Heliocentrical

Fallout 1: I think I just hate Fallout 2 since it's goofball fest. I'm actually enjoying Fallout 1 much more with it's serious tone and great atmosphere.

BTG is awesome, come at me bro.

Yes, I mean it sorta worked didn't it? Anyway I have some of my earliest gaming memories with the PS2. It's only console I ever owned and I loved that damn thing. My PS2 was Mine. I eventually transitioned over to PC but I still long for a PS2-like controller for my PC. I got an Xbox one controller for my PC and I hate it. Firstly it feels light and flimsy in my hands as if I could break it with little to no effort if I wanted to. Not to mention it has the worst wired connection I've ever come across. If I sneezed in the Xbox one controller's general direction it would magically disconnect from the wire I plugged into. You really have to jam the micro usb connector into the controller's micro usb port in order to get the controller to even connect in the first place and the wire doesn't even go in all the way . Overall not a good experience. I would love to get a beefy, weighty gamepad with a PS2 like control layout for my PC.

Anyone who does not follow the path of the PS2 and Sony are heretics that must be purged of their sins. All analog sticks must be in the center of the controller, one right next to the other. The Xbox controller is utter heresy used by perverse deviants that have fallen from the grace of our lord Sony. I mean what in the name of the holy PS2 is going on with it's left analog stick? Okay imagine the Xbox 360's controller scheme as a person's face. Do people normally have their left eyeball over on the leftmost side of their forehead and rotated 45 degrees? No! they don't and why is the d-pad in the left analog stick's spot? It should be in the left portion of the controller as mandated by our lord and savior Sony. For their sins our lord Sony has inflicted seven red rings of death upon the Xbox heretics. They know what they did. Xbox Controllers may be designed by heretics but like the Borg they're atleast somewhat human I think anyway. Nintendo controllers meanwhile are Lovecraftian nightmares constructed by Cthulhu himself and anyone who takes an unfortunate glimpse into the eyes of these unholy manifestations will be forever tainted. At which point there is no salvation for them. Speaking of which I've been meaning to get one of those older models of PS3s with some PS2 hardware so I can play my older games. Dark Alliance 2 was amazing.

Is my fellow conqueror of the living.

Glad you liked them, I actually have a few more if you don't mind. I'll PM them over to you as to not go off topic. OT: I really don't think anything good will come from talking more about Digital Homicide. The best people can do is to just ignore them and they will fade out of existence on the internet.

While I can't speak for gaming and Youtube culture as a whole I have found some rather noteworthy channels. In fact if it wasn't for them I wouldn't be where I am today. They've made a massive impact on my work and me as an individual. I would highly recommend checking out these channels and see what peaks your interest. Noah Caldwell Gervais: https://www.youtube.com/user/broadcaststsatic Noah Gervais is one of my favorite gaming analyzers. His videos are so in depth that they often span a couple of hours. Noah Gervais analyzes an entire franchise's worth of video games per video. While I do enjoy Noah's videos I also recognize that they can be a bit difficult to get into due to their density. But I still highly recommend his channel nontheless and really appreciate the insights he has to offer. Games as Literature: https://www.youtube.com/user/gamesasliterature This is one of the more recent channels that I've found but I haven't delved into much. As the channel's name suggests this guy looks at the narrative of video games as though it were literature. I suspect you might really enjoy this channel considering how fond you are of books. Errant Signal: https://www.youtube.com/user/Campster Campster delves deeply into the themes that games explore and talks a great deal about mechanics. He's another one of my personal favorites. Game Maker's Toolkit: https://www.youtube.com/user/McBacon1337 Mark Brown talks a great deal about how games are designed and the thought processes behind the design. Overall an excellent channel. MrBtongue: https://www.youtube.com/user/MrBtongue MrBtongue doesn't make videos that often but when he does they're amazing. A lot of his videos explore gaming from a literary context.

Sorry Selfsurprise but this really rubbed me the wrong way. Firstly you should never associate a character with how a person is IRL as characters are often exaggerated and serve no basis for reality by any stretch of the imagination. Secondly where did you get the idea that he was lazy misogynist and closet homophobe? Having watched Jim Sterling's content for a long time now I happen to know he's actually quite liberal.

@Woah_G! yes I suppose selective optimism and focusing on smaller things would be reasonable. However people who're overly optimistic about things far beyond their scope will inevitably be disappointed because they can't fix what the set out to fix.

