Amarna Forum

(09-09-2023, 03:39 AM)anthony Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-09-2023, 03:16 AM)Guest Wrote: [ -> ]Past a certain age, a man still playing video games can be a bad thing.

Past a certain year of birth, a man still pretending video games are weird is a bad thing.

They're not weird, in fact they're more accepted than ever. They just get boring, mind numbingly boring. I wish I could enjoy games again, I really mean it, but I can't with the current slop. Thus rejecting video games is my only choice. 

Memes aside, enjoying games isn't bad per se. But discussing them is kind of whack. Vidya talk goes nowhere, there isn't a more subjective field, not books, not movies, not even music. I don't enjoy them anymore, but the person enjoying them, his/her experience is so personal that it serves for nothing to the other. Everyone who rambles about them on forums, imageboards, etc is just masturbating. I don't enjoy watching others masturbate.

(09-09-2023, 03:58 AM)Guest Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-09-2023, 03:39 AM)anthony Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-09-2023, 03:16 AM)Guest Wrote: [ -> ]Past a certain age, a man still playing video games can be a bad thing.

Past a certain year of birth, a man still pretending video games are weird is a bad thing.

They're not weird, in fact they're more accepted than ever. They just get boring, mind numbingly boring. I wish I could enjoy games again, I really mean it, but I can't with the current slop. Thus rejecting video games is my only choice.

They don't get boring, most are shit and boring, as has always been the case. And the public eye focuses on shit ones. What are you saying. Imagine saying this about movies or literature and think about how people would take what you're saying. You wish you could enjoy these things, but "the current slop" (I hate people who choose to use disgusting words even to make disgusting points) is a problem. This isn't television. You aren't bound to a few channels of incoming signal. It's a library. It only gets bigger every year. You have access to NEARLY EVERY VIDEO GAME EVER MADE but you are choosing to pay attention to three big ones made by retards which are NEW every year. Video games aren't the problem. You are. Your ongoing decision to be retarded is the problem.

Are you also like this with movies? With that you could at least make the case that you prefer going to the kinoplex or whatever, but even in the cultural backwater where I live it's possible to attend screenings of good older films fairly frequently. Culture is not a television. It's a library. Are you like this with books? Can you only read things which came out in 2023?

Quote:Memes aside, enjoying games isn't bad per se. But discussing them is kind of whack. Vidya talk goes nowhere, there isn't a more subjective field, not books, not movies, not even music. I don't enjoy them anymore, but the person enjoying them, his/her experience is so personal that it serves for nothing to the other. Everyone who rambles about them on forums, imageboards, etc is just masturbating. I don't enjoy watching others masturbate.

As for discussion value, you seem to as far as I can tell be operating under the impression that the point of discussion is to solve art and media objectively. You may be new here, as that's basically the opposite of what I say the point of art is when it comes to this in every discussion. The room for someone to make their own view of something is what makes it interesting. It's where the discussion is possible. Where there is objectivity there's no point in discussion.

Also I believe that your idea on video games being the most subjective in this sense is maybe not mistaken, but probably coming from a narrow view of what we can make of more fixed media.

(09-07-2023, 11:23 PM)Guest Wrote: [ -> ]I don't know the video game and I can believe that it sucks from woke-itis. However, working with so many cooperators seems like it almost inevitably implies a degradation in quality. 80/20 rule means there are only so many inspired intelligent people to make games. Plus, the too-many-cooks and technical debt type heuristics from software engineering probably apply albeit to a lesser degree.
Only almost inevitably, because if one could enthrall all the brains in the third world with a suitably restrictive mechanism it may serve some purpose. In the same way the "wisdom of the crowds" could be teased out of midwits in glowie programs, unreliable sparks of intellect may be malleable into cutting rays for barely-nontrivial problems given proper load balancing and error correction.

Consider that anime regularly outsources, but doesn't falter in quality.

The real problem with Starfield is it's unwillingness to do anything interesting, innovate, polish, etc. It's just a very bland game. The hatred of this game is basically just surface-level shitting on bugs and some poor design choices, not this very real issue. Don't believe me? Both new God of War games have the exact same issue, but are praised universally because they do everything OK, and being under anesthesia is essentially what most modern gamers want in their video games. Outsourcing is just a symptom of this problem, it's a way to get "good models" that aren't interesting.

