A few days ago I re-watched the 1993 movie Demolition Man, starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes. I last saw the movie somewhere around 1995 or so. When I re-watched it, one particular scene left be perplexed.
The villain of the movie, Simon Phoenix, played by Wesley Snipes, is at some kind of public communication booth, when the police arrive and confront him. After he ignores their first command to lay on the ground, the police officer repeats the demand:
"Lie down on the ground... or else!"
I remember vividly Phoenix turning around and asking the police officer: "Or else what?" and the police officer becoming perplexed and asking his fellow officers in a lower tone of voice the same question. I do not remember exactly the response he then gave, but it was probably something like "or else we'll force you", and then Phoenix taunting them, with a fight ensuing.
I remember this vividly, like it was yesterday. I even remember Phoenix's facial expression and mannerisms when he asks it, as well as the police officer's. If prior to re-watching the movie I had been asked if this scene existed, as I described above, in the movie, I would have been willing to bet actual money that that's exactly what's in the movie.
To my complete puzzlement, however, that doesn't happen in the movie. After the police officer says "or else!" Phoenix just looks at him and then ignores him and doesn't say anything. That's not at all how I remember it happening!
Maybe it was an alternate scene? Doesn't seem to be so. I have searched high and low for alternate and deleted scenes, or any sort of reference to him asking that "or else what?", but nothing. I can only conclude that he never says that, and the ensuing short funny reaction from the police officers doesn't happen.
Yet, I can't help but remember that so vividly!
A somewhat memetic explanation for these is the so-called "Mandela effect", which posits that at some point in time some people have swapped places with their alternate selves in an alternate parallel universe where there have been subtle differences, and they occasionally still get flashbacks and memories of those differences.
In actuality what I believe has happened is that I imagined in my mind, perhaps during the movie or shortly after it, him asking "or else what?", and my brain concocted that little continuation there, and now, decades later, I am misremembering and thinking that it actually happened in the movie, when in fact it only happened inside my head.
I have another example, but this time it's even worse:
Something like a year ago I re-watched another movie that I hadn't seen in a long, long time: The 1957 classic film 12 Angry Men.
There were many scenes in the film that I remember vividly and clearly, such as the scene with the switchblade knife, and the scene where they recreate the limping man walking to the door of his apartment, and the argument about the woman seeing the murder through the windows of a passing train. I also remember vividly the final scene of the movie: The accused is sitting at the defense's table, completely broken with all hope lost, looking at the ground. But when the final verdict of not guilty is announced he looks up in complete surprise, with an expression that says that he cannot believe what's happening.
Except that that final scene never happens in the movie. It's not in the original script, and it's not any sort of alternate or deleted scene. To my knowledge it doesn't even happen in any later remake of the movie.
However, this time I'm so certain that I have seen that scene that I do not believe it's just my imagination and a fabricated memory. What I strongly believe has happened here is that I have seen some other movie, maybe a made-for-TV movie or similar, that has that ending scene, and I am simply confusing it with the 12 Angry Men movie. I have tried to find what other movie that scene might be from, but I have not been successful in finding it (even after asking for help in a dedicated forum). However, I'm certain that I have seen that scene. It's probably just from some really small and obscure made-for-TV movie, or perhaps some TV series, and it's really hard to find which just by googling.
Many people have similar experiences: They could swear that some movie, or TV series, had a particular scene, they are so sure of it that they could bet money on it... yet when they see the movie again years or decades later, they are left perplexed when the scene never happens (or happens very differently from what they remember). They are so convinced of it that they start suspecting it must have been cut or altered, this being some kind of alternate version or something.
What I believe is happening in the vast majority of cases is that people are either simply misremembering (eg. having imagined the scene in their heads and then decades later thinking that it actually happened), or are mixing two different movies together.
Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Why WASD?
