general gaming

[dire gate]

Pokemon SV's Open world was most...weird I've seen recently.

[river veldt]

Botw my beloved

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3m8pSu57DE

idk what everyone's talking about Forspoken seems pretty good

[grave tide]

Forspoken maybe deserves to be played

But 70 bucks price is too much

[quiet swift]

Performance issues and maybe not the style of writing people were expecting. Also yes, price

[static bluff]

Super good video about Forspoken

[river veldt]

ikr

[slim thorn]

so now that I'm far enough into the game to have an opinion on this

I really like that Isaac has a voice now

as usual I can't judge and don't care about VA "performances" and all, but Isaac having dialogue changes so many little things

"fuck, the auto-targeting is down"
"what about manual targeting?"
"...you want to go out there in the middle of all the asteroids and manually aim those things?"
"got a better idea?"

when it's his idea it sounds so much more badass

this is the weakest slogan

[proud warren]

Yesterday

Is a bad idea

[rancid herald]

“We’re still a bit unsure about today”

[proud warren]

Overmorrow

Is a great idea

[mossy flume]

https://www.pcgamer.com/this-professional-end-of-the-world-simulator-is-now-available-on-steam/

Would you like to play a game?

[static bluff]

[river veldt]

the only way to win is to not play or something like that

[mossy flume]

“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

[river veldt]

thanks

that move is great

[static bluff]

How about a nice game of chess?

[river veldt]

Onosa we should play chess against each other sometime

im not good but it would be fun i think

[static bluff]

Let's go

right now, it's on

[river veldt]

how

[arctic fern]

i think you can play chess via discord VC

the activities thing

[static bluff]

http://www.betterthanchess.com/?play=41263

no one click that but cm

[arctic fern]

clicks on that

[static bluff]

I'm stream it let's goooo

[static bluff]

Good game

[river veldt]

I lost 😔

[static bluff]

Moments before disaster

[dire gate]

Wow is that a castling white did there

[static bluff]

Pretty advanced move they don't teach in schools...

[dire gate]

Hmm...

Bb5?

[static bluff]

https://www.chessanytime.com/common/analyz/import/guest_120307.html

[dire gate]

Oh wait you have a Rook there

[static bluff]

That was our game

[river veldt]

lol

[static bluff]

We'll have a rematch soon and you can kick my ass. I got lucky, haha

[river veldt]

no! im not good at chess lol

[thorny loom]

@mossy flume https://kotaku.com/zelda-link-past-pc-port-emulator-reverse-engineered-1850057475?

[visual hill]

To the OpenMWtorium!!!

[river veldt]

awesome!

it just means even more people can experience this amazing game :3

[mossy flume]

It can also be compiled to run natively on Switch

I love these decompilation projects.

Ensuring that these masterpieces never get lost to the sands of time.

[river veldt]

why is Zelda art from Zelda 1 to Link's Awakening so goddamn comfy

like this???

[static bluff]

adventure

[river veldt]

yeah!

theres also a BOTW version

[static bluff]

when I was young, my best friend and I would play in the creek next to my grandma's house. He would be MegaMan and I was Link. We'd defeated all the imaginary monsters and make our way up the creek, but we'd always eventually get too scared and run back home. that's what Zelda for nes feels like to me.

[river veldt]

thats awesome

[robust spear]

Fox version

[river veldt]

I love this story so much omg

Zelda 1 has such a specific feel and I think the only other game that's captured that feeling for me is BOTW

[quiet swift]

Tunic?

[mossy flume]

That is indeed Tunic

I love Tunic in principle, but it's too difficult

Apparently I just gigasuck at games these days

[graceful bridge]

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/02/ps5-owners-wont-get-this-set-of-free-ps4-games-for-much-longer/

[fresh bane]

do they actually say that in the game to reference that manual targeting section?

if so that's so fucking cool

You don't even need a source just gotta look at the discourse and reception surrounding both games

Everyone loves Hi-Fi Rush and it didn't even need much marketing despite being shadowdropped, the game itself was the marketing, the game is so good people started talking about it and posting about it and that just kept spreading

Amazing how things work when your game is actually good and fun

[hushed onyx]

Oringinality is not an unalloyed and perpetual good. Sometimes a big but not original game is just fine.

[mossy flume]

Huh, Dead Space Remake is now Steam Deck Verified...

I highly doubt that.

It was extremely unplayable

[fresh bane]

I mean... we keep saying that original things are basically impossible but I keep seeing cool original games pop up, AAA and AA or indie

...mostly indie

[visual hill]

Steam Deck Verified is given pretty generously these days

a lot of games with barely legible fonts get that label, even though legible fonts on the 7" display is one of the criteria for being verified

Valve is likely doing this to inflate the number of verified games, and/or make publishers happy

[mossy flume]

Ohh, Hogwarts Legacy is marked as Verified

Hopefully that works

[gaunt marten]

Yeah, we're in a golden age of indie games, in regards to their availability, uniqueness and amount

[fresh bane]

Like, Hi Fi rush isn't an indie game, it's made by tango gameworks, the same people who made the evil within and ghostwire tokyo, AAA games

AAA gaming companies can totally do these types of games

[mossy flume]

The snag though is that once you’re developing a AAA game, the cost of doing so is very high and as such there’s an increased amount of risk involved. Doing something new is generally a risky investment, so they try not to shake things up too much at once.

But when they’re willing to do so, it often works out nicely.

[fresh bane]

Hi Fi rush is a much smaller scale game than the others Tango has worked on

if it were to flop, which I'd be extremely doubtful it ever would've, it wouldn't have been as big of a hit as if it was a game like most aaa games where the game is meant to be dozens of hours long and has been worked on for like over half a decade

[rose rose]

Conversely, I see a lot of games not verified on the basis of unreadably small text, then I play them and I’m just like “what small text?”

[slim thorn]

I forgot the exact wording so that's more of a paraphrase

well stuff like Hi Fi Rush flops all the time

just look at all the gaming cult classics that weren't commercially successful

[random steppe]

Helps that Hi Fi rush dropped at a really good time

[slim thorn]

it really did

[random steppe]

Forspoken bombed so that's not a big competitor

[slim thorn]

you can't predict what the gamer zeitgeist will be after the N years it takes to develop a game, and sometimes you get lucky that everyone's in the mood for it

[random steppe]

And Dead Space is good but an horror game which is kind of niche

[slim thorn]

I think it's a fairly mainstream kind but I agree it's not a direct competitor

I've heard movie analysts call this sort of thing "counterprogramming"

[fresh bane]

Hi Fi rush has the advantage to not only have been released after all the games it's cleeearly inspired from but also after DMC5 and BAYONETTA 3

which was, pretty bad

So it was double the perfect time to release

I do think that even if it released at any other point it would've been successful anyways

[random steppe]

Maybe successful, but it would have had an harder time competing with an God of War sized release

[visual hill]

"An immersive sim is a game that was received well by critics but sold poorly" —Civvie11

[slim thorn]

with people like us, sure, it was always going to get some takers, but these things have a huge impact on how many other people on the fence might get off it and try the thing

notice I'm not even considering picking up Hi Fi Rush myself; I've just got too much else going on and am not in the mood for that particular genre right now

[fresh bane]

I mean considering it released pretty close to the Dead Space remake which had been hyped and people were looking forward to it for a looong time...

[visual hill]

reminds me when people panicked because the MLP movie aired on the same week as Blade Runner 2049

[fresh bane]

I'm certain it would've been fine

[visual hill]

people were like "there's no way it will compete!!"

[fresh bane]

the game would've still been good, people would've still talked about it and said great things about it

[fresh bane]

Which just speaks volumes about how good the game is, a character action rhythm game?

That's like the perfect recipe for a commercial disaster but a cult classic

And yet it seems to have outsold Forspoken as well as received massive better reception

[slim thorn]

I thought those genres all had plenty of commercial successes

[random steppe]

Outselling forspoken I feel is not much of a feat

People were on the fence on that one way before it dropped

[dire gate]

critics' opinions != people's opinions != sales

[fresh bane]

I don't know if I'd say they were all commercial successes, these games always had fans but rhythm games and character action games were never extremely mainstream popular like DMC5 managed to become

and metal gear rising only got mainstream popular 10 years after it came out thanks to memes

the game came out in 2013 and people haaaaated it back in the day

so clearly there was a fanbase for these games and sure I'd say they were successful but even nowadays DMC5 achieving the level of popularity it did doesn't even come close to touching a franchise like resident evil

[random steppe]

Idk, I feel like with forspoken these 3 seems to align pretty well given the articles I have seen

[dire gate]

Yeah it depends

[unreal idol]

Man, I gotta be careful what video games I play

Fired up Octopath Traveler and it's already tingling my brain-meats with enjoyment lmao

But I don't wanna over do it

[slim thorn]

I never said all games in the genre were successes

that's obviously not true of any genre

we just don't pay attention to the flops outside genres we're personally invested in

except when it makes viral headlines like Forspoken

it's also important not to fall too deep into "critics are so clueless their opinions are always the opposite of the truth" narrative

especially when you lump together all the competent and the incompetent ones together like that

there's also lots of non-critic "people" who are bad at forming opinions on things

but to the extent that "critics" refers to random google headlines or metacritic scores, yes it's a poor basis for purchase decisions these days

[fresh bane]

lucky for me the character action genre isn't one that's bustling with games, there's really only a handful and they were all pretty successful sure, I'm just saying they were never extremely successful or profitable and never reached a huge mainstream audience, especially Bayonetta which struggled so hard that they needed to make a deal with Nintendo to save the franchise

otherwise Bayonetta would've never gotten a second game

... that probably would've been the best timeline...

