Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics

RIP Bioware. I think, irrespective of your feelings towards their more recent output, their absence is going to leave a major gulf in the RPG landscape.

It was sort of inevitable given that they hadn't had a genuinely successful game in twelve years. People are going to try and lay this at the feet of 'Veilguard', which I think ignores that Bioware had clearly been in a state of chronic mismanagement since about 2010. It was a long, slow fall.

Currently at home with a newborn and, finding videogames impractical as a hobby right now, I have decided to learn the solo mode for 'Wingspan'.

While I have some longstanding issues with the way the game is designed, I will say that as a little setup to escape to and pick away at when I have a free moment it's actually quite delightful. It's all very pleasingly tactile and good to look at.

'Psychonauts' - 2005

This is my favourite repeated gag in Tim Schafer games: the unending boring "conversation"...

'Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon' - 2001

It's been 25 years since peak tac-sim (I don't want to hear your opinions about 'Operation Flashpoint', thanks). There has simply never been another game that blended intense realism with accessibility like this game did.

I realise that I'm risking being a bit "Old Man Yells at Cloud" here, but this is another example. The original graphics here have such great lighting, really evocative of vibe and place, and the mix of colours and brightness helping to pull your attention around the scene. It looks great.

Here's the remastered lighting and it's just.. flatter? I won't argue that it's not more naturalistic, but it's definitely less interesting and does a worse job of showing off the level. The irony is that the techniques for lighting videogame levels HAVE improved significantly since 1998...

I have been enjoying the remaster of these games, although simply for the convenient packaging because I'm playing with OG graphics and controls. The remastered visuals seem to generally make smart choices, but there are some really rough patches that speak to a rushed job...

Specifically there's some dodgy upscaled textures that fail to understand what the original graphics were going for, and then there's some odd instances of them unthinkingly using the same source images for the OG textures without asking whether that works. For example:

Because I'm a specific kind of nerd, here's some things you should consider reading:

Walter Bejamin's 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', for an explaination on the value of physical pilgrimage and what it imbues art with.

Upon seeing this news I rather ungenerously thought: "I'm surprised it took this long", which is unfair of me. This really sucks for the workers, but also highlights what a hollowed out shell these stores had become thanks to digital distribution. www.rnz.co.nz/news/busines...

I remember buying 'Knights of the Old Republic' on one such trip (from an EB Games that was subsequently destroyed in the Christchurch Earthquake) and getting to spend the five hour drive home excited at the prospect of playing it. It's a strong, positive memory that now speaks to a dead age.

Upon seeing this news I rather ungenerously thought: "I'm surprised it took this long", which is unfair of me. This really sucks for the workers, but also highlights what a hollowed out shell these stores had become thanks to digital distribution. www.rnz.co.nz/news/busines...

In recent times they really seem to have almost entirely backed off from selling games (outside of being a place you pick up your pre-orders) and had instead pivoted to selling the all worst nerd-oriented collectable crap you could imagine.

Upon seeing this news I rather ungenerously thought: "I'm surprised it took this long", which is unfair of me. This really sucks for the workers, but also highlights what a hollowed out shell these stores had become thanks to digital distribution. www.rnz.co.nz/news/busines...

I've been doing my holiday thing of trying to keep off screens and the Internet as much as possible, but now I'm back and feeling inspired! So today I took on a little project of installing Windows 3.1 through DOSBox (and then naturally installing a bunch of Maxis games on it... )

'Star Trek: The Next Generation – A Final Unity' - 1995

'Thief II: The Metal Age' - 2000

This 'Mirror's Edge' posting was caused by me deciding to finally play 'Catalyst' and discovering it kinda slaps? Waaay better that its reputation.

I suspect this is a case of people reacting negatively to it being different from (and in a lot of ways incompatible with) the original), but I dunno, coming to it almost a decade after its release, and distant from any controversy, I'm really enjoying it.