On enemy variety, I see the critique of games like Zelda: BOTW and even realistic games like Hitman. Something those games have in common is very well-made enemy AI that presents you many ways to defeat them.
The way in which Half-Life maintained a continuous viewpoint over long stretches of gameplay and landscape was always so immersive to me. Games like God of War and Dead Space did something similar, but Valve had an additional challenge.
They almost never take player control, instead relying on mere hints of where to look; they even have the character sequences scripted for wherever the player was standing. That all usually took a lot of their effort.
I could be biased because I even enjoyed toying with their choreography tool, which let you layer simple gestures together; so without making a new animation, you could have someone both lean forward and nod right, and point their thumb right.
Half-Life: Alyx spoilersIt’s gonna be wild watching Valve try to explain that Eli was brought back from the dead in a prequel game that took place years before Half-Life 2, that 90% of their fans couldn’t play.
They usually are free to play with predatory monetization mechanics. That was especially back in 2016 when thanks to these games, the mobile gaming revenue outpaced PC and console gaming revenue.
Not that it succeeded long term, but I salute Apple Arcade’s venture on this. It’s a subscription service that aimed to highlight iPhone games that had no monetization, and were usually small indie games with a fun idea.
I imagine a lawsuit would likely bring up the topic of how hard it would be for a developer to keep the game around past purchase.
For instance, imagine a massively multiplayer online game; everyone playing the game is acutely aware of how much server hardware is needed to maintain that online presence, and it’s unrealistic to assume it would exist forever.
That’s probably why attention was pushed onto The Crew. It’s a racing game that shouldn’t need much from a server, so it’s arguably unfair to tie it to that access and take it offline.
It annoys me how often my standpoint on topics on Lemmy has been “I hate the same people you do, but your reasoning for hating them makes so little sense.”
I think “Disclaimer: Product may explode and take out your eye” only goes so far in terms of warning consumers. Better to actually have something protecting them.
EDIT: My tired mind when I wrote that was just specifically annoyed at the use of disclaimers to excuse a negative trait of software/products. Basically, I was reminded of when Cyberpunk hit the issue of seizure content, and all they did was add a generic warning to the game. But, I really should have added: Sony attempting to use consumer protection to excuse PSN is also stupid. Basically, I’d gotten off topic.
Pocketpair goes on to say that Palworld has been claimed to infringe on three patents held by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company and that part of the damage is required as compensation....
I hadn’t realized the court was within Japan. Does Palworld conduct business inside the country? I’d think if it was never released there, Japan would have no basis to pull them into a foreign case.
What is wrong with Californian views on identity politics, when it’s not just bad writing? Is it the acknowledgement of people that are gender nonbinary?
Elves being racist towards dwarves is acceptable in a game, but white humans being racist towards hispanic humans is “pushing agendas”?
I fault Bioware for a lot of things, but failing to invent a fantasy equivalent of the concept of gender is not one of them. Not everything needs to be moved to an otherworldly analogy just to avoid hurting the feelings of bigots.
I’d even consider the possibility he’s right, but not for reasons that support his argument.
Games and media present transgender and minority groups in an unobtrusive way, and bigots create 17 articles complaining about their basic inclusion for the sake of “DEI”.
Naughty Dog’s most famous games (containing humans) are based around white male leads. It’s basically just Uncharted Lost Legacy and TLOU2 that have diverged from that, and not by very much.
Literally the only game of Insomniac’s I can find (outside of anthropomorphic games like Ratchet&Clank) that even leans to minorities is Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which is based on a comic character that was already popular. Even the games based around Peter were going to acknowledge he’s the type of person to work at food banks and embrace New York’s diversity; that’s the pre-existing character.
Nobody complained when Assassin’s Creed had Leonardo da Vinci hand you a tank or a glider, or a female Spartan mysthios fight mythical gods, or have London gang runners that fight in hoods from rooftops. Assassin’s Creed has always ventured into the unrealistically cinematic extensions of common historical myths, and they’re not even the first to turn Yasuke into a samurai. Netflix put out an animated series on that a while back and it was awesome.
I do not expect an answer, but I genuinely think you should quietly ask yourself the question: Are you a racist?
No matter how many times I reread this comment, I don’t see how this reasoning would convince anyone - including yourself - of its position. The point about translation, for instance, not only feels like a non-sequitor but ignores the wealth of subjectivity that inherently goes into translating text to other languages.
