Katana314

@Katana314@lemmy.world

Profil ze zdalnego serwera może być niekompletny. Zobacz więcej na oryginalnej instancji.

Katana314,

Estelle, from Trails in the Sky.

She’s introduced as a bit of a cocky moron who constantly has to be wrangled by her more mature brother. But, there’s a slow development of competency where she starts to become decently sufficient at all the things her brother is good at, while he meanwhile lays bare some heavy emotional flaws - many of which Estelle excels at processing (call it a feminine trope, but it works).

Of note, all the rest of the Trails series have had male leads, and their pace of character development ground to a complete halt.

Katana314,

If you want something a bit closer to Starfox, rather than an all-range flight arena, try Rogue Flight. It definitely evokes the power fantasy feeling, living up the classic arcade trope of “one ship being readied on a mission to save humanity”. There’s some very big-name voice actor work in it, as well.

Another good game for the “power fantasy” trope, though it’s a bit more outside the target, is Ace Combat 7. Or, perhaps any games in the series, but this one is pretty accessible. The combat is close to what you’d get in X-Wing/Tie-Fighter, but with fighter planes. It breaks from realism a little bit where needed to make the stunts fun. And, the story very much orients around the silent player character being “scary tough” in a fight, to the point enemy fighters are retreating just from seeing your wing markings.

Katana314,

I realize when you search Steam there’s a lot of successful iterations of the classic Fire Emblem formula. Makes me wonder if any teams have done the same for HOMM3. I remember there was the fanmade expansion for it, it seems viable to invent a story/system from scratch.

EDIT: I should read other comments before commenting.

The non-profit helping people from all over the world to become successful game developers (www.theguardian.com) angielski

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Foundation broadened its reach by attending the world’s biggest video games event this summer – but faces challenges funding its work helping underrepresented developers

Katana314,

I think it’s perhaps more necessary than you might think.

We have a lot of entries appearing in Steam, yes, but a huge percentage of them are investor-driven, research-founded money farms. They intelligently gather players, and they successfully evade boycotting measures, but they don’t make people happy. And, the studios that went into them used to make such games but have been bought out and squeezed out by private equity.

If somebody really wants to play an online shooter, they’ll still play COD even if they hate it, IF it’s the only good option. The more new options appear, the less valuable those entrenched games get and the more likely they collapse entirely.

We’re kind of complacent with having people like Valve around making Steam, but we kind of need more people in that space for people to turn to as every major console gets enshittified. Even Gabe Newell won’t live forever.

Katana314,

I wish it was easier to predict when the AI bubble is going to pop. There’s likely lots of money to be made shorting them, but it’s not something small investors can do easily - and there’s a real possibility some thousands of investors instead pull harder on the copiumand just lie to themselves for the next decade that “it’s almost there bro, we just need another lake for cooling our doubled power output”

Katana314,

My general guess: The delay is tied to Denuvo. Smart devs will launch with Denuvo so that pudding-headed pirates (my label for a certain small demographic among pirates) drooling over marketing will see the trailers, try to pirate, fail, be told by crackers to wait like 2-3 weeks for them to unlock it; but instead become impatient and buy the game full price.

But the time period to capture pudding heads is not constant, and is not perfectly predictable before release. So, the developer may not want to commit to a certain release schedule where they will release on GOG, dropping Denuvo at that same time. They might even want to reserve the possibility the game will go years without dropping DRM, if it’s somehow staying constantly popular, and constantly desired by pirates, and/or they can see that the hacking communities have failed to unlock it.

Katana314,

That is a conclusion made in hindsight, the easiest place to make predictions. Not every studio has the same forms of public popularity and good will they can bank on.

Also, selling millions of copies is not an indicator of a studio’s upper bounds. Publishers - even indie-oriented ones - need the lightning in bottle releases to pay for games that didn’t do well. We can’t do an experiment where KC:D2 releases on two planet Earths, one with a DRM-free release and one with DRM, and say for certain that the second wouldn’t let them additionally fund another studio’s pet project.

Basically, given how many failed releases happen that we never hear about, it can be misrepresentative to point to some good games and say “See? Studios are able to pay their mortgage.” Denuvo is able to sell to studios, costing those studios money, in part by showing raw data (that we might not ever see) explaining how it promotes early sales.

