It sells itself on cool aesthetics, but the moment you get past that you realise it’s just a very, very generic open world shooter with incredibly bland and boring shooting layered over an impressively faithful recreation of Shinjuku. And even the aesthetics wear thin very quickly, being largely just a whole lot of “Hey I know that anime” level stuff cribbed from Japanese culture. The game is mostly just running around a map collecting stuff.
I mean, that’s exactly what makes it so “mid” to my mind. It’s not an atrocious disaster like Gollum. It’s not appalling bad, or even moderately bad. It’s just mid. The shooting isn’t dreadful, just dull. The map, the movement, the exploration… None of it is exactly bad, but none of it left any kind of impression on me. Like you said, it scratches that “running around and collecting stuff” itch, the numbers go up, you unlock new powers, etc. But it all just kind of passes straight through you and at the end you’re left with “Well, that sure did kill a few hours.”
Horizon: Zero Dawn suffers from all the usual modern open world hallmarks, the map littered with things to collect, the towers, the grinding to level up abilities, etc, etc. But the story is an absolute banger, and even a lot of the random collectible junk is full of little moments of deeply moving storytelling. I remember collecting every single one of the vantage points because I absolutely needed to hear all of the short story you unlock by doing it. It has zero relevance to the plot, but it’s just a great piece of writing. In comparison Ghost Wire is just, sort of… There.
I’m here to say Portal as well, specifically because, once you really look for it, you realise that about 90% of the game is tutorial. Like, seriously, basically everything leading up to “The cake is a lie” is teaching you the skills you need for the final sequence. It’s a massive tutorial followed by one level of actual game, and it’s beautiful, precisely because you don’t even notice that the tutorial hasn’t ended.
I’m really not sure what you mean by this. Are you talking about the game at release, or after they patched in all the intended content?
Outside of what I assume you mean by the “scripted gameplay” of the main story there are dozens upon dozens of side quests and weird little points of interest to discover (well over a hundred, easily). A lot of them help to elaborate on the setting in interesting ways. What exactly were you expecting that the game didn’t deliver on?
None of what you’ve just said connects back to your previous comment in the slightest. You started by saying that they cut too much from the TTRPG and that the world was too shallow, and then when I asked you to elaborate you just went on about augmentation systems.
At this point I’m not convinced you actually know what it is that you don’t like about it.
I thought of this post entirely because I have the Pokémon Center theme from Pokémon HeartGold SoulSilver stuck in my head, and it has wriggled in over and over for months despite me hearing and actively making other music.
I’m actually OK with games costing a bit more to sell if they cost a lot to make; god knows, the devs deserve to get paid properly. But, one, that money won’t actually make it to the devs, and two, any time Randy Pitchford is for something it’s really hard not to automatically be against it, on the assumption that he’s so consistently wrong about everything, and just such an unbelievable piece of shit, that just assuming he’s in the wrong is the safest bet.
Jesus Christ, he’s still alive?! I haven’t heard that name in years.
For those not blessed with the knowledge of our divine Lord and saviour Derek Smart, God’s gift to fame designers, oh boy, grab your popcorn, this is going to be good.
And by “good” I mean that whatever Derek has come up with will manage to be the most objectively terrible version of that thing possible, and he will aggressively defend it as the greatest thing that has ever happened in the history of everything, ever.
Hi people, I currently have two friends who injured their dominant arm in unrelated accidents and mostly can’t do anything but sit around and watch movies....
For the record, I use a mouse with my non-dominant hand and I can play even fast paced FPS games like Titanfall competently enough. I actually used to dominate on Splitgate for a while. It’s a skill that can be learned. I have the advantage of having done it my whole life and I fully acknowledge that’s hard to replicate, but I think that with some practice anyone should be able to get to the point where they can play slower, primarily mouse driven games like turn based RPGs. Real time with pause might also be doable if you bind the pause button to the mouse (a mouse with some extra bindable keys would really help here). Anyway, just a thought.
