Finished my Hollow Knight: Silksong 100% playthrough. Great game with some weird, frustrating and outright bad segments, that make you question what the devs were smoking.
Then I also beat Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance. I was pretty close to the end two weeks ago, before I took a break because of Silksong. Only one small boss and the final boss was left, but hunting for the rest of the secrets still took a while. It’s definitely better than Circle of the Moon, which I played before this, just because it doesn’t play like absolute cheeks. Graphics and Music are a major downgrade though.
Next up is the final Castlevania GBA game, Aria of Sorrow. I’ve played the sequel, Dawn of Sorrow on the NDS years ago, and I remember it being great, so I have high hopes for this one.
Then I started Megabonk. It’s Risk of Rain 2, but as an ASS game (Auto-Shooter Survivor game, like Vampire Survivors). Each run is 1-3 loops of a single map, and there are only two different maps in total. Characters, weapons and leveling are like VS, so your choice is for a starting weapon and each characters innate passive. Then you also earn money during a run to open chests for different items, like in RoR. While I think the game is solid, you have to like the gameplay enough to be fine with just not much variety in the visuals.
I think flying enemies are absolutely terrible to fight, especially early game.
Runbacks are the things everyone has already been talking about. There were two in the whole game that I thought were terrible, so it could have been worse.
However, for boss runbacks especially, because your corpse is in their room, it discourages leaving and coming back later. This can of course lead to just bashing your head against a difficult section and getting frustrated even more. In Hollow Knight your ghost at least spawned in front of the room so you didn’t have to commit to fighting the boss, even if you had to make it back there again.
I guess because of how much of the game is optional and non-linear, the devs couldn’t often really plan on when players will have which ability or upgrade, so some stuff felt kinda underutilized, for long stretches of the game.
Why are so many shard drops above places, where 75% of them will fall into unrecoverable spots? For rosaries, you at least get the magnet, just add the shards to that or something.
While definitely more clunky than the original games system, I don’t recall any boss fight where you couldn’t at least die at the edge of the boss area you enter on and grab your stuff without actually fighting the boss. Ive done this pretty frequently
Played it for a bit last year, shortly after the 1.0 release.
It’s probably a better game than Megabonk, but I think the Auto-Shooting part doesn’t really work in first-person, if you have to do all the aiming yourself anyway.
Some mechanics are just subjectively annoying, especially in PvE. Enemies healing themselves is one. Enemies stunning the player is another. In MY amazing dev company we would have none of that.
Another consideration is whether you’re a “patient gamer”. If you want to play the latest and greatest, then I have no idea. But, if you’re like me, then there are literally thousands of slightly older games you’d be happy to play.
If that’s you, then you can’t beat the Steam Deck for value. With game bundles, I often get 8 games for $10 or less. Even if I only play one, that’s incredible value compared with $80 new titles.
With a tiny bit of work, you can get Epic and GOG working on the Deck, too. If you’re a Prime subscriber, you’ll get 1-4 GOG/Epic games/week for free in addition to Epic’s weekly giveaways and GOG’s occasional giveaways. Some of those are AA/AAA games from a few years ago, too.
If you’re tired of AAA games entirely (like me), then the Deck is also likely the best since there are so many incredible indie games. I’d much rather play 20 unique 1-10 hour games than a single 100-hour AAA repetitive slog. And most can be had for $10 or less if you wait for a sale or bundle.
It’s also a great emulation machine for everything Nintendo that came before the Switch and everything else up to the PS2 generation, I guess? (Switch emulation is a bit of a pain to get working well, and for anything 360/PS3 or newer, they mostly have PC versions anyway, I think? I’ve never had a reason to emulate any of 'em so idk.)
The OLED has a great screen and great battery life, so I have barely touched my smaller emulation devices since getting it. Why use a tiny device with cramped, limited controls when I can play on a great screen with Steam Input (so I can easily write my own game macros, or use the back buttons on twin stick games instead of the face buttons so I never need to take my thumbs off the joysticks, etc.)
