Wtf, Azure was the worst of those issues. Crossbell gets attacked by about a dozen villains, and your police squadron never gets to actually “defeat” any of them until the very last chapter.
I’m interested in this one, but honestly a bit worried about increased realism effects.
The original was surprisingly VERY detailed about things like facial expressions in 2D character portraits - a good thing when the game has so many moments of growth and heartbreak. I’m a little worried about how well they’ll imitate a lot of that with increased graphics.
But hey, maybe I should play the demo to find out.
EDIT: Just learned that they’ve replaced the iconic line “Why is my present a BOY!??” with the generic “Who is this BOY!??” in the name of translation accuracy.
I know it’s a silly line but I have always feared interfacing with religious “translation accuracy” folks. Without translation liberties, we’d have Naruhodo Ryuichi declaring an “Igyari!” which is Japanese for Contradiction, instead of Phoenix Wright famously shouting Objection. That makes me very worried about the enjoyability of the rest of the script. We’re definitely not going to get any empty-chest messages.
I mean, I kind of guessed this way back when Collective Shout pushed their action.
I actually had a comment removed here on Lemmy when I brought up how this was “US politics/elections affecting your life as gamers”, because the mods insisted it was purely an Australian action, and my comment was off-topic. But we live in a global online world. There’s no way that US politics wouldn’t have a huge effect on this type of censorship.
What I gather from the linked conversation: (In regards to a joke where a boy turns out to have a polygamous dad)
Sure, but that’s universal. Most of the Islamic theocratic have this problem, and it’s a point of general focus… but Islam is their excuse, not a functional cause. It’s not like Mormons did it any better.
Islamic theocratics are not the same as muslims. Theocracy is where the law of one’s god is seen as the ruling body, and tend to be more of the extremists of a religion - in Islam’s case, the ones more likely to use religion as a weapon of power to have multiple wives. Nothing in that conversation came across as “Being pro-Islam is being anti-feminism”.
I’d also point out, the user made several efforts to ask for better explanation from those disagreeing, but everyone was just digging for more words from him instead of discussing openly. This is how disagreement is manufactured.
That’s fine, just have the AIs book random meetings with each other, while the humans meet for human meetings. Then bill the AI companies a full convention ticket for each AI that attended the other AIs’ meetings.
Spoilers for Alyx for all those without VR headsetsHonestly, all it’s doing is retconning the ending of Episode 2 in a slightly different way while still presenting that cliffhanger. It made me lose a lot of faith in their writers, and it will be hell to explain such a janky twist to non-VR players.
I would hope most of the industry learned a big lesson from Apex Legends. The day before its release, no one knew of its existence. The sole reason that it blew up was because it was fun.
Viral sharing of interactivity is likely the most cost effective way to run a marketing campaign for games - not bus ads, pre-order hype, etc. In other words, Make good games.
I negative-one that recommendation. Game is very hard to play well when you’re new; I’m used to lots of games in that style and GTFO was impossible; always hard to tell what players should be doing and is very unforgiving. Unless both players are hardcore gamers I wouldn’t recommend it.
I would say it’s no coincidence we’ve seen a drought of good singleplayer games around the same time as a drought of console exclusives.
Technology-wise, there’s no “reason” to buy any particular console. They’re all PCs. So, console makers have to invent that reason; and little things like a screenshot button, or family features, don’t pull people into the store. Exclusive games do.
And one key thing is, those exclusive games can’t be F2P microtransactions-laden casinos or live-service games. No one is spending $500 just to play something free; they’ll try to install that on a device they have. The exclusives have to be full, complete, well-voice-acted, well-written masterpieces respected by the gaming public - making anyone without that console envious.
But couldn’t devs just sell those games without making them exclusive? Perhaps not. Look at the credits for the latest God of War and you get a sense of how much they’re spending to make those types of games.
Yes, the game alone is still profitable. But A) It’s paying for a dozen failures Sony has also put out - no-name experiments they greenlit, and B) It might not be as profitable as many other reliable industries investors could put their money into. Why not just buy an index fund?
Thankfully, the equation works out better for indie studios; their games aren’t so massive as to need to account for millions in costs. So we’ll keep getting those. But big-budget singleplayer arrangements aren’t as likely when they’re not pushing some bigger product like a game console.
