The only argument for piracy being bad is that it is stealing because they lost a sale they would have otherwise gotten. You already bought the game. Therefore, there is no lost sale. There’s not a single moral argument against it now.
That being said, your ISP can’t tell the difference, so make sure you use a VPN (especially if torrenting)
And that argument is BS anyway, because there’s no such thing as “potential profit” even though companies say there is.
When I pirated the most games I had no money. If I didn’t pirate it, I’d go play on the street or whatever lol. Not going to buy what you literally can’t.
Same goes for denuvo and the “always online” for single player games crap. I’m not buying any games using those on principle.
I don’t disagree, I brought it up just because it’s the only argument against piracy that holds any merit at all )even if little) and is, in this case, completely irrelevant anyway.
As far as I know ow most paid VPNs allow it, a lot of free ones don’t. I can say from experience that Windscribe allows torrenting, although there is a 10gb limit per month on free accounts (there is a way to get around that tho)
When the big brother dies in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. The game is short, but does a great job of getting you emotionally attached to these brothers. Even through the controls, you control both brothers at once with each getting half of your controller. When he dies, it also essentially kills half of your controller. I found myself trying to move the brothers together as I have for the rest of the game.
Such a great way to implement gameplay into the emotions of a game. It was like after someone died in real life, you keep thinking about messaging them all the cool things you find that they’d like only to realize they’re not there. You just sent a meme to a phone number that hasn’t been paid for in months. Maybe you even start paying the phone bill so you can keep hearing their voicemail. Continuing to reach for half of the controller that can’t do anything now is just amazing.
I was playing this game with my 4 yo daughter, giving her a controller pretending she was controlling the younger brother. We would talk to the characters as if the younger brother was her and the elder brother was me. It was an amazing experience. Then the elder brother dies, and it’s not even a quick thing. There’s a whole big segment of the younger brother carrying the elder brother’s body and burying it. My daughter doesn’t exactly understands what is happening, but keeps getting more and more upset and scared, and keeps asking me why I wouldn’t wake up. That segment fucked me up as I was trying to get through that part while also trying to comfort my daughter.
I cried that whole bit with the controller feeling like you’re missing an arm. So exact a representation of grief.
But the last scene, where the father simply falls to his knees at his son’s grave. He’s been granted his life back at a price no human parent would ever, ever accept. I cried racking sobs. It was so awful and true.
This game is my answer as well. I held it together through big big brother’s burial. When I lost it was in the epilogue when I realized I needed to press big brother’s action button for little brother to pull the big lever. I literally wept as I pressed that button.
Hate soulslike stuff other than combat, bonus points when there’s no checkpoint before a boss fight so you have to redo 50 fights just to die again and repeat the process until you’ve learned the boss moved… or shot yourself. Oh and you can’t pause so tough luck if you ordered food or kids want something. Fromsoft are masters or marketing to sell this bullshit as something great
Also hate unskippable cutscenes, good story like witcher, ffvii remake or kotor defends itself. If you feel the need to do it chances are your story is bad and so you shouldn’t. Just look at ghost of tsushima, good combat, great world and visuals. Easily an 8/10 or better potential but mostly bad story without skips makes it tedious and just not fun. A samurai fetching herbs for peasants 😂 Bonus points if you can’t even pause the mighty cutscene
bonus points when there’s no checkpoint before a boss fight so you have to redo 50 fights just to die again and repeat the process
DS1 I feel is decent with this (could be Stockholm syndrome) and Elden Ring removes the issue almost completely. But Jesus Christ DS2 was awful in this regard. At least they added the mechanic where mobs stop respawning after you’ve killed them N times; I removed every single enemy from along the Smelter Demon corpse run lmao
I usually call them management games. Looking at the Steam tags for Factorio and RimWorld, they both have “Management” and Factorio additionally has “Resource Management”. But I think “Management” is your best bet.
I think RTS games don’t usually fall under management and instead are just called RTS.
In terms of my favourite ones, I love FTL: Faster Than Light. I’m picking it up again at the moment actually. I also like RinWorld, Oxygen Not Included, and Dungeon of the Endless.
