general gaming

[river veldt]

Far Cry 3 good ?

[random steppe]

It's good, gets worse halfway through though

And also it depends if you played other ubisoft games

It's a good formula if you are tired of the formula it's probably gonna get old fast since it's one of the first to use it

[river veldt]

ive never played one before

[random steppe]

It's the classic open world, liberate camps, climb on towers and ambush enemies guerrilla fighter simulator, the location is actually fucking gorgeous so it goes by well, the MC has absolutely zero charisma and is a player self insert with as fewer character traits as possible but the game is really well done IMO

[river veldt]

im mostly interested because im a big Michael Mando fan, i assume he's the main villain right ? since he's on the cover

[random steppe]

The full answer is kind of a spoiler so I'll just say that yeah, his appearences are the highlights of the story

He alone basically spearheaded the "charismatic villain" Far Cry trope that served the series really well for the next, IDK 10 years+ , so it's that good of a performance

[quiet swift]

Oh hey. Black mesa is 80% off.

[hushed onyx]

Isn't that kind of the point, you (the main character) are kind of the loser who no one would expect to do great things in the world?

[random steppe]

You can have underdog stories where the underdog has character traits or a personality

They don't need to be bland, I agree it's bland on purpose though, it's more so you can self insert in there, but still, it's fair to point it out it's not a character you are gonna think especially highly of

[hushed onyx]

It's more than that, from what I recall they have your big brother who is much more stereotypically someone who would thrive in this kind of environment...get shot and killed very early on so you're thrown back on your own resources.

[tiny wigeon]

I liked it, I've played 3 through 6, plus Primal and New Dawn

My rankings would be:
4, 5, 3, Primal, 6 , New Dawn

FC3 feels like a worse FC4 imo

I guess its more accurate to say that 4 is an upgrade to 3

all the Far Cry games are "one man army" games, which are my fav

I reallllly hope Ubisoft doesnt drop the ball with FC7 (whenever its announced). Otherwise I have a feeling the franchise will die.

[gaunt marten]

How do you feel about Dynasty Warriors?

[tiny wigeon]

I haven't played any, but I saw the ps5 remastered announcement, i didn't think about it much

is it something I should try out?

[slim thorn]

I assume Flitter mentioned it because they are "one man army" games, in the sense that the player character slaughters a ludicrous number of enemies solo

although the gameplay has little in common with Far Cry I think

[gaunt marten]

Yeah

I don't think the new iterations are very good

[random steppe]

I heard the last one that came out is alright

I haven't checked though

[green fulcrum]

That's about how most people would put them, yeah. Although some wouldn't even include New Dawn because it's technically non-canon.

[random steppe]

I like 3 a lot more than what I played of 4 and 5 (haven't finished either) personally

[tiny wigeon]

I feel like FC hits very close to the perfect sweet spot in protagonist strength

[random steppe]

But also, it might just be that for me the formula was old by the time I got to 4

[slim thorn]

that seems likely

[random steppe]

Open World kind of became way too ubiquitous at some point, while it was still pretty rare when FC3 came out

[tiny wigeon]

a lot of people also played 3 before 4, and because of that, like 3 more

[slim thorn]

within Far Cry itself, 4 was after all only the 2nd take on the "modern FC formula"

[tiny wigeon]

I personally played 4 first, so i may be bias

[slim thorn]

I haven't played the games myself but I've watched enough opinion pieces on them and related games to say that it seems pretty clear 4 is mostly just a better 3

[random steppe]

I played quite a bit of 2 too

[tiny wigeon]

yeah the ||superpowers at the end of the game|| were cool, but felt a little out of place for a FC game

[random steppe]

So by the time I got to 4 I was kind of done with the formula

2 had the absolutely genious idea of giving you malaria and having you micromanage the condition.
That said, I did like the weapon durability system with weapons jamming sometimes if they are poorly mantained, I kind of wish they did that with enemies too.

[river veldt]

malaria ????

[tiny wigeon]

and thats just a difference between us, even after playing all of the games, I would have no problem playing them all again

[tiny wigeon]

i havent seen anything of 1-2, but that sounds super annoying

[slim thorn]

FC 1 and 2 are very different beasts from 3+

[random steppe]

I think 2 is close enough

[tiny wigeon]

which is why I havent given them a second look really

[river veldt]

is it a Fallout situation where they're completely different genres

[random steppe]

Most of the gameplay formula is there, even if done not as well

[slim thorn]

it's not, the gameplay is superficially similar

but FC2 wants you to suffer, and FC3+ are power fantasies

and FC1 I forgor

[river veldt]

ah

[slim thorn]

although I personally suspect if I played FC2 myself I would just say "Spec Ops was better"

[random steppe]

FC2 does want you to suffer but most things are pretty manageable, that said, there is one thing that is pretty annoying and is probably the main reason I never finished it.
Reinforces for enemies come so often and so fast that you could set a clock on the every 30 seconds jeep full of more militants that comes and crashes right into your vehicle as you are having a gun fight.

[tiny wigeon]

what the heck LOL

compound interest gunfights haha

[random steppe]

Yeah the game is really weird, they clearly just made it time based and not even variable

You don't notice it at first but after a while it's impossible to not notice how evenly the encounters are spaced

[visual hill]

FC1 is developed by a different studio, it's proto-Crysis

[quiet swift]

4 is definitely among the best, but I have a liking for 5 because of, well, how eerily prescient it feels and how it... doesn't feel too far fetched?

[visual hill]

it's good but difficulty/rare checkpoints can be frustrating, especially in the late game

[slim thorn]

thaaaaat's right, that's why I don't remember it as a distinct game

[visual hill]

it's the only Far Cry I've finished so far

[quiet swift]

I mostly remember Yahtzee reviewing it for the protagonist having metaphorical massive cojones

[visual hill]

FC1's story/cinematics give it a B-movie feel, which is funny because you never know whether it's intended or not

although it does self-reference this fact at some point, so maybe they knew how it was going to come across

also, fun fact: FC1 code leaked a few years back, I spotted someone on GitHub working on creating a source port for it (which runs natively on Linux)

[quiet swift]

...man, it must be an ancient video because i'm struggling to find it. That, or I'm thinking fc3? or was it baked into the same review...

ah, no, it was the crysis review, referring to far cry's 🪩

And that review still has my favorite description of a "beast" gaming PC

"Of course, with amazing graphics comes the inhumane treatment of processors. Crysis is apparently designed for some kind of hypothetical future computer from space. I played this on a brand new gaming PC resembling the monolith from 2001, constructed from magical obsidian by the proud dwarves of Middle Earth, and it still chugged when things got busy."

[slim thorn]

I've heard that running OG Crysis on a modern PC gets weird because Crysis' guesses about hypothetical future computers were only partially correct

[cunning galleon]

The goat herself

I just need Nozomi now

[quiet swift]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyTS-gfwcJQ

...that is an unfortunate thumbnail?

[gaunt marten]

What's wrong with it?

[quiet swift]

Swastika? I believe the tilted version like that is the negative one

[cunning galleon]

Yea it's the tilted one

Hakenkreuz is different from the religious Swastika

[gaunt marten]

I don't even see any swastikas in the thumbnail

[cunning galleon]

Rightmost person

[gaunt marten]

Oh! On his forehead

Thanks

Yeah this guy looks like a typical nazi stereotype

[cunning galleon]

Neo-nazis do have targets- i mean, tattoos of it on their head!

-# I am not in anyway affiliated with filth

[minor plover]

I once worked for an organization that had swastikas on display which was pretty awkward ||it was a museum with a WWII section and lots of "the Nazis were definitely the bad guys" displays and videos||

[cunning galleon]

The nazis were pretty bad but not all Germans were nazis and not all Americans were good guys

I wanna go to a cool museum someday

Maybe even bring a plush of Kay

[random steppe]

Is that a spoiler for WW2?

[fickle garnet]

Is that still in spoiler period?

[minor plover]

it's a spoiler for "had us in the first half not gonna lie"

[fickle garnet]

Tru

[quiet swift]

https://www.techpowerup.com/341464/eas-new-owner-plans-ai-pivot-to-significantly-cut-operating-costs-report I am jack's complete lack of surprise

[quiet swift]

Hm. Question for you all. Dunno if it would happen, but under this new ownership, imagine that EA's non sports-related IPs would be sold off since they'd not be used. Who would you want to see get C&C, that would be able to actively work on it? (short of say, the original team from the 90s rejuvenated)

[gaunt marten]

Pocketwatch Games

[light gate]

They won’t get sold individually, they’d probably be like absorbed by sections towards some other entity.

If bankruptcy occurs.

Like we have ips that are stuck in other companies that never even knew they had.

[bitter stream]

is Relic still around? they do AoE 4 and seem to do a decent job there, so probably them for C&C

[light gate]

You mean Petroglyph, because they're the Ex-Westwood developers?

idk what Relic is doing these days, after Homeworld 2 I kinda just forgot about them.

[light gate]

Also this will make me abort my pre-order because I can see the immediate enshitification... so that's cool.

Goddam it, BF6 Beta was so fun but now I'm extremely skeptical what will happen in the long run.

[gaunt marten]

Steam autumn sale is up

Did anybody play these games? Care to review them?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/898890/Endling__Extinction_is_Forever
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1546710/Vernal_Edge
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1709730/Beyond_The_Edge_Of_Owlsgard

Steam

Endling - Extinction is Forever

Will a mother fox manage to keep its little cubs alive?

Experience a world ravaged by mankind through the eyes of the last fox on Earth in this eco-conscious adventure.…

Price

$4.49

Recommendations

2261

Metacritic

75

▶ Play video

Steam

Vernal Edge

Welcome to the Kingdom of Haricot.
Years ago, the land took to the sky, becoming a mysterious series of floating islands, where the power-hungry Church of Aloe now rules with an iron fist.

