ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: STATE OF MIND

[Ross Scott]

Merry Christmas!  This was supposed to come out sooner, but made it just barely in time instead.  This one might be a little more chaotic than usual, but it felt like an experience.

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[Archdeco]

Christmas game suggestion, although it's not the most obscure, and it's more of a New Years game, but check out Hypnospace Outlaw sometime.

[Steve the Pocket]

If I had a nickel for every time I've seen Steve Jobs' likeness used for a fictional tech company head, I'd have two nickels.

 

Also, with all the talk of brain uploading, I was expecting the game Soma to come up. Since it didn't, I'm guessing you haven't played it. And since you clearly have thoughts on the subject, I think you should!

 

Oh, and I'm curious what your source is for the claim that Carrington-class events happen every hundred years. I know we had a near-miss barely a decade ago and that the "original" Carrington Event was over a hundred and fifty before that...and the trail goes cold beyond that point. Also are we or are we not counting the ones that did or will miss the earth in that figure, because I think that's a pretty big asterisk.

[Im_CIA]

"Christmas Has Fallen"

"Millions will play Hanukkah games"

[Mira]

Quote

"Christmas Has Fallen"

"Millions will play Hanukkah games"

looking forward to the AVGN review of Eight Crazy Nights on the HyperScan

[The Screw]

This episode was a blast.

 

[ClockTickRobot]

The Christmas and Winter barrels aren't completely exhausted yet, but I agree they're close.

 

Parasite Eve is probably an obvious pick, the whole game takes place around and on Christmas Day and has a very weird plot with lots of strange monsters. Even though its a Squaresoft RPG, the combat isn't actually turnbased, instead being a unique 3rd person hybrid thing. The game isn't very grindy either, unless you want to try and beat the Chrysler Building on a second playthrough, but that's optional. I've beaten the game without any grinding, only took me like a few sittings too, its actually pretty short. PS1 only so it needs an emulator but it runs fine, at least on DuckStation.

 

For overlooked winter games there's Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves where you play as a Canadian lumberjack setting traps in the daytime to fight werewolves at night. The game is currently free on Steam. Its presentation is kind of lame, but the gameplay is solid with a lot of variation on the traps and weapon options. Its a Unity engine game so there's some slowdown, but on a gaming rig it shouldn't give you any trouble.

[ultrayoba]

Hey Ross, you brought up one interesting topic regarding modern attempts at stylization in indie games.

What you called "low poly" characters - they are not low poly themselves. If you look at the polycount of 3d beards, 3d eyes, 3d eyelids, 3d polygonal glasses - they probably have more polygons than Half-Life 2 characters. But they lack any kind of smooth polygons and textures.
 

The first two images are examples of (almost) the same model in Floppy and CD versions of X-wing. One is flat-shaded, while the other, the same, has Gourand shading applied, which makes it look smooth with the same polygon count. So your typical late 90s game or early 00s game has much less polycount than this indie game, but it was "smoothed" and had bitmap texture applied. Later games in the 00s also had other texture post effects to fake "detail" without using a billion polygons.

So there was a modern trend for some time when high poly models (or even just overlay filters) just without texture or shading were called "low poly". And it is still something you get first in google. And I kind of hated it, it reminded me of overall idk "corporate logo style" stuff. But this game takes it to the next level an inserts such characters into a textured world.

[Rick]

I've been playing The Talos Principle. Every time I stopped to think how much I liked the maps I was reminded of Ross since I didn't think much of game worlds before watching his videos. I thought he would enjoy that philosophical, puzzle game.

Now this video reminds me much more of that game given the similar AI themes. Now I'd like even more for Ross to try it if he hasn't yet. We seem to view things a little differently. I'm curious of what he would make of the questions posed in the game and if his views would change or stay intact.

[Im_CIA]

Why did you just reword half of the first guy's comment 

[Im_CIA]

Damn that bot got nuked so I look schizophrenic again

[SteelPony]

28:35 WTF! I can't believe that that footage is actually real. Cops in Peru really did actually dress up as Santa and his elf during a raid. - https://abc7.com/peru-lima-drugs-gangs/8825557/
 

31:20 "How to be a successful Bum. A tutorial by Ross Scott" :-D
 

33:50 I don't think it's an oversight on the game's part, Ross. Maybe the reason the police robots' massacre at the club wasn't mentioned on the news is because as we saw at 24:50 , there's a special office "only for members of government agencies" right inside where "independent" news is supposed to happen. Who's to say government agencies haven't set up shop in other press outlets in the game world. They probably(almost certainly) had a hand in keeping the police robot massacre incident off TV.
 

[Kaiosama TLJ]

Not gonna lie, for some reason the floating goblin head saying random stuff to the kid reminded me of MacBeatnik from Total Distortion:

 

Edited September 3 by Kaiosama TLJ (see edit history)