GameCube games MSRP was 49.99. Adjusted for inflation it is $79.30. The reason things feel so expensive is because you get half cooked broken DLC ridden games as the norm and a large portion of income goes toward housing, transportation (cars specifically), food and education.
Mhmm. Everyone is shitting on Nintendo, but the reality is their games are literally keeping up with inflation. The problem is that our wages haven’t kept up with inflation, and the cost of living has, at least, kept up. In some cases (rent), it’s grown faster than the inflation of everything else.
Don’t get me wrong, Nintendo is tone deaf for making this decision now, and I suspect they’d still make billions with a $15 price increase rather than a $30 one. I’m not defending them. But the picture is a lot larger than them.
If Nintendo always made games that didn’t need dlc or got free updates, didn’t require Nintendo online for full functionality, or had to pay a 30% platform fee, it would make much more sense for this price. I don’t believe for a second they won’t make a profit at $60 for their mainline games.
You’re also forgetting maybe the biggest factor: library selection. We used to have a lot of choices, but not literal thousands of choices across all our platforms. If we only had our choice of a few hundred games, $80 might sound more reasonable.
theres also the chance that at least for TTYD, that was a players choice version of the game, which retailed for 20$ new. since its 2006, on the wake of the Wii
This is a very smart and thoughtful perspective. One should consider their time and money as valuable, and not put it in games they disagree with. Do you have any good alternatives to recommend for the most popular Valve FPSs?
You might not like my answer, but I haven’t really played new FPS games in years, because basically none of them are doing what I want. I’m well served in basically every other genre right now, but these things are cyclical. We’re just getting through the era of indie FPS games inspired by Doom/Quake and other more maze-like shooters, and we may soon be entering the era where FPS games are inspired by my favorites. My multiplayer these days is usually fighting games, and the only ones that will give you trouble on Linux are Dragon Ball FighterZ and the upcoming 2XKO, both due to anti cheat.
As an aside, I’ll also say that where you put your time shouldn’t matter, if the product is free, for instance, but it does matter in online video games. Your presence in matchmaking is adding value for someone else who might spend money in the game, so you’d still be helping the causes of CS2 and TF2 just by playing on the official servers. For TF2, I think the code just went open source and there’s a revitalization project to bring it back to what it was like at launch? If so, that might be pre-loot-box, and playing that version of the game would help send the message you want to send. The same might apply to old versions of Counter-Strike.
I myself am against fomo. So we are sort of similar a little bit at least. We both dislike dark patterns.
I second that fighting games are mostly a mecca for us. I recommend Guilty Gear Strive, basically the only complaints people have about it nowadays is that it and it’s lobbies can load kind of slow, and some subjectively don’t like the gameplay, but that is up to you to decide (personally I love it’s gameplay). The new Virtua Fighter also looks incredible, maybe when it releases it will suit you well.
I also agree that tf2 classic looks great. It’s like the tf2 we grew to love but without the bullshit. When it releases on steam hopefully it gains traction.
Other games that are extremely pro consumer that I enjoy are Due Process and Straftat.
I haven’t been into FPS for several years, but if I was going to play anything current, I’d give The Forever Winter a look. It’s still being worked on, but the early access gameplay is really cool looking, and it’s bringing a lot of ideas to the table creatively.
I like a FPS but I have the most fun with the PVE sub genre of FPS. Left 4 Dead 2 and Deep Rock Galactic being my two favorites. Playing against other humans can be annoying if the skill balance isn’t right and if they’re cheating then it makes it no fun, imo.
Most people won’t budge. It doesn’t matter if Win10 is unsupported or isn’t getting a security update, I reckon a solid 40 of 43% will just stay on it until programs they use stop working.
Basically my plan until I can scrounge enough money up for a new computer. My current one literally won’t let me upgrade due to some component/driver it lacks.
For some of the hardware requirements, there are edits you can make to get it to install, but you do have to also force it every time there is a major release, minor updates go through fine.
Definitely you should look into Linux, it’s really gotten quite good. Especially if you don’t need games with anti cheat.
But if you just want to use Windows 11, it’s super duper easy. Just Google “download Windows 11 iso” and grab the iso file from Microsoft website.
Then download Rufus.
Then pop in a thumb drive that’s at least 8gb. Open Rufus, select your thumb drive and the iso, then choose the option to remove windows requirements, then click start.
Backup your files on Windows 10, save them somewhere. Then pop in the thumb drive and install windows 11 fresh.