Armored Core 6 might be one of the only cases i've ever seen where a franchise has it's control scheme dumbed down when moving to PC, rather than the other way around. 

(Quality of the game notwithstanding. I haven't played too much yet but seems pretty on par with the best entries on the franchise.)

Genshin ended up being rather well-made which goes a long way for explaining it's popularity. A series of fables essentially. Easy to write, easy to read, easy to digest. Slightly difficult when it gets to contracts but...well, most things go in 1 ear and out the other anyhow. I can see how they amassed such a large volume of players out of nowhere. The artwork is a major weakness, as they simply do not have the quality of the better Japanese artists. This being said, the gaming audience at large doesn't seem to have the ability to tell the difference. In this case, they supply all the symbols of "good Japanese art" and I assume that the audience (at large) digests it as such.

The format of "Gacha" is actually quite good for a game like this, as it forces the player to adapt with what he has unless he wishes to spend money. It is not difficult to adapt, and so I don't see it as being particularly predatory. The larger flaw is that MMO-like nature of "limited farm." In a game like this, one would want to farm for long stretches. But here, you only have so long to acquire x or y material. On the other hand, you don't need much of any material. But this does reduce the "lifespan" of the game in comparison to classical grinding RPGs. Probably a necessary adjustment (and so not much of a flaw) for the mobile market.

Professional education has also gone to the mobile market, with even some very "high-end" suppliers putting their stuff in mobile format first and foremost. I don't particularly like it, but it is what it is. I feel digestion is limited on such a device, which inherently has many distractions. I believe modern PC's are the same in this way, they are "locked-in-place phones."

Anyway, it is a strong game. Sometimes the masses are correct. The art is not great, but it is good. The music is not great, but it is good. The format is great in terms of what one can "build" and "build towards." The writing is good, and they probably succeeded largely on the strength of the mascot character.

F-Zero 99 is fantastic (I played X and GX, never had the original) and is a brilliant implementation of "online play" into an existing premise. It works perfectly with what F-Zero always was to me, which was a "racing game" that was actually about violence and personal presence in competition. Every racer always had a distinct machine and portrait so you'd appreciate them as people rather than slightly more present ghosts in what are basically a series of time trials. Making them actual people is brilliant.

Some people call this "Battle Royale". Whatever. But that meme has inspired me to reinstall Player Unknown's Battlegrounds for the first time in years to see what's going on there. Probably an army of chinese people cheating but we'll see.

Update: I came 30th and killed 3 people. The first one immediately after landing was particularly neat. Thought I picked a nice out of the way place. Someone else did too. Landed as fast as I could and found a shotgun. Loaded it while running to where I thought they want and blasted them away the moment I saw them. Then kind of moved around with a scoped rifle and picked off a couple of people before getting taken out as I approached the late game tight circle. Almost got the person who got me, then watched how the endgame played out. Game has a nice spectator feature. This is a really nice "pure game" format. The aesthetics have taken a hit since it became so asian. Guns and clothes no longer feel mean and utilitarian. Half of the players look like K-Pop acts carrying weird nu-guns I've never seen before with retarded neon green skins. I remember when the game started it was people dressed poor eastern euros, and clothes were on the ground like purely aesthetic powerups. Finding leather coats was always fun. And the guns were very basic. A couple of each type, simple and recognisable. Felt nice.

Still the core premise hasn't been compromised and this is probably a better game you can play indefinitely than some junk like Counter Strike. Felt like I was actually thinking rather than going through motions. Will probably play a couple more rounds.

(09-18-2023, 11:47 PM)anthony Wrote: [ -> ]F-Zero 99 is fantastic (I played X and GX, never had the original) and is a brilliant implementation of "online play" into an existing premise. It works perfectly with what F-Zero always was to me, which was a "racing game" that was actually about violence and personal presence in competition. Every racer always had a distinct machine and portrait so you'd appreciate them as people rather than slightly more present ghosts in what are basically a series of time trials. Making them actual people is brilliant.