FedNow is an option within the USA that uses a government-provided system to cheaply transfer money, and a number of banks have signed on. It’s not in use because it’s not as universally available yet.
I enjoyed this one a lot, but I eventually got stuck on a yeti boss, and quit.
It felt like his next move was somewhat randomized, and you needed to react in much less than a second to the type of move he was doing. While a lot of bosses develop patterns you can get used to, I couldn’t form any rules in my mind that could account for my reflexes not improving.
I could also point out: If the main sales race was for the gold-plated base copy of a game, instead of nickel and dining people who only have nickels and dimes, then it’s possible we would have a gaming world entirely focused on churning out AAAA singleplayer experiences, back to putting out trilogies of obscure gaming experiences.
This is not blaming gamers for not accepting higher prices for incomplete games; publishers moved where the money was, and I don’t blame them. I blame the rest of OTHER industries for not updating their wages so the world is livable and people have extra for entertainment.
That’s the thing, a lot of investors almost don’t like the idea that video games are low budget. They want to be able to double their funding and quadruple their success, like with a lot of growth properties.
According to a recent fan poll on Rankiwiki, gamers voted on their favorite titles among the highest-grossing video games. The results put “Minecraft” at the top, followed by “Fortnite” and “Grand Theft Auto V”....
I’ve heard that there’s a huge market for Hidden Object games. Like, double-digit percentage of the market.
Often the “mainstream, hardcore soulslike” gamer section of the market that’s targeted for discussion only ends up being a part of it. Most people who have a family member with a PlayStation are more likely to have a row of the latest sports games than anything else popular.
What sucks on my end is that this has only been the latest in a long chain of reasons to boycott Microsoft - so I can’t exactly claim, if they take a step back from “Systematically murdering innocent people” then I’ll go back to giving them money.
Battledield now throwing an error because Valorant is already sitting in kernel memory. Time to buy your EA Battlefield PC but don’t forget your Valorant PC
I mean, it’s like saying Pentagon security can’t work because some skilled hackers can someday find a way to spoof / steal credentials. Security always happens on a sliding scale based on the value of the contents.
I think at the very least, they can take steps that inconvenience hackers sufficiently each update without harming players - they can’t make it impossible to hack on the client side, but they can’t make it feel not worth it for them.
The reason I sort of insist on it is that even with serverside checks for game logic like teleportation and instant kills, game engines still load the data for player positions which allow for wallhacks and aimhacks. Those checks can only happen clientside; you can’t even send mouse positions often enough to look for “snaps”.
At the least, I agree that modern coders have gotten very lazy about having the server verify basic actions. “Okay, player 22 deals 8000 damage to every other player in the server simultaneously? Okay.”
What did James Gunn say about superhero movies? It’s not that the trend is over and people hate these games. It’s that they hate BAD games.
Plus, I’ve been buying plenty of indies that likely don’t feed into these statistics. It’s not even a hipster thing now - a lot of streamers just like playing the newest indie coop like REPO, Peak, Phasmophobia or Lethal Company.
I was able to get around secure boot by installing the beta on my PS5. From then, I had the pleasure of being unable to enter due to broken menus! Can’t complain for having spent nothing and having little trust in the franchise.
Xbox is canceling Contraband, announced in 2021 from Avalanche Studios (Just Cause), after four years of radio silence, sources tell Bloomberg News. This news arrives weeks after a mass layoff in which Xbox canceled several other big titles. - Jason Schreier
This is interesting for a couple of reasons. One is that this is about as much market share as Mac ever had at its peak, and almost twice as much as it has currently. Another is that, if you click the link for the site’s Steam Linux Data Tracker, you can see that English-only Linux market share (a crude way of filtering out...
My issue is that one might be alone on their obscure distro. I tried out Bazzite, but hit a fair number of issues getting stuff to run and my UI to look how I wanted. It contains many emulation layers to run packages made for other distros, but if they don’t quite work out of box, you can’t just look up the tutorial commands built for the other platforms.
My next go might be something popular like Mint or Ubuntu just to make issue searches easier.
I’d absolutely prefer getting away from the command line, but no distro I’ve tried has fulfilled that promise; there’s always something I’d like a certain way where there’s no intuitive UI to make that setting change.
