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Asuron posted:Rich Evans. It's always Rich Evans. Without a doubt.
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Mar 2, 2015 04:07
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Sephiroth_IRA posted:Without a doubt. OH MY GAWWWWDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!
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Mar 2, 2015 06:29
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DStecks posted:You're ignoring the possibility that a game can force a player into a mindset it disagrees with, in order to make a point. Spec Ops: The Line is profoundly anti-violence, but violence is the only way to proceed, and that's the point of the game. Bioshock is a game that directly analyzes the psychological connection between player and PC, and where it can break down (would you kindly), so I'd argue that "player is doing thing game does not like" is an overly simplistic reading. I think the difference though is The Line challenged you, pointing out that everything you were doing is reprehensible and you had no choice in it because the game was made that way. Just because you want to be the hero and the games says you're the hero it doesn't mean you are. Think about what you're doing a bit more next time. It works because it asks you to do terrible things then unlike the games it's contrasting with, it doesn't pretend it was in any way justified. In Bioshock on the other hand you're never challenged or punished for being an objectivisit, hoarding murder hobo. The game world shows the pitfalls of Objectivism but the gameplay doesn't. You're rewarded as much for helping people as you are for loving them over for your own personal gain. Harvesting the girls for Adam should give you power, but be the making of your own downfall later on, but it ain't really. Other than what ending you get game doesn't give much of a poo poo and even the "Bad" ending you get for doing it isn't really bad as it makes you out to be some kind of world conquering badass. Bioshock Infinite had a different problem where the game just gave up trying to deal with slavery and goes the South Park "Maybe both sides are wrong" (On loving Slavery of all things) and then never mentions it again.
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Mar 2, 2015 11:57
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Fans posted:In Bioshock on the other hand you're never challenged or punished for being an objectivisit, hoarding murder hobo. The game world shows the pitfalls of Objectivism but the gameplay doesn't. You're rewarded as much for helping people as you are for loving them over for your own personal gain. Harvesting the girls for Adam should give you power, but be the making of your own downfall later on, but it ain't really. Other than what ending you get game doesn't give much of a poo poo and even the "Bad" ending you get for doing it isn't really bad as it makes you out to be some kind of world conquering badass. I may be wrong on this, but I seem to remember that choosing to save the girls gets you better/more stuff in the long run, so that could be a small example of the gameplay saying that while looking out purely for yourself can seem immediately useful, it can gently caress you over in the long run.
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Mar 2, 2015 12:15
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BreakAtmo posted:I may be wrong on this, but I seem to remember that choosing to save the girls gets you better/more stuff in the long run, so that could be a small example of the gameplay saying that while looking out purely for yourself can seem immediately useful, it can gently caress you over in the long run. It's a toss up in my eyes, you get a lot more Adam for harvesting them to buy different powers, but you get given some free powers if you don't. None of the free powers are amazingly game breaking, so it doesn't seem to be the 'best' way to play. Even if it did give you vastly better stuff for not harvesting them, the only way to know this is to play the game through again so it's not very effective at communicating this.
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Mar 2, 2015 12:20
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Fans posted:It's a toss up in my eyes, you get a lot more Adam for harvesting them to buy different powers, but you get given some free powers if you don't. None of the free powers are amazingly game breaking, so it doesn't seem to be the 'best' way to play. The packages you get also have ADAM, not just extra powers. I think it's something like: Save a Little Sister - Get 80 ADAM. Harvest a Little Sister - get 160 ADAM. After saving 3 Little Sisters - get a package with 200 ADAM and special plasmids/tonics. So it doesn't entirely equal out, but yeah.
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Mar 2, 2015 12:58
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From a mechanical standpoint, saving the girls is superior in every way. You straight up get less useful stuff by going the evil route.
