EDIT: /u/southsamurai has picked up the gauntlet. May the sun shine on all their days. ___
With only a modicum of regret, I am stepping away from Lemmy.
Nothing to do with this community or Lemmy itself. Love y'all.
Rather, since leaving reddit I've observed a huge improvement in my mental health and my feelings of personal effectiveness. I'm taking this as a sign to exit social media for now, as an exercise in overall self-care.
So I'm releasing this community to, well, whoever would like to step up! This will likely be my last post here, but I'll keep an eye on my inbox.
If there are any takers, just hmu.
I love them both. I feel like they both need to be played on harder difficulties because they're built for a pushy playstyle, especially Eternal which requires melee finishers for ammo drops even more than the '16 game already did.
'16 has more of a straightforward plot. The story is fine. The main NPC looks and sounds like James Spader's Ultron, which thrills me. I love the Mars station design and wish the Hell levels were a bit more creative. Other than some mysterious hints at a connection between Doomguy and all the Hell stuff, '16 doesn't bother much with lore.
Eternal takes everything good about '16 and gives it an espresso, some laughing gas, and a whole bunch of lore that might have been written by Tenacious D. It's deeply silly, very hard and has some of the best game design I've ever seen. I don't think one is better than the other; 2016 is more nostalgic, but Eternal is more ambitious. The only catch about Eternal's ambition is that you really have to be on board, because there aren't optional play styles — you play Eternal the way the devs tell you it's supposed to be played.
Incidentally I just started Prey about an hour ago after sitting on it in my backlog for a couple years. It's very good so far, seems to have a good spread of systems with decent depth and the graphics are still 2023-approved.
I've been playing a lot of DOOM so the combat feels a bit Lite™, but I felt that way about Dishonored too—blows land like wing chun and not like a rock crusher.
It's got BioShock's turrets, F.E.A.R.'s slow-mo and Dishonored's stealthy parkour, and so far it all comes together nicely.
It feels very much like an Arkane title, too. Maybe a bit too much going on at once, but boy do they know how to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks.
It's a consequence of retail. Because carriers in the US determine which phones most of us can access, with the exit of LG from the market the Android landscape in the US was effectively reduced to Samsung. Other manufacturers may as well not exist for all the average shopper is led to believe -- the brick and mortar store where you pick out your phone gives you two options: iPhone or Samsung.
Certain markets too, perhaps. I'm in the US with an A32 because I've just flat-out stopped paying for flagships, and I haven't seen any junk in the most recent update.
Wow, hadn't heard of this. It looks great, thank you!
Yes goddammit, now let's do it again
Oh sick, I didn't realize Deathloop was first-person (I assumed it was over the shoulder 3rd-person like Max Payne & Control).
I almost mentioned Control in my post because it did have great environmental design that felt like a cross between Aperture and The X-Files. I'll stick Deathloop on the wishlist, thanks for the recommendation!
Shit, and it comes with the first two games for $4?? Purchased and downloaded. Thanks for the suggestion!
Thanks for the really thoughtful comment! You make all three sound extremely intriguing.
I was unaware that any of the Halo games had much of a story at all! I've always just imagined them as the present incarnation of Unreal Tournament, i.e. built primarily for competitive multiplayer. I'd have expected the art direction to be, uh, perfunctory. Shame on me.
The thing that I dislike about metroidvanias, which is that I get hopelessly disoriented, could indeed work in favor of a horror game. I'm very interested in this one now, and as a fortysomething gamer I love the idea of a Gameboy title.
I picked up Frostpunk during the Epic giveaway but haven't dived in yet. Thank you for the specific description---it'll make it easier to go in with the proper expectation for suspense!
In that you aren't simply pirating the stuff because Adobe's cracked to hell and back? Makes you an outlier I'd bet, but it's not weird.
What exactly does Sabbath mode do? Is it like a burst of deep freeze so the appliance can power down Fri-Sat and stay cold, or what?
Asking as a renter with Sabbath mode on the fridge in my apartment.
Well you just bloody sold me on DOOM 3, adding it to the wishlist immediately
I've started Black Mesa but haven't finished it yet. What I've played has been fucking impressive.
Valve is sort of the best at what I'm asking about---all of their games have the greatest touches that make the settings feel like existing locations you've walked into. It's what makes me wish they published more.
The insane detail that goes into aging Aperture throughout the second half of Portal 2, the way it starts in the 40s or 50s at the very bottom and has a distinct "era" for each level as you get closer to the surface, including Cave's progressing illness . . . it's such good storytelling, and it's literally just window dressing for the already-great main plot.
I've got about 2k hours in Skyrim so I definitely love a Bethesda game, but what I'm thinking about are simple arcade shooters with less of an RPG structure than TES or Fallout.
