If you like retro-inspired arcade racers, Slipstream is a fucking blast. You can use your own music if you want to and there are mods to add more cars.
Hah, that looks like the gameplay of PS3 / Xbox 360 era Ridge Racer but sent back to Ridge Racer 1993 graphics. Definitely seems like one of those delightful projects where someone just has nostalgia for something and also has the skills and drive to just do it themselves
Castlevania Lord of Shadow 2. Loved the first one and 2 was just bad. I wish they would have kept it as a God of War clone, with stunning visuals, game play and music
In a lot of respects it’s a good game, its fans even love it as a part of this big ongoing series. But it repeated a few tropes and trends that really started to get to me; wherein so many villains are introduced in a Dragonball style of escalating power rather than character definition.
The first two games introduced one supremely powerful hero, but invented mature and elaborate reasons as to why he couldn’t save the world alone - why evil or influential forces need cooperation of everyone to defeat, not a single showy swordsman. Then, later games try to impress you by showing villains that could easily beat this hero; without character definition to make such claims worth it.
They also really sold into the anime gender tropes - where every woman makes shy/teasing comments about the male lead, most girls are lesbian only for the sake of sexual harassment rather than true connection, etc.
Oh man, the moment I clicked on this thread, Trails came into mind. Now, I myself haven’t played it, but my mother is close to finishing Kevin’s game, and we were peeking at the the next few games and the most recent one to be released. And man, I don’t even know if I wanna play this series anymore.
The anime tropes we saw and read about from people’s reviews are killing us, and me and my mom fucking love anime. Hell, she’s a shonen-anime lover through and through. But the way the older characters like Agate get yassified into looking like generic anime guy #1 with red hair and Zin into slightly less generic anime guy #2 kills me, these dudes should not look like college kids 😭
The shitty romance that they’re hinting between Agate and Tita is 🤢. I really wish they had kept them as a sibling dynamic, and I thought Tita’s mom was freaking out because she thought he was a pervert, not that he actually liked her…
Also found out about the adopted siblings from TS:CS that seem to like each other, which is creepier than Estelle x Joshua because this pair was raised together since they were literal toddlers unlike the original two… God Japan’s not-by-blood adopt a son to marry thing kills me. The adopt a son to marry is fine if the girl wasn’t raised with him or like, they’re 20 years old. But this, “we literally were raised like siblings” thing kills me sometimes.
But yeah the egregious fan service, flanderization, and overall lack of seriousness that we saw from some of the newer games made me be like “maybe I won’t pick this game up,” which is a shame. I’m really disappointed to hear about the anime gender tropes stuff…
Capcom vs. SNK 2 was in the extended lineup. It’s great to see those passionate communities still playing those games 25 years later, even with plenty of new blood, though I will admit that both games fall into a situation where the top tier characters are so dominant that you don’t get a lot of variety in character selection in top 8, which can dampen the excitement a bit.
I hope Capcom brings an optional mode for new balance, like they added the option to disable roll cancel. The game is too unique with its mechanics, I think it’s one of the most interesting games ever with the modes, but the balance just isn’t great, which is holding the game back.
I was lucky that Strive top 8 were played early, so I could enjoy them at a decent time despite being in CEST. Bit unfortunate with the character variety, a lot of HC and Goldlewis matches and Johnny has proven to be very strong as people predicted. Would have preferred to see Ram win. Not that she’s weak, but in my opinion more interesting and somewhat underplayed. But alas.
Strive has excellent variety right now. Out of eight players, we had eight different characters. The nature of a tournament is that you’ll see repeats of the characters played by the people who stay in longer. The problem with a game like CvS2 is that you see those same characters over and over again throughout the pools stages, and you see very similar teams across the players in top 8. That Ramlethal player won the ArcSys world tour very recently, also.
I guess you’re right, my complaint was mostly about about the part of groups that I watched that was I think three Goldlewis matches in a row.
I don’t think the balance for Strive is in a really bad spot, and character skills can outweigh statistical advantages. Maybe it’s just that I dislike Goldlewis and HC due to their oppressive playstyles that I remember them as negative examples.