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Mar 2, 2015 20:49
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Testekill posted:Todds new review is up for his Patreons and it's on Word Up by Cameo. He's like crazy positive about it. I'm glad he dug Cameo. They're a vastly underrated band, and seriously, their stuff is everywhere. Everywhere. They're like Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) in that you may not know of the band, but they're immensely talented, influential and you've heard more of their songs than you'd think. I liked Word Up as a kid, but didn't get turned onto "Candy" until about 6 months ago. My favorite part of Mariah Carey's Loverboy was Larry Blackmon's nasally vocals (and over-the-top persona), so I decided to look up where the sample was from and that's how I came to find Candy - and proceeded to get hooked on it for a couple weeks! Celery Face posted:How could someone not like that song? It's the very definition of slick. Dunno what was up with the red codpiece though. Having grown up in the 80's, it was just an insane, schizophrenic time for fashion; especially if you lived in a major city. There are things I wouldn't have believed nor imagined if I hadn't seen them myself. The utter and complete lack of fashion boundaries was a lot of fun, actually. Now that I think about it, for as many pictures my sister has at her place, you'd think she didn't take a picture of herself before 1992. But I remember the big, blowout perms, jean + snakeskin jackets, too-tight jeans, cowboy boots... But then there's a picture of me in an electric blue British Knight's tracksuit with mesh netting and a high-top fade complete with a thunderbolt cut into the side and a rat tail.  So I can't talk.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe3dRw7ovhY
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Mar 2, 2015 20:51
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Tae posted:From a mechanical standpoint, saving the girls is superior in every way. You straight up get less useful stuff by going the evil route. My problem with Bioshock is that I felt that playing evil was playing it wrong. Honestly a lot of games seem like that to me if you go dark side/evil/etc you should have been nicer or doesn't gel with the narrative properly. Amusingly Overlord kind of subverted that by letting you either be evil or REALLY evil.
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Mar 2, 2015 22:14
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cubs2084 posted:What is it with friends who make dorky critique or video game shows together on the internet eventually being torn apart? Hey I just found out this dude left and came to this thread to see if there was any discussion about it. Me, I don't miss the guy. I legit enjoy the content of the completionist's videos as I have a little completionist tendencies in me when I really love the poo poo out of a game, but I always, always hated the humor in his videos. I think I laughed once every 3 or 4 videos and eventually I even found myself skipping past Gary's unfunny segment's since I felt they added nothing (especially the dumb music/singing poo poo that goes on way too long). I just got done watching the RE2 video that was put on last friday and liked that it got to focus solely on the game and not so much the dumb, time consuming asides every 30 seconds in rofl-random-man voice. For me, the channel is going to be much better for now on.
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Mar 2, 2015 23:57
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Fans posted:I think the difference though is The Line challenged you, pointing out that everything you were doing is reprehensible and you had no choice in it because the game was made that way. Just because you want to be the hero and the games says you're the hero it doesn't mean you are. Think about what you're doing a bit more next time. It works because it asks you to do terrible things then unlike the games it's contrasting with, it doesn't pretend it was in any way justified. You're not quite getting at the game's point - as a rule, if you need to come up with major changes to the game, your idea of what the game was going for might not be accurate - ask yourself "what does the game say by being exactly as it is?" Precisely the most interesting thing about Bioshock's ludonarrative is that it doesn't seriously punish you for killing the little girls. It makes the far more incisive point that Libertarianism works, but only for the exact one guy who manages to rise to the very tippy top of the shitpile ideology-infested world libertarians inevitably build. You know absorbing the little sisters gives you more power, but that the only real effect of not doing so is a cutscene at the end of the game - and since you're playing the game to experience the gameplay first and foremost, or you can look it up on youtube, you might as well have more stuff to play with. The little girl on the screen registers as a jumped-up health pack representing a crude moral choice that has no bearing on you. This is genius. The game replicates the effect of the libertarian worldview, in which traditional moral codes (don't kill children or metaphorically absorb their souls is way up there) are recognised as mere social agreements that have no true logical weight. "Who gets to decide what I can and cannot do? I