Valve are well within their rights here. This isn’t new content or transformative. It’s literally trying to remake the same game using the same engine. These devs knew they were playing with fire. Never come between GabeN and his hats.
Black Mesa is a remake of a single player game that Valve wasn’t planning on remaking any time soon, more profitable to make it official and take a cut
TF2 actively still makes them sht tons of money, no profit in splitting the fan base
Imo, Trademark. Black Mesa is a concept from Half-Life, but “Black Mesa” to the best of my knowledge wasn’t a registered trademark. “Team Fortress/Team Fortress 2” are registered trademarks however, and that significantly changes the value and functionality of the specific terms.
Yes, but it’s easier to give permission to use concepts that don’t infringe on trademark than it is to give permission on something that could be argued in court as muddying a trademark.
I know they require permission either way, but what permission they’re actually asking for changes based on what terminology they use
Well my point is that since the content is directly related, it actually doesn’t matter what they called it. It would’ve been exactly the same amount of infringement if they called it, “happy fun times at the science lab”.
The only differnce is it would’ve been less obvious to identify.
I get your point, my point is the infringement would be less egregious without trademark and thus easier for Valve to turn a blind eye to, or even potentially officially endorse via some potential deal à la Black Mesa.
But hey, I am fully willing to concede that I am just a layman with enormous distance from this topic and no specific expertise or insider knowledge, so the possibility of me being wrong is high
My thinking is that it was hot garbage that was trying to milk the TF2 name to grow their own fanbase. And valve didn’t want to be associated with that.
My guess is that Black Mesa looks great, had passionate people who were really communicating and engaging with Valve/community, didn’t infringe on the Half-Life trademark and it felt like a step forward, which is why it was allowed to continue AND even be brought to market.
Unfortunately it’s not just well within their rights, it’s their legal obligation. The stupid situation that is America means that for them to be able to maintain their claim of ownership on the IP trademark, they have to both actively use the trademark and actively police unauthorized use of the trademark by others. If they don’t, they risk losing the right to claim the trademark, which wouldn’t just mean independents running servers for the game, but also would mean unscrupulous entities could produce and sell merchandise featuring the trademark en masse without having to seek permission from or pay any commissions to Valve.
It’s shitty, but it’s more shitty because of the stupid system we’ve built than because of any intentional malevolence on Valve’s part, imo.
Important caveat: I am not a legal professional and it is entirely possible my understanding of trademark law is flawed, but this is my earnest understanding of the situation.
It is hardly incumbent on copyright owners, however, to challenge each and every actionable infringement. And there is nothing untoward about waiting to see whether an infringer’s exploitation undercuts the value of the copyrighted work, has no effect on the original work, or even complements it. Fan sites prompted by a book or film, for example, may benefit the copyright owner. See Wu, Tolerated Use, 31 Colum. J. L. & Arts 617, 619–620 (2008).
I play a lot of puzzle games. Some of them are pretty hard (the later levels of Tametsi take quite a while to crack).
But this one is on a completely different level. If there is a more brutally punishing sokoban-family game on existence, I have no idea what it might be.
Stephen, if he exists, is most likely condemned to roll sausages eternally in hell, for the sin of making this game.
Baba Is You is fantastic, and I think its difficulty curve is much, much more reasonable in the beginning than Stephen’s Sausage Roll. I haven’t finished it, but I didn’t utterly bounce off it either.
It’s very disappointing that Telltale went down. The Wolf Among Us by Telltale is also great, and, over a decade later, it’s finally getting a sequel some time this year.
Detroit: Become Human generally has big overarching choices that are more obviously good vs bad, or rather pacifist vs violent and deviant vs machine, but a lot of the smaller in-between choices can make a big difference regarding who lives and who dies, and a lot of them aren’t obvious, especially in Kara’s story line. One in particular that I remember can seem like an obvious “doing the right thing” choice but it actually is a choice that can get several characters killed as a result if you do what seems like the “good person” thing. Getting to the end with everyone still alive can be surprisingly difficult without a guide, and there are a lot of different endings and branching paths depending on a lot of different choices. One character has I think somewhere around 26 separate chances of dying in the story at different points in the game. There’s an achievement for getting all of them lol.
Heavy rain is similar to DBH but less obvious about having particular good or bad routes iirc. Like it doesn’t do the “pacifist vs violent” or “deviant vs machine” style choices, but there are a lot of different choices that can affect the ending and who survives to the end.
Dragon Age Origins is an oldie but a goody with a ton of endings and decisions that aren’t strictly good or bad. The following DA games are good too but the first one fits what you’re looking for the most.
Those are ones I can think of off the top of my head.
If you’re looking for more like this, check out the Telltale games. In particular, I’m a fan of The Wolf Among Us. It’s based on a comic book series (called Fables, if you wanted to google it,) where fairy tale creatures are real and live hidden among humans; It’s a good old fashioned murder mystery where the lead detective is the Big Bad Wolf. I won’t spoil anything here, but there are a lot of decisions which can have a major impact further down the line.
