My favorite is that their seeming takeaway from the success of Barbie is to go heads deep into TOY MOVIES.

I remember a lot of moments like this, the sheer time I had to mess with systems, how things weren’t taken for granted and all seemed new - Halo 1’s Flood reveal blew me away and the driving physics were incredible - it changed on ice and the Warthog’s turret ejected casings that bounced and accumulated on the ground! And then Halo 2/Half-Life 2’s physics impressed me, etc. But of course going back to some things from today’s perspective makes them seem primitive. Starcraft’s 12 unit selection limit? Skyward Sword’s lack of direct camera control without hitting a button?

But most recently I’d say Outer Wilds, Titanfall 2 and the recent main Zelda games threw the most wonder at me.

Outer Wilds for being a completely fresh onion of a puzzle/space exploration game, plenty of video essays with varying levels of spoilers there.

Titanfall 2 is on the surface a sci-fi FPS but the shift in scale between on-foot and in-Titan is unique combined with inventive levels and mechanics.

Breath of the Wild amazed me with the reveal of its scale and world.

Tears of the Kingdom amazes me with how polished it’s physics and sandbox is, I haven’t seen things work as well and without crazy quirks like I have in this game.

Outer Wilds moment

I think about that sometimes, I’m already cringing at new slang like “X is giving me Y” replacing “X is giving me Y vibes” since I’m old and keep wondering “X is giving you Y what?”

I’ve been deleting a lot of the old time-specific ones too in my photo library here and there - I imagine those like the Boat-Stuck-in-Canal or OceanGate memes - assuming the internet kinda survives - will be thought of like that Mesopotamia joke(?) that has lost its context except by super history buffs.

looking forward to more r/masterhacker content in the future