If those options don’t work, maybe look into games like Vampire Survivor, or Realm of The Mad God (though I think the latter does need some rapid mouse inputs when looting, so maybe not so good).
For context : have no idea how they found about it, but I love that they are illuminating indie games. And VICE.com has 12 million monthly readers. This is insane for me , because for a long time I was struggling for the game to be noticed. (If you want to follow how development of the game is going, a simple wishlist on Steam...
And so they bloody well should be! How the fuck else are we going to find out about cool, unique indie projects instead of mass produced corporate slop?
Independent creators should absolutely be encouraged to self promote in communities like this, or else what the fuck are we doing here? Just shilling for Activision?
I definitely want to see this version of self promotion encouraged. I think it’s good and healthy for this community to be a place where creators can discuss cool projects, engage with their fans and solicit feedback, as long as they’re doing so in a way that respects the health of the community. I think the accommodations you’ve chosen to make / demand here are very reasonable.
IIRC the reason for this is that China requires that games published there be published by entities that are at least some arbitrary percentage Chinese owned. So basically if you want access to that huge market - that loves video games - you have to cut a deal with Tencent or someone else like them.
I finished Control today. I have to say that i’m incredibly disappointed in myself for sleeping on it for so long. The game is awesome and i can’t conceive a reason why i had ever put it down. I love the amazing gameplay with all the OOP. They’re the kind of originality i love Remedy for. I started the foundation DLC today...
If you enjoyed Control, I highly recommend Signalis. Similarly creepy, unsettling vibes from everything, lots of exploration and really tense combat, and a story that holds enough back to keep you wondering.
Nothing released this year will even come close to touching the Warframe 1999 soundtrack. Absolute bangers from start to finish, and in particular Party of Your Lifetime is the most addictive bop you will have heard all year.
Warframe invented a fictional nineties boyband, and accidentally made them unbelievably awesome.
Buggy, incomplete, kind of a mess, but absolutely playable if you have a sufficient tolerance for jank.
While it’s for sure a ways away from being the game that was promised, what’s there is still one of the most unique and ambitious gaming experiences you can ever have.
Zomboid build 42 released today and i decided to give it a try. My character is Darren Floyd. He’s a young 20 something Night Guard for the Knoxville Mall. I spawned in a house and made my way into town on foot, eventually making it to the Gas Station in the screenshot. I ended up clearing it out and making my base in there....
First off, I want you to know that you can customize the game rules, and I’d honestly suggest doing so. I often describe Zomboid as a toolkit for building your own zombie movie. You can change how long it’s been since the “event”, how the infection spreads, how it works, whether survivors have immunity, how long it is before power and water shut off, the spawn chance of different item categories. It’s extremely flexible. Don’t be afraid to treat it as a toolkit. Make the game that’s fun for you.
In terms of actually playing Zomboid, it’s a stealth game first and foremost. You must evade zombies wherever possible. Stay low, avoid noise, avoid lights. Close curtains to about being seen from outside. If there aren’t curtains, make them from bed sheets. Don’t break windows unless you have to (and if you have to, remember to clear off the shards of glass in the frame or you’ll cut yourself climbing through).
If you have to fight, keep moving. You want to string the zombies out then hit a few, then string them out again. But extended fights will kill you as fatigue and panic set in. Remember that if you play by the default rules any scratch from a zombie has a 25% chance to zombify you, any bite is 100%. Zombie virus under default rules is a death sentence. Personally, I turned that off, went with the “Any survivor by now is probably immune” logic.
Your immediate goals are always a good backpack (backpacks reduce the weight of their contents, but that reduction depends on their quality), a good melee weapon, food and bandages. You can make bandages from torn up clothing, and with a pot of water you can boil them to sterilize them. This helps avoid infection.
Longer term, a big goal is to get your skills up. You want books for the big multipliers they give, and watching the right TV shows will give certain skills a huge boost. There are also certain things that you simply cannot do if you haven’t either read about them or started with the right character, like maintaining cars or hooking up generators.
