Fucking flaming gasoline trails, vehicles actually running out of gas after having their tanks punctured, it seems like the ejection was really toned down in GTAO but you could really get out of the windshield in single player.
I did get ejected through an incoming car in cyberpunk recently and was like "wow been a while."
I haven’t played in a couple years. Are you still bombarded with texts and phone calls as soon as you load into the game? And is theininap barely visible because of all the mission/activity markers?
Because that’s how it was last time I got on there. And that was right after they added the demolition derby stuff.
Reading this comment makes me give kudos for letting GTA V (singleplayer) exist as its own thing. I haven’t played GTAO since probably 2015 and have no idea what it’s like because of how little Rockstar pushes it on Singleplayer players.
No, they’ve done a couple of really nice qol updates lately that got rid of most of those, or at least reduced the calls to texts. I mean there’s still some annoyances, but it is better than it was. At least, last time I was there. Only join in maybe once a month or so now.
I know that Diablo isn’t a Capcom game, but if industry leaders are looking at $90 games with battle passes and in game purchases for $20 horse armor is “too low”, then we are truly fucked.
Games in the 90’s were almost the equivalent of $100 today. They seemed better, though, and people seem to play them longer, but that’s all probably just rose-tinted glasses
It’s the successor to one of the most successful consoles ever, and word is Nintendo’s had a lot of games that were done for some time now, but they’ve been holding them back to better position this launch. An hour-long Direct is about twice the usual length, and basically the entire industry is basing its plans around the Switch 2 and GTA6 right now.
I’m honestly curious is the Switch 2 will follow in that success.
Credit where credit is due; lots of kickstarters and small private companies have tried making something like the Switch for years, but very few people knew or cared about them. Then Nintendo pulls it off, which leads to the Steam Deck, which then compells a whole market to spring up for similar format devices.
Now there is a market, with competition from all sides, and Valve seems to be the one most are talking about for this format. Besides crushing emulators, how will Nintendo compete?
I was talking about this with some friends. Anecdotally, almost everyone we know who plays games has a Switch, but very few of them seem to care about a Switch 2, for one reason or another. What will undoubtedly still move units are their marquis franchises, not the least of which is expected to be a new 3D Super Mario game. Mario Kart does extremely well for them, but I’ll bet some amount of its success is tied to very cheap console hardware, which the Switch 2 will not be out of the gate, so that parents can buy each of their kids a handheld to play with each other in the car, at the laundromat, at their siblings’ soccer practice, etc., and as the hardware gets cheaper, that probably contributes to its “long tail” of sales.
But yeah, for people who live and breathe video games, consoles have lost their luster. Games take longer to make now, which means there are fewer first party titles, which means we have fewer reasons to buy another machine that plays the same games as some other piece of hardware we already own. That will be especially true for the Switch 2, since they don’t have a Wii U library to plunder for titles that they can port cheaply for people who’ve never played them.
All that to say, my expectations as an armchair analyst whose word isn’t worth anything on the matter and whose predictions may as well be a dice roll are that the Switch 2 will do very well, but I’d be surprised if it did better than the first Switch, and I don’t know that we’ll ever see a console do as well as the Switch, or the PS2 for that matter, ever again.
That first part really resonates because I experienced the DS lite. I didn’t see many phat NDS consoles, but kids everywhere had a DS lite. Mariokart did insanely well on that console, but not just because it was Mariokart, but also because of the download play feature.
It seems like Nintendo wants to replicate something like that through it’s virtual game card sharing feature. But it also seems like it’s a feature on the original Switch, so I wonder what new things they’ve planned.
I too will be surprised if the Switch 2 does better than the Switch. The 3DS, arguably the real sequel to the NDS, as opposed to the DSi, didn’t really touch the same highs that the DS lite did.
Agreed. It will hurt not being able to play the new Marios and Zeldas (Maybe emulators will pop up able to do so, but it’s not nearly as likely as it was in the past - at least, not until well after the console is no longer sold), but $400 $450 for what’s essentially a walled garden Steam Deck that plays Nintendo games just ain’t worth it to me. The original Switch was worth it to me at $300 in 2017, but times have changed.
Besides crushing emulators, how will Nintendo compete?
