Can I go with a game from the 90s? Because the adaptation of Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is one of the best games I ever played. Ellison himself voices the “evil” computer, AM and instead of trying to win, you have to make the correct moral choices so your character can finally be allowed to die. You play multiple characters (not concurrently), so you have to do this multiple times. It’s brutal but so good. I know very few people who even know it existed.
Games of any time period are valid. The two reasons I made the post were:
I was watching Nocllip’s documentary on the production of Prey & for a game that has possibly the best first 15 minutes of any game it got middling reviews & it really disappointing the devs that they work was overlooked. So I figured that perhaps some people here might enjoy it who had overlooked it or simply never heard of it.
I thought it’d be a great spring board for everyone who has that one game they love that they can’t ever talk about.
I actually heard about that game for the first time the other day in a YouTube video on philosophical questions in video games that I had playing in the background while doing other things.
Figment. I’m not sure how much attention this one got, but I hadn’t heard about it until I was searching the Nintendo store for deals. It’s a short puzzle/action game with a good story that felt compelling.
Obligatory: Roguelike (well, Roguelite but that starts getting into the berlin bullshit). Rogue is a class in tabletop RPGs and a historic game. Rouge is a bunny rabbit in sonic and a kind of makeup.
That aside, here are a few off the top of my head:
Distance: Mostly a “beat the clock” style racing game in the vein of trackmania, although the synchronous MP with collision is a great time at a party. But it also has a weirdly good singleplayer campaign with both a narrative and some solid mechanics and set pieces. Also a ridiculous steam workshop presence
Tales of Maj’Eyal probably doesn’t belong here as I think it has been ridiculously successful for a game made by a small team and consistently comes up in discussions by anyone who is aware of what “the berlin interpretation” is. But it feels like it is almost completely ignored in the overall cultural zeitgeist when roguelikes/lites comes up. Which is a shame since TOME is very much a roguelike (technically lite, but… meh) with some solid design concepts. The vast majority of runs feel like they were “worth it” and even the early leveling has enough variety and wrenches that it feels less like you lost an hour of your life when you wipe and more like you get to do the Sand Worm again. Some of the unlocks are complete bullshit (although, I want to say the special magic trees were just made “free” because everyone hated it?), but it is generally the kind of game where you can work toward something with every run.
UFO: Aftermath/Aftershock (fuck Afterlight). Back in the dark ages between Silent Storm (WOOO) and the 2012 nu-XCOM, there were a lot of eurojank games in the genre. And while I don’t think UFO Aftermath was “good”, I do think it was competent. But mostly? It is probably the best Stargate SG1 game ever made. Because the devs were trying to cash in on that Jagged Alliance craze and made the human weapons stage a lot longer. So you might find yourself in an endgame with a few G36s backing up your plasma rifles as you fend off the obligatory base invasion. Aftershock, and especially Afterlight, lost a lot of this charm (because they are years later timeline wise) but were still fun
Silent Storm. Sorry, Silent Mother Fucking Storm, if we want to be specific. Alternate history WW2 where you play as a special organization for the Allies or Axis that are investigating a third party who have the potential to turn the war itself and blah blah blah. Mostly it is probably one of the best balanced JA2 style AP-based strategy games out there (just… get a save editor because the leveling/training is broken) with an emphasis on line of sight, trajectories, and full destruction of terrain. The kind of game where you might spend six “turns” getting your scout into position so that you can have your sniper plug a person from behind a wall, your machine gunner unload on people sleeping in a barracks, and your grenadier to… make the guard tower not exist anymore. All without ever directly targeting an enemy because you are fully operating based on magic radio commands or whatever. Again, this probably doesn’t belong here since anyone who liked JA2 back in the day was talking about this but it more or less fell off the face of the earth in favor of nu-XCOM. And I feel like the genre would be pretty revolutionized if people remembered this existed.
Thanks for pointing out the rogue typo, I use swipe texting on my phone so I occasionally get stuff wrong and I tend not to proof read as much as I aught to. Either way it’s fixed now.
Hardspace Shipbreaker. You’re a wage slave (literally) in a space dock, taking apart ships and throwing the bits into the right bins. Doesn’t sound super fun, but it is. 1) You’re chopping up ships but you get to use LASERS!!! and the energy grappling hook. So satisfying. 2) The physics is 90% spot on. You’re in 3d, but it’s not purely inertial. There’s a dampening field that slows things down, so it doesn’t get too outta hand. There are a couple of other quirks, but they’re not hugely impacting. 3) The soundtrack is perfect. It’s a very bluesy, banjo style for a very bluecollar type job. 4) The voice acting is amazing. Every line from Weaver is just perfect. You hate Hal with a passion (you’re supposed to). The writing is a little hammy, but they have to rush it bc it’s really a minor bit of the game. (Spoiler, it’s very pro-labor and anti-capitalist, so if that triggers you, don’t play it.)