[fresh bane]

there's an overwhelming number of people that love giving opinions on things and voicing their opinions but they have no clue what they're talking about

whenever I discuss survival horror in a public group or something I swear I feel like people just straight up don't like survival horror because I hear people complaining about the original silent hill or resident evil games and all their complaints are literally staples and characteristics of the survival horror genre

[slim thorn]

meanwhile the newer Resident Evils are still more survival horror-y than most games, and Dead Space got multiple sequels and a remake

ultimately people just don't know much about genres they don't play

(unless they spend time learning about them like I do out of sheer curiosity; I certainly don't expect everyone to watch multi-hour youtube documentaries about the history of MMORPGs and CRPGs and whatnot when I haven't played a single one myself)

[fresh bane]

I'm still hoping for a Signalis style classic survival horror one day from a AAA or big developer

[slim thorn]

you mean "another"?

[fresh bane]

with RE4R things will eventually go back to action, it already has the quick swapping of RE8 and plenty of improvements to the shooting mechanics of the original

another?

[slim thorn]

I mean, RE1 wasn't an indie game

[fresh bane]

Yeeeeah but RE1 was also released in 2002 at a time where Resident Evil was popping off

I mean don't get me wrong it counts

[slim thorn]

I meant in 1996 but whatever

[fresh bane]

I'm confused

[slim thorn]

once upon a time, there was no franchise called Resident Evil, and then Capcom released a game called Resident Evil, which is what coined the term "survival horror"

Capcom was not an indie developer then (or now)

that's all

(among other examples but that's obviously the biggest)

anyway

I still really need to play RE3

we did finally finish RE0, and FE:PoR is maybe two sessions from being done, so hopefully within a week or two I can finally experience Nemesis

[fresh bane]

I think I understood what you meant but what I meant was that I hope that a non indie dev will do that again nowadays not implying that it hasn't been done before but I get it

I hae to finish RE3 but from what little I played I'm gonna be honest it might be my favourite RE game

at least from the classics

Even after having experienced RE1 and RE2 this one might just be my favourite

but I really like Jill so I'm biased here

[slim thorn]

did you play the original RE1 or (like me) just the remake?

[fresh bane]

nah just the remake, no original unfortunately

maybe I should do a playthrough for shits and giggles

[slim thorn]

I watched a speedrun lol

[fresh bane]

I could do that too

[river veldt]

J i l l s a n d w i c h

[fresh bane]

As much of a defender of classic survival horror I am, I also understand RE1 was the first of its kind and will be jank as fuck

[slim thorn]

it was probably always the one that stood to benefit the most from a remake

[fresh bane]

and it got a remake only like, a couple years after it released!!

and they look like they come from entirely different ages in time

crazy shit

[visual hill]

graphics used to evolve very fast, so that's understandable

[slim thorn]

(though you could make a case for RE0 since it also has much jank that could be solved or at least greatly mitigated)

[surreal ridge]

i bought a game

probably a bad idea but

[visual hill]

Princess Celestia Building Simulator!

I got it on EGS a while ago, tried it out but it didn't manage to hook me

it has too much of a "second job" feeling, I guess

[fresh bane]

to be fair RE0 is.... a can of worms in and of itself

[slim thorn]

indeed

[river veldt]

why is there a RE0

i dont even know what it's deal is

[slim thorn]

it's the right kind of mix of good and bad stuff that makes it imo super interesting to dissect

it's a prequel

if you haven't played any of the REs that's all that's worth knowing really

[river veldt]

like RE1-3 survival horror romps, 4-6 actiony, 7 and 8 a mix of both

wtf is RE0 like

[fresh bane]

bad

[river veldt]

oh

worse than 5 and 6?

[fresh bane]

that depends

5 and 6 are enjoyable shooters

RE0 is...

it exists

it's a videogame that exists

[river veldt]

i see

[fresh bane]

it's probably not the worst thing to exist but I wouldn't recommend playing it personally

[river veldt]

so it's like the Doom 3 of the Resident Evil franchise

[fresh bane]

Doom 3 is good though

[river veldt]

ehhhh

[fresh bane]

I grew up with Doom 3

[slim thorn]

RE0 is hard to fairly sum up in a single sentence

but if you haven't played the half dozen or so great REs, it doesn't matter, play those first/instead

[river veldt]

what happens in RE0

is it Whisker or whatever his name is

[slim thorn]

are you actually familiar with the plot of the other RE games

it's not really a deep story kind of franchise anyway

[river veldt]

sort of

I know 7 and 8 pretty well

[slim thorn]

eh, fine, let's do this

RE0's player characters are Rebecca Chambers (S.T.A.R.S. medic, you'd know her from playing RE1 as Chris) and Billy Coen (new to this game)

the main bad guy is Umbrella co-founder and scientist James Marcus, and much of the backstory revealed in this game is about how William Birkin (from RE2) and Albert Wesker (from RE1) screwed him over

[river veldt]

Albert Whisker

[fresh bane]

Rebecca ❤️

[slim thorn]

the game is set very shortly before the events RE1 where Rebecca and her S.T.A.R.S. team are looking for escaped fugitive Billy Coen (from the crashed helicopter you'd recall from RE1's intro if you played that) and end up investigating a train where all the passengers were attacked and zombified by Marcus' t-virus leeches

Rebecca and Billy end up working together to stay alive for the duration of the game, which much of the game's unique mechanics revolving around how you control / switch between both characters

(most of our complaints with the game boil down to... questionable design choices in these two-character mechanics, and/or level design that doesn't work well with it)

then at the end they go their separate ways peacefully as Rebecca's long since become convinced Billy's not the bad guy, and she needs to reunite with the S.T.A.R.S. survivors in the RE1 Spencer mansion

[river veldt]

i see

[fresh bane]

Billy then proceeded to rob the nearest gas station and got arrested /s

[slim thorn]

imo the best way to describe RE0's gameplay is an intriguing but failed experiment with shaking up the RE1 survival horror formula

but it's impossible to play it without brainstorming ways it could've been better

[river veldt]

i do not like games where i have to switch between characters

[slim thorn]

so I'm wasting a lot of spare brain cycles lately on it

[fresh bane]

If RE0 was just like RE1 exactly in structure and gameplay style it probably would've been a good game

[slim thorn]

that's the easy but boring option, sure

[fresh bane]

Sure, it wouldn't have been anything revolutionary

but better than a gimmick that fails and completely ruins the experience

boring but hey it would've been a nice.... what, 7/10

[slim thorn]

well, it didn't ruin my experience

6-7/10 is probably what I got

[fresh bane]

well I'm being hyperbolic but I guess the gimmick just kinda changes how the game is structured and that kinda ruins the game design a bit

not that switching between characters is bad inherently though

[slim thorn]

right, and there's parts of RE0 that handled it well

[random steppe]

If re0 is the game I am thinking of, it felt very much like a JRpg story too, which isn't a good thing

[slim thorn]

[fresh bane]

I'm curious what game you're thinking of

[slim thorn]

RE0's storytelling is extremely similar to RE1/2

like, to a fault

[random steppe]

Maybe I am thinking of another one

[slim thorn]

probably

I don't know of any RE that I'd describe as JRPG-y though

you might be thinking of Marcus's RE0 outfit, that did make me think of JRPG characters a bit

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/c/cf/James_Marcus-0.png/revision/latest?cb=20190527144111

[river veldt]

why he look like that

wtf is RE's tone

[slim thorn]

monster B-movie to action B-movie I'd say, depending on installment

lots of fun but does plenty of utterly ridiculous stuff because it never takes itself that seriously

have you not played / watched LPs of any of the pre-7 ones?

