PixlBit

WTF is Rust?

Yeah, I tried Stranger Things. Got to episode 5 and haven't been motivated to watch it since. I guess it's cute, but I'm not head over heels for it. The central mystery is not compelling at all, to me. The kids are not charismatic, and at times annoying.  It feels like what it is, a TV show, not an 80s feature film.

The reality is that our thoughts do shape our reality. Everything is energy, including thoughts. As it is above, so it is below; as it is inside, so it is outside. Negative thoughts, perception, hopelessness...the internal will hold you back externally, represented by your actions and quality of life in the material plane. But when you are down too deep, such as with a chemical disorder, you need serious assistance/support. You are doing the right thing by being pro-active and seeking that assistance. The tools to help ourselves are out there, we need but reach out for them.

I feel the same way about all of this shit, Uncharted 2 included. Both series feature half hearted attempts at things other games did or do better, with no challenge or interesting mechanics.  I care for none of the tales or characters in any of these games. The plots, dialogue, and characterizations are network TV quality, as far as I'm concerned, like something Bruce Campbell or Kevin Sorbo would have starred in on The WB.

That said, I'll take the better platforming and darker atmosphere of Newmb Raider over Uncharted's better...whatever.  At least the former still felt like a video game to me...

sf5 is ass, is my unvarnished opinion. Doesn't feel good, only looks good in some instances. Sluggish, boring, banal. I didn't care for any of the iterations of SF4 either though. That game also felt slow and floaty,compared to Alpha series or Third Strike.

Awesome game. One of the last time I had pure fun with a new release. Thought the difficulty made it refreshing and enjoyable. Want to play through all the DS Castlevanias again. Nothing better than a good 2D CV.  Portrait of Ruin is underrated. Another awesome game. I still might like Dawn of Sorrow the best though, because it offered, imo, the best take on the SoTN formula. I won't know for sure after I go through them again.

Holds up pretty well. Lighting was probably impressive for it's time. Controls aren't the smoothest, but the melee system is pretty complex.  I was playing it until I had a glitch where I couldn't die, lol

I'd rather have them come up with their own combat approach.Already tired of "inspired by Souls." Or copy from Severance: Blade of Darkness, which would be very different from everything else coming out lately.

Game look liked cheap-o, uninspired shit to me anyway. That "art style," smh. 

I liked RE6 enough to platinum it, but it was a sloppily put together game. No, the camera issues were not fixed in the options, only made less atrocious. Your left side peripheral vision was still compromised. Who thinks it's a good idea, in an action game, to have to pivot the camera to be able to see something 3 feet to your character's left? It's horribly inefficient, tiring, and makes no damn sense, design-wise or in terms of optical simulation.  Also, let's cut off vision/spatial orientation below the knees and scatter a bunch of objects on the ground and include a stumble animation when the characters collide with said objects. Only a fool thinks this is good design. Now we're going to be seeing melee action games that have this kind of character orientation! WTF.  Is no one using their fucking brains in this industry anymore, or do we just do what the guys before us did because of a loose correlation between specific features and sales? "Our metrics tell us that players love character on the left side of screen, taking up 1/3 - 1/4 of real estate in all 3rd person games." Bullshit.

To understand the "hatred" for horror themed action games, you have to remember the times. On consoles, if a horror game was made at all is was likely to be an action game. The Outlasts and Amnesias were on PC at the time, not Xbox. The pendulum swings in gaming, so people start craving the old/previous ways.  Look at how many "hardcore" WRPGs we have now after years of streamlined, dumbed down fare.  Look at how many adventure games now, how many space sims coming out, etc. The pendulum swings.  So it is, now, for 'pure' horror games/adventure-horror. From puzzles to explosions back to puzzles again. That the industry gluts the market with one or the other is why we have backlashes and trends shifting the other direction.  These publishers glutted the market trying to get their own RE4 on shelves.  Now people are sitting at the dinner table stuffed and sick of turkey, they want ham now.  But let's not forget, The Evil Within came out not too long ago, also RE:Revelations 2. What, did you expect 5 of these sunsabitches every year? Not going to happen unless one of them sees Minecraft or CoD numbers.

Been watching someone on YT play Subnautica.  It's so interesing and mesmerizing, and I'm not even into ocean life.  Perhaps because it's a different environment than I'm used to in games. Plus I like the visual style. I got a new laptop for work, but it's supposedly a "gaming" laptop also. I might just have to get this.

Alienware are always pricey. You probably could have gotten similar specs for less with another company, like CyberPowerPC.

God of War

 Ok, that off center camera position is horrible for combat. I think it's a horrible, overused perspective in games today periods, but I've never seen it work well for melee. There is a reason the top melee combat games are still using a centered character position with the camera pulled back. And we also see the continuing and annoying trend of renaming new games with the title of the original game. Are developers trying to erase history so their new games don't have to compete with earlier and likely superior/more memorable (See Thief, Hitman, Syndicate, etc) predecessors?   Santa Monica are just following the herd it looks like, and not in an interesting way in my eyes.  There have always been a plethora of copy cat games, but I think modern design conventions are some of the least interesting there have been. That's a topic in and of itself though. Pass.

Resident Evil

 Like you say, this might not be indicative fo the final product.  From what the director has said, it will be in first person (inspired by games like Outlast, Amnesia), and there will be guns (he complained about lack of weapons in those games).  This one is up in the air, but I'm a sucker for RE...but not that Umbrella Corps garbage.

Zelda

I join the chorus: looks great. Nods back to the original game, which I've been wanting to see for years. Of course there are nods to western open world games, but it looks like Nintendo is putting them through their own filter instead of just copying and pasting (see every other new AAA game) features from other popular games. It still looks like a very Japanese product - they love their health via cooking mechanics, there is a geniune appreciation for the natural world, there is sunlight.  The boldest stroke is the physics system, imo. It's the kind of thing you want to do to move your franchise forward, not ropey camera perspectives or cinematic affectations.

I hope the dungeons are dangerous and not all based on puzzle gimmicks. I still think the first Zelda game is singular in the series. It was a game full of mystery and self discovery, with gloomy dungeons and twitchy combat. I'm not a fan of the emphasis on gimmick puzzles and silly NPCs that the games have had ever since OoT.  The original Zelda was the Japanese arcade game meets the American open world RPG (yes, they existed back then too), basically Combat + Exploration and figuring things out for yourself.

 My only real concern is the thing that seems to be getting the most attention: the supposedly massive open world. I hope they utilize the space in a creative and hollistic manner, something that is designed according to the values of the series, and not just copypasta of Ubisoft or Bethesda. In any field of art and design there is an adage that whatever doesn't add, takes away. Too many developers are just putting features in games because they think emulating other successful games is the way to success for their game. This is very superficial thinking, linking correlation with causation.  Does this series or the gameplay within justify a enourmous land mass? We will see.