Same here except I've realized that I'm a complete jackass in most cases. I have a history of coming across as insensitive, cold and I've made women cry on a couple occasions even though I'm very polite. People seem to think it's fake because there isn't any heart behind it after they get to know me for a bit. I mean politeness and courtesy is just a gesture a good will right?

But that's exactly the same problem I stated in my OP. Little details while nice only allude consequence and never let you legitimately experience it. They're just set dressing. For example in Fallout 1 if you kill Killian for Gizmo over at Junktown you don't actually get to see Junktown evolve into the thriving boomtown that Ron Perlman alludes to in the ending. You just have to trust that what Ron Perlman is saying about what happened to Junktown to be true. It's all hearsay, you never get to legitimately experience any sort of consequence for your actions, it's disappointing. I guess that's why character progression always felt more real to me than narrative progression (except for Planescape: Torment and Undertale). It's a given that how you build your character will implicitly impact your gameplay experience. When I was playing Deus Ex GOTY with the GMDX mod I was gritting my teeth when I had to choose between the combat strength augmentation and the combat speed augmentation. Both of them have very legitimate functions which made the decision all the more difficult when I had to choose one over the other and stick with it for the rest of the game. This is my frustration with narrative in most games. There is often no weight and no impact to your choices. In games like Fallout 1 & 2 you accept the illusion of consequence without experiencing it. To put it bluntly it's as if those kinds of choices don't have any balls.

Well politics was annoying me and thus it must be punished by facing my wrath. It's not like I'm wrong here. Whether people can handle the truth or not is up to them. At least I'm not delusionally optimistic for the future unlike some people I know IRL. Boy aren't they in for the shock of their lives when their expectations for reality are shattered right before their eyes. As long as I continue to lower my expectations for the future then I will never be wrong and I take great comfort in knowing this. The future is utterly predictable, there's nothing we can do to fix it and I have yet to be proven wrong in my predictions. Also no one seems to be eager in proving me wrong either so that must mean I'm right.

Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion with Nehrim mod: I just found a bow called the Bow of Nutrition and it absorbs health. Um, Okay? that's an awfully weird name. I assume this is due to Nehrim's poor translation from German to English.

Deus Ex GOTY With GMDX Mod again: I just had this revelation, at the beginning of the game Paul Denton goes out of his way to make sure the NSF don't get killed but if you never played the game before it acts as a subtle bit of foreshadowing. You immediately suspect that something is going on between the NSF and Paul but you can't quite put your finger on it until later in the game. I'm totally convinced that pacifism is bullshit. Paul doesn't want you to kill any of the NSF because they're his buddies. So it makes sense as to why he doesn't want you to kill them. I think this applies to civilians as well but that isn't so much pacifism as it is not being a fucking murderer. Self defense isn't murder and Deus Ex treats it as such. Now if from that point onward you decide to kill UNATCO and MJ12 troops nothing happens. Deus Ex has context for everything if you look for it. Animals are killed regards of how you go about handling them so there's that too. I will be trying to ghost all of Deus Ex. Deus Ex "Pacifists" insist that you knock out all of the guards instead of walking right past them. You know because who wants to be sensible and to conserve ammo wherever possible? Fucking amateurs.

Don't cough while drinking soda either. I had a rather unpleasant experience where I was drinking some soda and cough snuck up on me. The soda went straight up my nose and hurt like hell.

I'm so sick of political pissing contests. Don't you people have anything better do or could possibly be less obnoxious about it? I will be so happy when this fucking election is over and I don't care who wins. Then in four years we get to do all this pointless bullshit all over again until the end of time, hooray. After playing Deus Ex I would kill to put a sentient A.I like Helios in power. Helios would've been so much better at governing us then we are now, that's pathetic.

@Selfsurprise yes, I very much feel this way. I have numerous written concepts and essays that I have yet to publish in any capacity as I'm concerned with their overall quality. but my writing will be up to my standards eventually. I have so many unique insights that I wish to offer to others and make them think about it. I want to make people go "Oh, I've never thought about it that way before.". That's just a basic reaction but I think you get my point.

