general gaming

[slim thorn]

huh

[dire gate]

"fgc player" doesn't make sense but I just wanted to type less letters

[rose rose]

I think an fgc player would be an influencer, technically

[visual hill]

FGC is an interesting case because the community is hellbent on sticking to 60 FPS, despite latency being critical

[slim thorn]

the irony is I would've guessed what you meant if you just wrote "fg"

[visual hill]

(some games support 120 FPS local play, but don't expect this for online modes until 2077)

[dire gate]

FGC is an interesting case, because they go full on frame-based gameplay

[visual hill]

supporting 120 FPS (or even arbitrary framerates) isn't too difficult with interpolation, the internal game logic can remain 60 FPS

…or you can adapt game logic for 120 FPS, double all input windows in the process

each approach has its upsides and downsides, but I 100% believe it can be done competitively

[bronze abyss]

that would make some tech weird since hitting frame perfects would be near impossible on 120 compared to 60

[slim thorn]

I usually see "UPS" (updates per second) for game logic/state updates when properly decoupled from FPS

[visual hill]

tickrate is another common term

[visual hill]

if you make the frame-perfect input have a 2-frame window, it's the same 16.6 ms input window

[slim thorn]

true, tick combines with rate much nicer than update

[rose rose]

why are we stuck on this reciprocal measurement anyway

[hasty patio]

https://cohost.org/Hempuli/post/3213826-empty#comments Enjoy.

[visual hill]

I prefer talking in mspf over FPS personally but the casual audience doesn't know about mspf 😦

(all graphics engineers speak in mspf)

[bronze abyss]

true i have a bit of a case of "braindead" so my dumbass cant read

cant focus at all rn

[rose rose]

I would assume anyone who actually needs to hit a target counts time and not reciprocal time really.

[slim thorn]

same

[rose rose]

even in my not-a-graphics-engineer world of "the UI needs to not be janky" we work in milliseconds

[bronze abyss]

what is reciprocal time

[rose rose]

frames per second, which is one over frame time

[dire gate]

I think the only community that really counts frames is fgc

[novel pine]

yea i need to use vsync when playing Chivalry 2 and it's honestly made the game just not fun :(, so many missed stabs and swings because of input lag really start to add up and make the game frustrating

[rose rose]

(okay, one over average frame time)

[dire gate]

Or I guess some insanely precise speedrun communities, but even they often use ms when they explain the window

[rose rose]

Though frames per second mostly annoys me because it's nonlinear

[visual hill]

if your display supports VRR (G-Sync/FreeSync), enable it and ensure your FPS is below the monitor refresh rate by at least 3

[slim thorn]

I regularly hear frame-perfect or 2-frame or similar things from speedrunners

[novel pine]

i havnet tried the max fps thing but yeah i have freesync enabled, doesnt fix it sadly, even the alternative vsync options in nvidia's panel dont work

[dire gate]

Yeah they use it, but they also often use phrases like "that means about 0.03 second input window" when explaining to casual people

[visual hill]

speedrunning does it quite often because a lot of old games are tied to frames

console games that run properly with uncapped FPS (via emulation) are quite recent, usually PS3/X360/Wii U/Switch

[dire gate]

Ultimately they use time to...well time the record

[bronze abyss]

brawlhalla not too long back left 60fps lock and is now at unlimited,yet they still measure in frames at the assumption of 60fps

[visual hill]

the record is timed with game time or real time, but frames are a frequent component of glitches and strategies

[slim thorn]

well, yes, but the timers for the games are not going to be recording in milliseconds (even SMB1 has the framerule thing)

[dire gate]

Well I did address all that

I honestly think the actual reason why "frame-perfect" term becomes relevant in speedruns is because of TAS

Because you actually aren't going to measure your input frame by frame when playing it, but you realize how precise the window is due to TAS running frame by frame

[slim thorn]

IME that's the most common context, but I still hear it plenty often in human runs, often for tricks they need to try several times

oh "because of TAS" in that sense

[visual hill]

I should learn to do a TAS one day

brb asking advice from Dream and riolu

[bronze abyss]

such promising young prodigies,i sure hope they hold their competitive integrity

[hushed onyx]

Hz

[visual hill]

reciprocal is 1/something

Hz is literally 1/time

[harsh kestrel]

The concerning thing I saw in that video I posted about Sonic Superstars is that it has the potential to crash your game and even mess up your driver like the dude in the video said he experienced, to the point of having to restart your PC

[mossy flume]

Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty spoilers, world detail/actor cast choice, late expansion: ||Gotta say, it's really cool that Grimes made another appearance in this game. And seems to have made a song! I wonder if she had input for the presentation of her performance here. ||

[dire gate]

Jesus Christ Summoningsalt broke yet another world record of himself

This guy is just casually printing out world records

[fresh bane]

Waiting for the next Punch Out world record video where he'll do a GenoSamuel and start talking about himself when talking about wrs

[dire gate]

Literally just him

[visual hill]

I finished Plutonia! These chaingunners have nothing on me.

[bronze abyss]

https://youtube.com/shorts/cPa9J1FV16M?si=5jpCt86GgWgPJo6o

anyone wanna tell them that theres a monitor setting for this?

and that the exact same shit has been used for like 20 years

[little badger]

https://fxtwitter.com/ign/status/1714593688846753987?

[gaunt marten]

Oh nice

If you set a game on Steam to "Ignore this" that game won't show up as a front page game:
Not Ignored: https://i.imgur.com/PL26tjQ.png
Ignored: https://i.imgur.com/Qb9kMce.png

I didn't think the front page ad spot was something you had control over

[untold vigil]

Wow, rare steam W?

[gaunt marten]

You can also turn off the ads that pop up every time you launch steam from Settings>Interface

https://i.imgur.com/x0jFMXM.png

[dire gate]

I don't think it's rare rare but cool feature anyway

[gaunt marten]

Taleweaver is not saying that the feature is rare amongst videogame stores

She's saying that it's rare for Steam to have wins like this one

[dire gate]

I know

I was saying it's not like Steam is consistently bad or smth

[little badger]

https://www.metacritic.com/game/super-mario-bros-wonder/ @river veldt

93 so far

[river veldt]

[peak berry]

explosive

[peak berry]

and nice cave

[peak berry]

and.... Beautiful surroundings.

[astral steeple]

https://vxtwitter.com/iFireMonkey/status/1714650389805510961

oh come on

[dire gate]

MS be like : We are finally buying ABK, this will make us better in competition

meanwhile
Sony : Yo check our e x c l u s i v e title, Spider-Man 2!
Nintendo : Don't forget our e x c l u s i v e title, Super Mario Bros. Wonder!

[wind stump]

Ragdoll physics on death. it is funny.
Allies that you can friendly fire. it is funny. (they may friendly fire you too. not so funny)
No story. this game dev is incapable of writing.
Tank tops. literally.
Funny explosive barrels
Regular barrels containing 'kappamaki'
Very unprofessional game and game page.
this is the greatest description of all time https://potato-yi.itch.io/tank-top-nitori

[dire gate]

this game dev is incapable of writing

[wind stump]

I will not retract my statement.

[quiet swift]

https://www.pcgamer.com/ruin-his-lifeold-school-runescape-player-gets-such-unhinged-advice-from-community-that-showing-their-cousin-the-responses-is-all-it-takes-to-get-a-96-million-gold-wand-back/ TIL, runescape players need serious help

[gaunt marten]

These read like sarcastic comments

[light gate]

They probably are, but they're not necessarily good taste either.

[wind stump]

they should take a page from warthunder and leak classified documents

[gaunt marten]

Certainly not "runescape players need serious help" levels of bad

"Don’t be an adult about it. Cause havoc. Ruin his life. This is RuneScape. More important than his dumb ass child," writes GatoDiablo99,

[light gate]

Would've been funnier if they both had to do a quest together, and whoever finishes the quest quicker they get the wand.

[gaunt marten]

There's no way I can read this comment that is actually genuine. This person lays the sarcasm on very thick

[light gate]

Gotta have those clicks though.

[gaunt marten]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/247080/view/3709336113878491737?l=english

Crypt of the Necrodancer has a Halloween themed game mode for the period of Halloween

[wind stump]

Of course Spark the Electric Jester 2 would have a menu like Sonic Adventure 2, lol

(Also yes I did finish the first game, it's a solid Sonic-like that stands on its own, I just found the last boss or two got a little too difficult and I didn't feel like playing as Fark)

which is funny
because he's the protgagonist of this game, lol

[visual hill]

Options: Graphics ON/OFF

[wind stump]

we have a few more options, lol

[quiet swift]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB49yJp-rJI speaking of RTS, i have just learned that the planetary annihilation folks are doing a sequel?

[rancid herald]

what

how?

didn't GPGs impode?

[wind stump]

i guess they unimploded

[thorny loom]

https://www.humblebundle.com/games/living-in-simulation?

[gaunt marten]

Please list the games

Farming Sim 19, House Flipper, some DLC for House Flipper, Firefighting Simulator, Builder Simulator, Juno: New Origins, Electrician Simulator, Start Fresh Cleaning Simulator, Lumberjacks Dynasty

[rancid herald]

what's juno about?

[gaunt marten]

If you pay ten dollars you only get the last four

[gaunt marten]

3D aerospace sandbox

https://youtu.be/EX6PoXLrk60

[thorny loom]

Sorry had a call was about too but looks like you got it

[thorny loom]

Lmao its only been two hours

[gaunt marten]

What's this website?

[dense crypt]

factory RTS from the planetary annihilation team

BleeeeEEEEECH

[gaunt marten]

What's wrong with that?

