I wonder what took them so long to make a response. The community was turning against them and they took an entire week to tell them that no, they do, in fact, want to keep making video game consoles.
Nothing announced in the video is ground-breaking, nor did it require so much time to prepare.
(Honestly, Pentiment and Hi-Fi Rush going multiplatform in place of Starfield is a huge win for PlayStation users lol)
Spent a good chunk of my childhood playing Sacred 1. It’s aged very poorly, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone nowadays, but I still think that the world design and environmental storytelling were some of the best I’ve found in a videogame.
For example, at the beginning of the game, orcs are migrating from the desert and attacking human settlements. When you progress, you discover that they aren’t doing it because they want to, but because the undead army is forcing them out of their land. And when you progress in the northern part of the world, there’s a completely optional region inside the forest, where you can find a few hastily made orcish settlements - but you only find women and shamans, because the men are fighting at the front. There are no dialogues, quests, books or anything telling you that, it’s just something that you infer from the environment.
It made exploring the world and finding its secrets fun, even if there wasn’t always a reward.
(There were also a metric ton of easter eggs, from tombstones mentioning LotR characters to receiving sunglasses as a reward for chasing rude orc visitors from a tourist island… it was a wild game)
I’ll go counter-current here and say that it was a fun game. IGN review sells it really well, and I had fun while playing it. I’d say the main problem of the game was releasing in a year already full of big-name releases, and a marketing campaign that was too quiet - I’m honestly surprised it cost $40 million, because I only heard of the game by pure chance.
Welcome to DnD, where the martial/caster disparity is a feature, not a bug. We’re actually really, really bad about balancing our content, please buy our overpriced rulebooks that offer very little guidance on how to actually use them.
Yeah, I’m just convinced that the designers actively hate the martials classes. Even in the playtest for the new edition, after 10 years of people pointing out the martial/caster disparity, it took them over a year to write a somewhat decent skill set for martials.
(Link away! I’m always interested in homebrews for DnD. You should also consider posting it in the c/dndhomebrew community if you want more visibility. I still don’t know how to link Lemmy communities to users from different instances, but you should be able to access it from my post history.)
From personal experience, by the time casters have depleted all their spell slots, martials are low on health as well, making the balance finicky at best even if you’re having multiple encounters per long rest. The game is balanced in a way that makes it impossible for martials to shine: you either play with few combat encounters, thus allowing the casters to shotgun their infinite spell slots at the enemy, or play with multiple combat encounters per long rest, which has martials on death’s door because their HP drop faster than the casters’ slots.
It’s also difficult, from a narrative perspective, to fit so many combat encounters in a single day, to the point that I honestly don’t think it’s possible unless you subscribe to some form of gritty realism ruleset (7-day long rests, long rests in safe zones, long rests at the end of a narrative arc, etc…).
It happens every time. Pokémon Sword/Shield and Scarlett/Violet had the biggest launch in the franchise’s history despite being (justifiably so) heavily criticized by pretty much everyone online.
People shit on microtransactions and always-online games but the top charts always show online multiplayer games are among the most played.
It doesn’t make the criticisms any less valid; it just means that the general public is usually ignorant of them.
On one level, my interest in this issue has been professional, because I’m writing a crime series […].
When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.
Sure, Joanne. “My interest in this was only professional, because I was writing a book where the serial killer is a man cross-dressing as a woman that kills other women”. We know how it ended.
She then proceeded with a very weird anti-trans statement:
When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. […].
As I didn’t have a realistic possibility of becoming a man back in the 1980s, it had to be books and music that got me through both my mental health issues and the sexualised scrutiny and judgement that sets so many girls to war against their bodies in their teens. Fortunately for me, I found my own sense of otherness, and my ambivalence about being a woman […]; it’s OK to feel confused, dark, both sexual and non-sexual, unsure of what or who you are.
I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria.
“I felt non-binary too, but I’m not trans, so you aren’t either!”.
