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Anime Your Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Lemming42

Arcane
Joined
Nov 4, 2012
Messages
6,217
Location
The Satellite Of Love
I don't think that's necessarily true. Witcher and Mass Effect, to my knowledge, had success partially down to the developers making it so your choices mattered in later games, even if this was more illusionary than not. Games taking advantage of something unique in the video game medium. Something experimental in theory. The Thin Man, meanwhile, doesn't really do anything that takes advantage of being a film, you could make it a play without much change. It's appeal lies in the dynamic between the two leads. The Thin Man is probably something more like Sam & Max whereas those would be more akin to some forgotten German Expressionism film.
That's interesting. My comparison with The Thin Man wasn't based on anything specific about the film, I was just trying to think of something very popular at the time that most people nowadays haven't watched and don't really care about, which is broadly how I assume Mass Effect and The Witcher will be seen 80 years from now.

I think you're right though in that a part of their success was in their use (or rather the way they pretended to use) of the unique strengths of videogames as a medium. I guess it's just a matter of waiting for an even more popular game to come along and do it better in a way that makes BioWare games or Witcher look quaint and simplistic in retrospect - maybe BG3 already has for BioWare, Larian's success is definitely going to cause big problems for Dreadwolf.
 

Morpheus Kitami

Liturgist
Joined
May 14, 2020
Messages
2,574
I don't think that's necessarily true. Witcher and Mass Effect, to my knowledge, had success partially down to the developers making it so your choices mattered in later games, even if this was more illusionary than not. Games taking advantage of something unique in the video game medium. Something experimental in theory. The Thin Man, meanwhile, doesn't really do anything that takes advantage of being a film, you could make it a play without much change. It's appeal lies in the dynamic between the two leads. The Thin Man is probably something more like Sam & Max whereas those would be more akin to some forgotten German Expressionism film.
That's interesting. My comparison with The Thin Man wasn't based on anything specific about the film, I was just trying to think of something very popular at the time that most people nowadays haven't watched and don't really care about, which is broadly how I assume Mass Effect and The Witcher will be seen 80 years from now.

I think you're right though in that a part of their success was in their use (or rather the way they pretended to use) of the unique strengths of videogames as a medium. I guess it's just a matter of waiting for an even more popular game to come along and do it better in a way that makes BioWare games or Witcher look quaint and simplistic in retrospect - maybe BG3 already has for BioWare, Larian's success is definitely going to cause big problems for Dreadwolf.
I don't think there's going to be that much difference in the number of people today who have seen say, Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind and The Thin Man. If you care enough about films to watch one film from that era, you likely at least have The Thin Man somewhere in your watch list. If you don't, you probably think something like "I don't need to watch Citizen Kane, it was his sled, right?" You may have watched a Simpsons or Family Guy skit about it, but otherwise don't care.

That said, I think video games will be interesting to look back on in 50 years time. Because unlike film, a lot of groundbreaking work wasn't as groundbreaking as we give credit for, it only seems that way because we forgot what else broke ground. There are often a half dozen games that can be given credit for some major element of a game or even for starting a genre. There's no Metropolis, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Citizen Kane of gaming, because between language and platform barriers someone somewhere else might have very well done something just as good earlier. A SNES player might be shocked to see what was capable of being done on contemporary PCs, or even on other, older computers and vice versa.
 

Iucounu

Educated
Joined
Jul 4, 2023
Messages
646
The Fallout artstyle looks completely retarded, to the point that I never want to touch any of the games in the series. Like a cartoon for 10-year-olds:

Vault_Boy_artwork.png
Fallout.jpg
 

Ezekiel

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2017
Messages
5,617
I know that I watched The Thin Man six years ago. Apparently, I even found it pretty good. But I can't remember offhand what it was about.
 

Butter

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 1, 2018
Messages
7,784
The Thin Man is excellent. There's no modern comparison to it, even going back 30 or 40 years. They simply stopped making movies that are smart, funny, sexy, unpretentious, and endearing. I'm a slut for 30s movies, but it's one of the best.
 

Hell Swarm

Educated
Joined
Jun 16, 2023
Messages
947
90% of dialog options should be cut from a game. They're innane small talk with no purpose or guidance. I wouldn't go up to a random woman in the street and ask her if she know where the butt plug of tuten carafternoon was. So why the fuck do autistic story writers think this wouldn't get an immediate "Fuck off retard" as a response?
 

Lemming42

Arcane
Joined
Nov 4, 2012
Messages
6,217
Location
The Satellite Of Love
In a fantasy setting, asking random passers-by for rumours is your only source of info if there's no internet. My favourite part is when the rumours are for shit that your character would already definitely know of though, stuff that's normal and commonplace in the setting. Like when NPCs will be all "have you heard of health potions? You can use these to restore health in battle!"

