For a long time I thought I didn’t like Tetris very much. Tetris 99, Tetris Effect and Puyo Puyo Tetris made me reconsider that. Turns out I just needed a push, and now I occasionally spend hours on the stuff, gladly.
I think excluding rhythm games, Tetris must be one of the only game that gets me into “the zone”.
The only reason gamebryo modding is “easy” is because the community has been working on tools for it for decades.
It uses weird proprietary formats nobody else is using and full of stupid quirks. Back when Morrowind released, officially all Bethesda provided along the construction set was their plugin for a thousand-dollar licenced product to make nif models. Nowadays they don’t even do that anymore because they know people have been making their own free tools for Blender etc.
As for the modding structure itself, other games support a plugin hierarchy like they do. Rimworld in particular, and it runs on Unity.
One of the 6 characters in Xenoblade 3’s main cast is black. He’s quite interesting too, this game has pretty good character writing IMO. They’re not the usual stereotypical JRPG character types.
Once during a long train trip I beat the Metroid Prime three times in a row in Metroid Prime Pinball, and at that point I told myself “OK, this game will never end, drain all remaining balls and do something else”.
The only price that exists is the one they offer for it. If you think it’s too expensive for what is offered, congratulations, you know how to spend money. For any kind of product whatsoever.
I certainly think Super Mario Odyssey or Super Mario Bros Wonder were worth their price tag, because they’re great. And that’s completely subjective.
You either think it’s worth it and buy it, or you don’t. They’re selling games, not food and water. And you’ve got a freaking galaxy of other games to choose from.
It shouldn’t matter at all to you though. And it sounds absolutely ridiculous when you’re shouting your outrage at people who do buy some of their products.
Except they’re not just saying “we don’t like this” and moving on. They’re using dogwhistles (“woke” is only the first one) and 4-chan level type of slurs in their cries of conspiracy. It’s a thinly disguised hate club, games are only an excuse.
They tried to progressively hide it from their group’s front page, editing its language several times, but it was still there in the discussions in and around the group.
My favorite games are Omori, Disco Elysium and Outer Wilds. I cried for hours at the end of those games, and I think the common point in them is high-quality emotional writing and stellar OST (music really affect me) and my attachment to the characters....
It’s a long game, but Xenoblade Chronicles 3 messed me up in all the right ways. Especially if music moves you, I recommend it. Mostly standalone too, if you didn’t play the other 2 main games.
Not sure what part exactly was spoiled to you, but I’d be surprised if it can ruin the emotional impact.
There is one twist I will not reveal that I can see might take a bit out of it, but I am not sure how you’d encounter such a specific story beat in isolation. Not convinced even that would completely spoil it too.
They worked on the writing of quite a few famous things, and surprisingly, they made one niche full game themselves that I have played, one of the playdate’s initial games.
Yeah, that curator’s crusade against them doesn’t smell too good, very gamergate-y. That said the call to flag the curator en masse could get them in trouble. Probably not the right solution.
I’ve seen their discussion board. So yeah, intent counts too, and I’d advise anyone who may want to join/use that group to carefully consider why it was made.
They’re terrible people because they use transphobic slurs out of nowhere and label anything they don’t like “woke”. Only took reading a dozen messages to get to that point. Also, welcome to the block list.
This is GREAT news. This means they can focus on making great original games and not be dragged into working on call of duty. Please just give me a new Spyro.
Not from US or UK, but all game magazines I can remember from the 90s and early 00s had that kind of snarky tone in some way really. They loved taunting their readers, and some even trash talked a lot.
In several of those, there was a specific character whose whole job was to answer reader’s mail in the most antagonistic way possible. Of course part of the game was readers expecting to be treated like shit, and writing in an exaggerated need rage and aggressive tone themselves.
So I like to use Xbox controllers (doesn’t matter if it’s first- or third-party) because I like the layout, it’s just comfortable to me. However I’ve noticed that on all my controllers in the past few years, the left thumb stick will start to “give out” over the course of a couple months. For instance I’ll be...
I can confirm in the case of switch joy-cons, sticks (and also rails, another weak part of those) can be replaced without any kind of soldering. It’s all ribbon cables.
