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Spark That Bled posted:I'd like to point out that when most game critics talk about the Wii nowadays, it's mostly in the context of the massive amount of shovelware that was released for it. That console sold a lot, but the only games people talk about are all iterations on Nintendo's big franchises, and updated ports of older games. WRONG, IDIOT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GxGdaK2mpM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv1VLaYUxyQ
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Jan 28, 2018 02:22
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Arcsquad12 posted:Holy hell, reuploading much, Allison? I have learned so much about Cynthia Rothrock and the early 90s video market. It’s also really striking how necessary it seems like it was to do a character + some kind of skit back in the early/mid-days, while now it’s just Doug leaning on that poo poo. I don’t know how anyone felt about it at the time, but it always strikes me as a huge distraction that just gets in the way of celebrating or doing a post-mortem on some enjoyable garbage.
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Jan 28, 2018 02:47
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Allison, as in movie nights Allison? Huh.
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Jan 28, 2018 02:58
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Yardbomb posted:The night elf opening area is usually dead as a doornail yeah, people pretty much bolt out of there as soon as possible. Neddy Seagoon posted:Make a beeline for Darnassus to the west, board the boat through the portal on the western side of town (the purple light under a tree). Takes you right to Stormwind. Well, like I said, I uninstalled the game, but I'll make note to do that if I ever decide to give it another shot. I think I'd still need to find someone in-game to give me a helping hand once I got to that point so I'd know what to do. At the moment, though, I'm more interested in checking out Monster Hunter World, which sounds like it has some pretty good online co-op. There's just something about chatting, goofing off, or hanging out with people in a virtual environment that really appeals to me. It seems like I have the worse luck with it, though.
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Jan 28, 2018 03:13
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Max Wilco posted:I was going to say that all this WOW talk reminds me that I tried playing WOW for the firs time late last year. I tried playing as Night Elf Shaman (via advice from this thread), but once I got through what seemed like the tutorial stuff, I didn't know what do next.
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Jan 28, 2018 03:27
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Wasn't the orc starting zone notorious for having a severe lack of content outside the safe bubble in early WoW?
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Jan 28, 2018 03:29
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Jimbot posted:Wasn't the orc starting zone notorious for having a severe lack of content outside the safe bubble in early WoW? Yeah, but the difference is unlike the Night Elf zone, the Orc zone is just a short walk away from the Troll and Tauren zones, the latter of which is usually swarmed with players.
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Jan 28, 2018 04:01
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Austin Walker on the reaction to his Monster Hunter World article: https://twitter.com/austin_walker/status/957316035585208320 https://twitter.com/austin_walker/status/957320874562072576 EDIT: Lowtax chimed in, too! https://twitter.com/richard_kyanka/status/957375504360902656 Max Wilco fucked around with this message at 06:04 on Jan 28, 2018 |
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Jan 28, 2018 06:01
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Max Wilco posted:Austin Walker on the reaction to his Monster Hunter World article: Might want to screencap those, just in case.
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Jan 28, 2018 06:10
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Might want to screencap those, just in case. Walker's tweets or Lowtax's?
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Jan 28, 2018 06:37
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Max Wilco posted:Walker's tweets or Lowtax's? Yes.
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Jan 28, 2018 06:38
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Max Wilco posted:Austin Walker on the reaction to his Monster Hunter World article: Honest to god this whole thing reminds me of a girl in my renaissance literature seminar last semester who threw a tantrum because the prof called her feminist critique of Troilus and Cressida weak pop psychology.
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Jan 28, 2018 06:48
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Which is funny to me because I'm pretty sure he and that Danielle Rendeau actually did say "do not buy this game" when they misinterpreted the deadnaming thing in Red Strings Club.
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Jan 28, 2018 07:06
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The Red Strings Club was a rare example of the critic actually warning people not to buy the game in normal circumstances. Most of the time it's a stereotype that leftist critics of problematic media refuse to engage with said media and that others should do the same when most of the time leftists that are sensitive (even arguably oversensitive) to problematic media will still engage with it.
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Jan 28, 2018 07:45
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Even if the Monster Hunter review DID say not to buy it, I really doubt that a boycott by the kind of person who is worried about colonialism in Japanese video games would have a particularly noticeable effect on sales.
