general gaming

[cunning galleon]

We fell down a hole when he tried rescuing me

[fickle garnet]

At least with Fortnite you don't have to buy the same game for $90 every year

[random steppe]

P5 is extremely good if you like JRPGs

I am starting to get too old for Persona but I still liked it a lot, despite the vibes being clearly crafted for someone half my age

[wind stump]

well if you did you'd have more experience with it than most Persona 5 fans

Haven't played 5, played 4 Golden and a bit of 3 Portable and Reload when that dropped, from what I gather I believe you should pick up Royal instead of base P5 but that's up to you, otherwise, good game, popular for good reason

... i got confused because the AI i'm fighting in World of Light is using the same character/costume I was like, 10 minutes ago

[slim thorn]

yeah AFAIK the Golden/Royal/etc versions are just the full versions of the games and there's no reason to seek out the outdated ones

[random steppe]

I assume they meant Royal, I don't think they sell the without DLC version now

[slim thorn]

3's the messy one because Portable and Reload are not just straight upgrades

[random steppe]

At least on Steam

[wind stump]

-# also tangentially related but Yakuza LikeA Dragon is definitely very "Persona-esque" but features a more mature cast if you want a Persona-esque game without the teenage angst

-# also it's Yakuza so you know it's a good time

[gaunt marten]

I can't read that because it's too small

[river veldt]

here use this 🔎

[fickle garnet]

Idk why I never got very far into Yakuza 0. I really liked it

[random steppe]

Man, can you imagine if you clicked on it, it brought up the windows magnifier tool?

[wind stump]

tempted to repost it but in all header text instead

[wind stump]

Too action-ey?

[fickle garnet]

No, I enjoyed the combat a lot

I think I just have a bit of a problem commiting myself to one game

[wind stump]

brain surgery be like

[unreal idol]

Can confirm

[wind stump]

wait didn't you actually have brain surgery

[green fulcrum]

Yeah he did

[wind stump]

[unreal idol]

And i am stronger for it

[toxic seal]

Oh my god they gave him cybernetic implants

[cerulean herald]

Rip

[fresh bane]

lol I don't think I've ever heard that headshot pop sound effect before, that's a surpisingly comical detail for a game that tries to take itself more seriously

[slim thorn]

weird, I've seen and heard that several times, I could've sworn it was a standard RE feature even if not in every game (since this genre benefits from a little uncertainty about how many shots it'll take to kill each enemy)

[river veldt]

Doom Eternal has that too

plus when you rip out a cacodemon's eyeball it makes a pop sound too

[slim thorn]

the UK one passed

the EU one is still at 90%, so another reminder for anyone who's in the EU and hasn't signed that one yet

[bitter stream]

oh nice

[green fulcrum]

Ah, good, was gonna spread this around if it hadn't been already.

[fresh bane]

I didn't want to bring it up out of the blue because I hate talking about internet drama but holy shit did this entire situation make me think Pirate Software's reputation took an insane nosedive for months now

[slim thorn]

it's been pointed out that the drama around Pirate Software probably unintentionally brought a bunch of badly needed attention to the Stop Killing Games movement

[robust latch]

hmmm they should have worded that petition better.
Since soo many game vendors don't sell you games anymore but you buy a licence to play it. so you don't own it. so they can revoke the licence

[slim thorn]

but let's not entangle those since the drama is ultimately unrelated to why SKG is a good idea

yeah it's likely that the outcome of this might just be labeling the license-ness of a game more prominently

but a step in the right direction is better than nothing, especially when this is all the control we have at the moment

[fresh bane]

I'm not even referring specifically to his misrepresentation of SKG just him and his reputation in general since it's somewhat connected to the topic, I'm just glad they finally got some voices to relay the message of the whole movement because it's something that I remember hearing about like, over a year ago now and I think it's something a lot of people just handwaved away even though they probably shouldn't and it's a pretty big deal

Besides the way I've heard it this is basically still just a proposal so any of the legal specifics will be figured out afterwards but only if this goes through, or at least that's how EU law worked or something like that, but basically a lot of people were worried that the proposal would be entirely what becomes law after but that's not exactly how it works

[slim thorn]

yeah, it's still a public petition, of course it can't be law as-is, it can only put an issue onto the agenda of a legislative body that has one of these petitioning systems

[river veldt]

who is pirate software

[bitter stream]

an idiot lmao

[river veldt]

oh lol

[slim thorn]

we were just saying not to derail the petition topic with that guy's personal drama lol

[fresh bane]

Well, to give you an answer related to the topic without going too much into it, he's just a very popular streamer/youtuber that misrepresented the movement a while ago now and probably maybe somewhat played a part in a lot of people handwaving the movement and not really paying it too much attention or even avoiding spreading the word about it

[cerulean herald]

Is there like a time limit for these petitions?

[green fulcrum]

In the case for bringing it up to the government, yes. But I think with enough pushing the EU petition should go over the threshold before the deadline.

[slim thorn]

part of the reason people started linking it around these last few days is that the time limit is approaching

[fickle garnet]

I would sign it if i lived in the EU or UK

[slim thorn]

ok, it's the end of this month to be precise

[cerulean herald]

I see, it's close tho
Wonder how much signatures it had, say, start of this year

[fresh bane]

it was at around like 400k before this whole thing blew up IIRC

[visual hill]

I think around 550k

I'm very surprised by the turnaround, there is a real chance it'll pass

but remember to keep passing it to your friends and family 🙂

I should try to get my parents to sign it, they were on board when I talked to them about it

[visual hill]

there's also a likely conflict of interest involved, since Thor works for offbrand games, a publisher of live service games like Rivals of Aether 2

(publisher, not developer, but still - remember that the petition specifically targets "publishers" rather than "developers")

[green fulcrum]

Unfortunately, the only place I know of with confirmed EU people is this server.

[green fulcrum]

So, I looked this up, and it appears to be a joke. They already have a dinosaur level in the game, for one thing, and second, it's a very cheesy photoshop.

[quiet swift]

https://www.ign.com/articles/perfect-dark-reboot-canceled-and-xbox-developer-the-initiative-closed-as-part-of-devastating-microsoft-layoffs

[river veldt]

9000 layoffs is absolutely insane

[quiet swift]

9000 is across Microsoft as a whole though

[river veldt]

yeah

that's still an insane number lol

9000 people lost their jobs that sucks

[quiet swift]

I know. I myself was part of gaming layoffs last year as well (EA)

Shockingly, 9000 seems to be 4% of staff. They apparently have like 220k people employed across all of microsoft

[river veldt]

oh man sorry to hear :(

[river veldt]

yeah this really sucks

i wonder what the timeline where Nintendo buys Rare looks like

[cunning galleon]

Man

[random steppe]

While that is technically true, as long as they have a "buy" button in their store I am pretty sure they are on the hook for that

And they could change it to a "rent" but they know it'd cost a lot of sales to do that

[robust latch]

you buy licences. thats not really a difference. and that's the problem with the language all of this stuff uses. its also all handled in the terms and conditions and terms of service. but no one ever reads that either

[random steppe]

You can hide whatever you want on there, a lot of these things do come down by what a reasonable person expects when you buy a thing

And what's explicitly communicated in plain view

Like I could make a game where you pay to buy a license for it for 35 seconds, and hide that in the license agreement.

That wouldn't fly in court thought

[worldly summit]

I loved it despite not usually caring for turn-based RPG games. It's a real treat as long as you know what you're signing up for: 100+ hour game, daily life sections as a high school student in Tokyo, plenty of text reading but the story is great, tons of visual flair and flashy animations, great soundtrack, turn based battles, etc

it's hard to recommend a game blindly but Persona 5 definitely fits on the "best of all time" lists

[river veldt]

really really cool video about Gordon's arrival to City 17 https://youtu.be/ct4OjjG7JT0?feature=shared

[little badger]

Ah

But it was the official sonic channel that posted that. And if it was a joke they did well on fooling everyone

[arctic fern]

Yo wtf?

[astral steeple]

Only series x and s is super lame lol

[arctic fern]

I don't understand

[astral steeple]

What

[arctic fern]

I don't know why you said what you said, how it was relevant

[astral steeple]

Helldivers 2

Them releasing it on xbox Is talking about only series x and s

Not the normal xbox one

Or one x etc

Which is dumb

[random steppe]

I actually compeltely lost track of the nomenclature of the microsoft consoles tbh

[arctic fern]

Isn't the one last gen? Xbox naming is dumb

[random steppe]

If I'm not mistaken though Seies X and Series S are the 4th gen right? Is Helldivers 2 on Playstation 4?

[arctic fern]

The important news is that a sony game is releasing on a microsoft console

Which is insane

[random steppe]

Yeah a sony published game on Xbox is pretty good news against console exclusivity

[arctic fern]

On August 26 btw

[wind stump]

i think Sony learned from the "required Playstation account" debacle to pump the fucking brakes

meanwhile Nintendo:

[random steppe]

I think the main difference is Sony having the best performing hardware as far as console goes right now

So like, they know they offer the best experience anyway if you want a box to put under your tv, performance wise

[astral steeple]

Pretty sure helldivers 2 isn't on ps4 at all

[random steppe]

Yeah, then it makes sense they'd port to the Xbox 4th gen

And not the 3rd right?

[astral steeple]

Some developers still continue to release games on xbox one while other developers stopped releasing games on it

Like mortal kombat 1 and street fighter 6 are on switch 1 and ps4 respectively while not being on xbox one despite clearly being ran on the lastgen hardware

Like thank god Tony hawk 3+4 is actually still releasing on xbox one and ps4 lol

Same with the mortal kombat legacy collection

[random steppe]

Yeah 3rd gen consoles had a surprisingly long life in part because covid disruptions made 4th gen consoles supply pretty scarce

[astral steeple]

Like I still use the 2013 black xbox one as my main console and will probably continue to do so for the longest time

Cause I really just don't want a series x or s at all and I don't even use my ps5 except maybe once a week or once every other week

[arctic fern]

Oh huh

Iiiiiinterresting

[wind stump]

This is garbage, but it's well written garbage.

[slim thorn]

named character privilege

[arctic fern]

Those are just names for people without names in games
Look at phoenix wright for dumb names
One of the victims in the first edgeworth game is "Hugh Mann"

There's a character called Luke Atme

[wind stump]

i don't think Goldshi calling them "Sus Man A" and "Sus Man B" is particularly accurate tho

[wind stump]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HndOgxCPkDI?feature=share

[little badger]

He was a good actor

[river veldt]

ah fuck that sucks

he was great in Kill Bill and Reservoir Dogs

[little badger]

[arctic fern]

https://youtu.be/cmkCQJrc9n4

[green fulcrum]

It seems the SKG petition has reached a million signatures! It's important though that people keep signing, because some of them might get tossed out as fraudulent, so the more signatures the petition has over the threshold, the better.

