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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is actually from 2022, but I missed it back in the day. This is quite important research imo, and very relevant lately. Link to the paper itself: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0747563222001637
Much as I’d predict support for that conclusion, I feel like there’s room to doubt the survey process used - as has often been the case for studies on gamer behavior.
I have different reasons I hate MS and Game Pass specifically, but I was never convinced by this argument.
It works on the argument of “We would like to stop offering direct purchase models, and require consumers to play by subscription.” But no one has done that. No one has really come close to doing that.
People argue the price will steadily go up; and that’s one of the reasons I don’t play Game Pass anymore. I knew that I wouldn’t maintain access to the games on there, which is why I bought the ones I wanted to keep playing - not very many.
So this is basically an observation about raising prices. But I think there’s a misconception on social media that you have to be reading the news and on your soapbox to alert people to those things.
Pricing has always very readily affected people’s spending behavior. Not just people that follow gaming news, but people browsing GameStop for whatever’s new. We’ve even seen that - stats are showing people spent much less on games this year. Some people are even spending less through the option of going for a subscription rather than buying 8 games through the year. The publisher plan is certainly to tune up that cost with time, but personally, I don’t think that plan has a high chance of success.
And there’s a very worrying reality on the publisher side that gamers have many alternatives, especially as quality falls in these AAA products. You can imagine someone starved for a Soulslike might’ve spent $70 on generic copycat “Folly of the Dodgeroll 7”, if not for seeing Hollow Knight Silksong for $20 one shelf over.
So basically, I never hated the subscription model itself as a “weapon of capitalism”; just the constant attempts to shrinkflate as has been happening to most else.
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.
I never actually liked FromSoft’s themselves, but several Soulslikes I really enjoyed did away with runbacks, or always had checkpoints right before bosses.
I really just want people to start evaluating each design decision Dark Souls made on its own - stop worshipping the whole as being perfect, because it most definitely is not. So many of the knowledge checks (poise, anyone?) are just there for experienced players to lord over confused shrubs.
This excuse stopped working the day I opened a tough-as-nails game like Furi, saw it had a difficulty menu, said “That’s nice”, and went back to challenging myself against the bosses on default settings.
It’s such a huge cop-out of self control, and especially falls to acknowledge that the forms of difficulty in a game are often varied - and someone might suck at only one of them.
I’m gonna be real with you: I don’t like Dark Souls. It felt poorly designed and obtuse with no payoff. But, it took me a long time to learn it’s completely unconstructive to bash it in places where people are admiring it. Whether I like it or not, other people do.
If you must, give a word of caution so people know what to expect. “It’s a Metroidvania, I didn’t like it because it’s very black and white, and goes hard on difficulty.”
This could just be the vestiges of E3’s ghost creating a bad demo, but I was pretty unimpressed by this. If Hitman allowed you to be as freeform as Crysis, this demo looked like Crysis 2, highlighting all the specific options that they crafted for you to use, and there are only maybe three of them rather than allowing you to...
Sometimes it’s an unfortunate demo effect where the devs have a form of gameplay they prefer that just doesn’t impress investors on a big screen. So, they shift toward the run-and-gun playstyle.
I seem to remember getting surprised by some AAAs in this way, where I expected them to be brainless action, then find myself strategizing in ways that E3 didn’t show since those bits are slower paced. Haven’t watched the video just yet though.
Like, I chose to play the Tutorial at the beginning. This Chainsaw seems like a pretty critical piece of the gameplay loop, but at no point has there been an explicit explanation or demonstration.
Doesn’t need a run button. And, something kind of useful is that while revving, the game changes from strafe controls to tank controls, making it easier to orient at an enemy around a corner since you can’t reach your camera thumbstick.
Much as I love XIV’s story, I really needed to break up story progression with other content, just for variety. I leveled up all crafters, did many daily raids, etc.
Maybe it matches with my hate of L4D’s high-level-focused Versus mode, but I couldn’t make it past two games of Evolve, while I’ve played a lot more B4B.
That video is completely out of date. I watched a sampling of the bugs they were showing, and none of them appear for me, even when playing with bots.
I remember it being shared on release, and its focus on things like physics within maps was a very specific thing - after Half-Life 2 many games gave up on physics especially in online, because it was more likely to lead to glitchy and unexpected behavior than emergent gameplay.
There’s so much in that video you’d have to pick out what matters to make your case, but to take melee reactions: B4B didn’t want the shove to be so powerful or delay the horde much, so it made sense zombies wouldn’t fall to the ground from one shove; the animation length would end up locking up the difficulty.