I never played the original on account it was ninety fucking dollars

[thorny loom]

https://www.startengine.com/offering/industrialannihilation

It’s essentially kickstarter but for like major investors it looks like

[gaunt marten]

Ew

[dense crypt]

I dislike factory building games immensely

Amd if industrial annihilation focuses on that, im just going to skip it

[gaunt marten]

Oh so you just don't like the genre, and it's nothing to do with the company

[dense crypt]

Which blows because i want a good a new RTS that isnt historical

[quiet swift]

Where were you when i linked a list yesterday

[dense crypt]

Not in this chat, clearly

[river veldt]

200cc in MK8DX

[rancid herald]

interesting

[dense crypt]

I miss F-Zero

[rancid herald]

man this website is fucking weird

they have reward tiers and everything

[dense crypt]

Glad there are games like them still being made

[rancid herald]

why not just use kickstarter my dudes? what is this? give me a plushie monkeylord

[gaunt marten]

Because this is not a Kickstarter

You're buying equity

[thorny loom]

^

It’s kickstarter but for investor groups

[light gate]

Why are they doing another game after two of their prior games failed?

[thorny loom]

PA did fine?

[gaunt marten]

It sold three million copies

[dense crypt]

And even if PA did fail, why cant they keep going?

[thorny loom]

It also got its own expansion so im assuming it made money back

It was kickstarted anyway

[light gate]

They basically dropped PA support and instead pushed for PA:Titans.

Titans did better but now they're doing industrial?

[gaunt marten]

Sounds like typical greedy development cycle

[quiet swift]

Titans released 8 years ago

[light gate]

Well Titans was better in every way, but people complained that their original version was dropped. So now they needed to pay for the expansion.

For pretty much online.

It was a mess.

I'm sure folks have forgotten by now which I guess its not very surprising.

[river veldt]

wow i was expecting SNES Rainbow Road to be harder on 200cc but i only fell off once

[thorny loom]

Titans had updates for a while. But mainly their issue was they had to change publishers i believe

So it didnt get as much attention as they wanted it to

[mossy flume]

This is actually really cool

Get shares of the company, not just the product.

[quiet swift]

The site was saying 1.05$ per share, but it had a minimum 500$ spend to get in

[slim thorn]

so, how does this differ from a traditional stock market? is this a private company? (the linked page doesn't even appear to name what company we're being asked to invest in)

oh wait Galactic Annihilation is the company name

[thorny loom]

You essentially are investing and becoming a shareholder

Which means you get actual say at like board meetings and stuff

[slim thorn]

do you not know what a "stock market" is?

[thorny loom]

In limited capacity

Buy low sell high

[slim thorn]

what you just said is also true of stock markets

that's what stock is

the linked webpage even calls it stock

I'm guessing the difference is this will still be a privately owned company after the sales this site organizes, and not the sort of thing people will speculatively day trade like your typical publicly traded stocks in public stock markets

[thorny loom]

I guess

Lmao sony knows the memes

https://fxtwitter.com/dexerto/status/1714654606569988277?s=46&t=bVzXPIZvXYyJJoEkCfgMsQ

[minor gorge]

It is interesting.

[wind stump]

12/10

[river veldt]

omg when you're playing as Peter can you find Miles and vice versa ??????

[mossy flume]

Seems so

[thorny loom]

Yeah. Gta 5 had a similar mechanic were you could run into the other protagonists on the street so its not that new

https://youtu.be/9Hne6_EF3vI?si=heJWC6CG93IW2AKi

[river veldt]

i dont care that it's not new it's cool as hell

[thorny loom]

Its cool they did that dont get me wrong

[wind stump]

lmao you just
die

[fresh bane]

Except in GTA when you find the other playable characters they want nothing to do with you but in Spiderman 2 supposedly you can not only see the other player swinging around but fight with both at once

[river veldt]

that's so cool

makes me sort of wish i had a ps5...

alas

[thorny loom]

Itll be ported to pc dont worry

[river veldt]

well my computer definitely cannot run it lol

[fresh bane]

With the money for a PS5 I'd just upgrade a computer

[little badger]

@river veldt forgot to show you this. Dragonforce made a song based on Zelda! https://youtu.be/K_Ln7VpB1c0? From the new album which comes out next year.

[river veldt]

waow

[astral steeple]

i have a ps5 but only have a few games on it

fort, spiderman remastered, tony hawk 1+2 deluxe, the ps4 tony hawk pro skater 5, fall guys, crash n sane trilogy, and astro's playroom

[visual hill]

consoles looked pretty good during the GPU shortage, but they no longer do to me

[wind stump]

they did a Skyrim song on their last album so this isn't surprising https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0CZii9_uvA

and a Starship Troopers song for some reason
but that music video is drugs so i like it, lol

[little badger]

Are they still in shortage or has it went back to normal?

[visual hill]

it's back to normal but pricing is still skewed towards high-end GPUs only really being interesting

[little badger]

Ah right.

[fresh bane]

I guess it's always about demographics really

Even if you make the argument that PCs are so much more powerful than consoles and the customization options and all that I totally understand that some people just wanna push a button, boot up the system, open the game and boom, especially adults with actual lives/families that don't have much time or interest on a PC for much outside work if anything

I've never had much interest on consoles myself really and growing up with potato specs pretty much all my life I've never had much of an issue with low end pcs or felt the need to (and for most of my life never even had the ability to) upgrade my computer asap to be up with the latest of tech

[gaunt marten]

Those people can just use Stadia

[fresh bane]

I forgot Stadia even existed

It's like it got King Crimson'd out of my mind

[river veldt]

i dont think it exists anymore

[gaunt marten]

It doesn't exist anymore so it might as well have been

It went the way of the Ouya

[river veldt]

i remember when their ad campaign was really aggressive

omg the Ouya

was the Ouya the one with the boomerang controller or am i thinking of something else

[fresh bane]

It lasted all about... 4 years with minimum success or actual userbase during that time
impressive

[river veldt]

oh man the Ouya's controller is not good

(it is not boomerang shaped though)

[thorny loom]

https://fxtwitter.com/frooctoling/status/1714680024920432675?s=46&t=bVzXPIZvXYyJJoEkCfgMsQ

[fresh bane]

If I'm honest consoles peaked with the Zeebo honestly

[thorny loom]

Apparently this company also made a gi joe game a few years ago that was ass

[river veldt]

oh man the Zeebo

WHAT IS THIS CONTROLLER

[mossy flume]

Chaos.

[little badger]

Have you finished the cyberpunk DLC yet?

[mossy flume]

Not yet, but I think I'm starting the final chapter

[fresh bane]

huh, what's this?

[slim thorn]

the irony is PC has been this convenient for me ever since "every game is on Steam" became almost true

[little badger]

Ooooh have fun.

[river veldt]

HOMY SHIT I DID IT

[gaunt marten]

Nice

[river veldt]

the only gold kart part i need now is the gold tires

[visual hill]

I am a tinkerer at heart so I like PC gaming for that aspect

[river veldt]

whichh means i have to beat all the staff ghosts

blows up

[visual hill]

the Zeebo had pretty decent ports of Quake 1 and 2, they are kind of impressive in their own right

(with full Portuguese localization and even voice acting in Quake 2)

work on Zeebo emulation has just started as of 2023

[river veldt]

why do people want to emulate the Zeebo

[visual hill]

because why not 🙂

[river veldt]

lol fair

[gaunt marten]

Preservation of history is paramount

Even if it's just a console nobody used or liked

With proper preservation you can glean all sorts of insight and cool stories from past objects

[visual hill]

Vita emulation has been making a lot of strides lately

[mossy flume]

One might say they've been breathing fresh life into it.

[visual hill]

console hacking is literally what keeps the PSP and Vita alive

it's actually considered a hip device to own in 2023 🙂

[gaunt marten]

We need a law that forces preservation of old hardware

Something like the library of Congress for books

If you want to sell new hardware in the US, you have to provide a copy of it (and schematics if that's feasible and safe) for preservation

And after a set period of time anyone is allowed to look it up, reproduce and modify it

[visual hill]

I don't really picture Apple or NVIDIA obeying to that.

they'd surely find loopholes

[gaunt marten]

There's a loophole, you just don't sell the product

[random steppe]

How much do you imagine a pc player spend tinkering with the game rather than playing it?

[gaunt marten]

Nire plays on PC

[random steppe]

Yeah but I don't see it really something that is a big difference

Between PC and Console

The other things I 100% agree with

[novel pine]

I've always been mildly annoyed how there are still lots of games not on steam, but then I discovered gg.deals which is normally a site that just lists game prices / sales across platforms but it also serves to let you look for games regardless of platform! It's really helpful, I hope someday they manage to find a way to list games that aren't on any store platforms and are just sold standalone

[gaunt marten]

It's not unless you want to mod your games or you play a specific subset of games which tend to be problematic on PC and fine on consoles

[random steppe]

But it's not like people spend 20 hours troubleshooting problems before playing every game on PC, most of the time you just like, hit play and play

There is the occasional problem that's for sure, but it's not so common

[gaunt marten]

Yeah

[random steppe]

Especially if you have kids tho, I must 100% agree

If I had any, console would be the way to go

Less ways to mess stuff up, easier to set up on a tv

[slim thorn]

with kids I definitely get the argument for a dedicated game device where they can't mess up anything other than their own games

and consoles have technical problems too, sadly

[random steppe]

Another argument I've seen, and I feel it, is that some people that work on PC just don't feel like they can relax when they are at a computer, they need that extra break between work and play

[slim thorn]

(the last time I played a Switch game I got to learn the hilariously convoluted process for sharing screenshots from it)

[gaunt marten]

A dedicated game device where they can't mess anything up is a computer running NixOS

[visual hill]

I've always been a PC fan even when I was a kid, I had consoles too but I found them restrictive

[novel pine]

me too, ive been using PC all my life and just never really cared much for consoles 🤷

[visual hill]

