Stovetop

Stovetop, 5 miesięcy temu

That is…actually far better than I thought it would be. It’s clearly not ready yet, but I could see the potential.

The AI model is too happy to serve the whims of the player, but if there was a better model that could actually be hooked in to me hanics like personality scores or reputation, I could see that as an interesting gameplay system. It also needs more checks on what they are and aren’t supposed to know (e.g. why would a Skyrim NPC associate the name Batman with heroism, or why would they know who Gandalf is?).

A (digital) setup like Westworld is probably in the cards someday. Hopefully with more checks in place to keep the AI from rising up though!

Stovetop, 5 miesięcy temu

I do hope you get to play and enjoy the game, but no way should the developer compromise on their vision of the game just to comply with a fucked-up morality regulation.

Stovetop, 5 miesięcy temu

I feel for you OP, I hope we all get to live in the more accepting world we deserve someday.

Apologies as well if my previous comment also sounds a bit unsympathetic, which was not my intention but it does to me on a re-read. I’m sure there’s a lot more discomfort that comes with living under these kinds of rules than just what games you are or aren’t allowed to play that I did not give enough consideration to.

Stovetop, 5 miesięcy temu

Monthly fees optional. These days I’d assume the battle pass model is more common.

Stovetop, 5 miesięcy temu

Live service games that become successful can make billions of dollars, so everyone is trying to be the next big one. Having a ton of concurrent live service projects is the “throw shit at a wall and see what sticks” strategy. They expect most to fail but hope that the 1 that succeeds makes up for it and then some.

Stovetop, 5 miesięcy temu

Only when you run out of breath.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA inhale

Stovetop, 5 miesięcy temu

Sadly I think this is the new normal. You could buy a decent GPU, or you could buy an entire game console. Unless you have some other reason to need a strong PC, it just doesn’t seem worth the investment.

At least Intel are trying to keep their prices low. Until they either catch on, in which case they’ll raise prices to match, or they fade out and leave everyone with unsupported hardware.

Stovetop, 5 miesięcy temu

Looking at that one, they have it labeled as “showcase” so they’ll probably do a limited collection of content in the game to demonstrate particular tricks and strategies but not the whole thing.

Stovetop, 6 miesięcy temu

It won by being a well-made, fun game. That’s really all there is. Exclusivity limits audience but it doesn’t affect quality.

Stovetop, 6 miesięcy temu (edited 6 miesięcy temu)

The series is still decently popular, though the newest is the lowest rated one yet. There is also more than one developer involved. Here’s a short list of the main titles, developer, and other notes listed below for each:

Life is Strange (2015)

• The original game.
• Takes place in 2013.
• Developed by Dontnod.
• Released in chapters.
• Remastered in 2022 by Deck Nine.
• 81 on OpenCritic.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm (2017)

• Prequel to Life is Strange.
• Features much of the Life is Strange cast.
• Takes place in 2010.
• Developed by Deck Nine.
• Released in chapters.
• Remastered in 2022 by Deck Nine.
• 80 on OpenCritic.

Life is Strange 2 (2018-2019)

• Sequel to Life is Strange.
• Features a new cast of characters.
• Takes place in 2016-2017.
• Developed by Dontnod.
• Released in chapters.
• 76 on OpenCritic.

Life is Strange: True Colors (2021)

• Sequel to Life is Strange 2.
• Features a new cast of characters.
• Takes place in 2019.
• Developed by Deck Nine.
• Released in its entirety.
• 81 on OpenCritic.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure (2024)

• Sequel to Life is Strange: True Colors.
• Stars the original protagonist of Life is Strange.
• Takes place in 2023.
• Developed by Deck Nine.
• Released in its entirety.
• 71 on OpenCritic.

Stovetop, 6 miesięcy temu (edited 6 miesięcy temu)

Yeah, it’s hard to keep track after they quickly abandoned the numbered naming scheme after 2. And I think that was partly because people were confused anyways by the un-numbered prequel featuring the same setting and cast of characters, while the numbered sequel was almost entirely separate.

(Caveat: I have not played Double Exposure yet so I am not sure how directly connected it is to the first game) The titles are disconnected enough that anyone can basically just jump into the series with any title at any time, the only exception being the first game and Before the Storm, since they’re directly connected. I’ve heard it said that those two can still be appreciated in either release order or chronological order, but would probably be best served played one right after the other either way.

The only other connections I know of are:

• Life is Strange 2 - A character from the original game and Before the Storm plays a minor role in the story, but context is not required to understand the plot.
• Life is Strange: True Colors - A character from Before the Storm features prominently in the story, but context is also not required to understand the main plot. However, this character has a DLC story that I haven’t played, so I don’t know if that ties in more to Before the Storm than True Colors alone does.

Stovetop, 7 miesięcy temu

As someone who has not played Silent Hill 2 and likely never will…what’s under the blanket?

