regrettably, Meta is the state of the art for VR. the Meta Quest 3 is stunningly crisp for the price point. it’s almost retina-scale with the pixels, the head/spatial tracking is extremely accurate and doesn’t require any base station or wired attachment, and you can fluidly stream VR games from your PC wirelessly at 1080p and like 120fps with nearly no latency or reality sickness.

I played Myst and Riven while I was sick with COVID last year, and it was one of the top five visual experiences of my lifetime (along with seeing the Grand Canyon and taking psychedelics.)

Meta has also recently finally cracked the holy grail of non-chonky AR glasses with full FoV, though the gallium nitride waveguide process is quite expensive and yields are too poor for them to sell it. but they look like slightly nerdy glasses that let you see holograms superimposed on your vision, even outdoors in the light.

unfortunately, VR is still anti-social and there’s not much content there, and the company leading the way is awful. but even just for Riven alone it was worth it to me.

Strong rumors of Valve’s new VR launching this year. Quite excited for that. Otherwise, the status (in my opinion) is stagnant. I still have fun occasionally getting into VR though.

Don’t you dare knock Adventure!

That’s a good choice! Probably the most popular one of that year. I never had a 2600 and started with a 5200, so my knowledge of it is lacking.

My wife’s current fortnite addiction would suggest otherwise

Not true! I installed it and played for 5 minutes once!

Parents playing with their kids

Yeah but then osrs came along

I really hoped we millennials would remember getting shit on constantly and maybe not do it.

Everyone who doesn’t play LoL will think you’re an idiot if you play ranked, that hasn’t changed in 15 years

Outside of shoot em up or hack and slash. Something with a good story that involved real coop to win. Not many.

No, it’s rated (E for children). I’m not a big fan of what it became or how inaccurate weapons were but it did offer something new to shooters when it came out with the construction mechanics and it has plenty of skill expression.

The more damning indictment is that something in the industry hasn’t displaced it, but it’s not like it’s any worse than a yearly Modern Warfare or FIFA release.

I’d say an even more damning indictment is that HellDivers gained the popularity it did.

That grind simulator game fucking sucks and is clunky and ugly, but it found success because the market is a trash desert.

Exactly. Several limits were loosened or removed entirely. The SNES was the first console with actual pixel transparency, the PSX, despite being weaker than the Saturn and the N64, was the king of the 90s. The jump in graphical and sound quality was always night and day from the Atari era all the way to the PS3/360 era (sound probably peaked in the PS2 era, with DVD quality)

Even on the PC, the jump from 3 years’ worth of advances was astonishing. Just compare the original Doom, 1993, with Quake, 1996

And here’s Quake 3, 1999

the goal is to get dopamine, move on when you stop getting dopamine

Is that the goal? I want more from my games than just poking my brain. I sometimes play games that challenge my reactions, sometimes ones that challenge my thinking. Superhot and Braid provided interesting time-related puzzles. Portal had some good lateral thinking puzzles.

I’m not exactly playing educational games, but when I played Assassin’s Creed games, the historical bits I found interesting were things I could learn more about outside the game. When I played Hearts of Iron 4, it was global politics around the time of WWII. Uboat and other sub games taught me a bit about submarine tactics in WWII. Oxygen not included taught me things I didn’t know about thermodynamics and materials, even if it is extremely simplified. Age of Empires and Total War were gateways to learn about medieval styles of warfare.

Even Sea of Thieves, which involves incredibly simplified sailing was what prompted me to learn about how square-masted sailing ships actually worked.

And, of course, all the flight simulators I’ve played over the years has taught me a lot about how to actually fly planes.

To me, if all you’re getting from a game is a bit of dopamine hits, you’re really missing out. It’s like watching the same movie over and over, or reading the same book over and over.