Them's Fightin' Herds went through a very tragic downfall. Publisher fired the entire development team at the end of 2023, before the final DLC character was even finished, and then released her in a completely broken state. Much later they would eventually put out a hotfix patch with several pages of nerfs, and this character is still banned competitively. They did promise further fixes, but they promised that a long time ago and it's been radio silence since. All other promised content updates, including Story Mode, are canceled.
Despite all that, the community's still here. I'm about to leave for Combo Breaker 2025 this weekend, where TFH will be one of the brackets I'm entering. Only a side event, bracket's small, but as long as there are brackets I will show up to them.
Skullgirls is somehow still here, 13 years after release. It's had a long history of perpetual development troubles, and yet has always been kicking. Earlier this year it came out that the developers are suing the publisher over $1.2 million they haven't been paid, so it looks like this actually is the end of development for real now. Fortunately the final patch is in a very good state, they went out on a high note and I'm happy with the finished product.
But again, the community? Still here. Also at Combo Breaker 2025, as a main stage headliner. Skullgirls will never die.
Puyo Puyo Champions is the most functional version of the game, in fact it's the only version on modern platforms that is faithfully accurate to original Tsu rules. Sega let it fall by the wayside in order to sell buggy rehashed crossovers and mobile subscription service exclusives, but PPC is the version you should be playing, don't buy the shovelware that is skinwalking the IP now. Unfortunately, Sega's mismanagement has split the playerbase because of all the shovelware they're pushing, and the west in particular is a hopeless mess because of it. For best results, queue when Japan is awake. But you can still play this version, and you should!
The thing is, I don’t think valve wants to become a desktop OS provider. Becoming the provider and maintainer of an OS for hundreds of millions of users is so far beyond their scope as a company. They’ve got a third the employees of Canonical and a fiftieth the employees of RedHat, the companies behind Ubuntu and Fedora. Maintaining a limited scope console/handheld OS that runs on a handful of hardware set ups is one thing, but supporting a fully fledged daily driver desktop OS meant to operate on any system is something else entirely.
Right now, most of their users are on windows, which makes them nervous because Microsoft is a known monopolist and has been slowly creeping deeper in to the PC games space. That’s why Valve has put so much effort in to software to support compatibility on Linux, so there is a viable alternative if Microsoft try’s to push them out. I think the steam deck and steamOS were a means to that end, create a business reason to develop and support those tools, not a first step towards becoming an operating system developer.
A better route forward for them would be to use their reach and public trust to help people make the switch to other extant distros. For example an all in one utility on the steam store that helps people select the right distro for their use case and set it up, have a hardware scan and a little quiz to choose a distro, a hard drive partitioning tool to set up dual boot, a tool to write the ISO to a USB drive (or maybe even just set up a bootable on the disk using the partitioner IDK), and migrate important files over using their cloud system.
If the issue is that people trust stuff with the valve branding on it, but are not willing to try Linux on their own, then Steam acting as a guide is much more practical than Valve taking on all the work needed to maintain a proper distro.
I recognise that for almost any one task, Linux has a solution that works better than Windows. My issue is just getting Linux to run not only one specific thing but all the dozens of programs with each having their own dependencies and possible quirks without losing my mind, weeks of my life, data or all three.
If Valve (or really any other large entity capable of handling this for tens of thousands of users) stepped in to act as the guide for setting it all up in a safe manner and such that it just works without constant need for tweaking (unless you want to stray from the “installation wizard”), I could see Linux gain a big surge in users.
I’m not being hyperbolic or lying for the sake of comedy, but the only games that ever made me feel violent were platformers with high frustration levels. I’ve never felt violent playing DOOM or Carmageddon or Postal 2. It’s pantomime violence, regardless of how realistic it looks. But Mario Bros. and Super Meat Boy? You’d better leave the house when I boot those shits up, and take the hammer with you.
Anyone who says postal 2 makes people more violent/racist/whatever has either never played the game or they have incredibly poor media literacy. That game’s a gem and to this day has some of the best level design I’ve seen. Also if you didn’t know they had a 20th anniversary update a couple years back that added a bunch of bug fixes, qol, and content out of nowhere
Same boat for me. I can whack zombies with a baseball bat all day or whatever and feel nothing, but get me frustrated with some insane timing-based thing and over- or under-sensitive controls, and I’ll crack for sure. Souls-like and certain platformers are pretty much the only ones that do it because I feel like I should be able to do the thing, and can’t. Other games that are super challenging, like RPGs or action-type games, I can try the same boss fight or “cinematic timing-based action sequence” (a thing that should die off) 100 times and not get the rages.
