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rawrienstein · 2 years ago

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Cool Games of 2022 that I liked

This guy launched with a pretty rough beta and honestly still isn't complete, but it's probably the most enjoyable co-op level based shooter that I've ever played. I've heard Fatshark is pretty good at creating additional content for their games, but you really shouldn't buy a game based on what might be coming. The moment to moment gameplay is just good. It's just really good. Also it's visually incredible...if your graphics card can handle it. (on a 3070ti with DLSS on quality and sometimes I drop to below 60fps at 1440p)

Pkmn LetLet def needed more time in development, but honestly this is probably the most interesting pkmn game overall. I personally only experienced one crash during my play time and performance has been fine. Like, I expect a switch to crumple under the weird expectations this game has, they should've designed those parts better, but even then. It's still a very compelling game. I like the openness, I liked exploring (even if it rarely hit 30 fps), I liked catching new funny little dudes, I liked the characters for once because they don't feel so one dimensional. Competitive is wild right now, lots of interesting teams and weird new stuff. I do hope they continue modifying the pkmn formula, I really want more for co-op. Anyway, I do hope they just slow down with pkmn and the devs can get their shit together properly.

I highly recommend if you're a fan of PS1 horror games. A dystopian sci-fi setting with Lovecraft themes and RE1~esq controls and puzzles and excellently executed anime art style. Everything about this game just works.

PLEASE NOTE THIS GAME DOES HAVE A LOT OF FLASHING IMAGERY AND DOES NOT HAVE A WAY TO TURN IT OFF.

A DOOM-like that takes being called that as a compliment. If you like fast-paced old school shooters, you'll love it. It's got dudes to shoot and you have bullets to feed them. Pretty excellent level design, some bits that make it just a little more engaging than point gun and dude, but not enough to disrupt flow. I really had a good time with it.

I kickstarter'd this game and I'm glad I did. It's a great puzzle platformer with a funny gun that is also a frog. I really love ps1 aesthetics and low poly art and this game does a great job with it. It's also fun to replay and speedrun levels. The frogun's sticky tongue latching on to walls to move around quickly is fun.

Absolutely excellent sprite work with gameplay improvements to an already good beat'em up base. If you need a beat'em up to play with friends, this one is my go to.

It sure does like to say capitalism sucks a lot, and that's a pretty good feature. Enjoyed the story and the characters, the beginning is really tense, but it loses that about a quarter of the way in (which I kinda miss). Still, you'll mostly enjoy following character stories and trying to do the best you can looking for your preferred ending with a funny dice system

Finally, a voxel based game that isn't terrible and actually takes advantage of being voxel based. Tons of creative solutions and interesting challenges. Unfortunately does need a pretty good rig to enjoy a lot of the visuals, but it does looks really good too.

I really liked Shadow Tower and King's Field. There's something really appealing about first person dungeon crawlers. The world here is interesting and full of secrets. Exploration is fun, but sometimes really tense (in a good way). Also, of course, I like ps1 aesthetics and this one really nails its look within that visual style while still feeling like it's own.

It's still in Early Access, but the content that's there is honestly worth it.

Yeah, it's good. Play it. I wrote a bunch of stuff about it before that felt negative overall, but it's still a great game (and better than the majority of other over inflated budget games).

Good job FromSoftware, now stop overworking your employees and please just take care of Armored Core 6. PLEASE REMEMBER THE ANTI-CAPITALISTIC THEMES OF ARMORED CORE. PLEASE REMEMBER THEM. PLEASE DON'T WATER DOWN HOW MEGA CORPORATIONS RUINED THE WORLD OVER AND OVER AGAIN. I WON'T FORGIVE YOU IF YOU DO. I'LL MAKE MY OWN STUPID MECH GAME GOD DAMN IT.

QUICK LIST OF GAMES THAT I'M PROBABLY GOING TO RECOMMEND BUT I HAVEN'T COMPLETED

Super Lesbian Animal RPG Lunistice Goodbye World Gloomwood UraGun Scorn

#rawri makes a funny video games list

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echoesofdusk · 1 year ago

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With Steam summer sale kicking off, I want to make a post with my personal video game recommendations (totally not shilling)

Starting off with... the fairly obvious.

AI: The Somnium Files

This murder mystery VN full of dirty jokes, puns and references to other media as well as mentions of urban legends has changed my life for worse. Play it!

Digimon World Next Order

This is a vpet/RPG hybrid where you have to look after two Digimon partners while also exploring the Digital World and recruiting Digimon to rebuild a city. It's on the grindier side but once you get the hang of everything it gets rather addicting. The PC version features a run button and a beginner mode, something the PSVita and PS4 versions didn't have.

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth Complete Edition. This is a collection of PS2 esque traditional turnbased RPGs. Like Next Order, these are on the grindy side but the grinding is extremely satisfying and building the optimal Digimon team is a lot of fun. Also great to play while doing something like listening to podcasts.

.hack//G.U. Last Recode

A remastered HD collection of PS2 RPGs featuring a brand new and original fourth episode unique to this collection. These games are are actually set in an MMORPG and you play as the protag's player avatar, Haseo. Track down the mysterious Tri-Edge and unravel the mysteries of The World.

Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series

A collection of two classic scrimblo 2D platformers remakes, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile and Klonoa: Lunatea's Veil. Cute visuals, simple yet engaging gameplay, catchy music and stories which may or may not make you cry.

NieR Automata

BECOME AS GODS

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition

A really cool and fun action RPG with visuals that aged REALLY well. An all around classic with a fun protagonist.

BlazBlue Centralfiction

A really fun 2D anime fighter with lots and lots of characters and tons of mechanics, now also with rollback!

Super Kiwi 64

(I know this game is rather cheap when not on sale to begin with but I'm plugging it anyway shhh)

This is a cute and fun bite sized 3D platformer that harkens back to 90s platformers, particularly the Nintendo 64 ones. The movement is really tight and fun and the game takes around an hour or so to 100%. Highly recommended for quick breaks between huge games!

Snake Pass

An unconventional 3D platformer in which you don't jump and maneuver through the air with complicated movements but instead slide, crawl and climb as a snake. With beautiful visuals, cute and colorful characters, unconventional but fun gameplay as well as music by David Wise, you can't go wrong with this one!

#hazy rambles #game recommendations #steam summer sale

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battlestar-royco · 4 years ago

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here is part 2 of my sci fi recs masterlist! again, i could’ve gone on with even more recs but i decided to draw the line here. this set for the most part errs on the darker side, thematically, visually, conceptually etc. i personally find it super thought-provoking and intriguing but that’s just me. i highly recommend reading the tw under the cut if you’re thinking of watching, especially the matrix and space gothic slides. please view at your discretion <3

part 1/2

If you like WLW (um idk why I only made this slide based on identity; it just kinda happened lmao but I think it works):

Siren: (tw: parent loss, grief, thalassophobia) a mermaid surfaces in a cove town looking for her lost sister. Polyamorous relationship between a man, a black/indigenous woman, and the mermaid!!!! Environmentalism! As a person who has thalassophobia, I didn’t find this too hard to watch. There aren’t that many underwater scenes, thankfully.

Black Mirror: San Junipero: (tw: grief, but otherwise none that I recall; it’s pretty lighthearted) two women meet in a beach resort in the 80s and fall in love. Interracial wlw!

