Papers please!

[OrsonM]

(cause no trouble)

Hopefully there isn't another thread about papers please anywhere around the forum, but just in case: here it is. I think that this it's the closest to being the best game released this year so far, at least in my opinion. It's audience is very wide (absolutely everyone can pick this up and enjoy it), it's funny, it's an original setting, it's very easy to understand and it's graphics are beautifully rendered in a style reminiscent to the classic Carmen Sandiego:



Which perhaps wasn't the intention, but it get that feeling at least.

My only gripe with the game is that it's replayability is virtually nil. All major events are scripted, for which even watching a twitch.tv stream of the game can ruin major surprises within the game. There's supposed to be something like around 20 endings, but everyone who knows something about multiple endings knows that it's usually a lackluster feature in almost every game that features them, Papers Please being no Chrono Trigger with it's supposed 20 endings (a game over screen is not a real ending!!!, so it's more like less than 10 true endings).

It's a game that it's best played maybe a couple of times, if not just once, as subsequent playthroughs begin show it's seams.

Other than than that, it's solid and awesome. Hopefully it's lack of randomization will be addressed at some point. There's also an endless mode available, but come on!

 

[Ailedhoo]

The BBC has done a article on Papers, Please!

 

[scheva007]

It also featured in charlie Brooker's "how videogames changed the world".

Although i liked the idea, and that there can be a real connection you feel to these people's stories, despite the rudementary graphics, i had an issue with the difficulty.
On the one hand its hard, cause you get bombarded with geographical terms from made up countries, which to memorize would take quite the time. On the other hand, once you got that (or printed a cheat sheet), and knew the most efficient way to manage your desk, you didnt need to turn to corruption because you made enough to feed your family

 

[Malachi256]

It also featured in charlie Brooker's "how videogames changed the world".

Although i liked the idea, and that there can be a real connection you feel to these people's stories, despite the rudementary graphics, i had an issue with the difficulty.
On the one hand its hard, cause you get bombarded with geographical terms from made up countries, which to memorize would take quite the time. On the other hand, once you got that (or printed a cheat sheet), and knew the most efficient way to manage your desk, you didnt need to turn to corruption because you made enough to feed your family

That very conundrum is part of the RP brilliance of the game. The increasing difficulty is what makes the various decisions you make more harrowing.

 

[Dell19]

An issue I have with the game is that the actual processing of passports is equivalent to a really dull job / task which puts me off playing it more. I appreciate that lots of games ultimately have some repetitive tasks in them however they are more hidden.

 

[PhilBowles]

An issue I have with the game is that the actual processing of passports is equivalent to a really dull job / task which puts me off playing it more. I appreciate that lots of games ultimately have some repetitive tasks in them however they are more hidden.

I haven't played the game, but I understand from everything I've read that that's pretty much the game's whole point - you're hardly going to get the feel of working a grinding, thankless job in a communist bureaucracy with flashy graphics or item drop rewards (to take examples from Diablo III, a game that's nothing but a single dull repetitive task repeated for 60 levels, but given entertainment value by those two factors).

 

[Dell19]

At various points you can make decisions that impact the storyline which is I think the main point of the game and up to a point the actual processing of people is quite fun when spotting inaccuracies etc. The time pressure to process people quickly is less fun as it encourages either memorising the passport rules or having an external reference (I ended up having wiki pages open alongside).

 

[schlaufuchs]

The object of the game is to make you feel miserable. The job is monotonous. No matter how hard you try it gets increasingly impossible to break even. All your family members die. Your supervisors yell at you. Every day the rules you have to be aware of change completely. Immigrants give you impossible decisions where aiding them means your family goes hungry, but not aiding them may cost them their life (or conversely, rejecting them means taking a moral stance, and letting them through means actively abetting prostitutes). The colors are dull, lots of grays and dark blues. The music is somber and soul-crushing. Everybody sounds the same. The "getting written up" sound is startling and grating.

You aren't supposed to have fun playing this game. This is a good thing though.

Just as not all songs have to be uplifting, not all movies have to have a happy ending, and not all paintings need to be pretty, so too do not all games have to be fun.

 

[scheva007]

That very conundrum is part of the RP brilliance of the game. The increasing difficulty is what makes the various decisions you make more harrowing.

The increasing difficulty lies in the more stuff you need to do yes. But i dont see learning made up stuff from the heart as something that should be a part of the difficulty in a videogame, i can learn latin vocabular for that

@owen: i agree about the most stuff, except for the "impossible" part. Once you have the regional names, there difficulty curve drops massivly and your family isnt in danger of starvation.

 

[Uberfrog]

The increasing difficulty lies in the more stuff you need to do yes. But i dont see learning made up stuff from the heart as something that should be a part of the difficulty in a videogame, i can learn latin vocabular for that

@owen: i agree about the most stuff, except for the "impossible" part. Once you have the regional names, there difficulty curve drops massivly and your family isnt in danger of starvation.

You either memorise the regions and regulations or you have to juggle the deliberately awkward handbook and paperwork on your cramped desk. Having a wiki page or a printout misses the point. So too does playing over and over until you nail everything. You're meant to feel limited, and the game is more of a role-playing fish-out-of-water experience than something you're meant to master.

 

[schlaufuchs]

@owen: i agree about the most stuff, except for the "impossible" part. Once you have the regional names, there difficulty curve drops massivly and your family isnt in danger of starvation.

You can also skip to the end of a book or look up the synopsis of its plot on wikipedia. It's rather not the point, is it?

 

[H4run]

this game is as Owen describe, it is frustatingly entertaining, how can I say it? And it really made my head spinning. This is one of the toughest game I ever play.