VERSUS: The Lost Ones

I found this game to be interesting up to the point where they bagan to charge additaonal cash for opening more powers or content in the game play. SO the base price you pay for this interactive story is NOT all you have to pay for for the entire experiance. SOME warning would be nice, before purchasing what I thought was a compleate game. Thought I should post this so some people could know.

Absolutely the weakest interactive novel from this studio that I've played. It is more focused on gender issues than plot, and it shows. The Mysterious Alien Being is shown as transgender for no reason at all, with all the pronouns (Hir, Ze etc.) when NOTHING indicates its gender or lack thereof (based off a single short encounter)! We get to know that the main protagonist had "freedom to experience their sexuality without restricting gender roles", that's very profound I think, but boring to mention. I'm to play a game, not entertain in gender studies, thank you. The number of remarks about gender is staggering and off-putting. That's too heavy handed. Plot... revolves around biggest cliches in SciFi ever. Defend your world from aliens, ok. Standard, but sensible. Go to a planet that holds a mysterious mortal combat tournament between Good and Evil where contestants are from all the galaxy. Now, this is cliche, contrived and childish. There was an old He-Man episode with a similar plot, and it was done better. This is the laziest SF cliche of them all, that allows you to show many alien species and interactions between them without all that pesky world building. Including a map of the planet Versus at one point was a mistake, since the locations made me cringe - single castle, single forest, single range of mountains, single love lake in a shape of a heart... I've read Polish communist children books with better maps than that when I was 8. Either make a good map or no map at all. We have flashbacks within flashbacks, game mechanics many times rammed in our face, and later, a wonderful option of buying a cheating DLC, forced on us during the actual game in a dialog. Hint: things like that ruin the immersion a bit. Had I wanted to by the DLC I would, now please gently let me play the game I've already bought. I've enjoyed Choice of the Deathless, Hero of Kendrickstone, Choice of Robots and other games from the same studio. They had good plot or interesting scenery or great character development and often all of those. This one has gender studies instead, and a silly map suited for a children fairy tale, not a SciFi story. And I enjoy GOOD children fairy tales, mind you, but don't you think profound mentions of "sexual experiences not restricted by gender roles" doesn't fit that? Must I tell the author such basics of storytelling, keeping a consistent tone? Tl;dr; Weak and uninspired, avoid. There are much better games from this studio.

This new series... i dont know what to make of it really. It feels far to abstract and pulp sci-fi for my liking. The terms he uses, the world building he has done... it just dosnt work for me. I loved the hero rise series 'a lot', but this new project by Zach is just... well its disappointing. Story wise its no inspiring at all, and the romance's are simply handed to you, you dont earn them. Far to many muti page narrative dumps, with few choices in between. The whole thing feels padded... with little progress being made. It dosnt feel like anything special happens because my character is one thing or another... at least nothing substantial. The mechanics for this project are more complex then hero rise, but I don't feel thats a good thing in this case. The stats are presented more as a puzzle for achievement's then as a representation of character development. The fact this project was designed specificity to run in series has greatly detracted from the quality as it doesn't feel like a complete story has been told... just the beginning. There is no clear beginning, middle, or end... just a beginning, middle, and to be continued. There was no clean or clear cut achievement the main character accomplished to make a conclusion to this first 'chapter'. It just seemed like "Well that seem a good place to stop, time to work one book two.". Maybe I'm judging this project to harshly based on Zach's past work, but this one has left me disappointed and uninspired. In fact I ended up only lightly skimming and speeding through the final chapter since I had lost so much interest in the choices I was presented. It just didn't feel satisfying. Take my opinion with a gain of salt though... this story just wasn't my 'thing'. That doesn't mean it won't be yours. Give it a shot if it appeals.

A lot of text dumps with made up words followed by a choice that usually doesn't lead anywhere. Pretty disappointing. Also I should mention that in the middle of the game it pulls a Dragon Age: Inquisition and asks you to purchase DLC to gain an upper hand.

So, the beginning of this was a pretty rough read -- in fact, I would go as far as to say my impressions leading up to the second half were just plain bad. As others have pointed out, the worldbuilding seemed hamfisted and awkward, the delivery of the made-up words like "blerg" and "furking" was anything but seamless (sadly, this problem never improved) and there were tons and tons of exposition drops about stuff that, to be quite frank, I simply didn't care about. With those complaints being noted, however, I did find myself enjoying this a lot more during the second half. The characters began to grow on me, the writer doing a pretty good job fleshing them out in the end, and I actually enjoyed the political intrigue (despite the narrative hammering in exactly what sort of effects your decisions will have). The writing also seemed to improve as the story went on, though I may have just gotten used to it. I only wish the worldbuilding could have been more interesting; to improve as the characters did over time -- though, there were some cool aspects of it that caught my interest near the end. I'm hopeful the writer will follow up on those and build upon them in future installments. Overall, I did enjoy myself with this, but take my "recommendation" with a grain of salt. This certainly isn't without problems, and if you don't think you have the patience to get through the subpar first half, then I'd say this isn't really worth your time. Overall, I'd put it at a 6/10, which is above average.

