Not a particularly interesting article necessarily, but I wanted to share this as the list is actually quite good in my opinion, and it’s laid out very nicely. It’s one page that’s very easy to scroll through. Might find some things you havent played!
I have such a love/hate relationship with Stardew Valley, slightly less so with My Time At Portia (the developers seem to have at least considered wrist strain in the button layout and mechanics). I long for a moneyless, classless game in this genre where the incentives are community thriving, trust, pleasure, and all the other...
Contribution is a currency used in Roots of Pacha. When the player donates food or supplies to the clan, contribution points are awarded as acknowledgement of their efforts.
Contribution points must be expended to develop ideas. Certain clan members have items for trade in exchange for points, as well.
Items are donated by placing them in the contribution bin, found just north of the bonfire. Donated items may be viewed and retrieved until the end of the day. The value of the contributions is tallied overnight and the bin is emptied for the next day.
It’s not just a rename of money, it’s more like your social renown in the village, like how much people respect you because of your contributions, and you use it mostly to choose what improvement project you want to build next in the village.
Stop making live service games and “shared world” faux-mmos. If it’s not single player, P2P multiplayer, or providing the server executable for me to host, I’m not buying it. There are already enough good MMOs anyways.
I loved the first Division game. It had a great community, great gunplay, and prior to the crafting nerf(s) a really good loot/crafting feedback loop. But it could have just as easily been made as a local co-op or self-hosted game. I have yet to encounter a game that can only exist as a live service game, unlike e.g. Eve Online which can only exist as an MMO.
Multiplayer games that I love, that I can self-host or play P2P?
Project Zomboid, ARK, Grim Dawn, Starbound, Space Engineers, Satisfactory, and Bellwright
I would have included Minecraft Java, but MS went and made it online only recently, where you can’t play at all without signing into their launcher, even singleplayer.
Today, we have an exciting update: Duncan and Paul, alongside many other talented members at Hopoo Games, will now be working on game development directly at @valvesoftware
WRT the hacking minigame(s), it’s much faster than e.g. Fallout 3/4 hacking and lockpicking. The rotating locks are a rhythm game that take 10-20 seconds. The sudoku-esque “slicing”/ hacking one takes about 30 seconds. Compared to Fallout 4 where you can be mousing through every line of characters to find the bracket pairs that remove a dud choice when you’re hacking, it honestly slows me down less. I haven’t had AI go wonky in combat.
I haven’t seen the reputations bounce around. I got the Pykes angry at me right at the start, and I haven’t managed to claw my way back yet. I haven’t been trying hard, to be fair, but if side missions are there that can easily recover you from negative faction standing, the game definitely isn’t putting it in front of me.
I’m always skeptical of edited videos that show bugs because controversy drives views, so there’s an incentive to find problems.
IMO it’s not amazing and it’s not bad. You need to enjoy stealth to enjoy Outlaws, because you need to use stealth 90% of the time to avoid getting overwhelmed. The worldspace is amazing, just like AssOdyssey. I love Star Wars as a universe, but not the movies themselves, and Outlaws doesn’t focus on Jedis or rehash the same old characters. And this game really feels like Star Wars.
If you’re not either really into Star Wars or really into stealth, I’d recommend waiting until it’s discounted, but mostly just because the Gold Edition price is insane ($110).
I like to keep track of my games that I have completed, with most of the games it is pretty easy. When the credits roll, I consider them beat, there are a few exceptions of course like Nier, Resident Evil 2 etc. What I struggle with are fighting, racing games and 4x games. I enjoy these genres, but I don’t know what is...
Square Enix uses the bastardized American pronunciation “man-nuh” for the English dubs, which is not incorrect, but the original pronunciation is “maw-nuh”
Really disappointed in this response. I’ve got a soft spot for the first Greedfall, and Steelrising holds a prominent spot in my backlog. As they’re a “AA” studio, I’ve had this idea of them as a scrappy, passionate team, but this response is tone-deaf and contentious, lacking any compassion for the concerns of the...
SH2 is my partner’s favorite game, and I’ll be interested to hear their assessment of this. I tried SH2 on PC a few years ago, and the tank controls were just so outdated it took me out of the game.
I’m all for AI being available to replicate VO voices… but it should solely be owned by the performers, just as their likeness would be, licensable out by them.
“You want to use my voice in your game or movie? Sign this license, and here’s a list of words you cannot make it say, and things the character using it cannot do.”
It depends on the reasons, but I tend to favor user reviews over critics given that I am a user and not a critic.