I also spent a lot of time on PC exclusives (and still do today)

[random steppe]

I went back and forth, I had a PSP but the last "hook up on TVT" console I owned was a PS2 so yeah, a while ago

[slim thorn]

back in the PS2 and Xbox 360 console generations (at least that's what they're defined by for me) I was mostly gaming on consoles, but of course back then most of those games didn't have PC releases

it lasted long enough that when I moved here I did get some used consoles for dirt cheap and still have them hooked up, but I haven't used any of them in years

started playing this btw

[novel pine]

ooh a "retro" game that doesnt juse use super low poly models and throw on a pixelated vr filter then call it a day. 🫡 wish there were more of these

[gaunt marten]

Please review it when you're able

I mean Ixrec

[slim thorn]

early impressions are good

the few abilities I have so far feel slick

and I have no idea what I'm doing, just like when I played the actually old games this is emulating

less than an hour in and I've already had my first "was that a sequence break or did the game want me to figure that out?" moment

[bronze abyss]

how do win overwatch

i did my best on my part but im probs bout to derank again

[fresh bane]

It's not about tinkering with the game some people just prefer the convenience of a dedicated game system especially if they have busier lifes or a family, you can just sit down on a couch and play and there's no need to worry about having the latest specs so it also appeals to other casual players who may not be into computers either

It's not really about computers being complicated or needing to know how to program linux to open a game it's just the convenience of having a singular system specifically for gaming that this one demographic vastly prefers

[mossy flume]

Oh my fucking god.
Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty, major late chapter spoilers.
||Did you think Metroid Dread’s EMMI were too tame? WELL DO I HAVE THE GAME FOR YOU ||

[random steppe]

Phantom Library
Wrong game, I think that one had Luigi or something

[gaunt marten]

I heard the game is finally good enough to play but I'm waiting for it to be truly ripe when they move on to the next product

[mossy flume]

Yeah, the 2.0 update really fixed all the major issues with gameplay with a lot of tuning across the board, it’s generally more fun to play now. And the Phantom Liberty expansion makes the storytelling and presentation really shine. It’s an awesome expansion.

[gaunt marten]

Maybe they should release two more expansions and then discount the game for me

[mossy flume]

Heh, alas, any further updates will just be bug fixes. They’ve put Cyberpunk 2077 development to bed and are now starting preproduction of the sequel.

[gaunt marten]

Oh okay

[mossy flume]

It has crashed on me a couple times, so it may need those fixes. I haven’t run into any gameplay bugs that I’ve noticed, though.

But every crash happened to be shortly after I saved, so it’s never been a big deal IME

In general the game has been greatly stabilized.

[gaunt marten]

Yeah, I've seen the same song and dance with the Witcher 3

[mossy flume]

Makes sense

They’re throwing away this game engine and their next games will be using Unreal Engine 5, so maybe they’ll stop having to deal with these problems to this extent

[novel pine]

I respect Cyberpunk for making a pretty much entirely 1st person RPG but the shooting felt way too spongey for me, and I started getting bored after the (excellent) 1st part... I'll play it again sometime

[mossy flume]

Yeah they rebalanced the combat

They rebalanced everything. Redid the skill tree entirely.

[novel pine]

Also it doesn't feel like you can roleplay much

[novel pine]

That's promising!

[gaunt marten]

You can roleplay as long as you want to roleplay the existing character

[mossy flume]

Redid how weapons and loot work (the randomness is basically gone now, which is actually good tbh)

[novel pine]

I haven't played many RPGs and I don't really need lots of roleplay elements in an RPG (Kingdom Come is probably my favorite non-traditional RPG of all time and it's pretty strict with your character's personality) but it was just disappointing since you get to make your own character and choose your background and whatnot

[mossy flume]

And tossed out a lot of cruft with the random items

[novel pine]

Yeah I saw that they removed/redid the absurd system of your clothing deciding armor

[mossy flume]

Yep

Implant system was redone too

They added the implant from the Edgerunners anime, both you and NPCs can use it. It’s actually really cool.

[fresh bane]

The most succint explanation I've heard about the 2.0 update is that it's not only the best state the game has ever been and totally worth it now but also basically a different game because of the changes they made to how pretty much everything works now

[mossy flume]

Bingo

Replaying from a new game is best for that reason

The vanilla experience is just more fun now

So many tiny QoL optimizations, the skill tree overhaul, implant overhaul, and combat rebalancing adds up to a better overall experience and game.

And Phantom Liberty main story content just takes the whole presentation to a new level

Bring the best GPU you can. It looks amazing

[bronze abyss]

ur tempting me to redownload the game stop making my 3080 cry

[mossy flume]

Like, yeah, it wasn’t ready to launch when it did. But the feedback they got was definitely applied here.

It works quite well on my 3080, definitely giving it a workout, but the raytracing and actual path tracing on the 4000 series is even cooler.
(Path tracing: like ray tracing but even fancier)

[bronze abyss]

i honestly kinda was regretting getting my 3080 for a while after 4000 rleeased cuz i got it just before that but then realised that there wasnt even that big of a difference and instead i should be worried bout my cpu

[mossy flume]

Yeah, it’s fine

I kinda want to shove a 4090 into my desktop, but I’m content to wait for the 5000 or 6000 series

[bronze abyss]

i wanna upgrade my cpu within this generation then on the 6th ill be upgrading GPU probs

[mossy flume]

The 3080 is a powerhouse that’ll last a good while

[gaunt marten]

My brother replaced his 2080 with a 4090 just last week

[random steppe]

Started it on normal but upped the difficulty a bit because it was a bit too easy.
Some enemies have quite a bit of hp but it generally makes sense when they do.
Most are just humans and a shotgun blast in close range, or headshots, kill them very fasts but you do get some of the biggest bruisers that are heavily augmented, or some dudes that have augmentations that allow them to parry or dodge projectiles be more toughts as you might expect.

[gaunt marten]

He didn't even have the courtesy to give me his secondhand GPU for free

[random steppe]

Generally, unless the enemy is a boss, even the strongest bruiser is going away with a headshot with a sniper rifle

[bronze abyss]

let me guess hes sitting with like a i5 7th gen

[mossy flume]

Whaaaaat… the jerk

[gaunt marten]

I didn't get to look at what CPU he has

[static bluff]

Hehehe...I got to fork the king and queen with my pawn. Pretty rare for that to happen on the 7th rank!

[gaunt marten]

Nice work

[visual hill]

forking with a pawn is always humiliating

[bronze abyss]

wheeze currently top 1000 in EU brawlhalla

[chilly mural]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39JYengjS6E yooooooooooo iwbtg

[bronze abyss]

oauicuhds first attempt yharon 1 shot HP left

nah melee is actually piss easy in calamity and vanilla terraria,compared to my ranger playthroughs this was p much a speedrun

[quiet swift]

Back on the RTS train, the indistrual annihilation trailer made its way to reddit and people have been commenting. I've been made aware of this game through it: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1672320/Fragile_Existence/

Steam

Fragile Existence

After three centuries of unhindered exploration and expansion beyond Sol, humanity has come under threat. Earth has been attacked by a fleet of unknown origin - the Near Earth Territories have been annihilated, and only a handful of ships carry what is left of the millennia-old species. With a relentless threat intent on extinguishing the flame ...

Release Date

2024

▶ Play video

[bronze abyss]

done

[wind stump]

You know, Novel is a complete fucking dumbass at the best of times

But this logic is sound, why not use the Halloween theme to commit a brutal murder and hide the body?

[thorny loom]

@wind stump https://www.pcgamer.com/slay-the-spire-dev-releases-free-groovy-autobattler-where-your-deck-is-dance-moves-and-thats-the-tea-sis/

[wind stump]

groovi

[gaunt marten]

Yep, I mentioned it a few days ago when they announced it

[thorny loom]

@graceful bridge @mossy flume

https://fxtwitter.com/stellarisgame/status/1715020380404920434?s=46&t=bVzXPIZvXYyJJoEkCfgMsQ

[graceful bridge]

#1032739346996011118 I already posted it.

[gaunt marten]

I wish you'd pay as much attention to Manechat as you do to the news feeds you trawl for things to post to Manechat

[dire gate]

tbf forum is really hard to check

I do search when I upload anything, but well

Not everyone does it

[thorny loom]

Yeah the forums are kind of hard to keep

I usually just stay in the general post

[graceful bridge]

I do wish we could pin favorite forums, but they exist for exactly this kind of thing.

