CULTURE

A Robot Has A Record Deal: How Artificial Intelligence Could Save Music

Warner music group just signed a deal for 20 records made by an algorithm.

FACT Magazine

Despite movies like The Matrix trying to warn us against the dangers of artificial intelligence, it appears humankind is walking eyes-wide-open into an AI induced apocalypse.

Look around, signs that malevolent technology is already among us are everywhere. Deep down, you know Siri resents you, you can hear it in her tone when you ask her to place your saved Domino's order. Your smart TV didn't glitch; it deleted your taped episodes of The Bachelor out of spite. Alexa didn't mishear you, she's just tired of your shit.

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Final Fantasy 7 Remake

Square Enix

They don't make JRPGs like they used to, but maybe that's a good thing.

While classic JRPGs thrived during the PlayStation 1 era and saw major innovations during the PlayStation 2 era, the PlayStation 3 era marked a major fall from grace for the genre. Save for a few major titles like Dark Souls and Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, fresh JRPG releases had grown increasingly scarce, and even the more major titles like Final Fantasy XIII were plagued by mixed reviews.

But with the PlayStation 4, JRPGs have seen a return to prominence. Sure, there may not be as many individual releases of bizarre, unheard of IPs like there were during the PS1 era, but PS4 era JRPGs have more than made up for quantity with quality. These are the best-of-the-best:

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CULTURE

The 9 Best JRPGs of the PS3 Era

JRPGs experience growing pains, too.

Final Fantasy 13 Lightning

Square Enix

The PlayStation 3 era was a weird time to be a fan of JRPGs.

The PlayStation 1 era was a creative boom for JRPGs as a genre, and the PlayStation 2 era was a period wherein many previous JRPG innovations were honed and perfected. But by the PlayStation 3 era, JRPGs had largely fallen out of favor in the wider world of gaming, with many critics regarding their classic turn-based mechanics as stale and boring.

The action RPG style of gameplay popularized by Kingdom Hearts, which combines active combat with menu navigation, became the most prominent mechanic in newer JRPGs. Some of these newer titles worked incredibly well, while others faltered and dug the genre further into the trenches. Ultimately, the PS3 era offered far fewer JRPGs than previous generations, but even so, there were a few gems that are still absolutely worth playing. These are the best JRPGs of the PS3 era.

Also, as a side note, I'm not including Persona 5, as it came out on both PS3 and PS4 simultaneously, and I consider it to primarily be a PS4-gen title.

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Culture News

Sony's PS5 Event Delay Is the Right Move (Even If It's Just PR)

If a brand can back positive social change through financially beneficial PR, that's still a positive.

Sony

Corporations have one interest and one interest only: profit.

No matter how much you love a nostalgic toy brand from your childhood or a fast food chain's Twitter account, it's worth remembering that their primary goal is always to get you to buy their product. Brands are not your friends, and it's naive to think that they ever "do the right thing" out of some higher sense of justice beyond their bottom line.

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Film Features

How A24 is Saving Movies

How the Small Distribution Company is Giving a Much Needed Voice to First-Time Directors

Set

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

My first proper date with my first ever girlfriend was to see Spring Breakers, the weirdest movie granted a wide theatrical release in 2013.

Directed by the mostly-underground Harmony Korrine, the film became notorious for James Franco's performance as Alien, an off-beat, very colorful gangster with a head covered in dreadlocks and an accent somewhere between a Tallahassee truck driver and Marcellus Wallace. I saw that movie in theatres. I didn't know it at the time, but the A24 Productions logo that kickstarted the experience would go on to become one of the most important symbols you could pin to a movie in the 2010's. It's since become a mark of excellence. Now, in 2020, you see a movie distributed by A24, and you know one thing: that movie will certainly be awesome, but might even be visionary, too. A24 is very quietly saving movies, and they're doing it by going against the most time-held and obvious of box office rules: They invest in uncertainties.

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popular

An Old Gamer Recommends Classic Video Games to Gen-Z

Allow an elder millennial gamer to show you young'uns the ropes.

SSX 3

Eurogamer.net

2020 marks the expected release for both Sony and Microsoft's next generation consoles, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Even better, both companies have promised potential buyers backwards compatibility with games from past console generations. So when Pandora's Box of old school video games is opened for the masses, what games should Gen Z prioritize to dust off the digital cobwebs? Allow an elder millennial to show you young'uns the ropes.

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