Akun

My eyesight's gone to crap anyway. lol So no, I don't bother. The "Night Light" setting on my PC looks kinda weird anyway, giving off this sepia color tone. I like quality graphics in my games.

Spec Ops was definitely a big one where you could barely empathize with its main character if you have a conscience at all. I remember how these were these real Special Forces soldiers who reacted to the game on YouTube, and they were complaining about how boring the action was and they barely reacted much to the white phosphorus scene at all. lol But I think the generic action was intentional, because it's meant to represent every single FPS out there. I love that the enemies were punishing too to make you feel encouraged to take the "easy way out" that was the white phosphorus. You could actually not go the phosphorus route IIRC, but you would have to cut through swaths of its punishing enemies. I do understand why people got annoyed though, because being judged and criticized for playing an FPS when you've paid money to pay it was... problematic. I get what the creators wanted to say with their game, but still. It's like being called out by McDonald's for eating a burger and killing animals. It's like, dude, you made the burgers, not us. We only paid money for it. Anyway, I do love morality in games though, but I prefer games where the morality isn't as clear-cut as Spec Ops, because otherwise, I would obviously go for the morally righteous options. Mass Effect 3 was a big one where empathizing with either the Quarians or the Geth wasn't always easy, even if you love Tali. The Quarians were harder to empathize with though because of what they did to the Geths. And then there's Mordin. Phew... do you go for the morally correct option and risk losing a war that might wipe out all life as you know it... or do you shoot your friend in the back? Dang. ME3's ending might suck, but the rest of the game was a banger. What a great way to end the trilogy. Some Shin Megami Tensei games had good morality options too, particularly Strange Journey and SMT IV. In the latter, it's interesting because the game gets you to empathize with the demons by letting you explore the society and see that, despite what they did to humans, they have a pretty similar society to humans and what we do to animals, making the decision to side with either the humans or the demons not as clear cut. The angels would often suck though. F*** the angels.

It's not just video games either. People love to associate any controversial thought or expressions with controversial or criminal actions. Violent or controversial TV shows and movies get blamed a lot too, but whenever something like this happens, when someone calls out video games for "corrupting society," it always reminds me of the comic book code and how it was invented out of the panic that comics were corrupting youth back in the '50s. Nowadays, a lot of comics are safe and tame, pandering to society's "moral standards" instead of taking risks, which is why the Big Two (Marvel and DC) suck nowadays, their comics anyway.

Nah, I think I have enough survival games for a lifetime. lol I get why the challenge of these games is appealing, but I prefer my games to be more relaxing, not stress me out.

Play some Raft for 103 minutes. Got bored. Refunded it on Steam. It's a cool concept, being able to build your home on a raft with lots of customization and island exploration. But man, it reminds me why I dislike survival games. The difficulty curve at the beginning was very steep, especially if you're new to both the game and the genre. It's hard to keep calm and figure out what to do next when the hunger and thirst meters keep you on your toes. Definitely not recommended if you suffer from anxiety issues and panic attacks.

I paid for PS Plus because I wanted the cloud save. The Singapore PS Plus library sucks though so I have to switch to my US-based account for the wider library range, but even then, I'd rarely see anything that catches my eye. No classic PS2/PS3 games. PS Now isn't available in Singapore, period, and I don't know how that would work with a US PS account, so I didn't bother. I also paid for Nintendo Online. Can't remember the exact reason, but it might have something to do with the cloud save like PS Plus, because I'm definitely not interested in Nintendo's legacy titles like I am with Sony's legacy titles. I did see a few N64 titles that caught my interest, but they're few and far between. I did find the original N64 Shin Megami Tensei, so that's surprising, and it's something I'll definitely try out someday. If only they included SMT II as well.

Time to bring the old thread back with the latest trending rage: Elmo's rage over a cookie.

I heard the Steam Deck can support games with next-gen graphics with far superior performance than the Switch, so Steam Deck automatically wins for this one because I heard Doom (2016) had performance issues on the Switch. Nintendo might have caught up with next-gen graphics, but they're still far behind when it comes to supporting said graphics on their console. I do own the Switch and not the Steam Deck though because I was never really a handheld gamer, playing all of my PC games on my desktop and playing my Switch games in Docked Mode.

Frankly, after a certain point, it just becomes repetitive and it didn't really scare me so much as being an annoying jump-scare. It was an interesting and well-done concept for an Alien game, but I wasn't as impressed by it as everyone else.

"Kids, Kenny!"

They are being sued for their greed right now after all, Sony.

True, but they've also borrowed from real life figures and cultures like the real life figure of Pocahontas in Pocahontas and South-East Asian culture in Raya and the Last Dragon. As a Singaporean from South-East Asia... the latter puts me off. But whatever.

Well, see, that's where the gameplay design of these games come into consideration. If it's just hitting the right QTE buttons to ensure a character's survival, sure, it's easy to keep them alive, and IMO, that's what makes the "your choices have consequences" aspect of the game cheap and superficial. But if your dialogue choices are more nuanced, in that making the wrong decision, no matter how sensible you might think they might be in real life context, can accidentally cause a character to die, that's when the games are more interesting and their storytelling potential utilized properly. I know of certain games, particularly visual novels and JRPGs, where you have to make a series of correct choices to keep certain characters alive (Devil Survivor comes to mind), and those choices don't feel random either and make sense. So I would say they have their own style of survival element that certain players like myself do enjoy, especially if they prefer story over gameplay in videogames.