live by my own code! It's all just a game, which makes it totally fine to eat these kids!" The game basically explores the societies built by different worldviews and ties it into themes of parenthood - Ryan 'fathers' a dog-eat-dog society that destroys itself, and his literal son has no meaning to him, the child of a transaction between prostitute and client. The player character's other parent, Fontaine, views him as merely a machine to be controlled with commands - replicating the relationship between the player and the game itself - and thus cares very little. It brings the player to the fairly obvious notion that love is a good thing, and people shouldn't be boiled down to the mere results of biology and sex or behaviours or economic standing. It goes further and claims that a 'family' is more than blood and can be fostered between anyone - the player's 'children' are neither programmed nor biologically his, yet are his family anyway. It's calling for an enlargement of that behaviour to encompass all people. The last shot of the game's good ending is of numerous hands united, an explicitly communal image. The game is asking you to choose between a fulfilling story or a sense of power and 'fun' at the expense of a few cartoon children, set in a society that 'turns people into monsters'. Hbomberguy fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Mar 3, 2015 01:26
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Tracula posted:Amusingly Overlord kind of subverted that by letting you either be evil or REALLY evil. Overlord explored the types of Evil you could be: the kind that undercuts itself in the name of Being Evil, or the kind that perpetuates itself. Hell, the two games as a whole have a message of "Evil Overlords come about when the Good Guys become terrible in their own right".
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Mar 3, 2015 04:44
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Hbomberguy posted:You know absorbing the little sisters gives you more power, but that the only real effect of not doing so is a cutscene at the end of the game - and since you're playing the game to experience the gameplay first and foremost, or you can look it up on youtube, you might as well have more stuff to play with. The little girl on the screen registers as a jumped-up health pack representing a crude moral choice that has no bearing on you. This is genius. The game replicates the effect of the libertarian worldview, in which traditional moral codes (don't kill children or metaphorically absorb their souls is way up there) are recognised as mere social agreements that have no true logical weight. "Who gets to decide what I can and cannot do? I live by my own code! It's all just a game, which makes it totally fine to eat these kids!" This is a really cool interpretation except it doesn't make much sense in the case of Bioshock's plot, where people really were appalled at what was being done to the Little Sisters in secret and only ever bought into as the fall came on it because it was pitched as an absolutely necessary thing for the salvation of Rapture and not as a "Well they're just kids, who cares?" convenience. If using the Little Sisters as healthpacks is the libertarian view then it doesn't match up with Rapture's view, who have a lot of people who were genuinely appalled at what was going on, even hyper libertarian Ryan himself. Sure they knew it was appalling and still did it because their hand was forced, but that's different to them taking the view that it doesn't matter what the girls think at all.
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Mar 3, 2015 09:25
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Fans posted:This is a really cool interpretation except it doesn't make much sense in the case of Bioshock's plot, where people really were appalled at what was being done to the Little Sisters in secret and only ever bought into as the fall came on it because it was pitched as an absolutely necessary thing for the salvation of Rapture and not as a "Well they're just kids, who cares?" convenience. If using the Little Sisters as healthpacks is the libertarian view then it doesn't match up with Rapture's view, who have a lot of people who were genuinely appalled at what was going on, even hyper libertarian Ryan himself. Even then, the sisters have to have giant monsters hanging out with them at all times - their creators knew they would have to be defended from someone. Or even ignoring that, the suffering tiny children is a really on-the-nose example of a fantasy utopia being held up by immense suffering that simply goes unnoticed. Tear open a cool art deco big daddy and inside is a mutilated human. What conditions did the people who mined the steel to build rapture work in, etc?
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Mar 3, 2015 10:03
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Libertarians are garbage people who fail the lowest-bar test for humanity, basically. There is sociological data to back this up as well, that self-identified libertarians say they care less about others and really do once in experimental circumstances.
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Mar 3, 2015 16:07
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I've heard people talk about Libertarians, but I keep hearing different things. Who are they and what do they stand for?
