In The Palace Of The Odd

Too many games seems like such an entitled complaint but really, who can keep up? While everyone else is focused on World of Warcraft Forever or Grand Theft Auto VI or even the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, all launching this month, I thought I had a clear run through December and January, with just the EverQuest II expansion (No date yet but it'll be December.) and Ananta arriving on January 15 2027. 

Only now I learn there's another game I'm curious about that's launching in December. And another that doesn't, as yet, have release date but which looks like it will, when it comes, shoulder everything else aside.

The one that's definitely coming soon is Silver Palace. I was already vaguely aware of it - I wrote about it in September when, apparently, I also pre-registered. Much good that did me. I'd heard not a word from anyone about the game since then, not until I read about the launch date on MMOBomb yesterday

After that, I went to the official website and watched the rest of the videos. They seem a bit generic but I guess I'm going to be giving it a go all the same.

The game, which is releasing globally on December 14, is described on the Epic Store as an "open-world action adventure RPG centred around detective mysteries". I checked Epic because, annoyingly, the game isn't on Steam, or not as yet, anyway. 

MMOBomb has variously labeled it a "Victorian-themed anime action game" and a "Victorian noir-style action RPG." It is, of course, a gacha game, too, but then all the good ones are, these days.

From the videos, I'd call it a mash-up. It looks like they threw a bunch of genres into a blender, then stirred in a gaggle of tropes after that. They seem to have everything in there, from knights in the age of chivalry to fin de siecle grandeur to the roaring twenties, all mushed together with no consideration for reason or logic.

It looks great! I'd play it. I'm going to play it. At least for long enough to find out if it's really just a horrible mess or whether that blender has churned out something smooth and delicious.

I just hope the gameplay doesn't lean too heavily into playing the detective. As I was saying the other day, I always think I'm going to like detective games more than I actually do. I don't imagine there'll be too many of those super-annoying whiteboards covered with bits of string, anyway. That's more of a 'nineties/noughties trope. From the videos, it looks like it's further down towards the sword-sticks and brass knuckles end of the cliche. More Holmes and Raffles than CSI Fantasyland. (I bloody hate Raffles, as it happens...)

I like flamethrowers, though. Well, in games, that is. And I do like the look of some of the characters, particularly the way they seem to be quite chaotic and accident-prone. That looks like it might be a laugh. For once, I might even play the male character. The top-hat and tails look is very fetching.

That's Silver Palace, then. I could write more about it but since I don't know anything more, that wouldn't take long. I will just mention that the developer behind it, Elementa Games, is based in Singapore. Whether that's going to bring a different feel or aesthetic to the familiar mix will be interesting to see.

On to the next one. And it's a good one. 

It's called Ordinary Oddness, which is a pretty fine thing to be called. I don't know a lot about this one either but there's a twenty-two minute "Reveal Trailer" on YouTube. Watch that and you'll know as much about it as I do. 

And I do recommend watching it, too. Preferably in full screen. It'll be twenty minutes well-spent, trust me.

I just watched it all the way through again. It is, frankly, stunning. It seems to be a segment stripped straight out of the main storyline and even without knowing any of the characters or backstory, it's compulsive viewing. It makes the Silver Palace videos look trite by comparison and I thought those were pretty decent.

I'm willing to entertain the explanation that these kinds of games are playing directly to my personal preferences but even allowing for that, why is the quality so high now? Free-to-play games were never like this before Genshin Impact, were they? Now they all are. (This one, as usual, is coming from a division of TenCent called Cosmipup Studios. It's based in Hangzhou, like they often seem to be. Must be a fun place...)

As for what genre Ordinary Oddness is supposed to be, the Steam Store page (This one is on Steam, I'm happy to say.) calls it a "Nothing-Stays-Oddinary Open-World RPG." Yes, they do spell that "Oddinary" I can't tell if it's a typo or a pun. 

QuintLyn Bowers, writing for MMOBomb, unhelpfully, for me anyway, describes it as "Paprika if it were a game."  I'd never heard of Paprika because I'm an anime ignoramus. Alright, an anime ingenue. That's less hurtful. 

Fortunately, I know how to look stuff up.

Wikipedia tells me Paprika was "a 2006 Japanese animated surrealist science fiction psychological thriller" that might have been the inspiration for Christopher Nolan's Inception, another movie I've never seen and know next to nothing about. 

I don't need any of those reference points, though. I know exactly what Ordinary Oddness is referencing and I can date that influence back a decade or so before Paprika, too. Ordinary Madness is Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, if it was a game, not a comic.

I don't actually like Grant Morrison. Or not for a long time. I sat in an auditorium at a comic convention in the 'nineties and watched him instigate what looked disturbingly like a sixties love-in on stage. There were bean-bags, ffs! I walked out after a few minutes and went to the bar instead. I don't believe I've read anything he's written since. 

Before that, though, I read all his Doom Patrols and loved them. That was why I was waiting to hear him talk in the first place. Never meet your heroes. It's such great advice. 

At the time, Doom Patrol was nothing like I'd seen in comics before. I imagine it was like something someone had seen. Very little is ever original. But it certainly was the first dadaist/surrealist super-hero title from a mainstream American publisher I'd read. 

Not, obviously, the last. That influence is all over Ordinary Madness like fingerprints although Morrison's pernicious influence is so pervasive in the culture now, there's absolutely no reason to believe anyone involved with the game has ever even heard of the Doom Patrol. It's like fucking Tolkein now, the stuff Alan Moore and Grant Morrison piped into the air ducts back then.

If you've been waiting thirty years for a chance to walk abut in that world, well now's your chance. I can't wait, personally. Ordinary Madness is above Ananta on my want-to-play list now.

Of course, by the time it arrives, there'll probably be something better out there, coming down the production line. Apparently it is possible to have too much of a good thing after all.