general gaming

[random steppe]

The worse that can happen is that it's bad, but I'm here for it

I feel like it will be a commercial success regardless, it doesn't sound like it'll cost a ton on money to make and Mark name can probably sell enough to recoup the cost.

And maybe it'll be great

[fresh bane]

Mark has already said multiple times that he's got more money than he knows what to even do with so I doubt money is a big concern, he's clearly got the budget to do all these cinematic projects and he's had plenty of practice with all the previous projects he's done so I'm not worried about the production value with this

It's gonna be as good as Iron Lung I'm sure

https://youtube.com/shorts/pDGmWaNhv-Y?si=y9pqBBBHw4NWMgPW
it's actually really funny to hear him talk about it

it's almost as if he's offended about the stupid amount of money he has

[slim thorn]

the way the system works, it's almost the only attitude left besides being a jerk about it lol

I often feel that way about my own situation (to a lesser extent ofc)

[fresh bane]

Or denying/ignoring that you have so much money and becoming incredibly disconnected and out of touch from the rest of the world

[slim thorn]

yeah

heck, just today my parents made a joke about having to retire to get as much vacation time as I have

even being in almost-Europe is its own source of inequality

[fresh bane]

The difference being that social media type of 'jobs' inherently are different in the sense that you become a micro celebrity of sorts rather than just working a really good job so that brings a whole can of issues with that

[slim thorn]

at least the youtubing situation requires working on making videos... in theory

[fresh bane]

Streaming also sorta requires working depending on what it is, Jerma has done some pretty insanely high production value and high effort stream events but he's an outlier

Still I'd probably classify the more hardcore streamers as working too just because of the insane hellish mental toll that streaming everyday for like 8+ hours is

I would hate doing that

[thorny loom]

Lmao jerma

Isnt he the smiley faced guy meme

[rose rose]

I think pretty much anyone making enough money to live via streaming is putting in enough work for it to be at least a full time job

If not more

[fresh bane]

he's more than 'the smiley face guy meme' but yeah that's him

[thorny loom]

Yeah. Ive seen some of their salaries from the twitch leaks

They better be

[slim thorn]

I should probably clarify that my "in theory" caveat is due to some channels hiring staff to make the videos where it starts to become unclear how much the original celebrity is still contributing to the process

certainly a lot of these content creators are putting in full time job hours or actually crazy hours

[fresh bane]

Right, I assumed you meant that, but even in the cases where they have a whole crew it's usually after the 'celebrity' already contributed like years of their own work into building up their channel and viewer base

Usually

[slim thorn]

yeah, just didn't want to get distracted by that whole tangent

[mossy flume]

I’m pretty sure it’s the sort of occupation where you’re basically working 24/7. Keeping a steady stream of viewers is actually very hard.

[random steppe]

Ehh...maybe.
Like it has unique challenges compared to other jobs for sure but you can get away with a lot less depending on the circumstances.

Also it's a very competitive market, very few get to do that job in society, so there is going to be a bias for hard workers just on numbers alone.

[rose rose]

Even if you have upgraded to "running a business with employees" that is probably also a whole chunk of work most of the time

[slim thorn]

either a bias for hard work or a bias for dumb luck or for whatever else the market happens to reward

[fresh bane]

It really depends on what type of stream it is because there's a lot that are pretty high effort but literally just like anything else you have to do something to stand out or do something in a unique enough way to build up an audience, no different than a tv show failing because it's just boring or brings nothing new and people don't watch it

[random steppe]

Dumb luck is a prequisite, but even then, a phrase I like is that luck is when opportunity meets preparation.

If you never get the opportunity, which is completely random chance, it doesn't matter how prepared and hard working you are

[slim thorn]

in fact the closest I got to this status was when I put crazy hours into fan translation (which I'm glad I did, but definitely not going back to that now lol)

[mossy flume]

This is a deeply under-appreciated fact about success.

[fresh bane]

Also doesn't help when you bring in the algorithms into the conversation where creators are encouraged and pushed to do stuff like post everyday or reach quotas, I was actually going to mention that Mark seems to already have reached that point similar to creators like Pewdiepie and Jerma where they're in a very comfortable position that they can ''soft retire'' meaning they can just post and stream whenever they want and do the stuff they want without that constant threat of ''I gotta stay relevant, I gotta post every X days'' or whatever

[random steppe]

And conversely, thousands of creators get the opportunity, but don't have the preparation.

How many channels get a video going viral with hudred thousands of views, and then all the other videos past that are 1k at most.

They had million of eyeballs on them but they weren't able to exploit the opportunity to make a carreer out of it (or didn't want to in the first place)

[fresh bane]

Alternatively they grip onto that one thing that made them famous and don't let go which obviously also doesn't work

[mossy flume]

The multiple layers of RNG to becoming famous on doing Twitch/YouTube stuff is kinda nuts.

1. Initial resources to have the equipment needed to make content.
2. The correct sort of personality and charisma to draw a crowd.
3. The correct sort of idea at the right time.
4. The know-how to present that content in a consumable format.
5. Nebulous social networks and recommendation algorithms pick up on your content at sufficient scale.
6. The creative predisposition to continue developing content in your audience’s niche that continually draws a crowd over time. While also adapting to changes over time.

Basically it’s winning the lottery, but with more external factors to contend with that are not possible to control.

[random steppe]

You are correct but I'll say one thing about 1

A lot of people go hard with thousand dollar microphones and stream decks, capture cards and crazy shit day 1 when they decide to go for it, that is probably one of the dumbest thing I've ever seen.
If you have 12 viewers you should probably invest in an okay microphone, and that's it.
You definitely don't need studio level equipment to make it, I don't even think it helps that much, all the other points you cited are so much more important.

[fresh bane]

I think a lot of people put too much emphasis on having a bunch of things at once when you're starting out, maybe it's just my perception being stuck in 2010 but I really don't think all that stuff is a necessity to become famous at least not in the sense of becoming top yt/twitch streamer number one, a lot of those things I think are just the type of lightning in a bottle situation that any type of content or creator 'needs' to get popular at any point in any medium pretty much
I think people are perfectly capable of reaching sensible goals if they have the drive but that's obviously not all it takes, I just think it's misguided to think ''it's IMPOSSIBLE to become a streamer or youtuber if you don't have all these things and you're not lucky''

[random steppe]

At least in my opinion

It's funny that we were writing the same thing

[mossy flume]

Right, you don’t need that much from the get-go. But there’s still some initial investment in things like cameras, mics, maybe a green screen…

[fresh bane]

I've definitely seen a few streamers or youtubers or general content creators that enjoy a moderate following which is what I think most people should aim for because luck will always be a huge factor on anything anyone does in any medium but I do think it's misguided to think that its the only thing you can rely on

[slim thorn]

it does depend on the content, e.g. the "just a decent mic" standard I mostly hear about let's plays, where you're mostly recording the game you're playing so you don't need additional hardware to record and edit yourself

[fresh bane]

I think it's a very general 'tip' most content creators say though I'm glad a very common thing they almost always say is to NOT do this stuff with the goal of becoming famous

[slim thorn]

same

some kinds showbiz jobs can be semi-consistently acquired with work, but there's never any guarantee of getting famous for it

[fresh bane]

If it works out in the end, that's amazing, but going into it with the idea that it's gonna be smooth sailing or that it's a viable or consistent idea for a job is pretty bad and even though it's a different ecosystem and a bit more on a micro scale being an artist a lot of very similar things happen where I personally understand that idea

It's pretty much the same with acting too I think a lot of people take for granted how identical the TV/movie bussiness is to twitch and youtube and all that

If you're an actor and you get a gig and it works out that's fantastic
...but maybe don't quit your day job just in case....

[mossy flume]

If your goal with anything is specifically to get famous, you’re doing it wrong.

[slim thorn]

it says something that one of the best Hollywood musicals I've ever seen is all about how trying to make it big in Hollywood is a reckless gamble that will probably leave you destitute but people keep doing it anyway

[fresh bane]

I don't think the point is specifically that you go into it with the idea to get famous though people do that all the time but I think it's just more people being so allured by this cool job that they wanna do it too, get famous as in make it your job and the thing you do

People will never stop doing it

[slim thorn]

that's certainly the vibe La La Land was going for at least

[fresh bane]

I don't think I've seen whatever that is but yeah I think that's a better explanation, especially all those kids during the mid 2010s that would have it as their dream job to become a youtuber and you'd even see the first few youtuber courses and classes popping up

[slim thorn]

La La Land (2016) is the aforementioned excellent musical about people trying to make it big in Hollywood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVVqlm8Fq3Y

[random steppe]

Movie was good, that scene was exceptional

[slim thorn]

at least youtubing doesn't involve being stuck in LA traffic every day

[fresh bane]

and now my brain wants to start talking about cities and car infrastructure/dependency

the only musical I actually listened to/watched was Hamilton I did hear about La La Land a lot but mostly just hearing it being mentioned

[slim thorn]

around here it probably only comes up when I mention my favorite (non-MLP) musicals are Singin' In The Rain, Chicago and La La Land

[random steppe]

It's really good, it's one of the few musicals that managed to burst outside the musical bubble

And into general population awareness

[slim thorn]

admittedly, in part because of that one hilarious Oscar mix-up

[random steppe]

You say that, but A LOT of youtubers and content creators are in LA

[slim thorn]

well, okay, apparently none of the ones I watch for some reason

like the one I was watching a minute ago was Canadian

[random steppe]

Especially a lot of them that joined countent creator groups, and then got deals to cooperate with game designers or youtube larger studious

[fresh bane]

Uuuuh I don't know my US geography but I do know or at least I think, a lot of ytubers or cc's do stay in California

Don't know the exact statistics of it but I did notice that

[random steppe]

An example is Jesse Cox, which was in Maker, which is disney associated, they had more than a few times hand him and other people in various stuff
Like this is ancient (RIP TB) but if at the time you joined a group that did stuff like this, you had to be in LA obviously,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YNtcmdnRiM

[slim thorn]

yes, LA is in California

[fresh bane]

If you didn't say that I would've probably guessed LA was in New York or something

[slim thorn]

I thought a lot of those people were visiting LA rather than living permanently, but yeah good point, I haven't watched that group in a long time

[random steppe]

Which is really bad BTW, it's why LA is impossible to live in and incredibly expensive

[fresh bane]

I think it's just because a lot of bussiness is done in LA so it has become a bit of a hub for that

[slim thorn]

to be fair I can never remember what state Chicago is in

[random steppe]

You focus like 10 industries all in one place

Good fucking luck

Everyone in content creation, show business, tech, game production, and probably another half dozen things want to live there.
You can urban plan as hard as you want, it's not going to be painless.