At some point in the late 90's or early 2000's, first-person shooter games on the PC started by default mapping the movement keys to the W, A, S and D keys of the keyboard (the cursor keys being the more common default mapping in the infancy of first-person shooters, ie. the early 90's.) Some other game genres, such as third-person shooters, quickly followed suit.This was indeed much more convenient than the cursor keys, especially since games were becoming more and more complex by the year, requiring more and more keys to control. In most standard PC keyboards the cursor keys are kind of isolated from other keys, and thus the user needed to reach farther to use any other such keys. However, the WASD keys are not only immediately surrounded by plenty of other keys, additionally (when the WASD keys are used with the index, middle and ring finger) the thumb ends up conveniently resting on the spacebar, thus bringing that key conveniently into the mix as well. Also the pinky finger comfortably rests on the ctrl and shift keys.
Very typically the most common default key mapping for most games, besides the WASD keys themselves, have been for quite a long time for the spacebar to jump, E as the primary "use" or "interact" key, R typically to reload, and F for some sort of secondary "use" key. Some games that require even more keys may by default use the Q, the G, and even the Z, X and C keys. (While not universal, the C key is very often mapped by default to crouching, although in some games the left ctrl key is used for that.)
However, some game will need even more keys than those, and may thus extend to use keys that are much farther away, such as the J, I or even the M keys.
But one has to ask, why did WASD in particular become the almost universal standard? If you notice the key on the left of A is Caps Lock. Some games do actually map it to some functionality, but rarely. In fact, many games leave it to its default system functionality. There might be some technical difficulties sometimes getting the Caps Lock key to remap to something else.
Wouldn't it have been better to make the ESDF keys the default for movement? In other words, shift everything one slot to the right. This way the A key would have been conveniently on the left of the S key for some functionality. Even the Q key is now relatively easy to reach as well, and would thus act as an additional convenient key.
(Of course there's nothing stopping a player from remapping the keys like this, as the vast majority of games offer the option to do that. But WASD has become ubiquitous because all games use it by default, and the vast majority of people won't bother to change it.)
Some games use some more awkwardly-positioned keys by default, like the Alt key. This could well be remapped to the A or the Q key instead, for instance.
Why the 1980's is so popular in terms of nostalgia
People of all ages are nostalgic about different eras, most commonly about the times of their childhood and teenage years. However, the decade of the 1980's in particular seems to hold a special position in this regard. Looking at it in terms of people's ages there doesn't seem to be anything particular about the 80's that makes that decade stand out from the rest. Sure, the people who are today in their 30's, 40's and 50's were kids and teenagers during that time, but the same can be said of the 1990's, the 1970's, and perhaps to some extent of the 1960's. Yet not even nearly as much nostalgia is prevalent about those other decades.
What makes precisely the 1980's so special, to stand out so prominently from the rest? I think there are many reasons for this.
The 1980's was the time when many of the modern movie conventions were invented or refined, and many of the most memorable cult classics of (what could be classified as) modern cinema came from this era. Masterpieces of modern cinema that defined and shaped their respective genres, and had great influence not only in moviemaking but also, and most importantly, on popular culture.
Movies like Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) greatly influenced the space horror genre, and even to this day many movies of that genre owe a great deal to them. The Terminator (1984) was also a great influence in the modern "light" sci-fi genre. And, of course, going into the more "hard-core" sci-fi, Blade Runner (1982) is a masterpiece, and most futuristic sci-fi movies today owe a lot to it. Quite many other horror sci-fi masterpieces were created in this era, such as The Thing (1982)
On the lighter side of sci-fi, no other movie franchise had a bigger influence in popular culture than the original Star Wars trilogy (1977, 1980, and 1983), although there are also many other fondly remembered and influential movies such as E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982), Robocop (1987), Tron (1982), Predator (1987), and Back to the Future (1985). Modern sci-fi owes a great deal to all these movies.
Modern horror movies also owe a great deal to cult classics from the era of the 1980's, such as Friday the 13th (1980), Halloween (1978), The Evil Dead (1981), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), The Shining (1980), Re-Animator (1985), Poltergeist (1981), The Fly (1986), and Scanners (1981), all of which were extremely influential trend-setters that have affected filmmaking to this day.
The 1980's also saw the creation of many TV series that are still fondly remembered (much more so than most TV series created prior or after) and which likewise made great innovations in how such series are made, and had a great influence on subsequent TV series to this day.
