West of Loathing

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Suitably Ironic Moniker
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West of Loathing

Post by Suitably Ironic Moniker »

I'm sure most of you are aware of Kingdom of Loathing, and also know of their new game, West of Loathing. What most of you seem not to be aware of is that if you have a computer and a sense of humor, you need to be playing this game. It is wonderful in its presentation.

It's hard to describe what makes it great without spoiling some of the humor. The whole ethos is apparent from the menu screen, going into your choice of character. Aside from a few silly stats that you can build upon, your character also attains traits throughout the game. While in the tutorial, I ended up with "Stupid Walking" trait, which I could actually toggle on and off in the options if I didn't like it, but there was no danger of that. My character will alternate styles every four to five steps, going from walking on her hands, to sliding face first along the floor, to hopping on her lantern like a pogo stick, and many more. You interact with so much in this world, and it is a well built world housing the excellent writing and characterizations. There is nothing that isn't fair game, and yet I've never felt like they're treading onto "Blazing Saddles" or other satire universes' respective domains. They are original and brilliant.

The gameplay itself is similar in many ways to KoL, though obviously missing the timers that existed at one time, at least, within that game. You can recruit a partner and pick your horse (which is a great quest in itself). I'm only up to the first major town, but I am a Cow Puncher, backed up by an angry cowgirl and a ghost horse. I have multiple games installed on my system right now, but this is the only one I want to play. If you even remotely enjoy laughing and smiling, you need to buy this game post-haste.
When I was a boy, I laid in my twin-sized bed and wondered where my brother was. - Mitch Hedberg
paulbaxter
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Re: West of Loathing

Post by paulbaxter »

Sold!

It's been a long time, but in terms of hours played and enjoyment got, Kingdom of Loathing is my favorite all time game.
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Carpet_pissr
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Re: West of Loathing

Post by Carpet_pissr »

How does it compare to Kingdom? Decidedly better or MOTS? I played Kingdom for quite a while, but guess I burned out on it before I got to "the end" (of all the adventures).

Or I could, you know, read a few reviews. :P
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Suitably Ironic Moniker
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Re: West of Loathing

Post by Suitably Ironic Moniker »

It's been a long time for me with KoL, but the two hours I've put into this game have flown by, and I'm still laughing at how clever they are.
When I was a boy, I laid in my twin-sized bed and wondered where my brother was. - Mitch Hedberg
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Zarathud
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Re: West of Loathing

Post by Zarathud »

How adult is the humor? And is there blood?
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Suitably Ironic Moniker
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Re: West of Loathing

Post by Suitably Ironic Moniker »

There isn't any blood, though there are some disgusting text descriptions of the contents of spittoons. Of by "adult humor", you mean sexual or profane, I haven't seen any as of yet, though there must be a bordello in the game somewhere. For me, the humor is best described as "absurdist." I really believe that most people would easily get $9-10 of enjoyment out of this game easily.
When I was a boy, I laid in my twin-sized bed and wondered where my brother was. - Mitch Hedberg
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Sepiche
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Re: West of Loathing

Post by Sepiche »

I've played this for a few hours now, and it's surprisingly fun. If you ever played Kingdom of Loathing and enjoyed it, this is definitely more of the same.

I would describe the humor as mostly fairly clever dad jokes.
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Jolor
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Re: West of Loathing

Post by Jolor »

Oh my god. I just explained to my companion how some mining equipment worked (I had no idea) and was rewarded with a unique pickaxe called
Spoiler:
Minesplainer
So sayeth the wise Alaundo.
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