Chozo

Chozo, 7 godzin temu

It depends on the game, and my familiarity with it. If it's a linear, story-based game where the player doesn't really influence the end result at all, then watching it is just as good as playing it myself, in my opinion. Or if it's a new addition to a franchise that I'm already experienced in, like a new Super Mario game, then watching it is generally just as fine of an experience as playing it.

But if it's a game that's based entirely around the experience of playing it, like most multiplayer shooters for example, then watching somebody else play may be entertaining, but doesn't substitute actually playing it myself.

Chozo, 17 dni temu

Check out The Finals! It's made by a bunch of ex-DICE devs who went and founded Embark Studios. Totally different vibe from Battlefield, but it still has the environment destruction and fine-tuned gunplay they've always been good at.

Chozo, miesiąc temu

I know people that got their Nintendo DS banned for using flash carts. This ain't new.

Chozo, miesiąc temu

I'm excited, as I loved the first one. I'm not in love with the disconnect between visual designs in the the pre-rendered scenes and the gameplay, though; the cutscenes look like they're for a completely different title altogether.

Also, no Miriam?

Chozo, miesiąc temu

I really want this to do well. I've lost a lot of faith in Konami in recent years, but the SH2 remake gives me a bit of hope, and I'd like to see them ride that momentum and breathe some new life into Silent Hill.

Chozo, miesiąc temu

It took a while to get there, but Cyberpunk 2077.

Chozo, miesiąc temu

As someone who spent several years and hundreds of dollars on Destiny 2, I sure am glad to see that this is why we couldn't get a new Crucible map for like five years.

Chozo, miesiąc temu

I just recently finished this one, and The Man Who Erased His Name. Apparently I've been sleeping on the Yakuza series, because they're fantastic, and have amazing soundtracks.

Chozo, 2 miesiące temu

As do handheld systems like GB/GBA/DS/PSP. IMO they emulate even better on phones since those games were already designed for small, handheld screens.

But most modern phones can also handily emulate up to some newer consoles, like N64/PS1-era with ease, though I've found that touch controls becomes a lot harder the more modern the console goes.

Chozo, 2 miesiące temu

There's a mobile port? I could've been stacking Xmult while on the john this whole time???

Chozo, 2 miesiące temu

The art director followed Antireal on Twitter.

If not for this, I would've chalked this up to the designs being abstract enough that it'd be feasible for two separate artists to have come up with them independently. The fact that he was following the artist is a bit damning.

It's a shame, because he's a fantastic artist, himself, but this is definitely going to soil his reputation, and probably calls into question some of his earlier pieces, as well.

Chozo, 2 miesiące temu

Or do you want to admit that you didn't really look at the comparison images?

You're already like five comments deep into an argument that hasn't even happened yet, calm down.

Chozo, 2 miesiące temu

Something that you may not be considering is that a big part of live service updates is stopping cheaters. Whether the game is balanced or not doesn't matter at all if other players are flying through the map and insta-killing everybody else.

Allowing the use of old versions of your game will consequentially allow cheaters to continue having access to known, exploitable files. Even if those files are no longer in use in the "live" version of the game, giving cheaters a sandbox to experiment in inevitably allows for further exploits to be discovered in the live version.

Chozo, 2 miesiące temu

I also recommend The Finals! It's exclusively multiplayer, and the only "grind" one needs to worry about is unlocking all the weapons and gadgets; it doesn't take long to do, and you don't even need all of them if you aren't going to use them. But there's nothing to level up or upgrade, so once you buy an item, it's just a permanent part of your kit. There's no story or campaign that you have to progress, no cutscenes to sit through. You just launch the game, pick a mode, and queue for a match.

I have like 750+ in-match hours logged, and have no plans on stopping.

Chozo, 2 miesiące temu

Honestly, I'd rather see another studio take a crack at the franchise. I don't know whether Gamefreak have lost a lot of important talent over the years or if they just got lazy because their games are guaranteed to sell no matter how poorly they're produced, but they do not know how to make games in the current era. Full stop. The last handful of mainline Pokemon titles have been unacceptably poor quality, and Nintendo won't light a fire under their ass because... why would they, when they're already printing money?

I think it would be wildly beneficial to the health of the franchise if a completely new studio took the wheel for a minute. They don't have to reinvent the game mechanics or take the story in some dark and gritty direction or anything like that, but if they just made it functional that'd already be a huge step up over Gamefreak's last few releases.

Personally, I'd love to see Retro Studios take a crack at a mainline Pokemon title. They've already got a very close relationship with Nintendo, and have released nothing but bangers.

Chozo, 2 miesiące temu

The electric costs aren't nearly as high as people think. For huge datacenters, yes, but that's because they're processing requests for hundreds or thousands of users simultaneously. For a studio using it to translate lines for a single game, they could easily get away with doing it locally, and effectively for free. You can train your own local model on a consumer-grade PC without any issue, and it'll still run just as fast as the big server farm-powered models.

