Hypnospace Outlaw

This is where you can deliberate anything relating to videogames - past, present and future
Post Reply
User avatar
JaySevenZero
Admin
Posts: 2643
Joined: August 27th, 2012, 4:28 pm
Location: Liverpool, Europe, Earth
Contact:

Hypnospace Outlaw

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Hypnospace Outlaw for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
User avatar
Seph
Member
Posts: 158
Joined: February 12th, 2021, 2:25 pm
Location: Hiroshima

Re: 483 - Hypnospace Outlaw

Post by Seph »

I heard so much about this game when it came out and I was excited to play it as it sounded exactly like the sort of thing I thought I'd enjoy, as I love playing detective and solving puzzles.

After giving it a try when it landed on game pass I just couldn't get into it. I managed to advance a few hours, but it really left me cold. Maybe I approached it wrong, but it almost felt like a pixel hunt. I'm not sure if it was a pacing issue or a lack of in-world motivation, but I didn't feel compelled to finish it or see if there was more going on below the surface.

The naff Geocities-style websites offer a nice nostalgia buzz and a few laughs, but that's all I can offer in terms of positives. I'm looking forward to the discussion to hear if I did miss out on anything special, but I think this is one I won't revisit.
User avatar
Simonsloth
Member
Posts: 1639
Joined: November 22nd, 2017, 7:17 am
Location: London
Contact:

Re: 483 - Hypnospace Outlaw

Post by Simonsloth »

Seph wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 6:50 pm I heard so much about this game when it came out and it sounded exactly like the sort of thing I thought I'd enjoy as I like playing detective and solving puzzles.

After giving it a try after it landed on game pass, I just couldn't get into. I managed to advance a few hours, but it really left me cold. I'm not sure if it was a pacing issue or a lack of in-world motivation, but I didn't feel compelled to finished it and see if there was more going on below the surface.

The naff Geocities style websites offer a nice nostalgia buzz and a few laughs, but that's all I can offer in terms of positives. I'm looking forward to the discussion to hear if I did miss out on anything special, but I feel like this is one I won't revisit.
Did you play it on PC or console? I found PC infinitely better.
User avatar
Seph
Member
Posts: 158
Joined: February 12th, 2021, 2:25 pm
Location: Hiroshima

Re: 483 - Hypnospace Outlaw

Post by Seph »

Simonsloth wrote: May 4th, 2021, 4:56 pm
Seph wrote: May 3rd, 2021, 6:50 pm I heard so much about this game when it came out and it sounded exactly like the sort of thing I thought I'd enjoy as I like playing detective and solving puzzles.

After giving it a try after it landed on game pass, I just couldn't get into. I managed to advance a few hours, but it really left me cold. I'm not sure if it was a pacing issue or a lack of in-world motivation, but I didn't feel compelled to finished it and see if there was more going on below the surface.

The naff Geocities style websites offer a nice nostalgia buzz and a few laughs, but that's all I can offer in terms of positives. I'm looking forward to the discussion to hear if I did miss out on anything special, but I feel like this is one I won't revisit.
Did you play it on PC or console? I found PC infinitely better.
I did try on console first and then PC. I thought the PC experience was better and more suited for a game like this, but I hit a brick wall again. Maybe it's one I'll revisit in future.
User avatar
T-BirD
Member
Posts: 20
Joined: June 8th, 2021, 8:17 pm
Location: Bavaria, Germany

Re: Our next podcast recording (21.8.21): 483 - Hypnospace Outlaw

Post by T-BirD »

The upcoming podcast having given me the best reason I was going to get to play Hypnospace Outlaw, I started it up a few days ago.

The developers really do try to set the scene, with the computer and OS booting sounds being spot-on. I knew the game tried to recreate an internet of the 90's but not much more. Having began my internet usage in 1995, I would argue the game's websites are much more in line with 1996/97 than '99. I also don't remember the internet back then being this loud, with literally every page having a song on auto-play, but overall you really get the feeling that the developers were "there". Having spent precious little time on Geocities, and none on AOL, perhaps the game tends more towards these.

Browsing the closed Hypnospace network is - at least so far - the real highlight, but the the actual gameplay is fairly unique as well. Being an enforcer (a moderator cop of sorts), I get paid to do my job, regardless of what I think about my tasks. Some of the violations I flag seem practically innocent to me, and nice people are getting in (luckily not very much) trouble because of it. I can close cases as soon as I have enough violations flagged, or I can stick around and try to find additional ones for a bonus payout - and this is where a great moral push-pull dynamic has occasionally come into play. I could finish a case with the bare minimum of infractions flagged because I don't agree with what my job asks me to do, but at the same time I have a personal incentive to find more offenses.
After all, I need better antivirus protection and more songs!
Seeing how the community reacts and revolts against what I do, and getting insight into internal communications with the creators of Hypnospace who are assigning me these tasks is pretty interesting, as I find myself mentally trapped in the middle while actually working for one side.

But then it seems there is more happening on top of all of this. Banned Netsettler pages have piqued my curiosity, and I'm not quite sure what's going on with the Outlaw game, other than it being a long way from bug-free.

Hypnospace Outlaw is not always very fun to play, but it's just interesting enough to keep working on. I'm on case 8 and have noticed the last two cases have been far more challenging than the ones before. I'm looking forward to the big reveal which I suspect is coming.
User avatar
DeadpoolNegative
Member
Posts: 183
Joined: April 16th, 2015, 5:00 am

Re: Our next podcast recording (21.8.21): 483 - Hypnospace Outlaw

Post by DeadpoolNegative »

Hypnospace Outlaw is one of the most confounding, strange games I've ever played. I've played it sporadically since it hit GamePass last year, and while I wasn't able to complete it in time for the podcast, I do have a few scattered thoughts.

