“You can see the cabbage in it.” Immersion; First Impressions. [Nice Replay]

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Nice Games Club is on break until January, so your nice hosts can take time to wrap up work on Widget Satchel, coming to PC and consoles in 2019! In the meantime, we picked out a few of our favorite episodes from our first two years in the clubhouse.

One of Martha’s picks, this was our 42nd episode (don’t panic!). It was first released on August 30th, 2017.

Original show notes:

It’s a slightly experimental show this week, as we try to see what a two-topic episode looks like. Also, Martha defends her love of coleslaw, Stephen still doesn’t really like VR, and Mark has almost completely lost his voice.

[0:05:54] Video Game Immersion

• Our pal and VR innovator Andrew Fladeboe.
• “Representation and Embodiment in Virtual Reality” – Jorge Albor, PopMatters
• Bioshock (remastered) opening scene
• “Would You Kindly Read This Article on Gaming’s Greatest Plot Twist?” – Mike Diver, Vice
• Our recent episode of Nice Plays: OneShot
• “Enhancing VR Immersion with the CPU in Star Trek: Bridge Crew” – Cristiano F, Intel
• “Cognitive Flow: The Psychology of Great Game Design” – Sean Baron
• “Why Sonic the Hedgehog is awful, and always has been” – Ryan Brown, The Mirror
• Requiem, a “roleplaying” mod for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
• Mark is up to 118 shrines in Breath of the Wild. Stephen is not happy.

[0:39:27] Main Menus and First Impressions

• “Why do console games require a button press before showing the main menu?” – StackExchange
• “Game Design: Splash Screen” – Jesse Freeman
• “The Ten Commandments Of Video Game Menus” – Kirk Hamilton, Kotaku
• We didn’t get a chance to talk about it in the episode, but here is a cool breakdown of the main menu in Brutal Legend, which uses video compositing and some other fun tricks.