[slim thorn]

I believe Discord search checks the threads/posts that I'm already following

the usual issue is that you can't search a single post (which is a baffling missing feature), but it's easy to tell if a specific link was posted in anything you follow

[arctic fern]

its also easy to check of a game already has a thread and to check the thread

[true maple]

Not if the game is actually in some related thread

Like civilization or stellaris

Also it's not easy to search for forum threads at all

[arctic fern]

oh right, people decided that stellaris is the same game as hearts of iron, making it easy to not talk about either

[slim thorn]

yeah, there's always corner cases with different names or threads about a group of games, but once you're linked the thread once it's no longer an issue

most games and shows are just one thread for the one thing though

[gaunt marten]

We need to pin links to the most popular threads and put them in this channel to help with discoverability

[slim thorn]

#1032716748887179434 already is a pinned post within #1032714873009872967

otherwise, I think the chat volume in any given thread is too inconsistent for a pin to make sense

[gaunt marten]

No

What I'm saying is every few months we can make a pin in this thread that leads to other threads which have been recently popular so people know if there's a lot of recent activity

Otherwise the best way to find out what everyone is talking about is to browser the thread list and hope you find something relevant

[slim thorn]

oh

well, pinned messages are even worse for discoverability

and I don't see how a manually curated / guaranteed to be out of date in a week list will be any better than browsing the #1032714873009872967 list directly

[sour hill]

Yeah I agree

[gaunt marten]

Pinned messages are not even worse for discoverability if you already know it is there

[slim thorn]

well, yes, but that's what the word "discoverability" means

I thought the original problem this conversation was about was people not knowing that threads exist for certain games

but I'm still convinced that the existing forum search solves that as well as it can be solved

especially since recent message volume is not a good indicator of whether posting a new message there would get ignored; half the time threads come back to life because someone new started playing the game

[gaunt marten]

The problem is I want to know where people are talking and I don't want to check every thread

[thorny loom]

Mood

[gaunt marten]

I don't want to talk. I just want to see what they're saying

[slim thorn]

I just join all the threads for the games I'm interested in

which is nowhere near every thread

and then the sidebar tells me if anyone said anything

[arctic fern]

i join threads for games im actively interested in
thats kind of the idea of this system

[gaunt marten]

I want to know for games I'm not interested in

That's the problem

[arctic fern]

why

[slim thorn]

ah

[gaunt marten]

Because I like people, not videogames

[slim thorn]

well, I don't think that's a typical use case

[gaunt marten]

I can't put hundreds of threads in my sidebar

Part of the typical use case for a discord server is finding where the interesting conversations are

[slim thorn]

I have joined threads for games I have no interest in playing (most recently BG3), but ultimately there's a limit to that, and I usually end up leaving it when it's no longer feasible to chat without playing and/or the chat becomes gibberish to me

[slim thorn]

the inactive threads don't take up sidebar space

[gaunt marten]

Yeah but the active threads are still too much

[slim thorn]

I've joined dozens of #1032714873009872967 threads but the relevant part of my sidebar right now is just this

[gaunt marten]

How come guessthegame is lower for you and higher for me?

[slim thorn]

not sure

I think the order has something to do with when you join them

but I've never properly tested it

[gaunt marten]

Wouldn't most join #1032716748887179434 first?

[slim thorn]

yeah I have no idea

anyway back to Pseudoregalia

[gaunt marten]

My biggest problem with the game is it needs more pants

[slim thorn]

would you believe there's an option for that in the settings menu

[gaunt marten]

Nice

[astral steeple]

The only thread I've joined Is the fort thread ngl

Though half the time any time anyone else besides me mentions the game it's usually in here lol

Threads are somewhat useless for the most part

[slim thorn]

nah, they're amazing for most games here

they probably aren't doing so great for Fortnite because there just aren't that many Fortnite players/discussers here

[astral steeple]

you'd think for a server this big there'd be a bit more lol

[slim thorn]

for other games, the dedicated thread will go on for thousands of messages when someone's actively playing it which would've been considered spam anywhere else

[gaunt marten]

For some stupid reason discord caps the number of new messages to 25 no matter how many thousands there are

[arctic fern]

fortnite is a joke here

[astral steeple]

but why though

[gaunt marten]

Every time someone tells you why they have that opinion you say "No that's not true." And start arguing

You know why already

[arctic fern]

tbh you're basically the prime example of why
you spent $14000 on the game
thats an absurd amount of money for a video game
thats a problem, not a reason to like it
and people like you, who the game industry politely call "whales" (yes there is literally an industry term for you) make us instinctively back away from something like that
its designed to suck money from people, harvesting them for everything they can, then move onto the next mark

[slim thorn]

[astral steeple]

the thing with that though is that they dont really "force" you to spend any money on the game at all

its fully optional to do it

you dont have to spend anything to even play the game at all

as a game on its own, monetization aside, to its core the actual **gameplay **is actually pretty fun to play

especially the zero build mode

[arctic fern]

proving flitters point immediately. incredible.

[slim thorn]

that it does not involve physical threats of violence against the non-spenders does not mean the game is devoid of ethically questionable psychological manipulation, or its player base devoid of a toxic culture of pressure to spend

[astral steeple]

Overwatch's monetization is arguably worse and people seem to have no problem here with it whatsoever

[slim thorn]

nah I've seen people critize OW's monetization here before

[arctic fern]

lol we have problems with it too

we have problems with almost all forms of monatisation

[astral steeple]

at least its not lootboxes

you get exactly what you pay for

[slim thorn]

well, other than the regular selling a complete game for a flat price thing

[arctic fern]

i will give it that one tiny credit

[thorny loom]

Mega

[arctic fern]

agent

[thorny loom]

Wanna buy an elden ring coat

https://www.pcgamer.com/elden-ring-has-launched-an-official-luxury-streetwear-collab-and-for-the-low-price-of-dollar1700-you-can-own-your-own-faux-fur-coat-lined-with-the-lands-between/

[arctic fern]

...no?

what?

[thorny loom]

Its only $1700

[slim thorn]

(and while y'all were arguing about that, I found another max health upgrade in Pseudoregalia)

[arctic fern]

are you helping or hurting the current ongoing discussion agent?

[slim thorn]

it felt like an intentional topic swerve to me

[astral steeple]

i just dont see monetization in games as an issue if the game itself is free and the monetization is cosmetic only

it'd be different if it was like in a 60-70+ dollar game

and if it was like shit that gives you a gameplay advantage/boost

🤷

[thorny loom]

Are we talking about micro-transactions again

[slim thorn]

while what you just said was the gamer discourse a decade or two ago when these systems were new

the extent to which it's been pushed in the time since then has changed the consensus

[arctic fern]

no we're trying to tell arianna why fortnite is a joke
again
tho i dont know why i bothered

[thorny loom]

Oh

[slim thorn]

Fortnite being one of the prime examples of how much people can be pressured into spending through predatory game design and toxic playerbase culture and cause meaningful harm even when the items are mostly(?) cosmetic

[astral steeple]

to be completely fair i didnt even get a "nextgen" console till 2019

when i got an xbox one

maybe i am just like super behind on it lol

i refused to even touch anything nextgen up until that point

[slim thorn]

you're allowed to enjoy playing the game, and continue to spend money on the game, but please don't pretend to be unaware of the game's influence and legacy

[astral steeple]

wdym by "mostly"

[slim thorn]

I'm not an expert on Fortnite so I can't assess the truth of anyone's claim about how cosmetic or non-cosmetic any specific mtx is, so I phrased the statement as "mostly(?)" to avoid commiting to something I didn't know for sure while making it clear that the distinction between mostly or entirely was irrelevant to the point

[arctic fern]

if you're somehow rich enough that $14000 is something you can comfortably spend on fortnite, then fine i suppose
but $14000 is just under what my yearly income is

[astral steeple]

its only cosmetics

that 14k wasnt all at once

that was over the course of 2019 till now

stimulus checks and stuff included

[arctic fern]

tell me: what happens to your $14000 when fortnite's servers shut down?

[astral steeple]

theyve already mentioned they dont plan on ever shutting the game down

epic themselves literally see it as a "forever" game

[slim thorn]

I think that's more than I've spent on video games in my entire life, hardware included

[arctic fern]

right. becase all things last forever.

[slim thorn]

to be clear, every live service / free to play game wants to be your "forever game"

that is not an informative statement, it's a re-definition of the genre we all know Fortnite's in

[astral steeple]

they also have the whole UEFN thing that pretty much gives full UE5 access to make stuff for the game

which theyve been slowly shifting towards

pretty much making the game a "platform"

[quiet swift]

I've played 20 years of WOW, and even the subscription for that is not 14k $

[arctic fern]

if you say so.

[slim thorn]

we're very aware of the whole Fortnite as a platform idea

[quiet swift]

[astral steeple]

also the only reason i had been able to spend so much on the game to begin with is due to not being able to live on my own

so my rent is super low

to where even after buying food and essentials and paying my rent i still have way too much money leftover

my rent is only like 320 dollars each month

i make 15 an hour

so its like way too much money to just do whatever with

[quiet swift]

Savings account?

[astral steeple]

well yeah i save money as well lol

[sour hill]

Retirement fund

Stockz

[river veldt]

401k

[astral steeple]

im still able to do that even with buying stuff in the game

[bleak lintel]

Over in MiHoYo land everyone has fun at the expense of whales, even the whales. But people who can afford spending 10,000$ on an account usually know what they’re getting into.

[river veldt]

stocks and bonds

[slim thorn]

what was that site which shows you the market value of all your Steam games?

[river veldt]

what was that one movie where the guy got his son a savings bond for christmas

[quiet swift]

https://steamdb.info/calculator/ ?

[astral steeple]

alvin and the chipmunks? lol

[quiet swift]

20 years of wow and 20 years of steam even at max price and I still haven't hit 14k

And you said since what, 2017?

[astral steeple]

2019

[quiet swift]

[slim thorn]

my account is £1,000 - £3,000 depending which prices you take

[full sedge]

mine is about £100

[river veldt]

my account is probably worth like

60 dollars idk

[full sedge]

my playstation account was probably a lot more

[river veldt]

i dont use steam very much

[astral steeple]

also the other thing is as well is that nowadays im not even spending as much when new stuff comes out

due to pretty much having everything in the fort shop when it resets each day

before i was spending like 300-400 dollars a month on vbucks

now i generally only need like the 84 dollar pack once or twice and im covered for the whole month

[river veldt]

idk how much my nintendo account is worth i have a lot of games on that

[slim thorn]

my steamdb page said my account is "16.8 years" old

and it's at most £3k lol

[astral steeple]

so thats helped with saving money as well into my savings account

[river veldt]

is the pound stringer than the us dollar

stronger

[visual hill]

round number!!1

[quiet swift]

I think pound is still the strongest

[slim thorn]

a pound is worth slightly more than a dollar

[quiet swift]

Huh, thought it was more

[slim thorn]

apparently... between 1 and 1.4 dollars depending on which year we're looking at, these days closer to 1.2

[arctic fern]

i know im a gaming addict
but this is over £14 years, and unloke fortnite im not buying one skin when i spend £40, im buying whole games

[gaunt marten]

"Fortnite will never be finished." Is not the same as "We will never shut Fortnite down."