F-Zero has always appealed to me for this reason, gladiatorial racing, where combatants race at speeds of almost thousands of kilometres, or megametres rather, impending death looming over them as they race to the finish.  Life or death, do I want to stay safe in my current position and be patient, or do I risk spending boost power advancing past the competition and leave my car open to be trashed?  Your life hangs by a thread, so much quick thinking involved, immeasurably so with 99, a remix of the SNES original with more than three times the traditional standard of 30 racers.  The original is so impressive, these are some of the most Aryan video games.



"What if we took Formula 1 races and made everyone twice as fast and deadlier?" Granted, once you're attuned then your only real threat is the second or possibly third car, of the other three cars you didn't select.  I chose this video in particular because at least you see a glimpse of the other racers.  X and onwards made everyone else more of a threat, in addition to cars and characters of their own, but the original is still so cool.  Look at how fast and fluid this all is, for a SNES launch title in 1990.  Everyone and their mother was still playing on their dinky little 8-bit consoles, Outrun, or Ridge Racer when this blew everyone's minds.  So much activity going on-screen.



So how would F-Zero 99 rectify the original's issue of on-screen combatants like X and GX? Of course, as stated previously and in its name, multiply the amount by 3.3!  Make them all humans. 



Holy shit, 98 other racers.  It's not an exaggeration, this actually looks like a Formula 1 race on crack.  Look at how much action is happening on-screen, all the chaos for you to wade through and tame.  Again, all they had to do was increase the amount of combatant racers, that's it, it's largely the same as the original, and I still love that game.  No elaborate musings on "gameplay" bullshit or whatever I presume, it just connected like that.  And the end result is cool, like all video games should be.  I surmised at one point that Nintendo's only course of action for F-Zero was to make an online multiplayer game that still retains the intensity and violence these are known for and they did exactly that.

(09-09-2023, 04:08 AM)anthony Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-09-2023, 03:58 AM)Guest Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-09-2023, 03:39 AM)anthony Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-09-2023, 03:16 AM)Guest Wrote: [ -> ]Past a certain age, a man still playing video games can be a bad thing.

Past a certain year of birth, a man still pretending video games are weird is a bad thing.

They're not weird, in fact they're more accepted than ever. They just get boring, mind numbingly boring. I wish I could enjoy games again, I really mean it, but I can't with the current slop. Thus rejecting video games is my only choice.

They don't get boring, most are shit and boring, as has always been the case. And the public eye focuses on shit ones. What are you saying. Imagine saying this about movies or literature and think about how people would take what you're saying. You wish you could enjoy these things, but "the current slop" (I hate people who choose to use disgusting words even to make disgusting points) is a problem. This isn't television. You aren't bound to a few channels of incoming signal. It's a library. It only gets bigger every year. You have access to NEARLY EVERY VIDEO GAME EVER MADE but you are choosing to pay attention to three big ones made by retards which are NEW every year. Video games aren't the problem. You are. Your ongoing decision to be retarded is the problem.

Are you also like this with movies? With that you could at least make the case that you prefer going to the kinoplex or whatever, but even in the cultural backwater where I live it's possible to attend screenings of good older films fairly frequently. Culture is not a television. It's a library. Are you like this with books? Can you only read things which came out in 2023? [...]

Thank Hitler you cut down this moronic POPULAR "opinion" (general consensus). God, do I get SICK of people espousing this complete RETARDATION. HURR "I just don't like 'em like I used to!" DURR— uh, okay first off, fix your shitty fucking life. Video games are luxury items— if you're living in squalor it's going to impact your ability to interact with fine things.
How many times does this need to be repeated? Forever, apparently.

On the subject of "slop", I agree that this is a negative aesthetic creep— one which I am all too guilty of allowing in.
What would you suggest we use to refer to ZOGshit or similar? "Slop" obviously gains traction because of the desire to externalize internal disgust impulse onto the things— to make others feel it.
There's benefit in this, but I agree that "using disgusting words even to make a disgusting point" is probably a net negative.