Admittedly Borderlands has skill trees and classes, but I feel like it's safe to call it a shooter first & a roleplayer second. But DOOM, Bioshock, Portal, Metro---if there's more to your character than their name & their gun, the game barely acknowledges it. :P
Not a Skyrim modder, I take it
An extremely patient gamer, I see ;)
I was 16 when Goldeneye released. The immersion of those locations was off the charts for the time. I'm not sure I played another game that gave me that uncanny feeling of being somewhere else until HL2.
I actually have SoC & CoP in my backlog. I tried SoC once, but admittedly didn't give it the time it deserved.
Gameplay-wise, would you recommend playing CoP before SoC, since Pripyat is newer, or is it best to play SoC first for the story?
For example, I didn't fall in love with Titanfall 2's environmental art design---it felt a bit generic to me, like it was meant to be the backdrop for a shooter, as opposed to the Sevastopol in A:I or the station in SOMA that felt like existing locations.
Ditto BioShock: Infinite. The world felt like it was built around the premise of being an arena shooter, not the other way around.
BioShock 1 & 2 are exactly what I'm talking about though.
Even Borderlands 2 has great world-building: the corporate history that can be inferred from the level design, the weapons & the NPCs makes it one of the richer games I've played.
Would love to hear others' thoughts on your favorite FPS environments!
Wisława Szymborska, 1986
What needs to be done? Fill out the application and enclose a résumé.
Regardless of the length of life a résumé is best kept short.
Concise, well-chosen facts are de rigueur. Landscapes are replaced by addresses, shaky memories give way to unshakable dates.
Of all your loves mention only the marriage, of all your children only those who were born.
Who knows you counts more than who you know. Trips only if taken abroad. Memberships in what but without why. Honors, but not how they were earned.
Write as if you’d never talked to yourself and always kept yourself at arm’s length.
Pass over in silence your dogs, cats, birds, dusty keepsakes, friends, and dreams.
Price, not worth, and title, not what’s inside. His shoe size, not where he’s off to, that one you pass yourself off as. In addition, a photograph with one ear showing. What matters is its shape, not what it hears. What is there to hear, anyway? The clatter of paper shredders.
Edward Hirsch, 2020
Instead of a pebble to mark our grief or a coin to ease his passage you placed a speaker at the top of his head and suddenly a drumbeat came blasting out of the grass, startling the mourners on the far side of the cemetery, clanging the trees, scattering the swifts that had gathered around the stone like souls of the dead, souls that were now parting to make way for a noisy spirit rising out of the dirt.
Tracy K. Smith, 2007
Winter is a boa constrictor Contemplating a goat. Nothing moves, Save for the river, making its way Steadily into ice. A state of consternation.
My limbs settle into stony disuse In this city full of streetlamps And unimaginable sweets. I would rather your misuse, your beard
Smelling of some other woman's Idle afternoons. Lately, the heart of me Has grown to resemble a cactus Whose on flower blooms one night only
Under the whitest, The most disdainful of moons.
This might be a spicy answer, but just on the game dev side how do we feel about Valve these days?
I feel like HL3 could be a license to print money at any time, but they took their time w Alyx, made it about the VR experience, and made it about single player.
Valve could have shittified any of their IPs long ago, but instead they neglect them. It's almost the opposite problem.
Fool---the scroll wheel is a scalpel; the scrollbar is a broadsword. Use the right tool for the job.
There was a recurring gag on Parks And Rec about Pawnee internet users needing Altavista so they could use it to navigate to Google. That joke felt very real.
Edward Hirsch, 2020
Moon-head is shouting at me to back the fuck up on the forklift I am trying to jab into a tower of wooden pallets stacked all the way to the sprinklers laid out under the roof of the warehouse where I am struggling to control the prongs of a monster and avoid dousing everyone on the floor of E.H. Sargent & Co., my summer of chemicals, the school where I learned that someone is always shouting at someone else on the job to back the fuck up.
Nikainetos, 3 BCE
Traveler, I am the grave of Biton: if you go from Torone to Amphipolis, give Nicagoras this message: his only son died in a storm, in early winter, before sunrise.
Muriel Rukeyser, 1962
This journey is exploring us. Where the child stood An island in a river of crisis, now The bridges bind us in symbol, the sea Is a bond, the sky reaches into our bodies. We pray : we dive into each other’s eyes.
Whatever can come to a woman can come to me.
This is the long body : into life from the beginning, Big-headed infant unfolding into child, who stretches and finds And then flowing the young one going tall, sunward, And now full-grown, held, tense, setting feet to the ground, Going as we go in the changes of the body, As it is changes, in the long strip of our many Shapes, as we range shifting through time. The long body : a procession of images.
