Deep Dive Devin

The Sonic Unleashed PC port does open the floodgates for Xbox 360 ports, but only partway. The static recompilation tools developed for it essentially translate code from 360 to PC, and can work on any game, Unleashed was just the one the devs wanted most. It's not as viable as stuff like the N64 recomps we saw last year, since Dario and Skyth had to rewrite the game's render pipeline, but there is a lot more that can be done with this stuff in the future.

chatGPT has revolutionalized fake accounts. there are still some more basic ones on here but they go through cycles and patterns. a lot of times they're scraping and rephrasing other posts on the site. honestly, given our relative lack of activity, I'm just surprised they target the place at all. I can't imagine there's many people coming here clicking their scam links.

It's not a joke because it's not anything, this is a bot.

Oh come now, I think we're all gonna make it to dying as climate refugees or getting shot at protests in at least two decades.

@Mira are you really sure you want to be baiting bad arguments out of people? I don't think it's going to be fun or helpful for anyone, and if you're not careful the mods may come down on you for it. If someone doesn't respond to reason in a polite environment I don't think they're going to respond to it any better in an antagonistic one. I understand if it's just a dunk, I like dunks on conservative dipshittery, but I don't know if actively targeting someone is going to get you anything other than a ban, and I don't want what dwindling members this forum has left to be occupied by the aforementioned dipshittery.

Played this game last week while I was ill. Fittingly, it felt like a fever dream. The visuals really convincingly emulate the aesthetic of pixel art despite the entire game being 3D. It allows for a cleanness of style with the freedom for more expressive cameras and perspectives. I don't know that the animesque character drawings totally fit that setting, but it avoids Ross's Yuppie Psycho complaint of over-the-top expressions. The game wears its Silent Hill 2 influence on its sleeve, in that you're looking for your dead wife and start the game staring in a bathroom mirror. The story wears its Neon Genesis Evangelion influence on its sleeve, in that it doesn't make any fucking sense, but I cried anyway. The puzzles aren't the hardest, but each one took me a fair amount of time and didn't feel too leading, without ever requiring a guide. I would say they respect the player's intellect more than they directly challenge it. The survival horror gameplay is also super-smooth, enough that I would recommend veterans of the genre play on harder difficulties, since I'm a novice and it was still pretty comfortable for me on normal. I kinda wanted to feel the squeeze, a little bit more than I got. Just make sure to use the "extended inventory" option. Some people might think futzing around with too few item slots is rewarding. I don't. The psychological/cosmic horror aspect gave me a headache. This story would be confusing and non-linear even if it didn't feature the breakdown of reality making both the player and protagonist unaware of what's real. This is the classy style of Lovecraft, where the influence of something sinister is felt more than the presence of the thing itself. If there even is a something. It might all be one thing that's a different thing. It also might not be real. Interpretive art! All in all, you have to be willing to accept that the story is more emotionally honest than literal (you also have to like lesbians) but it was one of the most arresting experiences I've had with a game in a long time. Highly recommended if you enjoy good survival horror mechanics and having all hope crushed from your psyche.

But it's not about persuasion, is it? It's not like the people who regularly claim to believe democrats, the left and any of their civilian beneficiaries are actual demons from literal biblical hell got to that belief by observing the available evidence, right? They don't care about other opinions. It's about performing an affect to each other and themselves. That's why we see phony terms like "anti-conservative bullying" come up, because any acknowledgement that they are not, have never been and probably never will be the underdogs would crack the facade that they're defending anything but the same royalist sentiments that the founding voices of conservatism established centuries ago. It never went anywhere, and it's not going anywhere.

Be honest, no you haven't.

I can tell you're an aspiring fantasy author yourself. Either way, literally nobody asked. You just hop between different racist or misogynist conspiracy theories targeting whatever minority group pisses you off during a given hour of the day with no direction. You're not actually going to do anything here except keep making the case that absolutely no normal person should want you in any kind of movement or community.

Okay. Well the rest of the world would rather that you just be filtered by the extremely basic standards of participating in the movement's discord server. Hence why we have the standards.

