Withywarlock

With the George A. Romero example, I think (I say 'think' because I'm sure Night of the Living Dead had messages about racism and othering) it began with Dawn of the Dead which was quite clever in its use of zombies as a representation of 'mindless consumerism.' Land of the Dead was when things got a whole lot less subtle, a criticism of plutocracy and distribution of wealth and so forth. Diary of the Dead wasn't even a criticism or comment, more an observation of "social media exists." I recall Red Letter Media (RLM) did a joke about Romero writing up the next film before he passed away, going "Twitter, err, can you 'tweet' a zombie?" I agree it would be unfortunate for people to not get the satire, but then if they're offended (especially if they haven't played the game), they're the exact kind of people the game is taking the piss out of. One thing I can say about Grand Theft Auto it's that nobody looks good, and very rarely does anyone come out of it smelling of roses. It's only until the story's over that their lives can begin to resemble normalcy in a world that's just as kooky as it was before.

You had it right in one when you said "this may actually be a game completely based on satire." Grand Theft Auto V is to GTA's comedic writing what Diary of the Dead is to George A. Romero's social commentary; they often have something to say, and sometimes it's worth listening to. Without spoiling anything it only goes further, and is spread all the thinner. Still, don't take this as moodiness or indeed telling you to stop playing on. It's a fun game, well worth playing on if you're enjoying it now.

This is one of the major reasons why I like Fallout: New Vegas, that every faction has its flaws but - minus Caesar's Legion, which Chris Avellone didn't want in the game for this reason - has its redeeming features that make it difficult to entirely loathe them. That to me is what makes a good villain: a character whose motives you can understand. A great villain's motives are better than yours. But those are factions rather than characters. Cephal Lorentus, a Lawful-Evil Wizard in Pathfinder: Kingmaker's Varnhold's Lot DLC is how I envision a perfect character archetype of that alignment. An cold man whose hard logic comes from his years of experience, and whose mistrust aids his role as an advisor. I was delighted to play my first ever Lawful-Evil character in that DLC because we got on so well, an alignment I normally don't like. So inspired was I that I used his character portrait in my subsequent playthrough of the main game, as an Alchemist. I may even use his avatar for this here forum, come to think of it. Ahem! But were I in a Chaotic-Good mood, he would not suit me one bit. Moving on! Geralt of Rivia took some time to grow upon me. I don't like that I can't use magic to persuade everyone without fail, and I don't always like his methods, but I cannot deny that he is mostly consistent in his behaviours and reasoning in my playthrough of The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. However good or evil he is in that moment, he has his own flair that justifies it. Korgan Bloodaxe of Baldur's Gate II is a Chaotic-Evil Barbarian character, another alignment I normally wouldn't have in my party, but he has a lot of charisma with his yelling and cursing, searching for a necromancer's tome that his former party had wrongfully stolen. He plans on stealing it back for himself and selling it for cash. Strangely, that's all the people who come to mind.

Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) is a game that replicates cities to a tee, and will even simulate real world planes going by in real time. Part of the reason why its system requirements are so ludicrously high is because it's rendering the world as best it can from an aerial view, and the detail on the ground is amazing. Or it was, an update has recently caused the game some trouble.

I remember the ability, but I was a bit disappointed that it couldn't be used in every single dialogue to get one's way. But then I suppose that's the point: you'd breeze through every such encounter and probably make Geralt less himself and more my sort of character. I should really use it in combat more often though, I often find myself easily outnumbered.