While of course not the first what could be called a "modern" police procedural TV series, Miami Vice (1984-1989) arguably started and defined how modern "gritty" TV shows of the genre are made. Most modern police procedurals owe a great deal to Miami Vice. Also many other TV series of the era are very fondly remembered (even more so that most TV series prior and since), such as Knight Rider (1982-1986), The A-Team (1983-1987), MacGyver (1985-1992), L.A. Law (1986-1994), Dynasty (1981-1989), Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996), and others.
The 1980's was also the time when music, especially (but not limited to) electronic music, went into overdrive. While the 1970's already saw a lot of experimentation into especially electronic music, with all the new technological inventions allowing new types of artificial sounds to be created, it was really the 1980's when the artform was really refined, with an enormous amount of new music styles and genres appearing, most of which have persisted to this day and, once again, have had a great influence in most music ever since.
Rap music was by large refined to its modern form throughout the 80's. Most forms of modern electronic music was likewise refined and even invented in the 80's, such as all forms of techno with its myriads of variants, as well as trance, house, and so on. The 80's was also the era of glam rock and especially metal music, when most of the forms of modern metal was likewise refined and even invented. (While so-called glam rock was already pretty much in full force in the 1970's, the 80's is still the decade that's most remembered and marked by the extragavant showmanship of the genre.)
The 1980's also saw the invention and popularization of a vast amount of consumer electronics that were either a rarity or non-existent prior, and that have had a huge influence on culture and society ever since. The decade saw the proliferation of very cheap forms of physical mass distribution of music and movies in the form of compact cassettes and VHS tapes and players. It was also the decade that pretty much defined the notion of a home gaming console, portable gaming consoles, and home computers, something that has gone pretty much effectively unchanged to this day (with only the computational prowess of the hardware and the ergonomics of controllers being the main things that have progressed).
Ironically, the 1980's is also fondly remembered for what it did not have, as it gives nostalgic feelings about "the time before" such-and-such fancy new things.
For example, while the internet did exist pretty much for the entirety of the 1980's, it was extremely primitive and just a privilege of the very few. It wasn't but the latter half of the 1990's and the early 2000's that the internet became a widespread commodity. In the 1980's pretty much nobody had access to the internet, so it was pretty much the last decade "before the internet". This had a great deal of influence in society and how for example information was conveyed to the wider public. For example magazines, such as video game magazines, were extremely popular in the 1980's because they were almost the only way to get any sort of information about new video games. Likewise communication between people over large distances was much harder, as calling people via telephone, especially abroad, tended to be very expensive, and sending them physical mail was very slow (sometimes a letter taking even weeks to arrive at its destination).
The same can be said, to some extent, about television and newspapers, as prior to the internet they were pretty much the only way to know what was happening in the world, or even your own country (although this was still largely the case well into the 1990's and somewhat into the early 2000's, so it's not that strongly associated with the 80's particularly.)
Similarly, affordable and viable cellphones did not become a thing until the 1990's, so the 1980's was pretty much the last "cellphone-free" decade. Landline phones were the norm, and when you were away from home, you were pretty much disconnected from the rest of the world outside your immediate surroundings. Phone booths were extremely common in this decade precisely because of this reason.
I believe these are some of the many reasons why the 1980's, from all the decades in the past half a century or so, is particularly significant and influential, and why it tends to be the decade that's most fondly remembered and causes the most nostalgia. People rarely reminisce about the 1960's, 1970's or 1990's as much as about the 80's.
What makes precisely the 1980's so special, to stand out so prominently from the rest? I think there are many reasons for this.
The 1980's was the time when many of the modern movie conventions were invented or refined, and many of the most memorable cult classics of (what could be classified as) modern cinema came from this era. Masterpieces of modern cinema that defined and shaped their respective genres, and had great influence not only in moviemaking but also, and most importantly, on popular culture.