Reviewers in the video game space may have been asked to review something they otherwise would not be interested in, which just intrinsically is going to color your perception of it, for example, whereas no one is forcing users to play something they don’t want to.
OTOH, critics may attempt to be more objective (or not).
The innovation vs stagnation debate has been had across all sectors, but it’s imo also an effect of cost-cutting and risk-minimization. Every time something new fails, you lose money, which means you have to cut more somewhere else if you want to keep your profit margin the same. So instead, you don’t try new things, you fire your creatives, you make every product more safe and bland.
Of course that’s a bad plan, but that’s where being drawn to reuse and reboots and endless sequels comes from.
We can’t fix stagnation until we fix mindless profit-seeking to appease mindless demands for infinite stock price growth.
I would not be surprised if the negative backlash about their closure forced Microsoft’s hand, because imagine if it came out that this group wanted to give those devs their jobs back with the same company identity, and maybe even work more on the game they built, and MS just was like, “nah”. Absolute PR bloodbath.
Going to stick with portable systems, because a box is a box is a box, even if some are cooler than others (PS2 slim with attached screen, and N64).
#3 Gameboy Advance SP
Loved the compactness of the clamshell design. So much more portable than other systems at the time.
#2 Steam Deck
Windows games on a Linux handheld, plus it runs old games that Win 10 can’t.
#1 PlayStation Portable
This was and will always remain my favorite gaming system. So many great games, movies, a cool disc/cartridge hybrid media format, SD card support for all sorts of stuff, custom firmwares… man, such an amazing system.
I’m so nostalgia-driven, I can’t bring myself to play most MMOs because I feel like they’ll die and I’ll losev access to that “world”. If I knew that I could run a private server once the official ones shut down, it would completely change my outlook.
Which is what this would serve to counteract, by allowing players to continue operating the servers when devs abandon them.
Nothing happens to the game code itself to devalue it when a game shuts down. The developer not running the server doesn’t actually speak to the quality of the server itself.
trying to push through a law that conforms to your moral view of the world is weird. It’s exactly the same mentality of people who want it to be the law that the ten commandments are in every classroom.
I’m sorry to tell you, but both sides of a given moral stance… are moral views. Someone’s morals push them to dictate having the 10 Commandments in classrooms. My morals push me to oppose that happening. The law is going to enshrine a moral viewpoint no matter which way it goes.
All laws entail a moral viewpoint, either directly, or as a simple function of attempting to do what is “right”: something as simple as defining the safe PPM of a chemical in drinking water is only done because we believe it is right/moral to provide clean drinking water (and also, immoral not to).
That’s not what I said, I said it’s still a moral stance to oppose having religious iconography in a public setting as a government mandate, which could be a ban of it, or simply not having a law that mandates it. The idea that a choice not to do anything is not also a moral stance, is mistaken.
Videogames are being destroyed! Most video games work indefinitely, but a growing number are designed to stop working as soon as publishers end support. This effectively robs customers, destroys games as an artform, and is unnecessary. Our movement seeks to pass new law in the EU to put an end to this practice. Our proposal...
An interesting question is whether this would be constitutional in the US, if ever attempted here. Generally, forcing developers to code something has been considered “compelled speech”, though this defense gets deployed to varying degrees of effectiveness (i.e. refusing to code proper authentication doesn’t exempt you from liability in a breach just because requiring that auth would compel you to code it).
Frankly I have no faith we’ll ever see game makes forced into being consumer-friendly, and I’ve just begun to refuse to purchase any “Live Service” games precisely because I don’t want to be investing hours of my time into something that can be taken away at-will.
If B didn’t say X can person A sue person B to compel performance of contract or just money back/damages?
Well first, my question more relates to the US Constitution’s 1st Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech from government/public interference, which is why a law could not compel someone to code something, but also, even in contract disputes between private parties, you will only be able to compel Specific Performance (doing an action) if you can show that monetary or other compensatory damages would be unable to properly compensate for the breach, and Specific Performance can never cover “personal obligations” such as continued employment.
If you had already written the code, but refused to turn it over, that might be possible to compel, but if it wasn’t yet written I don’t believe the courts would ever compel you to write that code as a form of compensation for contract breach.
Unionizing wouldn’t normally really give workers more control over the product, it’s about worker benefits, and management levels who direct product are usually excluded from participating in a union.
There’s a totally fair criticism that Windows is no more or less comprehensible or usable than e.g. Ubuntu, but familiarity is the differentiator. If someone is opposed to changing settings in a .conf file but not a .ini file, or fine with making registry changes but not service changes, it’s not an issue of usability or accessibility, it’s just familiarity.