[arctic fern]

the UK one did too but no-one cares about the uk so thats fine

but yeah that may have happened here

[little badger]

Anthem is shutting down in January https://www.ea.com/games/anthem/news/anthem-game-update

[arctic fern]

...anthem still exists?

also #STOPKILLINGGAMES

[slim thorn]

#wellmaybethisonesokay

[rancid herald]

I'm actually kind of curious how serious they actually take fraudulent signatures

[little badger]

Yeah. After 2.0 was abandoned it’s been in maintenance mode. I’ll need to go back to it before it’s gone

[arctic fern]

honestly, no, the 6 people who bought it deserve to play the game they bought

[slim thorn]

yeah I'm kidding

afaik it's nobody's favorite game but ofc all the principles still apply

[river veldt]

literally my first thought lmao

[little badger]

Also they are not issuing refunds if you purchase premium currency in the past

[rancid herald]

tbh he's probably not wrong, the rise has been rather crazy all things considered

[arctic fern]

what a suprise.

take your money, give nothing back.

[slim thorn]

does any cancelled game issue virtual currency refunds?

[rancid herald]

like in the past 4 hours there's been over 9000 signatures per hour

[arctic fern]

actually one game i played did

[little badger]

It’s EA after all

[arctic fern]

one

indi obviously

this was like 10 years ago i think

[rancid herald]

It depends on the game

[slim thorn]

actually there's a great example of something that should go into legislation: make all virtual currencies refundable

[rancid herald]

tbh it's probably likely that they weren't getting a lot of new purchases atm so there's probably nothing to refund

[slim thorn]

yeah, financially speaking you'd only shut down the servers when the game's income dipped below the cost of keeping servers up

[rancid herald]

or when they finally found which closet the server was stuffed in

[arctic fern]

im pretty sure that digital game purchases arent legally required to have refunds in many places, steam does it out of courtesy

currency will never happen

[slim thorn]

yup

well, sure, not anytime soon, but that doesn't mean it's not worth a little discussion of what the morally ideal legislation on the topic would be

I think any path to making gacha/lootbox/live service games non-evil would involve something that restricts the virtual currency, even if indirectly

[rancid herald]

I'd rather digital currency was just dropped all together

just price the items as they are in real life currency; the extra layer isn't meaningful unless you can earn that currency in game (like in helldivers2)

[slim thorn]

the latter is why this is a non-obvious topic

we don't want to outlaw free-to-play after all

I'm trying to think of a wording that doesn't have obvious problems but this is tricky

[rancid herald]

I mean, the problem is that most games don't allow you to earn in game currency despite the layer

[slim thorn]

ah, the model I was used to is the currency being earnable and buyable but the rate of earning by just playing for free is painfully low

[rancid herald]

It's like Josh says, there's also the whole 'you have to buy the next package up in order to buy item x but then you have left overs'

[slim thorn]

my first thought is perhaps to outlaw exchanging real money for virtual money, and all items buyable both ways simply have to be purchaseable directly in either currency

[rancid herald]

yeah

[slim thorn]

that still has loopholes in cases like a real money purchase improving your ability to farm the virtual currency, I'm not sure how important it would be to close that (iirc Diablo Immortal exploits this?)

but that's as far as I feel like thinking about it atm

[rancid herald]

fair

But generally speaking I wouldn't expect a game to refund in game currency unless the purchase of that currency was made relatively recently relative to the date of ending

Like if you bought 50 anthem coins yesterday, you should probably get a refund. Probably not so if you bought 50 coins at release and never spent them

[slim thorn]

true, if the exchange rate varies over time that gets really thorny

I was also thinking free exchange between virtual and real might be undesirable if it makes it easy for people to use the virtual items to effectively share real money around

so time-limited refunds is probably the right move

[arctic fern]

refunding the original price/value would make the most sense

[rancid herald]

depends on the currency. Not everything as that stable, particularly for a long running game

there was a period where the canadian dollar was on par with the american dollar, which isn't true now

[arctic fern]

im confused
if i went to a store, bought an item for £20, then a week later realise its not fit for purpose and get a refund, it should be £20
doesnt matter if the global housing market crashed in the meantime

[visual hill]

I remember when BioWare made good non-RPG games 👀 (namely, MDK 2)

[rancid herald]

It seems to me the issue is this: suppose you buy something for 20 dollars american (which in pounds is 10 pounds), then a month goes by and the pound loses a lot of value so now 20 dollars american is the same as 20 pounds. If you get a refund, it's a question of whether you should get 20 pounds (which is equal to what you paid a month prior) or 10 pounds (which is what you paid a month prior but is now worth half as much)

[gaunt marten]

If you bought something for twenty pounds, and five years later realized it was not fit for purpose and got a refund, how much is a fair amount given it's in the box still?

[worldly summit]

the non-discount price that the thing is currently being sold for? I don’t know of places that would offer a five year refund

[gaunt marten]

Yes. That's why I asked the question! It's a novel situation

Refunding for the current price seems easy to manipulate. If a company wants, they can just lower the price so that they don't have to offer big refunds

[arctic fern]

i was looking into how the UK handles refunds and thought that 5 years is too silly, but then i looked into it and i think you have up to 6 years to make a claim https://www.gov.uk/accepting-returns-and-giving-refunds

but i think a reasonable policy would be similar to steams 2 months

[gaunt marten]

Hell yeah

[fickle garnet]

I thought steam was two weeks

[gaunt marten]

Six years is great

Steam gives two weeks of "no questions asked" but your local laws can allow for refunds of any length

[fickle garnet]

Oh huh

[arctic fern]

the answer to this is simple though
you get back what you paid
if you paid USD but live in the uk, you get USD
if you paid in sterling, you get sterling

[little badger]

I heard GTA V is releasing in your country soon.

[arctic fern]

im not sure how else you could do that

[rancid herald]

I mean, we're talking about currency exchanges

[gaunt marten]

GTA V has been in Saudi Arabia for ten years

[arctic fern]

yes but thats the same with any purchase

[gaunt marten]

Yeah this bad information

[shell shore]

This absolute master piece

[gaunt marten]

I bought GTA V back in February 11 2016

[arctic fern]

thats a ps4 box
you saw that and didnt think to question things a bit maybe?

[green fulcrum]

I love how you remembered the exact date, lol

[little badger]

It’s official but it’s the PS5 version

[gaunt marten]

I didn't remember it, I looked it up

I played the game for 15 days and then put it aside.

[little badger]

Didn’t like it?

[gaunt marten]

The scene that ends with them taking the guy to the airport was far too violent for me

[little badger]

It’s just the PS5 version. The PS4 does get support but not much

[little badger]

Ah yeah that mission. I enjoyed the game apparently people wanted the game banned because of that mission

[arctic fern]

ah yeah that scene
yeah... i can see why youd put the game down after that

[little badger]

Some countries had to alter the scene

[gaunt marten]

Game was okay otherwise. Did not blow my mind so I didn't feel like it was worth it to continue

[little badger]

Hopefully 6 is good.

[unreal idol]

The last GTA game i played was 3

[little badger]

Did you like it PK?

[unreal idol]

At the time it was fine but the novelty wore off quickly

[slim thorn]

I tried GTA 4 way back when that was the one getting hyped up, most of it was mediocre for me, and everything I've heard about the other entries gives me no reason to believe their game design priorities changed so I've never been interested in the rest of the series.

[little badger]

I have played the very first GTA’s but my first GTA was 3

[gaunt marten]

I liked San Andreas. At the time we called it GTA 5 because it was two entries after 3.

Imagine my surprise when they released GTA V later

[unreal idol]

I like the original GTA and GTA2 a lot though

[little badger]

The top down view was good

[cerulean herald]

Only GTA game I played was 5, but I considered maybe the others someday

[unreal idol]

I think the game quality dropped sharply once they ditched the overhead view

But I've not played any past 3 so what do I know

[little badger]

I did see a mod for sanandreas that had the top down view and it looked interesting.

Did anyone play this? I loved it growing up

[cerulean herald]

Haven't heard of it til now

[little badger]

It did have one annoying section

[green fulcrum]

I had no idea about the "airport mission" you guys were talking about before, and now that I do...yeah, I can see why that would cause people to get very uncomfortable very fast.

This is why I don't play GTA. Not because of the whole "people vs cops" thing, but because of just how damn brutal and cruel it is, solely for "fun". Maybe there's some fascinating messages to deliver through its realistic depiction of these practices and crimes, but...I already know those messages. I don't want to see them.

[river veldt]

GTA has always been satirical/over the top, it's why i like RDR 1 and especially 2 more because the characters actually feel like people rather than caricatures. hopefully they can channel some of that in GTA VI

[unreal idol]

GTA London crying in a corner

[arctic fern]

well they lost their most important guy Leslie Benzies so obviously 6 is going to suck

that was a joke

[gaunt marten]

I felt like GTA was satirical but Saints Row was over the top

And that's why GTA was good

[arctic fern]

GTA saterised real life
saints row saterised GTA
well 2 did, 3 to a lesser extent

after that the games kinda sucked

[gaunt marten]

I was thinking specifically about 3

Didn't play 2. Played 4 a little

[river veldt]

i played V all the way through and it was

it was fine i suppose

Franklin was the only character i remotely liked, Trevor was way too much and Michael was kind of boring

i liked the radio a lot

[little badger]

GTA IV was a darker entry in the series.

[cerulean herald]

Wasn't rly a fan of Trevor either

[gaunt marten]

There should be a story mod that removes Trevor

[river veldt]

i liked Franklin's friend too, Lamar

[arctic fern]

2 is the best one
3 had a much better engine and netcode but 2 was just the best world and story

[gaunt marten]

Garfield minus Garfield style

[little badger]

Did you play the new ish saints row?

[arctic fern]

DArkviperAU recent did a run where every char except the main ones were invisible

[cerulean herald]

I liked Michael, tho his family I didn't care too much for

[arctic fern]

the opening cuscene where michal is yelling at his therapist but uits an empty room is funny

[river veldt]

i own GTA IV but i haven't played it yet

[arctic fern]

yes
it sucked

[river veldt]

yeah i don't dislike him im just kind of neutral

[little badger]

I just hope the next one goes back to its roots

[visual hill]

I used to dislike it, but now I unironically think it's a good thing to have

[arctic fern]

the... studio is gone

it is no more

[visual hill]

it probably helps as a nod to another of Rockstar's games, Manhunt 🙂

[little badger]

Oh yeah. Unless someone takes it over but I doubt it

[visual hill]

(which I haven't played and don't intend to, but still)

[little badger]

Cali does GTA do French dubs or is it all in English.

[river veldt]

taking the guy to the airport i don't think i remember that part

[visual hill]

GTA does not do dubs, it's part of its brand at this point

[river veldt]

i remember the torture scene being way too much for me

[visual hill]

(and it's also cheaper, and some people will like you more if you don't do dubs)

[cerulean herald]

The torture scene

[river veldt]

OH

lmao yeah

[gaunt marten]

After the torture scene they take him to the airport. I didn't want to say torture

[river veldt]

i remember so little of that game and i just played it like 3 months ago

ah sorry

[gaunt marten]

It's okay

[visual hill]

whenever I did that mission (twice), I always got the It's Legal! badge.