Enter Vernal, A young woman bent on finding her estranged father. With the help of some abnormal martial prowess and an amnesiac automaton named Chervil, Sh…

Price

$4.24

Recommendations

445

▶ Play video

Steam

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard

Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard is an old-school point & click adventure game that is reminiscent of the animated movies and Saturday morning cartoons of decades gone by. While it is obviously inspired by the LucasArts and Sierra classics, it also strives to create its own style and identity by returning to the original “adventure” aspect of th…

Price

$4.99

Recommendations

224

▶ Play video

[wind stump]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5IryFKpXDo

[visual hill]

@quiet swift did you see https://store.steampowered.com/app/3884520/Blood_Refreshed_Supply/ 😛

Steam

Blood: Refreshed Supply™

Blood: Refreshed Supply follows Caleb, an undead gunslinger on a quest for revenge against his former demonic master, Tchernobog. Despite his once powerful position as a fearsome Cabal commander and one of Tchernobog’s “Chosen” few, Caleb and his fellow Chosen are betrayed by the dark god and slain for reasons unknown. Seeking answers and…

Price

$24.99

Release Date

Dec 4, 2025

▶ Play video

I did a quick search and I don't think it's been discussed here

[orchid sundial]

this is a strange question but does anyone here have a hacked ps3 system? i ask this because from january 2015 to january 2018 they had mlp ps3 avatars you could get, and most of them are lost. if you bought any mlp avatars from the time period i mentioned would you be able to dump those edat/pkg files for preservation?

[visual hill]

I don't, I haven't had a PS3 around for a while now (I believe it's at my parents', or my brother's). I last played on a physical PS3 in 2013 or so, maybe once in 2015

[orchid sundial]

i think the avatars were only available in the usa too

[random steppe]

Huh I played that game

Like, at the time

[quiet swift]

Endling is rather hard, there's a fair bit of repetitiveness since you have to return to a den a bunch of times as you explore zones with the limited time you have, and the ending is eeeh

[quiet swift]

Ah, a remaster

[frozen gate]

no site it's archived on?

[orchid sundial]

there's some on archive.org but its not all of them

[frozen gate]

oh sad

[wind stump]

gayming

[cerulean herald]

man i remember playing jetpack joyride

[wind stump]

I do in fact, enjoy to gamble.

[bitter stream]

oh no! you've been captured by the Cloverpit

good luck

[green fulcrum]

Surprised Nintendo is that low. Granted, they have a lot of anti-consumer shit, and they hate emulation, but I don't think the opinion of them overall is soured that much. Certainly not to the extent of Ubisoft or Blizzard.

[uneven epoch]

presumably the comic logic distates its current opinion

and, well. z-a dlc

[slim thorn]

it depends on whether you mentally separate Nintendo the company from Nintendo the developer

everyone likes devs, everyone hates publishers/"companies"/etc that seemingly just get in the way of devs just deving and players just playing (because when they do their job well you never hear about them)

[unreal idol]

Its CAD, the author is a numpty

Also what the fuck that's CAD

I'm used to Buckley face 8^U

[wind stump]

I think he ended the "story" at some point because you know
Loss

surprised he's even still making webcomics after that but eh

[river veldt]

:.|:;

[visual hill]

a lot of webcomic artists seem to hang on for surprisingly long, even if the comic becomes way less active

[river veldt]

wtf they added vanilla item descriptions ???? to Isaac

[visual hill]

funny, that was mentioned in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk3S3o1qOHo as a parallel to Balatro's design problem

but yeah, it happened at some point, somewhat recently

"FAFO" game design can be a hard sell in a roguelike, given the consequences of death

[wind stump]

Like...
Vanilla items in Isaac now tell you what they do?

[river veldt]

like you don't need a mod anymore for the game to tell you what the item does before you pick it up

[proud warren]

you still need to get to mom at least once since the update came out

it's still not as in depth as the mod, but hey, at least you can use it online/during daily runs

[smoky sonnet]

and you need to have collected the item before

[dense crypt]

What does FAFO mean

[cerulean herald]

Fuck around and find out

[gaunt marten]

Thanks

[gaunt marten]

https://i.imgur.com/Ey7bZ2Q.png Steam no longer shows the review graph by default. I wonder why

[rancid herald]

they were getting complaints that the pages were too graphic

[green fulcrum]

You joke, but they probably were getting complaints from big name studios like Gearbox who were getting a ngeative rep from Steam reviews.

[rotund forge]

Can Just Dance be considered an exercise game?

[green fulcrum]

...Technically? Maybe?

[rotund forge]

Actually now that I think about it, Dance Central 3 had a K Cal meter with a fire symbol next to it. So a calories burner tracker

and speaking of Dance Central 3, it has the most tonal whiplash final boss ever

[cunning galleon]

r e p a i r simulator

[little badger]

Gamepass price has increased

[bitter stream]

what are they adding actually worth 50% more money?

[astral steeple]

ULTRA BASED XBOX

[bitter stream]

hmm, interesting though that's pretty expensive per month

[astral steeple]

I mean its somewhat more worth it now

Though I'm just kinda confused how this will work for people who already are subscribed to fort crew who also use game pass ultimate as well

[bitter stream]

no idea, I assume you can end one and just use the gamepass ?

[astral steeple]

Hm

[bitter stream]

but idk how that works on Epic's end

[astral steeple]

Oh this also means you'll get rocket leagues rocket pass too

Since that is included with crew

Even more worth it lol

[little badger]

Differences

[bitter stream]

interesting, so there's 3 different groups of games across gamepass

I guess CoD will be Ultimate only

I wonder what ends up where

[sacred grove]

me who would rather buy individual games and have some semblance of longer-term ownership

[grim stirrup]

i mean, it used to be worth, when a year could be less than the price of a AAA game

when you're essentially paying for like 3/4 of a console a year for it though, thats a different story

[astral steeple]

Microsoft has stated that the Fortnite Crew being included in Game Pass Ultimate (Starting November 18th) is "just the beginning of Xbox and Epic’s work together toward an open gaming ecosystem where friends can play and create together, anywhere, across devices."

🤔

[sacred grove]

Not that it'd be feasible for me anyway. I'm a Linux nerd, so I wouldn't want to lock myself into game pass in the first place

[cunning galleon]

Has Xbox always did cloud gaming? That's very cool imo

[little badger]

For a few years but it’s not the best

[visual hill]

yes

[visual hill]

GeForce Now is way ahead in quality and features

[visual hill]

as the Minecraft anvil says: Too expensive!

[astral steeple]

I mean from what I played of the recent star wars game and indiana jones game on cloud gaming on my Xbox one they ran really good and there weren't any issues at all

[uneven epoch]

https://www.tumblr.com/thiscatdraws/796143924445151232

[bitter stream]

these are really cool

[fickle garnet]

Xbox game pass ultimate is now $41 a month Canadian, which is like $500 a year wtf

[river veldt]

omg i love all of these but the LttP one especially

[fickle garnet]

Ngl, this makes me want to cancel my game pass subscription. The higher price really isnt worth it to me

[bitter stream]

yeah fair enough

it really is a lot

[little badger]

Everyone is cancelling gamepass

[fickle garnet]

I dont blame them

[astral steeple]

Idk

All these benefits seem super worth it

[cunning galleon]

Okay i will cope

[astral steeple]

Plus they have the lower tiers of game pass itself too

Obviously the ultimate one is gonna cost the most and have the most benefits overall

[little badger]

I know you get fortnite crew and Ubisoft but it will only get more expensive

[astral steeple]

I usually just let my game pass ultimate renew each month anyways

Have since 2019

[fickle garnet]

Not for me. Ubisoft + classics has nothing that interests me, and I already have Fortnite Crew (and am contemplating cancelling it)

[little badger]

I do have ultimate on Xbox and premium on PlayStation but I do still buy games I prefer physical

[slim thorn]

as someone who has never had gamepass and hasn't touched my consoles in many years

what are the differences between current gamepass and this proposal for you, besides price

I did read the marketing images above but most of it is, well, vague marketing speak that means nothing to me

[bitter stream]

well, normally you get the 400+ games on any tier of gamepass

now it's restricted to the super tier

plus they are adding a delay of 1 year to new games

Presumably for CoD sales

[fickle garnet]

Ultimate just now includes Ubisoft + classics, and the Fortnite crew subscription. I've also been thinking of cancelling game pass for a bit now, so this just might make me do it

[visual hill]

a big issue with Game Pass is that it doesn't work on Linux, and its GDK-based ports are inferior to Steam or EGS versions (due to linking against a different SDK, making them incompatible with a lot of mods). These are a dealbreaker for me

[little badger]

It won’t be long before they make a statement

Or backtracking it

[visual hill]

(yes, EGS versions are a lot more mod-friendly, and also DRM-free in many cases where Steam versions aren't)

[bitter stream]

what are you basing that on?

[fickle garnet]

Yeah, modding game pass games on pc is quite frusturating sometimes

[little badger]

Well the website has crashed because everyone is cancelling

[bitter stream]

I don't know how many people that actually is, given only Microsoft has the data

They may look at it and backtrack, or they may just carry on, like they did with the XBOX series X price hikes

they did another announcement about another price hike recently

[little badger]

Sone of the in game perks are good but Hopfully they change the value of them to make them better because of the price change.

[bitter stream]

A series X used to be 700 AUD here, then they raised to 800 AUD, now it's 850 AUD, and presumably going to rise again if the changes in American pricing reflect h ere.

[visual hill]

Xbox Series Y 😛

[bitter stream]

lol

[little badger]

What about Xbox series C

For calinou

[fickle garnet]

The only things i've been using game pass for lately anyways is wolfenstein, and hollow knight

[slim thorn]

this feels to me like a "we were running at a loss, and we've got as many customers that way as we're going to get, so it's time to raise prices into profitability with whatever portion of the audience will tolerate that" situation

[visual hill]

I wonder if it'll end up like Tumblr (or Yahoo! more generally)

i.e. the company is still around, but a shadow of its former self

[bitter stream]

for the XBOX brand ? maybe.

[slim thorn]

i.e. they're almost certainly expecting cancellations, so it would take something like 10x more cancellations than expected to actually move the needle on their decision-making

[bitter stream]

it's a shame, as a machine I kinda like the Series X, but I didn't pick one up because I don't need it with a PC. Now it seems way way overpriced for what it is, even with backwards compatibility

[visual hill]

the Series X was really attractive at launch, not that I want to play on a console personally

it dwindled over the years as studios put more effort in PS5 versions, which sell way more (and therefore, less in Xbox versions)

[slim thorn]

I've felt that way about a lot of consoles. But no console can really compete with PC on the "PCs last more than one console generation" aspect. Even when you need to buy a new PC, that generally won't break your existing PC games.

consoles only made sense to me way back in the 00s when a majority of games worth playing were console exclusive

(as in actually console exclusive, not the modern marketing dilution of "console exclusive" that means "our console and PC, just not the other guy's console because screw them")

[bitter stream]

yeah. I guess only nintendo has console exclusives that actually stick there

unless you emulate, i guess

[orchid sundial]

I just found out about the xbox game pass price increase

xbox continues to dig its reputation deeper into the ground

[slim thorn]

indeed, even with Nintendo's switch exclusives, we're still talking about de facto paying hundreds of dollars to play a game I care about on an itty bitty screen with a controller I like less, which is a hard sell even if that game is Metroid Prime 4

[orchid sundial]

and somehow, they made it worse this time because fortnite decided to become involved! and fortnite ruins everything it touches! in my opinion at least.

