Crippled Girls - 4chan's erotic game

[Skykid]

This visual novel is a fascinating low. It's not a game, it's a picture book.

Well yes. Look at the genre name. Visual. Novel. It's not a game, it's a visual. novel. Reading is hard.

In which case I'll assume you've read the thread title.

[Stormwatch]

Which was worded like that with the specific purpose of causing shock, not for precision. Duh.

Then again... a visual novel is a game, but not really. It's a game with very limited gameplay. It's just what this genre is like: an audiovisual story with branching paths. You can dislike the genre, but it's not reasonable to bash a specific game for following the conventions of the genre.

[BryanM]

If Love Plus has taught me anything, endlessly filling up progress bars for no reason is far more fun than it has any goddamn right to be.

It's an observation that's obvious, yes, but it's not obvious that you can literally make a fun Progress Quest game out of it as a sole mechanic.

I will never understand why it is rehashed in nearly every work in nearly every genre, when it was already exhausted more than a decade ago. They should just move on.

Having watched dozens of terrible things, I think I have a handle on the underpinings on why its more successful to go this route:

* Suspension of disbelief. Wincest with your sister in a world full of wizards and robots? Sure, whatever. Still having fun after becoming a salaryman? What the hell do you take us for, rubes?

* From data sampling on this forum, the average salaryman lacks even the time to properly fist himself at night. How on earth is he going to follow a tv show for a whole three months? Let's be serious: these cartoons are still for children and for people who are still kids, or want to be children/forget what a shitpile their life has become.

The only thing I can think of as trying to be anchored to "Real Life" was Say Hello to Blackjack, the one about a new guy in Japan's medical field, getting shit pay and being responsible for problems far above his experience level. Catherine is kinda sorta realistic as well if you disregard the supernatural bits: you're the guy from Office Space, alone in a box all day fixing inane Y2K bugs, for endless thousands of hours of your life. Outside of the box, you have a bland boring girlfriend you don't like too much, and spend most nights drinking with the same couple of assholes over and over. There's a common thematic overlap here: the premise is depressing as hell.

So for whatever reason, life ends after college. If it's not some fantasy action world, and it's not meant to depress the hell out of everyone, the school trope it is. Okabe from Steins;Gate would be a NEET if he weren't nominally a college kid, for example.

The harem/fictional friend type media is, ultimately, food pellets for Calhoun's "beautiful ones". We're facing a slow population crash; Japan is at the forefront but the rest of the developed world is right behind them. Last year the white demographic in the USA had more deaths than it had births, just a matter of time before that applies across the board.

The rats were no longer rats.

[Skykid]

Which was worded like that with the specific purpose of causing shock, not for precision. Duh.

It says what it says. I was accused of not reading, even though I simply addressed the fact there's no game in there based on several posts suggesting the contrary. Petty stuff, let's leave it.

http://i.imgur.com/d1494HI.png

is....is every page like that?

Yes.

Considering it's made by amateurs

It's worth noting that's nothing to do with me. I was sworn at and lambasted while being told it was a highly accomplished work of some deep emotional impact. It's nothing of the sort, it's a load of crap.

You seem to have some thing against the Japanese. Blame the otaku. They're the market for this new direction and style. They're the ones who keep buying it and making it the stable way to make money.

I've got nothing against the Japanese, just the poverty of 90% of their current media output. They just went from making everything I love to a vast proportion of intolerable drivel. It's a chicken and the egg scenario regarding who's responsible, but I'm pretty sure they were the first to stoke the fire by developing characters that appeal to recluses, and then sidelining art in favour of money-spinning off the back of troubled children. Still, at least there's 10% worth a look, and I do look, when I find it.

[Stormwatch]

Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.

[Skykid]

Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.

I agree with that.

Before closing the book on this chapter, I'd just like to return an earlier sentiment and kick Geist118 square in the balls.

This stuff is just crass nonsense using disabled girls as a stand-in for able girls, yet another format to ogle and court unrealistic females in a perverse fantasy for socially challenged males.

This statement is a lie. That's what the problem is here. It will continue to be a lie no matter how much you keep telling yourself that the subject matter is enough to label the game as shit.

The point of my "childish" post above, where I gave all those shit non-reviews, is that that's what you sound like: a fucking imbecile, and a liar. What's more, you're so blind you can't see that.

