All posts tagged: gamings

Gaming’s new coming-of-age genre embraces ‘millennial cringe’ | Games

Gaming’s new coming-of-age genre embraces ‘millennial cringe’ | Games

Published by Sam Flores

I’ve noticed an interesting micro-trend emerging in the last few years: millennial nostalgia games. Not just ones that adopt the aesthetic of Y2K gaming – think Crow Country or Fear the Spotlight’s deliberately retro PS1-style fuzzy polygons – but semi-autobiographical games specifically about the millennial experience. I’ve played three in the past year. Despelote is set in 2002 in Ecuador and is played through the eyes of a football-obsessed eight-year-old. The award-winning Consume Me is about being a teen girl battling disordered eating in the 00s. And this week I played a point-and-click adventure game about being a college student in the early 2000s. Perfect Tides: Station to Station is set in New York in 2003 – a year that is the epitome of nostalgia for the micro-generation that grew up without the internet but came of age online. It was before Facebook, before the smartphone, but firmly during the era of late-night forum browsing and instant-messenger conversations. The internet wasn’t yet a vector for mass communication, but it could still bring you together with …

AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D CPU Review: Gaming’s Best Chip

AMD Ryzen 7 9850X3D CPU Review: Gaming’s Best Chip

Published by skeptic

Introducing the gaming side paints a slightly clearer picture. In older 3DMark benchmarks, again using the RTX 5080, the difference in scores was extremely minor, with wider margins in newer benchmarks. Time Spy, for example, saw under a one percent increase, while Speedway was closer to 10 percent. via Brad Bourque When it comes to actual gaming benchmarks, there’s a difference, but in practice you aren’t going to notice it. Cyberpunk 2077 is one of my go-to games, because it’s a popular title that’s also quite demanding, and the in-game benchmark means it’s very consistent. At 1440p, with the settings on ultra and ray tracing on, but path tracing off, the 9800X3D delivered 69.61 FPS compared to the 9850X3D’s 71.19 FPS, about a 2 percent difference. via Brad Bourque None of the other major games I tested, including Marvel Rivals, Arc Raiders, and Counter-Strike 2, showed any noticeable difference either. Particularly with a matching high-end GPU, we’re talking about a 3 to 4 frames-per-second difference when already over 120 fps. I’m not sure even the …

‘It’s a loving mockery, because it’s also who I am’: the making of gaming’s most pathetic character | Games

‘It’s a loving mockery, because it’s also who I am’: the making of gaming’s most pathetic character | Games

Published by Sam Flores

“I don’t know why he is in a onesie and has a big ass,” shrugs game developer Gabe Cuzzillo. “Bennett just came in with that at some point.” “I thought it would be cute,” replies Bennett Foddy, who was formerly Cuzzillo’s professor at New York University’s Game Center and is now his collaborator. “Working on character design and animation brings you over to liking big butts. I could give you an enormous amount of evidence for this.” Foddy and Cuzzillo are talking about Nate, the impressively pathetic manbaby protagonist of their profound and ridiculous comedy game Baby Steps, developed together with Maxi Boch. When I was preparing to talk to them, I felt like I was about to meet my tormentors: I spent a week last year in the grip of this purposefully, transcendentally frustrating game about going on a horrible hiking holiday with the world’s most incompetent loser. Baby Steps’ premise seems like a cruel joke at first: watch the hapless man suffer! And you will suffer too! But the more I played it, …