Any game involving Africans has to be woke, according to them and the devs have been fighting a barrage of trolling and obvious racism since the game was put up on steam.
Before the poster makes any other posts, they must answer the prompt: “Apologies! We’ve been dealing with an influx of hate speech and bigotry, so to clarify your concerns, could you please provide the intended meaning of the word “Woke” in this post?”
The excuse doesn’t work well when “retro 3D” games are actively being made by indie devs today.
As long as it’s a uniform aesthetic aimed for and achieved by the devs, it can survive a long time. I’d say just as much of GTA: SA and a lot of Nintendo games.
It also goes to show that a lot of tactical/modern Xbox / 360 games never really had any stylistic imitators in the modern era, and for good reason.
Unfortunately, there are some very celebrated games that commit to this approach. Final Fantasy XIV and WoW keep getting away with it, and there are others.
Of course, they had to work for a long time to earn that pedigree and price tag. This certainly has not.
I don’t think it’s such a direct lesson since it could’ve been other financial information on there. Instead of a crypto key, the game could’ve installed a keylogger that read the player’s banking password later.
It’s more of a general warning that Steam games are not necessarily safe.
From what I know of Concord, it kind of was a 7/10 game - It was functional, but just not impressive or interesting. The thing is, when it’s released with a fervent anticipation of being a “Live service HIT”, it was critically important to have a flood of players. At least indie singleplayer games can hit success late (Among Us being a perfect example, its first release didn’t really strike big)
I’m sure it’s a good time to mention Portal though. Many gamers have said they want tighter, more focused experiences that are really worth the price tag. I guess question being, is this game all that amazing, and are gamers honest about that thinking towards prices.
I’d even say the interconnectedness is often more of a handicap.
There’s one character in Sky whose arc is postponed into Azure. It…doesn’t fit with that larger narrative. Then, the biggest criticism of some of those later games is how there’s too many characters around. Most were enjoyed when first introduced, but then there’s way too many. In a lot of ways it suffers the same ways later Marvel movies do; banking on audience members shouting “I know what that is!!”
Supposedly some more recent games refocus on smaller groups but are still very much about “building a larger narrative”. I can’t claim I’ve played all of them to get a larger opinion, but Kingdom Hearts did a lot of that, and we saw its failed payoff in Kingdom Hearts 3 (actually something like KH8). I still enjoy the first two games in the series - the duology this one is remaking - but I’m pretty sick of the obsession with lore.
A video I watched even discussed how early Star Trek movies had blatant plotholes with earlier establishment, but that was fine because it was better to focus on the narrative the director wanted.
A lot of it reads as lazy DLC meant to satisfy investors that want “value-adds” without taking a lot of development time. I’d imagine only obsessive fans (admittedly, there are many) would be considering them.
But the fact that it’s a remake of a 20 year old game doesn’t seem like it would affect the value. For reference, the old one was top down with prerendered chibi sprites. The new one is fully 3D with voice acting. It’s a pretty sizable change in appearance, even how the combat functions. $60 is probably normal, though it makes sense that for anyone unsure about it, either play the demo or just wait for it to go on sale.
I’d almost like for more of the control to go the other way. A director could negotiate with a composer about what mood is being asked for a particular moment in a game, leading to the composer making ideas for leitmotifs and buildup. Then, the game gets some number of adjustments or early planning to account for it.
It sounds insane to reconfigure everything to match the music, but honestly, from some of my favorite moments in gaming, it can make a lot of sense. Some of the crescendo periods of Final Fantasy XIV felt incredibly well-earned from the way they had used the expansion’s whole soundtrack as a sort of ballad, repeating a few certain themes both story-wise and in the music.
One example of a game that I think developed this dissonance is Ace Attorney. The main confrontational “gameplay” of those games is when you’re cross-examining a witness. The “Cross Examination” themes are some of the fan favorites - and since the beginning, they’ve had a second theme, Allegro, for when things are getting more intense. The Investigations games decided to put in a third theme, Presto, which goes loony for the sake of a culminating showdown of wits with the murderer, who has one last excuse as to why accusing them is impossible. It feels EPIC.