For reference, desistance is a real term that refers to people who changes their mind about their gender dysphoria, and, although further research is still needed, she is probably citing real sources. It’s also strange to insert that knowledge in a post where she’s supposedly trying to convince people that she’s not a TERF, among the “five reasons she’s worried about the new trans activism”, whatever that means. “I don’t hate trans people, but anyway, they aren’t real and you are preying on children”.
She then ended her wall of text by alluding that all trans women are actually men who want to prey on women (never mind that, if a man wanted to become a sexual predator, he could just… Do that, instead of faking gender dysphoria? Like, a man who wants to sexually harass someone isn’t stopping at the “girls only” sign. He’s not a vampire). But hey, before that she said that she cares about trans women, so I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.
So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.
That’s the simple truth of a person who should really talk to their therapist about her trauma instead of writing bullshit online.
If agreeing with known transphobes, erasing trans identity, and putting trans women and sexual predators on the same level isn’t transphobic, I really don’t know what is.
Considering the glacial pace of modern AAA game development, I don’t think it’s odd that they want multiple games in development at the same time to ensure a steady release schedule.
We don’t really know what these five games are (if they really exist at all), but if they diversify the offer with a mix of first person, third person, remakes of old titles and maybe yet-another-attempt-at-bad-online-RE-that-nobody-wants, which is what they’ve done so far (RE7, RE2make, RE3make, Resistance, RE8, RE4make), I think it’s a good thing.
Divinity 2: Original Sin is a wonderful game with an engaging combat system, great exploration, and an intriguing story with fun and memorable characters.
I never finished the prologue because the game forced me to fight the cute doggo. After telling me its name and asking me to find it.
You can’t save the dog. You can only convince it not to attack you, but (a) the dialogue doesn’t trigger if you progress too much before talking to it, (b) the dog and its pack turn hostile on you if you proceed with the game. The only option you have is basically to ignore them, and it’s too sad for me :(
It’s a free-to-play mobile gacha game. Therefore, it is trash. That point simply cannot be argued. It’s not up for debate. If you’re here to debate that point, please don’t even bother. All mobile games are trash. All free-to-play games are trash. All gacha games are trash. Again: there is no debate about that....
The inherent appeal of gacha games is always cute anime girls/pretty anime boys. I doubt anyone will find any of these games appealing to them if they don’t like the art style in the first place.
I haven’t played Honkai or Genshin Impact, so my understanding and knowledge of both games is fairly limited (mostly hearsay from people who actually played them), so take the rest of the message with a healthy dose of salt.
I’ve heard the production value is excellent compared to most other mobile games: for the low price of $0 (gacha microtransactions excluded, of course) you get a full open world game with nice graphics and animations and a fully fledged story (I’m unsure how good that actually is and from what I’ve seen I’m inclined to think “not much”, but it probably appeals to anime fans).
I’ve also heard that you can play Genshin Impact for free and still get the characters you want if you’re patient enough, which is not something that can be said of most gacha games. The PvE nature of the game means that you don’t necessarily need the best lv999 S-rank character to compete with other players, and can enjoy (most of?) what the game has to offer for free, which means that you don’t need to engage with the gacha aspect of the game if you don’t want to. I don’t know if that applies to Honkai as well, but considering it’s a very similar game from the same software house, I’d say it’s possible.
In conclusion, I don’t think the game is worth checking out if you don’t like anime and/or mobile games, but if you like any of those and are a young person without a stable income, a f2p open world game with bells and whistles such as nice graphics and animations could be appealing. Although, as I said, my opinion is mostly derived from hearsay and a quick glance at YT to check what the deal was about, I won’t pretend I really know what I’m talking about here.
Sure is, and I never said otherwise. I doubt that people playing those games care. If they are playing those games they probably like them and are okay with the idea of supporting them.
Okay let me start with two heavy hitters right from the get go and don’t forget these are only personal oppinions and I absolute understand if you like those games. Good for you!...
