I personally prefer story over gameplay, but to each their own.

Which, in one sense, is definitely cool. I get the impression that Super Metroid is a game with tons of replay value that encourages playing it in a different way each time.

In another way, to make this happen, I didn’t think it was very fun for first-time players. Bomb jumping is kind of an awkward mechanic and harder to pull off than in Zero Mission, and finding upgrades seemed to rely more on pulling off complex techniques with perfect timing. I don’t remember ever being required to wall jump in Zero Mission or 2. There’s so many beginner’s traps too, with the one-way doors and the noob bridge. In Zero Mission, I felt like upgrades were more clearly telegraphed to the player, so you could get more of them without using a guide. In Super, it’s a lot of bombing random walls and stuff, and the X-Ray Scope feels really limited.

If I got stuck, it would be difficult to consult guides, because many writers seemed to put sequence breaks into the walkthrough as opposed to a “natural” playthrough.

While it might be true that Dread has a lot of “hand-holding” (I don’t know because I haven’t played it yet), part of me wonders if that criticism comes from experienced players who want a harder challenge than Super that lean even farther into advanced-level techniques. I guess I’ll find out when I play it.

I have to use a printer for my work-from-home job. If you just buy a Brother laserjet printer and avoid other brands and inkjets, it’s way more affordable. It costs more up front, but they’re reliable and don’t need to be replaced every year. My printer cost $250 and I’ve had it for at least five years at this point.

I came of age during the PS3 era and the Indie Game Revolution, where people were debating on whether video games could be art, so I personally can’t help but prefer when games have storytelling and ludonarrative and lore.

But for many people, Super Metroid’s lack of a plot will be a draw and not a drawback, and that’s cool. I’d actually really love a new nonlinear Metroid game in the vein of Super someday, and perhaps this time it wouldn’t take place on the planet Zebes.

I have AM2R archived on my computer. I’m very excited to try it!

When I called Zero Mission an asset flip, I was trying to steelman a potenial opposing point in favor of Super. I may not have been successful at this. And I myself don’t actually see it as an asset flip – I loved Zero Mission.

Back then, I actually said he was one of the most dangerous people alive due to the work his company was doing on computer chips in pig brains.

Turns out I was right. The man’s a real-life Gendo Ikari.

Yep, most male gamers who take issue with Aloy can’t tell she has some light coverage, and then criticize her for not wearing makeup and being ugly, which is amusing. And sad too, that even wearing makeup doesn’t satisfy their impossible standards because it’s still not enough makeup.

Maybe Aloy plucks? Some people just have great eyebrows without having to do anything, and I am jealous of those people.

even if you could theoretically tell a story that sounds somehow “unfair” depending on your storytelling skills.

Yeah, they sure do love pulling the Riley Gaines card even though she came in fifth, making it a total nonsequitur.

And I totally agree that this debate is too big considering it only targets a tiny handful of athletes. I say it’s complicated because some arguments used feel, circumstantial? As in, “Trans women should play with women because there’s only a couple of them anyway?” Would acceptance of that argument lead to tokenism? BWhat if, for whatever reason, a sports team happened to take on a lot of trans woman? I think that would be okay, but I worry it would dredge the debate up all over again.

Or, people often say, “Trans women should be allowed to play with women because they rarely win anyway.” But what if a trans woman ends up on a winning streak and then another controversy erupts? I feel uncomfortable that our condition for entry is framed as our failure to win, and that if we win, then by implication we get othered as opposed to just being a woman who won a sports game one time. This recently happened, actually. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/ca-school-sports-authority-panders

This is to say, I’m just thinking aboug how we come to a supporting argument that ages with grace? And what argument should that be? Not that I think any pro-trans argument would satisfy some people, with it being the wedge issue that makes TERFS out of people originally left of center. I guess I don’t know the answer at this point.

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It’s a complex issue for sure, but I’m really proud of this thread for consistently using the term “trans women” when talking about the differences between trans women compared to cis women and cis men in sports.

