I don’t blame them. Nintendo fans buy anything at any price. I don’t see it being different this time.
Mario Kart 8 never goes on sale and sold 70m copies; Pokémon Scarlet/Violet sold 30m despite looking and playing like dogshit; they sold Skyward Sword HD, the remaster of a 10-yo game, at full price and still placed a few millions.
Nintendo is basically like Apple at this point, the brand is enough to convince people to spend more than they would for the competition, regardless of quality. I personally know a lot of people who loudly groaned/complained at the price announcement, but will still buy it day one, just like they always had in all these years.
And people terminally online should stop pretending the Steam Deck is competition to the Switch 2. It couldn’t even compete with the Switch 1, which was five years older, had worse performance, and had been easily emulated for years at that point.
Just did a GOG survey that focused on the idea of a paid membership option on GOG. Seems they’re determining what people would be willing to pay extra for. Some of the options were...
Ubisoft Entertainment SA will carve out a unit including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Sixinto a subsidiary with an enterprise value of about €4 billion ($4.3 billion)....
Yeah, community-made Pokemon games really hit some heights in recent years. Too bad Nintendo is so opposed to the homebrew scene.
I had lots of fun with Pokémon Odyssey last year, patiently waiting for the final update that should come this year as well. As I said, 2025 is packed!
So sad about GoG’s revenue drop. It’s my store of choice and I genuinely find it more unintrusive than Steam, but if it keeps going like this, I wonder how long it will exist. Hopefully they manage to turn things around.
“LumenTale: Memories of Trey is a Monster Collector RPG set in the wonderful land of Talea. Trey, who has mysteriously lost his memories, decides to set on a journey after a particular event. His only guiding light will be a mysterious desire… but will that be true?”...
I really liked GI and i was saddened by their closure. Quality journalism (gaming and elsewhere) is dying, substituted by AI slop, paid influencers and clickbait articles.
Hopefully a few of the good ones remain. This is a step in the right direction.
I tried playing Harvest Moon on the SNES today and having played Stardew Valley for hours, I thought I'd try and see how tolerable the original Harvest Moon was in comparison. I know and understand it is unfair because there's a 20 year gap between Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, while also discrediting Harvest Moon's later...
Having grown up with the PS1, it’s been fun revisiting old classics and see what has aged well and what hasn’t.
Platformers like Spyro, Crash, Rayman, Abe’s Oddysee and Ape Escape have aged like fine wine (although Crash 1 is a lot more janky than the others). But that back into the past, some games also showed no signs of proper playtesting aimed at kids, which means overly difficult levels, annoying completions and such - I remember spending months playing Tarzan, The Emperor’s New Groove, Croc 2, Kingley’s Adventure and others to 100% them, and some of them I could never finish. I only recently 100% Croc 2 for the first time, for example, and yeah, it wasn’t really that good.
Some JRPGs are also as great today as they were the day they were released (Final Fantasy IX, Xenogears, Chrono Cross, Star Ocean and even lesser known ones such as Legend of Legaia, Threads of Fate and Wild Arms), and are arguably better than many of their contemporary competitors. But you sometimes have to stomach one too many random encounter, overly distracting old/early PS1-era graphics, bad translations, or all of the above (I’ve never been an omega-fan of FFVII, and let me tell you, revisiting it in the pandemic really didn’t improve my opinion of that game).
The slow gameplay afforded by the console really allows action-horror games such as Resident Evil, Dino Crisis and Silent Hill to shine, but those that attempted to be more action-oriented, such as Siphon Filter, really show the signs of age. Dino Crisis 2 is the exception here, being very action-heavy, but also distinctly “modern” in many of its design choices.
Stealth games such as Metal Gear Solid and Tenchu are also great, although very limited in scope by today’s standards, and the latter’s low render distance is something that may annoy players accustomed to modern gaming.
FPS games (Medal of Honour being the biggest title) really have no place in any contemporary gamer’s playlist. The same can be said about Race/driving games, unless you like revisiting the catchy tunes of the Gran Turismo 2 soundtrack. For example, I found CTR - Crash Team Racing quite dull and too easy even at max difficulty, but had a blast collecting all achievements in the remake (shame it never got released on PC - I wonder why).
