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BrawlMan

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Kinda like how it’s almost impossible for music to sound completely original anymore because even the best artists get inspiration from their favorites.
For music, I rarely bother with the mainstream aside from Gorillaz and Linkin Park. I go to YouTube or Sound Cloud. Much more unique and interesting sounds over there. Still a familiarity to them, but with their own twists.
 
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Dalisclock

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Fyi, Escapist did one of their showcases again, in case you didn't know yet.
00:00:29 Negative Atmosphere
00:04:04 Gigabash
00:05:47 Organs Please
00:06:45 Forest Grove
00:07:49 Corriden
00:11:26 Button City
00:12:49 Shardpunk: Verminfall
00:14:33 Catizens
00:15:13 Falling Frontier
00:18:14 Gravewood High
00:18:54 Kredolis
00:20:16 Super Dungeon Maker
00:23:00 Terra Invicta
00:24:59 Industria
00:25:41 Anvil Saga
00:26:23 Swift
00:28:05 A Juggler's Tale
00:29:20 The Last Oricru
00:30:53 The Universim
00:32:04 Stasis: Bone Totem
00:33:49 Lorn's Lure
00:35:18 Harmony's Odyssey
00:36:51 Dice Legacy
00:37:51 Behind the Frame
00:43:21 Prehistoric Kingdom
00:44:32 Elsie
00:45:50 Despot's Game
00:47:59 Expedition Zero
00:48:57 The BookWalker
00:50:22 IXION
00:51:53 Rawmen
00:53:55 Serial Cleaners
00:55:08 Perish
00:56:01 Revival: Recolonization
00:56:38 ExeKiller
00:58:16 Dredge
00:59:07 Glitched
01:05:26 Recursive Ruin
01:07:11 The Riftbreaker
01:08:09 Crowsworn
01:09:46 Harlow
01:14:06 Gamedec
01:16:01 The Looter
01:17:08 Trifox
01:18:25 Absolute Tactics: Daughters of Mercy
01:19:50 The Good Life
01:22:21 Escape Simulator
01:23:45 Night is Coming
01:25:02 Sacred Fire
01:26:19 Roots of Pacha
01:28:32 Project Warlok II
01:29:37 This Means Warp
01:30:36 Selaco
01:32:48 Terror of Hemasaurus
01:35:45 Clid the Snail
01:37:08 Kraken Academy
01:38:18 Lila's Sky Ark
01:39:52 Serin Fate
01:42:23 Selfloss
01:44:21 One Hand Clapping
01:49:39 Tunche
01:50:25 Jupiter Moons: Mecha
01:51:23 SpiderHeck
01:52:30 Janosik 2
01:54:15 Park Story
01:56:56 Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer's Legacy
02:00:51 A Gummy's Life
02:03:10 B.I.O.T.A.
02:05:05 Kitori Academy (Witchery Academy)
02:06:06 Necropolis Suite
02:07:16 The Season of the Warlock
02:08:13 Kingshunt
02:10:49 Kainga: Seeds of Civilization
02:13:23 Wartales
02:14:47 Moo Lander
02:16:18 The Lightbringer
02:17:48 Doomblade
[/QUOTE]


I tend to watch those with a notepad at hand and I write down the names of the ones that catch my attention as I go. After that, I decide whether or not to sort them onto my Wishlist to keep an eye on them until they come out.

So normally I end up playing a fraction of the games I see but I have discovered a couple interesting ones through those.
 

meiam

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The more that’s out there, the more it starts to blend together. Kinda like how it’s almost impossible for music to sound completely original anymore because even the best artists get inspiration from their favorites.
It's also a review thing, you need to convey the experience to someone who hasn't experienced it and the only way to do that is by referring to something the person probably has already experienced (ie big popular game). If for example you were reviewing food and tasted something brand new you'd still try to relate it to other experience so that the listener would get some sort of understanding of what's going on, simply saying "it taste unlike anything else" is pretty useless. Similarly just saying "it's a brand new way to play a game" wouldn't be much use and explaining it properly would be essentially doing the game tutorial, which would be both too long and quite boring for a review.
 

Dalisclock

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This might have been posted a while back but I found this interesting.

Notably, the big thing I didn't know was that the Norse Tattoo thing in popular culture may be heavily overrepresented.

Also, some spoilers if you haven't played it yet but want to.
 
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It does also discuss the skin color thing some people are mad about, because of course people are mad about the black lady and not....well, any of the other stuff that doesn't quite fit the mythos or history around this game.

Let's just face it, GOW takes real myths and history and then reinterprets them however it wants for the story it wants to tell and that's fine.
 
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BrawlMan

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Christ, how did you 80s kids survive all this before NES? I know things weren't easy, but the Commodore has so many ridiculously tedious ways just to start up the games.

 
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BrawlMan

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It does also discuss the skin color thing some people are mad about, because of course people are mad about the black lady and not....well, any of the other stuff that doesn't quite fit the mythos or history around this game.
Don't forget that a lot of Neo Nazis and racists like to attach themselves to Norse mythology to prove that they're the superior race and the whites are the ultimate survivors. And at the end of the day, geographically makes sense or not, they don't want to see people like me nor anyone else non-white in a positive or non-negative light. They want to see us as either victims, monsters, assholes, or mindless slaves.