Music scene, that too I think is super focused there

[slim thorn]

I've heard many large tech companies have been actively trying to diversify locations since nothing about their jobs requires putting everyone in the same place, and many things are less expensive when they go somewhere that's not the center of the universe

[mossy flume]

While that’s a good thing, it also ends up being kinda hard because all the engineers moved to a few select locations where everything is expensive and for the most part they’re not budging

[fresh bane]

there's probably a bunch of logistical reasons why california is such a big hub for bussinesses that I don't know but I know enough to assume that it wouldn't be as easy as some companies going into other locations to change that

but I don't know anything about that

[mossy flume]

There’s one particularly dramatic example of this (there’s more than just diversifying locations involved I know, but still relevant) where TSMC is trying to build a next-gen chip fabrication factory in Arizona. Unfortunately, far too few people stateside are actually qualified to work in that sort of factory or the construction thereof and they are therefore having substantial difficulties with the construction process and finding people who could actually staff it.

[slim thorn]

yep, it's the sort of thing an already big tech company does because they can eat the startup costs of investing in infrastructure somewhere else to recruit more people who can do the job but for whatever reason could not easily move to the existing tech hubs

[fresh bane]

Mmmm, putting your bussiness where you're more likely to find people qualified to work sounds like a pretty big reason

[slim thorn]

mm-hmm, actual startups pretty much have no choice but to start in an existing hub

[mossy flume]

It’s circular, too. It also draws workers there, therefore draining other locations of expansion opportunities.

No opportunities outside the hubs for anyone involved.

It’s a reason why I moved here, so I’m part of the problem.

[fresh bane]

Yeah that sounds like it'd be really tough to ''stop'' that or try to diversify bussiness into other areas

I mean you kinda don't have a choice

[minor gorge]

Most of the positions I had been applying to for the past few months are clustered in the places you mentioned.

[mossy flume]

True

[slim thorn]

at least with jobs like software dev it's less infeasible because the job can be done 100% remote from day one, which is likely why I've only ever heard of tech companies doing this

[mossy flume]

The only jobs I could find were minimum wage contract jobs with no benefits and that simply wasn’t paying my rent.

[slim thorn]

even with my job, I'm not comfortable paying London rents

[minor gorge]

Not as many positions are open to that now, but that may be due to where I had been looking.

[fresh bane]

I guess now that makes sense whenever I hear cases of people that live quite far from where they work but that's kind of their only choice since usually living closer to work is more expensive depending on where it is

[minor gorge]

Yes.

[fresh bane]

If the job can be done remotely then I would imagine this entire thing wouldn't be a problem

....unless the company decides to be shitty for the lols and force you to move nearby anyways

[slim thorn]

well

it's certainly not that simple lol

[minor gorge]

The hybrid model has become more common recently.

[mossy flume]

The pay typically varies depending on where you’re located

[slim thorn]

COVID forced a lot of companies to figure out the infrastructure and culture for remote work a lot faster than they would've otherwise

[mossy flume]

It’s cost of living adjustment and it’s not always proportional.

[slim thorn]

but it also highlighted just how much infrastructure and culture work needed to be done to make positions remote-able

even when the job fundamentally doesn't require a physical presence at all

[minor gorge]

Most of the telecommuting options I have applied to have you splitting time between home and an office.

[slim thorn]

my own position also does hybrid

[mossy flume]

It also sucks when a company promises to go remote permanently, people move away, then two years later they change their minds and demand everyone move back or get a new job somewhere else.

So even if you do get that position of being a remote employee, apparently it’s still a bet on whether it’ll stay that way.

[fresh bane]

that one really sucks

[mossy flume]

Yeah.

[minor gorge]

My evening podcasts had a lot of stories focused on that most of last year.

[slim thorn]

while true, I'm not sure that's unique to the remoting issue; employers can and have misrepresented their positions in all sorts of ways

we've always had to be on guard against needing to suddenly change jobs when the rug is pulled out from under us

[static bluff]

I've seen it myself. I know a guy who was told that remote working was over, even though he was hired to work remote. He doesn't own a car, and you know how amazing public transportation can be. He's not happy.

[bronze abyss]

wait discord just put me here when i entered the channel the fuck is this?

[minor gorge]

Potentially annoying bug.

[bronze abyss]

no shot they are going through with this its actually ridiculous

im p sure what they are going for is to not lose profits to trading but like this is literaly THE thing of the game for ages now,thats what made rocketleague have as much personality as it does

[random steppe]

I didn't even know RL had a trading system for cosmetics

The site they cited was probably relatively ethical, but overall I think those features are going to disappear as it becomes clearer and clearer that it runs the risk to be regulated as gambling if you can get the item through a lootbox, and go find somewhere to sell the item for real money

I don't think you could for RL but I know you can for CSGO and TF2 and it's actually fuckng disgusting.

And Epic is probably moving before anything like that happens, and I don't fault them.

Or maybe it's just that RL is kinda declining and they didn't see a reason to keep the feature mantained and supported

[thorny loom]

they did that for fortnite awhile back. use to be pinata loot boxes but now its just a skin shop

[random steppe]

Yeah lootboxes are already bad, but the thing that IMO takes it over the line, is if you can go and sell what you got

So RL was probably fine from that aspect, for the moment

You could trade but not sell for real money, from what I could see, for that site at least

My guess is that they didn't want to run the risk anyway

Actually IDK, was I giving that site too much credit?
If anyone used it lemme know if you could sell stuff you got in game for cash

I don't think that'd be the case, but I shouldn't assume, this is the videogame industry

There is no bottom

[dapper cedar]

been replaying The Simpsons Game, didn't this joke just age phenomenally? (later game spoilers, not sure how much it matters in this instance but would rather not chance it)

[bronze abyss]

lootboxes havent been a thing since epic bought psyonix

now you get random drops of blueprints that you see what they give and then pay premium currency to craft them

and back in psyonix RL days while they did have lootboxes items would get traded for keys,not money

you have an item wanna sell it? great you trade it with whoever wants it for X amount of keys that the item is worth,rather than actual money

and theres lots of lootboxes/skins you used to get for free aswell which you can trade aswell so you can partake in the economy without spending any money

[random steppe]

Oh ok nevermind then

Thanks for the clarification

[little badger]

https://fxtwitter.com/ign/status/1713494984161182078?

[novel pine]

better late than never i guess

[wind stump]

Oh good
Someone made the Heart fight harder

[astral steeple]

https://vxtwitter.com/PUBGM_Europe/status/1712724885724856356

LMAO the timing

[wind stump]

ok?

[young creek]

very exciting for all the pubg gamers

[little badger]

https://fxtwitter.com/ign/status/1713623523388751964?

[random steppe]

The first I heard of the game, was people saying it looked really bad

Now it seems like people are changing ther tune on it

[river veldt]

THIS GAME LOOKS FUCKING AWESOME

[random steppe]

So it seems like they were able to tighten it between previews and release

[visual hill]

despite their relatively small scale, Teyon's games have become a lot better over the years

remember that they started with… things like Rambo: The Video Game

[little badger]

Did anyone here play the last terminator game that came out?

[visual hill]

I didn't

[astral steeple]

Was afk but it's funny timing cause fort is doing a Alan wake 2 collab at the same time already

[river veldt]

https://fixupx.com/cinemassacre/status/1713616124963684553?s=46

this is crazy

sidenote the artstyle for Mario Wonder reminds me a lot of the clay art for early Nintendo Power lol

[little badger]

https://fxtwitter.com/daily_swgames/status/1713616738103722289?

[dense crypt]

yo this looks RAD

[quiet swift]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WockX1sG40k

[dense crypt]

SHOOOOE

[quiet swift]

Bless you

[fickle garnet]

That's a powerful shoe

[fresh bane]

If I can't put it on and do some sick tubular grinds on rails I don't want it

[white phoenix]

Oh I thought this was a new gaming shoe for only the most hardcore gamers before reading the title

[fresh bane]

I wish

[arctic fern]

i realise this is a meme build but that is a damn fine looking computer shoe

[little badger]

https://fxtwitter.com/wario64/status/1713651960694649320?

[bitter stream]

fascinating, was it any good?

[novel pine]

I cry every time

[little badger]

The real game yes but haven’t played the card game

[random steppe]

This is illegal

They can't release the tabletop before porting it to PC, this is not acceptable

[river veldt]

there's a Doom 2016 tabletop game

[fresh bane]

Didn't Dark Souls also have a tabletop game?

[fresh bane]

From the minimal searches I just did seems like both DS and BB's tabletop games are fine, same for the card games unfortunately

But I know nothing about them or tabletop games in general and I only quickly looked it up right now, seems like people have more fun when they make up their own house rules

[little badger]

[fresh bane]

also seems like both ds and bb's card games are designed to be played with 3+ players?

[white phoenix]

dude they're trolling

[fresh bane]

lol at least the game is being honest

[little badger]

It’s real

[white phoenix]

I know

[little badger]

Bloodborne 2 when.

[sour hill]

All I'm asking for is bloodborne 60fps on ps5...

I would buy a ps5 just to play that

[little badger]

Everyone has been asking for that for years.

[fresh bane]

Isn't bloodborne incapable of going 60 fps because it's built for 30 fps? I've heard the framerate is pretty unstable and can sometimes go into the 20s which is pretty unnaceptable but I remember reading 60 fps would cause the entire game to be sped up because it's just not built for anything other than 30

[gaunt marten]

I have never asked for Bloodborne on the PS5

Just give me a PC version

[gaunt marten]

It's typically not impossible but needs development work.