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Mar 3, 2015 16:49
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Mraagvpeine posted:I've heard people talk about Libertarians, but I keep hearing different things. Who are they and what do they stand for? I shall rather cruelly point you towards D&D's thread on it. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3636681&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 Wherein you will learn things that sadly cannot be unlearned.
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Mar 3, 2015 16:57
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Mraagvpeine posted:I've heard people talk about Libertarians, but I keep hearing different things. Who are they and what do they stand for? Libertarians generally want as small a government as possible with as few laws as possible, seeing virtually all laws as restrictions of freedom. They love free markets, and many see taxation as theft. They would like to see a lot of government services done away with, and some are for privatizing basically everything: why have government maintain infrastructure, offer schools, or provide fire and police departments when the free market can do it itself at fair market value? That was about as neutral a description as I could give (it's about ethics in ideological journalism). You can, of course, extrapolate from there, and the link in the post above mine is very illuminating.
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Mar 3, 2015 16:58
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Mraagvpeine posted:I've heard people talk about Libertarians, but I keep hearing different things. Who are they and what do they stand for? Right-libertarians = Robert Nozick. Left-libertarians = Um... Noam Chomsky? At least nominally. That's how I've always thought of it, anyway.
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Mar 3, 2015 17:01
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Mraagvpeine posted:I've heard people talk about Libertarians, but I keep hearing different things. Who are they and what do they stand for? They're anarchists who want to keep the police around.
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Mar 3, 2015 17:05
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BravestOfTheLamps posted:They're anarchists who want to keep the police around. Not all of them! Some of them want everyone to use freely hire-able private police forces called DRO's (Dispute Resolution Organizations) that will come to a non-violent agreement. You may wonder why you need to hire armed mercenaries to come to this non violent agreement and that's the kind of talk that I will be happy to discuss with you with my far larger, far better armed DRO where I'm sure we can come to all sorts of exciting agreements.
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Mar 3, 2015 17:16
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Most Libertarians claim allegiance to Ayn Rand's writing, even though Rand herself had strong words to say about Libertarians, calling them a bigger threat to society than anyone else in the entire world. The only true words she ever wrote. She mostly otherwise wrote stuff that made her sound like Skeletor, justifying colonisation of America and other weird poo poo - and even she had serious problems with the movement. That's really all you need to know. They're not garbage people through traditional methods, aka through bad education or never questioning one's ideological worldview, but through an ethical (for want of a better word) commitment to being the lovely person they view as unoppressed by petty morals. Rand was smart enough to decry Libertarians but dumb enough to think her ideas and writing were calling for anything other than that precise political movement. Atlas Shrugged was literally a book about the rich conspiring to destroy the world, and she thought it was a good thing that this happened. It justifies genocide. 'But what makes genocide bad?' An objectivist would ask. And bam, now you're stupid. That's the ultimate joke of Bioshock's Andrew Ryan (get it?) - an idealist whose vision creates only chaos and monsters, but who insists they're just failures and didn't truly live up to the idea. A man who demands you smash his own face in, just to prove some vague concept of freedom, smugly whining about parasites alone in a study with no love or happiness to speak of. He's probably the most accurate libertarian character ever written. Holy poo poo you guys have done it, you've made Bioshock an entertaining thing to think about. Finally. I knew it wasn't a waste playing through that whole shitpile.
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Mar 3, 2015 17:18
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Despite my criticism I quite liked it up to the end of Andrew Ryan but then it was all aboard the stupid train for an ending and a Sequel that tried to undo all the good feeling it had gained from me so far.
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Mar 3, 2015 17:34
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Todd's patreon pushed past $1000, so we should be seeing a new Top Ten Worst Songs list.
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Mar 3, 2015 17:43
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I'll look at that thread later when I have time.Rebochan posted:Todd's patreon pushed past $1000, so we should be seeing a new Top Ten Worst Songs list. Hooray, I'll be looking forward to it.