Orphan Black: (tw: suicide, infertility, rape implication, VB, language, drug use) a woman realizes she is one of several clones and uncovers an elaborate corporate conspiracy. This is one of my personal favorites with great rep of complex women of all ages and bodily autonomy. Several central queer characters and a black male secondary character!

Starfish: (tw: grief, a few jump scares and brief monstrous imagery, blood) after the death of her best friend, a young woman breaks into the deceased’s apartment and discovers a chain of music tapes that could save the world. Weird, subtle, and experimental. Not to sound like a surfer but you kinda have to allow yourself to be in the vibe. The main character and her friend were definitely a thing imo.

Annihilation: (tw: body horror, VB, disturbing imagery) a team of women scientists explore an anomaly that rapidly mutates genes. There are canonical and coded wlw and multiple (light-skinned) POC in this but the rep is short-lived. I put it on because although it should’ve been more ambitious with the casting, I think it breaks *some* ground for Hollywood sci fi with the all-woman team and more than one WOC. Wack ending though.

Mad Max: Fury Road: (tw: rape implication, violence) I think everyone knows about this one but: in the apocalypse, a woman breaks 4 younger women out of a harem. A badass car chase across the desert ensues. A bit light on plot/worldbuilding, but sooooo cool-looking and very thematic!!!!

If you liked STRANGER THINGS:

It: (tw: VB) don’t actually watch this lmao I’m serious. It’s really stupid, and not in a funny way. But I do think Stranger Things was inspired by this story overall. The modern It films are better but they’re also really kjslsklskls stupid? Stephen King in general is obsolete imo.

The Thing: (tw: VB) an alien that can take the form of others wreaks havoc on a scientific facility in Antarctica. It’s dark and vibey, but I feel like it’s just Alien in Antarctica with truly terrible special effects tbh?? Others feel differently. It’s also classified as sci fi/horror, so stay away if you’re easily scared! Not too good on representation.

Super 8: (tw: some language) a group of preteens witnesses an alien-caused train crash as they’re filming a home movie. Not diverse but I definitely think it inspired a lot of sci fi for the 2010s, ESPECIALLY Stranger Things. Not too scary either!

ET: (tw: it’s been a really long time since I watched so I don’t remember but it’s rated PG) I think everyone knows what this is about!

Alien: (tw: VB) truckers in space discover a deadly evolving alien. One of my favorite movies of all time! I love the aesthetic and the mood and worldbuilding so much. Ellen Ripley is one of the first Final Girls in the horror genre. I personally found this more of a sci fi than a horror movie but I’d say stay away if you’re nervous!!

Terminator: (tw: VB) a deadly android is sent to kill a woman who’s destined to birth the man who saves the world. Terminator 2 is way better imo because it centers on Sarah rather than the dudes saving her and trying to kill her. But it’s still worth a watch, you know, for the culture.

If you liked CONTAGION:

War of the Worlds: (tw: blood) pretty straightforward aliens come to Earth to take over. Sorry to rec another T*m Cruise movie but I really like the alien design and the apocalypsey feel of this one. Baby Dakota Fanning is in it too!

Falling Skies: (tw: VB, body horror, rape) alien invasion yada yada but the alien lore gets more interesting as it goes on. It’s kind of cheesy and yeah maybe I did discover it by looking up the iCarly boyfriend (and what about it??) but it’s nice to have on in the downtime. An Asian woman co-stars.

Knowing: (tw: blood) school students unearth a time capsule that contains a sheet from a girl who predicted all the tragic world events between 1959-2009. This is NOT a good movie but it’s SO hilarious to me because of the acting and contrivances. Fun to group-watch!!!!

10 Cloverfield Lane: (tw: VB, emotional abuse) a woman wakes up in a bunker to a captor who tells her that the world has fallen to alien apocalypse. I think this movie elevates the original Cloverfield in pretty much every way. Again, super tense and moody. The conflict revolves around whether or not the captor is being truthful.

Train to Busan: (tw: extreme VB and disturbing imagery) a man and his daughter are on a train when a zombie hops on at the last minute. It’s Korean with an all-Asian cast; Choi Woo-shik co-stars. I definitely wouldn’t watch if you’re scared of blood and gore. It’s very gross and violent.

12 Monkeys: (tw: ableism, violence) a man from the 2030s is sent back to the 1990s to prevent the plague that will end the world. I think the aesthetics of this are really cool but otherwise it’s not a favorite. But I think it appeals to people who like apocalypse and time travel stuff!

If you liked THE MATRIX:

Strange Days: (tw: rape, sex, nudity, VB, racism, police brutality) memories can be saved to hard-drives and sold on the black market for exorbitant prices. Very problematic and triggering presentation of rape, but young Angela Basset stars and there’s a condemnation of police brutality that’s still relevant 20+ years after its release.

Upgrade: (tw: ableism, VB, fridging) a disabled man installs an AI in his spine to help him move and investigate the murder of his wife. The premise is glaringly ableist and I feel weird even recommending it tbh but it’s got great visuals and a few good twists.

Altered Carbon: (tw: VB, weird interracial body switching, uhhh I haven’t finished this one IDK) in a society where human bodies are interchangeable, a man wakes up in a new body after 300 years of his mind being dormant. A Latina woman co-stars, two Asian characters in a subplot, a few other POC here and there as well. I think season 2 stars a black man.

eXistenZ: (tw: VB, anti-Asian racism, general weirdness? IDK it’s hard to describe. There are guns made out of bones and weirdly sexual visuals.) after someone tries to assassinate her, a video game designer and her bodyguard must play through her virtual reality game in order to save the only copy of the game.

Minority Report: (tw: VB, eye removal/insertion) all crimes are predicted and criminals reported before they are committed. The main character is preemptively accused of murder. This one is really white but it was one of the first movies that got me into sci fi. Early 2000s Colin Farrell <3.

If you liked WESTWORLD:

Humans: (tw: uncanny valley, objectification) androids are household helpers and public assistants throughout Britain until one day they start developing consciences. It hits a lot of the themes of Westworld without all the unnecessary pretentiousness, “edginess,” and “grittiness,” and it stars Gemma Chan and Colin Morgan!!

Blade Runner 2049: (^) an android is ordered to find and kill a human/android hybrid. It’s not without its issues but it’s one of my favorite movies of all time, right up there with Alien. So beautiful, so thematic, so thought-provoking (to me, anyway. I know a lot of people thought it was way too slow).

Ex Machina: (^) a man is invited to a private estate to help test the intelligence of an android. It’s kind of predictable imo but you know Oscar Isaac and Sonoya Mizuno are in it so we have to stan, and so is Domhnall Gleeson, for the SW fans! I like how isolated and quiet it feels.

I Am Mother: (tw: blood, gaslighting) after an extinction event, a young woman is raised by a lone android in a human repopulation facility until one day a woman knocks. It starts off slow and a bit generic, but I’m obsessed with the 2nd and 3rd acts of this movie---good acting, dialogue, and fantastic visuals. It has that same isolated feel as Ex Machina with only three characters, all of which are women/woman-coded!!!

If you liked ALIEN (space gothic):

Battlestar Galactica (2004-2008 reboot): (tw: genocide, war, colonization, VB, uncanny valley, rape, infidelity) space opera that follows humanity as it fights the ever-evolving and powerful enemy of their own creation: androids named Cylons. Um? I L O V E THIS SHOW SO MUCH and I truly do think it’s everything sci fi should be. There is a really unfortunate Miss Saigon-esque romance plot in season 1 and a lazily-written love triangle involving a black woman in season 3, but otherwise it’s one of my all-time favorites and I highly recommend. It’ll spin your mind and tug your heartstrings for years.

