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[Darkmere]

The cover art image for The Forest is the lower half of a dead woman in a skirt, which shows off lots of gash wounds on her legs and a broken ankle.  I'd love to be highly critical of the interpretation but to be honest, with zero information about the game and how sexualized most promo images are... seeing cut-up legs (a usually sexualized part) of a dead woman did also make me think of murder porn just from the cover.

I was pretty surprised when I read what the game was actually about. Not really interested... but surprised.

[Tellemurius]

The cover art image for The Forest is the lower half of a dead woman in a skirt, which shows off lots of gash wounds on her legs and a broken ankle.  I'd love to be highly critical of the interpretation but to be honest, with zero information about the game and how sexualized most promo images are... seeing cut-up legs (a usually sexualized part) of a dead woman did also make me think of murder porn just from the cover.

I was pretty surprised when I read what the game was actually about. Not really interested... but surprised.

Oh that, she is the flight attendant that you find dead due to the crash. Now for it looking like murder porn,  i mean this is steam of all things, theres no adult things allowed in the first place. Theres nakid raging women in the game that scream and beat you to death while missing some anatomical parts like nipples.

[Sappho]

Yeah, but the fact that they chose to advertise it with that image is a real turn-off for a lot of people who will identify that image as something like "murder porn." The image should give at least a small idea of what the game is about, since it's often the only thing a person sees about the game before deciding whether to look into it or not. They've chosen for their first impression to be an image of a woman who looks like she's been mutilated by a serial killer rapist. Turned me off from learning more, I can tell you that.

[crazysheep]

Spoiler: the forest cover image (click to show/hide)

I'm now wondering if I'm abnormal for not inferring "murder porn game" from this image :S

[Tellemurius]

Yeah, but the fact that they chose to advertise it with that image is a real turn-off for a lot of people who will identify that image as something like "murder porn." The image should give at least a small idea of what the game is about, since it's often the only thing a person sees about the game before deciding whether to look into it or not. They've chosen for their first impression to be an image of a woman who looks like she's been mutilated by a serial killer rapist. Turned me off from learning more, I can tell you that.

Now this is really new to me, something like this is usually bitched all over the place in forums. I mean i seen more complaints of "Early Access" than that. To me the image comes off as dead person. I dunno, I really don't pay attention to coverart, this already reminded me about the complaints for Far Cry 4's artwork. People putting too much effort into something thats last minute for PR.

[Darkmere]

Yeah, but the fact that they chose to advertise it with that image is a real turn-off for a lot of people who will identify that image as something like "murder porn." The image should give at least a small idea of what the game is about, since it's often the only thing a person sees about the game before deciding whether to look into it or not. They've chosen for their first impression to be an image of a woman who looks like she's been mutilated by a serial killer rapist. Turned me off from learning more, I can tell you that.

That about sums it up. Nothing about the image says "sandbox zombie game" to me. You don't find that out until you get to the tiny text after the dead woman with her legs splayed out. At the very least, whoever did their marketing was an idiot.

Spoiler: Here's the rest of the image that's cropped in that version (click to show/hide)

So... In the order it draws your eye reading from right to left, top to bottom... we see a dead woman with her legs splayed open, a title, and very last in fine print that doesn't show up well on the shrunk image... a note telling us what the game is. No, it's not openly hardcore, nor is the game literally pornography. But the image is the first thing I ever saw of the game. Is it zombies or mutants? A base you can build? an evil swamp?

Nope. Dead woman with her legs splayed and no face that would humanize her.


EDIT: I'm willing to concede that the image was *probably* designed for visceral shock value, but my immediate reaction was "dead woman with stab wounds. This looks like some kind of murder mystery in the woods.... but that corpse does look a little rapey... pass. The fact that it's so different means a huge marketing fail at the very least, even discounting the undertones of sexual abuse.

[Sappho]

Yeah, but the fact that they chose to advertise it with that image is a real turn-off for a lot of people who will identify that image as something like "murder porn." The image should give at least a small idea of what the game is about, since it's often the only thing a person sees about the game before deciding whether to look into it or not. They've chosen for their first impression to be an image of a woman who looks like she's been mutilated by a serial killer rapist. Turned me off from learning more, I can tell you that.

Now this is really new to me, something like this is usually bitched all over the place in forums. I mean i seen more complaints of "Early Access" than that. To me the image comes off as dead person. I dunno, I really don't pay attention to coverart, this already reminded me about the complaints for Far Cry 4's artwork. People putting too much effort into something thats last minute for PR.

Well... You're not a woman. : ) Apparently they didn't consider the fact that women play games, too, and images like that one conjure up certain very unpleasant facts of life. That's not to say that men can't find it unpleasant or a turn-off (or simply misleading), but for women, that image kind of sums up a lot of horrible things that actually happen, so it's especially repulsive. Apparently that's not intentional, but that's why we're saying whoever designed it is an idiot.

[Tellemurius]

Like I said, last minute PR

 I can see it though thinking about it just it doesn't pop out compared to other things i dont wanna mention.

[Darkmere]

Like I said, last minute PR

That's really the only point I wanted to make. I can totally see where people make that rapey connection from zero-thought marketing and it's really not something that encouraged me to look at the game more, at all. I was actually pretty shocked when i looked at the forum thread and saw it wasn't some kind of murder mystery. That said, my contribution to the thread derail is over since I haven't actually played the game and can't offer an opinion.

[Tellemurius]

It was more to the point of Puke's poke at it, its already bad enough I got BigD complaining about Early Access when he gets the chance but to me it sounded extremely hostile.

[Glloyd]

Honestly, all I wanted to know was whether it was worth the 11 bucks. Promotional materials are promotional materials, and they'll never tell you anything about the actual game.

So, is it worth a buy?

[Tellemurius]

Honestly, all I wanted to know was whether it was worth the 11 bucks. Promotional materials are promotional materials, and they'll never tell you anything about the actual game.

So, is it worth a buy?

11 bucks for survival horror yes.

[Mech#4]

From what I've seen over a number of let's plays, the survival part of it isn't too difficult but I think the most interesting part of the game is in the little details. The cannibals act is a variety of different ways, not always attacking you and scouting about rather than always blindly rushing you. The map has a lot of different areas to explore and, while it isn't randomly generated, I believe there is plans to expand it further.

Physics can be a bit wonky sometimes, especially with floating boats but I think the game sets a rather nice believable world with only a few fantastical elements.

[puke]

but to me it sounded extremely hostile.

Yep.

[Culise]

--RTS comments--

TA/SupCom are great games and I love them, but he's not a fan of futuristic settings, so they're sadly out- good suggestions, though.  He prefers more straightforward gameplay, which may be what drove him away from CoH2 (I haven't played it myself and he wasn't clear on what he didn't like about it.

That's a shame.  I've never played it myself, but TA is on sale for $1.79 this weekend on GOG, so it'd be an ideal time to pick it up. 

Oh, and a few others: UFO series, Xenonauts, King's Bounty, Blitzkrieg, and so forth.