The wives and girlfriends of IndyCar drivers battled it out online this weekend:

Youtube Video – [02:50..]

Skyrim and Skyward Sword are pretty much the only major 2011 releases I've played.

The Elder Scrolls is a genre unto itself. Nearly right from the start, you can go anywhere and do anything at any time with a fully customized character. Pick up anything, put it anywhere. Harvest and combine an extensive variety of ingredients for potions. Forge and enchant weapons and armour. Pickpocket, summon, reanimate, read oodles of incredibly detailed lore books, and blast enemies off of cliffs.

Skyrim had a lot of quality-of-life improvements over Oblivion. More refined character models and animations, streamlined menus, faster combat, dual-wield spells, and an overall tighter presentation. It also had fantastic setpieces such as random dragon battles, learning shouts, giants & mammoths, Dwarven Centurions, the College of Winterhold, and Blackreach.

But even with all that, I found it significantly less satisfying than Oblivion. The snowscapes and rugged tundra feel brilliant at first, but it's the same across the whole map, and a lack of colour pervades everything. Enemy variety is subpar, with dungeons stocked mostly with different sizes of Draugr and Dwarven automatons. Dungeons have also been streamlined to the point of eventually becoming a drag, something that's never happened to me in nearly 300 hours of Oblivion. And the soundtrack leans heavily on ambience, lacking the charming melodies that pervade Oblivion. Even the writing generally feels blander.

You may be able to go anywhere and do anything, but after you finish the flashiest parts, the rest feels like you're doing EXACTLY the same thing over and over.

But hey, dem Sparks!

@oscillator said in That's Not News!:

Comprehensive article for Perfect Dark's 20th anniversary with developer interviews:

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/05/feature_perfect_dark_turns_20_-_the_definitive_story_behind_the_n64_hit_that_outclassed_james_bond

Another one, this time delving deep into Rareware's work culture at the time:

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-05-22-perfect-dark-the-oral-history-of-an-n64-classic

The biggest problem with the 3DS Zelda remasters are the visuals. Everything was brightened up and the saturation boosted, destroying the subtle lighting and atmosphere. There's no way Nintendo considers these releases the definitive way to play them or even an improvement except in a purely technical sense. It's obvious these visual changes were made only to increase playability on a very small screen.

@naltmank said in What does your dream next-gen launch lineup look like?:

Backyard Baseball 2001 Remastered. Comes with the added bonus of being able to relive your childhood, but only the good parts when you weren't a hormone monster driven purely by your Id. Man, those ten minutes would be worth the price of admission alone!

Even better - High Heat Baseball 2003!

Youtube Video

Youtube Video – [51:23..]

Youtube Video

Comprehensive article for Perfect Dark's 20th anniversary with developer interviews:

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/05/feature_perfect_dark_turns_20_-_the_definitive_story_behind_the_n64_hit_that_outclassed_james_bond

@scotty said in So, there's this Kyle Bosman guy on Twitch...:

@oscillator

So what was the big project?

Kyle is now a freelance narrative designer for the German developer KING Art Games (Iron Harvest, former EZA sponsor), working on their next, unannounced project which is in the conceptual phase.

Also, he said the Masters degree he was going for was in Game Design.