Skyrim never “clicked” for me. I remember hearing awesome things about it: a vast open world full of things to discover, the ability to create my own character and build it however I wanted, the option to influence the world around me with my choices…
In practice, I found myself in a very big but mostly empty world, full of copy-pasted uninspired dungeons with randomized loot, and no matter what character I chose to build, the combat system sucks and the AI never tries to do anything more than mindlessly walk towards you (and get stuck on the scenery). I was never able to immerse myself in the world because everything was so drab and insipid: generic characters living in generic cities talking about generic things with a very bad dub.
Choices never matter because the game insists on spoon-feeding you everything it has to offer. You can roleplay as a barbarian and still become the headmaster of Hogwarts; you can side with the romans or the vikings but the world doesn’t change aside from the uniform of the guards patrolling the cities you visit; you can ignore the dragons roaming the land and they never do anything, because they are just random encounters in the world without any kind of personality or goal aside from turning up and being a minor annoyance to the player.
The modding community is great, but even after spending a few hours installing a dozen or so mods, I was never able to escape the jankiness of the original game: it was still Skyrim, just with a different coat of paint (and a few less bugs and horrible UI decisions).
Reading about the overall reception of Starfield, I felt like I was going crazy, because everything the people say about that game, I already felt about Skyrim fifteen years ago. On the one hand, I felt like my feelings were being legitimized; on the other hand, I still don’t understand why people forgive Skyrim (and still play it to this day) but hate the new Bethesda game so much.
Had a friend unironically trying to convince me that Palworld is evil because it brainwashes people into liking human enslavement and shooting at civilians.
His favourite game is Pokémon, a game where you bond with your fire lizard by pitting it against other animals in a government-sanctioned tournament.
Of course he’s also one of those people who spends hours lamenting the state of current Pokémon games, while also buying both versions of each game at day 1.
I played it on gamepass, then bought the Collector’s Edition simply because I wanted to give some money to the devs, and then bought it again on Xbox with the DLC just to have an excuse to play it again.
It’s a wonderful game choke full of content (especially if you like the collect-a-thon aspect of the game), the combat system is amazing, and there are tons of skills available across four different branches for each of the four+1 elements, which means it never overstays its welcome because there’s always something new to unlock and play with. But most of all, I loved having a game that isn’t afraid of giving you hard puzzles without a companion or an annoying thinking voice explaining everything to you before you even had a chance to look at the damn thing.
It immediately became one of my favourite games ever, and it’s a shame that not enough people even know of its existence.
1:22 - Obsidian Entertainment, Avowed. Release date: Fall 2024.
They show the game’s world, the combat system, and touch a bit on the quest system and dialogue options.
9:22 - Ninja Theory, Senua’s Saga Hellblade II. Release date: May 21, 2024.
They talk about the story and theme of the game, show some cutscenes, and touch a bit on the combat system. They also delve into the sound design, and some behind-the-scenes about the setting and motion capture.
They talk about the combat system, monster design, and show a glimpse of the mount travelling across the open world. The final segment is dedicated to the soundtrack, and how it changes to fit the moment-to-moment gameplay.
25:12 - Oxide, Ara History Untold. Release date: Fall 2024.
They talk about wanting to revolutionize the genre. They show procedurally generated biomes, and mention the attention to detail that went into crafting different cultures and societies from all around the world. The system is deep, requiring the player to explore and make choices that will change the society and the world around them to achieve different win conditions. No mention of Xbox, so I guess it’s still a PC-only release, at least for now.
33:10 - Machine Games, Indiana Jones and the great circle. Release date: 2024.
Hey, look, Todd Howard makes an appearance. There’s some cutscenes, but they show gameplay as well. It’s a first person adventure game set between Raiders of the lost ark and The last crusade. Dr. Jones is shown exploring ancient ruins, vast deserts, snowy mountains and the Vatican, following the trails of a man who stole a relic from the Marshall College and fighting some nazis along the way. But they also talk about the puzzles, which will take centre stage. Seems cool. The last bit is about the behind-the-scenes of the animators and composers, and they also talk about the other characters that will be part of the story.
