Its like Genshin. It has a very specific audience (weebs). It just happens to be a niche that is very active online. Most people who that doesn’t appeal too just don’t think about it rather than posting about something they dislike.
Oh I know, I’ve played it, I like it, but I’m a chronic shitpost enjoyer. I suppose you can’t beat the price, but I think I’d hesitate to call it a puzzle game, exactly?
Hacknet. You play as a novice hacker who investigates the disappearance of a character by hacking into other people’s computers to gather information.
The hacking mechanic is fairly realistic and requires you to use the terminal a lot, so it really makes you feel like a hacker. Pretty short and sweet game, and the soundtrack is pretty good as well
Oh, I really love Hacknet! Played the main game and the DLC. Discovered it one day while browsing Rémi Gallego’s (aka The Algorithm) discography, and found out that he did some tracks for the OST
I put about 30h into Valheim and this feels like it will play out a similar way. I’ll have a blast for a concentrated time, maybe play with a friend or two, then find something else. I thought the mishmash of realistic world and cute cartoony monsters would clash but it’s working for me. Just starting to see the loop of automation and what to look for in a second base. It has a charming amount of jank attached to it.
I spent most of my time yesterday rebuilding my base after one of those grass elephants attacked us for no obvious reason, then a bunch of WAY higher level Relaxasaurus raided alongside the elephant and burned my base down.
Oh, crazy on the raiding - I had a few low-level monsters raid, but fought them off pretty easily. Those monsters would kill me instantly. Not surprised if raid balancing is another bug, though.
I haven’t played it, and not trying to squash anyone’s fun, but this is what turns me off to the game entirely. Early Access often feels like a lazy way to get funding and get free QA testing. They get to make a game without really making any kind of solid commitment to the game or the community. Bugs? Who cares! It’s early access, so they can be forgiven!
And based on some of the images where it looks like they just dropped a generic Kalash model they bought from an asset store (for example), it’s a second red flag of possible laziness.
I hope this turns into something amazing for people who are enjoying it, but I’m going to wait to see where development goes before I give it real consideration.
Admittedly, I’m guilty of buying EA because there have been dry periods in the GameDev pipeline and I was desperate for something new, but I’m okay with it for smaller devs that don’t have the budget for the kind of QA that bigger devs do. That said, the fact that some of these games have been in EA for over a decade (putting aside whether or not they’re effectively a functional product at this point) is a pretty egregious abuse of the community goodwill, and bigger developers shouldn’t be using it at all because it’s encouraging the trend of pushing out buggy messes with 60GB day-1 patches that still don’t make a game playable.
I've got a feeling that the legal issues, even if they're in the clear, are going to pose a lot of problems for the longevity of the game. But, I'm really hopeful that this sparks inspiration for other devs to take on the monster collecting genre. Pokemon has dominated that space for so long that they practically define the genre at this point, so it'll be nice to see new monster collectors come out with their own unique styles.
So far Pocketpair has been VERY careful about actually infringing on copyright or trademarks. People smarter than I am are pretty certain that if Nintendo or the Pokemon Company could take legal action against the game as it is, they would have already. The important things to note are that you cannot copyright an art style and you cannot copyright or patent game mechanics. And even if things were touch and go, the gameplay loop of adding survival elements and an emphasis on cooperative guild base management is pretty transformative compared to Pokemon games. So as long as they avoid adding pals that are so close to their Pokemon counterparts that they don’t pass the squint test they will be alright.
While all of that appears to be true, that doesn't mean Nintendo/TPC aren't able to make this small studio's lives a nightmare if they wanted. I have a feeling that the level of scrutiny the studio will be under from now on is going to inhibit any real innovation, as they're already walking a very fine line as it is.
It's also worth noting that they're both Japanese companies, and Japan has different views on IP than the rest of the world. I don't really know enough to go into detail, but it's entirely possible something a company from the US could laugh off is enough to get action taken in Japan.
Agreed, all of the ‘drama’ surrounding this possible copyright case is largely created by youtubers and tiktokers for views.
That said, Nintendo WILL probably sue but as a formality to protect their brand, and will gracefully pay Pocket Pair’s legal fees as a cost of business once the court rules in Pocket Pair’s favor to keep their copyrights from lapsing to generic use. It’s not uncommon.
Not doing that is how Bayer lost the copyright for ‘Asprin’ in the U.S.
Now if a ton of people refer to Pals as Pokemon the same way people refer to all tissues as Kleenex, THEN they might legitimately run the risk of losing their copyright and will pursue aggressively but I don’t see that happening.
There is no legal issue, Nintendo is suing as a formality to protect their existing copyrights. They’ll be ruled against and shrug their shoulders and pay Pocket Pair’s legal fees because that is a much better business decision than risking losing their copyright to their existing creatures.
If they don’t aggressively protect their copyright, the JCO might just rule that they have become generic and common use like how Bayer lost the trademarked name ‘Asprin’ in the U.S. when it was considered common use and Bayer did not pursue it aggressively.
But that doesn’t make good youtube poop or memes so you probably think this is some kind of hotly contested hullabaloo because of where you are getting your info from.
GTA games are the epitome of shallowness, for me. The story is always so vague and not interesting, you never get attached to characters. Gameplay is a boring loop, but its strength has always been being some sort of theme park. But it’s 2024 and “hop onto a game just to go fast on car and shoot a couple of civilians”
Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Like Pokémon, nintendo developers know fans will buy new games regardless of how much new content there is to it. There is no legitimate reason for the game to be so close mechanically to its Gamecube entry, and I find it an insult to long time fans.
