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 I'm presenting this video LP without commentary of any kind. This is an experience, not something to be babbled over. Write-ups will come in the following post, but watch the videos before reading that. I will say one thing before we start: This game's psychological horror is at its best when you're playing it yourself. You have no idea what's going, what you're supposed to be doing, or what's coming next. Watching the LP will ruin this for you. Go pick it up on Steam and play it first, it's dirt cheap and worth every penny. If you absolutely must have someone play it for you, then buckle up. We're going to the Dark Place on this one.      
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Mar 7, 2015 09:58
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The Lady - Questions & Answers What the gently caress just happened? The Lady is a surrealistic psychological horror action/puzzle game. (Phew, that's a lot of adjectives.) Created by indie developer MPR Art, it was released on Steam around the end of 2014 and/or beginning of 2015. The controls are simple; the game is often described as "brutally difficult," but only in the sense of the abstract and bizarre puzzles. The actual action sequences are rather easy—outside of a particular section of Anxiety. No. No, seriously. What the gently caress just happened? Oh! You mean the story. The Lady follows the titular protagonist through her struggles with what appears to be schizophrenia. I am 100% serious. Through the magical powers of surrealism, it puts you, the player, in the shoes of a woman suffering from extreme mental illness. The vast majority of the game's horror—which is actually more pervasive, unsettling dissonance than outright scares—comes from the alien experience. In order to simulate a woman trying to figure out what's in her own head, all you get to go on is a vague list of controls, and then off you go into the wonderful world of acid fever dreams. Good luck! The puzzle aspects of this game come from interacting with the environment and figuring out how to get through the game's various levels, although you probably won't figure out where the level breaks are until you've passed the first few. Death and game over screens seem to come out of nowhere, the protagonist has no visible life gauge (outside of boss fights), and there's little or no indication how to interact with the bizarre environment other than to poke at it and hope for the best. The run above is pretty much picture-perfect outside of a purposeful wrong turn in Self-Harm and a botched attempt at Anxiety. A blind first trip through will not go nearly as smoothly. (The level names shown here aren't official, by the way. They're just convenient tags for each of the environments.) What is this LP doing here? Shouldn't you be off somewhere making jokes about near-ancient RPGs? The Lady is a very short gaming experience once you know what you're doing, so it was an LP I could get out the door in a matter of hours. Besides that, this is an overlooked (and inexpensive) game that I have a particular soft spot for. It does a fantastic job of communicating the horrors of mental illness without uttering a single word. Depression, anxiety, schizophrenia... if you've heard of it, The Lady has it on display. It's disturbing and freaky the first time through, but after you have time to think about it, it's just... sad. Sad, bleak, and lonely. The hell is up with the Space Invaders thing? No idea. I'm guessing it was put in for maximum  factor. Personally, I think it's really jarring and out of place, and not in a good way.What's with the ending? idgi  She didn't make it. More specifically, she committed suicide by slashing her wrists. The vulture stalking her in "Depression" was Death. It finally caught up to her, and she couldn't take it anymore. Not everything in life has a happy ending, I'm sorry to say. Late Edit: After chatting with the creator on Steam, it seems the ending was meant to be far more ambiguous. "What does it meant to you" is kind of a storytelling cop out IMO, but since we're dealing with the Crazy Train to Crazytown, I suppose it works. I need a hug now.  Yeah. This game has that effect on people. If you want to make yourself feel a little better, though, I encourage you to donate to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. They're good people who do good work. Okay, that's it for me. Hope you enjoyed this brief little foray out of my comfort zone. I'll be back to posting dumb RPG stuff here shortly. Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Mar 7, 2015 |
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Mar 7, 2015 09:59
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Chokes McGee posted:Late Edit: After chatting with the creator on Steam, it seems the ending was meant to be far more ambiguous. "What does it meant to you" is kind of a storytelling cop out IMO, but since we're dealing with the Crazy Train to Crazytown, I suppose it works. Yeah, watched this after dealing with some issues with mom falling and cracking her hip. Hugs would be nice. I guess the creator might also mean that she might have been lucky and found help after she cut herself, maybe someone was there to save her. 
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Mar 8, 2015 15:44
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SystemLogoff posted:I guess the creator might also mean that she might have been lucky and found help after she cut herself, maybe someone was there to save her. Well, the only real response I got was that it was supposed to leave things kind of unsatisfying; the phrasing was something like "just like real life, there's no real ending to panic disorder." The mission statement of the game is to specifically make you assign meaning and debate imagery of the game, which is good, because it brings awareness of and attempts at understanding to mental illness.
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Mar 8, 2015 16:31
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Speaking as someone who has schizophrenia, I feel rather awkward about the character in this game being typecasted as having it... It feels like it feeds into the narrative that schizophrenics should see/hear/experience the world in a sort of crazy "EVERYTHING IS SPIDERS" sort of way, which isn't how it works in practice. It really is disturbing to feel like my experiences and mental disorder has to be almost worse in order for it to be valid, which is something I find to be troubling about a variety of media in regards to mental health. I don't know if anything I wrote even makes sense =/
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Mar 12, 2015 23:01
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Yeah, that was... something. I wouldn't call it schizophrenia that's for sure. Maybe a bad fever dream but definitely not a portrayal of mental illness. Though to be fair, mental illnesses affect us each differently so... Yeah. Thanks(?) for LPing this I guess.