Black Mirror: Men Against Fire: (tw: genocide, war, nudity) soldiers in the near future protect citizens from mutant zombies, but one soldier starts experiencing strange hallucinations in the field. This is such an underrated Black Mirror episode starring a black man. There’s brief objectification of a black woman but it’s very anti-military and it has an interesting sterile aesthetic that reminds me of Alien.

High Life: (tw: rape, black holes/space anxiety, very disturbing) prisoners are given the option to join a space expedition and serve as experimental subjects en route to a black hole. Please please stay away if you are triggered by sexual violence of any kind. There’s almost no physical violence in this movie but it’s psychologically haunting imo.

The Faculty: (tw; VB, drug use) high schoolers discover their teachers are being possessed by an invading alien race. I LOVE THIS MOVIE LMFAOOOO. The cast is SO wild---Elijah Wood, John Oliver, Usher, Salma Hayek, Josh Hartnett??? And I’m probably forgetting more. The combination of the cast, the terrible dialogue, and shitty special effects is PEAK comedy imo. But bear in mind it’s bloody!!

Prometheus: (tw: body horror, VB, uncanny valley) a crew of scientists heads on a deep space mission to find the aliens who created the human race. A prequel to Alien, but I kind of view it as its own thing. Despite the plot holes, I love this movie too! It was one of my sci fi gateways and the visuals are stunning. It’s pretty gory though so if that’s not your thing stay away.

Life: (tw: extreme VB) a lesser Alien, but it provides all the space gothic tropes (jokey crew, shots of space, really pretty spaceship, everyone dies, creepy alien) with a well-known cast---Gyllenhaal, Reynolds, etc.

The X Files: (tw: a few episodes contain 90s racism, sexism, queerphobia etc but you can skip them) a lot of people have watched this so I barely have to explain, but it’s one of my favorites. Two FBI agents investigate multiple aliens and get involved in government conspiracies along the way. A good gateway!

A Quiet Place: (tw: child loss, VB, tension) I think most people know what this is about too. Alien apocalypse with aliens that hunt by sound. The daughter in the family is deaf, and so is the actress who portrays her. The representation of deafness was critically acclaimed.

#maxine talks sci fi #movie recs #maxine did you read/watch

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nbbkatherine · 4 years ago

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Connecting the Dots

Homeland by Cory Doctorow; Charlie’s Angels, 2019 Elizabeth Banks film; Numb3rs tv show; You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane; Parasite, 2019 Bong Joon-ho film; the chilliad by Molly Of Geography webserial; Westworld tv show; Future Friends album by Superfruit; Dickinson tv show; after-words bookstore in Chicago, IL; webcomic name by Alex Norris; American Gods by Neil Gaiman; GINGER by BROCKHAMPTON; Russian Doll tv show.

Woohoo it’s been two years of Never Be Bored! This blog is all about relating different types of media together, and in the twenty-five posts so far, I’ve written about over one hundred books, movies, tv shows, and more. We could plot out each of these posts on a graph—nodes for individual recommendations and edges connecting recs in the same post. So buckle up folks, today we’re going to connect those dots so that we get one, big, beautiful connected graph.

Already some of the work is done. Too Like the Lightning is featured in Really Big Worms and The R Smith Edition. Worm is featured in The R Smith Edition, All Superheroes Need Therapy, and It’s the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine. The first twelve posts all got a bonus recommendation from A Year In Review. Kurt Vonnegut wrote both Slaughterhouse Five from Nonlinearity and Galápagos in And So On. Elsewhere University from Strange and Yet Familiar got a shoutout in A+ in Applied Magics.

Let’s start off easy, making connections with what we’ve already got.

Do you hear that? Arrival, from Nonlinearity, and The Vast of Night, featured in Something in the sky, are two sci-fi movies about listening to aliens. For a modern take, with lots of scenes about trying to figure out xenolinguistics, go for Arrival, but if you’d rather something creepy and retro with dramatic monologues, give The Vast of Night a try.

Takeshi Kovacs is one bad ass mother fucker who is just over this shit, but still somehow gets roped into flashy fight scenes. If you liked that character in Altered Carbon, from To Whom Am I Speaking?, you’ll like the story of Duncan Vizla, aka the Black Kaiser, an almost-retired hitman in Polar, a Year in Review bonus rec to Floor It.

Bright Star (featured in The Northwestern Edition) and Hadestown (featured in It’s an old song) are both blues/jazz/folk musicals about a double love story. Bright Star is loosely based on a Missouri folk tale, Hadetown is inspired by Greek mythology. Both are excellent.

Cosmo Sheldrake (The How How Much Much and I from Strange and Yet Familiar) and Hozier (Hozier and Wasteland, Baby! from Daisies & Death) both create music that makes you imagine old fairy magic in the forest. Cosmo Sheldrake’s “Hocking” is like what I’d envision playing at a fae celebration of summer solstice, while Hozier’s “Wasteland, Baby!” is the sad love song from after the party’s over.

And now, let’s add entirely new nodes to our graph with new recommendations to connect posts.

Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer (Really Big Worms, The R Smith Edition) is a very idea-forward book, and (one of) the catalysts that kicks off the story is a stolen newspaper article draft. Ada Palmer is a professor who researches intellectual history, and it absolutely shows in her writing as her books explore the implications of a society based on certain ideas. Cory Doctorow is another favorite author of mine who also writes idea-forward fiction—if you liked Too Like the Lightning, try his Homeland, in which Marcus Yallow is entrusted with an archive documenting government and corporate crime, and has to figure out how to publish it without getting arrested. I would also highly recommend this book, available to download for free from Doctorow’s website, if you liked The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick (Something in the sky). Although Homeland is fictional, as you read you’ll learn things too—about information security, the darkweb, evading surveillance, and protesting tips.

I want more action movies starring women, because I love a good fight sequence and watching things go boom, but I’m tired of watching men with big guns in movies with, like, one named woman character. Kingsman: The Secret Service (A Year in Review bonus rec to Non je ne regrette rien) just barely passes the Bechdel test, but I will give it a bonus point for having two badass women main characters who aren’t love interests (ugh, the bar is so low). And if you liked the aesthetic of Kingmen’s gentlemen spies, then you might like Elizabeth Bank’s 2019 reboot movie Charlie’s Angels. Naomi Scott, Ella Balinska and Kristen Stweart all kicking ass on screen? Yes, please! Continuing in that vein, see also Ocean’s 8 (Floor It) for an all-women heist crew, set on stealing diamonds from the Met Gala.

My favorite episodes of Hannibal (Daisies & Death) are the one-off monster-of-the-week type episodes, where the FBI is investigating a murder and Will Graham, profiler extraordinaire, is called in for help. If you’re into crime shows like that, try Numb3rs, streaming on Hulu, a tv show about two brothers—one, Alan, an FBI agent and the other, Charlie, a mathematician. Together they solve crimes, using fluid dynamics, disease spread modeling, wavelet analysis, and many more areas of applied math. (I learned a little about sabermetrics, the statistical analysis of baseball, from one episode, so I dropped that term in conversation with a sports-obsessed acquaintance freshman year in college. We became good friends, and I’m pretty sure that conversation was part of why.) For more on applications of mathematics to real world problems, read The Code Book by Simon Singh, featured in On Computability, which details the math theory behind creating and cracking encryption over the centuries.