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Jan 28, 2018 08:45
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Jimbot posted:Wasn't the orc starting zone notorious for having a severe lack of content outside the safe bubble in early WoW? It was a broader problem with Kalimdor as a whole being started far later in development than Eastern Kingdoms, so 3/4 Horde factions had a very thin starting experience, while 3/4 Alliance factions got an extra year of polish with stuff like a whole chain of cooking quests. Durotar had basically just enough quests to get Orcs and Trolls to Orgimmar (Trolls didn't move out to Echo Isles until Cataclysm), but please don't pay too much attention to the giant content hole in the middle of the zone that you hoof it across once and never see again. Mulgore was a little less dire with fun stuff like the ancestor quest, but it still more or less funnelled players into The Barrens asap.
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Jan 28, 2018 09:03
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Puppy Time posted:Even if the Monster Hunter review DID say not to buy it, I really doubt that a boycott by the kind of person who is worried about colonialism in Japanese video games would have a particularly noticeable effect on sales. True, but I know that there's probably going to be people who'll latch onto the article, and chew out people who buy the game or refute the points in the article. https://twitter.com/headfallsoff/status/957338207963832321 https://twitter.com/headfallsoff/status/957338948984037376 I also saw someone point out that article seems to be referring to western colonialism, when Japan has its own history of colonialism. https://twitter.com/Noontide108/status/957325384172924928 So there's that I guess.  FoldableHuman posted:It was a broader problem with Kalimdor as a whole being started far later in development than Eastern Kingdoms, so 3/4 Horde factions had a very thin starting experience, while 3/4 Alliance factions got an extra year of polish with stuff like a whole chain of cooking quests. Durotar had basically just enough quests to get Orcs and Trolls to Orgimmar (Trolls didn't move out to Echo Isles until Cataclysm), but please don't pay too much attention to the giant content hole in the middle of the zone that you hoof it across once and never see again. Mulgore was a little less dire with fun stuff like the ancestor quest, but it still more or less funnelled players into The Barrens asap. I think in choosing Night Elf, that meant that I was with Alliance. Is there any real content difference between Alliance and Horde? I sort of wanted to play Horde initially, as I wanted to play something like an Orc, or and Undead. I went with NIght Elf Shaman, though, because I was told that offered a sampling of every kind of attack style or something.
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Jan 28, 2018 09:13
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Max Wilco posted:Is there any real content difference between Alliance and Horde? I sort of wanted to play Horde initially, as I wanted to play something like an Orc, or and Undead. I went with NIght Elf Shaman, though, because I was told that offered a sampling of every kind of attack style or something. A fair bit yeah, like there's whole swathes of quests that only one side or the other will get, some entire zones are pretty much side exclusive. Also not saying it in a nitpicky way, but I think you mean druid, they're one of the 'can do any role' classes and elves are too wimpy to be shamans. 
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Jan 28, 2018 10:21
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Yardbomb posted:A fair bit yeah, like there's whole swathes of quests that only one side or the other will get, some entire zones are pretty much side exclusive. Druid is probably the best starting character class, because it does indeed have the full spectrum of roles to sample.
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Jan 28, 2018 10:53
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Yardbomb posted:A fair bit yeah, like there's whole swathes of quests that only one side or the other will get, some entire zones are pretty much side exclusive. Neddy Seagoon posted:Druid is probably the best starting character class, because it does indeed have the full spectrum of roles to sample. Oh shoot, that was it! Druid was the class I tried, not shaman (I got the two mixed up).
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Jan 28, 2018 11:31
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Max Wilco posted:I also saw someone point out that article seems to be referring to western colonialism, when Japan has its own history of colonialism. In fairness, Western media tropes can and do influence the messages and undertones in art made elsewhere, just through sheer ubiquity. For instance, any time you see Indiana Jones style tomb-raiding or ancient egyptian pyramids and mummies sort of stuff in Japan it tends to inherit the same icky undertones those tend to have in Western media by sheer imitation if nothing else. If you hardcore death of the author, you could also argue the country of origin doesn't really matter, but eeehhhhhhh. Waypoint article was still reaching a bit though.
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Jan 28, 2018 12:07
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Thompsons posted:Which is funny to me because I'm pretty sure he and that Danielle Rendeau actually did say "do not buy this game" when they misinterpreted the deadnaming thing in Red Strings Club. Don’t think Austin did that, no.