[visual hill]

my gameplay ratio is really low, but I can only play so many games at once

[river veldt]

simply acquire more eyes and breains and hands

[visual hill]

I still feel the impact of 2016 Steam sales to this day. 👀

[slim thorn]

so even if you round everything implausibly high up at every possible stage of the calculation, my Steam account is still worth less than $5k

[visual hill]

back when I spent scholarship money to buy games on deep sales

[slim thorn]

and that's over half my gaming life

[full sedge]

i was slightly off

[astral steeple]

them saying fortnite will never be finished is literally them saying the game will continue to keep running forever lol

[river veldt]

that avatar goes hard

[bleak lintel]

This is similar to how League players spend a ton of money on skins. It is easy to justify if it is the only game you play.

[full sedge]

thanks

[slim thorn]

can we please not blindly believe marketing speak as if it was anything other than marketing speak

[full sedge]

i wish i could spend money on games.. i hate being poor so much

[visual hill]

a lot of CS2 players have inventories worth thousands, even cheaters (!)

[full sedge]

new games keep coming out and i just cant buy them, i hate it

[visual hill]

(if you get banned, you can't sell the items, so all the value is lost)

[thorny loom]

Being poor sucks

[slim thorn]

of course they want to run the game forever, every company wants everything they do to keep making money forever; they can't guarantee it'll actually happen

(regardless of how good or not the game itself is or whether it "deserves" to go on forever and so on)

[gaunt marten]

Absolutely wrong. There are a lot of unfinished games that have stopped running and never has been a single game that didn't stop running and to think a game can last forever is beyond idiotic.

[wind stump]

But but but
The giant billion company cares about me!!!!

[astral steeple]

also wow apparently ive only spent like 22 dollars on steam overall lol

[full sedge]

yea this is entirely dependent on playerbase sticking around and the game remaining extremely profitable, trusting epic when they say a game is becoming a platform and will last forever is wild

live service wishes it could do that, but live service will inevitably die

at least.. i really hope so :(

[astral steeple]

i mean

in this case it seems to be working for them

given their profit and playerbase amount

[slim thorn]

so far, yes

no one was ever disputing that Fortnite has been a monumental financial success so far

[gaunt marten]

Absolutely, a game can last ten, twenty. I can even see a game running for eighty years

Forever is much, much longer than that

[slim thorn]

I wonder when WoW will finally stop

it seems obvious it's past its prime but last I checked it's far from dead

[astral steeple]

also considering the constant collabs they have been able to do yeah

seems to be pretty profitable

on top of their original designed skins by their art team

granted the licenses themselves are probably ridiculously expensive

jack skellington especially

[full sedge]

it’s crazy to me that fortnite hasn’t massively fallen off from when i was playing it but i guess people just do play the same shit lol

[slim thorn]

is there a trustworthy source for player statistics on games like this

[astral steeple]

the zero build mode brought back a whole ton of people who originally stopped playing

[astral steeple]

theres a live player count thing in game

[slim thorn]

I said trustworthy lol

[full sedge]

zero build takes away the only thing that made the game unique as a BR so that’s even more wild

[minor plover]

I always feel weird about "whale" discussions because I don't do micro transactions and I've probably spent under 1k lifetime buying games themselves... and over $20k on two very important kickstarters

[astral steeple]

the other thing that keeps people playing is the constant map changes/new items/new weapons/etc

stuff that keeps the game constantly different from week to week/month to month/etc

new map every year with whole new locations and stuff

[slim thorn]

again, that much is standard for any live service game

[quiet swift]

bfa and shadowlands were very much in the wrong direction, but dragonflight, quality wise, has been one of the best expansions ever. The storyline is just not as gripping as say, WOTLK or Legion have been so it's not as 'big' so to speak

[slim thorn]

telling us stuff we already know is not persuasive, it's just annoying

[astral steeple]

this is the current live player amount right now

[full sedge]

yes but for some of that is opposite of an incentive, constantly changing shit and never being able to settle into what you got when you got the game can be annoying for learning

[quiet swift]

I'd say it's on the upswing, depends on what the next xpac will be. Two weeks to blizzcon

[slim thorn]

(nvm I misread something)

[full sedge]

i don’t think ive actually talked about it before, but back in c1 of fortnite i made a decent amount of money playing fortnite competitively in my region. the amount of changes and live service from c1 - c2 are what led me to giving up on the game, id spent all this time learning and mastering my skills just for it to mean largely nothing weeks - months later which is extremely demotivating

[arctic fern]

do feel theres a difference between funding something to be made at all and giving a multi billion dollar company $14000

[full sedge]

such is live service, ever-changing, which is actually not always a good thing.

[arctic fern]

huh

[astral steeple]

ive put in like 9190 hours on the game since i first started playing back in july of 2019 lol

[full sedge]

i put in about 4k in c1 before i quit

[slim thorn]

one of those eternal paradoxes of game dev is that if you don't update the game, some people will get bored and stop playing, and if you do update the game, different people will get annoyed and stop playing

one can only make so many people happy in the long run

[full sedge]

epic made that game awful to be played competitively as time went on

[river veldt]

i played till chapter 2 and then i got bored i guess

[gaunt marten]

You could keep archiving every iteration of the game and make those iterations available.

[astral steeple]

after they released the zero build mode i havent gone back to build mode since

[slim thorn]

which is itself a maintenance cost

[full sedge]

dang, building is what got me hooked on fortnite

[slim thorn]

and some games do that, or de facto have that done by fans

but for most it'd be silly

[astral steeple]

ive always despised the building as a whole

is much more fun for me as just a normal shooter with wacky licensed characters and original skins lol

[minor plover]

This is one reason I like true DLC packs and community mods

[sour hill]

Yeah when I heard that they removed building and my friends who played were thrilled about it, it gave me a good laugh

[quiet swift]

Fortnite is fun, i've played it recently as it's a game I can play with my fiancée despite our ping differences for locations. I do admire how they keep it up to date with changes, and there is some neatness to appearing as a random character of choice, but it's more like spending 20 bucks at most on stuff like that

[gaunt marten]

It doesn't need to be maintained. You can release it for the community to maintain it

[full sedge]

idk, i get a lot of people love the ever-changing and constant updates of live service, but ive always liked video games as a competitive endeavour (granted my preferences dont mean shit) and shit changing every other week in live service games really makes me annoyed, idk

[slim thorn]

true, for a fully single player game it's not that hard

[river veldt]

i was semi interested getting back into it since Ash from Evil Dead became a skin

[gaunt marten]

Steam used to allow you to grab any previous version of a game

[river veldt]

but eh

[gaunt marten]

But then they removed that feature and made it opt-in for developers

[slim thorn]

probably for the best, security updates are a thing and all

[little badger]

@mossy flume @graceful bridge got it a day early

[full sedge]

building is the main skill expression in the game and (again) the thing that makes fortnite unique from other BRs, but yea, if ppl enjoy it thats nice

[minor plover]

Like I enjoy StarCraft 2 releasing big campaigns and new coop commanders. I can keep playing what I have, unchanged (... unfortunately not entirely true), or pick up new stuff

[astral steeple]

like being able to shoot anakin skywalker as Jack Skellington with an assault rifle while Optimus Prime and Michael Myers do the macarena in the back is the funnest shit ever lol

[river veldt]

19 INCHES OF VENOM

[gaunt marten]

Preservation trumps every other priority for me including security

[visual hill]

I was about to say that

[sour hill]

Yeah, I think the vast majority just aren't interested in the added complexity 🤷‍♀️

[river veldt]

holy FUCK Venom is massive in this game

[quiet swift]

Ninteen inches of what

[river veldt]

VENOM

[astral steeple]

also with zero build it has its own skill set

being able to think tactically and being able to aim good

[visual hill]

one of the reasons competitive people like CS is that balance changes are very rare. The last direct balance change was in early 2023 (and September 2021 before that)

[slim thorn]

tbf if the goal is preservation, what we should really be worried about are the "87% of classic games" you can't play, or all the multiplayer/live service games that become unplayable the moment servers shut down

[arctic fern]

i agree preservation is important but so is security
theres probably a middleground there lol

[visual hill]

Overwatch is the complete opposite

[gaunt marten]

I am worried about it!

[slim thorn]

specific old versions of games which are already going to stick around forever is a much smaller problem, and for most games really a non-problem

[full sedge]

idk, so many of my favourite games or game series have had the fun sucked out of them by what live service has done, and clearly only catering to whales and people who can afford to pour money into the game. its made video games for months now feel so dull and im at a point where ive gone from competitive multiplayer only person -> playing single player games that dont get updated anymore and its sad, it makes me sad that the gaming industry is like this now

[gaunt marten]

Not in this case. If you willingly download and use an old game version that is insecure then it's your fault.

[full sedge]

i really hope live service as a thing ends soon, but idek anymore

[arctic fern]

when the ecurity issue is about other usrs however...

[visual hill]

the live service model feels like it's starting to be tired

[quiet swift]

wint: i feel like it's starting to. A lot of big releases that are live services are being panned critically overall

[visual hill]

maybe it'll transform in the future, but not necessarily into a form we like more

[gaunt marten]

If the other users download the insecure version it's their fault

[quiet swift]

Though some are definitely still making money but general public reaction has trended negatively for sure

[slim thorn]

not all security issues are entirely on the client

[sour hill]

cough payday 3

[full sedge]

ive noticed it gives me some hope

[river veldt]

never lose jope

[visual hill]

I still play a bunch of old games with community servers, no matchmaking or mtx

[gaunt marten]

Yes, but all security issues are not an excuse to deny preservation

[arctic fern]

i didnt say that, no-one said that

[slim thorn]

I only raised it as a counter to the specific point of all versions of all games being probably not the best idea

[full sedge]

gaming has always been my main hobby and it feels so dull now with how it all works and how everything revolves around micro-transactions

[visual hill]

it's still a better experience most of the time, in my book

[gaunt marten]

Then why did you argue with me? I said that preservation trumps security.