[little badger]

Ah

[river veldt]

the driving in 5 feels pretty good

[visual hill]

I think part of this is also because AAA games are so averse to risk taking these days, and you know what that is? Risk taking 😛

sure, it's a 12 year old AAA game now, but still

[little badger]

I got gold on that mission

[green fulcrum]

I find it hilarious how so many people on YouTube and Twitter were quick to label GTA 6 as "super Communist woke shit" when it showed a Pride Parade in-game, and I'm just sitting here thinking, "did any of you even play the previous games?"

Underneath all that satire and cruel crime stuff is a TON of political commentary that is treated shockingly seriously, and almost all of it is "woke".

[visual hill]

Chatterbox FM my beloved

[little badger]

In sanandreas the Gay area in san fierro has pride flags

[visual hill]

Midtown Madness 2 also had that in 2000

[fresh bane]

If a person says those specific strings of words in a sentence are you really surprised what they're saying is complete nonsense?
But then again I don't wanna get into that whole conversation, I just brush those people off, not worth even considering honestly

[cerulean herald]

I hope that you get 6 stars wanted level if u mess with the pride parade

[little badger]

Or just send the whole army

[fresh bane]

I hope you can fist fight an alligator

that's what they really should be focusing on if you ask me

or befriend one and pet it

[little badger]

They will also enter shops apparently.

[fickle garnet]

When they first revealed the pride stuff in GTA6 I kept seeing people fantasize about driving a car through the parade

[fresh bane]

I hear people actually keep alligators as pets so surely there's gotta be one NPC with an alligator pet

[river veldt]

both the new protagonists are hot which is a step up from 5 where only one was hot

[little badger]

What would you name it?

[fresh bane]

Gummy

[little badger]

I’m glad rockstar games is in Scotland where I’m from

[fresh bane]

fucking christ I felt that through the screen

[fickle garnet]

Mr. X is fucking terrifying

[fresh bane]

more like annoying, I still hate this section of the remake, although I'll give them one thing at least it's short enough that if you already know what to expect you can dance around him and do what you need to do

[slim thorn]

that's still baffling to me since (remake) Mr X was one of the best things in any RE game for me

[fresh bane]

I like the idea in concept but in practice I find myself getting frustrated by it more often than not, but granted I am playing on hardcore where a single bite already leaves you in red and this particular section I didn't properly clean up the hallways so I had one or two zombies in there plus a licker PLUS Mr X on my ass the entire time while I'm just trying to press the buttons on this thing to get my little extra pouch

[slim thorn]

ah, yeah that might fall into "for most games the highest difficulty is intrinsically not fun"

[fresh bane]

If we want to talk scary this is the one new section in the remake that legitimately still creeps me the hell out, both back when I played it normally and now that I'm playing with fixed cameras and the original soundtrack, somehow it makes it even scarier

It's the one section where I reverted back to my tried and true tactic as a child when I was scared of the village section in RE4 where I just went into the menu and just hung out in there for a bit before trying to move forward in the section because I'd be so scared

Something about the combination of tight spaces, plus chest deep water, plus underwater monster blocking your way that you HAVE to get through, plus the weird noises

[river veldt]

i agree with this statement, but Doom Eternal is an outlier for me because Nightmare is super fun. though i guess that's technically not the highest difficulty Ultra Nightmare is but dying and having to start over sounds like a nightmare no pun intended

[slim thorn]

iirc you can't play the highest difficulty on a first playthrough anyway, which I assume became a standard after too many people hurt themselves

shooters do have a very wide range of base skill levels so it is reasonable that many people choose a difficulty above or below the average for their first playthrough

[river veldt]

i don't think i'll ever try legendary Halo

i can barely play on Normal lmao

[slim thorn]

but almost no one wants to play a game where most enemy attacks are effectively one-hit kills

oh also Nire this is a downside of your beloved fixed angles

[river veldt]

i think all difficulty sliders should have funny names

[slim thorn]

the over the shoulder camera makes it basically 100% your own fault if you don't know where Mr X is before opening a door

[river veldt]

Doom and Wolfenstein are the kings of this

[slim thorn]

I do prefer every game to have unique difficulty names, though they don't have to be funny

[river veldt]

so good https://preview.redd.it/there-is-a-difficulty-for-everyone-v0-h7xjcn0ux4ta1.jpg?auto=webp&s=3bc165e89baf4d3d85193422a802fcdb3a837bed

[slim thorn]

e.g. "Heroic" and "Legendary" are perfectly solid

[astral steeple]

lol rip

EA is shutting down the servers for anthem on January 12th of next year

They aren't doing refunds either

[slim thorn]

yep, see earlier discussion

[astral steeple]

How many live service games is ea gonna shut down the servers for at this point lol

[fresh bane]

That was still my fault that I got hit there, I tried to rush through the section despite knowing Mr X was there because I thought I could make it, so it's not exactly a fault of the camera, you still hear his footsteps get louder and the music starting up even if he's not in the room once he ''notices'' you and starts going where you are, which is a clear enough cue that works even if you can't directly see him, a lot like Nemesis in RE3 since the way he works is more accurate to this Mr X than in the original where he'd always be in clear view of any camera angle and he'd just pursue you for a few screens rather than the entire RPD

[random steppe]

Lowkey gotta respect Square with the Avengers game

Closed down the server, but they made it so you can still play it in single player with all the cosmetics MTX unlocked

[slim thorn]

ah, fair, I couldn't tell in the video if you were able to hear it or not

[astral steeple]

I wish I played the avengers game more

Only played it like less than an hour or so

You had to like play up to a certain point to unlock an item in a different game so I never touched it after that

Was kinda fun

[random steppe]

You can still play it to my understanding

[slim thorn]

and yeah it's still weird to me that my OG RE3 Nemesis experience was so shallow compared to everyone else describes it

I know he's technically dynamic but it had none of the unique fun that RE2RE Mr X brought to that game and only that game

[astral steeple]

That also reminds me you can no longer get that one matrix tech demo thing

It got removed from ps5 store before I had got a ps5 so I never got to mess with it

[visual hill]

I miss that from old games, but sometimes it was confusing, especially for non-native speakers

what difficulty is Yellowberries-r-us?

(yes, that's a difficulty name)

it's ||the Easy/"Hey, not too rough" difficulty from Heretic||

[slim thorn]

to be fair, in most games I have no idea what the actual difference is between normal and hard even if I play a bit on both

[visual hill]

Rise of the Triad even has difficulty names that vary according to the character you choose

[slim thorn]

I do like the modern trend of games flat-out telling you what the difficulty option does

[visual hill]

so each difficulty has 5 possible names

[river veldt]

i love "hey, not too rough" is such a great name

[slim thorn]

and letting you set a "custom" difficulty that fiddles with the relevant parameters directly

[fresh bane]

this was the next attempt to that one I did, I already knew he was there and even heard him opening the door, but I still almost got caught although this time I was further away from the door so he didn't insta clothesline me in the chest

[random steppe]

I think if you manage to find a physical copy, you'd be able to play it still

The avengers thing

[fresh bane]

To be fair we are talking about a 1999 game vs a 2019 game, compared to the original Mr X Nemesis was a significant step-up, but it is gonna look unimpressive now

[slim thorn]

I should finish RE3RE one of these days

got interrupted by life and never managed to prioritize it again

[astral steeple]

Oh lol

Was confused for a second

[visual hill]

reminds me of this: https://bsky.app/profile/graslu00.bsky.social/post/3lgglyzhalc2m

Graslu00 (@graslu00.bsky.social)

Welcome back, GoldenEye

-# Wario64 (@wario64.bsky.social)
Doom: The Dark Ages will feature multiple difficulty modifiers

Bluesky · Jan 23, 2025, 7:19 PM

[fresh bane]

The layout of the RPD vs the open Raccoon City streets also have a different dynamic, it's a lot more open in RE3 except for those tight alleyways that connect some of the upper and lower levels of the city

[visual hill]

people were hyped about Doom TDA's custom difficulty and we were just like "always has been". Although it's good they did it, a lot of reviewers straight out recommend increasing the game speed since it's quite slow out of the box

[random steppe]

Yeah I got confused about what you were talking about as well, my bad

[visual hill]

I bought it for €4 before it was shut down but haven't touched it yet

[river veldt]

have they ever done a Goldeneye remake

[slim thorn]

yeah this is the other part where I feel a huge disconnect with the usual RE3 discourse; it didn't feel "open" at all to me, being technically outside doesn't change that in practice it was more linear than a lot of (either) RE2 when I played it myself

[river veldt]

cause i would love to play it with actual dual analog controls rather than the N64 control scheme

[visual hill]

yes, on Wii and PS3 officially

and the original had a cancelled Xbox remaster that leaked in February 2021

Feburary 2021 was the month of leaks, we also got Dinosaur Planet the same month 😛

[river veldt]

ah !

they should put it on PC

[visual hill]

it'll never happen

[river veldt]

why ??

oh right it's a Rare game

[visual hill]

MGM is very stringent with the brand, and Rare is in trouble these days with the Microsoft layoffs

the Perfect Dark reboot (not developed by Rare) was canceled this week

[river veldt]

isn't it Amazon now ? or do they co own with MGM

[visual hill]

the "man jaw" warriors won 😢

(I remember the debate when the first images came out, saying that Joanna had a "man jaw"...)

