If you’re into scripting or hacking you should check this game out. It’s an interesting twist on the Multi-User Dungeon genre. The game presents mostly as a command-line interface where your goal is to seek out targets to pwn for money/points. NPC targets will have vulnerabilities you need to find and exploit in order to expose a hackable part. Once found you engage hackermode where you’ll have a timelimit to break the target’s security (mostly through bruteforce cracking). The game allows you to write short scripts in JavaScript to automate searching for vulnerabilities and cracking security.
Being Multi-User, there are other users online doing what you’re doing and you’re free to chat with them and exchange scripts. You’re also free to write malicious scripts that will steal money/points from others who don’t check scripts before running them!
The part I found cool was that the game mirrors IRL hacking much closer than other hacking games. You’ll often need to submit incorrect data to NPC targets to get an error message that will contain hints about where to go next. Ex. A webpage has “News” and “About Us” sections. You can request a section that doesn’t exist to get an error message that shows all acceptable sections: “News”, “About Us”, or “Employees”. You’ve found a hidden section! Using scripts to send a bunch of mal-formed data at a target and then analyzing which ones generate an exploitable error is part of real-life security testing.
In hacknet, when you try to hack a target you’ll see it has SSH and FTP services running. You run fake programs like SSHcrack.exe and FTPbounce.exe to exploit those services and the you’re in.
In hackmud, when you try to hack a target you’ll see it has an “ez_35” lock and a “c001” lock. The ez_35 lock requires an unlock word, something like “open”, “unlock”, “release” and a digit between 0 and 9. The c001 lock requires a color like “red” “purple” “lime”. You need to enter the right inputs within the time limit to hack the target. You can do it manually, but most targets have too many locks with too many options to manually guess all of them in time. You’ll need to write your own real life script in JavaScript that can detect locks and automatically guess every option for those locks. If you’ve ever done programming challenges then you shouldn’t have too much difficulty writing these scripts. If you’re new to programming it’s not the easiest tutorial. The game provides very little direct help.
It’s all about timing, just like face buttons. Platforming or fighting games, you gotta have that instant response. Aiming or acceleration needs the precision of analog. So, “depends on the game” is my hot take…
I realised all these years later that so many games from my childhood had the issue of “floaty characters”.
Mario 64 felt so good because you could run at full speed, snap the alalog stick back and jump, and Mario would pivot on a bees dick and launch himself at your face.
Mortal Kombat 9, also known as “Mortal Kombat” or “Mortal Kombat (2011)” is where the modern canon starts. It’s also delisted from sale, so you’ll need to find a used copy for consoles or pirate it for PC. It’s a soft reboot of the story and also establishes the bar for what fighting game story modes should be. It’s campy and leans into it, and that’s the tone that MK always has when it’s at its best.
Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11 are sequels to that, and they escalate the ridiculousness. These are direct sequels, so while they make efforts to ensure you can understand what’s happening even if you haven’t played the games before, MKX is best enjoyed after playing MK9, and MK11 is best enjoyed after playing MKX.
Mortal Kombat 1 is another soft reboot, but (slight spoiler) it also does this while preserving the canon of, and sequeling, MK9, MKX, and MK11.
MK9 is a throwback to your favorite characters with modern (at the time) mechanics.
MKX brings back the run button and tries to keep all of the different versions of each character over the years in the same game via its “variation” system.
MK11 tries to do away with some superfluous features of MKX while adding more defensive options.
MK1 introduces “kameos”, which is like a Marvel vs. Capcom 1 style assist system.
MK9 is also the start of the modern game mechanics, in addition to the story. They established the current gameplay formula in MK9, and have been iterating on it since then.
Unless you really want to play the classic games, I think MK9 is the best starting point.
edit: Wait wtf am I talking about you obviously start with the movie from 1995.
If the mtx is meaningless because you can get it easily in game, then it is predatory as it is intended to be purchased by people who are not aware that they can earn it in game. That strikes me as worse than mtx that is required to do something they can’t without it, because it preys on people’s lack of information and they aren’t making an informed choice.