I don’t know if I would call FTL a process optimization game. One thing I feel like it’s missing is feedback if your process is being optimized or if you just got lucky. With Rimworld, Roller Coaster Tycoon, and Factorio all include metrics that allow you to judge if you’ve made your process better but because of FTLs randomness, it’s hard to determine if you played better or just had better rolls. That said I love FTL and it’s an amazing game.
Absolutely how I felt. It’s heavy on the randomness and I’ve never beat it despite doing very well on some runs. I think the important thing about FTL is that it’s about the journey. The ending is always depressing.
Well I can tell you that a PC is definitely in your interest because not only is there access to great indie games and modding, but it acts less like a subscription service and you get to keep the games on steam forever. Unlike PlayStation, your games won’t be obsolete and you can run them on newer hardware to enjoy them all over again. Want to play Morrowind at 4k, you bet.
That being said, here’s what I would do in your shoes. I wouldn’t invest in a steam deck up front. I think the deck is great for a lot of gaming experiences, but if you’re used to a Ps5, it’s not going to satisfy you probably. Too little power for more complex games isn’t enough for me as my only console.
I would get a cheap computer. Learn to build one yourself if you can, it’s not hard and can be a fun community effort to get parts in your price range. Consult forums for the individual parts. Sounds hard, but it’s not that bad.
The next part will sound weird because subscriptions are bad buuuut I recommend anyone new to Pc games go look at humble bundle and especially at their subscription. They usually provide a good value for games while also donating to charity.
But yeah overall, you should probably take a break after selling your Ps5. I think it’d be a good opportunity to see if gaming still feels right for you.
I think I’m also in the boat of moving into PC gaming soon. I would be interested in doing a cheap build, but I don’t know much about good components and wouldn’t be sure where to start my research. It would definitely be a good project and I would feel more invested with a build I put together and can upgrade over time.
I do think I need a break from the PS5. The thing is that I’m a college student and just started my summer break, so I didn’t play the PS5 for about 6 months. Now that I have time, I pick it up again and quickly feel drained or uninspired by what there is to play. Even going through the store I struggle to find anything worth my time. So my thinking is that if I already need a break again, then it might just mean that I have outgrown the console gaming life and would benefit from moving onto PC or simplifying my gaming to lighter titles that are more story rich.
I think I’m going to take some time to evaluate the PS5 more. Probably if I don’t use it much before Christmas, then I can look to offload it.
Ah, I have more advice then. So most people build their PCs on PCPartPicker. Other than that you can find or make posts on Toms hardware, the LTT forums, the Reddit pc gaming sub, or even probably here. There are plenty of people much more skilled than I at picking parts. It’s somewhat of an art but you have to start somewhere. Also just consider your upgrade paths. Don’t buy a motherboard without knowing that there is a better CPU for the same socket. Stuff like that.
The college life is rough. I do it myself so I’d just keep in mind if you’re moving around a lot, you’ll need to be okay with moving the pc and it’s components. I move mine around often in a large case with a big monitor. It’s a task for sure. So consider building in a smaller case, it’s harder but may be worth it in the long run.
Not sure what kind of games you enjoy but steam loves their sales. Both the sales and humble bundle are a good way to try games for really cheap. Also steam let’s you refund games with less than 2hrs played. So trying things out for a bit and returning them is a very good deal. Also no subscription for online so that’s cool.
Assetto Corsa has a great VR mode, No Man’s Sky, Half life Alyx, V-Racer Hoverbike, Walkabout Mini-golf , Box VR (My workout game), Arizona Sunshine, Observer (great game but too short)
Not a shooter, but superliminal I think has a few levels that let you use portals to change your size, and there’s no limits on how many times you can do it, so you can shrink yourself to be microscopic to the point where you can fit inside a straw and it takes like a minute to walk to the end of the straw. Everything in the room is modeled to be quite detailed, so there’s also a chess board, and you can get on top of the rook piece and it’s like being on top of a castle.
It honestly bugged me that people think there’s like a ceiling price for 2d even though it require artist to animate frame by frame, but 3d it’s unlimited even though you could tweak everything far more easily.