[sour hill]

Basically the same situation dark souls 1 was in

[gaunt marten]

Yeah, I was hesitant to mention Dark Souls 1 because Bloodborne may not have been designed with future ports in mind which might make things much more hairy

[sour hill]

I mean for the dark souls 1 remaster/hd port they remade the game in a new engine iirc

[little badger]

What class did you use in Bloodborne the first time you played it

[fresh bane]

jesus christ 808 is so adorable

sorry we're talking about bloodborne

[sour hill]

Probably waste of skin, because that one's funny

[fresh bane]

Did they? I don't think Fromsoft did that one though

[little badger]

[sour hill]

they outsourced it

[fresh bane]

Fromsoft doesn't want to put in the effort and time into making ports or stuff like that so all that stuff is entirely outsourced, don't know why they haven't outsorced Bloodborne but maybe because Sony doesn't wanna share

but Dark Souls 1 was already multiplatform and for PC a couple mods were basically a requirement for it to even work

[gaunt marten]

Yeah, there was a mod that made the game 60FPS

[sour hill]

It was a quality build using ludwig's holy blade, though

[gaunt marten]

At the time it wasn't considered trivial

[fresh bane]

For as much as I dislike DS2 as a game and for the fact that it totally went back on its word about having next gen editions/DLCs (pretty much the DLCs built that damn game) the one thing I'll give that game is having the SOTFS version where they made the game nice and HD and smooth 60 fps

Back when I started playing DS on my potato PC I had to tinker around with DS1 because that port is so god damn awful it not only looked but played bad, going from that into the much more better optimized DS2 where I could actually have a good resolution and settings and still get a nice 50-60 frames felt so good

Probably the only part of DS2 I actually enjoyed is that it actually played very well in that sense

[sour hill]

Except the SOTFS pc port has this weird deadzone issue with the left stick that you need to use an obscure workaround to fix

But uh, it's an improvement

[gaunt marten]

Just don't jump

[visual hill]

https://fxtwitter.com/illusion0002/status/1712240011339264072

a hacked PS5 can run Bloodborne's PS4 backcompat at 120 FPS, but it's not a steady 120 FPS for performance reasons

full list here: https://github.com/illusion0001/libhijacker/releases/tag/1.116

[sour hill]

do you need a hardware mod to do that, or no?

[visual hill]

it just need to be using an old enough firmware IIRC

[fresh bane]

with a simple key rebind and after a first playthrough I got a much better score on this mission now that I'm going back and trying to do a 100% run

I've never had this happen on a game before but it seems like the mouse continues to be active even in fullscreen, it doesn't interact with anything outside the game window thankfully, otherwise I'd be clicking all over the place while in the game, but it's very unresponsive so using the mouse as the attack binds is very inconsistent, I re-binded the light and heavy attacks to Q and E and now I'm getting muuuuuch more consistent hits and timings

So weird, this doesn't happen at all in DMC5 and I never felt the need but if I played this game on windowed the mouse would constantly click outside or click the game window and stretch out the window itself (dunno why the game even allows for that anyways)

[river veldt]

oh man the Ghostbusters video game is so much fun

[mossy flume]

…I thought these were all renderings or paintings or something

[river veldt]

i think a lot of people do/did haha

[light gate]

You'd be pleasently suprised!

Its rare to see it happen nowdays, probably because its difficult and expensive. But it does have a charm.

[rancid herald]

in the 90s it was all models

they were only just figuring out how to make computers work

[fresh bane]

Fun fact the models of the time like all the classic N64 Mario models didn't use the type of mesh polygonal modelling that's common now that we all know, they used NURBS modeling instead, think of it as pixels vs vectors, NURBs models rather than using many polygons to create the 'mesh' of the model they use points and curves.

NURBs modeling is still used today but not for gaming or 3d models it's used more for engineering stuff but that's what they used to use at the time for 3d modelling for stuff like games, which is why those N64 renders can look like they're made of plastic

[peak berry]

steel mill

and interesting buildings

[little badger]

https://fxtwitter.com/bbcnews/status/1713885677316673708?

[thorny loom]

https://fxtwitter.com/minecraft/status/1713618649846866367?s=46&t=bVzXPIZvXYyJJoEkCfgMsQ

Speaking of minecraft

[slim thorn]

did any of them have a gameplay use this time

[thorny loom]

Armadillo gives material to craft new wolf armor

Not sure what they’re expected to happen. Since this happened the first time

https://www.pcgamer.com/van-gogh-museum-forced-to-stop-distributing-special-pikachu-cards-after-scalpers-storm-the-gates-we-take-the-safety-and-security-of-visitors-and-staff-very-seriously/

[teal cliff]

I wonder if this'll be better than the dark souls ttrpg was

tthe dark souls ttrpg sucking was a real shame because I think dark souls has a good basis for a tabletop roleplaying game to be made from it

but the execution was just lousy, it was basically D&D5E with a Dark Souls skin

[hidden cypress]

The dark souls boardgame was pretty fun, just expensive as shit

[little badger]

https://fxtwitter.com/bethesda/status/1713917988963795369? @mossy flume @graceful bridge

[little badger]

Was it expensive at launch

[teal cliff]

The tabletop game? Not really

Average price for a ttrpg box if I recall

[little badger]

https://fxtwitter.com/dcdeacon/status/1713918172351308242?

Reviews are coming in for Spiderman 2 https://fxtwitter.com/playstationsize/status/1713919466956877849?

[dire gate]

ngl it would be surprising if they mess this game up

[river veldt]

holy hell

[thorny loom]

Guess we know now itll either be spiderman 2 or Totk being goty

[dire gate]

bg3 crying in background

[little badger]

My game arrives on the 20th

[thorny loom]

Oh right bg3.

[dire gate]

tbf while I think bg3 will win a lot of awards including some "game of the year" or "best game" awards, I don't think it will be winning more than other 2

TotK seems like the biggest contender yet, unless Spiderman 2 is more than just a "great game"

[little badger]

Are you going to get spiderman?

[teal cliff]

Spiderman is probably going to end up my "GOTY from among the popular choices"

I really liked Spiderman PS4 and Miles Morales, 100%ing both

which is pretty rare for me but they're also kinda easy 100%s

[dire gate]

TotK will definitely not be as dominant as BotW

[thorny loom]

I still need to play the first one so probably mot

[slim thorn]

ftr there's no real need to play BotW before TotK

if you struggle to find time for either I'd recommend TotK since it fixed some of BotW's rough edges and just has way more content (much of which is optional, so the effect is it's easier to find a good amount of whatever content you do like)

[dire gate]

I think Sparkle is talking about Spiderman

[slim thorn]

oops

[little badger]

I’ve started playing NieR it’s very good.

What would you say is the best one Ixrec

[slim thorn]

the best... NieR?

[dire gate]

ffxiv

[little badger]

[slim thorn]

well that gets messy but

as I recall you were interested in the gameplay more than the story

and Automata is the easy winner on that count

[little badger]

I’m playing for the story too.

[slim thorn]

to make a long answer short, imo overall story quality is a toss-up / personal preference between Replicant and Automata; both games share a lot of the same tropes, themes, archetypes, strengths and weaknesses

I'd say the single biggest (non-spoiler) difference is probably that Replicant "pretends to be an ordinary mediocre JRPG" for a while before going full Yoko Taro, while Automata is full Yoko Taro from the start

with a close second being that Replicant's story is more focused on its core cast and main plot, with Automata having more meaningful story content spread out among sidequests (i.e. don't skip those)

[little badger]

And I know it’ll take a while but I want to get all the trophies in the NieR series.

I’m currently playing on normal difficulty.

[graceful bridge]

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/10/amd-pulls-graphics-driver-after-anti-lag-triggers-counter-strike-2-bans/

[little badger]

I seen that.

[little badger]

Have you ever tried it on the hardest setting or is it not for you.

[slim thorn]

it is very rare that I enjoy a game on a harder difficulty level than the default, because in most games a "higher difficulty level" is just a flat enemy buff / player debuff that only affects tedium, not challenge

as solid as NieR Automata's core combat was, I saw no reason to think I'd enjoy replaying the whole thing with double grind (I already left the arena challenges unfinished because after doing every other sidequest I was still 10-20 levels too low for some of those)

[gaunt marten]

That's very genre dependent

A lot of games I like have meaningful difficulty

But also a lot of games I like are roguelikes

[slim thorn]

makes sense

those tend to have a huge element of choose your own difficulty even without an official setting

Hades would be a good example of a rare exception where I did spend a lot of time in the super hard modes, in part because it was so much more involved than "Difficulty: Hard"

[gaunt marten]

Yeah, I really like sticking to a level of challenge just above my comfort zone

[random steppe]

Roguelikes tend to also put a huge emphasys on gameplay rather than story, with a few exceptions

So like, if you are playing one, chances are you consider the higher difficulties more content for you to play, rather than an obstacle to content if you are there to enjoy the story in a RPG

[little badger]

Ah right.

[slim thorn]

yeah, I formed this expectation from shooters and most other action games with the then-traditional linear sequence of levels design, where difficulty generally is like that (with Halo always being a huge exception where excellent enemy AI made fighting them on higher difficulties actually interesting... usually)

most of the other genres I've played a lot of tend to just not have a setting like that, like platformers and metroidvanias

(I know Metroid Dread has a hard mode, but case in point all it does is buff enemies)

[teal cliff]

I exclusively play on the easiest setting available 😎

most of the time anyways. I like hard rhythm games.

[quiet swift]

[minor plover]

I much prefer "more enemies" to "buffed enemies" as a difficulty increase. Buffed enemies just makes you have to do the same maneuver more times. More enemies means you have to deal with a more complex battle space, different angles for attackers, etc

[little badger]

With the halo AI when on legendary they rush you more and use plasma grenades more often and more legendary enemies spawn.

