Why do I feel like the music cue after that statement is this.

Nothing to be done for it.

Okay? Again, who are you serving by choosing this specific forum to shout that messaging? I know you aren’t OP, so consider that the royal “you”.

It’s just tiresome is all, and I’m on the “boo, capitalism” side of things. It’s like the folks who turn every thread tangentially related to Microsoft into a Linux advertisement. Or the involuntary ejaculation of a vegetarian when the subject of diet comes up. Like, yes, these folks are probably correct about the things they are saying; you’re never going to be wrong to consider the angle being worked by a corp. However, it’s infantilizing to suggest that people are unaware that a corporation wants their money. That’s a given, and without additional commentary, it’s a positively useless statement that only serves to make people tune out the messaging, even in contexts where it IS desirable to bring it up (such as when a company is doing shady shit in pursuit of your money). Releasing a mediocre graphical remaster of a title that people have nostalgia for hardly qualifies as “shady shit” in my book. Lazy, sure, but not shady.

Interesting! Based on the headline I thought this was maybe like a 2d version of The Guild games, but this appears to learn closer to something like Recettear, maybe?

You are thinking of a different vampire game. Vampire Survivors has no elements of metroidvania in its design that I can think of.

It sounds like they had moved to a more restrictive system. It’s been a long time since I played KF2, so my memory could be suspect, but I recall your “character” being not much more impactful than a weapon skin.

The meat and potatoes was actually what class you picked, which perks you selected from that class (you got a new choice every 5 levels or so), and then what weapons you rolled with. This will be hypothetical because I don’t actually know the particulars, but I think it’s generally illustrative of KF2’s progression design:

Load in, select Demolitionist class, get a +1%/level damage bonus with explosives and incendiaries as my class trait. Hit level 5. Choose between doubling the AOE of my Molotov cocktails or being able to carry two extra frag grenade. And so on. Any “character” could be any class, and could freely tailor perk choices to their liking.

Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and slap a guarantee on it, I’ll do it, I’ve got spare time, but, for your customer’s sake, for your daughter’s sake, if you want to make a quality game, you’ll buy from me.

Are you actually proposing incorporating elements of the BR genre (choosing drop locations, looting, encroaching zone time limit, limited respawning, etc) or do you just want bigger arenas and more players in your regular Twisted Metal death match? Cause I don’t actually think Twisted Metal is as suited for the BR genre as you say, but I could be convinced otherwise if you have a take.

This feels like a response to a question I don’t know enough to ask. What’s the context?

This isn’t a direct answer to your question per se, but if this a topic that interests you, I can’t recommend The Right Stuff enough. I’ve not seen the film from the 80s, though by all accounts it’s pretty good, but the book is an excellent overview of the early days of space exploration, when the exact sort of questions that you ask here were being bandied about by the fledgling, pre-Apollo program NASA.

The focus of the book is on the first wave of astronauts who, as someone else mentioned, were pulled primarily from combat aviation backgrounds. I recall several passages which detailed their reactions to the sorts of psychological testing that they were undergoing, usually complete with humorous anecdotes.

That’s because OPs article is citing the second annual Teens and Screens report from the UCLA Center for Scholars and Storytellers. Your NPR article from 2023 is citing the first annual Teens and Screens report.

It’s a holdover from the early days of Rainbow Six would be my guess. You had like a dozen or so operatives with mild differentiations in stats and traits. Each guy had a “service record” of sorts, which gave a little more context for what was, in essence, the games’ lives system. If I remember right, some of these names were either pulled from or incorporated into the Tom Clancy Universe of novels and adaptations. It was a practically free way to inject some story and character into games that were pretty light on those details otherwise.

Of course, modern Rainbow Six has no need for these things, but inertia is a bitch, and you can be sure some grognards would piss and moan about a “feature” being removed if they stopped including these details.

I’m: A Contraction

4 was something of a departure from the formula, wasn’t it?

HoMM2 was my game from the series. For whatever reason, I never really progressed past that one, even though I had heard 3 was the consensus favorite.

Yes. The United States Board on Geographic Names is the group within the Department of the Interior which handles these matters. They are a part of the executive branch. I suspect that you can follow a chain of delegated authorities through that board, up the civil service hierarchy, landing on the desk of the President.

