For video games I prefer the smoother experience but this media isn’t as simple as others. The ambitions of one game can affect its performance and depending on how much the player spends on their system, the experience differs.

I have forgiveness for drops and stuff depending on the severity. Like... in film, there isn’t a difference in Transformers and a silent film; both can play on YouTube just fine. The hardware is secondary.

With that said, the best experience is always better. It’s like how I get annoyed when people watch movies on an iPhone and they miss out on half the experience. It’s like that in games too. I tend to be somewhat bothered by a bad version of a game where the frame rate chugs when I know it’s so much better elsewhere.

I was on vacation for the last two races. I missed a lot of stuff. Sad news for the sport with the crash in F2. It would have me rattled to my core if I was a racer. I've been rattled by less in my own life.

Looking forward to Singapore. Now that NFL is back, my weekends include waaaaay too much sports consumption. I hope this isn't unhealthy, aha.

I think a trades show like E3 is amazing for fans, people looking for networking opportunities, and publishers alike. But the idea of centring your marketing campaign around a HUGE E3 showcase isn't realistic.

From experience, even getting staff to make a quick photoshop poster for something like a publicity shoot is a pain in the ass when they have 50 other waaaay more important tasks going on that will actually help make the TV show itself. I can't imagine working to make some big E3 demo when you could be doing other things.

I believe E3 still has value, but a more round the clock approach to the industry and marketing is healthier and will be how things work in the future. ESA should lower the cost to attend and more developers and publishers will show up likely. I still think its cool to have one BIG trades show for the industry per year. But expecting each brand to have something important every year is unrealistic.

Maaaaan I hope this is half as amusing as Aliens Colonial Marines. Looks to be a similar shit storm.

Resistance: Fall of Man

Replaying this split screen for the first time since it came out. I remember loving this game, but it doesn’t hold up suuuuuper well.

Pretty much every element in this game other than the guns and AI is half assed. For example, there isn’t any music until some strings pipe up when it wants to scare you. I don’t remember this being so vanilla.

With that said, the levels get better mid-game and it’s still quite fun to play with a friend. We played it to get into the spoooooky Halloween atmosphere but it’s more of a warmup because it’s not really that scary. I think Resistance 2 was better in that regard.

I was off the Assassins Creed train with the Ezio trilogy pretty much taking the series in a seemingly infinite narrative direction, but once I saw AC3 was an Indigenous story, I was excited. I never followed up on whether Indigenous people had a say in its creation but what I hear, it actually had a solid story and gameplay scenarios but late into the game.

I actually bought this but I had issues with the acting performances and extremely slow pace. On top of that, I felt like I was at the end of my rope with the hard to control parkour stuff. I bailed about 13 hours in and haven’t looked back at Assassin’s Creed unfortunately.

I didn't have time nor the memory to submit for this years list. Looking at the list on Wikipedia, I didn't actually like very many games from 2012 and I probably would have placed Wipeout at #1 even though I only played it in the Wipeout Omega Collection for the first time in 2019.

The Drum n Bass + Dance + Electronica + 4K visuals + 60 fps + future race aesthetics + speeeeeed = GOTY

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Sometimes going the cinematic route isn’t better. I actually prefer Fallout New Vegas to Fallout 4. There is something immersive and true to RPG games when you just zoom in on someone’s head when you’re speaking to them.

Edit:

to add to that, I really didn't like the opening in-game cutscene in Persona 5 (not the anime cutscenes). The animation felt wonky, and sometimes JRPG games feel uncanny when they try their hand at proper blocking. Despite me being tired of shorthand JRPG animation and blocking, for example, hand flipping gestures and everybody standing in a line - it still kinda works and is pretty effective for the genre.

So sometimes the simple way is the right way.

I kinda agree with you. Well, I DO agree with you but the games industry is unnecessarily sheltered and only recently do they begin to open up about how the process of making games works. From what I understand, these kinds of cinematic cutscenes and dialogue scenes are improved with time and budget.

Most companies nowadays create an algorithm for their camera angles in dialogue scenes or cutscenes. BioWare went the extra mile and tried making algorithms for animations which was a mess in its own right.

The thing is, it actually works sometimes. You’d have no idea but CD Projekt Red uses this method in The Witcher 2 & 3. Most dialogue scenes in that game look amazing. OTS shots, wide shots, panning low angle dolly shots. They go hands on and have cinematic directors for key scenes and every scene gets reviewed and approved but the algorithm is there and it works.

Control is pretty bad with the standard 3 cam setup for dialogue. Over-the-shoulder, over-the-shoulder, wide. Rinse and repeat. It definitely gets old, but what else can a AA-budget game actually do?

AA-budget games are expected to look, feel, and play on the scale of AAA-budget games. They’re reviewed and treated the same but the resources are different. It’s kinda a losing situation if you ask me.

Also kinda leads to a greater issue that John Carmack brought up in his Joe Rogan interview. Games cost so much money nowadays. Salaries are high and the quality expectation is high and it takes so long. In the end, the budgets can go BIG. It’s not unusual for a company like Ubisoft or Rockstar to spend $100M-$500M on a big game. So therefore, you want the biggest return possible and you get games that are “focus tested to death” meaning you get similar feeling games. So I find a lot of games like Control come off as super commonplace with its DNA coming from many other games. Despite having some of its own identity, Control and other AA games have to feel like the AAA ones but they come off as lesser in many ways.

I can’t live without ranks so I went with Standard. Can’t wait to play more.