Movies like Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) greatly influenced the space horror genre, and even to this day many movies of that genre owe a great deal to them. The Terminator (1984) was also a great influence in the modern "light" sci-fi genre. And, of course, going into the more "hard-core" sci-fi, Blade Runner (1982) is a masterpiece, and most futuristic sci-fi movies today owe a lot to it. Quite many other horror sci-fi masterpieces were created in this era, such as The Thing (1982)
On the lighter side of sci-fi, no other movie franchise had a bigger influence in popular culture than the original Star Wars trilogy (1977, 1980, and 1983), although there are also many other fondly remembered and influential movies such as E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982), Robocop (1987), Tron (1982), Predator (1987), and Back to the Future (1985). Modern sci-fi owes a great deal to all these movies.
Modern horror movies also owe a great deal to cult classics from the era of the 1980's, such as Friday the 13th (1980), Halloween (1978), The Evil Dead (1981), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), The Shining (1980), Re-Animator (1985), Poltergeist (1981), The Fly (1986), and Scanners (1981), all of which were extremely influential trend-setters that have affected filmmaking to this day.
The 1980's also saw the creation of many TV series that are still fondly remembered (much more so than most TV series created prior or after) and which likewise made great innovations in how such series are made, and had a great influence on subsequent TV series to this day.
While of course not the first what could be called a "modern" police procedural TV series, Miami Vice (1984-1989) arguably started and defined how modern "gritty" TV shows of the genre are made. Most modern police procedurals owe a great deal to Miami Vice. Also many other TV series of the era are very fondly remembered (even more so that most TV series prior and since), such as Knight Rider (1982-1986), The A-Team (1983-1987), MacGyver (1985-1992), L.A. Law (1986-1994), Dynasty (1981-1989), Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996), and others.
The 1980's was also the time when music, especially (but not limited to) electronic music, went into overdrive. While the 1970's already saw a lot of experimentation into especially electronic music, with all the new technological inventions allowing new types of artificial sounds to be created, it was really the 1980's when the artform was really refined, with an enormous amount of new music styles and genres appearing, most of which have persisted to this day and, once again, have had a great influence in most music ever since.
Rap music was by large refined to its modern form throughout the 80's. Most forms of modern electronic music was likewise refined and even invented in the 80's, such as all forms of techno with its myriads of variants, as well as trance, house, and so on. The 80's was also the era of glam rock and especially metal music, when most of the forms of modern metal was likewise refined and even invented. (While so-called glam rock was already pretty much in full force in the 1970's, the 80's is still the decade that's most remembered and marked by the extragavant showmanship of the genre.)
The 1980's also saw the invention and popularization of a vast amount of consumer electronics that were either a rarity or non-existent prior, and that have had a huge influence on culture and society ever since. The decade saw the proliferation of very cheap forms of physical mass distribution of music and movies in the form of compact cassettes and VHS tapes and players. It was also the decade that pretty much defined the notion of a home gaming console, portable gaming consoles, and home computers, something that has gone pretty much effectively unchanged to this day (with only the computational prowess of the hardware and the ergonomics of controllers being the main things that have progressed).
Ironically, the 1980's is also fondly remembered for what it did not have, as it gives nostalgic feelings about "the time before" such-and-such fancy new things.
For example, while the internet did exist pretty much for the entirety of the 1980's, it was extremely primitive and just a privilege of the very few. It wasn't but the latter half of the 1990's and the early 2000's that the internet became a widespread commodity. In the 1980's pretty much nobody had access to the internet, so it was pretty much the last decade "before the internet". This had a great deal of influence in society and how for example information was conveyed to the wider public. For example magazines, such as video game magazines, were extremely popular in the 1980's because they were almost the only way to get any sort of information about new video games. Likewise communication between people over large distances was much harder, as calling people via telephone, especially abroad, tended to be very expensive, and sending them physical mail was very slow (sometimes a letter taking even weeks to arrive at its destination).
The same can be said, to some extent, about television and newspapers, as prior to the internet they were pretty much the only way to know what was happening in the world, or even your own country (although this was still largely the case well into the 1990's and somewhat into the early 2000's, so it's not that strongly associated with the 80's particularly.)
