NEON MERCURY's ++ ps360ii Lite ++ thread -weaning you off WoW since 07

Started by NEON MERCURY, November 09, 2003, 08:52:13 PM

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WorldForgot

Well, nerds, good to hear y'all are still inspired by games. I had not heard of SATISFACTORY so I've got to check that out!

Currently not playing as many competitive shooters as I used to - although I still adore Overwatch - cuz my team got burnt out/split up so I migrated to PC Overwatch instead of PS4.

So what I've found instead has been the nostalgic rabbit hole of fighting games. Grew up playing Marvel Vs Capcom 2 and Smash, with a bit of Mortal Kombat when I could sneak it. Now that I've got the time to try a bunch out I've especially grown really fond of the ArcSys works fighting games, and bought a Mayflash arcade stick for the best feeling of quarter, half, and full circle inputs.







The personality and depth of ArcSys fighting games goes beyond Capcom's technical emphasis of Street Fighter's simplicity toward a philosophy of fighting game that isn't just wearing your opponent down, doesn't hold to past convention, emphasizing the creation of your own style of approach or combo linking. Mischief, as they emphasize. The characters are unique, balanced for variety -- and all the mechanics feature a cancel/link/gatling approach to inputs that feels like playing the piano.

Drenk

Buy Celeste and a thousand other games here for 5 dollars, all the money being donated to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Community Bail Fund: https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality

I'm finishing the free DLC of Celeste, a very long chapter where speedrunners techniques are necessary, and...what a fucking glorious game...

Ascension.

polkablues

Even if all you play of that collection is Celeste and Night In The Woods, you're already getting way more than your money's worth out of it. And going to a good cause, too.

Unrelatedly, I now have firsthand experience with this:
Quote from: WorldForgot on November 21, 2019, 03:44:35 PM


I haven't played it a ton yet, but it's pretty fucking mindblowing so far. Being back in that world is great just in general, and in the most polished and immersive VR experience to date is icing on the cake. There's a game mechanic with "gravity gloves" where to pick up a distant object, you aim your hand at it, grip to engage it, and flip your wrist to bring it arcing through the air, where you then have to catch it when it reaches you. I can not stress enough how deeply satisfying this action is, every single time. Just a pure uncut shot of endorphins straight to the pleasure center. It's a good game, you guys.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Drenk

I'll play and be awed by Alyx in a decade.

The Last of Us II is reminding me that I loved The Last of Us and what I actually didn't like was God of War.

By the way, the model for the character of Dina did a playthrough of The Last of Us. Her channel is entertaining. She has no idea of what happens in the sequel, even though her *body* is in it, that will probably be a very strange experience for her.

Ascension.


Drenk

The full discourse around The Last of Us II is so weird, man. From the bigots who got crazy after the leaks to the people who mock the game based on the marketing, plus the fact that crunching at Naughty Dog is awful ("I'm very much anti crunching, obviously, and have tweeted my fair share of useless tweets at Druckmann...).

But when spoiler culture forces you to basically hide what the themes of your game is behind empty taglines, forbidding reviewers to write about the details, you're exposing yourself to that kind of vapidity.

This is twisted. The fact that workers have to say that people online are supporting them based on what seems to be distorted information...

https://twitter.com/Beavs/status/1275100834846531593

But yeah. Unions. Now.

EDIT:

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1274475482629758977

I mean. Look at this one, giving a compliment before mentioning: "gratuitous evisceration?" You mean? Fighting zombies in a game with zombies? This is about sensibility and all, I guess. I'm not bothered by the violence and...I have a hard time registering the complaint at all since I'm not seeing it? Seriously, before starting the game I thought that I would be decapitating teenage girls every twenty minutes.


Ascension.

polkablues

I don't think I've ever played a game in which the violence was less gratuitous.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Drenk

That teaser was the first to capture my interest and I finally know what happens next.



Still in love with the game.
Ascension.

Drenk

Here is a great link to have access to a lot of beautiful concept art from The Last of Us II. Spoilers abound, obviously.

https://magazine.artstation.com/2020/06/naughty-dog-the-last-of-us-part-ii-art-blast/
Ascension.

polkablues

Finished the game yesterday, and I'm still in awe of what it accomplishes on both narrative and technical levels.

I'm finally allowing myself to wade into some of the online reaction and criticism, and oh boy. Outside the outright homophobic/transphobic garbage, the primary theme of the criticism seems to be "how dare they force me to think complex thoughts!"  There's a lot of people confusing "I didn't want the character to make that decision" with "the character shouldn't/wouldn't have made that decision," and a lot of viscerally negative reaction to being made to empathize with a character they wanted to only see as a villain. A lot of pushback to the very concept of empathy in general, which is concerning.