It’s probably the same about fighting games: modern entries are much more fluid and dynamic, have better AI and allow for a greater skill ceiling. I say “probably” because I suck at fighting games and I’ve never played them extensively, aside from a few sparring matches with my brother on Tekken 3.
There are other cases where I found the original game “good enough, but not worth your time over the most recent entries”. For example, as a kid I spent countless hours crossing the skies of Ace Combat 2, but all the titles that came after it are just better. If I had to chose only one game for this post, AC2 would probably be it. I loved it and I still do, and its soundtrack is bonkers (seriously, it’s really good), but yeah, I’d take 4, Zero and 6, or even Project Wingman, over it any day.
Unfortunately, I haven’t! I didn’t have a PS2 growing up, I went straight from the PS1 to the X360, so I missed on a lot of titles from the sixth gen. I eventually got back to play some of them (.hack games, Ace Combat titles, and a few more), but I don’t have as much free time as I did when I was a kid and I’m still missing a ton of stuff.
That being said, the CTR remake did have all the Nitro Kart levels in it and they were a true joy to play. I liked them even more than the original’s levels, which I certainly did non expect as I had a lot of nostalgia for the OG. Let me tell you, if the remake had been released on PC with cross-play, me and my brother would still be playing it to this day lol
That’s sad to hear. I was aware of some of them MTX-heavy, but I thought it was compensated by the base game being more feature-rich than their predecessors.
I appreciate the correction, I really am ignorant when it comes to this genre.
Yeah pacman and pong were seminal but so was elite on the BBC, and Populous which I think was on the spectrum. Also unreal tournament, silent hill, vice city, homeworld, doom 2016, beam ng, I enjoyed em all but I can’t decide. Ppl here have done much more gaming than me, I’m wondering what you all think is the best game...
The answer to that question depends on your tastes, your current situation (amount of free time, mood, etc…) and many more. There’s no such thing as the “best” when it comes to a subjective piece of media.
I can’t even decide on my favourite game, because what I like and what I want to play depends on the aforementioned factors. I may be interested in a strong narrative today, on puzzles tomorrow, and on a crazy platformer game next. Different games resonate with me differently depending on when I play them.
Games that really stayed with me are (in no particular order) Xenogears, Metal Gear Solid, CrossCode, Digimon World, Oddworld Abe’s Odyssey, Ace Combat 4-6, The Talos Principle, Ori and the Blind Forest, Threads of Fate, and I also spent a crazy amount of hours on Stronghold, Advance Wars: Days of Ruin and Medieval II Total War. There’s, like, at least half a dozen different genres in that list and all those games are very different from one another, but all had different qualities that resonated with me for one reason or the other.
This feels like the Morbius re-release. Big Rigs is (in)famous for being one of the worst/most broken games ever made, who in their right mind would pay for it?
I don’t think I agree. I feel like the game is so short and incomplete that you can see everything it has to offer by playing it for 10 minutes - or watching a YT gameplay.
The game has one map, no collisions, no AI. I think I remember it having different playable “rigs” but they are mechanically the same, so there’s no point.
At least with a game like Oblivion you could play it for 20 years and stillfindnewones. Big Rigs doesn’t have near the same “energy”.
Fun fact, Ace Combat 5 has a similar “going at ludicrous speed” bug (We have to go faster, We have to go even faster), but it also has an entire (actually good) playable game attached to it.
How many years of development has this game had? I wonder if it’s another case of Microsoft Mismanagement™ or if it’s actually so huge and detailed that it’s actually worth all of this time spent in the works.
To be fair, I don’t think any of the MS releases ever suffered from bugs at launch. At least from my experience, they always worked pretty consistently on release, aside from maybe a few exceptions - I remember ReCore having excruciatingly long respawn times, Redfall suffering from stuttering and inconsistent framerate, and Ori 2 not being as fluid as the predecessor on console when it released, but all these were still perfectly playable at launch.
I feel like their problem is always the quality and quantity of the content. I wonder if the middling reception of Avowed convinced them that the game requires a bit more work to compete in the crowded and very competitive landscape of open world RPGs.