I’m not trying to reject you just out of spite; I genuinely don’t think internet arguments like this are ever “winnable” for anyone. If you come up with a better description for what it is you oppose, feel free to mention it, but otherwise, I’d say do some self-reflecting.
Now that I think about it, this idea was probably a good one for standard release, not live service. People get enticed by IP rights even if they don’t necessarily devote hundreds of hours to a game like this.
It works for things like Injustice. They see a Batman/Superman fighting game even if they aren’t going to hit Gold rank in competitive. Even if they only hit 10 hours, they paid the entry price.
The Steam achievement in Darkchaser is quite interesting—one of them requires you to travel the distance equivalent to circling the Earth once, and another requires the distance from the Earth to the Moon. However, I still want to complain: is anyone actually able to complete this? I know it’s a game that requires you to run...
This is Furukawa. At today’s Corporate Management Policy Briefing, we announced that Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch. Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the successor to Nintendo Switch as well. Further information about the successor to Nintendo Switch, including its...
My final straw was giving takedowns to assets used in Garry’s Mod. Those uses are generally associated to pro-Nintendo artistic messaging, and don’t go towards any game piracy.
I decided from there I was done with Nintendo, haven’t given them a dime since. They need to downsize their law department before I consider them again.
They CAN still be fun. General fact of the matter is that the games we find fun aren’t always necessarily innovating much. Sometimes it’s just a comfortable routine.
Absolutely not going to fault anyone that finds their games boring though.
And I’ll say it again, dumb “quotation” because it only referred to convincing people to try Ubisoft+; which is very explicitly a game rental system.
(Setting aside the change going in through California law where ALL retailers must stop referring to sales as ownership. That affects Assassin’s Creed just as much as your next indie Roguelike)
In my piece, I noted that—so far at least—I hadn’t encountered anything overtly preachy or that one might describe as garishly political or “overly woke”.
Aaand done with the article! Good, that didn’t take too long.
I gave Linux another shot this past month. It was a lot better than I remembered, but still not good enough, basically in the reliability areas. I wish the experience was “it all just works” like so many have said.
I may not mind giving it another try when Windows Recall goes live.
Priority one is having a working computer. Priority two is evading future spyware.
Priority three is using an OS where seeking support for issues doesn’t produce the reply “Sounds like you fucked something up, idiot, because it works perfectly for me!”
You’re saying this to someone who took the time to format a drive to install Linux, read up on recommended partition structure, and take the time tweaking desktop settings to my preference, in genuine hope it would become a daily driver so I could stop using Windows. All of that effort still wasn’t enough.
The quote wasn’t pointed to you, but it was a generalized view of how seeking help turns out. Your above comment, and this one, are showing the same thing: You, and Linux users in general, need only the tiniest justification to belittle someone for not being a 100% Linux devotee/apologist.
I used Linux Mint 21 first, which didn’t (correctly) support my ancient wi-fi card or graphics driver. I then tried 22, which was much better, but failed to run a number of games, exhibiting a variety of issues not listed on ProtonDB.
I then switched to Bazzite, which ran those same games correctly, but its OS-integrated file explorer was oversimplified far past what Windows does, it failed to install several Linux-native applications, alt-tab behavior was frequently glitchy around games, and often I would come back from sleep mode with bizarre graphical glitches forcing me to restart.
I’m not even highlighting the poor usability, or the stuff I might be able to reconfigure. I’m okay with taking time to tweak my OS how I want it, but not when that’s just a matter of having it work correctly.
Some ways I could see the problem at least partially resolved on PC are: Returning to server-side validation, and designing games such that player location knowledge and aiming reflexes are not always the biggest tests for victory. Hackers may, in fact, develop wallhacks and aimhacks for such a game, but may exhibit frustration finding these alone don’t necessarily bag them a win because of bad tactical decisionmaking.
Such games wouldn’t be realistic tactical shooters in the vein of COD, though.
It’s not just trust of the game developer. I honestly believe most of them just want to put out profitable games. It’s trust that a hacker won’t ever learn how to sign their code in a way that causes it to be respected as part of the game’s code instructions.
There was some old article about how a black hat found a vulnerability in a signed virtual driver used by Genshin Impact. So, they deployed their whole infection package together with that plain driver to computers that had never been used for video games at all; and because Microsoft chose to trust that driver, it worked.
I wish I could find an article on it, since a paraphrased summary isn’t a great source. This is coming from memory.