I guess if you actually want a device on the go, then something smaller might be better, but for longer trips the Deck works great in my laptop bag, and for short, mobile gaming breaks, I’ll just play Minion Masters or Space Cadet Pinball on my phone.
I still enjoy triple A titles but problem is I don’t finish most of them, I change games often and if I don’t get back to it I forget where I was or the controls.
I’ve been seriously addicted to brotato after it came to gamepass. And why twin stick shooters aren’t more plentiful is beyond me.
I think I’m enjoying brotato so much because I can just hop in whenever.
Ask me again in another couple of years. By then it might be sold at a price point better aligned with what I expect to get, and I might even have the hardware to run the average Unity 5 Unreal Engine 5 game.
You’d think people who do nothing all day but work on middleware had the time and resources to carefully optimize their code, but apparently not.
…and I might even have the hardware to run the average Unity 5 game.
Unreal Engine 5, surely? As that’s what it is. Unity 5 was apparently released back in 2015.
But, yea, BL4 is a “wait for ~20 €/$ sale for the ultimatebundle with all the dlc”. Haven’t really felt the need for BL since Pre-sequel killed it for me. Got BL3 on sale and… eh, it was kinda stuttery mess as well, when I played it.
Same here. I did it the hard way with a modchip but these days it’s all software. It lived as a media player for a long time. I eventually replaced it with a PC running Windows Media Center, that was nowhere near as good…
Woah! Someone who liked the ending! You're too wholesome for a gaming community lol.
I read one meta take on the ending that both sounded interesting and like cope. The end of Part II makes you feel exactly like Ellie feels. You push through because you want a conclusion to the story, just like Ellie. The end might be terrible, but it is an ending. In a meta way, you could get a better "ending" by stoping when Ellie and Dina are together at the farmhouse. You can stop playing, just like Ellie could stop obsessing over Abby, but how many people did that? Who would stop when the story isn't done?
Personally, I think the writers made a bet that they could stretch "an eye for an eye leaves the world blind" into a novel.
I’m the kind of person that even if I don’t agree with the message of a game, I can respect and like it.
The meta aspect was something I noticed too. Maybe it is cope like you said, but the story making you feel how Ellie feels is the kind of story I love. Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes and all that. I didn’t think of the farmhouse “ending” though, I can see that though because the game officially ends at the farmhouse. So the “better ending” being there I could see, especially with them escaping alive (except for Jesse)
Alright, the truth then. You’re right about one thing… I do need capital. And votes. Wanna know why? “I have a dream.” That one day, every person in this nation will control their OWN destiny. A land of the TRULY free, dammit. A nation of ACTION, not words. Ruled by STRENGTH, not committee. Where the law changes to suit the individual, not the other way around. Where power and justice are back where they belong: in the hands of the people! Where every man is free to think – to act – for himself! Fuck all these limp-dick lawyers and chicken-shit bureaucrats. Fuck this 24/7 Internet spew of trivia and celebrity bullshit. Fuck “American pride”. Fuck the media! Fuck all of it! America is diseased. Rotten to the core. There’s no saving it – we need to pull it out by the roots. WIpe the slate clean. BURN IT DOWN! And from the ashes, a new America will be born. Evolved, but untamed! The weak will be purged, and the strongest will thrive – free to live as they see fit, they will make America GREAT AGAIN!
What the hell are you talking about?
You still don’t get it. I’m using war as a business to get elected… so I can end war as a business! In my new America, people will die and kill for what they BELIEVE! Not for money, not for oil! Not for what they’re told is right. Every man will be free to fight his own wars!
I never played that game, and without that context, it is genuinely scary how hard it is to tell whether it not this is a real thing a real politician actually said. God damn, Kojima saw it coming.
There was a sci-fi book called Parable of the Sower in the early 90s that had it as the slogan of a shitty fascist president. It’s worth a read and will feel especially creepy right now.
Ronald Reagan, the 1980 Republican presidential nominee, originated the slogan “Make America Great Again.” He and his running mate George H.W. Bush used the phrase on buttons and posters
With 20/20 hindsight it was obviously a good idea.