I was going to say "it would be better to ask the opposite question of what would work," but then I think Skylanders Academy, the Netflix show based on the video game series shows a lot of games could well work. I have to admit, as a 28 year old, I did belly laugh at some of the jokes within that show made entirely for children. The first Crash Bandicoot had an animated intro that had a rather catchy theme tune, which many have mistaken for an unaired TV show, and honestly I think there's enough source material to work with. Each game could well have its own TV series, even if it was something like 6-8 short episodes rather than one based on each level (a lot of which after the first game use the same level themes.) 🎶Tell your friends to play our game and we'll make lots of loot! 🎶 I'm sorry, I'm answering my own question, not yours. I think a lot of these zombie games you see about like The Last of Us or Days Gone have missed their chance to stand out, as said in the past, because The Walking Dead is still ongoing to my knowledge, and even then when those shows come out it'll still be too early. I guess if I had to choose one series of games it would be The Elder Scrolls. Either it has to be set in one of the older games (pre-Morrowind) and is so unfamiliar that it is new and magical to the current fanbase, or it's so familiar that it's tired and doesn't do anything the game does better. If you set it far into the future it becomes unrecognisable without exceptionally talented writers (not many of those making video game TV shows and films knocking about), and if you set it in a period that people are familiar with it has to be about more than the protagonist of the game that setting's in. The games have exceptional lore and they make great stories with it, but I'm not sure how you would make a TV show without it being an anthology series that's based on things that people closely recognise (stories about a Dark Brotherhood assassin, the Morag Tong, the Thieves' Guild, or perhaps based on books such as The Locked Room; the books were always good for their twists in the tale!)

I had to look that up because I had no idea how one would make a horror game in 1986. It seems quite spooky, but the music is a bit... upbeat, I find! Mind, it sets the tone for what's about to follow: "your car erupts in an explosion! At least it will save you the cost of a tow!" 🤣 I'm sorry to say I've played this. I tried to play it again earlier this year and I also didn't like it for its controls. Bearing in mind this was right at the beginning in the hospital(?). I'm glad it wasn't just me, but it's also sad that others have had trouble with it. As for games I'm certain nobody here's played, there's quite a few cheap picks, mostly those of the Warhammer 40,000 license. I'll pick something more interesting though and say Enchanted Arms. I hear lots of people say they're fans of FromSoftware for their Soulsborne games but never do I hear them claim they've played Enchanted Arms, which is a very different game to their usual fare. It's a 3D JRPG from the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 era, with tile-based tactical gameplay and mechanics and lore that you can understand, so in that regard it's nothing like a JRPG. Very fun, and virtually none of the praise/criticisms you could have for the Soulsborne games really applies here, so don't be turned on/off if you like/dislike FromSoftware's typical fare.

There's a number of options I resort to: Et Tu, Brute Force? Butting your head against a wall until it comes down still brings the wall down. Sometimes it works to just keep trying over and over again with sheer determination. This can also include lowering the difficulty. I had to do this with Tyranny because of its frightfully unintuitive combat (yet another RPG that thinks it's being clever re-inventing d20 combat), going from what should've been fine on Normal mode as a now experienced CRPG player to Story Mode, which somehow manages to occasionally wipe out my party. Live to Fight Another Day. Something video games do well, and sometimes don't do well, is the presentation of combat. Why is every bandit itching for a fight, to the point where they may try to take someone who has a legendary reputation upon sight, in a world where news travels fast? Why is every beast so hungry its first instinct is to attack someone who is wearing plate mail? This goes for enemies too, but some fights and other perilous situations should be avoided entirely. They may be worth a lot of XP, they may be time-sensitive, but neither mean anything if your avatar is dead. Do a tabletop, say nope.avi, and decide to power up elsewhere. Withywarlock's Diplomatique. If tabletop gamers talked to each other about a problem, there'd be 85% less forum posts about tabletop drama and questions for game masters. Likewise, 85% more games with dialogue options would be better if I could talk or bribe my way past an enemy or situation. I'd even be for a game where I can talk a crevasse being easier to bound, or a door into opening (which technically exists with knock spells and such if they have vocal components). Given you reach godlike levels (if only in theme and lore rather than mechanics) in many video games, it'd be nice for you to actually have such mythical powers, to be completely convincing in all things. It's overpowered, but that's the whole point of reaching godly levels. Alternatively I could just save scum.