This moment in a city, in its dream of war. We chose to be, Becoming the only ones under the trees when the harsh sound Of the machine sirens spoke. There were these two men, And the bearded one, the boys, the Negro mother feeding Her baby. And threats, the ambulance with open doors. Now silence. Everyone else within the walls. We sang. We are the living island, We the flesh of this island, being lived, Whoever knows us is part of us today.
Whatever can happen to anyone can happen to me.
Fire striking its word among us, waterlilies Reaching from darkness upward to a sun Of rebirth, the implacable. And in our myth The Changing Woman who is still and who offers.
Eyes drinking light, transforming light, this day That struggles with itself, brings itself to birth. In ways of being, through silence, sources of light Arriving behind my eye, a dialogue of light.
And everything a witness of the buried life. This moment flowing across the sun, this force Of flowers and voices body in body through space. The city of endless cycles of the sun.
I speak to you You speak to me
Muriel Rukeyser, 1962
I think of the image brought into my room Of the sage and the thin young man who flickers and asks. He is asking about the moment when the Buddha Offers the lotus, a flower held out as declaration. “Isn’t that fragile?” he asks. The sage answers: “I speak to you. You speak to me. Is that fragile?”
Muriel Rukeyser, 1962
Many of us Each in his own life waiting Waiting to move Beginning to move Walking And early on the road of the hill of the world Come to my landscapes emerging on the grass
The stages of the theatre of the journey
I see the time of willingness between plays Waiting and walking and the play of the body Silver body with its bosses and places One by one touched awakened into into
Touched and turned one by one into flame
The theatre of the advancing goddess Blossoming Smiles as she stands intensely being in stillness Slowness in her blue dress advancing standing I go And far across a field over the jewel grass
The play of the family stroke by stroke acted out
Gestures of deep acknowledging on the journey stages Of the playings the play of the goddess and the god A supple god of searching and reaching Who weaves his strength Who dances her more alive
The theatre of all animals, my snakes, my great horses
Always the journey long patient many haltings Many waitings for choice and again easy breathing When the decision to go on is made Along the long slopes of choice and again the world The play of poetry approaching in its solving
Solvings of relations in poems and silences For we were born to express born for a journey Caves, theatres, the companioned solitary way And then I came to the place of mournful labor
A turn in the road and the long sight from the cliff
Over the scene of the land dug away to nothing and many Seen to a stripped horizon carrying barrows of earth A hod of earth taken and emptied and thrown away Repeated farther than sight. The voice saying slowly
But it is hell. I heard my own voice in the words Or it could be a foundation And after the words My chance came. To enter. The theatres of the world.
Muriel Rukeyser, 1962
Born of this river and this rock island, I relate The changes : I born when the whirling snow Rained past the general’s grave and the amiable child White past the windows of the house of Gyp the Blood. General, gangster, child. I know in myself the island.
I was the island without bridges, the child down whose blazing Eye the men of plumes and bone raced their canoes and fire Among the building of my young childhood, houses; I was those changes, the live darknesses Of wood, the pale grain of a grove in the fields Over the river fronting red cliffs across— And always surrounding her the river, birdcries, the wild Father building his sand, the mother in panic her parks— Bridges were thrown across, the girl arose From sleeping streams of change in the change city. The violent forgetting, the naked sides of darkness. Fountain of a city in growth, and island of light and water. Snow striking up past the graves, the yellow cry of spring.
Whatever can come to a city can come to this city. Under the tall compulsion of the past I see the city change like a man changing I love this man with my lifelong body of love I know you among your changes wherever I go Hearing the sounds of building the syllables of wrecking A young girl watching the man throwing red hot rivets Coals in a bucket of change How can you love a city that will not stay? I love you like a man of life in change.
Leaves like yesterday shed, the yellow of green spring Like today accepted and become one’s self I go, I am a city with bridges and tunnels, Rock, cloud, ships, voices. To the man where the river met The tracks, now buried deep along the Drive Where blossoms like sex pink, dense pink, rose, pink, red.
Towers falling. A dream of towers. Necessity of fountains. And my poor, Stirring among our dreams, Poor of my own spirit, and tribes, hope of towers And lives, looking out through my eyes. The city the growing body of our hate and love. The root of the soul, and war in its black doorways. A male sustained cry interrupting nightmare. Male flower heading upstream.
Among a city of light, the stone that grows. Stigma of dead stone, inert water, the tattered Monuments rivetted against flesh. Blue noon where the wall made big agonized men Stand like sailors pinned howling on their lines, and I See stopped in time a crime behind green glass, Lilies of all my life on fire. Flash faith in a city building its fantasies.
I walk past the guards into my city of change.
