I wonder if anyone involved in this debate has even played both games… because outside of having a bunch of adorable yet vicious critters with grimdark world implications… they’re nothing alike
Might as well be comparing Resident Evil to House of the Dead, both have zombies, both take place in a house, both have terrible voice acting… but one’s intended to be scary and has very limited resources and depressing music to give that feel, while the other is a goofy action game intended to be B-Grade schlock where you just mindlessly shoot things
Palworld gameplay isn’t even remotely similar to Pokemon. Its basically Ark Survival that just so happens to have plagiarised pokemon designs instead of dinosaurs.
I kinda wish they didn’t go such overt plagiarism in terms of design because then Palworld could be a nice game on its own
that’s my take on it really, they clearly knew their designs were copied bs, and totally did not have to make it that way. For me personally it totally throws off the potential vibe and just feels like poking a bear for absolutely no reason. Plus I also think the game is kind of offensive and in poor taste but that seems to be a minority opinion to say the least.
the only explanation i can come up with is that they wanted the free PR, i mean would the game really have been so popular if it wasn’t teetering on the knife’s edge of plagiarism?
if they made the creature designs comfortably different from pokemon it would kinda just be yet another game
But honestly, what can even be considered “comfortably different” from Pokemon? If you make funny little animals, they’ll probably resemble at least one of the 1025 Pokemon currently in existence.
(FYI, by raw numbers Minecraft is still the #1 popular game. Not relevant to the discussion but a neat statistic. It’s kind of mind boggling how popular that stupid block game is)
Fortnite Battle Royale was an afterthought, a gamejam project at Epic, made with assets from Fortnite: Save the World. They hoped to use the BR hype to get some more players to the main game, but it got so ridiculously popular it quickly overtook StW and became the Fortnite we all know today.
So do I, I’m not knocking it, but you play it for the schlock and awe, not to be legitimately frightened or experienced a tense environment… and in that sense comparing it to Resident Evil because they both have zombies in a mansion made by mad science, is foolish.
If you like survival games (Ark, Rust, Valheim…), you’d probably like it. It’s a pretty decent survival game, and getting it’s nice having the Pals grind your resources for you.
“Hi, welcome to the midgame checkpoint. To continue, please produce 25 potions that require four different useless items.”
“Oh ho, this enemy is impervious to your broadsword. But if you have that one dagger the orphan boy dropped 26 playing hours ago, then you can throw it in his eye and obtain the Orphan’s Treasure. This unique item will grant a buff that increases gainaxing.”
“Yes, you’re low on health, but you can eat 25 cheese wheels. Save those hundred full life potions for when you really need th-Oh that was the last boss. Good job, you win, and the potions mean nothing.”
Ok, that last one is a reason not to hoard, but it stems from a thousand boss battles where you didn’t have any healing items.
Yes, you’re low on health, but you can eat 25 cheese wheels.
Just once I'd like a game where this actually has consequences. Oh, you ate 25 cheese wheels right before a battle? Now you're nauseated and your stomach is aching. You puke mid battle and your enemy decapitates you, which leading to a spray of blood and vomit in their face so you kinda get the last laugh but you're still dead.
I think Outer Worlds does this, (Well not the whole puking thing lmao) if you eat/drink too much of the same thing you get hit with a debuff or something. You can also develop addictions iirc with certain foods, drugs and alcohol where you get slapped with a debuff if it gets too long since you last consumed ut
That game exists. It’s called “real life”. It’s pay to win and often not all that fun. Plus, the graphics can be hit or miss at times, depending on your hardware.
You eat the giant corpse. You’re having a hard time getting all of it down. Stop eating? y/n
n
You choke over your giant corpse. You die. Do you want your possesions identified? y/n
Or, if you can’t choke to death because you’re wearing an amulet of magical breathing:
You stuff yourself, and then vomit voluminously.
It’s not really the same, because eating doesn’t heal you and you’d usually rather do it when nothing is trying to kill you, although sometimes it can’t be helped.
I wasn’t exactly old enough to have experienced this, but I know there was a time that if you wanted to play a PC game, you didn’t buy it on a floppy or a disc; you got a book with code that you had to type up and compile yourself. If you did more than just follow the book, you could understand it and change it to be whatever you wanted!
