When I first went hands-on with despelote at GDC, I thought I was playing the game like an idiot.
You can kick the ball around and knock some stuff down, but you don’t have to.
In my preview, I mentioned a point in the demo where it was dinner time, and when I headed over to the kitchen, I played with the stove and burner to the dismay of my father, which resulted in him spewing a bunch of dialog but not actually punishing me. I did it because I thought it would be funny, and it turns out that this style of gameplay is absolutely acceptable.
despelote (again, no capital D) is a slice-of-life experience about being a kid in Ecuador. As you play, you discover that its sort of an autobiographical experience from the eyes of game creator Julian Cordero. Over the course of this two-hour experience, he recounts several innocent points of his life and ties them all to Ecuador’s qualification for the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
Most of the fun I had in despelote was from pissing off other characters.
It’s an interesting portrayal of how people, young and old, think back at old memories. For a lot of people, it can be through a negative instance. I, like so many Americans, remember exactly what I was doing as the events of 9/11 unfolded. Sort of tying this way of thinking back to the game, as a fan of the Green Bay Packers, I remember everything I was doing as I watched each game in their 2010 Super Bowl run. That said, seeing things through the eyes of a child in a country you never lived in while tying it to a sport you don’t really care about is more difficult for someone like me.
The game has a lot of creativity and good gameplay ideas behind it, despite feeling like the gameplay is quite barren. I’m in no way bashing Latin America or soccer, but I’ve never cared to visit Ecuador, nor do I really have much attachment to the sport of soccer. So when I’m walking around this virtual version of Quito and hearing this and that about the World Cup, there’s nothing for me to really speak to here. After playing the game, nothing pulled me into the setting, but that probably wasn’t the intention anyway.
Part of what made the experience bland for me is in the way that it looks. The game’s visuals are striking to say the least. The entire setting and environments of the game are rendered in a sepia-toned, dotty fashion, sort of invoking a dream experience, which in my mind encapsulates nostalgia. Is it beautiful? Not to me. I find it very jarring, and the lack of color in its overall style didn’t make me appreciate the setting. I’m a big traveler and absolutely enjoy cultural overtones, but the “sleepy” look just didn’t work for me. Again, I can see this working for other people, but I’m also somebody that couldn’t finish Return of the Obra Dinn just because I personally found it to be too much of an eyesore.
If you want, you can help these kids get the ball out of the tree by kicking another ball out of it. Do you get anything for it? Not really.
The main things I enjoyed visually though were in the character design and interactive objects. Every character and NPC is a flat, black-and-white, 2D drawing. They all seemed purposely out of place in a way that just worked perfectly and injected a lot of life into the experience, which you essentially need in a “walking simulator” that takes place in an otherwise lifeless setting. The visuals really start to flex once you begin finding soccer balls to kick around the environment. The way the ball is animated back and forth work extremely well with its overall look, and Sebastian Valbuena definitely deserves his flowers here. I have my own biases and issues with the style, but I’ve seen enough games to know that Valbuena definitely accomplished great things overall with despelote‘s look
I spent a lot of time in this review talking about my lack of connection to soccer and how despelote doesn’t really kindle any desire for me to visit Ecuador, so the general impression might be that I don’t like the game. This isn’t true at all. In fact, I honestly don’t know whether I like or dislike it. I’ll definitely say it’s interesting, and it was interesting enough for me to see it through to the end. There’s two reasons for that… for one, it’s short. Lastly, while the setting is boring in a lot of ways, the few actions you can take lead to fun outcomes.
I already talked about the burning stove. That wasn’t the only stupid thing I did in the game. During that particular section, your sister is watching her favorite TV show, and you can choose to sit on the couch and take up the TV by playing a soccer video game (more on this specific minigame later), and that pisses her off. There’s also a point in the game where you play hide-and-seek with her, and you can just not look for her when she hides. There’s also this party that you get all dressed and fancy for, but you can go out, play some soccer, and then fall in the mud–pissing your parents off. Then there’s a party where you can drink all the wine on the tables, looking like a dumb kid. I got a laugh doing all these things and more. If Cordero and Valbuena wanted to make a “bad boy simulator,” I’d be all in.