[astral steeple]

When's rumble roses xx gonna get a remaster/remake lol

Would be peak

[visual hill]

although to be fair, N64 controls are good as long as you use the 1.2 Solitaire scheme. Don't bother with 1.1 Honey

the N64 stick is very precise, more than modern controllers

[river veldt]

i was using the controls on the Switch N64 emulator

[visual hill]

oh yeah, that's a problem... it's a worse experience than on original hardware in many aspects

play it on PC with 1964GEPD, you can use a mouse there

it makes the game quite a bit easier, so consider custom difficulty (007) to increase enemy reaction speed if you find 00 Agent too easy

[fresh bane]

It's not so much open in terms of level design, the Raccoon City streets are still blocked off in various ways such that functionally they're basically still hallways connecting with each other like the RPD or the sewers, it's more in terms of where to go and what things to get done first, maybe you don't notice it during your first playthrough, but if you were to replay RE3 and say ''Last time I went to the hospital first, let me go to the gas station this time now'' and then you do and you realize you get a completely different interaction if you do, to give a very general example, I don't even actually remember if those two areas are a specific choice actually

[river veldt]

i'll keep this in mind, thanks Cali

[slim thorn]

I am now aware of that choice, but I had to be told by the internet that the choice existed, so it didn't impact my first playthroughs

[river veldt]

i still have only played the original RE4

[slim thorn]

I feel like there's maybe 1-2 of those total in the game? been a while

[visual hill]

there is a GE recompilation being worked on, but it's not quite ready for release yet

watch this space: https://github.com/kholdfuzion/GoldenRecomp/commits/main

[river veldt]

as much as i love Ethan i don't think i could do RE7

scary

[astral steeple]

Oh yeah another game that really needs a remake/remaster

Silent hill 4 : the room

[slim thorn]

oh is it time for another round of "why do they only remake the games that didn't need a remake"

[astral steeple]

lol

[fickle garnet]

Yeah, I never got far in RE7 cuz it was really creepy

[river veldt]

i bet i could handle RE8 fine

[slim thorn]

I'm sure I could "handle" them if I wanted to, but I watched LPs for 7 and 8 since that's what I was in the mood for at the time

[river veldt]

ive watched LPs for both too

[fickle garnet]

I fully played through RE8

[fresh bane]

I agree but I'm glad that they decided to go back to SH1, I was scared of a situation where they'd do SH2 and then SH3, SH1 needs a remake in the sense that there's literally no way to play it at all outside of the original because it's not even ported like the original REs are now, so at least this way people will have some way to play it
especially nowadays that people seem to be physically unable to discuss or play a videogame that wasn't released in the past 5 years

[river veldt]

idk, i'm weird in that i'm not really a big fan of actually playing horror games lol, i prefer to watch LPs of them most of the time

[slim thorn]

nah that's super common

back when I watched LPers regularly I found the horror game playthroughs were some of the most entertaining and also stuff I was not likely to play on my own anyway

[fresh bane]

I am going through stream vods for E33 and Death Stranding 2 because they're games I know I'm kinda interested in and would probably get the gist of and enjoy watching as someone else plays it, but not interested enough that I want to buy them and make the time to play them entirely

[slim thorn]

it's also really hard to explain the appeal of something like Silent Hill 2 or Signalis

at least with the Resident Evils or Dead Spaces I can talk about it in gameplay terms where the survival horror elements make it different in an interesting way from other kinds of shooters, but that's because the gameplay loop is the core appeal in those

[fickle garnet]

I tried to play the HD remaster of RE1, but it was really frustrating

[river veldt]

oh yeah i would like to try Dead Space sometime

[fickle garnet]

Dead Space is great

[river veldt]

it's a situation now where the Remake is the definitive version right ?

[slim thorn]

yeah, Dead Space 1's remake is just straight-up improvments on the original, just like RE1's

[fresh bane]

For Dead Space yes

It's not like RE2-RE2R where there's significant enough changes to still recommend the original over the remake

It's just Dead Space 1 but arguably better

[visual hill]

remaking bad games has a lot more value than remaking good games 😛

[slim thorn]

preaching to the choir

[visual hill]

I'm glad Nightdive tackled Turok 3 for instance, they fixed a lot of problems with it

even when they remastered Quake 2 (a good game), they took the liberty to make much-awaited gameplay changes

many studios would not have done that, I can tell, especially in a game as sacred as Quake

[fresh bane]

It's the way it arguably should be done, but we're now at a time where even thinking about making a game and even just planning the making of a game already costs enough money that any company is going to want to ensure their remake is a guaranteed success

[river veldt]

Nightdive mentioned 🔥🔥🔥

[fresh bane]

which is why they're not remaking Metal Gear 1 and 2 and they're just going straight for MGS3

No one cares about Metal Gear 1 and 2, but everyone cares about MGS3

[astral steeple]

I mean with silent hill 4 it needs a remake/remaster cause it's the best in the series and is also not really playable on modern consoles afaik

[visual hill]

I haven't played MGS3 yet, but if I wait for Delta to go on sale, I'll be playing it in 2027 at the earliest probably...

[river veldt]

i thought people like MGS 1 and 2 ?

[slim thorn]

MG, not MGS

[visual hill]

Metal Gear 1/2 are the 2D top-down stealth games for the MSX console

[slim thorn]

hi, it's me, I only played MGS 1-4 (and MGR), never the MGs or the Vs or the spinoffs

[river veldt]

ooooh lol

[fresh bane]

Yeah, if you have a computer strong enough to even play it by then too of course...

[visual hill]

I should be good on this aspect, don't worry

[slim thorn]

I wonder how RPG fans feel about all the remake talk

there's gotta be people who feel FF7 is not the one that deserved the remake treatment

[fickle garnet]

I should try and finish MGS1-3

[fresh bane]

Absolutely

[slim thorn]

much less the 100x bigger and shinier stealth sequel is-this-even-a-remake treatment

[fresh bane]

FF2, FF4, FF6, FF9

But a lot of hardcore FF fans have always been pissed at the fact that 7 is the one that gets all the glory

that's not necessarily a new thing

[river veldt]

i mean probably but im a big 7 fan so im happy with a pseudo remake lol

[visual hill]

FF4 has the really cool battle music that even some Doom maps use

[slim thorn]

one of the things I found fascinating about the Entire History of Video Games essay was how it highlighted the ways in which FF7 was arguably the first true "AAA" game with how much budget and marketing went into it, and how SE was immensely rewarded for that gamble

[cerulean herald]

What's the reasoning for 7 in particular getting the attention?

[river veldt]

cause it's fucking awesome

[visual hill]

strong story points

[fresh bane]

One of those early 3d games with a lot of storytelling at a time where that wasn't done

Like Silent Hill 1, MGS1

Those were some of the big games that showed people this is what videogames can do now

[slim thorn]

in this case, what actually matters is that FF7 has always been one of the best-selling and culturally influential FFs; there are far more people who know about 7 and none of the others than any other single FF game

it helps that 7 was also actually a good FF game, but that's not why it got a remake

[visual hill]

I played MGS1 for the first time in 2022 and walked away very impressed

[rancid herald]

FF starts at 7 and ends at 8 (I'm using python rules)

[river veldt]

i need to get on playing Metal Gear Solid

[slim thorn]

if you want to ask why 7 sold that well, being one of the first big budget games on a then brand new console with limited competition as well as one of the few JRPGs to even get released properly in the west at the time probably covers much of it

[rancid herald]

what console was FF7?

[slim thorn]

PS1

in fact it's one of the few games I played on my physical PS1 as a teenager (at the time I was totally unaware of the REs)

[rancid herald]

huh

You played most of your PS games on your metaphysical PS1?

[slim thorn]

on my PS2 lol

[river veldt]

i should replay FF7

[slim thorn]

in fact in fact, I think FF7's still the only multi-disc console game I've ever played

[river veldt]

last time i played through it was 2020

which was

five years ago???

that can't be right

[random steppe]

I wouldn't be able to articulate why but MGS for some reason doesn't strike me as a Cap game

[slim thorn]

well if I'm gonna play an FF again it's gonna be a new one, there's so many I haven't experienced yet it seems silly to just repeat one of the two I do know

[fresh bane]

It's not so much that FF7 ''unjustly'' gets all the attention or anything, because it is that good, it's just that the other FF games are also just as good, some would argue even better, but FF7 culturally just was that big that it made a mark even on mainstream audiences so everyone knows who Cloud Strife is, but not as many people are gonna know who.... checks notes Bartz Klauser is

[rancid herald]

I remember my mom playing it but it must have been on our ps2

[river veldt]

now im curious why you think that lol

i suppose im not a big stealth guy

[slim thorn]

reminder that I've only played 7 and 9 myself, and I played 9 way later partially because Denzy talked me into it

[random steppe]

I am not sure

[river veldt]

unless it's Batman

[robust latch]

i played Riven on the PS1. the disk swapping was even worse then the PC version

[river veldt]

they put Riven on the PS1 ????

[rancid herald]

which was the FF with zero g soccer?

[slim thorn]

tbf I would not sell the older MGSes on the stealth gameplay

[robust latch]

lol yep

[slim thorn]

X I think?

[cerulean herald]

I'm guessing each FF game is self contained, and not all connected and direct sequels of each other

[slim thorn]

blitzball?

[rancid herald]

yeah

[random steppe]

Yes, it's 10

[slim thorn]

correct, the FF games are by default unrelated to each other

[random steppe]

Which in hindsight, I think it has probably the most solid narrative in the series

[fresh bane]

Yes, unless it's specifically the same number with a subtitle, like FF7: Crisis Core, then it's a different thing entirely

[slim thorn]

when they do make an actual story sequel they call it something like "FF X-2"

[fresh bane]

Kinda like Zelda, or at least, the way Zelda was, until they caved and made up the timeline

[slim thorn]

not that the actual Zelda games changed much

[rancid herald]

Zelda still be like that (Zelda devs don't care about the timeline)

[slim thorn]

also plot is never Zelda's top priority, unlike with Final Fantasy

[toxic seal]

The Tales series is also like this, with the exception of Tales of Berseria and Tales of Zestiria that take place at different eras in the same universe, and Tales of Xillia and Tales of Xillia 2 because direct sequel

[slim thorn]

Zelda can get away with not even caring whether the games are connected, while in FF none of the stories would make any sense if they weren't clear about being in the same world or a different world

[rancid herald]

one day they'll release the FF multiverse game and everyone will hate it

Final Fantasys

[random steppe]

That's what Dissidia is

[fresh bane]

they did already

[slim thorn]

never heard of it

[rancid herald]

Join cloud and Sora as they join up to fight microsoft

[random steppe]

It's a sort of fighting game

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/PG7lvNkyPZs?si=H17h8HU9LYee-N6Q

I will say, maybe a hot take, but this is the definitive Final Fantasy look for me

[rancid herald]

"How can it be a sort of fighting game?"
"Well it's more of a dating simulator with swords"

[fresh bane]

They used this same artstyle for Crisis Core on the PSP and Kingdom Hearts since like KH2 to Birth by Sleep and it's perfection

[slim thorn]

Persona is hard enough to explain at the best of times

[river veldt]

i love Cloud's stupid big sword

bog sword

[rancid herald]

bong sword

[fickle garnet]

I want to play FF8

[visual hill]

too bad Cloud can't use "up B out of shield" in Final Fantasy

[dense crypt]

I have played 5, 7, and 8, theyre all great tbh

[slim thorn]

I'm mildly curious about several of the FFs, but not enough to commit the time it would take to play another one, especially over all the other games out there

[fresh bane]

this is all I know about FF8

actually I'm lying, when I was a kid I had this CD with a bunch of music videos on it, and I distinctly remember this really nice song paired with FF8's cinematic intro that I would listen and look at all the time, even though I had no idea what a Final Fantasy even was because I was so young

so I know the intro too

[cerulean herald]

This is as good as graphics are gonna get

[fickle garnet]

If I was to play FF8, should I play the remaster or the original?