I was interested in the game because I'm a huge fan of co-writer Xalavier Nelson's visual novel Can Androids Play: Blue, which is also available on XBox One, a tight, disturbing tale about mech pilots facing the unknown. Now that I've got that obvious plug out of the way...

Hypnospace Outlaw is such neat idea I'm shocked it's taken this long for someone to do it: simulate the 1990s internet in the form of a point and click game. Of course, when you actually sit down and play the game, you begin to understand why, in a sense, it's taken so long- because the 1990s internet was a visual nightmare. Although the date says 1999, it feels more like 1997, when kids were grabbing Geocities pages and just putting any old thing up there. Where graphics were... not the way they are now. It's... it's a lot. I often had to check and double check for what I was supposed to do and where I was supposed to go, so discombobulating was the world of Hypnospace.

Said world is populated by many kinds of people talking about many kinds of things. People who need to be heard, who need to express to the world their interests, their desires, their cares. People without a voice their entire lives finally finding one. But as I remember, from my own terrible experiences with the internet in my youth, all these people communicating at once, trying to connect with each other, and it backfiring terribly.

The interface of Hypnospace is also accurate, and I think I would have had more fun playing with a mouse and keyboard and not an XBox controller.

Maybe part of the reason I've been so reluctant to really dive into Hypnospace Outlaw and finish it is that it reminds me of wounds that never quite fully healed, of how I burned a little too bright and embarrassed myself with my e-mail or message board chicanery. Even thought the denizens of Hypnospace are entirely fictional, I recognize many of them, in others, and myself. But The wounds, in the end, were self inflicted. Something I suspect Jay Tholen and Xalavier Nelson know all too well.

--Dan
User avatar
Alex79
Member
Posts: 8423
Joined: September 2nd, 2012, 12:36 pm
Location: Walsall, UK.
Contact:

Re: Our next podcast recording (21.8.21): 483 - Hypnospace Outlaw

Post by Alex79 »

I pretty much ignored this as despite never having heard of the game I'd wrongly assumed it was some sort of space shooter or something. For whatever reason I actually looked it up today and it looks really interesting! Wish I'd realised earlier as it would have been good to play before the show, but I'll definitely be picking this up at the end of the month and listening retrospectively once I've finished it.
User avatar
bensbb
Member
Posts: 6
Joined: June 8th, 2020, 1:00 pm

Re: Hypnospace Outlaw

Post by bensbb »

It's a shame I didn't get a chance to complete the game and comment before the recording as I have quite a lot to say about this one!

The general presentation and mood of the game is fantastic, and really builds up a convincing world and does a really good job of imitating the "Geocities-style" websites of the time. It's definitely worth a look if you're into point-and-click style puzzles with a fresh coat of paint, and have nostalgia for the 1999 internet vibes like I do!

The puzzles I generally found OK but I did end up "cheating" and using a guide on 2 of them - the freelands map puzzle and the secret eye cult at the end. The solutions for those were just way too long winded for me, after reading i'm not sure I would've ever figured those out. Once the crash happens, and it moves to the Hypnospace Archive Project section of the game, I got very confused as it's not that well explained in my opinion, although I did eventually figure out what was going on and managed to finish the game. There is a bit of a lack of variety in the general gameplay, so I feel what you get out of the game really depends on how immersive and believable you find the world - it worked on me but I'm not sure it would work on everyone, as I think it's heavily tied to nostalgia of a similar time.

The ending really hit me at first with the eulogies for the deceased users combined with the music and graphics I actually found quite moving after I'd spent a lot of time finding out about these people in the game (maybe I'm just a sucker for that sort of thing!), but after I slept on it it didn't really hold water - suddenly Dylan just has a change of heart and feel sorry? It felt like a lot of these public "apologies" in the real world, from the likes of Zuckerberg, he was more sorry he was caught, the way he went from "lol my code still works" to "I've felt bad about this for the last 20 years". I felt the game presented this in such a way that it was supposed to be honest, but to me it wasn't convincing.

With regards to the other comments here about platform of choice I imagine playing this on an Xbox or PS4 controller would be pretty awful - but I can highly recommend playing on the switch in portable mode. This is the way I played the game (Currently only £6 on sale too!) and its great with a touch screen interface, and as most things are quite low res, the smaller/lower res screen isn't an issue at all.
User avatar
T-BirD
Member
Posts: 20
Joined: June 8th, 2021, 8:17 pm
Location: Bavaria, Germany

Re: Hypnospace Outlaw

Post by T-BirD »

Managed to finish Hypnospace Outlaw. I recommend the first 1-2 hours as a unique bit of time travel to 1995-96 company-curated internet spaces (though it supposedly takes place in 1999). Seeing pages change with time is pretty cool too. To be honest though, I don't remember the internet at the time being QUITE as annoying (auto-playing music on EVERY page. I remember being awed the first couple times I found any internet site that played music in 1996/97. It was rare at the time. Now, I never want to hear the Squisherz theme song ever again, and I can't get ThatBrassyKid's page theme out of my head even though I hate it.

The later game presents some interesting friction in the form of the beginnings of digital copyright infringement, visions of developers pitted against company profitability, and a few other themes. Unfortunately, the puzzles became too obtuse and tedious for me to derive much enjoyment out of them anymore.

Honestly, the internet sleuthing puzzle bit was done better in MISSING - Since January (aka. In Memoriam), albeit in a different form. Missing is no longer playable though (many of real webpages were already down when I finished it in 2009, so I'm guessing they are all gone by now).

Hypnospace Outlaw is absolutely worth checking out; just try not to feel any compulsion to actually finish it - the payoff probably won't be worth it to you.
Post Reply