Culture Wars General - KiA Diet Coke Edition

[Corn Flakes]

You almost have to go back to Pong for that. I know SJW "walking simulators" have more or less wrecked the reputation of vidya as art (because apparently the SJW concept of art is it has to suck). But a game can and probably (usually) should actually tell a story too. Back when Valve still made games they did this very well. And even games like Wolfenstein told a story, even if it was pretty much "go kill Hitler."

The story doesn't even need to be more complex than a couple screens of text. Take Wolfenstein 3D, for example. It had a "READ THIS!" button on the menu with the built-in manual:

(Really, killing actual goose-stepping Nazis is its own story.)

Hell, it doesn't even need to be in the game itself. I remember playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on a friend's NES and the game just threw you into a map with dancing bushes with no explanation. Everything about the story was in the physical manual. Without the manual and without knowing anything about the series, you'd just think you dropped into an acid trip of walking mushrooms, bipedal turtles, and floating coins.

The idea of having a lot of story baked into the game world itself was fairly novel for a very long time outside of text-heavy genres such as adventure games or RPGs.

 

[Kurtis Trent]

I doubt that. All the rest of the stuff, every hole or doorway is a vagina, Pyramid Head represents guilt or rape, but the toxic masculinity point is new to me.


I don't think it did. For us, sure. We've been playing these games since the 90s. The problem is that there hasn't been a big budget horror game other than Resident Evil since Dead Space 2. The Evil Within and Alien Isolation might count, but one was an incomprehensible action game and the other a hide-and-seek meme game.

Indie horror games are still around, but you have to wade through an olympic swimming pool of shitty jump scare games to find them.

seems you haven't been on twitter, good for you (sperging about how games are problematic and sexist and Who Is Gay are quite regular). Reddit is somewhat more reasonable, but I've seen a lot of bad takes over the years, and those who treat James like some kind of sex-obsessed maniac honestly annoy me. I understand some things involving PH may come off as rapey but James himself was never a rapist and there's more to the character than "sexual frustration". I swear, I sometimes get an impression that's the only thing the non-fans know about the game...

Believe it or not, this is all relevant to the discussion on Miranda's butt and "objectification" of game characters. Did you all notice how the same people don't have a problem with this:


If the guy represents rape, and they find him sexy, so...okay, maybe I shouldn't overthink this...

Off-topic, but do you have any recommendations of good indie horror that's not a PT clone or a RE1 Remake clone on unreal engine? I only vaguely enjoyed Song of Horror. Don't care for Little NIghtmares or Amnesia...

 

[Marissa Moira]

The story doesn't even need to be more complex than a couple screens of text. Take Wolfenstein 3D, for example. It had a "READ THIS!" button on the menu with the built-in manual:

View attachment 1915246View attachment 1915249View attachment 1915250
(Really, killing actual goose-stepping Nazis is its own story.)

Hell, it doesn't even need to be in the game itself. I remember playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on a friend's NES and the game just threw you into a map with dancing bushes with no explanation. Everything about the story was in the physical manual. Without the manual and without knowing anything about the series, you'd just think you dropped into an acid trip of walking mushrooms, bipedal turtles, and floating coins.

The idea of having a lot of story baked into the game world itself was fairly novel for a very long time outside of text-heavy genres such as adventure games or RPGs.

Yeah the Mario manuals only have the story take up a single paragraph.

That's why the story in games is usually called context. It's a simple frame for the setting telling you what the objectives are and why in the overall game.

Both Rayman origins and Rayman Legends also did this. You can even look at the Spyro Remaster, they set things up in 30 seconds and let the player run free.