The requirements aren’t actually required. Win 11 runs fine on all sorts of hardware. Support stops at 8th Gen Intel, but I’ve installed it on 5th Gen. My work laptop is 2nd or 3rd Gen. It’s fine 🤷♂️
Technically less secure? Yeah, in some ways. But it’s miles ahead of running unpatched windows 10 after September.
Oh shit this is actually really helpful, I might end up doing the Rufus USB route when I get my stuff back up and running (apartment flooded and I have to wait until the finish fixing my ceiling before I can plug everything back up.)
Yeah I’m just going to stick on Win 10 for a while. Apparently the enterprise version is getting support for longer so maybe I’ll see if I can get on that.
Yep, I feel like people overestimate how much anyone cares about official support or security patches or whatever. People will assume it’s fine until they’re either forced out or something goes horribly wrong.
Regular folks will most likely let it be if possible, until it’s time for a new PC anyway.
Yep. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but valve dropping support for windows 7 was what made me switch to linux. Until the computer stops working for the average user, they won’t change.
Tes 3: Morrowind, every NPCs can be killed and of course if you kill some of them before they got usefull to progress the main quest you are locked.
At their death there is a notification message like “you fucked up, you can reload or continue to play in this world forever doomed”. BUT, in my first playthrough some broken mod I installed was hiding this message …
Also, in the same game you could lose quest item and be unable to finish the main quest. But that kind of require you to be stupid on purpose, because it’s obvious what item are important.
EDIT: found the in game message: " With this character’s death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created."
Hey man, Morrowind quests don’t hold your hand! It’s not like there’s a minimap and some big ass marker over his head saying “don’t kill and rob this half naked dude who looks like a skooma addict in his tiny studio apartment because he’s secretly the spy master for the main faction in the game”! I was young! I chose violence!
It was some small QoL changes in the UI and menus, recommended by my friend who recommended me the game. I don’t remember exactly the changes but there was nothing big added or changed in the gameplay
Good news. You can still beat the game if the “thread of prophecy is severed”, but it is fairly challenging and generally requires stumble-luck or at LEAST knowledge of how to normally beat the game. It helps to know the identity of another character you have to kill in cold blood to get “almost back on track”. And then the location that serves no real purpose except to get back on track from that situation.
Yes indeed, I know what you are talking about. But I would not really consider that the “normal” ending as described by OP. Even if the ending scene itself is exactly the same, it’s a very different path and clearly a much harder one.
OK hear me out: Minecraft in survival. For real. Nothing jump scares like a creeper going “psshht” in your back, telegraphing that you’re about to die in a destructive explosion. As you walk a narrow path over a chasm of lava in the Nether, the wail of the Ghast might make you fall out of sheer panic before it even shoots at you. The Warden is a special kind of scary too, as it’s nearly unkillable and will detect you by the noise you make. It sounds kind of silly but there’s plenty of players making the remark that Minecraft survival is basically horror.
And it’s all in a child friendly, non gory, voxel style.
Yeah that shit scared me when I played it at 40 years old. It kind of wears you down when you walk around in dark caves for hours on end.
Another alternative might be Subnautica. It has some jump scares but mostly it’s just the Deep Unknown that gives you chills. Few things in that game are actually dangerous.
Aw man, preparing for the nether and writing down my coordinates, terrified of ghasts and facing blazes for as long as I could stand it. I still prepare for any excursion from my base like a packrat.
While we’re at it with non-horror games: the level that introduced the flood in Halo CE really gave me a scare. I don’t know what it says about me, but I invited a friend over to play that level with me, lol. It’s a bit of a reach not being a horror game, but a great game with some tension here and there.
Seems like gaming piracy is really dying this time for sure. Most sites are compromised and untrustworthy, big teams are retiring, the one remaining denuvo cracker that i heard of is apparently psychotic... It doesn't seem like it bodes well
Looking at the world rn, I dont think things have a tendency to get better on their own. In a decade or two people won't even believe we lived in the wild west era of internet where you could just get stuff for free without a subscription, online connection or drm.
When people run out of money to pay for a billion subscriptions, companies will have to think hard about their business model. I don’t think the current trend can last forever.
Look at the fragmentation of streaming services. Piracy is on the rise again because of it.
That's why I said gaming piracy before, I don't think denuvo can protect media files (yet) and those are less likely to be malware or cryptominers anyway. So I think that aspect is safe for now at least, but rip gaming.
