Rules Control Fun

People have been able to drive in Over-Botch since the very beginning, but with a notable lack of regard to the rules of the road. I guess when there’s no real penalty, either legal or to your health, you can be as much of a maniac as you want.

I think it’s just been sort of tolerated up until now, but in line with Over-Botch’s efforts to create a realistic version of the world in a digital form, they’re finally introducing some stringent road rules. And why not, I say? If you want to drive like a hoon, ramp onto a roof and crash your car into the middle of an intersection, there are a million games that let you do that. This isn’t the place.

This is a game that’s supposed to be about realism, and there’s nothing realistic about that. If I did that, I’d end up in an auto service centre. Malvern mechanics probably wouldn’t stand for it, come to think of it. Upon presenting them with the mangled, smoking chunk of metal that used to be my car, they would rightfully be confused about why I’d ramp onto a building and Leeroy Jenkins my way right into heavy traffic. Except I might not even be there to tell the tale, unless it was in a full body cast.

Over-Botch is meant to be real life, but digital. I get that there are elements of the game that are fun, but we still want people to take it seriously. You want to run into trouble and die, that’s Whirl(pool) of Watercraft is on the shelf of the game shop. Buy that instead, and enter a fantasy realm where it’s all ocean and you have to craft a jetski to fight off roaming bands of magical merpeople. Or, like, literally any other game that doesn’t bother with realism.

There are people in this game trying to learn about and become car mechanics. Prahran residents might trust them with their cars someday. You don’t like consequence-free head-on collisions that take time out of a mechanic’s day? Go play Tweed for Speed. It’s just a lot of that, with people in sweater-vests and elegant suit jackets.

-Yan