My roommate has been playing with a bunch of different local AI models on his own PC for a couple years now. There's been no discernable change to our electric bill. His PC draws more power playing an anime waifu gacha game than it does training/generating AI.

Chozo, 2 miesiące temu

I think a big part of this sentiment has to do with Bungie burning a lot of bridges with their fan base in recent years. I'd played Destiny 2 for several years (from Shadowkeep through The Final Shape), and in that time Bungie had made a lot of very unpopular moves. From things like the "Destiny Content Vault" (where old content was removed from the game to make room for new content), expansions getting delayed by several months, massive studio layoffs, apparent mismanagement of an entire expansion (Lightfall), more studio layoffs... It's just really hard, as a player, to back a Bungie project right now. I no longer feel like their priorities line up with mine.

Meanwhile, I've also been a huge fan of Embark's previous game, The Finals. It's a totally different type of FPS compared to Destiny, yet they managed to capture my interest by doing correctly all the things Bungie did wrong. They nailed the monetization of the game and it doesn't feel predatory, they listen to their community, and they constantly show a commitment toward making The Finals into the best game it can be (and not necessarily the most profitable game it could be).

So while Marathon looks like it's got all the makings for an amazing game, I just don't feel like Bungie fans have enough faith left in Bungie anymore. For a lot of people, myself included, The Final Shape was the "end" of Destiny; not because Bungie stopped making it (they're still releasing content), but because we got the closure we wanted out of Destiny's story and we're just done with Bungie's antics.

That said, I just don't like extraction shooters. I played a bit of Arc Raiders to see how it is, and it's just not for me. Honestly, I hope both games do well, because it's clear that both studios put a lot of heart into these games and I'm interested in learning about both games' stories. But right now, Bungie has to overcome their reputation if they want Marathon to succeed.

Chozo, 2 miesiące temu

What was Wurm Online?

Chozo, 2 miesiące temu

I really don't think it was that secret. Every modern Ubisoft game I've played has had multiple unskippable TOS checkboxes that you had to agree to before you can even pass the title screen, which state in no uncertain terms that they're going to datamine the shit out of your entire play session.

It is still nice to see this stuff being challenged, though, even though I'm doubtful that it'll bring about any meaningful change.

Chozo, 2 miesiące temu

Yeah man we get it, piracy good, laws bad, yar har and all that shit. This guy's still an idiot, and so is anybody defending him.

Chozo, 2 miesiące temu

It's so lifelike!

Chozo, 3 miesiące temu

You gotta press the C button first, to ask them.

Chozo, 3 miesiące temu

There was fine print at one point during the stream that specified that 4K will be limited to 60 FPS.

Chozo, 3 miesiące temu

It took less computational power to put a man on the moon than it does to make the shadows look 2.03% more realistic.

Chozo, 3 miesiące temu

Australia's usually really strict when it comes to violence in video games, but the Silent Hill series isn't really known for intense gore. Though, the trailer looked a bit like it was going to be a bit body horror-focused (I got lots of Junji Ito vibes from it), so maybe SH:F will actually be a bit bloodier than other SH games.

Chozo, 4 miesiące temu

Good! Hopefully more devs follow suit and pull traffic away from Fandom.

Also hopeful that they manage to fix the SEO on the site, as Fandom is still the top result for "Vampire Survivors wiki".

Chozo, 4 miesiące temu

Anything to avoid discussing TES6.

Chozo, 4 miesiące temu

I believe it's supposed to be more of a spiritual successor to The Sims.

Chozo, 4 miesiące temu

That's interesting that they give you the full details like that. Most games will, at most, tell you "We took action against a player you reported", or something equally vague.

Chozo, 4 miesiące temu

For me, it'd be Prime. The game just oozes atmosphere from start to finish, and has one of my favorite game soundtracks of all time. I still sometimes listen to the Phendrana Drifts tracks because they're just so damn chill.

Chozo, 5 miesięcy temu

when will they tackle loot boxes?

Once loot boxes stop buying yachts.

Chozo, 5 miesięcy temu

Ranked isn't for fun, tho.

Chozo, 5 miesięcy temu

Man, you extrapolated a lot from five words.

1. Pretty much every game with a ranked mode also has casual modes. They're separated for a reason. While you absolutely can have fun playing ranked, fun isn't the point. Competition is the point.
2. Not at all. It's for people who want to compete. It's for people who care about what the scoreboard says at the end of a match. It's for players who care whether they win or lose, more than they care about having a good time.
3. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If you've ever watched esports players train, they're not logging into the game with the same mindset you or I might have. They're logging in with the same mindset we have when we start our shifts at work. They don't stop playing just because they stopped having fun, they're working towards a goal they've set for themselves. For the hyper-competitive player, the game is a passion more than a hobby.

To your point about Yu-Gi-Oh, that sucks and I feel you on that. But sometimes a game just has a higher skill curve due to the player base being experienced in the game. YGO is decades old at this point (new cards, sure, but the base game is largely the same), and a lot of players have been grinding at it the whole time. In fact, I'd imagine that a majority of people currently interested in YGO are probably longtime followers, who have steeped in the meta for years now.

