But Skyrim is beautiful even with its older graphics and has an interesting world to explore. Grey space metal structures on grey planets just aren’t interesting. Also even more so if the story starts with “you touched a weird rock”, don’t know why but here have my spaceship.
In Skyrim you’re waking up going to be executed next moment there’s a dragon attack.
Right? There was this one guy on Lemmy the other day expecting the game to be like Freelancer… Like, dude, it’s Fallout with a space suit, we’ve known that for years now. I feel like gamers always have the most stupid and unrealistic expectations imaginable.
A lot of the game before you escape the testing track, minus maybe the point you are told about momentum jumps, feel like one big tutorial without even realizing you’re in one. It’s done very well.
When I played through Portal in dev commentary mode, I was surprised at the time to realize they’re basically trying to teach you things through the whole game (or at least heavily signpost). Made me realize a lot about game design, and design in general.
I’m here to say Portal as well, specifically because, once you really look for it, you realise that about 90% of the game is tutorial. Like, seriously, basically everything leading up to “The cake is a lie” is teaching you the skills you need for the final sequence. It’s a massive tutorial followed by one level of actual game, and it’s beautiful, precisely because you don’t even notice that the tutorial hasn’t ended.
Sweeney (the CEO of Epic) says that he wants competition with Steam, but many of his actions point toward that he really just wants to be the guy at the top (ie, he wants to be the monopoly instead of Valve). He’s taken a fair number of anti-consumerist stances, which vary from understandable to clearly anti-competitive.
Epic is known for making exclusivity deals with 3rd party studios in which Epic bribes the studio with money, and in exchange, the studio does not release their game on Steam for 1 year.
At several points, this occurred after a studio already said that they will release on Steam, and the studio would have to walk back and delete their Steam listing.
Iirc, at one point Epic bought out a studio and had them remove the Steam listing for an already-released game, causing the game to be unplayable for people who had already bought the game
Edit: this apparently happened twice (Unreal Tournament and Rocket League), but it appears that the games still work for the people who bought it. I think the concern was actually that Steam players would lose functionality due to not being supported anymore after the unlisting
The Epic Game Store released in a non-functional state, and development on it is extremely slow. The first impression of the broken store likely still influences many people’s impression of the store. But it’s still missing many features that many gamers want to see in a store.
There were various rumors when the store first launched that it contained spyware. My understanding is that those rumors never fully got disproven, especially since some of the claims were supported by at least some evidence
Epic does not support Linux, and Sweeney has openly said that he does not plan to support Linux until it becomes more popular. He did immediately jump on board with supporting Arm though, which caused a lot of Linux gamers to think that he just doesn’t want to support Linux
Sweeney is a pretty abrasive person and iirc he made a lot of concerning statements on his social media. Several of them (as mentioned above) indicate that he wants to dethrone Valve so that he can be the monopoly instead
Overall, many gamers are in support of more competition in the game store space. Unfortunately, many gamers also think that Epic is an untrustworthy competitor, and they believe that Epic has a serious chance of making the gaming industry worse if they become more popular. As a result, many would prefer for Steam remain the monopoly rather than to take a bet on Epic.
It was a while ago, I don’t remember off the top of my head which specific game I’m remembering. Doing a brief search, it appears that this happened to Unreal Tournament and Rocket League, though it appears that the games still work for the people who bought it before the unlisting. I think the concern was losing functionality, especially for server-based or multiplayer games
For unplayable, Rocket League had very good Linux and macos native builds Epic required them to delete support for those operating systems as part of the acquisition of Psyonix
Yeesh I knew Epic was run by dick heads but I didn’t know they were this slimy, I’m glad I’ve only bought one game on their platform (Subnautica below zero), and that’s only because I got the original Subnautica for free from their weekly giveaway and loved it. I’ll continue to get the free games from them as it’s good to take a chance on games that you otherwise might never learn about.
I don’t care how much of a pirate cheapo game this is, watching Nintendo go ape over practically a knockoff someone could have made as a joke is amusing, especially with their playerbase success.
What were you doing for the majority of those 30 hours? Most likely resource gathering, building your base, optimizing pal usage, etc… Basically the only similarity is that you throw spheres at creatures. There’s no gyms, no turn based gameplay, no trading, no evolution, and not even really trainer battles, just some unique encounters.
You cannot copyright a vague idea. No matter how much Nintendo might want to.
The game is basically just magic animals in the world that you can capture and do things with. It’s literally every JRPG ever. It’s just mounts with extra features.
Not a big surprise on the Huffman Shitshow. A lot of subs over there are insanely toxic. But yeah, a ban for that? That’s crazy.
