KoboldCoterie

KoboldCoterie, 11 dni temu

Looking at this list of 3rd party games, I wonder if the reason for this is that most of these games have been available on other platforms already for quite some time. If you were interested in e.g. Hades 2, unless you just didn’t have a PC available, you probably weren’t waiting for an at-the-time unannounced Switch 2 to play it on. Heck, Cyberpunk is 5 years old at this point. Street Fighter 6 is 2 years old and was on a lot of other platforms.

I expect we might see different results when we see more 3rd party games getting simultaneous launch on Switch 2 and other platforms.

KoboldCoterie, 14 dni temu

Could it be that people just don’t want yet another fairly generic live service PvP extraction shooter? No, can’t be.

KoboldCoterie, 13 dni temu

I love the callout that the story was delivered via text logs, as if voice acting was typically present in anything except FMV-based games in that time period. “Bog standard FPS” is a really funky term for an era when there were only really a few well-known FPS games out there at all.

You’ve got to remember that Marathon 1 was released in 1994, the same year Doom II was released. What else was there at that point? You really had Doom, Marathon, Pathways Into Darkness (also a Bungie title and only sort of an FPS at all), Wolfenstein 3D, System Shock, Hexen / Heretic, and some really niche ones that most people had never even heard of at the time, never mind now.

KoboldCoterie, 16 dni temu

Marathon 2 (1995) let you go underwater.

KoboldCoterie, 16 dni temu

Man, I’d forgotten how utterly baller that theme is.

KoboldCoterie, miesiąc temu

Agreed on this. They’re just so good at making new interesting things that it feels like a bit of a shame to waste time on sequels. I even really enjoyed Pyre, despite it being generally considered the weakest of their games; it was such an interesting setting and premise.

Bastion and Transistor both had very satisfying conclusions to their stories and revisiting either doesn’t feel necessary.

KoboldCoterie, miesiąc temu

Can you elaborate? Specifically because almost all of the negative Steam reviews, of which there are many, say more or less the opposite - that it tries to do that, but fails to capture what made Remnant so good.

(Not to criticize your opinion, to be clear; it’s on sale and I was strongly considering it as someone who likes Remnant. Sell it for me?)

KoboldCoterie, miesiąc temu

I didn’t say that the overall review is ‘mostly negative’, to be clear; I said that almost all of the (many) negative reviews that exist seem to be talking about the failure to live up to remnant 1.

Thanks for the detailed review; it’s helpful to have a nice comparison between the two. I did enjoy Remnant 1 quite a bit. Would you say the DLC you played is worth buying even considering the generally mixed reviews?

KoboldCoterie, miesiąc temu

The Borderlands franchise is really past its prime at this point, anyway. I’ve got absolutely no issue skipping this one. Might pick it up when it’s on sale for $10 in a few years. The franchise really peaked with BL2; it’s been down hill since.

KoboldCoterie, miesiąc temu

No, EGS is plenty shitty now; what they’re saying is that EGS’s one singular saving grace - the free games they give away - likely won’t last for the reason they outlined.

KoboldCoterie, miesiąc temu

This new game has essentially no relation besides name and logo to the old Marathon games. Sadly, because the old ones were the shit.

KoboldCoterie, miesiąc temu

It’s okay, ‘the shit’ is a weird phrase anyway. And as a Marathon trilogy connoisseur, you’re clearly alright.

KoboldCoterie, miesiąc temu

This is brilliant, thanks for the link!

KoboldCoterie, miesiąc temu

And also knock it off with the fucking microtransactions and shit. I wouldn’t mind games costing something appropriate for inflation if we were getting complete, high quality games without the expectation that we spend even more money afterwards. As it stands, they’re complaining about the low cost of games while also milking players for every penny they can on top of the purchase price. Fuck these guys.

KoboldCoterie, 2 miesiące temu

I think the trailer and Steam page makes it pretty clear that this isn’t just aimed at furries. Not that furries won’t jump on it - we will, but it’s not just for furries.

KoboldCoterie, 4 miesiące temu

The last page of this survey is heavy handed and full of leading questions. It feels like you’re less trying to gather research data and more trying to push an agenda; it would not pass scientific review. The fact that I agree with the agenda being pushed doesn’t change my feelings on that.

