#been playing a lot of mgsv as of late

[shootyrefutey]

Kazuhira ‘Kaz’ Mcdonell Benedict Hell Master ‘Babygirl’ Miller

[vifizeny]

im so inactive so heres dave i drew at school with a mouse :-)

[la-li-lu-le-lol]

I have a thesis statement: There is a reason why there hasn't been another MGS1 remake since 2004, and that reason is because today, in this age, it would take way too much effort. Making all the assets and making the game HD and super pretty won't be an issue, that's the EASY part. Fans have been re-making Shadow Moses in the Unreal engine for literal years.

The hard part(s) is literally everything else that's not the graphics. The entire game would need a significant level design and gameplay overhaul because MGS1 was designed for the late 90s. Shadow Moses was physically designed with a top-down camera in mind, it was designed for backtracking to pad the game's short length (MGS1's game area is actually very small, as were a lot of early 3d games), even the sizes of rooms and placements of doors and hallways and level transitions were designed specifically to work with the polygonal rendering limitations that a fifth generation machine has. We're so far removed from all of that now, that don't worry about ANY of those things anymore.

A remake would require level design overhaul that still FEELS like the original Shadow Moses but is different to where it works with the conventions of modern Stealth-based level design. Likewise with gameplay - the backtrack for the sniper rifle and heating/cooling the cards, nah nah. Leave that shit out. Also, what do you even do about the codec? Turn it into cutscenes? Have it be audio-only, like in MGSV? If it's like that, then the devs have to worry about making sure the player doesn't progress too far while the codecs are playing and potentially sequence-break. If it's turned into cutscenes, then whole-ass amounts of shot direction, modeling, and motion capture will be needed. (Potentially, something like MGS4's codec might work, but that was 2008...)

It would basically require the amount of effort and original thought that went into making FF7R, something that no small studio can do without barrels full of money.

What makes this extra difficult is the amount of pressure and hype surrounding the idea of an MGS1 remake, which is expected to be perfect and faithful by the series rabid cult following, but also it paradoxically cannot be perfect if it is faithful, and if it's not faithful in order to gel with modern game design, it'll get shit on if it's not the most amazing re-imagining in the world. In other words, the idea of an MGS1 remake screams "big fat risk that will require way too much work for not a lot of payoff"

I know people THINK they want a highly faithful, "Twin Snakes but HD"-esque MGS1 remake, but we're about twelve years too late on that being an acceptable style of release. I can tell you now that playing a "faithful to a fault" remake would expose MGS1's many weaknesses that naturally come from being 24 years old lol. It would be way too short for its 60$ price tag, way too easy, and way too clunky standing up against remakes like FF7R.

Anyway, yeah. Them's my pessimistic realistic cranky old lady thoughts.

[absolutepx]

So I've been playing Death Stranding lately. Wait, that's not what this post is about. Well, it kind of is. Hang on. What is Death Stranding about?

A: Norman Reedus getting bare ass naked B. Sneaking around ghosts with the help of your sidekick, an actual baby C: Carrying 50 Amazon packages up a hill while trying to not topple over D: Waking up in the morning and drinking 5 Monster Energy™ for breakfast

For those following along at home, the answer is actually none of the above. Despite the set dressing being bizarre to the point of near absurdity, what the game is actually about, like thematically, is actually really simple.

See, the development of Death Stranding was actually quite a trip. Hideo Kojima is the video game world's equivalent of an auteur director. He has a very recognizable personal style. It's thoroughly horny – he caught a bunch of shit for the design of Quiet in MGSV, but like, a lot of Kojima characters are just -like that-, including the dudes. Also, this is going to possibly be important later.

Anyway, so Kojima was going to do a rebootmakequel of Silent Hill, and the demo actually made it to the PS store and I could actually write a whole side essay about why P.T. (it was called P.T. for some reason btw) was brilliant game design for how it used the same hallway over and over and it was somehow beneficial to the overall feeling of horror. So Konami it turns out kinda sucks nowadays and they like, fired Kojima (they were huge dicks about it behind closed doors, too) and scrapped the project and kicked him out on the street and kept the Metal Gear series which was his baby (literally the baby in the sink in P.T., he snuck a bunch of messaging about the Konami situation into the demo like a breakup album) and Kojima would go on to form his own studio and poach some of the people who worked with him to boot. So the thing about Kojima is this: he's got a reputation for already putting some wild shit in his games, like a ladder that takes like 10 real time minutes to climb in MGS3 for dramatic effect, and a boss in MGS3 that summons the ghosts of all the people you were too lazy to stealth past and killed, or a sniper battle with a really old guy that he wanted to have last two weeks or some shit until he died of old age but he was "told that "this was impossible and not recommended." That is a real quote I just looked up. So he's coming off the heels of making this hugely successful game with MGSV and the hype of the P.T. Demo and he fucking, he like took all the people that were going to be working on P.T. Along like Guillermo Del Toro was going to co-write it and Norman Reedus was going to star in it, and he's like, I'm going to make this game called Death Stranding. And the first trailer comes out for it and it's completely nuts. Norman Reedus wakes up naked on a beach crying with a baby and there are floating people in the sky? So we're all like hooooooly shit, there's no one to tell him "this is impossible and not recommended" anymore. What's he going to make now!?

