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Her Story: review and search terms
Jun. 25th, 2015 03:50 amSo I couldn't sleep and REALLY felt like playing the new game Her Story, and since it's only $5 I bought it.
It's a game about database searching, woo! WAIT NO IT'S ACTUALLY GOOD. Like a more non linear Analogue: A Hate Story, you are puzzling through a mystery via old logs. In this case, they're videos of a woman being interviewed about her missing husband. As you watch new videos you get new search terms to try, which leads to more videos. I haven't managed to get them all, but it's pretty easy to get the basic gist of the story. Really, I got the basic gist a few videos in, and the rest was just figuring out the (sometimes quite interesting!) details.
This very positive review is what inspired me to buy it, and I have to say I was a bit disappointed with the cheesiness of some of the twists, they allow for interesting story telling but I was expecting something more plausible and less "Oh I've seen this movie". But once I got over that I really enjoyed the game: the underlying story has issues, but it's told REALLY well. The non linear, player controlled aspect is very cleverly done, and the actress makes you care about not only her but the characters you never meet. Since I wasn't overwhelmed with admiration for the plot I haven't bothered untangling all the complicated clues that might clarify some of the ambiguity. But there's definitely some sneaky clues to puzzle out if you're inclined that way.
But I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO FIND ALL THE VIDEOS. I'm stuck at around 75% /o\ For anyone else in this boat, here's my search terms thus far, roughly categorised by number of videos returned. I'd ignore the one video words unless you get REALLY desperate, most of the time they were the already seen video where I'd heard the word. EDIT: Have seen them now, wasn't missing anything significant.
Note: without spoilers, the game deals with some heavy subjects. I mean, the first suggested search term is "murder", and it goes on from there.
( Spoilers! )
It's a game about database searching, woo! WAIT NO IT'S ACTUALLY GOOD. Like a more non linear Analogue: A Hate Story, you are puzzling through a mystery via old logs. In this case, they're videos of a woman being interviewed about her missing husband. As you watch new videos you get new search terms to try, which leads to more videos. I haven't managed to get them all, but it's pretty easy to get the basic gist of the story. Really, I got the basic gist a few videos in, and the rest was just figuring out the (sometimes quite interesting!) details.
This very positive review is what inspired me to buy it, and I have to say I was a bit disappointed with the cheesiness of some of the twists, they allow for interesting story telling but I was expecting something more plausible and less "Oh I've seen this movie". But once I got over that I really enjoyed the game: the underlying story has issues, but it's told REALLY well. The non linear, player controlled aspect is very cleverly done, and the actress makes you care about not only her but the characters you never meet. Since I wasn't overwhelmed with admiration for the plot I haven't bothered untangling all the complicated clues that might clarify some of the ambiguity. But there's definitely some sneaky clues to puzzle out if you're inclined that way.
But I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO FIND ALL THE VIDEOS. I'm stuck at around 75% /o\ For anyone else in this boat, here's my search terms thus far, roughly categorised by number of videos returned. I'd ignore the one video words unless you get REALLY desperate, most of the time they were the already seen video where I'd heard the word. EDIT: Have seen them now, wasn't missing anything significant.
Note: without spoilers, the game deals with some heavy subjects. I mean, the first suggested search term is "murder", and it goes on from there.
( Spoilers! )
