Mega Man 12 has entered the chat.

Creature From the Black Lagoon ride!!!

is video game?

This was a great read and now I'm figuring out when I'm going to make the 6.5hr drive out to New Hampshire to check this thing out!

This does not look fun. I'm very glad COVID gave us work from home. It's perfect for days like this.

I don't care about these awards at all. They are a joke. IMO the only game awards that matter are the AIAS D.I.C.E. awards, the GDC Developer's Choice and _maybe_ the BAFTA Games Awards.

"The Game Awards" is a thinly veiled commercial in the guise of an award show.

Yeah I just go to the YouTube channel and watch the announcements that spark my interest.

"Awards and media shape the narrative of what counts as culturally or creatively valuable"

He points out that only DICE has nominated mobile games Angry Birds HD and Pokemon GO for their GOTY.

I'd argue that those are the only two mobile games that had enough of a cultural impact to deserve that.

Yeah when was the last time anybody associated Joe Rogan with stoicism? What a completely laughable thought.

Yeah, I don't get the impression that his followers would actually positively associate things like stoicism, courage, manners, self-restraint or chivalry with masculinity.

Their idea of masculinity is centered around expressing rage and exerting power. Or like you said, being a domineering bully.

And this was back in the day when we only had one phone line, so we'd call each other on the phone and have a quick setup call like "OK, I'm going to hang up and have my PC call your PC in 3 minutes" and in those 3 minutes we'd both be unplugging phone cables and re-running them into our modems LOL

A true classic. I was in middle school when the original (not Battlenet Edition) came out and my friends and I would direct-dial each others modems to play VS matches. Those were the days...

I only played it once, but I recall Dread having lots of moments that felt like you were off the critical path and had to find your way back, but oops it turns out you were actually on the critical path the whole time. So despite running you all over the map and back again, it still felt linear.

It's bad enough in a game like Bananza, but it's straight-up antithetical to "search action" genre games. I want to be lost. Please kick my ass off the critical path and force me to find my way back!!!

And I think all this stems from Nintendo's seemingly secret directive of "80% of players need to be able to beat this game with minimal frustration, so make sure they can" which IMO is becoming more of a detriment to their games (Bananza has this problem pretty bad).

Maybe? But I don't mind the guidance in Fusion or Zero Mission, and I don't recall minding it in Samus Returns (3DS). But for some reason in Dread it bugged me, I think because in a way it was more invisible which to me felt like a trick, like it was tricking me into thinking I was clever.

I'm waiting on a market research survey to pay out on Friday so I can buy it with that gift card. That way if I don't like it as much as I hope I do, at least I won't have really paid for it.

For the record I felt Dread was probably an 8.5. It was just a smidge too linear (signposted) for me.

For comparison, I work at Syracuse and our Chancellor announced at the start of this fall that he'd be retiring at the end of the academic year, giving the University's Board plenty of time to identify / interview candidates and hire his successor.