![the hunter call of the wild free atv dlc the hunter call of the wild free atv dlc](https://cdn.player.one/sites/player.one/files/styles/lg/public/2021/06/29/p1thehunternewdlc.png)
Or, like me, just grow a vast screenshot folder you really keep meaning to organise and tidy sometime. Explore, focus, change lenses and exposures, then share discoveries and pretties with your pals. I am always appreciative when a game lets me pause the action and examine a world at my own pace, from my own angles. Thank goodness, then, for the development of the photo mode. And I think that’s something I really like about video games: the tension between “Wow I’m really here!” and “Oh god what is this horrible trick?” Photo Modeīut if artists are putting so much care and love in these worlds, how are we to share and enjoy them? It’s hard to appreciate the small details when violence, motor vehicles, and jetpacks are whooshing you past them at great speed. But if you look closely, maybe it’ll feel even less real, so clearly wrong. Knock-off brands can make a game world feel more real if you only catch the flash of colour out the corner of your eye. Like if New York were secretly moved to France and its cultural markers shifted: the giant pizza slice replaced with Pissaladière, the subway referred to as the “metro”, and the Yankees and Mets ignored to hype up a football rivalry between New York City FC and the NY Red Bulls.
![the hunter call of the wild free atv dlc the hunter call of the wild free atv dlc](https://skidrowgamereloaded.co/uploads/games/images/61/1573821496_thehunter-call-of-the-wild-saseka-safari-trophy-lodge.jpg)
It might look like a place you know, people might speak the language you know and use the slang you know, but something is just off. A world without familiar brands just feels weird, which is a distressing thought. The reason video game worlds feel unreal isn’t anything to do with graphics technology, it’s because they’re missing the brands which constantly fill our eyes. The developers don’t have to make parody brands, of course (and we might return to this on a future face-off), but few can resist the opportunity to slip in a wee wdaft joke.
![the hunter call of the wild free atv dlc the hunter call of the wild free atv dlc](https://avalanchestudios.com/resized/unsafe/1200x630/smart/filters:quality(85)/https%3A%2F%2Fimages.prismic.io%2Favalanche-studios%2F991cd483-d877-47db-8392-345caa4c4a93_CoTW_2021_mynewsdesk_headerSTEAM.png)
Point is, you will likely have encountered an in-game brand which tries to avoid trademark problems while remaining familiar by parodying a real-world brand. Or maybe you you heard radio ads for Pißwasser, or used an iFruit phone. Or maybe the machine was decorated with the red and white swooshes of Grog, or Nuka Cola, or it sold Dr Pooper, or Sprunk, or Poopsi, or Bepis Max. If you’ve played a video game set in a world even remotely resembling our own, you may have seen a drinks machine selling lurid green cans of refreshing Mountain Who. Reader dear, what’s better: parody in-game brands, or photo modes?
![the hunter call of the wild free atv dlc the hunter call of the wild free atv dlc](https://img.youtube.com/vi/SoegUaezMhQ/0.jpg)
This time, it’s a question of things you want to screenshot versus a way of taking screenshots. Pick yourself up, Alice, dust yourself off, and continue the search. But this is a collaborative process, and if we’re to find the single best thing I will need to watch many of my loves be fed into an industrial shredder. I am tremendously sorry to report that last time (which I imagine was only a week or two ago), you decided that unit designers are better than handcrafted art styles. With your help, I’m on a mission to answer the biggest question: what’s the best things in video games? With a wholly sensical face-off between two things each week, we’ll surely soon discover the absolute best thing.