 

[Secret Asshole]

Normies actually believe SH2 is mainly about "toxic masculinity" as if men can't have any other issues. Like...taking care of a disabled relative who is dying from an illness is a struggle and there's no easy answer to a human being in pain??
SH intellectuals won't allow you to have any other interpretation besides James is a toxic male (James' VA got cancelled by the fandom because he found the character sympathetic, he was going through a divorce at the time), Angela is a helpless victim, Pyramid head is a rapist (when the character artist confirmed he's not) and every hole is Mary's vagina...
Horror lost its edge. SH2 at least had the balls to make the character actually did something horrific but also give you a choice on whether to forgive him or not (take fucking notes, Druckmann). Or Rule Of Rose where the enemies represented children and you had a victim of a pedophile and a serial killer as bosses...
Modern horror games don't do anything interesting besides "Religious cults and corporations are evil" and "The monster is a metaphor for your depression and anxiety, love yourself, your mental illness is beautiful" tumblr shit (Swery's The Missing).

tldr; psychological horror is DEAD, so I'll settle for a big titty vampire milf, that's good enough.

Silent Hill 2 was representative of the massive guilt that James had for (I don't know why I'm spoiling this but) being tired of taking care of his sick wife and smothering her to death with a pillow and the lie that he did it for her own good (not because he was tired of her holding her back).

In essence, it was about lying to yourself for doing something so horrible, you delude yourself into believing that lie, because you cannot picture yourself as a monster. Silent Hill 2 was about coming to terms with that guilt and its message was that you could never hide it with a lie, because it will eat you alive. Pyramid Head (if you read the lore scattered throughout) is actually a personification of James' own guilt and desire to be judged and punished, assaulting him.

I mean, its brilliant because it is in actuality beautiful simple but so fucking overanalyzed people need to shut the fuck up about it.

The problem with doing psychological horror today is it tackles themes that make people uncomfortable. Rape, violence, murder, torture, guilt, emotional anguish...but psychological horror has been extremely hard to do in almost every medium except for maybe literature. Its kind of a miracle videogames got one good one out of it.

The problem with building a horror game is that:

- You need a feeling of helplessness. You cannot be a badass. This is very difficult to balance out gameplay wise. You don't want a walking simulator, but you don't want it to have heavy combat. You had some franchises take advantage of this like Fatal Frame which uses a camera, or Clocktower for the PS2 which was fucking intense (running and hiding, picking up clues until you could fight back). You need some mechanism where you can only barely overcome encounters, likely based on strategy and your own wits. Just running away a lot of times doesn't seem to cut it for me. Incapacitation maybe, not total defeat.

- To be horrifying, you need a real mystery. You can't spoon feed the player. We fear the unknown. So it has to be that way. Why are people terrified of serial killers or those missing person's podcasts? Because its a mystery. There's this great line in one of my favorite horror movies ever, Frailty, where a character says: "Dad told us that there were moments when people could just disappear without anyone knowing where they went or why." That's fucking horrifying. That's what makes us scared. And you have to be as evasive as possible. Its why a lot of horror movies encase their monsters in shadow, so the audience can't get a good look (and to hide the imperfections, but it works both ways)

- Horror deals with things that makes us uncomfortable. And today, anything that makes someone uncomfortable is verboten. So you're really hemmed in when you're choosing where you are going. Its hard to do interesting or horrific things when you're just boxed in.

That's why its really difficult to do survival horror these days.

 

[Marissa Moira]

The problem with building a horror game is that:

- You need a feeling of helplessness. You cannot be a badass. This is very difficult to balance out gameplay wise. You don't want a walking simulator, but you don't want it to have heavy combat. You had some franchises take advantage of this like Fatal Frame which uses a camera, or Clocktower for the PS2 which was fucking intense (running and hiding, picking up clues until you could fight back). You need some mechanism where you can only barely overcome encounters, likely based on strategy and your own wits. Just running away a lot of times doesn't seem to cut it for me. Incapacitation maybe, not total defeat.