Similarly, affordable and viable cellphones did not become a thing until the 1990's, so the 1980's was pretty much the last "cellphone-free" decade. Landline phones were the norm, and when you were away from home, you were pretty much disconnected from the rest of the world outside your immediate surroundings. Phone booths were extremely common in this decade precisely because of this reason.
I believe these are some of the many reasons why the 1980's, from all the decades in the past half a century or so, is particularly significant and influential, and why it tends to be the decade that's most fondly remembered and causes the most nostalgia. People rarely reminisce about the 1960's, 1970's or 1990's as much as about the 80's.
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
Is the fifty-move rule in chess the correct amount?
In chess, pretty much universally, the so-called "fifty-move rule" is applied: If at least 50 moves (ie. 100 half-moves, ie. both players have made 50 moves) have been made without a pawn move and without a capture, either player can declare the game as drawn. (In other words, applying the rule is optional.)
(If the 50th or any subsequent move is checkmate, then it takes precedence over the draw. A player cannot afterwards avoid being checkmated by retroactively trying to claim draw, if a checkmating move was allowed to be made. Curiously there have been cases of chess engines that have been incorrectly programmed to think that the 50-move draw takes precedence over the checkmate, and have lost a drawn game in this manner.)
While applying the rule is technically optional, FIDE quite recently (in 2014) introduced an additional (lesser known) rule for their tournaments that if 75 moves are made without a pawn move and without a capture, the game is drawn automatically (a referee may apply this rule if he sees this happening, and the game is ended regardless of what the players want.)
The 50-move rule might sound like a relatively recent invention, but actually it has a surprisingly long history. It was first introduced into chess by Ruy Lopez all the way back in the 1560's. While other numbers of moves were also suggested, 50 became the de facto standard quite quickly.
As you might imagine, this rule, and the exact number of moves, has been quite contentious over the centuries. After all, 50 is a completely arbitrary number that's not really based on anything. It was originally, and for many centuries, just a nice round number that's "big enough" for the vast majority of known endgames. There's really no reason why it couldn't be 45, or 60, or some other arbitrary number that's likewise "big enough".
With centuries of accumulated chess knowledge, unsurprisingly people started to eventually find endgames with forced wins that took longer than 50 moves. This felt unfair: A player could win the game, but since it took more than 50 moves (without a pawn move or a capture), he could not. Instead, the game would be declared draw, because of this rather arbitrary rule with its arbitrary number.
The rule was attempted to be patched several times. For example in 1928 FIDE amended the rule to state that if a known endgame position required more than 50 moves to a forced win, then the rule would be extended to 100 moves.
Since only a handful of endgame positions requiring more than 50 moves were known at the time, this was considered enough. However, over the decades, and especially after computers were used to analyze positions, more and more such positions were found, some requiring a lot more than 50 moves. (The current record known, as of writing this, is 545 moves to a forced win with optimal play from both players, without a pawn move or a capture.)
Since it became clearer and clearer that the number of such positions was innumerable, and the maximum amount of moves was likewise really large, FIDE decided in 2001 to restore the 50-move rule to be just 50 moves, period, for any position.
Does this rule make sense, given that there are so many positions where a game would be "incorrectly" declared a draw, even though one of the players would have a theoretical forced mate and thus victory? Does it make sense for the number of moves to be that completely arbitrary 50? (Why 50 and not some other amount?)
Rather obviously, the rule exists for practical reasons, especially in tournaments. A game cannot be allowed, for very practical reasons, to continue indefinitely. (While the three-fold repetition rule would stop certain repetitive patterns from going on forever, it's not enough to stop a game from continuing for hundreds and hundreds, perhaps even thousands of moves, without the same position ever repeating three times.) Chess tournaments have an allotted time to be organized, for practical reasons, and a single game just cannot continue for days.
One could argue that chess clocks are for that purpose. This can indeed be the case, but on the other hand, there are tournament formats where each player gets additional time for each move, so theoretically the game could continue indefinitely. (There may also be smaller tournaments, eg. for school students, that don't use clocks at all.)
