I second this, great manufacturer. The 8BitDo Pro 2 is my personal preference. It looks like a Playstation and SNES controller did the fusion dance. I liked it so much I bought two: one for my PC and one for my Switch. It has a quality feel to it, excellent tactile response, and feels very comfortable in my hands.
The Ultimate 2.4 has right now bluetooth and hall effect sensors as well. I couldn’t get it to pair with the switch though I didn’t try super hard. It works on Bluetooth with my Android TV but for whatever reason ignores the customized buttons (I keep accidentally pressing the wing buttons on the bottom) so I use the dongle on the TV.
I use the 8bitdo Pro for platforming because of the d-pad makes it feel like a SNES controller. And the 8bitdo Ultimate for games where I need joysticks.
Second this, just get some thumbstick covers. I have the 8bitdo pro, and I’m getting tired of the joysticks peeling off onto the rest of the controller after a game.
I haven’t had drift on them yet, but if/when I need to replace Old Reliable, I’m looking for hall effect joysticks.
Edit: damn, just found out the pro2 has hall effect joysticks
Hard but fair precision platformer by an expert of platformer design. Excellent controls, deep platforming mechanics, and a cathartic story about internal and external struggles.
This feels painfully obvious to a lot of (mostly trans) people, and likewise it feels painfully obvious to me too, in retrospect. It has also become painfully obvious to me that I, myself, am trans. But these are things that I was not aware of during the development of Celeste, where I was writing Madeline and speaking from her perspective. Creating Celeste with my friends helped me reach the point where I could realize this truth about myself. During Celeste’s development, I did not know that Madeline or myself were trans. During the Farewell DLC’s development, I began to form a hunch. Post-development, I now know that we both are.
Read further, while the author didn’t realize what she was doing it is a trans narrative through and through, and the free dlc ending did contain the flag because by then she did know.
When Madeline looks in the mirror and sees her other self; when she attempts to abandon her reflection, who then drags her down the mountain; when the two reconcile and merge to become stronger and more complete… that was all unknowingly written from a trans perspective.
I’ve been wanting to play this for a while and that price made it an instant buy. Really glad I did. Some of the strawberries are hard and unfair tho, haha.
People that have this opinion often only play AAA games. There are a lot of indie games that channel old-school game energy and improve upon them. Shovel Knight for example is a lot better than old platformers wish they were. A Hat in Time is a ton of fun compared to the vast majority of PS2/Gamecube 3D platformers. Hollow Knight is better than any Metroid game (I know a lot of people would disagree, though).
Hollow Knight is pretty different than metroid games and I’m not sure I’d directly compare them. I’m the only person I know that doesn’t like Hollow Knight and it seems like the departures it makes from the classic metroidvania formula that put me off it are part of the reason other people like it
Nah, you have a point. There are a bunch of "2D soulslikes" that get advertised as "Metroidvanias", and I wish we had better language to split that difference, because there's a big conceptual shift between the "parry and dodge" souls style and the genuine Metroid/Castlevania style of movement and aggression. It feels very different and honestly the last time something scratched that itch it was Bloodstained.
So yeah, Hollow Kinght is a very well made game, but it's not what I'm looking for every time I fire up one of the DSvanias for yet another run.
Cassette Beasts kicks the ever loving shit out of Pokemon across the board, modern or retro.
Retro games weren’t better than modern games as a “full-stop” statement. They tended to be bug-ridden messes, but there was still a heart and soul behind them that tends to be missing in the AAA industry. Continuing on the Pokemon example Red/Blue were an absolute mess. I mean, moves and items that were supposed to massively increase critical hit rate massively decreased them instead. Stat calculations were all over the place. Hell, the ghost-psychic interaction just straight didn’t function as intended. It was a mess, and yet for some reason, it’s touted as “better” than the modern Pokemon games.
Plus, not all big studio games are soulless cash grabs of releases, either. Hi-Fi Rush is my favorite game of 2023 by a huge margin, and was a Bethesda published game. Sure, the dev studio was “smaller” compared to Ubisoft or Activison, but I wouldn’t call the game indie - it was AAA in polish and scale. I’m currently really enjoying Unicorn Overlord, getting major Ogre Battle 64 vibes from it, and playing a lot of Monster Hunter Rise thanks to a Steam sale. These games slap, and have all the depth and passion of games of old without alI of the horrible jank we dealt with in the pre-internet “no such thing as a post-release patch” world.