That’s capitalism for you: first you say that the price doesn’t depend on the production expenses and can be as big as the seller wants, and now you try to explain the price with “production expenses”. No. It is a 2d platformer. 20 bucks is already a very high price.
first you say that the price doesn’t depend on the production expenses and can be as big as the seller wants
Huh? When did i even claim that?
Edit: also even if i said that, which i didn’t, let’s not pretend selling a 2d metroidvania at $30 or even $40 is as same as AAA studio justifying selling their game at $80. It’s like a different issue altogether because one is actively firing people and exploit cheap worker and giving their CEO a fat bonus while claiming inflation, the other is people pretend a dimension of their artwork is the limiting factor.
My beliefs are that all software, with no exceptions should be free and non economic, set this aside for a bit:
I still see absolutely no reason for why one art style would have more value then any other art style.
A game can be anything we can conceive. The best games i played where not about the gameplay but the stories they tell, the vibes they set, the feelings they make me feel.
Thomas was alone and limbo are technically speaking not very complex but the value those games hold is infinitely more then a modern urbisoft title.
One is expensive produced soulless junk i wouldn’t even want to install ending with an abstract value of 0 to me, the others are experiences i cherish that i cannot buy for 20 bucks anywhere else therefor far exceeding the abstract value that 20 bucks is. Its worth way more, its factually sold for way less.
But i repeat, all software should be free, art and experiences should be shared freely and the people who make them deserve the means to flourish by getting acces to the many natural resources that are being wasted on capitalism.
Nintendo: Yes, you can shove that Mario in your socialistic arses; now give us those “the means to flourish by getting acces to the many natural resources”! All of them! Now!
Nitendo already has access because they have money and connections, if they would want to build something new, lets say a themepark or just a big event on public property there is not much stopping them, they can just do that with faster signed permission then you would receive a rejection email.
Nitendo also isnt indie game at all, just because they happen to make 2d platforms doesn’t mean they represent the default Businessmodel for all 2d platformers.
As a consequence of Nintendo already having more then a reasonable share, it also becomes morally correct to use their products and services without payment. The costs of All their games, hardware, regardless of 2d style should be 0 to consumers who almost all have less then they should have.
2D is not even less work than 3D imo if you’re comparing “good looking” 3D and 2D work. Modern techniques have all but rendered them as merely separate art styles.
Yeah, It really depend on how detail you want it to be, both is hard, but somehow people will pay one more than the other.
So the smart thing to do here is have a 2d metroidvania with 3d artstyle, and suddenly the price ceiling is removed lol (bloodstained is $40 on release)
A lot of 2d games are done in 3d engines these days anyway, because it gives “free” parallax, depth buffering and masking, hardware accelerated compositing etc.
So it’s all the work of hand-drawing animation frames with all the complexity of rigging and mapping in 3d.
Enter the Gungeon and the Shovel Knight series are two examples that come to mind.
There is a price for every D. You go to the store and buy a D for like 15 bucks, so reselling it for more than 20 is criminal. You get one D for free with a game engine, then you buy another D, that’s why the top price for two D is 20 bucks. You would think a game with 3 D will be capped at 40, but then you need to add some A to it, so it’s OK if a game with 3 D and 3 A costs 80 bucks at retail, A aren’t free.
It’s not about hours. It’s the cost of those hours. Despite tons of helpers, performant 3d is hard as fuck. And with that comes expensive coders. In extreme cases you’re talking about 3.5:1.
I don’t think anyone would have complained if it was $30-$40. They could have sold well at $60 with some people complaining about it and others defending them for the choice.
I’d make it depend on the length. Expedition 33 is shorter. So if you want an experience that you can finish quickly you should choose that. If you want to spend weeks to months on a game choose BG3.
Both are great. Maybe play E33 first and go to BG3 after that.
My wife, two friends, and I all played Diablo IV online together. We beat the main campaign together and had a lot of fun with it. We’re trying to beat the expansion campaign too, but my wife and one friend dropped out, so it’s just been me and a buddy powering through it.
That’s a game where you can just have fun dicking around in the world, even if there isn’t an objective. And it has plenty of endgame content to keep you entertained after you beat the campaign.
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