That’s part of it sure, but it just… doesn’t feel right. Someone else pointed out how it is almost an “alternate universe Max Payne 2” with how it feels narratively like a more follow-up to the first game than the second. It also just has a very different tone and style in the writing. It doesn’t have that Remedy vibe. Everything from the characters and main story to the TV bits, which feel very different compared to Lords and Ladies and Adress Unknown.
It’s by no means a bad game, and the action bits are awesome. It just doesn’t feel like a Max Payne game to me.
Remedy are doing a connected universe, kind of like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. People are calling it the Remedyverse. They’ve started blending their IPs into each other, even IPs they no longer own like Max Payne and Quantum Break (where they just change the names pretty much so “Alex Casey” becomes “legally distinct Max Payne”). It’s very cool and really comes to its head in Alan Wake 2, which really is enhanced quite a bit by playing the other Remedy games in order first.
Max Payne 3 isn’t bad at all - it’s a very tight 3rd person shooter. It’s just that it was made by Rockstar and not Remedy (Rockstar had bought the IP after Max Payne 2). So Max Payne 3 doesn’t really “feel” like a Max Payne game. It’s still a good game though, I just kind of wish it was independent of the Max Payne franchise.
Man, old paper magazine PC Gamer… Strong nostalgia overload. Getting a copy was always the highlight of the month, that era of like 1995-2009 was really the golden age of PC gaming.
It definitely is time for Max Payne! Well, unless you want to wait for the RTC Remix mod. And it’s the first step into the wonderful Remedyverse too, culminating in the fantastic Alan Wake 2!
Both MP 1&2 are honestly amazing, and they are very short games too so not really a huge commitment compared to some modern titles. The comic book style slideshow used instead of cutscenes was also ingenious as it has let the game age incredibly gracefully.
Do it! The story and writing is still great and the gameplay holds up surprisingly well for such an old game (not that it will feel modern, but it’s not a chore to play).
Well… kinda but not really. The room-placement is only a small part of Blue Prince though and I think turning it into a roguelite was pretty innovative.
Funny story, Tonda Ros actually hadn’t heard of Betrayal until Blue Prince was well into beta testing. These things happen. The true inspiration for it was a choose-your-own-adventure/puzzle book by Christopher Manson called “The Maze”. Manson actually contributed with the art for the paintings in the Gallery in Blue Prince.
Okay listen. I know I haven’t played it myself but… Isn’t Arc Raiders just another fucking extraction shooter? How the fuck does it beat Blue Prince for most innovative gameplay?
It has some really strong moments and a very powerful ending that means it leaves a very strong lasting impression in a lot of people. Also the music really carries it. I still think it’s a good game, but I was definitely a victim of this too and have found that my esteem of it has fallen a little bit as the “dust has settled” so to speak.
It’s still a great game, and I’d recommend people playing it but I don’t think I’d rank it as highly on my all-time list now as I would have when I sat and watched the credits roll the first time.
The game was made by communists, and they do make fun of themselves and other communists a lot and try to be even handed with the satire. That being said, if you’ve completed all four political vision quests you do notice how pro-communist the authors are. I always recommend people do the communist path on their first playthrough, because it is the political quest that injects a necessary piece of hope into the game. It feels almost like the “canon” choice considering how well it balances out certain other elements of the story.
Communist vision quest spoilersNot only do you have some gorgeous lines in the book club about their motivations, like: > “I guess you could say we believe it because it’s impossible.” He looks at the scattered matchboxes on the ground. “It’s our way of saying we refuse to accept that the world has to remain… like this…” But then the scene also ends with irrefutable proof that infra-materialism works. Ideas can change the world if you believe in them.
Are you looking for story or gameplay? Chaos Zero Nightmare is relatively new and is a roguelike deckbuilder with really good gameplay. Lots of synergies, lots of combos, lots of variations of every card letting you craft very specific decks that can make almost anything work if you just get lucky with finding just the right pieces and upgrades during a run.
The story is ass though (but at least there is a fast forward button) and some of the character designs do make me roll my eyes with how absurdly gooner-baity they are.
That’s very interesting and sounds cool - though might be above my paygrade.
What kind of delay does the double prompting incur? I can’t imagine it would be nothing, especially for this use case of calling external LLMs via a proxy.
If anything a RAG for certain game related information might be a nice addition to the current system, rather than replacement. I think for a roleplay and storytelling focus there is a benefit of having a persistent character “life story” of long term memories fed into every prompt, creating character throughlines and potentially even character development.
Well, what I’m working on is a mod for STALKER Anomaly, and most large models already seem to have good enough awareness of the STALKER games setting. I can imagine it’s a much bigger challenge if you’re making your own game set in your own unique world. I still need to have some minor game information inserted into the prompt, but only like a paragraph detailing some important game mechanics.
Getting longer term interactions to work right is actually what I’ve been working on the last few weeks, implementing a long-term memory for game characters using LLM calls to condense raw events into summaries that can be fed back into future prompts to retain context. The basics of this system was actually already in place created by the original mod author, I just expanded it into a true full on hierarchical memory system with long- and mid-term memories.
But it turns out creating and refining the LLM prompts for memory management is harder than implementing the memory function itself!