One of the wildest video game related periods of my life was when I hadn’t deleted PT from my PS4, it had been removed from the store and the workarounds to access it weren’t widely known about yet. SO MANY people wanted to play it so I’d take my PS4 to their houses or they’d visit mine. Even people I didn’t know that well but it came up in conversation, if they didn’t seem totally suss I’d offer to visit their place with my console so they could play it, and most of them took me up on it. It felt like… I figured I might as well as it was gone from the store and couldn’t be reinstalled if people had deleted it. As it was free to begin with, and so many people were interested to see what it was like and had missed out. I had people I hardly knew offer me crazy amounts of money for my PS4 and I knew consoles with it installed were selling for crazy prices on eBay. I was tempted but didn’t succumb because I wasn’t 100% it wouldn’t give someone savvy a way to hack my account, or that Sony wouldn’t go hardline and ban my account for breaking the rules somehow.
That was so awesome of you! It's so sad that so many people have to miss out on one of the greatest gaming experiences in history because of konami's senseless pettiness. Hope you still have that ps4. I still have my old ps4 with P.T. installed, but the hdmi port is broken. Gonna fix it and see if I can back it up to a newer hdd or something without losing it, as tempting as it is to sell with this economy.
@@howlsmoodycastle9313 I don’t actually, I sold it back when I got a PS5 (after restoring to factory settings). The PT hype had died down by then, there were more play throughs on YT, and and great emulations made for PC, so it was a lot more accessible. :)
I had the luck of having a friend with a VR set bring his PS4 over so I could play it too. Thank god for people like the two of y’all who were willing to share their copy with the community
20:10 It's kinda telling that the gamers who wrote those guides, primarily men, can't recognize what are clearly meant to be umbilical cords, instead mistaking them for "intestines" or "vines". A lot of Dolores' story is told through a distinctly female lens, not just through motherhood but through the fact that back in the '60s a lot of perfectly healthy women were falsely diagnosed with mental illness simply for being headstrong and outspoken, given treatments that made them passive. Just look at Rosemary Kennedy for a terrifying example of this.
I love it when RU-vidr's are big enough to spend time creating genuinely thoughtful and interesting content, but still small enough that they have to do it in a cupboard.
I think the best scare I’ve seen from Delors is from John Wolfe’s play through. He was in a small utility/bathroom with his back to the door. He turns around and Delors’ face is peeking around the door frame, John jumps and screams and Delors slinks away. Edit: my great grandfather had Alzheimer’s and it was one of the worst things I’ve ever witnessed. One of my memories of him was when he went missing and it was a family friend found him in the street that him and his wife, who had passed away, looking for his wife. Turns out he had walked to the house his parents had lived (both had passed away maybe about 30 odd years ago as of today). He was looking for his mum and dad and then got to the house, knocked on the door to find someone else and said he was looking for his wife
Hearing the fact that most guides refer to the fleshy tendrils as intestines really solidifies how much we need women’s perspectives in horror game analysis and throughout the entire industry.
There is baby! There is long, fleshy rope! This should be obvious, I knew about umbilical cords at 14! I hate this kind of blatant obliviousness, I swear to god.
I appreciate your analysis of horror games/stories so much. No one ever wants to have these types of discussions with me, but listening to you pick apart and discuss these themes has me repeatedly saying "Exactly!" to an empty room. 😂
You are genuinely one of my favorite YT personalities, I love your quick wit, in-depth insight, and dry humor SO much!! Also, idk if you take suggestions, but after your IT book/movie video I thought maaaaybe you'd be into this idea: a video about media you think would be great to adapt into other media (ie books into movies, or TV shows into games, etc). You just have such a nuanced view on how themes, pacing, characterizations, and game elements work together to form a cohesive narrative that I think it'd be super interesting to hear your ideas! (For reference, FriendlySpaceNinja did a video like this recently that inspired this idea)
I love horror but am a complete baby who cannot play horror games so watch a lot of playthroughs. Visage is one of those games I watched playthroughs of and was dismayed where they gave up on it. It’s a game I have fond memories of watching and I enjoyed the care that had obviously been put into the lore. Honestly come back again and again to this channel because you appreciate where people have put the care into media and rightly point out when something has been created as a money grab or to be “shocking” (looking at you Rachel Foster)
There's a lot of visage I missed on my first couple of playthroughs. Examples being that there is always a subtle breadcrumb trail leading you to where you have to go next, you just have to be paying super close attention to spot the clues sometimes. Another is the maze: you're still meant to be spamming the camera flash in the maze, and your brightness is probably turned up too far if you are not. Anytime the flash catches imaginary boy, it seems to take him off your trail for a generous amount of time.