Stovetop, 7 miesięcy temu

It’s like how back when the Euro or the Pound were worth nearly 2x what the dollar was, a new device or piece of hardware would sell for $399/€399/£399.

Stovetop, 7 miesięcy temu

I can’t believe they would have the audacity to put the world’s only AAAA game on a bad game list.

Stovetop, 7 miesięcy temu

I realized this idea long, long ago, when Rare made Banjo-Tooie.

Banjo-Kazooie was a fun game. You unlock worlds, go to the world, collect 100% of all there is to collect, then continue.

Banjo-Tooie, its sequel, wanted to be bigger and better in every way. Sprawling open world hub, much larger worlds with more sub-zones, interconnectivity between worlds, more things to unlock, more things to do, etc. etc.

And I think, despite having so much more, it was a worse game for it. You go to a new world but find there’s a lot you can’t do yet because you didn’t unlock an ability that comes later on. You push a button in one world and then something happens in another, but now you have to backtrack through the sprawling overworld and large world maps to get there.

And this was just a pair of games made for the Nintendo 64, before the concept of “open world” had really even taken off.

But it demonstrated to me that bigger was not always better, and having more to do did not make it a better game if it wasn’t as enjoyable.

Early open world games were fairly small, and the natural desire for people who have seen everything becomes “I wish there was more,” but in practice it ends up typically being that they take the same amount of stuff and divide it up over a larger area, or they fill the world with tedium just for the sake of having something to do.

When looking at the collectibles and activities on a world map like Genshin Impact, it’s basically sensory overload with how much there is to do.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/bb16954e-5f9e-4db8-8f08-6e62a7ee6a73.jpeg

But almost all of that is garbage. And this is just a fraction of one region among several. Go here, do this time trial, shoot these balloons, follow this spirit, solve this logic puzzle, and then loot your pittance of gatcha currency so you can try to win your next waifu or husbando before time runs out.

And don’t forget to do your dailies!

If a game has a large world, it needs to act in service to its design. It needs to be fun to exist in and travel through, not tedious. It needs to have enough stuff to do that keep it from feeling empty, but not so much stuff that it makes it hard to find anything worthwhile. And it needs to give enough ability for the player to make their own fun, to act as the balance on that tightrope walk between not-enough and too-much.

Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom are the most recent games that seemed to properly scratch an open world itch for me. While they weren’t perfect, the way they managed to really incorporate the open world as its own sort of puzzle to solve, in ways that Genshin Impact failed to properly emulate, made them more enjoyable as an open world than most other games in that genre I’ve played in recent memory.

Stovetop, 7 miesięcy temu

In a world that is controlled almost entirely by heteronormativity, policing straight representation in a queer-friendly game made by a queer developer does not seem like an equivalent situation at all.

Stovetop, 7 miesięcy temu

Filed before, updated and approved after.

Stovetop, 7 miesięcy temu

I’ve seen a few valid criticisms, which I get. It’s hard to make a choice-driven narrative in the post-BG3 market and not get held to a higher standard. “Written by committee” is one such descriptor I’ve heard.

For me, as a fan of Dragon Age: Origins, I also can’t say I prefer the dip into the actiony, grindy sort of combat mechanics the game appears to have now.

Stovetop, 7 miesięcy temu

Gotta get that daily login bonus in [insert live service game here].

Stovetop, 7 miesięcy temu

I bought a PS4 pro back in the day but am giving this one a pass.

I’m all for incremental mid-gen upgrades, but not at that price point. If it can’t be priced competitively with the prices people have been paying, then it should not be made until the hardware they want meets that price point.

Should have made it $499 and drop the base price of the PS5 to $399.

Stovetop, 7 miesięcy temu

There’s probably a reason why people apparently like her. Or two, actually.

Stovetop, 7 miesięcy temu

Surprised it’s not higher. I would have thought more than 2% of people on Steam were using Steam Deck.

Stovetop, 7 miesięcy temu

Agreed. I remember there being some controversy around including figures in the game like Poundmaker, whose major mark in history was advocating against the colonial practices his people were submitted to.

Forcing anti-colonial figures to compete in the colonial model of success just doesn’t seem right.

Stovetop, 7 miesięcy temu

Surely this will be the movie to break Lionsgate’s streak of complete flops.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

While I don’t believe the PS5 has any feature that is up to snuff with quick resume, just wanted to mention that I think this feature was a bit different in function. It was more like a shortcut to specific things within a game, such as if you wanted to just go straight into a multiplayer match or to a specific level of a game, you’d use one of these activity cards, the game boots up, and there’d be minimal to no menus to navigate through. Just launch direct to gameplay or as close to it as possible.

I don’t believe many games used it, though. Not even all of Sony’s own offerings.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

But the Sony implementation wasn’t really meant to take you back to where you were previously, it was meant to take you to specific predefined starting points, is all. Both meant to be “time savers” of a sort but different strategies were used. One clearly didn’t work as well as the other.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

The BioShock logo (and the art of the game itself) uses an art deco style that was relatively commonplace around the early 1900’s.