No it's not. It's actually very normal, average and general to be less insane than you. Extremely low bar to clear. That's what the rules are for! You get a lot more people in the movement without the predatory assholes feeling like they belong and making things worse for everyone else.

Not very specific at all, as long as the rules do their job. That's kind of the point, toxic people like you drive support away. Extremely fucked up sentence to write Buddy. The one in a tiny corner is you. If Stop Killing Games is that important, the compromise should come from the tiny sect of toxic weirdos, not the rest of the human race who just wants to keep their games. All you're showing here is that you care more about performing this predatory politics than any video game.

They're also not really left on social issues, but I assure you that neither I nor almost anyone on that discord server is interested in discussing social issues with this guy: But y'know good luck with the brain ghost demons

That wouldn't be accurate even if we all clubbed ourselves over the head until we were dumb enough to pretend Biden is "leftist". You are fighting brain ghosts

Oh my god I remember this, I didn't even notice it was the exact same guy. He was pushing this "everything is controlled by secret commies" conspiracy theory almost four years ago now. Is this why he thinks discord mods are all secret commies??? Because he got banned from the unofficial AF discord for the exact thing I'm talking about? That is hilarious

Really beating the "extremely niche toxic personality" allegations with this one. "Listening to reason", here meaning "Calling everyone 'evil demons' when they don't accept your conspiracy theories that anyone who bans you for being racist is a secret communist". Bud, all I said was that your perspective was skewed on account of you not knowing what you're talking about. Is that really less reasonable than telling me to burn in the fires of hell? So-called "Extreme leftist social ideologues" have not been participating in elections recently. Conservative democrats keep blaming their losses on the left for not voting enough, so clearly the left is a big enough voting block that you should appeal to them, right? I love the false equivalence here. "Yeah, the right will attack blacks and jews, but the left isn't ACCEPTING of our anti-black and anti-jew behavior, so that makes them worse!" "You just compare anyone you don't like to Hitler!" | | V "Moderating my internet toxicity is just like Stalin and Mao!" lol. lmao, even. Also the hilarity of calling Reddit of all things dominated by leftists. I cannot stress how much I wish the world you are afraid of was real.

The rest of your post suggests otherwise. We're all familiar with exactly what you want, which is to not be punished for hate speech and harassment. Your chosen path to this is to pretend they're "ill defined". The old "you just call anyone you don't like a nazi" defense. And it's just as bad as it's always been, because big shocker, only a very small and very specific subset of toxic personalities ever seem to struggle with this. It's never a problem for the overwhelming majority of people. That's part of the reason discord servers are chaotic, because clearing that bar is no problem for anyone except the exact people who are supposed to be filtered. If the standards were high enough that only lefties were allowed, servers would be a lot better! You're just mad because the kind of bigotry and harassment you or one of your friends or idols keeps getting banned for is something you think the targets deserve, that shouldn't be disincentivized. And uh, you're wrong. That being said, we should take from Orwell's playbook, particularly from how he dealt with this ideology in Spain.

This is an extremely hilarious thing to say. I just went onto the discord and their policy is the most bog-standard "do not attack people for no reason" stuff any normal person would want and expect. If you feel excluded by this, you probably SHOULD be excluded! Anyone who can't take these extremely basic and sensible guidelines is a person to avoid. I'm not sure how exactly going against so-called "leftist ideology" is much help here if this is your breaking point. This is a movement to have governments regulate corporate industry practices, because basically no other options seem to exist. The economic conservative's answer to the problem of Games Being Killed is "let it keep happening until people get sick and stop buying"...and that's not happening! It would massively destroy decades' worth of art to let it continue even if it did! You want a discord full of channers that don't actually care about the movement? Because it sure SOUNDS like you do. In conclusion,

Nobody said that they did.

I guarantee not one of these books said video games should have shit post-processing effects all over them.

I never said "even if there's no difference between the two", because there is a difference. Maybe the guy calling everyone else stupid for being able to see that difference is the one who's not thinking for himself?

