You can smell my finger

[Thad]

Wow, Twelve Minutes sounds remarkably bad.

Twelve Minutes is a game about a man stuck in a time loop. That time loop gives him the opportunity and impetus to do terrible things to his wife. There are moments where it made me feel sick.

[...]

Twelve Minutes asks you to drug your wife upwards of a dozen times as you puzzle your way through torturing a man into giving up plot-critical information.

[...]

The setup for Twelve Minutes is simple: a cop is coming to kill you and your wife, and you will be stuck in a 12-minute time loop until you stop him. To break said loop, you will adventure-game your way through a series of puzzles, uncovering more information about character motivations and relationships each time. The game’s animations are stiff, and its puzzles are obtuse. The star-studded voice cast isn’t given much to work with, and fails to contribute to the experience in any meaningful way. Its ending is terrible. This is the most I can say without spoiling the entire game.

[...]

All of this Psych 101 writing could be fine if it were delivered with grace, or tact, or care. But it isn’t. It feels pretentious and exhausting, like trauma porn for the sake of itself.

[Friday]

I read the spoiler section that reveals the plot/ending and was rolling my eyes the whole time.

It's edgelord shock bullshit disguised as intellectualism or some sort of deep understanding of the human condition/psyche.

So edgelord shock bullshit.

[Mongrel]

Yeah I read the spoilered part and was like "wow this is complete garbage" though I was barely able to read because I was also doing the :mongreltilt: .gif thing SO HARD.

Like that is just some comically bad shit.

[beatbandito]

I actually watched someone play 12 Minutes. I can't say anything specific the article mentioned is incorrect, but framing it with "That time loop gives him the opportunity and impetus to do terrible things to his wife." is like saying "red dead redemption is a game about killing hookers, because that's all I did in it for five hours."

Also of note is that the reviewer seems to have not actually beaten the game. The final ending makes it pretty clear that the Incest pregnancy and father figure cop are entirely fictional. 90% of the gameplay is just scenarios invented by the MC to deny or act out against the reveal that he has been dating his half sister, years before the main setting of the game could have taken place.

I'm not going to argue that maybe it needs better content warning tags, or that it seems like a shitty excuse to sell the game as a character working through trauma. But kotaku never stopped being the site that doesn't know what's going on, they just started selling their ignorance with rage clicks.

[Thad]

Also of note is that the reviewer seems to have not actually beaten the game. The final ending makes it pretty clear that the Incest pregnancy and father figure cop are entirely fictional. 90% of the gameplay is just scenarios invented by the MC to deny or act out against the reveal that he has been dating his half sister, years before the main setting of the game could have taken place.

I...thought that was all pretty clear in the article.

[beatbandito]

Also of note is that the reviewer seems to have not actually beaten the game. The final ending makes it pretty clear that the Incest pregnancy and father figure cop are entirely fictional. 90% of the gameplay is just scenarios invented by the MC to deny or act out against the reveal that he has been dating his half sister, years before the main setting of the game could have taken place.

I...thought that was all pretty clear in the article.

Well, that's the cool thing about selling ignorance as rage clicks. Once people read your article and make their opinion based on just it, even when someone from a closer community says "hey I actually saw the game and this article writer didn't get the real ending" you can just decide that person didn't read the article, instead of listening to a better informed position.

I even went back and watched the endings again, (even though I was the only one with an actual reference and shouldn't have to continue to put in more effort to convince you about a thing you don't know) and the quote they specifically say is from the "True Ending" isn't even the fake-out final ending. It's like 3 back from the actual final ending.

[KingRoyal]

And third, that all of this was part of your psychosexual mind palace and the only thing that really happened was the incest. That part was real. The rest has been a fantasy.

That quote from the article makes it sound like they did in fact get the true ending

[beatbandito]

okay, well you're wrong

[KingRoyal]

Also of note is that the reviewer seems to have not actually beaten the game. The final ending makes it pretty clear that the Incest pregnancy and father figure cop are entirely fictional. 90% of the gameplay is just scenarios invented by the MC to deny or act out against the reveal that he has been dating his half sister, years before the main setting of the game could have taken place.

How is what they wrote different from what you wrote?