Katana314,

The original Fatal Frame trilogy are some of the best horror games I’ve played. Not only are they genuinely scary without using a lot of blood, but they have difficulty that connects well with the scariness.

It occasionally feels “unfair” and makes you feel vulnerable, but is still relatively doable so that you don’t get overwhelmed. At times you’ll be retreading old ground just trying to solve a puzzle when another ghost will come at you out of nowhere.

Katana314,

There’s a scene like this in one of the Telltale Sam and Max games that really deserves a better reenactment. Went something like this:

Sam: “So, Bosco, how much do you want for this…’Deadly virus’ that’s really just a tissue you sneezed into?”
Bosco: “A hundred trillion dollars.”
Max: “WHAT? That’s insane!!”
Sam: “How crazy can you get to think we’re going to pay something like that?”
Bosco: “All I know is, I keep finding the dumbest junk around my store, and think up the most ridiculous price I can imagine for them! And you two keep paying it! So who’s crazy now, fool?”

Katana314,

If it’s too hard?

I’m not far enough in Silksong to give an opinion, but: Had this happen with Stellar Blade. I was playing through, actually started to enjoy the story, and it has a series of about 3 bosses at the end, interspersed with cutscenes (not fought in a row, just progressively harder). And they were awesome - challenging, but awesome. I felt rewarded for recognizing the full combo strings and parrying, as well as recognizing opportunities to get attacks in.

I get to the final boss (the “Take hand” one), and it’s a brick wall. Epic and all, but feels like a leap in difficulty for an already-tough game. I keep at it, trying my best, but it gets no easier. It’s also an unsatisfying runback after often barely getting far into the fight. Finally, having not needed it all game, I switch to the game’s built-in easy mode. Even then, it’s a challenge, and I lose if I’m not paying attention to the attacks! But, I can at least recover from those failures, and try to learn more in one go. From then, I’m eventually able to get through and see the conclusion to the story. I recognize I do not hold bragging rights to that final boss, and I’m fine with that. I liked getting to see the ending cutscene, I exhibited as much patience as I could give with the bosses…but any more than that, and I would’ve started to hate the game.

Katana314,

Now I wish Valve would implement Bluesky’s idea of blocklists.

Basically, the community would pool together to make voluntary lists of “Anti-woke mobs” that just troll through forums with rage bait, and add them to that list. It would require a level of trust, and tools to confirm each addition (eg, highlight a worst-case post from that user) but could start to clean things up.

They could also let users choose to hide posts from users below a certain Steam score, making it hard to occupy space with brand new accounts.

Katana314,

At the time, I predicted you were probably right - but it would still be a good value for the time that the price stayed low.

Katana314,

Let’s look on the bright side - they’re rushing the talent out to the independent pastures that made Expedition 33 as quickly as possible.

Let the venture capitalists publish their 100% AI-written slop for no one to buy. The gaming world will be out here making and playing games.

Katana314,

Half-Life 2. It brought me into PC gaming, as well as introducing me to Garry’s Mod, a relatively simple sandbox tool for creativity, complete with a wide array of assets to use.

I also really appreciate its moody world design that doesn’t often explain things directly to you.

Katana314,

I’ve always really loved mechanics that encourage players to manage risk, especially where it relates to HP systems.

One that I enjoyed, in Cosmic Star Heroine; when your characters’ HP reaches 0, they remain on their feet for their next turn. If their HP is healed to a positive number that turn, they can continue, but their healing is halved to make that difficult. On the other hand, while in negative HP, they can also perform an attack that deals double damage - after which they’ll be KO’d.

Fatal Frame has an item that will automatically revive and full-heal you one time when you would otherwise die. However, you can only hold one of these at a time. So, if you’re playing with heavy use of healing items, burning through all your film (ammo), you might find a second one, which will make you wish you’d leaned on the first one a bit more by not bothering to heal quite so often.

Another random example: You’re in a JRPG, and going against a boss enemy that has a brutal spell that reduces people’s HP by 3/4ths. However, they have pretty limited options for actually finishing you off. At some point, players will realize their advantage, and stop spending so much time healing people to full. A similar example is a boss in Final Fantasy X. It habitually casts Zombie on your party members, meaning healing spells will damage them, and revival spells will kill them. She then frequently casts “Revive-All” on your party. If everyone’s a zombie, that means you die in one turn. However, if you stop healing, and let party members die to basic attacks, she may accidentally bring them back to life for you - and no longer zombified.

