Piracy is effectively legal in Canada, for downloading. ISPs can’t share your private details without a warrant from the courts, and the courts have rejected mass John Doe lawsuits to unmask users.
Plus, infringement for private use has a maximum penalty of $5000, but could easily be set by the first case creating court precedent at 3× the retail price of the pirated media (punitive damages are usually capped at 3× the value of the good, in Canada.)
That means that going to court would be incredibly expensive, could only target single individuals, and would likely set a precedent that they can only get $60 in damages for a $20 movie. Not going to happen.
So, piracy is effectively legal in Canada, for private use. Just don’t be stupid and profit from piracy.
Check out Clone Hero! I’m away from my computer, but there are archives that let you import all of the Rock Band and Guitar Hero songs. You can use/mod old controllers or even 3D print your own.
You might be surprised to hear that Konami, famed for focusing casino machines, was actually mistranslated on also focusing on arcade machines. There’s still a whole rhythmgame scene, but unfortunately it’s mostly centered around Japan. That’s where DDR, beatmania, Gitadora (the series Guitar Hero/Rockband ripped off) are, including newer series like DanceRush and Maimai and whatnot. If you ever visit the higherscale independent arcades, you might find some unsanctioned imports with some even emulating the online functionality (with gacha, ofc…). Otherwise, your only hope in the states is Round1, which host official imports, and D&B which only has DDR.
To add on to the other commenter, check out Osu!, ADOFAI, Rhythm Doctor, Hifi Rush, and a whole bunch of apps if you don’t want arcades.
Or puzzles that are completely esoteric or unintuitive. Just replayed some of the Myst games, and it’s like “oh ok I was stuck on this for 30min because the lever was on the other side of the map and there was literally no indication that it was related”. That’s just artificially inflating your game’s difficulty, and it’s lazy puzzle making. Boooo
I love fast travel, warp gates, teleporting and anything that makes it easier and faster for me to get from Point A to Point B.
“Scenery is pretty.” Don’t care.
“Look at the extra content.” I’ll look if I want to. Don’t force it.
While I enjoy casual and relaxed games, taking forever to walk to where I want to go is neither casual nor relaxed. I wanna be where I wanna be in game and don’t pad on the gameplay hours with slow transport options.
I hate when folks ask for this and assholes say “people will just use this to save scum, don’t cheat.” As if working adults with children should be able to dedicate a whole hour totally uninterrupted.
Also, who cares? It’s your game; play it however you like. I mean, isn’t the whole reason why people play video games is to have fun? If save scumming is your idea of fun, I say scum away.
The problem being that a lot of people don’t actually know what it is that will make them happy. Winning is good, right? Yeah, but not if it’s too easy. Being to save the game state at any point makes a lot of games much too easy to be any fun. And while you might argue “well just don’t save all the time,” people are also bad at creating their own handicaps to increase fun.
Yes, there are exceptions to every generalization (see: OSRS Ultimate Ironman) but by and large there’s a reason why the most popular kind of games are set up the way they are.
You ever play Monopoly Go? Straight-up not fun because it’s basically impossible to lose.
Winning is good, right? Yeah, but not if it’s too easy
That’s how you feel about it, though, not an objective thing everybody feels the same about. I absolutely cheat whenever I’m finding a game too difficult, and I assure you, I’m still enjoying the game. I don’t know what people get out of what I find to be the extremely infuriating act of repeatedly failing over and over until I finally get it right, but I have not ever felt the sense of accomplishment I’m told I should feel after finally beating something I struggled with. I feel angry and like I wasted a bunch of time when I could have been enjoying something more fun.
I’m just trying to have a good time, not compete with myself or prove that I can learn just the right way and right time to hit certain button combos or whatever.
The too-easy levels of notfun are very far away from the too-hard levels of notfun.
Different games are for different styles of fun and for different people. Heck, some games are more like walk-through stories than actual games. If the game is too hard for you to enjoy, then that game just isn’t for you, that’s all. Let other people have their difficult games and find a different one to enjoy. When I played Monopoly Go and found it boringly easy, I didn’t complain that they should make it harder so I could enjoy it, I just recognized that I wasn’t the kind of player they were targeting and found something else to play.