Only one trouble; Ace Attorney is often a comedic series, and side characters are still acting stupid and making flat-falling jokes during that last cross examination, often breaking the mood of that great track. In my view, a “musically-directed” Ace Attorney would be fine with keeping up its signature silliness at all other points in the game, but keep the tone completely serious when that “Presto” theme is playing, to make it feel like a really personal boss fight.
The only one of those I really expect to show censorship resistance is Steam. And of that, I’m very curious if they’re going to see repercussions from it.
I think the death run back and the option of exploring for upgrades were always at odds. When you respawn, getting things back is your first task as a form of loss avoidance. But then you’re standing in front of the boss room, maybe after jumping some spike pits, and you might as well just go in. There’s no thought to going other places at that point.
Shovel Knight used a death run to reclaim your lost treasure, and it worked out because it plays as a linear platformer, egging you on into accomplishing the daring feat you just pulled; gating little important behind upgrades.
Soulslike Tunic basically abandoned the death run back, just having you lose 20 gold (which hangs in that spot), and the game didn’t really suffer for it especially because exploration of old areas is so key to that game.
I’d recommend you don’t watch this if you’ve yet to play the first game (either iteration). A few spoiler elements.
It was kind of a given that this would be made, since, while the first has a great set of conclusions, it also sets up a really compelling cliffhanger element. The two games were supposedly written as one originally, and then split to two since it was getting long.
Still, part of me predicts some people will play the upcoming remake, and then get so wrapped up in the ending they’ll just buy the old-fashioned SC so they don’t have to wait for the remake edition.
This often happens to me in RPGs because I’m missing some combat mechanic or fundamental.
It’s made me want to design better optional tutorials for those games to help people discover certain strategies. Eg;
“Hey, you have many different tuning macguffins on this character, but it means their stats aren’t built to any one strength. For an example, try using 8 yellow macguffins to build them for taunting/defense so they can use their self-heal unique, and build up stun on enemies each time they’re attacked.”
Those things feel so witty to discover, but many RPGs now build up and prioritize so many systems it’s understandable people aren’t quickly attuned to them. What often gets me is thinking I’m not making the right decisions mid-combat, when my menu decisions around equipment/abilities are completely wrong.
It might be a fun moment in a soulslike when you’re fighting a same-sized story character that used to be a friend, they display the health bar as “x8”, and then each time one is depleted, they use a healing item inbetween swings.
Ico and Shadow of the Colossus creator Fumito Ueda recently said that the age of developers creating new mechanics is over, something he’s apparently being saying since Journey. For the most part, I agree with him. But there’s one AAA game that bucked this trend - Watch Dogs Legion. With its incredible NPC recruitment...
That’s not always true when members of the team feel really motivated and inspired by a concept.
I’ve been in that zone a few times before. “Well, I’ve been working for a few hours. I guess I should take a break and play a game. …Or, I could just keep at it…?”
Of course, with such large teams now, you’re unlikely to see that happen to many of them. They’ll be working late, but usually zombies.
Today’s game is Final Fantasy 7. I picked this up on Steam after borrowing it from my local library a few years ago and playing like 7 chapters on PS4. That poor PS4 barely held together while running it. It sounded like a Jet Engine. I nearly wasn’t able to play this today due to my slow ass internet taking forever to...
I never played Remake, but when a YouTuber recently did a comparison video between some of their major scenes, I ended up respecting the original so much more.
A great one was when the plate falls. The original made directorial choices that emphasized the brutality of it all so much better, especially by choosing to cut the music. It just seems like Remake’s director was adding so many things simply because he could, making short and direct scenes so much worse by excess creation.
Of note, another JRPG from that general time period, Trails in the Sky, is being remade soon, and that one seemed quite a bit more faithful to me. Still taking liberties to change dialog, but only where it makes sense - they also greatly retooled the battle system with full respect for classic turntaking style.