- To be horrifying, you need a real mystery. You can't spoon feed the player. We fear the unknown. So it has to be that way. Why are people terrified of serial killers or those missing person's podcasts? Because its a mystery. There's this great line in one of my favorite horror movies ever, Frailty, where a character says: "Dad told us that there were moments when people could just disappear without anyone knowing where they went or why." That's fucking horrifying. That's what makes us scared. And you have to be as evasive as possible. Its why a lot of horror movies encase their monsters in shadow, so the audience can't get a good look (and to hide the imperfections, but it works both ways)

- Horror deals with things that makes us uncomfortable. And today, anything that makes someone uncomfortable is verboten. So you're really hemmed in when you're choosing where you are going. Its hard to do interesting or horrific things when you're just boxed in.

That's why its really difficult to do survival horror these days.

Honestly the ideal way would probably be to incorporate a stamina meter for every move and it slowly rechargers.

Like you can fight back but it will drain your stamina and if you tire yourself out, you'll be very vulnerable so you need to find a place to hide to recharge. If you are not successful in killing the monster or all monsters, you've now blown your cover and you might not be able to run away fast enough because running will drain your stamina and they might catch up. They're also now alerted so any nearby hiding place is no good because they can see you.

You have to have every decision be weighing consequences. Sort of like setting up how Thief does stealth where if you're spotted you can kinda sorta kill the person but combat sucks so it's usually reserved for last resort.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

the point is video games are a combination of certain aspects. do you need a story? no. do you need animu tiddies? no. but good luck finding anyone playing a game that has no story, lore, sound, graphics or whatever fluff someone deems "unnecessary" and is just black and white pixels for the sake of "gameplay".

It is not unnecessary and you're right, but the game is still there even when stripped to its essentials. Look at hardcore fighting game fans, the most popular ones aren't based on lore or story, it's all about gameplay and they obsess over the frames and hitboxes, that's the real game and they know it. They're an extreme outlier, sure.

Back during Quake 1, 2 and later FPPS people turned down the graphics to get an advantage. Competitive Quake was basically untextured and flat-shaded. I haven't looked if people still do it but there used to be videos showing where the hitboxes are compared to the model during an online game in games like modern CS. That's all multiplayer though and I don't know anything about DOTA/LOL spergery but they're probably running pixel perfect metas while the graphics just get in the way.

Back when I played a lot of bullet hell shooters there was a series of really popular free games that had no graphics other than the hitboxes against a black background. Really good games and I wish I remember what they were called. Pure gameplay. It was like Pong except avoid the bullet hell of balls. Small community, absolutely, but there was still a lot of people playing games without graphics.

Point is that if a video game sheds the fancy presentation and is stripped down to its core gameplay mechanics and presented in its most basic form it should still be a game that can be played, otherwise it's not much of a game. Take Virtua Tennis or similar games as an example, you have buttons to lounge, sprint and such, at its most extreme you could more or less play the same game as a fancy pong clone from the classic pong perspective. It would still be really fun.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Off-topic, but do you have any recommendations of good indie horror that's not a PT clone or a RE1 Remake clone on unreal engine? I only vaguely enjoyed Song of Horror. Don't care for Little NIghtmares or Amnesia...

I don't, because RE1 clones are my thing. The way I tend to find horror games these days is the YouTube channel and blog Alpha Beta Gamers. Just search the horror tag and play games that catch your eye.

You need a feeling of helplessness. You cannot be a badass. This is very difficult to balance out gameplay wise. You don't want a walking simulator, but you don't want it to have heavy combat. You had some franchises take advantage of this like Fatal Frame which uses a camera, or Clocktower for the PS2 which was fucking intense (running and hiding, picking up clues until you could fight back). You need some mechanism where you can only barely overcome encounters, likely based on strategy and your own wits. Just running away a lot of times doesn't seem to cut it for me. Incapacitation maybe, not total defeat.

That's something I disagree with. I've gotten shit in the past for saying this, but Silent Hill has guns. You beat monsters to death with a rusty pipe. There are videos of Resident Evil playthroughs where they kill every enemy in the game. After Amnesia, people got this idea that having weapons made a game not-scary; it was mentally retconed that Resident Evil was never scary, and the guns in Silent Hill were never to be mentioned.