[arctic fern]

security issues are however one of the few legitimate reasons for certain versions of games no-longer being available

[gaunt marten]

All versions of all games is complete preservation.

[quiet swift]

Every single one of the marked ones are rated mixed - not necessarily only for the MTX aspect of things, but other issues.. probably because they are released too early and not enough QA BECAUSE they are live service

[gaunt marten]

No, there are no legitimate reasons for any version of any game to not be available.

[quiet swift]

(despite that, they are making tons of money since they are in top sellers. Except first one, it's not rated yet somehow?)

[gaunt marten]

Top sellers are sorted by revenue

[slim thorn]

ultimately these games get made because people spend money on them, and that won't change until people stop spending money on them

[full sedge]

well i mean, yes, companies are encouraged to release shit unfinished because live service = we’ll finish it later

and they still profit

[slim thorn]

but I've never been into competitive multiplayer myself, so this entire trend under discussion has never directly affected me

[arctic fern]

yes but complete preservation isnt necessary in most, if not all, situations
major patches and/or bugfixe builds is all you really need to preserve

[full sedge]

the way companies release games is why you should NEVER preorder things but people do anyway

because people dont understand why it’s bad to do so, i guess

[quiet swift]

Because of the shiny extras!

[slim thorn]

I think most of the people doing it now just haven't been personally burned by it (yet)

[gaunt marten]

You never know the true value of something until much after you preserve it. Every piece of media should be preserved for every future generation.

[sour hill]

At least steam refunds are more of a thing now

[quiet swift]

A lot of people on steam are spending the 70$ to buy D4, review it with 0.1 hours played, and then refund it

[gaunt marten]

Steam does reserve the right to deny refunds for abuse of the refund system.

[full sedge]

yeah :(

i remember watching a youtube video a little ago that covered this. in a lot of games something like 1% - 2% of the players give the companies most of their profit. while ever those people continue doing that, companies dont have a reason to try harder/do better, they’re still making fucktons so why change

[quiet swift]

Most live services are wholly geared towards 🐳

[full sedge]

mhm

[slim thorn]

I have the good fortune that all the genres I like are ones indie devs can do well these days, so I "just" play some of the many good games that are still coming out which happens to not be AAA as much any more

[gaunt marten]

They are trying harder, by cutting cost centers like the game itself and investing in psychological coercion techniques to make more money

[full sedge]

trying harder to be worse :D

wonderful /j

[gaunt marten]

The only solution is to make it so they are either stopped by force or they make more money by making a better game instead of a worse one

[full sedge]

ive been trying to get into single player games lately and it’s been a nice break! 100%ed Celeste and RoR2, and playing games that give me that same difficulty thrill i get from competitive multiplayer but through a single player, full game that isn’t live service experience has been really great

[quiet swift]

That's what the whole thing against loot boxes was about, but was replaced by even worse monetization

[full sedge]

i need more single player games that centre around difficulty to try, i might head for soulsborne stuff next i think

[quiet swift]

Hades!

[full sedge]

the main problem is money, games do be costing that

[slim thorn]

I assume you're aware of Hollow Knight?

and Hades

[full sedge]

yeah, i do want to play that, ive been suggested that a lot since 100%ing celeste

i have not heard of Hades though

[sour hill]

Damn, really?

[random steppe]

[full sedge]

i mean i’ve heard the name but i have 0 clue what the game is/what it’s about

[slim thorn]

Hades is one of the best and most successful roguelites, in particular one of the few liked by people like me who normally hate roguelites

[random steppe]

Hades is also exceptional yeah

[slim thorn]

specifically it's an isometric dungeon crawler hack-and-slash where the dungeon is procedurally generated each run, with a greek mythology theme since you're trying to literally escape Hades from the bottom up

[full sedge]

it’s going on the list

[gaunt marten]

Yes, law is a continuous process of finding loopholes and patching them. You can't arbitrarily make broad laws that only apply subjectively.

[sour hill]

I honestly had a lot of fun just watching my friend play Hades at my house

[slim thorn]

from what you just said, Hades might be a particularly good fit for you because it has one of the best difficulty systems I've ever seen in a game, with the main postgame content being a pile of 15(?) different "Heat" modifiers you can apply to make your runs harder in wildly varied ways

[gaunt marten]

Hades God Mode is really fun

[quiet swift]

[random steppe]

It's one of the few of the story heavy roguelike that make it work really really well.

[slim thorn]

back when I played it I enjoyed the core loop so much I eventually cleared a 32 heat run (with a build recommended by Tchern but still)

[full sedge]

sounds extremely similar to the postgame modifiers in RoR2 called Eclipse that progressively adds more difficulty modifiers starting with the hardest difficulty as the base and adding up to 8 modifiers, unlocking each modifier as you beat the last one/two/three/etc.

left ping on i think, sorry

[slim thorn]

makes sense, I'm not familiar with the RoRs

in the metroidvania space, I'd recommend Hollow Knight as the best one overall that offers a very high skill ceiling for serious players, with honorable mentions to Blasphemous, Ender Lilies and Guacamelee for also being excellent and hard when they want to be

(I know we usually say Ori is one of the best modern metroidvanias, and it is, but that one doesn't really do hard)

[sour hill]

In soulsborne you kinda have to make up your own difficulty modifiers, but stuff like doing a level 1 playthrough is actually really fun

[slim thorn]

(and for 3d soulsbornes I'm not the person to ask)

[quiet swift]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1145360/Hades/

Steam

Hades

Hades is a god-like rogue-like dungeon crawler that combines the best aspects of Supergiant's critically acclaimed titles, including the fast-paced action of Bastion, the rich atmosphere and depth of Transistor, and the character-driven storytelling of Pyre.BATTLE OUT OF HELLAs the immortal Prince of the Underworld, you'll wield the powers and m...

Price

$24.99

Recommendations

216454

Metacritic

93

▶ Play video

[full sedge]

HK seems like a really logical one to go for

[slim thorn]

I've also gotten into randomizer mods lately, which probably also appeal to that itch for mixing up familiar games in ways that push your mastery of the core systems

[random steppe]

For soulsborne the recent Lies of P is very good, has more of a story than Fromsoft offerings and some fresh ideas.
Apart from that nothing that adds difficulty on cycles like ROR tho

[full sedge]

yeah that’s fine

[slim thorn]

oh and I haven't finished Pseudoregalia yet but that's worth mentioning here since its overall design and its platforming mechanics are particularly reliant on the player wanting to git gud at them

[full sedge]

jm open to trying new things atm to get away from the live service multiplayer space

[sour hill]

Oh actually sekiro has a cool hard mode you unlock after beating the game

[random steppe]

It's really nice to finish a game actually

I discovered

[full sedge]

very true

[random steppe]

Being able to take a step back and go "that was good, that was bad, this thing could have been better"

[slim thorn]

the true retro gaming experience: finishing

[random steppe]

Instead of being forever on the threadmill and slowly get to hate the game you like for the tiniest of annoyances

[full sedge]

i think i missed a lot of really cool gaming experiences by growing almost exclusively doing multiplayer only stuff and not dipping into single player much

[sour hill]

Luckily the single player games are the ones that don't die as much

[full sedge]

true

[sour hill]

So ya kinda optimized, there

[full sedge]

i need to go back and play so much stuff one day, but yeah, money stuff

if things are old enough then 🏴‍☠️ but otherwise yeah

[slim thorn]

with single player there often isn't even a meaningful concept of "death"

I played Link to the Past for the first time this year

[sour hill]

By death I mean that the game is unobtainable or non functional

[slim thorn]

oh right that kind

[full sedge]

id like to go back and play Pokemon games eventually, i only ever got to play X and Y

[gaunt marten]

You couldn't live with your own singleplayer games. Where does that take you? Back to preservation

[quiet swift]

Quiet, Thanos

[slim thorn]

does it count as "using a walkthrough" if you realize what you're meant to do the moment you read "go to <general area>" and never read step 2

[river veldt]

sylv moment

[sour hill]

Yes

[quiet swift]

https://www.wowhead.com/diablo-4/news/play-diablo-4-during-xbox-game-pass-free-play-days-335645 huh. 10 hour d4 trial with gamepass

"Hey @Xbox players, slay demons this weekend. Diablo IV is free for all Xbox members from October 19 until October 22 (Game Pass Core / Game Pass Ultimate not required) with a 10-hour gameplay trial. Read more here:"

[gaunt marten]

That's not what "free for all members" means

[quiet swift]

Oh it's a bit different. THe other three games require core/ultimate. D4 doesn't

(was just looking up what the difference was)

[gaunt marten]

I see

[river veldt]

every gold part unlocked

[wind stump]

based

[gaunt marten]

I don't see goldmember here

[thorny loom]

Wheres goldfinger

[green fulcrum]

"I love gooooooolllld."

[fresh bane]

After the initial wave of negative reception because of some amount of technical issues and the presence of denuvo/requiring launching epic to play the game seems like the general consensus around Sonic Superstars is that it's... fine, it's a standard alright platformer with some neat ideas and mediocre bosses

which is a bummer

Guess I'll be picking up Mania instead and maybe I'll pick up Superstars if I see it's on sale

[thorny loom]

It definitely isnt worth $60

Mania on sale is a better deal yeah

[river veldt]

Mania is worth whatever it's worth i dont remember i bought it like 6 years ago

[gaunt marten]

You bought it on launch?

