Rex
3hr ago
While I am always happy to hear people talk about Valheim, I disagree with many of your points. I find Valheim to be close to the platonic ideal of a survival game. People talk about video games as art and they generally are speaking of narrative and plot. I find the whole design of Valheim to be a superlative example of artistic expression.
Every part of the game has been carefully crafted and balanced around the the developers ideas and taste. Yes, the default setting are somewhat hardcore. There is friction. “Quality of Life” features are eschewed. The game is all the better for it and people should experience the game as they developers intend.
People also complain about the lack of “craft from chest” features. Or the limited inventory (somewhat relaxed in 1.0). People complain the developers are lazy and QoL like this should have been implemented years ago. It’s very clear at this point that it’s not a matter of prioritization, skill, or investment on the devs part. Those features fundamentally change the experience. Some people may be tuned off. Fine. But leaning into these features is what makes the game more of a pure survival game. Compared to every other generic slop/sandbox game. I find video games developers fairly loathsome. But I have supreme respect for Iron Gate for sticking to their guns and not giving the lowest common denominator NPCs what they want.
Compare Valheim to Enshrouded. A somewhat popular, perhaps more popular, survival game that is superficially very similar to Valheim. I found that game to be total trash. It’s got all the QoL that people ask for and more “fluid” combat. It’s also incredibly generic. No soul. I suspect most people would be lucky to get 50 hours of fun out of that game.
Valheim demands more. I’ve got like 500 hours on Valheim over the past 4 years. I am likely going to roll a new world and start fresh on no map, no portal (NMNP) settings. NMNP is an even more pure survival experience. Getting lost in the massive world is very possible. Get caught in a storm and get too far off course and you may never find your base again. No portal requires you to make a base in each new biome. It completely changes the dynamic and makes it much more fun in my experience.
Anyone who hasn’t played Valheim should give it a try. It’s not for everyone. But if you like spending time with games and being fully engaged, you may love it. It’s very different from the modern AAA slop that plays itself.
I enjoy YouTube far more than cable tv. There are a lot of great channels out there and I find the best ones are usually in the 2k to 30k subscriber range. Discovery is typically pretty hard and they will randomly show up in various recommendations. New videos typically come out every few weeks or months - not the daily slop from big channels.
Anyone have any recommendations?
I’ll share one. @josh_from_xboxlive.
https://youtube.com/@josh_from_xboxlive?si=j_AwTobz8Jn73lv7
I like it because while he ostensibly talks about film, books, and pop culture, he has some novel takes I have not seen elsewhere.
Highlights include What’s Wrong with Modern Horror, where he takes down this whole concept of “elevated horror” in films.
Writing as a Magical Praxis where he describes a nexus of tarot and storytelling. I knew nothing of tarot and he had an interesting thesis.
Also he has great playlist on “the Homer of the 20th Century” aka George Lucas. Very interesting analysis of Star Wars as a modern myth and the various thematic elements of the series. I have not seen these takes anywhere else.
Anyone else have any recommendations?
Rex
13d ago
Can you point me to the YouTube videos. Sounds right up my alley. I like Nathan fielder but I’m not expert.
Rex
14d ago
How about some television talk.
I was looking for a show to watch on a second screen while I played the new Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter and came across Slow Horses - BBC spy show about MI5 and a group of remedial agents. My parents have been watching for years and always recommend it. I loathe most modern television but for whatever reason decided to give it a shot.
It’s very much as expected. The first half of season 1 is all about a “loathsome” right wing terrorist cell, the Sons of Albion. Get this - these right wing youths kidnap an innocent British British-Asian boy and plan to behead him live on the internet in an ISIS style video. But wait, it’s actually a rouge opp carried out by the evil girlboss intelligence minister. They then do a double fakeout where the Sons of Albion get wise to the setup and the scary right wing guy goes on a rampage and attempts to carry out the beheading.
This is a completely ludicrous plot line and it appears that Apple’s Slow Horses is going to be every bit as awful as I expected for a show developed after 2016. Does Hollywood imagine there are actually these sort of right wing terror cells just waiting to activate? Despite all evidence to the contrary and dozens if not hundreds of other instances of racial and political violence perpetrated against white people? Or is the goal to get boomers all worked up about dangerous right wing ideologies. Are they stupid or liars?
For anyone here who’s watched it, does Slow Horses get better? Is there anything of value here?
I’m separately on season 4 of Le Bureau des Legendes - a French foreign intelligence tv drama produced by Canal and very highly regarded by anyone in the Anglosphere that’s seen it. It’s the show that Paramount’s The Agency is based on. And I must say the The Bureau is truly excellent. Season 1 aired in 2015 so it’s only mildly annoying with politics. Very mild. It’s really great and worth a watch if you haven’t seen it. I have a lot of thoughts on it that I can share if anyone is interested. But it reminds me a lot of 24, with less action and more drama.
Thanks. Great stuff. Particular RojoFern and his Mushroom Cloud video. I find it very interesting and cool that there are creators out there that can put together better documentary style videos than big television production studios.
I’ve always been a fan of nuclear weapons content. When I was a kid I got a copy of The Effects of Thermonuclear Weapons from a local university library. Loved it. I have a DVD somewhere that has most of the good public videos of famous Nuke tests.
But I can’t imagine a video like this being made professionally for Tv. It would be too niche. But somehow some random guy is able to do it. There are likely millions of examples of this on YouTube. That’s exactly what I’m trying to find.
More options
Context Copy link