Random gaming thoughts and questions

For skating specifically? I don’t think so. It’s been pretty fallow since the EA Skate series died, and even then nothing’s had the cultural impact of Tony Hawk since.

Kids these days are all about getting their musical tastes shaped by 5 Nights at Freddy’s and Fortnite.

(I think the last big generational music-influence game may have been Rock Band, which established a canon for Classic Rock songs among a certain age group)

Yea, the question was more meant to be about music, but thinking about it I realized that skate culture kind of blew up around the time of THPS as well. Guitar Hero/Rock Band is a good one!

I know there’s a Supreme fashion brand that’s worth 1 billion dollars. Their trick seems to be making shit limited and making it really expensive and instantly selling a third of their stock to one reseller that marks it up even more.

Also, stealing an anticapitalist message to sell bullshit is … I don’t even know what to say.

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🐛🐛🐛 So I’ve been playing a whole hell of a lot of Burnout Paradise Remastered lately thanks to EA Access on my Xbox One. And like most open-world games the developers of this game put in whimsical and satirical billboards and such throughout the map.

One particular billboard stands out. Every time I see it, and I do see it quite a bit because it’s absolutely everywhere, all I can think of is an old internet meme from several years ago.

It gives me the creepy crawlies. 🐛🐛🐛

I love how the tree behind the billboard looks like her hair.

My 6 year old son just got slapped with some unpleasant reality in Minecraft - got a 12 hour ban for using “invincibility or invisibility hacks”, which we had to have a talk about. At first I figured there was a mistake, my son doesn’t even know how to hack the game. But he told me that he thinks it happened because he found a spot that will make you invisible, and other people do it. And then I had to explain that just because it exists and other people use it, doesn’t mean it isn’t a kind of cheating. I don’t think he understands, and I can’t really blame him. Games can be weird.

This has been bugging me lots with Destiny, Titanfall and now Anthem.

From someone who comes from the Robotech/Macross/Mechwarrior/Battletech/Transformers school of big robot guns, I can’t see the whole PREMISE of “small arms fire” being useful against beasts/giant mechs.

I saw this with the useless US Army humans Michael Bay liked to use as background fodder alongside the giant robots but these small guns just feel anachronistic in these scifi-fantasy settings.

I mean, you could wave your hand and justify it with…uh, magic bullets? To be fair, it didn’t feel as lopsided in Mass Effect series.

Anyone else?

I agree on all parts, except Titanfall did at least try to address this by giving lone pilots specialized anti-Titan weapons they could equip. And those had huge disadvantages if used against personnel. And standard firearms were mostly garbage towards Titans, unless you pulled off a mount & kill maneuver.

But even the anti-titan weapons were mostly just a dangerous nuisance unless completely ignored.

On more than one occasion I’ve seen people using the word “crunchy” to describe a video game. What the hell does it mean for a game to be “crunchy”?

Pretty sure it means highly detailed. And mixed with Rice Crispies.

I’ve seen it used to mean “containing intricate mechanics to pore over, contemplate, and master”. Usually in contrast with “fluffy”, for games with relatively simple mechanics and relying on their aesthetics for appeal.

So would “crunchy” be a synonym for “fiddly” then?

I’ve seen it used in the context of RPGs or Warhammer 40K.

Crunch: The stat blocks for characters, enemies, NPCs, etc.
Fluff: The little narrative back-stories, context, and blurbs describing non-mechanical aspects.

Fluff is used in a derogatory manner by rules lawyers and players of that ilk.

A game can be fiddly without being crunchy, and vice-versa, though I’d argue that there is a heavy overlap for the two, yeah.

This is basically how I see it used, and I would add, smiling, that in my circles, “crunchy” is often used as a slur rather than “fluffy,” but different strokes for different folks.

Crunchy games have complex, interwoven, often mathematical, optimizable mechanical systems at their heart, and players are invited–or perhaps required–to leap into that stuff and roll around in it. There’s a certain joy in tweaking all those systems to find maximally awesome results, and they can feel extremely customizable and deep, especially while you’re still learning how all the moving parts interconnect.

A non-crunchy game eschews some or all of that, or reduces the focus on those elements in favor of other things. The prototypical other side of the axis is “fluff”–worldbuilding, lore, narrative structures, storytelling, descriptiveness, aesthetics, social elements. All the right-brain stuff! These games can still be deep and customizable, just in different ways. Rather than balancing your myriad armor bonuses to produce the hardest-to-hit hero, you’re optimizing your faction relationships by questing, establishing a name for yourself, investigating how the world of the game ticks rather than the systems of the game in order to find your place in it and path to victory.

Oh… NUMBER-crunchy.

I’ve commonly seen it refer to if melee combat or gunplay is sufficiently noisy, responsive or …tactile?

I hate fishing in video games.

I hate how boring it is.
I hate the associated mini-games for it.
I hate filling my pack with junk.
I hate reeling in the wrong fish.
I hate reeling in trash mobs.
I hate looking for fishing spots.
I hate losing inventory space for fishing gear.
I hate having to equip the pole in place of a weapon.
I hate when it’s mandatory.
I hate when it’s optional.
I hate when my pole breaks.
I hate finding bait.
I hate being attacked and interrupted.
I hate the fishing tutorials.
I hate seasonal and daylight restrictions.
I hate the bloopy sound effects of the float hitting the water.
I hate the chittering of the reel.
I hate the whip sound of the line.
I hate fishing alone.
I hate fishing with MMO guildies.
I hate fishing with NPCs.
I hate fishing contests.
I hate putting the entire game on hold just to jump through these stupid hoops.

I love the idea of fishing in games. I just wish they’d toss in even a tiny parcel of tactics/skill rather than the normal RNG. ‘Does the MMO have fishing’ is literally one of the first things I look for. But they’re all RNG based with almost no skill/strategy involved.

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I enjoy fishing in games like Torchlight and crap. Which game are you playing where all that can or does happen?