Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes: Her Story

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Starting point is 00:00:22 Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hey guys, welcome to this Quick Take episode. We're so excited to have you here with us. In the past, these Quick Take episodes actually were only available to those who financially supported the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon. But due to popular demand, we have decided to shake up the perks for our supporters and will be releasing these Quick Takes on Saturdays to everyone, giving you all some extra free content that was previously unavailable to the public. And these Quick Takes are a little more laid back, and they're hosted by just one of us. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy this Quick Take episode. Shazam! Boom!

Starting point is 00:01:15 Hello, squad mates. This is Paul here with another Quick Take episode, and thank you so much for your guys' support. What I want to talk to you guys about today is a story-based game called Her Story. And I'm still on a little bit of a high here. I just completed the game. I bought it and I finished it all here in one sitting. And this is not a terribly long game, but that is not something I can say about very many games. So this one came courtesy of my friend James, who had mentioned this being one of his favorite story-based games. And somehow, this is one that

Starting point is 00:01:53 just slipped by me. I knew of it, but I didn't know a whole lot of details and had never actually played it. So this is a game that I bought for $10 on Steam. It's probably not the most efficient $10 you can spend because this game you can complete in two to three hours. But if you are a fan of movies and storylines and games, this is definitely one that you should check out. This, um, there are some complaints about this because it is barely a game. And so this definitely falls into that genre of where you are basically watching a story. You're not really making decisions and you're not impacting the story, but you are playing like a detective. So kind of the

Starting point is 00:02:41 hook of this game is that you are sitting down where you have a fake computer screen, and this is like an old school Windows desktop. And they basically tell you that they have taken all of these interviews of this case. You don't know anything about it, but they say, we have saved all of the video files on your computer. You have access to all of it. All you need to do is put in a search term, and it'll pull any time that during the police interviews, she says this word. And so basically, the game has like seven different interviews with a person, and it's all segmented and cut out into chunks as short as seven or eight seconds, or as long as about two minutes. And so right off the bat, it pre-fills with the word murder.

Starting point is 00:03:33 And so it tells you, you know, here are the clips that mention murder, and you can click on them, and then you hear that portion of the interview. And this is where I want to be very careful to not go into any specifics because the entire point of this game is to slowly draw out the twists and the turns of the story. And this is one of those cases where this is a rather bold choice because you are going to uncover this story based on whatever search terms you start to use. And so there are a few that are kind of apparent right off the bat. If you hear someone's name, you're going to plug that in and now you're going to learn more about that person. Or there'll be a certain description of a body and then that'll kind of tell you, oh, maybe I should search for this term.

Starting point is 00:04:22 And so when they designed this game, they don't know what search terms you're going to put in, and they don't know what order you're going to watch these videos. And so it's kind of like where you have this really fuzzy picture that just slowly comes into focus, and you learn the twists and turns along the way. The game also has achievements that you can unlock. So there are certain events that you can find by searching certain terms that don't necessarily inform the story, but they are like silly little Easter eggs. So I'll completely spoil one of them here. But in some of the interviews that you see, she's holding a guitar. And so it's like, why on earth is she holding a guitar?

Starting point is 00:05:06 This is like a police interview. But then if you start searching for a term like singing or song, you'll find where they ask her to play a certain song. And it's like this really creepy song about a person dying and what they do with the body. And then you get like an achievement, the wind and the rain. And like you found one of those little things that are built into the game um the only thing i'll say is that uh this game is full of twists and turns the one thing that the developer built in that's kind of clever is that there are some aspects of the story that you probably won't find until you discover that person's name. And so they did build it in a little bit that you're probably not going to accidentally find out the twists and turns too early.

Starting point is 00:05:54 You're probably going to find them at the appropriate time. And there are 270 of these clips. And the game will only give you the first five results if you search a term. So if you search for the word body, it might say 29 results, and then they'll only show you the first five. And so you have to start getting a little more clever in your searches, a little bit more specific. And then once you piece everything together and you understand the story, the game kind of knows. Like, once you've clicked on certain videos, it'll pop up with a fake chat window, and it'll say, so do you now understand what happened? And then after you say yes,

Starting point is 00:06:39 then they still hit you with another twist in the story. So it's very clever. It is definitely worth playing. I am not going to try to cheat the system, but it's entirely possible you might be able to play this game and beat it and request a refund because you probably could knock this out in about two hours. I kind of took my time and I left my desktop up for a bit while taking a break, and I think my Steam playtime was two and a half hours. So anyway, this one is called Her Story. I think it is very much worth playing if you like this genre. If you don't like interactive movie games, then don't even try this one. This one will bother you to no end. But when I looked at all the reviews, that was really the only negative comment. People just saying, this isn't really a game. It's more just like an

Starting point is 00:07:25 interactive movie. But I loved it. Very interesting story. This one will definitely stick with me. Very clever. And I hope that you guys enjoy it as well. Thanks so much. Happy gaming, everyone. We'll see you next time.

Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes: Her Story

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