Did the true ending (and then the extremely true ending). The game is so full of love for video games that it’s contagious for me and I really appreciated how much the game makers cared about it
SC has been working on this problem since before 2021, but no they didn’t invent the concept. They are attempting to implement it at a scale that nobody has been able to do as flawlessly as SC requires. If they pull it off, it’ll be an incredible leap.
There are no game engines that do completely seamless server meshing at the moment. SC is trying to do that.
Path of exile is great because it doesn’t shy away from complexity at all, instead it does the exact opposite, it just goes balls deep. It really make for a very refreshing change to typical AAA games where your intelligence as a player doesn’t feel insulted.
I second Grim Dawn as it’s clearly labor of love from the developers and still getting updates. I also like the fact that its not live service like Path of exile meaning that it does not require online connection and can be even be modded.
It remains to be seen with GGG will do with Path of Exile 1 when they release Path of Exile 2, it would be cool if they would release something like POE Unlimited a premium version of the game that would allow people to play the first game as single player experience, mod it and host their of servers.
But in this day and age it’s much more likely that they’ll just force people to move on to their next big thing.
There’s a lot of enshittification going around with games and services with more greedy business practices and it would be naive to think GGG is immune to it. When it comes to live service games certain level of skepticism is healthy to have. Now I do hope we’ll be able to play POE1 even 10 or 20 years from now with it being just as good.
To Each Their Own I guess. Single player games tend to respect players time a lot more and thus usually require a lot less grinding or farming to complete. That being said Grim Dawn does have online multiplayer and community hosted seasons.
I always wondered on what engine the first Xenoblade Chronicles is running. Absolutely massive beautiful landscapes and it runs absolutely smooth even on the 3Ds! No pop ins either!
they made a totally new and optimized engine for those games
The most difficult part of the development was getting the game’s scale to work within the new hardware. This entailed the creation of a new graphics engine with a custom visibility culling and complex level of detail systems. All of the environments were rebuilt and optimized for the new system while keeping the original aesthetic intact.
I only purchase full price games under one of 2 conditions. Either it’s a series that I deeply love and know for certain will always put out quality games (Zelda, Mario, Monster Hunter) or it’s a game that is extremely well reviewed and doesn’t go on sale (factorio, other Nintendo games)
As for whether I believe a game I’ve purchased was worth it, I don’t equate hours invested to price worthiness, but rather my overall enjoyment. I’ve put too many hours into games I regret ever buying (Ark) and played some games that were far too short but I would’ve paid double for (Outer Wilds). Rather, I believe it’s how much the game affects you when you come out of it. Ark was a frustrating, grindy experience, but Outer Wilds literally changed who I am as a person. When I play something like Sonic Frontiers I come out in awe, and giddy with how much excitement that game gave me, but when I play something like Elder Scrolls Online, I don’t dislike it but I don’t feel anything special. Frontiers was absolutely a worthy purchase but ESO was not, because one really affected me and the other, even though I wouldn’t call it a bad game, just didn’t really do anything to me.
Oh of course I never pre-order, but Zelda and Mario have not had any bad main games in the past decade so I don’t feel worried about buying them on release.
A certain number of hours reached is a fairly easy metric to use and it works great for a lot of games. But let me tell you about Senua’s Sacrifice… that game is short. It was only $20 or something and 8 hours to play through. But it made me ugly cry at the ending. It was so emotionally charged I just sobbed for the girl. That was definitely worth the price.
I’ve been playing a bunch of CRPGs the last couple of months (BG3, BG1 Enhanced, Pillars 1, Divinity 2, Pathfinder Kingmaker currently) and games like this need keywords highlighted in texts and tooltips. Some of the newer ones do this a bit already, but it’s pretty inconsistent and not enough in my experience.
BG3 could use some lore popups, so you can learn more about the world, the gods, races, etc. Also, even some really basic mechanics could use it, if you just have very little experience. What does Save or Saving Throw mean exactly, which stat matters for specific spells, etc.