When I run a social media site, it will be a rule to use uncensored terms, and any use of asterisks or alt-words like “unalive” will result in a warning or suspension.
When listening to the dev commentary of Valve games, they talk about how much work goes into level design planning even just for the sake of optimization, like clearly delineating barriers between major regions (doorways) so the engine can unload objects from other areas.
I get the impression the “First step easy” setup from UE5 may have made it so that more people can give us unoptimized messes, but still only a few rare devs understand proper optimization at all levels of development.
Playing an indie mystery game called Dragon Detective. I’m on case 4 so far, it’s definitely held my attention with the story. It manages to do a good job with its worldbuilding.
It sounds plausible Sony and Microsoft don’t have very fair algorithms to decide what a dev earns for their subscription. That’s an internal element, and we don’t get to see that calculation.
Imagine a guy hears about Game Pass, and sees he can play Spiritfarer on it. “Spiritfarer!? That awesome emotional experience that everyone says they cried at? I’m definitely playing that!” 5-ish hours later, they’ve finished the game, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but the subscription is still going.
At this point, the subscriber decides they may as well play State of Decay 2 mindlessly the rest of the month, often without much interest, but trusts another excellent singleplayer indie darling will arrive next month.
I’d bet the algorithm may pay the SOD2 devs far more in that case because numbers show that’s what “kept them engaged”, not to mention live service games like SOD2 have DLC to entice people into.
Theres absolutely a danger in that thinking, since most people bought a PS5 after seeing Sony’s incredible singleplayer games, and I believe that’s primarily what gets people into Game Pass too.
This is actually from 2022, but I missed it back in the day. This is quite important research imo, and very relevant lately. Link to the paper itself: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0747563222001637
Much as I’d predict support for that conclusion, I feel like there’s room to doubt the survey process used - as has often been the case for studies on gamer behavior.
I have different reasons I hate MS and Game Pass specifically, but I was never convinced by this argument.
It works on the argument of “We would like to stop offering direct purchase models, and require consumers to play by subscription.” But no one has done that. No one has really come close to doing that.
People argue the price will steadily go up; and that’s one of the reasons I don’t play Game Pass anymore. I knew that I wouldn’t maintain access to the games on there, which is why I bought the ones I wanted to keep playing - not very many.
So this is basically an observation about raising prices. But I think there’s a misconception on social media that you have to be reading the news and on your soapbox to alert people to those things.
Pricing has always very readily affected people’s spending behavior. Not just people that follow gaming news, but people browsing GameStop for whatever’s new. We’ve even seen that - stats are showing people spent much less on games this year. Some people are even spending less through the option of going for a subscription rather than buying 8 games through the year. The publisher plan is certainly to tune up that cost with time, but personally, I don’t think that plan has a high chance of success.
And there’s a very worrying reality on the publisher side that gamers have many alternatives, especially as quality falls in these AAA products. You can imagine someone starved for a Soulslike might’ve spent $70 on generic copycat “Folly of the Dodgeroll 7”, if not for seeing Hollow Knight Silksong for $20 one shelf over.
So basically, I never hated the subscription model itself as a “weapon of capitalism”; just the constant attempts to shrinkflate as has been happening to most else.
I mean, you changed the topic onto the subject of pricing, which is the main thing driving sentiment that Microsoft is anti-consumer. There are other smaller gaming subscriptions out there, and I don’t call many of them anti-consumer.
I never actually liked FromSoft’s themselves, but several Soulslikes I really enjoyed did away with runbacks, or always had checkpoints right before bosses.
I really just want people to start evaluating each design decision Dark Souls made on its own - stop worshipping the whole as being perfect, because it most definitely is not. So many of the knowledge checks (poise, anyone?) are just there for experienced players to lord over confused shrubs.
This excuse stopped working the day I opened a tough-as-nails game like Furi, saw it had a difficulty menu, said “That’s nice”, and went back to challenging myself against the bosses on default settings.