[beatbandito]

Also of note is that the reviewer seems to have not actually beaten the game. The final ending makes it pretty clear that the Incest pregnancy and father figure cop are entirely fictional. 90% of the gameplay is just scenarios invented by the MC to deny or act out against the reveal that he has been dating his half sister, years before the main setting of the game could have taken place.

How is what they wrote different from what you wrote?

Maybe you should watch or play the game and see the actual development through the remaining two endings. Or better yet the context for the information they did give.

[KingRoyal]

No matter what you or I think about the game, it's unfair to say the reviewer didn't finish it when they cite the specific ending you yourself said is the true one. You can disagree with the take without accusing them or anyone of having not experienced it fully.

[zaratustra]

if you want a game about time loops, maybe try Sexy Brutale.

[beatbandito]

No matter what you or I think about the game, it's unfair to say the reviewer didn't finish it when they cite the specific ending you yourself said is the true one. You can disagree with the take without accusing them or anyone of having not experienced it fully.

"You didn't tell me exactly what to think. So I have no reasons to not absolutely accept this other opinion that did tell me what to think."

There is more to the story, and a reframing of how to see what happened, and the extent to which things happened. But considering you can read this:

the quote they specifically say is from the "True Ending" isn't even the fake-out final ending. It's like 3 back from the actual final ending.

and get

they cite the specific ending you yourself said is the true one

then I'm even less motivated to keep explaining.

[Thad]

"You didn't tell me exactly what to think. So I have no reasons to not absolutely accept this other opinion that did tell me what to think."

why do you do this every time

[beatbandito]

because if I didn't express myself so you can complain about the specific wording, I'd have to hear you keep saying how this one article gives you as much reference for the actual point as someone who experienced the story

[KingRoyal]

You just seem incredibly aggressive about how someone else interpreted a game you watched, to the point that you're accusing them of not actually playing it and only taking the opinion they did to generate clicks, which does not seem fair or accurate.

[Brantly B.]

The only thing I'm upset about is that they tricked Daisy Ridley into doing another Star Wars.

[Mongrel]

I mean, Beat, this is all kind of irrelevant because IMO opinion, even with a changed ending that still sounds pretty shit.

Something being totally awful, but then pulling back to be slightly less awful towards the end, doesn't make it not-awful in any overall sense. Even if I fully accept everything you say, this still seems to be a game about schlock fratboy "psychiatry", beatings, drugging, incest, and rather contrived and juvenile justifications for all that.

[Upthorn]

Hey, guys: Everybody here's been focusing solely on beatbandito's statement that "also, an ending exists that the review didn't mention." And that his description of that ending didn't do a great job at distinguishing itself from the reviewer's description of the ending that the reviewer found.

But what I heard him say is that he perceives the entire Kotaku article as extremely disingenuous.

framing it with "That time loop gives him the opportunity and impetus to do terrible things to his wife." is like saying "red dead redemption is a game about killing hookers"

This part here tells me that "yes, those are things you *can* do to advance the game's plot, but they aren't things you *have* to do, simply the route that the reviewer found easiest to take."
Whereas the entire review is predicated on the premise that the game forces you to do these things to avoid getting murdered and figure out what's going on.

If you read that review, and swallow that premise, of course it doesn't matter that there's extra endings that recontextualize things.

But maybe... maybe the entire review is disingenuous and the premise that twelve minutes is a game entirely about drugging, torturing, and murdering your wife and neighbors over and over is... incorrect?

Edit: I want to make it clear that I'm not making any statements about the game. I have no experience with it outside of having read some of the articles about it, but I think there's a thing where beatbandito often has difficulty fully expressing the thing he's trying to say, gets badly misinterpreted, and then gets angry about his statements being grossly mischaracterized. This is an issue that I find very easy to sympathize with.

Addendum: I think there is a worthwhile discuss to be had about the implications of the fact that the stuff the reviewer felt forced to do is even in the game, and treated as a valid path of advancement, but if the truth is that it's only one option, then that discussion can't really be had under the assumption that it's the only option.

[Brantly B.]

No, it's all part of the route you have to take, with the understanding that the time loop will erase the event for everybody else.