Pathfinder does the lore popups already and some stats get an explanation, but not nearly enough for me as a complete newcomer to the system.
I like the way Age of Wonders 4 does it: Keywords in tooltips are highlighted, and you can hover over them to get another tooltip with an explanation and more highlighted keywords to hover over. This means you can easily explore the basic mechanics right there in the tooltips.
Stopping rendering / game logic / music if you alt tab. And resource management overall. It grinds my gears when games use resources even when there’s nothing happening. (Civ6 for instance constantly uses absurd amounts of cpu just for idling in game and doesn’t use any more when calculating so turns.)
The question of pause-a-game-when-not-focused is a big question for me. I don’t know if there’s a perfect answer, though I’d at least like a toggle.
I run a Linux environment, with multiple workspaces. I can switch between workspaces by whacking a key combination. So I really, really frequently am swapping between them, even when playing games.
I totally understand how some people might want a game to auto-pause when they switch away from it. I remember once seeing a video recording of some guy who was handling support calls. He was playing video games in between calls, and every time a call came in, he would switch over to his support software and do work. Now, setting aside the question of whether his manager was okay with that, that’s a very legitimate use case where you’d want a game to auto-pause on switch. Otherwise, you have to manually pause and then switch.
On the other hand, I often want to switch away when the game is doing something time-consuming. Starfield can take a while to do a rest, and I’ll often be looking at something on another workspace while resting. I definitely don’t want the game to pause then, else I just have to sit there staring at a screen with a progress bar moving. Same thing with turn-based games that have an AI phase, where the AI is computing something. If a game has any moments with downtime, I’d like to be able to run it in the background without it pausing. It’s really annoying when a game developer tries to “helpfully” auto-pause the game, when I don’t want that. I’d be fine with that as a default, but if there’s no toggle, it’s really irritating (Starfield does have a toggle, albeit one hidden in a config file and without a UI widget for it).
On idles, I agree. Especially for turn-based games like Civilization, it’d be nice to at least have the option to forego idle animations, which would be a big battery usage saver for laptops. The only thing it should need to do, even in the foreground, if you’re not pushing buttons, is be playing music.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Unciv, but it’s a full open-source reimplementation of Civilization 5 for Android and desktop OSes, using simple graphics. It really does drive home how much graphical fluff there is in the series – not that that’s necessarily bad, but it really is not necessary to play the game. And for a lot of people, it’d be nice to have battery-friendly games.
there is no such thing as “idling” in a game, when viewed through the lens of software engineering. Even if you aren’t giving the game any new inputs, the game is still doing the work of rendering the screen. Calculating a turn is actually only a small part of the process.
Calculating a turn is the most intensive part of the process. I don’t expect it to use no cpu. But Civ6 has no right to use similar cpu power to stelarris running at max speed while just rendering grass. And considering that it continues to use that even if its paused and minimized, I think it’s pretty clear that they just don’t care about power consumption.
I generally want the opposite. If I alt tab while waiting for a long operation I want it to keep going while I’m tabbed out, and I especially want the music to continue so I don’t forget I have the game running
Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex both come to mind. Alexander Brandon was involved in both and his work is absolutely amazing.
If we talk specific singles, though, it’s Morrowind (Nerevar Rising), Control (Take Control), and, recently, Baldur’s Gate 3 (Raphael’s Final Act). Morrowind’s tune is so ingrained in my mind that it’s my to-go whenever I get my hands on a keyboard.
Great choices there! the Unreal Tournament and Morrowind soundtracks have been stuck in my head for a long time now. UT in particular -- I listen to the full album about once a week while I'm working.
I never played Deus Ex when it came out, so I don't have the nostalgic attachment for that one, but I just discovered this a few days ago: https://alexanderbrandon.bandcamp.com/album/conspiravision-deus-ex-remixed. I bought it and am giving it a full listen today. Highly recommended; probably that much better if you're a fan of the game.
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