You encounter the merchant where you can buy the MTX stuff in the first few hours of the game. You can’t even use the majority of them before reaching that point.
I would honestly bet money that they’d designed the game to not have microtransactions, then some executive at the 11th hour told them to find a way to include them, and they made them inconsequential as a sort of malicious compliance. Not that I think it’s OK to have them in the first place, it really soured me on the game initially. I think it’s considerably worse for including them, but they are completely meaningless.
I have another theory, and please don’t be offended if I’m wrong.
Maybe it wasn’t a game at all.
Could it have been The Bishop of Battle from the movie Nightmares? You might have Mandela-effected this game from memories of that movie and similar games you had played.
Super Mario Bros on the NES. I remember getting super frustrated and throwing a tantrum because I couldn’t figure out how to jump over the second hole. Hahahaha man I was pathetic.
Since she is very young and has no social pressure towards microsoftcraft, I‘d suggest mineclone, its free, open source and in opposition to bedrock mc not bloated with ingame purchases.
If you could list one that isn’t just “Microsoft bad” sure, I’ve never played it, but I’ve played literally thousands of hours of Minecraft Java, along with several thousand more on mod packs for Java.
Not to mention the very large community of Minecraft let’s players, tutorials, etc that exist for Minecraft, and it’s huge cultural influence.
Not saying mineclone is bad or anything, I don’t know much about it aside from the site listing it’s features, but MC is the OG and huge for a reason, and I agree bedrock is full of garbage MTX, but Java is not.
modders literally had to reverse engineer minecraft to mod it (closed source)
you cant download the game without logging into mojang despite the fact that you have to log in to your microsoft account anyway
constant changes that make the game more approachable but barely any that make it more complex ie redstone (subjective)
cant be played offline easily
Those are just the first ones I can come up with.
I have started playing minecraft in the browser. Had to pay for it using paypal since it wasnt available in shops. I definitely played thousands of hours as well, made lets plays, have multiple servers.
The reason I dont recommend it anymore is the initial minecraft was very different from today. It used to be about creativity. Today it feels like a race for content. Mostly like a game as a service thing.
You don’t have to login to a mojang and ms account, it’s just Microsoft accounts, which if you dislike Microsoft sure…
The telemetry is far from insidious and is used in many many games as a way to provide data about what people interact with (or don’t) so devs have a better idea of what to focus on. minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Snooper
Modders seemed to have made due with the closed source nature… Again talking about Java specifically, not Bedrock.
Not sure if you’re aware but the 1.21 release includes an auto-crafter, pretty big addition for Redstone related automation. Though this post is also about a 4yo so… It’s not super likely they’ll be interested in Redstone anyway.
Can be played offline if you’ve logged into the mc launcher at least once before being offline afaik.
I don’t really understand what you mean by “a race for content” if anything it feels like the game hasn’t changed enough considering how long it’s been out, they’ll add one or two new kinda nifty things per release, but compared to mod makers… The pace is much slower.
What? You said use MineClone instead, I asked for any reasons why one would prefer MineClone over MIneCraft, you gave some reasons, I argued my points and agreed with some of yours.
How is that disrespectful lmfao, that’s how people discuss differences in opinion.
I did. Besides the obvious „dont expose your children to microtransactions if avoidable“ I have brought many more that are my concerns.
If you reread your text, you said this, in short:
telemetry no problem
closed source no problem
offline no problem
Which is just taking the facts that you asked for and putting them into the trash. This I found disrespectful. Even before when you said „find one“ was disrespectful but I chose to keep talking since it might be a misunderstanding.
They might be no problem for you but consent is quite a huge problem. Being able to use the product you bought (over a decade ago) in the way you want to and are used to. There is an argument that prolonged sales and development cost money and such but we‘re on lemmy, a FOSS program (where telemetry is opt in btw) and we‘re discussing why telemetry without opt out is bad?
Also, to play offline is pretty much impossible, I checked multiple sources. If you dont have internet and cant login, youre f*cked.
