving a list of who is the wolf for each girl and where you can find them.

      I will say there’s no such thing as a “happy” ending in this game though. The Path is all about the bleakness of life and the inevitability of death, similar to ToT’s previous game The Graveyard.

  12. Gregg Avatar
    Gregg

    Thanks for the recommendations Alex. I’ll have to check some of those out. Just looked for Valkyrie Profile and holy dung beetles… it must be rare judging by the prices!

    I’ll keep tabs on this site. I’m impressed with the review format and the comprehensive break downs. Thanks again.

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      Thanks for the compliments. You can never have enough of those.

      As for VP – there’s a PSP remake which is considerably cheaper. VP2 for the PS2 is a huge drop in quality but VP3, which just came out for the Nintendo DS is a lovely mix of the original and Ogre Tactics.

      Hope to see you around more often!

  13. Greg Avatar
    Greg

    This “game” is not art. It is a pretentious stab at shock value hiding behind a goth aesthetic while is glaring flaws only add to the “artsy-ness” of this… thing.

    The only people this thing will appeal to is pedophiles.

  14. Matzerath Avatar

    An old girlfriend from way back when was taking a beginning psychology class(!!), and one day she asked me if I liked a certain movie, and told me that her teacher had said that ANYONE who answers ‘yes’ is mentally unstable, and perhaps dangerous.
    The movie?
    A Clockwork Orange.
    Now some people would agree with the beginning psychology teacher, while others feel the movie is a brilliant, if disturbing, work of art. I’m with the latter.
    Something can be entertaining and unnerving at the same time. It’s called an emotional response, and though the mainstream likes to avoid such messy things, I personally feel it has a bit of merit. But that’s just me.

  15. Alex Lucard Avatar

    Greg #2 aka Greg with 1G. As much as I really hated this game, and have trouble understanding how anyone could enjoy this thing, I’m pretty sure ToT didn’t make this game for pedophiles.

    I agree the game is pretentious and it’s buggy piece of crap, but if someone finds the graphics beautiful or enjoys the game for a myriad of reasons, that’s their opinion and it’s no more right or wrong than my own. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve yet to hear ANYONE say how else they have interpreted the scenes when each girl meets their wolf, but if someone has a different outlook that they can DESCRIBE I won’t fault them for it or think they are hideous sick bastards for doing so.

  16. Alex Lucard Avatar

    Matzerath – Bringing up Clockwork Orange is an awesome example relating to The Path, especially with all the recent calls to have it taken off of steam.

    Oddly enough the British were the ones that banned Clockwork Orange and the Americans didn’t. Funny, because the States are generally stereotyped as the most conservative, Puritanical nation. Some things just rub people the wrong way. The Path certainly disgusted me (Which is especially dramatic due to how many horror games I’ve played over the years) but my god, I’d never say “Take this game off Steam” or that ToT are awful human beings for making it.

    There are indeed a LOT of dark and beautiful things in this world, video games amongst them. I just think The Path isn’t one of them. I’d rather play say, HellNight or Persona 2.

  17. Rowan Davies Avatar

    ‘The Path is nothing more than one giant metaphor for rape. Rape and murder.’

    Considering that many media outrages with regards to controversial games tend to appear from unfounded sources or from people who have never sat down to actual play them, it is in fact sensationalist articles like this that are likely to get the wrong heads turning.

    Saying that certain reactionary people may see the game as a rape simulator when you’ve provided little evidence to the contrary seems extremely short-sighted and contradictory. I almost have trouble discerning whether this was in fact your intention.

    Any fool can see that the game has strong themes of sexual violence, but to discount the multitude of other themes that it puts up such as innocence and the loss thereof, love, death and fear to me seems a reckless way to approach critical analysis and more than a little irresponsible when you have voice that other people may actually hear.

    To be clear, I’m not saying that the Path is a good game. Personally, so far, I’ve had mixed feelings. It’s pretentious in parts, tedious, ugly, beautiful and buggy. One thing it isn’t is a giant metaphor for rape, at least not in the patronizing, simplistic way that you’ve described, having omitted commentary on the other aspects -no matter how botched- that have been implemented into the overall design of the game.

    I’m sorry to be attacking your writing, but your review made me genuinely angry. And you did greatly exaggerate the time it takes to walk the path ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgkQRNOJZGg ), unless the slowdown bugs you mentioned were severe enough to cause game to crawl at 1/5th of its normal playing speed, in which case I’m amazed that you didn’t give up on the review and deem the game unplayable, but I’m guessing that would have been less controversial.

    On a less aggressive note, the fact that the game seems to be dividing opinions in such a way may be testament -in part- to the game design. It’s obviously poking at certain parts of the brain that many people find uncomfortable.

    Of course I respect that this article is your opinion, but in some ways reading it has made me feel more uneasy than the actual game itself – something akin to reading a bad tabloid newspaper when you’re intelligent enough to see what’s really going on in the world…

  18. Matzerath Avatar

    Alex — with that said, I would also note that Clockwork Orange does in fact have horrifying scenes of sexual assault and violence, whereas this game has NONE. What’s being argued over this whole time is a fade to black. Nothing is shown. And a couple of the encounters don’t even insinuate rape. The question looms over what exactly happened, but is never explicitly answered. At any rate, there’s exactly zero in this game that would titillate a pervert — you’re not playing the wolf, after all. Getting something like that out of this game would be like getting a hard-on when an old movie pans over to a fireplace. To say this is somehow more disturbing than any number of modern movies is ridiculous — clearly it’s the interactive aspect that is blowing things out of proportion. But to use such hyperbole over a fade-to-black is just kind of weird.
    Now if they made Clockwork Orange into a video-game …

  19. Alex Lucard Avatar

    Rowan –

    I’m going to have to assume you either didn’t read the review or you haven’t fully played the game.