I didn’t even know RuneScape had a subscription! I think I briefly played it about 15 years ago. Good game, I just don’t have the time to play it, unfortunately. I assume you play? What’s the community like over there?
I just looked up their pricing and it makes sense for them to have an optional subscription. $14 a month is in line with other similar games (e.g. wow). Would be nice if they had a couple of tiers of subscription. Maybe a $7 and a $14. But that might complicate things. How much can you do on the free mode?
My brother has been playing for years and has a few paid accounts. Here’s how he explained it to me. All paid accounts had their prices locked in until you cancelled them. His first, and main, account had a price of $5 a month because he first bought it 15 years ago.
There are also “ironman” modes that exist in the main game. It’s an option at character creation that will restrict your account from trading with other players forcing you to obtain all items on your own instead of just buying them from the trade board. Since you need to make a new character, this is also another payment. My brother has two ironman accounts.
There are “leagues” which are new temporary servers where the rules are different and XP gain is incredibly fast. You’re given tasks to complete before the “league” ends and are awarded cosmetic items based on how much you complete. This requires its own paid account to play. My brother has one of these too.
In total he spent about $20 a month on the game for his various accounts. This change to the subscription will set every single one of his subscriptions to $14 a month raising his monthly payment to something like $56 a month which is ridiculous. He plans on ending all of his subscriptions since there is now no incentive to stay subscribed (the price is no longer locked in). So my brother, a long time and devoted customer, will play the game less and give less money because Jagex is hoping most people like him won’t go through the hassle of unsubscribing.
He, and lots of other long time players, are hoping that Jagex does what other MMOs do and allow multiple accounts for one subscription price.
You don’t need a separate account to play Leagues or any other temporary game modes. You are correct however that you do need to pay a separate membership for each character unless you’re okay with that character only being able to do F2P activities.
20 years ago it was $5 and maybe like 10% of skills were locked behind it. I noticed very little impact from it. But I’m pretty sure end game stuff was locked. IIRC, dragon armor was locked and may have been the best armor.
I’d be surprised if that general model changed significantly.
The model hasn’t changed, but as development of new content has continued, 95% of new content is subscription only.
That said, I can’t speak for Runescape “proper” aka Runescape 3, the current “main” version. I’ve heard a lot of concerning things about all sorts of mobile game style predatory shit going on there.
I’ve only played Runescape 2, now called “Old School Runescape”, which is a fork of the game from (I think) 2006.
Essentially, right around that time they completely overhauled combat, stat progression, and a bunch of other stuff, and called it Runescape 3. A lot of people didn’t like the changes and started hosting custom servers from before the changes.
Eventually they made an official version, called it Old School Runescape, and have been developing it side by side with “normal” Runescape since.
Old School isn’t predatory in my opinion. Outside of occasional “leagues” on special servers with specific challenges applied, there’s no FOMO. The f2p game has plenty of content enjoyable on its own. The subscription just unlocks a mountain of more content, including alternative ways to level up through early game. Technically you can advance faster with a subscription, but that’s due to having more options to turn into an over optimized plan, not some shit exp multiplier or something.
Look up YouTube videos on fastest max level on RS3. You can get all your levels to max level with micro transaction loot boxes in a very very short time for a very very large amount of money.
Tons. There’s an entire roguelike genre built around this; some of my favorites are Vagante and Streets of Rogue. There are games with procedurally generated worlds like Terraria, RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, and Factorio. There are RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3 that have so many ways to spec your characters and so many permutations of how events could unfold based on what you did that you’re unlikely to see them all.
I didn’t personally care for it, but I know I’m in the minority. In fact, one of the reasons I didn’t care for it is because it felt far less replayable than many of its peers. Even Zagreus will call out “the butterfly room”, because there are so few permutations to see.
Lmao I love Hades but this is such a sick burn, I’m stealing it for next time someone tries to convince me some shlocky k-drama is peak kino.
I do hope Hades 2 ups the variability of the encounters more, you’re absolutely right about endgame being a bit weak for a roguelike, even with the different weapons.
If you don’t mind his particular style, the SsethTzeentach video is what convinced me to give it a fair shake. The in-game tutorial and tooltips are pretty good though, and will get you started. Overtime you’ll discover more and more systems. Oh and just so you know, the demo is the full game, but a version behind.
All of these are classic roguelikes, a genre of games which frequently aren’t much to look at. The tradeoff for the looks is that they offer vast depth and complexity… and (usually) permadeath and a learning curve that’s more of a cliff. I recommend watching some yt videos about any roguelike you want to learn more about, just so a fan can explain the appeal and show off all the basics.