Spending hours arguing with people on the Internet. That's definitely not as common back then, especially with how new the Internet was. People chasing fame through social media was definitely not a thing yet, especially when there's no such thing as YouTube. Sure, you had reality shows like Jackass, but getting fame wasn't nearly as easy as creating a user account online. You had to get lucky and make the proper connections. Not everyone could just get instant fame on TV.

The PC, definitely. My entire life has been attached to the PC since I was 10. I do everything on my PC, from browsing the Internet to having a social life online, so if I get to play high-end games on my PC too, then all the better.

Usually, I would buy it on Steam for my PC as I like modding my games with either aesthetic mods or difficulty-tuning mods. If I have the option to have more control over my games via PC mods, then I would usually just buy it on Steam. But if there's some kind of exclusive content available only on other platforms, then I might buy it on other platforms. My FOMO is very high.

Technically, yes, I would classify them as "survival horror games" because 1) they do contain traditional horror elements like jump scares, scary monsters, and scary moments, and 2) the "gameplay" does involve you trying to keep the characters alive and ensuring they survive by making the correct choices. But honestly, I wouldn't put them on any list either because I find them to be generally poorly written and filled with cliched movie tropes. And this is coming from someone who generally likes games where your choices affect the story like Detroit: Become Human, a far superior QTE adventure game IMO where the story outcome relies on you making the correct dialogue choices, not just beating the QTEs. I also find the "replayability" of The Dark Pictures Anthology games to be superficial, because you could easily get the "best" ending by following a walkthrough, whereas a game like Detroit: Become Human doesn't necessarily have the "best" ending because many of its endings are more nuanced in morality, meaning that if you just follow your instincts and choose the best decisions you personally believe in, some of the endings you get by playing this way would still feel authentic instead of being just a "bad end." There's more meaning in your decisions that way, instead of forcing you to pick the "correct" choice during the journey.

I feel like there were a lot of moments like these in Spiritfarer. A number of backstories about the characters are implied through vague interaction with them rather than stated explicitly. Elena comes to mind in particular, because despite being a thorny teacher, you can interpret quite a lot from her exchange with you even if it's never explained why she's so passive-aggressive, especially with your very last interaction with her. Even the minigames add context to the characters' backstories and reflect their past lives.

Nope. I love depressing games and stories because I love to cry. The emotional catharsis feels so good.

Mass Effect games are a big one, with the music setting the proper atmosphere and mood. That Normandy theme always gets me. I feel like Detroit: Become Human had some decent tracks too that enhanced the thrill and emotions of the scenes, like "Now", from Connor's chase sequence. God, that was so good. Made the scene so much more intense:

Jurassic World: Dominion - 4/10 Though I didn't really 'watch it' per se and more like I skipped through the boring parts with uninteresting human characters and obligatory romance sub-plots. God, that line by Alan Grant to Ellie was so cringe. Who wrote this crap?

Netflix, along with Disney, was pandering to BlackRock Investment and Larry Fink's ESG rating score, which explains why their content feel kinda bland over the past decade. I heard that Netflix has been trying to separate itself from such company policies recently, however, by releasing something like Dave Chappell's stand-up shows which definitely tanked their ESG score massively due to the controversial content it contains.

I'm not surprised, to be honest, as Disney has a track record of taking other "franchises" (and fairy tales) and streamlining it for their audiences. Sometimes they'd just "borrow" from real life cultures and historic figures too.

I think it has hurt theaters, and it has affected filmmaking too. Nowadays, filmmakers like Martin Scorsese has to adapt to the changing times and make a movie suitable for streaming instead of experiencing it on a big screen with the atmosphere a dark theater could provide. I think streaming services have just spoiled us though (myself included), because we could easily watch almost any movie now as long as we subscribe to the correct streaming provider. This advance in technology means we're encouraged to take the more convenient route of watching movies and TV shows. And sometimes, some streaming services do feel like money well-spent. A movie ticket could cost me up to S$13 in Singapore during a weekend release, and I would only get a single movie, whereas paying S$14 on Netflix would get me dozens of movies and TV shows as well. So if you're middle class and maybe you don't earn that much on the side, streaming services are just a more tempting and valuable option, especially with how many films are released per year. But I think it was inevitable though, with the advancement of digital platforms. Everything's just becoming more digital, and video games have been digital for a long time. Even Nintendo games can be played digitally through the eshop without a physical copy. It's only a matter of time before theaters get overtaken by these huge streaming corporations (especially with Jeff Bezos probably still having a hand in Amazon Prime's direction), even if there are some who still prefer the unique experience of watching a movie at the theater with crowds of people. It's only going to get worse for theaters down the line. We might not even have physical theaters anymore since the Metaverse has been released; virtual theaters might become a thing, however that works.