Rashav3rak

Make other characters look straight to the camera and say "wow Witt is so witty, and smart and cunning"

barely related, but my favorite moment from Wonder Woman 1984 is when Diana Wonder Woman and Kristen Wiig Cat Lady go out for drinks and get to know each other. The scene begins with Diana Wonder Woman laughing at something we the audience didn't get to hear, says to Cat Lady, "you're so funny 😂," and the scene moves on. Like, you've got talented comedienne Kristen Wiig in your movie and you're establishing her character, and the writer (writers? I'm not looking it up) couldn't come up with a single funny thing for her to say? The entire movie is inept on every possible level but for some reason, that moment of ineptitude is the one that lodged itself in my brain.

If someone asks for help and you're in a position to help, you help them.

It's especially weird that companies are still like this after seeing the success of a game like Baldurs Gate 3. The runaway hit of the year, and biggest earner on Steam, doesn't even implement the basic Steam DRM. I tried it. The game launches and runs just fine when Steam isn't running at all. It's so messed up how capitalism leads to that (providing good products at fair prices and respecting your audience) being seen as an "unsustainable business model."

Half-Life: Alyx is the game that shows us just how incredible vr can be. And it's the game that ruins you for all other vr games because nothing else is anywhere near as good.

Since you mentioned Myst, Cyan published a vr game called The Last Clockwinder. It's a cozy little game where you solve puzzles using automatons that repeat your own recorded actions. So for example, you record yourself picking up an object and dropping it in a bucket, and then a robot repeats the same actions over and over. Before long you're creating assembly lines of robots that are all interacting with each other, and are all recordings of you. It's easier to understand from watching a trailer. Anyway, it has a cute solarpunk(?) aesthetic, some nice casual queerness, and the kind of corny, earnest performances I remember from the Myst games. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1755100/The_Last_Clockwinder/

Beat Saber is an obvious good option, but before you spend any money on song packs, check out a site like BEATSAVER. Beat Saber can be modded and there are custom song managers you can use, but you don't have to bother with all that if you really don't want to. Downloading the zip file from beatsaver and dropping it into beat saber directory is enough (assuming the custom song didn't require any mods, some of them do). There are so many good songs on there that rival anything officially released.

Also Blade and Sorcery. It's rough around the edges, but the implementation of magic is pretty great. Hurling fireballs, using telekinesis to pick up and throw weapons, objects, and enemies, holding a ball of electricity in one hand and using it to imbue the sword you're holding in your other hand, it's all very fun. Even if it does make me more motion-sick than just about anything I've played in vr.

Fully expecting this to be yet another Rockstar Special, i.e. a technical marvel rendering a painstakingly crafted world, full of boring gameplay, underdeveloped systems, and dull, unlikable characters.

someone already said to my boss "oh they're getting us all in a room so we're fish in a barrel?"

I'm having fun with friends online, jeez

this is my favorite suggestion so far

I like the grapefruit seltzer and hate actual grapefruit

The first game is one of my all-time favorite games, absolutely love it, so it's interesting that I never had the slightest interest in the second. I very much doubt I'll ever play it. For me, the ending of the first game is devastating, and is the end of Joel and Ellie's story. We don't need more. We know their lives will continue past the credits, we know the world the characters inhabit will go on, there's more plot that could unfold, but it doesn't need to. We know who these characters are now, we know the rules of their world, and whatever comes next is not going to reveal anything new about Joel and Ellie. We've been given enough that we can fill in the rest of their stories in our minds.

Which is why I didn't need a sequel with these characters. Or any sequel at all really, because as well-drawn as the setting may be, it's just another zombie apocalypse. The story of Ellie and Joel is why it's worth my time to trudge back out into the thousandth video game zombie apocalypse, so a sequel with the same setting and new characters was going to need to be spectacular. From everything I've heard, it sounds like a game that's jaw-dropping on a technical level, but is decidedly inferior to the first. I don't feel any fomo by skipping it. In my mind, it doesn't exist.

My memory of watching that movie is feeling uncomfortable and realizing "oh, these characters are the people I went to college with."