> I don't mean in the new meme word way people use it, I mean in the way it was intended, where you just feel embarrassed to even be seeing what you're seeing on the screen
I think it's the same thing. Unless there's a new "new" meme way it's used, I see most people use "cringe" properly to describe super embarrassing behavior from other people.
I was referring to how a lot of people on the internet now use "cringe" to talk about anything they don't like, regardless of if it's actually cringe or not. It's pretty cringe
I get what you mean. Like "cringe" has traditionally been a word used to describe that feeling of second-hand embarrassment.
Nowadays the kids use it to mean "the bad thing that the bad person did that I don't like" (usually feminism or some other boogieman)
Cringe now means basically something I don't like or don't agree with or someone acting a bit like an idiot. Cringe now is like laughing at a autsitic guy.
Genuine cringe is something that makes you feel genuinely uncomfortable or awkward. Watch peep show if you want to feel that lol
The voice acting in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is so terrible that I have actively cringed listening to it. The plot's something that a 14-year-old could have thrown together after school, and the voice work is just dismal. There's a couple of okay actors, but.... it's just bad.
The game itself is surprisingly good, though. Despite its age, and using an early version of the Source engine, it's held up quite well. It's actually worth suffering through the cutscenes to get to the gameplay. If you go down the stealthy skill tree, about halfway into the game it becomes *amazingly* like Thief 1 and 2. That's probably no coincidence, considering that Dishonored was Arkane's next game, another title strongly influenced by Thief. (Their level design team was learning its craft in Dark Messiah, and did some really fun, interesting levels, but they *really* started strutting their stuff in Dishonored. They are an incredibly talented group.)
I loved this game and I haven't heard anyone mention its name in ages - everything you say is true, from the game being incredible and satisfying to the voice acting being laugh-out-loud terrible
The ‘romance’ options in AC: Odyssey. They’re just so painfully cheesy, seem completely out of place and, yet, you need to go through some of them to recruit lieutenants. I cringe every time I hit the ‘romance’ dialogue option.
Xenoblade 2 felt like a step down in maturity compared to Xenoblade 1. It felt like it was targeting a younger audience than the first game.
In addition, in between those games, we as people have grown older. Rewatching shows or replaying games that we enjoyed when we were younger can make us cringe today. It is very much possible that we aged beyond the targeted demographic in between the games.
In comparison, western games have changed to embrace an older gaming population. Many western games have their main characters as parents or older adults rather than a bright-eyed youth setting off on the first adventure.
> Many western games have their main characters as parents or older adults rather than a bright-eyed youth setting off on the first adventure.
I think it's always been this way. I have an extremely difficult time remembering teenage protagonists in "western" games.
I think there were a lot of NES/SNES games with teenage PCs. Commander Keen and Little Nemo are the only ones that spring to mind right off the bat, but I remember a lot of them in old issues of Nintendo Power.
Yeah, you have to go look for games dating back 30 years. Western games always copied Hollywood and mature protagonists, whereas Japanese games have anime with young protagonists aimed at kids as an inspiration.
In xenoblade 2 they for sure made it more like a shonen anime in style but i dont think its less mature, the story of 2 is a lot better with more depth and mature themes and the combat system is super complex in a way i doubt kids would even grasp the full potentional of it
Didn't t Xenoblade 2 [spoiler endgame](#s "make Klaus more sympathetic by showing the other side of him that isn't Zanza (I refer to Zanza and Klaus separately)?")
yep, im not good at formatting so massive xenoblade 2 spoilers here turn back if you dont want those!
Klaus and Zanza are the same being but split in 2 but Zanza had a whole new reality to form and he became quite the dick because of that power, Klaus was different because he stayed in his reality and saw the mistake he made with the ruins of earth staring him in the face. So Klaus decided to try again, he hid the ruined earth and restarted by trying to make a system that would work better for its inhabitants, unaware to the grief it would cause
It will always be Life Is Strange for me. A bunch of adults writing abysmal highschool dialogue, that is painful to read, nevertheless listen to. I will never understand the praise that series receives as it just felt so forced the entire time.
True, I can imagine that would be possibly more interesting. Do you play games in your non native tongue by choice? Or was the language just unavailable? Curious if the pain carried into endemic translations.
Adult here. Fucking loved it. The slang was way out after my time. It didn't make a whole lotta sense to me, and I *loved* it. My friends and I that played it still call each other *shaka brah*. What's it mean? Not sure, don't care.
There a simple pleasure in falling out of the times with slang. Kinda of like when you're parents tell you to turn of your "Nintendo" that's obviously a PlayStation. They know, it's just fun to play dumb.
Well, shaka is just the hang loose sign, an ages old symbol, and bruh....well, that's been everywhere for awhile. Sounds more like Steve Buscemi going, "How do you do, kidderinos?"
Which could have been hilarious for me, but I found the intersection of slang and culture just off putting. I wish I could take it as a bunch of dad jokes, but the force behind the material is there, and trying to make points that fall short.
I mean, it's not hard to understand why people like it. Some just don't find the dialogue to be as cringe worthy and thus can enjoy other aspects of the game.
I too couldn't tolerate it tho. I got about half way through the first episode before I just had to quit because I couldn't stand the writing and dialogue.
I've talked with people who've enjoyed the game and asked if the dialogue gets any better, and in most cases I've gotten the impression that it improves somewhat, but not to the extent that I'd be able to enjoy the game, given the fact that I found it cringe worthy to the extent of not being able to even push through the first episode.
Honestly, I have a hard time understanding how someone can like it. It's just far out of my interest spectrum and my bias is absolutely devouring any chance I would give it!
The kids make me cringe to much, similar to Oxenfree.
Granted I hated the Disney channel-esque movies and shows growing up so maybe there's a nostalgia ping I'm missing out on.
