He sleeps upside-down like a bat, and roams the woods of the upper Left Coast at night, foraging for wolves. It is known.
This isn’t a new excuse, and shouldn’t simply be lampooned. They, and others like them, will do worse than repeat it unironically — they will normalize it.
As an OG who grew up with “real” video games having to be entered by hand from the pages of a cherished magazine (like the mail-order seamonkeys/X-Ray glasses/etc. fad before it), please hear me when I say:
If the game you’re playing isn’t doing it for ya, alter/mod it until it is. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a noob, a child, afraid of judgment by “everyone”, or all of the above.
Do you just love the way your latest/favorite game does combat, but somehow the dialogue/narration is a drag? You’re in luck! The latter are almost always “skippable” right outta the box! But, should you instead for whatever reason prefer to not fritter away your very finite and completely unknowable number of remaining heartbeats on a slog of fetch-quests… You have your own permission to upgrade your experience until you’re happy. Full stop.
Fuck the haters (fwiw, the doubters in your head aren’t real people), play your single-player games however you want. The real “cheating” is depriving yourself of that sacred, cherished happiness because of “peer” pressure manufactured by faceless “culture”. 🤘🏼🤓
Honestly? I just picked up Eternal Strands the other day, and have been pleasantly surprised at the thematic flow, level design, dialogue, and even the art transcends my assumptions. At first glance, it looked a bit Overwatch/Torchlighty in style, and the combat can get bouncy at higher power levels (it’s a good thing, and super fun, but no spoilers)
I’m enjoying it more and more each session. The kaiju hunting sequences have elements of a certain Colossus series with nods to Breath of the Wild, et al. Loadouts & equipment in general have a classic Monster Hunter feel, modulating elemental affinities to target mission/hunt. (eg. Optimizing weaponry for Force [grav ctrl], magic for fire, and maxing armor with fire resist is some ridiculous fun: pulling all mobs into melee, lighting the black hole effect around you on fire and immolating them in stasis? Good stuff.)
The dialogue is well done, too, and I honestly don’t miss the cutscene style conversations that’re quickly becoming standard issue. The way this team pulled it off, with talented writers and evocative voice actors, I haven’t skimmed a dialogue yet — actually look forward to them, in fact.
Anyhow, give it a try. There’s more under the surface than the trailer or any non-spoilery media’s gonna show ya. 🤘🏼
Ferreal. They stumbled through the Uncanny Valley, but decided to camp elsewhere — and wisely. The rampant alteration by the frothing, untethered Sims modding crowd will tweak every atom of their hard work into something barely recognizable. Except for the towel-guarded bits that pixelation made “too suggestive”(?)… Yeah, that’s not gonna come up at all, post release. 😉
Boomers trying for that Satanic Panic BS again. 😜 Yeah, that totally worked last time, gramps. TTRPGs are a multi-billion global industry, now. Fuckin’ blue hairs.
edit: Can you imagine what it would be like to have demonstrative pedestrian justice against CEOs, et al, be widely accepted as “cool AF” & something everyone’s at least a little curious about? What a Game Night changer, eh 😂🤘🏽
To this day, I’m at a loss to explain why people go piddling around in this festering pool of our modern Internet® without a fucking condom (much less: bleach, flamethrowers, etc.)