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Jan 28, 2018 13:00
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Linear Zoetrope posted:Waypoint article was still reaching a bit though. "A bit". None of the politicized issues he is speaking of are anywhere implicit in the game and you have to do some really hard twisting of the setting and world to get it to fit the point of view he puts forward in the article. quote:Through the full set of low rank quests, Monster Hunter: World embodies exactly this colonialist fantasy: the pillaging of natural resources, the violence against native people, and the rhetorical establishment of the colonizer as civilized and rational. I am 100% positive that he feels this way because the first handful of monsters you are assigned to hunt don't attack you until you strike first (spoiler, you're supposed to feel a little bad about it, duh), but the game is VERY EXPLICIT about the fact that they destroy the hunters' camps, poison their water and eat their food supply if they are left alone. edit: quote:You master them so that you can cut them into pieces, and you cut them into pieces so that you can make new gear, and you make new gear so that you can master them better. Even when you choose to trap monsters (a slightly more difficult task than simply killing them), you’re rewarded with their pieces when you get home. You are not a hero, you are a hunter who kills for sport. You are a hero and you aren't killing for sport, what you do is again very explicitly something that not everybody in the game's world can do. Your job is to protect people from the monsters because you have old world technology that they don't have access to or the skill to use. Carving the pieces off of monsters is how that equipment is fabricated and the game straight up tells you multiple times that if you capture a monster they are researched and then released back into the wild alive with you getting the spoils of the research. He doesn't care a single bit about the game. He cares about sounding important and saying what he thinks are insightful things that people who play video games could really stand to hear to broaden their narrow worldly horizons, but he sailed real wide past the mark. Also the entire plot of the game is about stopping toxic threats to the environment and preserving nature. The whole thing. You can't even skip the cutscenes and he still didn't pay any attention to them. It's sad. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Jan 28, 2018 |
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Jan 28, 2018 13:40
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I would just like to say that the concept of an unspoiled uninhabited continent is a common myth of colonialism, just acting like the natives didn't exist. Which one could argue is root inspiration from which the game's New World concept pulls. He doesn't do that in the article, but you could fairly easily make such an argument.
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Jan 28, 2018 13:59
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The idea of "it's a new uncharted world to explore" does not in all cases have to be followed up by "which obviously means the world is ours now and we can take whatever we want" and Monster Hunter absolutely does not put that idea forward. Again, it's the opposite: The team ecologists are constantly urging you to capture monsters instead of killing them so they can be released back into the environment without screwing up the ecosystem and you get more and better rewards for doing so.
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Jan 28, 2018 14:08
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Let this guy do a colonialist reading of The Witcher franchise. Won't someone please think of the poor drowners and bilge hags?
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Jan 28, 2018 16:28
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Max Wilco posted:
This article and the accompanying video were really interesting and have actually gotten me to think about buying Monster Hunter World, whereas I had no interest in it before. Walker spends ten minutes of the review gushing over the quality of the animations, how well scale is conveyed in the game, and how fun the combat is and three minutes on frankly fascinating analysis of some underlying themes and people are still mad as hell over what is a positive review.
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Jan 28, 2018 16:48
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It's a shame that people who disagree with that article seem to be being made out as Bad Ones(tm) now because the article itself plays fast and loose with true and honest readings of the "text". It backs into the Colonialist reading instead of deriving that reading from the text itself.
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Jan 28, 2018 16:54
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Waffles Inc. posted:It's a shame that people who disagree with that article seem to be being made out as Bad Ones(tm) now because the article itself plays fast and loose with true and honest readings of the "text". It backs into the Colonialist reading instead of deriving that reading from the text itself. Where are people "being made out as Bad Ones(tm)"? Like in this thread the consensus seems to be "Yeah, that's kinda bullshit."
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Jan 28, 2018 17:33
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Puppy Time posted:Where are people "being made out as Bad Ones(tm)"? Like in this thread the consensus seems to be "Yeah, that's kinda bullshit." In the twitter discussions posted above.
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Jan 28, 2018 17:39
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Linear Zoetrope posted:In fairness, Western media tropes can and do influence the messages and undertones in art made elsewhere, just through sheer ubiquity. For instance, any time you see Indiana Jones style tomb-raiding or ancient egyptian pyramids and mummies sort of stuff in Japan it tends to inherit the same icky undertones those tend to have in Western media by sheer imitation if nothing else. If you hardcore death of the author, you could also argue the country of origin doesn't really matter, but eeehhhhhhh. I'm currently trying to get through the Berserk manga, having loved the 90s anime but never really feeling motivated to read the manga because people described the mangaka as being a bit like GRRM, as in, he'd probably die before finishing the story and I can't stand that idea. But apparently he's more active now and so I feel like I should start catching up on things. Anyway, the point I was gonna make is that I read some people discussing how Berserk of all things has some pretty racist tropes in the way it treats some land that is I guess vaguely Indian or Muslim? It's the one headed by an emperor who, even by Berserk standards, is supposed to be a real piece of work. I just thought that was kinda interesting, dunno how true it is or not. I think that's a fair bit off in the future from where I am.