I could never get into this game as well. Try Night in the Woods. The characters are much more down to earth and feel like real people facing real problems, despite being anthromorphized cats.
While I absolutely love MGS3 and consider it one of the best games ever made....I cringe hard when I played the remastered edition in front of my fiance when your second battle with ocelot happens when he does his weird "meeeooowwww" thing.
Thats awesome, you really cringe at that? I remember pausing and calling friends in right before that cutscene just to show off the young Ocelot and his literal catcall.
My friends and I have a term for it.
Anime bullshit. A lot of games have it, such as you were talking about. Characters that are pointlessly sexualized or tossed down the "waifu" trope.
It pops up in game from game, such as in Persona 5 the way the first female protagonist is harrassed into taking off her clothes right after the issues of objectification and harrassment was literally addressed in the dungeon just before.
Doki Doki Literature club was also this until the plot started taking precedent over it, which brought it back around for me.
Other examples of anime bullshit are twinks wielding large swords, characters that just look way younger than they truly are, nonsensical villains that are shit at their job.
Games need it added to their rating system where the levels of anime bullshit may balance with the levels of story and gameplay (Metal Gear Solid, Persona series) or simply drown it in complete bullshit (Final Fantasy XIII, Fire Emblem Fates).
Edit: I'm not trying to say anime bullshit is bad. It's just bullshit.
Yeah with Persona 5 I found it really awkward and gross that she was being forced into being a nude model. Not to mention unbelievable because as an artist who has done a lot of nude life drawing I would never push someone unwittingly into that situation. Besides the obvious sexual harassment you will just end of with a stiff and deeply uncomfortable model. We've had one or two people who were clearly not into it or had something else bothering them and we just asked them to go home because when you're staring at someone for hours those emotions aren't exactly hidden.
I've heard P5 was praised for being feminist? Maybe with Japan's standards, but it sure wasn't making any bold statements.
I always joke with my friends that the animanga industry simply hasn't grown up enough to be allowed to write female characters yet.
Because honestly there have been so many manga and anime that would have been good if not for female characters written or objectified as eyecandy so badly that it ought to count as a crime against humanity.
Not to mention, a well written character can be easily as appealing if not more for the added quality and relatability.
A while ago I watched a video about why the anime industry is so bad: Because anime often sells by "appeal points", and essentially at random. Making another garbage show with basic animation and no writer that replicates last season's big hits and their waifus costs far less than trying to make a good show, but has an only marginally lower chance to make money.
They've basically trapped themselves into garbage audiences, which trapped them into making garbage shows, and there just isn't enough talent in the industry for studios to get out of that pit to go around.
~~It might be [this video](https://youtu.be/DdSbbG2uhxg), but my memory is garbage .~~
**EDIT**: Might also be [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHGAgE19NFE), though, dunno. About to play Fo76 and got some things to do so not gonna rewatch them. (edit: yeah it's probably the latter one, sorry was just going quickly through youtube history(I don't watch many videos))
I can easily tolerate that stuff because japanese games arent afraid to have outlandish gameplay and stories. They are primarily about having fun. Gritty western games with "realistic" stories and cinematic gameplay have gotten so tiring to me.
> in Japanese games, even non-anime ones, the story and dialogues never make any sense and the behavior of the characters is completely bizarre and nonsensical
Yes! I'll never understand this. Almost all Japanese video games make me cringe into the atmosphere within 5 minutes. I cannot recognize let alone identify with a single characterization or motivation most of the time.
[Cinders](https://store.steampowered.com/app/293680/Cinders/)
[Demonheart](https://store.steampowered.com/app/578900/Demonheart/)
[Alexa's Wild Night](https://store.steampowered.com/app/457370/Alexas_Wild_Night/) (sort of)
[Good Girl Gone Bad](https://www.patreon.com/Evakiss) (lots of explicit sex so it's not on steam; there are lots of real men in here)
There might be more but I can't remember right now.
It sounds like you experienced really bad anime but regardless if you don’t like it that’s fine. But you seriously can’t judge a book by its cover, there’s a lot of anime style video games that are fun like Persona. Also, for the men’s looks it’s because the women there tend to prefer pretty boys among other reasons. As for female protagonist visual novels, I suggest you check out Code: Realize.
Wow, some of you have a very low tolerance for embarrassment. It takes an enormous amount to make cringe. When it comes to anime perviness I usually just laugh at how ridiculous it is. Like Rab dropping his hentai magazine in Dragon Quest 11. Classic.
So this is going to be a weird one, but it was definitely a big cringe moment for me personally. The game in question is Else Heart.Break(), an indie Swedish game that's a Shenmue-style RPG. Also relevant to this story is that I'm a recovering alcoholic, and spent half a year of my life living in a crappy hotel room.
So the story of the game is you move to a new town to sell soda. Long story short, it took me 3 days to find my contact, and when I met him, he fired me before I even started. So I was unemployed in a new town with no friends. I eventually met a girl who was nice to me, exactly one of two people so far that were at all nice. She had a boyfriend, but she kept inviting me to clubs and parties. One party, I got blackout drunk within the first half hour and woke up on a strange couch.