Your opinion is wrong. The end.

Turns out my appraisal was perfectly accurate and your opinion was wrong. Fancy that.


Bye now!

[cj iwakura]

I enjoyed your thoughts, Skykid, and the (mostly) mature perspective you provided. I don't agree entirely, but I definitely see your points, and I'm in absolute agreement that modern-day Japan isn't a fraction as creative as they used to be, but every so often they have moments of genius. (Catherine, the SMT series in general, Drakengard/Nier, etc.)

Note that they all involve adults.

[Stormwatch]

No, Skykid, your original statement to which Giest118 reacted was a complete load of bullshit.

[cj iwakura]

It was also kind of insulting.

[EmperorIng]

The truth... hurts?

[Giest118]

Turns out my appraisal was perfectly accurate and your opinion was wrong. Fancy that.

Apparently you haven't been on the internet for very long. Your initial appraisal, which, in case you've forgotten it (I know that's a problem for people who love to hear themselves talk), was that Katawa Shoujo was nothing more or less than awful, tasteless fetish porn. Since you have no worldly experience whatsoever, let me demonstrate, in simple terms, the difference between mindless fetish porn and the subject of this thread.







I'm not even setting my standards particularly high here. I know Katawa Shoujo isn't a masterpiece, but it is something I enjoyed. You didn't like it enough to read past the first hour; that's fine. But when you say that it's offensive fetish porn based only on the basic premise, you come across sounding like the idiotic journalists who constantly pose the question: do video games cause violence? That's a type of thinking I will vehemently disagree with, regardless of what it's being applied to.

[Skykid]

Look chaps, I'm not saying anyone here is socially challenged - if you're not, you're not. Please don't be insulted. We don't know here on the forum, and I certainly don't know. I'm not casting aspersions over anyone individually, all I've been given is the lowdown and the product. You asked me to play it to change my mind, and it most certainly didn't.

What I do know is the socially challenged are an extremely likely audience for this type of product, for reasons I outlined in my criticism. I don't think it's developed by people saying "let's make a terrible visual novel about dating crippled kids so socially retarded people don't have to leave their bedrooms to interact with women", but I do tend to think that that's pretty much who it's going to reach out to. You might disagree with that, and if you do I'd really like to hear why. But personally, and based on observations of certain fanbases over the years, that's my take.

And if you're not a shut-in, have fantastic people skills and love to spend time with your friends, colleagues, family and partners, you should really ask yourself why you're playing such a stupid fucking game/VN instead of doing something (anything) more constructive. The world is your oyster.

[cj iwakura]

My honest problem with Katawa Shoujo is the adult content. It in no way adds to the game, it only cheapens it, ESPECIALLY Lilly's story.

Sure, it happens, but it feels all kinds of forced.


And come on, skykid, you're mature enough to not push your opinions onto people like that.

[Giest118]

EDIT: Skykid edited his post, so now what I originally wrote here is literally responding to nothing.

In more reasonable tones; how much you like this visual novel will depend at least in part on how receptive you are to the idea of love being the forefront of a narrative in general. I'm thinking this game was never meant for people like Skykid. Which isn't a slight against him; it's just not for everyone.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

This visual novel is a fascinating low. It's not a game, it's a picture book. The writing is appalling: verbose melodrama overwritten in content and underwritten in depth, slapping you with cringeworthy uses of English every other line. The author's pervasive and irritating desire to be poetic and meaningful is insufferably obvious, resulting in a narrative that's immature, lightweight, and amateurish.

That does look pretty bad. I've gotten into Jack Vance lately, and he loves using antiquated terminology to help with his world-building of strange planets and worlds, but he never actually lets it bog down the action or writing to this kind of pretentiousness. I've never gotten into visual novels people have bugged me about reading. I like being able to imagine the environment and characters that the author setup, rather than have it presented as a picture book. That, and books are nice because you can read them whereever you bring the book, whereas a VN is limited to the computer...

One glaring issue with the apparently humane nature of the content is that the starring group of attractive young students are segregated from the rest of society due to their physical slights... And this is defended as being a realistic approach to disability, a view to seeing them as equals? In what sense? In that even disabled girls can be victims of sexist stereotyping within a trite anime dating sim?

