It’s okay, don’t feel bad! This is the kind of political decision where I don’t fault anyone for making either choice. Boycotting Russia is noble, but so is supporting devs for making amazing games!
it’s not hard to imagine why a ban on conversion therapy is gaining signatures while a ban on killing live service games is not. Stop Killing Games is noble, but ultimately amounts to media preservation. Meanwhile, conversion therapy is literal torture of vulnerable children. Only hardcore gamers really understand the Stop Killing Games initiative, while most sane people will quickly sign anything that improves the lives of children.
seems really cool! I like the flexible interpretation of the “point buy” system that tabletop wargames use.
Developer Steel Balalaika is based in Russia.
Not so fond of putting any money into Russia’s tax base, though. No shade to the devs who are probably cool people, I just struggle with making this kind of choice in our shitty modern world 😔
SWD2 is so fun, just a nice, breezy lil metroidvania. Does the cool metroidvania thing where the endgame mobility upgrades make you feel like a ninja grappling all over the place.
this is a big ol’ bummer. understandable why they would struggle to get buy-in from stodgy old men, but disappointing all the same. I really thought they had a good chance when the campaign was kicking off, the excitement seemed to be there. But if even the EU won’t legislate this, it’s hard to imagine any other CPB taking up this idea. Maybe if we’re all still here in 10 years we can try again. Maybe there will be enough millenials in seats of power by then to make this happen. Or maybe the kids will be so used to live service games by then that a majority of gamers will just be blindly accepting the state of the industry.
exactly! I’ve felt for a while now that Sonic games should use driving game controls instead of platformer controls, and MKW shows a way they could do that and still have a platforming game in there!
This specific PC “port” comes from a team that has done several other PC ports of N64 games in recent months, all released under a similar legal framework. Nintendo has yet to challenge any of those previous releases, so one can imagine that they may actually be safe from Nintendo’s fury.
Playing a bit of Mario Kart World. The new systems (rails, wall riding) seem fun, but I’m not a fan of the constant straight roads. Grand Prix is not great and Knockout Tour is fun but is starting to get stale. The most fun I’m having is in Time Trial, as it seems like the best way to play with the new mechanics.
God i’m so jealous of all y’all Switch 2 owners. The trick system seems so cool and satisfying. One of my favorite childhood game experiences was Sonic Adventure 2, and I played a few of the earlier stages over and over again as a kid because I needed to farm rings (money) for the Chao Garden. I got really good at blasting through City Escape and similar levels, knowing the various optional routes and shortcuts, memorizing when exactly I had to hit a button to snap to a grind rail or light dash along a ring lane. Speedrunning those stages gave me a very satisfying feeling.
After watching a lot of gameplay of MKW, I really feel like MKW is the first modern game I’ve seen that recreates that experience, in a way that modern Sonic games could never. Especially the Time Trials mode in this one seems like it would recreate my modern experience of trying to do tricks through a stage to make Sonic and Shadow go even faster. Sonic Team should be taking notes from MKW in my opinion, this kind of “arcade racing + tony hawk tricks” gameplay is exactly what I want out of a Sonic game.
I am amazed at how well this game is reviewing. It felt like half the critics were dunking on Death Stranding 1 upon release, and then there was this slow reappraisal where a bunch of people changed their tune over the course of the past 5 years. Now DS2 (Seek King Vendrick?) comes out, and with just a little refinement, the critics are all singing its praises. Would the review scores be as high if the general public had not come around on DS1?
Reverse engineering projects such as these are technically made legal because the developers involved do not use any leaked content or copyrighted assets. They also require players to provide their own legally-sourced ROMs for them to work.
Enjoying KOTOR2 at the moment. A More Civilized Age (AKA my favorite podcast ever) is doing a playalong of the game right now, so that has been motivating me through all the clunky combat scenarios. I’m really loving the juicy dialogue and top-tier voice acting. The Exile is so much more interesting than any other protagonist i’ve ever seen in a BioWare game - I feel like I really have a lot of room to interpret what kind of grey Jedi i want to be. I am shocked that Obsidian (and notorious POS Chris Avellone) pumped out this much amazing writing in 10 months.
I never finished all the time trials in Mario Kart 8, and I don’t have the budget to grab a Switch 2, so i’ve been plugging away at those trials to satiate my hunger for MKWorld.