But at the time of making the decision, it was an unbelievably risky plan and the odds were stacked against it. As a matter of fact, for every successful 2D platformer made with care and love that gets released and becomes successful, there are dozens that fail miserably and that you will never hear of.
Yes, believing in yourself and taking risks makes success possible, but remember that it does not guarantee it.
This comment sounds like it’s discouraging these kind of risks. But I feel like you should almost always take them, because otherwise your life is just hollow.
I think you’ve got to work out what your appetite for risk is. It’s important to do take risks sometimes even if they scare you to move your life forward but also sometimes don’t. I’ve seen a bunch of people really fuck their lives up because they just kept rolling the dice.
One of my goals in life is to not become impoverished due to bad financial decisions, and think of how many people quit their jobs to try to make a successful game just for their plan to not work out and them then trying to somehow get their lives back in order so they won’t become homeless.
I’m sorry honey but you have to understand that daddy took a risk otherwise he would feel hollow! Sure we’re broke now because he quit his job to do a thing and it didn’t take off, and your little brother Timmy had to go live with Gramma or else he’d starve, but think of how daddy feels now! Not hollow!
I mean sure, your friends and family won’t let you starve. But you can’t rely on them forever. Government ain’t doing shit either: At least in my country, to get unemployment benefits, you need to be laid off or fired. If you quit your job to develop a game and fail, that’s on you. Yes, there’s also disability benefits, but those are small and require you to be disabled. Food banks exist too, but they don’t help you pay rent, nor do you get a full month’s worth of food every month.
All in all, a family with kids must have at least one working adult or HUGE savings.
So again, where’s the paradise where government will keep your rent or mortgage paid and your family fed if your game dev endeavour doesn’t pan out? I wanna move there.
We have decent worker protections in Belgium, but if you quit your job here to work on games I don’t know if you have the right to unemployment (since you weren’t fired). Even then, it only lasts for a year or so if you have worked at the place for 5 years, with the monthly payment decreasing significantly until the last few months you only get like 500€ per month.
Luck and a good review from a relevant reviewer. The devs of Nightmare Reaper credit Civvie11’s reviews of their game to the multifold increase of sales after they sent him a redeem code. And that’s not the only game that he’s helped out.
My friend quit his job and has been making indie games since 2015. It's been 20 10 years and he's made like $40,000 total in the time with all his games combined. His wife pays all the bills. Every time he releases a new game he tells everyone this is the one that'll make him a million bucks. He points to games like Hollowknight, Stardew Valley, Undertale etc as proof.
This mindset from people is what makes online multiplayer games unplayable for me.
I don’t get a lot of time to play games as an adult. When I do, I don’t particularly want people telling me how I should be having fun. There is this weird competition that happens where you need to know everything about a game before you are allowed to partake in the game. It sucks to have missed out on so many experiences, but i guess my not playing sub-optimally made someone else’s experience better, so it’s all good.
No man, by all means you bought the game enjoy it however you want. But be real, if you play Ranked in a competitive online game then are expected to at least understand the games mechanics. If not, why not stick to standard? That’s what irritates me.
If you want to figure out how good you are and enjoy a challenge you play ranked. If the ranked system is good you should rarely or never play with teammates less knowledgeable and less skilled than you.
I don’t think we need a higher barrier of entry for ranked. Just accept that the skill variance happens on both sides and focus on your own game. If you can mentor that is nice and helpful if done right.
I agree 100% and for the record I’m decent at my best days on most online FPS games that I play. It’s not the outcome that irritates me it’s the “why” behind it. In R6S for example “I’m not opening rotation holes because I don’t know where to open them/forgot about them” and “I don’t care about rotation holes because I’m here for my K/D” both have the same outcome. One is an honest play style while the other actively ignores a core part of the game. This I why I’m left wondering if some players like the game itself or they’re just jumping in to jump in. Despite everything it’s still an online game and other players are players not NPCs.
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