Wonderful video Mert, but you can get the sledge hammer I believe without completing Dolores story. You can beat the game by bee-lining it to the wall, smashing it, and just re-do it and not go through the other stories.... ....I'm not saying I did that and not any of the other spooks because Lisa was to spooky noooooo. Great video :) Nice to see you getting more confidant and on camera more!
@@MertKayKay I mean I did, and I never completed the Dolores story. All of what you showed was new to me, so unless I broke the game (Which is easy I guess?!)
Talk about bonkers... You uploaded this video exactly one year to the day after I stopped playing Visage because I was sick of all the cheap insta-deaths and the maddening frequency of lame, predictable jump scares. Well done! 😁
Okay but honestly thank you for this amazing look at Visage, i've been tangentially interested in the game since i first saw it's early access crop up but haven't ever fully gotten around to looking into it (mostly due to never really finding a letsplay i clicked with for the full game . because despite loving horror this game is just a specific kind of horror i need something else to diffuse the tension of to actually engage with GFDFG), this was a very well made, and i loved hearing your thoughts about it on multiple levels, you're very well-spoken! And to be honest on P.T., as someone who's 21 and has had an unabated fascination with it since. an age i definitely shouldn't've even known about it at HGFGBH, i feel like personally if it had came out, Silent Hills might *not* have been a good *silent hill* game by a Lot of people's standards, but i think it'd've been a great nevertheless Kojima is a *fantastic* brand of weird dude for horror, just straight up, and i think psychological horror (especially Silent Hill's trippy kinda loosey goosey fluid allegory brand of it tbh) would suit him fantastically I think genuinely the thing that makes me saddest about Silent Hills never releasing is the kind of creature concepts and shit we might've gotten from putting Mr. Hideo "made a soldier who's power is *FUCKING BEE TELEPATHY VIA PHEROMONES*', 'made a literal vampire who served unimagineable cunt and could not die if he tried and put him in a terrorist plot' 'literally how did half of mgs's villains even WORK they SHOULDN'T HAVE but they're STILL in my head to this day WHO LET THEM BE THAT VIBIN' Kojima in the driver's seat and potentially giving him the aid of Mr. Masahiro 'do i even need to give you examples. fucking pyramid head as a symbol of the desire for self flagellation. the grotesque and fucking brilliantly designed potential fear-of-r/pe monsters from sh3. *fucking god in silent hill 3* Valtiel any of the weirdos from silent hill 4 (god i love silent hill 4...) those monster beds from 2 literally any monster from those games where do i even begin' Ito Like as someone who Mostly loves Silent Hill for it's design and story i think that's the biggest loss, the game might've fucking sucked, who knows what kind of mechanics it would've had or if it would've been able to keep up to par the entire time, but *god* there would have been a fucking weirdness there that could not have been beat, i think if nothing else it would've nailed what makes the other Silent Hill games memorable; character and Sheer Fucking Vibes I hope when OD comes out it's so fucked up and weird it makes me want to put aside my petty little xbox hatred (god why did it have to be exclusive to that console i hate those controllers i'd rather use an N64 controller...) at least long enough to experience it I genuinely hope it's something so beyond what we could've even tried to anticipate, i hope it absolutely blows us away And splendid video^^!!! I'll definitely be looking into more of your stuff :D!!
I'd love to hear your thoughts on Luto. The full game isn't out yet but the demo is on the playstation store. Really scratched the PT itch that Visage didn't quite get for me
I had always suspected for Lucy the imaginary demon ghost thing is a manifestation of trauma. I believe she was a victim of CSA. There isn't much evidence for this theory I know, but it's that closet scene that always left me feeling that way. Because the closet wall is shared with her parents closet, and when you go in that closet to knock, well, you'd be knocking on the parent's side. Or the parent's side is knocking on the child's. It was just really unsettling to me and has left me with that lasting impression of what happened. The treehouse scene strengthens those feelings, but that closet scene does a lot of heavy lifting in the creep factor for me.