[astral steeple]

lol

Not even

[slim thorn]

it certainly commercializes everything it touches, because that's the whole reason it touches anything

[bitter stream]

up to and including Daft Punk. cool to see in-game, but weird

[astral steeple]

I mean yeah

Part of the whole ultimate digital playground lol

[bitter stream]

I know it probably pays the rights holders really well, but It's wild to be 360 no-scoped by Miku with her "Porche TM" car and her "Powerrangers TM" Gun

[slim thorn]

and the kinds of gaming experiences I personally care about tend to be on the opposite extreme of the monetization/commercialization/etc scale

[visual hill]

during covid, consoles were attractive because they were cheaper than a graphics card upgrade and had comparable power

this argument is long gone now: consoles are more expensive than they are at launch, two new GPU generations have come out since and the PS5 Pro is overall underwhelming (many games run worse on PS5 Pro than PS5!)

[slim thorn]

makes sense, though the longevity question still applies there

[bitter stream]

Does the PS5 have backwards compatibility now days for PS4 games?

[visual hill]

yes

[fickle garnet]

Imo Fortnite has just turned into a soulles husk meant to drive sales and engagement though letting you buy your favourite characters/celebrities

[visual hill]

the PS5 Pro is technically the best console to play old PS4 exclusives

but I'm hopeful ShadPS4 will save us... eventually 🙂

[bitter stream]

oh interesting, I do have a copy of Bloodborne that'd be fun to play at higher framerates

though.... a PS5 Pro is like, way too much atm.

maybe when PS6 comes out, ps5 pro's will hit something approaching reasonable pricing

[astral steeple]

Kpdh, scooby doo, art the clown, the black phone, Jason vorhees, huggy wuggy, and ghostface all in October alone is wild lol

[bitter stream]

Yeah, it's as bad as MtG is atm

Original MtG worlds? barely heard of them WotC churning out more IPs than they can hold

[astral steeple]

lol

[frozen gate]

huggy wuggy? that thing from that uh

[bitter stream]

It's good the gameplay holds up well enough for Fortnite

[astral steeple]

Poppy playtime yes

[frozen gate]

wild i thought poppy playtime would have run out of steam by now

[visual hill]

it's kind of like the Switch 2 right now, given the relative lack of exclusives that are really good/worth the admission cost

[slim thorn]

does a fortnite appearance indicate a thing has run out of steam, or is the timing usually just random

[visual hill]

we do have Switch emulation, but it doesn't work well on every exclusive out there

[fickle garnet]

I've barely been playing Fortnite lately, cus it just hasn't been very fun

[unreal idol]

Do what now

[bitter stream]

Context of this statement: MtG's gameplay is in a very weird state atm, where people play more Commander (100 card singleton) than the core game (60 card 4x copies).

[slim thorn]

"Poppy Playtime" is a horror game

[astral steeple]

Sometimes the collabs have been to promote something and other times they're just random

It's like super odd

[unreal idol]

Oh

[bitter stream]

Fair enough, there's heaps of other FPS games out there. I wish BF6 hadn't, ya know. been sold off

[frozen gate]

i assumed theyd normally only get something in there when it's popular but i have no idea

[fickle garnet]

There's nothing odd about it, they're just trying to make money and drive sales

[frozen gate]

i did figure poppy playtime absolutely annihilated itself when it made parts of it nfts

[astral steeple]

There was the binding of isaac collab recently too

[frozen gate]

oh ya

[fickle garnet]

Will that affect Battlefield 6?

[frozen gate]

i think there's been leaks of how epic picks these things i guess and it's just a massive list of what they think kids might like or is cool

[bitter stream]

Maybe not immediately, but if they dont' squeeze it for MTX cash within 6 months, I'll be surprised

[frozen gate]

mario was on there but like good luck lol

[astral steeple]

One collab could be to promote something new coming out like beavis and butthead or squid game, or it could be random and out of nowhere like daft punk where it was a celebration of their music etc or mighty morphin power rangers where nothing new was really happening with the ip and it got put in

I guess it mainly comes down to what all companies agree to be put in

Like nintendo overall has wanted their stuff in game but only on the specifics of it being locked to switch and only being usable and visible etc on nintendo

Would show up as a default on other consoles

So epic said nope

[bitter stream]

@slim thorn Not sure if a 40 minute analysis on the current MtG sets art, legal issues and general culture is of interest, but here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNGowvILFXo

It goes over the Spiderman set, the mirror set made for digital, and the troubles there in as well as artistic considerations of branding, companies selling copies of IP and such

[slim thorn]

ok that's a super interesting detail

[astral steeple]

Samus was originally planned back in 2020

When master chief and kratos got put in

The bounty hunter season

Then nintendo pulled that so epic declined on finalizing it

[unreal idol]

Probably for the best

[astral steeple]

They got really hung up on their characters showing up on platforms that weren't their platforms... They would be thrilled to have Nintendo characters in Fortnite, but just only if it's on their platform... For me and for all of Epic, we’re like, ‘That is an absolute must. We want to make sure that Fortnite is the same experience, no matter what screen or device you're playing on.’”

From a interview with Donald mustard

[slim thorn]

sometimes "creative differences" are a reasonable disagreement instead of a euphemism

[astral steeple]

I bet if that deal had gone through without the restrictions link might have shown up after lol

[visual hill]

imagine Fox as part of all the furry bait skins 👀

[unreal idol]

Gamepass costs more than one of the systems lol

[astral steeple]

So many nintendo characters they would have probably done yeah

Krystal would have sold immensely as a skin lol

[cerulean herald]

I'm glad I got the free gamepass before all this went down

[unreal idol]

Microsoft really shot themselves in the foot

[visual hill]

Mr. Game & Watch skin for the competitive advantage (you're invisible from one side)

[astral steeple]

lmao

Princess peach and daisy skins

[wind stump]

me

[hushed onyx]

lol, yeah. Krystal would have slayed.

[worthy rose]

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/s/dwGt4qQGEX yikes

[astral steeple]

Idk

The benefits are pretty good

That seems like super worth it overall

Like even the boost on ms rewards Is great

Normal ms rewards helps pretty often

So having it boosted saves you More money too

[random steppe]

I think the best usecase for gamepass is paying like, one or two months a year and dedicate that month to play all the stuff weren't quite interested in enough to outright buy but they are worth it if you'd bundle them together for the price to play them once

[light gate]

Ehh, its too expensive for what’s worth.

[random steppe]

IDK I occasionally buy a month and I usually play like, 50-100 bucks worth of games during that

And I cancel until 6 months later

[light gate]

I rather buy something and play it on my own pace than feel pressured to play because I have to pay another month.

I just don’t have that time.

[random steppe]

I don't think it's likely worth it to have it active all year for sure

(that's like, 2 games)

[astral steeple]

I guess it helps that I have a 5tb external drive so I can keep a bunch of Games installed on my xbox one at all times

I still have like 3.3tb free currently

[light gate]

I still don’t have any storage module on my ps5, besides me finding a 256gb thumbstick for a failed project and using it for PS4 titles.

[astral steeple]

This is the one I use. Bought it a few years ago for like 100 dollars

[slim thorn]

tbf most of the stuff in that list is so vague I have no idea if it's of value to me

the memberships I strongly suspect don't matter to me because I don't play any multiplayer games, and if they include game licenses I care about it's probably stuff I bought already

[light gate]

Honestly, Sony and Microsoft need to make multiplayer free if the industry is gonna keep increasing game prices in general. Adding more games and ‘benefits’ isn’t gonna get me rushing to buy a service.

At least NSO is cheap as hell to play online yearly.

Either cheap the service for online play, or make it free.

[astral steeple]

I mean at least with xbox you always had to pay for multiplayer even in the 360 days

Now at least you don't have to pay for the multiplayer on free games

Just paid games only

[fresh bane]

but what if I don't want any of that and I just want a game

[light gate]

I pay ONE DOLLAR A MONTH for iCloud 50gb because its like… the only storage I need for stuff I want saved on the cloud.

The only reason I even have that is because its dirt cheap. If it increases to like $7.99… I’d probably cancel.

So for online, paying 10 bucks a month is annoying because you already pay for your ISP.

Paying annually ten bucks I can digest.

A lot of economy of scales tbh.

[astral steeple]

Then you don't subscribe to it lol

It's just for people who want the extra perks

Plus they have multiple lower tiers on it

The ultimate just happens to be the most bang for your buck

[light gate]

The lower tiers seem like a rip off tbh.

[astral steeple]

Plus the addition of crew into game pass helps if you actively play rocket league and fall guys too since you get the rocket pass included and there was leaks of the fall guys pass being put into crew as well

So that saves money for people actively playing those games who might not play fort itself

[light gate]

That’s assuming if you play them.

[astral steeple]

So it's a win for certain people who play on xbox and have ultimate

[light gate]

Certain folks for sure I guess.

[astral steeple]

Plus for people who do play fort itself crew straight up gives you the battle pass and 1000 vbucks every month

So even more money saved

By not having to buy the pass each season every few months

[fresh bane]

Right, sure, don't subscribe to it, but when they're changing the previous tiers as well and when they're adding a bunch of useless stuff that a lot of people don't care about to the tiers that are more worth it you can't really say ''just don't subscribe to it'' because at that point the people that were fully into gamepass are now fucked unless they want to fork over the extra money for ''benefits'' that they're never going to use
They already did it once when there was only the one good tier for gamepass and the other one was still called xbox live, then they did it again like a year or two ago, and now they're doing it again, and at some point you're gonna be paying 20 bucks just for the ''essential'' tier and get even less benefits, I read that they even increased the price for the PC tier with no added benefits. The answer should be less to ''just not buy it lol'' because at the end of the day everyone wants something like gamepass to be worth it for everybody and have the best value it can but now it just isn't if you wanted one or two of those perks that are now not available on the lower tiers but you get a bunch of unnecessary perks that you're gonna have to pay for anyway instead of making them optional for example

[eager bane]

I didn't follow the whole conversation above, but here's my two cents.
A few years ago I loved Game Pass for it's cheap price, and the ability for me to try out new games I wouldn't have otherwise as a casual gamer. Since about a year and a half ago, I went back to buying games on steam instead as it's just not worth it to me anymore at that price tag, and the games that interest me the most usually don't come to game pass.
I very rarely subscribe for a month to play a specific game, but veeeeery rarely.