 

[Marissa Moira]

That's something I disagree with. I've gotten shit in the past for saying this, but Silent Hill has guns. You beat monsters to death with a rusty pipe. There are videos of Resident Evil playthroughs where they kill every enemy in the game. After Amnesia, people got this idea that having weapons made a game not-scary; it was mentally retconed that Resident Evil was never scary, and the guns in Silent Hill were never to be mentioned.

But that's something that leads to basically then just re-creating the Soulsborne genre. You have weapons and to complement the weapons you have overly violent and agile enemies.

So that also opens up another argument, are you looking for horror or are you looking for a thriller? A thriller is something where there's constant tension and action.

 

[Corn Flakes]

But that's something that leads to basically then just re-creating the Soulsborne genre. You have weapons and to complement the weapons you have overly violent and agile enemies.

So that also opens up another argument, are you looking for horror or are you looking for a thriller? A thriller is something where there's constant tension and action.

The difference then is how good your character is at combat. If you're playing a side-strafing, circle-strafing, auto-sprinting badass who can dodgeroll Jason Vorhees' machete, even a flintlock pistol is fine. If your character is slow, controls like a tank, gets stunned for three seconds by anything that connects with so much as a sneeze, and needs to stop dead on his tricks to aim, and considers "aiming" to be an "interesting concept without any practical application in real life", you could have a minigun with infinite bullets and still have tension in the game. Souls games are the former, the original Resident Evil games are the latter.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

I don't, because RE1 clones are my thing. The way I tend to find horror games these days is the YouTube channel and blog Alpha Beta Gamers. Just search the horror tag and play games that catch your eye.


That's something I disagree with. I've gotten shit in the past for saying this, but Silent Hill has guns. You beat monsters to death with a rusty pipe. There are videos of Resident Evil playthroughs where they kill every enemy in the game. After Amnesia, people got this idea that having weapons made a game not-scary; it was mentally retconed that Resident Evil was never scary, and the guns in Silent Hill were never to be mentioned.

Resident Evil 4 had ALL the guns ALL the time and people universally agree that the regenerators made them shit their pants. The blind Wolverine dudes were also really creepy to be around.

Combat also lets a horror game be dynamic in a way that a non-combat game won't be. In a game like Outlast I feel jump-scared but that's it. If an enemy shows up there's either a closet or an escape chute right beside me, I know that, that's the game design, it has to be like that because I can't defend myself.

 

[AMHOLIO]

Off-topic, but do you have any recommendations of good indie horror that's not a PT clone or a RE1 Remake clone on unreal engine? I only vaguely enjoyed Song of Horror. Don't care for Little NIghtmares or Amnesia...

Neverending Nightmares, Detention, FAITH, & Lost in Vivo are popular and different. Darkwood for sure if you enjoy survival horror.

Resident Evil 4 had ALL the guns ALL the time and people universally agree that the regenerators made them shit their pants. The blind Wolverine dudes were also really creepy to be around.

Combat also lets a horror game be dynamic in a way that a non-combat game won't be. In a game like Outlast I feel jump-scared but that's it. If an enemy shows up there's either a closet or an escape chute right beside me, I know that, that's the game design, it has to be like that because I can't defend myself.

The choice to defend or not defend yourself and find an escape is what I've heard complemented. It's a nice panic moment where you have to make that split second choice whether to run or gun.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Steam has initiated the hentai holocaust.

https://noisypixel.net/evenicle-2-officially-banned-steam-english/

They're not stopping at Evenicle 2, there's apparently a slew of others that will be hit by the ban hammer.


On the bright side at least this can be relevant again

Mangagamer is going to charge a fucking premium for the physical release Evenicle 2, no platforms will take the game AND it has a real big boy official ESRB AO rating. That's a real collector's item. The first game came with some bullshit 18+ rating that they made up in house.