It’s such a huge cop-out of self control, and especially falls to acknowledge that the forms of difficulty in a game are often varied - and someone might suck at only one of them.
This could very much represent troubles not just in video game development, but project development in an investor-driven market entirely.
Everyone is focused on short-term wins and profits - so they can demonstrate they’re a fantastic manager making incredible things. They hire 1000 people, then show the grandiose things they made with those people in 2 years so they can take more investment. But the way creative work goes, there are far better ways to play that lottery - they just don’t involve as much active management, and are far less showy.
As a publisher, you could just start 50 small studios of only 10 employees each, with occasional external support as needed to each one, and give all of them 5 years to develop. That would equate to the same or much lesser cost as some of these gigantic multi-outsourced projects, but it means investments are left for longer. And of course, few of them would be a “Hollow Knight” or “Minecraft”, but just enough of them would likely succeed to pay for all the others.
You can see similar concerns in R&D and other similar fields across industries, that give randomized and unpredictable benefit when every manager is watching every quarter’s earnings.
I’m gonna be real with you: I don’t like Dark Souls. It felt poorly designed and obtuse with no payoff. But, it took me a long time to learn it’s completely unconstructive to bash it in places where people are admiring it. Whether I like it or not, other people do.
If you must, give a word of caution so people know what to expect. “It’s a Metroidvania, I didn’t like it because it’s very black and white, and goes hard on difficulty.”
This could just be the vestiges of E3’s ghost creating a bad demo, but I was pretty unimpressed by this. If Hitman allowed you to be as freeform as Crysis, this demo looked like Crysis 2, highlighting all the specific options that they crafted for you to use, and there are only maybe three of them rather than allowing you to...
Sometimes it’s an unfortunate demo effect where the devs have a form of gameplay they prefer that just doesn’t impress investors on a big screen. So, they shift toward the run-and-gun playstyle.
I seem to remember getting surprised by some AAAs in this way, where I expected them to be brainless action, then find myself strategizing in ways that E3 didn’t show since those bits are slower paced. Haven’t watched the video just yet though.
Like, I chose to play the Tutorial at the beginning. This Chainsaw seems like a pretty critical piece of the gameplay loop, but at no point has there been an explicit explanation or demonstration.
Doesn’t need a run button. And, something kind of useful is that while revving, the game changes from strafe controls to tank controls, making it easier to orient at an enemy around a corner since you can’t reach your camera thumbstick.
Much as I love XIV’s story, I really needed to break up story progression with other content, just for variety. I leveled up all crafters, did many daily raids, etc.
Maybe it matches with my hate of L4D’s high-level-focused Versus mode, but I couldn’t make it past two games of Evolve, while I’ve played a lot more B4B.
That video is completely out of date. I watched a sampling of the bugs they were showing, and none of them appear for me, even when playing with bots.
I remember it being shared on release, and its focus on things like physics within maps was a very specific thing - after Half-Life 2 many games gave up on physics especially in online, because it was more likely to lead to glitchy and unexpected behavior than emergent gameplay.
There’s so much in that video you’d have to pick out what matters to make your case, but to take melee reactions: B4B didn’t want the shove to be so powerful or delay the horde much, so it made sense zombies wouldn’t fall to the ground from one shove; the animation length would end up locking up the difficulty.
Death reactions is another gameplay choice. With automatic weapons, I wasted alot of ammo in L4D2 simply because it wasn’t instantly clear an enemy was dead - they were just playing out their lengthy Oscar death. Sometimes it’s a tradeoff between showcasing the enemy design, and showcasing the weapon’s effects when dozens of other enemies are bearing down.
I have been considering livestreaming gaming (mostly Retroachievements, and maybe some noncompetitive speed running), but I cannot find/decide a good service. I am not considering it as a source of income, or wanting a huge number of viewers....
I feel like a growing solution would be to simulcast to Twitch as well as other platforms, and hopefully slowly encourage users to view via the other platforms.
