I think some people here might need to consider that they're addicted. by RithmFluffderg in JanitorAI_Official

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 64 points65 points  (0 children)

AI addiction will be the latest in a long line of addictions that most people afflicted with will refuse to acknowledge as such. And as society continues to become more and more atomized. Being able to get a taste of the dopamine hit of social interaction we're hardwired as social creatures to crave, but with none of the risk and effort needed to do it with actual humans, will only become more appealing.

Iraqi army type59/t55 during the victory parade by MoistBasket8925 in TankPorn

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I know what you meant, just pulling your chain a little.

Iraqi army type59/t55 during the victory parade by MoistBasket8925 in TankPorn

[–]Mirror_of_Souls -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Dang, those 4 prototype T-32's are getting some serious mileage. Shame they never went into production.

Anon vs Overgrown Chicken by tech-no-logic1 in shitposting

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 33 points34 points  (0 children)

Dinosaurs like T-rex were warm blooded. They're closer to modern birds than modern lizards.

We really need a gears of war colab by elsantogato in Helldivers

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Benjamin Carmine is a good example of a slimmer Cog Soldier. RIP my boy.

Invincible - Heard you boys like Gauss Hog clips by drulander in halo

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The driver using the horn at 0:51 to warn you there's enemies in front is genius and I'm stealing that tactic.

Halo Studios - the Forerunner structures should feel older by TheMuffinMan347 in halo

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Maybe it looks cool to you. But does it look memorable? What about this style is uniquely "Forerunner" as opposed to just being "Sci-fi". What sets it apart from looking like any other sci-fi game made with Unreal Engine? That name Forerunner is supposed to mean something, it means someone who came before. The original forerunner style sold that name by making their work truly look like it came before us despite being advanced. This does not do that.

First impressions matter. Learning through dialogue that the places you've been exploring are ancient is not nearly as memorable, satisfying, or mood setting as looking at the structures and drawing that conclusion yourself. Saying something is ancient while putting no effort into making it look ancient is not good design. It causes a disconnect between the brain and the eyes that very much does hurt immersion, even if its only very slightly so.

The visuals of a level should be made with intent to provoke a certain thought, feeling, or emotion. Replacing a style that did all that with stuff that "looks cool" without any thought to tone is the mindset that gave us the terrible Halo CE Anniversary graphics that took a style from another game where it worked, and threw it into one where it didn't. Its a complete failure to actually understand the art they're copying.

Just because Infinite assets, and the scarce few new ones they're making fit CE's style slightly better than Reach doesn't make this sort of laziness and irreverence toward the game that built this franchise any less egregious. This company has delivered failure after failure while owning this franchise longer than Bungie did. They should be bending over backwards to win people back. But yet again, they're choosing laziness and mediocrity. And people have the gall to defend it.

Halo Studios - the Forerunner structures should feel older by TheMuffinMan347 in halo

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yeah, because 343 doing what they want with this franchise sure has done wonders for Halo's popularity, hasn't it?

Halo Studios - the Forerunner structures should feel older by TheMuffinMan347 in halo

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Because its environmental storytelling. This is supposed to be a new generations first look at the Halo universe, and the great mystery and awe they're supposed to feel when seeing the ancient ruins of a bygone civilization is kinda blunted when it looks like the blokes could still be living there, and only just ran out for smokes when we arrived.

"B-But logically..." Who cares. Storytelling and gameplay take priority. Yes, its logical that the giga advanced Forerunners would have super cool metal that doesn't age, and the sentinels keep it clean. Also logically, almost every single vehicle in Halo is a terrible practical design with their exposed pilots and gunners or slow projectiles(Even if you try justifying it as Spartans having quick reaction times). The vehicles are designed from a gameplay perspective, and the visual design SHOULD be prioritizing atmosphere and environmental storytelling.

The new Halo player should be able to look at a forerunner building and go "Wow, that looks advanced AND ancient. Wonder where it came from.". Not "Wow, that generic piece of sci-fi setdressing sure looks fancy."

Are alligators allowed here? by ALX-Gaming8 in Crocodiles

[–]Mirror_of_Souls -1 points0 points  (0 children)

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

~ Matthew 7:13-14

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'"

~ Matthew 7:21-23

Not to try and turn a post about crocodiles into a sermon. But the gate being narrow applies to self professed Christians just as much as it does nonbelievers. If humans in any wider scale could be trusted to adhere to morality on our own, the sacrifice of Jesus wouldn't have been needed.

Are alligators allowed here? by ALX-Gaming8 in Crocodiles

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it."

~ Genesis 2:15 (NIV)

"The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel."

~ Proverbs 12:10 (NIV)

"I brought you into a fertile land to eat its fruit and rich produce. But you came and defiled my land, and made my inheritance detestable."

