fuckin’ facepalm here.
California: Do you know where Sequoia is? In California.
New Orlean: It’s in Radiator 1-3.
Age: They were in love when they were young, but when aging they saw they weren’t what the other wanted.
Guitars: What the fuck are you retarded? What was the sole instrument that playing during all Radiator 1-1?
Piano: Remember the song at the end of Radiator 1-2? Yeah, that was piano, dumbfuck.
Death Metal: Radiator 1-3.
Do you seriously think that any of the above mentioned had any major focus at all in the mod? You can’t take minor details and call them important. It’s like saying Halo 3 is about Piano because there is piano in its theme song. And you can’t describe a current installment of a mod with things you plan to involve in future installments without even mentioning they haven’t been included yet.
I’m sorry but I don’t recall CampaignJunkie mentioning that everything he said about the mod was important, but I probably missed it.
That’s because he figured people would be intelligent enough to understand that.
By the way:
Here are the writers notes about Radiator 1-1:
And Radiator 1-2
Read about half of this and then got sick of it.
“Can ‘looking at stuff’ be fun too?”
no
Even campaignjunkie thinks his mod is shit. He says himself that he hates both mod installments and only released the second installment because he had already put so much work in to it. Posting that quote just killed your own argument.
He is fooling people. He promises all this stuff. People see death metal in the description and think, oh, I like death metal, so they dl Radiator only to find it has absolutely nothing to do with death metal. In the case of piano a piano fan might play through the whole game looking for the piano, only to find that the piano mentioned in the description was referring to a short sound track at the very end of the game. That would piss me off a lot. In FEAR Project Origin there is a zombie playing the piano in one scene, FEAR Project Origin must be about piano.
When describing something you want to summarize it.
“Presenting the substance in a condensed form”
ie the main ideas.
Your argument is invalid.
“That’s where stargazing comes in. It’s still passive… and to many, it’s still boring. Which leads me to what I consider my failures in Polaris - it’s not very “fun” and the tasks and instructions are still very game-like. “Do this. Look at that. Do that.” It’s all basically one big tutorial level until the end, when Dylan disappears and the player finally has to make a decision for himself. Originally I had less overt instruction, and it was embedded within the text of the narrative more - but playtesters would get confused. “Do I click on the Big Dipper?” So yes, my biggest regret about Polaris is the “game” part.”
“I don’t like how HWC turned out at all. At its core, the gameplay consists of crawling around and moving crates. It’s really quite awful… but at this point, I’ve worked too long on it to simply let it drift away, so I decided to polish this turd until it’s pretty shiny and set it off into the wild. The scope of HWC definitely exploded out of control, and in its current state it’s an absolute mess. I never want to open the map up in the editor again. Mein gott.”
Really?
You’re trying to argue with your own posts.
The game part may not be that much fun (although I thought it was), but the other parts like the mood, story, techniques used for the sky, etc. are beautiful.
ie the mapping and creativity was impressive but the mod was very boring/what I’ve said already. Who really cares if the mapping is good if the mod itself isn’t fun? If something is boring, then no matter how pretty it is it is still an epic fail.
Your argument has failed so you are trying to change your premise.
But then wouldn’t you be saying exactly what garthbartin was saying, that this would be better off as some other medium than a game? I’m not taking sides here, and I personally enjoyed the mod, so don’t accuse me of anything kthxbye.
No I think it’s good as a game since it allows interactivity, unlike movies or paintings where you’re only a spectator.
[COLOR=‘Red’]I just cleared out a shit-ton of off-topic rubbish and pointless bickering. All of you keep on topic and keep it civil.
After having just read through this whole thread, both garthbartin and imonfire are going to be taking an enforced break from the forums. I can’t leave some of you guys unattended for even a couple of days, it seems.
Haha, namley me, but i’m innocent on this one!
I didn’t have you in mind when I wrote it, but if the cap fits… 
Ah, I knew I had seen a thread about Radiator before. I think I’ll repeat what I said in the other thread I posted in, but I’m not going to worry about spoilers, since there have already been a truckload of spoilers in this thread. If what Imonfire posted about the developer notes, then many of my points are going to be a little redundant, but most of the point I’m making here isn’t WHAT the problems with the mod are, but WHY they are problems. I’ll be expanding on my original post from the Good Mods ruined by certain things thread for this purpose.
Radiator 1-2: Polaris and Handle with Care
This game was perhaps the freshest takes I’ve seen on an FPS. Polaris was excellent, though slightly marred by the fact that I felt absolutely no connection to any of the characters. The main character was a bitch and Dylan was actually kind of a douche, seeing how he brought her(I’m assuming the main character is female because the gender of the main character remains ambiguous within this section) out on a date she has absolutely no interest in, and then left her there to find her own way back without actually SAYING what direction he was going to go. The only clue that he went north is that he had been constantly telling you to find north. North is just a reference point, it doesn’t mean every single thing we’re looking for is in that direction.
Furthermore, the endings all pretty much amounted to the same thing whether you completed the game successfully or not, leaving you questioning the point of why you even bothered playing it at all.(not a good feeling to be left with upon completing a game) Despite all this, I was given the impression that the section was supposed to have some sort of emotional impact.
Still, I can forgive these points for the fresh gameplay that Polaris implemented.
The Handle with Care section is the part that bugs me the most. The fundamental premise of HwC seems to be that you are tasked with repressing troubled memories inside your head during a marriage counseling session in order for your relationship with your gay lover to survive.
The first issue that struck me was that a male specific name was used for the main character. There are a number of gender neutral names (like Lee/Leigh, Casey, Kim, Parker, Alex/Alyx, etc) that would have allowed the gender to be interpreted by the player; either playing as a girl in a straight relationship or as a guy in a gay relationship. I have nothing against any person for being homosexual, but at the same time I have no interest in supporting homosexuality as a lifestyle. As a result, this issue made it pretty much impossible to immerse myself in the character I was supposed to be playing as.
