Akun

If only I was as Interested in anime games as you are, the issue is I can't even get hold of one even if I try to because of how little they are displayed on stores close to me.
Maybe In the future I might get into anime games since I enjoy watching anime as well.

Bro - You always know where to find the anime games on most platforms. How do you know about these? I mean, Anime games just don't get the same amount of coverage as other genres.

You're the fortunate one - we hardly have anything like that for Switch games. It's mainly PS4/PS5 and Xbox One/Series games.

This is pretty f***ed up.
As someone who's passionate about movies and the craft of filmmaking, I'm often reminded of how it doesn't just take a single person to make a movie, but an entire crew of often unsung heroes. At least the writers got their due with the Writers' Guild, but VFX artists need their own guild or unionization as well.
I wasn't really a fan of how the newer Marvel films looked the same in terms of color grading and style compared to the Phase 1 films, but I certainly wouldn't have blamed the VFX artists for that one, but the studio heads that wanted to cut cost and push release dates. This reminds me of how when certain AAA games were released with bugs, people complain about it and the hundreds and thousands of developers working those bugs and animation details had to fix it on a crunch time, often without thanks.
I've seen so many video essays talking about such an issue in modern Hollywood films too, how studios have become lazy and dependent on VFX artists to polish up the film rather than having the filmmakers do the hard work of capturing the right shots in the right environment with the right lighting. And these freaking release dates too, pushing for a harder deadline regardless of workers' rights. I'd have been willing to wait years for a movie to be done right rather than be rushed out. That's my policy with any entertainment, including games.
I do understand that there are certain windows of opportunity that makes a release date the most profitable, and history has proved that when certain movies get delayed too long, people were no longer interested anymore. But I think there needs to be a compromise for that, for studios to come up with a solution that doesn't mean VFX artists get underpaid or forced through forced labor and unreasonable crunch times, threatened with bullying or worse. Just make movies the traditional way and stop relying on visual effects so much. We know that most movies rely on it so much because it's cheaper to polish up the lighting and color of a film rather than do the hard work of location-scouting or picking the right lighting - you know, like in the old days with Hitchcock or Kubrick when VFX wasn't as heavily relied on as a crutch.
And if you do need the VFX artists to do the heavy work... PAY THEM. Maybe even give the proper credits to them in your little pretentious Oscars speeches instead of being cheap, you Hollywood hacks.

I have a few. SPOILERS for all videos.
And that's how Madoka Magica became forever sealed as my favorite anime of all time. lol Because the shocking twists didn't stop there. And sure, there have been dark magical girl anime before, but I feel like Madoka Magica really changed how magical girls were portrayed ever since, the same way The Dark Knight influenced superhero films. Gone were the days where magical girls were symbols of hope and love.
Gintama had tons of epic moments, but most of the memorable ones for me were its comedic WTF moments:
 
I still remember the days when I could ask, "How the f*** did they get away with that?!"
Before Madoka Magica came into my life, I think the first time I got "WTF'd" by an anime was Gurren Lagann. It had tons of epic moments, especially when the Giga Drill Breaker appeared for the first time and broke the Internet, but this one stood out for me because it was the first time I saw an anime or even a TV show having the balls to pull something like this several episodes down the series (7 episodes if I recall):
 
And then of course, I'd be remiss not to have mention Nichijou, the greatest of slapstick slice of life:
Just watch the series. Thank me later. 😛 

I just haven't seen any real signs that gaming would fade out at this time. Even with the advent of VRs, non-VR gaming is still relevant and has a big market. Consoles are still selling well despite the PS5's struggle with exclusive games. The PC hasn't really changed much from the 2000s aside from better graphics (longer than that if you count MS DOS as a "PC"), and I have a feeling it's going to be the longest survivor if gaming does become dated in the future, especially with how much we use the PC for a variety of activities besides gaming.
I do see VRs as the big thing in the future though, but as much hype as I'm hearing about it, I'm just personally unimpressed by the tech. It feels like one of those technology where it feels like sci-fi, but still feels pretty grounded and contemporary in the same way cars still feel grounded and contemporary (unlike the flying cars of sci-fi films). Until I see something truly groundbreaking and revolutionary like holodecks (where I can literally smell the flowers and touch the grass in a game), I just don't feel the "technological change" in the industry yet from my gaming experience in the 2000s/2010s.
As for whether gaming itself will become irrelevant regardless of the VRs' existence... unlikely. People will always need a hobby and something to kill time, going as far back as the cave-drawings of the Stone Age. We've just become more advanced in our leisure time beyond painting in caves. I haven't really seen the next big thing in leisure yet, unless you want to count the problematic Metaverse, so I think gaming will still be around for at least... optimistically speaking, the next 50 years.
100 years is a more challenging gauge to measure though. I'll grant you that, at the very least, over the last two decades, how we live as a society has changed a lot, so who knows with the following century. And in the past century, technology has definitely improved exponentially. To quote a deleted scene from the movie, Prometheus, "20th Century: the automobile, television, nuclear weapons, spacecrafts, Internet. 21st Century: biotech, nanotech, fusion and fission and M-theory - and that was just the first decade." So yeah, technology has advanced on a far more incremental pace than ever, so who knows with the next century?
But I still stand by my stance that gaming inherently wouldn't really go out of style, nor will people's need for leisure disappear. Perhaps we might see a new form of gaming in the future. Well, I wouldn't see because I'd be dead. Our children would, but I wouldn't know. lol

