Today I played through the campaign.

HOLY FUCK.

I was expecting the prototypical "unlock one new ability per level" thing that games do, based on the spoiler-free reviews I had read. So glad to find that wasn't the case. That being said, I absolutely did not expect:

the fucking time-travel level. HOLY SHIT THAT WAS AWESOME!!!

Nor did I expect

The sky-chase level. So well done! So fun! Fuck Viper.

And the last thing...

The level where the dynamic scenario factory is building a level as you play through it... The sheer size and scope of the moving pieces Respawn was able to imagine, construct, and execute still stagger me. The first Titanfall had all these epic splash screens to show you how they imagined the game universe, but this Titanfall actually had that same sense of scale in the real gameplay...

It was simply fucking brilliant.

On a scale of 0-The Last of Us for emotional connection and storytelling, I put this at a 9. So, so good. This game was every bit as stunning, impressive, and satisfying as CoD: MW3 was. There were so many purely awesome things... It just played out wonderfully.

Thanks for the recommendation, good buddy.

But I absolutely agree with you about scanlines and fake "static" on digital televisions when it can't find an input and photo "filters" that make things look like they were processed 30 years ago by someone that didn't know how photography worked. These were not happy accidents. These were just problems.

Purely from a "capturing an aesthetic" perspective.

Here

I very much dislike games which seek to capture a 'retro' aesthetic. Often it's not even gotten right: they do it wrong and just use low res pixel art, forgetting that there were limitations on color palate and sprite count. But the biggest thing that I hate is that it was a style forced by hardware limitation. We don't have those limitations anymore. So fucking use your 16.7 million colors, 1080p frame buffers, and memory pool that allows for more animation frames. Give us gorgeous images. Move forward, not back.

Double Fine goes from giving us something that looks great (but unfortunately didn't move great) like Broken Age, and now is going back to 16 colors with Thimbleweed Park. Disgraceful and backwards.

Filters that curve the screen or add scan lines blow by the way. It doesn't approximate what it really looked like at all and just looks like shit.

Here

http://hip2save.com/2016/11/03/sams-club-1-day-only-sale-on-november-12th-big-savings-on-gift-cards-electronics-k-cup...

https://m.samsclub.com/ip/xbox-one-battlefield-extra-controller-gam/prod20620120

I keep a CRT SDTV around to play old games, but is completely baffles me how wrong so many people get it when it comes to ports and conversions. It's unfortunately rare to see ports of 2D games on modern systems get the scaling and filtering right. It can be done though. Megaman Legacy collection looks great. Megaman 9 and 10 on the other hand, look like shit on an HDTV.

I could potentially equal this argument with you losing the disc and no one pressing the disc anymore. I assume the difference is you could always buy it from someone else, which is similar to someone else keeping the digital data stored somehow and selling to you at a later point in time.

I think it's much easier to find a used disc based copy of a game. In particular, the workings on the app store make it impossible to give people your games.

Edit: Someone convince me that having to deal with it being on physical media is worth it.

Have you ever played "The Act?".

You can't play it anymore. It's gone. Off the app store. I doubt you can find an arcade machine anymore. There's one in the International Arcade Museum, but where else?

And it's a shame, because it's 1000x better than Dragon's Lair and actually kind of works as a video game, not to mention being gorgeous. But you can't play it because it's never been on a disc.

Many games don't hold up. A few totally do and are jsut as fun as they've ever been. Adventure, River Raid, Kaboom!, breakout, others. Good times.

Edit: Someone convince me that having to deal with it being on physical media is worth it.

Do you think you'd be able to hold on to an e-book for 30 years to someday read to your kid?

Do you think kids will be reading physical books 30 years from now?

And I say this as someone carefully collecting my favorite books in a growing library.

I don't know about that, but I almost certainly won't be playing any current videogames 30 years from now :)

I played through Mario 3 today on my NES.

I don't know how you do it. I can't go back :)

2D games tend to fare much better over time.