Real-life equivalent would be some shit like "have you heard of 'water'? They say this 'drink' can quench your 'thirst'! Just be careful of too much 'water' - if you fall in, you could 'drown'!"
 

Ezekiel

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2017
Messages
5,617
Replaying Arkham City for hate material (Yes, I'm serious.) made me also realize that there is no point to the open world, since you just glide and rappel over everything anyway. It's just an empty sea between the locations (inside buildings) where stuff actually happens. Just one more example of many of how linear design crushes almost every time.

Open worlds are best for sandbox design, games that provide a great deal of creative freedom.
 
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Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,715
Replaying Arkham City for hate material (Yes, I'm serious.) made me also realize that there is no point to the open world, since you just glide and rappel over everything anyway. It's just an empty sea between the locations (inside buildings) where stuff actually happens. Just one more example of many of how linear design crushes almost every time.
Play games with better non-linear design.
 

Silverfish

Arbiter
Joined
Dec 4, 2019
Messages
3,319
Replaying Arkham City for hate material (Yes, I'm serious.) made me also realize that there is no point to the open world, since you just glide and rappel over everything anyway. It's just an empty sea between the locations (inside buildings) where stuff actually happens. Just one more example of many of how linear design crushes almost every time.

Open worlds are best for sandbox design, games that provide a great deal of creative freedom.

Back when I first played the Arkham games, I foolishly thought that eventually the open world would have some kind of point, like you'd find some upgrades that would expand what you could do in the air and make traversal really engaging. Embarrassingly, I'd even hoped that there'd be air tricks like in Spider-Man 2.
 

destinae vomitus

Educated
Joined
Apr 25, 2021
Messages
109
I like Shadow Warrior more than Duke 3D and even Blood. Mind you I like or rather love all three games, aesthetically speaking I enjoy Duke the most, and the other two do have mods and custom maps/campaigns that beat it when you take them into account (SW is anaemic in that regard). Outside of a few downright bad maps and some rough elements here and there though, I just think it's Da Best. It's got the most varied, unique and powerful arsenal, and you're gonna use everything if you do clean start on each map like a real action hero. The monster roster isn't comprised of push-overs but none of the common mooks are blatantly overtuned like in Blood, and most importantly it just feels really good to slice up or frag them as Wang yells EAT THIS PENCIL-DICK or something equally lewd and lurid. I could go on but I'll cap this off by saying that Wang is really funny and dare I say it even "badass", which is sadly a genuinely unpopular opinion in this oh-so tolerant modern age.
 

Ezekiel

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2017
Messages
5,617
Replaying Arkham City for hate material (Yes, I'm serious.) made me also realize that there is no point to the open world, since you just glide and rappel over everything anyway. It's just an empty sea between the locations (inside buildings) where stuff actually happens. Just one more example of many of how linear design crushes almost every time.
Play games with better non-linear design.
It's regrettable that I didn't know how to add Switch games to the emulator menu that logs hours until after I had already finished my four month long playthrough of Tears of the Kingdom. The total must have been nuts. Hours and hours every weekend.

emulate.jpg
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
13,625
Location
Eastern block
I think Quake 2 is underrated

has terrific level design, on the same level as 1 if not slightly better (not kidding)
 

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,715
It does have good level design, however I don't think it's on-par with Q1. There's too many static empty corridoors as opposed to gamey tricks and traps, puzzle elements, platforming, interesting & varied combat setups. Q2 still has some of that, but not enough; it was definitely striving for a more realistic playspace.
 

Ezekiel

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2017
Messages
5,617
I miss good cutscenes. Well, I just killed the T-rex in the original Tomb Raider for the first time and agree that its reveal was better without the cutscene in the remake, was more a surprise coming out of the darkness.



(Unlisted video)

But a moment like this where they want the character to talk to the protagonist should just be a cutscene. It would be as if you encountered Psycho Mantis and instead of a cutscene you moved around in the game, unable to use any of your weapons and blocked off by an invisible barrier as he talked. Far too much important dialogue is now told in-game, where you barely pay attention because you are interacting.
 

Hell Swarm

Educated
Joined
Jun 16, 2023
Messages
947
I think Quake 2 is underrated

has terrific level design, on the same level as 1 if not slightly better (not kidding)
Before the remaster I would have agreed but now most people rate Quake 2 quite highly. Depending on your preference it may even be higher than Quake 1. They're about the same quality and it depends on which style you like more.
 

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