Stovetop

Stovetop, 2 dni temu

They keep one-upping themselves with every new title.

Stovetop, 2 dni temu

It’s not a spiritual successor, just a normal successor. It’s the latest entry in the “Mario & Luigi” series.

Stovetop, 5 dni temu

I’m assuming it’s to make sure there’s not long waits to try them. Giving a set number of tokens to visitors means they can roughly control the amount of time someone spends with those games. One person can’t just buy 100 coins and spend all day on the same game.

Could have just done a ticketing system reserved in advance with fixed time blocks, though. But then your museum tour is on a schedule.

Stovetop, 10 dni temu

I am trying to think of scenarios where this will screw with normal users because companies never do moves like this unless they’re after some sort of grift.

But I am not seeing it at present. Maybe I’m just too tired and my brain isn’t working, but if a game is downloaded digitally and the license comes with it, there’s effectively no difference. Take it offline, you still have the license, no issues.

The only potential impact I can think of is if you have two users on a console that is the home console for neither person, and both of them bought the same game digitally. User 1 downloads the game, the license comes with it, and they take the console offline. User 2 then uses the console, tries to play the game they own, and gets a license error because the console is offline and doesn’t know they own it and therefore it can only be played by the person who downloaded it. But I think that’s how it works already, since User 2 would still need the console to be online to import their licenses.

Stovetop, 9 dni temu

That’s the same conclusion I arrived at, but wasn’t 100% sure. Since the act of downloading a game and the act of obtaining/transferring licenses both require the console to be online, I couldn’t see what difference there would be to the user experience compared to before, even if the order it does those steps in is switched.

Stovetop, 9 dni temu

And only if the PS5 isn’t user 1’s home console, which if it is, the license extends to any other user on that console.

Stovetop, 15 dni temu

Hard to know if the patent is expired when they haven’t even officially announced which ones they plan to bring forward in the suit.

The only info I was aware of so far is that there were multiple claims they were making.

Stovetop, 16 dni temu

Definitely not a Valve W though.

I have no idea how some people can worship a corporation so strongly, though.

Stovetop, 16 dni temu

It really is like a feudal system. There’s a reason why the HBO series Succession is framed like the politics between a lord, his heirs, and his vassals.

Stovetop, 18 dni temu

Apologies for the Xitter link, but it looks like the main character Atsu is being portrayed by Erika Ishii.

x.com/suckerpunchprod/status/1838715791228964978?…

Stovetop, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

The side-by-sides are definitely diminished returns compared to earlier gens where hardware bumps had very noticeable gains.

I am sure the performance is measurably better than the base PS5, but I don’t think it’s $200-plus-separate-disc-drive better.

I also found the game choices they used for some of these comparisons to be odd picks. Sure you have “Made for PS5” exclusives like the new Ratchet and Clank, Returnal, and Spider-Man 2, but they also heavily showcased:

• The Last of Us Part 2
• God of War: Ragnarok
• Ghost of Tsushima
• Horizon: Forbidden West
• Control

All of those are last-gen games that received PS5 enhancements. Being on a base PS5, I already feel like I am getting the “better” experience compared to the default for those games, so why upgrade?

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

My memory may be hazy, but I recall the mainstream acceptance of the digital distribution model on PC as more of an early 2010’s thing. People hated Steam at launch, having yet another launcher you had to download which was basically just DRM for Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike.

It wasn’t until their marketplace opened up and they offered very attractive sales that people came around to it eventually.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

Chasing the “best version” is a fool’s errand, though. Unless you’re buying top-of-the-line hardware every cycle, you’ll never have the best. And even then, there are games that seem to target future hardware by having settings so high not even top-end PCs can max them out comfortably, and other games that are just so badly optimized they’ll randomly decide they hate some feature of your setup and tank the performance, too.

Everyone has their threshold for what looks good enough, and they upgrade when they reach that point. I used my last PC for 10 years before finally upgrading to a newer build, and I’m hoping to use my current one as long as well.

But just based on the displayed difference in performance between the base PS5 and the PS5 Pro, it doesn’t seem like a good investment for what benefits you get. It’s like paying Apple prices for marginally better hardware, and with overpriced wheels disc drive sold separately.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

Now that’s a hot take.

Trying to be the Adobe of game engines is fine, but their online service is the line in the sand?

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

I’d say Mario Kart 8 deserves recognition, but agree with the other ones.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

The DNA example might be a bad comparison to make, though, when hereditary illnesses are also a comparison you could make to an engine that has the same flaws as it’s predecessors.