A better method would have been to ask the question in a neutral way (e.g. ‘Do you believe that storing game cartridges qualifies as preservation?’ or even better, ‘Storing game cartridges qualifies as preservation’ as a statement, with a Strongly Disagree - Strongly Agree scale), then at the end of the survey provide the information you’re providing in the links below each question.

KoboldCoterie, 5 miesięcy temu

There’s probably already games where AI generated “every pixel”, just not the code that displays those pixels… This headline only implies art, even though it’s pretty clear they meant the whole game, code and all, and without seeing the whole article, we can’t really effectively comment.

KoboldCoterie, 5 miesięcy temu

It’s worth noting that Risk of Rain 1 and 2 are very different games (3rd person 3D vs. 2D side scroller), and both are good - so if 2 didn’t grab you, maybe check out 1 and see if that’s more your thing. (The remastered version has a lot of nice QOL stuff and some new game modes and items.)

KoboldCoterie, 5 miesięcy temu

In this same vein, Backpack Hero is quite good, too! If you like one, maybe check out the other.

KoboldCoterie, 5 miesięcy temu

I got you, fam. It’s not exactly the same - more narrative focused, and slower paced - but it will scratch that same itch.

KoboldCoterie, 5 miesięcy temu

Even if there weren’t a million examples of prior art, the fact that patents on game mechanics are even allowed is just awful for the industry as a whole, and we as players should absolutely rail against this. Every game borrows from other games’ ideas and mechanics - I’d bet money that there hasn’t been a single fully “original” game in 20+ years. If companies are allowed to patent every little mechanic (even ones they didn’t come up with), the industry as a whole will just become impossible to operate in.

KoboldCoterie, 6 miesięcy temu

Well, this all but guarantees that we’ll see more ridiculously high priced consoles in the future, too. Good going, folks!

KoboldCoterie, 6 miesięcy temu

it is literally illegal for a CEO to do the right thing if it will cost shareholders

Source?

KoboldCoterie, 7 miesięcy temu

The only downside is that the participants need to be familiar enough with their chosen game to do a randomizer which means roping in casual players is difficult.

Casual players can be fine with some games. Some actually become easier with Archipelago (e.g. Noita, Risk of Rain 2) since you’re getting meta-progression between runs that normally wouldn’t be there. Others though are especially punishing for new players (Doom comes to mind - you have to be pretty intimately familiar with the levels. There’s keys hidden in secret areas sometimes, for example, and ammo can be very scarce.)

KoboldCoterie, 7 miesięcy temu

Every time I see this, I can’t help but feel like it works better without the third panel. Showing it happening dulls the comedic impact of the final panel. Anyone who doesn’t know what Kirby is about isn’t going to understand the comic anyway, and anyone who does doesn’t need the third panel to understand what happened.

KoboldCoterie, 7 miesięcy temu (edited 7 miesięcy temu)

One brother is on an Xbox One is on a PC One is on a steam deck with WiFi hotspot.

That’s going to be the limiting factor.

Are you specifically looking for something to play against each other? There’s some pretty good options for co-op games with crossplay, and that might make for a more friendly experience, but if you’re in the mood for something competitive, options are a little more limited.

Some potential options:

• Destiny 2
• Monster Hunter Rise
• The Ascent
• Borderlands 3
• Warframe
• Remnant 2

If you all had a PC, you’d have a lot more options. Maybe two of you should consider going in on a Steam Deck for Brother #3 for Christmas!

KoboldCoterie, 7 miesięcy temu

Not only WoW, but most old MMOs were built around being social experiences. The really old ones (Everquest, most notably) were basically chat rooms with games attached. The gameplay was very slow, and you relied heavily on other players to progress, so you spent a lot of time just chatting with people, either in zone chat or in groups or in guilds. Over time, you started to recognize the same names showing up in the same places, or as you progressed, the same players would be progressing at the same pace so you’d keep seeing them as you moved from zone to zone.

It was also a lot easier to build friendships for otherwise socially awkward people. You had an immediate common interest and common goal (advancing in the game), so you had common ground to talk about, and a common activity to enjoy together, but during the downtime, conversation would often shift to other things - where you lived, how old you were, what your hobbies were… so you’d get to know people ‘outside the game’, too.

Nowadays, WoW and other MMOs are much more fast-paced, and much more solo play oriented. There’s still group-required content, but it’s very action-heavy; you don’t have a lot of time that you’re just sitting around chatting, and groups are much more short-term things. 15 or 20 minutes, whereas once upon a time, it was 3+ hours as standard.