I’m just knowledgable enough it doesn’t scare me off, it just annoys me.
You fell in love with a game and it's characters, sunk hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours into it. It became a comforting, immensely satisfying part of your daily life. Then you heard a sequel was coming and got really hyped but when it came out it was utter rubbish......
In a lot of respects it’s a good game, its fans even love it as a part of this big ongoing series. But it repeated a few tropes and trends that really started to get to me; wherein so many villains are introduced in a Dragonball style of escalating power rather than character definition.
The first two games introduced one supremely powerful hero, but invented mature and elaborate reasons as to why he couldn’t save the world alone - why evil or influential forces need cooperation of everyone to defeat, not a single showy swordsman. Then, later games try to impress you by showing villains that could easily beat this hero; without character definition to make such claims worth it.
They also really sold into the anime gender tropes - where every woman makes shy/teasing comments about the male lead, most girls are lesbian only for the sake of sexual harassment rather than true connection, etc.
I think it’s de-emphasized because part of the GOG appeal is that you don’t need a launcher and can grab direct DRM free installers. The launcher just exists for convenience.
Mastercard and Visa are not the only middle-men; the only “payment processors” involved in making sales.
Next time you check out at a cafe, look at the branding of the tablet/software the cashier is using. Chances are, it wasn’t developed by the cafe owners, or by MC/Visa. That’s a payment processor. There’s some big ones out there that can be hard to avoid.
EDIT: While finding exact point of blame remains difficult, a recent statement from Valve suggests I may be wrong about the card companies being innocent, at least with Mastercard. It’s a long chain and it seems each link wants to forward blame.
I don’t understand looking at Sims 4 as an example. The game has had progressive additions for a long time; it’s basically a live service game, and now comes free.
It’s rare for anyone to feel they want all the DLC - usually it would just be a few things they want and have fun with.
Counterpoint: The really good journalism sites won’t report an issue the moment a rumor comes up. It often turns out a good amount of the rumor is overstating or misrepresenting the issue. They can lose a LOT of credibility if even one statement is wrong. So, they take time to research every fact before putting out a report.
Gaming news sites often have slow days, so they’ll take the risk. But several have already had to retract statements on the recent censorship for getting things completely wrong. Example: Many people thought Mouthwashing was just removed from Itch. In actuality, it had been removed long ago for a misstep where they had linked to their Steam page.
Not an authoritative source, but a Redditor claimed that the term “payment processors” is being misconstrued in a way that could misdirect blame. Visa and Mastercard have given some people responses claiming they take no position on adult content, and it’s possible they’re telling the truth.
Basically, payment processors by this guy’s definition are lesser known companies that handle other middle level processing; like Stripe, PayPal, or Heartland, as well as many others you’ve never heard of. And, what makes the debate difficult with them is that they’ve always viewed adult content as a “risky” subject - due to higher frequency of support cases, chargebacks, general frustration, etc. As such, some processor that sell their service to adult businesses may charge higher rates - rates that stores like Steam or Itch are probably less willing to pay for 90% of their library.
Take that summary with a grain of salt as it’s only based on rumors and indirect industry knowledge. Not an indication people shouldn’t complain, since Visa/MC could still choose to take a stance and investigate wrongdoing, and might not be totally honest; but it’s possible the full blame will go to other specific businesses.
I don’t think that’s really the distinction in adult businesses - entertainment companies often use those same dark patterns around trials/subscriptions. Maybe some adult businesses do too, but that’s not unique.
My understanding is that the higher rate is related more to the product and customer behavior, rather than the seller’s behavior. By some trend, customers are more likely to refund a hentai tentacle game than a regular platformer.
Something I’d like in a perfect world is legislation to fight back against general “contact unavailability” of large companies.
I generally recognize that there are lots of people that call for simple stuff that they could’ve checked online. That said, there has to be a legislative median that ensures people with serious concerns can follow some path to contact some sentient person. Heck, even just to serve them lawsuit papers.
Haven’t there been many Cthulu Mythos games? I’m sure they’re able to find veins of storytelling that have some big reveals, but don’t necessarily conclude with successfully defeating the Cenobites.