Hopefully whatever they do next with their engine moves away from the cells and worldspaces model of their previous engines. After all of Starfield’s criticisms, they need to move away from loadscreen triggers as much as possible.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

None of their games are as good as Morrowind, yet that hasn’t stopped them from selling like hotcakes.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

They want to pay less than they were to whoever was in that spot before.

That or it’s one of the essential positions they didn’t want to downsize but the previous person left for other reasons.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

I think there is some merit to using it in a critical sense, just based on what happened that one time it was used.

To me, AAAA means a game that was given way too much budget for its scope, to its own detriment. Take what should be a niche, mid-budget game and pump it full of cash. The game becomes too big to fail and needs to use every “play it safe” strategy the MBAs demand in order to recoup its budget. So it aims for broad appeal, which makes it fail at being the niche game it was supposed to be, and it ends up flopping.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

RIP this dev team, they can join Campo Santo in the “doing shit all” club.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

To me that just looks like adulthood.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

They always were. Thinking back to Legion invasions and whatever the fuck they did for BfA before I deleted my account following the Blitzchung incident.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

Hot take: WoW never had a good story in any expansion. Just a few good moments scattered around like islands in a sea of grind.

The closest they got to a good cohesive story was Legion, but that was only if you were playing from the beginning and got to see everything develop live before they just started shoving people into catch up points that made no sense without context.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

Having switched to FF14 a while ago, I always thought that game’s early access model for preordering was unnecessary. Since you could still “preorder” during the EA window and start playing right away, why not just call it what it is, the official launch of the expansion? Never liked the taste of FOMO, even when it’s artificial/unimpactful.

But having a separate paid EA window on top of the game’s subscription cost and cost of buying the expansion? That just doesn’t sit right at all. I can’t even complain about FF14 now.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

Between last generation and this one, though, we’re at the point where consoles are more like prebuilts. Games have performance targets, it’s up to users to decide when they feel like an upgrade. The only difference is that games (usually) won’t release for models that can’t run them well, compared to some people who try to squeeze out every frame they can from their 10-year-old potato PCs, though every now and then you still get a Cyberpunk 2077 on consoles.

But there’s a reason why some games still target the PS4 in 2024, because if you’re a small-budget indie game that doesn’t need the full hardware of the PS5, why not? Since you don’t get locked out of older stuff when you upgrade anymore, which enables newer stuff to keep releasing on older systems, anyone can hold on to a console until they run into a game worth upgrading for.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

I don’t think it’s a texture bug, I think they just took the same model they use for the enemy unit, put them in poses, and then stuck a burn shader on there.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

I feel like Elder Scrolls was the model being followed for open world RPGs. Assassin’s Creed didn’t even have RPG mechanics until the later games.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

The studio closed, alongside some major scandals about how badly they abused their employees. They were working on another game that ended up getting canceled when they closed down.

I believe Rockstar/Take Two still own the IP but have no interest in using it at this time, and it’s been long enough that not many people remember it or have much sentimental attachment, so I wouldn’t expect anything new anytime soon.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

It’s a bit more than that, though. Epic lost their lawsuit against Apple but they won theirs against Google.

Google was colluding with OEMs to stifle competition on Android, and that practice was determined to be anticompetitive. Sure you could always jump through the Google-mandated hoops and install a third-party store, but then you could also always install other browsers on Windows even when Internet Explorer was the default, and that was also determined to be anticompetitive.

Stovetop, miesiąc temu

I agree, but that’s what the courts decided. IANAL but I’m assuming it hinges on the pretense that Android is supposed to be an open ecosystem where partners and OEMs are given fair treatment, while iOS is a top-to-bottom “product” controlled by a single company that makes their own business arrangements.

In short, Apple deciding to block Epic from having their own app store, fine. Google bribing/coercing Android OEMs to prioritize the Play Store and not pre-install or facilitate the Epic Store, not fine.

I don’t think the courts would have cared if Google locked down their own Pixel phones to block out Epic, but it’s the act of throwing their weight around as the OS provider to their business partners (the OEMs) that they took issue with.

Stovetop, 2 miesiące temu

Wait, you were supposed to cover it? But how else are you supposed to let others know your N64 is capable of running DK64 without crashing?

Stovetop, 2 miesiące temu

Maybe, but I think it’s just the idea that it doesn’t need to be mutually exclusive.

If you play an MMO, you are probably there primarily for the community/group/social content, the character builds, the economy, the frequent updates, etc. But nothing says it can’t also have a good story.