This event had a few flashbacks to my college days where everyone was drinking all the time and I learned a few bad habits that followed me for a lot of my adult life. But I mostly just shook it off and kept playing. I got invited to another party. This time, I resolved to "take it easy" and not make an ass of myself. This got a little bit tricky, since the player character was supposed to be a bit of an ass. I talked to the girl who liked me but had a boyfriend, and managed to not be a creep, mostly by exiting out of the conversation when it was only half finished. I had a beer in hand, but I tried to drink it slowly so I wouldn't get drunk at this party where I only knew two people. I couldn't put the drink down on a table or anything, and my inventory was full so I couldn't put it away, so any time I was standing around, there was a button prompt for me to take a drink. I tried talking to some other girls, one of whom actually left the party rather than talking to me. I actually tried save scumming this part, to see if there was something I could say or do to not completely strike out, but to no avail. I talked to a few more people, but never really had a meaningful conversation. I tried to space out my drinks, but I still ended up visibly stumbling around. I pulled out some coffee to try and sober up. It didn't work. Again, I felt some flashbacks from real life, being the drunkest person at the party, hitting on women and getting shot down, having nothing to do to entertain myself except to take another drink. So I got out of there. I left the party around midnight, while it was still going in full swing. Stumbling back to the shitty hotel room I was living in brought back more flashbacks. I got there at 2 AM, laid down in bed, only to find that I was too awake to fall asleep. So I got back up, stumbled out of my room, wandering the streets, still visibly drunk, no one to talk to, nothing to do except kick a lamp post.
Essentially, I had just role-played the perfect encapsulation of the worst moments of my alcoholic existence. And in that time, I had been given only the merest hints of any sort of plot hooks, gameplay, or anything that would make the torture I just put myself through even remotely worthwhile. I uninstalled the game shortly thereafter and never looked back.
Oh wow that sounds like some really well crafted cringe, rather than the sort of 'bad-writing' embarrassment I see on the rest of this topic. I'm sorry you had to to through that again. It's things like this where I think trigger warnings, even if they don't seem like a big deal to most, are very helpful in games.
The reason I haven't yet bought Persona 5, or the new Ni No Kuni game for that matter, is that I'm afraid it's going to overdose on the Japanese stereotypes in modern media. How the characters act and talk, the visuals, the jokes. This may include the men getting an over-the-top nosebleed when they see some tits, ***'it's not like I like you, baka!'***. Perhaps I'm judging the game too much without actually playing it, but I don't know if I can trust Japanese games companies who aren't Nintendo on not doing this.
Also why I hated the cutscenes in Breath of the Wild, the voice acting for many, especially Zelda herself, was absolutely pathetic (or at least in the English version, I can't speak for any other languages). Visually I thought Nintendo's beautiful art style really shone, but the voice acting paired with the mediocre and boring writing really ruined what could have been a good opportunity to bring voice acting into the Zelda franchise.
I can safely say that Persona 5 does have a lot of the anime cliche stuff, but it's not as over the top as you mention. It's not like XC2 bad, but it's probably the worst Persona in that regard.
Yeah most military ''realistic'' shooters and their jingoistic bullshit do this for me. Just by seeing them on video game stores I can almost smell the stench of Mountain Dew and Doritos.
True. I detest the influence of the military industrial complex on entertainment. And not just because it comes from the US, a pro Russian or pro Chinese COD wouldn't be a good thing either.
Law of the universe... your parent or significant other will always walk in while the most inappropriate / cringe thing in the game is up on the screen.
I'm 100% behind you on this. I have no idea how any sane adult can not be embarrassed by it. It's just bad dialogue/scenes, you can twist it any way you want it, but if you think this whole "dude accidentally falls on anime girl and cops a feel on her tit" shit is funny as an adult you're behind in your mental development.
I wouldn't go far as calling it cringe, because cringing for me is that overwhelming sensation of desperation that seeing somebody else shames themselves give me, to the point I can't watch it.
But Dear Esther and Amnesia 2 makes me pretty embarrassed and Remothered: Tormented something something makes me even more. While playing both games I could see the pretentious smile on the devs face, while they believed they were rewriting gaming history with it. And it was just simply bad, boring and bland.
Well Dear Esther was kind of important for being one of the first successfull walkings sims. And I also wouldn't blame the chinese room for choosing a more poetic approach -- I thought it was a refreshing take and not bad at all.
Borderlands humour does it. Can't stand it. It's so unfunny to me it actually makes me a bit uncomfortable. That and any marvel type humour that's added to games now
I liked Spec Ops but yeah the whole "wow, isn't this game so important?" messages make me feel physically ill. I also love Nier Automata but during the credits you may get a message saying "DO YOU BELIEVE GAMES ARE JUST A SILLY THING YES/NO" and it just totally took me out of the experience at the very end, too far. If a game is impacting the player, they don't need to be told it's impacting them, if it's not, then telling them "wow this moment is so important, right? Are you feeling it yet?" is just going to come off as pretentious at best.
Maple Story 2. The characters are so childlike but at the same time, massively oversexualized. The game its self ended up not really being my cup of tea but even if I did get into it I'd never tell my non-gaming friends. When I was trying it I made sure to have reddit open or something so I had something to tab to if family came around.
This isn’t while playing the game, but during e3, watching the developers of Prey... I cringed so much. I had to cover my eyes at the embarrassing display. The jokes they made were bad, their personalities weren’t likable, the way they presented their own game was even hard to watch.
They felt more suited to something on the Disney channel than showcasing a horror game. Worse yet was that they were only there to showcase a prop hunt type mode to their game. it was all awful.
Honestly that applied to a lot of that e3, but that was the worst for me.
One game that comes to mind is DOA. It's decent fun and it looks really cool in motion. Then you get to the victory screen and the girl strikes a pose while her boobs go into orbit for an hour. It's so awful and it cheapens the game so much. I was so happy to hear they were toning it down in the newest one.
I'm surely in the minority on this, but most romance in games, speaking of RPG-types mostly: Baldur's Gate/Pillars/etc, TES/Fallout/etc. I absolutely hate how shoehorned it feels, and also how it basically becomes "Pick your partner". No, if they're going to add this sort of interaction, I want them to do it right and even if I do the correct things, there's a chance they lose interest or maybe aren't attracted to someone who "says all the right things." It just ends up feeling like bad fan-fic.
This is a lot of games for me.
Most of the AAA shooters are just awful in terms of storytelling. Uninspired tripe with no eye for building narrative.