Death reactions is another gameplay choice. With automatic weapons, I wasted alot of ammo in L4D2 simply because it wasn’t instantly clear an enemy was dead - they were just playing out their lengthy Oscar death. Sometimes it’s a tradeoff between showcasing the enemy design, and showcasing the weapon’s effects when dozens of other enemies are bearing down.
I have been considering livestreaming gaming (mostly Retroachievements, and maybe some noncompetitive speed running), but I cannot find/decide a good service. I am not considering it as a source of income, or wanting a huge number of viewers....
I feel like a growing solution would be to simulcast to Twitch as well as other platforms, and hopefully slowly encourage users to view via the other platforms.
Kudos to the OP - I stopped watching Twitch when Bezos went full Nazi, but couldn’t get YouTube off my list.
The excitement of F1 racing is unattainable to most people, which is why it makes sense as a game, but bikes are pretty tame. However, one thing that makes bikes interesting is their smallness, ease and simplicity. The Yakuza series has started picking up on giving protagonists such small vehicles, including a skateboard and a segway, and they make much more sense within those worlds than full vehicles.
I feel like this could be envisioned as part of a larger open-world game, not as the vehicle itself as a means to fun. Something like: You have an open world game, and it has cars, and they are faster than your bike. But they are far more nimble, can go in tighter areas, and can be stored in larger vehicles used to get around. So, something like picking the Gravity Gun in Half-Life 2, they’re a tool that’s fantastic for making use of the environment for better results, but not a “first-order strategy for movement”. This is even sometimes how they work out in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Something I’ve picked up on with my gaming preference is stories that don’t simply focus on one “mood” for the game, but alter it to fit the situation. Players get a relaxed time exploring or diving into combat, and the world is inviting and colorful, but when the story builds, it puts brutal tests of character in front...
I didn’t quite get that feeling with Breath of the Wild, but I’ve certainly had those moments where the theme of a ruined world absolutely ruined my emotional stakes, so I can understand it.
The opening lines of Nier Automata are nihilistic and signal 2B’s desire to just get death over with. Nothing in the whole game’s story brought this feeling back in the other direction, and as a result of an adventure spanning a gray and brown “Abandoned city and death” the optimistic ending absolutely didn’t hit with me. Hard to identify why my response was so different from everyone else’s.
The pointlessness of a fight amid a ruined world is also what makes me not care about a lot of uber-dark Soulslike games. I don’t see much of what I’m saving in most of those, and learning the lore behind all of Dark Souls’ endings reinforces that feeling.
It’s hard to tell which extreme is going to surprise people first with Valiant Hearts.
Like, it’s a WW1 game so of course you’re expecting it to be brutal. Then, it’s cute to have so many stories of soldiers not based around killing people - just adventure, puzzle-solving, making friends across country lines, as well as the heartfelt letters written.
Then it gets to Chemin des Dames, and holy shit, not even the most brutal shooters evoke the unfathomable amounts of death happening in those meat grinders. Neither element would’ve hit so hard without the other giving you that kind of whiplash.
The only real lesson here might be that both Western media as a whole, and the Eastern anime industry, have regressed a lot. Rambo in particular is marked by tragedy with the way sequels warped him into a false image of raw masculinity. Many anime authors have even said as much. But the Eastern gaming scene appears to still have some very dedicated auteurs.
It’s even sort of harmed the feminist movement for Western media to be so simple - often showing women as unemotional, infallible badasses to try to “equal the score”, ultimately just causing people to hate them and even misconstrue women as being the issue with those movies.
But I’m also glad to get more examples of poignant Western media; I felt upset that I could only think of Eastern examples, when I know there are some great ones made more locally.
Something I realize I never touched on is the specific way emotional extremes tie in to specific characters.
Quite often, what I enjoy most about story-driven games is the way you either see characters change, or get to see different sides of them. The moment that the quirky and silly kid turns deathly serious and speaks directly. The moment that a calm, collected tactician falls into a panic attack and runs away. The moment that an emotionless assassin is pressed into laughter for the first time.
One specific game that gave this feeling in spades is JRPG “Trails in the Sky”. I think it sometimes forces its extremes a bit, but it’s very good at spending a long time building joy and normalcy before establishing how much trauma and violence exists in the history and near-future of the world.
But while JRPGs can bore people with their 50-80-hour runtimes, one game I think demonstrated that principle fantastically was “Elite Beat Agents” for the DS. Within the scope of a 5-minute pop song, a focal character may go to the lowest point of their life, and bounce all the way back to happiness. Pushing the idea along with a frenetic musical pace makes it more acceptable, but it shows the importance of taking someone to both extremes.