i somehow always managed to start with Lucy’s story in Visage & was always a little afraid to start the others because i figured it’d be more of the same, but hearing that they’re all pretty radically different is super enticing & i might have to give it another go now
This whole video brought back so many memories. Bringing up Layers of Fear just set me back to when first finish Visage when it was only Lucy and Dolores. Wanting more of this game and not having many options. I was streaming back then with people who knew exactly what I was looking for to fill the void. Layers of Fear was a great introduction to horror of this style if you are very chicken but want to try horror. Playing after Visage felt exactly how you described. I did find Lurk in the Dark: Prologue. Did just see that there is more to it finally so may pick it up again. It's been years since I played it but it was just as scary as visage if not more for about a 45 min play time. As for the controls they are clunky. Very clunky somtimes. The inventory was confusing at first and still isn't great. I assume a controller only amplified this issue. This isn't a game I recommend to many people. Can be frustrating to the point you are no longer scared. Or as it happened to you, death at every corner. I personally haven't had that happen to me but i did watch friends get bad luck like that during their streams. Overall still IMO one of the best horror games out there, maybe tied with SOMA. Just gotta get passed some issues that can definitely ruin the game for anyone. Loved the video. Very fair critiques even though Lucy is my favorite chapter. Starting with Dolores would for sure sour Lucy's chapter.
Your bit about romanticization reminds me of how people romanticize Versus 13 over FF15, which even Nomura himself notes was more akin to a concept than a full game
My biggest regret has always been that I uninstalled P.T. before it was removed from the PS store because I needed space to install another game I didn’t even end up liking.
Oh my word, you researching PT had you feeling the same fear I feel? Ma'am, we learn and grow together haha. Good hustle, thank you for your sacrifice *brofist*
I feel like some of the problems you describe about Visage are born purely because the devs are forgetting the core rules of game development. It's easy to get lost in the plot and how you want people to execute a puzzle and forget the most basic solutions that should have been either implemented or explained, in-game, why they can't work. they couyld've used some more playtests :)
Yeah.. so Lucy's chapter was the one they released first, so a lot of people played it before the game's full release. What i've seen is that people tend to be more forgiving to the first chapter they play and more heavily critical towards the second. While watching a different You Tuber's video on "Visage", he likes Lucy's chapter more, because playing Dolores after Lucy made the second chapter feel too slow and dragged out. The way i see it, depending on which chapter you start the game with, you may have a radically different perspective and, with that, a different espectation on how the rest of the game will turn out as, so when the second chapter inevitably breaks that espectation, it can lead to frustration.
Everything in the world can benefit from a good UI/UX specialist. Someone that understands your vision, but also understands user needs. Unfortunately scarce among many games these days. I'm always baffled when a game has a good system, then the sequel doesn't. It stinks of people doing "different" just to do it and not caring what is good for the game and experience. A lot of the things you are frustrated about could have been fixed with just a little user testing, such as the sanity meter. So saying it's not the fault of the developer is untrue. All products that are interacted with need LOADS of user testing because you cannot assume how people will try to solve your puzzles until you witness them try.
You know, your horror game coverage is why I keep coming back to this channel. I think it's helped get me out of my comfort zone and try some horror games.
@@StephenYuan Same here, I just realized I hadn't dared to play Bloober's Observer before seeing it covered on this channel and it was just chilling in the pool of free EGS games I amassed over the years.
Hah that's so funny, I'm so thankful there's great creators covering these horror games and analyzing them cause I am way too much of a pansy to play them 😂
"One should never, ever interrupt one's desire to defecate. I've enquired at the Bronx and London zoos as to the daily bowel evacuation of primates. It's not once, twice, or three times, sir, but four. At the end of an average day, their cages are filled with a veritable mountain of natural health!" Sorry... One of my favorite movie quotes.
