What are you currently playing?

[Drathnoxis]

By that logic, we can't expect every game to be as well-written as Baldur's Gate 3.

Do you expect every game to be as well-written as Baldur's Gate 3? Because I think you'll be disappointed. Rare spent a fortune on their modeling and rendering tech and it isn't really that surprising that other companies couldn't quite match it. Mario RPG still looks good and, personally, the animations worked fine for me, the game as a whole is more cartoony than DKC even with the 3D art style. Anyway, the point is entirely tangential to the argument as to whether a CRT filter improves the visual quality.

Ask me, it's the exception rather than the rule that games of that era only look good on a CRT TV, or with an artificial CRT filter. Most of them either never looked that good to begin with, or they still look good even without the 'softening' effect. I wouldn't go as far as Worgen as to say I "prefer" one look over the other, I just don't think that it's that important in the majority of cases. And don't bother posting more examples, I've played plenty of SNES and PS1 games without CRT to base my opinion on.

It's not that I don't understand your position. I just don't agree with it.

Yes it definitely is the exception. I don't play games on a CRT and I've played lots without a filter. My whole position was exclusively to do with sprite based 3D rendered games like DKC and Mario RPG and if you disagree with that, I don't even know. It's like we're looking at different images.

The user you spoke to is called Worgen, not Worgan.

Clearly you have taken this photograph from someone else who spoke to someone with the username Worgan. I didn't expect you to stoop to such lows just to win an Internet argument, but: exposed. Seriously though, good effort to photograph your telly.

Look, I can't help it if he misspelled his name when he made his account.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Do you expect every game to be as well-written as Baldur's Gate 3?

I don't even know how you came to the conclusion that that's what I was trying to say. Whatever. Guess this conversation's finished.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I don't even know how you came to the conclusion that that's what I was trying to say. Whatever. Guess this conversation's finished.

Drathnoxis: "Well we can't expect every game to measure up to Donkey Kong Country levels of rendering tech."

NerfedFalcon: "By that logic, we can't expect every game to be as well-written as Baldur's Gate 3."

I have no idea what else you were trying to say. I assumed you were disagreeing with me, but were you actually agreeing? The logic is sound, obviously we can't expect every game to be as well written as Baldur's Gate 3 (I'm assuming, never having played it, that it is actually well written based on the praise it's received). The best games are the best for a reason, because they do things better than the rest. If you have some other point you might consider using a few more words to explain it. Not that it really has anything to do with my original point, anyway.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

@Drathnoxis

This conversation is finished. On this topic specifically, I no longer care enough to keep talking about it.

I can't make myself any clearer than that.

 

[Drathnoxis]

@Drathnoxis

This conversation is finished. On this topic specifically, I no longer care enough to keep talking about it.

I can't make myself any clearer than that.

Funny how whenever people say that, they keep responding. Guess they can't help themselves.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Funny how whenever people say that, they keep responding. Guess they can't help themselves.

You could stop responding at any time yourself, but I guess you can't help yourself either. Yeah, I know I'm still replying to you, so don't bother to point that out. You done?

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Alright, finished Afterimage and good riddance. That took way too long.

There're MV fans out there who're all about having as much content and as many biomes, checklists and endings as possible. Well, sure, if you're enjoying the game you don't want it to be over. But the game is as massive as it is scattershot, and by those tokens it exhausted me long before I could get into the fun of it.

Part of it is because you never get a good feel for story beats, or whether you're "done" with an area or not. The map stretches endlessly and strings biome after biome like it's automatically loading recommended videos.

The story is utter nonsense. I'm willing to tolerate the gobbledygook of something like Bloodborne or Hollow Knight or Blasphemous or Ender Lilies, so long as the theming is strong and there's a - how the hell do you phrase this - "air of mythical reverence that feeds the enigma of the world" (oh, atmosphere). The world is dead or dying and you're there to knock it off, probably via sacrifice. Everything else is color bubbles.