That’s honestly exactly what’s kept me away from CRPGs. The premise often seems to be based around something like ruined worlds or corrupt empires (both, in Wasteland’s case), with little hope for massive change. The old poster child, Fallout, runs its whole train off of treating endless grim fighting as an absurd thing to not even care about, with its tagline “War never changes”. Fun sometimes, but never meaningful.
If you’re able to get a good internet connection, you could run anything on Geforce Now’s list. Not the most optimal gaming experience, but it can be satisfying enough.
To give something more specific I enjoy, try Backpack Hero. It’s a roguelike on the easier side, built around making absurd combos.
That might be underselling how big the series is - not to mention that many of them have been completely re-done in HD so they’re no longer on GBA graphics.
These are generally pretty big games. A lot of “mystery” games are about one mystery, but every AA game has at least 4, the last of each game being a giant epic journey.
I had this exact issue with the first two Dark Souls games. I explored, but did not find the “intended path forward” that would give me a gradual difficulty curve.
This is why I think a better game formula is: Give players some kind of overt objective marker or in-world guidance for their primary destination, but also point out they’re going to start having a very hard time if they never explore for themselves.
I’ve been playing Battlefield-like Wild Assault, and each time I die, the difficulty of reviving me helps me to realize how out of position I was. Other times when I was popping from cover and got hit by a rusher, a teammate quickly retaliates and then revives me.
The game also has some crazy moments with the healer’s ultimate, which revives people they’re standing on while the healer can keep shooting.
I mean, if digital games were always excluded from this form of preservation, and digital game cards are just a step up in terms of store discoverability, I think it did.
They’re obviously incredibly inferior to full game cards. They’re not much better than digital games, but they’re better than “We’re not releasing on Nintendo Switch because no one will see us in the eshop and since the game sells for $10 we can’t afford game cartridges.”
“And at least part of that plan involves AI”, reads the subtitle. To be clear, not an endorsement from me. Some of this reads very strangely to me, but this is boots on the ground reporting from Gamescom of developer sentiment....
I definitely want to see more publisher-driven “game experiments”. Imagine a studio putting out a 3-hour vertical slice of a PS2-era-style experimental game idea for $5. Now imagine, a publisher puts out about 20 of these such games a year (and mostly loses money on them - since $5 isn’t a lot and those 3-hour segments need polish) but then, occasionally one of them hits it big - and then the publisher grants them a greenlight to make a trilogy of 14-hour games after figuring out that people enjoy it.
To clarify, the idea would be to have smaller studios each independently making games. So for half a year, one studio may only have the responsibility of a single 3-hour demo.
I might’ve tried out Nikki if it’d been okay with some amount of “sexy” outfits - like, I know not to expect any bikini-model type of garb, but there’s still a midpoint that could feel appealing but also classy.
Either way - still a gacha game with a pretty incomprehensible story.
While I’m not a furry, Steam has some interesting titles on offer from Anthrocon, even if you just find animals to be a unique aesthetic choice for characters. I’m an Ace Attorney fan, so I got the demo for “Dragon Detective” which just released yesterday.
In other gaming news, the demo for Trails in the Sky’s remake is out. In typical JRPG fashion, reports say the demo covers about 6 hours of content.
So many people online seem to already complain about Silent Hill f out of a few details coming out of trailers. I honestly think the game looks sick and I can’t wait to play it, expecially considering the writer’s good reputation....
Damn man, I love Resident Evil and have never finished an SH game, but we have so many of the former (especially considering the indie scene) this seems like an excessively presumptuous comment.
The MISSING: J J Macfield and the Island of Memories is a great one.
EndingPsyche. Though much of the dialog and written messages could lead you, like myself, to believe Macfield is a closeted lesbian undergoing community/family abuse for her quiet obsessions with a girl…it’s actually the less common form of LGBT. Macfield is a closet trans woman; much of the game’s horrific bodily mutilation themes take a stand-in for the dysphoria of being uncomfortable in her own masculine body. Of course, many of the same types who’d retch at a gay protagonist would throw up at the idea of being someone they didn’t identify with - which ironically is exactly what the game is teaching you.
I remember when dinoflask did YTPs of Overwatch’s lead designer, he poked fun at how, whenever the game needed a progressive image boost, they would retcon a character to be gay at random. He sentence-mixed something like “Our fans are always wondering who’s going to be gay on our next update.”
I’m in a perspective of hoping for more romantic subplots of any kind. I never played through any generation of RPGs that made those popular, and when they were there, they were hastily written in, or just optional.
