No they have not. If they dumped their own cartridge or had the ROM somewhere in their archives, it would be identical to one downloaded from the Internet. The whole controversy happened because someone saw the iNES headers in whatever release of Super Mario Bros was new at the time. Those headers are added by all NES cartridge dumpers, and the creator of this format developed the NES emulator used by Nintendo in Animal Crossing for the GameCube.
Rom pirates usually trim and sign their releases, specially if they have to break or decode any encryption. These pirate’s signatures have been found in official Nintendo releases. Some of their own emulators have also been found to run piracy emulation software. They are pretty much hypocrites.
Throwback to the NES Classic ROM having a ripper/uploader’s signature in the game code. Because Nintendo didn’t ever bother archiving their own games, and just downloaded ROMs from the same sites they were trying to shut down.
All that talk about how Xbox is investing in the Japanese market and then they close the one prominent Japanese studio that they own. The same one that, as the article points out, made Hi-Fi Rush which was “a break out hit”. What the hell, Microsoft.
I’m honestly quite tired of remasters. Why can’t we see some new original games?
The original Deus Ex is this bizarre mixture of jank, camp, and sheer brilliance. So much of what made the game amazing was unintentional and contingent with the era. A remaster is never going to be able to recapture that lightning in a bottle. It’s always going to be soulless.
TBH I am happy they’re remastering some older games. I missed out on a lot of stuff because I was doing other things when a lot of highly regarded games came out (sold my PS1 to buy crack). So I’ve recently got a steam deck and played bioshock - really enjoyed it - and system shock is in my queue. I’m not sure I’d have been so keen to try them if they’d had the original graphics, that shit looks so dated now. But yeah, maybe they’re taking the remaster thing a bit too far.
The Enhanced Edition for System Shock makes it perfectly suitable for anyone used to FPS controls, the “remaster” changes so much that it is hardly the same game.
Well in that case, the Remaster. Enhanced edition is fine in a lot of ways but its torture with a controller because you have to switch out of FPS view to use the MFDs a lot. Play the new and shiny.
Cool, cheers for the heads up. Yeah it’s on my list, I’ll get to it soon. I just gotta finish cyberpunk, then play Dishonored, then I’m thinking system shock is next.
Steam deck has the mouse pad, no? Still not as good as a real mouse, but the one on my steam controller was the perfect bridge for playing mouse games with a controller.
Enhanced Edition is by far the best way to play System Shock, it’s controls are a little mouse centric, but the mouse pad on the steam deck should be plenty suitable for mouse things like playing an audio log. Other than that, EE lets you control it like a typical FPS and you can bind controls for switching weapons and whatnot to avoid the UI
If you want to play System Shock, the OG or EE is the only way to get the real experience, IMO the remaster sanded away many of the parts that made it unique (while adding some that make it less unique, like a crafting system for some reason?) to the point that it kinda loses its identity
The original Deus Ex is perfectly playable today as long as you follow a guide to get it patched up and configured for a modern system. Plus it runs at a rock steady frame rate on any PC today, whereas it didn’t at the time of release (it was very laggy, buggy, and crashed a lot).
The game is definitely meant for mouse and keyboard though. You need some very high precision aiming and a steady hand to cope with the scope wobble (unless you train to master level).
Yeah I never played that either. I’m up for giving it a go, though. But I’m not great at precision controls, now I’m getting old my reactions aren’t so quick and my hands are pretty wrecked. But yeah there’s lots of old games I’ve missed out on and I’m enjoying catching up. Plus some of the new stuff is incredible for someone who was raised on 8 bit graphics.
Oh you don’t need quick reactions for Deus Ex. It can be played in a very slow and methodical way. It’s just that you need precision to get the most out of the sniper scopes (which can be used on multiple weapons).
There’s never been such an abundance of games and consoles as there is now. There are more games than anyone could ever play, both new and old. Releasing another poorly made remaster doesn’t mean no ones making new original games. I don’t think there hasn’t been a year I didn’t play an original, engaging and creative new video game. It’s literally the golden age of gaming.
Totally. There are some excellent AAA developers too (e.g. Naughty Dog, Remedy, Santa Monica, FromSoft, Kojima) but I’d say the biggest surprises for me have come from AA studios and indie developers – Animal Well, Clair Obscur, Returnal, Silksong, Crypt Custodian, Celeste, to name a few. I mean, there are tons of crappy indie games too, but the amount of creativity and quality in the indie scene is stunning.
Also the original Deus Ex is not easy for non-techie games to just pick up and play. Unless you own old hardware (collector nerds) or you can negotiate the jank on modern hardware (techie nerds) then many old titles are just not accessible.
I think a game like Deus Ex that people still talk about as a classic deserve remasters.