But if I'm going to be paying 90 dollars for a physical porn game, it better come with a fucking art book.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Steam has initiated the hentai holocaust.

https://noisypixel.net/evenicle-2-officially-banned-steam-english/

They're not stopping at Evenicle 2, there's apparently a slew of others that will be hit by the ban hammer.


On the bright side at least this can be relevant again

https://youtube.com/watch?v=R1Nd6LU4ImQ

Mangagamer is going to charge a fucking premium for the physical release Evenicle 2, no platforms will take the game AND it has a real big boy official ESRB AO rating. That's a real collector's item. The first game came with some bullshit 18+ rating that they made up in house.

But if I'm going to be paying 90 dollars for a physical porn game, it better come with a fucking art book.

can't wait for the ssseth review where he dodges how he aquires the game.

 

[Marissa Moira]

can't wait for the ssseth review where he dodges how he aquires the game.

You can get the original from mangagamer that comes without the need to use steam

MangaGamer.com - Your Onestop Moe Download Store!

MangaGamer - the eroge and localization publisher bringing you popular titles like Higurashi, Rance, Kindred Spirits, euphoria, Koihime, and more!

www.mangagamer.com

Here's the thing though all these people/lolifags keep broadcasting their actions even if it's meant to be kept on the downlow, they will broadcast to everyone that they're keeping it on the down low. So much so that it attracts corporate attention, this has happened multiple times now. Most recently with Microsoft banning Gal Gun prior to this.

So now all these same people are piling on to the switch now like it's a lifeboat on the titantic and have learned nothing. Do you really think a company who is set to open multiple family oriented theme parks and to produce an american children's movie is going to want the negative publicity of people going around everywhere going "LOL I CAN PLAY GAMES THAT LETS ME TOUCH LOLIS AND UNDERAGE". No these faggots are standing on train tracks just waiting to get hit by a corporate locomotive.

Anyways somewhat related they apparently westernized Dragon Quest's designs to appeal more to westerners. A scenario that I long wanted to see for an outcome is actually happening. They didn't make them look like final fantasy characters but looks closer to the 3d Lupin character designs, not quite quasi-disney/pixar either but it's a weird middle ground. But at least it's not suffering like Dragon Quest 11 was where they get mistaken for Dragon ball characters from the normies.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

You can get the original from mangagamer that comes without the need to use steam

MangaGamer.com - Your Onestop Moe Download Store!

MangaGamer - the eroge and localization publisher bringing you popular titles like Higurashi, Rance, Kindred Spirits, euphoria, Koihime, and more!

www.mangagamer.com

Here's the thing though all these people/lolifags keep broadcasting their actions even if it's meant to be kept on the downlow, they will broadcast to everyone that they're keeping it on the down low. So much so that it attracts corporate attention, this has happened multiple times now. Most recently with Microsoft banning Gal Gun prior to this.

So now all these same people are piling on to the switch now like it's a lifeboat on the titantic and have learned nothing. Do you really think a company who is set to open multiple family oriented theme parks and to produce an american children's movie is going to want the negative publicity of people going around everywhere going "LOL I CAN PLAY GAMES THAT LETS ME TOUCH LOLIS AND UNDERAGE". No these faggots are standing on train tracks just waiting to get hit by a corporate locomotive.

Anyways somewhat related they apparently westernized Dragon Quest's designs to appeal more to westerners. A scenario that I long wanted to see for an outcome is actually happening. They didn't make them look like final fantasy characters but looks closer to the 3d Lupin character designs, not quite quasi-disney/pixar either but it's a weird middle ground. But at least it's not suffering like Dragon Quest 11 was where they get mistaken for Dragon ball characters from the normies.

yeah DQ 11 hit the balance between the Toriyama style designs and the 3d Lupin type design. It's nice.

 

[9263900263]

You almost have to go back to Pong for that. I know SJW "walking simulators" have more or less wrecked the reputation of vidya as art (because apparently the SJW concept of art is it has to suck). But a game can and probably (usually) should actually tell a story too. Back when Valve still made games they did this very well. And even games like Wolfenstein told a story, even if it was pretty much "go kill Hitler."