    The review is ten pages long and talks about the bugs and gives spoilers for two of the girls and how easy it is to interpret the wolf for those girls as sexual assault. I also bring up the death aspects and that the bugs in the game are so bad that it is indeed, nigh unplayable at points. I’m not really sure how you missed any of that unless you are skimming.

    There’s also a discussion of how the other themes were dwarved by the fact that the game takes single age children and has horrible things happen to them. We have some very stupid reactionaries out there who are looking to demonize not only video games but the gothic subculture and this game gives a bounty of ammunition to both.

    It sounds to me that you’re more upset that I pushed some of your buttons in the way The Path pushed some of mine. If you actually think this review was created for sensationalism or controversy then it would be hypocritical of you not to be far more upset at The Path itself. After all it’s a game which, as you said, “strong themes of sexual violence” harkening back to the original origins of Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, which would lead anyone who is familar with folklore and/or the original tale to choose the rape metaphor before any other potential conclusion. It exists simply FOR that level of controversy and sensationalism that you accuse me of, and after spending well over a decade defending both video games and the gothic subculture to mainstream media, this is about as offensive and destructive a product for both as I could think of without actually having the implied violence shown.

    To be honest I’m actually quite bothered by the people out there that are hating on The Path and exaggerating the metaphor aspects. I’ve seen people on forums claiming to hear or actually see things and I’ve had to go onto said threads and say “No. That’s crap. Saying things like that is an outright lie. Hate on the game for what it has. It really doesn’t need to have things made up about it.” I’m pretty sure if I was looking for controversy or attention I wouldn’t set people straight who misquote my review or are using it as an excuse to be a dick to people who like this game.

    If I were you, I’d actually read the review again (or for the first time) and then also see the conversations many reviewers are having about this across the net and seeing how even people who utterly love this game are actually agreeing with me about my REAL complaints, which are the technical things. Like a lot of people who are hating on the game for the sake of hating it, you’re looking more at the use of the word rape than the rest of the review. At the same time I really appreciate and respect you telling me exactly how you feel, so don’t think for a second I didn’t take your comments of criticism seriously. No matter what you write, some people are going to love it and some people are going to hate it. Maybe next time you’ll find an article by me that you DO like or agree with.

  20. Matzerath Avatar

    As a final note, there is no way this game could be considered worse than ‘Batman Forever’ for Playstation 1.

  21. Alex Lucard Avatar

    Matzerath – For me, and I don’t want to speak for others but it appears this may be a common mindset with the detractors, it’s more the fact that you have to guide these little girls into the metaphorical rape and death. It’s YOU making it happen and you can’t actually proceed to the next chapter until you do. As you mentioned, you’re not playing AS the wolf and to be honest, I’m not sure if that would be more or less disturbing if you did. I suppose it depends on the person. it would definitely clear things up after all. I mean if you’re playing as a Woodman running through the forest for an underage girl, it becomes a little more creepy. As for the correlation to a movie, remember you passively watch a movie. You don’t push the 13 year old into the waiting arms of Jason Voorhees. It’s that actively guiding into inevitable destruction that is the trigger, or at least that is what I theorize.

    You have to remember ToT itself expects you to know to original story of LRRH, which is very violent and gruesome and does not have a happy ending. Tale of Tales basically goes out of its way to set you up for a “Hey, THIS MEANS RAPE” to anyone with that folkloric or fairy tale background.

    I would definitely disagree that there are any wolf scenes that don’t imply rape, but that’s all a matter of interpretation. I won’t say you’re right or wrong because hey, you’re not. It’s all opinion.

    What it comes down to is, as you’ve said – that fade to black and a combination of the cut scene(s) can make an imagination run wild. For myself, because I know the story from its basic origins and have had to write a research paper on the evolution of LRRH and the allusions therein, I can’t deny that I am probably more prone to the interpreting the scenes to the original source material especially as ToT has made many a comment that this was there intent. At the same time, someone who isn’t that well versed in the lore could (and some obviously have) come up with a different meaning. There is nothing right or wrong about that.

    Perhaps its a case of being to familar/overeducated on the subject matter. It would be an interest survey to see who thinks what and if there is any correlation between class, subculture, political leanings and the like, but methinks that would be an even BIGGER powderkeg than we already have.

    Again as for the perversion aspect, I was pretty cut and dry with saying none of that is in the actually game, that nothing is shown and it’s all cut to black but that some crazy ass ultra conservative or ultra liberal is going to see some aspect of this game or hear about it from a fifth or sixth hand source and decry it as filth and smut and evil without actually having seen footage or playing it.

  22. Istalindir Avatar
    Istalindir

    “…ToT has missed what the original story was about…”

    I really couldn’t hold a candle to some of the other responses to this review but I wanted to call attention to the above statement. I feel that ToT got the original gist of the story spot on. In the older versions I’ve read Little Red did appear to get both raped and killed.

    “Little Red Riding-Hood undressed herself and went into bed…” and “…wicked wolf fell upon Little Red Riding-Hood, and ate her all up.”

    This, to me, implies something far more horrible than is stated.

    I will agree that it has some gameplay issues but, to me, the whole experience more than makes up for it.

    I will not fault you for your honest opinion, I just wanted to add a little something to this interesting debate.

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      @ Istalindir – The original version of LRRH was about assault, cannibalism and murder. Later on this mas miscontrued as rape due to poor translation into English and eventually is became disneyfied. (Is that even a word?)

