I played a little bit of it again last fall. Still great.

Too bad they never made any sequels!

How would I know that playing nu-Marathon?

If that's not the mystery what is the mystery? Or more broadly, what is the plot at all?

Marathon is to me the story of a guy who breaks a lot of windows. (Sometimes because he's told to, other times just for fun!)

Games like Callisto train gamers to be passive receptacles.

And then of course your get second screen / streaming / distracted gamers who don't pay attention to the tutorial, don't understand the controls, can't figure them out on their own - then blame the game.

In the Callisto Protocol demo there are buttons for run, attack, etc, but none of them work until the tutorial for them appears.

Games should be teaching people "if you wait there will be a tutorial, but also knock yourself out and maybe discover something on your own!"

Happy to see "press all the buttons" mentioned early. Incredible how many people don't do this.

One of my strongly held idiosyncratic beliefs is that the games industry has done a lot of harm by actively teaching players NOT to just press all the buttons!

Reposting this because I was hoping people would get mad about this and nobody did!

This is a great example of the (built-in by design!) flaws of CPI.

If the average TV today costs $500 then according to this an average TV in 2000 cost $25,000.

Did an average TV in the year 2000 cost $25,000?

Does that sound even remotely plausible?

I do think the cutscenes are well done, the codex entries are neat - there are good craft elements. But codex entries aren't narrative and they aren't effective commentary - it's almost all "lore." (Deragatory)

To the people saying the game has a lot to say on a many topics, I would ask "what is it saying on which topics exactly?"

Not that it has to be didactic and preach a specific message but I don't think "future cheeseburgers are gross" is thoughtful commentary. (Maybe it was in "The Space Merchants")

The central mystery of Marathon is "where did the people vanish to?", which is the mystery of 90% of walking sims. A neat side mystery is "what's the deal with the moths?" but they just tell you what the deal is in a cutscene.

Marathon, Journey to the Savage Planet and XCom: Chimera Squad (among others) all have this same sort of "the future of capitalism is drinkable cheeseburger!" critique - to me that's crossed over into rote repetition. Playing the anti-capitalism hits while the studio runner buys more cars.

I'm not saying any of these people are wrong - I just don't see it at all.

Side note: I could not possibly be *more* over rich companies producing vaguely anti-capitalist narratives where the criticism is "if future capitalism is so grand why is the food so dystopian?"

The text here, and the accompanying video, feels like people are playing a wildly different Marathon game. I don't think Marathon has any story or narrative at all really.

What it has to say about capitalism is basically the same as every other irony-tinged space game of the last decade or so.

Going to be real here: I've played a lot of Marathon and the story / lore comes off as totally inert to me. Very clearly the work of a team writing codex entries on the side, with basically zero effort put into integration or solving problems with multiplayer storytelling.

Marvel's "Ultimates" line was supposed to be a jumping-on point for new readers - sold at convenience stores while ditching the complex continuity.

Then the stories were like "what if Captain America was racist?" and were mostly twists on existing continuity - so meaningless to non-fans.

When I look at this video of Moon Patrol it's genuinely impressive. (With some knowledge of the time I suppose) As a kid you might just think "this is a cool game" but as an adult I can recognize specific elements of craft - the scrolling, the wheels tracking the terrain height, etc.

What makes "good art" is the recognition that someone did something remarkable.

This looks pretty neat even today - if you're familiar with contemporary games this is a real achievement.

Part of why AI art isn't impressive - *making* the AI might be impressive but the output isn't an achievement.

Moon Patrol was the first game to do real parallax scrolling (according to wikipedia) and it also did foot IK!

Ok real talk - the way all the wheels follow the terrain is genuinely impressive!

TBH it's hard to imagine anyone coming to the 2600 late and having affinity for it - the NES really was a dramatic step up.

That said Moon Patrol was an arcade game first and apparently was the first game with parallax scrolling - that has to count for something!

No mention of Moon Patrol is insane!

A lot of "juice it" advice amounts to "make it boppy" but some games shouldn't be boppy!

I think one of the strengths of Souls games that people don't talk about much is the lack of this sort of thing, in the character animations and especially in the UI. It has basically no "juice" as defined by all those mid-2010s best practices, and is better for it.

It's been a while but from what I remember TOS version is less horny and more just crazy - it's the episode where Sulu with the sword comes from.

Worf's greatest foe

This episode is actually a sequel to an original series episode. There's no escape!

I constantly use this as an example of bad conventional wisdom and the result of being unwilling to sweat the details. After Catwoman and Elektra this was a common refrain but that's two movies and both of them were bad! It doesn't speak to any broader trend.

I'm convinced that there isn't a single "social media economist" on any site who understands how CPI works.

CPI is designed to underreport inflation. Any stat you create that hinges on CPI will look rosier than reality.

When I first saw this I thought the guy on the left was holding a gun and the plan was to shoot the scaffolding down.

(Great plan I approve)

People are being real weird about Crimson Desert. They seem to have decided that it's a lovable underdog story and are going hard on "the gaming press is conspiring to kill this game for daring to dream!"

Maybe some people just thought it was mid and it's not that deep.