This is why I wish everything was open source. If I don’t like the way something is done, I can tweak it. Any part of it and make it perfect for me.
The closest I got was learning that the TI-85 I used in my algebra classes had BASIC programming in it, and I found the code for a rogulike dungeon crawler kinda like Eye of the Beholder specifically for the calculator. At the time, I already knew plenty of BASIC myself so I could tweak things as I found bugs or generally didn’t like the stats of an item.
You can go to GOG, buy some really old game, install it on a PC, play it and after a few minutes go: “How the fk was I so dazzled with this shit back then?!”
At least for me, whilst most such game were A LOT of fun back then, almost all of them feel kinda meh nowadays, the graphics-heavy ones because they look like shit now compared to even games from 10 year ago and the other ones because their game mechanics are so shallow and simplistic (and often oh so reliant on reaction times) compared to even what Indie companies have been doing in the last couple of decades.
Yeah, the memory of the fun that was had survived the passage of time, but most of those games pale in comparisson to games I’ve played in the last 2 decades. Beware of confusing the two like the sterotypical old person who complains “Music was much better when I was young, before Rock-n-Roll”.
PS: I’m not even especially big on fancy graphics but instead prefer complex multi-layered game mechanics, so the kind of games from back then I still can enjoy today are things like Civilization.
I’m not talking about comparison to modern expectation; I’m saying that devs were scrappier, had less established frameworks of design and technology, and still created a beautiful cultural moment
Mind you, the biggest hindrance the create something special back then was technical, nowadays it’s time: codebases are far more massive nowadays and the work that goes into making assets (sprites, models, audio, animation and so on) that go with the code in a modern game is gigantic compared to back then (or, alternativelly, if done with reusable assets you get just another of hundred of similar-loooking low-buget indie games).
Even something like Bioshock with it’s unique vision was already a massive piece of work when it comes to game assets, though artistically (and as a game too) it’s a masterpiece, IMHO.
I actually made a handfull of games back in the early 90s (a minesweeper clone for the ZX Spectrum done in Assembly and never published, and a Tic-Tac-Toe game for the PC done in C that I sold to a small magazine and did got published) and then started working on game making a few years ago, and definitelly the programing work has expanded in terms of size (with still some down-to-the-metal technically complex stuff like shader programming) but the asset creation work has massivelly exploded (no wonder AAA games have bugets in the hundreds of millions of dollars range).
“How the fk was I so dazzled with this shit back then?!”
Lack of games to compare to, mostly. For instance, how many games could you compare Warcraft to, back in 1994? Probably only Dune II. By 1999, any RTS game would be compared to Starcraft, Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, Total Annihilation and possibly others. “Doom clone” remained the definition of FPS for roughly 3 years. Meanwhile, every platformer since the late 80s was compared to half the catalogue available on the NES. Something something “learning from others’ mistakes, standing on the shoulders of giants”
Not every old game is a gem, just like not every modern game is trash. One of my personal old favorites that holds up well is Jedi Outcast. Does a better job at making you feel like a lightsaber wielding jedi than Force Unleashed
I watched the trailer and read the steam description. I don’t like how it treats and lets you treat the pals. My 8yo was very excited to see a pokemon clone game, and asked me to stop the trailer 30 seconds in because of them beating up the pals and using them as slaves.
Then don’t play it. Also, your last sentence literally describes Pokemon. Wild animals beating the crap out of each other and enslaved by post war child army.
I said this in another comment, but the concept itself is different from the execution though. She watches pokemon, and they regularly talk about respecting the pokemon and treating them with respect. Anybody who treats pokemon as an object without love is shown in a bad light; even team rocket is shown to have great love for their Meowth that they are willing to walk away from Meowth when they think Meowth would have a better life elsewhere. On palworld steam description, they literally say pals can be treated any way you want because they thankfully don’t have any human rights issues. Kids don’t think of the bigger picture, or the deeper meaning beyond what they actually see. I’m not saying the game is bad. I’m just saying I don’t like the game for how it is, and it’s definitely not a kids game where as pokemon can be.
I mean if they really respected the pokemon they’d leave them in the wild instead of beating the shit out of them and then grooming them to do their bidding. Oh yeah, cool this guy treats his slaves better than that guy. Lol!
Yeah like I said in another comment, the game is not a kids game, and that is fine. However, the game looks cute and charming, and very like pokemon, which makes it very attractive for kids, and makes me concerned for any kid who likes playing this game.
The concern over children liking Palworld is akin to all those unfounded concerns about shooter games “causing” violence.
Humans, even small children, are VERY capable to separate fiction from reality. There’s no problem at all about a kid wanting to play a game about catching animals and using them to build your base.
That might actually be true up to a certain age. She was really into Powerpuff girls when she was 5, and I had to switch it to something else because she was aggressive a lot. It was like a switch turned off a week after I stopped ppg. Anecdotal, but yeah some things are not suitable for some ages.
After seeing a few videos about it, it’s a pass for me. Pretty plainly a soulless legally distinct mishmash of random design elements with nothing to bring to the table creatively
If this was a soulless cash grab, it wouldn’t be half as optimized as it is now. I climbed a peak, and could see the other side of the map without any frame drops. AAA titles still struggle to do that.
It is bootleg Pokemon, but it’s also a well made game.
Like yeah someone with relatively okay skill could duplicate a famous painting, but we wouldn’t make them famous for it. Art is about making interesting choices.
I’m having terrible seeing it, but if you’re happy that’s great. I barely have time for the games I’m excited about from three years ago, so who am I to criticise?
the optimization is weird because yeah you can see far as hell and it looks good enough, but at the same time my entirely decent GPU can’t run it in 1080p on lowest settings
i just wish they’d implemented the resolution setting to only apply to the game world, it’s kind of idiotic to have it affect the UI as well…
Nah. It’s the Vampire Survivors of the “catch em all” genre. I thought it looked like ass in the videos - and it does! - but when you have your own hands on the controller it’s a different experience. Again, like VS, it lands in a sweet spot re: progression, expansion, new interactions, etc.
I tell people “it’s the least polished game I’ve ever played for 20+ hours”.
Yeah because taking your pets to an arena-style fight to “fainting” is also a great model for the kids lmao
Pokémon’s dog fighting aside, Palworld has a certain cynicism that imo takes it out of the realm of a kids game. The game allows you to capture humans and then has a little blurb about how it’s “inhumane” to do so. There’s a niche for an “adult” monster capture game that Palworld is filling. I’m curious about how the game will continue to develop in early access. They have a lot of funding & hype, let’s see if they can see it through to a full release (or wallow in development like so many other Early Access survival games).
The concept itself is different from the execution though. She watches pokemon, and they regularly talk about respecting the pokemon and treating them with respect. Anybody who treats pokemon as an object without love is shown in a bad light; even team rocket is shown to have great love for their Meowth that they are willing to walk away from Meowth when they think Meowth would have a better life elsewhere. On palworld steam description, they literally say pals can be treated any way you want because they thankfully don’t have any human rights issues. Kids don’t think of the bigger picture, deeper meaning beyond what they actually see. The game is not a kids game, and that is fine. However, the game looks cute and charming, and very like pokemon, which makes me concerned for any kid who likes playing this game.
I think you’re a great parent who interrogates the media that your child is consuming!
The aesthetic of Palworld feeds that cynicism; it’s charming and colorful and awfully brutal. Parents should be aware of the game’s content and the game should probably get a Teen rating (at least in the US; not sure how PEGI does their rating).
But at the same time, the human enemies are ones locking pals in literal cages who you can free. And none of the pals actually die when you are out fighting them in the world, they just pass out with Xs over their eyes. (Just don’t unlock the butcher knife)
Really the game lets you treat pals however you want, from never using them for work and doing everything yourself, to full on brutal working conditions. Choice is yours.
They talk about treating them with respect… then trap them in poke balls and let them out to fight each other for bragging rights and entertainment. The people of the Pokémon world are the highest of hypocrites and that’s one of the main lessons that should be taken from that show
This seems like biblical levels of silly. Treating a slave creature well before you hawk it into the arena to fight for you feels a little morally nebulous.
It’s a fun game, and laughing about the pals is totally part of it. The penguins special move is getting blasted out of a bazooka, and immediately passing out. It’s hilarious, but if you think about it, it’s really not much different from Ash Catchem tossing his pokemon into cage fighting rings. Palworld is honest about it, and injects humor that clearly makes you feel uncomfortable.
Other people reply by how Pokemons are being in captive is a bad thing, and even though it’s logical, I know what the Pokemon anime is. Like most anime, it teaches children kind and nice stuff, and the captive thing is ignored likely because it can’t be applied in real world. No need to doubt - Pokemon is not bad for your child.
Palworld just allows too much freedom when compared to that. You either have to be an established person to understand what you’re doing or play with your parents so they explain what your actions mean.
and if understand the game right one of the “bad guy” groups you fight thinks this is fucked up and wants to kill you because you make pals fight
you’re kind of explicitly playing as the bad guy, and considering the stuff the game has you do you’re basically a cartoon villain in a massive lair filled with grunts who are just sort of there and go on lunch breaks between shifts of building death rays
That’s what pokemon is though. It’s cock fighting and animal slavery. I knew that as a teen when I played the original games and watched the original show. And pokemon Manga is even more violent.
I haven’t played the game yet. Not sure if I will. But I’ve seen some gameplay, and, honestly, it bothers me too, and not just because beating up Pokemon feels bad. My main problem is that it could have been done in a better way that would make me feel less bad lol
The pals should be dangerous! Even the basic starter ones!
I play a Pokemon TTRPG where you can beat up Pokemon with your bare hands if you want. The difference is, they’re not helpless. A trainer without any investment in their personal combat skills is roughly a suitable match for a low level Ratata. Even in the video games, there’s a reason Professor Birch got cornered by a couple Zigzagoon. It’s the same reason you’re not allowed in the long grass without a Pokemon.
Pokemon are magical monsters that can just straight up kill you. There’s a big difference between fighting something like that, on basically equal footing, and punching a helpless stuffed animal.
It’s definitely not a kid game. The descriptions of the pals tells how some of them are used for torture, sex, drugs, religion all sorts of wild shit. I really hope they keep that up to because imo the game is better for it.
Pokemon always was a dog fighting economy. Growing up with it never thought about how dark it was but we old now.
Fun seeing an absurd matured version of monster catching dog fighting economy.
Idk if it’ll be living up to hype a year from now, but for now pretty fun. Also love seeing game freak miss out on all this money. You dummies have known people wanted something like this for decades!
It was about beetle fighting. One of the core sources of inspiration is based on how groups of kids(in Japan) go into the woods to find the biggest beetle they could, bring them back and have them fight.
It definitely takes the “Pokémon are slaves” thing and runs with it. You can kill and eat the pals. Some of them are very “human”. You basically stop short of actually whipping them, though I’m sure they’d add that in.
Edit: maybe I’ll clarify, the Syndicate is a group against the mistreatment of pals. You can capture them and force them to work for you. The player is very much the bad guy here.
The player is the bad guy because of a mechanic that exists but isn’t encouraged? There are plenty of games that allow the player character to commit awful crimes. You only play as the bad guy if you’re playing as the bad guy.
That’s the way I see it. Show me a slave owner who just kinda let their slaves wander around without any kind of restraints, and let them do whatever they want
The electric Pokemon were forced to work at the power plant in the first season of the anime. Pokemon have always been slaves. I totally get not liking the presentation, though. It’s far more grotesque and not abstracted away.
Considering how the steam page reads, it’s like a full blown parody by simply pointing out what Pokemon’s world must be like through the eyes of an adult.
Pals can be used to fight, or they can be made to work on farms or factories. You can even sell them or eat them!
Put an army of Pals on the job. Don’t worry; there are no labor laws for Pals.
Letting Pals do the work is the key to automation. Build a factory, place a Pal in it, and they’ll keep working as long as they’re fed—until they’re dead, that is.
Endangered Pals live in wildlife sanctuaries. Sneak in and capture rare Pals to get rich quick! It’s not a crime if you don’t get caught, after all.
The game is still in early access and has plans to officially support mods. Either the devs will make a “PG” setting or someone will mod it to be more child friendly.
Yup, the golden era of AAA games has been over since after the 360/PS3 days arguably.
Now it’s all corporatized and basically trying to nickel-and-dime users - which apparently a large amount of users are perfectly okay with (more or less) due to devs still pushing out battle/season passes, $20+ MTX skins, and lootboxes.
I don’t think all AAA games would go that route. A bunch of them definitely would but some of the publishers that have a passion for games and not just cranking out the same shit year after year would definitely not go that route.
You can still play real video games through emulators tho, there are tons of hidden gems in every console! I’ve been finding joy again by playing those
Raging barbarians replaced with literal demons. XCom unit replaced with BFG squads. I could see that working. There’s a mod I play for Civ 5 which adds a barbarian civ which - when they defeat things - turns units and cities into MORE barbs. It’s fucking brutal and turns the game into a ‘last man standing’ rather than anyone being able to win. I love it!
DOOM: Battle for Earth. A 4X strategy/survival game. Basically you try to save Earth with limited resources or prolong it’s death. Kinda like They Are Billions.
I’m thinking all the other civs are demons. The trick is the player/slayer can only destroy thier cities, not capture them. So the only cities you can actually have are player made. The rest you rip and tear through.
Navigating Qeynos and Freeport before maps were made, accidentally attacking your guild master and adding your corpse to the pile by falling off of Kelethin bridges due to lag were a right of passage.
This is a rare console W over PC. All your games are just there. No additional launchers or log ins, no waiting 30 minutes for the game to update because you havnt opened that launcher in months.
They’re capable of supporting mouse and keyboard. For some reason most games just don’t. Like on my PS5, anything that uses a mouse style menu, I can use a mouse to operate. I can also use a keyboard to type in input boxes with anything. But the only game I can fully play with a M&KB I’ve tried so far is Call of Duty. Which is nuts because Stellaris, Civilization and City Skylines are on this system, too, and they would very much benefit from full M&KB support.
I don’t have a PS5, but I have a couple Dualsense controllers. Some games BLOW ME AWAY on controller. Returnal with haptics and adaptive triggers? INSANE. I wouldn’t play it with any other control method.
Consoles have exclusives. I much rather download an extra launcher than have to pay $400 for very similar hardware to use their special launcher to play a game. Also, if you have physical games, you have to deal with changing those out. PC, you're already on your PC so you just play the games you wanna play. Also, basically every time I've tried to play something on a playstation with someone, their PS needs and update and the game needs an update. PC games just update without me paying any attention to them on their own.
They do. If I want to play one game, then I have to grab the disk and put it in its specific console to play it with its launcher. There's some exceptions, like gamecube games can be played on Wii's using its hardware and launcher. But if I want to the play a PS4 game, I have to switch to that hardware and the PS4 launcher. On PC, at least I can use retroarch as a single unified launcher for many consoles instead of buying several consoles to use each of them as a distinct launcher and steam for most everything else. No switching to the PS# launcher to run some things and the Switch launcher for different games. Even if a game has its own dedicated launcher on PC (probably enough reason for me to not bother playing), its still better than having to physically swap hardware to use its launcher.
The whole heckin console is your launcher. So now you need another whole box IRL for the other launchers. Be sure to fiddle with your TV’s source selection button that for some reason can never work the way we expect.
No it’s not, different hardware isn’t equivalent to different launchers. Because if it was you could say the same exact thing about PCs.
The point is, on console whether you play a ubisoft game or EA game or Microsoft game, they all are launched from the same native launcher.
And I literally don’t even own a modern console and play all my games on PC, so have no buyers remorse. So please stop with this infantile platform war bullshit. I’m assuming you’re a grown-ass man, so please act like it.
Another big win is game licences work for anyone using the console for all games. While some PC publishers require each individual user to buy another copy of the game in order to keep separate profiles. Looking at you, Ubisoft
If you’re a parent, you can create a family group with your Microsoft account. Add each child’s Microsoft account under yours. Purchase the game on your account. Login to your account on your childs PC to install it. Log out and then login to your childs account. They’ll be able to play it.
Limitations? They will not have access to any DLC. It’s limited to one child. If you have more than one child, too bad.
No additional launchers or log ins, no waiting 30 minutes for the game to update
That happens on consoles all the time. Don’t play your modern console (switch or newer) and the same thing happens. I avoid Xbox now because every time I go to play it’s a 30 minute wait for system and game updates. -and my Xbox is hardwired Ethernet to 300 mbs service so it’s not slow Internet
I even booted up my switch before family visiting on Thanksgiving because I knew it would want an update. At least Switch was nice by making it optional.
I’m not though. Unless you open every launcher for every game whenever you open you PC then you still have that problem.
If I’m using my xbox regularly than that one game I havnt played in 8 months is going to stay updated. The same isn’t true for PCs. I use mine every day, but the other week when I went to load up world of warships for the first time in a while I had a 12gb update because it has its own special launcher, so I just said fuck it and went to a different game.
Current MM theory basically always puts the worst players on teams with the best players to “even out” the teams. But it leads to a terrible experience for everyone involved because the bad player gets constantly shit on and the good players are stuck trying to hard carry a whole team.
When that ends up happening for 1000-2000 hours of gameplay people get frustrated and call out the bad players.
Good players and bad players are both outliers. If you assign a numerical value to the players it’ll more likely try to balance the teams more than anything. I’ll put together an example.
P1: 100 - Best Player in the game
P2: 50 - Average Player
P3: 40 - Just below average
P4: 2 - Brand New to the game
To match these 4 players there’s only so many choices. Put P1 on a team with P2 or P3 and the other side is extremely disadvantaged. By putting P1 and P4 together, they average out to ~51. P2 and P3 average for ~45. The game thinks that’s a valid matchup, but really nobody is going to enjoy it.
This happens in both pubs and competitive modes because it maximizes “engagement” from the worst players, as they have a higher chance of being carried to a win when they’re put with the better players. Those also tend to be the ones who spend the most money, so these companies cater to them at the cost of enjoyment for everyone else.
Playing with people leagues better than you even if you are carried to a win sucks. In a lot of games you don’t even get to actually play. You’re dead before you get a shot off or never get to touch the ball or you fall off at the first obstacle and end not even getting to finish the race because you’re so behind everyone else.
That’s also true, and is often my experience in non-shooter games.
However it does work out that the lowest common denominator doesn’t care if they didn’t do anything. They’re just happy to win. The couch casuals aren’t ever going to be great, so their standard of a great game is much, much lower than anyone who plays daily or even every few days
I think it’s more of a votekick problem. There’s always going to be people whining about their teammates regardless of skill differential. People will also find ways to accuse same and higher ranked players of being bad at the game, because it’s more about ego and them being in a bad mood.
Even in games where votekick doesn’t exist this level of toxicity does, and it’s often because of the manipulated matchmaking algorithms putting them in that bad mood and inflating their Ego.
I don’t think that’s the reason, I think they’re using the game as an outlet for unrelated frustrations in their lives, but I agree that toxicity still exists in games without votekick. But personally I find it infinitely more tolerable playing a game with toxic people when they don’t have the power to kick me out of the match, because that means I’m not obligated to try to appease them.
Ugh. Then you have never had them throw the game and basically work against the rest of the team just to hurt everyone else.
I don’t think there is any easy answer, it’s just more people playing and the world being ever increasingly full of narcissists who just only can think of themselves as right that means a portion of any online take is gonna be shit. And yeah it really made me stop bother playing
For real. Was playing a Star Wars game again recently. Devs had dropped support and the community had become rampagingly toxic. I found a discord to play with people and actually have a voice chat and they all whined about how no new players showed up but they were repugnant to an extreme. Hyper gatekeep-y for a start but then add on a massive dose of sexism, racism and every other flavor of bigotry.
Decided maybe that the game had died for a reason and uninstalled that shit.
Kinda reminds me of the current state of SW:Squadrons. The only remaining community are the toxic sweats. The player count is so low that you pretty much always have to wait minutes to start x.x
I was talking about Battlefront 2 (2016) but Squadrons also applies. I tried playing that game online 3 times and just never bothered continuing it. I get being sweaty, fine, but being toxic about it is something else. Just not interested in it anymore. Been playing stuff like Baldurs Gate 3 perpetually now and it’s great. Or the Hitman trilogy. Actually looking at my playstation almost all the games are singleplayer. Only multiplayer game recently is a co-op game, It Takes Two.
Oh yes it can. People will compete over the kills and kill hog as much as they can. Some people will actively block you so you can’t shoot while they’re in a lightsaber hero. It’s just exhausting.
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