So the whole time the game is in development I keep seeing these tweets where it'll be like, Kojima and one of his homies smiling with some saccharine message about being spiritual warriors and changing the world. And not just Del Toro and Reedus, there was Mads Mikkelsen (another guy Kojima puts in the game just because he apparently loves him), and the band Chvches, and also like, Keanu Reeves at one point? You know how everyone has just kind of accepted that Keanu is a being of light? Here he was endorsing Kojima. The hype was pretty confused and frantic.

The game eventually comes out. A lot of game journos hate it because I think there was this expectation it was going to be, you know, less weird and have more of the conventional structure of a video game. That's not to say the average gamer wasn't also dismissive of it, but I think on the ground level there was more of an understanding that like, yeah, Kojima just be like that sometimes.

Because the game was a timed console exclusive and your homie don't play like that, I spent the first year or so cautiously viewing Death Stranding from a distance. I wasn't sure I was going to like it – except for being really impressed with P.T., I wasn't actually a big fan of Kojima's games as games – but I -was- sure that I was going to buy it, because of the way Konami fucked him over, just out of support. And the shit I was hearing was really out there. The primary mode of gameplay is just delivery packages. You collect Norman Reedus' bathwater and pee and use it as grenades. You get a motorcycle that looks like the one from AMC's The Ride with Norman Reedus, and when you sit on it, his character in the game says "Wow, this thing is like the one from AMC's The Ride with Norman Reedus!"

But I didn't really want to know that much about it. Something has that much fucking crazy person energy, you want to go in mostly blind, right? So maybe people just weren't talking about this, or maybe I wasn't seeing it, but then I watched Girlfriend Reviews' video about it and they came right out and said it (link provided if you want to hear Shelby say it more articulately than me):

Death Stranding is basically about the exact opposite of Twitter. It's about remembering how to be kind to each other, how to reconnect in a world where people are so often hostile to each other by default. Prophetically, it's about a world where people are afraid to go outside or touch other people and how damaging that is. It's not a game about carrying packages, it's a game about helping people by being brave enough to walk through a wasteland carrying their burdens because they can't. It's about rebuilding the lost connections between people, about restoring roads and giving people hope. I bet, for Kojima and the people close to him, it's about how to answer hostility with compassion. You can't kill people in Death Stranding. You can and are absolutely encouraged to fucking throw hands with people sometimes, but all the tools and weapons are nonlethal. So I think Kojima took all the Twitter heat he got over the Quiet nontroversy, and all the feelings of isolation he had from Konami separating him from his team during the end of the development of MGSV, and all the support and encouragement he got from his bros Del Toro and Mads and the rest, and decided to channel that into making a game that was a statement about all of it. And sure, it's a little heavy handed, and sure, it's a little saccharine, and sure, the gameplay sometimes borders on miserable in service of creating emotional payoffs. For me, especially in 2020, this message is a huge success. Social media should be an opportunity for all of us to feel more connected to each other, yet primarily it feels like one of the main forces driving people apart. Why is that? Why is the internet of today such a hostile place? I'm old enough to remember web 1.0: I can haz cheezburger memes; YTMND; the early wild west days of Youtube... What happened to us? I've thrown the blame at Twitter in the past, and I think the architecture of the user experience on Twitter is absolutely a big piece of the puzzle, because it fosters negative interactions. But in terms of the behavior, people have observed that 2018 Twitter was actually almost exactly like 2014 Tumblr. (For the record, Tumblr is now one of the chillest places left on the internet, because so few fucks are left to give.)

I think part of it is the anonymity. The dehumanizing disconnection of the separation of screens and miles. Louis CK, before he was cancelled, had a great point about cyberbullying, and why it's so much more savage than kids are IRL. When you pick on someone in person and you are confronted with seeing the pain you caused them, for most sane people it causes negative feedback and you become disgusted with your actions and eventually learn to stop being a shithead. Online, at best you can "break the wrist, walk away".

