Ultimate Videogame Topic 3: The Next Generation

[Captain Picard]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/06/25/rock- ... reenlight/

[Chevre]

FTL is SUPER FUN. It's kind of like this generation's Oregon Trail. I was doing so well but I must have underprepared because I got totally destroyed by a ship in like the 7th sector, lol

[Sudo_Nym]

Euro Truck Simulator is impossible to play without a wheel controller.

[mastin2]

So there's a game I just played--not very long (it's a flash game), but which I was deeply, deeply impressed with.
You can play it here.

Basically, nothing special on a glance. A slightly-humorous, obviously-cynical choose-your-own-adventure story with each path having vastly different versions of the characters, right?

...

Wrong.

Nothing in the game is a contradiction. Each different path merely represents different aspects of you, Faith, God, S(a)tan, and all the intricacies thereof. It takes either a good memory, multiple playthroughs, or good notekeeping to accomplish, but if you read all of the text on all of the pages, you realize that each and every path fleshes out those different elements of the characters...and through that fleshing out of them, goes into the philosophy debate tied into that aspect of them.

More than that, while each ending seems to be stand-alone, when you look at them, you realize that most of them tie together quite well. In that once again, they're showing characters, reacting in certain ways, just with a slightly different outcome based off of a decision you made early or late. Any individual path may seem somewhat-flat. May seem stereotypical, a bit rushed, perhaps slightly empty. But when you bring in aspects of the other endings into that ending, it gains a whole new meaning, beyond what it ever could have originally meant. Each answer, each end, gives the story new life that it otherwise lacks, no matter what the end result may look like individually.

By fleshing out the characters' different aspects, by having those endings end up crossing over into one another in generally-quite-subtle ways, the visual novel manages to bring out things that you could never get from linear storytelling. Among them, you basically have in its different endings an ever-looping philosophical debate. Each ending seems to have an Aesop attached to it, no matter how flat, mundane, or meaningful it may be. But the game is brilliantly in-depth again when you tie those philosophies with the other paths, and you realize that it's basically just different people on the podium arguing their different take on life. They have the same facts, but different interpretations of it, which you get to see by your choices. It explores the opinions many hold that God is crazy, evil, lazy, and/or apathetic, while also exploring the argument that God is bad, while also exploring the argument that God is not 'good' nor 'evil' in human terms because his philosophy works in mysterious ways humans can't hope to comprehend...
...And also explores all these things' counter-arguments, exploring how God is a voice of reason where humanity has none, that God is good, that God loves life, and has investment in it, exploring that God has a place in the world, and also the counter-argument about God working in mysterious ways in that His mysterious ways seem fairly...

arbitrary

.
And has counter-arguments to

that

built in, and so on and so forth.

Just on God.
Those arguments about God also apply to humanity, even stronger. The story does have a slight overall lean towards the cynical. So for humanity, the overall philosophy isn't so much good or evil, as much as it is not-strongly-evil vs. blatantly evil, in that humanity is portrayed as, like with a lot of forms of life, consuming resources from their surroundings in order to propagate their existence. The whole argument on humanity draws from basically every ending you see. The above one, for instance, is basically something that people taking a philosophy of humanity just being little more than animals might take, in that we still are doing the same things we were biologically programmed to do. Yet there's many more.

You have to be paying attention to these things quite closely in order to make some of these connections. But if you can connect the dots like I did, then the game's exploration of humanity, god, good/evil, and so much more with all those arguments and counter-arguments built in makes it an amazingly brilliant game to play. One that also has a very large amount of humor built in, and (though dry) quite excellent exposition.

Highly recommend a playthrough or two.

[Iecerint]

Did anyone play the Escape From Horrorland adventure game that was released in 1996? It was a Goosebumps spin-off that some friends and I were really into and quoted from endlessly.

I just discovered that Isabella Rossellini was in it, which kind of startled me. She's probably a sex demon or something. I remember that Jeff Goldblum was Dracula.

[Iecerint]

Whoa I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is on Steam?

[zoraster]

was doing so well in FTL... then i forgot to fix the oxygen and left my computer for a second to find my 7 crew members dead. hurrah.

[Parama]

Whoa I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is on Steam?

Yup, I got it a while back. I think they've been patching it up a little too but I can't be sure.

[Iecerint]

Is it worth buying and playing through? I once stayed up all night reading a very colorfully-written summary of all of the scenarios, but I never played it myself.

[Parama]

If you already know everything that happens in each scenario there's basically no point in playing it, eh. The story's really the main draw, and the endgame section of the game isn't as interesting as the individual scenarios either.

[Flameaxe]

Euro Truck Simulator is impossible to play without

a wheel controller.

Mike Sweeney in the morning.

Seriously, you don't even know what you missed RIP in pepperoni.

[Gammagooey]

playing through an english patched rom of the 2nd Miles Edgeworth investigations game

graphics seem a bit bad and i'm not sure if its because of the emulator or just because i got used to the 3DS graphics

1st case was good and had a cameo of

Shelly De Killer

that's probably going to turn into something really good

2nd case is fine so far but OH GOD THE OLD CIRCUS MUSIC IS BACK
also has "You're the one who got murdered!" as proobably the dumbest alternate answer I remember in the entire series

[Captain Picard]

Bought a second GPU, since it will run hotter now, I want to hook up my side fan, but only three connections on mb, researching says you can buy a cable from psu to fan, but it will run continuously.. Can also buy a fan splitter, would that work better? Or?

[Parama]

1st case was great, yeah, 2nd case is alright too. I need to get back to AAI2, started the third case and then they released the full game patch so I had to import a save starting from the start of that case but that killed the momentum i had
but that was a few weeks ago

[Zachrulez]

was doing so well in FTL... then i forgot to fix the oxygen and left my computer for a second to find my 7 crew members dead. hurrah.

That is the most annoying way to die.

What's worse is when you see it, but the air is already thin enough to where you have to watch your crew die.

[Captain Picard]

Race the Sun is pretty fun, though hard as fack

[Sudo_Nym]

Just finished Gunpoint. That's a pretty awesome game.

[Scigatt]

Floating Point is on Steam. It's completely free. Get it.

My record score on default settings is 1.5M+

[CooLDoG]

Euro Truck Simulator is impossible to play without a wheel controller.

wrong. I enjoyed the game 20+ hours so far with a mouse.

[Sudo_Nym]

Euro Truck Simulator is impossible to play without a wheel controller.

wrong. I enjoyed the game 20+ hours so far with a mouse.

I've managed to set up my controller to play it, but I can't steer with a mouse.

[Chevre]

I steer with keyboard, and the mouse controls camera, but usually I try to leave the camera alone once I set it up how I want it.

Anyway, am I just a bad driver or is backing the trailer up to the unloading point fiendishly hard?

[Sudo_Nym]

It is pretty hard. The trailer always seems to move weirdly no matter which way I steer. I tend to just skip it, since you only get 45 XP for parking.

[Captain Picard]

Been slacking on my video game backlog.

Just did Chapter 2 of The Wolf Among Us.

My choices:

Spoiler:

I sympathized with Crane (60.9%)
I persuaded him to talk (62.3%)
I let White come with me (91.8%)
I smacked Georgie around (30.3%)
I didn't hit Beast again (77.6%)

Surprised the number for smacking Porgie was so low, and also surprised that the number for letting Snow come was so high.

Off to the next chapter!

[Iecerint]

I'm totally buying it when the full PS4 version is released.

[Captain Picard]

I'm totally buying it when the full PS4 version is released.

Euro truck simulator?

Also, you haz ps4?

What games do you have? We can play together!