Deep Dive Devin

The scariest thing about this is that I need to get sleep and wait to see it until tonight.

Oh right, this is the game that jumpscared Vinny with his own voice being in it

@Pilgrim2048 Maybe it's not what you mean, but to get a feel for Ross's taste you can check out this still from the Big Game List video: Hilariously, the comments on that video are full of people coping hard about some of the games he mentioned missing these marks.

Ross, you ever read MS Paint Adventures? I don't think you'd be a Homestuck fan, but Problem Sleuth skewers Noir Fiction and Graphic Adventure Games in a way I think you'd like

I like Elden Ring a lot, but I'm not sure I would agree with the recommendation (I mean, this guy made two posts a month ago and then hasn't been here since, so who knows if it even matters). Elden Ring is a great action game, and it along with the souls games of its type do a great job fostering immersion. These games are all about feeling like a tiny bug crawling along the corpses of titans from centuries past, and they're amazing at that, but the OP is talking about games with, y'know, plot. And a cast of characters. The plot of most Fromsoft RPGs is "some schlub wakes up in a dying world and kills shit until they can't anymore", and the characters consist of a series of vague hints about where to take their quest and some cool items if you do it right. They have personalities, but their stories can end really quickly if you don't know what you're doing, and that's assuming you even know where to go at what time to activate them at all, and I still wouldn't say each of them constitutes a huge part of the game on their own -- it has to account for the idea that you murdered them the second they showed up because there's no other way to get that cool armor, or else the story is about the people you're fighting rather than the ones you're helping. Almost all of the big plot stuff in these games happened before your character actually shows up, and a central theme of the games is not having all the pieces of exactly what happened, let alone knowing how to piece it together. You have to scrape what you can off the underside of item descriptions, know that some things have two names, the etymological significance of certain terms in both English and Japanese -- and even then you're only gesturing to a vague understanding of the story, because the destruction of history and failure to learn from their mistakes is exactly what leads the people of Dark Souls to...well, keep making Dark Souls happen. And I feel like that's maybe not quite what the person who says "I like Witcher and Red Dead's stories, but I'm looking for something a little more obscure" is asking for.

I'm going to replace the spambot comment by saying I finally got around to Night in the Woods after seven years, and I think it's really good. I know Ross used it as an example of "games that are not for me" in the list video, but my taste differs from his pretty frequently anyway. It's about dropping out of college and returning to your economically-depressed hometown, and something sinister is lurking in the woods. You reconnect with your old friends who have their own insecurities and problems to deal with, reckon with why you left college (and why you left home to begin with), get drunk at a party and make an ass of yourself, shoplift, smash fluorescent lights with a bat, and try to make the voices in your head stop. And hey, is that a dismembered arm on the ground? Also, the whole game looks like the kind of anthro animal characters your grandma would embroider on a quilt, or something that would be broadcast on Nick Jr. between episodes of Blue's Clues. The three-way contrast between ruining all your personal relationships, having prophetic dreams of the end of the world, and being an adorable little kittycat girl is very effective at establishing a unique identity, and is just a good character study in general. I've known guys like Gregg, I podcast with a guy who's almost exactly like Angus, and all of this is wrapped around a talentless fuckup protagonist with no life direction, whom I couldn't help but relate to. The lore of the former company mining town being the site of massive labor violations, followed by massive strikes, is both an interesting mystery to uncover and just straight up true about a lot of small-town America. JD Rockefeller had something almost exactly like this game happen. It's a game that's deeply critical of a lot of things Americans (and citizens of liberal capitalist democracies in general) kind of take for granted, and it manages not to beat the player over the head with it much Anyway, it was very genuine as a game narrative, so that's my contribution to this thread. I also think Ross was totally right to pass on it, because a lot of it is queer young adult furries having big feelings at stuff. It has very little in terms of core mechanics or challenge beyond some inconsequential minigames, almost like a visual novel. The otherworldly horror and breakdown of reality mostly stays on the fringes until the ending, which probably didn't go far enough if you're coming for the horror alone. He wouldn't play far enough to see it, but Ross would probably say something like Anyway I had a good time with it, though unfortunately the game expects you to play favorites with your friends. The ending changes depending on whether you spent more time with Gregg or Beatrice, so I have to do another playthrough to see some of the activities I missed. Still, recommended for people that like slow-burn character studies in games.