[slim thorn]

and carry more grenades, even when they die

my most common cause of unexpected Halo deaths was chain reactions from grenades simply lying on the ground, until I got in the habit of always staying at 3/3 grenades just for the sake of cleaning them off the ground by default

(which is also more fun than hoarding grenades "just in case", let's be real)

[little badger]

And on one level or two the highest of the covenant would spawn but not many times.

Ah yes the chain reaction grenades

[kind shadow]

as much as I'm #stopthemobvote im glad armidollo won, dog armor AND cherry blossom trees in the same year? food for the fans

[river veldt]

i agree

[kind shadow]

don't fucking get me started on how mainline pokemon games are majority single battles while the official competitive format is doubles

mainline games should have more double battles

you can't use an entire pool of moves in the main game (helping hand, the pledge moves, see the effects of spread moves like EQ and surf, explore gimmicks like volt absorb + discharge)

[bronze abyss]

babe wake up generic cod game but likely even more dogshit #29125 just dropped 🥰

[white phoenix]

Plays much differently than the previous one tho

Campaign's going to go hard too

[thorny loom]

The main selling point is that the multiplayer maps are mw2 (09) remastered maps

Since that was a high demand after they remastered the original campaign

[bronze abyss]

that could have worked way better as just DLC

istg if they release warzone 3 and it still sucks ass then that will be the most incompetent bullshit ive seen ever probably

[thorny loom]

Mw 2 2022 Is techically a dlc lol

[white phoenix]

Why did you send me this

[thorny loom]

Really tempted with skeletor and inaruius

[white phoenix]

Anyway the big thing about mw3 is the movement n stuff

[bronze abyss]

i hope they remove 0 recoil builds from the game

[thorny loom]

Looking at ui changes. They made a lot of the stuff look more like mw2 classic as well

[white phoenix]

Yeah bringing back all the old maps, the acr, the hardpoint sound effect sounds like the OG, and they BROUGHT BACK FACTION NAMES

I think its clear that sledgehammer wants to call back to the OG with even the little things that people may not notice, so I respect that

[little badger]

Oh we were talking about cod and that’s the Halloween event

And the only thing they need to change about MW3 is the UAV call in because it only makes a noise

Like on the enemy team

[river veldt]

omg Ash

[little badger]

Did you play the beta?

[white phoenix]

Yeah

I noticed those things right away

[little badger]

Also sledgehammer confirmed that there will be a health bar coming at launch it was bugged in the beta.

But the TTK is decent

What cod is everyone’s favourite?

[gaunt marten]

The old ones before they changed their business model

[teal cliff]

black ops 2.

[white phoenix]

I still look at bo2 and compare the tech in that game to today since it was what people in 2012 thinks 2025 would look like lol

[sour hill]

🐟

[white phoenix]

Man cod after bo2 until mw 2019 really fell off the cliff compared to battlefield in terms of graphics lol

I was shocked that you actually climb ladders with arms and you can see your legs in bf4 made in 2013, while cod ghosts was raving about fish ai

They finally added actual ladder climbing years later in mw2019

[graceful bridge]

Okay, I just played this and it's great. A furry sci-fi visual novel about gathering friends to stop another species from destroying your home.
https://millerdark.itch.io/under-one-sky

The art & music are amazing.

[kind shadow]

oh shit is that markipliers brother (i forget his name)

[graceful bridge]

No, I think you're thinking of the TwoKinds artist

This is the artist behind the Housepets webcomic, and author of the Tales of the Hayven Celestia novels.

[kind shadow]

OH yea

I've read both a while ago so they got confused in my head

[little badger]

I want a ghosts 2 because it ended on a cliffhanger.

[white phoenix]

Yeah same, but I feel like there would be riots if they ever announced it, it just doesn't sound like a good business decision

[little badger]

But if they ever announce infinite warfare zombies again I will be happy

[hidden cypress]

Infinite warfare was underrated

I just was sick of exo multi-player but the single player and zombies were p fun

[white phoenix]

That campaign and its worldbuilding is criminally underrated

[little badger]

In the beta did you keep hearing grenade! Over and over again?

[white phoenix]

YEAH wtf is up with that

[little badger]

It’s a bug

[harsh kestrel]

It's no surprise that Spiderman 2 is doing that well ratings wise. It's Insomniac. Those guys make diamonds out of whatever they touch somehow

[mossy flume]

https://hard-drive.net/hd/video-games/today-were-calling-the-ps3-retro-just-to-upset-you/

[little badger]

Are you going to get it?

[harsh kestrel]

I pre-ordered it already

[static bluff]

This thing is old and so are you!

[young creek]

ive got one more year in me

[little badger]

[light gate]

What the hell does that collector's edition give?

That's so much.

[white phoenix]

19 inches of Venom

[light gate]

A venom statue?

[white phoenix]

Yeah venom with both spidermen fighting him

[light gate]

I guess that's cool.

Shame you still gotta buy the game.

ON TOP of that.

[light gate]

Holy shit, it actually has the game?

[little badger]

[white phoenix]

Well I mean, 80 for the game and the rest for the figure

[light gate]

There are collector editions that do not have the game.

[white phoenix]

Did you really think the game didn't come with it

[light gate]

Yes!

[little badger]

Some collectors do

[light gate]

Many collector editions were doing that in the PS4 era from what I remember.

[little badger]

Yes I got the red dead 2 collectors and had to buy the game separately.

[light gate]

[white phoenix]

Lol of course

On the bright side its good for those on pc buying digitally if the price is alright

The persona 3 collectors comes with the physical game and as such cannot be bought if you want it for pc

[little badger]

I just hope physical doesn’t go away

[light gate]

Physical goods or Physical discs?

[little badger]

Discs.

[light gate]

That will go away one day.

Its innevitable.

Games are way too big these days.

[mossy flume]

That's vanishing in a gen or two, yeah

[light gate]

Microsoft pretty much is killing the disc drive on their Xbox Series X soon with the revision model.

[rose rose]

Microsoft's slides were pretty clear that they'd go away in the mid-gen refresh this gen

Who knows whether that's still the plan

[white phoenix]

Ps5 having a digital edition was just another nail in the coffin

[rose rose]

But it was once

[little badger]

There will be a lot of complaints if that happens because you see what happens when a game company doesn’t want to do physical they keep asking them till they get it.

[mossy flume]

Current rumors about Nintendo Switch 2 insist that there will be a digital-only version and a version compatible with cartridges.

[light gate]

Complaints from the gaming community? Sure.

Not from the general audience.

[rose rose]

But why

[mossy flume]

If it pans out that Nintendo gets into that, then I guess it's a strong signal that physical is dying out. But I have mixed feelings on the assertion.

[light gate]

Yeah, cartridges at least remain playable and can be bigger than a CD.

[rose rose]

PCs don't have physical media in any meaningful way any more and nobody has complained much

[mossy flume]

Dunno. They seem to also consistently claim that there will be one with backwards compatibility and one without. But people claim random bullshit all the time, so who knows.

[light gate]

Doesn't make much sense for Nintendo do go that route.

[rose rose]

I do not think I would put any stock in these rumours

[mossy flume]

Me neither

[light gate]

Most rumors have pointed to backwards compatibility but who the hell knows.

[little badger]

Remember when games came with a proper manual and maps.

[mossy flume]

Personally I would find it ridiculous and mornic if Nintendo doesn't do backwards compatibility.

[mossy flume]

Yep

[little badger]

[slim thorn]

incidentally, when was the last time new games on physical discs didn't need a day one download to be playable?

[rose rose]

Reading the manual on the way home

[light gate]

Indie games I think, but that's about it.

[rose rose]

What indie games are coming on discs day one in the first place

[light gate]

Limited Run is a thing.

[slim thorn]

I was about to ask, all my indie games are on PC only or PC first

[light gate]

I know you can get Tunic physical.

[mossy flume]

I saw Tunic at Best Buy the other day

And Celeste.

[slim thorn]

oh that is cool

[rose rose]

Not at launch!

[slim thorn]

yeah

[mossy flume]

Yeah, not at launch

[light gate]

Day one is rare.

[slim thorn]

if I got anything physical related to Tunic it'd be that plushie and the physical manual

[light gate]

***super rare

[mossy flume]

I don't think anyone does it at launch unless they reach a stretch goal on a Kickstarter.

[slim thorn]

anyway, at least personally I feel like we've been de facto digital-only for over a generation already, and the discs are just there to preserve existing customer habits for a bit longer

[rose rose]

If you wait until a year after the game launches to produce the discs you do get the advantage of the day one patch having already happened

[light gate]

im trying to save money for Mario Wonder and now you reminded me of this

[mossy flume]

And the amount of money needed to do that is a lot, so it basically never happens

[little badger]

I loved getting the games then opening the case before you got home.

[mossy flume]

The manual comes with a warning saying that it's spoilers

Which is true

[slim thorn]

lol

[light gate]

Heck I don't know if I should get Wonder or get RDR1 since I've never played it.

[little badger]

And the PS2 games having a memory card holder.

[mossy flume]

GameCube game boxes did that too

[little badger]

[slim thorn]

do Switch boxes do that?

[light gate]

Also would have to halt my Xbox Cloud Gaming sub to save up faster eeegghh.

Probably should get to that.

[mossy flume]

Here we are

[little badger]

Back then we didn’t think that storage was small but nowadays it’s nothing.

[rose rose]

The switch does not have memory cards

[mossy flume]

No, just the cart

[light gate]

NOW I WANT THAT

GOD

[rose rose]

No we thought it was small back then too

[light gate]

I love Tunic.

[rose rose]

Both the physical GameCube disc capacity and the memory card capacity caused problems

[little badger]

Well someone is watching a Railcar video

[slim thorn]

I only realized when playing Tunic in the randomizer that there were multiple secret chests and an entire secret area that I never discovered, even when I thought I was looking up all the secrets at the end of my original playthrough; that game just won't end

[mossy flume]

That pic was several weeks ago haha

[little badger]

Ah.

[mossy flume]

So, was.

[river veldt]

i'll try out Tunic someday

[little badger]

Did you get it for a good price?

[mossy flume]

Preordered it

[little badger]

Nice.