These are subjective statements though and different people want different things. And difficulty variation can broaden the audience while not really changing the game. Sometimes I love a fight. Sometimes I want a story. Sometimes I want to couch coop with my youngest kid and he struggles with some games that he otherwise loves (looking at you Cuphead) that an easier mode would totally fix. And he absolutely loves Sonic, but the originals would be unplayable for him if not for modern saving and non permadeath. Or emulation with save states and cheat codes.
Why are you trying to convince people that if a game is too difficult or long periods between saving doesn’t work for them then it is their fault and not that of the game design. That’s a weird stance to take. If someone designed a car that was generally very nice but with the gear shift next to the passenger seat door, would you say that is just a car for people with super long arms or would you say that was a poor design choice that is going to massively limit an otherwise nice car?
This is more like you complaining that some cars don’t come with automatic transmission options. Sorry buddy, some of us like sports cars and having an automatic transmission option would devalue the very concept of what that particular car is.
I still haven’t beaten Super Mario Brothers. I’ve gotten very close, but I choked on the final Bowser multiple times. I’m not mad at Nintendo for that. I’m not even mad at myself for that. I had loads of fun playing Super Mario Brothers and being able to save would lower the value of the game.
I don’t understand why you’re insistent that all games need to cater to your desired difficulty level. Some games are made for you, some games are made for other people. Chasing the widest audience possible is how you end up with bland art, be it games, movies, social media platforms, or any other thing people enjoy.
Look, you said it yourself. Different people want different things, and what some people want is fundamentally incompatible with what you want. So, you get a different set of games than they get.
This seems to act like games and their default difficulty options are commandments carved in stone when they’re not. If I find a game to difficulty to enjoy and then find it enjoyable by cheating, that’s what I’m gonna do.
I know what will make me happy and it’s not being forced to sit for a full hour through a rogue like just because of whiny goobers complaining to the devs so they don’t implement save and quit.
Dishonored was the first thing that came to mind when I read the title, too. OP, if you haven’t played it, check it out!
As for others…
Skyrim and Fallout aren’t exactly deep stealth games, but stealth is hands down the most popular and arguably most fun way to play. Sneaky archer is a freaking meme.
Far Cry games all favour stealth as well. While you’re totally allowed to go in guns a blazing and it’s frankly more effective sometimes, the game does reward stealth and is clearly designed with it in mind. Silencers are magic, you can distract enemies, can lure wildlife to attack, smoke bombs, knife combos, “death from above”, etc.
The Metro series isn’t entirely stealth, but a lot of human enemy sections are meant to be done with stealth and I recall it being actually very difficult if you’re not stealthy (you die fast). I also recall the stealth feeling more realistic in terms of detection time. Finally, there’s something extra fun about being stealthy in a very dark post apocalyptic subway tunnel. Much better atmosphere for it!
As a final side note, the way OP described assassin’s Creed sounds like the older games. They might like some of the “middle” games like Unity more. The games that came just before Origins (Origins and later are very fun games, but the stealth is no longer the focus).
I don't quite remember how I played Metro 2033, but I do know that I played so much with Metro Last Light to get that stupid 'kill no humans' achievement that whenever I play it now I can practically zoom through most areas with stealth. Same way with Dishonored. Both great games, I love revisiting them from time to time.
With dishonored I wanted to be the ultimate ninja that leave no trace and had a lot of fun doing a clean hands ghost run. So challenging though, since I didn’t know if I had been detected until the end of each stage when they show you your performance.
I disliked Dishonored because the game tells you not to kill too many people or bad things will happen and then proceeds to make most of the items and abilities for killing people. You can kill some people, but it’s not clear exactly how many each level. I wasn’t really interested in spending tens of hours playing a game only to be told that I was a bad person who gets the bad ending. As a result I kept killing to a minimum and missed out on or barely used a huge portion of the items and abilities. Seemed like questionable game design.
Prey was great though. Not sure if I’d call it a stealth game, however.
The game doesn’t really want you to spare enemies. It’s just that there are 3 different ways to play the game and 3 different flavors of the story : low, mid and high chaos. I think you should feel free to massacre everyone, and then maybe start over a new game and try lower chaos !
Sorry, I should have phrased that a little differently. What I mean to say is the game should not be limited to just the mechanics of the older games. There’s so many small mechanics they’ve added since the days of the 2D games on GBA that shouldn’t be ignored just because they aren’t retro.
One mechanic I’ve always loved in any game it’s been in is the ability to have a hideout/home/etc that you can deck out with furniture and whatnot to make it your own. It’s just a comfy mechanic to have.
