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WTF Did I Just Play?

WTF Did I Just Play?

Welcome to the very first edition of “Wtf Gaming”! Here I will review and speculate over the weirdest games out there, and decide if the quality of the game overcomes its “Wtf Factor”.

The Devs – The Brains Behind the Weird

Today’s game is Push Me Pull You , by House House. These are Michael, Nico, Jake and Stuart, four friends from Melbourne who like talking and thinking about video games. In 2013 Nico made a video game about geometry, and Stu made one about looking at art. The time seemed right to all make one together, as stated on their first blog post . It seems they’ve formed purely for the sake of Push Me Pull You , as fit for any true indie game developer.

The Story – Another Pleasant Valley Sunday

The game, according to Kill Screen who interviewed the developers, is about a utopian society built around play, diversity, and a strong sense of community. Each game session is a sports match where you need to keep the ball in your court. If there is a plot to the game, it is as yet unknown. If it does have a plot in the end, I imagine it would have something to do with resolving a conflict by working together and using your community’s support to get through it.

The Gameplay – Joined at the Hip

The gameplay is where the WTF factor comes in. You are joined at the torso with another player, with the ability to move generally how you like in coordination with your other half. You are also able to stretch and shorten whenever you need to. Your opponent is another pair of players, and the object of each match is to drag the ball to your side of the court and keep it there long enough to score a point, as said by Rock Paper Shotgun . I have yet to find any information indicating that there’s a single player mode, so this game might very well fall under the same trap Tri Force Heroes did – this trap being that most gamers find it difficult to coordinate two other friends to come over and the single player is rigged to suck.

The Graphics – 100% Medically Accurate

You’re just hooked up to another person. It almost sounds plausible when I put it that way. Not much different from any team-based multiplayer after all. But the way this game looks is what really haunts your nightmares. The human centipede quality of these cartoon figures is eerie at best, but I think the most uncanny of all is the way the reaching arms stutter in their animation. Nothing says horror like these jerky movements coupled with weird squishy sounds that are apparently nothing more than lettuce being chopped, according to the Kill Screen interview. The extension of the torso is also uncanny, the way it wriggles in a boneless manner, utterly inconsistent with real world physics. Which is fine – I do not ask for real physics in games, however I do ask for plausible ones. The game world is built on the joint torso premise but until I hear the reasoning behind it, being joined torsos is truly weird.

WTF Did I Just Play?

WTF Factor – What Does it Really Mean?

As the developers mention in their interview with Kill Screen, Push Me Pull You is about abstracting your body in interesting ways, pushing and pulling, doing all of these crazy things with your fingers and seeing it mirrored in another world. Furthermore, the game represents the challenges we face in real life and how working together is the key to resolution. As Nico and Jake explain, we constantly talk about scenarios [families] get into, like, “Oh, what if they’re having a big fight and they draw a line down the middle of the room— [the characters in Push Me Pull You ] have to draw a line down their own body. But yeah, in this world – if this was your life – you wouldn’t get along all the time. And that actually maps to co-op games pretty well, because as much as you and your partner sometimes feel like a perfectly well-oiled machine, other times you’re just two people yelling at each other, really frustrated, like, “Why won’t you go the way I want you to go or why won’t you do what I need you to do?” That co-op approach to life – there’s a lot of communication to be found there.

WTF Factor – Is it Worth Buying?

I think this one might be free to play, but we’ll see. Regardless, is this game worth playing despite the human centipede? Well, judging by the developers’ reasoning behind their joined torso concept, it seems like it would be worth a shot. After watching too many gifs and three videos of gameplay, I admit I’ve gotten used to the snake-like quality of Push Me Pull You . That, coupled with the rather adorable idea that it’s all about working together and community, makes the game a lot less weird and a lot more cute. For me, however, that also makes it a lot more boring. The weirdness is the biggest draw towards the game, but when it turns out to be a rather unexciting co-op game, I am less than interested. As such, my final say would be no, Push Me Pull You is not worth buying.

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