But the story in Afterimage is something else. The dialogue is overwritten as fuck and the lore is impenetrable as fuck. Something about clones, memories, robots, faeries, crystals, masks, confluences. The lead is a clone from a clone, or a failed experiment that got cloned, and acts as a rekindled memory to a crystalized vessel who has to become an essential go defeat a transcendental? I'm a story guy first and it takes a special kind of headache to get me to skip skip skip dialogue scenes, but man I got there quick this time.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

The story is utter nonsense. I'm willing to tolerate the gobbledygook of something like Bloodborne or Hollow Knight or Blasphemous or Ender Lilies, so long as the theming is strong and there's a - how the hell do you phrase this - "air of mythical reverence that feeds the enigma of the world" (oh, atmosphere). The world is dead or dying and you're there to knock it off, probably via sacrifice. Everything else is color bubbles.

I don't know if you own a Switch or if you've already played it, but Metroid Dread took an interesting approach to lore: essentially, not doing much at all, instead assuming you played all the previous games and already know what the big deal is about the Chozo. In a way it's kind of a refreshing approach, and it fits with the status Samus is supposed to have. It's also a really solid 6-8 hour (first run) game, highly recommend even if you're not up on the series lore.

 

[Drathnoxis]

You could stop responding at any time yourself, but I guess you can't help yourself either. Yeah, I know I'm still replying to you, so don't bother to point that out. You done?

I'm fine with continuing the conversation.

Spoiler: here's some more cool images of CRT vs. LCD

Man I never realized that CRT's had such an anti-aliasing effect.

 

[Ezekiel]

I saw that one above with the dots for eyes becoming lines before. Amazing.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I saw that one above with the dots for eyes becoming lines before. Amazing.

Kind of makes me wish I had a really good CRT television. I wonder if anybody makes them anymore.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

You could stop responding at any time yourself, but I guess you can't help yourself either. Yeah, I know I'm still replying to you, so don't bother to point that out. You done?

I'm fine with continuing the conversation.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

So I found a game that dropped on Steam with a price of $15 (local) and a 10% starter discount, but to explain what it is, I need to write a lot of context, bear with me. Or don't. I'm not a cop, just some idiot on the Internet. I wrote the game's title on its own line in bold, and from reading it you may already get enough of an idea what's going on.

For the rest of you still sticking around: In the first half of the 2010s, the hottest thing on Youtube was Major League Gaming, or MLG. A lot of people made montages of them playing Call of Duty or other first-person shooters trying to show off that they were MLG material, and other people came along and made parodies of those people's videos. Common features of the parodies included eye-watering filter effects, incomprehensible text flying across the screen, Call of Duty hit markers in games that are nothing like Call of Duty, and an obsession with Mountain Dew, marijuana and the Illuminati. If you know what I'm talking about, great; if not, look up some MLG montage videos so you know the basic style, then come back here. Done? Good.

In 2014, someone came along and made a free, 10-minute first-person shooter which turned itself into an interactive parody MLG montage as you played it, putting up flashing text and GIFs with every kill and making you drink (off-brand) Mountain Dew to restore health as you battle the Illuminati's forces of evil. That game was called GAME OF THE YEAR 420BLAZEIT. Ten years later, they've turned it into a full-sized (for low-indie price) game. The full title of which:

420BLAZEIT2: GAME OF THE YEAR -=Dank Dreams and Goated Memes=- [#wow/11 Like and Subscribe] Poggerz Edition.

The first level is essentially the full original game turned into a tutorial mission, after which you go through several vaguely-themed worlds with various levels; the first world has an alien spaceship, a conspiracy theory museum, and Area 51, for instance. It's really an excuse to put you through a surprisingly wide variety of insane and inane setpieces, and though the guns are fun to use (the Space Grenade is one of the most fun weapons I've used in an FPS) and movement feels great, how much you enjoy the game is probably going to depend on whether you find old memes funny. Making it worse is that to avoid any intellectual property issues, all of the memes are replaced by off-brand versions, which is actually a plot point - the Illuminati are responsible. There is some genuine comedy outside of memes, though, with the aforementioned conspiracy theory museum being a goldmine of it, but it comes and goes.

I know based on my description so far that the word 'good' has no business being anywhere near this game, but if you're from the right era and have the right kind of mindset, it really is a great time.