That said:
Caves of Qud - actually one of the prettier classic roguelikes, if you can belive it. You’re a traveller in a strange and unique world of vast salt deserts, jungles, and the titular caves. There is a ton of flavorful, semi-randomly generated history (especially the ever-important tales of the sultans) and cultures, so every run feels different. There is technically a main plot, but you can just ignore it and go exploring - it’s a sandbox experience. The best parts, to me, are the aforementioned flavour, the tactical combat (that can get incredibly chaotic, with screen-warping effects going off every turn), the build diversity, and delving too greedily and too deeply into the caves.
Cogmind - haven’t played this one, but it’s on a list. You’re a robot. You’re building yourself from parts as you go, fighting other robots and stealing their parts.
CDDA - one of my faves, but definitely not something I’d recommend as an intro to this genre. You’re a survivor in a zombie apocalypse. Go do things and don’t get bitten. It’s a sandbox - survive as long as you can, achieve a self-set goal. The distinguishing feature of CDDA is how realistic it tries to be - crafting is very complex, you need to track your thirst, nutrition, and sleep, you can easily get sick or get your arm broken, the zombies can track you by sight, noise, and lingering scent… My favourite part is surviving long enough to build elaborate apocalypse death mobiles, Mad Max style.
Traditional roguelikes may frequently pair with bad graphics, but it’s not a requirement. There are games like Tangledeep and Jupiter Hell, for instance. But thanks, these sound interesting.
If you want a bit better graphics I’d recommend you check out Tales of Maj’Eyal (ToME for short). It is on steam but the game is open-source and can be downloaded for free on its website.
If I had to choose a single game to play for the rest of time, it would be Dwarf Fortress. There’s just so much variety in its world generation and how the game can be played that if I was limited to just that one game, I would still have things to do.
And the awesome part of DF is that each time you start over (on the same world) you just add more to its history and the story continues. Losing is definitely fun when keeping that in mind.
Pokemon is about the universe it was created in. It was the perfect on the go game when we were children and it even had a great anime to go with it. When you were home, you watched Ash and Pikachu take on the world of pokemon. Everything looked so vibrant and cool. Then when it was time for you to go with your parents to a house party, you could play Pokemon on your Gameboy.
It’s just a nostalgia franchise now, but that’s okay. Most people are unhappy with how Game Freak is handling the role of building these games, but maybe one day they’ll make a turn.
I agree, but I also think kids nowadays find it interesting too, but hell, they find Fortnite interesting too, so maybe Palworld is gonna be the next big thing for them now (if it survives the hype and the pass of time).
A bit more about nostalgia, I remember I played Pokémon Red and obviously watched the anime too, but then I saw a magazine advertising Pokémon yellow and showing Jesse, James and Meow, I was like WTF I need to have this, plot twist never did (not physically at least) but at least I continued with Fire Red, Ruby (never finished it) Diamond and Platinum, Soul Silver and I kinda stopped there, currently playing Omega Ruby because yeah, nostalgia, oh and yeah I finished Pokémon yellow recently in Anbernic RG351V, so a very good way to achieve it if you ask me.
It would have been interesting if they released more games like Pokémon yellow (making it easier to feel we are in the anime).
I don’t play Pokemon expecting a good turn-based RPG, I just like collecting cool little monsters and making them grow. Similar games like Cassette Beasts, Monster Sanctuary, and now Palworld appeal to me for the same reason.
Tim Sweeney is an obnoxious hypocritical dickhead who has only gotten worse and stupider and more hostile over the years, he is constantly spouting anti-consumer and anti-common-sense nonsense while acting like he’s saving gamers and nurturing his egotistical martyr complex. He has gotten so bad that he has contradicted his own past self so many times that for awhile there was a literal subreddit “TimCriticizesTim” devoted to it. Also EGS itself is garbage resource-guzzling software that almost nobody actually wants on their computer, most of the people who do use it do it either because they’re forced to so they can play games exclusively available on it, or because Epic bribes them to by giving them free games constantly. It is nasty software that collects way more data than it needs to, spying on your files and possibly other stuff too, and they also lied about it (and as far as I know still do).
A first person scifi FPS-RPG. Developed in Ukraine. Very unique experience wrapped inside of a concept that’s been done before. High slavjank tolerance required.
The best thing about this gen so far is the rise of handheld PCs, like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally. I mostly play on the Deck nowadays, while the PS5 gathers dust.
The best thing about this gen so far is the rise of handheld PCs
I’d like to think this is due the Chinese handhelds picking up where Nintendo left… (In its own way ofc 🏴☠️) and I’m glad I was a participant of this…
But I think it is mostly because of cloud gaming and Nintendo Switch inspiration.
Hello! Gear sets are actually coming in the very next update to the game, that feature is already pretty much finished. Most recent devblog covers this more! We held a poll about what are the most frequently asked QOL, and gear sets were #1 so we started with that.
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