If we agree that some limit has to be put on games that just don't progress in any meaningful way ("progress" being measured by irreversible moves, ie. pawn moves and captures), then 50 moves is not an unreasonable amount. It's plenty enough for like 99.99% of (pawnless) endgame positions that happen in real life practical games. Engames that are theoretical wins in more than 50 moves (without pawn moves and captures) are extraordinarily rare, especially in actual realistic games.
Given that it's impossible to even prove for most positions whether they are forced wins, and given that the vast majority of players would usually not even know how to win for certain (the likelihood that they will make a mistake and make the game an actual draw, or even a loss for them, is quite high), I think it's completely reasonable to just ignore those extraordinarily rare circumstances, and not try to apply patch after patch to the rule. Starting to list all the exceptions to the rule (which was attempted by FIDE at one point) would be an endless wild goose chase.
I think the 50-move rule makes practical sense, and the number 50 is acceptable, given how rare the exceptions are. It has more practical value than the astronomically rare games where it "wrongly" makes a won game a draw.
(If the 50th or any subsequent move is checkmate, then it takes precedence over the draw. A player cannot afterwards avoid being checkmated by retroactively trying to claim draw, if a checkmating move was allowed to be made. Curiously there have been cases of chess engines that have been incorrectly programmed to think that the 50-move draw takes precedence over the checkmate, and have lost a drawn game in this manner.)
While applying the rule is technically optional, FIDE quite recently (in 2014) introduced an additional (lesser known) rule for their tournaments that if 75 moves are made without a pawn move and without a capture, the game is drawn automatically (a referee may apply this rule if he sees this happening, and the game is ended regardless of what the players want.)
The 50-move rule might sound like a relatively recent invention, but actually it has a surprisingly long history. It was first introduced into chess by Ruy Lopez all the way back in the 1560's. While other numbers of moves were also suggested, 50 became the de facto standard quite quickly.
As you might imagine, this rule, and the exact number of moves, has been quite contentious over the centuries. After all, 50 is a completely arbitrary number that's not really based on anything. It was originally, and for many centuries, just a nice round number that's "big enough" for the vast majority of known endgames. There's really no reason why it couldn't be 45, or 60, or some other arbitrary number that's likewise "big enough".
With centuries of accumulated chess knowledge, unsurprisingly people started to eventually find endgames with forced wins that took longer than 50 moves. This felt unfair: A player could win the game, but since it took more than 50 moves (without a pawn move or a capture), he could not. Instead, the game would be declared draw, because of this rather arbitrary rule with its arbitrary number.
The rule was attempted to be patched several times. For example in 1928 FIDE amended the rule to state that if a known endgame position required more than 50 moves to a forced win, then the rule would be extended to 100 moves.
Since only a handful of endgame positions requiring more than 50 moves were known at the time, this was considered enough. However, over the decades, and especially after computers were used to analyze positions, more and more such positions were found, some requiring a lot more than 50 moves. (The current record known, as of writing this, is 545 moves to a forced win with optimal play from both players, without a pawn move or a capture.)
Since it became clearer and clearer that the number of such positions was innumerable, and the maximum amount of moves was likewise really large, FIDE decided in 2001 to restore the 50-move rule to be just 50 moves, period, for any position.
Does this rule make sense, given that there are so many positions where a game would be "incorrectly" declared a draw, even though one of the players would have a theoretical forced mate and thus victory? Does it make sense for the number of moves to be that completely arbitrary 50? (Why 50 and not some other amount?)
Rather obviously, the rule exists for practical reasons, especially in tournaments. A game cannot be allowed, for very practical reasons, to continue indefinitely. (While the three-fold repetition rule would stop certain repetitive patterns from going on forever, it's not enough to stop a game from continuing for hundreds and hundreds, perhaps even thousands of moves, without the same position ever repeating three times.) Chess tournaments have an allotted time to be organized, for practical reasons, and a single game just cannot continue for days.
One could argue that chess clocks are for that purpose. This can indeed be the case, but on the other hand, there are tournament formats where each player gets additional time for each move, so theoretically the game could continue indefinitely. (There may also be smaller tournaments, eg. for school students, that don't use clocks at all.)