Its also not a point to say modders got around it. Repacking games for piracy reasons isnt much different from what they had to do and I think its legitimately a big plus that the minetest engine is so easily moddable.
I think the problem is you seemingly don’t know how a discussion and difference of opinon works.
I’m not taking your “facts” and throwing them in the trash, I was point for point giving my take on your concerns.
I was genuinely curious why someone would play minetest over MC and wanted to know what pros/cons exist, and the pros/cons you gave didn’t resonate with me.
Lemmy has forced telemetry, for example, every time you upvote or downvote something, that information is easily seen by instance admins. The question becomes is that telemetry harmful in any way to the end user, in Lemmys case, I can very easily see how that could be used to harm another user. In Minecrafts case… I don’t see it.
MTX again aren’t in Java, which is again why I stated to just use Java in my first response.
It’s not impossible to play offline, there are many very easy workarounds available.
There are tens of thousands of mods minimum for minecraft, so yes it is fair to say that modders got around it. I’m not talking piracy, I mean large content additions such as Mekanism, Create, etc…
Yes it is a plus that minetest is more open source, but does a 4 YO looking for a game to play, who will likely socialize with other children who are more likely to know what minecraft is vs minetest really understand or care in the slightest that their knockoff mc game is open source? Come on man.
I’m also going to point out I didn’t downvote you at all, and wasn’t at all trying to be rude or disrespectful, simply stating my opinions as a long time MC player, my first paragraph of this response being an emotionally charged/rude response not withstanding, as I was irritated at the strange emotional response you had to what I thought was an innocuous discussion.
I do apologize for the first paragraphs rudeness, but am leaving it there to not hide my misstep.
Thanks for elaborating. I understand a little better now. Also I appreciate you apologizing.
Some things I still want to clear up:
lemmy doesnt have „telemetry“, it is federated and instance admins have a lot more to do than harm someone. Thats very far fetched, whereas microsoft will receive tons of money for behavioral data from players. There is opt in telemetry for lemmy servers which is entirely different. Telemetry is a technical term, not what someone makes of it, sorry.
I checked, the ways to play offline arent easy. From four sources, you always have to log in with an account and after can play without internet.
Mods being available is not an argument against my aegument. Its still been hacked which I find unnecessary. I know about mods I own public minecraft servers.
Mineclone (minetest ist the engine) is not more open source. It is open source, minecraft is closed source. A child does not care either way. Introducing them to open source just makes the world a better place, bit by bit. Not necessarily important now but definitely in a couple years.
Also, you use the child to make your point (of open source) and exclude it when convenient (bedrock being a microstransaction mess and heavily geared towards kids).
I really dont want to fight more today. Its been a rough couple of days actually. Many people with really strong opinions and very little empathy. Lets agree to disagree.
Still in early development, probably not that suited for a kid. The bespoke and enclosed experience of Minecraft would be better, assuming you can turn the shop off or limit it in some way.
I dont know where you have your information from but it works just like minecraft does, no difference. Especially for a really young kid that probably barely would press „play game“ there’s no issues afaik.
Why do you suggest something that you have to assume things about? You cant turn off the shop in bedrock minecraft. It is part of the ui (made to pull kids into microtransactions) exactly the reason why I would not suggest it to kids - or anyone - in the first place.
I checked the page and your claim is false. It is not in early development and the list of missing features has 4 points in comparison to 40+ points that are on par with minecraft.
Its also incredibly easy to install and free so no harm in trying.
Every open world game has turned into the same “do this x times to get y reward that has no relevance whatsoever to the game”
I miss the days of games on rails. I could sit down, enjoy a game and play it through to the end in 10-20 hours. Now it seems like every game is trying to milk 100+ hours of gameplay time out of even the most basic of stories and mechanics.
Open world is really only good if it’s something like an MMO where the content is built up over the course of years and there are multiple story lines.
Aside from that, it works well for racing games not much else.
I tend to agree but then I also have moments where I get lost in the world for a few hours and it’s great. Death Stranding is probably my favourite where I walk everywhere and I spend an hour doing one delivery!