(09-09-2023, 04:08 AM)anthony Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:Memes aside, enjoying games isn't bad per se. But discussing them is kind of whack. Vidya talk goes nowhere, there isn't a more subjective field, not books, not movies, not even music. I don't enjoy them anymore, but the person enjoying them, his/her experience is so personal that it serves for nothing to the other. Everyone who rambles about them on forums, imageboards, etc is just masturbating. I don't enjoy watching others masturbate.

As for discussion value, you seem to as far as I can tell be operating under the impression that the point of discussion is to solve art and media objectively. You may be new here, as that's basically the opposite of what I say the point of art is when it comes to this in every discussion. The room for someone to make their own view of something is what makes it interesting. It's where the discussion is possible. Where there is objectivity there's no point in discussion.

Also I believe that your idea on video games being the most subjective in this sense is maybe not mistaken, but probably coming from a narrow view of what we can make of more fixed media.

Again, thank you for cutting down this dumbfuck "RATIONALIST" 4Mex homogenized "opinion".

Guest you are retarded, what you seek is to shave off the edges of everything, so your "opinions" are completely frictionless.

(09-20-2023, 11:57 AM)skorr Wrote: [ -> ]I have been playing and greatly enjoying Deus Ex. Just finishing up the Hong Kong mission but I can tell that it will certainly be one of my favorite games, if not my absolute favorite.

The gameplay is fun, but the only comment I will make is that I greatly enjoy how JC can just do whatever he wants in a narrative sense with few repercussions. For instance, it was a blast killing Anne Navarre and getting the whole thing wiped off of UNATCO records. 

But the setting and atmosphere is what really makes it amazing. You have everything scary people thought about the government back in the late 90s rolled up into this beautiful package. UFOs and gray aliens, artificial vaccines for artificial viruses, mole people, FEMA...

I will create a thread after I finish the game, probably.

The conspiracy culture aspect is very cool. And something I'm broadly looking into at the moment. Might make a "conspiracy culture" thread down the line after I look at a few more things.

(09-21-2023, 01:10 AM)anthony Wrote: [ -> ]

(09-20-2023, 11:57 AM)skorr Wrote: [ -> ]...

The conspiracy culture aspect is very cool. And something I'm broadly looking into at the moment. Might make a "conspiracy culture" thread down the line after I look at a few more things.

Imagine Deus Ex (a Deus Exvania?) were it to be made with the past 20 years of conspiracy theories after The X-Files.  Q, Alex Jones, David Dees, Space Nazis, They Live Lizards, Gangstalking, Epstein, Coronavirus, Hyperborea, everything.  The conspiracies were always one of my favourite aspects that Deus Ex captured and utilised, I am begrieved that much of its recent attention has been on that nigger from the start talking about taxing corporations.  For me, it was always that everything you know is wrong, and it's time to take action into your own hands to understand the world.  JC Denton is so awesome.

Something I've been discussing with people is how the 90s conspiracy culture was such a complete aesthetic, or at least looks like one in retrospect. The X-Files seems like it was able to emerge naturally from what was already there and fill the shoes. The tastes and inclinations of actual conspiracy theorists (typical 90s conspiracy theorists are even regularly somewhat lionised in The X-Files, get to be friends with Moulder, etc) were able to combine with the genuine concerns of the time (rather mild because 90s), the things which actually were popularly talked about underground (urban legends and UFOs, safe but intriguing stuff), and the tone of the 90s (beginnings of darkness and moodiness creeping back into popular culture, early high tech fascinations that were not yet zogged).

It makes for a very complete look and feel that could pretty much spin itself out entirely due to some happy coincidences of circumstances.

Conspiracy culture today is... different.

Far more severe, far more high stakes, more people in deeper and all connected to stuff that's far more visceral and real. No longer weird long haired nerds watching the skies. Now it's fat boomers on facebook talking about the need to execute democrats to shut down the adrenochrome farms, and democrats talking on twitter about how we need to execute the facebook boomers to stop them being concerned about things which aren't even real. 90s conspiracy culture was very libertarian. Things looked stable enough that those who knew a bit more about what was going on could still believe they could politely excuse themselves from dysfunction and decay. And still thought it was possible to goodwill and hardwork our way out of most problems. But by now, we know what most of the smart libertarians have been forced to turn to.