To not feel like I'm wearing someone else's spectacles, which is how I described my VR experience at the Van Gogh Immersive Experience in York for an article. It was worth paying the ~£6 for about 15 minutes of being taken on a tour around Gogh's works in a 3D realm, but it strained my eyes a bit and I had to close my peepers every so often so I wouldn't need a pair of specs of my own. My partner, whose syncope was fortunately not brought on by the experience, felt she could only last that amount of time; any longer and she would've felt her motion sickness coming on. I really don't want to pay the money I would for VR to play for 10 minutes at a time at most. I'd like to play as long as I do any typical gaming session without having to rest my eyes, but I suspect that won't happen for a while. I'm happy to wait, but I suspect AR or something else will come along and do everything VR wanted to do better.

2014 was the year I decided I was totally and utterly against preordering. I'd preorder so many mediocre games for the purpose of review, whilst listening to Totalbiscuit's excellent video on why you shouldn't preorder video games! Eleven times the charm, I guess. At least Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor was good. Before I continue on my tantrum, I'll say it was Sunset Overdrive that broke me. Having become tired of my Playstation 4, I'd exchanged it for an Xbox One so I could play this game by Insomniac I really liked the look of (the Sunset TV marketing was also well done). Unfortunately, the extensive character customisation wasn't enough for me as it wasn't up to my speed and I wasn't satisfied with the exploration. ~Tirade resumes below~ But yes, I appreciate the hypocrisy that I'd bang on about not pre-ordering shortly after doing just that for 10 or so months in a ferver of getting so-called AAA games for £20 on Amazon on day one. That said, I really don't care any more. I've tried too long and too hard to convince too few people to not do it, so if more content gets cut from games to sell back to people... fine. We deserve it. And quite frankly I don't quite care enough about the longevity of the industry and good practice within it because there's no more I could have said or done to try and improve things. I can appreciate why people don't bother trying to convert people to their own more important causes via diplomacy. It's too exhausting. That's honestly why I like participating in this forum. It's just nice to chat about what we have now, and what we had before, with zero pretence we're going to somehow change the world. I think it's too easy to get caught up on that, especially on bigger forums like Reddit and such.

You and @Razor1911 are both right. Reviewers are only human at the end of the day, and have no special qualifications that give them a protected identity (such as a doctor or a lawyer.) For all our English A-levels, literature-critique diplomas and repeat viewings of the Angry Video Game Nerd, we're just giving an opinion based on our own or our editor's ethics and review criteria, with the odd dash of objective analysis we choose to make. Hence the phrase "everyone's a critic," or the famous quote by Jean Sibelius, "Remember: a statue has never been set up in honour of a critic!"

Typically full. Quite simply for the reason that most items can be sold off, and there's zero downside to having more money, unless you really can't fight off one of TESIV: Oblivion's highwaymen, which will let you go if you plead poverty (having less than 100 Septims, or wearing clothes of a value of less than 10 Septims.) In games such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim's Hearthfire expansion, a lot of goods can be used to build a homestead, which may have previously been used for bartering or crafting items you may no longer need. Similarly with Fallout 4, where there's not a single item that can't be scrapped for building your strongholds. I'd say this encourages hoarding, but I imagine the kind of people who partake are already inventory hoarders. And in the tabletop, some games have rules for coin weight, meaning you can't carry around hundreds of thousands of currency because it weighs so much, and games with rules such as that typically tell you the dimensions of currency, so you may only have limited space in your pack to place it. Having said all that, there's a great sense of satisfaction to having a tidied up, low-encumberance inventory. Being light of foot makes me light of mood. And you, @StaceyPowers? I'm always curious of your opinions on the threads you contribute to the forum!

Very rarely do I skip such things. Even when I'm just skipping through dialogue options, I like to go through them all in case something gets added to my journal automatically, or may provide additional dialogue later on because I'd asked about it. As for zones, they require a lot more attention, time and energy so I may or may not go into them. In a Spiders game, which are typically short and you eke out every bit of value for money you can, they're not particularly optional (and are designed as such to give you a leg-up in the main quest, to great effect I might add) so I make a point of doing them, even if I don't like how they drag out the game, however short.

Frequently. Being a reviewer has also done the same thing, as once I put into words how I feel about a game I tend to sometimes look at the game from a whole new angle, or indeed when my viewers bring into question (or rather, on today's internet, assert) something about my review. Something that's good about internet reviews today is the comment sections; more often than not I skip most of the review to see what the commenters are saying, and if there's a great enough consensus there, I may have more incentive to read the review proper and look at what's going on, good or ill.