I haven’t tried this, so can’t really compare it myself, but if we are comparing this to Splatoon (which seems reasonable in terms of appeal if not completely in terms of gameplay), I can already see a difference, and in my opinion a huge problem.
Microtransactions. Very bad case of them according to lots of reviews.
There have been 4 paid DLCs, Castlevania is just the latest.
However, I agree it’s been all worth it until now. Every new area feels like a new experience with cool new gimmicks, gameplay has been refined with stuff like the backpack, we got cool free indie crossover stuff…
And Return to Castlevania has more love for the series in it than anything Konami has done in the last 15 years (which is not saying much, fuck Konami).
I’m okay with the next DLC being the last. The game has had a fantastic life, and I wouldn’t want it to go past the creators’ motivation and start becoming bland. Excited to see what Motion Twin and Evil Empire have in store now (though Motion Twin’s situation seems a bit complex).
Motion Twin is an interesting studio. They have a completely horizontal structure, they keep their studio small (10 people at most) on purpose and they’re more like a partnership of independent developers agreeing on common projects.
Most of them also seem to prefer switching to completely something else once they consider a game is done. Dead Cells is a special case because after a year part of MT wanted to keep working on it, so they created their own, more traditional studio Evil Empire and hired people just for that.
But then, things at MT apparently didn’t go too well. They spent months vetoing everything because no game concept seemed good enough for everyone to agree on it. The lead dev on Dead Cells tried to push them to at least try something, it didn’t go well and they pushed him out instead.
Looks like there has been quite a bit of turnover on the studio since Dead Cells, and very little news, and since we’re talking about a studio of 8-10 people, it’s a bit worrying.
So, a long time ago I got Little Big Adventure 2 a.k.a. Twinsen’s Odyssey.
This game has a “behaviour” feature that lets you switch between 4 modes : normal, stealthy, athletic and agressive. This has an impact on how the main character Twinsen moves and acts : normal walks and interacts, stealthy sneaks around, athletic runs and jumps, aggressive lets you punch stuff.
Note that all of those except athletic are unbearably slow, and the game requires quite a bit of jumping, so I quickly considered athletic the default one, only switching for something else briefly when I needed to do something specific.
In this game you get your second and last weapon, a sword, quite far into the game. It does a lot of damage, and it’s required to beat some enemies. But every time I’d try to use it, Twinsen would do a ridiculous backflip first, then do a jumping attack forward. It was very hard to hit a moving enemy that way, it required a lot of space and since I could barely control that move (tank controls by the way), there was a huge risk I’d get hit in the process.
I lost many times against a huge boss that was only vulnerable to the sword, eventually beat him with great difficulty and after that went through the rest of the game still trying to get the most out of that ridiculous weapon.
It took me another playthrough to understand that the way Twinsen used the sword depended on his behaviour. Only athletic did that double jump first, agressive in particular just let you hack stuff up immediately.
Probably something on the Amstrad CPC computer, and I couldn’t tell which game specifically.
I had the Donkey Kong arcade port on it, ironically better than the NES one because it had the full 4 levels instead of just 3.
Other game of note was Jet Set Willy. Despite the simplistic style that game was creepy as hell to me. The intro music was a pretty good 8-bit rendition of the Moonlight Sonata. Not sure how much of this is due to the game, but that music still kind of gives me the creeps.
Then on that computers I had lots of forgettable games, often in compilations. And a few bad ports (Salamander a.k.a Life Force), okay ones (Contra) and a very late addition of Lemmings, probably the best game I had on it yet not the best version of the game by far.
I got a NES as a secondary gaming platform at some point. Super Mario Bros 1 and 3 were not the first games I played, but after playing so many crappy platform games on the CPC they definitely had a huge impact on what I still consider good game design now.
Maya is a genius compared to Pearl. Poor girl was introduced as a little kid and they decided she’d stay a toddler in a grown-up body for the rest her life.
Okay let me start with two heavy hitters right from the get go and don’t forget these are only personal oppinions and I absolute understand if you like those games. Good for you!...
And that’s weird, I really love the series as a whole. OoT feels way too bland to me and… I don’t know, I can’t stand its characters, its boring empty environments (plain, ranch and lake for example), its overwhelmingly grey colour palette.