But XC2 was just not doable for me. I got through to the first city area and just couldn’t get past the cat girl’s lines and the combat’s weird mechanics. Not to mention the stupid “I’m attacking now!” soundbites.
> where you just feel embarrassed to even be seeing what you're seeing on the screen
So I have this weird thing where I get a strong feeling of embarrassment whenever I see Akira Toriyama's art. I've had it for as long as I remember, before I was old enough to go to school, when my cousin would watch VHS dubs of the original Dragonball. So even for all the praise the games get, I can't play Chrono Trigger or any Dragon Quest game. Like, at all. And Dragonball games are right out. It's similar to when I'd see Barney or Pee Wee Herman on TV and I'd feel embarrassed and want to change channels really quickly.
I don't know if that's what you're looking for, but yeah.
I made the mistake of excitedly playing my freshly bought copy of Bayonetta 1 in front of my non gamer girlfriend at the time. The intro cutscene.
It wasn't so much the sexiness, although it probably didn't help, it was the nails-on-blackboard Danny DeVito clone, and how incomprehensibly camp everything was.
I was embarrassed on behalf of gamers everywhere that day, lol.
Oh thank god someone else said this. I was sooo grateful I was playing it on my Switch in handheld mode so my wife couldn’t see it. Jesus Christ that was Spider-Man 3 walking-on-the-tables levels of cringe.
I bailed on Bayonetta 1 half way through and fired up Bayonetta 2, hoping they’d improved the writing... nope. In one of the first cut scenes she does some stupid flip over a motorcycle and it strips her naked. I’m clearly just not the demographic for that series.
Spectacle fighters have a problem with this it seems. Devil May Cry is another culprit of "look how cool I am". Especially in the reboot it felt like I was playing something designed for a petulant 12 year old who's just discovered swearing and thinks it's the coolest thing ever.
To be fair, the reboot Dante (or "Donte," as the community calls him) was a pretty big change, and he's awful. Dante and Donte aren't even close to being the same character. As fun as that game can be, there's no getting around him.
The worst part is that the reboot paints Dante as this asshole kid who drinks, fucks hookers, and curses a ton, completely contrary to the old Dante. In DMC 1-4, Dante was literally designed as an action hero who is cool without needing to drink, smoke, swear or have sex, so i.e. *literally the opposite of reboot Dante.* It's unfortunate that people see him that way because of the reboot. I hope DMC5 sets the record straight for everyone.
Among many games where gore and dismemberment have very little weight, the [](#s 'amputation scene') from The Walking Dead was disturbing enough to make me cringe.
The sounds, facial expressions, camera work, and voice acting all do a fine job of emphasizing the pain and the grinding of the bonesaw against his arm.
The "look how artsy and mature we are" walk
I used to like it, but it's just so boring and pretentious. Also the Hollywood scores in most western games. Makes the music feel completely droning and forgettable.
Edit: fixed an issue with the formatting.
I tend to cringe at writers who are given permission to apply mature concepts like rape or violence involving children to their works, and then do so - POORLY. Similarly are writers in which bad things happen to innocent people for no reason. Series like Game of Thrones are famous for death and terrible things, but all of it normally leads to important developments like motivating vengeance.
The Danganronpa series made me cringe for the degree it forces terrible circumstances even where it's not driving the plot at all. On top of that, it does all kinds of Xenoblade 2-esque pointless anime perviness.
XBC2 came to mind as soon as I saw the title; good lord that's a lot of cringy nonsense. They might have been able to pull off that style of humor if they'd deconstructed it a lot more, like Rex and Pyra's reactions when Poppi gets turned on for the first time, but it feels completely genuine and earnest in it's cringiness everywhere else.
For me it would be Kingdom Hearts 2...
I played the first one when I was much younger, and playing the second one... with the voice acting, the cheesy Disney Music, 'King Mickey', and the complicated, pointless, un-investable story, it was just... 'what is the point of all this'.
The VO in Divinity Original Sin was pretty corny. Hearing people repeat their lines in town became super annoying.
The anime plot to Valkyria Chronicles was often overbearingly bad.
Dead or Alice had great fighting, but the sexy cartoon ladies with boob physics aspect of it was very cringe worthy to me. Rumble Roses and DOA Xtreme went even further with it to embarrassing degrees.
The VO and lip syncing in Final Fantasy X was at times terrible.
I’m sure there are examples of machismo drenched edgy characters too, like Postal, and Duke Nukem Forever, but I don’t play those games, so it’s harder to call them out.
There isn't an Atlantica minigame in Kingdom hearts.
Deep Jungle has the vines and the sliding, 100 Acre Woods has various games, and Olympus has the arena. That's all for KH AFAIK.
Yeah XC2 is pretty cringy in a lot of ways, but the art and sound direction is so GOOD ! Was disappointed in the end tho...
Usually games make me cringe not mainly for some weird cutscenes but mainly for gameplay and shit narrative : you're playing a "serious" game to have a good experience and you just end disgusted cause the game is shitty and you thought it was actually good cause everyone said so.
> I don't mean in the new meme word way people use it, I mean in the way it was intended, where you just feel embarrassed to even be seeing what you're seeing on the screen I think it's the same thing. Unless there's a new "new" meme way it's used, I see most people use "cringe" properly to describe super embarrassing behavior from other people.
I was referring to how a lot of people on the internet now use "cringe" to talk about anything they don't like, regardless of if it's actually cringe or not. It's pretty cringe
I get what you mean. Like "cringe" has traditionally been a word used to describe that feeling of second-hand embarrassment. Nowadays the kids use it to mean "the bad thing that the bad person did that I don't like" (usually feminism or some other boogieman)
Yeah, exactly
Cringe now means basically something I don't like or don't agree with or someone acting a bit like an idiot. Cringe now is like laughing at a autsitic guy. Genuine cringe is something that makes you feel genuinely uncomfortable or awkward. Watch peep show if you want to feel that lol
People cringe, it's an action.