All the achievements, and most of the gameplay, in the game are tied to this soccer video game in the game.
Again, soccer is pretty integral to the overall experience in despelote. When you boot the game up, you’re treated to a quick Atari-esque soccer game to play that actually feels good and it’s easy to get addicted to it. As mentioned earlier, there are points in the game where you can go down to the living room and fire it up. All of the game’s achievements are actually tied to that in-game video game, so if you’re worried about gameplay, that’s the bulk of it.
For the most part, the rest of the game is essentially a walking simulator with timed moments here and there. Almost every chapter of the game has you kicking a soccer ball at some point, but aside from just kicking it around to other people, it doesn’t serve much of a purpose which is absolutely fine, because the controls are finnicky. A lot of the ball control is tied to the right stick, but the problem is as a first-person game, the right stick is also essential for moving the camera around, and it doesn’t feel like you have total control of the ball as you walk around with it. Still, kicking the ball around has its moments… I particularly got a kick (see what I did there?) out of stealing the ball from teenagers and then kicking it out of the map, which led to my character getting beat up. But hey, there’s no dying in this game.
At the end of the day, despelote is a chill experience, and chill can mean a lot of things. It can be good, it can be bad, and it can be boring. There’ll be plenty of times in life you’ll be chilling with people you don’t know, doing things you don’t care about, but they’ll still be memorable. That’s exactly what despelote is. I don’t like soccer, but I created my own vibe doing idiotic things, and that’s totally okay. I didn’t have the best time, and I didn’t have the worst time, but I’ll remember it.
There’ll be plenty of times in life you’ll be chilling with people you don’t know, doing things you don’t care about, but they’ll still be memorable. That’s exactly what despelote is. I don’t like soccer, but I created my own vibe doing idiotic things, and that’s totally okay. I didn’t have the best time, and I didn’t have the worst time, but I’ll remember it.
When I first went hands-on with despelote at GDC, I thought I was playing the game like an idiot.
You can kick the ball around and knock some stuff down, but you don’t have to.
In my preview, I mentioned a point in the demo where it was dinner time, and when I headed over to the kitchen, I played with the stove and burner to the dismay of my father, which resulted in him spewing a bunch of dialog but not actually punishing me. I did it because I thought it would be funny, and it turns out that this style of gameplay is absolutely acceptable.
despelote (again, no capital D) is a slice-of-life experience about being a kid in Ecuador. As you play, you discover that its sort of an autobiographical experience from the eyes of game creator Julian Cordero. Over the course of this two-hour experience, he recounts several innocent points of his life and ties them all to Ecuador’s qualification for the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
Most of the fun I had in despelote was from pissing off other characters.
It’s an interesting portrayal of how people, young and old, think back at old memories. For a lot of people, it can be through a negative instance. I, like so many Americans, remember exactly what I was doing as the events of 9/11 unfolded. Sort of tying this way of thinking back to the game, as a fan of the Green Bay Packers, I remember everything I was doing as I watched each game in their 2010 Super Bowl run. That said, seeing things through the eyes of a child in a country you never lived in while tying it to a sport you don’t really care about is more difficult for someone like me.
The game has a lot of creativity and good gameplay ideas behind it, despite feeling like the gameplay is quite barren. I’m in no way bashing Latin America or soccer, but I’ve never cared to visit Ecuador, nor do I really have much attachment to the sport of soccer. So when I’m walking around this virtual version of Quito and hearing this and that about the World Cup, there’s nothing for me to really speak to here. After playing the game, nothing pulled me into the setting, but that probably wasn’t the intention anyway.