Majora’s Mask’s one of my favourites though. But yeah, I’d rather replay a Link to the Past or any of the other 3D games over OoT.
I suspect Metroid Prime works for you because movement is quite slow. Samus feels like a tank compared to Gordon Freeman.
I love the Prime trilogy, but when I returned to it while doing a Metroid binge of sort, and I was kind of trying to do decent times, I was surprised how much slower-paced they feel compared to the 2D games. Even jumps feel floaty (probably for the better, it’s hard to judge jumps correctly in first person).
Really not convinced that you can’t call something a genre because it wouldn’t describe different games in a series.
I’d argue the Wario Land series has mostly changed genres between 1 and 2. First one is a straight platformer that’s basically Super Mario Bros with different abilities, following games are exploration puzzle game things that have a platforming element, but in which platforming is not the main point IMO.
Resident Evil really forgot it was survival horror for a while.
Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom are almost nothing like the classic Zelda formula. Free-form puzzle solving, free-er movement, almost zero dungeon structures, consumable weapons…
Those are significant, because when it happens it’s very likely some people would be more invested in either the old or new games, which incidentally explains why it doesn’t happen that much in established series.
I know I was initially very disappointed with new Wario, because all I wanted back then was more Mario-style platforming and the intentionally frustrating design of Wario Land 2-3-4 wasn’t for me.
I happen to like both, but they’re very different. Like a lot of fans of the rest of the series, while playing BotW I missed the classic dungeon experience. A whole divine beast and a dozen shrines stitched together would be maybe like one dungeon in the main series, and it’d have a new item, it would rely on it a lot with clever riddles and it’d have a unique boss, not just another flavour of Ganon.
Of course, a classic Zelda game is also a lot more linear in structure, with a world you can only explore bit by bit, and in a set order (mostly, there is a couple of exceptions).
Being stuck for a while on iOS was its initial problem.
The Android port took quite a bit of time to happen which means 2048 had time to eclipse it for many people. And when it finally was on Android, It probably struggled more there for being a paid game when 2048 was free with ads what’s wrong with you people, it costs as much as 2 coffees and ads are fucking annoying.
It’s been available on both iOS and Android for years before Arcade was a thing.
The reason 2048 took over was probably because Threes was only on iOS for a while, and because 2048 was available as a free, ad-supported game while Threes was only available as a paid game.
I got Threes back around Android release, and 2048 was already huge.
I think Castlevania : Lords of Shadow’s IP kind of worked against it. It’s useless to non- fans of the series, and it’s jarring to those who are.
It’s like it is constantly wondering if it’s a new take on the universe, or just a whole new one with useless, random references thrown in. There are lots of people completely displaced from their original time and background, and I am not talking about the game’s big spoilery reveal, but completely random ones with no point.
One example among many : in the main series there is a character who is a 20th century German artist who tragically turned mad because he lost his family during WW2. He is “reimagined” into a random bat-faced vampire general in the 11th century. His name is just mentioned in narration before a short fight and he’s never seen again.
Despite all of that, the game is great. Mostly linear, definitely has some pacing issues, but it’s pretty good at telling its story, it’s a decent spectacle fighter, and the environments are great.
Sequels… Yeah, not so much. But I really liked the first one. I just feel the Castlevania name only set it for something it wasn’t though.
Nintendo started doing that a lot around the Wii. New Super Mario Bros series, Donkey Kong Country Returns, etc… also on other games regular messages to let you know that you could lower the difficulty. And Skyward Sword’s Fi being unable to let you play more than 2 seconds without trying to “help”.
Honestly I did not like it much. I didn’t mind that it was an option, but I did mind that it was a shiny, blinking thing making shrieking sounds at you as soon as you’d start facing a bit of challenge.
Super Mario Bros Wonder’s way of doing this is way better IMO, with the beginner characters and some of the badges that you can activate to make the game easier when you need it.
Personally I got through the “standard” white palace (not the side path. Fuck that).
