SteposVenzny

SteposVenzny, rok temu

Blurry looks more realistic than blocky, especially on the low-resolution CRT monitors old games were designed for.

Now that we’ve got better screens and games with better graphics, we see early 3D as a stylized aesthetic and a lack of texture filtering fits that aesthetic better but these games’ actual goal they were made with was realism.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

Too much new stuff. I think the fact that Xen existing was the difference between the free version and the paid version pushed them to pad Xen out way too far for fear that snappier pacing would feel like a ripoff.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

How cheap is an adequate VR set these days? Probably still not cheap enough for this one game to justify the purchase, right?

SteposVenzny, rok temu

Touch screens don’t lend themselves to Snake the way buttons did, so the only good mobile game is now functionally unplayable.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

“It’s okay to fail” seems like it would have been a more valuable life lesson than “it feels good to beat a really hard video game” and it concerns me that you’re so okay with the amount of trauma this entertainment product caused him.

The fact that you’re sharing this story of years of repeated meltdowns caused by a video game and calling it an example of games being beneficial is pretty surreal.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

These are your words, quoted from your post:

One of his most recent meltdowns was so traumatic for him,

SteposVenzny, rok temu

My point is that I described the same distress you’re describing using the same terminology you did. I didn’t accuse you of anything, I just strongly disagreed with your takeaway that this story describes something positive.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

Andromeda has the biggest difference I’ve ever seen between low graphics settings and high ones. I wonder if the lack of recognition for its beautiful environments isn’t mainly that they just weren’t beautiful on most people’s systems.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

My favorite ME1 build is Infiltrator. The damage output of a properly modded sniper rifle can get truly depraved late in the game.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

The ammo system rewarded you with ammo for the opposite color of beam you were using, so you are actually totally free to ignore the power beam most of the time without running into supply issues. Even when you wanted to only use one color, like the light beam when you’re on Dark Aether, use the one you don’t want in combat to shoot crates and plants and stuff to farm good ammo for the fights.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

It’s less that they’re easy to get without buying them with real money and more that they’re supposed to be acquired slowly and, when relevant, used sparingly.

My frustration with the discourse is that so many who see the game’s general lack of convenience see that through the filter of these microtransactions and assume ill intent on part of the actual game design when really it’s just genuinely idiosyncratic like the original was.

The truth is, if you’re the sort to be tempted by these purchases in the first place then you’re not the sort of person who would enjoy the game even if you do buy them. I don’t know whether that makes them better or worse, honestly, but if you buy the game it at least doesn’t rub your nose in them like Assassin’s Creed.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

It’s such a fun phrase to say, though.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

Games that I’m confident the average person would love:

• Burnout (3 and/or Revenge)
• Tony Hawk’s Underground (definitely 1 and not 2)
• Shadow of the Colossus (I’m otherwise avoiding games with HD versions for modern platforms but I specifically think this game is weirdly better with PS2-level graphics and performance)
• Ultimate Spider-Man (Spider-Man 2 had better swinging but I think this is the stronger overall package)

Games with a more niche appeal but, dammit, I want you to play them anyways:

• Steambot Chronicles
• Shadow of Destiny

Games that felt like a big deal at the time but I haven’t actually played since I was a kid so take with a grain of salt:

• Evergrace
• Way of the Samurai (1 and/or 2)
• Stuntman
• Def Jam Vendetta & Fight for NY
• Mercenaries 1
• NBA Street (2 was my favorite but all three were great)
• NFL Street (only played 1, presumably 2 and 3 are also great)

A game I know is bad but I want you to play it so that the voice clips will be burned into your brain also:

• Kessen 2

SteposVenzny, rok temu

West of Loathing. The RPG stuff is great and the comedy is great but really the main strength is I just enjoy reading its dialogue. The vocabulary and sentence construction have a real sincerity for the setting contrasted against the silliness of the rest of it that makes both parts hit harder.

Similarly, the first three Monkey Island games which achieve that same injection of the heartfelt into the wacky by way of their gorgeous art and music.

But as far as the joy of just doing something it’s hard to beat the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games, to just be dropped into a level and be told “do cool stuff for a while”.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

I really think modernizing the controls is a bad idea. Lara is probably still going to be as heavy and rigid as in the original, so if all it changes is what analog sticks do then it’s going to set up the players with expectation that it should be responsive in the way that dual analog games are responsive instead of the type of responsiveness you got from the old tank controls so people will perceive the game as being sloppy and unreasonably demanding. And if they change more than just what analog sticks do, if they change the underlying mechanics of movement to be more the way dual analog controls are responsive, it’s going to make the platforming a lot harder because the jumps were designed around the type of precision tank controls offer.

In the modern day, its weird retro tank controls are honestly one of the original series’s biggest strengths for me. In a landscape full of platforming that largely plays itself, old-school Tomb Raider makes platforming feel exciting again by making you stop and think through what you’re doing.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

I feel like these conversations get dominated by games with the fewest explicit flaws rather than the ones that have the most to offer but it’s my firm belief that no piece of art can be truly great which is not also kind of annoying. Not because annoyingness is inherent to greatness but because greatness and annoyingness are both the products of an underlying willingness to take creative risks.