      ToT said they wanted to go back to the roots of the tale but instead they went for the erroneous English translation, which is fine and I was able to tell exactly WHICH version of the tale they were going for, but they still focused far more on the shock and pretentious than the original point of the story. The way one plays The Path completely changes not only the point of the story but the point of Fairy Tales and folklore in the first place.

  23. Emriss Avatar
    Emriss

    Holy crap, an intelligent discussion on a game review board!

    “…or telling me that I didn’t get it…” I’m just here to jump on that exact bandwagon. It seems to me that you’re trying to play this as a conventional game. Although you do acknowledge that ToT goes for plenty of metaphor, you don’t seem to be doing much more than scratching the surface and getting no further than calling rape. That’s what you see it as. Ok then. But you stretched that pretty thin across the entire review; one of the things I love about this game is that there’s no ‘right’ answer for how you interpret things. Personally, I don’t think anything in this game is meant to be taken even slightly literally. To me, the entire forest is a dreamscape, and I think that the strained music and surreal grandmothers-house sequence really added to the atmosphere. After all, that’s what they were aiming for: atmosphere.

    You complain about wandering around and picking flowers. As far as I can see, it’s not just about leading a girl to her doom (and even with that, don’t you think there’s something to be said for how you always bring it on yourself?). It’s about finding beauty in a life that’s about to end, and really letting your character get fleshed out so you can better interpret what happens. For example:

    Rose’s Wolf, as I interpret it: it’s a soul in pain; that lack of skin certainly doesn’t look comfortable. If you paid decent attention to Rose’s thoughts as you encountered items (which, to be honest, I don’t think you did half the time), you’d know that she wants to help others, and that it hurts her when others are in pain. Also, when burying the skull in the Graveyard, she thinks something like, “While their bodies lie buried in dirt, their souls fly up to the sky.” In my mind, I was creating a story as I went along; I heard this as almost wistful. When she encountered her Wolf, it was trying to take her up and away, to some sort of heaven where there was no pain or suffering. Or maybe she was just trying to help it by leading it upward to keep it from suffering. Either way: she tried, she failed, she fell, and she drowned. The drowning bit? I got that from the house sequence later, when part of it filled with water.

    I don’t think they’re even alive during that bit at the end when they hobble the last leg of the journey to the house. In fact, I see the whole thing as a metaphor for life. Follow the path/do as you were told when you were young. But if you stay on the path, it’ll be boring/if you don’t walk on the wild side, life will be boring. It is possible to stray and remain unscathed, and still reach the end of that stage of your life unharmed, but know that if something happens you brought it on yourself. The Girl in White is innocence and purity, trying to keep you where you’re ‘supposed’ to be. The house is a sort of deathbed sequence for that stage of life, or perhaps for a different life each time, where your life flashes before your eyes as the mind shuts down.

    Yes, the game was buggy, and the walking speed slow, and the lag frustrating (but really dude, for most people it’s not as bad as yours). But as for the content, it looks to me like you and your colleagues scratched the surface, saw what you expected to see (as you yourself mentioned, you were expecting rape and murder), and that was that. Sorry if I misinterpreted what you wrote or something, but it’s late and my brain is rusty. I’ll probably be back some time tomorrow to pick up the slack.

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      @Emriss – We try to keep trolling/flaming to a minimum here. It’s all about the debate and intelligent conversation here, even if a reader or three disagrees with a review. After all, a review is only meant to be the starting point for a discussion, not the word of God. ;-)

      I like your “everything is a wacky metaphor” theory actually. It’s very Gulliver’s Travels. After all, you can read that either as a swashbuckling adventure tale…or you can read it as one giant metaphor for British Politics at the time. It just depends on your point of view and what you are looking for. Your interpretation of Rose however is a bit off depending on what style of literary criticism your using. Jung or Freudian Literary criticism for example, who define that as a highly sexual moment, as would feminist literary criticsm. It’s pretty hard not to use those styles and come away with rape from that scene. At the same time, when DOESN’T Freud see sex, right?

      With dream analysis, clouds supposedly represent a lack of wisdom which is probably the closest to your viewpoint, no? At the same time Rose goes off with the cloud monster and gets brutalized at the end, which is again, very easy to interpret as sexual assualt and rape and that the Cloud Monster is the metaphor for Rose’s lack of wisdom by going off with a strange creature that most people would go, “That’s not right” and thus recieving her ick…reward. However if we stick with the dream interpretation aspect to go with the cloud (For continuity) a dream of water in your house implies overwhelming negative emotion or that you have been in a struggle recently, which again leans more to the rape aspect of the game.

      I also would have to disagree with your interpretation of the Girl in White if only because as we all know, at one point in the game she is the wolf. How do you reconcile the incarnation of innocence and purity also bringing the downfall of that particulae girl (Sorry, I’m trying to not spoil WHO the girl is for people who haven’t played yet).

      The thing is Emriss that I’ve written a lot of articles on philosophy and/or metaphor in games. The Path attempts this, but does it VERY POORLY compared to a lot of other games. The metaphors people are claiming to see are, are added as an after thought to the core meaning of the game in an attempt at placing red herrings throughout the title or claiming that some of the severe issues with the game “were on purpose” instead of bad programming. I can easily point you to about two dozen games that tackle the issues that some people are claiming to see in this game that do everything in a far superior manner. People are focusing more on the rape metaphor, which is exactly what the first English versions of LRRH are about (and nothing but) and the fact I called ToT on it for the really transparent subterfuge than the fact the majority of my complaints were about the game being nigh unplayable and technically god awful.

      I won’t fault you for your interpretation but I’ve had to review far too many books and games that do an awful job at using metaphor and allusion to have a hidden meaning, and The Path is one of those at the bottom. But then, if you, or anyone, enjoys this thing or finds merit in it, then I applaud you for doing what I was unable to. Atmosphere was one thing I really felt this game lacked, simply because I’ve sat through so many that do this thing better.