But I never could beat the Radiance. It’s fast, its attack hitboxes are completely bonkers, and I absolutely hate the fact I can’t properly train against it to make sense of its patterns. Because every time I lose I have to redo that stupid Hollow Knight section again. It’s not even a hard part, it’s just wasting my time and making me more nervous when I have to face the real deal.
Now, on a scale from 1 to 10, please tell us how strongly you feel about this. And, hypothetically, whether you’d mind if a few dozens more NPC were like that too.”
For backstory: My partner and I have been playing Super Mario Party so long that it’s gotten boring. They asked me what I wanted for my birthday (which is coming up), and I thought something like that would be cool. If X-COM 2 had a local co-op on the Switch, I’d do that, but is there something similar?
RTS means real time strategy, it’s stuff like warcraft, starcraft, age of empires etc. X-COM is turn based, so not real time.
If you are searching for turn based tactical games (I don’t really play RTS), yeah, Mario + Rabbids is very reminiscent of X-COM, only with an emphasis on movement combos (using other characters/enemies to boost your jumps, that kind of things). It does have multiplayer maps, though I have not tried them myself. Main campaign is single player.
In that move combo aspect it looks quite a bit like Chroma Squad, a tactical game with a cast of super sentai/power rangers-like actors who do combo stunts as they move. It’s pretty fun, though I have not tried the switch version and I think it’s single player only.
Fire emblem has two episodes on switch, three houses and engage. I have played a lot of three houses. It’s not for everyone, it’s a very long game with loads of dialogue, many characters, a lot of schedule planning etc. Battles are turn based, though in Fire Emblem fashion more about tricking the (basic) AI to break against your high defence “wall” characters while protecting your glass cannons characters. Difficulty being there is a lot of those (admittedly dumb) enemies with various strengths and weaknesses. It’s fun but again, single player only. I haven’t played Engage, because honestly, Its character design is terrible and it looks quite silly.
Triangle Strategy is another turn based tactical RPG with an heavy emphasis on story. Lots and lots of dialogue, to the point you may ask yourself when the strategy starts when you begin. It has branching story paths, with a rather unique voting mechanic where you have to convince your people to choose the path you want to take. Battle maps are typically less flat than fire emblem, and turn order is determined by each unit’s speed instead of being player turn/enemy turn. Again, single player.
Into the Breach is turn based strategy on a very small scale (each battle is 5 turns on a 10x10 map). It’s almost more of an open-ended puzzle than a strategy game, requiring you to use your squad effectively to defend key locations against waves of bugs with different abilities. It’s very good.
Wargroove is Advance Wars inspired, so instead of unique characters like Fire Emblem etc, you play one commander with a special ability, and armies of nameless soldier units that you recruit in cities you control. A remake of Advance Wars 1 and 2 is on switch too, I have not played it. Not a fan of this type of game personally, but they have their fans. Those are multiplayer, kind of like chess with more rules.
Now for something turn-based and strategic but completely different, Civilization 6 is on the switch, though I don’t know how well it works on it. It’s Civilization, so long games on random maps where you found your cities, find resources, develop technologies, trade, and choose a way to overpower the other empire. This one is multiplayer.
Even in the main series he’s been switching between power hungry destroyer of worlds (Galaxy, Wonder) and goofy bully with a Peach obsession (Sunshine, Odyssey) for a long time.
Yeah, RPGs (Square, Paper or M&L) often have him team up with the good guys when he’s been out-villained. He’s particularly depicted as incompetent in those, and usually kicked out of his own castle, it and his minions being one of the rare other things he cares about.
Gog is the main place for that, since their principal stance is DRM-free downloadable installers. They have a launcher too, but it’s optional and only meant as convenience. Itch.io does DRM-free too, but they’re often more about very indie and often experimental games. They have a few all-time indie classics though.
Steam technically doesn’t require the games to implement DRM, so a part of their library is DRM-free once you’ve passed the installation process (they don’t need steam to be running). This is on a case-by-case basis though. Lots of Steam games use steamworks (Steam’s very own DRM) and a lot more use third party DRMs (and even require external launchers like Ubisoft’s or EA’s).
For years I have been a bit pissed at Steam for opening themselves to all and every shitty fake game/quick buck asset flip there is out there, refusing to do any kind of curation. Instead they opted for letting the almighty Algorithm do that for them. I doesn’t work, their store is a discoverability catastrophe full of shit.
