Chatterbox: Video Games

I've seen. Your record through the in-game timer is uploaded online and you can see where you place amongst others on the leaderboards. The skips are nuts but the main paths are welcoming.

Edited by ChicoTheParakeet on Feb 24th 2024 at 2:13:56 PM

One of Sakurai’s videos on his YouTube channel talks about how game developers might leave the industry and do something else that don’t involve video games whatsoever, which makes me feel kinda wistful and/or melancholic.

Edited by wooden-ladybug93 on Feb 25th 2024 at 11:07:42 AM

I'd argue that even with its identity crisis, Foamstars is more than just "We have Splatoon at home." It plays pretty differently, especially in its team deathmatch mode. And while it has a bizarre combination of themes, such as its wacky backstories (one character was raised by penguins to fight climate change, and had a body that produced bubbles when she was a kid), its Las Vegas-esque setting with neon lights and casinos, and the songs that nearly all have lyrics about baths and foam, it still has a style all its own that does more than mimic the "pop stars in the city" style of Splatoon.

Watching people play Foamstars and Silent Hill: The Short Message makes me wish I had both games on the Switch or PC, though I know the obvious problems with both - Foamstars is probably going to have its playerbase plummet and die as a service, and Silent Hill: The Short Message is only the length of a movie. I've also been loving Foamstars's soundtrack.

Edited by BonsaiForest on Feb 25th 2024 at 1:18:29 PM

I...still prefer Splatoon 3, sorry...

Foamstars lost me completely when they mentioned that the foam is bodily fluids.

Edited by Memers on Feb 25th 2024 at 10:20:41 AM

There's even a meme picture about that, showing both an inkling and Soa saying that they shoot people with their body fluid, and the inkling has the person respond, "Aww, you're sweet!" and Soa has the person respond, "Hello, Human Resources?"

So do I. I just think this game looks appealing to me in its own way.

And yes, Inklings use their own body fluid for ink.

Edited by BonsaiForest on Feb 25th 2024 at 1:26:38 PM

Me trying not to cry at the fact that Media Molecule shut down their PS3 servers so I can't earn any of the online-required trophies in LittleBigPlanet and LittleBigPlanet 2, which I recently bought at my used-game store.

Edited by wooden-ladybug93 on Feb 25th 2024 at 12:36:54 PM

I used to play so many player-made levels in LittleBigPlanet!

I brainstormed a little story of my 'sona being in Kid Icarus: Uprising, where he wants to become Pit's apprentice (despite not being an angel himself, only a half-human/half-kitsune hybrid).

I found a neat video about the worst Garfield video game, Garfield 2004, and the video maker's efforts to fix its problems while staying true to the original intent, which was actually a pretty neat gameplay loop.

"I'd rather have something unique than something good." Honestly, I totally understand that!

There’s a Garfield game worse than A Week of Garfield?

Edited by omega2900 on Feb 29th 2024 at 8:07:21 AM

It was the first 3D Garfield game, so there was probably some trouble transitioning to 3D.

(Sidenote, I'm surprised at how many Garfield games there are.)

https://garfield.fandom.com/wiki/Garfield_Video_Games

Edited by lalalei2001 on Feb 29th 2024 at 9:57:02 AM

For a comic based entirely on anti-humor, Garfield has a truly ridiculous following.

Anything that's distinctive will get a following! I always liked Garfield when I was a kid. He was also the unofficial mascot of my school.

This comment about the SNES version of Spawn does make me wonder if it's possible to beat Malebolgia before you're 'supposed' to.

You think Nintendo will one day develop an official accessibility controller for their consoles, like Sony and Microsoft did?

A question for gamers old enough to have nostalgia.

How does your nostalgia for older games manifest? Do you prefer the past to the present, or just have certain older games that you like along with the newer ones?

Does playing old games you liked give you a similar feeling to playing them did back then, or do you sometimes play newer games that give you the same feeling that playing older ones did?

Have you also had "nostalgia burnout," where you can no longer enjoy the old things from the past due to overexposure (having played them a lot), or have you discovered that older games from your past haven't aged well?

Speaking for myself:

The latter: I have a number of old games that I like, some moderately-old games that I like, and some new games that I like.

For example, I still love Quest for Glory III; and Aquaria; and Barrow Hill: The Dark Path.

(Okay, Barrow Hill is old in style, but it's still a recent game.)

I honestly don't think that I remember that feeling with any accuracy—but I doubt it.

After all, I was in a very different place in my life back then, and everything was much newer.

Hmm... I don't think so.

I have experienced boredom due to replaying a game too frequently—but that has nothing to do with nostalgia.

Hmmm... Probably. I don't have a specific experience in mind, but that idea seems familiar.

I have had the experience of finding that an old game's graphics were simpler than I remembered, I do believe!

I'm curious: what prompts these questions?

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 6th 2024 at 7:56:56 PM

I don't wanna become one of those old people who do nothing but whine about the present and say endlessly that the past is way better. That's why younger people become ageist.

Hey, are we gonna react to the Xbox Partner Preview Livestream here or no?

tbh, I'm not seeing too many folks bringing up the partner showcase. I'm still watching it, but I'll just summarize my thoughts at the end.