  • Misaimed Fandom:
    • Unfortunately, due to the Nazi deification of all things blond and blue-eyed, a disproportionate number of the "fans" of Norse mythology you'll find these days are Wotanists, a neo-nazi white supremacist sect who wish to return the lighter-skinned "to their ancestral religion." How these nutters would react to the fact that Norse mythology is full of Inter Species Romance (such as the marriage between Njodr and Skadi, Loki being a Frost-Giant, Frey falling in Love at First Sight with a giantess), or what can be called the polymorphous perverse (Thor being a Wholesome Crossdresserand a fetching bride as Freya, Loki's fondness for coupling with animals).
      • For what it's worth, back then many of the aforementioned traits and deeds would probably have been looked down as being argr or ragr (a hard-to-translate word with the connotations of somebody being unmanly, weak, pathetic, and possibly homosexual (the latter attested by the even more inflammatory form rassragr or "arse-ragr"); a rather grave insult among the Norse people at that time), as mentioned by the gods themselves, such as Thor being concerned that the other gods will consider him ragr after putting on a bride's dress. The complex and often ambiguous nature of mythology or system of religious lore (especially one so fragmentarily preserved as the Norse one) naturally leads to one man's Values Dissonance being another man's Values Resonance, both now and probably then as well.
    • More to the point, the Norse Gods are described repeatedly in the original myths as vulnerable and mortal, they are afraid of Frost Giants, Trolls and others and rely greatly on powerful weapons and artifacts (such as Mjölnir) to feel safe, have to sacrifice eyes and limbs to achieve their ends (Odin sacrifices his eye, Tyr sacrifices his arm) and of course there's the fact that in the end, Everyone Dies. Founding an ideology of power and domination based on Gods who are mortal, vulnerable and self-destructive is missing the point.
    • The concept of Valhalla and Sessrumnir. People often talk about how they eat at Odin's table and are served mead by hot Action Girls. But when they are not eating they are fighting. Maiming each other dying and regenerating. Forever, or at least until Ragnarök. Drinking with Odin sounds more like making yourself numb with alcohol to deal with the horror. Or perhaps they liked the neverending fighting.
Let's just face it, GOW takes real myths and history and then reinterprets them however it wants for the story it wants to tell and that's fine.
Same here.
 
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Don't forget that a lot of Neo Nazis and racists like to attach themselves to Norse mythology to prove that they're the superior race and the whites are the ultimate survivors. And at the end of the day, geographically makes sense or not, they don't want to see people like me nor anyone else no-white in a positive or non-negative light. They want to see us as either victims, monsters, assholes, or mindless slaves.
Oh, I haven't. It actually really sucks that such shitheads are doing their best to ruin a perfectly interesting mythos by trying to co-opt it for their own shitty agendas.

I'm led to understand a lot of modern day pagans really, really don't fucking like it that they have to defend their interest in Norse Runes as not being associated with Nazis.
 
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The Rogue Wolf

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Christ, how did you 80s kids survive all this before NES? I know things weren't easy but the Commodore has ridiculously tedious ways just to start up the game.

Let me introduce you to my first love:


The Radio Shack (yes, that Radio Shack) Color Computer 2. Eight whole colors and 16K of RAM. That tape deck there isn't for music- it's for data; you had to move the tape to the exact right spot where the data was located and then hope you'd had the volume set correctly. Fortunately it also had cartridges (called Game Paks) available, or if you were the patient sort, you could program your own in "Color BASIC".

I taught myself BASIC on this thing, and when I got to high school and took a BASIC class, there were several times where the teacher told me "you can't do that in BASIC" and I showed him that yes, in fact, you could.
 

BrawlMan

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Let me introduce you to my first love:


The Radio Shack (yes, that Radio Shack) Color Computer 2. Eight whole colors and 16K of RAM. That tape deck there isn't for music- it's for data; you had to move the tape to the exact right spot where the data was located and then hope you'd had the volume set correctly. Fortunately it also had cartridges (called Game Paks) available, or if you were the patient sort, you could program your own in "Color BASIC".

I taught myself BASIC on this thing, and when I got to high school and took a BASIC class, there were several times where the teacher told me "you can't do that in BASIC" and I showed him that yes, in fact, you could.
My God! Rolfe mentioned a couple of the models in the video. I'm impressed, but I can't even imagine going through all that.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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My God! Rolfe mentioned a couple of the models in the video. I'm impressed, but I can't even imagine going through all that.
It was all we had back then. (Well, there were disk drives and hard drives, but the first were a few hundred bucks and the second could set you back more than three thousand dollars [in 1985 money; today that's more than $7k] just for ten megabytes.)

I remember the days fondly, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate my 1TB M.2 drive.
 
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hanselthecaretaker

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It does also discuss the skin color thing some people are mad about, because of course people are mad about the black lady and not....well, any of the other stuff that doesn't quite fit the mythos or history around this game.

Let's just face it, GOW takes real myths and history and then reinterprets them however it wants for the story it wants to tell and that's fine.
Not to mention Kratos has always had a black VA, and his character was even supposed to be black himself early on.
 

BrawlMan

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Pat goes in about how the Immersive Sim was coined back when only Deus Ex and System Shock 2 were around. Now that are so many games like them, the term is not that unique and describe almost any game at this point.