That said, I still buy from them in some cases, and these cases are mostly down to one point : the workshop, the integrated mod and user content interface. It’s for a handful of games that profit a lot from it, but it’s undenyingly convenient.
What I often do if it’s a possibility is buying directly from the developer, which often includes a Steam key. That’s what I did for Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress (through Itch.io). It gives you everything Steam has to offer for the game and usually a DRM-free version too. Only “down point” is that your Steam review doesn’t count for the game’s Steam score when you have activated it from an external key. I don’t care much for that.
In the end at that point you’ve noticed I talked about a lot of different platforms and launchers, and it’s not even all of them. Like the previous poster, I can’t recommend Playnite enough. It’s a meta launcher that makes all of your libraries united in the same place, with a lot of options. You still require all the platforms installed, but you’re not using them directly most of the time.
I’ve got Steam, Gog, Humble, Ubisoft, EA, Amazon, Xbox, Itch.io and yeah, even Epic through it (though I only use EGS to get the free games, I don’t plan on buying anything from there).
That made me think about the most arbitrary and broken player “moral choice” I know : the end of Fable 2.
spoilerBad guy enslaves lots of people for years for his project, killing many of them. Then kills your family and your cute puppy because fuck you. After you beat bad guy, magic ascended girl appears, rewards you with one of three wishes for post-game : revive everyone enslaved by bad guy, revive your family and cute puppy, or give you lots of useless monies. The player is not really responsible for the slave deaths. The ability to “fix” ten years of history by magically erasing all the deaths is weird and undermines the impact of the whole story a lot. Also, and perhaps more importantly on the player’s side of things, the dog is a freaking gameplay mechanic, not having it prevents some actions and blocks a few minor quests. Well, sorry, nameless, faceless theoretical people who died years ago, I really need my cute puppy. Really, the game never even establishes why that very specifically determined choice has to be made. It feels very rushed, very cheap and the whole thing is over in 5 minutes.
‘There’s almost nobody left’: CEO of Baldur’s Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs
Same Lemmy title as the article. You know exactly who’s talking (“CEO of Baldur’s Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke”), about whom (“the D&D team he initially worked with”), what happened to them (“is gone”) and who is to blame (“due to Hasbro layoffs”).
As far as titles go, it’s pretty good at telling you exactly what the actual article is about. Sure, you may need basic knowledge about how a licenced product works, and that BG3 is under the D&D licence. It would be rather hard to fit all that in a title.
So yeah, I want to discuss or point out why I think Valve needs to fix Anti-Cheat issues. They have VAC but apparently its doing jackshit, be it Counter Strike 2 (any previous iterations) or something like Hunt: Showdown the prevalence of cheating players is non deniable. For me personally it has come to a point that I am not...
Let's discuss: Tetris (beehaw.org) angielski
The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!...
Bethesda Celebrates 30th Anniversary of The Elder Scrolls, Provides Small Development Update on The Elder Scrolls VI (www.thefpsreview.com) angielski
Fights In Tight Spaces devs announce fantasy follow-up Knights In Tight Spaces (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Are game studios suddenly abandoning Black developers? (www.gamedeveloper.com)
15 billion score in Pokemon Pinball + Caanoo (files.catbox.moe) angielski
New Rimworld DLC: Anomaly (twitter.com)
RimWorld - Anomaly (DLC) Store page is up (store.steampowered.com) angielski
MAR10 Day 2024 - Nintendo (www.youtube.com) angielski
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door releases 5.23.2024...
How A Small Video Game Narrative Studio Wound Up At The Heart Of A Massive, Anti-Woke Conspiracy Theory - Aftermath (aftermath.site) angielski
Sweet Baby Inc doesn’t even remotely do what many think it does, but on the modern internet, that doesn’t matter
Looking for emotional game recommendations angielski
My favorite games are Omori, Disco Elysium and Outer Wilds. I cried for hours at the end of those games, and I think the common point in them is high-quality emotional writing and stellar OST (music really affect me) and my attachment to the characters....