Part of what made the experience bland for me is in the way that it looks. The game’s visuals are striking to say the least. The entire setting and environments of the game are rendered in a sepia-toned, dotty fashion, sort of invoking a dream experience, which in my mind encapsulates nostalgia. Is it beautiful? Not to me. I find it very jarring, and the lack of color in its overall style didn’t make me appreciate the setting. I’m a big traveler and absolutely enjoy cultural overtones, but the “sleepy” look just didn’t work for me. Again, I can see this working for other people, but I’m also somebody that couldn’t finish Return of the Obra Dinn just because I personally found it to be too much of an eyesore.
If you want, you can help these kids get the ball out of the tree by kicking another ball out of it. Do you get anything for it? Not really.
The main things I enjoyed visually though were in the character design and interactive objects. Every character and NPC is a flat, black-and-white, 2D drawing. They all seemed purposely out of place in a way that just worked perfectly and injected a lot of life into the experience, which you essentially need in a “walking simulator” that takes place in an otherwise lifeless setting. The visuals really start to flex once you begin finding soccer balls to kick around the environment. The way the ball is animated back and forth work extremely well with its overall look, and Sebastian Valbuena definitely deserves his flowers here. I have my own biases and issues with the style, but I’ve seen enough games to know that Valbuena definitely accomplished great things overall with despelote‘s look
I spent a lot of time in this review talking about my lack of connection to soccer and how despelote doesn’t really kindle any desire for me to visit Ecuador, so the general impression might be that I don’t like the game. This isn’t true at all. In fact, I honestly don’t know whether I like or dislike it. I’ll definitely say it’s interesting, and it was interesting enough for me to see it through to the end. There’s two reasons for that… for one, it’s short. Lastly, while the setting is boring in a lot of ways, the few actions you can take lead to fun outcomes.
I already talked about the burning stove. That wasn’t the only stupid thing I did in the game. During that particular section, your sister is watching her favorite TV show, and you can choose to sit on the couch and take up the TV by playing a soccer video game (more on this specific minigame later), and that pisses her off. There’s also a point in the game where you play hide-and-seek with her, and you can just not look for her when she hides. There’s also this party that you get all dressed and fancy for, but you can go out, play some soccer, and then fall in the mud–pissing your parents off. Then there’s a party where you can drink all the wine on the tables, looking like a dumb kid. I got a laugh doing all these things and more. If Cordero and Valbuena wanted to make a “bad boy simulator,” I’d be all in.
All the achievements, and most of the gameplay, in the game are tied to this soccer video game in the game.
Again, soccer is pretty integral to the overall experience in despelote. When you boot the game up, you’re treated to a quick Atari-esque soccer game to play that actually feels good and it’s easy to get addicted to it. As mentioned earlier, there are points in the game where you can go down to the living room and fire it up. All of the game’s achievements are actually tied to that in-game video game, so if you’re worried about gameplay, that’s the bulk of it.
For the most part, the rest of the game is essentially a walking simulator with timed moments here and there. Almost every chapter of the game has you kicking a soccer ball at some point, but aside from just kicking it around to other people, it doesn’t serve much of a purpose which is absolutely fine, because the controls are finnicky. A lot of the ball control is tied to the right stick, but the problem is as a first-person game, the right stick is also essential for moving the camera around, and it doesn’t feel like you have total control of the ball as you walk around with it. Still, kicking the ball around has its moments… I particularly got a kick (see what I did there?) out of stealing the ball from teenagers and then kicking it out of the map, which led to my character getting beat up. But hey, there’s no dying in this game.
At the end of the day, despelote is a chill experience, and chill can mean a lot of things. It can be good, it can be bad, and it can be boring. There’ll be plenty of times in life you’ll be chilling with people you don’t know, doing things you don’t care about, but they’ll still be memorable. That’s exactly what despelote is. I don’t like soccer, but I created my own vibe doing idiotic things, and that’s totally okay. I didn’t have the best time, and I didn’t have the worst time, but I’ll remember it.
by Danreb Victorio
