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Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

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Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#511
The main From Software games (Demon Souls, DS, DS3, BB, and Sekiro). They really are special, and a cut above games like Witcher 3 or BoTW imo. I don't think I have ever played a game where nearly every element was best in class and worked so well together.

The "stories" are brilliant, and the way they are told is perfect for the medium. There is an incredible world, that is awe inspiring and fascinating, with deep and expansive lore, and yet it never gets in the way, or suffers from a disconnect with the player. In BoTW the vast majority of my actions make no sense in the context of the plot. In the DS games or BB the world doesn't revolve around my character, so my actions are those of an inhabitant rather than the driver of the plot, and thus my actions don't destroy my suspension of disbelief, despite the freedom given to me, the same way they do in a game like Cyberpunk where my player clearly exists in the separate plane from the one the the world is in.

The music matches the atmosphere and gameplay seamlessly, with very few disconnects. Especially Sekiro, which links its music to the gameplay nearly flawlessly. I won't claim it superior to Undertale, but it still lives in the very upper echelons.

The gameplay is genre defining. I don't think much more needs to be said of it, other than that the difficulty has been grossly misrepresented. My former roommate, who struggled with the tutorial levels of fallout 4 beat Sekiro. These games aren't easy, but they also probably aren't "too hard" for your average player.

And the level design is brilliant, intricate and varied, awe inspiring, and encouraging/requiring exploration without it feeling like a chore (swamps excepted).

Go play these games, jeez.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mandalorian has restored the faith in the future of the franchise in millions of fans. Most of us thought Star Wars was over considering how mediocre the last six movies have been but along comes this well-written, fun adventure that manages to tie together the previous movies, animated series and books. Imagine a new trilogy made by Filoni and Favreau - they would absolutely kill it.

Which books are you referring to? I don't feel like it draws particularly from the EU, though also no big contradictions like episodes 7-9.

If you include The Clone Wars as EU, it draws a lot from that. There's also a little bit from some of the novels.

https://www.thewrap.com/the-mandalorian-ahsoka-tano-star-war...

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#513
post #497

Lisp (specifically, I've learned Common Lisp). The power is amazing, being able to have code write code was something I didn't realize I was trying to do over and over in different languages, but to have it all just be code....amazing. And the parentheses are also great, just a simple syntax and auto formatting with a decent editor. Which brings me to Emacs. Still learning and being amazed at what can be done in ther…

Can you recommend a resource on lisp? I have some interest in learning a bit of it for fun because proper around here seem to marvel over it so much and I'd like to see what the hype is about.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#514

Vim: Although I use IDE for coding, Vim has been a good all-around editor for my past 8 years. I just hate working on editor without vim kb binding. MacOSX: As a veteran developer on Windows (and Linux), I really liked how everything worked well in GUI. While I can't explain it all, everything looks and feels intuitive and easier to work with, even little things like the command key, its various keyboard shortcuts, a…

+1 to vim, but no word of a lie, +2 to kakoune. This editor is literally the best possible right now. I'm still waiting for someone to write the paper proving editing with ranges is superior.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#515
post #458

World of Warcraft. Blizzard mentioned development of a MMORG in the late 1990's and started teasing in the early 2000's, and really ramped it up prior to launch. And when it landed, holy hell: it devastated worker's and student's sleep schedules for years. Plus it lived up to the hype: the world was huge and immersive, and they had tuned raiding & PvP based on the experience with co-operative Battle.net.

Still could never get into WoW after enjoying Everquest for so many years. Such an amazing game if you had the time to sink into it.

I recall that sentiment. I think those of us who avoided MMORPGs (either because of poor internet, or general fear of playing with other people << me) we weren't corrupted. I also recall a devoted following to UO also complaining about lack of domain-building in WoW.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#516
post #155

The Wire. I'd tried to watch it a few times, but only a few months ago actually got past the first two episodes. I think it helped that I quite quickly saw it as a morally ambiguous discussion of the institutional ineptitude of conservative western cultures in mitigating the effects of crime, rather than a typical 'good vs bad' cop show. With that mindset, the possibly-underwhelming finale of S1 is much more effectiv…

Also -- for anyone here that loved The Wire, I really recommend Treme. It is almost as good, just more about musicians than drugs. Writing and story lines are the same David Simon-esque style.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#517
post #49

iPhone (2007) Ok, maybe not so much the original 2007 model, arguably it wasn't until the iPhone 4 (2010) until it really came into its own. But few products released in my lifetime changed modern life as the iPhone did. And unlike most other seismic tech products (world-wide-web, linux) that took years to build momentum, it had lots of pre-release hype.

Absolutely the iPhone. Especially the original. Even today I think you could remove every optionally installed "app", and if all it had was a world-class web browser, weather, and the Maps app, be completely indispensable.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#518

Hamilton. I'm not big into theater nor musicals, and I had heard so much about it by the time I watched it on Disney+, I wasn't expecting it to blow me away but it totally did. I'm a huge fan now, watched it several times, listened to the album hundreds of times, read the book, and recommend it every time I can :)

Unfortunately, after listening to the soundtrack a bit, I find that I can only stand so much rap before my ears get tired.

Watch the Disney+ version with subtitles on, if you can. That deals effectively with the ear-tiredness problem.

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#519
post #426

As far as video game examples go... The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey. The trailers made them out to be the pinnacle of their respective franchises, and people's expectations for the two games was sky high. This plus all the changes made to the 3D Zelda and Mario formats meant there was a lot riding on these titles. But both delivered on that hype. They've both done extremely well in term…

What I loved about Super Mario 64 was that it used the same area for 6 stars (+ coin star). But for Galaxy for instance, you would just land on another area of the same planet and kinda follow "rail tracks" to the star. Haven't played Odyssey, but that's because I was a bit put off because of this. Is it better in this regard?

Re: Ask HN: What Lived Up to the Hype?

#520
Stadia, the initial reviews were actually pretty bad, but I'm blown away by how good it is. There's something undeniably cool about playing cyberpunk on a macbook air with full graphical detail, and then switching over to play on my TV exactly where I left off. The latency is virtually imperceptible to me, and I love that I don't need a 50 GB download just to try out a new game. Everytime I use it I'm honestly impressed that it works as well as it does. My only concern now is whether I can trust Google not to eventually kill it, given their recent track record.
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