My image of Microsoft also shifted dramatically when they started closing studios and firing ponies.
I suppose it makes sense given it's just another publicly traded company at the end of the day, but man...I was a year long Xbox fan and now all I can say is f* em

[visual hill]

pretty sure it won't happen, the ship has sailed in 2013 with 8th-gen consoles all having paid multiplayer

you know things are screwed when Nintendo has the cheapest online by a wide margin

[eager bane]

Buy more indie games, folks!

[visual hill]

work on that backlog too 😛

[fickle garnet]

I genuinely think I'm going to cancel my game pass subscription, cuz imo, it's not worth $41 a month

Microsoft is just continuing to be shitty

[astral steeple]

My main gripe with game pass ultimate is they got rid of the year long version you could buy

I'd much rather just have that renew each year

[fickle garnet]

I refuse to spend $500 a year for game pass

[astral steeple]

Though it's weird cause they still sell the 3 month codes for 60 dollars lol

On Amazon at least

So like I guess technically you can get it cheaper if you buy those instead of renewing it each month?

[slim thorn]

don't worry, I preordered the latest installment of famous indie series Silent Hill /s

[astral steeple]

Ngl the only games I've ever pre-ordered were the tony hawk remakes lol

1+2 and 3+4

Then I did buy pacman world repac day one and the glover port for xbox one day one as well

[random steppe]

There are few situations in which I preorder, and those are usually when I'm sure I want to play a game even if it's bad.

Like, there is no world in which I didn't play Silksong, even if it came out horrendous, I'd have to experience it anyway.

(nevermind there wasn't a preorder option for that one, I'd have preordered it if there was)

[fickle garnet]

I don't like to pre order games anymore, not after Star Wars Outlaws

Pre ordering that was a mistake

[slim thorn]

yeah, we talked about Silksong not having a pre-download option at the time, and it probably did lead to me playing it a few hours later than I otherwise would have #firstworldproblems

but it is funny that for so long the narrative was "never preorder anything" and nowadays with some digital games there is a genuine reason to do that, if the game offers pre-downloading when you preorder it

[random steppe]

I do think that TC should have had a preload/preorder option

Also I don't like much that they didn't give out review copies

That was weird

[slim thorn]

(also most of the joke is that, by many of the metrics and trends we use to compare "AAA"s to "indie"s, Silent Hill ends up coming out on the indie side per modern trends despite clearly being AAA )

[teal sonnet]

This new gamepass is more expensive than Netflix Premium

what in the actual

per year is almost the price of steam deck

[unreal idol]

When is the next steam sale?

[gaunt marten]

There's one right now

In the future just bookmark https://steamdb.info/sales/ and it will tell you

If you're only interested in the big two, they're at 18 December — 5 January and ~26 June — ~10 July

[unreal idol]

That's weird, Hollow Knight isnt showing up

I guess it doesn't appear to be on sale

[gaunt marten]

It's not on sale, yeah

might be for christmas

[unreal idol]

Lame

[gaunt marten]

Like I said, the summer and winter sales are the big two where games are more likely to be discounted for more

[unreal idol]

Hopefully I'll be in a good spot to buy it then

[gaunt marten]

SteamDB says this about Hollow Knight:

Price seen 15 times, last on Aug 25, 2025 (last month)```

[unreal idol]

That doesn't seem right. Its current price is $14.99

[gaunt marten]

This is for my region

[visual hill]

Hollow Knight is probably not on sale because of Silksong

[gaunt marten]

Each region has a different price set by the developer

[visual hill]

gotta get that revenue on the OG game while the sequel is hot 🙂

[gaunt marten]

It actually went on sale specifically for silksong!

[visual hill]

ah, I forgot

maybe it's because the recent sale was too recent then

[gaunt marten]

Yeah

https://i.imgur.com/pZrsRK7.png

[unreal idol]

Guess I'll just have to wait for the winter sale

[gaunt marten]

Basilisk jaws are a 1/1000 chance to drop from Basilisk knights, which are one of the slower enemies to kill in the game. I got very lucky and one dropped after 153 basilisk

[little badger]

BO7 beta gameplay

[bitter stream]

wait, are you playing a character instead of a generic soldier?

[little badger]

Yeah a main character from the campaign

[fickle garnet]

I played some of the beta. It's fine ig

Not amazing, just okay

Pretty much just Black Ops 6 with a fresh coat of paint

[toxic seal]

Hey what's good on sale on Steam right now? Itching for one or a few new things

[wind stump]

a sea person... called Suwam...

[frozen gate]

i played atelier rorona recently and that was fun, the whole atelier series and each trilogy should still be on sale rn

it put all its eggs into the gameplay basket so it doesnt look particularly amazing, maps are just hallways and enemy designs and all are very basic, and there's very little story while the characters stay as comfortable tropes and move the plot forward at the minimum

but the crafting/gathering aspect is genuinely very in depth and engaging and it frustrates me that it's not been done in another grander jrpg

and it's apart of that whole "cute girls doing stuff" anime theme if ur into that

[frozen gate]

so it's entirely about time management and learning how to use item synthesis in the most efficient manner possible, things like crafting a bunch of items in bulk is better for maintaining quality and traits but it wastes a ton of days to do so

you collect those better materials by going out exploring, sometimes you'll need to go back to craft a bomb or something to open a new path, that kind of thing

[frozen gate]

Intravenous 2 is also on sale if you want a game that's basically top-down Splinter Cell, like a genuine stealth game with a light meter and scroll-wheel to control ur runspeed and all, or Hotline Miami depending how you wanna play it

IV2 has the entire first game as a dlc so i feel it's better to just get that rather than start with the first

story is again p terrible tho

i love it otherwise

[visual hill]

Talos 2 is at a good price right now, but if you wanted the remaster of the first game, it was cheaper to buy 2 weeks ago than today

[quiet swift]

black mesa is like 5 bucks

[river veldt]

good game

[green fulcrum]

I don't play FPS games (unless you count Minecraft), but trust me on this, Black Mesa is good shit

[toxic seal]

I also got Ghost of Tsushima

[river veldt]

i think the original Half Life is still better but Black Mesa's extremely good as well

[toxic seal]

I hear you can pet foxes in it

[slim thorn]

oh, any particular reason? (I know BM overdid the Xen levels but HL1 underdid them so I think that evens out)

[river veldt]

mostly an aesthetics thing, but i also think some of the level extensions go on a little too long (even excluding Xen)

[green fulcrum]

Really? Most people loved the Xen levels from Black Mesa

I still get chills from the Xen trailer

That is how you get your audience hyped

[slim thorn]

oh, I've consistently heard people say the BM Xen levels are too long (despite them being good otherwise)

[river veldt]

they're super duper pretty

[green fulcrum]

Strange, I've never heard of any length issues

[slim thorn]

#1032716748887179434 message
#1032716748887179434 message
#manechat message

3 examples is probably enough

fairly sure I've heard it from youtubers as well but I have no citations handy on that front

[river veldt]

#1032716748887179434 message

lol

[slim thorn]

ironcially I found you saying Xen was too long but you were talking about base HL1

[river veldt]

ugh even thinking about base game Xen makes me annoyed

that factory level is fucked

[visual hill]

I agree, BM Xen would be more fun if it was half as long

[visual hill]

Blue Shift Xen is decent in my book, mostly because it's a short stint

[slim thorn]

the funniest part is I think one of those messages I linked has a GT shrug emoji on it

[green fulcrum]

Yeah, it does, but I don't remember the message, lol

[slim thorn]

happens to all of us

[green fulcrum]

Frankly this whole year has just been like that meme where the guy has his opened at 3 AM, blinks, and when he opens his eyes again it's 6 PM.

[quiet swift]

Xen levels of black mesa are fucking gorgeous and really well made. But if HL1's mesa to xen ratio was like 80/20, Black Mesa's ratio feels like 40-60. Xen HUGELY overstays its welcome

[slim thorn]

that's unironically been my life in Silksong week and Silent Hill f week because I consciously chose to abandon all semblance of sleep cycle to play the game more

[bronze abyss]

i just started playing noita and on almost all runs i died from my own spells when trying them out

[cunning galleon]

guh

garupan

ez sealclubbing

[slim thorn]

did he just reference the Dashcon ball pit?

[cunning galleon]

hey siri cue as the world caves in

[bronze abyss]

i did not get there in time

[cunning galleon]

mine

[graceful bridge]

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/call-of-duty/call-of-duty-cheaters-arrive-day-1-to-the-early-access-black-ops-7-beta-much-to-the-fps-communitys-dismay-this-cant-be-happening-already/

[little badger]

That streak is going to get nerfed

[wind stump]

Oof. https://discussions.unity.com/t/unity-platform-protection-take-immediate-action-to-protect-your-games-and-apps/1688031

A security vulnerability was identified that affects games and applications built on Unity versions 2017.1 and later for Android, Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. There is no evidence of any exploitation of the vulnerability, nor has there been any impact on users or customers. We have proactively provided fixes that address the vulnerability, and they are already available to all developers. The vulnerability was responsibly reported by the security researcher RyotaK, and we thank him for working with us.

Wanna shoutout RyotaK for being a real one and letting Unity know

[bitter stream]

yeah I heard abotu this regarding V Rising

[random steppe]

Oh that's why Hollow Knight updated today

[wind stump]

[visual hill]

hype!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw8zyKdyQsQ

[wind stump]

[rugged flax]

[arctic fern]

https://youtu.be/V40dAClI0d4

[wind stump]

HOLY FUCK

[quiet swift]

I remember playing this on my voodoo 3dfx 2000... (or 3000?)

[quiet swift]

https://www.theverge.com/news/792032/discord-customer-service-data-breach-hack

Oh look. The exact thing everyone predicted!

[gaunt marten]

That's not what people predicted

Discord doesn't even store photo IDs from age verification

The IDs taken are from customer support, which is a different process that would be there regardless of whether discord did automated age verification

[river veldt]

these types of reviews always crack me up

[cerulean herald]

they played another ~100 hours after the review

[cunning galleon]

A rolls royce armored car i made!

