Starfield would be fine if there was a way to get from place to place without constant reloads. This is a limitation of the (ancient) engine the game is on, as I understand it.
The thing is, we already have games like No Man’s Sky which do this very well. Starfield may have been better received if it came out 15 years ago, but against modern space games, it just sucks.
That’s ignoring anything else wrong with the game, of course, and there is plenty. But I could get over a lot if it didn’t feel like I was playing a menu instead of flying a spaceship at every change of scenery.
I really hope this is true. The only thing that will stop Rockstar from the delayed PC release nonsense in the future is actually stopping the double dip.
I ended up with a PS4 just for Red Dead 2. But I still haven’t bought it on PC and have no plans to do so.
The thing is, the PS4 kind of made sense because I also wanted a Blu-Ray player. I still have it for that, so a PS5 would be an impossible sell to me. It’s like Rockstar tries to sell consoles but this time around is one of the worst ever console eras.
Last few years I’ve been excitedly waiting for sequels from several small-to-medium sized studios that made highly acclaimed original games—I’m talking about Cities: Skylines, Kerbal Space Program, Planet Coaster, Frostpunk, etc.—yet each sequel was very poorly received to the point I wasn’t willing to risk my money...
I think CS:2 was far too ambitious, and there were very strange design choices around subsidies which effectively removed any challenge from the game – at first. I just played it the other day, and frankly it has turned around a lot. Decent game now.
KSP2 was just a corporate shit show – devs were well intentioned but ultimately were unable to continue based on factors out of their control. It really sucks because KSP1 is one of the best games ever made and KSP2 had a lot of promise.
The fun thing about The Last Samurai is that the title doesn’t refer to Tom Cruise. He does not play a samurai in the film. He plays an American officer.
He hangs with a group of samurai, who are collectively the last of their kind.
That said, plenty of people complained about it in its day.
Hm, I may need to rewatch it myself. That also doesn’t match what the link above suggests about interpreting the ending: “Algren finds redemption through his newfound purpose and ultimately sacrifices his life for the cause he once opposed.”
Edit: I just checked the last scene. You’re right, he doesn’t actually die. Which means the link is also wrong.
Still, I think it’s a stretch to say he’s the last samurai, since he never really becomes a samurai. One important note is that samurai is “samurai” in the plural, too.
It’s also way different from the goal of HL2. Downloading a launcher called Steam for free is not the same thing as buying specific hardware to play one game.
I’ve been playing some retro games recently (PS1 and prior) and I’ve been discovering a lot of games that I never thought I would enjoy. Particularly 90s arcade shmups and arcade style sports games....
The fact that it’s immutable isn’t necessarily good for people new to Linux. If something does go wrong, or the user wants to change something significant, most of what they read online about how to do that will not work like many other distros.
For experienced users, sure, there probably isn’t much difference.
I was probably 10 when my best friend (at the time) and I would play Super Contra on the NES for hours. We loved everything about it. We’d get as far as we could. We’d give each other lives. We could sing the soundtrack. When it was game over, we just restarted it.
Those days were simple and beautiful. I don’t think another game could give me anything like that experience, since it wasn’t really entirely about the game.
Well, they will. Two things drive the trend, in my view:
Lack of informed opinions. If you don’t know that other options exist, you’ll buy whatever because you think it is the baseline.
Convenience. This one is a killer. People regularly give up a lot – even rights – in the name of convenience.
Between those two factors, it’s a hard sell for the average consumer to not support this kind of corpo garbage. A nihilistic view, maybe, but I think it’s an accurate one.
In a similar vein, it’s pretty easy to show someone that consoles have these needlessly expensive proprietary links, plus games which are very expensive for the same reason. But it is very hard to convince someone that the cool thing they saw on TV isn’t, in fact, “cool” because of the aforementioned reasons. And ultimately, people like having cool things, even if that coolness is subjective.
Historically, it’s been a push-pull between groups, but everyone has had a different future. Now that things are being consolidated wholesale – e.g. physical media going out the window because so many are happy to stream and never own anything – it is more necessary than ever to call out #1 and #2, since the market itself is changing for the worse.
I think the issue is a bit more nuanced. Graphics have gotten so good that it is relatively easy to get character animations which sit in the uncanny valley.
The uncanny valley is bad. You can have beautiful, photorealistic graphics everywhere, but if your characters are in the uncanny valley, the overall aesthetic is more similar to a game which didn’t have the photorealism at all.