I love when you go into the ux of a game (beyond just talking about design or gameplay or whatever), it feels like a topic that's rarely talked about so explicitly in other game reviews, which always makes it refreshing to hear!
i really love the depth you talked about dementia with. i had two grandparents with dementia and i took care of them as a teen. my grandpa lived in his house for 30 years, and pretty much every day at some point he would ask "when can we go home?" he was probably talking about the house i live in, which was my dad's childhood home and mine as well. we'd frequently bring my grandpa up to our house to visit (mostly during holidays to also give his caretakers a day off). he was naturally confused, as is usual with people with dementia. but he was probably also confused because, yes, this was his house, but it was completely different. the walls, flooring, decorations. my great grandma honestly reminds me a LOT of delores. not the murdering her husband part. my great grandma had a son die of SIDS, and from that trauma she was institutionalized in an asylum. in the 1950s. you can see where this is going for her. maybe her dementia was in part caused by the electroshock therapy she received, im not sure if thats even how it works. but near the end of her life she was completely silent, frequently reacting to hallucinations by just moving her arms or closing her eyes. my great grandfather took very very good care of her, and still misses her every day. sorry for the trauma dump lol, i do this every in every comments section for a video that talks about dementia
Have I even heard of "Visage" before? No. Will I watch this entire video all the way through, completely hooked on a game I have never, nor will never, play? Absolutely!
The thing I think a lot of people don't really recognize when it comes to acknowledging if PT would be a good Silent Hill game is the fact that Kojima was never a defining part of the original Silent Hill games to begin with, he just happened to make a horror trailer game and brought in a lot of new ideas while at the same time almost making a hit piece against Konami before he left. Even if PT didn't exist, the Sient Hill franchise would still be as revered and venerated as it is, and I think a lot of people and game developers more specifically have taken the wrong lessons from what PT is that have ended up harming horror gaming in the long term more than anything else. I'm looking at you, Bloober Team, oh how the tables have turned...
I love that its come out thay Bloober are pretty much the only reason we're getting the original and untouched Storyline for the Silent Hill 2 remake after the original members wanted to modernize the story for modern audiences. So while they may have taken the "wrong" lessons from PT, what ever the hell that even means in a highly derivative form of entertainment which Video Games are and Bloober, they atleast seem to deeply care about the original Silent Hill 2 they're working on. I believe they care more about Silent Hill 2 than Konami ever has, because Konami is coming from this project in the terms of "holy shit the RE4 remake did amazingly, we should remake our most beloved game in the franchise!"
@@ProfMarkQ all but four of the ten members of team silent don't even work at konami anymore, so i don't know who these "original members" you're referring to are? and of the four that remain, two are producers which is not at all an integral part of the actual game design and tech development process other than making sure the team is on track and ass-kissing shareholders for money, one is a scenario writer, and then there's the monster designer himself masahiro ito. sooo with all that being said, i wouldn't put much stock in whatever any of them might've said about modernizing the SH2 remake. anyone who made silent hill 2 what it was (aside from masahiro ito, who has spoken before about how little control/input he has other than his design position at konami) is long gone! bloober still sucks and the changes they've made - however 'minor' they might seem to overeager fans - aren't very promising. they're not purists, and they only care as far as their bottom line goes. it's about capital for bloober, not artistic integrity. if the latter was actually the case, they wouldn't have ripped off their game ideas from other studios.
John Lennon said his son came home from school with a picture he drew, he asked what it was, and he said "it's Lucy in the sky with diamonds." So he wrote the song. Unfortunately that one got thrown into the LSD ring because yeah, there are some about it but with this context it's a better song in my eyes, just an imaginative world described through the eyes of a child...which unfortunately sounds like an acid trip sometimes lol❤😂 Thanks for this explanation I've never seen a thorough one and I've never played Visage personally.❤
Visage is the single greatest horror I’ve ever played. I would have loved to see Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hill game, but I’m so glad that we at least got Visage out of it. Edit: I think it might be worth mentioning that Visage is one of few games I’ve ever intentionally 100%’d. The other is Outer Wilds (please make a video on Outer Wilds, I’m begging you).
Side note: there was a “remake” or perhaps a “reimagining” of P.T. that came to Xbox called Evil Inside. I was so excited because I could finally experience P.T. myself. I was actually counting down the days to its release. It was dogwater. I can’t believe I paid money for that.
Maybe I need to go back to Visage, I played it the year it came out and everyone was calling it the scariest horror game in X/Y/Z years and I just ... didn't really find it scary. I finished 2 stories and started Delores' story and that was about when I just felt bored and gave up.