[river veldt]

i know it has a lot of Zelda I influence which makes me very interested

[light gate]

I was gonna pre-order it too but then Mario and RDR happened.

So now I'm in this weird scenario that I want to play those games.

But I also want the Tunic stuff.

[slim thorn]

I am extremely curious whether Cap will take to Tunic like a duck to water or bounce off it like ... whatever ducks bounce off of

[river veldt]

trampoline

[teal sonnet]

this is why I love that modern consoles now have ssds

https://twitter.com/Okami13_/status/1713935229709086942

[mossy flume]

I'm rather curious about that too.

[teal sonnet]

we can finally have shit like this

[mossy flume]

I still want to finish it someday

[little badger]

If you could pick any game to remake or remaster what would it be?

[river veldt]

Zelda II

[mossy flume]

Metroid Prime Trilogy.

[little badger]

I want the Simpsons hit and run that was such a good game.

[river veldt]

that game is so hard

[mossy flume]

Alternatively, KotOR

[light gate]

oh this is a hard question

[slim thorn]

nearly everything I like already has a remake, remaster, sequel, spiritual successor, or vibrant subgenre, often more than one of the above, so I honestly have no idea how to answer that

[light gate]

at least for me

[mossy flume]

The KotOR remaster might be doomed >_>

[light gate]

There are so many games I want to be remastered, not remade.

[river veldt]

i cant think of any others i'd want though

[light gate]

SimCity 4 would be nice for a proper remaster.

That game is really good.

[little badger]

I think I heard it was still going because the rumoured deleted videos was for licensing purposes.

[thorny loom]

599 us dollars

[river veldt]

FNAF 1 was supposed to get a remake, alas

[light gate]

Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun/Firestorm & Red Alert 2/Revenge also comes to mind.

[thorny loom]

Yeah the trailer ended up being removed cause of licensing issues with music

[river veldt]

er, reimagining would be a better word for it

[little badger]

Anyone play the croc games?

[white phoenix]

I don't even care if its remastered or not, I just want RDR and MGS4 on PC

[thorny loom]

Uh oh https://www.pcgamer.com/cities-skylines-2-devs-warn-players-of-performance-problems-we-have-not-achieved-the-benchmark-we-targeted/

[little badger]

This game

[river veldt]

Red Dead Redemption isn't on Pc ,

?

[white phoenix]

No

[mossy flume]

True, yeah.

They did say that

[little badger]

Yeah.

[white phoenix]

Those two games are famously the games emulators try to run well

[river veldt]

Star Wars Dark Forces is getting get a remaster by Night Dive that's really cool

[mossy flume]

Alas, running out of time before release day and can’t delay again

[river veldt]

it's like Doom but Star Wars

[light gate]

Isn't because RDR1 runs on PowerPC architecture?

[white phoenix]

Running Mgs4 well on pc is like the ultimate goal for the ps3 emulator

[little badger]

What games?

[light gate]

I know GTA IV PC port was a disaster.

[white phoenix]

Rdr and mgs4

[little badger]

Ah.

[light gate]

And it sucks because GTA IV is a game I enjoy

[white phoenix]

Which is why when rockstar announced that rdr rerelease, everyone was pissed because its still not on pc

[little badger]

This was so funny when I first watched it https://youtu.be/GGzwrjjgwOk?

[light gate]

Yeah I'm aware of it.

RDR is on PS4 so I presume they're emulating it.

Don't quote me on that.

I just have a hunch.

[little badger]

You can play RDR on PS5 at 60FPS with the latest patch

[light gate]

Yeah that makes more sense.

Wonder why would Rockstar oppose it...

Licensing issue?

[little badger]

Probably had to change something.

[light gate]

Well, I am sure Rockstar would hate seeing RDR1 on PC being shat on if it had performance issues.

They don't want a repeat of GTA IV.

And I know IV was bad because my PC could run GTA V pretty well, meanwhile IV was a slideshow.

[little badger]

I just wonder why they chose not to do online with the Re release.

[white phoenix]

Yeah, then don't have performance issues

Like come on rockstar

[light gate]

"don't have performance issues"

Really?

[white phoenix]

With all the money they get on gta online you'd think they could invest in optimization

[little badger]

GTA VI will have lots of MTX

[light gate]

Its not a matter of them doing it, but investors approving it.

Also their leaders and what not.

[little badger]

Well it’s been rumoured that GTA VI will cost 1-2 Billion to make.

[light gate]

Yeah that makes sense.

GTA VI is supposed to be like another step.

[little badger]

If it is it’ll be the most expensive media ever made.

[white phoenix]

Well yeah, if they think a polished enough game can potentially bring in more cash than it costs

[light gate]

That's not how it works.

You're talking about a game that is already old and outdated, with code that might or might not be properly documented, and things that need rewriting without it making the game feel different.

Even if you manage not to screw up, you still need to see why a game even performs badly.

[little badger]

I just hope the game runs well and no crashes at launch.

Wouldn’t surprise me if it’s 200GB or more

[light gate]

No, RDR1 is lower.

Way lower.

[white phoenix]

I realize that, I know how infamously spaghetti RDR was

[light gate]

Well they certainly don't owe PC users anything.

[little badger]

GTA V is 106 GB

[light gate]

RDR1 is 10.5GB

[river veldt]

why are games so big

[light gate]

Textures

[river veldt]

Mario Wonder is only 3 gigabytes

oh

[light gate]

Sound, Music.

High Poly Models

[slim thorn]

mostly the audio, music, texture, model, etc files, aka the "assets" that these high budget high fidelity games are expected to have now

[light gate]

1024x1024 textures are small but look blurry the closer you get to them.

If you make them bigger, say 4096x4096

[little badger]

But most devs try and compress files now don’t they?

[light gate]

They look better but its huge.

[river veldt]

jepg

[slim thorn]

huge files are huge even with compression

[light gate]

Even if you were to compress everything at the best level, it can only do so much.

[slim thorn]

you know how a video file for one episode of a TV show is usually a couple gigabytes? that's the compressed video file, no one even bothers uploading the uncompressed kind

[river veldt]

what tv show

[slim thorn]

any

[light gate]

The uncompressed kind, raw files.

RAW files are MASSIVE.

[river veldt]

wwe raw

[sour hill]

hell yeah brother

[slim thorn]

and particularly in video game engines, needing to decompress the files at runtime can be a significant cost in other ways, so sometimes it's not worth it

[river veldt]

cream of the crop

[slim thorn]

especially if your customers are allergic to loading screens

[light gate]

Also RAW files contain the highest amount of data in said texture, meaning that it contains all the detail of the texture.

Which you'd think its a good idea to put on games that want best graphics, but then load times are a thing, and ram is also another issue. There is also video ram to worry about.

[sour hill]

This would all be so much easier if we just stopped playing games

[slim thorn]

and that leads to nearly all practical game engines for large high-fidelity worlds swapping between smaller and larger versions of textures and models depending on how close you are to stuff

[light gate]

basically lmao

[slim thorn]

which is how you get things like "pop-in"

[river veldt]

#downwithgames

[wind stump]

#DownWithCapitalism

[sour hill]

Let's go back to choose your own adventure books

[light gate]

And the less we talk about programming, the better.

[rose rose]

Remember the 2017 MLP movie leak? That video file did not have inter-frame compression and so was well over 100 GB (and that's still with intra-frame compression)

[harsh kestrel]

I'm honestly hoping Sonic Superstars can pop up for download the second the time hits midnight and they don't do the dumb crap that some games do and release at like noon. Like, bro, I'm at work, I can't play this for like another 4 hours or so here

[thorny loom]

https://twitter.com/survivetheark/status/1714012656519315776

ARK: Survival Evolved (@survivetheark)

😁Smile! ASA certification builds have been submitted

Hang in there! We can't wait for you guys to get your hands on ARK: Survival Ascended!

Likes

894

Retweets

144

Twitter · Oct 16, 2023, 8:17 PM

[harsh kestrel]

So I looked into it and Sonic Superstars comes out at 11 PM ET tonight

[bitter stream]

hope you enjoy it once it's out!

[fresh bane]

I'm on the fence about whether or not I wanna buy it on launch or later down the road because I'm definitely interested in more 2d sonic stuff and I could just go play Sonic CD or Mania which I haven't played yet but I was interested in what Superstars was showing

I guess I'll wait a few days at the very least and see how people like it

[river veldt]

oh man you should totes play Mania

[visual hill]

Stay Retro!

[visual hill]

it is a native port (also for Switch), not emulation. The base PS4 is too weak to do PS3 emulation of such a demanding game

(modern high-end PCs still struggle with RDR's PS3 version, only Xbox really performs smoothly)

[graceful bridge]

https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/10/16/cryptic-zen-studios-layoffs-embracer-group-restructuring

[rancid herald]

it kills me

like for real

star trek is as big as it ever has been and our mmo is imploding

awful

[fresh bane]

So a couple months back in July they added a pretty big update to Hi-Fi with some brand new arcade gamemodes and one of them is BPM Rush where basically it's a bloody palace mode except every floor you clear (luckily there's only a handful) the speed of the game and the BPM of the music increases
....and it's horrifying

I actually ended up beating it but only with a C rank but the 'good news' is that only 2% of players ever even finished this gamemode at all, even on easy

so that's pretty cool

[mossy flume]

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/16/23919265/epic-games-store-now-on-older-games

[visual hill]

how about they bring Unreal and Jazz Jackrabbit on EGS 🙂

they'll get 100% of the revenue!

[gaunt marten]

It seems like a fair deal

I wonder how many times the "You must bring at least three games (or however many you have) in order to be eligible" rule is going to be relevant

[thorny loom]

https://www.pcgamer.com/whoops-blizzard-leaked-the-name-of-the-next-hearthstone-expansion-through-its-own-online-store/

[gaunt marten]

It seems like as a developer I'd want to release one game at a time to maximize revenue

[random steppe]

This is nice, their sales are pretty good for the value proposition, but they really don't have much I want to buy

This might fix that

[astral steeple]

they could probably release jazz jackrabbit on EGS and include Jazz as a fort skin that you get if you buy the game

ez money lol

[thorny loom]

lmao https://www.pcgamer.com/payday-3s-long-awaited-first-patch-is-delayed-again-please-bear-with-us/

[visual hill]

Please bear

[quiet swift]

_ No._

[arctic fern]

That game was clearly released like 3 months too early, christ

[bitter stream]

oh dear, it's taken three months for the first patch?