There could also be secondary antagonists tangentially related to them, right? I thought the antagonist for most of the first Hellraiser was some other kind of disciple that got cast out.
Apologies for YouTuber link - as some of the sources cited are in Japanese, it’s harder to get to a direct English source. The video description includes links to the Yahoo.jp article.
Hopefully you’re referring to Visa/Paypal, not Itch.
One place that comes to mind is Verotel. I barely know them, but supposedly one of their star attributes is their use for adult businesses. Likely someone else knows them better.
The thing is, I actually appreciate the idea of “de-objectifying” people in terms of fictional design; but I want that to be encouraged as part of the creative expression. A sexy female character with an identity and story behind her is a lot more fun to me than one just created to have big boobs. Heck, those same design principles can help design sexy men that appeal to female/gay groups.
But needless to say, forcing those views as part of these acts isn’t helping anyone. It’s just exerting forceful control, and we know how well that works for art.
There’s even an argument that SKG is a good financial motive for studios. Consumer electronics/entertainment spending is down, and it’s not hard to connect the idea that people are less enthused about video games when they aren’t sure they get to keep them. Which are you more likely to buy: Snake oil from a merchant on a turbo-driven truck ready to leave town? Or multiple panel-certified medicine from an extremely tightly-regulated industry.
I just picked up Beyond Galaxyland in a Fanatical bundle. I have not played it yet, so tentative recommendation, but reviews are indicating it may be a hidden gem.
For an older one I really liked: Cosmic Star Heroine. Pixel art, great soundtrack especially for bosses, and fantastic combat mechanics. It’s all very uniquely designed to encourage high-risk gameplay and variety on every turn, pushing moments where you buff yourself up for one or two supremely powerful strikes in a fight, or even sacrifice a character to KO the last enemy (all characters heal to full after every fight)
For even older: As someone who had that same kind of music-swelling nostalgia around FF7, I managed to win back that feeling when I played “The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky”. It’s a two-part game (sold as two units), that begins a giant series of games, but I only played it out of curiosity. Even though I didn’t fully enjoy later games, Trails had both a lot of enjoyable and unique elements to its combat, and a very emotionally written story that occasionally throws in silliness to retain charm. Though the game itself is old, it got a series of patches by a “master porting engineer” at Falcom that adds features like an experimental fast-forward mode to help with long battle animations.
On grinding, one great thing about the games is their XP system. They grant a lot more XP anytime you’re underleveled for enemies, and much less when you’re overleveled - helping to equalize the experience after just a few fights, many of which can be short thanks to fast forwarding. But, the story is still long overall.
You’ll see a Trails 3, which is very optional in my view. Weirdly, it’s a bit more of a “lore dump” for future games than closing off any major plot threads. To me it was a little bit of a signal of them taking their “Marvel universe” style of world a bit too far.
Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter adds Switch 2 version; ‘Prologue’ demo now available for PS5, Switch, and PC (www.gematsu.com) angielski
It Turns Out, Steam’s Adult Content Ban Has Been Plotted For A Year And Is Spearheaded By One Of Project 2025’s Leading Voices (www.thegamer.com) angielski
Anyone know if this is true or not?
AI at the World’s Biggest Games Event(Gamescom) Booked Random Meetings for Attendees angielski
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/36027977...
LEGO® Batman™: Legacy of the Dark Knight - Official Reveal Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Hollow Knight: Silksong - Special Announcement Stream (starts in 48 hours) (www.youtube.com) angielski
NOT a joke this time. It's happening. It's really happening. SILKSONG IS REAL.
90% of Games Developers Already Using AI in Workflows, According to New Google Cloud Research (www.googlecloudpresscorner.com) angielski
cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/35911830...
Discoverability is the industry’s "Achilles’ heel," marketing survey finds (www.gamesindustry.biz) angielski
Spooky co-op games for me and my girl? angielski
Right now we’re playing “I’m on observation duty” but it’s not “technically” two player, anyone got any good ones, new or classic, we could play?