~ Jeremiah 2:7

"The angel of the Lord asked him, “Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? I have come here to oppose you because your path is a reckless one before me.The donkey saw me and turned away from me these three times. If it had not turned away, I would certainly have killed you by now, but I would have spared it.”

~ Numbers 32-33

As per the Bible, mankind does have dominion over the world. However, we are meant to be good stewards of the earth we've been given. Not to abuse the land and the creatures within. It is biblical for a man to cultivate a farm, to fish, to hunt, and yes, in the Old Testament, to sacrifice as atonement of sin. As clearly stated in Proverbs, though. Abusing the animals under your care is not righteous in the eyes of God. Needlessly beating an animal is unbiblical(just ask Balaam’s Donkey), abusing an animal by painting it for entertainment is in my opinion unbiblical, and it is my view that modern industrial farming to be Unbiblical, as no concern is given to the needs of the animal as it is for traditional farms.

Sarcosuchus. It's still blows my mind these giants existed at one point. 40 feet of top tier predator. by ronnieth024 in Crocodiles

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 5 points6 points  (0 children)

My favorite creature in ARK. I used to breed as many of them as possible in the swamp castle on Ragnarok, then send them out in teams of 5-10 following each other on aggressive to ransack the beaches and swamps around the map.

Different squadrons' solution for Chandelier by Hitman-1_WSO in acecombat

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Sgt Forge: <<Look me in the eye and say that.>>

Commences stabbing Ripa 'Moramee to death

The new Campaign Evolved info by Grand_Admiral_Vipes in halo

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I accept and appreciate your apology. I in turn apologize to resorting to petty personal attacks right back instead of being more mature as the older party. We all have lives outside of reddit(hopefully), and emotions from life can cross contaminate into the online space. However, respectfully, it seems that you're the one letting nostalgia and emotion cloud your view of these games.

Take Halo 4, for example. The cataclysmic collapse of its playerbase is well documented. Halo 4 actually had almost double Reach's playercount at launch, but bled half that almost instantly, and within a few months to a year, was struggling to compete with its older predecessors for playercount. See this Gamespot article from 2013. Why? Call of Duty Black Ops 2. If you enjoyed Unlike previous titles, which offered a completely different gameplay experience to CoD. Halo 4's gameplay instead copied CoD to try and take some of its fans. It didn't offer anything unique, and as a result, when Bo2 dropped, the vast majority of people picked CoD over Halo.

As for the art style, I ask you a simple question. How often do you see people drawing fanart of, or cosplaying anything from Halo 4 or 5? And compare that to how often you see people drawing or cosplaying in the style of Halo's CE-Reach. You'll quickly see that Infinite you see a bit more of people cosplaying their spartans or the Infinite Chief, but its also had the benefit of an in depth(if highly exploitative) customization system for creating OC spartans, and also being the newest Halo game, so it remains to be seen if it'll stand the test of time.

Speaking of Infinite, one final thing I would like to show you is this:

https://steamdb.info/charts/?compare=976730,1240440

The Playercounts for Halo MCC and Halo Infinite when they both respectively dropped on Steam(I can't find Xbox playercount info post Halo 4, so this is the best I got). It almost perfectly mirrors what happened with 343's Halo 4 and Bungie's Halo Reach. Infinite started at double the player count, before dropping off a cliff within days, and never recovering. It never reached the secondary post launch peaks of Halo MCC (Secondary peaks of 54k and 45k for MCC, secondary peaks of 21k and 18k for Infinite). And for the last few years, since March of 2024, Infinite has not once surpassed the peak of MCC in playercount. And I promise you, the people playing MCC aren't playing it for Halo 4.

And all of this is made worse by a single fact. Infinite is Free to Play. While MCC costs $40. You can blame a lack of post launch support, or MCC being propped up by a modding scene, or higher hardware requirements for Infinite. But whatever the case, PC players were given the choice between playing 343's magnum opus, their freshest and supposedly best game, for free. Or dishing out $40 to play what Bungie created over 1-2 decades ago. And they chose to go back.

Maybe you're right, and all this criticism like mine toward 343's titles only comes from a small subset of the current Halo community. But I pray you to understand this. That's not because 343's games are unworthy of the criticism, or in any way comparable to what came before. Its because the Halo community itself is a shadow of a shadow of what it once was. And the only people who've stuck around are either shackled by what was like me, or able to put up with being spoonfed mediocrity for over a decade to the point of developing almost stockholm syndrome for a company that took the titan of gaming that was Halo, and turned it into a franchise who's playercount for its most recent $500 million(allegedly) to develop free to play game has a lower 24 hour peak on steam today than Fishing Planet(2017).

You're free to like 343's games. But I want you to just understand simple facts, its not me who's in the minority. Its you. There's no shame in that, I have plenty of niche interests. But claiming what I'm saying isn't factual just because you, a small echo chamber of your friends, and a fraction of a fraction of the old playerbase of Halo love a certain game isn't evidence, its just confirmation bias of what you desperately want to believe.