[fresh bane]

and if I remember correctly on launch the game was literally unplayable because it's a fully online game with no offline and the servers were down

[bitter stream]

hahah that's depressing

[gaunt marten]

Yeah, I try not to buy that sort of game because what good is a game if I can't play it when the Internet is out?

[fresh bane]

The only 'online' games I own are fighting games and even then all of them have an offline mode and offline gamemodes but I count them as online for obvious reasons

I'd like to think otherwise but I think the fully online game thing is going to be one of those things where all players are like ''this is awful, don't do this, we hate it'' but the companies will just ignore it or slowly try to implement it more until we get used to it

[slim thorn]

I'm not sure I own any "online games"

[fresh bane]

But I'd like to believe it won't happen

[gaunt marten]

If you can't start the game without being connected to the internet it's online only

Hitman 3 is online only

[slim thorn]

I guess these multiworld randomizer mods sort of count, but even those I can run entirely within my own laptop (and have done to test stuff)

[gaunt marten]

(also 2 and 1)

[fresh bane]

I still hate that, it's one of the few things that make those games not quite hit the perfect 10/10 mark

I think it's absolutely ridiculous

[slim thorn]

oh yeah those are annoying

fortunately it never impacted my game experience

the satirically confusing menus and business model did impact it

[gaunt marten]

Yeah but you live in a country with good internet uptime

[slim thorn]

indeed

[fresh bane]

I know I've been annoying about it since I've been playing it lately but I'm amazed at the amount of content Hi-Fi Rush has for its price, not DLC or micro transaction just fully unlockable content right there in the base game

I don't know if I find it funny or sad I feel the need to highlight that when it should and already was the norm before in games

[slim thorn]

and still is in most of the games I play

[bitter stream]

Did Hi-Fi Rush do well commercially? I've heard nothing but praise but I heard sales numbers weren't that high

[slim thorn]

those things vary a lot by genre, company and audience

[gaunt marten]

Hi-Fi Rush is too expensive for me

[fresh bane]

initially people reported and it seemed like Microsoft wasn't super happy with the sales of the game but it seems like they either changed their stance or that was wrong because according to a Microsoft marketing staff it was a hit
https://vxtwitter.com/aarongreenberg/status/1649431572137779203?

[slim thorn]

I haven't played it because I simply haven't been in the mood for that kind of game

[fresh bane]

the only other singleplayer game I've played recently was Blasphemous and luckily that one was also incredibly full of content for the price I yoinked it at

[bitter stream]

ah that's good to hear Nire.

[fresh bane]

But even SF6 has a battle pass now...

[slim thorn]

fwiw pretty much all the indie metroidvanias I've played are like that

as well as the indie platformers I got from that bundle with A Hat in Time a month or two ago

[bitter stream]

SF6 is probably the most filled content fighting game I've seen though. probably the only bigger one is Smash Bros Ultimate

[slim thorn]

and we could go on

[gaunt marten]

Blasphemous is not unique. It's great but there's a huge amount of indie games like it (all amazing)

[slim thorn]

at least competitive multiplayer games have a good reason to require internet and favor subscription models since every player relies on the servers staying up

[river veldt]

i dont think i play any online games regularly

[bitter stream]

I mean, Titanfall 2 since it got patched doesn't need a subscription model to enjoy haha. Though that's a long and complex history regarding servers, modding, and hackers.

[slim thorn]

right, "have a good reason" != "need", there are still multiple options

[fresh bane]

Capcom is in this weird spot where their microtransaction stuff isn't extremely predatory like what's most egregious nowadays and it's out of the way enough that you can perfectly access and play the game fully without needing it but with DMC5 the EX colors were all microtransactions I think, the Super costumes were also microtransactions as an option as well as a general ''buy X number of in-game currency'' option in the stores
RE3 and RE4 also had microtransaction options with RE4's being a bit controversial when they added that purchasable special ticket I think, SF6 has a battlepass now and probably the most egregious thing is how they limited the Drive Tickets in the game which are used to buy the basic character colors every other fighting game just already has or lets you unlock through arcade or gameplay, it's like 1k per character which is absolutely wild when they only gave you like 500 tickets every month I think

I want to say they've been a bit more generous with the tickets now but it's still something that should've been there since day one (also a lot of colors are just really ugly...)

[slim thorn]

I just mean that a fighting game having a battle pass makes tons of sense compared to, say, the last SimCity being infamously always-online

[fresh bane]

They're in this weird state where I can't fully complain about their microtransactions because it's nothing that directly affects the game but I still think they're being weird with the microtransactions

[slim thorn]

yeah RE4 I didn't even notice had mtx when I played it, I'm still not sure if they added that later or I just don't spend time in those parts of those games

[bitter stream]

ohh I see what you mean Ixrec. My bad.
Yeah, locking basic colours behind drive tickets is weird Nire.

It's very... what's the word, strange to see a Fighting game with the basic colours locked out

[gaunt marten]

Capcom always does aggressive microtransactions in the form of steam DLC, but they don't advertise it in an annoying way, and the game balance seems okay, so it's fine I guess

Every game from Resident Evil to Yakuza has it

[river veldt]

let me lod up yakuza

[fresh bane]

The microtransactions in RE3-4 and DMC5 aren't super in your face so it's very easy to ignore them to the point where players probably don't even know they exist but it's still weird, for DMC5 I was extremely disappointed with them and with DMC5's special editions because they didn't exactly offer much of anything that was worth it other than a few of Nero's Devil Bringers and Dante's special bike with a different moveset and properties to the regular base one which I still think is fucking wild those aren't unlockable in any way

[river veldt]

play dmc2 pleas

[fresh bane]

The EX costume thing is also super disappointing, I appreciate RE2-3-4's costumes a lot but DMC only gets a singular recolor?

It was also pretty wild when Capcom didn't even release Special Edition for PC presumably because PC players have mods that can do all the things the Special Edition could do and more which fair to them but it was pretty weird

Mods do a good enough job but I still wish I had these costumes and customization options in the base game like the RE remakes have

[gaunt marten]

Oh they got rid of the DLC on Yakuza 0

[river veldt]

what was it

[gaunt marten]

Money and consumable items

Literally the worst kind of microtransaction

[river veldt]

buy money with money

[gaunt marten]

Yeah but it's fake money with real money

[river veldt]

ah

crypto

[gaunt marten]

No

It's in-game money

[slim thorn]

at least an in-game item can potentially bring you happiness while playing the game

[fresh bane]

No, crypto is 'real' fake money

[river veldt]

i think pokemon did the consumable item dance

[bitter stream]

Oh? pokemon too?

wild

[gaunt marten]

Buy ultra balls early for 99 cents each

[river veldt]

yeah you could buy like 30 great balls or something for a small fee

which game was the one where a preorder bonus was lives

[gaunt marten]

That's so awful

[river veldt]

was that a sonic game

[rotund forge]

Pikmin 4's Digital preorder bonus was a single bomb rock and and ice bomb.

[river veldt]

eugh

[bitter stream]

why do they do these things, eww.

[fresh bane]

I missed this message but I don't know if you'd actually enjoy the game despite how good it is, since it's character action mixed with a rhythm game it's like two niche gameplay styles mixed in one, I want to say at the very least it's probably worth watching someone else play it if only just because it's an extremely fun game but I wouldn't blame anyone for not going through with playing it

[rotund forge]

It's worst when you realize a physical pre-order would have given you a piece of free merch

[river veldt]

THEY

[fresh bane]

I kinda wish it was just a character action game but music is the entire deal with the game so having it be a rhythm game is pretty important

[slim thorn]

I don't think I have a problem with "rhythm elements" in a genre I already like, though I've run into it so infrequently it's hard to say

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/zn097KQbHSE?si=vRyeiCBiD7QYQgAB

[slim thorn]

Rez is the only obvious example that jumps to mind but I dunno if any non-boomers remember that game

[river veldt]

i havent found a rhythm game ive liked yet

[fresh bane]

I have heard of it but I haven't played it

[gaunt marten]

Cadence of Hyrule no good?

[river veldt]

no

i mean it's probably good but i dont like it

it doesn't help i have terrible rhythm

oh well

it ees what it ees

[fresh bane]

I think the general consensus about Cadence of Hyrule is that if you're going to play a game heavily inspired by Crypt of the Necrodancer you might as well just play Crypt instead since it's the better game

but for what it is I heard Cadence is actually not that bad and it's good

Might check it out myself

[slim thorn]

my lack of character action vibes lately probably has to do with struggling to even finish Bayonetta 2 back when I played it (wasn't the game's fault, I was consistently exceptionally bad at basic dodge timing for no apparent reason) and since then most of my tryhard energy going into metroidvanias and randomizers thereof

[gaunt marten]

Sense of rhythm is a muscle you build

[river veldt]

what on earth is a character action game

[slim thorn]

like just yesterday I was replaying a bunch of Ender Lilies boss fights with random spirits/weapons to validate the randomizer's assumption that a normal player can beat anything with anything

[gaunt marten]

It's an action game with a fun character

Like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta

[river veldt]

genre names are so dumb

[fresh bane]

https://tenor.com/view/vergil-gif-18731459

Better if I show you

[gaunt marten]

But this one's good

It's an action game and it has characters

[slim thorn]

"character action" or "spectacle fighter" games like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising tend to be a subtype of hack-and-slash that has a particularly high skill ceiling by giving you lots of different ways to stylishly combine moves

[river veldt]

this gif is making me ill

[slim thorn]

it's one of those genres that's annoyingly hard to actually pin down and even I'm not satisfied with what I just said; playing one of them is the only way to really get it

[fresh bane]

the funny thing is I think there's some correlation between the skills you use on a Metroidvania and a character action game somewhat, I definitely found myself getting into 'the zone' when playing Blasphemous and the fight against Crisanta was almost like playing a very basic version of a DMC boss fight

But it's true that these are games where you either have to like them already or be very in the mood otherwise you won't enjoy them to the fullest or perform to the fullest

[slim thorn]

of course I'll never be able to do the kind of stuff that gif depicts, for me those games are all about getting into the mental zone of feeling instead of thinking and letting muscle memory take over

[river veldt]

muscle memory

[fresh bane]

Nah that gif is the absolute craziest of players to ever touch these games

[slim thorn]

yeah there's definitely a huge overlap with how I play spectacle fighters and harder metroidvanias

[fresh bane]

Most people won't do that kind of stuff

[slim thorn]

but as you say, those harder metroidvania bosses are "basic" by spectacle fighter standards

I can only play spectacle fighters at a basic level, so my experience playing those genres overlaps more than the games are really designed or intended to

[river veldt]

what is a spectacle fighter

[slim thorn]

we literally just explained that

[random steppe]

We are never going to agree with Capcom microtransactions, I feel like they are basically one of the most predatory single player company in the market

Second only to Ubisoft

[river veldt]

no that's a character action

[slim thorn]

"character action" or "spectacle fighter"

they're synonyms

[river veldt]

why are there 2 terms

[slim thorn]

[bitter stream]

why's that Genryu?