This new age of conspiracy is not fun or cool. It's very tedious, ugly, miserable, and everything that emerges from it is ugly. What does conspiracy culture of today actually look like if we try to represent it on screen. I mean the actual look. The 90s was light and mist spilling through open doors at night, lights in the skies, spooky pine forests, serious looking men in dark suits. It's cool, and nice. But today we don't really have either.

You could make something of it. But it wouldn't be nice. It'd probably have to look like Inland Empire to be true to the times.

Last thought, and to bring it back to video games. My absolute favourite conspiracy game to come out recently (of not many) is The X-Com Files, the mod for the original X-Com. It beautifully captures the tone of The X-Files and 90s conspiracy culture and realises them in a unique way. X-Com was always about exploration of the unknown, through direct engagement in combat, among many other ways you engage with its world. Modding x-com is more than re-skinning the aliens. You really have to build each entity as a complete piece of the world with pages of data, imagery, statistics on function, and then you viscerally engage with it in fights to the death, among other things. The game has a more exploratory/investigation oriented approach and tone than just about anything else I've played. It's a brilliant way of engaging with the premise.







Very recent production, still being worked on but was basically done a couple of years ago. Point being I love this game, it's a brilliant idea. And it understood that to be cool and interesting and fun it had to be specifically 90s culture, rather than general conspiracies. On one level this is a nice nod to the original game, which was set in the late 90s to 2000s, as was The X-Files, but nothing beyond this era is incorporated. There is no Jeffrey Epstein level. There is no adrenochrome. There is no great replacement or trannies on tv. Despite being about ostensibly horrible things, it is a nostalgic work. 

(09-21-2023, 05:02 AM)anthony Wrote: [ -> ]Conspiracy culture today is... different.

Far more severe, far more high stakes, more people in deeper and all connected to stuff that's far more visceral and real. No longer weird long haired nerds watching the skies. Now it's fat boomers on facebook talking about the need to execute democrats to shut down the adrenochrome farms, and democrats talking on twitter about how we need to execute the facebook boomers to stop them being concerned about things which aren't even real. 90s conspiracy culture was very libertarian. Things looked stable enough that those who knew a bit more about what was going on could still believe they could politely excuse themselves from dysfunction and decay. And still thought it was possible to goodwill and hardwork our way out of most problems. But by now, we know what most of the smart libertarians have been forced to turn to.

This new age of conspiracy is not fun or cool. It's very tedious, ugly, miserable, and everything that emerges from it is ugly. What does conspiracy culture of today actually look like if we try to represent it on screen. I mean the actual look. The 90s was light and mist spilling through open doors at night, lights in the skies, spooky pine forests, serious looking men in dark suits. It's cool, and nice. But today we don't really have either.

You are confusing "conspiracy culture" with conspiracy-influenced culture. The fundamental difference with the 90s is that conspiracies, and general mistrust on the american institutions, weren't as taboo in popular media as they're now. So a fair amount of television, videogames, and other forms of entertainment appeared wearing a clear influence of this "subculture"; but these were by men on the outside looking in, and taking out, this subculture. I would wager nobody who wrote The X-Files believed that extraterrestrial beings were walking among us, nor anyone working on Deus Ex believed that Majestic 12 literally governed the world. It may be that most of them were skeptical towards truth as was told in television - but they were still working for what amounted to "television". This civility was to be expected of them - and it is entertainment, after all.

Let's take a look at actual "conspiracy culture" , would you use "soft" to describe this? Would you call it fun? Or, dare I say, cool?







This is art by a man who believes in alien influence on this planet to the point he believes that he lost his virginity to an alien. It's as far away as lack of severity as one can get: the grays are as alluring as they are terrifying - and we are at their mercy. The key to understand "conspiracy culture" is, for me, the belief of the unavoidably upcoming Apocalypse, with every piece of media born from it as a prophecy, or a warning. Conspiracy art is visionary, it's about Revelation of the sense of the world, a final judgement, and the effective end of history. There's no stakes higher than these. And to what point were people willing to act according to them? 



