Just a heads up if you do try it, I mean the original not Catalyst. The sequel constantly kills that flow state with all the annoying intrusions you'll see from other AAA open world games. It's not the worst game ever, I did finish it, but it was the last time I bought something on release.
The original is just a short collection of levels. It's extremely minimalist. The only diversions from the flow is a simple story linking them and a handful of hidden collectibles.
Oblivion is about to turn 18 lol
Mirror's Edge - I usually turn the voices off and just run. Once you're in the flow it's so calming, and it doesn't overstay it's welcome.
(which is a part of the modern era of games as far as I’m concerned)
Yeah I was ready to shake my fist at the the idea these were "old" games, but in fairness we're talking about 15 years ago. It's entirely possible the creator of the video wasn't even born yet when Oblivion was released. It's way longer than we used to give games before we considered them old, though I think that's a result of how rapid obvious progress was - which has slowed down drastically.
Him fawning over the Witcher 3 as an old game from another era cracked me up though.
It's easy to look back on JRPG classics today, but 95-05 was also the dark ages of localization. So many titles got mangled that the mainstream perception of JRPGs was very similar to bad cult movies, especially during the trend chasing rush after Final Fantasy VII's success.
Even those that avoided translation butchery were still highly divisive outside of it's niche fanbase. The "western" RPG and JRPG divide was largely defined by people arguing over them in the 00s after western RPGs made their shift towards being narrative focused. The primary need for distinction, for the "western" RPG set at least, was that JRPG writing was seen as pretty poor. Ironic given some of the absolute slop "western" RPGs had put out that was being conveniently ignored in this argument, but I digress.
But that aside, yeah my anecdote was made with western RPGs in mind. There was a heavy emphasis on dungeon crawling and questing as a barebones narrative excuse to adventure. Kill monsters, get treasure. It's very much like the history of D&D in that way (not by accident). It's not until the late 90s, with games like Fallout and Baldur's Gate, that a shift occurred.
Even then, that shift was hardly over night. What defined something as an RPG was a big debate among that crowd. The systems crowd argued it was the mechanical structures brought over from TTRPGs, while the new wave of fans argued it was the narrative elements that made it unique. This hit it's peak as the genre hybridized with 'action' games and started to shed many of the TTRPG structures.
But that's all kind of irrelevant history. The video, and my response, is talking about broad popular trends and conceptions at the time. There were always exceptions, but the era the video mostly fawns over still hadn't even settled the "can games be art?" debate. The medium was still seen as very low-brow as a whole.
This is every communist newspaper ever. When I was younger and a lot more radical, I used to aggregate a massive collection of papers from almost every single party in my country (and plenty outside of it, if they regularly spoke on global matters rather than mostly their own national concerns). I was trying to create a network that could be just as comprehensive as mainstream media, so that I could cut them out completely.
Every single one of these, without fail, would dedicate thousands of words a week to squabbling with their equally, and pathetically, irrelevant rival parties over the most inane bullshit. Hidden in otherwise unrelated articles would still be jabs at other parties.
For what it's worth, it did more or less work. It gave me a much better picture of what was happening in my country, one that was far more relevant to my broke ass. It was refreshing to get articles about unions, poverty etc. that you just can't get from the mainstream. There were also some extremely useful resources I just didn't know about hidden in the mix. It was just far too embarrassing to share with a lay person who isn't going to understand the esoteric grudges that infested most of the reporting, so I eventually gave up on it.
I'm watching the dub so I've got a couple of weeks to go still, but I can't say I'm too upset. The mage trial arc has killed my enthusiasm for the series. These episodes are stretched out so much, it's almost Dragon Ball charging during a fight levels of bad.
I'd read the manga when it was coming out so I vaguely remembered it was coming, but I hadn't realised just how bad it was going to be on screen.
Eh, yes and no. It might help illustrate the limitations of testing for some people, but it's not really telling us anything new about them. It is meant to cheaply provide an indication of how a student is fairing and has never been considered by anyone serious as some kind of comprehensive measure of intelligence. Their flaws have been known for a long time.
Not going to lie, this video is pretty shit.
It was already a rough start but the claim that people didn't say things like "the graphics look incredible" was so ridiculous I had to pause it, especially while simultaneously showing clips from around the 7th gen. We absolutely praised games for their graphics back then (and much earlier), not just in terms of technological advancement over other titles but as things that were visually pleasing even outside of being a game. 7th Gen is actually notable for how aggressive the marketing around graphics became.
We did not, in fact, talk mostly about the stories of games. For a long time video game writing was widely considered unimportant. There were exceptions of course, though this thinking was so wide spread that I think younger gamers might be surprised to find that even RPG stories were often secondary - at best - to the game play for a long time. Story became a much larger feature once voice acting came to prominence in the mid-00s, but it would take awhile to catch on.
The author then states that Assassin's Creed 2 and Black Flag had memorable stories. What? I played both at the time, and had enjoyed both, but their stories were entirely forgettable. The writing of the series was even kind of a punch line at the time. You know the thing people really talked about with Assassin's Creed 2? How cool it was to parkour through such a beautiful recreation of renaissance Italy.
The stuff about how there were no microtransactions back then is nonsense as well. The period he keeps going back to for old games was the rise of this bullshit. Oblivion's horse armor was already years earlier.
The vibe of this video is just an awkward teenager lamenting he wasn't born in his imagined version of an earlier time.
The disappointing thing is, I do actually prefer older games. I think there is a wealth of interesting discussion about the things that were done differently. This video just isn't it.
I had one like... ten years ago? It didn't make enough of an impression on me to keep it in my moves or replace it, but it wasn't bad. If I lived in a place without an oven I might consider one again. The issue is I tend to meal prep and cook in bulk, because I'm lazy, so the low capacity can be a problem.
Though the real heads all make sure they got slow cookers
It has been a long, long time since I watched watched Andromeda but I remember always thinking it might be on the verge of something interesting then it seemingly forgetting what it was setting up and moving on to something boring again. Besides, I have always had a soft spot for dodgy look sci-fi action adventure from the 90s/00s.
Also I had a crush on Lexa Doig.
That last season was especially painful though, my god.
You're kind of right. Discovery S1 was trying to be a dark, prestige drama. It felt a lot more like BSG than Trek. I haven't watched it since it premiered but I don't remember hating it, though I didn't love it either.
They fired their show runner pretty early, so there is another tone shift from S2 onward. The tone becomes a lot more like the new-Trek movies, and later much more like Strange New Worlds. Take a look at screenshots from Season 4 compared to Season 1 to see just how much it shifted stylistically.
The real issue isn't aesthetic or tonal, it's that the writing is excruciating.