[random steppe]

Even ultimate team is at least a multiplayer feature, for how disgusting it is

[river veldt]

mxtx

no

[fresh bane]

Because character action is not an actual official term, it's made up by the community and different people refer to them differently

[river veldt]

mtx

[fresh bane]

Have you ever played DMC1?

[random steppe]

Look at this stuff, blue orbs are continues and red orbs are the currency to buy abilities in these games

[river veldt]

dmc is the game Jerma was playing when his house exploded

[random steppe]

Ubisoft is worse, but this is still really bad

[river veldt]

lordy

[fresh bane]

Blue orbs are more HP items, yellow orbs are continues

[random steppe]

Oh my bad yeah

[slim thorn]

I think "spectacle fighter" is one of those subgenres like "immersive sim" that's just narrow enough to have a devoted fanbase wishing there were more good games, but also primarily defined by a vibe or emergent gameplay or higher-order property of game design that makes it very difficult to explain if you haven't had the experience yourself

[random steppe]

You can however buy yellow orbs with red orbs

[river veldt]

that's like free to play mobile game level

[random steppe]

IIRC

Not quite to that level

[river veldt]

what is an immersive sim ? like SimCity or somthing ?

[slim thorn]

that's a city builder, totally unrelated

[bitter stream]

ah, that is pretty bad. especially for a DMC game...

[random steppe]

But it's on the very bad side for single player AAA game

[river veldt]

SimCity has sim in the title though

[fresh bane]

And that's without getting into the other editions DMC had the more expensive one going up to like 150 USD I think

[slim thorn]

here's what I said the last time you asked

[gaunt marten]

I agree it's mega fucked up, but I don't hate it as much as I hate microtransactions being pushed at me while I play the game, which Capcom doesn't do

[river veldt]

why is that what immersive sim means

[slim thorn]

we're not the ones making up these terms lol

[random steppe]

Yeah it's not as bad as a free to play game, it's out of the way

[slim thorn]

Metroidvania got it easy

[gaunt marten]

It's immersive and it simulates a world

[random steppe]

But F2P games are also free to play

[river veldt]

yeah SimCity is and does too

[gaunt marten]

Incorrect

[fresh bane]

It's the worst it's been for a DMC game, and it started with DMC4SE in 2015 when they retroactively added the same type of microtransactions of ''buy red orbs! buy the EX colors!'' thing, at least the EX colors came with the Special Edition already included and that game even had extra costumes at least! DMC5 doesn't even have any type of unlockable costume

[gaunt marten]

SimCity cannot be immersive in the sense that you do not control a character whose point of view you can be immersed in

It's a pure management game

[slim thorn]

this is why "immersive" and "simulate" are bad descriptors; without any other context they describe almost any good video game

[harsh kestrel]

This has definitely been one hell of a rollercoaster year for gaming in general. Ups and downs all over the place

[river veldt]

what are the downs

i guess Payday 3

my friend kratta likes that game though so it can't be too bad

[gaunt marten]

Kratta likes a lot of bad things, like Flitter

[random steppe]

Also I think there was a DMC that you couldn't buy by itself, you had to buy it in a bundle with red orbs

[hidden cypress]

I thought flitter liked good games?

[river veldt]

@sour hill care to weigh in

[gaunt marten]

I love good games

[river veldt]

do you like Mario

[gaunt marten]

No comment

[river veldt]

wtf

[random steppe]

And people speculated it was because if you buy a game with a bundle, you can't refound said game

[river veldt]

Mario Wonder is this week

friday !

[gaunt marten]

I can't really play Mario because it's like forty dollars a game

My budget is like two dollars

[slim thorn]

Ixrec — 11/22/2022 2:08 AM
(I did try the original DMC a loooong time ago but bounced off it so fast it doesn't really count)

[river veldt]

oh

that's fair

[gaunt marten]

I played DMC uh

3?

[slim thorn]

Nintendo games tend not to get those 90% discounts on Steam that allow Flitter to play them

[gaunt marten]

It was great. I played other DMC games and hated every one

[slim thorn]

or, you know, exist on Steam

[river veldt]

steam like

train

[harsh kestrel]

There's been a lot more downs than that. Payday 3 was one of them, but you also have the stuff that happened with Unity, you have Activision wiping two of the biggest fan made COD projects just because they could, you've got all the Epic Games layoffs just because, Diablo 4 has seen a lot of backlash, CSGO 2 ended up being yet another buggy mess added to the AAA game flops of 2023, so... Yeah, while there's been ups like Street Fighter 6, Mortal Kombat 1, Sonic Superstars, Spiderman 2, Baldur's Gate 3, and many other smaller titles that I even personally enjoyed, it's definitely been a mixed bag this year

[bitter stream]

CS2 being so undercooked was really dissapointing.

[visual hill]

I expected CS2 to be delayed but even an October release would have been a bit early

[slim thorn]

for me, after the DS and RE4 remakes passed, all of this year's AAA gaming has been "stuff other people do"

[visual hill]

this is why you don't do deadlines. 🙂

[fresh bane]

Ah, well that's a shame, DMC1 is by far the simpler DMC by virtue of being basically the game to kickstart the entire character action genre, but there's enough depth in there that a less experienced player or someone who doesn't particularly have a knack for this genre or does well with the more insane gameplay of later games can enjoy it
The only problem is, it's a game from 2001.... so it can be quite jank, one of the streamers I watch who played it for the first time a little while ago was having a very hard time with DMC1's fixed camera system and some of the controls, of course I didn't have a problem with them because I'm a psychopath but I understand it's a 20+ year old game

[visual hill]

(Valve isn't publicly traded, they can afford not having deadlines)

[river veldt]

ok but you named like 2 bad games and 5 good ones

isn't Epic Games killing Bandcamp or something

[gaunt marten]

No, they fired half the staff and sold it

[slim thorn]

the jank probably killed it for me, but I just can't remember

[river veldt]

so they are killing it

[gaunt marten]

They sold Bandcamp to a business-to-business music sales company

[harsh kestrel]

I honestly don't get shocked anymore when huge over hyped AAA titles end up being half baked buggy pieces of garbage for up to like a couple years and then feeling like a full game after that long. It's this stupid mentality of, oh, we know we can do this with our game, because we know we can update it later and draw our audience back in even after a couple years. That's what Battlefield 2042 has done, that's what Halo Infinite has done, and that's what Cyberpunk has done

[slim thorn]

I mean, that's been the norm for over a decade, maybe over two decades

anyone being surprised by it now either just got into gaming yesterday or has not been paying attention

[gaunt marten]

I'm glad I supported Bandcamp all these years, because every single file I bought from them is DRM-free and I don't care at all if Bandcamp goes to hell

[random steppe]

IDK if that was the intention for 2042, I guess I could see it because it released in abysmal condition performance and bug wise

But it was more than that

[bitter stream]

No Man's Sky leading the charge of super under cooked games being slowly updated to be decent.

[random steppe]

The design phylosophy in that game was just something that the BF community never asked nor wanted

[slim thorn]

to be fair, Halo Infinite was not a buggy mess; I played through its campaign start to finish without encountering any technical issues

(my big complaints were that Halo doesn't benefit from being open world, and Infinite threw out the unfinished plot of 4 and 5 in a particularly unsatisfying way to do what felt like a retread of 1-3 story/enemies/environments/etc so it was just really hard to care)

[gaunt marten]

Cloud Hop worked on Halo Infinite

[river veldt]

did Master Chief and Cortana finally kiss

[gaunt marten]

Did you watch the Halo TV show?

Pretty sure they got to like seventh base

[river veldt]

whoa

[bitter stream]

lmao

[river veldt]

what is seventh base

[bitter stream]

What on earth happens in the TV show?

[slim thorn]

do people want serious answers? lol

[bitter stream]

I guess seventh base is when he plugs her into his brain so they can live forever together.

[harsh kestrel]

It was never this bad up until the last few years. Now almost every AAA title that comes out ends up being a mess because the developers rush it out because of that mentality I mentioned. Thankfully not literally every single one is like that, but it's so common for AAA titles to just start off as flops and take forever to get off the ground to the point where the good majority of their fans have moved on to something else by the time it feels like a complete game. That's why a lot of indie games or games developed by smaller studios have been the standouts time and time again, because they care. They aren't consumed with corporate greed and have the suits breathing down their necks and pressuring them into releasing a half baked product for profit. There's been some good bounce backs, I won't lie, but it should have never been a flop to begin with. Not that some of these companies care. At least not the higher up suits that just want more billions of dollars, but then they wanna lay off employees like they're broke. That annoys me to no end, and I can imagine I'm not the only one that gets annoyed by it

[river veldt]

aww that's so sweet

[slim thorn]

...yeah not quite

[river veldt]

yeah

[bitter stream]

Ah nah Ixrec, I've not watched it, idk where to even watch it

If you could spoiler it that'd be great.

