I’ve never been one for Twin Peaks, I’m afraid, and I know Virginia gets compared to that a lot. It’s a small town with a cast of small town people. Weird stuff is happening. You’re an FBI agent. You drink coffee in the diner. You get it. And none of that is really what I like about Virginia.
At long last, we have a successor to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. But just how much faster is Nvidia’s new GTX 1650, and is it worth the upgrade for current GTX 1050 Ti owners? To help answer that question, I’ve gone and made some more graphs, pitting each graphics card against each other to see how they fare at 1920×1080 across a variety of different quality settings – because let’s face it, you can’t have a competition for the best graphics card under 150 / $150 without at least one> bar chart somewhere.
It s a long-observed fact that the phenomenon of the YouTube let s play has benefits beyond just entertaining viewers and gradually introducing teenagers to neo-Nazism via YouTube’s algorithm. For developers, for example, getting a popular YouTuber to play their latest title can be a significant boost to sales. Ryan Clark, developer of roguelike rhythm game Crypt of the Necrodancer told the New York Times that he had seen a $60,000 boost in sales after PewDiePie showcased his game. What gets overlooked is the (perhaps unwitting) contribution these YouTubers are making to the preservation of video games.
OK, two things on the agenda. Firstly, I’m heading off on my expedition to attempt to break the Curse Of Steam Charts for the next couple of weeks. I’m returning to Ursidae, Caniformia, to find that ancient temple once more and attempt to appease the enraged spirit of Horace. Hopefully we’ll never speak again!
Secondly, Toby’s back! This week’s Steam Charts are brought to you through the filter of a four year old who was really excited about doing this again, but then got into a right grump about it as soon as we started. But his naming skills remain as excellent as ever.
Often, games are burnt into our memories by the light of the events that took place offscreen. Sometimes, the fused structures are happy ones: a snatch of music from Sonic 3 brings with it the smell of cut grass and caravan upholstery, while the cover art for Discworld II dredges up midsummer sweat and wafting net curtains, the night before a family holiday.
The Interlude is a game about fidgeting. Technically it s a game about waiting. But doesn t waiting always become fidgeting? Particularly when you re waiting for something tense, like this ne er-do-well parked in their car on a dark evening, messages filling up their phone about the unspecified encounter they re about to have with an unsaved contact. It s eerie, and that eeriness causes restlessness, especially when you re trapped in the drivers seat with nowhere to go.
Missed Messages, once you get past being incredibly jealous of this beautiful dorm room, is a game about “romance, horror, and memes.” All three manage to be realistic, something that s not easy to pull off, but is helped along by developer Angela He basing the whole thing on her real experiences. It is also, obviously, completely gorgeous and I kind of just want to stare at it all day.
I think the reason that I like Screenshot Saturday so much is that it necessarily makes us focus on the little things in games. All those background vistas and assets that are easily overlooked when you re actually playing a game instead of happily watching gifs of all the hard work that s going into them. This week, then: a shy cardboard buddy, an absolutely gorgeous forest, and a spellbook companion.
Fan favourite Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 esports team FaZe Clan s World League run was halted last night as they took a 2-3 loss to Luminosity Gaming. But there’s rumblings that they wuz robbed, after both teams completed their win-conditions near simultaneously. Though FaZe appeared to capture their control point a half-second before being eliminated by Luminosity, the game ruled in favour of the latter, and referees chose to uphold the loss despite the inconsistency.
Sundays are for doing things that are important and exciting and meaningful, but I will just be eating more crisps. And reading the best writing about videogames from the past week.
Actually, screw videogames, because Alice O shared something way better in our work chat earlier this week. Can you inscribe human nostalgia onto foreign DNA? So asks Regine in her fascinating piece about DNA digital data storage. As if that just being a thing > wasn’t interesting enough, the piece is specifically about artist Margherita Pevere, who has turned a childhood memory into the best horrifying gloop you or I will ever lay eyes on.