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Mar 3, 2015 18:18
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For what it's worth, despite how shoddy some of Bioshock's themes and ideas turned out to be, it was a game that let me throw bees at people, it's okay in my book.
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Mar 3, 2015 18:36
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Hbomberguy posted:Holy poo poo you guys have done it, you've made Bioshock an entertaining thing to think about. Finally. I knew it wasn't a waste playing through that whole shitpile. Not to derail the thread even further, but I'd legit like to hear some searing critique about Bioshock from someone who considers it a shitpile while still saying it had some intelligent stuff in it. I've seen plenty of in-depth critique on Infinite that's been pretty fun to look into (Especially when you have pretty deeply contrasted views that still give credit to either side, like between Noah Caldwell-Gervais and Matthewmatosis), while the most I've seen on Bioshock 1 is "it gestures at heady topics like how ayn rand was a garbage dick also big daddies are neat i guess" being contrasted with "it's not system shock 2 and the ending's poo and video games can't be culturally relevant and/or intellectually engaging because something something inherently juvenile". I don't have any personal connection with the game (played maybe halfway through it years ago and saw the ending on Youtube), I just find it cool to read about. Then again, I seem to be the odd one out ITT as someone who unironically enjoys reading Hbomb's effortposts filled with thought/energy that would probably be better spent towards, i dunno, something outside a RGD thread that varies from relatively-mediocre to GBS-level at a moment's notice. So ignore me, basically.
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Mar 3, 2015 18:47
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Bioshock is an above average game that either gets undue praise or undue hatred for it's hype. It's a shooter with a interesting story, gameplay system and voice acting that's just been overhyped. Bioshock 2 is leagues better anyway and is a legitimately amazing game. Rebochan posted:Todd's patreon pushed past $1000, so we should be seeing a new Top Ten Worst Songs list. Talking about Todd reminded me that a day I thought would never arrive has happened: I really really really like a new Maroon 5 song. Sugar is kinda great 
OldTennisCourt fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Mar 3, 2015 19:28
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OldTennisCourt posted:Talking about Todd reminded me that a day I thought would never arrive has happened: I really really really like a new Maroon 5 song. Sugar is kinda great It's an okay song, but it made me imagine the same setup of "crashing" people's weddings like in the Sugar music video but instead they start singing their creepy recent song about stalking and eating a woman alive. MASEL TOV!
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Mar 3, 2015 19:44
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OldTennisCourt posted:Talking about Todd reminded me that a day I thought would never arrive has happened: I really really really like a new Maroon 5 song. Sugar is kinda great I feel you there buddy, I like Sugar too.
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Mar 3, 2015 20:01
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Moartoast posted:Not to derail the thread even further, but I'd legit like to hear some searing critique about Bioshock from someone who considers it a shitpile while still saying it had some intelligent stuff in it. I've seen plenty of in-depth critique on Infinite that's been pretty fun to look into (Especially when you have pretty deeply contrasted views that still give credit to either side, like between Noah Caldwell-Gervais and Matthewmatosis), while the most I've seen on Bioshock 1 is "it gestures at heady topics like how ayn rand was a garbage dick also big daddies are neat i guess" being contrasted with "it's not system shock 2 and the ending's poo and video games can't be culturally relevant and/or intellectually engaging because something something inherently juvenile". I don't have any personal connection with the game (played maybe halfway through it years ago and saw the ending on Youtube), I just find it cool to read about. I didn't find the gameplay to be enjoyable. Not enough stuff was going on and the powers, while superficially cool in concept (I'm throwing bees at people wheee) didn't really make much of a difference from just using guns. It barely registers as an RPG to me. I tend to enjoy games that either have really engaging and solid gameplay elements or really good stories (/ludonarratives) that give me an excuse to think about stuff. System Shock 2 and the Deus Ex games do what Bioshock did, only a lot better. There's more stuff, and choices - even an inventory! - in those games. All Bioshock really does well for me is the social critique / philosophy stuff it raises, and the thematically-relevant videogame-isation of the little sisters. That last part feels like a precursor to the far more infamous scene in Spec Ops: The Line, where spoilers, human lives are reduced to dots on a screen you click on to murder. It's a joke about drone warfare but also the gameification of violence and the effects of war on its fighters. If you want me to direct my efforts elsewhere I'm totally open to ideas, I only write here as a hobby to kill time when I'm not writing my own stuff. Cough
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Mar 3, 2015 20:08
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OldTennisCourt posted:Talking about Todd reminded me that a day I thought would never arrive has happened: I really really really like a new Maroon 5 song. Sugar is kinda great Animals is really good too, but I can see how people could interpert it as rape-y. Otherwise it's awesome. It was weird how Todd's section on it in the Worst of 2014 video was mostly about the actor in the music video.