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/Ch_xNzDk6aY?si=l9kbynXwHmDGc0IG

[fickle garnet]

Thanks

[visual hill]

hearing 2020 Tom feels weird

I'm so used to DF's modern voices by now

they spoke much more "nasally" back then

[fresh bane]

they have a DS2 video

I should check it out

I wanna hear more about that game from someone who knows more than me about all the behind the scenes tech and all the little specifics of the engine and the lighting systems and all that

[visual hill]

stencil shadows, my beloved

you can really see the underlying shadow mesh used here, it's a simplified version of the model you normally see

(games with shadow maps did that too, but modern games tend to rely on automatic shadow mesh generation instead of hand-authored lowpoly meshes)

but since games with stencil shadows often only allowed one shadow per object (for performance reasons), they had to come up with a way to decide which light should be used as a basis for shadow orientation... so, oftentimes, you had funny situations with shadows appearing extremely stretched, or even upside down

[bronze abyss]

what i just bought the game and launched it for the first time

[visual hill]

guess we doin cookies now

[sudden magnet]

Sometimes, happyness is mid-2000s registered shareware where you're a tiny tank in a model scene.

I recently rediscovered an old game we bought when we were younger, Tank-O-Box, where you play as a tiny tank fighting other tiny tanks in various model environments. Very arcadey.

[bitter stream]

that's great!

those small tank games can be a lot of fun

[sudden magnet]

https://www.mobygames.com/game/13757/tank-o-box/screenshots/windows/269184/

But yep, Tank-O-Box. Who knew tiny tanks could bring warm fuzzy memories?

[bitter stream]

woo

[craggy vine]

Doom 2 nightmare
At least in eternal I don't think enemies respawn

[fickle garnet]

They don't in Eternal, no

[craggy vine]

I wonder if there is a mod to make eternal nightmare like doom 2 nightmare

[river veldt]

oh christ please god no

[craggy vine]

[astral steeple]

Wow seeing this in cod is jarring

[green fulcrum]

It's stupid that's what it is. It's trying to be Fortnite and failing miserably.

The only people who legitimately like what CoD is doing to itself are the "do it for the lols" people or the CoD worshippers who offer up their souls to the game no matter what it does.

[cunning galleon]

I miss the older cod

Love the campaigns of WaW, WW2, MW2, 3, and 4

[green fulcrum]

I despise CoD and I miss the old CoD.

Even I can see that this is soulless.

[cunning galleon]

Hell, even the psp cod is better than this

Where did the tactical shooter aspect of CoD go?

[craggy vine]

Doom > all COD

[little badger]

@eager bane looks like no more motorsport only horizon

[eager bane]

I mean...to be fair, I didn't really like the last game, but...

just let these studios fullfill their own creative vision and they'll do you good! There's so many talented ponies there that can't just be replaced!

Building up a team like this isn't done in a heartbeat and they're shutting them down left and right

[arctic fern]

yep

[little badger]

Xbox is just shutting down all the good developers. Won’t be long until there is no more Xbox games to play

[arctic fern]

yep

[eager bane]

If only they didn't buy so many in the first place

buy and then shut down

[little badger]

Ever since they took over activision it’s gotten worse

[eager bane]

Welp...just another publicly traded company I suppose. Don't trust any of them.

especially not the borderline mono-/duopolistic ones

[little badger]

[light gate]

Let me get this straight, they killed the only franchise that could've competed against Grand Turismo...

Insanity.

[arctic fern]

if they're not making infinite money then they're not good enough

and if they are making infinite money, then next quarter they need to make infinityx2 money

[light gate]

Well, Xbox brand just died even more.

Forza was literally one of the biggest reasons I actually hesitated going back to Playstation.

Now all they have is more weird Halo reboots and Gears of War [Insert Number or Spinoff here].

[arctic fern]

https://aftermath.site/xbox-microsoft-layoffs-ai-prompt-chatgpt-matt

[gaunt marten]

This is like the "they should play tetris" meme

[wind stump]

i think i'm beyond saving

[wind stump]

https://youtu.be/XQ6bG2M9dTc

[green fulcrum]

I'm a bit worried now about Mojang if all these studios are being shut down. Then again, Mojang is a bit more independent compared to Microsoft's other studios, so maybe they'll survive this purge unscathed.

[sacred grove]

No way they're killing Minecraft. It makes them so much money

Either way, the modding community is bonkers and more than willing to keep it alive

[green fulcrum]

Oh absolutely. I have no doubt that if Minecraft eventually stopped development, the modders would step up and start making updates of their own. Maybe even form a team of their own too to have one set of "unofficial continuation updates" in the style of Mojang with Mojang's blessing.

And if/when that day comes, I'll switch to playing fully modded at that point, because there would be no other choice for vanilla. But only the fantasy modpacks, I don't like skyblock or any of the super modern techy packs.

[little badger]

Soon halo probably won’t exist.

[green fulcrum]

https://www.videogamer.com/news/after-microsoft-laid-off-9000-employees-xbox-producer-matt-turnbull-use-ai-reduce-emotional-cognitive-load-that-comes-with-job-loss/

[bitter stream]

that's... so heartless

[unreal idol]

I heard about that

[chilly mural]

I wish I didn't

[worthy rose]

Terminal linkedin brain

[fickle garnet]

What the fuck

[worthy rose]

Stop Killing Games Reaches 1 Million Signatures as Players Continue Fight for Game Preservation - IGN https://share.google/hAFpdQZ6IGGGGlEIw

[cunning galleon]

Isn't sky block pretty old?

[green fulcrum]

Yes, but it's still played a lot.

I still see youtubers playing Skyblock

[cerulean herald]

does parkour civilization count as a skyblock

[gaunt marten]

No

[slim thorn]

are you asking what skyblock is about

[gaunt marten]

1- It's not a real modpack
2- In Skyblock you use infinite block generation methods to expand

[green fulcrum]

I'm talking specifically about modded skyblock like sky factory.

[cerulean herald]

I'm familiar, was joking about how the parkour civilzation series mostly takes place above an empty void

[little badger]

Edgerunners II logo

[fickle garnet]

Theyre making a sequel to edgerunners?

[little badger]

[fresh bane]

there's too many things coming out right now I can't keep up

I hope the name doesn't mean an actual sequel to Edgerunner's story because kinda the fun of that whole thing is that it was a one off

[cerulean herald]

i thought this was like an Edgerunners dlc to the game at first

[fresh bane]

I hope it's a brand new story, there's plenty stories to tell in Night City

[slim thorn]

it was also pretty conclusive so I assume it'll be a different story with at least a partially different cast

what else is coming out atm?

[fresh bane]

Dandadan just started again I think

I gotta catch up on the Umas

Ghost in the Shell stuff is gonna get announced too, I gotta read that whole manga before the anime drops

[slim thorn]

oh right, dandadan will be on my todo list soon enough

[fresh bane]

I made the very smart decision to start listening to the audiobook of Heir to the Empire and I kinda got pretty into it despite already being busy with other stuff and also catching up with like 3 different things at once...

[slim thorn]

that is a commitment, oof

I was tempted to try those but I know I don't have the attention span for a full book trilogy and I've got too much else that needs my limited brainpower

[random steppe]

Dandadan I can't watch, I saw a clip that hit me so hard that IDK if I want to feel it with the emotional investment bonus damage.

Maybe in a while, after I convince myself I can handle it

[slim thorn]

I'll probably wait a while to start S2 since I'd much rather binge a show like DanDaDan

[fresh bane]

I don't think I could actually read it but at least with the audiobook I can do the things I need to do while kinda paying attention to it in the background, I can at least get that done instead of trying to do my thing while also paying attention to either a Death Stranding 2 stream or Slayers/Uma Musume or taking breaks to go through the million books I have yet to go through, I'll at least do the first book and then catch up with other stuff since this is a whole trilogy of books and not just the one

[random steppe]

I love audiobooks, I use them a lot, and I agree while playing a game but while watching a show sounds insane.

[fresh bane]

I actually read quite a bit of Dandadan so I'm not in too much of a hurry to see every new episode that's coming out, I'll probably binge it after it's almost done, this particular arc does also have quite an emotional punch to it similar to one in the first season too

[slim thorn]

personally audiobooks just put me to sleep

[random steppe]

I have a lot of games I play that are mechanically engaging but don't have much story to them and audiobooks work well for those

[slim thorn]

ah, for me engaging games need enough of my brainpower that I can't take in a second piece of media alongside it

[random steppe]

Depends which kind of engaging

Like, shooters or survival games are light enough on the thinking that I can definitely do it with an audiobook in the background

Factorio very much depends what I'm doing, if I'm putting down blueprints to expand an energy grid sure, if I'm trying to engineer a new line, fuck no

[slim thorn]

meanwhile I'd be playing those on a difficulty that does not allow distractions

[river veldt]

when i'm at home i can't play games without listening/watching something else

while out and about i can play without distractions on my Deck

[random steppe]

I guess it depends if I'm the actions I'm doing are more on the hand eye coordination kind of realm or the strategy/planning kind of realm

[river veldt]

this is why i play most games without audio

(except for Deltarune)

[slim thorn]

for me the game probably won't be fun to begin with unless there's some element of strategy/planning

pure twitch skill games bore me very quickly

(sorry Flitter I still haven't touched Chippy after that one session)

[cerulean herald]

for me its best when im just doing grinding on games that dont involve much thinking/attention

[river veldt]

ratjam is right

[slim thorn]

ok that is actually fascinating to me

it's usually such a huge part of the experience I feel like it wouldn't even count as playing the game if I had it muted, at least on a first/regular playthrough

[random steppe]

Also depends how much I played that game for sure, like, HK would have been hard to audiobook the first time I played it, now I have a lot of muscle memory for it

[fresh bane]

For a while I thought I was the kind of person that can do both because I always did play games with something in the background just to get the feeling that I was getting something done at the same time, but after a while I realized that when I'm doing something like playing a fighting game or even something like battlefront 2 I'm either paying attention to the audio and playing horribly or I'm fully into the game and the audio is something that's constantly drawing me out so I end up just pausing it instead
But if it's something a lot more ''menial'' in a way, like maybe my 5th run of a Resident Evil game where I already know the layouts and what I need to do, or like side missions in MGSV where there's a lot of just going through the motions of certain things, then I can totally listen to something at the same time

[slim thorn]

right, any game you've played a billion times before becomes way easier to multitask with

[river veldt]

it's why i'm not huge on playing horror games myself, audio is way too big a part of those to have it muted

[random steppe]

First time single player story game my full attention is on the game audio and visual, if it can't keep me there by itself it's not worth playing

[proud warren]

Listening to some deltarune music rn as a matter of fact, so I get the banger alert

Who would have guessed the game made by a musician has good music

[cerulean herald]

what is twitch skill?

[slim thorn]

reflexes

[cerulean herald]

ah

[slim thorn]

did that phrase die out after "twitch" became a streaming service?