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Jan 28, 2018 17:58
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Twitter seems to be specifically designed so that large amounts of the dumbest and most reactionary people of any group can overreact to everything, form large crowds, and make even the best groups look like idiots. Like you cannot criticize another Twitter user even mildly if you are popular, because that is "siccing your crowd" on them. I do think it's a good idea for game journalism to do a little better. I hate seeing social justice turned into a meme. And it's a decent enough criticism that it doesn't read the text of the game in order force a clickbait headline. In a better world you could just say that and be done with it, the writer would listen and do better next time. But now everything has a crowd attached to it.
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Jan 28, 2018 18:02
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CJacobs posted:The idea of "it's a new uncharted world to explore" does not in all cases have to be followed up by "which obviously means the world is ours now and we can take whatever we want" and Monster Hunter absolutely does not put that idea forward. Again, it's the opposite: The team ecologists are constantly urging you to capture monsters instead of killing them so they can be released back into the environment without screwing up the ecosystem and you get more and better rewards for doing so. Funny thing I heard during the Waypoint stream: they mentioned getting monster scale and meat from monsters they captured as rewards. So there's the possibility that captured monsters aren't being released back into the wild.
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Jan 28, 2018 18:15
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Spark That Bled posted:Funny thing I heard during the Waypoint stream: they mentioned getting monster scale and meat from monsters they captured as rewards. So there's the possibility that captured monsters aren't being released back into the wild. I mean fair enough, but my point is the game emphasizes the importance of protecting the habitat of the monsters and only actually killing them when you need to over and over again and he basically brushes that off in the article as "it's small potatoes compared to the ISSUES" when actually it's the entire background of the story.
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Jan 28, 2018 18:26
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Monhun plots are loving nothing and the ludonarrative dissonance in them is off the charts. The reflexive, defensive refusal to take Walker's article in good faith proves the article's necessity.
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Jan 28, 2018 18:31
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Ohh, that must be the reason why he didn't mention it, not the fact it doesn't fit his narrative. We all know that you can just disregard things if the media itself doesn't present it as the most important element, critics have been doing it for years!
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Jan 28, 2018 18:37
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DoctorWhat posted:Monhun plots are loving nothing and the ludonarrative dissonance in them is off the charts. The reflexive, defensive refusal to take Walker's article in good faith proves the article's necessity. It's a real bad article and reads like a college freshman discovering postcolonialism for the first time. They loving pay money for this? Jesus christ I could write that poo poo in my sleep
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Jan 28, 2018 18:38
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DoctorWhat posted:Monhun plots are loving nothing and the ludonarrative dissonance in them is off the charts. The reflexive, defensive refusal to take Walker's article in good faith proves the article's necessity. Counterpoint: Vice's tech "coverage" could disappear off the face of the internet tomorrow and nobody would notice, there are plenty of poorly-informed, click-baity hot takes to be had elsewhere on the web.
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Jan 28, 2018 18:39
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Hemingway To Go! posted:Like you cannot criticize another Twitter user even mildly if you are popular, because that is "siccing your crowd" on them. tbf that is literally true and something observed even before current social media got popular. SA's own retsupurae eventually moved away from making mock videos in part because some fraction of the audience would go and give people poo poo directly. Heck, even in mockthreads that usually only concern dozens of posters you have to lay down "don't touch the poop", which inevitably gets broken and thread locked.
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Jan 28, 2018 18:42
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Sonic the hedgehog may present himself as the savior of the people but in truth his motivations are not "way past cool" at all, but rather, symptomatic of the deep obsession with marxist-leninist dialecticism that plagues post-post-war America. The player is told that Robotnik (note the Jewish name, a case of clear anti-Semitism) is capturing animals to encase in robots, but is this really true? Perhaps he is offering gainful employment, which is accepted as the communist doctrine espoused by Sonic provides nothing at all. Sonic himself is given all the goods he wants (hot dogs, shoes, even scarfs in some interpretations) but the "liberated animals" are clothed in nothing... or are they clothed in new, robotic clothing bought via the free market? One might argue that Sonic is a game for children, and unlikely to contain these ideas. However, that is exactly the point: much like socialism, it is merely a fantasy, an impossible dream only children could accept. Also the graphics are pretty good and the controls are smooth, 8/10
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Jan 28, 2018 18:43
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