The Imitation Game, a Year in Review bonus rec to On Computability, is named for an artificial intelligence thought experiment proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, before anything resembling modern computers even existed. In Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson, robots across the globe gain sentience and begin to turn against their human makers—hilariously in retrospect, I recommended this book in It’s the End of the World as We Know It and I Feel Fine back in March. Anyway, between those two extremes, where is the field of artificial intelligence today? To learn more, try You Look Like a Thing and I Love You by Janelle Shane, a truly delightful book that will both show you how far research has come and will reassure you that the robot uprising won’t be happening anytime soon.

Bad Times at the El Royale (Just you, and me, and this gun) unsurprisingly takes place at the El Royale hotel. For reasons that would be spoilers to name, the setting is essential to the plot of the film—the story could not have unfolded in the way that it did anywhere else. This is also true of Parasite, 2019 Bong Joon-ho film currently streaming on Hulu, where many scenes take place in a rich family’s house—which was actually designed and built in pieces for the movie. An absolutely incredible dark comedy/thriller, Parasite explores the things a person might just do to get ahead. For another thriller with characters willing to go to extreme lengths for their own personal reasons, try Thoroughbreds, from Non je ne regrette rien.

Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe, featured in It’s an old song, retells the story of Persephone and Hades but in a vaguely modern setting—where the two first meet in a crowded bar. For more modernized Greek myths, check out the chilliad by Molly Of Geography, a wildly funny adaptation of the Illiad. Follow along with Homer Bard, undeclared freshman Alpha Sigma Phi pledge, as he recounts the story of the epic prank war against the Trojan House. If your favorite characters from this ongoing webserial are Achilles “AC” Myrmidon and Pedro Klaus “PK” Liebling but were looking for something a little more traditional, then you might like Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, a retelling of Illiad from the point of view of Patroclus, recommended in Is it better to speak or die?.

Firefly (The Family We Made Along the Way) is a tv show with an interesting blend of aesthetics—some people wear dusty cowboy hats and some people live in floating mansions and there’s a scene where the crew get a job to transport cattle from between planets. If you’re into that, try the tv show Westworld, streaming on HBO, about a Western-themed amusement park, populated by android hosts—who talk and dress and live as if it’s the 1800s, looking exactly like humans, with no idea that their entire world is a vacation destination for the wealthy. As the series continues and secrets are revealed, plot twists will keep you glued to the screen. See also Sense8 (To Whom Am I Speaking?), which likewise features lots of action and a cast of characters who keep secrets and deals with the question—what makes us different from each other?

In The Northwestern Edition I wrote about the different a cappella groups on campus; if you like that style of music then you might have heard of the group Pentatonix, the first a cappella group to win the Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement. Two members of the group, Mitch Grassi and Scott Hoying, also make up the duo Superfruit, and I adore their (synth-pop, not a cappella) album Future Friends. “Imaginary Parties” (which has an excellent music video) and “Bad 4 Us” are my song recs for Freckle and Caleb respectively, characters from The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo, the five-episode series from Baby if you love me, won’t you please just give me a smile?.

If you’re interested in queer art history, consider following Dan Vo on Instagram, one of the tour guides of the V&A’s LGBTQ tours, recommended in The Eye of the Beholder. You might also like Dickinson, an Apple TV show about Emily Dickinson growing up, writing poetry, getting into trouble with her parents, and falling in love with her friend Susan. Although it’s set in 19th century Massachusetts, the dialogue and music are thoroughly modern, which makes for a fun juxtaposition—in the first episode, Emily imagines going on a carriage ride with Death while “bury a friend” by Billie Eilish plays in the background. For more stories about the life of a queer poet, try Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde, featured in Looking Forward, Looking Back, about her experiences growing up, writing poetry, getting into trouble with her parents, and falling in love with lots of people, in 1940s and 50s New York City.

Here’s how you spend one perfect day in Chicago: you wake up late one November Saturday. Down in the Loop, you visit the beautiful Chicago Athletic Association, which despite the name is actually a hotel, for Chicago Art Book Fair (A Year in Review bonus rec to The Northwestern Edition). You browse brightly colored lithographs and maybe pick up a zine or two. Then you take a walk north, across the river, to E Illinois and Wabash, to after-words bookstore. Down in the basement, you look through the new and used books in search of something interesting. Take your time in River North, find something good to eat, because you have plenty of time before taking the Red Line up to Argyle, to catch a performance of the The Infinite Wrench by the Neo-Futurists, featured in Next!.

In My Favorite Shapes (This Might As Well Happen), we get to hear Julio Torres talk about, for example, an oval looking at his reflection in a pond and wishing he were a circle. Some of my favorite shapes are the pink blobs from Alex Norris’s webcomic name, three-panel comics with a repeated punchline—an excellent of example of how sometimes you don’t need a lot of fancy detail to convey emotion. For another webcomic about the absurdities of life, check out Poorly Drawn Lines by Reza Farazmand (And So On).

Forgotten gods and old magic tied to old places. In Digger (webcomic featured in The Family We Made Along the Way), a perfectly respectable wombat finds herself traveling strange lands and meeting a couple of gods (well, sort of). For another story of an ordinary person who gets caught up in the affairs of gods, try American Gods by Neil Gaiman, about an ex-convict who meets Mr. Wednesday, an American incarnation of the Norse deity Odin the All-Father. The things we are allowed to forget shape us—at one time, Odin had power because many people knew that he was real, but in this book, Mr. Wednesday is weakened because so many people have forgotten him. One of my favorite moments—in just about any written work I’ve ever read— is the line of dialogue in The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (A+ in Applied Magics) that Revealed a Thing Forgotten. You’ll know it when you see it, and any further description would be a major spoiler.

On the scale of how much singing is involved in rap albums, on one side you have something like neo-soul Overgrown (Looking Forward, Looking Back), where Ivy Sole shows off her vocals, and on the other you have R.A.P. Ferreira’s purple moonlight pages (Something in the sky), which has more of a jazz-rap feel. Somewhere in between is GINGER by BROCKHAMPTON, which has both catchy sung hooks and rapid-fire bars; two of my favorite songs off this album are “SUGAR” and “IF YOU PRAY RIGHT.” I’ve seen them in concert twice and I look forward to being able to again, someday.

Lastly, if you liked Palm Springs, from This Might As Well Happen, a rom-com in which Nyles and Sarah fall asleep and wake up on the day of Sarah’s sister’s wedding over and over again, but were looking for something a bit darker, then you might like Russian Doll, a black comedy tv series that begins when two people keep dying and reliving the same night. For another duo of characters with great dialogue bumbling through life and death together, try Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, featured in It’s an old song.

Here’s a visualization of this blog, with and without labels:

#books #movies #tv #webserials #music #things to do and see #Chicago #webcomics

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saieras · 6 years ago

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I was tagged by the newly-renamed @soybean-official

Rules: answer the questions about yourself and then tag people you wanna know better!

Name: My pen name is Areias which is incidentally a district in Sao Paolo but I didn’t know that when I made this up!

Nickname: P, or Pat

Age: Too damn old

Gender: Guy

Orientation: Gay

Height: 175cm sorry non-metric-users y’all on your own!

