Facade

Sep 16, 2013 by

Facade

First off, the install time on this game was far too long.  Not really worth the time waiting to get to play the game in the first place.  I mean, half an hour just to decompress audio files? Really? Let’s get into it anyhow.  I enjoyed the intro, setting up the story with just a black screen and someone calling the player on the phone to invite the player over for a visit.  The player is then treated with a very odd camera pull-back effect, pulling away from the two characters of the game, Trip and Grace. Just when the player thinks they can start playing the game, the player is forced to choose a name from a list (which didn’t include my own name, so I picked funny names such as Walter and...

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Façade- Thoughts

Sep 16, 2013 by

Façade- Thoughts

In my two play-throughs of Façade I had quite a different reaction to it, the first time I played I got kicked out almost immediately because I told the husband to shut up and proceeded to try and kiss the Wife. But on my second play through I began to take a different direction and tried to stay for as long as I could without getting kick out and it was during this time that I really started to like the game. The clunky mechanics and terrible word detection aside it was a very unique concept to a game. I’ve played many games that are designed to change your future and allies/foes as you make different decisions but never a game where you can type anything and it’s a neat idea. I think if someone...

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oh tell me more about your Italy trip, Trip...

Sep 16, 2013 by

oh tell me more about your Italy trip, Trip

so, in the hour I had to play around with Facade, I tried out three strategies: Touch and provoke my hosts as frequently as possible. Because when do I get to act on these sociopathic urges in real life? Honestly try to invest serious effort with a tragically mismatched couple. As other players may have pointed out, trying to steer conversation into a new direction is usually met with the kind of “uhhs” and “hehes” that dissolve so many real life conversations(that much had a certain pang of truth to it..).  A common criticism seems to point out the lack of meaningful dialogue possible between the player and the hosts, but I guess a sneaky justification for the flat AI is this: Grace and Trip are simply not all that interested in what you have to say....

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Response to Facade

Sep 16, 2013 by

Response to Facade

Facade is a game that I had encountered a few years ago. I don’t believe I’ve ever played it but I did read other people’s reviews of it (most of which were mocking or frustrated) and watched a few playthroughs of people on Youtube trying to get the characters to do various ridiculous things. By the time we got to it in this class though, I’d forgotten most of my knowledge about the game and it wasn’t until I saw a picture of the characters that I remembered anything about it. Considering the year it came out, I can see why this game was though of as kind of a groundbreaker. The characters really do respond to the player’s words and actions if the words were carefully chosen and the sheer number of possible...

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Thoughts on Facade

Sep 16, 2013 by

Thoughts on Facade

Façade is an interesting game in so far as it allows one to experiment with different approaches while trying to tackle the relationship problems of Grace and Trip. One need only patience and tact to accomplish this. I spent most of my time either agreeing with one or the other and typing lots of simple messages, things like: “you need to talk it through”, or “I am your friend!”, or trying to convince Trip that there’s no need to be trippin’. I thought it was rather funny how Grace tells Trip that she knows he’s been frequenting that bar on the corner, he acts like its something to be ashamed of, or when she drops the bomb about her having continued to paint in secret, next she’ll tell us that she’s also been taking dance lessons behind Trip’s back, these are...

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