It’s a bit strange that only one has a fixed release date despite all of them supposedly releasing this year, with the biggest offender being Indiana Jones that only has a generic “2024” release date. That being said, they all showed glimpses of gameplay and different environments, suggesting there’s at least a good chunk of the game already built. I could definitively see Indiana Jones being postponed, though (not a prediction, just saying that I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened).
Avowed seems ok. I’m not a fun of first-person fantasy games (I like looking at my character performing sick moves in cool armour), but they certainly know what they are doing and the gameplay looks fun and snappy. Unfortunately, apart from the combat system and one limited character interaction, they didn’t show too much of the gameplay to give me an idea of what the moment-to-moment gameplay will be, so I’ll suspend my judgement on this one for the moment while I keep waiting for more info.
Senua’s really good, but I never had any doubt about this one. It looked good when they first showed it a few years back, and it somehow looks ever better every time, despite this being the third or fourth trailer I’ve seen in as many years. It gives me the impression they really care about crafting as much a polished game as they can. I’m very optimistic about this one.
I love that they spent half the time dedicated to Secret of Mana talking about the cute critters. I loved every second of it, I’m a sucker for cute animals lol. Unfortunately I always find action JRPGs to be hit and miss: sometimes the game drags just too much and the gameplay ends up boring me before I finish the game. I’m not talking about this game in particular, it’s just a generic statement on the genre, and it’s just a “me” thing, feel free to disagree. Anyway, I’ll keep my eyes on this.
I always love strategy games, so I’m curious about Ara History Untold, which I hadn’t heard before today. I’m not going to lie, I was not entirely impressed, but it got me curious.
About Indiana Jones, I’m already looking forward to playing it, no doubt! I hope the focus will be on puzzles and exploration, as they promised, instead of combat, but I am hopeful they’ll do a decent job.
Their games were rough around the edges but sure as hell showed a lot of passion. The lore and attention to detail that went into their worlds were unparalleled, especially in the open world genre where lots of content is just generic copy-pasted fetch quests or mindlessly following the Ubisoft formula.
I recently played Alien Isolation, and I noticed all of the “hacking” she does on doors and computers are different types of games, like press the button at the right time, or match the images within a timer, etc....
PGR3, a Xbox360 racing game, contains Geometry Wars 1 and 2 as mini games. YT Link
Celeste contains the entirety of Celeste Classic (PICO-8) as an easter egg in one of its levels. YT Link
Xenogears, a PS1 JRPG game, contains a battle arena minigame, and I spent a few hours on that as a kid. YT Link
Machinarium’s Gomoku/5 in a row minigame is so much fun, I played it with my friends at school when we didn’t want to listen to our teacher :) By the way, I really recommend Machinarium to every fan of old school point-and-click games.
First of all, I don’t see how a series where each and every entry is unique and has nothing to do with the previous ones (apart from a few recurring names) could be “well past done”. They don’t even share the same gameplay or combat system.
And also, Square has “tried something new” pretty much all the time. Triangle Strategy, Live a Live, Nier, Kingdom Hearts, Star Ocean, SaGa, Mana series (with an upcoming title next year), Dragon Quest, Octopath Traveler… I’m just listing a few, but I could go on. It’s not even a thing they suddenly decided to do. Even a few gens back, I remember playing Star Ocean, Last Remnant, Resonance of Fate and other lesser known titles. If you want to go back to the PS1 days, Vagrant Story and Threads of Fate come to mind, but there are surely a lot more I’m currently forgetting. EDIT: Xenogears too! I don’t know how I could forget that one.
I played Lost Odyssey and very much liked it, but it’s not Square.
It was made by Mistwalker with MS backing, after Sakaguchi left Square.
Actually, re-reading my list, I noticed that I mentioned Resonance of Fate, which wasn’t Square, either! It was published by Sega. The other titles should be correct.
Mistwalker is the company founded by Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy. It should come to no surprise that the game is really evocative of many early FF titles.
The obvious answer is Pathologic. You play as one of three possible characters in a black plague-infested town in the russian steppe, trying to help people and survive.
