randomsnark

in my experience, most things will mobilize the squirrels to hide

fantastic

eccleston confirmed

apparently not

that phrase is to biology as "donde esta la biblioteca" is to spanish

The linked article mentions that one of the predator types merged into the dragon is raptors (as in birds of prey, not velociraptors)

You might enjoy crpgaddict, a blog that is playing through every computer roleplaying game in chronological order, providing scores for each one on various metrics. The reason I bring him up is that he doesn't rate on a curve, or give things marks for being "good for its time" - if pool of radiance scores higher than skyrim, it's not because it was influential or good for its time, but because he thinks it's outright better regardless of age (just an example - I'm not saying he would actually rate those two games that way, and he has not rated skyrim). There are early 80s games that he remembers fondly and had a huge impact on the industry that he rates as like 23/100 or whatever, because the scale leaves room for the Witcher 3.

It takes a long time to get through all those games, so he's currently up to the early 90s, having updated his blog regularly for over a decade. But his list of highest rated games might be a good place to start.

Oh, and while we're talking about old-ish RPGs that would score well on his scale, I might as well mention Morrowind and the Baldur's Gate series (before 3, obviously), which he won't reach for a long time but has been known to hold up as solid examples of the genre. Personally I still think Baldur's Gate 2 is great. I'm also a big fan of the quest for glory series, which crpgaddict has rated, but might not make his list of top scoring RPGs, because they're a hybrid adventure/RPG, so not all of their strengths appear on a scale designed for pure RPGs.

As someone who didn't play them back in the day, I feel like SotN holds up but Super Metroid doesn't. Just as another opinion. I couldn't really get into metroid fusion either. To me it feels like the moment-to-moment action gameplay is too clunky in the early metroid games I've played, even if the exploration element is neat. I did enjoy playing SotN for the first time a couple of years ago though. It's been a while since I played either, so they're not totally fresh in my memory - I guess it's possible that I'm just more forgiving of clunky melee combat than clunky shooting.

Tangentially related, always amuses me how "metroidvania" has become the genre name, when originally it was just a way that reviewers poked fun at the big change between SotN and earlier castlevanias. They were like "this isn't what I expect from a castlevania, it's a great game but maybe they should have named it metroidvania", and the name stuck. Another odd fact about that terminology is that according to interviews, the SotN designer never played metroid - they were inspired by the non-linear exploration with different routes opened up by items/upgrades in Zelda games (although obviously adding that to castlevania's platformer gameplay makes it more closely resemble metroid). So it should probably be considered a zeldavania.

Large language models (chatgpt etc, basically any of the AIs you've seen recent headlines about) aren't especially good at distinguishing true from false claims. It's one of the biggest weaknesses that AI researchers are actively trying to find solutions for.

V

part of the appeal is how bad I am at both the gameplay and the lore

I was literally just thinking about this, like a few minutes before seeing this post. It sounds like for some reason this political usage of "weird" is working, and annoying me is a small price to pay to stop Trump. But it does bug me, mostly because anything the left starts using, the right will eventually appropriate, and then it will spread and get widespread use outside of politics. I can see it becoming like "snowflake", which used to mean "special and unique", and then started being used in political discourse to mean "oversensitive", and is now being used everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if this trend means that a couple of years from now, "weird" is a very popular go-to insult even outside of politics, which will habituate people to associating weirdness with negativity (not that people need any incentive to do that).

Obviously it's a better outcome than a lot of other things that can result from politics, but it's irksome now and I can imagine the world being mildly more uncomfortable for everyone who doesn't conform to mainstream social standards in a couple of years than it is now.

Tl;Dr - sounds like you're thinking exactly what I was thinking, down to the mild-to-moderate level of discomfort and the acknowledgement that it might be necessary