Kudos to the OP - I stopped watching Twitch when Bezos went full Nazi, but couldn’t get YouTube off my list.
Something I’ve picked up on with my gaming preference is stories that don’t simply focus on one “mood” for the game, but alter it to fit the situation. Players get a relaxed time exploring or diving into combat, and the world is inviting and colorful, but when the story builds, it puts brutal tests of character in front...
Something I realize I never touched on is the specific way emotional extremes tie in to specific characters.
Quite often, what I enjoy most about story-driven games is the way you either see characters change, or get to see different sides of them. The moment that the quirky and silly kid turns deathly serious and speaks directly. The moment that a calm, collected tactician falls into a panic attack and runs away. The moment that an emotionless assassin is pressed into laughter for the first time.
One specific game that gave this feeling in spades is JRPG “Trails in the Sky”. I think it sometimes forces its extremes a bit, but it’s very good at spending a long time building joy and normalcy before establishing how much trauma and violence exists in the history and near-future of the world.
But while JRPGs can bore people with their 50-80-hour runtimes, one game I think demonstrated that principle fantastically was “Elite Beat Agents” for the DS. Within the scope of a 5-minute pop song, a focal character may go to the lowest point of their life, and bounce all the way back to happiness. Pushing the idea along with a frenetic musical pace makes it more acceptable, but it shows the importance of taking someone to both extremes.
That’s honestly exactly what’s kept me away from CRPGs. The premise often seems to be based around something like ruined worlds or corrupt empires (both, in Wasteland’s case), with little hope for massive change. The old poster child, Fallout, runs its whole train off of treating endless grim fighting as an absurd thing to not even care about, with its tagline “War never changes”. Fun sometimes, but never meaningful.
I’ve been playing Battlefield-like Wild Assault, and each time I die, the difficulty of reviving me helps me to realize how out of position I was. Other times when I was popping from cover and got hit by a rusher, a teammate quickly retaliates and then revives me.
The game also has some crazy moments with the healer’s ultimate, which revives people they’re standing on while the healer can keep shooting.
Relooted - Game made by South Africans has been bombarded by right-wingers (steamcommunity.com) angielski
Any game involving Africans has to be woke, according to them and the devs have been fighting a barrage of trolling and obvious racism since the game was put up on steam.
Everyone thinks the Deus Ex remaster looks awful and they're right: 'They really turned those 1999 graphics into 2003 graphics' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Would-be City of Heroes successor, Ship of Heroes, decides to launch the MMO with a $45 price tag and a $15 monthly subscription and it's, er, going about as well as you'd expect (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
No wonder he needs glasses angielski
Hades II | Review Thread (93/100 OpenCritic) angielski
Game Information...
Xbox invests big into indies, signs Game Pass deals with over 50 studios (www.tweaktown.com) angielski
Block Blasters: Theft of $32k in crypto from a stage 4 cancer patient due to valve’s incompetence in allowing malware on their platform (video.twimg.com) angielski
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/37902936...
Silent Hill f | Review Thread angielski
Game Information...
Microsoft starts rolling out Gaming Copilot on Windows 11 PCs (www.bleepingcomputer.com) angielski
Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, a JRPG, just got released on Steam—and this is a big deal because this game is to PC what Final Fantasy VII was to PlayStation. angielski
cross-posted from: atomicpoet.org/…/3d9c9c3e-14e9-446f-9d5c-83af4227…...
"Game directors and producers have too much power in their hands." Final Fantasy composer says there’s less creative freedom in game music nowadays (automaton-media.com) angielski
Nobuo Uematsu
Chairman Comer Invites CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit to Testify on Radicalization of Online Forum Users - United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (oversight.house.gov) angielski
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/e67234c8-04c8-4de9-843d-b124e3e1eefa.webp...