Quite the big step for gaming rights in the EU. In the last page, the document also mentions “whales” as “vulnerable people”, adding that a game targeting them specifically may run afoul of EU legislation when precaution are not taken to protect them from their impulses.
This may have a gigantic ripple effect in the industry – or it may not, if the industry decides that targeting whales in the US and China is more profitable than bowing to the EU.
As you’re most probably used to by now, this is just my initial warning that what follows is my ranting and rambling about both Steam Deck-specific(ish) news, and general gaming news I’ve spotted and seems interesting to me....
The soundtrack is fine. It works very well in its context and I still hum some of its tones every now and then, but that’s mostly it imo. The end credits song is one of the best end themes I’ve ever heard in a videogame, though.
2025 is the year of the X360. First the decomp tools, now this. Maybe we can even expect a serious attempt at emulating the system on PC? Xenia is still not good, unfortunately.
I’ll be honest, it doesn’t just “look like Advance Wars”. It looks like a rip-off. I love AW but I wish they went with a more original art style, like Wargroove did.
As you’re most probably used to by now, this is just my initial warning that what follows is my ranting and rambling about both Steam Deck-specific(ish) news, and general gaming news I’ve spotted and seems interesting to me....
About the GoG store’s second class treatment: it’s always worth it to email the publisher and ask them if they plan on updating their game on GoG!
I did exactly that a few months ago when I wanted to buy I was a teenage exocolonist - emailed Finji and let them know that their game was not up to date on the platform I wanted to buy the game on. They replied rather quickly and the game was updated a few days later. It was very nice because the game was on sale and, thanks to their quick reply, I was able to not miss the sale.
AI techbros will have you believe that you can solve world hunger, cure cancer, and colonize Mars with a few prompts on ChatGPT.
Yet their AI is still incapable of answering two prompts consecutively without making shit up, or drawing a human without turning it into an eldritch abomination.
Game preservation could be fixed with open source emulators and fixing copyright laws so that I’m allowed to download a game nobody has profited from in two decades, but that’s not appealing to big corporations.
Mildly surprised to see another installment in this series after all these years, but I’m pretty excited.
For those who don’t know, Styx is a AA stealth game where you play as a goblin assassin (the titular Styx). It spawned as a spin off of another fantasy game (Of orcs and men) where you played as both the goblin and an orc warrior, which was unfortunately a bit too janky for my tastes.
The focus on stealth of the following installments really benefitted the series, imo. While they still carry a bit of janky-ness (as many AA titles do), they are nevertheless a lot of fun! The story in the first one was very good as well. I still haven’t finished the second one, so I can’t comment much on it.
The first two games are also currently discounted on Steam and GoG ($2 for the first one and $3 for the second), and I think they are very much worth that much.
I started at 7 and looked forwards to every iteration of the series since then, 8 was more of the same with a weird story, 9 was cute and a good throwback, then I went back to 6 which was a masterpiece, 10 was emotional and beautiful, 12 wasn’t great but had cool worldbuilding, being a FFT fan....
If you kind of liked the XIII games, I highly recommend Lighting Returns. Time limits make me deeply anxious but that game’s timer is VERY generous, especially because you can stop time pretty much forever. I 100% my first run in, like, four days out of thirteen.
The story is wacky as hell (I honestly didn’t care much after XIII-2), but gameplay’s solid and exploration is fun.
As for the last question, I think that they should go back to their roots. They pivoted away from the JRPG genre with each title, but recent successes from similar games (such as Persona 5 in the AAA department, and Sea of Stars in the indie category) proved that people still crave a more traditional turn-based system.
I really enjoyed Tunic for the same reason as you! It has nice and cozy vibes but manages to challenge the player without ever feeling too cheap or overwhelmingly difficult, in both combat and puzzles. I really was reminded of old-school gaming, in a good way.
The only thing I disliked is how cryptic the last few puzzles were, to the point that I doubt the vast percentage of the player base would be able to figure them out without resorting to a guide. I certainly wasn’t. I love puzzle games and I love games like Talos Principle and Crosscode. I guess I just didn’t like how meta-gamey some of the solutions (and the reward for the puzzles) were.
PS. Another great post and the formatting is excellent. Congrats!