@@SobutaiPlaysDelores’ story is easily the best of the three. I should mention that there is technically a secret “fourth” chapter involving the character you play as. You access it via exploration and various tapes that you find. That one is less heavy on gameplay elements, and it is heavier on context clues and plot. But yeah, Delores’ chapter is easily the best. It features several puzzles, and some of them can be a bit tricky if you’re not paying attention. But Delores’ chapter was a great blend of story, puzzles, and horror. I loved it.
I live at the end of a five and a half minute hallway And as far as I can see, you are still miles from me In your doorway... And oh btw when the landlord came today, he measured everything. I knew he'd get it wrong. I just played along, because I was hoping that would fix it all But there's only so far you can go. When you're living in a hallway that keeps growing. I think to myself "Five more minutes and I'll be there..." Outside your door, but there's more to this story than I've been letting on...
@@guy-sl3kr I know about "My House. wad", but I was talking about a more straight forward adaptation of the House of Leaves and with the photo realism of a Visage or a P.T. But yeah "My House.wad" is a good exemple of what can be achive
I love your channel and everything you do. But every once in a while you say something like "cheesy beanie" and I remember why we declared our independence from y'all.
I used to work in senior living, as a culinary director. Most of my time was spent overseeing independent living and assisted living dining rooms, which would have their sort of quirky "guy sitting down at 11 PM when I'm getting ready to go home and saying he's waiting for breakfast" and arguing over seating arangements, but the memory care wing was a separate space sealed off by a one-way locking door. Most of the time I spent there was just bringing over a big food warmer loaded up with their meals at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and dropping off little snack trays throughout the day, but I can't imagine a darker place in the world. During the day it was mostly fine, sometimes the little old ladies would insist they need to give me a tip for dropping off the food, sometimes somebody would grab somebody else's walker and they'd start crying, one lady would kind of just walk back and forth between the hallway towards the exit and back (clearly trying to catch somebody opening the door on the way in, but not there enough to actually do it). At night though, it was all sobbing and wailing and people fighting, throwing food, many of them would lose the ability to communicate and just make noises. It doesn't sound that bad but it's truly awful, especially when you consider that most of the families pop by once a month, once every few months, twice a year, sometimes never. On a side note, the ONE time that everybody was consistently sitting together, bright, and communicating, is when they'd bring in somebody to host a sing along to classic songs or play vinyls from around the '50s. The staff there was almost entirely women from the Carribean (to the point that I've googled "why are there so many people from the Carribean in elder care", but no answer), and not to generalize an entire population of people, but Jamaica especially is a really tough place to grow up, and they have a reputation for not taking any shit, so they always had the tone of "annoyed daycare worker yelling at toddlers" when a 90 year old woman was having a nervous breakdown because she's reliving the death of her husband. It made me really angry at first, but as I worked there I saw that many of them would work 12-16 hour shifts, which I knew because I was often working 10-14 hour shifts and they were sometimes there before AND after me. When I think about that level of horror and despair being the equivalent amount of time that most people spend sleeping in their bed, the combination of sadness and monotony is almost unbearable for me to dwell on, and that's from the perspective of somebody who has all their faculties, is paid to be there, and eventually gets to go home or quit if it gets to be too much. This isn't a video about dementia, it just got me thinking, and I think they did a really excellent job of capturing what it might feel like. Also for what it's worth, I like the concept of Visage and I do think they pulled it off from the 2 scenarios I got through and this video, but I think it's pretty clear that Silent Hills was not going to be a first-person puzzle-exploration game, I really think it was gonna be a classic Silent Hill game with a lot of modern updates and a bunch of Kojima shenanigans. They had to make it the way they did to bury the lede, I doubt a team as ambitious as Kojima and Del Toro were gonna make "RE7 but with psychological horror instead". Sort of like the teaser for MGS4, playing into modern trends to subvert them at the end of the trailer. Basically Visage is a sequel to PT, not a "reimagining" of Silent Hills, except PT only REALLY works in one hyper focused L shaped corridor and shows off the themes and tone of what they're going for, not the actual loop.
0:01 «in 2014,sleeper tragedy PT hit the PlayStation» It was exactly sleeper tragedy 😭 And later with announced new season of twin peaks it was to good to be true
So glad to see you upload again! I found you from your amazing IT video and I've been binging old videos ever since. Your analysis and delivery are always so sharp, keep at it!