I met my oldest friend in an MMO about 24 or 25 years ago… we accompanied each other to a few different games over the years, and now we aren’t playing anything together, but we still talk. I flew across the country to attend his wedding a couple years ago. Similarly, I met my wife in WoW. Our first “date” was killing bugs in Silithus together. We’ve been together for about 18 years.

Old (as in, early-late 2000s) MMOs generated a lot of friendships; this isn’t at all an uncommon story to hear from people who played them at that time.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

Vampire Survivors’ genre has been coined ‘Bullet Heaven’, literally the opposite of bullet hell. The fact that it has the tag on Steam is kind of meaningless. Monster Hunter: Wilds’ Steam Page has the Dating Sim tag, but I’m willing to bet I won’t get to romance a Rathalos.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

“[Horse Armor] must have been [sold] in the millions, it had to be millions,” Nesmith said. “I don’t know the actual number, I probably did at one point, I just no longer remember that. And that was kind of a head shaker for us: you’re all making fun of it and yet you buy it.”

And that right there is the reason why the industry is absolutely saturated with this shit now. If people had just chilled the fuck out when this shit was first introduced, made sure it was an absolute flop from a sales perspective (not only for this one, but for others that were released back then, too), we might be in a better place now.

KoboldCoterie, 9 miesięcy temu

GTA4 is 16 years old at this point. Why would you expect it to support DirectX12, which is 7 years newer than the game?

KoboldCoterie, 10 miesięcy temu

Ooh, I’ll play.

Final Profit: A Shop RPG is an RPG about a deposed elf queen who opens a humble shop and slowly advances through the ranks of the Bureau of Business with the eventual goal of defeating Capitalism from within. It’s unique. It has some incremental game like mechanics, and can get a little repetitive in the mid-game, but it has a surprisingly compelling story and a lot of unfolding mechanics that keep it interesting all the way through.

Roughly a 30 hour playthrough with many endings, NG+ and some optional challenge modes that remove or change some of the most obvious strategies for advancement, so if you finish it and still want more, you can play through again with a somewhat different experience.

KoboldCoterie, 10 miesięcy temu

In Grotto, you play the role of a soothsayer living in a cave who is occasionally visited by members of a tribal society living nearby. They come to you with problems, and they want you to present your opinion, but you can’t speak. You have access to constellations of stars, which each hold different meanings, and you must present your answers in the form of a single constellation, which the petitioners are left to interpret.

You’ll feel a bit of frustration as your intended message is missed completely in favor of something that the petitioner wanted to hear, and the same constellation might mean different things to different people, but that’s just part of the game. The story unfolds around you and its progression is communicated to you only through the explanations your petitioners give for their visit. Each is a uniquely unreliable narrator, so what you believe is for you to decide.

Two endings, and an interesting story with some occasionally unexpected consequences that might make you feel bad, so if a game giving you a case of the sads is unappealing, maybe take that into consideration.

KoboldCoterie, 10 miesięcy temu

Heaven’s Vault is a game about archaeology and translating a dead language. You explore a unique solar system and discover ruins, in which you uncover artifacts, and bits of text. Through context clues, you translate the passages to uncover the storyline. It’s not difficult, so if you’re looking for a puzzle, this won’t really do it for you, but it’s more of a narrative experience. If you aren’t sure about a word or phrase, you can give it a guess (based on assigning words from a collection of possible translations to specific symbols), and the game will remember that choice and let you slowly revise your translations as you find new text that rules out prior incorrect guesses. There’s an interconnected storyline with multiple paths to follow, and a very unique world - haven’t seen anything like it in other games.

The game has a NG+ mode wherein you start with all of your translations from the first playthrough intact, but, most of the bits of text are considerably longer and more involved, letting you use your prior knowledge to uncover more of the story and the lore of the world, which is also neat.

KoboldCoterie, 10 miesięcy temu

Didn’t know that! Was going based off of the review score; 1600 reviews in 5 years seemed pretty little-known. All the same, don’t mind the downvotes - that’s the point of the thread after all. :)

KoboldCoterie, 10 miesięcy temu

If you enjoyed it, you might also enjoy Chants of Sennar! It’s also about translating languages; it’s more puzzle-oriented and less story-based; there’s a story to uncover, but it’s not as clear-cut and narrative driven. Still a great game, however!