This is an example of the system not accounting for, or being ambivalent about, the election of someone to that office with a fascist ideology.

It’s nice to have my initial reaction immediately validated upon opening the thread, for better or for worse, I gotta say.

Do you have other recommendations from their catalog? This is the only track of there’s I think I’ve listened to.

Ah, I’m a bit younger (in fact I don’t believe there’s a song on that list that was released after I was born), but I’m a big history geek, and the evolution of genre is a particular fascination of mine, so I have intentionally sought out the music which influenced bands I liked in high school.

I’m sure I’ve missed out on some killer acts from the era, so hopefully someone who was both alive at the time AND paying attention to the scene will appear and give us both an education.

A tangentially related suggestion for you, if you share my fascination with the context around the art we make (though you are probably well aware if you’re an old-head haha), there’s an EXCELLENT documentary about the LA hc punk scene that was released during its zenith (arguably) in 1981. Several of the bands I mention in that list appear. It is called The Decline of Western Civilization, and the most convincing argument I can make to get people to watch it is that the LAPD chief wrote an op-ed demanding theaters not screen it.

Yes, though this is a scenario where I’d argue such a reading is a touch overzealous, and is exactly the sort of overreaction that leads idiots to think that calling Musk’s Nazi salutes what they are is just pearl clutching. The song is about haters who talk mad shit behind your back, but don’t dare say anything to your face. Therefore, “boy” is being used to imply the narrator doesn’t consider these people to be “men”, as they lack some quality (maturity, courage, whatever) necessary to qualify.

Also, the world changed a lot in the decades between the song’s release and 2016. I’m not going to go digging to try and find out exactly how much of a piece of shit Anselmo has been and for how long. Fucker isn’t worth my mental bandwidth, so I’m okay with operating on the assumption that, like many, many folks, he was radicalized over time by the rise of the “alt-right” and becoming wealthy. In either case, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve got no intention of ever financially supporting his endeavors in the future, despite enjoying some of his output in the past.

Further recommendations for your exploration: any band Ian MacKaye has played in. Even if you don’t care for his work, he has had an outsized impact on the development of American punk / hardcore (even if he’s resisted that attribution). Specific recommendations include:

• Minor Threat - self titled (straight up hc punk)
• Embrace - Building (early emo, when that just meant it was a hardcore song that touched on emotions other than anger)
• Fugazi - Waiting Room, or the 13 Songs album as a whole (post-hardcore, or “hardcore, but we’re not afraid to show off that we’ve learned some music theory”)

Okay, with MacKaye given his due, other “classic punk” recommendations include:

• Agent Orange - Bloodstains
• Bad Brains - I Against I
• Black Flag - Fix Me, TV Party, My War
• Circle Jerks - Wild in the Streets, Live Fast Die Young, World up My Ass
• Dead Kennedys - Nazi Punks Fuck Off, California Über Alles, Holiday in Cambodia
• Germs - Lexicon Devil
• The Clash - Straight to Hell, White Riot, Lost in the Supermarket, and many more.
• Operation Ivy - Sound System
• The Descendents - Suburban Home
• Social Distortion - Story of My Life, Mommy’s Little Monster
• Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)?
• Hüsker Dü - Don’t Wanna Know If You Are Lonely, Pink Turns to Blue
• The Replacements - Androgynous, Bastards of Young, Here Comes a Regular, Can’t Hardly Wait, Answering Machine, Alex Chilton
• Minutemen - History Lesson Part 2, Corona

Some slightly deeper cuts, more in the proto-emo space than political punk, but they share a lot of musical DNA and I think some of these tracks are underrated.

• Rites of Spring - For Want Of
• The Hated - Words Come Back
• Dag Nasty - Circles
• Gray Matter - Burn No Bridges
• Soulside - Pearl to Stone
• IGNITION - Previous
• Fire Party - Cake
• Samiam - Tired of Waiting
• Fuel - Cue to You
• Drive Like Jehu - Here Come the Rome Plows

That’s probably enough for now. I hope you find some stuff you like here.