Whether this game’s usage of that style is a deliberate move or if it’s just borrowing from a shared aesthetic, who can say.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

Super Mario Wonder was also a big one. Critically acclaimed, too.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

You joke but I would kill for a new Kirby Air Ride game.

You wouldn’t believe my disappointment when they had a Nintendo Direct years ago and threw a “one more thing” at the end which opened with Kirby Air Ride music and Kirby riding in on the warp star, only for it to be a Smash Bros character reveal. The video they put on YouTube after the fact opened with the Smash logo, but it didn’t during the Nintendo Direct.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

WoW players not spew hateful bullshit they know nothing about? Who would even be left at that point?

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

Shit, Ben Starr? I’m in.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

The first game I remember doing this is The Witcher 2. Not sure if that’s the first game to come up with the idea, but it’s the earliest example I can remember.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

It’s a Christmas gift item. Everything “new” this time of year is targeted towards holiday shopping

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

Well, €/$100 is about how much people are paying for some new games these days, to put it in context. If someone is a Nintendo fan or a collector it’s not necessarily a hard sell at that price given that they probably have disposable income.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

ITT: people think emulators are only the ones you can download

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

I get that the content isn’t for everyone, but could always block OP or just keyword filter depending on what frontend/app you use to hide the content if you don’t want to see it.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

Depends. Echo chambers are also created by upvote/downvote ratios. If the majority are upvoting a lot of content you have no interest in, filtering that content is also a way to avoid an echo chamber from dominating your feed.

I browse a lot by Everything because my limited list of subscribed communities don’t yet publish enough content to really fill a day’s worth of browsing, so there are a lot of things I’ve blocked just because it’s not interesting to me, or if I am not really the intended audience (e.g. a lot of sports communities for teams I don’t follow, german-speaking communities from feddit.org, etc).

I don’t often have to resort to blocking specific users, but there’s a very small handful of names who post a large volume of content I want to filter but also don’t use consistent communities or keywords that I can cleanly filter instead.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

They keep one-upping themselves with every new title.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

It’s not a spiritual successor, just a normal successor. It’s the latest entry in the “Mario & Luigi” series.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

I’m assuming it’s to make sure there’s not long waits to try them. Giving a set number of tokens to visitors means they can roughly control the amount of time someone spends with those games. One person can’t just buy 100 coins and spend all day on the same game.

Could have just done a ticketing system reserved in advance with fixed time blocks, though. But then your museum tour is on a schedule.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

I am trying to think of scenarios where this will screw with normal users because companies never do moves like this unless they’re after some sort of grift.

But I am not seeing it at present. Maybe I’m just too tired and my brain isn’t working, but if a game is downloaded digitally and the license comes with it, there’s effectively no difference. Take it offline, you still have the license, no issues.

The only potential impact I can think of is if you have two users on a console that is the home console for neither person, and both of them bought the same game digitally. User 1 downloads the game, the license comes with it, and they take the console offline. User 2 then uses the console, tries to play the game they own, and gets a license error because the console is offline and doesn’t know they own it and therefore it can only be played by the person who downloaded it. But I think that’s how it works already, since User 2 would still need the console to be online to import their licenses.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

That’s the same conclusion I arrived at, but wasn’t 100% sure. Since the act of downloading a game and the act of obtaining/transferring licenses both require the console to be online, I couldn’t see what difference there would be to the user experience compared to before, even if the order it does those steps in is switched.

Stovetop, 8 miesięcy temu

And only if the PS5 isn’t user 1’s home console, which if it is, the license extends to any other user on that console.

Stovetop, 9 miesięcy temu

Hard to know if the patent is expired when they haven’t even officially announced which ones they plan to bring forward in the suit.

The only info I was aware of so far is that there were multiple claims they were making.

Stovetop, 9 miesięcy temu

It really is like a feudal system. There’s a reason why the HBO series Succession is framed like the politics between a lord, his heirs, and his vassals.

Stovetop, 9 miesięcy temu

Apologies for the Xitter link, but it looks like the main character Atsu is being portrayed by Erika Ishii.

x.com/suckerpunchprod/status/1838715791228964978?…

Stovetop, 9 miesięcy temu

Chasing the “best version” is a fool’s errand, though. Unless you’re buying top-of-the-line hardware every cycle, you’ll never have the best. And even then, there are games that seem to target future hardware by having settings so high not even top-end PCs can max them out comfortably, and other games that are just so badly optimized they’ll randomly decide they hate some feature of your setup and tank the performance, too.

Everyone has their threshold for what looks good enough, and they upgrade when they reach that point. I used my last PC for 10 years before finally upgrading to a newer build, and I’m hoping to use my current one as long as well.

But just based on the displayed difference in performance between the base PS5 and the PS5 Pro, it doesn’t seem like a good investment for what benefits you get. It’s like paying Apple prices for marginally better hardware, and with overpriced wheels disc drive sold separately.