[gaunt marten]

https://i.imgur.com/o0wi67B.png

[wind stump]

yea that unity thing is a bitch, huh

[graceful bridge]

GOG has some really good deals going on right now. The Robocop game that came out last year is jut $5.99 US.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/robocop_rogue_city_alex_murphy_edition

[wind stump]

100% success rate!

[wind stump]

Damn, I just started too...

[slim thorn]

would anyone be interested in watching me stream Expedition 33 if/when I played that

[random steppe]

Depends how busy I am but I might tune in if I have the chance

[cerulean herald]

I would also hop on, when possible

[frozen gate]

a lil cuz im curious what the game is like

ive been out of like gaming feeds so it felt like it came up suddenly and im hearing a lot of "JRPG of the year" comments about it

[slim thorn]

it did come out of nowhere, though that's kinda par for the course with beloved indie titles; no one's watching them until their first hit

[orchid sundial]

knowing how I've been summoned to jury duty I've been wondering if I should buy the ace attorney games

[random steppe]

I don't think that would help but that just struck me.

[quiet swift]

What ixrec said. There'd been some trailers and such a year or so ago but it didn't make waves until its release. Basically, think a turn based combat in JRPG style, but you can also dodge/parry during enemy turn instead of just sitting there and taking the hit. Built in unreal 5 engine so it looks awesome, and has a FANTASTIC story and characters

[random steppe]

It would be fun if there was a game about being a juror

Or someone that has in general the role to decide if someone is guilty based on a trial they look at and a set of laws

[quiet swift]

Dunno if I'd watch the whole way (busy with stuff and all) but I'd definitely want to see reactions to key moments

unrelated: Gamedevs: "The fuck we supposed to do?"

[slim thorn]

I mean

obviously it depends on the original game

[random steppe]

Terrible question

They should 100% have separated the narrative and gameplay in that question

And ask those separately

I feel like it's split so evenly because most people want qol changes to gameplay but want the narrative untouched

(I'm one of the few that actually like even big changes to narrative as long as they are good changes, even though they are pretty rare)

[slim thorn]

tbf I think everyone wants good changes, that's just so subjective

(and I don't think gameplay or narrative changes are any less subjective than the other, at least in the general case)

and in a lot of games those aren't two cleanly separable categories

[random steppe]

Maybe it's just personal experience, but I do find that most people love the narrative in the games they remember pretty unconditionally

While gameplay is often a lot more "well, it came out in 2006, you know"

[slim thorn]

yeah that's gonna depend entirely on genre

e.g. a lot of classic Nintendo games barely have a plot and are remembered entirely for the gameplay (or at least the world design enabling the gameplay)

[random steppe]

There are exceptions but in gneeral if we are talking about broad strokes (and we are since it''s a general survey) I feel like the two questions would have very different answers

That is not to say that there arent gameplay purists like Nire tends to be

[slim thorn]

there will definitely be people who say yes to one and no to the other, but I'm not sure how meaningful that would be

the more we generalize the question the more we include so many cases where all of the answers are situationally right

[random steppe]

Speaking personally, I know I really don't care if they want to modernise the gameplay of any game they remake, story also I don't mind changes but even I am more way about them.

[slim thorn]

I do think this is gonna come down entirely to which games the individual has played remakes of or would want a remake of

there's been plenty of remakes that made questionable changes to story, or to gameplay, or both, and to games where one mattered more than the other

there's also the "you can just play the original" issue; for some games that's true enough that there's no harm in controversial changes which are good for some players, e.g. I like everything about RE2RE, including the stuff Nire doesn't, and it's easy to emulate OG RE2 so that's basically a non-issue

[visual hill]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-cTsKzY230
The Nameless Mod (a big Deus Ex mod) is getting a content update 16 years on

[glad girder]

is there anything else I should pick up from the steam sale?

[river veldt]

Doom Eternal is only 3.99 which is a steal since it's the best game ever

[glad girder]

I'm debating doom eternal because I'm not sure if I'm feeling the doom itch right now

[rugged flax]

Elite Dangerous + Odyssey is less than $4 right now and ED:O has so much gameplay potential for only $4.

[random steppe]

That's a steal

Great game, I need to get back to it seriously

[smoky sonnet]

$2.49, holy shit

and i had like $1.80 in my steam account from cards lol, that's insanely cheap

[mossy flume]

Mass Effect Legendary Edition is also on sale for $6, normally $60

[smoky sonnet]

yeah, i've been eyeing that for a long time because it's on sale so often, but haven't been in the mood for those games so far

[random steppe]

If you grab it, grab Odyssey, it's definitely worth it, since they are adding a bunch of new ships you need it to have access to

And a new colonisation mechanic also tied to the expansion

[rugged flax]

rumor is that FDev is also cooking on something big soon, too

[smoky sonnet]

nah, $2.49 for deluxe which includes it

[smoky sonnet]

and i only paid 64 cents. fantastic times we live in.

so yeah, definitely go pick this up, anyone who's even slightly interested

[random steppe]

Oh you are correct

2.50 is insane

[bronze abyss]

So much yappinng about it that i decided to buy it

Is it viable to play vr?

[random steppe]

I think a few people here run a mlp themed squadron

Check the E:D thread

For VR I heard it's very good for that, fully supported, but also I never tried it so I can't really tell you

[cunning galleon]

hey its not only me that has bad driving

[quiet swift]

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/nightingale huh. Still an early access game but they've already put it as a free game on epic. That's one way to get a bit more cashflow (from epic themselves...)

[rugged flax]

discord.gg/spacehorse

Tell them Manechat sent you. The ENF are friends.

[sacred grove]

I bet they talk a lot about ships

[wind stump]

playing Click to Continue be like:

[fickle garnet]

Ooh Alan Wake 2 is free with PlayStation plus this month

[slim thorn]

nice

[fresh bane]

still no Steam release

[glad girder]

I got a few things

[river veldt]

Half Life 2 and Portal are so good

[quartz pawn]

Yes, it's really fun in VR. It's how I normally play.

[slim thorn]

aside from Switch exclusives, I think Alan Wake 2 and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown are the only off-Steam games I've gotten... since before it was trivial for indies to publish on Steam?

[visual hill]

the Croc remaster is a GOG exclusive

[fresh bane]

Good, glory to GOG /s

actually now that I think about it the Dino Crisis remasters are GOG exclusive too

Resident Evil as well

[visual hill]

Jazz Jackrabbit is also only sold on GOG, not even on EGS despite being an Epic megagame

[hushed onyx]

Homeworld: CataclysmEmergence is also GOG-exclusive, same with Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire.

Though I guess those might not count because they are properly old games.

[grave tide]

Damn, Anno 1800 feels so good

17 hours in 2 days

[slim thorn]

gonna start E33 soon, will stream in Quiet VC

[visual hill]

how much resolution is too much resolution? (Expendable's settings in the launcher)

[robust latch]

how did you get access to the Vegas Sphere screen

[hushed onyx]

Jupiter Brain stuff 😛

[gaunt marten]

It's on the switch and coming soon on steam

[river veldt]

ok fine, Ixrec's gameplay in vc convinced me. i'll get Expedition 33 when i can

[quiet swift]

[cerulean herald]

[river veldt]

im getting mixed messages on weather or not it runs good on Steam Deck, does anypony here have the game and an SD that theyve played it on ?

[quiet swift]

Yes and yes but I had it on gamepass so I cant try it on the deck. I believe it'll run, but 25-30fps ish at times unless you go to really low graphics and at that point you are doing yourself a disservice

[river veldt]

hmmm

[mossy flume]

Expedition 33 is pretty great

[slim thorn]

granted I'm playing it on potato graphics on my laptop since getting the full 30fps is pretty important in combat

[cerulean herald]

33 fps is the ideal framerate

[toxic seal]

Inb4 the remaster in 2033 released on March 3rd with a special 33fps mode

[rancid herald]

please god, make this real

also what is expedition 33

[slim thorn]

if that's a serious question then it is genuinely impressive you have escaped all the peer pressure to play it

[rancid herald]

it's... both?

it feels like one of those things that everyone praises but never explains why they're praising it

[slim thorn]

I feel like that happens a lot with RPGs since story is often the primary focus and you don't want to spoil it

[fresh bane]

It does feel like that doesn't it, and I even watched a playthrough up until like... maybe a bit before the middle of the game, before that I was fully on the dark about the game and I honestly didn't keep up with watching that so I didn't get that far

[river veldt]

if those were potato graphics then im fine lol

[fresh bane]

but it's hard to explain why I think people love this game so much by saying anything other than ''it's really good''

[rancid herald]

I guess it's a bit like trying to explain apple pie

is it apple pie, or pumpkin pie?

[slim thorn]

but Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a semi-turn-based RPG from French devs with gorgeous visuals about a world partway through a fantastical technicolor apocalypse and one of the titular expeditions still trying to prevent it

[river veldt]

mmm pie 🤤

[slim thorn]

I'm not sure you can "explain" it more than that at a high level

[fresh bane]

E33 is in this weird realm of modern videogames where lowering the graphics settings usually really doesn't make the game look any worse, at least going from high to medium as if you went from performance to quality

[slim thorn]

something something art style beats fidelity

[rancid herald]

I feel, as a moderator, I can't use a reaction image. But, if I might engage your power of imagination, it sounds like that meme of the guy going 'it's art!!!!!'

[slim thorn]

it sure is

[fresh bane]

It's just that the higher settings ''refine'' the visuals at such a small level it's really just imperceptible at this point

I mean we all saw that PS5 Pro comparison where they had to reeeeeally zoom into some details to show why it's totally worth to get that one

[slim thorn]

I did not see this but it sounds funny

[rancid herald]

only 10% off and still like 58+

awful

[slim thorn]

but yeah it's interesting that E33 handles potato graphics much better than Silent Hill f did

[rancid herald]

there seems to be this bad problem with some big games where it's like the developer can't be assed to optimize anything

[slim thorn]

performance is such a complicated beast that, unless I'm willing to whip out the profilers and benchmarks myself, I'm very hesitant to speculate about specific causes

I also just have no idea how projects like this decide what their target player hardware is going to be

[fresh bane]

I don't remember if I saw a Digital Foundry video or if it was some random hate video, but I remember seeing a video somewhere about how horribly unoptimized E33 is especially when it comes to visuals

[rancid herald]

I just come back to things like Jak and Daxter being able to run a seamless world on 3 mb of ram or some bullshit due to really clever programming and today's games are like 'you need 1 tb of ram'

[fresh bane]

I just remembered that since the words optimization and E33 were part of the topic

https://youtu.be/Ls4QS3F8rJU?si=JpO0EqRmL3QJf8r0

it was this one

[slim thorn]

tbh I've heard enough claims about "bad" performance on games that had good performance for me that I don't really trust any random sources on that topic any more

but no one agreeing on what standards to use is probably part of the mess

[fresh bane]

I mean my personal philosophy is that sometimes, games are gonna be running on string and duct tape and if it works for you then hey it works, but I'm sure that something like E33 being in the middle of a AAA release and an indie game has some optimization issues for sure, I'm sure people that actually know a lot about game engines and 3D and optimization will probably find a myriad of issues in E33

....but if it runs well for you then hey it works!