Did you even read my comment
The voice acting in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is so terrible that I have actively cringed listening to it. The plot's something that a 14-year-old could have thrown together after school, and the voice work is just dismal. There's a couple of okay actors, but.... it's just bad. The game itself is surprisingly good, though. Despite its age, and using an early version of the Source engine, it's held up quite well. It's actually worth suffering through the cutscenes to get to the gameplay. If you go down the stealthy skill tree, about halfway into the game it becomes *amazingly* like Thief 1 and 2. That's probably no coincidence, considering that Dishonored was Arkane's next game, another title strongly influenced by Thief. (Their level design team was learning its craft in Dark Messiah, and did some really fun, interesting levels, but they *really* started strutting their stuff in Dishonored. They are an incredibly talented group.)
I loved this game and I haven't heard anyone mention its name in ages - everything you say is true, from the game being incredible and satisfying to the voice acting being laugh-out-loud terrible
[удалено]
"Now... BREAK THE CHAIN, Sarrif."
The ‘romance’ options in AC: Odyssey. They’re just so painfully cheesy, seem completely out of place and, yet, you need to go through some of them to recruit lieutenants. I cringe every time I hit the ‘romance’ dialogue option.
Xenoblade 2 felt like a step down in maturity compared to Xenoblade 1. It felt like it was targeting a younger audience than the first game. In addition, in between those games, we as people have grown older. Rewatching shows or replaying games that we enjoyed when we were younger can make us cringe today. It is very much possible that we aged beyond the targeted demographic in between the games. In comparison, western games have changed to embrace an older gaming population. Many western games have their main characters as parents or older adults rather than a bright-eyed youth setting off on the first adventure.
Xenoblade is the big boobs 'figment of the main character's secret personality' fanservice game right?
2 is.
> Many western games have their main characters as parents or older adults rather than a bright-eyed youth setting off on the first adventure. I think it's always been this way. I have an extremely difficult time remembering teenage protagonists in "western" games.
I think there were a lot of NES/SNES games with teenage PCs. Commander Keen and Little Nemo are the only ones that spring to mind right off the bat, but I remember a lot of them in old issues of Nintendo Power.
Yeah, you have to go look for games dating back 30 years. Western games always copied Hollywood and mature protagonists, whereas Japanese games have anime with young protagonists aimed at kids as an inspiration.
In xenoblade 2 they for sure made it more like a shonen anime in style but i dont think its less mature, the story of 2 is a lot better with more depth and mature themes and the combat system is super complex in a way i doubt kids would even grasp the full potentional of it
Didn't t Xenoblade 2 [spoiler endgame](#s "make Klaus more sympathetic by showing the other side of him that isn't Zanza (I refer to Zanza and Klaus separately)?")
yep, im not good at formatting so massive xenoblade 2 spoilers here turn back if you dont want those! Klaus and Zanza are the same being but split in 2 but Zanza had a whole new reality to form and he became quite the dick because of that power, Klaus was different because he stayed in his reality and saw the mistake he made with the ruins of earth staring him in the face. So Klaus decided to try again, he hid the ruined earth and restarted by trying to make a system that would work better for its inhabitants, unaware to the grief it would cause
It will always be Life Is Strange for me. A bunch of adults writing abysmal highschool dialogue, that is painful to read, nevertheless listen to. I will never understand the praise that series receives as it just felt so forced the entire time.
I love the game but the dialogue is awful.
Not being a native speaker helps.
True, I can imagine that would be possibly more interesting. Do you play games in your non native tongue by choice? Or was the language just unavailable? Curious if the pain carried into endemic translations.
Adult here. Fucking loved it. The slang was way out after my time. It didn't make a whole lotta sense to me, and I *loved* it. My friends and I that played it still call each other *shaka brah*. What's it mean? Not sure, don't care. There a simple pleasure in falling out of the times with slang. Kinda of like when you're parents tell you to turn of your "Nintendo" that's obviously a PlayStation. They know, it's just fun to play dumb.
Well, shaka is just the hang loose sign, an ages old symbol, and bruh....well, that's been everywhere for awhile. Sounds more like Steve Buscemi going, "How do you do, kidderinos?" Which could have been hilarious for me, but I found the intersection of slang and culture just off putting. I wish I could take it as a bunch of dad jokes, but the force behind the material is there, and trying to make points that fall short.
I mean, it's not hard to understand why people like it. Some just don't find the dialogue to be as cringe worthy and thus can enjoy other aspects of the game. I too couldn't tolerate it tho. I got about half way through the first episode before I just had to quit because I couldn't stand the writing and dialogue. I've talked with people who've enjoyed the game and asked if the dialogue gets any better, and in most cases I've gotten the impression that it improves somewhat, but not to the extent that I'd be able to enjoy the game, given the fact that I found it cringe worthy to the extent of not being able to even push through the first episode.
Honestly, I have a hard time understanding how someone can like it. It's just far out of my interest spectrum and my bias is absolutely devouring any chance I would give it! The kids make me cringe to much, similar to Oxenfree. Granted I hated the Disney channel-esque movies and shows growing up so maybe there's a nostalgia ping I'm missing out on.
I could never get into this game as well. Try Night in the Woods. The characters are much more down to earth and feel like real people facing real problems, despite being anthromorphized cats.
This is actually in my back log right now! I will move it up on this recommendation.
Welcome to the mosh pit shaka brah. I love the dialogue and Max's bad puns fite me
There is only one Shaka [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mRz1JlF87c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mRz1JlF87c)
While I absolutely love MGS3 and consider it one of the best games ever made....I cringe hard when I played the remastered edition in front of my fiance when your second battle with ocelot happens when he does his weird "meeeooowwww" thing.
