h-o-t t-o g-t-f-o-o-h-k-w-a-y-d-g-g-t-f-o-o-h-y-s-i-f-w-a-d-g-t-f-o

[PhantomCatClock]

I can't believe I had to listen to my family bitch and moan for weeks with no amount of "haha yeah man yeah preachin' to the choir" able to stop it for a law that ended up getting repealed anyway


i worked too hard for this, trump. This is a personal attack on making me listen to more UUUUUUUU WHY CAN'T THEY USE THE RIGHT BATHROOM and MMMMMMMMMM WHERE WAS THE PRIVILEGE WHEN I HAD TO WORK FOR EVERYTHING for six more weeks like the goddamn groundhog saw its shadow



this shit is going straight to my livejournal s2g bro i s2g

[Slurpee]

watching youtube videos summarizing the plot of kingdom hearts and feeling nothing but aggravation

[PhantomCatClock]

uh oh did someone change the subject back to avgn

[Slurpee]

everything I read about the last of us 2
e.g.

I kept expecting her to grow and turn away from a life of constant violence, but she never picks up on the obvious didactic nature of the game she's in, even as the designers beat you over the head with a very simple lesson about the value of human life.

makes me think of this zero punctuation sight gag about lara croft's characterization in the new tomb raider games





a lot of reviewers are pointing out that a linear game about violence being bad has not only been done already years ago (spec ops the line, hotline miami, bioshock infinite... the last of us 1) but is essentially unfair because it's criticizing the player for complicity in violence while simultaneously making that violence the only way to proceed

Some of Ellie's enemies have trained attack dogs, and it's hard to avoid killing them. Even if you do manage to avoid it, though, there's eventually a cutscene with a quick-time event that forces you to kill a dog, to hear the animal's sharp, confused yelp as you smash her skull in with a metal pipe.

That wouldn't be enough suffering, however. Naughty Dog has to make sure you feel horrible, so you're later treated to a flashback in which you play fetch with that same dog, scritching her behind her velvety little ears. If Naughty Dog makes you feel bad enough, maybe next time you won't do ... the thing the game forces you to do?

the games medium criticizing itself for violence-centric play focus is all well and good, but without presenting an alternative, repeating the trick 7 years out from hotline miami is basically an exercise in miserabilism. it's a reflexive criticism, and for games to actually move forward as a medium, there has to be something meaningful to replace it

only, there is already, isn't there?
it was laid out years ago by...


Undertale a short 2008 experimental game called Execution by Jesse Venbrux


now, when a lot of people say "experimental", they really just mean "pretentiously meandering"— it's kind of a shield against criticism for anything that doesn't have any coherent meaning— so I feel the need to clarify, when I say "experimental", I mean experimental
Execution was figuring something out

in Execution, you're presented with some crosshairs, and a man tied to a pole. that's it. no context. what you do next is up to you
which almost seems like a joke
but it's not
if you do the thing most people do, shoot the man, the game informs you that you've lost
the trick is, if you re-open the game, the man is still dead, and the game informs you that actions have consequences. if you uninstall the game and re-install it, he's still dead. since it was an experimental indie game most of the people that played it were themselves developers and quickly cottoned on to the trick- it wasn't saving the information locally, it was hiding it in the windows registry. a neat technical trick, but other than that the game almost seems as eye-rollingly didactic as spec ops and its ilk- of course you're complicit in the violence of the text when violence is the only way to proceed, right? wrong. Execution is non-linear. if, instead of shooting the man, you quit the game, Execution informs you that you've won. most gamers are so conditioned to associate violence with progress that they didn't even realize that they were making a choice, but they were. your freedom is radical, there is always a choice

seven years later, Undertale came out


Undertale famously has three styles of progression: the one where you're nice to everyone, the one where you murder everyone, and the one where you're mostly nice but accidentally killed the goatmom because you didn't realize there was a way out of that fight

the one where you murder everyone, the "genocide route" is notoriously unpleasant to play. dead characters disappear from the game world, leaving a pronounced absence in their place. the colorful world becomes barren and desolate, the music becomes slow and distorted, NPC's beg you not to continue. everything in the game screams for you to stop what you're doing. the final boss for the regular game attempts to befriend you, and their death as they beg for their life is shocking and brutal. the real final boss knows you, as a player, can reset and try again, and their goal is to frustrate and bore you into giving up. but it doesn't stop there. the game also takes control away from you just enough to wound your pride, telling you if you've come this far, you clearly don't have a choice, there is clearly some deeper compulsion at work, some deeper sickness. it practically dares you to defy it, confidently sneering that you don't have will, don't have the self-respect to not see it through, you fucking tool, you weak, sick, child
the villain of the game is, appropriately, someone who, like you, had the ability to go back and start over. and, just as you probably did, at first he tried to do everything right. he was nice to everybody, and tried to set things right as best as he could. when he messed up, he started over, until everything was perfect. but then he got bored. he knew there was more to it, so he started being mean. he visited endless cruelties on the people he formerly befriended, just to see what would happen
this makes some people mad. who is the game to judge me, when the developers put all that content into the game? they grumble, the irony, of course, lost on them. I mean, what are you supposed to do, not consume content? not flatten this colorful world you're supposedly fond of into a series of binary choices? is lenny supposed to not pet the rabbits to death?