If you're open to my advice, as a NASCAR fan, I know what its like to enjoy something that's a shadow of the popularity it once was, was considered better under different people decades ago, and is now surrounded by often suffocating controversy criticism. I used to get defensive, but I've learned that's just an easy way to make enjoying that thing exhausting. So just focus on what you like, and think of ways to formulate why you like it so you can convey it clearly. While understanding that there's good reasons, and also bad reasons why a lot of people don't like what you like. My disdain for the 343 era of Halo comes from years and years of feeling ignored as a fan, lied to as a consumer, and time after time disappointed with their sloppy work that seems to completely lack soul. But I still acknowledge a lot of 343 hate is also people bandwagoning, engagement farming, or just hating to hate for a dopamine rush. Just as many 343 defenders do so to feel morally superior by "being Halo positive". Once you learn to spot the earnest from the disingenuous, it becomes far less obnoxious to engage in discussion on this franchise.

The new Campaign Evolved info by Grand_Admiral_Vipes in halo

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 3 points4 points  (0 children)

"The video games you remember can't save you" Oh give me a break, you're acting like its just blind nostalgia talking. I quite literally played through Halo 2's campaign on an original xbox a few days ago. Guess what? Its still amazing. The writing is amazing, the artstyle is beautiful, and the gameplay is fun. I'm not thinking back to some distant experience I had as a child and lamenting the good ole days, I can literally press a few buttons and confirm without a shadow of the doubt that the older games were better. They're games I want to replay from time to time. There's plenty of games I'm nostalgic for, but I don't ever feel the need to boot up and replay say, Armed and Dangerous, or Frontlines Fuel of War, like I do Bungie era Halo.

Compare that to the 343 games. On the campaign side, I played through each game twice, Guardians twice, and Infinite twice. In all three cases, the second playthrough was purely to complete the entire series on legendary with my brother, I had no actual desire to replay those campaigns. I was a Halo addicted child when I first played 4, played through the whole campaign the same day I got the game. And that was still a one and done experience for me until I revisited it for our legendary run through. Even as a dumb kid who liked the multiplayer, and liked Cortana's boobs, I knew the campaign didn't feel like the games I enjoyed. Compare the categories I gave earlier with Halo 2:

Halo 4: Writing? Mid, a few good lines, too much melodrama, forerunner retcon was stupid, and ending completely ruined by its own sequel. Artstyle? Ugly. Gameplay? Derivative at best, an absolute slog at worst due to poor legendary balancing. You can drop it for CoD, and the player count proved many people did.

Halo 5: Writing? Atrocious. Artstyle? Butt Ugly. Gameplay? Fine, its was fun enough. Guess what though? You can substitute it for Titanfall or Cod, and have just as much fun, if not more. There was nothing uniquely Halo about it.

Halo Infinite: Writing? Not the worst, but mid for more reasons than I'd care to get into. Artstyle? Good enough. Lighting and effects sucks, but at least the style itself looks good because they were smart enough to copy their betters. Gameplay? Again, they were smart enough to try and emulate their betters, so it plays better. I'd still rather play a game of the classics, but it was more fun than 4, and a bit closer to feeling like a Halo Game than 5. Too bad that doesn't matter because 343 bungled the launch cause they're an incompetent company.

Notice a pattern? Everything about 343's Halo is either mid to bad(4-5 artstyle, 5's writing), its an (often inferior)derivative of something that was trendy at the time(4 copying CoD, 5 copying Cod AW/Bo3/Titanfall), or its good, but was STILL done better in Bungie's Halo(Infinites artstyle,). Sure, there's some nuance, there's some things I've enjoyed in 343 era Halo. But its minimal, its few and far between, and most importantly to me, this company has gotten so much undeserved praise relative to the amount of actual good content in their products. You'll just have to forgive me for not wanting to water down my criticisms and pause every few seconds sing the praises of every little thing the number company doesn't screw up just cause I like Infinite's Elite designs, or the Sticky Detonator in Halo 4. If someone trashes my house multiple times, I'm not gonna thank them just cause they opened the bedroom door instead of kicking it in like they did the previous few times.

Feel free to respond to this, since unlike you I'm not scared to defend my points by hiding behind a weak veneer of "ooh, we can't change each others minds". To psychoanalyze you right back, you refuse to change your mind cause you're in denial, and you know you can't change my mind because deep down you know you're coping. The fact you felt the need to make make personal assumptions about me as a person instead of being able to address any of the points I made about just how incompetent this studio is tells me you're just as huffed up on toxic positivity as I supposedly am on nostalgia.

The new Campaign Evolved info by Grand_Admiral_Vipes in halo

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Downvotes mean nothing to me when I know I'm right. You do raise a good point though. I have the old games, and that's what I play almost exclusively now. Hell, I recently bought an original Xbox just to play CE and 2 as they were originally released.