At worst, you can become addicted to "clout chasing" and the psychological thrill of being cheered on by your social ingroup. It's even worse if you feel like it's not bullying and your actions are justified because whoever you've targeted is a bad person so you don't have to feel bad about what you do to them. This is where reductive, unhelpful catchphrases like "punch a nazi" come in. For every argument, one or both sides have convinced themselves that the other side is subhuman because their beliefs are so disgusting. And sometimes it's even true! A lot of times, especially these days, people really are acting like animals or worse online. Entire disinformation engines are roaring day and night, churning out garbage and cluttering the social consciousness. (Kojima talked about this bit, too, way back in MGS2. As if I wasn't already in danger of losing my thread through this.)

The human brain was not built to live like this. You can't wake up every morning, roll over and open your phone, and be immediately faced with a tidal wave of anger and indignity. It wasn't built to be aware of fully how horrible the world is at any moment ALL AT ONCE, ALL THE TIME. And you will be. Because of another way that our brain works – the way we are more likely to share negative opinions. And because of the cottage industry built on farming outrage clicks, and because of constant performative activism.

It's not that I don't agree that being informed is important.

It's not that I don't agree that the causes people get riled up about are important.

They are. They absolutely are.

But we can't keep living like this. The constant, unending flood of tragedy, arguments, and hot takes. How much of the negativity we associate with online culture is the product of this feedback loop? What if the rise of doomer culture has been, if not entirely created by, has been nourished and exacerbated by our hostile attitudes toward each other?  Incels and TERFs, white supremacists, radfems, tankies and Trumpers – it seems like on every side of every issue, there are people simultaneously getting it wrong in multiple directions at once and there are more being radicalized every day. They are the toxic waste left behind by the state of discourse. And any hill is a hill worth dying on.

So what am I actually advocating? I don't know. There are a lot of fights going on right now that are important and we can't just climb into bunkers and ignore our problems hoping that Norman Reedus and his fine ass are going to leave the shit we need on our doorsteps. We need to find the strength to carry those hypothetical packages for ourselves sometimes - and hopefully, for others as well. Humans are social creatures. We need interaction and enrichment.

We need love.

So just try to remember the connections between humanity. Try to put more good stuff into the world when you can. Share more shitposts and memes. Tell your friends and family that you love them. Share good news when you hear it. Go on a weird fucking tangent about Death Stranding. Find a way to "be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes."

[pxperhearts]

I can’t tell if I’m close to beating mgsv or if I’m at the halfway point lol either way, I’ve been playing that a lot lately and now I laugh in the face of skulls (kinda sorta. like a, ‘hahaha you an ugly fucker, wait, no, no dont get too close’, kinda laugh). also im in love with both quiet and eli. mmmm... I wanna write and post things but I also wanna play ??? it’s hard...

[diaroza]

Been playing a lot of MGSV lately

[fantasyinvader]

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve been really digging MGS4 lately. Maybe it was because I initially played it after binging the first three MGS games, but compared to TPP it feels a lot more like MGS with it’s more restricted environments rather than the open world. Like, bringing an open world into the mix ultimately hurts the experience I’ve found. Why navigate my way around tight gaps when things go tits up when I can just pick a direction and start running? Why focus on the story when I can put my time into exploring the region to find secrets or improving Mother Base? Why have cutscenes to move things forward when I can just listen to tapes when I have time?

Don’t get me wrong, I am enjoying MGSV. It’s really a game that can make you feel like a badass, make it feel like you’re Big Boss. Maybe that’s why the tapes are a thing, so we don’t get as many instances of Venom acting differently from us. But MGS4 really does feel like the grand finale to it all.

Also, Liquid Ocelot fingergunning people to death is freaking awesome.

[noblechaton]

felt LOL i repeatedly played the original persona 5 over 10+ times since its release and persona 5 royal probably 3/4 times, though im on a much needed break from the game. on my initial playthroughs for the game (both p5 and p5r), it took me around 100+ hours to finish probably... its definitely a lot to get through, especially if it’s your first time playing

oh yeah I’ve never touched a persona game prior to this so while I’d heard things beforehand it’s all extremely new and extremely Much To Think About for me as while I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into games before (MGSV, FFXV, Nier, various only shootem games) none of them have been quite as immersive as this as far as the gameplay goes

tho I think the game’s really hitting it’s stride around where I’m at rn, I barely put it down the last time I played and only did bc it was so late by that point 

idk if I’ll do multiple runs (definitely not in a row) but I’ve heard that a few times now so while I hope I can get all the stuff I want on this first go around I suppose I won’t be leaving it lay for forever afterwards lmao

[spaceoracle]

I’ve been playing a lot of MGSV lately.