It’s kind of amazing that they haven’t put PT back up, especially when we went so long without any Silent Hill content. I guess they’re saving it for the mother of all preorder bonuses. I also don’t think Silent Hills, if it was ever going to exist, would’ve been like PT. At most it might have been in the same location, but with new characters because there wouldn’t be any point in telling the same story twice.
the best sentence i've heard in months just might be "…[f]rom waking up in the same kind of purgatorial concrete room, to being chased by a be-gowned spectacle of womanly horror…" as a near-40 year old english / creative writing tutor, your Silence of the Lambs video essay was really good too. I'm going to watch the It video when time allows, hopefully your editor is more merciful than King's, and if not, at least … less sadomasochistic. He family-guy throw-away gags the hauntingly beautiful ending of …. the haunting of hill house … and should have faced international sanction for doing so (potentially twice!) in case of you not having read HoHh I won't throw it in here, but it's in It … f$%cking twice, and it's such a trauma-inducing, beautiful, pathological, dread-inspiring line that it makes his turning of it into a throw-away line all the more galling … and all who talk to youtube talk alone [i couldn't help it, forgive me] cheers m8
The parts of videos where you talk about UI/UX design are some of the most fascinating to me. You so clearly have expertise in that field and it’s so cool to hear you talk about it. ❤
Yes, yes! RU-vid finally pinged me. Thank you RU-vid. I ain't watched this because it's a minute or so old, but I know this is gonna be fire. Gonna be mowing the lawn, weedwacking and cutting down a tree to this. Edit: Cold war, plus demonology, dope as hell, I would never have played this game so I'm glad I got to watch it, keep doing what you doing, see you next time.
One thing I'd have added to the list of "things inspired by P.T." was Resident Evil VII, itself. When the "Beginning Hour" came out, it was obviously made inspired by the wild success of P.T. and it filled the hole that had been left when P.T. got unceremoniously unpersoned. People flocked to it and it was very popular and gave a new direction of Resident Evil, which worked out in Capcom's favor when they started to remake the older games and gather new fans who liked Biohazard to play them
PT is one of those games that I some how just missed & only heard about years after it was nuked from orbit... watched some let's plays instead. Visage is a wicked game & I found myself wracked with nervous excitement the whole time. Personally my favorite chapter was the little girl, I dont know why I just thought she was creepy AF & the demon "friend" was interesting. Picard was my least favorite cos it just feels so different. Also each chapter was released 1 by 1 with Lucy's first, Delores 2nd & Picard 3rd which is the most likley reason for the rough around the edges nature of Lucy's chapter compared to the rest Just a lil happier news: I have read & heard reports that they have been working on a, for a lack of better term, vaccine for dementia. Essentially the idea is that they know what part of the brain actually gets damaged & the couse. They intend to have an injection they can give people with early signs & it will repair the memory strands, stopping dementia from damaging you're mind. They also have a test that let's them pinpoint if the damage is accuring. It's still a ways off from being a thing but it would be amazing to see peoples minds be repaired before the damage can take them. As someone who's nan was taken by dementia its news that makes me smile.
Damn Luke I did not pin you as a Visage fan! Thanks for sharing. Also, curious: why do you call Rakan Picard? Was Picard an earlier name for him? And that dementia news is indeed happy :'( what a horrible disease.
@@MertKayKay for some reason my auto correct changed it to from Rikkan to Picard everytime... which is weird. Sorry about that 😅. And I did enjoy Visage, was a fun & dark experience. Makes me wish I tried out PT while it was avalable :(. Also this is the first time I've heard the Malphus theory which was really interesting. Great video 👍🏻
Have you heard of the game In Sound Mind? It’s similar to Visage, but less horror, more action/dynamic puzzle solving with an interesting story based on figures from Greek mythology. Maybe a topic for a future video, like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
I got stumped very early by a frustrating puzzle where I was directed to go to the attic, but couldn't reach it. I explored a bit, found a stepstool, and spent over half an hour trying to use the stepstool to climb up under the attic door, which you cannot do because that perfectly sensible solution is not what the developers intended. Instead, I had to wander around aimlessly for another hour until I noticed the hook jammed into the wall in the chapel. This was well after I tried picking up the various tools in the garage--any of which would have easily opened an attic door--and kept going back to the stepstool. I found this so frustratingly obtuse that it soured me on the game and made me distrust every single puzzle, because if plenty of obvious solutions won't work if they're not the very specific solution the game wants you to use, then what's the point in trying to figure anything out? EDIT: Oh, I see you mention this exact problem at 1:04:50. Ha.