In the past, the goalpost was at a different spot, so putting all the resources towards realism still wouldn’t get you into the valley, and everyone just thought it looked great.
What they don’t do is make money hand over fist without the need to design more product, as happens with subscription-based, game-as-a-service multiplayer titles. Some companies don’t want to make good games. They just want to make good money.
Musk should buy Bethesda. Gut it like he gutted Twitter. Start development on something random – the Elder Scrolls VI: Kingdom of Doge.
When it comes out, it will be a horrible, poorly made mess. Just like a regular Bethesda game but extra enshittified. He can charge extra for it to make it seem super premium.
Been playing this game for weeks. I completed it and then started a new game. The game’s story is excellent, but it absolutely does not justify the tedium it makes you endure to experience it. In a 40 minute sitting, I’d spend the entire thing simply having characters dialogue at me. What’s the point of the open world...
I actually felt it was one of the best games I’ve played in the last 10 years. I really enjoyed the story. The game is beautiful. I love the amount of immersion that is possible, especially with mods. I’ve played through it twice.
I really, really wish we could inspect weapons. One mod gets close, but it isn’t the same as a Rockstar-style weapons inspection. We don’t even get to zoom in on the models in inventory. A damned travesty because the weapons are gorgeous.
But overall, I find it hard to fault, especially given its state at launch.
Andrew Wilson is reportedly being considered for Disney's top job. It's a big move in the entertainment world, with potential ramifications for fans of Pixar and Marvel as well as The Sims, Battlefield, and Dragon Age
The corporate world absolutely idolizes the grift. Being able to “produce value” (=make more money while actually not producing anything more) is the only game left. Shareholders look at something like EA that releases the same old Madden year after year while making money hand over fist, and they fucking salivate.
Edit: and BTW, you know one giant group that grifts profit while producing nothing for the economy? Landlords.
There was a 2010 2D platformer released as Sonic 4 which was meant to be the spiritual successor.
I’d say the real spiritual successor on Genesis/Megadrive was Sonic & Knuckles, which came out after Sonic 3 and for all intents and purposes may as well have been called Sonic 4. But they had to push the Knuckles aspect because the cartridge had a passthrough that would accept another Genesis cartridge and allow you to play e.g. Sonic 2 with the Knuckles sprite, iirc.
No no no…Sonic and Knuckles was just Sonic 3, the other half of the cartridge that they sold you a second time, somehow.
It’s not though? Sonic & Knuckles has unique stages and story vs. Sonic 3. Unless you mean they were designed as one game and split at the end before release; that I don’t know.
I’m one of the very few people who loves the Steam Controller. If given an option between KBM and Steam Controller, I generally do the latter. The right pad as mouse isn’t as accurate as a mouse, but damned if it isn’t way more comfy from the couch.
I guess what I’m saying is: I’d suggest it is less about KBM and more about what games you play, where you play them, and probably whether or not you play multiplayer.
RDR2 was a beautiful game and one of the few that gave me a serious emotional response at the end. But it was a bit long winded along the way, so I’m OK with this.
That’s just a by-product of how Steam works. Playtime is counted as long as the Play button says “Stop”.
For games without DRM (e.g. KSP), you can launch it from the Steam install folder without Steam running. Everything works perfectly but your playtime won’t be counted for the same reason.
Try a strategy title with the pads, in particular something like Civ, where there is no time limit. Right pad works fantastic as a mouse replacement. Left pad is always kind of just there, though it can be useful as a radial menu if you use the configurator (albeit that makes more sense on Steam Controller since the pads are round).
Bungie appears to have extensively plagiarized an artist's work in their extraction shooter "Marathon" according to this Bluesky post (bsky.app)
https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/33d904f3-6ae2-46f1-ba36-c56913c7dc88.png...
Even Starfield's community patch modders are growing 'disenchanted' with the sci-fi RPG, as volunteers depart in droves: 'If nobody comes forward, we may have to retire the project' (www.pcgamer.com)
Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 2 (www.youtube.com)
Cities Skylines 2, Kerbal Space 2, Planet Coaster 2, Frostpunk 2... What Went Wrong?
Last few years I’ve been excitedly waiting for sequels from several small-to-medium sized studios that made highly acclaimed original games—I’m talking about Cities: Skylines, Kerbal Space Program, Planet Coaster, Frostpunk, etc.—yet each sequel was very poorly received to the point I wasn’t willing to risk my money...