The Batman telltale game is very similar; It’s less focused on “Batman the asskicker” and more focused on “Batman the world’s greatest detective” where you’re trying to uncover a plot by an unknown villain.
The Walking Dead is what put the game studio on the map for most people, but it’s ironically the game I like the least. Your choices do matter, so you may end up enjoying it. But I personally enjoyed the mysteries from the two latter games more than I enjoyed the interpersonal relationships in The Walking Dead. But maybe that’s just my autism talking.
The Banner Saga 1-3 has you leading an army and offers many difficult narrative decisions that don’t necessarily affect the story outcome but absolutely can make or break your next battle or just generally make you feel bad. Battles are turn-bases tactical style.
Fallout: New Vegas. Hell, Fallout 2. In 2 early on, you only have time to one of two quests and people die when you can’t help them. You can’t save everyone.
Very different from later games where time doesn’t matter and the whole world waits for you.
I thought Thromebreaker: The Witcher Tales had some extremely tough ones. They also heavily effect your gameplay in that many times they add or remove a character from your party. I had built a deck in that game that relied heavily on a character. That character then did something morally reprehensible and I decided to banish them. That removed them from my deck, too, so I had to come up with a new strategy after that.
Fun game if you can get into it. Almost every choice is extremely morally gray and often feels like there is no good choice at all.
When playing with friends/alone? Great! Customization is never a bad thing, and it enables groups with varied skill levels to still enjoy the game. Online multiplayer? Hate it hate it hate it.
One example: a lot of fps games are cross-platform these days, and I’ve never felt good about the things they do to balance mouse vs controller. I get why they attempt it, but it feels less like “balance” and more like they’ve created two different classes of players, controller being the close quarter players and mouse being the mid/long range flick shooters.
Another is any game that adjusts comeback mechanics during the course of a match, because I’ve never understood punishing someone for playing well
Another is any game that adjusts comeback mechanics during the course of a match, because I’ve never understood punishing someone for playing well
The idea behind it is aiming for a close ending for a variety of skill sets by trying to balance things as the last minute, but it certainly feels like punishing anyone who does well early on.
Some implementations are kinda fun when they seem like actual balancing, but only if they are early enough for the winning team/person to be able to address and not some unstoppable surprise on the last lap/few seconds of a match like a blue shell in Mario Kart.
If you like randomly made stories, you can try Rimworld.
You will quickly find yourself asking very difficult questions. Is taking on the cripple something you can afford to do? Is using medicine on a less valuable colonist smart? Do you let some of your colonists starve, or start a war with friendly neighbors? Cannibalism will make your neighbors hate you and some of your colonists might rebel over it, but that’s better than some of them starving… right?
If you’re into colony Sims Rimworld is amazing! Biotech and Idology are also great DLC expansions that give you a lot more options. IMO Royalty is the weakest one so if you’re just starting out I might recommend passing on it unless you really love the game
Wasteland 3 without looking up any guides poses some difficult choices, usually in the form of being forced to side with a certain faction at the expense of another, with no option to skip the choice once it’s presented.
The patient Nintendo gamer has to wait for an emulator and raise the Jolly Roger.
In all seriousness Nintendo games for previous gen (Wii U) are roughly half current gen. In the current gens store. Go back further and they just don’t support it.
The real problem now is all console companies just close the store on their old consoles so physical media is the only purchase route that lasts if you want to stay legal and that has scarcity value in the end.
Jail breaking is an option too for the Switch and I’ve been happy with the experience. Even paying more for a physically modded oled version ends up paying for itself quick considering the price of games.
Emulation is king when it doesn’t have bugs for sure. I’ve been running more games through emulation over the switch as it’s gotten better for that beautiful fps and resolution jump.
Any sort of fighting game if you’re planning to play online. It doesn’t matter how cheap Rivals of Aether or Street Fighter 6 is, if you’re not playing near release you’ll only be fighting against people with 500+ hours of experience.
I mostly agree, but I feel like Street Fighter 6(Going to throw Tekken 7/8 out as an option as well) has a good enough ranking system that you will be able to get people around your skill level years down the line. I didnt jump on Street Fighter 5 till Arcade Edition released, and never had an issue with learning and getting matches in Ranked, and I feel like that will be the same for SF6.
You will have to catch up with knowledge of characters, but I feel lower ranks are much easier in that regard.
However, the Street Fighter 6 Battle Hub is merciless and full of Master ranked players, and that is where turning up late is going to be painful and soul crushing(and I will be one of those people contributing to that).
This also highlights a huge advantage that popular fighting games have: the constant arrival of new players. You don't want to be the only person who picked up the game that week.
Thankfully, there are multiple really popular fighting games out right now (at least, really popular compared to how the genre was doing a few years ago), which is great.
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Aktywne