Moa

Couldn't have said it better myself.

I have mixed feelings on Remedy's offerings. They are damn good at creating an interesting atmosphere but their stories seem to always suffer from gun-in-hand syndrome.

So I finished the show and I liked it. The final episode was clever, emotionally satisfying, and excellent. I think I can better identify my initial reservations about the show and it is basically about problems with information and tension. Throughout the show, it feels like the viewer's perspective is split between Steve and whoever is the principal character of the episode. The primary mysteries are all questions that are unresolved for Steve: What was up with the house? What happened that night? What is currently happening? Other than the final question, there is very little tension because in the first case the viewer knows the answer and it takes Steve a long time to catch up. With the second question, neither the viewer nor Steve have all the information, but Hugh does and is just frustratingly holding out on us as well as Steve. We aren't waiting for a mystery to be solved, we are just waiting to be told the answer. Again, there is very little tension here. So there is only significant tension in the present-day timeline, which moves glacially slow and ultimately leads to the one place it was obviously going.

Am I missing something or is there no way to do competitive multiplayer matchmaking without having to do the free-rush mode?

Play the real game first and VR if you're e into that.

From a gameplay perspective, it is by far my favorite single player shooter. I love how the game encourages and rewards an aggressive playstyle. My only wish for the game is that I wanted bigger fights. On Ultra Violence it felt like the enemies were well-balanced, I just wanted more of them by the end of the game.

This seems very deadly premonition.

Ok, now get cracking on that PC port. I need 200 hours a week!.

The reason people are interested in a Battlefield battle royale mode is twofold. First, despite your impressions, the BR genre is not even close to saturated. There are three popular BR games, relative to the current FPS market as a whole, there is room for a lot more BR. Second, what draws people to BR games is the emergent gameplay and Battlefield more than any other series is known for its mayhem and emergent gameplay. The absolute nonsense that is Battlefield combined with BR seems like a match made in heaven.

I understand not wanting the BR mode to be half-baked, but the reactionary attitude a lot of people here and elsewhere seem to have against BR doesn't make sense to me. Basically since the inception of FPS games, we've been limited to a few core game modes like TDM, conquest, and the now forgotten CTF, among others, which all ultimately play similarly. Finally, something comes along that seriously shakes up the existing flow of FPS games and all the old men come out of their basements to yell at the hip young clouds.

I don't own a current gen console and I'm definitely not super angry about it.

This whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it feels like the product isn't worth the effort. These huge budget AAA games are fun, but rarely do they mean much to anyone. Regardless of how good RDR2 is, it will never equal the sum of its parts.

The lack of support availability from Valve is the only thing in this article that seems alarming. For 30% I would hope that Valve is prompt in helping developers use their platform. However, every time I read one of these articles I feel like the developers have very little self-awareness. They harken back to the days when steam was curated and any indie game released on the platform would instantly be successful, but they never seem to consider that their game would not have been allowed on Steam to begin with. They all think their game deserves more marketing but rarely seem to consider that there is finite marketing space for practically infinite games. I already see enough garbage on my Steam storefront, I don't need to see an add for your Castle Crashers knockoff. They always say more for me and never realize they are also saying less for thee.

Gaming chairs are hideous.

I just started House of Leaves and am about 40 pages into it so far, which feels like a lot given that it is a behemoth. I don't generally read books that could be classified as horror, and while I occasionally dip my toes in post-modern bullshit, I had yet to cross the threshold of ergodic fiction. My initial impression could not be more positive. The horror so far is very corner-of-the-eyes type stuff and uncanniness, which I generally find far more effective than the general stalkers and slow-walkers that are more prevalent in horror media. The story itself is also just compelling. I am working my way through the section that describes The Navidson Record, and I really just want to watch the movie. Between this and watching The Hill with the Haunted House , The House on the Haunted Hill, The Haunting of Hill House, I'm starting to feel a little pressed in by the dark.

I would characterize tone as the way in which a game portrays itself, and to that end, I would certainly classify Hotline Miami as being light in tone. While tone and content interact greatly and one informs the other, I think they can be understood independently.

I think there is a lot more room for mediocrity with dark tones and much less room for greatness. Having a generally light tone helps make the serious and dark moments stand out better, but having a dark tone often discourages the player from feeling attached to what is happening in the game. Personally, I can think of very few games that commit to a dark tone and pull it off masterfully. Off the top of my head, all I can think of is Kentucky Route Zero. Also, dark games are generally more susceptible to the garbage storytelling that has been endemic to video games since the beginning.

Isn't this the movie that ended with Chris Pratt challenging the bad guy to a dance off?

Yes, please.

This feels more like LOST than the "one long movie" format, at least the first few episodes do. So far, each episode feels like it has a self-contained story that follows the perspective of one of the principal characters and slowly advances the overall narrative. Each episode has a fairly hard start and stop that plays into a larger arc. As a general trend, I love the "one long movie" format for shows, but I hate that so many of them are hedging for a season 2. It is understandable from the business perspective, but I also feel like the practice undermined what is otherwise one of my favorite shows of all time. That tangent aside, I also read the introduction to House of Leaves yesterday and am thoroughly enjoying scaring myself this October.

Adult Luke is unreasonably handsome for the adult version of his child actor and also for a heroin addict. Also, Episode 3 and 4 felt much stronger than the first two.

I feel like I must be missing something. I'm two episodes in, and while I am enjoying the show it feels a little directionless. I don't really get what the show is building towards and while there is plenty of tension in the scenes, there isn't much in the narrative. I also feel like the adult actors are almost universally mediocre. They play their parts fine but do little to be more than their trauma. Either way, the scares are there and the price is right.

Weird bug aside, I'm just not sure how you can look at something like this clip and say 76 seems like it has even remotely engaging combat. The game is going to be even more reliant on combat than any other Fallout game due to the complete removal of anything but the cycle of exploration, combat, and progression, and it looks like Bethesda has done literally nothing to address their decades old gunplay. I know that the game has other things going for it, but it looks like it is built on an irrebarably rotten foundation.

I really don't think anyone should blindly buy Fallout 76. The previews make the game look really rough and I think it is going to burn a lot of people.

Turns out BR is a huge draw. I wonder if BF is going to find success here as well. As much as the beta felt undercooked, the emergent wackiness of BF is perfect for the series. I am also curious to see if BLOPS has the staying power to compete with fortnite on twitch. For me personally, the game looks to sterile and I've found a BR game I like.