[random steppe]

It's hard to explain, I guess it just felt more like it had anime tropes, like dudes being badass for no reason, hooded dudes that watched from the shadow, tonally it definitely clashed with what RE usually did in those early chapters

[river veldt]

i have played 4

[quiet swift]

Oh no. The game that my fiancée streams all the time, and that she loves a lot (knockout city) is getting a final season... and shutting down in june :<

[fresh bane]

Wait until you find out who Morpheus is

From REsident evil Dead Aim

[slim thorn]

ok, so 1-3 are the only ones you're "missing" really

[fresh bane]

Who at the end of the game || transforms into a tyrant in the form of a super hot lady??? WITH HEELS???? i'll take it fuck it ||

[river veldt]

what????/

[slim thorn]

lol

[river veldt]

omg trans?????

[random steppe]

Idk I never played it, but seems like it

By that description of events

[slim thorn]

dead aim is not exactly a mainline installment lol

[fresh bane]

It's one of those weird things where the character isn't necessarily trans but is like, obsessed with women and their beauty and shit so the transformation is meant to reflect that

[river veldt]

TRANS?????

[random steppe]

We stan

[fresh bane]

I don't think the writers meant for it to be a trans thing but it can super easily come across as that

[slim thorn]

neat

[river veldt]

it's like how Kojima doesn't understand why people think a lot of MGS is homoerotic

[fresh bane]

''what do you mean men don't hit each other with vihta and wrestle naked sweating in a hot sauna??? wha-how -whaaaa??? that's not gay!!''

[river veldt]

lmao

[fresh bane]

that is a real thing btw

[river veldt]

yes ive heard it before

[fresh bane]

snake and kaz go into MSF's hot sauna and Snake ''punishes'' Kaz by hitting him with a vihta broom and they wrestle and fight each other

it's all part of a CD drama

[river veldt]

isn't it canon that Snake doesn't know what sex is

[fresh bane]

That's just a joke we make about how characters like Snake and Dante and Kiryu don't know what sex is but it could be canon

Big Boss does sleep with Eva in MGS3 but Solid Snake I don't know

Big Boss does still believe in Santa

and gets mad when piece of shit Huey makes fun of him for believing in Santa

[river veldt]

i love that for him

[random steppe]

To be fair, with the shit that happens in those games, Santa is not that far fetched

[river veldt]

WAIT THATS WHAT BIG BOSS LOOKS LIKE???

I was expecting like

a large man

not a twunk

[fresh bane]

what?

[river veldt]

yea

i had never seen him before

[fresh bane]

he's a big dude

also all Snakes have strangely nice butts

it's like Kojima almost specifically asks the modelers to give them nice looking butts for some reason

[random steppe]

I mean, you sneak around a lot in those games

You have to stare at it for most of the time, might as well make it good

[fresh bane]

Right

and when you're prone on the ground it's literally right in your face

hey I'm not complaining, dude exercises and crouches all the time it makes sense, also a lot of times male characters have super flat butts and I always found it dumb

[fresh bane]

this is the twunk of the franchise btw

it's Raiden

I remember this one artist on the PS magazine that used to draw Raiden super femenine and pretty much like a woman

[river veldt]

omg

femboy

wait isn't Raiden the one from Metal Gear Rising Revengeance

[random steppe]

Yep

[fresh bane]

yeah that's the same one

[random steppe]

With raiden they do play around with gender expression for sure

[fresh bane]

and he looks like a twink while he's a robot too

[random steppe]

His cyborg exoskeletron has heels

[fresh bane]

to be fair considering he's based off of ninja and samurai stuff I think the heels aren't meant to be like, you know, fashionable femenine heels but resemble a specific type of footwear

you can see it with his toes where they're separated specifically near the thumb

[random steppe]

They do look more like modern heels than the tall wooden shoes of samurais to me

[slim thorn]

the heels are just there so they could do the animations where he swings his sword using his feet

[fresh bane]

The heels are for gripping ye

[random steppe]

That's definitely part of the design

[fresh bane]

he grips blades in MGS4

he actually does a bit of dancing on top of Vamp's chest while stabbing him with knives on his feet lol

it's funny

[random steppe]

But also it's not by chance that the more feminine of the protagonist is the one that gets the heels I feel

They definitely push it a lil bit

[slim thorn]

fwiw the term for those is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geta_(footwear) and they technically have nothing to do with samurai, they're just old-fashioned

...TIL there were specific kinds of geta associated with oiran

[fresh bane]

you'd think Raiden would be the twunk gay one but it's actually the romanian hairy muscular tall toreador looking dude who is bisexual

[teal sonnet]

https://twitter.com/Dansgaming/status/1621295890081128448

DansGaming (@Dansgaming)

Why did the Nintendo Switch gamer get a headache at the art museum?

They were not used to seeing so many frames

Likes

121

Twitter · Feb 2, 2023, 11:53 PM

the switch is probably the best console nintendo ever made, maybe competing with the wii

but good lord it is time to retire

[mossy flume]

The Switch has outsold the lifetime sales of the Wii.

[green fulcrum]

How long has it been for the Switch? Surely it's not time to retire just yet?

March 3, 2017

Almost 6 years...f*ck me, I was watching the stream when it was revealed. Where has time gone?

[slim thorn]

only slightly longer than my old laptop

[rancid herald]

the switch is super weird because it's (IIRC) considered a last generation console

it was kind of a mid gen replacement for the wii u

[mossy flume]

Tears of the Kingdom is going to be the last big release on the Switch. The successor is now rumored to be coming next year.

Yeah, the Switch was already running on dated hardware when it was released.

It’s a tablet from 2014, basically.

[rancid herald]

I'm genuinely surprised they're not trying to make tears a launch title

I guess they feel it's been in the oven too long to delay another year

[mossy flume]

Well maybe we’ll have a better idea soon. Allegedly there will be a Nintendo Direct next week.

Allegedly.

[rancid herald]

dear nintendo, for the love of god, don't name it switch u

[mossy flume]

Right???

[rancid herald]

or, god forbid

Swiitch

[mossy flume]

[astral field]

[teal sonnet]

that would be hilarious

[craggy vine]

How about, for the next console, you keep the tablet, but instead the processing is done on a box connected to your tv. And then you get 2 screens, the tv and the tablet

Oh wait

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/J6bQumoIsuo

damn

[weak river]

Welcome to the Frontier, Pilot.
There will probably be more where that came from.

[rancid herald]

I monkey pawed this. sorry y'all

[weak river]

Why would you do this to us

[rancid herald]

[fresh bane]

I can't believe Cinna cancelled the new Titanfall /s

[rough sleet]

https://youtube.com/shorts/ZxtRiW2HfZw

[icy crescent]

im sure they both will get along very well

[craggy vine]

Wait what is this

[proud warren]

looks to be Disney Dreamlight Valley

[icy crescent]

yes its Disney Dreamlight Valley

[proud warren]

I recognized a game

[craggy vine]

You won guess the game

[icy crescent]

[gaunt marten]

Overdo it how? Are you gonna have too much fun?

[unreal idol]

auuhhgeh

eha

hi sorry its 630

whatever it is itneeds to wait goodnight

okay so o answer your question

i had brain surgery and one of the things iwas told was nothing that required excessive or heavy concentration

certain 3d games were causing me mild discomfort while attempting to watch or play either due to the graphic style or particle effects

or just otherwise engaging my brain in weird ways

its fine and will get better as i heal but a few things are out of the question for me for a short time

thank god i love so many simple retro games

[gaunt marten]

I see

Sorry for pinging you so early

[unreal idol]

all good, it just surprised me and i've not been getting good sleep for obvious reasons

[slim thorn]

[unreal idol]

Is that a stuffed crab

With a biker jacket

[slim thorn]

apparently

[unreal idol]

He's perfect

[visual hill]

clearly, they intended to rewrite Dead Space in Rust at some point

[slim thorn]

what kind of starship captain wears a supervillain mask like that

[thorny loom]

https://youtu.be/Ln0WWfNn6ZU

[fresh bane]

Saw one of those videos in my recommended yesterday but with the BOTW Korok Forest

I will never understand this obsession with wanting to make everything especially stylized cartoony games into 4K raytracing super mega HD stuff

[river veldt]

yea it's impressive dont get me wrong, but it is strange

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/g2a5PmIhryA

the colors on the korok forest are so washed out lol

and it's chock full of these bloom effects

[arctic fern]

Mostly because why not

[fresh bane]

I don't mind it as an experiment or as a way to see how a game would look like in a different way, the problem starts when people start treating these ultra 4k HD shaders or mods or overhauls as the ultimate way a game can look, as if a cartoony stylized style is somehow a hindrance or a limitation of hardware

[mossy flume]

Because it’s a cool demonstration

[random steppe]

I prefere it this version TBH, but also, if I did like zelda as it was I'd be playing Zelda

Well maybe...I'd have to buy a console 1st

[uneven epoch]

somethin somethin points at wind waker n how incredibly well that game holds up because of its cartoon artstyle

twilight princess does not fare nearly as well

[fresh bane]

excuse you

https://tenor.com/view/nintendo-link-twilight-princess-zelda-midna-gif-16861954

Twilight Princess is gorgeous thank you very much

[rancid herald]

twilight princess hasn't aged well because they haven't ported it to the switch and therefore I can't play it

[fresh bane]

https://tenor.com/view/the-legend-of-zelda-twilight-princess-legend-of-zelda-twilight-princess-the-legend-of-zelda-legend-of-zelda-twilight-princess-gif-25430284

[fresh bane]

wish they'd do an HD HD of Twilight Princess for the Switch

[rancid herald]

I'd honestly just be happy if they ported the wii u HD to the switch

[bleak lintel]

Apparently it is done, it just sits there unreleased.