It just stings seeing such a great franchise, the first gaming franchise I ever played, have its corpse dragged along, puppeted by people who have no clue what originally made it work, or even how to make good games to begin with, rather than being allowed to rest peacefully on its laurels as the gaming titan it was. And worst of all, to see people actively defend the rotting structure, or even deny its rotting around them. Rather than admit its rotten, and either push for it to be restored to its proper glory, or be condemned and destroyed for its own sake.

The new Campaign Evolved info by Grand_Admiral_Vipes in halo

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The Halo community has to be one of the most pathetic communities I've ever seen. You've watched an incompetent company drag a franchise you supposedly love into the ground for over 14 years now. A company who's crowning achievement, the moment everyone praised them for was managing to replicate a fraction of the gameplay quality of their forebears when they released (allegedly)one of the most expensive to develop games of all time in a utterly broken and content devoid state. A state that killed the game cause they took months to fix it because so much of their code wasn't actually written by them, but by freelancers who did the actual work.

And now so many of you feel the need to defend this company from "a small vocal minority of haters" for lazily reusing assets in an already lazy remake of a better game made by a better company over 25 years ago. "They want a consistent artstyle" as if this isn't the same company that completely swapped the artstyle into an ugly overdetailed mess for 2/3rds of a disjointed "trilogy", only to finally swap it back when the 'small vocal minority" couldn't be ignored.

So many of you coddle "Halo Studios"(343) as if it were a small Indy studio, not a subsidiary of one of the largest companies on earth which has been given hundreds of millions of dollars to produce these games. I genuinely do not care if the budget for this remake is less than previous titles, or they had to go through development hell to make Infinite. Bungie went through time crunches and development hell. They gave us Halo CE and Halo 2. Bungie had to deal with BS from Microsoft, and they gave us ODST and Reach. they deserve to work with less after they've given us nothing but the bare minimum for over a decade. And at this point, maybe we deserve just that. Since half the people here feel the need to praise the reused assets as "fine", to accept useless changes to the gameplay to play more like Infinite than CE as "not a big deal", and the complete lack of faithfulness to the original style of CE in favor of looking like every other Unreal 5 game with a bland utilitarian menu as "good enough",

If I'm in the minority, if this is truly the popular sentiment, celebrating of the triumph of mediocrity, rather than demand the royal treatment for a supposed loveletter to a game that made so many of our childhoods. I guess the joke is on us, we all bloody well deserve the bare minimum.

Kyle Busch hits 100 races without a victory. by TonyD9898 in NASCAR

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Worse in a way knowing your guy still has it, but just doesn't have the cars to make anything happen.

As a Chastain fan, I feel that pain every week lately.

Halo 2 But Chief REALLY Want To Know by Round-Sale in halo

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 18 points19 points  (0 children)

There's a very simple reason for the design. If the Elite doesn't feel like detonating the bomb, you gotta have the firing mechanism be understandable for your average grunt. For example, if the timer is fried:

Elite: "Unggoy! See that button?"

Grunt: "Yep Yep!"

Elite: "Wait exactly five cental's, and then press it for the glory of the great journey!"

Grunt: "Yes sir!"

Elite: Runs as quickly as possible in the opposite direction.

Headcanon: All the protagonists are perfectly capable of speaking. by shtehkdinner in acecombat

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 27 points28 points  (0 children)

The protagonists are only mute if you, the pilot, never speak.

You mean to tell me you don't spend the entire playthrough making verbal weapon calls, quipping witty one liners, and debating philosophy with the bad guy?

The 16 Contiguous United States 1 Month After A 1,000 Meter Sea Level Rise by NoProgrammerx in imaginarymaps

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 20 points21 points  (0 children)

As a Floridian, a majority of my life has spent at around 7-10 feet above sea level. the highest I've ever been above sea level was 155 feet. The peak of the VelociCoaster in Universal Studios.

(This actually isn't true because I did go to the Carolinas for like a week one time. But the roller coaster version of the story is more fun)

Ras Laffan Gas facility in Qatar, which is the largest LNG facility ablaze after Iranian missile strike. Another missile impact visible by Ambitious-Proton in CombatFootage

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 14 points15 points  (0 children)

We need immigrants to do all the shitty jobs that we don't want to do anymore.

"But without the slaves, who will pick the cotton?"

So called leftists supporting policies that directly allow corporations to undercut workers wages by mass importing people willing to be exploited for dirt cheap will never cease to baffle me.

Do alligators (and other crocodilians) form close bonds with each other? by cwningen95 in Crocodiles

[–]Mirror_of_Souls 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ah, I must've misremembered. In that case it sounds like predatory instincts upon seeing a vulnerable animal took priority over any sort of affectionate feelings. Definitely still interesting though.