      Hope that helps!

  24. Lewis Avatar

    “I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve yet to hear ANYONE say how else they have interpreted the scenes when each girl meets their wolf”

    *waves* :)

  25. Alex Lucard Avatar

    Lewis – You’ve never TOLD me your interpretations! You’ve said you have a different view but haven’t clarified it. :-)

  26. Lewis Avatar

    Alex: didn’t I? Christ, I’m sloppy.

    One by one, then:

    Robin – not a lot to say. She meets the big bad wolf. She’s fascinated by wolves, and this childlike fascination doesn’t lead her to consider the dangers of them.

    Ginger – The one that confused me. I liked your idea, though would never equate it to rape. She’s finally found the like-minded friend she’s been looking for, or so she thinks. Unfortunately, she’s ultimately let down by the one person she can trust.

    Rose – Finding spirituality. Discovering that the lines between reality and make-believe are blurred beyond comprehension. Feelings of sorrow when she doesn’t find what she’s looking for.

    Ruby – The most obviously “rapey” one, given how the man looks at her. And, y’know, the body he drags into the woods. But more immediately disturbing is that he gives her a cigarrette. Her morbid curiosity about smoking got the better of her. This will almost certainly kill her.

    Carmen – Yeah, I think he killed her. Rape isn’t really alluded to, but the “weapon” features heavily in the snapshots that follow.

    Scarlet – Growing up. Letting go of responsibility and following your own dreams. The curtain comes down on her childhood. She no longer holds any weight over her younger sisters.

    How’s that?

  27. Alex Lucard Avatar

    Lewis – hey you can see rape in at least three (Carmen, Ruby, Ginger) of the six in some manner. Normally I’d take that as a vindication but actually, really “Yay, you can see the rape metaphor” isn’t usually a positive statement to make, is it? :-)

    Your interpretation of Ginger is indeed very close to my own. it’s seems like a metaphorical rape or even an emotional mental rape from your perspective than a physical one. After all, I think several people are looking at rape as just a sexual assault, when really it means to despoil or violate something. Which of course means that a loss of innocence is indeed rape. Just not a sexual one. Part of the issue with using the word “rape” to describe what happens to each girl is that people are doing the age old connotative Vs. Denotative mistake and looking at rape in the way 95% of English speakers use the term today – only as SEXSEXSEXSEX. Poor rapeseed oil. :-(

    I can definitely see your take on Robin and actually prefer it.

    Ruby and Carmen we seem to be as close to eye to eye as we can be.

    As for Scarlet, I can kind of see that, but having spent too much time within the goth subculture in my younger years and the metaphor and “dark beauty” that saturates that lifestyle choice, that’s definitely not the conclusion I could come to about that scene – if only because I’ve seen that exact montage in many other pieces and where that led. Which COULD be ToT’s point as they were obviously aiming for that demographic and art style.

    Again, it seems to come down to the more source knowledge you have, the far more likely you are to interpret the game both literally and far darker than someone who isn’t. Which is neither good nor bad, but it does bring up the irony that perhaps ignorance or innocence is best in this game as those that have lost that innocence themselves are far more apt to see that in these girls.

  28. Lewis Avatar

    Well, Alex, if you say the game is about “rape” but don’t define your terms properly, what conclusions do you expect people to draw?

    Yes, people are going to assume you’re using the word in its current form. Expecting people to see otherwise is presumptuous, and it’s leading to a lot of Angry Internet Behaviour. Tread carefully.

    So if you mean “it’s a game about young girls being either physically or emotionally hurt,” I’d agree with you, largely. But that’s a lot less fiery and powerful than saying “it’s a game about rape.”

  29. Alex Lucard Avatar

    Lewis – *I* still see it as physical and sexual assault on these girls. What I’m saying is that your (and by your I mean those who say they don’t see the rape aspects) interpretation still counts as rape in the definition of the word.

    When people say “I don’t see rape” but then talk about betrayal or loss of despoiling, that’s still rape. It’s people erroneously using the word rape on their end (not mine) by only using the word in a connotative manner. Everything people are saying the game is about is an aspect of rape. I see it primarily as the physical side, but emotional and mental despoiling is still rape. Thus when people talk about the loss of innocence at the same time they don’t see rape in the game, they’re not only misusing the word rape but actually justifying the point of view of those that do.

    Words have multiple meanings and layers and it’s a hilarious level of hypocrisy with people complaining that say, I don’t see more than a single layer to The Path but then those decryers themselves are in fact the ones looking at things through a single filter.

    For me yes, this game is physical and sexual abuse. That’s rape. But when people say “No no no, this game is about the loss of innocence or a deep betrayal or so on BUT IT’S NOT RAPE.” they just contradicted themselves.

    All I’m saying is that the naysayers can’t have it both ways. if you want to claim the multiple layers defense for the game, you also have to claim the multiple correct uses for the word rape and as such the game falls under the rape category in any way you interpret the game.

  30. Lewis Avatar

    “when people say “No no no, this game is about the loss of innocence or a deep betrayal or so on BUT IT’S NOT RAPE.” they just contradicted themselves.”

    I don’t see how this is the case, if their definition of “rape” is the most common one. If we go RIGHT the way back, “rape” means “to seize another’s land or property.”

    So is Empire: Total War a game about rape as well, then?

  31. Lewis Avatar

    (I do see where you’re coming from. The idea that whatever may happen to these girls is symbolic of each aspect of the trauma, both physical and psychological, that one goes through when they are sexually assaulted. That’s a very worthwhile idea to explore. I don’t think your review conveyed this at all well, though.)

  32. Alex Lucard Avatar

    Most common doesn’t always mean correct. Most common also doesn’t mean the lesser used are not equally as correct or are less valid.

    It’s like gay. It’s mostly used to describe homsexuality these days. However people also use it to mean something is stupid or lame and it also means to be quite happy. All three uses are valid and have very different meanings and it’s up to the reader or listener to discern the meaning. I mean “I feel pretty and witty and gay” can be taken in all three forms unless you know the source origin of the quote.

    If you’re going to jump into a debate, you have to be analystical and not emotional in order to have your viewpoints understood and respected. Unlike you and I, the vast majority of people talking about this game are doing some with their emotion on their sleeves and talking rather than listening.

    And yes if someone said “Empire Total War involves the rape of the land” or the like I would instantly know what they meant. Sure some people wouldn’t but is that the writer’s fauly for using his vocabularly correct or the reader’s for not.

    And I totally understand your feelings that my review didn’t convey this. I’ve said since before that this review went up to my usual audience that this is one of my worst pieces. The two articles my staff was supposed to have for last Friday were going to miss deadline so I had to finish this and format it quicker than I’ve ever done a review before. Of course this is the one a lot of newcomers to my work are being exposed to as their introduction to me.

    Sure, not my using of Jungian metaphysics and the collective unconciousness in the Persona games or my monthly Pokemon column on the folkloric origins of each Pokemon. Sigh, nope. It’s the game where I use the word Rape several times. C’est le vie, no?

  33. Lewis Avatar

    I hereby decree that you should change your name to Alex McRapelay.

  34. Alex Lucard Avatar

    LOL! Dude, my name is already Dracula spelled backwards. (A. Lucard). If I changed my name to that I might actually get LESS name jokes due to the uncomfortableness of it.

    Unlike now “Hey Dracula! Are you reviewing the next Castlevania game?”

  35. Generator Guy Avatar

    Thanks for the review! I was planning on trying the game (& looking forward to it), then I came across this. Ugh. A game all about rape and holding the button key down doesn’t sound like fun at all

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      Hey, thanks for the response.

  36. Gregory Weir Avatar

    Rape has a commonly understood, straightforward meaning: literal, forcible, sexual assault. In fact, in your review you say “The others are all sexual predators in one form or another that rape and beat the girl.” It’s disingenuous to later say, “Well, what I meant was that some of them were sexual predators in a non-sexual way.”

    But I suppose I knew going in that this review was intended to be provocative. When you declare something THE WORST and then proceed with a (figurative) orgy of negative criticism, reasoned discussion isn’t to be expected. And I have to say that if this is the worst game you’ve played, you haven’t been exposed to Klik-and-Play.

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      Mr. Weir (Sorry, there are already three Greg’s in here)- you’re misreading me. *I* still think it is literal sexual assault. I’m saying that the people who are running around saying “it’s not rape – it’s a loss of innocence/deflowering/despoiling/etc BUT IT’S NOT RAPE” are missing the fact that what they are describing is still rape – just not the sexual assault form. If they were saying “It’s not sexual assault” then their commentary would hold more water. That’s why I keep holding to the rape comment, because regardless of the flowery verbiage people are using to describe what happens in the game – IT’S STILL RAPE.

      I definitely suggest actually reading the review and subsequent commentary because you somehow missed the entire gist of what lewis and I were discussing.

  37. Oliver Army Avatar
    Oliver Army

    Isn’t it kinda, um, fitting that a game/interactive artsquirt about RAPE or mistreatment or whatever is pretty awful to play?

    Maybe ToT have just been unusually thorough with their product, right down to the mechanics.

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      Oliver – It’s fitting but when a game has severe lag or clipping issues or times when your character just poofs from the screen or gets stuck in an object, that’s bad programming. If someone actually said “I purposely built it to play horribly” that’s as close to a bold face lie as you can get in this industry.

  38. […] years in the making, the game has already drawn its fair share of praise, confusion, and unabashed criticism (the discussion in the comments of this one are very interesting). And more […]

  39. John Avatar
    John

    Uhh, there’s no “original version” of Little Red Riding Hood, Alex. It’s a folk tale and there are many versions.

    Anyway, discussing whether there was ACTUAL rape is kind of missing the point. From a literary criticism standpoint, the subtext seems clear: a ravenous beast devours (or tries to devour) a virginal girl, often after she gets into bed with him. Making this more explicit in an adult-oriented game based on the folk tale is completely appropriate, IMO.

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      Actually John there IS an original version. Any good folklorist can trace the origins of a story back to the source material, or at the very least, the first recorded telling of this story. In fact, Little Red Riding Hood is one of the easiest to do this with. It’s lineage is so clearly defined you could spend a hour in a library and come up with a pretty detailed timeline for the story and changes by culture, time period and language. The fact you would somehow not know that automatically makes your statement utterly erroneous.

      “Making this more explicit in an adult-oriented game based on the folk tale is completely appropriate, IMO”

      Again, I’d strongly suggest actually studying folklore and what goes into a fairy tale and why and you’d see how off base this statement is.

  40. Paul Eres Avatar

    I’ve a question: do you feel that the subject of rape itself should be outside the bounds of game? I.e. that any game “about rape” (or physical/sexual abuse, loss of innocence, etc.) should not be made?

    Do you feel that this game was a bad example of a game about rape, but that a better game about rape that treats it more seriously could exist? And if so, how could this game be improved so that it does that?

    The tone seems overly negative, with no suggestions about what they could have done differently to make it a good game, no constructive criticism, so the reader is left with the impression that you just hated that the game was about rape, and don’t believe that games can seriously address that subject, and don’t believe that the game could have been improved, but that the basic idea of it existing was wrong, not the execution or implementation.