The golden rule of Zomboid is that whenever you find yourself thinking “Surely they didn’t bother putting that in the game,” well, they did. You have to really start thinking about what you would actually do in these situations if it was real life. If you could do something in real life, you can probably do it in the game. If something would be dangerous in real life, it’s probably dangerous in the game. Don’t drink stagnant water without boiling it. Don’t eat food without cooking it. Etc, etc. (Yes, that includes the time my wife tried to make a can of WD40 and a lighter into a flamethrower and immediately exploded). It’s less of a zombie game and more of a survival sim with zombies (seriously, once you get the hang of this game you will spend way too much time thinking about the value of potatoes).
FUD means “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.” I’m not following how you think that’s what’s happening here? I mean, I think you’re accusing the Kodokawa execs of bullshitting, but what they’re expressing is the opposite of FUD.
Oh, yeah, it’s use in the crypto space is absolutely part of cult conditioning. Any reality check, any sensible question, any appeal to reason, it’s all FUD. Only blind unquestioning faith in the rapture… I mean TO THE MOON… is acceptable.
Tribes was an incredible series. I’ve played every game in the series, but I think it really peaked with Tribes 2. That game was basically perfect. The movement, the gunplay, the vehicles, the maps, all of it was spot on.
This just means you’re figuring out what you like, and refusing to force yourself to enjoy trash.
Remember, 90% of anything is shit, and of that 10%, not all of it is going to appeal to your tastes.
On top of that, AAA gaming is a fucking wasteland right now. Publishers have squeezed all the life out of the medium in search of ongoing profit bonanzas. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a AAA game, unless we count Cyberpunk which had the benefit of being self published, so I don’t really think that counts.
Oh, my bad, Elden Ring would definitely count as AAA. That was awesome (still need to finish it, and the DLC). But let’s be real, Elden Ring is great because it’s so different from the vast majority of the open world games out there.
Anyway, I mostly spend my time on mid-shelf, indie and self-published stuff, and even then the number of games I like is pretty small. My main go tos are Darktide, Warframe, Insurgency, Chivalry 2, The Finals (I guess that’s kind of mainstream?), Stellaris, and Total War Warhammer. I’ve also recently enjoyed VA-11-Hall-A, Slay The Princess, Shadows of Doubt, and Space Marine 2. Those were all pretty great.
I like that a lot of games get more long term support now. That’s really cool. It’s fun to be able to keep coming back to a game I like and finding new stuff.
But yeah, you don’t owe it to anyone to enjoy everything, and you owe it to yourself to not waste your time on things you don’t enjoy.
It feels like this has disaster written all over it.
Sorry if I’m harshing anyone’s vibe, but I can’t escape the feeling that a group of people whose main involvement in the games industry is as voice talent are basically saying “How hard could it be?” and not understanding that the answer is “Very.”
Ideally they would team up with an experienced studio to build something off of their creative ideas. But if they try to do this whole thing themselves, it has the makings of a Wha Happen? episode all over it.
Maybe it’ll work. They pulled off Vox Machina, so who knows. I’d certainly like to be wrong. But I can’t help but feel like we’ll all be talking about the fallout from this in five years, when eager backers are still waiting for the game they were promised.
Hey, if they’re actually securing funding for this instead of pushing the cost off onto eager fans, good for them. At least they’re doing one thing right. Unfortunately that only increases the potential for this to turn into a trash fire that sinks their whole company.
The 9800X3D just came out, so I’m looking to upgrade my 2017 PC to join the modern era, which means I’m waiting to play Baldurs Gate 3 (runs, but not ideal), Dead Space Remake (poorly optimised), Space Marine 2, Cyberpunk, Metaphor etc when I build my new rig in a couple of months....
It’s a little janky, and the blocky aesthetic may or may not be your thing, but it handles the idea of detective work better than any other game I’ve ever played. It’s not just “Walk around in detective vision until you assemble enough clues for the character to tell you the solution.” You have to actually think about things, examine the evidence, assemble a theory of the crime. Which is doubly impressive given that every crime is procedurally generated.