[cerulean herald]

well the website was the first thing that came to my mind, before i realized "wait no that wouldnt make sense"

[river veldt]

is doom eternal twitchy

[slim thorn]

partially; all shooters have an element of twitch skill in the core aiming and shooting mechanic, but my favorite shooters (including Doom and Halo) also have more interesting choices to make in the heat of combat like where to move and position yourself and which weapons to use on which enemies

[random steppe]

To be fair, some games do have a strategy layer and a hand eye coordination layers, but happen at different times.

Like for example, deciding your loadout or equipment then going out and actually playing it

[slim thorn]

multiplayer shooters are vastly twitchier than single player though which is part of why they do not click for me; if the other guy has double your reflexes it simply won't matter how well you play in every other aspect

[cerulean herald]

i looked at Chippy, and it seems like an insane bullet hell, which im guessing isnt a genre youre big on?

[slim thorn]

these days I think almost all popular games have some element of "downtime" strategizing / build customization

and "strategy" gets ambiguous really quickly, since I was talking about stuff like "oh there's a lot of enemies on my left I should move to cover that better protects that direction" while most of us would normally use that word for much higher level decisions in strategy games that don't exist at all in something like Halo

[slim thorn]

mostly yes, shmups and bullet hells and rhythm games fall into that "pure twitch skill" category that I can maybe enjoy for five minutes but usually quickly get bored of

[bitter stream]

Technically true, but also there's a vast gulf of potential outplay in most shooters that doesn't involve aiming at all.

[slim thorn]

I'm aware that theoretically exists, but it will never be real for me

[bitter stream]

[river veldt]

i don't like rhythm games

[slim thorn]

except as a spectator of course

[random steppe]

I love rhytm games, I'm absolutely terrible at them though

[cerulean herald]

What about that rhythm section in deltarune

[slim thorn]

I can get into rhythm-y stuff when it's combined with something else

like Hi-Fi Rush

I guess Undertale itself was also a good example, that weird mix of platforming/bullet hell/etc going on in the "boss fights" was a lot of fun, but I wouldn't want to play an entire game of just that

[river veldt]

bullet hell is every enemy not just bosses

[fresh bane]

I'm gonna need to do a Twilight and organize the stuff I wanna get through a little better if I have any hopes of getting any of this done, I might have to sacrifice one of the things I was actively following because there's too much, maybe I won't keep up with the E33 streams from the one streamer that's going through it right now after all...

I can catch the youtube compilation later

[slim thorn]

well maybe if you're on a genocide run lol

[river veldt]

it took me like 5 tries to get it lol

enemies still attack even if you're doing pacifist, usually it takes a few ACTs to get them to SPARE

[slim thorn]

fair, I just only remember the boss ones being difficult enough to comment on

with the regular enemies all my brainpower is spent on finding the non-violent option

[fresh bane]

I kinda wanna get through some more of Hades especially after the last update, that's a game I can totally play with something in the background, although I might stop paying attention to it whenever I have to really focus
but it's also one of those games where playing it without audio is kinda missing out on the insanely good music and voices

[slim thorn]

oh yeah, Hades 2 is still out there

man I am not engaging with Hades 2 or Death Stranding 2 or E33, there's just so many things to do now you have to ignore even a lot of the obviously good options

[fresh bane]

I generally play survival horror with audio too unless I'm doing like my 5th replay of it, at that point it becomes just doing the objectives that I already know how to do so my brain engages with it differently than when I'm taking my time and really taking it all in

[slim thorn]

that's a genre I don't feel like replaying much, since it loses most of the horror once you've memorized it

[fresh bane]

I really wanna know more about E33 but there's just so much I wanna get through that I'm fine with not checking it out or just getting to that much later, but DS2 I do wanna see what the hell Kojima is up to, so I'm prioritizing that

[fresh bane]

well, once you're replaying it it's not about the horror anymore, it becomes more like a tactical sort of game where you just challenge yourself to finish the game faster and more efficiently this time, at least that's the way it is to me, especially with a very tightly designed experience like Crow Country or RE1 where I just focus on knowing which enemies I know I can get through, which ones I should dispose of, knowing the most efficient way to get x or y items in one nice trip

etc etc

[slim thorn]

exactly

like I get why people do that but it's not for me, or at least not something I'd prioritize over every other game

[fresh bane]

I might replay Crow Country again sometime

[slim thorn]

maybe in a randomizer context, though that's also an insanely crowded space

[fresh bane]

I mean I get that there's definitely a lot of games I've been content with just playing once and then never again

[cerulean herald]

Funnily enough, in genocide route, theres only like 2 bosses that really exist, every other boss dies in 1 hit. its just more grindy (and those 2 bosses have a much higher difficulty curve)

[fresh bane]

Not because they're bad, you just don't really get the feel that you need to play through it again because that first experience was already great

But for me with games that I really like, like the REs and the MGS's, I found myself going back to them every so often and just doing one more playthrough

and then I did like 4 playthroughs in a row of MGS3 getting better and better ranks until I got Foxhound.... and now I think I'm finally 'done' with it

[slim thorn]

meanwhile the average player apparently doesn't even finish most of their games once, so we're already on the fringe of the bell curve

[fresh bane]

That reminds me apparently DS2 has an option for boss fights where you can ''pretend you won'' if you die enough times to it

[cerulean herald]

the steam achievements where the achievement for beating the game has single digit percentages

[fresh bane]

only 10% of players achieved this!

and you get the neat golden frame on the achievement

[cerulean herald]

this reminds me of GTA V where u can skip missions entirely if u die enough times
I did that with the ones where you pilot helicopters, god those were annoying

[fresh bane]

oh come on not even 50%

[proud warren]

I managed to get an unknown rank during my playthru lol

[slim thorn]

IIRC that's higher than most games

[cerulean herald]

im guessing the achievements count those that refunded the games? (even if its probably more likely ppl just dropped the game without refunding)

[slim thorn]

I assume so

the language in the UI is "% of all players", which I'm guessing means they had to play the game at least a tiny bit to count

[random steppe]

If I had to guess, the % is inversely proportional with the lenght of a game.

Roughly

Rather than the quality

[slim thorn]

that does seem likely

[fresh bane]

yay for me I guess

[slim thorn]

let's check some "beat the game" achievements for my typical metroidvania games... PoP: Lost Crown is 28.7%, Nine Sols is 27.5%, Ender Lilies is ~30% (ending A doesn't count), Blasphemous is 20.7%

and at the more extreme end of playtime... Death Stranding's is 19.2%, Witcher 3's is 22.6%

[fresh bane]

Nine Sols I was eyeing out for the next metroidvania game I wanted to play but I still haven't had the chance to get through the ones I already have so I've been holding off on getting it

[slim thorn]

also fair

[fresh bane]

Crypt Custodian I also wanted to check out, I did get that one but I haven't even installed it yet

[slim thorn]

I was holding off on buying more myself until I finally finished Bloodstained

that is such a nice chill one

you could definitely pair that with an audiobook lol

[fresh bane]

the whole indie metroidvania protagonist being a cartoony critter with a cloak is apparently true

the style and presentation really reminds me of Zelda so that already makes me really like it too

[slim thorn]

and this isn't even the only cartoony cat with a cloak metroidvania protagonist

[chilly mural]

I think about this piece of crow country piece a lot

https://bsky.app/profile/nirefuster.bsky.social/post/3ldkvunh3x22f

Nire (@nirefuster.bsky.social)

CROW COUNTRY 🐦‍⬛

Reposts

178

Likes

753

Bluesky · Dec 18, 2024, 8:11 AM

[slim thorn]

well Yi would probably insist that it's a "robe" or something

[cerulean herald]

not metroidvania, but Niko from oneshot is another cat with a cloak

[fresh bane]

I wanted to draw another one for the 1st anniversary of the game but I didn't get the time to...

[fresh bane]

what's the other one?

[slim thorn]

Yi from Nine Sols

[fresh bane]

I should've expected that

okay this game has much different character designs than I thought looking at the protagonist

[slim thorn]

tbf if I actually look at my full list the trope's not that common, we probably just listed all the notable examples

[cerulean herald]

yeah Yi's character design can be...deceptive

[fresh bane]

yeah I wasn't expecting one of these characters to have that design

I hate that my brain is still so league of legends pilled because when I hear Yi I can only think of this guy

get out of my brain I already uninstalled you like 2 years ago

[cerulean herald]

play nine sols so that way, when you hear Yi you think of cats instead

[fresh bane]

I probably will eventually I don't really know anything about it other than it's good and it's a metroidvania and I'm always looking for a good one of those (that also happens to catch my attention in other areas too)

I heard Blasphemous 2 was fine but I didn't really hear anything that made me think I need to play that one

[slim thorn]

B2 was very good but yes it's similar enough to B1 that you can reasonably judge its priority based on your B1 experience

[slim thorn]

I guess the main things to know about Nine Sols ahead of time are:

• For many the combat system and the Sol boss fights are the primary appeal. Compared to something like Hollow Knight, you have the familiar slash/dodge/jump/etc moves, and then the main difference is the emphasis on parrying. Not only are you expected to parry most basic enemy/boss attacks, but successful parries charge one of your stronger attacks, and there's a whole "imperfect parry" system, etc.
• The storyline is also a major appeal for many; unlike Hollow Knight or Ender Lilies, the Nine Sols story is a more traditional character-driven one where you read a lot of dialogue and are expected to pick up on subtext and character arcs and implied backstory and so on. But that's all I can explain about it without potentially spoiling it.
• and of course the unique mix of taoism/chinese mythology with sci-fi, both in the aesthetic and the lore/plot

[cerulean herald]

i personally preferred Nine Sols' gameplay/combat than Hollow Knight's
also I jumped into Nine Sols very blind, I didnt expect the sci-fi elements

[green fulcrum]

One thing I will never knock LoL for is its character design. DAMN they're all great.