Glad someone else mentioned this. When I heard of this, the premise sounded quite silly - many of them would be perfectly fine in a normal school with a few technological aids to help them with their individual needs. The idea of a school where all the 'cripples' are sent to seems like a way too convenient means of shoehorning all the cripples together (some of them barely count as seriously disabled anyways) as an excuse for a bunch of people with different disabilities to all be in the same vicinity. The concept just seems too gimmicky for it to be believable, which is unfortunate since it sounds like it tries to take itself more seriously than the one where all the guys are literally meat, or the one where everyone's a pigeon.

[Skykid]

And come on, skykid, you're mature enough to not push your opinions onto people like that.

You're right. Post edited. Since I don't actually know the age of who it is I'm talking to, sometimes I think it'd be best if I bit my tongue. Internet can get confusing over things like that.

It's not like I didn't spend a silly amount of time forming a reasonable criticism one page back, so there's really not much more to discuss.

[Eno]

My honest problem with Katawa Shoujo is the adult content. It in no way adds to the game, it only cheapens it, ESPECIALLY Lilly's story.

Sure, it happens, but it feels all kinds of forced.

Is there any Visual Novel where that doesn't hold(and that isn't plain eroge stuff)? First time I got a sex scene(not on KS, it was Utawarerumono) I just couldn't help but laugh at how it just came out of nowhere and overall felt like the writers went "Shit man, you really read all that stuff up until here? Here, have a sex scene, you probably need one.".

[Giest118]

My honest problem with Katawa Shoujo is the adult content. It in no way adds to the game, it only cheapens it, ESPECIALLY Lilly's story.

Sure, it happens, but it feels all kinds of forced.

Is there any Visual Novel where that doesn't hold(and that isn't plain eroge stuff)? First time I got a sex scene(not on KS, it was Utawarerumono) I just couldn't help but laugh at how it just came out of nowhere and overall felt like the writers went "Shit man, you really read all that stuff up until here? Here, have a sex scene, you probably need one.".

I tend not to have a problem with it unless it goes on too long. Which, in the case of Fate/Stay Night, every damn sex scene did. I mean, holy shit, I must have been clicking for twenty minutes to get back to the damn plot. Katawa Shoujo at least keeps it brief.

[cj iwakura]

My honest problem with Katawa Shoujo is the adult content. It in no way adds to the game, it only cheapens it, ESPECIALLY Lilly's story.

Sure, it happens, but it feels all kinds of forced.

Is there any Visual Novel where that doesn't hold(and that isn't plain eroge stuff)? First time I got a sex scene(not on KS, it was Utawarerumono) I just couldn't help but laugh at how it just came out of nowhere and overall felt like the writers went "Shit man, you really read all that stuff up until here? Here, have a sex scene, you probably need one.".

I tend not to have a problem with it unless it goes on too long. Which, in the case of Fate/Stay Night, every damn sex scene did. I mean, holy shit, I must have been clicking for twenty minutes to get back to the damn plot. Katawa Shoujo at least keeps it brief.

Fate/Stay Night's is so ridiculous it goes right past being hilarious to being even more nuts. And they even try to drag plot into it. Sheesh.

At least Katawa's was somewhat tasteful. Somewhat. Though I just mean Lilly's.
And even that had to drag it through the mud some more later.


No wonder I like 07th Expansion visual novels. I can handle murder and horrific violence. They don't involve eroge stuff.


I don't even need to ask: Skykid would hate Umineko. It is anime as all hell before it gets good.

[Ed Oscuro]

If Cookie Clicker has taught me anything, endlessly filling up progress bars for no reason is far more fun than it has any goddamn right to be.

(Even Pixiv agrees.)

[KAI]

Talking about 7th Expansion, is Rose Guns Days any good? I only played the demo, but it didn't look as good as Umineko.

[cj iwakura]

Talking about 7th Expansion, is Rose Guns Days any good? I only played the demo, but it didn't look as good as Umineko.

It's not, but it's a different kind of game. It's prohibition-era crime drama shenanigans. I enjoy that stuff, so I enjoy RGD.


Also, it's legitimately the best art Ryukishi's ever done.

[Mortificator]

Does anyone who wrote for the topic title have any of the disabilities portrayed?