One thing I have struggled with lately is finding good games to play. I bounce around from game to game trying to enjoy it but it just doesn’t scratch the itch like it used to. For example, one of my favorites was old school RuneScape, but it hasn’t really been giving me the same enjoyment that it used to. So then I would...
The core story content is single player only. The rest is multiplayer, but unlike Destiny there’s nothing that requires you to form your own group outside of the game, and all the gameplay is designed in such a way that you really don’t need to communicate. You can basically just turn on public matchmaking and get a bunch of humans who might as well be bots for all you’ll have to actually interact with them.
You can play all the content solo if you want to, but the difficulty might get a bit much, especially starting out (there are also certain game modes / mission types that really lean on having a full group).
A lot of the game is built around guilds and player to player interactions.
For a while that was true. But that entire design direction has basically been abandoned. Clans are more or less a vestigial organ at this point. Literally the only interaction I have ever had with a member of my clan was when I asked for an invite.
Sure, but again the amount of actual player to player interaction involved in that is minimal. Like I said, I’m in a clan, and outside of obtaining my initial invite (which basically went “Clan plz” in chat followed by clicking accept) I’ve had literally zero social interaction with my current clan. Trading has been effectively automated by Warframe market. You copy and paste something into chat, and the rest of the interaction consists of a pro forma exchange of "ty"s. Also, you don’t actually need a clan to trade, because anyone you’re trading with will inevitably invite you to theirs, so they’re only really important when selling.
This is absolutely nothing like the way that raiding and guilds are core to World of Warcraft. Clans play an almost purely mechanical role in Warframe, they’re not remotely the same thing, and do not have remotely the same requirement of social interaction.
First thing that comes to mind is Warframe. It’s a co-op third person looter-shooter, with full crossplay, so you can all party up across your platforms. It’s all very controller friendly, with lots of shotguns, SMGs, melee weapons and space magic that are all really forgiving of imprecise aim. It cares less about twitch reflexes and more about movement.
The scifi setting and “space ninja” aesthetic may or may not be to your taste, although I promise if you take the time really sink into the world it’s actually one of the most refreshingly different and unique scifi settings out there. There’s a lot of weirdness, but as you dig deeper into the story that weirdness all makes sense. And, like, it’s the good kind of weird if you get me? Stuff that makes you go “Holy fuck I want to know what the deal with that is!”
It does have a lot of MMO elements, so it can get grindy at times, but in my experience it’s a really solid game for hanging out and chilling on Discord together. Plus the game itself is free, with no paid DLC or add-ons, and for an adult with an income a few bucks here and there skips a LOT of grind, especially if you check out the third party market website where players will sell you a lot of the rare drops you’ll want for less than a dollar.
Added bonus, it’s made by the original developers of Unreal Tournament, Digital Extremes (there are actually a bunch of UT references squirelled away in the game).
The Steam achievement in Darkchaser is quite interesting—one of them requires you to travel the distance equivalent to circling the Earth once, and another requires the distance from the Earth to the Moon. However, I still want to complain: is anyone actually able to complete this? I know it’s a game that requires you to run...
What's an absolutely medium quality game? Not great, incredible or terrible or any single ended extreme. Dead medium quality angielski
Following up on this comment since I haven’t seen a thread about it: lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/14639216
What game has the best tutorial, in your opinion? angielski
I hear a lot about frustrating, unskippable tutorials. What games do a good job at teaching you what you need to know?
The Outer Worlds 2 Can't Be Anti-Capitalist When It's Charging Us $80 To Play It (www.thegamer.com) angielski
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn Announcement Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Cyberpunk 2 is now in preproduction, CD Projekt says (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Catchiest video game song? angielski
I thought of this post entirely because I have the Pokémon Center theme from Pokémon HeartGold SoulSilver stuck in my head, and it has wriggled in over and over for months despite me hearing and actively making other music.