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Mar 3, 2015 20:23
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OldTennisCourt posted:Bioshock is an above average game that either gets undue praise or undue hatred for it's hype. It's a shooter with a interesting story, gameplay system and voice acting that's just been overhyped. I can tolerate people saying Far Cry 4's story is better than 3's because it's technically better executed while having zero artistic ambition; but if you're saying Bioshock 2's story is better than Bioshock's then you're almost objectively wrong.
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Mar 3, 2015 20:24
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DStecks posted:I can tolerate people saying Far Cry 4's story is better than 3's because it's technically better executed while having zero artistic ambition; but if you're saying Bioshock 2's story is better than Bioshock's then you're almost objectively wrong. Bioshock 2 has the huge problem of cramming in a huge character into the mythos that was nowhere in the first game, but I though Lamb was a much better antagonist than Ryan. Ryan was interesting but Lamb's attitude of calm, detached certainty in the goodness of her actions made her much more chilling to me. She was doing horrific things but she completely justified every one of them whereas Ryan just seemed like a flat sort of douchebag to me. Plus the game was MUCH more refined. OldTennisCourt fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Mar 3, 2015 21:49
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I always compare Bioshock 2 to Rocky 4, in that they're both big dumb schlocky sequels that don't gel well with the original works but goddamn if I don't love the hell out of them anyway 
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Mar 3, 2015 21:57
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I think both games have some really good high points and some really bad low points, and I couldn't really pin down one over another as being outright better, just differently executed. 
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Mar 3, 2015 22:04
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WickedHate posted:It was weird how Todd's section on it in the Worst of 2014 video was mostly about the actor in the music video. That's Adam Levine, Mr. Maroon 5 himself. Honestly, I'm a little sick of people describing things they vaguely disagree with but lazily want to sound worse than they really are without any clarification "gross," but...... Jesus Christ, that song was really loving gross. On the other hand, Sugar is probably their best song in a decade. Not that that's a particularly high bar to clear, mind you. ninjahedgehog fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Mar 3, 2015 |
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Mar 3, 2015 22:27
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ninjahedgehog posted:That's Adam Levine, Mr. Maroon 5 himself. Honestly, I'm a little sick of people describing things they vaguely disagree with but lazily want to sound worse than they really are without any clarification "gross," but...... Jesus Christ, that song was really loving gross. Oh, for some reason I thought it was some celebrity who wasn't in the band. I must not have been paying attention. I don't think the song is gross, but I just see it differently then most people regardless of authorial intent and I totally get why others see it the way they do, I'm not gonna deny that it's easy to take in a bad. I like this cover a lot. It's more badass overall. though it lacks the awesome wolf howl.
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Mar 3, 2015 22:40
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I just thought it was a really really lazy song with bad lyrics, a boring tune, and an annoying nasally voice singing it Seriously, animals-mals??
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Mar 3, 2015 22:58
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FirstAidKite posted:Seriously, animals-mals?? I agree actually, that's pretty cheesy.
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Mar 3, 2015 22:59
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