I yell a lot, up to and including unintelligible screeching, and heaven help anyone who interacts with me in that state… But fortunately I’m not a controller thrower or slammer. Can’t afford to buy new shit due to rage. Instead I learned to just pause for a while and come back at it in better headspace. That’s often all it takes.
It’s for the best I live alone, but I’m sure my neighbors think I’m insane…
Hmm. I’m not sure these count.
A) they’re supposed to be mysterious
B) the progression makes sense, even if the key is in one of several burned books on a bookshelf among many other similar keys, or given to you in one of the bad endings.
The information is there, you just have to work for it.
I haven’t played Myst III, that was by a different company, right?
They keep pushing GTA V for free on PSN, except that it’s not GTA V. Period. Full stop. It’s GTA :O without the single player and absolutely nothing on the store page itself says this. You only find out when booting it up. 😬
It’s kind of crazy how well this 20 year old game is designed. Each NPC has a life. Each house is a real house, and not just a closed box for background setting.
The gameplay feels so good that it’s a bit startling when things are buggy, or just not as modern. Like when you have a fetch quest, but you already have the item: there’s no option to say: here it is! You have to literally walk away to trigger something in the quest engine, and then come back to deliver the item.
Also, the way enemies are not at all aware of each other stands out: 2 bandits standing next to each other. I snipe one of them, and the other doesn’t even react. Must have been the wind…
Agreed, I’m also surprised how much more alive the NPCs feel. They start conversations with each other and have their own lifes. It’s feels much more dynamic than Skyrim’s dumbed down version of the same system.
As someone who played waaaaaay too much of the original game back in the day and was very concerned about a remaster doing it justice, I have to say it turned out about as well as it possibly could have.
It didn’t set out to reinvent the wheel or make fixes for things that weren’t broken (other than the leveling, at least), it just turned Oblivion into a modern game while still being Oblivion deep down inside.
I am curious to hear perspectives on what Skyrim-only players think about it, because while the Oblivion remake is arguably now the most modernized Elder Scrolls game, it still doesn’t have some of the gameplay and QoL improvements that later came to Skyrim. It’s a perfect remaster for me, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there are folks out there thinking, “Why is there no dual wielding,” “What’s with the weird zoomed in dialog system,” “Where are all the skill perks,” or “Why are there no NPC companions,” and similar.
I also do hope that Bethesda or the community releases an updated version of the construction set soon so the modding scene can take off again for the game. From what I hear, the original Oblivion construction set is able to be used in the remaster with a good deal of messing around, but modders don’t currently have the tools needed to interact at all with the Unreal Engine 5 wrapper.
Also played Oblivion years and years ago, and I can agree and think you put it best. “It turned out as well as it could have”. Because to anyone complaining here, any and all changes anyone here suggests the team obviously thought the same things, but there is obviously a balance. Change it too much and hardcore original fans are pissed. Don’t change it enough and new fans are pissed because it’s too old. No matter what people were going to be unhappy. Gamers are some of the most negative people I’ve met.
I see a decent remaster, I see gameplay and motions have been updated, I see a lot has been updated without changing the core game too much. It turned out as well as it could have.
I played oblivion when it first came out but I put a lot more hours in to skyrim. I do think they could have improved the game a bit more. I’ve only been in the capital yet but it felt brutally empty, with all the npcs having the same path/walking speed and so few of them.
I think a bit of decorations and a few new npcs would have gone a long way. I wished they would have worked on the AI a bit more. Taverns don’t have bards and little ambiance, walking into one is disappointing and ends up with all the npcs in a clump moving at a snails pace because all their walking paths overlap at the same time when they spawn it. It was the same in the original but it’s also 2025.
The waterfront could have really used a bit more shacks. The arena posters just slapped onto walls bother me as well.
Thankfully, I imagine mods will fix all this so I’m optimistic overall.
It’s normal for a Bethesda game to have every town’s NPC be a named character with routines. So to do that in Oblivion would require programming a whole bunch of additional named NPCs that don’t exist in the original game.
Perhaps a crowd system could’ve been implemented… But… I can’t think of any Bethesda Game Studios game that ever used crowd systems.
Extra named NPCs was what I was hoping for. I understand why they didn’t because it would of been a huge change and I’m sure some of the fan base would have been very vocal about it.
I would have loved if they shipped it with mod support and maybe a oblivion+ version with official mods built by their teams like added npcs and other extras.
Oooh modders will find a way. Nexus has already been slowly populating with smaller, simpler mods. It’s only a matter of time before more complex mods come around.
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