iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Currently at home with a newborn and, finding videogames impractical as a hobby right now, I have decided to learn the solo mode for 'Wingspan'.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Although credit where credit's due, 'Wildlands' comes the closest to recapturing the magic. It's deeply, deeply flawed, but it sort of almost understands what 'Ghost Recon' was all about. Plus, I love alpine tundra and this is hands down the best depiction in a videogame.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

It's a shame the series never really matched this highpoint again. There's flashes of brilliance here and there in the rest of the games, but nothing is quite the total package that this one was. They quite literally do not make 'em like this anymore...

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

It's been 25 years since peak tac-sim (I don't want to hear your opinions about 'Operation Flashpoint', thanks). There has simply never been another game that blended intense realism with accessibility like this game did.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

The pinup on the side of the seaplane in TR2 is a great example. Definitely upscaled, because the details of it have started to diverge kinda wildly (and nonsensically) from the source image. Like, genuinely, what is she holding...

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Okay, I promise this is the last one. Here they clearly took some textures they already had and mirrored them to create a cobra head motif. The remaster repeats its trick of using a high res version of the original source, so instead of a cobra we get a jumble of arms and torso from a carved relief.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Here's the remastered lighting and it's just.. flatter? I won't argue that it's not more naturalistic, but it's definitely less interesting and does a worse job of showing off the level. The irony is that the techniques for lighting videogame levels HAVE improved significantly since 1998...

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

I realise that I'm risking being a bit "Old Man Yells at Cloud" here, but this is another example. The original graphics here have such great lighting, really evocative of vibe and place, and the mix of colours and brightness helping to pull your attention around the scene. It looks great.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Specifically there's some dodgy upscaled textures that fail to understand what the original graphics were going for, and then there's some odd instances of them unthinkingly using the same source images for the OG textures without asking whether that works. For example:

A scene from Tomb Raider III. Lara Croft stands on a surface of smooth river stones.

The same scene with the remastered graphics. The texture of the river stones is very clearly aquarium gravel and looks extremely weird.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

and Alain de Botton's 'Religion for Atheists', to explain the importance for society of temples and having places to gather together.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Walter Bejamin's 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', for an explaination on the value of physical pilgrimage and what it imbues art with.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

I've been doing my holiday thing of trying to keep off screens and the Internet as much as possible, but now I'm back and feeling inspired! So today I took on a little project of installing Windows 3.1 through DOSBox (and then naturally installing a bunch of Maxis games on it... )

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

'Star Trek: The Next Generation – A Final Unity' - 1995

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

It's interesting moving directly on from the first game to this one because, even though the technical improvements are only slight, the visual design of the environments just leaps forwards. That's not to say that I dislike the first game, but there's just somethings so much more here...

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

This 'Mirror's Edge' posting was caused by me deciding to finally play 'Catalyst' and discovering it kinda slaps? Waaay better that its reputation.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

The plus side is that it's on steep discount until it disappears, so consider nabbing it.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Sucks to see 'Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock' getting delisted in a week. It's a genuinely great "we go" space strategy game, and we'll worth your time.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 05/10/2025

Also: P-3 Orion, my beloved. It's nice to see you getting some love...

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

I always felt that their previous missile-age sim, 'Cold Waters', frustratingly hinted at complex systems happening above the water, and you never really got to see them as you were stuck with the limited information your submarine had access to. 'Sea Power' feels like a unveiling of those systems.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

What that means is that you can dive into it without having to read a 200 page manual like you did with the old Sonalysts sims from the mid-2000s. It's still punishingly difficult in places, but it feels like that because of you making mistakes rather than battling the controls or camera.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

This may have been triggered by me picking up the early access release of 'Sea Power', which I am loving so far. It's a real love letter to ships, and it hits the right balance of complexity in its simulation but with a fairly intuitive interface and good tutorials, something the genre often lacks.

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Of all the wargaming to be into it is the coolest, so there's that...

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Millennial PC Gaming Aesthetics @millennialpcaest.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

Sorry to report that I'm back on my naval wargames bullshit, so look forward to that...

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