Katana314,

I guess it’s at least nice for preservation, even if little progress has been made on consumer rights.

Lara Croft is a Sociopath angielski

Here I am playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider, when it dawns on me. Lara is a sociopath. She is a killing machine who barely even speaks on it, it’s nothing to her at this point. She doesn’t care about her health, injury nor pain. She just wants artifacts and to uncover ancient mysteries. I like her character but damn she is...

Katana314,

The unfortunate fact is, the conceit of most action games relies on some pretty dumb ideas.

  1. Every opponent is committed to ending your life, even to the point of fighting on when 80% of their unit is dead.
  2. Your hero is skilled enough at combat to win hundreds of fights without any permanent injuries
  3. The “light, casual” quests you’re put on like retrieving a child’s missing doll are important enough to for enemies to relentlessly guard with their life.

People have pointed this out for everyone from Mario to Nathan Drake, etc. Some games even try to base a “moment of introspection” around it, and it sort of falls flat.

Katana314,

Fuck it. Moderator action.

Before the poster makes any other posts, they must answer the prompt: “Apologies! We’ve been dealing with an influx of hate speech and bigotry, so to clarify your concerns, could you please provide the intended meaning of the word “Woke” in this post?”

Katana314,

It’s definitely not just indie games. I was looking forward to the Trails in the Sky remake, checked on its discussion forums, and it’s polluted with overblown “censorship” claims, sprinkled with “Guess the game FAILED cause it went WOKE” cringe.

If only Steam had something like BlueSky’s crowdsourced blocklists. That would be a freeform way of handling the issue.

Katana314,

The excuse doesn’t work well when “retro 3D” games are actively being made by indie devs today.

As long as it’s a uniform aesthetic aimed for and achieved by the devs, it can survive a long time. I’d say just as much of GTA: SA and a lot of Nintendo games.

It also goes to show that a lot of tactical/modern Xbox / 360 games never really had any stylistic imitators in the modern era, and for good reason.

Katana314,

Unfortunately, there are some very celebrated games that commit to this approach. Final Fantasy XIV and WoW keep getting away with it, and there are others.

Of course, they had to work for a long time to earn that pedigree and price tag. This certainly has not.

Katana314,

I didn’t bother watching the BF trailer. Can someone explain? I understand it’s making fun of a dichotomy of left/right/east/west

Katana314,

I will avoid giving Microsoft my money where possible, but I’m not going to oppose indie developers taking their money.

It just means their game trailers get an “Available with Game Pass” logo which I swiftly ignore.

Katana314,

I don’t think it’s such a direct lesson since it could’ve been other financial information on there. Instead of a crypto key, the game could’ve installed a keylogger that read the player’s banking password later.

It’s more of a general warning that Steam games are not necessarily safe.

Katana314,

From what I know of Concord, it kind of was a 7/10 game - It was functional, but just not impressive or interesting. The thing is, when it’s released with a fervent anticipation of being a “Live service HIT”, it was critically important to have a flood of players. At least indie singleplayer games can hit success late (Among Us being a perfect example, its first release didn’t really strike big)

Katana314,

I’m sure it’s a good time to mention Portal though. Many gamers have said they want tighter, more focused experiences that are really worth the price tag. I guess question being, is this game all that amazing, and are gamers honest about that thinking towards prices.

I at least agree that $70 is a lot.

Katana314,

Get a silk bag from the graveyard duck to live longer!

Katana314,

I’d even say the interconnectedness is often more of a handicap.

There’s one character in Sky whose arc is postponed into Azure. It…doesn’t fit with that larger narrative. Then, the biggest criticism of some of those later games is how there’s too many characters around. Most were enjoyed when first introduced, but then there’s way too many. In a lot of ways it suffers the same ways later Marvel movies do; banking on audience members shouting “I know what that is!!”