If server validation was still a common practice (as it should be) then cheats wouldn’t come in the form of speed hacks, teleportation hacks, or invincibility. The traditional thing in CS that was hard to prevent is aimhacks and wallhacks. I respect that those are hard to prevent, but they can be much less impactful in modern hero shooters.
The funny thing is, I hear that Concord at least worked on a basic level. It was visually high fidelity, guns worked, and it wasn’t terribly buggy, which is more than a lot of popular releases can say. But, of course, it offered nothing new and the character design was terrible.
For game designers, encouraging aggression is often a good thing. Too many players of StarCraft or even regular combat games end up “turtling”, dropping initiative wherever possible to make their games slow and boring while playing as safe as possible....
Dead by Daylight has an issue with killers that keep their focus on one of the four survivors, ignoring the core objectives and other players. Worse, it often works well. There are many videos out there of experienced teams that find karmic counters for this practice, helping the victim escape the killer to some completely unknown location on the map, and often leaving the killer late-game with little to work with.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (a 4v3 horror game), on the other hand, developed some issues where the prevailing strategies for the victims involve stacking up abilities that let them ignore attacks so there’s no need to hide or move slowly. It ends up taking long enough for the family members to even strike them down that some will brute-force objectives right in the family’s face. Part of the game’s issues is, the maps are developed to be relatively tight, so there’s fewer places for family to check, but it also made stealth strategies relatively ineffective.
An old favorite of mine for countering “Rush Meta” is in Team Fortress 2. For single players hoping to run past players to objectives, the Engineer’s sentry locks on to them pretty quickly, and no matter how fast they’re moving, it spells death within a certain bubble. Being automated, it also means no one has to camp for this to stay around. The sentries still die to inexperienced players that are making a unified push.
TF2’s other “rush punisher” is the Heavy - a class with a low skill cap, but a high health pool. He deals ludicrous damage up close, but can’t move quickly. So, he’s most lethal to people that are running at/past him instead of attacking from a distance. He says it right in his intro - he can’t outsmart people. He’s just a strong presence in a push for anyone that doesn’t have a plan to slow themselves down in order to deal the ton of damage needed to kill him. For a long time, in matches where the enemy team stuck to having 3 pyros rushing the frontline, my sole strategy was to pile up on Heavy, forcing the enemy team to consider ranged attackers like Demoman and Sniper, slowing the game down as a result.
Fighting games are a genre where it makes sense to push aggression meta. At times, people have wished that the genre allowed for more defensive counterattacking, but it’s not hard to predict how that would look in effect; two players both staring each other down waiting for the other to make a punishable move.
Basically, fighting games don’t have other mechanics outside of direct combat interactions that allow for fun decision-making. There’s fringe stuff like when someone has power-ups that don’t require landing hits (eg, Phoenix Wright in Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3) but they don’t involve much decision-making.
I think the only time rush is an issue in games like Starcraft, thus making it an example, is at the low level of play where people don’t know how to react. So, once players get experience in the mechanics, it’s basically fixing itself. Other games can sometimes have that issue at all levels of play though.
Playing complex strategy games for many years, one of the things that irks me the most is that hard AI levels often just give the dumb AI cheats to simulate it being smarter. To me, it’s not very satisfying to go against cheating AI. Are any games today leveraging neural networks to supplant or augment hand-written decision...
The most advanced AI I’ve seen is in Hitman WoA, and Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Both games don’t have “learning” AI. They just have tons of rules that the player can reasonably expect and interact with, that make them seem lifelike. If a guard sees you throw a coin twice in Hitman, he doesn’t get suspicious and investigate - he goes and picks it up just like the first one. Same for reactions to finding guns, briefcases, or your exploding rubber duck.
I thought this was a joke but it seems like it’s actually legit. WoW, which has a subscription and paid expansions, just added a $90 item to their store. This is Korean MMO levels of absurdity. What do you think of this?...
I’ve known about the gold tokens system, it has made sense as a way to invalidate black market gold sellers, equalizing WoW gold against the US Dollar. Still don’t quite understand why the token would now sell for 170k though…? Unless you didn’t mean to use the dollar symbol.
