Man...no matter where one stands on the issue, this is just depressing.

I get everyone saying that male friendships don’t have to be gay, but that point lands a little flat for me when we’re talking about a game that lets you romance the female characters and a series that has room to grow when it comes to depictions of gay men. I can understand looking at the whole situation, then seeing…

Well, is it “comic padding”, or is it a plot about a “well-intentioned liberal tries to be a savior but actually has no idea what she’s talking about and doesn’t actually understand the group she is purporting to save”? Both? It’s worth pointing out that house elf slaves and greedy, second-class-citizen Goblins don’t…

If Rowling had shown any interest in showing what good activism looked like you might have a point, but no she throws in one annoying activist who just doesn’t understand that house elves just like being slaves, actually (except for Dobby, he’s “a weird one”, don’t think about him too much). If she’s making a point…

You should check out Gita’s article that dropped on Polygon today too, they played through the whole thing and its a good companion piece to this article imo

It’s a review of the first 15 hours, technically sure, but you know if they said it was a “review” (or heck even just didn’t clarify it wasn’t like they did here) then a bunch of chodes would be winging about how they are reviewing a game they “didn’t even finish!”

I can’t fault them for it honestly, and nothing is…

I’m pretty sure the “MrGirl” thing, as horrible as that would be, is like a 4Chan bait rumor or something. Has something come out that shows it definitively?

When Tolkien was told his descriptions of dwarves were leaning on anti-semetic tropes and stereotypes, he course corrected hard and made it clear in later writings that those were super prejudiced and ignorant descriptions by other races, and then made it a point to show dwarves as just people living their lives like…

I think it’s more the idea that all he did for two weeks was obsessively play one game and not much else. Probably let other responsibilities slide, and came away with the amount of fun he was having wasn’t worth the two week hole in his life.

Man I played the heck out of this game when it came out...one of the examples of a solid, polished mobile action game that worked really well.

I’m normally not a spiritual or metaphysical type of person, but this quest got me into Tarot readings. I’m honestly not sure if I believe it in a spiritual sense, or more of a heady “tarot can help us make sense of our subconscious and interpret our journey” sort of way, but something about Misty, the art, and the…

I like Hollow Knight and appreciate it as a take on the Metroid formula, but dear god is that game overly long and sprawling at points. Sometimes I’m more in the mood for the tight-nit design of a traditional Metroid map/level.

I feel like AI upscaling and CRT simulation are both sides of the same coin really, just trying to get things looking like they’re “supposed to”. I lean more towards CRT simulation personally, since that’s what the devs were working with when designing all of the original assets.

The goal of any of these AI upscaling efforts is, to me, reduce the dissonance between the clearly low-res backgrounds and the models being rendered at a higher resolution than they were originally; basically, if you don’t play on a CRT with the original resolution it’s going to look like lego people sliding across a…

I use the model replacement and it’s complete coverage, every overworld character and NPC is replaced. Makes the game feel more in-line with FF8/FF10 in terms of how the characters are represented in-game.

Honestly, my favorite way to play FF7 is with the reunion mod: better proportioned models (but still match the…

...town?

The keys tend to give you a nudge, but Crestfallen guy literally goes “here’s the two places you need to go to complete your quest you find yourself on”. NPCs definitely give you some important context in these games. They’re just dressed up in weird overwrought language and cryptic laughter after every line read.

Heh…

The myth that you need a wiki to play/beat one of these games is a bit silly imo, but barring looking something up online you’d definitely have to pay attention and talk to NPCs or you’ll just be wandering around aimlessly. That can be fun, and it’ll get you through the game, but it sounds like you want more direction…

It is sort of weird, but the game at least does go “this new mini guardian sure did power up our sheikah slates and runes, I tell ya what” so it’s at least palatable.

In terms of a first playthrough, whatever makes me feel like I need to put effort and thought in to get through, but not so much that I have to dedicate all of my free time and and mastery to one game in order to see it to the end.