On Reddit, most people on this debate just say “biological males,” “males,” or “men” in situations where they’re clearly talking about trans women, which is a clear tell that it was never about fairness in sports for them.

As a bi woman, absolutely. I’m personally one who doesn’t like falling behind on my shaving routine, but hair looks wonderful on anyone who chooses to grow it out. I may or may not have a weakness for crunchy granola girls myself. 😳

You’d think the literal apocalypse happening would be an acceptable justification for not being dolled up 100% of the time, yet here we are with Aloy.

And honestly, she looks pretty good for someone socially ostracized her whole life, not having a mom, and roughing it her whole life in a cabin that doesn’t have running water. It could be a whole lot worse than just peach fuzz 🤷‍♀️

Hey, got any grapes?

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I’m trans and I see where you’re coming from. I was boycotting the game ahead of launch because I didn’t want to support J.K. Rowling, who has based her career off of making our lives harder.

But…it’s been two years. We lost the battle. The boycott led to the Streisand effect and the game sold insanely well. Trans people got a ton of negative press converage. We were all made out to be intolerant and cruel because one trans person said something that made the GirlfriendReviews lady cry. It seemed like after that, GamerGate 2 went into effect and so many games with diversity are getting preemptively reviewbombed, like Dragon Age: The Veilguard, leading to layoffs and shuttered development teams, while games like Black Myth Wukong with a known sexist director are insanely popular.

Hogwarts Legacy seems like such a small issue now. Now it’s 2025 and we’re quickly losing all our rights in an ongoing Constitutional crisis. These days, while I’d prefer if cis people buy the game used and add disclaimers to the posts they make about it, I’m too exhausted to care about the Wizard game and who chooses to play it.

Presumably, there would be no dirt, since water cleans dirt off of foxes.

This will be me someday. 😁

Aww, that’s disappointing. Linux users with a DS or who use emulators should look into Orcs & Elves in the meantime. It’s another fantasy-flavored FPS from ID and it’s pretty good.

At the time it came out, true CRPG throwbacks were still a pretty rare sight, and the few that did come out after Baldur’s Gate 2 and Fallout had low production values, like Geneforge. Neverwinter Nights and to a greater extent Dragon Age were also big departures from the traditional CRPG mold.

Getting to see a new CRPG with modern graphics and lots of voice acing, but still be isometric, was really exciting. I know it’s why I bought it.

But I never finished it. The intro sequence at the farm with the killer rabbits was so unbalanced, the hardest part of the game, and poorly done. It was cool that you could have different characters do dialogue and be a hardass or a smartass or a kissass, they did all feel like different flavors if the same outcome. And the game was just too long, so after putting 40 hours into it and still not being close to done, I put the game down.

Someday I’ll definitely try Wasteland 3, since HowLongToBeat says it’s shorter.

I kind of just hate the daily news cycle. The hourly news cycle on social media sites is even worse.

Trump says a bunch of awful things on a daily basis. His regime is a threat to democracy. No one voted for Elon. But we don’t need an article for every little things he says or does. Trump was a nobody oddball candidate that no one liked, and then he got disproportionately more news coverage from both liberal and conservative outlets compared to any other presidential candidate in 2016, day after day. That may have been why he was elected.

News outlets are incentivized to do this thanks to the advertising model and moving to web-only. It’s always so incendiary and tabloid-like. It’s done so much damage to society. People are making it worse by repeatedly clicking and sharing stuff from the daily news cycle instead of, as OP said, better journalism. It’s tricky, though, because the best journalism tends not to be behind a subscription model and not free, so how do you share it?

I read The Week now every Friday. I’m subscribed to the print magazine, but it’s also available free on Libby for Americans. The Week isn’t perfect; any weekly newspaper will do, though there’s not many left. I try to avoid news every other day of the week. My mental health has improved a bit (as much as can be expected for a person living in America) and I find I’m capable of thinking more critically about what I read.