if you get the "true pacifist" ending, the one where you're nice to everybody, and everything works out, the next time you start the game, the villain of the game shows up. he begs you to leave it be. don't restart it. you got everything right. it's not going to get better. restarting things is only going to take away from what you've accomplished. you can't be with them anymore, but they're happy now. don't take that away from them, don't let your need to see more of this world lead you down a path where it loses all meaning for you. isn't that the very thing you fought to stop? haven't you learned anything? 😕
tell you a secret? I listened. I never played the genocide route. maybe I learned my lesson from Execution and was content to not know the rest, or maybe I was just horrified at the idea of killing monster kid and pussied out. for years, I didn't even know the details. everything I know about it, I learned second-hand. my undertale will never know genocide. it's happy and safe, just the way I left it. or, to put it another way, I won. I'm sure I'm not the only one. the game couldn't have been more clear. the solution, as in Execution, was always there- you can simply choose to not play

and I have to wonder —
Spec Ops came out in 2012, Undertale in 2015
both won multiple game of the year awards
both have been discussed to death
we're 5 years out, and naughty dog wanders up to us with another linear didactic screed against violence, urging you to question your complicity in the horrors it creates
— if we take them at their word, isn't the answer the same as it's always been?
isn't naughty dog, essentially, asking us to not play it?

[Slurpee]

q: what sounds like a cross between a lawn-mower and a human voice?
a: I don't know, but it's woken me up from outside my window twice now

[FLOUNDERMAN_CLOCK]

any trick you can pull in a game, story or gameplay, is only as good as it's execution. like how a twist might work in one story but not another, or how sonic shuffle maps sucks but mario party doesn't. from what I can gather spec ops was fine for most of it's length since it gives you choices but then late in the game there's a bit where suddenly you're no longer able to make a good choice. then the game rubs your nose in it. but for some people that was clever and shocking BECAUSE you had control up to that point. so I guess it's up to personal preference. I think I'd be kind of annoyed from a gameplay perspective since the good choices were achieved through the players skill at the game. where as in a movie that wouldn't matter, the success up till that point enhance the effect of the eventual failure. in a game though that kinda sucks and you gotta balance it so it's still actually good in a game structure way, even if the story is sad. again though for some people that's not an issue, and it depends on the person and the execution. and how much respect the dev has for the player. talking down to your player for something you forced them to do isn't going to go down well. idk how well spec ops handles that I haven't played it yet just heard people discuss it to death. pretty sure it's in my steam library somewhere though lol.

with something like drakengard I was fine with a system where unlocking new endings all the way up till the "true" ending just makes the world worse each time instead of the easiest ending being the worst one. ending A is definitely bittersweet but the endings B-E, though giving you a better understanding of the world and why things are, actively makes things worse for the characters and in some cases the world. maybe it just doesn't shit on my accomplishments thus far, or what I enjoyed about the game up until that point. that I got a tangible reward in content for it. maybe it's because I used a gameshark to get past the pointless grind for the last ending, which was obviously there just to fuck with the player and waste their time fuck you I'm not doing it. if I ever played undertale i would just find a no commentary playthrough of the genocide route after beating it once, I know the game pulls some multi hour long boss fight to discourage you I dont play that shit. that sort of thing makes sense narratively and thematically yes, but no fuck you.

but anyways last of us 2's problem as far as I can tell from the old leaks and what we have now is simple: it's poorly written poorly plotted and full of itself. it states tired old violence and revenge are bad mmkay shit while clearly reveling in said violence and sucking it's own dick. it's reminds me of how the last perfect circle album has a bit where maynard is commenting on people looking at their cellphones all the time and it's made out to be this big dramatic statement, except this would be like if the entire album was candid recordings of maynard fucking around on his phone playing gatcha games and checking his facebook. also the lack of the old drummer was really noticeable but I digress. that's the game. for the specifics though, frankly I've seen other games and other media do all the shit people hate in last of us 2, but they did it WELL. I'm actually a bit worried people will start rejecting anything that reminds them of what this game did wrong. it's quickly turning into a love it to love it and hate it to hate it sort of game. a game being dark doesn't inherently mean "LOL GRIMDERp" or sadporn or edgy or what have you, and stuff that could be considered those things can still be good. great even. it really is all just context and execution imo. and a bit of personal taste.