BioShock Infinite. Mostly because I hated all of the characters, with the exception of the Luteces, and even they were on thin ice, mostly because of Rosalind. And Elizabeth as a NPC companion? I would prefer Ashley from Resident Evil 4 over Elizabeth any day. It didn't help that every time I tried to listen to a voxophone, she'd start talking about some bs, so I'd wait for her to finish and start the voxophone over, only to have her start talking again. When it happened 4 times with one vox, I had to take a break from the game. I just wanted to listen to the damn recording.
Gameplay is great though. I'll play the heck out of the Clash in the Clouds dlc. I get the fun action, and none of Booker and Elizabeth's constant whining.
I started the game immersed in the story, but kind of gave up on it after awhile, I think it was when “Akshually the slaves are evil for rebelling against the people who kidnapped them, took them to a floating island, abused the fuck out of them, didn’t even consider them human, and claimed it was doing them a favor because of White Man’s Burden bullshit” that ruined the spell for me
As cool as the idea of fighting through a dying utopia with factions on both sides trying to kill you who are “equal and opposite” evils, it kind of doesn’t work when one side is blatantly more in the right than the other yet the game wants me to believe it’s “Evil Vs. Evil”
“The only difference between Daisy Fitzroy and Zachary Comstock is how you spell their name!” - Booker DeWiit proving he is the dumbest man alive!
The DLC story was slightly better, but it doesn’t make sense for Elizabeth to go around killing all the Bookers because “Even though I love Booker like a father, some of the Bookers are evil!”, when a multiverse traveler should probably realize that in an infinite amount of universes you’re more likely than not going to find one where Adolf Hitler is known as the Rabbi who cured cancer and paints in his spare time… more than one most likely…
Great game tbh, but the story is such bullshit… I agree with you though, this is not a game you replay the main campaign, you boot it up and do Clash in the Clouds to get the same experience without Booker and Elizabeth being methheads… which is a shame because the characters had a lot of potiential in my opinion… Honestly the whole game did…
You can just tell that there was meant to be more going on with this story, but something clearly happened in development
The gameplay can be fun, but the story just isn’t there. It’s connection to Bioshock 1 and 2 feels forced.
As soon as they do the first “dimension switch”, or whatever, I lost any feeling of commitment since everything done up to that point became worthless to the plot.
My friend who loves the game praises the multiverse aspect of the game the most, and to me it just doesn't make sense, exactly for the reasons you gave. And having Elizabeth be there at the beginning of Rapture's downfall (and actively taking part in it, even if she was blackmailed iirc) didn't really sit right for me, but maybe that's just because I didn't like her lol.
I had totally forgot about the slavery aspect of the game. They absolutely could have handled it better. Like there's a million other ways they could have had an opposing faction who's also not 100% in the right, and that's the one you wanted to go with? Come on. Even BioShock 2 did that concept better with Ryan vs Lamb.
“The only difference between Daisy Fitzroy and Zachary Comstock is how you spell their name!” - Booker DeWiit proving he is the dumbest man alive!
Hogwarts Legacy: To be fair it is a big Openworld but it doesn’t catch me. The Story is kind of lame the voice sounds a little bit too Much like a crappy TTS. I tried to finish it but I always stop after like 30minutes played.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt I dislike that the Openworld is like a movie. You don’t need to think where you want to go, you just follow the little dots on your minimap until your are there. Its so utterly boring. I love the souls franchise, you see an NPC, walk up to her talk to her and write the important things down on your Notepad. To be fair, Wircher 3 looks absolutely beautiful after the recent patch.
Edit: I really really dislike Fortnite. Its highly overrated and it isn’t even original.
you can disable all the guides in the Witcher and play it without any gps or handholding. Combine that with the highest difficulty where you actually have to prepare yourself with potions and you have a great experience.
I also couldn’t get into the witcher 3, I think it had been over hyped to me. I found the combat a bit clunky and the story didn’t grab me. I got as far as the undead foetus mission with the baron, and sort of never came back to it
Almost anything first person. It makes me incredibly nauseous, which is really unfortunate because there are some really neat games that use the mechanic. I recently sold my copy of Echo Night since I couldn't play for more than around ten minutes at a time. I also couldn't complete the tutorial in Half-Life because it made me so nauseous that I had to spend almost the entire day in bed. Weirdly I'm perfectly fine with Metroid Prime.
I suspect Metroid Prime works for you because movement is quite slow. Samus feels like a tank compared to Gordon Freeman.
I love the Prime trilogy, but when I returned to it while doing a Metroid binge of sort, and I was kind of trying to do decent times, I was surprised how much slower-paced they feel compared to the 2D games. Even jumps feel floaty (probably for the better, it’s hard to judge jumps correctly in first person).
A lot of games increase difficulty by just turning up HP and attack numbers, and part of the fun of souls games is that that's really not how they handled difficulty.
And I get that. My biggest issue is I know if I could just lower the difficulty I would love the game. Hell I feel I could probably get pretty good at it if I played it on a lower difficulty then switched to a higher one after getting everything down.
I think Portal is the only one I'm fine with, probably because there's not as much action. First person puts me on edge and not in a way that I really appreciate. I also really like to be able to see the character in general.
To that end I also don't really like horror games, but I don't think that's as divisive an opinion.
I’m the opposite, I just don’t stay immersed in third person games, I despise third person peeking in multiplayer games, and I find it disorienting and claustrophobic when going into buildings or confined spaces in third person. I also just can’t walk up close to something in 3rd person and look at it in detail which I like to do.
bin.pol.social
Ważne