[quiet swift]

It's a turn based game JRPG style, but you don't just 'take hits' during your turn, you can dodge and parry and get rewarded for doing so correctly (timing). So the combat is great.
Characters are fantastic and feel very very real, especially dialogue-wise (and very much so compared to jrpg). The story's writing as well is just so damn good.
World is absolutely fascinating, and gorgeous.
And the OST? Fucking phenomenal

[river veldt]

is E33 indie or aaaaaaaaaaa

[fresh bane]

sure the insides may be held together by hopes and dreams but it works!

[river veldt]

too many a

[fresh bane]

It's AA

[river veldt]

ah

[rancid herald]

canada should make a game and call it eh eh

[quiet swift]

30ish 'core' team, then about 30-40+ more from outsourced studios and so on. But yeah, very indie

[toxic seal]

The soundtrack is probably my favorite part of E33

[river veldt]

oh yeah wasn't the music made by a guy from Fiverr

[fresh bane]

The early footage for E33 is very interesting to look at

It's super bare bones

[quiet swift]

Not quite

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/2r1kl4QxEtY?si=7xA_Q8OqFmxTd6We

Text to speech for character's voice lines

[quiet swift]

So the studio boss went to a very obscure french game dev forum which might/might not have been purely for music purposes, I don't know. Posted something about looking for someone for a game.
Composer was just happening to be browsing either that same day or very close, says he's interested, posts his soundcloud link which had only one track on it. He'd also never composed for a game before.
Boss liked what he heard and the rest is history

(and that forum since has died and disappeared)

[river veldt]

inch resting

[toxic seal]

I remember a long time ago seeing early Hollow Knight stuff put on Reddit and people said "Ah just another bland uninspired metroidvania. Not gonna fly. You should go back to your day job."

One Silksong later

[fresh bane]

''This will never catch on''

[quiet swift]

And the same person also shit on silksong later

[fresh bane]

It's such a weirdly shitty thing to say too because even the most niche games will usually have some modicum of success anyways even if it's not Silksong/HK levels

Maybe your ''uninspired'' survival horror indie game isn't gonna become the next Silksong but whatever make it anyways maybe 500 people will like it, that's a lot of people!

[cerulean herald]

yeah this wasa the post #1032716748887179434 message

oh u beat me to it

[quiet swift]

[fresh bane]

Pseudoregalia is kind of the most recent example of that I can think of, but I think Pseudoregalia has gotten more and more popular especially since Ixrec and i first played it when it came out years ago

...mostly because of furries

[rancid herald]

furries?

why so

[fresh bane]

wonder if that guy (OP, not the other guy) is still active, must be crazy to see the reception to Silksong as the friend of one of the creators

[river veldt]

because the main character is furry bait

[fresh bane]

The main character is a voluptuous goat-bunny-cat with no pants

but she's pretty cool too!

[cerulean herald]

-# i wanted to use the I'm Not a Furry sticker but i guess discord's sticker system is completely broken right now

[slim thorn]

being in GDQs might also help for a game like Pseudoregalia where the uniquely great movement system is the biggest appeal

[cerulean herald]

yes thank you

[river veldt]

i gotchu

[fresh bane]

not a furry
looks inside
fur
hmmmmm

[fresh bane]

Yes and that's kinda why I mentioned it because it sits in this weird in-between of 'got really popular' but also didn't get crazy worlwide popular

[slim thorn]

Crow Country feels like another game that’s easy to look at one screenshot of and assume it’s rubbish despite being the best thing in that niche in ages

[fresh bane]

It's popular, but only in specific circles, but that's good enough anyways!

Oh yeah Crow Country as well

[slim thorn]

Yeah none of these games needed to “go mainstream”

[fresh bane]

Signalis actually was also like this very early on, but then a year after release it got crazy popular
which is weird it took that long for it to get that popular

back when Signalis had just come out and we were playing and talking about it really not a whole lot of people were into it

[quiet swift]

Anyway @rancid herald , the bottom line of E33 is just that it's phenomenally good

[slim thorn]

I suspect games where the story is the main draw need time for that word of mouth to kick in

[river veldt]

i can't help but read popular in anton egos voice from ratatouille

he says it in such a weird way

[rancid herald]

I see

[arctic fern]

Sold!

Also I thought this was an interesting vid: https://youtu.be/ZGidbPEP0Jw

[green fulcrum]

Game plays at 60 FPS: "Perfect game, no notes."
Game plays at 59 FPS: "Major performance losses, unstable, unpolished, clearly rushed to hell, the devs doesn't deserve your money for this garbage."

That's what a lot of gamers and performance reviewers often sound like. Not all of them, but many of them.

[hasty patio]

I will give one out for that:

• When games are huge, unoptimized, and expect you to brute force through problems via better equipment.

[green fulcrum]

Ah yes, the Gearbox and Bethesda method

(And early Cyberpunk 2077 before they fixed the issues for the most part.)

[wind stump]

Should I tap the screen?

[rotund forge]

No, it will disorient frend

[wind stump]

i submit all to The Button

[rotund forge]

Whatchu playin

[wind stump]

Click To Continue

[cunning galleon]

Wonder if thorium is the most efficient power source in mindustry

[quiet swift]

https://www.gog.com/en/game/crysis_remastered_trilogy ...well this came out of nowhere?

[bitter stream]

has this got the original maps?

i'll take alook

nah, it's the console port, remastered

not the PC original ( also available on GOG)

[visual hill]

it was already on Steam, but this adds a DRM-free way of getting it

[bitter stream]

ah, that is good

[wind stump]

FUN IS MANDATORY

[teal sonnet]

With microsoft killing gamepass

I everyday respect even more Steam art of doing absolutely nothing and winning

[slim thorn]

"never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake"

though to be completely fair, I don't think Steam offers an online matchmaking service?

[visual hill]

they do, with SteamNetworkingSockets

Valve's own games also use extra services (inventory, game coordinator), hence them being listed separately on https://steamstat.us/

[slim thorn]

neat

[frozen gate]

also explains items going down occasionally when you play tf2

with the inventory thing

funny

[visual hill]

I tried that fabled 977485160 x 1869762652 resolution and no, it doesn't work

(a RTX 5090 can't create a framebuffer more than 16384x16384 last time I checked... or maybe 32768x32768)

[bitter stream]

rip

[bitter stream]

Sales are the wallet killer,
Sales are the micro transactions that bring about bankruptcy.
I will face those Sales. I will permit it to expire. And when it has gone past I will look back to see what I missed. Where the sales were there will be no losses, Only I will remain.

I don't need more games, right?

[quiet swift]

[bitter stream]

I saw a cool indie title on Youtube and now I'm like, "Surely one more extraction shooter"

How bad could it be? I'll find time, surely

like with PREY, and Fallout 4, and FNV, and F76, and Quasimorph, and...

(I ended up barely playing these games, even though I like them)

[river veldt]

oh yeah Prey

i have that

[bitter stream]

It's really good! I just, got part way into it, stopped, and then never went back

[frozen gate]

what is an extraction shooter?

[bitter stream]

hmm, Typically an FPS though TPS exist too. You go into a Zone or area, loot up gear/items/consumables, and try to leave with it while fighting Monsters/Enemies/Other players along the way.

I'm using a very broad version of the term

Typically they are leaning towards hardcore, permadeath experiences, but to me, Fallout is an example because you

Save --> Explore a zone--> and have to get enough loot to fund another adventure and leave alive.

There are in-betweens of course.
Zero Sievert is a top down, 2d version of this concept, with save games and opt in perma death, as the default saves each day you survive

[cunning galleon]

Extraction shooters are mostly realistic, like tarkov

[cunning galleon]

Sometimes the goal isn't the loot, it's to extract alive

[quiet swift]

Prey isnt called an extraction shooter, as far as I'm aware

Immersive sim, that's the word

[bitter stream]

Sure, PREY isn't one in it's campaign, but the Mooncrash DLC is basically that, with roguelike elements

Go into the Moonbase, get enough gear to leave, fight monsters.

Again, I'm using a very broad definition of "Extraction Shooter".

the indie game I was looking at, however, definitely falls into the category even when strict: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2941710/Project_Silverfish/

Steam

Project Silverfish

Project Silverfish is an immersive sim, FPS where you rely on your own wits and diverse sets of tools and weapons to survive!

Venture deep into a hostile and mysterious exclusion zone to hunt powerful artifacts, fight horrifying creatures and descend deeper into lost, cold-war era dungeons!…

Price

$29.99

Recommendations

1723

▶ Play video

[slim thorn]

interesting, I think I played Prey before that DLC existed (or I might've ignored it because multiplayer, who knows that long ago)

[bitter stream]

It's PvE only, I don't recall there being multiplayer, though there was a prop-hunt mode or something

[quiet swift]

See, that feels more like an extraction shooter

[bitter stream]

The mooncrash DLC trailer is really fun though haha

[visual hill]

ah yes, furry Stalker

I don't think Stalker classifies as an extraction shooter, it's more of an immersive sim that happens to have a more open world than usual for the genre

[bitter stream]

hmm, the gameplay seems pretty similiar to me, and Tarkov and the like were influenced pretty heavily by Stalker and it's mechanics

[visual hill]

definitely, extraction shooters extract a lot from Stalker's formula and translate it to multiplayer

[bitter stream]

yeah, I suppose that's a usual defining characteristic of some games. Though I think Zero Sievert probably qualified as a PvE extraction shooter with no multiplayer

It's got most of the mechanics, including timed raids, time to loot, weight, crafting benches as you complete tasks, etc etc.

[quiet swift]

"Generally extraction shooters have these: you choose your equipment before a mission, you go there and grab loot, you either extract with loot or die and lose everything you've equipped."