Diablo IV unleashes the Gauntlet, its first PvE competitive game mode, today (massivelyop.com) angielski
Sweet Baby employees incite harassment campaign against Steam curator (archive.ph) angielski
DL: nichegamer.com/sweet-baby-employees-incite-harass…
Crash Bandicoot 4, Spyro Reignited Trilogy Dev Toys For Bob Is Splitting From Activision (www.gameinformer.com) angielski
This is GREAT news. This means they can focus on making great original games and not be dragged into working on call of duty. Please just give me a new Spyro.
The game magazine that spent two years taunting a Final Fantasy VIII hater (ff8isthe.best) angielski
I really like this new blog. Reminds me of ukresistance.
18+ Bliss Hamlet - Arid shrubland peninsula - 11 colonists - 15 years (media.rimworld.gallery) angielski
How Do You Deal With Thumb Stick Drift? (lemmy.world) angielski
So I like to use Xbox controllers (doesn’t matter if it’s first- or third-party) because I like the layout, it’s just comfortable to me. However I’ve noticed that on all my controllers in the past few years, the left thumb stick will start to “give out” over the course of a couple months. For instance I’ll be...
Foamstars | Review Thread angielski
Game Information...
Dead Cells - A super-late (we know) update on Dead Cells - Steam News (store.steampowered.com)
What's your big "Oh, THAT'S how I do that" moment? angielski
I remembered a good brainfart of mine and wondered if anyone else had one to share....
First game you played angielski
Title says it all, what was the first game you remember playing and had fond memories of?...
NieR 3 Already Exists, But Not For Long (kotaku.com) angielski
cross-posted from: lemmy.ca/post/14353775
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of January 28th
What are you all playing! I’ve been playing a lot of lies of p and have been dipping my toes back into binding of Isaac!
Which games do you dislike, but the rest of the world loves them? angielski
Okay let me start with two heavy hitters right from the get go and don’t forget these are only personal oppinions and I absolute understand if you like those games. Good for you!...
Replacing the term "Metroidvania" (www.gamedeveloper.com) angielski
Popular mobile puzzle game classic Threes! is launching on PC for its 10th anniversary (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
This is the game that inspired 2048 but unfortunately never got nearly as popular.
What are some good games that have a bad reputation due to unreasonable expectations? angielski
For consistency sake, let’s say that any game that’s >or=7/10 at what it’s trying to do while having a popular perception of being a
What are your opinions about 'handicap' features in games angielski
I’m talking about something like setting starting percentages on smash bros....
What difficult games/game challenges did you give up on?
Be it a game that’s difficult in its entirety, or a particular challenge in a game that you just couldn’t complete....
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Will Have a Character Voiced by Text-to-Speech at Launch - IGN (www.ign.com) angielski
WB’s ‘Ready Player One’ Blockchain, VR, AR, AI ‘Readyverse’ Will Of Course Be A Disaster (www.forbes.com) angielski
What's a good co-op RTS for the Switch?
For backstory: My partner and I have been playing Super Mario Party so long that it’s gotten boring. They asked me what I wanted for my birthday (which is coming up), and I thought something like that would be cool. If X-COM 2 had a local co-op on the Switch, I’d do that, but is there something similar?
Has Bowser finally turned good and gave up on hunting Peach? angielski
You know Mario and Rabbids Sparks of Hope?...
What's up with Epic Games? angielski
I can’t seem to find that one comment explaining the issue with them…...
If Gamers Want More Powerful Women Then Stop Being Afraid Of Them (www.thegamer.com) angielski
Lae'zel and Shadowheart can be mean sometimes, and it's okay to embrace women in video games like them.
'There's almost nobody left': CEO of Baldur's Gate 3 dev Swen Vincke says the D&D team he initially worked with is gone, due to Hasbro layoffs (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Suffering and success.
The Day Before developer Fntastic shuts down - Gematsu (www.gematsu.com)
Valve needs to step up on Anti-Cheat angielski
So yeah, I want to discuss or point out why I think Valve needs to fix Anti-Cheat issues. They have VAC but apparently its doing jackshit, be it Counter Strike 2 (any previous iterations) or something like Hunt: Showdown the prevalence of cheating players is non deniable. For me personally it has come to a point that I am not...