That is only a minor issue compared to the flawed foundation on which the entire HwC section is based. In order to “win” you have to repress memories by moving boxes to shelves where they are sealed off. If you break any of these boxes, it results in an outburst during the counseling session, and if repeated often enough, results in the relationship ending.
There is no possible way that a person could have a healthy relationship that requires repressing memories. A healthy relationship is based on communication, and only a complete quack in the field of relation counseling would think otherwise, yet throughout the entire game you are praised by the counselor for repression and chastised for any outbursts. I was left doubting and rejecting the entire premise of both the game setting and game play involved.
Now here, it’s pointed out that part of the object of the game IS to actually question whether or not the relationship even SHOULD survive. That’s great and all, except that there isn’t any question about it now. As I pointed out already, if a relationship requires repressing memories instead of talking them out, it’s not a relationship. The game has now shot itself in the foot as the method to REALLY winning is to NOT PLAY. For an art piece, this is a brilliant concept, but even the most novice game developer should be able to recognize the fatal flaw in designing a game that encourages you to NOT play it.
The fundamental underlying problem is shown pretty well right here. The developer focused too much on keeping the ending reward/consequence from being “trite” and forgot one of the fundamental principles of game design is for effort of the player to be REWARDED and lack of effort or skill to be met with CONSEQUENCES. If he really wanted to show that divorce could actually be considered the “good ending” then getting that ending should have required skill and effort as well or instead.
Ultimately Radiator:Handle with Care shows itself as being highly polished with unique and well implemented metaphorical gameplay mechanics that could have been truly thought provoking , but since the metaphor upon which the gameplay is based is erroneous,(either in terms of rules of successful relationships or rules of successful gameplay) the gameplay goes from being intuitive to counter intuitive.
Wait this thread isn’t deleted? Anyway it was an interesting read, Acumen and I mostly agree with you. Especially on the part where you say that the gameplay is counter-intuitive instead of being intuitive. On my first playthrough I didn’t stack any boxes, because I accidentally dropped the first one then saw that something happened. A cut-scene to be more precise. Then I just said thought that I was supposed to “delete” bad memories so he can forget and get over them.
Then on my second play I saw those little numbers on the screens and on the walls, so I guessed I had to stack them in the corresponding spaces. Unfortunately I wasn’t (and I am still not) able to stack them all as some of them were almost unreachable.
I also found strange the fact that when you “successfully” repressed memories, you we’re given bad feedback from the marriage counselor, which incited me a bit to destroy those memory boxes.
I have actually successfully stacked all the boxes. The trick to this is that as long as you are careful, it is possible to set boxes down and pick it up later. You can pick up boxes that are in your way, take them off the shelf and leave yourself a completely clear path. Occasionally you also need to make use of the few barrels that are in the area to reach sections that are too high to jump to.
Oh, and you don’t get bad feedback when you successfully repress memories, you get bad feedback when you break the boxes, which isn’t how you repress memories, it’s how they break loose and result in an outburst on the subject. She’s actually chastising you for letting out the issues that you apparently need to talk about. In order to repress memories, you have to get the box into its proper place on the shelves.
The first part was cool, I didn’t understand the second part at all 
. Is the third part out yet?
Nope. It’s supposed to be out in September.
I can’t wait for it.
As far as the game went I got all the endings, mostly by just fucking around the first time and then going back and doing it right the second. And it was awesome. I enjoyed it more than most of the ‘LOOK, A NEW MAP’ mods.
As far as the majority of complaints about it I have read in this thread: They didn’t bug me, I don’t care.
I usually don’t post in threads about Radiator because I firmly believe that it doesn’t matter what I think… but seeing as BMS used to be my home turf, I feel compelled to “grace you with my presence.”
to the haters: It’s okay. But just keep in mind that there’s a reason why you can leave the clearing in Polaris or go through the exit door in HwC, at almost any time – if you don’t like it, leave. The exit is always there.
Grey Acumen: I find straightforward books, movies, and games to be boring. Yes, obscurity does not equate to subtlety, but at the same time I’d rather err on the side of David Lynch than Dan Brown.
re: gender neutral name – No. It’s about two gay dudes. I’m sorry it confuses and upsets you. I’m still not sure why this is a flaw.
re: “losing” being too easy to be rewarding – this is where I think you and the reviewer at Destructoid don’t quite understand what’s happening here:
Have you ever been in a relationship and wondered whether honesty is really the best policy? Why do you think so much infidelity goes on in the world, if the ethics are really so clear-cut? It’s not as obvious as it seems.
Here’s how I always thought of it: the therapist praises James for repressing a memory because that’s when James bites his tongue and gives the appearance of progress
Much like the “leap” at the end of Polaris, it’s up to the player to make this other “leap,” that they might as well just break boxes instead of bothering with the farce that is therapy (or at least James thinks it’s a farce)… and if they never make that leap, that’s fine, because that’s also a valid world view.
The boxes ramp fairly evenly in difficulty (though L3 is harder to provoke a crisis, that the player will inevitably break a few and get a bit frustrated) and at the end you get a fairly rewarding feeling when you realize you have to walk on the spotlight scaffold in order to get the last box repressed (there’s probably other solutions, but that’s the one I intended)
The problem is probably that I don’t hold your hand. You have to realize all the strategies yourself by interacting with the system: to move boxes out of the way beforehand, to use the blue barrels to prop yourself up, etc.
Anyway, I mod because I like modding. It’s not to please anyone.
Though it does entertain me when people get agitated.
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