If my understanding of second person is correct, based on the video @Alexander. had posted above, then there's the Fighting Fantasy video games, which are adaptations of the choose-your-own-adventure novels of the same brand. In those it's not "I come across a sleeping goblin whose face needs to be caved in with a warhammer," it's always "you come across a sleeping goblin whose face needs to be caved in with a warhammer," and so on. It's only when you're given the choice that you might say "I cave the sleeping goblin's face in with a warhammer, per its needs," and even then I may be misremembering it saying "I." I must say thanks for sharing the video too, it's a spectacular watch. I don't have the attention span to watch all of it, but it gets its point across quickly.

Some third-person games do make a point of making the "camera" be the player character, not their focus. Such as in Super Mario 64, you're playing as Mario but it's the Lakitu's eyes (or rather camera lens) you're looking through. In some Warhammer 40,000 games, Servo Skulls play a similar role. 🤣 I disagree with your conclusions, but I get the general premise of what you're saying, I just can't put into words what I think myself.

I used to hate Crash Bash because it's controls are absolutely dire, but it's the spin-off that shows the most respect for the IP with its musical style, its story, settings, and visual assets. It is the most Crash Bandicoot game that isn't a platformer, and given how appalled I was by its party gameplay that requires an additional player to be competent with, that's something. And this is in a world where Crash Purple: Ripto's Rampage exists, a similarly crap Game Boy Advance collection of mini-games that crosses over with Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy. Nowadays I'd say I loathe The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics because it's the worst offender for a strategy roleplaying game (SRPG) I've ever come across. Every mistake an SRPG could make, this game makes, and invents some new ones that weren't present in Final Fantasy Tactics, one of the older titles from 1997. It's a shambles for everybody who is expected to pick it up, be they Dark Crystal fans and tactical fans. Play literally any other Jim Henson's Creature Workshop game (including Rascal, which is somehow more technically competent) or SRPG.

I used to have a really bad temper when it came to video games before. I'm autistic, and let's say I once lent credence to the whole "autistic screeching" derogatory meme, as I would howl like a banshee and smack my controller against my chair, and do all sorts of things in a fit of impotent rage. I think I finally stopped when I once smacked my dad's laptop screen.... whilst wearing a ring. The colour bleeding as the laptop slowly but surely died out scared the daylights out of me, and thankfully my dad forgave the incident because it was an old laptop and he wasn't using it anyway. Since then I've been a lot more mindful of my outbursts, and today I'm completely uncaring about game rage. I have my partner to thank for my zen state, as she's the person who I save my energy for, harnessing any frustration I might have over a game to turn into creative ideas for entertaining her.

My advice would be to get through the shortest ones first, and don't be afraid to turn down the difficulty if you're not enjoying the current pace. The only problem with this is that you're then playing the game for the sake of completing it, and moving on, which may leave you bittersweet if it eventually clicks with you but is spoilt by that point. The thing is I have the time to play games that I don't like very much, whereas I'm sure you value your time so much more. The only game on that list I know for a fact I wouldn't recommend until last is Greedfall, because the only way that experience is going to be good is if you do everything, which takes approximately 60 hours (over half of which are a drag.) GTA 5 might be the best one if you want to disregard my above advice. It's a game that goes on a bit longer than it ought to, but it offers enough downtime - thematically and mechanically - to allow you to enjoy zooming around, exploring, and treating yourself to some makeovers.