And who knows, maybe Deus Ex has to look like shit in order to be itself? It’s not supposed to be a remake; a remaster just means 1) works on modern hardware, with modern controllers/OSes and 2) most if not all game mechanics, plot lines, level designs, etc feel and play as they originally did, with the exception that there might be some bug fixes or QoL changes to prevent things that are universally agreed upon as being bad/unnecessary.
What I’m getting at is - is it Deus Ex if it doesn’t look janky and weird?
I’m not sure it’s going to be soulless, but the problem is that the main premise is the government of highly competent psychopaths manufactures an emergency to gain total power, while the population withers. A cautionary tale, if you will.
The thing is that in reality, the government of highly incompetent psychopaths is gaining total power absolutely unopposed, while half the population applauds.
The original game has plenty of characters who are true believers in the government lie: the UNATCO soldiers, the mech agents, and even multiple civilians who either work for or support the government.
The main resistance force, the NSF (Northwest Sessionist Forces), is pretty controversial among the public. People seem to be split between viewing them as terrorists or heroes. Not unlike the way people view antifa in real life!
Making something new means taking a risk. Maybe it won’t sell well. So it’s more beneficial to profits to re-make something that has already proven its worth.
That’s how modern AAA devs operate. That’s why every AAA game in a franchise feels pretty much the same. And that’s why indie and AA games are far superior.
“AAA” gaming began as a reference to the “AAA” creditworthiness rating, meaning (essentially) “certain to repay the loan” // “certain to earn more than the development costs” (contrarespectively). AAA gaming has always been about the safe bet, the easy money, and the tailored to mass market design.
High budget games can only have so much ROI, so there’s kind of implicitly a limit on how much risk is tolerable for investors/publishers. Meanwhile, a game that costs a few million (or even less) could be the next big success, and rake in a massive sum - enough to justify its own budget in addition to many failed attempts to craft a star.
Even more risky is indie gaming, where the cost of development is provided by crazy people that want to produce “fun”, and gain money as some kind of (important) side effect. That’s where you get the wild “no one (in the know) would expect this to work” ideas, and most of them do fail, just as expected. The ones that are good enough to make it are by nature surprisingly good - indeed, this surprise is why publishers won’t go after the same concept under most conditions.
I played some of Human Revolution but I didn’t like the grind-factor (nor did I like the weird forced boss fights).
The original Deus Ex was so beautiful for the way you gained exploration and progress experience for finding secrets and accomplishing goals. Replacing that with a more “RPG-like” system that rewards hacking every single computer and doing non-lethal takedowns on every single enemy totally ruined it for me.
Does the argument work both ways? If effort is the same as being paid for. Does that mean pirating a game is the same as buying it? After all it’s basically the same effort these days.
Of course the argument doesn’t fly, as you cant actually buy a game anymore, just a temporary license for an undisclosed amount of time.
Morrowind: An oral history on Polygon is a wonderful read.
All the little stories Kirkbride tells are great. My favourite is him designing progressively weird shit to dupe Howard with. He’d be like “Hey Todd, can we put this in the game?” and after he knowingly got knocked back he’d present him something more palatable.
Yeah, I’ve heard of writers on shows like the Animaniacs doing it, insisting heavily on a more outrageous joke having to go in knowing it’ll get knocked back as a Trojan horse to slip the real jokes they want in.
Even Skyrim—certainly a weird, ambitious, and janky RPG in its own right—refined and streamlined the formula set by Morrowind and Oblivion, rather than expanding on their eccentricities, and that trend only continued in the studio’s following games.
I find it bizarre that people think Starfield isn’t “weird and ambitious”. Starfield is absolutely weird and ambitious, that’s why people didn’t like it, it tried to do something new and that something new turned out to not be fun.
I disagree, if anything I think Starfield was Bethesda not going far enough.
They created a new setting and added a couple of new mechanics, but they cradled it in the same tired formula that they have been doing for decades.
I had hoped that since it was a new IP, this would be the moment they would take a chance and try something new. Try a new approach to quest design and world building, don’t just make the game bigger but make the experience in it more varied with more interesting interactions. Instead it felt like new coat of paint on an old house and when they got called out on it, they became defensive.
I broke my heart when they said the lesson they learned was to stick to the same formula and when they tried to do it with Shattered Space, people hated it even more.
I hate to say it but it seems like Bethesda already peaked.
This was inevitable as soon as games started getting the budgets of blockbuster movies. No one wants to invest that much money into a project without getting some oversight and control in return.
Of course, very, very few people who have access to that kind of cash have any design sense whatsoever, and even fewer understand the creative process, or what makes games “good”… so they ask for shit that they think will be “safe” money-makers, and we get what we get: endless, samey, soulless shlock.