I think it's important to call out friends who behave like this, otherwise the bad behavior is only reinforced. I call it "an opportunity for corrective behavior". If there is no improvement, clearly the friend (individual) does not respect you and your time and it's time to move on from that friendship altogether. 

My username is a Supernatural original RPG character. Thanks for asking!

It gets pretty annoying, I agree. I'm usually on time, but my ex-bestfriend would usually be 10-15 minutes late quite often.
That said, I didn't really complain much about his behavior (partly because there were other aspects of his behavior that were far more problematic), and I didn't really mind waiting while playing my phone or my Switch.
20-30 minutes is pretty egregious though, and if I have to wait that long, I'll probably head home by the 20th minute mark or just head to a local fastfood at wait for him there instead. I'm already not physically fit, so standing on one spot for 30 minutes is not my idea of a good time.

Getting tried of it. I've stopped watching since Moon Knight.

They killed my love for Disney.

It's a healthy platform for me to engage in conversations so far. There's very few incidents of head-butting and arguments I've experienced in the previous forums I've stayed in, so that's something.

Probably not a shock given my avatar but the first one that popped into my head when I read the thread title was the 90s Spider-Man animated series. Loved it as a kid!
 

Some of the jokes in the Powerpuff Girls were so perverted but it was so subtly done that nobody noticed. For instance, the mayor and his secretary's interactions were always suspect.
 

If I was to spend a day in a game or sim then I would love to get into MSFS2020 and do a long good flight or many flights and see the world and the scenery and fly sky high - that would be the best job in the world people 😉

I like gameplay simple and fluent, while having a complex story. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a good example. It has a lot of different mechanics, but it is quite simple once you get to know it. And the plot? Absolutely awesome. So many actually surprising plot twists, and great plot overall. The ending was a bit lackluster, but by no means bad.

I find it annoying when reviews encourage pity-buying a game just because it's an indie game made by one person. While I could appreciate the hard work such a game would require, if the game doesn't appeal to me (whether it's because it's an indie game lacking the budget of a AAA game is irrelevant), then it doesn't appeal to me, and I shouldn't be guilted into spending my hard-earned money on something just because some other folks want to squander their money on supporting indie developers. Would you pay a large sum of money for a low budget mobile game over a AAA game just to support the developers? If you want to do that sort of thing and support the indie industry, it's your prerogative and more power to you, but don't gaslight, manipulate or guilt-trip me into buying it, saying how "other reviews are comparing this game to a AAA game." Of course they make comparisons to AAA games - they have a bigger budget and are a lot more fun, and therefore they feel those AAA games are more worthy of purchase. That's the sad reality of the industry, and no amount of good intentions from indie developers is going to change how cool-looking and high quality gameplay a AAA game will have over most indie games. If your positive review of an indie game requires the dismissal of the "high budget" of AAA games to make that indie game look better, then maybe the indie game you're defending just isn't that quality to stand on its own merits without comparing "developer budgets."
I like Undertale and Spiritfarer, for example, but as much as I love them, I'm not going to pretend that they're far superior games than most of the higher budget AAA games I've played in terms of gameplay mechanics, game length, storyline and especially visuals. The specific game that got me to talk about this issue, however, is Prehistoric Kingdom. It's been in development for over a decade now, and many reviews complained that it has the bare minimum a dinosaur park management game should have, and I think that, at the very least, they're justified in feeling bored, even if such criticisms might've been unfair towards the indie developer working with a minimum budget. The sad reality is that if you're working with a lower budget, your game will have less features than a higher budget game like Jurassic World: Evolution 2. For all the flaws of JWE2, it's undeniable that it has 1) a lot more dinosaurs, 2) higher quality visuals, 3) a lot more gameplay features. That's not a subjective opinion; that's a fact. It's an opinion to say you enjoy the minimalism of Prehistoric Kingdom, but it's disingenuous to say that Prehistoric Kingdom should be bought just to support low budget indie games, especially when they haven't done jack to develop the game at all for 10 years. It's like begging for a charity case, and it's manipulative.