'Oh god': There's a buried Steam help page that shows how much money you've ever spent on the platform, and you may not want to know (www.pcgamer.com)
Ubi, it's $70 and people are vary of your mile wide puddles that drop 75% in price after half a year
Civilization 7 Outlines Crucial 1.1.1 Update as It Struggles to Compete on Steam Against Civ 6 and Even the 15-Year-Old Civ 5 (www.ign.com)
Half Life: Alyx is Five Years Old Today
I genuinely can’t believe Half Life Alyx is five years old....
Favourite 90s platformer?
For me the nostalgia glasses are turned up to the max for Crash Bandicoot....
Is anyone else playing Avowed? What are your thoughts so far?
Nintendo admitted this recently (lemmy.world)
GTA VI Might Inspire Other AAA Developers to Price Their Games at $100 (80.lv)
Favorite retro games?
I’ve been playing some retro games recently (PS1 and prior) and I’ve been discovering a lot of games that I never thought I would enjoy. Particularly 90s arcade shmups and arcade style sports games....
SteamOS expands beyond Steam Deck (store.steampowered.com)
Cutting edge (lemmy.world)
What's the greatest joy you have gotten from a video game?
The 2TB WD_Black C50 expansion card for Xbox Series X/S hits record low $190 (www.theverge.com)
NGL, I’ve been waiting for this. Yeah, yeah, proprietary expansion, too expensive, but on the Xbox, you won’t (currently) do better.
Video Games Can’t Afford to Look This Good: The gaming industry spent billions pursuing the idea that customers wanted realistic graphics. Did executives misread the market? (www.nytimes.com)
archive.is link...
Frostpunk creators cancel "Project 8" and lay off staff amid concerns that "narrative-driven, story-rich games" don't sell (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
We tested the Nvidia App performance problems — games can run up to 15 percent slower with the app (www.tomshardware.com)
Outer Worlds 2 no longer exclusive to Xbox, is now coming to PS5 – WGB (wolfsgamingblog.com)
Elon Musk says too many game studios are owned by giant corporations so his giant corporation is going to start a studio to 'make games great again' (www.pcgamer.com)
Musk says he's going to launch an "AI game studio" at his xAI startup.
Sony reportedly prepping PlayStation 5 portable, plans to battle Nintendo's handheld dominance (www.eurogamer.net)
For me, Cyberpunk 2077 was uninteractive and has low replayablility value.
Been playing this game for weeks. I completed it and then started a new game. The game’s story is excellent, but it absolutely does not justify the tedium it makes you endure to experience it. In a 40 minute sitting, I’d spend the entire thing simply having characters dialogue at me. What’s the point of the open world...
Disney Said to be Considering a Surprising Replacement for Bob Iger: EA CEO Andrew Wilson - IGN (www.ign.com)
Andrew Wilson is reportedly being considered for Disney's top job. It's a big move in the entertainment world, with potential ramifications for fans of Pixar and Marvel as well as The Sims, Battlefield, and Dragon Age
malicious backdoor found in widely used game mod by Low Level [YouTube] (youtu.be)
Invidious, an alternative YouTube client in the browser without using YouTube directly (more private): inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=VH_8arwuRz8...
AYANEO 3 now officially announced with AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 and HDR OLED (www.gamingonlinux.com)
Screenshot of what I'm playing, day 3: Sonic 3
Loving how each new stage is an extension of the previous one.
Steven Spielberg is ‘a big PC Gamer’ — loves shooters, and insists on keyboard and mouse (www.tomshardware.com)
According to New GTA 6 Rumor, Main Story Might Be Shorter Than Red Dead Redemption 2 (questalerts.com)
This will look great in my library (lemmy.world)
Kotaku being Kotaku (lemmy.today)
At this point I’m going to Ladbrokes and betting against everything Kotaku promotes. They are like Jim Cramer of the gaming industry.
Civilization 7 dev on Ages system and series shakeup: "It's going to be the hardest thing for fans to get adjusted to" (www.ggrecon.com)
Sid Meier’s Civilization VII - Gameplay Reveal Trailer (www.youtube.com)
2K removes its pointless launcher from Civilization 6, while also announcing that Civilization 7 players will never have to suffer launching the game twice for no reason (www.pcgamer.com)
Speaking of controllers: What's your favorite WEIRD controller?
Today I learned about the Jogcon controller for PS1 & PS2:...