Exemplar of how NOT to be an author And game designer I swear this author has gone out of their way to tick every box on the list for story telling faux pas. It starts with a cold opening filled with nonsense terms and jargon, then proceeds into a flashback having told you nothing about the story, world or characters. The game is littered with invented words and terminology that are closer to a child’s attempts to pronounce words they misheard, than they are to phrases a living culture would develop. Cluttered with pseudo-English as if changing a vowel would adequately express how alien and new these things and concepts are meant to be. This problem is then exacerbated by the authors insistence on using the relatively unknown gender neutral pronouns Ze / Hir, incorrectly I might add seeing as their used in reference to a characters physical sex as well their completely unknown (as in our characters merely assume this) gender. It then proceeds to brush off the magnitude of an alien landscape with our characters (who early on express their desire to see the world beyond their narrow horizons, having never before travelled the stars) strolling into alien buildings, habitats and situations as if they were down at the market buying vegetables. Should we not be amazed at this, and there by proxy, we the reader/player feel some sense of imaginative thrill? But the crowning achievement on this monolith of unpleasantness is the unfolding character interactions. For you see, I had the Gall, the Nerve to try to play as a morally honest character who was also rebellious! The scandal, every time I picked an option that was deemed "honest" (by the author flagging that as the "honest" choice) I was immediately informed by the game that I was doing it wrong. For you see I the player am a mere spectator, how dare I try to impose my narrative on the writers scenario. The reason for this was that as a morally honest character, I was opposed to the blatantly evil feudal lords set up as the early adversary. I selected a character goal of disbanding this corrupt organisation, picturing my character as a being who held all lives as equal and worthy. But this goal (the game later informed me) required me to support certain characters, and believe in subterfuge and dishonesty. Which was why my character was chastised by the game (not a character, a meta-narrative construct) for daring to challenge another character who was attempting to trick someone who trusted them, into dying for them. A character literally described as a God, was trying to trick their loyal subjects into fighting a pointless battle they couldn't win, by lying to them. What was a morally upstanding character like mine to do? To then rub salt in the wound, as the game continued to tell me how I was playing it wrong (Hah!), all my characters subsequent dialogue with those involved in my goal of bringing down the ridiculously villainous bad-guys, was phrased with my undying obeisance as I decried my foolishness for deciding that I wished to be a Morally upstanding "Rebel".

I really wanted to like this. Having played through many of the other CYOA games on offer, I've come to learn that the quality can vary quite drastically between them. Now I don't think this is inherently a bad game - the writer has managed to create a rather vast setting with some interesting ideas. However, I believe this is also his downfall. In an attempt to flesh out this world he's built, Zachary Sergi crams an abudance of made-up words and names for his made-up concepts into each chapter, without giving the reader much time to absorb ([spoiler]ha, like the main character can absorb things[/spoiler]) them. Thus, it tends to feel as if the writer is trying to prove he is capable of world-building purely based on the number of artificial terms and zany names he's come up with, rather than the actual context and content behind them. I think the characters themselves were fairly interesting, and their interactions were presented quite well. What I didn't particularly appreciate was the introduction of [spoiler]the main character's ability to relive another character's memories through his/her dreams[/spoiler]. I don't think it was executed well enough to properly work, and felt like an excuse to dump a load of exposition about the chosen character and past events whilst giving the player an illusion of choice: [spoiler]you can affect what happens in the memory to a certain extent, but any actions you take are not carried over into the real world[/spoiler]. It makes one wonder what the point of it was, really, other than to impart a load of context that the reader once again has to try and get their head around. Moreover, I like and can appreciate the inclusion of wider gender identities, but in some instances here your character just assumes and uses the appropriate pronouns without any prior knowledge or explanation from the character in question. This can feel somewhat forced, and perhaps come across to the reader differently than the author intended. Oh, and did I mention the "BUY THIS DLC TO MAKE THINGS EASIER" option that appears early on in the game? No? Well, yes, it's there, and it's ridiculous. Way to ruin the immersion, Zachary. I loved the Heroes Rise trilogy by the same author. But this one? Not so much.

故事发生在名为Versus的星球，星球分为两部分，“建造”和“摧毁”，每一部分各有24个选手，每三天两边各自投票选出一个代表进行决斗，24场一个循环，活下来的人如果够资格，可以“重生”，送回家，成为传奇人物。 主角能吸收别人的能力和记忆，可以借此获取信息和提高自身属性。在来到Versus之后，主角需要在不同派系的斗争中决定自己的立场，确立自己的朋友和敌人。 本作只是整个故事的第一部分，从目前的剧情看，讨论的一个主要问题是人与机器、人与人工智能。[spoiler]人类的有机身体能再生，但脆弱，机器人身体坚不可摧，但没有再生能力；人类有独立的思想，而人工智能认为独立的思想会带来很多问题。兼有二者优势的“人机混合体”似乎是最理想的，而邪恶的“混合体”也是最难以对付的怪物 。[/spoiler]

This game contains pay-to-win in-app purchases. There's no indication of this in the store description, and you don't get hit with it until you've already wasted more than a hour playing. Unless you think this is acceptable behaviour, steer clear. Personally I think it should be a banning offence. Up until that point, I'd have rated it as meh. Not terrible, but certainly not great; the writing is patchy, the constant intrusion of explicit game mechanics into description and dialogue is a bit clunky, and actual interesting decisions (as opposed to just hitting "Next") are few and far between.

The first part is a chore. Lengthy set up, made up words. You don't know what's what and you have to pick choices... Didn't feel involved at any time. I clicked options absentmindedly, repeatingly falling asleep in the process (hence that grand total of 13 hrs of playtime). Want more non sense? How about the character you haven't defined yet, being sent in another new world filled with things you don't care about ? Then when the character falls asleep, you'd visit yet ANOTHER world...(that's madness really) Then a buying option appears. Don't know whether it's some side quest, additional content or additional stats and don't care: I stopped reading right away. You might want to try "Tin Star" (old west), "Choice of Robots" (near future sci-fi) or "Pendragon rising" (Arthurian fantasy) if you haven't read those already, but this one I'd say you can pass. That's my advice.