I’m so happy Mert did a vid on Visage because it’s one of my absolutely favourites. Sure it does have some gameplay problems, but I get the impression I’m more forgiving than most on these issues. The video was still great, and I did wonder about Dolores’s menopause meaning she couldn’t have a baby and what it all means, but I never noticed the rat poison before! However, is George Dolores’s husband? I actually thought he might be her son and she’s remembering him as a baby AND her presumably deceased partner - a double moment of pain for George. I wondered because their use of language is very different. But I urgently need to ask someone: 50:44 “Monitor and Abuse”. Is this a reference to anything? That’s a specific phase and my spidey sense is tingling...
I never considered that about George! He does look much younger so that could be true. Truthfully I have no idea My best guess could be the Monitor and Abuse trait from Dead by Daylight? The Doctor has it! Beyond that, no idea I'm afraid :(
@@MertKayKay Dolores used the line “I’ll show you, you damn scoundrel what bread your worth” (for example). No one under the age of 80 talks like that. In George’s cassette tapes he never uses terms of phrase like that and instead sounds relatively modern. He also strikes me as late-middle-aged Boomer not Silent Generation elderly. It’s just another tragic layer to his character, and complimentary to the disorientation and confusion of the Dolores chapter. DARN! I was hoping it wouldn’t be DBD. I thought both you and Behaviour were making a reference to something else. Maybe a book (or chapter) about MKULTRA or something? (Doctor and Dwayne are both connected to it) I’m doing a series of videos on the DBD killers and I’m all about little clues like that. I should've known you were a fellow Fog Walker! Anyway, loved the video, love the work, all the best! - BPA
The content warning about dementia and stillbirth made my jaw drop, not because they were upsetting to me, but because the last time i even thought about Visage, the game didnt have a plotline
I really like what i've seen of Visage, but i could never get past the ending of the Lucy chapter, which i think is a serious misstep. Lucy ripping her own jaw off is just so ludicrously extreme (and also physically impossible without i guess a demon's magic strength) that it elicited shocked laughter and then frustration from me. You might as well have had her rip her own legs off and throw them across the room. It just shattered the tone.
I'm gonna break the weirdest lance here for the game developers about the glass ball and the hammer: if you tried to do that IRL, it would likely shoot off like a giant marble or a bowling ball if you miss the right angle or lack the proper force. That's why the vise would probably be more effective, it holds the spherical surface in place while applying pressure on the right angle. I'm guessing dropping it from a second story wouldn't even leave a dent either, it looks super thick, too. I get exactly what you mean with your example, of course, different people will attempt different solutions to the same puzzle: maybe if the developers had included some sort of text comment on why the other tools aren't useful in this situation, it would've worked slightly better imo.
mk ultra was literally responsible for the death of numerous members of my family. Absolutely a vile program that is the reason my family can never be put back together. When i realized Dwaynes role in this, i was furious, haha.
My first and only playthrough of visage (on Xbox) was problem free save for one issue. In the prologue I decided to gather up every single item in the entire house before starting a chapter, then sorted and stored them in the foyer, right next to the staircase. As soon as I started the first chapter every single item clipped right through the floor and I had to play through the entire game with nothing but the few items that landed on the floor below instead of completely falling out of the map, and the very sparse item respawns that periodically happened
good god. rakkans chapter would actually kill me to play as someone with scopophobia. those painting are horrifying. not to mention the huge eye,,, lord
I played this together with my brother (okay he played and I hid behind my hands but whatever, in my defence I’m very light sensitive and the flash of the camera literally blind me. But I’m also a wimp so-) and we played Lucy’s chapter first! I still remember the two of us literally yelling when that lil gremlin girl just popped up and chased us in that basement. Visage is a good game, I enjoy it even if we never finished it but it could get really frustrating during some puzzles which sucked because we did really want to know what was going on! We both moved away before we could finish it so we’ve never seen the end of the story. I’d never be able to play on my own because I’m a freak but- anyway! So this video is great! It’s nice to know what happened and your analysis is always so interesting to listen to. Great video 😊
I happened upon your channel via suggestions from RU-vid, based on my viewing history. I very much enjoy your style, depth of research and insights, among many other things. I have watched videos on games or shows that I have had little interest in, strictly because of the way you present the topics at hand. Not gushing. Just entertained and informed on things I might never have given a chance to. Keep up the good work and I will keep watching and recommending your channel, and ISDWG too.