As a preface, I used to do this a lot on Reddit. My hobby (sounds odd) was to make a little old-school-blog-style post, detailing what I found interesting in gaming in the last week or so. I got a name for it, for a time, but having long-since abandoned reddit I thought I might try the same thing here, if you’ll indulge me!...
As a fellow enthusiast with an obsessive-compulsive drive to write about my hobbies (not necessarily video-game related, but quite similar) i know that these things take a while to write, especially when you take the time to format everything correctly, link the sources, etc.
So I wanted to echo the others here and say that I really appreciate your work here. It was a fun way to start my day, and I’m looking forward to your next post :)
Sony has stopped releasing games on GoG ever since they required login to the PSN. For example, you can buy God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn on GoG, but you can’t buy Ragnarok or Forbidden West.
They lifted the requirement a few weeks ago, but the games still have not been released on GoG, and at this point it’s doubtful they will.
It did. It’s also on Switch and on Windows/Xbox as a Play Anywhere title on MS Store (buy once, get to play on both platforms). But from what I remember, FFIX was the one that needed the remaster treatment the least, as it plays fairly well on any emulator. FFVII and FFVIII, on the other hand, get more bearable with the built-in speed up button (which, yes, you can do on an emulator as well, but then the music gets sped up too and it gets annoying).
Are they? Genuine question. Some of the FF titles I’ve played in the past were technical marvels on their respective consoles. FFXIII still gives modern games a run for their money on the graphical department, despite being 15 years old at this point. Not sure how they fare up nowadays though.
The era of traditional video games is just over for Gen Z. They aren’t just playing games anymore, instead, they are rewriting the rules. Forget about what we used to play with static storylines and pre-designed worlds.
I was hoping for this after the Resident Evil bundle from a few months ago.
The way Dino Crisis 2 managed to turn the tankiness of the RE/Dino Crisis gameplay into an action-packed shooter is stunning to me and I love that game dearly. Replayed it last year and it holds up surprisingly well!
Now let’s hope for a Pararisite Eve GOG release! :D
Racism and bigotry is so intrinsic to the world building of HP, that I find it kind of impossible to completely avoid it even by pirating the game to give no money to JKR and her allies.
I honestly just think that most people have bad text analysis skills/lack of proper reading comprehension. The book is told by the perspective of a specific character, and that character says “the sky is green”, so people believe it because they can’t detach the POV from what they are reading. It happens every time, such as people believing that the Space Marines are the good guys, or that the fascist dictatorship in Starship Trooper isn’t that bad after all.
The movies whitewashed a lot of bad stuff, and I still felt creeped out by them when I was a kid. I’m happy that some people is finally coming around to understanding it now that JKR is more vocal of her outlandish political views.
Unfortunately, it looks like a remake of Sigma 2 with the gore added back in :(
Kind of pointless when we already had Sigma 2 in the remastered trilogy that’s already available everywhere, while the OG Ninja Gaiden 2 is stuck on Xbox consoles. Still nice to see Ninja Gaiden news though.
18+ The Switch 2 Rollout Was So Convoluted It Made Us Want A Steam Deck. (aftermath.site) angielski
Steam Deck / Gaming News #8 angielski
My week’s news!...
GOG seems to be considering paid membership option angielski
Just did a GOG survey that focused on the idea of a paid membership option on GOG. Seems they’re determining what people would be willing to pay extra for. Some of the options were...
Ubisoft Carves Out Top Games Unit; Tencent to Get 25% Stake (www.bloomberg.com) angielski
Ubisoft Entertainment SA will carve out a unit including Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Sixinto a subsidiary with an enterprise value of about €4 billion ($4.3 billion)....
Cassette Beasts Showcase 2025 - 1.8 Update Coming Soon! (youtu.be) angielski
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/27458870...
Steam Deck / Gaming News #7 angielski
As is now a tradition (this is my 7th of these posts - after rejoining Lemmy just 28 days ago!) you’ll know the drill....
LumenTale: Memories of Trey | Direct 2025 (youtu.be) angielski
“LumenTale: Memories of Trey is a Monster Collector RPG set in the wonderful land of Talea. Trey, who has mysteriously lost his memories, decides to set on a journey after a particular event. His only guiding light will be a mysterious desire… but will that be true?”...
