Coelacanth

Coelacanth, 11 godzin temu

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).

Coelacanth, 3 godziny temu

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.

Coelacanth, 2 dni temu

While it win the Indie Award, I wonder?

Coelacanth, 3 dni temu

Dark Souls will probably be great, and I’m also very curious about Pokémon HGSS as that has a special place in my heart.

Coelacanth, 4 dni temu

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?

Coelacanth, 3 dni temu

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.

Coelacanth, 4 dni temu

Ooh, I haven’t watched a Christopher Odd LP in a while! That’s nice and short too I think I’ll watch that today. Thanks for the suggestion!

Coelacanth, 8 dni temu

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.

Coelacanth, 12 dni temu

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.

Coelacanth, 12 dni temu (edited 12 dni temu)

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.

Coelacanth, 14 dni temu

I’d recommend both Dispatch and Blue Prince — I still haven’t completed the latter, but, yes, I’ve unlocked the secret elevator.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but… you’re not as deep into Blue Prince as you think you are.

Coelacanth, 17 dni temu (edited 17 dni temu)

There are mods that implement it, don’t know about games. Skyrim has an AI driven follower mod and STALKER Anomaly has the TALKER mod.

Coelacanth, 17 dni temu

I’m actually also working on a project using LLMs to talk to NPCs. Though this one doesn’t use local models but online models called through a proxy using API keys, which lets you use much larger and better models.

But yeah it’s been interesting digging deep into the exact and precise construction of the prompts to get the NPCs talking and behaving exactly like you want them, and be as real and lifelike as possible.

Coelacanth, 16 dni temu

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!

Coelacanth, 12 dni temu

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.

Coelacanth, 17 dni temu

This feels kind of more like finding a valid excuse after the indie-or-not debate and backlash, but fuck it. Blue Prince is a great Indie GOTY (the correct choice imo).

I don’t think E33 should have qualified as an indie game to begin with.

Coelacanth, 17 dni temu

They do have a publisher: Kepler Interactive. But so does Blue Prince in fairness, it was published by Raw Fury.

What constitutes an indie game will always be debated, because it’s almost impossible to define it through black and white rules. If Kojima created a game with a budget of $300m, a cast of Hollywood A-listers and a development team of 200 people and published it himself, would that be an appropriate nomination for the Indie Awards?

Larian self published BG3, should that have been nominated for Indie Awards?

Coelacanth, 17 dni temu

I agree with your take. The definition of what an “indie” is is very vague and subjective, but given the budget and resources and circumstances of E33’s development it seems outside the scope of what seems to be the “spirit of the award”.

Blue Prince should have gotten the award to begin with.

Coelacanth, 17 dni temu

People didn’t call Dave the Diver an indie game. The Game Awards nominated it in that category, and rightly got a lot of shit for it.

Indie is a fraught and vague term in whatever genre of culture it gets applied to. During the early 00s indie music era you had tons of mass produced “indie rock” pushed out by big labels too.

Everyone kind of knows what it’s supposed to mean: small budget, small crew, independent of the major commercial publishers/labels/whatever. But there will always be edge cases in both directions.

Coelacanth, 25 dni temu

I don’t want any gifts, I just wanted to say you’re an amazing person and this is a great initiative ♥️

Coelacanth, 29 dni temu

I absolutely love Blue Prince! Such an amazing experience and a unique and innovative game. I hope you’re enjoying the note taking and progressively losing your mind!

Coelacanth, 29 dni temu

Without spoiling anything I will say this: I recommend taking actual notes. I did it in a physical notebook but digital has the benefit of being searchable. It’s possible to get by with only screenshots, but I really recommend both and I thought the note taking itself was so enjoyable. I find physical note taking helps with memorization too, and every time you make progress because of something you’ve taken notes of is such a dopamine rush.