I think your gameplay was the first time I've seen someone actually get the alternative ending (happy ending). Also to say, I think your retrospective/review/analysis on Visage is the BEST one out there. Honestly, your videos are perhaps the most eloquent and beautifully written analyses on RU-vid. But, enough ego-jerking; one of the things I enjoy the most is when scary games are played by people who actually get scared- because they're able to immerse themselves into the world of horror. Nothing annoys me more when a person 'meta-games' a scary game be it because of whatever reason (mind, not the people who just don't get scared [like your bf xD]). I say this because can you genuinely appreciate horror-related anything, if you don't/can't/won't feel it? (I mean, you can- but why play horror media if you don't even get scared anymore?) Besides all that, it was fun watching (hearing) you sh!t bricks and your bf charge headfirst into a whirlpool of terror and coming out relatively unfazed most of the time.
Reeves my ego has been completely jerked, thank you for that :') I'm inspired to make more now, so it pays off And I'm glad! And I agree. I am an absolute victim of my own imagination and will convince myself that death (and jumpscare) is around every corner.
i have been lurking on this channel for a good few weeks. i really enjoy your content! im happy to see this game get covered as well i felt it didnt get discussed as much as it shouldve
How exciting! I only discovered this channel a week or so ago when a friend and I were hanging out and they were watching one of your Walking Dead games and all I could think of was, "Finally, another essay channel with good writing and a quick wit" and I've been binging your backlog ever since. Truly a joy and I absolutely ADORED your video on Soma. Can't wait to watch this one and finally catch a stream of yours.
Fascinating video! I always enjoy watching your stuff for its humor and casual delivery, but your analysis is always so in-depth and carefully considered! Everything is said with a purpose, and you bring insights I've never considered. Always a pleasure 😊
Watching this in a separate room to my bf and I can hear him laughing, agreeing and commenting on it from afar. Evidently, this is phenomenal video essay
Being this early on a video and seeing the nearly empty comment section has sent me into an existential crisis about the motives of people who comment on a video before ever watching it. Do they get a sense of achievement from being among the first? Will I feel the same after posting this? We'll see.
Suppose I've just learned from decades of playing point and click adventures and other similar puzzlers to not overthink things. Example, at no point did I think "I can smash this orb with the hammer." The hammer is established to have a single purpose very early, that is to break the mirrors or walls. Not anything else. Thus, a different solution is needed for the orb. Likewise, maybe the attic hatch is a regional thing but I didn't think for a second to bring a chair over as I knew that that style of hatch uses a ring pull to open, so I immediately set about looking for a ring pull. I think maybe it's less developer's not offering alternative solutions and more players demanding them.
Seems like I could enjoy, like, a third of this game. I liked Madison, though. They didn't step on the same rake there apparently. Your theories are very convincing, though, I had fun.
@@MertKayKay You pushed me to try Madison out and I didn't regret it for a second. As a bonus, I just realised I can finish that video, which I dropped pretty early to hang out there myself! Living a good life.
I also COMPLETELY agree with you on SH 4. God knows I tried to finish it multiple times, but it flips its assets so many times, and yes, it's boring. Scary regardless, sure! I kinda respect it. But I couldn't even make myself beat it for the story with cheats lol. Too tedious, too repetitive. And that comes from someone who had beaten SH 2 three times in a row without complaints. Not the fastest or adhd-friendly game.
I love your content and this video is great and all, but comparing P.T. to a sad plate of sliced bread with beans and shredded cheese on it is a violation of the Geneva Convention.
Sounds a bit like they made at least three games, each with some pretty strong qualities, but mashed them into a single project (and therefore a single control scheme).
Honestly did not think much of Visage. I feel a lot of those post PT indie horrors just lack in many ways, be it writing, gameplay, atmosphere, scares. Visgae is one of these types that just felt less than meh. I get that a lot of these are made with smaller teams and less resources (You know, being indie titles), but its probably also due to people trying to make full games based on what was just a teaser demo. (Made by Hideo Kojima who can be very obtuse and is a bit of a nutjob, a loveable one but still)