I got a laptop recently with an AMD GPU, and installed Ubuntu on it, and the first time round I got the AMD drivers working, but every boot the discrete GPU and the integrated GPU would change their device IDs (e.g. gpu1/ gpu2), so Steam would end up launching games on the integrated GPU half the time. I got frustrated and installed Windows, but found out that you can’t buy Win10 anymore, so got Win11 and hated it so much I went back to Ubuntu. Second time around, I found a thing for setting the GPU in the launch options by GPU name, and that has fixed it.
Linux is not ready for average consumers if they have to install it themselves, but neither is Windows; most people buy a computer with the OS preinstalled, and never have to deal with driver setup; the Win11 install had a bunch of driver issues too.
SteamDeck is such a huge revolution because it’s really the first time that a company has made preinstalled Linux machines available in a way that average consumers don’t have to go looking for or pay through the nose (cough System76 cough).
If someone like Dell or Lenovo (or hey, even System76 or Framework) could get their laptops in-store at BestBuy, with everything pre-configured and ready-to-use, that would be Linux being “ready” for the average consumer.
Lego Island was an action town sim set in a Lego-themed world. There was nothing particularly “Lego” about the gameplay. I mostly just loved riding the motorcycle around the island as a kid.
Interesting thoughts about how to define success for video games in today’s market, particularly for those using early access. Lots of respect for Hooded Horse’s CEO, Tim Bender, he says all the right things and seems genuine....
I am very excited for the 1.0 release! My friends and I are currently playing a multiplayer game in Update 8, and we are so close to finishing all the space elevator parts for the first time.
Great game! I wish there was a randomized map, because it feels like I know every corner by now, and I do the think resource cost scaling gets ridiculous (try building a train of any length with 2 people), but it’s a really great survival crafter + factory builder.
I bounced off of it, and went back to Farthest Frontier.
I was not a huge fan of the way the villagers are accrued and assigned; it felt like they were trying to emulate Banished, but didn’t execute well on it.
I did love the way you draw housing plots, and the ability to add extensions onto houses that have different bonuses (e.g. a chicken coop that gives eggs).
I think if the city-builder+RTS hybrid aspect is very appealing to you, it’s one of the few out there. If you want a more traditional city builder, check out Farthest Frontier.
I really like it’s progression of resource tiers, and it’s exploration mechanic that lets you delve into ruins to find artifacts that give you bonuses to town morale.
It also has a nice pseudo-complex farming system, where you can manage the soil composition to favor different crops (or just choose to plant the crops that that area’s default soil lends itself to).
It also has randomized maps, which I like to reload until I find one with an interesting layout.
There is combat, but you can granularly control it, or disable it altogether (there are raiders, and wildlife like bears and wolves).
I love when completely innocent people say things like “no wrongdoing was acknowledged" and “no criminal charges have ever been brought against me”. I was suspicious before, but if there were no criminal charges then who cares, right? Right?
There’s not one. Sexting is very broad, it does not have to be pictures or direct references to boning. Any sexually-oriented text communication can be considered sexting.
Locker room humor generally refers to talk between guys, which could have sexual undertones, but isn’t normally something I’d think of as “sexually-oriented”.
And flirting can range all the way from smiling long at someone at a cafe or calling them ‘cutie’ in conversation, to me spanking my s.o. as they walk by in a sexy outfit and telling them they’re gonna get punished if they keep distracting me from work- so there’s a huge range in there, some of which I’d definitely consider sexting, if texted to someone.
Frankly, I have zero sympathy for him, because it’s very easy not to interact over direct message with fans at all, much less underage ones.
I’ve worked customer-interfacing jobs that required a high level of direct, personal relationship-building before (sometimes even gasp with people I found attractive!), and I never once felt compelled to take those communications into a private space, and there was never even a potential for those people to have been kids.
You don’t “stumble into” private messages with a minor that “get out of hand”.
I’ve played Last Epoch, PoE, D1/2/3, and a LOT of others, and Grim Dawn just knocks it out of the part for me. I really want more from Crate, once Farthest Frontier is wrapped up.
The Eurogamer 100 - 100 best games to play right now (www.eurogamer.net)
Not a particularly interesting article necessarily, but I wanted to share this as the list is actually quite good in my opinion, and it’s laid out very nicely. It’s one page that’s very easy to scroll through. Might find some things you havent played!
Moneyless Harvest Moon-type game?