It may not necessarily be that you're running into sweats or toxic players in the casual modes, as much as it is that the community at large is a bit ahead of you. TCGs are going to be like that a lot, just because they're inherently competitive.

These are all reasons I don't play competitive modes, for what it's worth.

Chozo, 5 miesięcy temu

It's hard not to when the man who just did two nazi salutes at the presidential inauguration is also trying to insert himself into our gaming spaces. We don't want nazis in our communities.

Chozo, 6 miesięcy temu

I'm confused. I've played Genshin, and I don't remember any sort of loot box system in the game. There's a gacha system which seems to be what the article keeps referring to, but that's very different from what I think the average user considers a "loot box".

Chozo, 6 miesięcy temu

I feel like the difference is the loot "box", itself. Granted, I've not played any loot box games since Team Fortress 2, but in that game the box was an actual inventory item you could store and open whenever you wanted, and those items would always be from the same pool.

With Genshin, you're basically just pulling from a singular, infinite loot box that rotates its reward pool. So you can't, as a player, decide to open a Year 1 item when it's not in the current rotation.

It's a small difference, but I feel like that's why we have separate terminology for "gacha" and "loot box" games.

Chozo, 6 miesięcy temu

My apologies if I'm getting this wrong, as I don't play Gacha games, but isn't that worse?

It depends. I'm not sure how current loot box games handle it, but with most gacha games, there are determined odds for the prizes, so they have a "pity" system. So after a certain amount of pulls, you're always guaranteed to get the top reward. RNG will make it so that you'll typically pull all the way to nearly the end of that pity timer before you get the top reward, but you'll eventually get it.

I'm not sure if traditional loot "boxes" have such a protection in place. I dunno if it's any better or worse since they're both pretty manipulative tactics, but it's different.

Chozo, 6 miesięcy temu

Was kinda hoping for specs. I like the design upgrade, though.

Chozo, 6 miesięcy temu

Maybe he realized that he bit off more than he could chew and that he's not actually a gaming visionary in the first place, considering that he stumbled upon Minecraft while developing a completely unrelated base-building game, instead. Minecraft was an accidental success, and you can't recreate an accident.

Chozo, 6 miesięcy temu

I dunno that the "Prime" name is that hard to get. If a couple of YouTubers can name their energy drink "Prime" and get away with it, then I imagine Microsoft wouldn't have much trouble using it.

Chozo, 6 miesięcy temu

Sounds like he finally ran out of that Microsoft money.

Chozo, 6 miesięcy temu

I don't think they can do much at all, actually. They're not allowed much wiggle room when it comes to being DMCA-compliant. They pretty much have to take every takedown request at face value, because DMCA requests are a legal process, and I imagine that any intervention on YouTube's side could be seen as arbitration. I doubt they could do much to interfere with an impersonator, since even a falsely-submitted DMCA complaint is still a legal request that has to be processed accordingly.

The DMCA needs to be gutted.

Nintendo can do something, though. They're the ones being impersonated, so they can actually take the guy to court.

Chozo, 6 miesięcy temu

I stopped playing because the story's over. The storytelling was the main thing that kept me playing for the last few expansions, and with The Final Shape being the finale to the main story, I just don't have a reason to go back to it right now. The episodic content is way lower quality than anything Bungie's put out before, and I kind of regret buying the deluxe edition of TFS because of that, as I have no intention of finishing the episodes.

It is still sad to see, though. I made a lot of really good friends through Destiny 2 and have a lot of great memories of times spent playing. Even though I'm no longer playing, it still feels like a pretty big loss seeing the community begin to fade away.

Chozo, 6 miesięcy temu

Agent 47 looks like he's seen some shit.

Chozo, 6 miesięcy temu

Must ship by: 2017 2020 2025 The heat death of the universe

Chozo, 7 miesięcy temu

It looks interesting, though it does feel a little slimy just how obvious they were about making sure all the sponsor logos were visible on screen. Like, it gave me Wayne's World flashbacks with how long they were holding on the logos, it almost felt like a parody.

Chozo, 7 miesięcy temu

I was actually really excited by the pre-rendered cut scene that wasn't cel-shaded. I thought they were going to ditch the cartoony aesthetic and try moving the franchise in a different direction. But then it switched to in-game footage, and it looks indistinguishable from footage of any previous BL game. Something about the art direction just looks like it's stuck in 2012, and not in a fun way.

Chozo, 7 miesięcy temu

Generally, I like cel shading. I think it's maybe the issue I have is more related to artistic choices; a lot of the designs are very chunky and low-detail. It still looks very distinctly, unmistakably like Borderlands, but it doesn't look like there's been any significant improvement since BL1. If you told me this was a DLC pack for the original 2009 game, I'd probably believe it.

The newer visuals in the cinematic had me thinking that maybe Gearbox is trying to do a soft reboot after how poorly the movie was received.