Deponia

I'm an idiot and as such I bought another PC game bundle, this time entirely focused on adventure games. What can I say, puzzling over a good point-and-click adventure just seems to work well with the tv on in the background- none of these games require constant attention, and most of them appeared to be very well-reviewed, even if I had heard of exactly zero of them before buying the bundle. Plus most of them seem like less than ten hour commitments. First up is Deponia, a game from Germany's Daedalic Entertainment, in which you do the standard adventure game tasks- picking up random objects, combining them with eachother and the environment, and navigating dialog trees to solve puzzles and move through a story. The gameplay is nothing revolutionary here, and nor is the story- a scrappy young man, Rufus, living on a poor junkyard planet sometime in the future, is desperate to leave and make it to the rich planet of his dreams, Elysium. Of course almost immediately after he starts on his journey, the entire thing is thrown completely off course and it's up to Rufus to both a) figure out a new way to get to Elysium and b) unravel a conspiracy that threatens everyone he knows on his home planet. The problem with Rufus is that he's a selfish prick who only thinks of himself, so he's not getting much in the way of help from his acquaintences. While his constant arrogance can get grating, he's at least mastered the art of the comedic pause. That, and the mostly good puzzles and gameplay would seem to make this a decent enough game. But damn, if I've ever seen a game just derailed by a plot, it's this one. Deponia is just so painfully misogynistic. I had to check some reviews afterwards and found out I'm not alone here, everyone's wondering what the hell is up with all the blatant objectifying of women. I mean, Rufus spends the whole game pining after this girl from Elysium, and winning her heart feels like the true goal of the game. So guess what her name is? It's Goal. GOAL. They named her GOAL. She's literally the "manic pixie dream girl" minus the "manic." When she falls to the planet, the men in the town fight to claim ownership of her. And when Rufus does something in front of her that she doesn't like, he has the ability to just wipe her memory and start fresh again with a back-up personality chip! She's one of two women in the game, and the other one slips comfortably into the bitchy ex-girlfriend trope. Rufus later interacts with her for a puzzle by drugging her. Fantastic. It wouldn't be so bad if by game's end you have Rufus learn his lesson, or if other people were calling him out on his shit, but no, this is apparently completely normal behavior. Two more games were released in the series, and from what I've read it only gets worse from here. The third game even brings in some racist stereotypes too! I mean, I get crude humor. I can see the appeal of how over-the-top a game like Duke Nukem or Leisure Suit Larry can be. But man, it just didn't fit at all here and I've got no interest continuing on with what was otherwise a decent enough adventure series.