Can it get more "miserable" than Marshall Applewhite fixating his eyes upon you and convincing you to commit suicide? 

I don't think modern conspiracy culture has changed. I don't think the 90s, as a whole, did it better, and certainly not mainstream culture - just that entertainment media moved out of them certainly out of terror. But conspiracies should be terrifying: you should be in horror and awe at the end of the world. It's not nice, but it never really was. Maybe the 90s had an innocence to them that blinded them to what was self-evident, was that the case? But can that be said to be a sign of a "nicer" time?

And yet, I believe, it's still "beautiful" - or, rather, sublime. I love this sentence, my favorite header of a news article in history. If after pondering it over and over again it doesn't disprove that the aesthetic power of "conspiracy culture" beyond mere fanciness has been lost, I don't know what could. 


The sheer "innocence" of it, of serenity as the noise and destruction of Retribution surrounds you, this smile... could this come from a place that is very tedious, ugly, miserable, and from which, everything that emerges from it is ugly?

"Lies of P" What is this, a game about being offered a glass of lemonade by an 8 year old girl?
Haha just kidding of course, that would be a ridiculous premise for a video game. haha.

(09-22-2023, 08:27 PM)oyakodon_khan Wrote: [ -> ]"Lies of P" What is this, a game about being offered a glass of lemonade by an 8 year old girl?
Haha just kidding of course, that would be a ridiculous premise for a video game. haha.

More seriously, Lies of P was an inevitability. You can take the "Gameplay" of a total and expressive work like Demons' Souls (through to Elden Ring), rip it out and start inserting it into different things as a modular piece of "content" for making various video games. Of course this has already happened a few times, just never this egregiously. The "mechanics" of Elden Ring divorced from the whole picture are just pointless. Stock assets. They were never compelling to me in isolation. But I know to the average person everything but that might as well not have existed. "Gameplay" and "lore" (has replaced "story"). That's a video game.

Miserable stuff. Bioshock crazy guys, retarded steampunk robots, korean-pretty protagonist (the best part since it's them being most honest and original about what they're into). To elaborate on that last point, the peak of Korean video games seems to have been various 2000s mmos where they were truly being themselves. Materialistic nerds with solid craft skills. Every Korean video game should just be about beautiful people going shopping. It's what they want, and so it would come out most interestingly. When are we getting a Suicide Boy game that plays like Shenmue only the karate is replaced with shopping and cutting yourself? THAT would be truly Korean and truly interesting.

The idea of a non-Fromsoft souls game is a silly task.
I feel that the actual in-the-moment combat was never exactly the Souls series strongest point, that their games are "greater than the sum of their parts" and ever since Demon Souls, the combat was more of a means to an end. The way you interface with this world and such. Dragons Dogma, a game that I consider vastly inferior to Dark Souls, has much better combat.
Of course, Fromsoft is not exactly blameless for this, they've been upping the spectacle more and more with each game, with most bosses being epic "fights" rather than the puzzle-esque approach of the first games. it's not exactly a bad thing, but a bit of an awkward feedback loop between what the audience wants and what Fromsoft wants to produce.

The popularity of Souls is two-fold.

1.) The quality of the experience. Others have commented on this. It is a cohesive work with many strengths.

2.) The marketing. Which was "this is a hardcore game."

The marketing will lead the discussion of the game, and will inevitably lead to poor clones etc. from other developers. The sick parts of the audience (those defeated souls who depend more on appearance of a meal than the taste of nourishment of it) will follow. This is a minority, as clone-sales always demonstrate.

"Action aficionados" are people who have internalized marketing to the nth degree.

The audience, can be split along these lines. There is one audience, that is always the same audience, and always will be. If games stop delivering to this audience, they will leave for another new media. As happened with literature and film already. It is not particularly important. This audience will never die.