Coelacanth, 28 dni temu

Enjoy your time with it! Those moments of seeing something in game and going “wait wait wait I know what this is!” *rifles through notes furiously* were my favourite part.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I have seen debates of both 3 and 4 over New Vegas. These arguments tend to come almost exclusively from newer fans. Anyone who played 1 and 2 first, especially back in the day, tends to have a much less favourable view of the Bethesda Fallouts. But there are tons of Bethesda-first fans who came into Fallout after first playing Skyrim, typically. The 4 fans either love the base building or tend to think the other games are “too old looking/feeling”. The 3 fans… I don’t even know, that game is pretty terrible I think. But they tend to argue the design of the world in 3 is better to explore than New Vegas.

I haven’t personally heard anyone argue 76 is the best Fallout, but I’m sure someone is out there.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I mean, I love NV and think it’s by far the best 3D Fallout, but it’s also got a ton of performance and bug issues. Partly due to the engine they were working with and the insane development cycle, but still. The game isn’t without issues. It’s famously unstable and buggy if played without mods. I also think it needs mentioning that a lot of the assets look out of place, because they are. The game had such a short development cycle that a lot of them are just reused FO3 assets.

I love it, but there is a reason so many people recommend something like the Viva New Vegas modlist even for a first playthrough.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Interesting that they didn’t include Ninja Gaiden 4 in an otherwise incredibly exhaustive list, but apart from that I think this is as close to “every notable 2025 release, summarised and collected” as you’re going to get.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I forgot about those because I never played them myself and honestly this year has been awash with so many good releases that they kind of slipped my mind. But you’re absolutely right!

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I haven’t played it in a million years but I remember Cut The Rope being really fun.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Recently it’s been Chaos Zero Nightmare on my phone. Yeah, it’s a gacha. Yeah it has some absolutely ridiculous gooneriffic character designs that makes me roll my eyes. Yeah it’s poorly translated and the story is garbage.

But you know what? The actual roguelike deckbuilder game mode is actually a ton of fun. The characters are well balanced enough that I’ve never felt like I was behind on power even with comparably “bad” pulls from the gacha. The game has been generous enough anyway that I have a lot of pulls saved up too. And the mutability and variety in the roguelike mode is just amazing. Tons of combos, tons of variations of every card and tons of opportunities to make niche builds work just because you happened to get one specific rare upgrade variation on one specific card while also stumbling upon one specific neutral card to add to your deck and stuff like that.

And all for the price of free? I can’t complain.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Does the story actually get good? I tried it out around launch but when they introduced a knockoff Paimon I noped out. I was there for a dark post-apocalypse story, not Sunday morning cartoon. Not that there is anything wrong with it but just not for me. I felt a little mislead.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

-95% and an All-Time Low mark on isthereanydeal.com is like my personal catnip.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I haven’t really played anything the past week, beyond playtesting changes I’m making to the TALKER mod for STALKER: Anomaly (the mod using AI to let you talk to NPCs). This little project has grown considerably and I have a lot of writing left to do before it’s fully ready I think. But early signs are positive. I also have some more prompt engineering to do. I’m getting much better and more interesting responses from NPCs now than with the base mod - which had extremely basic and barebones instructions for the LLM.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Can I half-cheat and say Control?

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I don’t know, I played Blasphemous this summer and had a very mixed time with it. I really wanted to love it but it mostly pissed me off. Too much gameplay design specifically intended to waste your time and make you miserable. Which - I guess - is the point because the game is all about the virtue of suffering. I just didn’t find it particularly fun to play.

Great world building, music and art though.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

It is… kind of. Hence the half-cheat. First off it’s 3D, but the game is completely centered around the Oldest House, which is the headquarters of the fictional FBC. Like a Metroidvania you explore and backtrack back and forth through it and unlock new areas opening up from previous places. There is also one (although only one) proper ability gate that lets you explore previously unreachable parts of earlier areas once unlocked.

Even if you don’t classify it as a true Metroidvania it’s definitely Metroidvania-inspired.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Blue Prince only being nominated for the two indie awards is an expected travesty. Merited a GOTY nomination imo and also a OST award nomination. Sad times.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I know it never had a chance to win it. It never had a chance to win the soundtrack award either, but a nomination is still something.

