For me, it probably goes back to high school when I was introduced to the band AFI. That was my first taste of the horror punk genre and subsequently got me into bands like The Misfits and White Zombie, the stories of H. P. Lovecraft, body and cosmic horror films like The Thing and Hellraiser, and in general opened me up to media outside of the mainstream.
I collect mostly CDs but would love to move onto vinyls when I have the space.
I tried to get into vinyl collection a few years ago, but was turned off when the copy I bought of David Bowie's "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" had skips right in the middle of Ziggy Stardust, which is my favourite song of all time. So now the few albums I own are just decorative pieces that I have framed and hanging on my walls. They look great, especially my copies of "The Art of Drowning" and "All Hallow's EP" by AFI, but I'll stick to digital music for listening from now on.
This was inspired by Neonriser's "If you had a Pokemon type..." topic. If pokemon were real and you could choose any one to be your "main" partner (ala Pikachu in the anime), which would it be?
I haven't been into pokemon for a long time. I played Red and watched the first few seasons of the anime as a kid, but that was where my interest peaked. I was pretty obsessed with it at the time, though. At a store, they were selling pokeballs with a pokemon keychain inside. All of the more popular ones were sold out, but I chose the Poliwhirl one. Ever since then, for whatever reason, he has been my favourite and would definitely be my best bud to go on adventures with.
In fact, a google search later and I think this is the exact same product.
Sadly the durability system siphoned most of the fun of that feature.
This is my biggest complaint of BotW. The weapon/shield durability really killed the game for me, and I'm certain that it's a direct result of the game being open world. They couldn't fill a game that size with interesting, unique items, so they "reward" your exploration with yet another weapon that'll break in ten swings. It's kind of like how they changed it from four heart pieces to five in Twilight Princess to fill more treasure chests, but that still felt more rewarding.
One pretty funny part of playing old games on new displays is that it sometimes makes them look worst. Here's an example. Old games were meant for blurry CRT screens, and developers took advantage of that effect. A lot of old graphics have pixelated corners that were obscured by CRT blurring. It's nothing super detrimental, but still interesting.
I enjoy that Twitter account
It's also interesting how games like Sonic 2 used the scan lines of old TVs to achieve a parallax scrolling effect, and some game boy games would simulate transparency by flickering at half the screen's refresh rate.
I watched Prey last night and really liked it. Normally I don't like when they redesign a classic monster or alien, but the Predator in this film looks really awesome. Morseo with the mask on than off, but it's close enough to the original with the mask off that I can't fault it.
I have a couple of complaints, but not really with the characters or story. There were just some odd production choices that felt goofy or out of place. Overall I'd rank it as #3 on my list of the best Predator movies, which goes:
#1. Predators - I know this will be a controversial top choice, but I love this movie and think it's easily the best in the series #2. Predator #3. Prey #4. Predator 2 #5. Alien vs Predator #6. Aliens vs Predator Requiem #99999999... The Predator - Oh my god, this movie was awful. It doesn't matter how many terrible sequels they make. This will always be at the bottom.
And I just want to take the time to mention, now that Disney owns the Predator franchise, we really need a Muppets vs Predator movie.
Speaking of dark souls, still have to play blasphemous ... (darksoul related because elden ring has some weapons referencing this game!) It's pretty cool and has lovley pixelart!
I played a little bit of Blasphemous. I like the art style a lot but 2D soulslikes never really do it for me. I'm not sure what it is. On its own it's probably a great game, but doesn't scratch the same itch.
Death's Gambit is another example, but I think it's a bit better because it leans more on the platformer and metroidvania side.
I really want to play the Demon's Souls remake. Besides being part of the Souls series, it's made by Bluepoint Games who also did the Shadow of the Colossus remake, which was amazing. But I don't feel like buying a whole new console for one game.
I wasn't sure if this belonged in the General or the Movies/TV section since I'm mostly talking about the weird videos you stumble across on YouTube, but there are probably lots of examples from traditional media as well.
My go-to favourite is the "Our House" video edited by Game Grumps. Most people I send it to turn it off after the first few seconds, so they miss all of the subtle changes that happen over time. I actually like to put it on while I'm working because the audio is so monotonous I can just zone out to it.