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Mar 12, 2015 23:27
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This just makes me wish the Drawn Dream guy didn't die.
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Mar 12, 2015 23:31
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devildragon777 posted:Speaking as someone who has schizophrenia, I feel rather awkward about the character in this game being typecasted as having it... Actually, it made perfect sense. I rolled my eyes too at the whole "THERE'S NO ENDING TO PANIC DISORDER". Well, perhaps in the same way that there's no "ending" to bad eyesight. While mental health treatment is still admittedly in the early stages, tremendous gains are possible through treatment, whether pharmaceutical or psychotherapeutic or otherwise, for most patients - particularly for relatively "minor" mental disorders such as some of the more low grade versions of mood or anxiety disorders.
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Mar 13, 2015 02:58
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Well. I don't think it was meant as THIS IS LITERALLY HOW EVERYTHING LOOKS TO THE MENTALLY ILL. It's just trying to communicate it in the most direct manner possible. For example, the depression section pretty much nails it for me: a slow trudge forward with thoughts of death nipping at your heels the entire way. It's very stark imagery but I feel it works.
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Mar 13, 2015 14:13
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 You know, I get that this is supposed to be one of those artsy-sort of games with a statement and a message about something. Had it not been explicitly spelled out beforehand what that theme was, I'd have no clue what I'm even supposed to be thinking throughout this...thing. All I really gleaned from it was a bunch of creepy artwork doing a bunch of boring gameplay that makes no sense set to dissonant ~spookynoise~ and suddenly becomes a semi-bullet hell Space Invaders, like the developer said "this doesn't seem game-y enough to get greenlit!". It even comes complete with a seizure-flash ending and BLOOD FOR THE DOOM VULTURE  Maybe I don't understand all the symbolism. Maybe I'm not wrapping my head around "this is supposed to represent mental illness!". Perhaps its because instead of having the 'experience' for myself, I watched it unfold. In any case, it definitely doesn't look fun, and I feel like it'd be better told as an illustrated short story book rather than an interactive videogame. But that's just like, my opinion, and I guess I'm someone who just doesn't understand these high-culture "art-games".
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Mar 14, 2015 02:34
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Seiren posted:Maybe I don't understand all the symbolism. Maybe I'm not wrapping my head around "this is supposed to represent mental illness!". Perhaps its because instead of having the 'experience' for myself, I watched it unfold. In any case, it definitely doesn't look fun, and I feel like it'd be better told as an illustrated short story book rather than an interactive videogame. Eehhnnnn. It loses a lot in the translation watching someone else play it perfectly, hence the preamble. The fun of the game is to figure out the mechanics, figure out where the finish line is, and then get her across it. It's a very niche and very indie game though, it either scratches an itch for you or doesn't. Basically this LP was pretty much a bust for everyone but at least I tried new things? v  v
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Mar 14, 2015 04:09
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Okay, as someone with panic disorder, saying "THERE'S NO END TO IT, LIKE PANIC DISORDER" is disingenuous bullshit. It's conditioned, you can by nature decondition it to some degree. It's long and it's painful and hard (heh), but gains can be made. Honestly, I feel like this game is kind of insulting to people with mental illnesses. It doesn't really "nail it" like something like (though it's a loaded topic) Depression Quest, but rather sort of approximates what it "must be like" with a bunch of spooooooooky nonsense and ~what does it mean to you~ storytelling. e: Before the inevitable Goon Armchair Psychologists call me out on panic disorder being a largely conditioned mechanism, have a PubMed link. Panic! at Nabisco fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Mar 14, 2015 |
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Mar 14, 2015 05:46
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Chokes McGee posted:Eehhnnnn. It loses a lot in the translation watching someone else play it perfectly, hence the preamble. The fun of the game is to figure out the mechanics, figure out where the finish line is, and then get her across it. It's a very niche and very indie game though, it either scratches an itch for you or doesn't. Ah, don't take it too hard. It was an artistic game about mental illness, which guarantees there are a lot of people out there, such as myself, who were never going to like it because it hits a bit too close to home.
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Mar 14, 2015 06:08
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David Corbett posted:Ah, don't take it too hard. It was an artistic game about mental illness, which guarantees there are a lot of people out there, such as myself, who were never going to like it because it hits a bit too close to home. Yeah. Full disclosure, I have bipolar 2 with an anxiety disorder on top of it. The depression was literally so bad they didn't even know it was actually bipolar until i had Ben on laminal for a while. It took nearly a decade and a half to get it under control and still requires careful maintenance and the occasional med adjustment. It's one of the reasons my big hangup is suicide prevention; there was no one there for me, and i still have know idea how i made it without anything terrible happening. That's why I can agree with "panic disorder never ends." I still think the ending's a bit of a cop out, but at least I can understand the reasoning behind it. mods plz move this thread to e/n tia Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Mar 14, 2015 |
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Mar 14, 2015 15:23
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