I’ve been playing it for a good couple months and I’m still nowhere near tired of it, I’ll actually replay the whole game once I beat it because it’s so much fun. Love the story and voice acting too. This game goes on sale a lot so I’d highly suggest getting jt for cheap and trying it out
I got the impression the writers had read a bunch of niche Marvel comics and wanted to impress with that knowledge. Maybe some fans of those characters actually enjoy that, but it didn’t flow well. I barely had any context for who this Hunter is, who Lilith is, and why they matter.
If someone says one thing and does another…people tend to trust the action, not the words. If sales numbers indicate one thing, it doesn’t matter what people say on social media.
Information originally from MinnMax’s Ben Hanson. There is an existing game used to describe this new game to Hanson as a point of reference, and all we know is that that game is not Hitman.
I’m reminded of the techniques Valve used for this type of thing in the Half-Life episodes.
Say, for instance, they have a bit of destruction physics that they think looks memorable and they want people to see. They’ll have a Combine soldier shoot at you from that direction, to force your attention that way. They may also set the event on a “Look Trigger” so that it will only happen while the player is looking at it.
I feel like when developers have a good pedigree, they can apply their concepts elsewhere.
Blizzard hadn’t made a shooter before Overwatch, but definitely got it right in so many respects. Bloober team had some mediocre horror games, but was steadily getting better before they made the Silent Hill 2 remake. Valve made just shooters before Portal and then DOTA 2. Heck, easy to forget The Talos Principle, an existential puzzle game is made by the people who made “Uber DUMB MACHO SHOOTER Serious Sam”.
Oh yeah, and survival horror team Tango Gameworks making cartoon rhythm combat game Hi-Fi Rush.
I’d say even PC, in terms of hardware, has plateaued. Many PC gamers are staying on Nvidia 1080 and 1070 cards, because gaming just hasn’t moved up past that graphical level - and it really shouldn’t, because quite a few human eyes just can’t see much detail beyond then - and developer budgets quite often don’t catch up to make use of all that excess hardware.
This might mean we effectively stay with the PS5, or even the PS4 generation, for quite a long time, while still generating ideas with what we do in that level. Probably the biggest thing we have to do now is control gaming budgets better. Try watching the credits of any Ubisoft game, and think “Someone approved all of these hires.” Meanwhile, rewind to Half-Life 2 and they played through the entire credits of the game during the opening sections without it taking a half hour.
I’ve found that Steam reviews are especially useless for visual novels and games with anime girls. I am open to the concept of a visual novel, and really enjoy the Ace Attorney games, but maintain 99.9% of them are trash, with none of their excess dialog trimmed down. They all have reviews saying Overwhelmingly Positive though, because anyone who would take the chance to try that genre - a small segment of people - will enjoy it.
I also really wish Steam would implement a Helpfulness system for Guides, since most games have Guide pages that are just filled with meme posts, eg; “How 2 win: Pick OP character, enjoy victory”.
There’s no exact point in time at which “the aggregated reviews” are one finished article of news. One bootlicking review site will have its review of a game out in the first 3 hours to be the first place people read. Then, another detailed reviewer will spend a week investigating the game’s systems before providing a more nuanced review.
You can’t really gauge its Steam reviews because there are only 13(!) total so far, reflective of a game that has launched with just a few hundred players. 224, as I’m writing this article. Sub-Concord levels. Yes. Concord is a unit of measurement now....
Sorry, folks. We’re still working on the browser plugin that automatically hides/downvotes all social media content that raises the topic of Sweet Baby Inc. You’ll just have to do it manually for now.
I’m reminded of a required minigame near the end of Star Fox Adventures based purely around button mashing. The requirement needed some dozen attempts when I was a kid and lead to strats involving rubbing a spoon on the controller.
Half-Life 2 peaks at 52,000 concurrent players, 20 years after its release (steamdb.info) angielski
λ ☣ ☢️ (λ)²
Half-Life 2 is currently 100% off for its 20th anniversary, plus a major update (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Bonus: it also seems that the episodes have been rolled into the base game. Full details of the anniversary update....
Windows 7 and 8 now dead for gaming, as new Steam update pulls support (www.pcgamesn.com) angielski
Why are most mobile games trash? (fedia.io) angielski
They usually are free to play with predatory monetization mechanics. That was especially back in 2016 when thanks to these games, the mobile gaming revenue outpaced PC and console gaming revenue.
Ubisoft sued for shutting down The Crew (www.polygon.com) angielski
I doubt anything comes of it, but here’s hoping.