Looking at the world rn, I dont think things have a tendency to get better on their own
This is called a recency bias (I think lol) - you’re looking at the world rn and assuming its trends must continue. When you look at history you see that there are ebbs and flows, and that stasis is rare. If you focus on certain things, you may certainly decide we’re in a downtrend. There will always be an uptrend afterward. And vice versa
That's way too big of a generalization. The fact is that technology advances and makes other technology obsolete, and the pirates are dwindling while DRM companies are getting more and more money to fix the issue. It is not going to just magically reverse at one point. If anything the people are just going to get more accustomed to it like they have already with copyright laws, subscription services and simply not owning anything digital anymore.
The second thing you're not addressing is how long the "ebb and flow" takes anyway, if gaming piracy has a resurgence in 50 years then I don't think I'm gonna care much about it by then lol. Blizzard games aren't getting cracked anymore and by the time they do, if ever, I'm not going to care about them.
The fact is that technology advances and makes other technology obsolete,
Yeah, it happens on both sides, it’s an arms race. It will swing the other way eventually - it always has and always will
The second thing you’re not addressing is how long the “ebb and flow” takes anyway
That was intentional. There’s no estimating a timeline, but with the development of technology it’s not unreasonable to expect a reversal even in a decade. Anyway, if you’re trying to ward off doomerism you’re not going to do it by only looking at what you stand to gain
Precisely the reason they'd be worth cracking I'd say. Anyway that was just an example, same goes for many EA / Ubi games for which it's just a matter of time before are perma-online or under denuvo.
Isn’t just piracy that’s dying, in my opinion, it’s gaming itself, or, at least, gaming as it used to be.
Besides Denuvo being a technology so bad that actually makes the original game worst than a copy without it, everyday comes with tons and tons of games with a pay-to-win approach or some kind of PBE. The only new, original and fun games nowadays are the indies, and it will be that way for a long time, as the industry seems to focus more and more in the mobile market since it’s already bigger than the PC and console together.
Gaming is definitely not dying it is a huge market. I don’t agree with the direction it’s heading though. But there are enough games released to keep my interest.
I expect all games to be bad by default now and don’t let myself get hyped up at all anymore. I waited on the edge of my seat since before the first teasers for CP2077 and still haven’t bothered to play it. I backed Star Citizen in 2013 lol… Was disappointed by Fallout 4 and 76 too, as a huge Fallout fan. I don’t remember the last game that legitimately lived up to my hopes and expectations. Fallout New Vegas I guess.
Yeah, I played it on release. Been trying it again lately with mods and it seems much more polished. The writing quality is still a pretty big disappointment, and the yes/yes/yes/no chat system.
For sure, indies are where it’s at. Most of my time gaming has been on indies for many years now. They are actually willing to do interesting things instead of chasing trends and money.
Occasionally you get large studios doing things like Baldur’s Gate 3, but it’s rare. Larian and FromSoft are about the only studios I trust to make good experiences that aren’t designed by the business team to make as much money as possible.
I agree that is clearly broken and overused in many games but if we were able to actually control the walking speed on PC with a keyboard similar to what is possible with a controller, it would probably be more bearable tbh.
SMB3 was an absolute banger and revolutionised the platforming genre while making the hardware run things it had no business doing, so much so that even id Software took inspiration from it.
World just improved the formula in every single way though. Far from ragging on SMB3, World just took an amazing game and polished it up beyond what was expected.
Sorry, that’s not correct. SMB3 was released in 1988 in Japan. It was delayed in North America until 1990 and released in the same year as SMW, while Nintendo of America ironed out its Super Nintendo console launch.
Super Mario World, in fact, started development as a port of Super Mario Bros. 3.
They’re interesting but aren’t used in novel ways. Leaf is great and Cape expands on it. Frog is entirely optional, Tanooki and Hammer are nice upgrades to Leaf and Fire Flower but don’t meaningfully change how you approach the game, the Shoe exists for a single level gimmick, and the map items are all little shortcuts to play less of the game. SMB3 does not use its unique tools to build new kinds of puzzles or present alternate paths through a level they just make the challenges a little easier.
Cape, P-Balloon, and Yoshi are much better utilized.
SMB3 does not use its unique tools to build new kinds of puzzles or present alternate paths through a level they just make the challenges a little easier.
This is extraordinarily wrong!
There are secrets that you need specific power ups to get to.
Raccoon/Tanuki are used to fly to secret areas or break blocks with the tail
Fire is used to melt blocks in the ice world
Frog can swim against strong currents
If you start some levels with an invincible star from the map, it will cause some blocks to drop a star instead of a coin, letting you chain invincibility through the whole level
Tanuki and Hammer aren’t necessary for anything in the main game, but they are for some e-reader levels where they can break blocks that can’t be broken normally
This is almost nothing, though. The secret areas are a handful of coins, or an extra power-up, or a magic whistle. Three sections of a water level or a wall of ice in one world is not a puzzle nor an “alternate path” in a meaningful way. E-reader? The niche peripheral adds a tiny bit of extra content for the GBA release of the NES game and that’s among your best arguments?
SMB3 is very good for what it is and a technical achievement but ranking it above World is pure nostalgia.
making the hardware run things it had no business doing,
Speaking of hardware limitations, Kirby’s Adventure plays like a mid gen SNES game, I have no idea how they got it running on NES. I need to play through it again
Kirby’s Adventure is the largest NES game ever officially released in terms of ROM size, and has a frankly absurd amount of graphics tiles. Just consider all of those required for the copy abilities thumbnails alone and you’ll see what I mean. It pulled basically every trick the MMC3 mapper is capable of, and was definitely a masterpiece of the system in the original sense, i.e. it displays astonishing mastery of the mechanics of the Famicom/NES.
What I find more amazing is that the MMC3 isn’t one of the mappers that confers any additional sound channels and the American NES didn’t support that capability anyway. So the entirety of the game’s iconic soundtrack fits within the confines of the NES’ two square waves, one triangle wave, one noise channel, and singular PCM channel.
I think ultimately it ran into memory constraints, even with the additional 8 KB provided by the mapper. If you sit back and look at them as a whole, its levels are all quite short. It’s still my favorite NES game bar none, though.
Programming all the copy abilities had to be a nightmare. Not only the graphics but the controls for things like the wheel & hi jump, the pallet swaps for the Freeze abilities, the environment interactions from the Hammer… it’s a ridiculous amount of content by today’s standards and it was made over 30 years ago.
Then add in cutscenes (all in-game engine, but still), between level overworld sections, mini-games… It’s baffling!
Half of that game would be DLC/premium content if it was made today.
As funny as this is, it’s also a very common logo, being a varient of the Penrose Triangle. Honestly more shocked they didn’t spring for some better graphics…
Yep and honestly I think it’s one of the better Assassins Creed games. It shows that at their best the Templar’s are trying to guide humanity into its future, while at their worst the Assassins are children playing with powers they don’t understand. Mind you that’s within the fact that the Templar’s are power tripping assholes in most games. I kinda wish we could get a Templar equivalent to Origin, perhaps have the Templar’s emerge out of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire after witnessing the Assassins being stupid with an artifact.
Fallout 3 for me works well as a sandbox and less as a narrative driven RPG. I had a lot of fun with it but I know if you went in expecting it to be something it’s not (like the first 2 fallout games) you’re gonna be disappointed.
It got a lot of backwards hate when 76 came out and it was suddenly really trendy to hate Bethesda. This is not to say that lots of people changed their mind on the game, though I’m sure some did, more that people who didn’t like the game got more confident to speak up about disliking it. This is also around the same time the New Vegas became a huge darling in popular opinion.
So, I’m an ardent ‘New Vegas is the best 3D Fallout game’ person.
But… Fallout 3 is not a bad game.
It is fun, it is enjoyable. It has solid game mechanics, it has a good number of well written characters and questlines, it is fun to just explore and find crazy shit.
It has flaws, yes.
But it is far from bad.
It just isn’t as good as New Vegas, which imo, basically just did everything FO3 did, but better, had a better overall storyline, refined and improved on all the gameplay mechanics, added in new gameplay features/elements.
It also had some big gameplay departures from 1 & 2. I’m not talking about being an FPS (although no longer having to worry about accuracy was pretty significant) but the fact that putting on different clothing magically made you more intelligent, and that it was a lot easier to do everything.
In FO3 you can pick all the locks, hack all the computers, pass all the conversation checks, and take on hordes of enemies all by yourself. In FO1+2 you had to pick the couple of things you were good at and not be able to do the other things until your next run.
1 & 2 I played a little bit. NV I 100% on steam a couple years ago and 360 many years ago. I did actually play 4 for about an hour. Was annoyed with how things had changed lol
Not going to lie, I like it quite a bit more than New Vegas. I understand several criticisms that people have, but 3 was by far the better experience for me.
I don’t think that’s right, I’m terrible at games but I still respect women (enough to spare them from interacting with me whenever possible. Same goes for all people really)
More likely higher ranked players finally figured out that keeping harmony within your team does wonders for your chance at winning. The amount of infighting I’ve had to stop just to save my elo is insane, why would i start something just because of someone’s gender.
Perhaps RPG’s with a party, like Mass Effect, Baldurs Gate 3, Fallout New Vegas (many companions with their own stories to find and tag along), Star Wars: knights of the old republic, dragon age.
Some shooters like the later Band of Brothers games, valkyria chronicles or the Mafia series you may enjoy as well.
In Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis, there are multiple paths to choose to complete the game, and one option is to choose a fun companion come with you to help you throughout.
Since OP likes open world games, in the later Bethesda RPGs like Skyrim and Fallout 4 you can have companions. not the same level of interaction as Bioware-like parties, but it’s something.
also not really an open world game, but in Midnight Suns you’re a mystical hero in a party with some of the avengers, other marvel heroes, and even some villains. there’s a lot of personal interactions with all the members between missions.
The problem with difficulties is that it’s much more difficult to design an AI system which you can tweak and make it smarter or dumber as opposed to just increasing damage and health values, so devs will just implement the best AI they can and leave difficulties as afterthought.
After playing a lot of games that don’t even have difficulty settings, I’ve started to believe in the idea that difficulty selection is just outdated game design and that having a single difficulty but optional areas/content that is more difficult is the way to do it. OSRS is one of my favorite examples - everyone plays the same game and going through levelling or whatever isn’t mechanically demanding. However, there are bosses and challenges (like Theatre of Blood which is an end-game raid or Inferno which is an end-game challenge) that are incredibly challenging and require weeks if not months of attempts to master and finally beat, but also are perfectly skippable and most casual players don’t even bother with them.
I’d like more games to be like FromSoft games. The difficulty is adjusted by what gear you have and what spells you use. None of that turning bosses into bullet sponges nonsense.
Yeah, Sekiro has a pretty adaptive way of making the game harder, if you start a replay and get rid of the charm item, you can’t almost parry, it has to be precise, and if you ring the demon bell everything gets higher life and damage, but drops much better loot.
Just going to ignore the hundreds of levels most players need to accumulate?
Sekiro was the only one that actually respected players time. Players bitched endlessly it was too hard.
If fromsoft actually gave a shit they’d add in adjustable parry windows and iframes and that works cover 90% of the people who weren’t good enough from sekiro. They won’t because they love to be gatekeepers.
I’ve beaten every day since 2 in addition to sekiro, the actual hard game. We’re talking about easing the game for the average population. So yeah if you are in the top .5% of players fromsoft gives a fuck about your time.
For everyone else your talking somewhere between 50 and 200. I mean for fucks sake for years the advice for hitting a wall in DS was explore and come back at a higher level.
Modern world of Warcraft has less leveling these days 🤦♂️
Yeah, but the point is that you aren’t just grinding levels. You literally said it yourself, you go explore a different area, you play more of the game (not just grind the same part of the game)
I mean for fucks sake for years the advice for hitting a wall in DS was explore and come back at a higher level.
Kind of like when you’re lower level in other games and have to level up to beat the boss? Do level 1 gnomes go straight to killing The Lich King in world of warcraft?
A lot of people say this and I don’t get it. What would be lost by having each playstyle be balanced properly and then adding difficulty scaling on top of that?
That’s not at all surprising. PvE game design is almost always about making the computer less competent in fun and/or believable ways. If you’ve got a computer that can simulate every item and skill in an enemy team’s arsenal and game out the best combination in milliseconds, the player is going to be dead by Turn 1 or stun-locked and dead by Turn 2.
I’ve been immensely impressed with DOS2 AI. If an enemy is sleeping, another enemy will use part of its turn to hit the enemy to wake it up. There were several instances where I paused and just stared awestruck
but there’s so many other ways to change difficulty.
change number of enemies and where they spawn change gear and abilities, the Witcher did that one with how the stamina system worked. it didn’t drain on the lower difficulties. horizon zero dawn made everything in the shops more expensive and made the enemies drop less money. honestly, that one also sucked. only served to make the game grindier.
I had fun with Zero Dawn but came out with a list of minor improvements that would make the game significantly better. Forbidden West had almost all the same problems, and added several more besides. The game really started to lose me when I was trying to upgrade a particular piece of equipment and just had to keep doing laps up and down a goddamn mountain with no nearby quick travel location, hoping that an elite version of an enemy would spawn, then laboriously killing it in the hopes that a particular resource would drop, only to get disappointed by the RNG and have to repeat the process, because that was the only place where that resource could be got, and that was the only place where that enemy would spawn.
The grind was appalling, and it took what was a moderately interesting fight the first couple of times and turned it into a monotonous chore.
Also the upgrade barely turned out to be worth the effort.
I finished the game more out of spite than anything else, and I did not purchase the DLC, nor do I have any plans of getting any sequels. Damn shame, because there’s an awful lot about both games to like.
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