Favorite colors: Somewhere between blue and grey

Book Recommendations: Airborn trilogy by Kenneth Oppel; they are a steampunk swashbuckling Victorian/Edwardian era adventure novels with airships and lots of action. They remain my favorite YA books and highly recommended.

Other than that, the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik outlines the Napoleonic Wars but with each country fielding an air force of dragons and their riders. Badass, amazingly written, and with very believable periodic/historic dialogue! Also the dragons have cute personalities.

Movie Recommendations: sorry this turned out to be so long

Live action:

Contagion; a very realistic sci-fi thriller with an amazing cast, about a massive pandemic outbreak.

Notes on a Scandal; this is also a thriller about a very creepy and manipulative old teacher (played phenomenally by Judi Dench) and her friendship with a younger colleague (played by Cate Blanchett) who has a romantic relationship with one of her students.

Land of Mine; an unconventional war film told from the perspective of German prisoners of war after WWII, many of whom were boys, forced by the Allied government after the war to manually clear landmines from miles and miles of coast.

On a lighter note, if you’re on this blog, chances are you’re a fan of the MCU! Iron Man 1, CACW, and SMHC are my favorites :)

Animated:

Song of the Sea, an Irish animated movie that really has a unique and fable-like animation style.

Patema Inverted (Sakasama no Patema); it has an awesome premise and is gorgeously animated, and I like the characters!

Your Name (Kimi no Na Wa); this probably needs no explanation but I adore the premise and the animation as well. The voice acting is also on point!

Other than these, most things by Hayao Miyazaki or Pixar, and some by Disney are quite good.

TV Recommendations: Game of Thrones, A Handmaid’s Tale, and an old but fantastic X-files-like series Fringe! I always loved the opening sequence.

Music Recommendations: As a genre I love instrumental music so from that category Two Steps From Hell is at the top of the list.

For lyrical music, I tend to like a particular song instead of an artist, but One Republic, the Fray, and Green Day get shout outs.

Game Recommendations: A category I added because I love games! Anyway, The Long Dark, This War of Mine, The Banner Saga, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun.

Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate? Tea, but my go-to drink is milk.

Cats or dogs? Dogs, but my own personality is like a cat so maybe I just need some extroverted animal to love me.

Favorite meme?

I I i

I I I _

Because it’s a super old meme but keeps coming back from time to time in the least expected way and it’s great

Goals for 2018: Pass the board exam, generally stay on top of my shit, finish 2 outstanding fanfics I left on hiatus.

I want to live long enough to witness: a supernova, interstellar travel, for NASA to explore Europa and Ganymede (and possibly find alien lifeforms!), organ cloning and targeted immune therapy with nanobots

Weird obsessions: I’m not sure what constitutes as weird tbh

How many sideblogs? None

Random fact about me: I am a faulty perfectionist; I want to do everything perfectly but that means 90% planning and 10% doing and in the end I run out of time so I end up with something I’m not satisfied with. I’m still learning to deal with it!

Thank you once again for the tag, this has been fun :)

Idk who to tag really because I’m kinda new to tumblr but uh, @the-claire-bitch-project and @my-babies-are-ash because I see you guys on my dash a lot and you both have great blogs!!! Also @lafayette1777 and @doctortwelfth because I love your angst fics like omg that is a level of written perfection I want to achieve

#this turned out to be way longer than I intended #random

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adventurecow · 8 years ago

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Stories Untold: Parts 1-3 Theories

Been watching Cry play Stories Untold lately, and I had a few theories that I wanted to throw out before the final episode! Highly recommend that everyone try it out.

Major spoilers for the three first episodes of Stories Untold. If you haven't watched Cry play it, or played it yourself, I highly recommend that you do so before continuing to read on. Trust me - it's the kind of story that's best experienced firsthand.

First, let's recap of what's happened so far.

Part 1: The House Abandon

You play as a dude who's playing a text adventure in your old family home. Plot twist: it turns out that the text adventure is literally about you, you are actively controlling the player character in the game, and your actions in the game are actually directly affecting your surroundings. At the end, you are forced to admit that it's all your fault. Your fault? What IS your fault?

Part 2: The Lab Conduct

In this episode, the game jumps to a very sketchy experimental lab where you're forced to perform increasingly harmful manipulations on what appears to be some kind of heart that turns out to have probably belonged to an alien. At the end, it spawns a black box, which you can touch to retrieve its owner's memories - which are very conveniently spewed out in classic text adventure format on your computer. You interact with the scenes in the memories in the same way you would a regular text adventure. And then comes the plot twist - something happens, and you gain access to the CURRENT thoughts and feelings of a captive test subject in the lab, as well as full control over them. You direct the test subject to basically destroy the lab as revenge for the way the experimenters have treated you.

Part 3: The Station Process

You are a volunteer who has been stationed at a remote cabin in the woods, and there's a severe snowstorm going on. Your job is to process mysterious transmissions. You know absolutely nothing except for the fact that your job is top secret and vital to national security. But for all its aura of mystery, The Station Process is probably the most blatant of all the first three episodes.

At the end, as one by one your fellow volunteers disappear and you're left running alone through the snow, you hear voices telling you to "wake up". It's a little cliched, but that most likely means that you're in a coma. Now the question is - who are you, and when did you fall into a coma? And what does this have to do with all the text adventure metatextual strangeness?

My Theory

Based on the names mentioned, you seem to be playing the same man throughout all three episode. As for time, the year 1986 seems to crop up over and over again as well, so it has to have some kind of significance.

I personally think that the sci-fi episode - The Lab Conduct - is a good place to start reconstructing the truth of the whole story. First of all, there seems to have been an alien invasion. An alien craft crashed, and government agents retrieved a few alien captives along with the black boxes of the aliens who died at the site. In order to access the alien's memories, the experimenters invented a set of equipment through which you can access the memories of the aliens, by taking the black box's contents and interpreting it as an English text adventure.

The scientists, however, made a fatal mistake by making the text adventure interactive. Instead of letting the player passively consume the memories, they allowed the player to control the movements of the person in the memories. What happens then, when instead of exploring the memories of a dead person's black box, you're exploring the memories of a live person, in real time?

To be fair, they probably didn't anticipate that our protagonist would be able to actually manipulate the actions of an alien in real life. From the sounds of it, they've used test subjects to approach the black boxes of other aliens, and none of them even succeeded in getting to the memory parsing part. Probably didn't even survive the experiments.

But the point is, our protagonist is special. Somehow managed to access the black box memories, and even jack into the mind of a subject in real time. The mechanism by which he accomplishes this should be clear - the experimenters somehow stitched the alien black boxes together, so it shouldn't have been difficult for him to jump from one black box to another - the aliens had artificially become a hive mind at that point. And then of course he proceeded to wreck the entire lab as revenge, probably because of the way he and his fellow test subjects were treated.

Now, how does this play into the rest of the episodes? The most obvious connection, of course, is aliens. The Lab Conduct refers to alien captives, and the crash of an alien ship. The Station Process talks about what is obviously a pending alien invasion - it makes sense that protecting against it would be a highly secret matter of national security. Now the question is - how does the Station Process link to the Lab Conduct? Does it happen before, or after?