Ross giving the game the Poe's Law award is extremely apt. Bioshock isn't subtle about it's hatred for libertarian seasteading, but with Culpa Innata, I dunno. It's difficult to tell if it's a critique of objectivism or an ad for it, like the designers either created a sci fi utopia and threw the Randian philosophy into it to make it more questionable, or they designed a society they thought would be objectivist, but didn't really understand what their own philosophy suggested that world would need to look like (a common occurrence). It reminds me of this drawing: This is all complicated by the fact that the foundational assumptions of that society are actually a lie because they need it to be that way to keep the sun from dying. Is that the devs saying "this is the proof it would be the best way for humanity to survive", or "this bullshit would only work if it was a lie while the real adults work on solving actual problems"? Either way, I think the game should have gone harder on the propaganda and consumerism angles.

The site already has an FAQ that addresses most of his false impressions. The real problem is that he's spread misinformation that will proliferate beyond him, and I don't think there's anything that can go on the site to stop that.

Hey, this changes nothing, but just for kicks, it looks like people allegedly have a server emulator going for The Crew, they uploaded a video last week: Yes, I know that the campaign will continue either way and the problem needs to be cut off at its source. But it's nice that this one will probably be rescued from destruction.

I feel a little bad that I know this game because of Vinny absolutely obliterating its reputation in a single clip. Poor bastard never stood a chance.

I think it's probably a coincidence. This page seems to connect the phrase with dance moves before naturally expanding out into various physical actions. The girl throwing that can is the one I always knew about and assumed was the origin.

why would anyone expect the babylon bee to come up with a second joke

Equal distribution of absurd costuming to the people!

Akira Toriyama dead at 68. We lost a legend

Is that Dracula Flow or Homestuck dialogue

Ross wants you to email the address in the video, [email protected] But I think you posting here probably means he'll see it at some point so you should be good.

A petition for the EFF to respond to Ross's emails might have better luck

If you have some idea about a radical new direction Trump brought that conservatives do not have a long history of being sympathetic to, I'd love to hear it. But no, I don't buy that it was in any way for the sake of the working class. Why would it be? And yes, their animosity for poor people is not directly analogous to their animosity for Mexicans, but the point is that the euphemism gets pulled back as they gain power, and it would be extremely inconsistent for the entire rest of their belief system for that to somehow be the breaking point they think is taking things too far. Well see, the issue is that the most incorrect I've been is the exaggeration of "obliterate the middle class". Obviously they haven't said that out loud, which I've already admitted to. But if you think their attacks on welfare and public programs aren't or haven't escalated, that's very silly. I'm never going to act like I know everything, but I know when someone is telling me to stop making obvious connections, and I'm not gonna do that. It's not like you're offering a succinct and cogent worldview yourself, you're essentially just calling people irrational for thinking the best way forward is to not engage with the right. There is functionally very little difference between these things, though frankly I scoff at the idea that the average republican is just a little baby robot lamb who knows not what he does and just follows his programming. The extent to which these people are fascists deep down in their hearts or whatever versus opportunists grasping at power and ramming through policies to make themselves rich is a question for historians, it's worthless in terms of rhetoric for right now unless you're gonna tell me that all anyone needs to do is convince them that human rights are Actually Very Profitable™. They didn't choose their positions in a vacuum. If it were as simple as "well ya gotta gut something", it wouldn't always be welfare, they would have some opposition to the overwhelming amounts of money in the police and military-industrial complex, or any of the other sources of overwhelming violence that get their dicks hard. (note: for clarity, I am making a hyperbolic joke here. I do not believe that police brutality and imperialist warfare is literally sexually pleasurable to the majority of the republican party) The dubious implication that anyone on the right even counts as an "intellectual" aside, the entire point here, the larger issue surrounding this entire discussion is that I get the overwhelming implication that you think some of them are actually coherent or well-intentioned thinkers who are worth hearing out. You keep talking about Thomas fucking Sowell like he's supposed to be a cut above the rest, but it's cranks the whole way down. I have absolutely no issue with the anthropological study of such a figure for the purposes of deducing the actual intention behind the words, but it sure seems like you would say that doesn't actually count as getting a real understanding of the right, because you're treating "understanding" as equivalent to forming a connection with the right, and that's a bad idea for everyone.

