rolling thread of stuff worth reading on videogames

i used to play the LucasArts games before we even had a soundcard, so my first memory of Monkey Island 1/2 is with the speaker music, which was still quite glorious

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Friday, September 30, 2016 3:01 PM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so true.. I had no idea those games even had speech until I played loom at someone's place who had a sound blaster. mind. blown.

They didn't, originally! CD-ROM versions. Thankfully, the Lucasarts approach of dialogue floating around the character as the mouths warbled and limbs gesticulated was far more expressive anyway. The ironic asides in particular would surely have grated coming from no-budget actors...

secret at least never had speech, i think -- cd-rom version featured VGA graphx, icons instead of text for yr inventory, and iirc pre-recorded music tracks rather than speaker/MIDI. but nobody talked till (the underrated) curse. (2000s "special edition" had speech i assume but i never played this.)

loom tho yeah that had speech in a later version. WELCOME TO THE AGE OF THE GREAT GUILDS. for space tho it was often altered from the orig text. by orson scott card, weirdly.

agree that the captions over the wild gesticulations are a Style and that the games were written for that style.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/13/13263008/mafia-3-racism-shooter-opinion

yeah, even the ads for that have been very UH

it's a shame because i do like the concept/setting

really good piece on PLATO gaming

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/10/want-to-see-gamings-past-and-future-dive-into-the-educational-world-of-plato/

i haven't actually read it yet but it makes me v happy to see this
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2016/11/hillary-clinton-for-president.html

I enjoyed this review of FF XV - actually got me interested in playing it
http://kotaku.com/final-fantasy-xv-the-kotaku-review-1789400066

is it a mmorpg or no? if no, i may have to try?
i hate this answer tree

it's a classic single player FF, though sounds like the fight system is pretty different from previous FFs (real time, can't control party members)

real time fights you say? welp, there goes christmas.

can't control party members? ok i'm like interested but i've been burnt so many times by FF as of late. i thought FF X was garbage

I enjoyed the heck out of FF XII

13 made me never want to play another.

but...

12 is awesome, 14 was even pretty fun for a MMO

13 is bad

i have honestly forgotten what number was the last one i played

I have a challopion belief that FF is the worst iteration of console RPGs

thats barely a challop tbrr. hard to think of a worse one

jimmy maher at the digital antiquarian keeps getting better. right now he's doing a (three-part?) series on a world war i dogfighter, i guess as a prelude to his coverage of cinemaware's "wings" (1990). considered dropping the blog when he finished with the infocom games (his primary wheelhouse), but not as long as he keeps writing the way he has been.

http://www.filfre.net/

Thanks Will I needed that

I have a challopion belief that FF is the worst iteration of console RPGs

the latest ones, or the series in general? confused by "iteration" there

i will stab anyone who has a bad word to say about IV-VI. the rest are pretty flawed, but i haven't gotten through a full one since VII

i haven't played one since IX. i'm excited for the new one, though, and will take it on when i'm done with the witcher.

Karl you should play X. it is really good. the combat is amazing. i'm playing IX right now for the first time and while it's really good, it feels like one of the most linear of the series. there are long stretches where i am just watching stuff happen. the story is pretty cool though.

XV looks really cool and i've played the demos and it seems like a good mix of modern HD graphics and weird fantasy stuff (very cool random monster design from what I've seen) i would already have this if it was on Steam GET WITH IT SQUARE ENIX!

oh yeah, XIII was vastly underrated. the story was dumb and impenetrable but it looked amazing and the combat was so much fun. juggling enemies in the air was a blast. they should have just ditched the world map completely.

the latest ones, or the series in general?

all of them!

7 and 8 are ok ish.. X is fine.. everything since is garbage

XII was fun!

did we ever make a thread about horrible pay-to-win games like Game of War and the ridiculous, horrible things they do to people's lives?

like this guy?

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-game-of-war-california-stolen-money-20161212-story.html

Ater stealing $4.8 million from his employers, Kevin Lee Co went a spending spree and bought everything from season tickets for the Sacramento Kings to plastic surgery.

But his oddest expenditure was on the addictive smartphone game “Game of War.”

According to federal prosecutors, Co spent a lion’s share of the embezzled funds – approximately $1 million – on the game.

https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/how-cheat-codes-vanished-from-video-games

That's a fun read, thank you!

Wonder if the WAD community and its descendants might also fit into the narrative. The novelty-play Goldeneye modifications discussed in the article were surely inspired by things like Barney Doom, where fans dove into the code and started reverse-engineering it. And then at a certain point you don't really need or want 'codes' because the novelty effect of being able to moonwalk or whatever is actually now an unlockable thing if you collect all the hidden skate tapes.

That also makes me think that the novelty just wears off, particularly when the average gamer is 16 rather than 10. But maybe most important at all is that games got less hard. Something like Contra virtually begs for some cheat, any cheat, for you to have a snowball's chance of seeing most of the levels. That's pretty much a dead model.

no way dude I beat Contra before cheats
shoulda gotten a badge or patch or something

that badge is called "take a blurry Polaroid of the TV set and get Nintendo Power to print it"

I remember when Activision games asked for that, on 2600. think maybe we did it once?

no way dude I beat Contra before cheats
shoulda gotten a badge or patch or something

same, it was sheer memorization

im in that Contra club.

i was super impressed with the cheat codes in GTA:SA. "make everyone a clown" "make everyone an Elvis impersonator" "cars have moon gravity" etc.

http://kotaku.com/the-year-in-video-game-paintings-1790382713

not worth reading (apparently neither Orland nor his editors know which decade WWI belongs to; only one non-PS4/Windows/XB1 game makes the cut) but I thought this pattern was of interest. The parallel evolution of games and cinema end-of-the-year detritus?

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/12/ars-technicas-best-video-games-of-2016/

20. August 2
19. October 6
18. October 13
17. March 11
16. October 21
15. June 29
14. October 10
13. November 29
12. November 17
11. October 28
10. October 28
9. August 23
8. February 5
7. October 18
6. May 10
5. November 11
4. May 12
3. January 26
2. February 25
1. May 23

think it's worse for video games because you need a ton of time to really examine them (especially certain genres like multiplayer shooters and RPGs) unlike films. video game reviews generally have the deadline rush problem

http://www.vulture.com/2017/02/video-games-are-better-than-real-life.html

(as with most things on the internet, ignore the headline/URL)

kind of an interesting article. tbh i'm not sure if i agree with the final assertion. the world IS shit, but is that why video games are great? um... no.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/soviet-arcade-game-museum

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/musicofcastlevania/musicofcastlevania.htm

Castlevania is where the series starts and more or less defined what the follow two games will sound like. The heavily syncopated rhythm with the octave leaping bass in "Vampire Killer", the first level of the game, is present in nearly every level track of the game and is very common amongst these three games (as well as most Konami games of this era). Every song is also in a minor mode, which is a bit unique. While the levels have a distinct Konami esq. rock like drum accompaniment (indicative of their style and the era), there are still numerous baroque influences that dot the OST. The "Alberti Bass" figure that accompanies boss fights and the second phrase of the level five music are perhaps the biggest indicators of a Gothic/baroque influence. Even though "Alberti Bass" figures relate to classical technique, it's especially synonymous with older harpsichord and clavecin music so the intent is rather clear.

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-oral-history-of-oregon-trail

Interesting analysis by Liz Ryerson on Duke Nukem & toxic masculinity, in Jacobin of all places:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/04/duke-nukems-dystopian-fantasies/

http://kotaku.com/how-three-kids-beat-the-odds-and-translated-final-fanta-1794628286