[mossy flume]

Yep, among a list of games that Nintendo is allegedly sitting on

Including an alleged Prime 1 remaster that has supposedly been finished for years now

[rancid herald]

As much as I love the switch, it's times like these that make me feel like the development of the console has been completely wonky. It's like they planned to port Wind Waker and TP to the next console, but then had a mid console lift switch (hehe) to the Switch and forgot to bring everything forward

maybe they intend to release them in the deadspace between now and the next console in place of major releases

[mossy flume]

It would be interesting if the Switch successor got all of these alleged remasters

[bleak lintel]

I think they datamined the new Fire Emblem was finished in 2021 and they sat on it for a bit.

[thorny loom]

Also because nintendo will likely never do anything like that for their games.

[mossy flume]

The timing also suggests that Prime 4 may now just be targeting the next console, given that Tears of the Kingdom is reportedly the last major release on the Switch

But who knows

[bleak lintel]

I think it was classified they don't view Metroid as a major release.

[rancid herald]

at this point I almost want them to hold off and release them for the next console

[rose rose]

Maybe they just don’t think Metroid is “major”

[fresh bane]

they do treat Metroid as a small franchise in comparison to Mario and Zelda

Metroid 2 and Metroid Dread performed really well fortunately

[river veldt]

i mean

compared to Mario and Zelda, Metroid is a relatively small franchise. not a knock against Metroid, jut saying that Mario and Zelda are like some of the bestselling game franchises ever

[fresh bane]

sales aside metroid isn't even as popular as zelda or mario

Samus is popular but for other reasons

and it's not even the regular usual Samus that is popular

[bleak lintel]

Metroid is strange because it is usually considered one of the big ips for Nintendo but they never treat it as such.

[thorny loom]

Nintendo basically doesnt consider anything other than Mario and Zelda as major series

[bleak lintel]

Splatoon is real major now.

[river veldt]

yeah splatoon is huge

[thorny loom]

Maybe now yes.

[dire gate]

It's more like Mario and Zelda are way too big compared to others

[river veldt]

Splatoon 3 sold like a trillion copies in the first month or something

[fresh bane]

🦑

[dire gate]

Things like Kirby and Splatoon are also reasonably big franchise

But Mario and Zelda are like, another level of 'big'

[fresh bane]

lol you mean three million?

[dire gate]

Metroid, on the other hand, is actually pretty minor franchise; while it has a lot of fans, it is well known to have relatively low sales

Dread went well, I'll give that

[mossy flume]

Metroid Dread broke that trend

[bleak lintel]

Splatoon 3 is already hitting 8M it seems.

[river veldt]

yea i was exaggerating for comedic effect hehe

[dire gate]

Animal Crossing is a very weird case where they only release a single game per console

And New Horizons was a massive success

[mossy flume]

Largely due to the pandemic

[thorny loom]

It only was a hit because of covid

Yeah

That and doom eternal were boosted by it

[bleak lintel]

Dread showed people do want Metroid as long as it isn't Other M.

[river veldt]

sucks New Horizons was so popular considering it was not the best AC by a long shot

[mossy flume]

Sales numbers for the Switch are hard to normalize because the pandemic exploded it

[fresh bane]

By September 2022 Splatoon 3 had sold nearly 8 million copies, by May 2022 Dread had sold 2.9 million copies

2.9 million being the most sold in the entire history of the franchise ever

Metroid is definitely not a huge franchise for Nintendo

[dire gate]

Forgotten land sold 5+mil

[mossy flume]

A heavily story-driven Metroid would be great. It would just be nice if that story wasn’t tremendously sexist.

[thorny loom]

Probably the biggest thing with nintendo is Nintendo doesnt really care about its old games

[river veldt]

t h e b a b y

[dire gate]

[thorny loom]

And when they actually do something with its half assed

[static bluff]

yo mario lmk when you fancy another game

[river veldt]

oh right

we can go rn if you want

[bleak lintel]

Nintendo games tend to be timeless and don't require a lot.

[static bluff]

Let's gooooo

[fresh bane]

Dread has a pretty good story

[mossy flume]

Indeed

[fresh bane]

I think Dread Samus might be my favourite Samus

[river veldt]

Metroid Dread my beloved

[mossy flume]

Mercury Stream gets it

[river veldt]

they did the Metroid 2 remake right

[fresh bane]

https://tenor.com/view/metroid-dread-samus-aran-fusion-suit-charge-beam-gif-22016970

[mossy flume]

Yep

[fresh bane]

oh my god she's so goddamn cool!!

she casually charges the beam while walking

[thorny loom]

They need to be put on their e stores but fair

[fresh bane]

you can't get more cooler than that

this enemy means NOTHING to her she's just playing around with em

[thorny loom]

Nintendo wants to complain about piracy but rarely does actually anything to mitigate the issue other than play DMCA wack a mole

[bleak lintel]

Nintendo almost lost the name Nintendo once.

[thorny loom]

I remember that

[fresh bane]

''we will never make these games officially available and also if you pirate them you're literal scum and we will sue you to death''

-Nintendo

[thorny loom]

This essentially if your not an old mario or zelda game.

[dire gate]

I don’t think it is specifically a Nintendo problem but it is annoying

[thorny loom]

Its not

[fresh bane]

Nintendo is the most notable example for a reason I feel

[thorny loom]

But nintendo does the least amount to do anything about it

[dire gate]

idk it feels more like because Nintendo games in general are more nostalgic

[fresh bane]

I don't know about that

[thorny loom]

People like to think old nintendo games are perfect and while a lot of them are really good. Some of them havent aged well.

Thats mostly when you get to the n64 era.

[bleak lintel]

N64/PS1 era is when 3d games ran at 15 FPS.

[mossy flume]

Yeah, they’re much more aggressive about it than Sony and Microsoft.

Nintendo is notable because they’ve become actively hostile towards video game archival efforts. They have been actively hampering efforts to preserve history whereas Sony, Sega, Atari and Microsoft have ignored them.

[fresh bane]

same with Smash tournaments

the best is to literally just ignore it and literally actually unironically for real for real no cap nothing will happen

[mossy flume]

Like postings of archives of high quality manual scans of classic games have seen DMCAs from Nintendo

[fresh bane]

the only reason nintendo doesn't shut down every single emulator out there is because they legally cannot

because emulation is totally legal and recognized as a fair competitor

[mossy flume]

Yeah

[bleak lintel]

Microsoft has put forth the most effort with all their backwards compatibility, oddly enough the Series S/X also make really good PS1/PS2 emulators.

[thorny loom]

Can confirm

[thorny loom]

Though i do think that was mostly unintentional since you have to do dev mode for this

[mossy flume]

That was indeed unintentional

But it works

I hear Dolphin also works

[thorny loom]

It was recently ported over yes

Same as RCPCX2

I intended to try it out this weekend since that’s basically the only reason i bought the X was for an emulator console

[wind stump]

lol

[gaunt marten]

Close it https://i.imgur.com/So0Bz5P.png

[gaunt marten]

The way the other character campaigns were designed and especially Plague Knight's was masterful

For Plague Knight they designed the character around the maps, keeping them almost exactly the same

They realized it's probably gonna be untenable to make each character do the exact same levels, so they changed things up for the later characters

[thorny loom]

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-last-of-us-part-1-is-delayed-because-everyone-likes-the-hbo-show-so-much/

[mossy flume]

Heh

[bleak lintel]

They had a big spike selling part 1 and 2 because of the show.

[rough sleet]

https://youtube.com/shorts/SH4BfkDE7iU

[rough sleet]

lmao

[river veldt]

i lost 😭

[gaunt marten]

At chess?