It’s easy to see the yearly Call of Duty, Pokemon, generic EA sports, and obligatory Ubisoft open world games release and think “man, AAA gaming sucks”, but they’re honestly a very tiny portion of the conversation.
EDIT: I take everything back, Bethesda just closed the studio that made Hi-Fi Rush. AAA gaming is a cancer that needs to be surgically extracted.
Early Access is just “release”. Only the devs openly admit ahead of time the game is buggy and unfinished, and promise - as always - to fix it up and add the missing parts.
Often they do. Sometimes they don’t.
TBH it’s ultimately nothing but a shitty buggy release, but the honesty of making that known ahead of time buys a whole lot of goodwill. It should be the default, that any publisher releasing a game that is not finished - so most AAA nowadays - marks it as Early Access, openly declaring the unfinished part.
It’s also very different from a beta version, which is usually feature and content complete (otherwise it’s generally called an alpha). Early Access versions are often very early in the development process, they’re feature-complete-ish, but never or rarely content complete, usually just starting out on that. This works exceedingly well for games that need “just more stuff”, but can miss the mark on games that need underlying systems reworked as this ires the existing playerbase and splits it.
Early access isn't necessarily different from a beta version, it's just the name of the program used by devs to generate some revenue and get feedback during development. The game can be in alpha or beta or whatever.
Personally, I avoid games in early access on principle (with a couple exceptions) as I would rather play them once they are completed.
The game has a pretty unique mechanic. It makes you control two characters at the same time. It’s not a coop game, with optional solo. It’s strictly a single player game, where you use one controller to move two characters, the titular two sons, one on each control stick. Throughout the game you use movement and interactions with the environment to solve simple puzzles to remove obstacles in your way and travel to your destination. Usually, by having you do different things with each character simultaneously. After a while, it becomes second nature to control both brothers in a synchronous and flowing manner when you get used to the challenge of moving and paying attention to two different things at the same time.
spoilerNear the end of game though, one of the brothers dies. Now, you are left with two control sets, but only one character. Puzzles similar to ones that you already solved, now you have to figure out how to solve them, on your own. This on its own is gutwrenching as you developed a familiarity and affection to both characters and their dynamic, as they grow from mutually annoyed siblings, to a well coordinated team of brothers who care and protect each other. But through the game, you’re also taught that the younger brother can’t swim, he doesn’t know how to. So whenever you had to cross a body of water, the elder brother had to carry the younger brother on his back. He is deadly afraid of being in the water since their mother apparently drowned herself and he saw her die. At the climax of the game, alone in the middle of the ocean, you have to swim to shore. The emotional kicker is as you discover that using the dead brother’s stick on your controller, which you haven’t touched in at least half an hour since the other brother died because it doesn’t do anything anymore, calls however upon the memory of the older brother when you swim. You have to use both controller’s sticks to swim effectively and survive, and you can hear him cheering and supporting the younger brother to find his strength and swim on his own, back home, to carry on and save their father’s life. It’s such an empowering and emotional moment.
The ending of that game still makes me tear up after all this years as it makes me think of my own family. Even writing this comment I’m getting emotional. And it does it all without a single line of dialogue, text or voice acting. All by animation and vocalizations along with game mechanics. It’s one of the most effective uses of gameplay I have ever seen in a video game and forever has made me think of this as one of my favorite games of all time.
Other video games, and things people call emotional are usually about story elements, plot lines, events on a character’s arc. Things that have books upon books of analysis and history. Not that they’re any less valuable or deserving of praise, but using gameplay this effectively to convey emotion is, however, kind of unique and rather harder to pull off effectively.
You put that into words perfectly. I think it’s the only game that proscribes an emotion so successfully through a gameplay mechanic. It’s the most real, raw and visceral sense of loss I’ve ever felt in a game, film or book. Truly unique.
You missed the very end when the dad finds out that his son basically died to save him. As a dad with two sons, this would break me. Leave me to die, boys. That’s not a trade I’d ever make.
For the people discussing here: remember that the morality of an act depends on the act itself, the context where it happens, and the moral premises. It does not depend on how you phrase or label the act.