also on a side note the zombies are boring in every leak I've seen of the game. the first one you fight is a quicktime event after almost an hour of continuous relationship whining and not doing anything. no zombie new types either. I get that the zombies aren't the main point but it's lazy considering most of the game is action. the final product isn't really entertaining even as shlock, the gameplay feels like it's just there to say it's a game even though there appears to be a lot of it. it's a generic yet serviceable third person action game from ten years ago that's also a bad movie with nonsensical characters. the environment graphics are good though. real good. some of the vehicle action setpieces aren't bad either.

there's a lot more to it than that but I'm already bored of the situation, the fun shit happened when the leaks first came out. all I really cared about was the memes and sony's desperate attempt to dmca the entire internet to keep people from seeing the leaks. I didnt even know you could dmca a meme! that was new to me. the caramelldansen video with all the metal gear rising clips and leak spoilers was amazing in particular, one of the few youtube videos I've actually backed up. all the senator armstrong and golf shit was gold in general. the choke edits got played out fast but I loved that "stop abby she's the last of us, too!" one and the sonic adventure 2 edit. I want that shit remade in sfm once the game comes out and the models are ripped. it was all hilarious and it ran it's course. once the game comes out proper it might spark some more drama and memes and shit, but it would just be a repeat of when the leaks came out. it was fun while it lasted. I would have posted it here when it was relevant but people either wouldn't want spoilers, or wouldn't want to see someone get golf clubbed to death by senator armstrong while german techno bubble gum pop blares from their speakers.

on another note, the most refreshing bit on revenge I've seen in a decade was that part of gravity falls where dipper goes "wow revenge is underrated that felt amazing". shit just sorta worked out and it was funny and satisfying but not mean or ugly.

[FLOUNDERMAN_CLOCK]

NEW FLOUNDERMAN LORE

-three spike flounderman is to blueshirt bart simpson as four spikes is to red shirt bart
-each and flash movie with flounderman actually features a different individual incarnation of flounderman
-flounderman fishsmell is specifically like european fermented fish dishes
-if you touch him the smell lingers on your hands for half a day

[Slurpee]

I don't think my point was that the game is bad (haven't played it lol) so much as that the optimal solution to the question the game poses literally seems to be to not play it

[Slurpee]

the fact that spongebob talks about "pioneers" in the pizza delivery episode of spongebob raises some troubling questions about bikini bottom's geopolitical history

[VCRClock]

please buy my indie game that berates you for paying money to play it

[PhantomCatClock]

Kotor—there was a long time there where some other, newer game, was what people thought of when you said Kotor. I've only played the first, 2003, one—had some moral choices (a lot of them, actually, but most were inconsequential beyond making you gooder or badder. Some were big) but it made you feel like a shitty asshole if you picked sith. Stopped playing after a little bit. If I wanted to feel like a shitbag for being a villain, I'd just go back to my normal everyday life, not a fucking video game

the fact that spongebob talks about "pioneers" in the pizza delivery episode of spongebob raises some troubling questions about bikini bottom's geopolitical history

or coronavirus started in bikini bottom and not wuhan. my delivery dude is a fucking pioneer tell ya what

[PannacottaClock]

this is just stupid if I go in blind then when am i supposed to tell that oh this is one of those games where violence is a bad thing huh

The Perfect solution to this problem is to add a throwaway line to one npc saying "this is just a game so it doesn't matter if you kill people and I love you" and small kiss

[Slurpee]

this is just stupid if I go in blind then when am i supposed to tell that oh this is one of those games where violence is a bad thing huh

The Perfect solution to this problem is to add a throwaway line to one npc saying "this is just a game so it doesn't matter if you kill people and I love you" and small kiss

lol

[PhantomCatClock]

slurpee el que lo lea

[RobClock]

First night at the house; refrigerator and electric heater were on the same circuit so when the fridge kicked in, the circuit switched off. Cold as fuck.

Insulation just bumped above hot water on the grand scheme of priorities.

[RobClock]

Sorry for being AWOL for so long, I miss you guys

[PhantomCatClock]

Oh hell yeah, I didn't know you were about to move in alre—shit, it has been that long.

[PannacottaClock]

lol

the real gut punch there is that their love isn't real either, of course

Congratulations on your happy home, RobClock

[Marlin Clock]

Is it still so cold you need to worry about an electric heater in Canada? Or is it your water heater?

[PhantomCatClock]

I'd imagine when you're trying to sleep