As days go by, the situation worsens and, in order to survive, you are forced to make very hard decisions. Can you spare the food for the others? Will you rob someone of their medicines? Will you risk going to the most dangerous parts of the city, where the stench of infection permeates the air?
Making it to the end of a day is a genuine accomplishment in this game, considering all the work you have to do to stay alive, and that the game really doesn’t care if you live or die. It won’t hold your hand to make sure you get through to the end; it’s entirely possible to make it through 10 days and then back yourself into a corner where you have absolutely no hope of survival, short of loading a save from a few (in-game) days ago. Or perhaps to save yourself the agony of replaying several hours of the game, you end up in terrifying, desperate scenarios where you have to sell your only weapon for a few scraps of bread, or murder a child for the medicine he’s carrying while you’re about to die from infection. That’s true horror right there.
It’s not an easy game and it’s not a good game, even. It’s old and dated and janky, but it’s also full of charm and personality. I wouldn’t say it’s a game meant to be played, as much as it is an experience worth going through. You won’t have fun playing the game. Even if you can overlook its pain points, it’s an objectively oppressive game that will make you feel miserable from beginning to end, and increasingly so. I wouldn’t say it’s for everyone, and I don’t mean that in an elitist way. Some people simply won’t stand this much bleakness during the time they are supposedly spending to find entertainment.
I have heard very good things about it, but I can’t talk for myself, as I haven’t played it. My only recommendation is to stay away from the console versions of the game, as I tried it on Xbox One and it was unplayable (heard the same about the PS4 port, too). Maybe it’s better on next gen, but I wouldn’t risk it.
Two things worth mentioning:
The remake only has one character, the Haruspex. If you want to play as the Bachelor or the Changeling, you’ll need to grab the original game.
There are difficulty settings in the remake. I would leave them as default, as I think the difficulty of the game, and the conflicting decisions you’ll need to undertake because of it, is an integral part of the experience. That being said, if you really like the game and want to see it through, you can tweak the difficulty a bit, and accessibility is always a plus in my book.
Again, this is just hearsay as I haven’t played it, but from what I’ve gathered, Pathologic 2 is more a retelling than a faithful remake. Same setting and same ending, but a different road, so to speak. You could play either one and then move on to the other if you like it.
I’ve played and almost 100% the Spyro trilogy when it came out. The games were lovely and (aside from the gorgeous remade graphics) the gameplay has aged really well....
These laws will ban rewards for spending money within a game for the first time, ban rewards for buying consecutive microtransactions, and ban rewards for daily log-ins.
Journey to the savage planet is a very recent game that ties those two genres together. There is a lot of platforming to do and you eventually unlock more equipment, such as the grappling hook and a limited booster jet, that further improve how you traverse the environment. Unfortunately the shooter part is kinda basic from beginning to end, but if you liked Ratchet & Clank, you’ll be okay with it.
Aside from that one, I don’t remember other games that try to blend platforming with shooter. In Psychonauts you shoot psychic beams, but maybe that’s a bit of a stretch.
Have you been spending hours trying to pass a level? Or maybe you are completely addicted to a newly bought game. Do you have a question about a game or would like to share something else? In the Weekly Discussion Thread, you can do it all!...
I found the game very rough around the edges, and had to look at an internet guide to tell me where to go in the last level, but it’s a game really worth playing for the atmosphere and story alone.
There’s a great video essay on YT that takes a deep dive into the story and symbolism of the game, which I really recommend watching after finishing the game, if you’re into that form of content. A complete story breakdown of Signalis.
I can relate to that. These days I find myself gravitating more towards calm/introspective games that let me sit back, explore at my own pace and relax.
Wish you a good day, and I hope you are enjoying the holidays :)
I’m a big Dontnod fan. They really know how to craft an emotional story with some great character interaction and drama. None of their games is perfect, but they are always an enjoyable (and very emotional) ride.
This seems yet another LiS-game-but-different-title-for-legal-reasons (kind of like Tell me why), so I’m really looking forward to it.