[mossy flume]

https://metro.co.uk/2023/02/03/half-life-3-cancelled-in-2015-as-story-and-gameplay-details-leak-18218191/

Have some clickbait I suppose

[river veldt]

yes

[gaunt marten]

A mere 8 by 8 grid, no fog of war, no technology tree, no random map or spawn position, only two players, both sides exact same pieces... Chess is too simplistic for you to win

[river veldt]

[static bluff]

Polytopia addresses these limitations

[river veldt]

why do all of these Half Life 3 things sound like really not good continuations of the story

im just really bad at thinking ahead

like i will see a piece and it is within capture range of my piece and im like "yes good" and then it all falls apart

[craggy vine]

Perhaps why it was cancelled

[gaunt marten]

I finally got Big Picture mode to work https://i.imgur.com/B6vwVTc.png

It's completely unusable for me in fullscreen without a GPU

[thorny loom]

We got a better half life 3

[river veldt]

this and Epistle 3 sounds really bad imo

[thorny loom]

https://youtu.be/Uy0n-JGjHhw

[river veldt]

glad they never came to fruition

[slim thorn]

never

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/eBoRm0QFUk0

I don't really like Leon's new shirt it's this weird v-neck thing and it bothers me so much for some reason

also og RE4 Leon looks much more handsome

Love what I'm seeing so far though

Oh god the rain effects need to be improved the rain is super opaque for some reason, also look at the droplets around Leon dude's getting absolutely drenched

they're so massive for some reason

[thorny loom]

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/square-enix-blames-declining-game-sales-on-weak-catalog-titles

[unreal idol]

maybe se should make video games

instead of NFT and live service grifts

literally FFXIV is keeping that company from completely crashing and burning

[thorny loom]

Just glad deus ex got sold so we can get a new game out of it

[unreal idol]

which is ironic because it almost utterly killed it over a decade ago

how the turns have tabled my pretties

[fresh bane]

what the fuck is squeenix even doing anymore

[thorny loom]

Final fantasy

[fresh bane]

No, I mean in general

it seems like they have no idea what they're even doing

[thorny loom]

And attempting and failing live service games and crypto

[gaunt marten]

I literally can't afford to buy Square Enix games because they're all at least twice as expensive as their competition

[river veldt]

wooloo

[thorny loom]

Like PK said final fantasy is the only reason square enix is still around.

[slim thorn]

I play so few AAAs these days I can't even remember which ones are squeenix, much less which ones they developed vs published

I know Hitman has something to do with them, and obviously the FFs, but that's about it

[thorny loom]

It should tell you the state of triple A games when remakes of 15 year old games are the best they have to offer

[dire gate]

DQ

[thorny loom]

Ah right hitman

[slim thorn]

I know you don't mean Dairy Queen but I'm blanking on what you did mean

[gaunt marten]

They sold Hitman to the developers

[slim thorn]

oh Dragon Quest?

[dire gate]

Dragon Quest

[thorny loom]

Ah right

[gaunt marten]

Now Hitman is independent

[thorny loom]

Havent heard that in awhile

[dire gate]

They also have KH, if they do release a game

[random steppe]

Ffxvi is hitting soon, so that will probably be a decent influx of cash

[gaunt marten]

It tells us a lot about how much of the anticonsumer stuff in Hitman was due to corporate meddling

[dire gate]

Octopath Traveler is also SE franchise

[unreal idol]

I'm so disappointed in Chocobo GP

[gaunt marten]

Turns out, none of it! The always online stuff was just the Hitman team being awful

[thorny loom]

Also that

[unreal idol]

It could have easily been a super rock solid, high selling Mario Kart clone if it was just sold as a single $50 game

instead it was a scam aimed at children

[thorny loom]

At the very least they made hitman 3 into the hitman complete trilogy

[slim thorn]

FF15 was 2016, Dragon Quest XI was 2017, KH3 was 2019, FF7 remake was 2020

so it has been a while since any of those had a major non-remake release

[dire gate]

Octopath 1 was 2018 2 is coming out in a month

[unreal idol]

Endwalker 2021

it may be an FFXIV expansion but it might as well be treated as an AAA release

[mossy flume]

Same. It could've been great, but wow...

[dire gate]

Triangle Strategy was 2022

[slim thorn]

never heard of it but okay

[thorny loom]

They were hit very hard financially with the avengers live service game flopping

[unreal idol]

triangle strat is great

been watching denzy play it from time to time

[rose rose]

From Square Enix’s “we give up on naming anything” department

[thorny loom]

On the topic if companies being hit hard

[unreal idol]

we like to refer to triangle strategy as "pyramid scheme"

[slim thorn]

Octopath I've heard the name of but still don't even know what kind of game it is

[thorny loom]

Microsoft isnt doing great

[unreal idol]

sure they are

they're just sad that they're not doing great-er

[thorny loom]

In regards to 343. They basically killed the company in all but name

[unreal idol]

maybe nintendo can walk in and offer to buy microsoft

[thorny loom]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/microsoft-s-343-industries-reportedly-reorganizes-after-layoffs-to-chart-future-for-halo/ar-AA16XxXc

[unreal idol]

like how microsoft tried to do that in the early 00s and nintendo just kind of laughed them out of the room

[thorny loom]

Now rumor is star-field maybe delayed again

[mossy flume]

Apparently rumors about Starfield are rampant as hell right now

The subreddit had to enact containment measures

So suffice to say: Nobody knows right now.

[thorny loom]

Yeah.

[slim thorn]

not to mention the other game I'm in the middle of is 24 years old

[thorny loom]

The leaker also said red-fall is in rough shape as well

[rancid herald]

yikes

[thorny loom]

Didnt help bethesda announced it will have always online drm

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/redfall-fans-vow-not-to-buy-the-game-following-always-online-confirmation/ar-AA174ptD

What i really want MCC style game for gears of war

[rancid herald]

it's the year of our lord 2023 and we're still doing this shit

come on guys

[slim thorn]

I don't even know which shit you're referring to

there are so many options

[thorny loom]

The only time this is acceptable is MMO’s like wow or where online play is the whole point like Overwatch.

[rancid herald]

I believe in killing two birds with one stone, so naturally my comments are multi-applicable

[thorny loom]

https://www.pcgamer.com/this-military-base-building-sim-has-all-of-the-soldiers-and-none-of-the-violence/

[thorny loom]

Omg

https://www.pcgamer.com/eas-monster-hunter-like-has-no-plans-for-microtransactions-all-post-launch-content-will-be-free/

EA not doing microtransactions in a game? They must be desperate for good PR

[quiet swift]

it's not a studio they directly own, I believe it's a cooperation between two publishers (EA and another?) and the studio making it?

So not as much of a vice grip on the nutsack

[thorny loom]

Ah

[quiet swift]

Publisher Electronic Arts announced its partnership with Omega Force and its parent company Koei Tecmo on September 14, 2022. The game would be published under its EA Originals label, which had previously released smaller, independent video games such as It Takes Two and Unravel.[7]

[thorny loom]

Hi tcher again

[slim thorn]

don't you just love it when you go to hand in a quest and instead they run away screaming

[arctic fern]

lol

[green fulcrum]

What game is this? It looks like a CRPG of some kind.

[rugged flax]

Derail Valley looks better with every single short that AltFuture posts
They've fully simulated airbrakes and airbrake leakage so you need to apply handbrakes to keep your train from rolling away
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qQsGb8ZdkwU

[quiet swift]

Planescape Torment. Ancient rpg

[green fulcrum]

Ah

[fresh bane]

https://www.eurogamer.net/back-4-blood-wont-get-more-new-content-as-dev-shifts-focus-to-new-game

Welp

that lasted like, 2 years

[arctic fern]

was that a massive shock? the proposed DLC is made, the game is as complete as its going to get

it wasnt proposing to be a live service

[fresh bane]

No shock on my part, the game was never as successful as I thought it'd be

[arctic fern]

no, and that honestly irks me
its a great game i've had a lot of fun with

its better than l4d2, not that its a particularly high bar to pass
i said it
i didnt enjoy l4d2 a lot

[random steppe]

The only left 4 dead kind of game I enjoyed a lot were the vermintide games

It's just not my kind of game for some reason

[river veldt]

is that Warhammer

[random steppe]

The Fantasy warhammer, yes

[arctic fern]

...christ that headline actually annoys me
"game is finished but we're going to report on it like this game was a failure"
fuck off

[random steppe]

Not the sci-fi counterpart

[arctic fern]

darktide is awesome

thats the scifi version

[random steppe]

I've heard it was spotty on release so I held off

[arctic fern]

it is... but its still awesome

[random steppe]

I'll probably get around to it at some point

[arctic fern]

if you do buy it, hit me up

[random steppe]

[arctic fern]

the core gameplay is soooooo good
the game feel is amazing

lasguns feel so satisfying
the boltgun feels big and chonky

[fresh bane]

the headline only says that the game won't receive any more content though

[arctic fern]

yeah
but the fact they reported on it makes it sound bad

a game finishing its dev cycle isnt news worthy

[fresh bane]

Every single gaming news outlet is reporting on it though it's what they do

I don't think anyone sees this as bad

I just think it's surprising because these games usually still keep getting updates especially nowadays

[arctic fern]

well the game promised some DLCs
which were delivered

and they're good

[static bluff]

Streaming Spyro.