If we agree that some limit has to be put on games that just don't progress in any meaningful way ("progress" being measured by irreversible moves, ie. pawn moves and captures), then 50 moves is not an unreasonable amount. It's plenty enough for like 99.99% of (pawnless) endgame positions that happen in real life practical games. Engames that are theoretical wins in more than 50 moves (without pawn moves and captures) are extraordinarily rare, especially in actual realistic games.
Given that it's impossible to even prove for most positions whether they are forced wins, and given that the vast majority of players would usually not even know how to win for certain (the likelihood that they will make a mistake and make the game an actual draw, or even a loss for them, is quite high), I think it's completely reasonable to just ignore those extraordinarily rare circumstances, and not try to apply patch after patch to the rule. Starting to list all the exceptions to the rule (which was attempted by FIDE at one point) would be an endless wild goose chase.
I think the 50-move rule makes practical sense, and the number 50 is acceptable, given how rare the exceptions are. It has more practical value than the astronomically rare games where it "wrongly" makes a won game a draw.
Friday, May 10, 2019
Sonic Forces: A surprising gem of a game
I have to admit I have never been a fan of any of the Sonic games. No, not even the first three ones. (I once got to actually try them on an actual Sega Genesis. I was not hooked in the least. Sorry, but that's just how it is.)
The Sonic franchise kept dormant for a while, but eventually new more modern games were made. The general consensus has always been that these new installments have been between mediocre and absolutely horrendous, with only maybe one or two exceptions (and even those have generally not got much praise).
A couple of years ago a new game was released: Sonic Forces. I actually saw a few reaction and "let's play" videos (although I mostly just skimmed through them), and it didn't look all that interesting to me. Perhaps the character creation was slightly interesting, but otherwise it looked like a relatively boring repetitive game.
Some time ago I had a lack of something to play on the Nintendo Switch, and a friend lent me his copy of Sonic Forces. I wasn't particularly excited about it, but decided to try it anyway, because I had nothing better to play while traveling. I was expecting (and I even expressed this to him) to perhaps play the game for half an hour, maybe an hour at most, and get bored of it.
So I started playing it... and playing it... and playing it. I played it at home in docked mode... and kept playing it. And I continued to play it the next day.
To my own surprise, I found myself playing it to the end. It's not an extraordinarily long game (less than 10 hours for a first-time playthrough), but even more to my surprise I wouldn't have actually minded if it had been a bit longer.
It was actually a pretty fun game to play. It's not the best game in existence, but believe me, I have played much, much worse games than this. It was surprisingly addictive, enticing and fun. My experience was surprisingly positive.
I'm fully of the opinion that this is an underappreciated gem. It's not a masterpiece, but it doesn't have to be. It was fun and entertaining, and may I even say cute, and that's all that matters. It might not be for everybody, but it just hit the right buttons for me, at least. I liked it.
A couple of years ago a new game was released: Sonic Forces. I actually saw a few reaction and "let's play" videos (although I mostly just skimmed through them), and it didn't look all that interesting to me. Perhaps the character creation was slightly interesting, but otherwise it looked like a relatively boring repetitive game.
Some time ago I had a lack of something to play on the Nintendo Switch, and a friend lent me his copy of Sonic Forces. I wasn't particularly excited about it, but decided to try it anyway, because I had nothing better to play while traveling. I was expecting (and I even expressed this to him) to perhaps play the game for half an hour, maybe an hour at most, and get bored of it.
So I started playing it... and playing it... and playing it. I played it at home in docked mode... and kept playing it. And I continued to play it the next day.
To my own surprise, I found myself playing it to the end. It's not an extraordinarily long game (less than 10 hours for a first-time playthrough), but even more to my surprise I wouldn't have actually minded if it had been a bit longer.
It was actually a pretty fun game to play. It's not the best game in existence, but believe me, I have played much, much worse games than this. It was surprisingly addictive, enticing and fun. My experience was surprisingly positive.
I'm fully of the opinion that this is an underappreciated gem. It's not a masterpiece, but it doesn't have to be. It was fun and entertaining, and may I even say cute, and that's all that matters. It might not be for everybody, but it just hit the right buttons for me, at least. I liked it.
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