Long story short -- game good, discourse bad. Case in point:

https://twitter.com/LauraBaileyVO/status/1279173199918292992?s=20
My house, my rules, my coffee

WorldForgot

My current favorite essay on TLOU2, although I'm sure there will be more for yearz:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Worksheets and Dinosaurs:
Putting the Violent Actions of The Last of Us Part II's Player Characters in the Context of Generational Trauma

A lotta summation for those that havent been able to play the game, which also means it has MANY SPOILERS . Where its sauce iz iz in this reading of Ellie + Abby, I feel:

Spoiler: ShowHide
Quote
This is the point where I suspect Myers probably was inspired to write the line which so frustrated me when I read it in the days prior to release, as someone for whom cognitive behavioral therapy is deeply ineffective, suggesting that the events of the game would have been prevented had Ellie had access to "cognitive behavioral therapy worksheets, or meditation." The line made sense to me, although my reservations about the suggested methodology remained, when Ellie, herding goats into the barn, hears one of them bleat and flashes back to heading into the basement of the WLF hideout where Joel was killed, hearing him begging her for help (which didn't happen in story; as in the very real sorts of complex post-traumatic stress that are being depicted here, Ellie is adding details to her inherently unreliable memories that make them more traumatic, just as Abby was able to move past hers by remembering something that never happened at all). She decides that she cannot remain with her wife and child and must instead follow a lead Tommy left her, suggesting Abby is looking for the remaining Fireflies in Santa Barbara, California.

But both Abby and Ellie invested a huge amount of emotion into the idea of a vaccine/cure for the cordyceps. Abby presumably just wanted a normal life without all these zombies, Ellie wanted the Star Trek future. And it's worse for Ellie — which is why it takes her so much longer to get over — because she feels it's her fault, and there's a reasonable case that it sort of is (or at least, that it's because of her — she didn't have any control over Joel's decision to save her). Ellie's dreams of becoming an astronaut will never happens, and it's likely the human species will be extinct within a few generations (again, if you think this isn't implied, take a look at the title of the series). So to her, essentially, based on the worldview she has internalized, all these people she's killing? Already dead, because of her, so why does it matter if she shoots or stabs them or just... continues existing, since that's the thing dooming them?
It's a f — ed up way to view the world, but I think the flashbacks for both women and especially Ellie make it clear that that's exactly why both of them are hardened killers at 19 and why Ellie can't let Joel's death go, why she feels she HAS TO kill Abby — because at this point, she has to rationalize that what Joel did was the only way in which her life does have any meaning, and so she has to avenge him, since she never really reconciled with him. Cognitive behavioral therapy worksheets and meditation aren't going to get someone very far when they already believe that the deaths of billions are on their hands, they know for a fact that the deaths of hundreds or thousands are, and the worksheets are mostly about taking on a responsibility that they already have too much of.

A lot of negative press around The Last of Us Part II has leveled the accusation, either with this exact term or something similar, that the game is "misery porn." Given what I've just recounted, obviously it's a super grim story. I got in an argument the other day about whether it was "cynical" (as many folks view it) or "uplifting," and I firmly maintain that The Last of Us Part II is actually uplifting. You have to get through all of the combat stuff to get there (and, as I've remarked, as a child who came of age at the literal turn of the millenium, it's really hard for me to take moral panics about video game violence terribly seriously, because my generation seriously never did end up having any correlation whatsoever between playing Duke Nukem and doing school shootings however much the media pushed that narrative) and the ending is not happy, but Ellie finds the same peace that Abby did. It's cathartic. It's — dare I say it — "An American Tragedy", but one where our two central characters are both alive and in pursuit of some kind of hope.

Drenk

Fuck yeah. This made me shiver. The treatment of trauma in this game overwhelmed me...

Spoiler: ShowHide
When Abby gets through hell to find the tools to operate Yara and has, once again, the flashback of the hallway, getting there and finding her father smiling sent a strong shiver through my body and I'm actually crying right now, what the hell...

The simple act of walking through that hallway, multiple times...

And that fucking shot of Joel with his guitar toward the end, absolutely essential and meaningful before you even see the scene of them on the porch...


And I agree that the game is ultimately uplifting, obviously, I cherish it tremendously...
Ascension.

Drenk

Quote from: polkablues on September 03, 2019, 06:25:10 PM


This game is really good so far. It combines my three greatest loves: brutalist architecture, Lovecraftian horror, and hurling benches at dudes from across the room with my mind powers.

A side benefit is that I can probably cook dinner on my graphics card while I'm playing, but that's the cost of beauty, I guess.

Bought it yesterday and loving it already. Control controls heavenly; you can imagine the thousands of tests Remedy made to obtain perfect controls. And I don't have a PS4 Pro, so no sound and no heat.
I wonder if the game will keep being interesting, the path to follow is very « gamey » but I like how the universe blends X-Files with Portal.
Ascension.

Drenk

A walkthrough with the level designer of a highlight of The Last of Us II!

Ascension.

Drenk

Ascension.