I also miss story driven games such as Uncharted games, playing several open world games in a row can be exhausting, I kinda feel it for game reviewers and such.
I found the three newish Tomb Raider games to be a great mix of a sort of open world feel at times where you have things to explore, while being very much on rails. Each arc in the story gives you an area to explore and your actions in that area progress the story. You get some weapon and ability upgrades throughout. I came in not expecting much and couldn’t put the first one down. I think I finished Tomb Raider 2013 to 100% in about 20-25 hours and it was excellent. Will probably do another playthrough at some point, still haven’t played the third.
I agree there. At the very least with the first of them. The 2nd and 3rd started to add a lot of crafting mechanics, but I really enjoyed the first one (and have played all 3 to completion)
Absolutely agree on Red Dead Redemption 2. Another point considering it’s an open world game it plays extremely linearly and sometimes in missions it tells you that you can’t leave a certain area for no reason.
I really enjoyed it, and will return to it. But I put it down because it felt like doing chores. I will try again and try to focus on the scenery and story, which I do like a lot
I got it for free and really enjoyed it. The main character is the epitome of beige and bland generic gruff white dude but the game did quite a lot new and had some good ideas.
The second one was even better, it’s very meme heavy in its characters but if you can tolerate them the gameplay is even better and the story is better too.
Always ready to bump my favorite game of all time, but honestly I feel this is quite a popular opinion (compared to some of the games in OP’s list that are really overlooked on these discussions of best games ever).
But still, what an incredible experience, the OST for outer Wilds was my fourth most listened to on last year’s Spotify Wrapped :)
Yeah, it may not be as popular as Mario or Zelda, but I wouldn’t say it’s “unfairly forgotten”. People who have played the game tend to be pretty vocal about it. And justifiably so, I’ve never had a comparable experience in another game. I wish I could forget about it and play it again.
For the people who do find out about it and it hooks them enough sure, it’s not really forgotten or underrated. But I still think it’s kinda obscure / not well known?
I started playing the Outer Worlds thinking I had simply misheard the name Outer Wilds and found myself very confused but still kept trudging on. Thank you for bringing some sanity into my life; Wilds seems like the game I wanted to play the whole time, not Worlds. I’ll see how chaotic I can fuck out Worlds before I ditch it for Wilds.
I just wish Valve wasn’t pulling a Nintendo and not aiding the fans of a game they care about, instead of just sitting on it and claiming they are doing all they can for it.
How long has it been since we were promised a major update after Jungle Inferno? How long since Valve promised community fixes? How long since Valve delayed it with “we’re working hard on making it next update”? How long did Valve say they heard the community loud and clear about the bot crisis?
TF2 is my all time favorite game, but it’s no longer really playable in 2024. Casual servers are infested with bots, and there’s been no major changes to the game since 2017. I wish Valve cared about the game as much as the community still does dozens of years later.
They most certainly made a decision based on priorities and TF2 wasn’t a big enough one for them to jump on. If there were enough users who would pay clamoring for it, they’d move.
Oh, instead of giving money to the developers and charity, we can instead give money to thieves and scammers? Wow! Thanks! Fuck charity and the people who make the games I want to play, amirite?
If you want me to stay in the piracy section, just say so. I’m there anyway.
I have also purchased literally hundreds of games directly from Steam and GOG, so the sum total of my soul in gaming is in the positive, as far as I’m concerned.
Also, if you’re purchasing a humble package for charity, you’d better customize where the money goes because by default the devs and the charity get barely any of it. I’ve bought many of them over the years.
regarding scammers:
I have purchased literally hundreds of steam keys from such shops over the years and have had a grand total of only 3 keys be removed from my account within days or weeks, and was granted refunds from the shops when I provided proof from Steam that the keys were rejected as duplicates. Every game I’ve installed other than those 3 have worked without issues. It’s an educated risk that I failed to mention because it’s been over 99% successful for me. Make your own call.
edit: Also worth mentioning that there are many games in my Steam account that were added after the games were delisted, such as the original GTA Trilogy, solely because I could still find keys on keyshops. If you want a delisted game, it’s worth considering.
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