I think that's half-true about Sonic 06. The game's level design, when you're playing as regular Sonic, has a lot of value and a broadness that rivals the best of SA1. Project 06 (which is just made in Unity by the way, not another Sonic engine) has shown me that while the physics still need to be a little floaty and slow compared to other games, the moment-to-moment experience of running, jumping, spinning and homing attacking across enemies and obstacles can be made relatively fun. It's everything else the game asks you to do that sucks. Bad town missions, the "holding princess Elise" gameplay, Silver's stop-and-go object throwing, Shadow's vehicles, and the entire game's button-mash combat. I do think ChaosX should be taking more liberties with these things, especially Silver, but the game is more "fun sometimes, boring sometimes" compared to "bad sometimes, boring usually" like it was before. For all the talk about "why do we remake things that are already good", we sometimes overlook that the only people willing to remake something that sucks are people who don't necessarily understand why it sucks in the first place. But I dunno. It's been years since I played the original 06 release and my channel isn't getting back to it until February 2025 at the earliest. Maybe something between now and then will turn me into an evangelist. Also, as someone who has experienced *mildly* more Devil May Cry than Ross, the one little thing I would say is that Dante isn't really "emo" per se. He's actually pretty expressive, and has a lot of fun being a crazy demon-fighting weirdo.

You're missing my point. Kerdios said that the US right has become "impossible to discuss with". This isn't literally true, yes, but nobody who says it means it that way. Obviously people can talk to each other, but you shouldn't be surprised that people rarely agree to the caveat of "just agree to their framing of politics and treat their opinions as more legitimate than they are". What I am saying is that there hasn't been a significant change in position that made this divide larger, just a more toxic attitude that's harder for moderates to ignore. My example of how they obfuscated this before was to bring up which political euphemisms they've historically covered their asses with. The things they actually want have not changed that much. Yes, the Muslim registry thing was a real promise Trump made, though it was early in his presidency and obviously didn't come to pass. I admit "destroy the middle class" is exaggerated. Both of this country's parties are corporate-controlled, neither of them have working class interests in mind (it was Clinton who dealt the biggest blow to welfare, after all), but it does not take a genius to look at "lower taxes" being implemented as "rich people paying less taxes for social programs that benefit non-rich people" and see that that was always the point. It's not unfounded to say these things, though. I honestly don't know what to think if you're just going to tell me the concept of political euphemism has completely passed you by. Like, when Republicans say "gay marriage should be decided on by individual states", they say it because they know many states would never legalize it on their own, but there's not a lot of political viability in trying to ban it nationwide (currently). This is how they approach abortion, how they previously approached segregation, et cetera. If you're honestly telling me that they'd still believe in "states' rights" to decide these things when the conservative position was federally-mandated, that's extremely naive. If you want to cite good reasons to believe not every euphemism is sound or wholly accurate to what people say it means, I guess we can have that discussion, but I'm not interested in being told I don't know what I'm talking about because I don't simply take people who constantly lie about things at their own word.

I don't think there's a ton of use distinguishing between "the GOP" and so-called "Trump MAGA". Certainly a lot of former-republicans have become disillusioned, but it's not like that caused them to move left, or indeed vote any differently at all, as far as I can tell. There's nothing in particular that MAGA says or believes that is a break with tradition for conservatism, it's just more than before (an escalation which I fear is going to hurt us when the democrats have absolutely not matched it in any way). You're right that discussion is impossible with them, but I mean. The strat before was to shift the conversation to something so abstract that it was impossible to reach an agreement anyway. That's "protect American jobs", "war on terror", "lower taxes". It's not like most of the voters changed their minds when that became "keep the Mexicans out", "Muslim registry" and "obliterate the middle class". It's harder to stay friends with people who are always saying the quiet part loud, but the quiet part hasn't changed much. Pundits and politicians are riding the reactionary wave because it gets them money and power, and that's what they've always done. It's certainly become scarier, but that's as much as anything because the Democrats are not fit to match them. At-best they're pretending all the old euphemisms are still what's being fought, and at worst they're moving further right themselves.

I loved what Nightdive did with Quake 1, I should probably play 2 sometime. Though I've always gotten the impression that 2 is more conventional and kinda...less interesting, across the board? I don't remember where I specifically first heard that. On a related note, I recently played through Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, the Team Reptile successor to Jet Set Radio. It works great! And that's about it. Something about the slower speed, the broadness of the stages and general gameplay formula feels less-exciting than Jet Set Radio Future did. I love the OST, I love the controls, I love the visuals emulating that low-poly, blurry-texture-with-harsh-cel-shading style, but the magic just isn't there. It's not a bad game, and it's probably better for everyone who isn't already a superfan like me, but Future is still the height of this style of game.

I like to think I'm a spooky scarecrow in spirit. I'm really good at making people (birds) leave me alone