Thanks for the warning. I’d started playing because I needed a distraction from some hard IRL stuff, so that’s good to know. It was nice that when I fired up Being a DIK from the same bundle, they straight out ask you at the beginning if you’re going through shit right now, and gently suggest the game may be rough for you if you are.
Adult games give emotional support these days. Not all, but many understand and respect the player to a degree not normally found in games. And because all the right wing puritans aren’t playing those games, no one is complaining about other hot button topics like gender, equality, etc.
LoF does the same mid game right before it hits the hardest with even offering to skip the scene entirely. However all characters are really likable, have some really good development and it is an overall (bitter)sweet story with lots of happy endings
when I fired up Being a DIK from the same bundle, they straight out ask you at the beginning if you’re going through shit right now, and gently suggest the game may be rough for you if you are.
Considering the dev’s previous game, Acting Lessons, that warning is worth taking seriously. That game has a fantastic story, but it has some rough shit go down. Although I will say that by the end of season 1 of Being a ΔΙΚ I don’t think there had been much “rough if you’re going through some shit” stuff. I haven’t played season 2 yet.
Yeah nah there is no gameplay there its pure coomer shit. Match 3 puzzle game, thats not a genre the only games that use that has their core gameplay are designed to be scams.
It’s certainly what the majority of the genre became with the advent of mobile gaming, as with so many other simple puzzle games. But the original Bejeweled and Puzzle Quest were both excellent and huge hits, and were complete games before the microtransaction garbage that came later.
It’s a nice genre for relaxing and turning off your brain, similar to a Tetris or a Bust-A-Move. I know there have to be titty and microtransaction filled variants of both of those, does it invalidate them as puzzle game genres?
Yeah coomer games are similar to mobile games. Theyre puzzle games that are designed to be extremely easy to make players feel good. They are technically still puzzle games just bad ones.
Maybe the match 3 stuff, but there are a lot of ‘adult’ games that are beyond that. Go play The Last Sovereign and tell me it isn’t better than all the final fantasies, I dare you.
I was going to mention The Last Sovereign in this thread. It’s a little bit hard to recommend because it’s like, barely modified RPG maker sprites and some serviceable art for sex scenes, along with the difficulty. However that game is a damn magnum opus.
Welcome to the club! Theres tons of Japanese eroge that became anime like Fate. Just because theres sexy time, don’t mean the story aint a banger either!
Oh right, I have actually heard that about Fate. I never played any of the games, but I caught a lot of Unlimited Blade Works when my wife was watching it, and it seemed pretty solid.
I’ve still got the original visual novels sitting on my backup drive, somewhere. I played through the major first storyline, but hadn’t gotten around to UBW and… oh boy, heaven’s something? Definitely was a great read, even after starting with the anime.
One other side point that came to mind after the main post.
We’re so conditioned to think realistic violence in games is fine, but realistic sex in games is “wrong” or “sad”. But honestly, I realized I played through 3+ games without doing any violence* and had a blast, and that was actually really refreshing.
We’re so conditioned to think realistic violence in games is fine, but realistic sex in games is “wrong” or “sad”.
Not just in games. In all media. You bring to mind a great quote from George R. R. Martin.
“I can describe an axe entering a human skull in great explicit detail and no one will blink twice at it. I provide a similar description, just as detailed, of a penis entering a vagina, and I get letters about it and people swearing off. To my mind this is kind of frustrating, it’s madness. Ultimately, in the history of [the] world, penises entering vaginas have given a lot of people a lot of pleasure; axes entering skulls, well, not so much.”
Not just sex; dancing, music, poetry, novels, games, decorations. Anything which takes joy in life and expression is forbidden.
Suffering while alive is seen as the proper punishment for being born human - seeing people and nature as beautiful and divine is legitimately blasphemy to these people.
I remember a quote from a famous porn actor “nacho vidal”.
“I’d rather have my kids playing with “fake plastic penises” around the house than playing with fake plastic firearms.”
I’m not comfortable with the idea of kids playing with sexual toys. But it makes me feel something weird that I’m not more weirded out by kids playing to kill with fake guns.
And this isn’t just the lead and the love interest: supporting characters look this way too, and even villains (frequently clad in monstrous makeup) are still played by conventionally attractive performers. Even background extras are good-looking, or at least inoffensively bland. No one is ugly. No one is really fat. Everyone is beautiful.
Heh, this reminds me of this scene in Last Action Hero (Just watch until 1:34 or so for the scene I’m referring to.
Honestly though, I think this might be starting to change. Looking at shows like Resident Alien and Wheel of Time, for example, there are plenty of casting choices that go against that trend. Now, I’m not saying anyone in these shows is ugly or anything like that, but there are a lot of folks being cast who are not “classic Hollywood pretty” and it’s very nice to see. I like seeing people playing the everyday Joe art who actually looks like an everyday Joe. It really breaks immersion for me when the “ugly girl” part is played by someone who is beautiful dressed in a frumpy outfit.
Yeah, usually the stars are classically attractive still, but there’s a lot more space for other people in other roles. I think comedy in particular has a lot of stars who aren’t incredibly hot.
However, probably a lot of people who are getting jobs as extras are trying to make their way in the industry. The industry, being dominated by attractive people, attracts attractive people. Ugly people fear they wouldn’t succeed, so it creates a selection bias.
Omg what an utter dogshit of an article this is. I bet a fat person expecting unnecessary sex scenes in action movies wrote it. Like go watch some BBW porn you whale.
I didn’t expect a media critique article to make it click why I don’t find “ideal” body types half as attractive as a chick with a realistic belly (of any size sans starvation) and a flirtatious smile.