Gee, I wonder if there's some difference between carefully curated atmosphere and colorwork in a movie or drawing and games with shit post-processing. Could it possibly be that the one that looks like dogshit gets treated worse? Nah, everyone else must just need to be convinced bad art direction is actually good.

This is just you being an elitist. Maybe you shouldn't be treated as equal for having dumb opinions like this one. You think art is just whatever personally appeals to your emotions and makes you feel comfortable. It's childish. It takes skill to actually practice a craft to completion, it takes no skill to have a vision and taste. Those things are endemic to human existence, and you're dumping on tastes you don't like for not matching what you subjectively believe art is "supposed" to look like. Everything has a personality, and anything with visuals has "an artistic direction". Doesn't mean I have to think they're good, or that me doing so is any less valid a take than yours. When it's appropriate, maybe. Nobody is arguing against games using colored lighting to convey a day/night cycle. That's not the thing being debated here, it's aggressive post-processing applied to entire games regardless of context. Concept art isn't the game. If something looks bad, it looks bad. It allegedly being intended to look better means jack shit. Bad attempts. Yeah and they accomplished it without applying shit post-processing to the whole game. Insane what difference actually executing your vision properly does. Please don't be a bitch. You're not "sorry" when you're responding to something nobody said. Literally no part of this is about games not having or not needing dark atmosphere, it's about not trying to achieve that atmosphere in a way that looks bad and cheap, which nasty filters and pointless distractions do. It seems like you believe that the games you like cannot actually be criticized and everyone else simply must be convinced to like them. It's kind of rich to see you strawmanning people this hard to call them children when your whole take is essentially just saying "these games objectively look good, so how could anyone say another game using their techniques doesn't?". Bud, the video is over an hour long. We can see what kind of environments the game has, and more importantly, we can see that the new one is washed-out and vapid to look at by comparison. Whatever you act like is being attempted here clearly is not the same between both games, because they fucking look different, which means it makes sense to judge one as better and the other as worse for how they choose to portray their vision.

Those things don't actually reinforce your opinion. A game could have more concept art, more artists, an overwhelming amount of time and money spent on crafting an aesthetic, and still not actually look any better than another game with less. This is possible not just by the unique voices of different people shining through without too many chefs spoiling the broth, or by the game having dogshit post-processing effects slapped over it that distract from the art direction that was there. If you don't have better examples of games "being cinematic" and "had any kind of personality" than fuckin' Fallout 3 and Skyrim, then I would say there's no such thing as "overdoing it" - it's just a bad decision to begin with. Color and lighting are the exact things that aggressive post-processing is either obfuscating or trying to replace entirely. Every game with a shitty filter over it is more colorful when it's gone!

There is nothing that humans do that cannot be art when given the proper context; games are art because we say they are. Bad art, cynical, crappy, corporate art is art. And video games, whether someone sticks their hand in the soup with crappy post-processing effects or not, will always be art. Also, there's something hilarious about using Sonic Adventure 1, a game that famously made such good use of the Dreamcast's unique hardware to bring out a sleek, unique Y2K aesthetic that it was utterly butchered when placed on less-fitting hardware (yes, Sonic Team themselves also did a bad job, but that's beside the point), to illustrate how apparently this was the wrong way to do things. If it proves anything, it's that we should have been squeezing way more out of less-powerful hardware decades ago, and just streamlined the differences between platforms more quickly. Baked lighting and vertex paint is still a perfectly legitimate and often surrealistically-beautiful aesthetic, it's just that stuff like real-time lighting is easier to market with the good ol' shiny screenshots from the Deus Ex 2 video, or else allows a scene to be lit faster than catering each palette or paint to a specific mood. None of this is a defense of aggressive and unflattering post-processing either way though...because it just doesn't look good! And it's not ugly because it's realistic, because it's not realistic. It's ugly. New Vegas looked a lot more real when I changed it to something actually natural looking, and it didn't stop communicating a dilapidated wasteland in that. Elden Ring is a fantasy game, but an annoying vignette cutting off my peripheral vision made it neither more real nor more fantastical, it just annoyed me.