Game Informer Is Back and the Entire Team Has Returned (www.youtube.com) angielski
It seems Game Informer’s death was… Greatly exaggerated
What are some old games that are hard to revisit, because a more modern and superior version exists? angielski
I tried playing Harvest Moon on the SNES today and having played Stardew Valley for hours, I thought I'd try and see how tolerable the original Harvest Moon was in comparison. I know and understand it is unfair because there's a 20 year gap between Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, while also discrediting Harvest Moon's later...
Best game ever? angielski
Yeah pacman and pong were seminal but so was elite on the BBC, and Populous which I think was on the spectrum. Also unreal tournament, silent hill, vice city, homeworld, doom 2016, beam ng, I enjoyed em all but I can’t decide. Ppl here have done much more gaming than me, I’m wondering what you all think is the best game...
Big Rigs, the infamous truck racing game, is coming to Steam this year (www.destructoid.com) angielski
Fable delayed to 2026 (www.gamesindustry.biz) angielski
Very likely will be a launch game for MS’s new handheld console....
Key principles on in-game virtual currencies | European Commission (commission.europa.eu) angielski
Quoting someone from another site:...
Digimon Con 2025 (www.youtube.com) angielski
This year’s Digimon Con was packed with great content! Nobody made a post about this, so here it is....
Steam Deck / Gaming News #6 angielski
As you’re most probably used to by now, this is just my initial warning that what follows is my ranting and rambling about both Steam Deck-specific(ish) news, and general gaming news I’ve spotted and seems interesting to me....
Chrono Trigger Is Timeless (www.dcgameblog.com) angielski
Any Xbox 360 Can Now Be Hacked with Just a USB Flash Drive (www.youtube.com) angielski
Fast-paced turn-based tactics game Warside for fans of Advance Wars launches April 14 (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
Threads of Time - Humble Games Showcase 2025 Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Steam Deck / Gaming News #5 (lemmy.world) angielski
As you’re most probably used to by now, this is just my initial warning that what follows is my ranting and rambling about both Steam Deck-specific(ish) news, and general gaming news I’ve spotted and seems interesting to me....
Forza Horizon 5 Will Require a Microsoft Account to Play on PS5 (xcancel.com) angielski
No, Phil Spencer, Having AI Mock Up An Old Game Is Not The Same As Preserving It (www.techdirt.com) angielski
Upcoming Xbox Console Update Reportedly Resetting System Back to Factory Settings (gamerant.com) angielski
Styx: Blades of Greed | Reveal Trailer (youtu.be) angielski
Are modern Final Fantasy games bad?
I started at 7 and looked forwards to every iteration of the series since then, 8 was more of the same with a weird story, 9 was cute and a good throwback, then I went back to 6 which was a masterpiece, 10 was emotional and beautiful, 12 wasn’t great but had cool worldbuilding, being a FFT fan....
Steam Deck Gaming News #2 angielski
To start with:...
Steam Deck Gaming News (lemmy.world) angielski
As a preface, I used to do this a lot on Reddit. My hobby (sounds odd) was to make a little old-school-blog-style post, detailing what I found interesting in gaming in the last week or so. I got a name for it, for a time, but having long-since abandoned reddit I thought I might try the same thing here, if you’ll indulge me!...
BREAKING: Warner Bros. Games is shutting down Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and WB San Diego, sources tell Bloomberg News. (bsky.app) angielski
Warner Bros. is also canceling the Wonder Woman game....
God of War trilogy remaster announcement set for March 2025 (lemmy.world) angielski
Final Fantasy 9 and Final Fantasy Tactics remakes are reportedly still in ‘active development’ (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles for iOS shuts down over "unfixable bug" (www.theverge.com) angielski
Digimon Story Time Stranger - Announcement Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Sony finally surrenders: PSN accounts will be 'optional' for games on Steam, but they'll give you free stuff if you sign up (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Dino Crisis 1 & 2 just got enhanced PC re-releases, courtesy of GOG (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Hogwarts Legacy - PC Modding Update (www.youtube.com) angielski
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 | Release Date Trailer (April 24) (www.youtube.com) angielski
NINJA GAIDEN 2 Black | Official Launch Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski