"Five Nights at Freddy’s"
Hmm.
You know, as much as I've enjoyed Mr. Lowell's work in the past, I think that he might just be a bit too jaded and cynical, in this particular case. And, yes, for those of you who have endured my own pissy rants about the evils of the video game industry, that is indeed coming from me of all people, believe it or not. Don't get me wrong, as it's not even that I necessarily disagree with what he says about Five Nights at Freddy's here. Not really. Taken on its own merits, ignoring the context of it being made by a single dude working (initially) with an infinitesimal budget, then yeah, everything said about it in the above linked article is indeed true. Still, I just think that this probably should have been a case of "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Y'know, just this once.
Mainly, it's just that, unlike games like Dota or LoL or whatever, or games like Diablo III, or games like SimCity, or just about any other given EA or Ubisoft or Square Enix or Capcom or whatever game from the past decade or two[1], I don't think that Five Nights at Freddy's is a game that actively harms video gaming as a whole, and thus doesn't really deserve such vitriol. It really is a cheap, incredibly simple, made-by-one-guy game. If it had been made by a Triple-A team of hundreds of people, then sure, it'd be pure shit, but... well, for being a game made by a single guy, at least it's not one of the multitudes of shitty, half-baked simulators you see being shat out lately. It does have that much going for it.
And then there was the bizarre bit where he dumped mentions of Gone Home, Journey, and The Stanley Parable into the article, claiming those games to be "too simple and basic to ever be worth your time" as well. All I can say in response to that is "What the fuck, Mr. Lowell? ಠ_ಠ"
(As an aside, not all of those old Sega CD FMV games were as terrible as he makes them out to be, either. Well, most of them were, true enough, but some of them were still... uh... okay, at least, I guess? I liked a few of them, anyway. *shrug* Or, at least, I remember thinking that I liked them at the time, even while acknowledging even then that they were more or less pure shit, even so. Hmm, I'm not really helping my case here, am I?)
[1] - Though, to be fair, my wrath is admittedly directed more toward the asinine layers of shit being piled atop the games made by those guys, rather than the games themselves.
You know, as much as I've enjoyed Mr. Lowell's work in the past, I think that he might just be a bit too jaded and cynical, in this particular case. And, yes, for those of you who have endured my own pissy rants about the evils of the video game industry, that is indeed coming from me of all people, believe it or not. Don't get me wrong, as it's not even that I necessarily disagree with what he says about Five Nights at Freddy's here. Not really. Taken on its own merits, ignoring the context of it being made by a single dude working (initially) with an infinitesimal budget, then yeah, everything said about it in the above linked article is indeed true. Still, I just think that this probably should have been a case of "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Y'know, just this once.
Mainly, it's just that, unlike games like Dota or LoL or whatever, or games like Diablo III, or games like SimCity, or just about any other given EA or Ubisoft or Square Enix or Capcom or whatever game from the past decade or two[1], I don't think that Five Nights at Freddy's is a game that actively harms video gaming as a whole, and thus doesn't really deserve such vitriol. It really is a cheap, incredibly simple, made-by-one-guy game. If it had been made by a Triple-A team of hundreds of people, then sure, it'd be pure shit, but... well, for being a game made by a single guy, at least it's not one of the multitudes of shitty, half-baked simulators you see being shat out lately. It does have that much going for it.
And then there was the bizarre bit where he dumped mentions of Gone Home, Journey, and The Stanley Parable into the article, claiming those games to be "too simple and basic to ever be worth your time" as well. All I can say in response to that is "What the fuck, Mr. Lowell? ಠ_ಠ"
(As an aside, not all of those old Sega CD FMV games were as terrible as he makes them out to be, either. Well, most of them were, true enough, but some of them were still... uh... okay, at least, I guess? I liked a few of them, anyway. *shrug* Or, at least, I remember thinking that I liked them at the time, even while acknowledging even then that they were more or less pure shit, even so. Hmm, I'm not really helping my case here, am I?)
[1] - Though, to be fair, my wrath is admittedly directed more toward the asinine layers of shit being piled atop the games made by those guys, rather than the games themselves.