This being said, this immortal audience is not suddenly some great exception of man. No, they will generally communicate along the lines of a game's marketing as well. They will swap priorities, contradict themselves, etc. as they follow quality around. They cannot express what they know. This is the state of most of humanity, including some who are very impressive. I will not put this on the most impressive, because I do not know them, but it is fairly believable that they would be of this type too. After all, Great Men never write their own biographies. They leave vast cuts in History and Time.

Why can't Normcattle differentiate between good games and bad games?
The thought that millions of people slavishly do their daily toil in their lord's manor(Genshin Impact and other gachaslop) willingly is baffling to me. Why are these people so fond of these activities? Do they feel obliged to return because they've started very long time ago and now it has become a habit, or at more extreme circumstances, second nature?
All of it is so mundane and repetitive, their daily lives are like this as well and yet they don't even want something new or exciting either.
It is as if they're accustomed to this insect-like situation despite being ''free''.
What is this spiritual condition which reduces the men to numb creatures who occupy themselves with dull games, thus numbing themselves even further?
What I believe games need now is, clarity about what it is about. No cover art or trailers which fool the enfeebled minds, no pandering to effeminate and sick masses. A defined beginning and an end, a game which sets out to accomplish things and does so without regret. I am afraid technology has advanced so far but humans have regressed! Their minds and bodies are sick, their technologies allow them to unravel the truth, and yet they're still idle. The gaming question is about the humans despite having so many technics are still far from becoming gods!


Thus among chatter a bright light shone forth.
In the future a game will be brought forth, vision of a single man, an individual so supreme that he is the ultimate culmination of the West beginning with the Greeks and resulting in today, master of all arts and of godly strength. Someone who composes wonderfully. Someone who is free of sickness and has clarity of mind, his game will not help out the player, he won't lay down the carpet so everyone can enjoy a tasteful session of gaming preceded by a mundane activity. No, it will demand many things, it will demand that the player first and foremost has to be strong, with lungs to take up long journeys in highlands. Above the clouds, among many marble fountains which share the most tasteful Ambrosia, with thunderous music which fill the brightly lit and divinely held clouds he will have many servants which he will refer to as ''my most dear muses'', he from his great place will show a glimpse of the divine light that he is so familiar with. Us dwellers of earth, some of us will ignore it, some of us will conclude that we don't have enough strength to travel to his place and some will be utterly possessed by his message transforming entirely to fly there. They will become birds, who by relinquishing their former morality and conduct, come to posses entirely new ones, superior ones, which made them even more elegant and clever!
For what is a poet or a prophet? Is he someone who puts the infant to sleep by singing lullabies? Or is he someone who sets people aflame with passion and joy! But joy could be tiring and passion's vessel could at times be unworthy of his passions. So, we who are so fond of hidden truths, so fond in fact that we hid one inside our own heads, above our mouth and between our eyes, open your hearts to the genius who is yet to come! The savior whose coming has been announced now with great enthusiasm. Despite being so away from us, one could hear his whistle, profound and confident.


Beginning with ''Thus'' and ending with "confident", those puzzling words don't belong to me, despite this prophesy coming from me without any forethought, I feel compelled to share it with my friends on here. I have an active account here but I will post this as guest so that this noble testament won't be associated with anyone.

All video games exist in a ratio between Pacman and Gary Grigsby's War in the East.
Dark Souls is the ur-video game because it achieves alchemical perfection by balancing these two.
NaughtyDog/Ubisoft movie games attempt an artificial balance for mass appeal and thusly are effectively eunuch trannyware theleologispiritually-speaking

I was curious, and now and then decide to spend money on myself to try and fight my extreme miserly neurosis, so I bought Escape From Tarkov. It was 25% off, so only kind of beat neurosis. Still expensive for a game.

It seems to have a lot going for it, works very well as a refinement of form, but it also does a lot I consider sort of wrong. Here's the short answer. I think this is where Icycalm's philosophy would have led if he weren't retarded. It's not a "first person shooter". It's high stakes virtual gambling framed around simulated mercenary manhunts. Is that fun? Kind of.

They did a great job with the guns, and the feel of the violence and shooting people. The guns are very modular in the way modern guns are, you can fiddle with them in different ways. Outside of fights you can view the 3D models and mess with attachments. In fights you can look at it, check its various functions, load individual magazines with different rounds, the gun stuff is nice.