Valve style story telling destroyed games having stories IMO. Go back and replay HL1, how much fun to you have waiting for them to open the doors because they won't stop talking? How much fun is the reactor sequence? Bet you love that tram ride at the start right? HL2? Doctor Klein's lab sequence. Valve are the reason why we have games like LTOU which has hour long segments of holding forward so people can preach at you. Witcher 3 has your horse ride it's self next to an NPC to talk for 10 minutes before the game starts after the tutorial. All of this bullshit was solved on the PS2 with skippable cut scenes. Valve did in engine crap with it's big sellers and it became the defacto way to tell a story. Left 4 dead is the only valve series which got the story right. It's there for an intro, an outro and banter in the middle. I want to play the game not watch a movie on a VCR with a broken play button.

 

[Secret Asshole]

Steam has initiated the hentai holocaust.

https://noisypixel.net/evenicle-2-officially-banned-steam-english/

They're not stopping at Evenicle 2, there's apparently a slew of others that will be hit by the ban hammer.


On the bright side at least this can be relevant again

https://youtube.com/watch?v=R1Nd6LU4ImQ

Mangagamer is going to charge a fucking premium for the physical release Evenicle 2, no platforms will take the game AND it has a real big boy official ESRB AO rating. That's a real collector's item. The first game came with some bullshit 18+ rating that they made up in house.

But if I'm going to be paying 90 dollars for a physical porn game, it better come with a fucking art book.

Aww, shit. Is there any specific list? It does get tiring seeing all this shit go down.

 

[Marissa Moira]

Aww, shit. Is there any specific list? It does get tiring seeing all this shit go down.

No official one that I've found, people said they've just been hitting games at random, but the trend they all have in common though is that they feature characters who appear to be or are considered underage.

Apparently Alicesoft's alternatives to Steam were to be both GOG and Epic, but at this point it's not looking promising either.

GOG never went for those games in the first place and Epic may not want to associate them due to image issues. They're wanting Epic Exclusives to be a real a thing and hosting porn games would sink that ship.

 

[Corn Flakes]

No official one that I've found they've just been hitting games at random. The trend they all have in common though is that they feature characters who appear to be or are considered underage.

Let's be honest, after the Pornhub wipe anything that could even be remotely associated with underage porn, fictional or real, is getting scrubbed off.

 

[9263900263]

Aww, shit. Is there any specific list? It does get tiring seeing all this shit go down.

Valve did this before. It's not the first game.

Also good. Fuck hentai games filling up my recommendations and most of the new releases. I've never bought one, I've never browsed them and I have zero interest in weeaboo story books. Steam clearing up all this junk and hiding it behind a curtain with RPG maker games would make Steam usable again. These days Steam is so bad for finding new games it's easier to use crack watch as a filter for uwuu >__________< girls 2 fuck my boipussy remix HD the summer festival special edition spam

On SH2. People miss the forest for the trees with that game. All the weird monsters and main characters aren't close to Mary in terms of character. She has very little dialog but what she does have is gut wrenching. Towards the end when you're hearing her tell you how guilty she feels for being sick and all that entails it's well acted and very well written. Unlike rape man and rape man the beddening, Mary has a real world problem. She's talking to someone she loves with all her heart and constantly makes suffer. She's tearing herself up inside over you the player and doesn't know how to deal with that. She comes to life as a person, a real person with real problems. She's not video game man with his whacky dog ending or slutty plot device the escort mission. She's just a person in immense emotional pain trying to reach out to the person she needs to rely on but hurts even more if she does. On a first play through by that point in the game most people are wanting it over and the horror has lots it's edge so it's impact isn't as great. Replay the game again or go watch the scene on youtube and pay attention to that scene. It should be the most impactful scene in the whole game and instead the legacy is RAPEMAN IS COOL! despite Pyramid head being a mediocre boss fight and the least interesting monster in the game it's self.