This year has been quite shit compared to previous one’s
The number of games being voted on for GOTY this year is pretty hard to choose from since there’s so many. They just aren’t AAA games. They’re all AA or indies.
They haven’t released the current version of SteamOS to be installed on any machine and imaging the actual Deck’s OS won’t work on all hardware. You could do the old steam machine OS; but it is not anywhere the same as what the Deck and this new Steam Machine use other than being based on Linux.
There is Bazzite, though, which is not the same OS, but strives to offer the same experience.
Taking control away to have a cutscene that is all dialogue and no action that could have just as easily been something you control as you walk and listen. Especially if it’s not even an in-engine, real-time scripted thing but a pre-rendered video that doesn’t even show your actual character as you have them dressed.
I had a similar softlock in Skyrim at release that wasn’t fixed until the toolset came out and I was able to go in and see that the script that was meant to fire was never actually added to the trigger. So a dude is supposed to come up to a door and open a little window to talk to you, but he would just stay sitting down in the room since the script telling him to go to the door and begin the dialogue that leads to the trigger that opens the door was written and available, but wasn’t tied to the trigger of activating the door. I just put the script into the trigger and Bam! finally was able to get through the MQ.
Ever since, I have been salty AF about Bethesda’s ability to build games. This was such a stupidly simple mistske and it persisted for months only to be fixed by modders with a simple 5 second change.
I am now imagining Microsoft making a new Zork game that is a graphical feast and not at all similar to the OG other than killing you outright if you spend too long in the dark.
To be fair, Zork is also just a simple text-based adventure game. I’m not even sure what could be learned by looking at its source code unless you wanted to learn that obscure, proprietary forked language itself. Text-based adventures are little more than spicy Hello World programs. 🤷♂️
You have traversal tools, but also the different guns are used to solve puzzles and progression may be locked behind having the right guns. I only have 2 of the guns so far where I am in the game but I know there’s several more.
Metroid Prime. It’s the only series I know of that is fully in the genre and is also not a 2D platformer.
It’s insane to me how many Souls Likes could be 3D Metroidvanias if they used special powers to clear obstacles instead of just keys or random triggers to unlock new areas. That’s really the only thing I see that separates the genres.
Sekiro is closer than any other, but it’s mainly just 1 thing you don’t have in the prologue (the grappling hook). I would love a game that is 3D over a 2D platformer, but also has the unlockable traversal tools the way Metroid or Syphony of the Night had.
Totally sounds like it will only stops kids talking to adults but not adults talking to kids. The creeps already try to get their victims to communicate off-platform using unmoderated services. Unless this blocks the kids’ from seeing the adults’ messages, the adults trying to fuck with kids could just tell them to use a different messenger.