The same way they have been for a while, by making charming, accessible, and fun games. The average consumer doesn’t care about how litigious they are, unfortunately.
For the past 20 years that also included fun gimmicks. They sometimes fail, as with the Wii U, or were good but… Kinda just a gimmick, like the 3DS. But Nintendo has been making their consoles pretty unique from every other console. The DS format and the Wii are still very unique consoles. The Switch 2… Not so much…
I don’t doubt the Switch 2 will see success, but how it’ll stand out from everything else like the Switch originally did is still a question.
I dunno why people are so downvote heavy in this comm…
Yeah I agree that Nintendo has seen the most success when they have a compelling gimmick; time will tell if the same gimmick with more power will do the trick. I doubt the mouse gimmick will be more than a novelty, but we’ll see what they show tomorrow.
For me it’s not fanboyism more like vibing on nostalgia, Zelda, Smash Bros, Pokemon (RGBXYZ whatever), top down rpgs, Mario Party - Kart. And probably some crossovers like Metal Gear Solid. But gonna wait at least a year untill considering buying. The Steamdeck is comparable but much of it never going to use although still interested
It also included being considerably cheaper than other consoles because they use outdated tech. $400 $450 is a hefty price tag for a Nintendo console. I’m sure it will do well, since it’s just “Switch but more powerful,” which is what people were asking for. But for me, it’s too pricey for what it is.
And AND it’s not as though we can expect another mainline Zelda game on launch day. Maybe Metroid Prime 4, sure, but that series has never moved units the way Zelda does (as much as I wish it did).
I agree with your assessment. That’s where I fall too. I’ve got a launch day Switch and an OLED Steam Deck. My Switch mostly gathers dust since I got the Deck.
Metroid Prime 4 will be on the OG Switch, so no worry about missing out there. It will probably leak like most Nintendo games have been lately and I’ll get to play it early on my modded Switch, even. I think a new 3D Mario is what I’ll be missing out on, which will hurt, but not enough that I’ll be willing to pay almost over $500 to play it.
They do love their shadow drops, but I’m guessing no. Maybe they’ll do it for the Switch 2, though - they’ve pretty much run out of Wii U games to port and will have to re-release older stuff now!
that would have been so cool, but I don’t really know how it coulda worked out, like an isolated horror-scape wouldnt allow for char development or anything.
I disagree about Soma being an isolated setting, there are actually lots of characters, it’s just that they’re all insane cyborgs who mostly happen to have their own personal reasons for attacking you.
I can’t seem to find them, but before the game came out there was a series of live action video shorts made in association with it to help establish the concept and setting, I’d imagine a show being along the lines of those but fleshed out more.
Look up Soma Transmissions. There was also a bunch of short stories about the game. The one about climbing the big orbital gun to the top really stuck with me.
And there was more characters than just the scary proxy things.
I’m guessing they are planning everything. From the official minecraft article :
Now we’re actively working on Vibrant Visuals for Minecraft: Java Edition and our goal is to bring it to the game in a way that serves not only our players, but also our modders and resource pack creators.
I haven’t tried it in awhile, but tried it a few times over the years and always preferred Skater XL (just felt more like Skate to me), but I need to see how Session has progressed.
One of my favorite Skater XL mods is the ability to go into slow-mo whenever you start a trick. Really cool/fun. Also really satisfying to make your own skateboards in the game.
I was debating between the two when I was first looking at them. I guess Session is supposed to be the more “realistic” one, and it’s pretty tough actually. Each stick controls each foot (left stick for left foot, right stick for right foot) but you can of course change the settings to be as arcadey as you want. There’s even a control setting to make it play exactly like Skate 2/3. There aren’t many maps to play in, but the maps that are there are pretty good.
When I first got the game in 2021 or '22, the maps didn’t even have cars or other pedestrians, but they added those in one of the updates in the last couple years (tells you how much I play it lol).
I’ll also say that the music is kinda lacking in the game. Like there are two or three “stations” you can listen to based on genres, and there are only a few songs in each, but the classic “turn the game’s music volume all the way down and pull up a playlist on YouTube/Spotify” move always works.