With that in mind: since I define arseholery as “actions or behaviour that cause more harm to someone else than they benefit the agent”, and there’s practically no harm being caused by OP’s actions, I do not think that OP is being an arsehole.
Sierra adventure games, like King’s Quest and Space Quest, were notorious for this kind of thing. Like there could be an item you have 1 chance to get, and you didn’t know, so you don’t get it and then several hours later when you’re at the end of the game, you realize you need that thing to solve the puzzle and actually move on. But you can’t. Because you didn’t get it when you had the chance and you can not go back.
I like the Unstable Ordinance from Space Quest IV that you can pick up near the start of the game. It’s entirely useless, you can’t ditch it, and if you have in your inventory near the end of the game, it blows up and kills you. Everytime. You have to restart nearly the whole game and resist the adventure game urge to grab everything that isn’t nailed down.
I thought it blew up when you went into the sewers which isn't long after you pick it up. But still, it's a trap you don't realize is a problem right away and really sucked :)
Those games didn’t give a fuck about your feelings. I remember some of those point and clicks had zero chill. I played one where all I wanted to do was cross the street. My character was immediately run over by a car and I had to start over. The typing games could be even worse. Oh sorry this bees nest is attacking you, here’s hoping you grabbed the bug spray under the carpet on the 3rd floor and are quick enough on your feet to type out the exact sequence of words necessary to get your character to use it. ‘Use bug spray’ sorry can you please be more specific. Oh never mind your character is dead, no saves, heres the worst 8 bit death audio anyone has ever created.
That’s the exact game that came to mind. At least a few years ago there was a website where you could play all those games , I don’t know if it’s still up.
It’s okay to stop playing a game after you’ve played enough of it to understand it isn’t for you.
I think I had about 10~12 hours played of Diablo 4 before I noticed it wasn’t for me and stopped. Still enjoyed what little I played of it, but wasn’t motivated to continue.
That’s not really FOMO. FOMO would be like, pre-ordering a special edition of a game you aren’t even sure about wanting for $90 because there’s a “Preorder-Only” in-game perk and you just have to have, or falling for those “Limited Time Only” microtransactions in FTP games.
I guess I meant it more so in the fear of missing out on something culturally relevant. Whether it’s a modern multiplayer game like Destiny 2 or a classic that is frequently referenced like Half Life. Not being able to be part of the conversation when it’s brought up
I get what you are saying but a lot of the time it’s just a mediocre experience and I’m not necessarily disliking it. More indifferent than anything. Occasionally a game has made a pretty solid turn around in the last act
General discussion of illegal activities is legal, but distributed methods/keys/software to bypass DRM is not. In addition to the poster getting in trouble, the admins of multiple instances could at minimum be forced to delete the content, and at worst get their asses kicked by Nentendo’s legal team, and be forced to reveal the identities of the user that posted it.
In my jurisdiction downloading pirated stuff is perfectly legal. It’s only illegal when you’re distributing it. And even for jurisdictions where it’s not legal even to download pirated stuff, companies don’t much care about people who download, but only those who upload and as far as I know, you can discuss pirating all you want and nothing’s illegal.
I got curious myself and agreed, so I went looking.
A lot of sources specified that it was part of a technical requirements checklist, and…
Yeap. It doesn’t explicitly require a “press any key” screen, but it gives a more pleasant screen to look at while you select a user. People online also say it’s used to detect which controller is in use.
If you add a feature like this to a game, it becomes harder to maintain if there are discrepancies between builds. So presumably it’s usually just left in rather than removed.
The New Input Package is actually just what Unity users call it because it isn't the original and requires a package manager install from the stock LTR releases but it's been out for a few years now. Still, you're right, although I see no reason not to adopt it, most games that are using it will probably be releasing this year.
I think you’ve nailed it by outlining the worry of kids without an income of their own - if you can’t buy what you want whenever, game length is a plus, but when you’ve got disposable income, summer sales, the odd free game, and new good titles coming out all the time, brevity’s more valuable than each game being a forever-game.
Usually games as a service, they’ll release a large patch or expansion that makes significant, unpopular, changes. So lots of long time fans will review bomb it, in a good way, to show their displeasure.
One does not even need to review bomb as a single update can easily ruin a game. After that it’s no longer comparable to the game one was playing for possibly thousands of hours.
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