Fairgame$ Has Been Canceled, Too, According to Michael Pachter, Who Says Sony Has ‘Lost Its Way’ (wccftech.com) angielski
archive.ph/UDHc9
Steam can't escape the fallout from its censorship controversy (www.polygon.com) angielski
Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? angielski
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/43998814
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers Has Made Certain Bosses And NPCs Unkillable Following Backlash In China (www.thegamer.com) angielski
Game prices should have increased with every new generation, former PlayStation US boss says (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
[Discussion] Ranking the highest-grossing video games angielski
According to a recent fan poll on Rankiwiki, gamers voted on their favorite titles among the highest-grossing video games. The results put “Minecraft” at the top, followed by “Fortnite” and “Grand Theft Auto V”....
Arkane employees demand Microsoft sever ties with Israeli military: 'We don’t want to be part of this sinister project for Gaza' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Final Fantasy X programmer doesn’t get why devs want to replicate low-poly PS1 era games. “We worked so hard to avoid warping, but now they say it’s charming” - AUTOMATON WEST (automaton-media.com) angielski
Begun the kernel wars have angielski
Battledield now throwing an error because Valorant is already sitting in kernel memory. Time to buy your EA Battlefield PC but don’t forget your Valorant PC
18+ Gen Z Is Cutting Back On Video Game Purchases (www.vice.com) angielski
'Consumers are not okay with okay': Take-Two boss says BioShock 4 is taking so long because the company's goal is 'to make the best entertainment, not necessarily the most entertainment' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Battlefield 6 cheats day 1 of early access. Depite kernel level anti cheat, forced secure boot TPM 2.0 (youtu.be) angielski
Xbox Drops Work on ‘Contraband’ Video Game After Four Years (www.bloomberg.com) angielski
Xbox is canceling Contraband, announced in 2021 from Avalanche Studios (Just Cause), after four years of radio silence, sources tell Bloomberg News. This news arrives weeks after a mass layoff in which Xbox canceled several other big titles. - Jason Schreier
Steam Survey for July 2025 shows Linux approaching 3% (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
This is interesting for a couple of reasons. One is that this is about as much market share as Mac ever had at its peak, and almost twice as much as it has currently. Another is that, if you click the link for the site’s Steam Linux Data Tracker, you can see that English-only Linux market share (a crude way of filtering out...
What game sequel ruined a beloved franchise or character for you? angielski
You fell in love with a game and it's characters, sunk hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours into it. It became a comforting, immensely satisfying part of your daily life. Then you heard a sequel was coming and got really hyped but when it came out it was utter rubbish......
GOG’s Freedom To Buy Campaign Gives Away Controversial Games For Free To Protest Censorship (noisypixel.net) angielski
Mastercard release a statement about game stores, payment processors and adult content (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
EA CEO Says No $80 Games for Now: 'We're Not Looking to Make Any Changes at This Stage' (www.ign.com) angielski
Why did thousands of adult titles just disappear from the biggest PC gaming marketplaces? (www.theguardian.com) angielski
[Megathread] Payments Processors & Collective Shout VS NSFW games angielski
Hi friends,...
Petition to tell MasterCard, Visa, and activist groups to stop censoring legal fictional content (www.change.org) angielski
Some notes based on frequent comments:...
18+ A Hellraiser video game. What do you all think? (youtu.be) angielski
[VIDEO] Japan Sanctions Visa after the Censorship of Anime and Manga (youtu.be) angielski
Apologies for YouTuber link - as some of the sources cited are in Japanese, it’s harder to get to a direct English source. The video description includes links to the Yahoo.jp article.
Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader dev Owlcat comes out swinging in support of Stop Killing Games: 'Every player deserves lasting access to what they’ve paid for' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Ubisoft's annual report dictates that the consumers are the problem (www.youtube.com) angielski
Rumor: Star Wars Outlaws Sequel Canceled By Ubisoft (gamerant.com) angielski
First they came for steam, then they came for itch.io . angielski
Source.
Itch.io is delisting NSFW games due to pressure from payment processors (itch.io) angielski
The group responsible is “Collective Shout”, the same org has targeted Steam before....
Stop Killing Games is facing a complaint in the EU that uses nonsense logic to accuse the movement's founder of failing to disclose financial contributions he never made: 'It's not paranoia if they re (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Looking for a "classic" RPG with solid plot (Steam Deck) angielski
I’ve always been a sucker for RPG games. When I’m feeling down I tend to play Final Fantasy 8 or Final Fantasy 10, they’re like my comfort games....