The Sunday Papers
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Sundays are for telling Alexa how excited you are for Cyber Monday. Before you get their attention, let's read this week's best writing about games.
For VG247, Jeremy Peel asks: "Why do video games make some people feel sick?" An interesting insight from experts as to why you might feel nauseous when playing games and methods to counteract it, both from a dev perspective and a player perspective.
When shooters introduce extra movement, like head bobbing, the issue only gets worse. “It’s an artificial stimulus that doesn’t relate to anything you’re really feeling physically,” Weech says. “If you see a head bob up and down, your brain wants to interpret and integrate it. But it can’t, because it doesn’t match with all of the other information. It’s a whole disaster for your brain to deal with that kind of thing. That’s really terribly nauseating.”
For Hitpoints, Nathan Brown wrote about the death of the titans. Brown examines whether the big three - Activision, Ubisoft, and EA - are losing relevance, and if so, why?
Part of their problem is that these days a breakout hit can come from anywhere, and the games that are capturing the gaming public’s attention reflect that. Indies and upstart publishers are eating the majors’ lunch. At the other end of the budgetary scale, Microsoft and Sony, after their recent acquisition sprees, are more powerful and effective publishers today than EA, Activision or Ubisoft. Microsoft doesn’t need a Battlefield or Far Cry to sell Game Pass subscriptions. Sony may not have got its chequebook out quite so much, but still has managed to fill PS5’s first year with more quality games from firstparty studios than the big three have contributed to it.
For Eurogamer, Martin Robinson wrote a quick post about how Rez made him. May need to give this one a go. If it can capture the feeling of those Forza Horizon openings, then that's all I need.
More importantly, it's given me 20 years of pure joy. Rez is a short thing to see through, and like its arcade predecessors it won't take more than 60 minutes to see its credits roll. But lord knows how many times I've played it through now - it's something I return to like a favourite album, enjoying it in new contexts and sometimes whole new perspectives.
For Kotaku, Sisi Jiang reviewed The Legend Of Tianding, an action platformer where you play as a Taiwanese, freedom-fighting folka hero. This game wasn't on my radar at all, but I may just have to give this a go. The art style looks fantastic as well.
I get nervous when a game tries to be too many things at once; mashups that muddle their creative visions tend to be utterly forgettable. Legend manages to strike the perfect balance between street brawler, platformer, and visual novel. If you love any of those things individually, it’s very easy to accidentally fall in love with the other aspects of the game.
For PC Gamer, Evan Lahti declares that he's a two-mouse man. The closest things I've used to ergonomic mice was those little red beads you find wedged in the centre of Lenovo business laptop keyboards.
For more than two years I've had two mice plugged into my PC—two simultaneous, full-time sources of cursor input. Does that make you uncomfortable? I've survived this experiment with minimal injury or estrangement to family, and I'm here to share it with you in the hope that more brave PC gamers might see the truth: two mice are better than one.
Finally, Apollo432's video reminds me how nice Battlefield 1 looks, especially when you compare it to Battlefield 2042. It can't just be me right?
Music this week is Do It Again by Steely Dan. Here's the YouTube link and Spotify link. Timeless.
That's me. Have a solid Sunday everyone!