KoboldCoterie, 10 miesięcy temu

The dev is also very responsive! I left a (positive) review with some critical feedback and they commented on it very quickly and had a bit of a dialog with me about the comments I’d made; they ended up revising the Steam page based on review feedback (mine and others), too, which made me want to support them even more!

KoboldCoterie, 10 miesięcy temu

It’s unfortunate that RPGMaker games have such a consistent and distinct aesthetic, it’s really obvious when a game was made with the engine, and a lot of the reviews mention it, too.

That said, this is definitely one of the best RPGMaker games I’ve played. They really stretch what’s possible with it. Can’t get away from that look, though.

KoboldCoterie, 10 miesięcy temu

Definitely another great one!

KoboldCoterie, 10 miesięcy temu

I want a FO or TES game that’s just a modder playground.

• Build the world, don’t populate it with anything.
• Divide the world into a grid, let modders submit mods to a central database and register them with the grid squares they alter.
• Let the game download an assortment of mods (maybe using user-defined tags to preference certain content) that fills out the world, using their grid square registration system to ensure no overlapping / conflicting content.)
• Let players rate content they play.
• Reward the modders who made popular content in some way.

Obviously there’s a lot of glaring problems with this, but in my head, it’d be awesome.

KoboldCoterie, rok temu

This is the first I’ve seen of this game, but… this is definitely not what I expected from a game titled ‘Perfect Dark’. Maybe I just don’t remember the N64 game well enough, but this seems pretty far-removed, from a plot perspective.

KoboldCoterie, rok temu

Wasn’t the original Perfect Dark hard sci-fi with aliens and spaceships and things? It’s possible I just don’t remember it well. Either way, this doesn’t look like a bad game at all. Just not what I’d have expected.

KoboldCoterie, rok temu

It’s either that or they eventually plan on charging PC players a monthly fee to play all their Sony games.

That would be hilarious, I’d love to see the backlash if they tried that.

KoboldCoterie, rok temu

“It’s as fun as Marvel Rivals!” could become the new face of apathy and sarcasm.

KoboldCoterie, rok temu

I have been watching the Prince of Persia game, but I would absolutely have glazed right over its release while entranced by Hades II, so yes, I agree with you, it’s a very smart decision on their part.

(Also, can I just say, holy shit is Hades II some good value. It’s basically two games worth of content in one. More than twice the size of Hades I. Utter insanity.)

KoboldCoterie, rok temu

You encounter the merchant where you can buy the MTX stuff in the first few hours of the game. You can’t even use the majority of them before reaching that point.

I would honestly bet money that they’d designed the game to not have microtransactions, then some executive at the 11th hour told them to find a way to include them, and they made them inconsequential as a sort of malicious compliance. Not that I think it’s OK to have them in the first place, it really soured me on the game initially. I think it’s considerably worse for including them, but they are completely meaningless.

KoboldCoterie, rok temu

It’d honestly be hilarious if all the creators just started rebranding their fan projects with Palworld Pals (or any other similar IP). Start shifting the discourse away from Pokemon. I’d love that.

KoboldCoterie, rok temu

For better or for worse capcom is doing this shit in nearly every one of their games so i kinda expected this shit And if we stop shitting on them for doing it, we let it become normalized.

Denuvo is a cancer This pretty much sums up the topic.

Optimisation. It is poor apparently. Nothing new really as far as pc games go. It’s actually a lot worse than that. It’s been a while since I played something that had this level of problems. The fact that it’s CPU-based performance is actually the bigger issue because it doesn’t matter how beefy your graphics card is, you’re still dropping a ton of frames in that city specifically. I can run the game at 144 FPS until I go to that city, then it drops to 40, which is just outrageous. Gaming PC build logic has for a long time been to prioritize a great graphics card over a great processor (assuming you’re building with a budget and not a ‘money is no object’ type build), because that’s what matters for games, but suddenly with this one specific game, the processor is the bottleneck.

KoboldCoterie, rok temu

To add to that, the DLC thing really pisses me off particularly because I bought the game last night, and there was no DLC. The DLC didn’t show up until a few hours later, and by that point it was too late to refund it. Kind of felt like a bait and switch, because normally I wouldn’t buy a game at launch if they did that shit.