It’s one of the only games I dont think I’ve ever really gotten tired of. Even after at least 40 hours of gameplay there’s still always something to be done, and it’s fun to try it in new and interesting ways. I wish Kojima-san had been able to finish it up properly... 

[fishylife]

Dreamwidth Roundup - July 2020

The TV shows I finished this month were The Story of Minglan (知否？知否？應是綠肥紅瘦), Someday or One Day (想見你), Chernobyl, Season 2 of National Treasure (國家寶藏), and My Roommate is a Detective (民國奇探).

Movies I watched this month are I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime), The Namesake, Monster, The Lovely Bones, I am Love (Io sono l'amore), Il Postino: The Postman, The Right Stuff, Farewell My Concubine (霸王別姬), and Gomorra. I’m thinking of slowing down the rate at which I’m watching movies and writing reviews. I think I’ve been on high-output mode since March when I had more free time on weekends because of no sports. But I’ve been so focused on clearing out my back log rather than spending more time thinking about each movie (not before writing, but just spending time floating in the atmosphere/headspace of the movie for a longer period of time). So I think I’m going to slow down a bit on the rate at which I’m going through movies.

I finally caught up on some video game Let’s play series. This month I watched videos for Final Fantasy VII Remake and Metal Gear Solid. I’m planning on going back and watching videos for the main MGS games. Haven’t decided if I’m going to re-watch MGSV. And then afterwards I’m going to check out Death Stranding.

I did write a few personal thought pieces lately. They’re not anything deep, more like musings. (1) (2)

And I have a lot of random links this month.

[webcomixtape-blog]

AWKWARD ZOMBIE

COMEDY/VIDEO GAMES/SFW/ONGOING

I seem to be doing a lot of joke-a-day comics lately. I may have gone a little hard on the dramatic, story-driven comics when I first started out, and we’re paying for it now by... Doing a bunch of pure comedy webcomics? This isn’t much of a problem. Oh well. This is, however, our first look at the real stereotype theme for webcomics: Video Games!

Awkward Zombie, by Katie Tiedrich is the BEST video game webcomic. Probably. I mean, I tend to like it most, though that may be due to similarities in the games Katie and I play. Easy to appreciate a joke when you know where it came from and why it’s funny. Still, biases aside it’s still a great comedy webcomic, with a wry and sarcastic sense of humour that’s easy to appreciate. Named for an early World of Warcraft comic, Awkward Zombie tends to change focus based on what the author is playing at the time, with a few extra comics thrown in with fan scripts and input from her friends and family. As such, it tends to present one game for a number of strips, or alternate between whatever she’s been playing on her couch and on her handheld. We’re currently neck deep in MGSV and the new Fire Emblem, which is an... Interesting combination.  The comic also includes standalone comics based on Tiedrich’s real life, often involving her cats and/or boyfriend (now husband). Of note are a set of ‘one panel every hour’ updates done in a sketchy, pencil-on-paper style. 

Cementing her style early on, Awkward Zombie enjoy a cartoony sort of style, very clean and easy to recognise. You’ll know which character is which, even when not directly copying the aesthetic of the game in question, like with the Animal Crossing or Pokemon games. One game that will forever show up in the comic is Smash Brothers, as the early comic focused so heavily on Tiedrich’s exaggerated takes on the extended cast. Her Marth in particular has drawn a lot of attention for being drastically different to his Fire Emblem self, something a latter comic referenced to great effect. 

Awkward Zombie, like all joke-a-day comedy webcomics, tends to require a lot less explanation than a longer form dramatic comic. The jokes are good, the games focused on are well suited to a little good-natured ridicule, and the art is pleasant, if not breathtaking. Hell, even the quick jaunts into the creator’s personal life tend to be well executed. Don’t expect the sort of ‘in the news’ freshness of content you can expect from Penny Arcade. Tiedrich seems more than happy to take her time with her games and comic.  We’re still getting updates about MGSV for fucks sake. Good thing Kojima games are so well suited to comedy.

Go get a little awkward. 