$80 for Borderlands 4 too costly? Randy Pitchford says, "If you're a real fan, you'll find a way to make it happen" (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Derek Smart unveils ACE Platform, a multi-blockchain ‘virtual town hall of engagement opportunities’ | Massively Overpowered (massivelyop.com) angielski
One-handed games? angielski
Hi people, I currently have two friends who injured their dominant arm in unrelated accidents and mostly can’t do anything but sit around and watch movies....
From the trailer of Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014) angielski
Which is an incredible game, and is even more fun to play now than it was in 2014!
After Years of Struggling To Be Noticed, My Indie Game Was Covered By VICE (lemmy.world) angielski
For context : have no idea how they found about it, but I love that they are illuminating indie games. And VICE.com has 12 million monthly readers. This is insane for me , because for a long time I was struggling for the game to be noticed. (If you want to follow how development of the game is going, a simple wishlist on Steam...
Valve ban advertising-based business models on Steam, no forced adverts like in mobile games (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
Marvel Snap is banned, just like TikTok (www.theverge.com) angielski
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Of course Atari’s new handheld includes a trackball, spinner, and numpad (arstechnica.com) angielski
Day 163 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I’ve been playing until I forget to post Screenshots (pixelfed.social) angielski
I finished Control today. I have to say that i’m incredibly disappointed in myself for sleeping on it for so long. The game is awesome and i can’t conceive a reason why i had ever put it down. I love the amazing gameplay with all the OOP. They’re the kind of originality i love Remedy for. I started the foundation DLC today...
Control is free to claim for 24 hours on Epic (store.epicgames.com) angielski
A bit weird that their big christmas giveaway is something they already gave away before, I noticed it’s in my library for a while now.
The best game music of 2024, as chosen by composers | VGC (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Cloud Imperium Games [Star Citizen developer] Undergoes Major Shake-Up to Hit Deadlines (insider-gaming.com) angielski
Day 154 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I’ve been playing until I forget to post Screenshots (pxscdn.com) angielski
Zomboid build 42 released today and i decided to give it a try. My character is Darren Floyd. He’s a young 20 something Night Guard for the Knoxville Mall. I spawned in a house and made my way into town on foot, eventually making it to the Gas Station in the screenshot. I ended up clearing it out and making my base in there....
Onimusha Way of the Sword - Announcement Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Employees at FromSoftware owner Kadokawa reportedly "thrilled" about possible Sony takeover (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Seems like corporate FUD but still important if corporate FUD is being used.
TRIBES: The Most Influential FPS You (Probably) Never Played [video essay 52:59] (www.youtube.com) angielski
Making peace with liking very few games? angielski
I love my favorite games and have been playing them for years, but I disliked about 99% of the games I played....
Critical Role's plans to make a videogame have become an 'active pursuit', says CEO Travis Willingham, after almost 10 years of growing a D&D campaign into a full-on franchise (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
In a bit of a pre upgrade slump, what do you recommend? angielski
The 9800X3D just came out, so I’m looking to upgrade my 2017 PC to join the modern era, which means I’m waiting to play Baldurs Gate 3 (runs, but not ideal), Dead Space Remake (poorly optimised), Space Marine 2, Cyberpunk, Metaphor etc when I build my new rig in a couple of months....
What are some video game quotes that is stuck in your head? angielski
“You Must Construct Additional Pylons”
Rumors of Sony Acquiring FromSoft’s Parent Company - GAMESCENSOR (www.gamescensor.com) angielski
What are your favorite 1000+ hour games? angielski
One thing I have struggled with lately is finding good games to play. I bounce around from game to game trying to enjoy it but it just doesn’t scratch the itch like it used to. For example, one of my favorites was old school RuneScape, but it hasn’t really been giving me the same enjoyment that it used to. So then I would...
Games to play with my late 40s brothers? angielski
Hi...
I don't think it's possible for me to complete this Steam achievement angielski
The Steam achievement in Darkchaser is quite interesting—one of them requires you to travel the distance equivalent to circling the Earth once, and another requires the distance from the Earth to the Moon. However, I still want to complain: is anyone actually able to complete this? I know it’s a game that requires you to run...