My theory is that the Station Process happens first. It feels like we're witnessing the first contact here, as opposed to the Lab Conduct where contact has already been made and we're already experimenting on the poor aliens. So here, then, is where our protagonist's journey starts - in a cold, lonely cabin in the woods. He volunteers to man the station, and at the end, fails to prevent the alien invasion thanks to one of the aliens screwing up the transmitter. Now there's one moment in this episode that I think is crucial - it's the part where he's dragged out of his chair and out into the snow... and somehow ends up entirely unscathed.

That's an utterly fantastical scene - so improbable, in fact, that I think that this moment is a fabrication in his mind. I think that he in fact did get captured by the aliens - and maybe even modified somehow (perhaps to have a black box of his own, which is why he could jack into their minds so easily). In the process, he was rendered comatose somehow.

The fictional nature of everything that happens outside the cabin is reinforced by the fact that he hears voices calling for him to wake up at the end of the episode. I think that he was probably retrieved from the aliens at some point while he was in a coma, alongside the other station guards. Maybe that's why they were all called volunteers, even though it's hard to imagine why you'd volunteer to go through that kind of dangerous experiment. The government's scientists felt like they HAD to use subjects who had been in contact with the aliens, perhaps because they could interface with the aliens' minds. Or perhaps it was easier to use subjects who already knew about the aliens - more convenient for secrecy purposes, anyway.

And of course, this all culminates in The House Abandon. At the end of The Lab Conduct, you see all the alien black boxes floating to greet him. At that point, I feel like our protagonist BECOMES assimilated into the hive mind and loses his sense of individuality, and his ability to control his own actions.

Since the Last Session implies therapy, I think that The House Abandon is literally a therapeutic exercise. First, the therapist somehow jacks the protagonist into his own black box and relive his childhood memories, and even literally control a past version of himself. Then, there is a trigger that makes him switch into the present version of himself, so that he's literally controlling himself in real time. Finally, he is confronted by his own sin - the fact that he controlled the alien to destroy the lab - in order to make him remember his own sin. And by taking responsibility for that, he begins to retake control of his individuality.

Then, he proceeds to play through The Lab Conduct and The Station Process in order to put his memories of being an individual back together, which then culminates in him waking up and probably wrapping up the therapeutic process for him in the Last Session.

This explains why we never actually see the protagonist's body in any of the games, even though his presence is heavily implied. It's because he literally does not have a self - his sense of self has been shattered through the assimilation process.

This theory is probably too convoluted to be even halfway true, and so I look forward to be proven wrong in the final chapter when Cry plays it.

#cryaotic #stories untold #the house abandon #horror games #interactive fiction

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anireviewer-blog · 8 years ago

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Oh hey wow I used to have an anime review blog

Anyway, I just finished SAO for, like, the sixth time. Am I the only one watches up to Episode 14 and then stops? The show is called Sword Art Online, but out of all the episodes of each season, only the first fourteen actually merit relevance to it’s name.

Following Episode 14, the show puts a bad taste in my mouth for several reasons. First of all, it’s impossible to follow. The art, story, characters, and emotion of the first half of season 1 are ridiculously good, and when that all ends abruptly after the collapse of SAO, it’s just like, “Well shit, what are we gonna do now?” Yes, they continue the virtual reality theme and put him back into the NerveGear, but Alfheim doesn’t have nearly the same drama or significance of SAO. Every episode after that doesn’t deliver the same resounding message of love and survival that we all craved in Sword Art Online.

When the players return to virtual reality in the world of Alfheim, it simply doesn’t compare to the significance from earlier episodes. The whole reason SAO grabbed you and made you want to keep watching was because they revealed the devious intent of Kayaba Akihiko in the ending of Episode 1. The same goes for similar shows, like AoT. Had Eren’s mother survived, none of us would have clicked “Keep Watching,” eagerly anticipating his lust for revenge and how he would strike it. Everything is put on the line in SAO when life in the game became life itself. This was the origion of each character’s passion to stay alive, to pass each new level and floor boss. When the characters enter Alfheim, they aren’t fighting for survival, but fighting for fun. They can die and respawn without fearing for their own safety. While Kirito’s passion in Alfheim stems from saving Asuna, other characters express a wild motive that, while somewhat emotionally powerful, fails any realistic justification. They scream in battle for the sake of empowerment, not in grave determination and will to keep living as in earlier episodes.

The art and style of SAO takes a turn for the worst following Episode 14. The beautiful scenery and settings of Aincrad that changed with every episode were discarded in exchange for bland deciduous forests, sci-fi computer rooms, and Asuna’s weird birdcage forage prison. These are the only landscapes that you get to explore as a spectator of Alfheim. You can also say goodbye to the fluid, action-packed swordfighting scenes that showed not only the absolute skill of each player, but also the unique combat system of Sword Art Online. I may be a bad apple here, but the flying-while-fighting thing is not appealing aesthetically. Perhaps my expectations were a bit unrealistic after seeing what was acheived in SAO, but the smooth swordplay, combo attacks, skills, backflips, and trademark dual-weilding were direly missed In Alfheim. These and other unique characteristics of the action in Aincrad were what made boss fights and dungeons so addicting, and what made the tasteless flying combat of Alfheim pale in comparison.

However, I will say a few things in favor of the final half of SAO’s Season 1 episodes. The development of Kirito’s character is very compelling, similar to the personal growth he underwent in Aincrad. Kirito entering the world in the dim hope of finding Asuna shows a lot about his character, and he continues to define this quality through his actions in Alfheim. The lengths that he goes to discover her in that world really shows his love for her, not necessarily more than he did in SAO, but still enough to stand out. Also, the addition of a strong antagonist evoked a lot of emotion out of me as a viewer. His truly diabolical intentions and obsession with Asuna are incredibly gripping, building huge opposition to him, creating this new passion that you never got to experience in SAO, and making it that much cooler when he’s finally taken down. The final scene in particular, where Kirito is being held down by immense gravity and Oberon is molesting Asuna, stood out to me as a good example of the new, emotional themes that had been introduced alongside with Alfheim Online.

This show is absolutely spectacular, has always been one of my favorites, and remains so today. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend you give it a try. When you become completely engrossed, please do yourself a favor and finish Sword Art Online with the end of Sword Art Online. Let Kirito trotting intently down the hospital hallway be the final, desperate act of love that it should be, and resist the urge to play the next episode, hoping for a glimmer of any prevalent themes that we all loved from the world of Aincrad, from the beautiful steel castle floating in the sky.