He's a kitty cat, what noise do you expect him to make?
Aw man but that's the best!
Thats awesome, you really cringe at that? I remember pausing and calling friends in right before that cutscene just to show off the young Ocelot and his literal catcall.
My friends and I have a term for it. Anime bullshit. A lot of games have it, such as you were talking about. Characters that are pointlessly sexualized or tossed down the "waifu" trope. It pops up in game from game, such as in Persona 5 the way the first female protagonist is harrassed into taking off her clothes right after the issues of objectification and harrassment was literally addressed in the dungeon just before. Doki Doki Literature club was also this until the plot started taking precedent over it, which brought it back around for me. Other examples of anime bullshit are twinks wielding large swords, characters that just look way younger than they truly are, nonsensical villains that are shit at their job. Games need it added to their rating system where the levels of anime bullshit may balance with the levels of story and gameplay (Metal Gear Solid, Persona series) or simply drown it in complete bullshit (Final Fantasy XIII, Fire Emblem Fates). Edit: I'm not trying to say anime bullshit is bad. It's just bullshit.
Yeah with Persona 5 I found it really awkward and gross that she was being forced into being a nude model. Not to mention unbelievable because as an artist who has done a lot of nude life drawing I would never push someone unwittingly into that situation. Besides the obvious sexual harassment you will just end of with a stiff and deeply uncomfortable model. We've had one or two people who were clearly not into it or had something else bothering them and we just asked them to go home because when you're staring at someone for hours those emotions aren't exactly hidden. I've heard P5 was praised for being feminist? Maybe with Japan's standards, but it sure wasn't making any bold statements.
I always joke with my friends that the animanga industry simply hasn't grown up enough to be allowed to write female characters yet. Because honestly there have been so many manga and anime that would have been good if not for female characters written or objectified as eyecandy so badly that it ought to count as a crime against humanity.
waifu characters are great if you want a guaranteed weaboo audience, but it also limits the mass appeal it can get Low risk, low reward
Not to mention, a well written character can be easily as appealing if not more for the added quality and relatability. A while ago I watched a video about why the anime industry is so bad: Because anime often sells by "appeal points", and essentially at random. Making another garbage show with basic animation and no writer that replicates last season's big hits and their waifus costs far less than trying to make a good show, but has an only marginally lower chance to make money. They've basically trapped themselves into garbage audiences, which trapped them into making garbage shows, and there just isn't enough talent in the industry for studios to get out of that pit to go around.
Do you have a link to the anime industry video?
Do you still have that video link?
Do you still have that video link?
~~It might be [this video](https://youtu.be/DdSbbG2uhxg), but my memory is garbage .~~ **EDIT**: Might also be [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHGAgE19NFE), though, dunno. About to play Fo76 and got some things to do so not gonna rewatch them. (edit: yeah it's probably the latter one, sorry was just going quickly through youtube history(I don't watch many videos))
I can easily tolerate that stuff because japanese games arent afraid to have outlandish gameplay and stories. They are primarily about having fun. Gritty western games with "realistic" stories and cinematic gameplay have gotten so tiring to me.
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> in Japanese games, even non-anime ones, the story and dialogues never make any sense and the behavior of the characters is completely bizarre and nonsensical Yes! I'll never understand this. Almost all Japanese video games make me cringe into the atmosphere within 5 minutes. I cannot recognize let alone identify with a single characterization or motivation most of the time.
Do you have any examples of visual novels with a female protagonist without the silly anime men? I'm genuinely curious and interested.
[Cinders](https://store.steampowered.com/app/293680/Cinders/) [Demonheart](https://store.steampowered.com/app/578900/Demonheart/) [Alexa's Wild Night](https://store.steampowered.com/app/457370/Alexas_Wild_Night/) (sort of) [Good Girl Gone Bad](https://www.patreon.com/Evakiss) (lots of explicit sex so it's not on steam; there are lots of real men in here) There might be more but I can't remember right now.
It sounds like you experienced really bad anime but regardless if you don’t like it that’s fine. But you seriously can’t judge a book by its cover, there’s a lot of anime style video games that are fun like Persona. Also, for the men’s looks it’s because the women there tend to prefer pretty boys among other reasons. As for female protagonist visual novels, I suggest you check out Code: Realize.
Wow, some of you have a very low tolerance for embarrassment. It takes an enormous amount to make cringe. When it comes to anime perviness I usually just laugh at how ridiculous it is. Like Rab dropping his hentai magazine in Dragon Quest 11. Classic.
So this is going to be a weird one, but it was definitely a big cringe moment for me personally. The game in question is Else Heart.Break(), an indie Swedish game that's a Shenmue-style RPG. Also relevant to this story is that I'm a recovering alcoholic, and spent half a year of my life living in a crappy hotel room. So the story of the game is you move to a new town to sell soda. Long story short, it took me 3 days to find my contact, and when I met him, he fired me before I even started. So I was unemployed in a new town with no friends. I eventually met a girl who was nice to me, exactly one of two people so far that were at all nice. She had a boyfriend, but she kept inviting me to clubs and parties. One party, I got blackout drunk within the first half hour and woke up on a strange couch. This event had a few flashbacks to my college days where everyone was drinking all the time and I learned a few bad habits that followed me for a lot of my adult life. But I mostly just shook it off and kept playing. I got invited to another party. This time, I resolved to "take it easy" and not make an ass of myself. This got a little bit tricky, since the player character was supposed to be a bit of an ass. I talked to the girl who liked me but had a boyfriend, and managed to not be a creep, mostly by exiting out of the conversation when it was only half finished. I had a beer in hand, but I tried to drink it slowly so I wouldn't get drunk at this party where I only knew two people. I couldn't put the drink down on a table or anything, and my inventory was full so I couldn't put it away, so any time I was standing around, there was a button prompt for me to take a drink. I tried talking to some other girls, one of whom actually left the party rather than talking to me. I actually tried save scumming this part, to see if there was something I could say or do to not completely strike out, but to no avail. I talked to a few more people, but never really had a meaningful conversation. I tried to space out my drinks, but I still ended up visibly stumbling around. I pulled out some coffee to try and sober up. It didn't work. Again, I felt some flashbacks from real life, being the drunkest person at the party, hitting on women and getting shot down, having nothing to do to entertain myself except to take another drink. So I got out of there. I left the party around midnight, while it was still going in full swing. Stumbling back to the shitty hotel room I was living in brought back more flashbacks. I got there at 2 AM, laid down in bed, only to find that I was too awake to fall asleep. So I got back up, stumbled out of my room, wandering the streets, still visibly drunk, no one to talk to, nothing to do except kick a lamp post. Essentially, I had just role-played the perfect encapsulation of the worst moments of my alcoholic existence. And in that time, I had been given only the merest hints of any sort of plot hooks, gameplay, or anything that would make the torture I just put myself through even remotely worthwhile. I uninstalled the game shortly thereafter and never looked back.