It doesn't even have Mario

[river veldt]

very near launch !

iirc i bought it in October

[gaunt marten]

Wait but we're in October

[fresh bane]

Some people were highlighting that it's not as speedy and it has a bit more of a methodical platformer speed to it but I was under the impression after playing the original trilogy of games that Sonic 2D isn't exactly press → to go fast and finish the level, but maybe Superstars has even less speed to it which is why people seem to bring that up so often

[river veldt]

first games i bought for my Switch were BotW and Shovel Knight

[river veldt]

October 2017 silly

[gaunt marten]

Whoa it's still 2017

Feels like it's been years

[fresh bane]

Hell it's 15 usd by default, I could just get it right now no need to wait for a sale

[river veldt]

it's only 15 bucks ????

[fresh bane]

....I mean I could wait for a sale if I wanted to be greedy(?) but I could just get it whenever I feel like playing sanic

It's funny how Superstars not only isn't as good but also seems to have about the same ish content? And yet it's a full 45 dollars more expensive than Mania

just.... because

[gaunt marten]

We are getting a Halloween sale soon on Steam

[fresh bane]

God please put Cyberpunk on sale

I actually really wanna play it

[gaunt marten]

That one's not going for any significant sale until years from now if trends hold

[fresh bane]

pain

The phantom liberty expansion is an extra 20 bucks or something too...

[gaunt marten]

Yeah, so the best thing to do is be patient and keep the game in mind for years to come

[fresh bane]

Sweetie Belle, remind me in exactly 5 years to check for a sale on Cyberpunk please

[river veldt]

!remindme in 5 years remind nire to check for Cyberpunk sale

[haughty umbra]

Reminder set for 5 years and 2 days from now.

[gaunt marten]

Rounding errors are so funny

[river veldt]

why did the 2 days

[gaunt marten]

I assume she's adding a day for each leap year

Each leap year is one year and one day long but also one year long

This is a bug, obviously

[river veldt]

oooh

[dapper cedar]

watched a friend play through all of Rain World and have since gotten the game myself… it is waaaay harder to play as the slugcat yourself than to watch someone else do it

[gaunt marten]

Yeah, it's not fun to figure out how to play

Ask for advice.

The game is fun once you learn how to play

[dapper cedar]

aye, it would be far more daunting if I was completely clueless… am only somewhat clueless so far tho, a lot of core gameplay stuff stuck in my mind from watching friend play

[slim thorn]

yeah I bounced off Rain World hard

[dapper cedar]

is just navigating the map that’s real tricky, and I love games with massive maps of the sort

2D ones anyway

[slim thorn]

I could (and eventually did) look up the answers, but that also takes all the fun out of it

[gaunt marten]

When are you playing La Mulana?

[dapper cedar]

I love it but wish I could wipe all knowledge from my mind, seems like that is a lot of the point

[slim thorn]

which sucks because it could've been a great game if it had just enough direction that you could get anywhere without blindly following guides

(I know that one thing is supposed to guide you but it completely fails to do so in practice)

[dapper cedar]

it’s a lot of figuring out but I’ll be damned if them slugcats ain’t cute enough to persevere

[slim thorn]

yeah, I spent several hours trying

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/3IdgZY9y1Sg?si=P4s6cxcN0ktkh3Em

seeing people killbind after this taunt brings me inexplicable joy

I love that the nonsensical broken humor of a TF2 player is basically a character going ''Thanks! '' and then imploding or dropping dead like a ragdoll

https://youtu.be/YRdbp3CLkwI?si=PoqRkEelKFnrNvVB

also I love that I recognized who the taunt was from

Really fucking cool seeing community creators getting their stuff on the game

[slim thorn]

Pseudoregalia is now on my shortlist of favorite Metroidvanias. This one's a little tricky to recommend since it's amazing if your expectations are calibrated right, but can easily disappoint otherwise. It's about 8-9 hours, set in what visually feels like one enormous Ocarina of Time dungeon, except with no map and hardly any linearity, where the core gameplay and the upgrades/abilities are mostly about platforming (combat and story are afterthoughts). In particular, the platforming moves strongly reward skillful planning and execution; button mashing never works, but half of the crazy move combos I thought to try did work when I aimed and timed them right (it's practically begging to be randomized and speedrun). The level design is also so good that for half my playthrough I had no idea where I was going and whether I was sequence breaking (in retrospect, often I was) but I was almost always making progress and naturally learned every room by the end since they're all instantly recognizable.

[gaunt marten]

Nice nice

I'm looking forward to buying it. It's only four dollars so I might buy it tomorrow, or I might wait for the next sale in case it goes on a small sale

I also hear it has an archipelago randomizer

[slim thorn]

indeed it does, it's on my shortlist to try setting up later

after the OoT/MM thing wraps up, if you do another "normal" Archipelago I'll most likely bring Ender Lilies, Blasphemous 2 and Pseudoregalia

[gaunt marten]

That's a lot of games in one month

I'm glad you're warming up to the concept

[slim thorn]

tbf all of these are smaller than Hollow Knight (esp Pseudo) so it's probably easier than it sounds

plus I just spent the last week or so beta testing the AP integration of Ender Lilies, somehow I got caught up in auditing all their logic rules so I have way too much knowledge of that one now

[gaunt marten]

Yeah

[slim thorn]

but they already fixed the one item duplication glitch that I considered a blocker for playing it in our asyncs

[gaunt marten]

Oh no I'm getting more items

I can't play like this

[astral steeple]

https://fxtwitter.com/Halo/status/1715130714642055345

oh shit

[fresh bane]

I actually wonder if I should try out another metroidvania game... I actually enjoyed Blasphemous a lot, I was wondering if maybe a Castlevania game would be down my alley but I'm very unfamiliar with them and I really didn't like the original first few games... not my style at all

[slim thorn]

well, specifically it was duplicating nearly all of the currencies and stat buffs, which would've made a big chunk of the game's items "worthless" when other players found them, which kinda misses the point of an async rando

when you say "original first few Castlevanias", do you mean the (S)NES era ones?

[gaunt marten]

That makes sense

The old Castlevanias are very different from the new ones

Different games basically

[fresh bane]

I played the original Castlevania 1 fully, I can't remember if I played 2 and 3 fully, I touched a bit of 4 before moving into the remake of 1 and after not finishing any of those other than the very first one I thought maybe I shouldn't force myself to play when I'm not having fun at all

[slim thorn]

ok yeah, you're good to write off old old Castlevania then

[gaunt marten]

The newer Castlevanias are faster in pace, less punishing, and have fun gimmicks

[slim thorn]

for newer Castlevanias, I have not gotten to trying these myself but my current understanding is that Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow are the two must-try games

[gaunt marten]

Amazing art and music for some of them

[slim thorn]

and if either of those click there's plenty of other good ones in their eras to also play

[gaunt marten]

For Nire specifically I recommend Order of Ecclesia

[slim thorn]

[gaunt marten]

Also, I recommend against the 3D Castlevania games

[slim thorn]

fair point, I'm the type where, if I'm in it for gameplay, the story/characters/etc don't have a major impact on how much fun I have, but I dunno how big of a factor that is for Nire

[river veldt]

Castlevania 2 is amazing

[gaunt marten]

They are in general not where the series shines

[slim thorn]

yeah what I've seen everywhere is that the 3D games never quite figured out how to be better than okay

[gaunt marten]

I don't know anyone else who thinks so

It's a horrible night to have a curse is good though

[river veldt]

it's a good game !

[gaunt marten]

Good I can buy

Amazing is a little harder

[river veldt]

ok maybe it's not as good as 1 or 4 but it's still good

[gaunt marten]

God, Isaac has so many references for a game of its age

[river veldt]

also it had an awesome Nintendo Power cover

[fresh bane]

I guess it depends on the type of storytelling... Blasphemous was out of the way enough where I can kinda gleam what's going on and all the other characters and stuff kinda passively gives you the information, I'm probably not great at remembering details or paying much attention when the story is very involved but it doesn't get in the way of my enjoyment at all, I just don't want to jump into a game where I know nothing and miss out on context or references which is why I wasn't ultra sure about going into Castlevania but Aria of Sorrow and Order of Ecclessia look pretty fun...

[gaunt marten]

Hah, I remember when pro was a word for a gamer

[slim thorn]

and since you said Metroidvanias in general, I should recap (and to phrase this for easy searching/self-quoting later):

[river veldt]

Nintendo Power had some awesome covers

[slim thorn]

my favorite Metroidvanias are Hollow Knight, Ori 1-2, Blasphemous 1-2, Guacamelee 1-2, Ender Lilies, Pseudoregalia, Yoku's Island Express, and of course Metroid itself (ZM/Fusion/Dread/Prime 1-3)

[fresh bane]

The only other Castlevania type game I was looking towards was the one crossed over with Blasphemous, those games have the 'real' main game and then a little extra very very retro castlevania inspired game which looked cool but I imagine they're more classic Castlevania inspired rather than something more modern like Blasphemous so I probably wouldn't enjoy those

[gaunt marten]

No Shovel Knight

[slim thorn]

oh yeah continuity lockout is a non-issue with Castlevania, this is not Game of Thrones level story density, usually the story's close to an afterthought

[river veldt]

Dracula !

(that's the story)

[slim thorn]

is back yet again somehow

[gaunt marten]

Somehow Dracula returned

[slim thorn]

like the biggest twist I think the series ever pulled is ||YOU are Dracula, take that!||

[river veldt]

wait which one is that

[slim thorn]

||Aria of Sorrow iirc||

[river veldt]

oh

ive only played 1, 2, and 4

[slim thorn]

hence the ||Sorrow|| I assume

[gaunt marten]

Nobody could have guessed who Alucard was

[fresh bane]

Good good, I guess I'll check out either of those two Castlevanias later and see which one grabs my attention more, for some reason I'm craving some single player stuff which is why I want to play Cyberpunk so badly lol

[fresh bane]

Guacamelee?