That’s the same feeling I had. Session just felt more incomplete/rough around the edges. To those points, Skater XL basically uses the Skate control scheme, which I find the right balance of skill-based/fun. I think the soundtrack is pretty great with the likes of Modest Mouse, Interpol, Band of Horses, etc. But also pretty limited. As for levels, the site I linked above also has 1,056mod maps you can add, so that’s definitely not an issue.
Single player games with a good story and fun replayability are what I’m after. Or co-op. Occasionally, a fun multiplayer with a risky, innovative design like Lethal Company.
If a game requires me to collect 100 goddamn feathers, or press X 20 times to “survive” a heavily scripted encounter, you are doing your game wrong. Look at Black Mesa, look at Subnatica. Look at the games that took risks like Lethal Company or Elite Dangerous. You don’t have to appeal to everyone. You have to tell a story well, and the gameplay should be unique and interesting. Larian understood that with Divinity 2, and made improvements to both story and gameplay in BG3.
Unfortunately the good taste of people who actively comment about games often has only slight overlap with what makes money.
Three of the top ten US game earners in 2024 were yearly sports game rehashes. One of the top ten games was Call Of Duty. One was Fortnite.
These are money making machines. We can argue and beg and plead all we want. There is a huge mass of gamers out there was simply don’t care, and who will continue to buy formulaic rehashes and microtransaction infested treadmills.
The AAA publishers are not in it for the art. Look at AA and indie if you want games that are willing to appeal to a niche. I’m talking to you and everyone else reading this because this might actually have an effect. Saying what AAA publishers and developers should do is pointless, not like they will ever read it.
“What makes money” is always relative to how much it costs to make though.
I would argue the market for every kind of game is expanding. There’s a bigger market for Tetris now than there was in 1987, in terms of actual economic resources that could go into making Tetris profitably.
The Tetris market is a smaller percentage share of the overall gaming market, but in absolute terms it’s more money than it was in 1987.
That’s my suspicion at least.
Then the challenge is connecting that market slice with the dev shop that wants to serve that market slice. Which isn’t trivial. But I think it’s worth keeping in mind.
Every market is getting bigger, based on at least these four factors:
More cultural acceptance of gaming
Higher percentage of humanity achieving economic status where leisure becomes relevant
Proliferation of technology to greater portion of humanity
Expansion of human population
All markets are growing.
Heck, the market for COBOL programmers is larger today than ever before. That’s really interesting if you think about it.
“What makes money” is always relative to how much it costs to make though.
Season passes, microtransactions, and DLCs. Additionally creating brand recognition among the masses along with flashy trailers. These are all reasons that AAA behemoths are still banked on to make huge net profits.
Sometimes these massive games fail and lose money in spectacular ways, but it happens a lot less than us enlightened good taste gamers would like to imagine. Money gets shoveled into creatively safe massive games because they usually make a huge profit. I love say, Wasteland 2, but that game probably has made less money in its entire life than the newest Fifa game made in a week.
Good story and fun replayability (to me that means branching story paths and discoverability) is tough to combine. I’m hopeful for generative AI’s ability to make good stories that are also unique. Real, in depth dialogue that stays in character, AI directors for new story paths, that kind of thing.
It’s kind of hard to have an incredibly varied and versatile powerset in a video game, simply becuase you have a limited set of inputs. So you would normally have a small set of powers that each serve a purpose. But then doing that and still representing 4 elements means each only gets very limited options.
Thinking about it, I can see two ways to make bending feel powerful, versatile and give a good representation to all elements. 1) maybe the best solution would be to have customizable load outs with various bending powers, and let you switch between those load outs on the fly so you can coordinate a few power sets that work well together but swap them when other sets are more useful to the situation. 2) An interesting idea would be to use situational awareness to execute moves without specific user inputs differentiating the exact power used. For example, you could have a single boost button that uses a different element depending on if the player is on land, water, in the air or dodging (fire rocket!). And you could have a close/melee attack and ranged attack for each element that you can specify, but the exact effect/attack it creates can vary depending on the environment and enemy type of the target. Let it feel a little bit like the character is making decisions, not just you, like Batman in combat in the Arkham games. And of course, there would be a charge up to a special attack that uses the Avatar state and all 4 elements at once.
ign.com
Ważne