It’s set in the Titanfall universe, there’s lots of lore scattered around. People work hard to integrate a narrative into the level and character designs, to imply plot in incidental dialogue or cinematics, or just literally write text entries that the majority of gamers will never read because only shooting and rare skins trigger their dopamine.
Nobody asked to have some pointless story injected into their online shooters. I’m pretty sure the people that want world-building and narrative and lore in their games aren’t playing online shooters. I know I’m not.
Ok, well, I am. It’s not “pointless story” it’s entertainment and I’m struggling to come up with a game that has zero plot or setting or characterization. Rocket League maybe.
Over and over and over and over the gaming community has been screwed over by Publishers so I’ll stop grave dancing when Corpos stop being so horrible
Requiring a third party account to play a game months after it was released and after selling it to customers who can’t legitimately make an account because you don’t feel like their country can make you enough profit. Helldivers 2
Attempting to take away peoples digital “purchases” of media because you can’t be bothered to pay licencing. Sony
Changing the definition of “purchase” an established word in English and not defining your new definition until page 22 of a EULA that you know nobody is going to read. Sony, and everyone else
Shutting down a server and rendering a game with a whole single player aspect completely useless and not telling consumers this at the time of purchase. The Crew (www.stopkillinggames.com)
Selling a terribly incomplete game filled with glitches for the price of a full game. Cyberpunk 2077 and so many others.
Selling Pre-Purchases to let people play the game early but really its just another way to get people to pay to be Guinea pigs in your buggy game. That new Star Wars game and so many others.
Adding so many stupid “micro transactions” to games to milk players as much as possible for useless skins and camos etc. Diablo 4 and so many more.
Adding a “Season Pass”??? I don’t even understand what this is??? Buy a full priced game and then buy a subscription to that game??? But still not have access to all of the content and then be shown a magic glove that costs €500, why is this not part of the subscription or is it??? I hope it is. New COD and probably others
“Making” a game and selling it to people but really its just a scam where they got “volunteers” to work on the game for free. Then shutting the game down instantly. That zombie game with Will Smith.
Something, something Overwatch 2 is a totally brand new game.
Shutting down third party mods for an unsupported and dangerous game just after the sale for that game is over. Fine, they didn’t own all of the assets used but they did fix the issue where people could infect your system with malware. COD
Increasing the prices of all of your subscriptions and making those subscriptions worse by offering less while your parent company is posting ~$20 Billion profits in the most recent quarter, yes quarter, thats like 3 months…
Btw all of these examples have happened within the last 4 years. Its pretty sad that I can list these off the top of my head. I only play single player games and I only got back into gaming a couple of years ago after ~10 years of not really playing anything
Actually "rationalising the pipeline" would be getting rid of all the massively overpaid execs, rather than the people who actually make the Take-Two execs their money
Not defending corporations but these massive conglomerates usually get so intricate, so messy, that there are people who end up getting a paycheck that genuinely do not get assignments. In other words, getting paid to watch paint dry. So sometimes the comments that look terrible are directed at people who were doing nothing or very nearly nothing and still getting paid for it.
But yes also fuck executives getting x80 the pay of developers.
Let’s not pretend that the vast majority of CP2077’s side quests are not that type of C&P’ed filler crap.
They are.
What is significant about CP2077 is how a dozen or so side quests are incredibly stellar, far outdoing even the main (non-expansion) story quest. They’re incredibly good. That’s just a few ones sadly, but they’re big and have lots of interactions and cool moments though, they almost feel like the main quests in a lot of ways.
I get how people didn’t like them. But I had a ton of fun doing the NCPD busywork. The gameplay was engaging enough to entertain me. If you don’t have a lot of time to play video games ut’s sometimes frustrating to watch an hour of cutscenes and only play for a couple minutes. The story was great but it gave me the option to just play.
tbf that’s a lot easier to say when you’re the president of one of the richest companies in the industry. I don’t disagree, but not everybody has the resources to just keep developing forever, and that’s easy to forget too.
In the documentary this quote is from he said that about thr development of HL1. To be fair the devs themselves said they voluntairily crunched quite a bit and had some time constraints at the end of the game.
But he’s also president of one of the richest companies in the industry because he always said this.
And while your point is valid for smaller studios, it feels like it’s usually used by the big ones that do have the resources, but would rather give more money to investors.
Yeah, no one has a problem with small indie groups doing early access, aka terraria, rimworld, factorio, minecraft. It’s about keeping expectations in check and having a good fun base game.
Rogue Legacy 2 had a great early access in part because it was regular releases with a lot of communication and they set great expectations for it. I knew what I got myself into and had a blast trying each new area as it came out.
The context for this was them deciding to take the time to finish the game properly even if they were no longer going to get paid to do it (the publisher would stop funding).
wizards are turning into Gaben as he echoes across eternity. It seems like he’s turning into a wizard, but that’s because we can only see behind us in time.
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