That's the description of it, but that can be broadly used to describe any FPS, honestly

But I see it more that E S are just 100% built around that loop - whether you are extracing loot, or yourself. So stuff like Tarkov and so on obviously fit, and then also I would say Payday, Left 4 Dead, and stuff like that

[frozen gate]

left 4 dead mention

[quiet swift]

Prey's dlc fits, but not the base game itself

[slim thorn]

yeah, this feels like a genre I just don't play so I have no feel for where to draw the fuzzy line

[bitter stream]

[frozen gate]

though id feel like i wouldve heard that definition for l4d since i spend so much time with it

[quiet swift]

I don't either. But I think Marathon is trying to be one?

[bitter stream]

Marathon is a standard modern Extraction shooter, though it happened to steal it's art style, and also fail to be fun lol

[frozen gate]

l4d just isnt as defined by its gear as the horde stuff

[cunning galleon]

Extraction shooters you typically have a storage system to keep the loot

[frozen gate]

i call those "horde shooters," payday and drg and whatnot

[bitter stream]

That's a fair point eoN, you tend to have a main base or setup to store loot, and then choose what to bring in on the next attempt

[cunning galleon]

In L4D2 you kinda don't you're just given the loot and it's always the same, if you die in the match you don't lose everything you equipped if you could literally just find it in the safe room again or somewhere else

What would make L4D2 an extraction shooter is if it isn't a campaign and you have a storage system

[bitter stream]

What do you think of Fallout, say Fallout 4 in this sort of thing eoN?

[frozen gate]

my explanation wouldve just been that l4d doesnt have enough diversity with its gear to have its identity based around that

the progression is pretty like standard too, no t2s until after the first map and t3s occasionally spawn for limited use, more like powerups

[cunning galleon]

Is fallout 4 an extraction shooter?

[quiet swift]

But then we're going into semantics to filter what falls under the "extraction shooter" definition, which as I mentioned can be really broad if you relax your understanding of what defines an extraction

[cunning galleon]

Don't think it counts if you're still at risk in your base, in extraction shooters no one is able to kill you when you're in the main menu

If fallout 4 is an extraction shooter then so is dayz

[quiet swift]

(tl:dr I took issue with prey being on the list and now am being pedantic )

[cunning galleon]

For me and from my understanding an extraction shooter means after extracting you're no longer in the game world and you're safe

[bitter stream]

fair enough eoN. hmm,

I think it fit my purposes well enough to put PREY, Fallout 4, and the like under extraction shooter, because that's the same gameplay loop even if it has additions like quests and story.

[frozen gate]

im just figuring it's based on vibes, like i have no idea what an immersive sim is but i understand thief is under that label

my thing with fallout is that it's basically a CRPG masquerading as an FPS like bethesda had been doing for a while with Elder Scrolls so i had that idea in mind already

[cunning galleon]

Fallout 4 is open world isn't it?

Like you're not confined to one location

[bitter stream]

Yeah, you can explore, and have limited places to put up bases

[quiet swift]

Liv: that also can be a broad term but I feel it tends to be FPS games where the high-paced, team based, precise shooting is NOT part of the game.

It's that's specific kind of FPS where it's more about the vibes and story of the setting than the combat, so immersive is more about how you're immersed in the setting

Case in point, google suggests this list. Prey, Dishonered, Deus Ex, Bioshock, System Shock

Those are all a very specific type of first person game. Shooters technically, but they feel different than say, Half Life or Doom maybe

[frozen gate]

the thing is like, thief and dishonored are hella different from cruelty squad, deus ex, etc, bioshock iirc is in a really confusing spot where i hear both yes and no for it

[slim thorn]

the core idea with an "immersive sim" is that most problems have multiple valid solutions, often including creative emergent solutions

[frozen gate]

system shock had more RPG elements too so that's more confusion

[slim thorn]

so it's easy to see why that leads to no one agreeing on what counts

but historically this has typically taken the form of FPSs with RPG elements that allow for at the bare minimum both a shoot-y solution and a stealthy solution to most encounters, often also an RPG-like dialogue solution

[quiet swift]

Can't talk about cruelty squad but nah, having played DE, Dishonored and Bioshock, I can definitely see how people label them the same way

https://store.steampowered.com/app/388860/Judas/ also really looking forward to BIOSHOCK IN SPAAAAAAACE

Steam

Judas

A disintegrating starship. A desperate escape plan.

You are the mysterious and troubled Judas. Your only hope for survival is to make or break alliances with your worst enemies. Will you work together to fix what you broke – or will you leave it to burn?

Judas is a narrative FPS developed by Ghost Story Games, a studio led by Ken Levine, C…

Release Date

Coming soon

▶ Play video

[slim thorn]

it's easy to see how Dishonored scratches that itch, though it feels like a borderline case since it's almost explicitly 2 solutions at all times lol

[river veldt]

Bioshock is so good because it's underwater

i want to live in Rapture

[slim thorn]

personally I feel Bioshock just doesn't count, it has RPG elements in the upgrade system but basically every encounter is shoot stuff, the choices are "just" with what weapon

[quiet swift]

To be fair, that's most games isn't it? does this make Mass effect an immersive sim?

[river veldt]

wait i forgot Rapture was a

objectivist ???? paradise

[frozen gate]

but Thief is p widely accepted under the ImSim label, came before SS2 so p early on, same devs, and has no RPG elements and much too heavily discourages the fighting solution

[slim thorn]

mostly no, because Mass Effect rarely offers a choice about which set of mechanics applies to which encounter; almost every firefight can only be a firefight, almost every dialogue tree can only be a dialogue tree (even if there's a firefight at the end of one branch), etc

but yeah you can see why this is a very squishy definition no matter how you slice it

[frozen gate]

actually Dishonored was a spiritual successor to Thief tbf

[slim thorn]

honestly this is my first time hearing that Thief was an "immersive sim", I've always heard it just called a stealth game

but yeah nobody is ever going to agree on what that genre term means

[quiet swift]

Hmm. How about Cyberpunk? I know there's some hard locked fights but there's very much different solutions to a lot of stuff

[quiet swift]

Same with extraction shooters, I think

[slim thorn]

I'm just articulating A meaning that I'm personally used to that at least manages to describe something interesting enough to be worthy of a genre label

[river veldt]

that new Indiana Jones game has immersive sim elements

[slim thorn]

the whole "RPG got diluted into nothing" history probably also affects the immersive sim term

[bitter stream]

yeah, RPG mechanics cross-pollinated with everything,

[slim thorn]

where you really get that immersive sim vibe are when the "solutions" to an encounter are significantly more diverse than just shoot or sneak

e.g.:

• you can talk the guard into letting you in with a high persuade skill
• you can pick the locks on the back door
• you can distract the enemies with an explosion and run in
• you can just shoot everyone
• you can find an angry NPC and convince him to shoot everyone for you
  and so on

that's the kind of variety of options I expect from a game like the original Deus Ex, which is what defines the term to me

[quiet swift]

...Does this make Baldur's Gate 3 an immersive sim?

[bitter stream]

sure, it's basically DnD right?

[slim thorn]

yeah you can see why "historically this takes the form of ... RPG elements"

[frozen gate]

crpgs and imsims will be fighting a lot

[slim thorn]

especially as RPGs get more and more realtime elements

a serious attempting at defining immersive sim is probably going to throw "real time" in there somewhere

[frozen gate]

i think like

90s pc games in the west were very like

into having massive amounts of player freedom

[slim thorn]

but I suspect it's mostly a historical coincidence that FPS+RPG hybrids were the first combination that went for this particular flavor of real-time freedom

you're right, being (then) PC genres is likely a factor in that history

[frozen gate]

yaa

bg3 does go back to like bg1-2 by the guys who made dragon age

[frozen gate]

oh and crpgs had been having a revival about the same time as imsims did afaik i think like

there's probably just a lot of crossover

[slim thorn]

yeah I'm very familiar with the Bioware RPG history and the CRPG revival, despite playing maybe 2 of the games in it lol

[bitter stream]

It's difficult to come up with a "strict++" definition of Extraction Shooters, because there's a lot of different ways to implement the same gameplay, even though i suppose, the common view is

"A game with EFT-like mechanics with regard to timed raids in a zone, loot to extract/objectives to extract with/do in the raid"

The shooting part could in theory be optional, Dark and Darker is a fantasy medieval combat version of EFT, for example.

PvPvE is the typical buzzword you'll see on advertising for games like that

But that's not a strict thing either,

See stuff like the defunct "Cycle: The frontier" for an attempt at constant on servers with individual raid timers per player.

[visual hill]

it sold much too well to be an immersive sim

[frozen gate]

being reminded that square gutted thief because they wanted a massive success

dishonored wouldve been thief 4 otherwise

[river veldt]

how is thief

good ?

[frozen gate]

my favorite game, pure stealth approach though so

a lot of patience and waiting for guard rotations

the first one does have more "action" segments that are like tomb-raiding kind of almost-horror with zombies but for most people those were the misses of the game, which is why 2 is purely about the heisting

[river veldt]

ah

[frozen gate]

yaa

the level design is the biggest part of it

multiple entries and approaches to whatever you're trying to do and it drops you in a level to figure pretty much the entire thing out, navigating on your own

[river veldt]

im not big on stealth, i'm more of a rush in and smash things type of guy

[frozen gate]

it's vv tense bc it's heavy on sound design and its soundtrack is entirely brooding ambience

yaa

this wouldnt be the one then haha

if you imagine MGS as your idea of stealth then this is like 10x slower paced

[river veldt]

i imagine the Arkham games

[frozen gate]

well not that MGS is very slow paced i suppose, but you get the idea

ahh

yeah just like, a looot more waiting around and slow movement basically lol

[fresh bane]

I still want to play Dishonored 2, it's been on my to-do list for a long time now, I managed to get Dishonored 2 and the dlc for like 9 bucks last year or so but I haven't gotten around to even installing it, I remember being crazy about the first one when I played it for the first time around 2018

[river veldt]

ah i see

[fresh bane]

The good thing about Dishonored is that you can approach the game in whatever way you want

[river veldt]

well im glad you like it liv :3

i do want to try MGS someday though

[frozen gate]

i think it's worth

mgs2 is a lot of fun to like "ghost"

[cunning galleon]

My favorite game is an extraction shooter

[frozen gate]

also ya i would say Dishonored if u wanted to try something more energetic

it's chill with letting you blow everyone else up if you wanted

[fresh bane]

I've played a couple of those VR missions in MGS2 where you have to practically ghost a small cut of a level and it is very fun for the kinds of players who enjoy doing that, the gameplay of MGS1-2 is very technical in a very satisfying way when you manage to pull it off

[cunning galleon]

Despite my wealth, I still have gear fear and I'm sure almost all extraction shooters share one thing and it's gear fear

[frozen gate]

though my favorite way to play was pacifistic, not using the powers and going for ghost and that's just bc Thief fan and all

[frozen gate]

knowing guards 90% of the time turn to their right so u just wait on their left side in MGS2, had a real like

giddy hehehe feeling

each of the areas felt like lil puzzles then you'd just figure out the best way to get through them and i loved that

played with game over on discovery when i did, which is why

[visual hill]

TIL

[frozen gate]

hahaha

[visual hill]

I just get behind them and mash square until they die

it makes a funny sound too

[frozen gate]

it's on par with realizing you can just jump over people's heads in a pinch on occasion in dishonored

[fresh bane]

It's kind of the same in MGSV, the guards have very exploitable weaknesses in their AIs that mess them up if you know what they are

[visual hill]

I didn't know you could do that in MGS1, I played the entire game without knowing that (and much of MGS2 too)

[slim thorn]

I did try Thief 2 a while back, and found it to be a clunky frustrating mess and didn't even finish the tutorial level. Maybe that's a skill issue, but for now there's too many other games to try instead.