Edited by AzureSeas on Mar 6th 2024 at 1:14:09 PM

Confession: I never owned an Xbox console in my life.

The nostalgia thing is something I've wondered about, as I've seen a lot of people who insist that the past was better than the present, where the past is whatever they happen to have grown up with. I've been through nostalgia phases myself, of revisiting games from my past en masse, then eventually moving back to newer games. Or revisiting some old favorites here and there.

Nowadays, possibly due to overexposure, I can't stand stuff from my past. Chiptune music isn't nostalgic to me, but instead, just awful sounding, and all sounding very much the same (the NES only being able to output like 5 types of sound certainly didn't help). But it used to be nostalgic at one point.

Retro games, likewise, have just godawful gameplay by today's standards imo, though with some exceptions, and those exceptions are the ones I've played so often I got bored with them not due to low quality but overexposure.

I do sometimes experience nostalgia from new games that give me the same feel that old games did in their time. For example, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's sheer openness and exploration and variety in its world felt like playing the first Zelda game, which itself was about freely exploring an outdoors world and sometimes going underground. Except Breath of the Wild was way more detailed, and its world felt super alive.

My view on gaming is that every era has its pros and cons and its trends. There was a time when seemingly half the games were platformers. Nowadays I see crafting systems and upgrade systems everywhere. Just a different cliche. Microtransactions ruin the hell out of "live service" games imo, but most games in that genre flop badly, and companies are starting to learn their lesson. I've seen people argue that gaming is dying or whatever because the big budget side of the industry has lots of expensive flops and many layoffs. And yet the indie scene is somehow doing juuuuust fine. But a lot of people pretend it doesn't even exist!

If there's a Golden Age of Gaming, I argue that it's now. The definition of "golden age" isn't really about quality (which is inherently opinion-based) but instead something more measurable: rapid growth. And we got that now. Games come in many forms, from many corners of the industry, from miniscule budgets to massive budgets. The Switch alone has 13,421 games (last I checked) in its North America store (I found this by searching all Switch products on the online store, and subtracting the ones that were DLC alone). In the time when it dominated, the NES sold 60 million units. At a time with more competition from all corners than ever before, the Switch sold 139 million. Games aren't just targeting elementary school boys, but all demographics imaginable. Instead of being dominated by Japan with some input from the US and UK, the video game industry has entries from countries all over the world. While there is unquestionably some bad stuff going on (sports games in particular are ruined by microtransactions and sometimes very poor quality caused by lack of competition, like the Madden NFL games), overall, I think there's never been a better time to be a gamer.

Edited by BonsaiForest on Mar 6th 2024 at 11:54:00 AM

The past is safe because it's already happened, while the present can be pretty bad, and it's right next to the future, and who knows what that's going to look like. Playing a game from that time of safety might comfort someone who isn't enjoying the present, like how eating a certain meal or listening to certain music can be reassuring. It can also be pleasing to relax with a game you know forwards and backwards, instead of having to learn new controls, levels, enemy attack patterns, etc.

Do I habitually nostalgia-game? I'd say not really, it's just plain hard to do without having a bunch of consoles hooked up, and a lot of older PC games won't even run on a modern rig, something I found out when I tried to reinstall Emperor: Battle for Dune one evening. If I play an older game, it's mainly because I prefer it to a modern title, like how I still have Civilization V installed after giving up on Civ VI after a few hours, or occasionally have the urge to play a campaign in the Medieval II II Stainless Steel mod because I'm apathetic about the time periods more recent Total War games are set in.

Replaying those old games is never quite the same as the feeling of Past Me playing them for the first time, because like I said, I know them now. I picked up Unreal Tournament 2004 for Steam and played a bit of it (against bots), and while I could appreciate the nostalgia value of it, I've played too many FPSes since then to have the game hit me the same way, and know I could have a similar or even better experience if I bought the right modern game.

And I have been "nostalgia burned." I got the original Aliens vs. Predator PC game on Steam for stupid cheap, intending to show how my improved skills and courage would let me conquer it, only to be immediately unhappy with how the Marine moved like a hummingbird, leading me to give it up after less than an hour of playing. The Command & Conquer remaster made me grin when it prompted me to change the old-school graphics to the updated visuals, until I was reminded how poorly the two sides were balanced and how dumb the AI was. The Age of Empires II remaster had a similar problem, and the samey faction rosters, dumb unit AI, and bullshit campaign missions made me rage-uninstall one afternoon and I've never looked back. Sometimes Past Me liked a game a lot because he didn't know any better. Other times, the games were good for their time, but have since been surpassed, and my standards have risen as well.

Still, it's not all bad. Outer Wilds made me feel a sense of mystery and an excitement to unravel it that I hadn't felt since playing Myst on a neighbor's computer after school, even if the gameplay is very, very different. Deep Rock Galactic has the sort of fast-paced, high-action combat I fondly remember from UT 2004, except it also has the cooperative horde-blasting gameplay I loved about Left 4 Dead. Neither of these are intentionally "retro" titles, instead they're just damned good games that offer great gameplay, stories and/or experiences that make me favorably compare them to older games that impressed me back in the day.

Aaaand that's enough "older gamer" rambling for now.

Edited by Tacitus on Mar 6th 2024 at 12:57:55 PM