As for the broader game stuff... again, high stakes gambling framed around simulated mercenary manhunts. Certain people might find this comparison upsetting, but it reminded me most of PUBG, which I also played again recently. PUBG is like the "arcade" game to Tarkov's "hardcore" experience. PUBG makes more money and has more cash flowing through it, but it's not a material gambling game. It's free to play but encourages asians to buy more flashing widgets and pink hats for their character. While Tarkov is expensive to buy into, then makes you invest time and effort into securing nice virtual objects, which you have to gamble as you play the game. You die, you lose your stuff. If your gun was nice the guy who killed you is walking off with it. And a nice gun is a lot of work in this game.

Tarkov is Russian I believe. And seems to have on some level been spawned by a lot of strange warehouse neurosis. No MICROTRANSACTIONS, because we all know those RUINED gaming, right guys? No microtransactions, but the game is built around "dailys" and various gambling inspired addiction loop processes... with no way for the devs to really get more money from that once you're in. It might keep you playing, but what is that really worth to the guys making the game like this? Or you, obviously.

The game is great stakes experience. You have to be completely wired and paying attention or you're going to die and suffer consequences. If you're playing well you'll be punishing other peoples' complacency and running off with their nice stuff. Heavy gambling with virtual assets is a great (and evil) idea and I'm really surprised more people don't do it. Imagine a racing game where you have to bet your car.

On one level this is the stakes game, on the other, it has really nice guns and finely detailed gun shooting. Obviously these feed into each other. As I'm always saying violence tests and engages us because of the stakes on one hand, and the capacity to leverage ourselves against our circumstances on the other. The game does this quite well. The trouble is just that once I get it... there isn't really a point.

I enjoy firing nice virtual guns. I might occasionally want a really mean challenge. I enjoy an experience that's new and alien. I've had some experiences that really threw me and had me thinking differently here. But, I'll still say that after having spent a day or so on it (a decent pile of hours, I don't feel robbed), I might consider myself done. At least for now. I'll keep it on my computer probably and fire some guns a few more times. But honestly, it kind of made me want to play pubg instead. PUBG is faster to set up games, faster paced once you're inside, better suited to shorter sessions (I feel like Tarkov is built around sunk days), I can easily set myself a short term goal I can easily be satisfied by (win or place high in one game), the guns and such are still pretty good, the game's scenario forces a lot of thinking and planning and reacting without feeling like it rewards whoever is willing to sink the most time since we refresh every game and the skills demanded are very video game fundamentals. If I want a high stakes game based around stalking people through wide open spaces PUBG gives me a lot of what Tarkov has to offer, but I don't feel it hooking at me in such a way that Tarkov does. Even though PUBG is probably actively trying to hook me harder.

I probably enjoyed Tarkov the most the first time I survived a big outdoor level, it was like Death Stranding with guns. I had to tab out to check out the massive map and actually navigate by landmarks from one end of the thing to another. Along the way killed some stuff, collected nice things, and got out alive. That was very pleasing. But then, the fact I had to check an external map is weird. The game doesn't give you an effective in game one. The game to me seems to thrive heavily on how weird and obtuse it is, but it also seems like it encourages people to get out of that as soon as possible. You get *Quests* with obscenely obscure goals. Needle in haystack stuff. To survive a game you need to find an exit, which are very vaguely named and that's all you get to go on. No chance. The more familiar you get with the thing the more pointless it ultimately strikes me as. The more it's just an elaborate slot machine that costs time.

I have more Umineko to read, I have to play Pathologic 2 to completion (the real peak of Russian interactive multimedia), I have old Japanese stuff to emulate. The game offers some novel experiences, but ultimately feels sort of like a warehousecore experience for masochists.

Also, I am able to feel done with the game because my first experience with it was such an absurd peak. First shot I fired in the game was a mistake. I got startled and hit left click. Second shot hit the head of a max-level player. Killing him instantly. I kept his max level dogtags as a trophy. With that I beat the game and got my money's worth. Everything afterwards was postgame fucking around.