  41. Paul Eres Avatar

    (Oh, and full disclosure, I’m an indie developer and a friend of the people who made this game, so I may be a bit biased in my reaction to this review.)

  42. Matzerath Avatar

    Perrault is the earliest known WRITTEN version of the tale, though it existed for quite some time previously, in many different forms. No one of course can be cited as the originator of the oral tradition, just the written one.

  43. Matzerath Avatar

    By the way you guys, I just found this awesome site called ‘Wikipedia’!

  44. John Avatar
    John

    What Matzerath said. There’s absolutely no way to know who the “originator” was, if such a person even existed. Folktales are part of a living tradition, and they gradually change every time they are retold.

    And again, the subtext of rape (or at least sexuality) is even there in Perrault’s version, whether it “actually” happened in the story or not.

  45. Chikazz Avatar
    Chikazz

    I’d also like to give my two cents. I loved this game dearly. I felt guilty leading them to their doom, yes, but it felt… necessary, and I don’t mean that from a gameplay perspective. When you wander around, and listen to what they’re telling you, you get to know them, and they ~want~ to go to the wolves. I had the feeling that I’d be giving them exactly what they wanted. But I also felt horribly guilty in taking them, because I knew, especially after the first one, (Robin, in my case, who kept saying that she wanted to play with something big and cuddly, I believe) that giving what they wanted was going to hurt them very badly. I felt rather like a mother who had to let her children go out, make their own mistakes, and get hurt, in order for them to learn and grow.

    And Alex, the Little Girl in The Pretty White Dress is not a wolf. But someone who looks suspiciously like her is. In my case, both the wolf and the Little Girl in The Pretty White Dress were there and it was… interesting.

  46. Alex Lucard Avatar

    Paul – I think the game is simply a bad game. I don’t think ANY issue should be taboo as long as it’s dealt with in an intelligent fashion. The Path is like a lot of the goth crap I had to wade through a decade ago where most of it was dressed up with the barest underpinnings of imagery and some third rate understanding of the subjects that the creators were trying to speak of. I think the people calling for the game to be banned or directly making verbal assaults on the developers are a bit looney and that any rancor should be towards the game, the poor attempt at allusions, the massive issues with the game from a programming standpoint and how this game is about as artistic as paper mache. I honestly think the only way this could be improved is by scrapping it and starting over. Considering the majority of my review is on the execution issues and include a screenshot of one of the big game stopping bugs, I think way too many people are focusing on the “A game involving underage girls being raped is personally disgusting.” rather then the five pages devoted to “Wow. There’s no way this should have been commercially released with all the bugs I was able to find.” Honestly, had the game actually run smoothly and I hadn’t found all the issues with it, I’d have been kinder to it and said, “At least it has a solid engine.” When two of the three control schemes have severe detection issues, it doesn’t matter if the story is about rape or Final Fantasy 1 Zillion, it’s still a poorly made game and it will get the same level of bile.

    There are many other games that deal with the same issues as The Path. Rule of Rose and Theresia for example. Where both RoR and The path are HORRRIBLY designed from a technical standpoint, with poorly done gameplay and glitches up the wazoo, RoR has a far more compelling story and is actually creepier then The Path, so I’d say RoR is a few steps up from The Path and able to keep that artistic merit that The Path strives for while only suffering from a fraction of the bugs The Path has.

    Theresia on the other hand is crazy dark and definitely covers topics equally as taboo, if not more so. But it’s amazingly well done in just about every way. Well, it is kind of ugly.

    Half my rancor is indeed directly at the idea that anyone would somehow find leading your protagonist to their mental and physical destruction as entertaining along with TOT (and obviously several of the game’s fans) inability to understand what the point is of folk tales, how they are told and why. The other half is simply that indie game or no, this thing needed at least six momnths more of playtesting.

  47. Alex Lucard Avatar

    -Matzerath you do realize that bringing up Wikipedia generally kills any sort of intellectual discussion on a topic due to how the information is added, edited and deleted?

    And you can easily go back and find earlier oral versions of LRRH before Perrault along with who told them. Again, it’s actually studying the legends and being able to cite works. Amateur Internet key word searching generally provides more erroneous information than not, especially with these sorts of things.

    John – from your comments again, it’s obvious you’re unaware of even the basic trapping of folklore and fairy tales, and you probably have neither read Perrault’s story or can read/write in French. That’s not meant to be mean or snide. I’m just saying Perrault has written commentary where no, his version of the story does not have any intended rape subtext on his part and anyone who has read it would know that immediately.

  48. Matzerath Avatar

    Alex – it was a joke, sir. But if you are going to be silly enough to take the bait, I would like to point out that your Perrault quote near the beginning of the article exists verbatim on the Wikipedia entry for Little Red Riding Hood, which of course could be coincidence, though you would do us a service with your learned research on the subject by citing some these previous ‘oral storytellers’ that a person knowledgeable as yourself can supply. Thank you in advance.

  49. Kevin Avatar
    Kevin

    If it helps the apologists sleep better, this review probably got me more interested in the game than all the “It’s spooky and deep and by the guys who made that one game!” positive reviews. I’m probably going to play it. I’ll hate it, but now I feel like I have to.

    Which, when you think about it, ties in rather well.

    1. Alex Lucard Avatar

      Kevin – I don’t think the “apologists” are going to sleep well until they change my mind on the game. This happens with every title. There is always a small subsect of gamers who will love a title and defend it to the death because god forbid someone have a differing opinion or intepretation of their own. Thankfully with The Path, the majority have wanted an intellectual discussion, which I approve and respect rather than “OMGWTF MY OPINION IS FACT F*** YOU!” which is sadly how a lot of gaming threads degenerate into on other sites.