I'm always advocating for multiple paths in a game's storyline. I know it's hard to do, so I don't really have high hopes for such a feature to be more prevalent. But on the other hand, you get a JRPG like Shin Megami Tensei where some of their endgame content does contain multiple paths depending on whom you side with (SMT IV comes to mind). I believe Fire Emblem games also contain different paths based on whom you side with. I feel like this is mostly a JRPG thing though, because whenever a western RPG does it, they'd often resort to the lazy "slideshow" method like Fallout: New Vegas or Mass Effect 3, instead of creating three distinctly different gameplay levels based on player choices.
Now, obviously, games like Detroit: Become Human and The Dark Picture anthology could do it easily because they lack gameplay features outside of QTE, so it's easy to make them. But I would propose for game developers to be more daring and innovative, creating full game levels with multiple paths. You see this in older RPGs too like Dragon Age: Origins, so I don't know more AAA games these days don't have such features anymore. I heard The Witcher 3 had multiple paths, but I'm not really a fan of medieval fantasy settings, which is why when CD Projekt Red announced Cyberpunk: 2077, I thought we were going to get Witcher 3 with a sci-fi cyberpunk setting, with all the multiple paths Witcher 3 had to offer. Alas, that was not so, with the way the life paths were described by people who've played them.
Another cool concept I've really liked in the past is Undertale with the players' act of pacifism being a core important part of the story, and even though I had my problems with the message, Spec Ops: The Line had a nice concept like that as well, so I wouldn't mind seeing more games in the future turn the game genre on itself, like the Goombas in a Mario game calling out Mario for stomping on them all the time or something, or a Pokémon game where the questionable ethics of dog-fighting comes into question. Just spice things up a little and do a little subversion to make the familiar formula fresher, more interesting.
BioShock had a good idea in terms of farming the Little Sisters for ADAM, but they made it too easy morally to choose not to farm them. And I'm not talking about how challenging the gameplay is, but rather, making the decision more morally grey. I'm not exactly sure how to do it, especially in the obviously morally questionable objectivism of BioShock context, but a game where the innocence of a malicious ghost child comes into question would be interesting as well in horror games. Imagine having to play through Silent Hill 2 without killing any monsters, for example. 
Speaking of horror games, here's a concept for you: a protagonist whose appearance becomes more grotesque depending on your moral actions, but the other characters actually call out on this. In most games that have such a feature, I feel like the NPCs don't usually call out on the protagonist's appearance, such as Mass Effect or even Fable.
How about a horror protagonist with some kind of disease that gradually makes them become as deformed as the monsters they fight? Maybe the deformed lump of flesh becomes a burden even that movement becomes harder by the end of the game, and maybe depending on your choices, you could either become one of the monsters or fight against the disease with all your might.
I don't know. I'm just spitballing here. 😛 Hope it helps. lol

HAH! I WISH.
Singapore is known for being inferior when it comes to film education because we just don't have a viable film industry here unlike in America, Europe, even Malaysia or Vietnam. We did have a video effects class in college that taught us Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro (god that was boring). We also have your typical Audio & Video classes, but that's the closest you can get to holding a camera.
I had to sign up for private film schools and even that didn't get me anywhere close to the film industry. For shame. I've tried my hands on making my own films for years using a handheld cam I bought, but I've pretty much given up by now.

Actually the overbearing Keanu part is what ruined the game for me. I wanted an authentic cyberpunk story, but everything in the game is overshadowed by Keanu's character. You constantly play second fiddle to him and what he says goes every time, you can never deny him, and if you don't do everything to suck up to him you get one of the bad endings for the game. I hated his character so much, and even though I enjoyed the gamplay I could not get myself to re-play the story more than once due to that.

This right here. I agree 💯% 
I don't think paying more should give users the better support. Not everyone can afford to spend as much as others on their gaming hobbies. Some of us can barely afford the console, that purchase alone should be enough. We're supporting this company as well, so it feels like favoritism when they go and do this. 
Just promotes favoritism among their userbase. 

That's one thing I can't stand about cloud saves. I've had issues with them in the past, where they sometimes get over-written or my main saves are corrupted and somehow my cloud saves don't work either. That happened a while back, but I forget what game it was. 

I couldn't agree less. I actually believe people with less experience of the PlayStation band and the technology and features indigenous to it are more likely to need help than those who have been playing on the brand for a long time. There should be NO priority given to anyone when it customer service, every who needs it needs it and the same service should be made available to all regardless of how many purchases they've made or how actively they play. I actually find the very idea of what Sony is planning deplorable. This isn't frequent flyer miles or a loyalty stamp from a coffee house, that's fair. This is like at that same coffee house being told you wave to wait if there's a problem with your order or a mistake on your bill because a more regular customer wants help first. I'm actually inclined to call this disgusting and I cannot understand why anyone would think that this is OK.

What's not to understand? It's an inherently flawed and biased system that guarantees quality support to privileged and entitled members only. And what you're saying is that anyone who doesn't put hundreds of hours into their PS games should just suck it up and put up with shitty customer service if there are bugs and issues? I'm sorry, but that's insulting.