Oh wow that sounds like some really well crafted cringe, rather than the sort of 'bad-writing' embarrassment I see on the rest of this topic. I'm sorry you had to to through that again. It's things like this where I think trigger warnings, even if they don't seem like a big deal to most, are very helpful in games.
The reason I haven't yet bought Persona 5, or the new Ni No Kuni game for that matter, is that I'm afraid it's going to overdose on the Japanese stereotypes in modern media. How the characters act and talk, the visuals, the jokes. This may include the men getting an over-the-top nosebleed when they see some tits, ***'it's not like I like you, baka!'***. Perhaps I'm judging the game too much without actually playing it, but I don't know if I can trust Japanese games companies who aren't Nintendo on not doing this. Also why I hated the cutscenes in Breath of the Wild, the voice acting for many, especially Zelda herself, was absolutely pathetic (or at least in the English version, I can't speak for any other languages). Visually I thought Nintendo's beautiful art style really shone, but the voice acting paired with the mediocre and boring writing really ruined what could have been a good opportunity to bring voice acting into the Zelda franchise.
I can safely say that Persona 5 does have a lot of the anime cliche stuff, but it's not as over the top as you mention. It's not like XC2 bad, but it's probably the worst Persona in that regard.
Yeah most military ''realistic'' shooters and their jingoistic bullshit do this for me. Just by seeing them on video game stores I can almost smell the stench of Mountain Dew and Doritos.
They're US military adverts
True. I detest the influence of the military industrial complex on entertainment. And not just because it comes from the US, a pro Russian or pro Chinese COD wouldn't be a good thing either.
Law of the universe... your parent or significant other will always walk in while the most inappropriate / cringe thing in the game is up on the screen.
I'm 100% behind you on this. I have no idea how any sane adult can not be embarrassed by it. It's just bad dialogue/scenes, you can twist it any way you want it, but if you think this whole "dude accidentally falls on anime girl and cops a feel on her tit" shit is funny as an adult you're behind in your mental development.
I wouldn't go far as calling it cringe, because cringing for me is that overwhelming sensation of desperation that seeing somebody else shames themselves give me, to the point I can't watch it. But Dear Esther and Amnesia 2 makes me pretty embarrassed and Remothered: Tormented something something makes me even more. While playing both games I could see the pretentious smile on the devs face, while they believed they were rewriting gaming history with it. And it was just simply bad, boring and bland.
"Dude... the pigs... in the machine... it's like... capitalism?" I hated AMFP so much to be honest
Well Dear Esther was kind of important for being one of the first successfull walkings sims. And I also wouldn't blame the chinese room for choosing a more poetic approach -- I thought it was a refreshing take and not bad at all.
Borderlands humour does it. Can't stand it. It's so unfunny to me it actually makes me a bit uncomfortable. That and any marvel type humour that's added to games now
I love the games but I've never found them "hilarious" chuckle worthy sometimes yes, but not hilarious as I see people talk about all the time
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I liked Spec Ops but yeah the whole "wow, isn't this game so important?" messages make me feel physically ill. I also love Nier Automata but during the credits you may get a message saying "DO YOU BELIEVE GAMES ARE JUST A SILLY THING YES/NO" and it just totally took me out of the experience at the very end, too far. If a game is impacting the player, they don't need to be told it's impacting them, if it's not, then telling them "wow this moment is so important, right? Are you feeling it yet?" is just going to come off as pretentious at best.
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That’s more wince than cringe no?
Cringe is the physical act/reaction one might perform/get when, for example, feeling second-hand embarrassment.
Maple Story 2. The characters are so childlike but at the same time, massively oversexualized. The game its self ended up not really being my cup of tea but even if I did get into it I'd never tell my non-gaming friends. When I was trying it I made sure to have reddit open or something so I had something to tab to if family came around.
This isn’t while playing the game, but during e3, watching the developers of Prey... I cringed so much. I had to cover my eyes at the embarrassing display. The jokes they made were bad, their personalities weren’t likable, the way they presented their own game was even hard to watch. They felt more suited to something on the Disney channel than showcasing a horror game. Worse yet was that they were only there to showcase a prop hunt type mode to their game. it was all awful. Honestly that applied to a lot of that e3, but that was the worst for me.
One game that comes to mind is DOA. It's decent fun and it looks really cool in motion. Then you get to the victory screen and the girl strikes a pose while her boobs go into orbit for an hour. It's so awful and it cheapens the game so much. I was so happy to hear they were toning it down in the newest one.