Supposedly some more recent games refocus on smaller groups but are still very much about “building a larger narrative”. I can’t claim I’ve played all of them to get a larger opinion, but Kingdom Hearts did a lot of that, and we saw its failed payoff in Kingdom Hearts 3 (actually something like KH8). I still enjoy the first two games in the series - the duology this one is remaking - but I’m pretty sick of the obsession with lore.

A video I watched even discussed how early Star Trek movies had blatant plotholes with earlier establishment, but that was fine because it was better to focus on the narrative the director wanted.

Katana314,

A lot of it reads as lazy DLC meant to satisfy investors that want “value-adds” without taking a lot of development time. I’d imagine only obsessive fans (admittedly, there are many) would be considering them.

But the fact that it’s a remake of a 20 year old game doesn’t seem like it would affect the value. For reference, the old one was top down with prerendered chibi sprites. The new one is fully 3D with voice acting. It’s a pretty sizable change in appearance, even how the combat functions. $60 is probably normal, though it makes sense that for anyone unsure about it, either play the demo or just wait for it to go on sale.

Katana314,

I’d almost like for more of the control to go the other way. A director could negotiate with a composer about what mood is being asked for a particular moment in a game, leading to the composer making ideas for leitmotifs and buildup. Then, the game gets some number of adjustments or early planning to account for it.

It sounds insane to reconfigure everything to match the music, but honestly, from some of my favorite moments in gaming, it can make a lot of sense. Some of the crescendo periods of Final Fantasy XIV felt incredibly well-earned from the way they had used the expansion’s whole soundtrack as a sort of ballad, repeating a few certain themes both story-wise and in the music.

One example of a game that I think developed this dissonance is Ace Attorney. The main confrontational “gameplay” of those games is when you’re cross-examining a witness. The “Cross Examination” themes are some of the fan favorites - and since the beginning, they’ve had a second theme, Allegro, for when things are getting more intense. The Investigations games decided to put in a third theme, Presto, which goes loony for the sake of a culminating showdown of wits with the murderer, who has one last excuse as to why accusing them is impossible. It feels EPIC.

Only one trouble; Ace Attorney is often a comedic series, and side characters are still acting stupid and making flat-falling jokes during that last cross examination, often breaking the mood of that great track. In my view, a “musically-directed” Ace Attorney would be fine with keeping up its signature silliness at all other points in the game, but keep the tone completely serious when that “Presto” theme is playing, to make it feel like a really personal boss fight.

Katana314,

The only one of those I really expect to show censorship resistance is Steam. And of that, I’m very curious if they’re going to see repercussions from it.

Katana314,

Countdown to him getting fired in 3…2…3…4…8…49…

Because companies ultimately seem to love leaders that are toxic these days.

Katana314,

I think the death run back and the option of exploring for upgrades were always at odds. When you respawn, getting things back is your first task as a form of loss avoidance. But then you’re standing in front of the boss room, maybe after jumping some spike pits, and you might as well just go in. There’s no thought to going other places at that point.

Shovel Knight used a death run to reclaim your lost treasure, and it worked out because it plays as a linear platformer, egging you on into accomplishing the daring feat you just pulled; gating little important behind upgrades.

Soulslike Tunic basically abandoned the death run back, just having you lose 20 gold (which hangs in that spot), and the game didn’t really suffer for it especially because exploration of old areas is so key to that game.

Katana314,

I’d recommend you don’t watch this if you’ve yet to play the first game (either iteration). A few spoiler elements.

It was kind of a given that this would be made, since, while the first has a great set of conclusions, it also sets up a really compelling cliffhanger element. The two games were supposedly written as one originally, and then split to two since it was getting long.

Still, part of me predicts some people will play the upcoming remake, and then get so wrapped up in the ending they’ll just buy the old-fashioned SC so they don’t have to wait for the remake edition.

Katana314,

This often happens to me in RPGs because I’m missing some combat mechanic or fundamental.

It’s made me want to design better optional tutorials for those games to help people discover certain strategies. Eg;

“Hey, you have many different tuning macguffins on this character, but it means their stats aren’t built to any one strength. For an example, try using 8 yellow macguffins to build them for taunting/defense so they can use their self-heal unique, and build up stun on enemies each time they’re attacked.”