-James

[t-t-m-r]

heres a video game thing. it is long so begin scrolling

1:   Do you try to stay away from walkthroughs?

i try to stay away from walkthroughs until i give up completely which normally takes about 15 mins

2:   Company you're always loyal to?

i’m not really loyal to any company actually, i suppose i’m loyal to valve? but that could change real fast if they continue not revealing anything about source 2

3:   Best game you've ever played?

aaaaah never have a concrete answer for this but its currently either xenoblade chronicles or portal 2, i’m getting closer to playing witcher 3 and that will probably overtake

4:   Worst game you've ever played?

imagine a walking sim about game development but so unbelievably unforgivably pretentious and whingey and then times it by six and you have about one percent of The Beginner’s Guide, created by Stanley Parable co-creator Davey Wreden. jesus christ. the beginner’s fucking guide pisses me off so much. it’s got some really clever moments, but it also has some of the worst, most ham-handed woe is me writing about a tortured artist indie game dev who clearly hates the concept of video games being a business and video games in general. and then Davey manages to flip the whole thing on HIMSELF and turns it into a big pity party about him. instead of playing this, i’d recommend playing William Pugh (the other co-creator of the Stanley Parable)’s Dr Langeskov, the Tiger and the Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist instead. it’s free as opposed to The Beginner’s Guide, has really good and clever writing as opposed to the Beginner’s Guide, and is just in general better than the beginner’s fucking guide fuck fuck this game

also FleetCOMM, but that’s not a finished game anyways

5:   A popular series/game you just can't get into no matter how much you try?

i cannot get into mobas. i dont want to spend twenty hours learning the shit and then spend fifty minutes being told to kill myself

6:   A game that's changed you the most?

bioshock and the entire zero escape series have probably changed my entire life. nier did this recently as well

7:   A game you'll never forget?

THUMPER. it’s ridiculously intense and it has some of the sickest visuals i have seen in a piece of media

8:   Best soundtrack?

Xenoblade Chronicles, Nier, Jet Set Radio Future, virtually any persona game

9:   A game you turn your volume off every time you play it? i can’t actually think of a game i play with a terrible soundtrack, apart from fleetcomm 10:   A game you've completely given up on? i’m never going to finish MGSV as long as i live. i cant into stealth 11:   Hardest game you've played?

THUMPER new game + fuck you

12:   Shortest time you've beaten a game in?

beat portal 2 in under 2 hours once, also did a single segment run of mirror’s edge in around 2-3 hours? can’t remember

13:   A game you were the most excited for when it wasn't released yet?

firewatch never again

14:   A game you think would be cool if it had voice acting?

okami tbh

15:   Which two games do you think would make an awesome crossover?

portal and half life they canonically take place in the same universe comeaaaaaahn

16:   Character you've hated most? From what game?

no strong answer here but tyrann from nier can go get fucked. and the skeletons in minecraft. fuck them. fucking bow and arrow 80% accuracy pieces of shit

17:   What game do you never tell people you play?

huniepop is the deepest, most challenging, most tactically-rich match three game in existence. in the late game it turns into a chess match against the game itself as you are constantly planning your moves many turns in advance

18:   A game you wish your friends knew about?

i wish more of my friends played warframe

19:   Which game do you think deserves a revival?

mother fucking jet set radio

20:   What was the first video game you ever played?

the first good video game that wasn’t a shitty movie game was Crash Bandicoot

21:   How old were you when you first played a video game? like maybe 5? or 6? 22:   If you could immerse yourself in any game for one day, which game would it be? What would you do?

hdoom

23:   Biggest disappointment you've had in gaming?

firewatch i was interested in it from all the moments they hyped up the mystery aspect of it in press conferences and trailers. it had this sense of underlying menace that got me interested. the actual game had some truly amazing, almost cinematic moments of interactivity in the dialogue, and it was unbelievably pretty, but the entire last hour was not good. ”but you’re SUPPOSED to be disappointed! you were just assuming things because you were isolated! everything was fine in the end, there was no mystery! that’s called subverting the player’s expectations! such great writing!” no. great writing is not reintroducing and building sympathy for a character ten minutes before killing them off. and then it just kinda ended with the lowest-effort reveal that tied things up but in the most mundane way possible. henry and delilah were incredible, 3 dimensional characters, but that’s basically it. it felt like they got to the end of the game and were completely out of ideas

24:   Casual, Hardcore, or in the middle?

middle. hardcore people have no life and casual people mostly use facebook as their main social media outlet. both of those things sound awful

25:   Be honest; have you ever used cheats (like ActionReplay or Gameshark)?

no

26:   Handheld or console?

handheld and pc. i have a PS4 now though and since i’m moving away from home i’m gonna spend a lot more time on it

27:   Has there ever been a moment that has made you cry?

the after-credits ending of the Last Guardian

28:   Which character's clothes do you wish you owned the most?

to be fair my dude i have no idea

29:   Which is more important, gameplay or story?

both, fool

30:   A game that hasn't been localized in your country that you think should be localized?

rondo duo 2 i’m kidding actually i have no idea