[frozen gate]

yeahh i tried not to knock anyone out

[fresh bane]

It's technically MGS1's version of CQC, you can also flip and throw people in 1 and 2 by tapping square and holding backwards

The game never really tells you that though

and then Kojima thought that was really cool, so he expanded on that for MGS3, and then retroactively explained why Snake totally wasn't doing that in MGS1-2 but is totally doing it now

[frozen gate]

honesgly what got me to keep going into it and stealth games in general was entirely about the tension since i dont really feel that for other games, so for a big chunk of why i like it is emotional i guess

[visual hill]

in MGS2, cartwheels temporarily knock down guards which is useful if you can reach a room transition soon after (to avoid alarms after they wake up)

[visual hill]

Thief 1 has a proper tutorial but not Thief 2. I highly recommend playing T1's tutorial first

[fresh bane]

I actually don't remember if they get alerted by the cqc flip, I think they just get confused and look around and then go back to their routine

Thief usually goes for super cheap especially if any sale is happening, I always wanted to just get all of them at least to have them there if I ever wanted to play them but I don't want to impulsively purchase stuff that I probably won't play

Dishonored is kind of like Thief, and I still haven't played the second one, which I've avoided spoilers of for years because I actually really do wanna play it!

I was very into the story for the first game I remember

[frozen gate]

oh yeah

dishonored was made by a bunch of Thief FM devs like 10 years prior

[fresh bane]

that makes sense

[frozen gate]

i think i mentioned it here but the cool - Corvo Attano on the Lady Boyle guestbook is actually based on Calendra's Cistern FM from like 2000, and Lady Boyle's Last Party was mostly designed by the guy who made that FM

annd Arkane hqd been trying to get the rights to Thief before learning Square had it before Dishonored

[frozen gate]

theyre actually p similar overall

[fresh bane]

I almost want to say that after so much time still trying to get the rights for the games you made 20+ years ago is almost not even worth fighting but there's been some success stories of developers who didn't give up on trying to snatch the rights for the games they made back from the claws of whichever publisher

sometimes the problem lies in the fact that the publisher went down or got dissolved into another one so now who knows who actually has the rights

[frozen gate]

oh yeah it wouldve been a cool alt reality where like

we got the perfect Thief 4 by Arkane and all those original FM creators who got into the industry bc of the game in the first place

but i also admit it probably wouldntve done as well as Dishonored aha

[obsidian salmon]

fallen london: the game where ambushing a seven-throated bird in the "land of is-not" 15 consecutive times in a row to train your monster hunting aptitude all while it comments about the lovely weather surrounding you two (and if you fail, while attacking you) is not only optimal, but also the only way I found to easily accomplish this task with relatively low risk in middle midgame

i love sounding absolutely insane talking about it

[hollow folio]

minecraft idea: when you (the player) is in survival mode, the standard mobs (zombies, skeletons, creepers, spiders, etc) can individually be in either survival or creative mode and you do not know if a mob is in creative or survival mode when you see it. it's a gamble. if its in creative mode, it will just roam around passively and not harm you. but it could potentially switch to survival at any time without warning (if its one of the mixed ones). the only way you will know is if it starts attacking or attempting to attack you. each individual is different. this is how it works: some are permantly in survival, some perminantly in creative. and then theres some that can switch back and forth without warning. so if you see a mob and it sees you but doesnt attack you, it could be 1. a perminant creative mode mob, or 2. a mixed mode mob. if it starts attacking you, it is either 1. a permenant survival mode mob, or 2. a mixed mode mob. you have to figure it out yourself. if you keep one that is currently passive around your base (trap it in your house or something) and it never attacks, eventually you can assume it is probably a permenant creative mode mob but when you encounter them without the intention to stick around for long, you dont know if it is permenantly creative and safe or if its mixed and able to suddenly attack, unless it happens and vice versa

[gaunt marten]

That sounds novel but not fun

[cerulean herald]

it just sounds like some of the hostile mobs can be not hostile, and some deciding to be neutral

I dont understand the specification of creative mode, unless a hostile mob is invincible while on creative

(assuming in your version, u can hurt the creative mode mobs)

[slim thorn]

does anyone else see game banner images in their Steam library randomly lose the stylized text of the game name? it's rare, and simply clicking on another game fixes it, but I've had this happen on multiple games

[bronze abyss]

happens ocassionally,though didnt pay much attention to it

overall the current client is pretty buggy

[obsidian salmon]

5 is higher than 5?

[gaunt marten]

5 >= 5

[visual hill]

Thief: The Black Parade is made by Arkane Lyon's lead level designer, skacky

so it kind of happened in the end 🙂

[visual hill]

I've seen this occasionally too, not sure of the reproduction steps

[gaunt marten]

I wonder which of my games are unity games https://i.imgur.com/2F5BgLi.png

[frozen gate]

portal 100%

[arctic fern]

https://youtu.be/uOFI9iVYGqQ

Love smooth mcgroove

[gaunt marten]

Smooth McGroove is still the only guy in the acapella scene

[astral steeple]

Wow they turned chucky into a full size person lmao

[wind stump]

https://youtu.be/iS9t99I29ic

[visual hill]

SteamDB has that information

Brotato is Godot on desktop (Unity on mobile)

[gaunt marten]

I was being sarcastic

All of the games that suddenly had to update due to the new vulnerability

[visual hill]

press F to pay respects to developers who lost the sources of their project

(it's more common than you think, even in relatively recent indie games)

[wind stump]

... Can't unsee it now.

[cerulean herald]

Francesca mentioned
also what game be this

[wind stump]

Hyper Recon Force

*Hyper Team Recon

[fickle garnet]

My ps5 won't even show the free games with PlayStation plus this month, so I can't play Alan Wake 2 yet. I've been waiting all day, but it still hasn't been fixed

[proud warren]

Oh shit, I know that character: her name's Ember, right? She's a guest character in a fighting game i play from time to time

[fickle garnet]

I can finally download Alan Wake 2

[wind stump]

why are video games like this

[arctic fern]

at the risk of abusing mod powers:

https://tenor.com/view/money-gif-11341170073272671015

[wind stump]

anyway that's why i pirated Trails First Chapter-

(don't feel bad, it's like the most successful Trails game or something)

[frozen gate]

from what i can tell all the dlc are just

"buy this to get a bunch of free ingame junk items" like if u wanted to cheat it

plus costume dlc which i never get anyway

it's absolutely insane they have that much to get to $157 but it's entirely worthless

which is really weird

[frozen gate]

as in like

[wind stump]

i wouldn't even call Falcom AAA, tbh lmao

More like, AA+?

[frozen gate]

sepith one is what you use to buy quartz iirc, but it's not like this game is ultra cheap with dropping them

like this game has a shining pom, its equivalenr of metal slime

and it drops 100 of each when you kill it

so the 5 separate dlc that give you hundreds of sepith? completely useless

[frozen gate]

yeah theyre absolutely not triple A

in the 2000s both their Ys and Trails series had the exact same sprite style and when they upgraded to like anime models the first time they also both used them and they were kinda flat

trails wouldn't even be localized if not at the risk of someone's life doing it all on their own

[wind stump]

Trails 1st Chapter is pretty high quality tho

Then again, I've only finished the prologue

[frozen gate]

i think like daybreak is when they updated again

but last time the models looked like this

[wind stump]

also having played Ys X Nordics, that is also pretty high quality

(god i love Karja)

[frozen gate]

they reuse the model itself between both series, at least before that point it looks

def between cold steel and ys 8 & ys celceta

theyre well written though

i finished like

OG trails FC a long while back it's v comfortable

[visual hill]

I'd like to play the Ys games at some point, I watched a Ys Nordics review back when it was only available in Japan and it looked pretty good

I guess I also need to pay it forward to the developers behind this article: https://ph3at.github.io/posts/Windows-Input/
which has been useful in my own work lately 🙂

[worthy rose]

E33 has hit 5 million copies sold!

[visual hill]

they announced a free update too

(did people scream to make them pay for it like with NMS? :P)

[wind stump]

It's a surprisingly good entry point given how Ys is heavily tied into itself.

[frozen gate]

this is cuz ys 8 did a whole ||everything before this was a dream|| thing which wasnt suuper well received

but it made it more accessible

that said the stories are like 99% self contained so you can really start anywhere

[gaunt marten]

Start from YS 1 and don't do remakes

You will surely regret this

[frozen gate]

you wont know why dogi is your best friend, but the story extent of that is "he broke through a fucking wall" and that's it

[frozen gate]

oh god

even the remake i have like a 10m clip of redoing the final boss repeatedly cuz it's a nightmare LOL

[wind stump]

dogi in a nutshell https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE1XE6Thp9E

[frozen gate]

cuz ys is like 80s old so that's really as complex as it could be bahah

[frozen gate]

this is why we love him 💞

[wind stump]

the sunglasses and partially empty Fireball bottle makes it even better

[peak berry]

https://eqmemory.cn/70267.html

This mod is on the old foundation added many frames, of course the game version still not the latest.

[fickle garnet]

Playing Alan Wake 2, and am I crazy, or is Alan Wake's writing structure very similar to how the hiss speaks in Control

[gaunt marten]

They're basically written by the same people