Those things feel so witty to discover, but many RPGs now build up and prioritize so many systems it’s understandable people aren’t quickly attuned to them. What often gets me is thinking I’m not making the right decisions mid-combat, when my menu decisions around equipment/abilities are completely wrong.

Katana314,

It might be a fun moment in a soulslike when you’re fighting a same-sized story character that used to be a friend, they display the health bar as “x8”, and then each time one is depleted, they use a healing item inbetween swings.

Watch Dogs Legion’s Recruitment System is Fantastic (spectra.video) angielski

Ico and Shadow of the Colossus creator Fumito Ueda recently said that the age of developers creating new mechanics is over, something he’s apparently being saying since Journey. For the most part, I agree with him. But there’s one AAA game that bucked this trend - Watch Dogs Legion. With its incredible NPC recruitment...

Katana314,

The loss of character identity was not great for this game.

It didn’t help that my game had a save-breaking issue that set me back 5 or 6 hours.

Katana314,

That’s not always true when members of the team feel really motivated and inspired by a concept.

I’ve been in that zone a few times before. “Well, I’ve been working for a few hours. I guess I should take a break and play a game. …Or, I could just keep at it…?”

Of course, with such large teams now, you’re unlikely to see that happen to many of them. They’ll be working late, but usually zombies.

Day 422 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing angielski

Today’s game is Final Fantasy 7. I picked this up on Steam after borrowing it from my local library a few years ago and playing like 7 chapters on PS4. That poor PS4 barely held together while running it. It sounded like a Jet Engine. I nearly wasn’t able to play this today due to my slow ass internet taking forever to...

Katana314,

I never played Remake, but when a YouTuber recently did a comparison video between some of their major scenes, I ended up respecting the original so much more.

A great one was when the plate falls. The original made directorial choices that emphasized the brutality of it all so much better, especially by choosing to cut the music. It just seems like Remake’s director was adding so many things simply because he could, making short and direct scenes so much worse by excess creation.

Of note, another JRPG from that general time period, Trails in the Sky, is being remade soon, and that one seemed quite a bit more faithful to me. Still taking liberties to change dialog, but only where it makes sense - they also greatly retooled the battle system with full respect for classic turntaking style.

Katana314,

When I run a social media site, it will be a rule to use uncensored terms, and any use of asterisks or alt-words like “unalive” will result in a warning or suspension.

Katana314,

When listening to the dev commentary of Valve games, they talk about how much work goes into level design planning even just for the sake of optimization, like clearly delineating barriers between major regions (doorways) so the engine can unload objects from other areas.

I get the impression the “First step easy” setup from UE5 may have made it so that more people can give us unoptimized messes, but still only a few rare devs understand proper optimization at all levels of development.

Katana314,

I’ve still been using it lately to animate a video. It’s nice that so many tools have been refined in that time.

Katana314,

Playing an indie mystery game called Dragon Detective. I’m on case 4 so far, it’s definitely held my attention with the story. It manages to do a good job with its worldbuilding.

Katana314,

This makes me realize the last time I interacted with Digimon was the age-old TV show that began with an Isekai.

I’m curious how the series has changed. Apparently some of the newer stories lean a bit darker?

Katana314,

It sounds plausible Sony and Microsoft don’t have very fair algorithms to decide what a dev earns for their subscription. That’s an internal element, and we don’t get to see that calculation.

Imagine a guy hears about Game Pass, and sees he can play Spiritfarer on it. “Spiritfarer!? That awesome emotional experience that everyone says they cried at? I’m definitely playing that!” 5-ish hours later, they’ve finished the game, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but the subscription is still going.

At this point, the subscriber decides they may as well play State of Decay 2 mindlessly the rest of the month, often without much interest, but trusts another excellent singleplayer indie darling will arrive next month.

I’d bet the algorithm may pay the SOD2 devs far more in that case because numbers show that’s what “kept them engaged”, not to mention live service games like SOD2 have DLC to entice people into.

Theres absolutely a danger in that thinking, since most people bought a PS5 after seeing Sony’s incredible singleplayer games, and I believe that’s primarily what gets people into Game Pass too.

Katana314,

I mean, you changed the topic onto the subject of pricing, which is the main thing driving sentiment that Microsoft is anti-consumer. There are other smaller gaming subscriptions out there, and I don’t call many of them anti-consumer.

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