[minor plover]

original L4D was really smooth gameplay for PvE. L4D2 was like "let's add a bunch of random shit that doesn't improve things just for pvp"

[arctic fern]

l4d2 was just l4d but more
which is fine
but l4d also kinda sucks

[minor plover]

yeah, I mean, L4D was my game of choice for a period of time when I had a crew I played with. Me, Catherine, Jeremy, and Scott were so well coordinated.

it's not as fun in pickup games, and honestly I think it blows as a PvP game

[fresh bane]

what are these random shits? that's the first time I hear anyone prefer l4d over l4d2

[wise frigate]

I like them both equally because I don't care enough to nitpick and also because I love valve

[minor plover]

were you specifically playing the PvE mode on expert?

[wise frigate]

L4d2 was the one I played the most tho

[fresh bane]

I want to say I'm not the craziest most hardcore valve fan but I have been playing valve games since I'm a literal child so I guess that wouldn't be true

[minor plover]

I found L4D2 was better for pickup games because it had lots of decent casual shit, but if you really wanted the "stick together and kill zombies" experience, L4D1 was where it was at

[wise frigate]

The first game I've ever played was either Minecraft or Portal

[fresh bane]

I don't really think l4d2 or l4d1 have a significant enough difference that it'd make a difference when it comes to playing the regular survival campaign mode

I never really felt that anyways, the only problems I have is joining casual matches runs the risk of people joining and leaving as they please, which doesn't happen if you already have a party or people commited to finishing the campaign which happens sometimes

the communities surrounding valve games are like that

[hasty patio]

https://www.eveonline.com/news/view/information-is-power

[minor plover]

L4D2's higher emphasis on (1) moving events and (2) specials that were designed to invalidate close-stacking tactics made it considerably less interesting to me for Expert campaign mode. Made it much more traditional FPS, whereas I thought L4D1 really emphasized a different skillset that other games didn't, and that unique skillset is what made me play it so much

[fresh bane]

Guess it's just a matter of perspective, in my opinion it makes it more difficult for survivors to rely on a single strategy and it forces them to think on the fly and not stack up too close because of course the game is going to punish that

Expert is going to be understandably hard too

I'm not sure what you mean by moving events though

[arctic fern]

I just think both are bad

Why play a game where it can just randomly decide you're whole team is dead?

Even on easy difficulty?

[fresh bane]

Because people enjoy the difficulty and coming together as a group to successfuly survive the situation?

I also never came across a situation where the game 'randomly 'decided we're dead, if the entire group dies it's because they fucked up

[arctic fern]

Sure
But l4d can just kill you

It's too easy to just be incapacitated with no recourse

[minor plover]

moving events meaning, you throw a switch or something and then you have to get to another location to hit the switch to stop the flood of zombies. In L4D1, when you do something like call the elevator in No Mercy, you fight a flood of zombies right there and don't have to go anywhere to stop them. You fight until the elevator opens, and then just step on to the elevator.

as opposed to like ... getting the coke in L4D2, where you break in, and have to get in to the store, get the coke, get it back up to the door, and deposit it

[fresh bane]

If you aren't good at spacing yourself or your teammates aren't around to help sure you're going to get downed, but that's hardly the fault of the game, that's where the coming together as a team part comes in

[arctic fern]

Lol whut

[fresh bane]

and you know what Lothar I'll give that one to you mostly because I just personally dislike those sections like the one in the mall where you have to run from the shop to turning off the alarm

but fortunately I don't come across those sections a lot

[arctic fern]

Can't com together as a team if half are incapacitated

[fresh bane]

If half the team is incapacitated then how is that the game's fault?

the game doesn't just incapacitate half the team immediately if the team gets incapacitated it's because they're just standing there waiting for a tank to hit them

or they're running away and not shooting back

or they didn't save up their molotovs or pipe bombs

[arctic fern]

Hunter comes from nowhere to maul you, jockey takes you round a corner, the rest are busy Bering boomerd

Whole game can go tits up in seconds

With no time to react or recover

Sounds like fun game design

[fresh bane]

In pvp sure if the infected are good but I never came across a situation like that in pve myself even on expert mode

I've had more trouble with tanks than with a coordinated special infected attack

it's also much harder to pull off in pvp than it seems because I've played a bit of versus and if the survivors are good they can literally just push you aside before you can even do anything

hunters are super easy to push away if you hear them or see them jump

[minor plover]

I found that in L4D2 that stuff plus the advent of spitters in particular made the game much more like ... how good are you at FPS skillz ... like my L4D1 team, half of us actually suck at FPS's but we understood how to stick tight and cover each other and react quickly ... but in L4D2 I found success required considerably more like "everyone is good at aiming and pulling off jumps over random obstacles and shit" which wasn't really what I play for

[arctic fern]

"if you hear or see them"

Yes

If

[fresh bane]

and if you don't then that's on you because they make a loud ass screech and they growl

[arctic fern]

Not literally all the time

[river veldt]

i remember being at a babysitters house and watching them play L4D2 as a 9 year old and i was terrified lmao

[fresh bane]

if they don't do those noise cues then probably a glitch or something because they're designed to do that, all of the infected make clear distinctive noises so you can react properly or prepare beforehand

[arctic fern]

Oh you know there's a hunter

[minor plover]

a lot of the game is also designed around positioning yourself in such a way that the specials can't get a clean shot at you

[arctic fern]

But you don't know exactly where it is

Unless you have echolocation?

I guess if you play maps hundreds if times you learn spawnpoints and stuff, but I ain't got time to do that on a game I actively hate

[minor plover]

like, don't just run out into the street when there's a hunter. As a group, you move to places where you can handle them.

[fresh bane]

if you knew where they were then it wouldn't even be a challenge of course you don't know where they are, depending heavily on what level and what part of a level you're in, and yes lothar a lot of times it comes down to simply realizing there's a threat and knowing how to counter it

[thorny loom]

Vermintide is pretty fun

[fresh bane]

if there's a hunter then don't run into the streets all nilly willy and be on the lookout

[thorny loom]

Darktide is also fun but it needs some work

[arctic fern]

Darktide is so good
I just want the game to run properly

[thorny loom]

But the biggest flaw of back 4 blood to me was the difficulty and how the infected didnt really feel unique

[arctic fern]

That's a fair complaint

[thorny loom]

They all boiled down to “shoot the weakspot”

[arctic fern]

I still enjoyed b4b far more than l4d

As in, I enjoyed it at all

It's a low bar

[thorny loom]

It was alright when i played on easy

It wasnt a bad game

But it couldve been better

[arctic fern]

It's intense if you play it on higher difficulties but I never felt completely overwhelmed

Especially as the card system lets you specialize with weapons and playstyles you're more comfortable with

[minor plover]

personally I thought the bulk of what made L4D1 interesting was basically ... figuring out, as a group, how to move through the levels such that you didn't give specials or hordes opportunities to really jack you up. Take this hallway ... I hear stuff, hold in here. You two cover the stairs, us two are covering the tunnel. I hear a tank up ahead and I'll throw a molotov and then let's retreat to the construction yard. To me it was exactly the right level of predictable vs unpredictable.

[arctic fern]

Oh god it's 1:30 am
I gotta sleep
But if folks ever want to play darktide, b4b, or some other game I own, hit me up
I love games

Also my steam is linked to my discord profile

[craggy vine]

Damn it.. So heavily considering parallels and doing pc gaming on my mac

[rose rose]

I do not think the results would be terribly compelling

[mossy flume]

Can confirm, it’s a pretty laggy solution

It works for lightweight games, but eh

[rose rose]

x86 emulation on ARM windows inside an VM on a base laptop Mac is just not a compelling set of layers

And that’s before we get to the graphics

[mossy flume]

Oh, right, if you’re on a M series Mac, you’re basically out of luck there unless the dev makes an ARM build of your game.

That’s kinda the thing about macs. Despite the processing capabilities, just assume you can’t play games on them because you largely can’t.

Damn Apple and their refusal to adopt Vulkan or support OpenGL grumble grumble

[river veldt]

I like Mario

this was the wrong chat whoops

[minor gorge]

It is relevant to the channel.

