@mops: Erich von Däniken can be considered the father of modern pseudoarcheology, at least in relation to claims of "aliens did it." His 1968 book Chariots of the Gods?--although it was debunked and criticized in its own time by Carl Sagan and others--is still popular in fringe circles. On its face, "aliens did it and/or inspired it" is not an inherently racist notion. But here's the thing. Given enough time and enough opportunity, people usually tell on themselves.
In von Däniken's case, the tell(1)comes(2) in his 1979 Signs of the Gods? Framing his ideas as questions that others are too afraid or too sensitive to ask, he asks questions like, “Was the black race a failure and did the extraterrestrials change the genetic code by gene surgery and then programme a white or a yellow race?”
Take a look at those two links to see even more egregious "questions" that reveal the racist nature of pseudoarcheology. I don't think anyone is making the claim that everyone who ever watched and was amused by Ancient Aliens is racist. There are certainly people who believe this nonsense who don't come to it from this perspective. At the same time, the "racialism" is clearly baked into the theories from the outset and from one of the most prominent voices in the space.
@joehogan: This is what I always wonder when people talk about how BoTW was amazing when compared to other open world games. I haven't played it but I've watched a lot of it and...I don't get it. Yeah, the hang glider is pretty cool and more games should have that. But other than that, I don't see how it's special compared to other games. The gameplay itself actually looks awful. Item degradation in a single player game always sucks, but I've never seen a game where it happens so frequently that it will happen multiple times in the same combat encounter. Plenty of games have the "walk in a direction and find cool shit" thing going on. The only difference is whether or not someone likes the world/setting of the game.
@zombiepie: I definitely got some weird vibes of imperialism in the name of science from the first few hours of playing this. Learning that the local tribes are based on a real people is certainly...something. Wow.
Where the hell else am I supposed to go on this site to find out if this year's tabletop-to-PC games are any good?!
Great list for real though!
I second what @razorblade79 says, House of Suns is really good. I just finished it a couple months ago and I loved it. It was my first Reynolds and I immediately bought another one.
This looks like it has some interesting mechanics that change up the way games in this genre are usually played, but it also doesn't look fun. And the guns and gun attachments look really weird for some reason.
@neuroflare: It's hilarious because he has been talking in front of a camera and on podcasts for years. There are surely instances of him fucking up. And then you can factor in the sheer scale of the viewership of Wheel of Fortune. It's literally orders of magnitude larger than the viewership of Giant Bomb--that's going to make people more nervous. Importantly, the vast majority of the contestants on game shows aren't people who are paid to talk in front of an audience. They don't have that skill. This would be like picking a profession, having Bakalar train at it for a day, then see how many times he makes a fool of himself. It's gonna be way more than once.
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