Being able to trade with anyone around the world is pretty dope. It was much harder finding another kid with Pokemon Blue so I could get a goddamn Pinsir.
In HeartGold/SoulSilver specifically (and then not again after for some reason), you could toggle the running shoes. So much nicer than having to hold B all the time. They also allowed for two Select items (items you can activate without entering the items menu), which also never carried over to other games.
I seem to remember one of the more modern games allowing you to view move details (description, power, accuracy, etc) from the movelist screen during a fight, rather than having to go to Pokemon > [Pokemon] > view moves, or whatever it is. I think one game also allowed you to see if the move you’re about to use is super effective or not, but I’m not really a fan of that one. Learning type effectiveness is part of the game imo, but my opinion on this isn’t too strong.
Not really QOL but I loved mega evolution and would like to see it come back. It was exclusive to Gen 6, which was the last Gen I played, but I heard they never included it in following Gens. It was basically a temporary “evolution” (a different form) for specific fully evolved Pokemon for just the fight. Only one Pokemon can mega evolve per fight though, so you gotta choose wisely. Gen 6 competitive battling was peak imo for just that reason.
I really liked the EV training in Gen 6, not sure if that carried over but it made it much easier to increase EVs, rather than having to fight the same Pokemon over and over again.
HMs eventually disappeared. Gen 4 had a whole bunch, then in Gen 5 I think there were still a lot but most weren’t required for progression (I think in order to beat the game you only needed one of the HMs, I can’t remember which. The rest were just for optional stuff I think. It’s been a while though). I think in Gen 7 they finally removed HMs. The moves are still available I think, but they don’t do anything outside of battle.
I’m sure there’s more I’m forgetting, someone else can expand on this list.
I dont know which game but they did add a QoL feature that tells you whether a move is effective, super effective, or ineffective vs monsters youve fought before, based on typings.
I remember that being the “feature” which really highlighted the dumbing-down of the game. Work things out for yourself? Look them up? Remember what you’ve learned? No, we’ve solved the puzzle for you, don’t worry.
Not to blow my own trumpet, but I was able to memorise basic type relationships as a small child!
That is a summing-up of the criticism that I’ve seen a few times though: they refuse to accept that their players grow up and only ever aim the games at youngsters, difficulty-wise.
It’s not that simple. Proton implements the Windows API functions required to run a Windows game on x64-based Linux, but it’s not a CPU emulator. Emulating x64 on ARM at the speeds required by a game is virtually impossible.
If Steam comes to ARM / Android, it would have to be a whole separate ecosystem of games. But Valve is late to the game there since we already have several players on that market, not least the standard Google Play Store.
There was a game called tribes that combined the surfing/skiing movement with combat before the counterstrike mod levels came out, it was pretty fun the sequel tribes 2 was pretty popular for a minute when it came out too. But the skill ceiling on some of those cs surf maps was wild.
Unfortunately, my personal curse is the love of achievements 😅, and heroic support of them with GOG is still a little bit lacking. But with the new comet support with overlay in heroic, hopefully it will change soon.
I wasn’t ever much of a fan of achievements, but the last, idk 6 months or so I have been so invested in them. Its nice to check my profile on GOG and see my play-time and achievements logged :)
Comet does all I need to, but I am also looking forward to the upcoming overlay!
At first I found achievements a bit ridiculous, like in the old days at school where you received an image if you did good.
In the meantime, some smart achievements forced me out of my play style and made me try things I would never had the idea of trying. Those are the best achievements for me. The game with such achievements that triggered the achievement crazyneness of mine was Trine 2 😁
I tried to make a Blizzard account recently, just for testing purposes. Literally could not do it. Spent half an hour trying to complete weird math quizzes, at the end of which it would just fail. Gave up.
93% vs 77% doesn’t strike me as polarized. 16% difference?
77% doesn’t even seem that bad if it’s a style of game I like. From about 2001 I used to see sci fi movies that looked interesting as long as they had at least a 25% Rotten Tomatoes score because my tastes were different.
Is there something I’m missing? I haven’t played either game and I haven’t looked at reviews. Won’t buy KCD (no character creation) and probably will eventually buy Avowed.
The thing is, those reviews must be left by someone who purchased it. It’s got a self-selection bias. People purchased it presumably expecting to like it. They thought it would be a style of game they enjoyed. Most people who think it isn’t something they’ll like will just pass over it and not buy it, and obviously not effect the score.
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