This is because I do not review in-development releases. I only review finished releases or the developer. The purpose of posted comments on an in-development release is to bring attention to the current pros and cons so that they might be addressed in future releases. It would be grossly unfair to permanently log a review of a game about issues that will hopefully be dealt with in future releases.
You do know that you can edit your review in order to update it, right??
You can change the rating and everything, even delete your whole review and post another one.
This forum gives you all the tools and options you need.
but that this can not be called a game if you have no recourse but to use a walkthrough or console cheats to get through it. The idea is to improve the plot tracks so that the game may be played without the requirement to cheat.
You dont need to use a walkthrough or console, technically all can be accomplished without those things.
Realistically though, most people would get stuck somewhere, and would need to either ask for help here or use a walkthrough for help.
This game isnt meant to be easy, in the sense that you accomplish everything without effort. If you were basically handed the answer, whats the point of having to do stuff in order to complete quests? It would just be a boring hassle.
Some things could have a little more indication however, to that I agree.
For example, I found out about the use of the flower by accident! Vickie had told me that I need to do something Ashley would appreciate, and since I had no real options (that I could see), I was like: "well, maybe I can give her something. I got a flower, maybe that will work?"
Surprisingly, it sort of worked. Ashley told me she hates that color though, so I had to change the flower's color.
BUT it is not a random guess as to what color the flower needs to be, btw. (That part is fine)
You are not given a whole palette of colors to choose from.
You actually get only 1 color dye: Blue Hair Color Dye.
So the answer becomes, DUH - I need to use my only color dye to change the color of the flower.
This is purely intuitive, and yes you dont know for sure until you try it, but thats the kind of game that this is: You need to figure stuff out by yourself.
So, you saying the game needs to be played without
the requirement to cheat is just disingenuous, since you dont need to cheat anyway. That is not a requirement.
and situations where the player has no idea what to do outside of random wandering
Sure, some parts can be improved, no doubt.
That is what I meant when I said the story is flawed. The story as in the Original Story. Not the plot, the Original Story as is defined by the game. The game uses Stories that are written by people, and those stories include much more than just plot. Items, behaviour of NPCs, Clothing, hints, etc are all determined by the Story files.
I think we are in agreement here, you just misunderstood my previous comment.
have always been confused with these idiotic complaints about the load time and graphic card load of Unity games. It's a real-time 3D rendering engine that is configured by default to use as much of your GPU power as possible. Every other commercial real time 3D rendering game takes a long time to load so why the complaints about Unity games? You expect to configure the graphics settings of commercial games down if you do not have a top end graphics card, so why is anyone confused about doing the same thing with a Unity game? True, developers can take steps to better streamline the loading process to improve game load times, but that is something you do for a finished release and not the current in-development releases.
Well, if you've played several other real-time 3D games, you'd know that most of them have shorter loading times than House Party. Even those that have long loading times, once you actually load the game from the main menu and you get in game, if you simply load a save file to go back to some other point, the game will load faster than the initial load it does from the main menu.
House Party simply has unusually long loading times (even after the initial load), and this is frustrating because it is a kind of game where Save/Load is very important since you are bound to make mistakes, piss off NPCs, select the wrong dialogue option, go down a path you didnt want to, etc etc.
Now, I realize that this isnt a AAA game, and I am comparing it to AAA titles, so the game (and its devs) is actually excused.
This doesnt eliminate my frustration at times however. But I do understand that this isnt a freakin Ubisoft game, dont worry.
The GPU load is also unreasonably high, and this screams poor optimization. I am not particularly bothered by that however, since the "fix" is ridiculously simple and easy. I just turn off Realistic Shadows, and all is well. The graphics quality loss isnt even that significant in my humble opinion (feel free to disagree).
So with that option alone turned off, GPU-load is at more than acceptable levels, allowing me to get a good framerate.
The addition of a GPU-limiter is also pretty handy, especially for those that dont use V-sync.
Btw,
"use as much of your GPU power as possible" isnt something thats good if at the highest degree. You should already know, that every real-time rendering game has to compromise between using a good amount of graphics resources and graphics quality.
In other words, (for ex.) a game could have 16392x16392 shadow resolution, but that would "KILL" most if not all gaming rigs. Plus, the actual quality benefit would be negligible.
But as for taking advantage of the resources that are available, then yes graphics engines should be able to take advantage of every resource, to provide maximum performance.
There's a difference between "use as much of your GPU power as possible" and "put unnecessary load that most single GPUs cant handle resulting in low frame rates" however.
I hope you understand what I mean. A gamer with a GTX 960 couldnt hope to run this game at max details. My GTX 970 cant handle that, how would the 960?
Basically, you need something like a GTX 1070 or better, to run it at max details.
THAT is the complaint. The complaint isnt that the game uses as much of the GPU as it can. Its that an excessively powerful GPU is required in order to run the game at max graphics details.
However, I am not gonna be the one who will complain about this, since the game offers tuning of key graphics details that make a difference and allows me to run it at perfectly acceptable frame rates.
This is simply something the devs can work on, to improve overall experience of the users.
You expect to configure the graphics settings of commercial games down if you do not have a top end graphics card
You dont need to have a top end graphics card for most commercial games. You dont even need to have the latest gen of graphics cards. My GTX 970 is usually enough, for 1080p, with my setup. I have neither a high refresh rate monitor nor do I try the most demanding games out there. Most games are actually easier to render than House Party at max details.
At the end of the day, most of this talk is just pointless. You have your opinion and preferences and I have mine.
I know people that are absolutely disgraced if they cant run a game at max details, ~120FPS stable, and using any high resolution packs and mods that are available, and in some cases they even demand Supersampling AA, and use of DSR for upscaling, etc.
The thing is, that some stuff is just entirely subjective.
This is why I told you to submit a review, because this is mostly a matter of subjective opinion.