  50. Chikazz Avatar
    Chikazz

    Oh, perhaps I should add that after some minor software conflicts, which were quickly dealt with by shutting down the conflicting software in question, the game ran perfectly on my pc. And many other people’s. Not everyone’s, granted, but I’ve never met software that ran perfectly on every pc.

  51. Alex Lucard Avatar

    -Matz I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound defensive or mean to you. Especially as we’ve joked before. Chalk that up to a 2am responding after getting home from a party. Ireally didn’t mean it to sound like a dick or being pompous if that’s how it came across.

    If the archives over there for an article about “the highgate vampire” are still up you should check the edit history. OMFG – hilarious.

    Same to John. Please don’t take my last comment to you as insulting or snarkey. I was just saying I’ve read the original French version of Perrault’s tale and the focus here is more on the fact that Perrault’s tale is considered the original of LRRH the character NOT the overall folktale. Perrault added the red hood and the symbolism it stands for. If you see rape in it (much like I see Rape in The Path) I’d be a hypocrite for saying it’s not there. I’m just saying that the overall focus on study on the first LRRH tale is on the hood itself.

    Anyway to Matz! I pulled my quote from ISBN 978-0486424767 Les contes en vers et en prose which is great because it’s a Dual Language book and you can read a decent English translation along with the french version. For those that read French rather can get the more complete Les contes de Perrault (ISBN 978-1421206028 . You can also check out Little Red Riding Hood: A Casebook by Alan (ISBN 978-0299120344 ), Steven Swann Jones’a Article ‘On Analyzing Fairy Tales: “Little Red Riding Hood” Revisited’ from Western Folklore (Microfiche it maybe? It’s from 1987) and Victor Laruccia’s ‘Little Red Riding Hood’s Metacommentary: Paradoxical Injunction, Semiotics and Behavior.’

    As for tracing the legend back further than Perault to known oral examples, you can go as far back as The King’s Book aka the Codex Regius. That was written in the late 13th century and many (but not most) folklore scholars claim this was the origin of the Little Red Riding Hood myth. All of these were minstrel tales and or songs that were passed through the norse culture by song. At one time (and you’ll see this in some of the pieces I named for you. Sæmundr fróði was at one time considered the originator of the tale and it was belived it passed to France because he lived and studied there for part of his life. However more scholars than not doubt this now.

    You can go back even further and find the story in the תַּנַ”ךְ or the Jewish bible. I have to admit though. Taking יוֹנָה as the source origin of Little Red RIding Hood is a fascinating idea, but I’m skeptical on it. So are most of the rabbis I’ve talked to.

    Anyway, I hope this helps. We’re really gone off topic which is a disservice to the Path and Tale of Tales. We should probably re-rail the conversation back onto the game itself and the symbolism (or lack thereof) and the overall quality of the game because otherwise we’re all going to look like pretentious gits to people new to reading this. :-) You’ve got my email right? If you want to do more on the folklore, we should do that there or maybe start a thread in the forums. The Nyogtha section on the site here also is a collection of some of my folklore (and cooking) pieces if for some reason you want to go into those as well.

  52. Chikazz Avatar
    Chikazz

    I know your comments were not aimed at me, but I wanted to say, in case it did end up coming off that way, that my aim wasn’t to change your mind, but instead to give my own personal viewpoint. I realize you are quite steadfast in your own view, and have a right to it as much as anyone. I really don’t agree with you, but that doesn’t mean I have to change your mind. And sorry if my comment about your pc issues came off harsh. I’m tired and I’m in a rush to pack.

  53. James Cavin Avatar
    James Cavin

    Thanks so much for this article! I was slightly curious about the game after seeing it mentioned on tigsource (their post mentioned nothing of the games’ content, but had a link to this page labeled “criticism”). After reading what you had to say, I know for certain it’s not the game for me. But it was really great to see the intelligent discussion in the comments here! I will definitely be coming back to this site.

    On another note, you mention several times that Tales of Tales missed the point of fairy tales in the first place. I’m rather interested in both games and folklore, although I have no serious education in either. What, in your opinion, is the point of fairy tales, and how can a game convey this point? Are there any games that have done so successfully?

    Sorry for the slightly off topic question, but I’m really interested in the subject of folklore in games.

  54. Alex Lucard Avatar

    Chikaszz – No need to apologize. I really enjoyed both your comments. it’s totally cool that you don’t agree with me and you have NO IDEA how refreshing it is to see about a dozen people taking the time to tell me “That’s not how I view the game.” after I dealt with about a dozen people in a row before writing the review that all unanimously agreed “Dude, this game is nothing but rape. WTF?” I’ve loved seeing the comments and hearing others intepretations and also having new people on the site point blank ask my credentials for my interpretation as how would they know that I do writing and consulting for several video game companies regarding folklore and metaphor? They’re new to me, my commentary and the site.

    Gamers as a whole NEED to have discussions like this. Intelligent debate and discourse rather than sitting around flipping virtual middle fingers or saying “You suck.” Yes, we can be passionate and sometimes heated when we disagree but name calling and talking without listening to the otherside has given our fandom a well earned negative stereotype. Even if we part disagreeing on the Path both intellectually and tech wise, at least we were able to have this discussion like mature adults. That’s what matters most to me.

  55. Alex Lucard Avatar

    Mr. Cavin – Welcome to Diehard GameFAN! It’s great to hear from you.

    I don’t really have room here in the comments to do the whole “What is folklore” bit. Thankfully though, I do have a piece on the site from November 2005 from my folklore column talking about what folklore is. Man, this is old but relevant!

    It’s a nice introduction to what folklore is and how it’s basically oral/written anthropology/sociology and archaeology.