Are there any games like Diablo but not Diablo because Diablo? angielski
EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea" (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
Personally I would not call Immortals of Aveum an AAA game. 😅...
Xbox is still committed to making consoles, says boss Phil Spencer (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
What's your big "Oh, THAT'S how I do that" moment? angielski
I remembered a good brainfart of mine and wondered if anyone else had one to share....
Hogwarts Legacy has officially cleared Zelda as 2023's best-selling game worldwide (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
First game you played angielski
Title says it all, what was the first game you remember playing and had fond memories of?...
deleted_by_moderator
There are "five Resident Evil games in development right now, including Resident Evil 9", leaker claims (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
I don't know if I have the strength to do it (lemmy.world) angielski
DEATH STRANDING 2: ON THE BEACH – State of Play Announce Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Can someone explain to me why Honkai: Star Rail is treated as something other than trash? I keep seeing posts about it, all over. angielski
It’s a free-to-play mobile gacha game. Therefore, it is trash. That point simply cannot be argued. It’s not up for debate. If you’re here to debate that point, please don’t even bother. All mobile games are trash. All free-to-play games are trash. All gacha games are trash. Again: there is no debate about that....
No More Avatar Reckoning, it has been cancelled (gengamer.in) angielski
Which games do you dislike, but the rest of the world loves them? angielski
Okay let me start with two heavy hitters right from the get go and don’t forget these are only personal oppinions and I absolute understand if you like those games. Good for you!...
The Pokemon Company releases a statement regarding Palworld: Inquiries Regarding Other Companies’ Games (corporate.pokemon.co.jp) angielski
Here’s a archive link, archive.ph/oT1L6
Your personal Masterpieces angielski
Hello Lemmings!...
Xbox Developers Direct angielski
I really enjoyed the Xbox Developer Direct....
The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered - Official Launch Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
ACE COMBAT 7: Skies Unknown – Announcement Trailer – Nintendo Switch (youtu.be) angielski
Elex 3 May Have Been Canceled, Developer Piranha Bytes Possibly Closed Down (twistedvoxel.com) angielski
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/10831301...
What are some of the best mini-games youve played? (games inside games) angielski
I recently played Alien Isolation, and I noticed all of the “hacking” she does on doors and computers are different types of games, like press the button at the right time, or match the images within a timer, etc....
Final Fantasy 17 needs "a younger generation" of lead developers, suggests FF16 producer (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Games that force you to make hard choices angielski
Hey all!...
Xbox to Present Developer_Direct, Returning on January 18 (news.xbox.com) angielski
This Spyro the Dragon tweet has fans thinking a new instalment is coming (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
I’ve played and almost 100% the Spyro trilogy when it came out. The games were lovely and (aside from the gorgeous remade graphics) the gameplay has aged really well....
China announced new laws to limit microtransactions, affecting major corporations like Tencent. (gamerant.com) angielski
These laws will ban rewards for spending money within a game for the first time, ban rewards for buying consecutive microtransactions, and ban rewards for daily log-ins.
What are some 3D platformer/3rd person shooter hybrids aside from the Ratchet and Jak series? angielski
Copied from a Reddit post:...
Void Stranger - Release Trailer (youtu.be) angielski
itch.io page...
Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown | New Gameplay Today (www.youtube.com) angielski
The Weekly 'What are you playing?' Discussion (lemmy.world) angielski
Have you been spending hours trying to pass a level? Or maybe you are completely addicted to a newly bought game. Do you have a question about a game or would like to share something else? In the Weekly Discussion Thread, you can do it all!...
Lost Ruins, Free on Gog (www.gog.com) angielski
"The Day Before" makers Fntastic are shutting down. (lemmy.world) angielski
Source: twitter.com/FntasticHQ/…/1734265789237338453...
Banishers: Ghosts Of New Eden wants to be a thoughtful blockbuster on a budget (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Lost Records: Bloom and Rage | Reveal Teaser (www.youtube.com) angielski