Didn’t want to complain really, the matches were hype, I got some really good laughs out of them too when RedDitto grabbed opponents in the most insane situations. Good stuff all around
Never did like pro level (and never had aspirations to do so), but way back in the day, the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) had an amateur league fittingly called the Cyberathelete Amateur League (CAL), we had a small team for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars that we competed in, didn’t do stellar but it was a blast, met people from other teams we’d often practice with or just do pub games.
It was total beer league type stuff, if you can find a group like that imo it’s worth it, would love to have that type of experience again, end the day stakes were low and we played for fun, people took it serious but not too serious if that makes sense, it’s really easy to kill the enjoyment if someone takes it too far though.
CAL got somewhat serious at the very top and was basically the precursor to MLG. CAL open was very hit or miss, but at least in CS it got quite serious pretty quickly. Those top players were some of the first ever to get paid semi consistent and were the best in the world at the time.
I played some tourneys through CAL in counterstrike a long time ago and there was some tough competition on the amateur side. The pros were on another level from most amateur teams but a few of the amateur teams could still give them some competition.
This was when MS went sweeping in and started wide brushing over usernames as well. My friends’ tags were Babyfetaljuice and Yourmomstampon and they were forced to change them to keep playing.
And there’s the problem. It wasn’t so much they refused to acknowledge the city existed. The company refused to acknowledge they had to provide support staff beyond seeing a ticket and closing the ticket.
The customer support center was probably locked from accessing any website except a tightly controlled set of pages and tools. Even Maps is too easy to turn into a game. Look at Geoguesser.
I remember in high school we would use MS Paint and an eraser tool to make a game where you had to trace over a similar sized line and whoever had the most erased without backtracking won. Point being, people will make a game out of anything so petty tyrants managers have to lock that shit down to focus their people on the work.
Check out place names in Newfoundland, Canada. We’ve got Dildo, Placentia, Conception Bay, and many more. We’ve also got Heart’s Desire, Heart’s Content, and Hearts Delight, not necessarily inappropriate names but I could see someone flagging it as a fake name nevertheless.
This shit still happens all the time. Somehow, all the morons got in charge of all the tech stuff. So now we have to deal with overly dramatic influencer wannabes, masquerading as social justice advocates. I was on reddit the other day, and the subject of teachers sleeping with students came up, and how no one takes it seriously when its a male student. I had said thats probably because just about every guy on the planet had wanted to sleep with at least one of his teachers when his in teenage years. I said that I had fancied my maths teacher when I was 15. I got banned for “soliciting sex from a minor”…
Cant even talk about our lived experience as human beings without someone looking to twist it into some kind of offence. What happened to Josh was a warning. And we didnt listen. Now we have religious puritains in the house of lords in the UK pushing age verification in online spaces. Everyone thinks about stealing data, its not. Its about pushing morality. They are currently going after the porn term “barely legal”. Why? Because in their heads it means not legal… In the gaming space, it used to be “video games cause violence” that then pivoted to “video games cause sexual violence against women”…
We will enter the post-internet age in our lifetimes, mark my words. People are starting to realize that it is not sustainable to have corporations filter your every word and authoritarian governments hold killswitches at arm’s reach. There is a growing need of a new and independent communication medium built from the ground up for censorship-resistance. And there is no shortage of bright minds to actually implement such a “peoples’ network”. Just look at freifunk, reticulum, etc.
Thirty years ago it was not possible to use a computer without installing proprietary software, but nowadays fully FOSS computing is the everyday reality of millions of people. Thirty years from now it will be possible to access all the world’s knowledge and communicate securely with anyone willing to listen, all without paying a cent to greedy ISPs or having your traffic monitored by government agents. There will be crackdowns and repression, but we will make it through.
Thirty years from now it will be possible to access all the world’s knowledge and communicate securely with anyone willing to listen, all without paying a cent to greedy ISPs or having your traffic monitored by government agents.
I participated in a local Unreal Tournament competition and won $3k. Was $75 buy in and I think I got somewhat lucky in my match placement. Was allowed to do this solo at 14 🤣.
Lots of terrible players in my bracket while I watched the best pick each other off on the other half. Took second honestly by sitting back and picking off kills from others engagements 🤷♂️.
I did CAL P on in the CS1.6 era with middling success.
I barely can get high in the mid tier leagues today. Too much specialization, meta, guns, characters, and the playing field is literally thousands of times bigger.
It’s mostly meta and effort. Your reflexes don’t decline THAT until your 60s. Sure you might not be able to be a top 1% but beyond that it’s mostly just practice and giving fucks lol.
I’m not reading patch notes, I’m playing builds I want and ignoring meta, and I’d rather pop 2 off in the noggin than seek out and practice with better players.
OTOH I’m turning the fastest laps of my life with my auto racing and am chasing a win!
I played it with coop mates (via game pass IIRC), all EGS fans since Oblivion, well after 76 was released and patched up, and it was just… boring. And grindy. Yet kept trying to upsell us stuff. I kinda get how some like the game with those BGS environments, but that was still a shock to me.
Starfield did nothing either. I watched YT story videos/tried the intro out of a friend’s Steam library instead of buying and felt like I was looking at a AI slop Skyrim mod, both technically and in terms of writing. Again, I’m a hardcore fan going way back, warts, glitches and all.
It’s remarkable the studio has fallen so far, without basically changing anything, yet still has such a loyal following. How is that even possible?
Fallout 1 - exceptional world-building, fantastic game, great character writing, superbly replayable RPG. Your build is instrumental to what you can do; decisions affect the world. Held together by jank and bugs, alas, but generally superb.
Fallout 2 - fixes most of the jank and bugs and has a much bigger and deeper world, but not quite as well-integrated a story. Worthy sequel, though.
Fallout 3 - “Oblivion with guns”, but has a pretty decent story, lots of interesting side quests. Seems like Bethesda misunderstood the point of the setting a bit, but very promising. Has some RPG replayability - different builds and different choices change what’s available in the world.
Fallout New Vegas - best game in the whole series. Good plot, great sidequests, great characters, reactive world. Actually makes it seem like the Creation engine can be used for ‘proper’ RPGs - everything by Bethesda tended to be a mile wide and an inch deep up till then. Obsidian actually understand the setting, which is not surprising since they had a lot of original Black Isle devs in their team. Held together by jank and bugs, which I’m going to pretend was a callback to Fallout 1.
Fallout 4 - just what the fuck. Plot that you can barely believe is as stupid as it is. One-note, irritating characters. Dreadful writing. Gives up being an RPG in favour of crafting and base-building. “Talking” interface which was the butt of jokes at the time and an insult to the history of the series. Barely any decision is of consequence, you could save near the “final decision” point, see all the endings, and miss nothing of consequence. All of Bethesda’s worst habits, given free rein.
Not going to be spending money with Bethesda again unless the reviews turn up exceptional. After F4, I was expecting nothing from 76, and was not surprised. Was expecting nothing from Starfield, and was not surprised. Am expecting Elder Scrolls 5 to be a bag of shite as well - am whatever the complete opposite of ‘hyped’ is for it.
I think the rose tinted glasses effect is strong. Fallout 4 wasn’t that bad and had some neat characters and sidequests. I played heavily modded NV too, and while great, has plenty of missed beats and slow quests.
Also, making a (mostly) top down, tight text game is very different than producing a voice acted, sprawling 3D world. It’s like trying to compare the writing quality of a novel vs a 2 part blockbuster movie.
Not that I disagree with the decline, but I think that’s putting it too strong and ignoring huge differences.
For me the technical and artistic of aspects are factors too. Starfield would’ve been unreal if it came out in 2012… but look at its contemporaries. CP2077? KCD2? Even ME Andromeda utterly trounces it in artistic creativity, animation quality, graphics, scripting, performance, HDR quality, combat, even some voice acting; I could go on and on. And it’s basically the same premise.
Yet Starfield feels like modded Skyrim, looks only superficially better, and runs at like a tenth the speed.
One thing that really threw me off FO4 was the voiced main character. They had to simplify the dialogue options significantly, and I just don’t need my character to have a voice, my imagination can sort that out just fine. That way I can make up my own mind about how my character sounds in my head, have more detailed dialogue options (like FO:NV), and not have a locked in boring voice with boring dialogue options. Lots of cool additions in FO4, but it just seemed so shallow, I stopped playing quite early.
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Aktywne