Sulphur on 27/2/2019 at 04:38
The multiple branching timelines thing is a standard goto for time fuckery, yeah. Possibly one of the earlier stories to formalise that idea was Greg Benford's Timescape, and you see it used in much of Stein;s Gate as well.
As far as LIS' overarching message is concerned, I thought it was a pretty literal interpretation of chaos theory: unrelated events can cause large consequences elsewhere. The entire thing started off with the butterfly, IIRC, and that's as literal a symbol for chaos theory as you can get ('Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil...') right up to the actual storm the game builds up to. So while you can read it as the universe wants Chloe dead, I'd read it as 'fucking around with the natural order of things has its own effect on the normal weave of consequence you might not be able to prepare for'. If you want to say that reduces to 'try to make things better and you just make things worse', you can, but I think it's less about that and more about there's some things that it's cleaner for you to make your peace with.
Renzatic on 27/2/2019 at 06:01
I'm not saying that the universe is literally out to get Chloe, but it does seem that everyone ends up better off without her. You're always having to save her from dying, and no matter how much you change things, she seems meant to die at this point in her life. The events that spiral out from saving her the first time require you to use your powers more and more to put right, which is what kicks off the tornado at the end. The cards aren't exactly stacked in her favor.Quote:
If you want to say that reduces to 'try to make things better and you just make things worse', you can, but I think it's less about that and more about there's some things that it's cleaner for you to make your peace with.
I'd say that sums up my thoughts on it pretty succinctly. It's not "don't fight fate, cuz you'll only make things worse", but "you can change things, and you may even make things better overall, but this small change you've made may not worth the price you'll have to pay."
Jason Moyer on 1/3/2019 at 13:23
I ended up finishing Gat Out Of Hell in one sitting. I forgot how much fun the last few Saints Row games are, and also how legitimately funny they are at times. The musical interlude between the first and second acts actually made me chuckle. The demonic powers were fun, I liked flying around the city and spent most of the game using the ass-stomping power to annihilate everything. I'd give it a solid 4/5.
My Backloggery Fortune Cookie picked Dead Space next, so I guess I'll give it another try since I bounced off of it pretty hard when it came out.
WingedKagouti on 1/3/2019 at 13:47
I honestly think Gat Out of Hell is the best SR game if you just need a quick burst of what that series brings. It takes what was the focus of the previous game and gets going immedately. It also doesn't outstay its welcome since you can blast your way through the story in a couple of hours if you just want to finish it.
I have been playing (and completing) the campaigns of C&C3 + Kane's Wrath and Red Alert 3 + Uprising. While Tim Curry as the Soviet Premier makes for a decent villain in the RA games, he is nowhere near as awesome as Joseph Kucan portraying Kane in the main series. Still, the campaigns of all four games delivers when it comes to eating the cheesy scenery. Except the Scrin mini-campaign in C&C3, that one is a bit flat in the cheese department, but that does make sense given the story and how the Scrin are presented.
Thirith on 2/3/2019 at 14:24
I'd been replaying the Mirror's Edge Catalyst story missions because I remember not liking the story or characters much - but I found that without the context of the story, the missions felt off to me, so I ended up restarting the game proper. The story is still weak (I actually prefer the first game's storytelling, even if that wasn't particularly good either), but I'm enjoying the game itself better for having at least a sketchy idea what it's all about. Also, it's weird: Catalyst is pretty similar in terms of its aesthetics, but there's something more... plasticky, for want of a better word, about the city of Glass. IMO the first game worked better with textures; surfaces tended to be less flat and shiny when you got close to them, which made things more tactile.
But I still love the parkour gameplay, and as long as I don't play the time-critical deliveries I greatly enjoy what Catalyst has to offer. There's no other game that has made parkour feel as exhilarating to me as the two Mirror's Edge games, and for all their faults I'd love to see them take a third crack at it. But if they stick to an open world, they'd better improve their open world skills.
Jason Moyer on 2/3/2019 at 14:57
I wish that instead of an open world there were 2-3 times as many challenge towers. Also I felt like the story missions were a fairly big let down compared to the original, with much less opportunity to go off the beaten path and stupid forced combat.
The flow of the original game was so much better. It was constantly alternating between 3 general level styles, some were "go from point A to point B however you want", some were "get through this relatively linear area as fast as you can before you get gaffled" and then there were the "take a break and do some platforming" levels. God it was so good, I should really go replay it again.
Pyrian on 2/3/2019 at 20:59
Winter Assault is a helluva grind. I liked the later expansions better, with the strategic map and stuff.
Tony_Tarantula on 4/3/2019 at 03:02
DMC 5 Finally drops this week. Final Trailer
[video=youtube;5u0w0kQjCV4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u0w0kQjCV4[/video]
So far every bit of the gameplay we've seen looks great. It's the most polished release in awhile if the pre-release info and demo are any indication.
My best guess:
Someone voice-adjusted Urizen's voice to reverse the pitch-shift. It's VERY obviously the voice of Vergil. My guess is that somehow Vergil got "split", with V being his human part and the other part of him either being his original body possessed or the demonic part.
Thirith on 4/3/2019 at 09:16
I spent some time over the weekend doing the early escalation missions in Hitman (2016, played in Hitman 2) and getting started on the Paris level. I love how in freeform play I tend to end up doing things differently from one attempt to the next; small decisions like whether to go right or left first can have major repercussions, as I end up going for this set of opportunities rather than that one depending on what I come upon first.
Most of the time I played Mirror's Edge Catalyst, though, and the game's sense of speed makes getting around great fun. I don't think the open world missions are particularly well designed (in particular the timed deliveries that are almost impossible if you don't use various shortcuts to begin with - I wish those didn't have a limit but just let you compete for one, two or three stars instead), but as a playground I'm really enjoying the city.
However, one trope I'm really tired of is that of the radicalised character who's supposedly as bad as the people they're fighting. Whether it's this game, Bioshock Infinite or The Last of Us, it's lazy, facile and mistakes actual interesting ambiguity for simplistic both-sides-are-the-same relativism, and that's without going into why these characters so often are written as black women.
Tony_Tarantula on 4/3/2019 at 14:47
They're written as black women because the normal trope is Evil white males in power vs. noble rainbow coalition. A black lesbian female is the most opposite from a white male people think of so it creates the biggest contrast possible.
As far as the trope...it's lazy writing but it's also not an inaccurate trope. I'm thinking back over the last 300 years or so of history and I don't think I can name a single revolution where the actual revolutionaries weren't at LEAST as crazy as the people they were fighting. Everyone here hates the American founders enough to know the issues they had(their first government collapsed almost immediately) and a lot of other ones (like the French and Russian revolutions) ushered in literal rivers of blood once they got into power. Usual you only get some semblence of order once the radicals are pushed aside and more sane governance takes over.