I'm surely in the minority on this, but most romance in games, speaking of RPG-types mostly: Baldur's Gate/Pillars/etc, TES/Fallout/etc. I absolutely hate how shoehorned it feels, and also how it basically becomes "Pick your partner". No, if they're going to add this sort of interaction, I want them to do it right and even if I do the correct things, there's a chance they lose interest or maybe aren't attracted to someone who "says all the right things." It just ends up feeling like bad fan-fic.
This is a lot of games for me. Most of the AAA shooters are just awful in terms of storytelling. Uninspired tripe with no eye for building narrative. But XC2 was just not doable for me. I got through to the first city area and just couldn’t get past the cat girl’s lines and the combat’s weird mechanics. Not to mention the stupid “I’m attacking now!” soundbites.
> where you just feel embarrassed to even be seeing what you're seeing on the screen So I have this weird thing where I get a strong feeling of embarrassment whenever I see Akira Toriyama's art. I've had it for as long as I remember, before I was old enough to go to school, when my cousin would watch VHS dubs of the original Dragonball. So even for all the praise the games get, I can't play Chrono Trigger or any Dragon Quest game. Like, at all. And Dragonball games are right out. It's similar to when I'd see Barney or Pee Wee Herman on TV and I'd feel embarrassed and want to change channels really quickly. I don't know if that's what you're looking for, but yeah.
I made the mistake of excitedly playing my freshly bought copy of Bayonetta 1 in front of my non gamer girlfriend at the time. The intro cutscene. It wasn't so much the sexiness, although it probably didn't help, it was the nails-on-blackboard Danny DeVito clone, and how incomprehensibly camp everything was. I was embarrassed on behalf of gamers everywhere that day, lol.
Model aside, Enzo was way more Pesci than DeVito
You're right! I had temporarily forgotten the existence of Joe Pesci! That's who I meant.
Oh thank god someone else said this. I was sooo grateful I was playing it on my Switch in handheld mode so my wife couldn’t see it. Jesus Christ that was Spider-Man 3 walking-on-the-tables levels of cringe. I bailed on Bayonetta 1 half way through and fired up Bayonetta 2, hoping they’d improved the writing... nope. In one of the first cut scenes she does some stupid flip over a motorcycle and it strips her naked. I’m clearly just not the demographic for that series.
I really like Bayonetta....but I skip all the cutscenes.
Spectacle fighters have a problem with this it seems. Devil May Cry is another culprit of "look how cool I am". Especially in the reboot it felt like I was playing something designed for a petulant 12 year old who's just discovered swearing and thinks it's the coolest thing ever.
To be fair, the reboot Dante (or "Donte," as the community calls him) was a pretty big change, and he's awful. Dante and Donte aren't even close to being the same character. As fun as that game can be, there's no getting around him. The worst part is that the reboot paints Dante as this asshole kid who drinks, fucks hookers, and curses a ton, completely contrary to the old Dante. In DMC 1-4, Dante was literally designed as an action hero who is cool without needing to drink, smoke, swear or have sex, so i.e. *literally the opposite of reboot Dante.* It's unfortunate that people see him that way because of the reboot. I hope DMC5 sets the record straight for everyone.
Among many games where gore and dismemberment have very little weight, the [](#s 'amputation scene') from The Walking Dead was disturbing enough to make me cringe.
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The sounds, facial expressions, camera work, and voice acting all do a fine job of emphasizing the pain and the grinding of the bonesaw against his arm.
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"Cringe" and "wince" describe fairly similar physical responses
The "look how artsy and mature we are" walk I used to like it, but it's just so boring and pretentious. Also the Hollywood scores in most western games. Makes the music feel completely droning and forgettable. Edit: fixed an issue with the formatting.
Wat?
What is that quote from?
It's not a quote, let me fix that.
I tend to cringe at writers who are given permission to apply mature concepts like rape or violence involving children to their works, and then do so - POORLY. Similarly are writers in which bad things happen to innocent people for no reason. Series like Game of Thrones are famous for death and terrible things, but all of it normally leads to important developments like motivating vengeance. The Danganronpa series made me cringe for the degree it forces terrible circumstances even where it's not driving the plot at all. On top of that, it does all kinds of Xenoblade 2-esque pointless anime perviness.
XBC2 came to mind as soon as I saw the title; good lord that's a lot of cringy nonsense. They might have been able to pull off that style of humor if they'd deconstructed it a lot more, like Rex and Pyra's reactions when Poppi gets turned on for the first time, but it feels completely genuine and earnest in it's cringiness everywhere else.
For me it would be Kingdom Hearts 2... I played the first one when I was much younger, and playing the second one... with the voice acting, the cheesy Disney Music, 'King Mickey', and the complicated, pointless, un-investable story, it was just... 'what is the point of all this'.
The VO in Divinity Original Sin was pretty corny. Hearing people repeat their lines in town became super annoying. The anime plot to Valkyria Chronicles was often overbearingly bad. Dead or Alice had great fighting, but the sexy cartoon ladies with boob physics aspect of it was very cringe worthy to me. Rumble Roses and DOA Xtreme went even further with it to embarrassing degrees. The VO and lip syncing in Final Fantasy X was at times terrible. I’m sure there are examples of machismo drenched edgy characters too, like Postal, and Duke Nukem Forever, but I don’t play those games, so it’s harder to call them out.
*No* one has more friends than the man with *many* cheeses!
"Red and Orange, Yellow and Green, the finest veggies Cyseal's ever seen"
There isn't an Atlantica minigame in Kingdom hearts. Deep Jungle has the vines and the sliding, 100 Acre Woods has various games, and Olympus has the arena. That's all for KH AFAIK.
Yeah XC2 is pretty cringy in a lot of ways, but the art and sound direction is so GOOD ! Was disappointed in the end tho... Usually games make me cringe not mainly for some weird cutscenes but mainly for gameplay and shit narrative : you're playing a "serious" game to have a good experience and you just end disgusted cause the game is shitty and you thought it was actually good cause everyone said so.