[rancid herald]

appparently spiderman miles morale is on sale this weekend

this is good for bitcoin Cinna

[craggy vine]

Idk, I have seen very good results from paralells even on a base M1 air

Of course I don't expect to run doom eternal or rdr2. Something like Skyrim or fallout new vagas would be awesome though.

I still got my desktop for the latest AAA games.

[hidden elbow]

https://youtu.be/PaxrIFlc6E4

This looks so lovely I really want to try it

[proud warren]

I swear, Roboquest is like, hella unforgiving

[wind stump]

well i'm making yet another poor life choice by reinstalling Battle.Net to play OW2
Any advice for someone who hasn't played in a few years?

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/mErqPBVl944

whoops

should probably allow some indie games to be shown in e3

that would be great actually honestly

[young creek]

lol why even have e3 then

Seems like such a huge mistake by those 3 with how much hype e3 always brings

[fresh bane]

Ever Since the nintendo directs they straight up just started doing their own version of that so I guess there's ''no point'' in e3 anymore

[slim thorn]

I mean was there ever a point in E3

[young creek]

Yes

it was always super fun and causes the most hype in the gaming community of any event

[gaunt marten]

If a game is any good I'll probably hear about it later

[slim thorn]

I mean if we really want to do this

my experience tuning into any games convention, E3 or whatever Direct or anything else, is hours of stuff I don't care about for 1-2 minutes of information I do care about

which is not fun

and with the way gaming culture has been since before I got into it, "causes the most hype" is an indictment, not a compliment

[fresh bane]

Especially when the stuff you don't care about is mostly non videogame related or a bunch of teaser trailers or something that might as well not even be there because it just fills up time

Everytime I watched an e3 stream or a game awards stream or something it's mostly like 80% just stuff you don't really care about and if you watch other streamers watch it you can see how they will almost always actually say it or look super bored and then the other like 15% is stuff you care about and then like a 5% stuff that is just hype, sometimes

[slim thorn]

the other thing is that game preview content (trailers, articles, interviews, etc) is so unreliable at indicating whether I'll actually enjoy or want to buy the game that comes out that I stopped consuming any of it within my first few years of playing games, and that was back in a time where my video game "previews" were mostly magazine articles

so in a typical year, "Halo 10 and Kingdom Hearts 9 3/4 were announced" is the grand total of conference information I get any value from

[fresh bane]

''Oooh can't wait to see more of this highly anticipated game''

cgi trailer/all cutscenes/cinematic trailer

thankfully with short length content being king on the internet nowadays and stuff spreading so quickly most of the 'most important' shit in an event like this will easily make rounds and you will hear about it

especially if you watch literally any big youtuber that's in any way related to videogames or whatever

[slim thorn]

in my case, so much of it lands right here in Manechat that I don't personally follow any gaming news source

[fresh bane]

You just gotta click on #1032716748887179434 and check how active it is to know whether a big thing in gaming you gotta know happened or not

[slim thorn]

or if someone triggered an "extended debate" on whether Dark Souls or Left 4 Dead is any good

[slim thorn]

the irony of this statement is that almost everything I watch is long-form

[fresh bane]

Yeah same here, for the longest time the only form of content I consumed were video essays no shorter than 30 min

I'm als ocurrently going through critical role's campaign 2

with 100+ episodes 4 hours long each!

I will finish this series in 2 years

[random steppe]

All you said about e3 might be correct, but it was still a pretty nice event to get hyped with friends about future game releases and announcements

Game awards is kinda that but it's not the same scope

It's not like without E3 trailers are going to be any more accurate

But you lose the "event"

[slim thorn]

can't speak to that since it was never a bring your friends "event" with anyone I knew

[random steppe]

It was a huge topic of conversation on this server (or any server) for the week during it

I don't think people miss it because it was an accurate portrayal of the games to come

[slim thorn]

fair, maybe I was never the target audience

[fresh bane]

I think it was always most definitely a complaint that when a game gets announced or shown it's never actually showing the game

[slim thorn]

for me those Manechat logs are just what I temp-mute and then skim the day after to extract the aforementioned 1-2 sentences of information

[random steppe]

Yeah but that isn't an E3 problem

That's a gaming industry wide thing

[slim thorn]

actually sitting in the stream + channel the whole time would've just been boring no matter how much everyone else was shouting about it

[random steppe]

I mean, regardless of the stream, which was fun, the discussion of what was presented was interesting.
Like, when they drop a bunch of trailers and games announcement people around you are going to have opinions, and opinions are fun

[slim thorn]

that part yeah, though it's mostly after the event anyway

[random steppe]

Well yeah, the event needs to happen for it to be a thing tho

[slim thorn]

announcements don't need to happen at an E3-like event lol

maybe it's better than the alternatives for people who do enjoy this kind of thing

[random steppe]

They don't need to happen so clustered, but as I said, it was a nice excuse to gather some friends and talk about videogames

Like, you don't need to wait for the Oscars to talk about the movies released that year, but it's a good moment to do it since people interested in that topic will probably gather around that time

[slim thorn]

the other thing is that every time I do skim one of these conference reaction backlogs there's a lot of complaining about filler content and uninformative trailers and all the other time-wasting they do, so I'm pretty sure it's not just me being an introvert

weirdly that almost never happened with the oscars in my experience, or when it did it was a minor blip indistinguishable from "that guy we know watched a film we like last night" in terms of conversation voluue

[heady bridge]

Nintendo did still have a booth at E3 even when they swapped to having Directs over keynotes at the event itself, seems they won’t even be doing that this year, which kinda tells me that after Tears of the Kingdom the Switch is having first party support wound down in preparation for its successor. As for the other 2 well Sony stopped supporting E3 before COVID and Microsoft probably feels they are able to run their own show seeing as they own their own whole theatre that’s used for stuff like The Game Awards already

[random steppe]

Yeah, all those things are true, everyone's a critic on the Internet and also, there has been a pissing contest for decades for who makes the best conference, you are going to see criticism if nothing else because team sports

[heady bridge]

I mean in that case with no big guns does that mean Devolver Digital will win by default this year? >_>

[wind stump]

i mean they always win

it's almost like they understand that one of the Es in E3 is ENTERTAINMENT or something

the best way to advertise something is to mask the actual ad as much as possible so people watch it not for the product you're shilling but for the fact it's just entertaining to watch

[heady bridge]

I feel like E3 returning will just cannibalise the summer season of reveals what with it having to compete with Sumner Ganes Fest now around the same time as well, it coming back too feels like it will weaken both shows

[wind stump]

[heady bridge]

The AAA sphere being in a pretty unhealthy state overall doesn’t help matters but the increasing fragmentation in the indie market makes finding the titles you wanna see and find out about, and standing out from the crowd harder than ever.

[quiet swift]

Industry-wise Gamescom is more of a thing for the tech and stuff. Announcements-wise, I think game awards has taken over

[slim thorn]

some of that fragmentation is inevitable because we each have our favorite genres and there's simply too many games to fit into any single thing people would sit through, even those who claim to like watching conferences

[heady bridge]

Gamescom also has a more European slant being in Germany and all.

[slim thorn]

discoverability was an easier problem to solve when only AAA devs could afford to make a good game at all

[heady bridge]

That and I feel only the top indies were curated to appear in the big shows originally, with the AAA receding from those it feels to me a race to plug that gap with diminishing returns

[slim thorn]

I might've sought out something like a youtube channel specializing in genres I like if I didn't already have a neverending backlog of games I should try

not to mention a neverending backlog of every other kind of entertainment

"news" about upcoming entertainment is almost redundant

[random steppe]

Depends how broad your interests are I suppose

Like, if your main genre is car racing, you don't get that many releases per year
Or space sims

[slim thorn]

yep, if I was the type to spend thousands of hours in a single game genre and never touch TV, books, movies, or any other kind of video game, I'd certainly be seeking out YT channels about it and following devs that specialize in it and so on

[random steppe]

If your main thing is open world 3rd person action games, that's another whole ballpark

[heady bridge]

Or if you liked the old classic arcadey racers you have even slimmer pickings, there’s Forza Horizon, and Need for Speed…. and that’s it, even the indie space has relatively slim pickings compared to other genres

[slim thorn]

come to think of it, I don't recall hearing about any kickstarters or early accesses for classic racing games

the ones I did hear about... I wanna say classic RPGs, space sims, roguelites, survival/crafting? (and of course several unique ones that aren't part of some easily definable cluster)

[wind stump]

Nothing other than praying for good teammates?

[hushed onyx]

I can! (I have an Intel Mac)

[quiet swift]

[slim thorn]

context?