Muriel Rukeyser. 1962
Girl grown woman fire mother of fire I go to the stone street turning to fire. Voices Go screaming Fire to the green glass wall. And there where my youth flies blazing into fire The dance of sane and insane images, noon Of seasons and days. Noontime of my one hour.
Saw down the bright noon street the crooked faces Among the tall daylight in the city of change. The scene has walls stone glass all my gone life One wall a web through which the moment walks And I am open, and the opened hour The world as water-garden lying behind it. In a city of stone, necessity of fountains, Forces water fallen on glass, men with their axes.
An arm of flame reaches from water-green glass, Behind the wall I know waterlilies Drinking their light, transforming light and our eyes Skythrown under water, clouds under those flowers, Walls standing on all things stand in a city noon Who will not believe a waterlily fire. Whatever can happen in a city of stone, Whatever can come to a wall can come to this wall.
I walk in the river of crisis toward the real, I pass guards, finding the center of my fear And you, Dick, endlessly my friend during storm.
The arm of flame striking through the wall of form.
Adrienne Rich, 1973
A man in terror of impotence or infertility, not knowing the difference a man trying to tell something howling from the climacteric music of the entirely isolated soul yelling at Joy from the tunnel of the ego music without the ghost of another person in it, music trying to tell something the man does not want out, would keep if he could gagged and bound and flogged with chords of Joy where everything is silence and the beating of a bloody fist upon a splintered table
Allen Ginsberg, 1980
Pigeons shake their wings on the copper church roof out my window across the street, a bird perched on the cross surveys the city's blue-grey clouds. Larry Rivers 'll come at 10 AM and take my picture. I'm taking your picture, pigeons. I'm writing you down, Dawn. I'm immortalizing your exhaust, Avenue A bus. O Thought, now you'll have to think the same thing forever!
William Blake, 1793
Why should I care for the men of Thames Or the cheating waves of charter'd streams Or shrink at the little blasts of fear That the hireling blows into my ear
Tho born on the cheating banks of Thames Tho his waters bathed my infant limbs The Ohio shall wash his stains from me I was born a slave but I go to be free.
Patti Smith, from Early Works 1970--1979
picture this. I’ll play the killer. 16 millimeter. ebony and ivory. the purest contrast. iris closed. open sesame. a screen of creamy white satin. on that wedding lap a white persian cat. a pale hand pets. milk purr. pan up slow. it’s me see. in a black silk suit. dark glasses. kid gloves. as sinister as the law allows. I’ve returned from the opera. prowl cat tom cat. if I’m male it doesn’t matter.
I’m on the ledge. that’s a several story drop. how did I execute my brilliant cat walk? that’s up to you, franju. but there I am. perched on her window sill like a dirty bluebird. the back of my neck is wet. I sit there what seems for hours. a human chess game. she makes the first move.
it’s quite simple. she gets up to adjust her sloppy stocking. her easter spikes could use some vaseline. her matt gesture is reflected in black patent leather. shoot to the ruffled vanity. mirror image. look at the kisser gazing from that mica. lipstick so thick you could carve your initials in it.
no alias not me. my initials are PLS and I’d be pleased to leave my monogram. close-up shot of my steady fist. I’m cool as menthol, the kind of confidence one achieves thru an open nose.
cocaine. I can do it. watch me raise my leather fingers. bluebeard itching for a fleshy white neck. I strike. she’s no match for me. the cold adhesive touch of the octopus. I remove my glove. struggle struggle. glub glub. she’s gone.
as the opening credits roll up. the killer, swift as an athlete, is escaping. springing from roof top to roof top. racing against pyramid shapes into the black seine.
search party music. the killer. 16 mm. black and white. g. franju. with patti smith.
george franju. media me. shoot me on the kodak. I’ll do it for free.
Hart Crane, 1926
Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge The dice of drowned men’s bones he saw bequeath An embassy. Their numbers as he watched, Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured.
And wrecks passed without sound of bells, The calyx of death’s bounty giving back A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph, The portent wound in corridors of shells.
Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil, Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled, Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars; And silent answers crept across the stars.
Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive No farther tides ... High in the azure steeps Monody shall not wake the mariner. This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.
Catullus, trans. Carl Sesar 1974
Quaenam te mala mens, miselle Rauide, agit praecipitem in meos iambos? quis deus tibi non bene aduocatus uecordem parat excitare rixam? an ut peruenias in ora uulgi? quid uis? qualubet esse notus optas? eris, quandoquidem meos amores cum longa uoluisti amare poena.
Lost your mind Ravidus, you poor ass, landing smack into one of my poems like this? Is some god getting you into trouble because you didn't say your prayers right? Or are you just out to get talked about? What do you want? To be famous, never mind how? Okay you will, and being that it's my girl you're after, you're going to suffer for a long, long time.