In a year filled with great games, this is still my favorite game so far, somehow. Combat can feel clunky at times, but honestly the level design and the exploration is impeccable, plus SHODAN is such an unsettling villain.
I was quite surprised when I saw the reviews settling at mid-70s on average. Don’t let that scare you away, but bear in mind no hand-holding in this one.
This is bonkers. I already liked the demo and and I’m still blown away by the fact that they achieved that amout of graphical fidelity using the GZDoom engine.
It absolutely sucks, but many of the standard calls of “it’s always been shit” and “boycott” aren’t really doing anything outside of virtue signalling or trying to hold a moral view to a company that couldn’t give a fuck about the 0.001% of people that action these views.
Regarding software engineering, I’ve often said that “if the games industry doesn’t unionise, there’s no hope for the rest of the tech industry”, and I still stand by that. While there are obvious complications in forming unions in a global market, I truly believe that the US is often the barrier towards workers rights. If American workers can unionise, you can bet that those in Europe would do so too.
I’m British, so I don’t have a great understanding of French law, but do they have unions in the same way, or are they similar to works councils in Germany? I know French law is protective of workers, so wonder if it’s as divisive as it would be in the West.
Union is actually mandatory in France if the company is more than 50 people iirc. But depending on the place, and especially in computer related work, very, very few people participate in the union.
Unions often suffer very bad reputation, and people are very often afraid either that they will act against their company interest or antagonise their bosses. I think about 15% of workers are unionised in France.
Too many devs think they’re above unionizing. It’s going to be very difficult to pull off. They won’t be interested until it’s too late.
Bottom line is that tech is chock full of greedy fucking people who only care about what they’re getting paid this year.
I don’t think the gaming industry could lead on this issue though. It’s tech companies like FAANG that really lead the market and that’s where people refuse to organize.
I couldn’t agree more. I’m a software engineer at a FAANG company, and the split is very apparent. There are either people that would love to see a union (but know their employer would happily fire 100k+ people for even trying it), alongside people that believe unions are the devil. There was a shift in the last 12 months due to the mass layoffs and the nature of how someone with a decade or more of loyal work can be locked out and fired immediately without so much as a “goodbye”, but there is still a huge number of people that view tech as a “survival of the fittest” thing. I work with some people that even love the idea of URA and the “weakest” people in the team losing their jobs.
Game dev is an interesting thing, though. For decades now, even smaller companies (at the time) like Rare were built from the mentality that you cannot just work 50 hours a week to make a good game, or that once a release is complete, you move on to your next gig. That culture has existed throughout corporate, not just in tech, which is why I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a true effort towards unionising industry-wide. Hell, I would’ve thought that the Activision issues from a while ago would have spurred something too.
Nope. All companies started in the 90s as groups of gamerbros. When they started to make loads of money and had to get managers cause they didnt want to do management was when it started to go down.
That’s really not at all what happened. Gaming development goes back to the 70s and gamerbro culture has almost nothing to do with history of game dev, that’s a more recent thing that happened with DOTA and the like.
Blizzard made awesome games and was led by someone who wanted to make awesome games. Eventually they gave upper management to someone who doesnt play games and now we have empty sheels
Unicorn Overlord looks good. Not many tactics RPGs have scratched the FF tactics itch for me (Symphony of War hits the spot but playing that on steam).
There are third party memory card solutions out there... essentially they hijack the cart slot and allow you to stick in a standard micro SD card to use as storage.
I have two of the standard PSV memory cards (I think a 4gb one that came with my Assassin's Creed bundle, and another 32gb one that I spent like $100 on when the finally dropped the prices into a realm that was at least within viewing distance of sanity), but being able to stick in a cheap-o micro SD card and have ALL the games I purchased (and some extras...) is pretty great.
And because I feel like I'm legally obligated to say this as a Vita owner, hacking the thing was the best decision I made outside of buying the handheld in the first place, when it comes to the PSV. It's way easier now than when I initially wanted to try (and was too scared to do so when the handheld was still being supported), and as long as you follow up-to-date instructions you should be golden.
Was hoping to get Capt Falcon in Mario Kart to go with the Blue Falcon kart, especially since I also refuse to get a subscription, but alas. Still, it’s nice to see any new F-zero for the first time in… wow, 20 years.
Because I find it insulting to have to pay for services that are free on PC, especially when we’re talking about being able to play multiplayer games using a peer to peer connection or the ability to play some older games (amongst other things).
Reasonable people can debate how the pricing should be structured, especially when it comes to online functionality that doesn’t even take a penny of Nintendo’s server budget…
But I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect zero cost at all, when:
Console manufacturers have an unavoidable incentive to sell hardware at a loss (even without factoring in the platforming costs+risks) and make up for it in software sales and add-on services
…and they suffer the reputation hit if any of their offerings are not up to par, in a way that e.g. Windows does not, so they have an unavoidable interest in monitoring and triaging issues with games
…and networked components tend to be the most sensitive and most traceable part of any software system
…and scaling issues tend to be a cross-cutting concern that a third-party vendor who isn’t intimately familiar with the client codebase can affordably help with
It’s just part of the deal you make when you sign up for a walled garden. You get certain guarantees, but only if you pay for the relevant package. You can’t have it both ways – getting the benefit of first-party backing while enjoying the freedom of a purely third-party environment. It’s like a cruise ship that doesn’t let you bring your own alcohol.
Windows doesn’t offer the service that connects Counter Strike players together, Valve does, and they do it for free and they offer it for first and third party games and they suffer the reputation hit if the service doesn’t work (possibly even worse because at least with consoles you potentially have a physical copy as a backup to play with, which isn’t a possibility with always online games on Steam).
Nintendo gets a cut on all software sold on their consoles, they get all profits from first party software, they don’t tend to be the manufacturer that sells at the biggest loss (if at a loss at all), but people are still defending their choice to lock basic functionalities behind a paywall…
Weird mindset… you consider that it’s ok because it’s cheap? At what price is it not ok anymore?
It’s unacceptable to me that we have to pay for services that should be free and that we can’t own certain games because they’re locked behind a paywall.
On the other hand your could consider it paying for Fzero and just ignore the rest of the network. If that works for you then the problem is solved.
On the other hand if you are worried that you will never “own” the battle Royale game: that was never going to happen, it will die when the serves go dark no matter how they monitize. You might as well enjoy it while it lasts.
The idea that you can control capitalists with ‘your wallet’ is flawed. Its never worked that way. Capitalism is controlled by regulations, or its not and you get crony capitalism.
It's a really cool roguelike basebuilder game and the Ancient Seals is the most recent of many updates for it that we've gotten, adding more goals in the game and an overarching narrative / progression in each cycle so settlements feel more connected than before.
It's relatively cheap, the developers are great at supporting the game and listening to feedback, and I definitely recommend it for anyone curious about it. The game has felt finished and very polished for over a year now so don't let the early access tag dissuade you from trying it out
tl;dr It's a good game and it's consistently getting better
The game is fully playable and has hardly any bugs. They have a set schedule for updates: every two weeks. I’m amazed at the changes they’ve done since I picked it up during the winter sale (9ish months ago). The devs are dedicated, that’s for sure.
It’s one of my favourite games. The devs are really good at making the choices you make interesting and meaningful.
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