[slim thorn]

I personally think HK has the edge on platforming and 9S has the edge on combat, especially boss fights

[cerulean herald]

yeah, I sometimes forget about the platforming aspect in 9S bc it feels more natural/isnt very prominent, if that makes sense?

like the one time I was "reminded" that 9S was still a platformer was during ||the Lady Etheral segment||

[slim thorn]

indeed, Sky Tower is probably the other memorable platforming segment

but I get what you mean, it often feels like a natural extension of running from one room to another rather than "oh look, an obstacle course of needlessly lethal stuff, let me plan a route"

[fresh bane]

Yeah, the world and characters is easily the best part about the world the artists at Riot constructed, it's not really a surprise to me that Arcane was such a big hit, the biggest drawback that prevents people from enjoying and engaging with the world and characters is they actually have to play the game to get to know most of them
(these were my 5 favourite champs to play and favourite champs in general)

[slim thorn]

~~I prefer Vi's Arcane design ~~

[fresh bane]

A lot of people do just like with Jinx, but in both cases it feels like a different character to me, especially since I haven't actually seen Arcane until today, but I just take it as her appearance when she was younger before she settles into her actual appearance, which is fine with me

[fresh bane]

I think Blasphemous was pretty combat oriented too so I definitely don't mind that

story wise too, I had to actually use my brain to understand some parts of that game

[slim thorn]

ah, then comparing to Blasphemous, expect Nine Sols combat to be more fast-paced

[fresh bane]

Yeah that's perfectly fine for me, Devil May Cry is one of my favourite franchises so I'm not alien to fast paced combat, I just used Blasphemous as an example because I think it's the only metroidvania I played with a somewhat more action focus, you don't really pull all that kinda stuff off in something like Metroid even if you include Dread, feels like it's more about the movement than the combat if that explains it

I really engage more with the metroid part of the genre than the castlevania, I somehow bounced off every single one of those games

which is a bummer because artistically they're great

[slim thorn]

indeed Metroid is much more about running away from and jumping over stuff

so the other day I was talking about Metroid-likes vs Igavanias vs the post-Hollow Knight/Dark Souls metroidvanias

and one reason I make that distinction is that the post-HK ones almost always have a dash move with i-frames, an air dash, a double jump, etc, as well as melee combat so it's important to be able to get up close, whack, then back away

while Metroids typically have no dodge/dash move and no melee, just run and jump then shoot while you're safely far away

[fresh bane]

Well, at least they used to before Samus Returns and Dread introduced parrying and more option movements like a dash too

[slim thorn]

indeed, but it's still a very minor part of those particular games

these aren't hard rules after all

like how almost all of the post-HK metroidvanias have an HK-like charm system, and then Ori 1 doesn't have that, but Ori 2 does, so even that is an exception that kinda proves the rule (especially since HK came out in between Ori 1 and 2)

[slim thorn]

so it's funny you say this because I basically just completed my "actually play the best Igavanias" sidequest (Castlevania Rondo, Symphony, Aria, then Bloodstained CotM and RotN) so I think I can fairly judge them now

and yeah, I still prefer the Metroid-likes and HK-likes overall

but I think it's safe to say RotN is the best of those that I've played, if you're ever looking to give it another chance

(Aria of Sorrow is still the best actual Castlevania, but B:RotN is more like a modern version of / straight upgrade of Aria than anything else)

[fresh bane]

I tried getting into Castlevania by playing Aria first but I never really seemed to be fully into it or engaged by it, I played the remake of the first Castlevania too, I did the last 3DS one and every time I just can't really seem to be interested in it unfortunately, I don't know what it is, maybe I didn't play any of them long enough to give the action time to ramp up but other games like the Metroids and Blasphemous never had any issues with getting me hooked early on
The only 'Castlevania' I was thinking of giving a try was this Record of Lodoss War game that's a metroidvania that sort of caught my eye because the movement and combat looked pretty eye catching and interesting to me, but I want to actually see all the ovas for this anime beforehand especially since this is a sequel to all that so I won't be playing that for a bit
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1203630/Record_of_Lodoss_WarDeedlit_in_Wonder_Labyrinth/

Steam

Record of Lodoss War-Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth-

Record of Lodoss War ~Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth~ is a 2D action-exploration "Metroidvania"-style game developed under the close supervision of original creator Ryo Mizuno, depicting the previously unknown story of Deedlit and the events leading up to Record of Lodoss War: Diadem of the Covenant.
Both fans of Record of Lodoss War and all-ne…

Price

$8.99

Recommendations

6484

▶ Play video

[slim thorn]

that's completely fair, I do think the core combat in Castle/Igavanias is just not as good as the Metroid-likes and the HK-likes

(mostly because a key part of that subgenre is the RPG elements, and you can't balance a combat system as tightly when you want to let the player use a hundred different weapons and thousands of equipment combinations)

I actually have Lodoss on my wishlist too, since I've heard good things about it, but I figured I'd just play the game and see if it was good enough to make me care about whatever extended franchise weirdness it's apparently connected to

[fresh bane]

That might be part of it honestly, I do really like to focus on the actual mechanics of a metroidvania, the movement, abilities, the combat, the exploration, and not also have to juggle stats and equipment and different weapons, at least not in the RPG sense of having multiple weapons
I think it's also just the general presentation I think doesn't let me fully immerse into a castlevania game for some reason, I feel like if I could be fully immersed in a story then I can look past not really vibing with the gameplay, like if Blasphemous played really badly I'm still intrigued by the presentation and the story and the artstyle so I can play through it, but for Castlevania games neither the gameplay nor the presentation engages me so I get none of that and I just start zoning out really quickly

which again it kinda sucks because I do think that visually and aesthetically the world and characters and everything is super cool, the music and the soundtracks are all great, so I wish I did actually like the games so I could experience all that

[slim thorn]

makes sense, (2D) Castlevanias are known for their consistently great art but they typically have a perfunctory story so it's probably not enough by modern standards

[fresh bane]

If they ever made a new Castlevania and it had like at least Blasphemous level presentation with voice acting and a few animated cutscenes and a more involved actual story (not just: let's kill Dracula) then I could see myself actually going through a Castlevania game probably, but I don't think Konami is interested in doing that and if they did something tells me it wouldn't be a 2D metroidvania anyways

[slim thorn]

which makes me curious what you'll think of Crypt Custodian; that's a simple and silly story, very unpretentious compared to most of the games mentioned here, but I was consistently engaged with the chill vibes of it all

[fresh bane]

I think Crypt Custodian is probably gonna engage me a lot with the mechanics that it won't be a problem, I just saw the trailer of it on the steam page and I liked it enough that I knew it was worth the purchase on sale

[slim thorn]

to be fair, Aria and RotN are like 3-5 steps beyond "let's kill Dracula"

heck in RotN I was actually able to figure out how to get the non-bad endings

like, iirc Aria is "zomg Dracula's castle" -> "which one of these five(?) mysterious characters is Dracula's replacement" -> ||"wait, I was the Dracula all along!?" -> "I must kill you because you are the Dracula" -> "don't worry, I will defeat the Dracula inside me so you don't have to kill me"|| ->

[visual hill]

even Doom Eternal will give you an option for super armor on respawn if you fail enough times

it did that during my TAG 1 playthrough, but I refused and won anyway

[slim thorn]

I think I made that sound dumber than I intended to but you get the idea

[fresh bane]

I probably expressed that wrong, Order of Ecclessa is also not just that and it's not like all the subsequent Castlevania games kept the same NES style of ''story'' forever obviously, but I guess for something like Castlevania I want a little bit more to really get me to engage with it because I already am not engaged by the mechanics and the game feel so I need that little extra oomph to get me to power through

for Metroid I don't care that Samus doesn't speak or that there's basically no conventional storytelling happening because... I like playing Metroid already

[slim thorn]

yeah, I still think it's fair to call those stories "perfunctory" since they occupy so little of one's attention and playtime and don't have any exceptional depth to unpack

mostly it was just fun to write out the literally exactly 5 additional plot steps

[river veldt]

im a big Castlevania 1 and 2 fan

[slim thorn]

you should try Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon then

CotM is basically "classic"/arcade/pre-SotN Castlevania but with a bunch of improvements, in the same way that RotN is basically metroidvania/post-SotN Castlevania with a bunch of improvements

(granted I've only played Rondo from that era, not 1 or 2)

[proud warren]

Spoilers for (sort of) deltarune chapters 3+4 spoilers

This happens when you score directly on the transition score going from one rank to another

[gaunt marten]

https://i.imgur.com/9LdJWJZ.png

No they haven't been, I just cleared the list manually

[cunning galleon]

Land yacht

[toxic seal]

Post from the founder of Unknown Worlds on leaving https://www.reddit.com/r/subnautica/comments/1lryw9o/what_is_a_wave_but_a_thousand_drops/

TL;DR He's sad he is leaving the company he founded and built from the ground up but has confidence the community and devs will guide Subnautica 2 to being a good game via early access as it did with every other game Unknown Worlds did with early access.

[hidden elbow]

Currently saving some money to get this cool thing

[visual hill]

Smashketball is fun (I'm the Slippy here)
we're doing a Smash Remix tournament this afternoon, focused on new content added in the 2.0.0 update

[quiet swift]

Tried that mystery fanatical bundle at 5$ to see if I could get the higher cost game. Turns out no, and only one game interested me, so i'm offering up keys for others. Poke me if you want em:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/251430/The_Inner_World/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/772430/Hero_of_the_Kingdom_III/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/896440/Eternal_Edge/

[cerulean herald]

I'd like Burst Fighter pls

[fickle garnet]

I forgot how much I liked SSBU

[bitter stream]

why do you enjoy it in particular?

[fickle garnet]

I like it because it's pretty easy to just jump in and enjoy yourself if you're not great at fighting games

[visual hill]

it's the least jank of all Smash games but I wish it didn't downgrade some of the tech from previous games so much

and some of my pet peeves (like not easily seeing whether you still have your double jump) remain unfixed in that game

technically, you can see it... if you look at your character and spot a tiny trail of smoke. Good luck spotting that mid-fight when you are meant to look at your opponent 😛

[fickle garnet]

It's the only Smash game I've played except the 3ds game

[visual hill]

that reminds me, I just saw this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sEO-vzyUaQ

we're having a Smash modding renaissance in 2025, lots of big updates for existing mods

and Brawlback (rollback netcode for Brawl/Project+) is making good progress right now

[fickle garnet]

The only DLC character I have is Sephiroth

[river veldt]

Banjo and Kazooie is my fave DLC character

[visual hill]

nuh-uh

[cerulean herald]

I still can't get over the Internet's reaction to Steve

[visual hill]

speaking of Banjo, I wanted to check out Conker again

I tried Live & Reloaded in xemu a few years ago but it was crashy, and couldn't get widescreen working (I did get 60 FPS working though)

Live & Reloaded is better than the original in some ways, but also worse in many (e.g. lots of censorship)

[river veldt]

they should put Rare Replay on Steam that would be badass

[visual hill]

very unlikely

especially with Rare not going so well lately, see the Microsoft layoffs

[river veldt]

yeah but it would be cool

[visual hill]

consider it done

(I'm playing the N64 original this time around)

[green fulcrum]

This game would never be made these days, lol

[visual hill]

Duke Nukem if he was a furry.

[visual hill]

lol, the idle flourishes in this game are quite the thing

[cunning galleon]

Damn girl went from 12 to 1,,got me worried

[fresh bane]

5head

[cunning galleon]

tic tac ttoe board

[fresh bane]

https://tenor.com/view/サクラバクシンオー-ウマ娘-ミニキャラ-かわいい-ダンス-gif-24011503

[cerulean herald]

uma musume if it was a musical

[dense crypt]

Smashing

[wind stump]

*UNWELCOME SCHOOL INTENSIFIES*

[dense crypt]

Theyre gonna arrive at the jewelry store and then get gunned down instantly /ref

[cunning galleon]

ms pink

[slim thorn]

temporal paradox detected

[wind stump]

you can slam me for playing Blue Archive all you want, but

1. The story is funni
2. The music goes fucking hard

(Guilty Gear reference)

[cunning galleon]

Don't worry, it fixed itself

This is her only win

Haru won once technically

But uh.. Against other retired horses

[wind stump]

Hoshino is a mood

(For context, she's the only third year in Abydos... Which doesn't mean much when there's a grand total of 5 members)

[cunning galleon]

Hoshino from chihatan????