It’s why I’m excited for a certain JRPG remake that puts one such relation (between a guy and a girl) front and center, so much so that it becomes a driving element of the story. Those who know, know I suppose.
One thing that helps in its case is, it doesn’t advertise on the box “Romance 1-1000 characters!!” IMO, a good romantic plot sneaks up on you after you’ve invested in the characters.
Honestly, I suppose FF7 is another great example, but I was thinking of the Trails in the Sky remake due out in a month or two.
Sorry if that’s a vague spoiler. It wasn’t even something I knew about the game playing through, but the slow-impact delivery of it worked fantastically.
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FATAL FRAME II: Crimson Butterfly REMAKE Announcement Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
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...
Queer developers speak out as adult games remain in limbo following payment processor showdown at Steam and itch.io (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Borderlands 4 Launches To Mostly Negative Steam Reviews Over Performance Issues And Crashing (www.thegamer.com) angielski
AAA game? Performance issues and crashing on release? Why I never.
bruh, i just realised that the last time i played Garrys Mod,Obama was still president lmao angielski
Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? angielski
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/45779767
A demo for Digimon Story: Time Stranger is now available for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox – Digitally Downloaded (www.digitallydownloaded.net) angielski
Subscription models like Xbox Game Pass are "not properly valuing" developers, says former Bethesda exec (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Sexualized video games are not causing harm to male or female players, according to research (www.psypost.org) angielski
This is actually from 2022, but I missed it back in the day. This is quite important research imo, and very relevant lately. Link to the paper itself: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0747563222001637
Xbox fans are compiling lists of all the Activision, Bethesda, and Microsoft games still missing from Xbox Game Pass — and it's pretty huge (www.windowscentral.com) angielski
Linked the story for anyone who wants context. It’s about a list compiled by Twitter user x.com/Crusader3456...
Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks (www.ign.com) angielski
Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now on Steam - and it broke Steam servers for 30 minutes and counting now (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Picture of isSteamDown showing that Steam is indeed experiencing issues...
007 First Light – Gameplay Reveal (www.youtube.com) angielski
This could just be the vestiges of E3’s ghost creating a bad demo, but I was pretty unimpressed by this. If Hitman allowed you to be as freeform as Crysis, this demo looked like Crysis 2, highlighting all the specific options that they crafted for you to use, and there are only maybe three of them rather than allowing you to...
I'm playing Gears of War Reloaded, and I have a question. Will there be some point when the Chainsaw I've had for hours actually gets explained to me? angielski
Like, I chose to play the Tutorial at the beginning. This Chainsaw seems like a pretty critical piece of the gameplay loop, but at no point has there been an explicit explanation or demonstration.
Elite Dangerous angielski
Left 4 Dead creator teasing new four player co-op shooter (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Alternatives to Twitch and YouTube for livestreaming gaming? angielski
I have been considering livestreaming gaming (mostly Retroachievements, and maybe some noncompetitive speed running), but I cannot find/decide a good service. I am not considering it as a source of income, or wanting a huge number of viewers....
Four wheels good, two wheels bad: why are there no exciting cycling games? (www.theguardian.com) angielski
What games have mastered "Both emotional extremes"? angielski
Something I’ve picked up on with my gaming preference is stories that don’t simply focus on one “mood” for the game, but alter it to fit the situation. Players get a relaxed time exploring or diving into combat, and the world is inviting and colorful, but when the story builds, it puts brutal tests of character in front...
Suggest some games according to my laptop's hardware angielski
Title says it all.
[Humble Bundle] Duo of Justice: Ace Attorney and Mega Man (www.humblebundle.com) angielski
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35092759...
Duality of Gamer angielski
A message from the medic angielski
Nintendo Switch 2 game-key cards not eligible for preservation by Japan’s National Diet Library, officials say (automaton-media.com) angielski
At Gamescom, it felt like the industry now has a plan: make games quicker | Opinion (www.gamesindustry.biz) angielski
“And at least part of that plan involves AI”, reads the subtitle. To be clear, not an endorsement from me. Some of this reads very strangely to me, but this is boots on the ground reporting from Gamescom of developer sentiment....
Random Things that I never expected: Infinity Nikki × Stardew Valley Collab Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? angielski
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/44554525
Why do new Silent Hill entries attract so much negativity? angielski
So many people online seem to already complain about Silent Hill f out of a few details coming out of trailers. I honestly think the game looks sick and I can’t wait to play it, expecially considering the writer’s good reputation....
Whine harder you assholes angielski