Nintendo sues a streamer for streaming ten games before their release (www.gamescensor.com) angielski
PlayStation Uses Safety Concerns To Defend Steam PSN Account Requirements (www.thegamer.com) angielski
Pocketpair Confirms Which Patents Nintendo And The Pokemon Company Are Suing It Over (www.thegamer.com) angielski
Pocketpair goes on to say that Palworld has been claimed to infringe on three patents held by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company and that part of the damage is required as compensation....
Metaphor: ReFantazio's success is further proof that politics are good in videogames, actually—no matter what reactionaries tell you (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Warner Bros. Admits MultiVersus Underperformed, Contributing to Another $100 Million Hit to Revenue in Its Games Business (www.ign.com) angielski
I don't think it's possible for me to complete this Steam achievement angielski
The Steam achievement in Darkchaser is quite interesting—one of them requires you to travel the distance equivalent to circling the Earth once, and another requires the distance from the Earth to the Moon. However, I still want to complain: is anyone actually able to complete this? I know it’s a game that requires you to run...
Nintendo Confirms Backwards Compatibility for Switch Successor! angielski
This is Furukawa. At today’s Corporate Management Policy Briefing, we announced that Nintendo Switch software will also be playable on the successor to Nintendo Switch. Nintendo Switch Online will be available on the successor to Nintendo Switch as well. Further information about the successor to Nintendo Switch, including its...
Ubisoft boss says it knows players think it has an 'inconsistency in quality,' so it delayed Assassin's Creed Shadows to flip that script (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s Clumsy, Preachy Political Messaging Does More Harm Than Good (www.forbes.com) angielski
Not sure how particulary I think about it....
Linux hits exactly 2% user share on the October 2024 Steam Survey (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
Apex Legends is taking away its support for the Steam Deck and Linux (www.theverge.com) angielski
Steam games will now need to fully disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
Now if only they could more clearly communicate when games are playable offline.
In the era of remakes and remasters, what niche game would you like to see receive the treatment? angielski
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/27366526...
Veilguard reviews are totally legit (matrix.gvid.tv) angielski
An Update from PlayStation Studios (Neon Koi and Firewalk Studios are closing) (sonyinteractive.com) angielski
Neon Koi was developing a mobile action game. Firewalk Studios recently launched and quickly delisted Concord.
Stories and Mechanics around punishing over-aggression angielski
For game designers, encouraging aggression is often a good thing. Too many players of StarCraft or even regular combat games end up “turtling”, dropping initiative wherever possible to make their games slow and boring while playing as safe as possible....
Are any games using neural networks for better hard AI that doesn't cheat? angielski
Playing complex strategy games for many years, one of the things that irks me the most is that hard AI levels often just give the dumb AI cheats to simulate it being smarter. To me, it’s not very satisfying to go against cheating AI. Are any games today leveraging neural networks to supplant or augment hand-written decision...
World of Warcraft adds $90 mount to in game store (lemmy.world) angielski
I thought this was a joke but it seems like it’s actually legit. WoW, which has a subscription and paid expansions, just added a $90 item to their store. This is Korean MMO levels of absurdity. What do you think of this?...
Marvel's Midnight Suns is criminally underrated angielski
I’ve been playing it for a good couple months and I’m still nowhere near tired of it, I’ll actually replay the whole game once I beat it because it’s so much fun. Love the story and voice acting too. This game goes on sale a lot so I’d highly suggest getting jt for cheap and trying it out
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Team Disbanded After Critically Lauded Platformer Fails to Meet Expectations - Report (www.ign.com) angielski
Naughty Dog’s next game will reportedly offer ‘a lot of player freedom’ | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Information originally from MinnMax’s Ben Hanson. There is an existing game used to describe this new game to Hanson as a point of reference, and all we know is that that game is not Hitman.
'It Has Plateaued': Should We Be Worried About Console Gaming's Future? (flip.it) angielski
Honestly the Switch 2 is the only future console I have any excitement for.
OpenCritic now has user-reviews including pros&cons and shows user score (opencritic.com) angielski
‘Unknown 9: Awakening’ Arrives To 200 Steam Players, Poor Reviews (www.forbes.com) angielski
You can’t really gauge its Steam reviews because there are only 13(!) total so far, reflective of a game that has launched with just a few hundred players. 224, as I’m writing this article. Sub-Concord levels. Yes. Concord is a unit of measurement now....
The Mario Party Stigmata (lemmy.world) angielski