But yeah, media and culture have become largely sterilized in regards to sex.
well tbf one of the detailed sex scenes (in the book) is between a 30 yrs old khal drogo with a 13 year old daenerys targaryen, and it’s being depicted as a good thing, he’s the first guy that cares about her
Leading up to the release of Cyberpunk 2077 a relatively innocent post about whether players would be able to romance anyone and sleep with them. The absolute mockery and scorn OP received was shameful. It really struck me because it was so clear how we’ve been conditioned to reject sexuality while at the same time being ultra-desensitized to violence.
What I do recall was one guy asking very specific questions about how much we would be able to customize genitals, and whether sex would be fully interactive with visuals of full penetration.
And while none of those things are wrong per se, the general vibe of asking about all of those things was very weird and pervy.
Hm maybe my memory of the post is fuzzy but that is more pervy than I recalled. Still gets to the larger point though about how we talk about violence in graphic detail with no self-consciousness but can’t do the same for sexuality.
You know that even fantasy sex is a problem to the puritan mind, even mild representations of sex like activities becomes weird. Well in the Western society that is. I found out that some temples in India are finely decorated with more or less explicit scenes. In certain societies sex is seen as an engine. The issue with violence is that it isn’t just highly but it’s nearly a constant in our western society. Go back to the middle ages, how many people whacked each other in popular imagery. Even recently we have seen more violence than ever. Gore doesn’t do much any longer for many adults, but it’s supposed to elicit a strong evolutionary reflex of disgust and fear. I feel we’ve been overexposed to these things, but not others.
Part of the actual answer to that question is that, while violence is often loud and public (and sometimes government sanctioned on massive scales), sex is something that is usually done in private, intimate settings without observers.
Please note that this is mostly an American thing, in European TV and books we have naked people and (not too explicit detail in TV, books differ) sex.
Some of us are always wondering about this. Something 18+ might be sex or gore related.
Kinda funny to see it in Canada as well, especially when you throw Quebec culture into the mix (things seem a little more sex positive over there compared to other parts of the country, which is neat to think about sometimes).
It was wild being raised by my mother who didn’t mind if I saw consensual sex, because I should eventually have sex, but restricted all violence because ideally I’ll never see violence in person.
I have no idea how good this is a philosophy for raising children. Sample size is too small.
I was always curious about the Playdate because Lucas Pope made a game for it and he’s a genius, but I never really could see myself justifying the massive price tag for what it is.
Also I hope you’re feeling better! It made me so happy to see a post from you again as I’ve missed seeing you around. Hope your health is improving ♥️
I had a Playdate for a while. I thought it would fill a gap when playing in sunlight (as a retro collector / curator).
But it just didn’t hold up software wise for me. Everything is more or less minigames. It does have system selling minigames - but that wasn’t enough for me.
The tomatoes growing in that apartment is great level design. I had the same reaction of "how could these plants survive without people?" and then you get jumped and it's like "oh, should have known." The apartment also has a door you can't open that's opened after you get jumped which explains where the people came from. I remember appreciating the details (after struggling to not die).
For anyone else whose never heard of a playdate console before it appears the crank on the side is “used for gameplay in select titles” rather than, as I hoped, a way to power the device like those old timey radios.
Still looks great, good article and more power too them! (Tho not via crank)
Ahhh that’s annoying. The crank looks like it makes the whole unit much more awkward to hold, especially for larger hands. The fact that it’s just a control gimmick which doesn’t really add anything to classic Game Boy games makes it a hard pass for me.
The crank is the sole reason this thing exists. If you want an emulation handheld to play Gameboy games without a crank there are countless options out there.
It’s a tough sell then. I did a search in the article for the word crank and got a lot of matches but it was too long for me to read. I would have preferred some short video clips to demonstrate exactly how it works.
This article isn’t about the playdate, it’s an article about an emulation software someone wrote that runs on the playdates hardware, so you won’t get a detailed explanation about the playdate as a general device there.
The playdate is a novelty device that anyone can develop Minigames for which use the crank for their gameplay. It is several years old at this point. It’s also very expensive for what it is so if you’re not a fan of just having little novel devices with not much use there is no reason to buy one. It is indeed a tough sell for most people but they have their own demographic of enthusiasts.
I’m a little confused why you’d form a strong opinion on something you willfully refused to read. In fact, even my title for the article kinda gives it away. Or the screenshot.
The crank folds down into an extremely satisfying magnetic dock that it can sit in while not using it.
Also… These aren’t classic Gameboy games, they’re modern games made specifically for the device. The unique control mechanism is the niche, and it’s surprisingly fun to use. You just also CAN emulate Gameboy games on it. There’s people who have made e-readers for it too… Though… That’s where even i draw the line lol
Sounds like this isn’t your thing though, there are lots of Gameboy emulator powered handhelds if that’s all you’re looking for. If you want extremely unique gameplay by tons of small indie developers (including Lucas Pope of Papers Please), super easy to make games for (I’ve made 2 just for friends), really easy side loading, and something just fun to show people, it’s a super easy sell.
But in relation to my article, and their work on CrankBoy…you can watch how they added the crank to the fishing part of the original Link’s Awakening fishing section. This kind of thing is why I think Sodium and Stonerl are doing amazing work, because it’s so different!
Now I’m curious if one can pull that off with simple games if features like high refresh rate and wireless thrown off. Also, price. With that ‘Memory LCD’ of theirs, it costs $100 per unit as per their Twitter.
14 days standby clock, 8 hours active
That’s what PD team claims for 740 mAh battery, it is what cheap mp3 players now have\consume. If there is a space to optimize it further, we’d see even better numbers, but I’m not confident this crank or little solar panel on the surface (whole back panel?) could make it autonomous. Yet, the idea of a handheld that LOVES sunlight is tempting. And, also, the idea of games that are built around slow and infrequent refresh like those minigames on e-books.
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