[gaunt marten]

Guacamelee is fun if you can ignore the bullshit

[slim thorn]

a Metroidvania beat-em-up where you play a luchador using wrestling moves

[river veldt]

this sounds like 12 different games

[fresh bane]

Sounds awesome

[slim thorn]

yeah some people found the style of humor off-putting in that one

and tbf it's not always my favorite either

[gaunt marten]

It doesn't take itself seriously but I really wish it did

[slim thorn]

but I'm still happy that the sequel had multiple boss fights in chicken form

[river veldt]

Guacamelee 2 had a Undertale reference and that's epic

[gaunt marten]

An

[gaunt marten]

Skeleton brothers

[fresh bane]

My only worry about Fusion is that I already saw all of Dread so I worry that maybe Fusion won't feel as smooth in design and gameplay, I would play Dread but I already ran into a bunch of issues playing Metroid 2 remake because these 3D sidescrolling Metroid games pretty much require fulll 360 aiming and I don't have a controller

[river veldt]

yes good job

[gaunt marten]

Are Sans and Papyrus brothers?

[river veldt]

yeah

[fresh bane]

Not the cuccoos

[slim thorn]

ah, ZM and Fusion are eight direction aiming, so they shouldn't have that issue

[gaunt marten]

I thought they were roommates or whatever. I didn't pay attention because I didn't like them

[river veldt]

how could you not like them

[gaunt marten]

They don't take themselves seriously but I really wish they did

[river veldt]

?

[slim thorn]

I'm more of a Temmie person myself

[gaunt marten]

It's a reference

Temmie gets a pass because she's cute

[river veldt]

i mean they're not my favourite characters but i still like them a lot

[gaunt marten]

Other than that no silly business

[fresh bane]

Only Prime and Metroid 2R onwards need the analog stick the other ones are 8 directions so those were fine in that regard, I just wonder if it'll feel old or if it'll feel as smooth to play as Dread, I haven't really seen anything of Fusion so it's just something I'm wondering completely blind though

I guess I'll put Fusion and Guacamelee into the list too

[river veldt]

Undertale has lots of silly business

but also lots of serious business

[slim thorn]

ZM/Fusion will definitely feel older than Dread but I dunno if it'd be "not smooth" or any other bad way

you definitely won't get those slick moments of the camera doing actual 3D stuff during the cutscenes and quicktime events

[river veldt]

blows up

[fresh bane]

I honestly can't even remember how it felt to play ZM but I'm mostly just thinking of the stiffer Castlevania movement right now which is why I'm saying it's just me wondering about it while knowing nothing at all

I played Zero Mission so long ago

I never did finish Super either, it was getting kind of long and my attention span couldn't take it

[slim thorn]

the fundamental movement should be extremely similar to Dread anyway

[river veldt]

yeah it's not as stiff as Castlevania

[gaunt marten]

Other than the games Ixrec mentioned, I like Monster Sanctuary, Steamworld Dig 2 (very good) and Minit

[fresh bane]

Fusion should be nice and short which is perfect for my brain

[slim thorn]

(well I do think Super is a tad overrated but that's a whole other conversation )

[river veldt]

i think the only Metroidvania ive completed is Dread

[fresh bane]

It kind of is but since I didn't finish it I don't wanna say too much

I honestly really enjoyed Metroid 2

probably my favourite with Dread

[gaunt marten]

Minit is more of a Zelda, I guess

[slim thorn]

granted the 2D Metroids are a little weird now that literally most of them have remakes

[river veldt]

i wish i had a 3ds so i coulf play the Metroid 2 remake

alas

[slim thorn]

like, of course Zero Mission is better than the original NES Metroid in some ways

and of course Link Between Worlds is better than Link to the Past in some ways

[gaunt marten]

You could emulate it on your phone or PC

[river veldt]

i dont want to

(lazy)

[fresh bane]

I wouldn't recommend it anyways without a controlelr

[gaunt marten]

I wonder if someone sells a DS shaped controller

[fresh bane]

I like Zelda

[mossy flume]

Could just jailbreak a 3DS

Better than an emulator.

[river veldt]

i dont have a 3ds

[mossy flume]

3DS emulators are a bit stuttery IME

[gaunt marten]

If you're too lazy I can set up an emulator for you, and you will only need to bring a controller.

[river veldt]

i dont have any controllers either

[gaunt marten]

Then perish

[fresh bane]

In every way I would say, I don't think there's any reasons to actually play the original Metroid after ZM but I'm sure there's probably some sweaty hardcore Metroid fan that will go on a rant about how the original Metroid is a masterpiece of gaming and superior

[slim thorn]

yeah my personal take is that the Metroid remakes are flat out better than the originals, sometimes by a small margin, but still enough that there's kinda no point playing anything older than Fusion these days

[river veldt]

the only bad thing about Zero Mission is that it created the Zero Suit

[slim thorn]

whereas the Zelda games and their remakes are more mixed and complicated

(unless you really like randomizers, then the fact that Super Metroid has the bigger mod community becomes important)

[gaunt marten]

Minit is a very unique timeloop game where you start in your house and you die after one minute, respawning at your house immediately

[fresh bane]

Zero Mission's ending screens are so cool too, the original sure didn't have those

[slim thorn]

so it's the Dark Souls of Outer Wildses

[gaunt marten]

Throughout the game you find all sorts of way to change the map and make it easier to do things in your limited time

[river veldt]

Samus in the suit with no helmet looks weird

[fresh bane]

When it comes to Zelda remakes the only flat out better version is OOT3D even if it does have some small issues it overall comes out completely on top over the original, Majora's is more of a mixed bag and I don't count Worlds as a remake myself

[gaunt marten]

Put the helmet on, Shinji

[fresh bane]

But yeah I would probably recommend a new fan of Metroid to play ZM and Fusion first if they wanna do release order (which they should)

[river veldt]

i heard the Wind Waker remake was better than the original

or is that a remaster

[gaunt marten]

That's easy because the original sucked

[fresh bane]

It was a remaster but it is better

[gaunt marten]

I really didn't like the artstyle of wind waker

It was my enemy

[river veldt]

yeah the Triforce shard questline was better in HD iirc

[slim thorn]

I have no problems with the artstyles of any Zelda but I played WW far too long ago to critique it

[fresh bane]

I like the cartoony chibi artstyle of Worlds better than the cel shaded Windwaker one

[river veldt]

idk if i dislike any Zelda artstyles

maybe Twilight Princess idk

[slim thorn]

then perish

[gaunt marten]

Yeah Twilight Princess has an awful lighting system but I really like the art direction otherwise

[slim thorn]

that's fair

did HD improve that?

[fresh bane]

The only bad thing about Twilight Princess is the weird blur+bloom otherwise I like the grim dark aesthetic

[gaunt marten]

The remaster on the Wii U does it a lot of good but it's still not great

[river veldt]

actually the best Zelda artstyle is objectively LttP /hj

[gaunt marten]

It's one of the best

[river veldt]

totally not biased

[fresh bane]

I like it

I wish Nintendo would do a new 2D pixel art Zelda, they won't and I don't even know if they're gonna even try a new 2D Zelda at all, but I wish

[slim thorn]

it's insane how well LttP holds up by modern standards

[river veldt]

most SNES games hold up amazingly visually

[gaunt marten]

I liked Oracle of Seasons because it had a really cool opening cutscene showing Link in a drawn artstyle and it was better than anything the device could do at the time

[slim thorn]

I meant overall but yeah

[fresh bane]

If we're lucky they're gonna follow the 'formula' of main game + 2D + main game + 2D they've had since Skyward Sword

[river veldt]

Link's Awakening had this too

[gaunt marten]

Yeah but I didn't play that one

[slim thorn]

for a game made of 2D pixel art, the SNES wasn't very limiting, at that point it's all on the art quality which is hard in any generation of gaming

[river veldt]

the map is Mode 7

[fresh bane]

The one thing that got me to play Oracle was the cool scenes of Link dancing with Din but I remember dropping it because it just didn't hook me

[river veldt]

the future is now

[gaunt marten]

I told you the opening was great

[fresh bane]

I think for me there's such a thing as a game being too old that the combination of the visuals and the limited gameplay because of it being on an older probably portable console like the gameboy means it's probably not super engaging for my brian

brain

So unfortunately no Oracle for me

[river veldt]

i recently played Super Mario Land 2 again

it's probably the best Gameboy game

[gaunt marten]

When I played it it was new

[slim thorn]

SNES games are right around when some genres stopped being significantly held back by the tech and "too old" stops applying

of course some stuff took another generation or two

[fresh bane]

Yeah I could probably totally play Link to the Past

....but why when you have Worlds

[river veldt]

it's a good game

[gaunt marten]

Because there's no Archipelago randomizer for Worlds

[slim thorn]

since I played them back to back I bothered to write a lengthy list of reasons but yeah for most players I'd suggest LBW first

simply having a modern save system is so huge

[fresh bane]

Luckily for me I don't do randomizers so that doesn't bother me

I honestly think ALBW has more mechanics that are so much more engaging to me that even if I could I wouldn't have fun with LTTP now

[gaunt marten]

But you could start

[slim thorn]

I do think ALBW is the better game but I don't think the margin is that big

[river veldt]

LttP has pink hair Link

that makes it the best Zelda game

[gaunt marten]

Rabbit link is all pink

[river veldt]

this is true

[fresh bane]

yeah.... pink....

[river veldt]

you'll see pink hair more than blonde

[fresh bane]

I think my favourite pixelated Link/Zelda is probably Minish Cap, which is the last pixel art one I think

[gaunt marten]

Imagine your hair color failing to render