I’m assuming Silksong snags the Indie Award but Best Debut Indie should be possible to win perhaps. It’s such a unique, interesting and inventive game and it deserves recognition.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Even on Normal you can just build defensively and use Maelle with Egide to tank through like 99% of the game even without nailing a single parry or dodge. It’s only maybe the optional superboss that might give you trouble.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Perfect for when I shake my current STALKER addiction and get back to actually playing the AW2 DLCs. Bookmarked, thanks for sharing!

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

There is an alternate universe out there where the N-gage was a smash hit, Nokia is reigning supreme in the handheld market and we’re all rocking gull-wing phones.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Same story for almost every passion industry. I remember being surprised at first to learn how underpaid Formula 1 engineers are when some of them are literal rocket scientists, for example.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I know it was very original and different back in the day, but is it really one of the “best game ever”?

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

The writing, setting and concept were charming and the art direction is good which means despite being polygonally challenged I don’t mind the way it looks. Great soundtrack too. That being said I tried playing it earlier this year for the first time and it just struck me as one of those games that have aged like fine milk mechanically. It really really wants you to be a stealthy spy sneaking around and being non-lethal yet the stealth gameplay felt terrible, and going guns blazing wasn’t particularly fun either as gunplay in these old games is hard for me to enjoy having gotten used to modern FPSes. And it doesn’t help that the guns blazing approach forces you to listen to a constant soundtrack of blaring alarms, which frankly was hard for me to deal with.

I couldn’t make myself finish it despite really wanting to be able to say I’ve played it, but maybe I’ll give it another go some day. At least I don’t think it’s all that long.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

For me in general I think FPS games have aged the worst. There is such a big part of the pleasure that comes from animations, gunplay, recoil implementation, enemy AI, ragdolls, hit effects… I have a much easier time playing something like Fallout 1&2 - which are even older but have mechanics that are more timeless.

But yeah it was definitely a time in gaming where technological advancements felt like they were happening at an exponentially increasing pace. Comparing games from 2000 with just a few years later is like night and day. Splinter Cell came out only two years after NOLF and that’s a stealth game that’s aged spectacularly. And even Monolith’s own F.E.A.R. came out in 2005 and feels like one of the first truly modern shooters - one that still really holds up well.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

My STALKER: Anomaly playthrough is progressing at the typically languid pace. As soon as I find a scoped shotgun for Hip’s quest I can start thinking about migrating my base of operations a bit north. For a Loner run this would be prime time to setup in Rostok, but Mercenaries aren’t on friendly terms with Duty so that’s out. I’ll have to make it to Dead City probably and that will be quite a trek. I probably have to wait until I find and repair a better suit. And also hope my companions don’t die on me as I need them to haul over all my collected shit in my stash.

I’ve also been playing Chaos Zero Nightmare on my phone. Yes it’s a gacha game (don’t buy any currency to gamble) and yes the character designs are unfortunately a bit too gooneriffic, and yes the story is pretty bad and the translation is pure Google Translate level machine-translated slop. But you know what? The actual gameplay of the roguelike deckbuilder portion is actually very fun. Tons of customisation with an incredibly mutable deckbuilder that has tons of variations for every single card. Even the balance is surprisingly good, with such endless possibilities in combos and specific versions of specific cards that you can make pretty much any character shine with enough work on finding just the right decks and setups. Don’t know if it will stick, and I’ll keep an eye on balance going forward to see if they start making it more pay-to-win, but for now I’m having a surprisingly good time with it.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Does the switch have Ninja Gaiden Black? 04 is good and all but Black is even better.

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

Ah. I guess of the Sigmas it’s the least offensive version. It’s a shame still though as NGB is the perfect version. But yeah I momentarily forgot about it being an Xbox exclusive.

Great game though!

Coelacanth, miesiąc temu

I want to finish it some day but I also kind of get sick of it quickly whenever I try to play it for extended periods and actually do main story missions.

Fucking around in the open world and fishing and hunting and all that is great though.