    Anyway, ToT made several big mistakes. The first is that a fairy tale has to be accessible to children. Not written specifically for mindy you but ACCESSIBLE and UNDERSTOOD. By making this an “Mature” game with a lot of vague commentary, it automatically disqualifies this as a fairy tale. A fairy tale can indeed be written for adults, as several were, but part of the taxonomy is that child can still hear or read the story and understand the base level as well as the metaphor. If you decide to study folklore, you’ll encounter “The Précieuses” and Madame D’Aulnoy. She wrote two full books of fairy tales meant primarily for adults. However she knew her children would want to hear her stories as well as the children of her servants, so even those adult tales are told in a way that any single digit child can understand them and walk away with the moral. However, as Fairy Tales (regardless of which classification system you use and there are several) are always designed with the purpose of teaching the reader a lesson in morals, behaviour or how to be a good member of society, The Path fails in that regard as it does none of those options. It’s dark for the sake of dark bordering on pretentious fluff and shock value.

    A neat comparison to those early folk tales would be the very early Warner Bros. Bugs Bunny cartoons and the like. They too were as much for adults as children but over the years they softened and became primarily only for children. There’s some great pieces that go into detail on this.

    Another area is that a fairy tale must be simple, deal primarily with archetypes and characters are simple. Again, this is an area where The Path falls short, even with the simple aspect.

    Third, as you play as the little girls in this game and actively guide them to their doom/demise/ending/what have you the biggest point of the Fairy Tale is missed – the child (or reader) in question is meant to learn NOT to do what the protagonist did to cause harm or a temporary dillema for them. By guiding six girls to a similar fate by similar means, The Path has in fact become, an ANTI-Fairy tale. A darker reflection of the intent of this oral and literary genre, which can be pretty dark to begin with. As such, ToT missed the boat in spectacular fashion.

    Finally Fairy Tales are usually interpreted with a Jungian of Freudian literay criticism style. Even though you know, large groups of people discredit Freud, it’s still the school most used. If you’re using Freudian LC, it’s almost impossible to not interpret The Path as “Rapeapalooza 2009.” Jungian would give it an easier time, but the end result is still “That’s a lotta rape!”

    I hope this helps James. I’m actually going to have to stop talking about The Path for the weekend as I have reviews of Mana Khemia for the PSP and Valkyrie Profile 3 for the DS to start on. The first VP, by the way, is a far better use of folklore, mythology and the like then The Path in every way possible. I can’t think of any possible rape interpretations either. ;-)

  56. Matzerath Avatar

    Well, I think the poor horse we’ve been beating is extremely deceased, but it was definitely a good conversation. I still of course disagree with most of your arguments, Alex, but I do appreciate your knowledge of the subject and especially the pointers to new and interesting reading material! In the end all of this seemed to have helped the sales for the game, though I fear that Steam is about to get a lot of scary emails that look like this:
    “WTF?! tHAT wuznt a rape simulater!!! Gve me bac my 10 dollars you buncha ****!! If I wantd tu take a hike in da woods I’d go outside!!!”

  57. James Cavin Avatar
    James Cavin

    Thanks so much for the info! I obviously have a lot of reading to do (I’d still be reading my library copy of Hero with a Thousand Faces, but somebody recalled it over spring break).

    And I’d really like to thank everyone here for having such a courteous, intelligent discussion. This site has been an amazingly refreshing find in the usually flame-war-torn landscape of gaming forums. This is definitely going on my favorites!

  58. Wow Avatar
    Wow

    Since the developer probably had High Art in mind when making this, the developer should be aware that art, of course, is all about the enjoyer’s perception. People see different things in art. There is only misery and RAPE in this game. OK, way to prove that games aren’t just for children, it’s so groundbreaking a game that challenges the player to either LOVE/HATE it. Wow, everyone’s response and reaction is so emotive. It’s rape. Try something more subtle next time. Give it a dozen or so years before you attempt another game. Meet more people first. Learn about masculine and feminine.

    This game is ART, just like ALL GAMES. Except this game tries so so so very hard to be art, and its themes nearly all revolve around RAPE. This game is a piece of shit, and not worth anybody’s time.

  59. […] Diehardgamefan vond er maar niets aan – maar in de meer dan 70 (!) comments wordt er uitgebreid gediscussieerd over de roots van het […]

  60. Yes/No Avatar
    Yes/No

    Eh…

    It’s a horror game. It’s supposed to make you feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t rely on body or shock horror. Gamers are so used to not having any emotional involvement in games (perhaps at all) that when a game like this comes along it scares them in a way they just don’t know how to deal with.

    The only game I can compare this to is Planescape: Torment when playing as an evil Nameless One.

    This is perhaps the second game to toy with the player emotionally in a way that’s unique to a game: your own actions.

    Then again, maybe I’m wrong.

    Oh well.

  61. KoolSpot Avatar
    KoolSpot

    Excellent Review!!!, Excellent Discussion, I am bookmarking this page right now!

    I was a courious about the game, then i saw this review, and i am not going to play it. Why? Is not because is about rape, is because a RAPE game with all those bugs and flaws is not worth it. I have seen like 4 Different reviews with different opinions about this but for me this is the best one.

    I am completely agree with you, but i am going to say the following: The game has some clever points in the way he was meant to be, but smart twists and turns are not good storytelling if there is no history to tell.

    Anyway thats my humble ignorant opinion…

    Excellent Review Alucard…

    Sorry about my english, i am still learning…

  62. KoolSpot Avatar
    KoolSpot

    I forgot to say: Maybe i am an old school guy but for me games should be FUN. You are going to play with a game, so basically a game is a TOY. Of course don’t misunderstand me please. THere are adult toys, however FUN is needed.