My second favourite is this creepy clip from The Adventures of Mark Twain.
I love retro games, but there are some that can be a pain to get working on modern hardware. GOG generally does a great job of updating games to work on current versions of Windows. For example, the Steam version of Tron 2.0 crashes instantly for a lot of people but the GOG version works flawlessly (at least for me). But I have encountered a few games with compatibility issues, like Sacrifice which doesn't work on high dpi screens so I have to use my laptop if I want to play it.
If you don't want to resort to piracy, licensing can be an issue too. We'll probably never see a legitimate re-release of the No One Lives Forever games because the rights have changed hands so many times that no one knows who owns it. But I'm okay with downloading games that the copyright holders aren't making available themselves for whatever reason.
But aside from those issues, it's nice when you can finally play a game that would have taxed the hell out of an average PC back when it was released. Giants: Citizen Kabuto used to become unplayable at the end of the first campaign because the framerate dropped to a slideshow, but now I can actually finish it. And while a game like Trespasser got criticized at launch for its steep hardware requirements, we can now fully appreciate it. It's still deeply flawed, but I got plenty of enjoyment out of it because Dinosaurs!
I think there is room for both open world and linear games.
For sure. Don't get me wrong. It's not like I hate open world games entirely. I just don't want every series I enjoy to become one. Publishers seem to look at it as a selling feature so more and more games are being altered into open world experiences even if it adds nothing or drags down the design.
From Software has already gone down that path with Elden Ring, and Nintendo with Breath of the Wild, and Microsoft with Halo Infinite. I'm worried we're going to lose out on a lot of experiences because everyone is chasing the same trend.
I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, but I'm sick of every game series going "open world" lately. It's to the point where announcing a new game is open world will actually kill any interest I have in it.
I understand the notion that a large sandbox can give you more to do, encourages emergent gameplay and therefore increases the amount of time and (supposedly) value you get out of a game. But more often than not the extra stuff to do is just copy/pasted objectives and missions scattered around the map, and I always get bored of playing around with the game mechanics and physics before I even finish the main story. It's directionless, with too many distractions and not enough pushing you forward.
Game series that I used to love, like Metal Gear Solid and Zelda, were way better in my opinion before they went open world. It's not like Zelda was ever linear to begin with, but the open areas like Hyrule Field and the Great Sea were the spaces between more traditionally designed levels. Those sort of classic overworlds helped make the game's world feel bigger and more real, but most of the actual gameplay took place in heavily choreographed locations that felt unique and hand-crafted. BotW did have more traditional dungeons as well, but the architecture of all of them looked exactly the same other than being arranged in a different configuration for whatever puzzle you had to solve.
I really like Elden Ring and have managed to complete the story four times, but I think it's great in spite of being open world rather than because of it. I know that if it were designed more linearly like Dark Souls I would have enjoyed it even more. There is just so much space that is totally pointless. In Dark Souls, if there's a path you can take you're almost guaranteed to be rewarded for your exploration with an item, but in Elden Ring there's usually nothing. It's bigger, but why?
I can't think of a single example of an open world game where all of that space was actually utilized in an interesting way. It's always filled with repeating assets with nothing to do but move through it to the next objective and maybe fight a respawning mob of enemies that you could just as easily rush past. And when you reach your destination, it's almost always an outpost that looks just like every other outpost, complete with the same objectives.
I like to compare this to metroidvania games, because they also have large worlds with multiple paths to take, but each path is more narrow and purposefully designed. If there are enemies in the area, they're typically placed in a way that takes advantage of the terrain, which makes the level design even more meaningful. It's a part of the gameplay rather than just a space for the gameplay to take place in.
Another good contrast would be the original Resident Evil. The gameplay area is small, but the world feels fully realized despite getting such a small glimpse into it. There's nothing in the mansion that looks like it's there just to fill up space and you form an attachment to the setting because the game is designed around revisiting rooms and finding something new each time while the story gradually pushes you deeper into new, unexplored locations.
So that's my rant. I don't expect people to feel the same way, but hopefully I articulated myself in a way that you can at least sympathize with.
Posts: 101/24hrs 
Show Posts