[river veldt]

it's on

[slim thorn]

what happens at the end of Halo season 1 is ||in order to win a firefight where all the spartans including MC were going to die, MC asks Cortana to completely take over his brain functions, effectively killing/zombifying him but allowing Cortana to win the fight with his body||

[river veldt]

Paramount+ i think

what the hell

[harsh kestrel]

I remember that being a flop as well

[river veldt]

||Master Chief dies ???????||

[slim thorn]

which, for the record, I thought was a great ending

and a perfect example of stuff they can only do in the TV show because it's an alternate continuity from the games and books

[gaunt marten]

I'm glad you asked

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/bases-loaded

[harsh kestrel]

The only show I know based off of a game that did well was, ironically, the Cyberpunk anime. That was actually decent

[slim thorn]

like having Dr Halsey be a major character and quasi-antagonist instead of just a name from everyone's backstory that only shows up in later games to give the occasional technobabble speech

[bitter stream]

Tekken bloodlines was decent from what i saw. I tried Edgerunners but it was too depressing for me to watch much of it.

[slim thorn]

(the part of the Halo show that was not good was the part that had nothing to do with Chief, Cortana or Halsey)

[river veldt]

Halsey is the one who made Master Chief super right

[slim thorn]

Dr Halsey was the chief scientist behind the Spartan soldier programs as well as the Cortana AI, so, yes

[fresh bane]

It took me this long to actually even find this thing because Capcom has since deleted the page containing these editions and the contents of them from the official DMC website but while I don't see Capcom's microtransactions as predatory or the most predatory I did say in this convo that they're in this extremely weird spot where their microtransactions don't get in the way of the game or get all up in your face trying to get you to buy them but they just feel so weird when they lock out any amount of content asides from the main game with a microtransaction (a singular color, extra announcers, live action cutscenes, skins and slightly different weapons) or the SF6 thing with the drive tickets where it's so obvious they want you to pay money for em, or the RE3-RE4 thing
At least this was a limited edition and only available in Japan but this is still probably one of the wildest things Capcom has done relating to microtransactions
https://press-start.com.au/news/playstation/2018/10/23/one-of-the-japanese-devil-may-cry-5-collectors-edition-costs-a-casual-11000/

[river veldt]

i have a very loose grasp of halo lore

[slim thorn]

or to put a finer point on it: she was in charge of the whole experimenting on children to turn them into super soldiers thing

[river veldt]

so she is a bad guy

[slim thorn]

which the TV show gets to focus on as a source of drama because that is actually pretty effed up but also was necessary for humanity to stand a chance in this war

[random steppe]

I don't mind that much if a game has expensive collector editions to be fair, especially if they mostly include collectables or a few skins.

[slim thorn]

whereas in the games it's just this neat backstory detail you only know if you read the books or were paying attention to one or two cutscnes in later games, it's never part of the main plot

[random steppe]

Even crazy expensive stuff, it's kind of whatever, it doesn't bother me that someone spent a buttload of money to have something to put on their bookshelf

[gaunt marten]

Life sized statue of Cloud Strife collector edition

[river veldt]

who is they warring with Ixrec

the Flood isn't it

[fresh bane]

The collector edition is like 150 and includes some stuff that maybe are worth it, but those limited editions go well into the thousands of dollars for a replica of the protagonists' jackets which you can probably get a replica for less money

[slim thorn]

the Covenant, a religious coalition of various alien species that believe wiping out humanity is a necessary step of their salvation

[gaunt marten]

With complimentary copies sent to the Italian senate members

[slim thorn]

the Flood show up later in the first game and have not shown up in the show at all (yet?)

[fresh bane]

Again, it was limited and only in Japan, but it's still one of the actual wildest things they've done

[river veldt]

is the uh

[random steppe]

Yeah I'm fine with them selling that, it doesn't impact me, I'm more bothered by the ingame monetisation

[river veldt]

the Arbiter a Covenant

[slim thorn]

yes

specifically he's one of the "Elite" or Sangheili species

[random steppe]

As long as they don't actively misrepresent what's in there of course

[slim thorn]

formerly one of the Covenant's top generals, then in Halo 2 turned special commando working directly under the Prophets (leaders of the Covenant), then ended up leading the Sangheili rebellion against the Prophets after it became obvious the Prophets were bad guys

[river veldt]

are the Arbiter and Master Chief friends

[bitter stream]

Ya know, I don't know.

[river veldt]

wait is the Arbiter the one who goes WAAAUGH

[slim thorn]

part of Halo 2 is MC and Arbiter begrudgingly working together after they realize they have a common enemy

all the Elites make that noise lol

[river veldt]

it's a great noise

[slim thorn]

then in Halo 3, the Covenant Civil War is in full swing and the Arbiter-led forces are full-blown allies of humanity hunting down what's left of the Prophet's forces (hence the "Finish the Fight" tagline; you do in fact finish that war)

[bitter stream]

Cooking a plasma grenade onto an invis gold Elite in Halo 1 is so damn satisfying

[river veldt]

whoa

[slim thorn]

Halo 1-3 was a very solid trilogy

[river veldt]

they were cooking with that tagline

[random steppe]

Maybe at some point I'll actually try to play Halo

I have access to it, I have Game Pass

[river veldt]

i wonder if the Master Chief Collection would run on my computer

[gaunt marten]

Yes

[slim thorn]

solid in story and in gameplay; part of the reason all three games still stand on their own and weren't obsoleted by each other is that the enemies and weapons and levels keep changing, e.g. in Halo 1 your most common big enemies are Elites, while by the time of Halo 3 it's Brutes

[river veldt]

what goes in in 4 and 5 then

[fresh bane]

Collector's for DMC5 comes with the deluxe edition of DMC5, a replica model of Nico's van, an art book and Nico's notes, a pin and a sticker and... a cloth print? whatever that is
Sounds like it's worth it but I actually heard it's very underwhelming and the art book is pretty basic, the box also looks like it's probably a super high quality box but surprise it's just cardboard lol, the only thing worth it here is the artbook really and paying 150 for this is pretty wild, especially because this being the Deluxe isn't the Special Edition so forget about getting Vergil
I understand not being bothered by editions and other purchasable stuff that isn't microtransactions or directly tied to the game but this kind of thing still bothers me because I just know they can do so much better especially with all the effort their games have

[river veldt]

if the big war is over ?

[slim thorn]

a new story arc that sadly will never be finished, and a new faction of enemies/weapons/vehicles that I thought were just as good as the Covenant but oh well

[river veldt]

wait it won't ever be finished ???

[slim thorn]

Halo Infinite decided to unceremoniously abandon that plotline

[river veldt]

oh

that's a shame

[bitter stream]

ah, I've not played 4 &5, i guess I can just skip to infinite then

[slim thorn]

well, 4 and 5 are actually really good, Infinite is the only one I'd rank below the others

especially since Infinite feels like a retread of 3 more than anything else

[river veldt]

isn't Master Chief a rank ?

[bitter stream]

ah, alas, I don't own... wait, I have game pass lol.

[slim thorn]

sort of

[bitter stream]

I got 1-month of gamepass to try out Forza Horizons 5, found it wasn't for me, then next on the 'to try list' is AOE 4

[slim thorn]

Halo 5 in particular has the most unique core gameplay of the mainline Halos because of its extra movement abilities (slides, jetpack boosts), and controlling the NPC Spartans

at least for me, best campaign gameplay is a hard fight between 1, 3 and 5

[bitter stream]

I'm actually really kinda annoyed at myself for not enjoying Forza Horizons more, because there's so much to like in that game.

[river veldt]

it was weird for me when i watched gameplay of Infinite and Master Chief talked because im so used to Doomguy's silence lol

[slim thorn]

he's a man of few words but MC has always talked

instead MC's famous for being curt and goal-oriented to an almost comical extreme

[gaunt marten]

It was weird for me when I read a crossover fanfic where Master Chief and Doomguy met but they didn't kiss

[river veldt]

wtf

why wouldn't they kiss

they have so much in common

[gaunt marten]

Helmets

[slim thorn]

like in the Halo 2 opening when famously his response to the Covenant attack is simply to turn to the guy next to him and say "I need a weapon"

[river veldt]

ah 😔

[bitter stream]

Damn helmets! If only there was a safe space in the galaxy where they could take em off, make out and have a nice relaxing day.

[visual hill]

Halo 5 is unobtainium today 😦

(or almost)

[slim thorn]

(although I am describing 1-3's MC, he's significantly more emotional in 4-5 because that storyline focused on bad things happening to Cortana)

[river veldt]

D:

[visual hill]

it may not be the best entry, but that's no reason to make it hard to access

[slim thorn]

it might be the most wasted potential entry

5 had so many good ideas, if they'd been properly followed up on with a true Halo 6 it likely would've been as good as 3 was for many of the same reasons

[visual hill]

I have MCC installed, I should start playing ASAP so I can finish the games before 2030 or so.

(also because it's taking like 80 GB on my SSD)

[bitter stream]

that's a good call Calinou

related to HALO and bad monetization, I wish destiny wasn't such a preimier case of terrible for consumer repeat monetization trite.

Multiple split campaign sections priced as full AAA release prices, seperate seasons every few months or so, terrible cosmetic store and removal of in-game methods to get bright dust.

etc etc.

A friend got me a campaign to play in it, and Bungie went and removed the campaign from it. it's nuts

[slim thorn]

in retrospect, Bungie switching from Halo to Destiny was probably one of the big reasons I shifted toward indie games from the 2010s onward

[bitter stream]

yeah, fair call.

I need to play more of err. Bug Knight Jumps A lot

Hollow Knight

[river veldt]

i was always shocked how popular Destiny was

[slim thorn]

every time I see Destiny footage I go "oooh, I wanna play that, but without all the multiplayer gear treadmill nonsense please, just the shooting bit"

so I replay Halo 1, 3 or 5 instead

[bitter stream]

lol fair enough

[bitter stream]

I'm not sure if it's a like, sunk cost thing for some players, or if they really only play one game