A frequent flyer in r/fatlogic, it is with guilty pleasure I must admit that I love the portrayal of Thor in the upcoming God of War. On the one hand my admiration of this artistic choice runs contrary to whenever I see spiteful obese people saying that in another time they'd be worshiped as goddesses, but on the other hand I'm not clamouring that my own obesity should be treated as if I am the God of Thunder. It's so hard to pick a side on this one, and neither side really exists outside of my own headspace. In the meantime, until people start excusing poor lifestyles by pointing to the game insisting it's making them do it, I'll enjoy Thor's gut, but he'd look a lot more comfortable if his belly was hanging over his chainmail underdungers. #SlayAndSway

What follows is venemous and hardly constructive because I'm up past my bedtime. If you continue, please read at your own peril. I think the best thing they can do right now is go back to basics. The open world now exists as a feature to put on the back of the box. It's not there for the player's enjoyment because all they do is follow a trail telling them where to go, and it's not there because developers like filling their game with repeating low-quality assets. Every open world is exceptionally beautiful, that's why nobody's exploring them once all the obligatory boxes are ticked off. The basics I'm talking about are roadsigns, journals and rumours. Not every roadsign is relevent, not every journal entry is complete, not every rumour is true. The problem with that is it's time-consuming. It's time-consuming for developers who could be programming content people can play, and it's time-consuming for players who are just following something because the game says they can. It would be a massive undertaking for this idea to go mainstream in a post-Morrowind world, and the money isn't there to do so. This only seems like a grognard problem until you see why Fable III got the schtick that it did, and that in itself is the problem: everyone was looking at the problem, but nobody saw it. It was a waypoint that didn't guide you to any side quests, any of the cool NPCs or features. It's why the story was so nonsensical, because as far as anyone was concerned the game consisted only of that map marker. Having to pay attention to the world by looking at it rather than the UI is crucial to an open world, otherwise why not just make a linear game, which is better in every single other way? Another thing would be having places that, for all intents and purposes, don't matter. Not every landmark exists to net you experience points or a poster you have to tear down. It exists because it's relevent to the world, not the player. I mentioned this before but Fallout does this well: a school doesn't exist as a place to be looted, it exists because education was once a thing. A cave doesn't exist to be the home of a Sword of Bifercating, it exists because that's how this natural formation has come to be in this setting. Anything I suggest about looking at an open world can't really happen in the mainstream market, it'd have to be made for the fringe players who like Gothic, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and whatever weirdos reside between those two.

I get where you're coming from and to an extent, I agree. Playing as that character might give me more time to appreciate why they do something, even if I disagree with their actions. However, there's times where a character might do something so aggrevating that I care more about it because I've spent so much time reaching that point, that it feels a waste. Had I not played the character, I wouldn't care as much to get worked up about it. It's why World of Warcraft fans have been up in arms with every patch lately: the faction they've been part of for years, possibly over a decade, has consistently undone so much work players have worked to achieve, and they're powerless to do anything except sit by and hope it gets fixed next time. I understand why someone may learn something from playing a character for themselves. I can also appreciate how someone can feel baffled at best, and horrified at worst by what they're subject to.

I tend to say anything before the previous system, so Sony Playstation 3/Microsoft Xbox 360/Nintendo Wii. Where the Nintendo 3DS and Playstation Vita come into the equation as they've not had a system replace them (by their own company; see smartphones) I don't know. The faults of my reasoning are not unknown to me. Whereabouts do you decide the cut-off point?

Frequently, yes. I tend to listen to a show in the background (TV, YouTube, radio) and drown out the game that way. Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. However, there are times where the music's too good to ignore, in which case I'll often just download it from YouTube and listen to it without requiring the game.

I never thought I would be saying this so soon after the rather compelling list I've got, but... Spyro 2: Season of Flame, for the Game Boy Advance. A sequel to Season of Ice, Spyro has to use a number of elemental breaths to solve recycled puzzles and slay the one (of two) enemies in each level that is vulnerable to it. That's particularly handy given the charge is lethal in this game, more so for the player than enemies, due to the isometric view and slippery controls. All levels are surrounded by water that drowns Spyro without any saving grace whatsoever (no being booted back to the shore with a level of Sparx reduced unlike the previous game), and the most help you get is a rudimentary map that gives the wireframe outlines of 1993's Doom a run for their money. Still, it was fun. Next up: Crash Bandicoot: The Big Adventure / XS. A good game that doesn't use its premesis of Dr. Neo Cortex shrinking the Earth down to the size of a Wumpa to any effect whatsoever.