So in that spirit, my answer is Steambot Chronicles.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

Plenty of new stuff is still coming out so I can see no reason to be upset about remakes and remasters.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

I actually totally sympathize with that critic from your clip and don’t think there’s anything dishonest or otherwise cognitively dissonant about that review. There’s nothing I can spend more time complaining about than something I really enjoy because I naturally fixate on things that stand out about a given experience and the flaws are what stands out in something that’s overall very good.

I would never in a million years rate that particular game a 9.1/10 but that’s just me and the critic valuing different aspects of design different amounts.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

Prior to dlc, games were released in what was considered a finished state though.

Not really. Games were updated back then, too, it just meant the physical copy someone bought later was more up-to-date than the physical copy someone got earlier. Usually it was just bugfixes but a more visible example that’s pretty well known is Ocarina of Time’s 1.2 release that censored blood by turning it green and removed an Islamic prayer sample from a piece of its background music.

And there were absolutely games came out with unforgivable major bugs back in the day, a top-of-my-head example is that Battletoads on the NES actually can’t be beaten in two player mode because after a while the controls will just stop responding. Admittedly it was less common then in major releases than it is today but that’s less because patches exist and more because new games are more complex than old games so there are more opportunities per game for something to go catastrophically wrong.

The ability to patch games that have already been released really is only a good thing.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

I’ve absolutely died as a result of bad dialogue choices but that’s just role playing; sometimes something you might choose to do can only logically result in your death and I, for one, am happy to be given that choice. I’ve straight up deleted a character profile with lots of progress because there was no in-character way not to do the thing that would kill me in dialogue. That game over is just that character’s canonical ending as far as I’m concerned. He couldn’t not shit-talk that god, that god couldn’t not erase him from existence out of spite. If the game had not provided me with an option to shit-talk the god, I would have been annoyed that none of the dialogue options were true to my character.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

That’s why the phrasing was “from the caste of people” in the clarification. It was just a cultural difference: his home treated him as honorable and other cultures don’t.

When he is briefly enslaved, it wasn’t because they mistook him for being the kind of person you get to do that to, it’s because he was that kind of person and simply hadn’t been treated that way before.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

I’m ready for a new era in Mario voice acting of an Italian voice actor putting on a cartoonish American accent.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

I don’t see why anybody would ever play a boring version of a gnome when the proper gnome is right there.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

The only notable thing about the game is that it’s extremely pretty. So I say start it again, see how much this prettiness matters to you on this new TV, and then decide whether to continue.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

I beat Tears of the Kingdom without doing any main quests at all after getting to the surface, which I didn’t realize going in would mean beating it without the paraglider. It changes everything about how you approach movement and even a lot of the combat when you don’t have that crutch to lean on.

I accidentally created a speedster pacifist in Oblivion, building the crap out of my speed and acrobatics and neglecting the archery and stealth I had planned to specialize in so I just had to rush through dungeons stealing all the treasure and weaving between an ever-growing web of enemy attacks. By far the best Oblivion character I ever made.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

The lack of paraglider didn’t have much of an impact on that. It’s more common to either die or be unharmed by a fall than to take survivable damage.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

I went more for tech-based solutions.

SteposVenzny, rok temu

It’s a part of my most hated trend in the video game industry: video games that are ashamed to be video games so they try to fool you into thinking they’re a more “respectable” art form like TV shows or movies. The mainstream hype we’re seeing is probably that it’s popular with Naughty Dog fans rather than Final Fantasy fans.

I wish these types of games would at least consistently ape more interesting TV shows and movies. Alan Wake seems like the only one that didn’t aspire to be something forgettable. I don’t even like Twin Peaks but at least it’s an identity.

This game is okay enough that I’m probably going to eventually finish it but I don’t think I’d ever feel tempted to start it again even if somehow every other option available to me were objectively worse because at least some of what’s left would be memorable enough to care about.

In general, the graphics are roughly the same as FFXIV.

The graphics are apparently deceptively good. Not immediately jaw-dropping for us lay people like the series is known for but more of a technical quality. I thought it was underwhelming on first glance but I admit I enjoy the things that video brings up now that I’ve started paying attention to them.

SteposVenzny, 2 lata temu

I’ve got a 1080p monitor and a 4k TV in my house and have used my computer plugged into each. The TV is also better for a lot of non-resolution reasons so sometimes I’ll want to move it there for those factors but in terms of displaying the 4k visuals, I honestly don’t think it makes a difference for me at all. Rendering the image at 4k internally has all sorts of benefits for the graphics but displaying that internally 4k image on the 1080 monitor retains all those benefits so I don’t see any point in buying a higher-definition monitor.

But the thing is, I never even wanted 4k on the TV at all. I didn’t want it to be smart, either. I just wanted good-looking colors and it became impossible to find a TV that put the effort into what I cared about that didn’t come with the other features. So I suspect that when I do ever replace my monitor, it’s probably also going to strong-arm me into having a higher resolution that I don’t actually want. And I can’t help but assume this is a big portion of what’s leading to these survey results.