I’ve played it thru twice. The first time as-is, but the 2nd time I shut off the “15 minute shifts” option. I think that breaks things up too much. I think open-shift is better. I bought the vinyl soundtrack. I’m not a huge fan of vinyl, but this is the right style of music that would benefit from it.
I remeber playing Jedi fallen order and seeing ships being broken down like that during the opening mission. I thought that I would rather be doing that and then hardspace showed up on steam a few days later. It’s been on my wish list for way too long, definitely going to pick it up for my next game
I’ve just recently said that on Lemmy - I said to a friend I wanted a game where you broke down and scrapped star wars ships, and they pointed me towards this game. It was recently on sale so I picked it up. It’s been an absolute blast and exactly what I was looking for (though I still wish I could do it with SW ships). I also agree about the shift timer, so thankfully there’s an option for that.
The writing is a little hammy, but they have to rush it bc it’s really a minor bit of the game. (Spoiler, it’s very pro-labor and anti-capitalist, so if that triggers you, don’t play it.)
Which annoyingly, is the reason I bounced off the game. Breaking down ships is fun. That’s literally the whole reason I want to play the game. The story wants me to hate playing the game and won’t let me play until I listen to the entirety of why capitalism is bad.
I listen to the entirety of why capitalism is bad.
Capitalism is pretty bad, so it didn’t bother me. It was refreshing to hear it in a narrative. Game devs don’t usually get to say stuff like that, so it was nice.
Yeah, but you don’t need to tell me that in an unskippable cutscene (the fact that it’s unskippable is the part I have an issue with) and ironically, the gameplay is so compelling that I absolutely do not mind just wasting my life away toiling under these ridiculous work conditions.
Edit: Let’s be real here, the game didn’t need a story. Just set me up with a ridiculous amount of debt and let me just break down ship after ship. They could have just added more ships and systems than make a story that people actively would work against.
Major studios pander to current sentiment but don’t seek to resolve the issues. For example the cyberpunk genre is an indictment of many things including the reckless pursuit of technology and corporate super powers. Yet Cyberpunk 2077 with partner with Amazon Prime gaming and let the man leading Neurolink voice a character in their game.
That’s not to disparage 2077 just an acknowledgement of the reality of triple A game development. They’re making products most of the time rather than art. Their worms can still be enjoyable but rarely get to make scathing statements.
Major studios pander to current sentiment but don’t seek to resolve the issues.
Lol, seek to resolve issues? They’re not the government. They’re art. Art critiques things and suggests people to change things. It came write laws.
Yet Cyberpunk 2077 with partner with Amazon Prime gaming and let the man leading Neurolink voice a character in their game.
The devs and writers don’t make the business decisions. Wish they did, they’d have a better product, imo. The marketing is done by someone else who the devs, usually, have no control over.
From my perspective producing art can be pivotal in impacting change, good or bad by swaying public sentiment. I’m not claiming that they can pull out the old quill and ink and pen up some statues, but that voicing distaste is the first step in enacting change.
Voicing thought alone doesn’t impact change, but neither does enacting laws, you also require enforcement. But laws enforced without public support don’t last forever.
On the last paragraph I think we had a disconnect, I had assumed you said devs in reference to an entire studio. But it seems you were strictly speaking about the individual of that occupation in a larger studio.
It still is a little lib-ish. The game goes to great lengths at showing Silverhand (and anyone blaming capitalism) as being a bit too harsh or off their rocker, with V explicitly mocking his leftist opinions in dialogue many times (replaying the game, once during an elevator ride, another after dealing with the chapel in pacifica). The game is very on the nose about blaming corporations but spares the rod when talking about the system.
Underappreciated for sure, but to be fair, it’s super repetitive. If they’d added a secondary component or loop where you could black market trade or participate in the economy of the game some how to drown out the monotony of breaking the same ships over and over, I’d have played it more.
Not necessarily, but there's some correlation. Games widely praised either are quality games or they resonate with their audience in some particular way, which can be itself an indication of value. Conversely a game that is widely panned might have some significant flaws or be lacking in some fundamental way.
Sure, there is always the odd Garfield Kart meme and some controversy skewing that. But because lists of reviews are easily available on the store page you can look at what is it that the other customers are praising or criticizing, and make your mind based on whether you see merits in these opinions.
Overall, even if you don't trust popular opinion, it's still a very useful tool. Frankly, often more useful than mainstream game reviews that tend to be overly lenient with triple-A publishers, and neglect indies.
An individual review does not matter too much (unless it has good text), but an overall score can give a hint. In example if a game gets a lot of flag from the users of recent reviews, than something is going on. It's always good to have a way of user reviews alongside the media outlets. You can even see if the game got for free (on paid games) and how long the guy played it at the time of writing the review. And it should incentivize developers to work on the game. Better than having nothing, like on Epic Games. User/Player opinions are not welcome there at all.