[cerulean herald]

what characters r u maining at the moment

[wind stump]

Somehow I doubt that...

[chilly mural]

Sir, another gacha has hit the steam library

[wind stump]

am i talking too much about Blue Archive i'm sorry

[cunning galleon]

I love uma musume

I'm screaming for my horse girl to win

Strangely intense lol

[cerulean herald]

So she's like a girlfailure that desperately tries to look like a girlboss

[wind stump]

She's the Haru of Blue Archive

[gaunt marten]

I steal from Zamorak. Zamorak curses me with reduced stats and taking damage. Then I pray to Zamorak to restore my prayer points, allowing me to heal and get my stats back faster https://i.imgur.com/0hlsda4.png

[bitter stream]

How's OSRS been so far to play? is the grinding fun?

[cunning galleon]

I keep thinking of other characters

Haru for me is still Haru Fukuda not best girlfail

[gaunt marten]

I have autism, of course grinding is fun

I'm enjoying myself. Here are my stats https://i.imgur.com/KQvnD9Y.png and my skills. https://i.imgur.com/ImNUBtH.png

[bitter stream]

oh nice

[gaunt marten]

My goal is to make a million gold a day so that I can sustain membership indefinitely, but that won't happen until I first have membership so I can boost my gold earning. Until then, I need to make 16 million gold for my first membership bond

(Or spend 14 dollars for a month)

[bitter stream]

well, if you're having fun, that's good a goal as any

[gaunt marten]

Currently I'm at about 6m total net worth

In large part due to buying and selling items for profit

[bitter stream]

neat! what do you flip?

[gaunt marten]

I installed a flip tracker a couple of days ago

[bitter stream]

I suppose that makes sense for effeciency, does it just tell you what's low and thus easy to flip?

[gaunt marten]

No it tells me what I already flipped

Since I installed it, here are the most profitable items https://i.imgur.com/6e0z7H4.png

[bitter stream]

wow, nice

gosh, so much ore huh, the game is very different than I remember I guess with the market

[gaunt marten]

Iron ore is very quick to mine and popular with everyone since it can be made into both iron and steel

[bitter stream]

fair enough, Good luck on the grind to 16m.

[river veldt]

genuinely real

[wind stump]

me playing Blue Archive

[visual hill]

trying out Portal RTX again

with the latest updates (ray reconstruction + DLSS transformer model), the visuals are a lot more stable now

[slim thorn]

oh it's a 60 mb video, that's why my discord can't stream it

[visual hill]

it was 361 MB before I re-encoded it
I used game bar to record it, it makes huge files even though they are only 1080p (I'm playing in 4K)

but I told it to make large files to get the best possible quality, it's better to re-encode later to get more efficient encodes

(since real-time encoding is inefficient)

[slim thorn]

that gag is much scarier now that I actually have some tooth fillings

[visual hill]

uhh, something happened

I went into NVCP to force V-Sync on the game (can't do it in-game if using frame generation), and after restarting the game, this is what I got

[tiny wigeon]

My friend added a mod without telling me

[gaunt marten]

Is this the jumpscare one?

Yeah

I don't like it

[green fulcrum]

Oh come on, this is cheap. It's not even scary. If the mod really wanted to be scary it would jumpscare you with the Moon Lord or something, because at least that would be the right art style.

This mod is bad and its maker should feel bad.

[tiny wigeon]

I wasn’t to fond of it either, but it’s funny now. Keeps me on my hooves

[fickle garnet]

I think it's funny too

[tiny wigeon]

There is so many shitpost mods, I saw one while yesterday that just adds Chris Griffin as a painting.

[fickle garnet]

And I don't really think it's meant to be scary tbh, more just for fun

[gaunt marten]

It has a one in one thousand chance of triggering every second

Which means it triggers roughly every twenty minutes

[tiny wigeon]

1/10,000

~ 2.7 hours

It’s silly, I’m scared it’s going to trigger during a boss fight

[tiny wigeon]

I also have a texture pack to change all the vanilla npcs into ponies.

[fickle garnet]

Also, this last sentence seems unnecessarily mean. The creator most likely just made the mod as a joke to have fun with

[green fulcrum]

I was mostly referencing this scene from Futurama: https://youtu.be/4mcD5jd-RAU?feature=shared

But the parts above that last sentence are what I actually think about the mod.

It is cheap and objectively lazy the way it is.

[visual hill]

I can't stand lazy jumpscares, I always turn them off when possible (like Alan Wake 2 which added an option for it post-launch)

[gaunt marten]

Oh they changed it to 1/10k? That's good

[visual hill]

unless you are Doom 3 and can afford having a jumpscare that is so bad it actually becomes hilarious

[green fulcrum]

If it was a Terraria boss that jumpscared you, it would lose the laziness aspect because then at least you have to put in effort in designing the jumpscare yourself, but it would still be cheap for being a jumpscare ar all. Just tossing in a pre-made jumpscare from Foxy of all things is the very definition of lazy.

[visual hill]

I was made aware of this detail in Unreal yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTRTCfy6lvY

[river veldt]

that's fucking hilarious

[toxic seal]

Impossible

[visual hill]

Half-Life 2 RTX time

[tiny wigeon]

wow that looks great

i should take advantage of RTX more often now that I have an oled

[visual hill]

I'm playing on an OLED in a dark room with HDR, it's sublime

[visual hill]

I finished what's available so far (Ravenholm + Nova Prospekt)

[river veldt]

we dont go to ravenholm

[green fulcrum]

I love Ravenholm's name. That's such a cool name for a town.

[visual hill]

Ravens make anything sound cool

see the Ravenwest team in Race Driver: GRID

Raven Software too

[fresh bane]

I always found it pretty nuts that ''all'' old videogames really need to bump them up to modern standards is just better lighting, almost universally every time I see an older videogame, mostly ones that already try to go for a somewhat realistic artstyle, get some sort of remaster with better fancier lighting or some sort of RTX treatment, it almost always takes me a second to really tell if it's the original game or if it's just really well remade
Obviously not implying that it's perfect all the time, or that it's something that should be done systematically for every game, I just mean from the standpoint of thinking that it doesn't matter if your videogame doesn't have all the polygons, or the best most 4k textures ever, if the lighting is well done and convincing, then the game almost always looks really good

[visual hill]

the parallax-occlusion-mapped surfaces do a lot of heavy lifting here

a lot of what you think is geometry is just a well-made texture

[fresh bane]

(Of course it helps that Valve games just always looked really good too)

[visual hill]

raytracing makes self-shadowing on those surfaces easy, while rasterized games often skip self-shadowing on POM surfaces

(it's possible, but pretty demanding)

you can choose to use raytracing without HD assets, but I find it looks a lot worse here. Half-Life 2's texture quality has never been the greatest

[fresh bane]

I'm not even saying that it's like an RTX exclusive thing or something, I'm just saying that at least it's my impression after seeing this kinda stuff pretty often, that just having good lighting really does the heavy lifting when it comes to making a game look really good just in general, wether it's some ray trace tech or something else

like some 2010s games with heavy baked in lighting still look really good because of that

and then a lot of others didn't hold up very well

[visual hill]

yeah it's true, and Half-Life 2 benefits a lot from raytracing because its stock lightmaps are also pretty low-res (they aren't any more detailed than Quake 1's)

[slim thorn]

I think it's also that lighting systems have been probably the most important part of graphics that was heavily limited by technology for most of our lives

[visual hill]

2010s games in comparison have much higher-res baked lighting

[slim thorn]

there's not really much more you can do with texture quality, for example

[visual hill]

I think we reached a point around 2020 where blurry textures are mostly a thing of the past

[slim thorn]

yeah

[visual hill]

LOD pop-in is slowly becoming something of the past with Nanite and other microfacet-based geometry systems too

[slim thorn]

depending on your personal standard for "blurry" we may have passed that ages ago

it's just that lighting is maybe the only thing where "just" throwing more compute power (and using a system that presumes that much compute power) at the problem really does make it significantly better

if a game had texture or audio or model quality issues that's gonna be way more work

[fresh bane]

To be fair I don't exactly mean going insane with the lighting tech, that's why I say that what I'm trying to say isn't necessarily RTX-exclusive

the tech has gotten to the point where techniques and tech that is nowadays like, very ''standard'' is so much better than what we had before that even just like copy pasting an older game and only changing the lighting to anything modern is gonna probably really make the game pop a lot more

[visual hill]

indeed, it's possible for rasterization to do most of what Half-Life 2 RTX is doing

it's more work though, artists will either need to bake high-res lightmaps (takes a lot of time and storage) or place lots of lights that are meant to fake global illumination (time-consuming)

[fresh bane]

I guess a good example I can give is all those indie unity games with the fake PS1 aesthetic that still utilize 'modern' lighting, I think that's a good example of what I'm trying to say

[visual hill]

yeah, like The Big Catch: Tacklebox

[fresh bane]

the whole scenario of copy pasting an old game into a modern lighting engine is mostly just a fictional scenario to kinda illustrate what I'm trying to say, I realize that actually doing that would be an insane amount of work

[slim thorn]

I think another reason this works is that the vast majority of games want a lot of the same things from lighting. Dynamic shadows and specular highlights and subsurface scattering and all those other fancy features are often a plus even in highly stylized and unrealistic games where the models/textures/etc are much more obviously non-photorealistic.

[fresh bane]

or, well, depends on the game I guess

Yes a good example I think that is coming to my mind right now is something like the new Jet Set Radio I think

Like, even cel-shaded anime artstyle videogames are using fancier lighting than just super baked in basic, sometimes not even actually using real shadow lighting from like the PS2

I mean obviously much less cartoony aesthetic going on in the new one but I guess you can tell what I mean

...anyway all that to say RTX half life/portal looks pretty dope

[visual hill]

I remember the debate when PBR materials started being a thing around 2015, there were some concerns about it making development of stylized games harder

but in practice, it's not really that different from before, you will be using custom materials regardless

[slim thorn]

PBR?

[visual hill]

physically-based rendering

the roughness/metallic workflow, or specular/glossiness in Unity parlance

[river veldt]

very true. ive always loved the Source aesthetic

[fresh bane]

Yeah I'm looking this up right now because i don't know what that is too lol

[visual hill]

in short, it's what allows materials in 8th-gen console games onwards to look more realistic than before

(although there is one PS3 game that is notable for using PBR, The Last of Us)

it's called roughness/metallic because each material has an associated roughness map (which determines how rough the surface is at a given pixel), and a metallic map (which determines how conductive the material is - since conductivity affects how light reflects on the surface)