[quiet swift]

There are some issues subbing to SWTOR when going through steam, because of dormant EA accounts - impossible to see unless you go through the swtor website first

So he has to call/send screenshots to fix this

Chances are this is for a 30 day sub, which is like 13$

10000 cartel coins is like... 60$+

[gaunt marten]

It's unreasonable to ask that

If it would have cut into your work time, then stop wasting time at work

[quiet swift]

Right?

[slim thorn]

speaking of things we watch long-form video essays about

I'd love to know more about how blind people experience video games

I know a few things about how it's technically possible to operate them, but I struggle to imagine how the whole "fun" part still works

[quiet swift]

I think it varies on what "blind" means in their case. Like, complete darkness blind or it's blurriness or cataracts or something

[slim thorn]

yeah, like I have no difficulty imagining how colorblind gaming works

[river veldt]

watching Jerma play Elden Ring and it's nice how there isn't "male or female" options and instead it's "Type A or Type B"

[young creek]

yeah they have that in WoW too

[river veldt]

that's cool! i like that a lot

[young creek]

I also think its in Pokemon until you start the game and then they start using he or she anyway

[river veldt]

ye

[slim thorn]

it's nice when the easy accommodations quickly become standard things

[river veldt]

yea lol

[fresh bane]

I find it weird that Bloodborne is the game that's usually associated with trans people through memes when DS2 is the one that has a thing that allows your character to change genders

although that thing does just magically change your sex entirely so it's kinda different I suppose

https://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Gender+Swap+Coffin

[slim thorn]

a coffin?

now I'm curious what subtext they were going for

[fresh bane]

I don't even know if there even is any intended subtext there lol

DS2 is already a mess in general anyway

[slim thorn]

but DS is all about subtext, there's barely any text /s

[fresh bane]

I guess you could see it as the old form dying and the new form being reborn or something like that?

[slim thorn]

that's one of the options that sprung to mind for me yeah

[fresh bane]

something something deep subtext

[ancient raft]

i want to play some bl who wants to join?

[slim thorn]

the other one is something to do with vampires since you did just bring up Bloodborne and trans-ness, and I think vampires have a history of being associated with illicit desire which led to them overlapping with LGBT+ stuff recently

[fresh bane]

I thought Bloodborne was about werewolves and weird eldritch beasts

[slim thorn]

yeah the only work I'm actually familiar with myself is Bram Stoker's novel so that was just a wild guess

[fresh bane]

there's no vampires to my knowledge in BB, I don't really know why it's associated with trans people so much

[slim thorn]

is this like whenever I ask what New Vegas has to do with trans people and get a huge shrug

[fresh bane]

Relevant

what's trans about New Vegas?

[slim thorn]

haven't heard Yume Nikki in a loooong time

[fresh bane]

also first time I hear of SH3 having associations with trans people

[slim thorn]

I'm thinking of trying Elysium after Planescape though (in fact I forgot to say it here, but it was people raving about Elysium that led me to recently start Planescape)

same, though I had heard that SH3 tended to be more popular with women (and in retrospect: duh )

[fresh bane]

ooof I just finished watching a playthrough of disco elysium from a streamer I like like a couple months back now and damn it's such a powerful and beautiful game

like one of the best games ever made in my opinion

[slim thorn]

Celeste is also one I had to ask about the first time I saw it in one of these memes because the trans part is in postgame stuff I never played because I'm bad at that genre

[fresh bane]

it has a lot of reading though, you will be reading a lot

[fresh bane]

SH3 is my favourite one it's so incredibly underrated

[slim thorn]

is this directed at me or the lurkers? because I am reading Planescape

[fresh bane]

I don't know what Planescape is I'm just letting you know just in case

[river veldt]

New Vegas is like the trans game

dont ask me why because i dont know

[slim thorn]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Elysium

Disco Elysium is a 2019 role-playing video game developed and published by ZA/UM. Inspired by Infinity Engine-era games, particularly Planescape: Torment ...

it's one of those games that's so famous within this particular subcommunity of gamers that you can't go five minutes without hearing about it

[river veldt]

Bringi gifted it to me but it wont launch >:c

[slim thorn]

albeit I don't think any of the regulars here are invested in that corner of classic isometric truckloads-of-text RPGs, except insofar as Elysium made them recently aware of it

[fresh bane]

At this point it's repeated so many times in so many memes without any explanation I'm sure it just began as a meme and shitpost and people just ran with it because nobody really explains why the entire meme even started on the first place lol

[fresh bane]

Oh, cool

I remember reading that Disco Elysium was based on the original novel by the writer that is like super not popular at all

didn't even get a translation

[river veldt]

Celeste and New Vegas are what pop into my head when i hear "trans video games"

[slim thorn]

like, my mental process was literally "I kinda want to play either Planescape or Elysium, but which one first?" and eventually settled on starting with the older one

[fresh bane]

It's like playing Resident Evil before Silent Hill

[slim thorn]

wait, I thought those were contemporaries?

[fresh bane]

Sssssssssssuure? But Silent Hill is directly based and specifically requested to copy and imitate Resident Evil

SH1 came out in 1999 by that time RE3 and Code Veronica were already out

[slim thorn]

oh

wow where the hell did I get the idea that RE1 and SH1 came out together

[fresh bane]

That would've been an impressive feat in technology if SH1 came out at the same time as RE1

The leap in visuals as funny as it may sound is crazy between those two games

[slim thorn]

tbh one of the surprises for me with playing Planescape is how good the presentation is despite all the obvious constraints

(also last night one of the minor female NPCs was hitting on the tiefling lady in my party; it's just one dialogue tree out of a million but that's more representation than I would've expected in 1999)

[fresh bane]

Everytime I look at old media be it movies games or comics or animation I keep finding that there was a lot more representation than people would make you think nowadays

Of all kinds

I was looking at some old comic art the other day and I was like wow those ladies are buff

[slim thorn]

when I read Action Comics #1 my biggest surprise was that Lois Lane was proud, intelligent and assertive and it was never portrayed as a bad thing (only her recklessness was )

apparently the traditional gender roles I was expecting were more of a silver age post-CCA thing

[fresh bane]

I think that's what always made her a good character, but I never read a single superman comic so I can't comment

I probably should tbh...

Mary Jane too

[river veldt]

Superman more like pretty cool guy 😎

[fresh bane]

also apparently Lois and Clark's relationship was always kind of not super traditional

I remember seeing this one panel of Lois lifting some weights asking Clark if he's ready to leave, I assume on a date or something as they're both dressed formal

[static bluff]

I hear he can leap over tall buildings in a single bound

[river veldt]

whoa!

[slim thorn]

incidentally, the Superman Rebirth run that everyone including me always recommends is about a time when Superman and Lois have been together long enough to have a son that's now learning to use his own powers

something something all about family

[river veldt]

thank you Vin Diesel

[fresh bane]

fambly

[river veldt]

Clark looks like such a dork in this panel idk why

big ol dork

[fresh bane]

that's because he is a dork

[river veldt]

nerd

shove him in a lockert

dies

[slim thorn]

Clark Kent is very much a dork on purpose

[fresh bane]

''on purpose''

sure

[river veldt]

hesa dork but a ripped dork

[fresh bane]

I see what you mean about assertiveness

Someday I should look into some of Superman's recommended readings and essential readings

[river veldt]

wasnt there a Golden Age comic where someone is trying to assassinate Clark but obvioulsy it doesnt work because hes Superman

[fresh bane]

Superman is the character I have a general understanding of through cultural osmosis and just other depictions of the character but I never actually read or saw anything from the character

[slim thorn]

probably several

[fresh bane]

not the movies not the comics not the animations, nothing

[river veldt]

Watch the 1978 movie

it's easily the best live action Superman film

[slim thorn]

everyone starts out that way because a lot of Superman comics are the sort of trope popularizer/codifier that made a big impact at the time but in retrospect are not the works everyone recommends as the best examples ever

[random steppe]

It's a bit silly to see someone lift in those clothes

[fresh bane]

I usually cut some slack for older comics when it comes to that stuff because I'm aware of the cultural context at the time but it'd be nice to start off with a more modern run

as long as it's newbie friendly I suppose

[river veldt]

ive heard All Star Superman is good

[random steppe]

Yeah it was a silly time.
It's just funny to see

[fresh bane]

Wouldn't want to start off with a run where they have children and he's already been Superman for a long time

[slim thorn]

yep, All-Star and Rebirth are the standard recs in part because they're extremely newbie friendly and modern enough to not have those issues

[river veldt]

man

I hope the DCU Superman is good

[slim thorn]

well in Rebirth he does have a kid already but it's still newbie friendly lol

[fresh bane]

I'm excited to see what they'll do for Bats and Supes design wise

All Star Batman was that awful one by Miller right?

[slim thorn]

yes

[fresh bane]

right, gonna avoid that one