I have such a love/hate relationship with Stardew Valley, slightly less so with My Time At Portia (the developers seem to have at least considered wrist strain in the button layout and mechanics). I long for a moneyless, classless game in this genre where the incentives are community thriving, trust, pleasure, and all the other...
Concord is going offline beginning September 6th (blog.playstation.com) angielski
Update: players are now throwing themselves off cliffs to grind xp for the platinum trophy x.com/realradec/status/1831041419756388429
Risk of Rain developers join Valve, announced in a twitter post. (x.com)
Today, we have an exciting update: Duncan and Paul, alongside many other talented members at Hopoo Games, will now be working on game development directly at @valvesoftware
Star Wars Outlaws Is A Crappy Masterpiece (kotaku.com)
Need tips, when is a non-campaign game considered 'completed'? angielski
I like to keep track of my games that I have completed, with most of the games it is pretty easy. When the credits roll, I consider them beat, there are a few exceptions of course like Nier, Resident Evil 2 etc. What I struggle with are fighting, racing games and 4x games. I enjoy these genres, but I don’t know what is...
How to pronounce "Mana" properly (youtu.be)
Square Enix uses the bastardized American pronunciation “man-nuh” for the English dubs, which is not incorrect, but the original pronunciation is “maw-nuh”
GreedFall Developer Spiders Respond To Allegations (insider-gaming.com)
Really disappointed in this response. I’ve got a soft spot for the first Greedfall, and Steelrising holds a prominent spot in my backlog. As they’re a “AA” studio, I’ve had this idea of them as a scrappy, passionate team, but this response is tone-deaf and contentious, lacking any compassion for the concerns of the...
Silent Hill 2's remake dares to modernise a classic, and is largely succeeding (www.eurogamer.net)
The previews so far are more positive than I imagined… Sh2 is one of my all time favorites. I will eat my words if bloober actually pulls this off!
Amazon reportedly working on animated anthology TV series featuring Spelunky and other video game worlds (www.eurogamer.net)
AI is changing video games — and striking performers want their due [NPR] (www.npr.org) angielski
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No More Room In Hell: How Tech & Games Are Desperately Rotting (The Jimquisition) (youtu.be)
cross-posted from: beehaw.org/post/15489246...
Tango Gameworks taken over and "revived" by PUBG publisher Krafton, with plans to expand Hi-Fi Rush IP (automaton-media.com) angielski
What's your favourite and/or least favourite gaming hardware?
So, I’ll start. I have 3 devices that I’d say are tied for best...
Max Payne 1 & 2 Remake is in full production, Control 2 is now in a playable state [VGC] (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
#StopKillingGames update: Finland just passed the threshold. angielski
The initiative is at more than 20% of the 1 million signatures necessary....
EU Citizen's initiative to pass legislation to stop game publishers disabling games we paid for (www.stopkillinggames.com)
Videogames are being destroyed! Most video games work indefinitely, but a growing number are designed to stop working as soon as publishers end support. This effectively robs customers, destroys games as an artform, and is unnecessary. Our movement seeks to pass new law in the EU to put an end to this practice. Our proposal...
Microsoft’s ‘World of Warcraft’ Gaming Staff Votes to Unionize (www.bloomberg.com) angielski
Bethesda Game Studios has unionized! (x.com) angielski
no official CWA press release yet, but here’s the union’s:...
98% compatibility
27 years later, the spirit of Lego Island lives on in a surprising place (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Long Dark dev criticises Manor Lords for lack of updates, Hooded Horse CEO replies that not every game needs to be "some live-service boom or bust" (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
Interesting thoughts about how to define success for video games in today’s market, particularly for those using early access. Lots of respect for Hooded Horse’s CEO, Tim Bender, he says all the right things and seems genuine....
Satisfactory Announcement (www.youtube.com)
I am very excited for the 1.0 release! My friends and I are currently playing a multiplayer game in Update 8, and we are so close to finishing all the space elevator parts for the first time.
Have you played Manor Lords and what are your opinions? (store.steampowered.com) angielski
I've been thinking of getting that game, though I am not sure on the development pace and state it is currently in....
Dr Disrespect finally shares why he was banned from Twitch (www.theverge.com) angielski
I love when completely innocent people say things like “no wrongdoing was acknowledged" and “no criminal charges have ever been brought against me”. I was suspicious before, but if there were no criminal charges then who cares, right? Right?
thoughts on arpgs? angielski
to clarify, I mean games like Diablo 4, Path of Exile, and Grim Dawn!...
Thoughts on Space Games, Part 3: Too Many Tiny Games! angielski
Hi everyone, here’s the final post of my Space Game recommendations:...