Or store.epicgames.com/en-US/free-games if you always want to go straight to the freebies (though you have to wait for the actual freebies to load, they show you the freemium ones while you wait!)
A, jeszcze pytanie, która gmina miała (w mojej metryce!) wyniki najbardziej rozjechane z wynikami krajowi. W 2015 była to Pałecznica w małopolskim, a w 2019 Ruda-Huta w lubelskim. Poniżej wyniki szczegółowe (w nawiasach ogólnokrajowe dla porównania):
2015 gm. Pałecznica
PiS: 27,51% (37,58%)
POKO: 2,81% (24,09%)
Razem: 0,91% (3,62%)
KORWiN: 1,90% (4,76%)
PSL: 58,97% (5,13%)
ZLew: 0,99% (7,55%)
Kukiz’15: 6,16% (8,81%)
Nowoczesna: 0,53% (7,60%)
głosowało 1316 osób.
2019 gm. Ruda-Huta
POKO: 5,76% (27,40%)
Konfederacja: 3,67% (6,81%)
PSL: 40,77% (8,55%)
PiS: 46,81% (43,59%)
SLD: 2,60% (12,56%)
głosowały 1262 osoby.
Generalnie w danych widoczna jest bardzo silna zbieżność pomiędzy rozjechaniem wyników, a popularnością PSL. No nie powinno to dziwić, bo PSL ma bardzo regionalne poparcie, pomimo bycia komitetem ogólnokrajowym.
Przepływy
Przyjąłem następujące przeliczniki według tego, jak kojarze transfery między partiami:
POKO w 2019 = PO + Nowoczesna + ZLew/2 z 2015
PiS w 2019 = PiS w 2015
SLD w 2019 = Razem + ZLew/2 z 2015
PSL w 2019 = PSL + Kukiz/2 z 2015
Konfederacja w 2019 = KORWiN + Kukiz/2 z 2015
wtedy otrzymujemy:
największy wzrost PiSu w Klwowie: z 37,17% na 70,19%, kosztem wyłącznie PSL
największa strata PiSu w Cisnej z 35,56% na 25,17%, na korzyść SLD
największy wzrost Lewicy w Hrubieszowie: z 2,71% (Razem) i 5,93% (ZL) na 22,03% (SLD), kosztem PO
najbardziej niezmiennie głosuje Bukowina Tatrzańska, przepływy w granicach 1,3 pp. (a PiS z dokładnością do 0,02%)
wyborcy zagraniczni bardzo zmotywowali się do głosowania na opozycję pomiędzy wyborami, bo Lewica ma +12, KO +8, natomiast PSL -4, a PiS i Konfederacja po -8.
w samej Warszawie PiS poleciał w dół wszędzie poza Białołęką, Targówkiem i Ursusem (ale też w granicach ułamków pp.); Konfa poleciała w dół w każdej dzielnicy o ok. 2pp; POKO tak samo 3 do 7 pp. w dół, natomiast Lewica w dzielnicach warszawskich urosła pomiędzy 4 a 9 pp.
Inne ciekawe rekordy które warto wspomnieć
najwyższy wynik PiSu (88,87% w 2019) w Godziszowie
I love the outer worlds, it has such a unique style to it, very much fallout humor in space with a little bit of arcanum thrown in for good measure. IMHO outer worlds > Starfield, when I saw that neon was just one long hallway with a few neon lights and signs, I knew what I was getting into and just stopped playing. Starfield has no identity, it’s bland, space combat is annoying at best, and it’s just an unoptimized mess. Outer worlds is unique, and when I see it I know exactly what it is, I can’t say the same for Starfield.
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst. Everybody loved the first game, but nobody played the second game, including me for a good few years. But once I decided to try it I realized how much I had been missing out. It’s really good. Making it open world really works. There is fast travel but I never once used it because just running around is so fun. If you liked the first game, please try Catalyst!
Mad Max is honestly probably one of my most replayed and enjoyable games that I own. If it wasn't for Sims 3, it would have the most hours in my Steam library. For me there's something just so cathartic about driving around the wasteland looting scrap and beating up warboys lol. And then getting some mods/trainers involved and exploring the dev areas out in the Big Nothing is great too. I've gotten some really great screenshots out of that game.
I picked it up on sale after watching Fury Road, which in turn I put off watching for years because I really like the first trilogy and did not want to have that memory tainted by some cash grab Hollywood sequel. Boy was I wrong about the film, and I was equally blown away by the game, to a point I felt really guilty getting it for 10 bucks or so. I really, really wish there was a multiplayer, though.
My biggest disappointment in it is that my favorite zone of the map only has one mission, but that mission is great. Apart of that its cool riding cars in the desert.
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