To use FF14 as an example, as the only one I’ve played, the story could probably be told just as well in the form of a single-player game (or, being more realistic given its size, a series of single-player games). But it exists in the first place because there is a market for people who like both MMOs and the kinds of stories told in Final Fantasy games. For people who aren’t into the online elements, there are still plenty of good single-player experiences out there, like maybe the 14 other Final Fantasy titles that aren’t MMOs.

Stovetop, 2 miesiące temu

And one where MasterChief doesn’t remove his helmet at every opportunity and doesn’t have sex with the first sketchy woman he meets.

Stovetop, 2 miesiące temu

Not that I think it should work this way, but could always just pick a lesser known actor willing to settle for a paycheck to be “David Prowse’s Darth Vader” and then dub them over with someone more famous who is paid a lesser amount of money to be “James Earl Jones’ Darth Vader”.

Stovetop, 2 miesiące temu

They basically come overclocked right out of the factory these days, given how hard Intel pushes them just to make their numbers look bigger.

Next time I build a PC, I plan to spend extra on hardware that can run games decently while producing as little heat as possible. My current PC is like a space heater when it’s running and it’s unbearable to play games on it for any extended periods during the summer months.

Stovetop, 3 miesiące temu

Shoulda been a launch title. They spent so much time throwing more money at it they failed to strike while the iron was hot.

Stovetop, 3 miesiące temu

Well, it’s not siding with Microsoft, it is Microsoft. This is a Microsoft game.

Stovetop, 3 miesiące temu

Companies are never your friend.

Valve is like any other company. They’re as good as your money is good.

Stovetop, 3 miesiące temu

Fair, but not-shitty companies eventually become shitty companies in almost every circumstance. I hate making the argument that someone is fine because they only hurt a few people compared to the guy who hurts lots.

Stovetop, 4 miesiące temu

You’re probably not missing much. Morrowind is the last good Elder Scrolls game they ever made. But that has also been PC/Xbox exclusive since 2002 so may as well write the series off completely.

Stovetop, 4 miesiące temu

I bet I’ve played a lot more of them than you have.

It took me a while to realize that I wasn’t having fun with Skyrim, and I thought it wasn’t as good as Oblivion. The games weren’t getting any better, just prettier. The writing and worldbuilding was getting objectively worse, too.

Morrowind is the only one I keep going back to, it’s the only one that has some semblance of soul.

Stovetop, 4 miesiące temu

isles excited to write a comment about Kotaku being excited to write a story about Ubisoft being excited to let you know Prince of Persia Remake is Still Years Away.

Stovetop, 4 miesiące temu

When those two stinkers are the only content they’ve put out in 10 years, there’s not a lot to really build a more optimistic outlook from.

Even then, Inquisition was iffy and Mass Effect 3 generates bad reactions to this day (though I still enjoyed Mass Effect 3 for what it was).

Stovetop, 4 miesiące temu

No, Inquisition was an incredibly middling game. I dropped it after about 15 hours when I realized I was having no fun.

If you enjoyed it, great. I still enjoyed Mass Effect 3, too. But they weren’t great games.

Stovetop, 4 miesiące temu

I got past the hinterlands. Skimmed through it, in fact, after hearing online that there was nothing there worth doing.

The rest of the game failed to grip me as much as the first one did, and I didn’t even like DA:O as much as other games in its genre. Granted, I also dropped Dragon Age 2 like a hot potato, so perhaps if I had enjoyed that game more, I wouldn’t have been so turned off of Inquisition for being marginally more tolerable.

Stovetop, 4 miesiące temu

It’s definitely easier to have that degree of support when you’ve got a common architecture now. There has never been a console generation before this where you had literal years of overlap with games releasing on previous and current gen, because it didn’t require much extra work to maintain additional versions. They were already doing that with the “Pro” consoles before anyways.

Hell, PS4 players are still going to get the highly anticipated Shadow of the Erdtree DLC for Elden Ring in a few weeks.

Stovetop, 4 miesiące temu

It’s the video game equivalent of Legos. I think it has staying power in a way few other games have, precisely in the same way that Legos have remained popular toys for generations.

Stovetop, 4 miesiące temu

I will just agree to disagree on that front. Playing casually, I clocked over 100 hours on the 2nd game, which is more time than it took me to complete the original full game on PS1. I enjoyed basically every minute of time played (save for one particular mini-game that I didn’t care for), so I’d say I got a good value out of it for the cost. It is also hard to say that it is a cash grab when it provides a much fuller experience than most AAA games these days seem to have.

Basically, I don’t hate it any more than I hate the fact that The Lord of the Rings is three separate movies; it’s not like The Hobbit.