#sao #sword #art #online #swordartonline #sword art online #rant #sao rant #aincrad #alfheim #alfheim online #review #anime #anime review #anireveiw

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vrsystem-us · 5 years ago

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15 BEST GRAPHICS on Modern VR Systems

we don't get to talk about VR very often but we love it when we can and we love graphics so we figured it was a good time to feature 15 VR games with some of the most insane graphics let's just get started with number 15 and talk about Vader immortal it's by far not the best-looking game on this list but it has a few key things first it's one of the better-looking games on the quest the wireless oculus device the quality and detail they cram on the headset for this game in particular is just incredibly impressive but also now that it's on the standard rift platform you could really see the graphical effort even more but the big thing I want to point out with this game is just Darth Vader himself when he walks up to you and he stares you down you can really tell they put a Hall of the budget into him he looks incredible and the sense of presence he gives off when he's standing in front of you is nothing short of amazing you really feel like it's him so we're giving the game big points for that but moving on to number 14 let's talk about red matter VR red matter VR is awesome there are a few VR games on this list that are like this but I think whew look as cool the concept is you're exploring a Space Station lab on a moon of Saturn to investigate shady secret research projects it's like an alternate universe sci-fi cold war dystopia and if something went wrong so it's up to you to figure it out it's atmospheric but it's also strikingly detailed even more than you'd expect and some of the weird evil red visual effects they use in-game are a sight to behold really check it out but next at number 13 zero caliber VR this game is impressive in a different sense I mean it looks pretty decent but it's all how it comes together as a first-person shooter you have full movement around the environment and can take cover at will it's all freedom you have big guns that you can realistically hold and interact with different parts of it and there's just lots of explosions and the game doesn't really take a hit up close some things can look kind of crappy but when it's all in motion the ambition of the game itself makes it really visually impressive it feels like you're dropped into a real first-person shooter like Call of Duty or something since you shoot things and it looks cool that's what I'm trying to say and next up at number 12 we have Arizona sunshine a game that you might think at first it's just another throwaway zombie shooter game like you see on every other app store but this one actually looks damn good once you get into it the use of lighting in just the outdoor environments and just the art style of sort of being kind of artsy but sort of realistic make this thing quite a looker and more than you'd expect especially if you're running on a decent machine aside from just the bright color and the lighting and stuff the explosion effects and some of that stuff is really really impressive this game isn't like the absolute masterpiece or anything but it is absolutely solid and consistent and just fun to look at so that's why we considered it plus honestly it's just fun as hell shooting zombies is always cool and Arizona sunshine is of the higher quality so check it out but moving over to number 11 something I really want to talk about is the gallery part of the Ember stone this is actually the follow-up to the gallery call of the star seed which was a big hit for a lot of vibe players back in the day when it first launched it's a really cool puzzle mystery adventure game which already looked damn good and the developers cloud head games really stepped it up with ember stone I just look at it now that in the game story you're entering a new ancient hidden world everything is just bigger and more fantastical within the game so the art design and the graphic line should really keep up and make up for this it really looks better than ever visually and gameplay wise it's a massive improvement over a call of the star seed and I would highly highly recommend it but next at number 10 singularity 5 it's this awesome wave shooter that I'm really hyped to talk about it looks incredible and has a great sense of style the art direction is like a crazy high-concept sci-fi kind of artsy fartsy vibe that they completely nailed from the vision to the actual execution in the game not only is it stylish though but the on-screen menus and the fonts and everything like little things are really cool too it's just you know like I said sometimes with stuff it's just really the little details and when people really pay attention to every single individual element in a game they're making I just really appreciate there are a few other games like this on this list in terms of just like wave shooter type thing but it's still worth pointing out just because it's art style is so different and eclectic now at number 9 project cars to VR I still really firmly strongly believe that racing games are the perfect style of game to really get people into VR and just show them what it can do and right now really the best showcase of that is project cars - now straight up it's not my favorite racing game by any means but the VR component is just extremely extremely well done and the fidelity is perfectly translated to the VR options and in the best ways you really feel like you're in the car and there's still a surprising amount of detail on everything kick-ass graphics are needed to be able to properly convey a good sense of speed and if that's not done right the fun factor can drop instantly thankfully though project cars 2 succeeds and then some like from that - detail - just everything you want to blow somebody's mind put a VR headset on them and put them in a racing game and like I said earlier project cars - is the one to do it with at number 8 primordial this is a weird otherworldly first-person shooter with a single-player adventure and an arcade mode and despite there being so many other VR shooters this one just feels super unique and it looks great I think primarily it's because of the scope of this dense looking world as well as definitely these weapon visuals that the guns or weird gross weapons use are hyper detailed and cool and the game makes really fun use of glowing colors and bright neons - just great great effect it was made by like two dudes it's really amazing that it looks as good but we got to give them props next at number seven let's talk about how blade we love how blade here at game ranks and it also got of the arm oh it's just a damn good looking game it was a good looking game then and putting it in VR was a weird choice but it totally works the way it's set up essentially most at a time you're acting as the camera the game is still you know in third-person perspective only the camera has some slight movement and freedom with your head in motion and stuff there are other games that do it like this but I think he'll played is just one of the best-looking ones you know there is a loss in graphical fidelity in some spots as there always is with VR but experiencing this game in front of your damn face is still really cool and the characters and a creepy environment still look great and absolutely emulate you feel of playing it the traditional way honestly however you play it maybe you're watching this you don't even have a VR headset I'll say it again play hell-blade cuz it's a really cool single-player adventure anyway let's move on next at number six in death people describe this game in death kind of like as a Dark Souls VR game and yeah that works it has a lot of like great bow and arrow gameplay in it and it's a robe light so it has a satisfying challenge loop but gameplay aside it looks really good it's been hailed as one of the best-looking VR games and I really got it in particular point out how cool the enemies look and especially the way they move and animate here this is one that you just really kind of need to see to believe in motion like it's gotta be on your face as generic as that sounds I really think it's true some of the games on this list is better off you actually seeing them in person than a YouTube video with awful compression in 1080p showing it but getting down to the final five let's talk about Batman Arkham vr this is honestly like a relatively simple Batman experience this is really freaking cool and immersive and it looks so damn good and what started out as a psvr exclusive has been ported over and it's just really goddamn awesome it looks good on every platform because it preserves the look of the Rocksteady Batman Arkham games from style tough all that gritty detail and it puts you in Batman shoes literally it has a depth and scale of Gotham rooftops where you can look down to the busy streets below but also all of Batman's gadgets and his cool clubs are recreated with a bunch of really really fun detail this game is really more of an experience you know a museum type thing but it's really awesome and impressively running in real time I played this one like well over a year ago at least and I still can't stop thinking about how good it looks but moving on to number four just a quick one lone echo lone echo is awesome the movement and zero-gravity the puzzles and seriously I can't say enough good things about this one but it also looks awesome despite the simple premise of a Space Station floating through empty endless space it's the detail in the environments the lighting and really the character models you get up close and personal with that really impressive this one might make you queasy you know but the floating around in space is so much fun and I'd really recommend it especially because it's practically a graphical powerhouse dude but next up something I'm really excited to talk about at number three is Resident Evil 7 it's one of the more impressive triple-a VR outages Capcom definitely gambled on this one it's been probably a ton of money because the entirety of Resident Evil 7 can just be played in VR first of all this makes it incredibly scary the atmosphere and the graphics are preserved enough in VR to make certain sequences of the game still feel genuinely spooky also the detail of the character models is still insanely impressive those Baker's are messed up I don't know but really this is truly a VR game on a massive budget and if you can experience it you should because they gave it their all as long as you have the stomach for it it sucks EDD it's still just a psvr exclusive but still it looks damn good now down at number two let's talk about less of an official one its ally and isolation alien isolation is a crazy looker I mean creative assembly put a ton of time into the visuals here and just support in general with the game the dark hallways atmospheric lighting emergency lights the faithful level design that just really recreate that feeling the original alien it's a no brainer for looking good when it's also strapped to your face and ER this has to be access to with mods though there were like files in the game for VR support groundwork but it never came through as official DLC or an update like ii sega didn't support but it's worth tweaking fairly easily and checking out it's very scary and very moody and I think more than anything alien fans need to get themselves in this but finally at number one we want to talk about Robo recall okay where to start on this one ooh Robo recall kind of acts as like a nice graphical showcase for Unreal Engine VR stuff but thankfully it's also fun as hell but also more importantly on this list it's an absolute looker it's got a little bit everything you know semi explorable environments with impressively detailed city streets and tall skyscrapers where the scale actually feels properly massive up close and personal you have these highly detailed robot character models that really get in your face and look pretty amazing they can be blasted with bullets and damage and you can also grab them and slowly rip them apart with your hands before your very eyes and see all that stuff happening in motion in real time is so cool everything is shiny glossy detailed sharp it's highly stylized while also just making you feel like you're really there a robo recall is something really special everybody's gonna have different opinions on like what the best looking VR games are like there are more than we can even include on this list and everybody has a different type of preference for a graphical style and art style but these games look really amazing and we just wanted to highlight them but of course for VR enthusiasts down in the comments we want to hear what you guys are up to you what are you playing what do you think looks the best what are you really in love with what's whisking you away if you learned about a new game or something like that from us clicking the like button is the best way you can show appreciation and help us out we would love that but if you're new consider subscribing and hitting that notification about in it because we put out videos every single day but hey as always thanks for watching we'll see you guys next time