Yes, but that's if you're interested in looking at a game from an objective standpoint for the benefit of the consumer. I'm not interested in doing that and I disagree with this approach entirely as I believe video games are subjective experiences as opposed to objective products. As I said in my initial post my stated goal is to help video games as a medium progress in terms of design and mechanics. This does not entail that my insight is for consumers to base their purchases on as that isn't it's purpose. I'm a subjective philosopher, not an objective critic and it's only just now that I've recognized that. What really gnawed at me about my critiques is that I couldn't tell subjectivity apart from objectivity. I do not fully understand nor appreciate the general consensus of the consumer and as such I refuse to create anymore critiques under the false premise that I am for the consumer. So with my newly found consensus I'm choosing to dive head first in to subjectivity instead. Remember when I said I hated fast travel and you called me out on it? You knew that I was talking out of my subjective ass. Hell I knew that but that's still how I felt about that mechanic. Do you see what I'm saying? I am subjective to a fault so I'm not exactly the best choice when it comes to critiquing video games.

The concept of choice and consequence in RPGs has been really bugging me lately. For one I really don't think the concept means much since I make choices in video games constantly so what is it about RPGs that makes them different? While RPGs deliver on the choices front I have yet to feel any sort of consequence or impact from doing them. You know in Fallout 2 when the "consequence" of my choices means I have to choose between which clips of Ron Perlman I want to play for my ending slideshow I don't exactly feel the impact of my choices and thus they feeling meaningless to me. Each settlement I visited remained largely the same as it was from a mechanical standpoint. Now obviously this is an engine limitation but I can't help but feel like the concept of choice and consequence is being oversold here. The things I did in Fallout 2 that were sold to me as meaningful to me didn't feel like so whatsoever Now there is an example of the type of choice and consequence I'm talking about and it's the bomb in Megaton from Fallout 3. While from a narrative justification for blowing up Megaton was rather simplistic the mechanics of it were impactful. What is the consequence of blowing up Megaton? Megaton is wiped from the face of this earth and instead of being a viable settlement with merchants you trade with now it is a large crater in the ground and there is not a single merchant in sight. You removed an aspect of gameplay and you felt it, to me that is a legitimate consequence. The overall execution of the bomb was just perfect. I guarantee you that if you blew up a nuke in Fallout 2 nothing would've happened. All you would get as your "consequence" is that you would get a clip of Ron perlman saying you blew up a nuke and that's it, Whoop de freaking do. What matters more in terms of consequence? For me it's having a mechanical impact on the game world as opposed to a narrative one. It just feels right to me and I can easily forgive any flimsy narrative justification for making a choice if it means the consequence is impactful.

This is a genre that I really haven't given a chance and I'm not sure if I like it or not. Most of my experiences with them involve me trying to figure out how to progress for about half an hour and then quitting when I'm unable to. Are there any Point and Click Adventure Games that have extremely simple puzzles with no moon logic?

+1000 I don't know what the original context of your post was but what you said applies to pretty much everything. Idiots are annoying but arrogant idiots are even worse.

EzjFArjCMj8 I'm kinda in love with the way Free Dominguez's voice sounds right now. She's probably at least a decade or two older than I am. But that's okay right?

After some consideration I don't think being a reviewer is something I want to be. I'm sick to death of drawing lines in the sand and the inherent positive/negative camps that come from doing so. I don't want to be telling people what's "good" or "bad". I want to tell people my thoughts and add to the overall conversation surrounding video games as a medium. I want to be something akin to a video game philosopher if you will like MrBtongue https://www.youtube.com/user/MrBtongue and Noah Caldwell Gervais https://www.youtube.com/user/broadcaststsatic . Also while I have nothing against listing my grievances with various titles I can't help but feel like there's something wrong with quantifying them as a product in a review. The value you get out a video game is entirely subjective so what's even the point of a review when it's from the reviewer's perspective and not mine? In order to truly know if I like/dislike a video game I must play it for myself in order to get the whole experience that is only subjective to me. Until I'm able to play the video game for myself I'm unable to l see the whole picture and I'm only able to view it from the reviewer's perspective. This is one of the limitations that the concept of reviewing a video game pose.

Yeah, it seems to have trouble recognizing PCs with newer hardware. If the Sims 2 detects PC hardware it doesn't recognize then it will default and lock down to the lowest possible settings. I had to edit the Graphics Rules.sgr file just so I could have access to higher settings, get rid of those awful black squares that appear underneath sims and run the game at a 1920x1080 resolution. But IMO Sims 2 is the best sims game out of the series. Sims 3 was good but felt lacking compared to the Sims 2. Likewise the Sims 4 felt lacking compared to the Sims 3 and has been going nowhere 2 years after it's initial launch. iqaprLT7zic

Sims 2: Hello addiction my old friend.