Hashbrowns

You know, I really enjoyed nvidia's grass demo from the GeForce 256 days. You could control your path of flight through pretty blades of grass while soothing music lulled you into a relaxed state of mind, it was almost Flower before there was Flower. I never called it a game, though.

Is it possible that's from Bioshock 2? I didn't play it myself, but there was footage similar to what you're describing in the Giant Bomb Video Review of the game. Is this some of what you're referring to?....

After watching/playing Persona 4, and hearing that Tracey Rooney wouldn't be voicing Chie in any subsequent material, I had to make a clean brake from caring about any Persona 4 related media. That's the downside to having such a pitch-perfect voice cast as P4 did: any changes whatsoever became a deal breaker for me.

My PS3 died a few months before this game came out, and I remembered thinking it would be great if they did a PS4 version. I just never expected it to be this soon.

HD re-releases are great all around, they're safer investments for the publisher, let new people enjoy great games, and keep great games relevant for longer periods of time. I get frustrated with how quickly people "move on" from games, treating them like they have an expiration date. When I revisited Shadow of the Colossus in the HD collection, it really seemed to be what the PS2 version aspired to, finally realizing its potential.

People still buy classic movies on different, constantly improving formats. I owned Lawerence of Arabia on DVD, but I didn't even hesitate to get the Blu-ray. It's nice to see even a fraction of that kind of preservation in video games.

Would you define what moral and ethical standards you're appealing to? Without clear definitions, it's easy to hear what you're saying as:

"Actions are immoral and unethical based on how I respond emotionally."

Some clarification would help.

Yeah, I have, but I did end up buying and playing both Persona 4 and Deadly Premonition after watching the entirety of the Endurance Runs. I never managed to finish Persona 4, though.

I don't really count Phantasmagoria or Bioforge the same way, since those are a bit harder to actually aquire and get running than games that came out a few years ago.

No one elevator should have all this power.

...

I'm sorry.

My immediate choice is Remedy. Max Payne 2 has one of the most resilient stories I've played through.

By that I mean the complexities of the plot (character secrets, misdirection, general mystery) are ALL explained with no hand-waving of loose ends. That BY ITSELF is incredibly rare in video game stories.

In media res openings can be a cheap way for a story to appear more interesting than it would otherwise, but it's used perfectly in Max Payne 2 to misdirect you just enough to keep the ending a surprise, while also setting up the larger tone and themes of the game: the "fall" symbolizing Max's continued depression, mourning of his family, the guilt he feels for his attraction to Mona Sax, and the overall dread with his descent into progressively worse situations from which he feels there's no escape. And the ending line of narration in that game is one of the simplest but most effective cathartic character resolutions I've seen. Max Payne 3 did not go where I wanted it to, but the ending of MP2 was so satisfying that it didn't matter too much.

What sets Remedy apart from other writing-heavy developers is that they take their story seriously, but not themselves. They break the fourth wall many a time, but they never let those moments compromise the integrity of their story or characters. When Max realizes he's in a video game in the first installment, it's while he's hallucinating during a drug overdose. The joke works, but the integrity of the scene still holds.

Remedy deals in some big ideas, particularly in Alan Wake, where they explore the concept of creative expression by having a supernatural force directly tied to that concept as the central premise of the game. There are lots of stories about writers and writing (write what you know and most writers only know writing) but Alan Wake used that trope in some really interesting ways; and most importantly, the story remained internally consistent, with all the twists and supernatural events being in line with the established rules of the central "Dark Place" conceit.

And perhaps most importantly, Remedy never forgets that they're making a GAME, and they weave ambient story-telling (details in the level design) with traditional cutscene-exposition with equal aplomb.

I would actually offer Rocksteady as another contender for seamlessly fusing gameplay with narrative, with the opening of Arkham City being a prime example. It's slick, entertaining just to watch, but it also serves as a tutorial (a fun one even) while effortlessly establishing the game's premise and characters with a great economy of time.

You'll find some really impressive recordings in the Hi-Res store of HDTracks.com.

https://www.hdtracks.com/music/hires

It's a bummer that so few big names in the music industry seem interested in selling higher-quality flac downloads in the 96khz-24bit quality level. I'm not an audiophile really, but even on a reasonably accurate speaker/headphone setup, some of those recordings are really impactful in ways many people don't expect music to be.

Crazy, isn't it? And why is "lowest common denominator" always used as an insult? Having broad appeal isn't an intrinsic sign of inferiority. There are plenty of niche games that are unique, innovative, one-of-a-kind, and also happen to be very, very bad.

I'm not even defending ME2 per se, it's just the "lowest common denominator" jibe gets my goat.