https://youtu.be/Ri5HKY6nguc

#vr system

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bestvrsystem-com · 5 years ago

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15 BEST GRAPHICS on Modern VR Systems

https://youtu.be/Ri5HKY6nguc

#best vr ystem

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georgiapickupfutureworks-blog · 7 years ago

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Limbo Trailer Assignment Blog

For our assignment we have had to re-create the sound for the Limbo Trailer. I watched over the trailer many times before I could probably remember it off by heart and it sent me insane, but totally worth it for the research! You can find the original trailer with its original sound here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4HSyVXKYz8

I also played through the game, I wanted to get more of a feel for the games aesthetic and genre so I decided I would play through, plus it is an amazing game with a completely interesting but messed up story line. I would highly recommend playing through, worth an hour’s playtime (assuming you don’t die, but you will.) Download on Steam, it seems to be on sale often and can pick it up for a couple of pound.

Anyway, about the assignment, I instantly knew I wanted my genre to be heavily inspired by a fantasy theme. I first looked on wiki, like everyone else does for answers in life. One line in the entire page hit me the most; ‘Fantasy is a genre of fiction set in a fictional universe, often, but not always, without any locations, events, or people referencing the real world.’ And there it was, one sentence that opens up so many opportunities for endless creativity in a project, Fantasy is by far the more creative genre, (with many sub-genres,) and it opens up so many doors for projects. You can read more about fantasy here, wiki may always seem boring and daunting, but honestly this is one of the most fun research projects I have yet to do - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy

So once I had my main genre set, I wanted a sub genre, you can have many different types of fantasy themes whether it is magical, scary, in a fairy tale world, sci-fi, comical and many more. Even though my initial idea was to make it feel like a fairy tale, it drastically changed into more of a horror fantasy world. Over the course of the blog you will see how my idea changed from one to another. I feel like as a creator it is okay to change idea’s, I feel like being stuck in one mindset is what stops people being as creative as possible. Explore! It will always make the end product feel something to be proud of. A good website that shows and explains Fantasy and its sub genre’s well is here; http://www.findmeanauthor.com/fantasy_fiction_genre.htm

I started to research into other games, one of my most played games of all time is Everquest 2, it has been out for 13 years now, and it is hands down one of the best games. Not to mention the sound when you are playing, you don’t have to play with sound, but if you do you feel like you are there and you feel so more engaged, it never gets boring. As Everquest 2 is of course very heavily fantasy themed, each year they bring out new expansions and they always have a trailer. I watched through each trailer and seeing how the sound was all placed in and it really got me inspired. I will link my favorite trailer of where the sound really stood out for me, (for controversial reasons I won’t mention my favorite expansion.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj-S4GB6y7M

Other game trailers I briefly looked at was the Skyrim, Final Fantasy and Destiny trailers, I wanted to get a feel for similar fantasy games and see how each game has their own personality with sound. Of course I also re-watched all the Harry Potter trailers, if you know me well you know I will do anything to sneak in some Harry Potter somewhere! So there you have it, I also watched them trailers to get an idea of sound also used in film. It is amazing how similar sound in games and film is used. You can easily find all the trailers I mentioned over on YouTube.

So after watching the trailer, playing the game, working out a genre and doing research into other games/films, I sat down and analysed the trailer bit by bit and noted down every possible sound. I also noted down how I could re-create most sounds to suit my chosen genre. Doing this gave me a frame to work that really helped me come out with a final product better.

I began collecting any sounds I wanted to use, because I have so much experience with editing packages like Audacity and Premier Pro, I felt comfortable taking a sound and really making it my own. I got most of my sounds all over the place on Epidemic Sounds, this website is amazing for all types of music and sound effects. There is such a huge verity on there it meant I only had to get very little things from external sources like YouTube.

Overall I collected around 50 different sounds to work with. Including two separate sound tracks. I didn’t use them all but I did use about 85% of them and edited each one in some way.

All the links to the sounds that aren’t on Epidemic Sounds can be found on a separate document here. The document has links that take you directly to the YouTube page of each one.

For someone new to Audacity and Premier Pro, all the different options for editing audio can be overwhelming. Even to a semi-experienced creator like myself there are still many settings I don’t really understand fully when it comes to editing audio. The best thing to do is mess around with different effects until you find something you like! Once you start finding effects you like it gets much easier to edit other sounds.

I really enjoyed editing the sounds I collected, you can take the most basic sound and turn it into something completely different in the matter of a few buttons. One example is the sound of a duck I taken, I edited it to sound like a stranger creature. Quick link here.

I really wanted to have an intense build up in the trailer, to achieve this I used techniques of having sound get faster and louder. It makes it more intense as you are watching. I wanted the ambiance to feel realistic for a fantasy setting and I feel like I achieved this well. I wanted to have many little sounds that all added up as I felt that was more dramatic and interesting than one big sound.

Before I had any feedback of my first completed trailer, I think I was semi happy with it but I did feel like there was something missing. When I received the feedback from my peers and tutor it become clear what I could improve, but I did get carried away and ended up changing my sub genre from fairy-tale to horror fantasy.

After feedback when I added in more sounds, I decided to remove the original soundtrack I had as it was too overpowering with the other sounds. Instead I just added in a piano that slowly gets faster paced. I was much more happier with this change. Less is more!

Watch my original trailer before I made any changes.

My finished trailer after I received all my feedback.

You can see how my finished timeline looks. It is very layered but some of them full-length tracks you see are ones put together in Audacity. I originally did all my sound layering in Audacity but it was causing problems with the timings, so I but the more specific timings in with Premier Pro so I could match it up better.

After writing about my process fully I know how my trailer went from fairy-tale fantasy to horror fantasy, I feel like that was all simply in the research, I could of looked at more fairy-tale fantasy games or looked at Disney trailers to get a better idea of what a magical setting should sound like.

I am glad I did lean towards horror fantasy, it started to feel like Stranger Things and I really liked that. Stranger Things is one of my favorite shows and all the sounds are so intense and super interesting. I feel really happy with my finished trailer, although it went through a lot of changes I am glad it did. I feel like I re-created the sound well and I hope you can understand my thought process and enjoy the trailer!

*inserts link to finished trailer again as I am proud*

Enjoy!

#FWXB1101

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