'My Advice to Users Is to Accept Reality and Tune, or to Not Play' — Randy Pitchford Is at the 'Get a Refund From Steam' Stage of the Borderlands 4 PC Performance Backlash (www.ign.com) angielski
The Purpose of Difficulty | GMTK Mini (www.youtube.com) angielski
Yet another video talking about silksong's difficulty, but this one is from someone who knows what theyre talking about
Trails in the Sky the 2nd Teaser (JP Version) - 空の軌跡 the 2nd (www.youtube.com) angielski
Wow, so I guess they're just going to go ahead and remake them all then....
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Tops 4.4 million sales - IGN (www.ign.com) angielski
Wait, that's illegal angielski
Watch Dogs Legion’s Recruitment System is Fantastic (spectra.video) angielski
Ico and Shadow of the Colossus creator Fumito Ueda recently said that the age of developers creating new mechanics is over, something he’s apparently being saying since Journey. For the most part, I agree with him. But there’s one AAA game that bucked this trend - Watch Dogs Legion. With its incredible NPC recruitment...
deleted_by_moderator
FATAL FRAME II: Crimson Butterfly REMAKE Announcement Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Day 422 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing angielski
Today’s game is Final Fantasy 7. I picked this up on Steam after borrowing it from my local library a few years ago and playing like 7 chapters on PS4. That poor PS4 barely held together while running it. It sounded like a Jet Engine. I nearly wasn’t able to play this today due to my slow ass internet taking forever to...
Queer developers speak out as adult games remain in limbo following payment processor showdown at Steam and itch.io (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Borderlands 4 Launches To Mostly Negative Steam Reviews Over Performance Issues And Crashing (www.thegamer.com) angielski
AAA game? Performance issues and crashing on release? Why I never.
bruh, i just realised that the last time i played Garrys Mod,Obama was still president lmao angielski
Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? angielski
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/45779767
A demo for Digimon Story: Time Stranger is now available for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox – Digitally Downloaded (www.digitallydownloaded.net) angielski
Subscription models like Xbox Game Pass are "not properly valuing" developers, says former Bethesda exec (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Sexualized video games are not causing harm to male or female players, according to research (www.psypost.org) angielski
This is actually from 2022, but I missed it back in the day. This is quite important research imo, and very relevant lately. Link to the paper itself: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0747563222001637
Xbox fans are compiling lists of all the Activision, Bethesda, and Microsoft games still missing from Xbox Game Pass — and it's pretty huge (www.windowscentral.com) angielski
Linked the story for anyone who wants context. It’s about a list compiled by Twitter user x.com/Crusader3456...
Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks (www.ign.com) angielski
Team Cherry winning angielski
Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now on Steam - and it broke Steam servers for 30 minutes and counting now (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Picture of isSteamDown showing that Steam is indeed experiencing issues...
007 First Light – Gameplay Reveal (www.youtube.com) angielski
This could just be the vestiges of E3’s ghost creating a bad demo, but I was pretty unimpressed by this. If Hitman allowed you to be as freeform as Crysis, this demo looked like Crysis 2, highlighting all the specific options that they crafted for you to use, and there are only maybe three of them rather than allowing you to...
I'm playing Gears of War Reloaded, and I have a question. Will there be some point when the Chainsaw I've had for hours actually gets explained to me? angielski
Like, I chose to play the Tutorial at the beginning. This Chainsaw seems like a pretty critical piece of the gameplay loop, but at no point has there been an explicit explanation or demonstration.
Elite Dangerous angielski
Left 4 Dead creator teasing new four player co-op shooter (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Alternatives to Twitch and YouTube for livestreaming gaming? angielski
I have been considering livestreaming gaming (mostly Retroachievements, and maybe some noncompetitive speed running), but I cannot find/decide a good service. I am not considering it as a source of income, or wanting a huge number of viewers....
What games have mastered "Both emotional extremes"? angielski
Something I’ve picked up on with my gaming preference is stories that don’t simply focus on one “mood” for the game, but alter it to fit the situation. Players get a relaxed time exploring or diving into combat, and the world is inviting and colorful, but when the story builds, it puts brutal tests of character in front...
A message from the medic angielski